10753	----	Copyright (C) 2003 by Douglas Rushkoff. This Project Gutenberg is also available online at: http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/opensourcedemocracy_page292.aspx This eBook is available under the Demos Open Access License, which appears at the end of this text and online at: http://www.demos.co.uk/aboutus/licence_page295.aspx Title page: Open Source Democracy How online communication is changing offline politics by Douglas Rushkoff Acknowledgements Thanks to Tom Bentley and everyone at Demos for the opportunity to extend this inquiry to a new community of thinkers. Thanks also to my editorial assistant, Brooke Belisle, and to colleagues including Andrew Shapiro, Steven Johnson, Ted Byfield, Richard Barbrook, David Bennahum, Red Burns, Eugenie Furniss and Lance Strate. Introduction The emergence of the interactive mediaspace may offer a new model for cooperation. Although it may have disappointed many in the technology industry, the rise of interactive media, the birth of a new medium, the battle to control it and the downfall of the first victorious camp, taught us a lot about the relationship of ideas to the media through which they are disseminated. Those who witnessed, or better, have participated in the development of the interactive mediaspace have a very new understanding of the way that cultural narratives are developed, monopolised and challenged. And this knowledge extends, by allegory and experience, to areas far beyond digital culture, to the broader challenges of our time. As the world confronts the impact of globalism, newly revitalised threats of fundamentalism, and the emergence of seemingly irreconcilable value systems, it is incumbent upon us to generate a new reason to believe that living interdependently is not only possible, but preferable to the competitive individualism, ethnocentrism, nationalism and particularism that have characterised so much of late 20th century thinking and culture. The values engendered by our fledgling networked culture may, in fact, help a world struggling with the impact of globalism, the lure of fundamentalism and the clash of conflicting value systems. Thanks to the actual and allegorical role of interactive technologies in our work and lives, we may now have the ability to understand many social and political constructs in very new contexts. We may now be able to launch the kinds of conversations that change the relationship of individuals, parties, creeds and nations to one another and to the world at large. These interactive communication technologies could even help us to understand autonomy as a collective phenomenon, a shared state that emerges spontaneously and quite naturally when people are allowed to participate actively in their mutual self-interest. The emergence of the internet as a self-organising community, its subsequent co-option by business interests, the resulting collapse of the dot.com pyramid and the more recent self-conscious revival of interactive media's most participatory forums, serve as a case study in the politics of renaissance. The battle for control over new and little understood communication technologies has rendered transparent many of the agendas implicit in our political and cultural narratives. Meanwhile, the technologies themselves empower individuals to take part in the creation of new narratives. Thus, in an era when crass perversions of populism, and exaggerated calls for national security, threaten the very premises of representational democracy and free discourse, interactive technologies offer us a ray of hope for a renewed spirit of genuine civic engagement. The very survival of democracy as a functional reality may be dependent upon our acceptance, as individuals, of adult roles in conceiving and stewarding the shape and direction of society. And we may get our best rehearsal for these roles online. In short, the interactive mediaspace offers a new way of understanding civilisation itself, and a new set of good reasons for engaging with civic reality more fully in the face of what are often perceived (or taught) to be the many risks and compromises associated with cooperative behaviour. Sadly, thanks to the proliferation of traditional top-down media and propaganda, both marketers and politicians have succeeded in their efforts to turn neighbour against neighbour, city against city, and nation against nation. While such strategies sell more products, earn more votes and inspire a sense of exclusive salvation (we can't share, participate, or heaven forbid collaborate with people whom we've been taught not to trust) they imperil what is left of civil society. They threaten the last small hope for averting millions of deaths in the next set of faith-justified oil wars. As the mainstream mediaspace, particularly in the United States, becomes increasingly centralised and profit-driven, its ability to offer a multiplicity of perspectives on affairs of global importance is diminished. In America, broadcasting the Iraq war meant selling the Iraq war. Each of the media conglomerates broadcast the American regime's carefully concocted narrative, so much so that by the time the war actually began a Knight Ridder poll found half of Americans believed that Iraqis had participated directly as hijackers on 9 September 2001. The further embedded among coalition troops that mainstream reporters were, the further embedded in the language and priorities of the Pentagon they became. Dispatches regularly referred to the deaths of Iraqi soldiers as the 'softening of enemy positions', bombing strikes as 'targets of opportunity', and civilian deaths as the now-laughable 'collateral damage'. This was the propagandist motive for embedding reporters in the first place: when journalists' lives are dependent on the success of the troops with whom they are travelling, their coverage becomes skewed. But this did not stop many of the journalists from creating their own weblogs, or blogs: internet diaries through which they could share their more candid responses to the bigger questions of the war. Journalists' personal entries provided a much broader range of opinions on both the strategies and motivations of all sides in the conflict than were available, particularly to Americans, on broadcast and cable television. For an even wider assortment of perspectives, internet users were free to engage directly with the so-called enemy, as in the case of a blog called Dear Raed, written by what most internet experts came to regard as a real person living in Baghdad, voicing his opposition to the war. This daily journal of high aspirations for peace and a better life in Baghdad became one of the most read sources of information and opinion about the war on the web. Clearly, the success of sites like Dear Raed stem from our increasingly complex society's need for a multiplicity of points of view on our most pressing issues, particularly when confronted by a mainstream mediaspace that appears to be converging on single, corporate and government approved agenda. These alternative information sources are being given more attention and credence than they might actually deserve, but this is only because they are the only ready source of oppositional, or even independent thinking available. Those who choose to compose and disseminate alternative value systems may be working against the current and increasingly concretised mythologies of market, church and state, but they ultimately hold the keys to the rebirth of all three institutions in an entirely new context. The communications revolution may not have brought with it either salvation for the world's stock exchanges or the technological infrastructure for a new global resource distribution system. Though one possible direction for the implementation of new media technology may be exhausted, its other myriad potentials beckon us once again. While it may not provide us with a template for sure-fire business and marketing solutions, the rise of interactive media does provide us with the beginnings of new metaphors for cooperation, new faith in the power of networked activity and new evidence of our ability to participate actively in the authorship of our collective destiny. Chapter 1 From Moses to modems: demystifying the storytelling and taking control We are living in a world of stories. We can't help but use narratives to understand the events that occur around us. The unpredictability of nature, emotions, social interactions and power relationships led human beings from prehistoric times to develop narratives that described the patterns underlying the movements of these forces. Although we like to believe that primitive people actually believed the myths they created about everything, from the weather to the afterlife, a growing camp of religious historians are concluding that early religions were understood much more metaphorically than we understand religion today. As Karen Armstrong explains in A History of God1, and countless other religious historians and philosophers from Maimonides to Freud have begged us to understand, the ancients didn't believe that the wind or rain were gods. They invented characters whose personalities reflected the properties of these elements. The characters and their stories served more as ways of remembering that it would be cold for four months before spring returns than as genuinely accepted explanations for nature's changes. The people were actively, and quite self-consciously, anthropomorphizing the forces of nature. As different people and groups competed for authority, narratives began to be used to gain advantage. Stories were no longer being used simply to predict the patterns of nature, but to describe and influence the courses of politics, economics and power. In such a world, stories compete solely on the basis of their ability to win believers; to be understood as real. When the Pharaoh or King is treated as if he were a god, his subjects are actively participating in the conceit. But he still needed to prove his potency in real ways, and at regular intervals, in order to ensure their continued participation. However, if the ruler could somehow get his followers to accept the story of his divine authority as historical fact, then he need prove nothing. The story justifies itself and is accepted as a reality. In a sense, early civilisation was really just the process through which older, weaker people used stories to keep younger, stronger people from vying for their power. By the time the young were old enough to know what was going on, they were too invested in the system, or too physically weak themselves, to risk exposing the stories as myths. More positively, these stories provided enough societal continuity for some developments that spanned generations to take root. The Old Testament, for example, is basically the repeated story of how younger sons attempt to outwit their fathers for an inherited birth right. Of course, this is simply allegory for the Israelites' supplanting of the first-born civilisation, Egypt. But even those who understood the story as metaphor rather than historical fact continued to pass it on for the ethical tradition it contained: one of a people attempting to enact social justice rather than simply receive it. Storytelling: communication and media Since Biblical times we have been living in a world where the stories we use to describe and predict our reality have been presented as truth and mistaken for fact. These narratives, and their tellers, compete for believers in two ways: through the content of the stories and through the medium or tools through which the stories are told. The content of a story might be considered the what, where the technology through which the story is transmitted can be considered the how. In moments when new technologies of storytelling develop, the competitive value of the medium can be more influential than the value of the message. Exclusive access to the how of storytelling lets a storyteller monopolise the what. In ancient times, people were captivated by the epic storyteller as much for his ability to remember thousands of lines of text as for the actual content of the Iliad or Odyssey. Likewise, a television program or commercial holds us in its spell as much through the magic of broadcasting technology as its script. Whoever has power to get inside that magic box has the power to write the story we end up believing. We don't call the stuff on television 'programming' for nothing. The people making television are not programming our TV sets or their evening schedules; they are programming us. We use the dial to select which program we are going to receive and then we submit to it. This is not so dangerous in itself; but the less understanding and control we have over exactly what is fed to us through the tube, the more vulnerable we are to the whims of our programmers. For most of us, what goes on in the television set is magic. Before the age of VCRs and camcorders it was even more so. The creation and broadcast of a television program was a magic act. Whoever has his image in that box must be special. Back in the 1960s, Walter Cronkite used to end his newscast with the assertion: "and that's the way it is". It was his ability to appear in the magic box that gave him the tremendous authority necessary to lay claim to the absolute truth. I have always recoiled when this rhetorical advantage is exploited by those who have the power to monopolise a medium. Consider, for example, a scene in the third Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi. Luke and Hans Solo have landed on an alien moon and are taken prisoner by a tribe of little furry creatures called Ewoks. In an effort to win their liberation, Luke's two robots tell the Ewoks the story of their heroes' struggle against the dark forces of the Empire. C3PO, the golden android, relates the tale while little R2D2 projects holographic images of battling spaceships. The Ewoks are dazzled by R2's special effects and engrossed in C3PO's tale: the how and the what. They are so moved by the story that they not only release their prisoners but fight a violent war on their behalf! What if the Empire's villainous protector, Darth Vader, had arrived on the alien moon first and told his side of the story, complete with his own special effects? Television programming communicates through stories and it influences us through its seemingly magical capabilities. The programmer creates a character we like and with whom we can identify. As a series of plot developments bring that character into some kind of danger, we follow him and within us a sense of tension arises. This is what Aristotle called the rising arc of dramatic action. The storyteller brings the character, and his audience, into as much danger as we can tolerate before inventing a solution, the rescue, allowing us all to breathe a big sigh of relief. Back in Aristotle's day, this solution was called Deus ex machina (God from the machine). One of the Greek gods would literally descend on a mechanism from the rafters and save the day. In an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, the miraculous solution might take the form of a new, super-powered laser gun. In a commercial, the solution is, of course, the product being advertised. TV commercials have honed this storytelling technique into the perfect 30-second package. A man is at work when his wife calls to tell him she's crashed the car. The boss comes in to tell him he just lost a big account, his bank statement shows he's in the red and his secretary quits. Now his head hurts. We've followed the poor guy all the way up Aristotle's arc of rising tension. We can feel the character's pain. What can he do? He opens the top desk drawer and finds his bottle of Brand A Pain Reliever and swallows the pills He swallows the pills while an awe-inspiring hi-tech animation demonstrates the way the pill passes through his body. He, and us, are released from our torture. In this passive and mysterious medium, when we are brought into a state of vicarious tension, we are more likely to swallow whichever pill and accept whatever solution that the storyteller offers. Interactivity: the birth of resistance Interactive media changed this equation. Imagine if your father were watching that aspirin commercial back in 1955 on his old console television. Even if he suspected that he was watching a commercial designed to put him in a state of anxiety, in order to change the channel and remove himself from the externally imposed tension, he would have to move the popcorn off his lap, pull up the lever on his recliner, walk up to the television set and manually turn the dial. All that amounts to a somewhat rebellious action for a bleary-eyed television viewer. To sit through the rest of the commercial, however harrowing, might cost him only a tiny quantity of human energy until the pills come out of the drawer. The brain, being lazy, chooses the path of least resistance and Dad sits through the whole commercial. Flash forward to 1990. A kid with a remote control in his hand makes the same mental calculation: an ounce of stress, or an infinitesimally small quantity of human effort to move his finger an eighth of an inch and he's free! The remote control gives viewers the power to remove themselves from the storyteller's spell with almost no effort. Watch a kid (or observe yourself) next time he channel surfs from program to program. He's not changing the channel because he's bored, but he surfs away when he senses that he's being put into an imposed state of tension. The remote control breaks down the what. It allows a viewer to deconstruct the content of television media, and avoid falling under the programmer's spell. If a viewer does get back around the dial to watch the end of a program, he no longer has the same captivated orientation. Kids with remotes aren't watching television, they are watching the television (the physical machine) playing 'television', putting it through its paces. Just as the remote control allowed a generation to deconstruct the content of television, the video game joystick demystified its technology. Think back to the first time you ever saw a video game. It was probably Pong, that primitive black and white depiction of a ping-pong table, with a square on either side of the screen representing the bat and a tiny white dot representing the ball. Now, remember the exhilaration you felt at playing that game for the very first time. Was it because you had always wanted an effective simulation of ping-pong? Did you celebrate because you could practice without purchasing an entire table and installing it in the basement? Of course not. You were celebrating the simple ability to move the pixels on the screen for the first time. It was a moment of revolution! The screen was no longer the exclusive turf of the television broadcasters. Thanks to the joystick, as well as the subsequent introduction of the VCR and camcorder, we were empowered to move the pixels ourselves. The TV was no longer magical. Its functioning had become transparent. Just as the remote control allowed viewers to deconstruct the content of storytelling, the joystick allowed the audience to demystify the technology through which these stories were being told. Finally, the computer mouse and keyboard transformed a receive-only monitor into a portal. Packaged programming was no longer any more valuable, or valid, than the words we could type ourselves. The addition of a modem turned the computer into a broadcast facility. We were no longer dependent on the content of Rupert Murdoch or corporate TV stations, but could create and disseminate our own content. The internet revolution was a do-it-yourself revolution. We had deconstructed the content of media's stories, demystified its modes of transmission and learned to do it all for ourselves. These three stages of development: deconstruction of content, demystification of technology and finally do-it-yourself or participatory authorship are the three steps through which a programmed populace returns to autonomous thinking, action and collective self-determination. Chapter 2 The birth of the electronic community... and the backlash New forms of community were emerging that stressed the actual contributions of the participants, rather than whatever prepackaged content they had in common. In many cases, these contributions took the form not of ideas or text but technology itself. The early interactive mediaspace was a gift economy (see Barbrook2). People developed and shared new technologies with no expectation of financial return. It was gratifying enough to see one's own email program or bulletin board software spread to thousands of other users. The technologies in use on the internet today, from browsers and POP email programs to streaming video, were all developed by this shareware community of software engineers. The University of Illinois at Champagne Urbana, where Mozilla, the precursor to Netscape, was first developed was a hotbed of new software development. So was Cornell and MIT, as well as hundreds of more loosely organised hacker groups around the world. Invariably, the software applications developed by this community stressed communication over mere data retrieval. They were egalitarian in design. IRC chats and USENET groups, for example, present every contributor's postings in the same universal ASCII text. The internet was a text-only medium and its user was as likely to be typing into the keyboard as reading what was on screen. It is as if the internet's early developers released that this was not a medium for broadcasting by a few but for the expression of the many. People became the content, a shift that had implications not just for the online community but for society as a whole. The notion of a group of people working together for a shared goal rather than financial self-interest was quite startling to Westerners whose lives had been organised around the single purpose of making money and achieving personal security. The internet was considered sexy simply because young people took an interest in it. People who developed internet applications in this way were called cyberpunks or hackers, and their antics were often equated with those of Wild West outlaws, hippies, Situationists and even communists. But their organisation model was much more complex and potentially far-reaching than those of their countercultural predecessors. Many of these early technology and media pioneers would not have considered themselves to be part of a counterculture at all. Indeed, many new models for networked behaviour and collaborative engagement were developed at research facilities dedicated to the advancement of military technology. A US government policy requiring all firms working under Defense Department contracts to test their employees' blood and urine for illegal drug use led to a certain disconnection between most Silicon Valley firms and the majority of the fledgling computer counterculture. (In fact, of all the Silicon Valley firms, only Sun computing quite conspicuously refused to do drug testing on its employees.) Whatever the applications envisioned for the communication technology being developed, the operating principles of the finished networking solutions, as well as the style of collaboration required to create them, offered up a new cultural narrative based in collective self-determination. Online communities sprung up seemingly from nowhere. On the West Coast in the late 1980s one of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, Stewart Brand (now co-founder of the prestigious Global Business Network), conceived and implemented an online bulletin board called The Well (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link). Within two years thousands of users had joined the dial-in computer conferencing system and were sharing their deepest hopes and fears with one another. Famous scientists, authors, philosophers and scores of journalists flocked to the site in order to develop their ideas collaboratively rather than alone. Meanwhile as the internet continued to develop, online discussions in a distributed system called USENET began to proliferate. These were absolutely self-organising discussions about thousands of different topics. They themselves spawned communities of scientists, activists, doctors, and patients, among so many others, dedicated to tackling problems in collaboration across formerly prohibitive geographical and cultural divides. The Backlash These new communities are perhaps why the effects of the remote, joystick and mouse represented such a tremendous threat to business as usual. Studies in the mid-1990s showed that families with internet-capable computers were watching an average of nine hours less television per week. Even more frightening to those who depended on the mindless passivity of consumer culture, internet enthusiasts were sharing information, ideas and whole computer programs for free! Software known as 'freeware' and 'shareware' gave rise to a gift economy based on community and mutual self-interest. People were turning to alternative news and entertainment sources, which they didn't have to pay for. Worse, they were watching fewer commercials. Something had to be done. And it was. It is difficult to determine exactly how intentional each of the mainstream media's attacks were on the development of the internet and the culture it spawned. Certainly, the many executives of media conglomerates who contacted my colleagues and I for advice throughout the 1990s were both threatened by the unchecked growth of interactive culture and anxious to cash in on these new developments. They were chagrined by the flow of viewers away from television programming, but they hoped this shift could be managed and ultimately exploited. While many existing content industries, such as the music recording industry, sought to put both individual companies and entire new categories out of business (such as Napster and other peer-to-peer networks), the great majority of executives did not want to see the internet entirely shut down. It was, in fact, the US government, concerned about the spread of pornography to minors and encryption technology to rogue nations, that took more direct actions against the early internet's new model of open collaboration. Although many of the leaders and top shareholders of global media conglomerates felt quite threatened by the rise of new media, their conscious efforts to quell the unchecked spread of interactive technology were not the primary obstacles to the internet's natural development. A review of articles quoting the chiefs at TimeWarner, Newscorp, and Bertelsman reveals an industry either underestimating or simply misunderstanding the true promise of interactive media. The real attacks on the emerging new media culture were not orchestrated by old men from high up in glass office towers but arose almost as systemic responses from an old media culture responding to the birth of its successor. It was both through the specific, if misguided, actions of some media executives, as well as the much more unilateral response of an entire media culture responding to a threat to the status quo, that mainstream media began to reverse the effects of the remote, the joystick and the mouse. Borrowing a term from 1970s social science, media business advocates declared that we were now living in an 'attention economy'. True enough, the mediaspace might be infinite but there are only so many hours in a day during which potential audience members might be viewing a program. These units of human time became known as eyeball-hours, and pains were taken to create TV shows and web sites 'sticky' enough to engage those eyeballs long enough to show them an advertisement. Perhaps coincidentally, the growth of the attention economy was accompanied by an increase of concern over the attention spans of young people. Channel surfing and similar behaviour became equated with a very real but variously diagnosed childhood illness called Attention Deficit Disorder. Children who refused to pay attention were (much too quickly) drugged with addictive amphetamines before the real reasons for their adaptation to the onslaught of commercial messages were even considered. The demystification of media, enabled by the joystick and other early interactive technologies, was quickly reversed through the development of increasingly opaque computer interfaces. While early DOS computer users tended to understand a lot about how their computers stored information and launched programs, later operating systems such as Windows 95 put more barriers in place. Although these operating systems make computers easier to use in some ways, they prevent users from gaining access or command over its more intricate processes. Now, to install a new program, users must consult the 'wizard'. What better metaphor do we need for the remystification of the computer? Computer literacy no longer means being able to program a computer, but merely knowing how to use software such as Microsoft Office. Finally, the do-it-yourself ethic of the internet community was replaced by the new value of commerce. The communications age was rebranded as the information age, even though the internet had never really been about downloading files or data, but about communicating with other people. The difference was that information, or content, unlike real human interaction, could be bought and sold. It was a commodity. People would pay, it was thought, for horoscopes, stock prices and magazine articles. When selling information online didn't work, businesspeople instead turned to selling real products online. Horoscope.com and online literary journals gave way to Pets.com and online bookstores. The e-commerce boom was ignited. Soon the internet became the World Wide Web. Its opaque and image-heavy interfaces made it increasingly one-way and read-only, more conducive to commerce than communication. The internet was reduced to a direct marketing platform. The burst of the bubble and the re-emergence of community Few e-commerce companies made any money selling goods, but the idea that they could was all that mattered. When actual e-commerce didn't work, the internet was rebranded yet again as an investment platform. The Web was to be the new portal through which the middle class could invest in the stock market. And which stocks were they to invest in? Internet stocks, of course! Like any good pyramid scheme, everyone was in on it. Or at least they thought they were. News stories about online communities such as The Well, or even discussion groups for breast cancer survivors were soon overshadowed by those about daring young entrepreneurs launching multi-million-dollar IPOs (Initial Price Offerings of formerly private stock on public exchanges such as the NYSE or NASDAQ.) Internet journalism, written by option-holding employees of media conglomerates, moved from the culture section to the business pages and the dot.com pyramid scheme became the dominant new media story. A medium born out of the ability to break through packaged stories was now being used to promote a new, equally dangerous one: the great pyramid. A smart kid writes a business plan. He finds a few 'angel' investors to back him up long enough to land some first-level investors. Below them on the pyramid are several more rounds of investors, until the investment bank gets involved. Another few levels of investors buy in until the decision is made to go public. Of course, by this point, the angels and other early investors are executing their exit strategy. It used be known as a carpet bag. In any case they're gone and the investing public is left holding the soon-to-be-worthless shares. Tragically, but perhaps luckily, the dot.com bubble burst along with the story being used to keep it inflated. The entire cycle, the birth of a new medium, the battle to control it and the downfall of the first victorious camp, taught us a lot about the relationship of stories to the technologies through which they are disseminated. And the whole ordeal may have given us an opportunity for renaissance. Back here in the real world, the internet is doing just fine. Better than ever. The World Wide Web, whose rather opaque platform ascended primarily for its ability to serve as an online catalogue, has been adapted to serve many of the internet's original, more technologically primitive functions. USENET discussions have been reborn as web-based bulletin boards such as Slashdot, and Metafilter. Personal daily diaries known as weblogs have multiplied by the thousands. Blogger.com provides a set of publishing tools that allows even a novice to create a weblog, automatically add content to a Web site or organise links, commentary and open discussions. In the short time Blogger has been available, it has fostered an interconnected community of tens of thousands of users. These people don't simply surf the Web. They are now empowered to create it. Rising from the graveyard of failed business plans, these collaborative communities of authors and creators are the true harbingers of cultural and perhaps political renaissance. Chapter 3 The opportunity for renaissance The birth of the internet was interpreted by many as a revolution. Those of us in the counterculture saw in the internet an opportunity to topple the storytellers who had dominated our politics, economics, society and religion - in short our very reality - and to replace their stories with those of our own. It was a beautiful and exciting sentiment, but one as based in a particular narrative as any other. Revolutions simply replace one story with another. The capitalist narrative is replaced by that of the communist; the religious fundamentalist's replaced by the gnostic's. The means may be different, but the rewards are the same. So is the exclusivity of their distribution. That's why they're called revolutions - we're just going in a circle. This is why it might be more useful to understand the proliferation of interactive media as an opportunity for renaissance: a moment when we have the ability to step out of the story altogether. Renaissances are historical instances of widespread recontextualisation. People in a variety of different arts, philosophies and sciences have the ability to reframe their reality. Renaissance literally means 'rebirth'. It is the rebirth of old ideas in a new context. A renaissance is a dimensional leap, when our perspective shifts so dramatically that our understanding of the oldest, most fundamental elements of existence changes. The stories we have been using no longer work. Take a look back at what we think of as the original Renaissance; the one we were taught in school. What were the main leaps in perspective? One example is the use of perspective in painting. Artists developed the technique of the vanishing point and with it the ability to paint three-dimensional representations on two-dimensional surfaces. The character of this innovation is subtle but distinct. It is not a technique for working in three dimensions; it is not that artists moved from working on canvas to working with clay. Rather, perspective painting allows an artist to relate between dimensions: representing three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional plane. Another example is calculus, another key renaissance invention. Calculus is a mathematical system that allows us to derive one dimension from another. It is a way of describing curves with the language of lines, and spheres with the language of curves. The leap from arithmetic to calculus was not just a leap in our ability to work with higher dimensional objects, but a leap in our ability to relate the objects of one dimension to the objects of another. It was a shift in perspective that allowed us to orient ourselves to mathematical objects from beyond the context of their own dimensionality. The other main features of the Renaissance permitted similar shifts in perspective. Circumnavigation of the globe changed our relationship between the planet we live on and the maps we used to describe it. The maps still worked, they just described a globe instead of a plane. Anyone hoping to navigate a course had to be able to relate a two-dimensional map to the new reality of a three-dimensional planet. Similarly, the invention of moveable type and the printing press changed the relationship of author and audience to text. The creation of a manuscript was no longer a one-pointed affair. The creation of the first manuscript still was, but now it could be replicated and distributed to everyone. It was still one story, but now was subject to a multiplicity of individual perspectives. This innovation alone changed the landscape of religion in the Western World. Individual interpretation of the Bible led to the collapse of Church authority and the unilateral nature of its decrees. Everyone demanded his or her own relationship to the story. Our electronic renaissance In all these cases, people experienced a very particular shift in their relationship to, and understanding of, dimensions. Understood this way, a renaissance is a moment of reframing. We step out of the frame as it is currently defined and see the whole picture in a new context. We can then play by new rules. It is akin to the experience of a computer game player. At first, a gamer will play a video or computer game by the rules. He'll read the manual, if necessary, then move through the various levels of the game. Mastery of the game, at this stage, means getting to the end: making it to the last level, surviving, becoming the most powerful character or, in the case of a simulation game, designing and maintaining a thriving family, city or civilisation. For many gamers, this is as far as it goes. Some gamers, though - usually after they've mastered this level of play - will venture out onto the internet in search of other fans or user groups. There, they will gather the cheat codes that can be used to acquire special abilities within the game, such as invisibility or an infinite supply of ammunition. When the gamer returns to the game with his secret codes, is he still playing the game or is he cheating? From a renaissance perspective he is still playing the game, albeit a different one. His playing field has grown from the CD on which the game was shipped to the entire universe of computers where these secret codes and abilities can be discussed and shared. He is no longer playing the game, but a meta-game. The inner game world is still fun, but it is distanced by the gamer's new perspective, much in the way we are distanced from the play-within-a-play in one of Shakespeare's comedies or dramas. And the meta-theatrical convention gives us new perspective on the greater story as well. Gaming, as a metaphor but also as a lived experience, invites a renaissance perspective on the world in which we live. Perhaps gamers and their game culture have been as responsible as anyone for the rise in expressly self-similar forms of television like Beavis and Butt-head, The Simpsons and Southpark. The joy of such programs is not the relief of reaching the climax of the linear narrative, but rather the momentary thrill of making connections. The satisfaction is in recognising which bits of media are being satirised at any given moment. It is an entirely new perspective on television, where programs exist more in the form of Talmudic commentary: perspectives on perspectives on perspectives. We watch screens within screens, constantly reminded, almost as in a Brecht play, of the artifice of storytelling. It is as if we are looking at a series of proscenium arches, and are being invited as an audience to consider whether we are within a proscenium arch ourselves. The great Renaissance was a simple leap in perspective. Instead of seeing everything in one dimension, we came to realise there was more than one dimension on which things were occurring. Even the Elizabethan world picture, with its concentric rings of authority - God, king, man, animals - reflects this new found way of contending with the simultaneity of action of many dimensions at once. A gamer stepping out onto the internet to find a cheat code certainly reaches this first renaissance's level of awareness and skill. But what of the gamer who then learns to program new games for himself? He, we might argue, has stepped out of yet another frame into our current renaissance. He has deconstructed the content of the game, demystified the technology of its interface and now feels ready to open the codes and turn the game into a do-it-yourself activity. He has moved from a position of a receiving player to that of a deconstructing user. He has assumed the position of author, himself. This leap to authorship is precisely the character and quality of the dimensional leap associated with today's renaissance. The evidence of today's renaissance is at least as profound as that of the one that went before. The16th century saw the successful circumnavigation of the globe via the seas. The 20th century saw the successful circumnavigation of the globe from space. The first pictures of earth from space changed our perspective on this sphere forever. In the same century, our dominance over the planet was confirmed not just through our ability to travel around it, but to destroy it. The atomic bomb (itself the result of a rude dimensional interchange between submolecular particles) gave us the ability to author the globe's very destiny. Now, instead of merely being able to comprehend 'God's creation', we could actively control it. This is a new perspective. We also have our equivalent of perspective painting, in the invention of the holograph. The holograph allows us to represent not just three, but four dimensions on a two-dimensional plate. When the viewer walks past a holograph she can observe the three-dimensional object over a course of time. A bird can flap its wings in a single picture. But, more importantly for our renaissance's purposes, the holographic plate itself embodies a new renaissance principle. When the plate is smashed into hundreds of pieces, we do not find that one piece contains the bird's wing, and another piece the bird's beak. Each piece of the plate contains a faint image of the entire subject. When the pieces are put together, the image achieves greater resolution. But each piece contains a representation of the totality. This leap in dimensional understanding is now informing disciplines as diverse as brain anatomy and computer programming. Our analogy to calculus is the development of systems theory, chaos math and the much-celebrated fractal. Confronting non-linear equations on their own terms for the first time, mathematicians armed with computers are coming to new understandings of the way numbers can be used to represent the complex relationships between dimensions. Accepting that the surfaces in our world, from coastlines to clouds, exhibit the properties of both two and three-dimensional objects (just what is the surface area of a cloud?) they came up with ways of working with and representing objects with fractional dimensionality. Using fractals and their equations, we can now represent and work with objects from the natural world that defy Cartesian analysis. We also become able to develop mathematical models that reflect many more properties of nature's own systems, such as self-similarity and remote high leverage points. Again, we find that this renaissance is characterised by the ability of an individual to reflect, or even affect, the grand narrative. To write the game. Finally, our renaissance's answer to the printing press is the computer and its ability to network. Just as the printing press gave everyone access to readership, the computer and internet give everyone access to authorship. The first Renaissance took us from the position of passive recipient to active interpreter. Our current renaissance brings us from the role of interpreter to the role of author. We are the creators. As game programmers instead of game players, the creators of testimony rather than the believers in testament, we begin to become aware of just how much of our reality is open source and up for discussion. So much of what seemed like impenetrable hardware is actually software and ripe for reprogramming. The stories we use to understand the world seem less like explanations and more like collaborations. They are rule sets, only as good as their ability to explain the patterns of history or predict those of the future. Consider the experience of a cartographer attempting to hold a conversation with a surfer. They both can claim intimate knowledge of the ocean, but from vastly different perspectives. While the mapmaker understands the sea as a series of longitude and latitude lines, the surfer sees only a motion of waves that are not even depicted on the cartographer's map. If the cartographer were to call out from the beach to the surfer and ask him whether he is above or below the 43rd parallel, the surfer would be unable to respond. The mapmaker would have no choice but to conclude that the surfer was hopelessly lost. But if any of us were asked to choose who we would rather rely on to get us back to shore, most of us would pick the surfer. He experiences the water as a system of moving waves and stands a much better chance of navigating a safe course through them. Each surfer at each location and each moment of the day experiences an entirely different ocean. The cartographer experiences the same map no matter what. He has a more permanent model, but his liability is his propensity to mistake his map for the actual territory. The difference between the cartographer and the surfer's experience of the ocean is akin to pre and post-renaissance relationships to story. The first relies on the most linear and static interpretations of the story in order to create a static and authoritative template through which to glean its meaning. The latter relies on the living, moment-to-moment perceptions of its many active interpreters to develop a way of relating to its many changing patterns. Ultimately, in a cognitive process not unlike that employed by a chaos mathematician, the surfer learns to recognise the order underlying what at first appears to be random turbulence. Events, images, and arrangements that might otherwise have appeared to be unrelated are now, thanks to a world view that acknowledges discontinuity, revealed to be connected. To those unfamiliar with this style of pattern recognition, the connections they draw may appear to be as unrelated as a fortune-teller's tea leaves or Tarot cards are from the future events she predicts. Nonetheless, the surfer understands each moment and event in his world as a possible reflection on any other aspect or moment in the entire system. What gets reborn The renaissance experience of moving beyond the frame allows everything old to look new again. We are liberated from the maps we have been using to navigate our world and free to create new ones based on our own observations. This invariably leads to a whole new era of competition. Renaissance may be a rebirth of old ideas in a new context, but which ideas get to be reborn? The first to recognise the new renaissance will compete to have their ideologies be the ones that are rebirthed in this new context. This is why, with the emergence of the internet, we saw the attempted rebirth (and occasional stillbirth) of everything from paganism to libertarianism, and communism to psychedelia. Predictably, the financial markets and consumer capitalism, the dominant narratives of our era, were the first to successfully commandeer the renaissance. But they squandered their story on a pyramid scheme (indeed, the accelerating force of computers and networks tends to force any story to its logical conclusion) and now the interactive renaissance is once again up for grabs. Perhaps the most valuable idea to plant now, into the post-renaissance society of tomorrow, is the very notion of renaissance itself. Interactivity, both as an allegory for a healthier relationship to cultural programming, and as an actual implementation of a widely accessible authoring technology, reduces our dependence on fixed narratives while giving us the tools and courage to develop narratives together. The birth of interactive technology has allowed for a sudden change of state. We have witnessed together the wizard behind the curtain. We can all see, for this moment anyway, how so very much of what we have perceived of as reality is, in fact, merely social construction. More importantly, we have gained the ability to enact such wizardry ourselves. The most ready examples of such suddenly received knowledge come to us from the mystics. Indeed, many early cyber-pioneers expressed their insights (see my Cyberia for examples3) in mystical language coining terms such as 'technoshamanism' and 'cyberdelia'. Indeed, in some ways it does feel as though our society were at the boundaries of a mystical experience, when we have a glimpse of the profoundly arbitrary nature of the stories we use to organise and explain the human experience. It is at precisely these moments that the voyager wonders: "what can I tell myself - what I can write down that will make me remember this experience beyond words?" Of course, most of these mystical scribblings end up being over-simplified platitudes such as 'all is one' or 'I am God'. Those that rise above such clich, such as the more mystical tractates of Ezekiel or Julian of Norwich, defy rational analysis or any effort at comprehension. Our only choice, in such a situation, might be to attempt to preserve just the initial insight that our maps are mere models, and that we have the ability to draw new ones whenever we wish. This is why the scientists, mathematicians, engineers, businesspeople, religious and social organisers of the late 20th century, who have adopted a renaissance perspective on their fields, have also proclaimed their insights to be so categorically set apart from the work of their predecessors. Chaos mathematicians (and the economists who depend on them) regard systems theory as an entirely new understanding of the inner workings of our reality. They are then celebrated on the pages of the New York Times for declaring that our universe is actually made up of a few simple equations called cellular-automata. Scientists find themselves abandoning a theory of ant hill organisation that depends on commands from the queen, and replacing it with a bottom-up model of emergent organisation that depends on the free flow of information between every member of the colony. More importantly, however, these flashes of insight and radical reappraisal of formerly sacrosanct ideas are followed not by a retrenchment but by a new openness to reflection, collaboration and change. The greatest benefit of a shift in operating model appears to be the recollection that we are working with a mere model. 11 September 2001: Coping by retreat into a world view More than any particular map or narrative we might develop, we need to retain the crucial awareness that any and all of these narratives are mere models for behavioural, social, economic or political success. Though provisionally functional, none of them are absolutely true. To mistake any of them for reality would be to mistake the map for the territory. This, more than anything, is the terrible lesson of the 20th century. Many people, institutions and nations have yet to adopt strategies that take this lesson into account. The oil industry and its representatives (some now elected in government) are, for example, incapable of understanding a profit model that does not involve the exploitation of a fixed and limited resources. They continue to push the rest of the industrialised world toward the unnecessary bolstering of cooperative, if oppressive dictatorships, as well as the wars these policies invariably produce. The chemical and agriculture industries, incapable of envisioning a particular crop as anything but a drug-addicted, genetically altered species, cannot conceive of the impact of their innovations on the planet's topsoil or ecosystems. In more readily appreciated examples, the Church of England is still consumed with its defence of the literal interpretation of Biblical events and many fundamentalists sects in the United States still fight, quite successfully, to prevent the theory of evolution from being taught in State schools. Although the terrorist attacks on the United States can find their roots, at least partially, in a legacy of misguided American foreign and energy policy decisions, they have also increased our awareness of a great chasm between peoples with seemingly irreconcilable stories about the world and humankind's role within it. And the lines between these worldviews are anything but clear. Hours after the attacks, two of America's own fundamentalist ministers, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, were quick to fit the tragic events into their own concrete narrative for God's relationship to humankind. Unable, or unwilling, to understand the apocalyptic moment as anything but the wrath of God, they blamed the feminists, homosexuals and civil libertarians of New York City for having brought this terrible but heavenly decree on themselves. In a less strident but equally fundamentalist impulse, many American patriots interpreted the attacks as the beginning of a war against our nation's sacred values. This was to be seen as a war against capitalism and a free society. As American flags were raised in defiance of our Middle Eastern antagonists, just as many American freedoms were sacrificed to the new war on terrorism. Our nationalism overshadowed our national values, but our collective story was saved from deconstruction. Meanwhile, free-market capitalism's stalwarts, who had already suffered the collapse of the dot.com bubble and the faith-challenging reality of an economic recession, were also reeling from the attack on their most visible symbol of global trade. With its dependence on perpetual expansion, the story of global capitalism was not helped by this sure sign of resistance. Might the world not really be ready to embrace the World Trade Organisation's gifts? With a utopian future of global economic prosperity as central to its basic premise as any fundamentalist vision of a perfect past era in harmony with God, believers in the capitalist narrative responded the only way they could. They sought a war to defend their story. The most injurious rupture, of course, was to the narrative we use to feel safe and protected in an increasingly global society. The attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, pinpointed, devastating, and worst of all perfectly executed, challenged the notion that we were the world's singularly invincible nation. The people we appointed to protect us had proved their inability to do so. President Bush's quick rise to an over 90 percent popularity rating shows just how much we needed to believe in his ability to provide us with the omnipotent fatherly protection that his rhetoric commanded. But like a child realising that his parents can't save him from the bully at school, Americans were forced to consider that our leaders, our weapons and our wealth offer only so much insulation from a big bad world. Our nurtured complacency and our sense of absolute security had always been unfounded, of course. But waking up to the great existential dilemma as suddenly as we did was a traumatic experience. It led us to revert to old habits. Anti-Semites (and latent anti-Semites) around the world used the catastrophe as new evidence of the 'Jewish problem'. Tsarist and Nazi propaganda books, such as Protocols of the Elders of Zion, hit the bestseller lists in countries like Saudi Arabia where they are still being published by official government presses. Newspaper stories revived blood libel (that Jews drink the blood of murdered non-Jewish teens) and spread the disinformation that Jews were warned about the attacks by their rabbis through special radios they keep in their homes. Indeed, such informational treachery is nothing new. But in the destabilised atmosphere of disrupted narrative, it spread faster, wider and with greater effect than it otherwise would have. Efforts to package America's New War on news channels like CNN further alienated the more cynical viewers from the mainstream account of what had happened. Conspiracy theorists, web activists and open-minded leftists, already suspicious of the narratives presented through television, found themselves falling prey to a falsified email letter from a Brazilian schoolteacher, claiming that video footage of Palestinians celebrating the attacks had actually been shot years earlier during the Gulf War. Like any other narrative, the extreme counterculture's saga of a 'new world order', directed by the Bush family, had to be wrapped around the new data. Meanwhile, many Jews and Christians who hadn't even thought about their religion or their ethnicity for years found themselves instinctively asking: "how will this impact Israel?" or "is the Armageddon upon us?" They bought memberships in religious institutions for the first time in decades, and packed into their churches and synagogues looking for reassurance, for a way to fit these catastrophes into a bigger story. Like everyone else, they hoped to reconstruct the narrative that had been shattered. But surely our worldviews, political outlooks and religions aren't functioning at their best when they provide pat answers to life's biggest questions. The challenge to all thinking people is to resist the temptation to fall into yet another polarised, nationalist, or God-forbid, holy posture. Rather than retreating into the simplistic and childlike, if temporarily reassuring, belief that the answers have already been written along with the entire human story, we must resolve ourselves to participate actively in writing the story ourselves. It is not enough to go back to our old models, particularly when they have been revealed to be inadequate at explaining the complexity of the human condition. It is too late for the Western World to retreat into Christian fundamentalism, accelerating global conflict in an effort to bring on the messianic age. It is too late to push blindly towards a purely capitalist model of human culture. There is simply too much evidence that the short-term bottom line does not serve the needs of people or the environment. There are too many alternative values and cultural threads surrendered to profit efficiency that may yet prove vital to our cultural ecosystem. Instead, we must forge ahead into the challenging but necessary task of inventing new models ourselves, using the collaborative techniques learned over the past decade, and based in the real evidence around us. Chapter 4 Networked democracy The values engendered by our fledgling networked culture may, in fact, prove quite applicable to the broader challenges of our time and help a world struggling with the impact of globalism, the lure of fundamentalism and the clash of conflicting value systems. The very survival of democracy as a functional reality is dependent upon our acceptance, as individuals, of adult roles in conceiving and stewarding the shape and direction of society. Religions and ideologies are terrific things, so long as no one actually believes in them. While absolute truths may exist, it is presumptuous for anyone to conclude he has found and comprehended one. True, the adoption of an absolutist frame of reference serves many useful purposes. An accepted story can unify an otherwise diverse population, provide widespread support for a single regime and reassure people in times of stress. Except for the resulting ethnocentrism, repression of autonomy and stifling of new ideas, such static templates can function well for quite a while. Dictators from Adolph Hitler to Idi Amin owed a good part of their success to their ability to develop ethnically based mythologies that united their people under a single sense of identity. The Biblical myth of Jacob and his sons served to unify formerly non-allied desert tribes (with the same names as Jacob's sons) in ancient Sinai. They not only conquered much of the region, but created a fairly stable regime for centuries. So these stories enable a certain kind of functionality. Their relative stasis, if protected against the effects of time by fundamentalists, can allow for the adoption and implementation of long-term projects that span generations, even centuries. But when one group's absolute truth bumps up against another group's absolute truth, only conflict can result. New technologies, global media, and the spread of international corporate conglomerates have forced just such a clash of worldviews. While cultures have been reckoning with the impact of cosmopolitanism since even before the first ships crossed the Mediterranean, today's proliferation of media, products and their associated sensibilities, as well as their migration across formerly discreet boundaries, are unprecedented in magnitude. Globalism, at least as it is envisioned by the more expansionist advocates of free market capitalism, only exacerbates the most dangerously retrograde strains of xenophobia. The market's global aspirations (as expressed by Global Business Network co-founder Peter Schwartz's slogan "Open markets good. Closed markets bad. Tattoo it on your forehead"4) amount to a whitewash of regional cultural values. They are as reductionist as the tenets of any fundamentalist religion. In spite of the strident individualism of this brand of globalist rhetoric, it leaves no room for independent thinking or personal choice, except insofar as they are permitted by one's consumption decisions or the way one chooses to participate in the profit-making game. Mistaking the arbitrary and man-made rules of the marketplace for a precondition of the natural universe, corporate capitalism's globalist advocates believe they are liberating the masses from the artificially imposed restrictions of their own forms of religion and government. Perceiving the free market model as the way things really are, they ignore their own fabrications, while seeing everyone else's models as impediments to the natural and rightful force of evolution. As a result, globalism to almost anyone but a free market advocate, has come to mean the spread of the Western corporate value system to every other place in the world. Further, the bursting of the dot.com bubble, followed by the revelation of corporate malfeasance and insider trading, exposed corporate capitalism's dependence on myths; stories used to captivate and distract the public while the storytellers ran off with the funds. The spokespeople for globalism began to be perceived as if they were the 15th century Catholic missionaries that preceded the Conquistadors, preparing indigenous populations for eventual colonisation. The free market came to be understood as just another kind of marketing. Globalism was reduced, in the minds of most laypeople, to one more opaque mythology used to exploit the uninitiated majority. Networked democracy: learning from natural interconnectivity The current renaissance offers new understandings of what it might mean to forge a global society that transcends the possibilities described by the language of financial markets. It might not be too late to promote a globalism modelled on cooperation instead of competition, and on organic interchange instead of financial transaction. Again, our renaissance insights and inventions aid us in our quest for a more dimensionalised perspective on our relationship to one another. Rather famously the first renaissance elevated the Catholic mass into a congregation of Protestant readers. Thanks to the printing press and the literacy movement that followed, each person could enjoy his or her own personal relationship to texts and the mythologies they described. Our own renaissance offers us the opportunity to enhance the dimensionality of these relationships even further, as we transform from readers into writers. It's no coincidence that early internet users became obsessed with the fractal images they were capable of producing. The reassuring self-similarity of these seemingly random graphs of non-linear equations, evoked the shapes of nature. One simple set of fractal equations, iterated through a computer, could produce a three-dimensional image of a fern, a coastline or a cloud. Zooming in on one small section revealed details and textures reflective of those on other levels of magnification. Indeed, each tiny part appeared to reflect the whole. For early internet users, sitting alone in their homes or offices, connected to one another only by twisted pairs of copper phone lines, the notion of being connected, somehow, in the manner of a fractal was quite inspiring. They began to study new models of interconnectivity and group mind, such as James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis and Rupert Sheldrakes theory of morphogenesis, to explain and confirm their growing sense of non-local community. By the mid 1990s many internet users began to see the entire planet as a single organism, with human beings as the neurons in a global brain. The internet, according to this scheme, was the neural network being used to wire up this brain so that it could function in a coordinated fashion. In another model for group mind, this time celebrated among the rave counterculture, this connectivity was itself a pre-existing state. The internet was merely a metaphor, or outward manifestation, of a psychic connection between human beings that was only then being realised: the holographic reality. As functioning models for cooperative activity, these notions are not totally unsupported by nature. Biologists studying complex systems have observed coordinated behaviours between creatures that have no hierarchical communication scheme, or even any apparent communication scheme whatsoever. The coral reef, for example, exhibits remarkable levels of coordination even though it is made up of millions of tiny individual creatures. Surprisingly, perhaps, the strikingly harmonious behaviour of the collective does not repress the behaviour of the individual. In fact the vast series of interconnections between the creatures allows any single one of them to serve as a 'remote high leverage point' influencing the whole. When one tiny organism decides it is time for the reproductive cycle to begin, it triggers a mechanism through which hundreds of miles of coral reef can change colour within hours. Another more immediately observable example is the way women living together will very often synchronise in their menstrual cycles. This is not a fascistic scheme of nature, supplanting the individual rhythms of each member, but a way for each member of the social grouping to become more attuned and responsive to the subtle shifts in one another's physical and emotional states. Each member has more, not less, influence over the whole. These models of phase-locking and self-similarity, first studied by the chaos mathematicians but eventually adopted by the culture of the internet, also seemed to be reflected in the ever-expanding mediaspace. The notion of remote high leverage points (a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil leading to a hurricane in New York) was now proven every day by a datasphere capable of transmitting a single image globally in a matter of minutes. A black man being beaten by white cops in Los Angeles is captured on a home video camera and appears on television sets around the globe overnight. Eventually, this 30-second segment of police brutality leads to full-scale urban rioting in a dozen American cities. These models for interactivity and coordinated behavior may have been launched in the laboratory, but they were first embraced by countercultures. Psychedelics enthusiasts (people who either ingested substances such as LSD or found themselves inspired by the art, writing and expression of the culture associated with these drugs) found themselves drawn to technologies that were capable of reproducing both the visual effects of their hallucinations as well as the sense of newfound connection with others. Similarly, the computer and Internet galvanized certain strains of both the pagan and the grassroots 'do-it-yourself' countercultures as the 'cyberpunk' movement, which was dedicated to altering reality through technology, together. Only now are the social effects of these technologies being considered by political scientists for what they may teach us about public opinion and civic engagement. The underlying order of apparently chaotic systems in mathematics and in nature suggest that systems can behave in a fashion mutually beneficial to all members, even without a command hierarchy. The term scientists use to describe the natural self-organisation of a community is 'emergence'. As we have seen, until rather recently, most observers thought of a colony of beings, say ants, as receiving their commands from the top: the queen. It turns out that this is not the way individuals in the complex insect society know what to do. It is not a hierarchical system, they don't receive orders the way soldiers do in an army. The amazing organisation of an anthill 'emerges' from the bottom up, in a collective demonstration of each ant's evolved instincts. In a sense, it is not organised at all since there is no central bureaucracy. The collective behaviour of the colony is an emergent phenomenon. Likewise, the slime mould growing in damp fields and forests all around us can exhibit remarkably coordinated behaviour. Most of the time, the sludge-like collection of microorganisms go about their business quite independently of one another, each one foraging for food and moving about on its own. But when conditions worsen, food becomes scarce or the forest floor becomes dry, the formerly distinct creatures coalesce into a single being. The large mass of slime moves about, amassing the moisture of the collective, until it finds a more hospitable region of forest, and then breaks up again into individual creatures. The collective behaviour is an emergent trait, learned through millennia of evolution. But it is only activated when the group is under threat. The processes allowing for these alternative strategies are still being scrutinised by scientists, who are only beginning to come to grips with the implications of these findings in understanding other emergent systems from cities to civilisations. At first glance, the proposition that human civilisation imitates the behaviour of slime mould is preposterous, an evolutionary leap backwards. An individual human consciousness is infinitely more advanced than that of a single slime mould micro-organism. But coordinated human metaorganism is not to be confused with the highly structured visions of a 'super organism' imagined in the philosophical precursors to fascism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Rather, thanks to the feedback and iteration offered by our new interactive networks, we aspire instead towards a highly articulated and dynamic body politic: a genuinely networked democracy, capable of accepting and maintaining a multiplicity of points of view, instead of seeking premature resolution and the oversimplification that comes with it. This is why it appeared that the decision to grant the public open access to the internet in the early 1990s would herald a new era of teledemocracy, political activism and a reinstatement of the collective will into public affairs. The emergence of a networked culture, accompanied by an ethic of media literacy, open discussion and direct action held the promise of a more responsive political system wherever it spread. But most efforts at such teledemocracy so far, such as former Clinton pollster Dick Morris's web site www.vote.com, or even the somewhat effective political action site www.moveon.org, are simply new versions of the public opinion poll. Billing themselves as the next phase in a truly populist and articulated body politic, the sites amount to little more than an opportunity for politicians to glean the gist of a few more uninformed, knee-jerk reactions to the issue of the day. Vote.com, as the name suggests, reduces representative democracy to just another marketing survey. Even if it is just the framework for a much more substantial future version, it is based on a fundamentally flawed vision of push-button politics. That's the vision shared by most teledemocracy champions today. So what went wrong? Why didn't networked politics lead to a genuinely networked engagement in public affairs? Interference in the emergence First, by casting itself in the role of cultural and institutional watchdog, governments, particularly in the United States, became internet society's enemy. Though built with mostly US government dollars, the internet's growth into a public medium seemed to be impeded by the government's own systemic aversion to the kinds of information, images and ideas that the network spread. The government's fear of hackers was compounded by a fear of pornography and the fear of terrorism. The result was a tirade of ill-conceived legislation that made internet enthusiasts' blood boil. New decency laws aimed at curbing pornography (which were ultimately struck down) elicited cries of curtailment on free speech. Unsubstantiated and bungled raids on young hackers and their families turned law enforcement into the Keystone Cops of cyberspace and the US Justice Department into a sworn enemy of the shareware community's most valuable members. Misguided (and unsuccessful) efforts at preventing the dissemination of cryptography protocols across national boundaries turned corporate developers into government-haters as well. (This tradition of government interference in the rise of a community-driven internet is contrasted by the early participation of the UK's Labour government in the funding of internet opportunities there, such as community centres and public timeshare terminals, which were initially exploited mainly by arts collectives, union organisers, and activists. Of course all this didn't play very well with the nascent UK internet industry, which saw its slow start compared with the US and other developed nations as a direct result of government over-management and anti-competitive funding policies.) So, the US government became known as the antagonist of cyberculture. Every effort was made to diminish state control over the global telecommunications infrastructure. The internet itself, a government project, soon fell into private hands (Internic, and eventually industry consortiums). For just as a bacteria tends to grow unabated without the presence of fungus, so too does corporate power grow without the restrictive influence of government. This in itself may not have been so terrible. E-commerce certainly has its strengths and the economic development associated with a profit-driven internet creates new reasons for new countries to get their populations online. But an interactive marketplace is not fertile soil for networked democracy or public participation. As we have seen, the objective of marketers online is to reduce interactivity, shorten consideration and induce impulsive purchases. That's why the software and interfaces developed for the commercial webspace tended to take user's hands off the keyboard and onto the mouse. The most successful programs, for them, lead people to the 'buy' button and let them use the keyboard only to enter their credit card numbers and nothing else. The internet that grew from these development priorities, dominated by the World Wide Web instead of discussion groups, treats individuals more as consumers than as citizens. True, consumers can vote with their dollars, and that in a way feels something like direct communication with the entity in charge - the corporation. But this is not a good model for government. Sadly, though, it's the model being used to implement these first efforts at teledemocracy. And it's why these efforts suffer from the worst symptoms of consumer culture: they focus on short-term ideals, they encourage impulsive, image-driven decision-making and they aim to convince people that their mouse-clicking is some kind of direct action. Anyone arguing against such schemes must be an enemy of the public will, an elitist. Teledemocracy is a populist revival, after all, isn't it? Perhaps. But the system of representation on which most democracies were built was intended to buffer the effects of such populist revivals. Although they may not always (or even frequently) live up to it, our representatives' role is to think beyond short-term interests of the majority. They are elected to protect the rights of minority interests, the sorts of people and groups who are now increasingly cast as 'special interest groups'. Achieving the promise of network democracy The true promise of a network-enhanced democracy lies not in some form of web-driven political marketing survey, but in restoring and encouraging broader participation in some of the internet's more interactive forums. Activists of all stripes now have the freedom and facility to network and organise across vast geographical, national, racial and even ideological differences. And they've begun to do so. The best evidence we have that something truly new is going on is our mainstream media's inability to understand it. Major American news outlets are still incapable of acknowledging the tremendous breadth of the WTO protest movement because of the multiplicity of cooperating factions within it. Unable to draw out a single, simplified rationale that encompasses the logic of each and every protestor, traditional media storytellers conclude that there is no logic at all. (Just as I am writing this section, a newscaster on CNBC, reporting from a WTO demonstration, is condescendingly laughing at the word 'neo-liberal' on a placard, believing that the teen protestor holding it has invented the term!) In actuality, the multi-faceted rationale underlying the WTO protests confirm both their broad based support, as well as the quite evolved capacity of its members to coalesce across previously unimaginable ideological chasms. Indeed, these obsolete ideologies are themselves falling away as a new dynamic emerges from nascent political organism. For politicians who mean to lead more effectively in such an environment, the interactive solution may well be a new emphasis on education, where elected leaders use the internet to engage with constituents and justify the decisions they have made on our behalf, rather than simply soliciting our moment-to-moment opinions. Politicians cannot hope to reduce the collective will of their entire constituencies into a series of yes or no votes on the issues put before them. They can, however, engage the public in an ongoing exploration and dialogue on issues and their impacts, and attempt to provide a rationale for their roles in the chamber in which they participate. They must accept that their constituents are capable of comprehending legislative bodies as functioning organisms. In doing so, politicians will relieve themselves of the responsibility for hyping or spinning their decisions and instead use their time with the public to engage them in the evolution of the legislative process. Like teachers and religious leaders, whose roles as authority figures have been diminished by their students' and congregants' direct access to formerly secret data, politicians too must learn to function more like partners than parents. In doing so, they will leave the certainty of 20th century political ideologies behind, and admit to the open-ended and uncertain process of societal co-authorship. Whatever model they choose must shun static ideologies, and instead acknowledge the evolutionary process through which anything resembling progress is made. Chapter 5 Open source: Opening up the network democracy One model for the open-ended and participatory process through which legislation might occur in a networked democracy can be found in the 'open source' software movement. Faced with the restrictive practices of the highly competitive software developers, and the pitifully complex and inefficient operating systems such as Microsoft Windows that this process produces, a global community of programmers decided to find a better development philosophy for themselves. They founded one based in the original values of the shareware software development community, concluding that proprietary software is crippled by the many efforts to keep its underlying code a secret and locked down. Many users don't even know that a series of arbitrary decisions have been made about the software they use. They don't know it can be changed. They simply adjust. By publishing software along with its source code, open source developers encourage one another to correct each other's mistakes, and improve upon each other's work. Rather than competing they collaborate, and don't hide the way their programs work. As a result, everyone is invited to change the underlying code and the software can evolve with the benefit of a multiplicity of points of view. Of course this depends on a lot of preconditions. Participants in an open source collaboration must be educated in the field they are developing. People cannot expect to be able to understand and edit the code underlying any system until they have taken the time and spent the necessary energy to penetrate it. Very often, as in the case of computer software, this also depends on open standards so that the code is accessible to all. But it is also true of many other systems. If those who hope to engage in the revision of our societal models are not educated by those who developed what is already in place, they will spend most of their time inefficiently reverse-engineering existing structures in an effort to understand them. Progress can only be made if new minds are educated in the current languages, exposed to the rationale for all decisions that have been made and invited to test new methods and structures. Those who are invited to re-evaluate our social and political structures in such a way will stand the best chance of gaining the perspective necessary to see the emergent properties of such systems, as well as avenues for active participation in them. If no one is invited then the first harbingers of emergent paradigms will be those who have been motivated to train themselves in spite of the obstacles set in front of them by those who hope to maintain exclusive control over the code. The new models they come up with may, as a result, end up looking much more like old-style revolutions than true renaissances. The implementation of an open source democracy will require us to dig deep into the very code of our legislative processes, and then rebirth it in the new context of our networked reality. It will require us to assume, at least temporarily, that nothing at all is too sacred to be questioned, re-interpreted and modified. But in doing so, we will be enabled to bring democracy through its current crisis and into its next stage of development. But, like literacy, the open source ethos and process are hard if not impossible to control once they are unleashed. Once people are invited to participate in, say, the coding of a software program, they begin to question just how much of the rest of our world is open for discussion. They used to see software as an established and inviolable thing - something married to the computer. A given circumstance. With an open source awareness, they are free to discover that the codes of the software have been arranged by people, sometimes with agendas that hadn't formerly been apparent. One of the most widespread realizations accompanying the current renaissance is that a lot of what has been taken for granted as 'hardware' is, in fact, 'software' capable of being reprogrammed. They tend to begin to view everything that was formerly set in stone - from medical practices to the Bible - as social constructions and subject to revision. Likewise as public awareness of emergence theory increases, people are beginning to observe their world differently, seeing its principles in evidence, everywhere. Formerly esoteric subjects such as urban design or monetary policy become much more central as the public comes to recognize the power of these planning specialties to establish the rules through which society actually comes into existence. This marks a profound shift in our relationship to law and governance. We move from simply following the law, to understanding the law, to actually feeling capable of writing the law: adhering to the map, to understanding the map, to drawing our own. At the very least, we are aware that the choices made on our behalf have the ability to shape our future reality and that these choices are not ordained but implemented by people just like us. Unlike the 1960s, when people questioned their authorities in the hope of replacing them (revolution), today's activists are forcing us to re-evaluate the premise underlying top-down authority as an organising principle (renaissance). Bottom-up organisational models, from slime mould to WTO protests, seem better able to address today's participatory sensibility. Indeed, the age of irony may be over, not just because the American dream has been interrupted by terrorism and economic shocks but because media-savvy Westerners are no longer satisfied with understanding current events through the second-hand cynical musings of magazine journalists. They want to engage more directly and they see almost every set of rules as up for reinterpretation and re-engineering. Applying the theory So what happens when the open source development model is applied to, say, the economy? In the United States, it would mean coming to appreciate the rules of the economic game for what they are: rules. Operating in a closed source fashion, the right to actually produce currency is held exclusively by the Federal Reserve. Quietly removed from any relationship to real money such as gold or silver by Richard Nixon in the early 1970s, US currency now finds its value in pure social construction. Whether or not we know it, we all participate in the creation of its value by competing for dollars against one another. For example, when a people or businesses borrows money from the bank (an agent, in a sense, of the Federal Reserve) in the form of a mortgage they must eventually pay the bank back two or three times the original borrowed amount. These additional funds are not printed into existence, but must be won from others in the closed source system. Likewise, every time a student wants to buy one of my books, he must go out into the economy and earn or win some of these arbitrarily concocted tokens, US currency, in order to do it. Our transaction is brokered by the Federal Reserve, who has a monopoly on this closed source currency. Meanwhile, the actual value of this currency, and the effort required to obtain it, is decided much more by market speculators than its actual users. Speculation accounts for over 90 percent of US currency transactions in any given day. By this measure, real spending and the real economy are a tiny and secondary function of money: the dog is being wagged by its tail. What if currency were to become open source? In some communities it already is. They are not printing counterfeit bills but catalysing regional economies through the use of local currencies, locally created 'scrip' that can be exchanged throughout a particular region in lieu of Federal Reserve notes or real cash. The use of these currencies, as promoted by organisations such as the E.F. Schumacher Society, has been shown to accelerate the exchange of goods and services in a region by increasing the purchasing power of its members. There is no Federal Reserve surcharge on the creation and maintenance of cash, and no danger of government currency depreciation due to matters that have nothing to do with actual production and consumption. Like any other bottom-up system, the creation of local currency develops transactional models appropriate to the scale of the actual transactions and the communities in which they occur. While Federal notes, or Euros for that matter, might be appropriate for a merchant to use across state or national boundaries, local currencies make for greater fluidity and accountability between members of the same community. Thanks to the dynamic relationships permitted in a networked society, we need not choose between local and closed currencies. A post-renaissance perspective on economic issues has room for both to exist, simultaneously functioning on different orders of magnitude. In a society modelled on open source ideals, 'think globally, act locally' becomes more than just a catch phrase. The relationship of an individual or local community's action to the whole system can be experienced quite readily. For example, an open source software developer who writes just a few useful lines of code, say the protocol for enabling infrared communications to work on the Linux operating system, will see his or her contribution interpolated into the kernel of the operating system and then spread to everyone who uses it. He has done more than distributed a line of computer code. He has also enabled thousands of people using Linux to connect cell phones, PDA's and other devices to their computers for the first time. And he did it from his home, in his spare time. Likewise, a developer who leaves a security hole open in a piece of software quite dramatically sees the results of his action when a software 'worm', written by a computer criminal, penetrates the mail files of thousands of users, sending replicates of itself throughout the internet, sometimes for years to come. Members of an open source community are able to experience how their actions affect the whole. As a result, they become more conscious of how their moment-to-moment decisions can be better aligned with the larger issues with which they are concerned. A programmer concerned with energy consumption and the environment might take time to consider how a particular screen-saver routine impacts the total energy consumption pattern of a particular monitor. The programmer already understands that if the code is used on millions of machines, each effort to reduce energy consumption by a minuscule amount can amplify into tremendous energy savings. (Indeed, it has been calculated that the energy required to power all the televisions and computers in America that are currently in sleep mode equals the output of an entire average-size power plant.) The experience of open source development, or even just the acceptance of its value as a model for others, provides real-life practice for the deeper change in perspective required of us if we are to move into a more networked and emergent understanding of our world. The local community must be experienced as a place to implement policies, incrementally, that will eventually have an effect on the whole. For example, the environmental advocate who worries about the Brazilian rainforest will quit smoking himself before racing off to the next rally held to save the lungs of the planet. The woman organising against genetic engineering in agriculture will refuse to let her children eat at McDonalds, even if it requires them to bring their own lunch to a friend's birthday party. A consistency between belief and behaviour becomes the only way to make our designs on reality real. Closed source: no justice, no power An open source model for participatory, bottom-up and emergent policy will force us, or allow us, to confront the issues of our time more directly. Using the logic of a computer programmer, when we find we can't solve a problem by attacking one level of societal software, we proceed to the next level down. If necessary we dig all the way down to the machine language. For instance, today's misunderstood energy crisis provides a glaring example of the liability of closed source policymaking. The Western World is unnecessarily addicted to fossil fuels and other energy commodities not because alternative energy sources are unavailable, but because alternative business models for energy production cannot be fully considered without disrupting the world's most powerful corporations and economies. It really is as simple as that. Solar, geothermal and other renewable energy sources are quite ready for deployment in a wide variety of applications. They are not encouraged, not through tax policies nor through venture capital, because they don't make sense to an industry and economy that has based its business model on the exploitation of fixed and precious resources: A closed source model. As a result, we are suffering through a potentially irreversible environmental crisis, as well as a geopolitical conflict that is already spinning wildly out of control. The maintenance of such imbalances is dependent on closed source processes. The power of puppet dictators in the oil-producing Middle East is perpetuated not just by US warplanes, but by their own economies which derive all their wealth through the exploitation of resources. Were these nations required to compete in the global marketplace through the production of goods or services, then a passive, uneducated population would no longer bring their monarchs the wealth to which they are accustomed. As it is the peasants need only be educated enough to dig. And the closed source mentality travels all the way around the distribution cycle. Nowhere is the closed source imperative of an oil-based economy more evident than in the appointment, by America's judicial branch (though not its population), of a President to represent the oil industry. Conclusion The new transparency offered by the interactive mediaspace allows even the casually interested reader to learn how the West's foreign and domestic policies have been twisted to a perverse caricature of themselves. I do not wish here to beat the drum for a partisan revolution. Instead, I am to demonstrate how a growing willingness to engage with the underlying code of the democratic process could eventually manifest in a widespread call for revisions to our legal, economic and political structures on an unprecedented scale, except in the cases of full-fledged revolution. Transparency in media makes information available to those who never had access to it before. Access to media technology empowers those same people to discuss how they might want to change the status quo. Finally, networking technologies allow for online collaboration in the implementation of new models, and the very real-world organisation of social activism and relief efforts. The good news, for those within the power structure today, is that we are not about to enter a phase of revolution, but one of renaissance. We are heading not toward a toppling of the democratic, parliamentary or legislative processes, but toward their reinvention in a new, participatory context. In a sense, the people are becoming a new breed of wonk, capable of engaging with government and power structures in an entirely new fashion. The current regime, in the broadest sense, will have ended up being the true and lasting one, if it can get its head and policies around these renaissance modalities of increased dimensionality, emergence, scalability and participation. My advice? Don't beat them. Let them join you. Choose to believe that the renaissance I am describing has already taken place. Instead of looking forward to a day when justice will be won, declare that we are living in a just world right now. Declare that we are simply fighting for more justice. Movements, as such, are obsolete. They are incompatible with a renaissance sensibility because of the narrative style of their intended unfolding. They yearn forward towards salvation in the manner of utopians or fundamentalists: an increasing number of people are becoming aware of how movements of all stripes justify tremendous injustice in the name of that deferred future moment. People are actually taken out of their immediate experience and their connection to the political process as they put their heads down and do battle. It becomes not worth believing in anything. This is why we have to advocate living in the now in order to effect any real change. The should be no postponement of joy. Once we start down this path, there's can be no stopping. We begin to see the unreality of money. We begin to see how 'salvation' has been traded in for 'retirement' as the new ultimate goal for which Westerners suspend their lives and their ethics. (People work for companies they hate, and then invest in corporations whose ethics they detest, in order to guarantee a good retirement). We see the artificial obstacles to appropriate energy policy, international relations, urban planning and affordable healthcare as what they are: artificial. Meanwhile, what we can accomplish presents itself on a much more realistic scale when we engage with it in the moment and on a local level. Yes, political structures do need to be changed. But we may have to let their replacements emerge from the myriad of new relationships that begin to spawn once people are acting and communicating in the present, and on a realistic scale, instead of talking about a fictional future. The underlying premise is still dependent on the notion of progress. Indeed, things must get better or there's no point to any of it. But our understanding of progress must be disengaged from the false goal of growth, or the even more dangerous ideal of salvation. Our understanding must be reconnected with the very basic measure of social justice: how many people are able to participate? Our marketing experts tell us that they are failing in their efforts to advertise to internet users and cultural progressives because this new and resistant psychographic simply wants to engage, authentically, in social experiences. This should sound like good news to anyone who authentically wants to extend our collective autonomy. This population is made up not of customers to whom you must sell, or even constituents to whom you must pander, but partners on whom you can rely and with whom you can act. Treat them as such, and you might be surprised by how much you get done together. 1 Karen Armstrong, A History of God, (London: Vintage, 1999) 2 First Monday, The High-Tech Gift Economy, Richard Barbrook., 1998, (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_12/barbrook/) 3 Douglas Rushkoff, Cyeria: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace, (Flamingo, 1994) 4 Wired Magazine, Jul 1997 (see http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.07/longboom_pr.html) OPEN ACCESS LICENCE This is the full text of the Demos open access licence which encourages the circulation of our work under certain copyright conditions. You can read a summary of the licence conditions at http://www.demos.co.uk/aboutus/openaccess_page296.aspx DEMOS - Licence to Publish THE WORK (AS DEFINED BELOW) IS PROVIDED UNDER THE TERMS OF THIS LICENCE ("LICENCE"). THE WORK IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW. ANY USE OF THE WORK OTHER THAN AS AUTHORIZED UNDER THIS LICENCE IS PROHIBITED. 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18202	----	THE GROWTH OF THOUGHT AS AFFECTING THE PROGRESS OF SOCIETY. By William Withington. 1851. Contents. Part I. Introductory. Life Defined. Intellectual Culture and Intellectual Life, Distinguished. Human Life, a Problem. The Evil to be Managed. Self-Love Considered under a Three-fold Aspect. Three Agencies for meliorating the Human Condition. The Growth of Thought, Slow; and oft most in unexpected quarter. Part II. Welfare as dependent on the Social Institutions. Limited Aim of the Received Political Economy. An Enlightened Policy but the Effective Aim at managing Self-Love, directed towards Present Goods, vulgarly understood. The Political Fault of the Papacy. Its Substantial Correction by the Reformation. Republicanism carried from Religion into Legislation; still without a clear perception of its Principle. Its Progress accordingly Slow. Part III. Philosophy the Second Agency for promoting General Welfare, as the Educator of Self-Love; the Corrector of mistaken apprehensions of Temporal Good; the Revealer of the ties which bind the Members of the Human Family to One Lot, to suffer or rejoice together. Progress in estimating Life. Part IV. Mightier Influences yet needed, to contend with the Powers of Evil. Supplied by Man's recognizing the whole of his Being; the extent of his Duties; the Duration of his Existence. Religion, supplying the defects of the preceding Agencies; Considered in nine particulars. Conclusion. Recapitulation. Suggestions to Christian Ministers. Preface. A contemporary thus reveals the state of mind, through which he has come to the persuasion of great insight into the realities, which stand behind the veil: "What more natural, more spontaneous, more imperative, than that the conditions of his future being should press themselves on his anxious thought! Should we not suppose, the 'every third thought would be his grave,' together with the momentous realities that lie beyond it? If man is indeed, as Shakespeare describes him, 'a being of large discourse, looking before and after,' we could scarcely resist the belief, that, when once assured of the possibility of information on his head, he would, as it were, _rush_ to the oracle, to have his absorbing problems solved, and his restless heart relieved of its load of uncertain forebodings."* [Bush's Statement of Reasons, &c., p. 12.] Not less frequently or intensely, the writer's mind has turned to the problem of applying know truth to the present, reconciling self-love with justice and benevolence, and vindicating to godliness, the promise of the life that now is. If, meanwhile, he has been "intruding into those things which he hath not seen," like affecting an angelic religion,--then it were hardly possible but that he should mistake fancy for fact. But if his inquiries have been into what it is given to know, then he cannot resist the belief, that some may derive profit from the results of many fearfully anxious years, here compressed within a few pages. He might have further compressed, just saying: Mainly, political wisdom is the management of self-love; civilization is the cultivation of self-love; the excrescenses of civilization are the false refinements of self-love; while unselfish love is substantial virtue,--the end of the commandments,--the fulfilling of the law: Or, he might have enlarged indefinitely; more especially might have been written on practically applying the principles to the advancement of society. He may yet produce something of the kind. Of the substance of the following pages he has only to say, that, if false, the falsehood has probably become too much a part of his nature to be ever separated. As to such minor considerations, as logical arrangement and the niceties of style, he asks only the criticism due to one, whose hands have been necessitated to guide the plough oftener than the pen, through the best years of life. The Growth of Thought, As Affecting the Progress of Society. Part I. Introductory. The meditation on human life--on the contrast between what _is_, and what _might be_, on supposing a general concurrence to make the best of things-yields emotions both painful and pleasing;--painful for the demonstrations every where presented, of a love of darkness, rather than light; pleasing, that the worst evils are seen to be so remediable; and so clear the proofs of a gradual, but sure progress towards the remedy. The writer is not very familiar with those authors, who have so much to say on the problem of life--the question, What is life? He supposes them to follow a train of thought, something like this: The life of a creature is that perfection and flourish of its faculties, of which its constitution is capable, and which some of the race are destined to reach. Thus, the life of the lion is realized, when the animal ranges undisputed lord of the sunny desert; finds sufficiency of prey for himself and offspring, which he raises to inherit dominion; lives the number of years he is capable of enjoying existence, and then closes it, without excessive pains, lingering regrets, or fearful anticipations. Life differs from happiness. It is supposable, that the lion, tamed and petted, trained to feed somewhat after man's chosen manner, may be as happy as if at liberty in his native range. But such happiness is not the animal's life; since this implies the kind of happiness proper to the creature's constitution, in distinction from that induced by forced habits. To happiness add knowledge and intellectual culture, and all together do not realize the idea of life. The tame lion may be taught many arts, assimilating him to the intelligence of man; but these remove him so much further from his appropriate life. Thus there may be a cultivated intelligence, which constitutes no part of the creature's life; and this without considering the same as a moral agent. Macauley remarks, that the Jesuits seem to have solved the problem, how far intellectual culture may be carried, without producing intellectual emancipation. I suppose it would be only varying the expression of his thought to say, Jesuitical education strikingly exemplifies, how much intellectual culture may be superinduced upon the mind, without awakening intellectual life--without developing a spontaneous aptness to appreciate, seek, find, embrace the truth. The head is filled with the thoughts of others-many ascertained facts and just conclusions. It can reason aright in the circles of thought, where it has been trained to move; but elsewhere, no spontaneous activity--no self-directed power of thinking justly on new emergencies and questions not yet settled by rule--no spring within, from which living waters flow. The difference between intellectual culture and intellectual life appears in the fact, that in regard to those mastering ideas, which to after times mark one age as in advance of the preceding, the classical scholars, the scientific luminaries, the constitutional expounders of the day, are quite as likely to be behind the general sense of the age, as to be in advance. The question, What is human life? arises on a contemplation like this: There is no difficulty in determining the life of all the other tenants of earth; unless, indeed, those which man has so long and so universally subjected to his purposes, that the whereabouts, or indeed the existence of the original stock, remains in doubt. The inferior animals, left to themselves in favorable circumstances, manifest one development, attain to one flourish, live the same life, from generation to generation. Man may superinduce upon them what he calls _improvements_, because they better fit them for _his_ purposes. But said improvements are never transmitted from generation to its successor; left to itself, the race reverts to proper life, the same it has lived from the beginning. Man here presents a singular exception to the general rule of earth's inhabitants. The favorite pursuits of one age are abandoned in the next. This generation looks back on the earnest occupations of a preceding, as the adult looks back on the sports and toys of childhood. It is more than supposable, that the planning for the chances of office, the competition for making most gain out of the least productiveness--these earnest pursuits of the men of this age--in the next will be resigned to the children of larger growth; just as are now resigned the trappings of military glory. Where then is the human mind ultimately to fix? Where is man to find so essentially his good, as to fix his earnest pursuit in one direction, in which the race is still to hold on? Such seems to be the question, What is life? The elements of that darkness, which excludes the light of life, may be considered as these three: First, the excessive preponderance of self-love, as the ruling motive of human conduct. Secondly, the short-sightedness of self-love, in magnifying the present, at the cost of the distant future. And, Thirdly, the grossness of self-love, in preferring of present goods the vulgar and the sensible, to the refined and more exquisitely satisfactory. And there are three ways, in which we may attempt the abatement of existing evils; or, there are three agencies we may call in for this purpose. In the first place, leaving individuals to the operation of the common motives, we may labor at the social institutions, to adjust them to the rule, that, each seeking his own, after the common apprehension of present interests, may do so consistently with acting the part of a good citizen--contributing something to the general welfare; or, at least, not greatly detracting therefrom. Here, the agency employed, the Greeks would have called by a name, from which we have derived the word _politics_; which word, from abuse, has well nigh lost its original sense, _The science of social welfare_. _Policy_, we might say, for want of an exacter word. The second way, in which we may seek the same result, is, to inculcate juster apprehensions of present good--to inform and refine self-love; to show, that the purest of present enjoyments, are like the loaves and fishes distributed by divine hands, multiplying by division and participation--the best of all being such as none can enjoy fully, till they become the common property of the race. For want of a more accurately defined term, the agent here introduced may be called Philosophy; understanding by the term, the search, what would be the conduct and preferences of a truly wise man, dispassionately seeking for himself the best enjoyment of this life, uninformed of another to follow. Or, thirdly, we may seek to infuse a nobler principle than self-love, however refined--even the charity, whose essence is, to love one's neighbor as one's self; while, at the same time, this life being earnestly contemplated as but the introductory part of an immense whole, additional security is provided for the coincidence of interest with duty. In a word, the third agency to be employed is _Religion_. The whole subject thus sketched is one of which the writer is not aware, that it has been distinctly defined, as a field for thought and investigation. He has little to learn from the successes or the failures of predecessors. Be this his excuse for seeming prosy and dull; possibly for mistakes and crudities. He has the doubly difficulty of attempting to turn thought into trains to which it is not accustomed; and yet of offering no results so profound as to have escaped other observers; or so sublime as to be the due prize of genius, venturing where few can soar. If he offers any thoughts new, just, and important, they have rather been overlooked for their simplicity and obviousness. One may dive too deep for that which floats on the surface. Here are to be expected none of the splendid results, which dazzle in the popular sciences. The cultivator of this field can hope only to favor, imperceptibly it may be, the growth of thoughts and sentiments, tending slowly to work out a better condition of the human family. And he begs to commend that advice of Lacon, which himself has found so profitable: "In the pursuit of knowledge, follow it, wherever it is to be found; like fern, it is the produce of all climates; and like coin, its circulation is not restricted to any particular class. * * * * Pride is less ashamed of being ignorant, than of being instructed; and she looks too high to find that, which very often lies beneath her. Therefore condescend to men of low estate, and be for wisdom, that which Alcibiades was for power." (Vol. I., p. 122.) The difficulty with us Americans, in the way of being instructed, has been, that too proud, as if already possessed of the fullness of political wisdom, we have withal cherished a self-distrust, forbidding us to harmonize our institutions and modes of thinking into conformity with our work and altered situation. We have seen the British nation, choosing by the accident of birth a baby for its future sovereign, and training it in a way the least possible calculated to favor relations of acquaintance and sympathy with varied wants of the many; and our first impression, I fear, has been our last: What drivellers! Obstinately blind to the clearest lights of common sense! Whereas wiser for us would it be, to derive from the spectacle these general conclusion: that hard is it for the human mind to proceed in advance of ideas received and fashionable; that the so-called independent and original thinkers--leaders of public sentiment-are such as anticipate by a little the general progress of thought, as our hill-tops catch first by a little the beams of the rising sun, before they fill the intervening valleys; that men's superiority in profound thought or liberal ideas, in one direction, affords no security for their attaining to mediocrity in others; and that one familiar with the history of thought, may pronounce, with moral certainty, that such and such ideas were never entertained in such or such society, where due preparation did not exist. As we may confidently say, No mountain-top can tower high enough, to catch the sunbeams at midnight; with equal confidence we may say of many ideas now familiar as school-boy truths: no intellect in ancient Greece or Rome soared high enough above the mass to grasp them. Part II. Welfare as Dependent on Policy. As generally at all points, so the materialism of the age particularly appears, in that the political economists take _wealth_, defining their science in the vulgar acceptation, rather than in the good old English sense, _welfare_, _well-being_. If they occasionally venture a remark of a more liberal bearing on the general subject of public welfare; such is the exception to the general rule. Money, with its equivalents and exchangeables, is their usual theme in treating of wealth; thought the common use of the word economy might suggest a higher science. For he does not exhaust our idea of a good economist, who manages to have at command abundant materials for rendering home happy; while, for lack of wisdom to turn such materials to account, that home may be less happy than the next-door neighbor's, where want is hardly staved off. We exact, for fulfilling that character, wisdom in using the material means--provision for physical, intellectual, and moral training of the household--the just apportionment between labor and recreation-the true contentment, which frets not at present imperfection, while it still presses on to that perfection conceived to be attainable. Our writers on political economy would do well, to give the word as liberal a latitude of sense, as it legitimately assumes, when used in its primitive meaning of _household management_. But, rather than attempt to raise a scientific term so much above its received sense, I use another word, and say, Policy must begin with the admission, that self-love is the mightiest mover of human conduct; and not a self-love enlightened, deep, calculating, directed to the sources of fullest contentment; but following the groveling estimate, that riches, power, office, ease, being the object of envy or admiration, are the chief goods of life. Every business man admits, that his security for men's conduct must be found in their self-interest. He admits thus much practically, so for as his own business is concerned; the exceptions being so rare, as not to justify neglect of the general rule. Yet, neither business men nor politicians grasp the principle clearly, nor consequently apply it consistently. And he who would make a new application of it, is met with charges of great uncharitableness. This backwardness to generalize a rule, found so necessary practically to be followed, may be resolved into that flattering conceit of human dignity, which is yielded reluctantly, inch by inch, as plain demonstration wrests it away. And further, self-love conceals itself, because generally it operates first to pervert the judgment. The consciousness of preferring private interest to worthier considerations, is too painful to be endured. The man therefore strives, but too successfully, to misrepresent the case to himself. He contrives to make that seem right, which tends to his own advantage. But though indirect, the operation of self-love is none the less sure. Whether the individual be any the less blamable, because self-love assumes this disguise, is not now to be considered. There are individuals, to whom implicit confidence in their unguarded honesty, proves but an added motive to be more tremulously sensitive, not to abuse such confidence. There are, whom respect for their calling binds wholly to more carefulness, to prove worthy of such respect. So always if one is thoroughly pervaded with the right spirit. But dealing with bodies of men, as men yet are, these two rules should shape political institutions and social relations. First, so far as men can command confidence and respect, for the sake of birth, calling, or office, so far they are relieved from the necessity of seeking the same by personal qualifications; and accordingly a body of men so protected, will perceptibly fall short of the average, in the staple elements of respectability. Respect for station or calling so ample is here meant, as to satisfy the average desire of approbation. The extent, to which this is satisfied by the respect paid by the child, to the parent, for the relation's sake, is so moderate, as one of the elements tending to the formation of character, that it may be expected to operate generally as it universally would, where the right spirit fully reigns. The remark holds good, with moderate abatement, in the relation of teacher and pupil. In the infancy of the Christian church, the relation between pastor and flock was closely analogous to that between parents and children. On the one side were men of a disinterested and paternal spirit, so earnestly living the new life hid with Christ in God, that hardly the possibility could be conceived of a desire to exalt and magnify self, over the ignorance and degradation of their spiritual charge. On the other side were men, children in knowledge, incapable of estimating the ministry simply after the consciousness of benefits received. We are not then to condemn the arrangement, which clothed the ministry with an official dignity, the office being revered independently of the claims of the man; nor to wonder, if the arrangement outlived the necessity, or passed the bounds of moderation; or if it was not fully calculated, the danger, lest men of the primitive spirit yield places to those of an inferior stamp; and how truly eternal vigilance is the cost, at which all things here must be saved from their tendencies to deterioration. Accordingly the history of the Papacy for centuries has been, that its ministers are sure of unbounded respect from the populace, independently of their personal claims. The consequence is, that while a few are thus moved to heroic and almost angelic devotion to the spiritual good of their flocks, the many would never command respect for what they are as men. Similar remarks may be applied to the infancy of civil society. The prevalence of monarchy and aristocracy has been too universal, to be charged wholly upon force or chance. And yet in the origin, rational considerations can hardly be supposed to have been distinctly entertained. Still there may have been a dim consciousness of thoughts like these: It is so necessary that civil rulers be at all events respected, and so uncertain how to secure due respect to men meriting it, that we must invest a class of men with a factitious official dignity, and take the risk--rather the certainty--of its proving, in most cases, a cover for personal unworthiness, some degrees below the ordinary standard of humanity. If there existed a dim consciousness of such reasoning, it might have been well entertained. The second rule of Policy--the master maxim of political wisdom--is, that no class of men must be expected to concur heartily, for extirpating the evils, from which its own revenues and importance are derived. Speaking of men acting in a body, there is no room for the many exceptions, necessarily admitted to the rule, that with the individual self-love is the ruling motive. The individual sometimes yields to nobler considerations, than the calculations of self-interest. In the corporation, the _esprit du corps_--the clannish spirit--is sure to master it over public spirit. Devotion to the honor, aggrandizement, wealth and power of the order, company, or corporation, is more sure to control their acts as individuals. It is less liable to self-rebuke for conscious meanness. It looks somewhat more like the public spirit which ought to be. It is less liable to occasional counteractions from impulses of honor, humanity, or regard to reputation. Accordingly a body of men, so constituted as to find its best flourish short of the perfection of the whole social system, will inevitably, sooner or later, prove an obstacle to the onward march of improvement. A corporation is not necessarily a grievance and a sore on the body politic. If it can have its full flourish, without let to the progress of society, it may be harmless or beneficent. "_Sooner or later_;" be this condition marked, in estimating the spiritual policy of Rome. The body of reverends, which mediates between God and men, finds its best flourish, in just such degree of popular intelligence as suffices for comprehending the specious arguments, on which rest the claims of Holy Mother Church; and such amount of conscientiousness as galls the offender, till he has purchased absolution. More intelligence generally prevailing, and better appreciation of the divine law as a living rule of duty, would abate the awe in which the priesthood is held, and diminish the revenues accruing from mediating between offending man and his offended Maker. But Christianity found the world sunk below this moderate standard of intelligence and morals. The best flourish of the priesthood required in the people cultivation of understanding and conscience, up to the point of caring for their account in heaven's record. So the faulty relation between priesthood and people did not at once appear in the results; and, accordingly, the weight of the qualification, _sooner or later_. But in the early growth of society, considerations like the above have been little attended to, compared with the obvious advantages of the division of labor. As ordinarily each handicraft is best exercised by those earliest and steadiest in their devotion to the trade; so it is argued, universally, that the several departments of the public service will be best attended to, by being left to their respective trades, guilds, faculties, orders, or corporations, each strictly guarded from unhallowed intrusion. So religion has been left to its official functionaries, prescribing articles of belief and terms of salvation by a divine right,--legislation to princes and nobles, equally claiming by the same right to give law in temporals; and so of other general interests. Now a movement has been slowly going on, through some centuries, for working society into conformity with a rational rule; a rule not overlooking the advantages of the division of labor, but taking in too such qualifying considerations as the healthful stimulus of free competition, watchfulness over public functionaries, and the necessity of harmonizing private and corporate interests, with public duty. The movement has been slow; for the actors have dimly apprehended the part they were acting, and the principles by themselves vindicated. It has consisted of two principle acts. The Reformation carried republicanism into religion: our own Revolution into legislation. The two movements were parts of one whole; and, to get at the principles at bottom, either will serve for both, as well as for what may remain for finishing the work begun. The Reformation having been conducted by theologians, it was natural that disproportionate importance should have been attached to theological niceties. So far as Luther was right in regarding the doctrine of justification by faith only as the great article at issue, it must have been, because the opposite doctrine favored the conceit of a mysterious mediating power vested in a priesthood--a conceit so favorable to the aggrandizement of the order thus distinguished. But considered as a _politic_ movement--as an advance in rightly adjusting the social relations--the Reformation aimed principally at that ill arrangement, by which the authorized expounders of the law divine found their account, in involving that law in a glorious uncertainty, and entrapping people in a frequent violation thereof. Considered as a politic institution, Protestantism differs essentially from Popery, in that it makes more of prevention than of remedy; gives the ministry its best flourish, in the best welfare of the whole body; and pays for spiritual health, rather than for spiritual sickness. If all Protestants do not consistently so, the fact accords with the dim understanding, on both sides, of the essential points contested. This dim understanding further appears, in that after all the political discussion which has been, the success of republican institutions is still appealed to, as vindicating the reign of justice and benevolence in the public mind; mankind have within so much of the divine, are so self-disposed to do right, that they do not need much control, but may pretty safely be left to their own guidance. Nor is it left to the mere demagogue to talk thus. Doubtful it may be, whether it should be called dimness of understanding, or rather perverse ingenuity, that men reason thus, when the facts are: So general is the disposition to abuse power, that wherever it is accumulated, it will surely be abused; accordingly it must be distributed as equally as possible. If government be made the business of one part of the community--one tenth, or one hundredth, or one thousandth--that part will inevitably exalt self, at the cost of the others. So strong is self-love, turned towards temporal interests, so acute to discern what tends to the one desired end, and so sure to bend every thing that way, that men's temporal interests are pretty safe in their own hands, and safe no where else. Now the legitimate end of civil government being, to secure the temporal welfare of _all_, _all_ must have a share in it, or the excluded portions must find their rights neglected. It may have favored the common mistake, that the leaders in successful republican movements have so often shown a heroic self-devotion and disinterestedness--men like Luther, and Washington. But these are the exceptions, the rare gems of humanity. If they were the fair specimens, their work would never have been needed. Then we might leave to a class the regulation, whether of our spirituals or temporals, with the like advantage, that we leave the making of our watches or our shoes to their respective trades. But the indistinct apprehension, why the advantages of the division of labor fail in the matter of government, accords well with the observation, that republican principles make slow progress in the world, are held in gross inconsistencies; and the most zealous assertors thereof in one department, are oft found most strenuously opposed in others. It is thus that we are so slow to conform to one rule, our arrangements for spiritual instruction; for preserving health; for preventing crime; for cheaply, expeditiously, and satisfactorily settling disputed claims; for furnishing the whole people with instruction in their rights, interests, and duties; as well as that thorough cultivation of the whole man, which the full success of republicanism requires. Part III. Welfare as Dependent on Philosophy. But the whole office of Policy, in arranging the social relations, supposes the prevalence of an ill-informed and misdirected self-love. And, accordingly, the second way of attempting the promotion of general welfare is, to convey and impress just estimates of its constituents. Such is the office of Philosophy: the study of the truly wise man-wise for the present life--still leaving out man's hold on a future, and his relations to his Maker. What would such an one pursue; as life's chief ends--covet, as life's best goods? We still suppose self-love to be as really as ever the main-spring to human conduct; but that self-love enlightened, regulated, refine-- choosing first the goods which satisfy the nobler parts of man's nature, and on a liberal estimate of the ties which bind society together; in virtue of which, if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it. The items, claiming to constitute life's happiness, may be divided into two classes, distinguished by this important difference: one class essentially such, that only a limited number of mankind can obtain them;--if some succeed in the pursuit, their success involves the failure of others: The other class are such, as to involve no contradiction in the supposition of their becoming the common property of all. The success of a part, far from obstructing, rather facilitates the success of others; they constitute a store of wealth, from which each may take his fill; and the more he takes, the more he leaves, to satisfy the desires of all who come after. Now, in view of the case, Philosophy inquiring for life's chief goods, cannot make them to be fortune's prizes, scattered to tempt the cupidity of all; but which a few only can catch, while their luck proves the disappointment and vexation of the many. The supposition were monstrous. We so instinctively recoil from supposing such to be the appointment of nature's Author, and so consciously grasp it for a truth clear by its own light--the conviction of a provision fully made in nature for all, whenever nature's wants are truly consulted--that we may safely reject, by this test, every notion of temporal good, which makes it consist preeminently in whatever, by the nature of the case, can be the lot of but a limited number. Eminent above all other conceptions of temporal good, is that which makes it to consist emphatically in the possession of money, or the ability to command it by its equivalents. And because the capacities of enjoyment have never been measured, nor material wealth rationally estimated as a means of meeting those capacities, riches are prized, not as a means, but an end; and becoming themselves the end, no amount of possession lessens the desire to accumulate. A just philosophy argues on the case, that all cannot be rich, in the common acceptation of the term, whether be considered the limits to earth's productiveness, and the possibility of increasing material wealth; or whether, _rich_ being more a relative than an absolute term, that the supposition of _all rich_ is self-contradictory: therefore, in a juster sense, the supposition of all rich must be admissible;--the sense, namely, that whenever riches shall be reasonably estimated simply as the means of meeting capacities of enjoyment surveyed and known, then it will be found that the earth's productiveness, and the stock of material wealth, admit each to take to the fullness of his wants, leaving enough for all who come after. It is further the office of Philosophy to show in detail, what is thus wrought out as a conclusion from general principles; to show how much is consumed by artificial wants, and subjection to the tyranny of fashion; to show how the correction of factitious desires would leave natural and rational desires for better enjoyment than is now found, so that self-love would find not occasion for envy, or repining at a brother's prosperity. The unceasing desire to become richer would be, however, but a mitigated evil, if men sought only wealth by production. The aggravation of the case is, that they whom the desire most impels, seek the increase of their own store, not by producing, but by contriving to turn to their own stock the avails of the industry of others. Our young men, in deplorable numbers, slide into the persuasion, that any means of living and thriving are better than productive industry. Hence the rush into trade, the professions, into speculations, where the hazards are such, that the cool calculations of pure avarice would rather incline a man to prefer the prospect of growing rich by digging the earth. So much the preference of contrivance to labor overmaster the mastering desire to become rich. But there is a strange hankering after whatever is of the nature of a lottery. So the prizes are but splendid, no matter, if they are but few compared with the blanks. We are given to presuming each on his own good fortune. "Nothing venture, nothing have," has become a proverb. So agriculture is treated as if it had no rewards, because one ventures so little by engaging therein. And one might almost think that the conscious earth resented the indignity. Aided by Philosophy, we shall argue on this matter thus: All cannot live by their wits; the many must produce with the hands; and, the greater the part who shuffle off the charge, the more heavily it falls on others. The first law given to man in innocency, was, to keep the garden and till it; the first after the loss of innocency, "In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread;"--so a dispensation from such law, given by Him, who best knows what is good for man, in whatever state, is not worthy to stand high among life's blessings. More particularly we are taught in the same school, that the good thus contemplated must cost something at least on the score of that best of physical enjoyments--health. If it were duly appreciated, how high this stands among life's goods, and how much its perfection depends on freedom to the mind from the anxieties of hazardous speculation, and a goodly amount of manly labor, of which the varied occupations of agriculture are the most favorable of all; this consideration would check the prevalent ambition to make the contrivance of the brain supply the place of the labor of the hands. Health is commended to us, not only as among the first of present goods, but as one, the security of which is placed very much in our own power; if we will but study and practise the means. It is remarkable, that, while the healing art is proverbial for its sects and uncertainties--amid the disputes of homoeopaths and allopaths, mineralists and herbalists, stimulators and depletors--there is a pretty general agreement of parties on the laws of hygiene, or the art of preserving health. We might find here a law, taught by the constitution of nature, that its Author never intended healing to hold an important place in the cause of human welfare. He meant it should be well nigh dispensed with, by the obedience men should pay to laws, which they may understand. The full appreciation of these considerations would tend greatly to establish friendly relations in society; because, first, the good contemplated is such, that the success of one in seeking, facilitates the success of all. Secondly, it would abate the strife for luxuries,--amassing without producing, and cultivating artificial wants,--most fertile sources of discord. And, thirdly, it would establish between physicians and their employers, relations the most agreeable. Another most unmanageable misconception of life's good, makes one of its choicest items to be, the possession of power and superiority. To what depths of degradation will man depress his fellows, just to contemplate the distance between his might and their weakness! If this ambition seems less general than the desire of accumulating, or of substituting contrivance for productiveness, it may be, because the necessity of the case more limits the number who can bear rule; otherwise, the passion for power might find as ready an entrance to as many hearts as are taken by the love of gain, or the dislike to labor. We may find in this thought a partial explanation of the fact, that the thrift of the non-slaveholding States contrasted with the stagnation at the South, is so powerless an argument addressed to the slaveholders there; for you have not only to satisfy avarice of the superior profitableness of free labor; you have still to contend with the lust of dominion--the passion for power and superiority. To manage this passion is the heaviest charge of policy--to provide that the offices which must be intrusted to human hands, be filled peaceably and worthily. Philosophy explodes this notion of good (as claiming to be eminently such), in that it cannot stand the general test: It is a good, which a few must share by detracting so much from the happiness of others. And further, to the love of power is submitted the consideration, that knowledge is power. It may be feared, this maxim oft suggests scarce other sense, that that deeper insight into the tricks of trade or politics enables the possessor to outwit competitors for riches or honors in the game. It is still a low understanding, that knowledge of nature's laws multiplies the means of physical enjoyment. Knowledge is power in a higher sense, in that it empowers the possessor to call forth stores of enjoyment form objects, which seem to vulgar apprehension most barren of utility. But knowledge--taken for the round of mental cultivation--is power, in that it is competent to yield to all more than the delightful sense of conscious superiority, which vulgar ambition may afford to a few of its successful votaries; a store, from which each in taking does but multiply the remainder. But to find it so one must look well, that he apprehend knowledge to be a good of itself, independently of the distinction it confers. For a vain ambition often takes this direction; and then it matters little to one whether himself advance, or others be kept back--since, in either case, the difference between him and them, the distinction chiefly enjoyed, is the same. Now, the love of knowledge is prior in time to the love of distinction; it should seem then, that, with proper care, it might maintain the mastery over its rival. The child is delighted with the acquisition of new ideas, before it thinks of turning them to a vain-glorious account. It deserves to be considered, whether our modes of education, offering prizes and honors of scholarship, do not train into the ascendancy that love of distinction, which education ought and might keep subordinate; which in fact is one of the greatest hinderances to progress;--for when one's immediate aim is not truth itself, but the glory which attends the acquisition, he meets a thousand sidelong impulses from the straightforward search. That knowledge is a good which grows by being shared, is a truth more fully apprehended, as the idea of knowledge is enlarged. It is measurably so, while taken for eminence in common studies and the received sciences. One's advance is facilitated by the advance of others. Much more does this hold, when the distinction between intellectual culture and intellectual life is made, and the preference due to the latter apprehended. When the missionary enterprize was a new thing, in favor of the missionary's being a married man was argued the advantage of having children trained up in a Christian way before the eyes of the heathen. But so completely has that expectation been disappointed, that now the missionaries send home their children to be educated; alleging the danger, lest their children become stumbling blocks, through the apparent little difference between them and the heathen children. And the difficulty is not, that they cannot there, as well as here, be taught Latin, Greek, Mathematics--all the received sciences-the branches of what is nominally education. It is not so much, that they cannot there be shielded from evil influences abroad; as that their children there want, what our children enjoy--the sight of magnificent enterprises; a spirit of inquiry and freedom breathing all around them; and the healthful contact and stimulus of multitudes of young minds, in the like process of intellectual and moral training. It is such nameless imperceptible influences, that awaken intellectual life, from the mind, and determine the future man more than the teaching, which is nominally education. Why else does the acknowledged excellence of the teaching in the Prussian schools do so little to quicken intellectual life--to form men of progressive thoughts? We should be repaid the whole cost of the missionary enterprize, were it only in the clearness and importance of the lesson thus taught us, as otherwise we should hardly have suspected--the doctrine of our mutual dependencies and tendencies to a common average--how our intellectual life is subject to the law, "Whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it." We may hence take instruction, first, in the matter of educating our children. We have but half done our duty as parents, when we have joined with such of our neighbors as better appreciate, or readier furnish the means, of good instruction, to unite our children in a select school, furnished with competent masters and ample apparatus. The children of one neighborhood educate one another mainly. They receive from one another more of those impressions which form the mind and fix the after character, than all they get from their masters. The carefully trained will receive a deleterious impression from the neglected portion, despite of care to ward off evil influences. Or, however successfully care may be applied, that is but negative success. Our children still want the kindly stimulus to mental growth, to be realized in a whole community of young minds, all sharing the like wise training. We may hence take occasion, secondly, to mark (what is not so obvious), that through life the same law binds us: the law, that our intellectual life depends more on the state of society in which we exist, than on our direct efforts at self-culture. Individual effort may give one great preeminence before his associates in any of the acknowledged sciences, though even in such their success facilitates his; and if he prizes the knowledge--the truth--for itself, rather than for the attending glory, he will find in another's success, that, "whether one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it." But distinctively is it so, in regard to the general progress of universal mind in justness of thought and sentiment--those new developed master ideas which mark the place of each successive age in the line of progression; and in regard to which, the masters in the received sciences are quite as often found lagging behind, as going before. In regard to this, we are all of us individually very like the several drops which compose the mighty current of the Mississippi, moving with resistless force to its destination. A few may outstrip by a little the general progress of thought, and but a little; just as one drop in the current may receive an impulse, carrying it a little in advance; or, if we might suppose the drops gifted with intelligence, some by self-directed effort and seizing opportunities, might speed themselves a little. So study and determination will enable one to anticipate by a little the birth of ideas. And, on the other hand, the current of thought none can resist. Sometimes a man resolves to be so conservative, as to stick fast by the old moorings--_he_ is not going to yield to popular impulses. But it fares with him very much as it would with the single drop in the Mississippi, which should resolve to stop in its place, and so reluct against impulses and take advantage of all impediments. The result from day to day would be, not that it had stopped in its place, or any thing like it; but that its daily approach to the ocean was a little less than that of its fellows. Thus we are brought round to the same position--that the attempt to monopolize Heaven's best gifts to man, must be a very small affair-- that the individual best consults his own attainments in knowledge, after the sublimest sense of the term, by consulting the progress of his neighbors and the race; just as the single drop in the Mississippi sees its best hope of speedily reaching the ocean, in whatever gives onward impulse to the whole current. The thought receives force from the consideration, that here emphatically is that knowledge, which he who increaseth beyond the average increase, increaseth sorrow. A saying of so much currency must have some foundation in reality. And yet is not knowledge commended to us as one of the richest sources of enjoyment? "Happy the mortal, who has traced effects To their first cause." Where is the reconciling link between these seeming contradictions? Now eminence in any of the received sciences, or branches of literature, has rich capabilities of affording happiness. To penetrate the depths of mathematics, chemistry, or astronomy--to revel in the stores of ancient lore;--all such pursuits generally become more delightfully attractive, the further one advances; or, after the ancient indefinite use of terms, _knowledge_ might be taken for the just proportionate training of all the faculties, in distinction from the teaching, which impresses so many items of truth. And such education preeminently fits one to pass time happily. The maxim in question then applies emphatically to the forethought, which anticipates the dawn of ideas.* [Or, more generally, we might define, an accurate perception of the difference between _what is_ and _what ought to be_--between reality and ideal perfection. Perhaps we might say, _insight into logical futurity_.] And although, as above said, none do greatly anticipate beyond the general sense of the age, yet some may too much for their own comfort. This thought Schiller finely sets forth in his Cassandra. At the hour of her sister's nuptials, while the rest give loose to merriment at the festival, the prophetess wanders forth alone, complaining, that her insight into futurity debars her from participation in the common joy. "To all its arms doth mirth unfold, And every heart foregoes its cares, And hope is busy in the old; The bridal robe my sister wears, And I alone, alone am weeping; The sweet delusion mocks not me; Around these walls destruction sweeping, More near and near I see. A torch before my vision glows, But not in Hymen's hand it shines; A flame that to the welkin goes, But not from holy offering shrines: Glad hands the banquet are preparing, And near and near the halls of state, I hear the god that comes unsparing, I hear the steps of fate. And men my prophet wail deride! The solemn sorrow dies in scorn; And lonely in the waste I hide The tortured heart that would forewarn. And the happy, unregarded, Mocked by their fearful joy, I trod: Oh! dark to me the lot awarded, Thou evil Pythian god! Thine oracle in vain to be, Oh! wherefore am I thus consigned, With eyes that every truth must see, Lone in the city of the blind? Cursed with the anguish of a power To view the fates I may not thrall; The hovering tempest still must lower, The horror must befall. Boots it, the veil to lift, and give To sight the frowning fates beneath? For error is the life we live, And, oh, our knowledge is but death! Take back the clear and awful mirror, Shut from mine eyes the blood-red glare; Thy truth is but a gift of terror, When mortal lips declare. My blindness give to me once more, The gay, dim senses that rejoice; The past's delighted songs are o'er For lips that speak a prophet's voice. To me _the future_ thou has granted; I miss the moment from the chain-- The happy present hour enchanted! Take back thy gift again!"* [Bulwer's translation.] These lines express more than the trite observation, that a knowledge of futurity would prove a torment to the possessor. Beneath that obvious is couched the deeper moral, which expresses the sufferings of the philosophic prophet--of the man who, too much for his own quiet, anticipates reasonings, conclusions, sentiments, forms of social life yet to prevail--the man to whom not coming events, but coming ideas, cast their shadows before. If we could suppose one at the time of the crusades, educated to associate and sympathize with the choice spirits of the age, yet anticipating the sense of their age, in making the comparative estimate of chivalrous adventure, and successful cultivation of the arts of peace and industry; he must have felt somewhat like Cassandra among the less gifted. If we could look on life, as our successors will two hundred years hence, we too might complain of being "lone in the city of the blind;" unless large Hope and Benevolence enabled us to live on the future. Thus we find additional motive to desiring a united and absolute, rather than an individual and relative progress, in the consideration that knowledge most worthily so called--whoso increaseth greatly beyond the average attainment, doth so to his own sorrow. To complete the list of false estimates of good, refuted by one test, we should allude to the frivolities of gentility and fashion-the passion for wearing badges of distinction, however impotent or unmeaning such may be. This is the very poorest form of finding delight, in what from the nature of the case can be shared by few. For its incommunicableness is its only recommendation. It is an icy repellant, freezing up the kindly flow of sympathy with universal humanity; and uncompensated loss of that best ingredient of earthly felicity--the interchange of friendly feelings and offices; that store of wealth, from which the more that take, and the fuller their share, the more they leave to be taken by others. The foregoing may be treated as a fine and just speculation, but as what ever must remain a barren speculation; as if it were after the example of all ages, that men should mistake the material of happiness for happiness itself. So it always has been, so it always will be, that false notions of good usurp the place of the true, despite the demonstrations of moralists and divines to the contrary. Mind, however, has not stood still in this matter. It has moved, and that in the right direction. We may note a progress from age to age, in coming to a just estimate of life. Start not at the use of terms, rendered suspicious by the extravagancies of which they have been made the vehicle. But we must not reject ideas great, just, or new, because of the distortions and caricatures of little minds. If one idea occupies the mind all them more for being great and just, it will be likely to overmaster that mind, so as not to be produced in its fair proportions, or rightly applied. So fare they, with whom the one idea is, the progress of society--the growth of thought. The Mississippi in its progress throws froth and scum on its surface, more conspicuous than the under-running current. So radical folly and transcendental nonsense is obtruded on the sight, from the sympathy of little minds with the deeper current of thought. To gauge the progress of mind from those who are most noisy on the matter, would be, like taking the direction and rapidity of the Mississippi, from the froth, which the wind blows hither and thither over its surface. "Let us go on to perfection"--"Forgetting the things behind, and pressing onward to the things before." Such language describes distinctively the American character, and the spirit of Christianity. Only, where is perfection? What are the things before? If, as a people, we do fully take these expressions in their author's sense, we may hope there is one element of agreement, betokening good for the future. It is encouraging, that the two rival systems, most boldly promising to lead to perfection, both had their birth under political and mental bondage. So evidently with Romanism, whether under its proper form and name, or refined and disguised after the modern fashion. And the same is true of the baptized infidelity imported from Germany. The German mind is cramped and diseased by the bands which confine it. It is not allowed to speculate freely on politics, and the many questions most nearly touching present interests. Therefore, on the records and on the doctrines which pertain to eternal interests, it falls with an insane avidity for innovation, and runs into licentiousness a liberty no where else enjoyed. Hence the levity, in dealing with things sacred, in Germany often found in minds of the first and second orders, here is taken up by those to the third and fourth--the copyists and imitators; nay, by the buffoons who figure at the farces of mock philanthropy. Now, though every folly must find minds whose caliber it fits, we may hope the genuine American mind will not be extensively beguiled by either of the misbegotten offspring of Europe's mental servitude. But, to the point--progress made in estimating life. A few centuries ago, a torrent of enthusiasm set in the direction of bearing the cross into Asia, to fight for glory, and the propagation of Christianity, on the fields of Palestine. Already the old Roman military character was greatly improved on. Virtue, (_manliness_, a` vir-_man_) was no longer supposed to fulfil its highest office in Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. A delicate sense of honor, of the courtesy due to a foe and the gallantry to the other sex, betoken a type of humanity in advance of the brute ferocity of the best days of Rome. But, notwithstanding Mr. Burke's eloquence, and the opinion sometimes expressed, that the courtly knight of the middle age, realized the perfection of humanity; we have no reason to regret that the age of chivalry is gone by, and that the age of speculation, and money-making, and industrial enterprize has succeeded. The materialism of this age, with all its faults, is better than the chivalry of an age gone by. It tends to keep the world at peace; _that_ tended to perpetual turmoil. The supposition _all rich_, according to modern ideas, is not so flat a contradiction as the supposition _all glorious_, in military heroism. As the past age estimated life's supreme good, the enjoyment of a few _required_ the exclusion of the many from its benefits: as this age estimates the enjoyment of some, _admits_ the exclusion of others. Whether the mercantile spirit thoroughly entered into makes a better man than did the spirit of chivalry, may be doubted; not so, which best comports with the welfare of society. Now if one, at the time of the crusades, had so anticipated the spirit of the age, as to picture to himself modern Europe and America, manufacturing, trading, flocking to California, as if there a holy sepulcher was to be rescued from hands profane, glorying chiefly in mechanical development and mercantile enterprize; and had ventured to suggest, that instead of trooping to Asia to fight for glory, and the fancy of promoting religion by arguments of steel, it would be worthier of the choice spirits of the age to stay at home, and by industry and enterprize aim at multiplying the means of content to quiet life: he might have found a harder task than now devolves on him, who urges, that the materialism of this age must pass away, as has passed the chivalry of the crusades; both for the same reason; the progress of thought must outgrow the one, as it has outgrown the other. A new age with another spirit will be ushered in. What is to be the spirit of that age? Are we to find the forebodings in the dreamy sentimentalism, which boasts so much its flights beyond common material ideas? I trow rather, we may trace the character of the coming age in an increasing estimation of health, knowledge, mental cultivation, intellectual life, and the flow of the social affections, as the prime of earthly felicities--in an approximation towards rationally estimating money (with the ability to command it) as the means of meeting one's capacities of enjoyment--to be no longer worshipped as itself the idol or the end. When a pestilential disease breaks out in the city, the plainness and urgency of the case compel all to see in the sickness of one the danger of all. Wants and discomforts, which charity had been too cold to attend to, now considered as sources of contagion, are administered to with a ready alacrity. The law is recognized, according to which, "if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it." And this law will be more fully recognized, as self-love is educated--as men better understand their own welfare, and choose with reference to the whole of their nature, and the duration of their existence. Self-love is a motive of the indifferent kind--not of itself essentially good or bad. This appears from its being an essential part of our nature. Indeed, we can hardly conceive it as within the province of Omnipotence, to create a rational sentient being, who should be indifferent to his own happiness. The advantages accruing from an educated self-love are: First, additional security, that the good work of charity be done; and to all but the individual doer, it may matter little what be the prompting motives. Secondly, the expansion of yet nobler principles. Each act favors the growth of the sentiments, of which it is the expression. So he who does as benevolence bids, though from a motive secondary on the score of purity, will be likely again to do the same from yet purer motives. So at least if the essential principle be there, though appearing no more vividly than as a cold sense of duty. But, thirdly, self-love is made the rule and standard of charity: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." One must then first love himself, in order to loving his neighbor. Keeping this rule, there is no danger of loving thyself too well; rather, the more truly thou lovest thyself, the more truly thou lovest thy neighbor. Suppose one to cherish the vulgar notion of life--that it consists in the abundance of the things which one possesses, in the ability to live without exertion, amid plenty of good cheer. Suppose him to love his neighbor as himself. His charity must partake of the contraction and grossness of his self-love. Suppose another to prize duly intellectual riches. To him the discovery of a new principle in the physical, intellectual, or moral world, brings a joy unsurpassed by the merchant's, on the return of his heavily laden ship from a successful voyage. As the best legacy to his children, he would leave them a good education; and, knowing the natural influences and dependencies existing between young minds, he aims to have all the children in the neighborhood well educated, as the best security against failure in the attempt to educate his own. If all is but a refined calculation, how best to benefit himself and household; it is far more estimable and amiable than the gross selfishness which grovels after vulgar goods, and in the success of a brother sees an obstacle to its own success. But if he too loves his neighbor as himself, why how far his self-love is educated to find its satisfaction in nobler ends, by so much his charity is better than the other's. There is hope for the future in the consideration, that self-interest, the first, as well as love of approbation, the second, of the great powers which move the world, indeed all the indifferent motives, are getting still more into coincidence of action with justice and benevolence. When Jesus enforced a duty by the consideration, "Then shalt thou have worship [respect, approval,] in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee," he implied two things; first, that regard to the world's respectful esteem is not a censurable motive; and, secondly, that the same operates to good, rather than to evil. So it must have been even in that corrupt generation, so disposed to call evil good and good evil. It must be much more so now, when public sentiment has so much improved. Notwithstanding the danger of loving the praise of man more than the praise of God, and the mischiefs resulting from such preference, we should lose, on the whole, by eradicating the love of human praise. Witness the accounts of the atrocious outbreaks of depravity at the gold diggings, while society was yet unformed. Witness, wherever cease the common restraints of civilization. Thus agents--so often the authors of discord and confusion, so often the fire-brands to set the world in fumes--philanthropy is more and more firing as her sure allies. "Even so, the torch of hellish flames Becomes a leading light to heaven: And so corruption's self becomes To bread of life the living leaven." All analogies point to a still increasing vigor in the growth of the kingdom of heaven. If the mustard tree is never seen growing, but only to have grown; yet the greater the tree, the greater its power of daily making large growth, without its growing being perceived. All considerations indicate the power of each to do something to forward the consummation. No member of society is so insignificant, that his spiritual life does not affect the health of the whole. The obscurest, who cherishes a preference of ideal wealth over material riches and sensual delights, does something towards forming a sane public sentiment, just as surely as the tenant of the humblest city dwelling, who keeps clean his own premises, does something towards promoting the general health. It is well to review the progress made in estimating life--to impress our minds with its existence as a reality; because mind and enterprize just now tend so strongly to the material and mechanical, that we might be tempted to doubt, whether any other improvement were to be thought of. If so, we might well enough stop where we are. But we shall contemplate with most satisfaction our multiplied facilities for manufacturing, transportation, fertilizing the earth, and conveying intelligence, if we see in the whole a store, from which we may draw with good effect for promoting general welfare, whenever the true end of these means shall be earnestly studied. Otherwise the discovery, how to make two kernels of corn grow where one grew before, would all redound to the tyranny of fashion, and only foreshadow an increase of artificial wants, quite up to the increased supply; so that want would still be as close treading on our heels as ever. But if we yet scarce attain to longer life, better health, or more content, than fell to the lot of our fathers, with their simpler arts and manner, because we are forgetting to discriminate between true and false wants--between real and imaginary happiness: the true voice of history still is, not that the material means must always thus fall short of their legitimate end; but that, though the material and the mechanical travel first and fastest, the moral and the spiritual are following after. These in due time will reveal the meaning and the value of our stored acquisitions. Dr. Franklin calculated, that the labor of all for three or four hours a day, would furnish all the necessaries and all the conveniences of life; supposing men freed from the exactions of an arbitrary fashion. If he was near correctness, his time must be abundant in our day, when the productiveness of machinery, and skill in the arts, are so much improved. Then it is within existing possibilities, that every mind be thoroughly cultivated; and every body taxed for labor, only to the extent required by the conditions of its own best vigor and that of the inhabiting mind. So far afield from truth is the common supposition, that the many can receive but the elements of learning; while the few must sacrifice bodily vigor to excessive intellectual cultivation. Connect with this thought that before advanced of the irresistible tendencies of our intellectual life to one average; and what a boundless vista, in the direction of human progress, opens before us. As citizens of the republic, we have comparatively little cause to exult in the conceit of being freer or happier than other communities; much more in the chance, having broken the fetters of superstition and tyranny, next to rend those of false habit and fashion--to enthrone reason over the authority of one another's eyes and prejudices: to say in truth,-- "Here the free spirit of mankind at length Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place A limit to the giant's untamed strength, Or curb his swiftness in the forward race? Far, like the comet's way through infinite space, Stretches the long untravelled path of light Into the depth of ages; we may trace, Distant the brightening glory of his flight, Till the receding beams are lost to human sight." *Bryant. Part IV. Welfare as Dependent on Religion. But in all our attempts to educate self-love into harmony with Universal benevolence, we contend with the enemy, somewhat as Hercules wrestled with Antaeus:-- Und erstickst du ihn nicht in den Luften frei, Stets wachst ihm die Kraft anf der Erde neu.* [If thou strangle him not high lifted in air, Fresh strength from the earth he continues to share.] Thus we come to speak of present welfare, as dependent on the cultivation of the whole man--on a recognition of his immortality, his allegiance to his Maker, and his capacity for more disinterested sentiments, than self-love, however modified. The influences thus accruing are a confirmation, from higher authority, of the conclusions approved by philosophy, ethics, the prudence which calculates how man should live with man, considered as but creatures of earth--a _re-binding_--a _re-ligation_ to what was _obligation_ before; and such precisely is the proper sense of the word _religion_. That the promise of the life that now is attaches to godliness-the vivid recognition of a Father in heaven, with the union of reverence and love cherished by a dutiful child--and that naught else secures the possession, might be argued,-- 1. First, as anticipated from the nature of the case. If man is formed to own allegiance to his Maker, and to spend this life as preparatory and introductory to a coming existence, then, till these conditions are fulfilled, he must be expected, not to fill worthily his place, as possessor of the present life; but must, in important points, compare disadvantageously with the beasts that perish. If, like the inferior races, ours attained to a life which should be the full flourish of its demonstrable capacities, while immortality entered not into account, then would fail one argument to prove us destined to an hereafter. If the philosopher, from the examination of the chick eaglet in the shell, knowing naught else of the animal, could make out for it, within its narrow walls, a life answering to the indications of its organization; he might fitly question, whether it were destined to burst its prison, and soar aloft. And such embryo eaglet is man, considered only as to what this life realizes. 2. Historically, we are in little danger of being confounded on this argument. The evidence from fact is very plain and positive, that men have never become wise for the life that now is, but as they have first become wise for the life that is to come; that self-love never becomes a just prudence, till informed by the faith, hope, and charity of Jesus; in a word, that in Him is life, and only through the light derived from him is life realized to men. Seeking the lowest form of worldly wisdom--political science applied as the agent for promoting general welfare--we may look in vain for a beginning thus to apply such science, in any nation unblest by revelation. They on whom the light has shone, have generally so imperfectly comprehended it, that they have only attained to that vulgar love of liberty, which Guizot defines to be removed but a step from the love of power. Rather, we might say, that step is not--the two are but the same thing. Viewed on one side, it is the hatred of being domineered over; on the other, it is the love of domineering. Only where the Christian account of human character has been taken for a sober reality, has been taken for a sober reality, has been practically understood the rule of dividing power equally, because so universal is the tendency to grasp it inordinately. Only (we may add) where, better still, some good deference has been paid to the charge, "Call no man master on earth, for one is your Master in heaven." If this is the instruction, after which one becomes a republican, and shapes his love liberty; the conclusion is equally obvious and inevitable-call no man slave or vassal on earth, for One in heaven is the common Master of all. Mistaking here, France has gone through a series of signal failures. Her Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, still prove empty names; while want and oppression stare millions in the face, despite the promises of more than half a century's experimenting with revolutions. A vision of political blessedness mocks her sight, which, like fabled enchanted island, ever and anon seeming just within the grasp, still escapes, and flies the faster, the faster it is pursued. O my country! mercy spare thee from thus mistaking Heaven's high decree! But if we should allow to some of the more enlightened Gentiles of antiquity, some degree of political wisdom; we might still look in vain for their progress in that estimation of temporal wealth, which reveals our community of interests, thus divesting self-love of its hatefulness, by training it to its best satisfaction. Historically, we every where find self-love too blind, freakish, springing upon immediate results, too envenomed with maliciousness to calculate prudently. 3. Religion affords altogether the readiest, shortest, directest way to the conclusion, that interest and duty most coincide. It brings the man of humblest intellectual attainments at once to the conclusion, which the prudent calculator may reach, after long research and extensive induction of particulars; namely, that he cannot add ultimately to his own stock of enjoyment, by detracting from another's share. What might seem prudence at the expense of justice and benevolence, may assume a contrary aspect, at the first flush of conviction, that another life shall rectify the inequalities of this. Philosophy, having done its best at showing the interest of each in the welfare of all, and how much would redound to the happiness of all if all heartily concurred in thus regarding life, still labors at the question, as the world goes, how the individual will fare, who takes a course so different from the general current, as to devote his best zeal to bettering the condition of that world, which will be likely so little to appreciate his devotion. So that, as matter of fact, one is little likely to see first (in earnestness) the reign of righteousness, as the best security for the necessaries and conveniences of life, unless in the faith which apprehends, that "all these things shall be added" to those thus devoted to promoting the holy cause of humanity. 4. Again; to the great majority of mankind, religion is the best spur to the understanding, towards the conclusions of a just prudence. "The entrance of the word giveth understanding to the simple," says the Psalmist. How often have we found its so! How often the first impulse to intellectual activity is given by the man's religious interest! How often they, in whom a taste for reading could never be formed otherwise, begin to read for satisfying their spiritual wants, and so develop mental powers which else had ever lain dormant. If we mark those extremes of social humanity, the masses of Hindostan and the people of New England--the monotonous stagnation there, and the progressive enterprize here--we see a difference mainly attributable to a religion whose very spirit is, forgetting the things behind, and pressing onward to the things before. And, though this spirit may not always go forth in accordance with the teaching of that religion, it is none the less true, that such was its source; mind being awake, enterprising, on the track of improvement, only where a lively faith in Christianity has kindled the flame. Every where else, policy at best presses so hard on the subject individuals, as tolerably to restrain the passions from breaking out of one against another. Only "where the spirit of the Lord is," ventured the experiment, of making the pressure on each so light, as to become the best security for his keeping in place. 5. Philosophy fails (once more), because it has no adequate malady for the moral malady under which our race labors. When we speak of men weighing fairly the present and the future, comparing impartially the substantial with the showy, the gross with the refined, and choosing after the decision of a fully informed prudence, we suppose what does not exist; "The good that I would, I do not; but the evil that I would not, that I do." "The better seeing and approving, Towards the worse I still am moving:" Such is the united testimony of Christian and heathen to that "law of sin and death," through whose tyranny the united decisions of reason, prudence and conscience are powerless, till what the law could not do, "in that it was weak through the flesh," the grace of the Gospel accomplishes; restoring reason and conscience to the throne, giving effect to the conviction, how fully coincident are interest and duty-- "that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled by us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit." Paul's account of this matter may have accommodated to it, what John says of the command to mutual Christian love; that it is an old history, and yet not an old but a new one. _Old_, in the sense, that, from what time by one man sin came into the world and death by sin, every one in earnest to fulfil the true end of his being, has found the dame impotence attached to good resolves; the same supremacy gained by the baser impulses, in the hour of trial; the same temptation to find an excuse in what seems so like a law unavoidable, as if it were no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me, as if it were not the responsible _I_ that did wrong: this _I_ being controlled by sin, which is fancied as a foreign agent taking up a residence within, and controlling the man in spite of him. And, escaped from this and the like deceits, all have been brought to the stand, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!"--that species of self-despair, finishing the preparation for that renewing influence, which "is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." Thus the enemy is raised _in die Luften frei_, no more to receive fresh strength from mother Earth, to renew the contest successfully. But this account, so old in one sense, is not so in another--in the sense of being obsolete, or out of date. It still retains the freshness of novelty, to answer to the last example of a man's ordering life, as, he knows, meets the approval of his Judge, and his own truest welfare. 6. But "the end of the commandment," or the result of the process by which the soul is put into condition to contend successfully with the powers of evil, "is charity." So religion preeminently rebinds men to the rule of not seeking their own advantage at the cost of others; because it implants a principle, which might dispense with the certainty of always calculating prudently in doing right. Charity seeketh not her own--not one's own welfare calculated on the largest scale, exclusively, or at the cost of the greatest good of the whole. Thus it is essentially distinct from a prudence, however refined, and calculating its ends through eternity. It is called "the bond of perfectness," or a most perfect bond; because, if men were all devoted thus disinterestedly, each to the good of the whole, society would be perfectly held together, without other bond. All forms of civil compact and voluntary association might be dispensed with. Even prudence might fail to calculate, how the present sacrifice to general good is to be compensated; and charity would rebind the man to love his neighbor as himself, and do as he would receive again. It is further called "the perfect law of liberty;" as by a simple rule it perfectly secures to individuals those immunities, which constitutional provisions at best secure but imperfectly by complicated apparatus, and where philosophy halts at the perversities of human selfishness. 7. Faith alone is the sure foundation, whereto to add virtue [courage], and that for the further addition of knowledge. This courage is _du Coeur_--of the heart, and alone gives that simple love of truth, which, for _its_ sake, dares equally to be new and singular, or to be vulgar and common-place. Without that foundation, assuming to be courageous enough to leave the beaten track, and reject received opinions, one does but attain to the bravery, which, in its efforts to dare danger or opposition, is sure to overact its part. Who holds an even balance in weighing evidence, equally guarded against rejecting the old, because it is old, or the new, because it is new? I know not, unless such as have apprehended the _urwahr_--the essential truth, which throws all temporal considerations into the shade. There are two difficulties in the way of attempting changes in the existing state of things, with good prospect of improvement. The first arises from the force of habit, and a reluctance to try a new, it may be, hazardous course. The other form the little discrimination exercised, when men set about in earnest exchanging the old for the new--discrimination to avoid treating the old as necessarily antiquated, and the presumption of "laying again the foundation" of all things. And these difficulties will hardly be met successfully, except by men, in whom the fear of God has cast out other fear. The intelligent part of the people of southern Europe have been, for many years, more thoroughly divested of reverence for the papacy, than was Luther in the days of his greatest vehemence. But they have quietly taken things as they are. They have wanted Luther's substitute for superstition--a fervently religious spirit. They have had only worldly and political motives, for wishing to see the old imposition done away; and these have been powerless against natural apathy, and the fixedness of old establishment. Infidelity and indifferentism prove poor antagonists to superstition. But when this apathy is one overcome, then the difficulty is, to temper with discretion the zeal for innovation. Throughout, such only as heartily prize the true, because it is true, will be likely to shun alike, rejecting the old for its antiquity, and the new for its novelty. The first lesson is, to learn how much of human wisdom is but folly: the second, that it is not yet all folly, but a good deal of it genuine wisdom. And he will be most likely to unite these in the habit of thinking soberly, who first moderates his estimate of human power and wisdom, by marking how far their utmost flights had failed to anticipate, what has proved the power of God and the wisdom of God to the world's renovation. Such is the best preparation for still learning, how much that wears the appearance of wisdom and science unsubstantial. This best teaches so to reason soberly and conscientiously, as not to run into licentiousness the liberty of thinking. Religious zeal indeed has hitherto been little enough tempered with discretion; but no other zeal has glowed so intensely, without still more disastrous consequences, in setting the world on fire. It is yet a consideration in point, that, as in all undertakings hope of success best stimulates and sustains exertion; so the hope, that the world's disorders will yet be cured, is best furnished by the faith, which recognizes a Sovereign ordering and disposing all, bringing light out of darkness; making the wrath of man to praise him, and the remainder thereof pledged to restrain. Judging from history and appearances, the philanthropist may often doubt, whether the race be not destined still to go a ceaseless round; ever exchanging one delusion for another, but no real progress. As it was in character for the prophetess of Apollo, it complain: "My youth was by my tears corroded, My sole familiar was my pain; Each coming ill my heart foreboded, And felt at first--in vain." So the philosophic prophet may lament, that he anticipates so much more clearly, what _ought_ to be, than what _will_ be; that he finds the increase of knowledge, beyond the general sense of the age, to be but the increase of sorrow. But the religious insight into futurity saves from such anguish, by the hope which gilds and realizes the future: hope for the race, armed with a higher assurance than philosophy can work out, that and right and peace shall reign triumphant; and personal hope, inasmuch as, however dark the prospect for earth's races may be, the individual has a future, whose joy is his strength. 9. And this habitual reference of the government of earth to its Supreme Ruler, is not more necessary to the hope, that sustains endurance, than to the patience which bides the time, in opposition to the indecent, passionate haste, which defeats its own end. "He that believeth shall not make haste." There is much fruitless haste to bring the world to rights, for want of a lively belief in a sovereign controlling Power; whose wisdom, whose goodness, whose resources, whose interest, to bring the world to order and happiness, infinitely transcend ours. Thus is missed the conclusion, if He can endure to see the stream of evil flow on age after age; then discretion would set some bounds to our zeal, to see all evil rectified. And the clearer this conclusion is the result of faith, the surer the bounds will be just such, as to save from losing all by a headlong precipitancy. In short, that habit of mind equally ready to accept the right and the true, whether it come with a suspicious air of novelty and singularity, or whether as old and vulgar it be scouted for being behind the age-- that habit which neither yields to discouragements, nor favors the fool-hardy haste, which calculates neither time nor its own strength; which discriminates, when to "contend earnestly," and when to "let them alone," the dogged adherents to falsehood and wrong, to the teachings of time and circumstances, their conscience and their God, till every plant which he hath not planted be rooted up by these mightier energies--the habit, realizing all the good of the radical, in proving all things, and all the glory of the conservative, in holding fast what is good;--this habit, so favorable to human progress, but involving so rare a combination of seemingly opposite qualities, as scarcely to be accounted for on all apparent influences, has been well described, as a "life hid with Christ in God." And truly has it been remarked, in view of the general result of ordinary tendencies and influences in forming one-sided characters, that _becoming as a little child_, expresses no less fittingly the conditions of entering the kingdom of nature, and thinking with the wise, than of entering the kingdom of heaven, and worshipping with the holy. Of the spiritual more grievously than of the intellectual life is it true, that, "whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it." Here emphatically does the individual labor hardly, to digest into his life the conclusions of reason and conscience, in advance of the average understanding of the age. Professor Lyell, speaking of the Millerite phrenzy, and how some men of pretty sound mind were carried away with it, remarks to this effect: "Religious delusion is like a famine fever, which attacks first the hungry and emaciated, but in its progress cuts down many of the well-fed and robust." So it is. So strong are our tendencies to one tone, that the Christian, in setting to his worldly desires the bounds which his religion exacts, feels to be exercising a self-denial--yielding the temporal to the eternal. He scarce seems to himself to be acting the part of true worldly wisdom. In reading the life of Dr. Payson, it is obviously manifest, that his deeply spiritual views were not inwrought harmoniously into his life's web, as would have been, if he had carried along with him a whole community. The materialism of this age must pass away, as has passed the quixotism of the crusades. Each has but expressed a stage in the progress of thought; and neither measures the mature life of the soul. It is not so certain to sight, what will be next grasped by this reaching onward to the things before; whether a better reconcilement of the life that now is with that which is to come, or whether a vaporing, misty sentimentalism is to be the spirit of the next age. There are not wanting indications, that the materialism of this age is to be followed by a dreamy spiritualism, raising men above the observance of vulgar duties, but not above the practice of the grossest vices. It is not uncharitable to mark such tendencies, where we see canonized Rousseau, the very embodiment of sensuality, egotism, and misanthropy; and progress _so_ taught to be the law of _individual_ man, that, whether going to commit his crimes at the brothel, or to expiate them on the gallows, his tendencies are still and forever upward. We need better evidence than sight can afford, to say,-- "O no! a thousand cheerful omens give Hope of yet happier days, whose dawn is nigh: He who has tamed the elements, shall not live The slave of his own passions; he whose eye Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky, And in the abyss of brightness dares to span The sun's broad circle, rising yet more high, In God's magnificent works his will shall scan; And love and peace shall make their paradise with man." *Bryant Conclusion. The matter of the preceding thoughts may be thus summed up. A progressive movement has been going on towards the rule, that, self-love directed towards the material, the sensible, the showy, the distinguishing, is so the ruling motive of human conduct, as to constitute it the first requisite in adjusting the social relations, that private interests, and class interests may not flourish best, short of the best attainable flourish of the whole. When this point shall be so thoroughly understood, that it shall be taken for no reproach of any class of men to regard them practically as subject to the common influences which control human conduct; we may expect an effective move, for giving to the lawyer and to the physician a relation to society, analogous to that sustained by the pastor among Protestants; instead of leaving their professions to find their best flourish, at about the vigor of intellectual and moral life, which just now we live. But this idea loses its importance as another comes into appreciation, --namely, that the conflicts of self-love with self-love, suppose mistaken estimates of happiness to be uppermost; and, just in proportion as men rightly estimate life, and truly love themselves, they appreciate those strong, numberless, delicate, indissoluble ties, which bind the members of the social body to suffer, or to rejoice together. And this idea again lessens in importance, as yet a third gains the ascendancy--the living conviction, that time is but the portal to eternity; the soul meanwhile tasting "the powers of the world to come;" and knowing the persuasiveness of that strongest call to mutual endearment, "If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." And now the consideration of these three points is commended especially to the attention of those, who, in the execution of their office and ministry, have weekly access to the mind of the people. We mourn the waning influence of the American pulpit. Where the power thence emanating in the stirring days of trial to men's souls,--when its ministers stood on that commanding point, where they caught the first beams of rising day, and reflected the light in the face of the people? At our Revolutionary period, ministers, in their earnestness to preach to the times, might have come short in preaching eternity. So far there was a mistake to be rectified; but they did well to preach to the times. It is among the reasons, why religious so tempered political zeal; and, accordingly, why, as our Revolution _was_ without a model, so it _remains_ without a rival. It is well that the struggle came, before the toad-eaters to capital's feed agents in legislative halls occupied the high seats of moral influence. The true successors to the fathers are not the preachers of party politics, but they who aim to supply the lack of all parties, in that they fail to make liberty a means, valuable only as affording facilities to improvement. We are exceedingly contracted in our notions of the Christian preacher's just province. If we confine it to administering directly to the soul's spiritual wants and everlasting interests, we stray wide from the example, which God himself sets, when he writes a revelation for man. The Bible is full of histories, maxims, laws, just as might be expected in a book, which ignored any other life, than that which now is. One half of it (within bounds) might remain as it is, on the supposition, that men have neither hopes nor duties, but such as pertain to them as joint tenants of this earthly life. If we would keep people superior to the impulses of appetite, and the solicitations of sensual pleasure, we must attempt _servitute corporis uti_ by _imperio animi_* [In Sallust's well known sentence _servitute_ may be the object of _utimur_, _imperio_ the ablative of the means; or, reversing the construction, the sense may be, by keeping the body in subjection, we better maintain the mind's supremacy. Neither, I believe, is the common understanding of the passage.]--by training the mind to know its capacities and powers. If this be neglected, purely spiritual influences, supposing them forthcoming, will hardly save the body from unduly controlling the man. Vulgar ambition is to be forestalled in the same way. _Imperium populi_ may be expected to be attractive, in proportion as _imperium animi_ is unstudied, unknown; and of course the full sense missed, in which knowledge is power. He who knows the greatness of the world within, hears nothing strange in the declaration-that "greater is he who ruleth his own spirit, than he who taketh a city." That the recipients of a (so called) liberal education so often become the votaries of vulgar ambition, and vulgar pleasure too, is to be accounted for on the three-fold consideration: first, that what passes for a liberal education is often a very illiberal thing, doing very little to unfold the spirit to itself, and so impress the greatness of mastering its capabilities; secondly, that merely intellectual without moral influences, do not suffice; and thirdly, the law is supreme, which binds all to suffer, in their intellectual and spiritual life, from the mental and moral degradation of a part. Jesus thought it not beneath the dignity of his office, nor the sacredness of the Sabbath, nor the proprieties of the synagogue, to discourse to people on politeness and good breeding; nor to enforce attention to decorum, by the comparatively low consideration, "Then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee." Unworthy alike, both the lesson and the motive, would cry a false spirituality, if the example of such preaching were set by any lower authority. A false spirituality it is, for it originates in missing the close connection between the temporal and the spiritual, the outward and the inward, the life that now is, and that which is to come. In faithfully delivering the whole counsel of God, we may encounter something like the wrath of the ruler of the synagogue, whose spirituality was offended at the restoration of a withered hand on the Sabbath. We may find, that we have cast pearls before swine. We may be referred to Paul's determination to know nothing among the Corinthians, save Jesus Christ and him crucified. And, if we minister to a people who, like the Corinthians, need to be fed with milk and not meat; like them carnal, factious, party-spirited, and if we would delicately hint to them their character--let us do it indirectly, following Paul's example, when he put restraint on the fullness of matter within, and discoursed only on the elements of Christian doctrine. But shall the strong man be confined to a milk diet, because the careful nurse ventures to supply nothing else to the tender infant? If when for the time our people ought to be teachers, they need to be taught again the first principles of the oracle of God, we may reserve pearls for a worthier reception. But, if they are well-grounded in the elements, let us lead them on to perfection. Society's pillars, the temple's three P.s, Philosophy, Policy, Piety--these I commend to your notice. My labor is done: May we meet in that city where temple is none, Nor sun supervenes on the shadows of night; Jehovah--the Lamb--are its temple and light. 
18493	----	NON-VIOLENT ACTION IN TENSION AREAS: Series III: Number 1 July 1944. INTRODUCTION TO NON-VIOLENCE _By_ THEODORE PAULLIN THE PACIFIST RESEARCH BUREAU 1201 CHESTNUT STREET PHILADELPHIA 7, PENNSYLVANIA MEMBERS OF THE PACIFIST RESEARCH BUREAU Charles Boss, Jr. Isidor B. Hoffman Henry J. Cadbury John Haynes Holmes Allan Knight Chalmers E. Stanley Jones Abraham Cronbach John Howland Lathrop Albert E. Day Frederick J. Libby Dorothy Day A. J. Muste Edward W. Evans Ray Newton Jane Evans Mildred Scott Olmsted F. Burt Farquharson Kirby Page Harry Emerson Fosdick Clarence E. Pickett Harrop A. Freeman Guy W. Solt Elmer A. Fridell Douglas V. Steere Richard Gregg Dan West Harold Hatch Norman Whitney E. Raymond Wilson FINANCIAL SUPPORT The Pacifist Research Bureau is financed entirely by the contributions of organizations and individuals who are interested in seeing this type of research carried on. We trust that you may desire to have a part in this positive pacifist endeavor to aid in the formulation of plans for the world order of the future. Please make contributions payable to The Pacifist Research Bureau, 1201 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia 7, Pennsylvania. Contributions are deductible for income tax purposes. DIRECTOR'S FOREWORD "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you _can_ make words mean different things." * * * * * In the writings of pacifists and non-pacifists concerning theories of and experiences with non-violence, there is a clear lack of uniformity in the use of words. The present booklet, introducing the Bureau's new series on _Non-Violent Action in Tension Areas_, distinguished by green covers, critically examines pacifist terminology. But it does more, for it analyzes various types of non-violence, evaluates examples of non-violence referred to in previous literature, and points to new sources of case material. Dr. Theodore Paullin, Assistant Director of the Bureau, is the author of this study. The manuscript has been submitted to and reviewed by Professor Charles A. Ellwood and Professor Hornell Hart, both of the Department of Sociology, Duke University; and by Richard B. Gregg, author of several works on the philosophy and practice of non-violence. Their criticisms and suggestions have proved most helpful, but for any errors of interpretation the author is responsible. The Pacifist Research Bureau frankly bases its work upon the philosophy of pacifism: that man should exercise such respect for human personality that he will employ only love and sacrificial good will in opposing evil and that the purpose of all human endeavor should be the creation of a world brotherhood in which cooperative effort contributes to the good of all. A list of pamphlets published or in preparation appears on the back cover. HARROP A. FREEMAN, Executive Director _Any organization ordering 500 or more copies of any pamphlet published by the Pacifist Research Bureau may have its imprint appear on the title page along with that of the Bureau. The prepublication price for such orders is $75.00 for each 500 copies._ * * * * * TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION: ON TERMS 1 Definition of Terms 5 II. VIOLENCE WITHOUT HATE 9 Revolutionary Anarchism 10 Abraham Lincoln 11 The Church and War 11 III. NON-VIOLENCE BY NECESSITY 12 Non-Violent Resistance to Invaders 13 Chinese Boycotts Against Foreigners 15 Egyptian Opposition to Great Britain 16 IV. NON-VIOLENT COERCION 17 The Labor Strike 19 The Boycott 21 Non-Violent Coercion by the American Colonies 22 Irish Opposition to Great Britain After 1900 23 Strikes with Political Purposes 24 Non-Violence in International Affairs 24 V. SATYAGRAHA OR NON-VIOLENT DIRECT ACTION 25 The Origins of Satyagraha 26 The Process of Satyagraha 27 The Philosophy of Satyagraha 29 The Empirical Origins of Gandhi's Method 31 Non-Cooperation 32 Fasting 33 The American Abolition Movement 34 VI. NON-RESISTANCE 36 The Mennonites 37 The New England Non-Resistants 39 Tolstoy 41 VII. ACTIVE GOODWILL AND RECONCILIATION 43 Action in the Face of Persecution 44 Coercion or Persuasion? 46 Ministering to Groups in Conflict 47 The Power of Example 48 Work for Social Reform 49 Political Action and Compromise 50 The Third Alternative 51 VIII. CONCLUSIONS 54 * * * * * PREFACE The purpose of the present study is to analyze the various positions found within the pacifist movement itself in regard to the use of non-violent techniques of bringing about social change in group relationships. In its attempt to differentiate between them, it makes no pretense of determining which of the several pacifist positions is ethically most valid. Hence it is concerned with the application of non-violent principles in practice and their effectiveness in achieving group purposes, rather than with the philosophical and religious foundations of such principles. It is hoped that the study may help individuals to clarify their thinking within this field, but the author has no brief for one method as against the others. Each person must determine his own principles of action on the basis of his conception of the nature of the universe and his own scale of ethical values. The examples chosen to illustrate the various positions have been taken largely from historical situations in this country and in Europe, because our traditional education has made us more familiar with the history of these areas than with that of other parts of the world. It also seemed that the possibilities of employing non-violent methods of social change would be more apparent if it was evident that they had been used in the West, and were not only applicable in Oriental societies. It is unfortunate that this deliberate choice has eliminated such valuable illustrative material as the work of Kagawa in Japan. The exception to this general rule in the case of "Satyagraha" has been made because of the wide-spread discussion of this movement in all parts of the world in our day. I want to acknowledge with great appreciation the suggestions I have obtained from the preliminary work done for the Pacifist Research Bureau in this field by Russell Curtis and Haridas T. Muzumdar. THEODORE PAULLIN July 1, 1944 * * * * * INTRODUCTION TO NON-VIOLENCE * * * * * I. INTRODUCTION: ON TERMS "In the storm we found each other." "In the storm we clung together." These words are found in the opening paragraphs of "_Hey! Yellowbacks!" The War Diary of a Conscientious Objector_. Ernest L Meyer uses them to describe the psychological process by which a handful of men--a few professors and a lone student--at the University of Wisconsin grew into unity because they opposed the First World War, when everyone around them was being carried away in the enthusiasm which marked the first days of American participation. If there had been no storm, they might not have discovered their affinity, but as it was, despite the disparity of their interests and backgrounds, they found themselves in agreement on the most fundamental of their values, when all the rest chose to go another way. By standing together they all gained strength for the ordeals through which each must go, and they were filled with the spirit of others before them and far removed from them, who had understood life in the same way.[1] The incident may be taken as symbolic of the experience through which pacifists have gone in this Second World War, too. Men and women of many creeds, of diverse economic backgrounds, of greatly divergent philosophies, with wide variations in education, have come together in the desire to sustain one another and aid one another in making their protest against war. Each in his own way has refused to participate in the mass destruction of human life which war involves, and by that refusal has been united by the strongest bonds of sympathy with those of his fellows who have done likewise. But it is the storm that has brought unity. When the skies clear, there will be a memory of fellowship together, but there will also be a realization that in the half light we have seen only one aspect of each other's being, and that there are enormous differences between us. Our future hope of achieving the type of world we want will demand a continuation of our sense of unity, despite our diversities. At present pacifism is no completely integrated philosophy of life. Most of us would be hard pressed to define the term "pacifist" itself. Despite the fact that according to the Latin origins of the word it means "peace maker," it is small wonder that our non-pacifist friends think of the pacifist as a negative obstructionist, because until the time came to make a negative protest against the evil of war we ourselves all too often forgot that we were pacifists. In other times, if we have been peace-makers at all, we have thought of ourselves merely as doing the duty of citizens, and, in attempting to overcome some of the causes of conflict both within our domestic society and in the relations between nations, we have willingly merged ourselves with other men of goodwill whose aims and practices were almost identical to ours. Since the charge of negativism strikes home, many pacifists defend themselves by insisting that they stand primarily for a positive program, of which war-resistance is only a pre-requisite. They oppose war because it is evil in itself, but they oppose it also because the type of human brotherhood for which they stand can be realized only when war is eliminated from the world. Their real aim is the creation of the new society--long and imperfect though that process of creation may be. They share a vision, but they are still groping for the means of moving forward towards its achievement. They are generally convinced that some means are inappropriate to their ends, and that to use such means would automatically defeat them; but they are less certain about the means which _will_ bring some measure of success. One section of the pacifist movement believes that it has discovered a solution to the problem in what it calls "non-violent direct action." This group derives much of its inspiration from Gandhi and his non-violent movement for Indian independence. For instance, the Fellowship of Reconciliation has a committee on non-violent direct action which concerns itself with applying the techniques of the Gandhi movement to the solution of pressing social issues which are likely to cause conflict within our own society, especially discrimination against racial minorities. As a "textbook" this group has been using Krishnalal Shridharani's analysis of the Gandhi procedures, _War Without Violence_.[2] The advocates of "non-violent direct action" believe that their method can bring about the resolution of any conflict through the ultimate defeat of the forces of evil, and the triumph of justice and goodwill. In a widely discussed pamphlet, _If We Should Be Invaded_, issued just before the outbreak of the present war, Jessie Wallace Hughan, of the War Resisters League, maintained that non-violent resistance would be more effective even in meeting an armed invasion than would reliance upon military might.[3] Many pacifists have accepted the general thesis of the advocates of non-violent direct action without analyzing its meaning and implications. Others have rejected it on the basis of judgments just as superficial. Much confusion has crept into the discussion of the principle and into its application because of the constant use of ill-defined terms and partially formulated ideas. It is the purpose of the present study to analyze the positions of both the friends and opponents of non-violent direct action within the pacifist movement in the hope of clarifying thought upon this vitally important question. Before we can proceed with our discussion, we must make a clear distinction between non-violence as a principle, accepted as an end in itself, and non-violence as a means to some other desired end. Much of the present confusion in pacifist thought arises from a failure to make this distinction. On the one hand, the absolute pacifist believes that all men are brothers. Therefore, he maintains that the supreme duty of every individual is to respect the personality of every other man, and to love him, no matter what evil he may commit, and no matter how greatly he may threaten his fellows or the values which the pacifist holds most dear. Under no circumstances can the pacifist harm or destroy the person who does evil; he can use only love and sacrificial goodwill to bring about conversion. This is his highest value and his supreme principle. Though the heavens should fall, or he himself and all else he cherishes be destroyed in the process, he can place no other value before it. To the pacifist who holds such a position, non-violence is imperative _even if it does not work_. By his very respect for the personality of the evil-doer, and his insistence upon maintaining the bond of human brotherhood, he has already achieved his highest purpose and has won his greatest victory. But much of the present pacifist argument in favor of non-violence is based rather upon its expediency. Here, we are told, is a means of social action that _works_ in achieving the social goals to which pacifists aspire. Non-violence provides a moral force which is more powerful than any physical force. Whether it be used by the individual or by the social group, it is, in the long run, the most effective way of overcoming evil and bringing about the triumph of good. The literature is full of stories of individuals who have overcome highwaymen, or refractory neighbors, by the power of love.[4] More recent treatments such as Richard Gregg's _Power of Non-Violence_[5] present story after story of the successful use of non-violent resistance by groups against political oppression. The history of the Gandhi movement in India has seemed to provide proof of its expediency. Even the argument in Aldous Huxley's _Ends and Means_, that we can achieve no desired goal by means which are inconsistent with it, still regards non-violent action as a _means_ for achieving some other end, rather than an _end_ in itself.[6] So prevalent has such thinking become among pacifists, that it is not surprising that John Lewis, in his closely reasoned book, _The Case Against Pacifism_, bases his whole attack on the logic of the pacifist position upon the theory that pacifists _must_, as he does, hold other values above their respect for individual human personalities. Even in speaking of "absolute" pacifism he says, "The most fundamental objection to war is based on the conviction that violence and the taking of human life, being themselves wrong, cannot lead to anything but evil."[7] Thus he defines the absolute pacifist as one who accepts the ends and means argument of Huxley, which is really an argument based upon expediency, rather than defining him correctly as one who insists that violence and the taking of human life are the greatest evils, under any conditions, and therefore cannot be justified, even if they could be used for the achievement of highly desirable ends. Maintaining as Lewis does that respect for every human personality is not their highest value, non-pacifists attack pacifism almost entirely on the ground that in the present state of world society it is not expedient--that it is "impractical." Probably much of the pacifist defense of the position is designed to meet these non-pacifist arguments, and to persuade non-pacifists of goodwill that they can really best serve _their_ highest values by adopting the pacifist technique. Such reasoning is perfectly legitimate, even for the "absolutist," but he should recognize it for what it is--a mere afterthought to his acceptance of non-violence as a principle. The whole absolutist argument is this: (1) Since violence to any human personality is the greatest evil, I can never commit it. (2) But, at the same time, it is fortunate that non-violent means of overcoming evil are more effective than violent means, so I can serve my highest value--respect for every human personality--and at the same time serve the other values I hold. Or to say the same thing in positive terms, I can achieve my other ends _only_ by employing means which are consistent with those ends. On the other hand, many pacifists do in fact hold the position that John Lewis is attacking, and base their acceptance of pacifism entirely on the fact that it is the best means of obtaining the sort of social or economic or political order that they desire. Others, in balancing the destruction of violent conflict against what they concede might be gained by it, say that the price of social achievement through violent means is too high--that so many of their values are destroyed in the process of violence that they must abandon it entirely as a means, and find another which is less destructive. Different as are the positions of the absolute and the relative pacifists, in practice they find themselves united in their logical condemnation of violence as an effective means for bringing about social change. Hence there is no reason why they cannot join forces in many respects. Only a relatively small proportion, even of the absolutists, have no interest whatever in bringing about social change, and are thus unable to share in this aspect of pacifist thinking. FOOTNOTES: [1] Ernest L. Meyer, "_Hey! Yellowbacks!_" (New York: John Day, 1930), 3-6. [2] Krishnalal Shridharani, _War Without Violence_ (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1939); _Selections from War Without Violence_ was published by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, 2929 Broadway, New York, as a pamphlet, in 1941. [3] Jessie Wallace Hughan, _If We Should Be Invaded: Facing a Fantastic Hypothesis_ (War Resisters League, New York, 1939). A new edition with the title _Pacifism and Invasion_ was issued in 1942. [4] Many later writers have selected their examples from the large number presented by Adin Ballou, _Christian Non-Resistance: In All Its Important Bearings_ (Philadelphia: Universal Peace Union, 1910); first published in 1846. [5] Richard B. Gregg, _The Power of Non-Violence_ (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1934). A new and revised edition of this book is to be published by Fellowship Publications, N. Y., 1944. [6] Aldous Huxley, _Ends and Means: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals and the Methods Employed for Their Realization_ (New York: Harpers, 1937). [7] John Lewis, _The Case Against Pacifism_ (London: Allen and Unwin, 1940), 23. Definition of Terms Both in pacifist thought and in the criticisms of pacifism, a great deal of confusion arises because of the inexact use of terms. We have already seen that pacifists of many shades of opinion are united in their refusal to participate in war. In this objection there is a negative quality. The very word "non-violence" used in the title of this study suggests this same negative attitude, and it was not long ago that pacifists were generally known as "non-resistants." Although some of those who oppose participation in war still insist upon calling themselves "non-resistants"[8] many of the modern pacifists disclaim the term because it is negative, and insist that the essence of pacifism is the element of active goodwill toward all men.[9] Yet when confronted with evil, even he who thinks of his pacifism as a positive attitude must decide not only what means he _will_ use to oppose evil, but what means he _will not_ use. At the moment when the society of which he is a part insists that every one of its members participate in an enterprise to employ these proscribed means, the pacifists of all shades of opinion become "conscientious objectors." To what is it exactly that they object? Most answers to this question would say that they oppose "the use of force," "violence," "coercion," or in some cases, any "resistance" to evil whatever. But pacifists themselves have not been agreed upon the meanings and implications of these terms, and the opponents of pacifism have hastened to define them in such a way as to deny validity to the pacifist philosophy. Before we can proceed with our discussion we must define these terms for ourselves, as we shall use them in the present study. _Force_ we may define as physical or intangible power or influence to effect change in the material or immaterial world. _Coercion_ is the use of either physical or intangible force to compel action contrary to the will or reasoned judgment of the individual or group subjected to such force. _Violence_ is the willful application of force in such a way that it is physically or psychologically injurious to the person or group against whom it is applied. _Resistance_ is any opposition either physical or psychological to the positive will or action of another. It is the negative or defensive counterpart of coercion. The very diversity of terms used to describe the pacifist position shows that none of them satisfactorily expresses the essence of the pacifist philosophy. Among those commonly used are: (1) non-resistance, (2) passive resistance, (3) non-violent resistance, (4) super-resistance, (5) non-violent non-cooperation, (6) civil disobedience, (7) non-violent coercion, (8) non-violent direct action, (9) war without violence, and (10) Satyagraha or soul force.[10] Of these terms only "non-resistance" implies acquiescence in the will of the evil-doer; all the rest suggest an approval of resistance. Every one of them, even "non-resistance" itself, contemplates the use of some intangible moral force to oppose evil and a refusal to take an active part in committing evil. At least the last five indicate the positive desire to change the active policy of the evil-doer, either by persuasion or by compulsion. As we shall see, in practice they tend to involve a coercive element. Only in their rejection of violence are all these terms in agreement. Perhaps we are justified in accepting _opposition to violence_ as the heart of the pacifist philosophy. Under the definition of violence which has been suggested, this would amount to virtually the same thing as saying that the pacifist has such respect for every human personality that he cannot, under any circumstances whatsoever, intentionally inflict permanent injury upon any human being either physically or psychologically. This statement deserves further examination. All pacifists approve the use of "force," as we have defined it, and actually do use it, since it includes such things as "the force of love," "the force of example," or "the force of public opinion."[11] There are very few pacifists who would draw the line even at the use of _physical_ force. Most of them would approve it in restraining children or the mentally ill from injuring themselves or others, or in the organized police force of a community under the proper safeguards of the courts and law.[12] Many pacifists are also willing to accept coercion, provided it be non-violent. The strike, the boycott, or even the mass demonstration involve an element of coercion as we have defined that term. Shridharani assures us that despite Gandhi's insistence to the contrary, "In the light of events in India in the past twenty years as well as in the light of certain of Gandhi's own activities, ... it becomes apparent that Satyagraha does contain the element of coercion, if in a somewhat modified form."[13] Since to some people "coercion" implies revenge or punishment, Shridharani would, however, substitute the word "compulsion" for it. Gandhi himself and many of his followers would claim that the techniques of Satyagraha are only a marshalling of the forces of sympathy, public opinion, and the like, and that they are persuasive rather than coercive. At any rate a distinction, on the basis of the spirit in which they are undertaken, between types of action which are outwardly similar seems perfectly valid. There are other pacifists who would even accept a certain element of violence, as we have defined it, provided it were not physical in nature. Some persons with boundless good will feel that even physical violence may be justified on occasion if it is not accompanied by hatred toward its object.[14] However, there would be few who consider themselves pacifists who would accept such a position. We are again forced to the conclusion that it is violence as we have defined it to which the pacifist objects. At this point, the chief difference between the pacifist and the non-pacifist is that the latter defines violence as does Clarence Case, as "the _unlawful_ or _unregulated_ use of destructive physical force against persons or things."[15] Under such a definition, war itself, since it is sanctioned by law, would no longer involve violence. Thus for the non-pacifist it is ethically acceptable to use lawful violence against unlawful violence; for the pacifist, violence against any personality is never ethically justified.[16] On the other hand, a very large group of pacifists insist upon discarding these negative definitions in favor of one that is wholly positive. Maurice L. Rowntree has said: "The Pacifist way of life is the way that brings into action all the sense and wisdom, all the passion of love and goodwill that can be brought to bear upon the situation."[17] In this study, no attempt will be made to determine which of the many pacifist positions is most sound ethically. Before any person can make such a determination for himself, however, it is necessary that he understand the differences between the various approaches to the problem of influencing other people either to do something which he believes should be done, or to refrain from doing something which he feels ought not to be done. It might be helpful for us in our thinking to construct a scale at one end of which we place violence coupled with hatred, and at the other, dependence only upon the application of positive love and goodwill. In the intermediate positions we might place (1) violence without hatred, (2) non-violence practiced by necessity rather than because of principle, (3) non-violent coercion, (4) Satyagraha and non-violent direct action, and (5) non-resistance. We need, at the outset, to recognize that we are speaking primarily of the relationships between social groups rather than between individuals. As Reinhold Niebuhr has so ably pointed out, our ethical concepts in these two areas are greatly at variance with one another.[18] The pacifist principles are already widely accepted as ideals in the affairs of individuals. Every ethical religion teaches them in this area, and the person who rejects them is definitely the exception in our western society, until the violent man is regarded as subject to the discipline of society in general. Our real concern in this study is with non-violent means of achieving group purposes, whether they be defensive and conservative in character, or whether they be changes in the existing institutions of the social order. The study is not so much concerned with the religious and ethical bases of these techniques as it is with a consideration of their application in practice, and their effectiveness in achieving the purposes which the group in question has in view. We shall begin at one end of our scale and proceed to discuss each type of action in turn. FOOTNOTES: [8] Guy F. Hershberger makes a definite distinction between non-resistance and pacifism. He says that the former term describes the faith and life of those "Who cannot have any part in warfare because they believe the Bible forbids it, and who renounce all coercion, even nonviolent coercion." He goes on to say, "Pacifism, on the other hand, is a term which covers many types of opposition to war. Some modern so-called pacifists are opposed to all wars, and some are not. Some who oppose all wars find their authority in the will of God, while others find it largely in human reason. There are many other differences among them." "Biblical Nonresistance and Modern Pacifism," _The Mennonite Quarterly Review_, XVII, (July, 1943), 116. Hershberger is here defining pacifism broadly to include the European meaning of opposition to war, but not necessarily a refusal to take part in it. In the United States, and generally in Great Britain, the term is ordinarily applied only to those who actually refuse participation in war. [9] See Devere Allen, _The Fight for Peace_ (New York: Macmillan, 1930), 531-540. [10] On the origins of these terms see Haridas T. Muzumdar, _The United Nations of the World_ (New York: Universal, 1942), 201-203. [11] John Haynes Holmes, using the older term rather than "pacifist," has said, "The true non-resistant is militant--but he lifts his militancy from the plane of physical, to the plane of moral and spiritual force." _New Wars for Old_ (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1916), xiii. [12] Cecil John Cadoux, _Christian Pacifism Re-examined_ (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1940), 15-16; Leyton Richards, _Realistic Pacifism_ (Chicago: Willett, Clark, 1935), 3. [13] Shridharani, _War Without Violence_, 292. [14] John Lewis says, "We must draw a sharp distinction between the use of violence to achieve an unjust end and its use as police action in defence of the rule of law." _Case Against Pacifism_, 85. [15] Clarence Marsh Case, _Non-Violent Coercion_ (New York: Century, 1923), 323. Italics mine. [16] C. J. Cadoux has clearly stated his position in these words: "He [the pacifist] will confine himself to those methods of pressure which are either wholly non-coercive or are coercive in a strictly non-injurious way, foregoing altogether such injurious methods of coercion as torture, mutilation, or homicide: that is to say, he will refrain from war." _Christian Pacifism_, 65-66. [17] Maurice L. Rowntree, _Mankind Set Free_ (London: Cape, 1939), 80-81. II. VIOLENCE WITHOUT HATE Occasions may arise in which a man who genuinely abhors violence confronts an almost insoluble dilemma. On the one hand he may be faced with the imminent triumph of some almost insufferable evil; on the other, he may feel that the only available means of opposing that evil is violence, which is in itself evil.[19] In such a situation, the choice made by any individual depends upon his own subjective scale of values. The pacifist is convinced that for him to commit violence upon another is itself the greatest possible evil. The non-pacifist says that some other evils may be greater, and that the use of this lesser evil to oppose them is entirely justified. John Lewis bases his entire _Case Against Pacifism_ upon this latter assumption, and says that in such a conflict of values, pacifists "continue to be pacifists either because there is no serious threat, or because they do not expect to lose anything, or perhaps even because they do not value what is threatened."[20] The latter charge is entirely unjustified. The pacifist maintains his opposition to violence in the face of such a threat, not because he does not value what is threatened, but because he values something else more. Cadoux has phrased it, "Pacifism is applicable only in so far as there exist pacifists who are convinced of its wisdom. The subjective differences are of vital importance, yet are usually overlooked in arguments on the subject."[21] This means that our problem of considering the place of violence and non-violence in human life is not one of purely objective science, since the attitudes and beliefs of pacifists (and non-pacifists) themselves become a factor in the situation. If enough people accepted the pacifist scale of values, it would in fact become the true basis for social interaction.[22] In our western society, the majority even of those who believe in the brotherhood of man, and have great respect for the dignity of every human personality, will on occasion use violence as a means to attempt the achievement of their goals. Since their attitude is different from that of the militarist who would place violence itself high in his scale of values, it would pay us to consider their position. FOOTNOTES: [18] Reinhold Niebuhr, _Moral Man and Immoral Society_ (New York: Scribner's, 1932). See especially his consideration of coercion and persuasion in the two realms of individual and social conduct, pages xxii-xxiii. [19] As Cadoux puts it, "Broadly speaking, almost the whole human race believes that it is occasionally right and necessary to inflict injurious coercion on human beings, in order to prevent the perpetration by them of some intolerable evil." _Christian Pacifism Re-examined_, 97. [20] Lewis, 62. Revolutionary Anarchism The revolutionary Anarchists belong essentially in this group. As Alexander Berkman has put it, "The teachings of Anarchism are those of peace and harmony, of non-invasion, of the sacredness of life and liberty;" or again, "It [Anarchism] means that men are brothers, and that they should live like brothers, in peace and harmony."[23] But to create this ideal society the Anarchist feels that violence may be necessary. Berkman himself, in his younger days, was able to justify his attack upon the life of Frick at the time of the Homestead Strike in 1893 in these words: "But to the People belongs the earth--by right, if not in fact. To make it so in fact, all means are justifiable; nay advisable, even to the point of taking life.... Human life is, indeed, sacred and inviolate. But the killing of a tyrant, of an enemy of the People, is in no way to be considered as the taking of a life.... To remove a tyrant is an act of liberation, the giving of life and opportunity to an oppressed people."[24] Later, Berkman insisted that a successful revolution must be non-violent in nature. It must be the result of thoroughgoing changes in the ideas and opinions of the people. When their ideas have become sufficiently changed and unified, the people can stage a general strike in which they overthrow the old order by their refusal to co-operate with it. He maintains that any attempt to carry on the revolution itself by military means would fail because "government and capital are too well organized in a military way for the workers to cope with them." But, says Berkman, when the success of the revolution becomes apparent, the opposition will use violent means to suppress it. At that moment the people are justified in using violence themselves to protect it. Berkman believes that there is no record of any group in power giving up its power without being subjected to the use of physical force, or at least the threat of it.[25] Thus in effect, Berkman would still use violence against some personalities in order to establish a system in which respect for every personality would be possible. Actually his desire for the new society is greater than his abhorrence of violence. FOOTNOTES: [21] Cadoux, _Christian Pacifism Re-examined_, 116-117. [22] The way in which a whole social order can differ from that of the West, merely because it chooses to operate on the basis of different assumptions concerning such things as the aggressive nature of man is well brought out in the study of three New Guinea tribes living in very similar environments. Margaret Mead, _Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies_ (London: Routledge, 1935). [23] Alexander Berkman, _What Is Communist Anarchism_? (New York: Vanguard, 1929), x-xi, 176. [24] Alexander Berkman, _Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist_ (New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1912), 7. [25] Berkman, _Communist Anarchism_, 217-229, 247-248, 290. Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln represented the spirit of moderation in the use of violence. He led his nation in war reluctantly and prayerfully, with no touch of hatred toward those whom the armies of which he was Commander-in-Chief were destroying. He expressed his feeling in an inspiring way in the closing words of his Second Inaugural Address, when the war was rapidly drawing to a victorious close: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness to do the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations." The Church and War The statements of British and American churchmen during the present war call to mind these words of Lincoln. At Malvern, in 1941, members of the Church of England declared: "God himself is the sovereign of all human life; all men are his children, and ought to be brothers of one another; through Christ the Redeemer they can become what they ought to be." In March, 1942, American Protestant leaders at Delaware, Ohio, asserted: "We believe it is the purpose of God to create a world-wide community in Jesus Christ, transcending nation, race and class."[26] Yet the majority of the men who drew up these two statements were supporting the war which their nations were waging against fellow members of the world community--against those whom they professed to call brothers. Like Lincoln they did so in the belief that when the military phases of the war were over, it would be possible to turn from violence and to practice the principles of Christian charity.[27] There is little in human history to justify their hope. There is much to make us believe that the violent attitudes of war will lead to hatred and injustice toward enemies when the war is done. The inspiring words of Lincoln were followed by the orgy of radical reconstruction in the South. There is at least as grave a doubt that the spirit of the Christian Church will dominate the peace which is concluded at the end of the present war. The question arises insistently whether violence without hate can long live up to its own professions. FOOTNOTES: [26] number of these religious statements are conveniently brought together in the appendix to Paul Hutchinson's _From Victory to Peace_ (Chicago: Willett, Clark, 1943). For a statement of a point of view similar to the one we are discussing here, see also Charles Clayton Morrison, _The Christian and the War_ (Chicago: Willett, Clark, 1942). [27] Bernard Iddings Bell has expressed the attitude of such churchmen: "Evil may sometimes get such control of men and nations, they have realized, that armed resistance becomes a necessity. There are times when not to participate in violence is in itself violence to the welfare of the brethren. But no Christian moralist worth mentioning has ever regarded war _per se_ as other than monstrous, or hoped that by the use of violence anything more could be accomplished than the frustration of a temporarily powerful malicious wickedness. War in itself gives birth to no righteousness. Only such a fire of love as leads to self-effacement can advance the welfare of mankind." "Will the Christian Church Survive?" _Atlantic Monthly_, Vol. 170, October, 1942, 109. III. NON-VIOLENCE BY NECESSITY The use of non-violent resistance does not always denote devotion to pacifist principles. Groups who would gladly use arms against an enemy if they had them often use non-violent means simply because they have no others at their disposal at the moment. In contrast to the type of action described in the preceding section, such a procedure might be called "hate without violence." It would probably be better to call it "non-violence by necessity." The group using non-violence under such circumstances might have in view one of three purposes. It might hope through its display of opposition and its own suffering to appeal to the sense of fair play of the group that was oppressing it. However, such a hope can exist only in cases where the two opposing parties have a large area of agreement upon values, or homogeneity, and would have no basis when the oppressing group looked upon the oppressed as completely beneath their consideration. It is unlikely that it would have much success in changing the policy of a nation which consciously chose to invade another country, although it might affect individual soldiers if their cultural background were similar to that of the invaded people.[28] An invader usually desires to gain something from the invaded people. In order to succeed, he needs their cooperation. A second way of thwarting the will of the invader is to refuse that cooperation, and be willing to suffer the penalties of such refusal. Since the invaded territory would then have no value, the invader might leave of his own accord. A third possibility is for the invaded people to employ sabotage and inflict damage upon the invader in the belief that his invasion can be made so costly that it will be impossible for him to remain in the conquered territory. Such sabotage easily merges into violence. In the preceding paragraphs, the enemy of the group using non-violence has been referred to as the "invader," because our best examples of this type of non-violent opposition are to be found in the histories of conquered people opposing the will of occupying forces. A similar situation may exist between a colonial people and the home government of an imperial power, since in most cases their position is essentially that of a conquered people, except that their territory has been occupied for a longer period of time. FOOTNOTE: [28] Franklin H. Giddings said, "In a word, non-aggression and non-resistance are an outcome of homogeneity." "The Gospel of Non-Resistance," in _Democracy and Empire_ (New York: Macmillan, 1900), 356. See also Case, _Non-Violent Coercion_, 248; Lewis, _Case Against Pacifism_, 185-186. Non-Violent Resistance to Invaders Stories of the use of this sort of non-violence occur in our press every day, as they find their way out of the occupied countries which are opposing the Nazi invaders with every means at their disposal. In these countries the vast majority of the people are agreed in their determination to rid themselves of Nazi control. Such common agreement is the first requisite for the success of this method of resistance. When the people of the territory refuse to inform the police about individuals who are committing unlawful acts against the invaders, it is virtually impossible for the latter to check the expansion of non-cooperation or sabotage. Similarly, if the whole population refuses to cooperate with the invader, it is impossible for him to punish them all, or if he did, he would be destroying the labor force whose cooperation he desires, and would have defeated himself in the very process of stamping out the opposition to his regime. Hitler himself has discovered that there is a difference between military occupation and actual conquest. In his New Year's proclamation to the German people in 1944, he attempted to explain the Nazi reverses in North Africa and Italy in these words: "The true cause of the difficulties in North Africa and the Balkans was in reality the persistent attempts at sabotage and paralyzation of these plutocratic enemies of the fascist people's State. "Their continual sabotage not only succeeded in stopping supplies to Africa and, later on, to Italy, by ever-new methods of passive resistance, thus preventing our soldiers and the Italians standing at their side from receiving the material wherewithal for the conduct of the struggle, but also aggravated or confused the situation in the Balkans, which had been cleared according to plan by German actions."[29] Opposition to the German invader has taken different forms in different countries. In Denmark, where there was no military resistance to the initial invasion, the subtle opposition of the people has made itself felt in innumerable ways. There are many stories such as that of the King's refusal to institute anti-Jewish laws in Denmark on the ground that there was no Jewish problem there since the Danes did not feel themselves to be inferior to the Jews. Such ideological opposition makes the Nazis angry, and it also makes them uncomfortable, since they do hold enough values in common with the Danes to understand perfectly the implications of the Danish jibes. Such psychological opposition merges into sabotage very easily. For instance when the Germans demanded ten torpedo boats from the Danish navy, the Danes prepared them for delivery by taking all their guns and equipment ashore, and then burning the warehouse in which these were stored. The Nazis even forbade the press to mention the incident, lest it become a signal for a nationwide demonstration of solidarity.[30] Other occupied countries report the same type of non-violent resistance. There are strikes of parents against sending their children to Nazi-controlled schools, strikes of ministers against conforming to Nazi decrees, demonstrations, malingering, and interference with internal administration. Such events may appear less important than military resistance, but they make the life of an occupying force uneasy and unhappy.[31] Calls for non-violent preparation for the day of delivery go out constantly in the underground press. While urging solidarity in illegal acts among the French population at home, one French appeal even gave instructions to Frenchmen who might go to work in Germany: "If you respond to Laval's appeal, I know in what spirit you will do so. You will wish to slow down German production, establish contacts with all the Frenchmen in Germany, and create the strongest of Fifth Columns in the enemy country."[32] Over a long period of time such action cannot help having an effect upon the success of the invader. Since the grievance of the peoples of the occupied countries is a continuous one, there is no prospect that their resistance will relax until they have freed themselves of their oppressors. FOOTNOTES: [29] _New York Times_, Jan. 1, 1944, page 4, columns 2-7. [30] C. H. W. Hasselriis, "Nothing Rotten in Denmark," in _The New Republic_, June 7, 1943, Vol. 108: 760-761. [31] The publications of the various governments in exile are filled with such stories. See such periodicals as _News of Norway_ and _News from Belgium_, which can be obtained through the United Nations Information Service, 610 Fifth Avenue, New York City. [32] _Resistance_, Feb. 17, 1943, reprinted in _Free World_, July, 1943, Vol. 6, 77. Chinese Boycotts Against Foreigners We can find many other examples of the use of these non-violent methods under similar circumstances. The Chinese made use of the boycott repeatedly to oppose foreign domination and interference in their internal affairs in the years before the outbreak of the present war against Japan. Clarence Case lists five significant Chinese boycotts between 1906 and 1919. The last one was directed against foreigners _and the Chinese government_ to protest the action of the Peace Conference in giving Japan a predominant interest in Shantung. As a result the government of China was ousted, and the provisions of the treaty revised. Japan felt the effects of the boycott more than any other country. Case says of the Japanese reaction: "As for the total loss to Japanese trade, various authorities have settled upon $50,000,000, which we may accept as a close approximation. At any rate the pressure was great enough to impel the Japanese merchants of Peking and Tientsin, with apparent ruin staring them in the face, to appeal to their home government for protection. They insisted that the boycott should be made a diplomatic question of the first order and that demands for its removal should be backed by threats of military intervention. To this the government at Tokio 'could only reply that it knew no way by which the Chinese merchants, much less the Chinese people, could be made to buy Japanese goods against their will.'"[33] This incident calls to mind the experience of the American colonists in their non-violent resistance to Great Britain's imperial policy in the years following 1763, which we shall discuss more at length in the next section. Egyptian Opposition to Great Britain Another similar example is that of the Egyptian protest against British occupation of the country in 1919. People in all walks of life went on strike. Officials boycotted the British mission under Lord Milner, which came to work out a compromise. The mission was forced to return to London empty handed, but finally an agreement was reached there with Saad Zagloul Pasha, leader of the Egyptian movement, on the basis of independence for the country, with the British retaining only enough military control to safeguard their interest in the Suez Canal. After the acceptance of the settlement in 1922, friction between Egypt and Great Britain continued, but Egypt was not sufficiently united, nor were the grievances great enough to lead to the same type of successful non-cooperation practiced in 1919.[34] It must be recognized that in most cases such as those we have been considering, violence would be used by the resisters if they had it at their disposal. However, the occasional success of non-violence even under such circumstances is proof of the possible expediency of this method. When it has failed, it has done so because the resisters were not sufficiently committed to their purpose to carry it out in the face of possible death. It appears from this experience that complete solidarity and commitment is required for the success of non-violent methods when used in this way, just as they are if such methods are used as a matter of principle. It must be recognized that the self-discipline necessary for the success of a non-violent movement must be even more rigorous than the imposed discipline of a military machine, and also that there is a chance that the non-violent resisters will fail in their endeavor, just as there is a virtual certainty that one side in a military conflict will be defeated.[35] FOOTNOTES: [33] Case, _Non-Violent Coercion_, 330-339. The last sentence is quoted from _The Christian Science Monitor_, April 7, 1920. [34] A. Fenner Brockway, _Non-Co-operation in Other Lands_ (Madras: Tagore and Co., 1921), 25-39; Charles E. Mullett, _The British Empire_ (New York: Holt, 1938), 622-627. Pacifist literature has also made much of the Hungarian independence movement in the 1860's under Francis Deak, which refused to pay taxes to the Austrian government, or to co-operate in other ways. However, it would appear that outside pressures were as important in the final settlement establishing the Dual Monarchy in 1867 as was the Hungarian movement of non-cooperation. The pacifist writers generally follow the account in Brockway, _Non-Co-operation_, 1-24. He in turn follows the book of Arthur Griffith, _The Resurrection of Hungary_, published in 1904 in order to induce the Irish to use non-co-operation in their struggle against the English. For some of the other factors involved see A. J. P. Taylor, _The Hapsburg Monarchy 1815-1918_ (London: Macmillan, 1941), 101-151. [35] On the discipline required see Gregg, _Power of Non-Violence_, 266-294. Lewis, to prove the ineffectiveness of non-violence, quotes Joad: "There have been only too many occasions in history in which the meeting of violence by non-violence has led not to the taming of the violent, but to the extinction of the non-violent." _The Case Against Pacifism_, 184. IV. NON-VIOLENT COERCION In the last section we were considering the non-violent resistance of groups which had no choice in their means of opposing the will of an invader, but who would have chosen violence if the weapons of violence had been available to them. In those cases there was no question but that the choice rested upon the expediency of the moment rather than upon principle. In the cases of non-violence by necessity the purposes of the resisting groups were defensive and negative, designed to induce the withdrawal of the invader rather than to induce him to follow actively a different policy. In this section we are concerned with the action of groups designed to modify the conduct of others in order to promote their own ideals. We are concerned with people who presumably have a possible choice of methods to accomplish their purposes. They might rely upon persuasion and education of their opponents through emotional or intellectual appeals; but such action would have no coercive element in it, so we shall consider it in a later section. Or they might attempt to coerce their opponents, either by violent or non-violent means. For the present we are interested only in the latter through its usual manifestations: the strike, the boycott, or other organized movements of non-cooperation.[36] At first sight such methods do not appear to be coercive in nature, since they involve merely an abstention from action on the part of the group offering the resistance. Actually they are coercive, however, because of the absolute necessity for inter-group cooperation in the maintenance of our modern social, economic, and political systems. Under modern conditions the group against whom the resistance is directed must have the cooperation of the resisting group in order to continue to survive. When that cooperation is denied, the old dominant group is forced to make concessions, _even against its will_, to the former subordinate group in order to regain the help that they have refused to render under the old conditions.[37] The non-violent resisters themselves are also dependent upon inter-group cooperation. Hence the outcome of this type of struggle usually depends upon which of the two parties to the conflict can best or longest dispense with the services of the other. If the resisters are less able to hold out than the defenders, or if the costs of continued resistance become in their eyes greater than the advantages which might be gained by ultimate victory, they will lose their will to resist and their movement will end in failure. In all such struggles, both sides are greatly influenced by the opinions of parties not directly concerned in the immediate conflict, but who might give support or opposition to one side or the other depending upon which could enlist their sympathies. Because of the deep-seated dislike of violence, even in our western society, the side that first employs it is apt to lose the sympathy of these third parties. As E. A. Ross has put it: "Disobedience without violence wins, _if it wins_, not so much by touching the conscience of the masters as by exciting the sympathy of disinterested onlookers. The spectacle of men suffering for a principle _and not hitting back_ is a moving one. It obliges the power holders to condescend to explain, to justify themselves. The weak get a change of venue from the will of the stronger to the court of public opinion, perhaps of world opinion."[38] The stakes in such a struggle may be great or small. They range all the way from the demand of a labor union for an increase of five cents an hour in wages, to that of a whole people demanding political independence from an imperial master, or a revolutionary change in the economic or political power of the community. The decision of the resisters to use non-violent means of opposition to gain their ends may be based either upon principle or upon expediency. In the former case they would say that the purposes they have in mind would not be worth attaining if their achievement were to involve physical violence toward other human beings; in the latter they would act on the basis of the conclusion that in view of all the factors involved their purposes could best be served by avoiding violence. These factors would include the likelihood of counter-violence, an estimate of the relative physical strength of the two parties to the conflict, and the attitude of the public toward the party that first used violence. In practice the action of those who avoid violence because they regard it as wrong is very little different from that of those who avoid it because they think that it will not serve their ends. But since there is a moral difference between them, we shall postpone the consideration of Satyagraha, or non-violent direct action on the basis of principle, until the next section. It would deserve such separate treatment in any case because of the great amount of attention which it commands in pacifist circles all over the world. At the outset it is necessary to dispel the idea that non-violent resistance is something esoteric and oriental, and that it is seldom used in western society. This type of action is used constantly in our own communities, and the histories of western peoples present us with a large number of examples of the use of non-violent action in political and revolutionary conflicts. In the following discussion, the point of view is that of the West. FOOTNOTES: [36] Clarence Marsh Case, "Friends and Social Thinking" in S. B. Laughlin (Ed.), _Beyond Dilemmas_ (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1937), 130-137; Cadoux, _Christian Pacifism Re-Examined_, 24-25, and the chart on page 45. [37] Case, _Non-Violent Coercion_, 330. John Lewis says, "Non-violence can be as completely coercive as violence itself, in which case, while it has the advantage of not involving war, it cannot be defended on spiritual grounds." _Case Against Pacifism_, 110. [38] In his "Introduction" to Case, _Non-Violent Coercion_. The Labor Strike The most common type of non-violent conflict is the ordinary labor strike. In a strike, the workers withdraw their cooperation from the employer until he meets their demands. He suffers, because as long as they refuse to work for him it is impossible for him to produce the goods or services upon the sale of which his own living depends. Usually he is fighting for no principle during such a strike, so that he is apt to calculate his monetary loss from it against the advantages he would have to surrender in order to reach an agreement. When he concludes that it would be cheaper to give in, it is possible for the management and the strikers to arrive at a settlement. If the employer does feel that the principle of control of an enterprise by its owner is at stake, he may hold out longer, until he actually loses more by the strike than he would by conceding the demands of the strikers, but even then he balances psychological cost against monetary cost, and when the latter overweighs the former he becomes receptive to a settlement. During the strike the workers are going through much the same process. A strike from their point of view is even more costly than it is to the employer. It is not to be entered upon lightly, since their very means of sustenance are at stake. They too have to balance the monetary costs of their continued refusal to cooperate against the gains that they might hope for by continued resistance, and when the cost becomes greater than the prospective gain they are receptive to suggestions for compromise. They too may be contending for the principle of the right of organization and control over their own economic destinies, so that they may be willing to suffer loss for a longer period than they would if they stood to gain only the immediate monetary advantages, but when immediate costs more than overweigh ultimate psychological advantages, they too will be willing to capitulate. In the meantime the strikers have to see to it that the employer does not find someone else with whom he can cooperate in order to eliminate his dependence upon them. Hence they picket the plant, in an attempt to persuade others not to work there. If persuasion is not effective, they may resort to mass picketing, which amounts to a threat of violence against the persons who would attempt to take over their jobs. On occasion the threat to their jobs becomes so great that in order to defend them they will resort to violence against the strikebreaker. At this point, the public, which is apt to be somewhat sympathetic toward their demands for fair wages or better working conditions, turns against them and supports the employer, greatly adding to his moral standing and weakening that of the strikers, until the strikers, feeling that the forces against them are too great, are apt to give way. The employer will find the same negative reaction among the public if he tries to use violence in order to break the strike. Hence, if he does decide to use violence, he tries to make it appear that the strikers are responsible, or tries to induce them to use it first. It is to their advantage not to use it, even when it is used against them. Labor leaders in general understand this principle and try to avoid violence at all costs. They do so not on the basis of principle, but on the basis of expediency.[39] In the great wave of enthusiastic organization of labor that swept over the United States in 1936 and 1937, American labor copied a variant of the strike, which had been used earlier in Hungary and in France.[40] Instead of leaving the property of the employer and trying to prevent others from entering it to take their places, workers remained on a "sit down strike" within the plants, so that the employer would have been forced to use violence to remove them in order to operate the factory. These strikes were based in part upon the theory that the worker had a property right to his job, just as the employer did to his capital equipment. Such strikes were for a time more successful than the older variety, because strike-breaking was virtually impossible. However, it was not long before public opinion forced the abandonment of the technique. It was revolutionary in character, since it threatened the old concept of private property. The fear of small property holders that their own possessions would be jeopardized by the success of such a movement, made them support the owners of the plants against the strikers, who were then forced to give way. In this case the public's fear of revolutionary change was greater than their dislike of violence, so they even supported the use of physical force by the employers and the police authorities to remove the strikers from the plants. The very effectiveness of the method which labor was employing brought about its defeat, because the public was not yet persuaded to accept the new concept of the property right of the laborer to his job. FOOTNOTES: [39] A. J. Muste, _Non-Violence in an Aggressive World_ (New York: Harper, 1940), 70-72. [40] Barthelemy de Ligt, _The Conquest of Violence: An Essay on War and Revolution_ (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1938), 131-132. The Boycott The boycott is a more indirect type of non-cooperation than the strike, in most cases.[41] This word originated in Ireland in 1880 when a Captain Boycott, an agent for an Irish landlord, refused the demands of the tenants on the estate. In retaliation they threatened his life, forced his servants to leave him, tore down his fences, and cut off his food supplies. The Irish Land League, insisting that the land of Ireland should belong to its people, used this method of opposition in the years that followed. Its members refused to deal with peasants or tradesmen who sided with the government, but they used acts of violence and intimidation as well as economic pressure. The government employed 15,000 military police and 40,000 soldiers against the people, but they succeeded only in filling the jails. The struggle might well have won land for the Irish peasant, if Parnell, who had become leader of the Irish movement, had not agreed to accept the Gladstone Home Rule Bill of 1886 in exchange for calling off the opposition in Ireland. The Bill was defeated in Parliament and the Irish problem continued.[42] In later usage, the word "boycott" has been applied almost exclusively to the refusal of economic cooperation. Organized labor in America used the boycott against the goods of manufacturers who refused to deal with unions, and it is still used in appeals to the public not to patronize stores or manufacturers who deal unfairly with labor. The idea of economic sanctions, which played so large a part in the history of the League of Nations in its attempts to deal with those who disregarded decisions of the League, is essentially similar to the boycott. In fact much of the thinking of the pacifist movement between the two wars maintained that economic sanctions would provide a non-violent but coercive substitute for war, in settling international controversies.[43] FOOTNOTES: [41] "The boycott is a form of passive resistance in all cases where it does not descend to violence and intimidation. The fact that it is coercive does not place it beyond the moral pale, for coercion ... is a fact inseparable from life in society." Case, _Non-Violent Coercion_, 319. [42] De Ligt, 114-117; Carleton J. H. Hayes, _A Political and Cultural History of Modern Europe_ (New York: Macmillan, 1936), II, 496. [43] De Ligt, 218-241. Non-Violent Coercion by the American Colonies The western world has repeatedly employed non-violent coercion as a political as well as an economic technique. Strangely enough, many Americans who are apt to scoff at the methods of the Indian independence movement today forget that the American colonists used much the same methods in the early stages of their own revolt against England. When England began to assert imperial control over the colonies after 1763, the colonists answered with protests and refusals to cooperate. Against both the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Duties of 1767, they adopted non-importation agreements whereby they refused to import British goods. To be sure, the more radical colonists did not eschew violence on the basis of principle, and the direct action by which they forced colonial merchants to respect the terms of the non-importation agreements was not always non-violent. The loss of trade induced British merchants to go to Parliament on both occasions and to insist successfully upon the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766 and the Townshend Duties in 1770. In the face of non-cooperation practiced by the vast majority of the colonists, the British government had been forced to give way in order to serve its own best interests.[44] In 1774, when the Continental Congress established the Continental Association in order to use the same economic weapon again, the issues in the conflict were more clearly drawn. Many of the moderate colonists who had supported the earlier action, denounced this one as revolutionary, and went over to the loyalist side. The radicals themselves felt less secure in the use of their economic weapon, and began to gather arms for a violent rebellion. The attempt of the British to destroy these weapons led to Lexington and Concord.[45] What had been non-violent opposition to British policy had become armed revolt and civil war. It was a war which would probably have ended in the defeat of the colonists if they had not been able to fish in the troubled waters of international politics and win the active support of France, who sought thus to avenge the loss of her own colonies to Great Britain in 1763. We have here an example of the way in which non-violent resistance, when used merely on the basis of expediency, is apt to intensify and sharpen the conflict, until it finally leads to war itself.[46] FOOTNOTES: [44] Curtis Nettels says of the Stamp Act opposition, "The most telling weapons used by the colonists were the non-importation agreements, which struck the British merchants at a time when trade was bad." _The Roots of American Civilization_ (New York: Crofts, 1938), 632. Later he says, "The colonial merchants again resorted to the non-importation agreements as the most effectual means of compelling Britain to repeal the Townshend Acts." _Ibid._, 635. For a good account of this whole movement see also John C. Miller, _Origins of the American Revolution_ (Boston: Little, Brown, 1943), 150-164, 235-281. [45] Miller, 355-411. [46] Case, _Non-Violent Coercion_, 308-309. Irish Opposition to Great Britain After 1900 After centuries of violent opposition to British occupation, the Irish tried an experiment in non-violent non-cooperation after 1900. Arthur Griffith was inspired to use in Ireland the techniques employed in the Hungarian independence movement of 1866-1867. His Sinn Fein party, organized in 1906, determined to set up an independent government for Ireland outside the framework of the United Kingdom. When the Home Rule Act of 1914 was not put into operation because of the war, Sinn Fein gained ground. In the elections of 1918, three fourths of the successful Irish candidates were members of the party, so they met at Dublin as an Irish parliament rather than proceeding to Westminster. In 1921, after a new Home Rule Act had resulted only in additional opposition, the British government negotiated a settlement with the representatives of the "Irish Republic," which set up the "Irish Free State" as a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth. The Irish accepted the treaty, and the Irish problem was on its way to settlement, although later events were to prove that Ireland would not be satisfied until she had demonstrated that the new status made her in fact independent. Her neutrality in the present war should dispel all doubts.[47] FOOTNOTE: [47] Brockway, _Non-Co-operation_, 71-92; William I. Hull, _The War Method and the Peace Method: An Historical Contrast_ (New York: Revell, 1929), 229-231; Hayes, _Modern Europe_, II, 498-501, 876-879, 952-953. Strikes with Political Purposes British workers themselves have made use of strikes with political significance. In 1920, transport workers refused to handle goods destined to be used in the war against the Bolshevik regime in Russia, and thus forced Britain to cease her intervention.[48] In 1926, the general strike in Britain had revolutionary implications which the Government and the public recognized only too well. Hence the widespread opposition to it. The leaders of the strike were even frightened themselves, and called it off suddenly, leaving the masses of the workers completely bewildered.[49] In Germany, non-cooperation has also been used successfully. In 1920, a general strike defeated the attempt of the militarists to seize control of the state in the Kapp Putsch. In 1924, when the French Army invaded the Ruhr, the non-violent refusal of the German workers to mine coal for France had the support of the whole German nation. As the saying was at the time, "You can't mine coal with bayonets." Finally the French withdrew from their fruitless adventure.[50] FOOTNOTES: [48] Allen, _Fight for Peace_, 633-634; Huxley, _Ends and Means_, 169-170. [49] Berkman, _Communist Anarchism_, 247-248. [50] Oswald Garrison Villard's "Preface" to Shridharani, _War Without Violence_, xiv-xv. Non-Violence in International Affairs In the international field, we also have examples of the use of non-violent coercion. Thomas Jefferson, during the struggle for the recognition of American neutral rights by Britain and France, attempted to employ the economic weapons of pre-revolutionary days. His embargo upon American commerce and the later variants on that policy, designed to force the belligerents to recognize the American position, actually were more costly to American shippers than were the depredations of the French and the British, so they forced a reversal of American policy. The war against England that followed did not have the support of the shipping interests, whose trade it was supposedly trying to protect. It was more an adventure in American imperialism than it was an attempt to defend neutral rights, so it can hardly be said to have grown out of the issues which led to Jefferson's use of economic sanctions. The whole incident proves that the country which attempts to use this method in international affairs must expect to lose its own trade in the process. The cause must be great indeed before such undramatic losses become acceptable.[51] The same principle is illustrated in the attempt to impose economic sanctions on Italy in 1935 and 1936. The nations who made a gesture toward using them actually did not want to hinder Italian expansion, or did not want to do so enough to surrender their trade with Italy. The inevitable result was that the sanctions failed. The success of non-violent coercion is by no means assured in every case. It depends upon (1) the existence of a grievance great enough to justify the suffering that devolves upon the resisters, (2) the dependence of the opposition on the cooperation of the resisters, (3) solidarity among a large enough number of resisters, and (4) in most cases, the favorable reaction of the public not involved in the conflict. When all or most of these factors have been present, non-violent coercion has succeeded in our western society. On other occasions it has failed. But one who remembers the utter defeat of the Austrian socialists who employed arms against Chancellor Dolfuss in 1934 must admit that violent coercion also has its failures.[52] FOOTNOTES: [51] Louis Martin Sears, _Jefferson and the Embargo_ (Durham, N. C.: Duke University, 1927); Julius W. Pratt, _Expansionists of 1812_ (New York: Macmillan, 1925). [52] De Ligt, 131. For other statements concerning the virtual impossibility of violent revolution today see De Ligt, 81-82, 162-163; Horace G. Alexander, "Great Possessions" in Gerald Heard, _et. al._, _The New Pacifism_ (London: Allenson, 1936), 89-91; Huxley, _Ends and Means_, 178-179; Lewis, _Case Against Pacifism_, 112-113. V. SATYAGRAHA OR NON-VIOLENT DIRECT ACTION There is a distinction between those who employ non-violent methods of opposition on the basis of expediency and those who refuse to use violence on the basis of principle. In the minds of many pacifists the movement for Indian independence under the leadership of Mohandas K. Gandhi stands out as the supreme example of a political revolt which has insisted on this principle, and hence as a model to be followed in any pacifist movement of social, economic, or political reform. Gandhi's Satyagraha, therefore, deserves careful analysis in the light of pacifist principles. Western critics of Gandhi's methods are prone to insist that they may be applicable in the Orient, but that they can never be applied in the same way within our western culture. We have already seen that there have been many non-violent movements of reform within our western society, but those that we have examined have been based on expediency. Undoubtedly the widespread Hindu acceptance of the principle of _ahimsa_, or non-killing, even in the case of animals, prepared the way for Gandhi more completely than would have been the case in western society. The Origins of Satyagraha Shridharani has traced for us the origins of this distinctive Hindu philosophy of _ahimsa_. It arose from the idea of the sacrifice, which the Aryans brought to India with them at least 1500 years before Christ. From a gesture of propitiation of the gods, sacrifice gradually turned into a magic formula which would work automatically to procure desired ends and eliminate evil. In time the Hindus came to believe that the most effective type of sacrifice was self-sacrifice and suffering, accompanied by a refusal to injure others, or _ahimsa_.[53] Only the warrior caste of _Kshatriyas_ was allowed to fight. In his autobiography, Gandhi brings out clearly the pious nature of his home environment, and the emphasis which was placed there upon not eating meat because of the sacred character of animal life.[54] It is not surprising that a logical mind reared in such an environment should have espoused the principle of non-killing. In his western education Gandhi became acquainted with The Sermon on the Mount, and the writings of Tolstoy and Thoreau, but he tells us himself that he was attracted to these philosophies because they expressed ideas in which he already believed.[55] In fact, the Hindese have long employed the non-violent methods of resistance which Gandhi has encouraged in our own day. In 1830, the population of the State of Mysore carried on a great movement of non-cooperation against the exploitation by the native despot, during which they refused to work or pay taxes, and retired into the forests. There was no disorder or use of arms. The official report of the British Government said: "The natives understand very well the use of such measures to defend themselves against the abuse of authority. The method most in use, and that which gives the best results, is complete non-co-operation in all that concerns the Government, the administration and public life generally."[56] In about 1900 there was a great movement of non-cooperation under the leadership of Aurobindo Ghose against the British Government in Bengal. Ghose wanted independence and freedom from foreign tribute. He called upon the people to demonstrate their fitness for self-government by establishing hygienic conditions, founding schools, building roads and developing agriculture. But Ghose had the experience Gandhi was to have later. The people became impatient and fell back on violence; and the British then employed counter-violence to crush the movement completely.[57] The term "Satyagraha" itself was, however, a contribution of Gandhi. It was coined about 1906 in connection with the Indian movement of non-violent resistance in South Africa. Previously the English term "passive resistance" had been used, but Gandhi tells us that when he discovered that among Europeans, "it was supposed to be a weapon of the weak, that it could be characterized by hatred and that it could finally manifest itself as violence," he was forced to find a new word to carry his idea. The result was a combination of the Gujerati words _Sat_, meaning truth, and _Agraha_, meaning firmness--hence "truth force," or as it has been translated since, "soul force."[58] FOOTNOTES: [53] Shridharani, _War Without Violence_, 165-167. [54] M. K. Gandhi, _The Story of My Experiments with Truth_, translated by Mahadev Desai and Pyrelal Nair (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1927-1929), the earlier portions of Vol. I. [55] _Ibid._, I, 322; Shridharani, 167. [56] Quoted by De Ligt, _Conquest of Violence_, 89. [57] _Ibid._, 89-90. [58] Gandhi, _Experiments with Truth_, II, 153-154. The Process of Satyagraha Shridharani, who considers himself a follower of Gandhi, has given us a comprehensive analysis of Satyagraha as a mass movement. He begins his discussion with this statement of the conditions under which it is possible: "Satyagraha, as an organized mass action, presupposes that _the community concerned has a grievance which practically every member of that community feels_. This grievance should be of such large proportions that it could be transformed, in its positive side, into a 'Cause' rightfully claiming sacrifice and suffering from the community on its behalf."[59] This necessity for community solidarity is often overlooked by followers of Gandhi who advocate reforms by means of non-violent direct action in our western society. Given the grievance of British rule, Shridharani believes that the Hindese were willing to accept Satyagraha first because, unarmed under British law, no other means were available to them, and then because they were predisposed to the method because of the Hindu philosophy of non-violence and the mystic belief that truth will triumph eventually since it is a force greater than the physical.[60] The first step in Satyagraha is negotiation and arbitration with the adversary. Under these terms Shridharani includes the use of legislative channels, direct negotiations, and arbitration by third parties.[61] In reading his discussion one gets the impression that under the American system of government the later stages of Satyagraha would never be necessary, since the Satyagrahi must first exhaust all the avenues of political expression and legislative action which are open to him. If any sizeable group in American society displayed on any issue the solidarity required for successful use of this method, their political influence would undoubtedly be great enough to effect a change in the law, imperfect though American democracy may be. The second step in Satyagraha is agitation, the purpose of which is to educate the public on the issues at stake, to create the solidarity that is needed in the later stages of the movement, and to win acceptance, by members of the movement, of the methods to be employed.[62] According to Fenner Brockway, the failure of Satyagraha to achieve its objectives is an indication that the people of India had not really caught and accepted Gandhi's spirit and principles.[63] This means that on several occasions the later stages of Satyagraha have been put into action before earlier stages of creating solidarity on both purpose and method have been fully completed. Despite Gandhi's tremendous influence in India, the movement for Indian independence has not yet fully succeeded. In view of the fact that so many of the people who have worked for independence have failed to espouse Gandhi's principles whole-heartedly, if independence be achieved in the future it will be difficult to tell whether or not it was achieved because the Indian people fully accepted these principles. Many seem to have done so only in the spirit in which the American colonists of the eighteenth century employed similar methods during the earlier stages of their own independence movement.[64] Only after negotiation and arbitration have failed does Satyagraha make use of the techniques which are usually associated with it in the popular mind. As Shridharani puts it, "Moral suasion having proved ineffective the Satyagrahis do not hesitate to shift their technique to compulsive force."[65] He is pointing out that in practice Satyagraha is coercive in character, and that all the later steps from mass demonstrations through strikes, boycotts, non-cooperation, and civil disobedience to parallel government which divorces itself completely from the old are designed to _compel_ rather than to _persuade_ the oppressors to change their policy. In this respect it is very similar to the movements of non-violent resistance based on expediency which were considered in the preceding section. FOOTNOTES: [59] Shridharani, 4. Italics mine. [60] _Ibid._, 192-209. [61] _Ibid._, 5-7. [62] _Ibid._, 7-12. [63] A. Fenner Brockway, "Does Noncoöperation Work?" in Devere Allen (Ed.), _Pacifism in the Modern World_ (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1929), 126. [64] Nehru in his autobiography expresses strong differences of opinion with Gandhi at many points. In one place he says: "What a problem and a puzzle he has been not only to the British Government but to his own people and his closest associates!... How came we to associate ourselves with Gandhiji politically, and to become, in many instances, his devoted followers?... He attracted people, but it was ultimately intellectual conviction that brought them to him and kept them there. They did not agree with his philosophy of life, or even with many of his ideals. Often they did not understand him. But the action that he proposed was something tangible which could be understood and appreciated intellectually. Any action would be welcome after the long tradition of inaction which our spineless politics had nurtured; brave and effective action with an ethical halo about it had an irresistible appeal, both to the intellect and the emotions. Step by step he convinced us of the rightness of the action, and we went with him, although we did not accept his philosophy. To divorce action from the thought underlying it was not perhaps a proper procedure and was bound to lead to mental conflict and trouble later. Vaguely we hoped that Gandhiji, being essentially a man of action and very sensitive to changing conditions, would advance along the line that seemed to us to be right. And in any event the road he was following was the right one thus far; and, if the future meant a parting, it would be folly to anticipate it." Jawaharlal Nehru, _Toward Freedom_ (New York: John Day, 1942), 190-191. [65] Shridharani, 12. He lists and discusses 13 steps in the development of a campaign of Satyagraha, pp. 5-43. The Philosophy of Satyagraha It seems clear that Satyagraha cannot be equated with Christian pacifism. As Shridharani has said, "In India, the people are not stopping with mere good will, as the pacifists usually do, but, on the contrary, are engaged in direct action of a non-violent variety which they are confident will either mend or end the powers that be," and, "Satyagraha seems to have more in common with war than with Western pacifism."[66] Gandhi's campaign to recruit Indians for the British army during the First World War distinguishes him also from most western pacifists.[67] In an article entitled "The Doctrine of the Sword," written in 1920, Gandhi brought out clearly the fact that in his philosophy he places the ends above the means, so far as the mass of the people are concerned: "Where the only choice is between cowardice and violence I advise violence. I cultivate the quiet courage of dying without killing. But to him who has not this courage I advise killing and being killed rather than shameful flight from danger. I would risk violence a thousand times rather than the emasculation of the race. I would rather have India resort to arms to defend her honour than that she should in a cowardly manner remain a helpless victim of her own dishonour."[68] Both pacifists and their opponents have noted this inconsistency in Gandhi's philosophy. Lewis calls Gandhi "a strange mixture of Machiavellian astuteness and personal sanctity, profound humanitarianism and paralysing conservatism."[69] Bishop McConnell has said of his non-violent coercion, "This coercion is less harmful socially than coercion by direct force, but it is coercion nevertheless."[70] And C. J. Cadoux has declared: "The well-known work of Mr. Gandhi, both in India today and earlier in Africa, exemplifies rather the power of non-co-operation than Christian love on the part of a group; but even so, it calls for mention ... as another manifestation of the efficacy of non-violent methods of restraint."[71] Gandhi's own analysis of his movement places much emphasis on the mystical Hindu idea of self-inflicted suffering. In 1920, he said, "Progress is to be measured by the amount of suffering undergone by the sufferer."[72] This idea recurs many times in Gandhi's writings. The acceptance of such suffering is not easy; hence his emphasis upon the need of self-purification, preparation, and discipline. Because of the violence used by many of his followers during the first great campaign in India, Gandhi came to the conclusion that "before re-starting civil disobedience on a mass scale, it would be necessary to create a band of well-trained, pure-hearted volunteers who thoroughly understood the strict conditions of Satyagraha."[73] FOOTNOTES: [66] _Ibid._, xxvii, xxx. [67] Speech at Gujarat political conference, Nov., 1917, quoted by Case, _Non-violent Coercion_, 374-375. See also Shridharani, 122, note. [68] Quoted in Lewis, _Case Against Pacifism_, 107. A slightly different version is reprinted in Nehru, _Towards Freedom_, 81. [69] Lewis, _Case Against Pacifism_, 99. He goes on to say, "He is anti-British more than he is anti-war. He adopts tactics of non-violence because that is the most effective way in which a disarmed and disorganized multitude can resist armed troops and police. He has never suggested that when India attains full independence it shall disband the Indian army. The Indian National Congress ... never for one moment contemplated abandoning violence as the necessary instrument of the State they hoped one day to command." Pp. 99-100. [70] Francis J. McConnell, _Christianity and Coercion_ (Nashville: Cokesbury Press, 1933), 46. [71] Cadoux, _Christian Pacifism_, 109. [72] _Young India_, June 16, 1920, quoted by Shridharani, 169. [73] Gandhi, _Experiments_, II, 509-513. The Empirical Origins of Gandhi's Method Gandhi's autobiography brings out the origins of many of his ideas. We have already noted the importance of his Hindu training. He arrived empirically at many of his specific techniques. For instance, he describes in some detail a journey he made by coach in 1893 in South Africa, during which he was placed on the driver's seat, since Indians were not allowed to sit inside the coach. Later the coachman desired his seat and asked him to sit on the footboard. This Gandhi refused to do, whereupon the coachman began to box his ears. He describes the rest of the incident thus: "He was strong and I was weak. Some of the passengers were moved to pity and they exclaimed: 'Man, let him alone. Don't beat him. He is not to blame. He is right. If he can't stay there, let him come and sit with us.' 'No fear,' cried the man, but he seemed somewhat crestfallen and stopped beating me. He let go my arm, swore at me a little more, and asking the Hottenot servant who was sitting on the other side of the coachbox to sit on the footboard, took the seat so vacated."[74] He had a similar experience in 1896 when his refusal to prosecute the leaders of a mob which had beaten him aroused a favorable reaction on the part of the public.[75] Gradually the principle developed that the acceptance of suffering was an effective method of winning the sympathy and support of disinterested parties in a dispute, and that their moral influence might go far in determining its outcome. On his return to India after his successful campaign for Indian rights in South Africa, Gandhi led a strike of mill workers in Ahmedabad. He established a set of rules, forbidding resort to violence, the molestation of "blacklegs," and the taking of alms, and requiring the strikers to remain firm no matter how long the strike took--rules not too different from those that would be used in a strike by an occidental labor union.[76] Speaking of a period during this strike when the laborers were growing restive and threatening violence, Gandhi says: "One morning--it was at a mill-hands' meeting--while I was still groping and unable to see my way clearly, the light came to me. Unbidden and all by themselves the words came to my lips: 'Unless the strikers rally,' I declared to the meeting, 'and continue the strike till a settlement is reached, or till they leave the mills altogether, I will not touch any food.'" Gandhi insisted that the fast was not directed at the mill owners, but was for the purification of himself and the strikers. He told the owners that it should not influence their decision, and yet an arbitrator was now appointed, and as he says, "The strike was called off after I had fasted only for three days."[77] The efficacy of the fast was thus borne in on Gandhi. In the Kheda Satyagraha against unjust taxation, which was the first big movement of the sort in India, Gandhi discovered that "When the fear of jail disappears, repression puts heart into people." The movement ended in a compromise rather than the complete success of Gandhi's program. He said of it, "Although, therefore, the termination was celebrated as a triumph of Satyagraha, I could not enthuse over it, as it lacked the essentials of a complete triumph."[78] But even though Gandhi was not satisfied with anything less than a complete triumph, he had learned that when a people no longer fears the punishments that an oppressor metes out, the power of the oppressor is gone.[79] FOOTNOTES: [74] _Ibid._, I, 268-269. [75] Of the incident he says, "Thus the lynching ultimately proved to be a blessing for me, that is for the cause. It enhanced the prestige of the Indian community in South Africa, and made my work easier.... The incident also added to my professional practice." _Ibid._, I, 452-457. [76] _Ibid._, II, 411-413. [77] _Ibid._, II, 420-424. [78] _Ibid._, II, 428-440. [79] See the quotation from Gandhi in Shridharani, 29. Non-Cooperation It will be impossible for us here to consider in detail the great movements of non-cooperation on which Gandhi's followers have embarked in order to throw off British rule. In 1919 and again in the struggle of 1920-1922, Gandhi felt forced to call off the non-cooperation campaigns because the people, who were not sufficiently prepared, fell back upon violence.[80] In the struggle in 1930, Gandhi laid down more definite rules for Satyagrahis, forbidding them to harbor anger, or to offer any physical resistance or to insult their opponents, although they must refuse to do any act forbidden to them by the movement even at the cost of great suffering.[81] The movement ended in a compromise agreement with the British, but the terms of the agreement were never completely carried out. Repressive measures and the imprisonment of Gandhi checked the non-cooperation movement during the present war, at least temporarily. FOOTNOTES: [80] Gandhi, _Experiments_, II, 486-507; Shridharani, 126-129. [81] The rules, first published in _Young India_, Feb. 27, 1930, are given by Shridharani, 154-157. Fasting Gandhi also made use of the fast in 1919, 1924, 1932, 1933, 1939, and 1943 to obtain concessions, either from the British government or from groups of Hindese who did not accept his philosophy.[82] Of fasting Gandhi has said: "It does not mean coercion of anybody. It does, of course, exercise pressure on individuals, even as on the government; but it is nothing more than the natural and moral result of an act of sacrifice. It stirs up sluggish consciences and it fires loving hearts to action."[83] Yet Gandhi believed that the fast of the Irish leader, MacSweeney, when he was imprisoned in Dublin, was an act of violence.[84] In practice, Satyagraha is a mixture of expediency and principle. It is firmly based on the Hindu idea of _ahimsa_, and hence avoids physical violence. Despite Gandhi's insistence upon respect for and love for the opponent, however, his equal insistence upon winning the opponent completely to his point of view leads one to suspect that he is using the technique as a means to an end which he considers equally fundamental. He accepts suffering as an end in itself, yet he knows that it also is a means to other ends since it arouses the sympathy of public opinion. He regards non-cooperation as compatible with love for the opponent, yet we have already seen that under modern conditions it is coercive rather than persuasive in nature. Despite Gandhi's distinction between his own fasts and those of others, they too involve an element of psychological coercion. We are led to conclude that much of Gandhi's program is based upon expediency as well as upon the complete respect for every human personality which characterizes absolute pacifism. FOOTNOTES: [82] See the list given by Haridas T. Muzumdar, _Gandhi Triumphant! The Inside Story of the Historic Fast_ (New York: Universal, 1939), vi-vii. [83] _Ibid._, 89. [84] _Ibid._, 90. Lewis quotes Gandhi thus: "You cannot fast against a tyrant, for it will be a species of violence done to him. Fasting can only be resorted to against a lover not to extort rights, but to reform him." _Case Against Pacifism_, 109. The American Abolition Movement The West also has had its movements of reform which have espoused non-violence as a principle. The most significant one in the United States has been the abolition crusade before the Civil War. Its most publicized faction was the group led by William Lloyd Garrison, who has had a reputation as an uncompromising extremist. Almost every school boy remembers the words with which he introduced the first issue of the _Liberator_ in 1831: "I _will_ be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice.... I am in earnest--I will not equivocate--I will not excuse--I will not retreat a single inch--AND I WILL BE HEARD." He lived up to his promise during the years that followed, and it is no wonder that Parrington called him "the flintiest character amongst the New England militants."[85] In the South they regarded him as an inciter to violence, and barred his writings from the mails. Garrison's belief in "non-resistance" is less often stressed, yet his espousal of this principle was stated in the same uncompromising terms as his opposition to slavery. In 1838 he induced the Boston Peace Convention to found the New England Non-Resistance Society. In the "Declaration of Sentiments" which he wrote and which the new Society adopted, he said: "The history of mankind is crowded with evidences proving that physical coercion is not adapted to moral regeneration; that the sinful dispositions of men can be subdued only by love; that evil can be exterminated from the earth only by goodness."[86] Throughout his long struggle against slavery, Garrison remained true to his principles of non-resistance. But his denunciations of slavery made more impression on the popular mind, and aided in stirring up much of the violent sentiment in the North which expressed itself in a crescendo of denunciation of the slave owners. In the South, where anti-slavery sentiment had been strong before, a new defensive attitude began to develop. As Calhoun said of the northern criticism of slavery: "It has compelled us to the South to look into the nature and character of this great institution, and to correct many false impressions that even we had entertained in relation to it. Many in the South once believed that it was a moral and political evil; that folly and delusion are gone; we see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world."[87] In the North the violent statements of the abolitionists aroused a physically violent response. Mobs attacked abolition meetings in many places, and on one occasion Garrison himself was rescued from an angry Boston mob. This violence in turn aroused many men like Salmon P. Chase and Wendell Phillips to espouse the anti-slavery cause because they could not condone the actions of the anti-abolitionists.[88] Garrison himself proceeded serenely through the storms that his vigorous writings precipitated. Feelings rose on both sides, and many who heard and accepted the Garrisonian indictment of slavery knew nothing of his non-resistance principles.[89] Others, who did, came reluctantly to the conclusion that a civil war to rid the country of the evil would be preferable to its continuance. In time the struggle was transferred to the political arena, where men acted sometimes on the basis of interest and not always on the basis of moral principles. The gulf between the sections widened, and civil war approached. As abolitionists themselves began to express the belief that the slavery issue could not be settled without bloodshed, Garrison disclaimed all responsibility for the growing propensity to espouse violence. In the _Liberator_ in 1858 he said: "When the anti-slavery cause was launched, it was baptized in the spirit of peace. We proclaimed to the country and to the world that the weapons of our warfare were not carnal but spiritual, and we believed them to be mighty through God to the pulling down even of the stronghold of slavery; and for several years great moral power accompanied our cause wherever presented. Alas! in the course of the fearful developments of the Slave Power, and its continued aggressions on the rights of the people of the North, in my judgment a sad change has come over the spirit of anti-slavery men, generally speaking. We are growing more and more warlike, more and more disposed to repudiate the principles of peace.... Just in proportion as this spirit prevails, I feel that our moral power is departing and will depart.... I will not trust the war-spirit anywhere in the universe of God, because the experience of six thousand years proves it not to be at all reliable in such a struggle as ours.... "I pray you, abolitionists, still to adhere to that truth. Do not get impatient; do not become exasperated; do not attempt any new political organization; do not make yourselves familiar with the idea that blood must flow. Perhaps blood will flow--God knows, I do not; but it shall not flow through any counsel of mine. Much as I detest the oppression exercised by the Southern slaveholder, he is a man, sacred before me. He is a man, not to be harmed by my hand nor with my consent.... While I will not cease reprobating his horrible injustice, I will let him see that in my heart there is no desire to do him harm,--that I wish to bless him here, and bless him everlastingly,--and that I have no other weapon to wield against him but the simple truth of God, which is the great instrument for the overthrow of all iniquity, and the salvation of the world."[90] Yet Garrison's fervor for the emancipation of the slaves was so great that when the Civil War came, he said of Lincoln and the Republicans: "They are instruments in the hand of God to carry forward and help achieve the great object of emancipation for which we have so long been striving.... All our sympathies and wishes must be with the Government, as against the Southern desperadoes and buccaneers; yet of course without any compromise of principle on our part."[91] Although Lincoln insisted that the purpose of the North was the preservation of the Union rather than emancipation, eventually he did free the slaves. It would seem that Garrison, for all his non-resistance declarations, bore some of the responsibility for the great conflict. In this case, as in the case of Satyagraha, the demand for reform by non-violent means was translated into violence by followers who were more devoted to the cause of reform than they were to the non-violent methods which their leaders proclaimed. FOOTNOTES: [85] Vernon Louis Parrington, _Main Currents in American Thought_ (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1930), II, 352. [86] The "Declaration" is reprinted in Allen, _Fight for Peace_, 694-697. [87] Quoted in Avery Craven, _The Coming of the Civil War_ (New York: Scribners, 1942), 161. [88] Jesse Macy, _The Anti-Slavery Crusade_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919), 69-70. [89] For the many elements in the abolition movement, see Gilbert Hobbs Barnes, _The Antislavery Impulse, 1830-1844_ (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1933). [90] Wendell Phillips Garrison, _William Lloyd Garrison_ (New York: Century, 1889), III, 473-474. [91] Letter to Oliver Johnson, quoted in Allen, _Fight for Peace_, 449-450. VI. NON-RESISTANCE The preceding section of this study dealt with those who rejected physical violence on principle, and who felt no hatred toward the persons who were responsible for evil, but who used methods of bringing about reform which involved the use of non-physical coercion, and in some cases what might be called psychological violence. These advocates of non-violent direct action not only resisted evil negatively; they also attempted to establish what they considered to be a better state of affairs. This section will deal with true non-resistance. It is concerned with those who refuse to resist evil, even by non-violent means, for the most part basing their belief upon the injunction of Jesus to "resist not evil." For them, non-resistance becomes an end in itself, rather than a means for achieving other purposes. They are less concerned with reforming society than they are with maintaining the integrity of their own lives in this respect. If they have a social influence at all, it is only because by exhortation or, more especially by the force of example, they induce others to accept the same way of life. However, in their refusal to participate directly in such evil as war, even non-resistants do actually resist evil. The Mennonites The Mennonites are the largest and most significant group of non-resistants. For over four hundred years they have maintained their religious views, and applied them with remarkable consistency.[92] Their church grew out of the Anabaptist movement, which had its origins in Switzerland shortly after 1520. The Anabaptists believed in the literal acceptance of the teachings of the Bible, and their application as rules of conduct in daily life. Since they did not depend for their interpretations upon the authority of any priesthood or ministry, differences grew up among them at an early date. The more radical wing, from which the Mennonites came, accepting the Sermon on the Mount as the heart of the Gospel, early refused to offer any physical resistance to evil.[93] Felix Manz, who was executed for his beliefs in 1527, declared, "No Christian smites with the sword nor resists evil."[94] Hundreds of other Anabaptists followed Manz into martyrdom without surrendering their faith. In a day before conscription had come into general use, the Anabaptists suffered more for their heresy and their political views than they did for their non-resistance principles. In their belief in rendering unto Caesar only those things which were Caesar's and unto God the things that were God's, they came into conflict with the authorities of both church and state. The established church they refused to recognize at all, and they came to regard the state only as a necessary instrument to control those who had not become Christians. Far in advance of the times they adopted the principle of complete separation of church and state, which for them meant that no Christian might hold political office nor act as the agent of a coercive state, although he must obey its commands in matters which did not interfere with his duty toward God. On the basis of direct scriptural authority, they placed the payment of taxes in the latter category.[95] The modern Mennonites are descended from the followers of Menno Simons, who was born in the Netherlands in 1496. In 1524 he was ordained as a Catholic priest, but he soon came to doubt the soundness of that religion, and found his way into Anabaptist ranks, where he became one of the leading expounders of the radical principles, placing great emphasis upon non-resistance. In his biblical language, he thus stated his belief on this point: "The regenerated do not go to war, nor engage in strife. They are the children of peace who have beaten their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and know of no war. They render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. Their sword is the sword of the Spirit which they wield with a good conscience through the Holy Ghost."[96] In time the followers of Menno Simons gained in influence, while branches of the Anabaptist movement which did not follow the principle of non-resistance died out. Here and there other non-resistant groups such as the Hutterites and the Moravian Brethren continued.[97] Ultimately the Mennonites found their way into several parts of Europe, from the North Sea to Russia, in their search for a home where they might be free from persecution. The founding of Germantown in the new Pennsylvania colony in 1683 marked the beginning of a migration which in the years that followed brought the more radical of them to America.[98] With the coming of conscription in Europe, those who held most strongly to their non-resistant principles came to the United States to escape military service. Those who remained in Europe gradually gave up their opposition to war, but those in America have largely maintained their original position.[99] Today they still refrain from opposing evil, and believe in the separation of church and state, which to them means a refusal to hold office and, in many cases, to vote or to have recourse to the courts. They pay their taxes and do what the state demands, as long as it is not inconsistent with their duty to God. In case of a conflict in duty, service to God is placed first. Since they do not believe that it is possible for the world as a whole to become free of sin, they maintain that the Christian must separate himself from it. They make no attempt to bring about reform in society by means of political action or other movements of the sort which we have considered under non-violent direct action.[100] Since the term "pacifist" has come into general use to designate those opposed to war, the Mennonites have usually made a distinction between themselves as "non-resistants" and the pacifists, who, they claim, are more interested in creating a good society than they are in following completely the admonitions of the Bible. They also disclaim any relationship to such non-resistants as Garrison or Ballou, even though these men reached substantially the same conclusion about the nature of the state, or with Tolstoy who even refused to accept the support of the state for the institution of private property. The American non-resistants they regard primarily as reformers of human society, and Tolstoy as an anarchist who rejected the state altogether, rather than accepting it as a necessary evil.[101] In so far as the Mennonites have used social influence at all, it has been through the force of example, and in their missionary endeavors to win other individuals to the same high principles which they themselves follow. FOOTNOTES: [92] See the pamphlet by C. Henry Smith, _Christian Peace: Four Hundred Years of Mennonite Peace Principles and Practice_ (Newton, Kansas: Mennonite Publication Office, 1938). [93] C. Henry Smith, _The Story of the Mennonites_ (Berne, Ind.: Mennonite Book Concern, 1941), 9-30. [94] John Horsch, _Mennonites in Europe_, (Scottdale, Pa.: Mennonite Publishing House, 1942), 359. [95] Smith, _Story of the Mennonites_, 30-35. [96] Quoted by Horsch, 363. [97] _Ibid._, 365. [98] Smith, _Story of the Mennonites_, 536-539. [99] Smith, _Christian Peace_, 12-15. [100] Edward Yoder, _et al._, _Must Christians Fight: A Scriptural Inquiry_ (Akron, Pa.: Mennonite Central Committee, 1943), 31-32, 41-44, 59-61, 64-65. [101] _Ibid._, 62-63; and for a full discussion of the attitude see Guy F. Hershberger, "Biblical Non-resistance and Modern Pacifism" in _Mennonite Quarterly Rev._, XVII (July, 1943), 115-135. The New England Non-Resistants The Mennonites are undoubtedly right in making a distinction between their position and that of the relatively large group of "non-resistants" which arose in New England during the middle of the nineteenth century. We have already noted the "Declaration of Principles" written by Garrison and accepted by the New England Non-Resistance Society in 1838. Despite the fact that Garrison insisted that an individual ought not to participate in the government of a state which used coercion against its subjects, his life was devoted to a campaign against the evil of slavery. In the "Declaration" itself he said: "But, while we shall adhere to the doctrine of non-resistance and passive submission to enemies, we purpose, in a moral and spiritual sense, to speak and act boldly in the cause of GOD; to assail iniquity in high places, and in low places; to apply our principles to all existing civil, political, legal and ecclesiastical institutions; and to hasten the time, when the kingdoms of this world will have become the kingdoms of our LORD and of his CHRIST, and he shall reign forever."[102] Garrison was essentially a man of action; the real philosopher of the non-resistance movement was Adin Ballou, a Universalist minister of New England who devoted his whole life to the advancement of its principles. In 1846 he published his _Christian Non-Resistance: In All Its Important Bearings_, in which he set forth his doctrine, supported it with full scriptural citations, and then presented a catalogue of incidents which to his own satisfaction proved its effectiveness, both in personal and in social relationships. Although Ballou listed a long series of means which a Christian non-resistant might not use, he insisted that he had a duty to oppose evil, saying: "I claim the right to offer the utmost moral resistance, not sinful, of which God has made me capable, to every manifestation of evil among mankind. Nay, I hold it my duty to offer such moral resistance. In this sense my very non-resistance becomes the highest kind of resistance to evil."[103] Nor did Ballou condemn all use of "uninjurious, benevolent physical force" in restraining the insane or the man about to commit an injury to another. He finally defined non-resistance as "simply non-resistance of injury with injury--evil with evil." Rather, he believed in "the essential efficacy of good, as the counter-acting force with which to resist evil."[104] In applying his principle rigorously, Ballou, like the Mennonites, came to the conclusion that the non-resistant could have nothing to do with government. If he so much as voted for its officials, he had to share the moral responsibility for the wars, capital punishment, and other personal injuries which were carried out in its name. He insisted: "There is no escape from this terrible moral responsibility but by a conscientious withdrawal from such government, and an uncompromising protest against so much of its fundamental creed and constitutional law, as is decidedly anti-Christian. He must cease to be its pledged supporter, and approving dependent."[105] Like the Mennonites, he saw that the reason that governments were unchristian was that the people themselves were not Christian; but unlike the Mennonites he maintained that they might eventually become so, and that it was the duty of the Christian to hasten the day of their complete conversion. "This," he said, "is not to be done by voting at the polls, by seeking influential offices in the government and binding ourselves to anti-Christian political compacts. It is to be done by pure Christian precepts faithfully inculcated, and pure Christian examples on the part of those who have been favored to receive and embrace the highest truths."[106] The Mennonites believed that man was essentially depraved; Ballou believed that he was perfectible.[107] FOOTNOTES: [102] Allen, _Fight for Peace_, 696. [103] Ballou, _Christian Non-Resistance_, 3. [104] _Ibid._, 2-25. [105] _Ibid._, 18. [106] _Ibid._, 223-224. [107] Perhaps this is the point at which to insert a footnote on Henry Thoreau, whose essay on "Civil Disobedience" is said to have influenced Gandhi. Although he lived in the same intellectual climate that produced Garrison and Ballou, he was not a non-resistant on principle. For instance, he supported the violent attack upon slave holders by John Brown just before the Civil War. He did come to substantially the same conclusions, however, on government. He refused even to pay a tax to a government which carried on activities which he considered immoral, such as supporting slavery, or carrying on war. On one occasion he said, "They are the lovers of law and order who observe the law when the government breaks it." Essentially, Thoreau was a philosophical anarchist, who placed his faith entirely in the individual, rather than in any sort of organized social action. See the essay on him in Parrington, II, 400-413; and his own essay on "Civil Disobedience" in _The Writings of Henry David Thoreau_ (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906), IV, 356-387. Tolstoy Many people regard the writings of Count Leo Tolstoy as the epitome of the doctrine of non-resistance. Tolstoy arrived at his convictions after a long period of inner turmoil, and published them in _My Religion_ in 1884. In the years that followed, his wide correspondence introduced him to many others who had held the same views. He was especially impressed with the 1838 statement of Garrison, and with the writings of Ballou, with whom he entered into correspondence directly.[108] However, he went further than Ballou, and even further than the Mennonites in his theory, which he formulated fully in _The Kingdom of God is Within You_, published in 1893. He renounced the use of physical force completely even in dealing with the insane or with children.[109] He severed all relations with government, and went on to insist that the true Christian might not own any property. He practiced his own doctrines strictly. Tolstoy had quite a number of followers, and a few groups were established to carry out his teachings. These groups have continued to exist under the Soviet Union, but their present fate is obscure. His works greatly influenced Peter Verigin, leader of the Dukhobors, who shortly after 1900 left Russia and settled in Canada in order to find a more hospitable environment for their communistic community, and to escape the necessity for military service.[110] However, Tolstoy's theory is so completely anarchistic that it does not lend itself to organization. Hence his chief influence has been intellectual, and upon individuals. We have already noted the great impact that his works made on Gandhi, while he was formulating the ideas which were to result in Satyagraha. Neither in the case of Gandhi, nor of Peter Verigin, however, were Tolstoy's doctrines applied in completely undiluted form. The Mennonites also disclaim kinship with him on the grounds that he sought a regeneration of society as a whole in this world.[111] For most men the doctrine of complete anarchism has seemed too extreme for practical consideration, but it would seem that Tolstoy arrived at the logical conclusion of a system of non-resistance based on the premise that man should not combat evil, nor have any relationship whatever with human institutions which attempt to restrain men by means other than reliance upon the force of example and goodwill. FOOTNOTES: [108] Aylmer Maude, _The Life of Tolstoy,_ (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1910), II, 354-360, where the letters to and from Ballou are quoted at length. See also Count Leo N. Tolstoy, _The Kingdom of God is Within You_, translated by Leo Wiener (Boston: Dana Estes & Co., 1905), 6-22. [109] In a letter to L. G. Wilson, Tolstoy said: "I cannot agree with the concession he [Ballou] makes for employing violence against drunkards and insane people. The Master made no concessions, and we can make none. We must try, as Mr. Ballou puts it, to make impossible the existence of such people, but if they do exist, we must use all possible means, and sacrifice ourselves, but not employ violence. A true Christian will always prefer to be killed by a madman, than to deprive him of his liberty." Maude, _Tolstoy_, II, 355-356. [110] J. F. C. Wright, _Slava Bohu: The Story of the Dukhobors_ (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1940), 99. [111] Hershberger says of him: "He identified the kingdom of God with human society after the manner of the social gospel. But since he believed in an absolute renunciation of violence for all men, Tolstoy was an anarchist, repudiating the state altogether. Biblical nonresistance declines to participate in the coercive activities of the state, but nevertheless regards those as necessary for the maintenance of order in a sinful society, and is not anarchistic. But Tolstoy found no place for the state in human society at all; and due to his faith in the goodness of man he believed that eventually all coercion, including domestic police, would be done away." _Mennonite Qu. Rev._, XVII, 129-130. VII. ACTIVE GOODWILL AND RECONCILIATION The term "resistance" has occurred frequently in this study. As has been pointed out, this word has a negative quality, and implies opposition to the will of another, rather than an attempt to realize a positive policy. The preceding section dealt with its counterpart, "non-resistance," which has a neutral connotation, and implies that the non-resister is not involved in the immediate struggle, and that for him the refusal to inflict injury upon anyone is a higher value than the achievement of any policy of his own, either positive or negative. Non-violent coercion, Satyagraha, and non-violent direct action, on the other hand, are definitely positive in their approach. Each seeks to effectuate a specified change in the policy of the person or group responsible for a situation which those who organize the non-violent action believe to be undesirable. However, even in such action the negative quality may appear. Satyagraha, for instance, insofar as it is a movement of opposition or "resistance" to British rule in India is negative, despite its positive objectives of establishing a certain type of government and economic system in that country. The employment of active goodwill is another approach to the problem of bringing about desired social change. Its proponents seek to accomplish a positive alteration in the attitude and policy of the group or person responsible for some undesirable situation; but they refuse to use coercion--even non-violent coercion. Rather they endeavor to convince their opponent that it would be desirable to change his policy because the change would be in his own best interest, or would actually maintain his own real standard of values. Many of those who would reject all coercion of an opponent practice such positive goodwill towards him, not because they are convinced that their action will accomplish the social purposes which they would like to achieve, but rather because they place such an attitude toward their fellowmen as their highest value. They insist that they would act in the same way regardless of the consequences of their action, either to the person towards whom they practice goodwill or to themselves. They act on the basis of principle rather than on the basis of expediency. In this regard they are like many of the practitioners of other methods of non-violence; but unlike them they place their emphasis on the positive action of goodwill which they _will_ use, rather than upon a catalogue of violent actions which they will not use. To those who practice the method of goodwill all types of education and persuasion are available. In the past they have used the printed and spoken word, and under favorable circumstances even political action. They hope to appeal to "that of God in every man," to bring about genuine repentance on the part of those who have been responsible for evil. If direct persuasion is not effective, they hope that their exhibition of love towards him whom others under the same circumstances would regard as an enemy may appeal to an aspect of his nature which is temporarily submerged, and result in a change of attitude on his part. If it does not, these advocates of goodwill are ready to suffer the consequences of their action, even to the point of death. Action in the Face of Persecution The practice of positive goodwill is open to the individual as well as to the group. Since he does what he believes to be right regardless of the consequences, he will act before there are enough who share his opinion to create any chance of victory over the well organized forces of the state or other institutions which are responsible for evil. The history of the martyrs of all ages presents us with innumerable examples of men who have acted in this way. Socrates is of their number, as well as the early Christians who insisted upon practicing their religion despite the edicts of the Roman empire. Jesus himself is the outstanding example of one who was willing to die rather than to surrender principle. It cannot be said of these martyrs that they acted in order to bring about reforms in society. They suffered because under the compulsion of their faith they could act in no other way, and at the time of their deaths it always looked as though they had been defeated. But in the end their sacrifices had unsought results. The proof of their effectiveness is declared in the old adage that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." If we seek examples from relatively recent times, we may find them in the annals of many of the pacifist sects of our own day. Robert Barclay, the Quaker apologist of the late seventeenth century, stated the position which the members of the Society of Friends so often put to the test: "But the true, faithful and Christian suffering is for men to profess what they are persuaded is right, and so practise and perform their worship towards God, as being their true right so to do; and neither to do more than that, because of outward encouragement from men; nor any whit less, because of the fear of their laws and acts against it."[112] The early Quakers suffered severely under the laws of England in a day when religious toleration was virtually unheard of. George Fox himself had sixty encounters with magistrates and was imprisoned on eight occasions; yet he was not diverted from his task of preaching truth. It has been estimated that 15,000 Quakers "suffered" under the various religious acts of the Restoration.[113] But they continued to hold the principles which had been stated by twelve of their leaders, including Fox, to King Charles shortly after his return to England: "Our principle is, and our practice always has been, to seek peace and ensue it; to follow after righteousness and the knowledge of God; seeking the good and welfare, and doing that which tends to the peace of all. * * * * * "When we have been wronged, we have not sought to revenge ourselves; we have not made resistance against authority; but whenever we could not obey for conscience sake, we have suffered the most of any people in the nation...."[114] These sufferings did not go unheeded. Even the wordly Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary concerning Quakers on their way to prison: "They go like lambs without any resistance I would to God they would either conform or be more wise and not be catched."[115] In Massachusetts, where the Puritans hoped to establish the true garden of the Lord, the lot of the Quakers was even more severe. Despite warnings and imprisonments, Friends kept encroaching upon the Puritan preserve until the Massachusetts zealots, in their desperation over the failure of the gentler means of quenching Quaker ardor, condemned and executed three men and a woman. Even Charles II was revolted by such extreme measures, and ordered the colony to desist. After a long struggle the Quakers, along with other advocates of liberty of conscience, won their struggle for religious liberty even in Massachusetts. There can be little doubt that their sufferings played an important part in the establishment of religious liberty as an American principle.[116] In our own day the conscientious objector to military service, whatever his motivation and philosophy, faces a social situation very similar to that which confronted these early supporters of a new faith. For the moment there is little chance that his insistence upon following the highest values which his conscience recognizes will bring an end to war, because there are not enough others who share his convictions. He takes his individual stand without regard for outward consequences to himself, because his conviction leaves him no other alternative. But even though his "sufferings" do not at once make possible the universal practice of goodwill towards all men, they may in the end have the result of helping to banish war from the world. FOOTNOTES: [112] Robert Barclay, _An Apology for the True Christian Divinity; being an Explanation and Vindication of the Principles and Doctrines of the People Called Quakers_ (Philadelphia: Friends' Book Store, 1908), Proposition XIV, Section VI, 480. [113] A. Ruth Fry, _Quaker Ways: An Attempt to Explain Quaker Beliefs and Practices and to Illustrate them by the Lives and Activities of Friends of Former Days_ (London: Cassell, 1933), 126, 131. [114] Quoted by Margaret E. Hirst, _The Quakers in Peace and War: an Account of Their Peace Principles and Practice_ (New York: George H. Doran, 1923), 115-116. [115] Quoted in Fry, _Quaker Ways_, 128-129. [116] Hirst, 327; Rufus M. Jones, _The Quakers in the American Colonies_ (London: Macmillan, 1923), 3-135. Coercion or Persuasion? A man who is willing to undergo imprisonment and even death itself rather than to cease doing what he believes is right knows in his own heart that coercion is not an effective means of persuasion. The early Quakers saw this clearly. Barclay stated his conviction in these words: "This forcing of men's consciences is contrary to sound reason, and the very law of nature. For man's understanding cannot be forced by all the bodily sufferings another man can inflict upon him, especially in matters spiritual and super-natural: 'Tis argument, and evident demonstration of reason, together with the power of God reaching the heart, that can change a man's mind from one opinion to another, and not knocks and blows, and such like things, which may well destroy the body, but never can inform the soul, which is a free agent, and must either accept or reject matters of opinion as they are borne in upon it by something proportioned to its own nature."[117] And William Penn said more simply, "Gaols and gibbets are inadequate methods for conversion: this forbids all further light to come into the world."[118] Other religious groups who went through experiences comparable to those of the Friends came to similar conclusions. The Church of the Brethren, founded in 1709 in Germany, took as one of its leading principles that "there shall be no force in religion," and carried it out so faithfully that they would not baptize children, on the ground that this act would coerce them into membership in the church before they could decide to join of their own free will. The Brethren have refused to take part in war not only because it is contrary to the spirit of Christian love, and destroys sacred human life, but also because it is coercive and interferes with the free rights of others.[119] For the person who believes in the practice of positive goodwill towards all men, the refusal to use coercion arises from its incompatibility with the spirit of positive regard for every member of the human family, rather than being a separate value in itself. In social situations this regard may express itself in various ways. It may have a desirable result from the point of view of the practitioner, but again we must emphasize that he does what he does on the basis of principle; the result is a secondary consideration. FOOTNOTES: [117] Barclay, _Apology_, Prop. XIV, Sec. IV, 470. [118] Fry, _Quaker Ways_. 59-60. [119] D. W. Kurtz, _Ideals of the Church of the Brethren_, leaflet (Elgin, Ill.: General Mission Board, 1934?); Martin G. Brumbaugh in _Studies in the Doctrine of Peace_ (Elgin, Ill.: Board of Christian Education, Church of the Brethren, 1939), 56; the statement of the Goshen Conference of 1918 and other statements of the position of the church in L. W. Shultz (ed.), _Minutes of the Annual Conference of the Church of the Brethren on War and Peace_, mimeo (Elgin: Bd. of Chr. Ed., Church of the Brethren, 1935); and the pamphlet by Robert Henry Miller, _The Christian Philosophy of Peace_ (Elgin: Bd. of Chr. Ed., Church of the Brethren, 1935). Ministering to Groups in Conflict One expression of this philosophy may be abstention from partisanship in conflicts between other groups, in order to administer impartially to the human need of both parties to the conflict. In this connection much has been made of the story of the Irish Quakers during the rebellion in that country in 1798. Before the conflict broke into open violence the Quarterly Meetings and the General National Meeting recommended that all Friends destroy all firearms in their possession so that there could be no suspicion of their implication in the coming struggle. During the fighting in 1798 the Friends interceded with both sides in the interests of humanity, entertained the destitute from both parties and treated the wounds of any man who needed care. Both the Government forces and the rebels came to respect Quaker integrity, and in the midst of pillage and rapine the Quaker households escaped unscathed. But Thomas Hancock, who told the story a few years later, pointed out that in their course of conduct the Friends had not sought safety. "It is," he said, "to be presumed, that, even if outward preservation had not been experienced, they who conscientiously take the maxims of Peace for the rule of their conduct, would hold it not less their duty to conform to those principles; because the reward of such endeavor to act in obedience to their Divine Master's will is not always to be looked for in the present life. While, therefore, the fact of their outward preservation would be no sufficient argument to themselves that they had acted as they ought to act in such a crisis, it affords a striking lesson to those who will take no principle, that has not been verified by experience, for a rule of human conduct, even if it should have the sanction of Divine authority."[120] It is in this same spirit that various pacifist groups undertook the work of relief of suffering after the First World War in "friendly" and "enemy" countries alike, ministering to human need without distinction of party, race or creed. The stories of the work of the American Friends Service Committee and the _Service Civil_ founded by Pierre Ceresole are too well known to need repeating here.[121] It should not be overlooked that in this same spirit the Brethren and the Mennonites also carried on large scale relief projects during the interwar years. FOOTNOTES: [120] Thomas Hancock, _The Principles of Peace Exemplified in the Conduct of the Society of Friends in Ireland During the Rebellion of the year 1798, with some Preliminary and Concluding Observations_ (2nd ed., London, 1826), 28-29. All the important features of the story are summarized in Hirst, 216-224. [121] Lester M. Jones, _Quakers in Action: Recent Humanitarian and Reform Activities of the American Quakers_ (New York: Macmillan, 1929); Rufus M. Jones, _A Service of Love in War Time_ (New York: Macmillan, 1920); Mary Hoxie Jones, _Swords into Plowshares: An Account of the American Friends Service Committee 1917-1937_ (New York: Macmillan, 1937); Willis H. Hall, _Quaker International Work in Europe Since 1914_ (Chambery, Savoie, France: Imprimeries Reunies, 1938). On _Service Civil_, see Lilian Stevenson, _Towards a Christian International, The Story of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation_ (Vienna: International Fellowship of Reconciliation, 1929), 27-31, and Alan A. Hunter, _White Corpuscles in Europe_ (Chicago: Willett, Clark, 1939), 33-42. The Power of Example A social group that acts consistently in accordance with the principles of active goodwill also exerts great influence through the force of its example. A study of the Quaker activities in behalf of social welfare was published in Germany just before the First World War, by Auguste Jorns. She shows how, in relief of the poor, education, temperance, public health, the care of the insane, prison reform, and the abolition of slavery, the Quakers set about to solve the problem within their own society, but never in an exclusive way, so that others as well as members might receive the benefits of Quaker enterprises. Quaker methods became well known, and in time served as models for similar undertakings by other philanthropic groups and public agencies. Many modern social work procedures thus had their origins in the work of the Friends in a relatively small circle.[122] FOOTNOTE: [122] Auguste Jorns, _The Quakers as Pioneers in Social Work_, trans. by Thomas Kite Brown (New York: Macmillan, 1931). Work for Social Reform The activity of Quakers in the abolition of slavery both in England and America, especially the life-long work of John Woolman in the colonies, is well known. Here too, the first "concerned" Friends attempted to bring to an end the practice of holding slaves within the Society itself. When they had succeeded in eliminating it from their own ranks, they could, with a clear conscience, suggest that their neighbors follow their example. When the time came, Quakers were willing to take part in political action to eradicate the evil. The compensated emancipation of the slaves in the British Empire in 1833 proved that the reform could be accomplished without the violent repercussions which followed in the United States.[123] Horace G. Alexander has pointed out that the person who voluntarily surrenders privilege, as the American Quakers did in giving up their slaves, not only serves as a witness to the falsehood of privilege, but can never rest until reform is achieved. "The very fact," he says, "that he feels a loyalty to the oppressors as well as to the oppressed means that he can never rest until the oppressors have been converted. It is not their destruction that he wants, but a change in their hearts."[124] Such an attitude is based upon a faith in the perfectibility of man and the possibility of the regeneration of society. It leads from a desire to live one's own life according to high principles to a desire to establish similar principles in human institutions. It rejects the thesis of Reinhold Niebuhr that social groups can never live according to the same moral codes as individuals, and also the belief of such groups as the Mennonites that, since the "world" is necessarily evil, the precepts of high religion apply only to those who have accepted the Christian way of life. Instead, the conviction of those who hold this ideal that it is social as well as individual in its application leads them into the pathways of social reform, and even into political action. FOOTNOTES: [123] Henry J. Cadbury, _Colonial Quaker Antecedents to British Abolition of Slavery_, An address to the Friends' Historical Society, March 1933 (London: Friends Committee on Slavery and Protection of Native Races, 1933), reprinted from _The Friends' Quarterly Examiner_, July, 1933; Jorns, 197-233. [124] Horace G. Alexander in Heard, _et al._, _The New Pacifism_, 93. Political Action and Compromise The Quakers, for instance, have been noted for their participation in all sorts of reform movements. Since every reform in one sense involves opposition to some existing institution, Clarence Case has been led to call the Quakers "non-physical resistants;"[125] but since their real objective was usually the establishment of a new institution rather than the mere destruction of an old one, they might better be called "non-violent advocates." They were willing to advocate their reforms in the public forum and the political arena. Since, as Rufus Jones has pointed out, such action might yield to the temptation to compromise with men of lesser ideals, there has always been an element in the Society of Friends which insisted that the ideal must be served in its entirety, even to the extent of giving up public office and influence rather than to compromise.[126] In Pennsylvania the Quakers withdrew from the legislature when it became necessary in the existing political situation to vote support of the French and Indian war, but they did so not because they did not believe in political action, in which up to that moment they had taken part willingly enough, but rather because under the circumstances of the moment it was impossible to realize their ideals by that means.[127] Ruth Fry, in discussing the uncompromising attitude of the Friends on the issue of slavery, has well described the process of Quaker reform: "One cannot help feeling that this strong stand for the ultimate right was far more responsible for success than the more timid one, and should encourage such action in other great causes. In fact, the ideal Quaker method would seem to be patient waiting for enlightenment on the underlying principle, which when seen is so absolutely clear and convincing that no outer difficulties or suffering can affect it: its full implications gradually appear, and its ultimate triumph can never be doubted. Any advance towards it, may be accepted as a stepping stone, although only methods consistent with Quaker ideals may be used to gain the desired end. Doing anything tinged with evil, that good may come, is entirely contrary to their ideas."[128] She goes on to say, "As ever, the exact line of demarcation between methods aggressive enough to arouse the indolent and those beyond the bounds of Quaker propriety was indeed difficult to draw."[129] In such a statement we find a conception of compromise which is different from that usually encountered. In it the advocate of the ideal says that for the time being he will accept less than his ultimate goal, provided the change is in the direction in which he desires to move, but he will not accept the slightest compromise which would move away from his goal. FOOTNOTES: [125] Case, _Non-Violent Coercion_, 92-93. [126] Rufus M. Jones, _The Quakers in the American Colonies_, 175-176. [127] Jones, _Quakers in the Colonies_, 459-494; Isaac Sharpless, _A Quaker Experiment in Government_ (Philadelphia: Alfred J. Ferris, 1898), 226-276. [128] Fry, _Quaker Ways_, 171-172. [129] _Ibid._, 177. The Third Alternative The logical pursuit of such a principle leads even further than the type of compromise which Ruth Fry has described, to the establishment of a new basis of understanding which may not include any of the principles for which the parties in conflict may have been striving, and yet which brings about reconciliation. Eric Heyman, speaking in religious terms, has said of this process of discovering a new basis of understanding through the exercise of positive goodwill, even toward an oppressor: "That is the way of God, and it is therefore the way of our discipleship as reconcilers; the way of non-resistance to evil, of the total acceptance of the consequences of evil in all their lurid destructiveness, in order that the evil doer may be reconciled to God.... The whole consequences of his presence, whether small or great must be accepted with the single realisation that the whole process of the world's redemption rests upon the relationship which the Christian is able to create between himself and his oppressor. This course has nothing in common with resistance; it is the opposite of surrender, for its whole purpose and motive is the triumphing over evil by acceptance of all that it brings.... The resistance of evil, whether by way of violence or 'non-violence' is the way of this world. Resignation to evil is the way of weak surrender, and yields only a powerless resentment; at its best it is non-moral, at the worst sheerly immoral. Acceptance of evil is the triumphant answer of the redeemer. In the moment of his acceptance he knows of a certainty that he has overcome the world."[130] This process of finding a new basis of relationship has been called "a third alternative, which produces no majority rule and no defeated minority."[131] The Quakers have long used this method in arriving at decisions within their own meetings. They refuse to make motions and take votes which produce clearcut divisions within the group, but insist that no action shall be taken until all divergent points of view have been expressed, and a statement drawn up which embodies "the sense of the meeting" and is acceptable to all. As Elton Trueblood has said, "The overpowering of a minority by calling for a vote is a kind of force, and breeds the resentment which keeps the method of force from achieving ultimate success with persons."[132] Douglas Steere has described the process in these words: "This unshakable faith in the way of vital, mutual interaction by conciliatory conference is held to be applicable to international and interracial conflict as it is to that between workers and employer, or between man and wife. But it is not content to stop there. It would defy all fears and bring into the tense process of arriving at this joint decision a kind of patience and a quiet confidence which believes, not that there is no other way, but that there is a 'third-alternative' which will annihilate neither party."[133] M. P. Follett, twenty years ago, wrote a book entitled _Creative Experience_, in which she supported this same conclusion on the basis of scientific knowledge about the nature of man, society and politics. Speaking of the democratic process she said: "We have the will of the people ideally when all desires are satisfied.... The aim of democracy should be integrating desires. I have said that truth emerges from difference. In the ballot-box there is no confronting of difference, hence no possibility of integrating, hence no creating; self-government is a creative process and nothing else.... Democracy does not register various opinions; it is an attempt to create unity."[134] It might be said that in so far as democracy has succeeded, it has done so because of its adherence to this principle. The division of a society into groups which are unremittingly committed to struggle against each other, whether by violent or non-violent means, until one or the other has been annihilated or forced to yield outwardly to its oppressors for the time being, will inevitably destroy the loyalty to a common purpose through which alone democracy can exist. The contrast between the British and American attitudes toward the abolition of slavery presents us with a case in point. In Great Britain, the Emancipation Act contained provisions for the compensation of the slave owners, so that it became acceptable to them. In the United States the advocates of abolition insisted that since slavery was sin there could be no recognition of the rights of the owners. Elihu Burritt and his League of Universal Brotherhood were as much opposed to slavery as the most ardent abolitionists, yet of the League Burritt declared: "It will not only aim at the mutual pacification of enemies, but at their conversion into brethren."[135] Burritt became the chief advocate of compensated emancipation in the United States. Finally the idea was suggested in the Senate and hearings had been arranged on the measure. "But," Burritt said, "just as it had reached that stage at which Congressional action was about to recognize it as a legitimate proposition, 'John Brown's raid' suddenly closed the door against all overtures or efforts for the peaceful extinction of slavery. Its extinction by compensated emancipation would have recognized the moral complicity of the whole nation in planting and perpetuating it on this continent. It would have been an act of repentance, and the meetest work for repentance the nation could perform."[136] The country was already too divided to strive for this "third alternative," and, whether or not slavery was one of the prime causes of the Civil War, it made its contribution to creating the feeling which brought on the conflict. In the light of the present intensity of racial feeling in the United States, it can hardly be said that the enforced settlement of the war gave the Negro an equal place in American society or eliminated conflict between the races. One of the virtues of the method of reconciliation of views in seeking the "third alternative" is that it can be practiced by the individual or a very small group as well as on the national or international scale. James Myers has described its use within the local community in the "informal conference." In such a conference, the person or group desiring to create better understanding or to eliminate conflict between elements of the community calls together, without any publicity, representatives of various interests for a discussion of points of view, with the understanding that there will be no attempt to reach conclusions or arrive at any official decisions. James Myers' experience has indicated that the conferences create an appreciation of the reasons for former divergence of opinion, and a realization of the possibilities of new bases of relationship which have often resulted in easing tensions within the community and in the solution of racial, economic and social conflicts.[137] Even on the international level, individuals may make some contribution toward the elimination of conflicts, although, in the face of the present emphasis upon nationalism, and the lack of common international values to which appeal may be made, their labors are not apt to be crowned with success. As in all the cases which we have been considering, however, concerned individuals and groups may act in this field because they feel a compulsion to do so, regardless of whether or not their actions are likely to be successful in producing the desired result of reconciliation, and the discovery of the third alternative.[138] FOOTNOTES: [130] Eric Heyman, _The Pacifist Dilemma_ (Banbury, England: Friends' Peace Committee, 1941), 11-12. [131] Carl Heath, "The Third Alternative" in Heard, _et al._, _The New Pacifism_, 102. [132] D. Elton Trueblood, "The Quaker Method of Reaching Decisions" in Laughlin, _Beyond Dilemmas_, 119. [133] Douglas V. Steere, "Introduction" to Laughlin, _Beyond Dilemmas_, 18. [134] M. P. Follett, _Creative Experience_ (New York: Longmans, Green, 1924), 209. [135] Quoted in Allen, _Fight for Peace_, 428. [136] Quoted in _Ibid._, 437. [137] James Myers, _"Informal Conferences" a New Technique In Social Education_, Leaflet (New York: Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, 1943). [138] See George Lansbury, _My Pilgrimage for Peace_ (New York: Holt, 1938); Bertram Pickard, _Pacifist Diplomacy in Conflict Situations: Illustrated by the Quaker International Centers_ (Philadelphia: Pacifist Research Bureau, 1943). VIII. CONCLUSIONS Those who do not share the pacifist philosophy are prone to insist that the pacifists place far too much emphasis upon the refusal to employ physical force. These critics maintain that force is non-moral in character, and that the only moral question involved in its use is whether or not the purposes for which it is employed are "good" or "bad." They fail to realize that these concepts themselves arise from a subjective set of values, different for every social group on the basis of its own tradition and for every individual on the basis of his own experience and training. The "absolute" pacifist places at the very apex of his scale of values respect for every human personality so great that he cannot inflict injury on any human being regardless of the circumstances in which he finds himself. He would rather himself suffer what he considers to be injustice, or even see other innocent people suffer it, than to arrogate to himself the right of sitting in judgment on his fellow men and deciding that they must be destroyed through his action. For him to inflict injury or death upon any human being would be to commit the greatest iniquity of which he can conceive, and would create within his own soul a sense of guilt so great that acceptance of any other evil would be preferable to it. The person who acts on the basis of such a scale of values is not primarily concerned with the outward expediency of his action in turning the evil-doer into new ways, although he is happy if his action does have incidental desirable results. He acts as he does because of a deep conviction about the nature of the universe in which all men are brothers, and in which every personality is sacred. No logical argument to act otherwise can appeal to him unless it is based upon assumptions arising out of this conviction. Those who place their primary moral emphasis upon respect for human personality are led to hold many other values as well as their supreme value of refusing to use violence against their fellow men. Except in time of war, when governments insist that their citizens take part in mass violence, the absolute pacifist is apt to serve these other values, which he shares with many non-pacifists, without attracting the attention which distinguishes him from other men of goodwill. He insists only that in serving these subsidiary values he must not act in any way inconsistent with his highest value. Many pacifists, and all non-pacifists, differ from the absolutists in that they place other values before this supreme respect for every human personality. The pacifists who do so, refuse to inflict injury on their fellows not because this is itself their highest value, but because they believe other less objectionable methods are more effective for achieving their highest purposes, or because they accept the argument that the means they use must be consistent with the ends they seek. They would say that it is impossible to achieve universal human brotherhood by methods which destroy the basis for such brotherhood. Such persons assess non-violence as a _tactic_, rather than accepting it as a value in itself. John Lewis comes to the conclusion that under certain circumstances violence is a more effective method. Gandhi believes in non-violence both as a principle and as the most effective means of achieving his purposes. Every individual who looks upon non-violence as only a means, rather than as an end in itself, will accept or reject it on the basis of his estimate of the expediency of non-violent methods. Some come to the conclusion that violence can never be effective and therefore refuse to use it under any circumstances; others decide on each new occasion whether violence or non-violence will best serve their ends in that particular situation. In such cases the question is one of fact; the decision must be based upon the available evidence. From the diversity of opinions that exist at the present time it is obvious that the social sciences are not yet ready to give an unequivocal answer to this question of fact. Since the values that men hold subjectively are themselves social facts which the scientist must take into account, and since they vary from age to age, community to community, and individual to individual, it may never be possible to find the final answer. Meanwhile the individual facing the necessity for action must answer the question for himself on the basis of the best information available to him. Even if he refuses to face the issue for himself and accepts the prevalent idea of our own day that violence is an effective means of achieving desirable purposes, he has actually answered the question without giving thought to it. The potential tragedy of our generation is that the whole world has been plunged into war on the basis of the prevalent assumption that violence is an effective means of achieving high social purposes. Even that part of the planning for peace that is based upon maintaining international order by force rests upon this same assumption. If the assumption be false, mankind has paid a terrible price for its mistake. Another assumption on which the advocates of violence act is that the use of physical force in a noble cause inevitably brings about the triumph of that cause. History gives us no basis for such an assumption. There is much evidence that force sometimes fails, even when it is used on the "right" side. Although the sense of fighting in a righteous cause may improve the morale and thus increase the effectiveness of an army, actually wars are won by the _stronger_ side. It is a curious fact that on occasion both opposing armies may feel that they are fighting on the side of righteousness. Napoleon summarized the soldier's point of view when he said that God was on the side of the largest battalions. During the uncertain process of violent conflict, the destruction of human life--innocent and guilty alike--goes on. Just as there is evidence that violence used in a righteous cause is not always successful, there is evidence that non-violent methods sometimes succeed. Without attempting to give the final answer to the question whether violence creates so much destruction of human values that its apparent successes are only illusory, we can say that the success or failure of both violence and non-violence is determined by the conditions under which both are used, and attempt to discover the circumstances under which they have been effective. (1) No great social movement can arise unless the grievance against the existing order is great and continuous, or the demand for a new order is so deeply ingrained in the minds of the people in the movement that they are willing to expend great effort and undergo great sacrifices in order to bring about the desired change. (2) The group devoted to the idea of change must be large enough to have an impact on the situation. This is true whether the group desires to use violent or non-violent methods. In any case there will be a balancing of forces between those desiring change and those who oppose it. All of the non-violent techniques we have considered require sufficient numbers so that either their refusal of cooperation, their participation in politics, or their practice of positive goodwill has a significant effect upon the whole community. (3) The group that has a strong desire to bring about social change may be augmented in strength by the support of other elements in the population who do not feel so strongly on the issue. The less vigorous support of such neutrals may be the element that swings the balance in favor of the group desiring change. This "third party" group may also remain indifferent to the conflict. In that case the result will be determined solely by the relative strength of the direct participants. In any case, the group desiring change will be defeated if it alienates the members of the third party so that they join the other side. This latter consideration gives a great advantage to the practitioners of non-violence, since in our own day people generally are disposed to oppose violence, or at least "unlawful" violence, and to sympathize with the victims of violence, especially if they do not fight back. A definite commitment on the part of the reformers not to use violence may go far toward winning the initial support of the group neutral in the conflict. (4) These conditions of success must be created through the use of education and persuasion prior to taking action. The sense of grievance or the desire for social change must be developed in this way if it does not already exist. Even such a violent movement as the French Revolution grew out of a change in the intellectual climate of France created by the writers of the preceding century. Only when a large enough group has been won over to the cause of reform by such an educational campaign can the second requisite for success be obtained. Finally, much educational work must be done among the less interested third parties in order to predispose them to favor the changes advocated and to sympathize with the group taking part in the movement of reform. The final result of any social conflict is determined by the balancing of forces involved. Violence itself can never succeed against a stronger adversary, so those who desire to bring about social change or revolution by violence have to begin with the process of education to build a group large enough to overcome the violent forces which are likely to be arrayed against them. Even a violent revolution must be preceded by much non-violent educational preparation. But even when the group using violence has become large enough to overcome the physical force arrayed against it, its victory rests upon the coercion of its opponents rather than upon their conversion. Though defeated, the opponents still entertain their old concepts and look forward to the day of retribution, or to the counter-revolution. A social order so established rests upon a very unstable foundation. Revolutionaries have attempted in such circumstances to "liquidate" all the opposition, but it is doubtful that they have ever been completely successful in doing so. The ruthless use of violence in the process of liquidation has usually alienated third parties against the regime that uses it, and thus augmented the group that might support the counter-revolution. Advocates of non-violence must start in the same way as the violent revolutionaries to build their forces through persuasion and education. They must assess properly the attitude of the third party and carry on educational work with this group until it is certain that it will not go over to the other side at the moment of action. By the time a revolutionary or reforming group was large enough to use violence successfully, and to weather the storm of the counter-revolution or reaction, it would already have won to its side so large a portion of the community that it could probably succeed without the use of violence. This would certainly be true in a country like the United States. We must ask the question as to whether the energy consumed in the use of violence might not bring better results if it were expended upon additional education and persuasion, without involving the destruction of human life, human values, and property which violence inevitably entails. Even most of the ardent advocates of war and violent revolution admit that violence is only an undesirable necessity for the achievement of desirable ends. Non-violent methods pursued with the same commitment and vigor would be just as likely to succeed in the immediate situation as violence, without bringing in their train the tremendous human suffering attendant upon violence. More important is the fact that a social order based upon consent is more stable than one based upon coercion. If we are interested in the long range results of action, non-violence is much more likely to bring about the new society than is violence, because it fosters rather than destroys the sense of community upon which any new social order must be founded. * * * * * ADVERTISEMENT INTRODUCTION TO NON-VIOLENCE PUBLICATIONS OF THE PACIFIST RESEARCH BUREAU 1. Five Foot Shelf of Pacifist Literature 5c 2. The Balance of Power 25c 3. Coercion of States: In Federal Unions 25c 4. Coercion of States In International Organizations 25c 5. Comparative Peace Plans** 25c 6. Pacifist Diplomacy in Conflict Situations 10c 7. The Political Theories of Modern Pacifism 25c 8. Introduction to Non-Violence 25c 9. Economics for Peace* 25c 10. Conscientious Objectors in Prison* 25c * _In Preparation_ ** _Out of Print_ * * * * * 
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29639	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) Barbara Weinstock Lectures on The Morals of Trade IS CIVILIZATION A DISEASE? By STANTON COIT. SOCIAL JUSTICE WITHOUT SOCIALISM. By JOHN BATES CLARK. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN PRIVATE MONOPOLY AND GOOD CITIZENSHIP. By JOHN GRAHAM BROOKS. COMMERCIALISM AND JOURNALISM. By HAMILTON HOLT. THE BUSINESS CAREER IN ITS PUBLIC RELATIONS. By ALBERT SHAW. IS CIVILIZATION A DISEASE? By STANTON COIT BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1917 COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published May 1917_ BARBARA WEINSTOCK LECTURES ON THE MORALS OF TRADE This series will contain essays by representative scholars and men of affairs dealing with the various phases of the moral law in its bearing on business life under the new economic order, first delivered at the University of California on the Weinstock foundation. IS CIVILIZATION A DISEASE? I. TRADE TYPICAL OF CIVILIZATION In choosing "The Morals of Trade" as the general title of the Weinstock Lectureship, I am informed that its founder meant the word "Trade" to be understood in its comprehensive sense, as commensurate with our whole system of socialized wealth--at least, upon the present occasion I shall interpret it in this broad way. I shall furthermore ask you to consider our system of socialized wealth--its practice and principles--in relation to the whole of that vast artificial structure of human life which is labelled "Civilization," and which began to prevail some ten thousand years ago. Such a comprehensive sweep of vision is, in my judgment, necessary if we are to view trade in true human perspective; nor can we estimate the degree of praise or blame we ought to confer upon it until we have determined the worth of civilization itself. For trade is not only bound up inextricably with the whole of our social order, but, as it seems to me, manifests in a most acute form the universal character of civilization in general. We must therefore discover the structural principle which began to co-ordinate the lives of any group of human beings when their tribe finally passed out of barbarism. Having discovered this, we shall be able to judge whether by its ever-advancing application to the life of men, and its ever-increasing domination over their wills, it has furthered the cause of ideal humanity or not. If we find that it has been essentially humane, we shall have arrived at the conclusion that its offspring, trade, is moral. If, however, we unearth in the very principle of historic civilization something radically wrong, anti-human and inhuman, and if we can discover another co-ordinating principle which is humane and feasible, civilization will then be seen to be a thing to be "superseded"--as Nietzsche thought man himself was--and trade, its latest and lustiest issue, will be felt to be a usurper deserving to be disinherited in favor of some true economic child of the "Holy Spirit of Man." II. IS CIVILIZATION JUST? In order to open such lines of anthropological investigation and ethical reflection, I have raised the question: "Is Civilization a Disease?" Had I asked, "Is Civilization Christian?" I should have defeated my own end. You would have answered "No" as soon as you saw the subject of my discourse announced, and would have stayed at home. But you might still have given your ethical sanction to trade. You might have said, "It does not pretend to be Christian; but that is nothing against it, for the vital principle of Christianity is sentimental and impracticable: and what won't work can't be right." Had I raised the question in the form, "Could trade ever have emanated from an intelligent motive of universal love--of deference for the humanity in every man?" you would have replied, "Never!" But you might have consoled yourself with the thought that it is only a small part of our boasted civilization. We have art and education and family life and monogamy and religion; and these come in as correctives, so that trade, although not conceived of benevolence and not bearing the stamp of humanity in its character, is comparatively harmless under the restraints laid upon it. Then, too, the idea of universal love savors of theology, and would have put my lecture under that general ban which in philosophical circles has been set up against theological ethics. Indeed, I even shrank from asking, "Is civilization unethical, or wrong, or bad?" For nowadays we find moral judgments more attractive when they are disguised or at least slightly veiled. When we are really curious to know what is good, we become shy; we are not sure that our neighbors may not put a cynical interpretation upon any appearance of enthusiasm in our effort to find out what is right. Anticipating such delicacy in my prospective audience of to-night, I threw a physiological drapery, not to say pathological, over the ethical bareness of my theme, by introducing into it the idea of disease. For while it may no longer be a stigma to be un-Christian, and while some have been trying to break all the traditional tables of moral values and prevent any new ones from being inscribed, nobody, so far as I have been able to learn, has denied that disease, whether physical or only mental, is an evil and a thing which it would be wicked to spread for the mere delight in spreading it. Happily, there is still astir throughout the community an active, virile, and unashamed desire--and not only among women--for health. And in alertness and resourcefulness it is second only to the desire for wealth itself. The result is, that if anything which we have admired and been proud of has been discovered by experts to be of the nature of disease, we want to be notified, so that we may reverse our sentiments towards it, and if possible destroy it. The word "disease" is still plainly one of reproach. On the other hand, the very term "civilization" sets emotions vibrating of deference and awe towards the institution it signifies. Indeed, pride in being civilized is still so nearly universal--especially among Americans--that many persons upon hearing the point mooted whether civilization be a disease or not, are disposed to resent the bare suggestion as smacking of whimsicality. III. A METAPHORICAL USE OF THE WORD "DISEASE" I, therefore, hasten to hide myself thus early in my discourse behind the man, bigger than I, who many years ago first aroused this question in my mind, a question which, having once fastened itself upon the soul, may allow one no rest and may prevent one from ever again going on gayly through life singing with Browning's _Pippa_:-- God's in His Heaven-- All's right with the world. It is now twenty-six years since I first read Mr. Edward Carpenter's penetrating essay, then but recently published, entitled _Civilization: Its Cause and Cure_. The very name of the book made one ask: "Is civilization then a disease?" And if one deigned, as I did, to read the essay carefully, one found the author defending the affirmative in all seriousness and with much thoroughness, and displaying acute analytical power throughout his argument. The charge of whimsicality could not hold against him. The author showed an adequate insight into the social structure which is called civilization. What was equally essential, his knowledge of the latest speculations as to the nature of disease,--theories which have not yet been superseded and which when applied by Sir Almroth Wright proved to be most fruitful working hypotheses,--Carpenter's knowledge of these was comprehensive and discriminating. He accordingly never pressed the analogy between civilization and disease unduly--he knew that it could not be made to fit all particulars. And he never fell into any confusion of thought; he easily avoided being caught in his own metaphor. He employed it only within limits and only when it rendered the moral issue more concrete and vivid. Because he had a scientific knowledge both of civilization and of disease, he could safely use language which appealed to the moral emotions as an aid to our moral judgment. Indeed, Mr. Carpenter showed himself not only scientific in his ethics, but what is much rarer in these days, ethical in his science. For it is questionable whether one can ever arrive at any moral judgment except there be a deep and strong emotional accompaniment to one's rational investigation. If we do not take sides with humanity at the outset, if we eliminate all preference for certain kinds of conduct and goals of pursuit which grew up in the human mind before we began our scientific criticism of morals, how shall we ever get back again into the sphere of distinctively ethical judgment? For instance, how could we strike out from the field of observation the something which we count the moral factor in life, and then proceed to investigate the morals of trade? Evidently we must in every ethical enquiry start by taking sides with that trend of the Race-Will in us, which moves plainly towards an ever-increasing self-knowledge, self-reverence and self-control on the part of man. For it is this race-will in us whereby we have the capacity and interest to call any line of conduct or any disposition of the mind good or bad, right or wrong. IV. OUTLINE OF MY ARGUMENT Nor do I simply mean that we must show loyalty to life as opposed to death, or to health as against disease. It is more than that. The lifeward effort of some beings clashes with the corresponding attempt to live on the part of others, and the actualization of one impersonal ideal of beauty, truth, or society exacts the sacrifice of one set of human lives and favors the survival of another, so that an opposition in ideals may mean an antagonism in the struggle of classes and masses of men for existence. There is a combat, and we are called upon to choose which side to encourage and support. One and the same state of things often spells disease and death to the one party and life and health to the other. I shall be able on this account to show that whether civilization appears to us as a disease or not depends upon what sort of a person we are, and to which side we are constitutionally disposed to attach ourselves. To show this, I will first draw an analogy on the biological plane and then I will cite the judgment of great humanists who have sided against civilization. After that, I will submit instances in civilization itself for your own judgment. Only then shall I return to Edward Carpenter, to give a _résumé_ of his position, and to point out how far and why I agree with him, and at what stage I part company with him and for what reasons. Then I shall attempt to present a bird's-eye view of the steps in human advancement towards civilization as the best anthropologists have traced them. Thus, we shall be able to see our historic social order in right relation to that ideal humanity which our own spiritual constitution projects prophetically above the threshold of our consciousness. Then, if ever, we shall be in a state of mind to judge whether the thing which civilization has begotten after its own kind and named "trade" is good or bad. V. MAN _VERSUS_ CIVILIZATION Now to my biological analogy: It was recently my privilege to be conducted over the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City. You will remember that to it some millions of dollars have been assigned, for the purpose of discovering the cause and cure of bacterial diseases. In one department of the Institute a Japanese professor showed under the rays of the ultra-microscope specimens of a remarkable bacillus, the existence of which he had been the first to detect. It was that kind of bacillus which, if it is present in the marrow of a man's spinal cord, induces a state of the body that is called locomotor-ataxy. This state is one in which the man who manifests it is unable to control properly the movements of his feet and legs. He has lost command from the supreme cerebral centre; the lower nerve ganglia seem to have become insubordinate and to act on their own initiative. But is locomotor-ataxy a disease? Clearly your answer will depend upon whether you are on the side of the man or the microbe. If you sympathize with the man and are thinking of him, it is a disease; but if your heart is with the microbe there in the spinal cord, the locomotor-ataxy will be to you life and health abundant, and that not only for the individual specimen whom you pick out for observation, but for his whole family which, as the ataxy advances, reproduces itself proportionately, and with an inconceivable rapidity. What is to determine whether you are on the side of the man or the microbe? Surely the constitutional bent of your emotional and volitional preference. It is not a matter for the science of fact to consider. Mere intellect, mere reason, knows nothing of health and disease, unless it assumes this distinction as its starting-point. It knows only the order of sequences. Suppose, then, we were to find that civilization had pitted itself against Man, so that it was a case of Man _versus_ Civilization, as Herbert Spencer conceived an antagonism between Man and the State. Should we not be compelled, in order to decide what condition of things was one of health, to open up conscious relations with our deepest trend of heart and will, and find out whether we flowed with humanity or with civilization? Nor would there be any escape from the necessity of remaining true to our own trend and favoring whatever flowed the same way. In case of a clash between the social order and humanity, the health of each is to the other as a disease and, therefore, the question inevitably arises, "Which is in our judgment to be preserved?" and each one's answer must depend on whether he finds himself after full deliberation irresistibly drawn to the one side or the other. Civilization may be to man as the microbe to the locomotor-ataxy subject; but innate civilizationists would delight in the surrender of humanity to the social order. To them what would humanity be but civilization's opportunity, its habitat, its food-supply? I am saying that, to prove trade immoral it is not enough to show that man is a sacrifice to the economic order; you would be required also to demonstrate that man ought not to be sacrificed to any social order, that he must always be the final end, and never a mere means. But that is exactly what you can never demonstrate to any one who is not innately, spiritually, naturally, on the side of man against all other objects of interest. I mean that there is no arguing with any one who constitutionally hesitates to side with man. You might pray for such a one; but it would be folly to reason with him, for the foundation is not in him upon which your reasonings could mount. All this seems to me necessary to say, because I get the impression from books on political economy that most writers and readers first dehumanize themselves as a prerequisite to a discussion of the morals of trade. VI. THE LIVING FOUNDATIONS In one of his allegorical poems, James Russell Lowell depicted the antagonism of sentiment to which I am referring as existing between Christ and his conventional worshippers. The poem is a slight thing: although strict in metre and perfect in rhyme, it is too flowing and fantastic to be classed high in literature. But if we view it as a scientific essay in dynamic sociology, it is admirable beyond criticism. As its meaning is quite separable from its form and sensuous contents, I therefore ask you not to think of it as poetry or Christian mythology, but to regard it only as a compact treatise in ethical economics. Because this poem is familiar to you all, it will serve my object the better. It represents Christ as coming back to earth after eighteen hundred years, and all the grandees as rendering Him elaborate homage. Nor do they omit to direct His attention to His own image set up in the places of highest honor. But still, according to our dynamic sociologist:-- ... wherever his steps they led, The Lord in sorrow bent down His head, And from under the heavy foundation stones The Son of Mary heard bitter groans. And in church and palace and judgment-hall, He marked great fissures that rent the wall, And opened wider and still more wide As the living foundations heaved and sighed. "Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then, On the bodies and souls of living men? And think ye that building shall endure Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?" * * * * * Then Christ sought out an artisan-- A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin Pushed from her faintly Want and Sin. These set He in the midst of them, And as they drew back their garment-hem For fear of defilement, "Lo, here," said He, "The images ye have made of Me!" To-day no one denies that the foundations are alive and that they heave and sigh. In our age one need not be of the order of Christ to have ears to hear the bitter groans. Everybody hears them, if one may judge from the universal reports of the daily papers. Indeed, how to suppress the groans or to prevent them from becoming more articulate and coherent is the most vexing problem of the government of the most civilized state in the world. At least Prince von Bülow so represents the case in his book entitled _Imperial Germany_. And the party leaders of the United States have all been alert for two decades to discover how to render impossible an upheaval of the living foundations of America. There is, as I say, no denying the fact that the foundations are alive, and that they not only groan bitterly, but--what is more serious--heave threateningly. Whether any one person, however, is on the side of the living foundations, as according to Lowell Jesus Christ was, or on the side of the thrones and altars, as his conventional worshippers are depicted to be by Lowell and many another American writer since, depends upon what the special person's innate taste is. The thrones and altars have become more and more magnificent in beauty, costliness, and splendor, with the progress of civilization; but not so the mob, the rabble, the "underworld," whose stirrings have rent the walls. Christ's taste, it would seem, was not primarily aesthetic. But then not every one is a son of Mary, and not every carpenter's son sides with the class to which his father belonged. VII. CIVILIZATION CONDEMNED BY CHRIST AND ALL SONS OF MAN I said that after my biological analogy I should cite the judgments of some great sages who saw in civilization an enemy of man. Of these I have just been mentioning the greatest. The Founder of Christianity set His Will dead against the established order of society, rebuking the upholders of thrones and altars, and becoming the champion of the outcasts. The kingdom, He announced, was not to be of this our world of moneylenders. No wonder the rulers of His day gave Him short quarter, so that after three years of agitation this speaker of rousing parables to the multitude, who had no bank account, was silenced forever. Likewise, it was a foregone conclusion that every disciple of Christ whose spirit was to be set aflame by His--like St. Francis, and Savonarola, Wycliffe, Luther (at the first), and John Wesley--should turn in pity to the living foundations and in horror of spirit from the entombing thrones. But the protest against the sacrifice of man to mammonized society has been no monopoly of Christ and those spiritually descended from Him. The ancient Hebrew prophets taught equally a kingdom that was to be diametrically the opposite in principle from that which prevailed in the Jewish State or in Babylon, and later in Macedon or Rome. It should be noted that the prophets and Christ accompanied their censure of the formative principle, upon which nations and traders had built up their dealings with one another, with a proposed substitute. But if we go back to Gautama and the India of his time, we find that the Buddha's protest against civilization was still more extreme; for he did not wait to submit a new principle before condemning the old. Indeed, he felt that self-conscious existence for the individual, as he beheld it everywhere, was a tragic calamity, and altogether unendurable. Preferable would be the extinction utterly of all individualized selfhood. He would isolate the individual and submit him to a discipline, the object of which was escape forever from the wheel of existence. He advocated not mere individualistic anarchy, but the annihilation of individuality as preferable to civilized life. A third of the human race still believe in his discipline, and in the alternative he proposed to the highly developed type of social order which prevailed in his time in India. Nor do Gautama, the prophets, and Christ stand alone. All the great humanists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although professing no discipleship of earlier teachers, were at one with them in condemning the root-principle of the existing co-ordination of human lives in politics, economics, and education. The cry of Rousseau, "Back to Nature!" and all the watchwords of Voltaire and the encyclopædists, were so many summonses to revolt against the entire order of organized society. The same meaning underlay all the writings of Fourier and Prudhomme, of Owen and the other English communists. It was as if they all said, "Civilization is a disease; let us rid ourselves of it." With the socialists, Marx and Lassalle, and the anarchists, like Stepniak and Kropotkin, the condemnation of society, as it is and always had been, was equally radical and sweeping. Even humanists less violent in their protest, not so negative in their criticism, nor so positive in their offered substitutes, like Carlyle and Emerson, like Shelley and Whitman and Swinburne, like Henry George and Henry Demorest Lloyd, all aim to create in us the judgment that civilization, as it has been from the first, is no friend to the best in any man. No lover of humanity seems ever to have worshipped the god who rules over the things that are established. They all agree with the mediæval theologians that this world has been given over to the Prince of Darkness. VIII. TWO INSTANCES OF CIVILIZATION We may come to wonder the less at this adverse judgment when we have considered two instances of the effects which the highest types of civilization have had upon the masses of mankind who were brought under its sway. Take ancient Egypt and ancient Athens. Go back to the building of the pyramids. Although they are among the earliest monuments of civilization, they are yet among the most marvellous illustrations of the mastery of the human mind over matter. Scarcely three had passed of the ten thousand years which have constituted the epoch that superseded barbarism, before these vast tombs, or whatever they are, began to be erected. Lost in admiration as he stands before the Great Pyramid, how can any one but resent the suggestion that the social order, which made it at last possible, was a disease, preying upon the body and spirit of men? And yet, if one turns from it to examine that organization of human labor and that control of the wills of the masses of Egypt which made it possible, and then again looks up at it, one marks great fissures that rend the whole mass and one hears the foundations groan. To speak thus is only an imaginative way of saying, what all the anthropologists and archaeologists tell us, that to the building of any one of the great pyramids went the enforced labor of upwards of a million men for many years, who were literally driven by the lash of the whip. There is no ground for supposing that the feel of the whip, when the back of an Egyptian slave began to bleed, was different from what we should suffer if the stroke fell now on us: nor that cries of pain were any the less natural then. And we must remember that, according to the unanimous opinion of anthropologists, the organization of enforced labor is one of the essentials of civilization. Picturesque and vivid, but not exaggerated, is the saying of the author of that able book, _The Nemesis of Nations_: "Civilization begins with the crack of the whip." Lord Cromer quotes this dictum in his work on Egypt as giving an epitome of the kind of power behind the civilizing process as it has always manifested itself in the land of the Nile; and then, lest those of his readers who live in the glass house of English history should commit the ridiculous sin of unconscious hypocrisy, he gently but firmly reminds us that many inhumanities of a similar spirit, especially towards offenders against the laws of property, were not suppressed in England till the beginning of the nineteenth century. In these comments of mine upon Egypt, I may seem to have appealed to your sentiment of humanity; but I have never for a moment forgotten that no instance from history can prove civilization a disease except to those who are intuitively on the side of the man instead of the microbe, of the people instead of the pyramid. Such instances, however, are of value in bringing those who listen to them to a clear self-consciousness of their own primal preference--and that is a distinct gain, even when the preference is for the pyramid. It cannot be denied that the masses of Egypt were a sacrifice--and not willingly--to civilization. In the preceding periods of savagery and barbarism, there had been no such enslavement; the organization of enforced labor had not proceeded so far. The crack of the whip was still as yet intermittent. According to Lewis Morgan, civilization is the progress of man from beast to citizen. Well, until ten thousand years ago, man was more beast than citizen; but, happily for him, among the beasts of the field there is nothing parallel to this organization of labor through the will of one by means of the stroke of the courbash upon the backs of the many. Some students who shrink in horror from the Egyptian type of civilization plead nevertheless for the type which was manifested in ancient Greece. Let us go, then, to Athens in the age of Pericles, that period of her glory concerning which Professor Freeman somewhere says that to have lived but ten years in the midst of it would have been worth a hundred of modern mediocrity. Who can think otherwise as he recalls the Athenian drama, eloquence and philosophy, architecture and sculpture? But when one turns to the organization of society, as it was in Athens, to find out at what human price the splendor was bought of that dazzling decade when the Parthenon was being built, one finds that of the inhabitants of that City of the Light scarcely more than thirty thousand were free men, while two hundred thousand were slaves. Again, the living foundations groan! And if our heart, by its nature, insists on going out to the sacrificed, our delight in Athenian _Kultur_ will be henceforth shot through with anguish. Our only way of escape will be by absorbing Nietzsche into our system until the poison paralyzes our impulse to pity. But you may think that if we shift our investigation, we shall find relief. Let us enquire, then, into the position of woman instead of the man-slave in Athens. Alas! we are now confronted with facts which reveal, on the part of one whole half of Greek mankind, the surrender of their distinctive humanity to civilization, to that process whereby sentient beings are transformed from beasts into citizens. Professor Westermarck sums up the attitude of civilization to women in these terms:-- Nowhere else has the difference in culture between men and women been so immense as in the fully-developed Greek civilization. The lot of a wife in Greece was retirement and ignorance. She lived in almost absolute seclusion, in a separate part of the house, together with her female slaves, deprived of all the educating influence of male society, and having no place at those public spectacles which were the chief means of culture. He then calls attention to the startling absence from the whole of Greek literature of any evidence that any man who had received the training which Greek culture gave ever fell in love with any woman. In his chapter on the "Subjection of Wives," Professor Westermarck further says:-- The status of wives is in various respects connected with the ideas held about the female sex in general. Woman is commonly looked upon as a slight, dainty, and relatively weak creature, destitute of all nobler qualities. Especially among nations more advanced in culture she is regarded as intellectually and morally inferior to man. In Greece, in the historic age, the latter recognized in her no other end than to minister to his pleasure and to become the mother of his children. This author finds the Greek subjection of wives, as you will have noted, no exception to the universal rule as to the relation of culture to womanhood. After speaking of the status of woman among the ancient Hebrews, and the position assigned her by that greatest instrument of European civilization called the Roman Catholic Church, he repeats his generalization in these terms:-- Progress in civilization has exercised an unfavorable influence on the position of woman by widening the gulf between the sexes, as the higher culture was almost exclusively the prerogative of the men. Moreover, religion, and especially the great religions of the world, has contributed to the degradation of the female sex by regarding woman as unclean. IX. THE AGE OF THE FOUNDATIONS AT HAND Is this degradation an inevitable outcome of the animating principle at the heart of the process whereby sentient beings have thus far been transformed from beasts into citizens? We are forced to answer "Yes." Otherwise, why has the relative degradation of woman deepened universally with the progress of civilization? If Westermarck is right, it would seem that the lowest foundations of highly developed society have always consisted of the bodies and souls of women. If such be the historic fact, it may seem strange that only in our day, but now the world over, is heard the wail of women crying to be freed. Perhaps the reason, however, that we for the first time hear the wail is because never before had the fissures grown wide enough to allow the fainter, but more piteous, sighs to escape. The fact, too, of which there is no doubt, that at last in our age even women are beginning to be revered as responsible moral and spiritual agents may be a sign that the Day of the Foundations is come, that the age of civilization is nearing its close, and that a new era, animated by a fresh principle of human co-ordination, is at hand. There is at least evidence that many women are asking: "Are the products of civilization worth the price which we women have been compelled to pay, in order that they may exist? Is our subjection justifiable?" In reply, the men who entertain an innate contempt for woman answer, "Yes"; those who are moved by the extreme opposite of sentiment have arrived at the bitter, though chivalrous, thought, "Better the non-existence of the human race than the continued sacrifice of its womankind"; while even the sons of the golden mean in judgment go so far as to say that not only the already acquired benefits of civilization, but finer ones and more abundant, can from now on be attained by some other process, which will involve no degradation either to workingman or to woman, and which in structural principle and human effects will differ as much from civilization as civilization itself differed from the barbarism and savagery which preceded it. My own judgment is, that civilization is nearing its close. Four or five deadly blows were dealt out to it by four or five events which happened in the middle of the fifteenth century after Christ, and it has been staggering ever since. In that century, certain things occurred which produced the very opposite effect upon the masses of mankind to that produced by the wonderful thing which had happened ten thousand years ago and by its occurrence had changed radically the relation of men and women to the community and to the physical universe in which they lived. What was begun in the fifteenth century by the events that took place then, and what was continued as a destructive process until recently, is, in my judgment, being finished now through a constructive process which has been set up by certain other things--some ten or twenty--which have happened since the beginning of the present century. X. A NEW STRUCTURAL PRINCIPLE It has seemed to me necessary at this point in my argument to call attention to the introduction into social life in the fifteenth century of a new working principle which has been in direct antagonism to the basic idea of civilization, because it must be borne in mind that during the last four centuries the history of Europe and the New World furnishes illustrations of two conflicting processes of social integration. Not everything that has happened since the New World was discovered can be set down to the credit of that process which is still ascendant in Prussia. Instances, therefore, from modern history which go against my account of civilization have no weight against my contention and cannot be raised against me; modern instances must not only be shown to be facts, but to be vital outputs of the same principle that animates the old order. To account every co-ordination of modern social life as an instance of civilization is as if any one should cite the turbine engine and its achievements and set these down to the credit of the piston engine. But the idea of the one is wholly new and not a further evolution of the old. Or it is as if one should assign the glory of the motor-car to the inventor of the bicycle, or of the bicycle to the originator of the horse-cart; or as if one should point to an aeroplane as an illustration of a further stage in the evolution of the motor-car. It is a fact that the aeroplane came after, but not a fact that it came _from_, the motor-car. If, as I believe, the new order which began to manifest itself in the fifteenth century stands to civilization as the aeroplane to the motorcar, and as the motor-car to the bicycle and the horse-cart, or as the turbine to the piston engine, then I am right in claiming that we ought not to call it civilization. If we do, we should be acting like any one who insisted upon calling an airship a horse-cart. There might be reasons for so doing: and there may be reasons for calling things civilization which are something quite different. For instance, I can conceive that the new order might be more easily insinuated into general acceptance if those whose interests are all vested in the old are not informed that it is new. But tonight I am treating not of words, but of things; and if it will hasten the triumph of the new order to pretend that it is civilization, let us by all means do so--just as we call six o'clock seven in order to gain an extra hour of sunlight during the waking day. I know that to many the idea will appear grotesquely naive, that an institution as old as civilization and so wide-spreading should come to an end and be superseded by something else, and that this change should be taking place under our very eyes. But, happily for me, the world-conflict which is now devastating Europe has begun to undermine in the soul of many the fetish-worship of civilization. And to assist further in breaking the spell which civilization may have cast over the imagination of most of my audience, I would remind you that civilization is, after all, a mere mushroom growth, and that what has sprung up only overnight cannot have taken deep root (as if it were a thing practically eternal), and could not be very difficult to replace by something more deliberately thought out--by something learned through ten thousand years of the tragic effects experienced by thousands of millions of human beings. Civilization, I say, is a mere mushroom growth, as compared with the whole life-period of man's existence on earth. It is only ten thousand years old; while, by the most modest and cautious calculation, man has existed one hundred thousand years; and during the ninety thousand which preceded the last ten, he made gigantic progress towards self-knowledge and self-reverence. Let us, therefore, not be browbeaten by civilization on account of its antiquity. XI. EDWARD CARPENTER'S INDICTMENT OF CIVILIZATION Equally must we guard against the fallacy of attributing only the beneficent effects of civilization to its inherent principle, while we trace all the evils which have arisen in its train to extrinsic causes--to human nature, or to superficial and local obstructions. This word of warning brings me back to Mr. Edward Carpenter's essay on _Civilization: Its Cause and Cure_; for when I first read it he appeared to me to exaggerate out of all proportion the evils in modern life as compared with the good in it: especially did I feel that he erred in that he accounted the evils as permanent and organic characteristics of the civilizing process itself, and believed that they must increase with its development and could not be eradicated except with its extinction. During the last twenty-six years, however, I have learned a thing or two. I have not lost one jot or tittle of my early faith in man, and I have even gained fresh hope for a speedy issue of the human race out of most of its sufferings and sins; but I have gained this fresh hope only because I have been drawn by wider and closer observation of economic events--and especially of the new developments of trade and politics the world over--to the conclusion that the evils, however great, are to be traced to the false principle that animates the civilizing process, and that they will fall away of themselves when once that principle has been exchanged for another that is already well known, and which, as I have remarked, began four centuries ago to disintegrate the established order. Carpenter's indictment of civilization seems to me incontrovertible. The best way for me to present it briefly will be by means of a number of typical quotations, in which he indicates the nature of disease and shows that such is the state--mental, physical, social, and moral--induced in man by the organization of enforced labor and the whole of the adopted method of making citizens out of wild beasts:-- When we come to analyze the conception of disease, physical or mental, in society or the individual, it evidently means ... loss of unity. Health, therefore, should mean unity. ... The idea should be a positive one--a condition of the body in which it is an entirety, a unity, a central force maintaining that condition; and disease being the break-up--or break-down--of that entirety into multiplicity.... Thus in a body, the establishment of an insubordinate centre--a boil, a tumor, the introduction and spread of a germ with innumerable progeny throughout the system, the enlargement out of all reason of an existing organ--means disease. In the mind, disease begins when any passion asserts itself as an independent centre of thought and action.... What is a taint in the mind is also a taint in the body. The stomach has started the original idea of becoming itself the centre of the human system. The sexual organs may start a similar idea. Here are distinct threats, menaces made against the central authority--against the Man himself. For the man must rule, or disappear; it is impossible to imagine a man presided over by a Stomach--a walking Stomach, using hands, feet, and all the other members merely to carry it from place to place, and serve its assimilative mania. So of the Brain, or any other organ; for the Man is no organ, resides in no organ, but is the central life ruling and radiating among all organs, and assigning them their parts to play. Disease, then, in mind or body, is ... the abeyance of a central power and the growth of insubordinate centres--life in each creature being conceived of as a continual exercise of energy or conquest, by which external or antagonistic forces (or organisms) are brought into subjection and compelled into the service of the creature, or are thrown off as harmful to it. Thus, by way of illustration, we find that plants or animals, when in good health, have a remarkable power of throwing off the attacks of any parasites which incline to infest them; while those that are weakly are very soon eaten up by the same. A rose-tree, for instance, brought indoors, will soon fall a prey to the aphis, though when hardened out of doors the pest makes next to no impression on it. In dry seasons when the young turnip plants in the field are weakly from want of water, the entire crop is sometimes destroyed by the turnip-fly, which then multiplies enormously; but if a shower or two of rain comes before much damage is done, the plant will then grow vigorously, its tissues become more robust and resist the attacks of the fly, which in its turn dies. Late investigations seem to show that one of the functions of the white corpuscles of the blood is to devour disease-germs and bacteria present in the circulation,--thus absorbing these organisms into subjection to the central life of the body,--and that for this object they congregate in numbers toward any part of the body which is wounded or diseased. XII. CARPENTER'S FALSE REMEDY To cast Carpenter's metaphor, according to which civilization is a thing to be cured, into the form of an analogy, we might say that the civilizing process has been to man what the bringing indoors is to a rose-tree, or the coming of a drought to the turnips in a field. And I ask you to assume with me that this is so; as it will help me to get on with my argument, which, as it advances, will reveal more and more whether it be inherently weak or strong. Nor do I anticipate much opposition to Carpenter's mere indictment of civilization. At least it is only when he outlines his remedy that my own protest is aroused. And I suspect that many a reader will feel with me, that while to cure a rose-tree or a turnip plant may require only the taking of the one out of doors again and the falling of the kindly showers upon the other, the restoration of civilized man to health would necessitate something more than a mere return on his part to Nature and savagery. Indeed, such a return may be altogether impossible, and even undesirable. In my judgment, man having (as Carpenter himself points out) become "self-conscious," can never go back to Nature, since he is no longer the same being he was when he emerged from his more primitive state. Yet what Carpenter recommends so far as he recommends any cure, is exactly this: Human beings are to wear less clothes--if any at all; man will again live out of doors, for the most part, instead of in houses; he will return to the eating of uncooked food--mainly fruit and grains; he will begin to feel himself one again with Nature; he is to lose his sense of sin; every man will do the work he likes--and presumably not do the work he does not like. "As to External Government and Law, they will disappear," says Carpenter, "for they are only the travesties and transitory substitutes of Inward Government and Order." In religion, there is to be a like return to Nature. The author says:-- And when the civilization-period has passed away, the old Nature-religion--perhaps greatly grown--will come back.... Our Christian ceremonial is saturated with sexual and astronomical symbols; and long before Christianity existed, the sexual and astronomical were the main forms of religion.... On the high tops once more gathering he will celebrate with naked dances the glory of the human form and the great processions of the stars.... Carpenter sees signs already here and there of the beginning of this return:-- The present competitive society is more and more rapidly becoming a mere dead formula and husk within which the outlines of the new and _human_ society are already discernible. Simultaneously, and as if to match this growth, a move toward Nature and Savagery is for the first time taking place from within, instead of being forced upon Society from without. The Nature-movement, begun years ago in Literature and Art, is now among the more advanced sections of the civilized world rapidly realizing itself in actual life, going so far even as a denial, among some, of machinery and the complex products of Civilization, and developing among others into a gospel of salvation by sandals and sunbaths! In order to help us to judge aright whether a return to Nature and a primitive communism would restore to man that centrality and health of which we assume that civilization has deprived him, we should do well to consider what it was that happened ten thousand years ago and proved so sinister in changing the relation of men and women to the community in which they lived, and to the physical universe. But of that event we cannot gain an adequate appreciation unless we view it in perspective along the line of analogous events, some six, which had occurred from time to time during the ninety thousand years preceding. XIII. SPEECH AND FIRE A hundred thousand years ago, among our ancestors, who then were only inarticulate mammals, living in trees and caves, one of them by himself, or a little group of them together, hit upon the use of articulate vocal signs as a means of conveying to his mates his needs, his fears, his desires and threats. It was probably by a happy fluke that he hit upon this use, or by some transcendent flash of insight due to a spontaneous variation of ability above that of the average ape; or else some unusual stress of hunger or danger of attack drove even a mediocre individual to an unwonted exercise of ingenuity. In any case, by inventing articulate speech, he brought into existence a new species of mammal--man. I must leave to your imagination the thousand transforming effects of this new device for communicating perceptions, feelings, and intentions. The speaking ape stood to his own species, and through them to other kinds of animals and to the material universe, in a different relation from that in which the speechless stood. The power of combined action among the members of any group became immeasurably greater than it had previously been. A social unity of will was possible that could never have existed on earth hitherto. For all we know, thirty thousand years may have passed away before any other event occurred among human beings comparable in practical importance to the invention of spoken language. This, however, was all the time being gradually perfected under the stress of new experiences in general and of trying predicaments in particular. Then, in the fulness of time, and once more by a happy fluke, or by a stroke of spontaneous genius, or under the pressure of some unprecedented danger, or through the educative influence of some new order of experience, one of the speaking apes hit upon the use of fire, and thereby introduced a new era in the advancement of man. Practically infinite was the increase of man's new mastery over Nature. Into temperate and even icy regions he could now penetrate and, as it were, create around him a little temporary zone of tropical warmth. With speech had come social unity; with fire at man's disposal came mastery over matter. But the unity thereby suffered a change. With the invention of means of creating artificial warmth the social homogeneity of the tribe began to be broken. Whoever controlled fire controlled the rest of his group, since no other way for the tribal appropriation of the blessings of regulated fire was possible among talking apes, except that one individual, or a very few, should assume the office of owner of the sticks or flints for igniting the fire, and should become dispenser of the flame. The group thus was divided into the controller and the controlled, the owner and the owned, the master and the man, the governor and the governed, the chief and his followers. XIV. THE TWO MARKS OF ALL CIVILIZATION Such a differentiation of society was, among apes, the condition for any sort of social unity; but control by the few could at the first have been only rudimentary and intermittent. Fire is not everything, and was indispensable only on certain occasions, as when the group were caught unexpectedly in some wintry region. Then the choice for any man might lie between freezing or obeying. Be it observed that fire under such circumstances would be shared by all, but the power of social control would be monopolized by one. Had you been there, but not the mightiest of your group, the condition of your surviving the cold would have been that you surrendered whatever individual initiative you had had. You gained fire, but lost freedom. At this point, by some innate sense of logical identity, my mind is carried forward a hundred thousand years to that centre of to-day's highest civilization--Detroit, and to its very palladium, the Ford Motor Works. For in that far-famed institution is to be found a very striking similarity to the primeval monopoly of initiative which arose with the first control of fire. Mr. Henry Ford has been magnanimously ready to share profits with his men, but, so far as I can learn, no iota of the industrial control. Before I go to the next step towards citizenship, I would call attention to the fact that thus, near to the beginning of things human, when the use of fire was introduced, we are able to detect the two distinguishing characteristics of all civilization, and of trade in particular, which are the sharing by the tribe of the blessings of man's mastery over Nature, but, as the condition of the sharing, a monopoly of power and initiative by the few who dispense the blessings. So much of good and of goods--but no more--could the mass of men enjoy as was compatible with the continuance of the master's ascendancy over the men and over the public. We shall find no other than these marks in all future civilization, to distinguish it from savagery and barbarism. The only difference will be that in the period of civilization proper--that is, from ten thousand years ago to the end of the fifteenth century after Christ, when the established social order began to break up--the monopoly of initiative and control is practically absolute. As we trace the future steps in human evolution, we shall see how this concentration of power in the hands of rulers occurred. But it must be further observed that it is not only rudimentary civilization which we detect as ensuing upon the introduction of the use of fire: it is trade, socialized wealth, the division of the community into the "haves" and the "have-nots," the introduction of the working of the law, that to him that hath shall be given and that from him that hath nothing but his labor to offer shall be taken with it his liberty also. It should likewise be borne in mind that with the stealing of fire from heaven came also that coalition of government with trade, of politics with commerce, of the monopolists of economic power with the dictators of life and death, of peace and war, which is manifested to the highest conceivable degree to-day in the states most assertive of their leadership in the vanguard of civilization. I said that with the use of fire came the enslavement of men; but government and enslavement were one and the same thing. Neither, however, was as yet dominant over social life. XV. ARROWS AND EARTHENWARE The talking, fire-using anthropoid in the course of time invented the bow and arrow. So great and so enduring were the benefits of this new device that it is almost impossible for us, who have profited by them, to imagine the state of human society when men could kill animals or destroy enemies only by throwing stones or clubs, or by striking with the fist. But it is easy to see that the chief of a tribe of men received an incalculable increase of power when, besides the instruments of ignition, bows and arrows were in his possession to deal out at his will. Whatever equality of initiative and diffused sovereignty had existed before the use of fire was known, it now began to vanish, and the men of any tribe saw power concentrated in the will and word of the chief and those nearest him, while submission to his command was the condition of survival. And no doubt, with the loss of that individual liberty and that self-reliance which characterize the lower animals, there also died away a certain joyousness and zest of spontaneous self-fulfilment, such as we observe in wild creatures so long as they are free from hunger and thirst and secure from the pursuit of enemies. It was perhaps another ten thousand years before one more new link in the chain of man's mastery over Nature and the chief's mastery over his men was forged. This time it was probably a woman who--again by a happy chance or by necessity of maternal solicitude--noticed the effect of heat upon clay and introduced the art of pottery. Until then men had no utensils that could withstand the action of fire; they could not boil water except by dropping hot stones into some receptacle of wood or skin. Now, by the new device of boiling, the food-supply was enormously increased. The blessing of another mastery over matter was henceforth shared by all the members of the tribe. But, at the same time, there was a corresponding force added to the chief's grip upon his men. We see the law illustrated, that every new invention, owned by the few, becomes one more trap for the many. The differentiation between the owner of the tribe's wealth and the propertyless became with the introduction of pottery fixed and hopeless. The master dealt out not only fire and arrows, but cooking-utensils; or he withheld all these if he saw fit; and if you had been there, but not in command, you, too, would have tamely submitted or have died. XVI. ANIMALS TAMED AND IRON SMELTED The word "tamely" which I have just used, brings me to the next great event which moved mankind perceptibly nearer to civilization proper. It is an event which was not only a literal fact of prime importance, but which is eternally a symbol of man's own fate. It was probably first the dog that lent himself to the imagination of the speaking, fire-making, arrow-shooting, clay-baking, anthropoid ape, as a stimulus to the idea that captive animals might be of service to human beings. Man began to tame not only the dog, but the sheep, the ox, the camel, the goat, the horse, and the elephant. The gain to all the tribe was enormous. The men all shared in the profit, but once more their master appropriated the new increment in power. He became the owner of the domesticated animals as well as of the inanimate pot and arrow and flame. But at this stage it must have seemed to all the other members of the tribe that they also were owned, soul and body, by their chief. They could not help seeing, nor could he, that they were _his_ men. And how natural it was for them to rejoice in the fact that they belonged to some one who was mightier than themselves, and who identified his own prosperity with that of the tribe, and of every individual in it who served it according to his will. Loyalty to the beloved community became loyalty to the chief. But it is evident that what mankind had caused to happen to the dog and the horse, the chief had accomplished in regard to the human beings who had come under his power. He had tamed them; they were no longer wild animals. They had rendered up individual liberty and self-reliant independence such as we see among many species of wild beasts. But instead, as the price of obedience to a will outside their own, they had received a thousand creature-comforts. Only one more invention was needed to lift them to the highest and latest stage of barbarism. Some one now hit upon the art of smelting iron--the first invention that had not directly to do with the supplying of food. By leaps and bounds the art of smelting iron advanced man in the equipment of war, in the building of houses, roads, and vehicles of transportation. Now what magnificent returns individuals received for having surrendered their original liberty to do as they pleased! After all, what would independent initiative have been worth without fire or arrow or earthern kettle, or cow or horse or wheel, or sword and shield? Who would not have forfeited the bare birthright of empty (although healthy) independence for participation in the ever richer conquest over the physical resources of Nature? XVII. CIVILIZATION PROPER But now at last, only ten thousand years ago, the event occurred which put forever out of the question any possibility of prudence in any waywardness of individual whim, or any deviation from the rule dictated by the owner of things. This time the something that happened did not cause an increase of man's mastery over physical Nature. It was, instead, like that initial invention which turned apes into men. And again, like spoken language, it was a device to facilitate communication of mind with mind. In some one of the many groups of beings who had learned the use of fire, arrows, pots, sheep, and swords, some genius hit upon the idea of written signs as a medium of communication with those distant in space, and as a means of perpetuating a knowledge of the will of the dead among his survivors. But be it observed that only the master, never the man, only the owner of things, the controller of circumstances, was in a position to embody and preserve his judgment and desire in written signs. The new art of writing enhanced the power of rulers, of chiefs. The Pharaoh, not the fellah, dictated the inscription that was to be engraved. Thus all the rulers of the past were now able to perpetuate their power by adding their sanction to the word of the living chief, while no voice from the ranks of the governed would be allowed to immortalize itself in written speech. This is the reason that written language introduced civilization proper. There was no longer any chance for the wildness of the beast to crop out. Here began the empire of the dead over the living; but it was the empire of dead rulers over living slaves. The mastery over Nature and the monopoly of social power thereby became practically infinite. The tamers were now omnipotent in comparison with the tamed. It must be noticed that the process of transforming beasts into citizens was one to which only the tamed, but not the tamers, were subjected. The ruler stood outside of and above the rule he made. The law was for his subjects. This was the case with Henry VIII at the acme of civilization as it had been with the first of the Pharaohs. Not only the blond beast of prey, but the swarthy also dictated an ethic for his subjects in order to keep himself in ascendancy. It was because Nietzsche admired all beasts of prey and felt contempt for their victims that he hated Jesus Christ and proudly assumed the title of Anti-Christ. For Christ had set up an ethic which encouraged the victims to protest and attempt to win back their primeval initiative, to take over the sovereignty which had been concentrated in the hands of the mighty and to diffuse it among the nobodies of the tribe. St. Luke goes so far as to assert that even before Jesus was born his Mother entertained levelling ideas. Into her lips he puts a song in which she magnifies the Lord because she believed her Son would bring down the mighty and exalt them of low degree. But alas! civilization went on for fifteen hundred years and succeeded in tying Christianity to the chariot-wheel of monopolized initiative. XVIII. THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY AFTER CHRIST Christianity had to wait for something to happen that would lend force to its Gospel. That something did not occur until the middle of the fifteenth century. Then, as I have already said without specifying what they were, a number of unforeseen events took place which opened the door to the divine bridegroom of humanity. I have said that in the fifteenth century after Christ a new principle began to work in society; but I did not say that it was then for the first time promulgated. Civilization was the organization of man's mastery over Nature on a basis of self-interest; it was the giving only so much of wealth and power to the many as was compatible with the retention of one's own ascendancy. To be civilized, then, is evidently not to be Christian any more than it is to be Buddhistic or Judaic, socialistic or democratic. Everybody admits that one can be civilized and be none of these things: just as one may be "cultured" without being kind. In other words, it is consistent with being civilized to be highly selfish; one need only be rationalized in one's egoism. Indeed, civilization is the incarnation of self-interest. If self-interest, its basic principle, should give way to social interest; if the monopoly of social power should be broken and the power transferred to the general will of the community; if the community should relegate its administration to representatives, but should prevent these by some social device from ever usurping the power entrusted to them, then something new--something as different from civilization as the airship from the horse-cart--would have begun to establish itself. A new species of social order can be nothing other than an order whose basic principle is totally new; and what greater difference could exist in structuralizing tendencies than that between self-interest and the interest of the community? Whenever the latter gets the upper hand, it will be because Fate, the Cosmos, the Universe, the force within unconscious evolution, has caught up the song of the _Magnificat_. No such consummation of humanity has taken place, but it is undeniable that in the fifteenth century the Word entered like a seed into the soil of Fact. The Virgin's prophecy began to fulfil itself. Familiar to everybody, and quickly to be specified, are the wonderful events which turned the vision into reality. One of these events was the invention of gunpowder; another was the mariner's compass; a third was the invention of paper; a fourth, the printing-press; a fifth was the discovery that the earth goes round the sun once a year, and whirls on its own axis once a day; a sixth was that indiscretion of Christopher Columbus, whereby instead of over-populated India he opened up a way to the vast and sparsely denizened Americas. These events, each and severally and all together, produced in one particular the same sort of effect as the use of fire and of the bow and arrow, of pottery, the domestication of animals, and the smelting of iron: they enhanced incalculably the mastery of man over matter. But in the other particular characteristic of civilization they acted in the very opposite direction from all preceding inventions. Instead of entrenching the master in his monopoly of social power, instead of furthering the differentiation of society into master and man, they all played into the hands of the man. For the first time since the beginning of human evolution, inventions checked the monopolization of control over others. But the initiative that now flowed to the multitude of nobodies was not that puny freedom and narrow scope of self-realization which the talking ape had enjoyed. It was the accumulated foresight and control of the universe outside of man which had been storing itself up more and more for ninety thousand years in the intellects and wills of the favored few. The floodgates were opened for the first time in the fifteenth century, and this godlike energy flowed in among the people at large, so that man, the many, the multitude, were quickened by it into hope on earth, unto life here and now, into liberty, creative originality, and the joy of self-realization. But it was only the beginning: the effects of the introduction of gunpowder, the compass, the printing-press and paper, and the new ideas about the heavens, and the opening-up of relatively uninhabited lands, were scarcely discernible for two centuries, and then only as a destructive force. Indeed, for still another hundred years the process was one chiefly of disintegration. There was taking place a transference of power from the few to the many; a diffusion of sovereignty, as well as a redistribution of wealth; and the change was accompanied by an awakening of the masses to the meaning of the transformation which they were undergoing. The people began to realize that the invention of gun-powder had raised the peasant as a fighter to the level of the armed knight; that the compass and the opening-up of the Western hemisphere made it possible for the poor to escape from European masters whom they were unable to vanquish; and that the cheapness of books was linking the minds of the masses to the sources of learning and of religious tradition. It cannot but excite our mystic wonder that for nearly one hundred thousand years every new mastery of man over physical Nature was such that it inevitably played into the hands of rulers by strengthening their monopoly of initiative; and that then, at last, and ever since the fifteenth century after Christ, each new mechanical invention or discovery has had the unintended and undesired effect ultimately of scattering among the many the pent-up power of owners and rulers, and of creating in the many fresh psychic energy and a new capacity of invention. This great process of levelling-up took again an enormous leap forward in the middle of the nineteenth century. The steam-engine advanced it almost as much as all the fifteenth-century inventions and discoveries together. The new facilities of travel brought new experiences, and these, by the psychological law of contrast and novelty, stimulated intelligence many-fold. The new speed in transportation made it possible for thousands to escape from oppression where scarcely one had been able to do so in former generations. The Irish peasants began to pour into America; then followed the Germans; soon Russians and Latins were helped to leave the Old World; sometimes in all came a million-odd in one year. Wealth was multiplied and scattered to a degree that had never been dreamed to be possible. Not only in the United States, but in France, Italy, Scandinavia, the British Empire, and South America, the diffusion of social initiative was taking place. First, power spread from the few to the many severally; but now, for a quarter of a century, the many, without surrendering, have been pooling their new power in the general will of the nation. There, in the unified and unifying purpose of nations like America, and of each of her federate States, the power is being safeguarded for the community and for its members severally by political devices which render public servants incapable of prolonged usurpation. XIX. CIVILIZATION FACES ITS SUCCESSOR Still, the new order is far from being in the ascendant. As civilization began with the introduction of the use of fire, but was not triumphant until the invention of written language, so the new order--call it what you will: Christianity, the Meaning of America, the Dream of California, the Wisconsin Idea, Social Democracy, Humanity--this new order has only entered in as yeast which has not yet had a chance to leaven the whole lump. But the fermentation now goes on apace. The World-War is perhaps best understood when it is looked upon as a struggle of civilization against its successor. Alarmed and armed to the teeth, civilization (applied science organized on a basis of reasoned self-interest) is attempting to expand itself over territory which had been preempted and mapped out by social democracy, and was being devoted, in the spirit of the ideal commonwealth foreshadowed in Christian sentiment and Jewish prophecy, to the co-ordination of wealth and power on the principle of deference to the humanity in every man. But more significant than the World-War of the passing away of the old order and its supersession by a new are the ten or twenty inventions, ideas, discoveries, and new social contacts which marked the first decade of the present century. No doubt even the World-War has been precipitated by the sudden inrush of these unprecedented forces, and the realization of their trend by the self-centred leaders of civilization. It would seem that the civilized, anticipating a move on the part of the humanized, and fearing an appropriation of the benefits of new inventions, stole a march upon the unsuspecting. The result is, that we saw at the outset of the war the latest appliances seized upon by the upholders of arbitrary power, and only now, after the first shock of attack, are the builders of an earthly paradise demonstrating their ability and intention to turn all the forces of Nature and devices of reason to the service of each in the brotherhood of the common life. We are beginning to see, also, that every one of the latest inventions is such in its nature that soon victory must come to the cause of economic and political equality. Even the cheapness of motor-cars will overtake the champions of industrial monopoly, who at the first used them for the hoarding of social power. The submarine can at the first only be turned against the freedom of the seas during times of peace. The aeroplane and the airship, more than any other instruments of locomotion, will assist in the diffusion of initiative among all the outlying and small nations of the earth. More than anything else they will assist the weak and the meek of the earth to rush together to one another's rescue; and wireless telegraphy, as soon as it is established universally, will sound to them the alarum in the twinkling of an eye. All the new inventions are, as it were, God's detectives for the exposing of the subtle and disguised crimes of the great; or they are God's captains for the mobilization of the scattered forces of the meek when the plot of an oppressor has been unearthed. The people need only to realize that the new inventions are by their very nature breakers of power-monopolies, in order to find in them an irresistible incentive to rise and act in the cause of world-wide democratic initiative. High explosives, the gas-engine, the giant gun, sheets of flame, deadly gases, all these are within the reach of Christ's little ones to encircle their kingdom-that-is-coming against the attacks of inhuman humans. The new inventions are humanity's destructors to annihilate civilization's destroyers. I have specified some of the twentieth century's inventions to show that, like the compass and the printing-press, they will be scatterers of privileges to the masses. I might go on indefinitely adding to the list, but I will cite only one more. It was only in the last decade of the nineteenth century that a new way of making cheap paper was discovered--so cheap that it became possible to sell great dailies for one cent. But this practice was not established until the twentieth century. And it was only a few years ago that the greatest newspaper of the world--and a very stronghold of upper-class monopoly--was able, or driven, to reduce its price from threepence (six cents) to a penny. But I specify the case of the London _Times_ because, like a miracle of divine healing, but entirely due to the cheapness of paper, is the change of its policy from that of brutal imperialism to the democratic one of transforming the British Empire into a commonwealth of equal states. Now that the _Times_ has been converted, we may be sure that the universe itself has come round to the side of the right, and has taken up the cause of the poor. By the pricking of my thumbs I know that something better than civilization this way comes. Dull indeed must be that man whose blood does not tingle with anticipation. Yet the physical inventions of the twentieth century are not to be compared in pregnancy of good with its less palpable, its spiritual, novelties. XX. AGAINST THE MATERIALISTIC VIEW OF HISTORY Before passing, however, from the physical inventions to the new moral ideas and mental contacts, I must interpolate a comment to save myself from misunderstanding. Generally, those who trace to mechanical utilities new epochs in the development of mankind proceed upon the materialistic theory of history. But this theory I have in no wise committed myself to, for I count it to be false. It is true that I have traced all the great steps in human advancement to physical inventions, but I have in no word implied that the inventions themselves were caused by anything material whatsoever. And if they themselves were, as I believe, the result of man's mental and spiritual activities reacting against events, then my tracing of human advancement to them implies no belief in the materialistic theory of history. Every effect of the inventions must be set down ultimately not to them, but to their causes; and their causes were mental. Casually I have said as much, in remarking several times that they took place by a happy chance, or by a stroke of insight on the part of some rare genius, or by the reaction of some mediocre person's intelligent volition against some extraordinary experience which made the idea of the invention so obtrusively evident that even a mind not unusually gifted could scarcely have avoided lighting upon it. The only phrase I have used by which I cannot absolutely stand is the expression "by a happy chance"; for I believe that the mental productions of each person are due not to uncaused chance, or to accident, but to trends of the social mind that have been set in motion by mental exigencies arising out of current events. As primitive peoples, however, have left no record of their mental sequences, we cannot say with confidence what were the exact experiences that led to the idea of using fire, or to any other device that transformed the relation of human beings to one another or to their material habitat. I only repeat that whatever caused the inventions caused all the remote effects of these, and that if the causes of the inventions were mental and spiritual, then an interpretation of history is not materialistic merely because it traces advancement to mechanical utilities. That I am right in tracing these to mental and spiritual causes is proved at least in the case of recent inventions. For we know that their causes were psychic; we know the mental atmosphere, and how it arose, that brought forth the telephone and aeroplane and submarine. We know that these were not due to physical necessities or to any material causes. They arose from the brooding of creative imaginations disciplined in a method learned by reflection upon former successes in discovery. We also know in what main particulars this modern atmosphere differs from that of former centuries. But such questions are not germane to my central theme, and so I pass them over lightly. Let me then return without further delay from this digression which has been made in the interests, not of my argument, but of my self-respect as a student of social facts. XXI. CONTACT OF PEOPLES Consider, for instance, that at the beginning of our century, for the first time in more than fifteen hundred years, the Christian nations came into contact with a mighty pagan power, and were compelled to acknowledge it as not only a political, but a moral, equal. Whoever knows the magical effect in the quickening of intellectual and spiritual life due to new contact with a contrasting type of national culture will agree that the meeting thus of Christendom with the so-called "heathen" world is a fact of prime significance in the history of man. Nor is it simply the contact of heathen and Christian on terms of moral equality. There is another aspect to Japan's ascendancy and her recognition by the West. The East and the West meet at last. The psychic invasion of each by the other must be epoch-making and in the direction of the completeness and unification spiritually of all mankind in a brotherhood of nations and nation-states. The new contact of heathen and Christian, and of white and colored, of East and West, means that the exploitation of the dark races by nations more highly organized on a basis of self-interest is about to cease forever. With the humanization of the West will come the salvation of those tribes who never divided themselves so absolutely into the "haves" and the "have-nots," or who never attained a high mastery over the physical universe. Are there persons in America who say what, until the present war, many in Old England thought--that there is nothing new under the sun? Then I would call their attention to the unprecedented and revolutionary character of the contact in the United States, on a basis of relative political and social equality, of immigrants from some fifty-one different nations of the Old World. These people will mix their blood, their temperaments, and their traditions, and not only will a new variety of human being emerge, but the mixing of opposites in idea and temperament will quicken self-consciousness and heighten mental power and speed up its activity. The opportunity of the blond beasts of prey has lain in the torpor and inactivity and ignorance of the multitude. But I find no torpor in California. And where there is no one that will allow himself to be preyed upon, even blond beasts take up the new enterprise of co-operation among equals. This is an inevitable result of the contact of many varieties of unlikes, the unification, not of equals, but of supplementary equivalents. When such psychic conditions have prevailed for a century or more, it is inconceivable that trade can continue to consist of competition between individuals and the permission of the successful to amass and hoard fortunes. Either production and distribution will become communal, or the community will tax large fortunes into the state and national treasury. But there are three other distinguishing characteristics of the twentieth century which make for the replacing of civilization by humanization, and for the transition of trade from the harshness of the law into the abounding grace of the gospel. XXII. THE POWER TO TRANSMIT HUMAN LIFE, ITS SOCIAL CONTROL First, the limiting of population by the will of human individuals. In the beginning men stole fire from the gods; but life they allowed the Almighty to continue to dispense at his own inscrutable pleasure, while they remained his pleased but puzzled agents in its transmission. It was only in the eighties of the last century, after a hundred thousand years, that man hit upon the idea and the practice of controlling life as he had controlled fire. From the beginning, he had planted the fire-seed according to his own purpose and social need. And now at last he has come to look upon the life-seed as not simply in his keeping as a trust for another, but as his own property to control in the interest of his own future. Can human audacity reach higher? Can the assumption of divine and creative responsibility by man out-strip this latest act of self-government? From beast to citizen, did we say? But have we not found the process during the last four hundred years to be from citizenship to godship, from creature to creator? It was one of your American reformers who entitled a book _Man as Social Creator_. From beast to citizen seemed dull enough; but from citizen to God--what intoxication of zest does this thought engender! Can the creature dare it? Is this the great venture? Is this the meaning of the travail of the ages? Or is it only a process from citizen to man, from tamed beast to free spirit feeling the Soul of All at the inmost centre of himself, and finding the means at last of incarnating that soul in the community, in politics, trade, and domestic life? Howsoever the new facts and the newer outlook are to be interpreted, it becomes quite clear that if civilization was the taming of beasts, something that is not civilization has begun to assert itself. The liberating of citizens, as it moves to triumphant attainment, must scrap many an institution, many a habit, and set up the reverse of many a rule of conduct. We have indeed reached a new era, one which is not that of taming animals, when young women can--and know that they can--as war-brides strike against the labor of maternity and against the foreseen horror of a fate for one's offspring such as they would never choose for the fruit of their love. But, secondly, close upon the invention of means for controlling the transmission of life has followed the idea that this control shall not rest with the individuals most intimately concerned, but with the will of the community--of the nation--of federated humanity. If a man has no exclusive right to do as he pleases with his power of labor, to withhold it or direct it irrespective of the general welfare and the will of the commonweal, how much less, say the advocates of eugenic marriage, shall men and women be permitted to follow their own whim and their selfish pleasure as regards the use or waste of the power to communicate life? This new doctrine that men are only trustees for the nation and posterity in their central power to control the future quantity and quality of human beings whom they may bring into existence, recognizes no division of society into the tamed and the tamers. There is no class suggested of monopolists of social power who will regulate the rest of the community, as the owner of cattle controls the breeding of them. The general will of the community, administered under diffused public opinion and through the educated judgment of the individual himself, will decide. Only in cases of what are agreed to be downright crimes will the law step in to condemn and prevent, and then only through agents who are directly accountable to an enlightened and alert public opinion. The retaining of this new mastery of man over the quantity and quality of human life, by the communal conscience against all monopolists, is the transcendent feature of the new order. But if this be so, then trade, our system of producing and distributing wealth, ceases to be merely a question of the control of labor and becomes a question of the control of the transmission of human life. Such control might have been accounted a possible privilege among Virginian breeders of slaves. But so to regard it seems monstrous, now that chattel slavery has been universally condemned, thanks to the triumphant levellers of the last hundred years. What is more, all trade is beginning to be regarded as a question ultimately, not of the manufacture of machines and their products, nor of the propagation of plants and animals, but of the begetting of spiritual agents, who in their turn are to become the makers and masters of the universe in which they are to live. The third characteristic event of our century which is to help us to slough off civilization, as our ancestors ten thousand years ago rid themselves of the wild-beast features of barbarism and savagery, is the awakening of women. Their claim to social initiative and responsibility is the extremest possible reach of democratic self-assertion. The remarkable peculiarity of their entrance into trade is not, however, that they are women, but that they are the one half of mankind who have never worked for hire, but always from love, and who have desired the wage less than the approval of those they served. The morals of trade, as it has existed under the relation of master to wage-earner, even the ethics of trades-unionism, cannot survive the censure of women, who on other principles demand for themselves the right of maintenance by the state to protect them in the bearing and rearing of children and the making of homes, and the nursing of the wounded and the sick. Now that women no longer allow themselves as social agents to be ignored, they will insist that not only the morals of marriage and of democratic relations must become humane, but that all trade, as well as all legislation, must be guided by the eugenic motive. XXIII. FOREIGN TRADE THE BEGETTER OF WARS I have presumed to say that modern trade discloses civilization in its acutest form. The strict sobriety of this assertion we cannot, perhaps, appreciate to the full, unless we note the relation of trade during the last three hundred years to aggressive warfare. There prevails in the public mind the false notion that somehow peace and trade are akin in spirit and identical in their interests. This notion has been assiduously foisted upon the public by kings of industry and some professors of sociology, who possibly believe that it is true. But the facts of history prove that every great war during the last three centuries has been undertaken in the service of foreign traders, who call upon their government to back their claims. According to Sir John Seeley, the greatest political historian of the British Empire, foreign trade and modern war have always been one and the same thing. Some small nation-state resented the advent and methods of the foreign traders, and began to prepare for self-defence, asserting that it wished to be left alone, and that it meant to defend its own sacred traditions. This the government that backed the traders would not permit, and a clash of arms ensued. Or two rival sets of foreigners were jealous of each other in their effort to possess one and the same market and induced their respective governments to spring at each other's throats. Under such circumstances war does not always arise, because the mere show of vastly superior might is often sufficient to compel immediate submission. Such was the case when the United States in 1853 exhibited in the harbors of bewildered and terrified Japan a fleet of great steamships. The threatened nation, having admitted no foreigners since the Jesuits in the seventeenth century plotted against its political independence, and not knowing how to use steam to propel engines, saw that there was no alternative to violent conquest by their uninvited guests but peaceful submission on their own part. Such peace, however, is not the holy thing which some persons declare all peace to be. When a man holds up his hands in answer to the challenge of a highway robber, bloodshed is avoided; but the outrage is none the less detestable because perfect quiet prevails. Nor is it the kind of social calm which the angels meant when they proclaimed peace on earth to men of good will. On the contrary, it is that stillness of unchallenged iniquity of which our Lord expressed his menacing hate when He declared that He came not to bring peace but a sword. Trade illustrates civilization in its highest degree of intelligence and elaboration; and foreign trade is only trade in its widest transactions. But foreign trade being the cause of all war, the only way to end warfare is to displace civilization by a system of wealth produced and distributed under communal control. Then commerce will no longer be inspired by the financial interest of private investors, but by the total welfare of the whole people of the nation. But I have touched upon the identity of war and trade only to show their vital connection with civilization as a whole. XXIV. THE OPPOSITE OF A "RETURN TO NATURE" Civilization is still advancing by leaps and bounds. Nevertheless, at the same time, with a greater acceleration of development, the men are checkmating the master and transferring control and initiative to the will of the commonwealth. At least, not otherwise am I able to interpret the new deference for nationality which has been aroused in protest against aggressive militarism; nor the kind of industrial legislation that has been enacted during the last decade in California and other western states, in New Zealand and Australia, and even in Italy and England. It all means that the new inventions, although at first seized upon by monopolists, are seen to be such as to provide channels through which the pent-up instincts and hopes of the masses can act with concerted power. It means that also political machinery is being devised for securing the public welfare and protecting opportunities for individual genius and talent. No man asks for more. The world over we have reached the threshold of collective democracy, wherein the consuming of material wealth will be shared with approximate equality and wherein social control will be retained by the collective will, to safeguard individual initiative, and will be administered by public servants who have proved their superior ability, but who remain subject to almost instantaneous recall. Such a substitute for civilization, however, is the opposite of a return to the individualism of Nature or to a primeval communism. It presupposes the highest mastery of man over matter and social unity among all mankind co-operating as nation-states and federations of states. As regards external government and law, it is the antithesis of Mr. Carpenter's proposal that they should disappear, because they are the travesty of inward government and order. On the contrary, I hope that external government, animated by the general will of a social democratic commonwealth and vested in representatives sensitively accountable to an alert and intelligent public opinion, will appear to my listeners not as a travesty, but as the very incarnation of that inward government and order which every individual man must feel to be the law of his own being unless he has lost his manhood's centrality. A crushing indictment of Mr. Carpenter's modern movement back to Nature is to be found in the fact that it has declined instead of advancing during the twenty-six years since he wrote. Probably fewer persons in England preach salvation by sandals and sunbaths to-day than did a quarter of a century ago, while the sandals themselves and sunbaths have become but items among the general products of industry and governmental hygiene. The sunbath is only one of the many remedies prescribed to the poor by doctors impanelled by the British state, and the sandals are better made by machinery than by the hands of poetic hermits. But while the vision of philosophical anarchy has been fading away, whole nations on a gigantic scale have been subjecting the power of trusts and monopolies to the general will of the community. In America you have changed your federal law and many of your state constitutions, in order that the right of the common will to dictate may be unquestioned, and that no occasion for lawless violence need ever arise through any legal barrier to the full assertion of the mind of the common life. So in every particular of his cure for civilization Mr. Carpenter's worship of savagery and barbarism is being rejected as fantastic. We may return to uncooked fruits and grains. But what a task for the most highly developed industrial state, to raise and distribute an adequate supply of grapes, apples, and nuts the year round for the 1,000,000,000 inhabitants of the globe! What a call for many wizards of California to produce new species of luscious edibles! It would seem to me that the curse of civilization has lain in the direction of too little of either cooked or uncooked food, instead of too much. If the common people are to come into their own, trade in every necessity and luxury must be more highly integrated. The difference of the new era as regards foreign commerce will chiefly be that nations as a whole by their governments will conduct it instead of private traders. In other words, foreign trade will be nationalized, in the way that social democrats have long demanded that land and capital should be. The community will own and control it through state agents for the common welfare. Nothing of good which civilization has brought forth will be lost, nor will the organization of wealth be relaxed. Machinery will be multiplied a thousandfold. Like the human body itself, social life must become as complex as it can without losing its centrality. Be it remembered that the truly simple life is not gained by meagreness of possessions and interests, but by singleness of aim controlling a seemingly infinite number of detailed means. But this unity dominating a multiplicity of interests is attainable only through the entire mechanism of external government. And again, as the man resides in all the organs of the body, but is himself no organ, and as by the central unity of his life-energy is able to rush the white corpuscles to any part that is wounded or poisoned, so the general will, the community-self of the social democratic state, is beginning to direct all the healing agencies in the body politic to the rescue of the unfortunate. Such beneficence and benevolence, systematized and alert, is more than civilization. It is Christianity, it is the doing unto the least of one's fellow-men what self-interest prompts one never to do; but its power is equal to the redemptive goodness that inspires it. In motive and method it is not business, it is different from trade; for it is a progeny of pity. But nevertheless, it is socialized wealth and applied science and politics. It is government by the governed. When civilization has been superseded by this democratic process, which in our century is advancing at such rapid gait, there will surely be in the sphere of religion no more return to Nature than in that of economics. There will be no more the worship of any one instinct or organ, or any external object or agent. How could Carpenter have so far forgotten his own definition of health as to applaud the primitive ritualistic worship of the glories of the human body and the procession of the stars? That ritual was itself the symptom of the break-up of man's character into multiplicity, and the insubordination of specific organs. Surely when man has gained centrality of health, he will worship the unifying will which is dominant whenever health prevails. He will adore the spirit which makes the many one. But men will never gain that centrality of health until they have established this worship of the one heart that beats in every human breast and, being inspired with religious passion for it, have brought the entire economic order into conformity with its behests. _The Riverside Press_ CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS U · S · A 
10642	----	Proofreading Team. TOWARDS THE GREAT PEACE BY RALPH ADAMS CRAM, LITT.D., LL.D. 1922 INTRODUCTION For the course of lectures I am privileged to deliver at this time, I desire to take, in some sense as a text, a prayer that came to my attention at the outset of my preparatory work. It is adapted from a prayer by Bishop Hacket who flourished about the middle of the seventeenth century, and is as follows: _Lord, lift us out of Private-mindedness and give us Public souls to work for Thy Kingdom by daily creating that Atmosphere of a happy temper and generous heart which alone can bring the Great Peace._ Each thought in this noble aspiration is curiously applicable to each one of us in the times in which we fall: the supersession of narrow and selfish and egotistical "private-mindedness" by a vital passion for the winning of a Kingdom of righteousness consonant with the revealed will of God; the lifting of souls from nervous introspection to a height where they become indeed "public souls"; the accomplishing of the Kingdom not by great engines of mechanical power but by the daily offices of every individual; the substitution in place of current hatred, fear and jealous covetousness, of the unhappy temper and "generous heart" which are the only fruitful agencies of accomplishment. Finally, the "Great Peace" as the supreme object of thought and act and aspiration for us, and for all the world, at this time of crisis which has culminated through the antithesis of great peace, which is great war. I have tried to keep this prayer of Bishop Hacket's before me during the preparation of these lectures. I cannot claim that I have succeeded in achieving a "happy temper" in all things, but I honestly claim that I have striven earnestly for the "generous heart," even when forced, by what seem to me the necessities of the case, to indulge in condemnation or to bring forward subjects which can only be controversial. If the "Great War," and the greater war which preceded, comprehended, and followed it, were the result of many and varied errors, it matters little whether these were the result of perversity, bad judgment or the most generous impulses. As they resulted in the Great War, so they are a detriment to the Great Peace that must follow, and therefore they must be cast away. Consciousness of sin, repentance, and a will to do better, must precede the act of amendment, and we must see where we have erred if we are to forsake our ill ways and make an honest effort to strive for something better. For every failure I have made to achieve either a happy temper or a generous heart, I hereby express my regret, and tender my apologies in advance. CONTENTS LECTURE INTRODUCTION I. A WORLD AT THE CROSSROADS II. A WORKING PHILOSOPHY III. THE SOCIAL ORGANISM IV. THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM V. THE POLITICAL ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY VI. THE FUNCTION OF EDUCATION AND ART VII. THE PROBLEM OF ORGANIC RELIGION VIII. PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY APPENDIX A APPENDIX B TOWARDS THE GREAT PEACE I A WORLD AT THE CROSSROADS For two thousand years Christianity has been an operative force in the world; for more than a century democracy has been the controlling influence in the public affairs of Europe and the Americas; for two generations education, free, general and comprehensive, has been the rule in the West. Wealth incomparable, scientific achievements unexampled in their number and magnitude, facile means of swift intercommunication between peoples, have all worked together towards an earthly realization of the early nineteenth-century dream of proximate and unescapable millennium. With the opening of the second decade of the twentieth century it seemed that the stage was set for the last act in an unquestioned evolutionary drama. Man was master of all things, and the failures of the past were obliterated by the glory of the imminent event. The Great War was a progressive revelation and disillusionment. Therein, everything so carefully built up during the preceding four centuries was tried as by fire, and each failed--save the indestructible qualities of personal honour, courage and fortitude. Nothing corporate, whether secular or ecclesiastical, endured the test, nothing of government or administration, of science or industry, of philosophy or religion. The victories were those of individual character, the things that stood the test were not things but _men._ The "War to end war," the war "to make the world safe for democracy" came to a formal ending, and for a few hours the world gazed spellbound on golden hopes. Greater than the disillusionment of war was that of the making of the peace. There had never been a war, not even the "Thirty Years' War" in Germany, the "Hundred Years' War" in France or the wars of Napoleon, that was fraught with more horror, devastation and dishonour; there had never been a Peace, not even those of Berlin, Vienna and Westphalia, more cynical or more deeply infected with the poison of ultimate disaster. And here it was not things that failed, but _men._ What of the world since the Peace of Versailles? Hatred, suspicion, selfishness are the dominant notes. The nations of Europe are bankrupt financially, and the governments of the world are bankrupt politically. Society is dissolving into classes and factions, either at open war or manoeuvering for position, awaiting the favourable moment. Law and order are mocked at, philosophy and religion disregarded, and of all the varied objects of human veneration so loudly acclaimed and loftily exalted by the generation that preceded the war, not one remains to command a wide allegiance. One might put it in a sentence and say that everyone is dissatisfied with everything, and is showing his feelings after varied but disquieting fashion. It is a condition of unstable equilibrium constantly tending by its very nature to a point where dissolution is apparently inevitable. It is no part of my task to elaborate this thesis, and still less to magnify its perils. Enough has been said and written on this subject during the last two years; more than enough, perhaps, and in any case no thinking person is unaware of the conditions that exist, whatever may be his estimate of their significance, his interpenetration of their tendency. I have set myself the task of trying to suggest some constructive measures that we may employ in laying the foundations for the immediate future; they may be wrong in whole or in part, but at least my object and motive are not recrimination or invective, but regeneration. Nevertheless, as a foundation the case must be stated, and as a necessary preparation to any work that looks forward we must have at least a working hypothesis as to how the conditions that need redemption were brought about. I state the case thus, therefore: That human society, even humanity itself, is now in a state of flux that at any moment may change into a chaos comparable only with that which came with the fall of classical civilization and from which five centuries were necessary for the process of recovery. Christianity, democracy, science, education, wealth, and the cumulative inheritance of a thousand years, have not preserved us from the vain repetition of history. How has this been possible, what has been the sequence of events that has brought us to this pass? It is of course the result of the interaction of certain physical, material facts and certain spiritual forces. Out of these spiritual energies come events, phenomena that manifest themselves in political, social, ecclesiastical transactions and institutions; in wars, migrations and the reshaping of states; in codes of law, the organization of society, the development of art, literature and science. In their turn all these concrete products work on the minds and souls of men, modifying old spiritual impulses either by exaltation or degradation, bringing new ones into play; and again these react on the material fabric of human life, causing new combinations, unloosing new forces, that in their turn play their part in the eternal process of building, unbuilding and rebuilding our unstable and fluctuant world. Underlying all the varied material forms of ancient society, as this developed around the shores of the Mediterranean, was the great fact of slavery: Persia, Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, all were small, sometimes very small, minorities of highly developed, highly privileged individuals existing on a great sub-stratum of slaves. All the vast contributions of antiquity in government and law, in science, letters, art and philosophy, all the building of the culture and civilization that still remain the foundation stones of human society, was the work of the few free subsisting on the many un-free. But freedom, liberty, is an attribute of the soul and it may exist even when the body is in bondage. The slaves of antiquity were free neither in body nor in soul, but with the coming of Christianity all this was changed, for it is one of the great glories of the Christian religion that it gave freedom to the soul even before the Church could give freedom to the body of the slave. After the fall of the Roman Empire, and with the infiltration of the free races of the North, slavery gradually disappeared, and between the years 1000 and 1500 a very real liberty existed as the product of Christianity and under its protection. Society was hierarchical: from the serf up through the peasant, the guildsman, the burgher, the knighthood, the nobles, to the King, and so to the Emperor, there was a regular succession of graduations, but the lines of demarcation were fluid and easily passed, and as through the Church, the schools and the cloister there was an open road for the son of a peasant to achieve the Papacy, so through the guilds, chivalry, war and the court, the layman, if he possessed ability, might from an humble beginning travel far. An epoch of real liberty, of body, soul and mind, and the more real in that limits, differences and degrees were recognized, accepted and enforced. This condition existed roughly for five centuries in its swift rise, its long dominion and its slow decline, that is to say, from 1000 A.D. to 1500 A.D. There was still the traditional aristocracy, now feudal rather than patriarchal or military; there was still a servile class, now reduced to a small minority. In between was the great body of men of a degree of character, ability and intelligence, and with a recognized status, the like of which had never been seen before. It was not a bourgeoisie, for it was made up of producers,--agricultural, artisan, craft, art, mechanic; a great free society, the proudest product of Christian civilization. With the sixteenth century began a process of change that was to overturn all this and bring in something radically different. The Renaissance and the Reformation worked in a sense together to build up their own expressive form of society, and when this process had been completed we find still an aristocracy, though rapidly changing in the quality of its personnel and in the sense of its relationship to the rest of society; a servile class, the proletariat, enormously increased in proportion to the other social components; and two new classes, one the bourgeoisie, essentially non-producers and subsisting largely either on trade, usury or management, and the pauper, a phase of life hitherto little known under the Christian regime. The great body of free citizens that had made up the majority of society during the preceding epoch, the small land-holders, citizens, craftsmen and artists of fifty different sorts, has begun rapidly to dissolve, has almost vanished by the middle of the seventeenth century, and in another hundred years has practically disappeared. What had become of them, of this great bulk of the population of western Europe that, with the feudal aristocracy, the knighthood and the monks had made Mediaevalism? Some had degenerated into bourgeois traders, managers and financeers, but the great majority had been crushed down and down in the mass of submerged proletariat, losing liberty, degenerating in character, becoming more and more servile in status and wretched in estate, so forming a huge, inarticulate, dully ebullient mass, cut off from society, cut off almost from life itself. I must insist on these three factors in the development of society and its present catastrophe: the great, predominant, central body of free men during the Middle Ages, their supersession during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by a non-producing bourgeoisie, and the creation during the same period of a submerged proletariat. They are factors of great significance and potential force. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the industrial-financial revolution began. Within the space of an hundred years came all the revelations of the potential inherent in thermo-dynamics and electricity, and the invention of the machines that have changed the world. During the Renaissance and Reformation the old social and economic systems, so laboriously built up on the ruins of Roman tyranny, had been destroyed; autocracy had abolished liberty, licentiousness had wrecked the moral stamina, "freedom of conscience" had obliterated the guiding and restraining power of the old religion. The field was clear for a new dispensation. What happened was interesting and significant. Coal and iron, and their derivatives--steam and machinery--rapidly revealed their possibilities. To take advantage of these, it was necessary that labour should be available in large quantities and freely subject to exploitation; that unlimited capital should be forthcoming; that adequate markets should be discovered or created to absorb the surplus product, so enormously greater than the normal demand; and finally, it was necessary that directors and organizers and administrators should be ready at the call. The conditions of the time made all these possible. The land-holding peasantry of England--and it is here that the revolution was accomplished--had been largely dispossessed and pauperized under Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth, while the development of the wool-growing industry had restricted the arable land to a point where it no longer gave employment to the mass of field labourers. The first blast of factory production threw out of work the whole body of cottage weavers, smiths, craftsmen; and the result was a great mass of men, women, and children without defense, void of all rights, and given the alternative of submission to the dominance of the exploiters, or starvation. Without capital the new industry could neither begin nor continue. The exploits of the "joint-stock companies" invented and perfected in the eighteenth century, showed how this capital could easily be obtained, while the paralyzing and dismemberment of the Church during the Reformation had resulted in the abrogation of the old ecclesiastical inhibition against usury. The necessary capital was forthcoming, and the foundations were laid for the great system of finance which was one of the triumphant achievements of the last century. The question of markets was more difficult. It was clear that, through machinery, the exploitation of labour, and the manipulations of finance, the product would be enormously greater than the local or national demand. Until they themselves developed their own industrial system, the other nations of Europe were available, but as this process proceeded other markets had to be found; the result was achieved through advertising, i.e., the stimulating in the minds of the general public of a covetousness for something they had not known of and did not need, and the exploiting of barbarous or undeveloped races in Asia, Africa, Oceanica. This last task was easily achieved through "peaceful penetration" and the preëmpting of "spheres of influence." In the end (i.e., A.D. 1914), the whole world had so been divided, the stimulated markets showed signs of repletion, and since exaggerated profits meant increasing capital demanding investment, and the improvement in "labour-saving" devices continued unchecked, the contest for others' markets became acute, and world-politic was concentrated on the vital problem of markets, lines of communication, and tariffs. As for the finding or development of competent organizers and directors, the history of the world since the end of medievalism had curiously provided for this after a fashion that seemed almost miraculous. The type required was different from anything that had been developed before. Whenever the qualitative standard had been operative, it was necessary that the leaders in any form of creative action should be men of highly developed intellect, fine sensibility, wide and penetrating vision, nobility of instinct, passion for righteousness, and a consciousness of the eternal force of charity, honour, and service. During the imperial or decadent stages, courage, dynamic force, the passion for adventure, unscrupulousness in the matter of method, took the place of the qualities that marked the earlier periods. In the first instance the result was the great law-givers, philosophers, prophets, religious leaders, and artists of every sort; in the second, the great conquerors. Something quite different was now demanded--men who possessed some of the qualities needed for the development of imperialism, but who were unhampered by the restrictive influences of those who had sought perfection. To organize and administer the new industrial-financial-commercial régime, the leaders must be shrewd, ingenious, quick-witted, thick-skinned, unscrupulous, hard-headed, and avaricious; yet daring, dominating, and gifted with keen prevision and vivid imagination. These qualities had not been bred under any of the Mediterranean civilizations, or that of Central Europe in the Middle Ages, which had inherited so much therefrom. The pursuit of perfection always implies a definite aristocracy, which is as much a goal of effort as a noble philosophy, an august civil polity or a great art. This aristocracy was an accepted and indispensable part of society, and it was always more or less the same in principle, and always the centre and source of leadership, without which society cannot endure. It is true that at the hands of Christianity it acquired a new quality, that of service as contingent on privilege--one might almost say of privilege as contingent on service--and the ideals of honour, chivalry, compassion were established as its object and method of operation even though these were not always achieved, but the result was not a new creation; it was an institution as old as society, regenerated and transformed and playing a greater and a nobler part than ever before. Between the years 1455 and 1795 this old aristocracy was largely exterminated. The Wars of the Roses, the massacres of the Reformation, and the Civil Wars in England; the Thirty Years' War in Germany; the Hundred Years' War, the Wars of Religion, and the Revolution in France had decimated the families old in honour, preserving the tradition of culture, jealous of their alliances and their breeding--the natural and actual leaders in thought and action. England suffered badly enough as the result of war, with the persecutions of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth, and the Black Death, included for full measure. France suffered also, but Germany fared worst of all. By the end of the Thirty Years' War the older feudal nobility had largely disappeared, while the class of "gentlemen" had been almost exterminated. In France, until the fall of Napoleon III, and in Germany and Great Britain up to the present moment, the recruiting of the formal aristocracy has gone on steadily, but on a different basis and from a different class from anything known before. Demonstrated personal ability to gain and maintain leadership; distinguished service to the nation in war or statecraft; courage, honour, fealty--these, in general, had been the ground for admission to the ranks of the aristocracy. In general, also, advancement to the ranks of the higher nobility was from the class of "gentlemen," though the Church, the universities, and chivalry gave, during the Middle Ages, wide opportunity for personal merit to achieve the highest honours. Through the wholesale destruction of the representatives of a class that from the beginning of history had been the directing and creative force in civilization, a process began which was almost mechanical. As the upper strata of society were planed off by war, pestilence, civil slaughter, and assassination, the pressure on the great mass of men (peasants, serfs, unskilled labourers, the so-called "lower classes") was increasingly relaxed, and very soon the thin film of aristocracy, further weakened by dilution, broke, and through the crumbling shell burst to the surface those who had behind them no tradition but that of servility, no comprehension of the ideals of chivalry and honour of the gentleman, no stored-up results of education and culture, but only an age-long rage against the age-long dominating class, together with the instincts of craftiness, parsimony, and almost savage self-interest. As a class, it was very far from being what it was under the Roman Empire; on the other hand, it was equally removed from what it was during the Middle Ages in England, France and the Rhineland. Under mediaevalism chattel slavery had disappeared, and the lot of the peasant was a happier one than he had known before. He had achieved definite status, and the line that separated him from the gentry was very thin and constantly traversed, thanks to the accepted system of land tenure, the guilds, chivalry, the schools and universities, the priesthood and monasticism. The Renaissance had rapidly changed all this, however; absolutism in government, dispossession of land, the abolition of the guilds, and the collapse of the moral order and of the dominance of the Church, were fast pushing the peasant back into the position he had held under the Roman Empire, and from which Christianity had lifted him. By 1790 he had been for nearly three centuries under a progressive oppression that had undone nearly all the beneficent work of the Middle Ages and made the peasant class practically outlaw, while breaking down its character, degrading its morals, increasing its ignorance, and building up a sullen rage and an invincible hatred of all that stood visible as law and order in the persons of the ruling class. Filtering through the impoverished and diluted crust of a dissolving aristocracy, came this irruption from below. In their own persons certain of these people possessed the qualities and the will which were imperative for the organization of the industry, the trade, and the finance that were to control the world for four generations, and produce that industrial civilization which is the basis and the energizing force of modernism. Immediately, and with conspicuous ability, they took hold of the problem, solved its difficulties, developed its possibilities, and by the end of the nineteenth century had made it master of the world. Simultaneously an equal revolution and reversal was being effected in government. The free monarchies of the Middle Ages, beneath which lay the well recognized principle that no authority, human or divine, could give any monarch the right to govern wrong, and that there was such a thing (frequently exercised) as lawful rebellion, gave place to the absolutism and autocracy of Renaissance kingship and this, which was fostered both by Renaissance and Reformation, became at once the ally of the new forces in society and so furthered the growth as well as the misery and the degradation of the proletariat. In revolt against this new and very evil thing came the republicanism of the eighteenth century, inspired and directed in large measure by members of the fast perishing aristocracy of race, character and tradition. It was a splendid uprising against tyranny and oppression and is best expressed in the personalities and the actions of the Constitutional Convention of the United States in 1787 and the States General of France in 1789. The movement is not to be confounded with another that synchronizes with it, that is to say, democracy, for the two things are radically different in their antecedents, their protagonists, their modes of operation and their objects. While the one was the aspiration and the creation of the more enlightened and cultured, the representatives of the old aristocracy, the other issued out of the same _milieu_ that was responsible for the new social organism. That is to say; while certain of the more shrewd and ingenious were organizing trade, manufacture and finance and developing its autocratic and imperialistic possibilities at the expense of the great mass of their blood-brothers, others of the same social antecedents were devising a new theory, and experimenting in new schemes, of government, which would take all power away from the class that had hitherto exercised it and fix it firmly in the hands of the emancipated proletariat. This new model was called then, and is called now, democracy. Elsewhere I have tried to distinguish between democracy of theory and democracy of method. Perhaps I should have used a more lucid nomenclature if I had simply distinguished between republicanism and democracy, for this is what it amounts to. The former is as old as man, and is part of the "passion for perfection" that characterizes all crescent society, and is indeed the chief difference between brute and human nature; it means the guaranteeing of justice, and may be described as consisting of abolition of privilege, equality of opportunity, and utilization of ability. Democracy of method consists in a variable and uncertain sequence of devices which are supposed to achieve the democracy of ideal, but as a matter of fact have thus far usually worked in the opposite direction. The activity of this movement synchronizes with the pressing upward of the "the masses" through the dissolving crust of "the classes," and represents their contribution to the science of political philosophy, as the contribution of the latter is current "political economy." It will be perceived that the reaction of the new social force in the case of industrial organization is fundamentally opposed to that which occurred in the political sphere. The one is working steadily towards an autocratic imperialism and the "servile state," the other towards the fluctuating, incoherent control of the making and administering of laws by the untrained, the uncultivated, and the generally unfit, the issue of which is anarchy. The industrial-commercial-financial oligarchy that dominated society for the century preceding the Great War is the result of the first; Russia, today, is an exemplar of the second. The working out of these two great devices of the new force released by the destructive processes of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, simultaneously though in apparent opposition, explains why, when the war broke out, imperialism and democracy synchronized so exactly: on the one hand, imperial states, industry, commerce, and finance; on the other, a swiftly accelerating democratic system that was at the same time the effective means whereby the dominant imperialism worked, and the omnipresent and increasing threat to its further continuance. A full century elapsed before victory became secure, or even proximate. Republicanism rapidly extended itself to all the governments of western Europe, but it could not maintain itself in its primal integrity. Sooner here, later there, it surrendered to the financial, industrial, commercial forces that were taking over the control and direction of society, becoming partners with them and following their aims, conniving at their schemes, and sharing in their ever-increasing profits. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century these supposedly "free" governments had become as identified with "special privilege," and as widely severed from the people as a whole, as the autocratic governments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while they failed consistently to match them in effectiveness, energy and efficiency of operation. For this latter condition democracy was measurably responsible. For fifty years it had been slowly filtering into the moribund republican system until at last, during the same first decade of the present century, it had wholly transformed the governmental system, making it, whatever its outward form, whether constitutional monarchy, or republic, essentially democratic. So government became shifty, opportunist, incapable, and without the inherent energy to resist, beyond a certain point, the last great effort of the emergent proletariat to destroy, not alone the industrial civilization it justly detested, but the very government it had acquired by "peaceful penetration" and organized and administered along its chosen lines, and indeed the very fabric of society itself. Now these two remarkable products of the new mentality of a social force were facts, but they needed an intellectual or philosophical justification just as a low-born profiteer, when he has acquired a certain amount of money, needs an expensive club or a coat of arms to regularize his status. Protestantism and materialistic philosophy were joint nursing-mothers to modernism, but when, by the middle of the last century, it had reached man's estate, they proved inadequate; something else was necessary, and this was furnished to admiration by evolutionism. Through its doctrine of the survival of the fittest, it appeared to justify in the fullest degree the gospel of force as the final test, and "enlightened self-interest" as the new moral law; through its lucid demonstration of the strictly physical basis of life, the "descent of man" from primordial slime by way of the lemur or the anthropoid ape, and the non-existence of any supernatural power that had devised, or could determine, a code of morality in which certain things were eternal by right, and other than the variable reactions of very highly developed animals to experience and environment, it had given weighty support to the increasingly popular movement towards democracy both in theory and in act. Its greatest contribution, however, was its argument that, since the invariable law of life was one of progressive evolution, therefore the acquired characteristics which formed the material of evolution, and were heritable, could be mechanically increased in number by education; hence the body of inheritance (which unfortunately varied as between man and man because of past discrepancies in environment, opportunities, and education) could be equalized by a system of teaching that aimed to furnish that mental and physical training hitherto absent. Whether the case was ever so stated in set terms does not matter; very shortly this became the firm conviction of the great mass of men, and the modern democracy of method is based on the belief that all men are equal because they are men, and that free, compulsory, secularized, state-controlled education can and does remove the last difference that made possible any discrimination in rights and privileges as between one man and another. In another respect, however, the superstition of mechanical evolution played an important part, and with serious results. Neither the prophets nor the camp-followers seemed to realize that evolution, while undoubtedly a law of life within certain limits, was inseparable from degradation which was its concomitant, that is to say, that as the rocket rises so must it fall; as man is conceived, born and matures, even so must he die. The wave rises, but falls again; the state waxes to greatness, wanes, and the map knows it no more; each epoch of human history arises out of dim beginnings, magnifies itself in glory, and then yields to internal corruption, dilution and adulteration of blood, or prodigal dissipation of spiritual force, and takes its place in the annals of ancient history. Without recognition of this implacable, unescapable fact of degradation sequent on evolution, the later becomes a delusion and an instrument of death, for the eyes of man are blind to incipient or crescent dangers; content, self-secure, lost in a vain dream of manifest destiny they are deaf to warnings, incapable even of the primary gestures of self-defense. Such was one of the results of nineteenth-century evolutionism, and the generation that saw the last years of the nineteenth century and the first part of the new, basking in its day dreams of self-complacency, made no move to avert the dangers that threatened it then and now menace it with destruction. When, therefore, modernism achieved its grand climacteric in July, 1914, we had on the one hand an imperialism of force, in industry, commerce, and finance, expressing itself through highly developed specialists, and dictating the policies and practices of government, society, and education; on the other, a democracy of form which denied, combated, and destroyed distinction in personality and authority in thought, and discouraged constructive leadership in the intellectual, spiritual, and artistic spheres of activity. The opposition was absolute, the results catastrophic. The lack of competent leadership in every category of life finds a sufficient explanation in the two opposed forces, in their origin and nature, and in the fact of their opposition. In the somewhat garish light of the War and the Peace, it would not be difficult to feel a real and even poignant sympathy for two causes that were prominent and popular in the first fourteen years of the present century, namely, the philosophy that based itself on a mechanical system of evolution which predicted unescapable, irreversible human progress, and that religion which denied the reality of evil in the world. The plausibility of each was dissipated by the catastrophic events though both still linger in stubborn unconsciousness of their demise. The impulse towards sympathy is mitigated by realization of the unfortunate effect they exerted on history. This is particularly true of evolutionary philosophy, which was held as an article of faith, either consciously or sub-consciously, by the greater part of Western society. Not only did it deter men from realizing the ominous tendency of events but, more unhappily, it minimized their power to discriminate between what was good and bad in current society, and even reversed their sense of comparative values. If man was indeed progressing steadily from bad to good, and so to better and best, then the vivid and even splendid life of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, with its headlong conquest of the powers of nature, its enormous industrial development, its vast and ever-increasing wealth in material things, must be not only an amazing advance beyond any former civilization but positively good in itself, while the future could only be a progressive magnifying of what then was going on. "Just as" to quote Mr. Chesterton's admirable Dr. Pelkins, "just as when we see a pig in a litter larger than the other pigs, we know that by an unalterable law of the Inscrutable, it will some day be larger than an elephant...so we know and reverently acknowledge that when any power in human politics has shown for any period of time any considerable activity, it will go on until it reaches the sky." Nothing but a grave inability to estimate values, based on a pseudo-scientific dogma, can explain the lack of any just standard of comparative values that was the essential quality in pre-war society. Extraordinary as were the material achievements of the time, beneficent in certain ways, and susceptible in part of sometime being used to the advantage of humanity, they were largely negatived, and even reversed in value, just because the sense of proportion had been lost. The image which might have stimulated reverence had become a fetish. There were voices crying in the wilderness against a worship that had poisoned into idolatry, but they were unheard. Progressively the real things of life were blurred and forgotten and the things that were so obviously real that they were unreal became the object and the measure of achievement. It was an unhappy and almost fatal attitude of mind, and it was engendered not so much by the trend of civilization since the Renaissance and Reformation, nor by the compulsion and cumulative influence of the things themselves, as by the natural temper and inclinations and the native standards of this emancipated mass of humanity that, oppressed, outraged and degraded for four hundred years had at last burst out of its prison-house and had assumed control of society through industrialism, politics and social life. The saving grace of the old aristocracies had disappeared with the institution itself: between 1875 and 1900 the great single leaders, so fine in character, so brilliant in capacity, so surprising in their numbers, that had given a deceptive glory to the so-called Victorian Age, had almost wholly died out, and the new conditions neither fostered the development of adequate successors, nor gave audience to the few that, anomalously, appeared. It is not surprising therefore that the new social element that had played so masterly a part in bringing to its perfection the industrial-financial-democratic scheme of life should have developed an apologetic therefor, and imposed it, with all its materialism, its narrowness, its pragmatism, its, at times, grossness and cynicism, on the mind of a society where increasingly their own followers were, by sheer energy and efficiency, acquiring a predominant position. I am not unconscious that these are hard sayings and that few indeed will accept them. They seem too much like attempting that which Burke said was impossible, viz., to bring an indictment against a people. I intend nothing of the sort. Out of this same body of humanity which _as a whole_ has exerted this very unfavourable influence on modern society, have come and will come personalities of sudden and startling nobility, men who have done as great service as any of their contemporaries whatever their class or status. Out of the depths have come those who have ascended to the supreme heights, for since Christianity came into the world to free the souls of men, this new liberty has worked without limitations of caste or race. Indeed, the very creations of the emergent force, industrialism and democracy, while they were the betrayal of the many were the opportunity of the few, taking the place, as they did, of the older creeds of specifically Christian society, and inviting those who would to work their full emancipation and so become the servants of God and mankind. By the very bitterness of their antecedents, the cruelty of their inheritance, they gained a deeper sense of the reality of life, a more just sense of right and wrong, a clearer vision of things as they were, than happened in the case of those who had no such experience of the deep brutality of the regime of post-Renaissance society. True as this is, it is also true that for one who won through there were many who gained nothing, and it was, and is, the sheer weight of numbers of those who failed of this that has made their influence on the modern life as pervasive and controlling as it is. What has happened is a certain degradation of character, a weakening of the moral stamina of men, and against this no mechanical device in government, no philosophical or social theory, can stand a chance of successful resistance, while material progress in wealth and trade and scientific achievement becomes simply a contributory force in the process of degeneration. For this degradation of character we are bound to hold this new social force in a measure responsible, even though it has so operated because of its inherent qualities and in no material respect through conscious cynicism or viciousness; indeed it is safe to say that in so far as it was acting consciously it was with good motives, which adds an element of even greater tragedy to a situation already sufficiently depressing. If I am right in holding this to be the effective cause of the situation we have now to meet, it is true that it is by no means the only one. The emancipation and deliverance of the downtrodden masses of men who owed their evil estate to the destruction of the Christian society of the Middle Ages, was a clamourous necessity; it was a slavery as bad in some ways as any that had existed in antiquity, and the number of its victims was greater. The ill results of the accomplished fact was largely due to the condition of religion which existed during the period of emancipation. No society can endure without vital religion, and any revolution effected at a time when religion is moribund or dissipated in contentious fragments, is destined to be evacuated of its ideals and its potential, and to end in disaster. Now the freeing of the slaves of the Renaissance and the post-Reformation, and their absorption in the body politic, was one of the greatest revolutions in history, and it came at a time when religion, which had been one and vital throughout Western Europe for six centuries, had been shattered and nullified, and its place taken, in the lands that saw the great liberation, by Calvinism, Lutheranism, Puritanism and atheism, none of which could exert a guiding and redemptive influence on the dazed hordes that had at last come up into the light of day. In point of fact, therefore, we are bound to trace back the responsibility for the present crisis even to the Reformation itself, as well as to the tyranny and absolutism of government, and the sordid and profligate ordering of society, which followed on the end of Mediaevalism. So then we stand today confronting a situation that is ominous and obscure, since the very ideals and devices which we had held were the last word in progressive evolution have failed at the crisis, and because we who created them and have worked through them, have failed in character, and chiefly because we have accepted low ideals and inferior standards imposed upon us by social elements betrayed and abandoned by a world that could not aid them or assimilate them since itself had betrayed the only thing that could give them force, unity and coherency, that is, a vital and pervasive religious faith. There are those who hold our case to be desperate, to whom the disillusionment of peace, after the high optimism engendered by the vast heroism and the exalted ideals instigated by the war, has brought nothing but a mood of deep pessimism. The sentiment is perhaps natural, but it is none the less both irrational and wicked. If it is persisted in, if it becomes widespread, it may perfectly well justify itself, but only so. We no longer accept the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, we believe, and must highly believe, that our fate is of our own making, for Christianity has made us the heirs of free-will. What we will that shall we be, or rather, what we _are_ that shall we will, and if we make of ourselves what, by the grace of God, we may, then the victory rests with us. It is true that we are in the last years of a definite period, on that decline that precedes the opening of a new epoch. Never in history has any such period overpassed its limit of five hundred years, and ours, which came to birth in the last half of the fifteenth century, cannot outlast the present. But these declining years are preceding those wherein all things are made new, and the next two generations will see, not alone the passing of what we may call modernism, since it is our own age, but the prologue of the epoch that is to come. It is for us to say what this shall be. It is not foreordained; true, if we will it, it may be a reign of disaster, a parallel to the well-recognized "Dark Ages" of history, but also, if we will, it may be a new and a true "renaissance," a rebirth of old ideals, of old honour, of old faith, only incarnate in new and noble forms. The vision of an old heaven and a new earth was vouchsafed us during the war, when horror and dishonour and degradation were shot through and through with an epic heroism and chivalry and self-sacrifice. What if this all did fade in the miasma of Versailles and the cynicism of trade fighting to get back to "normalcy," and the red anarchy out of the East? There is no fiat of God that fixes these things as eternal. Even they also may be made the instruments of revelation and re-creation. Paris and London, Rome, Berlin and Washington are meshed in the tangled web of the superannuated who cannot escape the incubus of the old ways and the old theories that were themselves the cause of the war and of the failure of "modern civilization," but another generation is taking the field and we must believe that this has been burned out of them. They may have achieved this great perfection in the field, they may have experienced it through those susceptible years of life just preceding military age. It does not matter. Somehow they have it, and those who come much in contact in school or college with boys and men between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five, know, and thankfully confess, that if they can control the event the future is secure. In the harlequinade of fabulous material success the nations of "modern civilization" suffered a moral deterioration, in themselves and in their individual members; by a moral regeneration they may be saved. How is this to be accomplished? How, humanly speaking, is the redemption of society to be achieved? Not alone by change of heart in each individual, though if this could be it would be enough. Humanly speaking there is not time and we dare not hope for the divine miracle whereby "in the twinkling of an eye we shall all be changed." Still less by sole reliance on some series of new political, social, economic and educational devices; there is no plan, however wise and profound, that can work effectively under the dead weight of a society that is made up of individuals whose moral sense is defective. Either of these two methods, put into operation by itself, will fail. Acting together they may succeed. I repeat what I have said before. The material thing and the spiritual force work by inter-action and coördinately. The abandonment or reform of some device that has proved evil or inadequate, and the substitution of something better, changes to that extent the environment of the individual and so enables him more perfectly to develop his inherent possibilities in character and capacity, while every advance in this direction reacts on the machinery of life and makes its improvement more possible. With a real sense of my own personal presumption, but with an equally real sense of the responsibility that rests on every man at the present crisis, I shall venture certain suggestions as to possible changes that may well be effected in the material forms of contemporary society as well as in its methods of thought, in order that the spiritual energies of the individual may be raised to a higher level through the amelioration of a hampering environment, and, with even greater diffidence, others that may bear more directly on the character-development of the individual. In following out this line of thought I shall, in the remaining seven lectures, speak successively on: A Working Philosophy; The Social Organism; The Industrial and Economic Problem; The Political Organization of Society; The Function of Education and Art; The Problem of Organic Religion; and Personal Responsibility. I am only too conscious of the fact that the division of my subject under these categorical heads, and the necessities of special argument, if not indeed of special pleading, have forced me to such particular stress on each subject as may very likely give an impression of undue emphasis. If each lecture were to be taken by itself, such an impression would, I fear, be unescapable; I ask therefore for the courtesy of a suspension of judgment until the series is completed, for it is only when taken as a whole, one paper reacting upon and modifying another, that whatever merit the course possesses can be made apparent. II A WORKING PHILOSOPHY[*] [*This lecture has been very considerably re-written since it was delivered, and much of the matter it then contained has been cut out, and is now printed in the Appendix. These excisions were purely speculative, and while they have a certain bearing on the arguments and conclusions in the other lectures, might very well be prejudicial to them, and for this reason it has seemed better to remove them from the general sequence and give them a supplementary place by themselves.] The first reaction of the World War was a great interrogation, and the technical "Peace" that has followed brings only reiteration. Why did these things come, and how? The answers are as manifold as the clamourous tongues that ask, but none carries conviction and the problem is still unsolved. According to all rational probabilities we had no right to expect the war that befell; according to all the human indications as we saw them revealed amongst the Allies we had a right to expect a better peace; according to our abiding and abounding faith we had a right to expect a great bettering of life after the war, and even in spite of the peace. It is all a _non sequitur,_ and still we ask the reason and the meaning of it all. It may be very long before the full answer is given, yet if we are searching the way towards "The Great Peace" we must establish some working theory, if only that we may redeem our grave errors and avoid like perils in the future. The explanation I assume for myself, and on which I must work, is that, in spite of our intentions (which were of the best) we were led into the development, acceptance and application of a false philosophy of life which was not only untenable in itself but was vitiated and made noxious through its severance from vital religion. In close alliance with this declension of philosophy upon a basis that had been abandoned by the Christian world for a thousand years, perhaps as the ultimate reason for its occurrence, was the tendency to void religion of its vital power, to cut it out of intimate contact with life, and, in the end, to abandon it altogether as an energizing force interpenetrating all existence and controlling it in certain definite directions and after certain definite methods. The rather complete failure of our many modern and ingenious institutions, the failure of institutionalism altogether, is due far less to wrong theories underlying them, or to radical defects in their technique, than it is to this false philosophy and this progressive abandonment of religion. The wrong theories were there, and the mechanical defects, for the machines were conditioned by the principle that lay behind them, but effort at correction and betterment will make small progress unless we first regain the right religion and a right philosophy. I said this to Henri Bergson last year in Paris and his reply was significant as coming from a philosopher. "Yes," he said, "you are right; and of the two, the religion is the more important." If we had this back, and in full measure; if society were infused by it, through and through, and men lived its life, and in its life, philosophy would take care of itself and the nature of our institutions would not matter. On the other hand, without it, no institution can be counted safe, or will prove efficacious, while no philosophy, however lofty and magisterial, can take its place, or even play its own part in the life of man or society. I must in these lectures say much about institutions themselves, but first I shall try to indicate what seem to me the more serious errors in current philosophy, leaving until after a study of the material forms which are so largely conditioned by the philosophical attitude, the consideration of that religion, both organic and personal, which I believe can alone verify the philosophy, give the institutions life and render them reliable agencies for good. For a working definition of philosophy, in the sense in which I use it here, I will take two sayings, one out of the thirteenth century, one from the twentieth. "They are called wise who put things in their right order and control them well," says St. Thomas Aquinas. "Philosophy is the science of the totality of things," says Cardinal Mercier, his greatest contemporary commentator, and he continues, "Philosophy is the sum-total of reality." Philosophy is the body of _human_ wisdom, verified and irradiated by divine wisdom. "The science of the totality of things": not the isolation of individual phenomena, or even of groups of phenomena, as is the method of the natural sciences, but the setting of all in their varied relationships and values, the antithesis of that narrowness and concentration of vision that follow intensive specialization and have issue in infinite delusions and unrealities, "Philosophy regards the sum-total of reality" and it achieves this consciousness of reality, first by establishing right relations between phenomena, and then, abandoning the explicit intellectual process, by falling back on divine illumination which enables it to see through those well-ordered phenomena the Divine Actuality that lies behind, informing them with its own finality and using them both as types and as media of transmission and communication. So men are enabled by philosophy "to put things in their right order" and by religion "to control them well," thus becoming indeed worthy to be "called wise." Now, from the beginnings of conscious life, man has found himself surrounded and besieged by un-calculable phenomena. Beaten upon by forces he could not estimate or predict or control, he has sought to solve their sphynx-like riddle, to establish some plausible relation between them, to erect a logical scheme of things. Primitive man, as Worringer demonstrates in his "Form Problems of the Gothic," strove to achieve something of certitude and fixity through the crude but definite lines and forms of neolithic art. Classical man brought into play the vigour and subtlety and ingenuity of intellect in its primal and most dynamic form, expressed through static propositions of almost mathematical exactness. The peoples of the East rejected the intellectual-mathematical method and solution and sought a way out through the mysterious operation of the inner sense that manifests itself in the form of emotion. With the revelation of Christianity came also, and of course, enlightenment, which was not definite and closed at some given moment, but progressive and cumulative. At once, speaking philosophically, the intellectual method of the West and the intuitive method of the East came together and fused in a new thing, each element limiting, and at the same time fortifying the other, while the opposed obscurities of the past were irradiated by the revealing and creative spirit of Christ. So came the beginnings of that definitive Christian philosophy which was to proceed from Syria, Anatolia and Constantinople, through Alexandria to St. Augustine, and was to find its fullest expression during the Middle Ages and by means of Duns Scotus, Albertus Magnus, Hugh of St. Victor and St. Thomas Aquinas. It is an interesting fact, though apart from my present consideration, that this philosophical fusion was paralleled in the same places and at the same time, by an aesthetic fusion that brought into existence the first great and consistent art of Christianity. This question is admirably dealt with in Lisle March Phillipps' "Form and Colour." This great Christian philosophy which lay behind all the civilization of the Middle Ages, was positive, comprehensive and new. It demonstrated divine purpose working consciously through all things with a result in perfect coherency; it gave history a new meaning as revealing reality and as a thing forever present and never past, and above all it elucidated the nature of both matter and spirit and made clear their operation through the doctrine of sacramentalism. In the century that saw the consummation of this great philosophical system--as well as that of the civilization which was its expositor in material form--there came a separation and a divergence. The balanced unity was broken, and on the one hand the tendency was increasingly towards the exaggerated mysticism that had characterized the Eastern moiety of the synthesis, on the other towards an exaggerated intellectualism the seeds of which are inherent even in St. Thomas himself. The new mysticism withdrew further and further from the common life, finding refuge in hidden sanctuaries in Spain, Italy, the Rhineland; the old intellectualism became more and more dominant in the minds of man and the affairs of the world, and with the Renaissance it became supreme, as did the other qualities of paganism in art as well as in every other field of human activity. The first fruit of the new intellectualism was the philosophy of Dr. John Calvin--if we can call it such,--Augustinian philosophy, misread, distorted and made noxious by its reliance on the intellectual process cut off from spiritual energy as the sufficient corrective of philosophical thought. It is this false philosophy, allied with an equally false theology, that misled for so many centuries those who accepted the new versions of Christianity that issued out of the Reformation. The second was the mechanistic system, or systems, the protagonist of which was Descartes. If, as I believe, Calvinism was un-Christian, the materialistic philosophies that have gone on from the year 1637, were anti-Christian. As the power of Christianity declined through the centuries that have followed the Reformation, Calvinism played a less and less important part, while the new philosophies of mechanism and rationalism correspondingly increased. During the nineteenth century their control was absolute, and what we are today we have become through this dominance, coupled with the general devitalizing or abandonment of religion. And yet are we not left comfortless. Even in the evolutionary philosophy engendered by Darwin and formulated by Herbert Spencer and the Germans, with all its mistaken assumptions and dubious methods, already there is visible a tendency to get away from the old Pagan static system reborn with the Renaissance. We can never forget that Bergson has avowed that "the mind of man, by its very nature, is incapable of apprehending reality." After this the return towards the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages is not so difficult, nor even its recovery. If we associate with this process on the part of formal philosophy the very evident, if sometimes abnormal and exaggerated, progress towards a new mysticism, we are far from finding ourselves abandoned to despair as to the whole future of philosophy. Now this return and this recovery are, I believe, necessary as one of the first steps towards establishing a sound basis for the building up of a new and a better civilization, and one that is in fact as well as in name a Christian civilization. I do not mean that, with this restoration of Christian philosophy, there we should rest. Both revelation and enlightenment are progressive, and once the nexus of our broken life were restored, philosophical development would be continuous, and we should go on beyond the scholastics even as they proceeded beyond Patristic theology and philosophy. I think a break of continuity was effected in the sixteenth century, with disastrous effects, and until this break is healed we are cut off from what is in a sense the Apostolical succession of philosophical verity. Before going further I would guard against two possible misconceptions; of one of them I have already spoken, that is, the error so frequent in the past as well as today, that would make of philosophy, however sound, however consonant with the finalities of revealed religion, a substitute in any degree for religion itself. Philosophy is the reaction of the intellect, of man to the stimuli of life, but religion _is_ life and is therefore in many ways a flat contradiction of the concepts of the intellect, which is only a small portion of life, therefore limited, partial, and (because of this) sometimes entirely wrong in its conclusions independently arrived at along these necessarily circumscribed lines. The second possible error is that philosophy is the affair of a small group of students and specialists, quite outside the purview of the great mass of men, and that it owes its existence to this same class of delving scholars, few in number, impractical in their aims, and sharply differentiated from their fellows. On the contrary it is a vital consideration for all those who desire to "see life and see it whole" in order that they may establish a true scale of comparative values and a right relationship between those things that come from the outside and, meeting those that come from within, establish that plexus of interacting force we call life. As for the source of philosophic truth, Friar Bacon put it well when he said "All the wisdom of philosophy is created by God and given to the philosophers, and it is Himself that illumines the minds of men in all wisdom." It is a whimsical juxtaposition, but the first pastor of the Puritans in America, the Rev. John Robinson, testifies to the same effect. "All truth," he says, "is of God ... Wherefore it followeth that nothing true in right reason and sound philosophy can be false in divinity.... I add, though the truth be uttered by the devil himself, yet it is originally of God." There are not two sources of truth, that of Divine Revelation on the one hand, that of science and philosophy and all the intellectual works of man on the other. Truth is one, and the Source is one; the channels of communication alone are different. But truth in its finality, the Absolute, the _noumenon_ that is the substance of phenomena, is in itself not a thing that can be directly apprehended by man; it lies within the "ultra-violet" rays of his intellectual spectrum. "The trammels of the body prevent man from knowing God in Himself" says Philo, "He is known only in the Divine forces in which He manifests Himself." And St. Thomas: "In the present state of life in which the soul is united to a passable body, it is impossible for the intellect to understand anything actually except by turning to the phantasm." Religion confesses this, philosophy constantly tends to forget it, therefore true religion speaks always through the symbol, rejecting, because it transcends, the intellectual criterion, while philosophy is on safe ground only when it unites itself with religion, testing its own conclusions by a higher reality, and existing not as a rival but as a coadjutor. It is St. Paul who declares that "God has never left Himself without a witness" and the "witness" was explicit, however clouded, in the philosophies of paganism. Plato and Aristotle knew the limitations of man's mind, and the corrective of over-weaning intellectuality in religion, but thereafter the wisdom faded and pride ousted humility, with the result that philosophy became not light but darkness. Let me quote from the great twelfth century philosopher, Hugh of St. Victor, who deserves a better fate than sepulture in the ponderous tomes of Migne: "There was a certain wisdom that seemed such to them that knew not the true wisdom. The world found it and began to be puffed up, thinking itself great in this. Confiding in its wisdom it became presumptuous and boasted it would attain the highest wisdom. And it made itself a ladder of the face of creation.... Then those things which were seen were known and there were other things which were not known; and through those which were manifest they expected to reach those that were hidden. And they stumbled and fell into the falsehoods of their own imagining.... So God made foolish the wisdom of this world; and He pointed out another wisdom, which seemed foolishness and was not. For it preached Christ crucified, in order that truth might be sought in humility. But the world despised it, wishing to contemplate the works of God, which He had made a source of wonder, and it did not wish to venerate what He had set for imitation, neither did it look to its own disease, seeking medicine in piety; but presuming on a false health, it gave itself over with vain curiosity to the study of alien things." Precisely: and this is the destiny that has overtaken not only the pagan philosophy of which Hugh of St. Victor was speaking, but also that which followed after St. Thomas Aquinas, from Descartes to Hobbes and Kant and Comte and Herbert Spencer and William James. The jealously intellectual philosophies of the nineteenth century, the materialistic and mechanistic substitutes that were offered and accepted with such enthusiasm after the great cleavage between religion and life, are but "the falsehoods of their own imaginings" of which Hugh of St. Victor speaks, for they were cut off from the stream of spiritual verity, and are losing themselves in the desert they have made. Meanwhile they have played their part in shaping the destinies of the world, and it was an ill part, if we may judge from the results that showed themselves in the events that have been recorded between the year 1800 and the present moment. Just what this influence was in determining the nature of society, of industrial civilization and of the political organism I shall try to indicate in some of the following lectures, but apart from these concrete happenings, this influence was, I am persuaded, most disastrous in its bearing on human character. Neither wealth nor power, neither education nor environment, not even the inherent tendencies of race--the most powerful of all--can avail against the degenerative force of a life without religion, or, what is worse, that maintains only a desiccated formula; and the post-Renaissance philosophies are one and all definitely anti-religious and self-proclaimed substitutes for religion. As such they were offered and accepted, and as such they must take their share of the responsibility for what has happened. I believe we must and can retrace our steps to that point in time when a right philosophy was abandoned, and begin again. There is no impossibility or even difficulty here. History is not a dead thing, a thing of the past; it is eternally present to man, and this is one of the sharp differentiations between man and beast. The material monuments of man crumble and disappear, but the spirit that built the Parthenon or Reims Cathedral, that inspired St. Paul on Mars' hill or forged Magna Charta or the Constitution of the United States is, _because of our quality as men,_ just as present and operative with us today, if we will, as that which sent the youth of ten nations into a righteous war five years ago, or spoke yesterday through some noble action that you or I may have witnessed. It is as easy for us to accept and practice the philosophy of St. Thomas or the divine humanism of St. Francis as it is to accept the philosophy of Mr. Wells or the theories of Sir Oliver Lodge. No spiritual thing dies, or even grows old, nor does it drift backward in the dwindling perspective of ancient history, and the foolishest saying of man is that "you cannot turn back the hands of the clock." It is simply a question of will, and will is simply a question of desire and of faith. Manifestly I cannot be expected to recreate in a few words this philosophy to which I believe we must have recourse in our hour of need. I have no ability to do this in any case. It begins with St. Paul, is continued through St. Augustine, and finds its culmination in the great Mediaeval group of Duns Scotus, Albertus Magnus, Hugh of St. Victor and St. Thomas Aquinas. I do not know of any single book that epitomizes it all in vital form, though Cardinal Mercier and Dr. De Wulf have written much that is stimulating and helpful. I cannot help thinking that the great demand today is for a compact volume that synthesizes the whole magnificent system in terms not of history and scientific exegesis, but in terms of life. Plato and Aristotle are so preserved to man, and the philosophers of modernism also; it is only the magisterial and dynamic philosophy of Christianity that is diffused through many works, some of them still untranslated and all quite without coordination, save St. Thomas Aquinas alone, the magnitude of whose product staggers the human mind and in its profuseness defeats its own ends. We need no more histories of philosophy, but we need an epitome of Christian philosophy, not for students but for men. Such an epitome I am not fitted to offer, but there are certain rather fundamental conceptions and postulates that run counter both to pagan and to modern philosophy, the loss of which out of life has, I maintain, much to do with our present estate, and that must be regained before we can go forward with any reasonable hope of betterment. These I will try to indicate as well as I can. Christian philosophy teaches, in so far as it deals with the relationship between man and these divine forces that are forever building, unbuilding and rebuilding the fabric of life, somewhat as follows: The world as we know it, man, life itself as it works through all creation, is the union of matter and spirit; and matter is not spirit, nor spirit matter, nor is one a mode of the other, but they are two different creatures. Apart from this union of matter and spirit there is no life, in the sense in which we know it, and severance is death. "The body" says St. Thomas, "is not of the essence of the soul; but the soul, by the nature of its essence, can be united to the body, so that, properly speaking, the soul alone is not the species, but the composite", and Duns Scotus makes clear the nature and origin of this common "essence" when he says there is "on the one hand God as Infinite Actuality, on the other spiritual and corporeal substances possessing an homogeneous common element." That is to say; matter and spirit are both the result of the divine creative act, and though separate, and in a sense opposed, find their point of origin in the Divine Actuality. The created world is the concrete manifestation of matter, through which, for its transformation and redemption, spirit is active in a constant process of interpenetration whereby matter itself is being eternally redeemed. What then is matter and what is spirit? The question is of sufficient magnitude to absorb all the time assigned to these lectures, with the strong possibility that even then we should be scarcely wiser than before. For my own purposes, however, I am content to accept the definition of matter formulated by Duns Scotus, which takes over the earlier definition of Plotinus, purges it of its elements of pagan error, and redeems it by Christian insight. "Materia Primo Prima" says the great Franciscan, "is the indeterminate element of contingent things. This does not exist in Nature, but it has reality in so far as it constitutes the term of God's creative activity. By its union with a substantial form it becomes endowed with the attributes of quantity, and becomes Secundo Prima. Subject to the substantial changes of Nature, it becomes matter as we see it." It is this "Materia Primo Prima," the term of God's creative activity, that is eternally subjected to the regenerative process of spiritual interpenetration, and the result is organic life. What is spirit? The creative power of the Logos, in the sense in which St. John interprets and corrects the early, partial, and therefore erroneous theories of the Stoics and of Philo. God the Son, the Eternal Word of the Father, "the brightness of His glory and the figure of His Substance." "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father: by Whom all things were made." Pure wisdom, pure will, pure energy, unconditioned by matter, but creating life out of the operation of the Holy Spirit on and through matter, and in the fullness of time becoming Incarnate for the purpose of the final redemption of man. Now since man is so compact of matter and spirit, it must follow that he cannot lay hold of pure spirit, the Absolute that lies beyond and above all material conditioning, except through the medium of matter, through its figures, its symbols, its "phantasms." Says St. Thomas: "From material things we can rise to some kind of knowledge of immaterial things, but not to the perfect knowledge thereof." The way of life therefore, is the incessant endeavour of man sacramentally to approach the Absolute through the leading of the Holy Spirit, so running parallel to the slow perfecting of matter which is being effected by the same operation. So matter itself takes on a certain sanctity, not only as something susceptible, and in process, of perfection, but as the vehicle of spirit and its tabernacle, since in matter spirit is actually incarnate. From this process follows of necessity the whole sacramental system, in theology, philosophy and operation, of Christianity. It is of its _esse;_ its great original, revolutionary and final contribution to the wisdom that man may have for his own, and it follows inevitably from the basic facts of the Incarnation and Redemption, which are also its perfect showing forth. Philosophically this is the great contribution of Christianity and for fifteen centuries it was held implicitly by Christendom, yet it was rejected, either wholly or in part, by the Protestant organizations that came out of the Reformation, and it fell into such oblivion that outside the Catholic Church it was not so much ignored or rejected as totally forgotten. Recently a series of lectures were delivered at King's College, London, by various carefully chosen authorities, all specialists in their own fields, under the general title "Mediaeval Contributions to Modern Civilization," and neither the pious author of the address on "The Religious Contribution of the Middle Ages," nor the learned author of that on "Mediaeval Philosophy," gave evidence of ever having heard of sacramental philosophy. It may be that I do them an injustice, and that they would offer as excuse the incontestible fact that Mediaevalism contributed nothing to "modern civilization," either in religion or philosophy, that it was willing to accept. The peril of all philosophies, outside that of Christianity as it was developed under the Catholic dispensation, is dualism, and many have fallen into this grave error. Now dualism is not only the reversal of truth, it is also the destroyer of righteousness. Sacramentalism is the anthithesis of dualism. The sanctity of matter as the potential of spirit and its dwelling-place on earth; the humanizing of spirit through its condescension to man through the making of his body and all created things its earthly tabernacle, give, when carried out into logical development, a meaning to life, a glory to the world, an elucidation of otherwise unsolvable mysteries, and an impulse toward noble living no other system can afford. It is a real philosophy of life, a standard of values, a criterion of all possible postulates, and as its loss meant the world's peril, so its recovery may mean its salvation. Now as the philosophy of Christianity is purely and essentially sacramental, so must be the operation of God through the Church. This "Body of Christ" on earth is indeed a fellowship, a veritable communion of the faithful, whether living or dead, but it is also a divine organism which lives, and in which each member lives, not by the preaching of the Word, not even by and through the fellowship in living and worship, but through the ordained channels of grace known as the Sacraments. In accordance with the sacramental system, every material thing is proclaimed as possessing in varying degree sacramental potentiality, while seven great Sacraments were instituted to be, each after its own fashion, a special channel for the inflowing of the power of the Divine Actuality. Each is a symbol, just as so many other created things are, or may become, symbols, but they are also _realities,_ veritable media for the veritable communications of veritable divine grace. Here is the best definition I know, that of Hugh of St. Victor. "A sacrament is the corporeal or material element set out sensibly, representing from its similitude, signifying from its institution, and containing from its sanctification, some invisible and spiritual grace." This is the unvarying and invariable doctrine of historic Christianity, and the reason for the existence of the Church as a living and functioning organism. The whole sacramental system is in a sense an extension, in time, of the Redemption, just as one particular Sacrament, the Holy Eucharist, is also in a sense an extension of the Incarnation, as it is also an extension, in time, of the Atonement, the Sacrifice of Calvary. The Incarnation and the Redemption are not accomplished facts, completed nineteen centuries ago; they are processes that still continue, and their term is fixed only by the total regeneration and perfecting of matter, while the Seven Sacraments are the chiefest amongst an infinity of sacramental processes which are the agencies of this eternal transfiguration. God the Son became Incarnate, not only to accomplish the redemption of men as yet unborn, for endless ages, through the Sacrifice of Calvary, but also to initiate and forever maintain a new method whereby this result was to be more perfectly attained; that is to say, the Church, working through the specific sacramental agencies He had ordained, or was from time to time to ordain, through His everlasting presence in the Church He had brought into being at Pentecost. He did not come to establish in material form a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, or to provide for its ultimate coming. He indeed established a Spiritual Kingdom, His Church, "in the world, not of it," which is a very different matter indeed, as the centuries have proved. His Kingdom is not of this world, nor will it be established here. There has been no _absolute_ advance in human development since the Incarnation. Nations rise and fall, epochs wax and wane, civilizations grow out of savagery, crest and sink back into savagery and oblivion. Redemption is for the individual, not for the race, nor yet for society as a whole. Then, and only then, and under that form, it is sure, however long may be the period of its accomplishment. "Time is the ratio of the resistance of matter to the interpenetration of spirit," and by this resistance is the duration of time determined. When it shall have been wholly overcome then "time shall be no more." See therefore how perfect is the correspondence between the Sacraments and the method of life where they are the agents, and which they symbolically set forth. There is in each case the material form and the spiritual substance, or energy. Water, chrism, oil, the spoken word, the touch of hands, the sign of the cross, and finally and supremely the bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist. Each a material thing, but each representing, signifying and containing some gift of the Holy Spirit, real, absolute and potent. So matter and spirit are linked together in every operation of the Church, from the cradle to the grave, and man has ever before him the eternal revelation of this linked union of matter and spirit in his life, the eternal teaching of the honour of the material thing through its agency and through its existence as the subject for redemption. So also, through the material association, and the divine condescension to his earthly and fallible estate (limited by association with matter only to inadequate presentation) he makes the Spirit of God his own, to dwell therewith after the fashion of man. And how much this explains and justifies: Man approaches, and must always approach, spiritual things not only through material forms but by means of material agencies. The highest and most beautiful things, those where the spirit seems to achieve its loftiest reaches, are frequently associated with the grossest and most unspiritual forms, yet the very splendour of the spiritual verity redeems and glorifies the material agency, while on the other hand the homeliness, and even animal quality, of the material thing, brings to man, with a poignancy and an appeal that are incalculable, the spiritual thing that, in its absolute essence, would be so far beyond his ken and his experience and his powers of assimilation that it would be inoperative. This is the true Humanism; not the fictitious and hollow thing that was the offspring of neo-paganism and took to itself a title to which it had no claim. Held tacitly or consciously by the men of the Middle Ages, from the immortal philosopher to the immortal but nameless craftsman, it was the force that built up the noble social structure of the time and poised man himself in a sure equilibrium. Already it had of necessity developed the whole scheme of religious ceremonial and given art a new content and direction through its new service. By analogy and association all material things that could be so used were employed as figures and symbols, as well as agencies, through the Sacraments, and after a fashion that struck home to the soul through the organs of sense. Music, vestments, incense, flowers, poetry, dramatic action, were linked with the major arts of architecture, painting and sculpture, and all became not only ministers to the emotional faculties but direct appeals to the intellect through their function as poignant symbols. So art received its soul, and was almost a living creature until matter and spirit were again divorced in the death that severed them during the Reformation. Thereafter religion had entered upon a period of slow desiccation and sterilization wherever the symbol was cast away with the Sacraments and the faith and the philosophy that had made it live. The bitter hostility to the art and the liturgies and the ceremonial of the Catholic faith is due far less to ignorance of the meaning and function of art and to an inherited jealousy of its quality and its power, than it is to the conscious and determined rejection of the essential philosophy of Christianity, which is sacramentalism. The whole system was of an almost sublime perfection and simplicity, and the formal Sacraments were both its goal and its type. If they had been of the same value and identical in nature they would have failed of perfect exposition, in the sense in which they were types and symbols. They were not this, for while six of the explicit seven were substantially of one mode, there was one where the conditions that held elsewhere were transcended, and where, in addition to the two functions it was instituted to perform it gave, through its similitude, the clear revelation of the most significant and poignant fact in the vast mystery of life. I mean, of course, the Holy Eucharist, commonly called the Mass. If matter is _per se_ forever inert, unchangeable, indestructible, then we fall into the dilemma of a materialistic monism on the one hand, Manichaean dualism on the other. Even under the most spiritual interpretation we could offer--that, shall we say, of those today who try to run with the hare of religion and hunt with the hounds of rationalistic materialism--matter and spirit unite in man as body and soul, and in the Sacraments as the vehicle and the essence, but temporally and temporarily; doomed always to ultimate severance by death in the one case, by the completion of the sacramental process in the other. If, on the other hand, the object of the universe and of time is the constant redemption and transformation of matter through its interpenetration by spirit in the power of God the Holy Ghost, then we escape the falsities of dualism, while in the miracle of the Mass we find the type and the showing forth of the constant process of life whereby every instant, matter itself is being changed and glorified and transferred from the plane of matter to the plane of spirit. If this is so: if the Incarnation and the Redemption are not only fundamental facts but also types and symbols of the divine process forever going on here on earth, then, while the other Sacraments are in themselves not only instruments of grace but manifestations of that process whereby in all things matter is used as the vehicle of spirit, the Mass, transcending them all, is not only Communion, not only a Sacrifice acceptable before God, it is also the unique symbol of the redemption and transformation of matter; since, of all the Sacraments, it is the only one where the very physical qualities of the material vehicle are transformed, and while the accidents alone remain, the substance, finite and perishable, becomes, in an instant of time and by the operation of God, infinite and immortal. It is to sacramentalism then that we must return, not only in religion and its practice, but in philosophy, if we are to establish a firm foundation for that newer society and civilization that are to help us to achieve the "Great Peace." Antecedent systems failed, and subsequent systems have failed; in this alone, the philosophy of Christianity, is there safety, for it alone is consonant with the revealed will of God. III THE SOCIAL ORGANISM Society, that is to say, the association in life of men, women and children, is the fundamental fact of life, and this is so whether the association is of the family, the school, the community, industry or government. Everything else is simply a series of forms, arrangements and devices by which society works, either for good or ill. Man makes or mars himself in and through society. He is responsible for his own soul, but if he sees only this and works directly for his soul's salvation, disregarding the society of which he is a part, he may lose it, whereas, if he is faithful to society and honourably plays his part as a social animal with a soul, he will very probably save it, even though he may for the time have quite ignored its existence. Man is a member of a family, a pupil under education, a worker and a citizen. In all these relationships he is a part of a social group; he is also a component part of the human race and linked in some measure to every other member thereof whether living or dead. Into every organization or institution in which he is involved during his lifetime--family, school, art or craft, trade union, state, church--enters the social equation. If society is ill organized either in theory or in practice, in any or all of its manifestations, then the engines or devices by which it operates will be impotent for good. Defective society cannot produce either a good fundamental law, a good philosophy, a good art, or any other thing. Conversely, these, when brought forth under an wholesome society, will decay and perish when society degenerates. In its large estate, that is, comprehending all the minor groups, as a nation, a people or an era, society is always in a state of unstable equilibrium, tending either toward better or worse. It may indeed be of the very essence of human life, but it is a plant of tender growth and needs delicate nurture and jealous care; a small thing may work it irreparable injury. It may reach very great heights of perfection and spread over a continent, as during the European Middle Ages; it may sink to low depths with an equal dominion, as in the second dark ages of the nineteenth century. Sometimes little enclaves of high value hide themselves in the midst of degradation, as Venice and Ireland in the Dark Ages. Always, by the grace of God, the primary social unit, the family may, and frequently does, achieve and maintain both purity and beauty when the world without riots in ruin and profligacy. I have taken the problem of the organization of society as the first to be considered, for it is fundamental. If society is of the wrong shape it does not matter in the least how intelligent and admirable may be the devices we construct for the operation of government or industry or education; they may be masterly products of human intelligence but they will not work, whereas on the other hand a sane, wholesome and decent society can so interpret and administer clumsy and defective instruments that they will function to admiration. A perfect society would need no such engines at all, but a perfect society implies perfect individuals, and I think we are now persuaded that a society of this nature is a purely academic proposition both now and in the calculable future. What we have to do is to take mankind as it is; made up of infinitely varied personalities ranging from the idiot to the "super-man"; cruel and compassionate, covetous and self-sacrificing, silly and erudite, cynical and emotional, vulgar and cultured, brutal and fastidious, shameful in their degradation and splendid in their honour and chivalry, and by the franchise of liberty and the binding of law, facilitate in every way the process whereby they themselves work out their own salvation. You cannot impose morality by statute or guarantee either character or intelligence by the perfection of the machine. Every institution, good or bad, is the result of growth from many human impulses, not the creation of autocratic fiat. But growth may be impeded, hastened, or suspended, and the most that can be done is to offer incentives to action, remove the obstacles to development, and establish conditions and influences that make more easy the finding of the right way. Now it seems to me that the two greatest obstacles to the development of a right society have been first, the enormous scale in which everything of late has been cast, and second, that element in modern democracy which denies essential differences in human character, capacity and potential, and so logically prohibits social distinctions, and refuses them formal sanction or their recognition through conferred honours. In questioning the validity and the value of these two factors, imperialism and social democracy, and in suggesting substitutes, I am, I suppose, attacking precisely the two institutions which are today--or at all events have been until very recently--held in most conspicuous honour by the majority of people, but the question is at least debateable, and for my own part I have no alternative but to assert their mistaken nature, and to offer the best I can in the way of substitutes. The question of imperialism, of a gross and unhuman and therefore absolutely wrong scale, is one that will enter into almost all of the matters with which I propose to deal, certainly with industrialism, with politics, with education, with religion, as well as with the immediate problem of the social organism, for not only has it destroyed the human scale in human life, and therefore brought it into the danger of immediate destruction, but it has also been a factor in establishing the quantitative standard in all things, in place of the qualitative standard, and this, in itself, is simply the antecedent of well-merited catastrophe. In considering the social organism, therefore, we must have in mind that this is intimately affected by every organic institution which man has developed and into which he enters in common with others of his kind. The situation as it confronts us today is one in which man by his very energy and the stimulus of those cosmic energies he has so astonishingly mastered, has got far beyond his depth. I say man has mastered these energies; yes, but this was true only of a brief period in the immediate past. They now have mastered him. It is the old story of the Frankenstein monster over again. Man is not omnipotent, he is not God. There are limits beyond which he cannot go without coming in peril of death. An isolated individual here and there may become super-man, perhaps, though at grievous peril to his own soul, and it is conceivable that to such an one it might be possible to live beyond the human scale, though hardly. If one could envisage so awful a thing as a community made up entirely of super-men, one might concede that here also the human scale might be exceeded without danger of catastrophe. With society as it is, and always will be, a welter of defectives and geniuses in small numbers and a vast majority of just plain men, with all that that implies, the breaking through into the imperial scale is simply a letting in the jungle; walls and palings and stockades, the delicate fabrics of architecture, the clever institutions of law, the thin red line of the army, all melt, crumble, are overcome by the onrush of primordial things, and where once was the white man's city is now the eternal jungle, and the vines and thrusting roots and rank herbage blot out the very memory of a futile civilization, while the monkey and the jackal and the python come again into their heritage. Alexander and Caesar, Charles V and Louis XIV and Napoleon and Disraeli and William III could function for a few brief years beyond the limits of the human scale, though even they had an end, but you cannot link imperialism and democracy without the certainty of an earlier and a more ignominious fall. I have already spoken of the malignant and pathological quality of the quantitative standard. It is indeed not only the nemesis of culture but even of civilization itself. Out of this same gross scale of things come many other evils; great states subsisting on the subjugation and exploitation of small and alien peoples; great cities which when they exceed more than 100,000 in population are a menace, when they exceed 1,000,000 are a crime; division of labour and specialization which degrade men to the level of machines; concentration and segregation of industries, the factory system, high finance and international finance, capitalism, trades-unionism and the International, standardized education, "metropolitan" newspapers, pragmatic philosophy, and churches "run on business methods" and recruited by advertising and "publicity agents." Greater than all, however, is the social poison that effects society with pernicious anaemia through cutting man off from his natural social group and making of him an undistinguishable particle in a sliding stream of grain. Man belongs to his family, his neighbourhood, his local trade or craft guild and to his parish church: the essence of wholesome association is that a man should work with, through and by those whom he knows personally--and preferably so well that he calls them all by their first names. As a matter of fact, today he works with, through and by the individuals whom he probably has never seen, and frequently would, as a matter of personal taste, hesitate to recognize if he did see them. He belongs to the "local" of a union which is a part of a labour organization which covers the entire United States and is controlled in all essential matters from a point from one hundred to two thousand miles away. He votes for mayor with a group of men, less than one per cent of whom he knows personally (unless he is a professional politician), with another group for state officers, and with the whole voting population of the United States, for President. If he goes to church in a city he finds himself amongst people drawn from every ward and outlying district, if he mixes in "society" he associates with those from everywhere, perhaps, except his own neighbourhood. Only when he is in college, in his club or in his secret society lodge or the quarters of his ward boss does he find himself in intimate social relations with human beings of like mind and a similar social status. He is a cog in a wheel, a thing, a point of potential, a lonely and numerical unit, instead of a gregarious human animal rejoicing in his friends and companions, and working, playing and quarreling with them, as God made him and meant him to be and to do. Of course the result of this is that men are forced into unnatural associations, many of which are purely artificial and all of which are unsound. It is true that the trade union, the professional society, the club are natural and wholesome expressions of common and intimate interests, but they acquire a false value when they are not balanced and regulated by a prior and more compelling association which cuts, not vertically but horizontally through society, that is to say, the neighbourhood or community group. The harsh and perilous division into classes and castes which is now universal, with its development of "class consciousness," is the direct and inevitable result of this imperial scale in life which has annihilated the social unit of human scale and brought in the gigantic aggregations of peoples, money, manufacture and labourers, where man can no longer function either as a human unit or an essential factor in a workable society. It is hard to see just how we are to re-fashion this impossible society in terms even nearly approaching the normal and the human. It is universal, and it is accepted by everyone as very splendid and quite the greatest achievement of man. It is practically impossible for any one today to conceive of a world where great empires, populous cities, mills and factories and iron-works in their thousands, and employing their millions through their billions of capitalization, where the stock exchange and the great banking houses and the insurance companies and the department stores, the nation-wide trade unions and professional associations and educational foundations and religious corporations, do not play their predominant part. Nevertheless they are an aggregation of false values, their influence is anti-social, and their inherent weakness was so obviously revealed through the War and the Peace that it has generally escaped notice. There seem but two ways in which the true scale of life can be restored; either these institutions will continue, growing greater and more unwieldy with increasing speed until they burst in anarchy and chaos, and after ruin and long rest we begin all over again (as once before after the bursting of Roman imperialism), or we shall repeat history (as we always do) only after another fashion and, learning as we always can from the annals of monasticism, build our small communities of the right shape and scale in the very midst of the imperial states themselves, so becoming perhaps the leavening of the lump. This of course is what the monasteries of St. Benedict did in the sixth century and those of the Cluniacs and the Cistercians in the eleventh, and it is what the Franciscans and Dominicans tried to do in the fourteenth century, and failed because the fall of the cultural and historic wave had already begun. The trouble today with nearly all schemes of reform and regeneration is that they are infected with the very imperialism in scale that has produced the conditions they would redeem. Socialism is now as completely materialistic as the old capitalism, and as international in its scope and methods. Anarchy is becoming imperial and magnificent in its operations. Secular reformers must organize vast committees with intricate ramifications and elaborate systems supported by "drives" for money which must run into at least seven figures, and by vast and efficient bureaus for propaganda, before they can begin operations, and then the chief reliance for success is frequently placed on legislation enacted by the highest lawmaking bodies in the land. Even religion has now surrendered to the same obsession of magnitude and efficiency, and nothing goes (or tries to, it doesn't always succeed) unless it is conceived in gigantic "nation-wide" terms and is "put across" by efficiency experts, highly paid organizers, elaborate "teams" of propagandists and solicitors, and plenty of impressive advertising. A good deal can be bought this way, but it will not "stay bought," for no reform of any sort can be established after any such fashion, since reform begins in and with the individual, and if it succeeds at all it will be by the cumulative process. I shall speak of this element of scale in every succeeding lecture, for it vitiates every institution we have. Here, where I am dealing with society in itself, I can only say that I believe the sane and wholesome society of the future will eliminate great cities and great corporations of every sort. It will reverse the whole system of specialization and the segregation and unification of industries and the division of labour. It will build upward from the primary unit of the family, through the neighbourhood, to the small, and closely knit, and self-supporting community, and so to the state and the final unifying force which links together a federation of states. In general it will be a return in principle, though not in form, to the social organization of a Mediaeval Europe before the extinction of feudalism on the Continent, and the suppression of the monasteries and the enclosure of the common lands in England. The grave perils of this false scale in human society have been recognized by many individuals ever since the thing itself became operative, and every Utopia conceived by man during the last two centuries, whether it was theoretical or actually put into ephemeral practice, has been couched in terms of revolt away from imperialism and towards the unit of human scale. In every case however, the introduction of some form of communism has been the ruin of those projects actually materialized, for this in itself is imperialistic in its nature. Communism implies the standard of the gross aggregate, the denial of human differentiation and the quantitative standard, as well as the elimination of private property and the negation of sacred individuality. Its institution implies an almost immediate descent into anarchy with a sequent dictatorship and autocracy, for it is the reversal of the foundation laws of life. Such reversals cannot last, nothing can last that is inimical to flourishing life; it may triumph for a day but life itself sloughs it off as a sound body rids itself of some foreign substance through the sore that festers, bursts and, the septic conditions done away with, heals itself and returns to normal. Now the inhuman scale has produced one set of septic conditions in society while what is commonly called "democratization" has produced another. We have a bloated society, but also we have one in which a false theory has grown up and been put in practice, in accordance with which an uniformity of human kind has been assumed which never has existed and does not now, and in the effort to enforce this false theory the achievement of distinction has been impeded, leadership discouraged and leaders largely eliminated, the process of leveling downward carried to a very dangerous point, the sane and vital organization of society brought near to an end and a peculiarly vicious scale and standard of social values established. I have urged the return to human scale in human associations, but this does not imply any admixture of communism, which is its very antithesis, still less does it permit the retention of the theoretical uniformity and the unescapable leveling process of so-called democracy. Before the law all men are equal, that is, they are entitled to even-handed justice. Before God all men are equal, that is, they are granted charity and mercy which transcends the law, also they possess immortal souls of equal value. Here their equality stops. In every other respect they vary in character, capacity, intelligence and potentiality for development along any or all these lines, almost beyond the limits of computation. A sane society will recognize this, it will organize itself accordingly, it will deny to one what it will concede to another, it will foster emulation and reward accomplishment, and it will add another category to those in which all men are equal, that is, the freest scope for advancement, and the greatest facility for passing from one social group into another, the sole test being demonstrated merit. I am prepared at this point to use the word "aristocracy" for we have the thing even now, only in its worst possible form. The word itself means two things: a government by the best and most able citizens and, to quote a standard dictionary "Persons noted for superiority in any character or quality, taken collectively." There is no harm here, but the harm comes, and the odium also, and justly, when an aristocratic government degenerates into an oligarchy of privilege without responsibility, and when socially it is not "superiority in character or quality" but political cunning, opulence and sycophancy that are the touchstones to recognition and acceptance. The latter are the antithesis of Christianity and common sense, the former is consonant with both and, paradoxical as it may seem, it is also the fulfilling of the ideals of a real democracy, since its honours and distinctions imply service, its relations with those in other estates are reciprocal, it is not a closed caste but the prize of meritorious achievement, and it is therefore equality of opportunity, utilization of ability and the abolition of privilege without responsibility. Men are forever and gloriously struggling onward towards better things, but there is always the gravitational pull of original sin which scientists denominate "reversion to type." The saving grace in the individual is the divine gift of faith, hope and charity implanted in every soul. These every man must guard and cherish for they are the way of advancement in character. But society is man in association with men, in a sense a new and complex personality, and the same qualities are as necessary here as in the individual. Society, like man, may be said to possess body, soul and spirit, and it must function vitally along all these lines if it is to maintain a normal and wholesome existence. Somewhere there must be something that achieves high ideals of honour, chivalry, courtesy; that maintains right standards of comparative value, and that guards the social organism as a whole from the danger of surrender to false and debased standards, to plausible demagogues, and to mob-psychology. The greater the prevalence of democratic methods, the greater is the danger of this surrender to propaganda of a thousand sorts and to the dominance of the demagogue, and the existence of an estate fortified by the inheritance of high tradition, measurably free from the necessity of engaging too strenuously in the "struggle for life," guaranteed security of status so long as it does not betray the ideals of its order, but open to accessions from other estates on the basis of conspicuous merit alone, such a force operating in society has proved, and will prove, the best guardian of civilization as a whole and of the interests and liberties of those who may rank in what are known as lower social scales. But, it may be objected, such an institution as this has never existed. Every political or social aristocracy in history has been mixed and adulterated with bad characters and recreant representatives. There never has been and never will be a perfect aristocracy. Quite true; neither has there ever been a perfect democracy, or a perfect monarchy for that matter. As men we work with imperfections, but we live by faith, and our sole duty is to establish the highest ideals, and to compass them, in so far as we may, with unfailing courage, patience and steadfastness. The _ideal_ of democracy is a great ideal, but the _working_ of democracy has been a failure because, amongst other things, it has tried to carry on without the aid of true aristocracy. If the two can be united, first in ideal and in theory, then in operation, our present failure may be changed into victory. What, after all, does this imply, so far as the social organism is concerned? It seems to me, something like this. First of all, recognition of the fact that there are differences in individuals, in strains of blood, in races, that cannot be overcome by any power of education and environment, and can only be changed through very long periods of time, and that these differences must work corresponding differences in position, function and status in the social organism. Second, that since society automatically develops an aristocracy of some sort or other, and apparently cannot be stopped from doing this, it must be protected from the sort of thing it has produced of late, which is based on money, political expediency and the unscrupulous cleverness of the demagogue, and given a more rational substitute in the shape of a permanent group representing high character and the traditions of honour, chivalry and courtesy. Third, that character and service should be fostered and rewarded by that formal and august recognition, that secure and unquestioned status, and those added opportunities for service that will form a real and significant distinction. Finally, that this order or estate must be able to purge itself of unworthy material, and also must be freely open to constant accessions from without, whatever the source, and for proved character and service. I fear I must argue this case of the inequality in individual potential, that inequality that does not yield to complex education or favourable environment, for it is fundamental. If it does not exist, then my argument for the organization of society along lines that recognize and regularize diversity of social status and functions, falls to the ground. I affirm that, the doctrine of evolution and modern democratic theory to the contrary, it does exist and that the mitigating influence of education, environment and inherited acquired characters, is small at best. Let us take the most obvious concrete examples. There are certain ethnic units or races which for periods ranging from five hundred to two thousand years have produced _character_, and through character the great contributions that have been made to human culture and have been expressed through men of distinction, dynamic force, and vivid personality. Such, amongst many, are the Greeks, the Jews, the Romans, the Normans, the Franks, the "Anglo-Saxons," and the Celts. There are others that in all history have produced nothing. There are certain family names which are a guarantee of distinction, dynamic force, and vivid personality. There are thousands of these names, and they are to be found amongst all the races that have contributed towards the development of culture and civilization. On the other hand, there are far more that have produced nothing distinctive, and possibly never will. What is the reason for this? Is it the result of blind chance, of accidents that have left certain races and families isolated in stagnant eddies from which some sudden current of a whimsical tide might sweep them out into the full flood of progress, until they then overtook and passed their hitherto successful rivals, who, in their turn, would drift off into progressive incompetence and degeneracy? Biology does not look with enthusiasm on the methods of chance and accident. The choice and transmission of the forty-eight chromosomes that give to each individual his character-potential are probably in accordance with some obscure biological law through which the unfathomable divine will operates. Now these chromosomes may be selected and combined after a fashion, and with a persistence of continuity, that would guarantee character-potential, for good or for ill, through many generations, or they might be so varied in their combinations that no distinct traits would be carried over from one generation to another. As a matter of experience all these three processes take place and are recorded in families of distinct quality, good, bad and indifferent. If the character-potential is predetermined, then manifestly education and environment can play only the subordinate part of fostering its development or retarding it. In the same way the character and career of the various races of men are determined by the potential inherent in the individuals and families that compose them, and like them the races themselves are for long periods marked by power and capacity or weakness and lack of distinction. There are certain races, such as the Hottentot, the Malay, the American Indian, and mixed bloods, as the Mexican peons and Mongol-Slavs of a portion of the southeastern Europe, that, so far as recorded history is concerned, are either static or retrogressive. There are family units, poverty-stricken and incompetent, in Naples, Canton, East Side New York; or opulent and aggressive in West Side New York, in Birmingham, Westphalia, Pittsburgh, that are no more subject to the cultural and character-creating influences of education and environment--beyond a certain definite point--than are the amphibians of Africa or the rampant weeds of my garden. This is a hard saying and a provocative. The entire course of democratic theory, of humanitarian thought and of the popular type of scientific speculation stands against it, and the Christian religion as well, unless the statement itself is guarded by exact definitions. If the contention of the scientific materialist were correct, and the thing that makes man, and that Christians call the immortal soul, were but the result of physical processes of growth and differentiation, then slavery would be justifiable, and exploitation a reasonable and inevitable process. Since, however, this assumption of materialism is untenable, and since all men are possessed of immortal souls between which is no distinction in the sight of God, the situation, regrettable if you like, is one which at the same time calls for the exercise of a higher humanitarianism than that so popular during the last generation, and as well for a very drastic revision of contemporary political and social and educational methods. The soul of the man is the localization of divinity; in a sense each man is a manifestation of the Incarnation. Black or white, conspicuous or obscure, intelligent or stupid, offspring of a creative race or bound by the limitations of one that is static or in process of decay, there is no difference in the universal claim to justice, charity, and opportunity. The soul of a Cantonese river-man, of a Congo slave, of an East Side Jew, is in itself as essentially precious and worth saving as the soul of a bishop, of a descendant of a Norman viking or an Irish king, or that of a volunteer soldier in the late armies of France or Great Britain or the United States. Here lies absolute and final equality, and the State, the Law, the Church are bound to guard this equality in the one case and the other with equal force; indeed, those of the lower racial and family types claim even more faithful guardianship than those of the higher, for they can accomplish less for themselves and by themselves. But the fundamental and inescapable inequality, in intellect, in character, and in capacity, which I insist is one of the conditioning factors in life, is vociferously denied, but ruthlessly enforced, by the people that will be the first to denounce any restatement of what is after all no more than a patent fact. A little less enthusiasm for shibboleths, and a little more intelligent regard for history and palpable conditions, will show that the assumed equality between men "on the strength of their manhood alone," the sufficiency of education for correcting the accidental differences that show themselves, and the scheme of life that is worked out along democratic lines on the basis of this essential (or potential) equality, are "fond things vainly imagined" which must be radically modified before the world can begin a sane and wholesome building-up after the great purgation of war. That equality between men which exists by virtue of the presence in each of an immortal soul, involves an even distribution of justice and the protection of law, without distinction of persons, and an even measure of charity and compassion, but it does not involve the admission of a claim to equality of action or the denial of varied status, since race-values, both of blood and of the _gens_ enter in to establish differences in character, in intelligence and in capacity which cannot be changed by education, environment or heredity within periods which are practical considerations with society. If we could still hold the old Darwinian dogmas of the origin of species through the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest, and if the equally august and authoritative dogma of the transmission by inheritance of acquired characteristics were longer tenable, then perhaps we might invoke faith, hope and patience and continue our generous method of imperilling present society while we fixed our eyes on the vision of that to come when environment, education and heredity had accomplished their perfect work. Unfortunately--or perhaps fortunately--science is rapidly reconsidering its earlier and somewhat hasty conclusions, and the consensus of the most authoritative opinion seems to be that we must believe these things no longer. Failing these premises, on which we have laboured so long and so honestly and so sincerely, we are again thrown back on the testimony of history and our own observation, and with this reversal we also are bound to reconsider both our premises and the constitution of those systems and institutions we have erected on them as a foundation. The existence of a general law does not exclude exceptions. The fact that in the case of human beings we have to take into consideration a powerful factor that does not come into play in the domain of zoölogy and botany--the immortal soul--makes impossible the drawing of exact deductions from precedents therein established. This determining touch of the divine, which is no result of biological processes, but stands outside the limitations of heredity and environment and education, may manifest itself quite as well in one class as in another, for "God is no respecter of persons." As has been said before, there is no difference in degree as between immortal souls. The point is, however, that each is linked to a specific congeries of tendencies, limitations, effective or defective agencies, that are what they have been made by the parents of the race. These may be such as enable the soul to triumph in its earthly experience and in its bodily housing; they may be such as will bring about failure and defeat. It is not that the soul builds itself "more stately mansions"; it is that these are provided for it by the physical processes of life, and it is almost the first duty of man to see that they are well built. Again, the soul is single and personal; as it is not a plexus of inherited tendencies, so it is not heritable, and a great soul showing suddenly in the dusk of a dull race contributes nothing of its essential quality to the issue of the body it has made its house. The stews of a mill town may suddenly be illuminated by the radiance of a divine soul, to the amazement of profligate parents and the confusion of eugenists; but unless the unsolvable mystery of life has determined on a new species, and so by a sudden influx of the _élan vital_ cuts off the line of physical succession and establishes one that is wholly new, then the brightness dies away with the passing of the splendid soul, and the established tendencies resume their sway. The bearing of this theory on the actions of society is immediate. Through the complete disregard of race-values that has obtained during the last two or three centuries, and the emergence and complete supremacy in all categories of life of human groups of low potential, civilization has been brought down to a level where it is threatened with disaster. If recovery is to be effected and a second era of "dark ages" avoided, there must be an entirely new evaluation of things, a new estimate of the principles and methods that obtained under Modernism, and a fearless adventure into fields that may prove not to be so unfamiliar as might at first appear. Specifically, we must revise our attitude as to immigration, excluding whole classes, and even races, that we have hitherto welcomed with open hands from the disinterested offices of steamship companies: we must control and in some cases prohibit, the mating of various racial stocks; finally we must altogether disallow the practice of changing, by law, one race-name for another. This process is one for which no excuse exists and unless it can be brought to an end then, apart from certain physical differentiations on which nature wisely insists, we have no guaranty against the adulteration that has gone so far towards substituting the mongrel for the pure racial type, while society is bound to suffer still further deception and continued danger along the lines that have recently been indicated by the transformation of Treibitsch into "Lincoln," Braunstein into "Trotsky" and Samuels into "Montague." For its fulfillment, then, and its regeneration, the real democracy demands and must achieve the creation and cooperation of a real aristocracy, not an aristocracy of material force either military or civil, nor one of land owners or money-getters, nor one of artificial caste. All these substitutes have been tried from time to time, in Rome, China, Great Britain, the United States, and all have failed in the end, for all have ignored the one essential point of _character_, without which we shall continue to reproduce what we have at present; a thing as insolent, offensive and tyrannical as the old aristocracies at their worst, with none of the constructive and beneficent qualities of the old aristocracies at their best. That race-values have much to do with this development of character I believe to be true, but of far greater efficiency, indeed the actual motive force, is the Christian religion, working directly on and through the individual and using race as only one of its material means of operation. Democracy has accomplished its present failure, not only because it could not function without the cooperation of aristocracy, but chiefly because, in its modernist form, it has become in fact isolated from Christianity. All in it of good it derives from that Catholic Christianity of the Middle Ages which first put it into practice, all in it of evil it owes to a falling back on paganism and a denial of its own parentage and rejection of its control. I shall deal with this later in more detail; I speak of it now just for the purpose of entering a caveat against any deduction from what I have said that any natural force, of race or evolution or anything else, or any formal institution devised by man, ever has, or ever can, serve in itself as a way of social redemption. I am anxious not to overemphasize these things on which the development of my argument forces me to lay particular stress. For those who can go with me so far, the question will arise: How then are we so to reorganize society that we may gain the end in view? It is a question not easy of solution. Granted the fact of social differentiation and the necessity of its recognition, how are we to break down the wholly wrong system that now obtains and substitute another in its place? It would be simple enough if within the period allowed us by safety (apparently not any too extended at the present moment) a working majority of men could achieve, in the old and exact phraseology, that change of heart, that spiritual conversion, that would bring back into permanent authority the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity, and that sense of right values in life, which together make almost indifferent the nature of the formal devices man creates for the organization of society. Certainly this is possible; greater miracles have happened in history but, failing this, what? One turns of course by instinct to old models, but in this is the danger of an attempt at an archaeological restoration, a futile effort at reviving dead forms that have had their day. In principle, and in the working as well, the old orders of chivalry or knighthood strongly commend themselves, for here there was, in principle, both the maintenance of high ideals of honour courtesy and _noblesse oblige,_ and the rendering of chivalrous service. Chesterton has put it well in the phrase "the giving things which cannot be demanded, the avoiding things which cannot be punished." Moreover, admission to the orders of knighthood was free to all provided there were that cause which came from personal character alone. Knighthood was the crown of knightly service and it was forfeited for recreancy. Is there not in this some suggestion of what may again be established as an incentive and a reward, and as well, as a vital agency for the reorganization of society? Knighthood is personal, and is for the lifetime of the recipient. Is there any value in an estate where status is heritable? If there is any validity in the theory of varying and persistent race-values, it would seem so, yet the idea of recognizing this excellence of certain families and the reasonable probability of their maintaining the established standard unimpaired, and so giving them a formal status, would no doubt be repugnant to the vast majority of men in the United States. I think this aversion is based on prejudice, natural but ill-founded. We resent the idea of privilege without responsibility, as we should, but this, while it was the condition of those aristocracies which were operative at the time of the founding of the Republic, was opposed to the Mediaeval, or true idea, which linked responsibility with privilege. The old privilege is gone and cannot be restored, but already we have a new privilege which is being claimed and enforced by proletarian groups, and the legislative representatives of the whole people stand in such terror of massed votes that they not only fail to check this astonishing and topsy-turvy movement, but actually further its pretensions. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" actually means the restoration of privilege in a form far more tyrannical and monstrous than any ever exercised by the old aristocracies of Italy, France, Germany and England. Much recent legislation in Washington exempting certain industrial and agricultural classes from the operation of laws which bear heavily on other classes, and some of the claims and pretensions of unionized labor, tend in precisely the same direction. It is not restoration of privilege I have in mind but rather in a sense the prevention of this through the existence of a class or estate that has a fixed status dependent first on character and service and then on an assured position that is not contingent on political favour, the bulk of votes, or the acquisition of an inordinate amount of money. Surety of position works towards independence of thought and action and towards strong leadership. It establishes and maintains certain high ideals of honour, chivalry, and service as well as of courtesy and manners. If the things for which the gentlemen, the knighthood and the nobility of Europe during the Christian dispensation were responsible were stricken from the record there would be comparatively little left of the history of European culture and civilization. After all, is it merely sentimentalism and a sense of the picturesque that leads us to look backward with some wistfulness to the days of which the record is still left us in legends and fairy-tales and old romance, when ignorance and vulgarity did not sit in high places even if arrogance and pride and tyranny sometimes did, and when the profiteer and the oriental financier and the successful politician did not represent the distinction and the chivalry and the courtesy and the honour of the social organism man builds for his own habitation? The idea of knighthood still stirs us and the deeds of chivalry and the courtesy and the honour of the social Knights of the Round Table, Crusaders and knights errant, the quest of the Holy Grail, rescue and adventure, the fighting with paynims and powers of evil, still stir our blood and arouse in our minds strange contrasts and antinomies. Princes and fair chatelaines in their wide domains with castle and chase and delicate pleasaunce, liege-men bound to them by more than the feudal ties of service. All the varied honours of nobility, vitalized by significant ritual and symbolized by splendid and beautiful costumes. Courts of Love and troubadours and trouvères, kings who were kings indeed, with the splendour and courtesy and beneficence of their courts--Louis the Saint and Frederic II, Edward III and King Charles--above all the simple rank and high honour of the "gentleman," the representative of a long line of honourable tradition, no casual and purse-proud upstart, but of proud race and unquestioned status, proud because it stood for certain high ideals of honour and chivalry and loyalty, of courtesy and breeding and compassion. All these old things of long ago still rouse in us answering humours, and there are a few of us who can hardly see just why they are inconsistent with liberty and opportunity, justice, righteousness and mercy. Somehow the last two generations, and especially the last ten years, have revealed many things hitherto hidden, and as we envisage society as it has come to be, estimating it by new-found standards and establishing new comparisons through a recovery of a more just historical sense, the question comes whether it is indeed more wholesome, more beautiful, more normal to man as he is, than the older society that in varying forms but always the same principle, had held throughout all history until the new model came in, now hardly a century ago. I do not think this wistful and bewildered looking backward is particularly due to a new desire for beauty, that comeliness of condition that existed then and has now given place to gross ugliness and ill-conditioned manners and ways. Rather it seems to me it is due to a sense of irrationality and fundamental injustice in the present order, coupled with a new terror of the proximate issue as this already is revealing itself amongst many peoples. We resent the high estate, purchasable and purchased, of the cynical intriguer and the vulgar profiteer, of the tradesman in "big business," the cheap prophet and the pathetic progeny of "successful men" fast reverting to type. We know our city councils and our state legislatures and our houses of congress, we know our newspapers, their standards and the motive powers behind them, and what they record of the character and the doings of what they call "society men and women." Above all we know that under the ancient regime, in spite of manifold failures, shortcomings and disloyalty, there was such a thing as a standard of honour, a principle of chivalry, an impulse to unselfish service, a criterion of courtesy and good manners; we look for these things now in vain, except amongst those little enclaves of oblivion where the old character and old breeding still maintain a fading existence, and as we consider what we have become we sometimes wonder if the price we have paid for "democracy" was not too extortionate. Above all, we are tempted to this query when we think of our vanishing standards of right and wrong, of our progressive reversal of values, of our diminishing stock of social character. We tore down in indignant revolt the rotten fabric of a bad social system when it had so far declined from its ideal and its former estate that it could no longer be endured, and we made a new thing, full as we were with the fire of desire for a new righteousness and a new system that would compass it. Perhaps we did well, at least we hardly could have done anything else; but now we are again in the position of our forefathers who saw things as they were and acted with force and decision. There are as many counts against our society of plutocrats, politicians and proletarians, mingled in complete and ineffective confusion, as there were against the aristocracies, so called, of the eighteenth century. Perhaps there are more, at least many of them are different, but the indictment is no less sweeping. Our plan, so generous, so liberal, so high-minded in many ways, has failed to produce the results we desired, while it has worked itself out to the point of menace. It is for us to see these facts clearly, and so to act, and so promptly, that we may not have to await the destroying force of cataclysm for the correction of our errors. IV THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM The solution of the industrial and economic problem that now confronts the entire world with an insistence that is not to be denied, is contingent on the restoration, first of all, of the holiness and the joy of work. Labour is not a curse, it is rather one of the greatest of the earthly blessings of man, provided its sanctity is recognized and its performance is accomplished with satisfaction to the labourer. In work man creates, whether the product is a bushel of potatoes from a space of once arid ground, or whether it is the Taj Mahal, Westminster Abbey or the Constitution of the United States, and so working he partakes something of the divine power of creation. When work is subject to slavery, all sense of its holiness is lost, both by master and bondman; when it is subject to the factory system all the joy in labour is lost. Ingenuity may devise one clever panacea after another for the salving work and for lifting the working classes from the intolerable conditions that have prevailed for more than a century; they will be ephemeral in their existence and futile in their results unless sense of holiness is restored, and the joy in production and creation given back to those who have been defrauded. Before Christianity prevailed slavery was universal in civilized communities, labour, as conducted under that regime, was a curse, and this at length came home to roost on the gaunt wreckage of imperialism. Thereafter came slowly increasing liberty under the feudal system with its small social units and its system of production for use not profits, monasticism with its doctrine and practice of the sanctity of work, and the Church with its progressive emancipation of the spiritual part of man. Work was not easy, on the contrary it was very hard throughout the Dark Ages and Mediaevalism, but there is no particular merit in easy work. It was virtually free except for the labour and contributions in kind exacted by the over-lord (less in proportion than taxes in money have been at several times since) from the workers on the soil, and in the crafts of every kind redeemed from undue arduousness by the joy that comes from doing a thing well and producing something of beauty, originality and technical perfection. The period during which work possessed the most honourable status and the joy in work was the greatest, extends from the beginnings of the twelfth century well into the sixteenth. In some centuries, and along certain lines of activity, it continued much longer, notably in England and the United States, but social and industrial conditions were rapidly changing, the old aristocracy was becoming perverted, Lutheranisms, Calvinism and Puritanism were breaking down the old communal sense of brotherhood so arduously built up during the Middle Ages, capitalism was ousting the trade and craft guilds of free labour and political absolutism was crushing ever lower and lower a proletariat that was fast losing the last vestiges of old liberty. The fact of slavery without the name was gradually imposed on the agricultural classes, and after the suppression of the monasteries in England work as work lost its sacred character and fell under contempt. With the outbreak of industrialism in the last quarter of the eighteenth century through the institution and introduction of "labour-saving" machinery and the consequent division of labour, the factory system, the joint-stock company and capitalism, this new slavery was extended to industrial workers, and with its establishment disappeared the element of joy in labour. For fifty years, about the blackest half-century civilization has had to record, this condition of industrial slavery continued with little amendment. Very slowly, however, the workers themselves, championed by certain aristocrats like the seventh Earl of Shaftsbury against professional Liberals like Cobden, Bright, and Gladstone in England, began to loosen the shackles that bound them to infamous conditions, and after the abrogation of laws that made any association of workingmen a penal offense, the labour unions began to ameliorate certain of the servile conditions under which for two generations the workman had suffered. Since then the process of abolishing wage-slavery went slowly forward until at last the war came not only to threaten its destruction altogether but also to place the emancipated workers in a position where they could dictate terms and conditions to capital, to employers, to government and to the general public; while even now in many parts of Europe and America, besides Russia, overt attempts are being made to bring back the old slavery, only with the former bondsmen in supreme dictatorship, the former employers and the "bourgeoisie" in the new serfage. The old slavery is gone, but the joy in work has not been restored; instead, those who have achieved triumphant emancipation turn from labour itself with the same distaste, yes, with greater aversion than that which obtained under the old régime. With every added liberty and exemption, with every shortening of hours and increase of pay, production per hour falls off and the quality of the output declines. What is the reason for this? Is it due to the viciousness of the worker, to his natural selfishness, greed and cruelty? I do not think so, but rather that the explanation is to be found in the fact that the industrial system of modernism has resulted in a condition where the joy has been altogether cut out of labour, and that until this state of things has been reversed and the sense of the holiness of work and the joy of working have been restored, it is useless to look for workable solutions of the labour problem. The _fact_ of industrial slavery has been done away with but the sense of the servile condition that attaches to work has been retained, therefore the idea of the dignity and holiness of labour has not come back any more than the old joy and satisfaction. Failing this recovery, no reorganization of industrial relations, neither profit-sharing nor shop committees, neither nationalization nor state socialism, neither the abolition of capital, nor Soviets nor syndicalism nor the dictatorship of the proletariat will get us anywhere. It is all a waste of time, and, through its ultimate failure and disappointments, an intensification of an industrial disease. Why is it that this is so? For an answer I must probe deep and, it may seem, cut wildly. I believe it is because we have built up a system that goes far outside the limits of human scale, transcends human capacity, is forbidden by the laws and conditions of life, and must be abrogated if it is not to destroy itself and civilization in the process. What, precisely has taken place? Late in the eighteenth century two things happened; the discovery of the potential inherent in coal and its derivative, steam, with electricity yet unexploited but ready to hand, and the application of this to industrial purposes, together with the initiating of a long and astounding series of discoveries and inventions all applicable to industrial purposes. With a sort of vertiginous rapidity the whole industrial process was transformed from what it had been during the period of recorded history; steam and machinery took the place of brain and hand power directly applied, and a revolution greater than any other was effected. The new devices were hailed as "labour-saving" but they vastly increased labour both in hours of work and in hands employed. Bulk production through the factory system was inevitable, the result being an enormous surplus over the normal and local demand. To organize and conduct these processes of bulk-production required money greater in amount than individuals could furnish; so grew up capitalism, the joint-stock company, credit and cosmopolitan finance. To produce profits and dividends markets must be found for the huge surplus product. This was accomplished by stimulating the covetousness of people for things they had not thought of, under normal conditions would not, in many cases, need, and very likely would be happier without, and in "dumping" on supposedly barbarous peoples in remote parts of the world, articles alien to their traditions and their mode of life and generally pestiferous in their influence and results. So came advertising in all its branches, direct and indirect, from the newspaper and the bill-board to the drummer, the diplomatic representative and the commercial missionary. Every year saw some new invention that increased the product per man, the development of some new advertising device, the conquest of some new territory or the delimitation of some new "sphere of influence," and the revelation of some new possibility in the covetousness of man. Profits rose to new heights and accumulating dividends clamoured for new opportunities for investment. Competition tended to cut down returns, therefore labour was more and more sustained through diminished wages and laws that savagely prevented any concerted effort towards self-defense. Improvements in agricultural processes and the application of machinery and steam power, together with bulk-production and scientific localization of crops, threw great quantities of farm-labourers out of work and drove them into the industrial towns, while advances in medical science and in sanitation raised the proportion of births to deaths and soon provided a surplus of potential labour so that the operation of the "law of supply and demand," extolled by a new philosophy and enforced by the new "representative" or democratic and parliamentary government, resulted in an unfailing supply of cheap labour paid wages just beyond the limit of starvation. At last there came evidences that the limit had been reached; the whole world had been opened up and pre-empted, labour was beginning to demand and even get more adequate wages, competition, once hailed as "the life of trade" was becoming so fierce that dividends were dwindling. Something had to be done and in self-defense industries began to coalesce in enormous "trusts" and "combines" and monopolies. Capitalization of millions now ran into billions, finance became international in its scope and gargantuan in its proportions and ominousness, advertising grew from its original simplicity and naïveté into a vast industry based on all that the most ingenious professors could tell of applied psychology, subsidizing artists, poets, men of letters, employing armies of men along a hundred different lines, expending millions annually in its operations, making the modern newspaper possible, and ultimately developing the whole system of propaganda which has now become the one great determining factor in the making of public opinion. When the twentieth century opened, that industrialism which had begun just a century before, had, with its various collateral developments, financial, educational, journalistic, etc., become not only the greatest force in society, but as well a thing operating on the largest scale that man had ever essayed: beside it the Roman Empire was parochial. The result of this institution, conceived on such imperial lines, was, in the field we are now considering, the total destruction of the sense of the holiness of labour and of joy in work. It extended far beyond the limits of pure industrialism; it moulded and controlled society in all its forms, destroying ideals old as history, reversing values, confusing issues and wrecking man's powers of judgment. Until the war it seemed irresistible, now its weakness and the fallacy of its assumptions are revealed, but it has become so absolutely a part of our life, indeed of our nature, that we are unable to estimate it by any sound standards of judgment, and even when we approximate this we cannot think in other terms when we try to devise our schemes of redemption. Even the socialist and the Bolshevik think in imperial terms when they try to compass the ending of imperialism. Under this supreme system, as I see it, the two essential things I have spoken of cannot be restored, nor could they maintain themselves if, by some miracle, they were once re-established. The indictment cannot be closed here. The actual condition that has developed from industrialism presents certain factors that are not consonant with sane, wholesome and Christian living. Not only has the unit of human scale in human society been done away with, not only have the sense of the nobility of work and joy in the doing been exterminated, but, as well, certain absolutely false principles and methods have been adopted which are not susceptible of reform but only of abolition. Of some of these I have spoken already; the alarming drift towards cities, until now in the United States more than one-half the population is urban; the segregation of industries in certain cities and regions; the minute division of labour and intensive specialization; the abnormal growth of a true proletariat or non-land-holding class; the flooding of the country by cheap labour drawn from the most backward communities and from peoples of low race-value. Out of this has arisen a bitter class conflict and the ominous beginnings of a perilous class consciousness, with actual warfare joined in several countries, and threatened in all others where industrial civilization is prevalent. With this has grown up an artificially stimulated covetousness for a thousand futile luxuries, and a standard of living that presupposes a thousand non-essentials as basic necessities. Production for profit, not use, excess production due to machinery, efficient organization, and surplus of labour, together with the necessity for marketing the product at a profit, have produced a state of things where at least one-half the available labour in the country is engaged in the production and sale of articles which are not necessary to physical, intellectual or spiritual life, while of the remainder, hardly more than a half is employed in production, the others are devoting themselves to distribution and to the war of competition through advertising and the capturing of trade by ingenious and capable salesmen. It is a significant fact that two of the greatest industries in the United States are the making of automobiles and moving pictures. It is probably true to say that of the potential labour in the United States, about one-fourth is producing those things which are physically, intellectually and spiritually necessary; the remaining three-fourths are essentially non-producers: they must, however, be housed, fed, clothed, and amused, and the cost of this support is added to the cost of the necessities of life. The reason for the present high cost of living lies possibly here. Lest I be misunderstood, let me say here that under the head of necessities of life I do not mean a new model automobile each year, moving pictures, mechanical substitutes for music or any other art, and the thousand catch-trade devices that appear each year for the purpose of filching business from another or establishing a new desire in the already over-crowded imaginations of an over-stimulated populace. Particularly do I not mean advertising in any sense in which it is now understood and practised. If, as I believe to be the case, production for profit, rather than for use, the reversal of the ancient doctrine that the demand must produce the supply, in favour of the doctrine that the supply must foster the demand, is the foundation of our economic error and our industrial ills, then it follows that advertising as it is now carried on by billboards, circulars and newspapers, by drummers, solicitors and consular agents, falls in the same condemnation, for except by its offices the system could not have succeeded or continue to function. It is bad in itself as the support and strength of a bad institution, but its guilt does not stop here. So plausible is it, so essential to the very existence of the contemporary régime, so knit up with all the commonest affairs of life, so powerful in its organization and broad in its operations, it has poisoned, and continues to poison, the minds of men so that the headlong process of losing all sense of comparative values is accelerated, while every instinctive effort at recovery and readjustment is nullified. How far this process has gone may be illustrated by two instances. It is only a few months ago that a most respected clergyman publicly declared that missionaries were the greatest and most efficient asset to trade because they were unofficial commercial agents who opened up new and savage countries to Western commerce through advertising commodities of which the natives had never heard, and arousing in them a sense of acquisitiveness that meant more wealth and business for trade and manufacture, which should support foreign missions on this ground at least. More recently the head of an advertising concern in New York is reported to have said: "It is principally through advertising that we have arrived at the high degree of civilization which this age enjoys, for advertising has taught us the use of books and how to furnish our homes with the thousand and one comforts that add so materially to our physical and intellectual well-being. The future of the world depends on advertising. Advertising is the salvation of civilization, for civilization cannot outlive advertising a century." It is tempting to linger over such a delectable morsel as this, for even if it is only the absurd and irresponsible output of one poor, foolish man, it does express more or less what industrial civilization holds to be true, though few would avow their faith so whole-heartedly. The statement was made as propaganda, and propaganda is merely advertising in its most insidious and dangerous form. The thing revealed its possibilities during the war, but the black discredit that was then very justly attached to it could not prevail against its manifest potency, and it is now universally used after the most comprehensive and frequently unscrupulous fashion, with results that can only be perilous in the extreme. The type and calibre of mind that has now been released from long bondage, and by weight of numbers is now fast taking over the direction of affairs, is curiously subservient to the written word, and lacking a true sense of comparative values, without effective leadership either secular or religious, is easily swayed by every wind of doctrine. The forces of evil that are ever in conflict with the forces of right are notoriously ingenious in making the worse appear the better cause, and with every desire for illumination and for following the right way, the multitude, whether educated or illiterate, fall into the falsehoods of others' imaginings. Money, efficiency, an acquired knowledge of mob psychology, the printing press and the mail service acting in alliance, and directed by fanatical or cynical energy, form a force of enormous potency that is now being used effectively throughout society. It is irresponsible, anonymous and pervasive. Through its operation the last barriers are broken down between the leadership of character and the leadership of craft, while all formal distinctions between the valuable and the valueless are swept away. I have spoken at some length of this particular element in the present condition of things, because in both its aspects, as the support of our present industrial and economic system and as the efficient moulder of a fluid and unstable public opinion, it is perhaps the strongest and most subtle force of which we must take account. With a system so prevalent as imperial industry, so knit up with every phase of life and thought, and so determining a factor in all our concepts, united as it is with two such invincible allies as advertising and propaganda, it is inconceivable that it should be overthrown by any human force from without. Holding it to be essentially wrong, it seems to me providential that it is already showing signs of falling by its own weight. Production of commodities has far exceeded production of the means of payment, and society is now running on promises to pay, on paper obligations, on anticipations of future production and sale, on credit, in a word. The war has enormously magnified this condition until an enforced liquidation would mean bankruptcy for all the nations of the earth, while the production of utilities is decreasing in proportion to the production of luxuries, labour is exacting increasing pay for decreasing hours of work and quality of output, and the enormous financial structure, elaborately and ingeniously built up through several generations, is in grave danger of immediate catastrophe. The whole world is in the position of an insolvent debtor who is so deeply involved that his creditors cannot afford to let him go into bankruptcy, and so keep him out of the Poor Debtor's Court by doling out support from day to day. Confidence is the only thing that keeps matters going; what happens when this is lost is now being demonstrated in many parts of Europe. The optimist claims that increased production, coupled with enforced economy, will produce a satisfactory solution, but there is no evidence that labour, now having the whip-hand, will give up its present advantage sufficiently to make this possible; even if it did, payment must be in the form of exchange or else in further promises to pay, while the capacity of the world for consumption is limited somewhere, though thus far "big business" has failed to recognize this fact. At present the interest charges on debts, both public and private, have reached a point where they come near to consuming all possible profits even from a highly accelerated rate of production. Altogether it is reasonable to assume that the present financial-industrial system is near its term for reasons inherent in itself, let alone the possibility of a further extension of the drastic and completely effective measures of destruction that are characteristics of Bolshevism and its blood-brothers. Assuming that this is so, two questions arise: what is to take the place of imperial industry, and how is this substitution to be brought about? I think the answer to the first is: a social and industrial system based on small, self-contained, largely self-sufficing units, where supply follows demand, where production is primarily for use not profit, and where in all industrial operations some system will obtain which is more or less that of the guilds of the Middle Ages. I should like to go into this a little more in detail before trying to answer the second question. The normal social unit is a group of families predominantly of the same race, territorially compact, of substantially the same ideals as expressed in religion and the philosophy of life, and sufficiently numerous to provide from within itself the major part of those things which are necessary to physical, intellectual and spiritual well-being. It should consist of a central nucleus of houses, each with its garden, the churches, schools and public buildings that are requisite, the manufactories and workshops that supply the needs of the community, the shops for sale of those things not produced at home, and all necessary places of amusement. Around this residential centre should be sufficient agricultural land to furnish all the farm products that will be consumed by the community itself. The nucleus of habitation and industry, together with the surrounding farms, make up the social unit, which is to the fullest possible degree, self-contained, self-sufficient and self-governing. Certain propositions are fundamental, and they are as follows: Every family should own enough land to support itself at need. The farms included in the unit must produce enough to meet the needs of the population. Industry must be so organized that it will normally serve the resident population along every feasible line. Only such things as cannot be produced at home on account of climatic or soil limitations should be imported from outside. All necessary professional services should be obtainable within the community itself. All financial transactions such as loans, credits, banking and insurance should be domestic. Surplus products, whether agricultural, industrial or professional, should be considered as by-products, and in no case should the producing agency acquire such magnitude that home-consumption becomes a side issue and production for profit take the place of production for use. All this is absolutely opposed to our present system, but our present system is wasteful, artificial, illogical, unsocial, and therefore vicious. I have said enough as to the falsities, the dangers and the failures of bulk-production through the operations of capitalism, the factory system and advertising, but its concomitant, the segregation of industries, is equally objectionable. To ship hogs 1,500 miles to be slaughtered and packed in food form, and then ship this manufactured product back to the source from which the raw material came; to feed a great city with grain, potatoes and fruits coming from 1,000 to 3,000 miles away, and vegetables from a distance of several hundred miles, while the farms within a radius of fifty miles are abandoned and barren; to make all the shoes for the nation in one small area, to spin the wool and cotton and weave the cloth in two or three others; to make the greater part of the furniture in one state, the automobiles in a second and the breakfast food in a third, is so preposterous a proposition that it belongs in Gulliver's Travels, not in the annals of a supposedly intelligent people. The only benefit is that which for a time accrued to the railways, which carted raw materials and finished products back and forth over thousands of miles of their lines, the costs of shipment and reshipment being naturally added to the price to the consumer. The penalties for this uneconomic procedure were borne by society at large, not only in the increased costs but through the abnormal communities, each with its tens of thousands of operatives all engaged in the same work and generally drawn from foreign races (with the active co-operation of the steamship lines), and the permanent dislocation of the labour supply, together with the complete disruption of the social synthesis. With production for profit and segregation of industries has come an almost infinitesimal division and specialization of labour. Under a right industrial system this would be reduced, not magnified. The dignity of labour and the joy of creation demand that in so far as possible each man should carry through one entire operation. This is of course now, and always has been under any highly developed civilization, impossible in practice, except along certain lines of art and craftsmanship. The evils of the existing system can in a measure be done away with the moment production for use is the recognized law, for it is only in bulk-production that this intensive specialization can be made to pay. Bulk-production there will always be until, and if, the world is reorganized on the basis of an infinite number of self-contained social units, but in the ideal community--and I am dealing now with ideals--it would not exist. Allied with this is the whole question of the factory method and the use and misuse of machinery. It seems to me that the true principle is that machinery and the factory are admissible only when so employed they actually do produce, in bulk operations, a better product, and with less labour, than is possible through hand work. Weaving, forging and all work where human action must be more or less mechanical, offer a fair field for the machine and the factory, but wherever the human element can enter, where personality and the skilled craft of the hand are given play, the machine and the factory are inadmissible. The great city, creation of "big business," segregation of industries, advertising, salesmanship and a hundred other concomitants of modernism, have built up an abnormal and avaricious demand for bulk-production along lines where the handicraft should function. It becomes necessary--let us say--to provide a million dollars worth of furniture for a ten million dollar hotel (itself to be superseded and scrapped in perhaps ten years) and naturally only the most intensive and efficient factory system can meet this demand. Rightly, however, the furniture of a community should be produced by the local cabinet makers, and so it should be in many other industries now entirely taken over by the factory system. For the future then we must consciously work for the building upward from primary units, so completely reversing our present practice of creating the big thing and fighting hopelessly to preserve such small and few doles of liberty and personality as may be permitted to filter downward from above. This is the only true democracy, and the thing we call by the name is not this, largely because we have bent our best energies to the building up of vast and imperial aggregates which have inevitably assumed a complete unity in themselves and become dominating, tyrannical and ruthless forces that have operated regardless of the sound laws and wholesome principles of a right society. Neither the vital democracy of principle nor the artificial democracy of practice can exist in conjunction with imperialism, whether this is established in government, in industry, in trade, in society or in education. If we can assume, then, the gradual development of a new society in which these principles will be carried out, a society that is made up of social units of human scale, self-contained, self-supporting and self-governed, where production is primarily for use not profit, and where bulk-production is practically non-existent, the sub-division of labour reduced to the lowest practicable point, machinery employed to a much less extent than now, and the factory system abolished, what organic form will labour take on in place of that which now obtains? It is possible to forecast this only in the most general terms, for life itself must operate to determine the lines of development and dictate the consequent forms. If we can acquire a better standard of comparative values, and with a clearer and more fearless vision estimate the rights and wrongs of the contemporary system, rejecting the ill thing and jealously preserving, or passionately regaining, the good, we shall be able to establish certain broad, fundamental and governing principles, and doing this we can await in confidence the evolution of the organic forms that will be the working agencies of the new society. I have tried to indicate some of the basic principles of a new society. The operating forms, so far as industry is concerned, will, I think, follow in essential respects the craft-guilds of the Middle Ages. They will not be an archaeological restoration, as some of the English protagonists of this great revolution seem to anticipate, they will be variously adapted to the peculiar conditions of a new century, but the basic principles will be preserved. Whatever happens, I am sure it will not be either a continuation of the present system of capitalism and profit-hunting, or nationalization of industries, or state socialism in any form, or anything remotely resembling Bolshevism, syndicalism or a "dictatorship of the proletariat." Here, as in government, education and social relations, the power and the authority of the state must decline, government itself withdrawing more and more from interference with the operation of life, and liberty find its way back to the individual and to the social and economic groups. We live now under a more tyrannical and inquisitorial regime, in spite of (partly perhaps because of) its democratic forms and dogmas, than is common in historical records. Nationalization or state socialism would mean so great a magnifying of this condition that existence would soon become both grotesque and intolerable. We must realize, and soon, that man may lose even the last semblance of liberty, as well under a nominal democracy as under a nominal despotism or theocracy. The guild system was the solution of the industrial problem offered and enforced by Christianity working through secular life; it presupposed the small social and industrial unit and becomes meaningless if conceived in the gigantic and comprehensive scale of modern institutions. "National guilds" is a contradiction in terms: it takes on the same element of error that inheres in the idea of "one big union." In certain respects the Christian guild resembled the modern trade union, but it differed from it in more ways, and it seems to be true that wherever this difference exists the guild was right and the union is wrong. Community of fellowship and action amongst men of each craft trade or calling is essential under any social system, good or bad, and it would be inseparable from the better society that must sometime grow up on the basis of the unit of human scale, for these autonomous groups, in order to furnish substantially all that their component parts could require, would have to be of considerable size as compared with the little farming villages of New England, though in contrast with the great cities of modernism they would be small indeed. In these new "walled towns" there would be enough men engaged in agriculture, in the necessary industrial occupations, in trade and in the professions to form many guilds of workable size, and normally these guilds would neither contain members of two or more professions or occupations, nor those from outside the community itself. The guild cannot function under intensive methods of production or where production is primarily for profit, or where the factory system prevails, or where capitalism is the established system, or under combinations, trusts or other devices for the establishing and maintenance of great aggregates tending always towards monopoly. However much we may admire the guild system and desire its restoration, we may as well recognize this fact at once. The imperial scale must go and the human scale be restored before the guild can come back in any general sense. I am assuming that this will happen, either through conscious action on the part of the people or as the result of catastrophe that always overtakes those who remain wedded to the illusions of falsity. On this assumption what are these enduring principles that will control the guild system of industry in the new State, however may be its form? The answer is to be found in the old guilds, altars, shrines, vestments and sacred vessels were given in incredible quantities for the furnishing and embellishment of the chapel or church; funds also for the maintenance of priestly offices especially dedicated to the guild. Closely allied with the religious spirit was that of good-fellowship and merrymaking. Every sort of feast and game and pageant was a part of the guild system, as it was indeed of life generally at this time when men did not have to depend upon hired professional purveyors of amusement for their edification. What they wanted they did themselves, and this community in worship and community in merrymaking did more even than the merging of common material interests, to knit the whole body together into a living organism. In how far the old system can be revived and put into operation is a question. Certainly it cannot be adopted as a fad and imposed on an unwilling society as a clever archaeological restoration. It will have to grow naturally out of life itself and along lines at present hardly predicable. There are many evidences that just this spontaneous generation is taking place. The guild system is being preached widely in England where the defects of the present scheme are more obvious and the resulting labour situation--or rather social situation--is more fraught with danger than elsewhere, and already the restoration seems to have made considerable headway. I am convinced, however, that the vital aspects of the case are primarily due to the interior working of a new spirit born of disillusionment and the undying fire in man that flames always towards regeneration; what the ardent preaching of the enthusiastic protagonists of the crusade best accomplishes is the creation in the minds of those not directly associated with the movement of a readiness to give sympathy and support to the actual accomplishment when it manifests itself. Recently I have come in contact here in America with several cases where the workmen themselves have broken away from the old ways and have actually established what are to all intents and purposes craft-guilds, without in the least realizing that they were doing this. I think the process is bound to continue, for the old order has broken down and is so thoroughly discredited it can hardly be restored. If time is granted us, great things must follow, but it is increasingly doubtful if this necessary element of time can be counted on. Daily the situation grows more menacing. Capital, which so long exploited labour to its own fabulous profit, is not disposed to sit quiet while the fruits of its labours and all prospects of future emoluments are being dissipated, and it is hard at work striving to effect a "return to normalcy." In this it is being unconsciously aided by the bulk of union labour which, encouraged by the paramount position it achieved during the war, influenced by an avarice it may well have learned from its former masters, as narrow in its vision as they, and increasingly subservient to a leadership which is frequently cynical and unscrupulous and always of an order of character and intelligence which is tending to lower and lower levels, is alienating sympathy and bringing unionism into disrepute. In the United States the tendency is steadily towards a very dangerous reactionism, with a corresponding strengthening of the radical element which aims at revolution, and that impossible thing, a proletarian dictatorship. It is this latter which is rampant and at present unchecked in Europe, and this also is a constant menace to the success of those sane and righteous movements which take their lead from the guild system of the Middle Ages. A third danger, but one which is constantly on the decline at present, partly because of the general disrepute of governments and partly because of the enormous accessions of power now accruing both to reactionism and radical revolutionism, or "Bolshevism," is state socialism or nationalization, which leaves untouched all the fatal elements in industrialism while it changes only the agents of administration. The complete collapse of able and constructive and righteous leadership, which is one of the startling phenomena of modernism, has left uncontrolled the enormous energy that has been released during the last three generations, and this is working blindly but effectively towards a cataclysm so precipitate and comprehensive that it is impossible not to fear that it may determine long before the sober and informed elements in society have accomplished very much in the recovery and establishment of sound and righteous principles and methods. Of course we can compass whichever result we will. We may shut our eyes to the omens and let matters drift to disaster, or we may take thought and council and avert the penalty that threatens us; the event is in our own hands. It is as criminal to foresee and predict only catastrophe as it is to compass this through lethargy, selfishness and illusion. We are bound to believe that righteousness will prevail, even in our own time, and believing this, what, in general terms will be the construction of the new system that must take the place of industrialism? I have already indicated what seem to me the fundamental ideas as: the small social unit that is self-sustaining; production primarily for use, coöperation in place of competition; a revived guild system with the abolition of capitalism, exploitation and intensive specialization as we now know these dominant factors in modern civilization. In the application of these principles there are certain innovations that will, I think, take place, and these may be listed somewhat as follows: Land holding will become universal and the true proletariat or landless class will disappear. It may be that the holding of land will become a prerequisite to active citizenship. Industrial production being for use not profit, the great city becomes a thing of the past, and life is rendered simpler through the elimination of a thousand useless and vicious luxuries; those employed in mechanical industries will be incalculably fewer than now, while those that remain will give only a portion of their time to industrial production, the remainder being available for productive work on their own gardens and farms. The handicrafts will be restored to their proper place and dignity, taking over into creative labour large numbers of those who otherwise would be sacrificed to the factory system. Where bulk production, as in weaving and the preparation and manufacturing of metals, is economical and unavoidable and carried on by factory methods, these manufactories will probably be taken over by the several communities (not by the state as a whole) and administered as public institutions for the benefit of the community and under conditions and regulations which ensure justice and well-being to the employees. All those in any community engaged in a given occupation, as for example, building, will form one guild made up of masters, journeymen and apprentices, with the same principles and much the same methods as prevailed under the ancient guild system. Fluctuating scales of prices determined by fluctuating conditions of competition, supply and demand, and power of coercion, will give place to "the fair price" fixed by concerted community action and revised from time to time in order to preserve a right balance with the general scale of cost of raw materials and cost of living. A maximum of returns in the shape of profits or dividends will be fixed by law. The community itself will undertake the furnishing of credits, loans and necessary capital for the establishing of a new business, charging a small rate of interest and maintaining a reserve fund to meet these operations. Private banking, insurance and the loaning of money on collateral will cease to exist. I dare say this will all sound chimerical and irrational in the extreme; I do not see it in that light. Its avowed object is the supersession of "big business" in all its phases by something that comes down to human scale. It aims to reduce labour and divide it more evenly by making the great mass of non-producers--those engaged in distribution, salesmanship, advertising, propaganda, and the furnishing of things unnecessary to the bodily, intellectual and spiritual needs of man--actual producers and self-supporting to a very large extent. It aims at restoring to work some sense of the joy in creation through active mind and hand. It aims at the elimination of the parasitic element in society and of that dangerous factor which subsists on wealth it acquires without earning, and by sheer force of its own opulence dominates and degrades society. It does not strike at private ownership, but rather exalts, extends and defends this, but it _does_ cut into all the theories and practices of communism and socialism by establishing the principle and practice of fellowship and coöperation. Is this "chimerical and irrational"? Meanwhile the "walled towns" do not exist and may not for generations. "Big business" is indisposed to abrogate itself. Trade unionism is fighting for its life and thereafter for world conquest, while the enmity between capital and labour increases, with no evidence that a restored guild system is even approximately ready to take its place. Strikes and lockouts grow more and more numerous, and wider and more menacing in their scope. The day of the "general strike" has only been delayed at the eleventh hour in several countries, and a general strike, if it can hold for a sufficient period, means, where-ever it occurs and whenever it succeeds, the end of civilization and the loosing of the floods of anarchy. There is hardly time for us patiently to await the slow process of individual and corporate enlightenment or the spontaneous development of the autonomous communities which, if they were sufficient in number, would solve the problem through eliminating the danger. What then, in the premises, can we do? There are of course certain concrete things which might help, as for instance the further extension and honest trying out of the "Kansas plan" for regulating industrial relations; the forming of "consumers leagues," and all possible support and furtherance of coöperative efforts of every sort. There are further possibilities (perhaps hardly probabilities) of controlling stock issues and stock holdings so that dividends do not have to be paid on grossly inflated capitalization, and fixing the maximum of dividends payable to non-active stockholders. Equally desirable but equally improbable, is the raising of the level of leadership in the labour unions so that these valuable institutions may no longer stultify themselves and wreck their own cause by their unjust and anti-social regulations as to apprentices, control of maximum output and its standard of quality, division of labour with ironclad inhibitions against one man doing another's work and against one man doing what six men can do less well, and as to the obligation to strike on order when no local or personal grievance exists. Most useful of all would be a voluntary renunciation, on the part of the purchasing public, of nine-tenths of the futile luxuries they now insanely demand, coupled with the production by themselves of some of the commodities which are easily producable; in other words, establishing some measure of self-support and so releasing many men and women from the curse of existence under factory conditions and giving them an opportunity of living a normal life under self-supporting circumstances. This, coupled with a fostering of the "back to the farm" movement, and the development of conditions which would make this process more practicable and the life more attractive, would do much, though in small ways, towards producing a more wholesome and less threatening state of affairs. Back of the whole problem, however, lies a fallacy in our conception of existence that must be eliminated before even the most constructive panaceas can possibly work. I mean the whole doctrine of natural rights which has become the citadel of capitalism in all its most offensive aspects, and of labour in its most insolent assumptions. The "rights" of property, the "right" to strike, the "right" to collective bargaining, the "right" to shut down an essential industry or to "walk out" and then picket the place so that it may not be reopened, the "right" to vote and hold office and do any fool thing you please so long as it is within the law, these are applications of what I mean when I speak of a gross fallacy that has come into being and has stultified our intelligence while bringing near the wrecking of our whole system. Neither man nor his community possesses any _absolute_ rights; they are all conditioned on how they are exercised. If they are not so conditioned they become privilege, which is a right not subject to conditions, and privilege is one of the things republicanism and democracy and every other effort towards human emancipation have set themselves up to destroy. Even the "right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is conditioned by the manner of use, and the same is true of every other and unspecified right. I do not propose to speak here of more than one aspect of this self-evident truth, but the single instance I cite is one that bears closely on the question of our industrial and economic situation; it is the responsibility to society of property or capital on the one hand and of labour on the other, when both invoke their "rights" to justify them in oppressing the general public in the pursuit of their own natural interests. During the Middle Ages, just as the political theory maintained that while a king ruled by divine right, this right gave him no authority to govern wrong, so the social theory held that while a man had a right to private property he had no right to use it against society, nor could the labourer use his own rights to the injury of the same institution. Power, property and labour must be used as a _function_, i.e., "an activity which embodies and expresses the idea of social purpose." Unless I am mistaken, this is at the basis of our "common law." As Mediaevalism gave place to the Renaissance this Christian idea was abandoned, and increasingly the obligation was severed from the right, which so became that odious thing, privilege. Intolerable in its injustice and oppression, this privilege, which by the middle of the eighteenth century had become the attribute of the aristocracy, was completely overthrown, in France first of all, and a new doctrine of rights was enunciated and put in operation. Unfortunately the result was in essence simply a transforming of privilege from one body to another, for the old conception of social purpose, as the necessary concomitant of acknowledged rights, did not emerge from the shadows of the Middle Ages; it had been too long forgotten. The new "rights" were exclusively individualistic, in practice, though in the minds of the idealists who formulated them, they had their social aspect. Their promulgation synchronized with the sudden rise and violent expansion of industrialism, and as one country after another followed the lead of England in accepting the new system, they hardened into an iron-clad scheme for the defence of property and the free action of the holders and manipulators of property. Backed by the economic philosophy of Locke, Adam Smith, Bentham and the Manchester School, generally, and the evolutionary theories of the exponents of Darwinism, and abetted by an endless series of statutes, the idea of the exemption of property holders from any responsibility to society for the use of their property, became a fixed part of the mental equipment of modernism. Precisely the same thing happened politically and socially. Rights were personal and implied no necessary obligation to society as a whole; they were personal attributes and as such to be defended at all costs. Now the result of this profound error as to the existence, nature and limitation of these personal rights has meant simply the destruction of a righteous and unified society which works by coöperation and fellowship, and the substitution of individuals and corporate bodies who work by competition, strife and mutual aggression towards the attainment of all they can get under the impulse of what was once praised as "enlightened self interest." In other words--war. The conflict that began in 1914 was not a war hurled into the midst of a white peace, it was only a military war arising in the centre of a far greater social war, for there is no other word that is descriptive. Rights that are not contingent on the due discharge of duties and obligations are but hateful privilege; privilege has issue in selfishness and egotism, which in turn work themselves out in warfare and in the hatred that both precedes and follows conflict. The net result of a century and a half of industrialism is avarice, warfare and hate. Society can continue even when avariciousness is rampant--for a time--and warfare of one sort or another seems inseparable from humanity, at all events it has always been so, but hatred is another matter, for it is the negation of social life and is its solvent. Anger passes; it is sometimes even righteous, but hatred is synonymous with death in that it dissolves every unit, reducing it to its component parts and subjecting each of these to dissolution in its turn. Righteous anger roused the nations into the war that hate had engendered, but hate has followed after and for the moment is victorious. Russia seethes with hatred and is perishing of its poison, while there is not another country in Europe, of those that were involved in the war, where the same is not true in varying degrees; hatred of race for race, of nation for nation, of class for class, of one social or industrial or economic or political institution for another. This, above all else, is the disintegrating influence, and against it no social organism, no civilization can stand. Unless it is abrogated it means an ending of another epoch of human life, a period of darkness and another beginning, some time after the poison has been worked out by misery, adversity and forced repentance. It is this prevalence of hatred, reinforced by avarice and perpetuated by incessant warfare, that negatives all the efforts that are made towards effecting a correspondence between the divided interests that are the concomitant of industrialism. Strikes and lockouts, trades unions and employers' associations as they are now constituted and as they now operate, syndicalism and Bolshevism and proletarian dictatorships, protective tariffs and commercial spheres of influence, propaganda and subsidized newspapers are all energized by the principle of hate, and no good thing can come of any of them. Nor is it enough to work for the re-establishment of justice even by those methods of righteousness, and with the impulse towards righteousness, which are so different from those which are functioning at present along the lines of contemporary industrial "reform." Justice is a "natural" virtue with a real place in society, but the only saving force today is a supernatural virtue. This, amongst other things, Christ brought into the world and left as the saving force amongst the race He had redeemed and in the society reconstituted in accordance with His will. This supernatural virtue is Charity, sometimes expressed in the simpler form of Love, the essence of the social code of Christianity and the symbol of the New Dispensation as justice was the symbol of the Old. Just in so far as a man or a cult or an interest or a corporation or a state or a generation or a race, relinquishes charity as its controlling spirit, in so far it relinquishes its place in Christian society and its claim to the Christian name, while it is voided of all power for good or possibility of continuance. Where charity is gone, intellectual capacity, effectual power, and even justice itself become, not energies of good, but potent contributions to evil. Is this supernatural gift of charity a mark of contemporary civilization? Does it manifest itself with power today in the dealings between class and class, between interest and interest, between nation and nation? If not, then we have forfeited the name of Christian and betrayed Christian civilization into the hands of its enemies, while our efforts towards saving what is left to us of a once consistent and righteous society will be without result except as an acceleration of the now headlong process of dissolution. I am not charging any class or any interest or any people with exclusive apostacy. In the end there is little to choose between one or another. Labour is not more culpable than capital, nor the proletarian than the industrial magnate and the financier, nor the nominal secularist than the nominal religionist. Nor am I charging conscious and willful acceptance of wrong in the place of right. It is the institution itself, industrialism as it has come to be, with all its concomitants and derivatives, that has betrayed man to his disgrace and his society to condemnation, and so long as this system endures so long will recovery be impossible and regeneration a vain thing vainly imagined. Charity, that is to say, fellowship, generosity, pity, self-sacrifice, chivalry, all that is comprehended in the thing that Christ was, and preached, and promulgated as the fundamental law of life, cannot come back to the world so long as avarice, warfare and hate continue to exist, and through Charity alone can we find the solution of the industrial and economic problem that _must_ be solved under penalty of social death. V THE POLITICAL ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY In these essays, which look towards a new social synthesis, I find myself involved in somewhat artificial subdivisions. Industrial, social and political forces all react one upon another, and the complete social product is the result of the interplay of these forces, coördinated and vitalized by philosophy, education and religion. To isolate each factor and consider it separately is apt to result in false values, but there seems no other way in which the subject, which is essentially one, may be divided into the definite parts which are consequent on the form of a course of lectures. In considering now the political estate of the human social organism it will be evident that I hold that this must be contingent on many elements that reveal themselves in a contributory industrial system, in the principles that are embodied in social relationships, and in the general scheme of such a working philosophy of life as may predominate amongst the component parts of the synthetic society which is the product of all these varied energies and the organic forms through which they operate. Political organization has always been a powerful preoccupation of mankind, and the earliest records testify to its antiquity. The regulation of human intercourse, the delimiting of rights and privileges, protection of life and property, the codifying of laws, vague, various and conflicting, the making of new laws and the enforcing of those that have taken organic form; all these and an hundred other governmental functions, appeal strongly to the mind and touch closely on personal interests. It is no wonder that the political history of human society is the most varied, voluminous and popular in its appeal. At the present moment this problem has, in general, an even more poignant appeal, and no rival except the industrial problem, for in both cases systems that, up to ten years ago, were questioned only by a minority (large in the case of industry, small and obscure in the case of government) have since completely broken down, and it is probable that a political system which had existed throughout the greater part of Europe and the Americas for a century and a half, almost without serious criticism, has now as many assailants as industrialism itself. The change is startling from the "Triumphant Democracy" period, a space of time as clearly defined and as significant in its characteristics as the "Victorian Era." Before the war, during the war, and throughout the earlier years of the even more devastating "peace," the system which followed the ruin of the Renaissance autocracies, the essential elements in which were an ever-widening suffrage, parliamentary government, and the universal operation of the quantitative standard of values, was never questioned or criticised, except in matters of detail. That it was the most perfect governmental scheme ever devised and that it must continue forever, was held to be axiomatic, and with few exceptions the remedy proposed for such faults as could not possibly escape detection was a still further extension of the democratic principle. Even the war itself was held to be "a war to make the world safe for democracy." It is significant that the form in which this saying now frequently appears is one in which the word "from" is substituted in place of the word "for." It is useless to blink the fact that there is now a distrust of parliamentary and representative government which is almost universal and this distrust, which is becoming widespread, reaches from the Bolshevism of Russia on the one hand, through many intermediate social and intellectual stages, to the conservative elements in England and the United States, and the fast-strengthening royalist "bloc" in France. In many unexpected places there is visible a profound sense that something is so fundamentally wrong that palliatives are useless and some drastic reform is necessary, a reform that may almost amount to revolution. Lord Bryce still believes in democracy in spite of his keen realizations of its grievous defects, because, as he says, hope is an inextinguishable quality of the human soul. Mr. Chesterton preaches democracy in principle while condemning its mechanism and its workings with his accustomed vigour; the Adamses renounce democracy and all its works while offering no hint as to what could consistently take its place with any better chance of success, while the royalists excoriate it in unmeasured terms and preach an explicit return to monarchy. Meanwhile international Bolshevism, hating the thing as violently as do kings in exile, substitutes a crude and venal autocracy, while organized labour, as a whole, works for the day when a "class-conscious proletariat" will have taken matters into its own hands and established a new aristocracy of privilege in which the present working classes will hold the whip-hand. Meanwhile the more educated element of the general public withdraws itself more and more from political affairs, going its own way and making the best of a bad job it thinks itself taught by experience it cannot mend. It is useless to deny that government, in the character of its personnel, the quality of its output, the standard of its service and the degree of its beneficence has been steadily deteriorating during the last century and has now reached, in nearly every civilized country, a deplorably low level. Popular representatives are less and less men of character and ability; legislation is absurd in quantity, short-sighted, frivolous, inquisitorial, and in a large measure prompted by selfish interests; administration is reckless, wasteful and inefficient, while it is overloaded in numbers, without any particular aptitude on the part of its members, and in a measure controlled by personal or corporate interests. The whole system is in bad odour for it is shot through and through with the greed for money and influence, while the cynicism of the professional politician and the low average of character, intelligence and manners of the strata of society that increasingly are usurping all power, work towards producing that general contempt and aversion that have become so evident of late and that are a menace to society no less than that of the decaying institution itself. Confronted by a situation such as this, the natural tendency of those who suffer under it, either in their material interests or their ideals, is to condemn the mechanism, perhaps even the very principles for the operation of which the various machines were devised. Some reject the whole scheme of representative, parliamentary government, and, failing any plausible substitute, are driven back on some form of the soviet, or even government by industrial groups. Those that go to the limit and reject the whole scheme of democracy are in still worse plight for they have no alternative to offer except a restored monarchy, and this, the _terminus ad quem_ of their logic, their courage will not permit them to avow. It is a dilemma, but forced, I believe, by the fatal passion of the man of modernism for the machine, the mechanical device, the material equivalent for a thing that has no equivalent, and that is the personal character of the constituents of society and the working factors in a political organism. There was never a more foolish saying than that which is so frequently and so boastfully used: "a government of laws and not of men." This is the exact reversal of what should be recognized as a self-evident truth, viz, that the quality of the men, not the nature of the laws or of the administrative machine, is the determining factor in government. You may take any form of government ever devised by man, monarchy, aristocracy, republic, democracy, yes, or soviet, and if the community in which this government operates has a working majority of men of character, intelligence and spiritual energy, it will be a good government, whereas if the working majority is deficient in these characteristics, or if it makes itself negligible by abstention from public affairs it will be a bad government. There is no one political system which is right while all others are wrong. The monarchy of St. Louis was better than the Third Republic, as this is better than was the monarchy of Louis XV. The aristocracy of Washington was better than the democracy of this year of grace, as this in itself is better than the late junker aristocracy of Prussia. You cannot substitute a machine in place of character, you cannot supersede life by a theory. This does not mean that the form of government is of no moment, it is of the utmost importance for I cannot too often insist that the organic life of society is the resultant of two forces; spiritual energy working through and upon the material forms towards their improvement or--when this energy is weak or distorted--their degeneration; the material forms acting as a stimulus towards the development of spiritual energy through association and environment that are favourable, or towards its weakening and distortion when these are deterrents because of their own degraded or degrading nature. If it is futile to look for salvation through the mechanism, it is equally futile to try to act directly and exclusively on the character of the social constituents in the patient hope that their defects may be remedied, and the preponderance of character of high value achieved, before catastrophe overtakes the experiment. Life is as sacramental as the Christian religion and Christian philosophy; neither the spiritual substance nor the material accidents can operate alone but only in a conjunction so intimate that it is to all intents and purposes--that is, for the interests and purposes of God in human life--a perfect unity. However completely and even passionately we may realize the determining factor of spiritual energy as this manifests itself through personal character, however deeply we may distrust the machine, we are bound to recognize the paramount necessity of the active interplay of both within the limits of life as we know it on the earth, and therefore it is very much our concern that the machine, whether it is industrial, political, educational, ecclesiastical or social, is as perfect in its nature and stimulating in its operations as we are able to compass. In the present liquidation of values, theories and institutions we are bound therefore to scrutinize each operating agency of human society, to see wherein it has failed and how it can be bettered, and the problem before us now is the political organism. Now it appears that in the past there have been just two methods whereby a civil polity has come into existence and established itself for a short period or a long. These two methods are, first, unpremeditated and sometimes unconscious growth; second, calculated and self-conscious revolution. The first method has produced communities, states and empires that frequently worked well and lasted for long periods; the second has had issue in nothing that has endured for any length of time or has left a record of beneficence. Evolution in government is in accord with the processes of life, even to the extent that it is always after a time followed by degeneration; revolution in government is the throwing of a monkey-wrench into the machinery by a disaffected workman, with the wrecking of the machine, the violent stoppage of the works, and frequently the sudden death of the worker as a consequence. The English monarchy from Duke William to Henry VIII, is a case of normal growth by minor changes and modifications, but its subsequent history has been one of revolutions, six or seven having occurred in the last four hundred years; the scheme which now holds, though precariously, is the result of the great democratic revolution accomplished during the reign of Queen Victoria. The free monarchies of Europe which began to take form during the long period of the Dark Ages and pursued their admirable course well through the Middle Ages, were also normal and slow growths; but the revolutions that have followed the Great War will meet a different fate, several of them, indeed, have counted their existence in months and have already passed into history. If we are wise we shall discount revolutions for the future, for nothing but ill is accomplished by denying life and exalting the ingenious substitutes of ambitious and presumptuous Frankensteins; the result is too often a monster that works cleverly at first, and with a semblance of human intelligence, but in the end shows itself as a destroyer. Our task is to envisage, as clearly as possible, the political systems established amongst us, note their weaknesses either in themselves or in their relationship to society as it is, and then try to find those remedies that can be applied without any violent methods of dislocation or substitution; always bearing in mind the fact that the energizing force that will make them live, preserve them from deterioration, and adapt them to conditions which will ever change, is the spiritual force of human personality, and that this force comes only through the character qualities of the individual components of society. Now in considering our own case in this day and generation there are first of all two matters to be borne in mind. One is that we shall do well to confine our inquiry to the United States, for while the defects we shall have to point out are common to practically all the contemporary governments of Europe and the Americas, our own enginery is different in certain ways, and our troubles are also different between one example and another. After all, our immediate interest must lie with our own national problems. The other point is that in criticising the workings of government in America we are not necessarily criticising its founders or the creators of its original constitutions, charters, and other mechanisms. The Constitution of the United States, for example, was conceived to meet one series of perfectly definite conditions that have now been superseded by others which are radically, and even diametrically different. The original Constitution was a most able instrument of organic law, but just because it did fit so perfectly conditions as they were four generations ago, it applies but indifferently to present circumstances, and even less well than the Founders hoped would be the case; for the reason that the amendments which were provided for have seldom taken cognizance of these changing conditions, and even when this was done the amendments themselves have not been wisely drawn, while certain of them have been actually disastrous in their nature, others frivolous, and yet more the result of ephemeral and hysterical ebullitions of an engineered public opinion. The same may be said of state constitutions and municipal charters, which have suffered incessant changes, mostly unfortunate and ill-judged, except during the last few years, when a spirit of real wisdom and constructiveness has shown itself, though sporadically and as yet with some timidity. The reforms, such as they are, are largely in the line of palliatives; the deep-lying factors, those that control both success and failure, are seldom touched upon. The necessary courage--or perhaps temerity--is lacking. What is needed is such a clear seeing of conditions, and such an approach, as manifested themselves in the Constitutional Convention of the United States, for in spite of the many compromises that were in the end necessary to placate a public opinion not untouched by prejudice, superstition and selfishness, the great document--and even more the records of the debates--still brilliantly set forth both the clear-seeing and the lofty attitude that characterized the Convention. Had these men been gathered together today, even the same men, they would frame a very different document, for they took conditions and men as they were, and, with an indestructible hope to glorify their common sense, they produced a masterpiece. It is in the same spirit that we must approach our problem of today. Now in considering the situation that confronts us, we find certain respects in which either the methods are bad, or the results, or both. There is no unanimity in this criticism, indeed I doubt if any two of us would agree on all the items in the indictment, though we all might unite on one or two. I can only give my own list for what it is worth. In the first place we, in common with all the nations, have drifted into imperialism of a gross scale and illiberal, even tyrannical working. We could hardly do otherwise for such has been the universal tendency for more than an hundred years. By constant progression municipal governments have absorbed into themselves matters that in decency, and with any regard for liberty, belong to the individual. Simultaneously our state governments have followed the same course, infringing even on the just prerogatives of the towns and cities, while, more than all, the national government has robbed the states, the cities and the citizens of what should belong to them, until at last we have an imperial, autocratic, inquisitorial, and largely irresponsible government at Washington that is the one supreme political fact; we are no longer a Federal Republic but an Imperialism, in which is centralized all the authority inherent in the one hundred and ten millions of our population and from which a constantly diminishing stream of what is practically devolved authority, trickles down through state and city to the individual in the last instance--if it gets there at all! This I believe to be absolutely and fatally wrong. In the first place, human society cannot function at this abnormal scale, it is outside the human scale, for in spite of our pride and insolence there are limits on every hand to what man can do. In the second place, I conceive it to be absolutely at variance with any principle of republicanism or democracy or even of free monarchy. It is at one only with the imperialism of Egypt, Babylon, Rome and the late Empire of Germany. In a free monarchy, a republic, or a democracy, the pyramid of political organism stands, not on its point but broad-based and four-square, tapering upward to its final apex. A sane and wholesome society begins with the family--natural or artificial--which has original jurisdiction over a far greater series of rights and privileges than it now commands. From the family certain powers are delegated to the next higher social unit, the village or communal group, which in its turn concedes certain of its inherent rights to the organic group of communities, or states, and finally the states commit to the last and general authority, the national government, some of the elements of authority that have been delegated to them. The principle of this delegation from one organism to another, is common interest and welfare; only those functions which can be performed with more even justice and with greater effectiveness, by the community for example, than by the family, are so delegated. In the same way the several groups commit to their common government only so much as they cannot perform with due justice and equity to the others in the same group. In the end the national government exists only that it may provide for a limited number of national necessities, as for example, defence against extra-national aggression, the conduct of diplomatic relations with foreign powers, the maintaining of a national currency and a national postal service, the provision of courts of last resort, and the raising of revenue for the support of these few and explicit functions. The first step, it seems to me, towards governmental reform, is decentralization, with a return to the States, the civic communities and the individual citizens of nine-tenths of the powers and the prerogatives that have been taken from them in defiance of abstract justice, of the principles of free government and of the theory of the workable unit of human scale. In a word we must abandon imperialism and all its works and go back to the Federal Republic. The second cause of our troubles lies, I believe, in the institution of universal suffrage founded on the theory (or dogma) that the electoral franchise is an inalienable right. This doctrine is of recent invention, only coming into force during the "reconstruction period" following the War between the States, when it was brought forward by certain leaders of the Republican party to justify their enfranchisement of the negroes in the hope that by this act they could fix their party in power to perpetuity. In any case, the plan itself has worked badly, both for the community and for many of the voters. It is of course impossible for me to argue the case in detail; I can do hardly more than state my own personal belief, and this is that the question is wholly one of expediency, and that the question of abstract justice and the rights of man does not enter into the consideration. I submit that the electoral franchise should again be accepted as a privilege involving a duty, and not as a right inherent in every adult person of twenty-one years or over and not lunatic or in jail. This privilege, which in itself should confer honour, should be granted to those who demonstrate their capacity to use it honestly and intelligently, and taken away for cause. The acute critic will not be slow to remind me that this proposition is somewhat beside the case and that it possesses but an academic interest, since we are dealing with a _fait accompli._ This is of course perfectly true. The electoral franchise could be so restricted only by the suffrages of the present electorate, and it is inconceivable that any large number, and far less, a majority, of voters would even consider the proposition for a moment. For good or ill we have unrestricted adult suffrage, and there is not the faintest chance of any other basis being established by constitutional means. Something however can be done, and this is a thing of great value and importance. What I suggest is concerted effort towards a measured purification of the electorate through the penalizing of law-breakers by temporary disfranchisement. It is hardly too much to assume that a man who deliberately breaks the law is constructively unfit to vote or to hold office, at all events, conviction for any crime or misdemeanour gives a reasonable ground for depriving the offender of these privileges, at least for a time. The law-breaking element, whether it is millionaire or proletarian, is one of the dangerous factors in society, which would lose nothing if from time to time these gentry were removed from active participation in public affairs. If, for example, any one convicted of minor offenses punishable by fine or imprisonment were disfranchised for a year, if of major offenses, for varying and increasing periods, from five years upwards, and if a second offense during the period of disfranchisement worked an automatic doubling of the time prescribed for a first offense, I conceive that the electorate would be measurably purified and that regard for the law would be stimulated. In one instance I am persuaded that disfranchisement should be for life, and that is in the case of giving or accepting a bribe or otherwise committing a crime against the ballot; this, together with treason against the state, should be sufficient cause for eliminating the offender from all further participation in public affairs. If the electorate could be purified after this fashion, and if more stringent laws could be passed in the matter of naturalization of aliens, together with iron-clad requirements that every voter should be able to speak, read and write the English language, we should have achieved something towards the safeguarding of the suffrage. The third weakness in our system, and in some respect the most dangerous, as it is in all respects the most pestiferous, is the insanity of law-making. All parliamentary governments suffer from this malady, but that of the United States most grievously, and this is true of the national government, the states and the municipalities. It has become the conviction of legislative bodies that they must justify their existence by making laws, and the more laws they pass the better they have discharged their duties. The thing has become a scandal and an oppression, for the liberties of American citizens and the just prerogatives of the states and the cities, as vital human groups, have been more infringed upon, reduced, and degraded by free legislation than ever happened in similar communities by the action of absolute monarchs. It is a folly that works its insidious injury in two ways; first by confusing life by innumerable laws ill-advised, ill-drawn, mutually contradictory, ephemeral in their nature, inquisitorial in their workings; second, by creating a condition where any personal or factious interest can be served by due process of law, until at last we have reached a point where liberty itself has largely ceased to exist and we find ourselves crushed under a tyranny of popular government no less oppressive than the tyranny of absolutism. Nor is this all; the mania for making laws has bred a complete and ingenious and singularly effective system of getting laws made by methods familiar to the members of all legislative bodies whether they are city councils, state legislatures or the national congress, and this means opportunities for corruption, and methods of corruption, that are fast degrading government in the United States to a point where there is none so poor as to do it reverence. The whole system is preposterous and absurd, breeding not only bad laws, but a widespread contempt of law, while the personal freedom for which democracy once fought, is fast becoming a memory. The trouble began as a result of one of the elements in the American Constitution which was the product not of the sound common sense and the lofty judgment of the framers, but of a weak yielding to one of the doctrinaire fads of the time that had no relationship to life but was the invention of political theorists, and that was the unnatural separation of the executive, legislative and judicial functions of government. The error has worked far and the superstition still holds. What is needed is an initiative in legislation, centred in one responsible head or group, that, while functioning in all normal and necessary legislative directions, still allows individual initiative on the part of the legislators, as a supplementary, or corrective, or protective agency. No government functions well in fiscal matters without a budget: what we need in legislative matters is a legislative budget, and by this phrase, I mean that the primary agency for the proposing of laws should be the chief executive of a city, or state or the nation, with the advice and consent of his heads of departments who would form his cabinet or council. Under this plan the Governor and Council, for example, would at the opening of each legislative session present a programme or agenda of such laws as they believed the conditions to demand, and in the shape of bills accurately drawn by the proper law officer of the government. No such "government" bill could be referred to committee but must be discussed in open session, and until the bills so offered had been passed or refused, no private bill could be introduced. A procedure such as this would certainly reduce the flood of private bills to reasonable dimensions while it would insure a degree of responsibility now utterly lacking. There is now no way in which the author of a foolish or dangerous bill which has been enacted into law by a majority of the legislature, can be held to account and due responsibility imposed upon him, but the case would be very different if a mayor, a governor or the President of the United States made himself responsible for a law or a series of laws, by offering them for action in his own name. Certainly if this method were followed we should be preserved in great measure from the hasty, confused and frivolous legislation that at present makes up the major part of the output of our various legislative bodies. One of the greatest gains would be the reduction of the annual grist to a size where each act could be considered and debated at sufficient length to guarantee as reasonable a conclusion as would be possible to the members of the legislative body. The deplorable device of instituting committees, to each of which certain bunches of bills are referred before they are permitted to come before the house, would be no longer necessary. This system, which became necessary in order to deal with the enormous mass of undigested matter which has overwhelmed every legislature as a result of the present chaotic and irresponsible procedure, is perhaps both the most undemocratic device ever put in practice by a democracy, and the most fruitful of venality, corruption and injustice. It is unnecessary to labour this point for everyone knows its grave evils, but there seems no way to get rid of it unless some curb is placed on the number of bills introduced in any session. The British Parliament is not necessarily a model of intelligent or capable procedure, but where in one session at Westminster no more than four hundred bills were introduced, at Washington, for the same period, the count ran well over twelve thousand! Manifestly some committee system is inevitable under conditions such as this, but under the committee system free government and honest legislation are difficult of attainment. One would not of course prevent the proposal of a bill by any member of the legislature, indeed this free action would be absolutely necessary as a measure of protection against executive oppression, but this should be prohibited until after the government programme had been disposed of. After that task was accomplished the legislature might sit indefinitely, or as long as the public would stand it, for the purpose of considering private bills, and these could be referred to committees as at present. The chances are, however, that the government programme would cover the most essential matters and what would remain would be the edifying spectacle of Solons solemnly considering such questions as the minimum length of sheets on hotel beds, the limitation in inches and fractions, of the heels of women's shoes, the amount of flesh that could be legally exposed by a bathing suit, or the pensioning of a Swedish Assistant Janitor,--all of which are the substance of actual bills introduced in various State legislatures during the session last closed. Another grave weakness in our system is the election by popular vote of many judicial and administrative officers, coupled with the vigorous remnants of the old and degrading "spoils system" whereby many thousands of strictly non-political offices are almost automatically vacated after any partisan victory. I cannot trust myself to speak of the infamy of an elective judiciary; fortunately I live in a state where this worst abuse of democratic practice does not exist, and so it touches me only in so far as it offends the sense of decency and justice. In the other cases it is only a question of efficient and intelligent administration. There is an argument for electing the chief executive of a city, a state or the nation, by popular vote, and the same holds in the case of the lower house of the legislature where a bi-cameral system exists, but there is no argument for the popular election of the administrative officers of a state. There is even less,--if there can be less than nothing--for the changes in personnel that take place after every election. Civil service reform has done a world of good, but as yet it has not gone far enough in some directions, while its mechanism of examinations is defective in principle in that it leaves out the personal equation and establishes its tests only along a very few of the many lines that actually exist. I would offer it as a proposition that no election should in itself affect the status of any man except the man elected, and, in the case of a mayor or governor or the President, those who are directly responsible to him and to his administration for carrying out his policies; and further, that the voter, when he votes, should vote once and for one man in his city, once and for one man in his state, and once and for one man in the nation, and that man, in each case, should be his representative in the lower branch of the legislative body. Choosing administrative officials by majority vote, and the election of judges for short terms by the same method, are absurdities of a system fast falling into chaos. The maintenance of a bi-cameral legislative organization, with the choosing of the members of both houses by the same electorate is in the same class, a perfectly irrational anomaly which violates the first principles of logic and leads only to legislative incompetence, and worse. The referendum is of precisely the same nature, but this already has become a _reductio ad absurdum,_ and can hardly survive the discredit into which it has fallen. In any reorganization of government looking towards better results, these elements must disappear. As a matter of fact, government has come to occupy altogether too large a place in our consciousness; naturally, for it has come to a point where it pursues us--and overtakes us--at every turn. Democracies always govern too much, that is one of their great weaknesses. Elections, law-making, and getting and holding office, have become an obsession and they shadow our days. So insistent and incessant are the demands, so artificial and unreal the issues, so barren of vital results all this pandemonium of partisanship and change, the more intelligent and scrupulous are losing interest in the whole affair, and while they increasingly withdraw to matters of a greater degree of reality those who subsist on the proceeds gain the power, and hold it. At the very moment when the women of the United States have been given the vote, there are many men (and women also) who begin to think that the vote is a very empty institution and in itself practically void of power to effect anything of really vital moment. I am not now defending this position, I only assert that it exists, and I believe it is due to the degradation of government through the very modifications and transformations that have been effected, since the time of Andrew Jackson, in a perfectly honest attempt at improvement. The best government is that which does the least, which leaves local matters in the hands of localities, and personal matters in the hands of persons, and which is modestly inconspicuous. Good government establishes, or recognizes, conditions which are stable, reliable, and that may be counted on for more than two years, or four years, at a time. It has continuity, it preserves tradition, and it follows custom and common law. Such a government is neither hectic in its vicissitudes nor inquisitorial in its enactments. It is cautious in its expenditures, efficient in its administration, proud in maintaining its standards of honour, justice and "noblesse oblige." Good government is august and handsome; it surrounds itself with dignity and ceremony, even at times with splendour and pageantry, for these things are signs of self-respect and the outward showing of high ideals--or may be made so; that is what good manners and ceremony and beauty are for. Finally, good government is where the laws of Christian morals and courtesy and charity that are supposed to hold between Christian men hold equally, even more forcefully, in public relations both domestic and foreign. Where government of this nature exists, whether the form is monarchical, republican or democratic, there is liberty; where these conditions do not obtain the form matters not at all, for there is a servile state. At the risk of being tedious I will try to sketch the rough outlines of what, in substance, I believe to be that form of civil polity which, based on what now exists, changes only along lines that would perhaps tend towards establishing and maintaining those ideals of liberty, order and justice which have always been the common aim of those who have striven to reform a condition of things where they were attained indifferently or not at all. The primary and effective social and political unit is the "vill" or commune; that is to say, a group of families and individuals living in one neighbourhood, and of a size that would permit all the members to know one another if they wished to do so, and also the coming together of all those holding the electoral franchise, for common discussion and action. The average American country town, uninvaded by industrialism, is the natural type, for here the "town meeting" of our forefathers is practicable, and this remains the everlasting frame and model of self-government. In the case of a city the primary unit would be of approximately the same size, and the entire municipality would be divided into wards each containing, say, about five hundred voters. These primary units would possess a real unity and a very large measure of autonomy, but they would be federated for certain common purposes which would vary in number and importance in proportion to the closeness of their common interests, from the county, made up of a number of small villages, to the city which would comprise as many wards as might be numerically necessary, and whose central government would administer a great many more affairs than would the county. The city would be in effect a federation of the wards or boroughs. The individual voter would exercise his electoral franchise and perform his political duties only within the primary unit (the township or ward) where he had legal residence. At an annual "town meeting" he would vote for the "selectmen" or the ward council who would have in charge the local interests of the primary unit, which would be comprehensive in the case of a township, necessarily more limited in the case of a ward. These local boards would elect their own chairmen who would also form the legislative body of the county or the municipality. At the same town meeting the voter would cast his ballot for a representative in the lower legislative body of the state. In the smaller commonwealths each township or ward would elect its own representative, but in states of excessive population representation would have to be on the basis of counties and municipalities, for no legislative body should contain more than a very few hundred members. Nominations in the town meeting should be _viva voce,_ elections by secret ballot. Legislation should be primarily on the initiative of the selectmen or ward council, and voting should be _viva voce._ With the exercise of his privilege of speaking and voting at the meetings of his primary unit, the direct political action of the citizen would cease. The secondary unit would be the county or the city. Here the legislative body would consist of the presiding officers of the township or ward governments. The sheriff of a county or the mayor of a city would be chosen by these legislative bodies from their own number and should hold office for a term of several years, while the local governments, and therefore the legislative bodies of the county or the city, would be chosen annually. The chief executive of a county or city would appoint all heads of departments who would form his advisory council, and he would also frame and submit annually both a fiscal and a legislative budget. The tertiary unit is the state, which is a federation of the counties and cities forming some one of the historic divisions of the United States. The legislature would as now be composed of two chambers, one made up of representatives of the primary units, holding office for a brief term, and a second representing the secondary units and chosen by their governing bodies for a long term. The logic of a bi-cameral system demands that the lower house should represent the changing will of the people, the upper, in so far as possible, its cumulative wisdom and the continuity of tradition, while, as already stated, the whole principle is vitiated if both houses are chosen by the same electorate. The chief executive should be chosen by the legislative chambers in joint session, from a panel made up of their own membership and the heads of the county and city governments. He should hold office for a long term, preferably for an indeterminate period contingent on "good behaviour." In this case his cabinet, or council of the heads of departments, would of course be responsible to the legislature and would resign on a formal vote of censure or "lack of confidence." The Governor would have the same power of appointment, and the same authority to present fiscal and legislative budgets as, already specified in the case of a mayor of a city. No "commissions," unpaid or otherwise, should be permitted, all the administrative functions of government being performed by the various departments and their subordinate bureaux. The national government is the final social and political unit, though it is conceivable that with a territory and population as great and diversified as that of the United States, and bearing in mind the great discrepancy in size between the states, something might be gained by the institution of a system of provinces, some five or six in all, made up of states grouped in accordance with their general community of interests, as for example, all New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware; the states of the old Confederacy, those of the Pacific Coast, and so on. The point need not be pressed here, but there are considerations in its favour. In any case the nation as a whole is the final federal unit. Here the lower legislative house would consist of not more than four hundred members, allocated on a basis of population and elected by the representative bodies of the primary units (the townships and city wards) as already described. The members of the upper house would be elected by the legislative bodies of the several states on nomination by the Governor. The chief executive of the nation would be chosen by the two legislative bodies, in joint session, from amongst the then governors of the several states. He should certainly hold office for "good behaviour," and his cabinet would be responsible to the legislature as provided for in the case of the state governments. I do not offer this programme with any pride of paternity; probably it would not work very well, but it could hardly prove less efficacious than our present system under conditions as they have come to be. This cannot continue indefinitely, for it is so hopelessly defective that it is bound to bring about its own ruin, with the probable substitution of some doctrinaire device engendered by the natural revolt against an intolerable abuse. If only we could see conditions clearly and estimate them at something approaching their real value, we should rapidly develop a constructive public opinion that, even though it represented a minority, might by the very force behind it compel the majority to acquiesce in a radical reformation. Unfortunately we do not do this, we are hypnotized by phrases and deluded by vain theories, as Mr. Chesterton says: "So drugged and deadened is the public mind by the conventional public utterances, so accustomed have we grown to public men talking this sort of pompous nonsense and no other, that we are sometimes quite shocked by the revelation of what men really think, or else of what they really say." We do, now and then, confess that legislation is as a whole foolish, frivolous and opportunist; that administration is wasteful, incompetent and frequently venal; that the governmental personnel, legislative, administrative and executive, is of a low order in point of character, intelligence and culture--and tending lower each day. We admit this, for the evidence is so conspicuous that to deny it would be hypocrisy, but something holds us back from recognizing the nexus between effect and cause. Unrestricted immigration, universal suffrage, rotation in office, the subjection of many offices and measures to popular vote, the parliamentary system, government by political parties--all these customs and habits into which we have fallen have arrived at failure which presages disaster. They have failed because the character of the people that functioned through these various engines had failed, diluted by the low mentality and character-content of millions of immigrants and their offspring, degraded by the false values and vicious standards imposed by industrial civilization, foot-loose from all binding and control of a vital and potent religious impulse or religious organism. It is the old, vicious circle; spiritual energy declines or is diverted into wrong channels; thereupon the physical forms, social, industrial, political, slip a degree or two lower out of sympathy with the failing energy, and these in their turn exert a degrading influence on the waning spiritual force, which declines still further only to be pulled lower still by the material agencies which continue their progressive declension. Theories, no matter how high-minded and altruistic, cannot stand before a condition such as this, for self-protection decrees otherwise even if the higher motive of doing right things and getting right things just because they _are_ right, does not come into effective operation. The evil results of the institutions I have catalogued above are not to be denied, and the institutions themselves must be reformed or altogether abandoned, in the face of the loud-mouthed exhortations of those who now make them their means of livelihood, and even at the expense of the honest upholders of theories and doctrines that do credit to their humanitarianism but have been weighed and found wanting. I am anxious not to put this plan for the reform, in root and branch, of our political institutions, on the low level of mere caution and self-defense. The motive power of this is fear, and fear is only second to hate in its present position as a controlling force in society. We should have good government not because it is economical and ensures what are known as "good business conditions," and promises a peaceful continuance of society, but because it is as worthy an object of creative endeavour as noble art or a great literature or a just and merciful economic system, or a life that is full of joy and beauty and wholesome labour. The political organism is in a sense the microcosm of life itself, and it should be society lifted up to a level of dignity, majesty and nobility. The doctrine that in a democracy the government must exactly express the numerical preponderance in the social synthesis, and that, if this happens to be ignorant, mannerless and corrupt, then the government must be after the same fashion, is a low and a cowardly doctrine. Government should be better than the majority; better than the minority if this has advantage over the other. It should be of the best that man can compass, resting above him as in some sort an ideal; the visible expression of his better self, and the better self of the society of which he is a part. If a political system, any political system, produces any other result; if it has issue in a representation of the lowest and basest in society, or even of the general average, then it is a bad system and it must be redeemed or it will bring an end that is couched in terms of catastrophe. Reform is difficult, perhaps even impossible of attainment under the existing system where universal, unlimited suffrage and the party system are firmly intrenched as opponents of vital reform, and where representation and legislation take their indelible colour from these unfortunate institutions. It must freely be admitted that there is no chance of eliminating or recasting either one or the other by the recognized methods of platform support and mass action through the ballot. It comes in the end to a change of viewpoint and of heart on the part of the individual. No party, no political leader would for a moment endorse any one of the principles or methods I have suggested, for this would be a suicidal act. The newspaper, irresponsible, anonymous, directed by its advertizing interests or by those more sinister still, yet for all that the factor that controls the opinions of those who hold the balance of power in the community as it is now constituted, would reject them with derision, while in themselves they are radically opposed to the personal interests of the majority. The only hope of lifting government to the level of dignity and capacity it should hold, lies in the individual. It is necessary that we should see things clearly, estimate conditions as they are, and think through to the end. We do not do this. We admit, in a dull sort of way, that matters are not as they should be, that legislation is generally silly and oppressive, that taxation is excessive, that administration is wasteful and reckless and incompetent, for we know these things by experience. We accept them, however, with our national good-nature and easy tolerance, assuming that they are inseparable from democratic government--as indeed they are, but not for a moment does any large number think of questioning the principle, or even the system, that must take the responsibility. When disgust and indifference reach a certain point we stop voting, that is all. At the last presidential election less than one half the qualified voters took the trouble to cast their ballots, while in Boston (which is no exception) it generally happens that at a municipal elections the ballots cast are less than one-third the total electorate. I wonder how many there are here today who have ever been to a ward meeting, or have sat through a legislative session of a city government, as of Boston for example, or have listened to the debates in a state house of representatives, or analyzed the annual grist of legislative bills, or have sat for an hour or two in the Senate or House at Washington. Such an experience is, I assure you, illuminating, for it shows exactly why popular government is what it is, while it forms an admirable basis for a constructive revision of judgment as to the soundness of accepted principles and the validity of accepted methods. Our political attitude today is based on an inherited and automatic acceptance of certain perfectly automatic formulae. We neither see things clearly, estimate conditions as they are, nor think a proposition through to the end: we are obsessed by old formulae, partisan "slogans" and newspaper aphorisms; the which is both unworthy and perilous. Let us see things clearly for a moment; if we do this anything is possible, no matter how idealistic and apparently impracticable it may be. Is there any one who would confess that character and intelligence are now a helpless minority in this nation? Such an admission would be almost constructive treason. The instinct of the majority is right, but it is defective in will and it is subservient to base leadership, while its power for good is negatived by the persistence of a mass of formulae that, under radically changed conditions, have ceased to be beneficient, or even true, and have become a clog and a stumbling block. I may not have indicated better ideals or sounder methods of operation, but the true ideals exist and it is not beyond our ability to discover a better working system. Partisanship cannot reveal either one or the other, nor are they the fruit of organization or the attribute of political leadership. They belong to the common citizen, to you, to the individual, and if once superstition is cast out and we fall back on right reason and the eternal principles of the Christian ethic and the Christian ideal, we shall not find them difficult of attainment; and once attained they can be put in practice, for the ill thing exists only on sufferance, the right thing establishes itself by force of its very quality of right. VI THE FUNCTION OF EDUCATION AND ART When, as on occasion happens, some hostile criticism is leveled against the civilization of modernism, or against some one of its many details, the reply is ready, and the faultfinder is told that the defect, if it exists, will in the end be obviated by the processes of popular education. Pressed for more explicit details as to just what may be the nature of this omnipotent and sovereign "education," the many champions give various answer, depending more or less on the point of view and the peculiar predilections of each, but the general principles are the same. Education, they say, consist of two things; the formal practice and training of the schools, and the experience that comes through the use of certain public rights and privileges, such as the ballot, the holding of office, service on juries, and through various experiences of the practice of life, as the reading of newspapers (and perhaps books), the activities of work, business and the professions, and personal association with other men in social, craft, and professional clubs and other organizations. With the second category of education through experience we need not deal at this time; it is a question by itself and of no mean quality; the matter I would consider is the more formal and narrow one of scholastic training in so far as it bears on the Great Peace that, though perhaps after many days, must follow the Great War and the little peace. Answering along this line, the protagonists of salvation through education pretty well agree that the thing itself means the widest possible extension of our public school system, with free state universities and technical schools, and the extension of the educational period, with laws so rigid, and enforcement so pervasive and impartial, that no child between the ages of six and sixteen can possibly escape. This free, compulsory and universal education is assumed to be scrupulously secular and hedged about with every safeguard against the insidious encroachments of religion; it will aim to give a little training in most of the sciences, and much in the practical necessities of business life, as for example, stenography, book-keeping, advertising and business science; it will cover a broad field of manual training leading to "graduate courses" in special technical schools; the "laboratory method" and "field practice" will be increasingly developed and applied; Latin, Greek, logic and ancient history will be minimized or done away with altogether, and modern languages, applied psychology and contemporary history will be correspondingly emphasized. As for the state university, it will allow the widest range of free electives, and as an university it will aim to comprise within itself every possible department of practical activity, such as business administration, journalism, banking and finance, foreign trade, political science, psycho-analysis, mining, sanitary engineering, veterinary surgery, as well as law, medicine, agriculture, and civil and mechanical engineering. I am curious to inquire at this time if education such as this does, as a matter of fact, educate, and how far it my be relied upon as a corrective for present defects in society; or rather, first of all, whether education of this, or of any sort, may be looked on as a sufficient saving force, and whether general education, instead of being extended should not be curtailed, or rather safeguarded and restricted. I have already tried to indicate, in my lecture on the Social Organism, certain doubts that are now arising as to the prophylactic and regenerative powers of education, whether this is based on the old foundation of the Trivium and Quadrivium under the supreme dominion of Theology, or on the new foundation of utilitarianism and applied science under the dominion of scientific pedagogy. While the active-minded portion of society believed ardently in progressive evolution, in the sufficiency of the intellect, the inerrancy of the scientific method, and the transmission by inheritance of acquired characteristics, this supreme confidence in free, secular, compulsory education as the cure-all of the profuse and pervasive ills of society was not only natural but inevitable. I submit that experience has measurably modified the situation, and that we are bound therefore to reconsider our earlier persuasions in the light of somewhat revealing events. We may admit that the system of modern education works measurably well so far as intellectual training is concerned; _training_ as distinguished from development. It works measurably well also in preparing youth for participation in the life of applied science and for making money in business and finance. Conscientious hard labour has been given, and is being given, to making it more effective along these lines, and almost every year some new scheme is brought forward enthusiastically, tried out painstakingly, and then cast aside ignominiously for some new and even more ingenious device. The amount of education is enormous; the total of money spent on new foundations, courses, buildings, equipment--on everything but the pay of the teachers--is princely; the devotion of the teachers, themselves, in the face of inadequate wages, is exemplary, and yet, somehow the results are disappointing. The truth is, the development of _character_ is not in proportion to the development of public and private education. The moral standing of the nation, taken as a whole, has been degenerating; in business, in public affairs, in private life, until the standards of value have been confused, the line of demarcation between right and wrong blurred to indistinctness, and the old motives of honour, duty, service, charity, chivalry and compassion are no longer the controlling motive, or at least the conscious aspiration, of active men. This is not to say that these do not exist; the period that has seen the retrogression has recorded also a reaction, and there are now perhaps more who are fired by the ardent passion for active righteousness, than for several generations, but the average is lower, for where, many times in the past, there has been a broad, general average of decency, now the disparity is great between the motives that drive society as a whole, and its methods of operation, and the remnant that finds itself an unimportant minority. Newspapers are perhaps hardly a fair criterion of the moral status of a people--or of anything else for that matter--but what they record, and the way they do it, is at least an indication of a condition, and after every possible allowance has been made, what they record is a very alarming standard of public and private morality, both in the happenings themselves and in the fashion of their publicity. No one would claim that the responsibility for this weakening of moral standards rests predominantly on the shoulders of the educational system of today; the causes lie far deeper than this, but the point I wish to make is that the process has not been arrested by education, in spite of its prevalence, and that therefore it is unwise to continue our exclusive faith in its remedial offices. The faith was never well founded. Education can do much, but what it does, or can do, is to foster and develop _inherent possibilities,_ whether these are of character, intelligence or aptitude: it cannot put into a boy or man what was not there, _in posse,_ at birth, and humanly speaking, the diversity of potential in any thousand units is limited only by the number itself. Whether our present educational methods are those best calculated to foster and develop these inherent possibilities, so varied in nature and degree, is the question, and it is a question the answer to which depends largely on whether we look on intelligence, capacity or character as the thing of greatest moment. For those who believe that character is the thing of paramount importance--amongst whom I count myself--the answer must be in the negative. Nor is an affirmative reply entirely assured when the question is asked as to the results in the case of intellect and capacity. There are few who would claim that in either of these directions the general standard is now as high as it was, for example, in the last half of the last century. The Great War brought to the front few personalities of the first class, and the peace that has followed has an even less distinguished record to date. We may say with truth, I think, that the last ten years have provided greater issues, and smaller men to meet them in the capacity of leaders, than any previous crisis of similar moment. The art of leadership, and the fact of leadership, have been lost, and without leadership any society, particularly a democracy, is in danger of extinction. Here again one cannot charge education with our lack of men of character, intelligence and capacity to lead; as before, the causes lie far deeper, but the almost fatal absence at this time of the personalities of such force and power that they can captain society in its hours of danger from war or peace, must give us some basis for estimating the efficiency of our educational theory and practice, and again raise doubts as to whether here also we shall be well advised if we rely exclusively upon it as the ultimate saviour of society, while we are bound to ask whether its methods, even of developing intelligence and capacity, are the best that can be devised. Another point worth considering is this. So long as we could lay the flattering unction to our souls that acquired characteristics were heritable, and that therefore if an outcast from Posen, migrating to America, had taken advantage of his new opportunities and so had developed his character-potential, amassed money and acquired a measure of education and culture, he would automatically transmit something of this to his offspring, who would start so much the further forward and would tend normally to still greater advance, and so on _ad infinitum,_ so long we were justified in enforcing the widest measure of education on all and sundry, and in waiting in hope for a future when the cumulative process should have accomplished its perfect work. Now, however, we are told that this hope is vain, that acquired characteristics are not transmitted by heredity, and that the old folk-proverb "it is only three generations between shirtsleeves and shirtsleeves," is perhaps more scientifically exact than the evolutionary dictum of the nineteenth century. Which is what experience and history have been teaching, lo, these many years. The question then seems to divide itself into three parts; (a) are we justified in pinning our faith in ultimate social salvation to free, secular, and compulsory education carried to the furthest possible limits; (b) if not, then what precisely is the function of formal education; and (c) this being determined, is our present method adequate, and if not how should it be modified? It is unwise to speak dogmatically along any of these lines, they are too blurred and uncertain. I can only express an individual opinion. It seems to me that life unvaryingly testifies to the extreme disparity of potential in individuals and in families and in racial strains, though in the two latter the difference is not necessarily absolute and permanent, but variable in point of both time and degree. In individuals the limit of this potentiality is inherent, and it can neither be completely inhibited by adverse education and environment nor measurably extended by favourable education and environment. Characteristics acquired _outside_ inherent limitations are personal and non-heritable, however intimately they may have become a part of the individual himself. If this is true, then the question of education becomes personal also; that is to say, we educate for the individual, and with an eye to the part he himself is to play in society. We do not look for cumulative results but in a sense deal with each personality in regard to itself alone. I think this has a bearing both on the extent to which education should be enforced and on the quality and method of education itself, and though the contention will receive little but ridicule, I am bound to say that I hold that _general_ education should be reduced in quantity and considerably changed in nature. If the limit of development is substantially determined in each individual and cannot be extended by human agencies (I say "human" because God in His wisdom and by His power can raise up a prophet or a saint out of the lowest depths, and frequently does so), then the quantity and extent of general education should be determined not by a period of years and the facilities offered by a government liberal in its expenditures, but entirely by the demonstrated or indicated capacity of the individual. Our educational system should, so far as it is free and compulsory, normally end with the high school grade. Free college, university and technical training should not be provided, except for those who had given unmistakable evidences that they could, and probably would, use it to advantage. This would be provided for by non-competitive scholarships, limited in number only by the number of capable candidates, and determination of this capacity would be, not on the basis of test examinations, but on an average record covering a considerable period of time. It is doubtful if even these scholarships should be wholly free; some responsibility should be recognized, for a good half of the value of a thing (perhaps all its value) lies in working for it. A grant without service, a favour accepted without obligations, privilege without function, both cheapen and degrade. Let us now turn to the second question, i.e., what precisely is the function of formal education. For my own part I can answer this in a sentence. It is primarily the fostering and development of the character-potential inherent in each individual. In this process intellectual training and expansion and the furthering of natural aptitude have a part, but this is secondary to the major object which is the development of character. This is not in accordance with the practice or the theory of recent times, and in this fact lies one of the prime causes of failure. The one thing man exists to accomplish is character; not worldly success and eminence in any line, not the conquest of nature (though some have held otherwise), not even "adaptation to environment" in the _argot_ of last century science, but _character;_ the assimilation and fixing in personality of high and noble qualities of thought and deed, the furtherance, in a word, of the eternal sacramental process of redemption of matter through the operation of spiritual forces. Without this, social and political systems, imperial dominion, wealth and power, a favourable balance of trade avail nothing; with it, forms and methods and the enginery of living will look out for themselves. And yet this thing which comprises "the whole duty of man" has, of late, fallen into a singular disregard, while the constructive forces that count have either been discredited and largely abandoned, as in the case of religion, or, like education, turned into other channels or reversed altogether, as has happened with the idea and practice of obedience, discipline, self-denial, duty, honour and unselfishness; surely the most fantastic issue of the era of enlightenment, of liberty and of freedom of conscience. As a matter of fact character, as the chief end of man and the sole guaranty of a decent society, has been neglected; it was not disregarded by any conscious process, but the headlong events that have followed since the fifteenth century have steadily distorted our judgment and confused our standards of value even to reversal. By an imperceptible process other matters have come to engage our interest and control our action, until at last we are confronted by the nemesis of our own unwisdom, and we entertain the threat of a dissolving civilization just because the forces we have engendered or set loose have not been curbed or directed by that vigorous and potent personal character informing a people and a society, that we had forgot in our haste and that alone could give us safety. Formal education is but one of the factors that may be employed towards the development of character; you cannot so easily separate one force in life from another, assigning a specific duty here, a definite task there. That is one of the weaknesses of our time, the water-tight compartment plan of high specialization, the cellular theory of efficiency. Life must be seen as a whole, organized as a whole, lived as a whole. Every thought, every emotion, every action, works for the building or the unbuilding of character, and this synthesis of living must be reestablished before we can hope for social regeneration. Nevertheless formal education may be made a powerful factor, even now, and not only in this one specific direction, but through this, for the accomplishing of that unification of life that already is indicated as the next great task that is set before us; and this brings me to a consideration of the last of the questions I have proposed for answer, viz.: is our present system of education adequate to the sufficient development of character, and if not, how should it be modified? I do not think it adequate, and experience seems to me to prove the point. It has not maintained the sturdy if sometimes acutely unpleasant character of the New England stock, or the strong and handsome character of the race that dwelt in the thirteen original colonies as this manifested itself well into the last century, and it has, in general, bred no new thing in the millions of immigrants and their descendants who have flooded the country since 1840 and from whom the public schools and some of the colleges are largely recruited. It is not a question of expanded brain power or applied aptitude, but of character, and here there is a larger measure of failure than we had a right to expect. And yet, had we this right? The avowed object of formal education is mental and vocational training, and by no stretch of the imagination can we hold these to be synonymous with character. We have dealt with and through one thing alone, and that is the intellect, whereas character is rather the product of emotions judiciously stimulated, balanced (not controlled) by intellect, and applied through active and varied experience. Deliberately have we cut out every emotional and spiritual factor; not only religion and the fine arts, but also the studies, and the methods of study, and the type of text-books, that might have helped in the process of spiritual and emotional development. We have eliminated Latin and Greek, or taught them as a branch of philology; we have made English a technical exercise in analysis and composition, disregarding the moral and spiritual significance of the works of the great masters of English; we minimize ancient history and concentrate on European history since the French Revolution, and on the history of the United States, and because of the sensitiveness of our endless variety of religionists (pro forma) text books are written which leave religion out of history altogether--and frequently economics and politics as well when these cannot be made to square with popular convictions; philosophy and logic are already pretty well discarded, except for special electives and post-graduate courses, and as for art in its multifarious forms we know it not, unless it be in the rudimentary and devitalized form of free-hand drawing and occasional concerted singing. The only thing that is left in the line of emotional stimulus is competitive athletics, and for this reason I sometimes think it one of the most valuable factors in public education. It has, however, another function, and that is the coordination of training and life; it is in a sense an _école d'application,_ and through it the student, for once in a way, tries out his acquired mental equipment and his expanding character--as well as his physical prowess--against the circumstances of active vitality. It is just this sort of thing that for so long made the "public schools" of England, however limited or defective may have been the curriculum, a vital force in the development of British character. At best, however, this seems to me but an indifferent substitute, an inadequate "extra," doing limitedly the real work of education by indirection. What we need (granting my assumption of character as the _terminus ad quem_) is an educational system so recast that the formal studies and the collateral influences and the school life shall be more coordinated in themselves and with life, and that the resulting stimulus shall be equally operative along intellectual, emotional and creative lines. It is sufficiently easy to make suggestions as to how this is to be accomplished, to lay out programmes and lay down curricula, but here as elsewhere this does not amount to much; the change must come and the institutions develop as the result of the operations of life. If we can change our view of the object of education, the very force of life, working through experience, will adequately determine the forms. It is not therefore as a meticulous and mechanical system that I make the following suggestions as to certain desirable changes, but rather to indicate more exactly what I mean by a scheme of education that will work primarily towards the development of character. Now in the first place, I must hold that there can be no education which works primarily for character building, that is not interpenetrated at every point by definite, concrete religion and the practice of religion. As I shall try to show in my last two lectures, religion is the force or factor that links action with life. It is the only power available to man that makes possible a sound standard of comparative values, and with philosophy teaching man how to put things in their right order, it enters to show him how to control them well, while it offers the great constructive energy that makes the world an orderly unity rather than a type of chaos. Until the Reformation there was no question as to this, and even after, in the nations that accepted the great revolution, the point was for a time maintained; thereafter the centrifugal tendency in Protestantism resulted in such a wealth of mutually antagonistic sects that the application of the principle became impracticable, and for this, as well as for more fundamental reasons, it fell into desuetude. The condition is as difficult today for the process of denominational fission has gone steadily forward, and as this energy of the religious influence weakens the strenuosity of maintenance strengthens. With our 157 varieties of Protestantism confronting Catholicism, Hebraism, and a mass of frank rationalism and infidelity as large in amount as all others combined, it would seem at first sight impossible to harmonize free public education with concrete religion in any intimate way. So it is; but if the principle is recognized and accepted, ways and means will offer themselves, and ultimately the principle will be embodied in a workable scheme. For example; there is one thing that can be done anywhere, and whenever enough votes can be assembled to carry through the necessary legislation. At present the law regards with an austere disapproval that reflects a popular opinion (now happily tending towards decay), what are known as "denominational schools" and other institutions of learning. Those that maintain the necessity of an intimate union between religion and education, as for example the great majority of Roman Catholics and an increasing number of Episcopalians and Presbyterians, are taxed for the support of secular public schools which they do not use, while they must maintain at additional, and very great, expense, parochial and other private schools where their children may be taught after a fashion which they hold to be necessary from their own point of view. Again, state support is refused to such schools or colleges as may be under specific religious control, while pension funds for the teachers, established by generous benefactions, are explicitly reserved for those who are on the faculties of institutions which formally dissociate themselves from any religious influence. I maintain that this is both unjust and against public policy. Under our present system of religious individualism and ecclesiastical multiplicity, approximations only are possible, but I believe the wise and just plan would be for the state to fix certain standards which all schools receiving financial support from the public funds must maintain, and then, this condition being carried out, distribute the funds received from general taxation to public and private schools alike. This would enable Episcopalians, let us say, or Roman Catholics, or Jews, when in any community they are numerous enough to provide a sufficiency of scholars for any primary, grammar, or high school, to establish such a school in as close a relationship to their own religion as they desired, and have this school maintained out of the funds of the city. This is not a purely theoretical proposition; after an agitation lasting nearly half a century, Holland has this year put such a law in force. From every point of view we should do well to recognize this plan as both just and expedient. One virtue it would have, apart from those already noted, is the variation it would permit in curricula, text books, personnel and scholastic life as between one school and another. There is no more fatal error in education than that standardization which has recently become a fad and which finds its most mechanistic manifestation in France. Of course this need for the fortifying of education by religion is recognized even now, but the only plan devised for putting it into effect is one whereby various ministers of religion are allowed a certain brief period each week in which they may enter the public schools and give denominational instruction to those who desire their particular ministrations. This is one of the compromises, like the older method of Bible reading without commentary or exposition, which avails nothing and is apt to be worse than frank and avowed secularism. It is putting religion on exactly the same plane as analytical chemistry, psychoanalysis or salesmanship, (the latter I am told is about to be introduced in the Massachusetts high schools) or any other "elective," whereas if it is to have any value whatever it must be an ever-present force permeating the curriculum, the minds of the teachers, and the school life from end to end, and there is no way in which this can be accomplished except by a policy that will permit the maintenance of schools under religious domination at the expense of the state, provided they comply with certain purely educational requirements established and enforced by the state. I have already pointed out what seems to me the desirability of a considerable variation between the curriculum of one school and another. This would be possible and probably certain under the scheme proposed, but barring this, it is surely an open question whether the pretty thoroughly standardized curriculum now in operation would not be considerably modified to advantage if it is recognized that the prime object of education is character rather than mental training and the fitting of a pupil to obtain a paying job on graduation. From my own point of view the answer is in a vociferous affirmative. I suggest the drastic reduction of the very superficial science courses in all schools up to and including the high school, certainly in chemistry, physics and biology, but perhaps with some added emphasis on astronomy, geology and botany. History should become one of the fundamental subjects, and English, both being taught for their humanistic value and not as exercises in memory or for the purpose of making a student a sort of dictionary of dates. This would require a considerable rewriting of history text books, as well as a corresponding change in the methods of teaching, but after all, are not these both consummations devoutly to be wished. There are few histories like Mr. Chesterton's "Short History of England," unfortunately. One would, perhaps, hardly commend this stimulating book as a sufficient statement of English history for general use in schools, but its approach is wholly right and it possesses the singular virtue of interest. Another thing that commends it is the fact that while it runs from Caesar to Mr. Lloyd George, it contains, I believe, only seven specific dates, three of which are possibly wrong. This is as it should be--not the inaccuracies but the commendable frugality in point of number. Dates, apart from a few key years, are of small historical importance; so are the details of palace intrigues and military campaigns. History is, or should be, life expressed in terms of romance, and it is of little moment whether the narrated incidents are established by documentary evidence or whether they are contemporary legend quite unsubstantiated by what are known (and overestimated) as "facts." There is more of the real Middle Ages in Mallory's "Mort d'Arthur" than there is in all Hallam, and the same antithesis can be established for nearly all other periods of history. The history of man is one great dramatic romance, and so used it may be made perhaps the most stimulating agency in education as character development. I do not mean romance in the sense in which Mr. Wells takes it, that is to say, the dramatic assembling and clever coördination of unsubstantiated theories, personal preferences, prejudices and aversions, under the guise of solemn and irrefutable truth attested by all the exact sciences known to man, but romance which aims like any other art at communicating from one person to another something of the inner and essential quality of life as it has been lived, even if the material used is textually doubtful or even probably apocryphal. The deadly enemy of good, sound history is scientific historical criticism. The true history is romantic tradition; the stimulating thing, the tale that makes the blood leap, the pictorial incident that raises up in an instant the luminous vision of some great thing that once was. I would not exchange Kit Marlowe's _"Is this the face that launched a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"_ for all the critical commentaries of Teutonic pedants on the character and attributes of Helen of Troy as these have (to them) been revealed by archaeological investigations. I dare say that Bishop St. Remi of Reims never said in so many words "Bow thy proud head, Sicambrian; destroy what thou hast worshipped, worship what thou hast destroyed," and that the Meroving monarch did not go thence to issue an "order of the day" that the army should forthwith march down to the river and be baptized by battalions; but _there_ is the clear, unforgettable picture of the times and the men, and it will remain after the world has forgotten that some one has proved that St. Remi never met Clovis, and that he himself was probably only a variant of the great and original "sun-myth." Closely allied with the teaching of history and forming a link as it were with the teaching of English, is a branch of study at present unformulated and unknown, but, I am convinced, of great importance in education as a method of character development. Life has always focused in great personalities, and formal history has recognized the fact while showing little discretion, and sometimes very defective judgment, in the choices it has made. A past period becomes our own in so far as we translate it through its personalities and its art; the original documents matter little, except when they become misleading, as they frequently do, when read through contemporary spectacles. Now the great figures of a time are not only princes and politicians, conquerors and conspirators, they are quite as apt to be the knights and heroes and brave gentlemen who held no conspicuous position in Church or state. I think we need what might be called "The Golden Book of Knighthood"--or a series of text books adapted to elementary and advanced schools--made up of the lives and deeds (whether attested by "original documents," or legendary or even fabulous does not matter) of those in all times, and amongst all peoples, who were the glory of knighthood; the "parfait gentyl Knyghtes" "without fear and without reproach." Such for example, to go no farther back than the Christian Era, as St. George and St. Martin, King Arthur and Launcelot and Galahad, Charles Martel and Roland, St. Louis, Godfrey de Bouillon and Saladin, the Earl of Strafford, Montrose and Claverhouse, the Chevalier Bayard, Don John of Austria, Washington and Robert Lee and George Wyndham. These are but a few names, remembered at random; there are scores besides, and I think that they should be held up to honour and emulation throughout the formative period of youth. After all, they became, during the years when these qualities were exalted, the personification of the ideals of honour and chivalry, of compassion and generosity, of service and self-sacrifice and courtesy, and these, the qualifications of a gentleman and a man or honour, are, with the religion that fostered them, and the practice of that religion, the just objective of education. Much of all this can even now be taught through a judicious use of the opportunities offered instructors in English, whether this is through the graded "readers" of elementary education, or the more extended courses in colleges and universities. Very frequently these opportunities are ignored, and will be until we achieve something of a new orientation in the matter of teaching English. Now it may be I hold a vain and untenable view of this subject, but I am willing to confess that I believe the object of teaching English is the unlocking of the treasures of thought, character and emotion preserved in the written records of the tongue, and the arousing of a desire to know and assimilate these treasures on the part of the pupil. I am very sure that English should not be taught as a thing ending in "ology," not as an intricate science with all sorts of laws and rules and exceptions; not as a system whereby the little children of the Ghetto, and the offspring of Pittsburgh millionaires, and the spectacled infant elect of Beacon Hill may all be raised to the point where they can write with acceptable fluency the chiseled phrases of Matthew Arnold, the cadenced Latinity of Sir Thomas Browne, the sonorous measures of Bolingbroke or the distinguished and resonant periods of the King James Bible. Such an aim as this will always result in failure. The English language is the great storehouse of the rich thought and the burning emotion of the English race, and all this, as it has issued out of character, works towards the development of character, when it is made operative in new generations. There is no other language but Latin that has preserved so great a wealth of invaluable things, and English is taught in order that it all may be more available through that appreciation that comes from familiarity. There is no nobler record in the world: from Chaucer down to the moderns is one splendid sequence of character-revelations through a perfect but varied art, for literature is also a fine art, and one of the greatest of all. Is it not fair to say that the chief duty of the teacher of English is to lead the student to like great literature, to find it and enjoy it for himself, and through it to come to the liking of great ideas? In the old days there was an historical, or rather archaeological, method that was popular; also an analytical and grammarian method. There was also the philological method which was quite the worst of all and had almost as devastating results as in the case of Latin. It almost seems as though English were being taught for the production of a community of highly specialized teachers. No one would now go back to any of those quaint and archaic ways digged up out of the dim and remote past of the XIXth century. We should all agree, I think, that for general education, specialized technical knowledge is unimportant and scientific intensive methods unjustifiable. For one student who will turn out a teacher there are five hundred that will be just simple voters, wage-earners, readers of the Saturday Evening Post and the New Republic, members of the Fourth Presbyterian Church or the Ethical Society, and respectable heads of families. The School of Pedagogy has its own methods (I am given to understand), but under correction I submit they are not those of general education. Shall I put the whole thing in a phrase and say that the object of teaching English is to get young people to like good things? You may say this is English Literature, not English. Are the two so very far apart? English as a language is taught to make literature available. "Example is better than precept." Reading good literature for the love of it will bring in the habit of grammatical speaking and writing far more effectively than what is known as "a thorough grounding in the principles of English grammar." I doubt if the knowledge of, and facility in, English can be built up on such a basis; rather the laws should be deduced from examples. Philology, etymology, syntax are derivatives, not foundations. "Practice makes perfect" is a saying that needs to be followed by the old scholastic defensive _"distinguo."_ Practice in reading, rather than practice in writing, makes good English composition possible. The "daily theme" may be overdone; it is of little use unless _thought_ keeps ahead of the pen. I would plead then for the teaching of English after a fashion that will reveal great thoughts and stimulate to greater life, through the noble art of English literature and the perfectly illogical but altogether admirable English language. The function of education is to make students feel, think and act, after a fashion that increasingly reveals and utilizes the best that is in them, and increasingly serves the uses of society, and both history and English can be so taught as to help towards the accomplishment of these ends. There is another factor that may be so used, but I confess I shall speak of it with some hesitation. It is at present, and has been for ages, entirely outside the possibility even of consideration, and in a sense that goes beyond the general ignoring of religion, for while Catholics, who form the great majority of Christians, still hold to religion as a prime element in education, there are none--or only a minority so small as to be negligible--who give a thought to art in this connection. I bring forward the word, and the thing it represents, with diffidence, even apologetically: indeed, it is perhaps better to renounce the word altogether and substitute the term "beauty," for during the nineteenth century art got a bad name, not altogether undeservedly, and the disrepute lingers. So long as beauty is an instinct native to men (and it was this, except for very brief and periodic intervals, until hardly more than a century ago, though latterly in a vanishing form), it is wholesome, stimulating and indispensable, but when it becomes self-conscious, when it finds itself the possession of a few highly differentiated individuals instead of the attribute of man as such, then it tends to degenerate into something abnormal and, in its last estate, both futile and unclean. In its good estate, as for example in Greece, Byzantium, the Middle Ages, and in Oriental countries until the last few decades, beauty was so natural an object of endeavour and a mode of expression, and its universality resulted in so characteristic an environment, it was unnecessary to talk about it very much, or to give any particular thought to the educational value of the arts which were its manifestation through and to man, or how this was to be applied. The things were there, everywhere at hand; the temples and churches, the painting and the sculpture and the works of handicraft; the music and poetry and drama, the ceremonial and costume of daily life, both secular and religious, the very cities in which men congregated and the villages in which they were dispersed. Beauty, in all its concrete forms of art, was highly valued, almost as highly as religion or liberty or bodily health, but then it was a part of normal life and therefore taken for granted. Now all is changed. For just an hundred years (the process definitely began here in America between 1820 and 1823) we have been eliminating beauty as an attribute of life and living until, during the last two generations, it is true to say that the instinctive impulse of the race as a whole is towards ugliness in those categories of creation and appreciation where formerly it had been towards beauty. Of course the corollary of this was the driving of the unhappy man in whom was born some belated impulse towards the apprehending of beauty and its visible expression in some art, back upon himself, until, conscious of his isolation and confident of his own superiority, he not only made his art a form of purely personal expression (or even of exposure), but held himself to be, and so conducted himself, as a being apart, for whom the laws of the herd were not, and to whom all men should bow. The separation of art from life is only less disastrous in its results than the separation of religion from life, particularly since with the former went the separation of art (and therefore of beauty) from its immemorial alliance with religion. It was bad for art, it was bad for religion, and it was worst of all for life itself. Beyond a certain point man cannot live in and with and through ugliness, nor can society endure under such conditions, and the fact is that, however it came to pass, modern civilization has functioned through explicit ugliness, and the environment it has made for its votaries and its rebels indifferently, is unique in its palpable hideousness; from the clothes it wears and the motives it extols, to the cities it builds, and the structures therein, and the scheme of life that romps along in its ruthless career within the sordid suburbs that take the place of the once enclosing walls. And the defiant and segregated "artists," mortuary art museums, the exposed statues and hidden pictures, the opera subsidized by "high society," and the "arts and crafts" societies and the "art magazines" and "art schools" and clubs and "city beautiful" committees, only seem to make the contrast more apparent and the desperate nature of the situation more profound. It is a new situation altogether, and nowhere in history is there any recorded precedent to which we can return for council and example, for nothing quite of the same sort ever happened before. It is also a problem of which formal education must take cognizance, for the lack is one which must somehow be supplied, while it reveals an astonishing _lacuna_ in life that means a new deficiency in the unconscious education of man that renders him ineffective in life; defective even, it may be, unless from some source he can acquire something of what in the past life itself could afford. Indeed it is not merely a negative influence we deal with, but a positive, for, to paraphrase a little, "ugly associations corrupt good morals." Youth is beaten upon at many points by things that not only look ugly, but are, and as in compassion we are bound to offer some new agency to fill a lack, so in self-defence we must take thought as to how the evil influence of contemporaneousness is to be nullified and its results corrected. I confess the method seems to me to lean more closely to the indirect influence rather than the direct. It is doubtful if "art" can really be taught in any sense; the inherent sense of beauty can be fostered and an inherent aptitude developed, but that is about all. As for the building up of a non-professional passion for art I am quite sure it cannot be done, and should hardly be attempted, and very likely the same is true of the application of beauty. Text books on "How to Understand" this art or that are interesting ventures into abstract theory, but they are little more. We must always remember that art is a result, not a product, and that sense of beauty is a natural gift and not an accomplishment. On the other hand, much can be accomplished by indirection, and by this I mean the buildings and the grounds and the cultural adjuncts that are offered by any school or college. The ordinary type of school-house--primary, grammar or high school--is, in its barren ugliness and its barbarous "efficiency," a very real outrage on decency, and a few Braun photographs and plaster casts and potted plants avail nothing. Private schools and some colleges--by no means all--are apt to be somewhat better, and here the improvement during the last ten years has been amazing, one or two universities having acquired single buildings, or groups, of the most astonishing architectural beauty. In no case, however, has as yet complete unity been achieved, while the arts of painting, sculpture, music and the drama, as vital and operative and pervasive influences, lag far behind, and formal religion with its liturgies and ceremonial, its constant and varied services and its fine and appealing pageantry--religion which is the greatest vitalizing and stimulating force in beauty is hardly touched at all. Bad art of any kind is bad anywhere, but in any type of educational institution, from the kindergarten to the post graduate college, it is worse and less excusable than it is elsewhere, unless it be in association with religion, while the absence of beauty at the instigation of parsimony or efficiency is just as bad. I am firmly persuaded that we need, not more courses of study but more beautiful environment for scholars under instruction. I have touched cursorily on certain elements in education which need either a new emphasis or an altogether new interpretation; religion, history, art, but this does not mean that the same treatment should not be accorded elsewhere. There are certain studies that should be revived, such as formal logic, there are others that need immediate and complete restoration, as Latin for example, there are many, chiefly along scientific and vocational lines, that could well be minimized, or in some cases dispensed with altogether: one might go on indefinitely on this line, however, weighing and testing studies in relation to their character-value, but certainly enough has already been said to indicate the point of view I would urge for consideration. Before I close, however, I want to touch on two points that arise in connection with college education, if, even for the sake of argument, we admit that the primary object of all formal education is the "education" of the character-capacity in each individual. Of these two, the first has to do with the college curriculum, but I need to devote little time to this for the principle has already been developed and applied in a singularly stimulating and lucid book called "The Liberal College," by President Meiklejohn of Amherst, to which I beg to refer you. The scheme is a remarkable blending of the prescribed and the elective systems, and provides for the freshman year five compulsory studies, viz.: Social and Economic Institutions, Mathematics and Formal Logic, Science, English and Foreign Languages; for the sophomore year European History, Philosophy, Science, Literature, and one elective; for the junior year American History, History of Thought and two electives, and for the senior year one required study, Intellectual and Moral Problems, and one elective, the latter, which takes two-thirds of the student's time, must be a continuation of one of the four subjects included in the junior year. It seems to me that this is a singularly wise programme, since it not only determines the few studies which are fundamental, and imposes them on the student in diminishing number as he advances in his work, but it also provides for that freedom of choice which permits any student to find out and continue the particular line along which his inclinations lead him to travel, until his senior year is chiefly given over to the fullest possible development of the special subject. The fad for free electives all along the line was one of those curious phenomena, both humorous and tragic, that grew out of the evolutionary philosophy and the empirical democracy of the nineteenth century, and it wrought disaster, while the ironclad curriculum that preceded it was almost as bad along an opposite line. This project of Dr. Meiklejohn's seems to me to recognize life as a force and to base itself on this sure foundation instead of on the shifting sands of doctrinaire theory, and if this is so then it is right. For after all there is such a thing as life, and it is more potent than theory as it also has a way of disregarding or even smashing the machine. It is this force of life that should be more regarded in education, and more relied upon. It is the living in a school or a college that counts more than a curriculum; the association with others, students and teachers, the communal life, the common adventures and scrapes, the common sports, yes, and as it will be sometime, the common worship. It is through these that life works and character develops, and to this development and instigation of life the school and college should work more assiduously, minimizing for the moment the problems of curricula and pedagogic methods. If I am right in this there is no place for the "correspondence school," while the college or university that numbers its students by thousands becomes at least of doubtful value, and perhaps impossible. In any case it seems to me self-evident that a college, whatever its numbers, must have, as its primal and essential units, self-contained groups of not more than 150 students segregated in their own residential quad, with its common-room, refectory and chapel, and with a certain number of faculty members in residence, the whole being united under one "head." There may be perhaps no reason why, granting this unit system, these should not be multiplied in number until the whole student body is as great as that of a western state university today, but to me the idea is abhorrent of an "university" with five or ten thousand students all jostling together In one inchoate mass, eating in numerical mobs, assembling in social "unions" as large as a metropolitan hotel and almost as homelike, or taking refuge for safety from mere numbers in clubs, fraternities and secret societies. A college such as this is a mob, not an organism, and as a mob it ought to be put down. I said at the outset of this lecture that we could not lay the present failure of civilization to the doors of education, however great its shortcomings, for the causes lay deeper than this. I maintain that this is true; and yet formal education can not escape scatheless, for it has failed to admit this decline while acknowledging the claim set up for it that it could and would achieve this end. Certainly it will incur a heavy responsibility if it does not at once recognize the fact that while it can not do the half that has been claimed for it, it can do far more than it is doing now, and that in a very large degree the future does depend for its honour or its degradation on the part formal education is to perform at the present crisis. To do this it must execute a _volte face_ and confess that it can only develop inherent potential, not create capacity, and that the primary object of its activities must be not the stall-feeding of intellect and the practical preparation for a business career, but the fostering and the building up of the personal character that denotes the Christian gentleman. I do not think that I can do better for a conclusion than to quote from the "Philosophy of Education" by the late Dr. Thomas Edward Shields. "The unchanging aim of Christian education is, and always has been, to put the pupil into possession of a body of truth derived from nature and from Divine Revelation, from the concrete work of man's hand and from the content of human speech, in order to bring his conduct into conformity with Christian ideals and with the standards of the civilization of his day. "Christian education, therefore, aims at transforming native instincts while preserving and enlarging their powers. It aims at bringing the flesh under the control of the spirit. It draws upon the experience and the wisdom of the race, upon Divine Revelation and upon the power of Divine grace, in order that it may bring the conduct of the individual into conformity with Christian ideals and with the standards of the civilization of the day. It aims at the development of the whole man, at the preservation of unity and continuity in his conscious life; it aims at transforming man's native egotism to altruism; at developing the social side of his nature to such an extent that he may regard all men as his brothers; sharing with them the common Fatherhood of God. In one word, it aims at transforming a child of the flesh into a child of God." VII THE PROBLEM OF ORGANIC RELIGION If philosophy is "the science of the totality of things," and "they are called wise who put things in their right order and control them well," then it is religion, above all other factors and potencies, that enters in to reveal the right relationships and standards of value, and to contribute the redemptive and energizing force that makes possible the adequate control which is the second factor in the conduct of the man that is "called wise." Philosophy and religion are not to be confounded; religion is sufficient in itself and develops its own philosophy, but the latter is not sufficient in itself, and when it assumes the functions and prerogatives of religion, it brings disaster. Religion is the force that relates action to life. Of course it has other aspects, higher in essence and more impalpable in quality, but it is this first aspect I shall deal with, because I am not now speaking of religion as a purely spiritual power but only of its quality as the great coordinator of human action, the power that establishes a right ratio of values and gives the capacity for right control. Whether we accept the religion of the Middle Ages or not; whether we look on the period as one of high and edifying Christian civilization, or as a time of ignorance and superstition, we are bound to admit that society in its physical, intellectual and spiritual aspects was highly organized, and coordinated after a most masterly fashion. It was more nearly an unit, functioning lucidly and consistently, than anything the world has known since the Roman Empire. Whatever its defects, lack of coherency was not one of them. Life was not divided into water-tight compartments, but moved on as a consistent whole. Failures were constant, for the world even then was made up of men, but the ideal was perfectly clear-cut, the principles exactly seen and explicitly formulated; life was organic, consistent, highly articulated, and withal as full of the passion of aspiration towards an ultimate ideal as was the Gothic cathedral which is its perfect exemplar. The reason for this coherency and consistency was the universal recognition and acceptance of religion as the one energizing and standardizing force in life, the particular kind of religion that then prevailed, and the organic power which this religion had established; that is to say, the Church as an operative institution. So long as this condition obtained, which was, roughly speaking, for three hundred years, from the "Truce of God" in 1041 to the beginning of the "Babylonian Captivity" of the Papacy at Avignon in 1309, there was substantial unity in life, but as soon as it was shaken, this unity began to break up into a diversity that accomplished a condition of chaos, at and around the opening of the sixteenth century, which only yielded to the absolutism of the Renaissance, destined in its turn to break up into a second condition of chaos under the influence of industrialism, Puritanism and revolution. Since the accomplishment of the Reformation, this function of religion has never been restored to society in any degree comparable with that which it maintained during the Middle Ages. The Counter-Reformation preserved the institution itself in the Mediterranean lands, but it did not restore its old spiritual power in its entirety. Amongst the peoples that accepted the Reformation the new religion assumed for a time the authority of the old, but the centrifugal force inherent in its nature soon split the reformed churches into myriad fragments, so destroying their power of action, while the abandonment of the sacramental system progressively weakened their dynamic force. As it had from the first compounded, under compulsion, with absolutism and tyranny, so in the end it compromised with the cruelty, selfishness, injustice and avarice of industrialism, and when finally this achieved world supremacy, and physical science, materialistic philosophy and social revolution entered the field as co-combatants, it no longer possessed a sufficient original power either of resistance or of re-creative energy. Religion is in itself not the reaction of the human mind, under process of evolution, to certain physical stimuli of experience and phenomena, it is supernatural in that its source is outside nature; it is a manifestation of the grace of God, and as such it cannot be brought into existence by any conscious action of man or by any of his works. On the other hand, it can be fostered and preserved, or debilitated and dispersed, by these human acts and institutions, and in the same way man himself may be made more receptive to this divine grace, or turned against it, by the same agencies, the teachings of Dr. John Calvin to the contrary notwithstanding. This is part of the Catholic doctrine of free-will as opposed to the sixteenth-century dogma of predestination which, distorted and degraded from the doctrine of St. Paul and St. Augustine, played so large a part in that transformation of the Christian religion from which we have suffered ever since. God offers the free gift of religion and of faith to every child of man, but the recipient must cooperate if the gift is to be accepted. The Church, that is to say, the supernatural organism that is given material form in time and space and operates through human agencies, is for this reason subject to great vicissitudes, now rising to the highest level of righteousness and power, now sinking into depths of unrighteousness and impotence. Nothing, however, can affect the validity and the potency of its supernatural content and its supernatural channels of grace. These remain unaffected, whether the human organism is exalted or debased. The sacraments and devotions and practices of worship, are in themselves as potent if a Borgia sits in the chair of St. Peter as they are if a Hildebrand, and Innocent III or a Leo XIII is the occupant; nevertheless every weakening or degradation of the visible organism affects, and inevitably, the attitude of men towards the thing itself, and when this declension sets in and continues unchecked, the result is, first, a falling away and a discrediting of religion that sometimes results in general abandonment, and second--and after a time--a new outpouring of spiritual power that results in complete regeneration. The Church, in its human manifestation, is as subject to the rhythmical rise and fall of the currents of life as is the social organism or man himself, therefore it is not to be expected that it will pursue a course of even exaltation, or maintain a status that is impeccable. Now the working out of this law had issue in a great decline that began with the Exile at Avignon and was not terminated until the Council of Trent. In the depth of this catastrophe came the natural and righteous revolt against the manifold and intolerable abuses, but, like all reforming movements that take on a revolutionary character, reform and regeneration were soon forgotten in the unleashed passion for destruction and innovation, while the new doctrines of emancipation from authority, and the right of private judgment in religious matters, were seized upon by sovereigns chafing under ecclesiastical control, as a providential means of effecting and establishing their own independence, and so given an importance, and an ultimate victory that, in and by themselves, they could hardly have achieved. In the end it was the secular and autocratic state that reaped the victory, not the reformed religion, which was first used as a tool and then abandoned to its inevitable break-up into numberless antagonistic sects, some of them retaining a measure of the old faith and polity, others representing all the illiteracy and uncouthness and fanaticism of the new racial and social factors as these emerged at long last from the submergence and the oppression that had been their fate with the dissolution of Mediaevalism. Meanwhile the Roman Church which stood rigidly for historic Christianity and had been preserved by the Counter-Reformation to the Mediterranean states, continued bound to the autocratic and highly centralized administrative system that had become universal among secular powers during the decadence of Mediaevalism, and from which it had taken its colour, and it kept even pace for the future with the progressive intensification of this absolutism. This was natural, though in many respects deplorable, and it can be safely said that adverse criticism of the Catholic Church today is based only on qualities it acquired during the period of Renaissance autocracy and revived paganism; qualities that do not affect its essential integrity or authority but do misrepresent it before men, and work as a handicap in its adaptability and in its work of winning souls to Christianity and re-establishing the unity of Christendom. Fortunately this very immobility has saved it from a surrender to the new forces that were developed in secular society during the last two centuries, as it did yield to the compulsion of those that were let loose in the two that preceded them. It has never subjected questions of faith and morals to popular vote nor has it determined discipline by parliamentary practice under a well developed party system, therefore it has preserved its unity, its integrity and its just standard of comparative values. On the other hand, it has held so stubbornly to some of the ill ways of Renaissance centralization, which are in no sense consonant with its character, that it has failed to retard the constant movement of society away from a life wherein religion was the dominating and coordinating force, while at the present crisis it is as yet hardly more able than a divisive Protestantism to offer the regenerative energy that a desperate case demands. I do not know whether secular society is responsible for the decadence of religion, or the decadence of religion is responsible for the failure of secular society, nor does it particularly matter. What I am concerned with is a condition amounting to almost complete severance between the two, and how we may "knit up this ravelled sleeve" of life so that once more we may have an wholesome unity in place of the present disunity; for until this is accomplished, until once more religion enters into the very marrow of social being, enters with all its powers of judgment and determination and co-ordination and creative energy, just so long shall we seek in vain for our way out into the Great Peace of righteous and consistent living. Of course there is only one sure way, one method by which this, and all our manifold difficulties, can be resolved, and that is through the achieved enlightenment of the individual. As I have insisted in each of these lectures, salvation is not through machinery but through the individual soul, for it is life itself that is operating, not the instruments that man devises in his ingenuity. Yet the mechanism is of great value for even itself may give aid and stimulus in the personal regenerative process, or, on the contrary, it may deter this by the confusing and misleading influences it creates. Therefore we are bound to regard material reforms, and of these, as they suggest themselves in the field of organized religion, I propose to speak. No one will deny the progressive alienation of life from religion that has developed since the Reformation and has now reached a point of almost complete severance. Religion, once a public preoccupation, has now withdrawn to the fastnesses of the individual soul, when it has not vanished altogether, as it has in the case of the majority of citizens of this Republic in so far as definite faith, explicit belief, application, practice and action are concerned. In the hermitage that some still make within themselves, religion still lives on as ardent and as potent and as regenerative as before, but in general, if we are to judge from the conduct of recent life, it is held, when it is accepted at all, with a certain formality, and is neither cherished with conviction nor allowed to interfere with the everyday life of the practical man. As a great English statesman remarked in the last century, "No one has a higher regard for religion than I, but when it comes to intruding it into public affairs, well, really--!" The situation is one not unnaturally to be anticipated, for the whole course of religious, secular and sociological development during the last few centuries has been such as to make any other result improbable. I already have tried to show what seem to me the destructive factors, secularly and sociologically. As for the factors in religious development that have worked towards the same end, they are, first, the shattering of the unity of Christendom, with the denial by those of the reformed religions of the existence of a Church, one, visible and Catholic and infallible in matters of faith and morals; second, the denial of sacramental philosophy and abandonment of the sacraments (or all but one, or at most two of them) as instruments of Divine Grace; third, the surrender of the various religious organisms to the compulsion of the materialistic, worldly and opportunist factors in the secular life of modernism. The truths corresponding to these three errors are, Unity, Sacramentalism and Unworldliness. Until these three things are won back, Christianity will fail of its full mission, society will continue aimless, uncoördinate and on the verge of disaster, life itself will lack the meaning and the reality that give both joy in the living and victory in achievement, while the individual man will be gravely handicapped in the process of personal regeneration. It is not my purpose to frame a general indictment against persons and movements, but rather to suggest certain ways and means of possible recovery, and in general I shall try to confine myself to that form of organized religion to which I personally adhere, that is to say, the Anglican or Episcopal Church, partly because of my better knowledge of its conditions, and partly because whatever is said may in most cases be equally well applied to the Protestant denominations. _The unity of the Church._ It is no longer necessary to demonstrate this fundamental necessity. The old days of the nineteenth century are gone, those days when honest men vociferously acclaimed as honourable and glorious "the dissidence of dissent and the protestantism of the Protestant religion." Everyone knows now, everyone, that is, that accepts Christianity, that disunion is disgrace if not a very palpable sin. The desire for a restored unity is almost universal, but every effort in this direction, whatever its source, meets with failure, and the reason would appear to be that the approach is made from the wrong direction. In every case the individual is left alone, his personal beliefs and practices are, he is assured, jealously guarded; all that is asked is that some mechanical amalgamation, some official approximation shall be effected. Free interchange of pulpits, a system of reciprocal re-ordination, a "merger" of church property and parsons, an "irreducible minimum" of credal insistencies these, and others even more ingeniously compromising, are the well-meaning schemes that are put forward, and in the process one point after another is surrendered, as a _quid pro quo_ for the formal and technical capitulation of some other religious group. It is demonstrable that even if these well-meaning approximations were received with favour--and thus far nothing of the kind has appeared--the result, so far as essential unity is concerned, would be _nil._ There is a perfectly definite line of division between the Catholic and the Protestant, and until this line is erased there is no possible unity, even if this were only official and administrative. The Catholic (and in respect to this one particular point I include under this title members of the Roman, Anglican and Eastern Communions) maintains and practices the sacramental system; the Protestant does not. There is no reason, there is indeed grave danger of sacrilege, in a joint reception of the Holy Communion by those who look on it as a mere symbol and those who accept it as the very Body and Blood of Christ. Protestant clergy are urged to accept ordination at the hands of Anglican bishops, but the plea is made on the ground of order, expediency, and the preservation of tradition; whereas the Apostolical succession was established and enforced not for these reasons but in order that the grace of God, originally imparted by Christ Himself, may be continued through the lines He ordained, for the making and commissioning of priests who have power to serve as the channels for the accomplishing of the divine miracle of the Holy Eucharist, to offer the eternal Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ for the quick and the dead, and to remit the penalty of sins through confession and absolution. If the laying on of hands by the bishop were solely a matter of tradition and discipline, neither Rome nor the Anglican Communion would be justified in holding to it as a condition of unity; if it is for the transmission of the Holy Ghost for the making of a Catholic priest, with all that implies and has always implied, then it is wrong, even in the interests of a formal unity, to offer it to those who believe neither in the priesthood nor in the sacraments in the Catholic and historic sense. The conversion of the individual must take precedence of corporate action of any sort. When the secularist comes to believe in the Godhead of Christ he will unite himself with the rest of the faithful in a Church polity, but he will not do this, he has too much self-respect, simply because he is told by some ardent but minimizing parson that he does not have to believe in the Divinity of Christ in order to "join the church." When a Protestant comes to accept the sacramental system, to desire to participate in the Holy Sacrifice of the altar, to make confession of his sins and receive absolution, and to nourish and develop his spiritual nature by the use of the devotions that have grown up during nineteen hundred years, he will renounce his Protestantism, when his self-respect would not permit him to do this just because he had been assured that he need not really change any of his previous beliefs in order to ally himself with a Church that had better architecture and a more artistic ceremonial, and locally a higher social standing. When Anglicans or the Eastern Orthodox come to believe that a vernacular liturgy and a married priesthood and provincial autonomy are of less importance than Catholic unity, and when Roman Catholics can see that the same is of greater moment than a rigid preservation of Renaissance centralization and a cold _"non possumus"_ in the matter of Orders, then the way will be open for the reunion of the West, where this operation cannot be affected by formal negotiations looking towards some form of legalistic concordat. The evil heritage of the sixteenth century is still heavy upon us, and this heritage is one of jealousy and hate, not of charity and toleration. It is an heritage of legalism and technicalities, of self-will and individualism, of shibboleths that have become a dead letter, of prejudices that are fostered on distorted history and the propaganda of the self-seeking and the vain. The spirit of Christ is not in it, but the malice of Satan working upon the better natures of men and justifying in the name of conscience and principle what are frequently the workings of self-will and pride and intellectual obsession. This is the tragedy of it all; that Protestants and Anglicans and Roman Catholics are, so far as the majority are concerned, honestly convinced that they are right in maintaining their own divisiveness; in perpetuating an hundred Protestant sects on the basis of some variation in the form of baptism or church government or the method of conversion; in splitting up the Catholic Church because of a thousand year old disagreement as to a clause in the Creed which has a technical and theological significance only, or because one sector is alleged to have added unjustifiably to the Faith while the other is alleged to have unjustifiably taken away. Self-will and lack of charity, not love and the common will as these are revealed to the world through the Divine Will of Christ, are working here. The momentary triumph of evil over good, the passing victory that yet means the banishment of religion from the world, and the assurance of disaster still greater than that which is now upon us unless every man bends all his energies to the task of making the will of God prevail, first in himself, and so in the secular and ecclesiastical societies in and through which he plays his part in the life of the world--these are the fruits of a divided Christendom. I honestly believe that the first real step towards reunion would be a prompt cessation of the whole process of criticism, vilification and abuse, one of the other, that now marks the attitude of what are known as "church periodicals." Roman, Anglican, Protestant, are all alike, for all maintain a consistent slanging of each other. I have in mind in particular weekly religious papers in the United States which maintain departments almost wholly made up of attacks on Roman Catholicism and the derision of incidents of bad taste or illiteracy in the Protestant denominations, and others which lose no opportunity to discredit or abuse the Episcopal Church and the Protestant denominations, and finally a curiously malevolent newspaper representing the worst type of Protestant ignorance and prejudice, which exists on its libelous and indecent and dishonest assaults on Catholicism wherever it may be found. These are not alone, for the condition of ascerbity and nagging is practically universal. It merely echoes the pulpit and a portion of the general public. We all know of the so called "church" in Boston that is the forum of "escaped nuns" and "unfrocked priests," but in many places of better repute the sermon that bitterly attacks Christian Science, or "High Church Episcopalianism," or the errors of Protestantism generally, or the "usurpations of Rome" is by no means unknown, while elsewhere than in Ireland, the public as a whole finds much pleasure in bating any religion that happens to differ from its own,--or offends its sense of the uselessness of all religion. Let us have a new "Truce of God," and for the space of a year let all clergy, lecturers, newspapers, religious journals, and private individuals, totally abstain from sneering and ill-natured attacks on other religions and their followers. Could this be accomplished a greater step would be taken towards the reunion of Christendom than could be achieved by any number of conferences, commissions, councils and conventions. It was the will and the intent of Christ "that they all may be one, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me," and in disunity we deny Christ. There is no consideration of inheritance, of personal taste, of interests, of intellectual persuasion that can stand in the way of an affirmative answer to this prayer. Every man who calls himself a Christian and yet is not praying and working to break down the self-will and the self-conceit that, so often under the masquerade of conscience, hold him back from a return, even if it is only step by step, to the original unity of the Catholic Faith, is guilty of sin, while it is sin of an even graver degree that stands to the account of those who consciously work to perpetuate the division that now exists. _Sacramentalism._ The stumbling block, the apparently impassable barrier, is that which was erected when belief was substituted for faith; it is the intellectualizing of religion that has brought about the present failure of Christianity as a vital and controlling force in man and in society. The danger revealed itself even in the Middle Ages, and through perhaps the greatest Christian philosopher, and certainly one of the most commanding intellects, the world has known: St. Thomas Aquinas. In his case, and that of the others of his time, the intellect was still directed by spiritual forces, the chiefest of which was faith, therefore the inherent danger in the intellectualizing process did not clearly reveal itself or come into actual operation, but with the Renaissance and the Reformation it stood boldly forth, and since then as mind increased in its dominion faith declined. The Reformation, in all its later phases, that is to say, after it ceased to be a protest against moral defects and administrative abuses and became a revolutionary invention of new dogmas and practices, was the result of clever, stupid or perverse minds working overtime on religious problems which could not be solved or even apprehended by the intellect, whether it was that of an acute and highly trained master such as Calvin, or that of any one of the hundred founders of less savage but more curious and uncouth types of "reformed religion." What we need now for the recovery and re-establishment of Christianity is not so much increased belief as it is a renewed faith; faith in Christ, faith in His doctrine, faith in His Church. We lost this faith when we abandoned the sacraments and sacramentalism as superstitions, or retained some of them in form and as symbols while denying to them all supernatural power. If we would aid the individual soul to regain this lost faith we could do no better than to restore the seven sacraments of the historic Christian faith, and Christian Church to the place they once held for all Christians, and still hold in the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches and (with limitations) in the Anglican Church. Faith begets faith; faith in Christ brings faith in the sacraments, and faith in the sacraments brings faith in Christ. It is disbelief in the efficacy of the sacraments and in the sacramental principle in life that is the essential barrier between Protestantism and Catholicism, and until this barrier is dissolved there can be neither formal unity nor unity by compromise. This is already widely recognized, and as well the actual loss that comes with the denial and abandonment of the sacraments. There is in the Presbyterian church of Scotland a strong tendency towards a reassertion of the full sacramental doctrine; the "Free Catholic" movement throughout Great Britain is made up of Congregationalists, Methodists, Baptists, and other representatives of Evangelical Protestantism, and it is working unreservedly for the recovery and application of all the Catholic sacraments, with the devotions and ritual that go with them. Dr. Orchard, the head, and a Congregational minister, maintains in London a church where, as a Methodist member of the "Free Catholic" organization wrote me the other day, "the Blessed Sacrament is perpetually reserved and 'High Mass' is celebrated on Sundays with the full Catholic ceremonial." In my own practice of architecture I am constantly providing Presbyterian, Congregational, and even Unitarian churches, by request, with chancels containing altars properly vested and ornamented with crosses and candles, while the almost universal demand is for church edifices that shall approach as nearly as possible in appearance to the typical Catholic church of the Middle Ages. Of course some of this is due to a revived instinct for beauty, that almost sacramental quality in life which was ruthlessly destroyed by Protestantism, and also to a renewed sense of the value of symbol and ritual; but back of it all is the growing consciousness that, as Dr. Newman Smythe says, Protestantism has definitely failed, or at least become superannuated; that the essence of religion is spiritual not intellectual, affirmative not negative, and that the only measure of safety lies in a return towards, if not actually to, the Catholic faith and practice from which the old revolt was affected. It is a movement both significant and full of profound encouragement. Here then are two tendencies that surely show the way and demand encouragement and furtherance; recovery of the sense of Christian unity in Christ and through an united Catholic Church, and the re-acceptance of sacramentalism as the expression of that faith and as the method of that Church. I feel very strongly that wherever these tendencies show themselves they must be acclaimed and cherished. The Protestant denominations must be aided in every way in their process of recovery of the good things once thrown away; Episcopalians must be persuaded that nothing can be wrong that leads souls to Christ, and that therefore they must cease their opposition to Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament explicitly for adoration, to such devotions as Benediction and the Rosary simply because they have not explicit Apostolic sanction, or to vestments, incense and holy water because certain prescriptive laws passed four hundred years ago in England have never been repealed. Above all is it necessary that the Episcopal Church should declare itself formally for the reinstitution of the seven Catholic sacraments, with the Mass as the one supreme act of worship, obligatory as the chief service on Sundays and Holy Days, and both as communion and as sacrifice. In this connection there is one reform that would I think be more effective than any other, (except the exaltation of the Holy Eucharist itself) and that is the complete cessation of the practice of commissioning lay readers and using them for mission work and clerical assistance. A mission can be established and made fruitful only on the basis of the sacraments, and chiefly on those of the Holy Eucharist and Penance. It is not enough to send a zealous and well intentioned layman to "a promising mission field" in order that he may read Morning and Evening Prayer and some sermon already published. What is needed is a priest to say Mass and hear confessions, and nothing else will serve as a substitute. How this is to be accomplished, now when the candidates for Holy Orders are constantly falling off in number, with no immediate prospect of recovery, is a question. Perhaps we may learn something from the old custom of ordaining "Mass priests," without cure of souls and with a commission to celebrate the Holy Mysteries even while they continue their own secular work in the world. For my own part I am persuaded that the best solution lies in the establishing of diocesan monasteries where men may take vows for short terms, and, during the period of these vows, remain at the orders of the bishop to go out at any time and anywhere in the diocese and to do such temporary or periodical mission work as he may direct. _Unworldliness:_ I have referred to the great falling off in the number of candidates for the priesthood in the Episcopal Church; the same phenomenon is apparent in all the Protestant denominations, so far as I know, but it has not shown itself in the Roman Catholic Church. This defection parallels the falling-off of membership in the various churches (except again the Roman Catholic) in proportion to the increase in population. We are told that the diminution of the ministry is due to the starvation wages that are paid in the vast majority of cases, and of course it is true that where a married clergy is allowed, men who believe they have a calling both to ministerial and to domestic life will think twice before they follow the call of the first when the pecuniary returns are such as to make the second impossible, which is, generally speaking, the situation today. To obviate this difficulty many religious bodies have recently established pension funds, but even this form of clerical insurance, together with the increase that has been effected in clerical stipends, has shown no results in an increase of students in theological seminaries and in candidates for Orders. The man who has enough of faith in God and a strong enough call to the ministry of Christ, will answer the call even if he does think twice before doing so. The trouble lies, I believe, in the very lack of faith and in a failure of confidence in organized religion largely brought about by organized religion itself through the methods it has pursued during the last two or three generations. There is a widespread belief that it is compromising with the world; that it is playing fast and loose with faith and discipline in a vain opportunism that voids it of spiritual power. Even where distrust does not reach this disastrous conclusion, there is a growing feeling of repugnance to the methods now being adopted in high quarters to "sell religion" to the public, as is the phrase which is sufficient in itself to explain the falling away that now seems to be in process. The attempt to win unwilling support by the methods of the "institutional church," the rampant advertising, so frequently under the management of paid "publicity agents"; the setting apart of half the Sundays in the year for some one or other special purpose, usually the raising of money for a specific and frequently worthy object; the "drives" for millions, the huge and impressive organizations, "scientifically" conducted, for rounding up lapsed communicants, or doubtful converts, or cash and pledges for missions, or pensions, or the raising of clergy stipends; the "Nation-wide Campaign," the "Inter-Church World Movement"; these--not to speak of the growing policy of "making it easy" for the hesitant to "come into the church" by minimizing unpopular clauses in the Creeds or loosening-up on discipline, and of attracting "advanced" elements by the advocacy and exploiting of each new social or industrial or political fad as it arises--are strong deterrents to those who honestly and ardently hunger for religion that _is_ religion and neither social service nor "big business." Christ said "you _cannot_ serve both God and mammon," and this is one of the few cases where He stated a moral condition as a fact instead of indicating the right or the wrong possibility in action. Organized Christianity has for some time been trying to render this dual service, and the penalty thereof is now on the world. This consideration seems to me so important and so near the root of our troubles, and not in the field of organized religion alone, that I am going to quote at length from the Rev. Fr. Duffy of the American "Society of the Divine Compassion." What he has said came to me while I was preparing this lecture, and it is so much better than anything I could say that for my present purpose I make it my own. "To the thoughtful person, and the need of reformation will appeal only to the thoughtful person, it must on reflection become abundantly evident that the chief necessity of our times in the religious world is the recovery of Faith. Probably lack of the true measure of Faith has been the story of every generation, with few exceptions, in the long history of Christianity, but there possibly never has been a time when men talked more of it and possessed less than in our own day. * * * *" "Christianity is a new thing of splendid vision for each and every generation of men, unique in its promise and unapproached in its attraction. And yet how small a factor we have made it in the world's moulding compared with what it might be. We have not achieved a tiny part of what we might have achieved, because we lack the essentials of achievement; Faith and Faith's vision. Obsessed, after centuries of discussion and persecution, with the notion that faith is made up of mere belief, we have lost the secret of that victorious power that overcomes the world, and are weakly dependent upon the world's means for what spiritual operation we undertake. And so content have we grown with things as they are, that what they might be comes only as a dream that passes away quickly with the night; blind to our appalling money-dependency in modern religion, satisfied that the Kingdom of Heaven is as nigh to us as is possible under present conditions of society, we practically have substituted for the theological virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity, the ascending degrees of belief, resignation, money. This is partly due to our religious inheritance and partly to mental and spiritual sloth which dislikes the effort of thinking, preferring easy acquiescence in conditions that are the resultants of blinded vision. For dependency upon money is not something merely of the present, but a condition in the spiritual sphere that is largely a product of a long past. The really inexcusable thing is our willingness, in a day of greater light and knowledge, to close our eyes to the true nature of the unattractive, anaemic thing we _call_ faith, which would be seen as powerless to achieve at all, if taken out of the soil of material means in which it has been planted." He then gives various instances of methods actually put in practice amongst the churches and denominations which indicate the renunciation of faith and an exclusive reliance on worldy agencies and he then continues: "The Joint Commission on Clergy Pensions, appointed by the General Convention of 1913, made as the basis for apportionment, not the services of self-denial of, but the amount of stipend received by, the clergy eligible for pension, thus penalizing the priest who, for the love of God, sacrificed a larger income to accept work in the most needed places where toil is abundant and money scarce. It must be evident, of course, that the motive of the Commission is not an endorsement of the blasphemous gospel of Success, by adding penalty to the self-denying clergy; what is painfully obvious is their apparent unbounded confidence that there are no clergy sufficiently foolish to sacrifice stipend at the call of faith's venture! And since the Armistice, the only real activity in organized religion has been a series of "drives" for vast sums of money, in most cases professionally directed. "A consideration of a few facts such as the forgoing must readily convince even the most unimaginative person that whatever power faith might have had in the past, it counts for little today; that its secrets, its very meaning have been forgotten. Otherwise there could not be this extraordinary exaggeration of the place of money in spiritual operation, and the unblushing, tacit admission that mammon, which Christ so warned against, had been recognized as the master of spiritual situation, instead of the willing servant and useful adjunct of faith it was designed to be in the Christian vision. Indeed they all speak of that, largely unconscious, atmosphere of distrust of God which is so all-prevailing among Christian people today. If the great, positive vice of the age is covetousness, the great negative one is distrust of God; the two invariably go together as parts of a whole--one is the reverse side of the other--for, it is not that we _must_ not, or _ought_ not, but that we "_cannot_ serve God and mammon." And this atmosphere is one in which faith cannot exist, it is stifled, crushed, killed, except it breathe the pure, sweet air of God, with which it can alone surround itself when human hearts will. "It is not surprising that out of such conditions should grow false values, and that spirituality should be measured by the world's standard. Thus we have fallen into the vicious habit of adjudging qualifications for spiritual leadership among the clergy by the amount of their stipends, and measuring their potentialities for usefulness in the Kingdom of God by the amount of their yearly incomes; among the laity, the men of power are ever the men of material means, whom we permit to play the part of Providence in feeding and sustaining the Church from large purses, the filling of which will not always bear close investigation, and the really successful parish is always the one that, no matter what its spiritual condition, rejoices in abundant material means. So evident is it that the means of spiritual life have been so confused with the purely material, that it occasions no surprise when a neighbourhood having changed from the residence district of the comparatively well-to-do to the very poor, the vestry feels bound to consider the moving of the church to a more 'desirable' quarter. "These, of course, are hard facts to face, and it is not strange that we should seek to evade them by a false optimism that thinks evil is eliminated by merely contemplating good. The point is, _they must be faced,_ and at a time when there is some evidence of a little awakening, it must more and more force itself into the consciousness of the thoughtful that the dead spiritual conditions of today are due to the shifting of faith from God to material things as the means of achieving. The only hope lies in the apparent unconsciousness of the error. This is invariably the atmosphere that prevails when ecclesiastical history repeats itself in corruption; it had been true of more than two or three generations, though obviously unseen save by a few of those contemporary with the times, that in Jerusalem, 'the heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money; yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say: Is not the Lord among us? None evil can come upon us.' Corporate unconsciousness, in greater or less measure, of these conditions, may influence the degree of guilt, but never can acquit of the sin. And the cold, naked truth is that today we stand almost helpless before a world of peculiar problems. "What is there here to reflect the _power_ and _might_ of Christianity, such as the early Church, especially, possessed, and subsequent generations, in times of great faith, really knew so much of--the power to heal the sick, to cast out devils, to achieve wonders out of Christ's poverty, to experience the thrilling joy of religion in the ever-abiding Divine Presence, and witness the marvels of faith in the conquering of the world? How is it we are no longer able to communicate the secrets to the suffering world which are able to transmute the people's want into God's plenty, and attract and hold the hearts of men with the joys of the Vision Splendid? Why is it that hope has given way to resignation, that the preaching of forgiveness has been dwarfed by the insistence upon penalty, that distinct evils in the physical sphere are attributed to God and, because of that, held up to religious estimation as good; the day of miracles is regarded as belonging to a far distant past, the answering of prayer looked upon as the exception instead of the rule, and the old melody of joy in religion exchanged for the wail of despair in an interpretation of 'Thy will be done' that is only associated with human calamity? The reply is as simple as, to the thoughtful person, it is obvious: we have lost knowledge of a living, vital, conquering faith that is rooted in God Himself, and have satisfied the hunger of human sense by placing trust in the things of the earth which we see and touch, and in so doing lost the power spiritually to achieve. "Now we can only approach, in the hope of a day of better things, the great practical and intellectual problems of our times from the standpoint of faith's recovery, for it is only in their relationship to faith they can be viewed intelligently by the Christian. And it will be found that at the root of all our difficulties and all our negligences--so many of them unconscious--and as the cause of our vain expediencies and attempts to justify the corporate spiritual situation, is the absence of vital faith and a _whole_ obedience to which God alone has conditioned results. We need sorely to reconsider what faith really is, and when we have recovered in some measure that knowledge of it in experience, which declared its unspeakable worth in the early Church and in later periods of ecclesiastical history which stand out before all others, we shall look back upon our past distrust of God and His promises with shame and wonderment, and proceed to revise our cataloguing of spiritual values and degrees of sin. For the really destructive thing, _before all others,_ is a weakened faith that compromises in a half obedience to Christ and a search for earthly props. The work of Satan has even been the prompting of distrust of God in the human family, just as the work of redemption means so largely the re-establishing of it in the Person of Jesus Christ. From the first temptation of man to the present moment, all the forces of evil have concentrated upon breaking man's trust in God and His promises; every sin has had that as its ultimate end, and every disaster, ill and trial, in the world and individual life, is subtly presented by the enemy of God and man (knowing our haziness of vision), so as to place the appearances against the Creator in a blind disregard for the created; just as in the life of the Incarnate Son all the great power of the forces of darkness were brought to bear unsuccessfully upon the snapping of His faith in His Father--from the time He was tempted to believe Himself forgotten, when hungering and physically reduced in the wilderness after His long fast, until the dreadful cry of dereliction from the Cross at the very end. "The call for reformation today, then, is to the doing of things left undone, the search for and recovery of almost lost spiritual powers that alone lastingly can achieve for God and hasten man's salvation. And this requires the venture and daring that breaks from the world, withdraws from compromise, and that, rightly estimating the character and attitude of God, refuses longer to believe Him the author of evils we resignedly accept today by calling them good; and instead, claims the powers of the Divine promises for the utter destruction of the world's ills by a strict dependence upon spiritual forces and weapons for the accomplishment of results. Above all, this means a change and reform in corporate conduct as the end of repentance, for the present almost total disregard of the laws and principles of Christian living as given in the Sermon on the Mount." These are hard sayings and strong doctrine, but will any one say they are not true? The weakening of religion, with the consequent decline of civilization, is ultimately to be traced back to _organized_ religion, not to religion itself, and still less to any inherent defects in Christianity. Where organized religion has failed it deserved to fail, because it countenanced disunion, forsook the saving sacraments, and finally compromised with worldliness and materialism. With each one of these false ventures faith began to weaken amongst the mass of people until at last this, which can always save, and alone can save, ceased to have either the power or the will to force the organism to conform to the spirit. If we have indeed accomplished the depth of our fall, then the time is at hand when we may hope and pray for a new outpouring of divine grace that will bring recovery. There are wide evidences that men earnestly desire this. I have already spoken of the great corporate movements towards unity, and these mean much even though they may at present take on something of the quality of mechanism instead of depending on the individual and the grace of God working in him. The "World Conference on Faith and Order," the just effected federation of the Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists in Canada, above all the eirenic manifesto of the Bishops at the last Lambeth Conference, all indicate a new spirit working potently in the souls of men. Concrete results are not as yet conspicuous, but the spirit is there and a beginning has been made. Even more significant is the wide testimony to the need for definite, concrete and pervasive religion that is daily given by men whose names have hitherto been quite dissociated from matters of this kind; scientists, educators, men of business and men of public life. It may be testimony in favour of some new invention, some synthetic product of curious and abnormal ingredients; as a matter of fact it frequently is, and we confront such remarkable products as Mr. Wells has given us, for example. The significant thing, however, is the fact of the desire and the avowal; if we have this I think we may leave it to God to see that the desire is satisfied in the end by heavenly food and not by the nostrums of ingenuity. For the same reason we may look without dismay on certain novel phenomena of the moment. In their divergence from "the Faith once delivered to the Saints" and left in the keeping of the Church Christ founded as a living and eternal organism through which His Spirit would work forever, they are wrong and therefore they cannot endure, but each testifies to the passionate desire in man for religion as a reality, and no one of them comes into existence except as the result of desperate action by men to recover something that had been taken from them and that their souls needed, and would have at any cost. Each one of these strange manifestations is a reaction from some old error that had become established belief or custom. No one who holds to historic Christianity is interested in them, but those who have found religion intellectualized beyond endurance and transformed either by materialism or rationalism, seek for the mysticism they know to be a reality (to employ a paradox) in the ultra mysticism of Oriental cults; those who revolt against the exaggeration of evil and its exaltation to eminence that rivals that of God Himself, which is the legacy of one powerful movement in the Reformation, rush to the other extreme and deny the existence of evil and even the reality of matter, while spiritism, the most insidious, perilous and fatal of all the spiritual temptations that beset the world at this time, gains as its adherents those who have been deprived of the Catholic belief in the Communion of Saints and have been forbidden to pray for the dead or to ask for their prayers and intercessions. However strange and erroneous the actual manifestation, there is no question as to the reality and prevalence of the desire for the recovery of spiritual power through the channels of religion. It shows itself, as it should, first of all in the individual, and it is only recently that organized religion, Catholic or Protestant, has begun to show a sympathetic consciousness and to take the first hesitant steps towards meeting the demand. Because of this the seekers for reality have been left unshepherded and have wandered off into strange wildernesses. The call is now to the churches, to organized religion, and if the call is heeded our troubles are well on the road to an end. If the old way of jealousy, hatred and fear is maintained, then humanly speaking, our case is hopeless. If the older way of brotherhood, charity and loving-kindness is followed the future is secure in the Great Peace. Nothing is wrong that leads men to Christ, and this is true from the Salvation Army at one end of the scale to the Seven Sacraments of Catholicity at the other. The world demands now not denial but affirmation, not protest and division but the ringing "Credo" of Catholic unity. VIII PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts. We have tried to approach each subject in this course of lectures in the spirit of peace, and the greatest contributory factor in the achieving of the Great Peace is the individual himself, on whom, humanly speaking, rests the final responsibility. "Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts." Not by majestical engines and curious devices and mass-action, nor yet by an imposed human authority enforced by arms and the law, but by the Holy Spirit of God working through the individual soul and compelling the individual will. Peace is one of the promised fruits of the Holy Spirit, and like the others is manifested through human lives; therefore on us rests the preëminent responsibility of showing forth in ourselves, first of all, those things we desire for others and for society. We have experienced the Great War, we endure its aftermath, and amidst the perils and dangers that follow both there is none greater than that which attaches to exterior war, viz., that the attention of both combatants is focussed on the faults and the weaknesses and the crimes of the opponent, with the result that both become destructive critics rather than constructive examples. Chesterton rightly says, "What is wrong with the critic is that he does not criticise himself * * * rather he identifies himself with the ideal." Seeing evil in others and flattering one's self is the antithesis of the spirit that would lead to the Great Peace, for in that spirit the field of warfare is transferred from the external to the internal, and the interior contest, which alone establishes lasting results, necessitates a recognition of our own error and the need of amendment of our own life. If our modern devices have failed; if the things we invented with a high heart and high hope, in government, industry, society, education, philosophy have in the end brought disappointment, disillusionment, even despair, it is less because of their inherent defects than because the individual failed, and himself ceased to act as the sufficient channel for the divine power which alone energizes our weak little engines and which acts through the individual alone. There is no better demonstration of this essential part played by the personal life of man than the fact that God, for the redemption of the world, took on human form and became one Man amongst many men. There is no better demonstration of the fact that it is through the personal lives of individuals that the Great Peace is to be achieved, both directly and indirectly, than the fact that peace, the gift of the Holy Spirit, was promised to the individual man, by Christ Himself, as the legacy he left to his disciples after His Resurrection and Ascension. Since then the world has been under the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, the "Guide and Comforter" that was promised, even though it has blindly and from time to time rejected the guidance and therefore known not the comfort. The Old Law of "Thou shalt not" was followed by the New Law of "Thou shalt," and this in turn by the law of the third Person of the Trinity which does not supersede the dispensations of the Father and of the Son, but fulfills them in that it affords the spiritual power, if we will, to abide by the inhibitions and to carry out the commands. Our search is for peace, the Great Peace, "the Peace of God which passeth all understanding," and we shall achieve this for ourselves and for the world only through ourselves as individuals, and so for the society of which we are a part, and in so far as we bring ourselves into contact with the Spirit of God. There is deep significance in the fact that the first time Christ used the salutation "Peace be unto you," was after His resurrection. It would seem that this special gift of the Holy Spirit had to be withheld from man until after the human life of God the Son had been brought to an end in accomplishment, for He says "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." "It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you: but if I depart I will send Him unto you. When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth." "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." It is the spirit that quickeneth. After God had revealed the Law and given to us the great redeeming and atoning Life, He saw that we had need of a further manifestation before we should be able to keep the law and live the life. Therefore the Holy Spirit was sent to quicken us and give us power to do what we had both heard and seen. Today we accept the moral law, we recognize the perfection of Chirst's life, but we need to be reminded again that the power to be "sons of God" is present with us if we will but use it. As this power is a spirit it can only be apprehended spiritually; when our minds and hearts are set on material things, even on good material things, the "still small voice" of the spirit remains unheard: but if we listen first to that inward voice and then use the means of grace afforded us, we are enabled to lift up our hearts and minds to the Creator and then to use in His service all the material universe which is also His creation. We can not get a right philosophy by working for right philosophy, but only by living in the right relationship as individuals: then as a by-product of religion a right philosophy will come. We can not get a right industrial system by searching for a right industrial system, but if we show forth in our lives the Christian virtues, a right industrial system will come as one of the by-products of religion. So with each one of our so-called "problems." Life rightly lived has no problems. This is a hard saying for an intellectual age whose temptation is to trust in its own power rather than in the power of God, but "except ye become as little children" and walk by faith and not by sight the Kingdom of God is withheld. A soldier who suffered in the late war, and out of his suffering found peace, says, "Christ's hardest work is to teach the wise: Those who are entrusted with authority and responsibility will be the least prepared to make the venture of the Spirit, however much they may believe in it. They are sacrificing least now: they will have to sacrifice most when the Spirit comes. They have so much to unlearn: children and working men have so little. The whole of our world today is rooted and grounded in intellect. Our machinery, our institutions, our great systems, the entire body of enterprise is governed by brains. It is this that will alter. Just behind intellect there is a vision that is purer, keener, more powerful than the vision of your eyes, than the hearing of your ears, than the touch of your hands. This world is being transformed into another which comes into being at our spiritual touch. The world needs something personal, something from the heart. It is sick to death with the cold machinery of the intellect. But before men see this they must change their view of life, they must _be born again._ The scientists, the historians and theologians, the philosophers, have made the universe too big. It is not a big place: it is very tiny. Life is so simple, really. Our wise men have made it so difficult, so ugly. It is only children who can see the risen Christ; children, perhaps, out of whom seven devils have been cast. The world needs not critics, but teachers, and children are waiting everywhere to teach, but men, shutting the windows of their souls, try rather to mould these little ones to fit into the vacant spaces of their own stupid world. Are not children the true artists? They won't tolerate anything but Beauty. They see Beauty everywhere, not because it is there, but because they want it there. Everything they touch turns into something far more precious than gold: every word they utter is a song of praise. You are almost in heaven every time you look into the eyes of a child." Remember, please, these are the words of a man who has faced the horrible realities of modern warfare, and so do not dismiss them as mere poetry, or with Nicodemus' question, "How can a man be born again?", but listen to a modern interpretation of the answer to that question:--("The Life Indeed.") "We must be born again even to see the spiritual kingdom, must be born of water and the spirit to enter its gates at all. So to his little audience of disciples Our Lord says it is not an affair of legislation, of discovery, of which men say, 'Lo here, lo there! but the kingdom of heaven is _within you._ Why a second birth? This is a second birth because it must needs supervene at a point where two elements can work together, the element of an appealing, vitalizing spirit from the unseen and the element of free human choice. Being of the spirit, it is the birth into freedom: it is the soul emerging from its prison into the open air of liberty and light and life." Note the element of free choice. Our first birth is outside our choice and the gifts are unconditioned; our second birth, when again we become as little children, demands our response to the Holy Spirit and our persevering cooperation with Him to make His influence effectual for ourselves and for the "communion of saints" and the corporate religion into which the Spirit also baptizes us. In a recent sermon a bishop of the Episcopal Church says, "This is the creed of the Church--the Divine Father and Forgiveness: the Divine Son and Redemption: the Divine Spirit and Abundant Life. Therefore the Church still insists upon the creation of moral rectitude and spiritual character as the end and purpose of religion, aye, as the basic problem underlying all questions relating to human life--social, industrial, civic, and political. The Church still preaches the gospel of the Grace of God, the obligation and blessing of worship, the meaning and virtue of the Christian Sacraments." Also "My brethren, we shall not be content to criticize and find fault with our own age and time, but rather we shall pray for the power to see within its questionings, unrest and discontent--aye, its recklessness and apparent failures--the strivings of the Spirit of God. But each man has to voice for himself the conviction of the reality of the spiritual order and the spiritual life. Therefore, let us believe in and practice the worship of God, 'praying always' as St. Paul says, 'with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit,' or as St. Jude says, 'building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.'" Let us accept this suggestion and try to find in the unrest of our own time evidences of "the strivings of the Spirit of God," waiting our perception and response. The soldier of the Great War, having faced death and imprisonment and suffering in many forms says, "compared with the depth of good in the world the evil is shallow." The first evidence of good in our own day is the almost universal discontent with evils and the desire to find a better way. The humility which recognizes that so widespread a condition cannot be the fault of any one nation or group but is rather the responsibility of each one of us, is cause for hope. Some of us believe that war can breed only war, hatred only hatred; that governments cannot make peace, but can only cause cessation of open hostilities, and that the real peace, the Great Peace, must await the action of the Spirit. This Spirit, of love and forgiveness, breeds love and forgiveness, indeed is far more potent than the spirit of hate. Because of this very strength and potency its evidences are not so immediately apparent, but they are deeper-rooted. Perhaps in this material sphere we human beings must see, and to a certain extent experience, hate, before we can really know love, and consciously and freely choose it. When that choice is made, when we, knowing all that hate and evil and malice can accomplish, yet deliberately choose to love our enemies, we have slain the Adversary and made hate and evil powerless. Of course we have not power of ourselves to do this but only through the grace of God. When we try God's way, not waiting for the other person to reform or to be generous or to speak gently or to forgive, then and only then do we deserve the name of Christians; then and only then are we walking in love; then and only then are we really praying effectually "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." We have tried the way of the world, the way of reprisals, the way of distrust, and, thank God, we are none of us satisfied with the results. Perhaps now we may be ready to try the way of God by making the great adventure of faith, each one in his own person; faith in himself and faith in the future. The way of the world has bred fear that has issue in hate, and hate that has issue in fear; but the better way, that of faith, breeds trust that has issue in fellowship, and fellowship that has issue in trust. There is no problem of labour, of politics, of society that is insoluble if once it is approached in the spirit of faith and fellowship and trust, but none of these is susceptible of solution where the controlling motives are hate, distrust and fear. The modern policy of centralization and segregation has resulted in dealing with men as groups and not as individuals. When, for example, iron-bound cults (they are no less than this) meet as "capital" and as "labour," both merge the individuality of their members in a thing which has no real or necessary existence but is an artificial creation of thought operating under the dominion of ephemeral, almost accidental conditions. As a member of an "interest" or a cult, where humanity and personality are, so to speak, "in commission," a man does not hesitate to do those things he would never think of doing for himself, knowing them to be selfish, cruel, unjust and uncharitable. A case in point--if we need one, which is hardly probable since they are of daily occurrence--is the pending contest between the mine operators and mine workers in Great Britain, where both parties, with Government thrown in, are guilty of maintaining theories and perpetrating acts for which an individual would be, even now, excoriated and outlawed. The Irish imbroglio is another instance of the same kind. In a personal letter from a consulting engineer who has had unusual opportunities, by reason of his official position, to come closely in contact with the conditions governing industry and finance both in America and Europe since the war, I find this illuminating statement of a matured judgment. "As a practical matter, and facing the issue, I would preach the practice of de-centralization in government and business which will in time develop the individual and accomplish the desired end. * * * Decentralization should be carried to such an extent that the units of business would be of such size that the head could again have a personal relation with each individual associated with him. * * * With the personal relation again established, unionism as at present practiced would again be unnecessary, and the unions would become once more guilds for the development and advancement of the individual." It is this nullification of the human element, of the person as such, the introduction of the gross aggregate with its artificial corporate quality, and the attempt to establish a correspondence between these unnatural things, the whole being intensified by the emotions of fear, distrust and hate, which produces the contemporary insistence on "rights" and the rank injustice, cruelty and disorder that follow the blind contest. To quote again from the soldier who achieved illumination through the recent war, "My friends, there is no protection of rights in heaven. When we speak of rights we are blinded by the light of this world of rule and order and intellectual conceits. It is not justice we need, it is mercy." If we honestly endeavour to bring about something more nearly approaching the Kingdom of God on earth, we should do well to achieve a little more of the quality of child-like trust which knows that through the petition to father or mother, or to a guardian angel, or directly to God, the result will surely follow. We long passionately to see a good, _our_ good as we see it, accepted here and now, but whatever we offer, no mater how righteous or how salutary, is but a small part of the great good, a limited and partial showing forth of only one element, while the final and comprehensive good is the result of many contributions, and in the end is not ours, but God's, and by His overruling providence it may look very unlike what we had predetermined and anticipated. Moreover, the condition even of our own small good becoming effective, is _faith,_ and neither sight nor action. There is a faith that can move mountains, and it is faith in fellowship, in the underlying, indestructible good in man, above all in the desire and the intent of God to deal mercifully with us and beyond the dictates of justice and the claims of our own deserts. When we know and accept this power of faith, placing it above the efficiency of our own feeble works, then indeed we may become the patient, hopeful, joyful and faithful Christians we were intended to be, and therefore the creators of the spirit of peace. Nothing permanent can be achieved except in coöperation with God; any work of man alone (or of the devil) has in it the seed of decay and must perish, This knowledge relieves us of the gloomy responsibility of destroying or trying to destroy every evil thing we see or think we see. If it is really evil it is already dying unless nourished by evil within ourselves. Here is a Buddhist legend which has a lesson for each of us--"The watcher in the shrine of Buddha rushed in to the Holy Fathers one morning with tidings of a horrible demon who had usurped the throne of our Lord Buddha. The Fathers ran to the throne room, each one more infuriated than the other, and declaimed against the insolence of the demon, who grew huger and more hideous at every angry word that hurtled through the air. At last arrived the oldest and most saintly of the monks and threw himself on his knees before the demon and said, "We thank thee, O Master, for teaching us how much anger and wrath and jealousy was still hidden in our hearts." At every word he said, the demon grew smaller and smaller and at last vanished. He was am Anger-Eating Demon, and anger-rousing words and even thoughts of ill-feeling nourished him. The belief that in comparison with the depth of good in the world the evil is shallow may also be expressed in the statement that God is Lord of Eternity while the devil is prince only of this world. As this evil spirit has power, and as a part of this power is the ability to appear as an angel of light, so to deceive us, we are bound by self-examination, constantly indulged in, to scrutinize those things, so common in our own lives we do not notice them, which may be but the illusions of this spirit of darkness showing as a fictitious spirit of light: Hurry and carelessness both in thought and in action; snap-judgment at short range; compromise with the spirit of the time in the interest of "good business," "practical considerations" or "sound policy"; worship of the doctrine of "get results," acceptance of the horrible principle: that it is every man's business to "sell" something to another, from a patent medicine or "gilt edged" bonds to a new philosophy or an old religion; the estimating of values by size, number, cost. It is common parlance among Christian people to speak of what a man "is worth" meaning how much money he has. We speak of a man's "making a living" meaning only how much money he makes, when by making only money he would be killing his living. Do we not speak of the call of a missionary from an unshepherded flock to a large city parish as a call to "a wider sphere of usefulness"? When you or I conceive of any piece of work as "important" is it not because it involves either great numbers or great sums of money? Then we hear much today of the need for leaders. The need could not be exaggerated, but does not this lack exist, in part, because we have forgot that the Christian's first duty is to be a follower, and that only from amongst real followers can God (not man, least of all the man himself) raise up a leader? These are small matters, you may say, but "straws show which way the wind blows," and the spirit, like the wind, manifests itself first in small matters. Every life is made up largely of small things, "the little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love" which some one has called "the noblest portion of a good man's life." With this brief glance at some of the possible manifestations of the spirit of evil which we believe to be temporary and therefore of secondary importance only, let us consider some of the requisites of the Christian life as exemplified in the life of Christ, especially those of which we need to be reminded today. We have already spoken of that child-likeness which takes the faith simply and applies it to the common things of daily life--Christ's life of ministry, of good works (which was, in proportion to the time given to preparation for activity and preaching, of very short duration), full of injunctions to those who were with him to "tell no man"; therefore the good works which are done "in His likeness" must not be done in public. If we are "seen of men," verily we have our reward. Christ's life ended in apparent failure, in ignominious death on the cross. The world worships today's success and immediate publicity, the Christian, to be worthy of his Lord, must accept apparent failure and must offer his best work in secret: "And my Father which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly." A touching poem of Francis Thompson's pictures the marveling of a soul on his rewards in Paradise which, in his humility, he thinks undeserved. The man asks of God: _O when did I give Thee drink erewhile, Or when embrace Thine unseen feet? What gifts Thee give for my Lord Christ's smile, Who am a guest here most unmeet?_ and is answered _When thou kissedest thy wife and children sweet (Their eyes are fair in my sight as thine) I felt the embraces on My feet. (Lovely their locks in thy sight and Mine.)_ A necessary reminder of the fact that for each of us, charity, which is love, begins at home, and that we love and serve God best in His holy human relationships--if we love not our brother whom we have seen how can we love God whom we have not seen? Again, the individual Christian life must, like its Great Original, suffer for others. When we suffer as a result of our own wrongdoing we are but meeting our just reward; but if patiently and humbly and voluntarily we bear pain, even unto death, for others, we are transcending justice, the pagan law, and exemplifying mercy, the Christian virtue. No sensitive soul in this generation, conscious of the sacrifice of the millions of young lives who "stormed Heaven" in their willingness to die that others might live, can doubt this. The essence of love is sacrifice; voluntary, nay eager sacrifice. Before our Blessed Lord died He was mocked and ridiculed, He suffered physical hardship, falling under the weight of the cross, and He was lifted up, crucified, to suffer the ignominious death of a felon. He was made a spectacle for the jests and laughter of the multitude. In our own time and amongst ourselves, except for periods of war, there is little necessity for physical suffering for our faith, but the need to endure ridicule is as great as ever, perhaps even greater because of the absence of physical suffering. Since we are trying to apply these things in small and simple ways to the individual life let us each one consider how much moral courage it takes to defend Christian virtues when they are sneered at under the guise of "jokes." Let us exercise charity by not quoting instances, but let us be watchful of our laughter and our fellowship, which are both gifts of God, and see that we do not confuse pagan pleasure with Christian joy, the evil sneer with the tender recognition of the absurd in ourselves and in others. It is Mr. Chesterton again who points out the fact that the pagan virtues of justice and the like which he calls the "sad virtues" were superseded, when the great Christian revelation came, by the "gay and exuberant virtues," the virtues of grace, faith, hope and charity; and who says, "the pagan virtues are the reasonable virtues, and the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity are in their essence as unreasonable as they can be. Charity means pardoning what is unpardonable or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible or it is no virtue at all." If you say this is a paradox I reply: it must be so, since it requires faith to accept a paradox. The realm of reason is the one in which we walk by sight, and of this fact our age in its pride of intellect has need to be reminded. If Christ be not the Son of God, and His revelation of the "faith once delivered" be not the divine and final guide, fulfilling, completing and at the same time reversing every other ethic, religion and moral code, then these things be indeed foolishness, for there is no explaining them on the ground of logic or philosophy. But if, by the gift of grace, we have faith, we remember "I thank Thee, Father, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto babes: even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight." Again, and if as persons we are to grow in relationship to a personal God, we must both speak and listen to our Father; in other words we must use the great dynamic of prayer. "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." We are told that one of the requisites of the really good talker is to be a good listener; the apparently good talker is in reality a monologuist. In our prayer-life today do we recognize sufficiently the need for _listening_ to God? We are perhaps ready enough to ask for blessings and mercies, but that is only a part of the full life of prayer which must include also thanksgiving, lifting of the heart and mind, and quiet listening or interior prayer. There was an age in the world when this interior prayer was so much more joyful and natural a thing than the world of matter that it had to be taught "to labour is to pray." Today, when we accept the necessity of labour, and even worship activity for its own sake, do we not need to be reminded that to pray is to labour? If you doubt this, try to make that concentrated form of prayer known as meditation, out of which springs a resolve and determination to do better; try to do this faithfully for fifteen minutes a day and it may prove the hardest work you have ever undertaken. A great servant of God has said, "I believe no soul can be lost which faithfully practices meditation for fifteen minutes a day." Nor must we forget that in this work of prayer we are companioned by the Holy Spirit, the Peace-maker, Who maketh intercession for us "with groanings which can not be uttered" and "Who leads us ever gently but surely into that closer communion with God whose result is life more abundant." After prayer it is easier to realize that "to be spiritually minded is life and peace"; it is easier to obey the injunction "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice, and be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you." And for those that seek after peace it must be _all_ wrath, _all_ anger and _all_ evil speaking which are put away: This leaves no room for what the world calls "just wrath" "righteous anger," or speaking evil of evil doers. Let us call to mind the incident in the early life of St. John, afterwards the great disciple of love, when he wanted to call down wrath on the wicked inhabitants of a city and was rebuked by Our Lord who said, "Ye know not in what spirit ye speak." After love had supplanted wrath, and the good spirit had taken the place of the evil in St. John's heart, he was sent to convert the people he would have destroyed. Yes, it is the spirit that matters, the wrath that is wrong and that must be put away before we can love God or our neighbour as ourself, for the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. When we understand that the object of life and of education is the creation of a spirit and not the doing of things, we are freed from the tyranny of results in this world as a final test and come to realize that judgment belongs only to God Who as a Spirit judges the effort. Of course this does not mean that we are freed from the moral law, that certain evil things in ourselves and in others are not always the results of an evil spirit, but rather that in addition to avoiding and shunning those things which are obviously evil, we must with equal care avoid doing even good things in a bad spirit. The commandments still stand, the moral law is abated not one jot, but in Christianity and in Christianity alone are we given power to fulfill the law and to add the new commandment, the summing up of them all, of love to God and man. No human soul comes into the world without some desire to be good, because each human soul is a child of God. To each one, not blinded by pride (and surely it should be easy in these days to be humble) comes, sooner or later, the realization of his own inability of himself to do what he would, the need for a power outside himself, the power which is available and of which we have heard "I am come that ye might have life and more abundantly." Let us examine how the apostles set about living this abundant life. In Dr. Genung's "The Life Indeed" we read, "One and all they made it a matter of the spirit that is the man, but the spirit they recognized was not an abstraction, or a theory, but a present Person and helper who was witnessing with their spirits. St. John makes the matter equally definite: 'The Son of God,' he says, 'was manifest that he might destroy the works of the Devil,' and St. Paul, mindful of the inner subtleties of the conflict, warns his readers that Satan has changed his tactics and has transformed himself into an angel of light. I am not sure that we have gained greatly by letting our notions of spiritual life grow dim and abstract. Perhaps for this very reason the rebellious, negative, designing spirit that is so prone to invade the hearts of us all is the more free to gain a foot-hold and go about controlling the tone of our life. There is real advantage in bringing the large issues of life to a point where not only our mind but, as it were, our senses, can lay hold on them. It is the impulse of simple-minded men like those early disciples, and if we continue straight-seeing we do not outgrow it. What makes these views of life so deep is not that they are less simple than those of others, but that they are more simple. To St. John the reality that has come to win the world is not the promise of salvation, or prophecy of an eventual life eternal, but just life without modification or limitation, life absolute, full-orbed, pulsating through worlds seen and unseen alike. 'I am the Life,' he makes Christ say, not, 'I am working to secure it.' St. John it is who preserves to us that conception of eating the Flesh and drinking the Blood of the Son of Man. No philosopher in the world, we may roundly say, would ever have put it so, and yet how effectually is thus revealed what it means to get the power of the new life thoroughly incorporated with our blood and breath. He it is who identifies the most inner values of life with the simplest acts and experiences, reducing it to terms of eating bread and drinking water, and walking in daylight, and bearing fruit like the branches of a vine and following like sheep the voice of a shepherd, and entering a door and finding pasture." Let us cease trying materialistic and intellectual means for supplying the power to live the spiritual life and let us each one establish the needful relationship with the true source of power. May our time not be likened to the Oriental traveler, who, appreciating the convenience and force of electricity as seen in a room he occupied, fitted his palace, on his return, with a set of elaborate fixtures and was surprised to find no illumination therefrom! We are torches who can not shine in themselves, but who, when connected with the great central Source of Power, the Blessed Trinity in its three glorious manifestations, can show forth the light of the world. Christians should be torch bearers, and the true torch bearer lights not his own path so much as the path of those who come after him. And this brings us to the fundamental reason for personal responsibility. Our motive in seeking personal righteousness it not, as might hastily be thought, because of a selfish desire to save our own souls, or to withdraw either here or hereafter from other souls, but for "their sakes" to sanctify ourselves; for the lives we live today create the spiritual atmosphere of tomorrow. From Spain come the following suggestive thoughts in regard to the value of the person. "The individual is the real purpose of the universe. We may seek the hero of our thought in no philosopher who lived in flesh and blood, but in a being of fiction and of action, more real than all the philosophers. He is Don Quixote. One cannot say of Don Quixote that he was strictly idealistic. He did not fight for ideas: he was of the spirit and he fought for the spirit. Quixotism is a madness descended from the madness of the cross; therefore it is despised by reason; Don Quixote will not resign himself to either the world or its truth, to science or logic, to art or aesthetics, to morals or ethics. And what did he leave behind him? one may ask. I reply that he left himself, and that a man, a man living and immortal, is worth all theories and all philosophies. Other countries have left us institutions and books: Spain has left soul. St. Theresa is worth all institutions whatever, or any 'Critique of Pure Reason.'" Yes, this is I think the lesson we have to learn, now at this turning point in history with the epoch of intellect crumbling about our ears, and the great World's Fair of multiplied, ingenious mechanisms we have called "modern civilization" at a point of practical bankruptcy. It is the spirit that counts, the soul of "man living and immortal," and only through our own living, and the spiritual force that we can command, and through ourselves apply, shall we be able to compass that social regeneration that is the only alternative to social degeneration and catastrophe. The man who does not live his belief is powerless to redeem or to create, though he were a Solon, a Charlemagne, a Napoleon or a Washington; the man who lives his belief, even if he is a mill-hand in Fall River, is contributing something of energizing force to the task of re-creation. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts." Fantastic and paradoxical as it may seem to link together Don Quixote and St. Theresa, I am not sure that we could do better than to accept them as models. The loud laughter of an age of intellectual ribaldry and self-conceit dies away and the gaunt figure of the last of the Crusaders still stands before us heroic in his childlike refusal of compromise, his burning compassion, his deafness to ridicule. In a sense we must all be ready to accept the jeering and the scorn that were poured out on the Knight of La Mancha, if like him we are to fight, even foolishly, for the things that are worth fighting for--either that they may be destroyed, or restored. And with St. Theresa we must be willing to endure obloquy, suspicion, malice, if like her we live in faith, subjecting our will to the divine will, and then sparing nothing of ourselves in the labour of saving the world for God in the twentieth century as St. Theresa laboured to save it in the sixteenth century. The call today is for personal service through the right living that follows the discovery of a right relationship to God. Not a campaign but a crusade; and the figures of St. Louis and St. Francis and St. Theresa, together with all the Knights and Crusaders of Christendom, rise up before us to point the way. We would find the Great Peace, the world would find the Great Peace also, but _The way is all so very plain That we may lose the way._ We have been told: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you, for your Heavenly Father knoweth ye have need of these things." If we go forth on this new and knightly quest--quest indeed in these latter days, for the Holy Grail, lost long since and hidden away from men--we may, by the grace of God, achieve. Then, "suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye," and before we are aware, for "the Kingdom of God cometh not with watching," we and even the world, shall find that we have compassed the Great Peace, and if we do not live to see it, yet in our "certain hope" we shall know that it will come, if not in our time, yet in God's good time; if not in our way, yet in His more perfect way. In these lectures I have from time to time, and perhaps beyond your patience, criticised and condemned many of those concrete institutions which form the working mechanism of life, even suggesting possible substitutes. In ending I would say as in beginning; this is not because salvation may be found through any device, however perfect, but because this itself, by reason of its excellence on the one hand or its depravity on the other, is, under the law of life, contributory to the operation of the divine spirit (which is the sole effective energy) or a deterrent. I have tried at long last to gather up this diffuse argument for the supremacy of spiritual force as it works through the individual, and to place it before you in this concluding lecture. Perhaps I can best emphasize my point thus. The evil of the institutions which now hold back the progress that must be made towards social recovery and the Great Peace, is far less the quality of wrongness in themselves and the ill influence they put in operation, than it is the revelation they make of personal character. It is not so much that newspapers are what they are as that there should be men who are pleased and content to make them this, in apparently honest ignorance of what they are doing, and that there should be others in sufficient number to make them profitable business propositions by giving them their appreciation and support. It is not so much that government should be what it is as that character should have so far degenerated in the working majority of citizens that these qualities should show themselves as a fixed condition, and that there should be no body of men of numerical distinction, who regard the situation with sentiments much more active than those of indifference and amused toleration. It is not so much that the industrial situation should be what it is, as that there should be on both sides moral wrong, and that this condition could not have come about, nor could it still be maintained, except through character degeneration in the individual. It is not so much that many forms of religion are what they are, as it is that they should progressively have become this through their exponents and adherents, and that there should be so many who are still willing to defend them in this case. Every ill thing reveals through its very quality the defects of the individual man, and as upon him must rest the responsibilities for the fault, so on him must be placed the responsibility for the recovery. The failures we have recorded, the false gods we have raised up in idolatry, even the Great War itself, are revelations of failure in personal and individual character. We may recognize this, but recognition is not enough. We may found societies and committees and write books and deliver lectures, but corporate action is not enough, nor intellectual assent. There is but one way that is right, sufficient and effective, and that is the right living of each individual, which is the incarnation and operation of faith by the grace of God. It is my desire to close this course of lectures not with my own words but with those of one of the great personalities revealed by the war. First, however, I wish to say this. If there is any thought or word in what I have said that seems to you true, then I ask you to use it not as a matter for discussion but as an impulse toward personal action. If there is anything that is of the nature of explicit error, then I pray that the Spirit of Truth may make deaf your ears that you hear not, and blot out of your memory the record of what I have said. If there is anything that is not consonant with the Christian religion, as this has been revealed to the world and as it is guarded and interpreted by the Church to which these powers were committed, then I retract and disavow it explicitly and _ex animo._ There are two great spiritual figures that have been revealed to us through the Great War: Cardinal Mercier, the great confessor, who held aloft the standard of spiritual glory through the war itself, and Bishop Nicholai of Serbia who has testified to eternal truth and righteousness in the wilderness the war has brought to pass. It is with his inspired words that I will make an ending of the things I have been impelled to say. "Christ is merciful, but at last He comes as the Judge. * * * He comes now not to preside in the churches only but to be in your homes, in your shops, to be everywhere with you. He wants to be first; He has become last in Europe, * * * Civilization passes like the winds, but the soul remains. Christianization is the only good and constructive civilization. Americanization without Christianization means Bolshevism. Europe is suffering today for her sins. Christ has forgiven seventy times seven, and now it seems that He is the Judge, turning away, rejected, leaving Europe and going through the gate of Serbia to Asia. Pray for us. * * * Send us not your gold and silver for food so much as send us converted men. Convert your politicians, your members of the press, your journalists, to preach Christ. "Christ is choosing the perfect stones, the marble of all the churches, to complete His mystical body in Heaven. He thinks only of one Church, made from those true to Him of all the churches here. Civilizations are moving pictures, made by man. Without God they perish. The soul, the spirit, lives. The war is not against externals; the war is against ourselves." APPENDIX A From the point attained in the lecture on "A Working Philosophy," a point I believe to be clearly indicated by Christian philosophy and sharply differentiated from that of paganism or modernism, I would adventure further and even into a field of pure theory where I can adduce no support or justification from any other source. Speculation along this line may be dangerous, even unjustifiable; certainly it introduces the peril of an attempt to intellectualize what cannot be apprehended by the intellectual faculty, an effort which has been the obsession of modernism and has resulted in spiritual catastrophe. On the other hand we are confronted by a definite and plausible system worked out by those who were without fear of these consequences, and while this already is losing something of its common acceptance, it is still operative, indeed is the only working system and consistent theory of the majority of thinking men outside the limits of Catholicism. I think it wrong both in its assumptions and its inferences, and it certainly played a deplorable part in the building up of the latest phase of modern civilization, while its persistence is, I am persuaded, a barrier to recovery or advance. This theory, which has gradually been deduced from the wonderful investigations, tabulations and inferences of Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer and others of the great group of British intellectuals and scientists of the nineteenth century, is known under the general title of Evolution. The following suggestions are offered with extreme diffidence, and only as uncertain and indeterminate approximations. In some respects they seem not inconsistent with the most recent scientific research which already is casting so much doubt on many of the assumed factors behind evolution and on the accepted methods of its operation. The true solution, if it is found, will result from the cooperation of scientists, philosophers and theologians, illuminated by the fire of the Divine Wisdom--Hagia Sophia--for in such a problem as this, almost the final secret of the Cosmos, no single human agency acting alone can hope to achieve the final revelation, while all acting together could hardly escape falling into "the falsehoods of their own imaginings" if they relied solely on their unaided efforts in the intellectual sphere. Assuming then that life is an enduring process of the redemption of matter through the interpenetration of spirit, what is a possible method of action? To explain what I mean I must use a diagrammatic figure, but I admit this must be not only inadequate but misleading, for instead of the two dimensions of a diagram, we must postulate three, with time added as a vital element, and, I dare say, a "fourth dimension" as well. Confessing inadequacy in the symbol, let us conceive of a space divided into four strata. The lowest of these is the primary unknowable, the region of pure spirit, pure spirit itself, the creative energy of the universe, the unconditioned Absolute, in the terms of Christian theology, Almighty God. The second is the plane of matter, an area of potential, but in itself inert and indeterminate. The third is the space of what we call life in all its forms, the area in which the transformation and redemption take place. The fourth is the ultimate unknowable, that is to say, that which follows on after life and receives the finished product of redemption. [Illustration: DIAGRAM NO. 1. The interpenetration of Matter by Spirit. _x,_ The primary Unknowable; _x',_ the ultimate Unknowable; _[Greek: alpha],_ the plane of Matter; _[Greek: beta],_ the plane of Life.] Now there is eternally in process a penetration of the stratum of matter by jets of the _élan vital_ from the realm of pure spirit, each as it were striving to detach from the plane of matter some small portion, which is transformed in its passage through life and achieves entrance into the ultimate unknowable, when the process of redemption is, for this small particle, completed. Always, however, is exerted the gravitational pull of matter, and the energy that drove through, instead of pursuing a right line, tends to bend in a parabolic curve, like the trajectory of a cannon ball. In the completion of the process some portion of redeemed matter "gets by," so to speak, but other portions do not; they return to their source of origin and are reabsorbed in matter, becoming subject to the operation of future interpenetrating jets of spiritual energy. The upward drive of the _élan vital_ constitutes what may properly be known as evolution, the declining fall the process of devolution or degeneration. Evolution then is only one part of the cosmic process, it is inseparable from degeneration. This process holds in the case of individuals, of families, of races, of states and of eras, or definite and completed periods of time. As man is begotten, born, developed to maturity and then is brought downward to the grave, so in the case of races and nations and the clearly defined epochs into which the history of man divides itself. There is no mechanical system of "progress," no cumulative wisdom and power that in the end will inevitably lead to earthly perfection and triumph. For every individual there is the possibility of spiritual evolution within the time allotted that will open for him the gates that bar the frontiers of the world of reality and of redemption that lies beyond that world of earthly life which is the field of contest between unredeemed matter and redeeming spirit, of contest and of victory--or of failure. In the case of races and nations and epochs there is the same conflict between material factors and spiritual energy; the same crescent youth with all its primal vitality, maturity with its assurance and competence, and the dying fall of dissipating energies. In each case death is the concomitant of life but there is always something that lasts over, and that is the spiritual achievement, the precious residuum that remains, defying death and dissolution, that infuses the plane of life with its redemptive ardour, and is the heritage of lives that come after, acting with the sacramental agencies of religion in coöperation with God Who ordained and compassed them both, in that great process of redemption and salvation that is continually taking place and will continue until matter, and time which is but the ratio of the resistance of matter to the redeeming power of spirit, shall be no more. I confess the hopelessly mechanical quality in this vain attempt to put into words something that by its very nature must transcend all modes of expression that are intellectually apprehendable. Taken literally it would be entirely false and probably heretical from a theological point of view, as it certainly is more than inadequate as a philosophical proposition. It is intended only as a symbol, and a gross symbol at that, but as such I will let it stand. Now if there is indeed a possible truth hidden somewhere within somewhat clumsy approximations, it must modify some of our generally accepted ideas. The life-process will appear, not a slow, interrupted, but substantially forward development from lower and simpler organisms to higher and more complex, with the end (if there be an end), beyond the very limits of eternity, but rather a swift creation of some of the highest forms through the first energy of the creative force, with the throwing off of ever lower and lower forms as the curve of the trajectory descends. So through a mass of low and static vitality comes the sudden and enormous power that produces at the very beginnings of our own recorded history of man, the almost superhuman intelligence and capacity of the Greeks and the Egyptians. So each of the definite eras of civilization opens with the releasing of great energies, the revealing of great figures of paramount character and force. So, conversely, as the energy declines, men appear less and less potent and in a descending scale. This is the case with the Greek states, with the Roman Republic and the Empire, with Byzantium, with Mediaevalism, and with our modern era. I do not know of any other theory that claims to explain the perpetual and rhythmical fluctuations of history, as violent in their degree as they are approximately regular in their rhythm. Following the idea a little further, it may even appear that many of the lower, and particularly the more distorted, forms of animal life, instead of being abortive or undeveloped stages in a continuous evolutionary progress, are actually the product of a diminishing energy, stages in a process of degeneration, and therefore leading not upward to ever higher stages of development having issue at last in a completed perfection, but rather downward to ultimate extinction. Geology records this process in sufficient quantity, so far as many members of the animal kingdom are concerned, and we, in our own day, have seen the extinction of the dodo as well as the threatened disappearance of other species. Creeping and crawling creatures too, that we could crush with the heel, are but the last and puny descendants of mighty and terrible monsters that once rolled and crashed through the fetid forests of the carboniferous era. So there are races of men today, amongst others the pygmies of Africa and the Australian bushmen, as well as some nearer in a certain degree to the dominant races of the world, whom large-hearted optimists regard as stages of retarded development, capable, under tutelage, of advance to a level with the Caucasian, but who, in this view of the case, would be but the weakening product of the "dying fall" of the energy that produced the Greek, the Semite and the Nordic stocks. So in the last instance, the ape and the lemur and all their derivatives may be, not records of some of the many stages through which man has passed in his process of evolution, sidetracked by the upward rush of one highly favoured or fortunate line, nor yet an abortive branch from the common trunk from which sprang both man and ape, but rather the last degradation of a primaeval energy, producing in its declension these strange caricatures of the Man in whose production it found its achievement. In other words, the old evolutionary idea is exactly reversed, and those phenomena once looked on as passed stages of growth, become the memorials of a creative process that has already achieved, and is now returning, with its fantastic manifestations in terms of declining life, even to that primordial mystery whence it had emerged. Granting this theory, the search for the "missing link," whether in the geological strata below those that revealed the Piltdown skull, or in the fastnesses of Central Asia, is as vain a quest as it has always been. Primaeval man, as he is grudgingly revealed to us, may have been the degenerate remainder of an earlier and fully developed race whose records are buried in the sunken fastnesses of some vanished Atlantis or Lemuria, as the races of the South Sea Islands may be less metamorphosed remnants of the same stock. Into this infinitely degraded residuum of a vanished race entered the new energizing force when the divine creative energy came once more into operation, in the fullness of time, and the Minoan, the Egyptian and the Greek came almost in an hour to their highest perfection. So through the unnumbered ages of the world's history, God has from time to time created man in His own image, out of the dust of the earth, and man so made "a little lower than the angels" has, also in time, fallen and forfeited his inheritance. Yet the process goes on without ceasing, and in conformity with some law of divine periodicity; but it is _Man_ that is created in the beginning, of his full stature, even as is symbolically recorded in the Book of Genesis; not a hairy quadrumana that by the operation of the laws of natural selection and the survival of the fittest, ultimately and through endless ages, and by the most infinitesimal changes, becomes at last Plato and Caesar, Leonardo and Dante, St. Louis and Shakespeare and St. Francis. Now in this process of the interpenetration of matter by spirit there must be a certain periodicity, if it is a constant process and not one accomplished once and for all time in the very beginnings of the world. This rhythmical action, which is exemplified by every phenomenon of nature, the vibratory process of light, sound, heat, electricity, the pulsation of the heart, the motion of the tides, has never escaped the observation even of primitive peoples, and always attempts have been made to determine its periodicity. May it not be infinitely complex, as the ripple rises on the wave that lifts on the swell of the underlying tide? Certainly we are now being forced back to a new consideration of this periodical beat, in history at least, for now that our own era, which came in by the power of the Renaissance and the Reformation and received its final energizing force through the revolutions of the eighteenth century and the industrial revolution of the nineteenth, is so manifestly coming to its end, we look backward for precedents for this unexpected debacle and lo, they appear every five hundred years back as far as history records. 500 B.C., Anno Domini; 500 A.D., 1000 A.D., and 1500 A.D. are all, to the point of very clear approximation, nodal points, where the curve of the preceding five centuries, having achieved its crest, curves downward, and in its fall meets the curve of rising energy that is to condition the ensuing era. The next nodal point, calculated on this basis, comes about the year 2000. Are we not justified, in plotting our trajectory of modernism, in placing the crest in the year 1914, and in tracing the line of fall from that moment? I have plotted this curve, or series of curves, after a rough and ready fashion (Diagram No. 2) and though the personal equation must, in any subjective proposition such as this, enter largely into account, I think the diagram will be accepted in principle if not in details, and not wholly in its relationships. I have made no effort to estimate or indicate comparative heights and depths, giving to each five-hundred year epoch a similar level of rise and depth of fall. Perhaps the actual difference here would, rightly estimated, be less than we have been led to believe, though certainly few would lift the Carolingian crest to the level of that of Hellenism or of the Middle Ages, nor assign to the end of this latter period as low a fall as that accomplished during the tenth century in continental Europe. [Illustration: DIAGRAM No. 2. The rise and fall of the line of civilization; showing also the nodal points at the Christian Era and at the years 500, 1000, 1500 and 2000 (?)] In a third cut (Diagram No. 3) I have roughly indicated in conventional form a phenomenon which seems to me to show itself around the nodal point when a descending curve of energy meets and crosses the descending line. As the _élan vital_ that has made and characterized any period declines, it throws off reactions, the object of which is if possible to arrest, or at least delay, the fatal _glissade._ These are, in intent and in fact, reforms; conscious efforts at saving a desperate situation by regenerative methods. Trace back their lines of procedure, and in every case they will be found to issue out of the very force which is even then in process of degeneration, therefore they are poisoned at the source and no true or vital reforms, for the sudden energy that urges them is, after all, in no respect different from that which is already a failing force. [Illustration: DIAGRAM No. 3. The reactions thrown off by (a) the descending line of vital force, (b) by the ascending line.] This, I conceive, is why today the multitudinous and specious "reforms," which beat upon us from all sides, and find such ready acceptance in the enactments of law, are really no reforms at all, since each one of them is but an exaggeration or distortion of the very principles and methods that already are bending downward the curve of our progression until it disappears in the nether-world of failure, as did those of every preceding epoch of equal duration. An example of what I mean is the astute saying, frequently heard nowadays: "The cure for democracy is more democracy." Now while one curve descends and throws off its reformative reactions in the process, the other is ascending, preparatory to determining the coming era for its allotted space of five centuries. In this process it also throws off its own reactions, but these are for the purpose of lifting the line more rapidly, bringing its force into play before its determined time. These also are exaggerations, over-emphasized qualities that are inherent in the ascending force, and they are no more to be accepted as authoritative than are the others. They have their value however, for they are prophetic, and even in their exaggeration there is the clear forecast of things to be. Trace them in turn to the source. What is their source? The new power issues out of obscurity and its character is veiled, but we can estimate it from the very nature of the exaggerated reactions we _can_ see. If something shows itself, in sociology, economics, politics, religion, art, what you will, that is especially a denial of what has been a controlling agency during the past four or five hundred years: if it is by common consent impractical and "outside the current of manifest evolutionary development," then, shorn of its exaggerations, reduced to its essential quality, it is very probably a clear showing forth of what is about to come to birth and condition human life for the next five hundred years. This, I suppose, explains the comprehensive return to Medievalism that, to the scorn of biologists, sociologists and professors of political economy, is flaunting itself before us today, at the hands of a very small minority, in all the categories I have named, as well as in many others besides. A glance at the diagram will show a curious pattern round about the nodal point. One may say that the reactions are somewhat mixed. Quite so. At this moment we are beaten upon by numberless reforms, both "radical" and "reactionary." Materialism, democracy, rationalism, anarchy contending against Medievalism of twenty sorts, and strange mysticisms out of the East. Which shall we choose, _if_ we choose, and do not content ourselves with an easier inertia that allows nature to take its course? It is simply the question; On which wave will you ride; that which is descending to oblivion or that which has within itself the power and potency to control man's destiny for the next five hundred years? APPENDIX B CERTAIN BOOKS SUGGESTED FOR COLLATERAL READING ADAMS, HENRY Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres. ADAMS, HENRY Degradation of the Democratic Dogma. BAUDRILLART, A. Catholic Church, Renaissance and Protestantism. BELL, BERNARD IDDINGS Right and Wrong after the War. BELLOC, HILAIRE The Servile State. BRYCE, VISCOUNT Modern Democracies. BULL, PAUL B. The Sacramental Principle. CHESTERTON, G.K. Orthodoxy. CHESTERTON, G.K. What's Wrong with the World. CHESTERTON, G.K. The Napoleon of Notting Hill. CONKLIN, E.G. The Direction of Human Evolution. CRAM, R.A. The Nemesis of Mediocrity. CRAM, R.A. Walled Towns. CRAM, R.A. The Ministry of Art. CRAM, R.A. The Great Thousand Years. FAGUET, E. The Cult of Incompetence. FERRERO, G. Europe's Fateful Hour. FIGGIS, J.N. Civilization at the Cross Roads. FIGGIS, J.N. The Will to Freedom. FIGGIS, J.N. Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God." GENUNG, J.F. The Life Indeed. GRAHAM, STEPHEN Priest of the Ideal. HARRISON, McVEIGH Daily Meditations. HUBBARD, A.J. The Fate of Empires. IRELAND, ALLEYNE Democracy and the Human Equation. LeBON, G. The World in Revolt. MEIKLEJOHN, ALEXANDER The Liberal College. MORRIS, WILLIAM The Dream of John Ball. PECK, W.G. From Chaos to Catholicism. PENTY, A.J. Old Worlds for New. PENTY, A.J. The Restoration of the Guild System. PHILLIPPS, L. MARCH Form and Colour. PHILLIPPS, L. MARCH Europe Unbound. PORTER, A. KINGSLEY Beyond Architecture. POWELL, F.C. A Person's Religion. RAUPERT, G. Human Destiny and the New Psychology. SHIELDS, THOMAS E. The Philosophy of Education. TAWNEY, R.H. The Acquisitive Society. WALSH, JAMES J. The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries. WALSH, JAMES J. Education, How Old the New. WORRINGER, W. Form Problems of the Gothic. DeWULF, M. History of Mediaeval Philosophy. 
28278	----	THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE XXI LIBERALISM * * * * * _EDITORS OF_ THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE PROFESSOR GILBERT MURRAY, O.M., LL.D., F.B.A. PROFESSOR G. N. CLARK, LL.D., F.B.A. SIR HENRY TIZARD, K.C.B., F.R.S. * * * * * LIBERALISM _By_ L. T. HOBHOUSE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO _First published in 1911, and reprinted in 1919, 1923, 1927, 1929, 1934, 1942 and 1944_ PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I BEFORE LIBERALISM 7 II THE ELEMENTS OF LIBERALISM 1. Civil Liberty. 2. Fiscal Liberty. 3. Personal Liberty. 4. Social Liberty. 5. Economic Liberty. 6. Domestic Liberty. 7. Local, Racial, and National Liberty. 8. International Liberty. 9. Political Liberty and Popular Sovereignty 21 III THE MOVEMENT OF THEORY 50 IV 'LAISSEZ-FAIRE' 78 V GLADSTONE AND MILL 102 VI THE HEART OF LIBERALISM 116 VII THE STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL 138 VIII ECONOMIC LIBERALISM 167 IX THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM 214 BIBLIOGRAPHY 252 INDEX 253 LIBERALISM CHAPTER I BEFORE LIBERALISM The modern State is the distinctive product of a unique civilization. But it is a product which is still in the making, and a part of the process is a struggle between new and old principles of social order. To understand the new, which is our main purpose, we must first cast a glance at the old. We must understand what the social structure was, which--mainly, as I shall show, under the inspiration of Liberal ideas--is slowly but surely giving place to the new fabric of the civic State. The older structure itself was by no means primitive. What is truly primitive is very hard to say. But one thing is pretty clear. At all times men have lived in societies, and ties of kinship and of simple neighbourhood underlie every form of social organization. In the simplest societies it seems probable that these ties--reinforced and extended, perhaps, by religious or other beliefs--are the only ones that seriously count. It is certain that of the warp of descent and the woof of intermarriage there is woven a tissue out of which small and rude but close and compact communities are formed. But the ties of kinship and neighbourhood are effective only within narrow limits. While the local group, the clan, or the village community are often the centres of vigorous life, the larger aggregate of the Tribe seldom attains true social and political unity unless it rests upon a military organization. But military organization may serve not only to hold one tribe together but also to hold other tribes in subjection, and thereby, at the cost of much that is most valuable in primitive life, to establish a larger and at the same time a more orderly society. Such an order once established does not, indeed, rest on naked force. The rulers become invested with a sacrosanct authority. It may be that they are gods or descendants of gods. It may be that they are blessed and upheld by an independent priesthood. In either case the powers that be extend their sway not merely over the bodies but over the minds of men. They are ordained of God because they arrange the ordination. Such a government is not necessarily abhorrent to the people nor indifferent to them. But it is essentially government from above. So far as it affects the life of the people at all, it does so by imposing on them duties, as of military service, tribute, ordinances, and even new laws, in such wise and on such principles as seem good to itself. It is not true, as a certain school of jurisprudence held, that law is, as such, a command imposed by a superior upon an inferior, and backed by the sanctions of punishment. But though this is not true of law in general it is a roughly true description of law in that particular stage of society which we may conveniently describe as the Authoritarian. Now, in the greater part of the world and throughout the greater part of history the two forms of social organization that have been distinguished are the only forms to be found. Of course, they themselves admit of every possible variation of detail, but looking below these variations we find the two recurrent types. On the one hand, there are the small kinship groups, often vigorous enough in themselves, but feeble for purposes of united action. On the other hand, there are larger societies varying in extent and in degree of civilization from a petty negro kingdom to the Chinese Empire, resting on a certain union of military force and religious or quasi-religious belief which, to select a neutral name, we have called the principle of Authority. In the lower stages of civilization there appears, as a rule, to be only one method of suppressing the strife of hostile clans, maintaining the frontier against a common enemy, or establishing the elements of outward order. The alternative to authoritarian rule is relapse into the comparative anarchy of savage life. But another method made its appearance in classical antiquity. The city state of ancient Greece and Italy was a new type of social organization. It differed from the clan and the commune in several ways. In the first place it contained many clans and villages, and perhaps owed its origin to the coming together of separate clans on the basis not of conquest but of comparatively equal alliance. Though very small as compared with an ancient empire or a modern state it was much larger than a primitive kindred. Its life was more varied and complex. It allowed more free play to the individual, and, indeed, as it developed, it suppressed the old clan organization and substituted new divisions, geographical or other. It was based, in fact, not on kinship as such, but on civic right, and this it was which distinguished it not only from the commune, but from the Oriental monarchy. The law which it recognized and by which it lived was not a command imposed by a superior government on a subject mass. On the contrary, government was itself subject to law, and law was the life of the state, willingly supported by the entire body of free citizens. In this sense the city state was a community of free men. Considered collectively its citizens owned no master. They governed themselves, subject only to principles and rules of life descending from antiquity and owing their force to the spontaneous allegiance of successive generations. In such a community some of the problems that vex us most presented themselves in a very simple form. In particular the relation of the individual to the community was close, direct, and natural. Their interests were obviously bound up together. Unless each man did his duty the State might easily be destroyed and the population enslaved. Unless the State took thought for its citizens it might easily decay. What was still more important, there was no opposition of church and state, no fissure between political and religious life, between the claims of the secular and the spiritual, to distract the allegiance of the citizens, and to set the authority of conscience against the duties of patriotism. It was no feat of the philosophical imagination, but a quite simple and natural expression of the facts to describe such a community as an association of men for the purpose of living well. Ideals to which we win our way back with difficulty and doubt arose naturally out of the conditions of life in ancient Greece. On the other hand, this simple harmony had very serious limitations, which in the end involved the downfall of the city system. The responsibilities and privileges of the associated life were based not on the rights of human personality but on the rights of citizenship, and citizenship was never co-extensive with the community. The population included slaves or serfs, and in many cities there were large classes descended from the original conquered population, personally free but excluded from the governing circle. Notwithstanding the relative simplicity of social conditions the city was constantly torn by the disputes of faction--in part probably a legacy from the old clan organization, in part a consequence of the growth of wealth and the newer distinction of classes. The evil of faction was aggravated by the ill-success of the city organization in dealing with the problem of inter-state relations. The Greek city clung to its autonomy, and though the principle of federalism which might have solved the problem was ultimately brought into play, it came too late in Greek history to save the nation. The constructive genius of Rome devised a different method of dealing with the political problems involved in expanding relations. Roman citizenship was extended till it included all Italy and, later on, till it comprised the whole free population of the Mediterranean basin. But this extension was even more fatal to the free self-government of a city state. The population of Italy could not meet in the Forum of Rome or the Plain of Mars to elect consuls and pass laws, and the more wisely it was extended the less valuable for any political purpose did citizenship become. The history of Rome, in fact, might be taken as a vast illustration of the difficulty of building up an extended empire on any basis but that of personal despotism resting on military force and maintaining peace and order through the efficiency of the bureaucratic machine. In this vast mechanism it was the army that was the seat of power, or rather it was each army at its post on some distant frontier that was a potential seat of power. The "secret of the empire" that was early divulged was that an emperor could be made elsewhere than at Rome, and though a certain sanctity remained to the person of the emperor, and legists cherished a dim remembrance of the theory that he embodied the popular will, the fact was that he was the choice of a powerful army, ratified by the God of Battles, and maintaining his power as long as he could suppress any rival pretender. The break-up of the Empire through the continual repetition of military strife was accelerated, not caused, by the presence of barbarism both within and without the frontiers. To restore the elements of order a compromise between central and local jurisdictions was necessary, and the vassal became a local prince owning an allegiance, more or less real as the case might be, to a distant sovereign. Meanwhile, with the prevailing disorder the mass of the population in Western Europe lost its freedom, partly through conquest, partly through the necessity of finding a protector in troublous times. The social structure of the Middle Ages accordingly assumed the hierarchical form which we speak of as the Feudal system. In this thorough-going application of the principle of authority every man, in theory, had his master. The serf held of his lord, who held of a great seigneur, who held of the king. The king in the completer theory held of the emperor who was crowned by the Pope, who held of St. Peter. The chain of descent was complete from the Ruler of the universe to the humblest of the serfs.[1] But within this order the growth of industry and commerce raised up new centres of freedom. The towns in which men were learning anew the lessons of association for united defence and the regulation of common interests, obtained charters of rights from seigneur or king, and on the Continent even succeeded in establishing complete independence. Even in England, where from the Conquest the central power was at its strongest, the corporate towns became for many purposes self-governing communities. The city state was born again, and with it came an outburst of activity, the revival of literature and the arts, the rediscovery of ancient learning, the rebirth of philosophy and science. The mediæval city state was superior to the ancient in that slavery was no essential element in its existence. On the contrary, by welcoming the fugitive serf and vindicating his freedom it contributed powerfully to the decline of the milder form of servitude. But like the ancient state it was seriously and permanently weakened by internal faction, and like the ancient state it rested the privileges of its members not on the rights of human personality, but on the responsibilities of citizenship. It knew not so much liberty as "liberties," rights of corporations secured by charter, its own rights as a whole secured against king or feudatory and the rest of the world, rights of gilds and crafts within it, and to men or women only as they were members of such bodies. But the real weakness of the city state was once more its isolation. It was but an islet of relative freedom on, or actually within, the borders of a feudal society which grew more powerful with the generations. With the improvement of communications and of the arts of life, the central power, particularly in France and England, began to gain upon its vassals. Feudal disobedience and disorder were suppressed, and by the end of the fifteenth century great unified states, the foundation of modern nations, were already in being. Their emergence involved the widening and in some respects the improvement of the social order; and in its earlier stages it favoured civic autonomy by suppressing local anarchy and feudal privilege. But the growth of centralization was in the end incompatible with the genius of civic independence, and perilous to such elements of political right as had been gained for the population in general as the result of earlier conflicts between the crown and its vassals. We enter on the modern period, accordingly, with society constituted on a thoroughly authoritarian basis, the kingly power supreme and tending towards arbitrary despotism, and below the king the social hierarchy extending from the great territorial lord to the day-labourer. There is one point gained as compared to earlier forms of society. The base of the pyramid is a class which at least enjoys personal freedom. Serfdom has virtually disappeared in England, and in the greater part of France has either vanished or become attenuated to certain obnoxious incidents of the tenure of land. On the other hand, the divorce of the English peasant from the soil has begun, and has laid the foundation of the future social problem as it is to appear in this country. The modern State accordingly starts from the basis of an authoritarian order, and the protest against that order, a protest religious, political, economic, social, and ethical, is the historic beginning of Liberalism. Thus Liberalism appears at first as a criticism, sometimes even as a destructive and revolutionary criticism. Its negative aspect is for centuries foremost. Its business seems to be not so much to build up as to pull down, to remove obstacles which block human progress, rather than to point the positive goal of endeavour or fashion the fabric of civilization. It finds humanity oppressed, and would set it free. It finds a people groaning under arbitrary rule, a nation in bondage to a conquering race, industrial enterprise obstructed by social privileges or crippled by taxation, and it offers relief. Everywhere it is removing superincumbent weights, knocking off fetters, clearing away obstructions. Is it doing as much for the reconstruction that will be necessary when the demolition is complete? Is Liberalism at bottom a constructive or only a destructive principle? Is it of permanent significance? Does it express some vital truth of social life as such, or is it a temporary phenomenon called forth by the special circumstances of Western Europe, and is its work already so far complete that it can be content to hand on the torch to a newer and more constructive principle, retiring for its own part from the race, or perchance seeking more backward lands for missionary work? These are among the questions that we shall have to answer. We note, for the moment, that the circumstances of its origin suffice to explain the predominance of critical and destructive work without therefrom inferring the lack of ultimate reconstructive power. In point of fact, whether by the aid of Liberalism or through the conservative instincts of the race, the work of reconstruction has gone on side by side with that of demolition, and becomes more important generation by generation. The modern State, as I shall show, goes far towards incorporating the elements of Liberal principle, and when we have seen what these are, and to what extent they are actually realized, we shall be in a better position to understand the essentials of Liberalism, and to determine the question of its permanent value. FOOTNOTE: [1] This is, of course, only one side of mediæval theory, but it is the side which lay nearest to the facts. The reverse view, which derives the authority of government from the governed, made its appearance in the Middle Ages partly under the influence of classical tradition. But its main interest and importance is that it served as a starting-point for the thought of a later time. On the whole subject the reader may consult Gierke, _Political Theories of the Middle Age_, translated by Maitland (Cambridge University Press). CHAPTER II THE ELEMENTS OF LIBERALISM I cannot here attempt so much as a sketch of the historical progress of the Liberalizing movement. I would call attention only to the main points at which it assailed the old order, and to the fundamental ideas directing its advance. 1. _Civil Liberty._ Both logically and historically the first point of attack is arbitrary government, and the first liberty to be secured is the right to be dealt with in accordance with law. A man who has no legal rights against another, but stands entirely at his disposal, to be treated according to his caprice, is a slave to that other. He is "rightless," devoid of rights. Now, in some barbaric monarchies the system of rightlessness has at times been consistently carried through in the relations of subjects to the king. Here men and women, though enjoying customary rights of person and property as against one another, have no rights at all as against the king's pleasure. No European monarch or seignior has ever admittedly enjoyed power of this kind, but European governments have at various times and in various directions exercised or claimed powers no less arbitrary in principle. Thus, by the side of the regular courts of law which prescribe specific penalties for defined offences proved against a man by a regular form of trial, arbitrary governments resort to various extrajudicial forms of arrest, detention, and punishment, depending on their own will and pleasure. Of such a character is punishment by "administrative" process in Russia at the present day; imprisonment by _lettre de cachet_ in France under the _ancien régime_; all executions by so-called martial law in times of rebellion, and the suspension of various ordinary guarantees of immediate and fair trial in Ireland. Arbitrary government in this form was one of the first objects of attack by the English Parliament in the seventeenth century, and this first liberty of the subject was vindicated by the Petition of Right, and again by the Habeas Corpus Act. It is significant of much that this first step in liberty should be in reality nothing more nor less than a demand for law. "Freedom of men under government," says Locke, summing up one whole chapter of seventeenth-century controversy, "is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society and made by the legislative power erected in it." The first condition of universal freedom, that is to say, is a measure of universal restraint. Without such restraint some men may be free but others will be unfree. One man may be able to do all his will, but the rest will have no will except that which he sees fit to allow them. To put the same point from another side, the first condition of free government is government not by the arbitrary determination of the ruler, but by fixed rules of law, to which the ruler himself is subject. We draw the important inference that there is no essential antithesis between liberty and law. On the contrary, law is essential to liberty. Law, of course, restrains the individual; it is therefore opposed to his liberty at a given moment and in a given direction. But, equally, law restrains others from doing with him as they will. It liberates him from the fear of arbitrary aggression or coercion, and this is the only way, indeed, the only sense, in which liberty _for an entire community_ is attainable. There is one point tacitly postulated in this argument which should not be overlooked. In assuming that the reign of law guarantees liberty to the whole community, we are assuming that it is impartial. If there is one law for the Government and another for its subjects, one for noble and another for commoner, one for rich and another for poor, the law does not guarantee liberty for all. Liberty in this respect implies equality. Hence the demand of Liberalism for such a procedure as will ensure the impartial application of law. Hence the demand for the independence of the judiciary to secure equality as between the Government and its subjects. Hence the demand for cheap procedure and accessible courts. Hence the abolition of privileges of class.[2] Hence will come in time the demand for the abolition of the power of money to purchase skilled advocacy. 2. _Fiscal Liberty._ Closely connected with juristic liberty, and more widely felt in everyday life, is the question of fiscal liberty. The Stuarts brought things to a head in this country by arbitrary taxation. George III brought things to a head in America by the same infallible method. The immediate cause of the French Revolution was the refusal of the nobles and the clergy to bear their share of the financial burden. But fiscal liberty raises more searching questions than juristic liberty. It is not enough that taxes should be fixed by a law applying universally and impartially, for taxes vary from year to year in accordance with public needs, and while other laws may remain stable and unchanged for an indefinite period, taxation must, in the nature of the case, be adjustable. It is a matter, properly considered, for the Executive rather than the Legislature. Hence the liberty of the subject in fiscal matters means the restraint of the Executive, not merely by established and written laws, but by a more direct and constant supervision. It means, in a word, responsible government, and that is why we have more often heard the cry, "No taxation without representation," than the cry, "No legislation without representation." Hence, from the seventeenth century onwards, fiscal liberty was seen to involve what is called political liberty. 3. _Personal Liberty._ Of political liberty it will be more convenient to speak later. But let us here observe that there is another avenue by which it can be, and, in fact, was, approached. We have seen that the reign of law is the first step to liberty. A man is not free when he is controlled by other men, but only when he is controlled by principles and rules which all society must obey, for the community is the true master of the free man. But here we are only at the beginning of the matter. There may be law, and there may be no attempt, such as the Stuarts made, to set law aside, yet (1) the making and maintenance of law may depend on the will of the sovereign or of an oligarchy, and (2) the content of the law may be unjust and oppressive to some, to many, or to all except those who make it. The first point brings us back to the problem of political liberty, which we defer. The second opens questions which have occupied a great part of the history of Liberalism, and to deal with them we have to ask what types of law have been felt as peculiarly oppressive, and in what respects it has been necessary to claim liberty not merely through law, but by the abolition of bad law and tyrannical administration. In the first place, there is the sphere of what is called personal liberty--a sphere most difficult to define, but the arena of the fiercest strife of passion and the deepest feelings of mankind. At the basis lies liberty of thought--freedom from inquisition into opinions that a man forms in his own mind[3]--the inner citadel where, if anywhere, the individual must rule. But liberty of thought is of very little avail without liberty to exchange thoughts--since thought is mainly a social product; and so with liberty of thought goes liberty of speech and liberty of writing, printing, and peaceable discussion. These rights are not free from difficulty and dubiety. There is a point at which speech becomes indistinguishable from action, and free speech may mean the right to create disorder. The limits of just liberty here are easy to draw neither in theory nor in practice. They lead us immediately to one of the points at which liberty and order may be in conflict, and it is with conflicts of this kind that we shall have to deal. The possibilities of conflict are not less in relation to the connected right of liberty in religion. That this liberty is absolute cannot be contended. No modern state would tolerate a form of religious worship which should include cannibalism, human sacrifice, or the burning of witches. In point of fact, practices of this kind--which follow quite naturally from various forms of primitive belief that are most sincerely held--are habitually put down by civilized peoples that are responsible for the government of less developed races. The British law recognizes polygamy in India, but I imagine it would not be open either to a Mahommedan or a Hindu to contract two marriages in England. Nor is it for liberty of this kind that the battle has been fought. What, then, is the primary meaning of religious liberty? Externally, I take it to include the liberties of thought and expression, and to add to these the right of worship in any form which does not inflict injury on others or involve a breach of public order. This limitation appears to carry with it a certain decency and restraint in expression which avoids unnecessary insult to the feelings of others; and I think this implication must be allowed, though it makes some room for strained and unfair applications. Externally, again, we must note that the demand for religious liberty soon goes beyond mere toleration. Religious liberty is incomplete as long as any belief is penalized, as, for example, by carrying with it exclusion from office or from educational advantages. On this side, again, full liberty implies full equality. Turning to the internal side, the spirit of religious liberty rests on the conception that a man's religion ranks with his own innermost thought and feelings. It is the most concrete expression of his personal attitude to life, to his kind, to the world, to his own origin and destiny. There is no real religion that is not thus drenched in personality; and the more religion is recognized for spiritual the starker the contradiction is felt to be that any one should seek to impose a religion on another. Properly regarded, the attempt is not wicked, but impossible. Yet those sin most against true religion who try to convert men from the outside by mechanical means. They have the lie in the soul, being most ignorant of the nature of that for which they feel most deeply. Yet here again we stumble on difficulties. Religion is personal. Yet is not religion also eminently social? What is more vital to the social order than its beliefs? If we send a man to gaol for stealing trash, what shall we do to him whom, in our conscience and on our honour, we believe to be corrupting the hearts of mankind, and perhaps leading them to eternal perdition? Again, what in the name of liberty are we to do to men whose preaching, if followed out in act, would bring back the rack and the stake? Once more there is a difficulty of delimitation which will have to be fully sifted. I will only remark here that our practice has arrived at a solution which, upon the whole, appears to have worked well hitherto, and which has its roots in principle. It is open to a man to preach the principles of Torquemada or the religion of Mahomet. It is not open to men to practise such of their precepts as would violate the rights of others or cause a breach of the peace. Expression is free, and worship is free as far as it is the expression of personal devotion. So far as they infringe the freedom, or, more generally, the rights of others, the practices inculcated by a religion cannot enjoy unqualified freedom. 4. _Social Liberty._ From the spiritual we turn to the practical side of life. On this side we may observe, first, that Liberalism has had to deal with those restraints on the individual which flow from the hierarchic organization of society, and reserve certain offices, certain forms of occupation, and perhaps the right or at least the opportunity of education generally, to people of a certain rank or class. In its more extreme form this is a caste system, and its restrictions are religious or legal as well as social. In Europe it has taken more than one form. There is the monopoly of certain occupations by corporations, prominent in the minds of eighteenth-century French reformers. There is the reservation of public appointments and ecclesiastical patronage for those who are "born," and there is a more subtly pervading spirit of class which produces a hostile attitude to those who could and would rise; and this spirit finds a more material ally in the educational difficulties that beset brains unendowed with wealth. I need not labour points which will be apparent to all, but have again to remark two things. (1) Once more the struggle for liberty is also, when pushed through, a struggle for equality. Freedom to choose and follow an occupation, if it is to become fully effective, means equality with others in the opportunities for following such occupation. This is, in fact, one among the various considerations which lead Liberalism to support a national system of free education, and will lead it further yet on the same lines. (2) Once again, though we may insist on the rights of the individual, the social value of the corporation or quasi-corporation, like the Trade Union, cannot be ignored. Experience shows the necessity of some measure of collective regulation in industrial matters, and in the adjustment of such regulation to individual liberty serious difficulties of principle emerge. We shall have to refer to these in the next section. But one point is relevant at this stage. It is clearly a matter of Liberal principle that membership of a corporation should not depend on any hereditary qualification, nor be set about with any artificial difficulty of entry, where by the term artificial is meant any difficulty not involved in the nature of the occupation concerned, but designed for purposes of exclusiveness. As against all such methods of restriction, the Liberal case is clear. It has only to be added here that restrictions of sex are in every respect parallel to restrictions of class. There are, doubtless, occupations for which women are unfit. But, if so, the test of fitness is sufficient to exclude them. The "open road for women" is one application, and a very big one, of the "open road for talent," and to secure them both is of the essence of Liberalism. 5. _Economic Liberty_ Apart from monopolies, industry was shackled in the earlier part of the modern period by restrictive legislation in various forms, by navigation laws, and by tariffs. In particular, the tariff was not merely an obstruction to free enterprise, but a source of inequality as between trade and trade. Its fundamental effect is to transfer capital and labour from the objects on which they can be most profitably employed in a given locality, to objects on which they are less profitably employed, by endowing certain industries to the disadvantage of the general consumer. Here, again, the Liberal movement is at once an attack on an obstruction and on an inequality. In most countries the attack has succeeded in breaking down local tariffs and establishing relatively large Free Trade units. It is only in England, and only owing to our early manufacturing supremacy, that it has fully succeeded in overcoming the Protective principle, and even in England the Protectionist reaction would undoubtedly have gained at least a temporary victory but for our dependence on foreign countries for food and the materials of industry. The most striking victory of Liberal ideas is one of the most precarious. At the same time, the battle is one which Liberalism is always prepared to fight over again. It has led to no back stroke, no counter-movement within the Liberal ranks themselves. It is otherwise with organized restrictions upon industry. The old regulations, which were quite unsuited to the conditions of the time, either fell into desuetude during the eighteenth century, or were formally abolished during the earlier years of the industrial revolution. For a while it seemed as though wholly unrestricted industrial enterprise was to be the progressive watchword, and the echoes of that time still linger. But the old restrictions had not been formally withdrawn before a new process of regulation began. The conditions produced by the new factory system shocked the public conscience; and as early as 1802 we find the first of a long series of laws, out of which has grown an industrial code that year by year follows the life of the operative, in his relations with his employer, into more minute detail. The first stages of this movement were contemplated with doubt and distrust by many men of Liberal sympathies. The intention was, doubtless, to protect the weaker party, but the method was that of interference with freedom of contract. Now the freedom of the sane adult individual--even such strong individualists as Cobden recognized that the case of children stood apart--carried with it the right of concluding such agreements as seemed best to suit his own interests, and involved both the right and the duty of determining the lines of his life for himself. Free contract and personal responsibility lay close to the heart of the whole Liberal movement. Hence the doubts felt by so many Liberals as to the regulation of industry by law. None the less, as time has gone on, men of the keenest Liberal sympathies have come not merely to accept but eagerly to advance the extension of public control in the industrial sphere, and of collective responsibility in the matter of the education and even the feeding of children, the housing of the industrial population, the care of the sick and aged, the provision of the means of regular employment. On this side Liberalism seems definitely to have retraced its steps, and we shall have to inquire closely into the question whether the reversal is a change of principle or of application. Closely connected with freedom of contract is freedom of association. If men may make any agreement with one another in their mutual interest so long as they do not injure a third party, they may apparently agree to act together permanently for any purposes of common interest on the same conditions. That is, they may form associations. Yet at bottom the powers of an association are something very different from the powers of the individuals composing it; and it is only by legal pedantry that the attempt can be made to regulate the behaviour of an association on principles derived from and suitable to the relations of individuals. An association might become so powerful as to form a state within the state, and to contend with government on no unequal terms. The history of some revolutionary societies, of some ecclesiastical organizations, even of some American trusts might be quoted to show that the danger is not imaginary. Short of this, an association may act oppressively towards others and even towards its own members, and the function of Liberalism may be rather to protect the individual against the power of the association than to protect the right of association against the restriction of the law. In fact, in this regard, the principle of liberty cuts both ways, and this double application is reflected in history. The emancipation of trade unions, however, extending over the period from 1824 to 1906, and perhaps not yet complete, was in the main a liberating movement, because combination was necessary to place the workman on something approaching terms of equality with the employer, and because tacit combinations of employers could never, in fact, be prevented by law. It was, again, a movement to liberty through equality. On the other hand, the oppressive capacities of a trade union could never be left out of account, while combinations of capital, which might be infinitely more powerful, have justly been regarded with distrust. In this there is no inconsistency of principle, but a just appreciation of a real difference of circumstance. Upon the whole it may be said that the function of Liberalism is not so much to maintain a general right of free association as to define the right in each case in such terms as make for the maximum of real liberty and equality. 6. _Domestic Liberty._ Of all associations within the State, the miniature community of the Family is the most universal and of the strongest independent vitality. The authoritarian state was reflected in the authoritarian family, in which the husband was within wide limits absolute lord of the person and property of wife and children. The movement of liberation consists (1) in rendering the wife a fully responsible individual, capable of holding property, suing and being sued, conducting business on her own account, and enjoying full personal protection against her husband; (2) in establishing marriage as far as the law is concerned on a purely contractual basis, and leaving the sacramental aspect of marriage to the ordinances of the religion professed by the parties; (3) in securing the physical, mental, and moral care of the children, partly by imposing definite responsibilities on the parents and punishing them for neglect, partly by elaborating a public system of education and of hygiene. The first two movements are sufficiently typical cases of the interdependence of liberty and equality. The third is more often conceived as a Socialistic than a Liberal tendency, and, in point of fact, the State control of education gives rise to some searching questions of principle, which have not yet been fully solved. If, in general, education is a duty which the State has a right to enforce, there is a countervailing right of choice as to the lines of education which it would be ill to ignore, and the mode of adjustment has not yet been adequately determined either in theory or in practice. I would, however, strongly maintain that the general conception of the State as Over-parent is quite as truly Liberal as Socialistic. It is the basis of the rights of the child, of his protection against parental neglect, of the equality of opportunity which he may claim as a future citizen, of his training to fill his place as a grown-up person in the social system. Liberty once more involves control and restraint. 7. _Local, Racial, and National Liberty._ From the smallest social unit we pass to the largest. A great part of the liberating movement is occupied with the struggle of entire nations against alien rule, with the revolt of Europe against Napoleon, with the struggle of Italy for freedom, with the fate of the Christian subjects of Turkey, with the emancipation of the negro, with the national movement in Ireland and in India. Many of these struggles present the problem of liberty in its simplest form. It has been and is too often a question of securing the most elementary rights for the weaker party; and those who are not touched by the appeal are deficient rather in imagination than in logic or ethics. But at the back of national movements very difficult questions do arise. What is a nation as distinct from a state? What sort of unity does it constitute, and what are its rights? If Ireland is a nation, is Ulster one? and if Ulster is a British and Protestant nation, what of the Catholic half of Ulster? History has in some cases given us a practical answer. Thus, it has shown that, enjoying the gift of responsible government, French and British, despite all historical quarrels and all differences of religious belief, language, and social structure, have fused into the nation of Canada. History has justified the conviction that Germany was a nation, and thrown ridicule on the contemptuous saying of Metternich that Italy was a geographical expression. But how to anticipate history, what rights to concede to a people that claims to be a self-determining unit, is less easy to decide. There is no doubt that the general tendency of Liberalism is to favour autonomy, but, faced as it is with the problems of subdivision and the complexity of group with group, it has to rely on the concrete teaching of history and the practical insight of statesmanship to determine how the lines of autonomy are to be drawn. There is, however, one empirical test which seems generally applicable. Where a weaker nation incorporated with a larger or stronger one can be governed by ordinary law applicable to both parties to the union, and fulfilling all the ordinary principles of liberty, the arrangement may be the best for both parties. But where this system fails, where the government is constantly forced to resort to exceptional legislation or perhaps to de-liberalize its own institutions, the case becomes urgent. Under such conditions the most liberally-minded democracy is maintaining a system which must undermine its own principles. The Assyrian conqueror, Mr. Herbert Spencer remarks, who is depicted in the bas-reliefs leading his captive by a cord, is bound with that cord himself. He forfeits his liberty as long as he retains his power. Somewhat similar questions arise about race, which many people wrongly confuse with nationality. So far as elementary rights are concerned there can be no question as to the attitude of Liberalism. When the political power which should guarantee such rights is brought into view, questions of fact arise. Is the Negro or the Kaffir mentally and morally capable of self-government or of taking part in a self-governing State? The experience of Cape Colony tends to the affirmative view. American experience of the negro gives, I take it, a more doubtful answer. A specious extension of the white man's rights to the black may be the best way of ruining the black. To destroy tribal custom by introducing conceptions of individual property, the free disposal of land, and the free purchase of gin may be the handiest method for the expropriator. In all relations with weaker peoples we move in an atmosphere vitiated by the insincere use of high-sounding words. If men say equality, they mean oppression by forms of justice. If they say tutelage, they appear to mean the kind of tutelage extended to the fattened goose. In such an atmosphere, perhaps, our safest course, so far as principles and deductions avail at all, is to fix our eyes on the elements of the matter, and in any part of the world to support whatever method succeeds in securing the "coloured" man from personal violence, from the lash, from expropriation, and from gin; above all, so far as it may yet be, from the white man himself. Until the white man has fully learnt to rule his own life, the best of all things that he can do with the dark man is to do nothing with him. In this relation, the day of a more constructive Liberalism is yet to come. 8. _International Liberty._ If non-interference is the best thing for the barbarian many Liberals have thought it to be the supreme wisdom in international affairs generally. I shall examine this view later. Here I merely remark: (1) It is of the essence of Liberalism to oppose the use of force, the basis of all tyranny. (2) It is one of its practical necessities to withstand the tyranny of armaments. Not only may the military force be directly turned against liberty, as in Russia, but there are more subtle ways, as in Western Europe, in which the military spirit eats into free institutions and absorbs the public resources which might go to the advancement of civilization. (3) In proportion as the world becomes free, the use of force becomes meaningless. There is no purpose in aggression if it is not to issue in one form or another of national subjection. 9. _Political Liberty and Popular Sovereignty._ Underlying all these questions of right is the question how they are to be secured and maintained. By enforcing the responsibility of the executive and legislature to the community as a whole? Such is the general answer, and it indicates one of the lines of connection between the general theory of liberty and the doctrine of universal suffrage and the sovereignty of the people. The answer, however, does not meet all the possibilities of the case. The people as a whole might be careless of their rights and incapable of managing them. They might be set on the conquest of others, the expropriation of the rich, or on any form of collective tyranny or folly. It is perfectly possible that from the point of view of general liberty and social progress a limited franchise might give better results than one that is more extended. Even in this country it is a tenable view that the extension of the suffrage in 1884 tended for some years to arrest the development of liberty in various directions. On what theory does the principle of popular sovereignty rest, and within what limits does it hold good? Is it a part of the general principles of liberty and equality, or are other ideas involved? These are among the questions which we shall have to examine. We have now passed the main phases of the Liberal movement in very summary review, and we have noted, first, that it is co-extensive with life. It is concerned with the individual, the family, the State. It touches industry, law, religion, ethics. It would not be difficult, if space allowed, to illustrate its influence in literature and art, to describe the war with convention, insincerity, and patronage, and the struggle for free self-expression, for reality, for the artist's soul. Liberalism is an all-penetrating element of the life-structure of the modern world. Secondly, it is an effective historical force. If its work is nowhere complete, it is almost everywhere in progress. The modern State as we see it in Europe outside Russia, in the British colonies, in North and South America, as we begin to see it in the Russian empire and throughout the vast continent of Asia, is the old authoritarian society modified in greater or less degree by the absorption of Liberal principles. Turning, thirdly, to those principles themselves, we have recognized Liberalism in every department as a movement fairly denoted by the name--a movement of liberation, a clearance of obstructions, an opening of channels for the flow of free spontaneous vital activity. Fourthly, we have seen that in a large number of cases what is under one aspect a movement for liberty is on another side a movement towards equality, and the habitual association of these principles is so far confirmed. On the other hand, lastly, we have seen numerous cases in which the exacter definition of liberty and the precise meaning of equality remain obscure, and to discuss these will be our task. We have, moreover, admittedly regarded Liberalism mainly in its earlier and more negative aspect. We have seen it as a force working within an old society and modifying it by the loosening of the bonds which its structure imposed on human activity. We have yet to ask what constructive social scheme, if any, could be formed on Liberal principles; and it is here, if at all, that the fuller meaning of the principles of Liberty and Equality should appear, and the methods of applying them be made out. The problem of popular sovereignty pointed to the same need. Thus the lines of the remainder of our task are clearly laid down. We have to get at the fundamentals of Liberalism, and to consider what kind of structure can be raised upon the basis which they offer. We will approach the question by tracing the historic movement of Liberal thought through certain well-marked phases. We shall see how the problems which have been indicated were attacked by successive thinkers, and how partial solutions gave occasion for deeper probings. Following the guidance of the actual movement of ideas, we shall reach the centre and heart of Liberalism, and we shall try to form a conception of the essentials of the Liberal creed as a constructive theory of society. This conception we shall then apply to the greater questions, political and economic, of our own day; and this will enable us finally to estimate the present position of Liberalism as a living force in the modern world and the prospect of transforming its ideals into actualities. FOOTNOTES: [2] In England "benefit of clergy" was still a good plea for remission of sentence for a number of crimes in the seventeenth century. At that time all who could read could claim benefit, which was therefore of the nature of a privilege for the educated class. The requirement of reading, which had become a form, was abolished in 1705, but peers and clerks in holy orders could still plead their clergy in the eighteenth century, and the last relics of the privilege were not finally abolished till the nineteenth century. [3] See an interesting chapter in Faguet's _Liberalisme_, which points out that the common saying that thought is free is negated by any inquisition which compels a man to disclose opinions, and penalizes him if they are not such as to suit the inquisitor. CHAPTER III THE MOVEMENT OF THEORY Great changes are not caused by ideas alone; but they are not effected without ideas. The passions of men must be aroused if the frost of custom is to be broken or the chains of authority burst; but passion of itself is blind and its world is chaotic. To be effective men must act together, and to act together they must have a common understanding and a common object. When it comes to be a question of any far-reaching change, they must not merely conceive their own immediate end with clearness. They must convert others, they must communicate sympathy and win over the unconvinced. Upon the whole, they must show that their object is possible, that it is compatible with existing institutions, or at any rate with some workable form of social life. They are, in fact, driven on by the requirements of their position to the elaboration of ideas, and in the end to some sort of social philosophy; and the philosophies that have driving force behind them are those which arise after this fashion out of the practical demands of human feeling. The philosophies that remain ineffectual and academic are those that are formed by abstract reflection without relation to the thirsty souls of human kind. In England, it is true, where men are apt to be shy and unhandy in the region of theory, the Liberal movement has often sought to dispense with general principles. In its early days and in its more moderate forms, it sought its ends under the guise of constitutionalism. As against the claims of the Stuart monarchy, there was a historic case as well as a philosophic argument, and the earlier leaders of the Parliament relied more on precedent than on principle. This method was embodied in the Whig tradition, and runs on to our own time, as one of the elements that go to make up the working constitution of the Liberal mind. It is, so to say, the Conservative element in Liberalism, valuable in resistance to encroachments, valuable in securing continuity of development, for purposes of re-construction insufficient. To maintain the old order under changed circumstances may be, in fact, to initiate a revolution. It was so in the seventeenth century. Pym and his followers could find justification for their contentions in our constitutional history, but to do so they had to go behind both the Stuarts and the Tudors; and to apply the principles of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in 1640 was, in effect, to institute a revolution. In our own time, to maintain the right of the Commons against the Lords is, on the face of it, to adhere to old constitutional right, but to do so under the new circumstances which have made the Commons representative of the nation as a whole is, in reality, to establish democracy for the first time on a firm footing, and this, again, is to accomplish a revolution. Now, those who effect a revolution ought to know whither they are leading the world. They have need of a social theory--and in point of fact the more thorough-going apostles of movement always have such a theory; and though, as we have remarked, the theory emerges from the practical needs which they feel, and is therefore apt to invest ideas of merely temporary value with the character of eternal truths, it is not on this account to be dismissed as of secondary importance. Once formed, it reacts upon the minds of its adherents, and gives direction and unity to their efforts. It becomes, in its turn, a real historic force, and the degree of its coherence and adequacy is matter, not merely of academic interest, but of practical moment. Moreover, the onward course of a movement is more clearly understood by appreciating the successive points of view which its thinkers and statesmen have occupied than by following the devious turnings of political events and the tangle of party controversy. The point of view naturally affects the whole method of handling problems, whether speculative or practical, and to the historian it serves as a centre around which ideas and policies that perhaps differ, and even conflict with one another, may be so grouped as to show their underlying affinities. Let us then seek to determine the principal points of view which the Liberal movement has occupied, and distinguish the main types of theory in which the passion for freedom has sought to express itself. The first of these types I will call the theory of the Natural Order. The earlier Liberalism had to deal with authoritarian government in church and state. It had to vindicate the elements of personal, civil, and economic freedom; and in so doing it took its stand on the rights of man, and, in proportion as it was forced to be constructive, on the supposed harmony of the natural order. Government claimed supernatural sanction and divine ordinance. Liberal theory replied in effect that the rights of man rested on the law of Nature, and those of government on human institution. The oldest "institution" in this view was the individual, and the primordial society the natural grouping of human beings under the influence of family affection, and for the sake of mutual aid. Political society was a more artificial arrangement, a convention arrived at for the specific purpose of securing a better order and maintaining the common safety. It was, perhaps, as Locke held, founded on a contract between king and people, a contract which was brought to an end if either party violated its terms. Or, as in Rousseau's view, it was essentially a contract of the people with one another, an arrangement by means of which, out of many conflicting individual wills, a common or general will could be formed. A government might be instituted as the organ of this will, but it would, from the nature of the case, be subordinate to the people from whom it derived authority. The people were sovereign. The government was their delegate. Whatever the differences of outlook that divide these theories, those who from Locke to Rousseau and Paine worked with this order of ideas agreed in conceiving political society as a restraint to which men voluntarily submitted themselves for specific purposes. Political institutions were the source of subjection and inequality. Before and behind them stood the assemblage of free and equal individuals. But the isolated individual was powerless. He had rights which were limited only by the corresponding rights of others, but he could not, unless chance gave him the upper hand, enforce them. Accordingly, he found it best to enter into an arrangement with others for the mutual respect of rights; and for this purpose he instituted a government to maintain his rights within the community and to guard the community from assault from without. It followed that the function of government was limited and definable. It was to maintain the natural rights of man as accurately as the conditions of society allowed, and to do naught beside. Any further action employing the compulsory power of the State was of the nature of an infringement of the understanding on which government rested. In entering into the compact, the individual gave up so much of his rights as was necessitated by the condition of submitting to a common rule--so much, and no more. He gave up his natural rights and received in return civil rights, something less complete, perhaps, but more effective as resting on the guarantee of the collective power. If you would discover, then, what the civil rights of man in society should be, you must inquire what are the natural rights of man,[4] and how far they are unavoidably modified in accommodating the conflicting claims of men with one another. Any interference that goes beyond this necessary accommodation is oppression. Civil rights should agree as nearly as possible with natural rights, or, as Paine says, a civil right is a natural right exchanged. This conception of the relations of the State and the individual long outlived the theory on which it rested. It underlies the entire teaching of the Manchester school. Its spirit was absorbed, as we shall see, by many of the Utilitarians. It operated, though in diminishing force, throughout the nineteenth century; and it is strongly held by contemporary Liberals like M. Faguet, who frankly abrogate its speculative foundations and rest their case on social utility. Its strength is, in effect, not in its logical principles, but in the compactness and consistency which it gives to a view of the functions of the State which responds to certain needs of modern society. As long as those needs were uppermost, the theory was of living value. In proportion as they have been satisfied and other needs have emerged, the requirement has arisen for a fuller and sounder principle. But there was another side to the theory of nature which we must not ignore. If in this theory government is the marplot and authority the source of oppression and stagnation, where are the springs of progress and civilization? Clearly, in the action of individuals. The more the individual receives free scope for the play of his faculties, the more rapidly will society as a whole advance. There are here the elements of an important truth, but what is the implication? If the individual is free, any two individuals, each pursuing his own ends, may find themselves in conflict. It was, in fact, the possibility of such conflict which was recognized by our theory as the origin and foundation of society. Men had to agree to some measure of mutual restraint in order that their liberty might be effective. But in the course of the eighteenth century, and particularly in the economic sphere, there arose a view that the conflict of wills is based on misunderstanding and ignorance, and that its mischiefs are accentuated by governmental repression. At bottom there is a natural harmony of interests. Maintain external order, suppress violence, assure men in the possession of their property, and enforce the fulfilment of contracts, and the rest will go of itself. Each man will be guided by self-interest, but interest will lead him along the lines of greatest productivity. If all artificial barriers are removed, he will find the occupation which best suits his capacities, and this will be the occupation in which he will be most productive, and therefore, socially, most valuable. He will have to sell his goods to a willing purchaser, therefore he must devote himself to the production of things which others need, things, therefore, of social value. He will, by preference, make that for which he can obtain the highest price, and this will be that for which, at the particular time and place and in relation to his particular capacities, there is the greatest need. He will, again, find the employer who will pay him best, and that will be the employer to whom he can do the best service. Self-interest, if enlightened and unfettered, will, in short, lead him to conduct coincident with public interest. There is, in this sense, a natural harmony between the individual and society. True, this harmony might require a certain amount of education and enlightenment to make it effective. What it did not require was governmental "interference," which would always hamper the causes making for its smooth and effectual operation. Government must keep the ring, and leave it for individuals to play out the game. The theory of the natural rights of the individual is thus supplemented by a theory of the mutual harmony of individual and social needs, and, so completed, forms a conception of human society which is _primâ facie_ workable, which, in fact, contains important elements of truth, and which was responsive to the needs of a great class, and to many of the requirements of society as a whole, during a considerable period. On both sides, however, the theory exhibits, under criticism, fundamental weaknesses which have both a historical and a speculative significance. Let us first consider the conception of natural rights. What were these rights, and on what did they rest? On the first point men sought to be explicit. By way of illustration we cannot do better than quote the leading clauses of the Declaration of 1789.[5] _Article I._--Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can only be founded on common utility. _Article II._--The end of every political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man.[6] These rights are liberty, property, security (_la sûreté_), and resistance to oppression. _Article III._--The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation.... _Article IV._--Liberty consists in the power to do anything that does not injure others; thus, the exercise of the natural rights of every man has only such limits as assure to other members of society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law. _Article VI._--The law is the expression of the general will. All citizens have a right to take part (_concourir_), personally or by their representatives, in its formation. The remainder of this article insists on the impartiality of law and the equal admission of all citizens to office. The Declaration of 1793 is more emphatic about equality, and more rhetorical. Article III reads, "All men are equal by nature and before the law." It is easy to subject these articles to a niggling form of criticism in which their spirit is altogether missed. I would ask attention only to one or two points of principle. (_a_) What are the rights actually claimed? "Security" and "resistance to oppression" are not in principle distinct, and, moreover, may be taken as covered by the definition of liberty. The meaning at bottom is "Security for liberty in respect of his person and property is the right of every man." So expressed, it will be seen that this right postulates the existence of an ordered society, and lays down that it is the duty of such a society to secure the liberty of its members. The right of the individual, then, is not something independent of society, but one of the principles which a good social order must recognize. (_b_) Observe that equality is limited by the "common utility," and that the sphere of liberty is ultimately to be defined by "law." In both cases we are referred back from the individual either to the needs or to the decision of society as a whole. There are, moreover, two definitions of liberty. (1) It is the power to do what does not injure others. (2) It is a right limited by the consideration that others must enjoy the same rights. It is important to bear in mind that these two definitions are highly discrepant. If my right to knock a man down is only limited by his equal right to knock me down, the law has no business to interfere when we take to our fists. If, on the other hand, I have no right to injure another, the law should interfere. Very little reflection suffices to show that this is the sounder principle, and that respect for the equal liberty of another is not an adequate definition of liberty. My right to keep my neighbour awake by playing the piano all night is not satisfactorily counterbalanced by his right to keep a dog which howls all the time the piano is being played. The right of a "sweater" to pay starvation wages is not satisfactorily limited by the corresponding right which his employee would enjoy if he were in a position to impose the same terms on some one else. Generally, the right to injure or take advantage of another is not sufficiently limited by the right of that other if he should have the power to retaliate in kind. There is no right to injure another; and if we ask what is injury we are again thrown back on some general principle which will override the individual claim to do what one will. (_c_) The doctrine of popular sovereignty rests on two principles. (1) It is said to reside in the nation. Law is the expression of the general will. Here the "nation" is conceived as a collective whole, as a unit. (2) Every citizen has the right to take part in making the law. Here the question is one of individual right. Which is the real ground of democratic representation--the unity of the national life, or the inherent right of the individual to be consulted about that which concerns himself? Further, and this is a very serious question, which is the ultimate authority--the will of the nation, or the rights of the individual? Suppose the nation deliberately decides on laws which deny the rights of the individual, ought such laws to be obeyed in the name of popular sovereignty, or to be disobeyed in the name of natural rights? It is a real issue, and on these lines it is unfortunately quite insoluble. These difficulties were among the considerations which led to the formation of the second type of Liberal theory, and what has to be said about the harmony of the natural order may be taken in conjunction with this second theory to which we may now pass, and which is famous as The Greatest Happiness Principle. Bentham, who spent the greater part of his life in elaborating the greatest happiness principle as a basis of social reconstruction, was fully alive to the difficulties which we have found in the theory of natural rights. The alleged rights of man were for him so many anarchical fallacies. They were founded on no clearly assignable principle, and admitted of no demonstration. "I say I have a right." "I say you have no such right." Between the disputants who or what is to decide? What was the supposed law of nature? When was it written, and by whose authority? On what ground do we maintain that men are free or equal? On what principle and within what limits do we or can we maintain the right of property? There were points on which, by universal admission, all these rights have to give way. What is the right of property worth in times of war or of any overwhelming general need? The Declaration itself recognized the need of appeal to common utility or to the law to define the limits of individual right. Bentham would frankly make all rights dependent on common utility, and therewith he would make it possible to examine all conflicting claims in the light of a general principle. He would measure them all by a common standard. Has a man the right to express his opinion freely? To determine the question on Bentham's lines we must ask whether it is, on the whole, useful to society that the free expression of opinion should be allowed, and this, he would say, is a question which may be decided by general reasoning and by experience of results. Of course, we must take the rough with the smooth. If the free expression of opinion is allowed, false opinion will find utterance and will mislead many. The question would be, does the loss involved in the promulgation of error counterbalance the gain to be derived from unfettered discussion? and Bentham would hold himself free to judge by results. Should the State maintain the rights of private property? Yes, if the admission of those rights is useful to the community as a whole. No, if it is not useful. Some rights of property, again, may be advantageous, others disadvantageous. The community is free to make a selection. If it finds that certain forms of property are working to the exclusive benefit of individuals and the prejudice of the common weal, it has good ground for the suppression of those forms of property, while it may, with equal justice, maintain other forms of property which it holds sound as judged by the effect on the common welfare. It is limited by no "imprescriptible" right of the individual. It may do with the individual what it pleases provided that it has the good of the whole in view. So far as the question of right is concerned the Benthamite principle might be regarded as decidedly socialistic or even authoritarian. It contemplates, at least as a possibility, the complete subordination of individual to social claims. There is, however, another side to the Benthamite principle, to understand which we must state the heads of the theory itself as a positive doctrine. What is this social utility of which we have spoken? In what does it consist? What is useful to society, and what harmful? The answer has the merit of great clearness and simplicity. An action is good which tends to promote the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number of those affected by it. As with an action, so, of course, with an institution or a social system. That is useful which conforms to this principle. That is harmful which conflicts with it. That is right which conforms to it, that is wrong which conflicts with it. The greatest happiness principle is the one and supreme principle of conduct. Observe that it imposes on us two considerations. One is the _greatest_ happiness. Now happiness is defined as consisting positively in the presence of pleasure, negatively in the absence of pain. A greater pleasure is then preferable to a lesser, a pleasure unaccompanied by pain to one involving pain. Conceiving pain as a minus quantity of pleasure, we may say that the principle requires us always to take quantity and pleasure into account, and nothing else. But, secondly, the _number_ of individuals affected is material. An act might cause pleasure to one and pain to two. Then it is wrong, unless, indeed, the pleasure were very great and the pain in each case small. We must balance the consequences, taking all individuals affected into account, and "everybody must count for one and nobody for more than one." This comment is an integral part of the original formula. As between the happiness of his father, his child, or himself, and the happiness of a stranger, a man must be impartial. He must only consider the quantity of pleasure secured or pain inflicted. Now, in this conception of measurable quantities of pleasure and pain there is, as many critics have insisted, something unreal and academic. We shall have to return to the point, but let us first endeavour to understand the bearing of Bentham's teaching on the problems of his own time and on the subsequent development of Liberal thought. For this purpose we will keep to what is real in his doctrine, even if it is not always defined with academic precision. The salient points that we note, then, are (1) the subordination of all considerations of right to the considerations of happiness, (2) the importance of number, and (3) as the other side of the same doctrine, the insistence on equality or impartiality between man and man. The common utility which Bentham considers is the happiness experienced by a number of individuals, all of whom are reckoned for this purpose as of equal value. This is the radical individualism of the Benthamite creed, to be set against that socialistic tendency which struck us in our preliminary account. In this individualism, equality is fundamental. Everybody is to count for one, nobody for more than one, for every one can feel pain and pleasure. Liberty, on the other hand, is not fundamental, it is a means to an end. Popular sovereignty is not fundamental, for all government is a means to an end. Nevertheless, the school of Bentham, upon the whole, stood by both liberty and democracy. Let us consider their attitude. As to popular government, Bentham and James Mill reasoned after this fashion. Men, if left to themselves, that is to say, if neither trained by an educational discipline nor checked by responsibility, do not consider the good of the greatest number. They consider their own good. A king, if his power is unchecked, will rule in his own interest. A class, if its power is unchecked, will rule in its own interest. The only way to secure fair consideration for the happiness of all is to allow to all an equal share of power. True, if there is a conflict the majority will prevail, but they will be moved each by consideration of his own happiness, and the majority as a whole, therefore, by the happiness of the greater number. There is no inherent right in the individual to take a part in government. There is a claim to be considered in the distribution of the means of happiness, and to share in the work of government as a means to this end. It would follow, among other things, that if one man or one class could be shown to be so much wiser and better than others that his or their rule would, in fact, conduce more to the happiness of the greater number than a popular system, then the business of government ought to be entrusted to that man or that class and no one else ought to interfere with it. The whole argument, however, implies a crude view of the problem of government. It is, of course, theoretically possible that a question should present itself, detached from other questions, in which a definite measurable interest of each of the seven millions or more of voters is at stake. For example, the great majority of English people drink tea. Comparatively few drink wine. Should a particular sum be raised by a duty on tea or on wine? Here the majority of tea-drinkers have a measurable interest, the same in kind and roughly the same in degree for each; and the vote of the majority, if it could be taken on this question alone and based on self-interest alone, might be conceived without absurdity as representing a sum of individual interests. Even here, however, observe that, though the greatest number is considered, the greatest happiness does not fare so well. For to raise the same sum the tax on wine will, as less is drunk, have to be much larger than the tax on tea, so that a little gain to many tea-drinkers might inflict a heavy loss on the few wine-drinkers, and on the Benthamite principle it is not clear that this would be just. In point of fact it is possible for a majority to act tyrannically, by insisting on a slight convenience to itself at the expense, perhaps, of real suffering to a minority. Now the Utilitarian principle by no means justifies such tyranny, but it does seem to contemplate the weighing of one man's loss against another's gain, and such a method of balancing does not at bottom commend itself to our sense of justice. We may lay down that if there is a rational social order at all it must be one which never rests the essential indispensable condition of the happiness of one man on the unavoidable misery of another, nor the happiness of forty millions of men on the misery of one. It may be temporarily expedient, but it is eternally unjust, that one man should die for the people. We may go further. The case of the contemplated tax is, as applied to the politics of a modern State, an unreal one. Political questions cannot be thus isolated. Even if we could vote by referendum on a special tax, the question which voters would have to consider would never be the revenue from and the incidence of that tax alone. All the indirect social and economic bearings of the tax would come up for consideration, and in the illustration chosen people would be swayed, and rightly swayed, by their opinion, for example, of the comparative effects of tea-drinking and wine-drinking. No one element of the social life stands separate from the rest, any more than any one element of the animal body stands separate from the rest. In this sense the life of society is rightly held to be organic, and all considered public policy must be conceived in its bearing on the life of society as a whole. But the moment that we apply this view to politics, the Benthamite mode of stating the case for democracy is seen to be insufficient. The interests of every man are no doubt in the end bound up with the welfare of the whole community, but the relation is infinitely subtle and indirect. Moreover, it takes time to work itself out, and the evil that is done in the present day may only bear fruit when the generation that has done it has passed away. Thus, the direct and calculable benefit of the majority may by no means coincide with the ultimate good of society as a whole; and to suppose that the majority must, on grounds of self-interest, govern in the interests of the community as a whole is in reality to attribute to the mass of men full insight into problems which tax the highest efforts of science and of statesmanship. Lastly, to suppose that men are governed entirely by a sense of their interests is a many-sided fallacy. Men are neither so intelligent nor so selfish. They are swayed by emotion and by impulse, and both for good and for evil they will lend enthusiastic support to courses of public policy from which, as individuals, they have nothing to gain. To understand the real value of democratic government, we shall have to probe far deeper into the relations of the individual and society. I turn lastly to the question of liberty. On Benthamite principles there could be no question here of indefeasible individual right. There were even, as we saw, possibilities of a thorough-going Socialism or of an authoritarian paternalism in the Benthamite principle. But two great considerations told in the opposite direction. One arose from the circumstances of the day. Bentham, originally a man of somewhat conservative temper, was driven into Radicalism comparatively late in life by the indifference or hostility of the governing classes to his schemes of reform. Government, as he saw it, was of the nature of a close corporation with a vested interest hostile to the public weal, and his work is penetrated by distrust of power as such. There was much in the history of the time to justify his attitude. It was difficult at that time to believe in an honest officialdom putting the commonwealth above every personal or corporate interest, and reformers naturally looked to individual initiative as the source of progress. Secondly, and this was a more philosophic argument, the individual was supposed to understand his own interest best, and as the common good was the sum of individual interests, it followed that so far as every man was free to seek his own good, the good of the greatest number would be most effectually realized by general freedom of choice. That there were difficulties in reconciling self-interest with the general good was not denied. But men like James Mill, who especially worked at this side of the problem, held that they could be overcome by moral education. Trained from childhood to associate the good of others with his own, a man would come, he thought, to care for the happiness of others as for the happiness of self. For, in the long run, the two things were coincident. Particularly in a free economic system, as remarked above, each individual, moving along the line of greatest personal profit, would be found to fulfil the function of greatest profit to society. Let this be understood, and we should have true social harmony based on the spontaneous operation of personal interest enlightened by intelligence and chastened by the discipline of unruly instinct. Thus, though their starting-point was different, the Benthamites arrived at practical results not notably divergent from those of the doctrine of natural liberty; and, on the whole, the two influences worked together in the formation of that school who in the reform period exercised so notable an influence on English Liberalism, and to whose work we must now turn. FOOTNOTES: [4] _Cf._ the preamble to the Declaration of the Rights of Man by the French National Assembly in 1789. The Assembly lays down "the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of man," in order, among other things, "that the acts of the legislative power and those of the executive power, being capable of being at every instant compared with the end of every political institution, may be more respected accordingly." [5] The comparison of the Declaration of the Assembly in 1789 with that of the Convention in 1793 is full of interest, both for the points of agreement and difference, but would require a lengthy examination. I note one or two points in passing. [6] Contrast 1793, Art. I: "The end of society is the common happiness. Government is instituted to guarantee to man the enjoyment of his natural and imprescriptible rights." CHAPTER IV 'LAISSEZ-FAIRE' The school of Cobden is affiliated in general outlook both to the doctrine of natural liberty and to the discipline of Bentham. It shared with the Benthamites the thoroughly practical attitude dear to the English mind. It has much less to say of natural rights than the French theorists. On the other hand, it is saturated with the conviction that the unfettered action of the individual is the mainspring of all progress.[7] Its starting-point is economic. Trade is still in fetters. The worst of the archaic internal restrictions have, indeed, been thrown off. But even here Cobden is active in the work of finally emancipating Manchester from manorial rights that have no place in the nineteenth century. The main work, however, is the liberation of foreign trade. The Corn Laws, as even the tariff reformers of our own day admit, were conceived in the interest of the governing classes. They frankly imposed a tax on the food of the masses for the benefit of the landlords, and as the result of the agricultural and industrial revolutions which had been in progress since 1760, the masses had been brought to the lowest point of economic misery. Give to every man the right to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market, urged the Cobdenite, and trade would automatically expand. The business career would be open to the talents. The good workman would command the full money's worth of his work, and his money would buy him food and clothing at the lowest rate in the world's market. Only so would he get the full value of his work, paying toll to none. Taxes there must be to carry on government, but if we looked into the cost of government we found that it depended mostly on armaments. Why did we need armaments? First, because of the national antagonisms aroused and maintained by a protective system. Free commercial intercourse between nations would engender mutual knowledge, and knit the severed peoples by countless ties of business interests. Free Trade meant peace, and once taught by the example of Great Britain's prosperity, other nations would follow suit, and Free Trade would be universal. The other root of national danger was the principle of intervention. We took it on ourselves to set other nations right. How could we judge for other nations? Force was no remedy. Let every people be free to work out its own salvation. Things were not so perfect with us that we need go about setting the houses of other people in order. To complete personal freedom, there must be national freedom. There must also be colonial freedom. The colonies could no longer be governed in the interests of the mother country, nor ought they to require standing garrisons maintained by the mother country. They were distant lands, each, if we gave it freedom, with a great future of its own, capable of protecting itself, and developing with freedom into true nationhood. Personal freedom, colonial freedom, international freedom, were parts of one whole. Non-intervention, peace, restriction of armaments, retrenchment of expenditure, reduction of taxation, were the connected series of practical consequences. The money retrenched from wasteful military expenditure need not all be remitted to the taxpayer. A fraction of it devoted to education--free, secular, and universal--would do as much good as when spent on guns and ships it did harm. For education was necessary to raise the standard of intelligence, and provide the substantial equality of opportunity at the start without which the mass of men could not make use of the freedom given by the removal of legislative restrictions. There were here elements of a more constructive view for which Cobden and his friends have not always received sufficient credit. In the main, however, the teaching of the Manchester school tended both in external and in internal affairs to a restricted view of the function of government. Government had to maintain order, to restrain men from violence and fraud, to hold them secure in person and property against foreign and domestic enemies, to give them redress against injury, that so they may rely on reaping where they have sown, may enjoy the fruits of their industry, may enter unimpeded into what arrangements they will with one another for their mutual benefit. Let us see what criticism was passed on this view by the contemporaries of Cobden and by the loud voice of the facts themselves. The old economic régime had been in decay throughout the eighteenth century. The divorce of the labourer from the land was complete at the time when the Anti-Corn Law League was formed. The mass of the English peasantry were landless labourers working for a weekly wage of about ten or twelve shillings, and often for a good deal less. The rise of machine industry since 1760 had destroyed the old domestic system and reduced the operative in the towns to the position of a factory hand under an employer, who found the road to wealth easy in the monopoly of manufacture enjoyed by this country for two generations after the Napoleonic war. The factory system early brought matters to a head at one point by the systematic employment of women and young children under conditions which outraged the public conscience when they became known. In the case of children it was admitted from an early date, it was urged by Cobden himself, that the principle of free contract could not apply. Admitting, for the sake of argument, that the adult could make a better bargain for himself or herself than any one could do for him or her, no one could contend that the pauper child apprenticed by Poor Law guardians to a manufacturer had any say or could have any judgment as to the work which it was set to do. It had to be protected, and experience showed that it had to be protected by law. Free contract did not solve the question of the helpless child. It left it to be "exploited" by the employer in his own interest, and whatever regard might be shown for its health and well-being by individuals was a matter of individual benevolence, not a right secured by the necessary operation of the system of liberty. But these arguments admitted of great extension. If the child was helpless, was the grown-up person, man or woman, in a much better position? Here was the owner of a mill employing five hundred hands. Here was an operative possessed of no alternative means of subsistence seeking employment. Suppose them to bargain as to terms. If the bargain failed, the employer lost one man and had four hundred and ninety-nine to keep his mill going. At worst he might for a day or two, until another operative appeared, have a little difficulty in working a single machine. During the same days the operative might have nothing to eat, and might see his children going hungry. Where was the effective liberty in such an arrangement? The operatives themselves speedily found that there was none, and had from an early period in the rise of the machine industry sought to redress the balance by combination. Now, combination was naturally disliked by employers, and it was strongly suspect to believers in liberty because it put constraint upon individuals. Yet trade unions gained the first step in emancipation through the action of Place and the Radicals in 1824, more perhaps because these men conceived trade unions as the response of labour to oppressive laws which true freedom of competition would render superfluous than because they founded any serious hopes of permanent social progress upon Trade Unionism itself. In point of fact, the critical attitude was not without its justification. Trade Unionism can be protective in spirit and oppressive in action. Nevertheless, it was essential to the maintenance of their industrial standard by the artisan classes, because it alone, in the absence of drastic legislative protection, could do something to redress the inequality between employer and employed. It gave, upon the whole, far more freedom to the workman than it took away, and in this we learn an important lesson which has far wider application. In the matter of contract true freedom postulates substantial equality between the parties. In proportion as one party is in a position of vantage, he is able to dictate his terms. In proportion as the other party is in a weak position, he must accept unfavourable terms. Hence the truth of Walker's dictum that economic injuries tend to perpetuate themselves. The more a class is brought low, the greater its difficulty in rising again without assistance. For purposes of legislation the State has been exceedingly slow to accept this view. It began, as we saw, with the child, where the case was overwhelming. It went on to include the "young person" and the woman--not without criticism from those who held by woman's rights, and saw in this extension of tutelage an enlargement of male domination. Be that as it may, public opinion was brought to this point by the belief that it was intervening in an exceptional manner to protect a definite class not strong enough to bargain for itself. It drew the line at the adult male; and it is only within our own time, and as the result of a controversy waged for many years within the trade union world itself, that legislation has avowedly undertaken the task of controlling the conditions of industry, the hours, and at length, through the institution of Wages Boards in "sweated industries," the actual remuneration of working people without limitation of age or sex. To this it has been driven by the manifest teaching of experience that liberty without equality is a name of noble sound and squalid result. In place of the system of unfettered agreements between individual and individual which the school of Cobden contemplated, the industrial system which has actually grown up and is in process of further development rests on conditions prescribed by the State, and within the limits of those conditions is very largely governed by collective arrangements between associations of employers and employed. The law provides for the safety of the worker and the sanitary conditions of employment. It prescribes the length of the working day for women and children in factories and workshops, and for men in mines and on railways.[8] In the future it will probably deal freely with the hours of men. It enables wages boards to establish a legal minimum wage in scheduled industries which will undoubtedly grow in number. It makes employers liable for all injuries suffered by operatives in the course of their employment, and forbids any one to "contract out" of this obligation. Within these limits, it allows freedom of contract. But at this point, in the more highly developed trades, the work is taken up by voluntary associations. Combinations of men have been met by combinations of employers, and wages, hours, and all the details of the industrial bargain are settled by collective agreement through the agency of a joint board with an impartial chairman or referee in case of necessity for an entire locality and even an entire trade. So far have we gone from the free competition of isolated individuals. This development is sometimes held to have involved the decay and death of the older Liberalism. It is true that in the beginning factory legislation enjoyed a large measure of Conservative support. It was at that stage in accordance with the best traditions of paternal rule, and it commended itself to the religious convictions of men of whom Lord Shaftesbury was the typical example. It is true, also, that it was bitterly opposed by Cobden and Bright. On the other hand, Radicals like J. Cam Hobhouse took a leading part in the earlier legislation, and Whig Governments passed the very important Acts of 1833 and 1847. The cleavage of opinion, in fact, cut across the ordinary divisions of party. What is more to the purpose is that, as experience ripened, the implications of the new legislation became clearer, and men came to see that by industrial control they were not destroying liberty but confirming it. A new and more concrete conception of liberty arose and many old presuppositions were challenged. Let us look for a moment at these presuppositions. We have seen that the theory of _laissez-faire_ assumed that the State would hold the ring. That is to say, it would suppress force and fraud, keep property safe, and aid men in enforcing contracts. On these conditions, it was maintained, men should be absolutely free to compete with one another, so that their best energies should be called forth, so that each should feel himself responsible for the guidance of his own life, and exert his manhood to the utmost. But why, it might be asked, on these conditions, just these and no others? Why should the State ensure protection of person and property? The time was when the strong man armed kept his goods, and incidentally his neighbour's goods too if he could get hold of them. Why should the State intervene to do for a man that which his ancestor did for himself? Why should a man who has been soundly beaten in physical fight go to a public authority for redress? How much more manly to fight his own battle! Was it not a kind of pauperization to make men secure in person and property through no efforts of their own, by the agency of a state machinery operating over their heads? Would not a really consistent individualism abolish this machinery? "But," the advocate of _laissez-faire_ may reply, "the use of force is criminal, and the State must suppress crime." So men held in the nineteenth century. But there was an earlier time when they did not take this view, but left it to individuals and their kinsfolk to revenge their own injuries by their own might. Was not this a time of more unrestricted individual liberty? Yet the nineteenth century regarded it, and justly, as an age of barbarism. What, we may ask in our turn, is the essence of crime? May we not say that any intentional injury to another may be legitimately punished by a public authority, and may we not say that to impose twelve hours' daily labour on a child was to inflict a greater injury than the theft of a purse for which a century ago a man might be hanged? On what principle, then, is the line drawn, so as to specify certain injuries which the State may prohibit and to mark off others which it must leave untouched? Well, it may be said, _volenti non fit injuria_. No wrong is done to a man by a bargain to which he is a willing party. That may be, though there are doubtful cases. But in the field that has been in question the contention is that one party is not willing. The bargain is a forced bargain. The weaker man consents as one slipping over a precipice might consent to give all his fortune to one who will throw him a rope on no other terms. This is not true consent. True consent is free consent, and full freedom of consent implies equality on the part of both parties to the bargain. Just as government first secured the elements of freedom for all when it prevented the physically stronger man from slaying, beating, despoiling his neighbours, so it secures a larger measure of freedom for all by every restriction which it imposes with a view to preventing one man from making use of any of his advantages to the disadvantage of others. There emerges a distinction between unsocial and social freedom. Unsocial freedom is the right of a man to use his powers without regard to the wishes or interests of any one but himself. Such freedom is theoretically possible for an individual. It is antithetic to all public control. It is theoretically impossible for a plurality of individuals living in mutual contact. Socially it is a contradiction, unless the desires of all men were automatically attuned to social ends. Social freedom, then, for any epoch short of the millennium rests on restraint. It is a freedom that can be enjoyed by all the members of a community, and it is the freedom to choose among those lines of activity which do not involve injury to others. As experience of the social effects of action ripens, and as the social conscience is awakened, the conception of injury is widened and insight into its causes is deepened. The area of restraint is therefore increased. But, inasmuch as injury inflicted is itself crippling to the sufferer, as it lowers his health, confines his life, cramps his powers, so the prevention of such injury sets him free. The restraint of the aggressor is the freedom of the sufferer, and only by restraint on the actions by which men injure one another do they as a whole community gain freedom in all courses of conduct that can be pursued without ultimate social disharmony. It is, therefore, a very shallow wit that taunts contemporary Liberalism with inconsistency in opposing economic protection while it supports protective legislation for the manual labourer. The two things have nothing in common but that they are restraints intended to operate in the interests of somebody. The one is a restraint which, in the Liberal view, would operate in favour of certain industries and interests to the prejudice of others, and, on the whole, in favour of those who are already more fortunately placed and against the poorer classes. The other is a restraint conceived in the interest primarily of the poorer classes with the object of securing to them a more effective freedom and a nearer approach to equality of conditions in industrial relations. There is point in the argument only for those who conceive liberty as opposed to restraint as such. For those who understand that all social liberty rests upon restraint, that restraint of one man in one respect is the condition of the freedom of other men in that respect, the taunt has no meaning whatever. The liberty which is good is not the liberty of one gained at the expense of others, but the liberty which can be enjoyed by all who dwell together, and this liberty depends on and is measured by the completeness with which by law, custom, or their own feelings they are restrained from mutual injury. Individualism, as ordinarily understood, not only takes the policeman and the law court for granted. It also takes the rights of property for granted. But what is meant by the rights of property? In ordinary use the phrase means just that system to which long usage has accustomed us. This is a system under which a man is free to acquire by any method of production or exchange within the limits of the law whatever he can of land, consumable goods, or capital; to dispose of it at his own will and pleasure for his own purposes, to destroy it if he likes, to give it away or sell it as it suits him, and at death to bequeath it to whomsoever he will. The State, it is admitted, can take a part of a man's property by taxation. For the State is a necessity, and men must pay a price for security; but in all taxation the State on this view is taking something from a man which is "his," and in so doing is justified only by necessity. It has no "right" to deprive the individual of anything that is his in order to promote objects of its own which are not necessary to the common order. To do so is to infringe individual rights and make a man contribute by force to objects which he may view with indifference or even with dislike. "Socialistic" taxation is an infringement of individual freedom, the freedom to hold one's own and do as one will with one's own. Such seems to be the ordinary view. But a consistent theory of liberty could not rest wholly satisfied with the actual system under which property is held. The first point of attack, already pressed by the disciples of Cobden, was the barrier to free exchange in the matter of land. It was not and still is not easy for the landless to acquire land, and in the name of free contract Cobden and his disciples pressed for cheap and unimpeded transfer. But a more searching criticism was possible. Land is limited in amount, certain kinds of land very narrowly limited. Where there is limitation of supply monopoly is always possible, and against monopoly the principles of free competition declared war. To Cobden himself, free trade in land was the pendant to free trade in goods. But the attack on the land monopoly could be carried much further, and might lead the individualist who was in earnest about his principles to march a certain distance on parallel lines with the Socialist enemy. This has, in fact, occurred in the school of Henry George. This school holds by competition, but by competition only on the basis of a genuine freedom and equality for all individuals. To secure this basis, it would purge the social system of all elements of monopoly, of which the private ownership of land is in its view the most important. This object, it maintains, can be secured only through the absorption by the State of all elements of monopoly value. Now, monopoly value accrues whenever anything of worth to men of which the supply is limited falls into private hands. In this case competition fails. There is no check upon the owner except the limitations of demand. He can exact a price which bears no necessary relation to the cost of any effort of his own. In addition to normal wages and profits, he can extract from the necessities of others a surplus, to which the name of economic rent is given. He can also hold up his property and refuse to allow others to make use of it until the time when its full value has accrued, thereby increasing the rent which he will ultimately receive at the cost of much loss in the interim to society. Monopolies in our country fall into three classes. There is, first, the monopoly of land. Urban rents, for example, represent not merely the cost of building, nor the cost of building plus the site, as it would be if sites of the kind required were unlimited in amount. They represent the cost of a site where the supply falls short of the demand, that is to say, where there is an element of monopoly. And site value--the element in the actual cost of a house or factory that depends on its position--varies directly with the degree of this monopoly. This value the land nationalizer contends is not created by the owner. It is created by society. In part it is due to the general growth of the country to which the increase of population and the rise of town life is to be attributed. In part it depends on the growth of the particular locality, and in part on the direct expenditure of the ratepayers' money in sanitation and other improvements which make the place one where people can live and industry can thrive. Directly and indirectly, the community creates the site value. The landlord receives it, and, receiving it, can charge any one who wants to live or carry on industry upon the site with rent to the full amount. The land-nationalizer, looking at rights of property purely from the point of view of the individual, denies the justice of this arrangement, and he sees no solution except this--that the monopoly value should pass back to the community which creates it. Accordingly, he favours the taxation of site value to its full amount. Another element of monopoly arises from industries in which competition is inapplicable--the supply of gas and water, for example, a tramway service, and in some conditions a railway service. Here competition may be wasteful if not altogether impossible; and here again, on the lines of a strictly consistent individualism, if the industry is allowed to fall into private hands the owners will be able to secure something more than the normal profits of competitive industry. They will profit by monopoly at the expense of the general consumer, and the remedy is public control or public ownership. The latter is the more complete and efficacious remedy, and it is also the remedy of municipal socialism. Lastly, there may be forms of monopoly created by the State, such as the sale of liquor as restricted by the licensing system. In accordance with competitive ideas the value so created ought not to pass into private hands, and if on social grounds the monopoly is maintained, the taxation of licensed premises ought to be so arranged that the monopoly value returns to the community. Up to this point a thoroughly consistent individualism can work in harmony with socialism, and it is this partial alliance which has, in fact, laid down the lines of later Liberal finance. The great Budget of 1909 had behind it the united forces of Socialist and individualist opinion. It may be added that there is a fourth form of monopoly which would be open to the same double attack, but it is one of which less has been heard in Great Britain than in the United States. It is possible under a competitive system for rivals to come to an agreement. The more powerful may coerce the weaker, or a number of equals may agree to work together. Thus competition may defeat itself, and industry may be marshalled into trusts or other combinations for the private advantage against the public interest. Such combinations, predicted by Karl Marx as the appointed means of dissolving the competitive system, have been kept at bay in this country by Free Trade. Under Protection they constitute the most urgent problem of the day. Even here the railways, to take one example, are rapidly moving to a system of combination, the economies of which are obvious, while its immediate result is monopoly, and its assured end is nationalization. Thus individualism, when it grapples with the facts, is driven no small distance along Socialist lines. Once again we have found that to maintain individual freedom and equality we have to extend the sphere of social control. But to carry through the real principles of Liberalism, to achieve social liberty and living equality of rights, we shall have to probe still deeper. We must not assume any of the rights of property as axiomatic. We must look at their actual working and consider how they affect the life of society. We shall have to ask whether, if we could abolish all monopoly on articles of limited supply, we should yet have dealt with all the causes that contribute to social injustice and industrial disorder, whether we should have rescued the sweated worker, afforded to every man adequate security for a fair return for an honest day's toil, and prevented the use of economic advantage to procure gain for one man at the expense of another. We should have to ask whether we had the basis of a just delimitation between the rights of the community and those of the individual, and therewith a due appreciation of the appropriate ends of the State and the equitable basis of taxation. These inquiries take us to first principles, and to approach that part of our discussion it is desirable to carry further our sketch of the historic development of Liberalism in thought and action. FOOTNOTES: [7] "If I were asked to sum up in a sentence the difference and the connection (between the two schools) I would say that the Manchester men were the disciples of Adam Smith and Bentham, while the Philosophical Radicals followed Bentham and Adam Smith" (F. W. Hirst, _The Manchester School_, Introd., p. xi). Lord Morley, in the concluding chapter of his _Life of Cobden_, points out that it was the view of "policy as a whole" in connection with the economic movement of society which distinguished the school of Cobden from that of the Benthamites. [8] Indirectly it has for long limited the hours of men in factories owing to the interdependence of the adult male with the female and child operative. CHAPTER V GLADSTONE AND MILL From the middle of the nineteenth century two great names stand out in the history of British Liberalism--that of Gladstone in the world of action, that of Mill in the world of thought. Differing in much, they agreed in one respect. They had the supreme virtue of keeping their minds fresh and open to new ideas, and both of them in consequence advanced to a deeper interpretation of social life as they grew older. In 1846 Gladstone ranked as a Conservative, but he parted from his old traditions under the leadership of Peel on the question of Free Trade, and for many years to come the most notable of his public services lay in the completion of the Cobdenite policy of financial emancipation. In the pursuit of this policy he was brought into collision with the House of Lords, and it was his active intervention in 1859-60 which saved the Commons from a humiliating surrender, and secured its financial supremacy unimpaired until 1909. In the following decade he stood for the extension of the suffrage, and it was his Government which, in 1884, carried the extension of the representative principle to the point at which it rested twenty-seven years later. In economics Gladstone kept upon the whole to the Cobdenite principles which he acquired in middle life. He was not sympathetically disposed to the "New Unionism" and the semi-socialistic ideas that came at the end of the 'eighties, which, in fact, constituted a powerful cross current to the political work that he had immediately in hand. Yet in relation to Irish land he entered upon a new departure which threw over freedom of contract in a leading case where the two parties were on glaringly unequal terms. No abstract thinker, he had a passion for justice in the concrete which was capable of carrying him far. He knew tyranny when he saw it, and upon it he waged unremitting and many-sided war. But his most original work was done in the sphere of imperial relations. The maligned Majuba settlement was an act of justice which came too late to effect a permanent undoing of mischief. All the greater was the courage of the statesman who could throw himself at that time upon the inherent force of national liberty and international fair dealing. In the case of Ireland Gladstone again relied on the same principles, but another force was necessary to carry the day, a force which no man can command, the force of time. In international dealings generally Gladstone was a pioneer. His principle was not precisely that of Cobden. He was not a non-interventionist. He took action on behalf of Greece, and would have done so on behalf of the Armenians, to save the national honour and prevent a monstrous wrong. The Gladstonian principle may be defined by antithesis to that of Machiavelli, and to that of Bismarck, and to the practice of every Foreign Office. As that practice proceeds on the principle that reasons of State justify everything, so Gladstone proceeded on the principle that reasons of State justify nothing that is not justified already by the human conscience. The statesman is for him a man charged with maintaining not only the material interests but the honour of his country. He is a citizen of the world in that he represents his nation, which is a member of the community of the world. He has to recognize rights and duties, as every representative of every other human organization has to recognize rights and duties. There is no line drawn beyond which human obligations cease. There is no gulf across which the voice of human suffering cannot be heard, beyond which massacre and torture cease to be execrable. Simply as a patriot, again, a man should recognize that a nation may become great not merely by painting the map red, or extending her commerce beyond all precedent, but also as the champion of justice, the succourer of the oppressed, the established home of freedom. From the denunciation of the Opium War, from the exposure of the Neapolitan prisons, to his last appearance on the morrow of the Constantinople massacre this was the message which Gladstone sought to convey. He was before his time. He was not always able to maintain his principle in his own Cabinet, and on his retirement the world appeared to relapse definitely into the older ways. His own party gave itself up in large measure to opposite views. On the other hand, careful and unprejudiced criticism will recognize that the chief opponent of his old age, Lord Salisbury, had imbibed something of his spirit, and under its influence did much to save the country from the excesses of Imperialism, while his follower, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, used the brief term of his power to reverse the policy of racial domination in South Africa and to prove the value of the old Gladstonian trust in the recuperative force of political freedom. It may be added that, if cynicism has since appeared to hold the field in international politics, it is the cynicism of terror rather than the cynicism of ambition. The Scare has superseded the Vision as the moving force in our external relations, and there are now signs that the Scare in turn has spent its force and is making room at last for Sense. In other respects, Gladstone was a moral rather than an intellectual force. He raised the whole level of public life. By habitually calling upon what was best in men, he deepened the sense of public responsibility and paved the way, half unconsciously, for the fuller exercise of the social conscience. Mill was also a moral force, and the most persistent influence of his books is more an effect of character than of intellect. But, in place of Gladstone's driving power and practical capacity, Mill had the qualities of a life-long learner, and in his single person he spans the interval between the old and the new Liberalism. Brought up on the pure milk of the Benthamite word, he never definitely abandoned the first principles of his father. But he was perpetually bringing them into contact with fresh experience and new trains of thought, considering how they worked, and how they ought to be modified in order to maintain what was really sound and valuable in their content. Hence, Mill is the easiest person in the world to convict of inconsistency, incompleteness, and lack of rounded system. Hence, also, his work will survive the death of many consistent, complete, and perfectly rounded systems. As a utilitarian, Mill cannot appeal to any rights of the individual that can be set in opposition to the public welfare. His method is to show that the permanent welfare of the public is bound up with the rights of the individual. Of course, there are occasions on which the immediate expediency of the public would be met by ignoring personal rights. But if the rule of expediency were followed there would be neither right nor law at all. There would be no fixed rules in social life, and nothing to which men could trust in guiding their conduct. For the utilitarian, then, the question of right resolves itself into the question: What claim is it, in general and as a matter of principle, advisable for society to recognize? What in any given relation are the permanent conditions of social health? In regard to liberty Mill's reply turns on the moral or spiritual forces which determine the life of society. First, particularly as regards freedom of thought and discussion, society needs light. Truth has a social value, and we are never to suppose that we are in the possession of complete and final truth. But truth is only to be sought by experience in the world of thought, and of action as well. In the process of experimentation there are endless opportunities of error, and the free search for truth therefore involves friction and waste. The promulgation of error will do harm, a harm that might be averted if error were suppressed. But suppression by any other means than those of rational suasion is one of those remedies which cure the disease by killing the patient. It paralyzes the free search for truth. Not only so, but there is an element of positive value in honest error which places it above mechanically accepted truth. So far as it is honest it springs from the spontaneous operation of the mind on the basis of some partial and incomplete experience. It is, so far as it goes, an interpretation of experience, though a faulty one, whereas the belief imposed by authority is no interpretation of experience at all. It involves no personal effort. Its blind acceptance seals the resignation of the will and the intellect to effacement and stultification. The argument on this side does not rest on human fallibility. It appeals in its full strength to those who are most confident that they possess truth final and complete. They are asked to recognize that the way in which this truth must be communicated to others is not by material but by spiritual means, and that if they hold out physical threats as a deterrent, or worldly advantage as a means of persuasion, they are destroying not merely the fruits but the very root of truth as it grows within the human mind. Yet the argument receives additional force when we consider the actual history of human belief. The candid man who knows anything of the movements of thought will recognize that even the faith which is most vital to him is something that has grown through the generations, and he may infer, if he is reasonable, that as it has grown in the past so, if it has the vital seed within it, it will grow in the future. It may be permanent in outline, but in content it will change. But, if truth itself is an expanding circle of ideas that grows through criticism and by modification, we need say no more as to the rough and imperfect apprehension of truth which constitutes the dominant opinion of society at any given moment. It needs little effort of detachment to appreciate the danger of any limitation of inquiry by the collective will whether its organ be law or the repressive force of public opinion. The foundation of liberty on this side, then, is the conception of thought as a growth dependent on spiritual laws, flourishing in the movement of ideas as guided by experience, reflection and feeling, corrupted by the intrusion of material considerations, slain by the guillotine of finality. The same conception is broadened out to cover the whole idea of personality. Social well-being cannot be incompatible with individual well-being. But individual well-being has as its foundation the responsible life of the rational creature. Manhood, and Mill would emphatically add womanhood too, rests on the spontaneous development of faculty. To find vent for the capacities of feeling, of emotion, of thought, of action, is to find oneself. The result is no anarchy. The self so found has as the pivot of its life the power of control. To introduce some unity into life, some harmony into thought, action and feeling, is its central achievement, and to realize its relation to others and guide its own life thereby, its noblest rule. But the essential of control is that it should be self-control. Compulsion may be necessary for the purposes of external order, but it adds nothing to the inward life that is the true being of man. It even threatens it with loss of authority and infringes the sphere of its responsibility. It is a means and not an end, and a means that readily becomes a danger to ends that are very vital. Under self-guidance individuals will diverge widely, and some of their eccentricities will be futile, others wasteful, others even painful and abhorrent to witness. But, upon the whole, it is good that they should differ. Individuality is an element of well-being, and that not only because it is the necessary consequence of self-government, but because, after all allowances for waste, the common life is fuller and richer for the multiplicity of types that it includes, and that go to enlarge the area of collective experience. The larger wrong done by the repression of women is not the loss to women themselves who constitute one half of the community, but the impoverishment of the community as a whole, the loss of all the elements in the common stock which the free play of the woman's mind would contribute. Similar principles underlie Mill's treatment of representative government. If the adult citizen, male or female, has a right to vote, it is not so much as a means to the enforcement of his claims upon society, but rather as a means of enforcing his personal responsibility for the actions of the community. The problem of character is the determining issue in the question of government. If men could be spoon-fed with happiness, a benevolent despotism would be the ideal system. If they are to take a part in working out their own salvation, they must be summoned to their share in the task of directing the common life. Carrying this principle further, Mill turned the edge of the common objection to the extension of the suffrage based on the ignorance and the irresponsibility of the voters. To learn anything men must practise. They must be trusted with more responsibility if they are to acquire the sense of responsibility. There were dangers in the process, but there were greater dangers and there were fewer elements of hope as long as the mass of the population was left outside the circle of civic rights and duties. The greatest danger that Mill saw in democracy was that of the tyranny of the majority. He emphasized, perhaps more than any Liberal teacher before him, the difference between the desire of the majority and the good of the community. He recognized that the different rights for which the Liberal was wont to plead might turn out in practice hard to reconcile with one another, that if personal liberty were fundamental it might only be imperilled by a so-called political liberty which would give to the majority unlimited powers of coercion. He was, therefore, for many years anxiously concerned with the means of securing a fair hearing and fair representation to minorities, and as a pioneer of the movement for Proportional Representation he sought to make Parliament the reflection not of a portion of the people, however preponderant numerically, but of the whole. On the economic side of social life Mill recognized in principle the necessity of controlling contract where the parties were not on equal terms, but his insistence on personal responsibility made him chary in extending the principle to grown-up persons, and his especial attachment to the cause of feminine emancipation led him to resist the tide of feeling which was, in fact, securing the first elements of emancipation for the woman worker. He trusted at the outset of his career to the elevation of the standard of comfort as the best means of improving the position of the wage-earner, and in this elevation he regarded the limitation of the family as an essential condition. As he advanced in life, however, he became more and more dissatisfied with the whole structure of a system which left the mass of the population in the position of wage-earners, while the minority lived on rents, profits, and the interest on invested capital. He came to look forward to a co-operative organization of society in which a man would learn to "dig and weave for his country," as he now is prepared to fight for it, and in which the surplus products of industry would be distributed among the producers. In middle life voluntary co-operation appeared to him the best means to this end, but towards the close he recognized that his change of views was such as, on the whole, to rank him with the Socialists, and the brief exposition of the Socialist ideal given in his Autobiography remains perhaps the best summary statement of Liberal Socialism that we possess. CHAPTER VI THE HEART OF LIBERALISM The teaching of Mill brings us close to the heart of Liberalism. We learn from him, in the first place, that liberty is no mere formula of law, or of the restriction of law. There may be a tyranny of custom, a tyranny of opinion, even a tyranny of circumstance, as real as any tyranny of government and more pervasive. Nor does liberty rest on the self-assertion of the individual. There is scope abundant for Liberalism and illiberalism in personal conduct. Nor is liberty opposed to discipline, to organization, to strenuous conviction as to what is true and just. Nor is it to be identified with tolerance of opposed opinions. The Liberal does not meet opinions which he conceives to be false with toleration, as though they did not matter. He meets them with justice, and exacts for them a fair hearing as though they mattered just as much as his own. He is always ready to put his own convictions to the proof, not because he doubts them, but because he believes in them. For, both as to that which he holds for true and as to that which he holds for false, he believes that one final test applies. Let error have free play, and one of two things will happen. Either as it develops, as its implications and consequences become clear, some elements of truth will appear within it. They will separate themselves out; they will go to enrich the stock of human ideas; they will add something to the truth which he himself mistakenly took as final; they will serve to explain the root of the error; for error itself is generally a truth misconceived, and it is only when it is explained that it is finally and satisfactorily confuted. Or, in the alternative, no element of truth will appear. In that case the more fully the error is understood, the more patiently it is followed up in all the windings of its implications and consequences, the more thoroughly will it refute itself. The cancerous growth cannot be extirpated by the knife. The root is always left, and it is only the evolution of the self-protecting anti-toxin that works the final cure. Exactly parallel is the logic of truth. The more the truth is developed in all its implications, the greater is the opportunity of detecting any element of error that it may contain; and, conversely, if no error appears, the more completely does it establish itself as the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Liberalism applies the wisdom of Gamaliel in no spirit of indifference, but in the full conviction of the potency of truth. If this thing be of man, _i. e._ if it is not rooted in actual verity, it will come to nought. If it be of God, let us take care that we be not found fighting against God. Divergences of opinion, of character, of conduct are not unimportant matters. They may be most serious matters, and no one is called on in the name of Liberalism to overlook their seriousness. There are, for example, certain disqualifications inherent in the profession of certain opinions. It is not illiberal to recognize such disqualifications. It is not illiberal for a Protestant in choosing a tutor for his son to reject a conscientious Roman Catholic who avows that all his teaching is centred on the doctrine of his Church. It would be illiberal to reject the same man for the specific purpose of teaching arithmetic, if he avowed that he had no intention of using his position for the purpose of religious propagandism. For the former purpose the divergence of religious opinion is an inherent disqualification. It negates the object propounded, which is the general education of the boy on lines in which the father believes. For the latter purpose the opinion is no disqualification. The devout Catholic accepts the multiplication table, and can impart his knowledge without reference to the infallibility of the Pope. To refuse to employ him is to impose an extraneous penalty on his convictions. It is not illiberal for an editor to decline the services of a member of the opposite party as a leader writer, or even as a political reviewer or in any capacity in which his opinions would affect his work. It is illiberal to reject him as a compositor or as a clerk, or in any capacity in which his opinions would not affect his work for the paper. It is not illiberal to refuse a position of trust to the man whose record shows that he is likely to abuse such a trust. It is illiberal--and this the "moralist" has yet to learn--to punish a man who has done a wrong in one relation by excluding him from the performance of useful social functions for which he is perfectly fitted, by which he could at once serve society and re-establish his own self-respect. There may, however, yet come a time when Liberalism, already recognized as a duty in religion and in politics, will take its true place at the centre of our ethical conceptions, and will be seen to have its application not only to him whom we conceive to be the teacher of false opinions, but to the man whom we hold a sinner. The ground of Liberalism so understood is certainly not the view that a man's personal opinions are socially indifferent, nor that his personal morality matters nothing to others. So far as Mill rested his case on the distinction between self-regarding actions and actions that affect others, he was still dominated by the older individualism. We should frankly recognize that there is no side of a man's life which is unimportant to society, for whatever he is, does, or thinks may affect his own well-being, which is and ought to be matter of common concern, and may also directly or indirectly affect the thought, action, and character of those with whom he comes in contact. The underlying principle may be put in two ways. In the first place, the man is much more than his opinions and his actions. Carlyle and Sterling did not differ "except in opinion." To most of us that is just what difference means. Carlyle was aware that there was something much deeper, something that opinion just crassly formulates, and for the most part formulates inadequately, that is the real man. The real man is something more than is ever adequately expressed in terms which his fellows can understand; and just as his essential humanity lies deeper than all distinctions of rank, and class, and colour, and even, though in a different sense, of sex, so also it goes far below those comparatively external events which make one man figure as a saint and another as a criminal. This sense of ultimate oneness is the real meaning of equality, as it is the foundation of social solidarity and the bond which, if genuinely experienced, resists the disruptive force of all conflict, intellectual, religious, and ethical. But, further, while personal opinions and social institutions are like crystallized results, achievements that have been won by certain definite processes of individual or collective effort, human personality is that within which lives and grows, which can be destroyed but cannot be made, which cannot be taken to pieces and repaired, but can be placed under conditions in which it will flourish and expand, or, if it is diseased, under conditions in which it will heal itself by its own recuperative powers. The foundation of liberty is the idea of growth. Life is learning, but whether in theory or practice what a man genuinely learns is what he absorbs, and what he absorbs depends on the energy which he himself puts forth in response to his surroundings. Thus, to come at once to the real crux, the question of moral discipline, it is of course possible to reduce a man to order and prevent him from being a nuisance to his neighbours by arbitrary control and harsh punishment. This may be to the comfort of the neighbours, as is admitted, but regarded as a moral discipline it is a contradiction in terms. It is doing less than nothing for the character of the man himself. It is merely crushing him, and unless his will is killed the effect will be seen if ever the superincumbent pressure is by chance removed. It is also possible, though it takes a much higher skill, to teach the same man to discipline himself, and this is to foster the development of will, of personality, of self control, or whatever we please to call that central harmonizing power which makes us capable of directing our own lives. Liberalism is the belief that society can safely be founded on this self-directing power of personality, that it is only on this foundation that a true community can be built, and that so established its foundations are so deep and so wide that there is no limit that we can place to the extent of the building. Liberty then becomes not so much a right of the individual as a necessity of society. It rests not on the claim of A to be let alone by B, but on the duty of B to treat A as a rational being. It is not right to let crime alone or to let error alone, but it is imperative to treat the criminal or the mistaken or the ignorant as beings capable of right and truth, and to lead them on instead of merely beating them down. The rule of liberty is just the application of rational method. It is the opening of the door to the appeal of reason, of imagination, of social feeling; and except through the response to this appeal there is no assured progress of society. Now, I am not contending that these principles are free from difficulty in application. At many points they suggest difficulties both in theory and in practice, with some of which I shall try to deal later on. Nor, again, am I contending that freedom is the universal solvent, or the idea of liberty the sole foundation on which a true social philosophy can be based. On the contrary, freedom is only one side of social life. Mutual aid is not less important than mutual forbearance, the theory of collective action no less fundamental than the theory of personal freedom. But, in an inquiry where all the elements are so closely interwoven as they are in the field of social life, the point of departure becomes almost indifferent. Wherever we start we shall, if we are quite frank and consistent, be led on to look at the whole from some central point, and this, I think, has happened to us in working with the conception of 'liberty.' For, beginning with the right of the individual, and the antithesis between personal freedom and social control, we have been led on to a point at which we regard liberty as primarily a matter of social interest, as something flowing from the necessities of continuous advance in those regions of truth and of ethics which constitute the matters of highest social concern. At the same time, we have come to look for the effect of liberty in the firmer establishment of social solidarity, as the only foundation on which such solidarity can securely rest. We have, in fact, arrived by a path of our own at that which is ordinarily described as the organic conception of the relation between the individual and society--a conception towards which Mill worked through his career, and which forms the starting-point of T. H. Green's philosophy alike in ethics and in politics. The term organic is so much used and abused that it is best to state simply what it means. A thing is called organic when it is made up of parts which are quite distinct from one another, but which are destroyed or vitally altered when they are removed from the whole. Thus, the human body is organic because its life depends on the functions performed by many organs, while each of these organs depends in turn on the life of the body, perishing and decomposing if removed therefrom. Now, the organic view of society is equally simple. It means that, while the life of society is nothing but the life of individuals as they act one upon another, the life of the individual in turn would be something utterly different if he could be separated from society. A great deal of him would not exist at all. Even if he himself could maintain physical existence by the luck and skill of a Robinson Crusoe, his mental and moral being would, if it existed at all, be something quite different from anything that we know. By language, by training, by simply living with others, each of us absorbs into his system the social atmosphere that surrounds us. In particular, in the matter of rights and duties which is cardinal for Liberal theory, the relation of the individual to the community is everything. His rights and his duties are alike defined by the common good. What, for example, is my right? On the face of it, it is something that I claim. But a mere claim is nothing. I might claim anything and everything. If my claim is of right it is because it is sound, well grounded, in the judgment of an impartial observer. But an impartial observer will not consider me alone. He will equally weigh the opposed claims of others. He will take us in relation to one another, that is to say, as individuals involved in a social relationship. Further, if his decision is in any sense a rational one, it must rest on a principle of some kind; and again, as a rational man, any principle which he asserts he must found on some good result which it serves or embodies, and as an impartial man he must take the good of every one affected into account. That is to say, he must found his judgment on the common good. An individual right, then, cannot conflict with the common good, nor could any right exist apart from the common good. The argument might seem to make the individual too subservient to society. But this is to forget the other side of the original supposition. Society consists wholly of persons. It has no distinct personality separate from and superior to those of its members. It has, indeed, a certain collective life and character. The British nation is a unity with a life of its own. But the unity is constituted by certain ties that bind together all British subjects, which ties are in the last resort feelings and ideas, sentiments of patriotism, of kinship, a common pride, and a thousand more subtle sentiments that bind together men who speak a common language, have behind them a common history, and understand one another as they can understand no one else. The British nation is not a mysterious entity over and above the forty odd millions of living souls who dwell together under a common law. Its life is their life, its well-being or ill-fortune their well-being or ill-fortune. Thus, the common good to which each man's rights are subordinate is a good in which each man has a share. This share consists in realizing his capacities of feeling, of loving, of mental and physical energy, and in realizing these he plays his part in the social life, or, in Green's phrase, he finds his own good in the common good. Now, this phrase, it must be admitted, involves a certain assumption, which may be regarded as the fundamental postulate of the organic view of society. It implies that such a fulfilment or full development of personality is practically possible not for one man only but for all members of a community. There must be a line of development open along which each can move in harmony with others. Harmony in the full sense would involve not merely absence of conflict but actual support. There must be for each, then, possibilities of development such as not merely to permit but actively to further the development of others. Now, the older economists conceived a natural harmony, such that the interests of each would, if properly understood and unchecked by outside interference, inevitably lead him in courses profitable to others and to society at large. We saw that this assumption was too optimistic. The conception which we have now reached does not assume so much. It postulates, not that there is an actually existing harmony requiring nothing but prudence and coolness of judgment for its effective operation, but only that there is a possible ethical harmony, to which, partly by discipline, partly by the improvement of the conditions of life, men might attain, and that in such attainment lies the social ideal. To attempt the systematic proof of this postulate would take us into the field of philosophical first principles. It is the point at which the philosophy of politics comes into contact with that of ethics. It must suffice to say here that, just as the endeavour to establish coherent system in the world of thought is the characteristic of the rational impulse which lies at the root of science and philosophy, so the impulse to establish harmony in the world of feeling and action--a harmony which must include all those who think and feel--is of the essence of the rational impulse in the world of practice. To move towards harmony is the persistent impulse of the rational being, even if the goal lies always beyond the reach of accomplished effort. These principles may appear very abstract, remote from practical life, and valueless for concrete teaching. But this remoteness is of the nature of first principles when taken without the connecting links that bind them to the details of experience. To find some of these links let us take up again our old Liberal principles, and see how they look in the light of the organic, or, as we may now call it, the harmonic conception. We shall readily see, to begin with, that the old idea of equality has its place. For the common good includes every individual. It is founded on personality, and postulates free scope for the development of personality in each member of the community. This is the foundation not only of equal rights before the law, but also of what is called equality of opportunity. It does not necessarily imply actual equality of treatment for all persons any more than it implies original equality of powers.[9] It does, I think, imply that whatever inequality of actual treatment, of income, rank, office, consideration, there be in a good social system, it would rest, not on the interest of the favoured individual as such, but on the common good. If the existence of millionaires on the one hand and of paupers on the other is just, it must be because such contrasts are the result of an economic system which upon the whole works out for the common good, the good of the pauper being included therein as well as the good of the millionaire; that is to say, that when we have well weighed the good and the evil of all parties concerned we can find no alternative open to us which could do better for the good of all. I am not for the moment either attacking or defending any economic system. I point out only that this is the position which according to the organic or harmonic view of society must be made good by any rational defence of grave inequality in the distribution of wealth. In relation to equality, indeed, it appears, oddly enough, that the harmonic principle can adopt wholesale, and even expand, one of the "Rights of Man" as formulated in 1789--"Social distinctions can only be founded upon common utility." If it is really just that A should be superior to B in wealth or power or position, it is only because when the good of all concerned is considered, among whom B is one, it turns out that there is a net gain in the arrangement as compared with any alternative that we can devise. If we turn from equality to liberty, the general lines of argument have already been indicated, and the discussion of difficulties in detail must be left for the next chapter. It need only be repeated here that on the harmonic principle the fundamental importance of liberty rests on the nature of the "good" itself, and that whether we are thinking of the good of society or the good of the individual. The good is something attained by the development of the basal factors of personality; a development proceeding by the widening of ideas, the awakening of the imagination, the play of affection and passion, the strengthening and extension of rational control. As it is the development of these factors in each human being that makes his life worth having, so it is their harmonious interaction, the response of each to each, that makes of society a living whole. Liberty so interpreted cannot, as we have seen, dispense with restraint; restraint, however, is not an end but a means to an end, and one of the principal elements in that end is the enlargement of liberty. But the collective activity of the community does not necessarily proceed by coercion or restraint. The more securely it is founded on freedom and general willing assent, the more it is free to work out all the achievements in which the individual is feeble or powerless while combined action is strong. Human progress, on whatever side we consider it, is found to be in the main social progress, the work of conscious or unconscious co-operation. In this work voluntary association plays a large and increasing part. But the State is one form of association among others, distinguished by its use of coercive power, by its supremacy, and by its claim to control all who dwell within its geographical limits. What the functions of such a form of association are to be we shall have to consider a little further in connection with the other questions which we have already raised. But that, in general, we are justified in regarding the State as one among many forms of human association for the maintenance and improvement of life is the general principle that we have to point out here, and this is the point at which we stand furthest from the older Liberalism. We have, however, already seen some reason for thinking that the older doctrines led, when carefully examined, to a more enlarged conception of State action than appeared on the surface; and we shall see more fully before we have done that the "positive" conception of the State which we have now reached not only involves no conflict with the true principle of personal liberty, but is necessary to its effective realization. There is, in addition, one principle of historic Liberalism with which our present conception of the State is in full sympathy. The conception of the common good as it has been explained can be realized in its fullness only through the common will. There are, of course, elements of value in the good government of a benevolent despot or of a fatherly aristocracy. Within any peaceful order there is room for many good things to flourish. But the full fruit of social progress is only to be reaped by a society in which the generality of men and women are not only passive recipients but practical contributors. To make the rights and responsibilities of citizens real and living, and to extend them as widely as the conditions of society allow, is thus an integral part of the organic conception of society, and the justification of the democratic principle. It is, at the same time, the justification of nationalism so far as nationalism is founded on a true interpretation of history. For, inasmuch as the true social harmony rests on feeling and makes use of all the natural ties of kinship, of neighbourliness, of congruity of character and belief, and of language and mode of life, the best, healthiest, and most vigorous political unit is that to which men are by their own feelings strongly drawn. Any breach of such unity, whether by forcible disruption or by compulsory inclusion in a larger society of alien sentiments and laws, tends to mutilate--or, at lowest, to cramp--the spontaneous development of social life. National and personal freedom are growths of the same root, and their historic connection rests on no accident, but on ultimate identity of idea. Thus in the organic conception of society each of the leading ideas of historic Liberalism has its part to play. The ideal society is conceived as a whole which lives and flourishes by the harmonious growth of its parts, each of which in developing on its own lines and in accordance with its own nature tends on the whole to further the development of others. There is some elementary trace of such harmony in every form of social life that can maintain itself, for if the conflicting impulses predominated society would break up, and when they do predominate society does break up. At the other extreme, true harmony is an ideal which it is perhaps beyond the power of man to realize, but which serves to indicate the line of advance. But to admit this is to admit that the lines of possible development for each individual or, to use a more general phrase, for each constituent of the social order are not limited and fixed. There are many possibilities, and the course that will in the end make for social harmony is only one among them, while the possibilities of disharmony and conflict are many. The progress of society like that of the individual depends, then, ultimately on choice. It is not "natural," in the sense in which a physical law is natural, that is, in the sense of going forward automatically from stage to stage without backward turnings, deflections to the left, or fallings away on the right. It is natural only in this sense, that it is the expression of deep-seated forces of human nature which come to their own only by an infinitely slow and cumbersome process of mutual adjustment. Every constructive social doctrine rests on the conception of human progress. The heart of Liberalism is the understanding that progress is not a matter of mechanical contrivance, but of the liberation of living spiritual energy. Good mechanism is that which provides the channels wherein such energy can flow unimpeded, unobstructed by its own exuberance of output, vivifying the social structure, expanding and ennobling the life of mind. FOOTNOTE: [9] An absurd misconception fostered principally by opponents of equality for controversial purposes. CHAPTER VII THE STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL We have seen something of the principle underlying the Liberal idea and of its various applications. We have now to put the test question. Are these different applications compatible? Will they work together to make that harmonious whole of which it is easy enough to talk in abstract terms? Are they themselves really harmonious in theory and in practice? Does scope for individual development, for example, consort with the idea of equality? Is popular sovereignty a practicable basis of personal freedom, or does it open an avenue to the tyranny of the mob? Will the sentiment of nationality dwell in unison with the ideal of peace? Is the love of liberty compatible with the full realization of the common will? If reconcilable in theory, may not these ideals collide in practice? Are there not clearly occasions demonstrable in history when development in one direction involves retrogression in another? If so, how are we to strike the balance of gain and loss? Does political progress offer us nothing but a choice of evils, or may we have some confidence that, in solving the most pressing problem of the moment, we shall in the end be in a better position for grappling with the obstacles that come next in turn? I shall deal with these questions as far as limits of space allow, and I will take first the question of liberty and the common will upon which everything turns. Enough has already been said on this topic to enable us to shorten the discussion. We have seen that social liberty rests on restraint. A man can be free to direct his own life only in so far as others are prevented from molesting and interfering with him. So far there is no real departure from the strictest tenets of individualism. We have, indeed, had occasion to examine the application of the doctrine to freedom of contract on the one hand, and to the action of combinations on the other, and have seen reason to think that in either case nominal freedom, that is to say, the absence of legal restraint, might have the effect of impairing real freedom, that is to say, would allow the stronger party to coerce the weaker. We have also seen that the effect of combination may be double edged, that it may restrict freedom on one side and enlarge it on the other. In all these cases our contention has been simply that we should be guided by real and not by verbal considerations,--that we should ask in every case what policy will yield effective freedom--and we have found a close connection in each instance between freedom and equality. In these cases, however, we were dealing with the relations of one man with another, or of one body of men with another, and we could regard the community as an arbiter between them whose business it was to see justice done and prevent the abuse of coercive power. Hence we could treat a very large part of the modern development of social control as motived by the desire for a more effective liberty. The case is not so clear when we find the will of the individual in conflict with the will of the community as a whole. When such conflict occurs, it would seem that we must be prepared for one of two things. Either we must admit the legitimacy of coercion, avowedly not in the interests of freedom but in furtherance, without regard to freedom, of other ends which the community deems good. Or we must admit limitations which may cramp the development of the general will, and perchance prove a serious obstacle to collective progress. Is there any means of avoiding this conflict? Must we leave the question to be fought out in each case by a balance of advantages and disadvantages, or are there any general considerations which help us to determine the true sphere of collective and of private action? Let us first observe that, as Mill pointed out long ago, there are many forms of collective action which do not involve coercion. The State may provide for certain objects which it deems good without compelling any one to make use of them. Thus it may maintain hospitals, though any one who can pay for them remains free to employ his own doctors and nurses. It may and does maintain a great educational system, while leaving every one free to maintain or to attend a private school. It maintains parks and picture galleries without driving any one into them. There is a municipal tramway service, which does not prevent private people from running motor 'buses along the same streets, and so on. It is true that for the support of these objects rates and taxes are compulsorily levied, but this form of compulsion raises a set of questions of which we shall have to speak in another connection, and does not concern us here. For the moment we have to deal only with those actions of State which compel all citizens, or all whom they concern, to fall in with them and allow of no divergence. This kind of coercion tends to increase. Is its extension necessarily an encroachment upon liberty, or are the elements of value secured by collective control distinct from the elements of value secured by individual choice, so that within due limits each may develop side by side? We have already declined to solve the problem by applying Mill's distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding actions, first because there are no actions which may not directly or indirectly affect others, secondly because even if there were they would not cease to be matter of concern to others. The common good includes the good of every member of the community, and the injury which a man inflicts upon himself is matter of common concern, even apart from any ulterior effect upon others. If we refrain from coercing a man for his own good, it is not because his good is indifferent to us, but because it cannot be furthered by coercion. The difficulty is founded on the nature of the good itself, which on its personal side depends on the spontaneous flow of feeling checked and guided not by external restraint but by rational self-control. To try to form character by coercion is to destroy it in the making. Personality is not built up from without but grows from within, and the function of the outer order is not to create it, but to provide for it the most suitable conditions of growth. Thus, to the common question whether it is possible to make men good by Act of Parliament, the reply is that it is not possible to compel morality because morality is the act or character of a free agent, but that it is possible to create the conditions under which morality can develop, and among these not the least important is freedom from compulsion by others. The argument suggests that compulsion is limited not by indifference--how could the character of its members be matter of indifference to the community?--but by its own incapacity to achieve its ends. The spirit cannot be forced. Nor, conversely, can it prevail by force. It may require social expression. It may build up an association, a church for example, to carry out the common objects and maintain the common life of all who are like-minded. But the association must be free, because spiritually everything depends not on what is done but on the will with which it is done. The limit to the value of coercion thus lies not in the restriction of social purpose, but in the conditions of personal life. No force can compel growth. Whatever elements of social value depend on the accord of feeling, on comprehension of meaning, on the assent of will, must come through liberty. Here is the sphere and function of liberty in the social harmony. Where, then, is the sphere of compulsion, and what is its value? The reply is that compulsion is of value where outward conformity is of value, and this may be in any case where the non-conformity of one wrecks the purpose of others. We have already remarked that liberty itself only rests upon restraint. Thus a religious body is not, properly speaking, free to march in procession through the streets unless people of a different religion are restrained from pelting the procession with stones and pursuing it with insolence. We restrain them from disorder not to teach them the genuine spirit of religion, which they will not learn in the police court, but to secure to the other party the right of worship unmolested. The enforced restraint has its value in the action that it sets free. But we may not only restrain one man from obstructing another--and the extent to which we do this is the measure of the freedom that we maintain--but we may also restrain him from obstructing the general will; and this we have to do whenever uniformity is necessary to the end which the general will has in view. The majority of employers in a trade we may suppose would be willing to adopt certain precautions for the health or safety of their workers, to lower hours or to raise the rate of wages. They are unable to do so, however, as long as a minority, perhaps as long as a single employer, stands out. He would beat them in competition if they were voluntarily to undertake expenses from which he is free. In this case, the will of a minority, possibly the will of one man, thwarts that of the remainder. It coerces them, indirectly, but quite as effectively as if he were their master. If they, by combination, can coerce him no principle of liberty is violated. It is coercion against coercion, differing possibly in form and method, but not in principle or in spirit. Further, if the community as a whole sympathizes with the one side rather than the other, it can reasonably bring the law into play. Its object is not the moral education of the recusant individuals. Its object is to secure certain conditions which it believes necessary for the welfare of its members, and which can only be secured by an enforced uniformity. It appears, then, that the true distinction is not between self-regarding and other-regarding actions, but between coercive and non-coercive actions. The function of State coercion is to override individual coercion, and, of course, coercion exercised by any association of individuals within the State. It is by this means that it maintains liberty of expression, security of person and property, genuine freedom of contract, the rights of public meeting and association, and finally its own power to carry out common objects undefeated by the recalcitrance of individual members. Undoubtedly it endows both individuals and associations with powers as well as with rights. But over these powers it must exercise supervision in the interests of equal justice. Just as compulsion failed in the sphere of liberty, the sphere of spiritual growth, so liberty fails in the external order wherever, by the mere absence of supervisory restriction, men are able directly or indirectly to put constraint on one another. This is why there is no intrinsic and inevitable conflict between liberty and compulsion, but at bottom a mutual need. The object of compulsion is to secure the most favourable external conditions of inward growth and happiness so far as these conditions depend on combined action and uniform observance. The sphere of liberty is the sphere of growth itself. There is no true opposition between liberty as such and control as such, for every liberty rests on a corresponding act of control. The true opposition is between the control that cramps the personal life and the spiritual order, and the control that is aimed at securing the external and material conditions of their free and unimpeded development. I do not pretend that this delimitation solves all problems. The "inward" life will seek to express itself in outward acts. A religious ordinance may bid the devout refuse military service, or withhold the payment of a tax, or decline to submit a building to inspection. Here are external matters where conscience and the State come into direct conflict, and where is the court of appeal that is to decide between them? In any given case the right, as judged by the ultimate effect on human welfare, may, of course, be on the one side, or on the other, or between the two. But is there anything to guide the two parties as long as each believes itself to be in the right and sees no ground for waiving its opinion? To begin with, clearly the State does well to avoid such conflicts by substituting alternatives. Other duties than that of military service may be found for a follower of Tolstoy, and as long as he is willing to take his full share of burdens the difficulty is fairly met. Again, the mere convenience of the majority cannot be fairly weighed against the religious convictions of the few. It might be convenient that certain public work should be done on Saturday, but mere convenience would be an insufficient ground for compelling Jews to participate in it. Religious and ethical conviction must be weighed against religious and ethical conviction. It is not number that counts morally, but the belief that is reasoned out according to the best of one's lights as to the necessities of the common good. But the conscience of the community has its rights just as much as the conscience of the individual. If we are convinced that the inspection of a convent laundry is required in the interest, not of mere official routine, but of justice and humanity, we can do nothing but insist upon it, and when all has been done that can be done to save the individual conscience the common conviction of the common good must have its way. In the end the external order belongs to the community, and the right of protest to the individual. On the other side, the individual owes more to the community than is always recognized. Under modern conditions he is too much inclined to take for granted what the State does for him and to use the personal security and liberty of speech which it affords him as a vantage ground from which he can in safety denounce its works and repudiate its authority. He assumes the right to be in or out of the social system as he chooses. He relies on the general law which protects him, and emancipates himself from some particular law which he finds oppressive to his conscience. He forgets or does not take the trouble to reflect that, if every one were to act as he does, the social machine would come to a stop. He certainly fails to make it clear how a society would subsist in which every man should claim the right of unrestricted disobedience to a law which he happens to think wrong. In fact, it is possible for an over-tender conscience to consort with an insufficient sense of social responsibility. The combination is unfortunate; and we may fairly say that, if the State owes the utmost consideration to the conscience, its owner owes a corresponding debt to the State. With such mutual consideration, and with the development of the civic sense, conflicts between law and conscience are capable of being brought within very narrow limits, though their complete reconciliation will always remain a problem until men are generally agreed as to the fundamental conditions of the social harmony. It may be asked, on the other hand, whether in insisting on the free development of personality we have not understated the duty of society to its members. We all admit a collective responsibility for children. Are there not grown-up people who stand just as much in need of care? What of the idiot, the imbecile, the feeble-minded or the drunkard? What does rational self-determination mean for these classes? They may injure no one but themselves except by the contagion of bad example. But have we no duty towards them, having in view their own good alone and leaving every other consideration aside? Have we not the right to take the feeble-minded under our care and to keep the drunkard from drink, purely for their own good and apart from every ulterior consideration? And, if so, must we not extend the whole sphere of permissible coercion, and admit that a man may for his own sake and with no ulterior object, be compelled to do what we think right and avoid what we think wrong? The reply is that the argument is weak just where it seeks to generalize. We are compelled to put the insane under restraint for social reasons apart from their own benefit. But their own benefit would be a fully sufficient reason if no other existed. To them, by their misfortune, liberty, as we understand the term, has no application, because they are incapable of rational choice and therefore of the kind of growth for the sake of which freedom is valuable. The same thing is true of the feeble-minded, and if they are not yet treated on the same principle it is merely because the recognition of their type as a type is relatively modern. But the same thing is also in its degree true of the drunkard, so far as he is the victim of an impulse which he has allowed to grow beyond his own control; and the question whether he should be regarded as a fit object for tutelage or not is to be decided in each case by asking whether such capacity of self-control as he retains would be impaired or repaired by a period of tutelar restraint. There is nothing in all this to touch the essential of liberty which is the value of the power of self-governance where it exists. All that is proved is that where it does not exist it is right to save men from suffering, and if the case admits to put them under conditions in which the normal balance of impulse is most likely to be restored. It may be added that, in the case of the drunkard--and I think the argument applies to all cases where overwhelming impulse is apt to master the will--it is a still more obvious and elementary duty to remove the sources of temptation, and to treat as anti-social in the highest degree every attempt to make profit out of human weakness, misery, and wrong-doing. The case is not unlike that of a very unequal contract. The tempter is coolly seeking his profit, and the sufferer is beset with a fiend within. There is a form of coercion here which the genuine spirit of liberty will not fail to recognize as its enemy, and a form of injury to another which is not the less real because its weapon is an impulse which forces that other to the consent which he yields. I conclude that there is nothing in the doctrine of liberty to hinder the movement of general will in the sphere in which it is really efficient, and nothing in a just conception of the objects and methods of the general will to curtail liberty in the performance of the functions, social and personal, in which its value lies. Liberty and compulsion have complementary functions, and the self-governing State is at once the product and the condition of the self-governing individual. Thus there is no difficulty in understanding why the extension of State control on one side goes along with determined resistance to encroachments on another. It is a question not of increasing or diminishing, but of reorganizing, restraints. The period which has witnessed a rapid extension of industrial legislation has seen as determined a resistance to anything like the establishment of doctrinal religious teaching by a State authority,[10] and the distinction is perfectly just. At bottom it is the same conception of liberty and the same conception of the common will that prompts the regulation of industry and the severance of religious worship and doctrinal teaching from the mechanism of State control. So far we have been considering what the State compels the individual to do. If we pass to the question what the State is to do for the individual, a different but parallel question arises, and we have to note a corresponding movement of opinion. If the State does for the individual what he ought to do for himself what will be the effect on character, initiative, enterprise? It is a question now not of freedom, but of responsibility, and it is one that has caused many searchings of heart, and in respect of which opinion has undergone a remarkable change. Thus, in relation to poverty the older view was that the first thing needful was self-help. It was the business of every man to provide for himself and his family. If, indeed, he utterly failed, neither he nor they could be left to starve, and there was the Poor Law machinery to deal with his case. But the aim of every sincere friend of the poor must be to keep them away from the Poor Law machine. Experience of the forty years before 1834 had taught us what came of free resort to public funds by way of subvention to inadequate wages. It meant simply that the standard of remuneration was lowered in proportion as men could rely on public aid to make good the deficiency, while at the same time the incentives to independent labour were weakened when the pauper stood on an equal footing with the hard-working man. In general, if the attempt was made to substitute for personal effort the help of others, the result would only sap individual initiative and in the end bring down the rate of industrial remuneration. It was thought, for example--and this very point was urged against proposals for Old Age Pensions--that if any of the objects for which a man will, if possible, provide were removed from the scope of his own activity, he would in consequence be content with proportionally lower wages; if the employer was to compensate him for accident, he would fail to make provision for accidents on his own account; if his children were fed by the ratepayers, he would not earn the money wherewith to feed them. Hence, on the one hand, it was urged that the rate of wages would tend to adapt itself to the necessities of the wage earner, that in proportion as his necessities were met from other sources his wages would fall, that accordingly the apparent relief would be in large measure illusory, while finally, in view of the diminished stimulus to individual exertion, the productivity of labour would fall off, the incentives to industry would be diminished, and the community as a whole would be poorer. Upon the other hand, it was conceived that, however deplorable the condition of the working classes might be, the right way of raising them was to trust to individual enterprise and possibly, according to some thinkers, to voluntary combination. By these means the efficiency of labour might be enhanced and its regular remuneration raised. By sternly withholding all external supports we should teach the working classes to stand alone, and if there were pain in the disciplinary process there was yet hope in the future. They would come by degrees to a position of economic independence in which they would be able to face the risks of life, not in reliance upon the State, but by the force of their own brains and the strength of their own right arms. These views no longer command the same measure of assent. On all sides we find the State making active provision for the poorer classes and not by any means for the destitute alone. We find it educating the children, providing medical inspection, authorizing the feeding of the necessitous at the expense of the ratepayers, helping them to obtain employment through free Labour Exchanges, seeking to organize the labour market with a view to the mitigation of unemployment, and providing old age pensions for all whose incomes fall below thirteen shillings a week, without exacting any contribution. Now, in all this, we may well ask, is the State going forward blindly on the paths of broad and generous but unconsidered charity? Is it and can it remain indifferent to the effect on individual initiative and personal or parental responsibility? Or may we suppose that the wiser heads are well aware of what they are about, have looked at the matter on all sides, and are guided by a reasonable conception of the duty of the State and the responsibilities of the individual? Are we, in fact--for this is really the question--seeking charity or justice? We said above that it was the function of the State to secure the conditions upon which mind and character may develop themselves. Similarly we may say now that the function of the State is to secure conditions upon which its citizens are able to win by their own efforts all that is necessary to a full civic efficiency. It is not for the State to feed, house, or clothe them. It is for the State to take care that the economic conditions are such that the normal man who is not defective in mind or body or will can by useful labour feed, house, and clothe himself and his family. The "right to work" and the right to a "living wage" are just as valid as the rights of person or property. That is to say, they are integral conditions of a good social order. A society in which a single honest man of normal capacity is definitely unable to find the means of maintaining himself by useful work is to that extent suffering from malorganization. There is somewhere a defect in the social system, a hitch in the economic machine. Now, the individual workman cannot put the machine straight. He is the last person to have any say in the control of the market. It is not his fault if there is over-production in his industry, or if a new and cheaper process has been introduced which makes his particular skill, perhaps the product of years of application, a drug in the market. He does not direct or regulate industry. He is not responsible for its ups and downs, but he has to pay for them. That is why it is not charity but justice for which he is asking. Now, it may be infinitely difficult to meet his demand. To do so may involve a far-reaching economic reconstruction. The industrial questions involved may be so little understood that we may easily make matters worse in the attempt to make them better. All this shows the difficulty in finding means of meeting this particular claim of justice, but it does not shake its position as a claim of justice. A right is a right none the less though the means of securing it be imperfectly known; and the workman who is unemployed or underpaid through economic malorganization will remain a reproach not to the charity but to the justice of society as long as he is to be seen in the land. If this view of the duty of the State and the right of the workman is coming to prevail, it is owing partly to an enhanced sense of common responsibility, and partly to the teaching of experience. In the earlier days of the Free Trade era, it was permissible to hope that self-help would be an adequate solvent, and that with cheap food and expanding commerce the average workman would be able by the exercise of prudence and thrift not only to maintain himself in good times, but to lay by for sickness, unemployment, and old age. The actual course of events has in large measure disappointed these hopes. It is true that the standard of living in England has progressively advanced throughout the nineteenth century. It is true, in particular, that, since the disastrous period that preceded the Repeal of the Corn Laws and the passing of the Ten Hours' Act, social improvement has been real and marked. Trade Unionism and co-operation have grown, wages upon the whole have increased, the cost of living has diminished, housing and sanitation have improved, the death rate has fallen from about twenty-two to less than fifteen per thousand. But with all this improvement the prospect of a complete and lifelong economic independence for the average workman upon the lines of individual competition, even when supplemented and guarded by the collective bargaining of the Trade Union, appears exceedingly remote. The increase of wages does not appear to be by any means proportionate to the general growth of wealth. The whole standard of living has risen; the very provision of education has brought with it new needs and has almost compelled a higher standard of life in order to satisfy them. As a whole, the working classes of England, though less thrifty than those of some Continental countries, cannot be accused of undue negligence with regard to the future. The accumulation of savings in Friendly Societies, Trade Unions, Co-operative Societies, and Savings Banks shows an increase which has more than kept pace with the rise in the level of wages; yet there appears no likelihood that the average manual worker will attain the goal of that full independence, covering all the risks of life for self and family, which can alone render the competitive system really adequate to the demands of a civilized conscience. The careful researches of Mr. Booth in London and Mr. Rowntree in York, and of others in country districts, have revealed that a considerable percentage of the working classes are actually unable to earn a sum of money representing the full cost of the barest physical necessities for an average family; and, though the bulk of the working classes are undoubtedly in a better position than this, these researches go to show that even the relatively well-to-do gravitate towards this line of primary poverty in seasons of stress, at the time when the children are still at school, for example, or from the moment when the principal wage-earner begins to fail, in the decline of middle life. If only some ten per cent. of the population are actually living upon the poverty line at any given time,[11] twice or three times that number, it is reasonable to suppose, must approach the line in one period or other of their lives. But when we ascend from the conception of a bare physical maintenance for an average family to such a wage as would provide the real minimum requirements of a civilized life and meet all its contingencies without having to lean on any external prop, we should have to make additions to Mr. Rowntree's figure which have not yet been computed, but as to which it is probably well within the mark to say that none but the most highly skilled artisans are able to earn a remuneration meeting the requirements of the case. But, if that is so, it is clear that the system of industrial competition fails to meet the ethical demand embodied in the conception of the "living wage." That system holds out no hope of an improvement which shall bring the means of such a healthy and independent existence as should be the birthright of every citizen of a free state within the grasp of the mass of the people of the United Kingdom. It is this belief slowly penetrating the public mind which has turned it to new thoughts of social regeneration. The sum and substance of the changes that I have mentioned may be expressed in the principle that the individual cannot stand alone, but that between him and the State there is a reciprocal obligation. He owes the State the duty of industriously working for himself and his family. He is not to exploit the labour of his young children, but to submit to the public requirements for their education, health, cleanliness and general well-being. On the other side society owes to him the means of maintaining a civilized standard of life, and this debt is not adequately discharged by leaving him to secure such wages as he can in the higgling of the market. This view of social obligation lays increased stress on public but by no means ignores private responsibility. It is a simple principle of applied ethics that responsibility should be commensurate with power. Now, given the opportunity of adequately remunerated work, a man has the power to earn his living. It is his right and his duty to make the best use of his opportunity, and if he fails he may fairly suffer the penalty of being treated as a pauper or even, in an extreme case, as a criminal. But the opportunity itself he cannot command with the same freedom. It is only within narrow limits that it comes within the sphere of his control. The opportunities of work and the remuneration for work are determined by a complex mass of social forces which no individual, certainly no individual workman, can shape. They can be controlled, if at all, by the organized action of the community, and therefore, by a just apportionment of responsibility, it is for the community to deal with them. But this, it will be said, is not Liberalism but Socialism. Pursuing the economic rights of the individual we have been led to contemplate a Socialistic organization of industry. But a word like Socialism has many meanings, and it is possible that there should be a Liberal Socialism, as well as a Socialism that is illiberal. Let us, then, without sticking at a word, seek to follow out the Liberal view of the State in the sphere of economics. Let us try to determine in very general terms what is involved in realizing those primary conditions of industrial well-being which have been laid down, and how they consort with the rights of property and the claims of free industrial enterprise. FOOTNOTES: [10] The objection most often taken to "undenominationalism" itself is that it is in reality a form of doctrinal teaching seeking State endowment. [11] I do not include those living in "secondary poverty," as defined by Mr. Rowntree, as the responsibility in this case is partly personal. It must, however, be remembered that great poverty increases the difficulty of efficient management. CHAPTER VIII ECONOMIC LIBERALISM There are two forms of Socialism with which Liberalism has nothing to do. These I will call the mechanical and the official. Mechanical Socialism is founded on a false interpretation of history. It attributes the phenomena of social life and development to the sole operation of the economic factor, whereas the beginning of sound sociology is to conceive society as a whole in which all the parts interact. The economic factor, to take a single point, is at least as much the effect as it is the cause of scientific invention. There would be no world-wide system of telegraphy if there was no need of world-wide intercommunication. But there would be no electric telegraph at all but for the scientific interest which determined the experiments of Gauss and Weber. Mechanical Socialism, further, is founded on a false economic analysis which attributes all value to labour, denying, confounding or distorting the distinct functions of the direction of enterprise, the unavoidable payment for the use of capital, the productivity of nature, and the very complex social forces which, by determining the movements of demand and supply actually fix the rates at which goods exchange with one another. Politically, mechanical Socialism supposes a class war, resting on a clear-cut distinction of classes which does not exist. Far from tending to clear and simple lines of cleavage, modern society exhibits a more and more complex interweaving of interests, and it is impossible for a modern revolutionist to assail "property" in the interest of "labour" without finding that half the "labour" to which he appeals has a direct or indirect interest in "property." As to the future, mechanical Socialism conceives a logically developed system of the control of industry by government. Of this all that need be said is that the construction of Utopias is not a sound method of social science; that this particular Utopia makes insufficient provision for liberty, movement, and growth; and that in order to bring his ideals into the region of practical discussion, what the Socialist needs is to formulate not a system to be substituted as a whole for our present arrangements but a principle to guide statesmanship in the practical work of reforming what is amiss and developing what is good in the actual fabric of industry. A principle so applied grows if it has seeds of good in it, and so in particular the collective control of industry will be extended in proportion as it is found in practice to yield good results. The fancied clearness of Utopian vision is illusory, because its objects are artificial ideas and not living facts. The "system" of the world of books must be reconstructed as a principle that can be applied to the railway, the mine, the workshop, and the office that we know, before it can even be sensibly discussed. The evolution of Socialism as a practical force in politics has, in point of fact, proceeded by such a reconstruction, and this change carries with it the end of the materialistic Utopia. Official Socialism is a creed of different brand. Beginning with a contempt for ideals of liberty based on a confusion between liberty and competition, it proceeds to a measure of contempt for average humanity in general. It conceives mankind as in the mass a helpless and feeble race, which it is its duty to treat kindly. True kindness, of course, must be combined with firmness, and the life of the average man must be organized for his own good. He need not know that he is being organized. The socialistic organization will work in the background, and there will be wheels within wheels, or rather wires pulling wires. Ostensibly there will be a class of the elect, an aristocracy of character and intellect which will fill the civil services and do the practical work of administration. Behind these will be committees of union and progress who will direct operations, and behind the committees again one or more master minds from whom will emanate the ideas that are to direct the world. The play of democratic government will go on for a time, but the idea of a common will that should actually undertake the organization of social life is held the most childish of illusions. The master minds can for the moment work more easily through democratic forms, because they are here, and to destroy them would cause an upheaval. But the essence of government lies in the method of capture. The ostensible leaders of democracy are ignorant creatures who can with a little management be set to walk in the way in which they should go, and whom the crowd will follow like sheep. The art of governing consists in making men do what you wish without knowing what they are doing, to lead them on without showing them whither until it is too late for them to retrace their steps. Socialism so conceived has in essentials nothing to do with democracy or with liberty. It is a scheme of the organization of life by the superior person, who will decide for each man how he should work, how he should live, and indeed, with the aid of the Eugenist, whether he should live at all or whether he has any business to be born. At any rate, if he ought not to have been born--if, that is, he comes of a stock whose qualities are not approved--the Samurai will take care that he does not perpetuate his race. Now the average Liberal might have more sympathy with this view of life if he did not feel that for his part he is just a very ordinary man. He is quite sure that he cannot manage the lives of other people for them. He finds it enough to manage his own. But with the leave of the Superior he would rather do this in his own way than in the way of another, whose way may be much wiser but is not his. He would rather marry the woman of his own choice, than the one who would be sure to bring forth children of the standard type. He does not want to be standardized. He does not conceive himself as essentially an item in a census return. He does not want the standard clothes or the standard food, he wants the clothes which he finds comfortable and the food which he likes. With this unregenerate Adam in him, I fear that the Liberalism that is also within him is quite ready to make terms. Indeed, it incites him to go still further. It bids him consider that other men are, on the whole, very like himself and look on life in much the same way, and when it speaks within him of social duty it encourages him to aim not at a position of superiority which will enable him to govern his fellow creatures for their own good, but at a spirit of comradeship in which he will stand shoulder to shoulder with them on behalf of common aims. If, then, there be such a thing as a Liberal Socialism--and whether there be is still a subject for inquiry--it must clearly fulfil two conditions. In the first place, it must be democratic. It must come from below, not from above. Or rather, it must emerge from the efforts of society as a whole to secure a fuller measure of justice, and a better organization of mutual aid. It must engage the efforts and respond to the genuine desires not of a handful of superior beings, but of great masses of men. And, secondly, and for that very reason, it must make its account with the human individual. It must give the average man free play in the personal life for which he really cares. It must be founded on liberty, and must make not for the suppression but for the development of personality. How far, it may be asked, are these objects compatible? How far is it possible to organize industry in the interest of the common welfare without either overriding the freedom of individual choice or drying up the springs of initiative and energy? How far is it possible to abolish poverty, or to institute economic equality without arresting industrial progress? We cannot put the question without raising more fundamental issues. What is the real meaning of "equality" in economics? Would it mean, for example, that all should enjoy equal rewards, or that equal efforts should enjoy equal rewards, or that equal attainments should enjoy equal rewards? What is the province of justice in economics? Where does justice end and charity begin? And what, behind all this, is the basis of property? What is its social function and value? What is the measure of consideration due to vested interest and prescriptive right? It is impossible, within the limits of a volume, to deal exhaustively with such fundamental questions. The best course will be to follow out the lines of development which appear to proceed from those principles of Liberalism which have been already indicated and to see how far they lead to a solution. We saw that it was the duty of the State to secure the conditions of self-maintenance for the normal healthy citizen. There are two lines along which the fulfilment of this duty may be sought. One would consist in providing access to the means of production, the other in guaranteeing to the individual a certain share in the common stock. In point of fact, both lines have been followed by Liberal legislation. On the one side this legislation has set itself, however timidly and ineffectively as yet, to reversing the process which divorced the English peasantry from the soil. Contemporary research is making it clear that this divorce was not the inevitable result of slowly operating economic forces. It was brought about by the deliberate policy of the enclosure of the common fields begun in the fifteenth century, partially arrested from the middle of the sixteenth to the eighteenth, and completed between the reigns of George II and Queen Victoria. As this process was furthered by an aristocracy, so there is every reason to hope that it can be successfully reversed by a democracy, and that it will be possible to reconstitute a class of independent peasantry as the backbone of the working population. The experiment, however, involves one form or another of communal ownership. The labourer can only obtain the land with the financial help of the State, and it is certainly not the view of Liberals that the State, having once regained the fee simple, should part with it again. On the contrary, in an equitable division of the fruits of agriculture all advantages that are derived from the qualities or position of the soil itself, or from the enhancement of prices by tariffs would, since they are the product of no man's labour, fall to no man's share, or, what is the same thing, they should fall to every man, that is, to the community. This is why Liberal legislation seeks to create a class not of small landlords but of small tenants. It would give to this class access to the land and would reward them with the fruits of their own work--and no more. The surplus it would take to itself in the form of rent, and while it is desirable to give the State tenant full security against disturbance, rents must at stated periods be adjustable to prices and to cost. So, while Conservative policy is to establish a peasant proprietary which would reinforce the voting strength of property, the Liberal policy is to establish a State tenantry from whose prosperity the whole community would profit. The one solution is individualist. The other, as far as it goes, is nearer to the Socialist ideal. But, though British agriculture may have a great future before it, it will never regain its dominant position in our economic life, nor are small holdings ever likely to be the prevalent form of agriculture. The bulk of industry is, and probably will be, more and more in the hands of large undertakings with which the individual workman could not compete whatever instruments of production were placed in his hands. For the mass of the people, therefore, to be assured of the means of a decent livelihood must mean to be assured of continuous employment at a living wage, or, as an alternative, of public assistance. Now, as has been remarked, experience goes to show that the wage of the average worker, as fixed by competition, is not and is not likely to become sufficient to cover all the fortunes and misfortunes of life, to provide for sickness, accident, unemployment and old age, in addition to the regular needs of an average family. In the case of accident the State has put the burden of making provision on the employer. In the case of old age it has, acting, as I think, upon a sounder principle, taken the burden upon itself. It is very important to realize precisely what the new departure involved in the Old Age Pensions Act amounted to in point of principle. The Poor Law already guaranteed the aged person and the poor in general against actual starvation. But the Poor Law came into operation only at the point of sheer destitution. It failed to help those who had helped themselves. Indeed, to many it held out little inducement to help themselves if they could not hope to lay by so much as would enable them to live more comfortably on their means than they would live in the workhouse. The pension system throws over the test of destitution. It provides a certain minimum, a basis to go upon, a foundation upon which independent thrift may hope to build up a sufficiency. It is not a narcotic but a stimulus to self help and to friendly aid or filial support, and it is, up to a limit, available for all alike. It is precisely one of the conditions of independence of which voluntary effort can make use, but requiring voluntary effort to make it fully available. The suggestion underlying the movement for the break up of the Poor Law is just the general application of this principle. It is that, instead of redeeming the destitute, we should seek to render generally available the means of avoiding destitution, though in doing so we should uniformly call on the individual for a corresponding effort on his part. One method of meeting these conditions is to supply a basis for private effort to work upon, as is done in the case of the aged. Another method is that of State-aided insurance, and on these lines Liberal legislators have been experimenting in the hope of dealing with sickness, invalidity, and one portion of the problem of unemployment. A third may be illustrated by the method by which the Minority of the Poor Law Commissioners would deal with the case, at present so often full of tragic import, of the widowed or deserted mother of young children. Hitherto she has been regarded as an object of charity. It has been a matter for the benevolent to help her to retain her home, while it has been regarded as her duty to keep "off the rates" at the cost of no matter what expenditure of labour away from home. The newer conception of rights and duties comes out clearly in the argument of the commissioners, that if we take in earnest all that we say of the duties and responsibilities of motherhood, we shall recognize that the mother of young children is doing better service to the community and one more worthy of pecuniary remuneration when she stays at home and minds her children than when she goes out charing and leaves them to the chances of the street or to the perfunctory care of a neighbour. In proportion as we realize the force of this argument, we reverse our view as to the nature of public assistance in such a case. We no longer consider it desirable to drive the mother out to her charing work if we possibly can, nor do we consider her degraded by receiving public money. We cease, in fact, to regard the public money as a dole, we treat it as a payment for a civic service, and the condition that we are inclined to exact is precisely that she should not endeavour to add to it by earning wages, but rather that she should keep her home respectable and bring up her children in health and happiness. In defence of the competitive system two arguments have been familiar from old days. One is based on the habits of the working classes. It is said that they spend their surplus incomes on drink, and that if they have no margin for saving, it is because they have sunk it in the public-house. That argument is rapidly being met by the actual change of habits. The wave of temperance which two generations ago reformed the habits of the well-to-do in England is rapidly spreading through all classes in our own time. The drink bill is still excessive, the proportion of his weekly wages spent on drink by the average workman is still too great, but it is a diminishing quantity, and the fear which might have been legitimately expressed in old days that to add to wages was to add to the drink bill could no longer be felt as a valid objection to any improvement in the material condition of the working population in our own time. We no longer find the drink bill heavily increasing in years of commercial prosperity as of old. The second argument has experienced an even more decisive fate. Down to my own time it was forcibly contended that any improvement in the material condition of the mass of the people would result in an increase of the birth rate which, by extending the supply of labour, would bring down wages by an automatic process to the old level. There would be more people and they would all be as miserable as before. The actual decline of the birth rate, whatever its other consequences may be, has driven this argument from the field. The birth rate does not increase with prosperity, but diminishes. There is no fear of over-population; if there is any present danger, it is upon the other side. The fate of these two arguments must be reckoned as a very important factor in the changes of opinion which we have noted. Nevertheless, it may be thought that the system that I have outlined is no better than a vast organization of State charity, and that as such it must carry the consequences associated with charity on a large scale. It must dry up the sources of energy and undermine the independence of the individual. On the first point, I have already referred to certain cogent arguments for a contrary view. What the State is doing, what it would be doing if the whole series of contemplated changes were carried through to the end, would by no means suffice to meet the needs of the normal man. He would still have to labour to earn his own living. But he would have a basis to go upon, a sub-structure on which it would be possible for him to rear the fabric of a real sufficiency. He would have greater security, a brighter outlook, a more confident hope of being able to keep his head above water. The experience of life suggests that hope is a better stimulus than fear, confidence a better mental environment than insecurity. If desperation will sometimes spur men to exceptional exertion the effect is fleeting, and, for a permanence, a more stable condition is better suited to foster that blend of restraint and energy which makes up the tissue of a life of normal health. There would be those who would abuse their advantages as there are those who abuse every form of social institution. But upon the whole it is thought that individual responsibility can be more clearly fixed and more rigorously insisted on when its legitimate sphere is properly defined, that is to say, when the burden on the shoulders of the individual is not too great for average human nature to bear. But, it may be urged, any reliance on external assistance is destructive of independence. It is true that to look for support to private philanthropy has this effect, because it makes one man dependent on the good graces of another. But it is submitted that a form of support on which a man can count as a matter of legal right has not necessarily the same effect. Charity, again, tends to diminish the value of independent effort because it flows in the direction of the failures. It is a compensation for misfortune which easily slides into an encouragement to carelessness. What is matter of right, on the other hand, is enjoyed equally by the successful and the unsuccessful. It is not a handicap in favour of the one, but an equal distance deducted from the race to be run against fate by both. This brings us to the real question. Are measures of the kind under discussion to be regarded as measures of philanthropy or measures of justice, as the expression of collective benevolence or as the recognition of a general right? The full discussion of the question involves complex and in some respects novel conceptions of economics and of social ethics to which I can hardly do justice within the limits of this chapter. But I will endeavour to indicate in outline the conception of social and economic justice which underlies the movement of modern Liberal opinion. We may approach the subject by observing that, whatever the legal theory, in practice the existing English Poor Law recognizes the right of every person to the bare necessaries of life. The destitute man or woman can come to a public authority, and the public authority is bound to give him food and shelter. He has to that extent a lien on the public resources in virtue of his needs as a human being and on no other ground. This lien, however, only operates when he is destitute; and he can only exercise it by submitting to such conditions as the authorities impose, which when the workhouse test is enforced means loss of liberty. It was the leading "principle of 1834" that the lot of the pauper should be made "less eligible" than that of the independent labourer. Perhaps we may express the change of opinion which has come about in our day by saying that according to the newer principle the duty of society is rather to ensure that the lot of the independent labourer be more eligible than that of the pauper. With this object the lien on the common wealth is enlarged and reconstituted. Its exercise does not entail the penal consequence of the loss of freedom unless there is proved misfeasance or neglect on the part of the individual. The underlying contention is that, in a State so wealthy as the United Kingdom, every citizen should have full means of earning by socially useful labour so much material support as experience proves to be the necessary basis of a healthy, civilized existence. And if in the actual working of the industrial system the means are not in actual fact sufficiently available he is held to have a claim not as of charity but as of right on the national resources to make good the deficiency. That there are rights of property we all admit. Is there not perhaps a general right _to_ property? Is there not something radically wrong with an economic system under which through the laws of inheritance and bequest vast inequalities are perpetuated? Ought we to acquiesce in a condition in which the great majority are born to nothing except what they can earn, while some are born to more than the social value of any individual of whatever merit? May it not be that in a reasoned scheme of economic ethics we should have to allow a true right of property in the member of the community as such which would take the form of a certain minimum claim on the public resources? A pretty idea, it may be said, but ethics apart, what are the resources on which the less fortunate is to draw? The British State has little or no collective property available for any such purpose. Its revenues are based on taxation, and in the end what all this means is that the rich are to be taxed for the benefit of the poor, which we may be told is neither justice nor charity but sheer spoliation. To this I would reply that the depletion of public resources is a symptom of profound economic disorganization. Wealth, I would contend, has a social as well as a personal basis. Some forms of wealth, such as ground rents in and about cities, are substantially the creation of society, and it is only through the misfeasance of government in times past that such wealth has been allowed to fall into private hands. Other great sources of wealth are found in financial and speculative operations, often of distinctly anti-social tendency and possible only through the defective organization of our economy. Other causes rest in the partial monopolies which our liquor laws, on the one side, and the old practice of allowing the supply of municipal services to fall into private hands have built up. Through the principle of inheritance, property so accumulated is handed on; and the result is that while there is a small class born to the inheritance of a share in the material benefits of civilization, there is a far larger class which can say "naked we enter, naked we leave." This system, as a whole, it is maintained, requires revision. Property in this condition of things ceases, it is urged, to be essentially an institution by which each man can secure to himself the fruits of his own labour, and becomes an instrument whereby the owner can command the labour of others on terms which he is in general able to dictate. This tendency is held to be undesirable, and to be capable of a remedy through a concerted series of fiscal, industrial, and social measures which would have the effect of augmenting the common stock at the disposal of society, and so applying it as to secure the economic independence of all who do not forfeit their advantages by idleness, incapacity, or crime. There are early forms of communal society in which each person is born to his appropriate status, carrying its appropriate share of the common land. In destroying the last relics of this system economic individualism has laid the basis of great material advances, but at great cost to the happiness of the masses. The ground problem in economics is not to destroy property, but to restore the social conception of property to its right place under conditions suitable to modern needs. This is not to be done by crude measures of redistribution, such as those of which we hear in ancient history. It is to be done by distinguishing the social from the individual factors in wealth, by bringing the elements of social wealth into the public coffers, and by holding it at the disposal of society to administer to the prime needs of its members. The basis of property is social, and that in two senses. On the one hand, it is the organized force of society that maintains the rights of owners by protecting them against thieves and depredators. In spite of all criticism many people still seem to speak of the rights of property as though they were conferred by Nature or by Providence upon certain fortunate individuals, and as though these individuals had an unlimited right to command the State, as their servant, to secure them by the free use of the machinery of law in the undisturbed enjoyment of their possessions. They forget that without the organized force of society their rights are not worth a week's purchase. They do not ask themselves where they would be without the judge and the policeman and the settled order which society maintains. The prosperous business man who thinks that he has made his fortune entirely by self help does not pause to consider what single step he could have taken on the road to his success but for the ordered tranquillity which has made commercial development possible, the security by road, and rail, and sea, the masses of skilled labour, and the sum of intelligence which civilization has placed at his disposal, the very demand for the goods which he produces which the general progress of the world has created, the inventions which he uses as a matter of course and which have been built up by the collective effort of generations of men of science and organizers of industry. If he dug to the foundations of his fortune he would recognize that, as it is society that maintains and guarantees his possessions, so also it is society which is an indispensable partner in its original creation. This brings us to the second sense in which property is social. There is a social element in value and a social element in production. In modern industry there is very little that the individual can do by his unaided efforts. Labour is minutely divided; and in proportion as it is divided it is forced to be co-operative. Men produce goods to sell, and the rate of exchange, that is, price, is fixed by relations of demand and supply the rates of which are determined by complex social forces. In the methods of production every man makes use, to the best of his ability, of the whole available means of civilization, of the machinery which the brains of other men have devised, of the human apparatus which is the gift of acquired civilization. Society thus provides conditions or opportunities of which one man will make much better use than another, and the use to which they are put is the individual or personal element in production which is the basis of the personal claim to reward. To maintain and stimulate this personal effort is a necessity of good economic organization, and without asking here whether any particular conception of Socialism would or would not meet this need we may lay down with confidence that no form of Socialism which should ignore it could possibly enjoy enduring success. On the other hand, an individualism which ignores the social factor in wealth will deplete the national resources, deprive the community of its just share in the fruits of industry and so result in a one-sided and inequitable distribution of wealth. Economic justice is to render what is due not only to each individual but to each function, social or personal, that is engaged in the performance of useful service, and this due is measured by the amount necessary to stimulate and maintain the efficient exercise of that useful function. This equation between function and sustenance is the true meaning of economic equality. Now to apply this principle to the adjustment of the claims of the community on the one hand and the producers or inheritors of wealth on the other would involve a discrimination of the factors of production which is not easy to make in all instances. If we take the case of urban land, referred to above, the distinction is tolerably clear. The value of a site in London is something due essentially to London, not to the landlord. More accurately a part of it is due to London, a part to the British empire, a part, perhaps we should say, to Western civilization. But while it would be impossible to disentangle these subsidiary factors, the main point that the entire increment of value is due to one social factor or another is sufficiently clear, and this explains why Liberal opinion has fastened on the conception of site value as being by right communal and not personal property. The monopoly value of licensed premises, which is the direct creation of laws passed for the control of the liquor traffic, is another case in point. The difficulty which society finds in dealing with these cases is that it has allowed these sources of wealth to pass out of its hands, and that property of these kinds has freely passed from one man to another in the market, in the belief that it stood and would stand on the same basis in law as any other. Hence, it is not possible for society to insist on the whole of its claim. It could only resume its full rights at the cost of great hardship to individuals and a shock to the industrial system. What it can do is to shift taxation step by step from the wealth due to individual enterprise to the wealth that depends on its own collective progress, thus by degrees regaining the ownership of the fruits of its own collective work. Much more difficult in principle is the question of the more general elements of social value which run through production as a whole. We are dealing here with factors so intricately interwoven in their operation that they can only be separated by an indirect process. What this process would be we may best understand by imagining for a moment a thoroughgoing centralized organization of the industrial system endeavouring to carry out the principles of remuneration outlined above. The central authority which we imagine as endowed with such wisdom and justice as to find for every man his right place and to assign to every man his due reward would, if our argument is sound, find it necessary to assign to each producer, whether working with hand or brain, whether directing a department of industry or serving under direction, such remuneration as would stimulate him to put forth his best efforts and would maintain him in the condition necessary for the life-long exercise of his function. If we are right in considering that a great part of the wealth produced from year to year is of social origin, it would follow that, after the assignment of this remuneration, there would remain a surplus, and this would fall to the coffers of the community and be available for public purposes, for national defence, public works, education, charity, and the furtherance of civilized life. Now, this is merely an imaginary picture, and I need not ask whether such a measure of wisdom on the part of a Government is practically attainable, or whether such a measure of centralization might not carry consequences which would hamper progress in other directions. The picture serves merely to illustrate the principles of equitable distribution by which the State should be guided in dealing with property. It serves to define our conception of economic justice, and therewith the lines on which we should be guided in the adjustment of taxation and the reorganization of industry. I may illustrate its bearing by taking a couple of cases. One important source of private wealth under modern conditions is speculation. Is this also a source of social wealth? Does it produce anything for society? Does it perform a function for which our ideal administration would think it necessary to pay? I buy some railway stock at 110. A year or two later I seize a favourable opportunity and sell it at 125. Is the increment earned or unearned? The answer in the single case is clear, but it may be said that my good fortune in this case may be balanced by ill luck in another. No doubt. But, to go no further, if on balance I make a fortune or an income by this method it would seem to be a fortune or an income not earned by productive service. To this it may be replied that the buyers and sellers of stocks are indirectly performing the function of adjusting demand and supply, and so regulating industry. So far as they are expert business men trained in the knowledge of a particular market this may be so. So far as they dabble in the market in the hope of profiting from a favourable turn, they appear rather as gamblers. I will not pretend to determine which of the two is the larger class. I would point out only that, on the face of the facts, the profits derived from this particular source appear to be rather of the nature of a tax which astute or fortunate individuals are able to levy on the producer than as the reward which they obtain for a definite contribution on their own part to production. There are two possible empirical tests of this view. One is that a form of collective organization should be devised which should diminish the importance of the speculative market. Our principle would suggest the propriety of an attempt in that direction whenever opportunity offers. Another would be the imposition of a special tax on incomes derived from this source, and experience would rapidly show whether any such tax would actually hamper the process of production and distribution at any stage. If not, it would justify itself. It would prove that the total profit now absorbed by individuals exceeds, at least by the amount of the tax, the remuneration necessary to maintain that particular economic function. The other case I will take is that of inherited wealth. This is the main determining factor in the social and economic structure of our time. It is clear on our principle that it stands in quite a different position from that of wealth which is being created from day to day. It can be defended only on two grounds. One is prescriptive right, and the difficulty of disturbing the basis of the economic order. This provides an unanswerable argument against violent and hasty methods, but no argument at all against a gentle and slow-moving policy of economic reorganization. The other argument is that inherited wealth serves several indirect functions. The desire to provide for children and to found a family is a stimulus to effort. The existence of a leisured class affords possibilities for the free development of originality, and a supply of disinterested men and women for the service of the State. I would suggest once again that the only real test to which the value of these arguments can be submitted is the empirical test. On the face of the facts inherited wealth stands on a different footing from acquired wealth, and Liberal policy is on the right lines in beginning the discrimination of earned from unearned income. The distinction is misconceived only so far as income derived from capital or land may represent the savings of the individual and not his inheritance. The true distinction is between the inherited and the acquired, and while the taxation of acquired wealth may operate, so far as it goes, to diminish the profits, and so far to weaken the motive springs, of industry, it is by no means self-evident that any increase of taxation on inherited wealth would necessarily have that effect, or that it would vitally derange any other social function. It is, again, a matter on which only experience can decide, but if experience goes to show that we can impose a given tax on inherited wealth without diminishing the available supply of capital and without losing any service of value, the result would be net gain. The State could never be the sole producer, for in production the personal factor is vital, but there is no limit set by the necessities of things to the extension of its control of natural resources, on the one hand, and the accumulated heritage of the past, on the other. If Liberal policy has committed itself not only to the discrimination of earned and unearned incomes but also to a super-tax on large incomes from whatever source, the ground principle, again, I take to be a respectful doubt whether any single individual is worth to society by any means as much as some individuals obtain. We might, indeed, have to qualify this doubt if the great fortunes of the world fell to the great geniuses. It would be impossible to determine what we ought to pay for a Shakespere, a Browning, a Newton, or a Cobden. Impossible, but fortunately unnecessary. For the man of genius is forced by his own cravings to give, and the only reward that he asks from society is to be let alone and have some quiet and fresh air. Nor is he in reality entitled, notwithstanding his services, to ask more than the modest sufficiency which enables him to obtain those primary needs of the life of thought and creation, since his creative energy is the response to an inward stimulus which goads him on without regard to the wishes of any one else. The case of the great organizers of industry is rather different, but they, again, so far as their work is socially sound, are driven on more by internal necessity than by the genuine love of gain. They make great profits because their works reach a scale at which, if the balance is on the right side at all, it is certain to be a big balance, and they no doubt tend to be interested in money as the sign of their success, and also as the basis of increased social power. But I believe the direct influence of the lust of gain on this type of mind to have been immensely exaggerated; and as proof I would refer, first, to the readiness of many men of this class to accept and in individual cases actively to promote measures tending to diminish their material gain, and, secondly, to the mass of high business capacity which is at the command of the public administration for salaries which, as their recipient must be perfectly conscious, bear no relation to the income which it would be open to him to earn in commercial competition. On the whole, then, we may take it that the principle of the super-tax is based on the conception that when we come to an income of some £5,000 a year we approach the limit of the industrial value of the individual.[12] We are not likely to discourage any service of genuine social value by a rapidly increasing surtax on incomes above that amount. It is more likely that we shall quench the anti-social ardour for unmeasured wealth, for social power, and the vanity of display. These illustrations may suffice to give some concreteness to the conception of economic justice as the maintenance of social function. They serve also to show that the true resources of the State are larger and more varied than is generally supposed. The true function of taxation is to secure to society the element in wealth that is of social origin, or, more broadly, all that does not owe its origin to the efforts of living individuals. When taxation, based on these principles, is utilized to secure healthy conditions of existence to the mass of the people it is clear that this is no case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Peter is not robbed. Apart from the tax it is he who would be robbing the State. A tax which enables the State to secure a certain share of social value is not something deducted from that which the taxpayer has an unlimited right to call his own, but rather a repayment of something which was all along due to society. But why should the proceeds of the tax go to the poor in particular? Granting that Peter is not robbed, why should Paul be paid? Why should not the proceeds be expended on something of common concern to Peter and Paul alike, for Peter is equally a member of the community? Undoubtedly the only just method of dealing with the common funds is to expend them in objects which subserve the common good, and there are many directions in which public expenditure does in fact benefit all classes alike. This, it is worth noting, is true even of some important branches of expenditure which in their direct aim concern the poorer classes. Consider, for example, the value of public sanitation, not merely to the poorer regions which would suffer first if it were withheld, but to the richer as well who, seclude themselves as they may, cannot escape infection. In the old days judge and jury, as well as prisoners, would die of gaol fever. Consider, again, the economic value of education, not only to the worker, but to the employer whom he will serve. But when all this is allowed for it must be admitted that we have throughout contemplated a considerable measure of public expenditure in the elimination of poverty. The prime justification of this expenditure is that the prevention of suffering from the actual lack of adequate physical comforts is an essential element in the common good, an object in which all are bound to concern themselves, which all have the right to demand and the duty to fulfil. Any common life based on the avoidable suffering even of one of those who partake in it is a life not of harmony, but of discord. But we can go further. We said at the outset that the function of society was to secure to all normal adult members the means of earning by useful work the material necessaries of a healthy and efficient life. We can see now that this is one case and, properly understood, the largest and most far reaching case falling under the general principle of economic justice. This principle lays down that every social function must receive the reward that is sufficient to stimulate and maintain it through the life of the individual. Now, how much this reward may be in any case it is probably impossible to determine otherwise than by specific experiment. But if we grant, in accordance with the idea with which we have been working all along, that it is demanded of all sane adult men and women that they should live as civilized beings, as industrious workers, as good parents, as orderly and efficient citizens, it is, on the other side, the function of the economic organization of society to secure them the material means of living such a life, and the immediate duty of society is to mark the points at which such means fail and to make good the deficiency. Thus the conditions of social efficiency mark the minimum of industrial remuneration, and if they are not secured without the deliberate action of the State they must be secured by means of the deliberate action of the State. If it is the business of good economic organization to secure the equation between function and maintenance, the first and greatest application of this principle is to the primary needs. These fix the minimum standard of remuneration beyond which we require detailed experiment to tell us at what rate increased value of service rendered necessitates corresponding increase of reward. It may be objected that such a standard is unattainable. There are those, it may be contended, who are not, and never will be, worth a full efficiency wage. Whatever is done to secure them such a remuneration will only involve net loss. Hence it violates our standard of economic justice. It involves payment for a function of more than it is actually worth, and the discrepancy might be so great as to cripple society. It must, of course, be admitted that the population contains a certain percentage of the physically incapable, the mentally defective, and the morally uncontrolled. The treatment of these classes, all must agree, is and must be based on other principles than those of economics. One class requires punitive discipline, another needs life-long care, a third--the mentally and morally sound but physically defective--must depend, to its misfortune, on private and public charity. There is no question here of payment for a function, but of ministering to human suffering. It is, of course, desirable on economic as well as on broader grounds that the ministration should be so conceived as to render its object as nearly as possible independent and self-supporting. But in the main all that is done for these classes of the population is, and must be, a charge on the surplus. The real question that may be raised by a critic is whether the considerable proportion of the working class whose earnings actually fall short, as we should contend, of the minimum, could in point of fact earn that minimum. Their actual value, he may urge, is measured by the wage which they do in fact command in the competitive market, and if their wage falls short of the standard society may make good the deficiency if it will and can, but must not shut its eyes to the fact that in doing so it is performing, not an act of economic justice, but of charity. To this the reply is that the price which naked labour without property can command in bargaining with employers who possess property is no measure at all of the addition which such labour can actually make to wealth. The bargain is unequal, and low remuneration is itself a cause of low efficiency which in turn tends to react unfavourably on remuneration. Conversely, a general improvement in the conditions of life reacts favourably on the productivity of labour. Real wages have risen considerably in the last half century, but the income-tax returns indicate that the wealth of the business and professional man has increased even more rapidly. Up to the efficiency minimum there is, then, every reason to think that a general increase of wages would positively increase the available surplus whether that surplus goes to individuals as profits or to the State as national revenue. The material improvement of working-class conditions will more than pay its way regarded purely as an economic investment on behalf of society. This conclusion is strengthened if we consider narrowly what elements of cost the "living wage" ought in principle to cover. We are apt to assume uncritically that the wages earned by the labour of an adult man ought to suffice for the maintenance of an average family, providing for all risks. It ought, we think, to cover not only the food and clothing of wife and children, but the risks of sickness, accident, and unemployment. It ought to provide for education and lay by for old age. If it fails we are apt to think that the wage earner is not self supporting. Now, it is certainly open to doubt whether the actual addition to wealth made by an unskilled labourer denuded of all inherited property would equal the cost represented by the sum of these items. But here our further principle comes into play. He ought not to be denuded of all inherited property. As a citizen he should have a certain share in the social inheritance. This share should be his support in the times of misfortune, of sickness, and of worklessness, whether due to economic disorganization or to invalidity and old age. His children's share, again, is the State-provided education. These shares are charges on the social surplus. It does not, if fiscal arrangements are what they should be, infringe upon the income of other individuals, and the man who without further aid than the universally available share in the social inheritance which is to fall to him as a citizen pays his way through life is to be justly regarded as self-supporting. The central point of Liberal economics, then, is the equation of social service and reward. This is the principle that every function of social value requires such remuneration as serves to stimulate and maintain its effective performance; that every one who performs such a function has the right, in the strict ethical sense of that term, to such remuneration and to no more; that the residue of existing wealth should be at the disposal of the community for social purposes. Further, it is the right, in the same sense, of every person capable of performing some useful social function that he should have the opportunity of so doing, and it is his right that the remuneration that he receives for it should be his property, _i. e._ that it should stand at his free disposal enabling him to direct his personal concerns according to his own preferences. These are rights in the sense that they are conditions of the welfare of its members which a well-ordered State will seek by every means to fulfil. But it is not suggested that the way of such fulfilment is plain, or that it could be achieved at a stroke by a revolutionary change in the tenure of property or the system of industry. It is, indeed, implied that the State is vested with a certain overlordship over property in general and a supervisory power over industry in general, and this principle of economic sovereignty may be set side by side with that of economic justice as a no less fundamental conception of economic Liberalism. For here, as elsewhere, liberty implies control. But the manner in which the State is to exercise its controlling power is to be learnt by experience and even in large measure by cautious experiment. We have sought to determine the principle which should guide its action, the ends at which it is to aim. The systematic study of the means lies rather within the province of economics; and the teaching of history seems to be that progress is more continuous and secure when men are content to deal with problems piecemeal than when they seek to destroy root and branch in order to erect a complete system which has captured the imagination. It is evident that these conceptions embody many of the ideas that go to make up the framework of Socialist teaching, though they also emphasize elements of individual right and personal independence, of which Socialism at times appears oblivious. The distinction that I would claim for economic Liberalism is that it seeks to do justice to the social and individual factors in industry alike, as opposed to an abstract Socialism which emphasizes the one side and an abstract Individualism which leans its whole weight on the other. By keeping to the conception of harmony as our clue we constantly define the rights of the individual in terms of the common good, and think of the common good in terms of the welfare of all the individuals who constitute a society. Thus in economics we avoid the confusion of liberty with competition, and see no virtue in the right of a man to get the better of others. At the same time we are not led to minimize the share of personal initiative, talent, or energy in production, but are free to contend for their claim to adequate recognition. A Socialist who is convinced of the logical coherence and practical applicability of his system may dismiss such endeavours to harmonize divergent claims as a half-hearted and illogical series of compromises. It is equally possible that a Socialist who conceives Socialism as consisting in essence in the co-operative organization of industry by consumers, and is convinced that the full solution of industrial problems lies in that direction, should in proportion as he considers the psychological factors in production and investigates the means of realizing his ideal, find himself working back along the path to a point where he will meet the men who are grappling with the problems of the day on the principles here suggested, and will find himself able to move forward in practice in the front ranks of economic Liberalism. If this is so, the growing co-operation of political Liberalism and Labour, which in the last few years has replaced the antagonism of the 'nineties, is no mere accident of temporary political convenience, but has its roots deep in the necessities of Democracy. FOOTNOTE: [12] It is true that so long as it remains possible for a certain order of ability to earn £50,000 a year, the community will not obtain its services for £5,000. But if things should be so altered by taxation and economic reorganization that £5,000 became in practice the highest limit attainable, and remained attainable even for the ablest only by effort, there is no reason to doubt that that effort would be forthcoming. It is not the absolute amount of remuneration, but the increment of remuneration in proportion to the output of industrial or commercial capacity, which serves as the needed stimulus to energy. CHAPTER IX THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM The nineteenth century might be called the age of Liberalism, yet its close saw the fortunes of that great movement brought to their lowest ebb. Whether at home or abroad those who represented Liberal ideas had suffered crushing defeats. But this was the least considerable of the causes for anxiety. If Liberals had been defeated, something much worse seemed about to befall Liberalism. Its faith in itself was waxing cold. It seemed to have done its work. It had the air of a creed that is becoming fossilized as an extinct form, a fossil that occupied, moreover, an awkward position between two very active and energetically moving grindstones--the upper grindstone of plutocratic imperialism, and the nether grindstone of social democracy. "We know all about you," these parties seemed to say to Liberalism; "we have been right through you and come out on the other side. Respectable platitudes, you go maundering on about Cobden and Gladstone, and the liberty of the individual, and the rights of nationality, and government by the people. What you say is not precisely untrue, but it is unreal and uninteresting." So far in chorus. "It is not up to date," finished the Imperialist, and the Socialist bureaucrat. "It is not bread and butter," finished the Social democrat. Opposed in everything else, these two parties agreed in one thing. They were to divide the future between them. Unfortunately, however, for their agreement, the division was soon seen to be no equal one. Whatever might be the ultimate recuperative power of Social Democracy, for the time being, in the paralysis of Liberalism, the Imperial reaction had things all to itself. The governing classes of England were to assert themselves. They were to consolidate the Empire, incidentally passing the steam roller over two obstructive republics. They were to "teach the law" to the "sullen new-caught peoples" abroad. They were to re-establish the Church at home by the endowment of doctrinal education. At the same time they were to establish the liquor interest--which is, after all, the really potent instrument of government from above. They were to bind the colonies to us by ties of fiscal preference, and to establish the great commercial interests on the basis of protection. Their government, as conceived by the best exponents of the new doctrine, was by no means to be indifferent to the humanitarian claims of the social conscience. They were to deal out factory acts, and establish wages boards. They were to make an efficient and a disciplined people. In the idea of discipline the military element rapidly assumed a greater prominence. But on this side the evolution of opinion passed through two well-marked phases. The first was the period of optimism and expansion. The Englishman was the born ruler of the world. He might hold out a hand of friendship to the German and the American, whom he recognized as his kindred and who lived within the law. The rest of the world was peopled by dying nations whose manifest destiny was to be "administered" by the coming races, and exploited by their commercial syndicates. This mood of optimism did not survive the South African War. It received its death-blow at Colenso and Magersfontein, and within a few years fear had definitely taken the place of ambition as the mainspring of the movement to national and imperial consolidation. The Tariff Reform movement was largely inspired by a sense of insecurity in our commercial position. The half-patronizing friendship for Germany rapidly gave way, first to commercial jealousy, and then to unconcealed alarm for our national safety. All the powers of society were bent on lavish naval expenditure, and of imposing the idea of compulsory service on a reluctant people. The disciplined nation was needed no longer to dominate the world, but to maintain its own territory. Now, we are not concerned here to follow up the devious windings of modern Conservatism. We have to note only that what modern democracy has to face is no mere inertia of tradition. It is a distinct reactionary policy with a definite and not incoherent creed of its own, an ideal which in its best expression--for example, in the daily comments of the _Morning Post_--is certain to exercise a powerful attraction on many generous minds--the ideal of the efficient, disciplined nation, centre and dominating force of a powerful, self-contained, militant empire. What concerns us more particularly is the reaction of Conservative development upon the fortunes of democracy. But to understand this reaction, and, indeed, to make any sound estimate of the present position and prospects of Liberalism, we must cast a rapid glance over the movement of progressive thought during the last generation. When Gladstone formed his second Government in 1880 the old party system stood secure in Great Britain. It was only a band of politicians from the other side of St. George's Channel who disowned both the great allegiances. For the British political mind the plain distinction of Liberal and Conservative held the field, and the division was not yet a class distinction. The great Whig families held their place, and they of the aristocratic houses divided the spoil. But a new leaven was at work. The prosperity which had culminated in 1872 was passing away. Industrial progress slowed down; and, though the advance from the "Hungry 'Forties" had been immense, men began to see the limit of what they could reasonably expect from retrenchment and Free Trade. The work of Mr. Henry George awakened new interest in problems of poverty, and the idealism of William Morris gave new inspiration to Socialist propaganda. Meanwhile, the teaching of Green and the enthusiasm of Toynbee were setting Liberalism free from the shackles of an individualist conception of liberty and paving the way for the legislation of our own time. Lastly, the Fabian Society brought Socialism down from heaven and established a contact with practical politics and municipal government. Had Great Britain been an island in the mid-Pacific the onward movement would have been rapid and undeviating in its course. As it was, the new ideas were reflected in the parliament and the cabinet of 1880-1885, and the Radicalism of Birmingham barely kept on terms with the Whiggery of the clubs. A redistribution of social forces which would amalgamate the interests of "property" on the one side and those of democracy on the other was imminent, and on social questions democracy reinforced by the enfranchisement of the rural labourers in 1884 stood to win. At this stage the Irish question came to a head. Mr. Gladstone declared for Home Rule, and the party fissure took place on false lines. The upper and middle classes in the main went over to Unionism, but they took with them a section of the Radicals, while Mr. Gladstone's personal force retained on the Liberal side a number of men whose insight into the needs of democracy was by no means profound. The political fight was for the moment shifted from the social question to the single absorbing issue of Home Rule, and the new Unionist party enjoyed twenty years of almost unbroken supremacy. Again, had the Home Rule issue stood alone it might have been settled in 1892, but meanwhile in the later 'eighties the social question had become insistent. Socialism, ceasing to be a merely academic force, had begun to influence organized labour, and had inspired the more generous minds among the artisans with the determination to grapple with the problem of the unskilled workmen. From the Dockers' strike of 1889 the New Unionism became a fighting force in public affairs, and the idea of a Labour party began to take shape. On the new problems Liberalism, weakened as it already had been, was further divided, and its failure in 1892 is to be ascribed far more to this larger cause than to the dramatic personal incident of the Parnell divorce. In office without legislative power from 1892 to 1895, the Liberal party only experienced further loss of credit, and the rise of Imperialism swept the whole current of public interest in a new direction. The Labour movement itself was paralyzed, and the defeat of the Engineers in 1897 put an end to the hope of achieving a great social transformation by the method of the strike. But, in the meanwhile, opinion was being silently transformed. The labours of Mr. Charles Booth and his associates had at length stated the problem of poverty in scientific terms. Social and economic history was gradually taking shape as a virtually new branch of knowledge. The work of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb helped to clear up the relations between the organized efforts of workmen and the functions of the State. The discerning observer could trace the "organic filaments" of a fuller and more concrete social theory. On the other hand, in the Liberal ranks many of the most influential men had passed, without consciousness of the transition, under the sway of quite opposite influences. They were becoming Imperialists in their sleep, and it was only as the implications of Imperialism became evident that they were awakened. It was with the outbreak of the South African War that the new development of Conservative policy first compelled the average Liberal to consider his position. It needed the shock of an outspoken violation of right to stir him; and we may date the revival of the idea of justice in the party as an organized force from the speech in the summer of 1901 in which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman set himself against the stream of militant sentiment and challenged in a classic phrase the methods of the war. From the day of this speech, which was supposed at the time to have irretrievably ruined his political career, the name of the party-leader, hitherto greeted with indifference, became a recognized signal for the cheers of a political meeting, and a man with no marked genius but that of character and the insight which character gave into the minds of his followers acquired in his party the position of a Gladstone. This was the first and fundamental victory, the reinstatement of the idea of Right in the mind of Liberalism. Then, as the Conservative attack developed and its implications became apparent, one interest after another of the older Liberalism was rudely shaken into life. The Education Act of 1902 brought the Nonconformists into action. The Tariff Reform movement put Free Trade on its defence, and taught men to realize what the older economics of Liberalism had done for them. The Socialists of practical politics, the Labour Party, found that they could by no means dispense with the discipline of Cobden. Free Trade finance was to be the basis of social reform. Liberalism and Labour learned to co-operate in resisting delusive promises of remedies for unemployment and in maintaining the right of free international exchange. Meanwhile, Labour itself had experienced the full brunt of the attack. It had come not from the politicians but from the judges, but in this country we have to realize that within wide limits the judges are in effect legislators, and legislators with a certain persistent bent which can be held in check only by the constant vigilance and repeated efforts of the recognized organ for the making and repeal of law. In destroying the old position of the Trade Unions, the judges created the modern Labour party and cemented its alliance with Liberalism. Meanwhile, the aftermath of Imperialism in South Africa was reaped, and Conservative disillusionment unlocked the floodgates for the advancing tide of the Liberal revival. The tide has by no means spent itself. If it no longer rushes in an electoral torrent as in 1906 it flows in a steady stream towards social amelioration and democratic government. In this movement it is now sufficiently clear to all parties that the distinctive ideas of Liberalism have a permanent function. The Socialist recognizes with perfect clearness, for example, that popular government is not a meaningless shibboleth, but a reality that has to be maintained and extended by fighting. He is well aware that he must deal with the House of Lords and the Plural vote if he is to gain his own ends. He can no longer regard these questions as difficulties interposed by half-hearted Liberals to distract attention from the Social problem. He is aware that the problem of Home Rule and of devolution generally is an integral part of the organization of democracy. And, as a rule, he not merely acquiesces in the demand of women for a purely political right, but only quarrels with the Liberal party for its tardiness in meeting the demand. The old Liberal idea of peace and retrenchment again is recognized by the Socialistic, and indeed by the whole body of social reformers, as equally essential for the successful prosecution of their aims. Popular budgets will bring no relief to human suffering if the revenues that they secure are all to go upon the most expensive ship that is the fashion of the moment, nor can the popular mind devote itself to the improvement of domestic conditions while it is distracted either by ambitions or by scares. On the other side, the Liberal who starts from the Gladstonian tradition has in large measure realized that if he is to maintain the essence of his old ideas it must be through a process of adaptation and growth. He has learnt that while Free Trade laid the foundations of prosperity it did not erect the building. He has to acknowledge that it has not solved the problems of unemployment, of underpayment, of overcrowding. He has to look deeper into the meaning of liberty and to take account of the bearing of actual conditions on the meaning of equality. As an apostle of peace and an opponent of swollen armaments, he has come to recognize that the expenditure of the social surplus upon the instruments of progress is the real alternative to its expenditure on the instruments of war. As a Temperance man he is coming to rely more on the indirect effect of social improvement on the one hand and the elimination of monopolist profit on the other, than on the uncertain chances of absolute prohibition. There are, then, among the composite forces which maintained the Liberal Government in power through the crisis of 1910, the elements of such an organic view as may inspire and direct a genuine social progress. Liberalism has passed through its Slough of Despond, and in the give and take of ideas with Socialism has learnt, and taught, more than one lesson. The result is a broader and deeper movement in which the cooler and clearer minds recognize below the differences of party names and in spite of certain real cross-currents a genuine unity of purpose. What are the prospects of this movement? Will it be maintained? Is it the steady stream to which we have compared it, or a wave which must gradually sink into the trough? To put this question is to ask in effect whether democracy is in substance as well as in form a possible mode of government. To answer this question we must ask what democracy really means, and why it is the necessary basis of the Liberal idea. The question has already been raised incidentally, and we have seen reason to dismiss both the individualist and the Benthamite argument for popular government as unsatisfactory. We even admitted a doubt whether some of the concrete essentials of liberty and social justice might not, under certain conditions, be less fully realized under a widely-extended suffrage than under the rule of a superior class or a well-ordered despotism. On what, then, it may be asked, do we found our conception of democracy? Is it on general principles of social philosophy, or on the special conditions of our own country or of contemporary civilization? And how does our conception relate itself to our other ideas of the social order? Do we assume that the democracy will in the main accept these ideas, or if it rejects them are we willing to acquiesce in its decision as final? And in the end what do we expect? Will democracy assert itself, will it find a common purpose and give it concrete shape? Or will it blunder on, the passive subject of scares and ambitions, frenzies of enthusiasm and dejection, clay in the hands of those whose profession it is to model it to their will. First as to the general principle. Democracy is not founded merely on the right or the private interest of the individual. This is only one side of the shield. It is founded equally on the function of the individual as a member of the community. It founds the common good upon the common will, in forming which it bids every grown-up, intelligent person to take a part. No doubt many good things may be achieved for a people without responsive effort on its own part. It may be endowed with a good police, with an equitable system of private law, with education, with personal freedom, with a well-organized industry. It may receive these blessings at the hands of a foreign ruler, or from an enlightened bureaucracy or a benevolent monarch. However obtained, they are all very good things. But the democratic theory is that, so obtained, they lack a vitalizing element. A people so governed resembles an individual who has received all the external gifts of fortune, good teachers, healthy surroundings, a fair breeze to fill his sails, but owes his prosperous voyage to little or no effort of his own. We do not rate such a man so high as one who struggles through adversity to a much less eminent position. What we possess has its intrinsic value, but how we came to possess it is also an important question. It is so with a society. Good government is much, but the good will is more, and even the imperfect, halting, confused utterance of the common will may have in it the potency of higher things than a perfection of machinery can ever attain. But this principle makes one very large assumption. It postulates the existence of a common will. It assumes that the individuals whom it would enfranchise can enter into the common life and contribute to the formation of a common decision by a genuine interest in public transactions. Where and in so far as this assumption definitely fails, there is no case for democracy. Progress, in such a case, is not wholly impossible, but it must depend on the number of those who do care for the things that are of social value, who advance knowledge or "civilize life through the discoveries of art," or form a narrow but effective public opinion in support of liberty and order. We may go further. Whatever the form of government progress always does in fact depend on those who so think and live, and on the degree in which these common interests envelop their life and thought. Now, complete and wholehearted absorption in public interests is rare. It is the property not of the mass but of the few, and the democrat is well aware that it is the remnant which saves the people. He subjoins only that if their effort is really to succeed the people must be willing to be saved. The masses who spend their toilsome days in mine or factory struggling for bread have not their heads for ever filled with the complex details of international policy or industrial law. To expect this would be absurd. What is not exaggerated is to expect them to respond and assent to the things that make for the moral and material welfare of the country, and the position of the democrat is that the "remnant" is better occupied in convincing the people and carrying their minds and wills with it than in imposing on them laws which they are concerned only to obey and enjoy. At the same time, the remnant, be it never so select, has always much to learn. Some men are much better and wiser than others, but experience seems to show that hardly any man is so much better or wiser than others that he can permanently stand the test of irresponsible power over them. On the contrary, the best and wisest is he who is ready to go to the humblest in a spirit of inquiry, to find out what he wants and why he wants it before seeking to legislate for him. Admitting the utmost that can be said for the necessity of leadership, we must at the same time grant that the perfection of leadership itself lies in securing the willing, convinced, open-eyed support of the mass. Thus individuals will contribute to the social will in very varying degrees, but the democratic thesis is that the formation of such a will, that is, in effect, the extension of intelligent interest in all manner of public things, is in itself a good, and more than that, it is a condition qualifying other good things. Now the extension of interest is not to be created by democratic forms of government, and if it neither exists nor can be brought into existence, democracy remains an empty form and may even be worse than useless. On the other hand, where the capacity exists the establishment of responsible government is the first condition of its development. Even so it is not the sole condition. The modern State is a vast and complex organism. The individual voter feels himself lost among the millions. He is imperfectly acquainted with the devious issues and large problems of the day, and is sensible how little his solitary vote can affect their decision. What he needs to give him support and direction is organization with his neighbours and fellow workers. He can understand, for example, the affairs of his trade union, or, again, of his chapel. They are near to him. They affect him, and he feels that he can affect them. Through these interests, again, he comes into touch with wider questions--with a Factory Bill or an Education Bill--and in dealing with these questions he will now act as one of an organized body, whose combined voting strength will be no negligible quantity. Responsibility comes home to him, and to bring home responsibility is the problem of all government. The development of social interest--and that is democracy--depends not only on adult suffrage and the supremacy of the elected legislature, but on all the intermediate organizations which link the individual to the whole. This is one among the reasons why devolution and the revival of local government, at present crushed in this country by a centralized bureaucracy, are of the essence of democratic progress. The success of democracy depends on the response of the voters to the opportunities given them. But, conversely, the opportunities must be given in order to call forth the response. The exercise of popular government is itself an education. In considering whether any class or sex or race should be brought into the circle of enfranchisement, the determining consideration is the response which that class or sex or race would be likely to make to the trust. Would it enter effectively into the questions of public life, or would it be so much passive voting material, wax in the hands of the less scrupulous politicians? The question is a fair one, but people are too ready to answer it in the less favourable sense on the ground of the actual indifference or ignorance which they find or think they find among the unenfranchised. They forget that in that regard enfranchisement itself may be precisely the stimulus needed to awaken interest, and while they are impressed with the danger of admitting ignorant and irresponsible, and perhaps corruptible voters to a voice in the government, they are apt to overlook the counterbalancing danger of leaving a section of the community outside the circle of civic responsibility. The actual work of government must affect, and also it must be affected by, its relation to all who live within the realm. To secure good adaptation it ought, I will not say to reflect, but at least to take account of, the dispositions and circumstances of every class in the population. If any one class is dumb, the result is that Government is to that extent uninformed. It is not merely that the interests of that class may suffer, but that, even with the best will, mistakes may be made in handling it, because it cannot speak for itself. Officious spokesmen will pretend to represent its views, and will obtain, perhaps, undue authority merely because there is no way of bringing them to book. So among ourselves does the press constantly represent public opinion to be one thing while the cold arithmetic of the polls conclusively declares it to be another. The ballot alone effectively liberates the quiet citizen from the tyranny of the shouter and the wire-puller. I conclude that an impression of existing inertness or ignorance is not a sufficient reason for withholding responsible government or restricting the area of the suffrage. There must be a well-grounded view that political incapacity is so deep-rooted that the extension of political rights would tend only to facilitate undue influence by the less scrupulous sections of the more capable part of the people. Thus where we have an oligarchy of white planters in the midst of a coloured population, it is always open to doubt whether a general colour-franchise will be a sound method of securing even-handed justice. The economic and social conditions may be such that the "coloured" man would just have to vote as his master told him, and if the elementary rights are to be secured for all it may be that a semi-despotic system like that of some of our Crown colonies is the best that can be devised. On the other side, that which is most apt to frighten a governing class or race, a clamour on the part of an unenfranchised people for political rights, is to the democrat precisely the strongest reason that he can have in the absence of direct experience for believing them fit for the exercise of civic responsibility. He welcomes signs of dissatisfaction among the disfranchised as the best proof of awakening interest in public affairs, and he has none of those fears of ultimate social disruption which are a nightmare to bureaucracies because experience has sufficiently proved to him the healing power of freedom, of responsibility, and of the sense of justice. Moreover, a democrat cannot be a democrat for his own country alone. He cannot but recognize the complex and subtle interactions of nation upon nation which make every local success or failure of democracy tell upon other countries. Nothing has been more encouraging to the Liberalism of Western Europe in recent years than the signs of political awakening in the East. Until yesterday it seemed as though it would in the end be impossible to resist the ultimate "destiny" of the white races to be masters of the rest of the world. The result would have been that, however far democracy might develop within any Western State, it would always be confronted with a contrary principle in the relation of that State to dependencies, and this contradiction, as may easily be seen by the attentive student of our own political constitutions, is a standing menace to domestic freedom. The awakening of the Orient, from Constantinople to Pekin, is the greatest and most hopeful political fact of our time, and it is with the deepest shame that English Liberals have been compelled to look on while our Foreign Office has made itself the accomplice in the attempt to nip Persian freedom in the bud, and that in the interest of the most ruthless tyranny that has ever crushed the liberties of a white people. The cause of democracy is bound up with that of internationalism. The relation is many-sided. It is national pride, resentment, or ambition one day that sweeps the public mind and diverts it from all interest in domestic progress. The next day the same function is performed no less adequately by a scare. The practice of playing on popular emotions has been reduced to a fine art which neither of the great parties is ashamed to employ. Military ideals possess the mind, and military expenditure eats up the public resources. On the other side, the political economic and social progress of other nations reacts on our own. The backwardness of our commercial rivals in industrial legislation was long made an argument against further advances among ourselves. Conversely, when they go beyond us, as now they often do, we can learn from them. Physically the world is rapidly becoming one, and its unity must ultimately be reflected in political institutions. The old doctrine of absolute sovereignty is dead. The greater States of the day exhibit a complex system of government within government, authority limited by authority, and the world-state of the not impossible future must be based on a free national self-direction as full and satisfying as that enjoyed by Canada or Australia within the British Empire at this moment. National emulation will express itself less in the desire to extend territory or to count up ships and guns, and more in the endeavour to magnify the contribution of our own country to civilized life. Just as in the rebirth of our municipal life we find a civic patriotism which takes interest in the local university, which feels pride in the magnitude of the local industry, which parades the lowest death rate in the country, which is honestly ashamed of a bad record for crime or pauperism, so as Englishmen we shall concern ourselves less with the question whether two of our Dreadnoughts might not be pitted against one German, and more with the question whether we cannot equal Germany in the development of science, of education, and of industrial technique. Perhaps even, recovering from our present artificially induced and radically insincere mood of national self-abasement, we shall learn to take some pride in our own characteristic contributions as a nation to the arts of government, to the thought, the literature, the art, the mechanical inventions which have made and are re-making modern civilization. Standing by national autonomy and international equality, Liberalism is necessarily in conflict with the Imperial idea as it is ordinarily presented. But this is not to say that it is indifferent to the interests of the Empire as a whole, to the sentiment of unity pervading its white population, to all the possibilities involved in the bare fact that a fourth part of the human race recognizes one flag and one supreme authority. In relation to the self-governing colonies the Liberal of today has to face a change in the situation since Cobden's time not unlike that which we have traced in other departments. The Colonial Empire as it stands is in substance the creation of the older Liberalism. It is founded on self-government, and self-government is the root from which the existing sentiment of unity has sprung. The problem of our time is to devise means for the more concrete and living expression of this sentiment without impairing the rights of self-government on which it depends. Hitherto the "Imperialist" has had matters all his own way and has cleverly exploited Colonial opinion, or an appearance of Colonial opinion, in favour of class ascendancy and reactionary legislation in the mother country. But the colonies include the most democratic communities in the world. Their natural sympathies are not with the Conservatives, but with the most Progressive parties in the United Kingdom. They favour Home Rule, they set the pace in social legislation. There exist accordingly the political conditions of a democratic alliance which it is the business of the British Liberal to turn to account. He may hope to make his country the centre of a group of self-governing, democratic communities, one of which, moreover, serves as a natural link with the other great commonwealth of English-speaking people. The constitutional mechanism of the new unity begins to take shape in the Imperial Council, and its work begins to define itself as the adjustment of interests as between different portions of the Empire and the organization of common defence. Such a union is no menace to the world's peace or to the cause of freedom. On the contrary, as a natural outgrowth of a common sentiment, it is one of the steps towards a wider unity which involves no backstroke against the ideal of self-government. It is a model, and that on no mean scale, of the International State. Internationalism on the one side, national self-government on the other, are the radical conditions of the growth of a social mind which is the essence, as opposed to the form, of democracy. But as to form itself a word must, in conclusion, be said. If the forms are unsuitable the will cannot express itself, and if it fails of adequate expression it is in the end thwarted, repressed and paralyzed. In the matter of form the inherent difficulty of democratic government, whether direct or representative, is that it is government by majority, not government by universal consent. Its decisions are those of the larger part of the people, not of the whole. This defect is an unavoidable consequence of the necessities of decision and the impossibility of securing universal agreement. Statesmen have sought to remedy it by applying something of the nature of a brake upon the process of change. They have felt that to justify a new departure of any magnitude there must be something more than a bare majority. There must either be a large majority, two-thirds or three-fourths of the electorate, or there must be some friction to be overcome which will serve to test the depth and force as well as the numerical extent of the feeling behind the new proposal. In the United Kingdom we have one official brake, the House of Lords, and several unofficial ones, the civil service, the permanent determined opposition of the Bench to democratic measures, the Press, and all that we call Society. All these brakes act in one way only. There is no brake upon reaction--a lack which becomes more serious in proportion as the Conservative party acquires a definite and constructive policy of its own. In this situation the Liberal party set itself to deal with the official brake by the simple method of reducing its effective strength, but, to be honest, without having made up its mind as to the nature of the brake which it would like to substitute. On this question a few general remarks would seem to be in place. The function of a check on the House of Commons is to secure reconsideration. Conservative leaders are in the right when they point to the accidental elements that go to the constitution of parliamentary majorities. The programme of any general election is always composite, and a man finds himself compelled, for example, to choose between a Tariff Reformer whose views on education he approves, and a Free Trader whose educational policy he detests. In part this defect might be remedied by the Proportional system to which, whether against the grain or not, Liberals will find themselves driven the more they insist on the genuinely representative character of the House of Commons. But even a Proportional system would not wholly clear the issues before the electorate. The average man gives his vote on the question which he takes to be most important in itself, and which he supposes to be most likely to come up for immediate settlement. But he is always liable to find his expectations defeated, and a Parliament which is in reality elected on one issue may proceed to deal with quite another. The remedy proposed by the Parliament Bill was a two years' delay, which, it was held, would secure full discussion and considerable opportunity for the manifestation of opinion should it be adverse. This proposal had been put to the constituencies twice over, and had been ratified by them if any legislative proposal ever was ratified. It should enable the House of Commons, as the representatives of the people, to decide freely on the permanent constitution of the country. The Bill itself, however, does not lay down the lines of a permanent settlement. For, to begin with, in leaving the constitution of the House of Lords unaltered it provides a one-sided check, operating only on democratic measures which in any case have to run the gauntlet of the permanent officials, the judges, the Press, and Society. For permanent use the brake must be two-sided. Secondly, it is to be feared that the principle of delay would be an insufficient check upon a large and headstrong majority. What is really needed is that the people should have the opportunity of considering a proposal afresh. This could be secured in either of two ways: (1) by allowing the suspensory veto of the Second Chamber to hold a measure over to a new Parliament; (2) by allowing the House of Commons to submit a bill in the form in which it finally leaves the House to a direct popular vote. It is to my mind regrettable that so many Liberals should have closed the door on the Referendum. It is true that there are many measures to which it would be ill suited. For example, measures affecting a particular class or a particular locality would be apt to go by the board. They might command a large and enthusiastic majority among those primarily affected by them, but only receive a languid assent elsewhere, and they might be defeated by a majority beaten up for extraneous purposes among those without first-hand knowledge of the problems with which they are intended to deal. Again, if a referendum were to work at all it would only be in relation to measures of the first class, and only, if the public convenience is to be consulted, on very rare occasions. In all ordinary cases of insuperable difference between the Houses, the government of the day would accept the postponement of the measure till the new Parliament. But there are measures of urgency, measures of fundamental import, above all, measures which cut across the ordinary lines of party, and with which, in consequence, our system is impotent to deal, and on these the direct consultation of the people would be the most suitable method of solution.[13] What we need, then, is an impartial second chamber distinctly subordinate to the House of Commons, incapable of touching finance and therefore of overthrowing a ministry, but able to secure the submission of a measure either to the direct vote of the people or to the verdict of a second election--the government of the day having the choice between the alternatives. Such a chamber might be instituted by direct popular election. But the multiplication of elections is not good for the working of democracy, and it would be difficult to reconcile a directly elected house to a subordinate position. It might, therefore, as an alternative, be elected on a proportional system by the House of Commons itself, its members retaining their seat for two Parliaments. To bridge over the change half of the chamber for the present Parliament might be elected by the existing House of Lords, and their representatives retiring at the end of this Parliament would leave the next House of Commons and every future House of Commons with one-half of the chamber to elect. This Second Chamber would then reflect in equal proportions the existing and the last House of Commons, and the balance between parties should be fairly held.[14] This chamber would have ample power of securing reasonable amendments and would also have good ground for exercising moderation in pressing its views. If the public were behind the measure it would know that in the end the House of Commons could carry it in its teeth, whether by referendum or by a renewed vote of confidence at a general election. The Commons, on their side, would have reasons for exhibiting a conciliatory temper. They would not wish to be forced either to postpone or to appeal. As to which method they would choose they would have absolute discretion, and if they went to the country with a series of popular measures hung up and awaiting their return for ratification, they would justly feel themselves in a strong position. So far as to forms. The actual future of democracy, however, rests upon deeper issues. It is bound up with the general advance of civilization. The organic character of society is, we have seen, in one sense, an ideal. In another sense it is an actuality. That is to say, nothing of any import affects the social life on one side without setting up reactions all through the tissue. Hence, for example, we cannot maintain great political progress without some corresponding advance on other sides. People are not fully free in their political capacity when they are subject industrially to conditions which take the life and heart out of them. A nation as a whole cannot be in the full sense free while it fears another or gives cause of fear to another. The social problem must be viewed as a whole. We touch here the greatest weakness in modern reform movements. The spirit of specialism has invaded political and social activity, and in greater and greater degree men consecrate their whole energy to a particular cause to the almost cynical disregard of all other considerations. "Not such the help, nor these the defenders" which this moment of the world's progress needs. Rather we want to learn our supreme lesson from the school of Cobden. For them the political problem was one, manifold in its ramifications but undivided in its essence. It was a problem of realizing liberty. We have seen reason to think that their conception of liberty was too thin, and that to appreciate its concrete content we must understand it as resting upon mutual restraint and value it as a basis of mutual aid. For us, therefore, harmony serves better as a unifying conception. It remains for us to carry it through with the same logical cogency, the same practical resourcefulness, the same driving force that inspired the earlier Radicals, that gave fire to Cobden's statistics, and lent compelling power to the eloquence of Bright. We need less of the fanatics of sectarianism and more of the unifying mind. Our reformers must learn to rely less on the advertising value of immediate success and more on the deeper but less striking changes of practice or of feeling, to think less of catching votes and more of convincing opinion. We need a fuller co-operation among those of genuine democratic feeling and more agreement as to the order of reform. At present progress is blocked by the very competition of many causes for the first place in the advance. Here, again, devolution will help us, but what would help still more would be a clearer sense of the necessity of co-operation between all who profess and call themselves democrats, based on a fuller appreciation of the breadth and the depth of their own meaning. The advice seems cold to the fiery spirits, but they may come to learn that the vision of justice in the wholeness of her beauty kindles a passion that may not flare up into moments of dramatic scintillation, but burns with the enduring glow of the central heat. FOOTNOTES: [13] I need hardly add that financial measures are entirely unsuited to a referendum. Financial and executive control go together, and to take either of them out of the hands of the majority in the House of Commons is not to reform our system but to destroy it root and branch. The same is not true of legislative control. There are cases in which a government might fairly submit a legislative measure to the people without electing to stand or fall by it. [14] Probably the best alternative to these proposals is that of a small directly elected Second Chamber, with a provision for a joint session in case of insuperable disagreement, but with no provision for delay. This proposal has the advantage, apparently, of commanding a measure of Conservative support. BIBLIOGRAPHY LOCKE.--Second Treatise on Civil Government (1689). PAINE.--The Rights of Man (1792). BENTHAM.--Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789!). J. S. MILL.--Principles of Political Economy (Books IV and V). On Liberty. Representative Government. The Subjection of Women. Autobiography. COBDEN.--Political Writings. BRIGHT.--Speeches. MAZZINI.--The Duties of Man. Thoughts on Democracy in Europe. JEVONS.--The State in Relation to Labour. T. H. GREEN.--Principles of Political Obligation. Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract (_Works_, vol. iii). MORLEY.--Life of Cobden. Life of Gladstone. F. W. HIRST.--The Manchester School. G. LOWES DICKINSON.--Liberty and Justice. PROF. H. JONES.--The Working Faith of the Social Reformer. PROF. McCUNN.--Six Radical Thinkers. INDEX Association, right of, 37-8 Authoritarian rule, 8-10, 18, 21, 47, 54 Birth rate, 181 Charity, State, and Justice, 182 Church and State, 12 City States, 10-13, 16 Civil liberty, 21 Coercion, where justified, 139-154 Colonies, 41-4, 106, 216, 240 Conservatism, 88, 176, 217 Democracy, future of, 227-236, 242-51 Economic liberty, 34-8, 157 Education, 32, 40, 154 Feudalism, 15-18 Fiscal liberty, 25-6, 34, 78-81 Foreign policy, 41, 104-5 Freedom, conditions of, 23-4, 28, 31, 58, 91-2, 140, 146 Gladstone, W. E., 102-6 Greece, ancient, 10-13 Habeas Corpus Act, 23 Imperialism, 215, 221-4, 239 Industry, regulation of, 35-6, 82-8, 93 Inequality, the defence of, 131 Inherited wealth, 197-9 Ireland, 41, 103, 219, 224 Laissez-faire, 78-101 Land question, 82, 95-8, 175-6, 192-3 Liberalism, beginning of, 19, 51 Manchester school, 57 Militarism, 8, 45, 80, 148, 237-9 Mill, J. S., 107-15, 116 Monopolies, 97-100 National liberty, 40-4 Natural order, theory of, 54-64 Old Age Pensions, 156, 177 Opinion, Liberty and, 116-23 Organic Concept of Society, 125-30, 135 Peace, International, 80-1, 225, 237 Personal liberty, 26-31 Petition of Right, 22 Poor Law, 155, 177-9, 184 Popular sovereignty, 45-8, 64, 112 Poverty line, 162 Progress, nature of, 137 Property, rights of, 94-5, 100, 168, 186, 188 Proportional representation, 114, 243 Referendum, 245-6 Religions liberty, 29-31 Revolutionary Declarations, 60-2 Rome, ancient, 13-14 Second Chamber, the, 242-8 Socialism, 165, 167-72, 191, 211, 215, 219 Social liberty, 31-3, 140 Speculation, 195 Super-tax, 199-201 Temperance, 180, 226 Trade unions, 38, 84, 161, 220, 223 Unemployed, 160 Utilitarianism, 57, 65-77, 107 Wage," "living, 159, 163-4, 177, 205-8 Wealth, social basis of, 187-91, 194 Women, rights of, 33, 39, 86, 112, 114, 179 Work, right to, 159 Printed by The Riverside Press, Edinburgh 
37580	----	[ Transcriber's Notes: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation and non-standard punctuation. Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made. They are listed at the end of the text. Some of the entries in the index are not in alphabetical order; they have been kept as printed. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. ] CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL CHANGE BASED UPON A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE HALIFAX DISASTER BY SAMUEL HENRY PRINCE, M. A. (Tor.) SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY NEW YORK 1920 Halifax is not a large city but there are those who love it who would choose to dwell therein before all cities beneath the skies To All Such CITIZENS, PAR EXCELLENCE, I COUNT IT AN HONOR TO DEDICATE THESE LINES PREFACE The following pages embody the result of an observational study of the social phenomena attendant upon one of the greatest catastrophies in history--the Halifax Disaster. The idea of the work was suggested while carrying out a civic community study of the disaster city under the direction of Professor F. H. Giddings of Columbia University. The account deals first with the shock and disintegration as the writer observed it. Individual and group reactions are next examined in the light of sociological theory. The chapters on Social Organization are an effort to picture that process as it actually occurred. The writer has also tried faithfully to record any important contribution which Social Economy was able to make in the direction of systematic rehabilitation. Special reference is made to private initiative and governmental control in emergency relief. This monograph is in no sense, however, a relief survey. Its chief value to the literature of relief will lie in its bearing upon predictable social movements in great emergencies. Nor is the book a history of the disaster. It is rather, as the title suggests, an intensive study of two social orders, between which stands a great catastrophe, and its thesis is the place of catastrophe in social change. In the preparation of this work, which the author believes to be the first attempt to present a purely scientific and sociological treatment of any great disaster, he has received invaluable assistance. A few grateful lines can ill-express his obligation to his Professors of the Department of Sociology. To Professor F. H. Giddings the volume owes its inspiration and much of its social philosophy. To Professor A. A. Tenney it owes its present form and structure and any literary excellence it may possess. Professor R. E. Chaddock has read the manuscript throughout and has contributed many helpful suggestions. Professor S. M. Lindsay has read the chapter on Social Legislation, and Professor R. S. Woodworth of the Department of Psychology, that on Disaster Psychology. The author is under special tribute to Professor H. R. Seager, and to Professor Tenney, who most cheerfully sacrificed part of a summer vacation to read and revise the manuscript and proof. Without the walls of the University there are also those who have given aid. The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Dr. Edward T. Devine of New York, of Mr. C. C. Carstens of Boston, of Mr. Thomas Mackay, of Ottawa, and of Miss E. M. A. Vaughan, of the St. John Public Library. He has enjoyed the coöperation of many friends and fellow-townsmen of Halifax. He desires to thank particularly, Miss L. F. Barnaby, of the Halifax Citizens' Library, Miss J. B. Wisdom, of the Halifax Welfare Bureau, Rev. W. J. Patton of St. Paul's Church, Mr. W. C. Milner, of the Public Archives of Canada, Mr. L. Fred. Monaghan, Halifax City Clerk, Mr. G. K. Butler, Supervisor of Halifax Schools, Mr. R. M. Hattie, Secretary of the Halifax Town-Planning Commission, Dr. Franklin B. Royer, Director of the Massachusetts-Halifax Health Commission, Mr. E. A. Saunders, Secretary of the Halifax Board of Trade, Mr. E. H. Blois, Superintendent of Neglected and Delinquent Children, and last of all and most of all his friend of many years, Mr. A. J. Johnstone, editor of the _Dartmouth Independent_. S. H. P. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK, OCTOBER, 1920. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION PAGE The "catastrophe" in sociological literature 13 The "catastrophic view" _vs._ progress in evolution 14 Factors in social change 15 The stimuli factors 16 What crises mean 16 Communities and great vicissitudes 19 Causes of immobility 19 Catastrophe and progress 21 Historic cases suggested for study 23 CHAPTER I CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL DISINTEGRATION The City of Halifax 25 Terrific nature of the explosion 26 Destruction of life and property 26 The subsequent fire and storms 29 Annihilation of homes 31 Arresting of business 31 Disintegration of the social order 32 CHAPTER II CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Shock reaction 36 Hallucination 37 Primitive instincts 39 Crowd psychology 41 Phenomena of emotion 44 How men react when bereft completely 47 Post-catastrophic phenomena 48 Human nature in the absence of repression by conventionality, custom and law 49 Fatigue and the human will 52 The stimuli of heroism 55 Mutual aid 56 CHAPTER III CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION The organization of relief 59 The disaster protocracy 60 The transition from chaos through leadership 61 Utility of association 62 Vital place of communication 62 Imitation 63 Social pressure 63 Consciousness of kind 63 Discussion 64 Circumstantial pressure 64 Climate 65 Geographic determinants 67 Classification of factors 67 CHAPTER IV CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION (CONTINUED) The reorganization of the civil social order 69 Division of labor 69 Resumption of normal activities 70 State and voluntary associations 71 Order of reëstablishment 71 Effects of environmental change 75 The play of imitation 77 The stimulus of lookers-on 78 Social conservation 79 CHAPTER V CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL ECONOMY The contribution of social service 80 Its four-fold character 83 The principles of relief 85 Rehabilitation 86 Phases of application 87 Criticisms 92 A new principle 95 Social results 96 Summary for future guidance 97 CHAPTER VI CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL LEGISLATION Governmental agencies in catastrophe 102 What seems to be expected of governments 103 What they actually do 103 Social legislation 104 A permanent contribution 109 CHAPTER VII CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL SURPLUS Mill's explanation of the rapidity with which communities recover from disaster 111 The case of San Francisco 111 The case of Halifax 112 Social surplus 112 The equipmental factors 113 Correlation of tragedy in catastrophe with generosity of public response 114 Catastrophe insurance 116 A practical step 117 CHAPTER VIII CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL CHANGE The unchanging Halifax of the years 118 The causes of social immobility 119 The new birthday 122 The indications of change--appearance, expansion of business, population, political action, city-planning, housing, health, education, recreation, community spirit 123 Carsten's prophecy 140 CHAPTER IX CONCLUSION Recapitulation 141 The various steps in the study presented in propositional form 142 The rôle of catastrophe 145 Index 147 "This awful catastrophe is not the end but the beginning. History does not end so. It is the way its chapters open."--_St. Augustine._ INTRODUCTION The "catastrophe" in sociological literature--The "catastrophic view" _vs._ progress in evolution--Factors in social change--The stimuli factors--What crises mean--Communities and great vicissitudes--Causes of immobility--Catastrophe and progress--Historic cases suggested for study. There are many virgin fields in Sociology. This is one of the attractions the subject has for the scientific mind. But of all such fields none is more interesting than the factor of catastrophe in social change. And strangely enough, if there are but few references to the problem in all our rapidly-growing literature, it is not because catastrophies are few. Indeed it would seem that with the advent of the industrial age, disasters grow more frequent every year.[1] Many are small, no doubt, touching but the life of a village or a borough--a broken dyke, a bridge swept out by ice, a caved-in mine. Others again write themselves on the pages of History--an Ohio flood, an Omaha tornado, a Chicago fire, a San Francisco earthquake, a Halifax explosion. Each in its own way inscribes its records of social change--some to be effaced in a twelve-month--some to outlast a generation. Records they are, for the most part unread. How to read them is the problem. And it may be that when readers have grown in number and the script is better known, we shall be able to seize the moment of catastrophe and multiply immeasurably its power for social good. [1] "Within a score of years disasters ... have cost thousands of lives, have affected by personal injury, or destruction of property no fewer than a million and a half persons and have laid waste property valued at over a billion dollars ... the expectation based on past experience is that each year no less than half a dozen such catastrophies will occur." (Deacon J. Byron, _Disasters_, N. Y., 1918, p. 7.) This quotation refers to the United States alone. To define the term catastrophe is scarcely necessary. The dictionary calls catastrophe "an event producing a subversion of the order or system of things," and such as "may or may not be a cause of misery to man."[2] It is desirable however to limit the use of the term, in primary investigations at least, to those disasters which affect communities rather than states or nations, for restricted areas are more amenable to study. National cataclysms, such as war, famine, and financial panic are too general in character, and function on too grand a scale for satisfactory treatment, at least until the ground is cleared. It is necessary also to limit this investigation to those social changes which follow upon catastrophies, rather than precede them. For there are social effects which result from living in anticipation of disaster, such as are observable among communities in volcanic areas. Interesting as a broad study might be, it would be likely to lead the investigator too far afield into the realm of speculation. Nevertheless a general point of view is necessary to give meaning to even a limited treatment of the theme. For this purpose there may be contrasted the catastrophic view of history, as illustrated by that of the Hebrew peoples, and the modern conception of progress through evolution. The former looks upon history as a series of vicissitudes mercifully ending one day in final cataclysm. The spirit of apocalyptic expectancy prevails. Social conditions rest hopelessly static. Faith is pinned to a spiritual kingdom which can grow and can endure. Against this has been set an optimistic evolution, pictured like an escalade with resident forces lifting the world to better days. Progress becomes a smooth continuous growth. On the other hand the newer philosophy sees in history not necessarily the operation of progressive evolution but also of retrogressive evolution and cataclysm.[3] There are great stretches of smooth and even current in the stream, but always along the course are seen the rapid and the water-fall, the eddy and reversing tide. The latter is the general subject of this dissertation, and its thesis is the place of the water-fall. Only a very small, and specialized treatment is attempted; the great Niagaras must be left to abler hands. [2] Catastrophies are those unforeseen events which the Wells-Fargo express receipts used to call quaintly "Acts of God, Indians and other public enemies of the government." [3] If nature abhors a vacuum, she also abhors stagnation. Is there not reason behind all this action and reaction, these cycles and short-time changes which her observers note? May it not well be that the ever-swinging pendulum has a stir-up function to perform and that the miniature daily catastrophies of life are the things which keep it wholesome and sweet? "The old order changeth yielding place to the new. And God fulfils Himself in many ways Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." --Tennyson, Alfred, _The Passing of Arthur_. The conception of social change as used in this monograph also needs definition. By social change is meant those rapid mutations which accompany sudden interferences with the equilibrium of society, break up the _status-quo_, dissipate mental inertia and overturn other tendencies resistant to structural modification. The various forces which initiate such disturbances are factors in social change. These factors may be intra-social,--within the group--such factors as operate in the regular social process, imitation and adaptation, for example; or they may be extra-social, "stimuli" factors--from without the group--such as, accidental, extraneous or dramatic events. Of the latter conquest may be one, or the sudden intrusion of a foreign element, or rapid changes of environment.[4] [4] Ross, Edward A., _Foundations of Sociology_ (N. Y., 1905), ch. viii, p. 189. These sudden changes are fully worthy of careful study by scientific method. However important the accumulation of impulses toward social transformation may be, there is often a single "precipitating factor" which acts as the "igniting spark" or "the knocking away of the stay-block," or "the turning of a lever."[5] It is among such extra-social or "stimuli" factors that catastrophe falls as a precipitating agent in social change. [5] Ross, _op. cit._, p. 198. The significance of crisis in social change likewise requires attention, and it will be clarifying to our thought at this point to distinguish carefully between crisis and catastrophe, and to inquire what the nature of the former really is. The word "crisis" is of Greek origin, meaning a point of culmination and separation, an instant when change one way or another is impending. Crises are those critical moments which are, as we say, big with destiny. Battles have crisis-hours when the tide of victory turns. Diseases have them--the seventh day in pneumonia, or the fourteenth day in typhoid fever. Social institutions afford numerous illustrations, such as the eighth year of marriage.[6] There are critical years of stress and strain--the ages of fourteen and forty in life-histories, the latter being according to Sir Robertson Nicoll the most dangerous hour of existence. Other crises are "hours of insight" in the world of thought, and hours of opportunity in the world of action,--that "tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune," hours of doubt in religion "when all the gods are dead." "Crisis," Professor Shailer Mathews observes, "is something more than a relative term. It describes a situation which is no ordinary member of a line of antecedents and consequents, but one that assures radical change in the immediate future." He distinguishes between a crisis and a revolution. "The difference between a revolution and a crisis is the difference between the fire and the moment when someone with a lighted match in hand pauses to decide whether a fire shall be lighted." The term covers the situation preceding change, whether this situation be the culmination of a process or the result of some particular stimulus. "It is not necessarily precipitated by great issues. Quite as often it is occasioned by events .... which are so related to a new situation as to set in motion an entire group of forces as a match kindles a huge bonfire when once the fuel is laid."[7] The failure to distinguish between that which occasions the crisis and the crisis itself has been the source of some confusion in thinking. "Defeat in battle, floods, drought, pestilence and famine," are not strictly crises, but they super-induce the crisis-situation, as does anything which brings about "a disturbance of habit," though it be simply "an incident, a stimulation or a suggestion." In short, crises are the result either of a slowly maturing process or of sudden strain or shock; and the nature of the reaction in the crisis-hour is nothing more than the effort towards the reëstablishment of habits, new or old, when the former functioning has been disturbed. The situation, as has been pointed out, is closely correlated with attention. [6] Jeune, Sir Francis, a celebrated judge in divorce cases. [7] Mathews, Shailer, _The Church in the Changing Order_ (N. Y., 1907), ch. i, p. 1. When the habits are running smoothly the attention is relaxed; it is not at work. But when something happens to disturb the run of habit, the attention is called into play, and devises a new mode of behavior which will meet the crisis. That is, the attention establishes new and adequate habits, or it is its function so to do.[8] [8] Thomas, William I., _Source Book of Social Origins_ (Chicago, 1909), Introduction, p. 17. What appears to take place is analogous to what is known as the reconditioning of instincts in psychology. Professor Giddings has been the first to make the sociological application: Folk-ways of every kind, including mores and themistes are the most stable syntheses of pluralistic behavior; yet they are not unchanging. Under new and widening experience they suffer attrition and are modified. Instincts and with them emotion and imagination which largely fills the vast realm between instinct and reason are reconditioned. The word means simply that reflexes and higher processes subjected to new experiences are in a degree or entirely detached from old stimuli and associated with new ones. From time to time also traditions are invaded and habits are broken down by crisis. Pluralistic behavior then is scrutinized, criticized, discussed. It is rationally deliberated.[9] [9] Giddings, Franklin H., "Pluralistic Behaviour," _American Journal of Sociology_, vol. xxv, no. 4 (Jan., 1920), p. 401. Crises often, perhaps most often, precede catastrophies, as when revolutions break. The alternate truth that the catastrophies themselves are re-agents to generate the crisis-situation has not been so commonly noted. Nevertheless the disintegration of the normal by shock and calamity is an increasingly familiar spectacle. Heretofore it has been in the life-histories and careers of individual men rather than in the case of communities that the observations have been recorded. Our biographies teem with instances of personal crises precipitated by a great shock or disappointment--Hawthorne's dismissal from the custom house, Goldsmith's rejection from Civil Service, the refusal of Dickens's application for the stage, the turning back of Livingstone from China, the bankruptcy of Scott. Now examination reveals that the one thing characteristic of the crisis-period in the individual is a state of fluidity[10] into which the individual is thrown. Life becomes like molten metal. It enters a state of flux[11] from which it must reset upon a principle, a creed, or purpose. It is shaken perhaps violently out of rut and routine. Old customs crumble, and instability rules. There is generated a state of potentiality for reverse directions. The subject may "fall down" or he may "fall up." The presence of dynamic forces in such a state means change. But the precise rôle of the individual mind in a period of crisis is a problem not for sociology but for psychology. [10] The phrases "The world in a welter," "nations in the melting pot," "life in the smelting oven," are commonly heard and suggest a solution stage prior to the hardening process, or antecedent to crystallization. [11] Following the French Revolution Wordsworth wrote: I lost All feeling of conviction and in fine Sick, wearied out with contrarieties Yielded up moral questions in despair. --_Prelude_, bk. xi. The principle that fluidity is fundamental to social change is also true, however, of the community. Fluidity is not the usual state of society. Most of the "functions" of society have no tendency to disturb the _status quo_. The round of love, marriage and reproduction, so long as births and death balance, production so far as it is balanced by consumption, exchange so long as the argosies of commerce carry goods and not ideas, education so far as it passes on the traditional culture, these together with recreation, social intercourse, worship, social control, government and the administration of justice are essentially statical. They might conceivably go on forever without producing change.[12] [12] Ross, _op. cit._, p. 200. Indeed the usual condition of the body politic is immobility, conservatism and "determined resistance to change." The chief reason for this immobility is habit:[13] When our habits are settled and running smoothly they most resemble the instincts of animals. And the great part of our life is lived in the region of habit. The habits like the instincts are safe and serviceable. They have been tried and are associated with a feeling of security. There consequently grows up in the folk mind a determined resistance to change ... a state of rapid and constant change implies loss of settled habits and disorganization. As a result, all societies view change with suspicion, and the attempt to revise certain habits is even viewed as immorality. Now it is possible under such conditions for a society to become stationary or to attempt to remain so. The effort of attention is to preserve the present status, rather than to re-accommodate. This condition is particularly marked among savages. In the absence of science and a proper estimate of the value of change they rely on ritual and magic and a minute unquestioning adhesion to the past. Change is consequently introduced with a maximum of resistance ... Indeed the only world in which change is at a premium and is systematically sought is the modern scientific world.[14] But when there comes the shattering of the matrix of custom by catastrophe, then mores are broken up and scattered right and left. Fluidity is accomplished at a stroke. There comes a sudden chance for permanent social change. [13] To this cause of immobility may be added others, such as: (1) Narrow experience and few interests. (2) Large percentage of population owning property. (3) Oriental pride in permanence. (4) Fatalistic philosophies. (5) Over-emphasis of government. [14] Thomas, _op. cit._, pp. 20, 21. Social changes follow both minor and major disasters. The destruction of a mill may change the economic outlook of a village. The loss of a bridge may result in an entirely different school system for an isolated community; a cloud-burst may move a town. Great visitations, like the Chicago fire or the San Francisco earthquake, reveal these social processes in larger and more legible scale. Take as a single instance the latter city. Its quick recovery has been called one of the wonders of the age. In the very midst of surrounding desolation and business extinction, the Californian city projected a Panama-Pacific exposition, and its citizens proceeded to arrange for one of the greatest of all world fairs. On the other hand, the social changes which succeed relatively small disturbances are often such as to elude an estimate. The reason has been well suggested that "big crises bring changes about most easily because they affect all individuals alike at the same time." In other words a more general fluidity is accomplished. We see, therefore, a second principle begin to emerge. Not only is fluidity fundamental to social change, but the degree of fluidity seems to vary directly as the shock and extent of the catastrophe. There yet remains to notice the bearing of catastrophe upon social progress. The following words are quotable in this connection: It is quite certain that the degree of progress of a people has a certain relation to the number of disturbances encountered, and the most progressive have had a more vicissitudinous life. Our proverb "Necessity is the mother of invention" is the formulation in folk-thought of this principle of social change.[15] We cannot, however, remain long content with this suggestion as to the principle concerned--namely, that progress is a natural and an assured result of change. The point is that catastrophe always means social change. There is not always progress. It is well to guard against confusion here. Change means any qualitative variation, whereas progress means "amelioration, perfectionment." The latter will be seen to depend on other things--the nature of the shock, the models presented, the community culture and morale, the stimulus of leaders and lookers-on. The single case of Galveston, Texas,[16] is sufficient to disprove the too optimistic hypothesis that the effects of catastrophies are uniform. Here a city lost heart by reason of the overwhelming flood, and in spite of superior commercial advantages was outgrown by a rival fifty miles away. At the same time the case of Dayton, Ohio, should be borne in mind. Here also was a flood-stricken city and she became "the Gem City of the West." The principle[17] thus appears to be that progress in catastrophe is a resultant of specific conditioning factors, some of which are subject to social control. [15] Thomas, _op. cit._, p. 18. [16] "It has one of the finest, if not the finest, ports in North America. In 1900 a great tidal wave swept over the city, causing enormous damage and loss of life. While the city has had a certain growth since that time, it has been far outstripped by Houston, Dallas, and other Texas cities."--Kirby Page, formerly of Texas, in a letter to the author. [17] Another principle is suggested for study by the following sentence in Ross' _Foundations of Sociology_ (p. 206): "Brusk revolution in the conditions of life or thought produces not sudden, but gradual changes in society." This might easily be elaborated. It is indeed this very thing which makes possible the hope of eventual social control over disaster-stricken cities, and the transmutation of seeming evil into tremendous good. And this is in addition to the many practical social lessons which we have already been intelligent enough to preserve, such as those of better city-planning, and a more efficient charity organization. How much of man's advancement has been directly or indirectly due to disaster?[18] The question asks itself and it is a question as yet without an answer. When the answer is at last written, will there not be many surprises? Pitt-Rivers tells us that "the idea of a large boat might have been suggested in the time of floods when houses floated down the rivers before the eyes of men."[19] A terrible storm at sea gave America its first rice.[20] City-planning may be said to have taken its rise in America as a result of the Chicago fire, and the rôle of catastrophe in the progress of social legislation is a study in itself. The impetus thus received is immeasurable. Historically, labor-legislation took its rise with the coming of an infectious fever in the cotton-mills of Manchester in 1784. After the Cherry mine disaster legislation ensued at once. Again it was the Triangle fire which led to the appropriation of funds for a factory investigation commission in the State of New York. The sinking of the Titanic has greatly reduced the hazards of the sea. [18] The relationship of poetry and disaster is of interest. In a recent article on Disaster and Poetry a writer asks "whether often, if not always, suffering, disease and disaster do not bring to him [the poet] the will to create."--Marks, Jeanette, "Disaster and Poetry," _North American Review_, vol. 212, no. 1 (July, 1920), p. 93. [19] Thomas, _op. cit._, p. 23. [20] In this storm a ship from Madagascar was driven into a South Carolina port. In gratitude the Captain gave the Governor a sack of seed. It may easily prove true that the prophets of golden days to come who invariably arise on the day of disaster, are not entirely without ground for the faith which is in them; and that catastrophies are frequently only re-agents of further progress. But this is merely introductory. Thought becomes scientific only when its conclusions are checked up and under-written by observation or experiment. Prior to such procedure it must still remain opinion or belief. The whole subject is, it must be repeated, a virgin field in sociology. Knowledge will grow scientific only after the most faithful examination of many catastrophies. But it must be realized that the data of the greatest value is left ofttimes unrecorded, and fades rapidly from the social memory. Investigation is needed immediately after the event. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that sociological studies of Chicago, Galveston, Baltimore, San Francisco, and other disaster cities should be initiated at once.[21] [21] It is perhaps due to the reader to say that while this volume treats specifically of Halifax, the writer has studied the records of many disasters and these have been kept in mind in drawing his conclusions. He participated in the rescue and relief work at Halifax in 1917, and at the time of the Titanic disaster accompanied one of the expeditions to the scene. He was in New York when the Wall Street explosion occurred, and made a first hand study of its effects. Of such a series--if the work can be done--this little volume on Halifax is offered as a beginning. It is hoped that the many inadequacies of treatment will receive the generous allowances permitted a pioneer. CHAPTER I CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL DISINTEGRATION The City of Halifax--Terrific nature of the explosion--Destruction of life and property--The subsequent fire and storms--Annihilation of homes--Arresting of business--Disintegration of the social order. Halifax is the ocean terminal of the Dominion of Canada on her Atlantic seaboard. It is situated at the head of Chebucto Bay, a deep inlet on the southeastern shoreline of Nova Scotia. It is endowed by nature with a magnificent harbor, which as a matter of fact is one of the three finest in the world. In it a thousand vessels might safely ride at anchor. The possession of this harbor, together with ample defences, and a fortunate situation with regard to northern Europe established the Garrison City, early in the year 1914 as the natural war-base of the Dominion. Its tonnage leaped by millions, and it soon became the third shipping port in the entire British Empire. Hither the transports came, and the giant freighters to join their convoy. Cruisers and men-of-war put in to use its great dry-dock, or take on coal. Here too, cleared the supply and munition boats--some laden with empty shells, others with high explosives destined for the distant fields of battle. How much of the deadly cargo lay in the road-stead or came and went during those fateful years is not publicly known.[22] Certainly there was too much to breed a sense of safety, but no one gave the matter second thought. All were intent upon the mighty task of the hour. Sufficient unto each day was each day's evil. Each night the great war-gates were swung across the channels. Powerful searchlights swept unceasingly the sea and sky. The forts were fully manned. The gunners ready. The people knew these things, and no one dreamed of danger save to loved ones far away. Secure in her own defences the city lay unafraid, and almost apathetic. [22] During the month of December, 1915, alone, 30,000 tons of munitions passed over the railroad piers of Halifax. About midway in the last two years of war--to be exact December, 1917,--a French munitioner[23] heavily laden with trinitrotoluol, the most powerful of known explosives, reached Halifax from New York. On the early morning of the sixth of that month, she was proceeding under her own steam up the harbor-length toward anchorage in the basin--an oval expansion half-hidden by a blunt hill called Turple Head. Suddenly an empty Belgian relief ship[24] swept through the Narrows directly in her pathway. There was a confusion of signals; a few agonized manoeuvers. The vessels collided; and the shock of their colliding shook the world! [23] The _Mont Blanc_, St. Nazaire, Captain Lemedec, Pilot Francis Mackay, owners La Compagnie General Transatlantique 3,121 tons gross, 2252 net register, steel, single screw, 330 ft. long, 40 ft. beam, speed 7½ to 8 knots, inward bound, from New York to await convoy. Cargo 450,000 lbs. trinitrotoluol, 2300 tons picric acid, 35 tons benzol, employed in carrying munitions to France. [24] The _Imo_, Christiania, Captain Fron, Pilot William Hayes, owners Southern Pacific Whaling Company, 5,041 tons gross, 3161 tons register, steel, single screw, 430 ft. long, 45 ft. beam, speed 11 to 12 knots, outward bound to New York, in ballast, employed in carrying food to Belgium. War came to America that morning. Two thousand slain, six thousand injured, ten thousand homeless, thirty-five millions of dollars in property destroyed, three hundred acres left a smoking waste, churches, schools, factories blown down or burned--such was the appalling havoc of the greatest single explosion in the history of the world.[25] It was an episode which baffles description. It is difficult to gain from words even an approximate idea of the catastrophe and what followed in its trail. [25] The greatest previous explosion was when 500,000 pounds of dynamite blew up in Baltimore Harbor. It was all of a sudden--a single devastating blast; then the sound as of the crashing of a thousand chandeliers. Men and women cowered under the shower of debris and glass. There was one awful moment when hearts sank, and breaths were held. Then women cried aloud, and men looked dumbly into each other's eyes, and awaited the crack of doom. To some death was quick and merciful in its coming. Others were blinded, and staggered to and fro before they dropped. Still others with shattered limbs dragged themselves forth into the light--naked, blackened, unrecognizable human shapes. They lay prone upon the streetside, under the shadow of the great death-cloud which still dropped soot and oil and water. It was truly a sight to make the angels weep. Men who had been at the front said they had seen nothing so bad in Flanders. Over there men were torn with shrapnel, but the victims were in all cases men. Here father and mother, daughter and little child, all fell in "one red burial blent." A returned soldier said of it: "I have been in the trenches in France. I have gone over the top. Friends and comrades have been shot in my presence. I have seen scores of dead men lying upon the battlefield, but the sight .... was a thousand times worse and far more pathetic."[26] A well-known relief worker who had been at San Francisco, Chelsea and Salem immediately after those disasters said "I am impressed by the fact that this is much the saddest disaster I have seen." It has been compared to the scenes pictured by Lord Lytton in his tale of the last days of Pompeii: True there was not that hellish river of molten lava flowing down upon the fleeing people; and consuming them as feathers in fierce flames. But every other sickening detail was present--that of crashing shock and shaking earth, of crumbling homes, and cruel flame and fire. And there were showers, not it is true of ashes from the vortex of the volcano, but of soot and oil and water, of death-dealing fragments of shrapnel and deck and boiler, of glass and wood and of the shattered ship.[27] Like the New Albany tornado, it caused loss "in all five of the ways it is possible for a disaster to do so, in death, permanent injury, temporary injury, personal property loss, and real property loss."[28] Here were to be found in one dread assembling the combined horrors of war, earthquake, fire, flood, famine and storm--a combination seen for the first time in the records of human disaster. [26] Johnstone, Dwight, _The Tragedy of Halifax_ (in MS.). [27] McGlashen, Rev. J. A., _The Patriot_ (Dartmouth, N. S.). [28] Deacon, J. Byron, _Disasters_ (N. Y., 1918), ch. ii, p. 158. It was an earthquake[29] so violent that when the explosion occurred the old, rock-founded city shook as with palsy. The citadel trembled, the whole horizon seemed to move with the passing of the earth waves. These were caught and registered, their tracings[30] carefully preserved, but the mute record tells not of the falling roofs and flying plaster and collapsing walls which to many an unfortunate victim brought death and burial at one and the same time. [29] "The effect of the vast, sudden interference with the air was practically the same as if an earthquake had shaken Halifax to the ground." (MacMechan, Archibald, "Halifax in Ruins," _The Canadian Courier_, vol. xxiii, no. 4, p. 6.) [30] The tracings on the seismograph show three distinct shocks at the hours 9.05, 9.10 and 10.05. It was a flood, for the sea rushed forward in a gigantic tidal wave, fully a fathom in depth. It swept past pier and embankment into the lower streets, and receding, left boats and wreckage high and dry, but carried to a watery doom score upon score of human lives. Nearly two hundred men were drowned. It was a fire or rather a riot of fires, for the air was for a second filled with tongues of igneous vapour hiding themselves secretly within the lightning discharge of gas, only to burst out in gusts of sudden flame. Numberless buildings were presently ablaze. Soon there was naught to the northward but a roaring furnace. Above, the sky was crimson; below, a living crematorium--church and school, factory and home burned together in one fierce conflagration; and the brave firemen knew that there were men and women pinned beneath the wreckage, wounded past self-help. Frantic mothers heard the cries of little children, but in vain. Fathers desperately tore through burning brands, but often failed to save alive the captives of the flame. And so the last dread process went on,--earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And when the fires at last abated, the north end of the City of Halifax looked like some blackened hillside which a farmer had burned for fallow in the spring. But perhaps the most terrible of all the terrible accompaniments was the tornado-like gas-blast from the bursting ship. It wrought instant havoc everywhere. Trees were torn from the ground. Poles were snapped like toothpicks. Trains were stopped dead. Cars were left in twisted masses. Pedestrians were thrown violently into the air, houses collapsed on all sides. Steamers were slammed against the docks. Then followed a veritable air-raid, when the sky rained iron fragments upon the helpless city. Like a meteoric shower of death, they fell piercing a thousand roofs, and with many a mighty splash bore down into the sea. Nor yet did this complete the tale of woes of this _Dies Irae_. Scarce was the catastrophe an hour old when the news was flashed around that a second explosion was approaching. It was the powder magazine in the Navy-yard, and the flames were perilously near. Through the crowded streets raced the heralds like prophets of wrath to come. "Flee!.... Flee!.... Get into the open ground" was the cry. Shops were abandoned unguarded, goods laid open on every side. No key was turned, no till was closed, but all instanter joined the precipitant throng, driven like animals before a prairie fire--yet this was not all; for "the plight of the aged, the sick, the infants, the bed-ridden, the cripples, the nursing mothers, the pregnant can not be described." It was like the flight from Vesuvius of which Pliny the Younger tells: You could hear the shrieks of women, the crying of children and the shouts of men. Some were seeking their children; others their parents, others their wives and husbands ... one lamenting his own fate, another that of his family. Some praying to die from the very fear of dying, many lifting their hands to the gods, but the greater part imagining that there were no gods left anywhere, and that the last and eternal night was come upon the world.[31] It has been said that "Moscow was no more deserted before Napoleon than were the shattered streets of Halifax when this flight had been carried out."[32] And when the hegira was over, and when there had ensued a partial recovery from the blow and gloom, a still lower depth of agony had yet to be undergone--a succession of winter storms. Blizzards, rain, floods and zero weather were even then upon the way. They came in close procession and as if to crown and complete the terrors of the great catastrophe thunder rumbled, lightning broke sharply and lit up weirdly the snow-clad streets. Such was the catastrophe of Halifax--"a calamity the appalling nature of which stirred the imagination of the world."[33] [31] Pliny, _Letters_ (London, 1915), vol. i, bk. vi, p. 495. [32] Smith, Stanley K., _The Halifax Horror_ (Halifax, 1918), ch. ii, p. 24. [33] Bell, McKelvie, _A Romance of the Halifax Disaster_ (Halifax, 1918), p. 57. The description here concluded, brief and inadequate as it is, will sufficiently indicate the terrific nature of the catastrophic shock, and explain how utter and complete was the social disintegration which followed. There was the disintegration of the home and the family,--the reproductive system of society--its members sundered and helpless to avert it. There was the disintegration of the regulative system--government was in perplexity, and streets were without patrol. There was the disintegration of the sustaining system--a dislocation of transportation, a disorganization of business while the wheels of industry ceased in their turning. There was a derangement of the distributive system[34]--of all the usual services, of illumination, water-connections, telephones, deliveries. It was impossible to communicate with the outside world. There were no cars, no mails, no wires. There was a time when the city ceased to be a city, its citizens a mass of unorganized units--struggling for safety, shelter, covering and bread. As Lytton wrote of Pompeii; "The whole elements of civilization were broken up .... nothing in all the varied and complicated machinery of social life was left save the primal law of self preservation."[35] [34] Spencer, Herbert, _The Principles of Sociology_ (N. Y., 1908), pt. ii, p. 499 _et seq._ [35] Lytton, Lord, _The Last Days of Pompeii_ (London, 1896), p. 405. A writer has given a vivid word picture of the social contrasts of the disaster night and the beautiful evening before. What a change from the night before! No theatres open, no happy throngs along the street, no cheery gatherings around the fire-side. The houses were all cold, and dark and silent. Instead of laughter, weeping; instead of dancing, agonizing pain; instead of Elysian dreams, ominous nightmares. Fears and sorrow were in the way and all the daughters of music were brought low ... Halifax had become in a trice a city of dead bodies, ruined homes and blasted hopes.[36] To have looked in upon one of the great makeshift dormitories that first night, to have seen men, women and children, of all stations, huddled together on the stages of theatres, the chancels of churches, in stables, box-cars and basements was to have beheld a rift in the social structure such as no community had ever known. Old traditional social lines were hopelessly mixed and confused. The catastrophe smashed through strong walls like cobwebs, but it also smashed through fixed traditions, social divisions and old standards, making a rent which would not easily repair. Rich and poor, debutante and chambermaid, official and bellboy met for the first time as victims of a common calamity. [36] Johnstone, _op. cit._ Even on the eighth, two days after the disaster, when Mr. Ratshesky of the Massachusetts' Relief arrived he could report: "An awful sight presented itself, buildings shattered on all sides--chaos apparent." In a room in the City Hall twelve by twenty, he found assembled "men and women trying to organize different departments of relief, while other rooms were filled to utmost capacity with people pleading for doctors, nurses, food, and clothing for themselves and members of their families. Everything was in turmoil."[37] This account faithfully expresses the disintegration which came with the great shock of what had come to pass. It is this disintegration and the resultant phenomena which are of utmost importance for the student of social science to observe. To be quite emotionally free in the observation of such phenomena, however, is almost impossible. It has been said of sociological investigations that observation is made under bias because the facts under review are those of human life and touch human interest. A man can count the legs of a fly without having his heart wrung because he thinks there are too many or too few. But when he observes the life of the society in which he moves, lives and has his being, or some other society nearby, it is the rule that he approves or disapproves, is edified or horrified, by what he observes. When he does that he passes a moral judgment.[38] Sociology has suffered because of this inevitable bias. In our present study it is natural that our sympathy reactions should be especially strong. "_Quamquam animus meminisse horret, incipiam_" must be our motto. As students we must now endeavor to dissociate ourselves from them, and look upon the stricken Canadian city with all a chemist's patient detachment. In a field of science where the prospect of large-scale experimental progress is remote, we must learn well when the abnormal reveals itself in great tragedies and when social processes are seen magnified by a thousand diameters. Only thus can we hope for advances that will endure. [37] Ratshesky, A. C., "Report of Halifax Relief Expedition," _The State_ (Boston, 1918), p. 11. [38] Keller, A. G., "Sociology and Science," _The Nation_ (N. Y., May 4, 1916), vol. 102, no. 2653, p. 275. In this spirit then let us watch the slow process of the reorganization of Halifax, and see in it a picture of society itself as it reacts under the stimulus of catastrophe, and adjusts itself to the circumstantial pressure of new conditions. Before doing so, however, we shall pause, in the next chapter, to glance at a number of social phenomena which should be recorded and examined in the light of social psychology. But we must not lose the relationship of each chapter to our major thesis. It is sufficient for our purpose if thus far it has been shown that at Halifax the shock resulted in disintegration of social institutions, dislocation of the usual methods of social control and dissolution of the customary; that through the catastrophe the community was thrown into the state of flux which, as was suggested in the introduction, is the logical and natural prerequisite for social change; and finally that the shock was of a character such as "to affect all individuals alike at the same time," and to induce that degree of fluidity most favorable to social change. CHAPTER II CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Shock reaction--Hallucination--Primitive instincts--Crowd psychology--Phenomena of emotion--How men react when bereft completely--Post-catastrophic phenomena--Human nature in the absence of repression by conventionality, custom and law--Fatigue and the human will--The stimuli of heroism--Mutual aid. Social Psychology is a subject of primary importance to the student of society. Like Sociology itself its field is far from being exhausted. One looks in vain for a treatment of disaster psychology. In such a study the diverse phenomena involved would be of interest to the psychologist. Their effects in retarding or promoting social organization would concern the sociologist. With such possible effects in mind we are now to proceed to an examination of the major subjective reactions as they were to be seen in the Halifax catastrophe. It is improbable that any single community has ever presented so composite a picture of human traits in such bold relief as appeared in the City of Halifax upon the day of the explosion. Human phenomena which many knew of only as hidden away in books, stood out so clearly that he who ran might read. Besides the physiological reactions there was abundant illustration of hallucination, delusion, primitive instincts, and crowd psychology as well of other phenomena all of which have important sociological significance tending either to prolong disintegration, or to hasten social recovery. The first of these phenomena was the "stun" of the catastrophe itself. The shock reaction at Halifax has been variously described. It has been graphically likened "to being suddenly stricken with blindness and paralysis." It was a sensation of utter helplessness and disability. "We died a thousand horrible deaths" ran one description, "the nervous shock and terror were as hard to bear as were the wounds." "The people are dazed," wrote another observer, "they have almost ceased to exercise the sensation of pain." This physiological reaction animals and men shared alike. The appearance of the terror-stricken horses was as of beasts which had suddenly gone mad. A physiological accompaniment of shock and distraction is the abnormal action of the glands. The disturbance of the sympathetic nervous system produced by the emotional stress and strain of a great excitement or a great disappointment is reflected in the stimulation or inhibition of glandular action. Much physical as well as nervous illness was precipitated by the grief, excitement and exposure of the disaster.[39] Among cases observed were those of diabetes, tuberculosis and hyper-thyroidism, as well as the nervous instability to which reference is subsequently made. Such an epidemic of hyper-thyroidism--exaggerated action of the thyroid gland--is said to have followed the Kishineff massacres, the San Francisco earthquake and the air-raids on London.[40] As to diabetes, it has been shown that emotions cause increased output of glycogen. Glycogen is a step toward diabetes and therefore this disease is prone to appear in persons under emotional strain ... so common is this particular result in persons under prolonged emotion that someone has said that "when stocks go down in New York, diabetes goes up."[41] [39] For a full discussion of nervous disorders induced by an explosion at short range, _vide_ Roussy and Llermette, _The Psychoneuroses of War_ (London, 1918), ch. x. [40] Brown, W. Langden, Presidential address to Hunterian Society, London. [41] Crile, George W., _The Origin and Nature of the Emotions_ (Phila., 1915), p. 163. Turning now to other psychological aspects, we have to note the presence of hallucination in disaster. Hallucination may be roughly defined as false sense impression. For example, the patient sees an object which has no real existence, or hears an imaginary voice. Hallucinations are termed visual, auditory, tactile, _etc._ according to the sense to which the false impression appears to belong.[42] Hallucination is induced by the unusual suggesting the expected. It is sense-perception colored by association. It is the power of a dominant idea that, unbidden, enters the field of consciousness and takes possession of even the senses themselves. In Halifax one idea seemed to dominate most minds and clothe itself in the semblance of reality--the expected Germans. For a long time there had been under public discussion the question as to whether or not the city would be shelled by Zeppelin raiders, or possibly by a fleet at sea. All street-lights had been darkened by military orders. The failure to draw window shades had been subject to heavy penalty. It is no wonder eyes looked upward when there came the crash, and when seeing the strange unusual cloud beheld the Zeppelin of fancy. A man residing on the outskirts of the town of Dartmouth "heard" a German shell pass shrieking above him. Dartmouth Heights looks out over Halifax harbor, and here perhaps the vista is most expansive, and the eye sees furthest. The instant after the explosion a citizen standing here "saw" clearly a German fleet manoeuvering in the distance.[43] That shells had actually come few on the instant doubted. The head of one firm advised his employees not to run elsewhere, as "two shots never fall in the same place." [42] Hart, Bernard, _The Psychology of Insanity_ (Cambridge, 1916), ch. iii, p. 30. [43] "So hypochondriac fancies represent Ships, armies, battles in the firmament Till steady eyes the exhalations solve And all to its first matter, cloud, resolve." --Defoe, _Journal of the Plague Year_. This--a German assault--was the great mental explanation that came into the majority of minds. There was one other--that of the end of the world. Many fell to their knees in prayer. One woman was found in the open yard by her broken home repeating the general confession of the church. Few would have been surprised if out of the smoky cloud-ridden skies there should have appeared the archangels announcing the consummation of mundane affairs. Indeed there were instances, not a few, of those who "saw" in the death-cloud "the clear outlines of a face." Thus both auditory and visual hallucination were manifested to a degree. Hallucination has been described as "seeing" something which has no basis in reality. Thus it differs from delusion, which is rather a misinterpretation of what is seen. "Delusions are closely allied to hallucinations and generally accompany the latter. The distinction lies in the fact that delusions are not false sensations but false beliefs."[44] Anxiety, distraction by grief and loss, as well as nervous shock play freely with the mind and fancy and often swerve the judgment of perception. This was especially noticeable at Halifax in the hospital identification, particularly of children. A distracted father looked into a little girl's face four different times but did not recognize her as his own which, in fact, she was. The precisely opposite occurrence was also noted. A fond parent time and time again "discovered" his lost child, "seeing" to complete satisfaction special marks and features on its little body. But often there were present those who knew better, and the better judgment prevailed. Again this phenomenon was repeated in numberless instances at the morgue. Wearied and white after frantic and fruitless search wherever refugees were gathered together, the overwrought searchers would walk through the long lines of dead, and suddenly "recognize" a missing relative or friend.[45] Regretfully the attendant fulfilled the same thankless task from day to day. There had been no recognition at all. The observer had seen "not the object itself but the image evoked in the mind."[46] [44] Hart, _op. cit._, ch. iii, p. 31. [45] For parallel cases of erroneous recognition of the dead, _vide_ Le Bon, Gustave, _The Crowd, a Study of the Popular Mind_ (London), bk. i, ch. i, p. 51. [46] _Ibid._, p. 51. The primitive instincts of man were for a long time vaguely and loosely defined, until James and later McDougall essayed to give them name and number. But only with Thorndike's critical examination has it become clear how difficult a thing it is to carry the analysis of any situation back to the elemental or "primal movers of all human activity." Thorndike is satisfied to describe them as nothing save a set of original tendencies to respond to stimuli in more or less definite directions. When he speaks of instincts it is to mean only a "series of situations and responses" or "a set of tendencies for various situations to arouse the feelings of fear, anger, pity, _etc._ with which certain bodily movements usually go." Among them, there are those resulting in "food-getting and habitation," in "fear, fighting and anger" and in "human intercourse."[47] But McDougall's classification preserves the old phrases, and men are likely to go on speaking of the "instinct of flight," the "instinct of pugnacity," "parental instinct," "gregarious instinct" and the others.[48] For the sociologist it is enough that all agree that men are held under some powerful grip of nature and driven at times almost inevitably to the doing of acts quite irrespective of their social effects. [47] Thorndike, Edward L., _The Original Nature of Man_ (N. Y., 1913), ch. v, p. 43 _et seq._ [48] McDougall, William, _An Introduction to Social Psychology_ (Boston, 1917), ch. iii, p. 49 _et seq._ In catastrophe these primitive instincts are seen most plainly and less subject to the re-conditioning influences of ordinary life. This was especially noticeable at Halifax. The instinct of flight for self-preservation was reflected in the reaction of thousands. "Almost without thought, probably from the natural instinct of self-preservation I backed from the window to a small store-room and stood there dazed."[49] The experience so described may be said to have been general. This instinct was to be seen again in the action of the crew of the explosives-laden ship. Scarcely had the collision occurred when the whole complement lowered away the boats, rowed like madmen to the nearest shore--which happened to be that opposite to Halifax--and "scooted for the woods." As the ship, although set on fire immediately after the impact, did not actually blow up until some twenty minutes later, much might have been done by men less under the domination of instinct, in the way of warning and perhaps of minimizing the inevitable catastrophe.[50] [49] Sheldon, J., _The Busy East_ (Sackville, N. B. Can.), March, 1918. [50] The judgment of the court of enquiry ran as follows: "The master and pilot of the Mont Blanc are guilty of neglect of public safety in not taking proper steps to warn the inhabitants of the city of a probable explosion." (Drysdale Commission, _Judgment of_, sec. viii.) The instinct of pugnacity was to be seen in many a fine example of difficulty overcome in the work of rescue; as also in other instances, some suggestive of that early combat when animals and men struggled for mere physical existence. The parental instinct was everywhere in evidence, and was reflected not only in the sacrifices made and the privations endured by parents for their young, but in every act of relief, which arose in involuntary response to the cry of the distressed. It perhaps partially explains the phenomenon often noticed in disasters that "immediately and spontaneously neighbors and fellow-townsmen spring to the work of rescue and first aid."[51] [51] Deacon, J. Byron, _Disasters_ (N. Y., 1918), ch. vi, p. 151. The gregarious instinct--the instinct to herd--showed itself in the spontaneous groupings which came about and which seemed somehow to be associated with feelings of security from further harm. The refugees found comfort in the group. They rarely remained alone. These and other instinctive responses in a greater or less degree of complication were to be remarked of the actions not only of individuals but of groups as well. In the latter the typical phenomena of crowd psychology were manifested upon every hand. The crowd was seen to be what it is--"the like response of many to a socially inciting event or suggestion such as sudden danger." Out of a mere agglomeration of individuals and under the stress of emotional excitement there arose that mental unity, which Le Bon emphasizes.[52] There was noticeable the feeling of safety associated with togetherness which Trotter suggests.[53] There was the suggestibility, with its preceding conditions which Sidis[54] has clarified, namely, expectancy, inhibition, and limitation of the field of consciousness. There were the triple characteristics which Giddings notes: "Crowds are subject to swift contagion of feeling, they are sensitive to suggestion .... and always manifest a tendency to carry suggested ideas immediately into action."[55] [52] Le Bon, _op. cit._, p. 26. [53] Trotter, William, _Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War_ (London, 1919), p. 31. [54] Sidis, Boris, _The Psychology of Suggestion_ (N. Y., 1919), ch. vi, p. 56 _et seq._ [55] Giddings, Franklin H., _Principles of Sociology_ (N. Y., 1916), bk. ii, ch. ii, p. 136. Of illustrations of impulsive social action there are none more apt than those furnished by the reactions following the Halifax tragedy. Only Pliny's narrative of the flight from the eruption of Vesuvius, or the story of the "Day of Fear" in France,[56] or that depicting the days of the comet[57] are comparable thereto. [56] Stephens, Henry M., _A History of the French Revolution_ (N. Y., 1886), vol. i, p. 179. [57] Wells, H. G., _In the Days of the Comet_ (N. Y., 1906). At first all was confusion. Some ran to the cellars. Some ran to the streets. Some ran to their shops. Those in the shops ran home. This was in the area of wounds and bruises. Farther north was the area of death. Thither the rescuers turned. Automobiles sped over broken glass and splintered boards toward the unknown. Then came the orders of the soldiers, whose barracks were situated in the very heart of the danger district, for the people to fly southward, Common-ward, to the open spaces--anywhere. Another explosion was imminent. Then came further outbreaks of the flight impulse. Runs a graphic account: The crowd needed no second warning. They turned and fled. Hammers, shovels and bandages were thrown aside. Stores were left wide open with piles of currency on their counters. Homes were vacated in a twinkling. Little tots couldn't understand why they were being dragged along so fast. Some folks never looked back. Others did, either to catch a last glimpse of the home they never expected to see again or to tell if they could from the sky how far behind them the Dreaded Thing was.... They fled as they were.... Some carried children or bundles of such things as they had scrambled together.... Many were but scantily clad. Women fled in their night dresses. A few were stark naked, their bodies blackened with soot and grime. These had come from the destroyed section of the North End. What a storm-tossed motley throng, and as varied in its aspect and as poignant in its sufferings as any band of Belgian or Serbian refugees fleeing before the Hun.... A few rode in autos, but the great majority were on foot. With blanched faces, bleeding bodies and broken hearts, they fled from the Spectral Death they thought was coming hard after, fled to the open spaces where possibly its shadow might not fall. Soon Citadel Hill and the Common were black with terrified thousands. Thousands more trudged along St. Margaret's Bay road, seeking escape among its trees and winding curves.... Many cut down boughs and made themselves fires--for they were bitterly cold. Here they were--poorly clad, badly wounded, and with not one loaf of bread in all their number, so hastily did they leave, when galloping horsemen announced the danger was over and it was safe to return.[58] [58] Johnstone, Dwight, _The Tragedy of Halifax_ (in MS.). The ever-shifting responsiveness to rumor which distinguishes a crowd was noted. The entrance to the Park was black with human beings, some massed in groups, some running anxiously back and forth like ants when their hill has been crushed. There were blanched faces and trembling hands. The wildest rumors were in circulation and every bearer of tidings was immediately surrounded.[59] [59] _St. John Globe_, Correspondence, Dec., 1917. Not only here but when the crowd trekked back, and in the subsequent scenes which were witnessed in supply stations and shelters, the association which Sidis draws between calamity and hyper-suggestibility in the body politic was abundantly endorsed. We must now endeavor to understand the phenomena of emotion which accompany a great catastrophe. This is not the less difficult because the term emotion is not given consistent use even by psychologists. One interprets it as merely the affective side of the instinctive process--those "modes of affective experience," such as "anger, fear, curiosity," which accompany the excitement of "the principal powerful instincts."[60] Another sees it as also an impulsive, not merely a receptive state. It is "the way the body feels when it is prepared for a certain reaction," and includes "an impulse toward the particular reaction."[61] [60] McDougall, _op. cit._, p. 46. [61] Woodworth, Robert S., _Dynamic Psychology_ (N. Y., 1918), ch. iii, p. 54. It will be accurate enough for our purpose to think of the emotions as complicated states of feeling more or less allied to one another and to the human will.[62] Among them are jealousy and envy--"discomfort at seeing others approved and at being out-done by them."[63] This appeared repeatedly in the administration of relief and should be included in disaster psychology. Again greed[64]--more strictly a social instinct than an emotion--was common. How common will receive further exemplification in a later chapter. [62] "Anger, zeal, determination, willing, are closely allied, and probably identical in part. Certainly they are aroused by the same stimulus, namely, by obstruction, encountered in the pursuit of some end." (_Ibid._, p. 149.) [63] Thorndike, _op. cit._, p. 101. [64] "To go for attractive objects, to grab them when within reach, to hold them against competitors, to fight the one who tries to take them away. To go for, grab and hold them all the more if another is trying to do so, these lines of conduct are the roots of greed." (_Ibid._, p. 102.) Fear has already been referred to. Anger, shame, resentment while evident, were of less significance. Gratitude was early shown and there were many formal expressions of it. Later on, it seemed to be replaced by a feeling that as sufferers they, the victims, were only receiving their due in whatever aid was obtained. Of special interest is the rôle of the tender emotions, kindliness, sympathy and sorrow, as well as the reactions which may be expected when these occur in unusual exaltation through the repetition of stimuli or otherwise. Whatever may be the nature of the process whereby the feelings of his fellows affect a man, that which chiefly concerns us here, is how these reactions differ when the stimulation is multiplex. Of this multiplex stimulation in collective psychology Graham Wallas has written: The nervous exaltation so produced may be the effect of the rapid repetition of stimuli acting as repetition acts, for instance, when it produces seasickness or tickling.... If the exaltation is extreme conscious control of feeling and action is diminished.[65] Reaction is narrowed and men may behave, as they behave in dreams, less rationally and morally than they do if the whole of their nature is brought into play.[66] [65] M. Dide, a French psychologist, regards "the hypnosis produced by emotional shock--and this occurs not only in war but in other great catastrophies as well--as genetically a defence reaction, like natural sleep whose function according to him is primarily prophylactic against exhaustion and fatigue, ... it is comparable to the so-called death-shamming of animals." (Dide, M., _Les émotions et la guerre_ (Paris, 1918), Review of, _Psychological Bulletin_, vol. xv, no. 12, Dec., 1918, p. 441.) [66] Wallas, Graham, _The Great Society_ (N. Y., 1917), p. 136. What Wallas has said of the additional stimulation which the presence of a crowd induces may be given wider application, and is indeed a most illuminating thought, describing exactly the psycho-emotional reactions produced by the stimulation of terrifying scenes, such as were witnessed at Halifax. A case in point was that of the nervous exaltation produced upon a young doctor who operated continuously for many hours in the removal of injured eyes. The emotional tension he went through is expressed in his words to a witness: "If relief doesn't come to me soon, I shall murder somebody." Another instance where conscious control of feeling and action was diminished was that of a soldier. He was so affected by what he passed through during the explosion and his two days' participation in relief work, that he quite unwittingly took a seat in a train departing for Montreal. Later in a hospital of that city after many mental wanderings he recovered his memory. Over and over again he had been picturing the dreadful scenes which he had experienced. This condition includes a hyperactivity of the imagination "characterized by oneirism [oneiric delirium] reproducing most often the tragic or terrible scenes which immediately preceded the hypogenic shock."[67] [67] _Ibid._, p. 440. The nature of sympathy[68] may not be clearly comprehended but of its effects there is no doubt. It may lead to the relief of pain or induce the exactly opposite effect; or it may bring about so lively a distress as to quite incapacitate a man from giving help. Again it may lead to the avoidance of disaster scenes altogether. Thus some could on no account be prevailed upon to go into the hospitals or to enter the devastated area. Others by a process understood in the psychology of insanity secured the desired avoidance by suicide. The association of suicide with catastrophe has been already remarked in the case of San Francisco. A Halifax instance was that of a physician who had labored hard among the wounded. He later found the reaction of his emotional experiences too strong. He lost his mental balance and was discovered dead one morning near his office door. He had hanged himself during the night. Still another, a railroad man, driven to despair by loneliness and loss, his wife and children having perished, attempted to follow them in death. [68] Classed by William James as an emotion, but considered by McDougall a pseudo-instinct. Joy and sorrow are pleasure-pain conditions of emotional states. Sorrow is painful because "the impulse is baffled and cannot attain more than the most scanty and imperfect satisfaction in little acts, such as the leaving of flowers on the grave;"[69] although the intensity is increased by other considerations. Here again the unusual degree of stimulation which catastrophe induces brings about a behavior other than that which commonly attends the experience of grief. A phenomenon associated with wholesale bereavement is the almost entire absence of tears. A witness of the San Francisco disaster said it was at the end of the second day that he saw tears for the first time.[70] At Halifax, where the loss of life was many times greater, there was little crying. There seemed to be indeed a miserable but strong consolation in the fact that all were alike involved in the same calamity.[71] [69] McDougall, _op. cit._, p. 152. [70] O'Connor, Chas. J., _San Francisco Relief Survey_ (N. Y., 1913), pt. i, p. 6. [71] "The cutting edge of all our usual misfortunes comes from their character of loneliness."--(James, William, _Memories and Studies_, N. Y., 1911, p. 224.) There was "no bitterness, no complaint, only a great and eager desire to help some one less fortunate." Another observer said: "I have never seen such kindly feeling. I have never seen such tender sympathy. I have never heard an impatient word." And this was amongst men "who were covered with bruises, and whose hearts were heavy, who have not had a night's sleep, and who go all day long without thought of food." Another visitor remarked "there is not a more courageous, sane and reasonable people. Everyone is tender and considerate. Men who have lost wives and children, women whose sons and husbands are dead, boys and girls whose homes have been destroyed, are working to relieve the distress." A Montreal clergyman reported that "Halifax people have been meeting with dry eyes and calm faces the tragedies, the horrors, the sufferings and the exposures which followed the explosion." Grief is after all "a passive emotion," a "reaction of helplessness." It is "a state of mind appropriate to a condition of affairs where nothing is to be done"--[72] and there was much to be done at Halifax. [72] Woodworth, _op. cit._, p. 58. There are also to be added the phenomena of emotional parturition. As was to be expected the shock meant the immediate provision of a maternity hospital. Babies were born in cellars and among ruins. Premature births were common, one indeed taking place in the midst of the huddled thousands of refugees waiting in anguish upon the Common for permission to return to their abandoned homes. Nor were all the ills for which the shock was responsible immediately discernible. There were many post-catastrophic phenomena. Three months after the explosion many found themselves suffering an inexplicable breakdown, which the doctors attributed unquestionably to the catastrophe. It was a condition closely allied to "war-neurasthenia." Another disaster after-effect also may be here recorded. This was the not unnatural way in which people "lived on edge," for a long period after the disaster. There was a readiness and suggestibility to respond to rumor or to the least excitant. Twice at least the schools were emptied precipitately, and citizens went forth into pell-mell flight from their homes upon the circulation of reports of possible danger. No better illustration is afforded of the sociological fact that "the more expectant, or overwrought the public mind, the easier it is to set up a great perturbation. After a series of public calamities .... minds are blown about by every gust of passion or sentiment."[73] [73] Ross, Edward A., _Social Psychology_ (N. Y., 1918), ch. iv, p. 66. There are also to be included a few miscellaneous observations of behavior associated with the psychology of disaster relief. (1) The preference upon the part of the refugee for plural leadership and decision. (2) The aggravation of helplessness through the open distribution of relief. (3) The resentment which succeeds the intrusion of strangers in relief leadership. (4) The reaction of lassitude and depression after a period of strain. (5) The desire for privacy during interviews. (6) The vital importance of prompt decision in preventing an epidemic of complaint.[74] [74] A list compiled by the author from suggestions in Deacon's discussion of disasters. All were to be observed at Halifax. Analytic psychology is becoming increasingly interested in the phenomena of repression, inhibition and taboo. The real motives of action are often very different from the apparent motives which overlie them. Instinctive tendencies are buried beneath barriers of civilization, but they are buried alive. They are covered not crushed. These resistances are either within our minds or in society. The latter are summed up in conventionality, custom and law, all so relatively recent[75] in time as to supply a very thin veneer over the primitive tendencies which have held sway for ages. Few realize the place which conventionality, custom and law possess in a community until in some extraordinary catastrophe their power is broken, or what is the same thing the ability to enforce them is paralyzed. This fact is especially true of repressive enactments, and most laws fall within this category. Catastrophe shatters the unsubstantial veneer. When the police of Boston went on strike it was not only the signal for the crooks of all towns to repair to the unguarded center, but an unexpected reserve of crookedness came to light within the city itself. Lytton discovered at Pompeii signs of plunder and sacrilege which had taken place "when the pillars of the world tottered to and fro." At the time of the St. John Fire "loafers and thieves held high carnival. All night long they roamed the streets and thieved upon the misfortunes of others."[76] [75] It has been said that were the period of man's residence on earth considered as having covered an hundred thousand years, that of civilization would be represented by the last ten minutes. [76] Stewart, George, _The Story of the Great Fire in St. John_ (Toronto, 1877), p. 35. With the possibility of apprehension reduced to a minimum in the confusion at Halifax, with the deterrent forces of respectability and law practically unknown, men appeared for what they were as the following statement only too well discloses: Few folk thought that Halifax harbored any would-be ghouls or vultures. The disaster showed how many. Men clambered over the bodies of the dead to get beer in the shattered breweries. Men taking advantage of the flight from the city because of the possibility of another explosion went into houses and shops, and took whatever their thieving fingers could lay hold of. Then there were the nightly prowlers among the ruins, who rifled the pockets of the dead and dying, and snatched rings from icy fingers. A woman lying unconscious on the street had her fur coat snatched from her back.... One of the workers, hearing some one groaning rescued a shop-keeper from underneath the debris. Unearthing at the same time a cash box containing one hundred and fifty dollars, he gave it to a young man standing by to hold while he took the victim to a place of refuge. When he returned the box was there, but the young man and the money had disappeared. Then there was the profiteering phase. Landlords raised their rents upon people in no position to bear it. The Halifax Trades and Labor Council adopted a resolution urging that the Mayor be authorized to request all persons to report landlords who "have taken advantage of conditions created by the explosion." ... Plumbers refused to hold their union rules in abeyance and to work one minute beyond the regular eight hours unless they received their extra rates for overtime; and the bricklayers assumed a dog-in-the-manger attitude and refused to allow the plasterers to help in the repair of the chimneys. And this during days of dire stress ... when many men and women were working twelve and fourteen hours a day without a cent or thought of remuneration. One Halifax newspaper spoke of these men as "squeezing the uttermost farthing out of the anguished necessities of the homeless men, women and children." Truckmen charged exorbitant prices for the transferring of goods and baggage. Merchants boosted prices. A small shopkeeper asked a little starving child thirty cents for a loaf of bread. On Tuesday, December the twelfth, the Deputy Mayor issued a proclamation warning persons so acting that they would be dealt with under the provisions of the law.[77] [77] Johnstone, _op. cit._ Slowly the arm of repression grew vigorous once more. The military placed troops on patrol. Sentries were posted preventing entrance to the ruins to those who were not supplied with a special pass. Orders were issued to shoot any looter trying to escape. The Mayor's proclamation, the warning of the relief committee, the storm of popular indignation gradually became effectual. The stimulus of the same catastrophe, it thus appears, may result in two different types of responses--that of greed on the one hand or altruistic emotion on the other. One individual is spurred to increased activity by the opportunity of business profit, another by the sense of social needs. Why this is so--indeed the whole field of profiteering--would be a subject of interesting enquiry. Whether it is due to the varying degrees of socialization represented in the different individuals or whether it is not also partly due to the fact that philanthropy functions best in a sphere out of line with a man's own particular occupation, the truth remains that some display an altogether unusual type of reaction in an emergency to the actions of others; and perhaps exhibit behavior quite different from that which appears normal in a realm of conduct where associations based on habit are so strongly ingrained. The human will as we have seen is in close association with the emotions. We are now to notice the dynamogenic value of the strong emotions aroused by catastrophe. It is first of all essential to remember the rôle of adrenin in counteracting the effects of fatigue. Wonderful phenomena of endurance in disaster might well be anticipated for "adrenin set free in pain and in fear and in rage would put the members of the body unqualifiedly at the disposal of the nervous system." This is "living on one's will" or on "one's nerve." There are "reservoirs" of power ready to pour forth streams of energy if the occasion presents itself. Strong emotions may become an "arsenal of augmented strength." This fact William James was quick to see when he said "on any given day there are energies slumbering within us which the incitements of that day do not call forth."[78] But it was left to Cannon to unfold the physiological reasons,[79] and for Woodworth to explain how the presence of obstruction has power to call forth new energies.[80] Indeed the will[81] is just the inner driving force of the individual and an effort of will is only "the development of fresh motor power."[82] Following the lines of least resistance the will experiences no unusual exercise. Catastrophe opposes the tendency to eliminate from life everything that requires a calling forth of unusual energies. [78] James, William, _The Energies of Men_ (N. Y., 1920), p. 11. [79] Cannon, Walter B., _Bodily changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage_, ch. xi, p. 184, _et seq._ [80] Woodworth, _op. cit._, p. 147. [81] Will is indeed the supreme faculty, the whole mind in action, the internal stimulus which may call forth all the capacities and powers. (Conklin, Edwin G., _Heredity and Environment in the Development of Man_ [Princeton], ch. vi, p. 47.) [82] Woodworth, _op. cit._, p. 149. The energizing influence of an emotional excitant was shown at Halifax in the remarkable way in which sick soldiers abandoned their beds and turned them over to the victims rushed to the military hospitals. It was seen again in the sudden accession of strength displayed by the invalids and the infirm during the hurried evacuation of the houses--a behavior like that of the inhabitants of Antwerp during the bombardment of that city in October 1914, when those who fled to Holland showed extraordinary resistance to fatigue.[83] The resistance to fatigue and suffering received more abundant illustration at Halifax in the work of rescue and relief. Often men themselves were surprised at their own power for prolonged effort and prodigious strain under the excitement of catastrophe. It was only on Monday (the fifth day) that collapses from work began to appear. Among the more generally known instances of unusual endurance was that of a private, who with one of his eyes knocked out, continued working the entire day of the disaster. Another was that of a chauffeur who with a broken rib conveyed the wounded trip after trip to the hospital, only relinquishing the work when he collapsed. An unknown man was discovered at work in the midst of the ruins although his own face was half blown off. Those who escaped with lesser injuries worked day and night while the crisis lasted. Many did not go home for days, so manifold and heavy were the tasks. There was no pause for comment. Conversation was a matter of nods and silent signs, the direction of an index finger. Weeks later the workers were surprised to find themselves aged and thin. The excitement, the stimulus of an overwhelming need had banished all symptoms of fatigue. During the congestion which followed the arrival of the relief trains there were men who spent seventy-two hours with scarcely any rest or sleep. One of the telephone terminal room staff stuck to his post for ninety-two hours, probably the record case of the disaster for endurance under pressure. Magnificent effort, conspicuous enough for special notice was the work of the search parties who, facing bitterest cold and in the midst of blinding storms, continued their work of rescue; and the instance of the business girls who in the same weather worked for many hours with bottles of hot water hung about their waists. An effect which could not escape observation was the strange insensibility to suffering on the part of many of the victims themselves. Men, women and little children endured the crudest operations without experiencing the common effects of pain. They seemed to have been anaesthetized by the general shock. Sidewalk operations, the use of common thread for sutures, the cold-blooded extracting of eyes were carried on often without a tremor. This resistance to suffering was due not only to the increase of energy already described but also to the fact that the prostrating effect of pain is largely relative to the diversion of attention,--as "headaches disappear promptly upon the alarm of fire" and "toothaches vanish at the moment of a burglar's scare." Much pain is due to the super-sensitivity of an area through hyperaemia, or increased blood supply, following concentrated attention. Thus it is actually possible by volition to control the spread of pain, and the therapeutic virtues of an electric shock or a slap in the face are equally demonstrable. This reasoning is also applicable to the absence of sympathetic reactions among many disaster workers. They were found often to be "curiously detached and not greatly moved by the distressing scenes in morgue, in hospital, in the ruins and at the inquiry stations."[84] [83] Sano, F., "Documenti della guerra: Osservazioni psicologiche notate durante il bombardamento di Anversa," _Rivista di psichologia_, anno xi, pp. 119-128. [84] Smith, Stanley K., _The Halifax Horror_ (Halifax, 1918), ch. iv, p. 44. Catastrophe and the sudden termination of the normal which ensues become the stimuli of heroism and bring into play the great social virtues of generosity and of kindliness--which, in one of its forms, is mutual aid. The new conditions, perhaps it would be more correct to say, afford the occasion for their release. It is said that battle does to the individual what the developing solution does to the photographic plate,--brings out what is in the man. This may also be said of catastrophe. Every community has its socialized individuals, the dependable, the helpful, the considerate, as well as the "non-socialized survivors of savagery," who are distributed about the zero point of the social scale. Calamity is the occasion for the discovery of the "presence of extraordinary individuals in a group." The relation of them to a crisis is one of the most important points in the problem of progress. At Halifax there were encountered many such individuals as well as families who refused assistance that others might be relieved. Individual acts of finest model were written ineffaceably upon the social memory of the inhabitants. There was the case of a child who released with her teeth the clothes which held her mother beneath a pile of debris. A wounded girl saved a large family of children, getting them all out of a broken and burning home. A telegraph operator at the cost of his life stuck to his key, sent a warning message over the line and stopped an incoming train in the nick of time. Group heroism was no less remarkable. For the flooding of the powder magazine in the naval yard an entire battery volunteered. This was why the second explosion did not actually occur. Freight handlers too, as well as soldiers, revealed themselves possessors of the great spirit. A conspicuous case was that of the longshoremen working on board of a ship laden with explosives. Fully realizing the impending danger, because of the nearness of the burning munitioner, they used what precious minutes of life remained them to protect their own ship's explosives from ignition. A fire did afterwards start upon the ship but a brave captain loosed her from the pier, and himself extinguished the blaze which might soon have repeated in part the devastations already wrought. No disaster psychology should omit a discussion of the psychology of helpfulness--that self-help to which the best relief workers always appeal, as well as of the mutual aid upon which emergency relief must largely depend. Mutual aid while not a primary social fact is inherent in the association of members of society, as it also "obtains among cells and organs of the vital organism." As it insured survival in the earlier stages of evolution[85] so it reveals itself when survival is again threatened by catastrophe. [85] Kropotkin, Prince, _Mutual Aid_ (N. Y., 1919), ch. i, p. 14. The illustrations of mutual aid at Halifax would fill a volume. Not only was it evidenced in the instances of families and friends but also in the realm of business. Cafés served lunches without charge. Drug stores gave out freely of their supplies. Firms released their clerks to swell the army of relief. A noteworthy case of community service was that of the Grocers' Guild announcing that its members would fill no orders for outside points during the crisis, that they would coöperate with the relief committee in delivering foodstuffs free of charge to any point in the city, and that their stocks were at the disposal of the committee at the actual cost to them.[86] By incidents such as these, Halifax gained the appellation of the City of Comrades. [86] Johnstone, _op. cit._ Catastrophe becomes also the excitant for an unparalleled opening of the springs of generosity.[87] Communication has transformed mutual aid into a term of worldwide significance. As at San Francisco, when from all directions spontaneous gifts were hurried to the stricken city, when in a period of three months seventeen hundred carloads and five steamerloads of relief goods arrived, in addition to millions of cash contributions, so was it at Halifax. So it has always been, as is proven by Chicago, Dayton, Chelsea as well as by numbers of other instances. The public heart responds with instantaneous and passionate sympathy. Halifax specials were on every railroad. Ships brought relief by sea. Cities vied with each other in their responses. Every hour brought telegraphed assistance from governments and organizations. In about fifteen weeks approximately eight millions had been received, aside from the Federal grant. But it was not the totality of the gifts, but the number of the givers which gives point to our study. So many rushed with their donations to the Calvin Austin before she sailed from Boston on her errand of relief that "the police reserves were called out to preserve order." A great mass of the contributions involved much personal sacrifice upon the part of the contributors, as accompanying letters testified. It could be written of Halifax as it was of San Francisco that: all the fountains of good fellowship, of generosity, of sympathy, of good cheer, pluck and determination have been opened wide by the common downfall. The spirit of all is a marvelous revelation of the good and fine in humanity, intermittent or dormant under ordinary conditions, but dominant and all pervading in the shadow of disaster.[88] Abridged and sketchy as the foregoing necessarily is, it is perhaps full enough to have at least outlined the social phenomena of the major sort which a great disaster presents. These are found to be either abnormal and handicapping, such as, emotional parturition; or stimulative and promotive, such as the dynamogenic reactions. In propositional form it may be stated that catastrophe is attended by phenomena of social psychology, which may either retard or promote social organization. [87] There is no better evidence of the response of the public heart to a great tragedy than the fact that at Halifax upwards of a thousand offers were received for the adoption of the orphaned children. [88] Bicknell, Ernest P., "In the Thick of the Relief Work at San Francisco," _Charities and the Commons_, vol. xvi (June, 1906), p. 299. In addition this chapter has discussed the rôle of catastrophe in stimulating community service, in presenting models of altruistic conduct, in translating energy into action, in defending law and order, and in bringing into play the great social virtues of generosity, sympathy and mutual aid. CHAPTER III CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION The organization of relief--The disaster protocracy--The transition from chaos through leadership--Vital place of communication--Utility of association--Imitation--Social pressure--Consciousness of kind--Discussion--Circumstantial pressure--Climate--Geographic determinants--Classification of factors. We have seen something of the disintegration which followed what has been called the "stun of the explosion." It included the abrupt flight from, and the emptying of, all the houses and centers of employment, the division of families in the haste of the running and the rescue, and the utter helplessness of thousands in the three basic necessities of life--food, raiment and a roof. There was the dislocation of transportation, the disorganization of business, and the problem of unemployment aggravated because not only was the work gone, but also with it the will to work. Social organization comes next in order and because its process was associated with the organization of relief--the first social activity--the sociological factors observed in the latter call for descriptive treatment. When the human organism receives an accident to one of its parts, automatic relief processes from within spring at once into being, and it is so with the body politic. This "_vis medicatrix naturae_" assumes sovereign power over all the resources of the community. That part of the social sensorium which is most closely organized in normal hours, first recovers consciousness in disaster. In the case of Halifax it was the army. So was it in San Francisco, and in Chelsea. The army has the intensive concentration, the discipline, the organization and often the resource of supplies instantly available. Its training is of the kind for the endurance of shock.[89] It so happened that at Halifax large numbers of men in uniform were stationed where they could quickly respond to call. They were very soon under orders. The military authorities realized before midday, the part which the army should play. The firemen too were a social group which largely remained organized, and responded to the general alarm soon after the explosion. Their chief and deputy-chief had been instantly killed so they were leaderless, until one of the city controllers assumed command, and in spite of the wild exodus when the alarm of a second explosion spread, these men remained at their posts. [89] What has been said of soldiers is of course equally true of sailors. Play actors also display similar traits of collective behavior. They are accustomed to think quickly, to live in restricted spaces, and to meet emergencies. Than the stage there is no better school. Each actor does his or her part and it alone. The Academy Stock Company, forsaking the school of Thespis for that of Esculapius, organized the first relief station established at Halifax. This was in operation about noon on the day of the disaster. Thus it came about that the soldiers, firemen and play actors may be called the disaster protocracy.[90] They were "the alert and effective," the most promptly reacting units in emergency. And it would appear that the part of society which is most closely organized and disciplined in normal periods first recovers social consciousness in disaster. [90] Giddings, Franklin H., "Pluralistic Behaviour," _American Journal of Sociology_, vol. xxv, no. 4 (Jan., 1920), p. 539. It is the events of the first few hours which are of special interest to the sociologist. The word most descriptive of the first observable phenomenon was leadership. The soldiers were foremost in the work of rescue, of warning, of protection, of transportation and of food distribution. But the earliest leadership that could be called social, arising from the public itself, was that on the part of those who had no family ties, much of the earliest work being done by visitors in the city. The others as a rule ran first to their homes to discover if their own families were in danger. From this body in a short while however many came forward to join in the activities of relief. As already said those with no social, family or property ties were among the first to begin relief work. But many of these started early simply because they were present where need arose. Many indeed of the uninjured folk at a distance seemed unable to realize the terribleness of the immediate need in the stricken area. In fact, owing to the collapse of communication they did not for an appreciable time discover that there was an area more stricken than their own, and devoted themselves to cleaning up glass and the like. But within a quarter of an hour a hospital ship had sent ashore two landing parties with surgeons and emergency kits. With almost equal dispatch the passengers of an incoming train--the railroad terminal at the time being in the north end of the city--were on hand, and were among the earliest first-aid workers. One, a Montreal man, was known individually to have rendered first aid to at least a half hundred of the wounded. It was early afternoon, perhaps five hours after the catastrophe, when a semblance of coöperative action in rescue work began. Previous to this the work had been done in a rapid and random fashion, a single ruin being dug through a second or even a third time. Then came the recognition of the utility of association.[91] Thereafter the searchers became parties each of which was detailed to go over a definite area. When a particular section had been covered it was so recorded. This process considerably expedited the work in hand. Meanwhile relief was organized in other important directions. [91] Tenney, Alvan A., Unpublished lectures on Social Organization. The vital place of communication in society was recognized at once. It is a major influence in association, and upon it in disaster depends the immediacy as well as the adequacy of relief. Connections had been cut by the explosion and the outside world could only wait and wonder. How little real information filtered through is shown by the fact that at Truro, only sixty-two miles distant, the announcement was made three hours after the explosion that the death roll would not bear more than fifty names. Nevertheless within an hour after the explosion a telegraph company had a single line established, and with news of the disaster, communities everywhere took up the rôle of the Samaritan. While the great hegira was in progress another leader, a railroad official, drove rapidly out the Bedford Road and commandeered the first unbroken wire to Moncton. Thereafter all that the government railroad equipment could do was at the community's service. Meanwhile the dislocated railroad yards were being combed for a live engine and coaches in commission. A hospital train was put together and in less than four hours after the explosion a large number of injured people were being transported to Truro. Even before the rushing of the wounded to the hospitals a few began to realize the great human needs which would soon be manifest among the concourse of thousands who waited in helpless suspense upon the Common and the hill. Here they were _en masse_, a typical social aggregation, responding to the primitive, gregarious instinct of the herd. "Like sheep they had flocked together too bewildered for consecutive thought."[92] Yet here ministrations of one sort or another came into spontaneous operation. Soon the military began raising white tents upon the field. One after another they rose, presenting the appearance of an huge encampment. The idea spread by imitation,[93] the repetition of a model,--"the imitative response of many minds to the suggestive invention of one." One or two here and one or two there began to prepare the big church halls and other roomy institutional buildings for occupancy. Hastily the windows were patched up, the glass swept out, and no sooner had the danger of a second explosion passed, and the rumor of a possible roof reached the homeless, than they began to repair thither. At first each improvised shelter became a miniature clothing and food depot as well as a habitation. Then the idea spread of taking the refugees into such private homes as had fared less badly. Imitation is the foundation of custom. It became the thing to do. The thing to do is social pressure. It may be unwilled and unintended but it is inexorable. It worked effectively upon all who had an unused room. Many sheltered upwards of a dozen for weeks; some, more. [92] Bell, McKelvie, _A Romance of the Halifax Disaster_ (Halifax, 1918). [93] Tarde, Gabriel, _Les lois de l'imitation_ (N. Y., 1903), translation by E. C. Parsons, ch. i, p. 14. In the homes and shelters association of the like-minded soon came about through consciousness of kind. At first it was a very general consciousness which seemed to draw all together into a fellowship of suffering as victims of a common calamity. There was neither male nor female, just nor unjust, bond nor free. Men, women and little children lay side by side in the large sleeping rooms and "shared each other's woes," for "the consciousness of kind allays fear and engenders comradeship."[94] Then followed requests for changes of location in the dormitories, and for changes of seats at the dining tables. As various shelters sprang up, the religious element appeared. Applications came for transfers from Roman Catholic institutions to Protestant stations and _vice versa_. Even the politically congenial were only too ready to segregate when occasion offered. [94] Giddings, _op. cit._, p. 396. Discussion and agreement must precede all wise concerted volition. There must be "common discussion of common action."[95] Propositions must be "put forth" and talked over. There must be a "meeting of minds" and a "show of hands," and decisions made. There had been no preparedness. The city possessed not even a paper organization for such a contingency as a sudden disaster; so that during the most precious hours citizens and civic officials had to consult and map out a program as best the circumstances allowed. It was late afternoon on the day of the disaster when a tentative plan had been formulated in the City Hall. The newly formed committees could do but little until the following dawn. [95] Bagehot, Walter, _Physics and Politics_ (N. Y., 1884), p. 159, _et seq._ Men at best are largely creatures of circumstance. Innumerable causes, small and great, conspire to incite social action. But in catastrophe the control of circumstantial pressure[96] becomes almost sovereign in extent. The conditions it brings about, while often delaying measures of individual relief, account very largely for the rapidity of organization. While they limit they also provoke effort. The common danger constrains great numbers to "overlook many differences, to minimize many of their antagonisms and to combine their efforts." At Halifax the pressure of indescribable suffering precipitated the medical and hospital arrangements which were the earliest forms of communal service. But it was the meteorological conditions which commanded the most prompt attention to the consideration of shelter and clothing. The months appeared to have lost station and February to have come out of season. The following table gives the weather record for the seven days which followed the catastrophe.[97] It is the record of a succession of snow, wind, cold and blizzard. Thursday, Dec. 6th. 9 a. m. Fair. Frozen ground. Light N. W. wind. No precipitation. Temperature: max. 39.2, min. 16.8. Friday, Dec. 7th. 9 a. m. N. E. wind, velocity 19. Snow falling. At noon N. W. gale. Afternoon, blizzard conditions. 9 p. m. N. W. wind, velocity 34. Precipitation 16.0 in. snow. Temperature: max. 32.2, min. 24.8. Saturday, Dec. 8th. 9 a. m. N. W. wind, velocity 20. Intermittent sunshine. 9 p. m. N. W. wind, velocity 11. Precipitation 1.2 snow (in a. m.). Temperature: max. 29.8, min. 15. Sunday, Dec. 9th. 9 a. m. S. E. gale, velocity 39. Streets icy and almost impassable. 9 p. m. S. W. wind, velocity 27. Precipitation .99 rainfall (1.40 a. m. till noon). Temperature: max. 50.41, min. 14.6. Monday, Dec. 10th. 9 a. m. S. W. wind, velocity 11. Afternoon, blizzard (worst in years). Knee-deep drifts. 9 p. m. W. wind, velocity 20. Precipitation 5.6 snowfall (2 p. m. till 5.40 p. m.). Temperature: max. 34.2, min. 16.8. Tuesday, Dec. 11th. 9 a. m. Clear. W. wind, velocity 18. 9 p. m. W. wind, velocity 11. No precipitation. Temperature: max. 18.2, min. 6.6. Wednesday, Dec. 12th. 9 a. m. N. W. wind, velocity, 15. 9 p. m. N. E. wind, velocity 3. No precipitation. Temperature: max. 17, min. 2. [96] Giddings, _op. cit._, p. 390. [97] From information kindly supplied by D. L. Hutchinson, director of the St. John (N. B.) observatory, and F. B. Ronnan, Halifax Station. In consequence of otherwise unendurable conditions, the most rapid repairs were made to all habitable houses or those possible of being made so. The same was true of public buildings, hospitals, factories and warehouses. Moreover the same explanation accounts for the exodus of many who sought for shelter to the countryside nearby; and the many more who accepted the invitation of, and entrained for various Nova Scotian towns which became veritable "cities of refuge" to hundreds. The climate[98] decided the question of reconstruction in favor of temporary structures; for it was a time of year when prompt rebuilding was out of the question. Climatic conditions also seriously delayed the arrival of relief supplies, allowed but scanty provision for many, kept some from the depots of relief, or from surgical aid; and others standing in line in the bitter cold. It also added seriously to the sanitation and shelter problem. But it speeded and spurred the workers to prevent the maximum of exposure and neglect. It called imperatively for the most effective system, and many of the workable methods were hit upon under the stress of storm. An illustration of this may be found in the adoption of many food depots instead of one central station. Regional influence thus "fixes the possibilities of organization and collective effectiveness."[99] The sociologist must study maps of lands and plans of cities. The location of the food stations at Halifax was a matter of topography as were the later administration districts. The city is widely spread out. It has fifty more miles of street than a city of similar population in a neighboring province. Six depots were established for the public distribution of supplies,[100] situated so as to touch the entire needy population most effectively, and to equalize the groups to some degree. So too, in the matter of dressing stations, accessibility was a deciding factor. But even this system had to be supplemented. Bread vans were driven hither and thither and when halted in the center of a street were usually immediately surrounded. Thus social reorganization in catastrophe witnesses to an urgency resident no less in space than in time and reëmphasizes the importance placed upon the physical factors in sociology. [98] Semple, Ellen, _Influences of Geographic Environment_ (N. Y., 1911), p. 607, _et seq._ [99] Giddings, _op. cit._, p. 389. [100] For a period of two weeks meals for 15,000 people were distributed every day. Thus may be said to have come about the transition from chaos to a semblance of community organization. Not the normal civil social order of pre-disaster days, but the establishment of a species of collective behavior, and the organization of relationships apparently of a quite different character. The difference was one which might be compared to that between a great relief camp and a city. But the difference was only superficial. Fundamentally there were to be seen the factors underlying all social organization. These have been already illustrated, and are classified as psychological, such as leadership, gregarious instinct, imitation, consciousness of kind, discussion, recognition of utility of association and custom; and as physical, including climate and topography.[101] The conclusion was drawn that the part of society which is most closely organized and disciplined in normality, first recovers consciousness in catastrophe, and the value of a militia organization in every community is a practical corollary. This follows not only because of the imperturbability and the promptitude of reaction, of an army in crisis, but also because of the rapidity with which it can be mobilized, its value in preserving law and order, its authoritative control and power to punish, and because of the attending psychological effects of orderly bearing and coolness in a time of general chaos, bespeaking a care that is at once paternal and sympathetic. [101] Other sociological factors might also be illustrated, namely, (a) the biological, including, besides the density of population, the heredity and the physical and mental health of the inhabitants. (b) the equipmental factor, including available economic resources, general enlightenment, social surplus and institutional facilities for re-education, _etc._ (_Vide_ ch. vii.) CHAPTER IV CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION (Cont'd) The reorganization of the civil social order--Division of labor--Resumption of normal activities--State and voluntary associations--Order of reëstablishment--Effects of environmental change--The play of imitation--The stimulus of lookers-on--Social conservation. It is not necessary to repeat the fact, which the reader has already seen, that the process of complete social organization was largely expedited by the organization of relief, and materially reacted upon by it. The community's "big men," the men of prominence, the men of broad experience in civic and philanthropic work, the men who knew the resources of the city and had the prestige to command them, were deeply immersed in the relief work while the businesses and the departments of the shattered body politic waited or went forward in a more or less indifferent way. But this could be both economically and socially of a temporary nature only. "Business and industry must be set agoing. Church and school must resume the ordinary routine. One by one the broken threads of the former everyday life, the life of custom and habit must be reconnected." The division of social labor[102] is a law of society. It is traceable back to the primitive household itself, and is a result of underlying differences. The great "cause which determines the manner by which work is divided is diversity of capacity." With the advent of the social specialists at Halifax a major division of function began. The responsibility for the relief work having been delegated to a special social group, public thought and public men were free to turn their energies to the restoration of a normal society. [102] Durkheim, Émile, _De la division du travail social_ (Paris, 1893). But it was the reorganization rather than the organization of relations which the sociologist observes to have first taken place. The stage was all laid. It was necessary only for the actors in the drama to resume their places. The old "parts" awaited them, although many of the "properties" were no more. Or to use the more sociological jargon one might say, there was still the homogeneity of stock, still a dominating like-mindedness, still a protocracy, still a group of mores to serve as media of social self-control. Indeed most of the former complexities of social structure remained. But this was only potentially true. The social relations based upon the underlying factors had to be resumed. Moreover the resumption was accompanied by various changes the significance of which will appear in later discussion. The order of the resumption of normal activities is of unusual social interest as are also the influences which were in play and the changes which ensued. It may be objected that such a tabulation is unfair to the various socially component groups and that the special exigencies of each preclude comparison. But at least one index of the bent of the social mind is the separation of those activities which must needs be first rehabilitated, from those which can wait. Organizing genius was not entirely occupied with relief in the ordinary sense of the term. Economic vigor is one of the most vital things in a community's life. It is in a sense fundamental not only to happiness and general well-being but accompanies and conditions the cultural institutions, religious, educational and aesthetic. It is not surprising then that commercial activity was in actual fact the earliest aspect of life to resume a semblance of normality. Naturally public utilities were first on the list, for these include systems of communication without which society can hardly be. Reference has already been made to the speed with which a makeshift service was established, but our purpose here is to record the resumption of normal activity. Wire communication is led out from the city by pole lines. Many of these had been demolished, or broken at the crossbeam. Clerks had been injured and instruments damaged. In spite of these odds one was reconnected within an hour, and by the evening of the day of the disaster six direct multiplex wires to Montreal, three to St. John and one each to Boston and New York, had been established. Upwards of a thousand messages an hour went forth the first week. The work became normal about December twentieth. The telephone system suffered the loss of the entire northern exchange and of the harbor cable--broken through ships dragging anchor--a total material damage of one hundred thousand dollars. Its personnel was also depleted. Nevertheless telephone business may be said to have been generally resumed on the seventh, the day after the disaster, and the load of local traffic soon attained over one hundred and twenty percent above its average figure. Telephone service was absolutely suspended for only about two hours,--the period of prohibition from buildings,--and the cable telephone for about three days. Messages of a social character were tabooed for several weeks, when the work again became normal. The illumination service was quickly restored. The company was able to give partial light and some service from noon on the sixth. Periods of intermittent darkness however, were not unusual. Gas service was off until December the ninth--the top of the gasometer having been broken and two hundred thousand cubic feet deflected from the mains into the air--when repairs were completed and on the tenth the service resumed. On the fourteenth gas and electric light service became normal. Railroad communication had been dislocated. The explosion occurred in the vicinity of the principal sidings and vital portions of the system. Three miles of the main road were buried in debris, the station wrecked, equipment damaged, and crews scattered searching for their dead. In spite of this, as already noted, a hospital train was sent out in the early afternoon of the disaster day and incoming trains were switched to their new tracks leading to the south end terminal. On the evening of the day following the disaster--Friday--the first regular train for Montreal left the city. Two days later the main lines were clear and the first train left the old passenger station on Saturday evening. By Monday the full passenger service was resumed, to and from the station. Eight days after the catastrophe all branches of the service were working and conditions were fairly normal. The rolling stock of the street-car system sustained much damage. Some of the employees were injured and others were unavailable. A scant service was restored at noon on December the sixth. By six o'clock of the seventh, tram lines in the north section were able to resume an eight-car service. Then the blizzard came and tied up all lines. It was not until Sunday, December ninth, that it was possible to resume any semblance of car service. On the twenty-second of December, twenty-two cars were operating--twenty-seven is the normal number,--but the shortage of men made it difficult to operate the full number. The service was not entirely normal for some months owing to the severe storms all winter which tied up the lines and caused delays, and to the shortage of men to handle the cars. The newspaper offices by the employment of hand compositors were able to produce papers on December seventh but in limited editions and of reduced size. This was owing to the dependency of the linotypes upon the gas service which had failed. The normal-size production recommenced in a week's time.[103] [103] In the great Baltimore fire of 1904 the _Baltimore Sun_, by remarkable enterprise was gotten out at Washington, 45 miles distant, and did not miss a single issue. The postal service was completely disorganized and was not restored to any extent until Monday the tenth of December. Owing to the innumerable changes of address, as well as many other reasons, it was weeks before there was a normal and reliable distribution of mails. The banks were open for business the morning following the catastrophe, just as soon as the doors and windows were put in. Traffic of relief trains coming in affected the ordinary trade for three months, more or less, but principally outside of the city. In the city all business in the banks went on as usual the day after the explosion. Two instances are selected at random to illustrate the resumption of general business activity. Out of much wreckage and a forty-thousand-dollar loss one company restarted paint and varnish making on January second. A large clothing establishment, had been badly damaged. The factory and all branches of the business were running in five weeks--January tenth. Machines were in operation with shortened staffs at an earlier date. The regular meetings of the City Council recommenced on December twentieth, and were held regularly from that time on. The Board of Trade rooms were not badly damaged and there was no cessation of work or meetings. The theatres were speedily repaired and resumed business on Friday, December the twenty-eighth. The Citizen's Library was a few weeks closed for the circulation of books, and used in relief service as a food depot, thus ministering to a hunger which is more imperious than that of mind in the hour of catastrophe. Of the churches several were entirely destroyed. In all cases the edifices were injured, organs disordered and windows shattered. Parishes were in some instances almost wiped out. In a single congregation four hundred and four perished. In another nearly two hundred were killed, the remainder losing their property. In a third, of the one hundred and eight houses represented in the congregation only fourteen were left standing. Hurried efforts were made to safeguard church property, but church services were not generally resumed until the second Sunday.[104] Even then the congregations were small and the worshipping-places were not in all cases churches. Theatres, halls and other buildings housed many a religious gathering. While the restoration of churches waited, clergy and church workers gave themselves unremittingly to the relief of the needy, the succor of the injured and the burial of the dead. Their intimate knowledge of family conditions was of inestimable value in the relief administration. Sunday schools were reassembled as accommodations permitted, but it was many months before the attendances approximated the normal. [104] On the first Sunday, December ninth at eleven o'clock Archdeacon Armitage conducted Divine service in St. Paul's Church, and the same afternoon this edifice was used by the congregation of All Saints Cathedral. The school system was badly disorganized. Three buildings were totally destroyed, and all were rendered uninhabitable for some time. The loss was approximately eight-hundred thousand dollars. The members of the staff were given over to relief committees, registration, nursing and clothing service. Early in March, about three months after the explosion, arrangements were completed whereby nearly all the children in the city could attend classes. The double-session system was introduced to accomplish this. Rooms were necessarily over-crowded and ventilation impaired. By May eighth, fifteen school buildings were in use.[105] [105] Quinn, J. P., _Report of Board of School Commissioners for City of Halifax_, 1918. Progress in reopening schools is indicated by the following schedule. Dec. 10 ................ classes in one institution Jan. 7 ................ " " three emergency shelters Jan. 8 ................ " " a church hall Jan. 14 ................ " " five school buildings Jan. 17 ................ " " one institution Jan. 21 ................ " " two school buildings Jan. 22 ................ " " one school building Jan. 24 ................ " " one school building Feb. 1 ................ " " one institution Feb. 25 ................ " " two school buildings Mar. 16 ................ " " one school building Apr. 8 ................ " " one school building May 8 ................ " " one school building May 20 ................ " " two portable schools The community as finally reorganized differed materially from that which had preceded. The picture of the conditions at a considerably later period will be fully presented elsewhere. Here will be noted only a few social effects immediately apparent and due to the temporary environmental conditions. Owing to the number of men required for reconstruction work the Tramway Company found it very difficult to get a full complement of men back into the service. As a result they took into consideration the advisability of employing women conductors, and finally adopted this plan. At the time of the explosion a heated election campaign was in progress. Then representative men of both political parties urged their followers to drop the election fight and the election was deferred and later rendered unnecessary by the withdrawal of one of the candidates. The darkening of the water-front, the shading of windows, and other war-protective measures against the submarine menace, were given little attention for many weeks, and the coming into operation of the Military Service Act was postponed. The establishment of relief stations, and later, of the temporary relief houses in the central and southern portion of the city brought about a very unusual commingling of classes, as well as a readjustment of membership in schools, parishes and various institutions. Club life, social life, lodge and society "evenings" were for a considerable period tabooed, because of a general sentiment against enjoyment under the existing conditions as well as to lack of accommodation and of time. The clamor for arrests, for the fixing of responsibility for the disaster, and for the meting out of punishment was for a long time in evidence, but never received complete satisfaction. The difficulties of restoration of school attendance repeated the experience of the Cherry disaster, and the Truant Officer had a very strenuous time owing to the fact that so many people had changed their addresses. A number of "special policemen" were recruited from citizens of all ranks, and this force materially assisted the members of the regular department. Owing to the large influx of workmen following the catastrophe, as well as for other reasons the work of the detectives was greatly increased.[106] [106] Hanrahan, F., _Report of Chief of Police_, Halifax, 1918. The survivors of two neighboring congregations, although belonging to different denominations, united in erecting a temporary church building--their respective churches having been destroyed--and have since worshipped together--a demonstration of the practicability of church union under circumstantial pressure. The display apartments of a furniture concern were utilized as actual living rooms by refugees for a period, while at the same time business was in operation throughout the rest of the establishment. The necessary functioning of relief activities, seven days in the week, the keeping of stores open on Sundays and the general disorganization of the parishes was reflected for a long period in a changed attitude upon the part of many towards Sabbath observance. German residents of the city were immediately placed under arrest when the disaster occurred, but all were later given their freedom. The citizens of Halifax were almost entirely oblivious to the progress of the war and other matters of world interest, for many days after the disaster. The reversion to the use of candles, oil lamps and lanterns was an interesting temporary effect. The rapidity of the reorganization, as well as the subsequent expansion, noted later, was largely effected by the social law of imitation already noticed. Many of the conditions affecting the rate of imitation were present. There was a crisis, there was necessity, there was trade and business advantage, social pressure, public demand, shibboleths--"a new Halifax" for example--but above all there was a multitude of models. The extent and scale of the rebuilding program in one area, the civic-improvement plans which accompanied the work in that district, the record time in which relief houses were completed, the marvellous speed at which the demolition companies cleared away the debris acted as models and stimuli to all inhabitants. The process of speeding-up spread like a great contagion, until the most hardened pessimist began to marvel at the recuperation daily enacted before his eyes. Among the models thus presented may be mentioned that of the rapid establishment of the morgue. This, the largest ever organized in Canada, was fitted up by forty soldiers and mechanics in the brief period of a day and a half. Another instance was that of the American Hospital. "At nine a. m. Bellevue was an officer's mess. By ten p. m. the same day it was a first-class sixty-six bed hospital, stocked with food and medicine and, in charge of Major Giddings;" it expressed a veritable "triumph of organizing ability." In the record time of three months, Messrs. Cavicchi and Pagano, with a maximum strength of nine hundred and fifty men and two hundred and seventy horses working ten hours a day removed every vestige of the debris in the devastated area. Apartments were built at the rate of one an hour. Motor lorries multiplied so rapidly that visitors said there had been an outbreak of "truck fever" in the place. By the stimulus of models, such as these, fresh vitality and motive were imparted to the members of the community. Halifax became busy as never before. New homes, new stores, new piers, new banks, replaced the old as if by magic. Men worked desperately hard. An influence which must not be left unrecorded because of its continuity of functioning is that of the stimulus of lookers-on. More than two hundred cities in all parts of the world had contributed to the reconstruction, and citizens of Halifax knew they were not unobserved. Articles, lectures and sermons were telling forth to interested thousands how a city blown to pieces, swept by fire, buried under ice and snow, and deluged by rain, was a city courageous beyond words. During the month of December, five leading periodicals in Canada and twelve in the United States arranged for articles and photographs descriptive of the city's advantages commercial and residential.[107] Halifax became a world-known city. This added still further spur to action. Halifax simply had to make good. She was bonded to the world. [107] Saunders, E. A., _Report of Halifax Board of Trade_, 1918. There are two considerations which may appropriately bring this chapter to a close. The first arises naturally from what has been said, namely, that in catastrophe it is only after division of function delegates to a special group the responsibility for relief work that public thought is directed to the resumption of normal society. The second is a practical deduction--that of social conservation. Every community should possess a permanent vigilance committee. There should be an emergency procedure on paper with duties outlined to which pledged men may be immediately drafted. Only in this way can social economy be preserved until the arrival of experienced disaster authorities from a distance. CHAPTER V CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL ECONOMY The contribution of social service--Its four-fold character--The principles of relief--Rehabilitation--Phases of application--Criticisms--A new principle--Social results--Summary for future guidance. We have already seen that there are certain determining factors in catastrophe and its social results. There is not only the level of the general capability and culture of the community, its power to meet crises and to readjust itself, the scarcity or plenitude of its resources, but also the presence or absence of "men skilled in dealing with crises."[108] In the past, disaster-stricken communities have had such men or have had them not. The disasters of the future--with the exception of those far remote from civilization--may depend on the presence of such leaders. They will come from near and far. The contribution of social service is the contribution of men skilled in dealing with crises. Relief thus becomes "an incident of progress and a social policy." We are now to notice this further determining factor in catastrophe as it applied itself to Halifax. [108] Thomas, William I., _Source Book of Social Origins_ (Chicago, 1909), Introduction, p. 18. During the first week at Halifax not only did each day bring its contribution of relief supplies in the way of food and clothing, but each day brought also men and women of skill and experience in social work to place freely their vision and ability at the service of the community.[109] [109] J. H. Falk, an expert in charge of the social welfare work in Winnipeg; Miss Rathburn of Toronto, Mrs. Burrington of the Y. W. C. A., Toronto. Christopher Lanz, under whose guidance the rehabilitation work after the Salem fire was brought to a successful conclusion; Katherine McMahon, Head worker of the Social Service Department of the Boston Dispensary, Lucy Wright, formerly Superintendent for the Mass. Commission for the Blind; Elizabeth Richards Day, Organizer and for many years Head Worker of the Social Service Department of the Boston Dispensary; E. E. Allen, Superintendent of the Perkins Institute for the Blind, C. C. Carstens, Superintendent of the Mass. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children; John F. Moors, president of the Associated Charities of Boston, who was in charge of the Red Cross relief following the Salem and Chelsea fires; William H. Pear, Agent of the Boston Provident Association; J. Prentice Murphy, General Secretary of the Boston Children's Aid Society; A. C. Ratshesky, Vice-chairman of the Public Safety Committee of the State of Massachusetts. The Halifax disaster was one of the first of great extent which has occurred since the principles of relief have been authoritatively written. No other community has experienced their application so fully or so promptly. One of the workers publicly stated that "Halifax was further ahead in relief work in two weeks than Lynn had been in a month." It was said that: Never before in any extensive disaster were the essential principles of disaster relief so quickly established as at Halifax. In less than twelve hours from the time the American Unit from Boston arrived, the necessary features of a good working plan were accepted by the local committee.[110] This was, it is true, sixty hours after the disaster, but nevertheless the advent of the social specialists brought to Halifax that something which was wanting when the citizens, astounded at the magnitude of their task, wondered just how and where to begin. When Mr. Ratshesky[111] of the Public Safety Committee of the State of Massachusetts, came into the room in the City Hall where a dozen or so were gathered in counsel, already overwrought with fatigue, it was the coming of a friend in need. It was soon clear that the new-comers had had unusual experience in dealing with other disasters. At once everyone took new heart. Only nine hours later, the Citizens' Relief Committee was ready, and a working plan adopted; and from it grew up a wonderful system worthy of study by all students of emergency relief. Thus social service broke into the midst of the great calamity not as a mere adjunct to what was already well devised, but as a central and deciding element, justifying its faith by its work, and its presence by its wisdom in grappling with an inexorable need. [110] Carstens, C. C., "From the Ashes of Halifax," _Survey_, vol. xxxix, no. 13 (Dec. 28, 1917), p. 361. [111] With Mr. Ratshesky were Mr. John F. Moors, and Major Giddings. Of course there had already been a commendable essay toward the solution of what had to be done. Applications for relief came pouring in two hours after the explosion, and industrious workers had already been dispensing to hundreds. On Friday morning volunteers were early at the City Hall, among them many of the public school teachers. A species of organization had already begun, but under congested and the least favorable conditions. A large number of investigators had gone forth, giving information and relief and bringing back reports of the missing, needy, helpless and injured. The Salvation Army had commenced a program of visits to follow up appeals. Clothing of all kinds was pouring into every station where the refugees were gathered together. The Canadian Red Cross was already active. But with the coming of the American Unit,[112] the transfer of the work to a new headquarters upon their advice, and the adoption of a complete plan of organization,[113] the systematic relief work may be said to have in reality begun. [112] The Public Safety Committee of Massachusetts and the Boston Unit of the American Red Cross. [113] The scheme as finally decided upon consisted of a small managing committee with sub-committees in control of food, clothing, shelter, fuel, burial, medical relief, transportation, information, finance and rebuilding. There was a four-fold contribution made by those experienced in relief and disaster organization. The initial service was the establishment of a policy of centralization of authority and administration into one official relief organization. This policy comprised first the coördination of the relief work into one central relief committee, second the placing of the relief funds from all sources into the hands of one finance committee, third the granting of relief by one central management, all records being cleared through one registration bureau, fourth the giving of emergency relief in food, clothing and other things immediately without waiting for the perfection of the relief organization, and fifth, the appointing of a small managing committee to carry out and interpret the general policy determined upon by the executive committee. If the first great service rendered was that of centralization, the second was that of effecting coöperation. The latter was only partially successful. There was at first an inevitable overlapping, especially in the matter of visiting, some families being visited and subjected to interview a dozen times. Failing to achieve complete coördination, the central committee endeavored to limit duplication so far as possible. An invitation extended to the Salvation Army about December eleventh, to place their visitors at the disposal of the general staff of visitors was declined and it was not until January first that this organization fully coördinated with the rehabilitation committee. It was about this time also that the Roman Catholic clergy agreed to coöperate in the registration plans. On December eighteenth the School Board gave official coöperation by assigning fifteen school teachers as volunteer visitors under the direction of the rehabilitation committee. Another obstacle to the complete systematization of the relief work was the most generous but independent distribution of clothing and supplies from the Eaton Center, and from the station established by a charitable Boston lady. The Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy, as well as the Salvation Army and other organizations received supplies in bulk and distributed to their constituents often with hasty or inadequate investigation. There was also at times lack of coöperation among the official committees themselves. Friction and crises arose from time to time, which were only stopped short of scandal. They were the consequence either of assumption of authority upon the part of the under-committees, of ineffectiveness of leadership, or of unfamiliarity with the principles of relief. There were also other problems, some of which it may be useful to note. One of these was the problem of the wisest use of local leaders who knew and could interpret the local point of view and method of doing things. Another that of the absorption of volunteers, many of whom could not be expected to understand the nature of scientific relief service. A third great contribution of social service was that of education in the principles of disaster relief. It was the problem of getting the idea of social conservation understood and established in a community which had not given the subject any thought, and which was quite unfamiliar with the ideals and purposes in view. This was the cause of much delaying of plans, overlapping in giving relief, and giving without substantial inquiry. It explained also the reason for the abundant criticism which arose. When criticism came there was, consequently, no well-informed body of public opinion to which to anchor the committee's work. Educational effort on this subject may be said to have begun with a masterful presentation of the nature of rehabitation at the meeting of the managing committee six days after the disaster. Here was set forth and illustrated the kind of service required and the desirability of such work was at once recognized and inaugurated. Thus the idea of rehabilitation filtered through to the various departments. Trained leaders imparted it to the untrained volunteers. Church, school and club caught something of its spirit and one of the permanent social results of the disaster remains in the partial socialization of institutions. It was this original absence of socialization, this lack of understanding of the true nature of disaster psychology and of the accepted methods of relief that at first made the community so utterly dependent upon the visiting social workers. It may be safely concluded as a fundamental principle that the self-dependence of a community in adversity is furthered by the socialization of existing institutions. The principles of disaster relief cover three stages, first, that of the emergency period; second, that of the period of transition; and third, that of rehabilitation. These principles in order of application may be thus briefly summarized: 1. The coördination of all the relief agencies arising, into one central relief service. 2. The directing of relief funds from all sources to one bonded finance committee. 3. The establishment of a temporary committee only, at first,--the more permanent organization to await the counsel of specialists in disaster relief, an early call having been sent for experienced workers. 4. The avoidance of, or the early abolition of mass treatment, _e. g._ bread lines, food depots, _etc._, as detrimental to a psychology of helpfulness and as calculated to delay a return to self-support. 5. The issuing of orders for supplies on local merchants to follow mass-provisioning. 6. The establishment of a policy of renewable cash grants for short periods until temporary aid is discontinued. 7. Continuance of relief upon a temporary basis until all claimants are registered and the aggregate of available aid ascertained, and the needs, resources and potentialities of self-help studied. 8. An early effort to influence public opinion as to the wisdom of careful policies and critical supervision. 9. The family to be considered the unit of treatment.[114] 10. A substitution of local workers wherever wise, and the use of local leaders in responsible positions. 11. The publication of a report, including a critical survey of policies and methods employed, and a discriminating record of the social results arising therefrom, the mistakes made and other information of value for future emergencies. This report in justice to contributors to include a financial statement. [114] "During the emergency stage of relief the people are dealt with in large groups with little attention to the special needs of individuals ... in the rehabilitation stage the family or the individual becomes the unit of consideration."--(Bicknell, E. P., "Disaster Relief and its Problems," _National Conference of Charities and Corrections_, sess. xxxvi, 1909, p. 12.) The fourth great service rendered was that of the establishment of rehabilitation policies and methods. The work of organizing for rehabilitation, as noted above, did not begin until the sixth day after the disaster. On the eighteenth of December the first chairman was appointed. There followed a developmental period during which little progress was made, save in the familiarizing of committees with the object of rehabilitation. "The object of rehabilitation" says J. Byron Deacon "is to assist families to recover from the dislocation induced by the disaster, and to regain their accustomed social and economic status. Emergency aid takes into account only present needs; rehabilitation looks to future welfare."[115] This was the purpose constantly kept in view. The division of work indicates the nature of the task attempted. The division provided for an advisor, a chief of staff, a supervisor of home visitors, a bureau of application and registration, an emergency department, a department of medical social service and a visitor in children's work. Later a children's sub-committee was included. [115] Deacon, J. Byron, _Disasters_ (N. Y., 1918), ch. v, p. 137. There was first the record and registration made and verified of all the sufferers and those in need. Over six thousand names of registrants resulted. Five districts or divisional areas were arranged for convenience and thoroughness of administration. One of these covered all cases outside of the city itself.[116] In charge of each district was a supervisor, and under the supervisor the various department heads. Trained workers were drawn into the service and their work and that of the volunteer visitors was directed by capable supervisors. The administration of relief was put upon a discriminating "case system." [116] The town of Dartmouth on the Eastern side of Halifax harbor also suffered very seriously in the explosion. It had its own relief organization under the very capable chairmanship of ex-mayor A. C. Johnstone. The nature of the relief work there did not differ essentially from that in Halifax. There were four important phases in which the work developed; the work of general rehabilitation, the medical social work, the children's problem and the problem of the blind. The general rehabilitation service was carried on with varied success. It secured valuable intelligence for all committees and gradually increased in working power and efficiency. How many were put upon their feet again through its kindly counsel and careful coöperation cannot be estimated or told in figures. The problem of medical social service is to learn the social condition of the patient, and to relate that knowledge to his medical condition in order that restoration to health and return to normal family and community relationships shall go hand in hand. A division of medical social service became active a week after the disaster, its workers becoming attached to the several emergency hospitals within the city itself and those established in nearby towns. It had as well a working relationship with the military and the permanent Halifax hospitals. Three thousand patients were cared for in twelve Halifax hospitals alone. Trained medical social workers interviewed eight hundred. The one question to which they sought an answer was: "How shall these patients be brought back again as fully as possible into normal lives and relationships?" Having obtained an answer as best they could, the effort was made to help and relieve to the fullest extent that service and science made possible. The contribution of medical social service was two-fold, immediate assistance and education. By the latter service, which represents the more permanent value to the community, very valuable information and guidance was given to the Halifax Medical Society and the children's and nursing interests. The improvements resulting from these efforts cannot fail to make "follow-up" and "after-care" important considerations in the public health and dispensary work of the future. Immediate assistance was given by the medical social service in six ways: 1. Arranging for clothing and shelter prior to discharge from hospital. 2. Interviews to understand medical social needs. 3. Arranging about eye problems with the committee on the blind, children's problems with the children's committee, family problems with the rehabilitation committee, _etc._ 4. Making a census of the handicapped, and classifying the returns. 5. Placing responsibility for follow-up and after-care. 6. Intensive case work where social problems involved a medical situation. Dr. M. M. Davis, Jr. Director of the Boston Dispensary, writes of the medical social service as follows: It may well be concluded that no organization or "unit" formed to deal with a flood, fire or explosion or disaster, can hereafter be regarded as complete unless in addition to doctors, nurses, relief workers and administrators there is also a due proportion of trained medical social workers. If twelve years ago medical social service received its baptism, Halifax has been its confirmation day.[117] [117] Davis, Michael M., Jr., "Medical Social Service in a Disaster," _Survey_, vol. xxxix, no. 25 (March 23, 1918), p. 675. The children's service was thorough, as it should have been. If the measure of success in disaster relief is the treatment which the children receive, Halifax relief was above reproach. The children's laws of the province are carefully drawn and adequate, the Superintendent of Neglected and Delinquent Children is a man of singular ability and has wide powers. He became chairman of a strong children's committee with which were associated, besides representatives of the children's institutions, two child-welfare workers of high reputation. This committee came in contact with upwards of five hundred families, including more than fifteen hundred children. Their work dealt with the special problems listed below. More permanent supervision was assumed by the Government Commission about five months after the disaster. The modern principle of the widest possible child-placing was encouraged, the effort being to keep children with parents and wherever necessary to subsidize families rather than institutions. The work of the children's committee consisted of 1. Getting urgent temporary repairs made to existing children's institutions. 2. Investigating cases to ascertain if children were in proper custody and receiving proper care. 3. Procuring necessary articles of clothing, _etc._, for children. 4. Hunting for "missing" children, identifying "unclaimed" children, and restoring children to their parents. 5. Interviewing hundreds of people who were: (a) hunting for lost children; (b) wishing to adopt homeless children; (c) arranging for the care of children. 6. Attending to a large correspondence, mostly regarding the adoption of children, for which upwards of a thousand applications were received. 7. Arranging for and supervising the transfer of children from hospitals, shelters, _etc._, the committee in most cases having sent some one to accompany the children. 8. Arranging for temporary maintenance, permanent care, pensions and compensations or allowances for children, including the finding of permanent homes. 9. Locating and referring to the proper agencies a number of wounded children. 10. Getting possession of children unlawfully taken possession of by improper persons. 11. Arranging for the proper guardianship of certain children.[118] [118] Blois, Ernest H., _Report of Superintendent of Neglected and Delinquent Children_ (Halifax, 1918), p. 110. The problem of the blind, was a special feature of the Halifax disaster. Blindness frequently resulted from the blizzard of glass which caused so great a percentage of the wounds. In large proportion the wounded were women who were engaged in their household duties. The rehabilitation of the blind presented problems of care and retraining upon which was concentrated the skill of three superintendents of important institutions for the blind as well as other specialists and workers. The presence in Halifax of a school for the blind with a capable president facilitated greatly an early grappling with the problem. The contributions of the social workers were chiefly of the character already indicated such as that of general medical social service. There were reported on March first, six hundred and thirty-three registrants,[119] but owing to the difficulties of registration this figure remains inexact. [119] Fraser, Sir Frederick, _Report of_. Rehabilitation "takes into account the feelings as well as the material requirements of the bereaved families." An additional phase for social workers is therefore mortuary service. Here is required an exceedingly delicate ministry for which few are qualified. It includes quiet coöperation in the painful process of identification, a sympathetic care for those who succumb to shock or grief, and helpful direction regarding the necessary steps to be taken, in interment. At Halifax this presented a remarkable opportunity for service, and an experienced Young Women's Christian Association worker from Toronto attended in such capacity. There is still another secondary phase which must be referred to as not being without social and moral results,--that of relief of animals. For the sheltering of homeless animals, the dressing of wounds, and the humane dispatch of the badly injured, specially designated gifts had been received. This work received the attention of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty. It will be useful as reference data to present here the nature of the criticism to which careful supervision gave rise. It was of the most trenchant character, and it centered about the alleged over-emphasis which seemed to be placed on system[120] and detailed investigations inflicted upon persons of whom many were still suffering from deprivation and from shock, and who were unused to the cross-examination methods of expert social diagnosticians. Often the thoroughness of the records seemed to the sufferers to be the more emphasized part of the proceedings. When all classes of people found themselves in need, there were naturally many who deeply resented being treated so palpably as "cases." But theirs was a choice which left but little regard for personal wishes or sensibilities. It is regrettable however to have to say that the cause of social service did not receive in the community the much larger repute which its magnificent work justified, chiefly because the innumerable "typewriters, card catalogues, involved indexes, and multifarious office equipment"[121] were not made less obtrusive. The merest touch of "cold professionalism" soon became fuel for the burning disapproval which spread through the city regarding the methods of relief.[122] Letters to the press gave vent to the indignation of the sufferers. One of the judges of the Supreme Court was as outspoken as anyone. In criticizing the food-distribution system he wrote very plainly of the "overdose of business efficiency and social service pedantry." Why should needy families be required, he asked, to go through a personal visit and reëxamination at the office every week, before receiving a renewal order for food. Such things were not easily understood or explained. It became increasingly felt that such discriminating and tardy administration of provisions was not the will of the innumerable donors who so spontaneously forwarded the generous aid. It was not, so the criticism ran, for the committee to detain and delay the needy recipients for the mere sake of preventing duplication and for the sake of the niceties of case records. At a public meeting in Wards Five and Six, it was charged that "too much red tape had been insisted upon by those in charge of the relief and in consequence of this and other objectionable features of management, there had been many cases of hardship and much unnecessary suffering." [120] The reader may contrast with this the early days of the relief at the Johnstown flood "where two windows were set apart from which clothing and boots were being thrown over the heads of the crowd, and those having the longest arms and the stoutest backs seemed to be getting the most of it"; and where almoners passed through the streets handing "ten dollar bills to everyone whom they met." [121] Johnstone, Dwight, _The Tragedy of Halifax_ (in MS.). [122] There was however no definite organization of the dissatisfied as actually took place at the Slocum Disaster. As to the justice of this it has been already indicated that criticism was inevitable because there existed no well-grounded body of public opinion to which could be anchored the wisdom of sound and thorough social methods. The passing of time has reënforced the rightness of the course taken, and not a few former critics would now be ready to condemn the methods used as not having been radical enough. Still there was an element of justice in what was said, and social workers of the future when thrown into a similar situation should curtain their machinery a little closer, at least until the community can realize the principles which organization must conserve. The principle on which rigid procedure is justified is based upon disaster psychology itself, and is the fruit of a long series of trials and errors. On the first few days after disaster the finer sensibilities of human nature appear. Men and women say "others have lost more, we will get on with a minimum of help." About the fifth day when the poignancy of the horrors has passed and the dead are buried, these same people suddenly discover that there are thousands of dollars available. Then another aspect of human nature comes into evidence. Every device is utilized by each to out-distance the other in the scramble. There has not been a single disaster where this state of mind has not shown itself. The way to deal with it without complete records as yet has not been suggested. The only way a committee can protect itself against disgruntled criticism is to know what it is doing. This is the justification of rigid desk procedure. It is a way to detect and to defeat imposture; though it serves also many other purposes. It was not, however, all adverse criticism which developed at Halifax. There were many who were able to see the beneficent purpose behind the careful service, and as months passed on the value of this experienced administration came to be more generally realized. Indeed so large a place did the Social Service workers eventually fill in the community that many reëstablished families begged for the continuance of the department's supervision even though its aid was no longer required. No greater testimony to the value of this rehabilitation work could be given.[123] [123] Johnstone, _op. cit._ When on January twenty-first the Federal Relief Commission took charge of the entire system, it may be said that there was a change not only of hands, but of policy as well. The large amounts made available by the Imperial and Dominion governments and by public subscription made it possible to substitute for rehabilitation the principle of modified restitution. This change of policy the government adopted because of the conviction upon the part of the people that they were suffering from the vicissitudes of war, and that full restoration was in law and equity of national obligation. The step is of special social significance for Halifax is the first instance where on any large scale[124] the principle of restitution became the guide, rather than that of rehabilitation. This principle of indemnity implies the reinstatement of the beneficiary as nearly as possible into the position from which he was hurled by the calamity which has befallen him. It implies that to the householder shall be given the use of a house, to the mechanic his tools, to the family its household furniture. For the community as a whole it means a speedy restoration of such economical and industrial activities as have been temporarily suspended, the rebuilding of bridges, the reopening of streets, the reëstablishment of banks, business houses, churches, schools. It requires that protection shall be given the defenseless, food and shelter to the homeless, suitable guardianship to the orphan and as nearly as possible normal social and industrial conditions to all.[125] It must be made clear that while in no case was the Halifax policy denominated restitution, but rather "generous relief," in actual practice a large proportion of claims were verified and paid on a percentage basis of the loss suffered, rather than that of ascertained need. The Commission was granted power to "pay in full all personal property and real estate claims duly established to an amount not exceeding five thousand dollars." And while in case of the larger claims of churches, schools, business properties and manufacturing establishments, and the property of the more prosperous classes, there was a policy of just and adequate relief declared, the agitation continued and continues that "every dollar of loss shall be paid in full." [124] Both in Chicago and Johnstown many families were placed in a position practically as good as that which they had occupied before. Carnegie once completely reimbursed the sufferers from a bank failure. [125] Devine, Edward T., _Principles of Relief_ (N. Y., 1904), pt. iv, p. 462. Of such a policy in disaster relief Deacon writes: "It is not the policy of disaster relief to employ its funds in restoring losses and compensating for death or personal injury." Commenting on this statement John F. Moors says: "It is interesting to note that at Halifax, the latest scene of serious disaster, such full compensation is intended."[126] [126] Moors, John F., Book Review, _Survey_, vol. xxxix, no. 17 (Jan. 26, 1918), p. 472. What were the social results of this policy? This question is one of no less interest to the community itself than to the student of sociology. It is perhaps too early for adequate examination and comparison with the policy which formerly held sway. While still a vital question there are observers who have grown dubious, if not of restitution certainly of the lump-sum method of restoration.[127] They assert that for many it proved simply a lesson in extravagance and did not safeguard the economic future of the recipients. Unused to carrying all their worldly goods in their vest pockets, these same pockets became empty again with uncommon rapidity. Victrolas, silk shirts and furbelows multiplied. Merchants' trade grew brisk with "explosion money." There seemed to be a temporary exchange of positions by the social classes. The following statement made by one closely associated with social conditions in Halifax and written over two years after the disaster, shows only too well the danger involved in the application of such a principle. After referring to "the spirit of passive criticism directed chiefly against the few who have borne the burden of restoration" the statement continues: The individuals who after all make up a community have been blinded to the bigger interests by their own individual material losses, and the idea of material compensation on a dollar for dollar basis. As some of us earlier foresaw, the disaster wrought much moral damage, for which no "claims" were even presented, even by those to whom we might look for special moral teaching in such an experience. In the course of our work we come daily upon evidences of this condition lingering in our midst. [127] The courts of small claims devoted ten minutes to each case. The amount awarded was paid on the day the case was heard. Upon the whole disaster-study inclines to the unwisdom of "the disposition to proceed as though the relief committee were a compensation board or an insurance society, and to indemnify for loss." But as already said it is early to appraise. What in ordinary times might be condemned might conceivably under the abnormal conditions of war be less morally dangerous. The system may have been at fault and not the principle.[128] Partly for reasons connected with the war it was desired to conclude the business with dispatch, and not to set up a banking house or a training school in thrift. There remains also the final test, the residuum of relief, the number of those who will remain permanently upon the charity list of the community. Will it be said of Halifax as formerly of Johnstown, that "probably so large a sum never passed into a community of equal size with so little danger to the personal character of the citizens and so complete an absence of any pauperizing or demoralizing influences?" [128] The policy to be pursued in disaster relief cannot yet be finally stated. It may ultimately be found necessary to distinguish between the loss of property socially owned, and that of private ownership. The lessons which come out of this experience at Halifax may easily be summarized. 1. The socialization of all communities should be promoted if for no other reason than for protection. 2. More technical methods of coördination are desirable. 3. To display the machinery of organization is unwise. 4. The supervision of voluntary services should be in the hands of one vocationally trained for the purpose. 5. Further consideration is required as to the policy of restitution and its administration. 6. The wisdom should be considered of establishing a secret relief distribution service, such as fraternal societies conduct for those who though in need will not publicly accept assistance. 7. The necessity of using trained searchers for the dead, who will note the precise spot where bodies are recovered, the centralization of all morgue service, the use of metal tags instead of paper, the sterilization and preservation of clothing and effects for purposes of identification, and in addition the development of a morgue social service with training and qualifications of a special character. 8. The complete organization of a social relief reserve with members beforehand definitely assigned to special tasks, with requisite printed supplies in readiness would render the most effective social economy in emergency. This reserve should be trained in the general organization of shelter, food and clothing, in the shaping of a policy of general rehabilitation, in medical social service, in children's work and in the use of volunteers. To answer the requirements of what could be called in any sense a sociological treatment of the disaster, the foregoing chapter on the contribution of social service could with difficulty be omitted. Social service introduces a relatively new element of leadership and control upon which disaster sufferers of the future may rely and which assures to any community the presence of those who have special skill in dealing with crises. The "relation of the great man to the crisis is indeed one of the most important points in the problem of progress"[129] in catastrophe. The subject also assumes special importance in the development of the thesis itself. No accounting for social changes which may hereafter be enumerated can be accurately undertaken without full consideration of the major influences which were present. Thus by elimination we may be able to better gauge the strength of the factor of catastrophe itself. The place of government and other social factors, however, has yet to be discussed.[130] [129] Thomas, _op. cit._, p. 19. [130] The author regrets that it has been necessary to omit special mention of the many institutions, societies and voluntary agencies, which were actively engaged in the relief work, and to confine the chapter to the principles employed by those mainly responsible for relief and administration. CHAPTER VI CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL LEGISLATION Governmental agencies in catastrophe--What seems to be expected of governments--What they actually do--Social legislation--A permanent contribution. We have thus far been tracing certain of the major influences which are brought to bear upon a community when, after having been overtaken by catastrophe, it is settling back into its former habitistic channels,--channels which not even catastrophe can altogether efface. Some of these influences are intra-communal and self-generating, such as the reconstructive impulses already examined. Others are ultra-communal, such as those vigorous social forces which sweep in upon a disaster city with the suddenness of catastrophe itself. There is a further influence which is of a community yet in a sense not of it alone, but of all communities--government--that institution of society which expresses its will by legislation, a will which may or may not be the will of the community concerned. And because legislative action is responsible action, and precedent-setting action, it is apt to be deliberative action. Perhaps this is especially true of the new and less familiar field of social legislation. While it may be that the latest group to function effectively at Halifax was government, social legislation when forthcoming contributed an important and deciding influence, and was in turn itself enriched by the calamity. The boundaries of social legislation are still in the making and daily enclosing a wider and wider field. But not all governments are sympathetic with this process. There are two standards of legislation--the one conserves above all things the rights and privileges of the individual, the other considers first the community as a whole. The superiority of the new ideals of legislation rests here, that it is the general interest which is primarily consulted and becomes the norm, rather than the rights of the individual citizen. Progress in legislation includes its extension into all the affairs of life, retaining as much as may be the liberty of the individual while progressively establishing the interests of all.[131] Its evolution is traceable from the first poor laws, all down the long succeeding line of those dealing with education, health, labor and recreation. However much agreement or disagreement there may be and is as to the wisdom of this mutable sphere of ameliorative legislation, changing just as one ideal or the other happens to be in the ascendancy, there is at least no doubt as to the duty of the government to protect and safeguard its citizens. [131] Lindsay, Samuel M., Unpublished Lectures on Social Legislation. The one duty of the state, that all citizens, except the philosophical anarchists, admit, is the obligation to safeguard the commonwealth by repelling invasion and keeping the domestic peace. To discharge this duty it is necessary to maintain a police force and a militia, and a naval establishment. Such dissent from this proposition as we hear now and then is negligible for practical purposes.[132] In this duty all governments alike share, be they imperial, federal, provincial or municipal, according to their respective powers. [132] Giddings, Franklin H., _The Responsible State_ (N. Y., 1918), ch. iv, p. 81. At Halifax authoritative control following the disaster was not wholly municipal or wholly martial, but rather an admixture of authorities. Policeman and soldier joined hands as agents of general protection. This service government did and did at once. One of the activities of the disaster relief first taken[133] was that by the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Nova Scotia, when he sent to the Chief of Police of Halifax the following order: You are hereby authorized to commandeer and make use of any vehicle of any kind that you find necessary for the purpose of removing the injured and the dead of this city. [133] Reference has already been made to the good work of the Government railroad officials in the quick restoration of service. The service of the police of Halifax was highly commendable. They worked for long periods with little rest to maintain public peace and order. The splendid service of the King's soldiers and sailors has already been considered. They were first and foremost in the work of rescue and of warning. Military orders to vacate the North End district as a precautionary measure followed hard upon the explosion. Military orders permitted the people to return. Within a few hours after the disaster the military established a cordon around the devastated district which no one was allowed to pass without an order, which citizens having business obtained at the City Hall. This was to prevent looting as well as to facilitate the search for the wounded pinned under the debris, and to permit the removal of the bodies of the killed. The burned and devastated area was policed by the military for about two months with the concurrence of civic authority. But catastrophe calls for much more than protection. It calls for a procedure, a guidance, a paternal care, and it calls for it at once. If we ask whether it be the function of government to take the foremost step of leadership in this care, the question is one for Political Science. If we ask the more sociological question whether governments actually and always do so, the answer is unhesitatingly--they do not. Says Cooley: "Like other phases of organization, government is merely one way of doing things, fitted by its character for doing some things, and unfitted for doing others."[134] This proved one of the things for which it was unfitted. Not one of the governmental authorities, civic, provincial, or federal, at once assumed and held authoritatively and continuously the relief leadership. Indeed it is a peculiar commentary that they were scarcely thought of as likely immediately to do so. It should be said, however, that the Deputy-mayor--the Mayor being absent from the city--was very active personally. While one of the controllers was himself replacing the dead fire-chief, the Deputy-mayor called an emergency meeting of citizens on the morning of the disaster, and another at three in the afternoon to consider what to do. This meeting of citizens was presided over by the Lieutenant-Governor, and at it, as already noticed, a beginning in relief organization was made. The committees, it will be remembered, were afterwards reformed upon a new basis on the advice of the American unit. But no civic resources were pledged to the people as was done at the Chicago fire. No moneys were then or subsequently appropriated. The Board of Health did not assert or assume the leadership in the unprecedented situation. The City Hall was indeed set up as the relief center temporarily, but the advice to remove it elsewhere was not successfully opposed. How little civic authority was retained under the disaster circumstances is evidenced by the following complaint. The Board of Control which was then the legal representative body of the city had no member on the executive committee of the disaster administration. One of these controllers publicly criticised the method of the Citizens' Committee as autocratic. He "almost had to have a page to reach the Committee as representative of the Board of Control." When the cabinet ministers from Ottawa were sitting in session in the legislative council room, and giving a hearing to a representative public gathering, the Mayor entered a complaint that the City Council and Corporation had been ignored by the acting committees. The Citizens' Committee exercised the general control. They were entrusted with the special grants and the civic authorities, Board of Health, police, _etc._, so far as emergency matters went, coöperated with them. But the various civic officers were not idle. No one was idle at Halifax. They were occupied with the rehabilitation of the various departments at City Hall and with individual programs of relief. What the civic government continued to do officially was rather in the way of providing the stiff formality of proclamation to the carefully weighed suggestions of the Citizens' Committee. Several of these proclamations were issued. Among them was one urging all people excepting those on relief work or upon especially urgent business to stay away from Halifax for two weeks. Another proclamation was a warning to merchants with regard to demanding exorbitant prices. Over the Mayor's signature went out the nation-wide appeal for aid that "a sorely afflicted people should be provided with clothing and food." The subsequent time, thought and help which City Hall contributed is of less sociological importance to this study. It is sufficient if we have faithfully described municipal aid in disaster as falling under the general category of service, rather than direction.[135] [134] Cooley, Charles H., _Social Organization_ (N. Y., 1912), ch. xxxv, p. 403. [135] This is not to be considered as without exception in catastrophies. A special Citizens' Committee led the operations at the Paterson fire and flood, but at the Chicago fire the City government took immediate and responsible action. This was also the case at Baltimore when the Mayor was the "key to the situation." It should however be added that both at Halifax and Dartmouth the chairmen of the Citizens' Committees were ex-mayors. Turning briefly to the provincial and federal spheres of activity in disaster we note that no special session of the provincial legislature was called, as was done by the Governor of Illinois after the calamity which overtook Chicago in 1871. Yet when the legislature of Nova Scotia convened a fully considered and detailed act was passed incorporating the Halifax Relief Commission, and designating and defining its powers.[136] The several articles defined its establishment as a rehabilitation and reconstruction committee, a town-planning board, as well as its powers of expropriation, its relationship to the city charter, certain parts of which it could amend or repeal; its powers to enforce attendance at its courts and boards; its relationship to the Workmen's Compensation Act and to the insurance problem. Besides, the Commission was also invested with full and adequate discretion regarding schools, churches and business properties. [136] _An Act to Incorporate the Halifax Relief Commission_, Halifax, 1918. Some of the disaster legislative powers and procedures are of special interest to social legislation. Among these were the power to repair, rebuild or restore buildings, the power to repair and carry out a town-planning scheme, the power to amend, repeal, alter or add to provisions in the city charter, the automatic assumption of rights of owner to insure to the extent of the amount expended in repair, and the automatic cancellation of workmen's compensation claims. The act incorporating the commission with powers to make investigation, and administer all funds and properties constitutes Chapter VI of the year 1918. The local legislature also passed Chapter XVIII authorizing the provincial loan of one hundred thousand dollars for the benefit of the sufferers; and Chapter XIX authorizing cities, towns and municipalities to contribute for the relief of sufferers. The action of Premier Borden of Canada for promptitude and wisdom is comparable to that of President Harrison of the United States at the time of the Johnstown flood. The Canadian Premier at the time of the disaster was in Prince Edward Island, an island province lying near Nova Scotia. He at once left for Halifax and arrived the following day. He immediately placed resources from the Federal government at the disposal of the local authorities to assist them in coping with the situation. The third day after the disaster he attended an important meeting regarding the harbor, and strengthened greatly the morale of the city by assuring a complete and rapid restoration of the harbor. Following the Premier came the Minister of Public Works and he too gave much administrative assistance. Then came five members of the Federal Cabinet, each announcing such programs of restoration as to give the community new heart and inspiration. Among these announcements was that of the establishment of a large ship-building plant upon the explosion area. The Canadian government had already as its first act made a grant of one million dollars, toward the sufferers' relief. It was then forcibly urged upon the government that it assume a responsibility towards Halifax such as the British government accepts in "its policy of holding itself responsible for loss and damage by air-raids and explosions." Public opinion seemed to demand that the work of restoration and reparation be undertaken by the government of Canada as a national enterprise. The government while disclaiming all legal liability, acceded to the request. On January twenty-first there was announced the formation of a Federal Halifax Relief Commission to take over the whole work of rehabilitation and reconstruction,--an announcement which brought a feeling of relief to the already discouraged workers. Another interesting contrast may be noted in the fact that while the Governor of Ohio appointed the Ohio Flood Commission to receive and administer relief funds and supplies, the Halifax Relief Commission was appointed by the Governor-General of Canada in Council. This was done under the "Enquiries Act of Canada, being Chapter CIV of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1906, and under the War Measures Act, 1914, being Chapter II of the Acts of Canada for the year 1914." The Federal grant was later increased to five million dollars, and subsequently to eighteen millions. There should also be here recorded the timely succour afforded by the Imperial Government at Westminster. Following the King's gracious cable of sympathy, the sum of five million dollars was voted by the British Government to the relief of Halifax. The King's words were: Most deeply regret to hear of serious explosion at Halifax resulting in great loss of life and property. Please convey to the people of Halifax, where I have spent so many happy times, my true sympathy in this grievous calamity. Reference has already been made to the policy to which the Commission was committed. This policy may be more exactly stated by an extract from the act incorporating the commission: _Whereas_, the said Halifax Relief Commission as heretofore constituted has recommended to the Governor-General of Canada in Council, that reasonable compensation or allowance should be made to persons injured in or by reason of the said disaster and the dependents of persons killed or injured in or by reason of the said disaster and the Governor-General of Canada in Council has been pleased to adopt said recommendation; _etc._ In the provision of material assistance, the strengthening of morale and the eventual establishment of a Relief Commission, government may be said to have contributed an important and deciding influence in the reorganization of the community of Halifax and its restoration to normal conditions. Not only must social legislation be acknowledged to have had a very direct determining influence upon whatever picture of the community is subsequently drawn, but social legislation itself was enriched by the catastrophe. The association of catastrophe with progress in social legislation has already been noticed in our introduction, the mass of facts in support of which no writer has yet compiled. In this introduction we noted how on many occasions disasters have been the preceding reagents in effecting legislation of permanent social value. It is instanced that city-planning in America took its rise from the Chicago fire, that the origin of labor legislation is traceable to a calamitous fever at Manchester and that the Titanic disaster precipitated amendment to the Seamen's laws.[137] It has been said that "the vast machinery of the Public Health Department in England has rapidly grown up in consequence of the cholera visitations in the middle of the last century;"[138] and also that public health work in America practically began with yellow fever epidemics. Writing of mining disasters, J. Byron Deacon says in this connection If it can be said that any circumstance attending such disasters is fortunate, it was that they exercised a profound influence upon public opinion, to demand new effort and legislation both for the prevention of industrial accidents and for the more equitable distribution of the burden of individual loss and community relief which they involved.[139] Again E. A. Ross writes: A permanent extension to the administration of the state has often dated from a calamity,--a pestilence, a famine, a murrain, a flood or a tempest--which, paralyzing private efforts has caused application for state aid.[140] [137] Parkinson, Thomas I., "Problems growing out of the Titanic Disaster," _Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science_, vol. vi, no. 1. [138] Ross, Edward A., _Foundations of Sociology_ (N. Y., 1905), ch. viii, p. 254. [139] Deacon, J. Byron, _Disasters_ (N. Y., 1918), p. 43. [140] Ross, _op. cit._, p. 253. The student of social legislation who reads this book will turn first to this chapter, and ask what permanent legislation will the future associate with so dire a calamity as that suffered at Halifax. It may be said that not only has special disaster legislation of precedent-setting value been enacted serving in a measure to standardize relief legislative procedure, but social legislation of wider application and more general character ensued. And this was along the line which the student of social law should be led to expect. As calamitous epidemics bring forth regulations of sanitation; as marine disasters foster regulations ensuring greater safety at sea, it might well be expected that a great explosion would bring about regulations controlling the handling of explosives. And this is in reality what has occurred. There were approved on the twenty-fifth day of June, 1919, by the Parliament of Canada, regulations respecting the loading and handling of explosives in harbors, applicable to all public harbors in Canada, to which the provisions of Part XII of the Canada Shipping Act apply; and to all other public harbors insofar as the same are not inconsistent with regulations already or hereafter made applicable.[141] They cover 1. The provision of special areas for berth, for explosives-carriers. 2. Regulations of ship control to be observed in the navigation in harbors of explosives-laden vessels. 3. Regulations to be observed upon vessels carrying explosives. 4. Regulations governing the handling of explosives. "The enactment of these regulations" writes the Under-Secretary of State for Canada[142] "was suggested in large measure by the Halifax disaster." Had these regulations been in effect and observed in Halifax Harbor it is hardly conceivable that the great disaster of 1917 could have occurred. [141] _Regulations for the Loading and Handling of Explosives in the Harbors of Canada_ (Ottawa, June, 1919). [142] In a letter to the author. It should be borne in mind that the recommendation for this general legislation of social utility originated with the Drysdale commission--a board of enquiry appointed by the Federal Government to determine the cause of the disaster and whose judgment, was issued on February fourth, 1918. In Section XIII of this judgment, the following occurs: that the regulations governing the traffic in Halifax harbor in force since the war were prepared by competent naval authorities; that such traffic regulations do not specifically deal with the handling of ships laden with explosives, and we recommend that such competent authority forthwith take up and make specific regulations dealing with such subject. We, therefore, conclude that the function of government in disaster is of primary importance, and that social legislation when forthcoming constitutes an important and deciding influence and is itself in turn enriched by calamity. Brought to the test of comparison with observed facts the statement in the Introduction, that catastrophe is in close association with progress in social legislation receives abundant justification. CHAPTER VII CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL SURPLUS Mill's explanation of the rapidity with which communities recover from disaster--The case of San Francisco--The case of Halifax--Social surplus--The equipmental factors--Correlation of tragedy in catastrophe with generosity of public response--Catastrophe insurance--A practical step. John Stuart Mill offers a very interesting explanation of what has so often created wonder, the great rapidity with which countries recover from a state of devastation, the disappearance in a short time of all traces of the mischiefs done by earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and the ravages of war.[143] This "_vis medicatrix naturae_" he explains on an economic principle. All the wealth destroyed was merely the rapid consumption of what had been produced previously, and which would have in due course been consumed anyway. The rapid repairs of disasters mainly depends, he says, on whether the community has been depopulated. [143] Mill, John Stuart, _Principles of Political Economy_ (London, 1917), ch. v, p. 74. But this is not an all-sufficient explanation, and indeed applies particularly to countries which have not been bereft of the raw materials of industrial machinery. San Francisco recovered exceedingly rapidly from her terrible experience of 1906. Indeed her quick recovery has been called one of the wonders of the age. San Francisco was not depopulated. Her actual losses of life were but four hundred and ninety-eight, and those injured four hundred and fifteen. The loss of life on the other hand was about two thousand in Halifax, a city of fifty thousand population--but one-eighth that of San Francisco--and her list of injured ran into many thousands. And yet the same phenomenon appeared. There are other factors both social and economic which must not be omitted from an account of the influences of recuperation, namely the equipmental and other factors which produce social surplus. Disaster-stricken communities cannot survive unless their "surplus energy exceeds their needs." They cannot become normal until the social surplus is restored. The social surplus, according to Professor Tenney, is "merely the sum-total of surplus energy existing in the individuals composing a social group, or immediately available to such individuals."[144] It includes not only "bodily vigor" but "such material goods also as are immediately available for the restoration of depleted bodily vigor." It is not only physiological, as life energy, and social, as conditions of knowledge and institutional facilities, but also socio-economic, as equipment for the maintenance or restoration of physiological and social needs. In catastrophe bodily vigor may have been depleted, and material goods been consumed. No period of recuperation or rapid gain can ensue unless such equipment is in some degree replaced and a balance of social surplus restored. This is the _conditio sine qua non_ of recuperation, and of the transition from a pain-economy to a pleasure-economy,[145] after disaster. Certainly the maintenance of the standard of living demands it. The standard of living has been defined as the "mode of activity and scale of comfort which a person has come to regard as indispensable to his happiness and to secure and retain which he is willing to make any reasonable sacrifice." Following Professor Seager's association of the standard of living with population, the reduction of population in catastrophe of a certain character might conceivably operate to automatically heighten the standard of living, just as the growth of population often brings about its fall. But catastrophe often consumes great quantities of material goods and brings about a change in incomes and in occupations.[146] Seager notes that: Actual starvation confronts more rarely those belonging to the class of manual workers, but for them also under-nutrition is a possibility which prolonged illness or inability to obtain employment may at any time change into a reality. The narrow margin which their usual earnings provide above the bare necessaries of life, coupled with their lack of accumulated savings, makes them especially liable, when some temporary calamity reduces their incomes, to sink permanently below the line of self-support and self-respect.[147] [144] Tenney, Alvan A., "Individual and Social Surplus," _Popular Science Monthly_, vol. lxxxii (Dec., 1912), p. 552. [145] Patten, Simon N., _Theory of the Social Forces_ (Phil., 1896), p. 75. [146] At San Francisco "after the fire, the proportion of families in the lower income groups was somewhat larger, and the proportion in the higher income groups somewhat smaller than before the fire." (Motley, James M., _San Francisco Relief Survey_, New York, 1913, pt. iv, p. 228.) [147] Seager, Henry R., _Economics, Briefer Course_ (N. Y., 1909), ch. xiii, p. 210. It must be remembered that at Halifax while the equipmental damage was stupendous, still the heart of the downtown business section remained sound. The banking district held together, and the dislocation of business machinery was less protracted on that account. To this it is necessary to add how to a very considerable extent the material losses were replaced by communities and countries which not only supplied the city with the material of recuperation but with men and means as well. Were her own workmen killed and injured? Glaziers, drivers, repair men and carpenters came by train-loads bringing their tools, their food and their wages with them. The city's population was increased by thirty-five hundred workmen, twenty-three hundred of whom were registered with the committee at one time. Was her glass destroyed? Eighty acres of transparences came for the temporary repairs and had been placed by January the twenty-first. Were her buildings gone? Seven million, five hundred thousand feet of lumber were soon available to house the homeless. Were her people destitute? Food and clothing were soon stacked high. Were her citizens bankrupt because of losses? Fifty thousand dollars came from Newfoundland, another fifty thousand from New Zealand, one hundred thousand from Quebec, one hundred thousand from Montreal, two hundred and fifty thousand from Australia, five million from Great Britain. In merchandise, clothing and cash a million came from Massachusetts. In about fifteen weeks, aside from the Federal grant, eight millions were contributed. The total contributions from all sources amounted finally to twenty-seven million dollars. Factors such as these must not be omitted in examining the sociological recuperation of a smitten city. And when the experience of Halifax is set side by side with the related experiences of other cities a conclusion may be drawn that disaster-stricken communities can always count upon public aid, for the reasons which have already been discussed. But there is found to be strongly suggested a correlation between the striking character or magnitude of a disaster and the generosity of the relief response,[148] as there is also with the immediacy of the appeal. "It is not the facts themselves which strike the popular imagination" says Le Bon, "but the way in which they take place."[149] There have been disasters relatively serious, such as the St. Quentin forest fire, where repeated appeals met with astonishingly little response from the people. "A single great accident" continues Le Bon, "will profoundly impress them even though the results be infinitely less disastrous than those of a hundred small accidents put together." It was in recognition of this principle that "it was decided to transfer the residue of the amount contributed [after the Triangle fire] to the contingent fund of the American Red Cross, to be used in disasters, which in their nature do not evoke so quick or generous public response, but where the suffering is as grievous."[150] [148] At the time of the tragic Martinique disaster the New York committee received $80,000 more than it could disburse. (Devine, Edward T., _The Principles of Relief_, N. Y., 1904, pt. iv, ch. vii, p. 468.) [149] Le Bon, Gustave, _The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind_ (London), ch. iii, p. 79. [150] Deacon, J. Byron, _Disasters_ (N. Y., 1918), ch. v, p. 120. Besides the relation of the tragic in catastrophe to generosity and other expressions of sympathy, the experience at Halifax suggests also a relationship between the aid furnished by a contributing community and that community's own previous history in regard to calamity. As an instance may be cited the quick and splendid response which came from St. John and Campbellton, two New Brunswick cities with unforgettable memories of great disasters which they themselves had suffered. It is also not improbable that the study of comparative catastrophe would reveal a correlation between the relative amount of aid given and the distance of those who give. Indeed there are reasons which suggest that the relationship might be written thus: that relief in disaster varies inversely as the square of the cost distance. The association here suggested is given additional plausibility from the fact that attention to certain types of news seems to vary according to this principle, and news notice is no inconsiderable factor in disaster aid. Enough has been said to make it clear that at the present time, in the absence of any scientific method of socially ameliorating the consequences of catastrophe, relief is a fluctuating quantity, and is poorly apportioned from the point of view of need. While such conditions obtain, disasters must inevitably contribute to the inequalities which break the hearts of men. It is alas true, that after all our generosities and philanthropies many people lose their normal position in the social and economic scale through earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, railway wrecks, fires, and the common accidents of industrial life. These accidents naturally have a vast influence over the lives of their victims; for they often render people unfit to struggle along in the rank and file of humanity.[151] [151] Blackmar and Gillin, _Outlines of Sociology_ (N. Y., 1915), pt. iv, ch. v, p. 402. The only socially defensible way of doing is to spread the economic results of these disasters over the entire community in some form of intra-city catastrophe insurance administered by the Federal government. This alone will overcome the irrationality of an inequitable levy upon the more sympathetic, and the fluctuations of disproportionate relief. And even beyond this step is there not the possibility of an international system in which each nation will insure the other? Certainly at Halifax the aid contributed came from many nations and tongues. But while we are discussing what ought to be and eventually will be done, one very practical step remains which may be taken at once. At the Halifax disaster, we have seen that much of the direction and technical leadership, welcome as it was, and saving the situation as it did, yet came from without rather than from within the country. There is no Canadian who will close these pages without asking whether this must always be. May it not be respectfully suggested, as a concluding result of this study, that the Canadian government, take immediate steps to develop a staff of experts, a reserve fund, and stations of relief strategically located in Canada--these stations to have in their keeping left-over war-material, such as tents, stores, and other equipment together with records of available experts who have had experience in disasters and who may be subject to call when emergencies arise. And now to return to our thesis, and its special enquiry, namely, wherein is the specific functioning of catastrophe in social change? We have thus far concerned ourselves with the major factors of recuperation, intra-social forces, social service, and legislation. We find it necessary now to add that the socio-economic constitutes a no less important factor. But the effects may not stop with mere recuperation. Suppose a city becomes in a trice more prosperous and progressive than ever. Suppose she begins to grow populous with uncommon rapidity; her bank clearings do not fail but rather increase; her industries rebuild and grow in numbers; new companies come looking for sites as if dimly conscious that expansion is at hand! Suppose a city rises Phoenix-like from the flames, a new and better city, her people more kind, more charitable, more compassionate to little children, more considerate of age! Suppose there come social changes which alter the conservatism and civic habits of many years--changes which foster a spirit of public service, and stimulate civic pride! Then there is clearly some further influence associated with the day of disaster. Perhaps we shall find progress innate in catastrophe itself. CHAPTER VIII CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL CHANGE The unchanging Halifax of the years--The causes of social immobility--The new birthday--The indications of change: appearance, expansion of business, population, political action, city-planning, housing, health, education, recreation, community spirit--Carsten's prophecy. Halifax has had her fair proportion of tribute in her time. Kipling has called her "the Warden of the Honor of the North." Pauline Johnston sings of her pride of situation. As Edinburgh, "it is a city of many charms; beautiful for situation, beyond most of the cities of the world; vocal with history beyond most, for at every turn of its streets some voice from the past 'comes sounding through the toon.'" Her public gardens are the envy of all. Her vistas of the sea are without compare. Her Northwest Arm is a veritable joy. Birds sing in her homes. Cheery wood-fires burn brightly in her open grates. No city of her size is more hospitable than she. But she has always been a city which has never quite entered into her heritage commercially. Situated where by nature she might well be great, she has always been small. Unambitious, wealthy[152] and little jealous of the more rapidly-growing cities, she has prided herself on being a lover of better things. Commerce and industry were things alien[153] and secular. She devoted herself to standards of art, music, learning, religion and the philanthropies. Charitable and philanthropic institutions abounded. She has had her own conservative English ways. She affected homage to "old families," and to that illusory element "social prestige." She welcomed each new knight which the favor of the king conferred, and grew careless of civic prosperity and growth. She had leaned "too long upon the army and the navy" and her citizens had become "anaemic," "lethargic" and standstill; their "indifference" and "inertia" were a commonplace. Halifax had been complacent and academic rather than practical in her outlook upon the world and her general attitude toward life. [152] Halifax is the wealthiest city per capita in the Dominion of Canada. [153] For years real estate was marketed "quietly." In fact, real property was in the hands of one or two specialists only. Geographically she suffered by her situation on the rim of the continent. She experienced not a little neglect and isolation because she was an undeveloped terminal, and not a junction point. Travellers and commercial men could not visit her _en route_ but only by special trip. Again "the government has had altogether too many interests in Halifax for the good of the place." "Government-kept towns" are not as a rule "those which have achieved the greatest prosperity." Halifax as a civil-service headquarters and a government military depot was perhaps open to the charge of being at least "self-satisfied." Valuable acres of non-taxable land have been far from stimulating to civic enterprise. An historic city too, Halifax fell under the blight of overmuch looking backward, and sociologically the back look has been always recognized as the foe of progress. But she has had a past to be proud of--one which throbs with incident and interest. Born as a military settlement, she has been a garrison city and naval station for more than a hundred and fifty years. She has been called "the stormy petrel among the cities--always to the front in troublous times." She has served and suffered in four hard wars. She has gloried in this wealth of years and storied past. Her traditions have been traditions of royalty, blue blood, dashing officers, church parades, parliamentary ceremonies, fêtes, levées and all the splendor and spirit of old colonial times. A newspaper has published daily items of a generation before, and weekly featured a reverie in the past.[154] Old in her years she remained old in her appearance, old in her ways, and in her loves. She boasted old firms which have kept their jubilees, old churches wherein was cradled the religious life of Canada, an old university with a century of service. Each noon a cannon boomed the mid-day hour, and like a curfew sounded in the night. [154] _The Acadian Recorder_, C. C. Blackadar, editor. Search where one will, it would be difficult to find another city which has more completely exhibited the causes of social immobility as set forth by sociology. For there are, it must be remembered, causes of immobility as well as factors of social change. They may be geographical difficulties, or elements more distinctively social--an over-emphasis of government, discouraging innovation, too great a "volume of suggestion," the drag of "collective customs and beliefs," a "traditionalist educational system," the "inheritance of places and functions" tending to arrest development, "government, law, religion and ceremony, hallowed by age."[155] All these reënforce the conservative tendencies in society and preserve the _status quo_.[156] [155] Ross, Edward A., _Foundations of Sociology_ (N. Y., 1905), ch. viii, p. 197. [156] There are other causes of conservatism. A comparative freedom from disasters in the past is one. Halifax has suffered few in her entire history. Indeed the cholera epidemic is the only one of any consequence. She remained one of the last large wooden cities. Her sister city, St. John, was stricken by a disastrous fire and stands to-day safer, more substantial, more progressive in every way. Again communities are generally conservative in character when a large percentage are property-holding people. It was one of the surprises of the Halifax catastrophe that so large a number of citizens were found to own at least in part the homes they lived in. There are other questions which the sociologist would ask if it were possible to carry the investigation further. Is the community loath to disturb the existing relations or to resort to extreme means to achieve desired ends? Or is it eager to sweep away the old, to indulge in radical experiment and to try any means that give promise of success? He would study too the distribution of people relative to their interests. Is there a majority of those whose experiences are narrow and whose interests are few? Or is there a majority of those who have long enjoyed varied experiences and cultivated manifold interests, that yet remain harmonious? He studies the character of the choices, decisions, selections in a people's industry, law-making, educational and religious undertakings. It is thus that he proceeds in diagnosing a population as to the degree of conservatism and to discover what the ideal community should be.--Giddings, Franklin H., _Inductive Sociology_ (N. Y., 1909), p. 178, _et seq._ Diagnosis in detail is not essential here. Up to the time of the disaster Halifax had certainly preserved the _status quo_. We need not labor the how and why. Tourists had returned year after year and found her unaltered. "Dear, dirty old Halifax" they had called her. They had found business as usual,--old unpainted wooden houses on every side, unswept chimneys, an antiquated garbage system and offensive gutters; the best water and the poorest water system an inspector ever examined; the purest air but the most dust-laden in a storm; an obsolete tramway,[157] a "green market," ox-carts on the main streets, crossings ankle-deep with mud, a citizenship given over to late rising. Instead of making the city they had been "letting it happen." The "transient, the good-enough, the cheapest possible" had been the rule of action. [157] Halifax has now one of the best equipped tramway systems to be found anywhere. There has recently been appropriated the sum of $200,000 for sewers, $150,000 for water, $300,000 for street paving. Such has been the unchanging Halifax of the years. But the old order changeth. The spell of the past is broken. A change has come over the spirit of her dreams. There are signs that a new birthday has come. The twenty-first day of June was the old Natal Day, kept each year with punctilious regularity. But Halifax is now just beginning to realize that there was a new nativity, and that it dates from December--that fatal Sixth. "Sad as was the day, it may be the greatest day in the city's history." Almost instinctively since the disaster Halifax has come to see the sources of her weakness and of her strength. Her geographical position which once meant isolation[158] will henceforth be her best asset. Just as the geographical expansion of Europe made the outposts of the Old World the entrepôts of the New, so the expansion of Canada and of Nova Scotia--the province with the greatest number of natural resources of any in the Dominion--to the newly awakening city appears full of substantial promise. It will be largely hers to handle the water-borne commerce of a great country. Henceforth the ocean will become a link and not a limit. World-over connections are the certainties of the future, bound up inevitably with the economic and social solidarity of nations. Closer to South America than the United States, closer to South Africa than England, closer to Liverpool than New York, Halifax sees and accepts her destiny, forgets the inconvenience and loss she has undergone and the many annoyances of blasting and of digging, that the facilities of her "triple haven" might be multiplied and the march of progress begin. "The new terminals with their impressive passenger station, will not only be an attractive front door for Halifax, but will fit her to be one of the great portals of the Dominion." [158] Halifax long felt herself to have been commercially a martyr to Confederation. There has come upon the city a strange impatience of unbuilt spaces and untaxed areas sacred for decades to military barracks and parades. She has urged for some immediate solution, with the result that military property will be concentrated and many acres released to the city for its own disposal. Whether the pendulum will swing so far as to imperil the retention of old historic buildings, time-stained walls, and century-old church-yards is not yet apparent; although suggestions have been made which would have astounded the Halifax of a generation ago. Certain it is that a period of orientation is at hand. There is a stirring in the wards and clubs for progressive administration and modern policies. "Here as elsewhere the time has now come for clear thinking and the rearrangement of traditional thought." Indications of change are already abundant. The first to note is that of appearance. For illustration may be quoted an editorial published near the second anniversary of the explosion: Halifax has been improving in appearance since the explosion, exhibiting very sudden changes at particular points. One almost forgets what the city was like about ten years ago. Still there is a great deal to be done in the way of improvement to our streets. The move in the direction of permanent streets is an excellent one and if carried out as designed will be an improvement and saving to the city. The report of the Secretary of the Board of Trade makes the following reference to the change in appearance of the city: One of the pleasing features in reference to both the wholesale and retail business of Halifax is the improved condition of premises over a few years ago; retail stores are now having up-to-date and attractive fronts, while wholesalers are improving their show-rooms and thereby increasing their sales. The Mayor writes regarding the sidewalk improvement: Some twenty miles of concrete sidewalks to be constructed are on the order paper to be taken in turn so as to be as uniform as possible. This will go a long way toward improving the appearance of the city. As to the change in the style of houses the Mayor states: A pleasing feature of the new construction is the departure from the former square box style of dwelling, also the method of placing rows of houses exactly in the same style. Today homelike houses of modern design, set back from the street with lawns in front are the order of the day--bungalows are particularly in favor. Fine new residences are being built, apartment ideas are spreading, new lights are being tried out, a new tram company has taken hold. Indeed one citizen is credited with the words: "It is almost a sacrilege that Halifax should be so changed." The consciousness of change is seen in an altered public opinion and the beginnings of a new civic outlook. Evidence of the new note is a statement by one of the progressive Halifax firms: Halifax is going to make good. Outside firms are taking up valuable sites in our business districts. The banks are increasing their activities. Some of the biggest industries are coming our way. Surely everything points toward prosperity. Another feature indicative of the changing consciousness, which has infected a much wider region than Halifax itself is the plan now making rapid progress for an Old Home Summer, to be held from June to October, 1924. The project has already received legislative recognition. An effort will be made to recall former residents on a scale such as has never been attempted before. The committee in charge is made up of many prominent citizens and the "1924 Club" grows. One may observe still another indication of the determination to progress in the recent completion of a system linking-up Halifax by telephone with Montreal, Toronto, New York and Chicago. Indices of business conditions are far from satisfactory, yet the items used in their computations are the only ones upon which variations may be even roughly gauged. Roger Babson puts as the leading considerations: (1) Building and real estate; (2) bank clearings; (3) business failures. Other symptomatic facts are postal revenues, tramway receipts, exports, taxes, interest rates, insurance, wages and hours, commodity prices, unfilled orders, immigration and unemployment.[159] [159] Chaddock, Robert E., Unpublished Material. With regard to the first the following statement issued by the Mayor is significant. He says: The year 1919 has been one of exceptional prosperity in the City of Halifax. It has been a record year for building. Permits to the approximate value of $5,000,000 have been issued to the engineer's office, the largest amount by far in its history, the amount being practically ten times that of 1913, or the year before the Great War commenced. A part of this only can be attributed to the terrible explosion of 1917. He refers to the great amount of construction going on in the western and northwestern parts of the city which were relatively untouched by the disaster. The Mayor further states: It must be remembered that it is only two years since the devastation caused by the explosion and strangers in the city have considered it wonderful that we are so far advanced in building up that portion which only a year ago had not a house upon it. The following tabulation gives the building figures according to the permits issued at the City Hall. It shows a remarkable recent increase. Building Permits 1910 .................... $471,140 1911 .................... 508,836 1912 .................... 589,775 1913 .................... 839,635 1914 .................... 874,320 1915 .................... 1,066,938 1916 .................... 1,177,509 1917 .................... 844,079 1918 .................... 2,955,406 1919 .................... 5,194,806 With regard to real estate the Mayor writes in December 1919 The increase in the selling values of properties is remarkable. Business property has taken a jump in value, and it is difficult to get for business purposes property well situated unless at very high prices. Property has been known to change hands within a year at approximately double the amount originally paid. The Secretary of the Board of Trade reports: Real estate has been active, and prices have been obtained greatly in excess of what properties were valued at in pre-war days. In the matter of bank clearings[160] the following table indicates a very considerable change: Bank Clearings 1910 .................... $95,855,319 1911 .................... 87,994,043 1912 .................... 100,466,672 1913 .................... 105,347,626 1914 .................... 100,280,107 1915 .................... 104,414,598 1916 .................... 125,997,881 1917 .................... 151,182,752 1918 .................... 216,084,415 1919 .................... 241,200,194 [160] The reader will of course remember the general inflation of currency. As to business failures the Secretary says: Business failures have been few--practically the whole amount of the liabilities will be made up of one failure, and it is believed the loss to creditors in this particular case will be slight. Additional Indices Gross Postal Revenue Tramway Receipts (gross) 1910 ................ $114,318 $477,109 1911 ................ 119,561 502,399 1912 ................ 132,097 539,853 1913 ................ 140,102 605,933 1914 ................ 147,943 645,341 1915 ................ 154,499 718,840 1916 ................ 167,594 559,513 1917 ................ 255,815 859,667 1918 ................ 305,412 998,702 1919 ................ 349,507 1,258,503 Among other assurances at the new prosperity and the beginnings of fresh faith in the city's future is the coming of new large business interests into the city. Among the largest construction work is the building of the Halifax shipyards upon the explosion ground, involving an outlay of ten millions of dollars. There is the ever-extending plant of the Imperial Oil Company, which will eventually make of Halifax a great oil-distribution port. There is the continuation of the thirty-million-dollar scheme of modern terminal facilities, which have been constructed so close to the ocean that a ship may be out of sight of land within an hour after casting off from the quay. In short there has been, as has been said, an "impetus given to business generally." That the impetus will continue there is every prospect. Halifax may experience a temporary wave of depression when such waves are flowing elsewhere. But today there are fewer doubters and more believers. The day of new elevators, new hotels, harbor-bridges and electric trains is not very far away. The prophecy of Samuel Cunard made in 1840--when he inaugurated the first Trans-Atlantic line--that "Halifax would be the entering port of Canada"--seems destined to fulfilment. As regards population after disasters Hoffman writes: Even an earthquake such as affected the city of San Francisco may not materially change the existing numbers of the population after a sufficient period of time has elapsed for a reassembling of the former units, and a return to the normal conditions of life and growth.[161] Yet as before remarked, the catastrophe at Halifax eclipsed all preceding disasters to single communities on the Continent of America in the toll of human life.[162] In the San Francisco earthquake the loss was four hundred and ninety-eight; at the Chicago fire three hundred; at the Iroquois theatre fire in the same city, five hundred and seventy-five; at the Chester explosion one hundred and twelve; at the Johnstown flood two thousand. It is now estimated that the disaster at Halifax probably passed this latter figure, decreasing the city's population by four per cent. Notwithstanding this heavy draught upon the population, the 1918 volume of the Halifax Directory contained six hundred and fifty more names than the previous year. [161] Hoffman, Frederick L., _Insurance, Science and Economics_ (N. Y., 1911), ch. ix, p. 337. [162] In the Texas flood of 1900 there were lost 5,000 lives, but they cannot be said to have been all associated with a single community. In the light of this consideration the following indication of the growth of population is also of contributory interest.[163] Table 1911 ...................... 46,619 1912 ...................... 46,619 1913 ...................... 47,109 1914 ...................... 47,109 1915 ...................... 47,473 1916 ...................... 50,000 1917 ...................... 50,000 1918 ...................... 50,000 1919 ...................... 55,000 1920 ...................... 65,000[164] [163] Figures kindly supplied by Mr. John H. Barnstead, Registrar, Halifax. [164] The Directory of 1920 estimates the present population to be 85,000. An index of the growth of practical civic interest upon the part of citizens is revealed by the comparison of the numbers participating in political action by means of the vote. Recent figures for Halifax are: Political Action Year Purpose Eligible No. Percentage Percentage voters voting of Indifference of Interest 1918 ......... For Mayor 7,632 2,769 63.8 36.2 1919 ......... " " 8,890 4,264 52.1 47.9 1920 ......... " " 11,435 5,491 51.99 48.01 Instead of the disaster resulting in disheartenment and a gradually diminishing civic interest, the percentage of indifference is smaller and the percentage of interest is larger for 1920 than for 1919, and the percentage of interest for 1919 is larger than that for the previous year. The number of eligible voters also shows increase. "The campaign [for 1920] has marked a new era .... and will make it easier to institute new reforms."[165] [165] Halifax _Morning Chronicle_, April 29, 1920. Of further sociological interest is the change affecting city-planning, civic improvement, housing, health, education and recreation. In the realm of city-planning[166] and civic improvement, Halifax is awaking to the importance of taking advantage of an opportunity which comes to a city but seldom save through the avenue of disaster. The present Town-planning Board was formed as a result of the Town-planning Act of 1915. A board of four members, including the city engineer constitute the committee. The limits of the area to be brought under the scheme were still undecided when the explosion came. The disaster "hastened the resolution" of the Board. "When the disaster came it seemed that things would have to come to a head." Mr. Thomas Adams, the Dominion Housing and Town-planning Advisor, was brought to Halifax to help determine what should be done. "The disaster simply had the effect of bringing to a point certain things which were pending at the time. If that event had not occurred we would by this time be into a scheme, though possibly not so far as we are." Today the limits of the area have been defined and the scheme is nearly ready for presentation to the Council for adoption. The Dominion Town-planning Advisor's assistant reports that real progress has been made in the Halifax plan dealing with the proposed zoning of the city into factory, shopping and residential districts, the provision for future streets, street-widening and building lines, and suggestions for park and aerodrome sites. In the devastated area he has remarked progress in street-opening, in grading of the slope and in architectural treatment of the houses. Five hundred trees and three hundred shrubs have been ordered to be planted in this area. The whole area is under the control of the Relief Commission, for the Act appointing the Commission gave it the powers of a Town-planning Board. [166] The earliest city-planning was mediaeval. Halifax was laid out by military engineers with narrow streets--the "ideal was a fortified enclosure designed to accommodate the maximum number of inhabitants with the minimum of space." In 1813 a town-planning scheme was set on foot for the purpose of straightening streets, the removal of projections and banks of earth and stones which at that time existed in the center of streets. Considerable betterment resulted but unfortunately many fine trees were cut down. The disaster may thus be said not only to have hastened the resolution of the existing committee, but to have produced two planning-boards instead of one. Each must keep in mind the true ideal. For it is not the "City Beautiful" idea, but that of utility that is fundamental to city-planning. It is a principle to reduce to the minimum the social problems of community life, to accomplish Aristotle's ideal--"the welfare and happiness of everyone." In so doing civic beauty will not be neglected. "Scientific, sensible and sane city-planning" says an authority "with utility and public convenience as its primary consideration produces beauty--the beauty that is the result of adapting successfully a thing to its purpose." It is in accordance with this principle of civic art that the terminal area is being developed--a work designed by the same architect who planned the Chateau Laurier and the Ottawa Plaza with such aesthetic taste. To "deep cuttings, spanned by fine bridges, and bordered with trees and pleasant driveways, after the manner of Paris," and to a "waterfront as stately as Genoa's, a terminal station with a noble facade, overlooking a square and space of flowers,"[167] the future will also bring to Halifax more street-paving, sidewalks, parks, fountains, hedges, driveways, cluster-lighting, statuary, buildings of majesty, spaciousness and beauty. Wires will be buried, unsightly poles will disappear.... With time will come all these things which stamp a city as modern, as caring for the comfort of its people, their pleasure and rest, and health and safety. All these things come with time, effort, development of city pride, and the concentrated desire of a people for them.[168] [167] MacMechan, Archibald, "Changing Halifax," _Canadian Magazine_, vol. xli, no. 4, pp. 328, 329. [168] Crowell, H. C., _The Busy East_, vol. x, no. 7, p. 12. The question of housing is recognized as an old Halifax problem. It was already an acute one when the blow of the catastrophe fell and multiplied the difficulty a thousand-fold. The Relief Commission has grappled with its end of the problem, namely, the housing of the many refugees who were first accommodated in lodgings and in temporary shelters.[169] The old sombre frame-constructed buildings of the pre-disaster days are being replaced with attractive hydrostone. A hard-working wage-earning community is stepping out of indifferent structures into homes both comfortable and well-ordained. [169] A model housing development of 346 houses in the new north end has followed the disaster. "It is reasonable to assume," writes an observer, "that the standard of living will ascend. Already the influence of these new houses is showing itself in the homes that are springing up all over the city." But the old problem would have still remained unsolved, had not the city authorities caught something of the reconstruction spirit and felt the sharp urge of increasing difficulties. Action has been at last precipitated. However, lacking in comprehensiveness the first attempts, the city has bestirred itself and has come to realize adequate housing to be a supreme need of the community and vitally associated with the city's health and welfare. A Housing Committee of five members has been formed, having as chairman a man of widely recognized building experience and as director of housing, a capable citizen. It is intended to make full use of the federal housing scheme, in a practical way, the City Council having reversed its former decisions and accepted by by-law the obligation which the government act requires. It is hoped in this way to promote the erection of modern dwellings and to "contribute to the general health and well-being of the community." Thus the principle of promotive legislation and government aid, which when finally accepted in 1890, began the remarkable housing reform in England, has entered the City of Halifax, and will eventually write a record of increased health, comfort and contentment. How soon that record is written will largely depend upon the citizens themselves and their response to a leadership that is forceful as well as wise. The matter of health organization in Halifax affords perhaps the most significant contrast with the pre-disaster days. Prior to the catastrophe public health organization was not a matter for civic pride. The dispensary, which is often regarded as the index of a city's care for health, had received scant support and could only perform indifferent service. Adequate sanitary inspection could not be carried out for want of inspectors. The death rate[170] had averaged about twenty percent for a period of ten years, and the infant and tuberculosis mortality had been tremendously high--the former reaching the figure of one hundred and eighty-two.[171] There was no spur to progressive administration. The city was too ill-equipped to cope with such conditions. [170] London's is 14.6, New York's 13.6. [171] New York's is 90, New Zealand's 60. Today Halifax has the finest public health program and most complete public health organization in the Dominion. The fact that this is so is in very close relation to the catastrophe inasmuch as an unexpended balance of relief moneys[172] has been redirected by request for health purposes in Halifax. A five-year policy has been inaugurated. Fifty thousand dollars per year of the relief money, fifteen thousand dollars per year of the Canadian government money and five thousand dollars per year each, of the city and provincial money are to be expended in the five-year campaign. The sum totals seventy-five thousand dollars per year, or practically one dollar per capita. [172] These funds are from the munificent gift of Massachusetts. A Massachusetts-Halifax Health Commission has been formed--Dr. B. Franklin Royer is the executive officer. A completely equipped health centre has been established including all the essential remedial and educational agencies, namely, pre-natal, pre-school-age, school-age, tuberculosis, venereal disease, eye, ear, nose and throat clinics. There will also be provision for the growth of health ideas through mother's classes, first-aid, and sanitary leagues. A public health course for nurses is included in the educational campaign.[173] A most successful baby-saving exhibit has been held, and the plan calls for a full-time tuberculosis specialist. [173] Dalhousie University has recently graduated the first class of nurses in Canada to receive the Diploma of Public Health. Upon the part of the civic authorities there has been a greater realization of responsibility. Progressive steps have been already taken including the appointment of a Doctor of Public Health, and the provision of district sanitary inspectors. Restaurants and all places where food is exposed for sale are being systematically inspected with a view of effecting improvements. A single instance of commendable activity along sanitary lines is the prohibition of movable lunch cars, which have been seen on the streets of Halifax for years. The removal of a lot of dwellings unfit for occupation is receiving the attention of the officials. In fact it is the intention of the present Council to improve conditions throughout the city generally as quickly as is feasible to do so. Another illustration of the direction of attention to modern social methods is the present discussion of plans for a psychiatric clinic for mental hygiene and the discovery of defectives, especially those attending the schools. Still another indication of interest in child welfare is the fact that a clinic for babies was established in a central locality and a nurse for babies regularly employed. The hitherto meager hospital facilities are being amplified by the building of a maternity hospital and the enlargement of the children's hospital,--a centralization plan of hospital service being a unique and distinctive feature. In the way of industrial hygiene a full-time nurse is employed in the ship-building plant and here also safety policies have been introduced and have reduced accidents to a minimum. The movement for the control of preventable disease is gaining impetus and a modern tuberculosis hospital is being established. The Victoria General Hospital is being enlarged and extended, the additions having an estimated cost of half a million dollars. But it is not alone the activities of the Health Commission but also the earlier vigorous policy of disaster medical relief, which is seen reflected in the growing sense of community-responsibility for health conditions. Halifax has come to see the principle fundamental to all health reform, that public health is a purchasable commodity and that improvement in vital statistics is in close correlation with the progress of health organization. It remains to be seen whether so favored a community will also lead the way in the registration and periodic health examination of every individual citizen which is the final goal of all policies of health reform. The standards of education have always been high in Halifax. She has been the educational center of the Maritime Provinces. Her academic attainments have brought to her much distinction and not a little glory. Her public schools boast many a fine record to furnish inspiration to each successive generation. To secure appointment to the Halifax teaching staff the applicant must possess the highest qualifications. But however much educational leaders may desire them, modern methods and up-to-date equipment await in large measure the public will. Only where there is a will is there a way. That the public will in Halifax is becoming awakened to the vital rôle her educators play is being proven by the response to the campaign for the expansion of Dalhousie University. That response has been most generous and general, while local contributions have been amplified by large benefactions from the Carnegie Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Of the latter benefactions together amounting to one million dollars--four hundred thousand will be expended upon buildings and equipment. The modernizing process is shown again in the decision of the university to establish at once a Faculty of Commerce and to encourage the teaching of Spanish and Portuguese in the educational institutions of the city. In the old teaching methods all are given the same course of instruction regardless of the individual mental differences. Today the effort is to provide an education to fit the mind rather than to force the mind to fit the education. In the public schools of Halifax there are not lacking indications which herald the coming of the newer pedagogy. Among these may be mentioned the opening of sub-normal classes for retarded children, experimentation with the social-recitation system, the display of Safety-First League posters and the development of those departments already established, _viz._ vocational and domestic training, manual and physical education, medical inspection, supervised playgrounds, school nurses, dental clinics, and the wider use of school plants in evening technical classes. Halifax will sooner or later decide to employ to the fullest degree all the opportunities which child-training affords. The school system is an institution of society to mediate between a child and his environment. Children must learn to do and to be as well as to know. Their plastic minds must receive practice in resistance to domination by feeling and in the use of the intellect as the servant and guide of life. To the children of Halifax is due eventually a thorough training in citizenship. This is the last call of the new future in education. It rests upon the twin pillars of educational psychology and educational sociology. Recreation is still another sphere of civic life wherein the City of Halifax has taken a forward step. In making her plans for the future she has not forgotten that the rebuilt city should contain every facility for children to grow up with strong bodies and sane minds; as well as public provision for the leisure time of the adult population. A Recreation Commission has been formed made up of representatives of the various civic bodies and from the civic and provincial governments.[174] A playground expert was called in by the city government, who after study of the situation and conference with local groups, recommended a system of recreation as part of the general city plan. Already marked progress has resulted; indeed it has been said that the "municipal recreation system of Halifax has made a record for itself." A hill of about fifteen acres in the heart of the devastated area has been reserved for a park and playground. The city has built and turned over to the Commission a temporary bath-house, and has set aside the sum of ten thousand dollars for a permanent structure. The plans contain recommendations for minimum play-space for every school child, a central public recreation area, an open-air hillside stadium, as well as a community center with auditorium, community theatre, natatorium, gymnasium, and public baths. The real significance of this movement Halifax has not, herself, as yet fully realized. Just as there is a close relationship between health organization and mortality tables, so there is a close association between open spaces, street play, _etc._, and juvenile, as well as other forms of delinquency.[175] The moral value of organized recreation was itself demonstrated in the war, while the increasing menace of industrial fatigue, as well as the fact of the shorter working-day, call for public recreational facilities as a social policy. This policy is not however fully carried out with merely constructive and promotive action. It must be followed by restrictive and regulatory control of commercialized recreation, and wise and adequate systems of inspection for amusement in all its forms. This is the path of progress in socialized recreation. [174] It should be stated that the supervised playground movement had been developing in Halifax for a period of fourteen years, first under the Women's Council, afterwards under a regularly incorporated association with which the Women's Council merged. [175] In view of the explosion and the resulting housing conditions, an increase in juvenile delinquency might have been expected, but the "playgrounds which were established immediately after the disaster, and which adjoined both of the large temporary housing projects, are, it is felt, responsible for the excellent conditions which exist. The records of the Superintendent of Neglected and Delinquent Children show that there was an actual decrease in the number of juvenile arrests in 1918 over 1917."--(Leland, Arthur, "Recreation as a Part of the City Plan for Halifax, N. S., Canada," _Playground_, vol. xiii, no. 10, p. 493.) Progress in coöperation has also to be noticed. There has been a new sense of unity in dealing with common problems. The number of things which perforce had to be done together during the catastrophe was great. This doing of things together will be continued. The establishment of the Halifax Coöperative Society is initial evidence of a movement towards coöperative buying. Coöperation for community ends even now is revealing itself in the new interest for the common control of recreation, health conditions, _etc._ "The disaster," runs an article in the press, "has given our social movement an impetus. The social workers of the different creeds and classes have discovered each other and are getting together."[176] The organization of social service which only a few years back took a beginning in the form of an unpretentious bureau has shot ahead with amazing rapidity and now exercises an influence of coördination upon the churches, charities and philanthropic societies of the city. [176] Halifax _Evening Mail_, March 22, 1918. The unifying process is well illustrated by the increased coöperation upon the part of the churches. Following the disaster the churches of the city united into a single organization for relief service under the chairmanship of the Archbishop of Nova Scotia. Since then a Ministerial Association has been formed which has directed coöperative effort along various lines and has exercised pressure upon those in authority where the best interests of the city were involved. Thus the City of Halifax has been galvanized into life through the testing experience of a great catastrophe. She has undergone a civic transformation, such as could hardly otherwise have happened in fifty years. She has caught the spirit of the social age. This spirit after all means only that the community is just a family on a larger scale, and the interests of each member are interwoven with those of all. But merely to catch the spirit will not suffice. It must be cherished through an inevitable period of reaction and passivity, and then carried on still further into the relations of capital and labor, into the realm of socialized recreation and into those multiform spheres of social insurance whither all true social policies lead. All these converging lines taken not singly but together constitute a very real basis of faith in the city's future, and of hope for permanent changes for the better. Perhaps this attitude cannot be more fittingly expressed than in the words of Carstens: The Halifax disaster will leave a permanent mark upon the city for at least a generation, because so many of the living have been blinded or maimed for life. But it is possible that the disaster may leave a mark of another sort, for it is confidently believed by those who took part in the relief work during the first few weeks that Halifax will gain as well as lose. The sturdy qualities of its citizens will bring 'beauty out of ashes.' But it is rather for social than for material progress that the sociologist will seek and Carstens continues: It may reasonably be expected that through this Calvary, there may be developed a program for the care, training and education of the sightless as good if not better than any now existing, that medical social service will be permanently grafted upon the hospital and out-patient service of the community, and that the staff of teachers of the stricken city, by direct contact with the intimate problems of the families of the children they have in their class-rooms may acquire a broader view of their work. If there should result no other benefits, and there are likely to be many, as for example city-planning, housing and health, the death and suffering at Halifax will not have been in vain, will not have been all loss.[177] [177] Carstens, C. C., "From the Ashes of Halifax," _Survey_, vol. xxxix, no. 13, p. 61. CHAPTER IX CONCLUSION Recapitulation--The various steps in the study presented in propositional form--The rôle of catastrophe direct and indirect. (a) Directly prepares the ground-work for change by: (1) weakening social immobility; (2) producing fluidity of custom; (3) enhancing environal favorability for change--(b) Indirectly sets in motion factors determining the nature of the change such as: (1) the release of spirit and morale; (2) the play of imitation; (3) the stimulus of leaders and lookers-on; (4) the socialization of institutions. If the preceding narrative has been successful in setting forth the facts as they were observed, the reader has now before him a fairly accurate picture of a community as it reacts under the stimulus of catastrophe and proceeds to adjust itself to the circumstantial pressure of new conditions. It will be well, however, for the sake of clearness in emphasizing our closing propositions to recapitulate one by one the various steps in our study. These steps while primarily intended to follow the natural order in point of time will also be seen to represent a definite sociological process of development. At first the shock of the catastrophe was seen to have been sufficiently terrific to affect every inhabitant of the city. This fact gives peculiar value to the investigation. The more a shock is limited in extent the more its analysis grows in complexity. In such cases consideration must necessarily be given to the frontiers of influence. The chapter describing the shock also found the immediate reaction to have been a fairly general disintegration of social institutions, and of the usual methods of social control--in short, a dissolution of the customary. This turmoil into which society was thrown is sometimes called "fluidity," and, for lack of a better one, this term has been retained. It would thus appear that if it were later observed that essential social changes ensued, fluidity was one of the requisites of change; and this is indeed in perfect tally with previous thought upon the subject as set forth in our more theoretical introduction and expressed in the proposition that fluidity is fundamental to social change. The more general and preliminary treatment over, individual and group reactions were then examined in greater detail, and the phenomena of the major sort were singled out and classified. These were found to be either abnormal and handicapping such as emotional parturition; or stimulative and promotive, as dynamogenic reaction. This constituted the material of the second chapter. Put in propositional form it would be that catastrophe is attended by phenomena of social psychology which may either retard or promote social reorganization. Social organization came next in order, and because its progress was largely expedited by the organization of relief,--the first social activity,--the sociological factors observed in the latter have been recorded. These factors were classified as physical, including climate and topography, and psychological, such as leadership, suggestion, imitation, discussion, recognition of utility and consciousness of kind. Reference was also made to biological and equipmental considerations. Two conclusions of interest are here deducible: first, that part of society which is most closely organized and disciplined in normality first recovers social consciousness in catastrophe; second, it is only after division of function delegates to a special group the responsibility for relief work that public thought is directed to the resumption of a normal society. These conclusions emphasize the conservation value to society of a militia organization in every community and also of a permanent vigilance committee. The fifth chapter introduced a relatively new element, the presence of which may be relied upon in all future emergencies, that of a disaster social service. Its contribution was that of skillful service and wise direction; its permanent effect, the socialization of the community. The value of the presence of visiting social specialists is in inverse proportion to the degree to which the socialization of a community has advanced. The practical conclusion is clearly that self-dependence of a community in adversity is furthered by the socialization of the existing institutions. The next and latest group to function effectively was that of government, but social legislation when forth-coming, contributed an important and deciding influence, and was itself in turn enriched by the calamity. Brought to the test of comparison with observed facts the statement in the introduction receives abundant justification; namely, that catastrophe is in close association with progress in social legislation. To the influences already mentioned an additional factor of recuperation is added,--the socio-economic one. Disaster-stricken communities cannot become normal until the social surplus is restored. They may however always count upon public aid. But there is found to be strongly suggested a correlation between the magnitude or striking character of a disaster and the generosity of the relief response. The last chapter is devoted to a cataloging of the indications of social change from the standpoint of the community as a whole. The old social order is contrasted with that obtaining two years subsequent to the disaster. It here appeared that the city of Halifax had as a community undergone and is undergoing an extraordinary social change. This implies, according to the theory of social causation, an extraordinary antecedent. Before finally accepting the factor of catastrophe as such, the scientific reader may very properly ask whether there are not alternatives. To this query the answer is that there are alternatives, other very considerable extra-social factors to be noted, but that catastrophe was itself the precipitating factor there is little room for doubt. Of the other factors two only are of sufficient weight for our present consideration. The earliest in order of time, and perhaps also in rank of importance is that which Halifax residents understand as the coming of the new ocean terminals. The coming was so sudden in the nature of its announcement, and meant for many so much depreciation in property values, that it had something of the nature of catastrophe within it. It altered very extensively the previously accepted ideas of residential and business and industrial sections of the city, and caused a jolt in the body politic, such as had not visited it for years--not since the middle of the nineteenth century brought the revolutionizing steam. It is not to be denied that this factor has contributed not a little to the weakening of immobility, and the preparation of the ground for an inrush of the spirit of progress. The other factor was the war. The war functioned mightily in community organization for service. It brought prosperity to many a door, and whetted the appetite of many a merchant to put the business of peace on a war basis. But it would be merely speculation to say that prosperity would have continued in peace. Indeed such a conclusion would not be historically justifiable. Halifax has been through three important wars. In each, "trade was active, prices were high, the population increased, industry was stimulated by the demand, rents doubled and trebled, streets were uncommonly busy." But in each case also Halifax settled back to her ante-bellum sluggishness. In 1816 Halifax began to feel the reaction consequent upon the close of a war. The large navy and army were withdrawn and Halifax and its inhabitants "bore the appearance of a town at the close of a fair. The sudden change from universal hustle and business to ordinary pursuits made this alteration at times very perceptible. Money gradually disappeared and the failure of several mercantile establishments added to the general distress." But the closing of the war, now a hundred years later, has exhibited no such relapse. On the other hand Halifax grows daily more prosperous and progressive than before. Her bank clearings do not fail, but rather increase. There is clearly some further influence associated with this change. But there is a very real sense in which the war may indeed be said to have been the factor,--if we mean by it the fact that through the war and as a direct result of war-service the city was laid half in ruins by possibly the greatest single catastrophe on the American Continent. If we mean this, we have named the all-precipitating and determining event. The catastrophe was an episode of the great war. It only remains to add by way of clearer definition that the rôle of catastrophe appears to be both direct and indirect. Functioning directly, it prepares the ground-work for social change by (1) weakening social immobility; (2) precipitating fluidity of custom; (3) forcing environal favorability for change. Indirectly, it sets in motion factors determining the nature of the social change, such as (1) the release of spirit and morale; (2) the play of imitation; (3) the stimulus of leaders and lookers-on; (4) the socialization of institutions. Our final principle[178] thus appears to be that progress in catastrophe is a resultant of specific conditioning factors some of which are subject to social control. If there is one thing more than another which we would emphasize in conclusion it is this final principle. Progress is not necessarily a natural or assured result of change. It comes only as a result of effort that is wisely expended and sacrifice which is sacrifice in truth. [178] The two additional propositions suggested in the Introduction, namely, that the degree of fluidity seems to vary directly as the shock of the catastrophe, and that brusk revolution in the conditions of life accomplish not sudden, but gradual changes in society, require a study of comparative catastrophic phenomena for verification or rejection. That the nature of the social change in Halifax is one in the direction of progress we think to be based on reason and not alone on hope. That it is also our fervent hope, we need hardly add. But every Haligonian who cherishes for his city the vision which this book contains, may help mightily to bring it to pass by making effort his watchword and intelligence his guide. We do not say it will all come tomorrow. We do say a wonderful beginning has been made since yesterday. And this is bright for the future. In no better words can we conclude than in those of one of her greatest lovers: "Changes must come to Halifax. This is a world of change. But every true Haligonian hopes that the changes will not disfigure his beloved city, but only heighten and enhance the intimate and haunting charms she borrows from the sea."[179] [179] MacMechan, _op. cit._, p. 336. INDEX A Accidents, industrial, 116, 135 Advancement, human, _vide_ progress Aesthetics, 70 Aggregation, social, 62 Altruism, 51, 58 Ameliorative legislation, _vide_ legislation Analytic psychology, 49 Anxiety, 38 Anger, 39, 44, 45 Animal relief, 91 Army, _vide_ military Association, 56, 63; utility of, 62, 142 Associations, state and voluntary, 73, 99 Attention, 17, 20, 54, 55, 134 Authority, 101, 102, 103, 104 B Behavior, 17, 18, 52, 53, 60, 67 Beliefs, 23, 38, 120 Bereavement, 47 Biological factors in society, 67, 142 Body politic, 44, 69, 144 Bureau, welfare, 139 Business, disorganization of, 31, 59, 113; expansion of, 77, 124; indices of, 125; relief, 105, 113; resumption of, 69, 71, 72, 73 C Capital, 139 Catastrophe, and crisis, 16, 18; and communication, 31; definition of, 14; and evolution, 14, 15; and generosity, 57, 58, 115; and heroism, 55; and insurance, 116; and poetry, 22; and population, 128; and progress, 21, 22, 23; and social change, 118; and social disintegration, 31; and social economy, 80; and social legislation, 23, 100; and social organization, 59, 69; and social psychology, 35; and suicide, 46; and social surplus, 111; and survival, 56; and tragedy, 114, 115; and war, 14 Cataclysm, _vide_ catastrophe Causation, social, 144 Centralization, policy of, 83 Ceremony, 120 Change, social, and catastrophe, 20, 21; and crisis, 16, 21; definition of, 15, 21; factor of, 15, 16; and fluidity, 21; indications of, 123, 143; and progress, 21; resistance to, 19 Charity, 22, 97 Child welfare, 87, 88, 89, 90, 98, 135, 137 Churches, _vide_ religious institutions Circumstantial pressure, 33, 64, 77 Civic authority, _vide_ municipal control Civic improvement, 22, 77, 105, 108, 129, 130, 140 Civilization, 31, 49 Classes, social, 96, 139 Clergy, 74, 83, 84, 139 Clinics, 134 Climatic factors in society, 66, 67, 142 Clubs, 76, 123 Collective behavior, _vide_ behavior Commerce, 70, 118, 122 Commercialized recreation, 138 Communication, 31, 57, 61, 62, 71, 72, 73 Community, 19, 21, 32, 49, 55, 62, 67, 78, 80, 84, 85, 88, 92, 95, 96, 97, 100, 101, 109, 115, 135, 138, 143 Comparative catastrophe, 146 Compensation, 90, 96, 97, 105, 107 Component groups, 70 Consciousness, 37, 42, 59, 60, 68, 124, 142 Consciousness of kind, 63, 67, 142 Consciousness of underlying difference, 69 Conservation, social, 79, 84, 143 Conservatism in society, 19, 117, 120 Contagion of feeling, 42 Control, social, 19, 22, 34, 141, 146 Conventionality, 49 Coöperation, 61, 83, 84, 97, 138 Crime, 50, 76 Criticism, 49, 84, 86, 92, 94 Crisis, and catastrophe, 16; definition of, 16; and fluidity, 18; and great men, 55; and progress, 55; and revolution, 17; significance of, 16 Crises, in battles, 16; in communities, 18; in diseases, 16; in life-histories, 16, 18; men skilled in dealing with, 83, 98; power to meet, 80; in religions, 16; in social institutions, 16; in world of thought, 16 Crowd, 41, 42, 43, 45 Crowd psychology, 35, 41, 45 Courts, 96 Culture, 19, 21, 80 Curiosity, 44 Custom, 15, 19, 34, 49, 63, 67, 69, 120, 142, 145 Cycles, 15 D Death rate, 133 Delinquency, 138 Delirium, oneiric, 46 Delusion, 35, 38 Determination, 44, 58 Diagnosis, social, 92, 121 Disaster, _vide_ catastrophe Disaster psychology, _vide_ psychology Disaster relief, _vide_ relief Disease, 22, 36, 48, 134 Discussion, 37, 64, 67, 142 Disintegration of society, 18, 31, 33, 34, 35, 59 Dispensary, 88, 133 Distributive system of society, 31 Diversity of capacity, 69 Division of labor, 69, 79, 142 Dynamic forces, 19 Dynamogenic reactions, 52 E Economic factors in society, 68 Economy, social, 80, 98 Education, 19, 84, 101, 120, 121, 129, 134, 135, 136, 137 Educational institutions, 20, 69, 70, 74, 76, 82, 85, 91, 95, 135, 136 Educational psychology, 137 Educational sociology, 137 Emergency, 52, 60, 79, 82, 83, 87, 98, 143 Emotion, 33, 36, 44, 46, 47, 48, 52, 53 Endurance, 52, 53, 54, 60 Energies, 52, 58 Environmental effects, 15, 75, 136, 145 Envy, 44 Erroneous recognition, 39 Equipmental factors in society, 68, 142 Evolution, 14, 15, 56, 101 Exaltation, 45, 46 Expectancy, 41 F Factors in social change, 15, 16, 22, 144 Family, 59, 61, 74, 86, 88, 89, 140 Fatigue, 45, 52, 53, 54 Fear, 39, 44, 45, 64 First aid, 41, 61, 134 Flight instinct, 40 Fluidity, 18, 19, 20, 21, 34, 142, 145 Flux, 19, 34 Folkways, 18 Food-getting, 39, 92 Fraternal societies, 76, 98 G Generosity, 55, 57, 58, 115, 116, 143 Geographic determinants, 67, 119 Government, 19, 31, 100, 101; agencies of, 100; aid in disaster, 94, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107; an institution of society, 100; and leadership, 117; officials, 62, 102, 106; over-emphasis of, 19, 119, 120 Gratitude, 45 Great man, 55, 69 Greed, 44, 51, 94 Gregarious instinct, 40, 41, 63, 67 Grief, 38, 48 Group, 41, 55, 56, 60, 70, 142 Group heroism, 56 H Habit, 17, 19, 20, 52, 69, 117 Habitation, 39, 63 Hallucination, 35, 37, 38 Happiness, 70, 112 Health, public, 68, 88, 101, 108, 119, 132, 133, 134, 135, 138, 140 Helpfulness, psychology of, 56, 85 Herd instinct, 41, 63 Heroism, 55, 56 History, 14 Heredity, 67 Homes, 31, 32, 48, 63, 87, 114 Homogeneity, 70 Housing, 114, 129, 132, 140 Hospitals, 53, 66, 88, 90, 135, 140 Human nature, 93, 94 Hyperactivity of imagination, 46 Hyper-suggestibility, 44 Hypnosis, 45 I Imagination, 31, 37, 46, 114 Imitation, 15, 63, 67, 77, 142, 145 Imitation, conditions affecting rate of, 77 Immobility of society, 19, 20, 120, 144, 145 Impulsive social action, 42, 48 Indemnity, principle of, 95 Indications of social change, 123, 143 Indices of business, 125 Individual reactions, 41, 51, 53, 55 Industry, 31, 69, 118, 121, 144 Industrial, accidents, 116, 135; fatigue, 138; hygiene, 135 Inhibitions, 36, 41, 49 Insanity, 46 Instincts, 18, 20, 35, 39, 40, 44 Institutions, social, _vide_ religious, educational Insurance, social, 105, 116, 125 J Jealousy, 44 Justice, 19 Juvenile delinquency, 138 K Kind, consciousness of, 63, 67, 142 Kindliness, 45, 55 L Labor, 139; division of, 69, 79; legislation, 23, 101, 108 Law, 49, 50, 58, 120 Leadership, 21, 61, 67, 80, 84, 86, 145 Legislation, ameliorative, 101; boundaries of, 101; and catastrophe, 23, 110, 143; health, 108; ideals of, 101; labor, 23, 101, 108; mining, 23, 108; marine, 23, 108, 109; promotive, 133; progress in, 101, 108, 110, 143; social, 23, 100 Like-mindedness, 63, 70 Like response, 41 Limitation of field of consciousness, 42 Lookers-on, stimulus of, 21, 78, 145 M Magic, 20, 78 Martial law, 101 Maternity, 48, 135 Mass relief, 85 Medical inspection, 136 Medical social service, 87, 88, 89, 98, 140 Mental hygiene, 134 Mental unity, 41 Meteorological pressure, 65 Military and naval organization, 51, 60, 63, 68, 88, 101, 102, 122, 143, 145 Ministerial association, 139 Models, 21, 77, 78 Modes of affective experience, 44 Morale, 21, 106, 108, 145 Morality, 20, 97 Mores, 70 Morgue service, 39, 91, 98 Mortality, 112 Municipal control, 101, 102, 103, 104 Mutual aid, 55, 56, 57, 58 N Navy, _vide_ military News-notice, 115 Normality, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 79, 142 O Obstruction and the human will, 52 Occupational change, 113 Oneiric delirium, 46 Organization, _vide_ social, relief Orientation, 123 Original tendencies, 39 P Pain economy, 112 Pain, 53, 54 Parental instinct, 40, 41 Pensions, 90 Percentage of indifference, 129 Percentage of interest, 129 Personal crises, 18 Phenomena, of bereavement, 47; of crowd psychology, 35, 41, 45; diverse, 35; of emotion, 44; of endurance, 52, 53; post-catastrophic, 48; of repression, 49 Philanthropy, 52, 69, 116 Physical factors in society, 67, 142 Physiological reactions, 35, 36, 52 Pity, 39 Pleasure economy, 112 Pluralistic behavior, _vide_ behavior Plural leadership, 49 Police, 76, 101, 102 Political action, 64, 76, 129 Political Science, 103 Poor laws, 101 Population, 19, 67, 113, 114, 128, 137, 144 Post-catastrophic phenomena, 48 Precipitating agent, 16, 144, 145 Preparedness, 64 Press, 72 Pressure, social, 63, 77 Primitive household, 69 Principles of relief, _vide_ relief Production, 19 Profiteering, psychology of, 51 Procedure, 23, 79, 102, 109 Progress, in catastrophe, 21, 22, 23, 55, 98, 108, 146; and change, 21; degree of, 21; and evolution, 14, 15; meaning of, 21; and relief, 80; in social legislation, 23 Protocracy, 60, 70 Psychiatry, 134 Psychological factors in society, 67, 142 Psychology, analytic, 49; crowd, 35, 41, 45; disaster, 35, 56; of helpfulness, 56, 85; of helplessness, 49; of insanity, 46; of profiteering, 51; of relief, 49, 94; social, 35; and sociology, 19, 35 Public opinion, 23, 84, 86, 93 Public safety, 132, 136 Public utilities, 71 Pugnacity, instinct of, 40 R Reconditioning of instincts, 18 Recreation, 19, 73, 101, 129, 137 Recuperation of society, 20, 35, 112, 114, 117, 143 Regional influence, 66 Regulative system of society, 31 Rehabilitation, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 91, 94, 98, 104, 105, 107 Religion, 64, 118, 120, 121 Religious institutions, 32, 63, 69, 70, 74, 77, 85, 95, 120, 139 Relief, administration of, 44, 66, 83, 86, 87, 93, 94; division of labor in, 69; fluctuation of, 116; leadership in, 61, 103, 116; medical, 61, 62, 65; military in, 51, 60, 63, 68; organization of, 59; psychology of, 49, 94; principles of, 81, 84, 85, 96; procedure in, 79; relation to progress, 80; residuum of, 97; reserve, 98; secret service in, 98; shelter, 63, 64, 66, 82, 90; stages in, 85 Repression, 49, 50 Reproductive system of society, 31 Resentment, 45, 49 Residuum of relief, 97 Resumption of normal society, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75 Restitution, principle of, 94, 95 Retrogressive evolution, 15 Revolution, 17, 22 Ritual, 20 Rumor, responsiveness to, 43, 63 S Sabbath observance, 77 Safety, public, 132, 136 Sanitation, 66, 133, 134 Schools, _vide_ educational institutions Science, 33, 88 Security, feelings of, 41 Self-control, social, 70 Segregation, 64 Self-preservation, 31, 40 Sensation, 36, 38, 54 Sense perception, 37, 38 Sensorium, social, 59 Service, social, 80, 82, 84, 98, 117, 139, 143 Shibboleths, 77 Shock, reaction, 31, 36, 45, 54, 60, 91, 141 Social, action, 64; aggregation, 62; age, 139; choices, 121; consciousness, 60; conservation, 79, 84, 143; conservatism, 19, 117, 120; contrasts, 32; control, 19, 22, 34, 141, 146; economy, 80, 98; effects, 75, 96; factors, 59, 67, 142; immobility, 18, 20, 120, 144, 145; insurance, 105, 116, 125; legislation, 23, 100; memory, 23, 55; mind, 49, 70; order, 143; organization, 35, 59, 142; policy, 80, 139; pressure, 63, 77; psychology, 35; reorganization, 69; sensorium, 59; service, 80, 82, 84, 98, 117, 139, 143; specialists, 69, 81, 85, 94, 143; standards, 32; surplus, 68, 111, 112, 143 Social change, _vide_ change Socialization, 52, 55, 85, 97, 142, 145 Socialized recreation, 138, 139 Society, 33, 35, 49, 69, 70, 76, 79, 91, 100 Societies, 76, 99 Socio-economic factors, 112, 117, 143 Sociological factors, 59, 67, 142 Sociology, 33, 35, 120; attractions of study, 13; educational, 137; and psychology, 19, 35; virgin fields in, 13, 23 Sorrow, 45, 47 Standards, social, 32 Standards of living, 112, 113, 133 State, 101 Static conditions of society, _vide_ immobility Statistics, vital, 135 Stimulus, of catastrophe, 33, 51, 53, 54, 57; of heroism, 55; of leaders, 21; of lookers-on, 21, 78, 145; of models, 78; repetition of, 45 Struggle for existence, 41 Sub-normal, 136 Suggestibility, 41, 42, 48, 142 Suicide, 46 Supervised playgrounds, 136 Surplus, social, 68, 111, 112, 143 Survival, 56 Sustaining system of society, 31 Sympathy, 45, 46, 55, 58 T Taboo, 49, 71 Tender emotion, 45 Themistes, 18 Topography, 67, 142 Tradition, 32, 120 Transportation, 43 Trade-unions, 51 U Under-nutrition, 113 Unemployment, 59, 125 Unit in relief, 60 Unity, mental, 41 Utility, of association, 62, 67, 142 Utilities, public, 71 V Variation, social, _vide_ social change Vicissitudes, 14, 21 Vigilance committee, 19, 143 Vigor, economic, 70 Vocational training, 98, 136 Volition, 55, 64 Voluntary associations, 73, 84 W War, 14, 26, 45, 48, 94, 97, 101, 117, 144 Wealth, 111 Welfare, 70, 86, 132, 139 Will, 22, 44, 52, 53 Workmen's compensation, 105 Worship, 19, 77 Z Zeal, 44 VITA Born at Hammond River, Province of New Brunswick, Canada. Son of Samuel I. and Mary E. Perkins Prince. Graduate of St. John (N. B.) High School, the University of Toronto, Wycliffe College (Tor.). Taught at Ridley College, St. Catharines, Ont. Appointed to staff of St. Paul's Halifax N. S. Studied for doctorate at Columbia University. Subject of primary interest, Sociology; of secondary interest, Statistics and Social Legislation. Graduate courses with Professors, Giddings, Tenney, Chaddock, Lindsay, Andrews, Montague, McCrea. President of the British Empire Club of the University. [ Transcriber's Note: The following is a list of corrections made to the original. The first line is the original line, the second the corrected one. dead." "Crisis," Professor Shailer Matthews observes, "is something more dead." "Crisis," Professor Shailer Mathews observes, "is something more sentence in Ross' _Foundations of Sociology_ (p. 206) "Brusk sentence in Ross' _Foundations of Sociology_ (p. 206): "Brusk seaboard. It is situated at the head of Chebucto Bay a deep inlet on seaboard. It is situated at the head of Chebucto Bay, a deep inlet on an fro before they dropped. Still others with shattered limbs dragged and fro before they dropped. Still others with shattered limbs dragged "So hypochrondriac fancies represent "So hypochondriac fancies represent fruitless search whereever refugees were gathered together, the fruitless search wherever refugees were gathered together, the to do so, these lines of conduct are the roots of greed. (_Ibid._, to do so, these lines of conduct are the roots of greed." (_Ibid._, sentiment.[73] sentiment."[73] pressure. Magnificent effort, conspicious enough for special notice was pressure. Magnificent effort, conspicuous enough for special notice was could not escape, observation was the strange insensibility to suffering could not escape observation was the strange insensibility to suffering may be stated that catastrophe is attended by phenonema of social may be stated that catastrophe is attended by phenomena of social depot at well as a habitation. Then the idea spread of taking the depot as well as a habitation. Then the idea spread of taking the comradeship.[94] Then followed requests for changes of location in the comradeship."[94] Then followed requests for changes of location in the precipitation. Temperature: max. 18.2, min. 6.6 precipitation. Temperature: max. 18.2, min. 6.6. of_ Halifax, 1918. of Halifax_, 1918. CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION (Cont'd) CATASTROPHE AND SOCIAL ECONOMY relationships.?" Having obtained an answer as best they could, the effort relationships?" Having obtained an answer as best they could, the effort subsidize familes rather than institutions. subsidize families rather than institutions. 3. Procuring necessary articles of clothing, _etc_, for children. 3. Procuring necessary articles of clothing, _etc._, for children. exceeding five thousand dollars. And while in case of the larger claims exceeding five thousand dollars." And while in case of the larger claims John R. Moors says: "It is interesting to note that at Halifax, the John F. Moors says: "It is interesting to note that at Halifax, the We have thus far been tracing certain of the major influence which are We have thus far been tracing certain of the major influences which are In this duty all governments alike share, be they imperial, federal. In this duty all governments alike share, be they imperial, federal, committees. The Citizen's Committee exercised the general control. They committees. The Citizens' Committee exercised the general control. They muncipal aid in disaster as falling under the general category of municipal aid in disaster as falling under the general category of But this is not an all-sufficient explanation, and indeed aplies But this is not an all-sufficient explanation, and indeed applies and technical leadership, welcome at it was, and saving the situation as and technical leadership, welcome as it was, and saving the situation as ch viii, p. 197. ch. viii, p. 197. The chapter discribing the shock also found the immediate reaction to The chapter describing the shock also found the immediate reaction to [178] The two additional propositions suggested in the the Introduction, [178] The two additional propositions suggested in the Introduction, Imitation, conditions effecting rate of, 77 Imitation, conditions affecting rate of, 77 Pluralistic behavior, _vide_ behaviour Pluralistic behavior, _vide_ behavior ] 
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36957	----	SOCIAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES _The Volumes of the Series already Published are_:-- +Civilisation of Christendom, and other Studies.+ By BERNARD BOSANQUET, M.A. (Oxon.), Hon. LL.D. (Glasgow). 4s. 6d. +Short Studies in Character.+ By SOPHIE BRYANT, D.Sc. (Lond.). 4s. 6d. +Social Rights and Duties.+ By LESLIE STEPHEN. 2 vols., 9s. Other Volumes to follow by-- Professor A. SIDGWICK, Professor D. G. RITCHIE, and J. H. MUIRHEAD, Esq. (the Editor). The Ethical Library SOCIAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES ADDRESSES TO ETHICAL SOCIETIES LESLIE STEPHEN IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II. [Illustration: Logo] LONDON SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LIMITED NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO. 1896 ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS. NOTE. The following chapters are chiefly a republication of addresses delivered to the Ethical Societies of London. Some have previously appeared in the _International Journal of Ethics_, the _National Review_, and the _Contemporary Review_. The author has to thank the proprietors of these periodicals for their consent to the republication. L. S. CONTENTS. PAGE HEREDITY, 1 PUNISHMENT, 55 LUXURY, 95 THE DUTIES OF AUTHORS, 137 THE VANITY OF PHILOSOPHISING, 183 FORGOTTEN BENEFACTORS, 225 HEREDITY. I found, the other day, that an address upon Heredity had been announced, of which I was to be the deliverer. I admit that I was fully responsible for the statement, although, for reasons with which I need not trouble you, I was not quite prepared for it in this form. I mention this fact in order simply to say that the title may possibly give rise to false expectations. I am quite incompetent to express any opinion of the slightest scientific value upon certain problems suggested by that rather ugly word "heredity". The question as to the precise relationship between any organism and its parents or remoter ancestors, is one of the highest interest. The solution, for example, of the problem, whether is it possible for a living being to transmit to its descendants qualities which have only been acquired during its own lifetime, has an important bearing upon the general theory of evolution. But I have nothing whatever to suggest in regard to that problem. I simply take it for granted that there is some relation between parents and children: and a relation, speaking in the most general way, such that the qualities with which we start in life, resemble more or less closely those of our ancestors. I may also assume that, in some form or other, the doctrine of evolution must be accepted: and that all living things now in the world are the descendants, more or less modified, of the population which preceded them. I proceed to ask whether, as some people appear to believe, the acceptance of this doctrine in the most unqualified form, would introduce any difficulty into our primary ethical conceptions. I will also at once give my answer. I do not believe that it introduces any difficulty whatever. I do believe that the general theory of evolution tends in very important ways to give additional distinctness to certain ethical doctrines; although, to go at all fully into the how and the why would take me beyond my present purpose. All that I have to argue to-day is, that a belief in "heredity" need not be a stumbling-block to any reasonable person. I cannot doubt that the popular mind is vaguely alarmed by the doctrine. I read, the other day, a novel by a well-known author, of which, so far as I can remember, the main substance was as follows: A virtuous doctor (his virtue had some limitations) studied the problem of heredity, and had read Darwin, and Herbert Spencer, and Weissmann, and all the proper authorities. His own researches are carefully described, with the apparent assumption that they were both profound and of tremendous significance. He had, it appears, accumulated a vast amount of material; and his method was to cut out slips from newspapers, whenever they recorded any events in his own family history, and to preserve them in a mysterious cabinet. These investigations proved that there was a decided family likeness running through the descendants of a common ancestor. As a general rule, they had all belonged to the class "blackguard". From this result he inferred that there was no God and no soul. His relations were dreadfully scandalised: one was converted to his views; but the others contrived diabolical plots for setting fire to these marvellous collections and so stopping the contagion of these dreadful doctrines at their source. It struck me, I confess, that instead of burning the collections, they would have done better to ask him what was the connection between his premisses and his conclusions. What was this terrible, heart-paralysing truth which the poor man had discovered? Has any human being ever doubted, since mothers were invented, that children are apt to resemble their parents? I do not personally remember the fact, but I should be prepared to bet, if the point could be settled, that, before I was a month old,--and in those days neither Darwin nor Weissmann had published a line,--my nurse and my mother had affirmed that the baby was like his papa. That, at any rate, is a remark, the omission of which would show more originality than the assertion. If I desired, again, to produce classical authority for the importance of race, I should not have to extend my researches beyond the Latin Grammar. If, once more, we look into the writings of famous theologians, we meet it everywhere. I take the first that comes to hand. "Good men," says Calvin, "and beyond all others, Augustine, have laboured to demonstrate, that we are not corrupted by any adventitious means but that we derive an innate depravity from our very birth." The denial of this was an instance of consummate impudence--reserved, as Calvin shows, for such wicked heretics as Pelagius. The doctrine of heredity, in short, in a theological version, is essentially involved in the dogmatic foundations of the orthodox creed. I have no doubt that an investigation of the reasonings of Augustine and others would exhibit much affinity to modern controversy, though in a very different terminology. Whatever we may think of its merits, the doctrine of original sin implies that a depraved nature may have been transmitted to the whole human race; and, if the commonly alleged cause of the original depravity strikes us as insufficient, it is, at least, a very familiar argument of divines, that the doctrine corresponds to undeniable facts. Why should it startle us in a scientific dress? If we can transmit depravity, why not genius and bodily health? In one respect, modern theories tend rather to limit than to extend the applicability of the principle. No one ever doubted, nor could doubt, that the child of a monkey is always a monkey; and that the child of a negro, or even of a Mongol, has certain characteristics which distinguish it from the child of a European. But the difference is that, whereas it used to be held that there was an impassable barrier between the monkey and the man, it is now widely believed that both may be descendants from a common ancestor. Should this belief establish itself, we shall have to admit that, in spite of heredity, organic forms are capable of much wider variation than was believed by our fathers to be even conceivable. Let us try, then, to discover some more plausible explanation of the fear excited by the doctrine. Now, I wish to give as wide a berth as possible to that freewill controversy which perplexes so many minds, and is apt to intrude at this point. I will try to assume,--though it is not my own position,--the doctrine of the freedom of the will in the widest sense that any reasonable person can devise. No such person will deny that there is a close connection--the terms of which have not yet been defined--between the physical constitution and the moral or intellectual character. The man plainly grows out of the baby. If the baby's skull has a certain conformation it can only be an idiot; with another skull and brain it may be developed into a Shakespeare or a Dante. The possibilities ranging between those limits are immovably fixed at birth. And what determines the constitution with which the child is born? Surely it can be nothing but the constitution and circumstances of its parents. Whether I can be a great man, or cannot be more than a commonplace man, or a fool,--nay, whether I shall be man or monkey or an oak,--is settled before I have had any power of volition at all. Now, it is curious how, even at this early period, we are led to use delusive language. The difficulty is quaintly indicated in a remark by Jonathan Swift. The dean "hath often been heard to say" (says a fragment of autobiography) "that he felt the consequences of his parents' marriage, not only through the whole course of his education, but during the greater part of his life". If they had not married, he apparently implies, he would have been born of other parents, and certainly would have felt it for life. What the word "he" means in that connection, is a puzzle for logicians. I fell into the difficulty myself, the other day, when I had occasion to say that a man's character had been influenced, both by his inheritance of certain qualities and by the later circumstances of his education. Having said this, which, I think, aimed at a real meaning, it occurred to me that the phrase was grossly illogical, and I shall be still obliged if any one will put it straight for me. The difficulty was, that I had used the same form of words to indicate the influence of a separable accident, and to describe one aspect of the essential character. To say that a man is influenced by his education is to say that he would have been different had he gone, for example, to another school. That is intelligible. But to say that "he" would have been different if he had been born of other parents is absurd, for "he" would not have been "he". He would not have existed at all. "He" means the man who has grown out of the baby with all its innate qualities; and not some, but all those qualities, the very essence of the man himself, is, of course, the product of his progenitors. Such phrases, in short, suggest the fancy that a man had a pre-existence somewhere, and went about like Er the Pamphylian in Plato's myth, selecting the conditions of his next stay upon earth. In that case, no doubt, there might be some meaning in the doctrine. The character of the future incarnation would depend upon the soul's choice of position. But as we know nothing about any pre-existent soul, we must agree that each of us starts as the little lump of humanity, every characteristic of which is determined by the characteristics of the parents, however much its later career may be affected by the independent powers of thought and volition which it develops. So much, it seems to me, must be granted on all hands, and is perhaps implicitly denied by no one. But granting this very obvious remark, what harm does "heredity" do us? It is the most familiar of all remarks that you and I and all of us depend upon our brains in some sense. If they are pierced, we die; if they are inflamed, we go mad; and their constitution determines the whole of our career. A grain of sand in the wrong place, as the old epigrams have told us,--in Cæsar's eye, for example,--may change the course of history. That unlucky fly, which, as Fuller remarks, could find no other place to creep into in the whole patrimony of St. Peter except the Pope's throat, choked the unlucky man, and, for the time at least, altered the ecclesiastical order of Christendom. In other words, we are dependent at every instant upon elements in the outside world,--bacteria, for instance,--and the working of our own physical organism. But, that being so, what conceivable difference does it make whether the brain, which we certainly did not ourselves make, has a fixed resemblance to that of our parents, or be, if it be possible, the product of some other series of processes? It is important, no doubt, to recognise the fact; it would be of the highest importance if we could define the exact nature of the fact; but the influence upon any general ethical doctrine of the recognition of the bare fact itself seems to be precisely nothing at all. It is part of the necessary data of all psychological speculation, and has been recognised with more or less precision from the very first attempts to speculate. Trying, once more, to discover what it is that alarms, or is said to alarm, some people, we are reminded of certain facts, which again are of profound interest in some respects. I take a special instance,--not, unfortunately, a rare or at all a strange instance,--to illustrate the point. Many years ago I knew a clergyman, a man of most amiable character and refined tastes. One morning he shocked his friends by performing the Church service in a state of intoxication, and within a few months had drunk himself to death. The case was explained,--that is, a proper name for it was found,--when we learnt that more than one of his nearest relations had developed similar propensities, and died in much the same way. Then we called it an instance of "hereditary dipsomania," and were more or less consoled by the classification. We were not, I think, unreasonable. The discovery proved apparently that the man whom we had respected and admired was not a vulgar debauchee, who had been hypocritically concealing his vices; but that he had really possessed the excellent qualities attributed to him, only combined with an unfortunate constitutional tendency, which was as much a part of his original nature as a tendency to gout or consumption. Now this, as I think, suggests the problem which puzzles us at times. A man develops some vicious propensity, for which we were quite unprepared. In some cases, perhaps, he may show homicidal mania or kleptomania, or some of the other manias which physicians have discovered in late years. They say, though the lawyers are rather recalcitrant, that a man suffering from such a mania is not "responsible"; and if asked, why not? they reply, because he was the victim of a disease which made him unable to resist the morbid impulse. But then, we say, are not all our actions dependent upon our physical constitution? If a man develops homicidal mania, may not a murderer of the average type excuse himself upon the same ground? You have committed an action, we say, which shows you to be a man of abnormal wickedness. You are a bloodthirsty, ferocious, inhuman villain. Certainly, he may reply; but if you could examine my brain you would see that I could not be anything else. There is something wrong about its molecular construction, or about the shape of the skull into which it was fitted, which makes bloodthirstiness quite as inevitable in me as a tendency to drink is in others, or perhaps as the most ardent philanthropy may be in some. In short, I am a murderer; but wickedness is so natural to me that you must in all fairness excuse me. This is, of course, a kind of excuse which would not free a man from the gallows. It would simply suggest that punishment should not be considered from the moral, but, if I may say so, from the sanitary point of view. We should hang the murderer--not to satisfy our sense of justice, but to get rid of a nuisance. I will not now inquire what may be said upon that undoubtedly difficult problem; but I must touch upon the previous question which is raised by the argument. Would our supposed murderer make out a good case for himself? Is there no difference between him and the maniac; or, rather, what is the nature of the difference which we clearly recognise in practice? In the extreme case which our ancestors took as the typical case, the madman kills because he is under some complete illusion: he supposes that he is only breaking a glass when he is really taking a life, and so forth. He is therefore not wicked, but accidentally mischievous. We have now come to recognise the existence of many states of mind intervening between this and complete sanity. Among them, for example, is the state of mind of the homicidal monomaniac, whose propensity is considered to be the cause of his actions, and which may be consistent with his being in many other respects capable of acting upon the ordinary motives and judging reasonably in most of the affairs of life. What, then, is the meaning of the statement that he is a madman, and therefore excusable? The contention must, of course, be, in the first place, that his character is in some way abnormal. He is not governable by the ordinary motives which determine human action. But, beyond this, it is evident that the abnormality is taken to mean something more than the mere deviation from the average. A man may be abominably wicked, and yet not in the least abnormal in the sense here required. He may be deficient in the higher motives, and the more brutal passions may be unusually developed; and yet we do not hold that he therefore deviates from the type. So, in a different sphere, we may have one man possessing enormous strength and another exceedingly feeble, one very active and another very clumsy; and yet they may all be perfectly normal, they are free from physical disease, and all their physical functions may be performed according to the normal system. Entire freedom from disease, in short, is perfectly compatible with exceedingly wide deviations from the average, with capacity for walking a thousand miles in a thousand hours, or with inability to walk a single mile; and yet such deviations do not imply a departure from a certain common type. To say precisely what symptoms indicate mere differences within the normal type, and what imply an actual deviation from the type, is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible; and yet that such a distinction exists has to be constantly recognised. "So-and-so is delicate, but not diseased; feeble, but not deformed," has a definite meaning, though we may be unable to define the precise meaning of our words, or to decide which statement is true in particular cases. The great difficulty in the case of insanity corresponds to this. The physician tells us that the madman's mind works abnormally, but not abnormally in the sense merely of having some faculties weaker and others stronger than is common; but in such a way as to indicate disease, and, moreover, a particular kind of disease, or one, perhaps, of several particular kinds of diseases. The vagueness of this statement provokes lawyers, who have a natural love of definite external tests to govern their decisions; and it has led to a number of delicate discussions, upon which I need not enter. The legal problem seems essentially to be, what tests should guide us in determining whether a man should be regarded as a normal human being, or as a being so far differing from the normal type that he should be treated exceptionally, and especially put under the guidance of other persons, and excused from legal responsibility, that is, liability to punishment. I have to do with the moral problem alone. It is a still more difficult problem; but it has this advantage, that we do not require so definite an answer. We have not, happily, to decide whether our fellows shall go to heaven or to hell, though we have to decide whether they shall be hanged or locked up; and we must be content as a rule with very vague estimates as to their moral character. What we practically have to take, more or less roughly, into account is simply this: that our inference from conduct to character has often to be modified by the existence of these abnormal cases. A man is drunk on an important occasion; I infer, as a rule, that he has all the qualities which go with low sensuality; but in some cases the inference is wrong; the man may be really a person of most admirable feelings; but one of his instincts has suddenly taken an abnormal development, owing to a set of causes entirely different from the usual causes. Another man suddenly and causelessly kills a friend. The natural inference that he must be a bloodthirsty brute is erroneous, if it turns out that he has acted from impulses not generated by any habitual want of benevolence, but from some special defect in the constitution of his brain. In other words, our moral judgment must vary in the two cases, and may vary so much that the same action may rightly suggest only pity in one case and abhorrence in the other; although, in many cases, where it may be very difficult to say what is the precise implication as to character, the judgment must, if we are properly diffident, remain obscure. The moral problem always depends ultimately upon this: What is the character implied by this conduct? If the moral conduct shows malignity within the normal type, it justifies condemnation; if it shows only a blind instinctive impulse, due to a deflection from the type, it may justify no other feelings than those which we have for the poor maniac who fancies himself a king, and takes his limbs to be made of glass. If we hold that such responsibility implies free will we shall argue that the madman is deprived of free will, or that his freedom of will is more or less restricted, and that he is therefore irresponsible. In my own opinion, that proposition would be by no means an easy one to establish. I fancy that a man may be insane and yet capable, within very wide limits, of being good or bad, and that therefore we must at any rate hold that he has still some power of free will. The bearing of this upon the question of moral responsibility brings us within sight of some delicate problems. But, however this may be, the criterion by which we shall have to judge whether we are believers in free will or determinists will be the same. The problem is essentially, is this man accessible to the motives by which normal men regulate their conduct? or does he so far deflect from the typical constitution, however that constitution may be precisely defined, that his conscience or his affections or his intellectual powers are unable to act according to the general laws of human nature? Having said so much, I think that I may proceed to this conclusion, that the theory of heredity can make no real difference whatever to our problem. There is a difficulty for the metaphysician--the difficulty which is involved in discussions between materialists and idealists, determinists and believers in free will. I do not deny the existence of that difficulty. I only say that the question of heredity is altogether irrelevant to the difficulty. The desire to treat ethical problems by the methods of science may predispose a thinker to materialism, and may at the same time lead him to attach particular importance to the doctrine of heredity. But that doctrine only takes note of facts which every theory has to state in its own phraseology, and do not alter the ultimate problem. Let us, in fact, go back to our murderer. I am not responsible, he says, because I am determined by the processes in my brain. I am a mere machine, grinding out one set of actions or another as external accidents set my wheels and pulleys in motion. If that argument be fatal to moral responsibility, or to the belief that any truly moral action exists (a point which I do not argue), it will no doubt remove the moral element from the treatment both of murderers and madmen. They might still require different measures, just as we treat a machine differently when we consider that it is not of the normal construction, or that its various parts have somehow got out of gear, so that we can no longer, for example, expect that the mainspring will transmit its motion to the wheels. But, in any case, if the dependence upon the body be a fatal objection to morality in the highest sense, the circumstance that the body is made upon the plan of previously existing bodies makes no additional difficulty. If we could suppose every brain to be started afresh by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, the difficulty would be neither increased nor diminished. The problem, are we automatic? and the validity of the inference, is morality meaningless? are questions altogether independent of the question, what particular kind of automata are we? and do we or do we not resemble a previous generation of automata? If, however, we reply to the criminal that he is not a machine or an automaton, but a responsible, reasoning, and thinking being, we do not get away from the facts. We then assert that he is responsible because he possesses a certain moral constitution. But whatever words we may use to express the facts correctly, we must still allow that there is such a correlation between soul and body (if those old-fashioned words be admissible) that the health of his moral constitution depends at every instant upon the health of his nervous system and his brain. It may be shattered or destroyed by an injury; and, if this be so, what does it matter whether the injury--say the defective shape of the skull, which causes pressure on the brain--is due to some accident or to a connate malformation due to his parents? The difficulty, if it be difficulty, is that the want of responsibility is due to some cause, accidental relatively to him; and it matters not whether that cause be in his parents' constitution or in some other combination of circumstances. In any case, we have to suppose, whatever the relation of mind and body, we must at least assume that a man is born with some character. Like everything that exists, he has certain definite qualities which he did not make for himself, and upon which his subsequent development depends. And, if that be once admitted, the whole difficulty still occurs, and the question as to whether the origin of these innate qualities be derived from his parents or from a something else is a mere matter of detail. In fact, the confusion seems to me to arise from the vague phraseology which induces us to accept, virtually at least, the mental attitude of Dean Swift in Er the Pamphylian. We speak as if the man were an independent entity, lying somehow outside the chain of cause and effect, and arbitrarily plunged into it; nay, as if even his inner constitution were something superinduced upon his nature. It is really an absurd abstraction to distinguish between the man and his character, as though he meant a something existing without a character, and afterwards run into a mould by fate. The character is the man in certain relations, and he can never exist without it, any more than a piece of matter can be outside of all particular times and places. If the doctrine of free will and moral responsibility be so interpreted as to imply our acceptance of such fallacies, I can only say that it appears to me to be irreconcilable with the most undeniable facts. But I am very far from supposing that any intelligent supporter of the doctrine would state it in such a form. He would admit as fully as I do the facts, and, if they can be admitted and reconciled to the doctrine of moral responsibility, certainly the doctrine of heredity can be so reconciled. The only peculiarity of the doctrine is, that it has called attention to an order of facts which must in any case be recognised by every philosopher; and that it helps, therefore, to disperse a fallacy which only requires articulate statement to show its radical want of logic or even conceivability. We are, beyond all doubt, affected somehow, and affected profoundly, by our environment; and this particular form of relation to other beings has no more bearing upon the problem than the other forces which have been recognised ever since speculation began. There is, however, another side from which I must briefly consider the question of heredity; and it is a side which, I think, is really more important, because it involves issues of facts, and has suggested some more reasonable prejudices. It is, undoubtedly, very common that when a theory has obtained a certain currency it should be applied rashly beyond its proper limits. When the speculations of Darwin encouraged us to believe that the natural selection might be analogous to artificial selection, that different species of animals have been produced as varieties of dogs and pigeons have been produced by breeders, it was, at least, tempting to apply the same formula directly to other cases. Some men of science have endeavoured to show that genius or criminality is hereditary; and that, if one man writes a great poem and another picks a pocket, it is always in virtue of their hereditary endowment. Within certain limits, this statement is not surprising, and I shall be very glad when men of science can tell us what those limits may be. Without being a man of science, I fully believe that our congenital characteristics form, as I have said, certain impassable limits to our development. One baby is a potential Shakespeare, and, probably, only one in a million. The qualities with which he starts, again, are, no doubt, derived from his parents, though we do not, as yet, understand in what way; whether, for example, we should infer that Shakespeare's parents had more than usual capacity, or were especially healthy, or had some peculiar form of one-sided development which generated the disease called poetical genius; or whether he may have inherited qualities from a remote ancestor, which had remained latent for several generations. In any case, he was at birth only a potential Shakespeare. He might have died of the measles, or been made stupid by a sunstroke, or have taken to drink in bad company, or have run away to sea, or been sent to the University and become a mere bishop or professor of casuistry; in short, though he could not easily have done very much better work than he did, he might have done inconceivably less. That is to say, his congenital qualities implied certain powers; but what he would do with them remained to be partly determined by an indefinite variety of external circumstances acting upon him in various ways. Hence, we have always the complex problem, what, given certain raw material in the shape of new-born babies, will be the characteristics of the finished product in the shape of a grown-up population? If the social state is determined from the inherited qualities directly, we should be able, for example, to infer from a given proportion of criminals, that a certain number of children were born with a corresponding physical constitution, with "foreheads villainous low," and prognathous jaws, and with the other peculiar signs which mark the felon from his birth. In that case, again, we should infer, I suppose, that the only possible means of improving the social state would be by somehow improving the breed; perhaps, by appointing some of the inspectors who play so great a part in modern society, to examine infants, and get rid of those who were thus distinguished, by the means now adopted in the case of superfluous puppies. One objection to this system is, of course, that men of science have not yet shown that they are qualified for exercising such a supervision; and there are other difficulties upon which I need not dwell. This much, indeed, we may grant without any scientific prepossessions whatever. It is clearly very desirable that every generation should raise up for its successors as many children with sturdy bodies and vigorous brains as possible; and it is to be hoped that the objection to transmitting disease and imbecility may be more generally recognised, and, in some shape or other, have an influence even upon the strongest passions. But I am only concerned with the general theory, which, if I understand it rightly, would appear to imply that the characteristics of a society are irrevocably fixed by the characteristics of the children born into it; and, whether this theory be true or false, we must admit that it has a considerable bearing upon morality. If, in fact, we hold it to be rigidly true, we should have to suppose that no serious improvement can be produced in society at large, except by breeding a superior race of men. This, again, is a discouraging prospect. Let me quote what has been said by an authority who expresses, I believe, the accepted scientific view. "There can be no doubt," says Professor Huxley, "that vast changes have taken place in English civilisation since the days of the Tudors. But I am not aware that there is a single particle of evidence in favour of the conclusion that this evolutionary process has been accompanied by any modification of the physical or the mental characters of the men who have been the subjects of it. I have not met with any grounds for suspecting that the average Englishmen of to-day are sensibly different from those that Shakespeare knew and drew." The statement, I imagine, might be very much extended. I do not suppose that the average cockney of to-day is a superior animal, physically or morally, to the average Athenian of the days of Pericles, or even, it may be, to the pre-historic savages who made flint implements for the amusement of our antiquaries. Briefly, whatever change has taken place, within historical period, has been a social change, not a change in the structure of the individual. This is surely conceivable. We need only consider, for example, how vast a change has been made in all the conditions of life by the modern applications of practical science. Whether, in other respects, we are better or worse than our forefathers, we have an enormously greater aggregate of wealth now than we had, say, two centuries ago; we can support four times the population, though the condition of the lowest stratum may not be better. And this amazing advance of wealth is not due to the fact that Englishmen of to-day have better brains for mathematics than the Englishmen of Newton's time; but to the accumulation of capital, the improvement of the natural conditions of the soil, the turning to account of vast masses of material, previously neglected; to the invention of machinery, and so forth; all of which imply, not necessarily the very slightest improvement of natural capacity, but simply the growth of knowledge, and the fact that each generation has preserved more than it has consumed. What we call progress or civilisation, which means, whatever else it may or may not mean, a gigantic increase in the power of man over nature, is due, therefore, to the one fact that man can accumulate. He can modify the earth in such a way as to facilitate the labours of the coming generations; he can make tools which last beyond his own time, and which themselves become, as it were, the ancestors of incomparably superior tools; he can, moreover, accumulate and transmit knowledge, not merely the knowledge of facts, but the knowledge of scientific laws and of useful inventions, and of the right methods of investigating facts. When Newton made a discovery, he made it for all the following generations; and, though it may well be that no superior or even equal intellect has since arisen to carry on his work, the dwarf now stands on the shoulders of the giant. It is not simply that we know more facts. The modes of mathematical inquiry differ as much from those which Newton could employ, as the latest steam engine from the crude fire machine before the time of Watt; and an average undergraduate can solve with ease problems which once puzzled the greatest intellects that ever appeared among men. Man, then, can accumulate; and that simple fact enables every generation enormously to surpass its predecessors. Accumulation, again, is, of course, a form of inheritance. We are born heirs to the intellectual as well as to the material fortunes of our ancestors. But, it is obvious, this is something very different from heredity. It supposes an alteration, not in the man, but in his surroundings or his education in the widest sense; not in his intellectual capacity, but in the knowledge which it can attain and the rules which it has worked out. In order that a man may be capable either of bequeathing or inheriting, he must have certain faculties; he must be an observing, remembering, reasoning animal; but he may become indefinitely richer, not from any improvement in his powers of observing and remembering and using, but simply from the change in his position. People's memories, it is sometimes suggested, have been weakened by the invention of printing. But, weakened or not, we have an incomparably greater knowledge of the past than was formerly possible, because we can now keep our memories upon our bookshelves, in the form of histories and encyclopædias, and know every fact that we want to know when we want it, without troubling ourselves to fill our minds with all the knowledge that may ever be possibly useful. A library is an external and materialised memory. But without illustrating so plain a point any further, I simply take note of what it implies: that is, that, as Professor Huxley has pointed out, all that distinguishes the present state of things from the state of things in the time of Elizabeth, or, perhaps, at the time of remote Egyptian dynasties, may be due, not to any change in the individual, but to what is called the social factor. The inference from the individual to the society, or from the society to the individual, is, therefore, rigidly impossible, because, given the man, the position in which he is placed and the stage of development of the society to which he belongs, are relevant facts which exercise an incalculably great influence. If this be true, what follows? We remark, in the first place, that the evolution of which we speak in regard to natural history, the process by which the present population of the globe has gradually grown out of the population of remote geological epochs, is slow. The changes which it may produce are not sensible within a generation--for, indeed, the very nature of the case implies that they must take many generations--not perhaps even within such a period as is covered by all authentic history. It is not, of course, on that account to be overlooked for scientific purposes. Monkeys must have grown into men before they could begin to accumulate capital, either material or spiritual. The faculty of accumulating must itself have been developed. Only when once it was developed, another process would begin, the process of social evolution, which, however it may resemble the other, or possibly be in some sense its continuation, proceeds, at least, at a totally different rate. The difference is comparable, one may say roughly, to the difference between the speed of an express train and the speed of a four-wheeled waggon. Beneath the surface, it may be, the slower process is still continuing; men, for anything I can say to the contrary, may be acquiring larger brains and more sensitive bodies; and it is further possible, or rather obvious, that if we can do anything to facilitate this proceeding, to behave so as to give nature a better chance of turning out better work, we ought to do so. Only nature is pretty sure to take her time about it. How far, again, one process is to be considered as a continuation of the other, or as a modification, or even as in opposition to it, is a point which I cannot now touch. What I have to say is simply this: that if we take any two periods of society, the present, for example, and that of a thousand or five thousand years ago, we shall find enormous or incalculably great differences in the social structure, in the amount of knowledge, in the character of the ethical, religious, and philosophical beliefs, and in the relations between the individuals of which the society is constructed; but between the individuals at the two periods we may find hardly any definable difference whatever. For anything we can say, we should be able, if we could move people about in time as well as in space, to exchange a thousand infants of the nineteenth century A.D., for a thousand of the nineteenth century B.C., and nobody would be able to detect the difference which would result. Hence it follows, in my opinion, that the evolutionary process with which moralists and political philosophers have practically to deal, is what I have called the social, and not the individual process. We inherit thoughts as we inherit wealth; we inherit customs and laws and forms of worship, and indeed our whole mental furniture; we can add enormously to our inheritance, and can transmit the augmented fund to our descendants. But the other process of inheritance, to which the word "heredity" is taken to apply, is not, immediately at least, cumulative. We inherit the old faculties, bodily and mental, unaltered, or with infinitesimal alterations, though we live in a different environment, and are ourselves as much altered as our environment. The modern social organism is built up, if I may say so, of cells almost identical in their properties with those of the old organism, although the mode of combination gives entirely new properties to the whole, and brings out new actions and reactions among the constituent cells themselves. I have been touching the edge of certain problems of great interest but enormous complexity, and I shall venture to indicate the difference between these views and some which have recently attracted much attention. Mr. Kidd's work upon "Social Evolution" has made the phrase popular; but, instead of using it in my sense, he speaks as though "social evolution" involved what I have called individual evolution. In order to keep within limits, I will confine myself to one case upon which he lays great stress. It will show sufficiently why I hold his mode of reasoning to be inconclusive. Mr. Kidd has achieved success by very excellent qualities, by remarkable literary ability, and by his uniformly high tone of moral feeling. I should, therefore, be very sorry to speak of him otherwise than respectfully. Mr. Kidd, however, chooses to maintain a thesis in which he has certainly no personal interest,--the thesis, namely, that a little stupidity may be a very good thing. This view is, perhaps, intelligible when we observe that he also maintains that the progress of the race depends upon its holding "ultra-rational," which I think he would find it hard to distinguish from "irrational," beliefs. In support of this view he writes a chapter to prove that "progress is not primarily intellectual". The argument of which I have spoken is part of this proof. The Greeks, he tells us, were a race intellectually superior to ourselves. They were, so Mr. Galton informs him, two degrees above modern Englishmen in the scale of intelligence, and as superior to us as we are to the negro. And yet, says Mr. Kidd, this marvellous race died out, and no trace of its blood is now to be found in the present population of the world. Let us look shortly into the logic of this argument, and consider how far it is entitled to be regarded as scientific reasoning. First of all, I should ask, what precisely is meant by "the Greeks"? The argument is founded partly on the number of great thinkers, poets, and artists, in proportion to the population. Now, it is obviously essential to a scientific statement that we should know what is the population indicated. If we compare the number of great men at Athens in its best period with the number of free Athenians, we shall get one ratio; if we admit the Athenian slaves, or add Boeotia and other Greek States to our population, we get quite a different ratio. And the difference is of immense importance. The smaller the population, the higher the excellence indicated by a given number of great men; but, also, the smaller the population, the less is the wonder that it should have died out or been swallowed up in the whirlpools of political, religious, and social convulsions. A similar remark applies in regard to the period during which this race flourished. When did they begin and when did they cease to be superior to other people? Till the statement is more precise we do not even know what are the phenomena to be explained; and the case is susceptible of any number of explanations. Did the superior race cease to be prolific; or was it prolific, but of inferior descendants; and, if so, was it because it was mixed with races of an inferior stamp; or was it because its position exposed it to the attacks of more numerous enemies; or because its energy led it to attempt impossible feats? Has it died out, or has it been swamped by other races? To answer such questions is absolutely necessary before we can say positively that the higher organisation was the cause of the decay, or that it did not cause the decay by some indirect process due to the special combination of circumstances. But to answer such questions, if they be answerable at all, would require the investigations of a lifetime, and a mastery of a whole series of studies, historical, statistical, ethnological, and so forth, in which I am an absolute ignoramus. But I cannot perceive that Mr. Kidd claims more than second-hand information. But, secondly, there is another obvious question to which an answer is necessary. Mr. Kidd and Mr. Galton deduce their view about Greek intellect, first, from the proportion of great men. Does, then, the occurrence of a group of great men at a certain period prove a superior organisation in the race? That leads to a very familiar problem: What were the causes of what we may call the flowering times of arts and sciences? We are all familiar with the phenomenon; with the sudden display of astonishing excellence at Athens, at Florence, or in the England of Elizabeth. It seems to be the rule that processes which may have been going on quietly for centuries suddenly culminate; that artistic, poetic, or philosophic excellence becomes unprecedentedly common for a generation or two, and that the impulse then dies away as rapidly. It is the kind of problem which is satisfactorily solved by the authors of university prize essays, which somehow fail to convince the world or to be republished by their writers. Are we, then, entitled to argue from the great works an organic superiority in the race? Must we suppose, for example, that Englishmen at the time of Shakespeare and Bacon and Spenser and Raleigh were an abler race than their descendants, because, when there was a very much smaller number of educated men, they produced more first-rate authors than have been produced by generations much more numerous and more generally cultivated? This seems to me at least to be a very rash hypothesis; and some of the obvious remarks made in our university essays seem to me to indicate considerations which, though not conclusive, cannot be neglected. It is clear, for example, that particular stages of intellectual progress are abnormally stimulating; that, as the last step to a pass in the mountains suddenly reveals vast prospects, while a hundred equally difficult steps before made no appreciable change, so there are mental advances which, as at the time of Bacon, seemed suddenly to disclose boundless prospects of knowledge. It is the Pisgah sight of the promised land which causes a burst of energy. Or, again, a certain social condition is obviously required; philosophers and poets may exist potentially among barbarous tribes, but they cannot get a chance to speak, and they have no opportunity of communication with other thinkers. The intellect may be impelled in various directions, some of which leave no trace of a tangible kind. The amount of intellectual power implied in building up the Roman Empire may have been as great as that implied in developing Greek art; and in America, as we are often told, intellect turns to dollar-making, instead of book-writing. So, conversely, the outburst of power may indicate, not greater faculties, but special opportunities, or special stimulus, applied to already existing faculties. Everybody who has written an æsthetic treatise has pointed to all manner of conditions which were in this sense favourable to the Greeks. How far such conditions were sufficient I cannot even guess; but at least an allowance must be made for them before we can argue from the achievements to the intrinsic power of the race which achieved. I do not see that it is even "proved" that the average Athenian was in the least superior in this sense to the average Englishman. It would require a lifetime of study to pronounce any opinion worth having. I fully confess that, so far as a vague impression is worth anything, it is the most obvious impression, after looking at the Elgin marbles, that the Greeks were possessed of a finer organisation than ourselves. Still, I cannot accept as certain the quasi-mathematical formula that the Greek is to the Englishman as the Englishman to the negro. This, however, suggests another and very difficult series of problems. Mr. Kidd is arguing against intellectual superiority. He, of course, does not argue that the general superiority of a race leads to its disappearance; but that a one-sided superiority--an improvement of one set of faculties at the expense of others--may have that result. This at once suggests a whole series of psychological problems. The intellect and the emotional nature are not two separate organs, each capable of independent development. Every mental process involves both, and neither faculty can be developed without reference to the other. Mr. Kidd accepts the conclusion that certain primitive races were as clever as ourselves, because their brains were as large. If the argument be sound, it proves equally that their emotional nature was as well developed as ours; for no one can doubt that the brain is the physical condition of feeling as well as of thought. Even the most abstract thought, as he elsewhere notices, implies certain moral qualities. Newton remarked that he was superior to other men, not because his intellect was clearer, but because he attended more persistently to his problems. The statement, I think, involves a fallacy. Newton himself, no doubt, did better the longer he kept a problem before him. He inferred, unjustifiably, that of two different men, the one who could keep up his attention longest would be the best. That does not follow. The difference may indeed be moral as well as intellectual; and it is quite true that a power of sustained attention is of the highest importance in mathematics, and that that power supposes a moral quality; but, conversely, the power of attention probably implies also the power of clear intellectual vision. A muddle-headed man would find attention useless. This is, of course, still clearer in the case where the mind is exercised upon questions of human interest. The statesman and the dramatist both depend upon their power of sympathy and the strength of their emotions, as much as upon their logical capacity. To feel for others I must imagine their position: if I imagine it, I can hardly avoid feeling for them. "Altruism" is the product, in other words, of a process both intellectual and moral. Now, remembering this, we see the difficulty of pronouncing upon the nature of the Greek organisation. Perhaps the commonest of all remarks upon Greek work is the symmetry and harmony, the "all-roundness," if I may say so, of the development implied. Poetry and philosophy, art and science seem to be so blended in their work that we cannot tell which faculty is predominant. What, then, is the inequality of development which is essential to Mr. Kidd's argument? They were wanting, he seems to answer, in "altruism". What does this mean? The astonishing power of the Greeks was certainly as conspicuous in poetry and art as in anything else; and that power surely implies development of the emotional as well as of the intellectual nature. By a defect of "altruism," I take him to mean that these emotions did not flow along the channel of general philanthropy. They were wanting then, as I should put it, rather in cosmopolitanism than in altruism. If altruism means care for something outside yourself, where could we find better examples of altruism than at Thermopylæ or Marathon? Was it not due to Greek altruism in this form (some historians would say) that Mr. Kidd is not now living under the rule of a Persian Satrap? The altruism, no doubt, meant an intense and patriotic devotion to a small State, or an interest in Greek as against barbarian, and was compatible with much brutality to individuals and acquiescence in slavery. But this does not indicate an absence of the emotions themselves, but simply their confinement within narrow limits, by the conditions under which they were placed. Slavery, for example, is abominable; but I see no reason for supposing that the slave-holders in America were worse men by innate constitution than their opponents. They were corrupted by their position. This, in any case, leads to another problem. Were the Greeks more or less altruistic than other races? If you could show that altruistic races had survived while the Greeks perished, there might be a presumption that the want of altruism was the cause of their decay. But this again does not seem to be the case. Hardly one of the ancient races, indeed, has survived unvaried. The Romans were at least as brutal as the Greeks, and, one would say, as far from "altruistic". Yet they overpowered the Greeks. How, then, can it be inferred that the Greeks perished because of defective altruism? The struggle for existence was between races equally defective to all appearance in that quality; and it must be a sophistry to signalise its absence in one as the cause of its disappearance. There is, indeed, one race to which every one would turn as the most prominent example of survival, namely, the Jews. The Jews have enormous merits and great intellectual endowments; but can anybody say that they were altruistic in the sense of being cosmopolitan? Are they not conspicuous, beyond any race, for the narrower forms of altruism, rejection of a cosmopolitan creed, even when it arose among them, and exclusive devotion to the welfare of their own people? I think that it would be perfectly easy to argue that the Greeks died out just because of their cosmopolitan and therefore dispersive tendencies, and that the Jews have held out from a judicious adherence to narrower views of self-preservation. But personally I regard all such "arguments" as really belonging to the extra-scientific regions of rhetorical illustration. This suggests one other point which requires consideration. Mr. Kidd regards it as proved that progress has been due to the Christian religion, which revealed the new moral doctrine. The Christian religion introduced, it seems, that belief in the supernatural which is essential to altruism. It seems to me to be inconsistent with his own principles, that he should attribute progress to what is essentially, on his own showing, an intellectual change: that is, to a change in belief and even to a change which, in comparison with the old polytheism, was distinctly sceptical and rationalistic. But one point is clear. The introduction of Christianity may be interpreted more consistently in a totally different way. The Greek who became a Christian was not provided with a new set of emotions, but his emotions were directed into new channels. He ceased to care for Athens, because Athens had ceased to be an independent State; he began to be cosmopolitan when he was forced to be part of a cosmopolitan empire. The important distinction was no longer the distinction between Athenian and Spartan, but between the different classes in the world-wide system. That is to say, the "altruism" which came in with Christianity was not the product of a new dogma suddenly dropped from heaven; but of the new social condition, which made it inevitable that the forces which previously stimulated a local patriotism should now exert themselves nearer a cosmopolitan organisation. This is, of course, a commonplace; but, for that reason, it should not be simply ignored. It suggests one other consequence of Mr. Kidd's theory. It is proved, he says, that the progress of the Western world is due to Christianity. His "proof," as I suppose, is that the States which have sprung out of the old Empire of the West have been Christian and have progressed. How, then, about the Empire of the East? If the great Kingdoms of the West are the unique example of progress, what is the unique example of decay? Surely, the regions where Christian dogmatic theology was defended by Athanasius and Chrysostom. If you wish to point out a region where the race has actually gone backwards, you would refer to the Turkish Empire. Why, if Christianity was the sole cause of progress in one quarter, was it comparable with complete decay in the other? Does the Eastern theory about the _filioque_ explain it? Or were the Mohammedans more "altruistic" than the Christians? Or is it that it is absurd, especially upon Mr. Kidd's own doctrine, to assign the dogmatic creed of a race as the sole cause of its character and its success in the struggle for existence? I do not lay any stress upon the argument, except in a negative sense. I do not see, that is, how Mr. Kidd can make his theory fit the facts. But I infer one other remark. It is impossible to divine the causes of the rise and fall of empires, the success or decay of a race, from any of these sweeping generalisations about ill-defined qualities. If we ask why the Greeks died out, we should have to take into account another and a totally different set of considerations: what I may call the accidents of their position. We should have to consider all the arguments by which historians have tried to explain the events; the facts of physical geography, for example, which account for the division into small separate States; the relations of the Greeks to the Eastern races on the one side, and to the Romans on the other; and, briefly, to all the material conditions, those different from the intrinsic character of the race, by which the whole course of political development and of the conflict between different peoples, is moulded and directed into particular courses. I do not say, for I cannot guess, what would be the result of such an inquiry; but I think it just as possible that it would lead us to wonder at the persistence of the Greek States for so long a period, as that it would lead us to wonder at their disappearance. Our conclusion might be, that nothing but the astonishing intellectual powers of the Greeks enabled them to play so great a part in the world's history, not that their intellectual superiority was the cause of their decay. I consider, therefore, that the alleged fact is stated so vaguely that we have no distinct problem set before us; that we don't know what is the process to be explained; that the suggested intellectual superiority is doubtful, at least in degree: that the excess of intellectual above other development, which the superiority is supposed to have created, is not proved, and, still less, that such excess was more conspicuous among the Greeks than among their rivals; that, even if it existed, it is not proved that it would have produced the effect ascribed to it; and, finally, that the other causes which undoubtedly operated, are simply overlooked. I confess, therefore, that the whole argument seems to me to illustrate the danger of rashly applying certain scientific formulæ,--themselves, perhaps, still doubtful,--to new and exceedingly complex questions. If Darwin had reasoned in this light-hearted way, no one would have been moved by his conclusions. But I must still add, what brings me back to my point, that even if the proposition were proved, it would not establish the conclusion. It may be, that races of abnormal intellectual development are at a disadvantage in the struggle for existence. That does not prove that "progress is not primarily intellectual". Buckle, who argued that progress was due to intellectual causes exclusively, always assumed that human nature was constant, or that the faculties did not change. Though I do not accept his view, any more than Mr. Kidd's, I do not see that he was inconsistent. I take the most obvious case to illustrate the point. No one can doubt that one of the most important influences in modern social evolution was the set of mechanical contrivances devised by Arkwright and Watt and their contemporaries. Without them, the enormous development of great cities, of a population of artisans, and of the bringing together of all quarters of the globe, would have been impossible. The inventions, again, were due to no moral purpose in the inventors. They wanted to make money, and represented what is called (I do not say justly) the most egoistic impulse of modern times. One condition, then, of the great social change was essentially intellectual. This does not mean that Watt was a cleverer man than Archimedes. I don't know whether he was or not; but it does mean that the mechanical sciences had improved; and, consequently, that Watt, though not possessed of intrinsically greater powers, was, in this direction, a more intellectual person. He had inherited the truths discovered by Archimedes and many generations of successors. That science should be efficient, it is not required that men should be greater geniuses than their predecessors; but simply that they should know more of the facts and laws of nature, and have, so to speak, better intellectual tools. Mr. Kidd thinks that the inability of a savage to count three does not prove him to be stupid, only to be without certain rules discovered by the higher races. Yet, he will not deny that by the help of arithmetic we can work out sums inconceivable to the savage; and that our power affects our whole social position. Does not the existence of a currency affect mankind; and if we could not count, could we make use of it? I therefore hold that in many cases the causes of progress are "primarily intellectual". The mechanical discoveries of which I have spoken have revolutionised the whole world. I agree, indeed, fully, that the causes are not exclusively intellectual. A certain social condition--the existence, to say nothing more, of peace and order over wide regions--was as necessary as the intellectual condition to the development of commerce and manufactures. This, of course, implies the growth of corresponding sentiments, including, no doubt, what Mr. Kidd means by altruism. But the change may, and, I fancy, generally does, originate in intellectual movements. The new ideas shake the world. Reason, says Mr. Kidd, is the great disintegrating and egoistic force. I should say that reasoning is essentially altruistic: my discoveries are mentally discoveries for you; I cannot keep a truth for my private consumption, as I can keep a material product. But it is true, to use eulogistic instead of dyslogistic language, that reason is the great force of movement, and breaks up the old social conditions, not only by getting rid of the ultra-rational, but by spreading the power of the rational; and therefore it inevitably brings about a state of things in which the old moral impulses have to run in new channels; a narrow patriotism, to widen into a regard for the interests of other races; and the class distinctions which repose upon no reasonable ground, to disappear in favour of a wider humanity. When we are arguing about an organism, it is surely a mistake to fix our minds upon one aspect of the problem: to deny with Buckle the moral evolution, and with Mr. Kidd to disparage the intellectual evolution. Mr. Kidd's doctrine appears to me, though, of course, not to him, to be eminently discouraging. If he worked it out logically, his argument, I think, would come to this: that the progress of mankind has resulted from the accidental, that is, inexplicable, appearance of a quality called altruism, which gave to those who possessed it an advantage in the struggle for existence. It would be far more consistent to say that the religious dogma was determined by this new element, than that it was the cause. Altruism, again, was only produced in effect on this hypothesis by the slow results of a process necessarily lasting through many generations; and our only hope must be in a slow organic change of the primary characteristics of mankind. Now, it is, of course, true that those characteristics, whatever they may be, impose definite limits upon our progress. The raw material limits the product; and the new-born baby is the raw material of society, as wool is of cloth: you cannot convert it into tissue of gold. So much is undeniable. We, it is said, have been developed out of an arboreal animal, and I have sometimes regretted that we were not developed out of a flying animal. The course of civilisation would have been very different if we had not been forced to come into contact by crawling and swimming, instead of the much freer methods of aerial travelling. However, as things were, the choice was apparently between wings and hands; and if we could not have both, perhaps hands were preferable, and may in time lead to flying machines. The speculation, it may be, borders upon the fanciful. I mention it only by way of illustrating the unevitable conditions imposed upon us by "heredity". We have to be content with walking instead of flying; and similarly we have to be content with having only the five senses of our forefathers, and the various old-fashioned apparatuses for eating, drinking, digesting, and so forth, which they unconsciously elaborated. No material change can possibly be made in this system within any period to which we can look forward. To regret these limitations is just as idle as to regret that we cannot fly, or that we cannot extend our voyages to the moon. They are part of the primary data of the problem with which we have to deal; and to regret that that problem was not differently contrived is to propose to set about reconstructing the universe. But when we go on to ask how far this limits any possibilities of achieving really desirable, because distinctly conceivable results, I say that we have ample room for hopes large enough to animate our loftiest desires. We inherit, it is true, certain faculties which scarcely alter, or do not perceptibly alter, for the better. We do not see or smell or hear better than the savage, and in some of these faculties we are surpassed by the dog. We inherit also certain intellectual powers, and, if they improve, the improvement is so slow as to be perceptible only after many generations. But then this intellect carries with it another power,--the power of inheriting thoughts, beliefs, methods of reasoning and rules of conduct. And, therefore, to the organic evolution is added the social evolution, which enables us to accumulate our vast spiritual inheritance. The inheritance is everything, or almost everything, that makes the distinctions between the civilised races of to-day and the wandering savages who roamed the fens and the forests which were supplanted by fields and towns. And this, I think, makes room enough for all reasonable aspirations, though it certainly does not open any prospect that we shall ever become gods or angels. Thus, for example, we look with sorrow, sometimes with something like despair, upon the masses of the criminal or degraded population which grovels at the base of modern society. If we were bound to say, the crime and the stupidity are the necessary expression of the shape of the skull and the organisation of the brain; if we had therefore to infer that the only possible remedy is by so modifying the struggle for existence that the inferior forms may be killed off and a better breed of humanity take the place of the present; we should certainly feel that we were confined within very narrow limits. I do not for a moment say, that such considerations may not point to important practical conclusions. I should be very glad to hear of any practical suggestions for so applying these doctrines as to increase the probability that the next generation may be stronger, healthier, and more intelligent than the present. But I also assert that the most obvious facts also show that there are enormous possibilities of progress without supposing any such organic transformation. If all that makes the difference between the England of to-day and the England of two or three centuries back is the presence of the social factor, not of the organic change, it shows in the most striking way the vast educability of mankind, even without any ultimate change of human nature. We must all, I think, have been impressed lately by one of the most singular phenomena which have ever taken place in history. We have ourselves seen the transformation of the Japanese--whom we so recently regarded as semi-barbarians--acquire almost at a bound all the arts of Western civilisation, and able not only to use with singular effect that most complex and delicate piece of machinery which forms a modern warship, but to adopt systems of military organisation and the strategy of a Moltke. That is not because the Japanese have changed any one of their physical characteristics, for they are the very same men who the other day were chiefly known to us as performing the "happy despatch". They have changed simply because they were able to assimilate European results. Now, if that be a perfectly possible result, consistently with all the so-called laws of heredity, the same laws cannot be inconsistent with changes of a similar character within ourselves. You take a thorough ruffian,--a drinking, rowdy, fighting brute, who has stamped his wife or his friend into a jelly. You say that he is an illustration of slavism, or the reproduction of an ancient type which once had its place among his ancestors. The fact may be quite true; that he is, for example, acting-still in the spirit of those ancient Vikings who have been idealised by our romantic writers; but who, when they landed in an old British village, behaved pretty much as the modern roughs or some of those noble blackguards who are described in Mr. Rudyard Kipling's novels. But if you mean that he is divided from civilised beings by an impassable gulf, and is doomed to be a scoundrel by the shape of his skull, I venture to dispute the assumption. The Viking in a generation or two became the Norman knight, capable of the highest cultivation of his time; and even the rough, according to Mr. Rudyard Kipling, is capable, under judicious discipline, of developing some very fine qualities, chiefly, it is true, in the shape of devotion to his colours. To wean him from some of his weaknesses it is probably necessary to catch him rather younger. All, however, that I desire to say, for the present, is this--as it seems to me--very undeniable fact: that the difference between a civilised man and a barbarian, between the highest types of modern life and the apparently irreclaimable brutes who are exhibited in our police-courts, is not dependent upon the mark of the beast irreclaimably fixed upon them at their birth; but to certain later influences, which may or may not be brought to bear upon them effectually. There is nothing, for example, in the doctrine of heredity inconsistent with the belief that if such influences could be properly directed, the standard, say, of sobriety and prudence among the lowest classes might be improved, as much as the standard of the same virtues has been improved in classes above them. The consequences of such a change would, I suspect, be incomparably greater than the consequences of whole systems of laws regulating the hours of labour and whole armies of official inspectors. But into this I need not go; and I have only one thing to say in conclusion. I have spoken of the enormous results of what we call progress and civilisation. That they are in one sense enormous is, I suppose, undeniable. That the power which we generally describe as the command of man over nature has been immensely increased is too palpable a fact to be denied; that there has been a corresponding change in many political and social respects is a fact which I only mention without seeking to say how far it has been in all respects a change for the better. Further, I urge that this change, whatever it is, has not been due to a change in the individual constitution, but to a change in the social factor. And, this being so, I simply suggest that, considering how vast is the total change thus effected, we may reasonably hope, or, at the very least, we may reasonably endeavour to justify the hope, that a change of great magnitude may be brought about in those directions where we all have to regret the survival or even the development of so much that is melancholy: of regeneration going on alongside of amelioration. I think that the doctrine of heredity is sometimes interpreted in such a way as to suggest the hopelessness or at least the extreme difficulty of introducing any sensible improvement within any limited time; and what I have tried to urge is that, if properly understood, it does not in the least degree tend to justify such forebodings, or to imply that we are to abandon ourselves to a demoralising fatalism. PUNISHMENT. I invite you to consider a rather dry problem. I ventured to select this topic because it has lately been my duty to occupy myself with certain legal writings, which, perhaps, took me a little beyond my depth. They touched, however, problems which are common to the lawyer and to the moralist. Although not a lawyer, I am interested in some moral problems which have also a legal aspect: What I propose to do this evening is, to consider certain questions which lie in the region common to both provinces of inquiry, and especially this question: What is the true ethical theory of punishments inflicted by the criminal law? How, and in what sense, are they to be regarded as just? There is, obviously, a relation between the two codes--moral and legal. Murder is both a sin and a crime: a breach of the moral law, and of the laws of every civilised country. Yet, there is one broad and deep distinction between the two systems of law. The moral law is essentially concerned with a man's motives. To say that a man's conduct is wicked, is necessarily also to say that it is the action of a bad man, or due to evil passions. Murder is wicked, as it is the manifestation of the murderer's hatred of his neighbour. The criminal law, on the other hand, has to deal, in the first instance, with the external facts. It contemplates, primarily, what a man does, not what he is. It does not attempt to punish every man who hates his neighbour, but every man who has, in fact, killed, whether the action springs from hatred or some other motive. Every one who deliberately kills, unless the act falls under certain definite exceptions, is guilty of murder. This, of course, does not imply that the moral aspect is of no account. The exceptions are so arranged that the legal classification corresponds roughly to the moral classification. Under certain exceptions, killing is regarded as justifiable homicide, and under others, it is only manslaughter, and, therefore, receives none, or a slighter penalty. The coincidence between the codes may thus be very close. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the action condemned by the criminal law will be condemned by the moralist. The man who is legally guilty of murder is also, almost invariably, guilty of a great moral offence. Although, again, the moral law applies to large classes of conduct, which are not within the cognisance of the criminal law, it is, at least, plainly desirable that the criminal law should condemn nothing which is not also morally wrong. The sway of the moral law is universal; it applies to all conduct, and, of course, to the conduct of legislators and judges: they and the law which they define and apply should be consistent with the general law of right and wrong. They and all of us are bound not to make virtue more difficult nor vice easier. But, further, the questions as to the relations between the two codes arise in various directions. It is obvious that the criminal law has to employ very rough and ready methods. It cannot estimate, with any accuracy, the degree of immorality implied by any given action. It cannot, and it does not attempt to, look closely into the secrets of a man's heart. It cannot inquire, as a rule, how far a man's crime is the result of bad education or bad surroundings; how far it implies thorough corruption or only superficial faults of temper, or a misunderstanding of some fact or doctrine. It cannot take into account a number of metaphysical or psychological considerations which are connected with the theory of moral responsibility. To settle such points you would have to empanel a jury of philosophers, and the only thing of which you could be certain would be, that such a jury would never agree upon a verdict. Again, there are whole classes of virtues and vices with which the criminal law is not concerned. Ingratitude, to take the common example, is a grave vice, but one which it would be absurd to punish legally. Not only would such an attempt involve impossible inquiries, but the attempt would be self-defeating. If the duty of gratitude to a benefactor were turned into a legal obligation, gratitude proper would cease to exist. To confer a benefit would be the same thing as to acquire a right to repayment. A man who allows his best friend to starve, or to go to the workhouse, may be, morally, far worse than a thief; but you could not punish him legally, without adopting a principle which, even if practicable, would, so far as it operated, be destructive of all disinterested friendship. The law, again, can deal only with criminals who are found out. What proportion they may bear to the whole class of moral offenders is not discoverable; but it is, at least, safe to say that, for every man whom you convict of a crime, you must leave unpunished, because undetected, another sinner who is equally deserving of punishment. And, finally, it is apparently impossible to say, upon any intelligible grounds, what should be the proportion between crime and punishment. How many years' imprisonment does a man deserve for putting out his neighbour's eye? I do not see how such a rule of three can be stated. The good old theory of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, seems to suggest a possible criterion. But it was difficult to carry out. Deloraine, in the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, has, as he points out, killed Musgrove's brother; but, on the other hand, Musgrove has killed Deloraine's nephew, and, besides, got a thousand marks ransom out of Deloraine himself. Is the account to be regarded as accurately balanced? Is one brother just equal to a nephew plus a thousand marks? The theory, of course, is an application of an inappropriate analogy. If we regard crime simply as a case of private injury, we may say that it is fair that the wrong-doer should restore the thing that he has taken, and so put matters where they were before. But this is obviously to take a view which is quite inapplicable in most cases, and in all cases becomes inadequate when we take the moral view, and regard crime as an offence against society--not simply as a wrong to another individual. For such reasons, it is apparently impossible to say that a legal punishment can be just, in the full sense in which the moralist would use the words. No doubt we may say,--and we wish that we could always say,--that a man "deserves" what he has got; and that implies that we recognise as desirable some satisfaction to our sense of justice. And, of course, too, we demand that justice should be done in another sense of the word; that the case, for example, should be impartially investigated; that a man should not be punished severely because he is poor, or because he is unpopular, or let off easily because he is a private friend of the judge. Such demands mean that justice should not be perverted by applying irrelevant considerations; but they leave our previous questions untouched. The criminal law, from its nature, cannot impose equal penalties upon all men who are equally wicked; but only upon those who have made themselves liable: and that always involves elements of accident; it cannot take into account at all some of the elements upon which the depth of moral depravity essentially depends; and it is, at least, very difficult to say what specific meaning can be given to the proportion between crime and the suffering imposed upon the criminal. If, then, the legislative action must, of necessity, be very imperfect from the moral point of view, we may try what will be the effect of dismissing the moral question altogether, or, at least, reducing it to a secondary place. We may, that is, consider crime not in so far as immoral, but in so far as mischievous. Here we have the doctrine worked out very consistently by Bentham and his followers. Pain, they said, is an evil, the only evil; pleasure, a good, and the only good. To inflict needless pain--pain which does not cause a balance of pleasure--upon any one, be he a good man or be he a bad man, is, so far, wrong. For the same reason, it is justifiable, and, indeed, right, to inflict pain, so far as it prevents some greater evil. Hence, you should punish criminals just so far as the pain which you inflict is less than the pain which you prevent. It is wrong to give a single useless pang even to the worst of men. If (according to a sentiment attributed to Bentham) a fine of five shillings would prevent a man from committing murder, it would be wrong to fine him seven shillings and sixpence. This gives a justification of punishment, in so far as deterrent. It is obviously connected with another doctrine. A man is the best judge of his own pleasures and pains. Therefore, in so far as a man's actions affect himself alone, they are not to be forbidden by the law. We may think them bad or degrading; but so long as they do not affect others, the fact that a man chooses them is a proof that they give him pleasure; and we shall, therefore, only diminish the sum of happiness by interfering. Now, it is plain that this distinction does not draw the line between what is morally bad or good. Every habit which affects a man's own character, affects, also, his capacity to fulfil his duties to others. But this theory overlooks immorality, except so far as it happens to involve certain extraneous consequences. We are, upon this showing, to punish a criminal precisely in the same spirit as we are to abate a nuisance. The thief is to be suppressed, as we are to extirpate a mischievous weed, and to be suppressed by just as much severity as is required for the purpose. The drunkard, so long as he confines himself to making a beast of himself in his own room, does his neighbours no direct injury, and must be left to enjoy the pleasure which is shown, because he chooses it, to be a pleasure to him. Of this theory, it may, I think, be said that, however imperfect, it is tolerably consistent, and, moreover, that it undoubtedly does express one legitimate end of punishment. There can be no doubt, that is, that the punishment of murderers may be rightly defended, among other grounds, at any rate, on the ground that it discourages the practice; though we may not fully agree with the famous saying of the judge, "You are not hanged for stealing sheep, but hanged in order that sheep may not be stolen". And, further, though there are various difficulties about the distinction between "self-regarding" and "extra-regarding" conduct, we must also, I think, allow, in general terms, that the fact that a man's conduct has a direct and assignable influence upon his neighbour's happiness, must always be one reason, and, frequently, the only sufficient reason, for suppressing it by legal penalties. This doctrine of simple deterrence, however, seems, to most critics, to be insufficient. It omits the moral element too completely. When a man is punished for some revolting offence, we are not simply providing him and his like with reasons for abstaining in future. We are, as a fact, exposing him to infamy, sometimes more painful to bear than the immediate penalty, and are thus, in fact, invoking the sanction of the moral sentiment. Therefore, it is urged, we must still, whether we like it or not, be moralists. The purely utilitarian argument has omitted one element of the calculation. The punishment not only deters offenders, but gratifies the feeling of resentment to moral indignation, which has been approved by many moralists. Hence, it is urged, besides the deterrent theory, we must make room for the vindictive theory. It is legitimate and right to hate crime, and, therefore, to hate criminals; and legal punishments are defensible, not merely as adding to the motives for refraining from crime, but as gratifying the desire for revenge, which, in early ages, was assumed in the rude modes of putting down violence, and which, even now, should be not eradicated but confined within legal channels and directed towards the desirable ends. Postponing, for the present, a consideration of this proposed emendation, let us consider, a little more closely, the objection made to the theory of deterrence. In what way does it come into direct conflict with a moral theory of punishment? It looks upon immorality as mischievous, or as diminishing happiness; and upon the utilitarian view immorality means the diminution of happiness. Now, without discussing ultimate moral questions, I may assume that, for practical purposes, this seems to be a sufficiently tenable position. After all, we admit, to whatever school we belong, that crime is mischievous, and, whatever deeper meaning may be assigned to it, may be considered in that light by the legislator. He cannot--certainly he ought not to--forbid actions which do no harm to anybody, or which nobody, at the time and place, feels to be injurious to happiness. Even, therefore, if utilitarianism be unsatisfactory as an ultimate theory, it may represent adequately the point of view of the practical legislator. He tries to suppress violence and fraud because, as a fact, they cause what their victims unanimously agree to be painful consequences; and he need not look any further for a reason. People, it is said, have very different standards of pleasure. Still, we all dislike having our throats cut or our pockets picked; and that fact supplies a sufficient ground upon which to base the whole criminal law. When we go a little further, a point of divergence may be noticed, a short consideration of which may help to clear the case. Let us assume the legitimate end of all punishment to be deterrence. It will follow, that we must annex as a consequence to crimes an adequate counterpoise, and a counterpoise not more than adequate to the criminal's motives. The fine to be paid must be just sufficient to prevent the transgression. Now, it has been urged, this necessarily implies a conflict with morality. The degree of moral guilt implied in a given crime varies inversely as the temptation. The greater the inducement to the offence, the less the wickedness shown in committing the offence. A man may have enough virtue to refrain from a gratuitous injustice, although he has not virtue enough to resist a large bribe, or the threats of a man in power. But, if the legislator is to provide simply a counterpoise, he will have to follow the opposite rule. The greater the temptation, the greater must be the force of the motive which must be added to counterbalance the temptation. If there be a crime by which a man might make a million of money, you must, if you would prevent it, hold out the prospect of such pains as would, in his estimation, be cheaply avoided at the sacrifice of a million; or, making allowance for the uncertainty of detection, by the sacrifice of more than a million. But if, by the same crime, he only got a five-pound note, the prospect of paying a hundred pounds in case of detection might be a sufficient preservative of his honesty. Yet, the man who is tempted by the million gives less proof of dishonesty than the man who commits the same crime for a paltry five pounds. Therefore the punishment must be increased, as the wickedness is less. I must first set aside one ambiguity which perplexes this argument. When we speak of a temptation as varying, we may mean one of two very different things. To say that I am more "tempted" than you to commit a given crime, may mean that the gain expected by me is itself greater; or, it may mean that I am more predisposed to the crime. I may be more tempted, let us say, to poison my uncle than you are to poison yours. That may mean that my uncle is a rich old sinner and I am his heir, whereas your uncle is a poor saint and you will get nothing by his death. Or it may mean that I am more tempted because, our uncles being alike, I am spiteful, and you affectionate, by nature. In the first case, to say that I am under the stronger temptation would, perhaps, tend to alleviate the gravity of my crime; in the second, it would simply be another way of saying that I was the greater brute. In both cases, of course, it is true that the greater temptation would require the greater counterpoise. In one case, this only means that the worse the man, the stronger the restraints which he requires; and, if you could make different laws for bad men and good, it would follow that the bad would require the heaviest penalties. But this does not conflict with the moral view. It is no excuse for a murderer to say, "I am so bloodthirsty that I really could not help murdering". No contradiction to morality arises from punishing his crime more severely. In the other case alone,--the case in which we made distinctions founded upon the difference of surrounding circumstances,--it is true that we should, from the point of view of simple deterrence, require heavier penalties where the temptations were greater, and, therefore, the intrinsic malevolence proved to exist less. For most purposes, this argument seems to have very little practical application. The law is made for people in general; we cannot have one law for bad men and another for good; partly because good and bad people do not carry about tangible marks of their quality written upon their faces. No doubt, indeed, the atrocity of a crime is recognised, if not by the general law, by the nature of the sentence. An assault may show unnatural ferocity or merely a rather excessive warmth of temper; and, though the offence may be forbidden under the same clause of the criminal law, the judge may be empowered to give sentences of varying severity, varying more or less according to the moral depravity implied. So far, the worst offences (in a moral sense) get the heaviest punishment; and the deterring influence is rightly exerted by proportioning the penalty to the temptation, that is, to the predisposition to crime. The other case, again, requires some qualification. It is not true, as an absolute proposition, that the criminality is always, or generally, diminished, in proportion to the greatness of the temptation; for we must remember that both the temptation and the crime will generally be greater in proportion to the amount of mischief inflicted. It is more tempting, no doubt, to appropriate a thousand pounds than a shilling; but we cannot infer that the man who takes the larger sum is, therefore, less wicked; that he has a conscience which would have kept him honest under the smaller temptation, and has only yielded to the greater. Compare, for example, the case of the petty pilferer who appropriates my watch, with the case of the man of business who appropriates securities worth many thousand pounds and ruins widows and orphans by the dozen. We should all agree, I imagine, that the perpetrator of the more gigantic fraud would require the stronger deterring motive to be kept straight. He is playing for heavy stakes, and we cannot hold out too strong a threat of infamy and suffering, if our aim is simply to prevent the crime. But neither, if we consider him from the purely moral point of view, would it be fair to argue that he was a better man than the pickpocket, because the plunder which tempted him was greater. The opposite, I fancy, would be true. He shows a callousness to human suffering, and an amount of deliberate hypocrisy and treachery which proves him to be not only the more dangerous, but the more thoroughly corrupt of the two. The two ends of providing a sufficient counterpoise and of punishing the worst men most severely, would, therefore, coincide in this case also; and the argument that the greater temptation implies less wickedness is plainly inapplicable. Without going further into this, which may briefly indicate some of the perplexities involved, I may mention certain cases in which there seems to be a real divergence of the two principles. There are cases in which the temptation may be fairly held to lessen guilt, and in which punishment has, notwithstanding, been made severer in consequence. The criminal law of the last century, for example, imposed a penalty of death upon persons who stole certain kinds of property left in specially exposed positions. The ease of taking it would very possibly tempt to theft men who would elsewhere be honest; and it was sought to compensate for the strength of the temptation by more savage punishment of those who yielded to it. Or, again, there are certain problems of a similar kind connected with political offences. A man who gets up a rebellion from sincere political motives is generally far better morally than the man who gets up a rebellion for the sake, say, of simple plunder. Ought the motive to be allowed as an extenuation of the offence? It ought, it may be said, from a moral point of view; but, from the point of view of simple deterrence, we might rather consider that the patriotic rebel is the more dangerous person of the two, and, therefore, requires the prospect of at least as heavy a punishment to keep him quiet. So, again, it has been asked, whether it should be admitted as an excuse for a rioter, that he has joined in violent courses under threats from the riotous mob. This is, of course, an excuse from the moralist's point of view; the man is only attacking the police in order to save his own house from being burnt, not from a disorderly or disaffected spirit. But it is replied, from the deterring point of view, that, if such an excuse be allowed, you are ceasing to threaten at the precise moment when the threats are most required. If the law is not to press from one side, all the pressure will come from the other, and every argument will be in favour of joining the side of disorder. Hence, it is argued, we ought to proportion the punishment, not to the offence, but to the temptation. Now, I may say, very briefly, that such a divergence of the two principles appears to me to be possible; and, further, that cases may be put in which it might be necessary to deter, at all hazards, even to the neglect of moral considerations. A general who is defending a town must sometimes burn the houses of innocent people, without stopping to consider whether they can ever be compensated; and I think that there may be analogous cases even in regard to law, where the consideration of the absolute necessity of putting down mischievous conduct may override the normal moral considerations. But the general answer is, I think, different, and may help to clear the principle. The law to which I have referred, for the protection of exposed property, obviously suggests one remark. The true remedy for the evil would have been not to increase the penalty, but to increase the protection. You ought to have provided more watchmen, or to have forbidden owners to put temptation in the way of their neighbours, and not to have tried to make the hangman do the work of the policeman. So our ancestors erred when they protected their fields, not by putting up fences, but by setting mantraps to mutilate occasional trespassers. In that, as in other cases, the mistake is to confuse between the deterring influence of punishment and the preventive influence of protective measures. Arguments, questionable when used on behalf of punishment considered as deterring, are perfectly applicable to the preventive measures. It is obviously right that such measures should be proportioned to the temptation. When a starving man steals a loaf, he is not so bad as a man who steals when he is not starving. We should, therefore, think it morally wrong to punish him as severely. But, if we thought that he ought not to have the loaf, we should take stronger precautions in proportion to the probable temptation. If, for example, we were sending supplies to relieve a starving district, it would be clearly right to send such a force with them as might prevent their appropriation by the strongest, or the first comers. But, at the same time, we should also think it right to save the men from temptation, by providing as much as possible against the danger of starvation. So, again, it would be monstrous to punish a poor man more severely than a duke, for stealing a watch; but, as a matter of prudence, I should take more precautions if I were dining in a poor public-house, than if I were dining in a ducal palace. This suggests the true application of another doctrine, about the responsibility of society. Society, it is sometimes said, has no right to punish, because it ought to have suppressed the causes of crime. This doctrine is often stated very illogically, and would sanction a great deal of false sentimentalism. If society includes many corrupt and dangerous elements, that is no reason at all for not suppressing them by all available means. But, no doubt, it is a very good and sufficient reason for trying, as far as possible, to remove the cause as well as the effects; for getting rid of the temptations to crime, and training people so as to make them less disposed to crime, instead of simply punishing more severely those who have yielded to temptation and given play to instincts which have not been properly disciplined. This applies conspicuously to the case of the political criminal. It is generally essential to the welfare of a nation, that order should be preserved by a settled government. It is the duty of every government, not only to crush resistance, but to take such precautions as will make resistance hopeless. But a correlative duty is suggested when a rebellion actually occurs, and especially a rebellion which excites the sympathy of otherwise moral people. Such a case, that is, affords the strongest presumption that there are real grievances to be redressed, and that the rebel should not be confounded with the vulgar criminal. It may be, and often is, quite necessary to shoot him down, so long as he is actively attacking authority; but, when he is disarmed, he cannot be regarded simply as a thief or murderer, but as a man who has given a useful, though a disagreeable, hint that the times are out of joint. I have gone so far into these questions--which might lead to a great many other problems of legal casuistry--with the desire of bringing out one essential part of the question. The difficulties which have arisen point, I think, to the impossibility of treating the problem exclusively, from a simple consideration of the deterring influence of punishment. That, however, remains an essential element. If the sole reason for punishing a sheep-stealer be not the prevention of sheep-stealing, that is, at least, a very excellent reason as far as it goes. But it seems to me an insufficient reason from the moral point of view, and, in particular, to fail in assigning a sufficiently distinct ground for determining the desirable degree of punishment. The principle was advocated as limiting the severity of the old laws; but it is not quite easy to define the limit suggested. There is a necessary clumsiness about the method. A punishment only becomes operative in the cases in which the threat has failed to deter. The fact that a man has committed a crime demonstrates the inadequacy of the system in his case; we have not given him a sufficient motive for abstaining. When Bentham says, that if a fine of five shillings would prevent a murder, you ought not to fine the murderer seven and sixpence, he says what is, in a sense, obviously true. If I could prevent a murder, or, indeed, achieve any other desirable object, for a given sum, why should I throw away another penny? But the fine is not inflicted till somebody has committed a murder, and, in that case, the threat of fining has obviously failed. The question arises, therefore, how far am I to go? Am I to go on raising the tariff till murder becomes altogether obsolete? But we have already got as far as capital punishment, without achieving that result. And, if we consider the case upon this method, we begin to find a difficulty in the method of calculation. We are to compare the pain inflicted upon the criminal with the pain saved to the victim. But the greater the pain inflicted, the smaller, according to the assumption made, will be the number of criminals, and the greater the number of victims saved. If we could adopt the Draconic system, and be sure of punishing every crime with death, crime ought to disappear; for hardly anybody would break the law if he were quite certain of the gallows. But, in that case, the pain, both of the criminal and the victim, would disappear, for there would be no one in either class. The result, therefore, would be a pure gain: no crime and no punishment. Against this practical conclusion, indeed, Bentham was one of the first to protest; and he uses one very sound argument. Punish all crime equally, he says, and you put a premium on the worst crimes. If both robber and murderer are to be hanged, the robber will have a good reason for destroying evidence, by adding the murder to the plunder of his victims. But, though the argument is very much to the purpose, it seems to make our calculations rather difficult. We cannot look simply to the deterring influence of a given punishment, but have to consider its place in the general tariff, and its influence in inducing people to prefer one variety of crime to another. And if we try to find our way out of this difficulty, we shall have, I think, to find that the mode of reasoning requires some modification. The theory on which the calculation goes may, perhaps, be represented thus: It is supposed that by hanging a murderer, you prevent, say, ten murders which would otherwise happen. The suffering saved to the ten victims is greater than the actual suffering of the single criminal. Therefore, the infliction of the penalty gives a balance on the side of happiness. The argument seems to me to be sound as far as it goes, and, in some cases, it would, I think, be sufficient. If, for example, it were proved that the use of a certain remedy, such as inoculation, caused a certain number of deaths, while, on the other hand, it prevented ten times as many, we should consider that a good case had been made out for its adoption. And, similarly, if we attended simply to the number of executions and to the number of crimes, and could make the necessary arithmetical comparison, we should be able to estimate the balance of good or evil in terms of pain and pleasure. But this mode of considering the case is obviously inadequate; and, indeed, Bentham (though I cannot now go into his teaching) feels and makes allowance for its inadequacy. For, to say nothing else, the mere deterrence of a certain number of crimes is an entirely insufficient measure of the effect of the law. The one obvious remark is that, by suppressing violence, you not only save a certain number of lives, but you secure an essential condition of all civilised life. I came here to-night without a revolver in my pocket; and I am not aware that I showed any particular courage by doing so. But it would have been foolhardy to have shown the same negligence, a few years ago, in some of the Western States of America. If I had lived in such conditions, I should not only have taken a revolver, but have, very possibly, thought it a duty to join a vigilance committee, with a view to the suppression of crimes of violence. There are still regions where the fact that a man lives in a neighbouring village is a sufficient justification for shooting him down as soon as he comes in sight, for the simple reason that, otherwise, he would shoot you. So, when private war was still part of the regular custom, there was an obstacle which had to be crushed before any progress could be made in industrial development, which presupposes peaceful intercourse and mutual confidence. The formation of all that is meant by social order, the bringing about of a state of things in which men can meet habitually without fear or precaution, counting with complete confidence upon the absence of any hostile intention, is, obviously, an essential condition of everything that makes life worth living in a civilised country. The fact is too obvious to require much illustration; but it requires notice, for it is very imperfectly recognised when you regard murder, for example, simply as a kind of sporadic disease, which breaks out here and there, and can be kept within limits by killing some murderers, and so frightening other would-be murderers. The criminal law, no doubt, includes that consideration; but it includes infinitely more. It is a necessary corollary of that state of social relations which alone gives a secure base for every conceivable kind of satisfactory social relation. It might, perhaps, serve as a sufficient defence of the old system, when, in the absence of any settled order, the system of private vengeance, of blood-feuds, and so forth, served to restrain the prevalence of actual violence. But it is a totally insufficient measure of the real advantage gained by enforcing order. We have to compare, not only the number of murders and the number of victims which would exist in a given social order, supposing the penalty to be inflicted or not inflicted; but to compare two radically different social states, and to ask, whether it is better to live in a society where peace is the almost invariable rule, and violence the rare exception, or in one in which there is a chaos of little societies, each of them being in constant fear of all its neighbours. The construction of a central authority which will keep the peace is a necessary part of the process of civilisation, and the criminal law is involved in the process. For, of course, it follows that, so long as anti-social elements exist within the borders of society, and some people resort to the old methods of the knife or the bludgeon, they must be put down; and the hangman and the jailer, clumsy as the action may be, represent the only kind of machinery which has hitherto been invented for the purpose. It follows that we must understand "deterrence" in a wider sense than we have hitherto given to it. When we speak of punishment as deterring from crime, we must consider, not merely the effect upon the individual of the prospect of punishment following detection, but the total effect of a systematic adherence to the law upon the preservation of a peaceful state of society at large. We do not simply wish to provide a sufficient motive to decide the individual who is asking himself, shall I steal or not steal? but to maintain an organisation under which property shall be normally respected, and stealing become as exceptional as we can make it. This, in turn, involves much more than a simple execution of the criminal law; it involves the support of agencies for prevention, education, and reformation; though it does, also, involve an inflexible adherence to the criminal law. The law has to use rough means, and cannot possibly affect to adhere precisely to the moral deserts of individual cases. But it is justified by the simple ground that the only alternative is a chaos of barbarism. If you ask, therefore, in what sense is a criminal law just? we must confess that, in certain respects, it is impossible that it should be strictly just; it must deal with the found-out exclusively and with those who are found out in certain definite cases of criminality, and it must, therefore, impose penalties which do not precisely correspond to the degree of criminality implied. But the relation to morality is, nevertheless, intimate. For the growth of the social order depends upon the growth of the corresponding social instincts; or rather, the two processes are correlative. If I love my neighbour I shall not wish to cut his throat; and, in order that I may love him, I must be pretty sure that he does not mean to cut mine. The external framework provides a protection under which the primary moral instincts can expand; and the expansion of the instincts supposes a correlative modification of the external framework. The moral requirement in regard to the criminal law is, therefore, essentially, that it should be such a law as is favourable, when considered in connection with the whole order, to the strength and development of the existing morality. If the criminal asks, How do you justify yourself for punishing me? the reply must be, Because the inflexible administration of the law is an essential precondition of the whole system, under which alone progress is possible. A society in which peace and order are preserved is superior, in morals as in other respects, to a society in which peace and order are made impossible by violence; and the suppression by punishment of offenders is involved in the system. The advantage of belonging to such a society is not to be measured by counting up the working of individual cases; but by the whole characteristics of the social state, taken as a whole, and including, as one essential part, the administration of criminal law in such a way as to be in conformity with the conditions of healthy social development. The difficulty, I think, though I can only indicate the argument briefly, results from a common illusion, which is illustrated by the once famous social contract theory. You suppose a number of independent individuals, agreeing to join and expecting to receive a precise equivalent for every sacrifice that they make in consequence. The reply is, that the individual is the product of the society, and it is a mere fiction to consider him as possessing any antecedent rights whatever. His rights are to be deduced from, not to supply the premisses for deducing, the social order. The only considerations which are relevant are those which affect the welfare of the social organism, taken as a whole; and we must regard them as determined, before we come to the distribution of benefits and burdens among its constituent facts. Otherwise, we should be falling into the same fallacy as if we argued about the health of separate bodily organs, legs, and arms, and stomachs, as though they were independent things, fastened together to make a single machine. Since the leg implies the stomach, any consideration of the leg's separate rights would be absurd. So the individual member of a political society cannot be regarded as though he had existed outside society somewhere, and was entitled to a precise equivalent for the sacrifice of his independence. The doctrine involves impossible considerations. I have to contribute to certain sanitary regulations, though I may be stronger or weaker than my neighbours, and therefore less or more in need of them. Or, I have to pay a school-rate, whether I have a dozen children or none at all. Do those facts give me a right to complain if I am taxed equally with my neighbours? If so, every benefit which I receive from society must be set down as a separate item in an account to be balanced by itself. Obviously, the advantage which I receive in such cases is the whole advantage received from living in a healthy place or among educated people; and it is essentially impossible to cut that up into a number of different bits of happiness conferred in return for separate payments on account. If I use the contract formula, I must interpret it to mean that amenability to various regulations, including the criminal law, is part of the whole bargain, which would have been made, if it had ever been real, when I decided, if I ever had decided, to join the society. The instinct for punishing criminals guilty of violence is one of the fundamental instincts of civilisation, and we must accept it just as we accept any other fundamental instinct. The question of justice, however, is not a whit the less essential because it presupposes this social characteristic instead of supplying the primary axioms from which it is to be deduced. It is undoubtedly of the highest importance that every difference in our method of treating different classes should have its sufficient reason, to be assigned as clearly as possible. The preservation of the peace is essential; but that does not settle the methods by which it is to be preserved. On what ground, then, are we to deal with the problem of justice as regards different classes of crime? If the calculation of pain and pleasure, as already stated, seems to be unsatisfactory, what is the right principle of proportioning punishment to offence? I have noticed one argument which Bentham applied, and, as I think, with very good reason. To punish crimes equally, he said, is virtually to put a premium upon the worst. The "in for a penny in for a pound" maxim becomes at once applicable. Moreover, as every one now admits, the old brutal system is condemned by experience. To punish a great number of offences with death led to a mixture of excessive brutality with excessive uncertainty. The cruel punishment of some criminals was balanced by the complete escape of others. But this practical failure clearly resulted, in great measure, from an obscure sense of justice. It was grossly unjust, it seemed, to hang a man for stealing a loaf, when you could only hang another for the brutal murder of his wife. The penalty in the first case, was, it was felt, altogether out of proportion to the offence. This instinctive sentiment was, as I think we all feel, substantially right. In any case, it would have to be taken into account by the legislator, for the obvious reason that punishments which outrun public opinion, tend to make martyrs of criminals. They are either not inflicted, or they set the sympathy of the people on the side of the offender. But to say this, is not to prove the sentiment to be just, only to take account of its existence. And the question, therefore, remains, how it is to be logically justified, for it may seem to imply the theory to which I have objected--the hypothesis of a sort of debtor and creditor account--of the old "eye for an eye" doctrine, which, as I have argued, involves a misconception of the true doctrine. My reply would be, in general terms, that the doctrine requires restatement, and, if properly stated, will not lose but acquire new forces. Let us consider the consequences of my previous statements. The essential condition of social development is enforcement, where necessary, of peace and order by adequate means. The criminal law corresponds to one part of this process. The whole social system includes machinery for prevention, for reformation and for education, as well as for punishment; and it is only when taken in its relation to other parts of the system, that we can give the full justification. Its methods are, as I have said, obviously full of imperfections, from the purely moral point of view. If we consider it as an isolated fact, comparably to the interference of a quasi-supernatural power, which clutches an offender here and there, and punishes him simply to frighten others, the arbitrary and unequal nature of the proceeding assumes an air of injustice. In fact, if you take the extreme individualist view, according to which each man is an independent unit, while society represents a force impinging upon him from without, it always becomes difficult to introduce the conception of justice without ending in the approval of anarchy. When, however, we consider the social organisation as including all the means of civilising society, of strengthening the general spirit of order, as well as acting upon the fears of the disorderly, we have to take wider considerations into account. We become sensible, in the first place, of the importance of the principle that punishment should never be substituted for prevention. Wherever it is possible to remove temptations, or take precautions which make crime impossible, we can have no excuse for adopting the blundering and unsatisfactory system of punishing those who have committed it. We admit, that is, that the criminal law, though absolutely necessary, is an essentially clumsy contrivance, to be used only when other methods fail. When certain punishments have been condemned as brutalising, it has been replied that the persons punished were already so brutal that it is impossible to make them worse. But the brutalising influence is even more objectionable as it applies to the legislator than as it applies to the criminal. To make up for neglect of appropriate precautions by severity against the offender, is to adopt the necessarily arbitrary method in which chance must always play a part in place of more effective and civilising methods. Frugality in applying punishment is desirable as a guarantee that we are acting in the proper spirit. An Indian official was asked why the native police were disposed to use torture for the detection of crime. The cause was, he said, mainly from laziness: it was so much easier to sit in the shade, rubbing red pepper in a poor devil's eyes, than to go about in a hot sun collecting evidence. So, it would be very much easier to inflict cruel punishment than to try to remove the causes of crime; and a resolution never to use the more brutal methods is not, as I think, to be regarded as a proof of weak sentimentalism, but as a judicious self-denying ordinance, imposed upon society by itself, as binding it always to adopt, as far as it possibly can, what is at once the more humane and the more scientific method. The same principle involves the careful graduation of punishment. There are, indeed, as I believe, though I cannot give reasons, cases in which crimes ought to be punished with death. There are persons of whom we may say that it would have been better, especially for their neighbours, if they had never been born. "I am worth inconceivably more for hanging than for any other purpose," said the heroic John Brown; and the words may be applied, in a very different sense, to some of the wretches who occasionally make their appearance in the courts. To hang such a man is to act upon the assumption that murderers represent elements which are entirely and radically anti-social. The only remedy for them is extirpation. But, if this be admitted, it suggests a sufficient reason for not applying it to the cases of less gravity, in which such radical incompatibility has not been demonstrated. Punishment by death, even if necessary, is certainly a confession of impotence. We are admitting that we can do nothing better with the man than convert him into a scarecrow for the benefit of his like. What more, it may be asked, can we do with a criminal? The obvious reply would be, reform him. Although no one can doubt that reformation would be an extremely good thing, wherever practicable, it may be urged that the enterprise is exceedingly difficult; that, in many cases, it is hopeless; and that we might spend our money and our efforts to better purpose upon more hopeful materials. And yet, I think that the answer is the true one, if properly understood, and will suggest the right meaning to be given to the word "deterrence". So long as we consider the individual case alone, and merely mean that we are giving motives to bad men for refraining from particular lines of conduct, the results, however desirable, are of limited value. But if we consider deterrence as including or coinciding with reformation, as indicating a part of the general system of moral pressure by which the classes exposed to temptation may be gradually raised in the scale of civilisation, we recognise an acceptable meaning. In fact, if we ask what is the deterring influence of punishment, we must observe that at one extreme it will always fail, or only induce a bad man to take precautions against detection; and that, at the other end of the scale, there are a great many cases in which it does not come into active operation at all. You and I, I hope, are not in the least disposed to assault each other, even though no policeman is present. The bare thought of resorting to violence, pelting me, say, with rotten eggs, has not even suggested itself to you, even though I may be making a very provoking use of my tongue. But there is also an intermediate class of people upon whom the possibility of having to appear in a police court, and the strong sense of shame attached to such appearances, is an active restraining force, tending to limit, and, in cases where the proper conditions exist, gradually to narrow, the sphere of violence. We, the peaceable and law-abiding citizens, have gained a right to those epithets, because we have lived in a sphere where the law has been habitually enforced. We have ceased to carry deadly weapons about us, and have established a general condition of good order. The deterring influence of the criminal law acts, or ought to act, by gradually spreading that state of mind through a steadily widening circle. The classes which are still in need of such a support to their moral instincts are clearly capable of reformation, whatever may be the case of some of the individuals who break the law. A fighting tribe, which has been in the habit of resenting every injury by the use of the knife, may learn, in a very short time, that a court of law settles disputes more agreeably than a free fight; and may become a most admirable and efficient part of the society to which it belongs. And the same may be said of large classes in our own society, which are perfectly capable of being converted into good citizens, though they may retain certain propensities developed under a rougher and more brutal system. To employ excessive and brutalising punishments in order to suppress small offences, is, therefore, to abandon the aim of civilising, to declare internecine war against the class, and to regard them simply as a nuisance to be abated. The effect might be, if the law could be carried out, to prevent a certain number of crimes; but it must also be to generate a more dangerous spirit in the class which you regard simply as dangerous, instead of regarding it as the possible raw materials of a more civilised and orderly society. Without attempting to dwell upon a familiar argument, I merely say that this view of the case implies that the governing power should be regarded, not simply as a machinery for catching and killing noxious criminals, but as a great civilising influence, suppressing all temptations to crime, where possible; preferring prevention, in every practicable case, to punishment, and making use of the clumsy, though necessary, weapons in the last resort; and acting by a steady and regulated pressure upon all anti-social elements. It is only possible to give a satisfactory theory of the jail and the gallows, when you take them as a subordinate part of the system which includes reformatories and schools, and due precautions for the regular preservation of order. The ultimate criterion of justice is not to be found in any attempt to form a debtor and creditor account between the government and the individual; but in the civilising influence of the system, taken as a whole. And, finally, I come back to the other theory which I have noticed. To supply the defects of the simply deterrent theory, it has been found necessary, as I said, to invoke the vindictive theory. We should go, it was suggested, upon the theory that a criminal is hateful, and, therefore, that it should be a pleasure to punish him. The feelings of resentment and moral indignation are parts of our nature, to which the punishment of the offender affords them a legitimate gratification. Now, to this, I should reply that, in the first place, I do not admit that the desire for revenge, as usually understood, can ever be legitimate. Revenge, as I understand the word, implies a personal feeling. It is taking pleasure in giving pain to a man because he has given pain to me. According to my view of morals, any pleasure in causing pain is, so far, wrong; and the public punishment should be free from all personal motive. I quite agree with Bentham that we ought not to take a positive pleasure in the sufferings, even of the worst criminal; and to admit the legitimacy of such pleasure is to admit an element of pure sentiment to which it is difficult to assign any precise limits. If you allow yourself to hate a man so as to take pleasure in his sufferings, you might justify the infliction of superfluous torture and the old methods of hanging, drawing, and quartering. To do so is precisely to approve the ferocious old treatment, to which, as I conceive, the theory of simple deterrence was an excellent corrective, in so far as it at least implied a definite limit to the indulgence of fiercer passions. There is, however, I think, an element of truth in the doctrine. I admit, that is, that the punishment of a criminal should carry a moral approval, and not be regarded purely as a measure of convenience. Successful crime should be regarded with abhorrence. If a man convicted of a grave offence should be allowed to go without punishment, we should be rightly aggrieved. It is not, however, that we should take pleasure in his suffering, but that we should be pained by an example of the practical impunity of anti-social conduct. The escape of a murderer would, as we should feel, be a blow to the security of all innocent people. In that sense, we may take pleasure in his punishment, not in the sense of positive enjoyment, but, certainly, in the sense of relief from positive sense of evil. It is, and should be, painful to see the rogues flourish and honest men droop, and to observe "captive good attending captain ill". But the pleasure of seeing the necessary equilibrium restored is different from the pleasure of dwelling upon the sufferings of the disturber. The practical difference is that, while we regard the infliction of suffering as necessary, we admit it to be a necessary evil, and are keenly alive to the inability of keeping it within the limits fixed by the general necessities of the law. LUXURY. Professor Sidgwick has been discussing the ethics of luxury, and, according to his wont, has been giving fresh interest to a well-worn topic. I do not wish to dispute anything that he has said, nor do I hope to clear up problems which he professedly left unsolved. In one sense, they obviously cannot be solved precisely. Luxury is a relative term, which cannot be defined in absolute terms. A luxury, in the first place, is distinguished from a necessary. But, then, one man's necessary may be another man's luxury. My very existence depends upon conditions with which another man can dispense. If, again, we admit that there are many things which, though not absolutely necessary, may rightly be used, if they can be used without injuring others, we see that we must also take into account the varying social conditions. If we use luxury, in what Bentham called the dyslogistic sense, we must distinguish between necessaries and superfluities, and then divide superfluities into comforts which may be rightfully enjoyed, and luxuries which cannot be enjoyed without incurring some degree of moral censure. But the dividing lines are always shifting. Scott tells somewhere of a Highlander sleeping on the open moor in a winter night. When he tried to roll the snow into a pillow his companion kicked it away, as a proof of disgraceful effeminacy. Most of us would come to a speedy end if we lived in a social state where such a standard of hardiness was rigidly enforced. We admit that some kind of pillow may be permitted, if not as absolutely necessary, as, at least, a pardonable comfort. We shall probably agree, also, that nobody is to be blamed for using clean sheets and securing a certain amount of warmth and softness--as much, at least, as is desirable for sanitary reasons. But if we endeavour to prescribe precisely how much may be allowed in excess of the necessary, how often we are to send our sheets to the wash, whether it is right to have lace upon our pillows, and so forth, we get into problems where any attempt at precision is obviously illusory. We are the more perplexed by the question, whether the provision of a bed for ourselves causes other people to go without a bed, and, perhaps, without supper, or how far we are bound to take such consequences into account. Without aiming, therefore, at an impossible precision, I shall try to consider--not what objects should be called luxuries, or comforts, or necessaries, but what are the really relevant considerations by which we should endeavour to guide our judgments. Luxury is, as I have said, a well-worn topic. Saints and philosophers in all ages, have denounced the excessive love of material enjoyments, and set examples of a more or less thorough-going asceticism. It was--to go no further back--one of the favourite topics of our ancestors, in such papers as the _Spectator_ and the _Rambler_. Addison, in his _Cato_, described the simple Numidian, whose standard appears to have resembled that of Scott's Highlander. The Numidian, he says, rests his head upon a rock at night, and, if next day he chances to find a new repast or an untasted spring, "blesses his stars and calls it luxury". General Oglethorpe quoted this passage, in an argument about luxury, to Johnson, and added, "let us have _that_ kind of luxury, sir, if you will". Johnson himself put down all this declamation as part of the cant from which we ought to clear our minds. No nation, he said to Goldsmith, was ever hurt by luxury. "Let us take a walk from Charing Cross to Whitechapel, through the greatest series of shops in the world: what is there in any of these shops (if you except gin-shops) that can do any human being any harm?" "I accept your challenge," said Goldsmith. "The next shop to Northumberland House is a pickle-shop." To which the excellent Johnson replied, first, that five pickle-shops could serve the whole kingdom; secondly, that no harm was done to anybody either by making pickles or by eating pickles. I will not go into the ethics of pickles. I only quote this to remind you that this was one of the stock questions of the period; and not without reason. The denunciation of luxury was, in fact, the mark of a very significant tendency. Goldsmith had expressed the prevalent sentiment in the _Deserted Village_, as in the familiar passage beginning:-- Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay. And Goldsmith, like many contemporaries, was only versifying the sentiments uttered most powerfully by Rousseau in his famous exaltation of the ideal man of nature above the man of a corrupt civilisation. The theory has some affinity to the ancient doctrine already expounded by classical writers, according to which each form of government includes a principle of decay as well as of life. One stage in the process of corruption of Plato's ideal republic is marked by the appearance of the drones, people who take a surfeit of unnecessary pleasures, and, to obtain satisfaction, associate themselves with the fierce and rapacious. In Rousseau's time, this view became connected with the growing belief in progress and "perfectibility". It was a symptom of warning to the drones of his day. It showed that the thoughtful classes were becoming dimly sensible that something was wrong in the social organisation; and that a selfish and indolent aristocracy should be called upon to put its house in order. The denunciation of luxury meant, in short, that the rich and powerful were accused of indulgence in pleasures which they had not earned by services, but by the rigid enforcement of class privileges. Considered from this point of view, as the muttering of a coming storm, as the expression of a vague foreboding that the world was somehow out of joint, we may see more meaning than appears at first sight, in the old-fashioned commonplaces of our great-grandfathers. The language has changed its form; but the discontent at the misuse of wealth in various forms has certainly not diminished since that time. Obviously, then, the question of luxury is connected with very wide and deep problems as to what is the proper use of wealth, and might lead us into ultimate questions as to the justification of the right to private property at all. I shall try, however, to keep as closely as may be to the particular aspect of such problems, which is immediately relevant to this particular question. And for this purpose, I think it will be convenient to take two points separately. The objections to luxury may be stated either with reference to the individual or with reference to the society. That is to say, that if we consider a man by himself, we may ask with Johnson, whether expenditure upon pickles is injurious to the constitution, or at what point it becomes injurious. And, in the next place, we may ask whether, if we see our way to decide that pickles are wholesome as well as agreeable, some of us may not be getting more than our fair share of pickles, and so diminishing the total sum of pleasure, by inordinate consumption. First, then, I discard, for the moment, all social considerations. I take for granted, for the sake of argument, that my indulgence does no harm to any one else; that I am not depriving others of a means of enjoyment, but simply adding to my own; or, at any rate, that I am not, for the moment, to take into account that set of consequences. How far, on this hypothesis, or, say, setting aside all question of duty to my neighbour, should I be prudent in accumulating wealth? I sometimes amuse myself with the problem, How rich should I like to be, supposing that I were perfectly wise in that sense in which wisdom is compatible with thorough-going egoism, or with what is called enlightened self-interest? The obvious answer is that, in that case, there would be no limits to my desires. An imaginative American, we are told, defined competence as "a million a minute and all your expenses paid". The suggestion is fascinating, but not, to my mind, quite satisfactory. It recalls a doctrine which used to be put forward by the old political economists. They had to meet the theory--a preposterous theory enough--of the danger of a universal glut; the danger, that is, that a nation might produce so much that nothing would have any value, and, therefore, that we should all be ruined by all becoming enormously rich. To meet this, it was often urged--along with more satisfactory arguments--that human desires were illimitable; and, therefore, that however rich a man might become he would always wish to become a little richer. According to this doctrine, the desire for wealth cannot be satiated. The millionaire would still choose an extra half-crown rather than refuse it, although the half-crown brings him incomparably less additional pleasure than it brought him when his pockets were empty. But it is also true that long before we were millionaires, the pleasure obtainable by additional wealth may be infinitesimal, or absolutely non-existent. The simple desires may be easily saturated. Pope asks, "What riches give us, let us then inquire". And he replies, "Meat, fire, and clothes--what more? Meat, clothes, and fire." This is, in fact, a pithy summary of our most elementary and necessary wants. Now, our demand for meat is obviously strictly limited. As soon as we have eaten, say, a pound of beefsteak, we do not want more; by the time we have eaten, say, three pounds we do not only not want more, we loathe the very thought of eating. So, when we are clothed sufficiently for comfort and decency, more clothing is simply a burden; and we wish only for so much fire as will keep our thermometer within certain limits; a heat above or below would mean death either by burning or by freezing. Our ultimate aim, therefore, in regard to desires of this class, is not to increase the stimulus indefinitely, but to preserve a certain balance or equilibrium. If we want more food after our appetites are satisfied, it must either be with a view to our future consumption, which is still strictly finite, or else with a view to exchanging the food for something else, in which case it is desired, not as food, but as the means of satisfying some other desire. If, then, Pope's doctrine were really sound, which actually amounts to saying, if our desires were really limited to the physical conditions necessary to life, we should very soon reach the state in which they would be completely glutted or saturated. It may be worth while to note the circumstance which rather obscures our recognition of this fact. We may distinguish between the wealth which a man actually uses and that which remains, as I may say, only potential. A man may desire an indefinite quantity of wealth, because he may wish to have rights which he may yet never turn to actual account. There is a certain satisfaction, no doubt, in knowing that I have a vast balance at my banker's, though I have no desire to use it. I may want it some time or other; and, even if I never want it, I may enjoy the sense of having a disproportionate barrier of money-bags piled up between me and the yawning gulf of actual poverty. Therefore, though a very limited amount may be enough to satiate all our existing desires, we may like to know that there is more at our disposal. If possession carried with it the necessity of using our property, if we could not have potential as distinguished from actual wealth, we should be so far from desiring an indefinite increase of wealth that we should regard the increase beyond a certain limit as only one of two intolerable alternatives. The question, therefore, How rich should I wish to be? requires an answer to the previous question, How rich can I be? A man, even if on the intellectual level of a savage, can be indefinitely rich in potential wealth: he may, that is, have a right to millions of pounds or be the owner of thousands of acres; but in order to use them he must have certain capacities and sensibilities. It is a curious question, for example, how much of the wealth of a country would cease to be wealth at all if the intelligence of the possessors were lowered certain degrees in the scale? A large part of the wealth of England consists, I suppose, of machinery. If nobody knew more of machines than I do--and my whole notion of a machine is that it is something that goes round somehow if you happen to turn the right handle--all this wealth would become as useless as an electric telegraph in the possession of a hairy Ainu. And if nobody had any better artistic perception than mine, and we were therefore unable to see the difference between a Raphael and the daub in an advertising placard, the pictures in the National Gallery would have an average value, say, of eighteen-pence. A man, therefore, who is at the lower levels of intelligence is simply unable to be actually rich, beyond a narrow limit. The fact is occasionally forced upon us by striking examples. I heard the other day a story--I am afraid we all hear such stories too often--of a man who had become enormously rich by a freak of fortune. His only idea of enjoyment happened to be gin. He could, therefore, only use his wealth by drinking himself to death; a proceeding which he accordingly felt to be only a proper tribute to his improved social position. A similar result happens whenever a sudden rise of wages to an insufficiently civilised class leads to the enrichment of publicans, instead of increased indulgence in refined and innocent pleasures. The man, in short, whose idea of pleasure is simply the gratification of the physical appetites in their coarser forms is incapable of becoming actually rich, because a small amount of wealth will enable him to saturate his desires by providing a superfluity of the material means of gratification. It is, perhaps, here that we may take into account the remark so often made by moralists, by Adam Smith among others, as Professor Sidgwick reminds us, that happiness is more evenly distributed among different classes than we suppose. The king, according to Shakespeare, cannot-- With all the tide of pomp That beats upon the high shore of this world ... Sleep so soundly as the wretched slave Who with a body filled and vacant mind Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread. The "body filled" and the "vacant mind" make up for the "distressful bread". It is as well, that is, to have no wants except the want of mere physical comfort, as to have higher wants and the means of gratifying them, and yet to be saddled with the anxieties and responsibilities which the higher position involves. The doctrine, "I am not really better off than you," is, indeed, not a very graceful one from those who are actually better off. There was some excuse for the fox who said the grapes were sour when he could not get them; it argued a judicious desire to make the best of things: but if he made the remark while he was comfortably chewing them, by way of pacifying the grapeless foxes, we should have thought him a more objectionable hypocrite. The pauper may fairly reply, "If you really mean that your wealth brings no happiness, why don't you change places with me?" I will, therefore, not defend the statement, considered as an exhortation to content; but I accept it as a recognition of the obvious fact, that if happiness means a satisfaction of all our desires, a man of small means may be as happy as the man of the greatest means, if his desires are limited in proportion. But is it for our happiness to increase them? Does our principle hold when we suppose a man to have the necessary sensibilities for the actual enjoyment of wealth? If he acquires the tastes which imply greater intellectual cultivation, a power, therefore, of taking into account sources of pleasure more complex and more distant in time and space, does it then become true that his power of using wealth will be indefinite? I should reply, in the first place, that we must still admit the same psychological truth. Any desire whatever, that is, is capable of yielding only a strictly finite amount of enjoyment; the pleasure which we can derive from it must be limited both by the necessity of gratifying other desires and by the fact that no desire whatever is capable of an indefinite increase by increased stimulation. After a certain point of excitement is reached, we cannot get more pleasure by any accumulation of internal conditions. We assume for the present that our aim is simply to extract the greatest possible amount of gratification out of life. We must then take for our data our actual constitution, capacities, sensibilities, and so forth, and calculate how much wealth could be actually applied in order to keep us moving always along the line of maximum enjoyment. This would be to study the art of life on purely hedonistic principles. We should ask, what career will on the whole be fullest of enjoyment? and then, what material conditions can enable us to follow that career? I imagine that the amount requisite would vary indefinitely according to our characters. Suppose, for example, that a man has strong intellectual tastes, a love of art or science or literature. He will require, of course, enough wealth to enable him to devote himself without anxiety to his favourite pursuits, and enough, moreover, to train himself in all requisite knowledge. But granting this, the material conditions of happiness will be sufficiently fulfilled. I think it was Agassiz who observed when he was devoting himself to science that he had not time to get rich. Wealth to him would have been rather an impediment than an advantage. A man like Faraday, who placed his whole happiness in the extension of scientific knowledge, and who was not less honoured because he lived upon a modest income, would not have had a greater amount of that kind of happiness had he possessed the wealth of a Rothschild. A man whose pleasure is in reading books, or contemplating works of art, or listening to music, can obtain the highest enjoyment at a very moderate price, and could get very little more if he had the most unbounded wealth at his disposal. If we inquired what men possessing such tastes had derived from them the greatest happiness, we should, I fancy, find ourselves mentioning men comparatively poor, whose enjoyments were even comparatively keen, because they had to devote a certain amount of care and contrivance to obtaining full play for their capacities. Charles Lamb, plotting and contriving to get an old volume from a bookstall, possibly got more pleasure from his taste than if he had been the possessor of a gigantic library. The sociable man, again, the man whose pleasure in society is the genuine delight in a real interchange of thought and sympathy, who does not desire magnificent entertainment, but the stimulus of intimate association with congenial friends, would probably find the highest pleasure in comparatively simple social strata, where the display of wealth was no object, and men met, as Johnson met his friends at the club, to put mind fairly to mind, and to stimulate intellectual activity, instead of consuming the maximum of luxury. Milton's sonnet to Lawrence gives perhaps a rather severe but a very fascinating ideal of refined luxury:-- What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste with wine, whence we may rise To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? He who of these delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft, is not unwise. Nor need we be accused of inordinate boasting if we should say that we would rather have made a third at such a feast than have joined a dozen rowdy courtiers at the table of Charles II. There are, however, pleasures which undoubtedly suppose an indefinite capacity for using wealth. There is, for example, such a thing as the pure love of splendour, which is represented so curiously in some of Disraeli's novels. One of his heroes, if I remember rightly, proposed to follow the precedent actually set by Beckford, who built at Fonthill a tower 300 feet high--not because it was wanted for any other purpose, but simply for the sake of building a tower. Of course, if one has a taste for towers 300 feet high, there is no particular limit to the quantity of wealth which may be found convenient. One of the gentlest and most delicate satirists of modern society, Mr. Du Maurier, has given us admirable illustrations of a more vulgar form of the same tendency in his portraits of Sir Gorgius Midas. When that worthy denounces his servants because there are only three footmen sitting up till two o'clock to save him the trouble of using a latch-key, we may admit that his pleasures, such as they were, were capable of finding gratification in any quantity of expenditure. It might be a question, indeed, if we had time to ask it, whether the pleasure derived from such expenses by the millionaire be really so great as the pleasure which he had when he first turned the proverbial half-crown, with which he must have come to London, into his first five shillings; and it is certainly also a question whether his expenditure was ethically right. But at present we are only considering facts, and we may admit that there would be no filling such a gulf of desire by any dribble of bullion; and, further, that there are pleasures--not, on the face of them, immoral--in procuring which any quantity of money may be spent. If a man is simply desirous of obtaining influence, or, in some cases, political power; or if he decides to muddle away his money upon charity, there are no limits to the sums he may spend, especially if he has no objection to corrupting his neighbours. Before saying anything upon this, however, I must pause to deduce a conclusion. Keeping still to the purely hedonistic point of view, I ask, At what point does expenditure become luxurious in a culpable sense? meaning by "culpable" not morally culpable, but simply injudicious from the point of view of enlightened self-interest. To this I think that one answer is already suggested, that is to say, that since, on the one hand, a certain finite quantity of wealth will enable us to keep to the happiest or most philosophic career; and since, on the other hand, a man may possess a quantity of superfluous wealth which he can only use on penalty of deviating from that career, he becomes foolish, if not immoral--upon which I say nothing--when he tries to use more. That people frequently commit this folly is undeniable. Wealth ought to be (I mean would be by a judiciously selfish person) regarded as a means of enjoyment. Therefore the superfluous wealth should be left in the potential stage--as a balance at his banker's or accumulating in the funds. But though the possession does not imply a necessity of using, it does generally imply a sort of tacit feeling of responsibility--responsibility, that is, to a man's self. I have got so much money; surely it is a duty to myself to use it for my pleasure. So far as a man yields to such an argument, he becomes the slave instead of the master of his wealth. What ought to be machinery for furthering an end, becomes an end in itself: and, at that point of conduct, I think that we are disposed to call a man's life luxurious in a distinctly bad sense. The error, as I have suggested, is perhaps at bottom much the same as that which leads a poor man to spend an increase of wages at a gin-shop. But we do not call the gin-drinker luxurious, but simply vicious. For luxury seems to apply less to conduct which we can distinctly call bad in itself, than to conduct which only becomes bad or foolish as implying a disproportion between the end attained and the expense of attaining it. It applies when a man has, as we say, so much money that he does not know what to do with it. We speak of luxuries in the case of Sir Gorgius, where the prominent fact is that the man has been gorged with excessive wealth, and is yet too dull to use it in any manner which would increase the happiness of a reasonable or refined being. So it is generally regarded as characteristic rather of the upstart or newly-made millionaire than of the man born to higher position, whose life is perhaps as selfish and hardly superior morally. But the nobleman by birth has inherited a certain art of life; he has acquired traditional modes of arranging his pleasures, which give him the appearance, at least, of possessing more judicious and refined tastes; and we are less shocked than by the man who has obviously wealth which he knows not how to use, and which he, therefore, deliberately devotes to coarse and vulgar ostentation. The upstart may not be more selfish at bottom; but he dashes in your face the evidence of his selfishness, and appeals for admiration on the simple ground that he has a larger income than his neighbours. Luxury means, on this showing, all such expenditure as is objectionable, not because the pleasure obtained is intrinsically bad, but because we are spending for the sake of spending, and could get more real enjoyment at a lower sum. I need not dwell upon the fact that men of moderate means may fall into the same error. The fault of exaggerating the importance of machinery is not confined to those whom we call rich. Thackeray's discourses upon Snobs are full expositions of the same weakness in the middle classes. When we read, for example, of Colonel Ponto being miserable because he tries to make an income of a thousand a year support the pomp accessible to persons with ten thousand, we see that he has as false a view as Sir Gorgius of the true ends of life. And I refer to the same great satirist for abundant illustrations of the weaknesses which too often make society a machinery for wasting money on display, and entirely oblivious that it should be a machinery for the promotion of intellectual and refined pleasures. Now, if I have given a fair account of luxury as considered simply from the point of view of an enlightened selfishness, I may proceed to the ethical question. So far, I have only asked, in substance, at what point our expenditure upon pickles becomes foolish. But, of course, the more important question arises, at what point it becomes selfish. A man may be silly for spending money upon erecting towers; but if he does no harm to his neighbours we hardly call him wicked. We cannot say that it is unconditionally wrong to build a tower. We must inquire, therefore, how far luxury necessarily involves a wrong to others. Here we must begin by listening to all the philosophers and divines of whom I spoke at starting. Any number of wise and good men will tell us, in various dialects, that pleasure is in itself bad, or, at least, that all the pleasures obtainable by wealth are bad, or, at any rate, beneath the notice of the higher spirits. There are the thorough-going ascetics, who strive, not to regulate, but to suppress all except the absolutely necessary physical instincts, and think that even those desires savour of evil; who consider the best man to be the man who lives upon bread and water, and, if possible, upon mouldy bread and ditch-water. There are, again, spiritually-minded people, who consider all happiness to be worthless, except such happiness as results from aspirations to another world; who regard all riches as chains binding the soul to earth; who take the words "Blessed are the poor" in the most literal sense, as defining the true aim of life. We should seek, they say, for happiness elsewhere than in this transitory stage of existence, remember that the world is a mere screen hiding the awful realities of heaven and hell; and despise even such pleasures as are generally called intellectual pleasures, the pleasures, for example, of art or science, for they, too, belong really to the sphere of illusion, and are simply more subtle temptations than those of the flesh. And, besides these, we have the philosophers, who would have us live in the world of pure intellect, and tell us that the true moral of life is to make ourselves independent of external circumstances by suppressing all the corresponding desires. Renunciation, therefore, is the first lesson to be learned by the wise man; and the practical rule, as has been said, is that we should endeavour not to increase our numerator but to lessen our denominator. I cannot now discuss such doctrines. I am content to say that I regard them not as simply false, but as distorted views of truth. For my part, I am content to say that, even as a moralist, I wish to see people as happy as possible; that being, after all, a poor utilitarian after my own fashion, I desire--however erroneously--the greatest happiness of the greatest number; and, in particular, that I should like to see, not a feebler, but a much keener appreciation of all the pleasures derivable from art, or science, or literature, or rational society, even, if I may say so, from good cookery and athletic sports. Briefly, the ideal society seems to me to be one in which even our lower instincts should not be suppressed, but regulated; and the typical man of the future to be one whose whole faculties and their corresponding sensibilities should be cultivated to the utmost possible degree. What is the application of this to our special question? I do not know that I can do better than refer to the writings of Bernard Mandeville, who in his _Fable of the Bees_--one of the cleverest books in the language--succeeded by the help of much paradox, and under a cloak of cynicism, in stating the problem with singular vivacity. Private vices, that was his way of putting it, are public benefits. His meaning, put less paradoxically, was this: accept, on the one hand, the ascetic doctrine that pursuit of pleasure is intrinsically vicious, and you condemn all the impulses by which the structure of society, especially the industrial structure, has been built up. Accept, on the other hand, the doctrine that civilisation is, on the whole, a good thing, and you admit that the instincts, which, upon this hypothesis, correspond to private vices, are the only means of producing a public benefit. In other words, if we took the language of theologians in its natural sense, and really regarded the world as worthless, we should have no industry, no trade or commerce, and be still living in swamps and forests, digging up roots with our nails, living upon acorns and shell-fish, and scarcely even painting ourselves blue, for to the savage blue paint was a luxury. Now, apart from any question as to the fairness of this version of theological doctrine, we may ask, What is the real underlying difficulty--or that aspect of it which is still worth considering? We may grant, in the first place, to Mandeville, that, in point of fact, the construction of a civilised society presupposes the development of numerous desires, many of which are more or less condemned by severe moralists. If the savage comes to value blue paint, he may take to planting something to exchange for it, instead of simply lying on his back to digest his last handful of acorns; and, in so doing, he makes the first step towards the development of an industrial system. The desire for wealth is, of course, implied in all stages of progress if men are to create wealth; and we can partly answer Mandeville's paradox by throwing over the ascetic and declaring that a desire for good meat, and fire, and clothes, even for pictures, and books, and music, or for such comforts as most of us enjoy, is not in itself immoral; and that, on the contrary, the more there is of such enjoyment the better for men's bodies and minds, and therefore, on the whole, the better for their morality. But the moral difficulty returns in a new shape. The desire for wealth, let us say, is not in itself bad; it is simply natural--it is a desire for one essential condition of a tolerably happy life. But is it not bad, in so far as it is selfish? Do not the desires which have been the mainspring of all modern development imply a desire of each man to get rich at the expense of others? Have they not been the source of all that division between rich and poor which makes one side luxurious and the other miserable? Has not Dives become rich and bloated by force of the very same process which has made Lazarus a mass of sores and misery? Suppress the desire for wealth, and we should still be savages "running wild in woods". But was not even the noble savage better than the pauper who now hangs on to the fringes of society? and is his existence compensated by the existence of other classes who have more wealth than they can use? And so the old problem comes back; and we have, as of old, the most contradictory answers to the problem. I am, I confess it, one of those old-fashioned people who believe in progress, and hold that their own century is distinctly better than any which preceded it; who would on no account go back, if they could, to the days of the noble savages or even to the brutalities and superstitions of the ages of faith. But I do not think that I need argue that question for our present purpose. We have got to this century somehow, and we can only get out of it by living till the twentieth. Meanwhile, we should make the best of the interval. I will, therefore, only permit myself one remark. If we suppose, with Mandeville, that the instincts which have developed modern society have been, to a great extent, selfish desires, that is, for the personal comfort of the agent, irrespectively of consequences to others, it does not follow that the corresponding development has been mischievous. Good commonplace moralists have been much in the habit of condemning the selfish passions of kings and conquerors. What can be an easier mark for denunciation than such a man, for example, as Louis XI. of France, and the wily and cruel rulers of past ages, whose only aim was to enlarge their own powers and wealth? And yet, if we consider the matter historically, we must admit that such men have rendered enormous services to mankind. A ruler, let us say, had for his only object the extension and concentration of his own authority. Still, it was by the conflicts of rulers that the great nations have been formed out of a chaos of struggling clans; that peace and order, therefore, have been substituted for violence, throughout broad territories; that law has taken the place of private war; moreover, that the privileges of selfish orders have been suppressed through the development of a larger and more civilised national organisation; and that, although the immediate victory was won by the selfish ruler, the ultimate benefit has accrued to the people upon whom he was forced to rely for support against the oppressive subordinate powers. The ruler, perhaps, did not look beyond his own interests; but his own interest forced him to find allies among the mass of the population, and so gradually led to the formation of central organs, representing not the personal interest of the king, but the interest of the whole nation in which they had arisen. We may make a similar remark upon industrial development. The great merchant and capitalist and inventor of new methods and machinery has not looked, it may be, beyond his own interest; but, intentionally or not, he was helping to construct a vast organisation, which, whether it has, on the whole, improved the world or not, has, at least, made it enormously richer. Perhaps Watt, when he was improving the steam-engine, thought only of the profits to be derived from his invention. But the profit which he gained after a laborious life was but an infinitesimal fraction of the enormous increase of efficiency which resulted to the national industry. We cannot doubt that the whole gigantic system which at least maintains a population several times multiplied, which maintains part of it in wealth and a large proportion in reasonable comfort, has been due to the labours of many men, each working for his own interest and animated chiefly by the desire of wealth. So much remains true of the economist's doctrine of the natural harmony between individual and public interest. In this case, as in the case of governments, we may, perhaps, say that men acted from motives which must be called selfish, in this sense at least, that they thought of little but their own interests; but that, at the same time, their own interests compelled them to work in a direction which promoted, more or less, the interests of others. I add, briefly, that these are only instances of what we may call the general rule: namely, that morality begins from an external or unrecognised conformity of interests, and ends by recognising and adopting, as motives, the consequences which, in the earlier stage, seemed to be internal or accidental consequences. I begin by helping a man because circumstances make it useful to myself, and I end--and only become truly moral when I end--by doing what is useful to him, because it is useful to him. When, indeed, I have reached that point, my end itself is profoundly modified; it becomes much wider, and yet only regulates and directs to new channels a great deal of the corresponding conduct. The consideration of this modification--of the change which should take place when a man not only pursues such conduct as is beneficial on the whole to a country, but pursues it with a view to the beneficial consequences--brings us back to the question of luxury. The bare pursuit of wealth as the end of existence implies, of course, indifference to the means by which it is produced; an equal readiness, for example, to grow rich by cheating my neighbour, or by actually producing a greater quantity of useful produce. It is consistent with a simple desire to enlarge my business without reference to the effect upon the persons I employ, as when manufacturers enriched themselves by cruel exploitation of the labour of infants. But if we hope for a state of things in which an employer should consider himself as essentially part of the national organism, as increasing his own wealth only by such means as would be also advantageous to the comfort of the nation generally, the pursuit of wealth would become moralised. Here, in fact, we must once more consider Mandeville's paradox. Desire for wealth, he substantially says, must be good because it stimulates industry. When your lazy barbarian, who has no pleasure but gorging himself with food, comes also to desire fine clothes, he is not only a degree more refined in his tastes, but his increased industry leads him to produce enough food to support his tailor, and provision is made for two men instead of one. But desire for wealth, it is replied, is bad, because it leads our barbarian not only to consume the product of his own labour, but to consume that of somebody else. Mandeville gained piquancy for his argument by confusing the two cases. Since the desire is good, all its manifestations must be good. Extravagance, for example, is good, and, as he put it, the fire of London was a benefit to industry because it set up a greater demand for the services of carpenters and bricklayers. I need not say how frequently an argument substantially the same has been adopted by good writers, and simple extravagance been praised because it was supposed to be "good for trade". Political economists have been forced to labour the point that extravagant consumption does not increase wealth; but the only curious thing is that such a point should ever have required demonstration. The conclusion, which is sufficient for our purpose, is simply that an absolute denunciation or an absolute exaltation of the desire for wealth is equally impossible; for the desire may have contrary effects. In one shape it may stimulate to enjoyments which actually diminish wealth in general, or, at any rate, to those which lead to the actual exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few; and, on the other hand, to denounce it, simply would be to denounce all the springs of action which raise men above the barbarous state of society. When we look at the contrasts between the rich and the poor, we must rightfully desire a greater equality of distribution; but we may be tempted to approve too easily any means which may lead to such equality. It is, indeed, obvious that if all the national resources which are now applied to producing superfluities could be turned to the production of necessaries, we could support the same population in a greater comfort, or support a much greater population at a point just above starvation level. But it does not at all follow that a society in which every man's labour was devoted entirely to the task of providing necessaries would in fact be either more comfortable or more numerous. Historically speaking, the fact is the very reverse. The only societies in which there is such an equality are societies in which the level is one of uniform misery, and whose total industrial efficiency is incomparably smaller than that of the more civilised races. It has been only in so far as a nation has been able to support classes with sufficient means to devote themselves to science and art, and the cultivation of the higher faculties generally, that it has acquired the vast powers of production which enable some to be disproportionately rich, but which also enable numerous masses to support themselves in tolerable comfort where there were once a few wandering barbarians. That the more cultivated classes have sought only their own advantage instead of the general benefit, may be too true; but the conclusion is, not that they should cease to have the desires which entitle a man to be called a civilised being, but that these desires should be so regulated and moralised as to subserve directly and necessarily the ends which they have only promoted indirectly and accidentally. A society which has grown rich by mechanical discoveries and industrious organisation has acquired the power of greatly raising the average level of comfort. If, in point of fact, its power has been greatly misused, if a great development of poverty has taken place side by side with a great development of industrial efficiency, the proper inference is not that we should denounce the desires from which the efficiency is derived, but that we should direct them into such channels as may lead to the more universal distribution of the advantages which they create. It is, I think, from this point of view that we can best judge of the moral objection to luxury. For, as I previously suggested, luxury begins when a man becomes the slave instead of the master of his wealth; when that which ought to be a mere machinery becomes an end in itself; and when, therefore, there is a tendency to cultivate and stimulate to excess those lower passions which, though necessary within limits, may beyond those limits distort and lower the whole character, and make the pursuit of worthy objects impossible. We know that the king who had the reputation of being the wisest of mankind, after building a splendid temple and a gorgeous palace, and filling them with vessels of gold, and importing ivory and apes and peacocks, could find nothing better to do with the rest than to take 700 wives and 300 concubines--a measure which hardly increased his domestic felicity, but no doubt got rid of a good deal of money. Although few men have Solomon's opportunities of affording a typical instance of luxury, many of us show ourselves capable of weakness similar at least in kind. I need not multiply examples. The great mystery of fashion is perhaps a trifling but a significant example. When people, instead of considering dress as a means of displaying the beauty of the human frame, consider their bodies as mere pegs upon which to display clothes, and are ready to distort their own forms to fill arbitrary shapes, changed at short intervals to increase the cost, they are clearly exemplifying the confusion between means and ends. When a young gentleman spends a fortune upon the turf, or upon gambling, he shows that he has no more conception than the poor boy who plays pitch-and-toss with halfpence of the ways in which wealth might be made conducive to undertakings worthy of absorbing human energy. When, on pretence of cultivating society, we invent a whole cumbrous social apparatus which makes all rational conversation impossible, we know that the display of wealth has become an end to which we are ready to sacrifice our ostensible purpose. Now, I suggest that such luxury, such exaltation of the machinery above the ultimate good, corresponds pretty nearly to the distinction between the desires which lead to the rightful use and those which lead to the shameful misuse of wealth in a social sense. Human nature, indeed, is singularly complex, and it is impossible to deny that the hope of acquiring such luxuries may incidentally lead to that increase of industry and development of national resources which, as we have seen, is the ground upon which it is defended. The industrious apprentice may have been stimulated to become Lord Mayor by the odours from his master's turtle-soup; Arkwright, perhaps, was induced to invent the machinery which revolutionised the cotton manufactures by the hope of becoming Sir Richard, and rivalling the coarse luxury of some stupid Squire Western. But we cannot doubt that upon a large scale the love of the grosser indulgences is bad, even from its purely economical point of view. If, incidentally, it encourages industry, it far more directly and necessarily encourages wasteful expenditure. If a rich man can only spend his thousands at a gambling-table, the poorer man cannot be blamed for gambling with a thimble-rigger. When Solomon set up his domestic establishment, every shopkeeper in Jerusalem might be encouraged to marry an extra wife. If a rich man, who has enough to saturate a healthy appetite, tries how much money he can spend, like the old classical epicures, upon new dishes of nightingales' tongues, you can hardly expect the poorer man to refrain from an extra glass of gin. Briefly, so far as the resources of a nation are spent upon the mere ostentation--which we call vulgar, to imply that it is spending for the sake of expense, foolishly trying to get more pleasure for an appetite already gorged to excess, by simply increasing the stimulus--it is encouraging all the forces which make rather for waste than increased productiveness, and justifying the natural jealousy of the poorer. So far, that is, as a desire for wealth means a desire to consume as much as possible on supersaturating the lower appetites, the commonest argument against private property in general is not only plausible but justified. I should say, then, that luxury in a bad sense begins wherever in expenditure it indicates an insufficient sense of the responsibility which attaches to all wealth. This does not condemn an expenditure which may seem, from some points of view, luxurious; though, as I have said, I cannot profess to draw any distinct line in what is essentially a question of degree and of actual possibilities, I can only suggest in general that a man is _primâ facie_ justified in all such expenditure as tends to the highest possible cultivation of his faculties and of the faculties of those dependent upon him. I hold it to be a matter of the highest importance that there should be a thoroughly civilised class--a class capable of all intellectual pleasures; loving the beauties of art and nature; studying every possible department of knowledge, scientific and historical; maintaining all such modes of recreation and social enjoyment as are naturally appropriate to such a class. And I do not call any man luxurious for maintaining his position in such a sphere, or for enabling his children to follow in his steps. I believe that, as things are, the existence of such a class is a necessary condition of national welfare and of the preservation and extension of the whole body of cultivation which we have received from our ancestors. What is requisite is, that the class should be not only capable of refined enjoyment, but of discharging its functions relatively to the nation at large, and spreading a higher standard of enjoyment through the whole community. So far as the richer class maintains certain traditions, moral and intellectual--traditions of personal honour and public spirit, of artistic and literary cultivation--it may be discharging an invaluable function, and its existence may be a necessary means of diffusing a higher civilisation through the masses who have not the same advantage. Whatever employments of wealth contribute to make a man more efficient as an individual member of society, to strengthen his understanding and his perceptions, to widen his intellectual horizon and interest his sympathies, and the enjoyments which correspond to them, are not to be condemned as luxurious. They are, at present, only within the reach of the richer classes, ardently as we may hope that the power of partaking them may be extended as rapidly and widely as possible. But the growth of luxury, in the bad sense, is the indication that the class which should act as the brain of the social organism is ceasing to discharge its functions, and becoming what we call a survival. It is a kind of moral gout--an aristocratic disease, showing that the secretions are becoming disordered for want of a proper application of the energies. It was in that sense, as I said before, that our grandfathers denounced the luxury which proved that the ruling classes, especially in France, had retained their privileges while abandoning the corresponding duties. If in England we escaped so violent a catastrophe, it was because, with all their luxuries and levities and shortsightedness, the aristocratic classes were still playing an active part, and, if not governing well, doing whatever was done in the way of governing. But every class, and every member of a class, should always remember that he may be asked whether, on the whole, he and his like can give any sufficient reason for his or their existence, and that he ought to be prepared with a satisfactory answer. When he has to admit that his indulgences are in the main what may be called luxuries in the bad sense, he may consider that he is receiving notice to quit. This may suggest the last remark that I need make. It is impossible, I have said, to say definitely this is, and that is not, a luxury: and, in general, that is not the way in which the question presents itself. We have rather to decide upon our general standard of life, and to adopt a certain scale of living more or less fixed for us by our social surroundings. We can all do something towards rationalising the habitual modes of expenditure, and adapting the machinery to such ends as are worthy of intelligent and cultivated beings. So far as inclination is in the direction of vulgarity, of ostentatious habits, of multiplying idle ceremonies and cumbrous pomposities, we can protest by our own conduct, at least, in favour of plain living and high thinking. But so far as social life is really adapted to the advancement of intellect, the humanising and refinement of our sympathies, it promotes an improvement which cannot but spread beyond the immediate circle. Even such pursuits, it is true, may incidentally become provocative of an objectionable luxury. A man who is a lover of art, for example, occasionally shuts himself out all the more from the average sympathies, and indulges in pleasures, less gross but, perhaps, even more enervating than some which we should call distinctly sensual. The art, whether literary or plastic, which is only appreciable by the connoisseur, is an art which is luxurious because it is on the way to corruption. Nothing is clearer in the vague set of guesses which pass for æsthetic theory, than this: that to be healthy and vigorous, art must spread beyond cliques and studios, and express the strongest instincts and emotions of the society in which it is developed. This, I think, is significant of a general principle. Luxury is characteristic of a class with narrow outlook, and devoted to such enjoyments as are, by their nature, incapable of communication. Whenever the enjoyments are such as have an intrinsic tendency to raise the general standard, as well as to heighten the pleasure of a few, they cannot be simply stigmatised as luxurious. The old view of the responsibilities of wealth was chiefly confined to the doctrine that the rich man should give away as many of his superfluities as possible, to be scrambled for by the poor, in order to appease the Fates. We have come to see that charity, though at present a necessary, should be regarded as a degrading necessity; and, therefore, not in the long run a possible alternative to luxury. Too often it is itself a kind of luxury as mischievous as selfish disregard to the natural consequences of our expenditure. The true direction of our wishes should rather be to direct social energies into such channels as have a natural affinity to public spirit. A man who really loves art because he has a keen sense of beauty, not because he wishes to have the reputation of a skilful collector, would surely try to beautify the world in which we all live, to get rid of the hideous deformities which meet us at every turn, and not simply to make a little corner into which he may retire for simple self-indulgence. A lover of truth should not be content, as some philosophers were forced to be content, with discussion in an esoteric circle, but should endeavour, now that thought is free, to stimulate the intellectual activity of all men, confident that the greater the number of investigators, the more rapid will be the advance of truth. I do not venture to suggest what special direction should be taken by those who have the privileges and responsibilities of great wealth. I have never had to consider that problem in any practical reference. Still, considering how vast a part they actually play in social development, how great is their influence, and how many people and enterprises seem to be in want of a little money, I cannot help fancying that a rich man may find modes of expenditure other than reckless charity or elaborate pampering of his personal wants, which would be not only more useful to the world, but more interesting to himself than many of the ordinary forms of indulgence. But I am only speaking of general tendencies, and have disavowed any capacity for laying down precise regulations. If I have stated rightly what is the evil properly attacked when we speak of luxury as vicious, it will, I think, come mainly to this: that the direction in which we should look for improvement is not so much in directly prescribing any Spartan or ascetic system of life, as in cultivating in every one who possesses superfluities, the sense of his implicit responsibility to his fellows, which should go with every increase of wealth, and the conviction, not that he should regard pleasure as in itself bad, but that he should train himself to find pleasures in such conduct as makes him a more efficient member of the body corporate of Society. If, indeed, there should be any man who feels that he has no right to superfluities at all, while so many are wanting necessaries, and should resolve to devote himself to the improvement of their elevation, I should say, in the first place, I fully and heartily recognise him to be one of the very large class which I regard as my superiors in morality; although, in the next place, I should insinuate that he is one of those heroes who, while they deserve all honour, cannot be taken as models for universal imitation, inasmuch as I cannot help thinking that the ultimate end is not the renunciation but the multiplication of all innocent happiness. THE DUTIES OF AUTHORS. I propose to speak to you to-day upon a subject which, though I may perhaps be tempted to exaggerate its importance, possesses some real importance. I have undertaken to speak upon the duties of the class to which I belong. I make, however, no claims to the position of censor. I have no such claim, except, indeed, the claim of possessing some experience. There are two ways, I may observe, in which a man may acquire a sense of the importance of any moral law. One is by keeping the law, and the other is by breaking it. In some ways, perhaps, the systematic offender has acquired the most valuable experience. No one can speak more feelingly about the evils of intemperance than the reformed drunkard, unless it be the drunkard who has not reformed. The sober gentleman who has never exceeded can realise neither the force of the temptation nor the severity of the penalty. On the other hand, I must admit that some writers upon ethical questions have been men of fair moral character. I only make the statement by way of explaining that, in speaking of the duties of authors, I do not assert, even by the most indirect implication, that I personally have either observed or disregarded the principles which I shall discuss. Whether I am a model for imitation or an example of the evils to be avoided, matters nothing to this discourse; though the question to which of these classes I belong has a certain interest for myself. There is one other matter which I can deal with very briefly. I have said that the subject has a certain importance. Upon that it is needless to dilate; for, in the first place, authors have been engaged for generations, and never more industriously than in this generation, in preaching the vast importance of authors to mankind. I could not hope to add anything to their eloquence upon a topic with which they are so familiar. We may, however, assume that the enormous mass of literature which is daily produced, whether its abundance be a matter of regret or exultation, is at least a proof that a vast number of people read something, and are, we may suppose, more or less affected by what they read. It cannot be indifferent to inquire what are the duties of those who undertake to provide for this ever-growing demand. One matter has been lately discussed which may serve as a starting-point for what I have to say. A French author who came the other day to observe our manners and customs, was impressed by the fact that so much of our writing is anonymous. The public, that is, reads without knowing who are its instructors, and the instructors write without incurring any definite personal responsibility. The problem is naturally suggested, whether such a system be not morally objectionable. Ought not a man who undertakes to speak as an authority let us know who he is, and therefore with what authority he speaks? The question could hardly be answered satisfactorily without some study of the facts; and especially of the way in which the system has grown up. I can only notice one or two obvious reflections. A century ago we boasted--and we had reason to boast--that the English Press was the freest in Europe. It was already a very important factor in political life. But at that period the profession of letters was still regarded as more or less disreputable. The great author--the poet, divine, or historian--was indeed fully as much respected as he is now; but to write for money or to write in periodicals was held to be not quite worthy of a gentleman. Byron, for example, refused to take money for his poetry, and taunted others for taking money, until so much money was offered to him that he swallowed his scruples. Burns, though as much in need of money, had shortly before refused to write for money; and Wordsworth held that his high calling imposed upon him the duty of rather repelling than seeking the popularity by which money is to be won. We have changed all this, and the greatest modern authors are less apt to disavow a desire for pay, than to complain that their pay is insufficient. The employment--it can hardly be called the profession--of periodical writing, again--the only kind of writing which could make literature a source of a regular income--was long regarded as a kind of poor relation of the respectable or so-called learned professions, clerical, legal, and medical. Jeffrey, whose fame now rests upon his position as the editor of _The Edinburgh Review_, was for a long time anxious to conceal his employment as not exactly creditable. In the year 1809 the benchers of Lincoln's Inn passed a resolution that no one should be called to the Bar who had written for money in a newspaper. Writers in newspapers since that time have frequently risen to the Bench, and have been not the least honoured of Cabinet Ministers. Yet the sentiment which involved a certain stigma has only disappeared in this generation. And the historical cause seems to be obvious. The newspaper Press had gradually grown up in spite of authority. It had first been persecuted, and writers had escaped persecution by consenting to be spies or dependants upon great men. Half the hack-authors aspired to subsidies from the secret-service money, and the other half were looking for a reward when their patrons should have a turn in the distribution of good things. The Press was freer than elsewhere, for the English system of government gave importance to public discussion. Both Ministers and Opposition wished to influence voters through the papers. But the authors were in the position of dependent auxiliaries, prosecuted for libel if they went too far, and recompensed by pensions for the risks they had to run; they were despised, even by those who used them, as a set of mercenary guerillas, employed to do dirty work and insinuate charges which could not be made by responsible people, and ready, as was supposed, to serve on whichever side would pay them best. According to a well-known anecdote, two writers of the eighteenth century decided by the toss of a halfpenny which should write for Walpole and which should write for his adversary Pulteney; but the choice was generally decided by less reputable motives. Now, so long as the Press meant such a class it was of course natural that the trade should be regarded as discreditable, and should be carried on by men who had less care for their character than for their pockets. In England, where our development has been continuous and traditions linger long, the sentiment long survived; and the practice which corresponded to it--the practice, that is, of anonymity--has itself survived the sentiment which gave it birth. I do not, indeed, mean to insinuate that the practice may not have better reasons than that which led to its first adoption. The mask was formerly worn by men who were ashamed of their employment, and who had the same reasons for anonymity as a thief or an anarchist may have for a disguise. It may now be worn even by men who are proud of their profession, because the mask has a different significance. When a journalist calls himself "we" instead of "I," the word really represents a fact: the fact that he speaks not simply as an individual, but as the mouthpiece of a corporation, which itself claims to be the organ of a party. The plural covers whatever additional weight may be due to this representative character. To consider the value of this justification would take me too far. I have spoken of this historical fact because I think that it illustrates a more general problem. For, in the first place, I think that there were some elements in the older sentiment which deserved respect. When an author was as anxious to disavow the charge of writing for money as an author at the present day is to claim his reward, I cannot, for my part, simply set him down as silly. "My songs," said Burns, "are either above price or below price, and, therefore, I will accept nothing." I respect his feelings. He may not have been quite logical; but he was surely right in the belief that the poet whose inspiration should come from his breeches-pocket would never write true songs or embody the very spirit of a nation. I do not doubt that authors ought to be paid; but I certainly agree that a money reward never ought to be the chief aim of their writing. And I confess that some utterances about copyrights in these days have jarred upon me, because they seem to imply that the doctrine is not disavowed so unequivocally as it should be by our leaders. I am, indeed, happy to believe, as I fully believe, that there has never been a time at which more good work has been done for pure love of the work, independently, and even in defiance, of pecuniary considerations. But I cannot help thinking that in their desire to establish a right to the profits of their work, authors have condescended at moments to speak as if that reward constituted their sole motive to work, instead of being desired--as it may most properly be desired--simply as the means of enabling them to work. The old contempt was aristocratic, and in these days we have come to use aristocratic as a term of abuse. My own impression is that we ought to be just even to aristocrats; and in that contempt for all such work, I think that there was a genuine element of self-respect. The noble despised the poor scribe who had to get his living by his pen. We, my lords, as Chesterfield put it, may thank Providence that we do not depend upon our brains. It is wrong, no doubt, to despise anybody; and especially mean to despise a man for poverty. But the sentiment also included the belief--surely not so wrong--that the adventurer who joined the ranks of a party for the sake of the pay was so far contemptible, and likely to join the party which paid best. The misfortune, no doubt, was that the political state involved such dependence; and the desirable solution that every one should become independent. Till that solution was more or less reached, the corresponding sentiment was inevitable, and not without meaning. Well, the literary class has had its declaration of independence. An author has long ceased to need a patron, and he is in little danger of the law of libel. The question occurs: What are the qualities by which we should justify our independence? Have we not still a certain stoop of the shoulders, a kind of traditional shamefacedness, an awkwardness of manner, and a tendency to blush and stammer, which shows that we are not quite at ease in our new position? Or have we not--it is a more serious question--exchanged dependence upon the great for dependence upon the public, rather than learnt to stand upon our own feet? Have we made ourselves, and, if we have not, how can we make ourselves, worthy of our position as free men? We boast that the Press does part of what used to be done by the priesthood, that we enlighten and encourage and purify public opinion. There is a whole class which depends upon us for intellectual culture; which reads nothing that is not in newspapers and magazines. Do we give them a wholesome training, provide them with sound knowledge, and stimulate them to real thought? Are we such a priesthood as is really raising the standard of human life; or such a priesthood as is clinging to power by echoing the superstitions of its congregations? Nature is ruled by obeying her; and what is called ruling public opinion is too often servilely following its dictates. There is an old story which tells how a certain newspaper used to send out an emissary to discover what was the common remark that every one was making in omnibuses and club smoking-rooms, and to fashion it into next morning's article for the instruction of mankind. The echo affected to set the tune which it really repeated. Now, there is nothing more flattering than an echo. "This must be an inspired teacher, for he says exactly what I thought myself," is a very common and effective argument. To reproduce the opinions of the average reader; to dress them so skilfully that he will be pleased to see what keen intelligence is implied in holding such opinions; to say just what everybody wishes to have said a little more neatly than everybody could say it, or, at the outside, to say to-day what every one will be saying to-morrow, is one path to success in journalism. There is, I am afraid, much so-called education which tends to nothing better than a development of this art. I was consulted the other day by a young gentleman who was proposing to put himself under a professor of journalism. So far as I could gather from his account, the professor did not suggest that the pupil should study any branch of serious knowledge: that he should become, for example, a good political economist, or read ancient or modern history, or make himself familiar with continental affairs or bimetallism, or other thorny and complex subjects. The aim was precisely to enable him to dispense with all study, and to spin words out of absolute mental vacuity. If such an art can really be acquired, it is scarcely an art to be recommended to ingenuous youth. And yet, as I understand, it is an art which is more or less countenanced even at our universities. A distinguished classman learns much, but the last thing he learns is the depth of his own ignorance. He is too often practised in the power of beating out his gold or his tinsel to cover the largest possible surface; he becomes an adept in adopting the very last new fashion of thought; he can pronounce dogmatically upon all previous thinkers after reading not their own works, but the summary given in the last text-book. Success in the art of passing examinations requires the same qualities which enable a man to write off-hand a brilliant leading article upon any side of any subject. I have often heard remarks upon the modern diffusion of literary skill. Ten people, it is said, can write well now for one who could write well fifty years ago. No doubt the demand for facile writing has enormously increased the supply. But I do not think that first-rate writing--the writing which speaks of a full mind and strong convictions, which is clear because it is thorough, not because it is shallow--has increased in the same proportion, if, indeed, we can be sure that it has increased at all. Perhaps there are ten times as many people who can put other men's thoughts into fluent phrases; but are there ten times as many, are there even as many, who think for themselves and speak at first hand? The practice of anonymous writing affords, of course, obvious conveniences to a superficial omniscience. The young gentleman who dogmatises so early might blush if he had to sign his name to his audacious utterances. His tone of infallibility would be absurd if we knew who was the pope that was promulgating dogmas. The man in a mask professes to detect at a glance the absurd sophistries which impose upon the keenest contemporary intellects; but if he doffed the mask and appeared as young Mr. Smith, or Jones, who took his degree last year, we might doubt whether he had a right to assume so calmly that the sophistry is all on the other side. I am, however, quite aware that this is only one side of the question of anonymity. Were the practice abolished, the journalist who was forced to appear in his own character might abandon not his superficiality, but whatever power of blushing he retains. The more fluent phrase-monger might take himself even more seriously than he now does, and might persuade other people to take him seriously too. The charlatan, in short, might have a better chance, and use his notoriety as a stepping-stone to more mischievous ambition. I refrain from discussing this question: the rather because it is obvious that such changes must work themselves out gradually, and that we may assume, for the present, that the position will not be materially changed. I am, therefore, content to infer that the journalist should at least bear in mind one obvious criterion. He should never say anything anonymously to which he would be ashamed to sign his name. I do not mean merely that he should not be libellous or spiteful--I hope and believe that the underhand assassin of reputations, who at one period was common enough, has almost ceased to exist,--but rather that he should refrain from that pompous assumption of omniscience which would he ludicrous in a simple individual. He should say nothing when he speaks in the plural which would make him look silly if he used the first person singular. Now, this modest requirement involves, I think, a good deal. I will try to say what it involves by an example, of which I frequently think. I remember a young gentleman, who, in my hearing, confessed, in answer to a question from Carlyle, that he did a certain amount of journalistic work. The great man thereupon said, with his usual candour, and, I must add, without any personal discourtesy, that, in his opinion, the journalism of the period was just so much ditch-water. What should be a well of English undefiled poured forth streams little better than a public sewer. The phrase, like some other prophetic utterances, sounded a trifle harsh, but was all the more calculated to set me thinking. My thinking naturally led me to reflect upon Carlyle's own example. I was invited some time afterwards to sign a little testimonial presented to him upon his eightieth birthday, in imitation of the gift which he had himself forwarded to Goethe. In this it was said, and said, I think, most truly, that Carlyle was himself an example of the heroic life in literature. And why? A good many epigrams have been levelled at Carlyle, and he has more than once been ridiculed as the philosopher who preached the virtues of silence in thirty volumes. Now, Carlyle's utterances about silence may not have been unimpeachable; but I think that, stated in a commonplace way, they substantially come to this: that idle talk, a mere spinning of phrases, is a very demoralising habit, and one great mischief of the present day; but that the serious and careful utterance of real thought and genuine knowledge must be considered rather as a mode of action than of talk, and deserves the cordial welcome of all men. A Goethe affects action as much as a Napoleon. Carlyle did not really mean to draw the line between an active and a literary life; for he knew as well as any man that literature may at once require the most strenuous activity, and be the source of life and vigour in active men; but between frivolity and earnestness, between the mere waste and dissipation of energy and its concentration upon some worthy purpose. Judged by such a standard, Carlyle's words were also deeds. He wrote a good deal, for he lived a long time, and had for many years to live by his pen. I could, I think, mention several professional authors who habitually provide as much copy in a month as Carlyle ever achieved in a year. But, luckily for them, their works are not collected. Carlyle appears to be voluminous because he never wrote anything which was not worth preservation, and that because he never wrote an essay without making it as good as his abilities permitted. He did so, although he was till middle life hard pressed for money, and helping to support his family out of his narrow earnings. He stuck indomitably to his own ideal of what was best, though he had slowly to form a public which could appreciate him. And through long years of struggle and hardship he never condescended to make easy gains at the price of inferior workmanship, or to lower his standard of excellence in order to meet the immediate demands of editors. In that sense, if in no other, I call Carlyle a worthy hero of literature, and I reverence his example a great deal more, I fear, than I have imitated it. Perhaps, indeed, a man must have an unusually, even unreasonably, strong conviction of the truth and importance of his mission before he can make such sacrifices in order to discharge it worthily. To most of us the question occurs whether it can possibly be worth while to do so. Perhaps, if I devoted myself exclusively to delivering my message to mankind as forcibly as I could, and to making all necessary preparations, it might be rather more effective than the second-hand twaddle which I actually produce. But would the game be worth the candle? I have, it may be, a family to support. Should I not, as an honest man, think first of my butcher and my baker and of paying the collector of rates, before I undertake to become an immortal author? Probably, at the best, my immortality would be a very short one, for there is not one author in a thousand who can make his voice audible at the distance of a generation. Is it not better and wiser to earn an honest living by innocent small talk, than to aim at a great success and let my children go barefoot and lose their schooling? That low man, says Browning's Grammarian-- That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundred's soon hit: This high man, aiming at a million, Misses an unit. Is it not better to hit your hundred than to aim at your million and miss it? That is a problem which I do not think it possible to answer by a general rule. We rightly honour the Carlyle or the Wordsworth who has forced the public to admire him in spite of critical gibes and long obscurity; but we must not forget that even success does not necessarily justify the audacity which has won it, and that a good many people who fancied themselves to be capable of enlightening the world have been empty-headed impostors who would have done better to take the critic's advice: drop their pens and mind their gallipots. Devotion to an ideal, like other high qualities, may be misplaced or counterfeited by mere personal vanity. But leaving each man to decide by the concrete circumstances of his own case, I still hold that at least we should try in this respect to act in Carlyle's spirit. I cannot blame the author who, under certain conditions, feels that his first duty is to pay his weekly bills, so long, of course, as he does not earn the money by pandering to the bad passions of his readers; for there are modes of making a livelihood by the pen to which starvation or the workhouse would be preferred by any high-minded man. But we will not judge harshly of the author who lives by supplying innocent, if rather insipid, food for public amusement. He might be capable of better things; but, then, he might certainly be doing much worse. Yet in any case, I say that, to have a tolerably comfortable conscience, an author should try to look a little farther than this. The great mass of mankind has to devote most of its energies to employments which require nothing more than honest work; and yet even the humblest can do something to maintain and elevate the moral standard of his surroundings. The author, so far as he is simply a journeyman, a reporter of ordinary events and speeches, for example, does his duty so far as he reports them honestly; and we have no more to say to him. But the author who takes part in political and social or religious discussions has a responsibility which involves something more. Probably he feels--I am sure enough that I feel--that his performance makes remarkably little difference to mankind in general; and that he is playing only an infinitesimal part in the great processes by which the huge world blunders along, struggling into some approximation to a more tolerable order. He may compare himself to one of the myriads of insects building up one square yard on the coral reef which stretches for hundreds of leagues. Yet even the coral reef depends on the units, and if the insect's powers are small it concerns him to make the best of them. Now, to make the best of them implies some genuine interest in his work; something that makes the reader perceive that he is being addressed by a human being, not a mere machine for vamping up old materials. I have been struck in reading newspaper articles, even my own, by the curious loss of individuality which a man seems to suffer as a writer. Unconsciously the author takes the colour of his organ; he adopts not only its sentiment but its style, and seems to become a mere transmitter of messages, with whose substance he has no more to do than the wires of the electric telegraph which carries them. But now and then we suddenly come across something fresh and original; we know by instinct that we are being addressed by another man, and are in a living relation to a separate human being, not to a mere drilled characterless unit of a disciplined army; we find actually thoughts, convictions, arguments, which, though all arguments are old, have evidently struck the writer's mind, and not merely been transmitted into his pen; and then we may know that we are in the presence of a real force, and meeting with a man who is doing his duty. I refrain from mentioning, though I easily could mention, living modern instances. But on looking to the history of the past, it is curious to notice how rare the phenomenon is, and how important it is when it occurs. Think for a moment, for example, of old Cobbett, agricultural labourer and soldier, with nothing to help him but his shrewd mother-wit and his burly English strength. He wrote much that was poor and clumsy enough; much, too, that was pure claptrap, and much that was dictated by personal motives and desire for notoriety. But in spite of this the untaught peasant became one of the great political forces, more effective than the ninety and nine elegant _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly_ reviewers, who had all the advantages which he lacked. Why? Partly, no doubt, because he was a really strong man; but also because he had at least one genuine and deeply-rooted conviction, springing out of his profound desire for the welfare of the class which was both the largest and the most helpless of the England of his day. He is, therefore, one example, and there are many others, of the singular power which is exercised in journalism by a man, under whatever disadvantages, who possesses, or rather who is possessed by, some master-thought, and utters it in season and out of season with perhaps disproportionate intensity, but with perfect sincerity. Now, though Cobbett would be in some respects a bad model, I only refer to him in this sense. When my young friends consult me as to the conditions of successful journalism, my first bit of advice comes to this: know something really; at any rate, try to know something; be the slaves of some genuine idea, or you will be the slaves of a newspaper--a bit of mechanism instead of a man. You can carry on the business with self-respect--whatever your success--if it is also something more than a business; if, for example, you can honestly feel that you are helping on the propaganda of sound principle, denouncing real grievances, and speaking from genuine belief. No man has a right to lay down the law to statesmen as though he were in possession of absolute knowledge, or as though he were a man of science talking to a class of ignorant schoolboys. But every man ought to believe that truth is attainable, and to endeavour with all his power to attain it. He should study the great problems of the day historically: for he must know how they have arisen; what previous attempts have been made to solve them; how far recent suggestions are mere reproductions of exploded fallacies; and so qualify himself to see things in their true relations as facts of a great process of evolution. He should endeavour to be philosophical in spirit, so far, at least, as to seek to base his opinions upon general principles, and to look at the events of the day from a higher point of view than that of personal or party expediency. And he must, though upon this it is hardly necessary to insist, be familiar with the affairs of the day: for no one can apply principles to politics effectively without a genuine first-hand knowledge of the actual currents of political life. Unless a man can take up his calling in some such spirit, he can be but a mere retailer of popular commonplaces, and must live from hand to mouth or upon the chance utterances of people as thoughtless as himself, increasing the volume of mere noise which threatens to drown sense. But if he seriously cultivates his powers, and enriches his mind, he may feel sure that even in journalism he may be discharging one of the most important functions which a man can undertake. He may be right or wrong in the particular doctrines which he supports. Indeed, the first and most obvious result of any attempt to take wider views of politics is the admission that wisdom (and as certainly, nonsense) is not the exclusive possession of any party in politics, literature, or philosophy. But something is done whenever a man of trained intellect and genuine conviction lifts popular discussion to a higher plane. At such times it rises above the region of personal invective or pure platitude, and involves a conscious reference to great principles and to the remote conditions of the little bit of history which we are actually transacting. When John Stuart Mill became a member of the House of Commons, and was accepted as a philosopher coming among practical men, he said much that displeased his hearers; but it was observed by competent judges at the time, that the tone of parliamentary debates was perceptibly raised. Members of Parliament were forced to reflect for the moment, not only how their speeches would tell in next day's reports, and what traps they were setting for opponents, but also for a brief instant, how their arguments would stand the test of impartial logic. Mill tells a significant story in his autobiography, which, perhaps, indicates one source of his influence. When he appeared upon the hustings he was asked whether he had not said that the English working-classes were generally liars. He replied simply, "I did," and the reply was, he says, received with "vehement applause". The incident, he adds, convinced him that the working-classes valued nothing more than thorough straightforwardness, and honoured a man for daring to tell them of their faults. I hope that it is so: I believe, in point of fact, that no quality is more heartily honoured than unflinching political honesty. And I confess that I have often wondered why it is that where the reward is so clear, so few people take the plain road which leads to it. It seems equally clear that moral courage pays better than any other quality in politics, and that it is the rarest of all qualities even to be simulated. We are all anxious to show how profound is our affection for the masses; but how many candidates for their favour dare to give Mr. Mill's proof of genuine respect? No doubt you must make it clear that you possess some other qualities before you can hope to conciliate the respect of a class by accusing it openly of habitual lying. Indeed, this might be taken as a test of genuine independence. Till you can tell men of their faults without being suspected of spite or bad temper--till you can praise them without being suspected of unworthy flattery--you are not really in a position worthy to be called independent. How many journalists--I say nothing of statesmen--stand firmly enough on their own legs to speak out without giving offence? We are often told of a great revolution of opinion, and especially of the abandonment of the old prejudice against government interference. That a great change has taken place in the opinions which men profess is undeniable; though how far that change has been due to unbiassed scientific reflection, and how far to a change in the conditions of popularity, is a very different question. I see, for example, a statement by an honourable gentleman that he approves of the Eight Hours Bill because the principle of non-interference with adult labour is obsolete. It is too late to avow it. If the honourable gentleman means to say that experience has proved the principle to be erroneous, he is, of course, justified in abandoning it. But, if his meaning be simply that the principle has gone out of fashion, what is this but to admit that you will abandon any doctrine as soon as it ceases to be popular? Do we really mean to assert that a fallacious doctrine can never get the upper hand; that the beliefs of to-day are always better than the beliefs of yesterday; that every man who has dared to stick to an opinion condemned by a majority must necessarily be a fool for his pains? That really seems to be a common opinion. We hear a great deal at the present day about "mandates," and a mandate seems to be regarded not simply as a declaration of the will of a majority which must, in point of fact, be obeyed, but as the official utterance of an infallible church which cannot in point of logic be erroneous. Now, I confess that I have always had a weakness for the faithful Abdiel. I believe that a man is often doing invaluable services who resists the dominant current of opinion, who denounces fallacies when they are growing and flourishing, and points out that a revolution in belief, even though it be inevitable for the time, and even though it contain an element of right reason, may yet contain errors and hasty judgments and deviations from the true line of progress, which require exposure the more unsparing in proportion to their temporary popularity. Is not the ordinary journalist's frame of mind singularly unfavourable to his discharge of this function? and is it not inevitable that it should be so as long as the journalist's only aim is to gain a hearing somehow? It matters not which side he takes. He denounces some new doctrine, but only in the name of the current prejudices which it happens to shock. He advocates it, but only because it is the last new fashion of the day. In either case he falls into the ordinary party vice of imagining that his opponents must be fools or knaves, that their opinions are directly inspired by the devil or a judicial blindness inflicted by Providence, simply because he will not take the trouble to understand them. The man who would try to raise himself above the position of the mere pander to passing antipathies must widen his intellectual horizon. He must qualify himself to take broad views; he must learn that his little list of commonplaces does not represent real thought, but is often the embodiment of mere prejudice, or perhaps the deposit of words left by thinkers of past generations; he must learn to do more than merely dish them up with a new sauce; he must concentrate his abilities upon definite problems, consider how they have arisen, and what is their relation to the past and the future. To do so requires some disinterestedness: some love of truth for its own sake; and a capacity for answering your opponent by explaining him, instead of a mere quickness for taunting him personally. It requires, no doubt, serious and prolonged application. Even such a training will not enable a man to unlock all the puzzles of the day; but it may help towards the desirable consummation in which a solution is at least sought in connection with established principles, and with a constant reference to the organised experience which also can be a safe guide to more reasonable conclusions. Even the attempt to do so may strengthen a man against the temptation to take short cuts to notoriety, and seek a momentary sensation at the sacrifice of permanent effect. We owe gratitude to all who have acted upon such principles and won the influence which comes at last, though it comes slowly, to honest work, bestowed even upon such shifting materials as political and moral philosophy. I have dwelt so far chiefly upon political journalism, because it is so characteristic a part of modern literature, and illustrates so clearly some obvious tendencies of the time. I must say something, however, of another department of literature, which is sometimes said to have nothing at all to do with morality. The poet or the novelist, it is suggested, has no duties except that duty which Scheherazade discharged at the risk of her neck,--the duty of keeping her master amused. If, instead of telling him stories about genii, she had read him every morning an orthodox sermon or an ethical discourse, the one thousand and one nights would have been diminished by one thousand. Am I to tell our modern Scheherazades to forget the _Arabian Nights_, and adopt for our use passages from the homilies of Tillotson? Some religious persons have taken that horn of the dilemma, and perhaps with some plausibility. When the world is heaving with the throes of a social earthquake, what right have you or I to be lounging on sofas, telling silly stories about young ladies' and gentlemen's billings and cooings? Perhaps the condemnation should be extended to recreations less obviously frivolous. Your philosopher who tries to distinguish or to identify "is" and "is not," and to draw the true line between object and subject, has a very fascinating plaything, but is perhaps as far from influencing the world. Judging from the history of past philosophical cobwebs, he might as well be framing conundrums, or learning how to throw grain through the eye of a needle. I only refer to this to say that I am not in favour of suppressing either art or philosophy. I have a kind of hankering after them in some forms myself. I assume, without further argument, that Shakespeare, and Milton, and Wordsworth, and Fielding, and Scott, and Dickens, did well in devoting themselves to literature, and probably did more to make the world happier and better than if they had composed sermons or systems of philosophy. I must, as I said, refrain from pronouncing any set eulogy upon the services rendered by authors. This only I take for granted. No one, I think, of any intellectual capacity can remember the early days when his faculties were ripening, when he wandered, for the pure delight of wandering, in the enchanted world of the great imaginative writers, saw through their eyes, and unconsciously caught the contagion of their sympathies, without feeling a deep gratitude to the men who not only gave him so much innocent pleasure, but who incidentally refined his taste and roused his enthusiasm, and quickened his perception of whatever is beautiful, or heroic, or pathetic, in the moral or the natural world. The highest literature embodies the instincts by which a cultivated people differs from the barbarous, and the classes are in a true sense civilised, which enjoy and appreciate the ennobling as distinguished from the coarser pleasures, and rise above the merely brutal life. One who aspires to be a leader, or to follow the steps of the leaders, in this band of crusaders against barbarism, must surely have some corresponding duties. I am here upon the edge of certain troublesome controversies which I shall refrain from discussing at length. This only I need say. Some great authors explicitly accept the function of preaching. Milton, and, in later days, Wordsworth, identified the offices of the prophet and the poet, and set themselves deliberately to expound an ideal of life, and justify the ways of God to man. And Milton gave the principle in his famous saying, that he who would write well hereafter of laudable things must be himself a true poem. Yet men equally great have impressed readers by their apparent indifference to such considerations. They accept the new commandment which, as Emerson tells us, the Muse gave to her darling son, "Thou shalt not preach". Shakespeare and Scott did not consciously and deliberately write to set forth any ideal; they even wrote, more or less, to make money; they were magnificent opulent geniuses, who poured out their imaginative wealth liberally and spontaneously, without a thought of any particular moral, simply because their minds were full to overflowing of great thoughts and vivid images, which they diffused as liberally as the rose gives its scent. Are we to say that they were wrong or morally inferior, even if artistically superior, to those who wrote, like Milton or Dante, with a more definite aim? Must I condemn Scott because he did not write, like the excellent Miss Edgeworth, or even like Dickens in some of his stories, to preach consciously that honesty is the best policy, or that selfishness is a vice; and, if so, must I not condemn a man from whom I have not only received an incalculable amount of innocent enjoyment, but imbibed--it is my own fault if I have not imbibed--many thoughts that have strengthened and stimulated the best elements of my nature? If I insist upon the moral influences, am I not confounding the poet and the preacher, and falling under the lash of I know not how many critical connoisseurs? If I renounce the preachers, I am renouncing some of the greatest artists, and indirectly sanctioning even such art as is worthy only of Holywell Street, and panders to the worst passions. I will say what I think. Great writers, it seems to me, may be great in two ways; and the greatest is he who combines them most thoroughly. The first-rate writer, in the first place, must--to use a frequently misapplied word--be a thorough realist. He is great in proportion to the width and depth of the truths which he grasps, and to which he gives the most perfect expression. When we read Shakespeare at his best, what strikes us is that he has expressed once for all some home-truth about human nature and the world, round which all inferior writers seem to have been blundering without ever achieving a complete utterance. More generally, every great period of our literature has been marked in one shape or other by a fresh realism, or what is called the desire to return to Nature: to get rid of the phrases which have become conventional and unreal, and express the real living ultimate truth. Shakespeare and the great men of his time were inspired by such a passion; they were animated by the desire to "hold the mirror up to Nature" and to portray real vivid human passion, for they had burst through the old mediæval chains of theological dogma, and were aroused to a sudden fresh perception of the beauties which had been unrecognised and misconceived by ascetic monks. The men of Pope's time, again, believed in what they, too, called the "religion of Nature," and tried to hasten the day when enlightened reason should finally crush what Berkeley called the "pedantry of courts and schools". Wordsworth and his followers inaugurated a new era by proposing a return to "Nature," because the language, which with Pope expressed a real meaning, had again become the conventional language of a narrow class of critics and the town. It is in all ages one great function of the imaginative writers to get rid of mere survivals; to forego the spectacles used by their ancestors as helps, which have now become encumbrances; to destroy the formulas employed only to save the trouble of thinking, and make us see facts directly, instead of being befooled by words. In that sense it is their great service that they break up the old frost of dreary commonplace, and give life and power, in place of an acceptance of mere ossified or fossilised remnants of what once was thought. Briefly, they teach us to see what is before us. So far the function of the poet resembles that of the scientific and philosophic observer. He differs radically in method, because he proceeds by intuition instead of analysis; shows us the type, instead of cataloguing the attributes of a class; and gives us a real living man--a Falstaff or a Hamlet--instead of propounding a psychological theory as to the relations of the will, the intellect, and the emotions. I take it, therefore, that realism in this sense is one essential characteristic of great imaginative power. I hold it to be more than ever necessary; more necessary because scientific methods of thought are more developed. It is less possible for a serious writer to make use of the merely fanciful symbols which were perfectly legitimate as long as they represented real beliefs, but are now fitter for only the lighter moods. The greatest writers have to dispense with fairies and fighting gods and goddesses, and the muses, and to show us a direct portraiture of the forces by which society is actually moved. But the functions of the great writer, though they involve a perception of truth, are not adequately defined by the simple condition of truthfulness. He has to be--may I say it?--a preacher; he cannot help it; and, so far as he cannot help it, his preaching will be elevating in proportion as it is truthful. He does not preach in the sense in which a moralist preaches, by arguing in favour of this or that doctrine, or expounding the consequences of opinions. It is not his business to prove, but to see, and to make you see. But, in another sense, he cannot help preaching, because his power over you is founded upon sympathy, upon his personal charms, upon the clearness with which he sees and the vividness with which he portrays the real nature of the instincts which make men lovable or hateful. What are really the most fascinating books in the language? I was impressed the other day by discovering that perhaps the most popular of all English books, judging by the number of editions, is Goldsmith's _Vicar of Wakefield_. To what does it owe its popularity? Obviously to the exquisite keenness of Goldsmith's perception of the moral beauty of a simple character, which is always saved from the charge of being unctuous or sentimental by the constant play of gentle and yet penetrative humour. Do we not love Charles Lamb for a similar reason? Why, again, do we love Scott, as all men ought to love him? Is it not because his Jeanie Deans and his Dandie Dinmont, and a hundred more characters, show the geniality, the manliness as well as the shrewd common-sense of their creator, and his vivid perception of the elements which ennoble the national character which he loved so well? Why does the British public love Dickens so well? For his incomparable fun, no doubt; but also because the fun is always associated with a keen perception of certain moral qualities which they regard with, it may be, excessive admiration. But to give no more examples, I am content to say that the enduring power of every great writer depends not merely on his intellectual forces, but upon the charm of his character--the clear recognition of what it really is that makes life beautiful and desirable, and of what are the baser elements that fight against the elevating forces. We are under intellectual obligations to the man of science who will tell us, for example, how mountain chains have been raised and carved into their present shape. But we are grateful to the great poets and prose writers, to Wordsworth and Mr. Ruskin, for interpreting and stimulating the emotions which make the vision of the great peaks a source of pure delight. We may, in the same way, thank the psychologist who can make more intelligible the principle of association of ideas, or trace the development of the moral sense or the social affections. But we love the man who, like Goldsmith, and Lamb, and Scott, and Wordsworth, has revealed to us by actual portraits of typical characters, the sweetness and tenderness and truthfulness which may be embodied in humble characters. Love, says Wordsworth, of his shepherd lord-- Love had he found in huts where poor men lie, His daily teachers had been woods and rills; The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the comely hills. The power of discovering and of making us discover such thoughts in the huts of poor men and in natural scenery is the true prerogative of the poet, and it is to that power that he owes his enduring place in our hearts. I have said this much because I think that it is in a perversion of these principles that we shall find some of the temptations to which the author is in these days most liable. I can only glance at them briefly. One perversion, for example, is indicated by the common use of the phrase "realism". This word has various meanings; but the commonest, perhaps, would not be misrepresented by saying that it involves a confusion between the functions of the man of science and the poet. In a scientific sense, it is a sufficient reason for setting forth any theory that you believe it to be true. The facts which you describe may be hideous and revolting: it is not the less desirable that they should be accurately known. The poet and novelist may be equally justified in taking hideous and revolting facts into account. That, for example, is the duty of a satirist; and I am not at all concerned to say that satire is illegitimate--I think it perfectly legitimate. I should be the last to assert that a writer should confine himself to such facts as can be discussed with decency in presence of a young ladies' school. On the contrary, I think that, if not the most enviable privilege, it is sometimes a duty of the novelist to set forth vice and crime, and even, it may be, to set them forth in impressive and startling shapes. It is his duty to represent them truly and to make them intelligible; to show how they may be natural, and not to misrepresent even a villain. All I say is, that he should also recognise the fact that they are hideous and revolting. And, therefore, this is no excuse for the man who really dwells upon such facts, not because they are facts, but because he knows that such descriptions are the easiest way of attracting morbid tastes; and that he can get a readier market by being irreverent and indecent than by other expedients. To defend such work on the excuse of realism is simply to indulge in a bit of contemptible humbug, too transparent to need exposure. The purpose of an artist, you say, is to give pleasure, not to preach. That is perfectly true; but to give pleasure to whom? If it is to give pleasure to the prurient, to the cynical, to the debauchee, to give the kind of pleasure which, to a pure-minded man, is pain, and of which even the blackguard is ashamed, then I will not quarrel over words, and ask whether it can be truly artistic, but I will simply reply that I should have a greater respect for a man who lived by picking pockets. But, you reply, it requires a great deal of skill. So does picking pockets, and so do some other kinds of human energy which I need not particularise. If the ethical judgment be really irrelevant æsthetically, the æsthetic judgment must be irrelevant ethically. If that doctrine be true, we are, therefore, quite at liberty to say that a thing may be beautiful and at the same time blackguardly and beastly. I will, however, express my own conviction, that what is disgusting to a right-minded man cannot be really beautiful, and that the sentiments which it offends cannot be put out of court simply because they are called moral. They have as good a right to be considered as any others. There is a temptation of the opposite kind: the temptation to what I may briefly call sentimentalism. The virtue of idealism is as necessary as the virtue of realism; and every great writer shows his greatness by combining the two. The contradictory of the real is not properly the ideal, but the unreal--which is a very different thing. For idealism means properly, as I take it, that quality in virtue of which a poem or a fiction does not represent merely the scientific or photographic reproduction of matters of fact, but incarnates an idea and expresses a sentiment. A great work imparts to us the impression made upon a mind of unusual power, reflectiveness, and emotional sensibility by some aspect of the world in which we all live, but which he can see more vividly than others. To be really impressive, therefore, it must correspond to facts and be the genuine product of experience. The erroneous idealism is that which perverts the truth in order to gain apparent emphasis; which deals in the impossible, the absurd, and the exaggerated; and supposes a world which cannot even be better than the actual, because it cannot exist; which, therefore, has the defect of being arbitrary and inconceivable. So political Utopias are interesting in proportion as they suggest a legitimate construction, based upon actual facts and observed laws of human nature. As soon as we see that they presuppose a world of monstrosities, of impossible combinations of incompatible qualities, they become mere playthings. And the same is true of every work of imagination; as soon as it ceases to have a foundation in truth--to be other than realistic--it loses its real hold upon our sympathies. You solve no problem when you call in a god to cut the knot. This is the tendency of the sentimentalist, who refuses to be bound by the actual conditions. His creations are ephemeral because only plausible, even to the imagination, so long as the illusions to which they are congenial survive. And he probably falls into the further error that the emotion which he utters becomes as factitious as the laws which he invents. The man who weeps because he is melted at the sight of misery, touches us; but when he weeps because he finds it pleasant, or because he wishes to make a public exhibition of his tenderness of heart, we find him out by degrees and call him a humbug and a sentimentalist. Sham feelings and moral facts are the staple of the sentimentalist and the cause of his inevitable decay. These remarks may serve to suggest the temptations which most beset the author in our days, though peculiar to our day only in the degree in which authorship has become more professional. For the ideal author is the man who, having discovered truth, desires to reveal it to his fellows, or, being full of perceptions of beauty, cannot resist the impulse to embody them in words or outward symbols. But when he desires also to live by his powers, he is at once in a position of which all authors know the peril. He becomes self-conscious; for he has a perpetual poultice of public favour or enmity applied to soften his fibres, and to make him feel, even in his study, that an eye is upon him and that he must so act as always to preserve attention. He is tempted to produce sensation at any cost--to shock and startle by horrors if he cannot move the sympathies by gentle arts: for a man who cannot command the pathetic, can, at least, always be disgusting. He can turn our stomachs if he cannot move our hearts. He is tempted, at least, to caricature--to show how keen is his perception by crude and glaring colours, and to indulge in the grotesque as an easy substitute for the really graphic; he can affect a facile cynicism to show how profound is his penetration, and display that marvellous knowledge of the world and the human heart, and that power of discovering the emptiness of all apparent virtues which is so common an endowment of young gentlemen upon their first initiation into real experience of life. There is nothing which the author affects so easily at his first start as the world weariness which comes from long experience and years of disappointed hope. And when a man has once gained applause for his sentiment, he finds himself his own covert rival, and is forced to substitute for the first "sprightly runnings" a fanciful pumping up of the last dregs of his old feelings. Nothing, unfortunately, is more common, or could be more easily illustrated by examples of good writers, than the spectacle of the veteran trying to reproduce in cold blood the effects which he struck out spontaneously and unconsciously in youth. And, then, at every instant the poor author feels that he must keep up with the fashion; he lives in fear of that verdict which will come some day, that he is an old fogey, and that he is transgressing those eternal principles which were discovered by some ingenuous youth a fortnight ago. Some such danger is, indeed, shared by others than the author. It is the misfortune of his calling that success with him is intrinsically associated with notoriety. A man may do good work in many departments of life, of which no one will ever hear beyond a narrow circle. I hold, for my part, that the greatest part of the good work which is done in the world is actually of that kind, and that the best is done for the pure love of work. The world knows nothing of its greatest men, and as little, perhaps, of its best. But what would be the good of writing even a _Hamlet_ or a _Divine Comedy_ if nobody was to read it? Some great writers, I know, have prided themselves on finding fit audience and few; and I fully agree that a man who could really influence a few seminal minds might be well content with such a result of his labours. But, after all, the genuine aim of a great author must be, directly or indirectly, to affect the world in which he lives, whether by changing its beliefs or stimulating its emotions. And, as a rule, he cannot do so without becoming known, and even known to vast numbers of readers. Some religious writers, the author, for example, of the _Imitation of Christ_, have influenced many generations, while absolutely concealing their identity. Even they must, at least, have desired that their works should be known; and the case is a rare one. For the author generally, success of the worthiest kind, success in enlightening, encouraging, and stimulating his fellow-men, is inextricably connected with success of a lower kind, the success measured by fame and popularity. That, of course, is equally the case with statesmanship: a statesman has to appeal to crowds, and is too apt to be fascinated by thunders of applause; public oratory, even in the pulpit, is a terrible stimulant to unworthy vanity. The author only differs in this, that his very function presupposes a temperament of more than average sensibility; that he does not get that case-hardening which is administered to the statesman by the opposition orator; and that publicity has a specially intoxicating effect upon the man whose proper home is in his study, and who, perhaps, leaves it only to mix with a circle of reverent admirers. I have tried to indicate some of the obvious temptations of authors, especially so far as they are strengthened by the practice of authorship as a profession. They may be summed up by saying that they tend to degrade the profession into a trade, and a trade which has as many tricks as the least elevating kind of business. It would be, perhaps, desirable to end by deducing some definite moral. But, in the first place, I think that any such moral as I could give is sufficiently indicated by the statement of the dangers. And, in the second place, I do not think that there is any moral that can be regarded as peculiar to authors. For an author, after all, is a man, and, as all men ought to be, a workman. His power comes to this, that he is a man with a special capacity for exciting sympathy. That he should be a good workman, therefore, goes without saying; and it follows that he should have a sense of responsibility in whatever department he undertakes; that he should not bestow his advice upon us without qualifying himself to be a competent adviser; nor write philosophical speculation without serious study of philosophy; nor, if possible, produce poetry or even fiction without filling his mind by observation or training it by sympathy with the great movements of thought which are shaping the world in which we live. It is a sort of paradox which cannot be avoided, that we must warn a man that one condition of all good work is that it should be spontaneous, and yet tell him that it should be directed to make men better and happier. It seems to be saying that the conscious pursuit of a given end would be inconsistent with the attainment of the end. Yet I believe that this is a paradox which can be achieved in practice on the simple condition of a reasonable modesty. The author, that is, should not listen to those who would exaggerate the importance of his work. The world can get on very well without it; and even the greatest men are far more the product than the producers of the intellectual surroundings. The acceptance of that truth--I hold it to be a truth--will help to keep in check the exaggerated estimate of the importance of making a noise in the world, which is our besetting sin, and help to make a regulating principle of what is a theoretical belief, that a man who is doing honestly good work in any department, whether under the eyes of a multitude or of a few, will be happiest if he can learn to take pleasure in doing it thoroughly rather than in advertising it widely. And, finally, with that conviction we shall be less liable to the common error of an author who grumbles at his want of success, and becomes morbid and irritable and inclined to lower his standard, when in reality he ought to remember that he is as unreasonable as a marksman who should complain of the target for keeping out of the line of fire. "It is my own fault" is often a bitter reflection, but a bitter may be a very wholesome tonic. THE VANITY OF PHILOSOPHISING. When the Preacher exclaimed, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity," he did not exclude his own wisdom. "I communed with my own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all that have gone before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart hath great experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I gave my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." The Preacher, whoever he may have been, has uttered thoughts upon which many eloquent followers have expatiated. More than two thousand years have passed since the words were written; philosophies have risen and spread and decayed; and yet, in this year 1895, can we say that they have brought more than a multiplication of doubt? Has the increase of knowledge as yet diminished sorrow, or established any firm standing ground from which we may look upon the universe and say that the eternal riddle is, I will not say solved, but brought a step nearer to solution? A great poet--I can't tell whether he lived in the twelfth or the nineteenth century, for the phrase is equally characteristic of either Omar Khayyam or Edward Fitzgerald--gives the same thought:-- Myself, when young, did eagerly frequent Doctor and saint, and heard great argument About it and about: but evermore Came out by the same door as in I went. What, indeed, are eight or twenty centuries in the life even of this planet? There are moments at which we all have suddenly felt by flashes the sensation of being suspended in vast abysses of space and time: when we see, for example, a chart of the heavens which has been recently revealed to us by astronomers, and find that spaces between the stars shown to us by ordinary eyesight are filled in every direction with world beyond world, vast systems of worlds, worlds in every stage of evolution, growing out of nebulous vapour or sinking into eternal coldness: while the imagination is staggered and bewildered by the inconceivable vastness of the spaces indicated, and its own infinitesimal pettiness. If we stroll into a museum and look at the petrified bones of some grotesque monster, and after rejoicing, perhaps, that there is an end of him, we are struck by the thought of the vast lapse of ages during which he was being slowly hammered out of some mere primitive form, and then slowly decayed, and was gradually elbowed out of existence by monsters a degree less preposterous than himself, and gain a new measure of the portentous lapse of time. The greatest of poets has summed up the impression in the phrase which Carlyle was fond of quoting: "we are such stuff as dreams are made of": and our little speck of existence a vanishing quantity in comparison of the infinite above and below and around us, which we dimly infer though we cannot distinctly realise it. If in such a mood, common at times to all who can think or feel, we take up some philosophical work, and find the writer complacently setting forth a cosmogony or a theory of the Universe; explaining how things came into being; what is the reason why they are not better or worse; what is the end of the whole drama: are we not justified in exclaiming with Carlyle:-- The builder of this Universe was wise, He planned all souls, all systems, planets, particles: The plan he shaped all worlds and æons by Was--Heavens!--was thy small nine-and-thirty articles! Carlyle has been, to some of us, the most stimulating of writers, just because he succeeded in expressing, with unsurpassed power, the emotion which I must be content with indicating--the emotion which is roused by sudden revelations of the infinitudes, the silences and eternities that surround us. We cannot keep it permanently before us; the present absorbs us, and its little interests seem to be all that is important. It is only at moments when, for example, we reflect that our action of a minute ago is already a part of the mysterious past, sinking downwards, and rapidly becoming invisible in the depths of the infinite ocean, that we are startled by a momentary pang, and feel as though to live with a constant sense of our insignificance would be to risk the paralysis of all our powers of thought and action. That way, we are inclined to say, lies madness. We shall lose our heads if we gaze too long into such tremendous depths. Possibly we may restore our equilibrium by meditating upon the infinitesimal, though possibly too we may rather feel that such meditations only reveal another infinite. I intended to make a few reflections suggested by such thoughts, when I found a guide, and, to a great extent, an ally, in a writer who has lately taken up the ancient parable. Mr. Balfour, in a book rather quaintly entitled _Foundations of Belief_ has dwelt upon the vanity of all known philosophy, and has shown, or appears to some of his readers to have endeavoured to show, that it is hopeless to lay any sound foundations on the little film of knowledge beneath which lie the great unknown abysses. He tries to indicate some other basis, though, so far as I can understand him, the foundations of his edifice are ingeniously supported by the superstructure; and that is a kind of architecture which, to my mind, lacks stability. Through a large part of his argument, however, I find myself in the pleasanter position of an ally. He asserts, and I doubt whether any competent thinker would materially differ from him, that there does not, as a matter of fact, exist any established system of philosophic truth--any system upon which we can rely, as we do, in fact, rightly or wrongly rely, upon certain scientific doctrines. We no more doubt the truth of the Newtonian system of astronomy than we doubt that fire burns or that bread nourishes. But the briefest glance at the old systems of philosophy shows us, as Mr. Balfour says, nothing but imperishable ruins--imperishable æsthetically--but, logically, mere crumbling fragments. We can still read Plato with delight; but the delight is due to the beauty of style and exposition, not, certainly, to the conviction produced by his reasoning. Aristotle's philosophy is a marvel--for his time: but his theory of the Universe is no more tenable than his Natural Science. The luxuriant growths of later Greek philosophy are interesting only to the curious investigators of the pathology of the human intellect. The vast development of scholastic philosophy in the middle ages showed only how far unlimited ingenuity and subtlety may lead in the wrong direction, if it starts with mistaken principles. It ended by upsetting the doctrines which it attempted to prove, and had finally to commit suicide, or fall before the insurrection of living thought. The great men who revolted against its tyranny in its later stages constructed new systems, which, to them, seemed demonstrable, but which, to us, are already untenable. We cannot accept Descartes, or Spinoza, or Leibnitz, or Bacon, or Hobbes, or Locke, as giving satisfactory or even coherent systems, or as having done more than lead to the thorough scepticism of Hume. If Kant presented one solution of the difficulties in which philosophy was landed, we have still to ask what precisely Kant meant; whether his criticism was simply all-destructive, or really left anything standing, and, if so, what it left standing; and who represents the proper line of development. Shall we, with Schopenhauer, pronounce Hegel to be a thorough impostor? and, if so, can we seriously accept Schopenhauer's own system? If, here and there, some people accept his theories for literary purposes, nobody will maintain that they rest upon any permanently settled foundation. If, again, we believe in Hegel, we have to make out what we mean by believing in Hegel, and to which school of his followers we are to attach ourselves. I need not consider the polemic which Mr. Balfour has directed against the writers who have given a version of Hegelian principles in England. Personally, I agree with his criticisms in a general way; but I fancy that even the adherents of those principles would defend themselves mainly by declaring that they do not make such pretensions as he ascribes to them. They try, at most, to indicate a way of approaching, not of solving the problems. But, at least, they would claim to have done one thing: namely, to have proved the inadequacy of the rival system of empirical philosophy, accepted by the English followers of Locke, and now mainly represented for us by Mr. Herbert Spencer. I only add to this, that it is not a question of the convictions of any individual thinker, however eminent. Philosophies of every different variety have been not merely accepted by those who first devised them, but have been taken up in good faith by whole schools of disciples; they have been tested, on a large scale, by systematic application to all relevant questions, and one after the other has become bankrupt; has lost its hold on the world, and confessed that it leaves the riddle as dark as it was before. All that can be claimed for the greatest philosophers is, that they have, at least, proved that certain paths which seemed to lead through the labyrinth, end in a deadlock; that they have exposed certain fallacies by the process of provisionally believing in them; and that they have buoyed certain shoals, and demonstrated that no channel leads in what seemed to be a promising direction. Is there any channel open? Once more, I might follow--I might even, if I had time, expand Mr. Balfour's argument in another direction. He has pointed out--not for the first time certainly--how men's beliefs are due not to reasoning, but to countless causes which prevent them from reasoning. The argument is too familiar, indeed, to require much emphasis. Some one, arguing in the days of the old orthodoxy upon the necessity of the true faith to salvation, put the case of a couple of infants deserted by their parents. One of them is carried off by a Mohammedan and the other by a Christian. Each will, of course, adopt the faith of the party into whose hands it has fallen; and the problem was, whether the infant seized by the Mohammedan would be eternally damned, and the one taken by the Christian go straight to heaven; and whether, on the whole, that would satisfy our sense of justice. The argument implies the inevitableness of error. Men not only do, but ought to hold, contradictory opinions. Take a Scottish Davie Deans, brought up in the shadow of John Knox's pulpit; a Tyrolese peasant, educated in the Catholic Church; and a Mohammedan, living at Mecca; and, of course, it is plain, not only that each will accept the creed which pervades what is for him the whole world known to him, but that as a reasoning being each is probably in the right. That is to say, the accessible evidence is in each case overwhelmingly in favour of the doctrine, inasmuch as the supposed reasoner is entirely unaware of the evidence which might be produced on the other side. But what is true of the peasant is true of the philosopher. Measured on a sufficient scale, the difference vanishes. This intellectual horizon is just as much limited, though not so narrowly limited. No one but a bigot would deny that a mediæval philosopher might accept on perfectly reasonable grounds the dogmas of the Catholic Church. The historical difficulties had not even been presented to his mind. He had no reason for doubting innumerable assumptions as to fact which have since turned out to be erroneous; and if the method of his reasoning was itself fundamentally vicious, the fact only came to light gradually in the process of working out the results. We--including in the "we" the philosophers--have to approach truth by the help of assumptions, and by trying how in point of fact they will work; it is so hard to remember that they are only assumptions that we generally call them self-evident truths. Considering how many assumptions are involved even in the very structure of language itself; how we are led into all kinds of difficulties by the essential instrument of thought, which has been fashioned by the unconscious logic of our ancestors; it is not strange that the best that can be said of philosophies is, that they represent convenient working hypotheses. That, at least, seems to be a liberal view of their logical value. In another sense they are really to be considered as poetry, rather than as logic. They are modes of presenting certain conceptions of the world by apparently logical formulæ, instead of by concrete imagery; but, substantially, they represent the emotions with which men regard their dwelling place, and are radically imperfect if we insist upon considering them as providing us with correct plans and drawings of its various arrangements. Let us look for a moment at another set of reflections upon which Mr. Balfour touches. What has been the influence of these systems upon men's lives? Have these provisional constructions, these fluctuating, conflicting, unstable combinations of pretentious formulæ, really decided or directed the course of human history? It would seem so, if you read certain histories of philosophy. They seem to suggest that the hinge upon which all the course of human affairs ultimately turns is the growth of certain metaphysical conceptions. There is a preliminary difficulty in seeing how such pretensions can be established. The philosopher in his study or his lecture room discusses problems in which the enormously preponderating majority of the race has so little interest, that it is not even aware that there are any such problems to be discussed. He lays down dogmas so vague and unsatisfactory that half his hearers give up the attempt to understand, or understand them in a sense which the more intelligent half would utterly repudiate; and that intelligent half is itself divided into different schools, interpreting the dogmas in radically contradictory ways. Is it not hard to believe that speculation leads to vast results, when for ninety-nine men out of a hundred it is practically non-existent, and with the small minority it amounts to providing new weapons for endless controversy? We must, of course, admit that men's conduct is in some sense determined by their thoughts. Change the radical beliefs, and you will certainly change the whole constitution of society. And, again, it is obvious that in one sphere of thought the progress of inquiry is of vast importance. Nobody can deny that scientific and mechanical discoveries have, for good or evil, materially affected our lives. The great inventions of modern times, from gunpowder and printing to the steam-engine and electricity, have changed things as much as if they had altered the physical constitution of the world. They have indeed altered it for us, for they have given us the means of applying forces previously dormant, and therefore for practical purposes non-existent. Such beliefs have an immediate bearing upon the practices of ordinary human beings. But if we are to set down all philosophies as at once untenable and as absolutely unknown to the enormous majority of mankind, it becomes difficult to understand by what process they come to influence, or apparently to influence, the position of the race. A philosopher frames his scheme of the universe to his own satisfaction; but you and I hear nothing about it, and do not trouble ourselves to understand it, and go on working with our good old common-sense conceptions of things, leaving it to the philosopher to construct or destroy the fanciful system which he somehow supposes to lie beneath them. One answer is of course obvious. Religious and ethical systems, it is said, presuppose a philosophy: no one denies that men are profoundly affected by the gods whom they worship and the rules of conduct which they adopt; and therefore the sceptic who is burrowing at the base may be ruining the whole superstructure, although his operations are no more obvious upon the surface than those of some minute parasite. Accordingly, we are often told that revolutions are ultimately produced by speculation; and that old systems fall with a crash because some shrewd witness has been boring into the foundations upon which they really repose. The French Revolution, according to one familiar statement, was due to the freethinkers who had set about prying into the ultimate grounds of the old faith, and had succeeded in shaking the convictions necessary to social welfare. That this argument expresses a truth is what I am so far from denying that I should be most anxious to give it emphasis. But what is precisely the truth expressed? Destroy the belief in a church as a social system, and the organisation will crumble. But what is the real cause of the loss of belief? Is it the logical argument that is effective? Does the philosophical revolution underlie the political or religious revolution, or is that to invert cause and effect? Let me take an example to illustrate my meaning. The doctrine of the "rights of man," proclaimed by the whole revolutionary school, was, it is said, the cause of the revolution. The destruction of the old order was caused by the sudden conviction which spread through Europe of the truth of this theory, and the consequent decay of the old authority. Now we may proceed, if we please, to trace the origin of this doctrine back through certain speculations to the days of the Roman jurists, themselves influenced by the Stoical philosophy. The view suggested is that the doctrine was a kind of germ, a something which preserved its vitality through centuries, like the bacteria of modern physiologists, and which, somehow, developed a baleful or a beneficial activity about a century ago, and changed all the conditions of social equilibrium. But, if this be true, we naturally remark that the potency of the doctrine must have been due, not to the doctrine itself, which lay dormant so long, but to the conditions which suddenly made it effective. The doctrine, indeed, is so obvious, in a sense, that it is not to be doubted that anybody who once began to philosophise about laws and political constitutions, after they had reached a certain stage, would hit upon it in one shape or another. It is not comparable to those scientific discoveries which require patient thought and a dexterous combination of arguments: but one of the primary axioms which present themselves on the very threshold of inquiry. The mediæval peasant who put the question:-- When Adam delved, and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? was, probably, no great philosopher; but he was giving the essential pith of the doctrine of liberty, fraternity, and equality. It may be regarded as an obvious logical canon, converted by an illegitimate process into a statement of fact. If I make any general statement whatever about men or beasts or stones, I, of course, assume that there is a corresponding class of things in respect of each of which the proposition is equally true. As soon as I say anything, therefore, about morality or politics, which is intended to be true of men in general, I assume, in this sense, that men are so far equal that something may be predicated, indifferently, of every member of the class man. It is very natural and easy to convert this into the proposition that the concrete men of whom I am speaking are, in some sense, actually equal. In doing so, however, I am either making a false statement, or begging the question. As a matter of fact, men are, in many respects, as far as possible from being equal. The real question, therefore, is whether the inequalities which undoubtedly exist are or are not relevant to the political inequalities which I have to consider. As a matter of fact, the inequalities which were challenged by the revolutionary writers were, as I think, and as most of us think, entirely unjustifiable. At any rate, they had, as a matter of fact, produced widespread discontent and bitter antipathies between classes. It was the existence of these antipathies to which the outbreak was due. The peasant, for example, felt that he was forced to give up the fruit of his labour to the noble, and that the noble was discharging no duty to justify his demands. The peasant, probably, could not read; he was unaware that Rousseau or Voltaire was laying down principles which would cover his case; he had never even heard of philosopher or philosophy; only, when the time was ripe, when the upper orders had become useless, and the lower classes had accumulated a sufficient quantity of passion, of indignant or vindictive feeling, an outraged sense of justice, the crash came, and any formula which would cover the particular case was acceptable. The doctrine then made its fortune; not because it was true, or because it was demonstrable, but because it gave the shortest and simplest expression to the prevailing sentiment. The philosophical dogma, which had been lying idle for generations, doing no particular harm or good, was, suddenly, converted into a war-cry, the more effective because the real vagueness and uncertainty of its application enabled those who used it to save themselves the trouble of thinking or arguing. Instead of substituting particular grievances, and showing that this or that inequality in general was useless and objectionable, they could, in half a dozen words, denounce all inequality, and be perfectly satisfied with a formula which was imposing for its generality, though true only in its particular application. I take this familiar case, not only as familiar, but because it seems to me to be typical. Similar general remarks might, I fancy, be made about any of the great religious movements which have, undoubtedly, most profoundly affected human society. They are not due to the philosophers; to the abstract meditations of refined thinkers upon ultimate principles; but to great underlying social changes. Our Christian apologists of the last century held the quaint belief that a new creed was caused by the occurrence of certain miraculous facts, susceptible of legal proof. It is sufficiently obvious to us that this is to invert the process. Given the faith, and there is never any difficulty in supplying the miracles. No quantity of assertions as to miraculous events would have the slightest effect, unless there were a predisposition to accept them. The same answer applies to the theory that a new religion owes its success to the discovery of new moral truths. In the first place, there are, properly speaking, no sudden discoveries in morality; and in the next place, the mere statement of a moral doctrine, and even the presentation of a lofty moral type, can have little importance unless the soil is already prepared, and the doctrine is but the overt utterance of the sentiments which are seeking for expression. The only explanation that we can give of such events is the social explanation. There are periods, that is in history, when the old order is out of joint; when society has outgrown the institutions which were adequate at a previous stage, and when, therefore, the beliefs associated with them become oppressive, and can no longer pass without challenge; when different races and nations have been brought into collision or combination, and crushed together into new forms by conquest and commerce; when, therefore, the several creeds are no longer supported by the patriotism which has ceased to have a meaning; when a vast amalgam of different faiths and modes of life has been formed out of many heterogeneous elements; and thus a need is created for some wider and more comprehensive system of belief corresponding to the general needs of society. In that case the influence of the philosopher may be of some importance, because he can do something towards suggesting the most workable compromise, and of exposing superstitions which have lost their old support, and the instinctive loyalty of their adherents. Even then his voice will not be predominant. The creed will survive which is most suited to the state of the average intellect; it will include a large element of the ancient modes of thought, which still insist upon finding some satisfaction, and which, indeed, have a strange vitality beneath the surface, even when explicitly disavowed by the official interpreters of the faith. Now, if this be accepted as a rough sketch of the actual course of the development of belief, what is the conclusion as to the philosopher's function? Does it go to suggest that philosophy is but a vanity and vexation of spirit, and does it reduce the philosopher to a humbler position than is sometimes claimed for him? My answer would be, in the first place, that the case against philosophy would have to be frankly admitted if the criterion sometimes tacitly suggested be the true one. Nothing could be more hopeless than the claim of any philosophy whatever to have laid down a definitively satisfactory plan of things in general. When Mr. Balfour observes that an Aristotle or Aquinas or Descartes has not laid down a tenable theory of the universe, I can only add that the very phrase--theory of the universe--conveys a sufficient refutation. It is idle, or worse than idle, to imagine that we can lay down, or even hope to lay down, anything of the kind. It needs only one of those glances into the surrounding infinities which I have suggested, or the briefest survey of the history of philosophy, to reveal the sheer impossibility of the attempt. No one, perhaps, ever quite imagined that his speculation could really lay bare the ultimate ground plan of things in general. But, certainly, philosophers have, at times, thought, or spoken as if they thought, that they could construct a body of first principles which should be to knowledge in general what a science is to some particular application,--the general theory of physics, for example, to astronomy. Philosophy would then be a system of such ultimate principles. The day for such systems has, I think, passed. We have learnt that it is for ever impossible to spin real knowledge out of pure logic. What the universe, or the little bit of it that we know, actually is, can only be learnt by experience; and if experience presupposes categories or forms of intuition, still, without experience, they remain empty; as incapable of producing truth as a mill of grinding flour without corn. Philosophers must admit that on such terms we get only "brain cobwebs"; ingenious feats of intellectual legerdemain, where the operator shows his skill by dexterously hiding away his assumptions, and bringing them out at the end as triumphantly demonstrated conclusions. The more modest ideal, which is now presented to us, is what is called the unification of knowledge. That means, no doubt, that we have to bring our theories into harmony and consistency; to get rid of the hypothetical and conjectural elements which have intruded themselves from earlier and cruder speculation; and so to analyse the primary factors of thought and the most general conceptions, that we may not have to assume in one relation what we dispute in another. Even this process is, no doubt, exceedingly difficult; it is difficult partly because the human mind has, generally speaking, to begin at the wrong end; to proceed upon postulates which break down here and there and leave inconvenient fragments remaining elsewhere; partly because some philosophers are still open to the charge that they raise a dust and then complain that they cannot see; and, briefly, because, in one way or other, what with the dulness of the ordinary mind and what with the over-subtlety of the acute, our thoughts and beliefs have got into intricate tangles, which will require enormous patience and judgment to wind off and weave into a satisfactory tissue. Genuine philosophers, doubtless, will learn in time how to set about the work. It will probably strike them that instead of evolving pretentious systems of theology, and ethics, and politics, and art, each purporting to give an exhaustive theory of the subject, and each destined to melt away, leaving some infinitesimal residuum of real suggestion, they will have to follow a slower method of gradual and tentative investigation. If so, we must undoubtedly assign to philosophy a more modest position than has sometimes been claimed for it. It must resign its claim to a vision of transcendental realities, to a knowledge of things in themselves, and of the ultimate groundwork of the universe. It has not, I hold, a subject-matter peculiar to itself; it reveals no principles belonging to a separate sphere of thought; it corresponds simply to the attempt to correct and harmonise the cruder thoughts of the average human being, and to state explicitly in their purity the principles which have been all along implicitly involved in his ordinary observations. It is, therefore, not a substantive, but an adjective; philosophy is not a distinct department of thought, and cannot be defined by itself. All we can say is, that we think philosophically in so far as we think rightly. When our mode of conceiving the world includes no heterogeneous or conflicting element, we shall be philosophers; but we shall not, in that capacity, have a separate dominion of our own. Now, it will probably do no harm to philosophers more than to other men, to be impressed with a sense of modesty and a right appreciation of the necessary limitations of their enterprise. You have been trying to soar beyond the atmosphere, and you will make the better use of your wings when you learn that they won't support you in a vacuum. Your failure is not due to the want of aquiline powers of flight, but to the melancholy truth that even an eagle can't do much in an air-pump. Is not that a rather consoling reflection? But here the philosopher begins to be recalcitrant. You are not lowering my pretensions, he says, but attacking the power of man to attain truth upon any terms. All that is given to us in experience is the effect of underlying causes; if the causes vary the effects would vary; and, unless, therefore, you can get back to the cause, your knowledge must remain empirical and radically uncertain. Destroy all transcendental truths, and the phenomenal world itself becomes a mere shifting phantasmagoria, on which we can trace only coincidences and sequences, but are entirely unable to say that they will ever recur again. The argument, of course, raises the recollection of library upon library of controversy. I can only touch one point. Practically, we do not trouble ourselves about this difficulty. We are quite convinced that we know a great many things: we are sure that the sun will rise and set to-morrow; we have no doubt as to the properties of the ordinary objects, of trees and stones and steam-engines; every action of our lives implies a certain confidence in what is called the uniformity of nature; and it is plain enough that even if our knowledge be, in some sense, only a knowledge of probabilities, yet, from its effect upon conduct, it may be exactly the same as a knowledge of certainties. There may be an indefinite distance between the "necessary truth" that two and two make four and the empirical truth that a stone will fall; but if all the evidence attainable goes to prove that the stone will fall, I should be as foolish not to act upon that hypothesis as not to assume the truth of the arithmetical formula. Now, it is, of course, the growth within recent generations of vast systems of such truths which has alarmed the philosopher. He contrasts his own fluctuating and conflicting dogmas with the steady growth and assured results and mutual confirmation of the established physical sciences. He fears that they will obtain a prestige which will enable them to crush him and sweep his pretended knowledge into the limbo of alchemy and astrology and scholastic logomachy. Here comes in the argument which is really the keystone of Mr. Balfour's whole theory; and, as I cannot accept it, I must dwell upon its true nature. It looks, at first sight, like a retort upon the men of science. Your knowledge, he seems to say, is as vain as your antagonist's. Your physics, and astronomy, and chemistry, and physiology are mere empty shows, like the metaphysical theories that have gone to their long home in histories of philosophy. But to say this would be to accept complete scepticism, and a kind of scepticism which Mr. Balfour would, I am sure, disavow. He believes, of course, just as strongly as any one of us believes, in the astronomical theories of Newton and Laplace; or in the mathematical theories of the great physical sciences. That in which he disbelieves is a kind of bastard science called "naturalism," which, as he tells us, leads to contradictory or incoherent results. The naturalist, it appears, proposes to confine himself to the evidence of the senses, and ends by accepting a view of the world entirely inconsistent with the sensible perceptions. I see a green field: an object which has visual and other properties recognised by my organs of sense. No, says this misguided naturalist, you do not see what you suppose; what really happens is, that there is a vast whirlpool of atoms impinging upon each other and setting up vibrations, the last set of which is communicated to another set of atoms, called my optic nerve. These atoms, by their very nature imperceptible to the senses, are the only realities. We thus start from the senses and we get a world beyond the senses, a world which is a mere dance of infinite multitudes of bits of matter performing all manner of extraordinary gyrations and evolutions. The sensible impressions of colour, sound, and so forth, are mere illusions, somehow arising in a figment called the mind. This mind is a mere phantom--an unreal spectator of things and events, among which it has no place, and upon which it exercises no influence. Now, let me say first that I agree with Mr. Balfour that the doctrine thus imputed to the "naturalist" is absurd. I do not believe, for I cannot believe, that I am only a dance of atoms. I "cannot" believe, I say, for the words are to me meaningless. My sensations and emotions are to me the typical realities. I cannot doubt the real existence of pain and pleasure, grief and joy, whatever else I may doubt. I believe, for example, that my toothache is a reality; and nobody will ever persuade me that it is merely a set of molecular changes in my tooth. That it, in some way, is dependent upon such changes I fully believe; but that is quite a different statement. And, secondly, I agree with Mr. Balfour (or with what I take to be Mr. Balfour's belief) that the scientific doctrines which are reached by help of these atoms are established truths. I believe those doctrines, not because I am convinced by the arguments, which I may not have examined or be capable of examining; nor simply because I trust, though I do trust, in the ability and the candour of the scientific reasoners; but because the doctrines can be and have been independently verified. I believe, that is, in modern astronomy because it has enabled modern astronomers to predict eclipses, and enabled Adams and Leverrier to discover Neptune. That is the conclusive proof; for it is impossible to suppose that the power of prediction should be a result of erroneous belief, and such proofs are verifiable by anybody who can observe the phenomena. Here, then, we have the difficulty, the difficulty upon which the whole of Mr. Balfour's argument depends. Solve it, and the whole sceptical argument crumbles. The naturalistic theory, we both say, is incredible. The scientific doctrines based upon it are, as we both admit, unassailable. How is this? I reply, first, because the atoms represent nothing more than a logical scaffolding which enables us to infer one set of sensible phenomena from another. We start from phenomena and we end with phenomena. When we have discovered the so-called "law"--the connecting formula--we can remove the hypothesis as the engineer can remove the provisional supports when he has once got the keystone into his arch. That this is so appears, I think, from the whole scientific procedure. How is the atomic theory obtained? Not by any direct observation of atoms themselves. They are, as Mr. Balfour says, not only not objects of observation, but incapable by their nature of ever being directly observed. The man of science begins by saying, _if_ the phenomena of light correspond in some way to a vibration of atoms, the atoms must vibrate in such and such ways. He finds, again, that the laws so discovered will give the law of other phenomena of light; and he argues quite correctly that his hypothesis is for his purpose verified. That is, it has enabled him to discover a verifiable and verified formula. In order to do this he has assumed from the very first the theory which of course appears in his conclusions. All physical science consists ultimately in giving definite formulæ in terms of space and time. It is therefore assumed that the atoms are to have no qualities except those which are definable in terms of space. We exclude any other quality because our whole purpose is to obtain purely geometrical measurements. We have asked how those atoms, infinitesimal bits, so to speak, of solid space, arranged in certain positions, must move in order to correspond to the law given by observation, and we have therefore, of course, predetermined that our answer must come out in terms of atoms. But, now, what is the error of the "naturalist"? Simply that he has converted the scientific doctrine into an ontological doctrine. He really knows nothing, and cannot possibly know anything, about his atoms, except just this, that they give the law of the phenomena. He has nothing whatever to say to them in any other relation. If he proceeds, as Mr. Balfour says that he proceeds, to declare that nothing exists except atoms, that they are the ultimate realities, that they are "things in themselves," or objects independent of any subject, he is going beyond his tether, passing from science to transcendental metaphysics, and getting into hopeless confusion. In fact, after he has done his worst we may still follow Berkeley and deny the existence of matter, or declare with Clifford that atoms are only bits of mindstuff, or adopt any other metaphysical theory we please. The atoms at most are things which we judge from the analogy of the senses; and it is a pure illusion to suppose that they can ever take us into an extra-sensible world. They represent not only a convenient but an indispensable contrivance for enabling us to formulate scientific laws, such as those of light and heat; but they take us no further. In a remarkable passage, Mr. Balfour sketches an analogy, which gives the application of this to philosophical or theological questions; and I will venture to give my own interpretation of the argument because it seems to lead to the real point. We believe, he says, in a scientific theory of heat, although our view of the "realities" has changed. People once thought that heat was a substance. They now hold it to be a mode of motion. Yet our "scientific faith" (our faith, I suppose, that things are hot, and that their heat varies according to certain assigned laws) remains unaffected. On the other hand, he says, if we cease to believe in the Christian doctrine of the atonement, we cease also to have that "sense of reconciliation" between God and man which the doctrine was intended to explain. This he seems to regard as a kind of melancholy paradox. Why is the scepticism harmless in science and fatal in theology? First, what are the admitted facts? A man of science propounds a theory of heat. If his theory does not give us the observed laws, we reject it and adopt a more successful theory. In any case, we, of course, continue to believe in heat. We may know facts without knowing their causes; as, for example, the fact of gravitation, which is not the less certain because it is at present an ultimate fact. Otherwise our knowledge would be limited indeed; for even if the cause (in the scientific sense) were given, we should still have to ask, what is the cause of that cause? If heat is due to certain systems of atoms, we might still inquire how the atoms came to occupy their places, and possess the properties which they actually have. An effect "depends upon" a cause, as we naturally say; but it does not follow that the knowledge of the effect depends upon the knowledge of the cause. Now, what are the facts which correspond to the facts of heat in the theory of the atonement? If we believe in a certain being, an anthropomorphic deity, who will punish us or reward us, it is, of course, obvious that if we cease to believe in him we shall cease to desire to be reconciled to him. So if I believed that the warmth of my house depended upon a fire next door, and then discovered that no such fire existed, I should of course cease to care about lighting it. In this there is nothing which wants explanation. I suppose, therefore, that what Mr. Balfour means is, that if men have certain emotions,--remorse, for example, or what is called a conviction of sin,--and then learn to reject the theory by which these emotions were explained, they cease also to feel the emotions. In fact, he emphatically accepts the view that, if we cease to accept theology, we shall cease to be moral. The perversity of a few wretched "naturalists" in continuing to be moral is explained as a case of survival; the moral naturalist is the parasite who draws his sustenance from the organism which he infests. Let us consider the scientific analogy. I believe in heat, and I accept a scientific theory just as far as it gives me verified laws of heat. I believe, too, in the existence of conscience; that is, I believe that people have real emotions, such as remorse and shame, which correspond to the name. I hold that to be a fact of experience. It would have to be explained, again, so far as explanation is possible, by psychology in the first instance, as heat must be explained by scientific theories. Remorse is a fact, as heat is a fact; and an explanation would consist in giving accurately its place in the moral organism and the laws of its operation. The explanation furnished by any given psychology, by "association," for example, must be accepted or rejected in so far as it explains or fails to explain the facts. If some theory about spiritual "monads" enabled us to show what the conscience is, and how it is, in fact, stimulated or suppressed, we should accept it in the same way as we accept the physical theory of heat. As yet, I need hardly say, no such result has been achieved; and psychology is still far too vague to offer any definite laws of the emotional nature. But in any case, how can a theory about facts make the facts themselves vanish? Would not grief be real just as pain would be real if we could clearly explain how and why it occurred? Why should the "sense of reconciliation" vanish because we show the conditions of its existence? The reason of Mr. Balfour's difficulty, I think, appears from what I have said. In the physical theory we can draw the line clearly between the scientific and the philosophical spheres. Mr. Balfour can accept the scientific truth, though he does not accept the doctrine which results from translating it into ontology. But the boundary between psychology and philosophy is far less distinct. We constantly confound questions about the constitution of man, as known to us by experience, with questions about supposed intuitions of ultimate truth. The fact that sin causes remorse is interpreted as meaning that remorse actually is a knowledge of an avenging deity; and when the emotion is thus identified with the belief, it becomes easy to suppose that to destroy the belief is also to destroy the emotion. I think, indeed, that fallacies of that kind are among the commonest in philosophical writings. Now, of course, psychology has something to say in this matter. It may help, and I think that it has helped us to explain how men come to believe in anthropomorphic deities, and to invest them with the attributes of human rulers. But in that way it tends to show not that the conscience is caused by the belief, but to show how, under certain conditions, it has given rise to a belief by other than logical grounds. It suggests no probability that the conscience will disappear with the fallacy, but only that it will act differently when enlightened by a different logic. Conscience disappears no more than heat disappears, when both are explained; though the conduct which the emotions or the sensations determine will, of course, be affected. And now, I can say what I take to be the difficulty, and the escape. Mr. Balfour draws a kind of parallel between the scientific creed, which is, as he would put it, "based upon" a metaphysical doctrine, and the theological creed, which has a similar foundation. If the metaphysical foundation is so uncertain in both cases, must not the scientific be as uncertain as the theological? If we know nothing about atoms, or, on the other hand, about souls, we must be either sceptical in both cases, or credulous in both. There are the same underlying difficulties, and if we manage to overlook them in the case of science, why not overlook them in the case of theology? Conversely, if we elect to be sceptics in theology, how can we escape from scepticism in science? And, as a thorough-going scepticism is, doubtless, an impossible state of mind in practice, the conclusion of many people will be to accept belief in spite of certain gaps in our logical foundations. This, no doubt, is eminently convenient for the "constructive" process adumbrated by Mr. Balfour, which I certainly regard as extra-logical. But is any such dilemma really offered to us? The obvious answer is, that scientific truth, as Mr. Balfour admits, is not "based upon" metaphysical theory. The astronomical doctrine of a Newton remains equally valid, whatever is the ultimate nature of space or laws or atoms; whether we are materialists or empiricists or idealists. The philosophical "basis" is not really a set of truths which we must know before we can know the astronomical theory; but simply a set of hypotheses which have to conform to the truths given by experience. The unassailable truths are just the facts which we observe, and which science enables us to describe accurately and state systematically. If a metaphysical doctrine has any bearing upon these facts, which seems to be doubtful, it must conform to the facts, and not the facts to it. So long as no such theory is proved, we can afford to remain metaphysically sceptical without losing our hold upon the scientific truth. Now, I should say, what is true of the physical sciences is true of all our knowledge. We may study the moral sciences as we can study the physical sciences. We can observe and colligate the facts of emotion and volition, as we can observe the position of the stars and the laws of heat. Therefore, in so far as theology is an attempt to give a theory of the universe in general, we must accept or deny the doctrines just in so far as they serve to explain or fail to explain the facts. But, in any case, the facts will remain unaltered, and will not vanish because we may be unable to understand them. But theology corresponds, also, not to the scientific method, but to the ontological inquiries which are represented by Mr. Balfour's "naturalism". Both doctrines, as I should say, lead to incoherence, to contradictions covered by ambiguous language, and to hopeless difficulties, which, in theology, are described as inscrutable mysteries. I am, therefore, quite ready, with Mr. Balfour, to reject naturalism, but, on the same grounds, I also reject the transcendental theology. Attainable truth is equally independent of all such theories; and were it otherwise, we should be doomed to hopeless scepticism. Mr. Balfour's analogy, therefore, apparently upsets his conclusion. I believe in heat, and I believe in the conscience. I reject the atoms, and I reject the doctrine of atonement. I reject it, if it be meant for science, because, so far from explaining the facts, the facts explain how the false doctrine was generated. I reject it, if it is meant for philosophy, because, like other transcendental theories, it leads to hopeless controversies, and appears to me to be incredible as soon as any such theology as is tenable by a philosopher is substituted for the crude theology of a savage. We are driven to scepticism, then, if we first declare that scientific knowledge depends upon metaphysical theory; and then that all metaphysical theory is moonshine. I do not accept the first principle; and I hold that the danger to morals from metaphysical difficulties is pretty much the same as the danger that the stars will leave their courses if we adopt a wrong theory of an astronomy. We fancy that when we are explaining facts, we are, somehow, creating them; as the meteorologist in _Rasselas_ observed the clouds till he came to think that he caused the rain. The facts upon which morality depends are the facts that men have certain emotions; that mothers love their children; that there are such things as pity, and sympathy, and public spirit; and that there are social instincts upon the growth of which depends the vitality of the race. We may, of course, ask how more precisely these emotions act, and what functions they discharge. We may make historical and psychological and metaphysical inquiries; and we may end, if ever we reach such a consummation, by establishing what we may call a science of ethics. But the facts do not depend upon the explanation. The illusion of their dependence is easily produced. You make your theory of morality, and then you define morality as a belief in the object required by your theory. It follows, of course, that morality will disappear with the belief--or else that your theory is wrong. Morality, said some people, is a belief in future rewards and punishments. If that belief disappears, morality--that is, their morality--must disappear too. But that morality--taken as the actual sentiment which they have erroneously defined--should disappear also, no more follows than it follows that heat will disappear when we discover that there is no such thing as the old imaginary substance of heat. The doctrine is now more generally urged in a different form. Theology, it is said, is essential to morality. Such bold assertions may be best met by a dogmatic assertion of the inverse case. Theology, as I hold, is not the source of the moral instincts, but, under certain conditions, derives its real power from them. Theology, in the first place, is a word including not only heterogeneous but contradictory meanings,--Baal and Jehovah, the Mumbo-jumbo of the negro and Spinoza's "ens absolute infinitum". To the enormous majority of the human race, the more metaphysical conception is hopelessly unintelligible. When a savage expresses his crude sense of duties to the tribe under the form of belief in an ancestral ghost, is the morality made by the belief, or the belief generated by the incipient moral emotion? Does he believe in God or really in a man like himself, and respected precisely because he is like himself? Is not the truth tacitly acknowledged by the more philosophical religions? Their adherents admit that the God of philosophy is too abstract a Being to excite any emotion; he fades into Nature or the Unknowable, and it is impossible to love one whom, by his very definition, you can neither benefit nor injure and whose omnipotence makes even justice a mockery. Therefore, they make a God out of a man, and by boldly combining in words two contradictory sets of attributes, make what in theology is called a mystery, and in common sense called by a different name. Does not that amount to confessing that the true source of morality is in the human affections of like for like, and not in that sentiment towards a transcendental object of which you have chosen to make your definition? And, finally, if we ask what is the relation of theology to morality, from a historical point of view, we see the same result. Undoubtedly, theology has been a bulwark of morality in one way. It has expressed the veneration of mankind for the most deeply-seated customs of the race. It has been the form through which, though not the cause owing to which, men have expressed the importance of adhering to certain established institutions of the highest importance to mankind. Briefly, therefore, it represents the conservative instincts. But, for that reason, it has naturally lagged behind an advancing morality. The newer religions have been precisely protests against the objectionable conduct of the old-fashioned deities who retained the manners and customs of a more barbarous period; and have, therefore, been regarded by the older faith, sometimes with justice, as atheistic. Without referring to the familiar cases, I am content to appeal to the present day. What are the relative positions of the theologian and his opponent during the modern phase of evolution? The theologian has, in the main, maintained the sanctity of old institutions and customs; and I do not doubt that he has rendered a useful service. But the demand for justice, for the abolition of slavery, of the hardships of the poor and oppressed, the desire to construct society upon a wholesomer ideal, has been generated, not by theological speculation, but by the new relations into which men have been brought and the new sentiments developed. It has been accepted most fully by men hostile to all theology, by the free-thinker, the atheist, and the materialist, whom the orthodox denounces as criminal. Doubtless the denouncer has excuses: the reformer may err in the direction of excessive demolition; but the very survival of the older creeds depends, as we all see, upon their capacity for assimilating and finding utterance for the moral convictions which have arisen outside of their limits, and, generally, in defiance of their authority. To say, therefore, that the morality depends upon the survival of the metaphysical theory, seems to me to be inverting the true relation. I end by suggesting what is to my mind the true moral of these speculations. The vanity of philosophising means the vanity of certain philosophical pretensions; of the chimerical belief that the philosopher lays down the first principles of belief in ethics or in other departments of life, in such a sense that the destinies of the race or of knowledge depend upon accepting and applying his principles. His function is a humbler one, though one of vast importance. The great philosophical systems have vanished, though they have cleared the air. They were primitive attempts at construction; results of the fact that we have to act before we can think; and to assume postulates which can only be verified or falsified by the slow experience of ages. But the process by which truth is advanced is not confined to the philosopher; or perhaps we should rather say that some sort of crude philosophy is embedded even in the feeblest and earliest speculations of mankind. Our thoughts are guided by an implicit logic long before we have even a conception of logic in the abstract, or have the least thought of codifying and tabulating its formulæ. So every savage who begins to make a tool is exemplifying some mechanical principle which will not be put into accurate and abstract language till countless generations have passed. Every one at the present day who is using his wits is philosophising after a fashion, and is contributing towards the advancement of philosophy. He is increasing the mass of still more or less chaotic knowledge, the whole of which is to that philosopher what the particular set of facts is to the student of physical science. The philosopher has not to evolve first principles out of himself, so much as to discover what are the principles which have been unconsciously applied; to eliminate the obsolete elements; to bring the new into harmony; to verify them, or describe how they may be verified; and so to work towards the unification and systematisation of knowledge in general. Probably he will make a great many blunders in his task; but it may be some comfort to reflect that even blunders are often useful, and that he is not in the terribly responsible position of really framing laws for the universe or for man, but only of clearing up or codifying the laws which are already in operation. FORGOTTEN BENEFACTORS. I was reading not long ago some remarks[A] which impressed me at the time, and upon which, as it came to pass, I have had reason to reflect more seriously. The writer dwelt upon the vast services which have been rendered to the race by men of whom all memory has long since faded away. Compare, he said, the England of Alfred with the England of Victoria; think of the enormous differences which have been brought about in thirty generations; and then try to estimate how large a share of all that has been done in the interval should be put to the credit of thousands who have long sunk into oblivion, and whose achievements, by the very necessity of the case, can never be properly estimated. A few great names mark every period; the great statesmen, the great churchmen and warriors, are commemorated in our official histories; they are placed upon exalted pedestals; and to them is attributed everything that was done in their time, though, but for the co-operation of innumerable nameless fellow-labourers, they would not have been provided even with the foundations upon which their work was necessarily based. This remark recalls the familiar discussion about the importance of the individual. Is the hero whom we are invited to worship everything, or is he next to nothing? Is it true, as some writers put it, that had Cleopatra broken her nose, or had a cannon ball gone a hair's breadth further to the right or left when Napoleon was directing the siege of Toulon, "the whole course of history would have been changed"? Or is it rather true that, as some philosophers would say, no man is indispensable, nor even any man very important: that, if any even of the greatest of men had died of the measles in his infancy, we should have carved a different set of letters upon the pedestals of our statues, but the course of affairs would have run in much the same channel? I will not seek to discuss that old theme, to which it is evident that no very precise answer can be given. It is clearly a question of degree. Nobody can deny that a great man has an influence in the spheres of action and of thought; but to attempt to say how great an influence he has, how far he depends upon others or could be replaced by others, involves considerations lying in the unprofitable region of vague conjecture. This only I wish to note. It seems often to be suggested that there is something degrading or ungenerous in taking a side against the importance of the hero. It raises a suspicion that you are a valet, capable of supposing that men are distinguished by the quantity of lace on their coats, and not by the intensity of the fire in their souls. And, moreover, the view is fatalistic: it supposes that the destinies of the race are determined by what are denounced as blind "laws," and not by the passions and aspirations which guide their energies. To me it seems that it would be easy enough to retort these imputations. I cannot feel that a man of generous sympathies should be therefore inclined to a doctrine which would tend to make the future of the race a matter of chance. The more you believe in the importance of the great men, the more you have to admit that our progress depends upon the innumerable accidents which may stifle the greatest as easily as the smallest career. If some great social change was so absolutely dependent upon the leader who first put into words the demand upon which it is based, or who led the first forlorn hope which made victory possible, that his loss would have been the loss of his cause, it follows that the cause might have been lost if a crust of bread had gone the wrong way. It ought surely to be pleasanter if we are entitled to hold that we have a stronger ground of confidence; that the great victories of thought and action prove the diffusion of enthusiasm and courage through a wide circle; and that the fall of the chief is sure to make room for a worthy successor. The wider and deeper the causes of progress, the more confidently we can derive hope from the past, and accept with comparative equanimity even the most painful catastrophes. Nor can I agree that such a view implies any want of susceptibility to the claims of the hero. I do not think that we can pay homage too cheerfully to the great men who form landmarks in history. I admit, most gladly, that the admiration which we feel for such men; the thrill which stirs us in reading of the great patriots and martyrs of the past; the reverence which we are now and then able to pay to a contemporary--to a Lincoln, proving that political action may represent real faiths, not party formulæ; to a Gordon, impersonating the sense of duty; or a Father Damien, sacrificing his life for the lepers--is one of the invaluable elements of moral cultivation. But I do not see the connection between this and the desire to exalt the glory of the great man by ignoring the unknown who followed in his steps, and often made them possible. I have not so far attained to the cosmopolitan point of view that my blood is not stirred by the very name of Nelson. Nay, however cosmopolitan I might become, I hope that my sympathies would never blind me to the greatness of the qualities implied in his patriotic devotion. My cosmopolitanism would rather, I hope, lead me to appreciate more generously the similar qualities in his antagonists, and, also, the similar qualities in the "band of brothers" whom he was proud to lead. I should be sorry so to admire Nelson as to forget the sturdy old race of sea dogs who did their duty, and helped him to do his in a memorable way, some ninety years ago. I would rather believe than not that, had Nelson been killed at the Nile, there were many among his followers who, had the chance come to them, would have led the _Victory_ at Trafalgar, and have made England impregnable. "I trust we have within this realm five hundred good as he" is surely the more heroic tone. But, to drop the old-fashioned appeal to patriotic spirit, is it not true that, in every department of life, it is more congenial to our generous feelings to remember the existence and the importance of those who have never won a general reputation? This has come to be a commonplace in the sphere of scientific discovery. We find, over and over again, that the great discoverer has been all but anticipated by his rivals; that his fame, if not his real greatness, depends upon the circumstance that he has just anticipated by a year, or, perhaps, in extreme cases, by a generation, results to which a comparatively second-rate thinker would have been competent a few years later. The winner of the race is apt to monopolise the glory, though he wins only by a hair's breadth. The familiar instance of Darwin and Mr. Wallace is remarkable, not because the relation of the two thinkers was unique, but because, unfortunately, the generosity with which each acknowledged the merit of the other was exceptional. A great discovery is made when the fertile thought is already going through the process of incubation in a whole circle of intelligent minds; and that in which it first comes to the birth, claims, or, at least, receives, the whole merit, by a right of intellectual primogeniture not much more justifiable than the legal right. Admitting, again, in the fullest sense, the value and the difficulty of that last step which has to be made in order to reach the crowning triumph, it would surely be ungenerous to forget the long series of previous explorations by which alone it was made possible. There must have been countless forgotten Newtons and Descartes', who, in their day, had to exert equal powers in order to discover what are now the most familiar truths; to invent the simplest systems of arithmetical notation, or solve the earliest geometrical problems, without which neither a Newton nor a Descartes would have been possible. And what is true in science is, surely, equally true of activities which touch most of us more nearly. Of all undeniable claims to greatness I suppose the most undeniable to be the claim of the founders of religions. Their disciples are so much impressed by their greatness that they regard them as supernatural beings, or, in other words, as beings who are the sole and indispensable causes of all the consequences attributed to the prevalence of their doctrines. We are told, constantly, and often as though it were too obvious to need proof, that every moral improvement which has taken place in the world since the origin of Christianity, is due to Christianity, and that Christianity itself is entirely due to its founder. Human nature was utterly corrupt until the Deity became incarnate in the form of a Jewish peasant; and every social or moral step which has since been made in advance--and not one of the unfortunate backslidings by which the advance has since been trammelled--is a direct consequence of that stupendous event. This is the theory of the importance of the individual, raised, so to speak, to its very highest potence. We not only attribute the most important and far-reaching of all changes to a single agent, but declare that that agent cannot have been human, and indeed cannot have been less than the first cause of all changes. I shall not, of course, discuss the plausibility of a doctrine which, if accepted, breaks the whole chain of cause and effect, and makes the later history of the world not an evolution of previously operative process, but the result of an abrupt, mysterious interference from without, incommensurable with any other set of spiritual forces. I am content to say that to my mind the doctrine becomes daily more impossible to any one who thinks seriously and tries to picture to himself distinctly the true nature of the great world processes. What is to my purpose is, that it seems to me to be not only infinitely more credible, but also more satisfactory and more generous--if there be properly a question of generosity--to do justice to the disciples as well as to the master--to believe that the creed was fermenting in the hearts and minds of millions of human beings; and that, although the imperfect and superstitious elements by which it was alloyed were due to the medium in which it was propagated, yet, on the other hand, it succeeded so far as it corresponded to the better instincts of great masses of men, struggling blindly and through many errors to discover rules of conduct and modes of conceiving the universe more congenial than the old to their better nature, and prepared to form a society by crystallising round the nucleus which best corresponded to their aspirations. When so regarded, it seems to me, and only when so regarded, we can see in the phenomenon something which may give us solid ground for hopes of humanity, and enable us to do justice to countless obscure benefactors. The corruption of human nature, as theologians sometimes tell us, expresses a simple fact. Undoubtedly, it expresses a fact which nobody, so far as I know, ever thought of denying--the fact that there are bad instincts in human nature; that many men are cruel, sensual, and false; and that every man is more or less liable to succumb to temptation. But the essential meaning of the old theological dogma was, I take it, something different. It meant that man was so corrupt that he could only be made good by a miracle; that even his apparent virtues are splendid sins unless they come from divine grace; and, in short, that men cannot be really elevated without supernatural interference. If all that is good in men comes from their religions, and if religions are only explicable as inspirations from without, that, no doubt, logically follows. I prefer, myself, to believe that, though all men are weak, and a good many utter scoundrels; yet human nature does contain good principles; that those principles tend, however slow and imperfect may be the process, gradually to obtain the mastery; and that the great religions of the races, while indicating the intellectual and moral shortcomings of mankind, indicate also the gradual advance of ethical ideals, worked out by the natural and essential tendencies of the race. And thus, as it seems to me, this conception of the mode of growth of religions and of morality, which gathers strength as we come to take a more reasonable view of the world's history, is closely connected with the doctrine that, instead of ascribing all good achievement to the hero who drops from heaven, or springs spontaneously from the earth, we should steadily remember that he is only possible, and his work can only be successfully secured, by the tacit co-operation of the innumerable unknown persons in whose hearts his words find an echo because they are already feeling after the same ideal which is in him more completely embodied. In our judgment of such cases there is, then, an injustice so far as we make a false estimate of the right distribution of praise and gratitude. It would be an injustice, in a stricter sense, to the persons ignored, if we regarded such gratitude as the appropriate and main reward of a noble life. I need not repeat the commonplaces of moralists as to the real value of posthumous fame, nor inquire whether it implies an illusion, nor how far the desire for such fame is, in point of fact, a strong motive with many people. This only I will note--that obscurity is a condition, and by no means an altogether unpleasant condition, of much of the very best work that is done. The general or the statesman is conspicuous in connection with successful enterprise in which his subordinates necessarily do a great part of the labour. It is impossible for the outside world to form a correct judgment in such cases; and, therefore, there is no hardship to the particular persons concerned, if they are simply ignored where they would, certainly, be misjudged; and if they, therefore, work in obscurity, content with the approval of the very few who can estimate their merits. There is a compensation, as we see, when we reflect upon the moral disadvantages of conspicuous station. Literary people, for example, must be very unobservant if they do not notice how demoralising is the influence of public applause, and the constant inducement to court notoriety. It is unwholesome to live in an atmosphere which constantly stimulates and incites the weaknesses to which we are most liable. And many of our first writers must, I should fancy, feel pangs of self-humiliation when they contrast the credit which they have got for popular work with the very scanty recognition which comes to many who have applied equal talents to the discharge of duties often far more beneficial to mankind, but, from their nature, performed in the shade. "I," such a man, I fancy, must sometimes say to himself, "am quoted in every newspaper; I am puffed, and praised, and denounced; not to know me is to write yourself down a dunce; and, yet, have I done as much for the good of my kind as this or that humble friend, who would be astonished were his name ever to be uttered in public?" Some such thought, for example, is inspired by Johnson's most pathetic verses, when the great lexicographer, the acknowledged dictator of English literature, thought of the poor dependant, the little humble quack doctor, Levett, who was content, literally, to be fed with the crumbs from his tables. But the obscure dependant, as the patron felt, had done all that he could to alleviate the sum of human misery. His virtues walked their narrow round, Nor made a pause, nor left a void; And, sure, the Eternal Master found The single talent well employed. Have I not, Johnson seems to have felt, really done less to soothe misery by my _Dictionary_ and my _Ramblers_ than this obscure labourer in the back lanes of London, of whom, but for my verses, no one would have heard even the name? A full answer to questions suggested by these thoughts would, perhaps, require an estimate of the relative value of different aims and different functions in life; and, for such an estimate, there are no adequate grounds. In one of Browning's noblest poems, Rabbi Ben Ezra--of whom I must say that he strikes me as being a little too self-complacent--puts a relevant question. "Who," he asks, "shall arbitrate?" Ten men love what I hate; Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten who, in ears and eyes, Match me; we all surmise, They this thing and I that: whom shall my soul believe? And he answers or suggests one condition of a satisfactory answer, by saying that we are not to take the coarse judgment of the world, which goes by the work achieved. We must remember-- All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That, weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's account; Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act; Fancies that broke through language and escaped; All I would never be, All men ignored in me, That I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. If it were proper to treat a poetical utterance of this kind like a deliberate philosophical theory, I might wish to argue the point a little with the rabbi. But, at any rate, he points to considerations which show how little any one can judge of merit by any tangible and generally accessible test. I am content to say that this sentiment gives one--and a very impressive--answer to a problem which presses upon us the more as we grow older. It is natural for a man who feels that he has done most of his work, that the night is coming, and, as it seems, coming with accelerated speed; who feels, too, that whatever he has done or may do, he can no longer have the approval of those whose approval was dear to him as his breath;--it is natural for such a man to look back, to take stock more or less of his own performances perhaps, and at any rate to endeavour to estimate at their true worth the services which he has received from others. What, he may ask, has he done with his talents? what little fragment has he achieved of what might once have been in his power? The answer is pretty sure to have a very melancholy side to it; and it will lead to the question, what part of that fragment was really worth doing? What were the few really solid services which he may set off as some satisfaction to his self-esteem, against his countless errors and his wanderings in wrong directions, and his attempts to achieve the impossible, and the waste of energy upon the trifling and the worthless in which he is pretty sure to have spent a very large proportion of his time? When we try to return a verdict upon such issues, we feel painfully to how many illusions we are subject. When we are young we naturally accept the commonplaces, and do not question the ideals amid which we happen to have grown up; we are not conscious of the movement which we share. As long as we are floating with the current, we are not even aware that any current exists. We take our own little world to be the fixed base, quite unconscious that it is all the time whirling and spinning along a most complex course. And so it is difficult, even if the thought of making the attempt ever occurs to us, to try to occupy the position of a bystander looking on at life from outside, and endeavouring to pronounce some general opinion as to its merits or defects--its happiness or misery as a whole. "What a queer place this is!" I remember a man once saying to me abruptly; and I thought that he was referring to the steamboat on which we were fellow-passengers. I found that he had been suddenly struck by the oddity of the universe in general; and it seemed to me that there was a great deal to be said for a remark which seldom occurs to those people who take things for granted. We are roused sometimes by a philosopher who professes pessimism or optimism, to ask and to try to answer such questions. The answers, we know, are apt to be painfully discordant. Is the world on the whole a scene of misery, of restless desires, proving that we are miserable now, and doomed never to obtain satisfaction? is it our only wisdom to give up the will to live; to hope that all this visible and tangible scenery is so much illusion, and to aspire to sink into Nirvana? Shall we try to conquer all earthly appetites by a thorough-going asceticism, and cultivate those spiritual emotions which can only find full satisfaction in another and a better world? Or shall we agree that, after all, the love of the true and the beautiful, or, it may be, the physically pleasurable, gives a real solid comfort for the time, which it would be idle to drop for a shadow? Is the world a scene of probation, in which we are to be fitted for higher spheres beyond human ken by the hearty and strenuous exertion of every faculty that we possess? or shall we say that such action is a good in itself, which requires to be supplemented by no vision of any ulterior end? Shall we say that this is the best of all possible worlds because the fittest always tends to prevail, or that it is the worst because even the greatest wretchedness which is compatible with bare existence can still survive? Philosophers, no doubt, contradict each other, because even philosophers are not exempt from the universal weakness. The explanation that pessimism means a disordered liver, and the counter remark that optimism means a cold heart and a good digestion, are too familiar to need exposition. Each man's macrocosm is apt to be related to his microcosm, as the convex to the concave of a curve. To say the world is disagreeable, means that I find it disagreeable; and that may be either my own fault or the world's. Nor is it easy to correct the personal error by observation, for the observer carries himself and his illusions with him. Has such-and-such a life been a happy one? How are we to decide? We are often subject to what may be called the dramatic illusion. We judge by the catastrophe, by the success or failure of the assumed end. We see a noble young man struck down by some accident, and we think of his career sadly, because the promise has not been fulfilled. Is it not equally reasonable to say that the promise was itself a blessing? that the man we regret had his twenty or thirty years of hopefulness, confidence, and happiness, and that that was a clear gain even if we lose the result which we might have anticipated? Or we are impressed by the more exciting incidents of a life, the blows which crushed a man at intervals; and we forget all the monotonous years of tranquil happiness which, if we apply an arithmetical test, may have occupied by far the greater part of his existence. Southey, for example, argues that although we remember Cowper chiefly for his terrible mental suffering, we shall find, if we add up the moments of happiness and misery, that he probably had, on the balance, a life of much more enjoyment than torture. So, when we speak of the misery of a nation at the time of some great trouble--the French Revolution, for example--it is difficult to remember how small was the proportion of actual sufferers; how many thousands or millions of children were enjoying their little sports, utterly ignorant of the distant storm; how many mothers were absorbed in watching their children; and how many quiet commonplace people were going about their daily peaceful labour, pretty much as usual, and with only a vague--and possibly pleasurable--excitement at the news, which occasionally drifted to them, of the catastrophes in a different sphere. Carlyle, in one of his most vivid and famous passages, has incidentally drawn the contrast. Or, if we try to form an estimate of the balance of happiness and misery through any portion of the race, and appeal to experience for an answer, we must certainly remember how limited is the field of observation, even of the best informed, and the most impartial; how rigidly they are confined for their direct knowledge to one little section of one part of the race; and how the vast majority--the thousand millions or so who are altogether beyond their ken--are known to them only by statistical tables or the casual reports of superficial observers. As there are so many difficulties in forming an estimate, as we are not agreed as to the true ends of human life, nor as to the degrees in which those ends are actually attained, nor as to the efficacy of the various causes which determine the success or failure of the means employed, it becomes any one to put forward his own opinion upon the topics to which such considerations apply, with all modesty. And, yet, I think that I may dwell upon some truths which may be admitted by those who differ upon these difficult problems, and, as I fancy, deserve more weight than they generally receive, even though they have become commonplaces. The main condition of human happiness, say some people, is physical health. A man whose organs are all working satisfactorily cannot fail to be happy under any but very abnormal conditions; as, conversely, a grain of sand in the wrong place will make any life a burden. No one will dispute the truth contained in such _dicta_; and, perhaps, as we realise more distinctly the importance of sound health to our neighbours and to our descendants, as well as to ourselves, we shall lay greater stress upon the conduct which is conducive to its preservation. We shall see that what is, apparently, a mere dictate of personal prudence, has, also, its ethical aspect. But, without dwelling upon this view, we may apply the analogy to society. Whatever morality precisely means, and whatever happiness means, it clearly indicates what we call--and I think that it is no mere metaphor--a healthy state of society. This, again, implies, first of all, the health of those domestic relations which are as the ultimate molecular forces which bind together the social tissue. The society, we may say without hesitation, in which the reciprocal duties of husbands and wives, parents and children, are instinctively recognised and habitually observed, has, so far, secured the most deeply-seated and essential condition of happiness and virtue; the society in which the union of married people normally produces harmony, and the absolute identity of interests and affections, in which children are brought up in a pure home atmosphere, with an embodiment of the beauty of domestic love always before their eyes, imbibing unconsciously the tradition of a high moral standard, and so prepared to repay, in due time, to others the services lavishly and ungrudgingly bestowed upon them by their elders,--so far represents perfectly sound health. The degree in which any ethical theory recognises and reveals the essential importance of the family relation is, I think, the best test of its approximation to the truth. An unworthy view of domestic happiness may lead to the ascetic view which sets up a sham and Quixotic ideal; or to the cynical view which regards it as a mere case of selfish indulgence. I do not deny that the relation, like all other human relations, may require modification as circumstances change. Difficulties arise, as when we notice the great social changes which have broken up ancient ties, and have tended to weaken the family bond by facilitating desertion, and increasing the floating population. And many socialist schemes appear at first sight to be, and sometimes are, consciously designed to weaken the sense of responsibility of parents. I, of course, cannot now discuss a point which is, undoubtedly, of the highest importance; but I am certainly convinced that the merits of any change must be tested by its tendency to preserve, and, if possible, intensify the strength of this underlying bond upon which the welfare of society depends far more intimately than upon any other human relation. If this be true, it follows also that to those activities which knit families together, which help to enlarge the highest ideal of domestic life, we owe a greater debt than to any other kind of conduct. And to this I add that, as I believe, the highest services of this kind are rendered by persons condemned, or perhaps I should say privileged, to live in obscurity; whose very names will soon be forgotten, and who are entirely eclipsed by people whose services, though not equally valuable, are by their nature more public. To prove such an assertion is, of course, impossible. I give it only as my personal impression--for what it is worth, after any deductions you may please to make upon the score of the great fallibility of such impressions; and only because, correct or otherwise, it may serve to bring out aspects of the truth which we are apt to neglect. I have lived long enough to have had opportunities of seeing many eminent men and women. I have insensibly formed some kind of estimate of the services which they have rendered to me and my like; and I record, as far as I can, the result upon my own convictions. I will put aside for the moment the half-dozen men of really first-rate eminence,--the men whose names are written upon all the great intellectual and social movements of the century. I will think for the present only of those who may be placed in the second rank; of those who do not profess to have originated, but only to have diffused, important thoughts; who have acted as lieutenants to the great leaders, and become known to their contemporaries, with little prospect of filling any important place in the memory of their successors. Yet even such men bulk far more largely in our eyes than multitudes of men and women whose names will never be known outside their own little parish, or even their family circles. And then I ask myself, how far the estimate thus formed corresponds to the real value of the services performed. I think that I can speak most easily by deserting the line of abstract argument, and endeavouring to draw a portrait or two, which you need not assume to correspond too closely to particular facts. I mean to suggest reflections which will really apply in many representative cases, and to refer to typical instances of general truths. I will first mention one such case which happened to strike me forcibly at the time, and which no one here, I am quite certain, will be able to identify. Long years ago I knew a young man at college; he was so far from being intellectually eminent that he had great difficulty in passing his examinations; he died from the effects of an accident within a very short time after leaving the university, and hardly any one would now remember his name. He had not the smallest impression that there was anything remarkable about himself, and looked up to his teachers and his more brilliant companions with a loyal admiration which would have made him wonder that they should ever take notice of him. And yet I often thought then, and I believe, in looking back, that I thought rightly, that he was of more real use to his contemporaries than any one of the persons to whose influence they would most naturally refer as having affected their development. The secret was a very simple one. Without any special intellectual capacity, he somehow represented with singular completeness a beautiful moral type. He possessed the "simple faith miscalled simplicity," and was so absolutely unselfish, so conspicuously pure in his whole life and conduct, so unsuspicious of evil in others, so sweet and loyal in his nature, that to know him was to have before one's eyes an embodiment of some of the most lovable and really admirable qualities that a human being can possess. He was a living exemplification of the truth which some great humorists have embodied in their writings, the truth that simplicity at which fools laugh may be venerable to wise observers. Young men were not always immaculate in those days: I don't know that they are now; some of them probably were vicious in conduct, and might be cynical in the views which they openly expressed. But whatever might be their failings, they were at the age when all but the depraved--that is, I hope and fully believe, all but a very small minority--were capable of being deeply impressed by this concrete example. They might affect to ridicule, but it was impossible that even the ridicule should not be of the kindly sort; blended and tempered with something that was more like awe--profound respect, at least, for the beauty of soul that underlay the humble exterior. The direct moral addresses which took the form of eloquent sermons or of good advice naturally gained an incomparably higher reputation for those who uttered them. But, considering the facility with which the impressions so made evaporate from the minds of the hearers, I often thought that this obscure influence, the more impressive when one felt it because of its entire unconsciousness, probably did far more to stimulate good feelings and higher aspirations among his companions than all the official exhortations to which they ever listened. He would have been unfeignedly surprised to hear, what I most sincerely believe to be the truth, that his tutor owed incomparably more to his living exemplification of what is meant by a character of unblemished purity and simplicity, than he owed to the tutor whose respectable platitudes he received with unaffected humility. The case--for various reasons--impressed me deeply; and I have often thought of it and of the principle which it illustrates in later years. I once knew, for example, a woman whose whole life was devoted to domestic duties, and who confessed to me that she had sometimes felt a touch of humiliation when she thought how narrow was her own sphere of action, while her husband was daily deciding upon great questions of high political importance. Some women would have drawn the conclusion, that the exclusion of women from political activity was a grievance to be abated; and such people might receive with scorn the suggestion that the discharge of the domestic duty might possibly be as important as the discharge of the more conspicuous function. The argument about the proper sphere of women is now generally treated with contempt; and I am perfectly ready to admit that it begs the question, and is often a mere utterance of blind prejudice. No one, I hope, could assert more willingly than I, that the faculties of women should be cultivated as fully as possible, and that every sphere in which their faculties can be effectively applied should be thrown open to them. But the doctrine sometimes tacitly confounded with this, that the sphere generally assigned to women is necessarily lower or less important than others, is not to be admitted, because the contradictory may be misapplied. The domestic influence is, no doubt, confined within narrower limits; but then, within those limits it is incomparably stronger and more certain of effect. The man or woman can really mould the character of a little circle, and determine the whole life of one little section of the next generation; when it may be very difficult to say whether the influence which they can bring to bear upon a class or a nation is really perceptible at all, or does not even operate in the direction opposite to that intended. And I could not help thinking that a woman who was bringing up sons and daughters ready to quit themselves like brave men and women in the great struggle of life, might be doing something more really important than her conspicuous husband, who was, after all, only part of a vast and complicated machinery, nominally directed by him, but, in reality, controlling all his energy, and, not impossibly, working out the very results which he most disapproved. It is, therefore, with no reference to any of the political theories of women's rights, and so forth, that I venture to insist upon this topic. I think that we habitually under-estimate the enormous value of the services, whether of man or woman, done in the shade, and confined within a very limited area. Let me attempt, again, to draw a portrait, not all imaginary, which may explain, at least, what I often feel--the contrast between the real worth of such lives and the recognition which they can ever receive. Wordsworth, in one of those poems which show best how true and tender were his moral instincts, has described one who was-- A perfect woman, nobly planned To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a spirit too, and bright With something of an angel light. The words have often come to me of late, till I fancy that I could supply a commentary. The woman of whom Wordsworth speaks was, when he first saw her, a "phantom of delight," an embodiment of feminine beauty, and, as such, possessing a characteristic perhaps superfluous from a moral point of view. I have known and know women, not exactly beautiful, before whom I would gladly bow as deeply as I would if they were beautiful as Helen of Troy. But a poet must be allowed to take pleasure in beauty, and we may grant to it a certain place that it deserves among higher qualities. For it does so when the possessor is absolutely--not unaware of the fact, for that is hardly possible, nor, perhaps, desirable--but absolutely untouched by any vanity or self-consciousness. The beauty, one may say, gives, at least, an opportunity for displaying a quality which otherwise would not have so good an occasion of manifestation. And, moreover, there is a beauty of the rarest and most exquisite, which, if not the product, is, or at least seems to be, the spontaneous accompaniment of nobility of mind and character. Some persons, by a singular felicity, possess beauty as one of their essential attributes; it seems to be not an accident or an addition, but a part of their essence, which must mould every detail, which shines through body as well as soul, and is but the outward and visible sign of all that is sweet and elevated. Wordsworth's ideal woman is-- Not too bright or good For human nature's daily food, For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles: and yet displays equally-- The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill. We cannot, even in our thoughts, separate the artistic homage which we pay to the external appearance, and that which we pay to the inner qualities, of which they are apparently the inevitable and predestined symbol. We have before us the ideal--the type which reconciles all the conditions of human life, physical and moral--the "perfect woman," who is also the fitting vehicle of the angel light. But it is, of course, upon the qualities symbolised and not upon the outward symbols that we must insist. I will, therefore, say, that the inward beauty, whether fully represented or not by the outward form, implies, in the first place, the absence of all those qualities which tend to lower and vulgarise life. What we call the worldly view, for example, of love and marriage, is simply unintelligible to such a nature. Love means, to it, an absolute self-surrender, and the complete fusion of its own life with the life of the beloved object. It can only be granted in return for a reciprocal surrender; and becomes the mutual passion by which fear and distrust are utterly cast out; and the intensity proves not liability to weak illusions, but the sure insight of the lofty instincts which cannot fail to recognise corresponding instincts in others. To the lower mind, such a character appears to be too highly strung, too impassioned, romantic, and careless of the solid advantages which secure at least comfort. To those of more or less congenial sentiment, it will rather appear to imply a spirit which, because it breathes a higher element than that at which men habitually live, perceives also more distinctly what are the truest and deepest sources of all that deserves to be called real happiness. To live in an atmosphere of the strongest and most unqualified affection, to have the very substance of life woven out of the unreserved love of a worthy object, is its ideal; and that ideal represents, I am convinced, the highest and purest happiness that can be enjoyed in this world. Suppose, now, that one so endowed is struck by one of those terrible blows which shiver the very foundations of life; which make the outside world a mere discordant nightmare, and seem to leave for the only reality a perpetual and gnawing pain, which lulls for an instant only to be revived by every contact with facts. Sorrow becomes the element in which one lives and moves. Consolation, according to the familiar phrase, is idle; for the vulgar notion of consoling is that which Sir Walter Scott attributes to one of his characters: it is to try to prove that the very thing for which we offer consolation has not happened--in other words, to undertake an enterprise which is obviously hopeless and illusory. Yet the greatest test of true nobility of character is its power of turning even the bitterest grief to account. The lofty and simple nature sorrows; it does not attempt to shut its eyes to the full extent of the calamity, nor seek to distract itself by a forgetfulness which might obscure its most sacred visions of the past; nor, on the other hand, to make a parade of its sensibility, or try to foster or stimulate enervating emotions. It knows instinctively that grief, terrible as it is, is yet, in another sense, an invaluable possession. The sufferer who has eaten his bread with herbs learns, as the poet puts it, to know the heavenly powers. For he or she acquires a deeper and keener sympathy with all who are desolate and afflicted; and the natural affections become blended, if with a certain melancholy, yet with that quick and delicate perception of the suffering of others which gives the only consolation worthy of the name--the sense of something soothing and softening and inspiring in the midst of the bitterest agony. Grief, so taken, may be stunning and deadening for the time; it may make life a heavy burden, from which hope and eager interest have disappeared: "weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable"; but by slow degrees it undergoes a transmutation into more steady and profound love of whatsoever may still be left. The broken and mangled fibres imperceptibly find new attachments; and the only solution of the terrible dilemma is reached when time, which heals the actual laceration, enables the sufferer to feel that the new ties do not imply infidelity to the objects still beloved, but are a continuous development of the indelible emotions, and that the later activities are but a carrying on of the old duties, made more sacred and solemn by the old grief and its associations. A lofty nature which has profited by passing through the furnace acquires claims not only upon our love but upon our reverence. It becomes perhaps within the little circle with which it is familiar the obvious and immediate resort whenever some blow of sorrow or sickness has fallen upon one of its fellows. The figure which I attempt truly to describe is happily not unfamiliar. We have all, I hope, known some one who is instinctively called to mind whenever there is need of the loving kindness which seems so obvious and spontaneous that it does not even occur to the bestower to connect the conduct with self-sacrifice. Such persons appear to be formed by nature for ministering angels, and move among us unconscious of their claims to our devotion, and bringing light into darkness by their simple presence with as little thought that they deserve our gratitude as that they ought to emerge from obscurity. Happiness, peaceful and contented at least, if not the old bright and confident happiness, may come in time; and new spheres be bound together by the attractive force of a character which, if it is not more intrinsically lovable, has gained a more pathetic charm from its experience. The desire to relieve suffering has become a settled instinct; and, even when there is no special appeal to it, is incessantly overflowing in those "little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love" which, according to Wordsworth again, are the "best portion of a good man's life". Whether that be quite true I know not; but in so far as such acts seem to testify most unequivocally to the constant flow of a current of sympathetic tenderness, always ready to seize upon every occasion of giving happiness, on a child's birthday as on the parent's deathbed, they perhaps speak to us most convincingly of an all-pervading sweetness of character. An assiduous and watchful desire to show kindness, which makes a perpetual succession of such little attentions a part of the practical religion of the doer, may generate a corresponding love even more forcibly than the sacrifices made in obedience to a more conspicuous appeal for help. The value of such a life as I have tried imperfectly to indicate is not to be estimated by the number of good actions performed, or by any definite list of the particular consequences achieved. It may be hard to say how many pangs have been soothed, how much happiness has been added in special cases, by one who goes through life absorbed in such activities. But above and beyond all the separate instances, such a person,--the object only to a few, perhaps, of love and reverence, but to those few the object of those feelings in the most unreserved and unequivocal form,--is something far more than a source of any number of particular benefits. To reckon up and estimate the value of such benefits is a conceivable undertaking; but we cannot attempt to calculate the value of a spiritual force which has moulded our lives, which has helped by a simple consciousness of its existence to make us gentler, nobler, and purer in our thoughts of the world; which has constantly set before us a loftier ideal than we could frame for ourselves; which has bestowed upon us an ever-present criterion of the goodness or badness of our own motives by our perception of the light in which they appear to a simple and elevated character; which has made every cowardly and worldly thought shrink away abashed in the presence of noble instincts; which has given us a sympathy so close and constant that, as with the light of the sun, we are apt to be unconscious of its essential importance to us until some accident makes us realise the effect of its eclipse; and which, therefore, has in some sense become a part of ourselves, a restraining and elevating and softening impulse, to which we cling as to the worthiest and most indispensable of our possessions. I am not speaking from imagination. I am trying to utter convictions springing from my personal experience, and which I feel--most painfully--that I cannot adequately express. I could not say more, even if by saying more I could express myself adequately, without a sense of a kind of profanity for uttering what should be kept for a few. But though I speak for myself, I hope and I entirely believe that I am therefore speaking for many others also. There are few who have the eyes to see who have not recognised some such light shining upon their lives, and as one main source of what they have done or said if least unworthy. I fancy that the thought which naturally occurs to us when we reflect upon such an influence will be: was I, could I, be worthy of it? what am I that such goodness should have come to me? or, what, if anything, have I done to transmit to others the blessings conferred upon me? Such questions have various aspects, and I do not quite see how they could be reduced to a form admitting of a bare logical answer. It now seems to me almost unbecoming to dwell upon the comparison which I contemplated at starting. I imagined a man who has made some such impression upon the world as is recognised by public reputation, to compare his own achievement with such achievements as these, which are absolutely private, and neither seek nor desire any public reward. In truth, the two things are, perhaps, strictly incommensurable. They must be measured by different standards, and are of importance in different spheres. And yet I must try to say this much. The achievements to which I have referred as in their nature public and recognisable, should certainly be considered with gratitude. Yet, when we attempt to estimate their worth we are sensible of terrible drawbacks. I have passed, let us say, a measure admirably useful, or written a book which has made a mark. Certainly I have done a good action. But what if I had not done it? Were there not hundreds of people who would have been only too glad to take my place? I have been successful because I happen to have been in the front rank, which was impelled by thousands of eager supporters. I have said just a little better than my rivals what they were all striving to say; and my highest reward will be that my name will be attached in my own generation, and possibly even in the next, to some particular opinion which yet would have come to the birth without me. I have made a certain commotion on the surface for a moment or two, but the ripple will die away in a few years; and, important as I may seem to myself, I have only to look back for a generation to recognise the plain fact that there have not been at any period more than one or two conspicuous workers the products of whose activity can be distinctly recognised at the present day. Even in regard to them, it is often doubtful whether they did more harm or good; whether they did not direct human energy along the wrong paths, and do as much in giving currency to fallacies as in extending permanent truths. Now, after making such deductions, which to me, at least, seem to be essentially necessary, we can, I think, do justice to the truth which is contained in Browning's poem. You are not, he seems to say, to measure the worth of life by the amount of work done in it, by the tangible and obvious results which can be tested by the world's coarse finger and thumb. Rather, he suggests, the value depends upon the excellence of the soul which is fashioned into "heaven's consummate cup" by the stress of the potter's wheel; by the joys and sorrows, the trials and triumphs, which have affected it in its passage through life. I should prefer to say that the kind of dilemma so suggested is not really to the purpose. The rabbi may seem to speak, as I said, with a little too much complacency, if he be interpreted as sharing the feeling which is often, however unjustly, attributed to Goethe--that his supreme end was the cultivation of his own nature, and that he regarded himself as a work of art, to be elaborated for its own sake, and enriched by experience even at the cost of others. But in a better interpretation this does not apply: for the very process by which the noble nature is developed and cultivated, implies the closest and most active sympathy with suffering, and an invariable reference to the highest aims of life. It becomes perfect, that is, by constantly rendering invaluable services to others; and there is, therefore, no meaning in drawing a distinction between the services and the influence upon the soul itself. They are parts of the same indivisible process. What is true and noble, as I think, in the rabbi's doctrine, is that which I have already tried to indicate: namely, that the worth of such a life is not exhausted by a catalogue of the good deeds done, but that, beyond and above all them, remains the inestimable value within its own circle of the very existence of a natural symbol of the good and holy--by the "holy" I understand that which is not only moral, but beautiful by reason of its morality--and the incalculable benefits to it of the pure fountain of all good influences which descend upon all within its reach. The stimulus which is given to the beholders of such a life--by the clear perception that morality does not mean a string of judicious commonplaces, but can be embodied as the spring of a harmonious life, and reveal itself as a concrete flesh-and-blood human being--is something which transcends in value all the particular results which we can tabulate and reckon up. We must think of it, not as the cause of so many external benefits, but as the manifestation of a spiritual force which modifies and raises the characters of all its surroundings. If the sphere within which it distinctly operates is far narrower than that of political or literary achievement, it is also incomparably purer, and works without a single drawback. Every religion has its saints, and honours them in various ways, not always altogether edifying. But that man is unfortunate who has not a saint of his own--some one in whose presence, or in the very thought of whom, he does not recognise a superior, before whom it becomes him to bow with reverence and gratitude, and who has purified the atmosphere and strengthened the affections in a little circle from which the influence may be transmitted to others. The saint will be forgotten all too soon--long before less valuable, but accidentally more conspicuous, services have passed out of mind--but the moral elevation, even of a small circle, is a benefit which may be propagated indefinitely. If we cannot hope to preserve the name, we can try to carry on the good work; to maintain the ties which have been formed and propagate the goodwill through widening circles. That, I think, is what every one feels under the stress of the most terrible trials of life. We are shocked by the sense of the inevitable oblivion that will hide all that we loved so well. There is, according to my experience, only one thought which is inspiring, and--if not in the vulgar sense consoling, for it admits the existence of an unspeakable calamity--points, at least, to the direction in which we may gradually achieve something like peace and hopefulness without the slightest disloyalty to the objects of our love. It is the thought which I can only express by saying that we may learn to feel as if those who had left us had yet become part of ourselves; that we have become so permeated by their influence, that we can still think of their approval and sympathy as a stimulating and elevating power, and be conscious that we are more or less carrying on their work, in their spirit. We find, as Lowell says in his noble ode-- We find in our dull road their shining track; In every nobler mood We feel the orient of their spirit glow, Part of our life's unalterable good, Of all our saintlier aspiration; They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted ways, Beautiful evermore, and with the rays Of morn on their white shields of expectation. Alas, he adds, even the best deeds will be hidden before long by "the thoughtless drift of the deciduous years". Yes; they will be forgotten before long, as we too shall be forgotten--the incalculable majority within a generation or two. The thought may be painful, but the reasonable conclusion is, I think, not that we should fret over the inevitable; rather that we should purify our minds from this as from other illusions, and feel ashamed of the selfish desire that our own names should be preserved when we know that so many who were far better and nobler than ourselves will inevitably be forgotten, and were better and nobler without the stimulus of any such paltry desire. Gratitude to the obscure is, in this sense, I take it, a duty, which we cannot practise without a proportional moral benefit. It enables us to rise above the constant temptation to seek for notoriety at any price, and to make our ultimate aim the achievement of good work, not the chorus of popular applause which may be aroused. Thoroughly to conquer that temptation is, I take it, one of the objects which every man should set before himself. And nothing, I think, helps one more than a vivid and enduring consciousness of the enormous debt which we owe to men and women who lived in obscurity, who never had a thought of emerging out of obscurity, and whose ennobling influence has yet become a part of every higher principle of action in ourselves. I may or I may not have formed too low an estimate of the services of the few heroes who stand conspicuously above the ordinary level; but I am certain that nothing that I can say would exaggerate the importance of many who have no claims to such a position. To cherish and preserve that influence by every faculty we possess seems to me to be our plainest duty; and we may comfort ourselves, if comfort be needed, by the reflection that, though the memory may be transitory, the good done by a noble life and character may last far beyond any horizon which can be realised by our imaginations. THE END. FOOTNOTE: [A] See the "Wealth of Nature," in _Essays by a Barrister_ [Sir James Fitzjames Stephen]. ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
7176	----	A LETTER TO A HINDU THE SUBJECTION OF INDIA--ITS CAUSE AND CURE _With an Introduction by_ M. K. GANDHI By Leo Tolstoy INTRODUCTION The letter printed below is a translation of Tolstoy's letter written in Russian in reply to one from the Editor of Free Hindustan. After having passed from hand to hand, this letter at last came into my possession through a friend who asked me, as one much interested in Tolstoy's writings, whether I thought it worth publishing. I at once replied in the affirmative, and told him I should translate it myself into Gujarati and induce others' to translate and publish it in various Indian vernaculars. The letter as received by me was a type-written copy. It was therefore referred to the author, who confirmed it as his and kindly granted me permission to print it. To me, as a humble follower of that great teacher whom I have long looked upon as one of my guides, it is a matter of honour to be connected with the publication of his letter, such especially as the one which is now being given to the world. It is a mere statement of fact to say that every Indian, whether he owns up to it or not, has national aspirations. But there are as many opinions as there are Indian nationalists as to the exact meaning of that aspiration, and more especially as to the methods to be used to attain the end. One of the accepted and 'time-honoured' methods to attain the end is that of violence. The assassination of Sir Curzon Wylie was an illustration of that method in its worst and most detestable form. Tolstoy's life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of non-resistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in self-suffering. He admits of no exception to whittle down this great and divine law of love. He applies it to all the problems that trouble mankind. When a man like Tolstoy, one of the clearest thinkers in the western world, one of the greatest writers, one who as a soldier has known what violence is and what it can do, condemns Japan for having blindly followed the law of modern science, falsely so-called, and fears for that country 'the greatest calamities', it is for us to pause and consider whether, in our impatience of English rule, we do not want to replace one evil by another and a worse. India, which is the nursery of the great faiths of the world, will cease to be nationalist India, whatever else she may become, when she goes through the process of civilization in the shape of reproduction on that sacred soil of gun factories and the hateful industrialism which has reduced the people of Europe to a state of slavery, and all but stifled among them the best instincts which are the heritage of the human family. If we do not want the English in India we must pay the price. Tolstoy indicates it. 'Do not resist evil, but also do not yourselves participate in evil--in the violent deeds of the administration of the law courts, the collection of taxes and, what is more important, of the soldiers, and no one in the world will enslave you', passionately declares the sage of Yasnaya Polyana. Who can question the truth of what he says in the following: 'A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand people, not athletes, but rather weak and ordinary people, have enslaved two hundred millions of vigorous, clever, capable, freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear that not the English, but the Indians, have enslaved themselves?' One need not accept all that Tolstoy says--some of his facts are not accurately stated--to realize the central truth of his indictment of the present system, which is to understand and act upon the irresistible power of the soul over the body, of love, which is an attribute of the soul, over the brute or body force generated by the stirring in us of evil passions. There is no doubt that there is nothing new in what Tolstoy preaches. But his presentation of the old truth is refreshingly forceful. His logic is unassailable. And above all he endeavours to practise what he preaches. He preaches to convince. He is sincere and in earnest. He commands attention. [_19th November, 1909_] M. K. GANDHI A LETTER TO A HINDU By Leo Tolstoy _All that exists is One. People only call this One by different names._ THE VEDAS. _God is love, and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him._ I JOHN iv. 16. _God is one whole; we are the parts._ EXPOSITION OF THE TEACHING OF THE VEDAS BY VIVEKANANDA. I Do not seek quiet and rest in those earthly realms where delusions and desires are engendered, for if thou dost, thou wilt be dragged through the rough wilderness of life, which is far from Me. Whenever thou feelest that thy feet are becoming entangled in the interlaced roots of life, know that thou has strayed from the path to which I beckon thee: for I have placed thee in broad, smooth paths, which are strewn with flowers. I have put a light before thee, which thou canst follow and thus run without stumbling. KRISHNA. I have received your letter and two numbers of your periodical, both of which interest me extremely. The oppression of a majority by a minority, and the demoralization inevitably resulting from it, is a phenomenon that has always occupied me and has done so most particularly of late. I will try to explain to you what I think about that subject in general, and particularly about the cause from which the dreadful evils of which you write in your letter, and in the Hindu periodical you have sent me, have arisen and continue to arise. The reason for the astonishing fact that a majority of working people submit to a handful of idlers who control their labour and their very lives is always and everywhere the same--whether the oppressors and oppressed are of one race or whether, as in India and elsewhere, the oppressors are of a different nation. This phenomenon seems particularly strange in India, for there more than two hundred million people, highly gifted both physically and mentally, find themselves in the power of a small group of people quite alien to them in thought, and immeasurably inferior to them in religious morality. From your letter and the articles in _Free Hindustan_ as well as from the very interesting writings of the Hindu Swami Vivekananda and others, it appears that, as is the case in our time with the ills of all nations, the reason lies in the lack of a reasonable religious teaching which by explaining the meaning of life would supply a supreme law for the guidance of conduct and would replace the more than dubious precepts of pseudo-religion and pseudo-science with the immoral conclusions deduced from them and commonly called 'civilization'. Your letter, as well as the articles in _Free Hindustan_ and Indian political literature generally, shows that most of the leaders of public opinion among your people no longer attach any significance to the religious teachings that were and are professed by the peoples of India, and recognize no possibility of freeing the people from the oppression they endure except by adopting the irreligious and profoundly immoral social arrangements under which the English and other pseudo-Christian nations live to-day. And yet the chief if not the sole cause of the enslavement of the Indian peoples by the English lies in this very absence of a religious consciousness and of the guidance for conduct which should flow from it--a lack common in our day to all nations East and West, from Japan to England and America alike. II _O ye, who see perplexities over your heads, beneath your feet, and to the right and left of you; you will be an eternal enigma unto yourselves until ye become humble and joyful as children. Then will ye find Me, and having found Me in yourselves, you will rule over worlds, and looking out from the great world within to the little world without, you will bless everything that is, and find all is well with time and with you._ KRISHNA. To make my thoughts clear to you I must go farther back. We do not, cannot, and I venture to say need not, know how men lived millions of years ago or even ten thousand years ago, but we do know positively that, as far back as we have any knowledge of mankind, it has always lived in special groups of families, tribes, and nations in which the majority, in the conviction that it must be so, submissively and willingly bowed to the rule of one or more persons--that is to a very small minority. Despite all varieties of circumstances and personalities these relations manifested themselves among the various peoples of whose origin we have any knowledge; and the farther back we go the more absolutely necessary did this arrangement appear, both to the rulers and the ruled, to make it possible for people to live peacefully together. So it was everywhere. But though this external form of life existed for centuries and still exists, very early--thousands of years before our time--amid this life based on coercion, one and the same thought constantly emerged among different nations, namely, that in every individual a spiritual element is manifested that gives life to all that exists, and that this spiritual element strives to unite with everything of a like nature to itself, and attains this aim through love. This thought appeared in most various forms at different times and places, with varying completeness and clarity. It found expression in Brahmanism, Judaism, Mazdaism (the teachings of Zoroaster), in Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and in the writings of the Greek and Roman sages, as well as in Christianity and Mohammedanism. The mere fact that this thought has sprung up among different nations and at different times indicates that it is inherent in human nature and contains the truth. But this truth was made known to people who considered that a community could only be kept together if some of them restrained others, and so it appeared quite irreconcilable with the existing order of society. Moreover it was at first expressed only fragmentarily, and so obscurely that though people admitted its theoretic truth they could not entirely accept it as guidance for their conduct. Then, too, the dissemination of the truth in a society based on coercion was always hindered in one and the same manner, namely, those in power, feeling that the recognition of this truth would undermine their position, consciously or sometimes unconsciously perverted it by explanations and additions quite foreign to it, and also opposed it by open violence. Thus the truth--that his life should be directed by the spiritual element which is its basis, which manifests itself as love, and which is so natural to man--this truth, in order to force a way to man's consciousness, had to struggle not merely against the obscurity with which it was expressed and the intentional and unintentional distortions surrounding it, but also against deliberate violence, which by means of persecutions and punishments sought to compel men to accept religious laws authorized by the rulers and conflicting with the truth. Such a hindrance and misrepresentation of the truth--which had not yet achieved complete clarity--occurred everywhere: in Confucianism and Taoism, in Buddhism and in Christianity, in Mohammedanism and in your Brahmanism. III _My hand has sowed love everywhere, giving unto all that will receive. Blessings are offered unto all My children, but many times in their blindness they fail to see them. How few there are who gather the gifts which lie in profusion at their feet: how many there are, who, in wilful waywardness, turn their eyes away from them and complain with a wail that they have not that which I have given them; many of them defiantly repudiate not only My gifts, but Me also, Me, the Source of all blessings and the Author of their being._ KRISHNA. _I tarry awhile from the turmoil and strife of the world. I will beautify and quicken thy life with love and with joy, for the light of the soul is Love. Where Love is, there is contentment and peace, and where there is contentment and peace, there am I, also, in their midst._ KRISHNA. _The aim of the sinless One consists in acting without causing sorrow to others, although he could attain to great power by ignoring their feelings._ _The aim of the sinless One lies in not doing evil unto those who have done evil unto him._ _If a man causes suffering even to those who hate him without any reason, he will ultimately have grief not to be overcome._ _The punishment of evil doers consists in making them feel ashamed of themselves by doing them a great kindness._ _Of what use is superior knowledge in the one, if he does not endeavour to relieve his neighbour's want as much as his own?_ _If, in the morning, a man wishes to do evil unto another, in the evening the evil will return to him._ THE HINDU KURAL. Thus it went on everywhere. The recognition that love represents the highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was so interwoven everywhere with all kinds of falsehoods which distorted it, that finally nothing of it remained but words. It was taught that this highest morality was only applicable to private life--for home use, as it were--but that in public life all forms of violence--such as imprisonment, executions, and wars--might be used for the protection of the majority against a minority of evildoers, though such means were diametrically opposed to any vestige of love. And though common sense indicated that if some men claim to decide who is to be subjected to violence of all kinds for the benefit of others, these men to whom violence is applied may, in turn, arrive at a similar conclusion with regard to those who have employed violence to them, and though the great religious teachers of Brahmanism, Buddhism, and above all of Christianity, foreseeing such a perversion of the law of love, have constantly drawn attention to the one invariable condition of love (namely, the enduring of injuries, insults, and violence of all kinds without resisting evil by evil) people continued--regardless of all that leads man forward--to try to unite the incompatibles: the virtue of love, and what is opposed to love, namely, the restraining of evil by violence. And such a teaching, despite its inner contradiction, was so firmly established that the very people who recognize love as a virtue accept as lawful at the same time an order of life based on violence and allowing men not merely to torture but even to kill one another. For a long time people lived in this obvious contradiction without noticing it. But a time arrived when this contradiction became more and more evident to thinkers of various nations. And the old and simple truth that it is natural for men to help and to love one another, but not to torture and to kill one another, became ever clearer, so that fewer and fewer people were able to believe the sophistries by which the distortion of the truth had been made so plausible. In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs, and other heads of states. But the longer humanity lived the weaker grew the belief in this peculiar, God--given right of the ruler. That belief withered in the same way and almost simultaneously in the Christian and the Brahman world, as well as in Buddhist and Confucian spheres, and in recent times it has so faded away as to prevail no longer against man's reasonable understanding and the true religious feeling. People saw more and more clearly, and now the majority see quite clearly, the senselessness and immorality of subordinating their wills to those of other people just like themselves, when they are bidden to do what is contrary not only to their interests but also to their moral sense. And so one might suppose that having lost confidence in any religious authority for a belief in the divinity of potentates of various kinds, people would try to free themselves from subjection to it. But unfortunately not only were the rulers, who were considered supernatural beings, benefited by having the peoples in subjection, but as a result of the belief in, and during the rule of, these pseudodivine beings, ever larger and larger circles of people grouped and established themselves around them, and under an appearance of governing took advantage of the people. And when the old deception of a supernatural and God-appointed authority had dwindled away these men were only concerned to devise a new one which like its predecessor should make it possible to hold the people in bondage to a limited number of rulers. IV _Children, do you want to know by what your hearts should be guided? Throw aside your longings and strivings after that which is null and void; get rid of your erroneous thoughts about happiness and wisdom, and your empty and insincere desires. Dispense with these and you will know Love._ KRISHNA. _Be not the destroyers of yourselves. Arise to your true Being, and then you will have nothing to fear._ KRISHNA. New justifications have now appeared in place of the antiquated, obsolete, religious ones. These new justifications are just as inadequate as the old ones, but as they are new their futility cannot immediately be recognized by the majority of men. Besides this, those who enjoy power propagate these new sophistries and support them so skilfully that they seem irrefutable even to many of those who suffer from the oppression these theories seek to justify. These new justifications are termed 'scientific'. But by the term 'scientific' is understood just what was formerly understood by the term 'religious': just as formerly everything called 'religious' was held to be unquestionable simply because it was called religious, so now all that is called 'scientific' is held to be unquestionable. In the present case the obsolete religious justification of violence which consisted in the recognition of the supernatural personality of the God-ordained ruler ('there is no power but of God') has been superseded by the 'scientific' justification which puts forward, first, the assertion that because the coercion of man by man has existed in all ages, it follows that such coercion must continue to exist. This assertion that people should continue to live as they have done throughout past ages rather than as their reason and conscience indicate, is what 'science' calls 'the historic law'. A further 'scientific' justification lies in the statement that as among plants and wild beasts there is a constant struggle for existence which always results in the survival of the fittest, a similar struggle should be carried on among human beings--beings, that is, who are gifted with intelligence and love; faculties lacking in the creatures subject to the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest. Such is the second 'scientific' justification. The third, most important, and unfortunately most widespread justification is, at bottom, the age-old religious one just a little altered: that in public life the suppression of some for the protection of the majority cannot be avoided--so that coercion is unavoidable however desirable reliance on love alone might be in human intercourse. The only difference in this justification by pseudo-science consists in the fact that, to the question why such and such people and not others have the right to decide against whom violence may and must be used, pseudo-science now gives a different reply to that given by religion--which declared that the right to decide was valid because it was pronounced by persons possessed of divine power. 'Science' says that these decisions represent the will of the people, which under a constitutional form of government is supposed to find expression in all the decisions and actions of those who are at the helm at the moment. Such are the scientific justifications of the principle of coercion. They are not merely weak but absolutely invalid, yet they are so much needed by those who occupy privileged positions that they believe in them as blindly as they formerly believed in the immaculate conception, and propagate them just as confidently. And the unfortunate majority of men bound to toil is so dazzled by the pomp with which these 'scientific truths' are presented, that under this new influence it accepts these scientific stupidities for holy truth, just as it formerly accepted the pseudo-religious justifications; and it continues to submit to the present holders of power who are just as hard-hearted but rather more numerous than before. V _Who am I? I am that which thou hast searched for since thy baby eyes gazed wonderingly upon the world, whose horizon hides this real life from thee. I am that which in thy heart thou hast prayed for, demanded as thy birthright, although thou hast not known what it was. I am that which has lain in thy soul for hundreds and thousands of years. Sometimes I lay in thee grieving because thou didst not recognize me; sometimes I raised my head, opened my eyes, and extended my arms calling thee either tenderly and quietly, or strenuously, demanding that thou shouldst rebel against the iron chains which bound thee to the earth._ KRISHNA. So matters went on, and still go on, in the Christian world. But we might have hope that in the immense Brahman, Buddhist, and Confucian worlds this new scientific superstition would not establish itself, and that the Chinese, Japanese, and Hindus, once their eyes were opened to the religious fraud justifying violence, would advance directly to a recognition of the law of love inherent in humanity, and which had been so forcibly enunciated by the great Eastern teachers. But what has happened is that the scientific superstition replacing the religious one has been accepted and secured a stronger and stronger hold in the East. In your periodical you set out as the basic principle which should guide the actions of your people the maxim that: 'Resistance to aggression is not simply justifiable but imperative, nonresistance hurts both Altruism and Egotism.' Love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills, and in it you too have the only method of saving your people from enslavement. In very ancient times love was proclaimed with special strength and clearness among your people to be the religious basis of human life. Love, and forcible resistance to evil-doers, involve such a mutual contradiction as to destroy utterly the whole sense and meaning of the conception of love. And what follows? With a light heart and in the twentieth century you, an adherent of a religious people, deny their law, feeling convinced of your scientific enlightenment and your right to do so, and you repeat (do not take this amiss) the amazing stupidity indoctrinated in you by the advocates of the use of violence--the enemies of truth, the servants first of theology and then of science--your European teachers. You say that the English have enslaved your people and hold them in subjection because the latter have not resisted resolutely enough and have not met force by force. But the case is just the opposite. If the English have enslaved the people of India it is just because the latter recognized, and still recognize, force as the fundamental principle of the social order. In accord with that principle they submitted to their little rajahs, and on their behalf struggled against one another, fought the Europeans, the English, and are now trying to fight with them again. A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear that it is not the English who have enslaved the Indians, but the Indians who have enslaved themselves? When the Indians complain that the English have enslaved them it is as if drunkards complained that the spirit-dealers who have settled among them have enslaved them. You tell them that they might give up drinking, but they reply that they are so accustomed to it that they cannot abstain, and that they must have alcohol to keep up their energy. Is it not the same thing with the millions of people who submit to thousands' or even to hundreds, of others--of their own or other nations? If the people of India are enslaved by violence it is only because they themselves live and have lived by violence, and do not recognize the eternal law of love inherent in humanity. _Pitiful and foolish is the man who seeks what he already has, and does not know that he has it. Yes, Pitiful and foolish is he who does not know the bliss of love which surrounds him and which I have given him._ KRISHNA. As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence--as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual. Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the world will be able to enslave you. VI _O ye who sit in bondage and continually seek and pant for freedom, seek only for love. Love is peace in itself and peace which gives complete satisfaction. I am the key that opens the portal to the rarely discovered land where contentment alone is found._ KRISHNA. What is now happening to the people of the East as of the West is like what happens to every individual when he passes from childhood to adolescence and from youth to manhood. He loses what had hitherto guided his life and lives without direction, not having found a new standard suitable to his age, and so he invents all sorts of occupations, cares, distractions, and stupefactions to divert his attention from the misery and senselessness of his life. Such a condition may last a long time. When an individual passes from one period of life to another a time comes when he cannot go on in senseless activity and excitement as before, but has to understand that although he has outgrown what before used to direct him, this does not mean that he must live without any reasonable guidance, but rather that he must formulate for himself an understanding of life corresponding to his age, and having elucidated it must be guided by it. And in the same way a similar time must come in the growth and development of humanity. I believe that such a time has now arrived--not in the sense that it has come in the year 1908, but that the inherent contradiction of human life has now reached an extreme degree of tension: on the one side there is the consciousness of the beneficence of the law of love, and on the other the existing order of life which has for centuries occasioned an empty, anxious, restless, and troubled mode of life, conflicting as it does with the law of love and built on the use of violence. This contradiction must be faced, and the solution will evidently not be favourable to the outlived law of violence, but to the truth which has dwelt in the hearts of men from remote antiquity: the truth that the law of love is in accord with the nature of man. But men can only recognize this truth to its full extent when they have completely freed themselves from all religious and scientific superstitions and from all the consequent misrepresentations and sophistical distortions by which its recognition has been hindered for centuries. To save a sinking ship it is necessary to throw overboard the ballast, which though it may once have been needed would now cause the ship to sink. And so it is with the scientific superstition which hides the truth of their welfare from mankind. In order that men should embrace the truth--not in the vague way they did in childhood, nor in the one-sided and perverted way presented to them by their religious and scientific teachers, but embrace it as their highest law--the complete liberation of this truth from all and every superstition (both pseudo-religious and pseudo-scientific) by which it is still obscured is essential: not a partial, timid attempt, reckoning with traditions sanctified by age and with the habits of the people--not such as was effected in the religious sphere by Guru-Nanak, the founder of the sect of the Sikhs, and in the Christian world by Luther, and by similar reformers in other religions--but a fundamental cleansing of religious consciousness from all ancient religious and modern scientific superstitions. If only people freed themselves from their beliefs in all kinds of Ormuzds, Brahmas, Sabbaoths, and their incarnation as Krishnas and Christs, from beliefs in Paradises and Hells, in reincarnations and resurrections, from belief in the interference of the Gods in the external affairs of the universe, and above all, if they freed themselves from belief in the infallibility of all the various Vedas, Bibles, Gospels, Tripitakas, Korans, and the like, and also freed themselves from blind belief in a variety of scientific teachings about infinitely small atoms and molecules and in all the infinitely great and infinitely remote worlds, their movements and origin, as well as from faith in the infallibility of the scientific law to which humanity is at present subjected: the historic law, the economic laws, the law of struggle and survival, and so on--if people only freed themselves from this terrible accumulation of futile exercises of our lower capacities of mind and memory called the 'Sciences', and from the innumerable divisions of all sorts of histories, anthropologies, homiletics, bacteriologics, jurisprudences, cosmographies, strategies--their name is legion--and freed themselves from all this harmful, stupifying ballast--the simple law of love, natural to man, accessible to all and solving all questions and perplexities, would of itself become clear and obligatory. VII _Children, look at the flowers at your feet; do not trample upon them. Look at the love in your midst and do not repudiate it._ KRISHNA. _There is a higher reason which transcends all human minds. It is far and near. It permeates all the worlds and at the same time is infinitely higher than they._ _A man who sees that all things are contained in the higher spirit cannot treat any being with contempt._ _For him to whom all spiritual beings are equal to the highest there can be no room for deception or grief._ _Those who are ignorant and are devoted to the religious rites only, are in a deep gloom, but those who are given up to fruitless meditations are in a still greater darkness._ UPANISHADS, FROM VEDAS. Yes, in our time all these things must be cleared away in order that mankind may escape from self-inflicted calamities that have reached an extreme intensity. Whether an Indian seeks liberation from subjection to the English, or anyone else struggles with an oppressor either of his own nationality or of another--whether it be a Negro defending himself against the North Americans; or Persians, Russians, or Turks against the Persian, Russian, or Turkish governments, or any man seeking the greatest welfare for himself and for everybody else--they do not need explanations and justifications of old religious superstitions such as have been formulated by your Vivekanandas, Baba Bharatis, and others, or in the Christian world by a number of similar interpreters and exponents of things that nobody needs; nor the innumerable scientific theories about matters not only unnecessary but for the most part harmful. (In the spiritual realm nothing is indifferent: what is not useful is harmful.) What are wanted for the Indian as for the Englishman, the Frenchman, the German, and the Russian, are not Constitutions and Revolutions, nor all sorts of Conferences and Congresses, nor the many ingenious devices for submarine navigation and aerial navigation, nor powerful explosives, nor all sorts of conveniences to add to the enjoyment of the rich, ruling classes; nor new schools and universities with innumerable faculties of science, nor an augmentation of papers and books, nor gramophones and cinematographs, nor those childish and for the most part corrupt stupidities termed art--but one thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds place in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientific superstitions--the truth that for our life one law is valid--the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. Free your minds from those overgrown, mountainous imbecilities which hinder your recognition of it, and at once the truth will emerge from amid the pseudo-religious nonsense that has been smothering it: the indubitable, eternal truth inherent in man, which is one and the same in all the great religions of the world. It will in due time emerge and make its way to general recognition, and the nonsense that has obscured it will disappear of itself, and with it will go the evil from which humanity now suffers. _Children, look upwards with your beclouded eyes, and a world full of joy and love will disclose itself to you, a rational world made by My wisdom, the only real world. Then you will know what love has done with you, what love has bestowed upon you, what love demands from you._ KRISHNA. YASNAYA POLYANA. December 14th, 1908. 
29508	----	http://www.archive.org/details/ethicsofcopera00tuftuoft THE ETHICS OF COÖPERATION * * * * * Barbara Weinstock Lectures on The Morals of Trade THE ETHICS OF COÖPERATION. By JAMES H. TUFTS. HIGHER EDUCATION AND BUSINESS STANDARDS. By WILLARD EUGENE HOTCHKISS. CREATING CAPITAL: MONEY-MAKING AS AN AIM IN BUSINESS. By FREDERICK L. LIPMAN. IS CIVILIZATION A DISEASE? By STANTON COIT. SOCIAL JUSTICE WITHOUT SOCIALISM. By JOHN BATES CLARK. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN PRIVATE MONOPOLY AND GOOD CITIZENSHIP. By JOHN GRAHAM BROOKS. COMMERCIALISM AND JOURNALISM. By HAMILTON HOLT. THE BUSINESS CAREER IN ITS PUBLIC RELATIONS. By ALBERT SHAW. * * * * * THE ETHICS OF COÖPERATION by JAMES H. TUFTS Professor of Philosophy in the University of Chicago Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge 1918 Copyright, 1918, by the Regents of the University of California All Rights Reserved Published September 1918 BARBARA WEINSTOCK LECTURES ON THE MORALS OF TRADE This series will contain essays by representative scholars and men of affairs dealing with the various phases of the moral law in its bearing on business life under the new economic order, first delivered at the University of California on the Weinstock foundation. THE ETHICS OF COÖPERATION I According to Plato's famous myth, two gifts of the gods equipped man for living: the one, arts and inventions to supply him with the means of livelihood; the other, reverence and justice to be the ordering principles of societies and the bonds of friendship and conciliation. Agencies for mastery over nature and agencies for coöperation among men remain the two great sources of human power. But after two thousand years, it is possible to note an interesting fact as to their relative order of development in civilization. Nearly all the great skills and inventions that had been acquired up to the eighteenth century were brought into man's service at a very early date. The use of fire, the arts of weaver, potter, and metal worker, of sailor, hunter, fisher, and sower, early fed man and clothed him. These were carried to higher perfection by Egyptian and Greek, by Tyrian and Florentine, but it would be difficult to point to any great new unlocking of material resources until the days of the chemist and electrician. Domestic animals and crude water mills were for centuries in man's service, and until steam was harnessed, no additions were made of new powers. During this long period, however, the progress of human association made great and varied development. The gap between the men of Santander's caves, or early Egypt, and the civilization of a century ago is bridged rather by union of human powers, by the needs and stimulating contacts of society, than by conquest in the field of nature. It was in military, political, and religious organization that the power of associated effort was first shown. Army, state, and hierarchy were its visible representatives. Then, a little over a century ago, began what we call the industrial revolution, still incomplete, which combined new natural forces with new forms of human association. Steam, electricity, machines, the factory system, railroads: these suggest the natural forces at man's disposal; capital, credit, corporations, labor unions: these suggest the bringing together of men and their resources into units for exploiting or controlling the new natural forces. Sometimes resisting the political, military, or ecclesiastical forces which were earlier in the lead, sometimes mastering them, sometimes combining with them, economic organization has now taken its place in the world as a fourth great structure, or rather as a fourth great agency through which man achieves his greater tasks, and in so doing becomes conscious of hitherto unrealized powers. Early in this great process of social organization three divergent types emerged, which still contend for supremacy in the worlds of action and of valuation: dominance, competition, and coöperation. All mean a meeting of human forces. They rest respectively on power, rivalry, and sympathetic interchange. Each may contribute to human welfare. On the other hand, each may be taken so abstractly as to threaten human values. I hope to point out that the greatest of these is coöperation, and that it is largely the touchstone for the others. Coöperation and dominance both mean organization. Dominance implies inequality, direction and obedience, superior and subordinate. Coöperation implies some sort of equality, some mutual relation. It does not exclude difference in ability or in function. It does not exclude leadership, for leadership is usually necessary to make coöperation effective. But in dominance the special excellence is kept isolated; ideas are transmitted from above downward. In coöperation there is interchange, currents flowing in both directions, contacts of mutual sympathy, rather than of pride-humility, condescension-servility. The purpose of the joint pursuit in organization characterized by dominance may be either the exclusive good of the master or the joint good of the whole organized group, but in any case it is a purpose formed and kept by those few who know. The group may share in its execution and its benefits, but not in its construction or in the estimating and forecasting of its values. The purpose in coöperation is joint. Whether originally suggested by some leader of thought or action, or whether a composite of many suggestions in the give and take of discussion or in experiences of common need, it is weighed and adopted as a common end. It is not the work or possession of leaders alone, but embodies in varying degrees the work and active interest of all. Coöperation and competition at first glance may seem more radically opposed. For while dominance and coöperation both mean union of forces, competition appears to mean antagonism. _They_ stand for combination; _it_ for exclusion of one by another. Yet a deeper look shows that this is not true of competition in what we may call its social, as contrasted with its unsocial, aspect. The best illustration of what I venture to call social competition is sport. Here is rivalry, and here in any given contest one wins, the other loses, or few win and many lose. But the great thing in sport is not to win; the great thing is the game, the contest; and the contest is no contest unless the contestants are so nearly equal as to forbid any certainty in advance as to which will win. The best sport is found when no one contestant wins too often. There is in reality a common purpose--the zest of contest. Players combine and compete to carry out this purpose; and the rules are designed so to restrict the competition as to rule out certain kinds of action and preserve friendly relations. The contending rivals are in reality uniting to stimulate each other. Without the coöperation there would be no competition, and the competition is so conducted as to continue the relation. Competition in the world of thought is similarly social. In efforts to reach a solution of a scientific problem or to discuss a policy, the spur of rivalry or the matching of wits aids the common purpose of arriving at the truth. Similar competition exists in business. Many a firm owes its success to the competition of its rivals which has forced it to be efficient, progressive. As a manufacturing friend once remarked to me: "When the other man sells cheaper, you generally find he has found out something you don't know." But we also apply the term "competition" to rivalry in which there is no common purpose; to contests in which there is no intention to continue or repeat the match, and in which no rules control. Weeds compete with flowers and crowd them out. The factory competes with the hand loom and banishes it. The trust competes with the small firm and puts it out of business. The result is monopoly. When plants or inventions are thus said to compete for a place, there is frequently no room for both competitors, and no social gain by keeping both in the field. Competition serves here sometimes as a method of selection, although no one would decide to grow weeds rather than flowers because weeds are more efficient. In the case of what are called natural monopolies, there is duplication of effort instead of coöperation. Competition is here wasteful. But when we have to do, not with a specific product, or with a fixed field such as that of street railways or city lighting, but with the open field of invention and service, we need to provide for continuous coöperation, and competition seems at least one useful agency. To retain this, we frame rules against "unfair competition." As the rules of sport are designed to place a premium upon certain kinds of strength and skill which make a good game, so the rules of fair competition are designed to secure efficiency for public service, and to exclude efficiency in choking or fouling. In unfair competition there is no common purpose of public service or of advancing skill or invention; hence, no coöperation. The coöperative purpose or result is thus the test of useful, as contrasted with wasteful or harmful, competition. There is also an abstract conception of coöperation, which, in its one-sided emphasis upon equality, excludes any form of leadership, or direction, and in fear of inequality allows no place for competition. Selection of rulers by lot in a large and complex group is one illustration; jealous suspicion of ability, which becomes a cult of incompetence, is another. Refusals to accept inventions which require any modification of industry, or to recognize any inequalities of service, are others. But these do not affect the value of the principle as we can now define it in preliminary fashion: union tending to secure common ends, by a method which promotes equality, and with an outcome of increased power shared by all. II What are we to understand by the Ethics of Coöperation? Can we find some external standard of unquestioned value or absolute duty by which to measure the three processes of society which we have named, dominance, competition, coöperation? Masters of the past have offered many such, making appeal to the logic of reason or the response of sentiment, to the will for mastery or the claim of benevolence. To make a selection without giving reasons would seem arbitrary; to attempt a reasoned discussion would take us quite beyond the bounds appropriate to this lecture. But aside from the formulations of philosophers, humanity has been struggling--often rather haltingly and blindly--for certain goods and setting certain sign-posts which, if they do not point to a highway, at least mark certain paths as blind alleys. Such goods I take to be the great words, liberty, power, justice; such signs of blind paths I take to be rigidity, passive acceptance of what is. But those great words, just because they are so great, are given various meanings by those who would claim them for their own. Nor is there complete agreement as to just what paths deserve to be posted as leading nowhere. Groups characterized by dominance, cut-throat competition, or coöperation, tend to work out each its own interpretations of liberty, power, justice; its own code for the conduct of its members. Without assuming to decide your choice, I can indicate briefly what the main elements in these values and codes are. The group of masters and servants will develop what we have learned to call a morality of masters and a morality of slaves. This was essentially the code of the feudal system. We have survivals of such a group morality in our code of the gentleman, which in England still depreciates manual labor, although it has been refined and softened and enlarged to include respect for other than military and sportsman virtues. The code of masters exalts liberty--for the ruling class--and resents any restraint by inferiors or civilians, or by public opinion of any group but its own. It has a justice which takes for its premise a graded social order, and seeks to put and keep every man in his place. But its supreme value is power, likewise for the few, or for the state as consisting of society organized and directed by the ruling class. Such a group, according to Treitschke, will also need war, in order to test and exhibit its power to the utmost in fierce struggle with other powers. It will logically honor war as good. A group practicing cut-throat competition will simply reverse the order: first, struggle to put rivals out of the field; then, monopoly with unlimited power to control the market or possess the soil. It appeals to nature's struggle for existence as its standard for human life. It too sets a high value upon liberty in the sense of freedom from control, but originating as it did in resistance to control by privilege and other aspects of dominance, it has never learned the defects of a liberty which takes no account of ignorance, poverty, and ill health. It knows the liberty of nature, the liberty of the strong and the swift, but not the liberty achieved by the common effort for all. It knows justice, but a justice which is likely to be defined as securing to each his natural liberty, and which therefore means non-interference with the struggle for existence except to prevent violence and fraud. It takes no account as to whether the struggle kills few or many, or distributes goods widely or sparingly, or whether indeed there is any room at the table which civilization spreads; though it does not begrudge charity if administered under that name. A coöperating group has two working principles: first, common purpose and common good; second, that men can achieve by common effort what they cannot accomplish singly. The first, reinforced by the actual interchange of ideas and services, tends to favor equality. It implies mutual respect, confidence, and good-will. The second favors a constructive and progressive attitude, which will find standards neither in nature nor in humanity's past, since it conceives man able to change conditions to a considerable extent and thus to realize new goods. These principles tend toward a type of liberty different from those just mentioned. As contrasted with the liberty of a dominant group, coöperation favors a liberty for all, a liberty of live and let live, a tolerance and welcome for variation in type, provided only this is willing to make its contribution to the common weal. Instead of imitation or passive acceptance of patterns on the part of the majority, it stimulates active construction. As contrasted with the liberty favored in competing groups, coöperation would emphasize positive control over natural forces, over health conditions, over poverty and fear. It would make each person share as fully as possible in the knowledge and strength due to combined effort, and thus liberate him from many of the limitations which have hitherto hampered him. Similarly with justice. Coöperation's ethics of distribution is not rigidly set by the actual interest and rights of the past on the one hand, nor by hitherto available resources on the other. Neither natural rights nor present ability and present service form a complete measure. Since coöperation evokes new interests and new capacities, it is hospitable to new claims and new rights; since it makes new sources of supply available, it has in view the possibility at least of doing better for all than can an abstract insistence upon old claims. It may often avoid the deadlock of a rigid system. It is better to grow two blades of grass than to dispute who shall have the larger fraction of the one which has previously been the yield. It is better, not merely because there is more grass, but also because men's attitude becomes forward-looking and constructive, not pugnacious and rigid. Power is likewise a value in a coöperating group, but it must be power not merely used for the good of all, but to some extent controlled by all and thus actually shared. Only as so controlled and so shared is power attended by the responsibility which makes it safe for its possessors. Only on this basis does power over other men permit the free choices on their part which are essential to full moral life. As regards the actual efficiency of a coöperating group, it may be granted that its powers are not so rapidly mobilized. In small, homogeneous groups, the loss of time is small; in large groups the formation of public opinion and the conversion of this into action is still largely a problem rather than an achievement. New techniques have to be developed, and it may be that for certain military tasks the military technique will always be more efficient. To the coöperative group, however, this test will not be the ultimate ethical test. It will rather consider the possibilities of substituting for war other activities in which coöperation is superior. And if the advocate of war insists that war as such is the most glorious and desirable type of life, coöperation may perhaps fail to convert him. But it may hope to create a new order whose excellence shall be justified of her children. III A glance at the past rôles of dominance, competition, and coöperation in the institutions of government, religion, and commerce and industry, will aid us to consider coöperation in relation to present international problems. Primitive tribal life had elements of each of the three principles we have named. But with discovery by some genius of the power of organization for war the principle of dominance won, seemingly at a flash, a decisive position. No power of steam or lightning has been so spectacular and wide-reaching as the power which Egyptian, Assyrian, Macedonian, Roman, and their modern successors introduced and controlled. Political states owing their rise to military means naturally followed the military pattern. The sharp separation between ruler or ruling group and subject people, based on conquest, was perpetuated in class distinction. Gentry and simple, lord and villein, were indeed combined in exploitation of earth's resources, but coöperation was in the background, mastery in the fore. And when empires included peoples of various races and cultural advance the separation between higher and lower became intensified. Yet though submerged for long periods, the principle of coöperation has asserted itself, step by step and it seldom loses ground. Beginning usually in some group which at first combined to resist dominance, it has made its way through such stages as equality before the law, abolition of special privileges, extension of suffrage, influence of public sentiment, interchange of ideas, toward genuine participation by all in the dignity and responsibility of political power. It builds a Panama Canal, it maintains a great system of education, and has, we may easily believe, yet greater tasks in prospect. It may be premature to predict its complete displacement of dominance in our own day as a method of government, yet who in America doubts its ultimate prevalence? Religion presents a fascinating mixture of coöperation with dominance on the one hand, and exclusiveness on the other. The central fact is the community, which seeks some common end in ritual, or in beneficent activity. But at an early period leaders became invested, or invested themselves, with a sanctity which led to dominance. Not the power of force, but that of mystery and the invisible raised the priest above the level of the many. And, on another side, competition between rival national religions, like that between states, excluded friendly contacts. Jew and Samaritan had no dealings; between the followers of Baal and Jehovah there was no peace but by extermination. Yet it was religion which confronted the _Herrenmoral_ with the first reversal of values, and declared, "So shall it not be among you. But whosoever will be great among you let him be your minister." And it was religion which cut across national boundaries in its vision of what Professor Royce so happily calls the Great Community. Protest against dominance resulted, however, in divisions, and although coöperation in practical activities has done much to prepare the way for national understanding, the hostile forces of the world to-day lack the restraint which might have come from a united moral sentiment and moral will. In the economic field the story of dominance, coöperation, and competition is more complex than in government and religion. It followed somewhat different courses in trade and in industry. The simplest way to supply needs with goods is to go and take them; the simplest way to obtain services is to seize them. Dominance in the first case gives piracy and plunder, when directed against those without; fines and taxes, when exercised upon those within; in the second case, it gives slavery or forced levies. But trade, as a voluntary exchange of presents, or as a bargaining for mutual advantage, had likewise its early beginnings. Carried on at first with timidity and distrust, because the parties belonged to different groups, it has developed a high degree of mutual confidence between merchant and customer, banker and client, insurer and insured. By its system of contracts and fiduciary relations, which bind men of the most varying localities, races, occupations, social classes, and national allegiance, it has woven a new net of human relations far more intricate and wide-reaching than the natural ties of blood kinship. It rests upon mutual responsibility and good faith; it is a constant force for their extension. The industrial side of the process has had similar influence toward union. Free craftsmen in the towns found mutual support in guilds, when as yet the farm laborer or villein had to get on as best he could unaided. The factory system itself has been largely organized from above down. It has very largely assumed that the higher command needs no advice or ideas from below. Hours of labor, shop conditions, wages, have largely been fixed by "orders," just as governments once ruled by decrees. But as dominance in government has led men to unite against the new power and then has yielded to the more complete coöperation of participation, so in industry the factory system has given rise to the labor movement. As for the prospects of fuller coöperation, this may be said already to have displaced the older autocratic system within the managing group, and the war is giving an increased impetus to extension of the process. Exchange of goods and services is indeed a threefold coöperation: it meets wants which the parties cannot themselves satisfy or cannot well satisfy; it awakens new wants; it calls new inventions and new forces into play. It thus not only satisfies man's existing nature, but enlarges his capacity for enjoyment and his active powers. It makes not only for comfort, but for progress. IV If trade and industry, however, embody so fully the principle of coöperation, how does it come about that they have on the whole had a rather low reputation, not only among the class groups founded on militarism, but among philosophers and moralists? Why do we find the present calamities of war charged to economic causes? Perhaps the answer to these questions will point the path along which better coöperation may be expected. There is, from the outset, one defect in the coöperation between buyer and seller, employer and laborer. The coöperation is largely unintended. Each is primarily thinking of his own advantage, rather than that of the other, or of the social whole; he is seeking it in terms of money, which as a material object must be in the pocket of one party or of the other, and is not, like friendship or beauty, sharable. Mutual benefit is the result of exchange--it need not be the motive. This benefit comes about as if it were arranged by an invisible hand, said Adam Smith. Indeed, it was long held that if one of the bargainers gained, the other must lose. And when under modern conditions labor is considered as a commodity to be bought and sold in the cheapest market by an impersonal corporate employer, there is a strong presumption against the coöperative attitude on either side. The great problem here is, therefore: How can men be brought to seek consciously what now they unintentionally produce? How can the man whose ends are both self-centered and ignoble be changed into the man whose ends are wide and high? Something may doubtless be done by showing that a narrow selfishness is stupid. If we rule out monopoly the best way to gain great success is likely to lie through meeting needs of a great multitude; and to meet these effectively implies entering by imagination and sympathy into their situation. The business maxim of "service," the practices of refunding money if goods are unsatisfactory, of one price to all, of providing sanitary and even attractive factories and homes, and of paying a minimum wage far in excess of the market price, have often proved highly remunerative. Yet, I should not place exclusive, and perhaps not chief, reliance on these methods of appeal. They are analogous to the old maxim, honesty is the best policy; and we know too well that while this holds under certain conditions,--that is, among intelligent people, or in the long run,--it is often possible to acquire great gains by exploiting the weak, deceiving the ignorant, or perpetrating a fraud of such proportions that men forget its dishonesty in admiration at its audacity. In the end it is likely to prove that the level of economic life is to be raised not by proving that coöperation will better satisfy selfish and ignoble interests, but rather by creating new standards for measuring success, new interests in social and worthy ends, and by strengthening the appeal of duty where this conflicts with present interests. The one method stakes all on human nature as it is; the other challenges man's capacity to listen to new appeals and respond to better motives. It is, if you please, idealism; but before it is dismissed as worthless, consider what has been achieved in substituting social motives in the field of political action. There was a time when the aim in political life was undisguisedly selfish. The state, in distinction from the kinship group or the village community, was organized for power and profit. It was nearly a gigantic piratical enterprise, highly profitable to its managers. The shepherd, says Thrasymachus in Plato's dialogue, does not feed his sheep for their benefit, but for his own. Yet now, what president or minister, legislator or judge, would announce as his aim to acquire the greatest financial profit from his position? Even in autocratically governed countries, it is at least the assumption that the good of the state does not mean solely the prestige and wealth of the ruler. A great social and political order has been built up, and we all hold that it must not be exploited for private gain. It has not been created or maintained by chance. Nor could it survive if every man sought primarily his own advantage and left the commonwealth to care for itself. Nor in a democracy would it be maintained, provided the governing class alone were disinterested, deprived of private property, and given education, as Plato suggested. The only safety is in the general and intelligent desire for the public interest and common welfare. At this moment almost unanimous acceptance of responsibility for what we believe to be the public good and the maintenance of American ideals--though it brings to each of us sacrifice and to many the full measure of devotion--bears witness to the ability of human nature to adopt as its compelling motives a high end which opposes private advantage. Is the economic process too desperate a field for larger motives? To me it seems less desperate than the field of government in the days of autocratic kings. One great need is to substitute a different standard of success for the financial gains which have seemed the only test. Our schools of commerce are aiming to perform this service, by introducing professional standards. A physician is measured by his ability to cure the sick, an engineer by the soundness of his bridge and ship; why not measure a railroad president by his ability to supply coal in winter, to run trains on time, and decrease the cost of freight, rather than by his private accumulations? Why not measure a merchant or banker by similar tests? Mankind has built up a great economic system. Pioneer, adventurer, inventor, scientist, laborer, organizer, all have contributed. It is as essential to human welfare as the political system, and like that system it comes to us as an inheritance. I can see no reason why it should be thought unworthy of a statesman or a judge to use the political structure for his own profit, but perfectly justifiable for a man to exploit the economic structure for private gain. This does not necessarily exclude profit as a method of paying for services, and of increasing capital needed for development, but it would seek to adjust profits to services, and treat capital, just as it regards political power, as a public trust in need of coöperative regulation and to be used for the general welfare. But the war is teaching with dramatic swiftness what it might have needed decades of peace to bring home to us. We _are_ thinking of the common welfare. High prices may still be a rough guide to show men's needs, but we are learning to raise wheat because others need it--not merely because the price is high. Prices may also be a rough guide to consumption, but we are learning that eating wheat or sugar is not merely a matter of what I can afford. It is a question of whether I take wheat or sugar away from some one else who needs it--the soldier in France, the child in Belgium, the family of my less fortunate neighbor. The great argument for not interfering with private exchange in all such matters has been that if prices should by some authority be kept low in time of scarcity, men would consume the supply too rapidly; whereas if prices rise in response to scarcity, men at once begin to economize and so prevent the total exhaustion of the supply. We now reflect that if prices of milk rise it does not mean uniform economy--it means cutting off to a large degree the children of the poor and leaving relatively untouched the consumption of the well-to-do. Merely raising the _price_ of meat or wheat means taking these articles from the table of one class to leave them upon the table of another. War, requiring, as it does, the united strength and purpose of the whole people, has found this method antiquated. In Europe governments have said to their peoples: we _must_ all think of the common weal; we _must_ all share alike. In this country, the appeal of the food administrator, though largely without force of law, has been loyally answered by the great majority. It is doubtless rash to predict how much peace will retain of what war has taught, but who of us will again say so easily, "My work or leisure, my economy or my luxury, is my own affair, if I can afford it?" Who can fail to see that common welfare comes not without common intention? The second great defect in our economic order, from the point of view of coöperation, has been the inequality of its distribution. This has been due largely to competition when parties were unequal, not merely in their ability, but in their opportunity. And the most serious, though not the most apparent, aspect of this inequality, has not been that some have more comfort or luxuries to enjoy; it is the fact that wealth means power. In so far as it can set prices on all that we eat, wear, and enjoy, it is controlling the intimate affairs of life more thoroughly than any government ever attempted. In so far as it controls natural resources, means of transportation, organization of credit, and the capital necessary for large-scale manufacturing and marketing, it can set prices. The great questions then are, as with political power: How can this great power be coöperatively used? Is it serving all or a few? Two notable doctrines of the courts point ways for ethics. The first is that of property affected with public interest. Applied thus far by the courts to warehouses, transportation, and similar public services, what limits can we set ethically to the doctrine that power of one man over his fellows, whether through his office, or through his property, is affected with public interest? The police power, which sets the welfare of all above private property when these conflict, is a second doctrine whose ethical import far outruns its legal applications. Yet it is by neither of these that the most significant progress has been made toward removing that handicap of inequality which is the chief injustice of our economic system. It is by our great educational system, liberal in its provisions, generously supported by all classes, unselfishly served, opening to all doors of opportunity which once were closed to the many, the most successful department of our democratic institutions in helping and gaining confidence of all--a system of which this University of California is one of the most notable leaders and the most useful members--that fair conditions for competition and intelligent coöperation in the economic world are increasingly possible. V What bearing has this sketch of the significance and progress of coöperation upon the international questions which now overshadow all else? Certainly the world cannot remain as before: great powers struggling for empire; lesser powers struggling for their separate existence; great areas of backward peoples viewed as subjects for exploitation; we ourselves aloof. It must then choose between a future world order based on dominance, which means world empire; a world order based on nationalism joined with the non-social type of competition, which means, every nation the judge of its own interests, continuance of jealousies and from time to time the recurrence of war; and a world order based on nationalism plus international coöperation, "to establish justice, to provide for common defense, to promote the general welfare, and to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." It is not necessary to discuss in this country the principle of dominance and world empire. It contradicts our whole philosophy. Safety for dominance lies only in a civilization of discipline from above down, in ruthless repression of all thinking on the part of the subject class or race. Nor can I see any genuine alternative in what some advocate--reliance by each nation on its own military strength as the sole effective guarantee for its interests. After the military lessons of this war, the concentration of scientific, economic, and even educational attention upon military purposes would almost inevitably be vastly in excess of anything previously conceived. What limits can be set to the armies of France and Great Britain if these are to protect those countries from a German empire already double its previous extent, and taking steps to control the resources of eastern Europe and the near East? What navy could guarantee German commerce against the combined forces of Great Britain and the United States? What limits to the frightfulness yet to be discovered by chemist and bacteriologist? What guarantee against the insidious growth of a militarist attitude even in democratically minded peoples if the constant terror of war exalts military preparations to the supreme place? Something has changed the Germany of other days which many of us loved even while we shrank from its militarist masters. Is it absolutely certain that nothing can change the spirit of democratic peoples? At any rate, America, which has experimented on a larger scale with coöperation--political, economic, and religious--than any other continent, may well assert steadily and insistently that this is the more hopeful path. It may urge this upon distrustful Europe. The obstacles to coöperation are: 1. The survival of the principle of dominance, showing itself in desire for political power and prestige, and in certain conceptions of national honor. 2. The principle of non-social competition, exhibited in part in the political policy of eliminating weaker peoples, and conspicuously in foreign trade when the use of unfair methods relies upon national power to back up its exploitation or monopoly. 3. The principle of nationalistic sentiment, itself based on coöperation, on social tradition and common ideals, but bound up so closely with political sovereignty and antagonisms as to become exclusive instead of coöperative in its attitude toward other cultures. The principle of dominance deters from coöperation, not only the people that seeks to dominate, but peoples that fear to be dominated or to become involved in entangling alliances. Doubtless a policy of aloofness was long the safe policy for us. We could not trust political liberty to an alliance with monarchies, even as with equal right some European peoples might distrust the policies of a republic seemingly controlled by the slavery interest. At the present time one great power professes itself incredulous of the fairness of any world tribunal; smaller powers fear the commanding influence of the great; new national groups just struggling to expression fear that a league of nations would be based on present status and therefore give them no recognition, or else a measure of recognition conditioned by past injustices rather than by future aspirations and real desert. All these fears are justified in so far as the principle of dominance is still potent. The only league that can be trusted by peoples willing to live and let live, is one that is controlled by a coöperative spirit. And yet who can doubt that this spirit is spreading? Few governments are now organized on the avowed basis that military power, which embodies the spirit of dominance, should be superior to civil control, and even with them the principle of irresponsible rule, despite its reinforcement by military success, is likely to yield to the spirit of the age when once the pressure of war is removed which now holds former protesters against militarism solid in its support. For all powers that are genuine in their desire for coöperation there is overwhelming reason to try it; for only by the combined strength of those who accept this principle can liberty and justice be maintained against the aggression of powers capable of concentrating all their resources with a suddenness and ruthlessness in which dominance is probably superior. Yet coöperation for protection of liberty and justice is liable to fall short of humanity's hopes unless liberty and justice be themselves defined in a coöperative sense. The great liberties which man has gained, as step by step he has risen from savagery, have not been chiefly the assertion of already existing powers or the striking-off of fetters forged by his fellows. They have been _additions_ to previous powers. Science, art, invention, associated life in all its forms, have opened the windows of his dwelling, have given possibilities to his choice, have given the dream and the interpretation which have set him free from his prison. The liberty to which international coöperation points is not merely self-direction or self-determination, but a larger freedom from fear, a larger freedom from suspicion, a fuller control over nature and society, a new set of ideas, which will make men free in a far larger degree than ever before. Similarly justice needs to be coöperatively defined. A justice that looks merely to existing status will not give lasting peace. Peoples change in needs as truly as they differ in needs. But no people can be trusted to judge its own needs any more than to judge its own right. A justice which adheres rigidly to vested interests, and a justice which is based on expanding interests, are likely to be deadlocked unless a constructive spirit is brought to bear. Abstract rights to the soil, to trade, to expansion, must be subordinate to the supreme question: How can peoples live together and help instead of destroy? This can be approached only from an international point of view. The second obstacle, unsocial competition, is for trade what dominance is in politics. It prevents that solution for many of the delicate problems of international life which coöperation through trade might otherwise afford. Exchange of goods and services by voluntary trade accomplishes what once seemed attainable only by conquest or slavery. If Germany or Japan or Italy needs iron or coal; if England needs wheat, or if the United States sugar, it is possible, or should be possible, to obtain these without owning the country in which are the mines, grain, and sugar cane. The United States needs Canada's products; it has no desire to own Canada. But in recent years the exchange of products has been subjected to a new influence. National self-interest has been added to private self-interest. This has intensified and called out many of the worst features of antagonism and inequality. Few in this country have realized the extent to which other countries have organized their foreign commerce on national lines. We are now becoming informed as to the carefully worked-out programmes of commercial education, merchant marines, trade agreements, consular service, financial and moral support from the home government, and mutual aid among various salesmen of the same nationality living in a foreign country. We are preparing to undertake similar enterprises. We are reminded that "eighty per cent of the world's people live in the countries bordering on the Pacific Ocean, and that as a result of the rearrangement of trade routes, San Francisco's chance of becoming the greatest distributing port of the Pacific for goods _en route_ to the markets of the Orient, are now more promising than ever before." Can the United States take part in this commerce in such a way as to help, not hinder, international progress in harmony? Not unless we remember that commerce may be as predatory as armies, and that we must provide international guarantees against the exclusive types of competition which we have had to control by law in our own domestic affairs. An Indian or an African may be deprived of his possessions quite as effectively by trade as by violence. We need at least as high standards of social welfare as in domestic commerce. I cannot better present the situation than by quoting from a recent article by Mr. William Notz in the "Journal of Political Economy" (Feb. 1918): During the past twenty-five years competition in the world markets became enormously keen. In the wild scramble for trade the standards of honest business were disregarded more and more by all the various rival nations. In the absence of any special regulation or legislation, it appeared as though a silent understanding prevailed in wide circles that foreign trade was subject to a code of business ethics widely at variance with the rules observed in domestic trade. What was frowned upon as unethical and poor business policy, if not illegal at home, was condoned and winked at or openly espoused when foreign markets formed the basis of operations and foreigners were the competitors. High-minded men of all nations have long observed with concern the growing tendency of modern international trade toward selfish exploitation, concession-hunting, cut-throat competition, and commercialistic practices of the most sordid type. Time and again complaints have been voiced, retaliatory measures threatened, and more than once serious friction has ensued. Mr. Notz brings to our attention various efforts by official and commercial bodies looking toward remedies for such conditions and toward official recognition by all countries of unfair competition as a penal offense. What more do we need than fair competition to constitute the coöperative international life which we dreamed yesterday and now must consider, not merely as a dream, but as the only alternative to a future of horror? Free trade has been not unnaturally urged as at least one condition. Tariffs certainly isolate. To say to a country: "You shall manufacture nothing unless you own the raw material; you shall sell nothing unless at prices which I fix," is likely to provoke the reply: "Then I must acquire lands in which raw materials are found; I must acquire colonies which will buy my products." Trade agreements mean coöperation for those within, unless they are one-sided and made under duress; in any case they are exclusive of those without. Free trade, the open door, seems to offer a better way. But free trade in name is not free trade unless the parties are really free--free from ignorance, from pressure of want. If one party is weak and the other unscrupulous; if one competitor has a lower standard of living than the other, freedom of trade will not mean genuine coöperation. Such coöperation as means good for all requires either an equality of conditions between traders and laborers of competing nations and of nations which exchange goods, or else an international control to prevent unfair competition, exploitation of weaker peoples, and lowering of standards of living. Medical science is giving an object lesson which may well have a wide application. It is seeking to combat disease in its centers of diffusion. Instead of attempting to quarantine against the Orient, it is aiding the Orient to overcome those conditions which do harm alike to Orient and Occident. Plague, anthrax, yellow fever, cannot exist in one country without harm to all. Nor in the long run can men reach true coöperation so long as China and Africa are a prize for the exploiter rather than equals in the market. Not merely in the political sense, but in its larger meanings democracy here is not safe without democracy there. Education, and the lifting of all to a higher level, is the ultimate goal. And until education, invention, and intercommunication have done their work of elevation, international control must protect and regulate. In many respects the obstacle to international coöperation which is most difficult to remove is the strong and still growing sentiment of nationality. This is not, like dominance, a waning survival of a cruder method of social order; it is a genuine type of coöperation. Rooted as it is in a historic past, in community of ideals and traditions, and usually of language and art, it wakens the emotional response to a degree once true only of religion. Born of such a social tradition, the modern may be said in truth mentally and spiritually, as well as physically, to be born a Frenchman or a German, a Scotchman or Irishman or Englishman. He may be content to merge this inheritance in an empire if he can be senior partner, but the struggles of Irish, Poles, Czechs, and South Slavs, the Zionist movement, the nationalistic stirrings in India, with their literary revivals, their fierce self-assertions, seem to point away from internationalism rather than toward it. The Balkans, in which Serb, Bulgar, Roumanian, and Greek have been developing this national consciousness, have been the despair of peacemakers. The strongest point in the nationalist programme is, however, not in any wise opposed to coöperation, but rather to dominance or non-social competition. The strongest point is the importance of diversity combined with group unity for the fullest enrichment of life and the widest development of human capacity. A world all of one sort would not only be less interesting, but less progressive. We are stimulated by different customs, temperaments, arts, and ideals. But all this is the strongest argument for genuine coöperation, since by this only can diversity be helpful, even as it is only through diversity in its members that a community can develop fullest life. A world organization based on the principle that any single group is best and therefore ought to rule, or to displace all others, would be a calamity. A world organization which encourages every member to be itself would be a blessing. Why do nationalism and internationalism clash? Because this national spirit has rightly or wrongly been bound up so intimately with political independence. Tara's harp long hangs mute when Erin is conquered. Poland's children must not use a language in which they might learn to plot against their masters. A French-speaking Alsatian is suspected of disloyalty. Professor Dewey has recently pointed out that in the United States we have gone far toward separating culture from the state, and suggests that this may be the path of peace for Europe. We allow groups to keep their religion, their language, their song festivals. It may perhaps be claimed that this maintenance of distinct languages and separate cultures is a source of weakness in such a crisis as we now face. Yet it may well be urged, on the other hand, that a policy less liberal would have increased rather than diminished disunion and disloyalty. VI The student of human progress is likely to be increasingly impressed with the interaction between ideas and institutions. How far does man build and shape institutions to give body to his ideas? How far is it the organized life with its social contacts, its give and take, its enlargement of its membership to see life _sub specie communitatis_, which itself brings ideas to birth? Desire may bring the sexes together, but it is the association and organized relationships of the family which transform casual to permanent affection and shape our conceptions of its values. A herding instinct or a common need of defense or of food supplies may bring together early groups, and will to power may begin the state, but it is the living together which generates laws and wakens the craving for liberty and the struggle for justice. Seer and poet doubtless contribute to progress by their kindling appeals to the imagination and sympathy; the philosopher may, as Plato claimed for him, live as citizen of a perfect state which has no earthly being, and shape his life according to its laws; but mankind in general has learned law and right, as well as the arts of use and beauty, in the school of life in common. So it is likely to be with international coöperation. Fears and hopes now urge it upon a reluctant, incredulous world. But the beginnings--scientific, legal, commercial, political--timid and imperfect though they be, like our own early confederation, will work to reshape those who take part. Mutual understanding will increase with common action. When men work consistently to create new resources instead of treating their world as a fixed system, when they see it as a fountain, not as a cistern, they will gradually gain a new spirit. The Great Community must create as well as prove the ethics of coöperation. _The Riverside Press_ CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS U · S · A 
8077	----	THE MIND IN THE MAKING The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform By JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON _Author of_ "PETRARCH, THE FIRST MODERN SCHOLAR" "MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN TIMES" "THE NEW HISTORY", ETC. CONTENTS I PREFACE 1. ON THE PURPOSE OF THIS VOLUME 2. THREE DISAPPOINTED METHODS OF REFORM II 3. ON VARIOUS KINDS OF THINKING 4. RATIONALIZING 5. HOW CREATIVE THOUGHT TRANSFORMS THE WORLD III 6. OUR ANIMAL HERITAGE. THE NATURE OF CIVILIZATION 7. OUR SAVAGE MIND IV 8. BEGINNING OF CRITICAL THINKING 9. INFLUENCE OF PLATO AND ARISTOTLE V 10. ORIGIN OF MEDIAEVAL CIVILIZATION 11. OUR MEDIAEVAL INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE VI 12. THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION 13. HOW SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE HAS THE CONDITIONS OF LIFE VII 14. "THE SICKNESS OF AN ACQUISITIVE SOCIETY" 15. THE PHILOSOPHY OF SAFETY AND SANITY VIII 16. SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF REPRESSION 17. WHAT OF IT? APPENDIX * * * * * I. PREFACE This is an essay--not a treatise--on the most important of all matters of human concern. Although it has cost its author a great deal more thought and labor than will be apparent, it falls, in his estimation, far below the demands of its implacably urgent theme. Each page could readily be expanded into a volume. It suggests but the beginning of the beginning now being made to raise men's thinking onto a plain which may perhaps enable them to fend off or reduce some of the dangers which lurk on every hand. J. H. R. NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH, NEW YORK CITY, _August, 1921._ THE MIND IN THE MAKING 1. ON THE PURPOSE OF THIS VOLUME If some magical transformation could be produced in men's ways of looking at themselves and their fellows, no inconsiderable part of the evils which now afflict society would vanish away or remedy themselves automatically. If the majority of influential persons held the opinions and occupied the point of view that a few rather uninfluential people now do, there would, for instance, be no likelihood of another great war; the whole problem of "labor and capital" would be transformed and attenuated; national arrogance, race animosity, political corruption, and inefficiency would all be reduced below the danger point. As an old Stoic proverb has it, men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, rather than by the things themselves. This is eminently true of many of our worst problems to-day. We have available knowledge and ingenuity and material resources to make a far fairer world than that in which we find ourselves, but various obstacles prevent our intelligently availing ourselves of them. The object of this book is to substantiate this proposition, to exhibit with entire frankness the tremendous difficulties that stand in the way of such a beneficent change of mind, and to point out as clearly as may be some of the measures to be taken in order to overcome them. When we contemplate the shocking derangement of human affairs which now prevails in most civilized countries, including our own, even the best minds are puzzled and uncertain in their attempts to grasp the situation. The world seems to demand a moral and economic regeneration which it is dangerous to postpone, but as yet impossible to imagine, let alone direct. The preliminary intellectual regeneration which would put our leaders in a position to determine and control the course of affairs has not taken place. We have unprecedented conditions to deal with and novel adjustments to make--there can be no doubt of that. We also have a great stock of scientific knowledge unknown to our grandfathers with which to operate. So novel are the conditions, so copious the knowledge, that we must undertake the arduous task of reconsidering a great part of the opinions about man and his relations to his fellow-men which have been handed down to us by previous generations who lived in far other conditions and possessed far less information about the world and themselves. We have, however, first to create an _unprecedented attitude of mind to cope with unprecedented conditions, and to utilize unprecedented knowledge_ This is the preliminary, and most difficult, step to be taken--far more difficult than one would suspect who fails to realize that in order to take it we must overcome inveterate natural tendencies and artificial habits of long standing. How are we to put ourselves in a position to come to think of things that we not only never thought of before, but are most reluctant to question? In short, how are we to rid ourselves of our fond prejudices and _open our minds_? As a historical student who for a good many years has been especially engaged in inquiring how man happens to have the ideas and convictions about himself and human relations which now prevail, the writer has reached the conclusion that history can at least shed a great deal of light on our present predicaments and confusion. I do not mean by history that conventional chronicle of remote and irrelevant events which embittered the youthful years of many of us, but rather a study of how man has come to be as he is and to believe as he does. No historian has so far been able to make the whole story very plain or popular, but a number of considerations are obvious enough, and it ought not to be impossible some day to popularize them. I venture to think that if certain seemingly indisputable historical facts were generally known and accepted and permitted to play a daily part in our thought, the world would forthwith become a very different place from what it now is. We could then neither delude ourselves in the simple-minded way we now do, nor could we take advantage of the primitive ignorance of others. All our discussions of social, industrial, and political reform would be raised to a higher plane of insight and fruitfulness. In one of those brilliant divagations with which Mr. H. G. Wells is wont to enrich his novels he says: When the intellectual history of this time comes to be written, nothing, I think, will stand out more strikingly than the empty gulf in quality between the superb and richly fruitful scientific investigations that are going on, and the general thought of other educated sections of the community. I do not mean that scientific men are, as a whole, a class of supermen, dealing with and thinking about everything in a way altogether better than the common run of humanity, but in their field they think and work with an intensity, an integrity, a breadth, boldness, patience, thoroughness, and faithfulness--excepting only a few artists--which puts their work out of all comparison with any other human activity.... In these particular directions the human mind has achieved a new and higher quality of attitude and gesture, a veracity, a self-detachment, and self-abnegating vigor of criticism that tend to spread out and must ultimately spread out to every other human affair. No one who is even most superficially acquainted with the achievements of students of nature during the past few centuries can fail to see that their thought has been astoundingly effective in constantly adding to our knowledge of the universe, from the hugest nebula to the tiniest atom; moreover, this knowledge has been so applied as to well-nigh revolutionize human affairs, and both the knowledge and its applications appear to be no more than hopeful beginnings, with indefinite revelations ahead, if only the same kind of thought be continued in the same patient and scrupulous manner. But the knowledge of man, of the springs of his conduct, of his relation to his fellow-men singly or in groups, and the felicitous regulation of human intercourse in the interest of harmony and fairness, have made no such advance. Aristotle's treatises on astronomy and physics, and his notions of "generation and decay" and of chemical processes, have long gone by the board, but his politics and ethics are still revered. Does this mean that his penetration in the sciences of man exceeded so greatly his grasp of natural science, or does it mean that the progress of mankind in the scientific knowledge and regulation of human affairs has remained almost stationary for over two thousand years? I think that we may safely conclude that the latter is the case. It has required three centuries of scientific thought and of subtle inventions for its promotion to enable a modern chemist or physicist to center his attention on electrons and their relation to the mysterious nucleus of the atom, or to permit an embryologist to study the early stirrings of the fertilized egg. As yet relatively little of the same kind of thought has been brought to bear on human affairs. When we compare the discussions in the United States Senate in regard to the League of Nations with the consideration of a broken-down car in a roadside garage the contrast is shocking. The rural mechanic thinks scientifically; his only aim is to avail himself of his knowledge of the nature and workings of the car, with a view to making it run once more. The Senator, on the other hand, appears too often to have little idea of the nature and workings of nations, and he relies on rhetoric and appeals to vague fears and hopes or mere partisan animosity. The scientists have been busy for a century in revolutionizing the _practical_ relation of nations. The ocean is no longer a barrier, as it was in Washington's day, but to all intents and purposes a smooth avenue closely connecting, rather than safely separating, the eastern and western continents. The Senator will nevertheless unblushingly appeal to policies of a century back, suitable, mayhap, in their day, but now become a warning rather than a guide. The garage man, on the contrary, takes his mechanism as he finds it, and does not allow any mystic respect for the earlier forms of the gas engine to interfere with the needed adjustments. Those who have dealt with natural phenomena, as distinguished from purely human concerns, did not, however, quickly or easily gain popular approbation and respect. The process of emancipating natural science from current prejudices, both of the learned and of the unlearned, has been long and painful, and is not wholly completed yet. If we go back to the opening of the seventeenth century we find three men whose business it was, above all, to present and defend common sense in the natural sciences. The most eloquent and variedly persuasive of these was Lord Bacon. Then there was the young Descartes trying to shake himself loose from his training in a Jesuit seminary by going into the Thirty Years' War, and starting his intellectual life all over by giving up for the moment all he had been taught. Galileo had committed an offense of a grave character by discussing in the mother tongue the problems of physics. In his old age he was imprisoned and sentenced to repeat the seven penitential psalms for differing from Aristotle and Moses and the teachings of the theologians. On hearing Galileo's fate. Descartes burned a book he had written, _On The World_, lest he, too, get into trouble. From that time down to the days of Huxley and John Fiske the struggle has continued, and still continues--the Three Hundred Years' War for intellectual freedom in dealing with natural phenomena. It has been a conflict against ignorance, tradition, and vested interests in church and university, with all that preposterous invective and cruel misrepresentation which characterize the fight against new and critical ideas. Those who cried out against scientific discoveries did so in the name of God, of man's dignity, and of holy religion and morality. Finally, however, it has come about that our instruction in the natural sciences is tolerably free; although there are still large bodies of organized religious believers who are hotly opposed to some of the more fundamental findings of biology. Hundreds of thousands of readers can be found for Pastor Russell's exegesis of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse to hundreds who read Conklin's _Heredity and Environment_ or Slosson's _Creative Chemistry_. No publisher would accept a historical textbook based on an explicit statement of the knowledge we now have of man's animal ancestry. In general, however, our scientific men carry on their work and report their results with little or no effective hostility on the part of the clergy or the schools. The social body has become tolerant of their virus. This is not the case, however, with the social sciences. One cannot but feel a little queasy when he uses the expression "social science", because it seems as if we had not as yet got anywhere near a real science of man. I mean by social science our feeble efforts to study man, his natural equipment and impulses, and his relations to his fellows in the light of his origin and the history of the race. This enterprise has hitherto been opposed by a large number of obstacles essentially more hampering and far more numerous than those which for three hundred years hindered the advance of the natural sciences. Human affairs are in themselves far more intricate and perplexing than molecules and chromosomes. But this is only the more reason for bringing to bear on human affairs that critical type of thought and calculation for which the remunerative thought about molecules and chromosomes has prepared the way. I do not for a moment suggest that we can use precisely the same kind of thinking in dealing with the quandaries of mankind that we use in problems of chemical reaction and mechanical adjustment. Exact scientific results, such as might be formulated in mechanics, are, of course, out of the question. It would be unscientific to expect to apply them. I am not advocating any particular method of treating human affairs, but rather such a _general frame of mind, such a critical open-minded attitude_, as has hitherto been but sparsely developed among those who aspire to be men's guides, whether religious, political, economic, or academic. Most human progress has been, as Wells expresses it, a mere "muddling through". It has been man's wont to explain and sanctify his ways, with little regard to their fundamental and permanent expediency. An arresting example of what this muddling may mean we have seen during these recent years in the slaying or maiming of fifteen million of our young men, resulting in incalculable loss, continued disorder, and bewilderment. Yet men seem blindly driven to defend and perpetuate the conditions which produced the last disaster. Unless we wish to see a recurrence of this or some similar calamity, we must, as I have already suggested, create a new and unprecedented attitude of mind to meet the new and unprecedented conditions which confront us. _We should proceed to the thorough reconstruction of our mind, with a view to understanding actual human conduct and organization_. We must examine the facts freshly, critically, and dispassionately, and then allow our philosophy to formulate itself as a result of this examination, instead of permitting our observations to be distorted by archaic philosophy, political economy, and ethics. As it is, we are taught our philosophy first, and in its light we try to justify the facts. We must reverse this process, as did those who began the great work in experimental science; we must first face the facts, and patiently await the emergence of a new philosophy. A willingness to examine the very foundations of society does not mean a desire to encourage or engage in any hasty readjustment, but certainly no wise or needed readjustment _can_ be made unless such an examination is undertaken. I come back, then, to my original point that in this examination of existing facts history, by revealing the origin of many of our current fundamental beliefs, will tend to free our minds so as to permit honest thinking. Also, that the historical facts which I propose to recall would, if permitted to play a constant part in our thinking, automatically eliminate a very considerable portion of the gross stupidity and blindness which characterize our present thought and conduct in public affairs, and would contribute greatly to developing the needed scientific attitude toward human concerns--in other words, to _bringing the mind up to date_. 2. THREE DISAPPOINTED METHODS OF REFORM Plans for social betterment and the cure of public ills have in the past taken three general forms: (I) changes in the rules of the game, (II) spiritual exhortation, and (III) education. Had all these not largely failed, the world would not be in the plight in which it now confessedly is. I. Many reformers concede that they are suspicious of what they call "ideas". They are confident that our troubles result from defective organization, which should be remedied by more expedient legislation and wise ordinances. Abuses should be abolished or checked by forbidding them, or by some ingenious reordering of procedure. Responsibility should be concentrated or dispersed. The term of office of government officials should be lengthened or shortened; the number of members in governing bodies should be increased or decreased; there should be direct primaries, referendum, recall, government by commission; powers should be shifted here and there with a hope of meeting obvious mischances all too familiar in the past. In industry and education administrative reform is constantly going on, with the hope of reducing friction and increasing efficiency. The House of Commons not long ago came to new terms with the peers. The League of Nations has already had to adjust the functions and influence of the Council and the Assembly, respectively. No one will question that organization is absolutely essential in human affairs, but reorganization, while it sometimes produces assignable benefit, often fails to meet existing evils, and not uncommonly engenders new and unexpected ones. Our confidence in restriction and regimentation is exaggerated. What we usually need is a _change of attitude_, and without this our new regulations often leave the old situation unaltered. So long as we allow our government to be run by politicians and business lobbies it makes little difference how many aldermen or assemblymen we have or how long the mayor or governor holds office. In a university the fundamental drift of affairs cannot be greatly modified by creating a new dean, or a university council, or by enhancing or decreasing the nominal authority of the president or faculty. We now turn to the second sanctified method of reform, moral uplift. II. Those who are impatient with mere administrative reform, or who lack faith in it, declare that what we need is brotherly love. Thousands of pulpits admonish us to remember that we are all children of one Heavenly Father and that we should bear one another's burdens with fraternal patience. Capital is too selfish; Labor is bent on its own narrow interests regardless of the risks Capital takes. We are all dependent on one another, and a recognition of this should beget mutual forbearance and glad co-operation. Let us forget ourselves in others. "Little children, love one another." The fatherhood of God has been preached by Christians for over eighteen centuries, and the brotherhood of man by the Stoics long before them. The doctrine has proved compatible with slavery and serfdom, with wars blessed, and not infrequently instigated, by religious leaders, and with industrial oppression which it requires a brave clergyman or teacher to denounce to-day. True, we sometimes have moments of sympathy when our fellow-creatures become objects of tender solicitude. Some rare souls may honestly flatter themselves that they love mankind in general, but it would surely be a very rare soul indeed who dared profess that he loved his personal enemies--much less the enemies of his country or institutions. We still worship a tribal god, and the "foe" is not to be reckoned among his children. Suspicion and hate are much more congenial to our natures than love, for very obvious reasons in this world of rivalry and common failure. There is, beyond doubt, a natural kindliness in mankind which will show itself under favorable auspices. But experience would seem to teach that it is little promoted by moral exhortation. This is the only point that need be urged here. Whether there is another way of forwarding the brotherhood of man will be considered in the sequel. III. One disappointed in the effects of mere reorganization, and distrusting the power of moral exhortation, will urge that what we need above all is _education_. It is quite true that what we need is education, but something so different from what now passes as such that it needs a new name. Education has more various aims than we usually recognize, and should of course be judged in relation to the importance of its several intentions, and of its success in gaining them. The arts of reading and writing and figuring all would concede are basal in a world of newspapers and business. Then there is technical information and the training that prepares one to earn a livelihood in some more or less standardized guild or profession. Both these aims are reached fairly well by our present educational system, subject to various economies and improvements in detail. Then there are the studies which it is assumed contribute to general culture and to "training the mind", with the hope of cultivating our tastes, stimulating the imagination, and mayhap improving our reasoning powers. This branch of education is regarded by the few as very precious and indispensable; by the many as at best an amenity which has little relation to the real purposes and success of life. It is highly traditional and retrospective in the main, concerned with ancient tongues, old and revered books, higher mathematics, somewhat archaic philosophy and history, and the fruitless form of logic which has until recently been prized as man's best guide in the fastnesses of error. To these has been added in recent decades a choice of the various branches of natural science. The results, however, of our present scheme of liberal education are disappointing. One who, like myself, firmly agrees with its objects and is personally so addicted to old books, so pleased with such knowledge as he has of the ancient and modern languages, so envious of those who can think mathematically, and so interested in natural science--such a person must resent the fact that those who have had a liberal education rarely care for old books, rarely read for pleasure any foreign language, think mathematically, love philosophy or history, or care for the beasts, birds, plants, and rocks with any intelligent insight, or even real curiosity. This arouses the suspicion that our so-called "liberal education" miscarries and does not attain its ostensible aims. The three educational aims enumerated above have one thing in common. They are all directed toward an enhancement of the chances of _personal_ worldly success, or to the increase of our _personal_ culture and intellectual and literary enjoyment. Their purpose is not primarily to fit us to play a part in social or political betterment. But of late a fourth element has been added to the older ambitions, namely the hope of preparing boys and girls to become intelligent voters. This need has been forced upon us by the coming of political democracy, which makes one person's vote exactly as good as another's. Now education for citizenship would seem to consist in gaining a knowledge of the actual workings of our social organization, with some illuminating notions of its origin, together with a full realization of its defects and their apparent sources. But here we encounter an obstacle that is unimportant in the older types of education, but which may prove altogether fatal to any good results in our efforts to make better citizens. Subjects of instruction like reading and writing, mathematics, Latin and Greek, chemistry and physics, medicine and the law are fairly well standardized and retrospective. Doubtless there is a good deal of internal change in method and content going on, but this takes place unobtrusively and does not attract the attention of outside critics. Political and social questions, on the other hand, and matters relating to prevailing business methods, race animosities, public elections, and governmental policy are, if they are vital, necessarily "controversial". School boards and superintendents, trustees and presidents of colleges and universities, are sensitive to this fact. They eagerly deprecate in their public manifestos any suspicion that pupils and students are being awakened in any way to the truth that our institutions can possibly be fundamentally defective, or that the present generation of citizens has not conducted our affairs with exemplary success, guided by the immutable principles of justice. How indeed can a teacher be expected to explain to the sons and daughters of businessmen, politicians, doctors, lawyers, and clergymen--all pledged to the maintenance of the sources of their livelihood--the actual nature of business enterprise as now practiced, the prevailing methods of legislative bodies and courts, and the conduct of foreign affairs? Think of a teacher in the public schools recounting the more illuminating facts about the municipal government under which he lives, with due attention to graft and jobs! So, courses in government, political economy, sociology, and ethics confine themselves to inoffensive generalizations, harmless details of organization, and the commonplaces of routine morality, for only in that way can they escape being controversial. Teachers are rarely able or inclined to explain our social life and its presuppositions with sufficient insight and honesty to produce any very important results. Even if they are tempted to tell the essential facts they dare not do so, for fear of losing their places, amid the applause of all the righteously minded. However we may feel on this important matter, we must all agree that the aim of education for citizenship as now conceived is a preparation for the same old citizenship which has so far failed to eliminate the shocking hazards and crying injustices of our social and political life. For we sedulously inculcate in the coming generation exactly the same illusions and the same ill-placed confidence in existing institutions and prevailing notions that have brought the world to the pass in which we find it. Since we do all we can to corroborate the beneficence of what we have, we can hardly hope to raise up a more intelligent generation bent on achieving what we have not. We all know this to be true; it has been forcibly impressed on our minds of late. Most of us agree that it is right and best that it should be so; some of us do not like to think about it at all, but a few will be glad to spend a little time weighing certain suggestions in this volume which may indicate a way out of this _impasse_.[1] We have now considered briefly the three main hopes that have been hitherto entertained of bettering things (I) by changing the rules of the game, (II) by urging men to be good, and to love their neighbor as themselves, and (III) by education for citizenship. It may be that these hopes are not wholly unfounded, but it must be admitted that so far they have been grievously disappointed. Doubtless they will continue to be cherished on account of their assured respectability. Mere lack of success does not discredit a method, for there are many things that determine and perpetuate our sanctified ways of doing things besides their success in reaching their proposed ends. Had this not always been so, our life to-day would be far less stupidly conducted than it is. But let us agree to assume for the moment that the approved schemes of reform enumerated above have, to say the least, shown themselves inadequate to meet the crisis in which civilized society now finds itself. Have we any other hope? Yes, there is Intelligence. That is as yet an untested hope in its application to the regulation of human relations. It is not discredited because it has not been tried on any large scale outside the realm of natural science. There, everyone will confess, it has produced marvelous results. Employed in regard to stars, rocks, plants, and animals, and in the investigation of mechanical and chemical processes, it has completely revolutionized men's notions of the world in which they live, and of its inhabitants, _with the notable exception of man himself_. These discoveries have been used to change our habits and to supply us with everyday necessities which a hundred years ago were not dreamed of as luxuries accessible even to kings and millionaires. But most of us know too little of the past to realize the penalty that had to be paid for this application of intelligence. In order that these discoveries should be made and ingeniously applied to the conveniences of life, _it was necessary to discard practically all the consecrated notions of the world and its workings which had been held by the best and wisest and purest of mankind down to three hundred years ago_--indeed, until much more recently. Intelligence, in a creature of routine like man and in a universe so ill understood as ours, must often break valiantly with the past in order to get ahead. It would be pleasant to assume that all we had to do was to build on well-designed foundations, firmly laid by the wisdom of the ages. But those who have studied the history of natural science would agree that Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes found no such foundation, but had to begin their construction from the ground up. The several hopes of reform mentioned above all assume that the now generally accepted notions of righteous human conduct are not to be questioned. Our churches and universities defend this assumption. Our editors and lawyers and the more vocal of our business men adhere to it. Even those who pretend to study society and its origin seem often to believe that our present ideals and standards of property, the state, industrial organization, the relations of the sexes, and education are practically final and must necessarily be the basis of any possible betterment in detail. But if this be so Intelligence has already done its perfect work, and we can only lament that the outcome in the way of peace, decency, and fairness, judged even by existing standards, has been so disappointing. There are, of course, a few here and there who suspect and even repudiate current ideals and standards. But at present their resentment against existing evils takes the form of more or less dogmatic plans of reconstruction, like those of the socialists and communists, or exhausts itself in the vague protest and faultfinding of the average "Intellectual". Neither the socialist nor the common run of Intellectual appears to me to be on the right track. The former is more precise in his doctrines and confident in his prophecies than a scientific examination of mankind and its ways would at all justify; the other, more indefinite than he need be. If Intelligence is to have the freedom of action necessary to accumulate new and valuable knowledge about man's nature and possibilities which may ultimately be applied to reforming our ways, it must loose itself from the bonds that now confine it. The primeval curse still holds: "Of every tree in the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Few people confess that they are afraid of knowledge, but the university presidents, ministers, and editors who most often and publicly laud what they are wont to call "the fearless pursuit of truth", feel compelled, in the interest of public morals and order, to discourage any reckless indulgence in the fruit of the forbidden tree, for the inexperienced may select an unripe apple and suffer from the colic in consequence. "Just look at Russia!" Better always, instead of taking the risk on what the church calls "science falsely so called", fall back on ignorance rightly so called. No one denies that Intelligence is the light of the world and the chief glory of man, but, as Bertrand Russell says, we dread its indifference to respectable opinions and what we deem the well-tried wisdom of the ages. "It is," as he truly says, "fear that holds men back; fear that their cherished beliefs should prove harmful, fear lest they themselves should prove less worthy of respect than they have supposed themselves to be. 'Should the workingman think freely about property? What then will become of us, the rich? Should young men and women think freely about sex? What then will become of morality? Should soldiers think freely about war? What then will become of military discipline?'" This fear is natural and inevitable, but it is none the less dangerous and discreditable. Human arrangements are no longer so foolproof as they may once have been when the world moved far more slowly than it now does. It should therefore be a good deed to remove or lighten any of the various restraints on thought. I believe that there is an easy and relatively painless way in which our respect for the past can be lessened so that we shall no longer feel compelled to take the wisdom of the ages as the basis of our reforms. My own confidence in what President Butler calls "the findings of mankind" is gone, and the process by which it was lost will become obvious as we proceed. I have no reforms to recommend, except the liberation of Intelligence, which is the first and most essential one. I propose to review by way of introduction some of the new ideas which have been emerging during the past few years in regard to our minds and their operations. Then we shall proceed to the main theme of the book, a sketch of the manner in which our human intelligence appears to have come about. If anyone will follow the story with a fair degree of sympathy and patience he may, by merely putting together well-substantiated facts, many of which he doubtless knows in other connections, hope better to understand the perilous quandary in which mankind is now placed and the ways of escape that offer themselves. NOTES. [1] George Bernard Shaw reaches a similar conclusion when he contemplates education in the British Isles. "We must teach citizenship and political science at school. But must we? There is no must about it, the hard fact being that we must not teach political science or citizenship at school. The schoolmaster who attempted it would soon find himself penniless in the streets without pupils, if not in the dock pleading to a pompously worded indictment for sedition against the exploiters. Our schools teach the morality of feudalism corrupted by commercialism, and hold up the military conqueror, the robber baron, and the profiteer, as models of the illustrious and successful."--_Back to Methuselah_, xii. * * * * * II Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for everyone thinks himself so abundantly provided with it that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.--DESCARTES. We see man to-day, instead of the frank and courageous recognition of his status, the docile attention to his biological history, the determination to let nothing stand in the way of the security and permanence of his future, which alone can establish the safety and happiness of the race, substituting blind confidence in his destiny, unclouded faith in the essentially respectful attitude of the universe toward his moral code, and a belief no less firm that his traditions and laws and institutions necessarily contain permanent qualities of reality.--WILLIAM TROTTER. 3. ON VARIOUS KINDS OF THINKING The truest and most profound observations on Intelligence have in the past been made by the poets and, in recent times, by story-writers. They have been keen observers and recorders and reckoned freely with the emotions and sentiments. Most philosophers, on the other hand, have exhibited a grotesque ignorance of man's life and have built up systems that are elaborate and imposing, but quite unrelated to actual human affairs. They have almost consistently neglected the actual process of thought and have set the mind off as something apart to be studied by itself. _But no such mind, exempt from bodily processes, animal impulses, savage traditions, infantile impressions, conventional reactions, and traditional knowledge, ever existed_, even in the case of the most abstract of metaphysicians. Kant entitled his great work _A Critique of Pure Reason_. But to the modern student of mind pure reason seems as mythical as the pure gold, transparent as glass, with which the celestial city is paved. Formerly philosophers thought of mind as having to do exclusively with conscious thought. It was that within man which perceived, remembered, judged, reasoned, understood, believed, willed. But of late it has been shown that we are unaware of a great part of what we perceive, remember, will, and infer; and that a great part of the thinking of which we are aware is determined by that of which we are not conscious. It has indeed been demonstrated that our unconscious psychic life far outruns our conscious. This seems perfectly natural to anyone who considers the following facts: The sharp distinction between the mind and the body is, as we shall find, a very ancient and spontaneous uncritical savage prepossession. What we think of as "mind" is so intimately associated with what we call "body" that we are coming to realize that the one cannot be understood without the other. Every thought reverberates through the body, and, on the other hand, alterations in our physical condition affect our whole attitude of mind. The insufficient elimination of the foul and decaying products of digestion may plunge us into deep melancholy, whereas a few whiffs of nitrous monoxide may exalt us to the seventh heaven of supernal knowledge and godlike complacency. And vice versa, a sudden word or thought may cause our heart to jump, check our breathing, or make our knees as water. There is a whole new literature growing up which studies the effects of our bodily secretions and our muscular tensions and their relation to our emotions and our thinking. Then there are hidden impulses and desires and secret longings of which we can only with the greatest difficulty take account. They influence our conscious thought in the most bewildering fashion. Many of these unconscious influences appear to originate in our very early years. The older philosophers seem to have forgotten that even they were infants and children at their most impressionable age and never could by any possibility get over it. The term "unconscious", now so familiar to all readers of modern works on psychology, gives offense to some adherents of the past. There should, however, be no special mystery about it. It is not a new animistic abstraction, but simply a collective word to include all the physiological changes which escape our notice, all the forgotten experiences and impressions of the past which continue to influence our desires and reflections and conduct, even if we cannot remember them. What we can remember at any time is indeed an infinitesimal part of what has happened to us. We could not remember anything unless we forgot almost everything. As Bergson says, the brain is the organ of forgetfulness as well as of memory. Moreover, we tend, of course, to become oblivious to things to which we are thoroughly accustomed, for habit blinds us to their existence. So the forgotten and the habitual make up a great part of the so-called "unconscious". If we are ever to understand man, his conduct and reasoning, and if we aspire to learn to guide his life and his relations with his fellows more happily than heretofore, we cannot neglect the great discoveries briefly noted above. We must reconcile ourselves to novel and revolutionary conceptions of the mind, for it is clear that the older philosophers, whose works still determine our current views, had a very superficial notion of the subject with which they dealt. But for our purposes, with due regard to what has just been said and to much that has necessarily been left unsaid (and with the indulgence of those who will at first be inclined to dissent), _we shall consider mind chiefly as conscious knowledge and intelligence, as what we know and our attitude toward it--our disposition to increase our information, classify it, criticize it and apply it_. We do not think enough about thinking, and much of our confusion is the result of current illusions in regard to it. Let us forget for the moment any impressions we may have derived from the philosophers, and see what seems to happen in ourselves. The first thing that we notice is that our thought moves with such incredible rapidity that it is almost impossible to arrest any specimen of it long enough to have a look at it. When we are offered a penny for our thoughts we always find that we have recently had so many things in mind that we can easily make a selection which will not compromise us too nakedly. On inspection we shall find that even if we are not downright ashamed of a great part of our spontaneous thinking it is far too intimate, personal, ignoble or trivial to permit us to reveal more than a small part of it. I believe this must be true of everyone. We do not, of course, know what goes on in other people's heads. They tell us very little and we tell them very little. The spigot of speech, rarely fully opened, could never emit more than driblets of the ever renewed hogshead of thought--_noch grösser wie's Heidelberger Fass_. We find it hard to believe that other people's thoughts are as silly as our own, but they probably are. We all appear to ourselves to be thinking all the time during our waking hours, and most of us are aware that we go on thinking while we are asleep, even more foolishly than when awake. When uninterrupted by some practical issue we are engaged in what is now known as a _reverie_. This is our spontaneous and favorite kind of thinking. We allow our ideas to take their own course and this course is determined by our hopes and fears, our spontaneous desires, their fulfillment or frustration; by our likes and dislikes, our loves and hates and resentments. There is nothing else anything like so interesting to ourselves as ourselves. All thought that is not more or less laboriously controlled and directed will inevitably circle about the beloved Ego. It is amusing and pathetic to observe this tendency in ourselves and in others. We learn politely and generously to overlook this truth, but if we dare to think of it, it blazes forth like the noontide sun. The reverie or "free association of ideas" has of late become the subject of scientific research. While investigators are not yet agreed on the results, or at least on the proper interpretation to be given to them, there can be no doubt that our reveries form the chief index to our fundamental character. They are a reflection of our nature as modified by often hidden and forgotten experiences. We need not go into the matter further here, for it is only necessary to observe that the reverie is at all times a potent and in many cases an omnipotent rival to every other kind of thinking. It doubtless influences all our speculations in its persistent tendency to self-magnification and self-justification, which are its chief preoccupations, but it is the last thing to make directly or indirectly for honest increase of knowledge.[2] Philosophers usually talk as if such thinking did not exist or were in some way negligible. This is what makes their speculations so unreal and often worthless. The reverie, as any of us can see for himself, is frequently broken and interrupted by the necessity of a second kind of thinking. We have to make practical decisions. Shall we write a letter or no? Shall we take the subway or a bus? Shall we have dinner at seven or half past? Shall we buy U. S. Rubber or a Liberty Bond? Decisions are easily distinguishable from the free flow of the reverie. Sometimes they demand a good deal of careful pondering and the recollection of pertinent facts; often, however, they are made impulsively. They are a more difficult and laborious thing than the reverie, and we resent having to "make up our mind" when we are tired, or absorbed in a congenial reverie. Weighing a decision, it should be noted, does not necessarily add anything to our knowledge, although we may, of course, seek further information before making it. 4. RATIONALIZING A third kind of thinking is stimulated when anyone questions our belief and opinions. We sometimes find ourselves changing our minds without any resistance or heavy emotion, but if we are told that we are wrong we resent the imputation and harden our hearts. We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us, but our self-esteem, which is threatened. We are by nature stubbornly pledged to defend our own from attack, whether it be our person, our family, our property, or our opinion. A United States Senator once remarked to a friend of mine that God Almighty could not make him change his mind on our Latin-America policy. We may surrender, but rarely confess ourselves vanquished. In the intellectual world at least peace is without victory. Few of us take the pains to study the origin of our cherished convictions; indeed, we have a natural repugnance to so doing. We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to them. _The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do_. I remember years ago attending a public dinner to which the Governor of the state was bidden. The chairman explained that His Excellency could not be present for certain "good" reasons; what the "real" reasons were the presiding officer said he would leave us to conjecture. This distinction between "good" and "real" reasons is one of the most clarifying and essential in the whole realm of thought. We can readily give what seem to us "good" reasons for being a Catholic or a Mason, a Republican or a Democrat, an adherent or opponent of the League of Nations. But the "real" reasons are usually on quite a different plane. Of course the importance of this distinction is popularly, if somewhat obscurely, recognized. The Baptist missionary is ready enough to see that the Buddhist is not such because his doctrines would bear careful inspection, but because he happened to be born in a Buddhist family in Tokio. But it would be treason to his faith to acknowledge that his own partiality for certain doctrines is due to the fact that his mother was a member of the First Baptist church of Oak Ridge. A savage can give all sorts of reasons for his belief that it is dangerous to step on a man's shadow, and a newspaper editor can advance plenty of arguments against the Bolsheviki. But neither of them may realize why he happens to be defending his particular opinion. The "real" reasons for our beliefs are concealed from ourselves as well as from others. As we grow up we simply adopt the ideas presented to us in regard to such matters as religion, family relations, property, business, our country, and the state. We unconsciously absorb them from our environment. They are persistently whispered in our ear by the group in which we happen to live. Moreover, as Mr. Trotter has pointed out, these judgments, being the product of suggestion and not of reasoning, have the quality of perfect obviousness, so that to question them ... is to the believer to carry skepticism to an insane degree, and will be met by contempt, disapproval, or condemnation, according to the nature of the belief in question. When, therefore, we find ourselves entertaining an opinion about the basis of which there is a quality of feeling which tells us that to inquire into it would be absurd, obviously unnecessary, unprofitable, undesirable, bad form, or wicked, we may know that that opinion is a nonrational one, and probably, therefore, founded upon inadequate evidence.[3] Opinions, on the other hand, which are the result of experience or of honest reasoning do not have this quality of "primary certitude". I remember when as a youth I heard a group of business men discussing the question of the immortality of the soul, I was outraged by the sentiment of doubt expressed by one of the party. As I look back now I see that I had at the time no interest in the matter, and certainly no least argument to urge in favor of the belief in which I had been reared. But neither my personal indifference to the issue, nor the fact that I had previously given it no attention, served to prevent an angry resentment when I heard _my_ ideas questioned. This spontaneous and loyal support of our preconceptions--this process of finding "good" reasons to justify our routine beliefs--is known to modern psychologists as "rationalizing"--clearly only a new name for a very ancient thing. Our "good" reasons ordinarily have no value in promoting honest enlightenment, because, no matter how solemnly they may be marshaled, they are at bottom the result of personal preference or prejudice, and not of an honest desire to seek or accept new knowledge. In our reveries we are frequently engaged in self-justification, for we cannot bear to think ourselves wrong, and yet have constant illustrations of our weaknesses and mistakes. So we spend much time finding fault with circumstances and the conduct of others, and shifting on to them with great ingenuity the on us of our own failures and disappointments. _Rationalizing is the self-exculpation which occurs when we feel ourselves, or our group, accused of misapprehension or error._ The little word _my_ is the most important one in all human affairs, and properly to reckon with it is the beginning of wisdom. It has the same force whether it is _my_ dinner, _my_ dog, and _my_ house, or _my_ faith, _my_ country, and _my God_. We not only resent the imputation that our watch is wrong, or our car shabby, but that our conception of the canals of Mars, of the pronunciation of "Epictetus", of the medicinal value of salicine, or the date of Sargon I, are subject to revision. Philosophers, scholars, and men of science exhibit a common sensitiveness in all decisions in which their _amour propre_ is involved. Thousands of argumentative works have been written to vent a grudge. However stately their reasoning, it may be nothing but rationalizing, stimulated by the most commonplace of all motives. A history of philosophy and theology could be written in terms of grouches, wounded pride, and aversions, and it would be far more instructive than the usual treatments of these themes. Sometimes, under Providence, the lowly impulse of resentment leads to great achievements. Milton wrote his treatise on divorce as a result of his troubles with his seventeen-year-old wife, and when he was accused of being the leading spirit in a new sect, the Divorcers, he wrote his noble _Areopagitica_ to prove his right to say what he thought fit, and incidentally to establish the advantage of a free press in the promotion of Truth. All mankind, high and low, thinks in all the ways which have been described. The reverie goes on all the time not only in the mind of the mill hand and the Broadway flapper, but equally in weighty judges and godly bishops. It has gone on in all the philosophers, scientists, poets, and theologians that have ever lived. Aristotle's most abstruse speculations were doubtless tempered by highly irrelevant reflections. He is reported to have had very thin legs and small eyes, for which he doubtless had to find excuses, and he was wont to indulge in very conspicuous dress and rings and was accustomed to arrange his hair carefully.[4] Diogenes the Cynic exhibited the impudence of a touchy soul. His tub was his distinction. Tennyson in beginning his "Maud" could not forget his chagrin over losing his patrimony years before as the result of an unhappy investment in the Patent Decorative Carving Company. These facts are not recalled here as a gratuitous disparagement of the truly great, but to insure a full realization of the tremendous competition which all really exacting thought has to face, even in the minds of the most highly endowed mortals. And now the astonishing and perturbing suspicion emerges that perhaps almost all that had passed for social science, political economy, politics, and ethics in the past may be brushed aside by future generations as mainly rationalizing. John Dewey has already reached this conclusion in regard to philosophy.[5] Veblen[6] and other writers have revealed the various unperceived presuppositions of the traditional political economy, and now comes an Italian sociologist, Vilfredo Pareto, who, in his huge treatise on general sociology, devotes hundreds of pages to substantiating a similar thesis affecting all the social sciences.[7] This conclusion may be ranked by students of a hundred years hence as one of the several great discoveries of our age. It is by no means fully worked out, and it is so opposed to nature that it will be very slowly accepted by the great mass of those who consider themselves thoughtful. As a historical student I am personally fully reconciled to this newer view. Indeed, it seems to me inevitable that just as the various sciences of nature were, before the opening of the seventeenth century, largely masses of rationalizations to suit the religious sentiments of the period, so the social sciences have continued even to our own day to be rationalizations of uncritically accepted beliefs and customs. _It will become apparent as we proceed that the fact that an idea is ancient and that it has been widely received is no argument in its favor, but should immediately suggest the necessity of carefully testing it as a probable instance of rationalization_. 5. HOW CREATIVE THOUGHT TRANSFORMS THE WORLD This brings us to another kind of thought which can fairly easily be distinguished from the three kinds described above. It has not the usual qualities of the reverie, for it does not hover about our personal complacencies and humiliations. It is not made up of the homely decisions forced upon us by everyday needs, when we review our little stock of existing information, consult our conventional preferences and obligations, and make a choice of action. It is not the defense of our own cherished beliefs and prejudices just because they are our own--mere plausible excuses for remaining of the same mind. On the contrary, it is that peculiar species of thought which leads us to _change_ our mind. It is this kind of thought that has raised man from his pristine, subsavage ignorance and squalor to the degree of knowledge and comfort which he now possesses. On his capacity to continue and greatly extend this kind of thinking depends his chance of groping his way out of the plight in which the most highly civilized peoples of the world now find themselves. In the past this type of thinking has been called Reason. But so many misapprehensions have grown up around the word that some of us have become very suspicious of it. I suggest, therefore, that we substitute a recent name and speak of "creative thought" rather than of Reason. _For this kind of meditation begets knowledge, and knowledge is really creative inasmuch as it makes things look different from what they seemed before and may indeed work for their reconstruction_. In certain moods some of us realize that we are observing things or making reflections with a seeming disregard of our personal preoccupations. We are not preening or defending ourselves; we are not faced by the necessity of any practical decision, nor are we apologizing for believing this or that. We are just wondering and looking and mayhap seeing what we never perceived before. Curiosity is as clear and definite as any of our urges. We wonder what is in a sealed telegram or in a letter in which some one else is absorbed, or what is being said in the telephone booth or in low conversation. This inquisitiveness is vastly stimulated by jealousy, suspicion, or any hint that we ourselves are directly or indirectly involved. But there appears to be a fair amount of personal interest in other people's affairs even when they do not concern us except as a mystery to be unraveled or a tale to be told. The reports of a divorce suit will have "news value" for many weeks. They constitute a story, like a novel or play or moving picture. This is not an example of pure curiosity, however, since we readily identify ourselves with others, and their joys and despair then become our own. We also take note of, or "observe", as Sherlock Holmes says, things which have nothing to do with our personal interests and make no personal appeal either direct or by way of sympathy. This is what Veblen so well calls "idle curiosity". And it is usually idle enough. Some of us when we face the line of people opposite us in a subway train impulsively consider them in detail and engage in rapid inferences and form theories in regard to them. On entering a room there are those who will perceive at a glance the degree of preciousness of the rugs, the character of the pictures, and the personality revealed by the books. But there are many, it would seem, who are so absorbed in their personal reverie or in some definite purpose that they have no bright-eyed energy for idle curiosity. The tendency to miscellaneous observation we come by honestly enough, for we note it in many of our animal relatives. Veblen, however, uses the term "idle curiosity" somewhat ironically, as is his wont. It is idle only to those who fail to realize that it may be a very rare and indispensable thing from which almost all distinguished human achievement proceeds. Since it may lead to systematic examination and seeking for things hitherto undiscovered. For research is but diligent search which enjoys the high flavor of primitive hunting. Occasionally and fitfully idle curiosity thus leads to creative thought, which alters and broadens our own views and aspirations and may in turn, under highly favorable circumstances, affect the views and lives of others, even for generations to follow. An example or two will make this unique human process clear. Galileo was a thoughtful youth and doubtless carried on a rich and varied reverie. He had artistic ability and might have turned out to be a musician or painter. When he had dwelt among the monks at Valambrosa he had been tempted to lead the life of a religious. As a boy he busied himself with toy machines and he inherited a fondness for mathematics. All these facts are of record. We may safely assume also that, along with many other subjects of contemplation, the Pisan maidens found a vivid place in his thoughts. One day when seventeen years old he wandered into the cathedral of his native town. In the midst of his reverie he looked up at the lamps hanging by long chains from the high ceiling of the church. Then something very difficult to explain occurred. He found himself no longer thinking of the building, worshipers, or the services; of his artistic or religious interests; of his reluctance to become a physician as his father wished. He forgot the question of a career and even the _graziosissime donne_. As he watched the swinging lamps he was suddenly wondering if mayhap their oscillations, whether long or short, did not occupy the same time. Then he tested this hypothesis by counting his pulse, for that was the only timepiece he had with him. This observation, however remarkable in itself, was not enough to produce a really creative thought. Others may have noticed the same thing and yet nothing came of it. Most of our observations have no assignable results. Galileo may have seen that the warts on a peasant's face formed a perfect isosceles triangle, or he may have noticed with boyish glee that just as the officiating priest was uttering the solemn words, _ecce agnus Dei_, a fly lit on the end of his nose. To be really creative, ideas have to be worked up and then "put over", so that they become a part of man's social heritage. The highly accurate pendulum clock was one of the later results of Galileo's discovery. He himself was led to reconsider and successfully to refute the old notions of falling bodies. It remained for Newton to prove that the moon was falling, and presumably all the heavenly bodies. This quite upset all the consecrated views of the heavens as managed by angelic engineers. The universality of the laws of gravitation stimulated the attempt to seek other and equally important natural laws and cast grave doubts on the miracles in which mankind had hitherto believed. In short, those who dared to include in their thought the discoveries of Galileo and his successors found themselves in a new earth surrounded by new heavens. On the 28th of October, 1831, three hundred and fifty years after Galileo had noticed the isochronous vibrations of the lamps, creative thought and its currency had so far increased that Faraday was wondering what would happen if he mounted a disk of copper between the poles of a horseshoe magnet. As the disk revolved an electric current was produced. This would doubtless have seemed the idlest kind of an experiment to the stanch business men of the time, who, it happened, were just then denouncing the child-labor bills in their anxiety to avail themselves to the full of the results of earlier idle curiosity. But should the dynamos and motors which have come into being as the outcome of Faraday's experiment be stopped this evening, the business man of to-day, agitated over labor troubles, might, as he trudged home past lines of "dead" cars, through dark streets to an unlighted house, engage in a little creative thought of his own and perceive that he and his laborers would have no modern factories and mines to quarrel about had it not been for the strange practical effects of the idle curiosity of scientists, inventors, and engineers. The examples of creative intelligence given above belong to the realm of modern scientific achievement, which furnishes the most striking instances of the effects of scrupulous, objective thinking. But there are, of course, other great realms in which the recording and embodiment of acute observation and insight have wrought themselves into the higher life of man. The great poets and dramatists and our modern story-tellers have found themselves engaged in productive reveries, noting and artistically presenting their discoveries for the delight and instruction of those who have the ability to appreciate them. The process by which a fresh and original poem or drama comes into being is doubtless analogous to that which originates and elaborates so-called scientific discoveries; but there is clearly a temperamental difference. The genesis and advance of painting, sculpture, and music offer still other problems. We really as yet know shockingly little about these matters, and indeed very few people have the least curiosity about them.[8] Nevertheless, creative intelligence in its various forms and activities is what makes man. Were it not for its slow, painful, and constantly discouraged operations through the ages man would be no more than a species of primate living on seeds, fruit, roots, and uncooked flesh, and wandering naked through the woods and over the plains like a chimpanzee. The origin and progress and future promotion of civilization are ill understood and misconceived. These should be made the chief theme of education, but much hard work is necessary before we can reconstruct our ideas of man and his capacities and free ourselves from innumerable persistent misapprehensions. There have been obstructionists in all times, not merely the lethargic masses, but the moralists, the rationalizing theologians, and most of the philosophers, all busily if unconsciously engaged in ratifying existing ignorance and mistakes and discouraging creative thought. Naturally, those who reassure us seem worthy of honor and respect. Equally naturally those who puzzle us with disturbing criticisms and invite us to change our ways are objects of suspicion and readily discredited. Our personal discontent does not ordinarily extend to any critical questioning of the general situation in which we find ourselves. In every age the prevailing conditions of civilization have appeared quite natural and inevitable to those who grew up in them. The cow asks no questions as to how it happens to have a dry stall and a supply of hay. The kitten laps its warm milk from a china saucer, without knowing anything about porcelain; the dog nestles in the corner of a divan with no sense of obligation to the inventors of upholstery and the manufacturers of down pillows. So we humans accept our breakfasts, our trains and telephones and orchestras and movies, our national Constitution, or moral code and standards of manners, with the simplicity and innocence of a pet rabbit. We have absolutely inexhaustible capacities for appropriating what others do for us with no thought of a "thank you". We do not feel called upon to make any least contribution to the merry game ourselves. Indeed, we are usually quite unaware that a game is being played at all. We have now examined the various classes of thinking which we can readily observe in ourselves and which we have plenty of reasons to believe go on, and always have been going on, in our fellow-men. We can sometimes get quite pure and sparkling examples of all four kinds, but commonly they are so confused and intermingled in our reverie as not to be readily distinguishable. The reverie is a reflection of our longings, exultations, and complacencies, our fears, suspicions, and disappointments. We are chiefly engaged in struggling to maintain our self-respect and in asserting that supremacy which we all crave and which seems to us our natural prerogative. It is not strange, but rather quite inevitable, that our beliefs about what is true and false, good and bad, right and wrong, should be mixed up with the reverie and be influenced by the same considerations which determine its character and course. We resent criticisms of our views exactly as we do of anything else connected with ourselves. Our notions of life and its ideals seem to us to be _our own_ and as such necessarily true and right, to be defended at all costs. _We very rarely consider, however, the process by which we gained our convictions_. If we did so, we could hardly fail to see that there was usually little ground for our confidence in them. Here and there, in this department of knowledge or that, some one of us might make a fair claim to have taken some trouble to get correct ideas of, let us say, the situation in Russia, the sources of our food supply, the origin of the Constitution, the revision of the tariff, the policy of the Holy Roman Apostolic Church, modern business organization, trade unions, birth control, socialism, the League of Nations, the excess-profits tax, preparedness, advertising in its social bearings; but only a very exceptional person would be entitled to opinions on all of even these few matters. And yet most of us have opinions on all these, and on many other questions of equal importance, of which we may know even less. We feel compelled, as self-respecting persons, to take sides when they come up for discussion. We even surprise ourselves by our omniscience. Without taking thought we see in a flash that it is most righteous and expedient to discourage birth control by legislative enactment, or that one who decries intervention in Mexico is clearly wrong, or that big advertising is essential to big business and that big business is the pride of the land. As godlike beings why should we not rejoice in our omniscience? It is clear, in any case, that our convictions on important matters are not the result of knowledge or critical thought, nor, it may be added, are they often dictated by supposed self-interest. Most of them are _pure prejudices_ in the proper sense of that word. We do not form them ourselves. They are the whisperings of "the voice of the herd". We have in the last analysis no responsibility for them and need assume none. They are not really our own ideas, but those of others no more well informed or inspired than ourselves, who have got them in the same careless and humiliating manner as we. It should be our pride to revise our ideas and not to adhere to what passes for respectable opinion, for such opinion can frequently be shown to be not respectable at all. We should, in view of the considerations that have been mentioned, resent our supine credulity. As an English writer has remarked: "If we feared the entertaining of an unverifiable opinion with the warmth with which we fear using the wrong implement at the dinner table, if the thought of holding a prejudice disgusted us as does a foul disease, then the dangers of man's suggestibility would be turned into advantages."[9] The purpose of this essay is to set forth briefly the way in which the notions of the herd have been accumulated. This seems to me the best, easiest, and least invidious educational device for cultivating a proper distrust for the older notions on which we still continue to rely. The "real" reasons, which explain how it is we happen to hold a particular belief, are chiefly historical. Our most important opinions--those, for example, having to do with traditional, religious, and moral convictions, property rights, patriotism, national honor, the state, and indeed all the assumed foundations of society--are, as I have already suggested, rarely the result of reasoned consideration, but of unthinking absorption from the social environment in which we live. Consequently, they have about them a quality of "elemental certitude", and we especially resent doubt or criticism cast upon them. So long, however, as we revere the whisperings of the herd, we are obviously unable to examine them dispassionately and to consider to what extent they are suited to the novel conditions and social exigencies in which we find ourselves to-day. The "real" reasons for our beliefs, by making clear their origins and history, can do much to dissipate this emotional blockade and rid us of our prejudices and preconceptions. Once this is done and we come critically to examine our traditional beliefs, we may well find some of them sustained by experience and honest reasoning, while others must be revised to meet new conditions and our more extended knowledge. But only after we have undertaken such a critical examination in the light of experience and modern knowledge, freed from any feeling of "primary certitude", can we claim that the "good" are also the "real" reasons for our opinions. I do not flatter myself that this general show-up of man's thought through the ages will cure myself or others of carelessness in adopting ideas, or of unseemly heat in defending them just because we have adopted them. But if the considerations which I propose to recall are really incorporated into our thinking and are permitted to establish our general outlook on human affairs, they will do much to relieve the imaginary obligation we feel in regard to traditional sentiments and ideals. Few of us are capable of engaging in creative thought, but some of us can at least come to distinguish it from other and inferior kinds of thought and accord to it the esteem that it merits as the greatest treasure of the past and the only hope of the future. NOTES. [2] The poet-clergyman, John Donne, who lived in the time of James I, has given a beautifully honest picture of the doings of a saint's mind: "I throw myself down in my chamber and call in and invite God and His angels thither, and when they are there I neglect God and His angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door. I talk on in the same posture of praying, eyes lifted up, knees bowed down, as though I prayed to God, and if God or His angels should ask me when I thought last of God in that prayer I cannot tell. Sometimes I find that I had forgot what I was about, but when I began to forget it I cannot tell. A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of to-morrow's dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain troubles me in my prayer."--Quoted by ROBERT LYND, _The Art of Letters_, pp. 46-47. [3] Instincts of the Herd, p. 44. [4] Diogenes Laertius, book v. [5] _Reconstruction in Philosophy_. [6] _The Place of Science in Modern Civilization._ [7] _Traité de Sociologie Générale, passim._ The author's term "_derivations_" seems to be his precise way of expressing what we have called the "good" reasons, and his "_residus_" correspond to the "real" reasons. He well says, _"L'homme éprouve le besoin de raisonner, et en outre d'étendre un voile sur ses instincts et sur ses sentiments"_--hence, rationalization. (P. 788.) His aim is to reduce sociology to the "real" reasons. (P. 791.) [8] Recently a re-examination of creative thought has begun as a result of new knowledge which discredits many of the notions formerly held about "reason". See, for example, _Creative Intelligence_, by a group of American philosophic thinkers; John Dewey, _Essays in Experimental Logic_ (both pretty hard books); and Veblen, _The Place of Science in Modern Civilization_. Easier than these and very stimulating are Dewey, _Reconstruction in Philosophy_, and Woodworth, _Dynamic Psychology_. [9] Trotter, _op. cit._, p. 45. The first part of this little volume is excellent. * * * * * III Nous étions déjà si vieux quand nous sommes nés.--ANATOLE FRANCE. Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, nobis?--ENNIUS. Tous les homines se ressemblent si fort qu'il n'y a point de peuple dont les sottises ne nous doivent faire trembler.--FONTENELLE. The savage is very close to us indeed, both in his physical and mental make-up and in the forms of his social life. Tribal society is virtually delayed civilization, and the savages are a sort of contemporaneous ancestry.--WILLIAM I. THOMAS. 6. OUR ANIMAL HERITAGE. THE NATURE OF CIVILIZATION There are four historical layers underlying the minds of civilized men--the animal mind, the child mind, the savage mind, and the traditional civilized mind. We are all animals and never can cease to be; we were all children at our most impressionable age and can never get over the effects of that; our human ancestors have lived in savagery during practically the whole existence of the race, say five hundred thousand or a million years, and the primitive human mind is ever with us; finally, we are all born into an elaborate civilization, the constant pressure of which we can by no means escape. Each of these underlying minds has its special sciences and appropriate literatures. The new discipline of animal or comparative psychology deals with the first; genetic and analytical psychology with the second;[10] anthropology, ethnology, and comparative religion with the third; and the history of philosophy, science, theology, and literature with the fourth. We may grow beyond these underlying minds and in the light of new knowledge we may criticize their findings and even persuade ourselves that we have successfully transcended them. But if we are fair with ourselves we shall find that their hold on us is really inexorable. We can only transcend them artificially and precariously and in certain highly favorable conditions. Depression, anger, fear, or ordinary irritation will speedily prove the insecurity of any structure that we manage to rear on our fourfold foundation. Such fundamental and vital preoccupations as religion, love, war, and the chase stir impulses that lie far back in human history and which effectually repudiate the cavilings of ratiocination. In all our reveries and speculations, even the most exacting, sophisticated, and disillusioned, we have three unsympathetic companions sticking closer than a brother and looking on with jealous impatience--our wild apish progenitor, a playful or peevish baby, and a savage. We may at any moment find ourselves overtaken with a warm sense of camaraderie for any or all of these ancient pals of ours, and experience infinite relief in once more disporting ourselves with them as of yore. Some of us have in addition a Greek philosopher or man of letters in us; some a neoplatonic mystic, some a mediaeval monk, all of whom have learned to make terms with their older playfellows. Before retracing the way in which the mind as we now find it in so-called intelligent people has been accumulated, we may take time to try to see what civilization is and why man alone can become civilized. For the mind has expanded _pari passu_ with civilization, and without civilization there would, I venture to conjecture, have been no human mind in the commonly accepted sense of that term. It is now generally conceded by all who have studied the varied evidence and have freed themselves from ancient prejudice that, if we traced back our human lineage far enough we should come to a point where our human ancestors had no civilization and lived a speechless, naked, houseless, fireless, and toolless life, similar to that of the existing primates with which we are zoologically closely connected. This is one of the most fully substantiated of historical facts and one which we can never neglect in our attempts to explain man as he now is. We are all descended from the lower animals. We are furthermore still animals with not only an animal body, but with an animal mind. And this animal body and animal mind are the original foundations on which even the most subtle and refined intellectual life must perforce rest. We are ready to classify certain of our most essential desires as brutish--hunger and thirst, the urgence of sleep, and especially sexual longing. We know of blind animal rage, of striking, biting, scratching, howling, and snarling, of irrational fears and ignominious flight. We share our senses with the higher animals, have eyes and ears, noses and tongues much like theirs; heart, lungs, and other viscera, and four limbs. They have brains which stand them in good stead, although their heads are not so good as ours. But when one speaks of the animal mind he should think of still other resemblances between the brute and man. All animals learn--even the most humble among them may gain something from experience. All the higher animals exhibit curiosity under certain circumstances, and it is this impulse which underlies all human science. Moreover, some of the higher animals, especially the apes and monkeys, are much given to fumbling and groping. They are restless, easily bored, and spontaneously experimental. They therefore make discoveries quite unconsciously, and form new and sometimes profitable habits of action. If, by mere fumbling, a monkey, cat, or dog happens on a way to secure food, this remunerative line of conduct will "occur" to the creature when he feels hungry. This is what Thorndike has named learning by "trial and error". It might better be called "fumbling and success", for it is the success that establishes the association. The innate curiosity which man shares with his uncivilized zoological relatives is the native impulse that leads to scientific and philosophical speculation, and the original fumbling of a restless ape has become the ordered experimental investigation of modern times. A creature which lacked curiosity and had no tendency to fumble could never have developed civilization and human intelligence.[l0] But why did man alone of all the animals become civilized? The reason is not far to seek, although it has often escaped writers[11] on the subject. All animals gain a certain wisdom with age and experience, but the experience of one ape does not profit another. Learning among animals below man is _individual_, not _co-operative_ and _cumulative_. One dog does not seem to learn from another, nor one ape from another, in spite of the widespread misapprehension in this regard. Many experiments have been patiently tried in recent years and it seems to be pretty well established that the monkey learns by _monkeying_, but that he rarely or never appears to _ape_. He does not learn by imitation, because he does not imitate. There may be minor exceptions, but the fact that apes never, in spite of a bodily equipment nearly human, become in the least degree civilized, would seem to show that the accumulation of knowledge or dexterity through imitation is impossible for them. Man has the various sense organs of the apes and their extraordinary power of manipulation. To these essentials he adds a brain sufficiently more elaborate than that of the chimpanzee to enable him to do something that the ape cannot do--namely, "see" things clearly enough to form associations through imitation.[12] We can imagine the manner in which man unwittingly took one of his momentous and unprecedented first steps in civilization. Some restless primeval savage might find himself scraping the bark off a stick with the edge of a stone or shell and finally cutting into the wood and bringing the thing to a point. He might then spy an animal and, quite without reasoning, impulsively make a thrust with the stick and discover that it pierced the creature. If he could hold these various elements in the situation, sharpening the stick and using it, he would have made an invention--a rude spear. A particularly acute bystander might comprehend and imitate the process. If others did so and the habit was established in the tribe so that it became traditional and was transmitted to following generations, the process of civilization would have begun--also the process of human learning, which is noticing distinctions and analyzing situations. This simple process of sharpening a stick would involve the "concepts", as the philosophers say, of a tool and bark and a point and an artificial weapon. But ages and ages were to elapse before the botanist would distinguish the various layers which constitute the bark, or successive experimenters come upon the idea of a bayonet to take the place of the spear. Of late, considerable attention has been given to the question of man's original, uneducated, animal nature; what resources has he as a mere creature independent of any training that results from being brought up in some sort of civilized community? The question is difficult to formulate satisfactorily and still more difficult to answer. But without attempting to list man's supposed natural "instincts" we must assume that civilization is built up on his original propensities and impulses, whatever they may be. These probably remain nearly the same from generation to generation. The idea formerly held that the civilization of our ancestors affects our original nature is almost completely surrendered. _We are all born wholly uncivilized._ If a group of infants from the "best" families of to-day could be reared by apes they would find themselves with no civilization. How long it would take them and their children to gain what now passes for even a low savage culture it is impossible to say. The whole arduous task would have to be performed anew and it might not take place at all, unless conditions were favorable, for man is not naturally a "progressive" animal. He shares the tendency of all other animal tribes just to pull through and reproduce his kind. Most of us do not stop to think of the conditions of an animal existence. When we read the descriptions of our nature as given by William James, McDougall, or even Thorndike, with all his reservations, we get a rather impressive idea of our possibilities, not a picture of uncivilized life. When we go camping we think that we are deserting civilization, forgetting the sophisticated guides, and the pack horses laden with the most artificial luxuries, many of which would not have been available even a hundred years ago. We lead the simple life with Swedish matches, Brazilian coffee, Canadian bacon, California canned peaches, magazine rifles, jointed fishing rods, and electric flashlights. We are elaborately clothed and can discuss Bergson's views or D. H. Lawrence's last story. We naïvely imagine we are returning to "primitive" conditions because we are living out of doors or sheltered in a less solid abode than usual, and have to go to the brook for water. But man's original estate was, as Hobbes reflected, "poor, nasty, brutish, and short". To live like an animal is to rely upon one's own quite naked equipment and efforts, and not to mind getting wet or cold or scratching one's bare legs in the underbrush. One would have to eat his roots and seeds quite raw, and gnaw a bird as a cat does. To get the feel of uncivilized life, let us recall how savages with the comparatively advanced degree of culture reached by our native Indian tribes may fall to when really hungry. In the journal of the Lewis and Clark expedition there is an account of the killing of a deer by the white men. Hearing of this, the Shoshones raced wildly to the spot where the warm and bloody entrails had been thrown out ... and ran tumbling over one another like famished dogs. Each tore away whatever part he could, and instantly began to eat it; some had the liver, some the kidneys, and, in short, no part on which we are accustomed to look with disgust escaped them. One of them who had seized about nine feet of the entrails was chewing at one end, while with his hand he was diligently clearing his way by discharging the contents at the other. Another striking example of simple animal procedure is given in the same journal: One of the women, who had been leading two of our pack horses, halted at a rivulet about a mile behind and sent on the two horses by a female friend. On inquiring of Cameahwait the cause of her detention, he answered, with great apparent unconcern, that she had just stopped to lie in, but would soon overtake us. In fact, we were astonished to see her in about an hour's time come on with her new-born infant, and pass us on her way to the camp, seemingly in perfect health. This is the simple life and it was the life of our ancestors before civilization began. It had been the best kind of life possible in all the preceding aeons of the world's history. Without civilization it would be the existence to which all human beings now on the earth would forthwith revert. It is man's starting point.[13] But what about the mind? What was going on in the heads of our untutored forbears? We are apt to fall into the error of supposing that because they had human brains they must have had somewhat the same kinds of ideas and made the same kind of judgments that we do. Even distinguished philosophers like Descartes and Rousseau made this mistake. This assumption will not stand inspection. To reach back in imagination to the really primitive mind we should of course have to deduct at the start all the knowledge and all the discriminations and classifications that have grown up as a result of our education and our immersion from infancy in a highly artificial environment. Then we must recollect that our primitive ancestor had no words with which to name and tell about things. He was speechless. His fellows knew no more than he did. Each one learned during his lifetime according to his capacity, but no instruction in our sense of the word was possible. What he saw and heard was not what we should have called seeing and hearing. He responded to situations in a blind and impulsive manner, with no clear idea of them. In short, he must have _thought_ much as a wolf or bear does, just as he _lived_ much like them. We must be on our guard against accepting the prevalent notions of even the animal intellect. An owl may look quite as wise as a judge. A monkey, canary, or collie has bright eyes and seems far more alert than most of the people we see on the street car. A squirrel in the park appears to be looking at us much as we look at him. But he cannot be seeing the same things that we do. We can be scarcely more to him than a vague suggestion of peanuts. And even the peanut has little of the meaning for him that it has for us. A dog perceives a motor-car and may be induced to ride in it, but his idea of it would not differ from that of an ancient carryall, except, mayhap, in an appreciative distinction between the odor of gasoline and that of the stable. Only in times of sickness, drunkenness, or great excitement can we get some hint in ourselves of the impulsive responses in animals free from human sophistication and analysis. Locke thought that we first got simple ideas and then combined them into more complex conceptions and finally into generalizations or abstract ideas. But this is not the way that man's knowledge arose. He started with mere impressions of general situations, and gradually by his ability to handle things he came upon distinctions, which in time he made clearer by attaching names to them. We keep repeating this process when we learn about anything. The typewriter is at first a mere mass impression, and only gradually and imperfectly do most of us distinguish certain of its parts; only the men who made it are likely to realize its full complexity by noting and assigning names to all the levers, wheels, gears, bearings, controls, and adjustments. John Stuart Mill thought that the chief function of the mind was making inferences. But making distinctions is equally fundamental--seeing that there are really many things where only one was at first apparent. This process of analysis has been man's supreme accomplishment. This is what has made his mind grow. The human mind has then been built up through hundreds of thousands of years by gradual accretions and laborious accumulations. Man started at a cultural zero and had to find out everything for himself; or rather a very small number of peculiarly restless and adventurous spirits did the work. The great mass of humanity has never had anything to do with the increase of intelligence except to act as its medium of transfusion and perpetuation. Creative intelligence is confined to the very few, but the many can thoughtlessly avail themselves of the more obvious achievements of those who are exceptionally highly endowed. Even an ape will fit himself into a civilized environment. A chimpanzee can be taught to relish bicycles, roller skates, and cigarettes which he could never have devised, cannot understand, and could not reproduce. Even so with mankind. Most of us could not have devised, do not understand, and consequently could not reproduce any of the everyday conveniences and luxuries which surround us. Few of us could make an electric light, or write a good novel to read by it, or paint a picture for it to shine upon. Professor Giddings has recently asked the question, Why has there been any history?[14] Why, indeed, considering that the "good" and "respectable" is usually synonymous with the ancient routine, and the old have always been there to repress the young? Such heavy words of approval as "venerable", "sanctified", and "revered" all suggest great age rather than fresh discoveries. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, is our protest against being disturbed, forced to think or to change our habits. So history, _namely change_, has been mainly due to a small number of "seers",--really gropers and monkeyers--whose native curiosity outran that of their fellows and led them to escape here and there from the sanctified blindness of their time. The seer is simply an example of a _variation_ biologically, such as occurs in all species of living things, both animal and vegetable. But the unusually large roses in our gardens, the swifter horses of the herd, and the cleverer wolf in the pack have no means of influencing their fellows as a result of their peculiar superiority. Their offspring has some chance of sharing to some degree this pre-eminence, but otherwise things will go on as before. Whereas the singular variation represented by a St. Francis, a Dante, a Voltaire, or a Darwin may permanently, and for ages to follow change somewhat the character and ambitions of innumerable inferior members of the species who could by no possibility have originated anything for themselves, but who can, nevertheless, suffer some modification as a result of the teachings of others. This illustrates the magical and unique workings of culture and creative intelligence in mankind.[15] We have no means of knowing when or where the first contribution to civilization was made, and with it a start on the arduous building of the mind. There is some reason to think that the men who first transcended the animal mind were of inferior mental capacity to our own, but even if man, emerging from his animal estate, had had on the average quite as good a brain as those with which we are now familiar, I suspect that the extraordinarily slow and hazardous process of accumulating modern civilization would not have been greatly shortened. Mankind is lethargic, easily pledged to routine, timid, suspicious of innovation. That is his nature. He is only artificially, partially, and very recently "progressive". He has spent almost his whole existence as a savage hunter, and in that state of ignorance he illustrated on a magnificent scale all the inherent weaknesses of the human mind. 7. OUR SAVAGE MIND Should we arrange our present beliefs and opinions on the basis of their age, we should find that some of them were very, very old, going back to primitive man; others were derived from the Greeks; many more of them would prove to come directly from the Middle Ages; while certain others in our stock were unknown until natural science began to develop in a new form about three hundred years ago. The idea that man has a soul or double which survives the death of the body is very ancient indeed and is accepted by most savages. Such confidence as we have in the liberal arts, metaphysics, and formal logic goes back to the Greek thinkers; our religious ideas and our standards of sexual conduct are predominantly mediaeval in their presuppositions; our notions of electricity and disease germs are, of course, recent in origin, the result of painful and prolonged research which involved the rejection of a vast number of older notions sanctioned by immemorial acceptance. _In general, those ideas which are still almost universally accepted in regard to man's nature, his proper conduct, and his relations to God and his fellows are far more ancient and far less critical than those which have to do with the movement of the stars, the stratification of the rocks and the life of plants and animals_. Nothing is more essential in our attempt to escape from the bondage of consecrated ideas than to get a vivid notion of human achievement in its proper historical perspective. In order to do this let us imagine the whole gradual and laborious attainments of mankind compressed into the compass of a single lifetime. Let us assume that a single generation of men have in fifty years managed to accumulate all that now passes for civilization. They would have to start, as all individuals do, absolutely uncivilized, and their task would be to recapitulate what has occupied the race for, let us guess, at least five hundred thousand years. Each year in the life of a generation would therefore correspond to ten thousand years in the progress of the race. On this scale it would require forty-nine years to reach a point of intelligence which would enable our self-taught generation to give up their ancient and inveterate habits of wandering hunters and settle down here and there to till the ground, harvest their crops, domesticate animals, and weave their rough garments. Six months later, or half through the fiftieth year, some of them, in a particularly favorable situation, would have invented writing and thus established a new and wonderful means of spreading and perpetuating civilization. Three months later another group would have carried literature, art, and philosophy to a high degree of refinement and set standards for the succeeding weeks. For two months our generation would have been living under the blessings of Christianity; the printing press would be but a fortnight old and they would not have had the steam engine for quite a week. For two or three days they would have been hastening about the globe in steamships and railroad trains, and only yesterday would they have come upon the magical possibilities of electricity. Within the last few hours they would have learned to sail in the air and beneath the waters, and have forthwith applied their newest discoveries to the prosecution of a magnificent war on the scale befitting their high ideals and new resources. This is not so strange, for only a week ago they were burning and burying alive those who differed from the ruling party in regard to salvation, eviscerating in public those who had new ideas of government, and hanging old women who were accused of traffic with the devil. All of them had been no better than vagrant savages a year before. Their fuller knowledge was altogether too recent to have gone very deep, and they had many institutions and many leaders dedicated to the perpetuation of outworn notions which would otherwise have disappeared. Until recently changes had taken place so slowly and so insensibly that only a very few persons could be expected to realize that not a few of the beliefs that were accepted as eternal verities were due to the inevitable misunderstandings of a savage. In speaking of the "savage" or "primitive mind", we are, of course, using a very clumsy expression. We shall employ the term, nevertheless, to indicate the characteristics of the human mind when there was as yet no writing, no organized industry or mechanical arts, no money, no important specialization of function except between the sexes, no settled life in large communities. The period so described covers all but about five or six thousand of the half million to a million years that man has existed on the earth. There are no chronicles to tell us the story of those long centuries. Some inferences can be made from the increasing artfulness and variety of the flint weapons and tools which we find. But the stone weapons which have come down to us, even in their crudest forms (eoliths), are very far from representing the earliest achievements of man in the accumulation of culture. Those dim, remote cycles must have been full of great, but inconspicuous, originators who laid the foundations of civilization in discoveries and achievements so long taken for granted that we do not realize that they ever had to be made at all. Since man is descended from less highly endowed animals, there must have been a time when the man-animal was in a state of animal ignorance. He started with no more than an ape is able to know. He had to learn everything for himself, as he had no one to teach him the tricks that apes and children can be taught by sophisticated human beings. He was necessarily self-taught, and began, as we have seen, in a state of ignorance beyond anything we can readily conceive. He lived naked and speechless in the woods, or wandered over the plains without artificial shelter or any way of cooking his food. He subsisted on raw fruit, berries, roots, insects, and such animals as he could strike down or pick up dead. His mind must have corresponded with his brutish state. He must at the first have learned just as his animal relatives learn--by fumbling and by forming accidental associations. He had impulses and such sagacity as he individually derived from experience, but no heritage of knowledge accumulated by the group and transmitted by education. This heritage had to be constructed on man's potentialities. Of mankind in this extremely primitive condition we have no traces. There could indeed be no traces. All savages of the present day or of whom we have any record represent a relatively highly developed traditional culture, with elaborate languages, myths, and well-established artificial customs, which it probably took hundreds of thousands of years to accumulate. Man in "a state of nature" is only a presupposition, but a presupposition which is forced upon us by compelling evidence, conjectural and inferential though it is. On a geological time scale we are still close to savagery, and it is inevitable that the ideas and customs and sentiments of savagery should have become so ingrained that they may have actually affected man's nature by natural selection through the survival of those who most completely adjusted themselves to the uncritical culture which prevailed. But in any case it is certain, as many anthropologists have pointed out, that customs, savage ideas, and primitive sentiments have continued to form an important part of our own culture down even to the present day. We are met thus with the necessity of reckoning with this inveterate element in our present thought and customs. Much of the data that we have regarding primitive man has been accumulated in recent times, for the most part as a result of the study of simple peoples. These differ greatly in their habits and myths, but some salient common traits emerge which cast light on the spontaneous workings of the human mind when unaffected by the sophistications of a highly elaborate civilization. At the start man had to distinguish himself from the group to which he belonged and say, "I am I." This is not an idea given by nature.[16] There are evidences that the earlier religious notions were not based on individuality, but rather on the "virtue" which objects had--that is, their potency to do things. Only later did the animistic belief in the personalities of men, animals, and the forces of nature appear. When man discovered his own individuality he spontaneously ascribed the same type of individuality and purpose to animals and plants, to the wind and the thunder. This exhibits one of the most noxious tendencies of the mind--namely, personification. It is one of the most virulent enemies of clear thinking. We speak of the Spirit of the Reformation or the Spirit of Revolt or the Spirit of Disorder and Anarchy. The papers tell us that, "Berlin says", "London says", "Uncle Sam so decides", "John Bull is disgruntled". Now, whether or no there are such things as spirits, Berlin and London have no souls, and Uncle Sam is as mythical as the great god Pan. Sometimes this regression to the savage is harmless, but when a newspaper states that "Germany is as militaristic as ever", on the ground that some insolent Prussian lieutenant says that German armies will occupy Paris within five years, we have an example of animism which in a society farther removed from savagery than ours might be deemed a high crime and misdemeanor. Chemists and physicians have given up talking of spirits, but in discussing social and economic questions we are still victimized by the primitive animistic tendencies of the mind. The dream has had a great influence in the building up of the mind. Our ideas, especially our religious beliefs, would have had quite another history had men been dreamless. For it was not merely his shadow and his reflection in the water that led man to imagine souls and doubles, but pre-eminently the visions of the night. As his body lay quiet in sleep he found himself wandering in distant places. Sometimes he was visited by the dead. So it was clear that the body had an inhabitant who was not necessarily bound to it, who could desert it from time to time during life, and who continued to exist and interest itself in human affairs after death. Whole civilizations and religions and vast theological speculations have been dominated by this savage inference. It is true that in very recent times, since Plato, let us say, other reasons have been urged for believing in the soul and its immortality, but the idea appears to have got its firm footing in savage logic. It is a primitive inference, however it may later have been revised, rationalized, and ennobled. The taboo--the forbidden thing--of savage life is another thing very elementary in man's make-up. He had tendencies to fall into habits and establish inhibitions for reasons that he either did not discover or easily forgot. These became fixed and sacred to him and any departure from them filled him with dread. Sometimes the prohibition might have some reasonable justification, sometimes it might seem wholly absurd and even a great nuisance, but that made no difference in its binding force. For example, pork was taboo among the ancient Hebrews--no one can say why, but none of the modern justifications for abstaining from that particular kind of meat would have counted in early Jewish times. It is not improbable that it was the original veneration for the boar and not an abhorrence of him that led to the prohibition. The modern "principle" is too often only a new form of the ancient taboo, rather than an enlightened rule of conduct. The person who justifies himself by saying that he holds certain beliefs, or acts in a certain manner "on principle", and yet refuses to examine the basis and expediency of his principle, introduces into his thinking and conduct an irrational, mystical element similar to that which characterized savage prohibitions. Principles unintelligently urged make a great deal of trouble in the free consideration of social readjustment, for they are frequently as recalcitrant and obscurantist as the primitive taboo, and are really scarcely more than an excuse for refusing to reconsider one's convictions and conduct. The psychological conditions lying back of both taboo and this sort of principle are essentially the same. We find in savage thought a sort of intensified and generalized taboo in the classification of things as clean and unclean and in the conceptions of the sacred. These are really expressions of profound and persistent traits in the uncritical mind and can only be overcome by carefully cultivated criticism. They are the result of our natural timidity and the constant dread lest we find ourselves treading on holy (_i. e._, dangerous) ground.[17] When they are intrenched in the mind we cannot expect to think freely and fairly, for they effectually stop argument. If a thing is held to be sacred it is the center of what may be called a defense complex, and a reasonable consideration of the merits of the case will not be tolerated. When an issue is declared to be a "moral" one--for example, the prohibition of strong drink--an emotional state is implied which makes reasonable compromise and adjustment impossible; for "moral" is a word on somewhat the same plane as "sacred", and has much the same qualities and similar effects on thinking. In dealing with the relations of the sexes the terms "pure" and "impure" introduce mystic and irrational moods alien to clear analysis and reasonable readjustments. Those who have studied the characteristics of savage life are always struck by its deadly conservatism, its needless restraints on the freedom of the individual, and its hopeless routine. Man, like plants and animals in general, tends to go on from generation to generation, living as nearly as may be the life of his forbears. Changes have to be forced upon him by hard experience, and he is ever prone to find excuses for slipping back into older habits, for these are likely to be simpler, less critical, more spontaneous--more closely akin, in short, to his animal and primitive promptings. One who prides himself to-day on his conservatism, on the ground that man is naturally an anarchic and disorderly creature who is held in check by the far-seeing Tory, is almost exactly reversing the truth. Mankind is conservative by nature and readily generates restraints on himself and obstacles to change which have served to keep him in a state of savagery during almost his whole existence on the earth, and which still perpetuate all sorts of primitive barbarism in modern society. The conservative "on principle" is therefore a most unmistakably primitive person in his attitude. His only advance beyond the savage mood lies in the specious reasons he is able to advance for remaining of the same mind. What we vaguely call a "radical" is a very recent product due to altogether exceptional and unprecedented circumstances. NOTES. [10] It is impossible to discuss here the results which a really honest study of child psychology promises. The relations of the child to his parents and elders in general and to the highly artificial system of censorship and restraints which they impose in their own interests on his natural impulses must surely have a permanent influence on the notions he continues to have as an adult in regard to his "superiors" and the institutions and _mores_ under which he is called to live. Attempts in later life to gain intellectual freedom can only be successful if one comes to think of the childish origin of a great part of his "real" reasons. [11] Clarence Day in _Our Simian World_ discusses with delightful humor the effects of our underlying simian temperament on the conduct of life. [12] The word "imitation" is commonly used very loosely. The real question is does an animal, or even man himself, tend to make movements or sounds made by their fellow-creatures in their presence It seems to be made out now that even monkeys are not imitative in that sense and that man himself has no general inclination to do over what he sees being done. Pray, if you doubt this, note how many things you see others doing that you have no inclination to imitate! For an admirable summary see Thorndike, E. L., _The Original Nature of Man_, 1913, pp. 108 ff. [13] "If the earth were struck by one of Mr. Wells's comets, and if, in consequence, every human being now alive were to lose all the knowledge and habits which he had acquired from preceding generations (though retaining unchanged all his own powers of invention and memory and habituation) nine tenths of the inhabitants of London or New York would be dead in a month, and 99 per cent of the remaining tenth would be dead in six months. They would have no language to express their thoughts, and no thoughts but vague reverie. They could not read notices, or drive motors or horses. They would wander about, led by the inarticulate cries of a few naturally dominant individuals, drowning themselves, as thirst came on, in hundreds at the riverside landing places, looting those shops where the smell of decaying food attracted them, and perhaps at the end stumbling on the expedient of cannibalism. Even in the country districts men could not invent, in time to preserve their lives, methods of growing food, or taming animals, or making fire, or so clothing themselves as to endure a Northern winter."--GRAHAM WALLAS, _Our Social Heritage_, p. 16. Only the very lowest of savages might possibly pull through if culture should disappear. [14] "A Theory of History", Political Science Quarterly, December, 1920. He attributes history to the adventurers. [15] Count Korzybski in his _Manhood of Humanity_ is so impressed by the uniqueness and undreamed possibilities of human civilization and man's "time-binding" capacity that he declares that it is a gross and misleading error to regard man as an animal at all. Yet he is forced sadly to confess that man continues all too often to operate on an animal or "space-binding" plan of life. His aim and outlook are, however, essentially the same as those of the present writer. His method of approach will appeal especially to those who are wont to deal with affairs in the spirit of the mathematician and engineer. He is quite right in thinking that man has hitherto had little conception of his peculiar prerogatives and unlimited opportunities for betterment. [16] In the beginning, too, man did not know how children came about, for it was not easy to connect a common impulsive act with the event of birth so far removed in time. The tales told to children still are reminiscences of the mythical explanations which our savage ancestors advanced to explain the arrival of the infant. Consequently, all popular theories of the origin of marriage and the family based on the assumption of conscious paternity are outlawed. [17] Lucretius warns the reader not to be deterred from considering the evils wrought by religion by the fear of treading on "the unholy grounds of reason and in the path of sin".--_De Rer. Nat_. i, 80 ff. * * * * * IV Thereupon one of the Egyptian priests, who was of a very great age, said: O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are but children, and there was never an old man who was a Hellene. Solon in return asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition; nor any science which is hoary with age. --PLATO'S _Timaeus_, 22 (Jowett's translation). The truth is that we are far more likely to underrate the originality of the Greeks than to exaggerate it, and we do not always remember the very short time they took to lay down the lines scientific inquiry has followed ever since.--JOHN BURNET. 8. BEGINNING OF CRITICAL THINKING The Egyptians were the first people, so far as we know, who invented a highly artificial method of writing, about five thousand years ago, and began to devise new arts beyond those of their barbarous predecessors. They developed painting and architecture, navigation, and various ingenious industries; they worked in glass and enamels and began the use of copper, and so introduced metal into human affairs. But in spite of their extraordinary advance in practical, matter-of-fact knowledge they remained very primitive in their beliefs. The same may be said of the peoples of Mesopotamia and of the western Asiatic nations in general--just as in our own day the practical arts have got a long start compared with the revision of beliefs in regard to man and the gods. The peculiar opinions of the Egyptians do not enter directly into our intellectual heritage, but some of the fundamental religious ideas which developed in western Asia have, through the veneration for the Hebrew Scriptures, become part and parcel of our ways of thinking. To the Greeks, however, we are intellectually under heavy obligation. The literature of the Greeks, in such fragments as escaped destruction, was destined, along with the Hebrew Scriptures, to exercise an incalculable influence in the formation of our modern civilized minds. These two dominating literary heritages originated about the same time--day before yesterday--viewed in the perspective of our race's history. Previous to the Greek civilization books had played no great part in the development, dissemination, and transmission of culture from generation to generation. Now they were to become a cardinal force in advancing and retarding the mind's expansion. It required about a thousand years for the Greek shepherds from the pastures of the Danube to assimilate the culture of the highly civilized regions in which they first appeared as barbarian destroyers. They accepted the industrial arts of the eastern Mediterranean, adopted the Phoenician alphabet, and emulated the Phoenician merchant. By the seventh century before our era they had towns, colonies, and commerce, with much stimulating running hither and thither. We get our first traces of new intellectual enterprise in the Ionian cities, especially Miletus, and in the Italian colonies of the Greeks. Only later did Athens become the unrivaled center in a marvelous outflowering of the human intelligence. It is a delicate task to summarize what we owe to the Greeks. Leaving aside their supreme achievements in literature and art, we can consider only very briefly the general scope and nature of their thinking as it relates most closely to our theme. The chief strength of the Greeks lay in their freedom from hampering intellectual tradition. They had no venerated classics, no holy books, no dead languages to master, no authorities to check their free speculation. As Lord Bacon reminds us, they had no antiquity of knowledge and no knowledge of antiquity. A modern classicist would have been a forlorn outlander in ancient Athens, with no books in a forgotten tongue, no obsolete inflections to impose upon reluctant youth. He would have had to use the everyday speech of the sandal-maker and fuller. For a long time no technical words were invented to give aloofness and seeming precision to philosophic and scientific discussion. Aristotle was the first to use words incomprehensible to the average citizen. It was in these conditions that the possibilities of human criticism first showed themselves. The primitive notions of man, of the gods, and of the workings of natural forces began to be overhauled on an entirely new scale. Intelligence developed rapidly as exceptionally bold individuals came to have their suspicions of simple, spontaneous, and ancient ways of looking at things. Ultimately there came men who professed to doubt everything. As Abelard long after put it, "By doubting we come to question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth." But man is by nature credulous. He is victimized by first impressions, from which he can only escape with great difficulty. He resents criticism of accepted and familiar ideas as he resents any unwelcome disturbance of routine. So criticism is against nature, for it conflicts with the smooth workings of our more primitive minds, those of the child and the savage. It should not be forgotten that the Greek people were no exception in this matter. Anaxagoras and Aristotle were banished for thinking as they did; Euripides was an object of abhorrence to the conservative of his day, and Socrates was actually executed for his godless teachings. The Greek thinkers furnish the first instance of intellectual freedom, of the "self-detachment and self-abnegating vigor of criticism" which is most touchingly illustrated in the honest "know-nothingism" of Socrates. _They discovered skepticism in the higher and proper significance of the word, and this was their supreme contribution to human thought_. One of the finest examples of early Greek skepticism was the discovery of Xenophanes that man created the gods in his own image. He looked about him, observed the current conceptions of the gods, compared those of different peoples, and reached the conclusion that the way in which a tribe pictured its gods was not the outcome of any knowledge of how they really looked and whether they had black eyes or blue, but was a reflection of the familiarly human. If the lions had gods they would have the shape of their worshipers. No more fundamentally shocking revelation was ever made than this, for it shook the very foundations of religious belief. The home life on Olympus as described in Homer was too scandalous to escape the attention of the thoughtful, and no later Christian could have denounced the demoralizing influence of the current religious beliefs in hotter indignation than did Plato. To judge from the reflection of Greek thought which we find in Lucretius and Cicero, none of the primitive religious beliefs escaped mordant criticism. The second great discovery of the Greek thinkers was _metaphysics_. They did not have the name, which originated long after in quite an absurd fashion,[18] but they reveled in the thing. Nowadays metaphysics is revered by some as our noblest effort to reach the highest truth, and scorned by others as the silliest of wild-goose chases. I am inclined to rate it, like smoking, as a highly gratifying indulgence to those who like it, and, as indulgences go, relatively innocent. The Greeks found that the mind could carry on an absorbing game with itself. We all engage in reveries and fantasies of a homely, everyday type, concerned with our desires or resentments, but the fantasy of the metaphysician busies itself with conceptions, abstractions, distinctions, hypotheses, postulates, and logical inferences. Having made certain postulates or hypotheses, he finds new conclusions, which he follows in a seemingly convincing manner. This gives him the delightful emotion of pursuing Truth, something as the simple man pursues a maiden. Only Truth is more elusive than the maiden and may continue to beckon her follower for long years, no matter how gray and doddering he may become. Let me give two examples of metaphysical reasoning.[19] We have an idea of an omnipotent, all-good, and perfect being. We are incapable, knowing as we do only imperfect things, of framing such an idea for ourselves, so it must have been given us by the being himself. And perfection must include existence, so God must exist. This was good enough for Anselm and for Descartes, who went on to build a whole closely concatenated philosophical system on this foundation. To them the logic seemed irrefragable; to the modern student of comparative religion, even to Kant, himself a metaphysician, there was nothing whatsoever in it but an illustration of the native operations of a mind that has made a wholly gratuitous hypothesis and is victimized by an orderly series of spontaneous associations. A second example of metaphysics may be found in the doctrines of the Eleatic philosophers, who early appeared in the Greek colonies on the coast of Italy, and thought hard about space and motion. Empty space seemed as good as nothing, and, as nothing could not be said to exist, space must be an illusion; and as motion implied space in which to take place, there could be no motion. So all things were really perfectly compact and at rest, and all our impressions of change were the illusions of the thoughtless and the simple-minded. Since one of the chief satisfactions of the metaphysicians is to get away from the welter of our mutable world into a realm of assurance, this doctrine exercised a great fascination over many minds. The Eleatic conviction of unchanging stability received a new form in Plato's doctrine of eternal "ideas", and later developed into the comforting conception of the "Absolute", in which logical and world-weary souls have sought refuge from the times of Plotinus to those of Josiah Royce. But there was one group of Greek thinkers whose general notions of natural operations correspond in a striking manner to the conclusions of the most recent science. These were the Epicureans. Democritus was in no way a modern experimental scientist, but he met the Eleatic metaphysics with another set of speculative considerations which happened to be nearer what is now regarded as the truth than theirs. He rejected the Eleatic decisions against the reality of space and motion on the ground that, since motion obviously took place, the void must be a reality, even if the metaphysician could not conceive it. He hit upon the notion that all things were composed of minute, indestructible particles (or atoms) of fixed kinds. Given motion and sufficient time, these might by fortuitous concourse make all possible combinations. And it was one of these combinations which we call the world as we find it. For the atoms of various shapes were inherently capable of making up all material things, even the soul of man and the gods themselves. There was no permanence anywhere; all was no more than the shifting accidental and fleeting combinations of the permanent atoms of which the cosmos was composed. This doctrine was accepted by the noble Epicurus and his school and is delivered to us in the immortal poem of Lucretius "On the Nature of Things". The Epicureans believed the gods to exist because, like Anselm and Descartes, they thought we had an innate idea of them. But the divine beings led a life of elegant ease and took no account of man; neither his supplications, nor his sweet-smelling sacrifices, nor his blasphemies, ever disturbed their calm. Moreover, the human soul was dissipated at death. So the Epicureans flattered themselves that they had delivered man from his two chief apprehensions, the fear of the gods and the fear of death. For, as Lucretius says, he who understands the real nature of things will see that both are the illusions of ignorance. Thus one school of Greek thinkers attained to a complete rejection of religious beliefs in the name of natural science. 9. INFLUENCE OF PLATO AND ARISTOTLE In Plato we have at once the skepticism and the metaphysics of his contemporaries. He has had his followers down through the ages, some of whom carried his skepticism to its utmost bounds, while others availed themselves of his metaphysics to rear a system of arrogant mystical dogmatism. He put his speculations in the form of dialogues --ostensible discussions in the market place or the houses of philosophic Athenians. The Greek word for logic is dialectic, which really means "discussion". argumentation in the interest of fuller analysis, with the hope of more critical conclusions. The dialogues are the drama of his day, employed in Plato's magical hand as a vehicle of discursive reason. Of late we have in Ibsen, Shaw, Brieux, and Galsworthy the old expedient applied to the consideration of social perplexities and contradictions. The dialogue is indecisive in its outcome. It does not lend itself to dogmatic conclusions and systematic presentation, but exposes the intricacy of all important questions and the inevitable conflict of views, which may seem altogether irreconcilable. We much need to encourage and elaborate opportunities for profitable discussion to-day. We should revert to the dialectic of the Athenian agora and make it a chosen instrument for clarifying, co-ordinating and directing our co-operative thinking. Plato's indecision and urbane fair-mindedness is called irony. Now irony is seriousness without solemnity. It assumes that man is a serio-comic animal, and that no treatment of his affairs can be appropriate which gives him a consistency and dignity which he does not possess. He is always a child and a savage. He is the victim of conflicting desires and hidden yearnings. He may talk like a sentimental idealist and act like a brute. The same person will devote anxious years to the invention of high explosives and then give his fortune to the promotion of peace. We devise the most exquisite machinery for blowing our neighbors to pieces and then display our highest skill and organization in trying to patch together such as offer hope of being mended. Our nature forbids us to make a definite choice between the machine gun and the Red Cross nurse. So we use the one to keep the other busy. Human thought and conduct can only be treated broadly and truly in a mood of tolerant irony. It belies the logical precision of the long-faced, humorless writer on politics and ethics, whose works rarely deal with man at all, but are a stupid form of metaphysics. Plato made terms with the welter of things, but sought relief in the conception of supernal models, eternal in the heavens, after which all things were imperfectly fashioned. He confessed that he could not bear to accept a world which was like a leaky pot or a man running at the nose. In short, he ascribed the highest form of existence to ideals and abstractions. This was a new and sophisticated republication of savage animism. It invited lesser minds than his to indulge in all sorts of noble vagueness and impertinent jargon which continue to curse our popular discussions of human affairs. He consecrated one of the chief foibles of the human mind and elevated it to a religion. Ever since his time men have discussed the import of names. Are there such things as love, friendship, and honor, or are there only lovely things, friendly emotions in this individual and that, deeds which we may, according to our standards, pronounce honorable or dishonorable? If you believe in beauty, truth, and love _as such_ you are a Platonist. If you believe that there are only individual instances and illustrations of various classified emotions and desires and acts, and that abstractions are only the inevitable categories of thought, you would in the Middle Ages have been called a "nominalist". This matter merits a long discussion, but one can test any book or newspaper editorial at his leisure and see whether the writer puts you off with abstractions--Americanism, Bolshevism, public welfare, liberty, national honor, religion, morality, good taste, rights of man, science, reason, error--or, on the other hand, casts some light on actual human complications. I do not mean, of course, that we can get along without the use of abstract and general terms in our thinking and speaking, but we should be on our constant guard against viewing them as forces and attributing to them the vigor of personality. Animism is, as already explained, a pitfall which is always yawning before us and into which we are sure to plunge unless we are ever watchful. Platonism is its most amiable and complete disguise. Previous to Aristotle, Greek thought had been wonderfully free and elastic. It had not settled into compartments or assumed an educational form which would secure its unrevised transmission from teacher to student. It was not gathered together in systematic treatises. Aristotle combined the supreme powers of an original and creative thinker with the impulses of a textbook writer. He loved order and classification. He supplied manuals of Ethics, Politics, Logic, Psychology, Physics, Metaphysics, Economics, Poetics, Zoölogy, Meteorology, Constitutional Law, and God only knows what not, for we do not have by any means all the things he wrote. And he was equally interested, and perhaps equally capable, in all the widely scattered fields in which he labored. And some of his manuals were so overwhelming in the conclusiveness of their reasoning, so all-embracing in their scope, that the mediaeval universities may be forgiven for having made them the sole basis of a liberal education and for imposing fines on those who ventured to differ from "The Philosopher". He seemed to know everything that could be known and to have ordered all earthly knowledge in an inspired codification which would stand the professors in good stead down to the day of judgment. Aristotle combined an essentially metaphysical taste with a preternatural power of observation in dealing with the workings of nature. In spite of his inevitable mistakes, which became the curse of later docile generations, no other thinker of whom we have record can really compare with him in the distinction and variety of his achievements. It is not his fault that posterity used his works to hamper further progress and clarification. He is the father of book knowledge and the grandfather of the commentator. After two or three hundred years of talking in the market place and of philosophic discussions prolonged until morning, such of the Greeks as were predisposed to speculation had thought all the thoughts and uttered all the criticisms of commonly accepted beliefs and of one another that could by any possibility occur to those who had little inclination to fare forth and extend their knowledge of the so-called realities of nature by painful and specialized research and examination. This is to me the chief reason why, except for some advances in mathematics, astronomy, geography, and the refinements of scholarship, the glorious period of the Greek mind is commonly and rightfully assumed to have come to an end about the time of Aristotle's death. Why did the Greeks not go on, as modern scientists have gone on, with vistas of the unachieved still ahead of them? In the first place, Greek civilization was founded on slavery and a fixed condition of the industrial arts. The philosopher and scholar was estopped from fumbling with those everyday processes that were associated with the mean life of the slave and servant. Consequently there was no one to devise the practical apparatus by which alone profound and ever-increasing knowledge of natural operations is possible. The mechanical inventiveness of the Greeks was slight, and hence they never came upon the lens; they had no microscope to reveal the minute, no telescope to attract the remote; they never devised a mechanical timepiece, a thermometer, nor a barometer, to say nothing of cameras and spectroscopes. Archimedes, it is reported, disdained to make any record of his ingenious devices, for they were unworthy the noble profession of a philosopher. Such inventions as were made were usually either toys or of a heavy practical character. So the next great step forward in the extension of the human mind awaited the disappearance of slavery and the slowly dawning suspicion, and final repudiation, of the older metaphysics, which first became marked some three hundred years ago. NOTES. [18] When in the time of Cicero the long-hidden works of Aristotle were recovered and put into the hands of Andronicus of Rhodes to edit, he found certain fragments of highly abstruse speculation which he did not know what to do with. So he called them "addenda to the Physics"--_Ta meta ta physica_. These fragments, under the caption "Metaphysica", became the most revered of Aristotle's productions, his "First Philosophy", as the Scholastics were wont to call it. [19] John Dewey deduces metaphysics from man's original reverie and then shows how in time it became a solemn form of rationalizing current habits and standards. _Reconstruction in Philosophy_, lectures i-ii. It is certainly surprising how few philosophical writers have ever reached other than perfectly commonplace conclusions in regard to practical "morality". * * * * * V And God made the two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind: and it was so. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.--Gen. i. Ibi vacabimus et videbimus, videbimus et amabimus, amabimus et laudabimus. Ecce quod erit in fine sine fine. Nam quis alius noster est finis nisi pervenire ad regnum, cuius nullus est finis?--AUGUSTINE. 10. ORIGIN OF THE MEDIAEVAL CIVILIZATION In the formation of what we may call our historical mind--namely, that modification of our animal and primitive outlook which has been produced by men of exceptional intellectual venturesomeness--the Greeks played a great part. We have seen how the Greek thinkers introduced for the first time highly subtle and critical ways of scrutinizing old beliefs, and, how they disabused their minds of many an ancient and naïve mistake. But our current ways of thinking are not derived directly from the Greeks; we are separated from them by the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages. When we think of Athens we think of the Parthenon and its frieze, of Sophocles and Euripides, of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, of urbanity and clarity and moderation in all things. When we think of the Middle Ages we find ourselves in a world of monks, martyrs, and miracles, of popes and emperors, of knights and ladies; we remember Gregory the Great, Abélard, and Thomas Aquinas --and very little do these reminiscences have in common with those of Hellas. It was indeed a different world, with quite different fundamental presuppositions. Marvelous as were the achievements of the Greeks in art and literature, and ingenious as they were in new and varied combinations of ideas, they paid too little attention to the common things of the world to devise the necessary means of penetrating its mysteries. They failed to come upon the lynx-eyed lens, or other instruments of modern investigation, and thus never gained a godlike vision of the remote and the minute. Their critical thought was consequently not grounded in experimental or applied science, and without that the western world was unable to advance or even long maintain their high standards of criticism. After the Hellenes were absorbed into the vast Roman Empire critical thought and creative intelligence--rare and precarious things at best--began to decline, at first slowly and then with fatal rapidity and completeness. Moreover, new and highly uncritical beliefs and modes of thought became popular. They came from the Near East --Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor--and largely supplanted the critical traditions of the great schools of Greek philosophy. The Stoic and Epicurean dogmas had lost their freshness. The Greek thinkers had all agreed in looking for salvation through intelligence and knowledge. But eloquent leaders arose to reveal a new salvation, and over the portal of truth they erased the word "Reason" and wrote "Faith" in its stead; and the people listened gladly to the new prophets, for it was necessary only _to believe_ to be saved, and believing is far easier than thinking. It was religious and mystical thought which, in contrast to the secular philosophy of the Greeks and the scientific thought of our own day, dominated the intellectual life of the Middle Ages. Before considering this new phase through which the human mind was to pass it is necessary to guard against a common misapprehension in the use of the term "Middle Ages". Our historical textbooks usually include in that period the happenings between the dissolution of the Roman Empire and the voyages of Columbus or the opening of the Protestant revolt. To the student of intellectual history this is unfortunate, for the simple reason that almost all the ideas and even institutions of the Middle Ages, such as the church and monasticism and organized religious intolerance, really originated in the late Roman Empire. Moreover, the intellectual revolution which has ushered in the thought of our day did not get well under way until the seventeenth century. So one may say that medieval thought began long before the accepted beginning of the Middle Ages and persisted a century or so after they are ordinarily esteemed to have come to an end. We have to continue to employ the old expression for convenience' sake, but from the standpoint of the history of the European mind three periods should be distinguished, lying between ancient Greek thought as it was flourishing in Athens, Alexandria, Rhodes, Rome, and elsewhere at the opening of the Christian era, and the birth of modern science some sixteen hundred years later. The first of these is the period of the Christian Fathers, culminating in the authoritative writings of Augustine, who died in 430. By this time a great part of the critical Greek books had disappeared in western Europe. As for pagan writers, one has difficulty in thinking of a single name (except that of Lucian) later than Juvenal, who had died nearly three hundred years before Augustine. Worldly knowledge was reduced to pitiful compendiums on which the mediaeval students were later to place great reliance. Scientific, literary, and historical information was scarcely to be had. The western world, so far as it thought at all, devoted its attention to religion and all manner of mystical ideas, old and new. As Harnack has so well said, the world was already intellectually bankrupt before the German invasions and their accompanying disorders plunged it into still deeper ignorance and mental obscurity. The second, or "Dark Age", lasted with only slight improvement from Augustine to Abélard, about seven hundred years. The prosperous _villas_ disappeared; towns vanished or shriveled up; libraries were burned or rotted away from neglect; schools were closed, to be reopened later here and there, after Charlemagne's educational edict, in an especially enterprising monastery or by some exceptional bishop who did not spend his whole time in fighting. From about the year 1100 conditions began to be more and more favorable to the revival of intellectual ambition, a recovery of forgotten knowledge, and a gradual accumulation of new information and inventions unknown to the Greeks, or indeed to any previous civilization. The main presuppositions of this third period of the later Middle Ages go back, however, to the Roman Empire. They had been formulated by the Church Fathers, transmitted through the Dark Age, and were now elaborated by the professors in the newly established universities under the influence of Aristotle's recovered works and built up into a majestic intellectual structure known as Scholasticism. On these mediaeval university professors--the schoolmen--Lord Bacon long ago pronounced a judgment that may well stand to-day. "Having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle, their dictator), as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time [they], did out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books." Our civilization and the human mind, critical and uncritical, as we now find it in our western world, is a direct and uninterrupted outgrowth of the civilization and thought of the later Middle Ages. Very gradually only did peculiarly free and audacious individual thinkers escape from this or that mediaeval belief, until in our own day some few have come to reject practically all the presuppositions on which the Scholastic system was reared. But the great mass of Christian believers, whether Catholic or Protestant, still professedly or implicitly adhere to the assumptions of the Middle Ages, at least in all matters in which religious or moral sanctions are concerned. It is true that outside the Catholic clergy the term "mediaeval" is often used in a sense of disparagement, but that should not blind us to the fact that mediaeval presumptions, whether for better or worse, are still common. A few of the most fundamental of these presuppositions especially germane to our theme may be pointed out here. 11. OUR MEDIAEVAL INTELLECTUAL INHERITANCE The Greeks and Romans had various theories of the origin of things, all vague and admittedly conjectural. But the Christians, relying upon the inspired account in the Bible, built their theories on information which they believed vouchsafed to them by God himself. Their whole conception of human history was based upon a far more fundamental and thorough supernaturalism than we find among the Greeks and Romans. The pagan philosophers reckoned with the gods, to be sure, but they never assumed that man's earthly life should turn entirely on what was to happen after death. This was in theory the sole preoccupation of the mediaeval Christian. Life here below was but a brief, if decisive, preliminary to the real life to come. The mediaeval Christian was essentially more polytheistic than his pagan predecessors, for he pictured hierarchies of good and evil spirits who were ever aiding him to reach heaven or seducing him into the paths of sin and error. Miracles were of common occurrence and might be attributed either to God or the devil; the direct intervention of both good and evil spirits played a conspicuous part in the explanation of daily acts and motives.[20] As a distinguished church historian has said, the God of the Middle Ages was a God of arbitrariness--the more arbitrary the more Godlike. By frequent interferences with the regular course of events he made his existence clear, reassured his children of his continued solicitude, and frustrated the plots of the Evil One. Not until the eighteenth century did any considerable number of thinkers revolt against this conception of the Deity and come to worship a God of orderliness who abode by his own laws. The mediaeval thinkers all accepted without question what Santayana has strikingly described as the "Christian Epic". This included the general historical conceptions of how man came about, and how, in view of his origin and his past, he should conduct his life. The universe had come into being in less than a week, and man had originally been created in a state of perfection along with all other things--sun, moon, and stars, plants and animals. After a time the first human pair had yielded to temptation, transgressed God's commands, and been driven from the lovely garden in which he had placed them. So sin came into the world, and the offspring of the guilty pair were thereby contaminated and defiled from the womb. In time the wickedness became such on the newly created earth that God resolved to blot out mankind, excepting only Noah's family, which was spared to repeople the earth after the Flood, but the unity of language that man had formerly possessed was lost. At the appointed time, preceded by many prophetic visions among the chosen people, God sent his Son to live the life of men on earth and become their Saviour by submitting to death. Thereafter, with the spread of the gospel, the struggle between the kingdom of God and that of the devil became the supreme conflict of history. It was to culminate in the Last Judgment, when the final separation of good and evil should take place and the blessed should ascend into the heavens to dwell with God forever, while the wicked sank to hell to writhe in endless torment. This general account of man, his origin and fate, embraced in the Christian Epic, was notable for its precision, its divine authenticity, and the obstacles which its authority consequently presented to any revision in the light of increasing knowledge. The fundamental truths in regard to man were assumed to be established once and for all. The Greek thinkers had had little in the way of authority on which to build, and no inconsiderable number of them frankly confessed that they did not believe that such a thing could exist for the thoroughly sophisticated intelligence. But mediaeval philosophy and science _were grounded wholly in authority_. The mediaeval schoolmen turned aside from the hard path of skepticism, long searchings and investigation of actual phenomena, and confidently believed that they could find truth by the easy way of revelation and the elaboration of unquestioned dogmas. This reliance on authority is a fundamental primitive trait. We have inherited it not only from our mediaeval forefathers, but, like them and through them, from long generations of prehistoric men. We all have a natural tendency to rely upon established beliefs and fixed institutions. This is an expression of our spontaneous confidence in everything that comes to us in an unquestioned form. As children we are subject to authority and cannot escape the control of existing opinion. We unconsciously absorb our ideas and views from the group in which we happen to live. What we see about us, what we are told, and what we read has to be received at its face value so long as there are no conflicts to arouse skepticism. We are tremendously suggestible. Our mechanism is much better adapted to credulity than to questioning. All of us believe nearly all the time. Few doubt, and only now and then. The past exercises an almost irresistible fascination over us. As children we learn to look up to the old, and when we grow up we do not permit our poignant realization of elderly incapacity among our contemporaries to rouse suspicions of Moses, Isaiah, Confucius, or Aristotle. Their sayings come to us unquestioned; their remoteness makes inquiry into their competence impossible. We readily assume that they had sources of information and wisdom superior to the prophets of our own day. During the Middle Ages reverence for authority, and for that particular form of authority which we may call the tyranny of the past, was dominant, but probably not more so than it had been in other societies and ages--in ancient Egypt, in China and India. Of the great sources of mediaeval authority, the Bible and the Church Fathers, the Roman and Church law, and the encyclopaedic writings of Aristotle, none continues nowadays to hold us in its old grip. Even the Bible, although nominally unquestioned among Roman Catholics and all the more orthodox Protestant sects, is rarely appealed to, as of old, in parliamentary debate or in discussions of social and economic questions. It is still a religious authority, but it no longer forms the basis of secular decisions. The findings of modern science have shaken the hold of the sources of mediaeval authority, but they have done little as yet to loosen our inveterate habit of relying on the more insidious authority of current practice and belief. We still assume that received dogmas represent the secure conclusions of mankind, and that current institutions represent the approved results of much experiment in the past, which it would be worse than futile to repeat. One solemn remembrancer will cite as a warning the discreditable experience of the Greek cities in democracy; another, how the decline of "morality" and the disintegration of the family heralded the fall of Rome; another, the constant menace of mob rule as exemplified in the Reign of Terror. But to the student of history these alleged illustrations have little bearing on present conditions. He is struck, moreover, with the ease with which ancient misapprehensions are transmitted from generation to generation and with the difficulty of launching a newer and clearer and truer idea of anything. Bacon warns us that the multitude, "or the wisest for the multitude's sake", is in reality "ready to give passage rather to that which is popular and superficial than to that which is substantial and profound; for the truth is that time seemeth to be of the nature of a river or stream, which carrieth down to us that which is light and blown up, and sinketh and drowneth that which is weighty and solid". It is very painful to most minds to admit that the past does not furnish us with reliable, permanent standards of conduct and of public policy. We resent the imputation that things are not going, on the whole, pretty well, and find excuses for turning our backs on disconcerting and puzzling facts. We are full of respectable fears and a general timidity in the face of conditions which we vaguely feel are escaping control in spite of our best efforts to prevent any thoroughgoing readjustment. We instinctively try to show that Mr. Keynes must surely be wrong about the Treaty of Versailles; that Mr. Gibbs must be perversely exaggerating the horrors of modern war; that Mr. Hobson certainly views the industrial crisis with unjustifiable pessimism; that "business as usual" cannot be that socially perverse and incredibly inexpedient thing Mr. Veblen shows it to be; that Mr. Robin's picture of Lenin can only be explained by a disguised sympathy for Bolshevism. Yet, even if we could assume that traditional opinion is a fairly clear and reliable reflection of hard-earned experience, surely it should have less weight in our day and generation than in the past. For changes have overtaken mankind which have fundamentally altered the conditions in which we live, and which are revolutionizing the relations between individuals and classes and nations. Moreover, we must remember that knowledge has widened and deepened, so that, could any of us really catch up with the information of our own time, he would have little temptation to indulge the mediaeval habit of appealing to the authority of the past. The Christian Epic did not have to rely for its perpetuation either on its intellectual plausibility or its traditional authority. During the Middle Ages there developed a vast and powerful religious State, the mediaeval Church, the real successor, as Hobbes pointed out, to the Roman Empire; and the Church with all its resources, including its control over "the secular arm" of kings and princes, was ready to defend the Christian beliefs against question and revision. To doubt the teachings of the Church was the supreme crime; it was treason against God himself, in comparison with which--to judge from mediaeval experts on heresy--murder was a minor offense. We do not, however, inherit our present disposition to intolerance solely from the Middle Ages. As animals and children and savages, we are naively and unquestioningly intolerant. All divergence from the customary is suspicious and repugnant. It seems perverse, and readily suggests evil intentions. Indeed, so natural and spontaneous is intolerance that the question of freedom of speech and writing scarcely became a real issue before the seventeenth century. We have seen that some of the Greek thinkers were banished, or even executed, for their new ideas. The Roman officials, as well as the populace, pestered the early Christians, not so much for the substance of their views as because they were puritanical, refused the routine reverence to the gods, and prophesied the downfall of the State. But with the firm establishment of Christianity edicts began to be issued by the Roman emperors making orthodox Christian belief the test of good citizenship. One who disagreed with the emperor and his religious advisers in regard to the relation of the three members of the Trinity was subject to prosecution. Heretical books were burned, the houses of heretics destroyed. So, organized mediaeval religious intolerance was, like so many other things, a heritage of the later Roman Empire, and was duly sanctioned in both the Theodosian and Justinian Codes. It was, however, with the Inquisition, beginning in the thirteenth century, that the intolerance of the Middle Ages reached its most perfect organization. Heresy was looked upon as a contagious disease that must be checked at all costs. It did not matter that the heretic usually led a conspicuously blameless life, that he was arduous, did not swear, was emaciated with fasting and refused to participate in the vain recreations of his fellows. He was, indeed, overserious and took his religion too hard. This offensive parading as an angel of light was explained as the devil's camouflage. No one tried to find out what the heretic really thought or what were the merits of his divergent beliefs. Because he insisted on expressing his conception of God in slightly unfamiliar terms, the heretic was often branded as an atheist, just as to-day the Socialist is so often accused of being opposed to all government, when the real objection to him is that he believes in too much government. It was sufficient to classify a suspected heretic as an Albigensian, or Waldensian, or a member of some other heretical sect. There was no use in his trying to explain or justify; it was enough that he diverged. There have been various explanations of mediaeval religious intolerance. Lecky, for example, thought that it was due to the theory of exclusive salvation; that, since there was only one way of getting to heaven, all should obviously be compelled to adopt it, for the saving of their souls from eternal torment. But one finds little solicitude for the damned in mediaeval writings. The public at large thought hell none too bad for one who revolted against God and Holy Church. No, the heretics were persecuted because heresy was, according to the notions of the time, a monstrous and unutterably wicked thing, and because their beliefs threatened the vested interests of that day. We now realize more clearly than did Lecky that the Church was really a State in the Middle Ages, with its own laws and courts and prisons and regular taxation to which all were subject. It had all the interests and all the touchiness of a State, and more. The heretic was a traitor and a rebel. He thought that he could get along without the pope and bishops, and that he could well spare the ministrations of the orthodox priests and escape their exactions. He was the "anarchist", the "Red" of his time, who was undermining established authority, and, with the approval of all right-minded citizens, he was treated accordingly. For the mediaeval citizen no more conceived of a State in which the Church was not the dominating authority than we can conceive of a society in which the present political State may have been superseded by some other form of organization. Yet the inconceivable has come to pass. Secular authority has superseded in nearly all matters the old ecclesiastical regime. What was the supreme issue of the Middle Ages--the distinction between the religious heretic and the orthodox--is the least of public questions now. What, then, we may ask, has been the outcome of the old religious persecutions, of the trials, tortures, imprisonings, burnings, and massacres, culminating with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes? What did the Inquisition and the censorship, both so long unquestioned, accomplish? Did they succeed in defending the truth or "safeguarding" society? At any rate, conformity was not established. Nor did the Holy Roman Church maintain its monopoly, although it has survived, purified and freed from many an ancient abuse. In most countries of western Europe and in our own land one may now believe as he wishes, teach such religious views as appeal to him, and join with others who share his sympathies. "Atheism" is still a shocking charge in many ears, but the atheist is no longer an outlaw. _It has been demonstrated, in short, that religious dogma can be neglected in matters of public concern and reduced to a question of private taste and preference_. This is an incredible revolution. But we have many reasons for suspecting that in a much shorter time than that which has elapsed since the Inquisition was founded, the present attempt to eliminate by force those who contemplate a fundamental reordering of social and economic relations will seem quite as inexpedient and hopeless as the Inquisition's effort to defend the monopoly of the mediaeval Church. We can learn much from the past in regard to wrong ways of dealing with new ideas. As yet we have only old-fashioned and highly expensive modes of meeting the inevitable changes which are bound to take place. Repression has now and then enjoyed some temporary success, it is true, but in the main it has failed lamentably and produced only suffering and confusion. Much will depend on whether our purpose is to keep things as they are or to bring about readjustments designed to correct abuses and injustice in the present order. Do we believe, in other words, that truth is finally established and that we have only to defend it, or that it is still in the making? Do we believe in what is commonly called progress, or do we think of that as belonging only to the past? Have we, on the whole, arrived, or are we only on the way, or mayhap just starting? In the Middle Ages, even in the times of the Greeks and Romans, there was little or no conception of progress as the word is now used. There could doubtless be improvement in detail. Men could be wiser and better or more ignorant and perverse. But the assumption was that in general the social, economic, and religious order was fairly standardized. This was especially true in the Middle Ages. During these centuries men's single objective was the assurance of heaven and escape from hell. Life was an angry river into which men were cast. Demons were on every hand to drag them down. The only aim could be, with God's help, to reach the celestial shore. There was no time to consider whether the river might be made less dangerous by concerted effort, through the deflection of its torrents and the removal of its sharpest rocks. No one thought that human efforts should be directed to making the lot of humanity progressively better by intelligent reforms in the light of advancing knowledge. The world was a place to escape from on the best terms possible. In our own day this mediaeval idea of a static society yields only grudgingly, and the notion of inevitable vital change is as yet far from assimilated. We confess it with our lips, but resist it in our hearts. We have learned as yet to respect only one class of fundamental innovators, those dedicated to natural science and its applications. The social innovator is still generally suspect. To the mediaeval theologian, man was by nature vile. We have seen that, according to the Christian Epic, he was assoiled from birth with the primeval sin of his first parents, and began to darken his score with fresh offenses of his own as soon as he became intelligent enough to do so. An elaborate mechanism was supplied by the Church for washing away the original pollution and securing forgiveness for later sins. Indeed, this was ostensibly its main business. We may still well ask, Is man by nature bad? And accordingly as we answer the question we either frame appropriate means for frustrating his evil tendencies or, if we see some promise in him, work for his freedom and bid him take advantage of it to make himself and others happy. So far as I know, Charron, a friend of Montaigne, was one of the first to say a good word for man's animal nature, and a hundred years later the amiable Shaftesbury pointed out some honestly gentlemanly traits in the species. To the modern student of biology and anthropology man is neither good nor bad. There is no longer any "mystery of evil". But the mediaeval notion of _sin_--a term heavy with mysticism and deserving of careful scrutiny by every thoughtful person--still confuses us. Of man's impulses, the one which played the greatest part in mediaeval thoughts of sin and in the monastic ordering of life was the sexual. The presuppositions of the Middle Ages in the matter of the relations of men and women have been carried over to our own day. As compared with many of the ideas which we have inherited from the past, they are of comparatively recent origin. The Greeks and Romans were, on the whole, primitive and uncritical in their view of sex. The philosophers do not seem to have speculated on sex, although there was evidently some talk in Athens of women's rights. The movement is satirized by Aristophanes, and later Plato showed a willingness in _The Republic_ to impeach the current notions of the family and women's position in general. But there are few traces of our ideas of sexual "purity" in the classical writers. To the Stoic philosopher, and to other thoughtful elderly people, sexual indulgence was deemed a low order of pleasure and one best carefully controlled in the interests of peace of mind. But with the incoming of Christianity an essentially new attitude developed, which is still, consciously or unconsciously, that of most people to-day. St. Augustine, who had led a free life as a teacher of rhetoric in Carthage and Rome, came in his later years to believe, as he struggled to overcome his youthful temptations, that sexual desire was the most devilish of man's enemies and the chief sign of his degradation. He could imagine no such unruly urgence in man's perfect estate, when Adam and Eve still dwelt in Paradise. But with man's fall sexual desire appeared as the sign and seal of human debasement. This theory is poignantly set forth in Augustine's _City of God_. He furnished therein a philosophy for the monks, and doubtless his fourteenth book was well thumbed by those who were wont to ponder somewhat wistfully on one of the sins they had fled the world to escape. Christian monasticism was spreading in western Europe in Augustine's time, and the monkist vows included "chastity". There followed a long struggle to force the whole priesthood to adopt a celibate life, and this finally succeeded so far as repeated decrees of the Church could effect it. Marriage was proper for the laity, but both the monastic and secular clergy aspired to a superior holiness which should banish all thoughts of fervent earthly love. Thus a highly unnatural life was accepted by men and women of the most varied temperament and often with slight success. The result of Augustine's theories and of the efforts to frustrate one of man's most vehement impulses was to give sex a conscious importance it had never possessed before. The devil was thrust out of the door only to come in at all the windows. In due time the Protestant sects abolished monasteries, and the Catholic countries later followed their example. The Protestant clergy were permitted to marry, and the old asceticism has visibly declined. But it has done much to determine our whole attitude toward sex, and there is no class of questions still so difficult to discuss with full honesty or to deal with critically and with an open mind as those relating to the intimate relations of men and women. No one familiar with mediaeval literature will, however, be inclined to accuse its authors of prudishness. Nevertheless, modern prudishness, as it prevails especially in England and the United States--our squeamish and shamefaced reluctance to recognize and deal frankly with the facts and problems of sex--is clearly an outgrowth of the mediaeval attitude which looked on sexual impulse as of evil origin and a sign of man's degradation. Modern psychologists have shown that prudishness is not always an indication of exceptional purity, but rather the reverse. It is often a disguise thrown over repressed sexual interest and sexual preoccupations. It appears to be decreasing among the better educated of the younger generation. The study of biology, and especially of embryology, is an easy and simple way of disintegrating the "impurity complex". "Purity" in the sense of ignorance and suppressed curiosity is a highly dangerous state of mind. And such purity in alliance with prudery and defensive hypocrisy makes any honest discussion or essential readjustment of our institutions and habits extremely difficult. One of the greatest contrasts between mediaeval thinking and the more critical thought of to-day lies in the general conception of man's relation to the cosmos. To the medieval philosopher, as to the stupidest serf of the time, the world was made for man. All the heavenly bodies revolved about man's abode as their center. All creatures were made to assist or to try man. God and the devil were preoccupied with his fate, for had not God made him in his own image for his glory, and was not the devil intent on populating his own infernal kingdom? It was easy for those who had a poetic turn of mind to think of nature's workings as symbols for man's edification. The habits of the lion or the eagle yielded moral lessons or illustrated the divine scheme of salvation. Even the written word was to be valued, not for what it seemed to say, but for hidden allegories depicting man's struggles against evil and cheering him on his way. This is a perennially appealing conception of things. It corresponds to primitive and inveterate tendencies in humanity and gratifies, under the guise of humility, our hungering for self-importance. The mediaeval thinker, however freely he might exercise his powers of logical analysis in rationalizing the Christian Epic, never permitted himself to question its general anthropocentric and mystical view of the world. The philosophic mystic assumes the role of a docile child. He feels that all vital truth transcends his powers of discovery. He looks to the Infinite and Eternal Mind to reveal it to him through the prophets of old, or in moments of ecstatic communion with the Divine Intelligence. To the mystic all that concerns our deeper needs transcends logic and defies analysis. In his estimate the human reason is a feeble rushlight which can at best cast a flickering and uncertain ray on the grosser concerns of life, but which only serves to intensify the darkness which surrounds the hidden truth of God. In order that modern science might develop it is clear that a wholly new and opposed set of fundamental convictions had to be substituted for those of the Middle Ages. Man had to cultivate another kind of self-importance and a new and more profound humility. He had come to believe in his capacity to discover important truth through thoughtful examination of things about him, and he had to recognize, on the other hand, that the world did not seem to be made for him, but that humanity was apparently a curious incident in the universe, and its career a recent episode in cosmic history. He had to acquire a taste for the simplest possible and most thoroughgoing explanation of things. His whole mood had to change and impel him to reduce everything so far as possible to the commonplace. This new view was inevitably fiercely attacked by the mystically disposed. They misunderstood it and berated its adherents and accused them of robbing man of all that was most precious in life. These, in turn, were goaded into bitterness and denounced their opponents as pig-headed obscurantists. But we must, after all, come to terms in some way with the emotions underlying mysticism. They are very dear to us, and scientific knowledge will never form an adequate substitute for them. No one need fear that the supply of mystery will ever give out; but a great deal depends on our taste in mystery; that certainly needs refining. What disturbs the so-called rationalist in the mystic's attitude is his propensity to see mysteries where there are none and to fail to see those that we cannot possibly escape. In declaring that one is not a mystic, one makes no claim to be able to explain everything, nor does he maintain that all things are explicable in scientific terms. Indeed, no thoughtful person will be likely to boast that he can fully explain anything. We have only to scrape the surface of our experiences to find fundamental mystery. And how, indeed, as descendants of an extinct race of primates, with a mind still in the early stages of accumulation, should we be in the way of reaching ultimate truth at any point? One may properly urge, however, that as sharp a distinction as possible be made between fictitious mysteries and the unavoidable ones which surround us on every side. How milk turned sour used to be a real mystery, now partially solved since the discovery of bacteria; how the witch flew up the chimney was a gratuitous mystery with which we need no longer trouble ourselves. A "live" wire would once have suggested magic; now it is at least partially explained by the doctrine of electrons. It is the avowed purpose of scientific thought to reduce the number of mysteries, and its success has been marvelous, but it has by no means done its perfect work as yet. We have carried over far too much of mediaeval mysticism in our views of man and his duty toward himself and others. We must now recall the method adopted by students of the natural sciences in breaking away from the standards and limitations of the mediaeval philosophers and establishing new standards of their own. They thus prepared the way for a revolution in human affairs in the midst of which we now find ourselves. As yet their type of thinking has not been applied on any considerable scale to the solution of social problems. By learning to understand and appreciate the scientific frame of mind as a historical victory won against extraordinary odds, we may be encouraged to cultivate and popularize a similar attitude toward the study of man himself. NOTES. [20] St. Ethelred, returning from a pious visit to Citeaux in the days of Henry II, encountered a great storm when he reached the Channel. He asked himself what _he_ had done to be thus delayed, and suddenly thought that he had failed to _fulfill_ a promise to write a poem on St. Cuthbert. When he had completed this, "wonderful to say, the sea ceased to rage and became tranquil".--_Surtees Society Publications_, i, p. 177. * * * * * VI Narrabo igitur primo opera artis et naturae miranda.... ut videatur quod omnis magica potestas sit inferior his operibus et indigna. --ROGER BACON. I do not endeavor either by triumphs of confutation, or pleadings of antiquity, or assumption of authority, or even, by the veil of obscurity, to invest these inventions of mine with any majesty.... I have not sought nor do I seek either to force or ensnare men's judgments, but I lead them to things themselves and the concordances of things, that they may see for themselves what they have, what they can dispute, what they can add and contribute to the common stock.--FRANCIS BACON (_Preface to the Great Instauration_). 12. THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION At the opening of the seventeenth century a man of letters, of sufficient genius to be suspected by some of having written the plays of Shakespeare, directed his distinguished literary ability to the promotion and exaltation of natural science. Lord Bacon was the chief herald of that habit of scientific and critical thought which has played so novel and all-important a part in the making of the modern mind. When but twenty-two years old he was already sketching out a work which he planned to call _Temporis Partus Maximus (The Greatest Thing Ever)_. He felt that he had discovered why the human mind, enmeshed in mediaeval metaphysics and indifferent to natural phenomena, had hitherto been a stunted and ineffective thing, and how it might be so nurtured and guided as to gain undreamed of strength and vigor. And never has there been a man better equipped with literary gifts to preach a new gospel than Francis Bacon. He spent years in devising eloquent and ingenious ways of delivering learning from the "discredits and disgraces" of the past, and in exhorting man to explore the realms of nature for his delight and profit. He never wearied of trumpeting forth the glories of the new knowledge which would come with the study of common things and the profitable uses to which it might be put in relieving man's estate. He impeached the mediaeval schoolmen for spinning out endless cobwebs of learning, remarkable for their fineness, but of no substance or spirit. He urged the learned to come out of their cells, study the creations of God, and build upon what they discovered a new and true philosophy. Even in his own day students of natural phenomena had begun to carry out Bacon's general program with striking effects. While he was urging men to cease "tumbling up and down in their own reason and conceits" and to spell out, and so by degrees to learn to read, the volume of God's works, Galileo had already begun the reading and had found out that the Aristotelian physics ran counter to the facts; that a body once in motion will continue to move forever in a straight line unless it be stopped or deflected. Studying the sky through his newly invented telescope, he beheld the sun spots and noted the sun's revolution on its axis, the phases of Venus, and the satellites of Jupiter. These discoveries seemed to confirm the ideas advanced long before by Copernicus--the earth was not the center of the universe and the heavens were not perfect and unchanging. He dared to discuss these matters in the language of the people and was, as everyone knows, condemned by the Inquisition. This preoccupation with natural phenomena and this refusal to accept the old, established theories until they had been verified by an investigation of common fact was a very novel thing. It introduced a fresh and momentous element into our intellectual heritage. We have recalled the mysticism, supernaturalism, and intolerance of the Middle Ages, their reliance on old books, and their indifference to everyday fact except as a sort of allegory for the edification of the Christian pilgrim. In the mediaeval universities the professors, or "schoolmen", devoted themselves to the elaborate formulation of Christian doctrine and the interpretation of Aristotle's works. It was a period of revived Greek metaphysics, adapted to prevailing religious presuppositions. Into this fettered world Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, and others brought a new aspiration to promote investigation and honest, critical thinking about everyday things. _These founders of modern natural science realized that they would have to begin afresh. This was a bold resolve, but not so bold as must be that of the student of mankind to-day if he expects to free himself from the trammels of the past_. Bacon pointed out that the old days were not those of mature knowledge, but of youthful human ignorance. "_These_ times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those we count ancient, _ordine retrogrado_, by a computation backward from ourselves." In his _New Atlantis_ he pictures an ideal State which concentrated its resources on systematic scientific research, with a view to applying new discoveries to the betterment of man's lot. Descartes, who was a young man when Bacon was an old one, insisted on the necessity, if we proposed to seek the truth, of questioning _everything_ at least once in our lives. To all these leaders in the development of modern science doubt, not faith, was the beginning of wisdom. They doubted--and with good reason--what the Greeks were supposed to have discovered; they doubted all the old books and all the university professors' lecture notes. They did not venture to doubt the Bible, but they eluded it in various ways. They set to work to find out exactly what happened under certain circumstances. They experimented individually and reported their discoveries to the scientific academies which began to come into existence. As one follows the deliberations of these bodies it is pathetic to observe how little the learning of previous centuries, in spite of its imposing claims, had to contribute to a fruitful knowledge of common things. It required a century of hard work to establish the most elementary facts which would now be found in a child's book. How water and air act, how to measure time and temperature and atmospheric pressure, had to be discovered. The microscope revealed the complexity of organic tissues, the existence of minute creatures, vaguely called infusoria, and the strange inhabitants of the blood, the red and white corpuscles. The telescope put an end to the flattering assumption that the cosmos circled around man and the little ball he lives on. Without a certain un-Greek, practical inventive tendency which, for reasons not easily to be discovered, first began to manifest itself in the thirteenth century, this progress would not have been possible. The new thinkers descended from the magisterial chair and patiently fussed with lenses, tubes, pulleys, and wheels, thus weaning themselves from the adoration of man's mind and understanding. They had to devise the machinery of investigation as investigation itself progressed. Moreover, they did not confine themselves to the conventionally noble and elevated subjects of speculation. They addressed themselves to worms and ditch water in preference to metaphysical subtleties. They agreed with Bacon that the mean and even filthy things deserve study. All this was naturally scorned by the university professors, and the universities consequently played little or no part in the advance of natural science until the nineteenth century. Nor were the moral leaders of mankind behind the intellectual in opposing the novel tendencies. The clergy did all they could to perpetuate the squalid belief in witchcraft, but found no place for experimental science in their scheme of learning, and judged it offensive to the Maker of all things. But their opposition could do no more than hamper the new scientific impulse, which was far too potent to be seriously checked. So in one department of human thought--the investigation of natural processes--majestic progress has been made since the opening of the seventeenth century, with every promise of continued and startling advance. The new methods employed by students of natural science have resulted in the accumulation of a stupendous mass of information in regard to the material structure and operation of things, and the gradual way in which the earth and all its inhabitants have come into being. The nature and workings of atoms and molecules are being cleared up, and their relation to heat, light, and electricity established. The slow processes which have brought about the mountains and valleys, the seas and plains, have been exposed. The structure of the elementary cell can be studied under powerful lenses; its divisions, conjunctions, differentiation, and multiplication into the incredibly intricate substance of plants and animals can be traced. In short, man is now in a position, for the first time in his history, to have some really clear and accurate notion of the world in which he dwells and of the living creatures which surround him and with which he must come to terms. It would seem obvious that this fresh knowledge should enable him to direct his affairs more intelligently than his ancestors were able to do in their ignorance. He should be in a position to accommodate himself more and more successfully to the exigencies of an existence which he can understand more fully than any preceding generation, and he should aspire to deal more and more sagaciously with himself and his fellow-men. 13. HOW SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE HAS REVOLUTIONIZED THE CONDITIONS OF LIFE But while our information in regard to man and the world is incalculably greater than that available a hundred, even fifty years ago, we must frankly admit that the knowledge is still so novel, so imperfectly assimilated, so inadequately co-ordinated, and so feebly and ineffectively presented to the great mass of men, that its _direct_ effects upon human impulses and reasoning and outlook are as yet inconsiderable and disappointing. We _might_ think in terms of molecules and atoms, but we rarely do. Few have any more knowledge of their own bodily operations than had their grandparents. The farmer's confidence in the phases of the moon gives way but slowly before recent discoveries in regard to the bacteria of the soil. Few who use the telephone, ride on electric cars, and carry a camera have even the mildest curiosity in regard to how these things work. It is only _indirectly_, through _invention_, that scientific knowledge touches our lives on every hand, modifying our environment, altering our daily habits, dislocating the anciently established order, and imposing the burden of constant adaptation on even the most ignorant and lethargic. Unlike a great part of man's earlier thought, modern scientific knowledge and theory have not remained matter merely for academic discourse and learned books, but have provoked the invention of innumerable practical devices which surround us on every hand, and from which we can now scarce escape by land or sea. Thus while scientific knowledge has not greatly affected the thoughts of most of us, its influence in the promotion of modern invention has served to place us in a new setting or environment, the novel features of which it would be no small task to explain to one's great-great-grandfather, should he unexpectedly apply for up-to-date information. So even if modern scientific _knowledge_ is as yet so imperfect and ill understood as to make it impossible for us to apply much of it directly and personally in our daily conduct, we nevertheless cannot neglect the urgent effects of scientific _inventions_, for they are constantly posing new problems of adjustment to us, and sometimes disposing of old ones. Let us recall a few striking examples of the astonishing way in which what seemed in the beginning to be rather trivial inventions and devices have, with the improvements of modern science, profoundly altered the conditions of life. Some centuries before the time of Bacon and Galileo four discoveries were made which, supplemented and elaborated by later insight and ingenuity, may be said to underlie our modern civilization. A writer of the time of Henry II of England reports that sailors when caught in fog or darkness were wont to touch a needle to a bit of magnetic iron. The needle would then, it had been found, whirl around in a circle and come to rest pointing north. On this tiny index the vast extension of modern commerce and imperialism rests. That lentil-shaped bits of glass would magnify objects was known before the end of the thirteenth century, and from that little fact have come microscopes, telescopes, spectroscopes, and cameras; and from these in turn has come a great part of our present knowledge of natural processes in men, animals, and plants and our comprehension of the cosmos at large. Gunpowder began to be used a few decades after the lens was discovered; it and its terrible descendants have changed the whole problem of human warfare and of the public defense. The printing press, originally a homely scheme for saving the labor of the copyist, has not only made modern democracy and nationality possible, but has helped by the extension of education to undermine the ancient foundations upon which human industry has rested from the beginnings of civilization. In the middle of the eighteenth century the steam engine began to supplant the muscular power of men and animals, which had theretofore been only feebly supplemented by windmills and water wheels. And now we use steam and gas engines and water power to generate potent electric currents which do their work far from the source of supply. Mechanical ingenuity has utilized all this undreamed-of energy in innumerable novel ways for producing old and new commodities in tremendous quantities and distributing them with incredible rapidity throughout the earth. Vast factories have sprung up, with their laborious multitudes engaged on minute contributions to the finished article; overgrown cities sprawl over the neighboring green fields and pastures; long freight trains of steel cars thunder across continents; monstrous masses of wealth pile up, are reinvested, and applied to making the whole system more and more inconceivably intricate and interdependent; and incidentally there is hurry and worry and discontent and hazard beyond belief for a creature who has to grasp it all and control it all with a mind reared on that of an animal, a child, and a savage. As if these changes were not astounding enough, now has come the chemist who devotes himself to making not new _commodities_ (or old ones in new ways), but new _substances_. He juggles with the atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, chlorine, and the rest, and far outruns the workings of nature. Up to date he has been able to produce artfully over two hundred thousand compounds, for some of which mankind formerly depended on the alchemy of animals and plants. He can make foodstuffs out of sewage; he can entrap the nitrogen in the air and use it to raise wheat to feed, or high explosives to slaughter, his fellows. He no longer relies on plants and animals for dyes and perfumes. In short, a chemical discovery may at any moment devastate an immemorial industry and leave both capital and labor in the lurch. The day may not be far distant when, should the chemist learn to control the incredible interatomic energy, the steam engine will seem as complete an anachronism as the treadmill. The uttermost parts of the earth have been visited by Europeans, and commerce has brought all races of the globe into close touch. We have now to reckon with every nation under heaven, as was shown in the World War. At the same time steam and electrical communication have been so perfected that space has been practically annihilated as regards speech, and in matters of transportation reduced to perhaps a fifth. So all the peoples of the earth form economically a loose and, as yet, scarcely acknowledged federation of man, in which the fate of any member may affect the affairs of all the others, no matter how remote they may be geographically. All these unprecedented conditions have conspired to give business for business' sake a fascination and overwhelming importance it has never had before. We no longer make things for the sake of making them, but for money. The chair is not made to sit on, but for profit; the soap is no longer prepared for purposes of cleanliness, but to be sold for profit. Practically nothing catches our eye in the way of writing that was written for its own sake and not for money. Our magazines and newspapers are our modern commercial travelers proclaiming the gospel of business competition. Formerly the laboring classes worked because they were slaves, or because they were defenseless and could not escape from thraldom--or, mayhap, because they were natural artisans; but now they are coming into a position where they can combine and bargain and enter into business competition with their employers. Like their employers, they are learning to give as little as possible for as much as possible. This is good business; and the employer should realize that at last he has succeeded in teaching his employees to be strictly businesslike. When houses were built to live in, and wheat and cattle grown to eat, these essential industries took care of themselves. But now that profit is the motive for building houses and raising grain, if the promised returns are greater from manufacturing automobiles or embroidered lingerie, one is tempted to ask if there are any longer compelling reasons for building houses or raising food? Along with the new inventions and discoveries and our inordinately pervasive commerce have come two other novel elements in our environment--what we vaguely call "democracy" and "nationality". These also are to be traced to applied science and mechanical contrivances. The printing press has made popular education possible, and it is our aspiration to have every boy and girl learn to read and write--an ideal that the Western World has gone far to realize in the last hundred years. General education, introduced first among men and then extended to women, has made plausible the contention that all adults should have a vote, and thereby exercise some ostensible influence in the choice of public officials and in the direction of the policy of the government. Until recently the mass of the people have not been invited to turn their attention to public affairs, which have been left in the control of the richer classes and their representatives and agents, the statesmen or politicians. Doubtless our crowded cities have contributed to a growing sense of the importance of the common man, for all must now share the street car, the public park, the water supply, and contagious diseases. But there is a still more fundamental discovery underlying our democratic tendencies. This is the easily demonstrated scientific truth that nearly all men and women, whatever their social and economic status, may have much greater possibilities of activity and thought and emotion than they exhibit in the particular conditions in which they happen to be placed; that in all ranks may be found evidence of unrealized capacity; that we are living on a far lower scale of intelligent conduct and rational enjoyment than is necessary. Our present notions of nationality are of very recent origin, going back scarcely a hundred years. Formerly nations were made up of the subjects of this or that gracious majesty and were regarded by their God-given rulers as beasts of burden or slaves or, in more amiable moods, as children. The same forces that have given rise to modern democracy have made it possible for vast groups of people, such as make up France or the United States, to be held together more intimately than ever before by the news which reaches them daily of the enterprises of their government and the deeds of their conspicuous fellow-countrymen. In this way the inhabitants of an extensive territory embracing hundreds of thousands of square miles are brought as close together as the people of Athens in former days. Man Is surely a gregarious animal who dislikes solitude. He is, moreover, given to the most exaggerated estimate of his tribe; and on these ancient foundations modern nationality has been built up by means of the printing press, the telegraph, and cheap postage. _So it has fallen out that just when the world was becoming effectively cosmopolitan in its economic interdependence, its scientific research, and its exchange of books and art, the ancient tribal insolence has been developed on a stupendous scale._ The manner in which man has revolutionized his environment, habits of conduct, and purposes of life by inventions is perhaps the most astonishing thing in human history. It is an obscure and hitherto rather neglected subject. But it is clear enough, from the little that has been said here, that since the Middle Ages, and especially in the past hundred years, science has so hastened the process of change that it becomes increasingly difficult for man's common run of thinking to keep pace with the radical alterations in his actual practices and conditions of living. * * * * * VII Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by, When the poor are hovell'd and hustled together, each sex, like swine, When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie; Peace in her vineyard--yes!--but a company forges the wine. --TENNYSON. Could great men thunder As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet. For every pelting, petty officer Would use his heaven for thunder; Nothing but thunder! ... Man, proud man, Drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens, Would all themselves laugh mortal. --SHAKESPEARE. 14. "THE SICKNESS OF AN ACQUISITIVE SOCIETY" It is so difficult a task to form any correct estimate of one's own surroundings, largely on account of our very familiarity with them, that historical students have generally evaded this responsibility. They have often declared that it was impossible to do so satisfactorily. And yet no one will ever know more than we about what is going on now. Some secrets may be revealed to coming generations, but plenty of our circumstances will be obscure to them. And it certainly seems pusillanimous, if not hazardous, to depute to those yet unborn the task of comprehending the conditions under which we must live and strive. I have long believed that the only unmistakable contribution that the historical student can make to the progress of intelligence is to study the past with an eye constantly on the present. For history not only furnishes us with the key to the present by showing how our situation came about, but at the same time supplies a basis of comparison and a point of vantage by virtue of which the salient contrasts between our days and those of old can be detected. Without history the essential differences are sure to escape us. Our generation, like all preceding generations of mankind, inevitably takes what it finds largely for granted, and the great mass of men who argue about existing conditions assume a fundamental likeness to past conditions as the basis of their conclusions in regard to the present and the still unrolled future. Such a procedure becomes more and more dangerous, for although a continuity persists, there are more numerous, deeper and wider reaching contrasts between the world of to-day and that of a hundred, or even fifty, years ago, than have developed in any corresponding lapse of time since the beginning of civilization. This is not the place even to sketch the novelties in our knowledge and circumstances, our problems and possibilities. No more can be done here than to illustrate in a single field of human interest the need of an unprecedentedly open mind in order to avail ourselves of existing resources in grasping and manipulating the problems forced upon us. Few people realize how novel is the almost universal preoccupation with business which we can observe on every hand, but to which we are already so accustomed that it easily escapes the casual observer. But in spite of its vastness and magnificent achievements, business, based upon mass production and speculative profits, has produced new evils and reinforced old ones which no thoughtful person can possibly overlook. Consequently it has become the great issue of our time, the chief subject of discussion, to be defended or attacked according to one's tastes, even as religion and politics formerly had their day. Business men, whether conspicuous in manufacture, trade, or finance, are the leading figures of our age. They exercise a dominant influence in domestic and foreign policy; they subsidize our education and exert an unmistakable control over it. In other ages a military or religious caste enjoyed a similar pre-eminence. But now business directs and equips the soldier, who is far more dependent on its support than formerly. Most religious institutions make easy terms with business, and, far from interfering with it or its teachings, on the whole cordially support it. Business has its philosophy, which it holds to be based upon the immutable traits of human nature and as identical with morality and patriotism. It is a sensitive, intolerant philosophy, of which something will be said in the following section. Modern business produced a sort of paradise for the luckier of mankind, which endured down to the war, and which many hope to see restored in its former charm, and perhaps further beautified as the years go on. It represents one of the most startling of human achievements. No doubt a great part of the population worked hard and lived in relative squalor, but even then they had many comforts unknown to the toiling masses of previous centuries, and were apparently fairly contented. But escape was possible, for any man of capacity or character at all exceeding the average, into the middle or upper classes, for whom life offered, at a low cost and with the least trouble, conveniencies, comforts, and amenities beyond the compass of the richest and most powerful monarchs of other ages. The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages.... He could secure forthwith, if he wished it, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality, could dispatch his servant to the neighboring office of a bank for such supply of the precious metals as might seem convenient, and could then proceed abroad to foreign quarters, without knowledge of their religion, language, or customs, bearing coined wealth upon his person, and would consider himself greatly aggrieved and much surprised at the least interference. And most important of all, he could, before the war, regard this state of affairs as ... normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement, and any deviation from it as aberrant, scandalous, and avoidable. The projects and politics of militarism, and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and exclusion, which were to play the serpent in this paradise, were little more than the amusements of his daily newspaper, and appeared to exercise almost no influence at all on the ordinary course of social and economic life, the internationalization of which was nearly complete in practice.[21] This assumption of the permanence and normality of the prevailing business system was much disturbed by the outcome of the war, but less so, especially in this country, than might have been expected. It was easy to argue that the terrible conflict merely interrupted the generally beneficent course of affairs which would speedily re-establish itself when given an opportunity. To those who see the situation in this light, modern business has largely solved the age-long problem of producing and distributing the material necessities and amenities of life; and nothing remains except to perfect the system in detail, develop its further potentialities, and fight tooth and nail those who are led by lack of personal success or a maudlin sympathy for the incompetent to attack and undermine it. On the other hand, there were many before the war, not themselves suffering conspicuously from the system, who challenged its beneficence and permanence, in the name of justice, economy, and the best and highest interests of mankind as a whole. Since the war many more have come to the conclusion that business as now conducted is not merely unfair, exceedingly wasteful, and often highly inexpedient from a social standpoint, but that from an historical standpoint it is "intensely unusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, and temporary" (Keynes). It may prove to be the chief eccentricity of our age; quite as impermanent as was the feudal and manorial system or the role of the mediaeval Church or of monarchs by the grace of God; and destined to undergo changes which it is now quite impossible to forecast. In any case, economic issues are the chief and bitterest of our time. It is in connection with them that free thinking is most difficult and most apt to be misunderstood, for they easily become confused with the traditional reverences and sanctities of political fidelity, patriotism, morality, and even religion. There is something humiliating about this situation, which subordinates all the varied possibilities of life to its material prerequisites, much as if we were again back in a stage of impotent savagery, scratching for roots and looking for berries and dead animals. One of the most brilliant of recent English economists says with truth: The burden of our civilization is not merely, as many suppose, that the product of industry is ill-distributed, or its conduct tyrannical, or its operation interrupted by bitter disagreements. It is that industry itself has come to hold a position of exclusive predominance among human interests, which no single interest, and least of all the provision of the material means of existence, is fit to occupy. Like a hypochondriac who is so absorbed in the processes of his own digestion that he goes to the grave before he has begun to live, industrialized communities neglect the very objects for which it is worth while to acquire riches in their feverish preoccupation with the means by which riches can be acquired. That obsession by economic issues is as local and transitory as it is repulsive and disturbing. To future generations it will appear as pitiable as the obsession of the seventeenth century by religious quarrels appears to-day; indeed, it is less rational, since the object with which it is concerned is less important. And it is a poison which inflames every wound and turns each trivial scratch into a malignant ulcer.[22] Whatever may be the merits of the conflicting views of our business system, there can be no doubt that it is agitating all types of thoughtful men and women. Poets, dramatists, and story writers turn aside from their old _motifs_ to play the role of economists. Psychologists, biologists, chemists, engineers, are as never before striving to discover the relation between their realms of information and the general problems of social and industrial organization. And here is a historical student allowing the dust to collect on mediaeval chronicles, church histories, and even seventeenth-century rationalists, once fondly perused, in order to see if he can come to some terms with the profit system. And why not? Are we not all implicated? We all buy and many sell, and no one is left untouched by a situation which can in two or three years halve our incomes, without fault of ours. But before seeking to establish the bearing of the previous sections of this volume on our attitude toward the puzzles of our day, we must consider more carefully the "good reasons" commonly urged in defense of the existing system. 15. THE PHILOSOPHY OF SAFETY AND SANITY So far we have been mainly engaged in recalling the process by which man has accumulated such a mind as he now has, and the effects of this accumulation on his mode of life. Under former conditions (which are now passing away) and in a state of ignorance about highly essential matters (which are now being put in quite a new light) he established certain standards and practices in his political, social, and industrial life. His views of property, government, education, the relations of the sexes, and various other matters he reaffirms and perpetuates by means of schools, colleges, churches, newspapers, and magazines, which in order to be approved and succeed must concur in and ratify these established standards and practices and the current notions of good and evil, right and wrong. This is what happened in the past, and to the great majority of people this still seems to be the only means of "safeguarding society". Before subjecting this attitude of mind to further criticism it will be helpful to see how those argue who fail to perceive the vicious circle involved. The war brought with it a burst of unwonted and varied animation. Those who had never extended their activities beyond the usual routine of domestic and professional life suddenly found themselves participating in a vast enterprise in which they seemed to be broadening their knowledge and displaying undreamed of capacity for co-operation with their fellows. Expressions of high idealism exalted us above the petty cares of our previous existence, roused new ambitions, and opened up an exhilarating perspective of possibility and endeavor. It was common talk that when the foe, whose criminal lust for power had precipitated the mighty tragedy, should be vanquished, things would "no longer be the same". All would then agree that war was the abomination of abominations, the world would be made safe for right-minded democracy, and the nations would unite in smiling emulation. Never did bitterer disappointment follow high hopes. All the old habits of nationalistic policy reasserted themselves at Versailles. A frightened and bankrupt world could indeed hardly be expected to exhibit greater intelligence than the relatively happy and orderly one which had five years earlier allowed its sanctified traditions to drag it over the edge of the abyss. Then there emerged from the autocracy of the Tsars the dictatorship of the proletariat, and in Hungary and Germany various startling attempts to revolutionize hastily and excessively that ancient order which the Hapsburg and Hohenzollern rulers had managed to perpetuate in spite of all modern novelties. The real character of these movements was ill understood in our country, but it was inevitable that with man's deep-seated animistic tendencies they should appear as a sort of wicked demon or a deadly contagion which might attack even our own land unless prevented by timely measures. War had naturally produced its machinery for dealing with dissenters, sympathizers with the enemy, and those who deprecated or opposed war altogether; and it was the easiest thing in the world to extend the repression to those who held exceptional or unpopular views, like the Socialists and members of the I.W.W. It was plausible to charge these associations with being under the guidance of foreigners, with "pacificism" and a general tendency to disloyalty. But suspicion went further so as to embrace members of a rather small, thoughtful class who, while rarely socialistic, were confessedly skeptical in regard to the general beneficence of existing institutions, and who failed to applaud at just the right points to suit the taste of the majority of their fellow-citizens. So the general impression grew up that there was a sort of widespread conspiracy to overthrow the government by violence or, at least, a dangerous tendency to prepare the way for such a disaster, or at any rate a culpable indifference to its possibility. Business depression reinforced a natural reaction which had set in with the sudden and somewhat unexpected close of the war. The unwonted excitement brought on a national headache, and a sedative in the form of normalcy was proffered by the Republican party and thankfully accepted by the country at large. Under these circumstances the philosophy of safety and sanity was formulated. It is familiar and reassuring and puts no disagreeable task of mental and emotional readjustment on those who accept it. Hence its inevitable popularity and obvious soundness. And these are its presuppositions: No nation is comparable to our own in its wealth and promise, in its freedom and opportunity for all. It has opened its gates to the peoples of the earth, who have flocked across the ocean to escape the poverty and oppression of Europe. From the scattered colonies of the pre-revolutionary period the United States has rapidly advanced to its world ascendancy. When the European powers had reached a hopeless stalemate after four years of war the United States girded on the sword as the champion of liberty and democracy and in an incredibly short time brought the conflict to a victorious close before she had dispatched half the troops she could easily have spared. She had not entered the conflict with any motives of aggrandizement or of territorial extension. She felt her self-sufficiency and could well afford proudly to refuse to join the League of Nations on the ground that she did not wish to be involved in European wrangles or sacrifice a tittle of her rights of self-determination. The prosperity of the United States is to be attributed largely to the excellence of the Federal Constitution and the soundness of her democratic institutions. Class privileges do not exist, or at least are not recognized. Everyone has equal opportunity to rise in the world unhampered by the shackles of European caste. There is perfect freedom in matters of religious belief. Liberty of speech and of the press is confirmed by both the Federal Constitution and the constitutions of the various states. If people are not satisfied with their form of government they may at any time alter it by a peaceful exercise of the suffrage. In no other country is morality more highly prized or stoutly defended. Woman is held in her proper esteem and the institution of the family everywhere recognized as fundamental. We are singularly free from the vices which disgrace the capitals of Europe, not excepting London. In no other country is the schoolhouse so assuredly acknowledged to be the corner stone of democracy and liberty. Our higher institutions of learning are unrivaled; our public libraries numerous and accessible. Our newspapers and magazines disseminate knowledge and rational pleasure throughout the land. We are an ingenious people in the realm of invention and in the boldness of our business enterprise. We have the sturdy virtues of the pioneer. We are an honest people, keeping our contracts and giving fair measure. We are a tireless people in the patient attention to business and the laudable resolve to rise in the world. Many of our richest men began on the farm or as office boys. Success depends in our country almost exclusively on native capacity, which is rewarded here with a prompt and cheerful recognition which is rare in other lands. We are a progressive people, always ready for improvements, which indeed we take for granted, so regularly do they make their appearance. No alert American can visit any foreign country without noting innumerable examples of stupid adherence to outworn and cumbrous methods in industry, commerce, and transportation. Of course no one is so blind as not to see that here and there evils develop which should be remedied, either by legislation or by the gradual advance in enlightenment. Many of them will doubtless cure themselves. Our democracy is right at heart and you cannot fool all the people all the time. We have not escaped our fair quota of troubles. It would be too much to expect that we should. The difference of opinion between the Northern and Southern states actually led to civil war, but this only served to confirm the natural unity of the country and prepare the way for further advance. Protestants have sometimes dreaded a Catholic domination; the Mormons have been a source of anxiety to timid souls. Populists and advocates of free silver have seemed to threaten sound finance. On the other hand, Wall Street and the trusts have led some to think that corporate business enterprise may at times, if left unhampered, lead to over-powerful monopolies. But the evil workings of all these things had before the war been peaceful, if insidious. They might rouse apprehension in the minds of far-sighted and public-spirited observers, but there had been no general fear that any of them would overthrow the Republic and lead to a violent destruction of society as now constituted and mayhap to a reversion to barbarism. The circumstances of our participation in the World War and the rise of Bolshevism convinced many for the first time that at last society and the Republic were actually threatened. Heretofore the socialists of various kinds, the communists and anarchists, had attracted relatively little attention in our country. Except for the Chicago anarchist episode and the troubles with the I.W.W., radical reformers had been left to go their way, hold their meetings, and publish their newspapers and pamphlets with no great interference on the part of the police or attention on the part of lawgivers. With the progress of the war this situation changed; police and lawgivers began to interfere, and government officials and self-appointed guardians of the public weal began to denounce the "reds" and those suspected of "radical tendencies". The report of the Lusk Committee in the state of New York is perhaps the most imposing monument to this form of patriotic zeal. It is not our business here to discuss the merits of Socialism or Bolshevism either from the standpoint of their underlying theories or their promise in practice. It is only in their effects in developing and substantiating the philosophy of safety and sanity that they concern us in this discussion. Whether the report of the so-called Lusk Committee[23] has any considerable influence or no, it well illustrates a common and significant frame of mind and an habitual method of reasoning. The ostensible aim of the report is: ... to give a clear, unbiased statement and history of the purposes and objects, tactics and methods, of the various forces now at work in the United States, and particularly within the state of New York, which are seeking to undermine and destroy, not only the government under which we live, but also the very structure of American society. It also seeks to analyze the various constructive forces which are at work throughout the country counteracting these evil influences, and to present the many industrial and social problems that these constructive forces must meet and are meeting. The plan is executed with laborious comprehensiveness, and one unacquainted with the vast and varied range of so-called "radical" utterances will be overwhelmed by the mass brought together. But our aim here is to consider the attitude of mind and assumptions of the editors and their sympathizers. They admit the existence of "real grievances and natural demands of the working classes for a larger share in the management and use of the common wealth". It is these grievances and demands which the agitators use as a basis of their machinations. Those bent on a social revolution fall into two classes--socialists and anarchists. But while the groups differ in detail, these details are not worth considering. "Anyone who studies the propaganda of the various groups which we have named will learn that the arguments employed are the same; that the tactics advocated cannot be distinguished from one another, and that articles, or speeches made on the question of tactics or methods by anarchists, could, with propriety, be published in socialist, or communist newspapers without offending the membership of these organizations." So, fortunately for the reader, it is unnecessary to make any distinctions between socialists, anarchists, communists, and Bolsheviki. They all have the common purpose of overthrowing existing society and "general strikes and sabotage are the direct means advocated". The object is to drive business into bankruptcy by reducing production and raising costs.[24] But it would be a serious mistake to assume that the dangers are confined to our industrial system. "The very first general fact that must be driven home to Americans is that the pacifist movement in this country, the growth and connections of which are an important part of this report, is an absolutely integral and fundamental part of international socialism." European socialism, from which ours is derived, has had for one of its main purposes "the creation of an international sentiment to supersede national patriotism and effort, and this internationalism was based upon pacificism, in the sense that it opposed all wars between nations and developed at the same time class consciousness that was to culminate in relentless class warfare. In other words, it was not really peace that was the goal, but the abolition of the patriotic, warlike spirit of nationalities". In view of the necessity of making head against this menace the Criminal Anarchy statute of the State of New York was invoked, search warrants issued, "large quantities of revolutionary, incendiary and seditious written and printed matter were seized". After the refusal of Governor Smith to sign them, the so-called Lusk educational bills were repassed and signed by the Republican Governor Miller. No teacher in the schools shall be licensed to teach who "has advocated, either by word of mouth or in writing, a form of government other than the government of the United States or of this state". Moreover, "No person, firm, corporation, association, or society shall conduct, maintain, or operate any school, institute, class, or course of instruction in any subject without making application for and being granted a license from the University of the State of New York [_i. e_. the Regents]." The Regents shall have the right to send inspectors to visit classes and schools so licensed and to revoke licenses if they deem that an overthrow of the existing government by violence is being taught.[25] But the safe and sane philosophy by no means stops with the convenient and compendious identification of socialists of all kinds, anarchists, pacificists and internationalists, as belonging to one threatening group united in a like-minded attempt to overthrow society as we now know it. This class includes, it may be observed, such seemingly distinguishable personalities as Trotzky and Miss Jane Addams, who are assumed to be in essential harmony upon the great issue. But there are many others who are perhaps the innocent tools of the socialists. These include teachers, lecturers, writers, clergymen, and editors to whom the Lusk report devotes a long section on "the spread of socialism in educated circles". It is the purpose of this section ... to show the use made by members of the Socialist Party of America and other extreme radicals and revolutionaries of pacifist sentiment among people of education and culture in the United States as a vehicle for the promotion of revolutionary socialistic propaganda. The facts here related are important because they show that these socialists, playing upon the pacifist sentiment in a large body of sincere persons, were able to organize their energies and capitalize their prestige for the spread of their doctrines. [P. 969.] An instance of this is an article in the _New Republic_ which: ... includes more or less open attacks on Attorney-General Palmer, Mr. Lansing, the House Immigration Committee, the New York _Times_, Senator Fall, this Committee, etc. It also quotes the dissenting opinions in the Abrams case of Justices Holmes and Brandeis, and ends by making light of the danger of revolution in America: ... This belittling of the very real danger to the institutions of this country, as well as the attempted discrediting of any investigating group (or individual), has become thoroughly characteristic of our "Parlor Bolshevik" or "Intelligentsia". [P. 1103.] So it comes about, as might indeed have been foreseen from the first, that one finds himself, if not actually violating the criminal anarchy statute, at least branded as a Bolshevik if he speaks slightingly of the New York _Times_ or recalls the dissenting opinion of two judges of the Supreme Court. Moreover, as might have been anticipated, the issues prove to be at bottom not so much economic as moral and religious, for "Materialism and its formidable sons, Anarchy, Bolshevism, and Unrest, have thrown down the gauge of battle" to all decency. ... What is of the greatest importance for churchmen to understand, in order that they may not be led astray by specious arguments of so-called Christian Socialists and so-called liberals and self-styled partisans of free speech, is that socialism as a system, as well as anarchism and all its ramifications, from high-brow Bolshevism to the Russian Anarchist Association, are all the declared enemies of religion and all recognized moral standards and restraints. [P. 1124.] We must not be misled by "false, specious idealism masquerading as progress". The fight is one for God as well as country, in which all forms of radicalism, materialism, and anarchy should be fiercely and promptly stamped out.[26] NOTES. [21] Keynes, _The Economic Consequences of the Peace_, pp. 11-12. [22] Tawney, R. H., _The Acquisitive Society_, pp. 183-184. The original title of this admirable little work, a Fabian tract, was, _The Sickness of an Acquisitive Society_, but the American publishers evidently thought it inexpedient to stress the contention of the author that modern society has anything fundamentally the matter with it. [23] _Revolutionary Radicalism, Its History, Purpose, and Tactics: with an exposition and discussion of the steps being taken and required to curb it, being the report of the Joint Legislative Committee investigating seditious activities, filed April 24, 1920, in the Senate of the state of New York._ This comprises four stout volumes (over 4,200 pages in all) divided into two parts, dealing, respectively, with "Revolutionary and Subversive Movements at Home and Abroad" and "Constructive Movements and Measures in America". Albany, 1920. [24] "While the nature of this investigation has led the committee to lay its emphasis upon the activities of subversive organizations, it feels that this report would not be complete if it did not state emphatically that it believes that those persons in business and commercial enterprise and certain owners of property who seek to take advantage of the situation to reap inordinate gain from the public contribute in no small part to the social unrest which affords the radical a field of operation which otherwise would be closed to him." (P. 10.) [25] The general history throughout the United States of these and similar measures, the interference with public meetings, the trials, imprisonments, and censorship, are all set forth in Professor Chaffee's _Freedom of Speech_, 1920. [26] During the summer of 1921 the Vice-President of the United States published in _The Delineator_ a series of three articles on "Enemies of the Republic", in which he considers the question, "Are the 'reds' stalking our college women?" He finds some indications that they are, and warns his readers that, "Adherence to radical doctrines means the ultimate breaking down of the old, sturdy virtues of manhood and womanhood, the insidious destruction of character, the weakening of the moral fiber of the individual, and the destruction of the foundations of society." It may seem anomalous to some that the defenders of the old, sturdy virtues should so carelessly brand honest and thoughtful men and women, of whose opinions they can have no real knowledge, as "enemies of the Republic"--but there is nothing whatever anomalous in this. It has been the habit of defenders of the sturdy, old virtues from time immemorial to be careless of others' reputations. * * * * * VIII Dans les sciences politiques, il est un ordre de vérités qui, surtout chez les peuples libres ... ne peuvent être utiles, que lorsqu'elles sont généralement connues et avouées. Ainsi, l'influence du progrês de ces sciences sur la liberté, sur la prospérité des nations, doivent en quelque sorts se mesurer sur le nombre de ces vérités qui, par l'effet d'une instruction élémentaire, deviennent commune à tous les esprits; ainsi les progrès toujours croissants de cette instruction élémentaire, liés eux mêmes aux progrès nécessaires de ces sciences, nous répondent d'une amélioration dans les destinées de l'espèce humaine qui peut être regardée comme indéfinie, puisqu'elle n'a d'autres limites que celles de ces progrès mêmes.--CONDORCET. 16. SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF REPRESSION Of course the kind of reasoning and the presuppositions described in the previous section will appeal to many readers as an illustration of excessive and unjustifiable fear lest the present order be disturbed --a frenzied impulse to rush to the defense of our threatened institutions. Doubtless the Lusk report may quite properly be classed as a mere episode in war psychology. Having armed to put down the Germans and succeeded in so doing, the ardor of conflict does not immediately abate, but new enemies are sought and easily discovered. The hysteria of repression will probably subside, but it is now a well-recognized fact that in disease, whether organic or mental, the abnormal and excessive are but instructive exaggerations and perversions of the usual course of things. They do not exist by themselves, but represent the temporary and exaggerated functioning of bodily and mental processes. The real question for us here is not whether Senator Lusk is too fearful and too indiscriminate in his denunciations, but whether he and his colleagues do not merely furnish an overcharged and perhaps somewhat grotesque instance of man's natural and impulsive way of dealing with social problems. It seems to me that enough has already been said to lead us to suspect this. At the outset of this volume the statement was hazarded that if only men could come to look at things differently from the way they now generally do, a number of our most shocking evils would either remedy themselves or show themselves subject to gradual elimination or hopeful reduction. Among these evils a very fundamental one is the defensive attitude toward the criticism of our existing order and the naïve tendency to class critics as enemies of society. It was argued that a fuller understanding of the history of the race would contribute to that essential freedom of mind which would welcome criticism and permit fair judgments of its merits. Having reviewed the arguments of those who would suppress criticism lest it lead to violence and destruction, we may now properly recall in this connection certain often neglected historical facts which serve to weaken if not to discredit most of these arguments. Man has never been able to adapt himself very perfectly to his civilization, and there has always been a deal of injustice and maladjustment which might conceivably have been greatly decreased by intelligence. But now it would seem that this chronic distress has become acute, and some careful observers express the quite honest conviction that unless thought be raised to a far higher plane than hitherto, some great setback to civilization is inevitable. Yet instead of subjecting traditional ideas and rules to a thoroughgoing reconsideration, our impulse is, as we have seen, to hasten to justify existing and habitual notions of human conduct. There are many who flatter themselves that by suppressing so-called "radical" thought and its diffusion, the present system can be made to work satisfactorily on the basis of ideas of a hundred or a hundred thousand years ago. While we have permitted our free thought in the natural sciences to transform man's old world, we allow our schools and even our universities to continue to inculcate beliefs and ideals which may or may not have been appropriate to the past, but which are clearly anachronisms now. For, the "social science" taught in our schools is, it would appear, an orderly presentation of the conventional proprieties, rather than a summons to grapple with the novel and disconcerting facts that surround us on every side. At the opening of the twentieth century the so-called sciences of man, despite some progress, are, as has been pointed out, in much the same position that the natural sciences were some centuries earlier. Hobbes says of the scholastic philosophy that it went on one brazen leg and one of an ass. This seems to be our plight to-day. Our scientific leg is lusty and grows in strength daily; its fellow member--our thought of man and his sorry estate--is capricious and halting. We have not realized the hopes of the eighteenth-century "illumination", when confident philosophers believed that humanity was shaking off its ancient chains; that the clouds of superstition were lifting, and that with the new achievements of science man would boldly and rapidly advance toward hitherto undreamed-of concord and happiness. We can no longer countenance the specious precision of the English classical school of economics, whose premises have been given the lie by further thought and experience. We have really to start anew. The students of natural phenomena early realized the arduous path they had to travel. They had to escape, above all things, from the past. They perceived that they could look for no help from those whose special business it was to philosophize and moralize in terms of the past. They had to look for light in their own way and in the directions from which they conjectured it might come. Their first object was, as Bacon put it, _light_, not _fruit_. They had to learn before they could undertake changes, and Descartes is very careful to say that philosophic doubt was not to be carried over to daily conduct. This should for the time being conform to accepted standards, unenlightened as they might be. Such should be the frame of mind of one who seeks insight into human affairs. His subject matter is, however, far more intricate and unmanageable than that of the natural scientist. Experiment on which natural science has reared itself is by no means so readily applicable in studying mankind and its problems. The student of humanity has even more inveterate prejudices to overcome, more inherent and cultivated weaknesses of the mind to guard against, than the student of nature. Like the early scientists, he has a scholastic tradition to combat. He can look for little help from the universities as now constituted. The clergy, although less sensitive in regard to what they find in the Bible, are still stoutly opposed, on the whole, to any thoroughgoing criticism of the standards of morality to which they are accustomed. Few lawyers can view their profession with any considerable degree of detachment. Then there are the now all-potent business interests, backed by the politicians and in general supported by the ecclesiastical, legal, and educational classes. Many of the newspapers and magazines are under their influence, since they are become the business man's heralds and live off his bounty. Business indeed has almost become our religion; it is defended by the civil government even as the later Roman emperors and the mediaeval princes protected the Church against attack. Socialists and communists are the Waldensians and Albigensians of our day, heretics to be cast out, suppressed, and deported to Russia, if not directly to hell as of old. The Secret Service seems inclined to play the part of a modern Inquisition, which protects our new religion. Collected in its innumerable files is the evidence in regard to suspected heretics who have dared impugn "business as usual", or who have dwelt too lovingly on peace and good will among nations. Books and pamphlets, although no longer burned by the common hangman, are forbidden the mails by somewhat undiscerning officials. We have a pious vocabulary of high resentment and noble condemnation, even as they had in the Middle Ages, and part of it is genuine, if unintelligent, as it was then. Such are some of the obstacles which the student of human affairs must surmount. Yet we may hope that it will become increasingly clear that the repression of criticism (even if such criticism becomes fault-finding and takes the form of a denunciation of existing habits and institutions) is inexpedient and inappropriate to the situation in which the world finds itself. Let us assume that such people as really advocate lawlessness and disorder should be carefully watched and checked if they promise to be a cause of violence and destruction. But is it not possible to distinguish between them and those who question and even arraign with some degree of heat the standardized unfairness and maladjustments of our times? And there is another class who cannot by any exaggeration be considered agitators, who have by taking thought come to see that our conditions have so altered in the past hundred years and our knowledge so increased that the older ways of doing and viewing things are not only unreasonable, but actually dangerous. But so greatly has the hysteria of war unsettled the public mind that even this latter class is subject to discreditable accusations and some degree of interference. We constantly hear it charged that this or that individual or group advocates the violent overthrow of government, is not loyal to the Constitution, or is openly or secretly working for the abolition of private property or the family, or, in general, is supposed to be eager to "overturn everything without having anything to put in its place". The historical student may well recommend that we be on our guard against such accusations brought against groups and individuals. For the student of history finds that it has always been the custom to charge those who happened to be unpopular, with holding beliefs and doing things which they neither believed nor did. Socrates was executed for corrupting youth and infidelity to the gods; Jesus for proposing to overthrow the government; Luther was to the officials of his time one who taught "a loose, self-willed life, severed from all laws and wholly brutish". Those who questioned the popular delusions in regard to witchcraft were declared by clergymen, professors, and judges of the seventeenth century to be as good as atheists, who shed doubt on the devil's existence in order to lead their godless lives without fear of future retribution. How is it possible, in view of this inveterate habit of mankind, to accept at its face value what the police or Department of Justice, or self-appointed investigators, choose to report of the teachings of people who are already condemned in their eyes? Of course the criticism of accepted ideas is offensive and will long remain so. After all, talk and writing are forms of conduct, and, like all conduct, are inevitably disagreeable when they depart from the current standards of respectable behavior. To talk as if our established notions of religion, morality, and property, our ideas of stealing and killing, were defective and in need of revision, is indeed more shocking than to violate the current rules of action. For we are accustomed to actual crimes, misdemeanors, and sins, which are happening all the time, but we will not tolerate any suspected attempt to palliate them in theory. It is inevitable that new views should appear to the thoughtless to be justifications or extenuations of evil actions and an encouragement of violence and rebellion, and that they will accordingly be bitterly denounced. But there is no reason why an increase of intelligence should not put a growing number of us on our guard against this ancient pitfall. If we are courageously to meet and successfully to overcome the dangers with which our civilization is threatened, it is clear that we need _more mind_ than ever before. It is also clear that we can have indefinitely more mind than we already have if we but honestly desire it and avail ourselves of resources already at hand. Mind, as previously defined, is our "conscious knowledge and intelligence, what we know and our attitude toward it--our disposition to increase our information, classify it, criticize it, and apply it". _It is obvious that in this sense the mind is a matter of accumulation and that it has been in the making ever since man took his first step in civilization._ I have tried to suggest the manner in which man's long history illuminates our plight and casts light on the path to be followed. And history is beginning to take account of the knowledge of man's nature and origin contributed by the biologist and the anthropologist and the newer psychologists. Few people realize the hopeful revolution that is already beginning to influence the aims and methods of all these sciences of man. No previous generation of thinkers has been so humble on the whole as is that of to-day, so ready to avow their ignorance and to recognize the tendency of each new discovery to reveal further complexities in the problem. On the other hand, we are justified in feeling that at last we have the chance to start afresh. We are freer than any previous age from the various prepossessions and prejudices which we now see hampered the so-called "free" thinking of the eighteenth century. The standards and mood of natural science are having an increasing influence in stimulating eager research into human nature, beliefs, and institutions. With Bacon's recommendations of the study of common _things_ the human mind entered a new stage of development. Now that historic forces have brought the common _man_ to the fore, we are submitting him to scientific study and gaining thereby that elementary knowledge of his nature which needs to be vastly increased and spread abroad, since it can form the only possible basis for a successful and real democracy. I would not have the reader infer that I overrate the place of science or exact knowledge in the life of man. Science, which is but the most accurate information available about the world in which we live and the nature of ourselves and of our fellow men, is not the whole of life; and except to a few peculiar persons it can never be the most absorbing and vivid of our emotional satisfactions. We are poetic and artistic and romantic and mystical. We resent the cold analysis and reduction of life to the commonplace and well substantiated--and this is after all is said, the aim of scientific endeavor. But we have to adjust ourselves to a changing world in the light of constantly accumulating knowledge. It is knowledge that has altered the world and we must rely on knowledge and understanding to accommodate ourselves to our new surroundings and establish peace and order and security for the pursuit of those things that to most of us are more enticing than science itself.[27] No previous generation has been so perplexed as ours, but none has ever been justified in holding higher hopes if it could but reconcile itself to making bold and judicious use of its growing resources, material and intellectual. _It is fear that holds us back._ And fear is begotten of ignorance and uncertainty. And these mutually reinforce one another, for we feebly try to condone our ignorance by our uncertainty and to excuse our uncertainty by our ignorance. Our hot defense of our ideas and beliefs does not indicate an established confidence in them but often half-distrust, which we try to hide from ourselves, just as one who suffers from bashfulness offsets his sense of inferiority and awkwardness by rude aggression. If, for example, religious beliefs had been really firmly established there would have been no need of "aids to faith"; and so with our business system to-day, our politics and international relations. We dread to see things as they would appear if we thought of them honestly, for it is the nature of critical thought to metamorphose our familiar and approved world into something strange and unfamiliar. It is undoubtedly a nervous sense of the precariousness of the existing social system which accounts for the present strenuous opposition to a fair and square consideration of its merits and defects. Partisanship is our great curse. We too readily assume that everything has two sides and that it is our duty to be on one or the other. We must be defending or attacking something; only the lily-livered hide their natural cowardice by asking the impudent question, What is it all about? The heroic gird on the armor of the Lord, square their shoulders, and establish a muscular tension which serves to dispel doubt and begets the voluptuousness of bigotry and fanaticism.[28] In this mood questions become issues of right and wrong, not of expediency and inexpediency. It has been said that the worthy people of Cambridge are able promptly to reduce the most complex social or economic problem to a simple moral issue, and this is a wile of the Father of Lies, to which many of us yield readily enough. It is, however, possible for the individual to overcome the fear of thought. Once I was afraid that men might think too much; now, I only dread lest they will think too little and far too timidly, for I now see that real thinking is rare and difficult and that it needs every incentive in the face of innumerable ancient and inherent discouragements and impediments. We must first endeavor manfully to free our own minds and then do what we can to hearten others to free theirs. _Toujours de l'audace!_ As members of a race that has required from five hundred thousand to a million years to reach its present state of enlightenment, there is little reason to think that anyone of us is likely to cultivate intelligence too assiduously or in harmful excess. 17. WHAT OF IT? Our age is one of unprecedented responsibility. As Mr. Lippmann has so well said: Never before have we had to rely so completely on ourselves. No guardian to think for us, no precedent to follow without question, no lawmaker above, only ordinary men set to deal with heartbreaking perplexity. All weakness comes to the surface. We are homeless in a jungle of machines and untamed powers that haunt and lure the imagination. Of course our culture is confused, our thinking spasmodic, and our emotion out of kilter. No mariner ever enters upon a more uncharted sea than does the average human being born in the twentieth century. Our ancestors thought they knew their way from birth through all eternity; we are puzzled about day after to-morrow.... It is with emancipation that real tasks begin, and liberty is a searching challenge, for it takes away the guardianship of the master and the comfort of the priest. The iconoclasts did not free us. They threw us into the water, and now we have to swim.[29] We must look forward to ever new predicaments and adventures. _Nothing is going to be settled in the sense in which things were once supposed to be settled, for the simple reason that knowledge will probably continue to increase and will inevitably alter the world with which we have to make terms_. The only thing that might conceivably remain somewhat stabilized is an attitude of mind and unflagging expectancy appropriate to the terms and the rules according to which life's game must hereafter be played. We must promote a new cohesion and co-operation on the basis of this truth. And this means that we have now to substitute purpose for tradition, and this is a concise statement of the great revolution which we face. Now, when all human institutions so slowly and laboriously evolved are impugned, every consensus challenged, every creed flouted, as much as and perhaps even more than by the ancient Sophists, the call comes to us ... to explore, test, and, if necessary, reconstruct the very bases of conviction, for all open questions are new opportunities. Old beacon lights have shifted or gone out. Some of the issues we lately thought to be minor have taken on cosmic dimensions. We are all "up against" questions too big for us, so that there is everywhere a sense of insufficiency which is too deep to be fully deployed in the narrow field of consciousness. Hence, there is a new discontent with old leaders, standards, criteria, methods, and values, and a demand everywhere for new ones, a realization that mankind must now reorient itself and take its bearings from the eternal stars and sail no longer into the unknown future by the dead reckonings of the past.[30] Life, in short, has become a solemn sporting proposition--solemn enough in its heavy responsibilities and the magnitude of the stakes to satisfy our deepest religious longings; sporty enough to tickle the fancy of a baseball fan or an explorer in darkest Borneo. We can play the game or refuse to play it. At present most of human organization, governmental, educational, social, and religious, is directed, as it always has been, to holding things down, and to perpetuating beliefs and policies which belong to the past and have been but too gingerly readjusted to our new knowledge and new conditions. On the other hand, there are various scientific associations which are bent on revising and amplifying our knowledge and are not pledged to keeping alive any belief or method which cannot stand the criticism which comes with further information. The terrible fear of falling into mere rationalizing is gradually extending from the so-called natural sciences to psychology, anthropology, politics, and political economy. All this is a cheering response to the new situation. But, as has been pointed out, really honest discussion of our social, economic, and political standards and habits readily takes on the suspicion of heresy and infidelity. Just as the "freethinker" who, in the eighteenth century, strove to discredit miracles in the name of an all-wise and foreseeing God (who could not be suspected of tampering with his own laws), was accused of being an atheist and of really believing in no God at all; so those who would ennoble our ideals of social organization are described as "Intellectuals" or "parlor Bolshevists" who would overthrow society and all the achievements of the past in order to free themselves from moral and religious restraints and mayhap "get something for nothing". The parallel is very exact indeed. The Church always argued that there were no new heresies. All would, on examination, prove to be old and discredited. So the Vice-President of the United States has recently declared that: Men have experimented with radical theories in great and small ways times without number and always, always with complete failure. They are not new; they are old. Each failure has demonstrated anew that without effort there is no success. The race never gets something for nothing.[31] But is this not a complete reversal of the obvious truth? Unless we define "radical" as that which never does succeed, how can anyone with the most elementary notions of history fail to see that almost all the things that we prize to-day represent revolts against tradition, and were in their beginnings what seemed to be shocking divergences from current beliefs and practices? What about Christianity, and Protestantism, and constitutional government, and the rejection of old superstitions and the acceptance of modern scientific ideas? The race has always been getting something for nothing, for creative thought is, as we have seen, confined to a very few. And it has been the custom to discourage or kill those who prosecuted it too openly, not to reward them according to their merits. One cannot but wonder at this constantly recurring phrase "getting something for nothing", as if it were the peculiar and perverse ambition of disturbers of society. Except for our animal outfit, practically all we have is handed to us gratis. Can the most complacent reactionary flatter himself that he invented the art of writing or the printing press, or discovered his religious, economic, and moral convictions, or any of the devices which supply him with meat and raiment or any of the sources of such pleasure as he may derive from literature or the fine arts? In short, civilization is little else than getting something for nothing. Like other vested interests, it is "the legitimate right to something for nothing".[32] How much execrable reasoning and how many stupid accusations would fall away if this truth were accepted as a basis of discussion! Of course there is no more flagrant example of a systematic endeavor to get something for nothing than the present business system based on profits, and absentee ownership of stocks. Since the invention of printing, and indeed long before, those fearful of change have attempted to check criticism by attacking books. These were classified as orthodox or heterodox, moral or immoral, treasonable or loyal, according to their tone. Unhappily this habit continues and shows itself in the distinction between sound and unsound, radical and conservative, safe and dangerous. The sensible question to ask about a book is obviously whether it makes some contribution to a clearer understanding of our situation by adding or reaffirming important considerations and the inferences to be made from these. Such books could be set off against those that were but expressions of vague discontent or emulation, or denunciations of things because they are as they are or are not as they are not. I have personally little confidence in those who cry lo here or lo there. It is premature to advocate any wide sweeping reconstruction of the social order, although experiments and suggestions should not be discouraged. What we need first is a change of heart and a chastened mood which will permit an ever increasing number of people to see things as they are, in the light of what they have been and what they might be. The dogmatic socialist with his unhistorical assumptions of class struggle, his exaggerated economic interpretation of history, and his notion that labor is the sole producer of capital, is shedding scarcely more light on the actual situation than is the Lusk Committee and Mr. Coolidge, with their confidence in the sacredness of private property, as they conceive it, in the perennial rightness and inspiration of existing authority and the blessedness of the profit system. But there are plenty of writers, to mention only a few of the more recent ones, like Veblen, Dewey, J. A. Hobson, Tawney, Cole, Havelock Ellis, Bertrand Russell, Graham Wallas, who may or may not have (or ever have had) any confidence in the presuppositions and forecasts of socialism, whose books do make clearer to any fair-minded reader the painful exigencies of our own times. I often think of the economic historians of, say, two centuries hence who may find time to dig up the vestiges of the economic literature of to-day. We may in imagination appeal to their verdicts and in some cases venture to forecast them. Many of our writers they will throw aside as dominated by a desire merely to save the ill-understood present at all costs; others as attempting to realize plans which were already discredited in their own day. Future historians will, nevertheless, clearly distinguish a few who, by a sort of persistent and ardent detachment, were able to see things close at hand more fully and truly than their fellows and endeavored to do what they could to lead their fellows to perceive and reckon with the facts which so deeply concerned them. Blessed be those who aspire to win this glory. On the monument erected to Bruno on the site where he was burned for seeing more clearly than those in authority in his days, is the simple inscription, "Raised to Giordano Bruno by the generation which he foresaw." We are all purblind, but some are blinder than others who use the various means available for sharpening their eyesight. As an onlooker it seems to me safe to say that the lenses recommended by both the "radicals" and their vivid opponents rather tend to increase than diminish our natural astigmatism. Those who agree, on the whole, at least, with the _facts_ brought together in this essay and, on the whole, with the main _inferences_ suggested either explicitly or implicitly, will properly begin to wonder how our educational system and aims are to be so rearranged that coming generations may be better prepared to understand the condition of human life and to avail themselves of its possibilities more fully and guard against its dangers more skillfully than previous generations. There is now widespread discontent with our present educational methods and their elaborate futility; but it seems to me that we are rather rarely willing to face the fundamental difficulty, for it is obviously so very hard to overcome. _We do not dare to be honest enough to tell boys and girls and young men and women what would be most useful to them in an age of imperative social reconstruction._ We have seen that the ostensible aims of education are various,[33] and that among them is now included the avowed attempt to prepare the young to play their part later as voting citizens. If they are to do better than preceding generations they must be brought up differently. They would have to be given a different general attitude toward institutions and ideals; instead of having these represented to them as standardized and sacred they should be taught to view them as representing half-solved problems. But how can we ever expect to cultivate the judgment of the young in matters of fundamental social, economic, and political readjustment when we consider the really dominating forces in education? But even if these restraints were weakened or removed, the task would remain a very delicate one. Even with teachers free and far better informed than they are, it would be no easy thing to cultivate in the young a justifiable admiration for the achievements and traditional ideals of mankind and at the same time develop the requisite knowledge of the prevailing abuses, culpable stupidity, common dishonesty, and empty political buncombe, which too often passes for statesmanship. But the problem has to be tackled, and it may be tackled directly or indirectly. The direct way would be to describe as realistically as might be the actual conditions and methods, and their workings, good and bad. If there were better books than are now available it would be possible for teachers tactfully to show not only how government is supposed to run, but how it actually is run. There are plenty of reports of investigating committees, Federal and state, which furnish authentic information in regard to political corruption, graft, waste, and incompetency. These have not hitherto been supposed to have anything to do with the _science_ of government, although they are obviously absolutely essential to an _understanding_ of it. Similar reflections suggest themselves in the matter of business, international relations, and race animosities. But so long as our schools depend on appropriations made by politicians, and colleges and universities are largely supported by business men or by the state, and are under the control of those who are bent on preserving the existing system from criticism, it is hard to see any hope of a kind of education which would effectively question the conventional notions of government and business. They cannot be discussed with sufficient honesty to make their consideration really medicinal. We laud the brave and outspoken and those supposed to have the courage of their convictions--but only when these convictions are acceptable or indifferent to us. Otherwise, honesty and frankness become mere impudence.[34] No doubt politics and economics could be taught, and are being taught, better as time goes on. Neither of them are so utterly unreal and irrelevant to human proceedings as they formerly were. There is no reason why a teacher of political economy should not describe the actual workings of the profit system of industry with its restraints on production and its dependence on the engineer, and suggest the possibility of gathering together capital from functionless absentee stockholders on the basis of the current rate of interest rather than speculative dividends. The actual conditions of the workers could be described, their present precarious state, the inordinate and wasteful prevalence of hiring and firing; the policy of the unions, and their defensive and offensive tactics. Every youngster might be given some glimmering notion that neither "private property" nor "capital" is the real issue (since few question their essentiality) but rather the new problem of supplying other than the traditional motives for industrial enterprise--namely, the slave-like docility and hard compulsion of the great masses of workers, on the one hand, and speculative profits, on the other, which now dominate in our present business system. For the existing organization is not only becoming more and more patently wasteful, heartless, and unjust, but is beginning, for various reasons, to break down. In short, whatever the merits of our present ways of producing the material necessities and amenities of life, it looks to many as if they could not succeed indefinitely, even as well as they have in the past, without some fundamental revision. As for political life, a good deal would be accomplished if students could be habituated to distinguish successfully between the empty declamations of politicians and statements of facts, between vague party programs and concrete recommendations and proposals. They should early learn that language is not primarily a vehicle of ideas and information, but an emotional outlet, corresponding to various cooings, growlings, snarls, crowings, and brayings. Their attention could be invited to the rhetoric of the bitter-enders in the Senate or the soothing utterances of Mr. Harding on accepting the nomination for President: "With a Senate advising as the Constitution contemplates, I would hopefully approach the nations of Europe and of the earth, proposing that understanding which makes us a willing participant in the consecration of nations to a new relationship, to commit the moral forces of the world, America included, to peace and international justice, still leaving America free, independent, self-reliant, but offering friendship to all the world. If men call for more specific details, I remind them that moral committals are broad and all-inclusive, and we are contemplating peoples in the concord of humanity's advancement." After mastering the difference between language used to express facts and purposes and that which amounts to no more than a pious ejaculation, a suave and deprecating gesture, or an inferential accusation directed against the opposing party, the youth should be instructed in the theory and practice of party fidelity and the effects of partisanship on the conduct of our governmental affairs. In fine, he should get some notion of the motives and methods of those who really run our government, whether he learned anything else or not. These _direct_ attempts to produce a more intelligently critical and open-minded generation are, however, likely to be far less feasible than the _indirect_ methods. Partly because they will arouse strenuous opposition from the self-appointed defenders of society as now regulated, and partly because no immediate inspection of habits and institutions is so instructive as a study of their origin and progress and a comparison of them with other forms of social adjustment. I hope that it has already become clear that we have great, and hitherto only very superficially worked, resources in History, as it is now coming to be conceived. We are in the midst of the greatest intellectual revolution that has ever overtaken mankind. Our whole conception of mind is undergoing a great change. We are beginning to understand its nature, and as we find out more, intelligence may be raised to a recognized dignity and effectiveness which it has never enjoyed before. An encouraging beginning has been made in the case of the natural sciences, and a similar success may await the studies which have to do with the critical estimate of man's complicated nature, his fundamental impulses and resources, the needless and fatal repressions which these have suffered through the ignorance of the past, and the discovery of untried ways of enriching our existence and improving our relations with our fellow men. There[35] is a well-known passage in Goethe's "Faust" where he likens History to the Book with Seven Seals described in Revelation, which no one in heaven, or on the earth or under the earth, was able to open and read therein. All sorts of guesses have been hazarded as to its contents by Augustine, Orosius, Otto of Freising, Bossuet, Bolingbroke, Voltaire, Herder, Hegel, and many others, but none of them were able to break the seals, and all of them were gravely misled by their fragmentary knowledge of the book's contents. For we now see that the seven seals were seven great ignorances. No one knew much (1) of man's physical nature, or (2) the workings of his thoughts and desires, or (3) of the world in which he lives, or (4) of how he has come about as a race, or (5) of how he develops as an individual from a tiny egg, or (6) how deeply and permanently he is affected by the often forgotten impressions of infancy and childhood, or (7) how his ancestors lived for hundreds of thousands of years in the dark ignorance of savagery. The seals are all off now. The book at last lies open before those who are capable of reading it, and few they be as yet; for most of us still cling to the guesses made in regard to its contents before anyone knew what was in it. We have become attached to the familiar old stories which now prove to be fictions, and we find it hard to reconcile ourselves to the many hard sayings which the book proves to contain--its constant stress on the stupidity of "good" people; its scorn for the respectable and normal, which it often reduces to little more than sanctimonious routine and indolence and pious resentment at being disturbed in one's complacent assurances. Indeed, much of its teaching appears downright immoral according to existing standards. One awful thing that the Book of the Past makes plain is that with our animal heritage we are singularly oblivious to the large concerns of life. We are keenly sensitive to little discomforts, minor irritations, wounded vanity, and various danger signals; but our comprehension is inherently vague and listless when it comes to grasping intricate situations and establishing anything like a fair perspective in life's problems and possibilities. Our imagination is restrained by our own timidity, constantly reinforced by the warnings of our fellows, who are always urging us to be safe and sane, by which they mean convenient for them, predictable in our conduct and graciously amenable to the prevailing standards. But it is obvious that it is increasingly dangerous to yield to this inveterate tendency, however comfortable and respectable it may seem for the moment. History, as H. G. Wells has so finely expressed it, is coming more and more to be "a race between education and catastrophe. Our internal policies and our economic and social ideas are profoundly vitiated at present by wrong and fantastic ideas of the origin and historical relationship of social classes. A sense of history as the common adventure of all mankind is as necessary for peace within as it is for peace between the nations". There can be no secure peace now but a common peace of the whole world; no prosperity but a general prosperity, and this for the simple reason that we are all now brought so near together and are so pathetically and intricately interdependent, that the old notions of noble Isolation and national sovereignty are magnificently criminal. In the bottom of their hearts, or the depths of their unconscious, do not the conservatively minded realize that their whole attitude toward the world and its betterment is based on an assumption that finds no least support in the Great Book of the Past? Does it not make plain that the "conservative", so far as he is consistent and lives up to his professions, is fatally in the wrong? The so-called "radical" is also almost always wrong, for no one can foresee the future. But he works on a right assumption--namely, that the future has so far always proved different from the past and that it will continue to do so. Some of us, indeed, see that the future is tending to become more and more rapidly and widely different from the past. The conservative himself furnishes the only illustration of his theory, and even that is highly inconclusive. His general frame of mind appears to remain constant, but he finds himself defending and rejecting very different things. The great issue may, according to the period, be a primeval taboo, the utterances of the Delphic oracle, the Athanasian creed, the Inquisition, the geocentric theory, monarchy by the grace of God, witchcraft, slavery, war, capitalism, private property, or noble isolation. All of these tend to appear to the conservative under the aspect of eternity, but all of these things have come, many of them have gone, and the remainder would seem to be subject to undreamed-of modifications as time goes on. This is the teaching of the now unsealed book. NOTES. [27] Mr. James Branch Cabell has in his _Beyond Life_ defended man's romantic longings and inexorable craving to live part of the time at least in a world far more sweetly molded to his fancy than that of natural science and political economy. There is no reason why man should live by bread alone. There is a time, however, for natural science and political economy, for they should establish the conditions in which we may rejoice in our vital lies, which will then do no harm and bring much joy. [28] The relation of our kinesthesia or muscular sense to fanaticism on the one hand and freedom of mind on the other is a matter now beginning to be studied with the promise of highly important results. [29] _Drift and Mastery_, pp. 196-197. [30] G. Stanley Hall, "The Message of the Zeitgeist", in _Scientific Monthly_, August, 1921--a very wonderful and eloquent appeal by one of our oldest and boldest truth seekers. [31] _Delineator_, August, 1921, p. II. [32] Adopting Mr. Veblen's definition of a vested interest which caused some scandal in conservative circles when it was first reported. Doubtless the seeming offensiveness of the latter part of the definition obscured its reassuring beginning. [33] See Section 2 above. [34] The wise Goethe has said, _"Zieret Stärke den Mann und freies, muthiges Wesen, O, so ziemet ihm fast tiefes Geheimniss noch mehr"_, --Römische Elegien, xx. [35] The closing reflections are borrowed from _The Leaflet_, issued by the students of the New School for Social Research, established in New York in 1919, with a view of encouraging adults to continue their studies in the general spirit and mood which permeate this essay. APPENDIX SOME SUGGESTIONS IN REGARD TO READING It may happen that among the readers of this essay there will be some who will ask how they can most readily get a clearer idea of the various newer ways of looking at mankind and the problems of the day. The following list of titles is furnished with a view of doing something to meet this demand. It is not a bibliography in the usual sense of the term. It is confined to rather short and readily understandable presentations appropriate to the overcrowded schedule upon which most of us have to operate. All the writers mentioned belong, however, to that rather small class whose opinions are worth considering, even if one reserves the imprescriptible right not to agree with all they say. There may well be better references than those with which I happen to be acquainted, and others quite as useful; but I can hardly imagine anyone, whatever his degree of information, unless he happens to be a specialist in the particular field, failing to gain something of value from any one of the volumes mentioned. For the astounding revelations in regard to the fundamental nature of matter and the ways in which the modern chemist plays with it, see John Mills, _Within the Atom_ (D. Van Nostrand Company), and Slosson, _Creative Chemistry_ (The Century Company). A general account of the evolutionary process will be found in Crampton, _The Doctrine of Evolution_ (Columbia University Press), chaps, i-v. For our development as an individual from the egg see Conklin, _Heredity and Environment_ (Princeton University Press). The general scope of modern anthropology and the influence of this study on our notions of mankind as we now find it can be gathered from Goldenweiser, _Early Civilization, Introduction to Anthropology_ (Knopf). This should be supplemented by the remarkable volume of essays by Franz Boas, _The Mind of Primitive Man_ (Macmillan). Of the more recent and easily available books relating to the reconstruction of philosophy and the newer conceptions in regard to mind and intelligence the following may be mentioned: Dewey, _Reconstruction in Philosophy_ and _Human Nature and Conduct_ (Holt); Woodworth, _Dynamic Psychology_ (Columbia University Press); _Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War_ (Macmillan)--especially the first two sections, pp. 1-65; Bernard Hart, _The Psychology of Insanity_ (Putnam), an admirable little introduction to the importance of abnormal mental conditions in understanding our usual thoughts and emotions; McDougall, _Social Psychology_ (J. W. Luce); Everett D. Martin, _The Behavior of Crowds_ (Harpers); Edman, _Human Traits_ (Houghton-Mifflin). For the so-called behavioristic interpretation of mankind, see Watson, _Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist_ (Lippincott). Haldane, _Mechanism, Life, and Personality_ (Dutton), is a short discussion of some of the most fundamental elements in our modern conception of life itself. When it comes to gaining an idea of "Freudianism" and all the overwhelming discoveries, theories, and suggestions due to those who have busied themselves with the lasting effects of infantile and childish experiences, of hidden desires--sexual and otherwise, of "the Unconscious" and psychoanalysis, while there are many books, great and small, there would be no unanimity of opinion among those somewhat familiar with the subjects as to what should be recommended. It would be well if everyone could read in Havelock Ellis, _The Philosophy of Conflict_ (Houghton-Mifflin), the essay (XVIII) on Freud and his influence. Wilfred Lay, _Man's Unconscious Conflict_ (Dodd, Mead), is a popular exposition of psychoanalysis, and Tansley, _The New Psychology_ (Dodd, Mead), likewise. Harvey O'Higgins, _The Secret Springs_ (Harpers), reports, in a pleasing manner, some of the actual medical experiences of Dr. Edward Reede of Washington. But much of importance remains unsaid in all these little books for which one would have to turn to Freud himself, his present and former disciples, his enemies, and the special contributions of investigators and practitioners in this new and essential field of psychological research and therapy. Turning to the existing industrial system, its nature, defects, and recommendations for its reform, I may say that I think that relatively little is to be derived from the common run of economic textbooks. The following compendious volumes give an analysis of the situation and a consideration of the proposed remedies for existing evils and maladjustments: Veblen, _The Vested Interests and the Common Man_, also his _The Engineers and the Price System_ (Huebsch); J. A. Hobson, _Democracy after the War_ (Macmillan) and his more recent _Problems of a New World_ (Macmillan); Tawney, _The Acquisitive Society_ (Harcourt, Brace); Bertrand Russell, _Why Men Fight_ (Century) and his _Proposed Roads to Freedom_ (Holt), in which he describes clearly the history and aims of the various radical leaders and parties of recent times. As for newer views and criticism of the modern state and political life in general, in addition to Mr. Hobson's books mentioned above, the following are of importance: Graham Wallas, _The Great Society_ (Macmillan); Harold Laski, _Authority in the Modern State_ and _Problems of Sovereignty_ (Yale University Press); Walter Lippmann, _Preface to Politics_ and _Drift and Mastery_ (Holt). J. Russell Smith, _The World's Food Resources_ (Holt), is a larger and more detailed discussion than most of those recommended above, but contains a number of general facts and comment of first-rate importance. One who desires a highly thoughtful and scholarly review of the trend of religious thought in recent times should read McGiffert, _The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas_ (Macmillan). 
28901	----	The Ethical Library SOCIAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES Addresses to Ethical Societies by LESLIE STEPHEN In Two Volumes VOL. I. London Swan Sonnenschein & Co., Limited New York: MacMillan & Co. 1896 NOTE. The following chapters are chiefly a republication of addresses delivered to the Ethical Societies of London. Some have previously appeared in the _International Journal of Ethics_, the _National Review_, and the _Contemporary Review_. The author has to thank the proprietors of these periodicals for their consent to the republication. L. S. CONTENTS. PAGE THE AIMS OF ETHICAL SOCIETIES, 1 SCIENCE AND POLITICS, 45 THE SPHERE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, 91 THE MORALITY OF COMPETITION, 133 SOCIAL EQUALITY, 175 ETHICS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE, 221 THE AIMS OF ETHICAL SOCIETIES.[1] I am about to say a few words upon the aims of this society: and I should be sorry either to exaggerate or to depreciate our legitimate pretensions. It would be altogether impossible to speak too strongly of the importance of the great questions in which our membership of the society shows us to be interested. It would, I fear, be easy enough to make an over-estimate of the part which we can expect to play in their solution. I hold indeed, or I should not be here, that we may be of some service at any rate to each other. I think that anything which stimulates an active interest in the vital problems of the day deserves the support of all thinking men; and I propose to consider briefly some of the principles by which we should be guided in doing whatever we can to promote such an interest. [1] Address to West London Ethical Society, 4th December, 1892. We are told often enough that we are living in a period of important intellectual and social revolutions. In one way we are perhaps inclined even to state the fact a little too strongly. We suffer at times from the common illusion that the problems of to-day are entirely new: we fancy that nobody ever thought of them before, and that when we have solved them, nobody will ever need to look for another solution. To ardent reformers in all ages it seems as if the millennium must begin with their triumph, and that their triumph will be established by a single victory. And while some of us are thus sanguine, there are many who see in the struggles of to-day the approach of a deluge which is to sweep away all that once ennobled life. The believer in the old creeds, who fears that faith is decaying, and the supernatural life fading from the world, denounces the modern spirit as materialising and degrading. The conscience of mankind, he thinks, has become drugged and lethargic; our minds are fixed upon sensual pleasures, and our conduct regulated by a blind struggle for the maximum of luxurious enjoyment. The period in his eyes is a period of growing corruption; modern society suffers under a complication of mortal diseases, so widely spread and deeply seated that at present there is no hope of regeneration. The best hope is that its decay may provide the soil in which seed may be sown of a far-distant growth of happier augury. Such dismal forebodings are no novelty. Every age produces its prophecies of coming woes. Nothing would be easier than to make out a catena of testimonies from great men at every stage of the world's history, declaring each in turn that the cup of iniquity was now at last overflowing, and that corruption had reached so unprecedented a step that some great catastrophe must be approaching. A man of unusually lofty morality is, for that reason, more keenly sensitive to the lowness of the average standard, and too easily accepts the belief that the evils before his eyes must be in fact greater, and not, as may perhaps be the case, only more vividly perceived, than those of the bygone ages. A call to repentance easily takes the form of an assertion that the devil is getting the upper hand; and we may hope that the pessimist view is only a form of the discontent which is a necessary condition of improvement. Anyhow, the diametrical conflict of prophecies suggests one remark which often impresses me. We are bound to call each other by terribly hard names. A gentleman assures me in print that I am playing the devil's game; depriving my victims, if I have any, of all the beliefs that can make life noble or happy, and doing my best to destroy the very first principles of morality. Yet I meet my adversary in the flesh, and find that he treats me not only with courtesy, but with no inconsiderable amount of sympathy. He admits--by his actions and his argument--that I--the miserable sophist and seducer--have not only some good impulses, but have really something to say which deserves a careful and respectful answer. An infidel, a century or two ago, was supposed to have forfeited all claim to the ordinary decencies of life. Now I can say, and can say with real satisfaction, that I do not find any difference of creed, however vast in words, to be an obstacle to decent and even friendly treatment. I am at times tempted to ask whether my opponent can be quite logical in being so courteous; whether, if he is as sure as he says that I am in the devil's service, I ought not, as a matter of duty, to be encountered with the old dogmatism and arrogance. I shall, however, leave my friends of a different way of thinking to settle that point for themselves. I cannot doubt the sincerity of their courtesy, and I will hope that it is somehow consistent with their logic. Rather I will try to meet them in a corresponding spirit by a brief confession. I have often enough spoken too harshly and vehemently of my antagonists. I have tried to fix upon them too unreservedly what seemed to me the logical consequences of their dogmas. I have condemned their attempts at a milder interpretation of their creed as proofs of insincerity, when I ought to have done more justice to the legitimate and lofty motives which prompted them. And I at least am bound by my own views to admit that even the antagonist from whose utterances I differ most widely may be an unconscious ally, supplementing rather than contradicting my theories, and in great part moved by aspirations which I ought to recognise even when allied with what I take to be defective reasoning. We are all amenable to one great influence. The vast shuttle of modern life is weaving together all races and creeds and classes. We are no longer shut up in separate compartments, where the mental horizon is limited by the area visible from the parish steeple; each little section can no longer fancy, in the old childish fashion, that its own arbitrary prejudices and dogmas are parts of the eternal order of things; or infer that in the indefinite region beyond, there live nothing but monsters and anthropophagi, and men whose heads grow beneath their shoulders. The annihilation of space has made us fellows as by a kind of mechanical compulsion; and every advance of knowledge has increased the impossibility of taking our little church--little in comparison with mankind, be it even as great as the Catholic Church--for the one pattern of right belief. The first effect of bringing remote nations and classes into closer contact is often an explosion of antipathy; but in the long run it means a development of human sympathy. Wide, therefore, as is the opposition of opinions as to what is the true theory of the world--as to which is the divine and which the diabolical element--I fully believe that beneath the war of words and dogmas there is a growth of genuine toleration, and, we must hope, of ultimate conciliation. This is manifest in another direction. The churches are rapidly making at least one discovery. They are beginning to find out that their vitality depends not upon success in theological controversy, but upon their success in meeting certain social needs and aspirations common to all classes. It is simply impossible for any thinking man at the present day to take any living interest, for example, in the ancient controversies. The "drum ecclesiastic" of the seventeenth century would sound a mere lullaby to us. Here and there a priest or a belated dissenting minister may amuse himself by threshing out once more the old chaff of dead and buried dogmas. There are people who can argue gravely about baptismal regeneration or apostolical succession. Such doctrines were once alive, no doubt, because they represented the form in which certain still living problems had then to present themselves. They now require to be stated in a totally different shape, before we can even guess why they were once so exciting, or how men could have supposed their modes of attacking the question to be adequate. The Pope and General Booth still condemn each other's tenets; and in case of need would, I suppose, take down the old rusty weapons from the armoury. But each sees with equal clearness that the real stress of battle lies elsewhere. Each tries, after his own fashion, to give a better answer than the Socialists to the critical problems of to-day. We ought so far to congratulate both them and ourselves on the direction of their energies. Nay, can we not even co-operate, and put these hopeless controversies aside? Why not agree to differ about the questions which no one denies to be all but insoluble, and become allies in promoting morality? Enormous social forces find their natural channel through the churches; and if the beliefs inculcated by the church were not, as believers assert, the ultimate cause of progress, it is at least clear that they were not incompatible with progress. The church, we all now admit, whether by reason of or in spite of its dogmatic creed, was for ages one great organ of civilisation, and still exercises an incalculable influence. Why, then, should we, who cannot believe in the dogmas, yet fall into line with believers for practical purposes? Churches insist verbally upon the importance of their dogma: they are bound to do so by their logical position; but, in reality, for them, as for us, the dogma has become in many ways a mere excrescence--a survival of barren formulæ which do little harm to anybody. Carlyle, in his quaint phrase, talked about the exodus from Houndsditch, but doubted whether it were yet time to cast aside the Hebrew old clothes. They have become threadbare and antiquated. That gives a reason to the intelligent for abandoning them; but, also, perhaps a reason for not quarrelling with those who still care to masquerade in them. Orthodox people have made a demand that the Board Schools should teach certain ancient doctrines about the nature of Christ; and the demand strikes some of us as preposterous if not hypocritical. But putting aside the audacity of asking unbelievers to pay for such teaching, one might be tempted to ask, what harm could it really do? Do you fancy for a moment that you can really teach a child of ten the true meaning of the Incarnation? Can you give him more than a string of words as meaningless as magical formulæ? I was brought up at the most orthodox of Anglican seminaries. I learned the Catechism, and heard lectures upon the Thirty-nine Articles. I never found that the teaching had ever any particular effect upon my mind. As I grew up, the obsolete exuviæ of doctrine dropped off my mind like dead leaves from a tree. They could not get any vital hold in an atmosphere of tolerable enlightenment. Why should we fear the attempt to instil these fragments of decayed formulæ into the minds of children of tender age? Might we not be certain that they would vanish of themselves? They are superfluous, no doubt, but too futile to be of any lasting importance. I remember that, when the first Education Act was being discussed, mention was made of a certain Jew who not only sent his son to a Christian school, but insisted upon his attending all the lessons. He had paid his fees, he said, for education in the Gospels among other things, and he meant to have his money's worth. "But your son," it was urged, "will become a Christian." "I," he replied, "will take good care of that at home." Was not the Jew a man of sense? Can we suppose that the mechanical repetition of a few barren phrases will do either harm or good? As the child develops he will, we may hope, remember his multiplication table, and forget his fragments of the Athanasian Creed. Let the wheat and tares be planted together, and trust to the superior vitality of the more valuable plant. The sentiment might be expressed sentimentally as easily as cynically. We may urge, like many sceptics of the last century, that Christianity should be kept "for the use of the poor," and renounced in the esoteric creed of the educated. Or we may urge the literary and æsthetic beauty of the old training, and wish it to be preserved to discipline the imagination, though we may reject its value as a historical statement of fact. The audience which I am addressing has, I presume, made up its mind upon such views. They come too late. It might have been a good thing, had it been possible, to effect the transition from old to new without a violent convulsion: good, if Christian conceptions had been slowly developed into more simple forms; if the beautiful symbols had been retained till they could be impregnated with a new meaning; and if the new teaching of science and philosophy had gradually percolated into the ancient formulæ without causing a disruption. Possibly the Protestant Reformation was a misfortune, and Erasmus saw the truth more clearly than Luther. I cannot go into might-have-beens. We have to deal with facts. A conspiracy of silence is impossible about matters which have been vehemently discussed for centuries. We have to take sides; and we at least have agreed to take the side of the downright thinker, who will say nothing that he does not believe, and hide nothing that he does believe, and speak out his mind without reservation or economy and accommodation. Indeed, as things are, any other course seems to me to be impossible. I have spoken, for example, of General Booth. Many people heartily admire his schemes of social reform, and have been willing to subscribe for its support, without troubling themselves about his theology. I will make no objection; but I confess that I could not therefore treat that theology as either morally or intellectually respectable. It has happened to me once or twice to listen to expositions from orators of the Salvation Army. Some of them struck me as sincere though limited, and others as the victims of an overweening vanity. The oratory, so far as I could hear, consisted in stringing together an endless set of phrases about the blood of Christ, which, if they really meant anything, meant a doctrine as low in the intellectual scale as that of any of the objects of missionary enterprise. The conception of the transactions between God and man was apparently modelled upon the dealings of a petty tradesman. The "blood of Christ" was regarded like the panacea of a quack doctor, which will cure the sins of anybody who accepts the prescription. For anything I can say, such a creed may be elevating--relatively: elevating as slavery is said to have been elevating when it was a substitute for extermination. The hymns of the Army may be better than public-house melodies, and the excitement produced less mischievous than that due to gin. But the best that I can wish for its adherents is, that they should speedily reach a point at which they could perceive their doctrines to be debasing. I hope, indeed, that they do not realise their own meaning: but I could almost as soon join in some old pagan ceremonies, gash my body with knives, or swing myself from a hook, as indulge in this variety of spiritual intoxication. There are, it is true, plenty of more refined and intellectual preachers, whose sentiments deserve at least the respect due to tender and humane feeling. They have found a solution, satisfactory to themselves, of the great dilemma which presses on so many minds. A religion really to affect the vulgar must be a superstition; to satisfy the thoughtful, it must be a philosophy. Is it possible to contrive so to fuse the crude with the refined as to make at least a working compromise? To me personally, and to most of us living at the present day, the enterprise appears to be impracticable. My own experience is, I imagine, a very common one. When I ceased to accept the teaching of my youth, it was not so much a process of giving up beliefs, as of discovering that I had never really believed. The contrast between the genuine convictions which guide and govern our conduct, and the professions which we were taught to repeat in church, when once realised, was too glaring. One belonged to the world of realities, and the other to the world of dreams. The orthodox formulæ represent, no doubt, a sentiment, an attempt to symbolise emotions which might be beautiful, or to indicate vague impressions about the tendency of things in general; but to put them side by side with real beliefs about facts was to reveal their flimsiness. The "I believe" of the creed seemed to mean something quite different from the "I believe" of politics and history and science. Later experience has only deepened and strengthened that feeling. Kind and loving and noble-minded people have sought to press upon me the consolations of their religion. I thank them in all sincerity; and I feel,--why should I not admit it?--that it may be a genuine comfort to set your melancholy to the old strain in which so many generations have embodied their sorrows and their aspirations. And yet to me, its consolation is an invitation to reject plain facts; to seek for refuge in a shadowy world of dreams and conjectures, which dissolve as you try to grasp them. The doctrine offered for my acceptance cannot be stated without qualifications and reserves and modifications, which make it as useless as it is vague and conjectural. I may learn in time to submit to the inevitable; I cannot drug myself with phrases which evaporate as soon as they are exposed to a serious test. You profess to give me the only motives of conduct; and I know that at the first demand to define them honestly--to say precisely what you believe and why you believe it--you will be forced to withdraw, and explain and evade, and at last retire to the safe refuge of a mystery, which might as well be admitted at starting. As I have read and thought, I have been more and more impressed with the obvious explanation of these observations. How should the beliefs be otherwise than shadowy and illusory, when their very substance is made of doubts laboriously and ingeniously twisted into the semblance of convictions? In one way or other that is the characteristic mark of the theological systems of the present day. Proof is abandoned for persuasion. The orthodox believer professed once to prove the facts which he asserted and to show that his dogmas expressed the truth. He now only tries to show that the alleged facts don't matter, and that the dogmas are meaningless. Nearly two centuries ago, for example, a deist pointed out that the writer of the Book of Daniel, like other people, must have written after the events which he mentioned. All the learned, down to Dr. Pusey, denounced his theory, and declared his argument to be utterly destructive of the faith. Now an orthodox professor will admit that the deist was perfectly right, and only tries to persuade himself that arguments from facts are superfluous. The supposed foundation is gone: the superstructure is not to be affected. What the keenest disputant now seeks to show is, not that the truth of the records can be established beyond reasonable doubt; but that no absolute contradiction in terms is involved in supposing that they correspond more or less roughly to something which may possibly have happened. So long as a thing is not proved false by mathematical demonstration, I may still continue to take it for a divine revelation, and to listen respectfully when experienced statesmen and learned professors assure me with perfect gravity that they can believe in Noah's flood or in the swine of Gadara. They have an unquestionable right to believe if they please: and they expect me to accept the facts for the sake of the doctrine. There, unluckily, I have a similar difficulty. It is the orthodox who are the systematic sceptics. The most famous philosophers of my youth endeavoured to upset the deist by laying the foundation of Agnosticism, arbitrarily tagged to an orthodox conclusion. They told me to believe a doctrine because it was totally impossible that I should know whether it was true or not, or indeed attach any real meaning to it whatever. The highest altar, as Sir W. Hamilton said, was the altar to the unknown and unknowable God. Others, seeing the inevitable tendency of such methods, have done their best to find in that the Christian doctrine, rightly understood, the embodiment of the highest philosophy. It is the divine voice which speaks in our hearts, though it has caught some accretion of human passion and superstition. The popular versions are false and debased; the old versions of the Atonement, for example, monstrous; and the belief in the everlasting torture of sinners, a hideous and groundless caricature. With much that such men have said I could, of course, agree heartily; for, indeed, it expresses the strongest feelings which have caused religious revolt. But would it not be simpler to say, "the doctrine is not true," than to say, "it is true, but means just the reverse of what it was also taken to mean"? I prefer plain terms; and "without doubt he shall perish everlastingly" seems to be an awkward way of denying the endlessness of punishment. You cannot denounce the immorality of the old dogmas with the infidel, and then proclaim their infinite value with the believer. You defend the doctrine by showing that in its plain downright sense,--the sense in which it embodied popular imaginations,--it was false and shocking. The proposal to hold by the words evacuated of the old meaning is a concession of the whole case to the unbeliever, and a substitution of sentiment and aspiration for a genuine intellectual belief. Explaining away, however dexterously and delicately, is not defending, but at once confessing error, and encumbering yourself with all the trammels of misleading associations. The more popular method, therefore, at the present day is not to rationalise, but to try to outsceptic the sceptic. We are told that we have no solid ground from reason at all, and that even physical science is as full of contradictions as theology. Such enterprises, conducted with whatever ingenuity, are, as I believe, hopeless; but at least they are fundamentally and radically sceptical. That, under whatever disguises, is the true meaning of the Catholic argument, which is so persuasive to many. To prove the truth of Christianity by abstract reasoning may be hopeless; but nothing is easier than to persuade yourself to believe it, if once you will trust instinct in place of reason, and forget that instinct proves anything and everything. The success of such arguments with thoughtful men is simply a measure of the spread of scepticism. The conviction that truth is unattainable is the master argument for submitting to "authority". The "authority," in the scientific sense of any set of men who agree upon a doctrine, varies directly as their independence of each other. Their "authority" in the legal sense varies as the closeness of their mutual dependence. As the consent loses its value logically, it gains in power of coercion. And therefore it is easy to substitute drilling for arguing, and to take up a belief as you accept admission to a society, as a matter of taste and feeling, with which abstract logic has nothing to do. The common dilemma--you must be a Catholic or an atheist--means, that theology is only tenable if you drill people into belief by a vast organisation appealing to other than logical motives. I do not argue these points: I only indicate what I take to be your own conviction as well as mine. It seems to me, in fact, that the present state of mind--if we look to men's real thoughts and actions, not to their conventional phrases--is easily definable. It is simply a tacit recognition that the old orthodoxy cannot be maintained either by the evidence of facts or by philosophical argument. It has puzzled me sometimes to understand why the churches should insist upon nailing themselves down to the truth of their dogmas and their legendary history. Why cannot they say frankly, what they seem to be constantly on the verge of saying--Our dogmas and our history are not true, or not "true" in the historical or scientific sense of the word? To ask for such truth in the sphere of theology is as pedantic as to ask for it in the sphere of poetry. Poetical truth means, not that certain events actually happened, or that the poetical "machinery" is to be taken as an existing fact; but that the poem is, so to speak, the projection of truths upon the cloudland of imagination. It reflects and gives sensuous images of truth; but it is only the Philistine or the blockhead who can seriously ask, is it true? Some such position seems to be really conceivable as an ultimate compromise. Put aside the prosaic insistence upon literal matter-of-fact truth, and we may all agree to use the same symbolism, and interpret it as we please. This seems to me to be actually the view of many thoughtful people, though for obvious reasons it is not often explicitly stated. One reason is, of course, the consciousness that the great mass of mankind requires plain, tangible motives for governing its life; and if it once be admitted that so much of the orthodox doctrine is mere symbolism or adumbration of truths, the admission would involve the loss of the truths so indicated. Moral conduct, again, and moral beliefs are supposed to depend upon some affirmation of these truths; and excellent people are naturally shy of any open admission which may appear to throw doubt upon the ultimate grounds of morality. Indeed, if it could be really proved that men have to choose between renouncing moral truths and accepting unproved theories, it might be right--I will not argue the point--to commit intellectual suicide. If the truth is that we are mere animals or mere automata, shall we sacrifice the truth, or sacrifice what we have at least agreed to call our higher nature? For us the dilemma has no force: for we do not admit the discrepancy. We believe that morality depends upon something deeper and more permanent than any of the dogmas that have hitherto been current in the churches. It is a product of human nature, not of any of these transcendental speculations or faint survivals of traditional superstitions. Morality has grown up independently of, and often in spite of, theology. The creeds have been good so far as they have accepted or reflected the moral convictions; but it is an illusion to suppose that they have generated it. They represent the dialect and the imagery by which moral truths have been conveyed to minds at certain stages of thought; but it is a complete inversion of the truth to suppose that the morality sprang out of them. From this point of view we must of necessity treat the great ethical questions independently. We cannot form a real alliance with thinkers radically opposed to us. Divines tell us that we reject the one possible basis of morality. To us it appears that we are strengthening it, by severing it from a connection with doctrines arbitrary, incapable of proof, and incapable of retaining any consistent meaning. Theologians once believed that hell-fire was the ultimate sentence, and persecution the absolute duty of every Christian ruler. The churches which once burnt and exterminated are now only anxious to proclaim freedom of belief, and to cast the blame of persecution upon their rivals. Divines have discovered that the doctrine of hell-fire deserves all that infidels have said of it; and a member of Dante's church was arguing the other day that hell might on the whole be a rather pleasant place of residence. Doctrines which can thus be turned inside out are hardly desirable bases for morality. So the early Christians, again, were the Socialists of their age, and took a view of Dives and Lazarus which would commend itself to the Nihilists of to-day. The church is now often held up to us as the great barrier against Socialism, and the one refuge against subversive doctrines. In a well-known essay on "People whom one would have wished to have seen," Lamb and his friends are represented as agreeing that if Christ were to enter they would all fall down and worship Him. It may have been so; but if the man who best represents the ideas of early Christians were to enter a respectable society of to-day, would it not be more likely to send for the police? When we consider such changes, and mark in another direction how the dogmas which once set half the world to cut the throats of the other half, have sunk into mere combinations of hard words, can we seriously look to the maintenance of dogmas, even in the teeth of reason, as a guarantee for ethical convictions? What you call retaining the only base of morality, appears to us to be trying to associate morality with dogmas essentially arbitrary and unreasonable. From this point of view it is naturally our opinion that we should promote all thorough discussion of great ethical problems in a spirit and by methods which are independent of the orthodox dogmas. There are many such problems undoubtedly of the highest importance. The root of all the great social questions of which I have spoken lies in the region of Ethics; and upon that point, at least, we can go along with much that is said upon the orthodox side. We cannot, indeed, agree that Ethics can be adequately treated by men pledged to ancient traditions, employing antiquated methods, and always tempted to have an eye to the interest of their own creeds and churches. But we can fully agree that ethical principles underlie all the most important problems. Every great religious reform has been stimulated by the conviction that the one essential thing is a change of spirit, not a mere modification of the external law, which has ceased to correspond to genuine beliefs and powerful motives. The commonest criticism, indeed, of all projectors of new Utopias is that they propose a change of human nature. The criticism really suggests a sound criterion. Unless the change proposed be practicable, the Utopia will doubtless be impossible. And unless some practicable change be proposed, the Utopia, even were it embodied in practice, would be useless. If the sole result of raising wages were an increase in the consumption of gin, wages might as well stay at a minimum. But the tacit assumption that all changes of human nature are impracticable is simply a cynical and unproved assertion. All of us here hold, I imagine, that human nature has in a sense been changed. We hold that, with all its drawbacks, progress is not an illusion; that men have become at least more tolerant and more humane; that ancient brutalities have become impossible; and that the suffering of the weaker excites a keener sympathy. To say that, in that sense, human nature must be changed, is to say only that the one sound criterion of all schemes for social improvement lies in their ethical tendency. The standard of life cannot be permanently raised unless you can raise the standard of motive. Old-fashioned political theorists thought that a simple change of the constitutional machinery would of itself remedy all evils, and failed to recognise that behind the institutions lie all the instincts and capabilities of the men who are to work them. A similar fallacy is prevalent, I fancy, in regard to what we call social reforms. Some scheme for a new mode of distributing the products of industry would, it is often assumed, remedy all social evils. To my thinking, no such change would do more than touch the superficial evils, unless it had also some tendency to call out the higher and repress the lower impulses. Unless we can to some extent change "human nature," we shall be weaving ropes of sand, or devising schemes for perpetual motion, for driving our machinery more effectively without applying fresh energy. We shall be falling into the old blunders; approving Jack Cade's proposal--as recorded by Shakespeare--that the three-hooped pot should have seven hoops; or attempting to get rid of poverty by converting the whole nation into paupers. No one, perhaps, will deny this in terms; and to admit it frankly is to admit that every scheme must be judged by its tendency to "raise the manhood of the poor," and to make every man, rich and poor, feel that he is discharging a useful function in society. Old Robert Owen, when he began his reforms, rested his doctrine and his hopes of perfectibility upon the scientific application of a scheme for "the formation of character". His plans were crude enough, and fell short of success. But he had seen the real conditions of success; and when, in after years, he imagined that a new society might be made by simply collecting men of any character in a crowd, and inviting them to share alike, he fell into the inevitable failure. Modern Socialists might do well to remember his history. Now it is, as I understand, primarily the aim of an Ethical Society to promote the rational discussion of these underlying ethical principles. We wish to contribute to the clearest understanding we can of the right ends to which human energy should be devoted, and of the conditions under which such devotion is most likely to be rewarded with success. We desire to see the great controversy carried on in the nearest possible approach to a scientific spirit. That phrase implies, as I have said, that we must abandon much of the old guidance. The lights by which our ancestors professed to direct their course are not for us supernatural signs, shining in a transcendental region, but at most the beacons which they had themselves erected, and valuable as indications, though certainly not as infallible guides, to the right path. We must question everything, and be prepared to modify or abandon whatever is untenable. We must be scientific in spirit, in so far as we must trust nothing but a thorough and systematic investigation of facts, however the facts may be interpreted. Undoubtedly, the course marked out is long and arduous. It is perfectly true, moreover, as our antagonists will hasten to observe, that professedly scientific reasoners are hardly better agreed than their opponents. If they join upon some negative conclusions, and upon some general principles of method, they certainly do not reach the same results. They have at present no definite creed to lay down. I need only refer, for example, to one very obvious illustration. The men who were most conspicuous for their attempt to solve social problems by scientific methods, and most confident that they had succeeded, were, probably, those who founded the so-called "classical" political economy, and represented what is now called the individualist point of view. Government, they were apt to think, should do nothing but stand aside, see fair-play, and keep our knives from each other's throats and our hands out of each other's pockets. Much as their doctrines were denounced, this view is still represented by the most popular philosopher of the day. And undoubtedly we shall do well to take to heart the obvious moral. If we still believe in the old-fashioned doctrines, we must infer that to work out a scientific doctrine is by no means to secure its acceptance. If we reject them we must argue that the mere claim to be scientific may inspire men with a premature self-confidence, which tends only to make their errors more systematic. When, however, I look at the actual course of controversy, I am more impressed by another fact. "Individualism" is sometimes met by genuine argument. More frequently, I think, it is met by simple appeal to sentiment. This kind of thing, we are told, is exploded; it is not up to date; it is as obsolete as the plesiosaurus; and therefore, without bothering ourselves about your reasoning, we shall simply neglect it. Talk as much as you please, we can get a majority on the other side. We shall disregard your arguments, and, therefore--it is a common piece of logic at the present day--your arguments must be all wrong. I must be content here with simply indicating my own view. I think, in fact, that, in this as in other cases, the true answer to extreme theorists would be very different. I hold that we would begin by admitting the immense value of the lesson taught by the old individualists, if that be their right name. If they were precipitate in laying down "iron laws" and proclaiming inexorable necessity, they were perfectly right in pointing out that there are certain "laws of human nature," and conditions of social welfare, which will not be altered by simply declaring them to be unpleasant. They did an inestimable service in emphatically protesting against the system of forcibly suppressing, or trying to suppress, deep-seated evils, without an accurate preliminary diagnosis of the causes. And--not to go into remote questions--the "individualist" creed had this merit, which is related to our especial aims. The ethical doctrine which they preached may have had--I think that it had--many grave defects; but at least it involved a recognition of the truth which their opponents are too apt to shun or reject. They, at least, asserted strenuously the cardinal doctrine of the importance of individual responsibility. They might draw some erroneous inferences, but they could not put too emphatically the doctrine that men must not be taught to shift the blame of all their sufferings upon some mysterious entity called society, or expect improvement unless, among other virtues, they will cultivate the virtue of strenuous, unremitting, masculine self-help. If this be at all true, it may indicate what I take to be the aim of our society, or rather of us as members of an ethical society. We hold, that is, that the great problems of to-day have their root, so to speak, in an ethical soil. They will be decided one way or other by the view which we take of ethical questions. The questions, for example, of what is meant by social justice, what is the justification of private property, or the limits of personal liberty, all lead us ultimately to ethical foundations. The same is, of course, true of many other problems. The demand for political rights of women is discussed, rightly no doubt, upon grounds of justice, and takes us to some knotty points. Does justice imply the equality of the sexes; and, if so, in what sense of "equality"? And, beyond this, we come to the question, What would be the bearing of our principles upon the institution of marriage, and upon the family bond? No question can be more important, or more vitally connected with Ethics. We, at any rate, can no longer answer such problems by any traditional dogmatism. They--and many other questions which I need not specify--have been asked, and have yet to be answered. They will probably not be answered by a simple yes or no, nor by any isolated solution of a metaphysical puzzle. Undoubtedly, a vast mass of people will insist upon being consulted, and will adopt methods which cannot be regarded as philosophical. Therefore, it is a matter of pressing importance that all people who can think at all should use their own minds, and should do their best to widen and strengthen the influence of the ablest thinkers. The chaotic condition of the average mind is our reason for trying to strengthen the influence, always too feeble, of the genuine thinkers. Much that passes itself off for thought is simply old prejudice in a new dress. Tradition has always this, indeed, to say for itself: that it represents the product of much unconscious reasoning from experience, and that it is at least compatible with such progress as has been hitherto achieved. Progress has in future to take place in the daylight, and under the stress of keen discussion from every possible point of view. It would be rash indeed to assume that we can hope to see the substitution of purely rational and scientific methods for the old haphazard and tentative blundering into slightly better things. It is possible enough that the creed of the future may, after all, be a compromise, admitting some elements of higher truth, but attracting the popular mind by concessions to superstition and ignorance. We can hardly hope to get rid of the rooted errors which have so astonishing a vitality. But we should desire, and, so far as in us lies, endeavour to secure the presence of the largest possible element of genuine and reasoned conviction in the faith of our own and the rising generation. I have not sought to say anything new. I have only endeavoured to define the general position which we, as I imagine, have agreed to accept. We hold in common that the old dogmas are no longer tenable, though we are very far from being agreed as to what should replace them. We have each, I dare say, our own theory; we agree that our theories, whatever they may be, are in need of strict examination, of verification, it may be, but it may be also of modification or rejection. We hope that such societies as this may in the first place serve as centres for encouraging and popularising the full and free discussion of the great questions. We wish that people who have reached a certain stage of cultivation should be made aware of the course which is being taken by those who may rightly claim to be in the van. We often wish to know, as well as we can, what is the direction of the deeper currents of thought; what genuine results, for example, have been obtained by historical criticism, especially as applied to the religious history of the world; we want to know what are the real points now at issue in the world of science; the true bearing of the theories of evolution, and so forth, which are known by name far beyond the circle in which their logical reasoning is really appreciated; we want to know, again, what are the problems which really interest modern metaphysicians or psychologists; in what directions there seems to be a real promise of future achievement, and in what directions it seems to be proved by experience that any further expansion of intellectual energy is certain to result only in the discovery of mares' nests. Matthew Arnold would have expressed this by saying that we are required to be made accessible to the influence of the Zeitgeist. There is a difficulty, no doubt, in discovering by what signs we may recognise the utterances of the Zeitgeist; and distinguish between loyalty to the real intellectual leaders and a simple desire to be arrayed in the last new fashion in philosophy. There is no infallible sign; and, yet, a genuine desire to discover the true lines in which thought is developing, is not of the less importance. Arnold, like others, pointed the moral by a contrast between England and Germany. The best that has been done in England, it is said, has generally been done by amateurs and outsiders. They have, perhaps, certain advantages, as being less afraid to strike into original paths, and even the originality of ignorance is not always, though it may be in nine cases out of ten, a name for fresh blundering. But if sporadic English writers have now and then hit off valuable thoughts, there can be no doubt that we have had a heavy price to pay. The comparative absence of any class, devoted, like German professors, to a systematic and combined attempt to spread the borders of knowledge and speculation, has been an evil which is the more felt in proportion as specialisation of science and familiarity with previous achievements become more important. It would be very easy to give particular instances of our backwardness. How different would have been the course of English church history, said somebody, if Newman had only known German! He would have breathed a larger air, and might have desisted--I suppose that was the meaning--from the attempt to put life into certain dead bones. And with equal truth, it may be urged, how much better work might have been done by J. S. Mill if he had really read Kant! He might not have been converted, but he would have been saved from maintaining in their crude form, doctrines which undoubtedly require modification. Under his reign, English thought was constantly busied with false issues, simply from ignorance of the most effective criticism. It is needless to point out how much time is wasted in the defence of positions that have long been turned by the enemy from sheer want of acquaintance with the relevant evidence, or with the logic that has been revealed by the slow thrashing out of thorough controversy. It would be invidious perhaps to insist too much upon another obvious result: the ease with which a man endowed with a gift of popular rhetoric, and a facility for catching at the current phrases, can set up as a teacher, however palpable to the initiated may be his ignorance. Scientific thought has perhaps as much to fear from the false prophets who take its name as from the open enemies who try to stifle its voice. I would rather emphasise another point, perhaps less generally remarked. The study has its idols as well as its market-place. Certain weaknesses are developed in the academical atmosphere as well as in the arenas of public discussion. Freeman used to say that English historians had avoided certain errors into which German writers of far greater knowledge and more thorough scholarship had fallen, simply because points were missed by a professor in a German university which were plain to those who, like many Englishmen, had to take a part in actual political work. I think that this is not without a meaning for us. We have learnt, very properly, to respect German research and industry; and we are trying in various directions to imitate their example. Perhaps it would be as well to keep an eye upon some German weaknesses. A philosophy made for professors is apt to be a philosophy for pedants. A professor is bound to be omniscient; he has to have an answer to everything; he is tempted to construct systems which will pass muster in the lecture-room, and to despise the rest of their applicability to daily life. I confess myself to be old-fashioned enough to share some of the old English prejudices against those gigantic structures which have been thrown out by imposing philosophers, who evolved complete systems of metaphysics and logic and religion and politics and æsthetics out of their own consciousness. We have multiplied professors of late, and professors are bound to write books, and to magnify the value of their own studies. They must make a show of possessing an encyclopædic theory which will explain everything and take into account all previous theories. Sometimes, perhaps, they will lose themselves in endless subtleties and logomachies and construct cobwebs of the brain, predestined to the rubbish-heap of extinct philosophies. It is enough, however, to urge that a mere student may be the better for keeping in mind the necessity of keeping in mind real immediate human interests; as the sentimentalist has to be reminded of the importance of strictly logical considerations. And I think too that a very brief study of the most famous systems of old days will convince us that philosophers should be content with a more modest attitude than they have sometimes adopted; give up the pretensions to framing off-hand theories of things in general, and be content to puzzle out a few imperfect truths which may slowly work their way into the general structure of thought. I wish to speak humbly as befits one who cannot claim any particular authority for his opinion. But, in all humility, I suggest that if we can persuade men of reputation in the regions where subtle thought and accurate research are duly valued, we shall be doing good, not only to ourselves, but, if I may whisper it, to them. We value their attainments so highly that we desire their influence to spread beyond the narrow precinct of university lecture-rooms; and their thoughts be, at the same time, stimulated and vitalised by bringing them into closer contact with the problems which are daily forced upon us in the business of daily life. A divorce between the men of thought and the men of action is really bad for both. Whatever tends to break up the intellectual stupor of large classes, to rouse their minds, to increase their knowledge of the genuine work that is being done, to provide them even with more of such recreations as refine and invigorate, must have our sympathy, and will be useful both to those who confer and to those who receive instruction. So, after all, a philosopher can learn few things of more importance than the art of translating his doctrines into language intelligible and really instructive to the outside world. There was a period when real thinkers, as Locke and Berkeley and Butler and Hume, tried to express themselves as pithily and pointedly as possible. They were, say some of their critics, very shallow: they were over-anxious to suit the taste of wits and the town: and in too much fear of the charge of pedantry. Well, if some of our profounder thinkers would try for once to pack all that they really have to say as closely as they can, instead of trying to play every conceivable change upon every thought that occurs to them, I fancy that they would be surprised both at the narrowness of the space which they would occupy and the comparative greatness of the effect they would produce. An ethical society should aim at supplying a meeting-place between the expert and specialist on one side, and, on the other, with the men who have to apply ideas to the complex concretes of political and social activity. How far we can succeed in furthering that aim I need not attempt to say. But I will conclude by reverting to some thoughts at which I hinted at starting. You may think that I have hardly spoken in a very sanguine or optimistic tone. I have certainly admitted the existence of enormous difficulties and the probabilities of very imperfect success. I cannot think that the promised land of which we are taking a Pisgah sight is so near or the view so satisfactory as might be wished. A mirage like that which attended our predecessors may still be exercising illusions for us; and I anticipate less an immediate fruition, than a beginning of another long cycle of wanderings through a desert, let us hope rather more fertile than that which we have passed. If this be something of a confession you may easily explain it by personal considerations. In an old controversy which I was reading the other day, one of the disputants observed that his adversary held that the world was going from bad to worse. "I do not wonder at the opinion," he remarks; "for I am every day more tempted to embrace it myself, since every day I am leaving youth further behind." I am old enough to feel the force of that remark. Without admitting senility, I have lived long enough, that is, to know well that for me the brighter happiness is a thing of the past; that I have to look back even to realise what it means; and to feel that a sadder colouring is conferred upon the internal world by the eye "which hath kept watch o'er man's mortality." I have watched the brilliant promise of many contemporaries eclipsed by premature death; and have too often had to apply Newton's remark, "If that man had lived, we might have known something". Lights which once cheered me have gone out, and are going out all too rapidly; and, to say nothing of individuals, I have also lived long enough to watch the decay of once flourishing beliefs. I can remember, only too vividly, the confident hope with which many young men, whom I regarded as the destined leaders of progress, affirmed that the doctrines which they advocated were going forth conquering and to conquer; and though I may still think that those doctrines had a permanent value, and were far from deserving the reproaches now often levelled at them, I must admit that we greatly exaggerated our omniscience. I am often tempted, I confess, to draw the rather melancholy moral that some of my younger friends may be destined to disillusionment, and may be driven some thirty years hence to admit that their present confidence was a little in excess. I admit all this: but I do not admit that my view could sanction despondency. I can see perhaps ground for foreboding which I should once have rejected. I can realise more distinctly, not only the amount of misery in the world, but the amount of misdirected energy, the dulness of the average intellect, and the vast deadweight of superstition and dread of the light with which all improvement must have to reckon. And yet I also feel that, if a complacent optimism be impossible, the world was never so full of interest. When we complain of the stress and strain and over-excitement of modern society we indicate, I think, a real evil; but we also tacitly admit that no one has any excuse for being dull. In every direction there is abundant opportunity for brave and thoughtful men to find the fullest occupation for whatever energy they may possess. There is work to be found everywhere in this sense, and none but the most torpid can find an excuse for joining the spiritually unemployed. The fields, surely, are white for the harvest, though there are weeds enough to be extirpated, and hard enough furrows to be ploughed. We know what has been done in the field of physical science. It has made the world infinite. The days of the old pagan, "suckled in some creed outworn," are regretted in Wordsworth's sonnet; for the old pagan held to the poetical view that a star was the chariot of a deity. The poor deity, however, had, in fact, a duty as monotonous as that of a driver in the Underground Railway. To us a star is a signal of a new world; it suggests universe beyond universe; sinking into the infinite abysses of space; we see worlds forming or decaying and raising at every moment problems of a strange fascination. The prosaic truth is really more poetical than the old figment of the childish imagination. The first great discovery of the real nature of the stars did, in fact, logically or not, break up more effectually than perhaps any other cause, the old narrow and stifling conception of the universe represented by Dante's superlative power; and made incredible the systems based on the conception that man can be the centre of all things and the universe created for the sake of this place. It is enough to point to the similar change due to modern theories of evolution. The impassable barriers of thought are broken down. Instead of the verbal explanation, which made every plant and animal an ultimate and inexplicable fact, we now see in each a movement in an indefinite series of complex processes, stretching back further than the eye can reach into the indefinite past. If we are sometimes stunned by the sense of inconceivable vastness, we feel, at least, that no intellectual conqueror need ever be affected by the old fear. For him there will always be fresh regions to conquer. Every discovery suggests new problems; and though knowledge may be simplified and codified, it will always supply a base for fresh explanations of the indefinite regions beyond. Can that which is true of the physical sciences be applied in any degree to the so-called moral sciences? To Bentham, I believe, is ascribed the wish that he could fall asleep and be waked at the end of successive centuries, to take note of the victories achieved in the intervals by his utilitarianism. Tennyson, in one of his youthful poems, played with the same thought. It would be pleasant, as the story of the sleeping beauty suggested, to rise every hundred years to mark the progress made in science and politics; and to see the "Titanic forces" that would come to the birth in divers climes and seasons; for we, he says-- For we are Ancients of the earth, And in the morning of the times. Tennyson, if this expressed his serious belief, seems to have lost his illusions; and it is probable enough that Bentham's would have had some unpleasant surprises could his wish have been granted. It is more than a century since his doctrine was first revealed, and yet the world has not become converted; and some people doubt whether it ever will be. If, indeed, Bentham's speculations had been adopted; if we had all become convinced that morality means aiming at the greatest happiness of the greatest number; if we were agreed as to what is happiness, and what is the best way of promoting it,--there would still have been a vast step to take, no less than to persuade people to desire to follow the lines of conduct which tend to minimise unhappiness. The mere intellectual conviction that this or that will be useful is quite a different thing from the desire. You no more teach men to be moral by giving them a sound ethical theory, than you teach them to be good shots by explaining the theory of projectiles. A religion implies a philosophy, but a philosophy is not by itself a religion. The demand that it should be is, I hold, founded upon a wrong view as to the relation between the abstract theory and the art of conduct. To convert the world you have not merely to prove your theories, but to stimulate the imagination, to discipline the passions, to provide modes of utterance for the emotions and symbols which may represent the fundamental beliefs--briefly, to do what is done by the founders of the great religions. To transmute speculation into action is a problem of tremendous difficulty, and I only glance in the briefest way at its nature. We, I take it, as members of Ethical Societies, have no claim to be, even in the humblest way, missionaries of a new religion: but are simply interested in doing what we can to discuss in a profitable way the truths which it ought to embody or reflect. But that is itself a work of no trifling importance; and we may imagine that a Bentham, refreshed by his century's slumber, and having dropped some of his little personal vanities, would on the whole be satisfied with what he saw. If Bacon could again come to life, he too would find that the methods which he contemplated and the doctrines which he preached were narrow and refutive; yet his prophecies of scientific growth have been more than realised by his successors, modifying, in some ways, rejecting his principles. And so Bentham might hold to-day that, although his sacred formula was not so exhaustive or precise as he fancied, yet the conscious and deliberate pursuit of the happiness of mankind had taken a much more important place in the aspirations of the time. He would see that the vast changes which have taken place in society, vast beyond all previous conception, were bringing up ever new problems, requiring more elaborate methods, and more systematic reasoning. He would observe that many of the abuses which he denounced have disappeared, and that though progress does not take place along the precise lines which he laid down, there is both a clearer recognition of the great ends of conduct, and a general advance in the direction which he desired. That this can be carried on by promoting a free and full discussion of first principles; that the great social evils which still exist can be diminished, and the creed of the future, however dim its outlines may be to our perception, may be purified as much as possible from ancient prejudice and superstition, is our faith; and however little we can do to help in carrying out that process, we desire to do that little. SCIENCE AND POLITICS.[2] It is with great pleasure that I address you as president of this Society. Your main purpose, as I understand, is to promote the serious study of political and social problems in a spirit purged from the prejudice and narrowness of mere party conflict. You desire, that is, to promote a scientific investigation of some of the most important topics to which the human mind can devote itself. There is no purpose of which I approve more cordially: yet the very statement suggests a doubt. To speak of science and politics together is almost to suggest irony. And if politics be taken in the ordinary sense; if we think of the discussions by which the immediate fate of measures and of ministries is decided, I should be inclined to think that they belong to a sphere of thought to which scientific thought is hardly applicable, and in which I should be personally an unwarrantable intruder. My friends have sometimes accused me, indeed, of indifference to politics. I confess that I have never been able to follow the details of party warfare with the interest which they excite in some minds: and reasons, needless to indicate, have caused me to stray further and further away from intercourse with the society in which such details excite a predominant--I do not mean to insinuate an excessive--interest. I feel that if I were to suggest any arguments bearing directly upon home rule or disestablishment, I should at once come under that damnatory epithet "academical," which so neatly cuts the ground from under the feet of the political amateur. Moreover, I recognise a good deal of justice in the implied criticism. An active politician who wishes to impress his doctrines upon his countrymen, should have a kind of knowledge to which I can make no pretension. I share the ordinary feelings of awful reverence with which the human bookworm looks up to the man of business. He has faculties which in me are rudimentary, but which I can appreciate by their contrast to my own feebleness. The "knowledge of the world" ascribed to lawyers, to politicians, financiers, and such persons, like the "knowledge of the human heart" so often ascribed to dramatists and novelists, represents, I take it, a very real kind of knowledge; but it is rather an instinct than a set of definite principles; a power of somehow estimating the tendencies and motives of their fellow-creatures in a mass by rule of thumb, rather than by any distinctly assignable logical process; only to be gained by long experience and shrewd observation of men and cities. Such a faculty, as it reaches sound results without employing explicit definitions and syllogisms and inductive processes, sometimes inclines its possessors to look down too contemptuously upon the closet student. [2] Address to the Social and Political Education League, 29th March, 1892. While, however, I frankly confess my hopeless incapacity for taking any part in the process by which party platforms are constructed, I should be ashamed to admit that I was not very keenly interested in political discussions which seem to me to touch vitally important matters. And fully recognising the vast superiority of the practical man in his own world, I also hold that he should not treat me and my like as if we, according to the famous comparison, were black beetles, and he at the opposite pole of the universe. There exists, in books at least, such a thing as political theory, apart from that claiming to underlie the immediate special applications. Your practical man is given to appealing to such theories now and then; though I confess that he too often leaves the impression of having taken them up on the spur of the moment to round a peroration and to give dignity to a popular cry; and that, in his lips, they are apt to sound so crude and artificial that one can only wonder at his condescending to notice them. He ridicules them as the poorest of platitudes whenever they are used by an antagonist, and one can only hope that his occasional homage implies that he too has a certain belief that there ought to be, and perhaps may somewhere be, a sound theory, though he has not paid it much attention. Well, we, I take it, differ from him simply in this respect, that we believe more decidedly that such theory has at least a potential existence; and that if hitherto it is a very uncertain and ambiguous guide, the mere attempt to work it out seriously may do something to strengthen and deepen our practical political convictions. A man of real ability, who is actively engaged in politics without being submerged by merely political intrigues, can hardly fail to wish at least to institute some kind of research into the principles which guide his practice. To such a desire we may attribute some very stimulating books, such, for example, as Bagehot's _Physics and Politics_ or Mr. Bryce's philosophical study of the United States. What I propose to do is to suggest a few considerations as to the real value and proper direction of these arguments, which lie, as it were, on the borderland between the immediate "platform" and the abstract theory. Philosophers have given us the name "Sociology"--a barbarous name, say some--for the science which deals with the subject matter of our inquiries. Is it more than a name for a science which may or may not some day come into existence? What is science? It is simply organised knowledge; that part of our knowledge which is definite, established beyond reasonable doubt, and which achieves its task by formulating what are called "scientific laws". Laws in this sense are general formulæ, which, when the necessary data are supplied, will enable us to extend our knowledge beyond the immediate facts of perception. Given a planet, moving at a given speed in a given direction, and controlled by given attractive forces, we can determine its place at a future moment. Or given a vegetable organism in a given environment, we can predict within certain limits the way in which it will grow, although the laws are too obscure and too vague to enable us to speak of it with any approach to the precision of astronomy. And we should have reached a similar stage in sociology if from a given social or political constitution adopted by a given population, we could prophesy what would be the results. I need not say that any approximation to such achievements is almost indefinitely distant. Personal claims to such powers of prediction rather tend to bring discredit upon the embryo science. Coleridge gives in the _Biographia Literaria_ a quaint statement of his own method. On every great occurrence, he says, he tried to discover in past history the event that most nearly resembled it. He examined the original authorities. "Then fairly subtracting the points of difference from the points of likeness," as the balance favoured the former or the latter, he conjectured that the result would be the same, or different. So, for example, he was able to prophesy the end of the Spanish rising against Napoleon from the event of the war between Philip II. and the Dutch provinces. That is, he cried, "Heads!" and on this occasion the coin did not come down tails. But I need hardly point out how impossible is the process of political arithmetic. What is meant by adding or subtracting in this connection? Such a rule of three would certainly puzzle me, and, I fancy, most other observers. We may say that the insurrection of a patriotic people, when they are helped from without, and their oppressors have to operate from a distant base and to fight all Europe at the same time, will often succeed; and we may often be right; but we should not give ourselves the airs of prophets on that account. There are many superficial analogies of the same character. My predecessor, Professor Dicey, pointed out some of them, to confirm his rather depressing theory that history is nothing but an old almanac. Let me take a common one, which, I think, may illustrate our problem. There is a certain analogy between the cases of Cæsar, Cromwell, and Napoleon. In each case we have a military dictatorship as the final outcome of a civil war. Some people imagined that this analogy would apply to the United States, and that Washington or Grant would be what was called the man on horseback. The reasoning really involved was, in fact, a very simple one. The destruction of an old system of government makes some form of dictatorship the only alternative to chaos. It therefore gives a chance to the one indisputable holder of power in its most unmistakable shape, namely, to the general of a disciplined army. A soldier accordingly assumed power in each of the three first cases, although the differences between the societies ruled by the Roman, the English and the French dictators are so vast that further comparison soon becomes idle. Neither Washington nor Grant had the least chance of making themselves dictators had they wished, because the civil wars had left governments perfectly uninjured and capable of discharging all their functions, and had not produced a regular army with interests of its own. In this and other cases, I should say that such an analogy may be to some extent instructive, but I should certainly deny that there was anything like a scientific induction. We, happily, can reason to some extent upon political matters by the help of simple common sense before it has undergone that process of organisation, of reduction to precise measurable statements, which entitles it to be called a scientific procedure. The resemblance of Washington to Cromwell was of the external and superficial order. It may be compared to those analogies which exist between members of different natural orders without implying any deeper resemblance. A whale, we know, is like a fish in so far as he swims about in the sea, and he has whatever fishlike qualities are implied in the ability to swim. He will die on land, though not from the same causes. But, physiologically, he belongs to a different race, and we should make blunders if we argued from the external likeness to a closer resemblance. Or, to drop what may be too fanciful a comparison, it may be observed that all assemblies of human beings may be contrasted in respect of being numerous or select, and have certain properties in consequence. We may therefore make some true and general propositions about the contrasts between the action of small and large consultative bodies which will apply to many widely different cases. A good many, and, I think, some really valuable observations of this kind have been made, and form the substance of many generalisations laid down as to the relative advantages of democracy and aristocracy. Now I should be disposed to say that such remarks belong rather to the morphology than the physiology of the social organism. They indicate external resemblances between bodies of which the intimate constitution and the whole mode of growth and conditions of vitality, may be entirely different. Such analogies, then, though not without their value, are far from being properly scientific. What remains? There is, shall we say, no science of sociology--merely a heap of vague, empirical observations, too flimsy to be useful in strict logical inference? I should, I confess, be apt to say so myself. Then, you may proceed, is it not idle to attempt to introduce a scientific method? And to that I should emphatically reply, No! it is of the highest importance. The question, then, will follow, how I can maintain these two positions at once. And to that I make, in the first place, this general answer: Sociology is still of necessity a very vague body of approximate truths. We have not the data necessary for obtaining anything like precise laws. A mathematician can tell you precisely what he means when he speaks of bodies moving under the influence of an attraction which varies inversely as the square of the distance. But what are the attractive forces which hold together the body politic? They are a number of human passions, which even the acutest psychologists are as yet quite unable to analyse or to classify: they act according to laws of which we have hardly the vaguest inkling; and, even if we possessed any definite laws, the facts to which they have to be applied are so amazingly complex as to defy any attempt at assigning results. There is, so far as I can see, no ground for supposing that there is or ever can be a body of precise truths at all capable of comparison with the exact sciences. But this obvious truth, though it implies very narrow limits to our hopes of scientific results, does not force us to renounce the application of scientific method. The difficulty applies in some degree even to physiology as compared with physics, as the vital phenomena are incomparably more complex than those with which we have to deal in the simpler sciences; and yet nobody doubts that a scientific physiology is a possibility, and, to some extent, a reality. Now, in sociology, however imperfect it may be, we may still apply the same methods which have been so fruitful in other departments of thought. We may undertake it in the scientific spirit which depends upon patient appeal to observation, and be guided by the constant recollection that we are dealing with an organism, the various relations of whose constituent parts are determined by certain laws to which we may, perhaps, make some approximation. We may do so, although their mutual actions and reactions are so complex and subtle that we can never hope to disentangle them with any approach to completeness. And one test of the legitimacy of our methods will be, that although we do not hope to reach any precise and definitely assignable law, we yet reach, or aim at reaching, results which, while wanting in precision, want precision alone to be capable of incorporation in an ideal science such as might actually exist for a supernatural observer of incomparably superior powers. A man who knows, though he knows nothing more, that the moon is kept in its orbit by forces similar to or identical with those which cause the fall of an apple, knows something which only requires more definite treatment to be made into a genuine theory of gravitation. If, on the contrary, he merely pays himself with words, with vague guesses about occult properties, or a supposed angel who directs the moon's course, he is still in the unscientific stage. His theory is not science still in the vague, but something which stops the way to science. Now, if we can never hope to get further than the step which in the problem of gravitation represents the first step towards science, yet that step may be a highly important one. It represents a diversion of the current of thought from such channels as end in mere shifting sands of speculation, into the channel which leads towards some definite conclusion, verifiable by experience, and leading to conclusions, not very precise, but yet often pointing to important practical results. It may, perhaps, be said that, as the change which I am supposing represents only a change of method and spirit, it can achieve no great results in actual assignable truth. Well! a change of method and spirit is, in my opinion, of considerable importance, and very vague results would still imply an improvement in the chaos of what now passes for political philosophy. I will try to indicate very briefly the kind of improvement of which we need not despair. First of all, I conceive that, as I have indicated, a really scientific habit of thought would dispel many hopeless logomachies. When Burke, incomparably the greatest of our philosophical politicians, was arguing against the American policy of the Government, he expressed his hatred of metaphysics--the "Serbonian bog," as he called it, in which whole armies had been lost. The point at which he aimed was the fruitless discussion of abstract rights, which prevented people from applying their minds to the actual facts, and from seeing that metaphysical entities of that kind were utterly worthless when they ceased to correspond to the wants and aspirations of the peoples concerned. He could not, as he said, draw up an indictment against a nation, because he could not see how such troubles as had arisen between England and the Colonies were to be decided by technical distinctions such as passed current at _nisi prius_. I am afraid that the mode of reasoning condemned by Burke has not yet gone out of fashion. I do not wish to draw down upon myself the wrath of metaphysicians. I am perfectly willing that they should go on amusing themselves by attempting to deduce the first principles of morality from abstract considerations of logical affirmation and denial. But I will say this, that, in any case, and whatever the ultimate meaning of right and wrong, all political and social questions must be discussed with a continual reference to experience, to the contents as well as to the form of their metaphysical concepts. It is, to my mind, quite as idle to attempt to determine the value, say, of a political theory by reasoning independent of the character and circumstances of the nation and its constituent members, as to solve a medical question by abstract formulæ, instead of by careful, prolonged, and searching investigation into the constitution of the human body. I think that this requires to be asserted so long as popular orators continue to declaim, for example, about the "rights of man," or the doctrines of political equality. I by no means deny, or rather I should on due occasion emphatically assert, that the demands covered by such formulæ are perfectly right, and that they rest upon a base of justice. But I am forced to think that, as they are generally stated, they can lead to nothing but logomachy. When a man lays down some such sweeping principle, his real object is to save himself the trouble of thinking. So long as the first principles from which he starts are equally applicable,--and it is of the very nature of these principles that they should be equally applicable to men in all times and ages, to Englishmen and Americans, Hindoos and Chinese, Negroes and Australians,--they are worthless for any particular case, although, of course, they may be accidentally true in particular cases. In short, leaving to the metaphysicians--that is, postponing till the Greek Kalends--any decision as to the ultimate principles, I say that every political theory should be prepared to justify itself by an accurate observation of the history and all the various characteristics of the social organisation to which it is to be applied. This points to the contrast to which I have referred: the contrast between the keen vigorous good sense upon immediate questions of the day, to which I often listen with the unfeigned admiration due to the shrewd man of business, and the paltry little outworn platitudes which he introduces when he wants to tag his arguments with sounding principles. I think, to take an example out of harm's way, that an excellent instance is found in the famous American treatise, the _Federalist_. It deserves all the credit it has won so long as the authors are discussing the right way to form a constitution which may satisfy the wants and appease the prejudices then actually existing. In spite of such miscalculations as beset all forecasts of the future, they show admirable good sense and clear appreciation. But when they think it necessary to appeal to Montesquieu, to tag their arguments from common sense with little ornamental formulæ learnt from philosophical writings, they show a very amiable simplicity; but they also seem to me to sink at once to the level of a clever prize essay in a university competition. The mischief may be slight when we are merely considering literary effect. But it points to a graver evil. In political discussions, the half-trained mind has strong convictions about some particular case, and then finds it easiest to justify its conviction by some sweeping general principle. It really starts, speaking in terms of logic, by assuming the truth of its minor and takes for granted that any major which will cover the minor is therefore established. Nothing saves so much trouble in thinking as the acceptance of a good sounding generality or a self-evident truth. Where your poor scientific worker plods along, testing the truth of his argument at every point, making qualifications and reservations, and admitting that every general principle may require to be modified in concrete cases, you can thus both jump to your conclusion and assume the airs of a philosopher. It is, I fancy, for this reason that people have such a tendency to lay down absolute rules about really difficult points. It is so much easier to say at once that all drinking ought to be suppressed, than to consider how, in actual circumstances, sobriety can be judiciously encouraged; and by assuming a good self-evident law and denouncing your opponents as immoral worshippers of expediency, you place yourself in an enviable position of moral dignity and inaccessibility. No argument can touch you. These abstract rules, too, have the convenience of being strangely ambiguous. I have been almost pathetically affected when I have observed how some thoroughly commonplace person plumes himself on preserving his consistency because he sticks resolutely to his party dogmas, even when their whole meaning has evaporated. Some English radicals boasted of consistency because they refused to be convinced by experience that republicans under a military dictator could become tyrannous and oppressive. At the present day, I see many worthy gentlemen, who from being thorough-going individualists, have come to swallow unconsciously the first principles of socialism without the least perception that they have changed, simply because a new meaning has been gradually insinuated into the sacred formulæ. Scientific habits of thought, I venture to suggest, would tend to free a man from the dominion of these abstract phrases, which sometimes make men push absolute dogmas to extravagant results, and sometimes blind them to the complete transformation which has taken place in their true meaning. The great test of statesmanship, it is said, is the knowledge how and when to make a compromise, and when to hold fast to a principle. The tendency of the thoughtless is to denounce all compromise as wicked, and to stick to a form of words without bothering about the real meaning. Belief in "fads"--I cannot avoid the bit of slang--and singular malleability of real convictions are sometimes generated just by want of serious thought; and, at any rate, both phenomena are very common at present. This suggests another aspect of reasoning in a scientific spirit, namely, the importance which it attaches to a right comprehension of the practicable. The scientific view is sometimes described as fatalistic. A genuine scientific theory implies a true estimate of the great forces which mould institutions, and therefore a true apprehension of the limits within which they can be modified by any proposed change. We all remember Sydney Smith's famous illustration, in regard to the opposition to the Reform Bill, of Mrs. Partington's attempt to stop the Atlantic with her mop. Such an appeal is sometimes described as immoral. Many politicians, no doubt, find in it an excuse for immoral conduct. They assume that such and such a measure is inevitable, and therefore they think themselves justified for advocating it, even though they hold it to be wrong. Indeed, I observe that many excellent journalists are apparently unable to perceive any distinction between the assertion that a measure will be passed, and that it ought to be passed. Undoubtedly, if I think a measure unjust, I ought to say that it is unjust, even if I am sure that it will nevertheless be carried, and, in some cases, even though I may be a martyr to my opposition. If it is inevitable, it can be carried without my help, and my protest may at least sow a seed for future reaction. But this is no answer to the argument of Sydney Smith when taken in a reasonable sense. The opposition to the Reform Bill was a particular case of the opposition to the advance of democracy. The statement that democracy has advanced and will advance, is sometimes taken to be fatalistic. People who make the assertion may answer for themselves. I should answer, as I think we should all answer now, that the advance of democracy, desirable or undesirable, depended upon causes far too deep and general to be permanently affected by any Reform Bill. It was only one aspect of vast social changes which had been going on for centuries; and to propose to stop it by throwing out the Reform Bill was like proposing to stop a child's growth by forcing him to go on wearing his long clothes. Sydney Smith's answer might be immoral if it simply meant, don't fight because you will be beaten. It may often be a duty to take a beating. But it was, perhaps, rather a way of saying that if you want to stop the growth of democracy, you must begin by altering the course of the social, intellectual and moral changes which have been operating through many generations, and that unless you can do that, it is idle to oppose one particular corollary, and so to make a revolution inevitable, instead of a peaceful development. To say that any change is impossible in the absolute sense, may be fatalism; but it is simple good sense, and therefore good science, to say that to produce any change whatever you must bring to bear a force adequate to the change. When a man's leg is broken, you can't expect to heal it by a bit of sticking-plaster; a pill is not supposed, now, to be a cure for an earthquake; and to insist upon such facts is not to be fatalistic, but simply to say that a remedy must bear some proportion to an evil. It is a commonplace to observe upon the advantage which would have been gained if our grandfathers would have looked at the French Revolution scientifically. A terrible catastrophe had occurred abroad. The true moral, as we all see now, was that England should make such reforms as would obviate the danger of a similar catastrophe at home. The moral which too many people drew was too often, that all reforms should be stopped; with the result that the evils grew worse and social strata more profoundly alienated. It is a first principle of scientific reasoning, that a break-down of social order implies some antecedent defect, demanding an adequate remedy. It is a primary assumption of party argument, that the opposite party is wholly wrong, that its action is perfectly gratuitous, and either causeless or produced by the direct inspiration of the devil. The struggle, upon the scientific theory, represents two elements in an evolution which can be accomplished peacefully by such a reconstruction as will reconcile the conflicting aims and substitute harmony for discord. On the other doctrine, it is a conflict of hopelessly antagonistic principles, one of which is to be forcibly crushed. I hope that I am not too sanguine, but I cannot help believing that in this respect we have improved, and improved by imbibing some of the scientific doctrine. I think that in recent discussions of the most important topics, however bitter and however much distorted by the old party spirit, there is yet a clearer recognition than of old, that widely-spread discontent is not a reason for arbitrary suppression, but for seeking to understand and remove its causes. We should act in the spirit of Spinoza's great saying; and it should be our aim, as it was his care, "neither to mock, to bewail, nor to denounce men's actions, but to understand them". That is equally true of men's opinions. If they are violent, passionate, subversive of all order, our duty is not bare denunciations, but a clear comprehension of the causes, not of the ostensible reasons, of their opinions, and a resolution to remove those causes. I think this view has made some way: I am sure that it will make more way if we become more scientific in spirit; and it is one of the main reasons for encouraging such a spirit. The most obvious difficulty just now is one upon which I must touch, though with some fear and trembling. A terrible weapon has lately been coming into perfection, to which its inventors have given the elegant name of a "boom". The principle is--so far as I can understand--that the right frame of mind for dealing with the gravest problems is to generate a state of violent excitement, to adopt any remedy, real or supposed, which suggests itself at the moment, and to denounce everybody who suggests difficulties as a cynic or a cold-blooded egoist; and therefore to treat grave chronic and organic diseases of society by spasmodic impulses, to make stringent laws without condescending to ask whether they will work, and try the boldest experiments without considering whether they are likely to increase or diminish the evil. This, as some people think, is one of the inevitable consequences of democracy. I hope that it is not; but if it is, it is one of the inevitable consequences against which we, as cultivators of science, should most seriously protest, in the hope that we may some day find Philip sober enough to consider the consequences of his actions under the influence of spiritual intoxication. Professor Huxley, in one of those smart passages of arms which so forcibly illustrated his intellectual vigour, gave an apologue, which I wish that I could steal without acknowledgment. He spoke of an Irish carman who, on being told that he was not going in the right direction, replied that he was at any rate going at a great pace. The scientific doctrine is simply that we should look at the map before we set out for Utopia; and I think that a doctrine which requires to be enforced by every means in our power. This tendency, of course, comes out prominently in the important discussions of social and economic problems. That is a matter upon which I cannot now dwell, and which has been sufficiently emphasised by many eminent writers. If modern orators confined themselves to urging that the old economists exaggerated their claims to scientific accuracy, and were, in point of fact, guilty of many logical errors and hasty generalisations, I, at least, could fully agree with them. But the general impression seems to be, that because the old arguments were faulty, all argument is irrelevant: that because the alleged laws of nature were wrongly stated, there are no laws of nature at all; and that we may proceed to rearrange society, to fix the rate of wages or the rent of land or the incomes of capitalists without any reference at all to the conditions under which social arrangements have been worked out and actually carried on. This is, in short, to sanction the most obvious weakness of popular movements, and to assure the ignorant and thoughtless that they are above reason, and their crude guesses infallible guides to truth. One view which tries to give some plausibility to these assumptions is summed up in the now current phrase about the "masses" and the "classes". We all know the regular process of logical fence of the journalist, _i.e._, thrust and parry, which is repeated whenever such questions turn up. The Radical calls his opponent Tory and reactionary. The wicked Tory, it is said, thinks only of the class interest; believes that the nation exists for the sake of the House of Lords; lives in a little citadel provided with all the good things, which he is ready to defend against every attempt at a juster distribution; selfishness is his one motive; repression by brute force his only theory of government; and his views of life in general are those of the wicked cynics who gaze from their windows in Pall Mall. Then we have the roll of all the abuses which have been defended by this miscreant and his like since the days of George III.--slavery and capital punishment, and pensions and sinecures, and protection and the church establishment. The popular instinct, it is urged, has been in the right in so many cases that there is an enormous presumption in favour of the infallibility of all its instincts. The reply, of course, is equally obvious. Your boast, says the Conservative, that you please the masses, is in effect a confession that you truckle to the mob. You mean that your doctrines spread in proportion to the ignorance of your constituents. You prove the merits of your theories by showing that they disgust people the more they think. The Liberalism of a district, it has been argued, varies with the number of convictions for drunkenness. If it be easy to denounce our ancestors, it is also easy to show how they built up the great empire which now shelters us; and how, if they had truckled, as you would have us truckle, to popular whims, we should have been deprived of our commerce, our manufactures, and our position in the civilised world. And then it is easy to produce a list of all the base demagogues who have misled popular impatience and ignorance from the days of Cleon to those of the French Convention, or of the last disreputable "boss" bloated with corruption and the plunder of some great American city. This is the result, it is suggested, of pandering to the mob, and generally ostracising the intelligent citizen. I merely sketch the familiar arguments which any journalist has ready at hand, and, by a sufficient spice of references to actual affairs, can work up into any number of pointed leading articles. I will only observe that such arguments seem to me to illustrate that curious unreality of political theories of which I have spoken. It seems to be tacitly assumed on both sides, that votes are determined by a process of genuine reasoning. One side may be ignorant and the other prejudiced; but the arguments I have recapitulated seem to imply the assumption that the constituents really reflect upon the reasons for and against the measures proposed, and make up their minds accordingly. They are spoken of as though they were a body of experts, investigating a scientific doctrine, or at least a jury guided by the evidence laid before them. Upon that assumption, as it seems to me, the moral would be that the whole system is a palpable absurdity. The vast majority of voters scarcely think at all, and would be incapable of judging if they did. Hundreds of thousands care more for Dr. Grace's last score or the winner of the Derby than for any political question whatever. If they have opinions, they have neither the training nor the knowledge necessary to form any conclusion whatever. Consider the state of mind of the average voter--of nine men out of ten, say, whom you meet in the Strand. Ask yourselves honestly what value you would attach to his opinion upon any great question--say, of foreign politics or political economy. Has he ever really thought about them? Is he superficially acquainted with any of the relevant facts? Is he even capable of the imaginative effort necessary to set before him the vast interests often affected? And would the simple fact that he said "Yes" to a given question establish in your mind the smallest presumption against the probability that the right answer would be "No"? What are the chances that a majority of people, of whom not one in a hundred has any qualifications for judging, will give a right judgment? Yet that is the test suggested by most of the conventional arguments on both sides; for I do not say this as intending to accept the anti-democratic application. It is just as applicable, I believe, to the educated and the well-off. I need not labour the point, which is sufficiently obvious. I am quite convinced that, for example, the voters for a university will be guided by unreasonable prejudices as the voters for a metropolitan constituency. In some ways they will be worse. To find people who believe honestly in antiquated prejudices, you must go to the people who have been trained to believe them. An ecclesiastical seminary can manage to drill the pupils into professing absurdities from which average common sense would shrink, and only supply logical machinery for warring against reason. The reference to enlightened aristocracies is common enough; but I cannot discover that, "taken in a lump," any particular aristocracy cannot be as narrow-minded, short-sighted, and selfish, as the most rampant democracy. In point of fact, we all know that political action is determined by instinct rather than by reason. I do not mean that instinct is opposed to reason: it is simply a crude, undeveloped, inarticulate form of reason; it is blended with prejudices for which no reason is assigned, or even regarded as requisite. Such blind instincts, implying at most a kind of groping after error, necessarily govern the majority of men of all classes, in political as in other movements. The old apologists used to argue on the hypothesis that men must have accepted Christianity on the strength of a serious inquiry into the evidences. The fallacy of the doctrine is sufficiently plain: they accepted it because it suited them on the whole, and was fitted, no doubt, to their intellectual needs, but was also fitted to their emotional and moral needs as developed under certain social conditions. The inference from the general acceptance of any theory is not that it is true, but that it is true enough to satisfy the very feeble demand for logic--that it is not palpably absurd or self-contradictory; and that, for some reason or other, it satisfies also the imagination, the affections, and the aspirations of the believers. Not to go into other questions, this single remark indicates, I think, the attitude which the scientific observer would adopt in regard to this ancient controversy. He would study the causes as well as the alleged reasons assignable for any general instinct, and admit that its existence is one of the primary data which have to be taken into account. To denounce democracy or aristocracy is easy enough; and it saves trouble to assume that God is on one side and the devil on the other. The true method, I take it, is that which was indicated by Tocqueville's great book upon democracy in America; a book which, if I may trust my own impressions, though necessarily imperfect as regards America, is a perfectly admirable example of the fruitful method of studying such problems. Though an aristocrat by birth and breeding, Tocqueville had the wisdom to examine democratic beliefs and institutions in a thoroughly impartial spirit; and, instead of simply denouncing or admiring, to trace the genesis of the prevalent ideas and their close connection with the general state of social development. An inquiry conducted in that spirit would not lead to the absolute dogmatic conclusions in which the superficial controversialist delights. It would show, perhaps, that there was at least this much truth in the democratic contention, that the masses are, by their position, exempt from some of the prejudices which are ingrained in the members of a smaller caste; that they are therefore more accessible to certain moral considerations, and more anxious to promote the greatest happiness of the greater number. But it might also show how the weakness of the ignorant and untrained mind produces the characteristic evils of sentimentalism and impatience, of a belief in the omnipotence of legislation, and an excessive jealousy of all superiorities; and might possibly, too, exhibit certain merits which are impressed upon the aristocrat by his sense of the obligations of nobility. I do not in the least mean to express any opinion about such questions; I desire only to indicate the temper in which I conceive that they should be approached. I have lived long enough to be utterly unable to believe--though some older politicians than I seem still to believe, especially on the eve of a dissolution--that any of our party lines coincide with the lines between good and bad, wise and foolish. Every one, of course, will repudiate the abstract theory. Yet we may notice how constantly it is assumed; and can see to what fallacies it leads when we look for a moment at the historical questions which no longer unite party feeling. Few, indeed, even of our historians, can write without taking party views of such questions. Even the candid and impartial seem to deserve these epithets chiefly because they want imagination, and can cast blame or applaud alternately, because they do not enter into the real spirit of either party. Their views are sometimes a medley of inconsistent theories, rather than a deeper view which might reconcile apparent inconsistencies. I will only mention one point which often strikes me, and may lead to a relevant remark. Every royalist historian, we all know, labours to prove that Charles I. was a saint, and Cromwell a hypocrite. The view was natural at the time of the civil wars; but it now should suggest an obvious logical dilemma. If the monarchical theory which Charles represented was sound, and Charles was also a wise and good man, what caused the rebellion? A perfect man driving a perfect engine should surely not have run it off the rails. The royalist ought to seek to prove that Charles was a fool and a knave, to account for the collapse of royalty; and the case against royalty is all the stronger, if you could show that Charles, in spite of impeccable virtue, was forced by his position to end on the scaffold. Choose between him and the system which he applied. So Catholics and conservatives are never tired of denouncing Henry VIII. and the French revolutionists. So far as I can guess (I know very little about it), their case is a very strong one. I somehow believe, in spite of Froude, that Henry VIII. was a tyrant; and eulogies upon the reign of terror generally convince me that a greater set of scoundrels seldom came to the surface, than the perpetrators of those enormities. But then the real inference is, to my mind, very different. Henry VIII. was the product of the previous time; the ultimate outcome of that ideal state of things in which the church had its own way during the ages of truth. Must not the system have been wrong, when it had so lost all moral weight as to be at the mercy of a ruffianly plunderer? And so, as we all admit now, the strongest condemnation of the old French _régime_ is the fact that it had not only produced such a set of miscreants as those who have cast permanent odium even upon sound principles; but that its king and rulers went down before them without even an attempt at manly resistance. A revolution does not, perhaps, justify itself; it does not prove that its leaders judged rightly and acted virtuously: but, beyond a doubt, it condemns the previous order which brought it about. What a horrid thing is the explosion! Why, is the obvious answer, did you allow the explosive materials to accumulate, till the first match must fire the train? The greatest blot upon Burke, I need hardly say, is that his passions blinded him in his age, to this, as we now see, inevitable conclusion. The old-fashioned view, I fancy, is a relic of that view of history in which all the great events and changes were personified in some individual hero. The old "legislators," Lycurgus and Solon and the like, were supposed to have created the institutions which were really the products of a slow growth. When a favourable change due to economical causes took place in the position of the French peasantry, the peasants, says Michelet somewhere, called it "good king Henry". Carlyle's theory of hero worship is partly an application of the same mode of thought. You embody your principle in some concrete person; canonise him or damn him, as he represents truth or error; and take credit to yourself for insight and for a lofty morality. It becomes a kind of blasphemy to suggest that your great man, who thus stands for an inspired leader dropped straight out of heaven, was probably at best very imperfect, one-sided, and at least as much of a product as a producer. The crudity of the method is even regarded as a proof of its morality. Your common-place moralist likes to call everything black or white; he despises all qualifications as casuistical refinements, and plumes himself on the decisive verdict, saint or sinner, with which he labels the adherents and opponents of his party. And yet we know as a fact, how absurd are such judgments. We know how men are betrayed into bad causes from good motives, or put on the right side because it happens to harmonise with their lower interests. Saints--so we are told--have been the cruellest persecutors; and kings, acting from purely selfish ambition, have consolidated nations or crushed effete and mischievous institutions. If we can make up our minds as to which was, on the whole, the best cause,--and, generally speaking, both sides represented some sound principle,--it does not follow that it was also the cause of all the best men. Before we can judge of the individual, we must answer a hundred difficult questions: If he took the right side, did he take it from the right motives? Was it from personal ambition or pure patriotism? Did he see what was the real question at issue? Did he foresee the inevitable effect of the measures which he advocated? If he did not see, was it because he was human, and therefore short-sighted; or because he was brutal, and therefore wanting in sympathy; or because he had intellectual defects, which made it impossible for him to escape from the common illusions of the time? These, and any number of similar difficulties, arise when we try to judge of the great men who form landmarks in our history, from the time of Boadicea to that of Queen Victoria. They are always amusing, and sometimes important; but there is always a danger that they may warp our views of the vital facts. The beauty of Mary Queen of Scots still disqualifies many people from judging calmly the great issues of a most important historical epoch. I will leave it to you to apply this to our views of modern politics, and judge the value of the ordinary assumption which assumes that all good men must be on one side. Now we may say that the remedy for such illusions points to the importance of a doctrine which is by no means new, but which has, I think, bearings not always recognised. We have been told, again and again, since Plato wrote his _Republic_, that society is an organism. It is replied that this is at best an analogy upon which too great stress must not be laid; and we are warned against the fanciful comparisons which some writers have drawn between the body corporate and the actual physical body, with its cells, tissues, nervous system, and so forth. Now, whatever may be the danger of that mode of reasoning, I think that the statement, properly understood, corresponds to a simple logical canon too often neglected in historical and political reasonings. It means, I take it, in the first place, that every man is a product as well as a producer; that there is no such thing as the imaginary individual with fixed properties, whom theorists are apt to take for granted as the base of their reasoning; that no man or group of men is intelligible without taking into account the mass of instincts transmitted through their predecessors, and therefore without referring to their position in the general history of human development. And, secondly, it is essential to remember in speaking of any great man, or of any institution, their position as parts of a complicated system of actions and emotions. The word "if," I may say, changes its meaning. "If" Harold had won the battle of Hastings, what would have been the result? The answer would be comparatively simple, if we could, in the old fashion, attribute to William the Conqueror all the results in which he played a conspicuous part: if, therefore, we could make out a definite list of effects of which he was the cause, and, by simply "deducting" them, after Coleridge's fashion, from the effects which actually followed, determine what was the precise balance. But when we consider how many causes were actually in operation, how impossible it is to disentangle and separate them, and say this followed from that, and that other from something else, we have to admit that the might have been is simply indiscoverable. The great man may have hastened what was otherwise inevitable; he may simply have supplied the particular point, round which a crystallisation took place of forces which would have otherwise discovered some other centre; and the fact that he succeeded in establishing certain institutions or laws may be simply a proof that he saw a little more clearly than others the direction towards which more general causes were inevitably propelling the nation. Briefly, we cannot isolate the particular "cause" in this case, and have to remember at every moment that it was only one factor in a vast and complex series of changes, which would no doubt have taken a different turn without it, but of which it may be indefinitely difficult to say what was the precise deflection due to its action. In trying to indicate the importance, I have had to dwell upon the difficulty, of applying anything like scientific methods to political problems. I shall conclude by trying once more to indicate why, in spite of this, I hold that the attempt is desirable, and may be fruitful. People sometimes say that scientific methods are inapplicable because we cannot try experiments in social matters. I remember being long ago struck by a remark of Dr. Arnold, which has some bearing upon this assertion. He observed upon the great advantage possessed by Aristotle in the vast number of little republics in his time, each of which was virtually an experiment in politics. I always thought that this was fallacious somehow, and I fancy that it is not hard to indicate the general nature of the fallacy. Freeman, upon whose services to thorough and accurate study of history I am unworthy to pronounce an eulogy, fell into the same fallacy, I fancy, when he undertook to write a history of Federal Governments. He fancied that because the Achæan League and the Swiss Cantons and the United States of America all had this point in common, and that they represented the combinations of partially independent States, their history would be in a sense continuous. The obvious consideration that the federations differed in every possible way, in their religions and state of civilisation and whole social structure, might be neglected. Freeman's tendency to be indifferent to everything which was not in the narrowest sense political led him to this--as it seems to me--pedantic conception. If the prosperity of a nation depended exclusively upon the form of its government, Aristotle, as Arnold remarks, would have had before him a greater number of experiments than the modern observer. But the assumption is obviously wrong. Every one of these ancient States depended for its prosperity upon a vast number of conditions--its race, its geographical position, its stage of development, and so forth, quite impossible to tabulate or analyse; and the form of government which suited one would be entirely inapplicable to another. To extricate from all these conflicting elements the precise influence due to any institutions would be a task beyond the powers of any number of philosophers; and indeed the perplexity would probably be increased by the very number of experiments. To make an experiment fruitful, it is necessary to eliminate all the irrelevant elements which intrude into the concrete cases spontaneously offered by nature, and, for example, to obtain two cases differing only in one element, to which we may therefore plausibly attribute other contrasts. Now, the history of a hundred or a thousand small States would probably only present the introduction of new and perplexing elements for every new case. The influence, again, of individuals, or accident of war, or natural catastrophes, is greater in proportion as the State is smaller, and therefore makes it more difficult to observe the permanent and underlying influences. It seems to me, therefore, that the study, say of English history, where we have a continuous growth over many centuries, where the disturbing influences of individuals or chance are in a greater degree cancelled by the general tendencies working beneath them, we have really a far more instructive field for political observation. This may help us to see what are the kinds of results which may be anticipated from sociological study undertaken in a serious spirit. The growth, for example, of the industrial system of England is a profoundly interesting subject of inquiry, to which we are even now only beginning to do justice. Historians have admitted, even from the time of Hume, that the ideal history should give less of mere battles and intrigues, and more account of those deeper and more continuous processes which lie, so to speak, beneath the surface. They have hardly, I think, even yet realised the full bearing and importance of this observation. Yet, of late, much has been done, though much still remains to do, in the way of a truly scientific study of the development of institutions, political, ecclesiastical, industrial, and so forth, of this and other countries. As this tendency grows, we may hope gradually to have a genuine history of the English people; an account--not of the virtues and vices of Mary Queen of Scots, or arguments as to the propriety of cutting off Charles I.'s head--but a trustworthy account of the way in which the actual structure of modern society has been developed out of its simpler germs. The biographies of great kings and generals, and so forth, will always be interesting; but to the genuine historian of the future they will be interesting not so much as giving room for psychological analyses or for dramatic portraits, but as indications of the great social forces which produced them, and the direction of which at the moment may be illustrated by their cases. I have spoken of the history of our industrial system. To know what was the position of the English labourer at various times, how it was affected by the political changes or by the great mechanical discoveries, to observe what grievances arose, what remedies were applied or sought to be applied, and with what result,--to treat all this with due reference to the whole social and intellectual evolution of which it formed a part, may well call forth the powers of our acutest and most thoroughgoing inquirers, and will, when it is done, give essential data for some of the most vitally important problems of the day. This is what I understand by an application of the scientific spirit to social and political problems. We cannot try experiments, it is said, in historical questions. We cannot help always trying experiments, and experiments of vast importance. Every man has to try an experiment upon himself when he chooses his career; and the results are frequently very unpleasant, though very instructive. We have to be our own experiments. Every man who sets up in business tries an experiment, ending in fortune or in bankruptcy. Every strike is an experiment, and generally a costly one. Every attempt at starting a new charitable organisation, or a new system of socialism or co-operation, is an experiment. Every new law is an experiment, rash or otherwise. And from all these experiments we do at least collect a certain number of general observations, which, though generally consigned to copybooks, are not without value. What is true, however, is that we cannot try such experiments as a man of science can sometimes try in his laboratory, where he can select and isolate the necessary elements in any given process, and decide, by subjecting them to proper conditions, how a definite question is to be answered. Our first experiments are all in the rough, so to speak, tried at haphazard, and each involving an indefinite number of irrelevant conditions. But there is a partial compensation. We cannot tabulate the countless experiments which have been tried with all their distracting varieties. Yet in a certain sense the answer is given for us. For the social structure at any period is in fact the net product of all the experiments that have been made by the individuals of which it is and has been composed. Therefore, so far as we can obtain some general views of the successive changes in social order which have been gradually and steadily developing themselves throughout the more noisy and conspicuous but comparatively superficial political disturbances, we can detect the true meaning of some general phenomena in which the actors themselves were unconscious of the determining causes. We can see more or less what were the general causes which have led to various forms of associations, to the old guilds, or the modern factory system, to the trades unions or the co-operative societies; and correcting and verifying our general results by a careful examination of the particular instances, approximate, vaguely it may be and distantly, to some such conception of the laws of development of different social tissues as, if not properly scientific, may yet belong to the scientific order of thought. Thus, when distracted by this or that particular demand, by promises of the millennium to be inaugurated to-morrow by an Act of Parliament, or threats of some social cataclysm to overwhelm us if we concede an inch to wicked agitators, we may succeed in placing ourselves at a higher point of view, from which it is possible to look over wider horizons, to regard what is happening to-day in its relations to slow processes of elaboration, and to form judgments based upon wide and systematic inquiry, which, if they do not entitle us to predict particular events, as an astronomer predicts an eclipse, will at least be a guide to sane and sober minds, and suggest at once a humbler appreciation of what is within our power, and--I think also--a more really hopeful anticipation of genuine progress in the future. All scientific inquiry is an interrogation of nature. We have, in Bacon's grand sententious phrase, to command nature by obeying. We learn what are the laws of social growth by living them. The great difficulty of the interrogation is to know what questions we are to put. Under the guidance of metaphysicians, we have too often asked questions to which no answer is conceivable, like children, who in first trying to think, ask, why are we living in the nineteenth century, why is England an island, or why does pain hurt, or why do two and two make four? The only answer is by giving the same facts in a different set of words, and that is a kind of answer to which metaphysical dexterity sometimes gives an air of plausibility. More frequently our ingenuity takes the form of sanctioning preconceived prejudices, by wrapping up our conclusion in our premisses, and then bringing it out triumphantly with the air of a rigorous deduction. The progress of social science implies, in the first place, the abandonment of the weary system of hunting for fruitful truths in the region of chimeras, and trying to make empty logical concepts do the work of observation of facts. It involves, again, a clear perception of the kind of questions which can be profitably asked, and the limits within which an answer, not of the illusory kind, can really be expected. And then we may come to see that, without knowing it, we have really been trying a vast and continuous experiment, since the race first began to be human. We have, blindly and unconsciously, constructed a huge organism which does, somehow or other, provide a great many millions of people with a tolerable amount of food and comfort. We have accomplished this, I say, unconsciously; for each man, limited to his own little sphere, and limited to his own interests, and guided by his own prejudices and passions, has been as ignorant of more general tendencies as the coral insect of the reef which it has helped to build. To become distinctly conscious of what it is that we have all been doing all this time, is one step in advance. We have obeyed in ignorance; and as obedience becomes conscious, we may hope, within certain narrow limits, to command, or, at least, to direct. An enlarged perception of what have been the previous results may enable us to see what results are possible, and among them to select what may be worthy ends. It is not to be supposed that we shall ever get beyond the need of constant and careful experiment. But, in proportion as we can cultivate the right frame of mind, as each member of society requires wider sympathies and a larger horizon, it is permissible to hope that the experiments may become more intelligent; that we shall not, as has so often been done, increase poverty by the very remedies which are intended to remove it, or diverge from the path of steady progressive development, into the chase of some wild chimera, which requires for its achievement only the radical alteration of all the data of experience. "Annihilate space and time, and make two lovers happy," was the modest petition of an enthusiast; and he would probably have been ready to join in the prayer, "make all men angels, and then we shall have a model society". Although in saying this my immediate moral is to preach sobriety, I do not intend to denounce enthusiasm, but to urge a necessity of organising enthusiasm. I only recommend people not to venture upon flying machines before they have studied the laws of mechanics; but I earnestly hope that some day we may be able to call a balloon as we now call a cab. To point out the method, and to admit that it is not laborious, is not to discourage aspiration, but to look facts in the face: not to preach abandonment of enthusiasm, but to urge that enthusiasm should be systematic, should lead men to study the conditions of success, and to make a bridge before they leap the gulf. THE SPHERE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. There seem to be at present many conflicting views as to the nature of Political Economy. There is a popular impression that Political Economy, or, at any rate, the so-called "classical" doctrine, the doctrine which was made most definite by Ricardo, and accepted with modifications by J. S. Mill, is altogether exploded. Their main doctrines, it is suggested, were little better than mares' nests, and we may set aside their pretensions to have founded an exact science. What, then, is to come in its place? Are we simply to admit that there is no certainty about economical problems, and to fall back upon mere empiricism? Everything,--shall we say?--is to be regarded as an open question. That is, perhaps, a common impression in the popular mind. Yet, on the other hand, we may find some very able thinkers applying mathematical formulæ to economics; and that seems to suppose, that within a certain region they obtain results comparable in precision and accuracy to those of the great physical sciences. The topic is a very wide one; and it would be presumptuous in me to speak dogmatically. I wish, however, to suggest certain considerations which may, perhaps, be worth taking into account; and, as I must speak briefly, I must not attempt to supply all the necessary qualifications. I can only attempt to indicate what seems to me to be the correct point of view, and apologise if I appear to speak too dogmatically, simply because I cannot waste time by expressions of diffidence, by reference to probable criticisms, or even by a full statement of my own reasons. A full exposition would have to define the sphere of Political Economy by describing its data and its methods. What do we assume, and how do we reason? A complete answer to these questions would indicate the limits within which we can hope for valid conclusions. I will first refer, briefly, to a common statement of one theory advocated by the old-fashioned or classical school. Economic doctrine, they have said, supposes a certain process of abstraction. We have to do with what has been called the "economic man". He is not, happily, the real man. He is an imaginary being, whose sole principle of action is to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market: a man, more briefly, who always prefers a guinea--even a dirty guinea--to a pound of the cleanest. Economists reply to the remonstrances of those who deny the existence of such a monster, by adding that they do not for a moment suppose that men in general, or even tradesmen or stockbrokers, are in reality such beings,--mere money-making machines, stripped bare of all generous or altruistic sentiment--but simply that, as a matter of fact, most people do, _ceteris paribus_, prefer a guinea to a pound; and that so large a part of our industrial activity is carried on from motives of this kind, that we may obtain a fair approximation to the actual course of affairs by considering them as the sole motives. We shall not go wrong, for example, in financial questions, by assuming that the sole motive of speculators in the Stock Exchange is the desire to make money. Now, it is possible, perhaps, to justify this way of putting the case, by certain qualifications. I think, however, that, if strictly interpreted, it is apt to cover a serious fallacy. The "economic man" theory, we may say, assumes too much in one direction, and too little in another. It assumes too much if it is understood as implying that the desire for wealth is a purely selfish desire. A man may desire to make money in order simply to gratify his own sensual appetites. But he may also desire to be independent; and that may include a desire to do his part in the work of society, and probably does include some desire to relieve others of a burden. The wish to be self-supporting is not necessarily or purely "selfish". And obviously, too, one great motive in all such occupations is the desire to support a family, and one main inducement to saving is the desire to support it after your own death. Remove such motives, and half the impulses to regular industrial energy of all kinds would be destroyed. We must, therefore, give our "economic man" credit for motives referring to many interests besides those which he buttons into his own waistcoat. And therefore, too, as I have said, the assumption is insufficient. The very conception of economic science supposes all that is supposed, in the growth of a settled order of society. The purest type of the "economic man," as he is sometimes described, would be realised in the lowest savage, as sometimes described, who is absolutely selfish, who knocks his child on the head because it cries, and eats his aged parent if he cannot find a supply of roots. But such a being could only form herds, not societies. Political Economy only becomes conceivable when we suppose certain institutions to have been developed. It assumes, obviously, and in the first place, the institution of property; it becomes applicable, with less qualification, in proportion to the growth of the corresponding sentiments; it takes for granted all that highly elaborate set of instincts which induce me, when I want something, to produce an equivalent in exchange for it, instead of going out to take it by force. The more thorough the respect for property, the more applicable are rules of economics; and that respect implies a long training in that sense of other people's rights, which, unfortunately, is by no means so perfect as might be desired. It follows, then, that the economist really assumes more--and rightly assumes more--than he sometimes claims. He assumes what Adam Smith assumed at the opening of his great treatise: that is, the division of labour. But the division of labour implies the organisation of society. It implies that one man is growing corn while another is digging gold, because each is confident that he will be able to exchange the products of his own labour for the products of the other man's labour. This, of course, implies settled order, respect for contracts, the preservation of peace, and the abolition of force throughout the area occupied by the society. And this, again, is only possible in so far as certain political and ecclesiastical and military institutions have been definitely constructed. The economic assumption is really an assumption--not of a certain psychological condition of the average man, but--of the existence of a certain social mechanism. A complete science would clear up fully a problem which must occur often to all of us: How do you account for London? How is it that four or five millions of people manage to subsist on an area of a few square miles, which itself produces nothing? that other millions all over the world are engaged in providing for their wants? that food and clothes and fuel, in sufficient quantities to preserve life, are being distributed with tolerable regularity to each unit in this vast and apparently chaotic crowd? and that, somehow or other, we struggle on, well or ill, by the help of a gigantic commissariat, performing functions incomparably more complex than were ever needed for military purposes? The answer supposes that there is, as a matter of fact, a great industrial organisation which discharges the various functions of producing, exchanging, distributing, and so forth; and that its mutual relations are just as capable of being investigated and stated as the relations between different parts of an army. The men and officers do not wear uniforms; they are not explicitly drilled or subject to a definite code of discipline; and their rates of pay are not settled by any central authority. But there are capitalists, "undertakers" and labourers, merchants and retail dealers and contractors, and so forth, just as certainly as there are generals and privates, horse, foot, and artillery; and their mutual relations are equally definable. The economist has to explain the working of this industrial mechanism; and the thought may sometimes occur to us, that it is strange that he should find the task so difficult. Since we ourselves have made, or at any rate constitute, the mechanism, why should it be so puzzling to find out what it is? We are cooperating in a systematic production and distribution of wealth, and we surely ought not to find any impenetrable mystery in discovering what it is that we are doing every day of our lives. Certain economists writing within this century have often been credited with the discovery of the true theory of rent, or, which is equally good for my purpose, of starting a false theory. Yet landowners and agents had been letting farms and houses for generations; and surely they ought to have known what it was that they were themselves doing. One explanation of the difficulty is, that whereas an army is constituted by certain regulations of a central authority, the industrial army has grown up unconsciously and spontaneously. Its multitudinous members have only looked each at his own little circle; the labourer only thinks of his wages, and the capitalist of his profits, without considering his relations to the whole system of which he forms a part. The peasant drives his plough for wages, and buys his tea as if the tea fell like manna from the skies, without thinking of the curious relation into which he is thus brought with the natives of another hemisphere. The order which results from all these independent activities appeared to the older economists as an illustration of the doctrine of Final Causes. Providence had so ordered things that each man, by pursuing his own interests, pursued the interests of all. To a later school it appears rather as an illustration of the doctrine by which organisms are constructed through the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. In either case, it seems as though the mechanism were made rather for us than by us; that it is the product of conditions which we cannot control, instead of being an arrangement put together by conscious volitions. And, therefore, when the economist shows us what in fact are the existing arrangements and their mutual relations, he appears to be making a discovery of a scientific fact as much as if he were describing the anatomy of some newly-discovered animal or plant. The real assumption of the economist therefore is, as I think, simply the existence of a certain industrial organisation, which has a real existence as much as an army or a church; and there is no reason why his description should not be as accurate as the complexity of the facts allows. He is giving us the anatomy of society considered as a huge mechanism for producing and distributing wealth, and he makes an abstraction only in the sense that he is considering one set of facts at a time. The military writer would describe the constitution of an army without going into the psychological or political conditions which are of course implied, and without considering the soldiers in any other relations than those implied in their military services. In the same way, the economist describes the army of industry, and classifies its constituent parts. In order to explain their mutual relations, he has to make certain further assumptions, of which it would be rash to attempt a precise summary. He assumes as a fact, what has of course always been known, that scarcity implies dearness and plenty cheapness; that commodities flow to the markets where they will fetch the highest prices; that there is a certain gravitation towards equalisation of profits among capitalists, and of wages among labourers; so that capital or labour will flow towards the employments in which they will secure the highest reward. He endeavours to give the greatest accuracy to such formulæ, of which nobody, so far as I know, denies a certain approximate truth. So long as they hold good, his inferences, if logically drawn, will also hold good. They take for granted certain psychological facts, such as are implied in all statements about human nature. But the economist, as an economist, is content to take them for granted without investigating the ultimate psychological laws upon which they depend. Those laws, or rather their results, are a part of his primary data, although he may go so far into psychological problems as to try to state them more accurately. The selfishness or unselfishness of the economic man has to be considered by the psychologist or by the moralist; but the economist has only to consider their conclusions so far as they affect the facts. So long as it is true, for example, that scarcity causes dearness, that profits attract capital, that demand and supply tend to equalise each other, and so forth, his reasonings are justified; and the further questions of the ethical and psychological implications of these facts must be treated by a different science. The question of the play of economic forces thus generally reduces itself to a problem which may be thus stated: What are the conditions of industrial equilibrium? How must prices, rates of wages, and profit be related in order that the various classes concerned may receive such proportions of produce as are compatible with the maintenance of the existing system of organisation? If any specified change occurs, if production becomes easier or more difficult, if a tax be imposed, or a regulation of any kind affects previous conditions, what changes will be necessary to restore the equilibrium? These are the main problems of Political Economy. To solve, or attempt to solve them, we have to describe accurately the existing mechanism, and to suppose that it will regulate itself on the assumption which I have indicated as to demand and supply, the flow of capital and labour, and so forth. To go beyond these assumptions, and to justify them by psychological and other considerations, may be and is a most interesting task, but it takes us beyond the sphere of Economics proper. I must here diverge for a little, to notice the view of the school of economists which seems to regard scientific accuracy as attainable by a different path. Jevons, its most distinguished leader in England, says roundly, that political science must be a "mathematical science," because "it deals throughout with quantities"; and we have been since provided with a number of formulæ, corresponding to this doctrine. The obvious general reply would be, that Political Economy cannot be an exact science because it also deals throughout with human desires. The objection is not simply that our data are too vague. That objection, as Jevons says, would, perhaps, apply to meteorology, of which nobody doubts that it is capable of being made an exact science. But why does nobody doubt that meteorology might become an exact science? Because we are convinced that all the data which would be needed are expressible in precise terms of time and space; we have to do with volumes, and masses, and weights, and forces which can be exactly measured by lines; and, in short, with things which could be exactly measured and counted. The data are, at present, insufficiently known, and possibly the problems which would result might be too complex for our powers of calculation. Still, if we could once get the data, we could express all relevant considerations by precise figures and numbers. Now, is this true of economic science? Within certain limits, it is apparently true: Ricardo used mathematical formulæ, though he kept to arithmetic, instead of algebra. When Malthus spoke of arithmetical and geometrical ratios, the statement, true or false, was, of course, capable of precise numerical expression, so soon as the ratios were assigned. So there was the famous formula proving a relation between the number of quarters of corn produced by a given harvest, and the number of shillings that would be given for a quarter of corn. If, again, we took the number of marriages corresponding to a given price of corn, we should obtain a formula connecting the number of marriages with the number of quarters of corn produced. The utility of statistics, of course, depends upon the fact that we do empirically discover some tolerably constant and simple numerical formulæ. Such statistical statements are useful, indeed, not only in economical, but in other inquiries, which are clearly beyond the reach of mathematics. The proportion of criminals in a given population, the number of suicides, or of illegitimate births, may throw some light upon judicial and political, and even religious or ethical problems. Nor are such formulæ useless simply because empirical. The law of gravitation, for example, is empirical. Nobody knows the cause of the observed tendency of bodies to gravitate to each other, and therefore no one can say how far the law which represents the tendency must be universal. Still, the fact that, so far as we have observed, it is invariably verified, and that calculations founded upon it enable us to bring a vast variety of phenomena under a single rule, is quite enough to justify astronomical calculation. If, therefore, we could find a mathematical formula which was, as a matter of fact, verifiable in economical problems about prices, and so forth, we should rightly apply to mathematicians to help us with their methods. But, not only do we not find any such simple relations, but we can see conclusive reasons for being sure that we can never find them. Take, for example, the case of the number of marriages under given conditions. I need hardly say that it is impossible for the ablest mathematician to calculate whether the individual A will marry the individual B. But, by taking averages, and so eliminating individual eccentricities, he might discover that, in a given country and at a given time, a rise of prices will diminish marriages in certain proportion. Our knowledge of human nature is sufficient to make that highly probable. But our knowledge also shows that such a change will act differently in different cases: there will be one formula for France, and another for England; one for Lancashire, and another for Cornwall; one for the rich, and another for the poor; and both the total wealth of a country and its distribution will affect the rule. Differences of national temperament, of political and social constitution, of religion and ecclesiastical organisation, will all have an effect; and, therefore, a formula true here and now must, in all probability, fail altogether elsewhere. The formula is, in the mathematical phrase, a function of so many independent variables, that it must be complex beyond all conception, if it takes them all into account; while it must yet be necessarily inaccurate if it does not take them into account. But, besides this, the conditions upon which the law obviously depends are not themselves capable of being accurately defined, and still less of being numerically stated. Ingenious thinkers have, indeed, tried to apply mathematical formulæ to psychology; but they have not got very far; and it may, I think, be assumed, without further argument, that while you have to deal both with psychological and sociological elements, with human desires, and with those desires modified by social relations, it is impossible to find any data which can be mathematically stated. There is no arithmetical measure of the forces of love, or hunger, or avarice, by which (among others) the whole problem is worked out. It seems to me, therefore, that we must accept the alternative which is only mentioned to be repudiated by Jevons, namely, that Political Economy, if not a "mathematical science," must be part of sociology. I should say that it clearly is so; for if we wish to investigate the cause of any of the phenomena concerned, and not simply to tabulate from observations, we are at once concerned with the social structure and with the underlying psychology. The mathematical methods are quite in their place when dealing with statistics. The rise and fall of prices, and so forth, can be stated precisely in figures; and, whenever we can discover some approximation to a mathematical law (as in the cases I have noticed) we may work out the results. If, for example, the price of a commodity under certain conditions bears a certain relation to its scarcity, we can discover the one fact when the other fact is given, remembering only that our conclusions are not more certain than our premisses, and that the observed law depends upon unknown and most imperfectly knowable conditions. Such results, again, may be very useful in various ways, as illustrative of the way in which certain laws will work if they hold good; and, again, as testing many of our general theories. If you have argued that the price of gold or silver cannot be fixed, the fact that it has been fixed under certain conditions will of course lead to a revision of your arguments. But I cannot help thinking that it is an illusion to suppose that such methods can justify the assertion that the science as a whole is "mathematical". Nothing, indeed, is easier than to speak as if you had got a mathematical theory. Let _x_ mean the desire for marriage and _y_ the fear of want, then the number of marriages is a function of _x_ and _y_, and I can express this by symbols as well as by ordinary words. But there is no magic about the use of symbols. Mathematical inquiries are not fruitful because symbols are used, but because the symbols represent something absolutely precise and assignable. The highest mathematical inquiries are simply ingenious methods of counting; and till you have got something precise to count, they can take you no further. I cannot help thinking that this fallacy imposes upon some modern reasoners; that they assume that they have got the data because they have put together the formulæ which would be useful if they had the data; and, in short, that you can get more out of a mill than you put into it; or, in other words, that more conclusions than really follow can be got out of premisses, simply because you show what would follow if you had the required knowledge. When the attempt is made, as it seems to me to be made sometimes, to deduce economical laws from some law of human desire--as from the simple theorem that equal increments of a commodity imply diminishing amounts of utility--I should reply not only that the numerical data are vaguely defined and incapable of being accurately stated, but that the attempt must be illusory because the conclusions are not determinable from the premisses. The economic laws do not follow from any simple rule about human desires, because they vary according to the varying constitution of human society; and any conclusion which you could obtain would be necessarily confined to the abstract man of whom the law is supposed to hold good. Every such method, therefore, if it could be successful, could only lead to conclusions about human desire in general, and could throw no light upon the special problems of political economy, which essentially depend upon varying industrial organisation. I will not, however, go further. You must either, I hold, limit Political Economy to the field of statistical inquiry, or admit that, as a part of sociology, it deals with questions altogether beyond the reach of mathematics. Like physiology, it is concerned with results capable of numerical statement. The number of beats of the pulse, or the number of degrees of temperature of the body, are important data in physiological problems. They may be counted, and may give rise to mathematically expressible formulæ. But the fact does not excuse us from considering the physical conditions of the organs which are in some way correlated with these observed phenomena; and, in the case of Political Economy, we have to do with the social structure, which is dependent upon forces altogether incapable of precise numerical estimates. That, at least, is my view; and I shall apply it to illustrate one remark, which must, I think, have often occurred to us. Political Economy, that is, often appears to have a negative rather than a positive value. It is exceedingly potent--so, at least, I think--in dispersing certain popular fallacies; but it fails when we regard it as a science which can give us positive concrete "laws". The general reason is, I should say, that although its first principles may be true descriptions of facts, and any denial of them, or any inconsistent applications of them, may lead us into error, they are yet far from sufficient descriptions. They omit some considerations which are relevant in any concrete case; and the facts which they describe are so complex that, even when we look at them consistently and follow the right clue, we cannot solve the complicated problems which occur. It may be worth while to insist a little upon this, and to apply it to one or two peculiar problems. Let me start from the ordinary analogy. Economic inquiry, I have suggested, describes a certain existing mechanism, which exists as really as the physical structure described by an anatomist. The industrial organism has, of course, many properties of which the economist, as such, does not take account. The labourer has affections, and imaginations, and opinions outside of his occupation as labourer; he belongs to a state, a church, a family, and so forth, which affect his whole life, including his industrial life. Is it therefore impossible to consider the industrial organisation separately? Not more impossible, I should reply, than to apply the same method in regard to the individual body. Were I to regard my stomach simply as a bag into which I put my food, I should learn very little about the process of digestion. Still, it is such a bag, and it is important to know where it is, and what are its purely mechanical relations to other parts of the body. My arms and legs are levers, and I can calculate the pressure necessary to support a weight on the hand, as though my bones and muscles were made of iron and whipcord. I am a piece of mechanism, though I am more, and all the principles of simple mechanics apply to my actions, though they do not, by themselves, suffice to explain the actions. The discovery of the circulation of the blood explained, as I understand, my structure as a hydraulic apparatus; and it was of vast importance, even though it told us nothing directly of the other processes necessarily involved. In this case, therefore, we have an instance of the way in which a set of perfectly true propositions may, so to speak, be imbedded in a larger theory, and may be of the highest importance, though they are not by themselves sufficient to solve any concrete problem. We cannot, that is, deduce the physiological principles from the mechanical principles, although they are throughout implied. But those principles are not the less true and useful in the detection of fallacies. They may enable us to show that an argument supposes facts which do not exist; or, perhaps, that it is, at any rate, inconsistent because it assumes one structure in its premisses, and another in its conclusions. I state this by way of illustration: but the value of the remark may be best tested by applying it to some economical doctrines. Let us take, for example, the famous argument of Adam Smith against what he called the mercantile theory. That theory, according to him, supposed that the wealth of nations, like the wealth of an individual, was in proportion to the amount of money in their possession. He insisted upon the theory that money, as it is useful solely for exchange, cannot be, in itself, wealth; that its absolute amount is a matter of indifference, because if every coin in existence were halved or doubled, it would discharge precisely the same function; and he inferred that the doctrine which tested the advantages of foreign commerce by the balance of trade or the net return of money, was altogether illusory. His theory is expounded in every elementary treatise on the subject. It may be urged that it was a mere truism, and therefore useless; or, again, that it does not enable us to deduce a complete theory of the functions of money. In regard to the first statement, I should reply that, although Smith probably misrepresented some of his antagonists, the fallacy which he exposed was not only current at the time, but is still constantly cropping up in modern controversies. So long as arguments are put forward which implicitly involve an erroneous, because self-contradictory, conception of the true functions of money, it is essential to keep in mind these first principles, however obvious they may be in an abstract statement. Euclid's axioms are useful because they are self-evident; and so long as people make mistakes in geometry, it will be necessary to expose their blundering by bringing out the contradictions involved. As Hobbes observed, people would dispute even geometrical axioms if they had an interest in doing so; and, certainly, they are ready to dispute the plainest doctrines about money. The other remark, that we cannot deduce a complete theory from the axiom is, of course, true. Thus, for example, although the doctrine may be unimpeachable, there is a difficulty in applying it to the facts. As gold has other uses besides its use as money, its value is not regulated exclusively by the principle assigned; as other things, again, such as bank-notes and cheques, discharge some of the functions of money, we have all manner of difficult problems as to what money precisely is, and how the most elementary principles will apply to the concrete facts. A very shrewd economist once remarked, listening to a metaphysical argument, "If there had been any money to be made out of it, we should have solved that question in the city long ago". Yet, there is surely money to be made out of a correct theory of the currency; and people in the city do not seem to have arrived at a complete agreement. In fact, such controversies illustrate the extreme difficulty which arises out of the complexity of the phenomena, even where the economic assumption of the action of purely money-loving activity is most nearly verified. The moral is, I fancy, that while inaccurate conclusions are extremely difficult, we can only hope to approach them by a firm grasp of the first principles revealed in the simplest cases. Even in such a case, we have also to notice how we have to make allowance for the intrusion of other than purely economic cases. The doctrine just noticed is, of course, closely connected with the theory of free trade. The free trade argument is, I should mention, perfectly conclusive in a negative sense. It demonstrates, that is, the fallacy which lurks in the popular argument for protection. That argument belongs to the commonest class of economic fallacies, which consists in looking at one particular result without considering the necessary implications. The great advantage of any rational theory is, that it forces us to look upon the industrial mechanism as a whole, and to trace out the correlative changes involved in any particular operation. It disposes of the theories which virtually propose to improve our supply of water by pouring a cup out of one vessel into another; and such theories have had considerable success in economy. So far, in short, as a protectionist really maintains that the advantage consists in accumulating money, without asking what will be the effect upon the value of money, or that it consists in telling people to make for themselves what they could get on better terms by producing something to exchange for it, his arguments may be conclusively shown to be contradictory. Such arguments, at least, cannot be worth considering. But, to say nothing of cases which may be put by an ingenious disputant in which this may not quite apply, we have to consider reasons which may be extra-economical. When it is suggested, for example, that the economic disadvantage is a fair price for political independence; or, on the other hand, that the stimulus of competition is actually good for the trade affected; or, again, that protection tends naturally to corruption; we have arguments which, good or bad, are outside the sphere of economics proper. To answer them we have to enter the field of political or ethical inquiry, where we have to take leave of tangible facts and precise measures. This is a more prominent element as we approach the more human side (if I may so call it) of Political Economy. Consider, for example, the doctrine which made so profound an impression upon the old school--Malthus's theory of population. It was summed up in the famous--though admittedly inaccurate--phrase, that population had a tendency to increase in a geometrical ratio, while the means of subsistence increased only in an arithmetical ratio. The food available for each unit would therefore diminish as the population increased. The so-called law obviously states only a possibility. It describes a "tendency," or, in other words, only describes what would happen under certain, admittedly variable, conditions. It showed how, in a limited area and with the efficiency of industry remaining unaltered, the necessary limits upon the numbers of the population would come into play. If, then, the law were taken, or in so far as it was taken, to assert that, in point of fact, the population must always be increasing in civilised countries to the stage at which the lowest class would be at starvation level, it was certainly erroneous. There are cases in which statesmen are alarmed by the failure of population to show its old elasticity, and beginning to revert to the view that an increased rate is desirable. It cannot be said to be even necessarily true that in all cases an increased population implies, of necessity, increased difficulty of support. There are countries which are inadequately peopled, and where greater numbers would be able to support themselves more efficiently because they could adopt a more elaborate organisation. Nor can it be said with certainty that some pressure may not, within limits, be favourable to ultimate progress by stimulating the energies of the people. In a purely stationary state people might be too content with a certain stage of comfort to develop their resources and attain a permanently higher stage. Whatever the importance of such qualifications of the principle, there is a most important conclusion to be drawn. Malthus or his more rigid followers summed up their teaching by one practical moral. The essential condition of progress was, according to them, the discouragement of early marriages. If, they held, people could only be persuaded not to produce families until they had an adequate prospect of supporting their families, everything would go right. We shall not, I imagine, be inclined to dispute the proposition, that a certain degree of prudence and foresight is a quality of enormous value; and that such a quality will manifest itself by greater caution in taking the most important step in life. What such reasoners do not appear to have appreciated was, the immense complexity and difficulty of the demand which they were making. They seem to have fancied that it was possible simply to add another clause--the clause "Thou shalt not marry"--to the accepted code of morals; and that, as soon as the evil consequences of the condemned behaviour were understood,--properly expounded, for example, in little manuals for the use of school children,--obedience to the new regulation would spontaneously follow. What they did not see, or did not fully appreciate, was the enormous series of other things--religious, moral, and intellectual--which are necessarily implied in altering the relation of the strongest human passion to the general constitution, and the impossibility of bringing home such an alteration, either by an act of legislation or by pointing out the bearing of a particular set of prudential considerations. Political Economy might be a very good thing; but its expositors were certainly too apt to think that it could by itself at once become a new gospel for mankind. Should we then infer from such criticisms that the doctrine of Malthus was false, or was of no importance? Nothing would be further from my opinion. I hold, on the contrary, that it was of the highest importance, because it drew attention to a fact, the recognition of which was essential to all sound reasoning on social questions. The fact is, that population is not to be treated as a fixed quantity, but as capable of rapid expansion; and that this elasticity may at any moment require consideration, and does in fact give the explanation of many important phenomena. The main fact which gave importance to Malthus's writings was the rapid and enormous increase of pauperism during the first quarter of this century. The charitable and sentimental writers of the day were alarmed, but proposed to meet the evil by a reckless increase of charity, either of the official or the private variety. Pitt, we know, declared (though he qualified the statement) that to be the father of a large family should be a source of honour, not of obloquy; and the measures adopted under the influence of such notions did in fact tend to diminish all sense of responsibility, encouraged people to rely upon the parish for the support of their children, and brought about a state of things which alarmed all intelligent observers. The greatest check to the evil was given by the new Poor-law, adopted under the influence of the principles advocated by Malthus and his friends. His achievement, then, was not that he laid down any absolutely correct scientific truth, or even said anything which had not been more or less said by many judicious people before his time; but that he encouraged the application of a more systematic method of reasoning upon the great problem of the time. Instead of simply giving way to the first kindly impulse, abolishing a hardship here and distributing alms elsewhere, he substantially argued that society formed a complex organism, whose diseases should be considered physiologically, their causes explained, and the appropriate remedies considered in all their bearings. We must not ask simply whether we were giving a loaf to this or that starving man, or indulge in _à priori_ reasoning as to the right of every human being to be supported by others; but treat the question as a physician should treat a disease, and consider whether, on the whole, the new regulations would increase or diminish the causes of the existing evils. He did not, therefore, so much proclaim a new truth, as induce reformers to place themselves at a new and a more rational point of view. The so-called law of population which he announced might be in various ways inaccurate, but the announcement made it necessary for rational thinkers to take constantly into account considerations which are essential in any satisfactory treatment of the great problems. If it were right to consider pauperism as a gulf of fixed dimensions, we might hope to fill it by simply taking a sufficient quantity of wealth from the richer classes. If, as Malthus urged, this process had a tendency to enlarge the dimensions of the gulf itself, it was obvious that the whole problem required a more elaborate treatment. By impressing people with this truth, and by showing how, in a great variety of cases, the elasticity of the population was a most important factor in determining the condition of the people, Malthus did a great service, and introduced a more systematic and scientific method of discussing the immensely important questions involved. I will very briefly try to indicate one further application of economic principles. A critical point in the modern development of the study was marked by Mill's abandonment of the so-called "wage fund theory". That doctrine is now generally mentioned with contempt, as the most conspicuous instance of an entirely exploded theory. It is often said that it is either a falsity, or a barren truism. I am not about to argue the point, observing only that some very eminent Economists consider that it was rather inadequate than fallacious; and that to me it has always seemed that the theory which has really been confuted is not so much a theory which was ever actually held by Economists, as a formula into which they blundered when they tried to give a quasi-scientific definition of their meaning. It is common enough for people to argue sensibly, when the explicit statements of their argument may be altogether erroneous. At any rate, I think it has been a misfortune that a good phrase has been discredited; and that Mill's assailants, in exposing the errors of that particular theory of a "wage fund," seemed to imply that the whole conception of a "wage fund" was a mistake. For the result has been, that the popular mind seems to regard the amount spent in wages as an arbitrary quantity; as something which, as Malthus put it, might be fixed at pleasure by her Majesty's justices of the peace. Because the law was inaccurately stated, it is assumed that there is no law at all, and that the share of the labourers in the total product of industry might be fixed without reference to the effect of a change upon the general organisation. Now, if the wage fund means the share which, under existing circumstances, actually goes to the class dependent upon wages, it is of the highest importance to discover how that share is actually determined; and it does not even follow that a doctrine which is in some sense a truism may not be a highly important doctrine. One of the ablest of the old Economists, Nassan Senior, after laying down his version of the theory, observes that it is "so nearly self-evident" that if Political Economy were a new science, it might be taken for granted. But he proceeds to enumerate seven different opinions, some of them held by many people, and others by writers of authority, with which it is inconsistent. And, without following his arguments, this statement suggests what I take to be a really relevant defence of his reasons. At the time when the theory was first formulated, there were many current doctrines which were self-contradictory, and which could, therefore, best be met by the assertion of a truism. When the peace of 1815 brought distress instead of plenty, some people, such as Southey, thought it a sufficient explanation to say that the manufacturer had lost his best customer, because the Government wanted fewer guns and less powder. They chose to overlook the obvious fact that a customer who pays for his goods by taking money out of the pockets of the seller, is not an unmixed blessing. Then, there was the theory of general "gluts," and of what is still denounced as over-production. The best cure for commercial distress would be, as one disputant asserted, to burn all the goods in our warehouses. It was necessary to point out that this theory (when stated in superficial terms) regarded superabundance of wealth as the cause of universal poverty. Another common theory was the evil effect of manufacturers in displacing work. The excellent Robert Owen stated it as an appalling fact, that the cotton manufacture supplanted the labour of a hundred (perhaps it was two hundred) millions of men. He seems to assume that, if the machinery had not been there, there would still have been wages for the hundred millions. The curious confusion, indeed, which leads us to speak of men wanting work, when what we really mean is that they want wages, shows the tenacity of an old fallacy. Mandeville argued long ago that the fire of London was a blessing, because it set at work so many carpenters, plumbers, and glaziers. The Protestant Reformation had done less good than the invention of hooped petticoats, which had provided employment for so many milliners. I shall not insult you by exposing fallacies; and yet, so long as they survive, they have to be met by truisms. While people are proposing to lengthen their blankets by cutting off one end to sew upon the other, one has to point out that the total length remains constant. Now, I fancy that, in point of fact, these fallacies are often to be found in modern times. I read, the other day, in the papers, an argument, adduced by some advocate, on behalf of the Eight Hours Bill. He wished, he said, to make labour dear, and would therefore make it scarce. This apparently leads to the conclusion that the less people work the more they will get, which I take to be a fallacy. So, to mention nothing else, it is still apparently a common argument in favour of protection in America, that the native labourer requires to be supported against the pauperised labour of Europe. Americans in general are to be made richer by paying higher prices, and by being forced to produce commodities which they could get with less labour employed on the production of other things in exchange. I will not go further; for I think that no one who reads the common arguments can be in want of sufficient illustrations of popular fallacies. This, I say, is some justification for dwelling upon the contrary truisms. I admit, indeed, that even these fallacies may apply to particular cases in which they may represent partial truths; and I also agree that, as sometimes stated, the wage fund theory was not only a truism, but a fruitless truism. It was, however, as I believe, an attempt to generalise a very pertinent and important doctrine, as to the way in which the actual competition in which labourers and employers are involved, actually operates. If so, it requires rather modification than indiscriminate denunciation; and it is, I believe, so treated by the best modern Economists. I consider, then, that the Economists were virtually attempting to describe systematically the main relations of the industrial mechanism. They showed what were the main functions which it, in fact, discharges. Their theory was sufficient to expose many errors, especially those which arise from looking solely at one part of a complex process, and neglecting the implied reactions. It enabled them to point out the inconsistencies and actual contradictions involved in many popular arguments, which are still very far from being destroyed. Their main error--apart from any particular logical slips--was, namely, that when they had laid down certain principles which belong properly to the prolegomena of the science, and which are very useful when regarded as providing logical tests of valid reasoning, they imagined that they had done a great deal more, and that the desired science was actually constituted. They laid down three or four primary axioms, such as the doctrine that men desire wealth, and fancied that the whole theory could be deduced from them. This, if what I have said be true, was really to misunderstand what they were really doing. It was to suppose that you could obtain a description of social phenomena without examining the actual structure of society; and was as erroneous as to suppose that you could deduce physiological truths from a few general propositions about the mechanical relations of the skeleton. Such criticisms have been made by the historical school of Economists; and I, at least, can fully accept their general view. I quite agree that the old assumptions of the older school were frequently unjustifiable; nor can I deny that they laid them down with a tone of superlative dogmatism, which was apt to be very offensive, and which was not justified by their position. Moreover, I entirely agree that the progress of economic science, and of all other moral sciences, requires a historical basis; and that we should make a very great blunder if we thought that the creation of an economic man would justify us in dispensing with an investigation of concrete facts, both of the present day and of earlier stages of industrial evolution. But to this there is an obvious qualification. What do we mean by investigating facts? It seems to be a very simple rule, but it leads us at once to great difficulties. So, as Mill and later writers have very rightly asked, how are we to settle even the most obvious questions in inquiries where, for obvious reasons, we cannot make experiments, and where we have not such a set of facts as would spontaneously give us the truths which we might seek by experiment? Take, as Mill suggested, such a question as free trade. We cannot get two countries alike in all else, and differing only in respect to their adoption or rejection of a protective tariff. Anything like a thoroughgoing system of free trade has been tried in England alone; and the commercial prosperity of the country since its adoption has been affected by innumerable conditions, so that it is altogether impossible to isolate the results which are to be attributed to the negative condition of the absence of protection. Briefly, the result is that the phenomena with which we have to deal are so complex, and our power of arranging them so as to unravel the complexity is so limited, that the direct method of observation breaks down altogether. Mill confessed the necessity of applying a different method, which he described with great ability, and which substantially amounts to the method of the older Economists. If, with some writers of the historical school, we admit the objections which apply to this method, we seem to be reduced to a hopeless state of uncertainty. A treatise on Political Economy becomes nothing but a miscellaneous collection of facts, with no definite clue or uniform method of reasoning. I must beg, in conclusion, to indicate what, so far as I can guess, seems to be the view suggested in presence of this difficulty. If I am asked whether Political Economy, understood, for example, as Mill understood it, is to be regarded as a science, I should have to admit that I could not simply reply, Yes. To say nothing of any errors in his logic, I should say that I do not believe that it gives us sufficient guidance even in regard to economic phenomena. We could not, that is, deduce from the laws accepted by Economists the necessary working of any given measure--say, the effect of protection or free trade, or, still more, the making of a poor-law system. Such problems involve elements of which the Economist, purely as an Economist, is an incompetent judge; and the further we get from those questions in which purely economical considerations are dominant, towards those in which other factors become relevant,--from questions as to currency, for example, to questions as to the relations of capitalists and labourers,--the greater the inadequacy of our methods. But I also hold that Political Economists may rightly claim a certain scientific character for their speculations. If their ultimate aim is to frame a science of economics which shall be part of the science--not yet constituted--of sociology, then I should say that what they have really done--so far as they have reasoned accurately--has been to frame an essential part of the prolegomena to such a science. The "laws" which they have tried to formulate are not laws which, even if established, would enable us to predict the results of any given action; but they are laws which would have to be taken into account in attempting any such prediction. And this is so, I think, because the laws are descriptions--within limits accurate descriptions--of actually existing facts as to the social mechanism. They are not mere abstract hypotheses, in the sense sometimes attached to that phrase; but accounts of the plan upon which the industrial arrangements of civilised countries are, as a matter of fact, constructed. Such a classification and systematic account of facts is, as I should suggest, absolutely necessary for any sound historical method. Facts are not simply things lying about, which anybody can pick up and describe for the mere pains of collecting them. We cannot even see a fact without reflection and observation and judgment; and to arrange them in an order which shall be both systematic and fruitful, to look at them from that point of view in which we can detect the general underlying principles, is, in all cases, an essential process before we can begin to apply a truly historical method. Anything, it is said, may be proved by facts; and that is painfully true until we have the right method of what has been called "colligating" facts. The Catholic and the Protestant, the Conservative and the Radical, the Individualist and the Socialist, have equal facility in proving their own doctrines with arguments, which habitually begin, "All history shows". Printers should be instructed always to strike out that phrase as an erratum; and to substitute, "I choose to take for granted". In order to judge between them we have to come to some conclusion as to what is the right method of conceiving of history, and probably to try many methods before reaching that which arranges the shifting and complicated chaos of phenomena in something like an intelligible order. A first step and a necessary basis, as I believe, for all the more complex inquiries will have to be found by disentangling the various orders of laws (if I may so speak), and considering by themselves those laws of industrial growth which are nearest to the physical sciences in certain respects, and which, within certain limits, can be considered apart, inasmuch as they represent the working of forces which are comparatively independent of forces of a higher order. What I should say for Political Economists is that they have done a good deal in this direction; that they have explained, and, I suppose, with considerable accuracy, what is the actual nature of the industrial mechanism; that they have explained fairly its working in certain cases where the economic are practically also the sole or dominant motives; and that they have thus laid down certain truths which require attention even when we take into account the play of other more complex and, as we generally say, higher motives. We may indeed hope and believe that society will ultimately be constituted upon a different system; and that for the organisation which has spontaneously and unconsciously developed itself, another will be substituted which will correspond more closely to some principles of justice, and give freer scope for the full development of the human faculties. That is a very large question: I only say that, in any case, all genuine progress consists in a development of institutions already existing, and therefore that a full understanding of the working of the present system is essential to a rational consideration of possible improvements. The Socialist may look forward to a time--let us hope that it may come soon!--when nobody will have any grievances. But his schemes will be the better adapted for the realisation of his hopes in proportion as he has fully understood what is the part played by each factor of the existing system; what is its function, and how that function may be more efficiently discharged by any substitute. Only upon that condition can he avoid the common error of inventing some scheme which is in sociology what schemes for perpetual motion are in mechanics; plans for making everything go right by condemning some existing portion of the system without fully understanding how it has come into existence, and what is the part which it plays in the whole. I think myself that a study of the good old orthodox system of Political Economy is useful in this sense, even where it is wrong; because at least it does give a system, and therefore forces its opponents to present an alternative system, instead of simply cutting a hole in the shoe when it pinches, or striking out the driving wheel because it happens to creak unpleasantly. And I think so the more because I cannot but observe that whenever a real economic question presents itself, it has to be argued on pretty much the old principles, unless we take the heroic method of discarding argument altogether. I should be the last to deny that the old Political Economy requires careful revision and modification, and equally slow to deny that the limits of its applicability require to be carefully defined. But, with these qualifications, I say, with equal conviction, that it does lay down principles which require study and consideration, for the simple reason that they assert the existence of facts which are relevant and important in all the most vitally interesting problems of to-day. THE MORALITY OF COMPETITION. When it has occurred to me to say--as I have occasionally said--that, to my mind, the whole truth lies neither with the individualist nor with his antagonist, my friends have often assured me that I was illogical. Of two contradictory principles, they say, you must take one. There are cases, I admit, in which this remark applies. It is true, or it is not true, that two and two make four. We cannot, in arithmetic, adopt Sir Roger de Coverley's conciliatory view, that there is much to be said on both sides. But this logical rule supposes that, in point of fact, the two principles apply to the same case, and are mutually exclusive. I also think that the habit of taking for granted that social problems are reducible to such an alternative, is the source of innumerable fallacies. I hold that, as a rule, any absolute solution of such problems is impossible; and that a man who boasts of being logical, is generally announcing his deliberate intention to be one-sided. He is confusing the undeniable canon that of two contradictory propositions one must be true, with the assumption that two propositions are really contradictory. The apparent contradiction may be illusory. Society, says the individualist, is made up of all its members. Certainly: if all Englishmen died, there would be no English race. But it does not follow that every individual Englishman is not also the product of the race. Society, says the Socialist, is an organic whole. I quite admit the fact; but it does not follow that, as a whole, it has any qualities or aims independent of the qualities and aims of the constituent parts. Metaphysicians have amused themselves, in all ages, with the puzzle about the many and the one. Perhaps they may find contradictions in the statement that a human society is both one and many; a unit and yet complex; but I am content to assume that unless we admit the fact, we shall get a very little way in sociology. Society, we say, is an organism. That implies that every part of a society is dependent upon the other parts, and that although, for purposes of argument, we may find it convenient to assume that certain elements remain fixed while others vary, we must always remember that this is an assumption which, in the long run, never precisely corresponds to the facts. We may, for example, in economical questions, attend simply to the play of the ordinary industrial machinery, without taking into account the fact that the industrial machinery is conditioned by the political and ecclesiastical constitution, by the whole social order, and, therefore, by the acceptance of corresponding ethical, or philosophical or scientific creeds. The method is justifiable so long as we remember that we are using a logical artifice; but we blunder if we take our hypothesis for a full statement of the actual facts. We are then tempted, and it is, perhaps, the commonest of all sources of error in such inquiries, to assume that conditions are absolute which are really contingent; or, to attend only to the action, without noticing the inevitable reactions of the whole system of institutions. And I would suggest, that from this follows a very important lesson in such inquiries. To say that this or that part of a system is bad, is to say, by implication, that some better arrangement is possible consistently with our primary assumptions. In other words, we cannot rationally propose simply to cut out one part of a machine, dead or living, without considering the effect of the omission upon all the other dependent parts. The whole system is necessarily altered. What, we must therefore ask, is the tacit implication as well as what is the immediate purpose of a change? May not the bad effect be a necessary part of the system to which we also owe the good; or necessary under some conditions? It is always, therefore, a relevant question, what is the suggested alternative? We can then judge whether the removal of a particular evil is or is not to be produced at a greater cost than it is worth; whether it would be a process, say, of really curing a smoky chimney or of stopping the chimney altogether, and so abolishing not only the smoke but the fire. I propose to apply this to the question of "competition". Competition is frequently denounced as the source of social evils. The complaint is far from a new one. I might take for my text a passage from J. S. Mill's famous chapter on the probable future of the labouring classes. Mill, after saying that he agrees with the Socialists in their practical aims, declares his utter dissent from their declamations against competition. "They forget," he says, "that where competition is not, monopoly is; and that monopoly, in all its forms, is the taxation of the industrious for the support of indolence, if not of plunder." That suggests my question: If competition is bad, what is good? What is the alternative to competition? Is it, as Mill says, monopoly, or is any third choice possible? If it is monopoly, do you defend monopoly, or only monopoly in some special cases? I opened, not long ago, an old book of caricatures, in which the revolutionary leader is carrying a banner with the double inscription, "No monopoly! No competition!" The implied challenge--how can you abolish both?--seemed to me to require a plain answer. Directly afterwards I then took up the newspaper, and read the report of an address upon the prize-day of a school. The speaker dwelt in the usual terms upon the remorseless and crushing competition of the present day, which he mentioned as an incitement to every boy to get a good training for the struggle. The moral was excellent; but it seemed to me curious that the speaker should be denouncing competition in the very same breath with proofs of its influence in encouraging education. When I was a lad, a clever boy and a stupid boy had an equal chance of getting an appointment to a public office. The merit which won a place might be relationship to a public official, or perhaps to a gentleman who had an influence in the constituency of the official. The system was a partial survival of the good old days in which, according to Sam Weller, the young nobleman got a position because his mother's uncle's wife's grandfather had once lighted the King's pipe. The nobleman, I need hardly add, considered this as an illustration of the pleasant belief, "Whatever is, is right". As we had ceased to accept that opinion in politics, offices were soon afterwards thrown open to competition, with the general impression that we were doing justice and opening a career to merit. That the resulting system has grave defects is, I think, quite undeniable; but so far as it has succeeded in determining that the men should be selected for public duty, for their fitness, and for nothing else, it is surely a step in advance which no one would now propose to retrace. And yet it was simply a substitution of competition for monopoly. As it comes into wider operation, some of us begin to cry out against competition. The respectable citizen asks, What are we to do with our boys? The obvious reply is, that he really means, What are we to do with our fools? A clever lad can now get on by his cleverness; and of course those who are not clever are thrust aside. That is a misfortune, perhaps, for them; but we can hardly regard it as a misfortune for the country. And clearly, too, pressure of this kind is likely to increase. We have come to believe that it is a main duty of the nation to provide general education. When the excellent Miss Hannah More began to spread village schools, she protested warmly that she would not teach children anything which would tend to make the poor discontented with their station. They must learn to read the Bible, but she hoped that they would stop short of such knowledge as would enable them to read Tom Paine. Now, Hannah More deserves our gratitude for her share in setting the ball rolling; but it has rolled far beyond the limits she would have prescribed. We now desire not only that every child in the country should be able to acquire the elements of learning at least; but, further, we hope that ladders may be provided by which every promising child may be able to climb beyond the elements, and to acquire the fullest culture of which his faculties are capable. There is not only no credit at the present day in wishing so much, but it is discreditable not to do what lies in one's power to further its accomplishment. But, then, is not that to increase enormously the field of competition? I, for example, am a literary person, after a fashion; I have, that is, done something to earn a living by my pen. I had the advantage at starting of belonging to the small class which was well enough off to send its children to the best schools and universities. That is to say, I was one of the minority which had virtually a monopoly of education, and but for that circumstance I should in all probability have taken to some possibly more honest, but perhaps even worse paid, occupation. Every extension of the margin of education, everything which diffuses knowledge and intellectual training through a wider circle, must increase the competition among authors. If every man with brains, whether born in a palace or a cottage is to have a chance of making the best of them, the capacity for authorship, and therefore the number of competitors, will be enormously spread. It may also, we will hope, increase the demand for their work. The same remark applies to every profession for which intellectual culture is a qualification. Do we regret the fact? Would we sentence three-quarters of the nation to remain stupid, in order that the fools in the remaining quarter may have a better chance? That would be contrary to every democratic instinct, to the highest as well as the lowest. But if I say, every office and every profession shall be open to every man; success in it shall depend upon his abilities and merits; and, further, every child in the country shall have the opportunity of acquiring the necessary qualifications, what is that but to accept and to stimulate the spirit of competition? What, I ask, is the alternative? Should people be appointed by interest? Or is nobody to be anxious for official or professional or literary or commercial success, but only to develop his powers from a sense of duty, and wait till some infallible observer comes round and says, "Friend, take this position, which you deserve"? Somehow I do not think that last scheme practicable at present. But, even in that case, I do not see how the merits of any man are to be tested without enabling him to prove by experiment that he is the most meritorious person; and, if that be admitted, is not every step in promoting education, in equalising, therefore, the position from which men start for the race, a direct encouragement to competition? Carlyle was fond of saying that Napoleon's great message to mankind was the declaration that careers should be open to talent, or the tools given to him who could use them. Surely that was a sound principle; and one which, so far as I can see, cannot be applied without stimulating competition. The doctrine, indeed, is unpalatable to many Socialists. To me, it seems to be one to which only the cowardly and the indolent can object in principle. Will not a society be the better off, in which every man is set to work upon the tasks for which he is most fitted? If we allowed our teaching and our thinking to be done by blockheads; our hard labour to be done by men whose muscles were less developed than their brains; made our soldiers out of our cowards, and our sailors out of the sea-sick,--should we be better off? It seems, certainly, to me, that whatever may be the best constitution of society, one mark of it will be the tendency to distribute all social functions according to the fitness of the agents; to place trust where trust is justifiable, and to give the fullest scope for every proved ability, intellectual, moral, and physical. Of course, such approximation to this result, as we can observe in the present order of things, is very imperfect. Many of the most obvious evils in the particular system of competition now adopted, may be summed up in the statement, that the tests according to which success is awarded, are not so contrived as to secure the success of the best competitors. Some of them, for example, are calculated to give an advantage to the superficial and the showy. But that is to say that they are incompatible with the true principle which they were intended to embody; and that we should reform our method, not in the direction of limiting competition, but in the direction of so framing our system that it may be a genuine application of Carlyle's doctrine. In other words, in all the professions for which intellectual excellence is required, the conditions should be such as to give the best man the best chance, as far as human arrangements can secure that object. What other rule can be suggested? Competition, in this sense, means the preservation of the very atmosphere which is necessary to health; and to denounce it is either to confirm the most selfish and retrograde principles, or to denounce something which is only called competition by a confusion of ideas. How easy such a confusion may be, is obvious when we look at the ordinary language about industrial competition. We are told that wages are kept down by competition. To this Mill replied in the passage I have quoted, and, upon his own theory, at any rate, replied with perfect justice, that they were also kept up by competition. The common language upon the subject is merely one instance of the fallacies into which men fall when they personify an abstraction. Competition becomes a kind of malevolent and supernatural being, to whose powers no conceivable limits are assigned. It is supposed to account for any amount of degradation. Yet if, by multiplying their numbers, workmen increase supply, and so lower the price of labour, it follows, conversely, by the very same reasoning, that if they refused to multiply, they would diminish the supply and raise the price. The force, by its very nature, operates as certainly in one direction as in the other. If, again, there is competition among workmen, there is competition among capitalists. In every strike, of course, workmen apply the principle, and sometimes apply it very effectually, in the attempt to raise their wages. It was often argued, indeed, that in this struggle, the employer possessed advantages partly due to his power of forming tacit combinations. The farmers in a parish, or the manufacturers in a business, were pledged to each other not to raise the rate of wages. If that be so, you again complain, not of competition, but of the want of competition; and you agree that the labourer will benefit, as in fact, I take it, he has undoubtedly benefited, by freer competition among capitalists, or by the greater power of removing his own labour to better markets. In such cases, the very meaning of the complaint is not that there is competition, but that the competition is so arranged as to give an unfair advantage to one side. And a similar misunderstanding is obviously implied in other cases. The Australian or American workman fears that his wages will be lowered by the competition of the Chinese; and the Englishman protests against the competition of pauper aliens. Let us assume that he is right in believing that such competition will tend to lower his wages, whatever the moral to be drawn from the fact. Briefly, denunciations of "competition" in this sense are really complaints that we do not exclude the Chinese immigrant and therefore give a monopoly to the native labourer. That may be a good thing for him, and if it be not a good thing for the Chinaman who is excluded from the field, we perhaps do not care very much about the results to China. We are so much better than the heathen that we need not bother about their interests. But, of course, the English workman, when he complains of the intensity of competition, does not propose to adopt the analogous remedy of giving a monopoly to one section of our own population. The English pauper is here; we do not want to suppress him, but only to suppress his pauperism; and he certainly cannot be excluded from any share in the fund devoted to the support of labour. The evil, therefore, of which we complain is primarily the inadequacy of the support provided, not,--though that may also be complained of,--the undesirable method by which those funds are distributed. In other words, the complaint may so far be taken to mean that there are too many competitors, not that, given the competitors, their shares are determined by competition, instead of being determined by monopoly or by some other principle. We have therefore to inquire whether any principle can be suggested which will effect the desired end, and which will yet really exclude competition. The popular suggestion is that the remedy lies in suppressing competition by equalising the prizes. If no prizes are to be won, there will so far be less reason for competing. Enough may be provided for all by simply taking something from those who have too much. Now, I may probably assume that we all agree in approving the contemplated end--a greater equality of wealth, and especially an elevation of the lower classes to a higher position in the scale of comfort. Every social reformer, whatever his particular creed, would probably agree that some of us are too rich, and that a great many are too poor. But we still have to ask, in what sense it is conceivable that a real suppression of competition can contribute to the desired end. It is obvious that when we denounce competition we often mean not that it is to be abolished, but that it is to be regulated and limited in its application. So, for example, people sometimes speak as if competition were the antithesis to co-operation. But I need hardly say that individualists, as well as their opponents, may legitimately sing the praises of co-operation. Nobody was more forward than Mill, for example, and Mill's followers, in advocating the principles of the early co-operative societies. He and they rejoiced to believe that the co-operative societies had revealed unsuspected virtues and capacities in the class from which they sprang; that they had done much to raise the standard of life and to extend sympathy and human relations among previously disconnected units of society. But it is, of course, equally obvious that they have grown up in a society which supposes free competition in every part of its industrial system; that co-operative societies, so far as the outside world is concerned, have to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market; that the rate of wages of their members is still fixed by competition; and that they encourage habits of saving and forethought which presuppose that each man is to have private ends of his own. In what sense, then, can co-operation ever be regarded as really opposed to competition? Competition may exist among groups of men just as much as among individuals: a state of war is not less a state of war if it is carried on by regiments and armies, instead of by mere chaotic struggles in which each man fights for his own hand. Competition does not mean that there should be no combination, but that there should be no monopoly. So long as a trade or a profession is open to every one who chooses to take it up, its conduct will be equally regulated by competition, whether it be competition as between societies or individuals, or whether its profits be divided upon one system or another between the various classes concerned. Co-operators, of course, may look forward to a day in which society at large will be members of a single co-operative society; or, again, to a time in which every industrial enterprise may be conducted by the State. Supposing any such aspiration to be realised, the question still remains, whether they would amount to the abolition or still only to the shifting of the incidence of competition. Socialists tell us that hitherto the labourer has not had his fair share of the produce of industry. The existing system has sanctioned a complicated chicanery, by which one class has been enabled to live as mere bloodsuckers and parasites upon the rest of society. Property is the result of theft, instead of being, as Economists used to assure us, the reward of thrift. It is hoped that these evils may be remedied by a reconstruction of society, in which the means of production shall all be public property, and every man's income be simply a salary in proportion to the quantity of his labour. If we, then, ask how far competition would be abolished, we may first make one remark. Such a system, like every other system, requires, for its successful working, that the instincts and moral impulses should correspond to the demands of the society. Absolute equality of property is just as compatible with universal misery as with universal prosperity. A population made up of thoroughly lazy, sensual, stupid individuals could, if it chose, work such a machinery so as to suppress all who were industrious, refined and intelligent. However great may be the revenue of a nation, it is a very simple problem of arithmetic to discover how many people could be supported just above the starvation level. The nation at large would, on the supposed system, have to decide how its numbers and wants are to be proportioned to its means. If individuals do not compete, the whole society has, presumably, to compete with other societies; and, in every case whatever, with the general forces of nature. An indolent and inefficient majority might decide, if it pleased, that the amount of work to be exacted should be that which would be just enough to provide the simplest material necessities. If, again, the indolent and inefficient are to exist at all,--and we can scarcely count upon their disappearance,--and if further, they are to share equally with the industrious and the efficient, we must, in some way, coerce them into the required activity. If every industrial organisation is to be worked by the State, the State, it would seem, must appeal to the only means at its disposal,--namely, the prison and the scourge. If, moreover, the idle and sensual choose to multiply, the State must force them to refrain, or the standard of existence will be lowered. And, therefore, as is often argued, Socialism logically carried out would, under such conditions, lead to slavery; to a state in which labour would be enforced, and the whole system of life absolutely regulated by the will of the majority; and, in the last resort, by physical force. That seems, I confess, to be a necessary result, unless you can assume a moral change, which is entirely different from the mere change of machinery, and not necessarily implied, nor even made probable, by the change. The intellectual leaders of Socialism, no doubt, assume that the removal of "injustice" will lead to the development of a public spirit which will cause the total efficiency to be as great as it is at present, or perhaps greater. But the mass who call themselves Socialists take, one suspects, a much simpler view. They are moved by the very natural, but not especially lofty, desire to have more wages and less work. They take for granted that if their share of the total product is increased, they will get a larger dividend; and do not stop to inquire whether the advantage may be not more than counterbalanced by the diminution of the whole product, when the present incitements to industry are removed. They argue,--that is, so far as they argue at all,--as though the quantity to be distributed were a fixed quantity, and regard capitalists as pernicious persons, somehow intercepting a lion's share of the stream of wealth which, it is assumed, would flow equally if they were abolished. That is, of course, to beg the whole question. I, however, shall venture to assume that the industrial machinery requires a corresponding moral force to work it; and I, therefore, proceed to ask how such a force can be supposed to act without some form of competition. Nothing, as a recent writer suggests,--ironically, perhaps,--could be easier than to secure an abolition of competition. You have only to do two things: to draw a "ring-fence" round your society, and then to proportion the members within the fence to the supplies. The remark suggests the difficulty. A ring-fence, for example, round London or Manchester would mean the starvation of millions in a month; or, if round England, the ruin of English commerce, the enormous rise in the cost of the poor man's food, and the abolition of all his little luxuries. But, if you include even a population as large as London, what you have next to do is to drill some millions of people--vast numbers of them poor, reckless, ignorant, sensual, and selfish--to regulate their whole mode of life by a given code, and refrain from all the pleasures which they most appreciate. The task is a big one, and not the less if you have also to undertake that everybody, whatever his personal qualities, shall have enough to lead a comfortable life. I do not suppose, however, that any rational Socialist would accept that programme of isolation. He would hold that, in his Utopia, we can do more efficiently all that is done under a system which he regards as wasteful and unjust. The existing machinery, whatever else may be said of it, does, in fact, tend to weld the whole world more and more into a single industrial organism. English workmen are labouring to satisfy the wants of other human beings in every quarter of the world; while Chinese, and Africans, and Europeans, and Americans are also labouring to satisfy theirs. This vast and almost inconceivably complex machinery has grown up in the main unconsciously, or, at least, with a very imperfect anticipation of the ultimate results, by the independent efforts of innumerable inventors, and speculators, and merchants, and manufacturers, each of them intent, as a rule, only upon his own immediate profits and the interests of the little circle with which he is in immediate contact. The theory is not, I suppose, that this gigantic system of mutual interdependence should be abolished or restricted, but that it should be carried on consciously, with definite and intelligible purpose, and in such a way as to promote the interests of every fraction of society. The whole organism should resemble one worked by a single brain, instead of representing the resultant of a multitude of distracted and conflicting forces. The difficulties are obvious enough, nor need I dwell upon them here. I will not inquire whether it does not suppose something like omniscience in the new industrial leaders; and whether the restless and multifarious energy now displayed in discovering new means of satisfying human wants could be supplied by a central body, or a number of central bodies, made up of human beings, and, moreover, official human beings, reluctant to try experiments and strike into new courses, and without the present motives for enterprise, "Individualists" have enlarged sufficiently upon such topics. What I have to note is that, in any case, the change supposes the necessity of a corresponding morality in the growth of the instincts, the public spirit, the hatred of indolence, the temperance and self-command which would be requisite to work it efficiently. The organisation into which we are born presupposes certain moral instincts, and, moreover, necessarily implies a vast system of moral discipline. Our hopes and aspirations, our judgments of our neighbours and of ourselves, are at every moment guided and moulded by the great structure of which we form a part. Whenever we ask how our lives are to be directed, what are to be the terms on which we form our most intimate ties, whom we are to support or suppress, how we are to win respect or incur contempt, we are profoundly affected by the social relations in which we are placed at our birth, and the corresponding beliefs or prejudices which we have unconsciously imbibed. Such influences, it may perhaps be said, are of incomparably greater importance than the direct exhortations to which we listen, or than the abstract doctrines which we accept in words, but which receive their whole colouring from the concrete facts to which they conform. Now, I ask how such discipline can be conceived without some kind of competition; or, rather, what would be the discipline which would remain if, in some sense, competition could be suppressed? If in the ideal society there are still prizes to be won, positions which may be the object of legitimate desire, and if those positions are to be open to every one, whatever his circumstances, we might still have the keenest competition, though carried on by different methods. If, on the other hand, no man's position were to be better than another's, we might suppress competition at the price of suppressing every motive for social as well as individual improvement. In any conceivable state of things, the welfare of every society, the total means of enjoyment at its disposal, must depend upon the energy, intelligence, and trustworthiness of its constituent members. Such qualities, I need hardly say, are qualities of individuals. Unless John and Peter and Thomas are steady, industrious, sober, and honest, the society as a whole will be neither honest nor sober nor prosperous. The problem, then, becomes, how can you ensure the existence of such qualities unless John and Peter and the rest have some advantage in virtue of possessing them? Somehow or other, a man must be the better off for doing his work well and treating his neighbour fairly. He ought surely to hold the positions in which such qualities are most required, and to have, if possible, the best chance of being a progenitor of the rising generation. A social condition in which it made no difference to a man, except so far as his own conscience was concerned, whether he were or were not honest, would imply a society favourable to people without a conscience, because giving full play to the forces which make for corruption and disintegration. If you remove the rewards accessible to the virtuous and peaceful, how are you to keep the penalties which restrain the vicious and improvident? A bare repeal of the law, "If a man will not work, neither shall he eat," would not of itself promote industry. You would at most remove the compulsion which arises from competition, to introduce the compulsion which uses physical force. You would get rid of what seems to some people the "natural" penalty of want following waste, and be forced to introduce the "artificial" or legislative penalty of compulsory labour. But, otherwise, you must construct your society so that, by the spontaneous play of society, the purer elements may rise to the surface, and the scum sink to the bottom. So long as human nature varies indefinitely, so long as we have knaves and honest men, sinners and saints, cowards and heroes, some process of energetic and active sifting is surely essential to the preservation of social health; and it is difficult to see how that is conceivable without some process of active and keen competition. The Socialist will, of course, say, and say with too much truth, that the present form of competition is favourable to anti-social qualities. If, indeed, a capitalist is not a person who increases the productive powers of industry, but a person who manages simply to intercept a share produced by the industry of others, there is, of course, much to be said for this view. I cannot now consider that point, for my subject to-day is the moral aspect of competition considered generally. And what I have just said suggests what is, I think, the more purely moral aspect of the question. A reasonable Socialist desires to maintain what is good in the existing system, while suppressing its abuses. The question, What is good? is partly economical; but it is partly also ethical: and it is with that part that I am at present concerned. Any system of competition, any system which supposes a reward for virtue other than virtue itself, may be accused of promoting selfishness and other ugly qualities. The doctrine that virtue is its own reward is very charming in the mouth of the virtuous man; but when his neighbours use it as an excuse for not rewarding him, it becomes rather less attractive. It saves a great deal of trouble, no doubt, and relieves us from an awkward responsibility. I must, however, point out, in the first place, that a fallacy is often introduced into these discussions which Mr. Herbert Spencer has done a great deal to expose. He has dwelt very forcibly, for example, on the fact that it is a duty to be happy and healthy; and that selfishness, if used in a bad sense, should not mean simply regard for ourselves, but only disregard for our neighbours. We ought not, in other words, to be unjust because we ourselves happen to be the objects of injustice. The parable of the good Samaritan is generally regarded as a perfect embodiment of a great moral truth. Translated from poetry into an abstract logical form, it amounts to saying that we should do good to the man who most needs our services, whatever be the accidents which alienate ordinary sympathies. Now, suppose that the good Samaritan had himself fallen among thieves, what would have been his duty? His first duty, I should say, would have been, if possible, to knock down the thief; his second, to tie up his own wounds; and his third, to call in the police. We should not, perhaps, call him virtuous for such conduct; but we should clearly think him wrong for omitting it. Not to resist a thief is cowardly; not to attend to your own health is to incapacitate yourself for duty; not to apply to the police is to be wanting in public spirit. Assuming robbery to be wrong, I am not the less bound to suppress it because I happen to be the person robbed; I am only bound not to be vindictive--that is, not to allow my personal feelings to make me act otherwise than I should act if I had no special interest in the particular case. Adam Smith's favourite rule of the "indifferent spectator" is the proper one in the case. I should be impartial, and incline no more to severity than to lenity, because I am forced by circumstances to act both as judge and as plaintiff. So, in questions of self-support, it is obviously a fallacy to assume that an action, directed in the first instance to a man's own benefit, is therefore to be stigmatised as selfish. On the good Samaritan's principle, a person should be supported, _ceteris paribus_, by the person who can do it most efficiently, and in nine cases out of ten that person is himself. If self-support is selfish in the sense that the service is directly rendered to self, it is not the less unselfish in so far as it is necessarily also a service to others. If I keep myself by my labour, I am preventing a burden from falling upon my fellows. And, of course, the case is stronger when I include my family. We were all impressed the other day by the story of the poor boy who got some wretchedly small pittance by his work, spent a small portion of it upon his own needs, and devoted the chief part of it to trying to save his mother and her other children from starvation. Was he selfish? Was he selfish even in taking something for himself, as the only prop of his family? What may be the immediate motive of a man when he is working for his own bread and the bread of his family may often be a difficult question; but as, in point of fact, he is helping not only himself and those who depend on him, but also in some degree relieving others from a burden, his conduct must clearly not be set down as selfish in any sense which involves moral disapproval. Let us apply this to the case of competition. The word is generally used to convey a suggestion of selfishness in a bad sense. We think of the hardship upon the man who is ousted, as much as of the benefit to the man who gets in; or perhaps we think of it more. It suggests to us that one man has been shut out for the benefit of his neighbour; and that, of course, suggests envy, malice, and all uncharitableness. We hold that such competition must generate ill-will. I used--when I was intimately connected with a competitive system at the university--to hear occasionally of the evil influences of competition, as tending to promote jealousy between competitors. I always replied that, so far as my experience went, the evil was altogether imaginary. So far from competition generating ill-will, the keenest competitors were, as a rule, the closest friends. There was no stronger bond than the bond of rivalry in our intellectual contests. One main reason was, of course, that we had absolute faith in the fairness of the competition. We felt that it would be unworthy to complain of being beaten by a better man; and we had no doubt that, in point of fact, the winners were the better men; or, at any rate, were honestly believed to be the better men by those who distributed honours. The case, though on a small scale, may suggest one principle. So far as the end of such competitions is good, the normal motives cannot be bad. The end of a fair competition is the discovery of the ablest men, with a view to placing them in the position where their talents may be turned to most account. It can only be achieved so far as each man does his best to train his own powers, and is prepared to test them fairly against the powers of others. To work for that end is, then, not only permissible, but a duty. The spirit in which the end is pursued may be bad, in so far as a man pursues it by unfair means; in so far as he tries to make sham performance pass off for genuine; or, again, in so far as he sets an undue value upon the reward, as apart from the qualities by which it is gained. But if he works simply with the desire of making the best of himself, and if the reward is simply such a position as may enable him to be most useful to society, the competition which results will be bracing and invigorating, and will appeal to no such motives as can be called, in the bad sense, selfish. He is discharging a function which is useful, it is true, to himself; but which is also intrinsically useful to the whole society. The same principle applies, again, to intellectual activity in general. All genuine thought is essentially useful to mankind. In the struggle to discover truth, even our antagonists are, necessarily, our co-operators. A philosopher, as a man of science, owes, at least, as much to those who differ from him, as to those who agree with him. The conflict of many minds, from many sides, is the essential condition of intellectual progress. Now, if a man plays his part manfully and honourably in such a struggle, he deserves our gratitude, even if he takes the wrong side. If he looks forward to the recognition by the best judges as one motive for his activity, I think that he is asking for a worthy reward. He deserves blame, only so far as his motives have a mixture of unworthy personal sentiment. Obviously, if he aims at cheap fame, at making a temporary sensation instead of a permanent impression, at flattering prejudices instead of spreading truth; or, if he shows greediness of notoriety, by trying to get unjust credit, as we sometimes see scientific people squabbling over claims to the first promulgation of some trifling discovery, he is showing paltriness of spirit. The men whom we revere are those who, like Faraday or Darwin, devoted themselves exclusively to the advancement of knowledge, and would have scorned a reputation won by anything but genuine work. The fact that there is a competition in such matters implies, no doubt, a temptation,--the temptation to set a higher value upon praise than upon praiseworthiness; but I think it not only possible that the competitors in such rivalries may keep to the honourable path, but probable that, as a matter of fact, they frequently,--I hope that I may say generally,--do so. If the fame at which a man aims be not that which "in broad rumour lies," but that which "lives and spreads aloft in those pure eyes and perfect witness of all-judging Jove," then I think that the desire for it is scarcely to be called a last infirmity--rather, it is an inseparable quality of noble minds. We wish to honour men who have been good soldiers in that warfare, and we can hardly wish them to be indifferent to our homage. We may add, then, that a competition need not be demoralising when the competitors have lofty aims and use only honourable means. When, passing from purely intellectual aims, we consider the case, say, of the race for wealth, we may safely make an analogous remark. If a man's aim in becoming rich is of the vulgar kind; if he wishes to make an ostentatious display of wealth, and to spend his money upon demoralising amusement; or if, again, he tries to succeed by quackery instead of by the production of honest work, he is, of course, so far mischievous and immoral. But a man whose aims are public-spirited, nay, even if they be such as simply tend to improve the general comfort; who develops, for example, the resources of the country, and introduces new industries or more effective modes of manufacture, is, undoubtedly, in fact conferring a benefit upon his fellows, and may, so far, be doing his duty in the most effectual way open to him. If he succeeds by being really a more efficient man of business than his neighbours, he is only doing what, in the interests of all, it is desirable that he should do. He is discharging an essential social function; and what is to be desired is, that he should feel the responsibility involved, that he should regard his work as on one side the discharge of a social function, and not simply as a means of personal aggrandisement. It is not the fact that he is competing that is against him; but the fact, when it is a fact, that there is something discreditable about the means which he adopts, or the reward that he contemplates. This, indeed, suggests another and a highly important question--the question, namely, whether, in our present social state, his reward may not be excessive, and won at too great a cost to his rivals. And, without going into other questions involved, I will try to say a little, in conclusion, upon this, which is certainly a pressing problem. Competition, I have suggested, is not immoral if it is a competition in doing honest work by honourable means, and if it is also a fair competition. But it must, of course, be added, that fairness includes more than the simple equality of chances. It supposes, also, that there should be some proportion between the rewards and the merits. If it is simply a question between two men, which shall be captain of a ship, and which shall be mate, then the best plan is to decide by their merits as sailors; and, if their merits be fairly tried, the loser need bear no grudge against the winner. But when we have such cases as sometimes occur, when, for example, the ship is cast away, and it becomes a question whether I shall eat you or you shall eat me, or, let us say, which of us is to have the last biscuit, we get one of those terrible cases of temptation in which the strongest social bonds sometimes give way under the strain. The competition, then, becomes, in the highest degree, demoralising, and the struggle for existence resolves itself into a mere unscrupulous scramble for life, at any sacrifice of others. That, it is sometimes said, is a parallel to our social state at present. If I gave an excessive prize to the first boy in a school and flogged the second, I should not be doing justice. If one man is rewarded for a moderate amount of forethought by becoming a millionaire, and his unsuccessful rivals punished by starvation or the workhouse, the lottery of life is not arranged on principles of justice. A man must be a very determined optimist if he denied the painful truth to be found in such statements. He must be blind to many evils if he does not perceive the danger of dulling his sympathies by indifference to the fate of the unsuccessful. The rich man in Clough's poem observes that, whether there be a God matters very little-- For I and mine, thank somebody, Manage to get our victual. But, even if we are not very rich, we must often, I think, doubt whether we are not wrapping ourselves in a spirit of selfish complacency when we are returning to a comfortable home and passing outcasts of the street. We must sometimes reflect that our comfort is not simply a reward for virtue or intelligence, even if it be not sometimes the prize of actual dishonesty. To shut our eyes to the mass of wretchedness around us is to harden our hearts, although to open our hands is too often to do more harm than good. It is no wonder that we should be tempted to declaim against competition, when the competition means that so many unfortunates are to be crowded off their narrow standing-ground into the gulf of pauperism. This may suggest the moral which I have been endeavouring to bring out. Looking at society at large, we may surely say that it will be better in proportion as every man is strenuously endeavouring to play his part, and in which the parts are distributed to those best fitted to play them. We must admit, too, that for any period to which we can look forward, the great mass of mankind will find enough to occupy their energies in labouring primarily for their own support, and so bearing the burden of their own needs and the needs of their families. We may infer, too, that a society will be the better so far as it gives the most open careers to all talents, wherever displayed, and as it shows respect for the homely virtues of industry, integrity, and forethought, which are essential to the whole body as to its constituent members. And we may further say that the corresponding motives in the individual cannot be immoral. A desire of independence, the self-respect which makes a man shrink from accepting as a gift what he can win as a fair reward, the love of fairplay, which makes him use only honest means in the struggle, are qualities which can never lose their value, and which are not the less valuable because in the first instance they are most profitable to their possessors. Nothing which tends to weaken such motives can be good; but while they preserve their intensity, they necessarily imply the existence of competition in some form or other. It is equally clear that competition by itself is not a sufficient panacea. Whenever we take an abstract quality, personify it by the help of capital letters, and lay it down as the one principle of a complex system, we generally blunder. Competition is as far as possible from being the solitary condition of a healthy society. It must be not only a competition for worthy ends by honourable means, but should be a competition so regulated that the reward may bear some proportion to the merit. Monopoly is an evil in so far as it means an exclusive possession of some advantages or privileges, especially when they are given by the accidents of birth or position. It is something if they are given to the best and the ablest; but the evil still remains if even the best and ablest are rewarded by a position which cramps the energies and lowers the necessity of others. Competition is only desirable in so far as it is a process by which the useful qualities are encouraged by an adequate, and not more than an adequate, stimulus; and in which, therefore, there is not involved the degradation and the misery on the one side, the excessive reward on the other, of the unsuccessful and the successful in the struggle. Competition, therefore, we might say, could be unequivocally beneficial only in an ideal society; in a state in which we might unreservedly devote ourselves to making the best of our abilities and accepting the consequent results, without the painful sense in the background that others were being sacrificed and debased; crushed because they had less luck in the struggle, and were, perhaps, only less deserving in some degree than ourselves. So long as we are still far enough from having realised any such state; so long as we feel, and cannot but feel, that the distribution of rewards is so much at the mercy of chance, and so often goes to qualities which, in an ideal state, would deserve rather reprobation than applause, we can only aim at better things. We can do what in us lies to level some inequalities, to work, so far as our opportunities enable us, in the causes which are mostly beneficial for the race, to spread enlightenment and good feeling, and to help the unfortunate. But it is also incumbent upon us to remember carefully, what is so often overlooked in the denunciations of competition, that the end for which we must hope, and the approach to which we must further, is one in which the equivocal virtue of charity shall be suppressed; that is, in which no man shall be dependent upon his neighbour in such a sense as to be able to neglect his own duties; in which there may be normally a reciprocity of good services, and the reciprocity not be (as has been said) all on one side. There is a very explicable tendency at present to ask for such one-sided reciprocity. It is natural enough, for reasons too obvious to be mentioned, that reformers should dwell exclusively upon the right of every one to support, and neglect to point out the correlative duty of every one to do his best to support himself. The popular arguments about "old-age pensions" may illustrate the general state of mind. It is disgraceful, people say, that so large a proportion of the aged poor should come to depend upon the rates. Undoubtedly it is disgraceful. Then upon whom does the disgrace fall? It sounds harsh to say that it falls upon the sufferers. We shrink from saying to a pauper, "It serves you right". That sounds brutal, and is only in part true. Still, we should not shrink from stating whatever is true, painful though it may be. It sounds better to lay all the blame upon the oppressor than to lay it upon the oppressed; and yet, as a rule, the cowardice or folly of the oppressed has generally been one cause of their misfortunes, and cannot be overlooked in a true estimate of the case. That drunkenness, improvidence, love of gambling, and so forth, do in fact lead to pauperism is undeniable; and that they are bad, and so far disgraceful, is a necessary consequence. In such cases, then, pauperism is a proof of bad qualities; and the fact, like all other facts, must be recognised. The stress of argument, therefore, is laid upon the hardships suffered by the honest and industrious poor. The logical consequence should be, that the deserving poor should become pensioners, and the undeserving paupers. This at once opens the amazingly difficult question of moral merit, and the power of poor-law officials to solve problems which would certainly puzzle the keenest psychologists. Suppose, for example, that a man, without being definitely vicious, has counted upon the promised pension, and therefore neglected any attempts to save. If you give him a pension, you virtually tell everybody that saving is a folly; if you don't, you inflict upon him the stigma which is deserved by the drunkard and the thief. So difficult is it to arrange for this proposed valuation of a man's moral qualities that it has been proposed to get rid of all stigma by making it the right and duty of every one to take a pension. That might conceivably alter the praise, but it would surely not alter the praiseworthiness. It must be wrong in me to take money from my neighbours when I don't want it; and, if wrong, it surely ought to be disgraceful. And this seems to indicate the real point. We may aim at altering the facts, at making them more conducive to good qualities; but we cannot alter or attempt to decide by laws the degree of praise or blame to be attached to individuals. It would be very desirable to bring about a state of things in which no honest and provident man need ever fall into want; and, in that state, pauperism would be rightly discreditable as an indication of bad qualities. But to say that nobody shall be ashamed of taking support would be to ruin the essential economic virtues, and to pauperise the nation; and to try to lay down precise rules as to the distribution of honour and discredit, seems, to me, to be a problem beyond the power of a legislature. I express no opinion upon the question itself, because I am quite incompetent to do so. I only refer to it as illustrating the difficulties which beset us when we try to remove the evils of the present system, and yet to preserve the stimulus to industry, which is implied in competition. The shortest plan is to shut one's eyes to the difficulty, and roundly deny its existence. I hope that our legislators may hit upon some more promising methods. The ordinary mode of cutting the knot too often suggests that the actually contemplated ideal is the land in which the chickens run about ready roasted, and the curse of labour is finally removed from mankind. The true ideal, surely, is the state in which labour shall be generally a blessing; in which we shall recognise the fact--disagreeable or otherwise--that the race can only be elevated by the universal diffusion of public spirit, and a general conviction that it is every man's first duty to cultivate his own capacities, to turn them to the best possible account, and to work strenuously and heartily in whatever position he has been placed. It is because I cannot help thinking that when we attack competition in general terms, we are, too often, blinding ourselves to those homely and often-repeated, and, as I believe, indisputable truths, that I have ventured to speak to-day, namely, on the side of competition--so far, at least, on the side of competition as to suggest that our true ideal should be, not a state, if such a state be conceivable, in which there is no competition, but a state in which competition should be so regulated that it should be really equivalent to a process of bringing about the best possible distribution of the whole social forces; and should be held to be, because it would really be, not a struggle of each man to seize upon a larger share of insufficient means, but the honest effort of each man to do the very utmost he can to make himself a thoroughly efficient member of society. SOCIAL EQUALITY. The problem of which I propose to speak is the old dispute between Dives and Lazarus. Lazarus, presumably, was a better man than Dives. How could Dives justify himself for living in purple and fine linen, while Lazarus was lying at the gates, with the dogs licking his sores? The problem is one of all ages, and takes many forms. When the old Puritan saw a man going to the gallows, "There," he said, "but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford". When the rich man, entering his club, sees some wretched tatterdemalion, slouching on the pavement, there, he may say, goes Sir Gorgius Midas, but for--what? I am here and he there, he may say, because I was the son of a successful stock-jobber, and he the son of some deserted mother at the workhouse. That is the cause, but is it a reason? Suppose, as is likely enough, that Lazarus is as good a man as Midas, ought they not to change places, or to share their property equally? A question, certainly, to be asked, and, if possible, to be answered. It is often answered, and is most simply answered, by saying that all men ought to be equal. Dives should be cut up and distributed in equal shares between Lazarus and his brethren. The dogma which embodies this claim is one which is easily refuted in some of the senses which it may bear, though in spite of such refutations it has become an essential part of the most genuine creed of mankind. The man of science says, with perfect truth, that so far from men being born equal, some are born with the capacity of becoming Shakespeares and Newtons, and others with scarcely the power of rising above Sally the chimpanzee. The answer would be conclusive, if anybody demanded that we should all be just six feet high, with brains weighing sixty ounces, neither more nor less. It is also true, and, I conceive, more relevant, that, as the man of science will again say, all improvement has come through little groups of men superior to their neighbours, through races or through classes, which, by elevating themselves on the shoulders of others, have gained leisure and means for superior cultivation. But equality may be demanded as facilitating this process, by removing the artificial advantages of wealth. It may be taken as a demand for a fair start, not as a demand that the prizes shall be distributed irrespectively of individual worth. And, whether the demand is rightly or wrongly expressed, we must, I think, admit that the real force with which we have to reckon is the demand for justice and for equality as somehow implied by justice. It is easy to browbeat a poor man who wants bread and cheese for himself and his family, by calling his demands materialistic, and advising him to turn his mind to the future state, where he will have the best of Dives. It is equally easy to ascribe the demands to mere envy and selfishness, or to those evil-minded agitators who, for their own wicked purposes, induce men to prefer a guinea to a pound of wages. But, after all, there is something in the demand for fair play and for the means of leading decent lives, which requires a better answer. It is easy, again, to say that all Socialists are Utopian. Make every man equal to-day, and the old inequalities will reappear to-morrow. Pitch such a one over London Bridge, it was said, with nothing on but his breeches, and he will turn up at Woolwich with his pockets full of gold. It is as idle to try for a dead level, when you work with such heterogeneous materials, as to persuade a homogeneous fluid to stand at anything but a dead level. But surely it may be urged that this is as much a reason for declining to believe that equal conditions of life will produce mere monotony, as for insisting that equality in any state is impossible. The present system includes a plan for keeping the scum at the surface. One of the few lessons which I have learnt from life, and not found already in copy-books, is the enormous difficulty which a man of the respectable classes finds in completely ruining himself, even by vice, extravagance, and folly; whereas, there are plenty of honest people who, in spite of economy and prudence, can scarcely keep outside of the workhouse. Admitting the appeal to justice, it is, again, often urged that justice is opposed to the demand for equality. Property is sacred, it is said, because a man has (or ought to have) a right to what he has made either by labour or by a course of fair dealings with other men. I am not about to discuss the ultimate ground on which the claim to private property is justified, and, as I think, satisfactorily established. A man has a right, we say, to all that he has fairly earned. Has he, then, a right to inherit what his father has earned? A man has had the advantage of all that a rich father can do for him in education, and so forth. Why should he also have the father's fortune, without earning it? Are the merits of making money so great that they are transmissible to posterity? Should a man who has been so good as to become rich, be blessed even to the third and fourth generation? Why, as a matter of pure justice, should not all fortunes be applied to public uses, on the death of the man who made them? Such a law, however impolitic, would not be incompatible with the moral principle to which an appeal is made. There are, of course, innumerable other ways in which laws may favour an equality of property, without breaking any of the fundamental principles. What, for example, is the just method of distributing taxation? A rich man can not only pay more money than a poor man, in proportion to his income, but he can, with equal ease, pay a greater proportion. To double the income of a labourer may be to raise him from starvation to comfort. To double the income of a millionaire may simply be to encumber him with wealth by which he is unable to increase his own pleasure. There is a limit beyond which it is exceedingly difficult to find ways of spending money on one's own enjoyment--though I have never been able to fix it precisely. On this ground, such plans as a graduated income-tax are, it would seem, compatible with the plea of justice; and, within certain limits, we do, in fact, approve of various taxes, on the ground, real or supposed, that they tend to shift burdens from the poor to the rich, and, so far, to equalise wealth. In fact, this appeal to justice is a tacit concession of the principle. If we justify property on the ground that it is fair that a man should keep what he has earned by his own labour, it seems to follow that it is unjust that he should have anything not earned by his labour. In other words, the answer admits the ordinary first principle from which Socialism starts, and which, in some Socialist theories, it definitely tries to embody. All that I have tried to do, so far, is to show that the bare doctrine of equality, which is in some way connected with the demand for justice, is not, of necessity, either unjust or impracticable. It may be used to cover claims which are unjust, to sanction bare confiscation, to take away motives for industry, and, briefly, may be a demand of the drones to have an equal share of the honey. From the bare abstract principle of equality between men, we can, in my own opinion, deduce nothing; and, I do not think that the principle can itself be established. That is why it is made a first principle, or, in other words, one which is not to be discussed. The French revolutionists treated it in this way as _à priori_ and self-evident. No school was in more deadly opposition to such _à priori_ truths than the school of Bentham and the utilitarians. Yet, Bentham's famous doctrine, that in calculating happiness each man is to count for one, and nobody for more than one, seems to be simply the old principle in a new disguise. James Mill applied the doctrine to politics. J. S. Mill again applied it, with still more thoroughness, especially in his doctrine of representation and of the equality of the sexes. Accordingly, various moralists have urged that this was an inconsistency in utilitarian doctrine, implying that they, too, could make _à priori_ first principles when they wanted them. It has become a sort of orthodox dogma with radicals, who do not always trouble themselves about a philosophical basis, and is applied with undoubting confidence to many practical political problems. "One man, one vote" is not simply the formulation of a demand, but seems to intimate a logical ground for the demand. If, in politics, one man is rightfully entitled to one vote, is it not also true that, in economics, one man should have a right to one income, or, that money, like political power, should be distributed into precisely equal shares? Yet, why are we to take for granted the equality of men in the sense required for such deductions? Since men are not equally qualified for political power, it would seem better _primâ facie_ that each man should have the share of power and wealth which corresponds to his powers of using, or, perhaps, to his powers of enjoying. Why should we not say, "To each man according to his deserts"? One practical reason, of course, is the extreme difficulty of saying what are the deserts, and how they are to be ascertained. Undoubtedly, equality is the shortest and simplest way but, if we take it merely as the most convenient assumption, it loses its attractive appearance of abstract justice or _à priori_ self-certainty. Do a common labourer and Mr. Gladstone deserve the same share of voting power? If not, how many votes should Mr. Gladstone possess to give him his just influence? To ask such questions is to show that answering is impossible, though political theorists have, now and then, tried to put together some ostensible pretext for an answer. What, let us ask, is the true relation between justice and equality? A judge, to take the typical case, is perfectly just when he ascertains the facts by logical inferences from the evidence, and then applies the law in the spirit of a scientific reasoner. Given the facts, what is the rule under which they come? To answer that question, generally speaking, is his whole duty. In other words, he has to exclude all irrelevant considerations, such as his own private interests or affections. The parties are to be to him merely A and B, and he has to work out the result as an arithmetician works out a sum. Among the irrelevant considerations are frequently some moral aspects of the case. A judge, for example, decides a will to be valid or invalid without asking whether the testator acted justly or unjustly in a moral sense, but simply whether his action was legal or illegal. He cannot go behind the law, even from motives of benevolence or general maxims of justice, without being an unjust judge. Cases may arise, indeed, as I must say in passing, in which this is hardly true. A law may be so flagrantly unjust that a virtuous judge would refuse to administer it. One striking case was that of the fugitive slave law in the United States, where a man had to choose between acting legally and outraging humanity. So we consider a parent unjust who does not leave his fortune equally among his children. Unless there should be some special reason to the contrary, we shall hold him to be unfair for making distinctions out of mere preference of one child to another. Yet in the case of primogeniture our opinion would have to be modified. Supposing, for example, a state of society in which primogeniture was generally recognised as desirable for public interests, we could hardly call a man unjust for leaving his estates to his eldest son. If, in such a state, a man breaks the general rule, our judgment of his conduct would be determined perhaps by considering whether he was before or behind his age, whether he was acting from a keener perception of the evils of inequality or actuated by spite or regardless of the public interests which he believed to be concerned. A parent treats his children equally in his will in regard to money; but he does not, unless he is a fool, give the same training or the same opening to all his children, whether they are stupid or clever, industrious or idle. But what I wish to insist upon is, that justice implies essentially indifference to irrelevant considerations, and therefore, in many cases, equality in the treatment of the persons concerned. A judge has to decide without reference to bribes, and not be biassed by the position of an accused person. In that sense he treats the men equally, but of course he does not give equal treatment to the criminal and innocent, to the rightful and wrongful claimant. The equality implied in justice is therefore to be understood as an exclusion of the irrelevant, and thus supposes an understanding as to what is irrelevant. It is not a mere abstract assertion of equality; but the assertion that, in a given concrete case, a certain rule is to be applied without considering anything outside of the rule. An ideally perfect rule would contain within itself a sufficient indication of what is to be relevant. All men of full age, sound mind, and so forth, are to be treated in such and such a way. Then all cases falling within the rule are to be decided on the same principles, and in that sense equally. But the problem remains, what considerations should be taken into account by the rule itself? Let us put the canon of equality in a different shape, namely, that there should always be a sufficient reason for any difference in the treatment of our fellows. This rule does not imply that I should act in all cases as though all men were equal in character or mind, but that my action should in all cases be justified by some appropriate consideration. It does not prove that every man should have a vote, but that if one man has a vote and another has not, there should be some adequate reason for the difference. It does not prove that every man should work eight hours a day and have a shilling an hour; but that differences of hours or of pay and, equally, uniformity of hours and pay, should have some sufficient justification. This is a deeper principle, which in some cases justifies and in others does not justify the rule of equality. The rule of equality follows from it under certain conditions, and has gained credit because, in point of fact, those conditions have often been satisfied. The revolutionary demand for equality was, historically speaking, a protest against arbitrary inequality. It was a protest against the existence of privileges accompanied by no duties. When the rich man could only answer the question, "What have you done to justify your position?" by the famous phrase of Beaumarchais, "I took the trouble to be born," he was obviously in a false position. The demand for a society founded upon reason, in this sense that a sufficient reason should be given for all differences, was, it seems to me, perfectly right; and, moreover, was enough to condemn the then established system. But when this demand has been so constructed as to twist a logical rule, applicable to all scientific reasoning, into a dogmatic assertion that certain concrete beings were in fact equal, and to infer that they should have equal rights, it ceased to be logical at all, and has been a fruitful parent of many fallacies. Reasonable beings require a sufficient reason for all differences of conduct, for the difference between their treatment of a man and a monkey or a white man and a black, as well as for differences between treatment of rich and poor or wise men and fools; and there must, as the same principle implies, be also a sufficient reason for treating all members of a given class equally. We have to consider whether, for any given purpose, the differences between human beings and animals, Englishmen and negroes, men and women, are or are not of importance for our purpose. When the differences are irrelevant we neglect them or admit the claim to equality of treatment. But the question as to relevance is not to be taken for granted either way. It would be a very convenient but a very unjustifiable assumption in many cases, as it might save an astronomer trouble if he assumed that every star was equal to every other star. The application of this is, I think, obvious. The _â priori_ assumption of the equality of men is, in some sense, easily refuted. But the refutation does not entitle us to assume that arbitrary inequality, inequality for which no adequate ground can be assigned, is therefore justifiable. It merely shows that the problem is more complex than has been assumed at first sight. "All men ought to be equal." If you mean equal in natural capacity or character, it is enough to say that what is impossible cannot be. If you propose that the industrious and idle, the good and bad, the wise and foolish, should share equally in social advantages, the reply is equally obvious, that such a scheme, if possible, would be injurious to the qualities on which human welfare depends. If you say that men should be rewarded solely according to their intrinsic merits, we must ask, do you mean to abstract from the adventitious advantages of education, social surroundings, and so forth, or to take men as they actually are, whatever the circumstances to which their development is owing? To ask what a man would have been had he been in a different position from his youth, is to ask for an impossible solution, and one, moreover, of no practical bearing. I shall not employ a drunkard if I am in want of a butler, whether he has become a drunkard under overpowering temptation or become a drunkard from inherited dipsomania. But if, on the other hand, I take the man for what he is, without asking how he has come to be what he is, I leave the source at least of all the vast inequalities of which we complain. The difficulty, which I will not try to develop further, underlies, as I think, the really vital difference of method by which different schools attempt to answer the appeal for social justice. The school of so-called individualists finds, in fact, that equality in their sense is incompatible with the varied differences due to the complete growth of the social structure. They look upon men simply as so many independent units of varying qualities, no doubt, but still capable of being considered for political and social purposes as equal. They ask virtually what justice would demand if we had before us a crowd of independent applicants for the good things of the world, and the simplest answer is to distribute the good things equally. If it is replied that the idle and the industrious should not be upon the same footing, they are ready to agree, perhaps, that men should be rewarded according to their services to society, however difficult it may be to arrange the proportions. But it soon appears that the various classes into which society is actually divided imply differences not due to the individual and his intrinsic merits, but to the varying surroundings in which he is placed. To do justice, then, it becomes necessary to get rid of these differences. The extreme case is that of the family. Every one probably owes more to his mother and to his early domestic environment than to any other of the circumstances which have influenced his development. If you and I started as perfectly equal babies, and you have become a saint and I a sinner, the divergence probably began when our mothers watched our cradles, and was made inevitable before we had left their knees. Consequently, the more thorough-going designers of Utopia have proposed to abolish this awkward difference. Men must be different at their birth; but we might conceivably arrange public nurseries which should place them all under approximately equal conditions. Then any differences would result from a man's intrinsic qualities, and he might be said to be rewarded simply according to his own merits. The plan may be tempting, but has its disadvantages. There are injustices, if we call all inequality injustice, which we can only attribute to nature or to the unknown power which makes men and monkeys, Shakespeares and Stephens. And one result is that the character and conduct of human beings depend to a great extent upon circumstances, which are accidental in the sense that they are circumstances other than the original endowment of the individual. In this sense, maternal love, for example, is unjust. The mother loves her child because it is her own, not because it is better (though of course it is better) than other children. So, as Adam Smith, I think, observed, we are more moved by our neighbour's suffering from a corn on his great toe than by the starvation of millions in China. In other words, the affections, which are the great moving forces of society, are unjust in so far as they cause us to be infinitely more interested in our own little circle than in the remoter members of humanity known to us only by report. Without discussing the "justice" of this arrangement, we shall have, I think, to admit that it is inevitable. For I, at least, hold that the vague and vast organism of humanity depends for its cohesion upon the affinities and attractions, and not _vice versâ_. My interests are strongest where my power of action is greatest. The love of mothers for children is a force of essential value, and therefore to be cultivated rather than repressed, for no force known to us could replace it. And what is pre-eminently true in this case is, of course, true to a degree in others. Burke stated this with admirable force in his attack upon the revolutionists who expounded the opposite principle of abstract equality. "To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle," he says, "the germ, as it were, of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and mankind." The assertion that they desired to invert this order, to destroy every social link in so far as it tended to produce inequalities, was the pith of his great indictment against the French "metaphysical" revolutionists. They had perverted the general logical precept of the sufficient reason for all inequalities by converting it into an assuming of the equality of concrete units. They fell into the fallacy of which I have spoken; and many radicals, utilitarians, and others have followed them. They assumed that all the varieties of human character, or all those due to the influence of the social environment, through whose structure and inherited instincts every full-grown man has been moulded, might be safely disregarded for the purpose of political and social construction. They have spoken, in brief, as if men were the equal and homogeneous atoms of physical inquiry and social problems capable of solution by a simple rearrangement of the atoms in different orders, instead of remembering that they are dealing with a complex organism, in which not only the whole order but every constituent atom is also a complex structure of indefinitely varying qualities. In the recognition of this truth lies, as I believe, the true secret of any satisfactory method of treatment. Does this fact justify inequality in general? Or does not the principle of equality still remain as essentially implied in the Utopia which we all desire to construct? We have to take it for granted that to each man the first and primary moving instinct is and must be the love of the little "platoon" of which he is a member; that the problem is, not to destroy all these minor attractions, to obliterate the structure and replace society by a vast multitude of independent atoms, each supposed to aim directly at the good of the whole, but so to harmonise and develop or restrain the smaller interests of families, of groups and associations, that they may spontaneously co-operate towards the general welfare. It is a long and difficult task to which we have to apply ourselves; a task not to be effected by the demonstration or application of a single abstract dogma, but to be worked out gradually by the co-operation of many classes and of many generations. If it is fairly solved in the course of a thousand years or so, I for one shall be very fairly satisfied. But distant as the realisation may be, we may or rather ought to consider seriously the end to which we should be working. The conception implies a distinction of primary importance towards any clear treatment of the problem. We have, that is, two different, though not altogether distinct, provinces of what I may, perhaps, call organic and functional morality. We may take the existing order for granted, and ask what is then our duty; or we may ask how far the structure itself requires modification, and, if so, what kind of modification. A man who assumes the existence of the present structure may act justly or unjustly within the limits so prescribed. He must generally be guided in a number of cases by some principle of equality. The judge should endeavour to give the same law to rich and poor; the parent should not make arbitrary distinctions between his children; the statesman should try to distribute his burdens without favouring one particular class, and so forth. A man who, in such a sense, acts justly may be described as up to the level of his age and its accepted established moral ideas, and is, therefore, entitled at least to the negative praise of not being corrupt or dishonest. He fulfils accurately the functions imposed upon him, and is not governed by what Bentham called the sinister interests which would prevent them from being effectually discharged for the welfare of the community. But the problem which we have to consider is the deeper and more difficult one of organic justice; and our question is what justice means in this case, or what are the irrelevant considerations to be excluded from our motives of conduct. Between these two classes of justice there are distinctions which it is necessary to state briefly. Justice, as we generally use the word, implies that the unjust man deserves to be hanged, or, at least, is responsible for his actions. What "responsibility" precisely implies is, of course, a debatable question. I only need assume that, in any case, it implies that somebody is guilty of wrong-doing, for which he should receive an appropriate penalty. But in organic questions it is not the individual, but the race which is responsible; and we require a reform, not a penalty. An impatient temper leads us to generalise too hastily from the case of the individual to that of the country. We bestow the blame for all the wrongs of an oppressed nation, for example, upon the nation which oppresses. But in simple point of fact, the oppressed nation generally deserves (if the word can be fairly used) to share the blame. The trodden worm would not have been trodden upon if it had been a bit of a viper. Whatever the duty of turning the second cheek, it is clearly not a national duty. If we admire a Tell or Robert Bruce for resisting oppressors, we implicitly condemn those who submitted to oppressors. If a nation is divided or wanting in courage, public spirit, and independence, it will be trampled down; and though we may most rightfully blame the tramplers, it is idle to exonerate the trampled. It is easy, in the same way, to make the rich solely responsible for all the misery of the poor. The man who has got the booty is naturally regarded as the robber. But, speaking scientifically, that is, with the desire to state the plain facts, we must admit that if the poor are those who have gone to the wall in the struggle for wealth; then, whatever unjust weapons have been used in that struggle, the improvidence and vice and idleness have certainly been among the main causes of defeat. Here, as before, the question is not, who is to be punished? We can only settle that when dealing with individual cases. It is the question, what is the cause of certain evils? and here we must resist the temptation of supposing that the class which in some sense appears to profit by them, or, at least, to be exempt from them, has, therefore, any more to do with bringing them about than the class which suffers from them. The reflection may put us in mind of what seems to be a general law. The ultimate cause of the adoption of institutions and rules of conduct is often the fact of their utility to the race; but it is only at a later period that their utility becomes the conscious or avowed reason for maintaining them. The political fabric has been clearly built up, in great part, by purely selfish ambition. Nations have been formed by energetic rulers, who had no eye for anything beyond the gratification of their own ambition, although they were clear-headed enough to see that their own ambition could best secure its objects by taking the side of the stronger social forces, and by giving substantial benefit to others. The same holds good pre-eminently of industrial relations. We all know how Adam Smith, sharing the philosophical optimism of his time, showed how the pursuit of his own welfare by each man tended, by a kind of pre-ordained harmony, to contribute to the welfare of all. Since his time we have ceased to be so optimistic, and have recognised the fact that the building up of modern industrial systems has involved much injury to large classes. And yet we may, I think, in great measure adopt his view. The fact that each man was rogue enough to think first of himself and of his own wife and family is not a proof or a presumption that he did not flourish because, in point of fact, he was contributing (quite unintentionally perhaps) to the comforts of mankind in general. What we have to reflect is that, while the bare existence of certain institutions gives a strong presumption of their utility, there is also a probability that when the utility becomes a conscious aim or a consciously adopted criterion of their advantage, they will require a corresponding modification intended to secure the advantages at a minimum cost of evil. Premising these remarks as to the meaning of organic justice, we can now come to the question of equality. Justice in its ordinary sense may be regarded from one point of view as the first condition of the efficiency of the social organ. In saying that a judge is just, we imply that he is so far efficiently discharging his part in society--the due application of the law--without reference to irrelevant considerations. He is a machine which rightly parts the sheep and goats--taking the legal definition of goats and sheep--instead of putting some goats into the sheepfold, and _vice versâ_. That is, he secures the accurate application of the purely legal rule. Organic justice involves an application of the same principle because it equally depends upon the exclusion of irrelevant considerations. It implies such a distribution of functions and of maintenance as may secure the greatest possible efficiency of society towards some end in itself good. Society of course may be organised with great efficiency for bad or doubtful ends. A purely military organisation, however admirable for its purpose, may imply a sacrifice of the highest welfare of the nation. Assuming, however, the goodness of the end, the greatest efficiency is of course desirable. We may, for our purposes, assume that the efficiency of a nation regarded as a society for the production of wealth is a desirable end. There are, of course, many other purposes which must not be sacrificed to the production of wealth. But power of producing wealth, meaning roughly whatever contributes to the physical support and comfort of the nation, is undoubtedly a necessary condition of all other happiness. If we all starve we can have neither art nor science nor morality. What I mean, therefore, is that a nation is so far better as it is able to raise all necessary supplies with the least expenditure of labour, leaving aside the question how far the superfluous forces should be devoted to raising comparative luxuries or to some purely religious or moral or intellectual purposes. The perfect industrial organisation is, I shall assume, compatible with or rather a condition of a perfect organisation of other kinds. In the most general terms we have to consider what are the principles of social organisation, which of course implies a certain balance between the various organs and a thorough nutrition of all, while yet we may for a moment confine our attention to the purely industrial or economic part of the question. How, if at all, does the principle of equality or of social justice enter the problem? We may assume, in the first place, from this point of view, that one most obvious condition is the absence of all purely useless structures, whether of the kind which we call "survivals" or such as may be called parasitic growths. The organ which has ceased to discharge corresponding functions is simply a drag upon the vital forces. When a class, such as the old French aristocracy, ceases to perform duties while retaining privileges, it will be removed,--too probably, as in that case, it will be removed by violent and mischievous methods,--if the society is to grow in vigour. The individuals, as I have said, may or may not deserve punishment, for they are not personally responsible for the general order of things; but they are not unlikely to incur severe penalties, and what we should really hope is that they may be in some way absorbed by judicious medical treatment, instead of extirpated by the knife. At the other end of the scale, we have the parasitic class of the beggars or thieves. They, too, are not personally responsible for the conditions into which they are born. But they are not only to be pitied individually, but to be regarded, in the mass, as involving social disease and danger. More words upon that topic are quite superfluous, but I may just recall the truth that the two evils are directly connected. We hear it often said, and often denied, that the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer. So far, however, as it is true, it is one version of the very obvious fact that where there are many careless rich people, there will be the best chance for the beggars. The thoughtless expenditure of the rich without due responsibilities, provides the steady stream of so-called charity,--the charity which, as Shakespeare (or somebody else) observes, is twice cursed, which curses him that gives and him that receives; which is to the rich man as a mere drug to still his conscience and offer a spurious receipt in full for his neglect of social duties, and to the poor man an encouragement to live without self-respect, without providence, a mere hanger-on and dead-weight upon society, and a standing injury and source of temptation to his honest neighbours. Briefly, a wholesome social condition implies that every social organ discharges a useful function; it renders some service to the community which is equivalent to the support which it derives; brain and stomach each get their due share of supply; and there is a thorough reciprocity between all the different members of the body. But what kind of equality should be desired in order to secure this desirable organic balance? We have to do, I may remark, with the case of a homogeneous race. By this I mean not only that there is no reason to suppose that there is any difference between the innate qualities of rich and poor, but that there is the strongest reason for believing in an equality; that is to say, more definitely, that if you took a thousand poor babies and a thousand rich babies, and subjected them to the same conditions, they would show great individual differences, but no difference traceable to the mere difference of class origin. I therefore may leave aside such problems as might arise in the Southern States of America, or even in British India, where two different races are in presence; or, again, the case of the sexes, where we cannot assume as self-evident, that the organic differences are irrelevant to political or social ends. So far as we are concerned, we may take it for granted that the differences which emerge are not due to any causes antecedent to and overriding the differences due to different social positions. If we can say justly (as has been said) that a poor man is generally more charitable in proportion to his means, or, again, that he is, as a rule, a greater liar or a greater drunkard than the rich man, the difference is not due to a difference of breed, but to the education (in the widest sense) which each has received. So long as that difference remains, we must take account of it for purposes of obtaining the maximum efficiency. We must not make the poor man a professor of mathematics, or even manager of a railway, because he has talents which, if trained, would have qualified him for the post; but we may and must assume that an equal training would do as much for the poor man as for the rich; and the question is, how far it is desirable or possible to secure such equality. Now, from the point of view of securing a maximum efficiency, it seems to be a clearly desirable end that the only qualities which should indisputably help to determine a man's position in life, should also be those which determine his fitness for working in it efficiently. In Utopia, it should be the rule that each man shall do what he can do best. If one man is a gamekeeper and another a prime minister, it should be because one has the gifts of a gamekeeper and the other the gifts of a prime minister: whereas, in the actual state, as we all know, the gamekeeper often becomes the prime minister, while the potential prime minister is limited to looking after poachers. But I also urge that we must take into account the actual and not the potential qualities at any given moment. The inequality may be obviated by raising the grade of culture in all classes; but we must not assume that there is an actual equality where, in fact, there is the widest possible difference. In short, I assert that it is our duty to try to make men equal; though I deny that we are clearly justified in assuming an equality. By making them equal, I do not, of course, mean that we should try to make them all alike. I recognise, with Mill and every sensible writer on the subject, that such a consummation represents rather a danger than an advantage. I wish to see individuality strengthened, not crushed, to encourage men to develop the widest possible diversity of tastes, talents, and pursuits, and to attain unity of opinion, not by a calm assumption that this or that creed is true, but by encouraging the sharpest and freest collision of opinions. The equality of which I speak is that which would result, if the distinction into organs were not of such a nature as to make one class more favourable than another to the full development of whatever character and talents a man may possess. In other words, the distribution into classes would correspond purely and simply to the telling off of each man to the duties which he is best fitted to discharge. The position into which he is born, the class surroundings which determine his development, must not carry with them any disqualification for his acquiring the necessary aptitude for any other position. It was, I think, Fourier who argued that a man ought to be paid more highly for being a chimney-sweep than for being a prime minister, because the duties of a sweep are the more disagreeable,--a position which some prime ministers may, perhaps, see reason to doubt. My suggestion is, that in Utopia every human being would be so placed as to be capable of preparing himself for any other position, and should then go to the work for which he is best fitted. The equality as thus defined would, I submit, leave no room for a sense of injustice, because the qualities which determine a man's position would be the qualities for which he deserves the position, desert in this sense being measurable by fitness. Discontent with class distinctions must arise so long as a man feels that his position in a class limits and cramps his capacities below the level of happier fortunes. Discontent is not altogether a bad thing, for it is often an _alias_ for hope; remove all discontent and you remove all guarantee for improvement. But discontent is of the malignant variety when it is allied with a sense of injustice; that is, of restrictions imposed upon one class for no assignable reason. The only sufficient reason for classes is the efficient discharge of social functions. The differences between the positions of men in social strata, supply some of the most effective motives for the struggle of life; and the effort of men to rise into the wealthy or the powerful class is not likely to cease so long as men are men; but they take an unworthy form so long as the ambition is simply to attain privileges unconnected with or disproportioned to the duties involved, and which therefore generate hatred to the social structure. If a class could be simply an organ for the discharge of certain functions, and each man in the whole body politic able to fit himself for that class, the injustice, and therefore the malignant variety of discontent, would disappear. Of course, I am speaking only of justice. I do not attempt to define the proper ends of society, or regard justice in itself as a sufficient guarantee for all desirable results. Such justice may exist even in a savage tribe or a low social type. There may be a just distribution of food among a shipwrecked crew, but the attainment of such justice would not satisfy all their wants. The abolition of misery, the elevation of a degraded class to a higher stage is a good thing in itself, unless it can be shown to involve some counterbalancing evil. I only argue that the ideal society would have this, among other attributes, and, therefore, that to secure such equality is a legitimate object of aspiration. I am speaking of "Utopia". The time is indefinitely distant when a man will choose to be a sweep or a prime minister according to his aptitudes, and be equally able to learn his trade whether he is the son of a prime minister or a sweep. I only try to indicate the goal to which our efforts should be directed. But the goal thus defined implies methods different from that of some advocates of equality. They propose at once to assume the non-existence of a disagreeable difficulty, and to take men as equal in a sense in which they are not, in fact, equal. To me the problem appears to be, not the instant introduction of a new system, but a necessarily long and very gradual process of education directed towards the distant goal of making men equal in the desirable sense; and that problem, I add, is in the main a moral problem. It is idle to make institutions without making the qualities by which they must be worked. I do not say--far from it--that we are not to propose what may roughly be called external changes: new regulations and new forms of association, and so forth. On the contrary, I believe, as I have intimated, that this method corresponds to the normal order of development. The new institution protects and stimulates the germs of the moral instincts by which it must be worked. But I also hold that no mere rearrangement does any permanent good unless it calls forth a corresponding moral change, and, moreover, that the moral change, however slow and imperceptible, does incomparably more than any external change. If we assume our present institutions to be permanent, a slight improvement in moral qualities, a growth of sobriety, of chastity, of prudence and intellectual culture, would make an almost indefinite improvement in the condition of the masses. If, for example, Englishmen ceased to drink, every English home might be made reasonably comfortable. The two kinds of change imply each other; but it is the most characteristic error of the designers of Utopias to suppose a mere change of regulations without sufficiently attending to the moral implication. To attain equality, as I have tried to define the word, would imply vast moral changes, and therefore a long and difficult elaboration. We have not simply to make men happy, as they now count happiness, but to alter their views of happiness. The good old copy-books tell us that happiness is as common in poor men's huts as in rich men's palaces. We are apt to reply that the statement is a mockery and a lie. But it points to the consummation which in some simple social states has been partly realised, and which in some distant future may come to be an expression of facts. It is conceivable surely that rich men may some day find that there are modes of occupation which are more interesting as well as more useful than accumulation of luxuries or the keeping of horses for the turf; that, in place of propitiating fate by supporting the institution of beggary, there is an indefinite field for public-spirited energy in the way not of throwing crumbs to Lazarus, but of promoting national culture of mind, of spirit, and of body; that benevolence does not mean simple self-sacrifice, except to the selfish, but the pursuit of a noble and most interesting career; that men's duty to their children is not to enable them to lead idle lives, but to fit them for playing a manly part in the great game of life; and that their relation to those whom they employ is not that of persons exploiting the energies of inferior animals, but of leaders of industry with a common interest in the prosperity of their occupation. People, no doubt, will hardly pursue business from motives of pure benevolence to others, and I do not think it desirable that they should. But the recognition that the pursuit of an honourable business is useful to others may, nevertheless, guide their energies, make the mere scramble for wealth disreputable, and induce them to labour for solid and permanent advantages. Such moral changes are, I conceive, necessary conditions of the equality of which I have spoken; they must be brought about to some extent if the industrial organism is to free itself from the injustice necessarily implied in a mere blind struggle for personal comfort. Moreover, however distant the final consummation may be, there are, I think, many indications of an approximation. Nothing is more characteristic of modern society than the enormous development of the power of association for particular purposes. In former days a society had to form an independent organ, a corporation, a college, and so forth, to discharge any particular function, and the resulting organ was so distinct as to absorb the whole life of its members. The work of the fellow was absorbed in the corporate life of his corporation, and he had no distinct personal interests. Now we are all members of societies by the dozen, and society is constantly acquiring the art of forming associations for any purpose, temporary or permanent, which imply no deep structural division, and unite people of all classes and positions. As the profounder lines are obliterated, the tendency to form separate castes, defended by personal privileges, and holding themselves apart from other classes, rapidly diminishes; and the corresponding prejudices are in process of diminution. But I can only hint at this principle. A correlative moral change in the poor is, of course, equally essential. America is described by Mr. Lowell in the noblest panegyric ever made upon his own country, as "She that lifts up the manhood of the poor". She has taken some rather queer methods of securing that object lately; yet, however imperfect the result, every American traveller will, I believe, sympathise with what Mr. Bryce has recently said in his great book. America is still the land of hope--the land where the poor man's horizon is not bounded by a vista of inevitable dependence on charity; where--in spite of some superficially grotesque results--every man can speak to every other without the oppressive sense of condescension; where a civil word from a poor man is not always a covert request for a gratuity and a tacit confession of dependence. "Alas," says Wordsworth, in one of his pregnant phrases, "the gratitude of men has oftener left me mourning" than their cold-heartedness; because, I presume, it is a painful proof of the rarity of kindness. When one man can only receive a gift and another can only bestow it as a payment on account of a long accumulation of the arrears of class injustice, the relations hardly admit of genuine gratitude on either side. What grates most painfully upon me, and, I suppose, upon most of us, is the "servility" of man; the acceptance of a beggar's code of morals as natural and proper for any one in a shabby coat. The more prominent evil just now, according to conservatives and pessimists, is the correlative one of the beggar on horseback; of the man who has found out that he can squeeze more out of his masters, and uses his power even without considering whether it is wise to drain your milch cow too exhaustively. A hope of better things is encouraged by schemes for arbitration and conciliation between employers and employed. But we require a moral change if arbitration is to imply something more than a truce between natural enemies, and conciliation to be something different from that employed by Hood's butcher when, after hauling a sheep by main force into the slaughter-house, he exclaimed, "There, I've conciliated _him_!" The only principle on which arbitration can proceed is that the profits should be divided in such a way as to be a sufficient inducement to all persons concerned to give their money or their labour, mental or physical, to promote the prosperity of the business at large. But the reconciliation can only be complete when the capitalist is capable of employing his riches with enough public spirit and generosity to disarm mere envy by his obvious utility, and the poor man justifies his increased wages by his desire to secure permanent benefits and a better standard of life. In Utopia, the question will still be, what plan shall be a sufficient inducement to the men who co-operate as employers or labourers, but the inducement will appeal to better motives, and the positions be so far equalised that each will be most tolerable to the man best fitted for it. Here a vast series of problems opens about which I can only suggest the briefest hint. The principle I now urge is the old one, namely, that the usual mark of a quack remedy is the neglect of the moral aspect of a question. We want a state of opinion in which the poor are not objects to be slobbered over, but men to help in a manly struggle for moral as well as material elevation. A great deal is said, for example, about the evils of competition. It is remarkable indeed that few proposals for improvement even, so far as I can discover, tend to get rid of competition. Co-operation, as tradesmen will tell us, is not an abolition of competition, but a competition of groups instead of units. "Profit-sharing" is simply a plan by which workmen may take a direct share in the competition carried on by their masters. I do not mention this as any objection to such schemes, for I do not think that competition is an evil. I do not doubt the vast utility of schemes which tend to increase the intelligence and prudence of workmen, and give them an insight into the conditions of successful business. Competition is no doubt bad so far as it means cheating or gambling. But competition is, it seems to me, inevitable so long as we are forced to apply the experimental method in practical life, and I fail to see what other method is available. Competition means that thousands of people all over the world are trying to find out how they can supply more economically and efficiently the wants of other people, and that is a state of things to which I do not altogether object. Equality in my sense implies that every one should be allowed to compete for every place that he can fill. The cry is merely, as it seems to me, an evasion of the fundamental difficulty. That difficulty is not that people compete, but that there are too many competitors; not that a man's seat at the table has to be decided by fair trial of his abilities, but that there is not room enough to seat everybody. Malthus brought to the front the great stumbling-block in the way of Utopian optimism. His theory was stated too absolutely, and his view of the remedy was undoubtedly crude. But he hit the real difficulty; and every sensible observer of social evils admits that the great obstacle to social improvement is that social residuum, the parasitic class, which multiplies so as to keep down the standard of living, and turns to bad purposes the increased power of man over nature. We have abolished pestilence and famine in their grimmest shape; if we have not abolished war, it no longer involves usurpation or slavery or the permanent desolation of the conquered; but one result is just this, that great masses can be regularly kept alive at the lowest stage of existence without being periodically swept away by a "black death" or a horde of brutal invaders. If we choose to turn our advantages to account in this way, no nostrums will put an end to poverty; and the evil can only be met--as I venture to assume--by an elevation of the moral level, involving all that is implied in spreading civilisation downward. The difficulty shows itself in discussions of the proper sphere of government. Upon that vast and most puzzling topic I will only permit myself one remark. In former times the great aim of reformers was the limitation of the powers of government. They came to regard it as a kind of bogy or extra-natural force, which acted to oppress the poor in order to maintain certain personal privileges. Some, like Godwin of the "Political Justice," held that the millennium implied the abolition of government and the institution of anarchy. The early utilitarians held that government might be reformed by placing power in the hands of the subjects, who would use it only for their own interests, but still retained the prejudices engendered in their long struggle against authority, and held that its functions should still be gradually restricted on pain of developing a worse tyranny than the old. The government has been handed over to the people as they desired, but with the natural result that the new authorities not only use it to support their interests, but retain the conviction of its extra-natural, or perhaps supernatural, efficacy. It is regarded as an omnipotent body which can not only say (as it can) that whatever it pleases shall be legal, but that whatever is made a law in the juridical sense shall at once become a law of nature. Even their individualist opponents, who profess to follow Mr. Herbert Spencer, seem often to regard the power of government, not as one result of evolution, but as something external which can constrain and limit evolution. It corresponds to a kind of outside pressure which interferes arbitrarily with the so-called natural course of development, and should therefore be abolished. To me, on the contrary, it seems that government is simply one of the social organs, with powers strictly limited by its relation to others and by the nature of the sentiment upon which it rests. There are obvious reasons, in the centralisation of vast industrial interests, the "integration," as Mr. Spencer calls it, which is the correlative of differentiation, in the growing solidarity of different classes and countries, in the consequent growth of natural monopolies, which give a solid reason for believing that the functions of the central government may require expansion. To decide by any _à priori_ principle what should be the limits of this expansion is, to my mind, hopeless. The problem is one to be worked out by experiment,--that is, by many generations and by repeated blundering. A fool, said Erasmus Darwin, is a man who never makes an experiment; an experiment is a new mode of action which fails in its object ninety-nine times out of a hundred; therefore, wise men make more blunders, though they also make more discoveries than fools. Now, experiments in government and social organisation are as necessary to improvement as any other kind of experiment, and probably still more liable to failure. One thing, however, is again obvious. The simple remedy of throwing everything upon government, of allowing it to settle the rate of wages, the hours of labour, the prices of commodities, and so forth, requires for success a moral and intellectual change which it is impossible to over-estimate. I will not repeat the familiar arguments which, to my mind, justify this statement. It is enough to say that there is no ground in the bare proposal for putting all manner of industrial regulations into the hands of government, for supposing that it would not drag down every one into pauperism instead of raising everybody to comfort. I often read essays of which the weakness seems to be that while they purpose to establish equality, they give no real reason for holding that it would not be an equality of beggary. If every one is to be supported, idle or not, the natural conclusion is universal pauperism. If people are to be forced to work by government, or their numbers to be somehow restricted by government, you throw a stress upon the powers of government which, I will not say, it is impossible that it should bear, but which, to speak in the most moderate terms, implies a complete reconstruction of the intelligence, morality, and conceptions of happiness of human beings. Your government would have to be omniscient and purely benevolent as well as omnipotent, and I confess that I cannot see in the experience of those countries where the people have the most direct influence upon the government, any promise that this state of things will be realised just yet. Thus, I return to my conclusion,--to my platitude, if you will. Professor Fawcett used to say that he could lay down no rules for the sphere of government influence, except this rule, that no interference would do good unless it helped people to help themselves. I think that the doctrine was characteristic of his good sense, and I fully subscribe to it. I heartily agree that equality in the sense I have given, is a most desirable ideal; I agree that we should do all that in us lies to promote it; I only say that our aims should be always in consistence with the principle that such equality is only possible and desirable in so far as the lowest classes are lifted to a higher standard, morally as well as physically. Of course, that implies approval of every variety of new institutions and laws, of co-operation, of profit sharing, of boards of conciliation, of educational and other bodies for carrying light into darkness and elevating popular standards of life: but always with the express condition that no such institution is really useful except as it tends to foster a genuine spirit of independence, and to supply the moral improvement without which no outward change is worth a button. This is a truism, you may say. Yet, when I read the proposals to get rid of poverty by summarily ordering people to be equal, or to extirpate pauperism by spending a million upon certain institutions for out-door relief, I cannot help thinking that it is a truism which requires to be enforced. The old Political Economy, you say, is obsolete; meaning, perhaps, that you do not mean to be bothered with its assertions; but the old Economists had their merits. They were among the first who realised the vast importance of deeper social questions; they were the first who tried to treat them scientifically; they were not (I hope) the last who dared to speak unpleasant truths, simply because they believed them and believed in their importance. Perhaps, indeed, they rather enjoyed the practice a little too much, and indulged in it a little too ostentatiously. Yet, I am sure that, on the whole, it was a very useful practice, and one which is now scarcely as common as it should be. People are more anxious to pick holes in their statement of economic laws than to insist upon the essential fact that, after all, there are laws, not "laws" made by Parliament, but laws of nature, which do, and will, determine the production and distribution of wealth, and the recognition of which is as important to human welfare as the recognition of physiological laws to the bodily health. Holding this faith, the old Economists were never tired of asserting what is the fundamental truth of so-called "individualism," that, after all we may say about the social development, the essential condition of all social improvement is not that we should have this or that system of regulations, but that the individual should be manly, self-respecting, doing his duty as well as getting his pay, and deeply convinced that nothing will do any permanent good which does not imply the elevation of the individual in his standards of honesty, independence, and good conduct. We can only say to Lazarus: "You are probably past praying for, and all we can do is to save you from starving, by any means which do not encourage other people to fall into your weaknesses; but we recognise the right of your class for any and every possible help that can be given towards making men of them, and putting them on their legs by teaching them to stand upright". ETHICS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE. In his deeply-interesting Romanes lecture, Professor Huxley has stated the opinion that the ethical progress of society depends upon our combating the "cosmic process" which we call the struggle for existence. Since, as he adds, we inherit the "cosmic nature" which is the outcome of millions of years of severe training, it follows that the "ethical nature" may count upon having to reckon with a tenacious and powerful enemy as long as the world lasts. This is not a cheerful prospect. It is, as he admits, an audacious proposal to pit the microcosm against the macrocosm. We cannot help fearing that the microcosm may get the worst of it. Professor Huxley has not fully expanded his meaning, and says much to which I could cordially subscribe. But I think that the facts upon which he relies admit or require an interpretation which avoids the awkward conclusion. Pain and suffering, as Professor Huxley tells us, are always with us, and even increase in quantity and intensity as evolution advances. The fact had been recognised in remote ages long before theories of evolution had taken their modern form. Pessimism, from the time of the ancient Hindoo philosophers to the time of their disciple, Schopenhauer, has been in no want of evidence to support its melancholy conclusions. It would be idle to waste rhetoric in the attempt to recapitulate so familiar a position. Though I am not a pessimist, I cannot doubt that there is more plausibility in the doctrine than I could wish. Moreover, it may be granted that any attempt to explain or to justify the existence of evil is undeniably futile. It is not so much that the problem cannot be answered, as that it cannot even be asked in any intelligible sense. To "explain" a fact is to assign its causes--that is, to give the preceding set of facts out of which it arose. However far we might go backwards, we should get no nearer to perceiving any reason for the original fact. If we explain the fall of man by Adam's eating the apple, we are quite unable to say why the apple should have been created. If we could discover a general theory of pain, showing, say, that it implied certain physiological conditions, we shall be no nearer to knowing why those physiological conditions should have been what they are. The existence of pain, in short, is one of the primary data of our problem, not one of the accidents, for which we can hope in any intelligible sense to account. To give any "justification" is equally impossible. The book of Job really suggests an impossible, one may almost say a meaningless, problem. We can give an intelligible meaning to a demand for justice when we can suppose that a man has certain antecedent rights, which another man may respect or neglect. But this has no meaning as between the abstraction "nature" and the concrete facts which are themselves nature. It is unjust to meet equal claims differently. But it is not "unjust" in any intelligible sense that one being should be a monkey and another a man, any more than that part of me should be a hand and another head. The question would only arise if we supposed that the man and the monkey had existed before they were created, and had then possessed claims to equal treatment. The most logical theologians, indeed, admit that as between creature and creator there can be properly no question of justice. The pot and the potter cannot complain of each other. If the writer of Job had been able to show that the virtuous were rewarded and the vicious punished, he would only have transferred the problem to another issue. The judge might be justified, but the creator would be condemned. How can it be just to place a being where he is certain to sin, and then to damn him for sinning? That is the problem to which no answer can be given; and which already implies a confusion of ideas. We apply the conception of justice in a sphere where it is not applicable, and naturally fail to get any intelligible answer. It is impossible to combine the conceptions of God as the creator and God as the judge; and the logical straits into which the attempt leads are represented by the endless free-will controversy. I will not now enter that field of controversy: and I will only indicate what seems to me to be the position which we must accept in any scientific discussion of our problem. Hume, as I think, laid down the true principle when he said that there could be no _à priori_ proof of a matter of fact. An _à priori_ truth is a truth which cannot be denied without self-contradiction, but there can never be a logical consideration in supposing the non-existence of any fact whatever. The ordinary appeal to the truths of pure mathematics is, therefore, beside the question. All such truths are statements of the precise equivalence of two propositions. To say that there are four things is also to say that there are two pairs of things: to say that there is a plane triangle is also to say that there is a plane trilateral. One statement involves the other, because the difference is not in the thing described, but in our mode of contemplating it. We, therefore, cannot make one assertion and deny the other without implicit contradiction. From such results, again, is evolved (in the logical sense of evolution) the whole vast system of mathematical truths. The complexity of that system gives the erroneous idea that we can, somehow, attain a knowledge of facts, independently of experience. We fail to observe that even the most complex mathematical formula is simply a statement of an exact equivalence of two assertions; and that, till we know by experience the truth of one statement, we can never infer the truth, in fact, of the other. However elaborate may be the evolutions of mathematical truth, they can never get beyond the germs out of which they are evolved. They are valid precisely because the most complex statement is always the exact equivalent of the simpler, out of which it is constructed. They remain to the end truths of number or truths of geometry. They cannot, by themselves, tell us that things exist which can be counted or which can be measured. The whole claim, however elaborate, still requires its point of suspension. We may put their claims to absolute or necessary truth as high as we please; but they cannot give us by themselves a single fact. I can show, for example, that a circle has an infinite number of properties, all of which are virtually implied in the very existence of a circle. But that the circle or that space itself exists, is not a necessary truth, but a datum of experience. It is quite true that such truths are not, in one sense, empirical; they can be discovered without any change of experience; for, by their very nature, they refer to the constant element of experience, and are true on the supposition of the absolute changelessness of the objects contemplated. But it is a fallacy to suppose that, because independent of particular experiences, they are, therefore, independent of experience in general. Now, if we agree, as Huxley would have agreed, that Hume's doctrine is true, if we cannot know a single fact except from experience, we are limited in moral questions, as in all others, to elaborating and analysing our experience, and can never properly transcend it. A scientific treatment of an ethical question, at any rate, must take for granted all the facts of human nature. It can show what morality actually is; what are, in fact, the motives which make men moral, and what are the consequences of moral conduct. But it cannot get outside of the universe and lay down moral principles independent of all influences. I am well aware that in speaking of ethical questions upon this ground, I am exposed to many expressions of metaphysical contempt. I may hope to throw light upon the usual working of morality; but my theory of the facts cannot make men moral of itself. I cannot hope, for example, to show that immorality involves a contradiction, for I know that immorality exists. I cannot even hope to show that it is necessarily productive of misery to the individual, for I know that some people take pleasure in vicious conduct. I cannot deduce facts from morals, for I must consistently regard morals as part of the observed consequences of human nature under given conditions. Metaphysicians may, if they can, show me a more excellent method. I admit that their language sometimes enables them to take what, in words at least, is a sublimer position than mine. Kant's famous phrase, "Thou must, therefore thou canst," is impressive. And yet, it seems to me to involve an obvious piece of logical juggling. It is quite true that whenever it is my duty to act in a certain way, it must be a possibility; but that is only because an impossibility cannot be a duty. It is not my duty to fly, because I have not wings; and conversely, no doubt, it would follow that _if_ it were my duty I must possess the organs required. Thus understood, however, the phrase loses its sublimity, and yet, it is only because we have so to understand it, that it has any plausibility. Admitting, however, that people who differ from me can use grander language, and confessing my readiness to admit error whenever they can point to a single fact attainable by the pure reason, I must keep to the humbler path. I speak of the moral instincts as of others, simply from the point of view of experience: I cannot myself discover a single truth from the abstract principle of non-contradiction; and am content to take for granted that the world exists as we know it to exist, without seeking to deduce its peculiarities by any high _à priori_ road. Upon this assumption, the question really resolves itself into a different one. We can neither explain nor justify the existence of pain; but, of course, we can ask whether, as a matter of fact, pain predominates over pleasure; and we can ask whether, as a matter of fact, the "cosmic processes" tend to promote or discourage virtuous conduct. Does the theory of the "struggle for existence" throw any new light upon the general problem? I am quite unable to see, for my own part, that it really makes any difference: evil exists; and the question whether evil predominates over good, can only, I should say, be decided by an appeal to experience. One source of evil is the conflict of interests. Every beast preys upon others; and man, according to the old saying, is a wolf to man. All that the Darwinian or any other theory can do is, to enable us to trace the consequences of this fact in certain directions; but it neither creates the fact nor makes it more or less an essential part of the process. It "explains" certain phenomena, in the sense of showing their connection with previous phenomena, but does not show why the phenomena should present themselves at all. If we indulge our minds in purely fanciful constructions, we may regard the actual system as good or bad, just as we choose to imagine for its alternative a better or a worse system. If everybody had been put into a world where there was no pain, or where each man could get all he wanted without interfering with his neighbours, we may fancy that things would have been pleasanter. If the struggle, which we all know to exist, had no effect in preventing the "survival of the fittest," things--so, at least, some of us may think--would have been worse. But such fancies have nothing to do with scientific inquiries. We have to take things as they are and make the best of them. The common feeling, no doubt, is different. The incessant struggle between different races suggests a painful view of the universe, as Hobbes' natural state of war suggested painful theories as to human nature. War is evidently immoral, we think; and a doctrine which makes the whole process of evolution a process of war must be radically immoral too. The struggle, it is said, demands "ruthless self-assertion" and the hunting down of all competitors; and such phrases certainly have an unpleasant sound. But in the first place, the use of the epithets implies an anthropomorphism to which we have no right so long as we are dealing with the inferior species. We are then in a region to which such ideas have no direct application, and where the moral sentiments exist only in germ, if they can properly be said to exist at all. Is it fair to call a wolf ruthless because he eats a sheep and fails to consider the transaction from the sheep's point of view? We must surely admit that if the wolf is without mercy he is also without malice. We call an animal ferocious because a man who acted in the same way would be ferocious. But the man is really ferocious because he is really aware of the pain which he inflicts. The wolf, I suppose, has no more recognition of the sheep's feelings than a man has of feelings in the oyster or the potato. For him, they are simply non-existent; and it is just as inappropriate to think of the wolf as cruel, as it would be to call the sheep cruel for eating grass. Are we to say that "nature" is cruel because the arrangement increases the sum of undeserved suffering? That is a problem which I do not feel able to examine; but it is, at least, obvious that it cannot be answered off-hand in the affirmative. To the individual sheep it matters nothing whether he is eaten by the wolf or dies of disease or starvation. He has to die any way, and the particular way is unimportant. The wolf is simply one of the limiting forces upon sheep, and if he were removed others would come into play. The sheep, left to himself, would still give a practical illustration of the doctrine of Malthus. If, as evolutionists tell us, the hostility of the wolf tends to improve the breed of sheep, to encourage him to think more and to sharpen his wits, the sheep may be, on the whole, the better for the wolf, in this sense at least: that the sheep of a wolfless region might lead a more wretched existence, and be less capable animals and more subject to disease and starvation than the sheep in a wolf-haunted region. The wolf may, so far, be a blessing in disguise. This suggests another obvious remark. When we speak of the struggle for existence, the popular view seems to construe this into the theory that the world is a mere cockpit, in which one race carries on an interminable struggle with the other. If the wolves are turned in with the sheep, the first result will be that all the sheep will become mutton, and the last that there will be one big wolf with all the others inside him. But this is contrary to the essence of the doctrine. Every race depends, we all hold, upon its environment, and the environment includes all the other races. If some, therefore, are in conflict, others are mutually necessary. If the wolf ate all the sheep, and the sheep ate all the grass, the result would be the extirpation of all the sheep and all the wolves, as well as all the grass. The struggle necessarily implies reciprocal dependence in a countless variety of ways. There is not only a conflict, but a system of tacit alliances. One species is necessary to the existence of others, though the multiplication of some implies also the dying out of particular rivals. The conflict implies no cruelty, as I have said, and the alliance no goodwill. The wolf neither loves the sheep (except as mutton) nor hates him; but he depends upon him as absolutely as if he were aware of the fact. The sheep is one of the wolf's necessaries of life. When we speak of the struggle for existence we mean, of course, that there is at any given period a certain equilibrium between all the existing species; it changes, though it changes so slowly that the process is imperceptible and difficult to realise even to the scientific imagination. The survival of any species involves the disappearance of rivals no more than the preservation of allies. The struggle, therefore, is so far from internecine that it necessarily involves co-operation. It cannot even be said that it necessarily implies suffering. People, indeed, speak as though the extinction of a race involved suffering in the same way as the slaughter of an individual. It is plain that this is not a necessary, though it may sometimes be the actual result. A corporation may be suppressed without injury to its members. Every individual will die before long, struggle or no struggle. If the rate of reproduction fails to keep up with the rate of extinction, the species must diminish. But this might happen without any increase of suffering. If the boys in a district discovered how to take birds' eggs, they might soon extirpate a species; but it does not follow that the birds would individually suffer. Perhaps they would feel themselves relieved from a disagreeable responsibility. The process by which a species is improved, the dying out of the least fit, implies no more suffering than we know to exist independently of any doctrine as to a struggle. When we use anthropomorphic language, we may speak of "self-assertion". But "self-assertion," minus the anthropomorphism, means self-preservation; and that is merely a way of describing the fact that an animal or plant which is well adapted to its conditions of life is more likely to live than an animal which is ill-adapted. I have some difficulty in imagining how any other arrangement can even be supposed possible. It seems to be almost an identical proposition that the healthiest and strongest will generally live longest; and the conception of a "struggle for existence" only enables us to understand how this results in certain progressive modifications of the species. If we could ever for a moment have fancied that there was no pain and disease, and that some beings were not more liable than others to those evils, I might admit that the new doctrine has made the world darker. As it is, it seems to me that it leaves the data just what they were before, and only shows us that they have certain previously unsuspected bearings upon the history of the world. One other point must be mentioned. Not only are species interdependent as well as partly in competition, but there is an absolute dependence in all the higher species between its different members which may be said to imply a _de facto_ altruism, as the dependence upon other species implies a _de facto_ co-operation. Every animal, to say nothing else, is absolutely dependent for a considerable part of its existence upon its parents. The young bird or beast could not grow up unless its mother took care of it for a certain period. There is, therefore, no struggle as between mother and progeny; but, on the contrary, the closest possible alliance. Otherwise, life would be impossible. The young being defenceless, their parents could exterminate them if they pleased, and by so doing would exterminate the race. The parental relation, of course, constantly involves a partial sacrifice of the mother to her young. She has to go through a whole series of operations, which strain her own strength and endanger her own existence, but which are absolutely essential to the continuance of the race. It may be anthropomorphic to attribute any maternal emotions of the human kind to the animal. The bird, perhaps, sits upon her eggs because they give her an agreeable sensation, or, if you please, from a blind instinct which somehow determines her to the practice. She does not look forward, we may suppose, to bringing up a family, or speculate upon the delights of domestic affection. I only say that as a fact she behaves in a way which is at once injurious to her own chances of individual survival, and absolutely necessary to the survival of the species. The abnormal bird who deserts her nest escapes many dangers; but if all birds were devoid of the instinct, the birds would not survive a generation. Now, I ask, what is the difference which takes place when the monkey gradually loses his tail and sets up a superior brain? Is it properly to be described as a development or improvement of the "cosmic process," or as the beginning of a prolonged contest against it? In the first place, so far as man becomes a reasonable being, capable of foresight and of the adoption of means to ends, he recognises the nature of these tacit alliances. He believes it to be his interest not to exterminate everything, but to exterminate those species alone whose existence is incompatible with his own. The wolf eats every sheep that he comes across as long as his appetite lasts. If there are too many wolves, the process is checked by the starvation of the supernumerary eaters. Man can maintain just as many sheep as he wants, and may also proportion the numbers of his own species to the possibilities of future supply. Many of the lower species thus become subordinate parts of the social organism--that is to say, of the new equilibrium which has been established. There is so far a reciprocal advantage. The sheep that is preserved with a view to mutton gets the advantage, though he is not kept with a view to his own advantage. Of all arguments for vegetarianism, none is so weak as the argument from humanity. The pig has a stronger interest than any one in the demand for bacon. If all the world were Jewish, there would be no pigs at all. He has to pay for his privileges by an early death; but he makes a good bargain of it. He dies young, and, though we can hardly infer the "love of the gods," we must admit that he gets a superior race of beings to attend to his comforts, moved by the strongest possible interest in his health and vigour, and induced by its own needs, perhaps, to make him a little too fat for comfort, but certainly also to see that he has a good sty, and plenty to eat every day of his life. Other races, again, are extirpated as "ruthlessly" as in the merely instinctive struggle for existence. We get rid of wolves and snakes as well as we can, and more systematically than can be done by their animal competitors. The process does not necessarily involve cruelty, and certainly does not involve a diminution of the total of happiness. The struggle for existence means the substitution of a new system of equilibrium, in which one of the old discords has been removed, and the survivors live in greater harmony. If the wolf is extirpated as an internecine enemy, it is that there may be more sheep when sheep have become our allies and the objects of our earthly providence. The result may be, perhaps I might say must be, a state in which, on the whole, there is a greater amount of life supported on the planet; and therefore, as those will think who are not pessimists, a decided gain on the balance. At any rate, the difference so far is that the condition which was in all cases necessary, is now consciously recognised as necessary; and that we deliberately aim at a result which always had to be achieved on penalty of destruction. So far, again, as morality can be established on purely prudential grounds, the same holds good of relations between human beings themselves. Men begin to perceive that, even from a purely personal point of view, peace is preferable to war. If war is unhappily still prevalent, it is at least not war in which every clan is fighting with its neighbours, and where conquest means slavery or extirpation. Millions of men are at peace within the limits of a modern State, and can go about their business without cutting each other's throats. When they fight with other nations they do not enslave nor massacre their prisoners. Starting from the purely selfish ground Hobbes could prove conclusively that everybody benefited by the social compact which substituted peace and order for the original state of war. Is this, then, a reversal of the old state of things--a combating of a "cosmic process"? I should rather say that it is a development of the tacit alliances, and a modification so far of the direct or internecine conflict. Both were equally implied in the older conditions, and both still exist. Some races form alliances, while others are crowded out of existence. Of course, I cease to do some things which I should have done before. I don't attack the first man I meet in the street and take his scalp. One reason is that I don't expect he will take mine; for, if I did, I fear that, even as a civilised being, I should try to anticipate his intentions. This merely means that we have both come to see that we have a common interest in keeping the peace. And this, again, merely means that the tacit alliance which was always an absolutely necessary condition of the survival of the species has now been extended through a wider area. The species could not have got on at all if there had not been so much alliance as is necessary for its reproduction and for the preservation of its young for some years of helplessness. The change is simply that the small circle which included only the primitive family or class has extended, so that we can meet members of the same nation, or, it may be, of the same race, on terms which were previously confined to the minor group. We have still to exterminate and still to preserve. The mode of employing our energies has changed, but not the essential nature. Morality proper, however, has so far not emerged. It begins when sympathy begins; when we really desire the happiness of others; or, as Kant says, when we treat other men as an end and not simply as a means. Undoubtedly this involves a new principle, no less than the essential principle of all true morality. Still, I have to ask whether it implies a combating or a continuation of a cosmic process. Now, as I have observed, even the animal mother shows what I have called a _de facto_ altruism. She has instincts which, though dangerous to the individual, are essential for the race. The human mother sacrifices herself with a consciousness of the results to herself, and her personal fears are overcome by the strength of her affections. She intentionally endures a painful death to save them from suffering. The animal sacrifices herself, but without foresight of the result, and therefore without moral worth. This is merely the most striking exemplification of the general process of the development of morality. Conduct is first regarded purely with a view to the effects upon the agent, and is therefore enforced by extrinsic penalties, by consequences, that is, supposed to be attached to us by the will of some ruler, natural or supernatural. The instinct which comes to regard such conduct as bad in itself, which implies a dislike of giving pain to others, and not merely a dislike to the gallows, grows up under such probation until the really moralised being acquires feelings which make the external penalty superfluous. This, indubitably, is the greatest of all changes, the critical fact which decides whether we are to regard conduct simply as useful, or also to regard it as moral in the strictest sense. But I should still call it a development and not a reversal of the previous process. The conduct which we call virtuous is the same conduct externally which we before regarded as useful. The difference is that the simple fact of its utility, that is, of its utility to others and to the race in general, has now become also the sufficient motive for the action as well as the implicit cause of the action. In the earlier stages, when no true sympathy existed, men and animals were still forced to act in a certain way because it was beneficial to others. They now act in that way because they are conscious that it is beneficial to others. The whole history of moral evolution seems to imply this. We may go back to a period at which the moral law is identified with the general customs of the race; at which there is no perception of any clear distinction between that which is moral and that which is simply customary; between that which is imposed by a law in the strict sense and that which is dictated by general moral principles. In such a state of things, the motives for obedience partake of the nature of "blind instincts". No definite reason for them is present to the mind of the agent, and it does not occur to him even to demand a reason. "Our fathers did so and we do so" is the sole and sufficient explanation of their conduct. Thus instinct again may be traced back by evolutionists to the earliest period at which the instincts implied in the relations between the sexes or between parents and offspring, existed. They were the germ from which has sprung all morality such as we now recognise. Morality, then, implies the development of certain instincts which are essential to the race, but which may, in an indefinite number of cases, be injurious to the individual. The particular mother is killed because she obeys her natural instincts; but, if it were not for mothers and their instincts, the race would come to an end. Professor Huxley speaks of the "fanatical individualism" of our time as failing to construct morality from the analogy of the cosmic process. An individualism which regards the cosmic process as equivalent simply to an internecine struggle of each against all, must certainly fail to construct a satisfactory morality upon such terms, and I will add that any individualism which fails to recognise fully the social character, which regards society as an aggregate instead of an organism, will, in my opinion, find itself in difficulties. But I also submit that the development of the instincts which directly correspond to the needs of the race, is merely another case in which we aim consciously at an end which was before an unintentional result of our actions. Every race, above the lowest, has instincts which are only intelligible by the requirements of the race; and has both to compete with some and to form alliances with others of its fellow occupants of the planet. Both in the unmoralised condition and in that in which morality has become most developed, these instincts have common characteristics, and may be regarded as conditions of the power of the race to which they belong to maintain its position in the world, and, speaking roughly, to preserve or increase its own vitality. I will not pause to insist upon this so far as regards many qualities which are certainly moral, though they may be said to refer primarily to the individual. That chastity and temperance, truthfulness and energy, are, on the whole, advantages both to the individual and to the race, does not, I fancy, require elaborate proof; nor need I argue at length that the races in which they are common will therefore have inevitable advantages in the struggle for existence. Of all qualities which enable a race to hold its own, none is more important than the power of organising individually, politically, and socially, and that power implies the existence of justice and the instinct of mutual confidence-in short, all the social virtues. The difficulty seems to be felt in regard to those purely altruistic impulses, which, at first glance at any rate, make it apparently our duty to preserve those who would otherwise be unfit to live. Virtue, says Professor Huxley, is directed "not so much to the survival of the fittest," as to the "fitting of as many as possible to survive". I do not dispute the statement, I think it true in a sense; but I have a difficulty as to its application. Morality, it is obvious, must be limited by the conditions in which we are placed. What is impossible is not a duty. One condition plainly is that the planet is limited. There is only room for a certain number of living beings; and though we may determine what shall be the number, we cannot arbitrarily say that it shall be indefinitely great. It is one consequence that we do, in fact, go on suppressing the unfit, and cannot help going on suppressing them. Is it desirable that it should be otherwise? Should we wish, for example, that America could still be a hunting-ground for savages? Is it better that it should contain a million red men or sixty millions of civilised whites? Undoubtedly the moralist will say with absolute truth that the methods of extirpation adopted by Spaniards and Englishmen were detestable. I need not say that I agree with him, and hope that such methods may be abolished wherever any remnant of them exists. But I say so partly because I believe in the struggle for existence. This process underlies morality, and operates whether we are moral or not. The most civilised race, that which has the greatest knowledge, skill, power of organisation, will, I hold, have an inevitable advantage in the struggle, even if it does not use the brutal means which are superfluous as well as cruel. All the natives who lived in America a hundred years ago would be dead now in any case, even if they had invariably been treated with the greatest humanity, fairness, and consideration. Had they been unable to suit themselves to new conditions of life, they would have suffered an euthanasia instead of a partial extirpation; and had they suited themselves they would either have been absorbed or become a useful part of the population. To abolish the old brutal method is not to abolish the struggle for existence, but to make the result depend upon a higher order of qualities than those of the mere piratical viking. Mr. Pearson has been telling us in his most interesting book, that the negro may not improbably hold his own in Africa. I cannot say I regard this as an unmixed evil. Why should there not be parts of the world in which races of inferior intelligence or energy should hold their own? I am not so anxious to see the whole earth covered by an indefinite multiplication of the cockney type. But I only quote the suggestion for another reason. Till recent years the struggle for existence was carried on as between Europeans and negroes by simple violence and brutality. The slave trade and its consequences have condemned the whole continent to barbarism. That, undoubtedly, was part of the struggle for existence. But, if Mr. Pearson's guess should be verified, the results have been so far futile as well as disastrous. The negro has been degraded, and yet, after all our brutality, we cannot take his place. Therefore, besides the enormous evils to slave-trading countries themselves, the lowering of their moral tone, the substitution of piracy for legitimate commerce, and the degradation of the countries which bought the slaves, the superior race has not even been able to suppress the inferior. But the abolition of this monstrous evil does not involve the abolition but the humanisation of the struggle. The white man, however merciful he becomes, may gradually extend over such parts of the country as are suitable to him; and the black man will hold the rest and acquire such arts and civilisation as he is capable of appropriating. The absence of cruelty would not alter the fact that the fittest race would extend; but it may ensure that whatever is good in the negro may have a chance of development in his own sphere, and that success in the struggle will be decided by more valuable qualities. Without venturing further into a rather speculative region, I need only indicate the bearing of such considerations upon problems nearer home. It is often complained that the tendency of modern civilisation is to preserve the weakly, and therefore to lower the vitality of the race. This seems to involve inadmissible assumptions. In the first place, the process by which the weaker are preserved consists in suppressing various conditions unfavourable to human life in general. Sanitary legislation, for example, aims at destroying the causes of many of the diseases from which our forefathers suffered. If we can suppress the smallpox, we of course save many weakly children, who would have died had they been attacked. But we also remove one of the causes which weakened the constitutions of many of the survivors. I do not know by what right we can say that such legislation, or again, the legislation which prevents the excessive labour of children, does more harm by preserving the weak than it does good by preventing the weakening of the strong. One thing is at any rate clear: to preserve life is to increase the population, and therefore to increase the competition; or, in other words, to intensify the struggle for existence. The process is as broad as it is long. If we could be sure that every child born should grow up to maturity, the result would be to double the severity of the competition for support, What we should have to show, therefore, in order to justify the inference of a deterioration due to this process, would be, not that it simply increased the number of the candidates for living, but that it gave to the feebler candidates a differential advantage; that they are now more fitted than they were before for ousting their superior neighbours from the chances of support. But I can see no reason for supposing such a consequence to be probable or even possible. The struggle for existence, as I have suggested, rests upon the unalterable facts that the world is limited and population elastic. Under all conceivable circumstances we shall still have in some way or other to proportion our numbers to our supplies; and under all circumstances those who are fittest by reason of intellectual or moral or physical qualities will have the best chance of occupying good places, and leaving descendants to supply the next generation. It is surely not less true that in the civilised as much as in the most barbarous race, the healthiest are the most likely to live, and the most likely to be ancestors. If so, the struggle will still be carried on upon the same principles, though certainly in a different shape. It is true that this suggests one of the most difficult questions of the time. It is suggested, for example, that in some respects the "highest" specimens of the race are not the healthiest or the fittest. Genius, according to some people, is a variety of disease, and intellectual power is won by a diminution of reproductive power. A lower race, again, if we measure "high" and "low" by intellectual capacity, may oust a higher race, because it can support itself more cheaply, or, in other words, because it is more efficient for industrial purposes. Without presuming to pronounce upon such questions, I will simply ask whether this does not interpret Professor Huxley's remark about that "cosmic nature" which is still so strong, and which is likely to be strong so long as men require stomachs. We have not, I think, to suppress it, but to adapt it to new circumstances. We are engaged in working out a gigantic problem: What is the best, in the sense of the most efficient, type of human being? What is the best combination of brains and stomach? We turn out saints, who are "too good to live," and philosophers, who have run too rapidly to brains. They do not answer in practice, because they are instruments too delicate for the rough work of daily life. They may give us a foretaste of qualities which will be some day possible for the average man; of intellectual and moral qualities, which, though now exceptional, may become commonplace. But the best stock for the race are those in whom we have been lucky enough to strike out the happy combination, in which greater intellectual power is produced without the loss of physical vigour. Such men, it is probable, will not deviate so widely from the average type. The reconciliation of the two conditions can only be effected by a very gradual process of slowly edging onwards in the right direction. Meanwhile the theory of a struggle for existence justifies us, instead of condemning us, for preserving the delicate child, who may turn out to be a Newton or a Keats, because he will leave to us the advantage of his discoveries or his poems, while his physical feebleness assures us that he will not propagate his race. This may lead to a final question. Does the morality of a race strengthen or weaken it; fit it to hold its own in the general equilibrium, or make its extirpation by low moral races more probable? I do not suppose that anybody would deny what I have already suggested, that the more moral the race, the more harmonious and the better organised, the better it is fitted for holding its own. But if this be admitted, we must also admit that the change is not that it has ceased to struggle, but that it struggles by different means. It holds its own, not merely by brute force, but by justice, humanity, and intelligence, while, it may be added, the possession of such qualities does not weaken the brute force, where such a quality is still required. The most civilised races are, of course, also the most formidable in war. But, if we take the opposite alternative, I must ask how any quality which really weakens the vitality of the race can properly be called moral. I should entirely repudiate any rule of conduct which could be shown to have such a tendency. This, indeed, indicates what seems to me to be the moral difficulty with most people. Charity, you say, is a virtue; charity increases beggary, and so far tends to produce a feebler population; therefore, a moral quality tends doubly to diminish the vigour of a nation. The answer is, of course, obvious, and I am confident that Professor Huxley would have so far agreed with me. It is that all charity which fosters a degraded class is therefore immoral. The "fanatical individualism" of to-day has its weaknesses; but in this matter it seems to me that we see the weakness of the not less fanatical "collectivism". The question, in fact, how far any of the socialistic or ethical schemes of to-day are right or wrong, depends upon our answer to the question how far they tend to produce a vigorous or an enervated population. If I am asked to subscribe to General Booth's scheme, I inquire first whether the scheme is likely to increase or diminish the number of helpless hangers-on upon the efficient part of society. Will the whole nation consist in larger proportions of active and responsible workers, or of people who are simply burdens upon the real workers? The answer decides not only the question whether it is expedient, but also the question whether it is right or wrong, to support the proposed scheme. Every charitable action is so far a good action that it implies sympathy for suffering; but if it is so much in want of prudence that it increases the evil which it means to remedy, it becomes for that reason a bad action. To develop sympathy without developing foresight is just one of the one-sided developments which fail to constitute a real advance in morality, though I will not deny that it may incidentally lead to an advance. I hold, then, that the "struggle for existence" belongs to an underlying order of facts to which moral epithets cannot be properly applied. It denotes a condition of which the moralist has to take account, and to which morality has to be adapted; but which, just because it is a "cosmic process," cannot be altered, however much we may alter the conduct which it dictates. Under all conceivable circumstances, the race has to adapt itself to the environment, and that necessarily implies a conflict as well as an alliance. The preservation of the fittest, which is surely a good thing, is merely another aspect of the dying out of the unfit, which is hardly a bad thing. The feast which Nature spreads before us, according to Malthus's metaphor, is only sufficient for a limited number of guests, and the one question is how to select them. The tendency of morality is to humanise the struggle, to minimise the suffering of those who lose the game; and to offer the prizes to the qualities which are advantageous to all, rather than to those which increase and intensify the bitterness of the conflict. This implies the growth of foresight, which is an extension of the earlier instinct, and enables men to adapt themselves to the future and to learn from the past, as well as to act up to immediate impulse of present events. It implies still more the development of the sympathy which makes every man feel for the hurts of all, and which, as social organisation is closer, and the dependence of each constituent atom upon the whole organisation is more vividly realised, extends the range of a man's interests beyond his own private needs. In that sense, again, it must stimulate "collectivism" at the expense of a crude individualism, and condemns the doctrine which, as Professor Huxley puts it, would forbid us to restrain the member of a community from doing his best to destroy it. To restrain such conduct is surely to carry on the conflict against all anti-social agents or tendencies. For I should certainly hold any form of collectivism to be immoral which denied the essential doctrine of the abused individualist, the necessity, that is, for individual responsibility. We have surely to suppress the murderer, as our ancestors suppressed the wolf. We have to suppress both the external enemies, the noxious animals whose existence is incompatible with our own, and the internal enemies which are injurious elements in the society itself. That is, we have to work for the same end of eliminating the least fit. Our methods are changed; we desire to suppress poverty, not to extirpate the poor man. We give inferior races a chance of taking whatever place they are fit for, and try to supplant them with the least possible severity if they are unfit for any place. But the suppression of poverty supposes not the confiscation of wealth, which would hardly suppress poverty in the long run, nor even the adoption of a system of living which would enable the idle and the good-for-nothing to survive. The progress of civilisation depends, I should say, on the extension of the sense of duty which each man owes to society at large. That involves such a constitution of society that, although we abandon the old methods of hanging and flogging and shooting down--methods which corrupted the inflicters of punishment by diminishing their own sense of responsibility--may give an advantage to the prudent and industrious, and make it more probable that they will be the ancestors of the next generation. A system which should equalise the advantages of the energetic and the helpless would begin by demoralising, and would very soon lead to an unprecedented intensification of the struggle for existence. The probable result of a ruthless socialism would be the adoption of very severe means for suppressing those who did not contribute their share of work. But, in any case, as it seems, we never get away or break away from the inevitable fact. If individual ends could be suppressed, if every man worked for the good of society as energetically as for his own, we should still feel the absolute necessity of proportioning the whole body to the whole supplies obtainable from the planet, and to preserve the equilibrium of mankind relatively to the rest of nature. That day is probably distant; but even upon that hypothesis the struggle for existence would still be with us, and there would be the same necessity for preserving the fittest and killing out, as gently as might be, those who were unfit. 
21609	----	SOCIETY ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT BY HENRY KALLOCH ROWE, Ph.D. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND SOCIOLOGY IN NEWTON THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS PREFACE In studying biology it is convenient to make cross-sections of laboratory specimens in order to determine structure, and to watch plants and animals grow in order to determine function. There seems to be no good reason why social life should not be studied in the same way. To take a child in the home and watch it grow in the midst of the life of the family, the community, and the larger world, and to cut across group life so as to see its characteristics, its interests, and its organization, is to study sociology in the most natural way and to obtain the necessary data for generalization. To attempt to study sociological principles without this preliminary investigation is to confuse the student and leave him in a sea of vague abstractions. It is not because of a lack of appreciation of the abstract that the emphasis of this book is on the concrete. It is written as an introduction to the study of the principles of sociology, and it may well be used as a prelude to the various social sciences. It is natural that trained sociologists should prefer to discuss the profound problems of their science, and should plunge their pupils into material for study where they are soon beyond their depth; much of current life seems so obvious and so simple that it is easy to forget that the college man or woman has never looked upon it with a discriminating eye or with any attempt to understand its meaning. If this is true of the college student, it is unquestionably true of the men and women of the world. The writer believes that there is need of a simple, untechnical treatment of human society, and offers this book as a contribution to the practical side of social science. He writes with the undergraduate continually in mind, trying to see through his eyes and to think with his mind, and the references are to books that will best meet his needs and that are most readily accessible. It is expected that the pupil will read widely, and that the instructor will show how principles and laws are formulated from the multitude of observations of social phenomena. The last section of the book sums up briefly some of the scientific conclusions that are drawn from the concrete data, and prepares the way for a more detailed and technical study. If sociology is to have its rightful place in the world it must become a science for the people. It must not be permitted to remain the possession of an aristocracy of intellect. The heart of thousands of social workers who are trying to reform society and cure its ills is throbbing with sympathy and hope, but there is much waste of energy and misdirection of zeal because of a lack of understanding of the social life that they try to cure. They and the people to whom they minister need an interpretation of life in social terms that they can understand. Professional persons of all kinds need it. A world that is on the verge of despair because of the breakdown of harmonious human relations needs it to reassure itself of the value and the possibility of normal human relations. Doubtless the presentation of the subject is imperfect, but if it meets the need of those who find difficulty in using more technical discussions and opens up a new field of interest to many who hitherto have not known the difference between sociology and socialism, the effort at interpretation will have been worth while. HENRY K. ROWE NEWTON CENTRE, MASSACHUSETTS. CONTENTS PART ONE--INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER PAGE I. CHARACTERISTICS OF SOCIAL LIFE 1 II. UNORGANIZED GROUP LIFE 16 PART TWO--LIFE IN THE FAMILY GROUP III. FOUNDATIONS OF THE FAMILY 24 IV. THE HISTORY OF THE FAMILY 29 V. THE MAKING OF THE HOME 37 VI. CHILDREN IN THE HOME 42 VII. WORK, PLAY, AND EDUCATION 51 VIII. HOME ECONOMICS 60 IX. CHANGES IN THE FAMILY 67 X. DIVORCE 74 XI. THE SOCIAL EVIL 81 XII. CHARACTERISTICS AND PRINCIPLES 88 PART THREE--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE RURAL COMMUNITY XIII. THE COMMUNITY AND ITS HISTORY 91 XIV. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 99 XV. OCCUPATIONS 104 XVI. RECREATION 108 XVII. RURAL INSTITUTIONS 115 XVIII. RURAL EDUCATION 120 XIX. THE NEW RURAL SCHOOL 127 XX. RURAL GOVERNMENT 136 XXI. HEALTH AND BEAUTY 144 XXII. MORALS IN THE RURAL COMMUNITY 151 XXIII. THE RURAL CHURCH 156 XXIV. A NEW TYPE OF RURAL INSTITUTION 162 PART FOUR--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE CITY XXV. FROM COUNTRY TO CITY 169 XXVI. THE MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISE 180 XXVII. THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM 186 XXVIII. EXCHANGE AND TRANSPORTATION 201 XXIX. THE PEOPLE WHO WORK 212 XXX. THE IMMIGRANT 221 XXXI. HOW THE WORKING PEOPLE LIVE 230 XXXII. THE DIVERSIONS OF THE WORKING PEOPLE 238 XXXIII. CRIME AND ITS CURE 248 XXXIV. AGENCIES OF CONTROL 256 XXXV. DIFFICULTIES OF THE PEOPLE WHO WORK 263 XXXVI. CHARITY AND THE SETTLEMENTS 271 XXXVII. EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 280 XXXVIII. THE CHURCH 287 XXXIX. THE CITY IN THE MAKING 294 PART FIVE--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE NATION XL. THE BUILDING OF A NATION 300 XLI. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE PEOPLE AS A NATION 305 XLII. THE STATE 313 XLIII. PROBLEMS OF THE NATION 324 XLIV. INTERNATIONALISM 333 PART SIX--SOCIAL ANALYSIS XLV. PHYSICAL AND PERSONAL FACTORS IN THE LIFE OF SOCIETY 340 XLVI. SOCIAL PSYCHIC FACTORS 348 XLVII. SOCIAL THEORIES 357 XLVIII. THE SCIENCE OF SOCIOLOGY 364 INDEX 373 SOCIETY: ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT PART I--INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER I CHARACTERISTICS OF SOCIAL LIFE 1. =Man and His Social Relations.=--A study of society starts with the obvious fact that human beings live together. The hermit is abnormal. However far back we go in the process of human evolution we find the existence of social relations, and sociability seems a quality ingrained in human nature. Every individual has his own personality that belongs to him apart from every other individual, but the perpetuation and development of that personality is dependent on relations with other personalities and with the physical environment which limits his activity. As an individual his primary interest is in self, but he finds by experience that he cannot be independent of others. His impulses, his feelings, and his ideas are due to the relations that he has with that which is outside of himself. He may exercise choice, but it is within the limits set by these outside relations. He may make use of what they can do for him or he may antagonize them, at least he cannot ignore them. Experience determines how the individual may best adapt himself to his environment and adapt the environment to his own needs, and he thus establishes certain definite relationships. Any group of individuals, who have thus consciously established relationships with one another and with their social environment is a society. The relations through whose channels the interplay of social forces is constantly going on make up the social organization. The readjustments of these relations for the better adaptation of one individual to another, or of either to their environment, make up the process of social development. A society which remains in equilibrium is termed static, that which is changing is called dynamic. 2. =The Field and the Purpose of Sociology.=--Life in society is the subject matter of sociological study. Sociology is concerned with the origin and development of that life, with its present forms and activities, and with their future development. It finds its material in the every-day experiences of men, women, and children in whatever stage of progress they may be; but for practical purposes its chief interest is in the normal life of civilized communities, together with the past developments and future prospects of that life. The purpose of sociological study is to discover the active workings and controlling principles of life, its essential meaning, and its ultimate goal; then to apply the principles, laws, and ideals discovered to the imperfect social process that is now going on in the hope of social betterment. 3. =Source Material for Study.=--The source material of social life lies all about us. For its past history we must explore the primitive conduct of human beings as we learn it from anthropology and archæology, or as we infer it from the lowest human races or from animal groups that bear the nearest physical and mental resemblance to mankind. For present phenomena we have only to look about us, and having seen to attempt their interpretation. Life is mirrored in the daily press. Pick up any newspaper and examine its contents. It reveals social characteristics both local and wide-spread. 4. =Social Characteristics--Activity.=--The first fact that stands out clearly as a characteristic of social life is _activity_. Everybody seems to be doing something. There are a few among the population, like vagrants and the idle rich, who are parasites, but even they sustain relations to others that require a certain sort of effort. Activity seems fundamental. It needs but a hasty survey to show how general it is. Farmers are cultivating their broad acres, woodsmen are chopping and hewing in the forest, miners are drilling in underground chambers, and the products of farm, forest, and mine are finding their way by river, road, and rail to the great distributing centres. In the town the machinery of mill and factory keeps busy thousands of operatives, and turns out manufactured products to compete with the products of the soil for right of way to the cities of the New World and the Old. Busiest of all are the throngs that thread the streets of the great centres, and pour in and out of stores and offices. Men rush from one person to another, and interview one after another the business houses with which they maintain connection; women swarm about the counters of the department stores and find at the same time social satisfaction and pecuniary reward; children in hundreds pour into the intellectual hopper of the schoolroom and from there to the playground. Everybody is busy, and everybody is seeking personal profit and satisfaction. 5. =Mental Activity.=--There is another kind of activity of which these economic and social phases are only the outward expression, an activity of the mind which is busy continually adjusting the needs of the individual or social organism and the environment to each other. Some acts are so instinctive or habitual that they do not require conscious mental effort; others are the result of reasoning as to this or that course of action. The impulse of the farmer may be to remain inactive, or the schoolboy may feel like going fishing; the call of nature stimulates the desire; but reason reaches out and takes control and directs outward activity into proper channels. On the other hand, reason fortifies worthy inclinations. The youth feels an inclination to stretch his muscles or to use his brains, and reason re-enforces feeling. The physical need of food, clothing, and shelter acts as a goad to drive a man to work, and reason sanctions his natural response. This mental activity guides not only individual human conduct but also that of the group. Instinct impels the man to defend his family from hardship or his clan from defeat, and reason confirms the impulse. His sociable disposition urges him to co-operate in industry, and reason sanctions his inclination. The history of society reveals an increasing influence of the intellect in thus directing instinct and feeling. It is a law of social activity that it tends to become more rational with the increase of education and experience. But it is never possible to determine the quantitative influence of the various factors that enter into a decision, or to estimate the relative pressure of the forces that urge to activity. Alike in mental and in physical activity there is a union of all the causative factors. In an act of the will impulse, feeling, and reflection all have their part; in physical activity it is difficult to determine how compelling is any one of the various forces, such as heredity and environment, that enter into the decision. 6. =The Valuation of Social Activities.=--The importance to society of all these activities is not to be measured by their scope or by their vigor or volume, but by the efficiency with which they perform their function, and the value of the end they serve. Domestic activities, such as the care of children, may be restricted to the home, and a woman's career may seem to be blighted thereby, but no more important work can be accomplished than the proper training of the child. Political activity may be national in scope, but if it is vitiated by corrupt practices its value is greatly diminished. Certain activities carry with them no important results, because they have no definite function, but are sporadic and temporary, like the coming together of groups in the city streets, mingling in momentary excitement and dissolving as quickly. The true valuation of activities is to be determined by their social utility. The employment of working men in the brewing of beer or the manufacture of chewing-gum may give large returns to an individual or a corporation, but the social utility of such activity is small. Business enterprise is naturally self-centred; the first interest of every individual or group is self-preservation, and business must pay for itself and produce a surplus for its owner or it is not worth continuing from the economic standpoint; but a business enterprise has no right selfishly to disregard the interests of its employees and of the public. Its social value must be reckoned as small or great, not by the amount of business carried on, but by its contribution to human welfare. Take a department store as an illustration. It may be highly profitable to its owners, giving large returns on the investment, while distributing cheap and defective goods and paying its employees less than a decent living wage. Its value is to be determined as small because its social utility is of little worth. When the value of activity is estimated on this basis, it will be seen that among the noblest activities are those of the philanthropist who gives his time and interest without stint to the welfare of other folk; of the minister who lends himself to spiritual ministry, and the physician who gives up his own comfort and sometimes his own life to save those who are physically ill; of the housewife who bears and rears children and keeps the home as her willing contribution to the life of the world; and of the nurses, companions, and teachers who are mothers, sisters, and wives to those who need their help. 7. =Results of Activity.=--The product of activity is achievement. The workers of the world are continually transforming energy into material products. To clear away a forest, to raise a thousand bushels of grain, to market a herd of cattle or a car-load of shoes, to build a sky-scraper or an ocean liner, is an achievement. But it is a greater achievement to take a child mind and educate it until it learns how to cultivate the soil profitably, how to make a machine or a building of practical value, and how to save and enrich life. The history of human folk shows that achievement has been gradual, and much of it without conscious planning, but the great inventors, the great architects, the great statesmen have been men of vision, and definite purpose is sure to fill a larger place in the story of achievement. Purposive progress rather than unconscious, telic rather than genetic, is the order of the evolution of society. The highest achievement of the race is its moral uplift. The man or woman who has a noble or kindly thought, who has consecrated life to unselfish ends and has spent constructive effort for the common good, is the true prince among men. He may be a leader upon whom the common people rely in time of stress, or only a private in the ranks--he is a hero, for his achievement is spiritual, and his mastery of the inner life is his supreme victory. 8. =Association.=--A second characteristic of social life is that activity is not the activity of isolated individuals, but it is _activity in association_. Human beings work together, play together, talk together, worship together, fight together. If they happen to act alone, they are still closely related to one another. Examine the daily newspaper record and see how few items have to do with individuals acting in isolation. Even if a person sits down alone to think, his mind is working along the line on which it received the push of another mind shortly before. A large part of the work of the world is done in concert. The ship and the train have their crew, the factory its hands, the city police and fire departments their force. Men shout together on the ball field, and sing folk-songs in chorus. As an audience they listen to the play or the sermon, as a mob they rush the jail to lynch a prisoner, or as a crowd they riot in high carnival on Mardi Gras. The normal individual belongs to a family, a community, a political party, a nation; he may belong, besides, to a church, a few learned societies, a trade-union, or any number of clubs or fraternities. Human beings associate because they possess common interests and means of intercourse. They are affected by the same needs. They have the power to think in the same grooves and to feel a common sympathy. Members of the same race or community have a common fund of custom or tradition; they are conscious of like-mindedness in morals and religion; they are subject to the same kind of mental suggestion; they have their own peculiar language and literature. As communication between different parts of the world improves and ability to speak in different languages increases, there comes a better understanding among the world's peoples and an increase of mutual sympathy. Experience has taught the value of association. By it the individual makes friends, gains in knowledge, enlarges interests. Knowing this, he seeks acquaintances, friends, and companions. He finds the world richer because of family, community, and national life, and if necessary he is willing to sacrifice something of his own comfort and peace for the advantages that these associations will bring. 9. =Causes of Association.=--It is the nature of human beings to enjoy company, to be curious about what they see and hear, to talk together, and to imitate one another. These traits appear in savages and even in animals, and they are not outgrown with advance in civilization. These inborn instincts are modified or re-enforced by the conscious workings of the mind, and are aided or restricted by external circumstances. It is a natural instinct for men to seek associates. They feel a liking for one and a dislike for another, and select their friends accordingly. But the choice of most men is within a restricted field, for their acquaintance is narrow. College men are thrown with a certain set or join a certain fraternity. They play on the same team or belong to the same class. They may have chosen their college, but within that institution their environment is limited. It is similar in the world at large. Individuals do not choose the environment in which at first they find themselves, and the majority cannot readily change their environment. Within its natural limits and the barriers which caste or custom have fixed, children form their play groups according to their liking for each other, and adults organize their societies according to their mutual interests or common beliefs. With increasing acquaintance and ease of communication and transportation there comes a wider range of choice, and environment is less controlling. The will of the individual becomes freer to choose friends and associates wherever he finds them. He may have widely scattered business and political connections. He may be a member of an international association. He may even take a wife from another city or a distant nation. Mental interaction flows in international channels. 10. =Forms of Association.=--It is possible to classify all forms of association in two groups as natural, like a gang of boys, or artificial, like a political party. Or it is possible to arrange them according to the interests they serve, as economic, scientific, and the like. Again they may be classified according to thoroughness of organization, ranging from the crowd to the closely knit corporation. But whatever the form may be, the value of the association is to be judged according to the degree of social worth, as in the case of activities. On that basis a company of gladiators or a pugilist's club ranks below a village improvement society; that in turn yields in importance to a learned association of physicians discussing the best means of relieving human suffering. In the slow process of social evolution those forms that do not contribute to the welfare of the race will lose their place in society. 11. =Results of Association.=--The results of association are among the permanent assets of the race. Man has become what he is because of his social relations, and further progress is dependent upon them. The arts that distinguish man from his inferiors are the products of inter-communication and co-operation. The art of conversation and the accompanying interchange of ideas and thought stimulus are to be numbered among the benefits. The art of conciliation that calms ruffled tempers and softens conflict belongs here. The art of co-operation, that great engine of achievement, depends on learning through social contact how to think and feel sympathetically. Finally, there is the product of social organization. Chance meetings and temporary assemblies are of small value, though they must be noted as phenomena of association. More important are the fixed institutions that have grown out of relations continually tested by experience until they have become sanctioned by society as indispensable. Such are the organized forms of business, education, government, and religion. But all groups require organization of a sort. The gang has its recognized leader, the club its officers and by-laws. Even such antisocial persons as outlaws frequently move in bands and have their chiefs. Organization goes far to determine success in war or politics, in work or play. Like achievement, organization is the result of a gradual growth in collective experience, and must be continually adapted to the changing requirements of successive periods by the wisdom of master minds. It must also gradually include larger groups within its scope until, like the International Young Men's Christian Association or the Universal Postal Union, it reaches out to the ends of the earth. 12. =Control.=--The public mirror of the press reveals a third characteristic of social life. Activity and association are both under _control_. Activity would result in exploitation of the weak by the strong, and finally in anarchy, if there were no exercise of control. Under control activities are co-ordinated, individuals and classes are brought to work in co-operation and not in antagonism, and under an enlightened and sanctioned authority life becomes richer, fuller, and more truly free. Social control begins in the individual mind. Instincts and feelings are held in the leash of rational thought. Intelligence is the guide to action. Control is exerted externally upon the individual from early childhood. Parental authority checks the independence of the child and compels conformity to the will of his elders. Family tradition makes its power felt in many homes, and family pride is a compelling reason for moral rectitude. Every member of the family is restrained by the rights of the others, and often yields his own preferences for the common good. When the child goes out from the home he is still under restraint, and rigid regulations become even more pronounced. The rules of the schoolroom permit little freedom. The teacher's authority is absolute during the hours when school is in session. In the city when school hours are over there are municipal regulations enforced by watchful police that restrict the activity of a boy in the streets, and if he visits the playground he is still under the reign of law. Similarly the adult is hedged about by social control. Custom decrees that he must dress appropriately for the street, that he must pass to the right when he meets another person, and that he must raise his hat to an acquaintance of the opposite sex. The college youth finds it necessary to acquaint himself with the customs and traditions that have been handed down from class to class, and these must be observed under pain of ostracism. Faculty and trustees stand in the way of his unlimited enjoyment. His moral standards are affected by the atmosphere of the chapter house, the athletic field, and the examination hall. In business and civil relations men find themselves compelled to recognize laws that have been formulated for the public good. State and national governments have been able to assert successfully their right to control corporate action, however large and powerful the corporation might be. But government itself is subject to the will of the people in a democratic nation, and public opinion sways officials and determines local and national policies. Religious beliefs have the force of law upon whole peoples like the Mohammedans. Social control is exercised in large measure without the mailed fist. Moral suasion tends to supersede the birch stick and the policeman's billy. Within limits there is freedom of action, and the tacit appeal of society is to a man's self-control. But the newspaper with its sensation and police-court gossip never lets us forget that back of self-control is the court of judicial authority and the bar of public opinion. The result of the constant exercise of control is the existence of order. The normal individual becomes accustomed to restraint from his earliest years, and it is only the few who are disorderly in the schoolroom, on the streets, or in the broader relations of life. Criminals make up a small part of the population; anarchy never has appealed to many as a social philosophy; unconventional people are rare enough to attract special attention. 13. =Change.=--A fourth characteristic of social life is _change_. Control tends to keep society static, but there are powerful dynamic forces that are continually upsetting the equilibrium. In spite of the natural conservatism of institutions and agencies of control, group life is as continually changing as the physical elements in nature. Continued observation recorded over a considerable period of time reveals changing habits, changing occupations, changing interests, even changing laws and governments. Inside the group individuals are continually readjusting their modes of thought and activity to one another, and between groups there is a similar adjustment of social habits. Without such change there can be no progress. War or other catastrophe suddenly alters wide human relations. External influences are constantly making their impression upon us, stimulating us to higher attainment or dragging us down to individual and group degeneration. 14. =Causes of Change.=--The factors that enter into social life to produce change are numerous. Conflict of ideas among individuals and groups compels frequent readjustment of thought. The free expression of opinion in public debate and through the press is a powerful factor. Travel alters modes of conduct, and wholesale migration changes the characteristics of large groups of population. Family habits change with accumulation of wealth or removal from the farm to the city. The introduction of the telephone and the free mail delivery with its magazines and daily newspapers has altered currents of thought in the country. Summer visitors have introduced country and city to each other; the automobile has enlarged the horizon of thousands. New modes of agriculture have been adopted through the influence of a state agricultural college, new methods of education through a normal school, new methods of church work through a theological seminary. Whole peoples, as in China and Turkey, have been profoundly affected by forces that compelled change. Growth in population beyond comfortable means of subsistence has set tribes in motion; the need of wider markets has compelled nations to try forcible expansion into disputed areas. The desire for larger opportunities has sent millions of emigrants from Europe to America, and has been changing rapidly the complexion of the crowds that walk the city streets and enter the polling booths. Certain outstanding personalities have moulded life and thought through the centuries, and have profoundly changed whole regions of country. Mohammed and Confucius put their personal stamp upon the Orient; Cæsar and Napoleon made and remade western Europe; Adam Smith and Darwin swayed economic and scientific England; Washington and Lincoln were makers of America. Through such social processes as these--through unconscious suggestion, through communication and discussion that mould public opinion, through changes in environment and the influence of new leaders of thought and action--the evolution of folk life has carried whole races, sometimes to oblivion, but generally out of savagery and barbarism into a material and cultural civilization. 15. =Results of the Process.=--The results of the process of social change are so far-reaching as to be almost incalculable. Particularly marked are the changes of the last hundred years. The best way to appreciate them is by a comparison of periods. Take college life in America as an example. Scores of colleges now large and prosperous were not then in existence, and even in the older colleges conditions were far inferior to what they are in the newer and smaller colleges to-day. There were few preparatory schools, and the young man--of course there were no college women--fitted himself as best he could by private instruction. To reach the college it was necessary to drive by stage or private conveyance to the college town, to find rooms in an ill-equipped dormitory or private house, to be content with plain food for the body and a narrow course of study for the mind. The method of instruction was tedious and uninspiring; text-books were unattractive and dull. There were no libraries worthy of the name, no laboratories or observatories for research. Scientific instruction was conspicuous by its absence; the social sciences were unknown. Gymnasiums had not been evolved from the college wood-pile; intercollegiate sports were unknown. Glee clubs, dramatic societies, college journalism, and the other arts and pastimes that give color and variety to modern university life were unknown. In the same period modes of thinking have changed. Scientific discoveries and the principles that have been based on them have wrought a revolution. Evolution has become a word to conjure with. Scholars think in terms of process. Biological investigation has opened wide the whole realm of life and emphasized the place of development in the physical organism. Psychological study has changed the basis of philosophy. Sociology has come with new interpretations of human life. Rapid changes are taking place at the present time in education, in religion, and in social adjustments. The rate of progress varies in different parts of the world; there are handicaps in the form of race conservatism, local and individual self-satisfaction and independence, maladjustments and isolation; sometimes the process leads along a downward path. On the whole, however, the history is a story of progress. 16. =Weaknesses.=--In the thinking of not a few persons the handicaps that lie in the path of social development bulk larger than the engines of progress. They are pessimistic over the _weaknesses_ that constitute a fifth characteristic of social life. These are certainly not to be overlooked, but they are an inevitable result of incomplete adaptations during a constant process of change. There are numerous illustrations of weakness. Social activity is not always wisely directed. Association frequently develops antagonism instead of co-operation. In trade and industry individuals do not "play fair." Corporations are sometimes unjust. Politics are liable to become corrupt. In the various associations of home and community life indifference, cruelty, unchastity, and crime add to the burdens of poverty, disease, and wretchedness. A yellow press mirrors a scandalous amount of intrigue, immorality, and misdemeanor. Government abuses its power; public opinion is intolerant and unjust; fashion is tyrannical; law is uncompromising. In times like our own economic interests frequently overshadow cultural interests. In college estimation athletics appear to bulk larger than the curriculum. In the public mind prejudice and hasty judgments take precedence over carefully weighed opinions and judicial decisions. Conservatism blocks the wheels of progress, or radicalism, in its unbalanced enthusiasm, destroys by injudiciousness the good that has been gradually accumulating. The social machinery gets out of gear, or proves inefficient for the new burdens that frequently are imposed upon it. The social order is not perfect and needs occasional amendment. 17. =Resultant Problems.=--These weaknesses precipitate specific social problems. Some of them are bound up in the family relationships, like the better regulation of marriage and divorce, the prevention of desertion, and the rights of women and children. Others are questions that relate to industry, such as the rights of employees with reference to wages and hours of labor, or the unhealthy conditions in which working people live and toil. Certain matters are issues in every community. It is not easy to decide what shall be done with the poor, the unfortunate, and the weak-willed members of society. Some problems are peculiar to the country, the city, or the nation, like the need of rural co-operation, the improvement of municipal efficiency, or the regulation of immigration. A few are international, like the scourge of war. Besides such specific problems there are always general issues demanding the attention of social thinkers and reformers, such as the adjustment of individual rights to social duties, and the improvement of moral and religious efficiency. 18. =The Social Groups.=--A broad survey of the current life of society leads naturally to the questions: How is this social life organized? and How did it come to be? The answers to these questions appear in certain social groupings, each of which has a history and life of its own, but is only a segment of the whole circle of active association. These groupings include the family, the rural community, the city, and the nation. In the natural environment of the home social life finds its apprenticeship. When the child has become in a measure socialized, he enters into the larger relations of the neighborhood. Half the people of the United States live in country communities, but an increasing proportion of the population is found in the midst of the associations and activities of the larger civic community. All are citizens or wards of the nation, and have a part in the social life of America. Consciously or not they have still wider relations in a world life that is continually growing in social content. Each of these groups reveals the same fundamental characteristics, but each has its peculiar forms and its dominant energies; each has its perplexing problems and each its possibilities of greater good. Through the environment the forces of the mind are moulding a life that is gradually becoming more nearly like the social ideal. READING REFERENCES GIDDINGS: _Principles of Sociology_, pages 363-399. SMALL AND VINCENT: _Introduction to the Study of Society_, pages 237-240. DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 58-73. ROSS: _Social Control_, pages 49-61. ROSS: _Foundations of Sociology_, pages 182-255. BLACKMAR AND GILLIN: _Outlines of Sociology_, pages 271-282. CHAPTER II UNORGANIZED GROUP LIFE 19. =Temporary Groups.=--A study of the organization and development of social life is mainly a study of the mental and physical activities of individuals associated in permanent groups. Conditions change and there is a continual shifting of contacts as in a kaleidoscope, but the group is a fixed institution in the life of society. But besides the permanent groups there are temporary unorganized associations that have a place in social life too important to be overlooked. They vary in size from a chance meeting of two or three friends who stop on the street corner and separate after a few minutes of conversation, to the great mass-meeting, that is called for a special purpose and interests a whole neighborhood, but adjourns _sine die_. Such groups are subject to the same physical and psychic forces that affect the family, the community, and the nation, but they tend to act more on impulse, because there is no habitual subordination to an established rule or order. A simple illustration will show the influences that work to produce these temporary groupings and that govern conduct. 20. =How the Group Forms.=--Imagine a working man on the morning of a holiday. Without a fixed purpose how he will spend the day, his mind works along the line of least resistance, inviting physical or mental stimulus, and sensitive to respond. He is not accustomed to remain at home, nor does he wish to be alone. He is used to the companionship of the factory, and instinctively he longs for the association of his kind. He is most likely to meet his acquaintances on the street, and he feels the pull of the out-of-doors. The influences of instinct and habit impel him to activity, and he makes a definite choice to leave the house. Once on the street he feels the zest of motion and the anticipation of the pleasure that he will find in the companionship of his fellows. Reason assures him from past experience that he has made a good choice, and on general principles asserts that exercise is good for him, whatever may be the social result of his stroll. Thus the various factors that produce individual activity are at work in him. They are similarly at work in others of his kind. Presently these factors will bring them together. Unconsciously the working man and his friend are moving toward each other. The attention and discrimination of each man is brought into play with every person that he meets, but there is no recognition of acquaintance until each comes within the range of vision of the other. They greet each other with a hail of good-fellowship and a cordial hand-shake and stop for conversation. An analysis of the psychological elements that enter into such an incident would make plain the part of sense-perception and memory, of feeling and volition in the act of each, but the significant fact in the incident is that these mental factors are set to work because of the contact of one mind upon the other. It is the mental interaction arising from the moment's association that produces the social phenomenon. What are the social phenomena of this particular occasion? They are the acts that have taken place because of association. The individual would not greet himself or shake hands with himself, or stop to talk with himself. They are dependent upon the presence of more than one person; they are phenomena of the group. Why do they shake hands and talk? First, because they feel alike and think alike, and sympathy and like-mindedness seek expression in gesture and language, and, secondly, because their mode of action is under the control of a social custom that directs specific acts. If the meeting was on the continent of Europe the men might embrace, if it was in the jungle of Africa they might raise a yell at sight of each other, but American custom limits the greeting to a hand-clasp, supplemented on occasion by a slap on the shoulder. In Italy the language used is peculiar to the race and is helped out by many gestures; in New England of the Puritans the language used would be of a type peculiar to itself, and would hardly have the assistance of a changing facial expression. To-day two men have formed a temporary group, group action has taken place, and the action, while impulsive, is under the constraint of present custom. What happens next? 21. =The Working of the Social Mind.=--Conversation in the group develops a common purpose. The two men are conscious of common desires and interests, or through a conflict of ideas the will of one subordinates the will of the other, and under the control of the joint purpose, which is now the social mind, they move toward one goal. This goal soon appears to be the objective point of a larger social mind, for other men and boys are converging in the same direction. At the corner of another street the two companions meet other friends, and after a mutual greeting the augmented party finds its way to the entrance of a ball park. The same instincts and habits and the same feelings and thoughts have stirred in every member of the group; they have felt the pull of the same desires and interests; they have put themselves in motion toward the same goal; they have greeted one another in similar fashion, and they find satisfaction in talking together on a common topic; but they do not constitute a permanent or organized group, and once separated they may never repeat this chance meeting. 22. =The Impulse of the Crowd.=--Once within the ball park and seated on the long benches they are part of a far larger group of like-minded human beings, and they feel a common thrill in anticipation of the pleasure of the sport. They feel the stimulus that comes from obedience to a common impulse. A shout or a joke arouses a sympathetic outburst from hundreds. When they came together at first most of them were strangers, but common interests and emotions have produced a group consciousness. The game is called, and hundreds in unison fix their attention on the men in action. A hit is made, in breathless suspense the crowd watches to see the result, and with a common impulse cries out simultaneously in approbation or disgust over the play. As the game proceeds primitive passions play over the crowd and emotions find free expression in the language that habit and custom provide. The crowd is in a state of high suggestibility; it responds to the stimulus of a chance remark, the misplay of a player, or the misjudgment of an umpire; one moment it is thrown into panic by the prospect of defeat, and the next into paroxysms of delight as the tide of victory turns. On sufficient provocation the crowd gets into motion, impelled by a common excitement to unreasoning action; it pours upon the field, and, unless prevented, wreaks its anger upon team or umpire that has aroused it to fury, but met with superior force the crowd melts away, dissolving into its smaller groups and then into its individual elements. A crowd of the sort described constitutes one type of the incomplete group. It is a chance assembly, moved by a common purpose but coalescing only temporarily, guided by elemental impulses, and readily breaking up without permanent achievement other than obtaining the recreation sought. 23. =The Mass-Meeting.=--Another and more orderly type appears in a meeting of American residents in a foreign city to protest against an outrage to their flag or an injustice to one of their number. Those who assemble are not members of a definite organization with a regular machinery for action. They are, however, moved by common emotion and purpose, because they are conscious of a permanent bond that creates mutual sympathy. They are citizens of the same country. They are mindful of a national history that is their common heritage. They are proud of the position of eminence that belongs to the Western republic. There is a peculiar quality to the patriotism that they all feel and that calls out a unanimous expression. Their minds work alike, and they come together to give expression to their feelings and convictions. They are under the direction of a presiding officer and the procedure of the meeting is according to the parliamentary rules that guide civilized assemblies. However urgent of purpose, the speakers hold themselves in leash, and the listeners content themselves with conventional applause when their enthusiasm is aroused. After a reasonable amount of discussion has taken place, the assembly crystallizes its opinions in the form of resolutions couched in earnest but dignified language and disperses to await the action of those in authority. 24. =International Association.=--Still another type is the incomplete group that is composed of men and women of similar moral or religious convictions who never assemble in one place, but constitute a certain kind of association. Kipling could sing, "The East is East and the West is West And never the twain shall meet," yet through missionary efforts people of very different races and habits of living and thinking have been brought to cherish the same beliefs and to adopt similar customs. Thousands of such people in all parts of the world constitute a unified group because of their mental interaction, though they may never meet and are not organized in common. The only medium through which one section has influenced another may be a single missionary or book, but the electric current of sympathy passes from one to another as effectively as the wireless carries a message across leagues of space. In the same way sentiment and opinion spread and reproduce themselves, even through long periods of time. Before the middle of the nineteenth century Chinese sentiment was so strong against the importation of opium from India that war broke out with England, with the result that the curse was fastened upon the Orient. The evil increased, spreading through many countries. Meantime international fortunes brought the United States to the Philippines and trade carried opium to the United States. Foreigners in China combated the evil. The nation took a determined stand, and finally, through international agreement under American leadership, the trade and the consumption of opium were checked. Similarly slavery was put under the opprobrium of Christendom, public opinion in one nation after another was formed against it, laws were passed condemning it, and at last it received an international ban. At the present time, through agitation and conference, a world sentiment against war is increasing, and pacifists in every land constitute an expanding group of like-minded men and women who are determined that wars shall cease in the future. These are all examples of unorganized associations or incomplete groups. 25. =Experiments in Association.=--In the history of human kind numerous experiments in association have been made; those which have served well in the competition between groups have survived, and have tended to become permanent types of association, receiving the sanction of society, and so to be reckoned as social institutions; others have been thrown on the rubbish heap as worthless. It is generally believed, for example, that many related families in primitive times associated in a loosely connected horde, but the horde could not compete successfully with an organized state and gave way before it. The local community in New England once carried on its affairs satisfactorily in yearly mass-meeting, where every citizen had an equal privilege of speaking and voting directly upon a proposed measure, but there proved to be a limit to the efficiency of such government when the population increased, so that a meeting of all the citizens was impossible, and a constitutional assembly of representative citizens was devised. Similarly national governments have been organized for greater efficiency and machinery is being invented frequently to increase their value. 26. =Kinds of Unorganized Groups.=--Unorganized groups are of three kinds: There are first the normal groups that are continually being formed and dissolved, but that perform a useful function while they exist. Such are the chance meetings and conversations of friends in all walks of life, and the crowds that gather occasionally to help forward a good cause. They promote general intelligence, provide a free exchange of ideas, and help to form a body of public opinion for social guidance. There is often an open-mindedness among the common people that is not vitiated by the grip of vested interests upon their unwarped judgments, and the people can be trusted in the long run to make good. Democracy is based upon the reliability of public opinion. The second kind of unorganized group is one that is on the way to becoming a permanent group sanctioned by society. A group of this type is the boy's gang. By most persons the spontaneous association of a dozen boys who live near together and range over a certain district has been condemned as a social evil; recently it has become recognized as a normal group, forming naturally at a certain period of boy life and falling to pieces of its own accord a few years later. The tendency of boy leaders is not only to give it recognition as legitimate, but to use the gang instinct to promote definite organizations of greater value to their members and to the community. Another group of the same type is a so-called "movement," composed of a few individuals who associate themselves in a loose way to further a definite purpose, like the promotion of temperance, hold mass-meetings, and create public opinion, but do not at once proceed to a permanent organization. Eventually, when the movement has gathered sufficient headway or has shown that it is permanently valuable, a fixed organization may be accomplished. The third kind of unorganized group is an abnormality in the midst of civilization, a relic of the primitive days when impulse rather than reason swayed the mind of a group. Such is the crowd that gathers in a moment of excitement and yields to a momentary passion to lynch a prisoner, or a revolutionary mob that loots and burns out of a sheer desire for destruction. Such a group has not even the value of a safety-valve, for its passion gathers momentum as it goes, and, like a conflagration, it cannot be stopped until it has burned itself out or met a solid wall of military authority. 27. =The Popular Crowd vs. the Organized Group.=--In the routine life of a disciplined society there is always to be found at least one of these types. Even the abnormal type of the passionate crowd is not unusual in its milder form. Any unusual event like a fire or a circus will draw scores and hundreds together, and the crowd is always liable to fall into disorder unless officers of the law are in attendance. This is so well understood that the police are always in evidence where there are large congregations of people at church or theatre, where a prominent man is to be seen or a procession is to pass. But the popular mass is a volatile thing, and in proportion to its size it expends little useful energy. It is never to be reckoned as equal in importance to the organized company, however small it may be, that has a definite purpose guiding its regular action, and that persists in its purpose for years together. It is the fixed group, the social institution, that does the work of the world and carries society forward from lower to higher levels of civilization. Social efficiency belongs to the organized type. READING REFERENCES COOLEY: _Social Organization_, pages 149-156. GIDDINGS: _Elements of Sociology_, pages 129-140. ROSS: _Foundations of Sociology_, pages 120-138. ROSS: _Social Psychology_, pages 43-82. MÜNSTERBERG: _Psychology, General and Applied_, pages 269-273. DAVENPORT: _Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals_, pages 25-31. PART II--LIFE IN THE FAMILY GROUP CHAPTER III FOUNDATIONS OF THE FAMILY 28. =The Fundamental Importance of the Family.=--Social life can be understood best by taking the simplest organized group of human beings and analyzing its activities, its organization, and its development. The family is such a group and is, therefore, a natural basis for study. It illustrates most of the phases of social activity, it is simple in its organization, its history goes back to primitive times, and it is rapidly changing in the present. Family life is made up of the interactions of individual life, and, therefore, the individual in his social relations and not the family is the unit of sociological investigation, but until recent years the family group has been regarded as of greater importance than the individual, and in the Orient the family still occupies the place of importance. Out of the family have developed such institutions as property, law, and government, and on the maintenance of the family rests the future welfare of society. It has been claimed that "the study of the single family on its homestead would yield richer scientific knowledge and more practical results in the great social sciences than almost any other single object in the social world. Pursued historically, the student would find himself at the roots of property, separate ownership of land, inheritance, taxation, free trade and tariff, and discover the germs of international law and the state. The great questions of the day, as we call them, are little more than incidents to the working out of the great social institutions, and these are the expansions and modified forms of the family amid its unceasing support and activity." 29. =The Family on the Farm.=--The best environment in which to study the family is the farm. There the relations and activities of the larger world appear in miniature, but with a greater simplicity and unity than elsewhere. There the family gets closer to the soil, and its members feel their relation to nature and the restrictions that nature imposes upon human activity. There appear the occupations of the successive stages of history--hunting, the care of domesticated animals, agriculture, and manufacturing; there are the activities of production, distribution, and consumption of economic goods. There a consciousness of mutual dependence is developed, and the value of co-operation is illustrated. There the mind ranges less fettered than in the town, yet is less inclined toward radical changes. There the family preserves and hands down from one generation to another the heritage of the past, and stimulates its members to further progress. In the family on the farm children learn how to live in association with their kin and with hired employees; there much of the mental, moral, and religious training is begun; and there is found most of the sympathy and encouragement that nerves the boy to go out from home for the struggle of life in the larger community and the world. 30. =Physical Conditions of Farm Life.=--Every group, like every individual, is dependent in a measure on its physical environment. The prosperity of the family on the farm and the daily activities of its members wait often upon the quality of climate and soil and the temper of the weather. The rocky hillsides of mountain lands like Switzerland breed a hardy, self-reliant people, who make the most of small opportunities for agriculture. A well-watered, rolling country pours its riches into the lap of the husbandman; in such surroundings he is likely to be more cheerful but less gritty than the Scottish highlander. The pioneer settlers of America, in their trek into the ulterior, faced the forest and its terrors, and every member of the family who was old enough added his ounce of effort to the struggle to subdue it. Their descendants enjoy the fruits of the earlier victory. The well-trimmed woodland and fertile field are attractive to him; nature in varying moods interests him. Even on the edge of the Western desert the farmer is the master of a process of dry farming or irrigation, so that he can smile at nature's effort to drive him out. Science and education have helped to make man more independent of natural forces and natural moods, but still it is nature that provides the raw materials, that supplies the energy of wind and water and sunshine, and that hastens prosperity if man learns to co-operate with it. Success in the economic struggle of the family has always been conditioned upon the physical environment, and it will always remain one of the factors that shape human destiny. 31. =Inheritance of Family Traits.=--Another factor that enters into family life is the physical nature of its members, the quality of the stock from which the family is descended. Heredity is as important in sociological study as environment. It is well known that a child inherits racial and family traits from his ancestors, and these he cannot shake off altogether as he grows older. Families have their peculiarities that continue from one generation to another. The family endowment is often the foundation of individual success. Without physical sturdiness the man and woman on the farm are seriously handicapped and are liable to succumb in the struggle for existence; without mental ability and moral stamina members of the family fail to make a broad mark on the community, and the family influence declines. Mere acquisition or transmission of wealth does not constitute good fortune. This fact of heredity must therefore be reckoned with in all the activities of the family, and cannot be overlooked in a study of the psychic factors which are the real social forces. 32. =The Domestic Function of the Family.=--The farm family for the purpose of study may be thought of as composed of husband and wife, children and servants, but the makers of the family are of first importance for its understanding. The family has a long history, but it exists, not because it is a long-established institution, but because it satisfies present human needs, as all institutions must if they are to survive. The family serves many ends, but as the primary social instincts are to mate and to eat, so the principal functions of the family are the _domestic_ and the _economic_. The normal adult desires to mate, to have and rear children, and to make a home. To this his sexual and parental instincts impel him; they are nature's provision for the perpetuation of the race. The sex instinct attracts the man and the woman to each other, and marriage is the sanction of society to their union; the parental instinct gives birth to children and leads the father and mother to protect the child through the long years of dependence. Marriage and parenthood are twin obligations that the individual owes to the race. Celibacy makes no contribution to the perpetuation of the race, and unregulated sexual intercourse is a blight upon society. Marriage lays the foundation of the home and makes possible the values that belong to that institution. Children hold the family together; separation and divorce are most common in childless homes. Personal service and sacrifice are engendered in the care of children; therefore it is that the family without children is not a perfect family, but an abnormality as a social institution. For these reasons custom and law protect the home, and religion declares marriage a sacred bond and reproduction a sacred function. It is the long experience of the race that has made plain the fundamental importance of the marriage relation, and history shows how step by step man and woman have struggled toward higher standards of mutual appreciation and co-operation. From past history and present tendencies it is possible to determine values and weaknesses and to point out dangers and possibilities. As the family group is fundamental to an understanding of the community, so the relation of man and woman are essential to a comprehension of the complete family, and investigation of their relations must precede a study of the social development of the child in the home, or of the economic relations of the farmer and his assistants. Nothing more clearly illustrates the factors that enter into all human relations than the story of how the family came to be. READING REFERENCES HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 62-70. ELLWOOD: _Sociology and Modern Social Problems_, 1913 edition, pages 74-82. BOSANQUET: _The Family_, pages 241-259. DEALEY: _The Family in Its Sociological Aspects_, pages 1-11. BUTTERFIELD: "Rural Life and the Family," _American Journal of Sociology_, vol. 14, pages 721-725. HENDERSON: "Are Modern Industry and City Life Unfavorable to the Family?" _American Journal of Sociology_, vol. 14, pages 668-675. CHAPTER IV THE HISTORY OF THE FAMILY 33. =How the Family Came to Be.=--The modern family among civilized peoples is based almost universally on the union of one man and one woman. There is good reason to believe that this practice of monogamy was in vogue among primitive human beings, but marriage was unstable and it was only through long experimentation that monogamy proved itself best fitted to survive. At first conjugal affection, which has become intelligent and moral, was merely a sexual desire that led the man to seek a mate and the maid to choose among her suitors. Unbound by long-continued custom or legal and ceremonial restriction, the primitive couple were free to separate if they pleased, but the instinctive feeling that they belonged to each other, the habits of association, adaptation, and co-operation, and jealousy at any attention shown by another tended to preserve the relationship. The presence of offspring sealed the bond as long as the children were dependent, and strengthened the sense of mutual responsibility. The children were peculiarly the mother's children since she gave them birth, but the father instinctively protected the family that was growing up around him, and procured food and shelter for its members, though it is doubtful if he had any realization of his part in giving life to a new generation. During this period of social development, when the mother's presence constituted the home and the children were regarded as belonging primarily to her, descent was reckoned in the female line, the children were attached to the maternal clan of blood relatives, and such relatives began to move in bands, for the same reason that animals move in packs and herds. Some writers speak of it as a matriarchal period, but it does not appear that women governed; it is more proper to speak of the family as metronymic, for the children bore the mother's name and maternity outweighed paternity in social estimate. 34. =The Patriarchal Household.=--When population increased and food consequently became more difficult to obtain, the domestication of animals was achieved, and nomadic habits carried the family from pasture to pasture; rival clans wanted the same regions, wars broke out, and physical superiority asserted its claims. The man supplanted the woman as the important member of the household, reduced the others to submission, added to his wives and servants by capture or purchase, and established the patriarchal system. Descent henceforth was reckoned in the paternal line, and society had become patronymic instead of metronymic. It must not be supposed that this change occurred very suddenly. It may have taken many centuries to bring it about, but as the man learned his part in procreation and his power in society, he delighted in his self-importance to lord it over the woman and her children. The marriage relation ceased to be free and reciprocal. The wife no longer had a choice in marriage. Bought or captured, she was no longer wooed for a companion, but was valued according to her economic worth. As population pressed, the domestication of plants followed the taming of animals, but the agricultural settlement of the family only made the woman's lot harder, for she was the burden bearer on the farm. 35. =Polygyny.=--a better term than polygamy--was the inevitable result of the patriarchal system. Man made the law and the law recognized no restraint upon his sexual and parental instincts. Improvements in living added to the resources of the family and made it possible to maintain large households of wives, children, and slaves. Polygyny had some social utility, because it increased the number of children, and this gave added prestige and power to the family, as slavery had utility because it provided a labor force; but both were weaknesses in ancient society, because they did not tend in the long run to human welfare. Polygyny brutalized men, degraded women, and destroyed that affection and comradeship between parents and their offspring that are the proper heritage of children. Wherever it has survived as a system, polygyny has hindered progress, and wherever it exists in the midst of monogamy it tends to break down civilization. Another variety of marriage that has been less common than polygyny is polyandry. It is a term that signifies the marriage of one woman to several husbands, and seems to have occurred, as in the interior of Asia, only where subsistence was especially difficult or women comparatively few. Neither polygyny nor polyandry were universal, even where they were a frequent practice. Only the few could afford the indulgence, much the largest percentage of the people remained monogamous. 36. =Conflict and Social Selection.=--The supreme business of the social group is to adapt itself to the conditions that affect its life. It must learn to get on with its physical environment and with other social groups with which it comes into relation. The methods of adaptation are conflict and co-operation. The primitive savage and his wife learned to work together, and his family and hers very likely kept the peace, until through the increase of population they felt the pinch of hunger when the supply did not equal the demand. Then came conflict. Conflict is an essential element in all progress. There is conflict between the lower and higher impulses in the human mind, conflict between selfish ambition and the welfare of the group, conflict among individuals and races for a place in the sun. It is conceivable that the baser impulses that provoke much social conflict may give way to more rational and altruistic purpose, but it is difficult to see how all friction can be avoided in social relations. It is certainly to be reckoned with in the history of group life. The story of human progress shows that in the social conflict those groups survive which have become best adapted to life conditions and so are fitted to cope with their enemies. In the story of the family male leadership proved most useful and was perpetuated, but the practice of polygyny and polyandry proved in the long run to be hurtful to success in the sturdy struggle for existence. 37. =Ancestor-Worship.=--When a practice or institution is seen to work well it soon becomes indorsed by social custom, law, or religion. The patriarchal system became fortified by ancestor-worship, which helped to keep the family subordinate to its male head. Even the dead hand of the patriarch ruled. The paternal ancestors of the family were believed to have the power to bless or curse their descendants, and they were faithfully placated with gifts and veneration, as has continued to be the custom in China. Among the Romans the household gods were cherished at the hearth long before Jupiter became king of heaven; Æneas must save his ancestral-images if he lost all else in the fall of Troy. At Rome the worship of a common ancestor was the strongest family bond. The marriage ceremony consisted of a solemn transfer of the bride from her duties to her own ancestors over to the adoption of her husband's gods. This transfer of allegiance helped to perpetuate the patriarchal system, and the sanction of religion greatly strengthened the wedded relation, so that divorce and polygyny were unknown in the old Roman period. But the absolute patriarchal control of wife and children made the man selfish and arbitrary and weakened the bond of affection and mutual interests, while Roman political conquest strengthened the pride and power of the imperial masters. Religion lost its prestige and the family bond loosened, until from being one of the purest of social institutions in the early days of the republic, the Roman family became one of the most degenerate. This boded ill for the future of the race and empire. 38. =The Mediæval Family.=--The Roman family seemed in danger of disintegrating, for the matron claimed rights that ran counter to the rights of the man, when two new forces entered Roman society and checked this tendency toward disintegration. The first was Christianity, the second was Teutonic conquest. Christianity taught consideration for women and children, but it taught submission to the man in the home, and so was a constructive force in the conservation of the family. Teutonic custom was similar to the early Roman. When Teutonic enterprise pushed a new race over the goal of race conflict and took in charge the administration of affairs in Roman society, there was a restoration of the rule of force and so of masculine supremacy. In the lord's castle and the peasant's hut the authority of the man continued unquestioned through the Middle Ages, and the church made monogamous marriage a binding sacrament; but sexual infidelity was common, especially of the husband, and divorce was not unknown. In the civilized lands of Christendom monogamy was the only form of marriage recognized by civil law, and with the slow growth toward higher standards of civilization the harshness of patriarchal custom has become softened and the rights of women and children have been increased by law, though not without endangering the solidarity of the family. Similarly, the standards of sex conduct have improved. 39. =Advantages of Monogamy.=--The advantages of monogamy are so many that in spite of the present restiveness under restraint it seems certain to become the permanent and universal type as reason asserts its right and controls impulse. Nature seems to have predetermined it by maintaining approximately an equal number of the sexes, and nature frowns upon promiscuity by penalizing it with sterility and neglect of the few children that are born, so that in the struggle for existence the fittest survive by a process of natural selection. A study of biology and anthropology gives added evidence that nature favors monogamy, for in the highest grade of animals below man the monogamic relation holds almost without exception, and low-grade human races follow the same practice. There are moral advantages in monogamy that alone are sufficient to insure its permanence. It is to the advantage of society that altruistic and kindly feelings should outweigh jealousy, anger, and selfishness. Monogamy encourages affection and mutual consideration, and in that atmosphere children learn the graces and virtues that make social life wholesome and attractive. Welcomed in the home, they receive the care and instruction of both parents and become socialized for the larger and later responsibilities of the social order. In the altruism thus developed lie the roots of morals and religion. It is well agreed that the essence of each is the right motive to conduct. Love to men and to God is an accepted definition of religion, and ethics is grounded on that principle. Love is the ruling principle of the monogamic family; from the narrower domestic circle it extends to the community and to all mankind. 40. =Marriage Laws.=--In spite of the general practice of monogamy as a form of marriage and the noble principles that underlie the monogamic type of family, sex relations need the restraint of law. Human desires are selfish and ideals too often give way before them unless there is some kind of external control. There have been times when the church had such control, and in certain countries individual rulers have determined the law; but since the eighteenth century there has been a steady trend in the direction of popular control of all social relations. This tendency has been carried farthest in the United States, where public opinion voices its convictions and compels legislative action. It is natural that the people of certain States should be more progressive or radical than others, and therefore in the absence of a national law, there is considerable variety in the marriage and divorce laws, but no other country has higher ideals of the married relation and at the same time as large a measure of freedom. At present marriage laws in the United States agree generally on the following provisions: (1) Every marriage must be licensed by the State and the act of marriage must be reported to the State and registered. (2) Marriage is not legal below a certain age, and consent of parents must be obtained usually until the man is twenty-one and the woman eighteen. (3) Certain persons are forbidden marriage because of near relationship or personal defect. Such marriage if performed may be annulled. (4) Remarriage may take place after the death of husband or wife, after disappearance for a period varying from three to seven years, or a certain time after divorce. In the twenty-year period between 1886 and 1906 covered by the United States Census of Marriage and Divorce slow improvements were made in legislation, but a number of States are far behind others in the enactment of suitable laws, and most of the States do not make the provisions that are desirable for law enforcement. Yet there is a limit of strictness beyond which marriage laws cannot safely go, because they hinder marriage and provoke illicit relations. That limit is fixed by the sanction of public opinion. After all, there is less need of better regulation than of the education of public opinion to the sacredness of marriage and to its importance for human welfare. Without the restraints put upon impulse by the education of the understanding and the will, young people often assume family obligations thoughtlessly and even flippantly, when they are ill-mated and often unacquainted with each other's characteristic qualities. Such marriages usually bring distress and divorce instead of growing affection and unity. Without education in the obligation of marriage many well-qualified persons delay it or avoid it altogether, because they are unwilling to bear the burdens of family support, childbearing, and housekeeping. Society suffers loss in both cases. 41. =Reforms and Ideals.=--Because of all these deficiencies several remedies have been proposed and certain of them adopted. Because of the economic difficulties, it is urged that as far as possible by legislation, illegitimate ways of heaping up wealth for the few at the expense of the many should be checked, and that by vocational training boys should be fitted for a trade and girls prepared for housekeeping. To meet other difficulties it is proposed that popular instruction be given from press and pulpit, in order that the moral and spiritual plane of married life may be uplifted. The marriage ideal is a well-mated pair, physically and intellectually qualified, who through affection are attracted to marriage and through mutual consideration are ready unselfishly to seek each other's welfare, and who recognize in marriage a divinely ordered provision for human happiness and for the perpetuation of the race. Such a marriage does not plant the seeds of discord and neighborly scandal or compel a speedy resort to the divorce court. READING REFERENCES DEALEY: _The Family in Its Sociological Aspects_, pages 12-84. HOWARD: _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, II, pages 388-497. GOODSELL: _The Family as a Social and Educational Institution_, pages 5-47. BOSANQUET: _The Family_, part I. "Report on Marriage and Divorce, 1906," _Bureau of the Census_, I, pages 224-226. BLISS: _Encyclopedia of Social Reform_, art. "Family." CHAPTER V THE MAKING OF THE HOME 42. =The Story of the Home.=--Marriage is the gateway of the home; the home is the shelter of the family. It is the cradle of children, the nursery of mutual affection, and the training-school for citizenship in the community. The physical comfort of its inmates depends upon the house and its furnishings, but fondness for the home develops only in an atmosphere of good-will and kindness. The home has a story of its own, as has the family. In primitive days there was little necessity of a dwelling-place, except as a nest for young or a cache for provisions. A cave or a rough shelter of boughs was a makeshift for a home. Thither the hunter brought the game that he had killed, and there slept the glutton's sleep or went supperless to bed. When the hunter became a herdsman and shepherd and moved from place to place in search of pasture, he found it convenient to fashion a tent for his home, as the Hebrew patriarchs did when they roamed over Canaan and as the Bedouin of the desert does still. A settled life with a measure of civilization demanded a better and a stationary home, the degree of comfort varying with the desire and ambition of the householder and the amount of his wealth. To thousands home was little more than a place to sleep. Even in imperial Rome the proletariat occupied tall, ramshackle tenements, like the submerged poor who exist in the slums of modern cities. In mediæval Europe the peasant lived in a one-room hovel, clustered with others in a squalid hamlet upon the estate of a great landowner. The hut was poorly built, often of no better material than wattled sticks, cemented with mud, covered over with turf or thatch, usually without chimneys or even windows. The place was absolutely without conveniences. Summer and winter the family huddled together in the single room of the hut, faring forth to work in the morning, sleeping at night on bundles of straw, each person in the single garment that he wore through the day, and at convenient intervals breaking fast on black bread, salt meat, and home-brewed beer. There was no inducement for a landless serf to spend care or labor upon houses or surroundings; pigs and babies were permitted to tumble about both indiscriminately. Peasant homes in the Orient are little if any better now than European homes in the Middle Ages. The houses are rude structures and ill-kept. In the villages of India it is not unusual to occupy one house until it becomes so unsanitary as to be uninhabitable, and then to move elsewhere. Even royal courts in mediæval Europe moved from palace to palace for the same reason. It is a mistake to suppose that the squalid conditions found in the slums are peculiar to them; they are survivals of a lower stage of human existence found in all parts of the world, due to psychical, social, and economic conditions that are not easily changed, but conspicuous in the midst of modern progress. 43. =The Ancestral Type.=--In ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome only the higher classes enjoyed any degree of comfort. Accustomed to inconveniences, few even among them knew such luxuries as are common to middle-class Americans. The castle and manor-house of the mediæval lord were still more comfortless. In America the colonial log cabin and the sod house of the prairie pioneer were primitively incomplete. The struggle for existence and the difficulty of manufacture and transportation allowed few comforts. American homes, even a hundred years ago, knew nothing of furnaces and safety-matches, refrigerators and electric fans, bathtubs and sanitary accommodations, carpet-sweepers and vacuum cleaners, screen doors and double windows, hammocks and verandas. Neither law nor social custom required a good water or drainage system. A healthful or attractive location for the house received little thought; outbuildings were in close proximity to the house, if not attached to it. The furnishings of the house lacked comfort and beauty. Interior decorations of harmonious design were absent. Instruments of music were rare; statuary and paintings were beyond the reach of any but the richest purse. 44. =Social Values.=--On the other hand, there was in many a dwelling a home atmosphere that made up for the lack of conveniences. There was a bond of unity that was felt by every member of the family, and a spirit of mutual affection and self-sacrifice that stood a hard strain through poverty, sickness, and ill fortune of every sort. Father and mother, boys and girls were not afraid to work, and when the time came for relaxation there was little to attract away from the home circle. People had less to enjoy, but they were better contented with what they had. They had little money to spend, but their frugal tastes and habits of thrift fortified them against want, and there was little need of public or private charity. The home was frequently a school of moral and religious education. Selfishness in all its forms was discountenanced. There was no room for the idler, no time for laziness. Social hygiene and domestic science were not taught as such, but young people learned their responsibilities and grew up equipped to establish homes of their own. Parents were faithful instructors in the homely virtues of truthfulness, honesty, faithfulness, kindness, and love. Religion in the family was by no means universal, but in hundreds of homes religion was recognized as having legitimate demands upon the individual; religious exercises were observed at the mother's knee, the table, and the family altar; all the family attended church together, and were expected to take upon themselves the responsibilities of church membership. 45. =Gains and Losses.=--In the making of a modern home there have been both addition and subtraction. Life has gained immeasurably in comfort and convenience for the well-to-do, but the comfortless quarters of the poor drive the man to the saloon and the child to the streets. For the fortunate the home has become enriched with music, art, and literature, but it has lost much of the earlier simplicity, economic thrift, moral sturdiness, and religious principle and practice. For the poor life is so hard that the good qualities, if they ever existed, have tended to disappear without any compensation in culture. It is well understood that the home environment has most to do with shaping individual character. If the homely virtues are not cultivated there, society will suffer; if cold and cheerlessness are characteristic of its atmosphere, there will be little warmth in the disposition of its inmates toward society. Every home of the right sort is an asset to the community. It is an experiment station for social progress. Every married couple that sets up housekeeping starts a new centre of group life. If they diffuse a helpful atmosphere social virtues will develop and social efficiency increase. On the other hand, many homes are a menace to the community, because an ill-mated pair, poorly equipped for the struggle of existence, create a centre of group life in which the individual is handicapped physically and morally and too often becomes a curse to society at large. When it is remembered that the home is at the same time the power-house that generates the forces that push society forward, and the channel through which are transmitted the ideas and achievements of all the past, it will seem to be the supremely important institution that human experience has devised and sanctioned. 46. =The Ideal Home.=--The ideal home toward which the average home will be gradually approximating will be housed in a well-built dwelling of approved architecture; erected in a healthy location with room enough around it to give air space, and a bit of out-of-doors to enjoy; tastefully furnished and decorated inside, but without ostentation or extravagance; occupied by a healthy, happy family of parents and children who care more for each other and for their neighbors than for selfish pleasure and display, and who are learning how to play a worthy part in the folk life of their community and nation, and how to appreciate the highest and finest qualities that mind and spirit can develop in themselves or others. If for economic or social reasons any of this is impossible, there is a weakness in society that calls for prompt repair. READING REFERENCES STARR: _First Steps in Human Progress_, pages 149-158. JESSOPP: _The Coming of the Friars_, pages 87-104. GILLETTE: _Constructive Rural Sociology_, pages 170-178. CARNEY: _Country Life and the Country School_, pages 18-38. RICHARDS: "The Farm Home," art. in _Cyclopedia of Agriculture_, IV, pages 280-284. CHAPTER VI CHILDREN IN THE HOME 47. =Children Complete the Home.=--If the legend of the Pied Piper of Hameln should come true and all the children should run away from home, or if by some strange stroke of fortune no children should be born in a village or town for ten years or more, the tragedy of the childless home would be realized. There are localities and even nations where the birth-rate is so small that population is little more than stationary. In the United States the native birth-rate tends to decline, while the rate of immigrant foreigners greatly exceeds it. The higher the degree of comfort and luxury in the home the smaller the birth-rate seems to be a principle of social experience. There are selfish people who shirk the responsibilities and troubles of parenthood, and there are social diseases that tend to sterility, but the childless home is always an incomplete home. Children are the crown of marriage, the enrichment of the home, the hope of society in the future. The needs of the children stimulate parents to unselfish endeavor. Children are the comfort of the poor and distressed. The wedded life of a human pair may be ideal in every other respect, but one of the main functions of marriage is unaccomplished when the family remains incomplete. 48. =The Right to be Well-Born.=--The child comes into the home in obedience to the same primary instinct that draws the parents to each other. He calls out the affections of the parents and their intellectual resources, for he is dependent upon them, and often taxes their best judgment in coping with the difficulties that beset child life. But they often fail to realize that the child has certain inalienable rights as an individual and a potential member of society that demand their best gifts. There is first the right to be well-born. There is so much to contend with when once ushered into the world, that a child needs the best possible bodily inheritance. He needs to be rid of every encumbrance of physical unfitness if he is to live long and become a blessing and not a burden to society. Handicapped at the start, he cannot hope to achieve a high level of attainment. It is little short of criminal for a child to be condemned to lifelong weakness or suffering, because his parents were not fit to give him birth. Yet large numbers of parents make the thought of child welfare subordinate to their own desires. A man's primary concern in choosing a wife is his own personal satisfaction, not the birth and mothering of his children. Many young women regard the attractiveness, social position, or wealth of a young man as of greater consequence than his physical or moral fitness to become the father of her children. There are thousands of persons who are mentally deficient or unmoral, who nevertheless are unrestrained by society from association and even marriage. It is a social misfortune that the unfit should be taken care of by the tender mercies of philanthropists and even permitted to propagate their kind, while no special encouragement is given to those who are supremely fit to give their best to the upbuilding of the race. The principle of brotherly kindness requires that the weak and unfortunate be taken care of, but they should not be permitted to increase. It is a principle of social welfare that those who are incapable of exercising self-control should be placed under the control of the larger group. 49. =Eugenics in Legislation.=--It is the conviction that the right to be well-born is a valid one, that has given rise to the science of eugenics. As a science it was first discussed by Francis Gallon, and it has interested writers, investigators, and legislators in all progressive countries. Various specific proposals have been made in the interest of posterity, and agitation has resulted in certain experiments in legislation. It is not proposed that any should be required to marry, but it is thought possible to encourage the well qualified and to discourage and restrain the incapable. Some of these proposals, such as the offering of a premium by the State for healthy children, or endowing mothers as public functionaries, are not widely approved, but Great Britain in a National Insurance Act in 1911 included the provision of maternity benefits in recognition of the mother's contribution to the citizenship of the nation. Restrictive laws have been passed by certain of the States in America, which are eugenic experiments. Feeble-mindedness, in so many ways a social evil, is readily reproduced, and the weak-minded are easily controlled by the sex instinct. To prevent this certain State legislatures have forbidden the marriage of any feeble-minded or epileptic woman under the age of forty-five. It is well known that insanity is a family trait, and that criminal insanity is liable to recur if those who are afflicted are permitted to indulge in parenthood. Certain States accordingly annul the marriage of insane persons. Venereal disease is easily transmitted; there has been a beginning of legislation prohibiting persons thus tainted to marry. It is well established that very many persons, while not actually tainted with such diseases as tuberculosis and alcoholism, are predisposed to yield to their attack. For this reason the scope of eugenic legislation is likely to be extended. Some States have gone so far as to sterilize the unfit, that they may not by any chance exercise the powers of parenthood; it is urged in many quarters that clergymen require a medical certificate of good health before sanctioning marriage. 50. =Family Degeneracy.=--Several impressive illustrations have been published of degenerate families that show the far-reaching effects of heredity. In contrast to these pictures, has been set the life story of families who have won renown in successive generations because of unusual ability. Nothing so effective is presented by any argument as that of concrete cases. Perhaps the best known of these stories is that of the Jukes family. About the middle of the eighteenth century a normal man with a coarse, lazy vein in his nature built himself a hut in the woods of central New York. In five generations he had several hundred descendants. A study of twelve hundred persons who belonged to the family by kinship or marriage was made carefully, with the following findings. Nearly all of the family were lazy, ignorant, and coarse. Four hundred were physically diseased by their own fault. Two hundred were criminals; seven of them murderers. Fifty of the women were notoriously immoral. Three hundred of the children died from inherited weakness or neglect. More than three hundred members of the family were chronic paupers. It is estimated that they cost the State a thousand dollars apiece for pauperism and crime. Another family called the Kallikak family, which has been made the subject of investigation, is a still better example of heredity. The family was descended from a Revolutionary soldier, who had an illegitimate feeble-minded son by an imbecile young woman. The line continued by feeble-minded descent and marriage until four hundred and eighty descendants have been traced. Of these one hundred and forty-three were positively defective, thirty-six were illegitimate, thirty-three sexually immoral, mostly prostitutes, eight kept houses of ill repute, three were criminal, twenty-four were confirmed drunkards, and eighty-two died in infancy. On the other hand, there are striking examples of what good birth and breeding can do. It happened that the ancestor of the Kallikak family, after he had sown his wild oats, married well and had about five hundred descendants. All of them were normal, only two were alcoholic, and one sexually loose. The family has been prominent socially and in every way creditable in its history. In contrast to the Jukes family, the history of the Edwards family has been written. Its members married well, were well-bred, and gave much attention to education. Out of fourteen hundred individuals more than one hundred and twenty were Yale graduates, and one hundred and sixty-five more completed their education at other colleges; thirteen were college presidents, and more than a hundred college professors; they were founders of schools of all grades; more than one hundred were clergymen, missionaries, and theological professors; seventy-five were officers in the army and navy; more than eighty have been elected to public office; more than one hundred were lawyers, thirty judges, sixty physicians, and sixty prominent in literature. Not a few of them have been active in philanthropy, and many have been successful in business. It is impossible to escape from the conviction that whatever may be the physical and social environment, heredity perpetuates physical and mental worth or defectiveness and tends to produce social good or evil, and that the right to a worthy parentage belongs with the other rights to which individuals lay claim. It is as important as the right to a living, to an education, to a good home, or to the franchise. Without it society is incalculably poorer and the ultimate effects of failure are startling to consider. 51. =Marriage and Education.=--Some enthusiasts have demanded that to make sure of a good bodily inheritance, individuals be permitted to produce children without the trammels of marriage if they are well fitted for parenthood, but such persons seem ignorant or forgetful that free love has never proved otherwise than disastrous in the history of the race, and that physical perfection is not the sole good with which the child needs to be endowed, but that it must be supplemented with moral, mental, and spiritual endowment, and with the permanent affection and care of both parents in the home. Galton himself acknowledges marriage as a prerequisite in eugenics by saying: "Marriage, as now sanctified by religion and safeguarded by law in the more highly civilized nations, may not be ideally perfect, nor may it be universally accepted in future times, but it is the best that has hitherto been devised for the parties primarily concerned, for their children, for home life, and for society." The greatest hope of eugenics lies in social education. Sex hygiene must in some way become a part of the child's stock of information, but knowledge alone does not fortify action. More important is it to deal with the springs of action, to teach the equal standard of purity for men and women, and the moral responsibility of parenthood to adolescent youth, and at the same time to impress upon the whole community its responsibility of oversight of morals for the good of the next generation. Conviction of personal and social responsibility as superior to individual preferences is the only safety of society in all its relations, from eugenics through economics to ethics and religion. 52. =Euthenics.=--Euthenics is the science of controlled environment, as eugenics is the science of controlled heredity. The health and good fortune of the child depend on his surroundings as well as on his inheritance, and the gift of a perfect physique may be vitiated by an unwholesome environment. Environment acts directly upon the physical system of the individual through climate, home conditions, and occupation; it acts indirectly by affecting the personal desires, idiosyncrasies, and possible conduct. When the child of an early settler was carried away from home on an Indian raid, and brought up in the wigwam of the savage, he forgot his civilized heritage, and love for his foster-parents sometimes proved stronger than his natural affections. The child of the Russian Jew in Europe has little ambition and rises to no high level, but in America he gains distinction in school and success in business. A natural environment of forest or plain may determine the occupation of a whole community; a fickle climate vitally affects its prosperity. Whole races have entered upon a new future by migration. It is necessary to be cautious and not to ascribe to environment, as some do, the sole influence. Every individual is the creature of heredity plus environment plus his own will. But it is not possible to overlook environment as some do, and expect by a miracle to make or preserve character in the midst of conditions of spiritual asphyxiation. If social life is to be pure and strong, communities and families, through the official care of overseers of health and industry and through the loving care of parents in the homes, must see that children grow up with the advantages of nourishing food, pure air, proper clothing, and means for cleanliness; that at the proper age they be given mental and moral instruction and fitted for a worthy vocation; that wholesome social relations be established by means of playgrounds, clubs, and societies; that industrial conditions be properly supervised, and young people be able to earn not alone a living but a marriageable wage; and that some means of social insurance be provided sufficient to prevent suffering and want in sickness and old age. In such an environment there is opportunity to realize the value that will accrue from a good inheritance, and there is incentive to make the most of life's possibilities as they come and go. Ever since the importance of environment was made plain in the nineteenth century, social physicians have been trying all sorts of experiments in community therapeutics. Many of the remedies will be discussed in various connections. It is enough to remark here that social education, social regulation, and social idealism are all necessary, and that a social Utopia cannot be obtained in a day. 53. =The Right to Proper Care.=--Granted the right of the child to be well-born and the right to a favorable environment, there follows the right to be taken care of. This may be involved in the subject of a proper environment, but it deserves consideration by itself. There is more danger to the race from neglect than from race suicide. It is better that a child should not be born at all, than that he should be condemned to the hard knocks of a loveless home or a callous neighborhood. There is first the case of the child born out of wedlock, often a foundling with parentage unacknowledged. Then there is the child who is legitimately born as far as the law is concerned, but whose parents had no legitimate right to bring him into the world, because they had no reasonable expectation that they could provide properly for his wants. The wretched pauper recks nothing of the future of his offspring. Since the family group can never remain independent of the community, it may well be debated whether society is not under obligation to interfere and either by prohibition of excessive parenthood or by social provision for the care of such children, to secure to the young this right of proper care. Cruelty is a twin evil of neglect. The history of childhood deserves careful study side by side with the history of womanhood. In primitive times not even the right to existence was recognized. Abortion and infanticide, especially in the case of females, were practices used at will to dispose of unwelcome children, and these practices persisted among the backward peoples of Asia and Africa, until they were compelled to recognize the law of the white master when he extended his dominion over them. In the patriarchal household of classic lands, the child was under the absolute control of his father. Religious regulations might demand that he be instructed in the history and obligations of the race, as in the case of the Hebrew child, or the interests of the state might require physical training for its own defense, as in the case of Sparta, but there was no consideration of child rights in the home. Until the eighteenth century European children shared the hardships of poverty and discomfort common to the age, and often the cruelty of brutal and degraded parents; they were often condemned to long hours of industry in factories after the new industrial order caught them in its toils. In the mine and the mill and on the farm children have been bound down to labor for long and weary hours, until modern legislation has interfered. There are a number of reasons why child labor has been common. Hereditary custom has decreed it. Children have been looked upon by many races as a care and a burden rather than a responsibility and a blessing. Their economic value was their one claim to be regarded as a family asset. Even the religious teaching of Jews and Christians about the value and responsibility of children has not been influential enough to compel a recognition of their worth, though their innocence and purity, their faith and optimism are qualities indispensable to the race of mankind if social relations are to approach the ideal. 54. =The Value of Work.=--Labor is a social blessing rather than a curse. There can be no doubt that habits of industry are desirable for the child as well as for the adult. Idleness is the forerunner of ignorance, laziness, and general incapacity. It is no kindness to a child to permit him to spend all his time out of school in play. It gives him skill, a new respect for labor, and a new conception of the value of money, if he has a paper route, mows a lawn, shovels snow, or hoes potatoes. Especially is it desirable that a boy should have some sort of an occupation for a few hours a day during the long summer vacation. The child on the farm has no lack of opportunity, but for the boy of the city streets there is little that is practicable, outside of selling papers or serving as messenger boy or bootblack; for the girl there is little but housework or department-store service. Both need steady employment out of doors, and he who devises a method by which boys and girls can be taught such an occupation as gardening on vacant lots or in the city outskirts, and at the same time can be given a love for work and for the growing things of the country, will help to solve the problem of child labor and, incidentally, may contribute to the solution of poverty, incipient crime, and even of the rural problem and the high cost of living. READING REFERENCES BOSANQUET: _The Family_, pages 299-314. GODDARD: _The Kallikak Family._ EAMES: _Principles of Eugenics._ SALEEBY: _Parenthood and Race Culture_, pages 213-236. MCKEEVER: _Farm Boys and Girls_, pages 171-196. GALTON: _Inquiries into Human Faculty._ CHAPTER VII WORK, PLAY AND EDUCATION. 55. =Child Labor and Its Effects.=--Excessive child labor away from home is one of the evils that has called for reform more than the lack of employment. The child has a right to the home life. It is injurious for him to be kept at a monotonous task under physical or mental strain for long hours in a manufacturing establishment, or to be deprived of time to study and to play. Yet there are nearly two million children in the United States under sixteen years of age who are denied the rights of childhood through excessive labor. This evil began with the adoption of the factory system in modern industry. The introduction of light machinery into the textile mills of England made it possible to employ children at low wages, and it was profitable for the keepers of almshouses to apprentice pauper children to the manufacturers. Some of them were not more than five or six years old, but were kept in bondage more than twelve hours a day. Children were compelled to hard labor in the coal-mines, and to the dirty work of chimney sweeping. In the United States factory labor for children did not begin so soon, but by 1880 children eight years old were being employed in Massachusetts for more than twelve hours a day, and in parts of the country children are still employed at long hours in such occupations as the manufacture of cotton, glass, silk, and candy, in coal-mines and canning factories. Besides these are the newsboys, bootblacks, and messengers of the cities, children in domestic and personal service, and the child laborers on the farms. The causes of child labor lie in the poverty and greed of parents, the demands of employers, and often the desire of the children to escape from school and earn money. In spite of agitation and legislation, the indifference of the public permits it to continue and in some sections to increase. The harmful effects of child employment are numerous. It is true that two-thirds of the boys and nearly one-half of the girls employed in the United States are occupied with agriculture, most of them with their own parents, an occupation that is much healthier than indoor labor, yet agriculture demands long hours and wearisome toil. In the cities there is much night-work and employment in dangerous or unhealthy occupations. The sweating system has carried its bad effects into the homes of the very poor, for the younger members of the family can help to manufacture clothing, paper boxes, embroidery, and artificial flowers, and in spite of the law, such labor goes on far into the night in congested, ill-ventilated tenements. Children cannot work in this way day after day for long hours without serious physical deterioration. Some of them drop by the way and die as victims of an economic system and the social neglect that permits it. Others lose the opportunity of an education, and so are mentally less trained than the normal American child, and ultimately prove less efficient as industrial units. For the time they may add to the family income, but they react upon adult labor by lowering the wage of the head of the family, and they make it impossible for the child when grown to earn a high wage, because of inefficiency. The associations and influences of the street are morally degrading, and in the associations of the workroom and the factory yard the whole tone of the life of individuals is frequently lowered. 56. =Child-Labor Legislation.=--Friends of the children have tried to stop abuses. Trade-unions, consumers' leagues, and State bureaus have taken the initiative. Voluntary organizations, like the National Child Labor Committee, make the regulation of child labor their special object. They have succeeded in the establishment of a Federal Children's Bureau in Washington, and have encouraged State and national legislation. Most of the States forbid the employment of children under a certain age, usually twelve or fourteen years, and require attention to healthful conditions and moderate hours. They insist also that children shall not be deprived of education, but there is often inadequate provision made for inspection and proper enforcement of laws. The friends of the children are desirous of a uniform child-labor law which, if adopted and enforced by competent inspectors, would prevent factory work for all under fourteen years of age, and for weak children under sixteen would prescribe a limited number of hours and allow no night-work, would require certain certificates of age and health before employment is given, and would compel school attendance and the attainment of a limited education before permission is granted to go into the factory. Without doubt, it is a hardship to families in poverty that strong, growing children should not be permitted to go to work and help support those in need, but it is better for the social body to take care of its weak members in some other way, and for its own sake, as well as for the sake of the child, to make sure that he is physically and mentally equipped before he takes a regular place in the ranks of the wage-earners. 57. =The Right to Play.=--The play group is the first social training-ground for the child outside of the home, and it continues to be a desirable form of association, even into adult life, but it is only in recent years that adults have recognized the legitimacy of such a claim as the right to play. It was thought desirable that a boy should work off his restlessness, but the wood-pile provided the usual safety-valve for surplus energy. Play was a waste of time. Now it is more clearly understood that play has a distinct value. It is physically beneficial, expanding the lungs, strengthening muscle and nerve, and giving poise and elasticity to the whole body. It is mentally educational in developing qualities of quickness, skill, and leadership. It is socially valuable, for it requires honesty, fair play, mutual consideration, and self-control. Co-operation of effort is developed as well in team-play as in team-work, and the child becomes accustomed to act with thought of the group. The play group is a temporary form of association, varying in size and content as the whim of the child or the attraction of the moment moves its members. It is an example of primitive groupings swayed by instinctive impulses. Children turn quickly from one game to another, but for the time are absorbed in the particular play that is going on. No achievement results from the activity, no organization from the association. The rapid shifting of the scenes and the frequent disputes that arise indicate lack of control. Yet it is out of such association that the social mind develops and organized action becomes possible. If these are the advantages of play, the right to play may properly demand an opportunity for games and sports in the home and the yard, and the necessary equipment of gymnasium and field. It may call for freedom from the school and home occupations sufficient to give the recreative impulse due scope. As its importance becomes universally recognized, there will be no neighborhood, however congested, that lacks its playground for the children, and no industry, however insistent, that will deprive the boy or girl of its right to enjoy a certain part of every day for play. 58. =The Right to Liberty.=--The present tendency is to give large liberty to the child. Not only is there freedom on the playground; but social control in the home also has been giving place during the last generation to a recognition of the right of the individual child to develop his own personality in his own way, without much interference from authority. It is true that there is a nominal control in the home, in the school, and in the State, but in an increasing degree that control is held in abeyance while parent, teacher, and constable leniently indulge the child. This is a natural reaction from the discipline of an earlier time, and is a welcome indication that children's rights are to find recognition. Like most reactions, there is danger of its going too far. An inexperienced and headstrong child needs wise counsel and occasional restraint, and within the limits of kindness is helped rather than harmed by a deep respect for authority. Lawlessness is one of the dangers of the current period. It appears in countless minor misdemeanors, in the riotous acts of gangs and mobs, in the recklessness of corporations and labor unions, and in national disregard for international law; and its destructive tendency is disastrous for the future of civilized society unless a new restraint from earliest childhood keeps liberty from degenerating into license. 59. =The Right to Learn.=--There is one more right that belongs to children--the right of an opportunity to learn. Approximately three million children are born annually in the United States. Each one deserves to be well-born and well-reared. He needs the affectionate care of parents who will see that he learns how to live. This instruction need not be long delayed, and should not be relegated altogether to the school. There is first of all physical education. It is the mother's task to teach the child the principles of health, to inculcate proper habits of eating, drinking, and bathing. It is for her to see that he learns how to play with pleasure and profit, and is permitted to give expression to his natural energies. It is her privilege to make him acquainted with nature, and in a natural way with the illustration of flower and bird and squirrel she can give the child first lessons in sex hygiene. It is the function of the mother in the child's younger years and of the father in adolescent boyhood to open the mind of the child to understand the life processes. The lack of knowledge brings sorrow and sin to the family and injures society. Seeking information elsewhere, the boy and girl fall into bad habits and lay the foundation of permanent ills. The adolescent boy should be taught to avoid self-abuse, to practise healthful habits, and to keep from contact with physical and moral impurity; the adolescent girl should be given ample instruction in taking care of herself and in preparing for the responsibility of adult life. 60. =Mental and Moral Education.=--Mental education in the home is no less important. It is there that the child's instinctive impulses first find expression and he learns to imitate the words and actions of other members of the home. The things he sees and handles make their impressions upon him. He feels and thinks and wills a thousand times a day. The channels of habit are being grooved in the brain. It is the function of the home to protect him from that which is evil, to stimulate in him that which is good. Mental and moral education are inseparably interwoven. The first stories told by the mother's lips not only produce answering thoughts in the child mind, but answering modes of conduct also. The chief function of the intellect is to guide to right choice. Character building is the supreme object of life. It begins early. Learning to obey the parent is the first step toward self-control. Learning to know the beautiful from the ugly, the true from the false, the good from the evil is the foundation of a whole system of ethics. Learning to judge others according to character and attainment rather than according to wealth or social position cultivates the naturally democratic spirit of the child, and makes him a true American. Sharing in the responsibility of the home begets self-reliance and dependableness in later life. The supreme lesson of life is to learn to be unselfish. The child in the home is often obliged to yield his own wishes, and finds that he gets greater satisfaction than if he had contended successfully for his own claims. In the home the compelling motive of his life may be consecrated to the highest ideals, long before childhood has merged into manhood. Such consecration of motive is best secured through a knowledge of the concrete lives of noble men and women. The noble characters of history and literature are portraits of abstract excellences. It is the task of moral education in the home to make the ideal actual in life, to show that it is possible and worth while to be noble-minded, and that the highest ambition that a person can cherish is to be a social builder among his fellows. 61. =Child Dependents.=--Many children are not given the rights that belong to them in the home. They come into the world sickly or crippled, inheriting a weak constitution or a tendency toward that which is ill. They have little help from environment. One of a numerous family on a dilapidated farm or in an unhealthy tenement, the child struggles for an existence. Poverty, drunkenness, crime, illegitimacy stamp themselves upon the home life. Neglect and cruelty take the place of care and education. The death of one or both parents robs the children of home altogether. The child becomes dependent on society. The number of such children in the United States approximates one hundred and fifty thousand. In the absence of proper home care and training, society for its own protection and for the welfare of the child must assume charge. The State becomes a foster-parent, and as far as possible provides a substitute for the home. The earlier method was to place the individual child, with many other similar unfortunates, in a public or private philanthropic institution. In such an environment it was possible to maintain discipline, to secure instruction and a wholesome atmosphere for social development, and to have the advantage of economical management. But experience proved that a large institution of that kind can never be a true home or provide the proper opportunity for the development of individuality. The placing-out system, therefore, grew in favor. Results were better when a child was adopted into a real home, and received a measure of family affection and individual care. Even where a public institution must continue to care for dependent children, it is plainly preferable to distribute them in cottages instead of herding them in one large building. The principle of child relief is that life shall be made as nearly normal as possible. It is an accepted principle, also, that children shall be kept in their own home whenever possible, and if removal is necessary that they be restored to home associations at the earliest possible moment. In case of poverty, a charity organization society will help a needy family rather than allow it to disintegrate; in case of cruelty or neglect such an organization as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children will investigate, and if necessary find a better guardian; but the case must be an aggravated one before the society takes that last step, so important does the function of the home seem to be. 62. =Special Institutions.=--It is, of course, inevitable that some children should be misplaced and that some should be neglected by the civil authorities, but public interest should not allow such conditions to persist. Social sensitiveness to the hard lot of the child is a product of the modern conscience. Time was when the State remanded all chronic dependents to the doubtful care of the almshouse, and children were herded indiscriminately with their elders, as child delinquents were herded in the prisons with hardened criminals. Idiots, epileptics, and deformed and crippled children were given no special consideration. A kindlier public policy has provided special institutions for those special cases where under State officials they may receive adequate and permanent attention, and for normal dependent children there is a variety of agencies. The most approved form is the State school. This is virtually a temporary home where the needy child is placed by investigation and order of the court, is given a training in elementary subjects, manual arts, and domestic science, and after three or four years is placed in a home, preferably on a farm, where he can fill a worthy place in society. 63. =Children's Aid Societies.=--Another aid society is the private aid society supervised and sometimes subsidized by the State. This is a philanthropic organization supported by private gifts, making public reports, managed by a board of directors, with a secretary or superintendent as executive officer, and often with a temporary home for the homeless. With these private agencies the placing-out principle obtains, and children are soon removed to permanent homes. The work of the aid societies is by no means confined to finding homes. It aids parents to find truant children, it gives outings in the summer season, it shelters homeless mothers with their children, it administers aid in time of sickness. In industrial schools it teaches children to help themselves by training them in such practical arts as carpentry, caning chairs, printing, cooking, dressmaking, and millinery. Efficient oversight and management, together with co-operation among child-saving agencies, is a present need. A national welfare bureau is a decided step in advance. Prevention of neglect and cruelty in the homes of the children themselves is the immediate goal of all constructive effort. The education of public opinion to demand universal consideration for child life is the ultimate aim. READING REFERENCES MANGOLD: _Problems of Child Welfare_, pages 166-184, 271-341. CLOPPER: _Child Labor in the City Street._ MCKEEVER: _Training the Boy_, pages 203-213. MCKEEVER: _Farm Boys and Girls_, pages 26-36. LEE: _Constructive and Preventive Philanthropy_, pages 123-184. FOLKS: _Care of Destitute and Neglected Children._ CHAPTER VIII HOME ECONOMICS 64. =The Economic Function of the Home.=--Up to this point the domestic function of the family has been under consideration. Marriage and parenthood must hold first place, because they are fundamental to the family and to the welfare of the race. But the family has an economic as well as a domestic function. The primitive instinct of hunger finds satisfaction in the home, and economic needs are supplied in clothing, shelter, and bodily comforts. Production, distribution, and consumption are all a part of the life of the farm. Domestic economy is the foundation of all economics, and the family on the farm presents the fundamental principles and phenomena that belong to the science of economics as it presents the fundamentals of sociology. The hunger for food demands satisfaction even more insistently than the mating instinct. Birds must eat while they woo each other and build their nests, and when the nest is full of helpless young both parents find their time occupied in foraging for food. Similarly, when human mating is over and the family hearth is built, and especially when children have entered into the home life, the main occupation of man and wife is to provide maintenance for the family. The need of food, clothing, and shelter is common to the race. The requirements of the family determine largely both the amount and the kind of work that is done to meet them. However broad and elevated may be the interests of the modern gentleman and his cultured wife, they cannot forget that the physical needs of their family are as insistent as those of the unrefined day laborer. 65. =Primitive Economics.=--In primitive times the family provided everything for itself. In forest and field man and woman foraged for food, cooked it at the camp-fire that they made, and rested under a temporary shelter. If they required clothing they robbed the wild beasts of their hide and fur or wove an apron of vegetable fibre. Physical wants were few and required comparatively little labor. In the pastoral stage the flocks and herds provided food and clothing. Under the patriarchal system the woman was the economic slave. She was goatherd and milkmaid, fire-tender and cook, tailor and tent-maker. It was she who coaxed the grains to grow in the first cultivated field, and experimented with the first kitchen garden. She was the dependable field-hand for the sowing and reaping, when agriculture became the principal means of subsistence. But woman's position has steadily improved. She is no longer the slave but the helper. The peasant woman of Europe still works in the fields, but American women long ago confined themselves to indoor tasks, except in the gathering of special crops like cotton and cranberries. Home economics have taught the advantage of division of labor and co-operation. 66. =Division of Labor.=--Because of greater fitness for the heavy labor of the field and barn, the man and his sons naturally became the agriculturists and stock-breeders as civilization improved. It was man's function to produce the raw material for home manufacture. He ploughed and fertilized the soil, planted the various seeds, cultivated the growing crops, and gathered in the harvest. It was his task to perform the rougher part of preparing the raw material for use. He threshed the wheat and barley on the threshing-floor and ground the corn at the mill, and then turned over the product to his wife. He bred animals for dairy or market, milked his cows, sheared his sheep, and butchered his hogs and beeves; it was her task to turn then to the household's use. She learned how to take the wheat and corn, the beef and pork, and to prepare healthful and appetizing meals for the household; she practised making butter and cheese for home use and exchange. She took the flax and wool and spun and wove them into cloth, and with her needle fashioned garments for every member of the household and furnishings for the common home. She kept clean and tidy the home and its manufacturing tools. When field labor was slack the man improved the opportunity to fashion the plough and the horseshoe at the forge, to build the boat or the cart in the shop, to hew store or cut timber for building or firewood, to erect a mill for sawing lumber or grinding grain. Similarly the woman used her spare time in knitting and mending, and if time and strength permitted added to her duties the care of the poultry-house. 67. =The Servant of the Household.=--Long before civilization had advanced the household included servants. When wars broke out the victor found himself possessed of human spoil. With passion unrestrained, he killed the man or woman who had come under his power, but when reason had a chance to modify emotion he decided that it was more sensible to save his captives alive and to work them as his slaves. The men could satisfy his economic interest, the women his sex desire. The men were useful in the field, the women in the house. Ancient material prosperity was built on the slave system of industry. The remarkable culture of Athens was possible because the citizens, free from the necessity of labor, enjoyed ample leisure. Lords and ladies could live in their mediæval castles and practise chivalry with each other, because peasants slaved for them in the fields without pay. Slowly the servant class improved its status. Slaves became serfs and serfs became free peasants, but the relation of master and servant based on mutual service lasted for many centuries. The time came when it was profitable for both parties to deal on a money basis, and the workman began to know the meaning of independence. The actual relation of master and servant remained about the same, for the workman was still dependent upon his employer. It took him a long time to learn to think much for himself, and he did not know how to find employment outside of the community or even the household where he had grown up. In the growing democracy of England, and more fully in America, the workman learned to negotiate for himself as a free man, and even to become himself a freeholder of land. 68. =Hired Labor on the Farm.=--In the process of production in doors and out it was impossible on a large farm for the independent farmer and his wife to get on alone. There must be help in the cultivation of many acres and in the care of cattle and sheep. There must be assistance in the home when the birth and care of children brought an added burden to the housewife. Later the growing boys and girls could have their chores and thus add their contribution to the co-operative household, but for a time at least success on the farm depended on the hired laborer. Husband and wife became directors of industry as well as laborers themselves. In the busy summer season it was necessary to employ one or more assistants in the field, less often indoors, and the employee became for a time a member of the family. Often a neighbor performed the function of farm assistant, and as such stood on the same level as his employer; there was no servant class or servant problem, except the occasional shortage of laborers. Young men and women were glad of an opportunity to earn a little money and to save it in anticipation of the time when they would set up farming in homes of their own. The spirit and practice of co-operation dignified the employment in which all were engaged. 69. =Co-operation.=--The control of the manufacturing industry on a large scale by corporations makes hearty co-operation between the employing group and the employees difficult, but on the farm the personal relations of the persons engaged made it easy and natural. The art of working together as well as living together was an achievement of the home, at first beginning unconsciously, but later with a definite purpose. The practice of co-operation is a continual object-lesson to the children, as they become conscious of the mutual dependence of each and all. The farmer has no time to do the small tasks, and so the boy must do the chores. There is a limit to the strength of the mother, and so the daughter or housemaid must supplement her labors. Without the grain and vegetables the housewife cannot provide the meals, but the man is equally dependent upon the woman for the preparation of the food. Without the care and industry of the parents through the helpless years of childhood, the children could not win in the struggle for existence. Nor is it merely an economic matter, but health and happiness depend upon the mutual consideration and helpfulness of every member of the household. 70. =Economic Independence of the Farm.=--Until well into the nineteenth century the American farm household provided for most of its own economic needs. A country store, helped out if necessary by an occasional visit to town, supplied the few goods that were not produced at home. Economic wants were simple and means of purchase were not abundant. On the other hand, most of the products of the farm were consumed there. In the prevailing extensive agriculture the returns per acre were not great, methods of efficiency were not known or were given little attention, families were large and children and farm-hands enjoyed good appetites, and production and consumption tended to equalize themselves. In the process of the home manufacture of clothing it was difficult to keep the family provided with the necessary comforts; there was no thought of laying by a surplus beyond the anticipated needs of the family and provision for the wedding store of marriageable daughters. The distribution of any accumulated surplus was effected by the simplest mechanism of exchange. If the supply of young cattle was large or the wood-lot furnished more firewood than was needed, the product was bartered for seed corn or hay. There was swapping of horses by the men or of fruit or vegetable preserves by the women. Eggs and butter disposed of at the store helped to pay for sugar, salt, and spices. New incentives to larger production came with the extension of markets. When wood and hay could be shipped to a distance on the railroad, when a milk route in the neighborhood or a milk-train to the city made dairy products more profitable, or when market gardening became possible on an extensive scale, better methods of distribution were provided to take care of the more numerous products. 71. =Social and Economic Changes in the Family.=--The fundamental principles that govern the economic activities of the family are the same as they used to be. Industry, thrift, and co-operation are still the watchwords of prosperity. But with the development of civilization and the improvements in manufacture, communication, and transportation, the economic function of the family has changed. Instead of producing all the crops that he may need or the tools of his occupation, the farmer tends to produce the particular crops that he can best cultivate and that will bring him the largest returns. Because of increasing facilities of exchange he can sell his surplus and purchase the goods that will satisfy his other needs. The farmer's wife no longer spins and weaves the family's supply of clothing; the men buy their supply at the store and often even she turns over the task of making up her own gowns to the village dressmaker. Where there is a local creamery she is relieved of the manufacture of butter and cheese, and the cannery lays down its preserves at her door. Household manufacturing is confined almost entirely to the preparation of food, with a varying amount of dressmaking and millinery. In the towns and cities the needs of the family are even more completely supplied from without. Children are relieved of all responsibility, women's care are lightened by the stock of material in the shops, and the bakery and restaurant help to supply the table. Family life loses thereby much of its unity of effort and sympathy. The economic task falls mainly upon the male producer. Even he lives on the land and in the house of another man; he owns not the tools of his industry and does business in another's name. He hires himself to a superior for wage or salary, and thereby loses in a measure his own independence. But there is a gain in social solidarity, for the chain of mutual dependence reached farther and binds more firmly; there is gain in community co-operation, for each family is no longer self-sufficient. READING REFERENCES BOSANQUET: _The Family_, pages 221-227, 324-333. THOMAS: _Sex and Society_, pages 123-146. SMALL AND VINCENT: _Introduction to the Study of Society_, pages 105-108. MASON: _Woman's Share in Primitive Culture._ WEEDEN: _Economic and Social History of New England_, I, pages 324-326. CHAPTER IX CHANGES IN THE FAMILY 72. =Causes of Changes in the Family.=--The family at the present time is in a transition era. Its machinery is not working smoothly. Its environment is undergoing transformation. A hundred years ago the family was strictly rural; not more than three per cent of the people lived in large communities. Now nearly one-half are classified as urban by the United States census of 1910, and those who remain rural feel the influences of the town. There is far less economic independence on the farm than formerly, and in the towns and cities the home is little more than a place in which to sleep and eat for an increasing number of workers, both men and women. The family on the farm is no longer a perfectly representative type of the family in the more populous centres. These changes are due mainly to the requirements of industry, but partly at least to the desire of all members of the family to share in urban life. The increasing ease of communication and travel extends the mutual acquaintance of city and country people and, as the city is brought nearer, its pull upon the young people of the community strengthens. There is also an increasing tendency of the women folk to enter the various departments of industry outside of the home. It is increasingly difficult for one person to satisfy the needs of a large family. This tends to send the family to the city, where there are wider opportunities, and to drive women and children into socialized industry; at the same time, it tends to restrict the number of children in families that have high ideals for women and children. Family life everywhere is becoming increasingly difficult, and at the same time every member of the family is growing more independent in temper. The result is the breaking up of a large number of homes, because of the departure of the children, the separation of husband and wife, the desertion of parents, or the legal divorce of married persons. The maintenance of the family as a social institution is seriously threatened. 73. =Static vs. Dynamic Factors.=--There are factors entering into family life that act as bonds to cement the individual members together. Such are the material goods that they enjoy in common, like the home with its comforts and the means of support upon which they all rely. In addition to these there are psychical elements that enter into their relations and strengthen these bonds. The inheritance of the peculiar traits, manners, and customs that differentiate one family from another; the reputation of the family name and pride in its influence; an affection, understanding, and sympathy that come from the intimacy of the home life and the appreciation of one another's best qualities are ties that do not easily rend or loosen. On the other hand, there are centrifugal forces that are pushing the members of the family apart. At the bottom is selfish desire, which frets at restriction, and which is stimulated by the current emphasis upon personal pleasure and individual independence. The family solidarity which made the sons Democrats because their father voted that party ticket, or the daughters Methodists because their mother's religious preferences were for that denomination, has ceased to be effective. Every member of the family has his daily occupations in diverse localities. The head of the household may find his business duties in the city twenty miles away, or on the road that leads him far afield across the continent. For long hours the children are in school. The housewife is the only member of the family who remains at home and her outside interests and occupations have multiplied so rapidly as to make her, too, a comparative stranger to the home life. Modern industrialism has laid its hand upon the women and children, and thousands of them know the home only at morning and night. 74. =The Strain on the Urban Family.=--The rapid growth of cities, with the increase of buildings for the joint occupancy of a number of families, tends to disunity in each particular family and to a reduction in the size of families. The privacy and sense of intimate seclusion of the detached home is violated. The modern apartment-house has a common hall and stairway for a dozen families and a common dining-room and kitchen on the model of a hotel. The tenements are human incubators from which children overflow upon the streets, boarders invade the privacy of the family bedroom, and even sanitary conveniences are public. Home life is violated in the tenement by the pressure of an unfavorable environment; it perishes on the avenue because of a compelling desire to gain as much freedom as possible from household care. The care of a modern household grows in difficulty. Although the housekeeper has been relieved of performing certain economic functions that added to the burden of her grandmother, her responsibilities have been complicated by a number of conditions that are peculiar to the modern life of the town. Social custom demands of the upper classes a far more careful observance of fashion in dress and household furnishings, and in the exchange of social courtesies. The increasing cost of living due to these circumstances, and to a constantly rising standard of living, reacts upon the mind and nerves of the housewife with accelerating force. And not the least of her difficulties is the growing seriousness of the servant problem. Custom, social obligations, and nervous strain combine to make essential the help of a servant in the home. But the American maid is too independent and high-minded to make a household servant, and the American matron in the main has not learned how to be a just and considerate mistress. The result has been an influx of immigrant labor by servants who are untrained and inefficient, yet soon learn to make successful demands upon the employer for larger wages and more privileges because they are so essential to the comfort and even the existence of the family. Family life is increasingly at the mercy of the household employee. It is not strange that many women prefer the comfort and relief of an apartment or hotel, that many more hesitate to assume the responsibility of marriage and children, preferring to undertake their own self-support, and that not a few seek divorce. 75. =Family Desertion.=--While the burden of housekeeping rests upon the wife, there are corresponding weights and annoyances that fall upon the man. Business pressure and professional responsibility are wearying; he, too, feels the strain upon his nerves. When he returns home at evening he is easily disturbed by a worried wife, tired and fretful children, and the unmistakable atmosphere of gloom and friction that permeates many homes. He contrasts his unenviable position with the freedom and good-fellowship of the club, and chafes under the family bonds. In many cases he breaks them and sets himself free by way of the divorce court. The course of men of the upper class is paralleled by that of the working man or idler who meets similar conditions in a home where the servant does not enter, but where there is a surplus of children. He finds frequent relief in the saloon, and eventually escapes by deserting his family altogether, instead of having recourse to the law. This practice of desertion, which is the poor man's method of divorce, is one of the continual perplexities of organized charity, and constitutes one of the serious problems of family life. There are gradations in the practice of desertion, and it is not confined to men. The social butterfly who neglects her children to flutter here and there is a temporary deserter, little less culpable than the lazy husband who has an attack of _wanderlust_ before the birth of each child, and who returns to enjoy the comforts of home as soon as his wife is again able to assume the function of bread-winner for the growing family. From these it is but a step to the mutual desertion of a man and a woman, who from incompatibility of temper find it advisable to separate and go their own selfish ways, to wait until the law allows a final severance of the marriage bond. It is indisputable that this breaking up of the home is reacting seriously upon the moral character of the present generation; there is a carelessness in assuming the responsibility of marriage, and too much shirking of responsibility when the burden weighs heavily. There is a weakening of real affection and a consequent lack of mutual forbearance; there is an increasing feeling that marriage is a lottery and not worth while unless it promises increased satisfaction of sexual, economic, or social desires and ambitions. 76. =Feminism.=--There can be no question that the growing independence of woman has complicated the family situation. In reaction against the long subjection that has fallen to her lot, the modern woman in many cases rebels against the control of custom and the expectations of society, refuses to regard herself as strictly a home-keeper, and in some cases is unwilling to become a mother. She seeks wider associations and a larger range of activities outside of the home, she demands the same rights and privileges that belong to man, and she dreams of the day when her power as well as her influence will help to mould social institutions. The feminist movement is in the large a wholesome reaction against an undeserved subserviency to the masculine will. Undoubtedly it contains great social potencies. It deserves kindly reception in the struggle to reform and reconstruct society where society is weak. The present situation deserves not abuse, but the most careful consideration from every man. In countless cases woman has not only been repressed from activities outside of the family group, but has been oppressed in her own home also. America prides itself on its consideration for woman in comparison with the general European attitude toward her, but too often chivalry is not exercised in the home. Often the wife has been a slave in the household where she should have been queen. She has been subject to the passion of an hour and the whim of a moment. She has been servant rather than helpmeet. Upon her have fallen the reproaches of the unbridled temper of other members of the family; upon her have rested the burdens that others have shirked. Husband and children have been free to find diversion elsewhere; family responsibilities or broken health have confined her at home. Her husband might even find sex satisfaction away from home, but public opinion would be more lenient with him than with her if she offended. The time has come when it is right that these inequalities and injustices should cease. Society owes to woman not only her right to her own person and property, but the right to bear, also, her fair share of social responsibility in this modern world. Yet in the process of coming to her own, there is danger that the wife will forget that marriage is the most precious of human relations; that the home has the first claim upon her; that motherhood is the greatest privilege to which any woman, however socially gifted, can aspire; and that social institutions of tried worth are not lightly to be cast upon the rubbish heap. It is by no means certain that society can afford or that women ought to demand individualistic rights that will put in jeopardy the welfare of the remainder of the family. The average woman has not the strength to carry properly the burden of home cares plus large political and social responsibilities, nor has she the money to employ in the home all the modern improvements of labor-saving devices and skilled service that might in a measure take her place. Nor is it at all certain that the granting of individual rights to women would tend to purify sex relations, but it is quite conceivable that the old moral and religious sanctions of marriage may disappear and the State assume the task of caring for all children. It is clear that the rights and duties of women constitute a very serious part of the problem of family life. 77. =Individual Rights vs. Social Duties.=--The greatest weakness to be found in twentieth-century society is the disposition on the part of almost all individuals to place personal rights ahead of social duties. The modern spirit of individualism has grown strong since the Renaissance and the Reformation. It has forced political changes until absolutism has been yielding everywhere to democracy. It has extended social privileges until it has become possible for any one with push and ability to make his way to the top rung of the ladder of social prestige. It has permitted freedom to profess and practise any religion, and to advocate the most bizarre ideas in ethics and philosophy. It has brought human individuals to the place where they feel that nothing may be permitted to stand between them and the satisfaction of personal desire. The disciples of Nietzsche do not hesitate to stand boldly for the principle that might makes right, that he who can crush his competitors in the race for pleasure and profit has an indisputable claim on whatever he can grasp, and that the principle of mutual consideration is antiquated and ridiculous. Such principles and privileges may comport with the elemental instincts and interests of unrestrained, primitive creatures, but they do not harmonize with requirements of social solidarity and efficiency. Social evolution in the past has come only as the struggle for individual existence was modified by consideration for the needs of another, and social welfare in the future can be realized only as men and women both are willing to sacrifice age-long prejudice or momentary pleasure and profit to the permanent good of the larger group. READING REFERENCES COOLEY: _Social Organization_, pages 356-371. BRANDT AND BALDWIN: _Family Desertion._ DEALEY: _The Family in Its Sociological Aspects_, pages 85-95, 109-118. GOODSELL: _The Family as a Social and Educational Institution_, pages 456-477. HOWARD: _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, III, pages 239-250. CHAPTER X DIVORCE 78. =The Main Facts About Divorce.=--An indication of the emphasis on individual rights is furnished by the increase of divorce, especially in the United States, where the demands of individualism and industrialism are most insistent. The divorce record is the thermometer that measures the heat of domestic friction. Statistics of marriage and divorce made by the National Government in 1886 and again in 1906 make possible a comparison of conditions which reveal a rapid increase in the number of divorces granted by the courts. Certain outstanding facts are of great importance. (1) The number of divorces in twenty years increased from 23,000 to 72,000, which is three times the rate of increase of the population of the country. If this rate of progress continues, more than half the marriages in the United States will terminate in divorce by the end of the present century. (2) In the first census it was discovered that the number of divorces in the United States exceeded the total number of divorces in all the European countries; in the second census it was shown that the United States had increased its divorces three times, while Japan, with the largest divorce rate in the world, had reduced its rate one-half. (3) Divorces in the United States are least common among people of the middle class; they are higher among native whites than among immigrants, and they are highest in cities and among childless couples. (4) Two-thirds of the divorces are granted on the demands of the wife. (5) Divorce laws are very variable in the different States, but most divorces are obtained from the States where the applicants reside. 79. =Causes of Divorce.=--The causes recorded in divorce cases do not represent accurately the real causes, for the reason that it is easier to get an uncontested decision when the charges are not severe, and also for the reason that State laws vary and that which best fits the law will be put forward as the principal cause. Divorce laws in the United States generally recognize adultery, desertion, cruelty, drunkenness, lack of support, and crime as legitimate grounds for divorce. In the five years from 1902 to 1906 desertion was given as the ground for divorce in thirty-eight per cent of the cases, cruelty in twenty-three per cent, and adultery in fifteen per cent. Intemperance was given as the direct cause in only four per cent, and neglect approximately the same. The assignment of marital unfaithfulness in less than one-sixth of the cases, as compared with one-fourth twenty years before does not mean, however, that there is less unfaithfulness, but that minor offenses are considered sufficient on which to base a claim; the small percentage of charges of intemperance as the principal cause ought not to obscure the fact that it was an indirect cause in one-fifth of the cases. It is natural that the countries of Europe should present greater variety of laws and of causes assigned. In England, where the law has insisted on adultery as a necessary cause, divorces have been few. In Ireland, where the church forbids it, divorce is rare, less than one to thirty-five marriages. In Scotland fifty per cent of the cases reported are due to adultery. Cruelty was the principal cause ascribed in France, Austria, and Rumania; desertion in Russia and Sweden. The tendency abroad is to ascribe more rather than less to adultery. The real causes for divorce are more remote than the specific acts of adultery, desertion, or cruelty that are mentioned as grounds for divorce. The primary cause is undoubtedly the spirit of individual independence that demands its rights at the expense of others. In the case of women there is less hesitancy than formerly in seeking freedom from the marriage bond because of the increasing opportunity of self-support. The changing conditions of home life in the city, with the increasing cost of living, coupled with the ease of divorce, encourage resort to the courts. The unscrupulousness of some lawyers, who fatten their purses at the expense of marital happiness, and the meddlesomeness of relatives are also contributing causes. Finally the restraint of religion has relaxed, and unhappy and ill-mated persons do not shrink from taking a step which was formerly condemned by the church. 80. =History of Divorce.=--The history of divorce presents various opinions and practices. The Hebrews had high ideals, but frequently fell into lax practices; the Greeks began well but degenerated sadly to the point where marriage was a mere matter of convenience; the Romans, noted for their sterling qualities in the early days of the republic, practised divorce without restraint in the later days of the empire. The influence of Christianity was greatly to restrict divorce. The teaching of the Bible was explicit that the basis of marriage was the faithful love of the heart, and that impure desire was the essence of adultery. Illicit intercourse was the only possible moral excuse for divorce. True to this teaching, the Christian church tried hard to abolish divorce, as it attempted to check all sexual evils, and the Catholic Church threw about marriage the veil of sanctity by making it one of the seven sacraments. As a sacrament wedlock was indissoluble, except as money or influence induced the church to turn back the key which it alone possessed. Separation was allowed by law, but not divorce. Greater stability was infused into the marriage relation. Yet it is not possible to purify sex relations by tying tightly the marriage bond. Unfaithfulness has been so common in Europe among the higher classes that it occasioned little remark, until the social conscience became sensitive in recent decades, and among the lower classes divorce was often unnecessary, because so many unions took place without the sanction of the church. In Protestant countries there has been a variable recession from the extreme Catholic ground. The Episcopal Church in England and in colonial America recognized only the one Biblical cause of unfaithfulness; the more radical Protestants turned over the whole matter to the state. In New England desertion and cruelty were accepted alongside adultery as sufficient grounds for divorce, and the legislature sometimes granted it by special enactment. 81. =Investigation and Legislation in the United States and England.=--The divorce question provoked some discussion in this country about the time of the Civil War, and some statistics were gathered. Twenty years later the National Government was induced by the National Divorce Reform League to take a careful census of marriage and divorce. This was published in 1889, and revised and reissued in 1909. These reports aroused the States which controlled the regulation of marriage and divorce to attempt improved legislation. Almost universally among them divorce was made more difficult instead of easier. The term of residence before divorce could be obtained was lengthened; certain changes were made in the legal grounds for divorce; in less than twenty years fourteen States limited the privilege of divorced persons to remarry until after a specified time had elapsed, varying from three months to two years. Congress passed a uniform marriage law for all the territories. It was believed almost universally that the Constitution should be amended so as to secure a federal divorce law, but experience proved that it was better that individual States should adopt a uniform law. The later tendency has been in this direction. At the same time, the churches of the country interested themselves in the subject. The Protestant Episcopal Church took strong ground against its ministers remarrying a divorced person, and the National Council of Congregational Churches appointed a special committee which reported in 1907 in favor of strictness. Fourteen Protestant churches combined in an Interchurch Committee to secure united action, and the Federal Council of Churches recorded itself against the prevailing laxness. The purpose of all this group action was to check abuses and to create a more sensitive public opinion, especially among moral and religious leaders. In Great Britain, on the other hand, divorce had always been difficult. There the strictness of the law led to a demand for a study of the subject and a report to Parliament. The result was the appointment of a Royal Commission on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, consisting of twelve members, which investigated for three years, and in 1912 presented its report. It recognized the fact that severe restrictions were in force, and a majority of the commission regarding marriage as a legal rather than a sacramental bond, favored easier divorce and a single standard of morality for both sexes. It was proposed that the grounds for legal divorce should be adultery, desertion extending over three years, cruelty, incurable insanity after confinement for five years, habitual drunkenness found incurable after three years, or imprisonment carrying with it a sentence of death. A minority of the committee still regarding marriage as a sacrament, favored no relaxation of the law as it stood. 82. =Proposed Remedies.=--Various remedies have been proposed to stem the tide of excessive divorce. There are many who see in divorce nothing more than a healthy symptom of individual independence, a revolt against conditions of the home that are sometimes almost intolerable. Many others are alarmed at the rapid increase of divorce, especially in the United States, and believe that checks are necessary for the continued existence of the family and the well-being of society. The first reform proposed as a means of prevention of divorce is the revision of the marriage laws on a higher model. The second is a stricter divorce law, made as uniform as possible. The third is the adoption of measures of reconciliation which will remove the causes that provoke divorce. The proposed laws include such provisions as the prohibition of marriage for those who are criminal, degenerate, or unfitted to perform the sex function; the requirement of six months' publication of matrimonial banns and a physical certificate before marriage; a strictly provisional decree of divorce; the establishment of a court of domestic relations, and a prohibition of remarriage of the defendant during the life of the plaintiff. These are reasonable restrictions and seem likely to be adopted gradually, as practicable improvements over the existing laws. It is also proposed that the merits of every case shall be more carefully considered, and the judicial procedure improved by the appointment of a divorce proctor in connection with every court trying divorce cases, whose business it shall be to make investigations and to assist in trying or settling specific cases. Experiment has proved the value of such an officer. 83. =Court of Domestic Relations.=--One of the most significant improvements that has taken place is the establishment of a court of domestic relations, which already exists in several cities, and has made an enviable record. In the early experiments it seemed practicable in Kansas to make such a court a branch of the circuit and juvenile courts, so arranged that it would be possible to deal with the relations of the whole family; in Chicago the new tribunal was made a part of the municipal court. By means of patient questioning, first by a woman assistant and then by the judge himself, and by good advice and explicit directions as to conduct, with a warning that failure would be severely treated, it has been possible to unravel hundreds of domestic entanglements. 84. =Tendencies.=--There can be no question that the present tendency is in the direction of greater freedom in the marriage relation. Society will not continue to sanction inhumanity and immorality in the relations of man to woman. Marriage is ideally a sacred relation, but when it is not so treated, when love is dead and repulsion has taken its place, and especially when physical contact brings disease and suffering, public opinion is likely to consider that marriage is thereby virtually annulled, and to permit ratification of the fact by a decree of divorce. On the other hand, it is probable that increasing emphasis will be put on serious and well-prepared marriage, on the inculcation of a spirit of mutual love and forbearance through the agency of the church, and on the exhaustion of every effort to restore right relations, if they have not been irreparably destroyed, before any grant of divorce will be allowed. In this, as in all problems of the family, the spirit of mutual consideration for the interests of all concerned is that which must be invoked for a speedy and permanent solution. Education of young people in the importance of the family as a social institution and in the responsibility which every individual member should feel to make and keep the family pure and strong as a bulwark of social stability, is the surest means of preventing altogether its dissolution. READING REFERENCES "Report on Marriage and Divorce," 1906, _Bureau of the Census_, I, pages 272-274, 331-333. "Reports of the National League for the Protection of the Family." POST: _Ethics of Marriage and Divorce_, pages 62-84. DEALEY: _The Family in Its Sociological Aspects_, pages 96-108. HOWARD: _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, III, pages 3-160. WILLCOX: _The Divorce Problem._ CHAPTER XI THE SOCIAL EVIL 85. =Sexual Impurity.=--A prime factor in the breaking up of the home is sexual impurity. The sex passion, an elemental instinct of humanity, is sanctified by the marriage relation, but unbridled in those who seek above all else their own pleasure, becomes a curse in body and soul. It is not limited to either sex, but men have been more self-indulgent, and have been treated more leniently than erring women. Sexual impurity is wide-spread, but public opinion against it is steadily strengthening, and the tendency is to hold men and women equally responsible. For the sake of clearness it is advisable to distinguish between various forms of impurity, and to observe the proper terms. The sexual evil appears in aggravated form in commercial prostitution, but is more prevalent as an irregularity among non-professionals. Sexual intercourse before marriage, or fornication, was not infrequent in colonial days, and in Europe is startlingly common; very frequently among the lower classes there is no marriage until a child is born. Sexual infidelity after marriage, or adultery, is the cause of the ruin of many homes. In the cities and among the well-to-do classes the keeping of mistresses is an occasional practice, but it is far less common than was the case in former days, when it was the regular custom at royal courts and imitated by those lower in the social scale. 86. =Prostitution.=--Prostitution, softened in common speech to "the social evil," is a term for promiscuity of sex relationship for pay or its equivalent. It is a very old practice, and has existed in the East as a part of religious worship in veneration of the power of generation. In the West it is a frequent accompaniment of intemperance and crime. Modern prostitutes are recruited almost entirely from the lower middle class, both in Europe and America. Ignorant and helpless immigrant girls are seduced on the journey, in the streets of American cities, and in the tenements. Domestic servants and employees in factories and department stores seem to be most subject to exploitation, but no class or employment is immune. A great many girls, while still in their teens, have begun their destructive career. They are peculiarly susceptible in the evening, after the strain of the day's labor, when they are hunting for fun and excitement in theatres, dance-halls, and moving-picture shows. In summer they are themselves hunted on excursion steamers, and at the parks and recreation grounds. The seduction and exploitation of young women has become a distinct occupation of certain worthless young men, commonly known as cadets, who live upon the earnings of the women they procure. Three-fourths of the prostitutes have such men dependent on them, to whom they remain attached through fear or need of pecuniary relief in case of arrest, or even through a species of affection, though they receive nothing but abuse in return. Once secured, the victim is not permitted to escape. Not many women enter the life of prostitution from choice, but when they have once yielded to temptation or force, they lose their self-respect and usually sink into hopeless degradation, and then do not shrink from soliciting business within doors or on the streets. 87. =Promotion and Regulation of Vice.=--The social evil is centred in houses of ill fame managed by unprincipled women. The business is financed and the profits enjoyed by men who constantly stimulate the trade to make it more profitable. As a result of investigations in New York, it is estimated that the number of prostitutes would be not more than one-fourth of what it is were it not for the ruthless greed of these men. The houses are usually located in the poorer parts of the city, but they are also to be found scattered elsewhere. In cases where public opinion does not warrant rigid enforcement of the law against it, the illicit traffic is disregarded by the police, and often they are willing to share in the gains as the price of their leniency. As a rule the business is kept under cover and not permitted to flaunt itself on the streets. Definite segregation in a particular district has been attempted, and has sometimes been favored as a means of checking vice, but this means is not practised or favored after experiment has shown its uselessness as a check upon the trade. Government regulation by a system of license, with registration of prostitutes and regular though superficial examination of health, is in vogue in parts of western and southern Europe, but it is not favored by vice commissions that have examined into its workings. 88. =Extent of the Social Evil.=--It is probable that estimates as to the number of prostitutes in the great urban centres has been much exaggerated. In the nature of the case it is very difficult to get accurate reports, but when it is remembered that the number of men who frequent the resorts is not less than fifteen times the number of women, and that in most cases the proportion is larger, it is not difficult to conceive of the immense profits to the exploiters, but also of the enormous economic waste, the widely prevalent physical disease, and the untold misery of the women who sin, and of the innocent women at home who are sinned against by those who should be their protectors. A "white-slave traffic" seems to have developed in recent years that has not only increased the number of local prostitutes, but has united far-distant urban centres. It is very difficult to prove an intercity trade, but investigation has produced sufficient evidence to show that there is an organized business of procuring victims and that they have been exported to distant parts of the world, including South America, South Africa, and the Far East. 89. =The Causes.=--The social evil has usually been blamed upon the perversity of women and their pecuniary need, but investigation makes it plain that the causes go deeper than that. The first cause is the ignorance of girls who are permitted to grow up and go out into the world innocently, unaware of the snares in which they are liable to become enmeshed. Added to this ignorance is the lack of moral and religious training, so that there is often no firm conviction of right and wrong, an evil which is intensified in the city tenements by the conditions of congested population. A third grave cause is the public neglect of persons of defective mentality and morality. Women who are not capable of taking care of themselves are allowed full liberty of conduct, and frequently fall victims to the seducer. An investigation of cases in the New York Reformatory for Women at Bedford in 1913 showed one-third very deficient mentally; the Massachusetts Vice Commission in 1914 reported one-half to three-fourths of three hundred cases to be of the same class. It seems clear that a large proportion of prostitutes generally belong in this category. It has been estimated that there are now (1915) as many defective women at large in Massachusetts as there are in public institutions. Poverty is an important factor in the extension of the sexual evil. It is notorious that thousands of women workers are underpaid. In factories, restaurants, and department stores they frequently receive wages much less than the eight dollars a week required by women to maintain themselves, if dependent on their own resources. The American woman's pride in a good appearance, the natural human love of ease, luxury, and excitement, the craving for relaxation and thrill, after the exacting labor of a long day, all contribute to the welcome of an opportunity for an indulgence that brings money in return. The agency of the dance-hall and the saloon has also an important place in the downfall of the tempted. Intemperance and prostitution go together, and places where they can be enjoyed are factories of vice and crime. Many so-called hotels with bar attachment are little more than houses of evil resort. Especially notorious for a time were the Raines Law hotels in New York City, designed to check intemperance, but proving nurseries of prostitution. Commercial profit is large from both kinds of traffic, and one stimulates the other. Among minor causes of the social evil is the postponement or abandonment of marriage by many young people, the celibate life imposed upon students and soldiers, the declaration of some physicians that continence is injurious, and lax opinion, especially in Europe. 90. =The Consequences.=--It is impossible to measure adequately the consequences of sexual indulgence. It is destructive of physical health among women and of morals among both sexes. It results in a weakening of the will and a blunting of moral discernment. It is an economic waste, as is intemperance, for even on the level of economic values it is plain that money could be much better spent for that which would benefit rather than curse. But the great evil that looms large in public view is the legacy of physical disease that falls upon self-indulgent men and their families. The presence of venereal disease in Europe is almost unbelievable; so great has it been in continental armies that governments have become alarmed as to its effects upon the health and morale of the troops. College men have been reckless in sowing wild oats, and have suffered serious physical consequences. Most pathetic is the suffering that is caused to innocent wives and children in blindness, sterility, and frequent abdominal disease. This is a subject that demands the attention of every person interested in human happiness and social welfare. 91. =History of Reform.=--Spasmodic efforts to suppress the social evil have occurred from time to time. The result has been to scatter rather than to suppress it, and after a little it has crept back to its old haunts. Scattering it in tenements and residential districts has been very unfortunate. The cure is not so simple a process. Neither will segregation help. It is now generally agreed, especially as a result of recent investigations by vice commissioners in the large cities, that there must be a brave, sustained effort at suppression, and then the patient task of reclaiming the fallen and preventing the evil in future. Organization and investigation are the two words that give the key to the history of reform. International societies are agitating abroad; other associations are directly engaged in checking vice in the United States, most prominent of which is the American Vigilance Association. Rescue organizations are scattered through the cities. Especially active have been the commissions of investigation appointed privately and by municipal, State, and Federal Governments, which have issued illuminating reports. The United States in 1908 joined in an international treaty to prevent the world-wide traffic in white slaves, and in 1910 Congress passed the Mann White Slave Act to prevent interstate traffic in America. 92. =Measures of Prevention and Cure.=--The social evil is one about which there have been all sorts of wild opinions, but the facts are becoming well substantiated by investigations, and these investigations are the basis upon which all scientific conclusions must rest, alike for public education and for constructive legislation. No one remedy is adequate. There are those who believe that the church has it in its power to stir a wave of indignation that would sweep the whole traffic from the land, but it is not so simple a process. It is generally agreed that both education and legislation are necessary to check the evil. The first is necessary for the public health, and to support repressive laws. As a helpful means of repression it is proposed that the social evil, along with questions of social morals, like gambling, excise, and amusements, shall be taken out of the hands of the municipal police and the politicians, and lodged with an unpaid morals commission, which shall have its own special corps of expert officers and a morals court for the trial of cases appropriate to its jurisdiction. This experiment actually has been tried in Berlin. Measures of prevention as well as measures of repression are needed. Restraint is needed for defectives; protection for immigrants and young people, especially on shipboard, in the tenements, and in the moving-picture houses; better housing, better amusements, and better wages for all the people. Finally, the wrecks must be taken care of. Rescue homes and other agencies manage to save a few to reformed lives; homes are needed constantly for temporary residence. Private philanthropy has provided them thus far, but the United States Government has discussed the advisability of building them in sufficient numbers to meet every local need. Many old and hardened offenders need reformatories with farm and hospital where they can be cared for during a long time; some of the States have provided these already. The principles upon which a permanent cure of the social evil must be based are similar to those that underlie all family reform, namely, the rescue as far as possible of those already fallen, the social and moral education of youth to nobler purpose and will, the removal of unfavorable economic and social conditions, and the improvement of family life until it can satisfy the human cravings that legitimately belong to it. READING REFERENCES ADDAMS: _A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil._ WILLSON: _The American Boy and the Social Evil._ MORROW: _Social Diseases and Marriage_, pages 331-353. KNEELAND: _Commercialized Prostitution in New York City_, pages 253-271. CHAPTER XII CHARACTERISTICS AND PRINCIPLES 93. =Social Characteristics Illustrated by the Family.=--A study of the family such as has been made illustrates the characteristics of social life that were noted in the introductory chapter. There is activity in the performance of every domestic, economic, and social function. There is association in various ways for various purposes between all members of the family. Control is exercised by paternal authority, family custom, and personal and family interest. The history of the family shows gradual changes that have produced varieties of organization, and the present situation discloses weaknesses that are precipitating upon society very serious problems. Present characteristics largely determine future processes; always in planning for the future it is necessary to take into consideration the forces that produce and alter social characteristics. Specific measures meet with much scepticism, and enthusiastic reformers must always reckon with inertia, frequent reactions, and slow social development. In the face of sexualism, divorce, and selfish individualism, it requires patience and optimism to believe that the family will continue to exist and the home be maintained. 94. =Principles of Family Reform.=--It is probably impossible to restore the home life of the past, as it is impossible to turn back the tide of urban migration and growth. But it is possible on the basis of certain fundamental principles to improve the conditions of family life by means of methods that lie at hand. The first principle is that the home must function properly. There must be domestic and economic satisfactions. Without the satisfaction of the sexual and parental instincts and an atmosphere of comfort and freedom from anxiety, the home is emptied of its attractions. The second principle is that social sympathy and service rather than individual independence shall be the controlling motive in the home. As long as every member of the family consults first his own pleasure and comfort and contributes only half-heartedly to create a home atmosphere and to perform his part of the home functions, there can be no real gain in family life. The home is built on love; it can survive on nothing less than mutual consideration. 95. =The Method of Economic Adjustment.=--The first method by which these principles can be worked out is economic adjustment. It is becoming imperative that the family income and the family requirements shall be fitted together. Less extravagance and waste of expenditure and a living wage to meet legitimate needs, are both demanded by students of economic reform. It is not according to the principles of social righteousness that any family should suffer from cold or hunger, nor is it right that any social group should be wasteful of the portion of economic goods that has come to it. There is great need, also, that the expense of living should be reduced while the standards of living shall not be lowered. The business world has been trying to secure economies in production; there is even greater need of economies in distribution. Millions are wasted in advertising and in the profits of middlemen. Some method of co-operative buying and selling will have to be devised to stop this economic leakage. It would relieve the housewife from some of the worries of housekeeping and lighten the heart of the man who pays the bills. A third adjustment is that of the household employee to the remainder of the household. The servant problem is first an economic problem, and questions of wages, hours, and privileges must be based on economic principles; but it is also a social problem. The servant bears a social relation to the family. The family home is her home, and she must have a certain share in home comforts and privileges. A fourth reform is better housing and equipment. Attractive and comfortable houses in a wholesome environment of light, air, and sunshine, built for economical and easy housekeeping, are not only desirable but essential for a permanent and happy family life. 96. =The Method of Social Education.=--A second general method by which the principles of home life may be carried out is social education. Given the material accessories, there must be the education of the family in their use. Children in the home need to know the fundamentals of personal and sex hygiene and the principles of eugenics. In home and in school the emphasis in education should be upon social rather than economic values, on the significance of social relationships and the opportunities of social intercourse in the home and the community, on the personal and social advantages of intellectual culture, on the importance of moral progress in the elimination of drunkenness, sexualism, poverty, crime, and war, if there is to be future social development, and on the value of such social institutions as the home, the school, the church, and the state as agencies for individual happiness and group progress. Especially should there be impressed upon the child mind the transcendent importance of affectionate co-operation in the home circle, parents sacrificing personal preferences and anticipations of personal enjoyment for the good of children, and children having consideration for the wishes and convictions of their elders, and recognizing their own responsibility in rendering service for the common good. Sanctioned by law, by the custom of long tradition, by economic and social valuations, the home calls for personal devotion of will and purpose from every individual for the welfare of the group of which he is a privileged member. The family tie is the most sacred bond that links individuals in human society; to strengthen it is one of the noblest aspirations of human endeavor. READING REFERENCES DEALEY: _The Family in Its Sociological Aspects_, pages 119-134. POST: _Ethics of Marriage and Divorce_, pages 105-127. HOWARD: _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, III, pages 253-259. THWING: _The Recovery of the Home._ A Pamphlet. PART III--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE RURAL COMMUNITY CHAPTER XIII THE COMMUNITY AND ITS HISTORY 97. =Broadening the Horizon.=--Out of the kindergarten of the home the child graduates into the larger school of the community. Thus far through his early years the child's environment has been restricted almost entirely to the four walls of the home or the limits of the farm. His horizon has been bounded by garden, pasture, and orchard, except as he has enjoyed an occasional visit to the village centre or has found playmates on neighboring farms. He has shared in the isolation of the farm. The home of the nearest neighbor is very likely out of sight beyond the hill, or too far away for children's feet to travel the intervening distance; on the prairie the next door may be over the edge of the horizon. The home has been his social world. It has supplied for him a social group, persons to talk with, to play with, to work with. Inevitably he takes on their characteristics, and his life will continue to be narrow and to grow conservative and hard, unless he enlarges his experience, broadens his horizon, tries new activities, enjoys new associations, tests new methods of social control, and lets the forces that produce social change play upon his own life. Happy is he when he enters definitely into community life by taking his place in the district school. The schoolhouse may be at the village centre or it may stand aloof among the trees or stark on a barren hillside along the country road; physical environment is of small consequence as compared with the new social environment of the schoolroom itself. The child has come into contact with others of his kind in a permanent social institution outside the home, and this social contact has become a daily experience. Every child that goes to school is one of many representatives from the homes of the neighborhood. He brings with him the habits and ideas that he has gathered from his own home, and he finds that they do not agree or fuse easily with the ideas and habits of the other children. In the schoolroom and on the playground he repeats the process of social adjustments which the race has passed through. Conflicts for ascendancy are frequent. He must prove his physical prowess on the playground and his intellectual ability in the schoolroom. He must test his body of knowledge and the value of his mental processes by the mind of his teacher. He must have strength of conviction to defend his own opinions, but he must have an open mind to receive truths that are new to him. One of the great achievements of the school is to fuse dissimilar elements into common custom and opinion, and thus to socialize the independent units of community life. 98. =Learning Social Values in the Community.=--The school is the door to larger social opportunity than the home can provide, but it is not the only door. The child in passing to and from school comes into touch with other institutions and activities. He passes other homes than his own. He sees each in the midst of its own peculiar surroundings, and he makes comparisons of one with another and of each with his own. He estimates more or less consciously the value of that which he sees, not so much in terms of economic as of social worth, and congratulates or pities himself or his schoolmates, according to the judgments that he has made. He stops at the store, the mill, or the blacksmith shop, through frequent contact becomes familiar with their functions, and thinks in turn that he would like to be storekeeper, miller, and blacksmith. He sees the farmer on other farms than his own gathering his harvest in the fall, hauling wood in the winter, or ploughing his field in the spring, and he becomes conscious of common habits and occupations in this rural community. He gets acquainted with the variety of activities that enter into life in the country district in which his home is located, and he learns to appreciate the importance of the instruments upon which such activity depends for travel from place to place. By all these means the child is learning social values. After a little he comes to understand that the community, with its roads, its public buildings, and its established institutions, exists to satisfy certain economic and social needs that the single family cannot supply. By and by he learns that, like the family, it has grown out of the experience of relationships, and can be traced far back in history, and that as time passes it is slowly changing to adapt itself to the changing wants and wishes of its inhabitants. He becomes aware of a present tendency for the community to imitate the larger social life outside, to make its village centre a reproduction in miniature of the urban centres; later he realizes that the introduction of foreign elements into the population is working for the destruction of the simple, unified life of former days, and is introducing a certain flavor of cosmopolitanism. It is this growth of social consciousness in a single child, multiplied by the number of children in the community, that constitutes the process of social education. A community with no dynamic influences impinging upon it reproduces itself in this way generation after generation, and at best seems to maintain but a static existence. In reality, few communities stand still. The principle of change that is characteristic of social life is continually working to build up or tear down the community structure and to modify community functioning. The causes of change and their methods of operation appear in the history of the rural community. 99. =Rural History.=--The history of the rural community falls into two periods--first, when the village was necessary to the life of the individual; second, when the individual pioneer pushed out into the forest or prairie, and the village followed as a convenient social institution. The community came into existence through the bond of kinship. Every clan formed a village group with its own peculiar customs. These were primitive, even among semi-civilized peoples. Among the ancient Hebrews the village elders sat by the gate to administer justice in the name of the clan; in China the old men still bask on a log in the sun and pronounce judgment in neighborly gossip. The village existed for sociability and safety. The mediæval Germans left about each village a broad strip of waste land called the mark, and over this no stranger could come as a friend without sounding a trumpet. Later the village was surrounded by a wall called a tun, and by a transfer of terms the village frequently came to be called a mark, or tun, later changed to town. Place names even in the United States are often survivals of such a custom, as Charlestown or Chilmark. The Indian village in colonial America was similarly protected with a palisade, and village dogs heralded the approach of a stranger, as they do still in the East. 100. =The Mediæval Village.=--The peasant village of the Middle Ages constitutes a distinct type of rural community. A consciousness of mutual dependence between the owner of the land and the peasants who were his serfs produced a feudal system in which the landlord undertook to furnish protection and to permit the peasant to use portions of his land in exchange for service. Strips of fertile soil were allotted to the village families for cultivation, while pasture-land, meadow, and forest were kept for community use. Even in the heart of the city Boston Common remains as a relic of the old custom. On the mediæval manor people lived and worked together, most of them on the same social level, the lord in his manor-house and the peasants in a hamlet or larger village on his land, huddling together in rude huts and in crude fashion performing the social and economic functions of a rural community. In the village church the miller or the blacksmith held his head a little higher than his neighbors, and sometimes the lord of the manor did not deign to worship in the common parish church, but the mass of the people were fellow serfs, owning a common master, working at the same tasks, by custom sowing and reaping the same kind of grain on the same kind of land in the same week of the year. They attended the court of the master, who exercised the functions of government. They worshipped side by side in the church. The same customs bound them and the same superstitions worried their waking hours. There was thus a community solidarity that less commonly exists under modern conditions. There was no stimulus to progress on the manor itself. There were no schools for the peasant's children, and there was little social intelligence. The finer side of life was undeveloped, except as the love of music was stirred by the travelling bard, or martial fervor or the love of movement aroused the dance. There was no desire for religious independence or understanding of religious experience. The mass in the village church satisfied the religious instinct. There was no dynamic factor in the community itself. Besides all this, the community lived a self-centred life, because the people manufactured their own cloth and leather garments and most of the necessary tools, and, except for a few commodities like iron and salt, they were independent of trade. The result was that every stimulus of social exchange between villages was lacking. The broadening influence of the Crusades with their stimulus to thought, their creation of new economic wants, and their contact of races and nationalities, set in motion great changes. Out of the manorial villages went ambitious individuals, making their way as industrial pioneers to the opportunity of the larger towns, as now young people push out from the country to the city. New towns were founded and new enterprises were begun. Trade routes were opened up. The feudal principality grew into the modern state. Cultural interests demanded their share of attention. Schools were founded, and art and literature began again to develop. Even law and religion, most conservative among social institutions, underwent change. 101. =The Village in American History.=--The spirit of enterprise and the disturbed political and religious conditions impelled many groups in western Europe to emigrate to new lands after the geographical discoveries that ushered in the sixteenth century. They were free to go, for serfdom was disappearing from most of the European countries. The village life of Europe was transplanted to America. In the South the mediæval feudal village became the agricultural plantation, where the planter lived on his own estate surrounded by the rude cabins of his dusky peasantry. The more democratic, homogeneous village life of middle-class Englishmen reproduced itself in New England, where the houses of the settlers clustered about the village meeting-house and schoolhouse, and where habits of industry, frugality, and sobriety characterized every local group. In this new village life there came to be a stronger feeling of self-respect, and under the hard conditions of life in a new continent there developed a self-reliance that was destined to work wonders in days to come. The New World bred a spirit of independence that suited well the individualistic philosophy and religion of the modern Englishman. All these qualities prophesied much of individual achievement. Yet this tendency toward individualism threatened the former social solidarity, though there was a recognition of mutual interests and a readiness to show neighborly kindness in time of stress, and a perception of the social value of democracy in church and state. 102. =Individual Pioneering.=--The pioneer American colonies were group settlements, but they produced a new race of individual pioneers for the West. Occasionally a whole community emigrated, but usually hardy, venturesome individuals pushed out into the wilderness, opening up the frontier continually farther toward the setting sun. By the brookside the pioneer made a clearing and erected his log house; later on the unbroken prairie he built a rude hut of sod. On the land that was his by squatter's right or government claim he planted and reaped his crops. About him grew up a brood of children, and as the years passed, others like himself followed in the path that he had made, single men to work for a time as hired laborers, families to break new ground, until the countryside became sparsely settled and the nucleus of a village was made. Such pioneers were hard-working people, lonely and introspective. They knew little of the comforts and none of the refinements of life. They prescribed order and administered justice at the weapon's point. They were emotional in religion. They required the stimulus of abundant food and often of strong drink to goad them to their various tasks. Frontier pioneering in America reproduced many of the features of former ages of primitive life and compressed centuries into the space of a generation. It was distinctly individualistic, and needed socializing. The large farm or cattle-range kept men apart, the freedom of the open country attracted an unruly population, and in consequence frontier life tended to rough manners and lawlessness. Isolation and loneliness produced despondency and inertia, and tended to individual and group degeneration. Even in a growing village men and women of this type had few social institutions. There was little time for schooling or recreation. A circuit-riding preacher held religious services once or twice a month, and in certain regions at a certain season religious enthusiasm found vent in a camp-meeting, but religion often had little effect on habits and morals. Local government and industry were home-made. The settlers brought with them customs and traditions which they cherished, but in the mingling of pioneers from different districts there was continual change and fusion, until the West became the most enterprising and progressive part of the nation, continually open to new ideas and new methods. There was a wholesome respect for church and school, and as villages grew the settlers did not neglect the organization and housing of such institutions; store, mill, and smithy found their place as farther east, and later the lawyer and physician came, but the pioneer could do without them for a time. Inventiveness and individual initiative were characteristics of the rural people, made necessary by their remoteness and isolation. 103. =The Development of the West.=--With increasing settlement the rural pioneer gave place to the farmer. It was no longer necessary for him to break new ground, for arable acres could be purchased; neither was it necessary to turn from one occupation to another to satisfy personal or household needs, for division of labor provided specialists. Hardship gave way to comfort, for the land was fertile and experience had taught its values for the cultivation of particular crops. Loneliness and isolation were felt less severely as neighbors became more frequent and travelled roads made communication easier. Group life expanded and institutions became fixed. Every neighborhood had its school-teacher, and even the academy and college began to dot the land. Churches of various denominations found root in rural soil, and a settled minister became more common. A general store and post-office found place at the cross-roads, and the permanent machinery of local government was set up. Out of the forest clearings and prairie settlements evolved the prosperous farm life that has been so characteristic of the Middle West. But the prosperous life of these rural communities has not remained unchanged. Speculation in land has been creating a class of non-resident agricultural capitalists and tenant cultivators, and has been transforming the type of agricultural population over large sections of country. Soil exhaustion is leading to abandonment of the poorest land and is compelling methods of scientific agriculture on the remainder. These conditions are producing their own social problems for the rural community. READING REFERENCES SMALL AND VINCENT: _Introduction to the Study of Society_, pages 112-126. CHEYNEY: _Industrial and Social History of England_, pages 31-56. CUBBERLEY: _Rural Life and Education_, pages 1-62. WILSON: _Evolution of the Country Community_, pages 1-61. CARVER: _Principles of Rural Economics_, pages 74-116. ROSS: "The Agrarian Revolution in the Middle West," _North American Review_, September, 1909. GILLETTE: "The Drift to the City in Relation to the Rural Problem," _American Journal of Sociology_, March, 1911. CHAPTER XIV THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 104. =Physical Types.=--To understand the continually changing rural life of the present, it is necessary to examine into the physical characteristics of the country districts, the elements of the population, the functions of the rural community, and its social institutions. The physical characteristics have a large part in determining occupations and in fashioning social life. A natural harbor, especially if it is at the mouth of a river, seems destined by nature for a centre of commerce, as the falls of a swift-flowing stream indicate the location of a manufacturing plant. A mineral-bearing mountain invites to mining, and miles of forest land summon the lumberman. Broad and well-watered plains seem designed for agriculture, and on them acres of grain slowly mature through the summer months to turn into golden harvests in the fall. The Mississippi valley and the Western plain into which it blends have become the granary of the American nation. The railroad-train that rushes day and night from the Great Lakes toward the setting sun moves hour after hour through the extensive rural districts that characterize the great West. There are the mammoth farms that are given to the one enormous crop of wheat or corn. Alongside the railroad loom the immense elevators where the grain is stored to be shipped to market. Here and there are the farm-buildings where the owner or tenant lives, but villages are small and scattered and community activity is slight. Similarly, in the South before the Civil War there were large plantations of cotton and tobacco, dotted only here and there with the planter's mansion and clumps of negro cabins. Village life was not a characteristic of Southern society. The old South had its picturesque plantation life, and the aristocracy made its sociable visits from family to family, but that rural type disappeared with the war. With the breaking up of the old plantations there came a greater diversification of agriculture, which is going on at an accelerated pace, and social centres are increasing, but there is still much rural isolation. Among the remoter mountains lingers the most conservative American type of citizens in the arrested development of a century ago, with antique tools and ancient methods, scratching a few acres for a garden and corn-field, and living their backward, isolated life, without comfort or even peace, and almost without social institutions. In the East the country is more broken. Large farms are few, and agriculture is carried on intensively as a business, or is united with another occupation or as a diversion from the cares and tasks of the town. Farms of a score to a few hundred acres, only part of which are cultivated, form rural communities among the hills or along a river valley. Here and there a few houses cluster in village or hamlet, where each house yard has its garden patch, but the inhabitants of the village depend on other means than agriculture for a living. On the farms dairy and poultry products share with agriculture in rural importance, and no one crop constitutes an agricultural staple. In New England the villages are comparatively near together, and social life needs only prodding to produce a healthy development. 105. =Characteristics of Population.=--Rural life feels in each region the reactions of nature. The narrow life of the hills, the open life of the plains, the peaceful life of the comfortable plantation with its lazy river and its delightful climate, each has its peculiar characteristics that are due in part at least to nature. But these features are complicated by social elements of population. The American rural community of to-day is composed of individuals who differ in age and fortune and kinship, and who vary in qualities and resemblances. There are old and young and middle-aged persons, men and women, married and single, persons with many relatives and others with few, native and foreign born, strong and weak, well and ill, good and bad, educated and illiterate. Yet there are certain characteristics that are typical. In the first place, for example, there is a considerable uniformity of age in the population of a certain type of community. In those agricultural districts where individuals own their own homes, the number of elderly people is larger than it is in the city, and the young people are comparatively few, for the reason that their ambitions carry them to the city for its larger opportunities, and in the older States many a farm becomes abandoned on the death of the old people. In districts where tenant-farming is largely in vogue, gray hairs are much fewer. The tendency is for the original farmers who have been successful to sell or rent their property and move to town to enjoy its comforts and attractions, leaving the tenants and their families of children. In the second place, it is characteristic of long-settled rural communities that there is an interlocking of family relationship, with a number of prevailing family names and a great preponderance of native Americans; but in portions of the West and in rural districts not very remote from the large cities of the East there is a large mixture, and in spots a predominance of the foreign element. In the third place, small means rather than wealth and a sluggish contentment rather than ambition is characteristic of the older rural sections; in newer districts ambition to push ahead is more common, and prosperity and an air of opulence are not unusual. 106. =The Composition of Rural Communities.=--In an analysis of population it is proper to consider its composition and its manner of growth. In making a survey or taking a census of a community there are included at least statistics as to age, sex, number and size of families, degree of kinship, race parentage, and occupations. Records of age, sex, and size of family show the tendencies of a community as to growth or race suicide; kinship and race parentage indicate whether population is homogeneous; and occupations indicate the place that agriculture holds in a particular section of country. By a comparative study of statistics it is easy to determine whether a community is advancing, retrograding, or standing still, and what its position is relative to its neighbors; also to find out whether or not its occupations and characteristics are changing. 107. =Manner of Growth.=--The manner of growth of a community is by natural excess of births over deaths, and by immigration of persons from outside. As long as the former condition obtains, population is homogeneous, and the community is conservative in customs and beliefs; when immigration is extensive, and more especially when it goes on at the same time with a declining birth-rate and a considerable emigration of the native element, the population is becoming heterogeneous, and the customs and interests of the people are growing continually more divergent. The immigration of an earlier day was from one American community to another, or from northern Europe, but rural communities East and West are feeling the effects of the large foreign immigration of the last decade from southern and eastern Europe and from Asia. 108. =Decline of the Rural Population.=--The rural exodus to the cities is even more impressive and more serious in its consequences than the foreign influx into the country, though both are dynamic in their effects. This exodus is partly a matter of numbers and partly of quality. A distinction must be made first between the relative loss and the actual loss. The rural population in places of less than twenty-five hundred persons is steadily falling behind in proportion to the urban population in the country at large. There are many localities where there is also an actual loss in population, and in the North and Middle West the States generally are making no rural gain. But the most disheartening element in the movement of population from the point of view of rural communities is the loss of the most substantial of the older citizens, who move to the city to enjoy the reward of years of toil, and of the most ambitious of the young people who hope to get on faster in the city. Loss of such as these means loss of competent, progressive leaders. Added to this is the loss of laborers needed to cultivate the farms to their capacity for urban as well as rural supply. The loss of labor is not a serious economic misfortune, for it can be remedied to a large extent by the introduction of more machinery and new methods, but the loss of population reproduces in a measure the isolation of earlier days, and so tends to social degeneration. It is idle to expect that the far-reaching causes that are contributing to city growth will stop working for the sake of the rural community, but it is possible to enrich community life so that there will be less relative attraction in the city, and so that those who remain may enjoy many of the advantages that hitherto have been associated with the city alone. READING REFERENCES HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_, pages 11-37. GILLETTE: _Rural Sociology_, pages 32-46, 281-292. ANDERSON: _The Country Town_, pages 57-91. SEMPLE: _Influences of Geographic Environment._ GALPIN: "Method of Making a Social Survey in a Rural Community," _University of Wisconsin Circular of Information_, No. 29. CARROLL: _The Community Survey._ CHAPTER XV OCCUPATIONS 109. =Rural Occupations.=--An important part of the study of the rural community is its social functions. These do not differ greatly in name from the functions of the family, but they have wider scope. The domestic functions are confined almost entirely to the homes. The village usually includes a boarding-house or a country inn for the homeless few, and here and there an almshouse shelters the few derelicts whom the public must support. Economic activities in the main are associated with the farm home. The common occupation in the country is agriculture. Individuals are born into country homes, learn the common occupation, and of necessity in most cases make it their means of livelihood. Rural people are accustomed to hard labor for long hours. There are seasons when comparative inactivity renders life dull; there are individuals who enjoy pensions or the income of inherited or accumulated funds, and so are not compelled to resort to manual labor, and there are directors of agricultural industry; there are always a shiftless few who are lazy and poor; but these are only exceptions to the general rule of active toil. Not all rural districts are agricultural. Some are frontier settlements where lumbering or mining are the chief interests. Even where agriculture prevails there are varieties such as corn-raising or fruit-growing regions; there are communities that are progressively making use of the latest results of scientific agriculture, and communities that are almost as antique in their methods as the ancient Hebrews. Also, even in homogeneous districts, like those devoted to cotton-growing or tobacco-culture, there are always individuals who choose or inherit an occupation that supplies a special want to the community, such as carpenters, blacksmiths, and masters of other crafts. Occupations indicate an attempt to gear personal energies to the opportunities or requirements of a physical or social environment. All these occupations have more than economic value; they are fundamental to social prosperity. It is self-evident that the physician and the school-teacher render community service, but it is not so clear that the farmer who keeps his house well painted and his grounds in order, and who is improving his cattle and increasing the yield of his fields and woodland by scientific methods, and who organizes his neighbors for co-operative endeavor, is doing more than an economic service. Yet it is by means of inspiration, information, and co-operation that the community moves forward, and he who supplies these is a social benefactor. 110. =Differentiation of Occupation.=--If community life is to continue there must be the producers who farm or mine or manufacture; in rural districts they are farmers, hired laborers, woodcutters, threshers, and herdsmen. In the co-operation of village life there must be the craftsmen and tradesmen who finish and distribute the products that the others have secured, such as the miller, the carpenter, the teamster, and the storekeeper. For comfort and peace in the neighborhood there must be added the physician, the minister, the school-teacher, the justice of the peace, and such public functionaries as postmaster, mail-carrier, stage-driver, constable or sheriff, and other town or county officials. Without specific allotment of lands as on the feudal estate, or distribution of tasks as in a socialistic commonwealth, the community accomplishes a natural division of labor and diversification of industry, supports its own institutions by self-imposed taxes and voluntary contributions, and supplies its quota to the larger State of which it forms a democratic part. In spite of the constant exercise of individual independence and competition, there is at the foundation of every rural community the principle of co-operation and service as the only working formula for human life. 111. =Co-operation.=--One great advantage of community life over the home is the increased opportunity for co-operation. In new communities families work together to erect buildings, make roads, support schools, and organize and maintain a church. They aid each other in sickness, accident, and distress. Farmers find it profitable to unite for purposes of production, distribution, communication, transportation, and insurance. It may not seem worth while for a single farmer to buy an expensive piece of agricultural machinery for his own use, but it is well worth while for four or five to club together and buy it. The cost of an irrigation plant is much too high for one man, but a community can afford it when it will add materially to the production of all the farms in a district. In a region interested mainly in dairying a co-operative creamery can be made very profitable; in grain-producing sections co-operative elevator service makes possible the storage of grain until the demand increases values; in fruit-raising regions co-operation in selling has made the difference between success and failure. A co-operative telephone company has been the means of supplying several adjacent communities with easy communication. Co-operative banks are a convenient means of securing capital for agricultural use, and co-operative insurance companies have proved serviceable in carrying mutual risks. The advantages of such co-operation are by no means confined to economic interests. The best result is the increasing realization of mutual dependence and common concern. Co-operation is an antidote to the evils of isolation and independence. A co-operative telephone company may not pay large dividends, and may eventually sell out to a larger corporation, but it has introduced people to one another, brightened circumscribed lives, and taught the people social understanding and sympathy. But aside from all such artificial forms of co-operation, the very custom of providing such common institutions as the school and the church is a valuable form of social service, entirely apart from the specific results that come from the exercises of the schoolroom and the meeting-house. 112. =Why Co-operation May Fail.=--Many co-operative enterprises fail, and this is not strange. There is always the natural conservatism and individualism of the American people to contend with; there is jealousy of the men who have been elected to responsible offices, and there is lack of experience and good judgment by those who undertake to engineer the active organization. Sometimes the method of organization or financing is faulty. Such enterprises work best among foreigners who have a good opinion of them, and know how to conduct them because they have seen them work well in Europe. Every successful attempt at economic co-operation is a distinct gain for rural community betterment, for upon co-operation depends the success of the efforts being put forth for rural improvement generally. 113. =Competition Within the Group.=--Co-operation is of greatest value when it includes within it a wholesome amount of individual competition for the sake of general as well as individual gain. Boys' agricultural clubs, organized in the South and West, have raised the standards of corn and tomato production by stimulating a friendly spirit of rivalry among boys, and as a result the fathers of the boys have adopted new and more scientific methods to increase their own production. Agricultural fairs may be made powerful agencies for a similar stimulus. At State and county fairs agricultural colleges and experiment stations find it worth while to exhibit their methods and processes with the results obtained; wide-awake farmers get new ideas, which they try out subsequently at home; young people are encouraged to try for the premiums offered the next year, and steadily the general level of excellence rises throughout the district. READING REFERENCES MCKEEVER: _Farm Boys and Girls_, pages 171-196, 275-305. GILLETTE: _Rural Sociology_, pages 20-31. "Country Life," _Annals of American Academy_, pages 58-68. KERN: _Among Country Schools_, pages 129-157. FORD: _Co-operation in New England_, pages 87-185. COULTER: _Co-operation Among Farmers_, pages 3-23. HERRICK: _Rural Credits_, pages 456-480. CHAPTER XVI RECREATION 114. =Recreation and Culture.=--Besides the economic function the community has recreative and cultural functions to perform, and these need recognition and improvement. As the child in the home has a right to time and means for play, so the community, especially the young people, may lay claim to an opportunity for recreation; as the child has the right to learn in the home, so the people of the community should have cultural privileges. These demands are the more imperative, because the city has so much of this sort to offer, and the country community cannot hold its young people unless it provides a reasonable amount of attractions. It needs no particular institution to bring this about, but it needs a new spirit to recognize and enjoy the advantages that are possible even in thinly settled localities. Every opportunity for sociability strengthens just so much a natural instinct, increases the sense of social values, and enlarges the sphere of relationships. In the community, as in the home, children have the first claim to consideration. The recreative impulse is strong in them. When they graduate from the home into the school they find opportunity for the expression of this impulse through their new associations. On the way to and from school and at recess they have opportunity to indulge their impulses and to use their powers of invention. Among the younger children the desire for muscular activity makes running games of all sorts popular; as boys grow older they imitate the primitive impulse to hit and run, so well provided for in games of ball; girls enjoy their recreation in a quieter way as they grow older, and show a tendency to association in pairs. Associations formed in play are not usually lasting ones, but the playground reveals individual temperament and personal qualities that are likely to determine popularity or unpopularity. These play associations develop qualities of leadership, loyalty, honesty, and co-operation that tend to label a child among his mates with a reputation that he carries into later life. 115. =The Gang.=--Since play is a natural instinct it is to be expected that children will seek a natural rather than an artificial way of expressing the instinct. Organization at best can only direct activities, giving recognition to the social inclinations of childhood. For example, it is not easy for a school-teacher to organize a boys' society and to direct it in such activities as appeal to him. The boys prefer to choose their own mates and their own chief, and the activities that appeal to them are not the same as those that seem to their elders to be most suitable. Between the ages of ten and sixteen the boy tends to gang life. He may work on the farm all day, but evenings and Sundays, if he is permitted to amuse himself, he joins a gang. Obviously the characteristics of the gang are seen best in the city, but they are not materially different in the country. Hunting and fishing may be enjoyed at odd times of leisure by the boy without companions, but the delights of the swimming-hole can be enjoyed thoroughly only as he has the companionship of other boys, and skating gains in virtue as a sport with the possibility of hockey on the ice. This liking for companionship exhibits itself in the habitual association of boys of a certain district for mutual enjoyment. On every possible opportunity they get together in the woods, pretend they are Indians, hunt, fish, and fight in company, build their own camps and plunder the camps of other gangs, and practise other activities characteristic of the savage age through which they are passing. Gangs exhibit a love of cruelty to those whom they may plague, a fondness for appropriating property which does not belong to them, and if possible provoking chase for the sake of the thrill that comes from the attempt to get away. Group athletics of various sorts are popular. Six out of seven gangs have physical activities as the purpose of their organization. The boys do not necessarily adopt any particular organization or choose a leader; on the contrary, they are a natural group, tacitly acknowledging the leadership of the most masterly and versatile individual, finding their own headquarters and adopting the forms of activity that appeal most to the group, according to the season and the opportunities of the region of country where they belong. 116. =Leadership of Boys.=--The gang is but one expression of the group instinct. It is often a nursery of bad habits that sometimes lead to crime and degeneracy, but it is capable of being used for the good of boyhood. The gang develops the virtues of loyalty to the group and loyalty to the group principles. It stimulates self-sacrifice and co-operation, honor and courage. These virtues can be cultivated by the man who aspires to boy leadership and directed into channels of usefulness as the boy passes on toward manhood. But there must be a frank recognition of the place of the gang in boy life, and not only a remembrance of one's own boyhood days, but also an appreciation of them. One of the best ways that has been devised for securing adult leadership without loss of the gang spirit and characteristics is the Boy Scout movement. It transforms the unorganized gang into the organized patrol, and affiliates it with other patrols in a wide organization, adopts the natural activities of boys as a part of its programme, and adds others of absorbing interest. Obedience is added to the boy's other virtues, and social education is acquired rapidly. 117. =Varieties of Boys' Clubs.=--The gang is one of the few natural groups of the community, and should be related to other institutions. It should not be hampered by them, but should receive the encouragement and assistance of home, school, and church. The Boy Scout movement has been associated with the churches; other boys' organizations have been connected with the Sunday-schools; the home and the day-school may well provide resources or quarters for the gang, and recognize its activities. But the gang is not the only organization suited to the boys of a community. There are special interests provided for in more artificial groups, such as athletic, debating, agricultural, or natural history clubs. These attract like-minded individuals from all parts of the community, and help to balance the clan spirit developed by the gang. These clubs may centre in school or meeting-house or have quarters of their own. One provision that is needed for the satisfaction of boy life in the rural community is the field or green where two rival gangs may contend legitimately for supremacy in sport, or clubs from different neighborhoods may test their prowess and arouse local pride and enthusiasm. The green needs little or no equipment, but it gains recognition as the boys' own training-field and serves as a safeguard to the health and morals of the youth of the community. The gang and the green are the proper social institutions of boy life in the rural community. 118. =Girls' Clubs.=--The instinct of the girl is not the same as that of the boy. She has other interests that require different organization. Her disposition is less active, and she does not so readily form a group organization. She associates with other girls in a set that is less democratic than her brother's gang. It has its rivalries and enmities, but hateful thoughts, angry words, and slighting attitudes take the place of the active warfare of the boys. Girls enjoy clubs that are adapted to their interests. Reading clubs, cooking clubs, sewing clubs, musical organizations, and philanthropic societies are useful forms of neighborhood association, and their activities may be correlated with the work of the home, the school, and the church more easily than those of their brothers. In the country girls' organizations are very properly based on the interests of the farm, with which they are so closely related. They combine, as their brothers do, on the economic principle, organizing their poultry clubs, preserving clubs, or knitting clubs, but the social purpose is not lost sight of in the particular economic concern. An hour of sociability properly follows an hour of economic discussion or activity. Schoolgirls are very willing to accept the leadership of their teacher in a nature or culture club which will broaden their interests and stimulate their ambitions. One of the organizations that has sprung into existence on the model of the Boy Scout movement is the organization of Camp-Fire Girls. It is designed to meet the demand for companionship in a wholesome, pleasant way, and by its incentives to healthy activity and womanly virtue it helps to build character. 119. =Recreation in the Country.=--The recreative instinct is not confined to children. For the adult labor is lightened, worries banished, and carking care is less corroding, if now and then an evening of diversion interrupts the monotony of rural life, or a day off is devoted to a picnic or neighborhood frolic. There is the same interest in the country that there is in the city in methods of entertainment that satisfy primitive instincts. The instinct for human society enters into all of them. Other specific causes produce a fondness for the various forms of diversion indulged in. Among uncultured people especially an evening gathering soon proves dull unless there is something to do. Cards occupy the mind and hands and create a mild excitement that banishes troublesome thoughts and anxieties. Dancing breaks up the stiffness of a party, brings the sexes together, and provides the exhilaration of rhythmic motion. Barn frolics at maple-sugar or harvest time accomplish the same end, only less satisfactorily. Musicales and amateur theatricals provide an exhibition of skill, cultivate the æsthetic nature, gratify the dramatic instinct, and furnish opportunity for mutual acquaintance among the people of the community, who meet all too seldom in social gatherings, and at the same time they furnish wholesome entertainment for the community at small expense. The proceeds are used for local advantage, instead of being carried out of town. The passing show and moving pictures are less desirable. They are often cheap and degrading, though the kinetoscope can be made valuable for education. The out-of-door gatherings that occur when the countryside is not too busy to plan or enjoy them are a helpful means of cultivating a community spirit. Athletic contests on the boys' own field readily become a community affair, with a speech and refreshments afterward, and the award of a prize or pennant to the victorious individual or team. The old-fashioned picnic to lake or woods or hilltop is one of the best means for forming and strengthening friendships and for giving persons of all ages a good time. Friendly contests of various sorts all come into play to add to the pleasure of the day. Fourth of July, Arbor Day, Old Home Week, and other occasions, give opportunity for recreation and the cultivation of neighborhood interests. 120. =A Community Centre.=--Aside from the natural isolation and lack of energy and social interest among country people, the lack of efficient leadership is the most serious handicap to organized sociability. Added to these is the want of a neighborhood centre both convenient and suitable. A community building, tasteful in architecture and equipped for community use, is a great desideratum, but is not often available. There seems to be no good reason why the schoolhouse should not be such a social centre as the community needs, but most school buildings are not adapted to such use. In the absence of any other provision it is the privilege of the rural church to furnish the opportunity for neighborhood gatherings, and there is a growing conviction that this is one of the opportunities of the church to ally itself to general community interests. The church represents, or should represent, the whole community of men, women, young people, and children. It has all their interests at heart. It makes provision for them in Sunday-school, young people's societies, and other groups. It recognizes the social interests in festivals and sociables. It may usefully add to its functions that of raising the standards of community recreation, if no other proper provision for it exists; it is under obligation to find wholesome substitutes for the abuses that exist in the field of amusement which it commonly condemns. READING REFERENCES CURTIS: _Play and Recreation for the Open Country._ PUFFER: _The Boy and His Gang._ _Boy Scout Handbook; Handbook for Scout Masters._ _The Book of the Campfire Girls._ STERN: _Neighborhood Entertainments._ CUBBERLEY: _Rural Life and Education_, pages 117-126. CHAPTER XVII RURAL INSTITUTIONS 121. =The Complexity of Social Life.=--Closely allied to the agencies of recreation are the institutions that promote sociability and incidentally provide means of culture. It is not possible to separate social life into compartments and designate an institution as purely recreational or cultural or religious. There is a blending of interests and of functions in such an organization as the grange or the church, as there is in one individual or group a variety of interests and activities. The whole social system is complex, interwoven with a multitude of separate strands of personal desires and prejudices, group clannishness and conservatism, rival institutions developing friction and continually compelled to find new adjustments. Society in constantly in motion like the sea, its units continually striking against one another in perpetual conflict, and as continually melting into the harmony of a mighty wave breaking against the shore and forming anew to repeat the process. The difference is that social life is on an upward plane, its activities are not mere repetitions of a process, but they result in definite achievement, which in the process of centuries becomes an accumulated asset for the race. The most lasting achievements are the social institutions. 122. =The Village and the Country Store.=--Of all the social institutions of the rural community, the most important is the village itself. There scattered homesteads find their common centre of attraction; there houses are located nearer together and the spirit of neighborliness develops; there tradesmen and professional persons make their homes and at the same time diversify interests and provide for the wants of the community. The school and the church are often located in the open country, but the village forms the nucleus of social intercourse and there are most of the institutions of the community. The most primitive among these institutions is the country store. It has economic, social, and educational functions. It supplies goods that cannot be produced in the community, it serves as a mercantile exchange for local produce. It helps to remove the necessity of home manufacture of many articles. On occasion it may include an agency for insurance or real estate; it is frequently the village post-office; it contains the public bulletin-board; often the proprietor undertakes to perform the banking function to the extent of cashing checks. Socially the store serves a useful purpose, for it is the centre to which all the inhabitants come, and from which radiate lines of communication all over the neighborhood. It is a clearing-house for news and gossip, and takes the place of a local press. It was formerly, and to some extent is still, the social club of the men of the community during the long winter evenings. As such it performed in the past an educational function. Boxes, firkins, bales of goods, superannuated chairs, and the end of a counter constituted the sittings, and men of all ages occupied them, as they listened to harangues and joined in the discussions. The group constituted the forum of democracy, where politics were frequently on debate, where public opinion was formed, where conservatism and progressivism fought their battles before they tested conclusions at the ballot-box, where science and religion entered the lists, where local interests were threshed out in the absence of more general excitement and crops and agricultural methods filled in the pauses. In recent years the store circle has degenerated. The better class of habitual members has organized its lodges or found satisfaction in the grange, while the hangers-on at the store, barber-shop, or other loafing-place indulge in small talk on matters of no real concern. 123. =The Sewing Circle.=--What the country store has done for the men as a means of communication and stimulus, the ladies' aid society or church sewing circle has done for the women. Its opportunities are less frequent, but it provides an outlet for ideas and opinions that without it cannot easily find expression. At the same time it provides active occupation for a good cause, which is more than can be said of the men's forum. When it adds to its exercises a supper to which the other sex is admitted, it performs a yet wider social service. 124. =The Grange.=--The grange is an institution that includes both sexes and combines the interests of young people with those of their elders. Its primary purpose was to consolidate the common interests of a farming community and to stimulate economic prosperity, but it has included several social features, and in many localities exists merely for social purposes. It is an institution that is well adapted to become a social and educational centre for the rural community. When the child has advanced from the home to the school and, graduating from school, has entered into the adult life of the community, the grange serves as a training-school for civic service. In the grange-room, in company with his like-minded parents and friends in the community, he learns how to hold his own in debate in parliamentary fashion, he discusses improved agriculture and listens to lectures from masters of the science, he gains literary and historical knowledge, and from time to time he participates in the social diversions that take place under grange auspices. Music enlivens the meetings, and occasionally a feast is spread or an entertainment elaborated. The Farmers' Union is a similar organization, originating in the South in 1902. Such rural interests as these have come into existence spontaneously and continue to provide social centres of community life because other institutions do not satisfy. The home, the school, and the church are often spoken of as the essential institutions of the American community, but they do not at best perform all the functions of neighborhood life. The boys' gang, the circle of men about the stove at the corner grocery, the women's sewing circle or club, and the grange, each in its own way performs a necessary part of the group activities, and deserves recognition among the institutions that are worth while. It is scarcely necessary to note that they have their evils, but these are not of the nature of the institution. As the gang can be guided to worthy ends, so the energies of the store club and the sewing circle can be turned into channels of usefulness and low talk and scandal-mongering abolished. As for the grange, it is capable of becoming the most valuable social centre of the community, if it maintains the ideals of its existence and co-operates heartily with other social institutions of worth, like the church. 125. =Farmers' Institutes.=--Another type of organization exists which can hardly be called institutional, but which performs a useful community service. As illustrations may be mentioned the farmers' club, the farmers' institute, and the Chautauqua movement. These are organizations or movements for stimulating and broadening the interests of farm regions. They bring together the farmers and their families, sometimes from several neighborhoods and for several days, for the consideration of agricultural problems and for entertainment and mutual acquaintance. They are able to attract speakers from the State agricultural college or board, and even from national halls, and they become a valuable clearing-house of ideas and experience. They serve much the same purpose as a church or teachers' convention, and are restricted to a limited number of persons. Farmers' institutes have become a regular part of the State system of agricultural education throughout the country, and a large staff of lecturers and demonstrators exists for local instruction. The particular interests of women and young people are receiving recognition in institutes of their own in connection with the larger gatherings. The expense of such institutes is met by the government. Their success is, of course, dependent on the attendance and intelligent interest of the farm people, who gain greatly in inspiration and knowledge from contact with one another and from the experts to whom they listen. The institutes prove the value of association for the enrichment of individual and family life by means of suggestion, communication, and concerted activity. READING REFERENCES BUCK: _The Granger Movement._ BUTTERFIELD: _Chapters in Rural Progress_, pages 104-120, 136-161. CARNEY: _Country Life and the Country School_, pages 90-107. GILLETTE: _Rural Sociology_, pages 208-213. CUBBERLEY: _Rural Life and Education_, pages 117-159. CHAPTER XVIII RURAL EDUCATION 126. =The School as a Social Institution.=--There is one institution in every American community that stands as the gateway into the promised land of a richer life. This is the school. It supplements home training and prepares for the broader experiences of community existence. Into it goes the raw material of the bodies and minds of the children, and out of it comes the product of years of education for the making or marring of the children of the community. The school of the present is of two types. One is the relic of an earlier time, with few changes in equipment, organization, or function; it has not shared in the process of evolution enjoyed by certain other institutions of society. The other type is progressive. It has been continually finding adjustment to its environment, fitting itself to meet local needs, and is therefore abreast of the times in educational science. The demand of the age is that the progressive school keep advancing, and as fast as possible the backward school work up to the standard of efficiency. It is a sociological principle that every social institution approximates to the standards of the community as a whole. If community life is static, school and church stay in the ruts; if it is retrograding, they are losing ground; if it is progressive, they gradually show improvement. On the other hand, the community frequently feels external stimulus, first through one of its institutions, so that the institution becomes a means of betterment. Recent years furnish examples of a new impulse generated in the neighborhood by a teacher or a minister who enters the locality with new ideas and unquenchable zeal. 127. =Three Fundamental Principles of Education.=--There are three fundamental principles that ought to have recognition in every school. The first of these is the principle that education is to be social. The pupil has to learn how to live in the community. In the home he becomes socialized so far as to learn how to get along with his own relatives and intimates, but the school teaches him how to deal with all sorts of people. He gets acquainted with his environment, both social and physical. What kind of people are living in the homes of the neighborhood? What are their characteristics, their ideals, their failings? What are their occupations, their race or nationality, their measure of comfort, poverty, or wealth? How are they hindered or helped by their natural surroundings, and have they easy means of communication and transit with the outside world? What are the principles that govern social intercourse, and how can the pupil learn to put them into practice? How is he to reconcile his own individual rights with his social obligations? These are fundamental questions that deserve careful answer, and that must be made a part of the school curriculum if the community is to enjoy social health. It matters little how such subjects are named in any course of study, but it is essential that the principles of social living should be taught under some title. A second principle of education is that it should be vocational. The school children, after graduation, must make their own way in the world. Every normal youth looks forward in anticipation to the time when he will be earning his own support and the support of a family of his own. Every normal girl hopes to be mistress of a home of her own. There are certain things that they need to know if they are to make a success and to build happy homes. Their first business is to know how to make a home. Naturally they want to know the story of the family as a social institution, how the home is purchased or rented, the essentials of a good home, both in its equipment and in the spirit that animates it, the duties and rights of every member of the family, and the relations of the family to the community. The question arises: How may the home-maker provide for the support of the family? What are the available occupations, and how by manual and mental training may he equip himself for usefulness? How may the home-keeper do her part to make the home attractive and comfortable by a study of domestic science and home-management? Obviously, the curriculum should have a place for such studies as these that are so essential to peace and happiness and comfort in the home. A third principle is that education is to be cultural. Social and vocational knowledge are essential, broad culture of the mind is highly desirable. No citizen of the United States is expected to grow to maturity ignorant of the simple arts of reading or spelling correctly, writing a fair hand, and solving correctly the simple problems of arithmetic. Beyond this many schools provide a smattering of æsthetic training through music and drawing. These are subjects of study in the elementary schools. But culture involves more than these. An appreciation of literature, of the meaning and value of history, of the importance of science in the modern world, of the life of nations and races outside of our own country, of right thinking and right conduct with reference to all our individual relations, constitutes for all persons a mental training that is almost indispensable. To acquire this cultural education requires time and the elimination of the less valuable from the accepted course of study. It is a most wholesome tendency that is prolonging the terms and the years of compulsory education if that education is based on the right principles, and that is discussing the possibility, first, of using part of the long summer vacation to supplement the work of the present school year, and, secondly, of giving to the young people of every State a free university education. It is never to be forgotten that culture may and should go on through life, but that will not occur unless habits of study are formed in early years, and the school years will always remain the golden opportunity for an education. 128. =Education as It Is.=--On these fundamental principles every educational system should be built. Actual education falls far short of the standard. This standard cannot be reached without proper educational ideals, expert teaching, and adequate equipment. The ideal has been narrow. Stress is put upon one type of education. In the past it has been cultural above the lower grades, and, because it has been almost exclusively so, more than half the pupils have dropped out of school before entering high school. In recent years there has been a new emphasis on practical training, and vocational courses have tended to crowd out some of the cultural courses. The social education which is most important of all has been incidental or omitted altogether. Public opinion needs to be educated to the point of understanding that all three types of training are imperatively needed. There is a serious difficulty, however, in the way of a supply of teachers for this broad education. It is necessary to extend reform among the normal schools, but this can take place only after they have felt the demand from the grades. Another difficulty is the expense of providing the necessary equipment for vocational education. This does not prevent the introduction of social teaching or a proper attention to culture, but courses in manual training and domestic science usually cost more than most school boards are willing to meet. This is not an insurmountable obstacle, for cheap appliances are in the market and better school boards can be elected when the people want them. 129. =Wanted--a Better Rural Education.=--The school in the rural community has its own peculiar weaknesses. First among these weaknesses is the fact that education is not in terms of rural experience. It is an accepted educational principle of instruction to begin with that which is simple and familiar, and to work out to that which is complex and more remote. On that principle the rural school should make use of local geography, of rural material in arithmetic, of literature and music with a rural flavor, of nature study with drawings from nature. The opposite has been the case, with the result that the child appreciates neither his surroundings nor his opportunities, but looks upon them as something to be avoided for the more important urban life, with whose activities he has become familiar through his daily tasks. A second weakness is that rural education omits so much of importance to the child who must make his living in the country. To discuss rural conditions in a natural and systematic way, beginning with the family and working out into the social life of the community; to study the economic side of life first on the farm and then in the neighborhood, getting hold of the underlying principles of agriculture, becoming familiar with the action of various soils and crops and the best methods of cultivation and protection from harm, to prepare by a few simple lessons in household science for the responsibility of the home, is to provide the bases of success and happiness for the boys and girls of the country. Rural education, therefore, needs redirection. 130. =The Quality of Teaching.=--The child in the country has a right to as good instruction as the city child, but because of the poverty and penuriousness of school districts and the maintenance of too many small schools, rural communities pay small salaries and cannot command good teaching. There are thousands of schools scattered over the country with less than ten pupils in attendance, housed in cheap, unattractive buildings, with teachers who have had no normal-school training, and who have no enthusiasm for the work they have to do. They may hear twenty or more classes recite on numerous subjects in the course of a day, but there is no stimulus to teacher or pupil, and school hours provide little more than a conventional method for passing the time. In such communities as these there is rarely any efficient superintendence of teaching by a paid supervisor, and the school board is unqualified to judge on any other basis than the cost of schooling for a limited number of weeks. The small district school has the effect of strengthening the isolation that is the bane of the country regions. It continues to exist because every farmer wants the school near by for the convenience of his own family. The history of the "little red schoolhouse" throws a glamour of romance about the district headquarters, but in actual experience the district school has outlived its usefulness. There is a strong movement to consolidate district schools and at some conveniently central point, with attractive and ample grounds, to build, equip, and man a school adequate to the needs of the community. Experience shows that the expense need be no greater, because better teachers can be secured for a given expenditure when fewer are needed, and with a greater number of scholars there may be a regular system of grading and classes large enough to arouse enthusiasm and ambition. The district school operates on the principle of division of labor in educational production, but it does not enjoy the benefits of co-operation or combination for efficiency, while the consolidated school secures these advantages and at the same time a better division of labor through the grades. Rural education needs reorganization. 131. =A Discouraging Environment.=--Too many a rural community, like old China, has been facing the past. It has lacked courage and ambition. The atmosphere has been one of gloom and discouragement. This community temper appears in the social groups; it is felt in the home, and it is present in the school. It has been typical of whole sections of rural country. Dilapidated school buildings, plain and unkempt in appearance and cheap in construction, have been set in the midst of barren surroundings, unshaded by trees and unadorned with shrubs, without walks or drives to the entrance, and without even a flagpole as an evidence of patriotic enthusiasm. Inside the building there is insufficient light and ventilation, and the old-fashioned furniture is ill adapted to the needs of the pupils. The whole structure is almost devoid of the conveniences and modern devices for making school life either comfortable or worth while. In such an environment there is none of the stimulus that the school should furnish. The best pupil, who might respond quickly to stimulus, tends to sink to the level of the meanest, the mental horizon, cramped at home, is hardly broadened during school hours, and the main purpose for the existence of the institution is not achieved. READING REFERENCES FISKE: _The Challenge of the Country_, pages 151-170. FOGHT: _The American Rural School_, pages 154-253. CARNEY: _Country Life and the Country School_, pages 133-301. KERN: _Among Country Schools._ GILLETTE: _Rural Sociology_, pages 233-263. BRYAN: _Poems of Country Life._ CHAPTER XIX THE NEW RURAL SCHOOL 132. =Nature Study in the New Rural School.=--In striking contrast to such a defective rural institution as has been presented is the new rural school and the country-life movement of which it is a vital part. The first step in the new education is a growing recognition of the function of the school to relate its courses of study and its activities to the daily experience of the pupil. The background of country life is nature; therefore nature study is fundamental in the new curriculum. Careful observation of natural objects comes first, until the child is able to identify bird and bee and flower. To knowledge is added appreciation. The beauty of fern and leaf, of brookside and hillside, of star-dotted and cloud-dappled sky, is not appreciated by mere observation, but waits on the education of the mind. This is part of the task of the teacher. The economic use of natural objects and natural forces is secondary, and should remain so, but the new education takes the knowledge which has been gained by observation and the enthusiasm which has been distilled through appreciation, and applies them to the social need. Agriculture comes to seem not only an occupation for economic ends, but a vocation for social welfare also. With all the rest there is a moral and religious value in nature study. Nature is pre-eminently under the reign of law; obedience to that law, adjustment to the inexorable demands of nature, are essential to nature's children. No more wholesome moral lesson than this can be taught to the present generation of children. Nature ministers also to the spiritual. Power, order, beauty, intelligence speak through the language of the natural world to the human soul, and the thoughtful child can be led to see through nature to nature's God. Such a God is not a theory; in nature the divine presence is self-evident. All theory in the new rural school is based on experimentation. Together the new teacher and the pupils beautify the grounds and the interior of the school building; they plan and make gardens and try all sorts of gardening experiments; they grow the plants that they study, and, best of all, they see the process of growth; from the use of soil and seed and proper care they learn lessons in practical agriculture that give satisfaction to all employed as book studies alone never could, and they make possible a far better type of agriculture when the pupils have fields of their own. Nor is it necessary for pupils to wait for their maturity, for many a lesson learned at school and demonstrated in the neighborhood is promptly applied on the neighboring farms. 133. =The Study of the Individual.=--A second subject of study in the new rural schools is the individual. Nature study is essential to a rural school, but "the noblest study of mankind is man." Though it is highly important that the individual should regard social responsibility as out-weighing his own rights, it would be unfortunate if the importance of the individual were ever overlooked. The nature of the physical self, the requirement of diet and hygiene, the moral virtues that belong to noble manhood and womanhood, the possible self-development in the midst of the rural environment that is the pupil's natural habitat are among the worthy subjects of patient and serious study through the grades. Neither physiology, psychology, nor ethics need be taught as such, but the elementary principles that enter into all of them belong among the mental assets of every individual. 134. =Rural Social Science.=--In the same way it is not necessary and perhaps may not be advisable to teach rural sociology or economics by name, even in the high school. With the extension of the curriculum to include agriculture, there is need of some consideration of the principles of the ownership and use of land, farm management, and marketing. Practical instruction in accounts, manual training, and domestic science find place in the new school. Fully as important as these is it to explain the social relations that properly exist in the home, the school, and the neighborhood, to show the mutual dependence of all upon one another, and to point out the advantages of co-operation over a prideful individualism and frequent social friction. Along with these relationships, or supplementary to them, belong the larger relations of country and town and the reciprocal service that each can render to the other, the characteristics and tendencies of social life in both types of community, and the effects of the changes that are taking place in methods of doing business and in the nature and characteristics of the people of either community. Following these topics come the problems of rural socialization through such agencies as the school, the grange, and the church, and the application of the principles already learned in a study of social relations. 135. =Improvement in Economy and Efficiency.=--While the curriculum of the schools is being fitted to the needs of the community, it is desirable that there should be improvement of economy and efficiency in the whole system of education. This is being accomplished partly by better supervision and teaching, but also by a consolidation of schools which makes possible better grading, an enlarged curriculum, improved teaching, and a deeper interest among the pupils. But one of the best results that come from school consolidation is to the community itself. A consolidated school means a larger and better-equipped building. It often has a large assembly hall, a library, and an agricultural laboratory. The new school has within it tremendous potencies. It may become under proper direction an educational centre for people of all ages and degrees of attainment. Continuation schools for adults, especially the young and middle-aged people, who were born too soon to enjoy the advantages of the new education, are possible in the late autumn and winter. Popular lectures and demonstrations on subjects of common concern and entertainments based on rural interests find place at this centre. Mixed occasionally with a rural programme belongs instruction in wider social relations and world affairs. 136. =The Teacher a Community Leader.=--With the consolidated school comes the well-trained teacher, and such a teacher deserves new recognition as a community leader. In Europe and in some parts of rural America the teacher has a permanent home near the schoolhouse, as a minister has a parsonage near the meeting-house. Such a teacher has an interest in community welfare, and a willingness to aid in community betterment. Whether man or woman, he becomes naturally a community leader, and with the backing of public sentiment and adequate support a distinct community asset. Such a teacher is more than a school instructor. He becomes a social educator of the people by interpreting to them their community life; he becomes a social inspirer to hope, ambition, and courage as he unfolds possible social ideals; he becomes a guide to a new prosperity as he defines the methods and principles on which other communities have worked out their own local successes. Through the medium of the teacher the neighborhood may be brought into vital contact with other communities in a district or whole county, and may be brought together to consider their common interests and to try experiments in co-operation, first for educational purposes and then for general community prosperity. At first the rural teacher in many localities will have enough to do with securing proper accommodations for the children in school, for good buildings frequently wait for a teacher who has the courage to demand and persist in getting them; but the larger work for the community is only second in importance and adds greatly to the responsiveness of the older people to the suggestions of the teacher. One great weakness in the past has been the short term of service of the average teacher. It takes time to accomplish changes in a conservative community, and the new education will be successful only as the new teacher becomes a comparative fixture. To build oneself into the life of a rural community as does the physician, and to ennoble it with new ideas and higher ideals, is a missionary service that can hardly be surpassed at the present time in America. 137. =Higher Education.=--The normal school, the rural academy or county high school, and the college have their part in rural education. It rests with the normal school to supply the trained teacher and the normal schools rapidly are meeting the demands of the present situation. Training classes for rural teachers have been established in high schools or academies in twelve or more States. More and more these higher schools are relating their courses of study to the rural life in which so many of them are placed. 138. =What the University Can Do.=--An increasing number of young people from the country are going to college. The college was founded on the principle of educating American youth in a higher culture than local elementary schools could provide. It is the function of the college and the university to open wider vistas for the individual mind than is otherwise possible, to do on an infinitely larger scale what the teacher is attempting in the elementary grades. These higher schools are passing through a humanizing process; they are making more of the social sciences and the art of living well; and they are allying themselves with practical life. In the case of established institutions with traditions, and often with trustees and alumni of conservative tastes and tendencies, there are difficulties in the way of their rapid adaptation to vocational needs. It is probably best that a certain class of them should stand primarily for intellectual culture, as technical and agricultural schools stand for their specialties, but the true university should be representative of all the social interests of all the people in the State. An illustration of what the university can do in social service for a whole State occurs in the recent history of the University of Wisconsin. It conceived its function to be not solely to educate students who came for the full university course. It considered the needs of the people of the State, and it planned to provide information and intellectual stimulus for as wide a circle as possible. It provided correspondence courses. It sent out a corps of instructors to carry on extension courses. It made affiliations with other State institutions. It reached all classes of the people and touched all their social interests. It became especially useful to the farmers. In spite of scepticism on the part of the people and some of the university officers, those who had faith in the wider usefulness of the university pushed their plan until they succeeded in organizing a short winter course in agriculture for farmers' sons and then for the older farmers, branched out into domestic courses for the women, and even made provision for the interests of the boys and girls. Reaching out still further, the university organized farmers' courses in connection with the county agricultural schools, established experiment stations, and encouraged the boys to enter local contests for agricultural prizes. By these means the university has become widely popular and has been exceedingly beneficial to the people of the State. 139. =The Public Library.=--While the school stands out as the leading educational institution of the rural community, it is by no means the sole agency of culture. Alongside it is the library. Home libraries in the country rarely contain books of value, either culturally or for practical purposes. Circulating libraries of fiction are little better. School libraries and village libraries that contain well-selected literature are to be included among the desiderata of every countryside. A few of the great books of all time belong there, a small collection of current literature, including periodicals, and an abundant literature on country life in all its phases. It is the function of the library to instruct the people what to read and how to read by supplying book lists and book exhibits, and by demonstrating occasionally through the school or the church how books may be read to get the most out of them. In the days before public libraries were common in this country, library associations were formed to secure good literature. Such associations are still useful in small communities that find it impossible to sustain a public library, and they serve as a medium for securing from the State a travelling library, which has the special advantage of frequent substitution of books. Or the school library may be the nucleus of a literary collection for the whole community--advantageously so if the school building is kept open as a community centre. 140. =Reading Circles and Musical Clubs.=--The value of the library to the public consists, of course, not in the presence of books on the shelves, but in their use. Such use is encouraged by the existence of literary or art clubs and reading circles. They supply the twofold want of companionship and culture. The proper basis of association is similarity of interests. Local history or geology, nature study, current public events in State or nation, art in some of its phases, or the literature of a particular country or period, may be the special consideration of a club or reading circle; in every case the library is the laboratory of investigation. One of the conspicuously successful organizations of the last thirty years, showing how organization grows out of social need, is the Chautauqua movement. Starting as an undertaking in Sunday-school extension by means of a summer assembly and local reading circles, in which the study of history, literature, and science was added to Bible study, the movement has grown, until it is represented by a thousand summer institutes, with numerous popular lectures and entertainments, and it is one of the most useful educational agencies anywhere in the United States. Every community is interested in music. Music has a place on every programme, whether of church, school, or public assembly. A musical club is one of the effective types of organization for those who are like-minded in country or town. There are two varieties of organization, the first of persons who join for the pleasure that comes from agreeable society, the second of those who enter the organization for the musical culture to be obtained. Whether for diversion or study, a musical club is well worth while. Under the influence of music antagonisms soften, moroseness disappears, and sociability and good cheer take their place. The old-fashioned singing-school was one of the most popular of local social institutions; something is needed to fill its place. A club or band for the serious study of instrumental music not only gives culture to individuals, but is also an asset of increasing value to a church or community. 141. =Woman's Clubs.=--These have become so common that they need no special description, but as a social phenomenon they have their significance. They mark a new era in the emancipation of ideas; they are indicative of a new interest and ambition, and they are training-schools for future citizenship. They are of special value because of the wide areas of human interest that are brought within scope of discussion. For rural women they are a great boon, and while they have been most numerous in the larger centres, they may easily become a universal stimulus and guide to higher culture everywhere. In the absence of a grange they may serve as a centre of farm interests, and discussion may be made practical by the application of acquired knowledge to local problems, but their great value is in broadening the women's horizon of thought and interest beyond their own affairs. If rural men would organize local associations or brotherhoods for similar assembly and discussion of State and national interests they could multiply many times the benefits that come from the associations and discussions that occur on special days of political rally and voting. The rural mind needs frequent stimulus, and it needs frequent association with many minds. For this reason the cultural function is to be provided for by a method of congregation and organization approved by experience, leadership is to be provided and occasional stimulus applied, and life is to be enriched at many points. It is for the people themselves to carry on such enterprises, but the initiation of them often comes from outside. Usually, perhaps, the number of people locally who have a real desire for culture are few, but it is through the training of these few that judicious, capable leaders of the community are to be obtained. READING REFERENCES HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_, pages 197-277. CUBBERLEY: _Rural Life and Education_, pages 161-347. CARNEY: _Country Life and the Country School_, pages 336-340. DAVIS: _Agricultural Education in the Public Schools._ EGGLESTON AND BRUÉRE: _The Work of the Rural School_, pages 193-223. HOWE: _Wisconsin: an Experiment in Democracy_, pages 140-182. _Country Life_, pages 200-210. FOGHT: _The American Rural School_, pages 254-281. CHAPTER XX RURAL GOVERNMENT 142. =The Necessity of Government.=--Institutions of recreation and culture are in most cases the voluntary creation of local groups of individuals, except as the state has adopted a system of compulsory education. Government may be self-imposed or fixed by external authority, in any case it cannot be escaped. It can be changed in form and efficiency; it depends for its worth upon standards of public opinion; but it cannot cease to exist. As the activity of the child needs to be regulated by parental control in the home and by the discipline of the teacher in the school, so the activity of the people in the community needs to be regulated by the authority of government. Self-control on the part of each individual or the existence of custom or public opinion without an executive agency for the enforcement of the social will, is not sufficient to safeguard and promote the interests of all. Government has everywhere been necessary. 143. =The Reign of Law.=--The existence of regulation in the community is continually evident. The child comes into relation to law when he is sent to school to conform to the law of compulsory education. He goes to school along a road built and maintained by law, takes his place in a school building provided by a board of education or school committee that executes the law, and accepts the instruction of a teacher who is employed and paid according to the law. His hours of schooling and the length of terms and vacations are determined by the same authority. During his periods of recreation he is still under the reign of law, for game laws regulate the times when he may or may not hunt and fish. When he grows older and assumes the rights of citizenship he must bear his part of the burdens of society. He has the right to vote as one of the lawmakers of the land, but he is not thereby free to cast off the restraints of law. He must pay his proportion of the taxes that sustain the government that binds him, local, State, and federal taxes. He must perform the public duty of sitting on a jury or administering civic office if he is summoned thereto. Even in his own domicile, though he be householder and head of a family, he may not injure the public health or morals by nuisances on his own premises, his financial obligations to creditors are secured against him by law, even the possession of his acres is made certain only by public record. It makes no difference whether the legal restrictions under which he lives are local or national, they are all a part of the system for which he and his neighbors are responsible, and which as citizens they are under obligation to maintain. 144. =Political Terms.=--It is important to understand and use correctly certain terms which occur in this connection. The state is the people organized for the purpose of exercising the authority of social control. In its sociological sense it is not restricted to a large or small area, but in political parlance it is used with reference to a large district which possesses a certain degree of authority over all the people, as the State of New York, or the sovereign state of Great Britain. Government is the institution that functions for social control in accordance with the will of the people or of an individual to whose authority they submit. Politics is the science and art of government, and includes statesmanship as its highest type and the manipulation of party machinery as its lowest type. Law is the body of social regulations administered by government ostensibly for the public good. Each of these may be and in the past has been prostituted for private advantage. In the state one man or a small group has seized and held the sovereign power through the force of personal ascendancy or the prestige of birth or wealth, and has used it for himself, as history testifies by numerous examples. The forms of government in many cases have not been well adapted to the functions that they were designed to perform. The despotic administrative agencies that were overthrown by the French Revolution were ill-adapted to the governmental needs of the lower classes. Much of the governmental machinery of the American republic has not matched the constitutional forms that were originally provided, and the Constitution has had to be stretched or amended if the government of the founders of the republic was not to be revolutionized. So law and politics have had to be reorganized, revised, and reinterpreted to fit into the social need. Law is a conservative factor in progress, but it adapts itself of necessity to the demands of equity. 145. =The Will of the People.=--On the continent of Europe rural government is arranged usually by the central authority of the nation; in America it is more independent of national control. On this side of the water the colonial governments often interfered little with local freedom, and after the Revolution the people fashioned their own national organization, and in giving it certain powers jealously guarded their own local privileges. They were willing to sacrifice a general lawmaking power and grudgingly to permit the nation to have executive and judicial authority, but they retained the management of local affairs, including the raising and expenditure of direct taxes. Local government, therefore, has continued to reflect the mind of the community, a mind occasionally swayed by emotional impulse, but usually controlled by a love of order, and by an Anglo-Saxon pride in self-restraint. The will of the people has made the government and sanctions its actions. It may be that the will is not fixed or united enough to force itself effectually upon a set of public officials, and may await reform or revolution to become forceful, yet in the last resort and in the long run the will of the people prevails. By the provisions of a democratic constitution judgment is frequently passed by the people upon the administration of government, and it is within their power to change the administrative policy or to reject the agents of government whom they have previously elected. Locally they have the advantage of knowing all candidates for office. The efficiency of rural government depends much on its revenue, and farmers are reluctant to increase the tax rate; slowly they are learning the value of good roads and good schools. 146. =The Ancient History of the Community.=--The government of the rural community has a history of its own, as has the community itself. This government gradually fits itself to meet local needs, but it is slow to put away the survivals of earlier forms and customs that have outlived their usefulness. The history of the community goes back to primitive times, when the clan group recognized common interests and acknowledged the leadership of the chief or head man. Custom was the law of the clan, and its older members assisted the chief in interpreting custom. Government in the community developed in two ways, one along the path of centralization of authority, the other in the growth of democracy. One tendency was to attach an undue importance to ancient custom, and to throw about it a veil of sanctity by connecting it with religion. Such a community in its conservatism came to possess in time a static civilization, but it lacked virility and commonly fell under the control of a neighboring energetic community or prince. This is the usual history of the Oriental community. The other tendency was to adapt local law and organization to changing circumstances, and to make use of the abilities of all the members of the community, to give them a voice in the local assembly, and a right to hold public office. Such progressive communities were the city states of Greece, the republic of Rome, and the rural communities of the barbarian Germans before they settled in the Roman Empire. When the Greek communities became decadent they fell under foreign dominion; Rome imperialized the republic, but never forgot how to rule well in her municipalities; the Germans passed on their democratic ways to the English, and from that source they were brought to America. 147. =Two Types of Rural Government.=--In America there have been two types of rural government growing out of the manner of original settlement. In New England the colonists settled near together in villages grouped about the meeting-house. One or more villages constituted a town for purposes of government. In these small districts it was possible for all the citizens to meet frequently, and in an annual assembly the voters of the community elected their officers and adopted the necessary local regulations. Long custom transplanted oversea had kept a close connection between church and state, and until the new American principle of separation was universally adopted, the annual town meeting in Massachusetts was a parish meeting, in which the community voted with reference to the needs of the church as well as of the state. In the South community life was less closely knit, and town meetings were not in vogue. The parish held its vestry meetings for the transaction of ecclesiastical business, for episcopacy was the established church; overseers of the poor were elected at the same meetings. There were county assemblies for social and judicial purposes, but in each a few prominent people in the neighborhood managed affairs and perpetuated their privileges, as among the landed gentry of England. It was in these ways that popular government continued along the path of material and social progress in the North, while in the South a plantation aristocracy conservatively maintained its colonial ideas and institutions, including slavery. With wider settlement there was an extension of these sectional differences, except near the border of both, where a blending of the two took place to some extent. County organization was necessary for a time, while the country was thinly settled, but neighborhoods organized as school districts, and by a natural process the school district became the nucleus of a township government, at first for school purposes and later for the self-government of the whole community. In some cases, as in Illinois, it was made optional with the people of a county whether they would organize a township government or not, but wherever the two systems entered into comparison and competition the township government proved the more popular. As long as pure democracy remains there must be a small local unit of government, and the New England town meeting seems wonderfully well adapted to the purpose of self-government. The recent tendency to extend democracy in the form of political primaries and the referendum is a stimulus to such organization, and it may be expected that the town system will continue to extend, even in the South. 148. =Town and County Officials.=--The town meeting is held in a public building. In colonial days the close connection between church and state made it proper that the meeting should be in the meeting-house; in the West, where the school was the nucleus of local organization, the schoolhouse was the natural voting place. In present-day New England even a small village has its town house, containing a large hall, which serves for town meetings and for community assemblies for various social purposes. In the town meeting the administrative officers, called selectmen, are chosen annually, and minor officers, including clerk, treasurer, constables, and school committee; there the community taxes itself for the salaries of its officials, for the support of the town poor, for the maintenance of highways, and for such modern improvements as street lights and a public library. Personal ability counts for more than party allegiance, though each political party usually puts its candidates in the field. An important function of the local voters is the decision under the local-option system that prevails in the East, as to whether the sale of intoxicating liquors shall be licensed for the ensuing year; under an increasing referendum policy the acts of the State legislature are frequently submitted for review to the local voters. Where the town system does not exist or is part of a larger county, officers are elected for more extended responsibility. The functions of county officers are mainly judicial. Among the county officers are the sheriff elected by the people to preserve order and justice throughout the region, the coroner whose duty has been to investigate sudden death or disaster, and to hold an inquest to determine the origin of crime if it existed. The county commissioners or supervisors are executive officers, corresponding to the selectmen of the town; the clerk and treasurer of the county have duties similar to the town officers with those titles. 149. =Political Relations and Responsibilities.=--The local community, alike under township and county government, is a part of a larger political unit, and so has relations with and responsibilities to the greater State. The town meeting may legislate on such matters as the erection of a new schoolhouse or the building of a town highway, but it cannot locate the post-office or change the location of a State or county road. It may make its local taxes large or small, but it cannot increase or diminish the amount of the State tax or regulate the national tariff. The townsman lives under the jurisdiction of a law that is made by his representatives in the State legislature or the national Congress, and he is tried and punished for the infraction of law in a county, State, or national court. As a citizen of these larger political units he may vote for county, State, and national officials, and may himself aspire to the highest office in the gift of his countrymen. 150. =Political Standards.=--To a foreigner such a system of government may seem exceedingly complex, but by it self-government is preserved to the people of the nation, and a good degree of efficiency is maintained. There are problems of social control that need study and that produce various experiments in one State or another before they are widely adopted; there is corruption of party politics with unscrupulous methods and machinery that is too well oiled with "tainted" money; but local government averages up to the level of the intelligence and morals of the community. If the schoolhouse is an efficient centre for the proper training of boys and girls to understand their social relations and civic responsibilities, and if the meeting-house is an efficient centre for the discussion of social ethics and a religion that moves on the plane of earth as well as heaven, then the town house will give a good account of itself in intelligent voting and clean political methods. If the school-teacher and the minister have won for themselves positions of community leadership, and are educators of a forceful public opinion, and if the community is sufficiently in touch with the best constructive forces in the national political arena to feel their stimulus, the political type locally is not likely to be very low. A self-governing people will always have as good a government as it wants, and if the government is not what it should be, the will of the people has not been well educated. READING REFERENCES FAIRLIE: _Local Government in Counties, Towns, and Villages._ FISKE: _Civil Government in the United States_, pages 34-95. HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 292-317. HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_, pages 92-105. COOLEY: _Social Organization_, pages 402-410. CHAPTER XXI HEALTH AND BEAUTY 151. =Health and Beauty in the Community.=--Rural government formerly limited its range of activity to political and economic concerns. The individualism of Americans resented the interference of government in other matters. If property was made secure and taxed judiciously for the maintenance of public institutions, the duty of government was accomplished. The individual man was prepared to assume all further responsibility for himself and family. Such matters as the health of a rural community and its æsthetic appearance were left to individual initiative and generally were neglected. On many occasions the housewife showed her sympathy and kindliness by nursing a sick neighbor, but the members of the community had little appreciation of the seriousness of contagion and infection, no knowledge of germs, and small thought of preventive measures. The appearance of their buildings and grounds was nobody's business but their own. They had no conception of the social obligation of each for all and of all for each. The result was an unnecessary amount of illness, especially of tuberculosis and typhoid fever, because of insanitary buildings and grounds, and a general air of shabbiness and neglect that pervaded many communities. It was not that the people lacked the æsthetic sense, but it had not been trained, and in the struggle for the subjugation of a new continent all such minor considerations must give way to the satisfaction of elemental wants. Slowly it is becoming understood that health and beauty are matters that demand public attention and regulation. Good fortune and happiness are not purely economic and political concerns. Well-kept roads, clean and well-planned public buildings, sanitary farm structures, properly drained farm lands, and pure drinking water may not add to the number of bushels an acre, but they prolong life and add to its comfort and satisfaction. When it seems no longer strange to bother about health conditions, it will be relatively easy to give attention to rural æsthetics. If a schoolhouse or a meeting-house is to be erected, it will give greater satisfaction to the community if the principles of good architecture are observed and the building is set in the midst of trees and shrubbery and well-kept lawn. With such an object-lesson, the people of the community will presently contrast their own property with that of the public, the imitative impulse will begin to work, and individuals will begin to make improvements as leisure permits. There are villages that are ugly scars on a landscape which nature intended should be beautiful. With misdirected energy, farmers have destroyed the wild beauty of the fence corners and roadsides, mowing down the weeds and clearing out the brush and vines in an effort to make practical improvements, while with curious oversight they have permitted the weeds to grow in the paths and the grass to lengthen in the yard. Many a farm in rural communities has untidy refuse heaps, tottering outbuildings, rusting machinery, and general litter that reveal the absence of all sense of beauty or even neatness, yet the farmer and his wife may be thrifty, hard-working people, and scrupulously particular indoors. Their minds have not been sensitized to outdoor beauty and hideousness. They forget that nature is æsthetic; they live in the midst of her beauty, but their eyes are dim and their ears are dull, and it is difficult to instruct them. Happily, recent years have brought with them a new sense of the possibilities of rural beauty. Children are learning to appreciate it in the surroundings of the schoolhouse and the tasteful decorations of its interior; their elders are buying lawn-mowers and painting their fences, and America may yet rival in attractiveness the fair countryside of old England. 152. =Is the Town Healthier than the Country?=--It has been commonly believed that country people are healthier than townspeople. Their life in the open, with plenty of exercise and hard work, toughens fibre and strengthens the body to resist disease. It has also been supposed that the city, with its crowded quarters, vitiated air, and communicable diseases, has a much larger death-rate. It is true that city life is more dangerous to health than a country existence if no health precautions are taken, but city ordinances commonly regulate community health, while in the country there is greater license. Exposure gives birth to colds and coughs in the country; these are treated with inadequate home remedies, because physicians are inconveniently distant or expensive, and chronic diseases fasten themselves upon the individual. Ignorance of hygienic principles, absence of bathrooms, poor ventilation, unscreened doors and windows, and impure water and milk are among the causes of disease. There is as much need of pure air, pure water, and pure food in the country as in the city, and the danger from disease is no less menacing. The farmer loses vitality through long hours of labor, and is susceptible to disease scarcely less than is the working man in town. And he is more at fault if he suffers, for there is room to build the home in a healthful location, where drainage is easy and pure air and sunshine are abundant; there is water without price for cleansing purposes, and sanitation is possible without excessive cost. In most cases it is lack of information that prevents a realization of perils that lurk, and every rural community should have instruction in hygiene from school-teacher, physician, or resident nurse. 153. =Rural Health Preservers.=--Three health preservers are needed in every rural community. These are the health official, the physician, and the nurse. There is need first of one whose business it shall be to inspect the sanitary conditions of public and private buildings, and to watch the health of the people, old and young. It matters little whether the official is under State or local authority, if he efficiently and fearlessly performs his duty. Constant vigilance alone can give security, and it is a small price to pay if the community is compelled to bear even the whole expense of such a health official. Community health is often intrusted to the town fathers or a district board with little interest in the matter; on the other hand, the agent of a State board is not always a local resident, and is liable to overlook local conditions. It is desirable that the health official be an individual of good training, familiar with the locality, and with ample authority, for in this way only can safety be reasonably secure. It is by no means impracticable to give a local physician the necessary official authority. He is equipped with information and skilled by experience to know bad conditions when he sees them and to appreciate their seriousness. Whether or not a physician is the official health protector of the community, a physician there should be who can be reached readily by those who need him, and who should be required to produce a certificate of thorough training in both medicine and surgery. If such a medical practitioner does not establish himself in the district voluntarily, the community might well afford to employ such a physician on a salary and make him responsible for the health of all. As civilization advances it will become increasingly the custom in the country as well as in the city to employ a physician to keep one's general health good, as now one employs a dentist to examine and preserve the teeth. Medical practice must continually become more preventive and less remedial. It may seem as if it were an unwarranted expansion of the social functions of a community that it should care for the health of individuals, but as the interdependence of individuals becomes increasingly understood, the community may be expected to extend its care for its own welfare. 154. =The Village Nurse.=--Alongside the physician belongs the village or rural nurse. Already there are many communities that are becoming accustomed to such a functionary, who visits the schools, examines the children, prescribes for their small ailments or recommends a visit to the physician, and who stands ready to perform the duties of a trained nurse at the bedside of any sufferer. The support of such a nurse is usually maintained by voluntary subscription, but there seems to be no good reason why she should not be appointed and paid by the organized community as a local official. She is as much needed as a road-surveyor, surely as valuable as hog-reeve or pound-keeper. It is a valid social principle, though rural observation does not always justify it, that human life is not only intrinsically more valuable to the individual or family than the life of an animal of the herd, but it is actually worth more to the community. 155. =The Village Improvement Society.=--To secure good health conditions, interested persons in the community may organize a health club. Its feasibility is well proved by the history of the village improvement society. There are two hundred such societies in Massachusetts alone, and the whole movement is organized nationally in the American Civic Federation. Their object is the toning up of the community by various methods that have proved practicable. They owe their organization to a few public-spirited individuals, to a woman's club, or sometimes to a church. Their membership is entirely voluntary, but local government may properly co-operate to accomplish a desired end. Expenses are met by voluntary contribution or by means of public entertainments, and its efforts are limited, of course, by the fatness of its purse. Examples of the useful public service that they perform are the demolition of unsightly buildings and the cleaning up of unkempt premises, the beautification of public structures and the building of better roads, the erection of drinking troughs or fountains, and the improvement of cemeteries. Besides such outdoor interests village improvement societies create public spirit, educate the community by means of high-class entertainments, art and nature exhibits, and public discussion of current questions of local interest. They stand back of community enterprises for recreation, fire protection, and other forms of social service, including such economic interests as co-operative buying and marketing and the extension of telephone or transportation service. The initial impulse that sets in motion various forms of village improvement frequently comes from the summer visitor or from a teacher or minister who brings new ideas and a will to carry them into action. In certain sections of country, like the mountain region of northern New England, summer people are very numerous, through the weeks from June to October, and not a few of them revisit their favorite rural haunts for a briefer time in the winter. It is not to be expected that they are always a force for good. Sometimes they make country residents envious and dissatisfied. But it is not unusual that they give an intellectual stimulus to the young people and the women, compel the men to observe the proprieties of social intercourse, and encourage downcast leaders of church and neighborhood to renewed industry and hope. They demand multiplied comforts and conveniences, and expect attractive and healthful accommodations. Where they purchase and improve lands and buildings of their own they provide useful models to their less particular neighbors, and thus the leaven of a better type of living does its work in the neighborhood. 156. =Principles of Organization.=--The principles that lie at the basis of every organization for improvement are simple and practicable everywhere. They have been enumerated as a democratic spirit and organization, a wide interest in community affairs, and a perennial care for the well-being of all the people. Public spirit is the reason for its existence, and the same public spirit is the only force that can keep the organization alive. Every community in this democratic country has its fortunes in its own hands. If it is so permeated with individualism or inertia that it cannot awake to its duties and its privileges, it will perish in accordance with the law of the survival of the fittest; if, on the contrary, it adopts as its controlling principles those just mentioned, it will find increasing strength and profit for itself, because it keeps alive the spirit of co-operation and mutual help. READING REFERENCES HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_, pages 66-82, 106-130. GILLETTE: _Rural Sociology_, pages 147-167. HARRIS: _Health on the Farm._ FARWELL: _Village Improvement_, pages 47-53, Appendix. WATERS: _Village Nursing in the United States._ CHAPTER XXII MORALS IN THE RURAL COMMUNITY 157. =Social Disease and Its Causes.=--Rural morals are a phase of the public health of the community. Immorality is a kind of social disease, for which the community needs to find a remedy. The amount of moral ill varies widely, but it can be increased by neglect or lessened by effort, as surely as can the amount of physical disease. Moral ill is due to the individual and to the community. The judgment of the individual may be warped, his moral consciousness defective, or his will weak. He may have low standards and ill-adjusted relationships. Selfishness may have blunted his sympathy. All these conditions contribute to the common vices of community life. But the individual is sometimes less to blame than the community. Much moral ill is a consequence of the imperfect functioning of the community. A man steals because he is hungry or cold, and the motive to escape pain is stronger than the motive to deal lawfully with his neighbor; but if the community saw to it that adequate provision was made for all economic need, and if moral instruction was not lacking, it would be unlikely to happen. Similar reasons may be found for other evils. It is as much the business of the community to keep the social atmosphere wholesome as it is to keep the air and water of its farms pure. It should provide moral training and moral exercise. 158. =How Morals Develop.=--Without attempting a thoroughly scientific definition of morals, we may call good morals those habitual acts which are in harmony with the best individual and social interests of the people of the community, and bad morals the absence of such habits. Of course the acts are the consequence of motives, and in the last analysis the question of morals is rooted in the field of psychology or religion; but the inner motive is revealed in the outward act, and it is customary to speak of the act as moral or immoral. Moral standards are not unvarying. One race differs from another and one period of history differs from another. Primitive custom was the first standard, and was determined by what was good for the group, and the individual conformed to it from force of circumstances. If he was to remain a member of the group and enjoy its benefits he must be willing to sacrifice his selfish desires. His consciousness of the solidarity of the group deepens with experience, and his feelings of sympathy grow stronger, until impulsive altruism becomes a habit and eventually a fixed and purposeful patriotism. By and by religion throws about conduct its sanctions and interprets the meaning of morality. However imperfect may be the relations between good morals and pagan religions, Judaism and Christianity have combined religion with high moral ideals. The Hebrew prophets declared that God demanded justice, kindness, and mercy in human relations rather than acts of ceremony and sacrifice to himself, and Jesus made love to neighbor as fundamental to holiness as love to God. Such a religion becomes dynamic in producing moral deeds. 159. =The Social Stimulus to Morality.=--It is customary to think of the homely virtues of truthfulness, sobriety, thrift, and kindliness as individual obligations, but they are not wrought out in isolation. Isolation is never complete, and virtue is a social product. The farmer makes occasional visits to the country store, where he experiences social contacts; there is habitual association with individual workers on the farm or traders with whom the farmer carries on a business transaction. His personal contacts may not be helpful, and his wife may lack them almost altogether outside of the home; the result is often a tendency toward vice or degeneration, sometimes to insanity or suicide, but it is seldom that there are not helpful influences and relations available if the individual will put himself in the way of enjoying them. Good morals are dependent on right associations. Human beings need the stimulus of good society, otherwise the mind vegetates or broods upon real or fancied wrongs until the moral nature is in danger of atrophy or warping. Family feuds develop, as among the Scotch highlanders or the mountain people in certain parts of the South. Lack of social sympathy increases as the interests become self-centred; out of this characteristic grow directly such evils as petty lawlessness, rowdyism, and crime. The country districts need the help of high-grade schools and proper places of recreation, of the Young Men's Christian Association or an association of like principles, and most of all of a virile church that will interpret moral obligation and furnish the power that is needed to move the will to right action. 160. =Rural Vices.=--The moral problems of the rural community do not differ greatly from those of the town. The most common rural vices are profanity, drunkenness, and sexual immorality. Profanity is often a habit rather than a defect in moral character, and is due sometimes to a narrow vocabulary. It is a mark of ignorance and boorishness. In many localities it is less common than it used to be. The average community life is wholesome. Not more than twenty per cent of American rural communities have really bad conditions in any way, according to the investigations made by the United States Rural Life Commission in 1908. Considering the monotony and hardships of rural life, it is much to the credit of the people that most communities are temperate and law-abiding. Intemperance is one of the most common evils; there is a longing for the stimulant of liquor, which appears in some cases in moderate drinking and in other cases in the habit of an occasional spree in a near-by town, when reason abdicates to appetite. Lumbermen and miners, whose work is especially hard and isolation from good society complete, have been notorious for their lapses into intemperance, but it is not a serious problem in three out of four communities the country over, and a wave of temperance sentiment has swept strongly over rural districts. Gambling is a diversion that appeals to those who have few mental and pecuniary resources as an offset to the daily monotony, but this habit is not typical of rural communities. Investigations of the Rural Life Commission showed that sexual immorality prevails in ten to fifteen per cent of the rural communities, and they trace much of it to late evening drives and dances and unchaperoned calls, but on the whole the perversion of the sex instinct is less common than in the cities. The young are generally trained in moral principles, the religious sanctions are more strongly operative, and the conduct and character of every individual is constantly under the public eye. Young people in the country marry at an earlier age than in the city, and husband and wife are normally faithful. Crime in the country is peculiar to degenerate communities, elsewhere it is rare. Juvenile delinquency occurs, and there are not such helpful influences as the juvenile court of the city; on the other hand, most boys are in touch with home influences, feel the restraint of a law-abiding community, and know that lawbreaking is almost certain to be found out and punished. 161. =Community Obligation.=--Moral delinquency in the rural community lies in the failure to provide social stimulus to individual members. The farmer has as good reason to be ambitious for success and to feel pride in it as has the city merchant, but he has small local encouragement to develop better agriculture on his own farm. He has as much right to the benefits of association in toil and co-operation in effecting economies and disposing of his products as the employer or working man in town. He is equally entitled to good government, to wholesome recreation, to a suitable and efficient education, and to the spiritual leadership of a progressive church. Without the spur of community fellowship his life narrows and his abilities are not developed. With the help of community stimulus the individual may develop capacity for individual achievement and social leadership of as fine a quality as any urban centre can supply. It is well known that the strong men of the cities in business and the professions have come in large proportion from the country. If such qualities developed in the comparative isolation and discomfort of the past, it is a moral obligation of rural communities of the future to do even more to produce the brawn and brain of city leaders in days to come. READING REFERENCES WILSON: _The Evolution of the Country Community_, pages 171-188. ANDERSON: _The Country Town_, pages 95-106. DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 146-165. HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_, pages 166-175. HOBHOUSE: _Morals in Evolution_, I, pages 364-375. SPENCER: _Data of Ethics_, chapter 8. _Report of Committee on Morals and Rural Conditions of the General Association of Congregational Churches of Massachusetts_, 1908. CHAPTER XXIII THE RURAL CHURCH 162. =The Value of the Rural Church.=--Of all the local institutions of the rural community, none is so discouraging and at the same time so potential for usefulness as the country church. It has had a noble past; it is passing through a dubious present; it should emerge into a great future. The church is the conserver of the highest ideals. Like every long-established institution, it is conservative in methods as well as in principles. It regards itself as the censor of conduct and the mentor of conscience, and it fills the rôle of critic as often as it holds out an encouraging hand to the weary and hard pressed in the struggle for existence and moral victory. It is the guide-post to another world, which it esteems more highly than this. Sometimes it puts more emphasis on creed than on conduct, on Sunday scrupulousness than on Monday scruple. But in spite of its failings and its frequent local decline, the church is the hope of rural America. It is notorious that the absence of a church means a distinctly lower type of community life, both morally and socially. Vice and crime flourish there. Property values tumble when the church dies and the minister moves away. Many residents rarely if ever enter the precincts of the meeting-house or contribute to the expense of its maintenance, yet they share in the benefits that it gives and would not willingly see it disappear when they realize the consequences. In the westward march of settlement the missionary kept pace with the pioneer, and the church on the frontier became the centre of every good influence. It is impossible to estimate the value of the rural church in the onrush of civilization. Religion has been the saving salt of humanity when it was in danger of spoiling. In the lumber and the mining camp, on the cattle-ranch and the prairie, the missionary has sweetened life with his ministry and given a tone to the life of the open and the wild that in value is past calculation. 163. =The Church in Decline.=--In the days when it seems declining, the strength of the rural church is worth preserving. There are hundreds of rural communities where the young people have gone to the town and population has steadily fallen behind. There are hundreds more where the people of a community have drawn wealth from the soil, and with a succession of good crops and high prices have accumulated enough to keep them comfortable, and then have sold or leased their property and moved into town. The purchasers or tenants who replaced them have been less able to contribute to church support or have been of a different faith or race, and the churches have found it difficult to survive. Doubtless some of these churches could be spared without great loss, for in the rush of real or expected settlement, certain localities became over-churched, but the spectacle of scores of abandoned churches in the Middle West has as doleful an appearance as abandoned farms in New England. 164. =Is It Worth Preserving?=--It would be a misfortune for the church to perish out of the rural districts, for it performs a religious function that no other institution performs. It cherishes the beliefs that have strengthened man through the ages and given him the upward look that betokens faith in his destiny and power in his life. It calls out the best that is in him to meet the tasks of every day. It ministers to him in times of greatest need. It teaches him how to relate himself to an Unseen Power and to the fellowship of human kind. The meeting-house is a community centre drawing to itself like a magnet family groups and individuals from miles around, overcoming their isolation and breaking into the daily monotony of their lives, and with its worship and its sermon awakening new thoughts and impulses for the enrichment of life. Nor does its ministry confine itself to things of the spirit. The weekly Sunday assembly provides opportunity for social intercourse, if no more than an exchange of greetings, and now and then a sociable evening gathering or anniversary occasion brings an added social opportunity. 165. =The Country Minister.=--The faithful rural minister also carries the church to the people. His parish is broad, but he finds his way into the homes of his parishioners, acquaints himself with their characteristics and their needs, and fits his ministrations to them. Especially does he carry comfort to the sick and soothe the suffering and the dying. No other can quite fill his place; no other so builds himself into the hearts of the people. He may not be a great thinker or preach polished sermons; his hands may be rough and his clothes ill-fitting; but if he is a loyal friend and ministers to real spiritual need, he is saint and prophet to those whom he has brothered. In the rural economy each public functionary is worthy or unworthy, according to his personal fidelity to his particular task. A poorly equipped board of government is not worth half the salary of the school-teacher. That official may not hold his place or gain the respect of his pupils unless he meets their needs of instruction with a degree of efficiency. But a public servant who fills full the channels of his usefulness is worth twice what he is likely to get as his stipulated wage. The community can well afford to look kindly upon a minister of that type, to encourage him in his efforts for the upbuilding of the community, and to contribute to an honorable stipend for his support. 166. =The Problems.=--The rural church has its problems and so has the rural minister. There are the indifferent people who are irreligious themselves and have no share in the activities of the religious institution. There are the insincere people who belong to the church but are not sympathetic in spirit or conduct. There are the cold-blooded people who gather weekly in the meeting-house but do not respond to intellectual or spiritual stimulus, and who chill the heart of the minister and soon quench his enthusiasm. It is not surprising if he is restless and changes location frequently, or if he becomes listless and apparently indifferent to the welfare of his flock, when he meets no response and himself enjoys no stimulus from his own kind. All these conditions constitute the spiritual problem. Beyond this there is the institutional problem. The church finds maintenance difficult, often impossible without outside assistance. Failing to minister to any purely community need except on special occasions, or to assume any responsibility of leadership in civic or social affairs, it does not receive the cordial support of the community to which as a social institution, conserving the highest interests, it is reasonably entitled. It must be remembered that in America there can be no established church supported by the State, as in England. The church is on a different footing in every community from that of the public school. It is therefore dependent on the good-will of the community and must cultivate that good-will if it is to succeed. Most rural churches have yet to become a vital force, not only energizing their own members, but reaching out also to the whole community, seeking not their own growth as their chief end, but by ministering to the community's needs, realizing a fuller, richer life of their own. 167. =The Needs of the Church.=--The rural church needs reorganization for efficiency, but changes must be gradual. A local church that is democratic in its form of organization, with no external oversight, is likely to need strengthening in administration; a church that intrusts control to a small board or is governed from the outside probably needs to get closer to the people, but differences in church government are of small practical consequence. It does not appear that it makes much difference in the success of a rural church whether its organization is Episcopal, Presbyterian, or Congregational. The machinery needs modernizing, whatever the pattern. It is a part of the task to be undertaken by every up-to-date country minister to consider possible improvements in the various departments of the church. It is as likely that the children are being as inefficiently taught in the Sunday-school as in the every-day school, that organizations and opportunities for the young people are as lacking as in the community at large, that discussions in the Bible class are as pointless as those in any local forum. It is more than likely that the church is failing to make good in a given locality because it is depending on a few persons to carry on its activities, and these few do not co-operate well with one another or with other Christian people. The functions of the church are neither well understood nor properly performed. It has small assets in community good-will, and it is in no real sense a going concern. 168. =The New Rural Church.=--Here and there a church of a new type is meeting manfully these various needs. It has set itself first to answer the question whether the church is a real religious force in the community, and what method may best be used to energize the countryside more effectually for moral and religious ends. Old forms or times of worship have needed changing, or an innovating individual has taken a hand temporarily. Then it has faced the practical problem of religious education. Most churches maintain a Sunday-school and a Woman's Missionary or Aid Society. Certain of them have young people's organizations, and a few have organized men's classes or clubs. Each of these groups goes on its own independent course. There is no attempt to correlate the studies with which each concerns itself, and there is much waste of effort in holding group sessions that accomplish nothing. The new church directors simplify, correlate, and systematize all the educational work that is being attempted, improve courses of study and methods of teaching, and propose to all concerned the attainment of certain definite standards. In the third place, the new rural church adopts for itself a well-considered programme of community service. Its opportunity is unlimited, but its efforts are not worth much unless it approaches the subject intelligently, with a knowledge of local conditions, of its own resources, and of the methods that have been used successfully in other similar localities. Nothing less than these three tasks of investigation, education, and service belong to every church; toward this ideal is moving an increasing number of churches in the country. READING REFERENCES BUTTERFIELD: _The Country Church and the Rural Problem._ FISKE: _The Challenge of the Country._ WILSON: _The Church of the Open Country._ NESMITH: Chapter on "The Rural Church" in _Social Ministry._ HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_, pages 176-196. _Report of Country Life Commission_, 1908. CHAPTER XXIV A NEW TYPE OF RURAL INSTITUTION 169. =A New Type of Institution.=--The rural community everywhere is in need of a new social institution. Those which exist have been individualistic in purpose and method and only incidentally have been socially constructive. The school has existed to make individuals efficient intellectually, that they might be able to struggle successfully for existence. The church has existed as a means to individual salvation from future ill. Social good has resulted from these institutions, but it has not been fundamental in their purpose. The new rural institution that is needed is a centre for community reconstruction. If the school or the church can adapt itself to the need, either may become such an institution; if not, there must be a new type. It has often been said that the characteristic evil of rural life is the isolation of the people, but this must be understood to mean not merely an isolated location of farm dwellings but a lack of human fellowship. In the city the majority of people might as well live in isolated houses as far as acquaintance with neighbors is concerned, but they do not lack human fellowship because they have group connections elsewhere. In the country it is hardly possible to choose associates or institutional connections. There is one school prepared to receive the children of a certain age, and no other, unless they are conveyed to a distance at great inconvenience; the variety of suitable churches is not large. It is necessary to cultivate neighbors or to go without friendships. But rural social relations are not well lubricated. There are few common topics of conversation, except the weather, the crops, or a bit of gossip. There are few common interests about which discussion may centre. There is need of an institution that shall create and conserve such common interests. 170. =A Community House.=--The first task is to bring people together to a common gathering place, where perfect democracy will prevail, and where there may be unrestricted discussion. There is no objection to using the schoolhouse for the purpose, but ordinarily it is not adapted to the purposes of an assembly-room. The meeting-house may serve the purpose, but to many persons it seems a desecration of a sacred building, and except in the case of a single community church there is too much of the denominational flavor about it to make it an unrestricted forum. Ideally there should be a community house erected at a convenient location, and large enough to accommodate as many as might desire to assemble. It should be equipped for all the social uses to which it might be put. It should be paid for by the voluntary contributions of all the people, but title to the property should be in the hands of a board of trustees or associates who would be responsible for its maintenance and for the uses to which it would be put. These persons must be men and women of the town in whose judgment the people have full confidence. Regular expenses should be met by annual payments, as the Young Men's Christian Association is sustained in cities all over the country, and by occasional entertainments. A limited endowment fund would be helpful, but too large endowment tends to pauperize a local institution. 171. =Intellectual Stimulus.=--The second task is to put the community house to use. There are numerous ways by which this can be done, but the best are those that fit local need. Of all the needs the greatest is stimulus to thought. Ideally this should come from the pulpit of the rural church, but its stimulus is usually not strong, it is commonly confined to religious exhortation, and it reaches only a few. All the people of the community need to think seriously about their economic and social interests, and to be drawn out to express themselves on such subjects. The old-fashioned town meeting provided a channel for such discussion once a year. What is needed is a town-meeting extension through eight or nine months of the year. The community house offers an opportunity for such an extension. Under the initiative and guidance of one or two energetic local leaders, inspired by an occasional outside lecturer, such as can be obtained at small expense from agricultural colleges and other public agencies, almost any American community ought to carry on a forum of public discussion for weeks, taking up first the most urgent questions of community interest and passing on gradually to matters of broader concern. 172. =Social Satisfaction.=--As the adults of the community need intellectual stimulus, so the young people need social satisfactions. The salvation of the American rural community lies largely in the contentment of the young people, for without that quality of mind they leave the country for the town, or settle back in an unprogressive, unsocial state of sullen resignation. There must be opportunity for recreation. The community house should function for the entertainment of its constituency in ways that approve themselves to the associates in charge. But it is not so much entertainment that is wanted as an opportunity for sociability, occasions when all the youth of the community can meet for mutual acquaintance and the beginnings of courtship, and for the stimulus that comes from human association. If association and activity are characteristic of normal social life, it is unreasonable to suppose that rural young people will be contented to vegetate. If they cannot have legitimate opportunities to realize their impulse to associated activity, they will provide less satisfactory unconventional opportunities. One of the best means for promoting sociability and providing an outlet for youthful energy in concert has been found in the use of music. The old-fashioned singing-school filled a real need and its passing has left a distinct gap. Where musical gatherings have been revived experience has shown that they are a most effective stimulus to a new community consciousness. The country church choir has long been regarded as a useful social as well as religious institution, but the community chorus is far more effective. It is possible to uncover latent talent and to cultivate it so that it will furnish more attractive entertainment for the people than that which is imported at far greater expense from outside. Among the foreigners who are finding their way into rural localities, there is sometimes discovered a musical ability that outranks the native, and no other method of approach to the immigrant is so easy as by giving his young people a place in the social activities of the community. 173. =Continuation Schooling.=--A further use for the community house is educational. The older education of the district school was defective, and the new education is not enjoyed by many a farmer's boy or girl, because they cannot be spared in the later years of youth for long schooling. An adaptation of the idea of continuation schools for rural young people so that they may apply the new sciences to country life is greatly to be desired. The local school principal or county superintendent or an extension teacher from a State institution may be found available as director, and it belongs to the community to provide the necessary funds. For older people some of the same courses are suitable, but they should be supplemented with lectures of all sorts. It has been demonstrated many times that popular lecturers can be secured at small expense in different parts of the country, especially in these days when there are so many agencies to push the new agricultural science, and other subjects over a wide range of interests will not fail to find exponents if a demand for them can be created. 174. =Community Leadership.=--In the last analysis the prime factor in the rural situation is the community leader. Institutions can do little for the enrichment of rural life if personality is wanting. It is the leader's energy that keeps the wheels of the machinery turning, his wisdom that gears their action to the needs of the community. It is desirable that the leader should spring from the community itself, acquainted with its needs and voicing its aspirations. But more communities get their leaders from outside and are often more willing to accept such a leader than if he came up out of their midst, for the proverb is often true that a prophet is without honor in his own country. 175. =Qualities of Leadership.=--Social leadership is dependent upon certain qualities in the person who leads and in those who are led. The attitude of the people of the community is fundamental. The stimulus that the leader applies must find response in their inner natures if his energy is to become socially effective. If there is not a latent capacity to action, no amount of stimulus will avail. It is safe to assume that there are few local communities in America that will fail to respond to the right kind of leadership, but certain qualities in the leader are essential for inspiration. It is not necessary that he should be country born, but it is essential that he love the country, appreciate its opportunities, and be conscious of its needs. He cannot hope to call out these qualities in the people if he does not himself possess them. And it must be a genuine love and appreciation that is in him, for only sincerity and perfect honesty can win men for long. It is essential that he have breadth of sympathy for all the interests of the people that he seeks for his own; he may not think lightly of farming or storekeeping, of education or recreation, of morals or religion. He must be devoted to the community, its servant as well as its leader, content to build himself into its life. It is not necessary that the leader should be a trained expert, a finished product of the schools, desirable as such equipment is, but it is essential that he know how to call out the best that is in others, to play upon their emotions, to appeal to their intellects, to energize their wills. He must not only understand their present mental processes, but he must have a vision of them when they have become transformed with new impulses and ambitions, and converted to new and nobler purposes. He needs an unquenchable enthusiasm, a gentle patience, an invincible, aggressive persistency, a contagious optimism that will carry him over every obstacle to ultimate victory. It is essential that he possess fertility of resource to adapt himself to circumstances, that he have power to call out action and executive ability to direct it. Most important of all is a magnetic personality such as belonged to the great chieftains of history who in war or peace have been able to attract followers and to mould them in obedience to their own will. 176. =Broad Opportunities.=--A leader such as that described has an almost unlimited field of opportunity to mould social life. In the city the opportunity for leadership may seem to be larger, but few can dominate more than a small group. In the country the start may be slower and more discouraging, but the goal reaches out ahead. From better agriculture the leader may draw on the people to better social ideals, to a new appreciation of education and broad culture, to a truer understanding of ethics and religion. He may refashion institutions that may express the new in modern terms. But when this is accomplished his work is not done. He may reach out over the countryside and make his village a nucleus for wider progress through a whole county. Even then his influence is not spent. The rural communities in America are feeders of the cities; in them is the nursery of the men and women who are to become leaders in the larger circles of business and professional life, in journalism and literature, in religion and social reform. Many a rural teacher or pastor has built himself into the affections of a boy or a girl, incarnating for them the noblest ideals and stimulating them to achievement and service in an environment that he himself could never hope to fill and with a power of influence that he could never expect to wield. The avenues of opportunity are becoming more numerous. The teacher and the minister have advantages of leadership over the county Young Men's Christian Association secretary and the village nurse, but since personal qualities are the determining factors, no man or woman, whatever their position, can make good the claim without proving ability by actual achievement. Any man or woman who enters a particular community for the first time, or returns to it from college, may become a dynamo of blessing to it. There waits for such a leader the loyalty of the boys who may be won for noble manhood, of the girls who may become worthy mothers of a better generation of future citizens, of men and women for whom the glamour of youth has passed into the sober reality of maturer years, but who are still capable of seeing visions of a richer life that they and their children may yet enjoy. There are ready to his hand the institutions that have played an important part, however inefficiently in rural life, the heritage of social custom and community character that have come down from the past, and the material environment that helps or hinders but does not control human relations and human deeds. These constitute the measure of his world; these are clay for the potter and instruments for his working; upon him is laid the responsibility of the product. READING REFERENCES CURTIS: _Play and Recreation for the Open Country_, pages 195-259. FISKE: _The Challenge of the Country_, pages 225-266. COOLEY: _Human Nature and the Social Order_, pages 283-325. MCNUTT: "Ten Years in a Country Church," _World's Work_, December, 1910. MCKEEVER: _Farm Boys and Girls_, pages 129-145. CARNEY: _Country Life and the Country School_, pages 1-17, 302-327. PART IV--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE CITY CHAPTER XXV FROM COUNTRY TO CITY 177. =Enlarging the Social Environment.=--In the story of the family and the rural community it has become clear that the normal individual as he grows to maturity lives in an expanding circle of social relations. The primary unit of his social life is the family in the home. There the elemental human instincts are satisfied. There while a child he learns the first lessons of social conduct. From the home he enters into the larger life of the community. He takes his place in the school, where he touches the lives of other children and learns that he is a part of a larger social order. He gets into the current of community life and finds out the importance of local institutions like the country store and the meeting-house. He becomes accustomed to the ways that are characteristic of country people, and finds a place for himself in the industry and social activity of the countryside. When the boy who has grown up in a rural community comes to manhood, his natural tendency is to accept the occupation of farming with which he has become acquainted in boyhood, to woo a country maid for a mate, and to make for himself a rural home after the pattern of his ancestors. In that case his social environment remains restricted. His relations are with nature rather than with men. His horizon is narrow, his interests limited. The institutions that mould him are few, the forces that stimulate to progress are likely to be lacking altogether. He need not, but he usually does, cease to grow. 178. =Characteristics of the City.=--Certain individuals find the static life of the country unbearable. Their nature demands larger scope in an expanding environment. To them the stirring town beckons, and they are restless until they escape. The city is a centre of social life where the individual feels a greater stimulus than in the home or the rural community. It resembles the family and the village in providing social relations and an interchange of ideas, but it surpasses them in the large scale of its activities. It presents many of the same social characteristics that they do, but geared in each case for higher speed. Its activities are swifter and more varied. Its associations are more numerous and kaleidoscopic. Its people are less independent than in the country; control, economic and political, is more pervasive, even though crude in method. Change is more rapid in the city, because the forces that are at work are charged with dynamic energy. Weakness in social structure and functioning is conspicuous. In the large cities all these are intensified, but they are everywhere apparent whenever a community passes beyond the village stage. The line that separates the village or small town from the city is an arbitrary one. The United States calls those communities rural that have a population not exceeding twenty-five hundred, but it is less a question of population than of interests and activities. When agriculture gives place to trade or manufacturing as the leading economic interest; when the community takes on the social characteristics that belong to urban life; and when places of business and amusement assume a place of importance rather than the home, the school, and the church, the community passes into the urban class. Names and forms of government are of small consequence in classification compared with the spirit and ways of the community. 179. =How the City Grows.=--The city grows by the natural excess of births over deaths and by immigration. Without immigration the city grows more slowly but more wholesomely. Immigration introduces an alien element that has to adjust itself to new ways and does not always fuse readily with the native element. This is true of immigration from the country village as well as from a foreign country, but an American, even though brought up differently, finds it easier to adapt himself to his new environment. An increasingly large percentage of children are born and grow to maturity in the city. There are thousands of urban communities of moderate size in America, where there are few who come in from any distance, but for nearly a hundred years in the older parts of the country a rural migration has been carrying young people into town, and the recent volume of foreign immigration is spilling over from the large cities into the smaller urban centres, so that the mixture of population is becoming general. 180. =The Attraction of the City.=--Foreign immigration is a subject that must be treated by itself; rural immigration needs no prolonged discussion once the present limitations of life in the country are understood. Multitudes of ambitious young people are not contented with the opportunities offered by the rural environment. They want to be at the strategic points of the world's activities, struggling for success in the thick of things. The city attracts the country boy who is ambitious, exactly as old Rome attracted the immature German. The blare of its noisy traffic, the glare of its myriad lights, the rush and the roar and the rabble all urge him to get into the scramble for fun and gain. The crowd attracts. The instinct of sociability draws people together. Those who are unfamiliar with rural spaces and are accustomed to live in crowded tenements find it lonesome in the country, and prefer the discomfort of their congested quarters in town to the pure air and unspoiled beauty of the country. They love the stir of the streets, and enjoy sitting on the door-steps and wandering up and down the sidewalks, feeling the push of the motley crowd. Those who leave the country for the city feel all these attractions and are impelled by them, but beyond these attractions, re-enforcing them by an appeal to the intellect, are the economic advantages that lie in the numerous occupations and chances for promotion to high-salaried positions, the educational advantages for children and youth in the better-graded schools, the colleges, the libraries, and the other cultural institutions, and such social advantages as variety of entertainment, modern conveniences in houses and hotels, more beautiful and up-to-date churches, well-equipped hospitals, and comfortable and convenient means of transportation from place to place. 181. =Making a Countryman into a Citizen.=--It is important to enter into the spirit of the young people who prefer the streets and blocks of the town to the winding country roads, and are willing to sacrifice what there is of beauty and leisure in rural life for the ugliness, sordidness, and continuous drive of the city; to understand that a greater driving force, stirring in the soul of youth and thrusting upon him with every item of news from the city, is impelling him to disdain what the country can give him and to magnify the counter-attractions of the town. He has felt the monotony and the contracted opportunity of farm life as he knows it. He has experienced the drudgery of it ever since he began to do the chores. Familiar only with the methods of his ancestors, he knows that labor is hard and returns are few. He may look across broad acres that will some day be his, but he knows that his father is "land poor." As a farmer he sees no future for agriculture. He has known the village and the surrounding country ever since he graduated from the farmyard to the schoolhouse, and came into association with the boys and girls of the neighborhood. He knows the economic and social resources of the community and is satisfied that he can never hope for much enjoyment or profit in the limited rural environment. The school gave him little mental stimulus, but opened the door ajar into a larger world. The church gave him an orthodox gospel in terms of divinity and its environment rather than humanity on earth, but stirred vaguely his aspirations for a fuller life. He has sounded the depths of rural existence and found it unsatisfying. He wants to learn more, to do more, to be more. One eventful day he graduates from the village to the city, as years before he graduated from the home into the community. By boat or train, or by the more primitive method of stage-coach or afoot, he travels until he joins the surging crowd that swarms in the streets. He feels himself thrilling with the consciousness that he is moving toward success and possibly greatness. He does not stop to think that hundreds of those who seek their fortune in the city have failed, and have found themselves far worse off than the contented folk back in the home village. The newcomer establishes himself in a boarding-house or lodging-house which hundreds of others accept as an apology for a home, joins the multitude of unemployed in a search for work, and is happy if he finds it in an office that is smaller and darker than the wood-shed on the farm, or behind a counter where fresh air and sunlight never penetrate. He will put up with these non-essentials, for he expects in days ahead to move higher up, when the large rewards that are worth while will be his. In the ranks of business he measures his wits with others of his kind. He apes their manners, their slang, and their tone inflections. He imitates their fashions in clothes, learns the popular dishes in the restaurants, and if of feminine tastes gives up pie for salad. He goes home after hours to his small and dingy bedroom, tired from the drain upon his vitality because of ill-ventilated rooms and ill-nourishing food, but happy and free. There are no chores waiting for him now, and there is somewhere to go for entertainment. Not far away he may have his choice of theatres and moving-picture shows. If he is æsthetically or intellectually inclined, there are art-galleries and libraries beckoning him. If his earnings are a pittance and he cannot afford the theatre, and if his tastes do not draw him to library or museum, the saloon-keeper is always ready to be his friend. The youth from the country would be welcomed at the Young Men's Christian Association on the other side of the city, or at a church if there happened to be a social or religious function that opened the building, but the saloon is always near, always open, and always cordial. Poor or rich, or a stranger, it matters not, let him enter and enjoy the poor man's club. It is warm and pleasant there and he will soon make friends. 182. =Mental and Moral Changes.=--The readjustments that are necessary in the transfer from country to city are not accomplished without considerable mental and moral shock. Changing habits of living are paralleled by changing habits of thought. Old ideas are jostled by new every hour of the day. At the table, on the street, in office or store, at the theatre or church the currents of thought are different. Social contacts are more numerous, relations are more shifting, intellectual affinities and repulsions are felt constantly; mental interactions are so frequent that stability of beliefs and independence of thought give way to flexibility and uncertainty and openness to impression. Group influence asserts its power over the individual. Along with the influence of the group mind goes the influence of what may be called the electrical atmosphere of the city. The newcomer from the country is very conscious of it; to the old resident it becomes second nature. City life is noisy. The whole industrial system is athrob with energy. The purring of machinery, the rattle and roar of traffic, the clack and toot of the automobile, the clanging of bells, and the chatter of human tongues create a babel that confuses and tires the unsophisticated ear and brain. They become accustomed to the sounds after a time, but the noise registers itself continually on the sensitive nervous system, and many a man and woman breaks at last under the strain. Another element that adds to the nervous strain is haste. Life in the city is a stern chase after money and pleasure. Everybody hurries from morning until night, for everything moves on schedule, and twenty-four hours seem not long enough to do the world's work and enjoy the world's fun. Noise and hurry furnish a mental tension that charges the urban atmosphere with excitement. Purveyors of news and amusement have learned to cater to the love of excitement. The newspaper editor hunts continually for sensations, and sometimes does not scruple to twist sober fact into stirring fiction. The book-stall and the circulating library supply the novel and the cheap magazine to give smack to the jaded palate that cannot relish good literature. The theatre panders to the appetite for a thrill. In these circumstances lie the possibilities of moral shock. In the city there is freedom from the old restraint that the country community imposed. In the city the countryman finds that he can do as he pleases without the neighbors shaking their heads over him. In the absence of such restraint and with the social contact of new friends he may rapidly lower his moral standards as he changes his manners and his mental habits. It does not take long to shuffle off the old ways; it does not take much push or pull to make the unsophisticated boy or girl lose balance and drift toward lower ideals than those with which they came. Not a few find it hard to keep the moral poise in the whirlpool of mental distraction. It is these effects of the urban environment that help to explain the social derelicts that abound in the cities. It is the weakness of human nature, along with the economic pressure, that accounts for the drunkenness, vice, and crime that constitute so large a problem of city life and block the path of society's development. They are a part of the imperfection that is characteristic of this stage of human progress, and especially of the twentieth-century city. They are not incurable evils, they demand a remedy, and they furnish an inspiring object of study for the practitioner of social disease. He who escapes business and moral failure has open wide before him in the city the door of opportunity. He may, if he will, meet all the world and his wife in places where the people gather, touching elbows with individuals from every quarter of the country, with persons of every class and variety of attainment, with believers of every political, æsthetic, and religious creed. In such an atmosphere his mind expands like the exotic plant in a conservatory. His individual prejudices fall from him like worn-out leaves from the trees. He begins to realize that other people have good grounds for their opinions and practices that differ from his own, and that in most cases they are better than his, and he quickly adjusts himself to them. The city stimulates life by its greater social resources, and forms within its borders more highly developed human groups. Beyond the material comforts and luxuries that the city supplies are the social values that it creates in the associations and organizations of men and women allied for the philanthropic, remedial, and constructive purposes that are looking forward to the slow progress of mankind toward its highest ideals. 183. =The City as a Social Centre.=--The city is an epitome of national and even world life, as the farm is community life in miniature. Its social life is infinitely complex, as compared with the rural village. Distances that stretch out for miles in the country, over fields and woods and hills, are measured in the city by blocks of dwellings and public buildings, with intersecting streets, stretching away over a level area as far as the eye can see. Social institutions correspond to the needs of the inhabitants, and while there are a few like those in the country, because certain human needs are the same, there is a much larger variety in the city because of the great number of people of different sorts and the complexity of their demands. Every city has its business centres for finance, for wholesale trade, and for retail exchange, its centres for government, and for manufacturing; it has its railroad terminals and often its wharves and shipping, its libraries, museums, schools, and churches. All these are gathering places for groups of people. But there is no one social centre for all classes; rather, the people of the city are associated in an infinite number of large and small groups, according to the mutual interests of their members. But if the city has no four corners, it is itself a centre for a large district of country. As the village is the nucleus that binds together outlying farms and hamlets, so the city has far-flung connections with rural villages and small towns in a radius of many miles. 184. =The Importance of the City.=--The city has grown up because it was located conveniently for carrying on manufacturing and trade on a large scale. It is growing in importance because this is primarily an industrial age. Its population is increasing relatively to the rural population, and certain cities are growing enormously, in spite of Mr. Bryce's warning that it is unfortunate for any city to grow beyond a population of one hundred thousand. The importance of the city as a social centre is apparent when we remember that in America, according to the census of 1910, 46.3 per cent of the people live in communities of more than 2,500 population, while 31 per cent of the whole are inhabitants of cities of 25,000 or more population. When nearly one-third of all the people of the nation live in communities of such size, the large city becomes a type of social centre of great significance. At the prevailing rate of growth a majority of the American people will soon be dwelling in cities, and there seems to be no reason to expect a reversal of tendency because modern invention is making it possible for fewer persons on the farm to supply the agricultural products that city people need. This means, of course, that the temper and outlook of mind will be increasingly urban, that social institutions generally will have the characteristics of the city, that the National Government will be controlled by that part of the American citizens that so far has been least successful in governing itself well. 185. =Municipal History.=--The city has come to stay, and there is in it much of good. It has come into existence to satisfy human need, and while it may change in character it is not likely to be less important than now. Its history reveals its reasons for existence and indicates the probabilities of its future. The ancient city was an overgrown village that had special advantages for communication and transportation of goods, or that was located conveniently for protection against neighboring enemies. The cities of Greece maintained their independence as political units, but most social centres that at first were autonomous became parts of a larger state. The great cities were the capitals of nations or empires, and to strike at them in war was to aim at the vitals of an organism. Such were Thebes and Memphis in Egypt, Babylon and Nineveh in the Tigris-Euphrates valley, Carthage and Rome in the West. Such are Vienna and Berlin, Paris and London to-day. Lesser cities were centres of trade, like Corinth or Byzantium, or of culture, such as Athens. Such was Florence in the Middle Ages, and such are Liverpool and Leipzig to-day. The municipalities of the Roman Empire marked the climax of civic development in antiquity. The social and industrial life of the Middle Ages was rural. Only a few cities survived the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, and new centres of importance did not arise until trade revived and the manufacturing industry began to concentrate in growing towns about the time of the Crusades. Then artisans and tradesmen found their way to points convenient to travel and trade, and a city population began the processes of aggregation and congregation. They grew up rough in manners and careless of sanitation and hygiene, but they developed efficiency in local government and an inclination to demand civic rights from those who had any outside claim of control; they began to take pride in their public halls and churches, and presently they founded schools and universities. Wealth increased rapidly, and some of the cities, like the Hansa towns of the north, and Venice and Genoa in the south, commanded extensive and profitable trade routes. Modern cities owe their growth to the industrial revolution and the consequent increase of commerce. The industrial centres of northern England are an illustration of the way in which economic forces have worked in the building of cities. At the middle of the eighteenth century that part of Great Britain was far less populous and progressive than the eastern and southern counties. It had small representation in Parliament. It was provincial in thought, speech, and habits. It was given over to agriculture, small trade, and rude home manufacture. Presently came the revolutionary inventions of textile machinery, of the steam-engine, and of processes for extracting and utilizing coal and iron. The heavy, costly machinery required capital and the factory. Concentrated capital and machinery required workers. The working people were forced to give up their small home manufacturing and their unprofitable farming and move to the industrial barracks and workrooms of the manufacturing centres. These centres sprang up where the tools were most easily and cheaply obtained, and where lay the coal-beds and the iron ore to be worked over into machinery. From Newcastle on the east, through Sheffield, Leeds, Birmingham, and Manchester, to Liverpool on the west and Glasgow over the Scottish border grew up a chain of thriving cities, and later their people were given the ballot that was taken from certain of the depopulated rural villages. These cities have obtained a voice of power in the councils of the nation. In America the industrial era came somewhat later, but the same process of centralizing industry went on at the waterfalls of Eastern rivers, at railroad centres, and at ocean, lake, and Gulf ports. Commerce has accelerated the growth of many of these manufacturing towns. Increase of industry and population has been especially rapid in the great ports that front the two oceans, through whose gates pour the floods of immigrants, and in the interior cities like Chicago, that lie at especially favorable points for railway, lake, or river traffic. As in the Middle Ages, universities grew because teachers went where students were gathered, and students were attracted to the place where teachers were to be found, so in the larger cities the more people there are and the more numerous is the population, the greater the amount of business. It pays to be near the centre of things. READING REFERENCES HOWE: _The Modern City and Its Problems_, pages 9-49. GILLETTE: _Constructive Rural Sociology_, pages 32-46. STRONG: _Our World_, pages 228-283. NEARING AND WATSON: _Economics_, pages 123-132. GIRY AND REVILLE: _Emancipation of the Mediæval Towns._ BLISS: _New Encyclopedia of Social Reform_, art. "Cities." CHAPTER XXVI THE MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISE 186. =Preponderance of Economic Interests.=--Such a social centre as the city has several functions to perform for its inhabitants. Though primarily concerned with business, the people have other interests to be conserved; the city, therefore, has governmental, educational, and recreational functions as a social organization, and within its limits all kinds of human concerns find their sponsors and supporters. Unquestionably, the economic interests are preponderant. On the principle that social structure corresponds to function, the structure of the city lends itself to the performance of the economic function. Business streets are the principal thoroughfares. Districts near the great factories are crowded with the tenements that shelter the workers. Little room is left for breathing-places in town, and little leisure in which to breathe. Government is usually in the hands of professional politicians who are too willing to take their orders from the cohort captains of business. Morals, æsthetics, and recreation are all subordinate to business. Even religion is mainly an affair of Sunday, and appears to be of relatively small consequence compared with business or recreation. The great problems of the city are consequently economic at bottom. Poverty and misery, drunkenness, unemployment, and crime are all traceable in part, at least, to economic deficiency. Economic readjustments constitute the crying need of the twentieth-century city. 187. =The Manufacturing Industry.=--It is the function of the agriculturist and the herdsman, the miner and the lumberman, to produce the raw material. The sailor and the train-hand, the longshoreman and the teamster, transport them to the industrial centres. It is the business of the manufacturer and his employees to turn them into the finished product for the use of society. Manufacturing is the leading occupation in thousands of busy towns and small cities of all the industrial nations of western Europe and America, and shares with commerce and trade as a leading enterprise in the cosmopolitan centres. The merchant or financier who thinks his type of emporium or exchange is the only municipal centre of consequence, needs only to mount to the top of a tall building or climb a suburban hill where he can look off over the city and see the many smoking chimneys, to realize the importance of the factory. With thousands of tenement-house dwellers it is as natural to fall into the occupation of a factory hand as in the rural regions for the youth to become a farmer. The growing child who leaves school to help support the family has never learned a craftsman's trade, but he may find a subordinate place among the mill or factory hands until he gains enough skill to handle a machine. From that time until age compels him to join the ranks of the unemployed he is bound to his machine, as firmly as the mediæval serf was bound to the soil. Theoretically he is free to sell his labor in the highest market and to cross the continent if he will, but actually he is the slave of his employer, for he and his family are dependent upon his daily wage, and he cannot afford to lose that wage in order to make inquiries about the labor market elsewhere. Theoretically he is a citizen possessed of the franchise and equal in privilege and importance to his employer as a member of society, but actually he must vote for the party or the man who is most likely to benefit him economically, and he knows that he occupies a position of far less importance politically and socially than his employer. Employment is an essential in making a living, but it is an instrument that cuts two ways--it establishes an aristocracy of wealth and privilege for the employer and a servile class of employees who often are little better than peasants of the belt and wheel. 188. =History of Manufacturing.=--The history of the manufacturing industry is a curious succession of enslavement and emancipation. Until within a century and a half it was closely connected with the home. Primitive women fashioned the utensils and clothing of the primitive family, and when slaves were introduced into the household it became their task to perform those functions. The slave was a bondman. Neither his person nor his time was his own, and he could not hold property; but he was taken care of, fed and clothed and housed, and by a humane master was kindly treated and even made a friend. When the slave became a serf on the manorial estate of mediæval Europe, manufacturing was still a household employment and old methods were still in use. These sufficed, as there was little outside demand from potential buyers, due to general poverty and lack of the means of exchange and transportation. Certain industries became localized, like the forging of iron instruments at the smithy and the grinding of grain at the mill, and the monastery buildings included apartments for various kinds of handicraft, but the factory was not yet. Then artisans found their way to the town, associated themselves with others of their craft, and accepted the relation of journeyman in the employ of a master workman; there, too, the young apprentice learned his trade without remuneration. The group was a small one. For greater strength in local rivalries they organized craft guilds or associations, and established over all members convenient rules and restrictions. Increasing opportunities for exchange of goods stimulated production, but the output of hand labor was limited in amount. The position of the craftsman locally was increasingly important, and his fortunes were improving. The craft guilds successfully disputed with their rivals for a share in the government of the city; there was democracy in the guild, for master and journeyman were both included, and they had interests much in common. A journeyman confidently expected to become a master in a workshop of his own. 189. =Alteration of Status.=--Under the factory system the employee becomes one of many industrial units, having no social or guild relation to his employer, receiving a money wage as a quit claim from his employer, and dependent upon himself for labor and a living. For a time after the factory system came into vogue there were small shops where the employer busied himself among his men and personally superintended them, but the large factory tends to displace the small workshop, the corporation takes the place of the individual employer, and the employee becomes as impersonal a cog in the labor system as is any part of the machine at which he works. It used to be the case that a thrifty workman might hope to become in the future an employer, but now he has become a permanent member of a distinct class, for the large capital required for manufacturing is beyond his reach. The manufacturing industry is continually passing under the management of fewer individuals, while the number of operatives in each factory tends to increase. With concentration of management goes concentration of wealth, and the gap widens between rich and poor. Out of the modern factory system has come the industrial problem with all its varieties of skilled and unskilled work, woman and child labor, sweating, wages, hours and conditions of labor, unemployment, and other difficulties. 190. =The Working Grind.=--There are many manufacturing towns and small cities that are built on one industry. Thousands of workers, young and old, answer the morning summons of the whistle and pour into the factory for a day's labor at the machine. A brief recess at noon and the work is renewed for the second half of the day. Weary at night, the workers tramp home to the tenements, or hang to the trolley strap that is the symbol of the five-cent commuter, and recuperate for the next day's toil. They are cogs in the great wheel of industry, units in the great sum of human energy, indispensable elements in the progress of economic success. Sometimes they seem less prized than the costly machines at which they work, sometimes they fall exhausted in the ranks, as the soldier in the trenches drops under the attack, but they are absolutely essential to wealth and they are learning that they are indispensable to one another. In the development of social organization the working people are gaining a larger part. The factory is educating them to a consciousness of the solidarity of their class interests. All class organizations have their faults, but they teach their members group values and the dependence of the individual on his fellows. 191. =The Benefits of the New Industry to the Workers.=--It must not be supposed that the industrial revolution and the age of machinery have been a social misfortune. The benefits that have come to the laboring people, as well as to their employers, must be put into the balance against the evils. There is first of all the great increase of manufactured products that have been shared in by the workers and the greatly reduced price of many necessaries of life, such as matches, pins, and cooking utensils. Invention has eased many kinds of labor and taken them away from the overburdened housewife, and new machinery is constantly lightening the burden of the farm and the home. Invention has broadened the scope of labor, opening continually new avenues to the workers. It is difficult to see how the rapidly increasing number of people in the United States could have found employment without the typewriter, the automobile, and the numerous varieties of electrical application. The great number of modern conveniences that have come to be regarded as necessaries even in the homes of the working people, and the local improvements in streets and sidewalks, schools and playgrounds that are possible because of increasing wealth, are all due to the new type of industry. Conditions of labor are better. Where building laws are in force, factories are lighter, cleaner, and better ventilated than were the houses and shops of the pre-factory age, and the hours of labor that are necessary to earn a living have been greatly reduced in most industries. There have been mental and moral gains, also. It requires mental application to handle machinery. An uneducated immigrant may soon learn to handle a simple machine, but the complicated machinery that the better-paid workmen tend requires intelligence, care, and sobriety. The age of machinery has brought with it emancipation from slavery, indenture, and imprisonment for debt, and has made possible a new status for the worker and his children. The laborer in America is a citizen with a vote and a right to his own opinion equal to that of his employer; he has time and money enough to buy and read the newspaper; and he is encouraged and helped to educate his children and to prepare them for a place in the sun that is ampler than his own. READING REFERENCES CHEYNEY: _Industrial and Social History of England_, pages 199-239. NEARING AND WATSON: _Economics_, pages 206-212, 256-266. HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 143-156. ADAMS AND SUMNER: _Labor Problems_, pages 3-15. BOGART: _Economic History of the United States_, pages 130-169, 356-399. CHAPTER XXVII THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM 192. =What It Means.=--The industrial problem as a whole is a problem of adjusting the relations of employer and employee to each other and to the rapidly changing age in the midst of which industry exists. It is a problem that cannot be solved in a moment, for it has grown out of previous conditions and relationships. It must be considered in its causes, its alignments, the difficulties of each party, the efforts at solution, and the principles and theories that are being worked out for the settlement of the problem. 193. =Conflict Between Industrial Groups.=--The industrial problem is not entirely an economic problem, but it is such primarily. The function of employer and employee is to produce material goods that have value for exchange. Both enter into the economic relation for what they can get out of it in material gain. Selfish desire tends to overcome any consideration of each other's needs or of their mutual interests. There is a continual conflict between the wage-earner who wants to make a living and the employer who wants to make money, and neither stops long to consider the welfare of society as a whole when any specific issue arises. The conflict between individuals has developed into a class problem in which the organized forces of labor confront the organized forces of capital, with little disposition on either side to surrender an advantage once gained or to put an end to the conflict by a frank recognition of each other's rights. It is not strange that this conflict has continued to vex society. Conflict is one of the characteristics of imperfectly adjusted groups. It seems to be a necessary preliminary to co-operation, as war is. It will continue until human beings are educated to see that the interests of all are paramount to the interests of any group, and that in the long run any group will gain more of real value for itself by taking account of the interests of a rival. Railroad history in recent years has made it very plain that neither railway employees nor the public have gained as much by hectoring the railroad corporations as either would have gained by considering the interests of the railroad as well as its own. Industrial conflict is due in great part to the unwillingness of the employer to deal fairly by his employee. There have been worthy exceptions, of course, but capitalists in the main have not felt a responsibility to consider the interests of the workers. It has been a constant temptation to take advantage of the power of wealth for the exploitation of the wage-earning class. Unfortunately, the modern industrial period began with economic control in the hands of the employer, for with the transfer of industry to the factory the laborer was powerless to make terms with the employer. Unfortunately, also, the disposition of society was to let alone the relations of master and dependent in accordance with the _laisser-faire_ theory of the economists of that period. Government was slow to legislate in favor of the helpless employee, and the abuses of the time were many. The process of adjustment has been a difficult one, and experiment has been necessary to show what was really helpful and practicable. 194. =More than an Industrial Problem.=--In the process of experiment it has become clear that the industrial problem is more than an economic problem; secondarily, it is the problem of making a living that will contribute to the enrichment of life. It is not merely the adjustment of the wage scale to the profits of the capitalist by class conflict or peaceful bargaining, nor is it the problem of unemployment or official labor. The primary task may be to secure a better adjustment of the economic interests of employer and employee through an improvement of the wage system, but in the larger sense the industrial problem is a social and moral one. Sociologists reckon among the social forces a distinction between elemental desires and broader interests. Wages are able to satisfy the elemental desires of hunger and sex feeling by making it possible for a man to marry and bring up a family and get enough to eat; but there are larger questions of freedom, justice, comity, personal and social development that are involved in the labor problem. If wages are so small, or hours so long, or factory conditions so bad that health is affected, proper education made impossible, and recreation and religion prevented, the individual and society suffer much more than with reference to the elemental desires. The industrial problem is, therefore, a complex problem, and not one that can be easily or quickly solved. Although it is necessary to remember all as parts of one problem of industry, it is a convenience to remember that it is: (1) An economic problem, involving wages, hours, and conditions of labor. (2) A social problem, involving the mental and physical health and the social welfare of both the individual worker, the family, and the community. (3) An ethical problem, involving fairness, justice, comity, and freedom to the employer, the employee, and the public. (4) A complex problem, involving many specific problems, chief of which are the labor of women and children, immigrant labor, prison labor, organization of labor, insurance, unemployment, industrial education, the conduct of labor warfare, and the interest of the public in the industrial problem. 195. =Characteristics of Factory Life.=--Group life in the factory is not very different in characteristics from group life everywhere. It is an active life, the hand and brain of the worker keeping pace with the speedy machine, all together shaping the product that goes to exchange and storage. It is a social life, many individuals working in one room, and all the operatives contributing jointly to the making of the product. It is under control. Captains of industry and their lieutenants give direction to a group that has been thoroughly and efficiently organized. Without control and organization industry could not be successfully carried on, but it is open to question whether industrial control should not be more democratic, shared in by representatives of the workers and of the public as well as by the representatives of corporate capital or a single owner. It is a life of change. It does not seem so to the operative who turns out the same kind of a machine product day after day, sometimes by the million daily, but the personnel of the workers changes, and even the machines from time to time give way to others of an improved type. It is a life that has its peculiar weaknesses. The relations of employer and employee are not cordial; the health and comfort of the worker are often disregarded; the hours of labor are too long or the wages too small; the whole working staff is driven at too high speed; the whole process is on a mechanical rather than a human basis, and the material product is of more concern than the human producer. These weaknesses are due to the concentration of control in the hands of employers. The industrial problem is, therefore, largely a problem of control. 196. =Democratizing Industry.=--When the modern industrial system began in the eighteenth century the democratic principle played a small part in social relations. Parental authority in the family, the master's authority in the school, hierarchical authority in the church, official authority in the local community, and monarchical authority in the nation, were almost universal. It is not strange that the authority of the capitalist in his business was unquestioned. Only government had the right to interfere in the interest of the lower classes, and government had little care for that interest. The democratic principle has been gaining ground in family and school, state and church; it has found grudging recognition in industry. This is because the clash of economic interests is keenest in the factory. But even there the grip of privilege has loosened, and the possibility of democratizing industry as government has been democratized is being widely discussed. There is difference of opinion as to how this should be done. The socialist believes that control can be transferred to the people in no other way than by collective ownership. Others progressively inclined accept the principle of government regulation and believe that in that way the people, through their political representatives, can control the owners and managers. Others think that the best results can be obtained by giving a place on the governing board of an industry to working men alongside the representatives of capital and permitting them to work out their problems on a mutual basis. Each of these methods has been tried, but without demonstrating conclusively the superiority of any one. Whatever method may come into widest vogue, there must be a recognition of the principle of democratic interest and democratic control. No one class in society can dictate permanently to the people as a whole. Industry is the concern of all, and all must have a share in managing it for the benefit of all. 197. =Legislation.=--The history of industrial reform is first of all a story of legislative interference with arbitrary management. When Great Britain early in the nineteenth century overstepped the bounds of the let-alone policy and began to legislate for the protection of the employee, it was but a resumption of a paternal policy that had been general in Europe before. But formerly government had interfered in behalf of the employing class, now it was for the people who were under the control of the exploiting capitalist. The abuses of child labor were the first to receive attention, and Parliament reduced the hours of child apprentices to twelve a day. Once begun, restriction was extended. Beginning in 1833, under the leadership of Lord Shaftesbury, the working man's friend, the labor of children under thirteen was reduced to forty-eight hours a week, and children under nine were forbidden to work at all. The work of young people under eighteen was limited to sixty-nine hours a week, and then to ten hours a day; women were included in the last provision. These early laws were applicable to factories for weaving goods only, but they were extended later to all kinds of manufacturing and mining. These laws were not always strictly enforced, but to get them through Parliament at all was an achievement. Later legislation extended the ten-hour law to men; then the time was reduced to nine hours, and in many trades to eight. In the United States the need of legislation was far less urgent. Employers could not be so masterful in the treatment of their employees or so parsimonious in their distribution of wages, because the laborer always had the option of leaving the factory for the farm, and land was cheap. Women and children were not exploited in the mines as in England, pauper labor was not so available, and such trades as chimney-sweeping were unknown. Then, too, by the time there was much need for legislation, the spirit of justice was becoming wide-spread and legislatures responded more quickly to the appeal for protective legislation. It was soon seen that the industrial problem was not simply how much an employee should receive for a given piece of work or time, but how factory labor affected working people of different sex or age, and how these effects reacted upon society. Those who pressed legislation believed that the earnings of a child were not worth while when the child lost all opportunity for education and healthful physical exercise, and that woman's labor was not profitable if it deprived her of physical health and nervous energy, and weakened by so much the stamina of the next generation. The thought of social welfare seconded the thought of individual welfare and buttressed the claims of a particular class to economic consideration in such questions as proper wages. Massachusetts was the first American State to introduce labor legislation in 1836; in 1869 the same State organized the first labor bureau, to be followed by a National bureau in 1884, four years later converted into a government department. Among the favorite topics of legislation have been the limitation of woman and child labor, the regulation of wage payments, damages and similar concerns, protection from dangerous machinery and adequate factory inspection, and the appointment of boards of arbitration. The doctrine of the liability of employers in case of accident to persons in their employ has been increasingly accepted since Great Britain adopted an employers' liability act in 1880, and since 1897 compulsory insurance of employees has spread from the continent of Europe to England and the United States. 198. =The Organization of Labor.=--These measures of protection and relief have been due in part to the disinterested activity of philanthropists, and in part to the efforts of organized labor, backed up by public opinion; occasionally capitalists have voluntarily improved conditions or increased wages. The greatest agitation and pressure has come from the labor-unions. Unlike the mediæval guilds, these unions exist for the purpose of opposing the employer, and are formed in recognition of the principle that a group can obtain guarantees that an individual is helpless to secure. Like-mindedness holds the group together, and consciousness of common interests and mutual duties leads to sacrifice of individual benefit for the sake of the group. The moral effect of this sense and practice of mutual responsibility has been a distinct social gain, and warrants the hope that a time may come when this consciousness of mutual interests may extend until it includes the employing class as in the old-time guild. The modern labor-union is a product of the nineteenth century. Until 1850 there was much experimenting, and a revolutionary sentiment was prevalent both in America and abroad. The first union movement united all classes of wage-earners in a nation-wide reform, and aimed at social gains, such as education as well as economic gains. It hoped much from political activity, spoke often of social ideals, and did not disdain to co-operate with any good agency, even a friendly employer. Class feeling was less keen than later. But it became apparent that the lines of organization were too loose, that specific economic reforms must be secured rather than a whole social programme, and that little could probably be expected from political activity. Labor began to organize on a basis of trades, class feeling grew stronger, and trials of strength with employers showed the value of collective bargaining and fixed agreements. Out of the period grew the American Federation of Labor. More recently has come the industrial union, which includes all ranks of labor, like the early labor-union, and is especially beneficial to the unskilled. It is much more radical in its methods of operation, and is represented by such notorious organizations as the United Mine Workers and the International Workers of the World. 199. =Strikes.=--The principle of organization of the trade-union is democratic. The unit of organization is the local group of workers which is represented on the national governing bodies; in matters of important legislation, a referendum is allowed. Necessarily, executive power is strongly centralized, for the labor-union is a militant organization, but much is left to the local union. Though peaceful methods are employed when possible, warlike operations are frequent. The favorite weapon is the strike, or refusal to work, and this is often so disastrous to the employer that it results in the speedy granting of the laborers' demands. It requires good judgment on the part of the representatives of labor when to strike and how to conduct the campaign to a successful conclusion, but statistics compiled by the National Labor Bureau between 1881 and 1905 indicate that a majority of strikes ordered by authority of the organization were at least partially successful. The successful issue of strikes has demonstrated their value as weapons of warfare, and they have been accepted by society as allowable, but they tend to violence, and produce feelings of hatred and distrust, and would not be countenanced except as measures of coercion to secure needed reforms. The financial loss due to the cessation of labor foots up to a large total, but in comparison with the total amount of wages and profits it is small, and often the periods of manufacturing activity are so redistributed through the year that there is really no net loss. Yet a strike cannot be looked upon in any other way than as a misfortune. Like war, it breaks up peaceful if not friendly relations, and tends to destroy the solidarity of society. It tends to strengthen class feeling, which, like caste, is a handicap to the progress of mankind. Though it may benefit the working man, it is harmful to the general public, which suffers from the interruption of industry and sometimes of transportation, and whose business is disturbed by the blow to confidence. 200. =Peaceful Methods of Settlement.=--Strikes are so unsettling to industry that all parties find it better to use diplomacy when possible, or to submit a dispute to arbitration rather than to resort to violence. It is in industrial concerns very much as it is in international politics, and methods used in one circle suggest methods in the other. Formerly war was a universal practice, and of frequent occurrence, and duelling was common in the settlement of private quarrels; now the duel is virtually obsolete, and war is invoked only as a last resort. Difficulties are smoothed out through the diplomatic representatives that every nation keeps at the national capitals, and when they cannot settle an issue the matter is referred to an umpire satisfactory to both sides. Similarly in industrial disputes the tendency is away from the strike; when an issue arises representatives of both sides get together and try to find a way out. There is no good reason why an employer should refuse to recognize an organization or receive its representatives to conference, especially if the employer is a corporation which must work through representatives. Collective bargaining is in harmony with the spirit of the times and fair for all. Conference demands frankness on the part of all concerned. It leads more quickly to understanding and harmony if each party knows the situation that confronts the other. If the parties immediately concerned cannot reach an agreement, a third party may mediate and try to conciliate opposition. If that fails, the next natural step is voluntarily to refer the matter in dispute to arbitration, or by legal regulation to compel the disputants to submit to arbitration. 201. =Boards of Conciliation.=--The history of peaceful attempts to settle industrial disputes in the United States helps to explain the methods now frequently employed. In 1888, following a series of disastrous labor conflicts, Congress provided by legislation for the appointment of a board of three commissioners, which should make thorough investigation of particular disputes and publish its findings. The class of disputes was limited to interstate commerce concerns and the commissioners did not constitute a permanent board, but the legislative act marked the beginning of an attempt at conciliation. Ten years later the Erdman Act established a permanent board of conciliation to deal with similar cases when asked to do so by one of the parties, and in case of failure to propose arbitration; it provided, also, for a board of arbitration. Meantime the States passed various acts for the pacification of industrial disputes; the most popular have been the appointment of permanent boards of conciliation and arbitration, which have power to mediate, investigate, and recommend a settlement. These have been supplemented by State and national commissions, with a variety of functions and powers, including investigation and regulation. The experience of government boards has not been long enough to prove whether they are likely to be of permanent value, but the results are encouraging to those who believe that through conciliation and arbitration the industrial problem can best be solved. 202. =Public Welfare.=--There can be no reasonable complaint of the interference of the government. The government, whether of State or nation, represents the people, and the people have a large stake in every industrial dispute. Society is so interdependent that thousands are affected seriously by every derangement of industry. This is especially true of the stoppage of railways, mines, or large manufacturing establishments, when food and fuel cannot be obtained, and the delicate mechanism of business is upset. At best the public is seriously inconvenienced. It is therefore proper that the public should organize on its part to minimize the derangement of its interests. In 1901 a National Civic Federation was formed by those who were interested in industrial peace, and who were large-minded enough to see that it could not be obtained permanently unless recognition should be given to all three of the interested parties--the employers, the employees, and the public. Many small employers of labor are bitterly opposed to any others than themselves having anything to say about the methods of conducting industry, but the men of large experience are satisfied that the day of independence has passed. This organization includes on its committees representatives of all parties, and has helped in the settlement of a number of controversies. 203. =Voluntary Efforts of Employers.=--It is a hopeful sign that employers themselves are voluntarily seeking the betterment of their employees. It is a growing custom for corporations to provide for the comfort, health, and recreation of men and women in their employ. Rest-rooms, reading-rooms, baths, and gymnasiums are provided; athletic clubs are organized; lunches are furnished at cost; continuation schools are arranged. Some manufacturing establishments employ a welfare manager or secretary whose business it shall be to devise ways of improving working conditions. When these helps and helpers are supplied as philanthropy, they are not likely to be appreciated, for working people do not want to be patronized; if maintained on a co-operative basis, they are more acceptable. But the employer is beginning to see that it is good business to keep the workers contented and healthy. It adds to their efficiency, and in these days when scientific management is putting so much emphasis on efficiency, any measures that add to industrial welfare are not to be overlooked. 204. =Profit-Sharing.=--Another method of conferring benefit upon the employee is profit-sharing. By means of cash payment or stock bonuses, he is induced to work better and to be more careful of tools and machinery, while his expectation of a share in the success of the business stimulates his interest and his energy and keeps him better natured. The objections to the plan are that it is paternalistic, for the business is under the control of the employer and the amount of profits depends on his honesty, good management, and philanthropic disposition. There are instances where it has worked admirably, and from the point of view of the employer it is often worth while, because it tends to weaken unionism; but it cannot be regarded as a cure for industrial ills, because it is a remedy of uncertain value, and at best is not based on the principle of industrial democracy. 205. =Principles for the Solution of the Industrial Problem.=--Three principles contend for supremacy in all discussions and efforts to solve the industrial problem. The first is the doctrine of _employer's control_. This is the old principle that governed industrial relations until governmental legislation and trade-union activity compelled a recognition of the worker's rights. By that principle the capitalist and the laborer are free to work together or to fight each other, to make what arrangements they can about wages, hours, and health conditions, to share in profits if the employer is kindly disposed, but always with labor in a position of subordination and without recognized rights, as in the old political despotisms, which were sometimes benevolent but more often ruthless. Only the selfish, stubborn capitalist expects to see such a system permanently restored. The second principle is the doctrine of _collective control_. This theory is a natural reaction from the other, but goes to an opposite extreme. It is the theory of the syndicalist, who prefers to smash machinery before he takes control, and of the socialist, who contents himself with declaring the right of the worker to all productive property, and agitates peacefully for the abolition of the wage system in favor of a working man's commonwealth. The socialist blames the wage system for all the evils of the present industrial order, regards the trade-unions as useful industrial agencies of reform, but urges a resort to the ballot as a necessary means of getting control of industry. There would come first the socialization of natural resources and transportation systems, then of public utilities and large industries, and by degrees the socialization of all industry would become complete. Then on a democratic basis the workers would choose their industrial officers, arrange their hours, wages, and conditions of labor, and provide for the needs of every individual without exploitation, overexertion, or lack of opportunity to work. Serious objections are made to this programme for productive enterprise on the ground of the difficulty of effecting the transfer of the means of production and exchange, and of executive management without the incentive of abundant pecuniary returns for efficient superintendency; even more because of the natural selfishness of human beings who seek personal preferment, and the natural inertia of those who know that they will be taken care of whether they exert themselves or not. More serious still are the difficulties that lie in the way of a satisfactory distribution of the rewards of labor, for there is sure to be serious difference of opinion over the proper share of each person who contributes to the work of production, and no method of initiative, referendum, and recall would avail to smooth out the difficulties that would be sure to arise. 206. =Co-operation.=--The third principle is _co-operation_. The principle of co-operation is as important to society as the principle of division of labor. By means of co-operative activity in the home the family is able to maintain itself as a useful group. By means of co-operation in thinly settled communities local prosperity is possible without any individual possessing large resources. But in industry where competition rules and the aim of the employer is the exploitation of the worker, general comfort is sacrificed for the enrichment of the few and wealth flaunts itself in the midst of misery. There will always be a problem in the industrial relations of human beings until there is a recognition of this fundamental principle of co-operation. The application of the principle to the complicated system of modern industrialism is not easy, and attempts at co-operative production by working men with small and incapable management have not been successful, but it is becoming clear that as a principle of industrial relation between classes it is to obtain increasing recognition. If it is proper to admit the claims of the employer, the employee, and the public to an interest in every labor issue, then it is proper to look for the co-operation of them all in the regulation of industry. The usual experiments in co-operative industry have been the voluntary organization of production, exchange, or distribution by a group of middle or working class people to save the large expense of superintendents or middlemen. Co-operation in production has usually failed; in America co-operative banks and building associations, creameries, and fruit-growing associations have had considerable success, and in Europe co-operative stores and bakeries have had a large vogue in England and Belgium, and co-operative agriculture in Denmark. But industry on a large scale requires large capital, efficient management, capable, interested workmanship, and elimination of waste in material and human life. To this end it needs the good-will of all parties and the assistance of government. Unemployment, for instance, may be taken care of by giving every worker a good industrial education and doing away with inefficiency, and then establishing a wide-spread system of labor exchanges to adjust the mass of labor to specific requirements. Industry is such a big and important matter that nothing less than the co-operation of the whole of society can solve its problems. This co-operation, to be effective, requires a genuine partnership, in which the body of stockholders and the body of working men plan together, work together, and share together, with the assistance of government commissions and boards that continually adjust and, if necessary, regulate the processes of production and distribution on a basis of equity, to be determined by a consensus of expert opinion. In such a system there is no radical derangement of existing industry, no destruction of initiative, no expulsion of expert management or confiscation of property. Individual and corporate ownership continue, the wage system is not abolished, efficient administration is still to be obtained, but the body of control is not a board of directors responsible only to the stockholders of the corporation, and managing affairs primarily for their own gain, but it consists of representatives of those who contribute money, superintendence, and labor, together with or regulated by a group of government experts, all of whom are honestly seeking the good of all parties and enjoying their full confidence. Toward such an outcome of present strife many interested social reformers are working, and it is to be hoped that its advantages will soon appear so great that neither extreme alternative principle will have to be tried out thoroughly before there will be a general acceptance of the co-operative idea. It may seem utopian to those who are familiar with the selfishness and antagonism that have marked the history of the last hundred years, but it is already being tried out here and there, and it is the only principle that accords with the experiences and results of social evolution in other groups. It is the highest law that the struggle for individual power fails before the struggle for the good of the group, and a contest for the success of the few must give way to co-operation for the good of all. READING REFERENCES ELLWOOD: _Sociology in Its Psychological Aspects_, pages 188-194. ADAMS AND SUMNER: _Labor Problems_, pages 175-286, 379-432, 461-500. _Bulletins of the United States Department of Labor._ CARLTON: _History and Problems of Organized Labor_, pages 228-261. GLADDEN: _The Labor Question_, pages 77-113. HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 167-206. CROSS: _Essentials of Socialism_, pages 11, 12, 106-111. WYCKOFF: _The Workers._ CHAPTER XXVIII EXCHANGE AND TRANSPORTATION 207. =Mercantile Exchange.=--Important as is the manufacturing industry in the life of the city, it is only a part of the economic activity that is continually going on in its streets and buildings. The mercantile houses that carry on wholesale and retail trade, the towering office-buildings, and the railway and steamship terminals contain numerous groups of workers all engaged in the social task of supplying human wants, while streets and railways are avenues of traffic. The manufacture of goods is but a part of the process; distribution is as important as production. All these sources of supply are connected with banks and trust companies that furnish money and credit for business of every kind. The economic activities of a city form an intricate network in which the people are involved. Hardly second in importance to manufacturing is mercantile exchange. The manufacturer, after he has paid his workers, owns the goods that have been produced, but to get his living he must sell them. To do this he establishes relations with the merchant. Their relations are carried on through agents, some of whom travel from place to place taking orders, others establish office headquarters in the larger centres of trade. Once the merchant has opened his store or shop and purchased his goods he seeks to establish trade relations with as many individual customers as he can attract. Mercantile business is carried on in two kinds of stores, those which supply one kind of goods in wholesale or retail quantities, like groceries or dry goods, and those which maintain numerous departments for different kinds of manufactured goods. Large department stores have become a special feature of mercantile exchange in cities of considerable size, but they do not destroy the smaller merchants, though competition is often difficult. 208. =The Ethics of Business.=--The methods of carrying on mercantile business are based, as in the factory, on the principle of getting the largest possible profits. The welfare of employees is a secondary consideration. Expense of maintenance is heavy. Rents are costly in desirable locations; the expense of carrying a large stock of merchandise makes it necessary to borrow capital on which interest must be paid; the obligations of a large pay-roll must be met at frequent intervals, whether business is good or bad. All these items are present in varying degree, whatever the size of the business, except where a merchant has capital enough of his own to carry on a small business and can attend to the wants of his customers alone or with the help of his family. The temptation of the merchant is strong to use every possible means to make a success of his business, paying wages as low as possible, in order to cut down expenses, and offering all kinds of inducements to customers in order to sell his goods. The ethics of trade need improvement. It is by no means true, as some agitators declare, that the whole business system is corrupt, that honesty is rare, and that the merchant is without a conscience. General corruption is impossible in a commercial age like this, when the whole system of business is built on credit, and large transactions are carried on, as on the Stock Exchange, with full confidence in the word or even the nod of an operator. Of course, shoddy and impure goods are sold over the counter and the customer often pays more than an article is really worth, but every mercantile house has its popular reputation to sustain as well as its rated financial standing, and the business concern that does not deal honorably soon loses profitable trade. Exchange constitutes an important division of the science of economics, but its social causes and effects are of even greater consequence. Exchange is dependent upon the diffusion of information, the expansion of interests, and growing confidence between those who effect a transaction. When mutual wants are few it is possible to carry on business by means of barter; when trade increases money becomes a necessary medium; world commerce requires a system of credit which rests on social trust and integrity. Conversely, there are social consequences that come from customs of exchange. It enlarges human interests. It stimulates socialization of habits and broader ideas. It encourages industry and thrift and promotes division of labor. It strengthens social organization and tends to make it more efficient. Altogether, exchange of goods must be regarded as among the most important functions of society. 209. =Business Employees.=--The business ethics that are most open to criticism are those that govern the relations of the merchant and his employees. Here the system of employment is much the same as in the factory. The merchant deals with his employees through superintendents of departments. The employment manager hires the persons who seem best qualified for the position, and they are assigned to a department. They are under the orders of the head of the department, and their success or failure depends largely on his good-will. Wages and privileges are in his hand, and if he is morally unscrupulous he can ruin a weak-willed subordinate. There is little coherence among employees; there are always men and women who stand ready to take a vacant position, and often no particular skill or experience is required. There has been no such solidifying of interests by trade-unions as in the factory; the individual makes his own contract and stands on his own feet. On the other hand, there is an increasing number of employers who feel their responsibility to those who are in their employ, and, except in the department stores, they are usually associated personally with their employees. Welfare work is not uncommon in the large establishments, and a minimum wage is being adopted here and there. One of the worst abuses of the department store is the low-paid labor of women and girls. It is possible for girls who live at home to get along on a few dollars a week, but they establish a scale of wages so low that it is impossible for the young woman who is dependent on her own resources to get enough to eat and wear and keep well. The physical and moral wrecks that result are disheartening. Nourishing food in sufficient quantities to repair the waste of nerve and tissue cannot be obtained on five or six dollars a week, when room rent and clothing and necessary incidentals, like car-fare, have to be included. There are always human beasts of prey who are prepared to give financial assistance in exchange for sex gratification, and it is difficult to resist temptation when one's nervous vigor and strength of will are at the breaking-point. It is not strange that there is an economic element among the causes of the social evil; it is remarkable that moral sturdiness resists so much temptation. 210. =Offices.=--The numerous office-buildings that have arisen so rapidly in recent years in the cities also have large corps of women workers. They have personal relations with employers much more frequently, for there are thousands of offices where a few stenographers or even a single secretary are sufficient. Office work is skilled labor, is better paid, and attracts women of better attainments and higher ideals than in department store or factory. Office relations are pleasant as well as profitable. The demands are exacting; labor at the typewriter, the proof-sheets, or the bookkeeper's desk is tiresome, but the society of the office is congenial, working conditions are healthful and cheerful in most cases, and there are many opportunities for increasing efficiency and promotion. The office has its hardships. Everything is on a business basis, and there is little allowance for feelings or disposition. There are days when trials multiply and an atmosphere of irritation prevails; there are seasons when the constant rush creates a wearing nervous tension, and other seasons, when business is so poor that occasionally there are breakdowns of health or moral rectitude; but on the whole the office presents a simpler industrial problem than the factory or the store. 211. =Transportation.=--A third industry that has its centre in the city but extends across continents and seas is the business of transportation. Manufactured goods are conveyed from the factory to the warehouse and the store, goods sold in the mercantile establishment are delivered from door to door, but enormous quantities of the products of economic activity are hauled to greater distances by truck, car, and steamship. The city is a point to which roads, railways, and steamship lines converge, and from which they radiate in every direction. By long and short hauls, by express and freight, vast quantities of food products and manufactured goods pour into the metropolis, part to be used in its numerous dwellings, part to be shipped again to distant points. Along the same routes passengers are transported, journeying in all directions on a multitude of errands, jostling for a moment as they hurry to and from the means of conveyance, and then swinging away, each on its individual orbit, like comet or giant sun that nods acquaintance but once in a thousand years. The business of transportation occupies the time and attention of thousands of workers, and its ramifications are endless. It is not limited to a particular region like agriculture, or to towns and cities like manufacturing; it is not stopped by tariff walls or ocean boundaries. An acre of wheat is cut by the reaper, threshed, and carted to the elevator by wagon or motor truck. The railroad-car is hauled alongside, and with other bushels of its kind the grain is transported to a giant flour-mill, where it is turned into a whitened, pulverized product, packed in barrels, and shipped across the ocean to a foreign port. Conveyed by rail or truck to the bakery, the flour undergoes transformation into bread, and takes its final journey to hotel, restaurant, and dwelling-house. Similarly, every kind of raw material finds its destination far from the place of its production and is consumed directly or as a manufactured product. This gigantic business of transportation is the means of providing for the sustenance and comfort of millions of human beings, and in spite of the extensive use of machinery it requires at every step the co-operative labor of human beings. 212. =Growth of Interdependence.=--It is the far-flung lines of commerce that bind together the peoples of the world. Formerly there were periods of history, as in the European Middle Ages, when a social group produced nearly everything that it needed for consumption and commerce was small; but now all countries exchange their own products for others that they cannot so readily produce. The requirements of commerce have broken down the barriers between races, and have compelled mutual acquaintance and knowledge of languages, mutual confidence in one another's good intentions, and mutual understanding of one another's wants. The demands of commerce have precipitated wars, but have also brought victories of peace. They have stimulated the invention of improved means of communication, as the demands of manufacturing stimulated invention of machinery. The slow progress of horse-drawn vehicles over poor roads provoked the invention of improved highways and then of railroads. The application of steam to locomotives and ships revolutionized commerce, and by the steady improvements of many years has given to the eager trader and traveller the speedy, palatial steamship and the _train de luxe_. Transportation depends, however, on the man behind the engine rather than on the mass of steel that is conjured into motion. Successful commerce waits for the willingness and skill of worker and director. There must be the same division and direction of labor and the same spirit of co-operation; there must be intelligence in planning schedules for traffic and overcoming obstacles of nature and human frailty and incompetence. The teamster, the longshoreman, the freight-handler, and the engineer must all feel the push of the economic demand, keeping them steadily at work. A strike on any portion of the line ties up traffic and upsets the calculations of manufacturer, merchant, and consumer, for they are all dependent upon the servants of transportation. 213. =Problems of Transportation.=--There are problems of transportation that are of a purely economic nature, but there are also problems that are of social concern. The first problem is that of safe and rapid transportation. The comfort and safety of the millions who travel on business or for pleasure is a primary concern of society. If the roads are not kept in repair and the steamship lanes patrolled, if the rolling-stock is allowed to deteriorate and become liable to accident, if engine-drivers and helmsmen are intemperate or careless, if efficiency is not maintained, or if safety is sacrificed to speed, the public is not well served. Many are the illustrations of neglect and inefficiency that have culminated in accident and death. Or the transportation company is slow to adopt new inventions and to meet the expense that is necessary to equip a steamer or a railroad for speed, or to provide rapid interurban or suburban transit. Poor management or single tracks delay fast freights, or congested terminals tie up traffic. These inconveniences not only consume profits and ruffle the tempers of working men, but they are a social waste of time and effort, and they stand in the way of improved living conditions. The congestion of population in the cities can easily be remedied when rapid and cheap transit make it possible for working men to live twenty or thirty miles out of town. The standard of living can be raised appreciably when fast trolley or steam service provides the products of the farms in abundance and in fresh condition. Another problem is that of the worker. The same temptation faces the transportation manager that appears in the factory and the mercantile house. The expenses of traffic are enormous. Railways alone cost hundreds of millions for equipment and service, and there are periods when commerce slackens and earnings fall away. It is easier to cut wages than to postpone improvements or to raise freight or passenger rates. In the United States an interstate commerce commission regulates rates, but questions of wages and hours of labor are between the management and the men. Friction frequently develops, and hostility in the past has produced labor organizations that are well knit and powerful, so that the railroad man has succeeded in securing fair treatment, but there are other branches of transportation service where the servants of the public find their labor poorly paid and precarious in tenure. Teamsters and freight-handlers find conditions hard; sailors and dock-hands are often thrown out of employment. Whole armies of transportation employees have been enrolled since trolley-lines and automobile service have been organized. Fewer persons drive their own horses and vehicles, and many who walked to and from business or school now ride. Transportation service has been vastly extended, but there are continually more people to be accommodated, and motor-men, conductors, and chauffeurs to be adjusted to wage scales and service hours. 214. =Monopoly.=--A persistent tendency in transportation has been toward monopoly. Express service between two points becomes controlled by a single company, and the charges are increased. A street-railway company secures a valuable city franchise, lays its tracks on the principal streets, and monopolizes the business. Service may be poor and fares may be raised, unless kept down by a railroad commission, but the public must endure inconvenience, discomfort, and oppression, or walk. Railroad systems absorb short lines and control traffic over great districts; unless they are under government regulation they may adjust their time schedules and freight charges arbitrarily and impose as large a burden as the traffic will bear; the public is helpless, because there is no other suitable conveyance for passengers or freight. It is for these reasons that the United States has taken the control of interstate commerce into its own hands and regulated it, while the States have shown a disposition to inflict penalties upon recalcitrant corporations operating within State boundaries. It is the policy of government, also, to prevent control of one railroad by another, to the added inconvenience and expense of the public. But since 1890 there has been a rapid tendency toward a consolidation of business enterprises, by which railroads became united into a few gigantic systems, street railways were consolidated into a few large companies, and ocean-steamship companies amalgamated into an international combination. 215. =Government Ownership vs. Regulation.=--Nor did monopoly confine itself to transportation. The control of public utilities has passed into fewer hands. Coal companies, gas and electric light corporations, telegraph and telephone companies tend to monopolize business over large sections of country. Some of these possess a natural monopoly right, and if managed in the interests of the public that they serve, may be permitted to carry on their business without interference. But their large incomes and disposition to oppress their constituents has produced many demands for government ownership, especially of coal companies and railroads, and though for less reason of telephone and telegraph lines. Government ownership has been tried in Europe and in Australasia, but experience does not prove that it is universally desirable. There are financial objections in connection with purchase and operation, and the question of efficiency of government employees is open to debate. Enough experiments have been tried in the United States to render very doubtful the advisability of government ownership of any of these large enterprises where politics wield so large a power and democracy delights to shift office and responsibility. But it is desirable that the government of State and nation have power to regulate business associations that control the public welfare as widely as do railroads, telegraph-lines, and navigation companies. By legislation, incorporation, and taxation the government may keep its hand upon monopoly and, if necessary, supersede it, but the system which has grown up by a natural process is to be given full opportunity to justify itself before government assumes its functions. It is hardly to be expected that government regulation will be faultless, American experience with regulating commissions has not been altogether satisfactory, but society needs protection, and this the government may well provide. 216. =Trusts.=--The tendency to monopoly is not confined to any one department of economic activity. Manufacturing, mercantile, and banking companies have all tended to combine in large corporations, partly for greater economy, partly for an increase of profits through manipulating reorganization of stock companies, and partly for centralization of control. In the process, while the cost of certain products has been reduced by economy in operating expenses, the enormous dividend requirements of heavily capitalized corporations has necessitated high prices, a large business, and the danger of overproduction, and a virtual monopoly has made it possible to lift prices to a level that pinches the consumer. By a grim irony of circumstance, these giant and often ruthless corporations have taken the name of trusts, but they do not incline to recognize that the people's rights are in their trust. Not every trust is harmful to society, and certainly trusts need not be destroyed. They have come into existence by a natural economic process, and as far as they cheapen the cost of production and improve the manufacture and distribution of the product they are a social gain, but they need to be controlled, and it is the function of government to regulate them in the interests of society at large. It has been found by experience that publicity of corporate business is one of the best methods of control. In the long run every social organization must obtain the sanction of public opinion if it is to become a recognized institution, and in a democratic country like the United States no trust can become so independent or monopolistic that it can afford to disregard the public will and the public good, as certain American corporations have discovered to their grief. 217. =The Chances of Progress.=--Every economic problem resolves itself into a social problem. The satisfaction of human wants is the province of the manufacturer, the merchant, and the transporter, but it is not limited to any one or all of these, nor is society under their control. The range of wants is so great, the desires of social beings branch out into so many broad interests, that no one line of enterprise or one group of men can control more than a small portion of society. The whole is greater than any of its parts. There will be groups that are unfortunate, communities and races that will suffer temporarily in the process of social adjustment, but the welfare of the many can never long be sacrificed to the selfishness of the few. Social revolution in some form will take place. It may not be accomplished in a day or a year, but the social will is sure to assert itself and to right the people's wrongs. The social process that is going on in the modern city has aggravated the friction of industrial relations; the haste with which business is carried on is one of its chief causes; but the very speed of the movement will carry society the sooner out of its acute distresses into a better adjusted system of industry. So far most of the world's progress has been by a slow course of natural adjustment of individuals and groups to one another; that process cannot be stopped, but it can be directed by those who are conscious of the maladjustments that exist and perceive ways and means of improvement. Under such persons as leaders purposive progress may be achieved more rapidly and effectually in the near future. READING REFERENCES HADLEY: _Standards of Public Morality_, pages 33-96. NEARING: _Wages in the United States_, pages 93-96. NEARING AND WATSON: _Economics_, pages 241-255, 314-320. VROOMAN: _American Railway Problems_, pages 1-181. BOLEN: _Plain Facts as to the Trusts and the Tariff_, pages 3-236. BOGART: _Economic History of the United States_, pages 186-216, 305-337, 400-418. MONTGOMERY: _Vital American Problems_, pages 3-91. CHAPTER XXIX THE PEOPLE WHO WORK 218. =Economic vs. Social Values.=--Economic interests may receive first attention in the city, but the work that is done is of less importance than the people who work. Things may so fill the public mind that the real values of the various elements that enter into life may become distorted. A penny may be held so close to the eye as to hide the sun. Making a living may seem more important than making the most of life. Persons who are absorbed in business are liable to lose their sense of proportion between people and property; the capitalist overburdens himself with business cares until he breaks down under the nervous strain, and overworks his subordinates until they often become physical wrecks, but it is not because he personally intends to do harm. Eventually the social welfare of every class will become the supreme concern and the study of social efficiency will fill a larger place than the study of economic efficiency. 219. =The Social Classes.=--There is a natural line of social cleavage that has made it a customary expression to speak of the upper, the middle, and the lower classes. It is impossible to separate them sharply, for they shade into one another. Theoretically, in a democratic country like America there should be no class distinctions, but in colonial days birth and education had an acknowledged social position that did not belong to the common man, and in the nineteenth century a wealthy class came into existence that wrested supremacy from professional men and those who could rely alone on their intellectual achievements. It has never been impossible for individuals to push their way up the social path of success, but it has been increasingly difficult for a self-made man to break through into the circle of the _élite_. There are still young men who come out of the country without pecuniary capital but with physical strength and courage and, after years of persistent attack, conquer the citadel of place and power, but the odds are against the youth without either capital or a higher education than the high school gives. Without unusual ability and great strength of will it is impossible to rise high if one lacks capital or influential friends, but with the help of any two of these it is quite possible to gain success. Employers complain that the vast majority of persons whom they employ are lacking in energy, ambition, and ability. Important as is the possession of wealth and influence it seems to be the psychic values that ultimately determine the individual's place in American society. We shall expect, therefore, to find an upper class in society composed of some who hold their place because of the prestige that belongs to birth or property, and of others who have made their own way up because they had the necessary qualities to succeed. Below them in the social scale we shall expect to find a larger class who, because they were not consumed by ambition to excel, or because they lacked the means to achieve distinction, have come to occupy a place midway between the high and the low, to fill the numerous professional and business positions below the kings and great captains, and to hold the balance of power between the aristocracy and the proletariat. Below these, in turn, are the so-called masses, who fill the lower ranks of labor, and who are essential to the well-being of those who are reckoned above them. 220. =The Worth of the Upper Class.=--It is a common belief among the lowly that the people who hold a place in the upper ranks are not worthy of their lofty position, and there are many who hope to see such a general levelling as took place during the French Revolution. They are fortified in their opinion by the lavish and irresponsible way in which the wealthy use their money, and they are tantalized by the display of luxury which, if times are hard, are in aggravating contrast to the hardship and suffering of the poor. The scale of living of the millionaire cannot justify itself in the eyes of the man who finds it difficult to make both ends meet. Undoubtedly society will find it necessary some day to devise a more equitable method of distribution. But it is a mistake to suppose that most of the rich are idle parasites on society, or that their service, as well, as their wealth, could be dispensed with in the social order. In spite of the impression fostered by a sensational press that the average person of wealth devotes himself to the gaieties and dissipations of a pleasure-loving society, the truth is that after the self-centred years of callow youth are over most men and women take life seriously and only the few are idlers. If the investigator should go through the wealthy sections of the cities and suburbs, and record his observations, he would find that the men spend their days feeling the pulse of business in the down-town offices, directing the energies of thousands of individuals, keeping open the arteries of trade, using as productive capital the wealth that they count their own, making possible the economic activity and the very existence of the persons who find fault with their worthlessness. He would find the women in the nature of the case less occupied with public affairs, but interested and enlisted in all sorts of good enterprises, and, while often wasteful of time and money, bearing a part increasingly in the promotion of social reforms by active participation and by generous contributions. The immense gains that have come to society through philanthropy and social organization, as well as through the channels of industry, would have been impossible without the sympathetic activity of the so-called upper class. 221. =Who Belong to the City Aristocracy?=--Most of those who belong to the upper class are native Americans. They may not be far removed from European ancestry, but for themselves they have had the advantage of a rearing in American ways in the home, the school, and society at large. They are both city and country bred. The country boy has the advantage of physical strength and better manual training, but he often lacks intellectual development, and usually has little capital to start with. The city youth knows the city ways and possesses the asset of acquaintances and friendships, if not of capital, in the place where he expects to make a living. He is helped to success if the way is prepared for him by relatives who have attained place and property, but he is as often cursed by having more money and more liberty than is good for him, while still in his irresponsible years. No place is secure until the young man has proved his personal worth, whether he is from the city or the country and has come up out of poverty or from a home of wealth. 222. =Sources of Wealth.=--The large majority of persons of wealth have won or inherited their property from the economic industries of manufacturing, trade, commerce, and transportation, or real estate. Certain individuals have been fortunate in their mining or public-service investments; others make a large income as corporation officials, lawyers, physicians, engineers, and architects, but most of them have attained their success as capitalists, and they are able to maintain a position of prominence and ease because they use rather than hoard their wealth. It is easy to underestimate the usefulness of human beings who finance the world of industry, and in estimating the returns that are due to members of the various social classes this form of public service that is so essential to the prosperity of all must receive recognition. 223. =How They Live.=--Unfortunately, the possession of money furnishes a constant temptation to self-indulgence which, if carried far, is destructive of personal health and character, weakens family affection, and threatens the solidarity of society. The dwelling-house is costly and the furnishings are expensive. A retinue of servants performs many useless functions in the operation of the establishment. Ostentation often carried to the point of vulgarity marks habits of speech, of dress, and of conduct both within and outside of the home. Every member of the family has his own friends and interests and usually his own share of the family allowance. The adults of the family are unreasonably busy with social functions that are not worth their up-keep; the children are coddled and supplied with predigested culture in schools that cater to the trade, and if they are not spoiled in the process of preparation go on to college as a form of social recreation. There are exceptions, of course, to this manner of life, but those who follow it constitute a distinct type and by their manner of living exert a disintegrating influence in American society. 224. =The Middle Class.=--The middle class is not so distinct a stratum of society as are the upper and lower classes. It includes the bulk of the population in the United States, and from its ranks come the teachers, ministers, physicians, lawyers, artists, musicians, authors, and statesmen; the civil, mechanical, and electrical engineers, the architects, and the scientists of every name; most of the tradesmen of the towns and the farmers of the country; office managers and agents, handicraftsmen of the better grade, and not a few of the factory workers. They are the people who maintain the Protestant churches and their enterprises, who make up a large part of the constituency of educational institutions and buy books and reviews, and who patronize the better class of entertainments and amusements. These people are too numerous to belong to any one race, and they include both city and country bred. The educated class of foreigners finds its place among them, assimilates American culture, and intermarries in the second generation. Into the middle class of the cities is absorbed the constant stream of rural immigration, except the few who rise into the upper class or fall into the lower class. In the city itself grow up thousands of boys and girls who pass through the schools and into business and home life in their native environment, and who constitute the solid stratum of urban society. These people have not the means to make large display. They are influenced by the fashions of the upper class, sometimes are induced to applaud their poses or are hypnotized to do their bidding, but they have their own class standards, and most of them are contented to occupy their modest station. Only a minority of them own their homes, but as a class they can afford to pay a reasonable rent and to furnish their houses tastefully, to hire one or two household servants, and to live in comfort. Twenty years ago they owned bicycles and enjoyed century runs into the country on Sunday: since then some of them have been promoted to automobiles and enjoy a low-priced car as much as the wealthy appreciate their high-priced limousines. As in rural villages, so in the city they form various groups of neighbors or friends based on a common interest, and find entertainment and intellectual stimulus from such companionship. On the roster of social organizations are musical societies and bridge clubs, literary and art circles, dramatic associations, women's clubs, and men's fraternities. The people meet at dances, teas, and receptions; they mingle with others of their kind at church or theatre, and co-operate with other workers in settlements and charity organizations. They educate their children in the public schools and in increasing numbers give them the benefit of a college education. People of the middle class are by no means debarred from passing up to a higher social grade if they have the ability or good fortune to get ahead, nor are they guaranteed a permanent place in their own native group unless they are competent to keep their footing. There is no surety to keep the independent tradesman from failing in business or the careless youth from falling into intemperate or vicious habits; many hazards must be crossed and hindrances overcome before an assured position is secured in the community, but the opportunities are far better than for the handicapped strugglers below. 225. =Bonds of Union Between Classes.=--Though the middle class is distinct from the aristocracy of society in America, it is not shut off from association with it. The same is true in a less degree of the lowest class. Party lines are vertical, not horizontal. Religious and intellectual lines are only less so. The politician cannot afford to ignore a single vote, and the working man's counts as much as the plutocrat's. There are few churches that do not have representatives of all classes, from the gilded pew-holder to the workman with dingy hands who sits under the gallery. The school is no respecter of class lines. The store, the street-car, and the railroad are all common property, where one jostles another without regard to class. Friendship oversteps all boundaries, even of race and creed. 226. =The Lower Class.=--The lower class consists of those who are dependent upon others for the opportunity to work or for the charity that keeps them alive. They commonly lack initiative and ambition; if they have those qualities they are hindered by their environment from ever getting ahead. Sometimes they make an attempt in a small way to carry on trade on their own resources, but they seldom win success. Their skill as factory operatives is not so great as to gain for them a good wage, and when business is slack they are the first to be laid off the pay-roll, and they help to swell the ranks of the unemployed. Because of the American system of compulsory education they are not absolutely illiterate, but their ability is small; they leave school early, and what little education they have does not help them to earn a living. They do not usually choose an occupation, but they follow the line of least resistance, taking the first job that offers, and often finding later that they never can hope for advancement in it. Frequently they are the victims of weak will and inherited tendencies that lead to intemperance, vice, and crime. Thousands of them are living in the unwholesome tenements that lack comfort and attractiveness. There is no inducement to cultivate good habits, and no possibility of keeping the children free from moral and physical contamination. As a class they are continually on the edge of poverty and often submerged in it. They know what it is to feel the pinch of hunger, to shiver before the blasts of winter, and to look upon coal and ice as luxuries. They become discouraged from the struggle as they grow older, often get to be chronically dependent on charity, and not infrequently fall at last into a pauper's grave. 227. =The Degenerate American.=--Many of these people are Americans, swarms of them are foreigners who have come here to better their fortunes and have been disappointed or, finding the difficulties more than they anticipated, have settled down fairly contented in the city. Many persons think that it is the alien immigrant who causes the increase in intemperance and crime that has been characteristic of city life, but statistics lay much of the guilt upon the degenerate American. There are poor whites in the cities as there are in the South country. The riffraff drifts to town from the country as the Roman proletariat gravitated to the capital in the days of decadence. A great many young persons who enter the city with high hopes of making a fortune fail to get a foothold or gradually lose their grip and are swept along in the current of the city's débris. Illness, accident, and repeated failure are all causes of degeneration. Along with misfortune belongs misconduct. Those causes which produce poverty like intemperance, idleness, and ignorance, are productive of degeneracy, also. They render the individual unfit to meet the responsibilities of life, and tend not only to incompetence but also to sensuality and even crime. Added to the various physical causes are such psychical influences as contact with degraded minds or with base literature or art, loss of religious faith, and loss of self-confidence as to one's ability to succeed. Personal degeneracy tends to perpetuate itself in the family. Drunken, depraved, or feeble-minded parents usually produce children with the same inheritances or tendencies; family quarrelling and an utter absence of moral training do not foster the development of character. A slum environment in the city strengthens the evil tendencies of such a home, as it counterbalances the good effects of a wholesome home environment. Mental and moral degeneracy is always present in society, and if unchecked spreads widely; physical degeneracy is so common as to be alarming, resulting in dangerous forms of disease, imbecility, and insanity. Society is waking to the need of protecting itself against degeneracy in all its forms, and of cutting out the roots of the evil from the social body. READING REFERENCES NEARING: _Social Religion_, pages 104-157. COMMONS: "Is Class Conflict in America Growing?" art. in _American Journal of Sociology_, 13: 756-783. HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 276-283. NEARING AND WATSON: _Economics_, pages 185-193. WARNER: _American Charities_, pages 59-117, 276-292. PATTEN: _Social Basis of Religion_, pages 107-133. BLACKMAR AND GILLIN: _Outlines of Sociology_, pages 499-512. CHAPTER XXX THE IMMIGRANT 228. =The Immigrant Problem.=--An increasing proportion of the city's population is foreign born or of foreign parentage. For a hundred years America has been the goal of the European peasant's ambition, the magnet that has drawn him from interior hamlet and ocean port. Migration has been one of the mighty forces that have been reshaping society. The American people are being altered by it, and it is a question whether America will maintain its national characteristics if the volume of immigration continues unchecked. Europe has been deeply affected, and the people who constitute the migrating mass have been changed most of all. And the end is not yet. The immigrant constitutes one of the problems of society. Never has there been in history such a race movement as that which has added to one nation a population of more than twenty million in a half century. It is a problem that affects the welfare of races and continents outside of America, as well as here, and that affects millions yet unborn, and millions more who might have been born were it not for the unfavorable changes that have taken place because of the shift in population. It is a problem that has to do with all phases of group life--its economic, educational, political, moral, and religious interests. It is a problem that demands the united wisdom of all who care for the welfare of humanity in the days to come. The heart of the problem is first whether the immigrant shall be permitted to crowd into this country unhindered, or whether sterner barriers shall be placed in the way of the increasing multitude; secondly, if restrictions are decided upon what shall be their nature, and whose interests shall be considered first--those of the immigrant, of the countries involved, or of world progress as a whole? The problem can be approached best by considering (1) the history of immigration, (2) the present facts about immigration, (3) the tendencies and effects of immigration. Migrations have occurred everywhere in history, and they are progressing in these days in other countries besides the United States. Canada is adding thousands every year, parts of South America are already German or Italian because of immigration, in lesser numbers emigrants are going to the colonies that the European nations, especially the English, have located all over the world. European immigration to North America has been so prolonged and abundant that it constitutes the particular phenomenon that most deserves attention. Other nations have fought wars to secure additional territory for their people; the immigrant occupation of America has been a peaceful conquest. 229. =The Irish.=--Although the early occupation of this continent was by immigration from Europe, after the Revolution the increase of population was almost entirely by natural growth. Large families were the rule and a hardy people was rapidly gaining the mastery of the eastern part of the continent. It was not until 1820 that the new immigration became noticeable and the government took legislative action to regulate it (1819). Between 1840 and 1880 three distinct waves of immigration broke on American shores. The first was Irish. The Irish peasants were starving from a potato famine that extended over several years in the forties, and they poured by the thousand into America, the women becoming domestic servants and the men the unskilled laborers that were needed in the construction camps. They built roads, dug canals, and laid the first railways. Complaint was made that they lowered the standards of wages and of living, that their intemperate, improvident ways tended to complicate the problem of poverty, and that their Catholic religion made them dangerous, but they continued to come until the movement reached its climax, in 1851, when 272,000 passed through the gates of the Atlantic ports. The Irish-American has become an important element of the population, especially in the Eastern cities, and has shown special aptitude for politics and business. 230. =Germans and Scandinavians.=--The Irishman was followed by the German. He was attracted by-the rich agricultural lands of the Middle West and the opportunities for education and trade in the towns and cities. German political agitators who had failed to propagate democracy in the revolutionary days of 1848 made their way to a place where they could mould the German-American ideas. While the Irish settled down in the seaboard towns, the Germans went West, and constituted one of the solid groups that was to build the future cosmopolitan nation. The German was followed by the Scandinavian. The people of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were increasing in number, but their rough, cold country could not support them all. As the Norsemen took to the sea in the ninth century, so the Scandinavian did in the nineteenth, but this time in a peaceful migration toward the setting sun. They began coming soon after the Civil War, and by 1882 they numbered thirteen per cent of the total immigration. They were a specially valuable asset, for they were industrious agriculturists and occupied the valuable but unused acres of the Northwest, where they planted the wheat belt of the United States, learned American ways and founded American institutions, and have become one of the best strains in the American blood. 231. =The New Immigrants.=--If the United States could have continued to receive mainly such people as these from northern Europe, there would be little cause to complain of the volume of immigration, but since 1880 the tide has been setting in from southern and eastern Europe and even from Asia, bringing in large numbers of persons who are not of allied stock, have been little educated, and do not understand or fully sympathize with American principles and ideals, and for the most part are unskilled workmen. These have come in such enormous numbers as to constitute a real menace and to compel attention. TABLE OF IMMIGRATION FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1914 (Races numbering less than 10,000 each are not included) +--------------------------------------------------------+ | South Italians 251,612 | | Jews 138,051 | | Poles 122,657 | | Germans 79,871 | | English 51,746 | | Greeks 45,881 | | Russians 44,957 | | North Italians 44,802 | | Hungarians 44,538 | | Croatians and Slovenians 37,284 | | Ruthenians 36,727 | | Scandinavians 36,053 | | Irish 33,898 | | Slovaks 25,819 | | Roumanians 24,070 | | Lithuanians 21,584 | | Scotch 18,997 | | French 18,166 | | Bulgarians, Servians, and Montenegrins 15,084 | | Mexicans 13,089 | | Finns 12,805 | | Dutch and Flemings 12,566 | | Spanish 11,064 | +--------------------------------------------------------+ 232. =Italians and Slavs.=--Most numerous of these are the Italians. At home they feel the pressure of population, the pinch of small income, and heavy taxation. Here it costs less to be a citizen and there are more opportunities for a livelihood. Gangs of Italian laborers have taken the place of the Irish. Italians have established themselves in the small trades, and some of them find a place in the factory. Two-thirds of them are from the country, and they find opportunity to use their agricultural knowledge as farm laborers. In California and Louisiana they have established settlements of their own, and in the East they make a foreign fringe on the outskirts of suburban towns. North Italy is more progressive than the south and the qualities of the people are of higher grade, but the bulk of emigration is from the region of Naples and Sicily. Among the southern Italians the percentage of illiteracy is high, they have the reputation of being slippery in business relations, and not a few anarchists and criminals are found among them. It is not reasonable to expect that these people will measure up to the level of the steady, reliable, and hard-working American or north European, especially as large numbers of them are birds of passage spending the winter in Italy or going home for a time when business in America is depressed. Yet the great majority of those who settle here are peaceable, ambitious, and hard-working men and women. Alongside the Italian is the Slav. There are so many varieties of him that he is confusing. He comes from the various provinces of Russia, from the conglomerate empire of Austro-Hungary, and from the Balkan states. In physique he is sturdier than the Italian and mentally he is less excitable and nervous, but he drinks heavily and is often murderous when not sober. The Slav has come to America to find a place in the sun. At home he has suffered from political oppression and poverty; he has had little education of body or mind; he is subject to his primitive impulses as the west European long ago ceased to be. It is not easy for America to assimilate large numbers of such backward peoples, but the Slav is coming at the rate of three hundred thousand a year. The Slav is depended upon for the hard labor of mine and foundry, of sugar and oil refineries, and of meat-packing establishments. Hundreds and thousands are in the coal and iron regions of Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, and West Virginia. The Bohemians and Poles more frequently than the others bring their families with them, and to some extent settle in the rural districts, but the bulk of the Slavs are men who herd in congested boarding-houses, move frequently from one industrial centre to another, and naturally are very slow to become assimilated. 233. =The Jews.=--Of all the races that have found asylum in America none have felt abroad the heavy hand of oppression more than the Jew. He has been the world's outcast through nineteen centuries, but in America he has found freedom to expand. One-fifth of all the Jews are already in America, and the rate of immigration is not far from 140,000 a year. The immigrant Jews are of different grades, some are educated and well-to-do, but the masses are poor, and the most recent immigrants have low ideals of living. Few of those who come settle in the country districts; the large majority herd in the city tenements and engage in small trades and manufacturing. Jewish masters are unmerciful as sweaters, unprincipled as landlords, and disreputable as white slavers, but no man rises above limitations that others have set for him like the Jew, and with ambition, ability, and persistence the race is pushing its way to the front. The young people are eager for an education, and are often among the keenest pupils in their classes. Later they make their mark in the professions as well as in business. The Jew has found a new Canaan in the West. 234. =The Lesser Peoples.=--Besides these great groups that constitute the bulk of the incoming millions, there are representatives from all the nations and tribes of Europe. All parts of Great Britain have sent their people, and from Canada so many have come as almost to impoverish certain sections. French-Canadians are numerous in the mill cities of New England. From the Netherlands there has always been a small contingent. Portugal has sent islanders from the Azores and Cape Verde. The Finns are here, the Lithuanians from Russia, the Magyars from Hungary. The Greeks are pouring in from their sunny hills and valleys; they rival the Italians in the fruit trade, and monopolize the bootblack industry in certain cities. With the twentieth century have come the Turks and their Asiatic subjects, the Syrians and the Armenians. All these peoples have race peculiarities, prejudices, and superstitions. Most of their members belong in the lower grades of society and their coming is a distinct danger to the nation's future. There can be no question, of course, that individuals among them possess ability and even talent, and that certain groups like those from Great Britain and the Netherlands are exceptions to the general rule, but there is a strong conviction among social workers and students that those who are here should be assimilated before many more arrive. Definite measures are advocated by which it is expected that the government or private agencies may be able to make over these latest aliens into reputable, useful American citizens. 235. =Public Attitude toward Immigration.=--Although interest in national and immigrant welfare is far less keen than it well might be, the tremendous consequences of the wide-spread movement have not passed unnoticed. Wage-earners already here have felt the effects of low-grade competition and have clamored for restrictive legislation. On race rather than economic grounds Asiatics have been excluded except for the few already here. Federal regulation has been increased with reference to all immigrant traffic. This has been based increasingly on investigation by private effort and government commission, and governments and churches have established bureaus on immigration. Aid associations maintain agents to safeguard the newcomer from exploitation, both on the journey and in port. From all these sources a body of information has been gathered that throws light on the causes and effects of immigration. 236. =Causes and Effects.=--The primary cause is industrial. The desire of the people to improve their economic and social condition is the compelling motive that drives them, in spite of homesickness and ignorance, to venture into an unknown country and to face dangers and difficulties that could not be foreseen. Three out of four who come are males, pioneers oftentimes of a family that looks forward to a larger migration later on. Friends on this side encourage others and commonly supply the necessary funds. Eighty per cent of all who come into Massachusetts make the venture in hope of finding better industrial conditions or to join relatives or friends. In some countries, like Russia, religious and political oppression are expelling causes, and the military service required by the European Powers drives young men away. It has been demonstrated that forty per cent of the immigration is not permanent, but that for various reasons individuals return for a season, some permanently. Immigration has its good and bad effects. There are certain good qualities in many of the immigrant strains that are valuable to American character, and it cannot be denied that the exploitation of national resources and the execution of public works could not have been accomplished so rapidly without the immigrant. But the bad effects furnish a problem that is not easily solved. Immigrants come now in such large numbers that they tend to form alien groups of increasing proportions in the midst of the great cities. There is danger that the city will become a collection of districts--little Italy, little Hungary, and little Syria--and the sense of civic unity be destroyed. Even more significant is the high birth-rate of the foreigner. Statistics show that with the greater birth-rate of the immigrants there is a corresponding decline in the native birth-rate, so that the alien is supplanting the native American stock. Along with race degeneracy goes lack of industrial skill and declining wages, for the foreigner is ignorant, often unorganized, and willing to work and live under worse conditions than the native American. Among the disastrous social effects are increasing poverty and crime, lack of sanitation, and an increase of diseases that thrive in filth. Illiteracy and slow mentality lower the general level of intelligence. Lack of training in democracy renders the average immigrant a poor citizen, though some State laws give him the ballot without delay. In morals and religion there is more loss than gain by immigration. American liberty tends to become license, scores of thousands lose all interest in the church, and moral restraint is thrown off with the ecclesiastical yoke. Plainly when the immigrant population is predominant in a great city the problem of immigration becomes vital not only to the local municipality but also to the nation, which is fast becoming urban. 237. =Americanizing the Alien.=--After all is said, the immigrant problem is not insoluble. There is much in the situation to make one optimistic. Thus far the native stock has been able to survive and to give its best to the newcomer. The immigrant himself has no desire to destroy American institutions. He comes longing to share in their benefits. America is to him an Eldorado, a promised land flowing with milk and honey. His children, through the schools and other contacts, learn the language that his tongue is slow to acquire, and absorb the ideas and ideals that are typically American. After all, it is the spirit rather than the form of the institutions that make them valuable. The upper-class American, who is too indifferent to go to the polls on election day, is less patriotic and more harmful to American institutions than the Italian who is too ignorant to vote, but would die on the battle-field for the defense of his adopted country. Many agencies are at work to help the alien adjust himself to American ways and to make him into a good citizen. In the last resort the Americanization of the foreigner rests with the attitude of the native American toward him rather than with the immigrant himself. READING REFERENCES ROSS: _The Old World in the New_, pages 24-304. FAIRCHILD: _Immigration_, pages 213-368. COMMONS: _Races and Immigrants in America_, pages 198-238. ROBERTS: _The New Immigration._ JENKS AND LAUCK: _Immigration._ WOODS: _Americans in Process._ WILLIS: "Findings of the Immigration Commission," art. in _The Survey_, 25: 571-578. CHAPTER XXXI HOW THE WORKING PEOPLE LIVE 238. =In Europe.=--A large proportion of the immigrants from Europe have been peasants who have come out of rural villages to find a home in the barracks of American cities. In the Old World they have lived in houses that lacked comfort and convenience; they have worked hard through a long day for small returns; and a government less liberal and more burdened than the United States has mulcted them of much of their small income by heavy taxes. Young men have lost two or three years in compulsory military training, and their absence has kept the women in the fields. From the barracks men often return with the stigma of disease upon them, which, added to the common social evils of intemperance and careless sex relations, keeps moral standards low. Thousands of them are illiterate, few of them have time for recreation, and those who do understand little of its possibilities. Religion is largely a matter of inherited superstition, and as a superior force in life is quite lacking. To people of this sort comes the vision of a land where government is democratic, military conscription is unknown, wages are high, and there is unlimited opportunity to get ahead. Encouraged by agents of interested parties, many a man accumulates or borrows enough money to pay his passage and to get by the immigration officer on the American side, and faces westward with high hope of bettering his condition. 239. =In America.=--On the pier in America he is met by a friend or finds his way by force of gravity into the immigrant district of the city. Usually unmarried, he is glad to find a boarding place with a compatriot, who cheerfully admits him to a share of his small tenement, because he will help to pay the rent. With assistance he finds a job and within a week regards himself as an American. Later if it seems worth while he will take steps to become a citizen, but recently immigrants are less disposed to do this than formerly. Many immigrants do not find their new home in the port of landing; they are booked through to interior points or locate in a manufacturing town within comfortable reach of the great city; but they find a place in the midst of conditions that are not far different. Unskilled Italians commonly join construction gangs, and for weeks at a time make their home in a temporary shack which quickly becomes unsanitary. Wherever the immigrant goes he tends to form foreign colonies and to reproduce the low standards of living to which he has been accustomed. If he could be introduced to better habits and surrounded with improved conditions from the moment of his arrival he would gain much for himself, and far more speedily would become assimilated into an American; as it is, he is introducing foreign elements on a large scale into a city life that is overburdened with problems already. Changes in the manner of living are often for the worse. Instead of their village houses set in the midst of the open fields here, they herd like rabbits in overpopulated, unhealthy warrens, frequently sleeping in rooms continually dark and ill-ventilated. They still work for long hours, but here under conditions that breed discouragement and disease, in the sweat-shop or the dingy factory, and often in an occupation dangerous to life or limb. Though they are free from the temptations of the military quarters, they find them as numerous at the corner saloon and the brothel, and even in the overcrowded tenement itself. If they bring over their families or marry here, they can expect no better home than the tenement, unless they have the courage to get out into the country, away from all that which is familiar. Rather than do that or knowing no better way, they swarm with others of their kind in the immigrant hive. 240. =Tenement House Conditions.=--In New York large tenements from five to seven stories high, with three or four families on each floor, shelter many thousands of the city's workers. These are often built on lots too small to permit of air and light space between buildings. Some of them contain over a hundred individuals. Three-fourths of the population of Manhattan is in dwellings that house not less than twenty persons each. The density of population is one hundred and fifty to the acre. Twelve to eighteen dollars a month are charged for a suite of four rooms, some of them no better than dark closets. Instances can be multiplied where adults of both sexes and children are crowded into one or two rooms, where they cook, eat, and sleep, and where privacy is impossible. Thousands of children grow up unmoral, if not immoral, because their natural sense of modesty and decency has been blunted from childhood. The poorest classes live in cellars that reek with disease germs of the worst kind, and sanitary conditions are indescribable. If these conditions were confined to the immigrant population, Americans might shrug their shoulders and dismiss the subject with disparaging remarks about the dirty foreigner, but housing conditions like these are not restricted to the immigrant, whether he be Jew or Gentile. The American working man who finds work in the factory towns is little better off. The natural desire of landlords to spend as little as possible on their property, and to get the largest possible returns, makes it very difficult for the worker to find a suitable home for his family that he can afford to pay for. Yet he must live near his work to save time and expense. Old and dilapidated houses are ready for his occupancy, but though they are often not so bad as the large tenements, with their more attractive exteriors, they are not fit dwellings for his growing family. A flat in a three-decker may be obtained at a moderate rental, but such houses are usually poorly built, of the flimsiest inflammable material, and they, too, lack privacy and modern conveniences. 241. =Effects of these Conditions.=--It must not be supposed that these evils have been overlooked. Building associations and private philanthropists have erected improved tenements, and have proved that the right sort of structures may be made paying investments. State and municipal governments have appointed commissions and departments on housing, fire protection has been provided, better sanitary conditions have been enforced, and hopelessly bad buildings have been destroyed. But slums grow faster than they can be improved, and the rapidly growing tenement districts need more drastic and comprehensive measures than have yet been taken. The housing problem affects the tenant first of all, and in countless instances his unwholesome environment is ruining his health, ability, and character; but it also affects the community and the nation, for persons produced by such an environment do not make good citizens. The roots of family life are destroyed, gaunt poverty and loathsome disease hold hands along dark and dirty stairways and through the halls, foul language mingles with the foul air, and drunkenness is so common as to excite no remark. Sexual impurity finds its nest amid the darkness and ill-endowed children swarm in the streets. 242. =Possible Improvements.=--There must be some way out of these evil conditions that is practicable and that will be permanent. Those who are interested in housing reform favor two kinds of measures--first, the prevention of building in the future the kind of houses that have become so common but so unsatisfactory, and the improvement of those already in existence; second, provision of inexpensive, attractive, and sanitary dwellings outside of the city, and cheap and rapid transit to and from the places of labor. Both of these methods are practicable either by voluntary association or State action, and both are called for by the social need of the present. There are definite principles to be observed in the redistribution of population. The principle of association calls for group life in a neighborhood, and it is as idle to think that people from the slums can be contented on isolated farms as it is to suppose that they can be converted readily into prosperous American agriculturists. Close connection with the town is indispensable. The principle of adaptation demands that the new homes shall answer to the needs of the people for whom they are provided, and that the neighborhood shall be suited to those needs. The houses will need to be enough better than those in town to offset the greater effort of travel. The principle of control demands that the new life of the people be regulated as effectively as it can be by municipal authority, and if necessary that such municipal authority be extended or State authority be localized. There are difficulties in the way of all such enterprises, but social welfare requires improvements in the way the working people live. It is notorious that immigrants and working people generally have larger families than the well-to-do. The children of the city streets form a class of future citizens that deserve most careful attention. The problem of the tenement and the flat is especially serious, because they are the factories of human life. There the next generation is in the making, and there can be no doubt about the quality of the product if conditions continue as they are. It is important to inquire how the children live, what are their occupations and means of recreation, their moral incentives and temptations, and their opportunities for the development of personality. 243. =How the Children Live.=--The best way to understand how the children live is to put oneself in their place. Imagine waking in the morning in a stuffy, overcrowded room, eating a slice of bread or an onion for breakfast and looking forward to a bite for lunch and an ill-cooked evening meal, or in many cases starting out for the day without any breakfast, glad to leave the tenement for the street, and staying there throughout waking hours, when not in school, using it for playground, lunch-room, and loafing-place, and regarding it as pleasanter than home. Imagine going to school half fed and poorly clothed, sometimes the butt of a playmate's gibes because of a drunken father or a slatternly mother, required to study subjects that make no appeal to the child and in a language that is not native, and then back to the street, perhaps to sell papers until far into the night, or to run at the beck and call of the public as a messenger boy. Many a child, in spite of the public opposition to child labor, is put to work to help support the family, and department store and bootblack parlor are conspicuous among their places of occupation. Mills and factories employ them for special kinds of labor, and States are lax in the enforcement of child-labor laws after they are on the statute books. 244. =The Street Trades.=--Employment in the street trades is very common among the children of the tenements. There are numerous opportunities to peddle fruit and small wares at a small wage; messenger and news boys are always in demand, and the bootblacking industry absorbs many of the immigrant class. By these means the family income is pieced out, sometimes wholly provided, but the ill effects of such child labor are disturbing to the peace of mind of the well-wishers of children. Street labor works physical injury from exposure to inclement weather and to accident, from too great fatigue, and from irregular habits of eating and sleeping. It provokes resort to stimulants and sows the seeds of disease, vice, and petty crime. Moral deterioration follows from the bad habits formed, from the encouragement to lawbreaking and independence of parental authority, and from the evil environment of the people and places with which they come into contact. Children are susceptible to the influence of their elders, and easily form attachments for those who treat them well. Saloons and disorderly houses are their patrons, and when still young the children learn to imitate those whom they see and hear. Even for the children who do not work, the street has its influence for evil. The street was intended as a means of transit, not for trade or play, but it is the most convenient place for games and social enjoyments of all sorts. The little people become familiar with profane and obscene language, with quarrelling and dishonesty, and even with more serious crime, and no intellectual education in the schoolroom can counteract the moral lessons of the street. 245. =Playgrounds.=--Various experiments for keeping children off the street have been proposed and tried. Vacation schools in the summer provide interesting occupations and talks for those who can be induced to attend; their success is assured, but they reach only a small part of the children. Gymnasiums in the winter attract others of the older class, but the most useful experiments are equipped and supervised playgrounds. For the small children sand piles have met the desire for occupation, and kindergarten games have satisfied the instinct for association. The primitive nature of the child demanded change, and one kind of game after another was added for those of different ages. Swings, climbing ladders, and poles are always popular, and for the older boys opportunities for ball playing, skating, and coasting. All these activities must be under control. The characteristics of children on the playground are the same as those of their elders in society. Authority and instruction are as necessary as in school; indeed, playgrounds are a supplement to the indoor education of American children. 246. =The City School.=--The school is expected to be the foster-mother of every American child, whether native or adopted. It is expected to take the children from the avenue and the slum, those with the best influences of heredity and environment, and those with the worst, those who are in good health and those who are never well, and putting them all through the same intellectual process, to turn out a finished product of boys and girls qualified for American citizenship. It is an unreasonable expectation, and the American school falls far short of meeting its responsibility. It often has to work with the poorest kind of material, sometimes it has to feed the pupil before his mental powers can get to work. It has to see that the physical organs function properly before it can get satisfactory intellectual results. The school is the victim of an educational system that was made to fit other conditions than those of the present-day city; the whole system needs reconstructing, but the management is conservative, ignorant, or parsimonious in many cases, or too radical and given to fads and experiments. Yet, in spite of all its faults and delinquencies, the public schools of the city are the hope of the future. The school is the melting-pot of the city's youth. It is the training-school of municipal society. In the absence of family training it provides the social education that is necessary to equip the child for life. It accustoms him to an orderly group life and establishes relations with others of similar age from other streets or neighborhoods than those with which he is familiar. It teaches him how intelligent public opinion is formed, and brings him within the circle of larger interests than those with which he is naturally connected. He learns how to accommodate himself to the group rather than to fight or worm his way through for a desired end, as is the method of the street. He learns good morals and good manners. He finds out that there are better ways of expressing his ideas than in the slang of the alley, and in time he gains an understanding of a social leadership that depends on mental and moral superiority instead of physical strength or agility. As he grows older he becomes acquainted with the worth of established institutions, and his hand is no longer against every man and every man's hand against him. He likes to share in the social activities that occur as by-products of the school--the musical and dramatic entertainments, the athletic contests, and the debating and oratorical rivalries. By degrees he becomes aware that he is a responsible member of society, that he is an individual unit in a great aggregation of busy people doing the work of the world, and that the school is given him to make it possible for him to play well his part in the activities of the city and nation to which he belongs. READING REFERENCES VEILLER: _Housing Reform_, pages 3-46. RIIS: _How the Other Half Lives._ CLOPPER: _Child Labor in the City Streets._ MARTIN: "Exhibit of Congestion," art. in _The Survey_,20: 27-39. GOODYEAR: "Household Budgets of the Poor," art. in _Charities_, 16: 191-197. "The Pittsburgh Survey," arts, in _The Survey_, vol. 21. LEE: _Constructive and Preventive Philanthropy_, pages 109-184. CHAPTER XXXII THE DIVERSIONS OF THE WORKING PEOPLE 247. =The Demand for Recreation.=--The natural instinct for recreation is felt by the working people in common with persons of every class. They cannot afford to spend on the grand scale of those who patronize the best theatres and concerts, nor can they relax all summer at mountains or seashore, or play golf in the winter at Pinehurst or Palm Beach. They get their pleasures in a less expensive way in the parks or at the beach resorts in the summer, and at the "movies," dance-halls, and cheap theatres in the winter. They have little money to spend, but they get more real enjoyment out of a dime or a quarter than thousands of dollars give to some society buds and millionaires who are surfeited with pleasure. Recreation to the working people is not an occupation but a diversion. Their occupation is usually strenuous enough to furnish an appetite for entertainment, and they are not particular as to its character, though the more piquant it is the greater is the satisfaction. Craving for excitement and a stimulus that will restore their depleted energies, they flock into the dance-halls and the saloons, where they find the temporary satisfaction that they wanted, but where they are tempted to lose the control that civilization has put upon the primitive passions and to let the primitive instincts have their sway. It is a prerogative of childhood to be active. If activity is one of the striking characteristics of all social life, it is especially so of child life. The country child has all out-of-doors for the scope of his energies, the city boy and girl are cramped by the tenement and the narrow street, with occasional resort to a small park. It requires ingenuity to devise methods of diversion in such small areas, but necessity is the mother of invention, and the children of the city become expert in outwitting those whose business it is to keep them within bounds. This kind of education has a smack of practicality in that it sharpens the wits for the struggle for existence that makes up much of the experience of city folk, but it also tends to develop a crookedness in mental and moral habits through the constant effort to get ahead of the agents of social control. 248. =Street Games.=--To understand how the youth of the city get their diversions it is well to examine a cross-section of city life on Saturday afternoon or Sunday. Family quarters are crowded. Tenements and apartments have little spare space inside or outside. Children find it decidedly irksome indoors and naturally gravitate to the street, to the relief of their elders and their own satisfaction. There they quickly find associates and proceed to give expression to their restless spirits. It is the child's nature to play, and he uses all his wits to find the materials and the room for sport. His ingenuity can adapt sticks and stones to a variety of uses, but the street makes a sorry substitute for a ball-field, and while the girl may content herself with the sidewalk and door-steps, the boy soon looks abroad for a more satisfying occupation. Among the gangs of city boys no diversion is more enjoyable than the game of craps, learned from the Southern negro. With a pair of dice purchased for a cent or two at the corner news-stand and a few pennies obtained by newspaper selling or petty thieving the youngster is equipped with the necessary implements for gambling, and he soon becomes adept in cleaning out the pockets of the other fellows. 249. =Young People's Amusements.=--Meantime the older boys and girls are seeking their diversions. At fourteen or fifteen most of them have found work in factory or store, but evenings and Sundays they, too, are looking for diversion. The girls find it attractive to walk the streets, while the boys frequent the cheap pool-room, where they find a chance to gamble and listen to the tales of the idlers who find employment as cheap thieves and hangers-on of immoral houses. From these headquarters they sally forth upon the streets to find association with the other sex, and together they give themselves up to a few hours' entertainment. A few are contented to promenade the streets, but amusement houses are cheap, and the "movies" and vaudeville shows attract the crowd. For a few dimes a couple can have a wide range of choice. If the tonic of the playhouse is not sufficient, a small fee admits to the public dance-hall, where it is easy to meet new acquaintances and to find a partner who will go to any length in the mad hunt for pleasures that will satisfy. From the dance-hall it is an easy path to the saloon and the brothel, as it is from the game of craps and the pool-room to the gambling-den and the criminal joint. It is the lack of proper means for diversion and proper oversight of places of entertainment that is increasing the vice, drunkenness, and crime that curse the lives of thousands and give to the city an evil reputation. 250. =The Saloon as the Poor Man's Club.=--The saloon is an institution peculiar to America, but it is the successor of a long line of public drinking houses. There were cafés among the ancients, public houses among the Anglo-Saxons, and taverns in the colonies. At such places the traveller or the working man could find social companionship along with his glass of wine or grog, and by a natural evolution the saloon became the poor man's club. It is successful as a place of business, because it caters to primitive wants and social interests in considerable variety. It is a never-failing source of supply of the strong waters that bring the good cheer of intoxication, and lull into torpid content the mind that wants to forget its worry or its misery. It is a place where conventionality is laid aside and human beings meet on the common level of convivial good-fellowship. It is the avenue to fuller enjoyment in billiard-room, at card-table, in dance-hall, and in house of assignation, but though the door is open to them there is no obligation to enter. It is first aid to the sporting fraternity, the resort of those who delight in pugilism, baseball, and the racetrack, the dispenser of athletic news of all sorts that is worth talking about. It frequently provides a free lunch, music, and games. It is the agent of the political boss who mixes neighborhood charity with the dispensing of party jobs. "The saloon is a day-school, a night-school, a vacation-school, a Sunday-school, a kindergarten, a college, a university, all in one. It runs without term ends, vacations, or holidays.... It influences the thoughts, morals, politics, social customs, and ideals of its patrons." 251. =Substitutes for the Saloon.=--An institution that fills a place as large as this in the social life of the American city must be given careful consideration, and cannot be impatiently dismissed as an unmitigated social evil. The saloon is unsparingly denounced as the cause of intemperance, prostitution, poverty, and crime, and much of the charge is a fair indictment, but it is easier to condemn its abuses than to find a satisfactory substitute for the social service that it performs. If the saloon must go, something must be put in its place to perform its helpful functions. It may have to be legislated out of existence in order to check intemperance, for the satisfaction of thirst is its principal attraction, and its prime function is to furnish drink, but the law can be more easily enforced if other social centres are available where the average man can feel equally at home. A model saloon managed by church people or labor unionists has been tried, but has failed to solve the problem. The Young Men's Christian Association on its present basis does not reach the class of men that frequents the saloon. Coffee-houses, reading-rooms, municipal gymnasiums, and baths, may each provide a small part, but none of these nor all together fill the gap that is left after the saloon is abolished. Attractive quarters, recreational facilities, and a spirit of democracy and freedom appear absolutely essential to any successful experiment in substitution. The patrons wish to be consulted as to what they want and what they will pay for, and unless the substitute is self-supporting it is sure to fail. The most promising experiment is an athletic club maintained by regular dues, where there is abundant room for sport and conversation, and where it is possible to secure food at a moderate price and to enjoy lively music at the same time. Under a reasonable amount of regulation such an establishment cannot become a public nuisance, and it supplies a social need on a sound economic basis. 252. =Monopoly Experiments.=--It has been proposed to draw the virus of the saloon by removing the element of private profit and placing the traffic under State management. The South Carolina dispensary system was such an attempt. It broke up the saloon as a social centre, for drinking was not allowed on the premises, but it did not stop the consumption of liquor, the profits went to the public, and the saloon element became a vicious element in politics. The Norwegian or Gothenburg system was another experiment of a similar sort. The liquor traffic was made respectable by the government chartering a monopoly company and by putting business on the basis not of profit, but of supplying a reasonable demand of the working class. Fifty years' trial has reduced consumption one-half, has improved the character of the saloon, and has removed the immoral annexes. The system is not compulsory, but the people must choose between it and prohibition. The main objection raised against State monopoly or charter is that the government makes an alliance with a traffic that is injurious to society, and that is contrary to the fundamental principle of government. At best it can be regarded as only a half measure toward the abolition of the trade in intoxicants. 253. =The Seriousness of the Liquor Problem.=--There can be no doubt that the liquor problem is one of the serious menaces to modern health, morals, and prosperity. Intemperance is closely bound up with the home, it is a regular accompaniment of unchastity, it is both the cause and the result of poverty, it vitiates much charity, it is a leading cause of imbecility and insanity, and a provocative of crime. It stands squarely in the way of social progress. It is a complex problem. It is first a personal question, affecting primarily the drinker; secondly, a social question, affecting the family and the community; thirdly, an economic and political question, affecting society at large. Consequently the solution of the problem is not simple. Different phases of the problem demand a variety of methods. Intemperance may be approached from the standpoint of disease or immorality. It may be treated in medical or legislative fashion. It may receive the special condemnation of the churches. One of the most effective arguments against it is on the basis of economic waste. The best statistics are incomplete, but the conservative estimate of a national trade journal gave as the total direct expense in 1912, $1,630,000,000. This minimum figure means eighteen dollars for every man, woman, and child in the country. The indirect cost to society of the wretchedness and crime that result from intemperance is vastly greater. United States internal-revenue statistics indicate an increased consumption in all kinds of liquor between 1900 and 1910, although the territory under prohibition was steadily enlarging. 254. =Causes and Effects of the Traffic.=--The leading causes of intemperance are the natural craving of appetite and the pleasure of mild intoxication, the congenial society of the saloon and the habit of treating, and the presence of the public bar on the streets of the poorer districts of the city. The mere presence of the saloon is a standing invitation to the men and boys of the neighborhood, and it grows to seem a natural part of the environment. It is far more attractive than the cheerless tenement and the tiresome street. The sedative to tired nerves and stimulant for weary muscles is there; the social customs of the past or of the homeland re-enforce the social instincts of the present and draw with the power of a magnet. The effects of intemperance may be classified as physical losses, economic losses, and social losses. The immediate physical effect is exhilaration, but this is succeeded by lassitude and incompetency. The stimulus gained is momentary, the loss is permanent. It is well established that even small quantities of alcohol weaken the will power and benumb the mental powers. Habitual use depletes vitality and so predisposes to disease. Life-insurance policies consider the alcoholic a poor risk. The economic effect is a great preponderance of loss over gain. Somebody makes money out of the consumer, but it is not the farmer who produces the grain, the railroad company that transports it, or the government that taxes it; less than formerly is it the individual saloon-keeper, but the brewer and distiller who in increasing numbers own the local plant as well as manufacture the liquor. Neither the nation that taxes the manufacture for the sake of the internal revenue, nor the city or town that licenses the sale, gets enough to compensate for the economic loss to society. Among the specific losses to consumers are irregularity and cessation of employment, due to the unreliability of the intemperate workman and the consequent reluctance of employers to hire him--a reluctance increased since employers are made liable to compensate workmen for accidents; the poverty and destitution of the families of habitual drinkers; and the enormous waste of millions of dollars that, if not thus wasted, might have gone into the channels of legitimate trade. Finally, there is a wide-spread social effect. Intemperance ranks next to heredity as the cause of insanity. One-third to one-half of the crime in the country is charged to intemperance. Alcohol makes men quarrelsome, upsets the brain balance, and introduces the user to illegal and immoral practices. The saloon corrupts politics. It has been estimated that the liquor traffic controls two million votes, and some of it is easily purchasable. When it is remembered that the saloon is in close alliance with the gambling interest, the white-slave interest, the graft element, the political bosses, and the corrupt lobbies, it is easy to see that it constitutes a serious danger to good government throughout the nation. 255. =The Temperance Crusade.=--Intemperance has grown to be so wide-spread and serious an evil that a crusade against it has gathered strength through the nineteenth century. In colonial days the use of liquors was universal and excited little comment, but groups of persons here and there, especially the church people, opposed the common practice of tippling and began to organize in order to check it. It was not a total-abstinence movement at first, but was designed particularly to check the use of spirituous liquors. Temperance revivals swept over whole States, but were too emotional to be permanent. When the second half of the century began organization became more thorough and the Good Templars and Woman's Christian Temperance Union assumed the leadership of the cause. These organizations stood for total abstinence and State prohibition, and by temperance evangelism and temperance education the women especially pushed their campaign nationally and abroad. Among all temperance agencies the Anti-Saloon League organized in Ohio in 1893, and extending through the United States, has been most effective. It has federated existing agencies and enlisted organized religion. It has pushed no-license campaigns in States that had an optional law, has secured the extension of prohibition to scores of counties in the South and West, and has extended the area of State-wide prohibition, an experiment begun in Maine in 1851, until eighteen States are now under a prohibitory law (1915). 256. =Remedies for Intemperance.=--There is a general agreement among people who reflect upon social ills that intemperance is a curse upon large numbers of individuals and families through both its direct and indirect effects. It seems well established that even moderate drinking produces physical and mental weakness and even as a temporary stimulant is of small value. It is not so clear how to check the evil without injuring personal interests and violating the liberty which every citizen claims for himself as a right. Three methods have been proposed and tried as remedies for intemperance. The first of these is public appeal and education. Public addresses in which arguments are presented and an appeal made to the emotions have led to the signing of pledges, and sometimes to the control of elections, but they have to be repeated frequently to keep the individual who is moved by his impulses up to the standard. Slower is education through the press and through the school, where the evil effects of alcohol are demonstrated scientifically, but it has been tried patiently, and there is continually a large output of temperance literature. 257. =Regulation.=--A second method that has been used extensively is regulation. It seems to many persons that the use of liquor cannot be stopped, and if it is to be manufactured and sold, it is best to regulate it by a form of license. In many of the American States the people are allowed local option and vote periodically, whether they will permit the legal manufacture and sale of intoxicants, or will attempt to prevent it for a time. Local option has kept a great many towns and counties "dry" for years, and it is a step toward wide-spread prohibition. It is regarded by many as a better method than a State prohibition that is ineffective. Those who oppose all licensing on principle, do so on the ground that there should be no legal recognition of that which is known to be a social evil. 258. =Prohibition.=--Prohibition is to most temperance advocates the master key that will unlock the door to happiness and prosperity. The enforcement of prohibition in Russia after the European war began in 1914 had very impressive results in the better conduct and enterprise of the people. Where it has been carried out effectively in the United States, the results soon appear in diminished poverty and wretchedness and in a decrease of vice and crime. The legitimacy of this method is recognized even by liquor manufacturers, and they are willing to spend millions of dollars to prevent national prohibition, realizing that though it would not destroy their business it would greatly lessen the profits. The prohibition policy has bitter enemies among some who are not personally interested in the business. They think it is too drastic and call attention to the sociological principle that prohibitions are a primitive method of social control, but the trend of public opinion is strongly against them on the ground that prohibitions are necessary in an imperfect human society. Government increases its regulation of business of all kinds, and the police their regulation of individuals. The failure of half-way measures has added to the conviction that prohibition rigidly enforced is likely to be the only effective method for the solution of the liquor problem. READING REFERENCES STELZLE: _The Workingman and Social Problems_, pages 21-50. MOORE: "Social Value of the Saloon," art. in _American Journal of_ _Sociology_, 3: 1-12. MELENDY: "The Saloon in Chicago," art. in _American Journal of_ _Sociology_, 6: 289-306, 433-464. CALKINS: _Substitutes for the Saloon._ _Regulation of the Liquor Traffic_ (American Academy), pages 1-127. PEABODY: _The Liquor Problem: A Summary._ GRANT: "Children's Street Games," art. in _The Survey_, 23: 232-236. PARTRIDGE: _The Psychology of Intemperance_, pages 222-239. CHAPTER XXXIII CRIME AND ITS CURE 259. =The Problem of Crime.=--Habitual self-indulgence is at odds with the idea of social control. The man who resents interference with his diversions and pleasures is disposed to defy law, and if he feels that society is not treating him properly he is liable to become a lawbreaker. This is one of the reasons for the prevalence of crime, which on the whole increases rather than diminishes, and is a factor of disturbance in city life. Statistics in the United States show that in thirty years, from 1880 to 1910, the criminal population increased relative to population by one-third. This is only partly due to immigration, nor is it mainly because a large majority of criminals escape punishment. Two facts are to be kept constantly in mind: (1) Crime depends upon certain subjective and objective elements, and tends to increase or decrease without much regard to police protection. (2) As long as there are persons whose habits and character predispose them to crime, as long as there are social inequalities and wants that provoke to criminal acts, and as long as there are attractive or easy victims, so long will thieving and arson, rape and murder take place. The problem of crime is not a simple one. The individual and his family and his social environment are all involved and changes in economic conditions affect the amount of crime. The task of the social reformer is to determine the causes of crime and to apply measures of reform and prevention. The science of the phenomena of crime is called criminology, that of punishment is named penology. 260. =Its Causes.=--If there is to be any effective prevention of crime there is needed a clearer understanding of its causes. Criminologists are not agreed about these; one school emphasizes physical abnormalities as characteristic of the criminal, another considers environment the controlling influence. The removal of physical defect has repeatedly made an antisocial person normal in his conduct, and it seems plain, especially from the investigations of European criminologists, that certain individuals are born with a predisposition to crime, like the alcoholic inheriting a weak will, or with insane or epileptic tendencies that may lead early to criminal conduct; but it is not yet proven that a majority of offenders are hereditary perverts. A stronger reason for crime is the unsatisfied desire or the uncontrolled impulse that drives a man to take by force that to which he has no lawful claim. This desire is strengthened by the social conditions of the present. In all grades of society there are individuals who resort to all sorts of means to get money and pleasure, and those who are brought up without moral and social training, and who feel an inclination to disregard the interests of others are ready to justify themselves by illegal examples in high life. Given a tenement home, the streets for a playground, the saloon as a social centre, hard, unpleasant, and poorly paid labor, a yellow press, and a prevailing spirit of envy and hatred for the rich, and it is not difficult to manufacture any amount of crime. 261. =Special Reasons for Crime.=--Certain special circumstances have tended to encourage crime within the last few generations. The freedom and natural roughness of frontier life gave an opportunity for lawlessness and appealed to those who are scarcely to be reckoned as friends of society. In the mining and lumber camps gambling and drinking were common, and robbery and murder not infrequent. The American Civil War, like every war, stimulated the elemental passions and nourished criminal tendencies. Human life and rights were cheapened. The brute in man was evoked when it became lawful to kill and plunder. The moral effects of war are among the most lasting and the most pernicious. More recently the conditions of existence in the cities have generated crime and are certain to continue to do so as long as slums exist. The liberty that is characteristic of America easily becomes license, especially if restraint has been thrown off suddenly, as in the case of the immigrant, or of the country youth arriving in the city for the first time and dazzled by the opportunities of his new freedom or with a grudge against society because it has not been hospitable to him. The amount of crime is increased also by the constant increase of legislation. The social regulations that are necessary in the city tend to become confused with the more serious violations of the moral code, and because the first are frequently broken with impunity acts of crime seem less iniquitous. All these reasons help to explain the increase of crime in the cities. It is worth noticing that the blame for it is not to be placed on the immigrant. In spite of his misunderstanding of American law and custom, his overcrowding in houses and streets, his ill-treatment economically and socially, and his common disappointment and discouragement because his dreams of wealth and progress have not materialized, the immigrant as a rule is law-abiding when sober and is less responsible for crime than the degenerate American. It is important to remember that there is a constant inflow of undesirable elements of American population into the cities, as well as an influx of aliens from Europe. The proletariat is not all foreign. 262. =Measures of Prevention.=--Crime calls for prevention and punishment. Improvements in both are taking place. Various methods of prevention are being proposed and these should be considered systematically. The first step is to prevent the reproduction of the bad. It has even been proposed to take away the life of all who are regarded as hopeless delinquents. Less severe but still radical is the proposal, actually in practice in several States, to sterilize such persons as idiots, rapists, and confirmed criminals. The same end demanded by eugenics may be accomplished by segregating in life confinement all but the occasional criminals. A second step is the right training of children by the improvement home conditions, to include pensioning the mother if necessary, that she may hold the family together and bring the children up properly. The school helps to train the children, but industrial training is needed to take the place of the street trades. A third step is provision for specific moral and religious education. Many persons think that however good may be the moral influence of a school, there is need of supplementary instruction in the home and the church. In the school itself character study in history and literature helps, and attention to the noble deeds in current life; the introduction of forms of self-government and the study of the life and organization of society are also useful; but some way should be devised for the definite training of children in social and moral principles that will act as an antidote to antisocial tendencies. Experiments have been tried in the affiliation of church and school, and it has been urged that the State should appropriate money for religious training in the church, but the objection is made that such procedure is contrary to the American principle of the separation of church and state. The need of such education awaits a satisfactory solution. 263. =The Big Brother Idea.=--The most hopeful method of prevention is to provide a friend for the human being who needs safeguarding. Many a grown person needs this help, but especially the boy who is often tempted to go wrong. The Big Brother movement, starting in New York in 1905, befriended more than five thousand boys in six years, and branches were formed in cities all over the country. In Europe the minister is often made a probation officer by the state, to see that the boy or youth keeps straight. In this country through the agency of court or charitable society in some cities each boy in need has his special adviser, as each family has its friendly visitor; sometimes it is a probation officer, sometimes the judge of a juvenile court, sometimes only a charitably minded individual who loves boys. Through this friend work is found, to him difficulties are brought and intimate thoughts confided, and the boy is encouraged to grow morally strong. The immigrant, whether boy or man, often ignorant and stupid, especially needs such friendly assistance. The Boy Scout movement may be extended, or a substitute found for it, but some such organization is needed for the immigrant boy and the native American who is compelled to rely on his own resources. The fear of the law is undoubtedly a deterrent from crime, but it is inferior to the inspiration that comes from friendliness. 264. =Educating Public Opinion.=--One of the important preventives of crime is work--steady, well-paid, and not disagreeable work, with proper intervals of recreation; added to this a social interest to take the place of the saloon and the dance-hall. With these belong improved housing, a better police system, and cleaner politics. The education of public opinion will eventually lead to a general demand for all of these. The press has the great opportunity to mould public opinion, but in its search for news, especially of a sensational character, it discusses crime in such a way as to excite a morbid interest in its details, and sometimes in its repetition, and the newspaper rarely discusses measures of crime prevention. Many believe that a large responsibility rests upon the church to educate public opinion with regard to social obligation. They declare that the people need to be taught that certain social conditions are turning out criminals as regularly as the factory machine turns out its particular product, and then they need to be aroused in conscience until the will to prevent the evil is fixed. The minister, priest, or rabbi is summoned by the age to be both a prophet and a teacher of ways and means to a people too often unheeding and careless. 265. =Theories of Punishment.=--The old theory of punishment was that the state must punish the criminal in proportion to the seriousness of his crime, and that the penalty must be sufficiently severe to deter others from similar crime. This primitive theory has been giving way to the new theory of reformation. This theory is that the object of arrest and imprisonment is not merely the safety of the public during the criminal's term of imprisonment, but even more the reformation of the guilty man that he may be turned into a useful member of society. The reformatory method has been introduced with conspicuous success into a number of the American States, and is being extended until it seems likely to supplant the old theory altogether. 266. =Three Elements in the Method of Reformation.=--The reformatory system includes three elements that are comparatively new. The first of these is the indeterminate sentence now generally in practice in the United States. According to this principle, the sentence of a prisoner is not for a fixed period, but maximum and minimum limits are set, and the actual length of imprisonment is determined by the record the prisoner makes for himself. The second element is reformatory discipline. The whole treatment of the prisoner, his assignment to labor, his participation in mental, moral, and religious class exercises, are all designed to stimulate manhood and to work a complete reformation of character. The third element is conditional liberation, or the dismissal of the prisoner on parole. According to this method, the prisoner is freed on probation, if his record has been good, before his full term has expired, and is under obligation to report to the probation officer at stated intervals until his final discharge. If his conduct is not satisfactory he can be returned to prison at any time. This probation principle has been extended in application, so that most first offenders are not sent to a penal institution at all, but are placed on their good behavior under the watchful eye of the probation officer. Experience with the reformatory method shows that about eighty per cent of the cases turn out well. In the sifting process of the reformatory there are always a few incorrigibles who are turned over to the penitentiary, and most recidivists, or old offenders, are sentenced there directly. 267. =Helping the Discharged Prisoner.=--Two experiments have been tried to help the discharged prisoner and to improve the treatment of the juvenile criminal. It is a part of the reformatory system to prepare the way for a prisoner's return to society by teaching him a trade while in confinement, and finding him a place to work when he goes out, but under the old system a man was turned loose from prison with a small sum of money, to redeem himself, when he felt the timidity natural to an ex-convict and the stigma of his reputation, and in most cases took the easiest road and returned to crime. To aid him friendly societies were organized, and even now they prove necessary to get a man on his feet. The Volunteer Prison League was organized by Mrs. Ballington Booth to help in the reformation of men in prison and to aid them when they return to society, and homes have been established to give them temporary refuge. Through these efforts not a few criminals that seemed incurable have been reformed. 268. =The Juvenile Court.=--The juvenile court is the result of the enlightened modern policy of dealing with the criminal. It was the old custom to conduct the trial of the juvenile offender in the same way as older men were tried, and to commit them to the same prisons. They soon became hardened criminals through their associations. But experience proves that with the right treatment a majority of those who fall into crime before the age of sixteen can be redeemed to normal social conduct. Experiments with boys showed that there was a better way of trial and punishment than that which had been in vogue, and the juvenile courts that they devised have been widely adopted. The new plan is based on the principle of making friends with the boy. Personal inquiry into the conditions of his life is made before the trial, then the judge hears the case in private conference with the boy, and after consultation gives directions for his future conduct. It is plain that the right principle of dealing with crime is to secure the reformation of the criminal and the protection of society with a minimum amount of punishment. Retaliation is no longer the accepted principle; reformation has taken its place. Fundamental to all the rest is the prevention of crime by providing for the needs of children and youth. Methods of reform and reclamation are made necessary, because youthful impulses are not gratified in a way that would be beneficial, and habits are allowed to develop that lead to antisocial practices. Society can protect itself only by providing means for comfortable living, suitable employment, wholesome recreation, and social education. READING REFERENCES HENDERSON: _Cause and Cure of Crime._ WINES: _Punishment and Reformation_, pages 1-265. BARROWS: _Reformatory System in the United States_, pages 17-47. ELIOT: _The Juvenile Court and the Community_, pages 1-185. TRAVIS: _The Young Malefactor_, pages 100-183. CHAPTER XXXIV AGENCIES OF CONTROL 269. =Characteristics of City Government.=--The activities and associations of such large groups as the people who live in cities must be under social control. It is a principle of American life that the individual be permitted to direct his own energies as long as he does not interfere with the comfort and happiness of others, and in the country there is a large measure of freedom, but in the close contacts of city life constraint has to be in force. In contrast to the strict surveillance that is practised in certain countries, Americans, even in the cities, have seldom been watched or interfered with. The police have been guardians of peace and safety at street crossings and on the sidewalks; occasionally it has been necessary to arrest the doings of disorderly persons, to the annoyance of convivial spirits and small boys, but their functions as petty guardsmen have not given police officers great dignity in the eyes of citizens. City officials have confined their efforts to the routine affairs of their office, and have so often spent their spare time and the city's money freely for the satisfaction of their personal interests that municipal government has gained the reputation of being notoriously corrupt, and has been left to ward politicians by the better class of citizens. Nevertheless, municipal government represents the principle of control and stands in the background as the preserver of the interests of all the people. 270. =The Relation of the City to the State.=--The American city is almost universally a creature of the State. Town and county government were transplanted from England and naturally accompanied the settlers into the interior, but the city came as a late artificial arrangement for the better management of large aggregations of population, and the form and details of government were prescribed by State charter. The State has continued to be the guardian of the city, often to the detriment of municipal interests. If a city wishes to change the form of local administration, it must ask permission from the State Legislature, and every such question becomes entangled with State politics, and so is not likely to be judged on the merits of the question. Indeed, the whole history of city government condemns the intense partisanship that has directed the affairs of the city in its own interest when the real interests of all the people irrespective of party should have been cared for with business efficiency. 271. =Functions of the City Government.=--Among the recognized functions of the city government is, first, the normal function of operation. This includes the activity of the various municipal departments like the maintenance of streets, the prosecution of various public works, and the care of health by inspection and sanitation. Secondly, there are the regulative and reformatory functions, which make it necessary to organize and maintain a police and judicial force and to provide the necessary places of detention and punishment. Thirdly, there are educational and recreational functions represented by schools, public libraries, parks, and playgrounds. The tendency is for the city government to extend its functions in order to promote the various interests of its citizens. It is demanded that the city provide musical entertainments, theatres, and athletic grounds, that it open the schools as social centres and equip them for that purpose, that it beautify itself with the most approved adornments for twentieth-century cities; in short, that it regard itself as the agent of every kind of social welfare at whatever cost. Obviously, this programme involves the city in large expense, and there is a limit to the taxation and bonded indebtedness to which it can resort, but better financial management would save much waste and make larger funds available for social purposes without the necessity of raising large additional sums. 272. =How the Regulative Function Works.=--Doubtless it will be always true that the regulative function in its largest sense will be the main business of the city government. The interests of individuals clash. The self-interest of one often runs counter to the interests of another, and the city government is their mediator. At every turn one sees evidences of public oversight. The citizen leaves home to go to work in the morning. A sidewalk is provided for his convenience and safety if he needs or prefers to walk. The abutters must keep it in a safe condition; open coal scuttles, heaps of sand or gravel, or other obstructions must not remain there, and in winter ice must not threaten hurt. A street is kept clear for the citizen's carriage or automobile if he drives down-town, and a franchise is given a street-railway on certain conditions to provide cheap and rapid transit. For the convenience of the public the street is properly drained and paved, at night it is lighted and patrolled. No householder is permitted to throw ashes or garbage upon the public thoroughfare, no landowner can rear a building above a certain height to shut out light and air. The citizen arrives down-town. The public building in which he works or where he trades is inspected by the city authorities, the market where he buys his produce is subject to regulation, the street hawker who calls his own wares must procure a license to sell goods--law is omnipresent. 273. =The Police.=--The offender who violates city ordinances must expect to be arrested. Policemen are on the watch to detect such violations and promptly give warning that they cannot be permitted. Repeated violation leads to arrest and trial before a police-court justice, with the probable penalty of a fine or temporary detention in jail. In case of serious crime, the trial is before a higher court, and the punishment is more severe. Such control is necessary for the preservation of order because there are always social delinquents ready to take advantage of too great freedom. A certain class of offenses seems to require different handling. Moral obliquity such as the maintenance of disorderly houses is a corrupting influence, and the police departments of cities have frequently been charged with conniving at immoral practices. Police officials have been found to have their price, and graft has become notorious. For this reason a special morals police has been proposed to have charge of such cases, and experiments have been tried already on that plan. 274. =Organization of the City Government.=--(1) _In America._ The police department is but one of several boards or official departments for the management of municipal affairs. The administrative officers are appointed or elected, and are usually under the supervision of the city executive. The usual form of city government is modelled upon the State; a mayor corresponds to the governor and a city council of one or two chambers usually elected by wards is parallel to the State Legislature. The mayor is the executive officer and the head of the administrative system, the council assists or obstructs him, appropriates funds, and attends to the details of municipal legislation. Political considerations rather than fitness for office have usually determined the choice of persons for positions. (2) _In Europe._ In Europe municipal government is treated as a business or professional matter, not one of politics, and the results have been so much more satisfactory that American cities have begun to reform their governments. In England cities are governed according to the Local Government Act of 1888, by which cities of more than fifty thousand people become counties for administrative purposes, and control of administration is vested in a council elected by voters of the city. Councillors are regarded with high honor, but their work is a work of patriotism, for they are unpaid, with the result that the best men enter the city councils. Administration is carried on through various committees and through department officials who are retained permanently. In Germany the cities are managed like large households, and their officials are free to undertake improvements without specific legislative permission. The mayor or burgomaster is usually one who makes a profession of magistracy, and he need not be a citizen of the city that he serves. In administration he is assisted by a board of experts known as magistrates, who are elected by the council, usually for life. The council is the real governing body, and its members are elected by the people for six years, one-third of them retiring periodically, as in the United States Senate. The activities of the German cities are more numerous than in this country, yet they are managed economically and efficiently. 275. =Organizing Municipal Reform.=--The earliest reform movements in the United States were spasmodic uprisings of outraged citizens who were convinced of the corruption of city government. Among the pioneers in organization were leagues of reform in Chicago, Baltimore, and Boston, organized between 1874 and 1885. In 1887 the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Good Citizenship was formed. The weakness of the early movements was the temporary enthusiasm that soon died away after a victory for reform was gained at the polls; within a short time the grafters were in the saddle again. The year 1892 marked an epoch, for in that year the first City Club was organized in New York, followed by Good Government Clubs in many cities, and finally by the National Municipal League in 1894. Two hundred reform leagues in the larger cities united in the National Reform League, with its centre in Philadelphia. After 1905 a new impetus was given to civic reform by the new moral emphasis in business and politics. Better officials were elected and others were reminded that they were responsible to the people more than to the political machine. An extension of reform effort through direct primary nominations came into vogue on the principle that government ought to be by the people themselves: that democracy means self-control. The extension of municipal ownership was widely discussed on the principle that the people's interests demanded the better control of public utilities. There was apparent a new recognition that the city government was only an agent of popular control, not an irresponsible bureau for the enrichment of a few officials at the public expense. 276. =Commission Government.=--In a number of cases radical changes were made in the charter of the city. Galveston and several other Texas cities tried the experiment of substituting a commission for the mayor and council. The Galveston idea originated in 1901, after a hurricane had devastated the city, and the mayor and aldermen proved unable to cope with the situation. Upon request of an existing civic committee the State legislature gave to the city a new charter, with provision for a commission of five, including a mayor who ordinarily has no more power than any other commissioner. Each man was to manage a department and receive a salary. In four years the commission saved the city a million dollars. Des Moines, Iowa, added to the Galveston plan the initiative, the referendum, and the recall, put in force a merit system for subordinate officials, and adopted the non-partisan open primary. These experiments proved so popular that in 1908-9 not less than one hundred and thirty-eight cities, including most of the large ones, proposed to make important changes in their charters, adopting the most prominent features of the new plan, or adapting the new to the old system. Commission government has been defined as "that form of city government in which a small board, elected at large, exercises substantially the entire municipal authority, each member being assigned as head of a rather definite division of the administrative work; the commission being subject to one or more means of direct popular control, such as publicity of proceedings, recall, referendum, initiative, and a non-partisan ballot." Commission government is less cumbersome and less partisan than the old system and tends to be more efficient, but the public needs to remember that it is the men in office and not the form of government that make the control of municipal affairs a success or failure. In a few cases only disappointment has resulted from the changes made, and commission government is still in its experimental stage. 277. =The City Manager.=--A modification of the commission plan was tried in several cities of the South and Middle West in 1913-14. This has been called the city-manager plan. It is founded on the belief that the city needs business administration, and that a board of directors is not so efficient as a single manager employed by the commission, who shall have charge of all departments, appoint department heads as his subordinates, and thus unify the whole administration of municipal affairs. The manager is responsible to the commission, and through it to the people, and may be removed by the commission, or even by popular recall. Such a plan as this is, of course, liable to abuse, unless the commissioners are high-minded, conscientious men, and it has not been tried long enough to prove its worth. The best element in the whole history of recent municipal changes is the earnest effort of the people to find a form of administrative control that will work well, and this gives ground for belief that the experiments will continue until the American city will cease to be notorious for misgovernment and become, instead, a model for the whole nation. READING REFERENCES _Commission Government and the City Manager Plan_ (American Academy), pages 3-11, 103-109, 171-179, 183-201. GOODNOW: _City Government in the United States_, pages 69-108. BRYCE: _The American Commonwealth_ (abridged edition), pages 417-427. SHAW: _Municipal Government in Continental Europe_, pages 1-145. ZUEBLIN: _American Municipal Progress_ (revised edition), pages 376-394. CHAPTER XXXV DIFFICULTIES OF THE PEOPLE WHO WORK 278. =The Fact of Misery.=--A brief study of the conditions in which a city's toilers live and work and play makes it plain that the people have to contend with numerous difficulties. Large numbers of them are in misery, and there are few who are not living in constant fear of it. To a foreigner who did not understand America, it would seem incredible that misery should be prevalent in the midst of wealth and unbounded natural resources, when mines and factories are making record-breaking outputs, when harbors are thronged with ships and the call for workers goes across the sea. But no one who visits the tenements and alleys of the city fails to find abundant evidence of misery and want. People do not live in dark rooms and dirty surroundings from choice, sometimes as many as two thousand in a single block. They do not willingly pay a large percentage of their earnings in rent for a tenement that breeds fever and tuberculosis. They do not feed their babies on impure milk and permit their children to forage among the garbage cans because they care nothing for their young. They do not shiver without heat or lose vitality for lack of food until they have struggled for a comfortable existence to the point of exhaustion. Misery is here as it is in the Old World cities, and it leads to weakness and disease, drunkenness, vice, and crime. 279. =Easy Explanations.=--It is impossible to unravel completely the skein of difficulties in which the people are enmeshed, or to simplify the causes of the tangle. It is easy to blame a person's wretchedness on his individual misconduct and incompetency, to say, for example, that a man's family is sick and poor because he is intemperate. There might be truth in the charge, but it would probably not be the whole truth. It is easy to go back of the circumstance to the weak will of the man that made him a prey to impulse and appetite and kept him primitive in his habits, but that alone would not explain conditions. It is easy to charge misery upon the ignorance of the woman in the home who is wasteful of food and does not know how to provide for her family, or to charge lack of common sense to the home-makers when they try to raise six children on an income that is not enough for two. It is very common to lay all misery at the door of the capitalist who underpays labor and feels no responsibility for the life conditions of his employee. No one of these explains the presence of misery. It is easy to propose to society a simple remedy like better housing, prohibition, or socialism, when the only correct diagnosis of conditions demands a prolonged and expensive course of treatment that involves surgical action in the social body. It is easy to raise money for charity, to endow hospitals, and to talk about made-to-order schemes for ending unemployment, poverty, and panic, but it is soon discovered that there is no panacea for the evils that infest society. Back of all personal misconduct or misfortune, of all social specific or cure-all, is the fundamental difficulty that misery exists, that its causes are complex, and that all efforts to provide efficient relief on a large scale have failed, as far as history records. 280. =Poverty and Its Extent.=--Misery appears commonly in the form of sickness, vice, and poverty. One of these reacts upon another, and is both the cause and the result of another. Mental and moral incapacity, ignorance of hygiene, weakness of will, habits that seem incurable, all of these produce the first two in a seemingly hopeless way; poverty appears to be incurable above the rest. It is poverty that prevents fortifying the will by increasing physical stamina and moral courage, it is poverty that drives a man; to drink or desperation, and it is poverty that prescribes the unfavorable surroundings that do so much to keep a man down. Poverty is a danger flag that indicates the probability of deeper degradation and calls for the individual or group that is better off to lend a hand. Poverty is a goad, a thorn in the flesh of society, that is pushing it along the road of social reform. Private philanthropy, legislative enactment, and much talking are being tried as experiments to find a solution of the difficulty, but theorists and practitioners are not yet in full agreement as to the way out. There are, of course, different degrees of poverty, ranging from the helpless incompetents at the bottom of the scale to those who are in a fair degree of comfort, but who have so little laid aside for a rainy day that they live in constant fear of the poorhouse. Some struggle harder than others, and maintain an existence on or just above the poverty line--these are technically the poor. Charles Booth defines the poor as those "living in a state of struggle to obtain the necessaries of life." A few cease to struggle at all and, if they continue to live, manage it only by living on permanent charity--these are the paupers. This is a distinction that is carefully made by sociologists and is always convenient. It is difficult to estimate the extent of poverty with any accuracy, but a few estimates of skilled observers indicate its wide extent. Charles Booth thought that thirty per cent of the people of London were on or below the poverty line. Robert Hunter has declared that in 1899 eighteen per cent of the people in New York State received aid, and that ten per cent of those who died in Manhattan received pauper burial. Alongside these statements are the various estimates of 80,000 persons in almshouses in the United States, 3,000,000 receiving public or private aid, with a total annual expense of $200,000,000. The number of those who have small resources in reserve are many times as great, but industrious, frugal, and self-respecting, they manage to take care of themselves. 281. =Causes of Poverty.=--It is still more difficult to speak exactly of the relative importance of the causes of poverty. Investigation of hundreds of cases in certain localities makes it plain that poverty comes through a combination of several factors, including personal incompetence or misconduct, misfortune, and the effects of environment. In Boston out of one thousand cases investigated twenty-five years ago (1890-91), twenty per cent was due to drink, a figure nearly twice as much as the average found in other large cities; nine per cent more was due to such misconduct as shiftlessness, crime, and vagrancy; while seventy per cent was owing to misfortune, including defective employment and sickness or death in the family. Five thousand families investigated at another time in New York City showed that physical disability was present in three out of four families, and unemployment was responsible in two out of three cases. In nearly half the families there was found defect of character, and in a third of the cases there was widowhood or desertion or overcrowding. Added to these were old-age incapacity, large families, and ill adjustment to environment due to recent arrival in the city. Taking these as fair samples, it is proper to conclude that the causes commonly to be assigned to poverty are both subjective and objective, or individual and social. It was formerly customary to throw most of the blame on the poor themselves, to charge them with being lazy, intemperate, vicious, and generally incompetent, and it is useless to deny that these appear to be the direct causes in great numbers of instances, but as much of the negro and poor white trash in the South was found to be due to hookworm infection, so very many of the faults of the shiftless poor in the cities are due more indirectly to lack of nourishment, of education, and of courage. Over and over again, it may be, has the worker tried to get on better, only to get sick or lose his job just as he was improving his lot. The tendency of opinion is in the direction of putting the chief blame upon the disposition of the employer to exploit the worker, and the indifference of society to such exploitation; it is the discouraging conditions in which the working man lives, the uncertainty of employment and the high cost of living, the danger of accident and disease that constantly hangs over the laborer and his family, that devitalizes and disheartens him, and casts him before he is old on the social scrap heap. Summing up, it is convenient to classify the causes of poverty as individual and social, including under the first head ignorance, inefficiency, illness or accident, intemperance, and immorality, and under the second unemployment, widowhood, or desertion, overcrowding and insanitation, the high cost of living versus low wages, and lack of adjustment to environment. Poverty is one of those social conditions that appear in all parts of the country, even in the smaller villages, but it is more dreadful and wide-spread in the great cities. In smaller communities the cases are few and can be taken care of without great difficulty; to the larger centres have drifted the poor from the rural regions, and there congregate the immigrants who have failed to make good, until in large numbers they drain the vitals of the city's strength. Yet the problem of poverty is not new. It would be difficult to find any ancient city that did not have its rabble or mediæval village without its "ne'er-do-weel"; and in every period church or state or feudal group has taken its turn in providing relief. In recent years the principle of bestowing charity has been giving way to the principle of destroying poverty at the roots by removing the causes that produce it. This is no easy task, but experience has shown that it is the only effective way to get rid of the difficulty. 282. =Proposed Methods of Solution.=--The solution of the problem of poverty cannot be found in charity. Properly administered charity is a helpful means of temporary relief, but if it becomes permanent it pauperizes. It never will cure poverty. In spite of all charity organization, poverty increases as the cities grow, until it is clear that the causes must be removed if there is to be any hope of permanent relief. A better education is proposed as an offset to ignorance. Women need instruction in cooking, home making, and the care of children, for girls graduating from a machine or the counter of a department store into matrimony cannot reasonably be expected to know much about housekeeping. Such evils as divorce, desertion, intemperance, and poverty are due repeatedly to failure to make a home. Proper hygienic habits, care of sanitation, simple precautions against colds, coughs, and tuberculosis, make a great difference in the amount of misery. It is a question worth considering whether the home end of the poverty problem is not as important as the employment end. For the man's ignorance and inefficiency it is proposed that the vocational education of boys be widely extended. The social causes of poverty lead into other departments of sociological study, like the industrial problem, and it is useless to talk about a cure for poverty as an isolated phenomenon, yet there are certain principles that are necessarily involved. The whole subject of the poor needs thorough study. Organizations like the charity societies already have much data. The Russell Sage Foundation in New York City is making invaluable contributions to public knowledge. The reports of the national and State bureaus of labor contain a vast amount of statistical information. All this needs digestion. Then on the basis of investigation and digestion of information comes prompt and intelligent legislation for the amelioration of poverty, until the most shameful conditions in employment and housing are made impossible. Only persistent legislation and enforcement of law can make greedy landlords and capitalists do the right thing by the poor, until all society is spiritualized by the new social gospel of mutual consideration and educated to apply it to community life. 283. =Pauperism.=--Pauperism is poverty become chronic. When a family has been hopelessly dependent so long that self-respect and initiative are wholly gone, it seems useless to attempt to galvanize it into activity or respectability, and when a group of such families pauperizes a neighborhood, heroic measures become necessary. The families must be broken up, their members placed in institutions where they cannot remain sodden in drink or become violent in crime, and the neighborhood cleansed of its human débris. Pauperism is a social pest, and it must be rooted out like any other pest. If it is allowed to remain it festers; nothing short of eradication will suffice. But when once it is destroyed living conditions must be so reformed that pauperism will not recur, and that can be only by constant vigilance to prevent a continuance of poverty. The problem is one, and its solution must involve both poverty and pauperism. 284. =Unemployment.=--One of the causes of wide-spread poverty is unemployment. This is due sometimes to physical weakness or lack of ability or character, but as often to industrial depression or lack of adjustment between the labor supply and the employer. There is always an army of the unemployed, and it has increased so greatly through immigration and otherwise that it has demanded the serious attention of sociologists and legislators. Charitable organizations have given relief, but it is not properly a question of charity; private agencies have made a business of bringing together the employer and the employee, but not always treating fairly the employee; permanent free labor exchanges are now being tried by governments. The National Conference on Unemployment, meeting in 1914, recommended three constructive proposals, which include most of the experiments already tried in Europe and America. These are first the regularizing of business by putting it on a year-round basis instead of seasonal; second, the organization of a system of labor exchanges, local and State, to be supervised and co-ordinated by a national exchange; and third, a national insurance system for the unemployed, such as has been inaugurated successfully in Germany and Great Britain. The problem of unemployment is less complicated than many social problems, and there is every reason to believe that through careful legislation and administration it can be largely removed. The problem of those who are unable to work or unwilling to work is solved by means of public institutions. The whole problem of poverty awaits only intelligent, energetic, and united action for its successful solution. READING REFERENCES DEVINE: _Misery and Its Causes_, pages 3-50. HUNTER: _Poverty_, pages 66-105, 318-340. HENDERSON: _Dependents, Defectives, and Delinquents_, second edition, pages 12-97, 160-209. CARLTON: _History and Problems of Organized Labor_, pages 431-445. MARTIN: "Remedy for Unemployment," art. in _The Survey_, 22: 115-117. BOOTH: _Pauperism._ CHAPTER XXXVI CHARITY AND THE SETTLEMENTS 285. =The Impulse to Charity.=--The first impulse that stirs a person who sees another in want is immediately to relieve the want. This impulse to charity makes public begging profitable. It is an impulse creditable to the human heart, but its effects have not been approved by reason, for indiscriminate charity provokes deception, and is certain to result in chronic dependency. Wise methods of charity, therefore, constitute a problem as truly as poverty itself. Experience has proved so conclusively that the old methods of relief are unsatisfactory, that it has become necessary to determine and formulate true principles of relief for those who really desire to exercise their philanthropy helpfully. How to help is the question. 286. =History of Relief.=--Some light is thrown on the subject from the experience of the past. The whole notion of charity as a social duty was foreign to ancient thought. Families and clans had their own dependents, and benefit societies helped their own members. The Hebrew prophets called for mercy and kindness, Jesus spoke his parable of the good Samaritan, and the primitive Christians went so far as to organize their charity, so that none of their members would fail of a fair share. The church taught alms-giving as a deed of merit before God, and all through its history the Catholic Church has done much for its poor. In the Middle Ages it was a part of the feudal theory that the lord would care for his serfs, but in reality they got most help at the doors of a monastery. In modern times the church has shifted its burden to the state. This was inevitable in countries where there was no state church, and it was in accordance with the modern principle that the state is organized society functioning for the social welfare of all the people. In America the colonies and then the States adopted the English custom of relieving extreme need. At first it was possible for local committees to take care of their poor by doles furnished sparingly in their homes, and to place the chronic dependents in almshouses. The former practice is known as outdoor relief, the latter as indoor relief. Such relief was not administered scientifically, and did not help to reduce the amount of poverty. The almshouses were the dumping-ground of a community's undesirables, including idiots and even insane, cripples and incurables, epileptics, old people, and orphan children, constituting a social environment that was anything but helpful to human development. After a time it became necessary for the State to relieve the local authorities. The defectives and dependents became too numerous for the local community to take care of, and enlightened philanthropy was learning better methods. The result has been the gradual extension of State care and the segregation of the various classes of incompetents in various State institutions, including hospitals for the insane, the epileptic, and the morally deficient, sanitaria for those who suffer from alcoholic and tuberculous diseases, and schools for the proper training of the youth who have come under public oversight. 287. =Voluntary Charity.=--Public relief has been supplemented extensively by voluntary charity. This has become increasingly scientific. Indeed popular ideas have been largely transformed during the last generation. In the small towns and villages where there was little destitution, and where all knew one another's needs, there was no special need of scientific investigation or charitable organization, but in the large cities it became necessary. Thomas Chalmers in Scotland and Edward Denison and Octavia Hill in England demonstrated the conditions and the advantages of organized effort. The first charity organization society was organized in 1869 in London. Its fundamental principle was to help the poor to help themselves rather than to give them alms. Its aim was to federate all the charitable efforts of London, and while this has not proved practicable, it has greatly increased efficiency and has helped to bind together philanthropic effort all over England. The income of the various charitable agencies of London alone was reported to be $43,000,000 in 1906. In the United States the first organization on the English model was the charity organization society of Buffalo, founded in 1877; Boston followed with a similar organization the next year. These were followed by the organization of a National Conference of Charities and Corrections, which holds annual meetings and publishes reports that are a valuable storehouse of information. Many charitable agencies of various kinds contribute to the work of relief, some of them really helpful, others actually blocking the way of genuine progress, but all showing the strength of the philanthropic motive in American cities. The closer their alliance with the associated charities the more effective are their measures of charity. Three stages have marked the history of the charitable organization societies, as they have learned from experience. The first has been called the repressive stage. The fear of pauperizing recipients of charity made the societies too strict in their alms-giving, so that hardships resulted that were unnecessary, but such a course was the natural reaction against the indiscriminate charity that had been in vogue. This stage was succeeded by the discriminative, in which help is given discriminatingly, as investigation shows a real need at the same time that efforts are being put forth to make prolonged giving unnecessary. Closely combined with this discrimination, which is in constant use, is the third method of construction. By this constructive method the worker tries to get at the cause of the particular case of poverty and to alter the social conditions so that the cause shall no longer act. Experience and experiment have produced numerous specific measures of a constructive sort, like the establishment of playgrounds and public parks, kindergartens and schools for specific purposes, social settlements and school centres, municipal baths and gymnasiums, tenement-house reforms and the prevention of disease. 288. =Friendly Visiting.=--The functions of charity organization societies have been described as the co-ordination and co-operation of local societies rather than direct relief from the central organization, thorough investigation of all cases, with temporary relief where necessary, the establishment of friendly relations between the poor and the well-to-do, the finding of work for those who need it, and the accumulation of knowledge on poverty conditions. The actual contact of charitable societies with the people has been mainly through friendly visitors who voluntarily engage to call on the needy, and who meet at regular intervals to discuss concrete cases as well as general methods. These visitors have the advantage of bringing their spontaneous sympathy to bear upon the specific instances that come to their personal attention, whereas the officials of the charity organization society inevitably become more callous to suffering and tend to look upon each family as a case to be pigeonholed or scientifically treated, but the conviction is growing, nevertheless, that the situation can be effectively handled only by men and women who are genuinely experts, trained in the social settlements or in the schools of philanthropy. Whether a voluntary church worker or a charity expert, it is the business of the visitor to make thorough investigation of conditions, not merely inquiring of landlord or neighbors, or taking the hurried testimony of the family, but patiently searching for information from those who have known the case over a long period, preferably through the charity organization society. Actual relief may be required temporarily and must be adequate to the occasion, but the problem of the visitor is to devise a method of self-help, and to furnish the courage necessary to undertake and carry it through. It is important to consider in this connection the character and ancestry of the family, its environment and the social ideals and expectations of its members, if the steps taken are to be effective. The two principles that underlie the whole practice of relief are, first, to restore the individual or family to a normal place in society from which it has fallen, or to raise it to a normal standard of living which it has never before reached; secondly, to make all charity discriminative and co-operative, that it may accomplish the end sought without pauperizing the recipient. 289. =Public and Private Agencies.=--Institutions and agencies of relief are of two kinds, public and private. It is one of the functions of every social group to promote the welfare of its members. It is to be expected, therefore, that the church and the trade-union will help their own poor, but it is just as proper to expect that the whole community, and even the whole state, will take care of its own needy. The distinction between public and private agencies is not one of fundamental sociological principle, but one of convenience and efficiency of administration. Where the state has extended its activities, as in Germany, relief by such a method as the Elberfeld system is practicable; where public opinion, as in the United States, is not favorable to remanding as much as possible to the government, it is thought best that private agencies should supplement State aid, and in most cases make it unnecessary. 290. =Arguments for and Against Private Agencies of Relief.=--Some argue that private agencies should do it all. In spite of the large resources at the command of the state and the frequent necessity of legislation to handle the problem, they claim that public aid humiliates and degrades the recipient, while private assistance may put him on his feet without destroying his self-respect; and that public charity is too often unfeeling and tends to become a routine affair, while private aid can deal better with specific cases, show real interest and try experiments in the improvement of methods. There are those who would have all charity given back to the church. They believe the responsibility would stimulate the church's own life, extend its influence among the unchurched, show that it had an interest in the bodies as well as the souls of the people, and bring about co-operation between churches in the districts of town or city. It is of the genius of true religion to be helpful, and the church could soon learn wise methods. In answer to this argument the reply is that at present the indiscriminate charity of the church is doing real harm; that the church does not like to co-operate with other agencies; that it does not have adequate resources to deal with the problem or legal authority to restrain mendicants or segregate the various classes of dependents; and that all persons in the community ought to share in the responsibility of poor relief, and not all are in the church. They recognize the valuable aid of such organizations as the Hebrew Charities and the work of the St. Vincent de Paul Society of the Catholics, but they believe that such as these at best can be only auxiliary to the state. An illustration of the usefulness of private associations appears in a group of seven boys of foreign parentage in New York City, who organized themselves in 1903 into a quick-aid-to-the-hungry committee. They were only thirteen years old and poor. They lived on the East Side, and pennies and nickels did not make a full treasury. But they knew the need and had an instinct for helping the right people. In seven years these boys helped in more than two hundred and fifty emergency cases; their pennies grew to dollars as they earned more; their charity developed their self-respect; they held weekly meetings for debate, and several of them made their way through college. Funds were supplied, also, from friends outside, who were glad to aid such a worthy enterprise. The great need among private agencies is fuller co-operation with one another and with public boards and institutions. Then duplication of effort, misunderstandings, and wastefulness are avoided, and the hope of a decline in conditions of poverty increases. There are limits, however, to the ability of private agencies to control the situation. There are cases where the organized community or state must take a hand. There are lazy persons who will not support themselves or their families; there are certain persons who are chronically ill or dependent; there are various types of defectives and delinquents. All these need the authority of the public agencies. Then there are constructive activities that require the assistance and sanction of government, like parks and playgrounds, industrial schools, employment bureaus, the establishment and administration of state institutions, and the enforcement of health, sanitary, and building laws. Of course there is often inefficiency in government management. The local almshouse needs reforming, and the overseers of the poor should be trained experts. The organization and superintendence of state institutions is not ideal, and building arrangements need improvement, but there is a steady gain in the efficiency of boards of trustees and local managers. There is a willingness to learn from experience and a disposition to raise the standards in all departments of administration. 291. =The Social Settlement.=--However efficient an official board may be in the discharge of its duties, it cannot expect to call out from the beneficiary so enthusiastic a response as can a real friend. The best friends of the poor are their neighbors. It is well known that a group of families in a tenement house will help one of their number that is in specific difficulty, and that the poor give more generously to help their own kind than do those who are more well-to-do. It was a conviction of these principles of friendliness and neighborliness that led to the first social settlements. Because a person lives in an undesirable part of the city he is not necessarily a subject for charity, and the settlement is in no sense to be thought of as a charitable agency. It is a home established among the less-favored part of the population by educated, refined, sympathetic people who want to be neighborly and to bring courage and cheer and helpfulness to the struggling masses. The original residents of Hull House in Chicago believed that class alienation could be overcome best by the establishment of intimate social relationships, and they were willing to sacrifice their natural social advantages for the larger good. Settlements are not exclusively of the city, but the stress of life is sternest in the cities, and most of the experiments have been made there. They are oases in the desert of the buildings and pavements of brick, with their grime and monotony, and if the people of the desert will camp for an hour and drink of the spring, those who have planted the oasis will be well pleased. To attract them the settlement workers have organized clubs and classes for united study and activity in matters that naturally interest the people of the neighborhood; they have music and dancing and amateur theatricals, and often they supply domestic or industrial training in a small way for the young people who frequent the settlement. The residents aim to give the people what they want; they do not impose anything upon them. They try to satisfy economic and social wants. They try to stimulate the people of the neighborhood to desire the best things that they can get. They co-operate with the police and other departments of the city government, with the library, and with the school. They assist in procuring work for those who want it; they encourage the people to be thrifty and temperate; they help them to get baths and gymnastic facilities, playgrounds, and social centres. They frequently carry on investigations that are of great value and assist charitable agencies in their inquiries and beneficence. They call frequently upon the people in their homes and encourage them to ask for counsel and help if they are in trouble. The settlement idea grew out of a growing interest in the common people. It was stimulated by Maurice's establishment at London of a working man's college, with recent Cambridge graduates as teachers, and by university extension work in Cambridge; it was suggested further by the location of Edward Denison in the East End of London in 1867. In 1885 Canon Barnett, of St. Jude's Church, London, founded Toynbee Hall under Oxford auspices. The first settlement in the United States was established in New York in 1887, and soon became known as the University Settlement. Hull House in Chicago was started two years later; the first settlement in Boston was founded under the auspices of the Andover Theological Seminary. Most settlements avoid church connections, because of the danger of misunderstandings among people of widely differing faiths. The settlement has existed long enough to become a true social institution. It has remained true to its original principle of neighborliness, but it has increased its activities as occasion demanded. It has been a useful object-lesson to churches and city governments; some of its methods have been imitated, and in some of the cities its efforts have become unnecessary in certain directions because the city government itself has adopted its plans. The settlement has its critics and its devoted supporters; it is one of the voluntary experiments that shows the spirit of its promoters and that helps along social progress, and it must be estimated among the assets of a community. Here and there in the country among certain groups, as lumbermen, miners, or construction workers, or even in a settled town, many of the methods of the settlement are likely to find acceptance, and the settlement idea of neighborliness is fundamental to all happy and successful social life. READING REFERENCES DEVINE: _Principles of Relief_, pages 10-28, 171-181. WARNER: _American Charities_, pages 301-393. CONYNGTON: _How to Help_, pages 56-219. HENDERSON: _Modern Methods of Charity_, pages 380-511. HENDERSON: _Social Settlements._ ADDAMS: _Twenty Years at Hull House_, pages 89-153. CHAPTER XXXVII EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 292. =The Schools of the City.=--An important function of city government and of other institutions is the education of the people who make their home in the city or come to it to broaden their culture. The city provides for its young people as the country community does, by locating school-buildings within convenient reach of the people of every district, but on a much larger and usually a more efficient scale. Better trained teachers, better grading, a more modern equipment and well-proved methods give an advantage in education to the city child, though there are drawbacks in overcrowded buildings and narrow yards for play. The opportunities for social education are broader in the city, for the child comes into contact with many types of people, with a great variety of social institutions, and with all sorts of activities. It is these advantages, together with the higher institutions for study, that attract hundreds and sometimes thousands of students to the prominent social centres. The colleges and universities, the normal schools, the music and art institutes and lecture systems are numerous and attract correspondingly. 293. =The Press as an Educator.=--The institutions directly concerned with instruction are supplemented by other educational agencies. Among these is the press. The press is an institution that exerts a mighty force upon every department of the city's life. It is at the same time a business enterprise and a social institution. It is a public misfortune that the newspaper, the magazine, and the book publishing house is a private business undertaking, and often stands for class, party, or sectarian interests before those of the whole of society. There is always a temptation to sacrifice principle to policy, to publish distorted or half-true statements from selfish interest, and to prostitute influence to individuals or groups that care little for the public welfare. The publication of a statement or narrative of a crime or other misdemeanor tends by suggestion to the imitation of the wrong by others; it is a well-known fact that a sensational story of suicide or murder is likely to provoke others in the same manner. It is a grave question whether the realistic fiction so much in vogue and published in such quantities is not a baneful text-book on modern society. But when it chooses the press becomes an instrument of immense value to the public. It can turn the light of publicity on dark and dirty places. It can and does provide a means of wise utterance on questions of the day. It keeps a record of the good as well as the evil that is done. It is a means of communication between local groups everywhere, for it publishes what everybody wants to know about everybody else. It introduces the antipodes to each other, and makes it possible for far-sundered groups to unite even internationally for a good cause. As the railroad binds together portions of a continent, so the press links the minds of human beings. 294. =A Metropolitan Newspaper.=--Take a metropolitan newspaper and see how it reflects the current life of society. Economic interests of buyer and seller are exploited in the advertising columns. In no other way could a merchant so persuasively hawk his wares or a purchaser learn so readily about the market. The wholesaler and jobber find their interests attended to in special columns provided particularly for them. Financial interests are cared for by stock-exchange quotations, news items, and advertisements. All kinds of social concerns are taken care of in the news columns, items collected at great expense from the four quarters of the globe. Gatherings for a great variety of purposes are recorded. Educational and religious interests are given space, as well as sports and amusements; last Sunday's sermon jostles the latest scandal on Monday morning; weather probabilities and shipping news have their corners, as well as the fashion department and the cartoon. The newspaper is a moving picture of the world. 295. =The Value of the Press.=--The most valuable service rendered by the press is its education of the public mind, so that public opinion may register itself in intelligent action. It provides a forum for the discussion of issues that divide sects and parties, and helps to preserve religious freedom and popular government. Except that it is so frequently trammelled in uttering itself frankly on important public questions, it gives an indication of the trend of sentiment and so makes possible a forecast of future public action. The very variety of printed publications, from the sensational daily sheet to the published proceedings of a learned society, insures a healthy interchange of ideas that helps to level social inequalities and promotes a mutual understanding among all groups and grades of society. The cheapened process of book publication on a large scale, and the investment of large sums of money in the publishing business, with its mechanics of sale management as well as printing, has made possible an enormous output of literature on all subjects and has widened the range of general information in possession of the public. The whole system of modern life would be impossible without the press. 296. =The Library and the Museum.=--In spite of the efficient methods used for selling the output of the press, large numbers of books would be little read were it not for the collections of books that are available to the public, either free or at small cost. The public library is an educative agency that serves its constituency as faithfully as the school and the press. Its presence for use is one of the advantages that the city has over the country, though the public library has been extended far within one or two decades. The child goes from home to school and widens the circle of his acquaintances in the community; through the daily newspaper the adult gets into touch with a far wider environment, reaching even across the oceans; in the library any person, without respect to age, color, or condition, if only he possess the key of literacy to unlock knowledge, can travel to the utmost limits of continents and seas, can dig with the geologist below the surface, or soar with the astronomer beyond the limits of aviation, can hob-nob with ancient worthies or sit at the feet of the latest novelist or philosopher, and can learn how to rule empires from as good text-books as kings or patriarchs possess. What the library does for intellectual satisfaction the museum and art-gallery do for æsthetic appreciation. They make their appeal to the love of beauty in form, color, or weave, and call out oftentimes the best efforts of an individual's own genius. Often the gift of one or more public-spirited citizens, they register a disposition to serve society that is sometimes as useful as charity. Philanthropy that uplifts the mind of the recipient is as desirable as benevolence that plans bodily relief; the soul that is filled has as much cause to bless its minister as the stomach that is relieved of hunger. The picture-galleries of Europe, the tapestries, the metal and wood work, the engravings, and the frescoes, are the precious legacy of the past to the present, not easily reproduced, but serving as a continual incentive to modern production. They set in motion spiritual forces that uplift and expand the human mind and spur it to future achievement. 297. =Music and the Drama.=--Music and the drama have a similar stimulating and refining influence when they are not debauched by a sordid commercialism. They strengthen the noblest impulses, stir the blood to worthy deeds by their rhythmic or pictorial influence, unite individual hearts in worship or play, throb in unison with the sentiments that through all time have swayed human life. Often they have catered to the lower instincts, and have served for cheap amusement or entertainment not worth while, but concert-hall and theatre alike are capable of an educative work that can hardly be equalled elsewhere. When in combination they appeal to both eye and ear, they provide avenues for intellectual understanding and activity that neither school nor press can parallel. Recent mechanical inventions, such as automatic musical instruments and moving pictures, have added greatly to the range and effectiveness of music and the drama, but they only intensify and popularize the appeal to the senses. It is to be remembered that individual and social stimuli must be varied enough to touch men at all points and call out a response from every faculty of their nature. These arts, therefore, that make life real and socialize it and cheer men and women on their way, play a vital part in the education of society and deserve as serious consideration as the other educational agencies and institutions that find a place in the social economy of the community. Numerous amateur musical and dramatic societies testify to the interest of the people in these refined arts. 298. =The Need of Social Centres.=--Books and pictures, music and the drama are so many mild stimulants to those who use and appreciate them, but there are large numbers of people who rarely read anything but the newspaper, and who attend only cheap entertainments. These people need a spur to high thoughts and noble action, but they do not move in the world of culture. They need a stronger stimulant, the tang of virile debate about questions that touch closely their daily concerns, discussions in which they can share if they feel disposed. In large circles of the city's population there is a lack of facilities for such public discussion, and for that reason the people fall back on the prejudices of the newspapers for the formation of their opinions on public questions. Disputes sometimes wax warm in the saloon about the merits of a pugilist or baseball-player; questions of the rights of labor are aired in the talk of the trade-union headquarters; but the vital issues of city, state, and nation, and the underlying principles that are at stake find few avenues to the minds of the mass of the people. In the country the town meeting or the gathering at the district schoolhouse provides an occasional opportunity, or the grange meeting supplies a forum for its members, but even there the rank and file of the people do not talk over large questions often enough. In the city the need is great. 299. =The City Neighborhood.=--It is well understood that large cities have most of their public buildings and business structures in one quarter, and their residences in another; also that the character of the residential districts varies according to the wealth and culture of their inhabitants or the nationality and occupation to which they belong. The city is a coalition of semidetached groups, each of which has a unity of its own. The necessities of work draw all the people together down-town along the lines of streets and railways; now and then the different classes are shaken together in elevators and subways; but when they are free to follow their own volition they flow apart. Those who are on terms of intimacy live in a neighboring street; the grocer from whom they buy is at the corner; the school where their children go is within a few blocks; the theatre they patronize or the church they attend is not far away; the physician they employ lives in the neighborhood. Except the few who get about easily in their own conveyances and have a wide acquaintance, city dwellers have all but their business interests in the district in which they live, and which is seldom over a square mile in extent. Some municipalities are coming to see that each district is a neighborhood in itself and needs all the democratic institutions of a neighborhood. Among these belongs the assembly hall for free speech. It may well become a centre for a variety of social purposes, but it is fundamentally important that it provide a forum for public discussion. As the rich man has his club where he may meet the globetrotter or the leader of public affairs distinguished in his own country, and as the woman's club of high-minded women has its own lecturers and celebrities of all kinds, so the working man and his wife have a right to come into contact with stimulating personalities who will talk to them and to whom they can talk back. 300. =Forum for Public Discussion.=--Such democratic gatherings fall into two classes. There is the public lecture or address, after which an opportunity for questions and public discussion is given, and there is the neighborhood forum or town meeting, at which a question of general interest is taken up and debated in regular parliamentary fashion. In a number of cities both plans have been adopted. On a Sunday afternoon or evening, or at a convenient time on another evening of the week, a popular speaker addresses the audience on a theme of social interest, after it has been entertained for a half hour with music; following the address a brief intermission allows for relaxation, and then for an hour the question goes to the house, and free discussion takes place under the direction of the leader of the meeting. Sometimes series of this sort are supplied by churches or other social organizations; in that case many of the speakers are clergymen, and in some forums the topics are connected with religious or strictly moral interests; but even then the discussion is on the broad plane of the common concerns of humanity, and there is a zest to the occasion that the ordinary religious gathering does not inspire. The second plan is modelled after the old-fashioned town meeting that was transplanted from the mother country to New England, and has spread to other parts of the United States. It is a gathering of all who wish to discuss freely some question that interests them all, and it is more strictly co-operative than the first plan, for there is no one speaker to contribute the main part of the debate, but each may make his own contribution, and by the power of his own persuasion win for his argument the decision of the meeting. Besides stimulating the interest of those who take part, such a debate is a most effective educator of the public mind in matters of social weal. READING REFERENCES HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 228-253. KING: _Social Aspects of Education_, pages 65-97, 264-290. WARD: _The Social Center_, pages 212-251. WOLFE: _The Lodging House Problem_, pages 109-114. _Addresses and Proceedings of the National Education Association, 1905_, pages 644-650, "Music as a Factor in Culture." CHAPTER XXXVIII THE CHURCH 301. =The Place of the Church in the Urban Community.=--In the city, as in the country, the religious instinct expresses itself socially through the institution of the church or synagogue. Spiritual force cannot be confined within the limits of a single institution; religion is a dynamic that permeates the life of society; yet in this age of specialization, and especially in a country like the United States, where religion is a voluntary affair, not to be entangled with the school or the State, religion has naturally exerted its influence most directly through the church. Charity and settlement workers are inspired by a religion that makes humanitarianism a part of its creed, and a large majority of them are church members, but as a rule they do not attempt to introduce any religious forms or exercises into their programmes. Most public-school teachers have their religious connections and recognize the important place of religion in moulding character, but religious teaching is not included in the curriculum because of the recognized principle of complete religious liberty and the separation of church and state. The result has been that religion is not consciously felt as a vital force among many people who axe not directly connected with an ecclesiastical institution. Those who are definitely connected with the church in America contribute voluntarily to its expenses, sometimes even at personal sacrifice. Most people who have little religious interest realize the value of the mere presence of a meeting-house in the community as a reminder of moral obligations and an insurance against disorder. Its spire seems to point the way to heaven, and to make a mute appeal to the best motives and the highest ideals. The decline of the church is, therefore, regarded as a sign of social degeneracy. 302. =Worship and Church Attendance.=--The church exists in the city because it has certain specific functions to perform. To maintain public worship, to persuade to definite convictions and inspire to noble conduct, to furnish religious education, and to promote social reform are its essential responsibilities. Worship is a natural attitude to the individual who is prompted by a desire to adjust himself to the universe and to obtain the peace of mind that follows upon the establishment of a right relationship. To most people it is easier to get into the proper atmosphere and spirit of worship in a public assembly, and they therefore are accustomed to meet at stated intervals and bow side by side as if in kinship together before the Unseen. Long-established habit and a superstitious fear of the consequences that may follow neglect keep some persons regular in church attendance when they have no sense of spiritual satisfaction in worship. Others go to church because of the social opportunities that are present in any public gathering. In recent years church attendance has not kept pace with the increasing population of the city. A certain pride of intellect and a feeling of security in the growing power of man over nature has produced an indifference to religion and religious teachers. Multiplicity of other interests overshadows the ecclesiastical interests of the aristocracy; fatigue and hostility to an institution that they think caters to the rich keeps the proletariat at home. In addition the tendency of foreigners is to throw off religion along with other compulsory things that belonged to the Old World life and to add to the number of the unchurched. 303. =Evangelism and the History of Religious Conviction.=--A second function of the church is to exert spiritual and moral suasion. It is a social instinct to communicate ideas; language developed for that purpose. It is natural, therefore, that a church that has definite ideas about human obligation toward God and men should try to influence individuals and even send out evangelists and missionaries to propagate its faith widely. Those churches that think alike have organized into denominations, and have arranged extensive propaganda and trained and ordained their preachers to reason with and persuade their auditors to receive and act upon the message that is spoken. Several of the large cities of the United States contain denominational headquarters where world-wide activities receive direction, veritable dynamos for the generation of one of the vital forces of society. The convictions that prompt evangelism and missionary zeal are the result of centuries of race experience. The Catholic, the Protestant, and the Jewish churches have all grown out of religious experience and religious thinking that have their roots in early human history. The very forms of worship and of creed that constitute the framework of religion in a modern city church date far back in their origins. The religious instinct appears to be common to the whole human race. In primitive times religious interest was prompted by fear, and the early customs of sacrifice and worship were established by the group to bring its members into friendly relations with the Power outside themselves that might work to their undoing. Temples and shrines testified to man's devotion and stirred his emotions by their symbols and ceremonies. A special class of men was organized, a priesthood to mediate with the gods for mankind. Children were taught to respect and fear the higher powers, and their elders were often warned not to stir the anger of deity. As the human mind developed, impulse and emotion were supplemented by intellect. As man ruminated upon nature and human experience he was satisfied that there was intelligence and power in the universe, divine personality similar to but greater than himself, and his reason sanctioned the religious acts to which he had become accustomed. He added a creed to his cult. He did not associate his moral ideas and habits with his religious obligations; these ideas and habits grew out of the customs that had been found to work best in social relations. Pagan religions were slow to develop any kinship between religion and morals. It was among the Hebrews that the loftier idea of a God of holiness and justice, who demanded right and kindly conduct among men, came into prominence, and a few religious prophets went so far as to declare that sacrifice was less important than conduct. The fundamental teachings of Christianity were based on the same conception of social duty and on the religious conception of God as benevolent and loving, calling out loving fealty of heart rather than external rite and sacrifice. In Christian times religion has become a spiritual and moral motive power throughout the world. 304. =Church Organization.=--Throughout its long history society has adjusted the organization of its religious activities to social custom and social need. The church in any country is a name for an organized system, with its nerve-centres and its ganglia ramifying into the remotest localities. In the local community it binds together its members in mutual relations, even though they live on different sides of a city, or even in the suburbs. It has its relations to young and old, and plans for the spiritual welfare of human beings of every age through its boards and committees, classes and clubs. It presents a variety of group types to match the inclinations and opinions of different types of mind. One type is that of a closely knit, centralized organization, claiming ecclesiastical authority over individual opinions and practices on the principle that religion is a static thing, a law fixed in the eternal order, and not to be improved upon or questioned. Another type is that of loosely federated ecclesiastical units, flexible in organization and creed, cherishing religion as a dynamic thing, suiting itself to the changing mind of man and adjusting itself to individual and social need. It is a social law that both theology and organization conform in a degree to the prevailing social philosophy and constitution, and therefore no type can remain unchanged, but relatively one is always conservative and the other always liberal, with a blending of types between the two extremes. Denominational divisions are due partly to variety of opinion, partly to ancestry, and partly to historical circumstance; some of these divisions are international in extent; but through every communion runs the line of cleavage between conservatism and liberalism in the interpretation of custom and creed. The tendency of the times is to minimize differences and to bring together divergent types in federation or union on the ground that the church needs unity in order to use its strength, and that religion can exert its full energy in the midst of society only as the friction of too much machinery is removed. 305. =Religious Education.=--A third function of the church is religious education. This function of education in religion belongs theoretically to the church, in common with the home and the school, but the tendency has been to turn the religious education of children over to the school of the church. The minister, priest, or rabbi is the chief teacher of faith and duty, but in the Sunday-school the laity also has found instruction of the young people to be one of its functions. Instruction by both of these is supplemented by schools of a distinctly religious type and by a religious press. As long as society at large does not undertake to perform this function of religious education, the church conceives it to be one of its chief tasks to teach as well as to inspire the human will, by interpreting the best religious thought that the centuries of history have handed down, and for this purpose it uses the latest scientific knowledge about the human mind and tries to devise improved methods to make education more effective. Education is the twin art of evangelization. 306. =Promotion of Social Reform.=--As an institution hoary with age, the church is naturally conservative, and it has been slow to champion the various social reforms that have been proposed as panaceas. It has been quite as much concerned with a future existence as with the present, and has been prompt to point to heavenly bliss as a balance for earthly woe. It has concerned itself with the soul rather than the body, and with individual salvation rather than social reconstruction. It is only within a century that the modern church has given much attention to promoting social betterment as one of its principal functions, but within a few years the conscience of church people has been goading them to undertake a campaign of social welfare. Other institutions have needed the help of the church, and in some cases the church has had to take upon itself the burden that belonged to other organizations; moral movements, like temperance, have asked for the powerful sanction of religion, and the church has used its influence to persuade men. What has been spontaneous and intermittent is now becoming regular and continuous, until a social gospel is taking its place alongside individual evangelism. The Biblical phrase, "the kingdom of God," is being interpreted in terms of an improved social order. Religion, therefore, becomes a present-day force for progress, and the church an agency for social uplift. 307. =Adapting the Church to the Twentieth Century City.=--The church in the country has a comparatively simple problem of existence. It fits into the social organization of the community, and in most cases seldom has to readjust itself by radical changes to fit a swift change in the community. It is different with the church in the city. Urban growth is one of the striking phenomena of recent decades; local churches find themselves caught in the swirl, grow rapidly for a time, and then are left high and dry as the current sweeps the crowd farther along. Often the particular type that it represents is not suited to the newer residents who settle in the section where the church stands. It has the option of following the crowd or attempting a readjustment. To decamp is usually the easier way; readjustment is often so difficult as to be almost impossible. Financial resources have been depleted. The existing organization is not geared to the customs of the newcomers. Forms of worship must be improved if the church is to function satisfactorily. The popular appeal of religion must be couched in a new phraseology, often in a new language. Religious educational methods must be revised. Social service must be fitted to the new need. Small groups of workers must be organized to manage classes and clubs, and to get into personal contact with individuals whose orbit is on a different plane. The church must become a magnet to draw them within the influence of religion. It finds itself compelled to adopt such methods as these if it is not to become a mere survival of a better day. If, however, a locally disabled church can call upon the resources of a whole denomination, it may be able to make the necessary adjustments with ease, or even to continue its spiritual ministry along the old lines by means of subsidies. It is reasonable to believe that society will find a way to adjust the church to the needs of city people. It cannot afford to do without it. The church has been the conserver and propagator of spiritual force. It has supplied to thousands of persons the regenerative power of religion that alone has matched the degenerating influence of immoral habits. It has produced auxiliary organizations, like the Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Women's Christian Association. It has found a way, as in the Salvation Army, to get a grip upon the weak-willed and despairing. Missions and chapels in the slums and synagogues in the ghettos have carried religion to the lowest classes. These considerations argue for a wider co-operation among city people in strengthening an institution that represents social idealism. READING REFERENCES TRAWICK: _The City Church and Its Social Mission_, pages 14-22, 50-76, 95-99, 122-160. STRAYER: _Reconstruction of the Church_, pages 161-249. MENZIES: _History of Religion_, pages 19-78. RAUSCHENBUSCH: _Christianizing the Social Order_, pages 7-29, 96-102. MCCULLOCH: _The Open Church for the Unchurched_, pages 33-164. COE: _Education in Religion and Morals_, pages 373-388. CHAPTER XXXIX THE CITY IN THE MAKING 308. =Experimenting in the Mass.=--The modern city is a gigantic social experiment. Never before have so many people crowded together, never has there been such a close interlocking of economic and social and religious associations, never has there been such ease of communication and transit. Modern invention has given its aid to the natural effort of human beings to get together. The various interests that produce action have combined to make settlement compact. The city is a severe test of human ability to live peaceably and co-operatively at close quarters. In the country an unfriendly man can live by himself much of the time; in the city he is continually feeling somebody's elbows in his ribs. It is not strange that there is as yet much crudeness about the city. Its growth has been dominated by the economic motive, and everything has been sacrificed to the desire to make money. Dirty slums, crowded tenements, uncouth business blocks, garish bill-boards and electric signs, dumped rubbish on vacant lots, constant repairs of streets and buildings--these all are marks of crudity and experimentation, evidences that the city is still in the making. Many of the weaknesses that appear in urban society can be traced to this situation as a cause. The craze for amusement is partly a reaction from the high speed of modern industry, but partly, also, a social delirium produced by the new experience of the social whirl. Naturally more serious efforts are neglected for a time, and institutions of long standing, like the family, threaten to go to pieces. A thought-provoking lecture or a sermon on human obligation does not fit in with the mood of the thousands who walk or ride along the streets, searching for a sensation. The student who looks at urban society on the surface easily becomes pessimistic. 309. =Reasons for Optimism.=--This new experience of society will run its course. Undoubtedly there will go with it much of social loss, but there is firm ground for believing that there will be more of social gain. It is quite necessary for human beings to learn to associate intimately, for population is steadily increasing and modern civilization makes all classes and all nations more and more dependent on one another. The pace of life will slow down after a time, there will be less of social intoxication, and men and women will take their pleasures more sanely. Eventually they will listen to a message that is adapted to them, however serious it may be. One of the most hopeful factors in the situation is the presence of individuals and organized groups who are able to diagnose present conditions, and who are working definitely for their improvement. Much of modern progress is conscious and purposeful, where formerly men lived blindly, subject, as they believed, to the caprice of the gods. We know much about natural law, and lately we have learned something about social law; with this knowledge we can plan intelligently for the future. There is less excuse for social failure than formerly. Cities are learning how to make constructive plans for beautifying avenues and residential sections, and making efficient a whole transportation system; they will learn how to get rid of overcrowding, misery, and disease. What is needed is the will to do, and that will come with experience. 310. =Reasonable Expectations of Improvement.=--Any soundly constructive plan waits on thorough investigation. Such an organization as the Russell Sage Foundation, which is gathering all sorts of data about social conditions, is supplying just the information needed on which to base intelligent and effective action. On this foundation will come the slow process of construction. There will be diffusion of information, an enlistment of those who are able to help, and an increased co-operation among the numerous agencies of philanthropy and reform. The most obvious evils and those that seem capable of solution will be attacked first. Intelligent public opinion will not tolerate the continued existence of curable ills. Pure water, adequate sewerage, light, and air, and sanitary conveniences in every home will be required everywhere. Community physicians and nurses will be under municipal appointment to see that health conditions are maintained, and to instruct city families how to live properly. Vocational schools and courses in domestic science will prepare boys and girls for marriage and the home, and will tend to lessen poverty. Undoubtedly the time will come when it will be seen clearly that the interests of society demand the segregation of those who cannot take care of themselves and are an injury to others. Hospitals and places of detention for mental and moral defectives, and the victims of chronic vice and intemperance, as well as criminals of every sort, will seem natural and necessary. Larger questions of immigration, industrial management, and municipal administration will be studied and gradually solved by the united wisdom of city, state, and nation. 311. =Agencies of Progress and Gains Achieved.=--An examination of what has been achieved in this direction by almost any one of the larger cities in the United States shows encouraging progress. Smaller cities and even villages have made use of electricity for lighting, transportation, and telephone service. The water and sewerage systems of larger centres are far in advance of what they were a few years ago. Bathrooms with open plumbing and greater attention to the preservation of health have supplemented more thorough efforts to the spread of communicable diseases. Increasing agitation for more practical education has led to the creation of various kinds of vocational schools, including a large variety of correspondence schools for those who wish specific training. There are still thousands of boys and girls who enter industrial occupations in the most haphazard way, and yield to irrational impulse in choosing or giving up a particular job or a place to live in; similar impulse induces them to mate in the same haphazard way, and as lightly to separate if they tire of each other; but the very fact that enlightened public opinion does not countenance these practices, that there are social agencies contending against them, and that they are contrary to the laws of happiness, of efficiency, and even of survival, makes it unlikely that such irrational conduct can persist. As for the social ills that have seemed unavoidable, like sexual vice, current investigation and agitation, followed by increasing legislation and segregation of the unfit, promises to work a change, however gradual the process may be. Numerous organizations are at work in the fields of poverty, immigration, the industrial problem, reform of government, penology, business, education, and religion, and thousands of social workers are devoting their lives to the betterment of society. 312. =Conference and Co-operation.=--Improvement will be more rapid when the various agencies of reform have learned to pull together more efficiently. It is frequently charged that the friction between different temperance organizations has delayed progress in solving the problem of intemperance. It is often said that there would be less poverty if the various charitable agencies would everywhere organize and work in association. The independent temper of Americans makes it difficult to work together, but co-operation is a sound sociological principle, and experience proves that such principles must be obeyed. If the principle of combination that has been applied to business should be carried further and applied to the problems of society, there can be no question that results would speedily justify the action. Perhaps the greatest need in the city to-day is a union of resources. If an honest taxation would furnish funds, if the best people would plan intelligently and unselfishly for the city's future development, if boards and committees that are at odds would get together, there is every reason to think that astonishing changes for the better would soon be seen. Suppose that in every city of our land representatives of the chamber of commerce, of the city government, of the associated charities, of the school-teachers, of the ministers of the city, of the women's clubs, of the Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Women's Christian Association, of the labor-unions, and of the agencies that cater to amusement should sit together once in two weeks in conference upon the interests of all the people of the city, and should honestly and frankly discuss the practical questions that are always at the fore in public discussion, and then should report back for further conference in their own groups, there can be no doubt that the various groups would have a far better understanding and appreciation of one another, and in time would find ways and means to adopt such a programme as might come out of all the discussion. 313. =The Crucial Test of Democracy.=--World events have shown clearly since the outbreak of the European war that intelligent planning and persistent enforcement of a political programme can long contend successfully against great odds, when there is autocratic power behind it all. Democracy must show itself just as capable of planning and execution, if it is to hold its own against the control of a few, whether plutocrats, political bosses, or a centralized state, but its power to make good depends on the enlistment of all the abilities of city or nation in co-operative effort. There is no more crucial test of the ability of democracy to solve the social problems of this age than the present-day city. The social problem is not a question of politics, but of the social sciences. It is a question of living together peaceably and profitably. It involves economics, ethics, and sociological principles. It is yet to be proved that society is ready to be civilized or even to survive on a democratic basis. The time must come when it will, for associated activity under the self-control of the whole group is the logical and ethical outcome of sound sociological principle, but that time may not be near at hand. If democracy in the cities is to come promptly to its own, social education will soon change its emphasis from the material gain of the individual to co-operation for the social good, and under the inspiration of this idea the various agencies will unite for effective social service. READING REFERENCES HOWE: _The Modern City and Its Problems_, pages 367-376. GOODNOW: _City Government in the United States_, pages 302-308. ELDRIDGE: _Problems of Community Life_, pages 3-7. ELY: _The Coming City._ _Boston Directory of Charities_, 1914. PART V--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE NATION CHAPTER XL THE BUILDING OF A NATION 314. =Questions of the Larger Group.=--In any study of social life we have to find a place for larger groups than the family and the neighborhood or even the city. There are national units and even a certain amount of international unity in the world. How have they come to exist? What are the interests that hold them together? What are the forms of association that are practicable on such a large scale? Is there a tendency to stress the control of the group over its individual members, even its aristocracy 01 birth or wealth? These are questions that require some sort of an answer. Beyond them are other questions concerning the relations between these larger groups. Are there common interests or compelling forces that have merged hitherto sovereign states into federal or imperial union? Is it conceivable that such mutually jealous nations as the European powers may surrender willingly their individual interests of minor importance for the sake of the larger good of the whole? Can political independence ever become subordinate to social welfare? Are there any spiritual bonds that can hold more strongly than national ambitions and national pride? Such questions as these carry the student of society into a wider range of corporate life than the average man enters, but a range of life in which the welfare of every individual is involved. 315. =The Significance of National Life.=--The nation is a group of persons, families, and communities united for mutual protection and the promotion of the general welfare, and recognizing a sovereign power that controls them all. Some nations have been organized from above in obedience to the will of a successful warrior or peaceful group; others have been organized peacefully from below by the voluntary act of the people themselves. The nation in its capacity as a governing power is a state, but a nation exercises other functions than that of control; it exists to promote the common interests of mankind over a wider area than that of the local community. The historic tendency of nations has been to grow in size, as the transmission of ideas has become easy, and the extension of control has been made widely possible. The significance of national life is the social recognition at present given to community of interest by millions of individuals who believe that it is profitable for them to live under the same economic regulations, social legislation, and educational system, even though of mingled races and with various ideals. 316. =How the Nation Developed.=--The nation in embryo can be found in the primitive horde which was made up of families related by ties of kin, or by common language and customs. The control was held by the elderly men of experience, and exercised according to unwritten law. The horde was only loosely organized; it did not own land, but ranged over the hunting-grounds within its reach, and often small units separated permanently from the larger group. When hunting gave place to the domestication of animals, the horde became more definitely organized into the tribe, strong leadership developed in the defense of the tribe's property, and the military chieftain bent others in submission to his will. As long as land was of value for pasturage mainly, it was owned by the whole tribe in common. When agriculture was substituted for the pastoral stage of civilization, the tribe broke up by clans into villages, each under its chief and advisory council of heads of families. So far the mode of making a living had determined custom and organization. Village communities may remain almost unchanged for centuries, as in China, or here and there one of them may become a centre of trade, as in mediæval Germany. In the latter case it draws to itself all classes of people, develops wealth and culture, and presently dominates its neighbors. Small city states grew up in ancient time along the Nile in Egypt, and by and by federated under a particularly able leader, or were conquered by the band of an ambitious chieftain, who took the title of king. In such fashion were organized the great kingdoms and empires of antiquity. Social disintegration and foreign conquest broke up the great empires, and for centuries in the Middle Ages society existed in local groups; but common economic and racial interests, together with the political ambition of princes and nobles, drew together semi-independent principalities and communes, until they became welded into real nations. At first the state was monarchical, because a few kings and lords were able to dominate the mass, and because strength and authority were more needed than privileges of citizenship; then the economic interest became paramount, and merchants and manufacturers demanded a share in government for the protection of their interests. Education improved the general level of intelligence, and invention and growing commerce improved the condition of the people until eventually all classes claimed a right to champion their own interests. The most progressive nations racially, politically, and economically, outstripped the others in world rivalry until the great modern nations, each with its own peculiar qualities of efficiency, overtopped their predecessors of all time. 317. =The Story of the United States.=--The story of national life in the United States is especially noteworthy. Within a century and a half the people of this country have passed through the economic stages, from clearing the forests to building sky-scrapers; in government they have grown from a few jealous seaboard colonies along the Atlantic to a solidly welded federal nation that stretches from ocean to ocean; in education and skill they have developed from provincial hand-workers to expert managers of corporate enterprises that exploit the resources of the world; and in population they have grown from four million native Americans to a hundred million people, gathered and shaken together from the four corners of the earth. In that century and a half they have developed a new and powerful national consciousness. When the British colonies asserted their independence, they were held together by their common ambition and their common danger, but when they attempted to organize a government, the incipient States were unwilling to grant to the new nation the powers of sovereignty. The Confederation was a failure. The sense of common interest was not strong enough to compel a surrender of local rights. But presently it appeared that local jealousies and divisions were imperilling the interests of all, and that even the independence of the group was impossible without an effective national government. Then in national convention the States, through their representatives, sacrificed one after another their sovereign rights, until a respectable nation was erected to stand beside the powers of Europe. It was given power to make laws for the regulation of social conduct, and even of interstate commerce, to establish executive authority and administrative, judicial, and military systems, and to tax the property of the people for national revenue. To these basic functions others were added, as common interests demanded encouragement or protection. 318. =Tests of National Efficiency.=--Two tests came to the new nation in its first century. The first was the test of control. It was for a time a question whether the nation could extend its sovereignty over the interior. State claims were troublesome, and the selfish interests of individuals clashed with revenue officers, but the nation solved these difficulties. The second test was the test of unity, and was settled only after civil war. Out of the struggle the nation emerged stronger than it had ever been, because henceforth it was based on the principle of an indissoluble union. With its second century have come new tests--the test of absorbing millions of aliens in speech and habits, the test of wisely governing itself through an intelligent citizenship, the test of educating all of its people to their political and social responsibilities. Whether these tests will be met successfully is for the future to decide, but if the past is any criterion, the American republic will not fail. National structures have risen to a certain height and then fallen, because they were not built on the solid foundations of mutual confidence, co-operation, and loyalty. Building a self-governing nation that will stand the test of centuries is possible only for a people that is conscious of its community of interests, and is willing to sacrifice personal preferences and even personal profits for the common good. READING REFERENCES BRYCE: _The American Commonwealth_ (Abridged Edition), pages 3-21. DEALEY: _Development of the State_, pages 26-48. BLUNTSCHLI: _Theory of the State_, pages 82-102. MULFORD: _The Nation_, pages 37-60. BAGEHOT: _Physics and Politics_, pages 81-155. USHER: _Rise of the American People_, pages 151-167, 182-195, 269-281. CHAPTER XLI ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE PEOPLE AS A NATION 319. =The Reality of the Nation.=--Ordinarily the individual is not pressed upon heavily by his national relationships. He is conscious of them as he reads the newspaper or goes to the post-office, but except at congressional or presidential elections they are not brought home to him vividly. He thinks and acts in terms of the community. The nation is an artificial structure and most of its operations are centralized at a few points. The President lives and Congress meets at the national capital. The departments of government are located there, and the Supreme Court holds its sessions in the same city. Here and there at the busy ports are the custom-houses, with their revenue officers, and at convenient distances are district courts and United States officers for the maintenance of national order and justice. The post-office is the one national institution that is found everywhere, matched in ubiquity only by the flag, the symbol of national unity and strength. But though not noticeably exercised, the power of the nation is very real. There is no power to dispute its legislation and the decisions of its tribunals. No one dares refuse to contribute to its revenues, whether excise tax or import duties. No one is unaware that a very real nation exists. 320. =The Social Nature of the Nation.=--In thinking of the nation it is natural to consider its power as a state, but other functions belong to it as a social unit that are no less important. Its general function is not so much to govern as to promote the general welfare. The social nature of national organization is well expressed in the preamble to the national Constitution: "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." The general welfare is a somewhat vague term, but it includes all the interests of the people, and so indicates the scope of the national function. 321. =The Economic Function.=--The nation has an economic function. It is its business to encourage trade by means that seem most likely to help, whether by subsidies, tariffs, or expert advice; to protect all producers, distributers, and consumers by just laws and tribunals, so that unfair privileges shall not be enjoyed by the few at the expense of the many, and to provide in every legitimate way for the spread of information and for experimentation that agriculture, mining, and manufacturing may be improved. Evidences of the attempt of the United States to measure up to these responsibilities are the various tariffs that have been established for protection as well as revenue, the interstate and trade commissions that exist for the regulation of business, and the individuals and boards that are maintained for acquiring and disseminating information relating to all kinds of economic interests. The United States Patent Office encourages invention, and American inventors outnumber those of other nations. The United States Department of Agriculture employs many experimenters and expert agents and even distributes seeds of a good quality, in order that one of the most important industries of the American people may flourish. At times some of the national machinery has been prostituted to private gain, and there is always danger that the individual will try to prosper at the expense of society, but the people more than ever before are conscious that it is the function of the nation to promote the _general_ welfare, and private interests, however powerful, must give heed to this. 322. =Manufacturing in Corporations and Associations.=--Back of all organization and legislation lies a real national unity, through which the nation exercises indirectly an economic function. In spite of a popular jealousy of big business in the last decade, there is a pride in the ability of American business men to create a profitable world commerce, and middle-class people in well-to-do circumstances subscribe to the purchase of stocks and bonds in trusted corporations. Without this general interest and participation such a rapid extension of industrial enterprise could not have taken place. Without the lines of communication that radiate from great commercial and financial centres, without the banking connections that make it possible for the fiscal centres to support any particular institution that is in temporary distress, without the consciousness of national solidarity in the great departments of business life, economic achievement in America would have come on halting feet. This unity is fostered but not created by government, and no hostile government can destroy it altogether. To further economic interests throughout the nation all sorts of associations exist and hold conventions, from American poultry fanciers to national banking societies. Occasionally these associations pool their interests and advertise their concerns through a national exposition. In this way they find it possible to make an impression upon thousands of people whom they are educating indirectly through the printing-press. It would be an interesting study and one that would throw light on the complexity and ubiquity of national relations, if it could be ascertained locally how many individuals are connected with such national organizations, and what particular associations are most popular. If this examination were extended from purely economic organizations to associations of every kind, we should be able to gauge more accurately the strength of national influence upon social life. 323. =Health Interests.=--If this national unity exists in the economic field it is natural to expect to find it in the less material interests of society. The sense of common interests is all-pervasive. National health conditions bring the physicians together to discuss the causes and the therapeutics. How to keep well and to get strong, how to dress the baby and to bring up children are perennial topics for magazines with a national circulation. Insurance companies with a national constituency prescribe physical tests for all classes. Government takes cognizance of the physical interest of all its citizens, and passes through Congress pure-food and pure-drug acts. National societies of a voluntary nature also cater to health and happiness. Long-named organizations exist for moral prophylaxis and for the prevention of cruelty to children and animals. Vigilance associations of all sorts stand guard to keep children and their elders from contamination. Society protects itself over wide areas through such associated recognition of the mutual interests of all its members. 324. =National Sport.=--Recreation and sport also present national features. Every new phase of recreation from playgrounds to philately presently has its countrywide association. There is a conscious reaching out for wide fellowship with those who are interested in the same pursuits. The attraction of like-mindedness is a potent force in every department of life. Certain forms of relaxation or spirited rivalry have attained to the dignity of national sports. England has its football, Scotland its golf, Canada its lacrosse, the United States its baseball. The enthusiasm and excitement that hold whole cities in thrall as a national league season draws to its close, is a more striking phenomenon than Roman gladiatorial shows or Spanish bull-fights. Persons who seldom if ever attend a game, who do not know one player from another, wax eloquent over the merits of a team that represents their own city, while individuals who attain to the title of "fans" handle familiarly the details of the teams throughout the league circuit. Why should Olympic contests held in recent years between representatives of different nations, or international tennis championships, arouse universal interest? It is inexplicable except as evidence of collective consciousness and a national pride and loyalty. The same spirit has entered into university athletics. The great universities have their "rooters" scattered all over the land, and the whole nation is interested in the Thames or Henley races and the Poughkeepsie regattas. There are intercollegiate tennis championships and chess tournaments, football contests between the leaders East and West, all-America teams, and even international rivalries. 325. =The Function of Education.=--Nation-wide ties and loyalties in sport do not call for the official action of the nation, though national officials as individuals are often devoted to certain sports, but the nation has other functions that may be classed as social. No duty is more pressing, not even that of efficient government, than the task of education. The National Bureau of Education supplemented by State boards, officially takes cognizance of society's educational interests. In education local independence plays a large part, but it is the function of government to make inquiry into the best theories and methods anywhere in vogue, to extend information to all who are interested, and to use its large influence toward the adoption of improvements. Government in certain States of the American Union even goes so far as to co-operate with local communities in maintaining joint school superintendents of towns or counties. It is appropriate that a democratic nation should give much attention to the education of the people because the success of democracy depends on popular intelligence. The efforts of the government are seconded by voluntary organization. It is not unusual for college presidents or ordinary teachers to meet in conference and discuss their difficulties and aspirations, but a National Education Association is cumulative evidence that Americans think in terms of a continent, and that their interests are the same educationally in all parts of the land. It is no less true of other agencies of culture than the schools. Cultural associations of all kinds abound. Some of them are limited by State boundaries, not a few are national in their scope. There is a national Chautauqua; institutes with the same name hold their sessions all over the land. Music, art, and the drama, sometimes the same organized group of artists, appeal to appreciative audiences in Boston, New Orleans, Chicago, and San Francisco. Popular songs from the opera, popular dances from the music-halls sweep the country with a wave of imitative enthusiasm. There are national whims and national tastes that chase each other from ocean to ocean, almost as fast as the sun moves from meridian to meridian. 326. =National Philanthropy.=--So much of national life is voluntary in direction and organization in America, as compared with Germany or Russia, that it is easy to overlook its national significance. As a national state the United States does not attempt philanthropy. The separate States have their asylums as they have penitentiaries and reformatories, but the nation performs no such function. Yet philanthropic organization girdles the continent. The National Conference of Charities and Corrections is one instance of a society that meets annually in the interest of the depressed classes, discusses their problems, and reports its findings to the public as a basis for organized activity. Such an organization not only represents the humanitarian principles and interest of individuals here and there, but it helps to bind together local groups all over the country that are working on an altruistic basis. Whole sections of territory join in discussing still wider human interests. The Southern Sociological Conference appeals to the whole South and calls upon the rest of the country for speakers of reputation and wisdom. 327. =The Federal Council of Churches.=--It is fundamental to the spirit and word of the American Constitution that church and state shall not be united, but this does not prevent religious interests from being cherished nationally, and ecclesiastical organizations from having national affiliations. Modern churches are grouped first of all in denominations, because of certain peculiarities, but most of the denominations have spread over the country and propagated their type as opportunity offered. National conferences and conventions, therefore, take place regularly, bringing together Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, or Methodists, as the case may be, to consider the interests that are most vital to the denomination as a whole, or which the denomination as a whole, in place of the local churches, holds within its sphere of control. Politics and sectional interests have sometimes divided denominations, large bodies have sometimes split along conservative or radical lines, but the national ideal has never been lost sight of, and national organizations enjoy dignity and prestige. One of the most recent illustrations of a still broader interest and deeper consciousness is the federation of more than thirty evangelical Protestant denominations for better acquaintance and larger achievement. Temporary movements and even a definite Evangelical Alliance have been in evidence before, but now has come a permanent organization, to include all the religious interests that can be held in common, and especially to stress the more ambitious programme of social regeneration. The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America has yet to prove that it is not ahead of the times, but it is an earnest of a religious interest that oversteps the bounds of creed and denominational organization and calls upon the various divisions of the Protestant Church to unite for a national campaign. 328. =The Scope of National Life.=--Social life in the nation is not confined to any organization. It does not wait upon government to perform its various functions. It goes on because of the constant flow and counterflow of population through all the channels of acquaintance and correspondence, of travel and trade. People feel the need of one another, are in constant touch with one another, and inevitably are continually exchanging commodities and ideas. Barriers of race and language, of tariff walls and national conventions stand in the way of exchange between individuals of different nations, though a strenuous commercial age succeeds in making breaches in the barriers, but opportunity within the nation is free, and such natural barriers as language and race differences speedily give way before the mutual desires of the native and the hyphenated American. READING REFERENCES DEALEY: _Development of the State_, pages 63-115. _Reports of the Commissioner of Education._ _American Year Book_, 1914, _passim._ WARD: _Year Book of the Church and Social Service_, 1916, pages 24-29. CHAPTER XLII THE STATE 329. =The State and Its Sovereignty.=--The various economic and social functions that are exercised by the people as a nation can be performed in an orderly and effective way only when the people are organized politically, and the nation has full powers of sovereignty. When the nation functions politically it is a state. States may be large like Russia, or small like Montenegro; they may have full sovereignty like Great Britain, or limited sovereignty like New York; the fact that they exercise political authority makes them states. It is conceivable that this political authority may be exercised through the sheer force of public opinion, but the experience of the newly organized United States under the Articles of Confederation showed that national moral suasion was not effective. History seems to prove that society needs a machinery of government able to legislate and enforce its laws, and the tendency has been for a comparatively small number of states to extend their authority over more and more of the earth's surface. This has become possible through the maintenance of efficient military forces and wise local administration, aided by increasing ease of communication and transportation. Once it was a question whether the United States could enforce its law as far away as western Pennsylvania; now Great Britain bears unquestioned sway over the antipodes. Many persons look forward to the time when the people of all nations will unite in a universal state, with power to enforce its will without resort to war. 330. =Why the State is Necessary.=--There are some persons, commonly known as anarchists, who do not believe that government is necessary. They would have human relations reduced to their lowest terms, and then trust to human nature to behave itself properly. There are other persons known as Socialists, who would have the people in their collective capacity exercise a larger control than now over human action. Neither of these classes represents the bulk of society. Common sense and experience together seem to demand a government that will exercise a reasonable control, and by reasonable is meant a control that will preserve the best interests of all and make general progress possible. The political function of the nation is both coercive and directive. When we think of a state we naturally think of the power that it possesses to make peace or war with foreign powers, to keep order within the nation, to enforce its authority over any individual or group that breaks the laws that it has made; but while such power of control is essential and its exercise often spectacular, it is paralleled by the directive power. There are many social relations that need definition and much social conduct that needs direction. A man and a woman live together and bring up a family of children. Who is to determine their legal status, the terms of marriage, the rights of parenthood, the claims of childhood, the rights and obligations of the family as a part of the community? The family accumulates property in lands, houses, and movable possessions. Who will make the acquisition legal, insure property protection, and provide legally for inheritance? Every individual has his personal relation to the state, and privileges of citizenship are important. Who shall determine the right to vote and to hold office, or the duty to pay taxes or serve in the army or navy? In these various ways the state is no less functioning politically for the benefit of the people than when coercing recalcitrant citizens, warning or fighting other nations, or legislating in its congressional halls. Its opportunity to regulate the social interests of its citizens is almost illimitable, for while a written constitution may prescribe what a state may and may not do, those who made the constitution have the power to revise it or to override its provisions. 331. =Theories of the State.=--Archæological and historical evidence point to the family as the nursery of the state. There was a time when the contract theory was popular. It was believed that the state became possible when individuals agreed to give up some of their own individual rights for the sake of living in peace with their neighbors and enjoying mutual protection. There is no doubt that such a mutual arrangement was made in the troublous feudal period of mediæval European history, just as the original thirteen American colonies gave up some of their individual powers to make possible a real American state, but the social-contract theory is no longer accepted as a satisfactory explanation of the origin of government. There was no _Mayflower_ compact with the bushmen when Englishmen decided to live with the natives in Australia. There is another theory that eminently wise men, with or without divine assistance, formulated law and government for cities and tribes, and that their codes were definitely accepted by the people, but the work of these men, as far as it is historical at all, seems to have been a work of codifying laws which had grown out of custom rather than of making new laws. Still another theory that was once held strenuously by a few was that of the divine right of kings, as if God had given to one dynasty or one class the right to rule irresponsibly over their fellows. Individual political philosophers, like the Greek Aristotle and the German Bluntschli have published their theories, and have influenced schools of publicists, but the political science of the present day, basing its theories on observed facts, is content to trace the gradual changes that have taken place in the unconscious development of the past, and to point out the possibilities of intelligent progress in future evolution. 332. =How the State Came to Be.=--The true story of the development of the state seems to have been as follows. The roots of the state are in the family group. When the family expanded into the tribe, family discipline and family custom easily passed over to tribal discipline and tribal custom, strengthened by religious superstition and the will of the priest. But not all chieftains and all tribes have the same ability or the same disposition, so that while political custom and religious sanctions tended in the main to remain unchanged, an occasional exception upset the social equilibrium. Race mixture and conflicting interests compelled organization on a civil rather than a tribal basis. Or an ambitious prince or a restless tribe interfered with the established relations, and presently a powerful military state was giving law to subjugated tribes. Egypt, Persia, Rome, Turkey have been such states. On a larger scale, something of the same sort has happened in the conquest of outlying parts of the world by the European Powers, until one man in Petrograd can give law to Kamchatka, a cabinet in London can determine a policy for the government of India, or the United States Congress can change the administration of affairs in the Philippines. Military power has been the weapon by which authority has been imposed from without, legislative action the instrument by which authority has been extended within. 333. =The Government of Great Britain.=--The government of Great Britain is one of the best concrete examples of the growth of a typical state. Its Teutonic founders learned the rudiments of government in the German forests, where the principles of democracy took root. Military and political exigencies gave the prince large power, but the people never forgot how to exert their influence through local assembly or national council. In the thirteenth century, when the King displeased the men of the nation, they demanded the privileges of Magna Carta, and when King and lords ruled inefficiently, the common people found a way to enlarge their own powers. Representatives of the townsmen and the country shires took their places in Parliament, and gradually, with growing wisdom and courage, assumed more and more prerogatives. Three times in the seventeenth century Parliament demanded successfully certain rights of citizenship, though once it had to fight and once more to depose a king. In the nineteenth century, by a succession of reform acts, King and Parliament admitted tradesmen, farmers, and working men to a full share in the workings of the state, and only recently the Commons have supplanted the Lords as the leading legislative body of the nation. The story of Great Britain is a tale of growing democracy and increasing efficiency. The story of local government and the story of imperial government might be placed side by side with the story of national government, and each would reveal the political principles that have guided British progress. Social need, patient experiment, and growth in efficiency are significant phrases that help to explain the story. Every nation has worked out its government in its own way, interfered with occasionally by interested parties on the outside, but the general line of progress has been the same--local experimentation, federation or union more often imposed than agreed upon by popular consent, and a slow growth of popular rights over government by a privileged few. Present tendency is in the direction of safeguarding the interests of all by a fully representative government, in which the individual efficiency of prince or commoner alike shall have due weight, but no one sovereign or class shall rule the people as a whole. 334. =The Organization of Government.=--The political organization depends upon the functions that the state has to perform, as the structure of any group corresponds to its functions. The modern national machinery is a complicated system, and is becoming more so as constitutional conventions define more in detail the powers and forms of government, and as legislatures enter the field of social reform, but the simplest attempt at regulation involves several steps, and so naturally there are several departments of government. The first step is the election of those who are to make the laws. Practically all modern states recognize the principle that the people are at least to have a share in government; this is managed by the popular election of their representatives in the various departments of government. The second step is lawmaking by the representative legislature, congress, or parliament, usually after previous deliberation and recommendation by a committee; in some states the people have the right by referendum to ratify or reject the legislation, and even to initiate such legislation as they desire. The third step is the arrangement for carrying out the law that has been passed. This is managed by the executive department of the government. The fourth step is the actual administration of law and government by officials who are sometimes elected and sometimes appointed, and who constitute the administrative department of the political organization. A fifth step is the passing upon law and the relation of an individual or group to it by judicial officers attached to a system of courts. These departments of the state, with whatever auxiliary machinery has been organized to assist in their working, make up the political organization of the typical modern state. 335. =The Electoral System.=--There is great variety in the degree of self-government enjoyed by the people. In the most advanced nations the electoral privileges are widely distributed, in the backward nations it is only recently that the people have had any voice in national affairs. Usually suffrage is reserved for those who have reached adult manhood, but an increasing number of States of the American Union and several foreign nations have admitted women to equal privileges. Lack of property or education in many countries is a bar to electoral privilege. Pauperism and crime and sometimes religious heterodoxy disfranchise. The variety and number of officials to be elected varies greatly. The head of the nation in the states of the Old World generally holds his position by hereditary right, and he has large appointive power directly or indirectly. In some states the judiciary is appointed rather than elected on the ground that it should be above the influence of party politics. The chief power of the people is in choosing their representatives to make the laws. Most of these representatives are chosen for short terms and must answer to the people for their political conduct; by these means the people are actually self-governing, though the execution of the law may be in the hands of officers whom they have not chosen. Democratic government is nevertheless subject to all the forces that affect large bodies exerted through party organizations, demagogues, and a party press, but even opponents of democracy are willing to admit that the people are learning political lessons by experience. 336. =The Legislative System.=--Legislation by representatives of all classes of the people is a new political phenomenon tried out most thoroughly among the large nations by Great Britain, France, and the United States. Even now there is much distrust of the ability of the ordinary man in politics, and considerably more of the ordinary woman. But there have been so many extraordinary individuals who have risen to political eminence from the common crowd, that the legislative privilege can no longer be confined to an aristocracy. The old aristocratic element is represented to-day by a senate, or upper house, composed of men who are prominent by reason of birth, wealth, or position, but the upper house is of minor importance. The real legislative power rests with the lower chamber, which directly represents the middle and lower classes, professional, business, and industrial. The action of lawmaking bodies is usually limited in scope by the provisions of a written constitution, and is modified by the public opinion of constituents. Important among the necessary legislation is the regulation of the economic and social relations of individuals and corporations, provision for an adequate revenue by means of a system of taxation, appropriation for the maintenance of departments of government and necessary public works, and the determination of an international policy. In the United States an elaborate system of checks and balances gives the executive a provisional veto on legislation, but gives large advisory powers to Congress. In Great Britain the executive is the chief of the dominant party in Parliament, and if he loses the confidence of the legislative body he loses his position as prime minister unless sustained in a national election. In all legislative bodies there are inevitable differences of opinion and conflicts of interests resulting in party divisions and such opposite groups as conservatives and radicals. The formulation and pursuance of a national policy is, therefore, not an easy task, and the conflict of interests often necessitates compromise, so that a history of legislation over a series of years shows that national progress is generally accomplished by liberalism wresting a modicum of power from conservatism, then giving way for a little to a period of reaction, and then pushing forward a step further as public opinion becomes more intelligent or more courageous. 337. =The Executive Department.=--Legislative bodies occasionally take vacations; the executive is always on duty in person or through his subordinates. Popularly considered, the executive department of government consists of the president, the king, or the prime minister; actually it includes an advisory council or cabinet, which is responsible to its chief, but shares with him the task of the management of national affairs. The executive department of the government stands in relation to the people of the nation as the business manager of a corporation stands in relation to the stockholders. He must see that the will of the people, as expressed by their representatives, is carried into effect; he must appoint the necessary administrative officials for efficient service; he must keep his finger upon the pulse of the nation, and use his influence to hold the legislature to its duty; he must approve or veto laws which are sent to him to sign; above all, he must represent his nation in all its foreign relations, appoint the personnel of the diplomatic force, negotiate treaties, and help to form the international law of the world. It is the business of the executive to maintain the honor and dignity of the nation before the world, and to carry out the law of his own nation if it requires the whole military force available. 338. =Administrative Organization.=--The executive department includes the advisers of the head, who constitute the cabinet. In Europe the cabinet is responsible to the sovereign or the parliament, and the members usually act unitedly. In the United States they are appointed by the President, and are individually responsible to him alone. In their capacity as a cabinet they help to formulate national policy, and their influence in legislation and in moulding public opinion is considerable, but their chief function is in administering the departments of which they have charge. It is the custom for the heads of the chief departments of government to constitute the cabinet, but their number differs in different states, and titles vary, also. In general, the department of state or foreign affairs ranks first in importance, and its secretary is in charge of all correspondence with the diplomatic representatives of the nation located in the world's capitals; the department of the treasury or the exchequer is usually next in importance; others are the departments of the army and navy, of colonial possessions, of manufacturing and commerce, mining, or agriculture, of public utilities, of education or religion, and for judicial business. Each of these has its subordinate bureaus and an army of civil-service officials, some of whom owe their appointment to personal influence, others to real ability. The civil officials with which the public is most familiar are postal employees, officers of the federal courts, and revenue officials. Such persons usually hold office while their party is in power or during good behavior. Long tenure of office tends to conservative measures and the spirit of bureaucracy, while a system by which civil office is regarded as party spoil tends to corruption and inefficiency. The business of administration is becoming increasingly important in the modern state. 339. =The Judicial System.=--There is always danger that law may be misinterpreted or prove unconstitutional. It is the function of the judicial department of government to make decisions, interpreting and applying the law of the nation in particular cases brought before the courts. The law of the nation is superior to all local or sectional law; so is the national judiciary supreme in its authority and national in its jurisdiction. The judicial system of the United States includes a series of courts from the lowest district courts, which are located throughout the country, to the Supreme Court in Washington, which deals with the most momentous questions of national law. In the United States the judicial system is complicated by a system of lesser courts, State and local, independent of federal control, attached to which is a body of police, numerous judges, juries, and lawyers; the higher courts also have their justices and practising lawyers, but there is less haste and confusion and greater dignity and ability displayed. There has been much criticism in recent years of antiquated forms of procedure, cumbrous precedent, and unfair use of technicalities for the defeat of justice, but however imperfect judicial practice may be, the system is well intrenched and is not likely to be changed materially. 340. =The Relation of National to District Governments.=--In some nations there are survivals of older political divisions which once possessed sovereignty, but which have sacrificed most, if not all, of it for the larger good. This is the case in such federal states as the German Empire, Switzerland, and the United States. Each State in the American nation retains its own departments of government, and so has its governor and heads of departments, its two-chambered legislature, and its State judiciary. State law and State courts are more familiar to the people than most of the national legislation. In the German Empire each state has its own prince, and in many respects is self-governing, but has been more and more sinking its own individuality in the empire. In the British Empire there is still another relation. England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland were once independent of each other, but military and dynastic events united them. For local legislation and administration they tend to separate, and already Ireland has obtained home rule. Beyond seas a colonial empire has arisen, and certain great dominions are united by little more than ties of blood and loyalty to the mother country. Canada, Australia, and South Africa have gained a larger measure of sovereignty. India is held as an imperial possession, but even there experiments of self-government are being tried. The whole tendency of government, both here and abroad, seems to be to leave matters of local concern largely to the local community and matters that belong to a section or subordinate state to that district, and to centralize all matters of national or interstate concern in the hands of a small body of men at the national capital. In every case national or imperial authority is the court of last resort. READING REFERENCES BLISS: _New Encyclopedia of Social Reform_, art. "Anarchism." DEALEY: _Development of the State_, pages 127-234. WILSON: _The State_, pages 555-571. BLUNTSCHLI: _Theory of the State_, pages 61-73. _Constitution of the United States._ BRYCE: _The American Commonwealth_ (abridged edition), pages 22-242, 287-305. CHAPTER XLIII PROBLEMS OF THE NATION 341. =Government as the Advance Agent of Prosperity.=--It is common philosophy that society owes every man a living, and it seems to be a common belief that the government owes every man a job. There are, of course, only a few government positions, and these are rushed after by a swarm of office-seekers, but campaign orators have talked so much about a full dinner pail and the government as the advance agent of prosperity, that there seems to be a popular notion that the government, as if by a magician's wand, could cure unemployment, allay panics, dispel hard times, and increase a man's earning power at will. A little familiarity with economic law ought to modify this notion, but it is difficult to eradicate it. Society cannot, through any one institution, bring itself to perfection; many elements enter into the making of prosperity. It depends on individual ability and training for industry, on an understanding of the laws of health and keeping the body and brain in a state of efficiency, on peaceful relations between groups, on the successful balancing of supply and demand, and of wages and the cost of living, on personal integrity and group co-operation. All that the government can do is to instruct and stimulate. This it has been doing and will continue to do with growing effectiveness, but it has to feel its way and learn by experience, as do individuals. 342. =How It Has Met Its Responsibility.=--This problem of prosperity which is both economic and social, is the concern of all the people of the nation, and any attempt to solve it in the interest of one section or a single group cannot bring success. That is one reason for many of the social weaknesses everywhere visible. Government has legislated in the interests of a group of manufacturers, or the courts have favored the rich, or trusts have been attacked at the demands of a reforming party, or labor has been immune from the application of a law against conspiracy when corporations were hard hit. These weaknesses, which are characteristic of American democracy, find their parallels in all countries where modern industrial and social conditions obtain. But government has lent its energies to the upbuilding of a sound social structure. It has recognized the need of education for the youth of the land at a minimum cost, and the States of the American Union have made liberal grants for both academic and special training to their State universities, agricultural colleges, and normal schools. It encourages the country people to enrich their life and to increase their earnings for their own sake and for the prosperity of the people who are dependent upon them. It stimulates improved processes in manufacturing and mining, and protects business against foreign competition by a tariff wall; it tries to prevent recurring seasons of financial panics by a stable currency and the extension of credits. It provides the machinery for settling labor difficulties by conciliation and arbitration, and tries to mediate between gigantic combinations of trade and transportation and the public. It has pensioned liberally its old soldiers. It has attempted to find a method of taxation that would not bear heavily on its citizens, but that at the same time would provide a sufficient revenue to meet the enormous expense of catering to the multifarious interests of a population of a hundred million people. 343. =The Problem of Democracy.=--The problem of prosperity is complicated by the problem of democracy. If by a satisfactory method a body of wise men could be selected to study carefully each specific problem involved, could experiment over a term of years in the execution of plans worked out free from fear of being thrown out at any time as the result of elective action by an impatient people, prosperity might move on more rapid feet. In a country where power is in the hands of a few a specific programme can be worked out without much friction and rapid industrial and social progress can be made, as has been the case during the last fifty years in Germany; but where the masses of the people must be consulted and projects depend for success upon their sustained approval, progress is much more spasmodic and uncertain. Everything depends on an intelligent electorate, controlled by reason rather than emotion and patient enough to await the outcome of a policy that has been inaugurated. This raises the question as to the education of the electorate or the establishment of an educational qualification, as in some States. Is there any way by which the mass of the working people, who have only an elementary education, and never see even the outside of a State university, can be made intelligent and self-restrained? They will not read public documents, whether reports of expert commissions or speeches in Congress. Shall they be compelled to read what the government thinks is for their good, or be deprived of the suffrage as a penalty? They get their political opinions from sensational journals. Shall these publications be placed under a ban and the nation subsidize its own press? These are questions to be considered by the educational departments of State and nation, with a view to a more intelligent citizenship. Democracy cannot be said to be a failure, but it is still a problem. Government will not be any better than the majority of the citizens want it to be; hence its standards can be raised only as the mental and moral standards of the electorate are elevated. Education, a conscious share in the responsibility of legislation, and sure justice in all controverted cases, whether of individuals or classes, are necessary elements in winning even a measure of success. 344. =The Race Problem.=--The difficulties of American democracy are enormously enhanced by the race problem. If common problems are to be solved, there must be common interests. The population needs to be homogeneous, to be seeking the same ends, to be conscious of the same ideals. Not all the races of the world are thus homogeneous; it would be difficult to think of Englishmen, Russians, Chinese, South Americans, and Africans all working with united purpose, inspired by the same ideals, yet that is precisely what is expected in America under the tutelage and leadership of two great political parties, not always scrupulous about the methods used to obtain success at the polls. It is rather astonishing that Americans should expect their democracy to work any better than it does when they remember the conditions under which it works. To hand a man a ballot before he feels himself a part of the nation to which he has come, before he is stirred to something more than selfish achievement, before he is conscious of the real meaning of citizenship, is to court disaster, yet in being generous with the ballot the people of America are arming thousands of ignorant, irresponsible immigrants with weapons against themselves. The race problem of America is not at all simple. It is more than a problem of immigration. The problem of the European immigrant is one part of it. There is also the problem of the relation of the American people to the yellow races at our back door, and the problem of the negro, who is here through no fault of his own, but who, because he is here, must be brought into friendly and helpful relation with the rest of the nation. 345. =The Problem of the European Immigrant.=--The problem of the European immigrant is one of assimilation. It is difficult because the alien comes in such large numbers, brings with him a different race heritage, and settles usually among his own people, where American influence reaches him only at second hand. Environment may be expected to change him gradually, the education of his children will modify the coming generation, but it will be a slow task to make him over into an American in ideals and modes of thinking, as well as in industrial efficiency, and in the process the native American is likely to suffer loss in the contact, with a net lowering of standards in the life of the American people. To see the danger is not to despair of escaping it. To understand the danger is the first step in providing a safeguard, and to this end exact knowledge of the situation should be a part of the teaching of the schools. To seek a solution of the problem is the second step. The main agency is education, but this does not mean entirely education in the schools. Education through social contact is the principal means of assimilating the adult; for this purpose it is desirable that some means be found for the better distribution of the immigrant, and as immigration is a national problem, it is proper for the national government to attack that particular phase of it. Then it belongs to voluntary agencies, like settlements, churches, and philanthropic and educational societies to give instruction in the essentials of language, civics, industrial training, and character building. For the children the school provides such education, but voluntary agencies may well supplement its secular training with more definite and thorough instruction in morals and religion. It cannot be expected that the immigrant problem will settle itself; at least, a purposeful policy wisely and persistently carried out will accomplish far better and quicker results. Nor is it an insoluble problem; it is not even necessary that we should severely check immigration. But there is need of intelligent and co-operative action to distribute, educate, and find a suitable place for the immigrant, that he may make good, and to devise a restrictive policy that will effectually debar the most undesirable, and will hold back the vast stream of recent years until those already here have been taken care of. 346. =The Problem of the Asiatic Immigrant.=--The problem of the Asiatic immigrant is quite different. It is a problem of race conflict rather than of race assimilation. The student of human society cannot minimize the importance of race heredity. In the case of the European it holds a subordinate place, because the difference between his heritage and that of the American is comparatively slight. But the Asiatic belongs to a different race, and the century-long training of an entirely different environment makes it improbable that the Asiatic and the American can ever assimilate. Each can learn from the other and co-operate to mutual advantage, but race amalgamation, or even a fusion of customs of thought and social ideals is altogether unlikely. It is therefore not to the advantage of either American or Asiatic that much Asiatic immigration into the United States should take place. To agree to this is not to be hostile to or scornful of the yellow man. The higher classes are fully as intelligent and capable of as much energy and achievement as the American, but the vast mass of those who would come here if immigration were unrestricted are undesirable, because of their low industrial and moral standards, their tenacity of old habits, and with all the rest because of their immense numbers, that would overrun all the western part of the United States. When the Chinese Exclusion Act passed Congress in 1882, the Chinese alone were coming at the rate of nearly forty thousand a year, and that number might have been increased tenfold by this time, to say nothing of Japanese and Hindoos. While, therefore, the United States must treat Asiatics with consideration and live up to its treaty obligations, it seems the wise policy to refuse to admit the Asiatic masses to American residence. A part of the Asiatic problem, however, is the political relation of the United States and the Asiatic Powers, especially in the Pacific. This is less intimately vital, but is important in view of the rapidly growing tendency of both China and Japan to expand in trade and political ambitions. This is a problem of political rather than social science, but since the welfare of both races is concerned, and of other peoples of the Pacific Islands, it needs the intelligent consideration of all students. It is desirable to understand one another, to treat one another fairly and generously, and to find means, if possible, of co-operation rather than conflict, where the interests of one impinge upon another. All mediating influences, like Christian missions, are to be welcomed as helping to extend mutual understanding and to soften race prejudices and animosities. 347. =The Negro Problem.=--Not a few persons look upon the negro problem as the most serious social question in America. Whatever its relative merits, as compared with other problems, it is sufficiently serious to call for careful study and an attempt at solution. The negro race in America numbers approximately ten millions, twice as many as at the close of the Civil War. The negro was thrust upon America by the cupidity of the foreign slave-trader, and perpetuated by the difficulty of getting along without him. His presence has been in some ways beneficial to himself and to the whites among whom he settled, but it has been impossible for two races so diverse to live on a plane of equality, and the burden of education upon the South has been so heavy and the race qualities of the negro so discouraging, that progress in the solution of the negro problem has been slow. The problem of the colored race is not one of assimilation or of conflict. In spite of an admixture of blood that affects possibly a third of the American negroes, there never will be race fusion. Assimilation of culture was partly accomplished in slave days, and it will go on. There is no serious conflict between white and colored, when once the question of assimilation is understood. The problem is one of race adjustment. Fifty years have been insufficient to perfect the relations between the two races, but since they must live together, it is desirable that they should come to understand and sympathize with each other, and as far as possible co-operate for mutual advancement. The problem is a national one, because the man of color is not confined to the South, and even more because the South alone is unable to deal adequately with the situation. The negro greatly needs efficient social education. He tends to be dirty, lazy, and improvident, as is to be expected, when left to himself. Like all countrymen--a large proportion live in the country--he is backward in ways of thinking and methods of working. He is primitive in his passions and much given to emotion. He shows the traits of a people not far removed from savagery. It is remarkable that his white master was able to civilize him as much as he did, and it is not strange that there has been many a relapse under conditions of unprepared freedom, but it is only the more reason why negro character should be raised higher on the foundation already laid. The task is not very different from that which is presented by the slum population of the cities of the North. The children need to be taught how to live, and then given a chance to practise the instruction in a decent environment. They need manual and industrial training fitted to their industrial environment, and every opportunity to employ their knowledge in earning a living. They need noble ideals, and these they can get only by the sympathetic, wise teaching of their superiors, whether white or black. They and their friends need patience in the upward struggle, for it will not be easy to socialize and civilize ten million persons in a decade or a century. Such institutions as Hampton and Tuskegee are working on a correct basis in emphasizing industrial training; these schools very properly are supplemented by the right kind of elementary schools, on the one hand, and by cultural institutions of high grade on the other, for the negro is a human being, and his nature must be cultivated on all sides, as much as if he were white. 348. =The Race Problem a Part of One Great Social Problem.=--The race problem as a whole is not peculiar to America, but is intensified here by the large mixture of all races that is taking place. It is inevitable, as the world's population shifts in meeting the social forces of the present age. It is complicated by race inequalities and race ambitions. It is fundamentally a problem of adjustment between races that possess a considerable measure of civilization and those that are not far removed from barbarism. It is discouraging at times, because the supposedly cultured peoples revert under stress of war or competition or self-indulgence to the crudities of primitive barbarism, but it is a soluble problem, nevertheless. The privileged peoples need a solemn sense of the responsibility of the "white man's burden," which is not to cultivate the weaker man for the sake of economic exploitation, but to improve him for the weaker man's own sake, and for the sake of the world's civilization. The policy of any nation like the United States must be affected, of course, by its own interests, but the European, the Asiatic, the negro, and every race or people with which the American comes in contact ought to be regarded as a member of a world society in which the interlocking of relationships is so complete that the injury of one is the injury of all, and that which is done to aid the least will react to the benefit of him who already has more. READING REFERENCES DEALEY: _Development of the State_, pages 300-314. USHER: _Rise of the American People_, pages 392-404. MECKLIN: _Democracy and Race Friction_, pages 77-122. COMMONS: _Races and Immigrants in America_, pages 17-21, 198-238. COOLIDGE: _Chinese Immigration_, pages 423-458, 486-496. GULICK: _The American Japanese Problem_, pages 3-27, 90-196, 281-307. CHAPTER XLIV INTERNATIONALISM 349. =The New World Life.=--The social life that started in the family has broadened until it has circled the globe. It is possible now to speak in terms of world life. The interests of society have reached out from country to country, and from zone to zone, just as a child's interests as he grows to manhood expand from the home to the community and from the community to the nation. The idea of the social solidarity of all peoples is still new. Ever since the original divergence of population from its home nest, when groups became strange and hostile to one another because of mountain and forest barriers, changing languages, and occasionally clashing interests, the tendency of the peoples was to grow apart. But for a century past the tendency has been changing from divergence to convergence, from ignorance and distrust of one another to understanding, sympathy, and good-will, from independence and ruthlessness to interdependence and co-operation. Numerous agencies have brought this about--some physical like steam and electricity, some economic like commerce and finance, some social like travel and the interchange of ideas through the press, some moral and religious like missions and international organizations for peace. The history of a hundred years has made it plain that nations cannot live in isolation any more than individuals can, and that the tendency toward social solidarity must be the permanent tendency if society is to exist and prosper, even though civilization and peace may be temporarily set back for a generation by war. 350. =The Principle of Adaptation vs. Conflict.=--This New World life is not unnatural, though it has been slow in coming. A human being is influenced by his physical needs and desires, his cultivated habits, his accumulated interests, the customs of the people to whom he belongs, and the conditions of the environment in which he finds himself. While a savage his needs, desires, and interests are few, his habits are fixed, his relations are simple and local; but when he begins to take on civilization his needs multiply, his habits change, and his relations extend more widely. The more enlightened he becomes the greater the number of his interests and the more points of contact with other people. So with every human group. The process of social development for a time may intensify conflict, but there comes a time when it is made clear to the dullest mind that conflict must give way to mutual adaptation. No one group, not even a supernation, can have everything for itself, and for the sake of the world's comfort and peace it will be a decided social gain when that principle receives universal recognition. World federations and peace propaganda cannot be effective until that principle is accepted as a working basis for world life. 351. =The Increasing Recognition of the Principle of Adaptation.=--This principle of adaptation has found limited application for a long time. Starting with individuals in the family and family groups in the clan, it extended until it included all the members of a state in their relations to each other. Many individual interests conflict in business and society and different opinions clash, but all points of difference within the nation are settled by due process of law, except when elemental passions break out in a lynching, or a family feud is perpetuated among the hills. But war continued to be the mode of settling international difficulties. Military force restrained a vassal from hostile acts under the Roman peace. But the next necessary step was for states voluntarily to adjust their relations with one another. In some instances, even in ancient times, local differences were buried, and small federations, like the Achæan League of the Greeks and the Lombard League of the Middle Ages, were formed for common defense. These have been followed by greater alliances in modern times. But the striking instances of real interstate progress are found in the federation of such States as those that are included within the present United States of America, and within the new German Empire that was formed after the Franco-Prussian War. Sinking their differences and recognizing one another's rights and interests, the people of such united nations have become accustomed to a large national solidarity, and it ought not to require much instruction or persuasion to show them that what they have accomplished already for themselves is the correct principle for their guidance in world affairs. 352. =International Law and Peace.=--This principle of recognizing one another's rights and interests is the foundation of international law, which has been modified from time to time, but which from the publication of Hugo Grotius's _Law of War and Peace_ in the seventeenth century slowly has bound more closely together the civilized nations. There has come into existence a body of law for the conduct of nations that is less complete, but commands as great respect as the civil law of a single state. This law may be violated by a nation in the stress of conflict, as civil law may be derided by an individual lawbreaker or by an excited mob, but eventually it reasserts itself and slowly extends its scope and power. Without international legislative organization, without a tribunal or a military force to carry out its provisions, by sheer force of international opinion and a growing regard for social justice it demands attention from the proudest nations. Text-books have been written and university chairs founded to present its claims, international associations and conventions have met to define more accurately its code, and tentative steps have been taken to strengthen its position by two Hague Conferences that met in 1899 and 1907. Large contributions of money have been made to stimulate the cause of peace, and as many as two hundred and fifty peace societies have been organized. 353. =Arbitration and an International Court.=--Experiments have been tried at settling international disputes without resort to war. Great Britain and the United States have led the way in showing to the world during the last one hundred years that all kinds of vexatious differences can be settled peacefully by submitting them to arbitration. These successes have led the United States to propose general treaties of arbitration to other nations, and advance has been made in that direction. It was possible to establish at The Hague a permanent court of arbitration, and to refer to it really important cases. Such a calamity as the European war, of course, interrupts the progress of all such peaceful methods, but makes all the plainer the dire need of a better machinery for settling international differences. There is reasonable expectation that before many years there may be established a permanent international court of justice, an international parliament, and a sufficient international police force to restrain any one nation from breaking the peace. Only in this way can the dread of war be allayed and disarmament be undertaken; even then the success of such an experiment in government will depend on an increase of international understanding, respect, and consideration. 354. =Intercommunication and Its Rewards.=--The gain in social solidarity that has been achieved already is due first of all to improved communication between nations. In the days of slow sailing vessels it took several weeks to cross the Atlantic, and there was no quicker way to convey news. The news that peace had been arranged at Ghent in 1814 between Great Britain and the United States did not reach the armies on this side in time to prevent the battle of New Orleans. Even the results of the battle of Waterloo were not known in England for several days after Napoleon's overthrow. Now ocean leviathans keep pace with the storms that move across the waters, and the cable and the wireless flash their messages with the speed of the lightning. Power to put a girdle around the earth in a few minutes has made modern news agencies possible, and they have made the modern newspaper essential. The newspaper requires the railroad and the steamship for its distribution, and business men depend upon them all to carry out their plans. These physical agencies have made possible a commerce that is world-wide. There are ports that receive ships from every nation east and west. Great freight terminal yards hold cars that belong to all the great transportation lines of the country. Lombard Street and Wall Street feel the pulse of the world's trade as it beats through the channels of finance. Improved communication has made possible the unification of a great political system like the British Empire. In the Parliament House and government offices of Westminster centre the political interests of Canada, Australia, South Africa, Egypt, and India, as well as of islands in every sea. Better communication has brought into closer relations the Pan-American states, so that they have met more than once for their mutual benefit. Helpful social results have come from the travel that has grown enormously in volume since ease and cheapness of transportation have increased. The impulse to travel for pleasure keeps persons of wealth on the move, and the desire for knowledge sends the intellectually minded professional man or woman of small means globe-trotting. In this way the people of different nations learn from one another; they become able to converse in different languages and to get one another's point of view; they gain new wants while they lose some of their professional interests; they return home poorer in pocket but richer in experience, more interested in others, more tolerant. These are social values, certain to make their influence felt in days to come, and by no means unappreciable already. 355. =International Institutions.=--These values are conserved by international institutions. Societies are formed by like-minded persons for better acquaintance and for the advancement of knowledge. The sciences are cherished internationally, interparliamentary unions and other agencies for the preservation of peace hold their conferences, working men meet to air their grievances or plan programmes, religious denominations consult for pushing their campaigns. The organizations that grow out of these relations and conferences develop into institutions that have standing. The international associations of scholars are as much a part of the world's institutional assets as the educational system is a recognized asset of any country. They are clearing-houses of information, as necessary as an international clearing-house of finance. The World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the International Young Men's Christian Association are moral agencies that bring together those who have at heart the same interests, and when they have once made good they must be reckoned among the established organizations that help to move the world forward. Not least among such institutions are the religious organizations. The closely knit Roman Catholic Church, that has held together millions of faithful adherents in many lands for centuries, and whose canon law receives an unquestioning obedience as the law of a nation, is an illustration of what an international religious institution may be. Protestant Churches, naturally more independent, have moved more slowly, but their world alliances and federations are increasing to the point where they, too, are likely to become true institutions. 356. =Missions as a Social Institution.=--Those institutions and movements are most useful that aim definitely to stimulate the highest interests of all mankind. It is comparatively simple to provide local stimulus for a better community life, but to help move the world on to higher levels requires clear vision, patient hope, and a definite plan on a large scale. Christian missionaries are conspicuous for their lofty ideals, their personal devotion to an unselfish task, their persistent optimism, and their unswerving adherence to the programme marked out by the pioneers of the movement. It is no argument against them that they have not accomplished all that a few enthusiasts expected of them in a few years. To socialize and Christianize half the people of the world is the task of centuries. With broad statesmanship missionary leaders have undertaken to do both of these. Mistakes in method or detail of operation do not invalidate the whole enterprise, and all criticism must keep in mind the noble purpose to lift to a higher level the social, moral, and religious ideas and practices of the most backward peoples. The purpose is certainly no less laudable than that of a Chinese mission to England to persuade Great Britain to end the opium traffic, or a diplomatic mission from the United States to stop civil strife in Mexico. 357. =Education as a Means to Internationalism.=--Internationalism rests on the broad basis of the social nature of mankind, a nature that cannot be unsocialized, but can be developed to a higher and more purposeful socialization. As there are degrees of perfection in the excellence of social relations, so there are degrees of obligation resting upon the nations of the world to give of their best to a general levelling up. The dependable means of international socialization is education, whether it comes through the press, the pulpit, or the school. Every commission that visits one country from another to learn of its industries, its institutions, and its ideals, is a means to that important end. Every exchange professor between European and American universities helps to interpret one country to the other. Every Chinese, Mexican, or Filipino youth who attends an American school is borrowing stimulus for his own people. Every visitor who does not waste or abuse his opportunities is a unit in the process of improving the acquaintance of East and West, of North and South. Internationalism is not a social Utopia to be invented in a day; it is rather an attitude of mind and a mode of living that come gradually but with gathering momentum as mutual understanding and sympathy increase. READING REFERENCES STRONG: _Our World_, pages 3-202. FOSTER: _Arbitration and the Hague Court._ FAUNCE: _Social Aspects of Foreign Missions._ MAURENBRECKER: "The Moral and Social Tasks of World Politics," art. in _American Journal of Sociology_, 6: 307-315. TRUEBLOOD: _Federation of the World_, pages 7-20, 91-149. PART VI--SOCIAL ANALYSIS CHAPTER XLV PHYSICAL AND PERSONAL FACTORS IN THE LIFE OF SOCIETY 358. =Constant Factors in Social Phenomena.=--Our study of social life has made it plain that it is a complex affair, but it has been possible to classify society in certain groups, to follow the gradual extension of relations from small groups to large, and to take note of the numerous activities and interests that enter into contemporary group life. It is now desirable to search for certain common elements that in all periods enter into the life of every group, whether temporary or permanent, so that we may discover the constant factors and the general principles that belong to the science of society. Some of these have been referred to already among the characteristics of social life, but in this connection it is useful to classify them for closer examination. First among these is the physical factor which conditions human activity but is not a compelling force, for man has often subdued his environment when it has put obstacles in his way. This physical element includes the geographical conditions of mountain, valley, or seashore, the climate and the weather, the food and water supply, the physical inheritance of the individual and the laws that control physical development, and the physical constitution of the group. A second factor is the psychic nature of human beings and the psychical interaction that goes on between individuals within the group and that produces reactions between groups. 359. =The Natural Environment.=--The early sociologists put the emphasis on the physical more than the psychic factors, and especially on biological analogies in society. It seemed to them as if it was nature that brought men together. Mountains and ice-bound regions were inhospitable, impassable rivers and trackless forests limited the range of animals and men, violent storms and temperature changes made men afraid. Avoiding these dangers and seeking a food-supply where it was most plentiful, human beings met in the favored localities and learned by experience the principles of association. Everywhere man is still in contact with physical forces. He has not yet learned to get along without the products of the earth, extracting food-supplies from the soil, gathering the fruits that nature provides, and mining the useful and precious metals. The city-dweller seems less dependent on nature than is the farmer, but the urban citizen relies on steam and electricity to turn the wheels of industry and transportation, depends on coal and gas for heat and light, and uses winter's harvest of ice to relieve the oppressive heat of summer. Rivers and seas are highways of his commerce. Everywhere man seems hedged about by physical forces and physical laws. Yet with the prerogative of civilization he has become master rather than servant of nature. He has improved wild fruits and vegetables by cultivation, he has domesticated wild animals, he has harnessed the water of the streams and the winds of heaven. He has tunnelled the mountains, bridged the rivers, and laid his cables beneath the ocean. He has learned to ride over land and sea and even to skim along the currents of the air. He has been able to discover the chemical elements that permeate matter and the nature and laws of physical forces. By numerous inventions he has made use of the materials and powers of nature. The physical universe is a challenge to human wits, a stimulus to thought and activity that shall result in the wonderful achievements of civilization. 360. =The Human Physique.=--Another element that enters into every calculation of success or failure in human life is the physical constitution of the individual and the group. The individual's physique makes a great difference in his comfort and activity. The corpulent person finds it difficult to get about with ease, the cripple finds himself debarred from certain occupations, the person with weak lungs must shun certain climates and as far as possible must avoid indoor pursuits. By their power of ingenuity or by sheer force of will men have been able to overcome physical limitations, but it is necessary to reckon with those limitations, and they are always a handicap. The physical endowment of a race has been a deciding factor in certain times of crisis. The physical prowess of the Anakim kept back the timid Israelites from their intended conquest of Canaan until a more hardy generation had arisen among the invaders; the sturdy Germans won the lands of the Roman Empire in the West from the degenerate provincials; powerful vikings swept the Western seas and struck such terror into the peaceful Saxons that they cried out: "From the fury of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us." 361. =Biological Analogies.=--The physical factor in society received emphasis the more because society itself was thought of as an organism resembling physical organisms and dependent upon similar laws. As a man's physical frame was essential to his activity and limited his energies, so the visible structure of social organization was deemed more important than social activity and function. Particularly did the method of evolution that had become so famous in biology appeal to students of sociology as the only satisfactory explanation of social change. The study of animal evolution made it clear that heredity and environment played a large part in the development of animal life, and Darwin pointed out that progress came by the elimination of those individuals and species least fitted to survive in the struggle for existence and the perpetuation of those that best adapted themselves to environment. It was easy to find social analogies and to reach the conclusion that in the same way individuals and groups were creatures of heredity and environment, and the all-important task of society was to conform itself to environment. Of course, history disproved the universality of such a law, for more than once a race has risen above its environment or altered it, but it seemed a satisfactory working principle. Biological analogies, however, were overemphasized. It was a gain to know the workings of race traits and the relation of the individual to his ancestry, but to excuse crime on the ground of racial degeneracy or to despise a race and believe that none of its members can excel because it is conspicuous for certain race weaknesses has been unfortunate. Similarly there was advantage in remembering that environment is either a great help or a great hindrance to social progress, but it would be a social calamity to believe in a physical determinism that leaves to human beings no choice as to their manner of life. The important truth to keep in mind is that man and environment must be adapted to each other, but it often proves better to adapt environment to man than to force man into conformity to environment. It is the growing independence of environment through his own intellectual powers that has given to civilized man his ascendancy in the world. It is a mistake, also, to think that a struggle for existence is the only means of survival. As in the animal world, there comes a time in the process of evolution when the struggle for selfish existence becomes subordinated to effort to preserve the life of the young or to help the group by the sacrifice of the individual self, so in society it is reasonable to believe that the selfish struggle of individuals will give way by degrees to purposeful effort for social welfare, and that the solidarity of the group rather than the interest of the individual will seem the highest good. Then the group will care for the weak, and all will gain from the strength and prosperity of the whole. 362. =The Importance of the Individual.=--While it is true that individual interests are bound up with the prosperity of the group, and that the food that he eats, the clothes that he wears, and the money that he handles and uses are all his because social industry prevails, there is some danger of overlooking the importance of the individual. Though he does not exist alone, the individual with his distinctive personality is the unit of society. Without individuals there would be no society, without the action of the individual mind there would be no action of the social mind, without individual leadership there would be little order or progress. The single cell that made up the lowest forms of animal life is still the unit of that complex thing that we call the human body, and the well-being of the single cell is essential to the health and even the existence of the whole body; so the single human being is fundamental to the existence and health of the social body. No analysis of society is at all complete that does not include a study of the individual man. 363. =The Psychology of the Individual.=--Self-examination during the course of a single day helps to explain the life forces that act upon other individuals now and that have forged human history. In such study of self it soon becomes apparent to the student that the physical factor is subordinate to the psychic, but that they are connected. As soon as he wakes in the morning his mental processes are at work. Something has called back his consciousness from sleep. The light shining in at his window, the bell calling him to meet the day's schedule, the odor of food cooking in the kitchen, are physical stimuli calling out the response of his sense-perceptions; his mind begins at once to associate these impressions and to react upon his will until he gets out of bed and proceeds to prepare himself for the day. These processes of sensation, association, and volition constitute the simple basis of individual life upon which the complex structure of an active personality is built. The individual will is moved to activity by many agencies. There is first the instinct. As a person inherits physical traits from his ancestors, so he gets certain mental traits. The demand for food is the cry of the instinct for self-preservation. The grimace of the infant in response to the mother's smile is an expression of the instinct for imitation. The reaching out of its hand to grasp the sunshine is in obedience to the instinct for acquisition. All human association is due primarily to the instinct for sociability. These instincts are inborn. They cannot be eradicated, but they can be modified and controlled. Obedience to these native instincts produces fixed habits. These are not native but acquired, and so are not transmitted to posterity, in the belief of most scientists, but they are powerful factors in individual conduct. The individual early in the morning is hungry, and the appetite for food recurs at intervals through the day; it becomes a habit to go at certain hours where he may obtain satisfaction. So it is with many activities throughout the day. Instincts and habits produce impulses. The savage eats as often as he feels like it, if he can find berries or fruit or bring down game; impulse alone governs his conduct. But two other elements enter in to modify impulse, as experience teaches wisdom. The self-indulgent man remembers after a little that indulgence of impulse has resulted sometimes in pain rather than satisfaction, and his imagination pictures a recurrence of the unhappy experience. Feeling becomes a guide to regulate impulse. Feeling in turn compels thought. Presently the individual who is going through the civilizing process formulates a resolve and a theory, a resolve to eat at regular times and to abstain from foods that injure him, a theory that intelligent restraint is better than unregulated indulgence. In a similar way the individual acts with reference to selecting his environment. Instinct and habit act conservatively, impelling the individual to remain in the place where he was born and reared, and to follow the occupation of his father. But he feels the discomforts of the climate or the restrictions of his particular environment, he thinks about it, bringing to bear all the knowledge that he possesses, and he makes his choice between going elsewhere or modifying his present environment. Discovery and invention are both products of such choices as these. 364. =Desires and Interests.=--These complexes of thinking, feeling, and willing make up the conscious desires and interests that mould the individual life. Through the processes of attention to the stimuli that act upon human nature, discrimination between them, association of impressions and ideas that come from present and past experience, and deliberate judgments of value, the mind moves to action for the satisfaction of personal desires and interests. These desires and interests have been classified in various ways. For our present purpose it is useful to classify them as those that centre in the self, and those that centre in others beyond the self. The primitive desires to get food and drink, to mate, and to engage in muscular activity, all look toward the self-satisfaction which comes from their indulgence. There are various acquired interests that likewise centre in the self. The individual goes to college for the social pleasure that he anticipates, for intellectual satisfaction, or to equip himself with a training that will enable him to win success in the competition of business. In the larger society outside of college the art-lover gathers about him many treasures for his own æsthetic delight, the politician exerts himself for the attainment of power and position, the religious devotee hopes for personal favors from the unseen powers. These are on different planes of value, they are estimated differently by different persons, but they all centre in the individual, and if society benefits it is only indirectly or accidentally. As the individual rises in the scale of social intelligence, his interests become less self-centred, and as he extends his acquaintance and associations the scope of his interests enlarges. He begins to act with reference to the effect of his actions upon others. He sacrifices his own convenience for his roommate; he restrains his self-indulgence for the sake of the family that he might disgrace; he exerts himself in athletic prowess for the honor of the college to which he belongs; he is willing to risk his life on the battle-field in defense of the nation of which he is a citizen; he consecrates his life to missionary or scientific endeavor in a far land for the sake of humanity's gain. These are the social interests that dominate his activity. Mankind has risen from the brute by the process that leads the individual up from the low level of life moulded by primitive desires to the high plane of a life directed by the broad interests of society at large. It is the task of education to reveal this process, and to provide the stimuli that are needed for its continuance. 365. =Personality.=--No two persons are actuated alike in daily conduct. The pull of their individual desires is not the same, the influence of the various social interests is not in the same proportion. The situation is complicated by hereditary tendencies, and by physical and social environment. Consequently every human being possesses his own distinctive individuality or personality. Variations of personality can be classified and various persons resemble each other so much that types of personality are distinguished. Thus we distinguish between weak personality and forceful personality, according to the strength of individuation, a narrow or a broad personality according as interests are few and selfish or broadly social, a fixed or a changing personality according to conservatism or unsettled disposition. Personality is a distinction not always appreciated, a distinction that separates man from the brute because of his self-consciousness and power of self-direction by rational processes, and relieves him from the dead level that would exist in society if every individual were made after the same pattern. It is the secret of social as well as individual progress, for it is a great personality that sways the group. It is the great boon of present life and the great promise of continued life hereafter. READING REFERENCES ROSS: _Foundations of Sociology_, pages 165-181. ELLWOOD: _Sociology in its Psychological Aspects_, pages 94-123. DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 96-98, 200-230. NEARING AND WATSON: _Economics_, pages 60-98. DARWIN: _Descent of Man_, chap. XXI. DRUMMOND: _Ascent of Man_, pages 41-57, 189-266. GIDDINGS: _Inductive Sociology_, pages 249-278. CHAPTER XLVI SOCIAL PSYCHIC FACTORS 366. =The Social Mind.=--As individual life is compounded of many psychic elements that make up one mind, so the life of every group involves various factors of a psychic nature that constitute the social mind. The social mind does not exist apart from individual minds, but it is nevertheless real. When emotional excitement stirs a mob to action, the unity of feeling is evidence of a social mind. When a congregation recites a creed of the church the unity of belief shows the existence of a social mind. When a political land-slide occurs on the occasion of a presidential election in the United States, the unity of will expresses the social mind. The emotional phase is temporary, public opinion changes more slowly; all the time the social mind is gaining experience and learning wisdom, as does the individual. Social consciousness, which at first is slight, increases gradually, until it fructifies in social purpose which results in achievement. History is full of illustrations of such development. 367. =How the Social Mind is Formed.=--The formation of this social mind and its subsequent workings may be illustrated from a common occurrence in frontier history. Imagine three hunters meeting for the first time around a camp-fire, and analyze their mental processes. The first man was tired and hungry and camped to rest and eat. The second happened to come upon the camp just as a storm was breaking, saw the smoke of the fire, and turned aside for its comfort. The third picked up the trail of the second and followed it to find companionship. Each obeying a primal instinct and conscious of his kind, came into association with others, and thus by the process of aggregation a temporary group was formed. Sitting about the fire, each lighted his pipe in imitation of one another; they communicated with one another in language familiar to all; one became drowsy and the others yielded to the suggestion to sleep. Waking in the morning, they continued their conversation, and in sympathy with a common purpose and in recognition of the advantages of association, they decided to keep together for the remainder of the hunt. Thus was constituted the group or social mind. With the consciousness that they were congenial spirits and shared a common purpose, each was willing to sacrifice some of his own habits and preferences in the interest of the group. One man might prefer bacon and coffee for breakfast, while a second wished tea; one might wish to break camp at sunrise, another an hour later; each subordinated his own desires for the greater satisfaction of camp comradeship. The strongest personality in the group is the determining factor in forming the habits of the group, though it may be an unconscious leadership. The mind of the group is not the same as that of the leader, for the mutual mental interaction produces changes in all, but it approaches most nearly to his mind. 368. =Social Habits.=--By such processes of aggregation, communication, imitation, and association, individuals learn from one another and come to constitute a like-minded group. Sometimes it is a genetic group like the family, sometimes an artificial group like a band of huntsmen; in either case the group is held together by a psychic unity and comes to have its peculiar group characteristics. Fixed ways of thinking and acting are revealed. Social habits they may be called, or folk-ways, as some prefer to name them. These habits are quickly learned by the members of the group, and are passed on from generation to generation by imitation or the teaching of tradition. There are numerous conservative forces at work in society. Custom crystallizes into law, tradition is fortified by religion, a system of morals develops out of the folk-ways, the group life tends to become static and uniform. 369. =Adaptation.=--Two influences are continually at work, however, to change social habits--the forces of the natural environment and interaction between different groups. Both of these compel adaptation to surroundings if permanence of group life is to be secured. Family life in the north country illustrates the working of this principle of adaptation. In the days of settlement there was a partial adaptation to the physical environment. Houses were built tight and warm to provide shelter, abundant food was supplied from the farm, on which men toiled long hours to make a living, homespun clothing was manufactured to protect against the rigors of winter, but ignorance and lack of sufficient means prevented complete adaptation, and society was punished for its failure to complete the adaptation. Climate was severe and the laws of health were not fully worked out or observed, therefore few children lived to maturity, although the birth-rate was high. Economic success came only as the reward of patient and unremitting toil, the shiftless family failed in the struggle for existence. Tradition taught certain agricultural methods, but diminishing returns threatened poverty, unless methods were better adapted to soil and climate. Thus the people were forced slowly to improve their methods and their manner of living to conform to what nature demanded. No less powerful is the influence of the social environment. The authority of custom or government tends to make every family conform to certain methods of building a house, cooking food, cultivating land, selling crops, paying taxes, voting for local officials, but let one family change its habits and prove conclusively that it has improved on the old ways, and it is only a question of time when others will adapt themselves better to the situation that environs them. The countryman takes a city daily and notes the weather indications and the state of the market, he installs a rural telephone and is able to make contracts for his crops by long-distance conversation, he buys an improved piece of machinery for cultivating the farm, a gasolene engine, or a motor-wagon for quick delivery of produce; presently his neighbors discover that he is adapting himself more effectually to his environment than they are, and one by one they imitate him in adopting the new methods. By and by the community becomes known for its progressiveness, and it is imitated by neighboring communities. This process of social adaptation is a mental process more or less definite. A particular family may not consciously follow a definite plan for improved adaptation, but little by little it alters its ways, until in the course of two or three generations it has changed the circumstances and habits that characterized the ancestral group. In that case the change is slow. Certain families may definitely determine to modify their habits, and within a few years accomplish a telic change. In either case there are constantly going on the processes of observation, discrimination, and decision, due to the impact of mind upon mind, both within and outside of the group, until mental reactions are moving through channels that are different from the old. 370. =Genetic Progress.=--The modification of folk-ways in the interest of better adaptation to environment constitutes progress. Such modification is caused by the action of various mental stimuli. The people of a hill village for generations have been contented with poor roads and rough side-paths, along which they find an uneasy way by the glimmer of a lantern at night. They are unaccustomed to sanitary conveniences in their houses or to ample heating arrangements or ventilation in school or church. They have thought little about these things, and if they wished to make improvements they would be handicapped by small numbers and lack of wealth. But after a time there comes an influx of summer visitors; some of them purchase property and take up their permanent residence in the village. They have been accustomed to conveniences; in other words, to a more complete adaptation to environment; they demand local improvements and are willing to help pay for them. More money can be raised for taxation, and when public opinion has crystallized so that social action is possible, the progressive steps are taken. What takes place thus in a small way locally is typical of what is going on continually in all parts of the world. Accumulating wealth and increasing knowledge of the good things of the city make country people emigrate or provide themselves with a share of the good things at home. The influence of an enthusiastic individual or group who takes the lead in better schools, better housing, or better government is improving the cities. The growing cosmopolitanism of all peoples and their adoption of the best that each has achieved is being produced by commerce, migration, and "contact and cross-fertilization of cultures." 371. =Telic Progress.=--Most social progress has come without the full realization of the significance of the gradual changes that were taking place. Few if any individuals saw the end from the beginning. They are for the most part silent forces that have been modifying the folk-ways in Europe and America. There has been little conception of social obligation or social ideals, little more than a blind obedience to the stimuli that pressed upon the individual and the group. But with the awakening of the social consciousness and a quickening of the social conscience has come telic progress. There is purpose now in the action of associations and method in the enactments of legislatures and the acts of administrative officers. There are plans and programmes for all sorts of improvements that await only the proper means and the sanction of public opinion for their realization. Like a runner poised for a dash of speed, society seems to be on the eve of new achievement in the direction of progress. 372. =Means of Social Progress.=--There are three distinct means of telic progress. Society may be lifted to a higher level by compulsion, as a huge crane lifts a heavy girder to the place it is to occupy in the construction of a great building. A prohibitory law that forbids the erection of unhealthy tenements throughout the cities of a state or nation is a distinctly progressive step, compulsory in its nature. Or the group may be moved by persuasion. A board of conciliation may persuade conflicting industrial groups to adjust their differences by peaceful methods, and thus inaugurate an ethical movement in industry greatly to the advantage of all parties. Or progress may be achieved by the slow process of education. The average church has been accustomed to conceive of its functions as pertaining to the individual rather than to the whole social order. It cannot be compelled to change by governmental action, for the church is free and democratic in America. It cannot easily be persuaded to change its methods in favor of a social programme. By the slower process of training the young people it can and does gradually broaden its activities and make itself more efficiently useful to the community in which it finds its place. 373. =Criticism as a Means of Social Education.=--Education is not confined to the training of the schools. It is a continuous process going on through the life of the individual or the group. It is the intellectual process by which the mind is focussed on one problem after another that rises above the horizon of experience and uses its powers to improve the adaptation now existing between the situation and the person or the group. The educational process is complex. There must be first the incitement to thought. Most effective in this direction is criticism. If the roads are such a handicap to the comfort and safety of travel that there is caustic criticism at the next town meeting, public opinion begins to set definitely in the direction of improvement. If city government is corrupt and the tax rate mounts steadily without corresponding benefits to the taxpayers, the newspapers call the attention of citizens to the fact, and they begin to consider a change of administration. Criticism is the knife that cuts to the roots of social disease, and through the infliction of temporary pain effects a cure. Criticism has started many a reform in church and state. The presence of the critic in any group is an irritant that provokes to progressive action. 374. =Discussion.=--Criticism leads to discussion. There is sure to be a conflict of ideas in every group. Conservative and progressive contend with each other; sometimes it is a matter of belief, sometimes of practice. Knots of individuals talk matters over, leaders debate on the public platform, newspapers take part on one side or the other. In this way national policies are determined, first by Congress or Parliament, and then by the constituents of the legislators. Freedom of discussion is regarded as one of the safeguards of popular government. If social conduct should be analyzed on a large scale it would be found that discussion is a constant factor. In every business deal there is discussion of the pros and cons of the proposition, in every case that comes before the courts there are arguments made on both sides, in the maintenance of every social institution that costs money there is a consideration of its worth. Even if the discussion does not find voice, the human intellect debates the question in its silent halls. So universal is the practice of discussion and so prized is the privilege that this is sometimes called the Age of Discussion. 375. =Decision.=--Determination of action follows criticism and discussion in the group, as volition follows thinking in the case of the individual. One hundred years ago college education was classical. In the time of the Renaissance and the Reformation a revival of interest in the classics produced a reaction against mediævalism, and in time fastened a curriculum upon the universities that was composed mainly of the ancient languages, mathematics, and a deductive philosophy and theology. In the nineteenth century there began a criticism of the classical curriculum. It was declared that such a course of study was narrow and antiquated, that new subjects, such as history, the modern languages, and the sciences were better worth attention, and presently it was argued that a person could not be truly educated until he knew his own times by the study of sociology, politics, economics, and other social sciences. Of course, there was earnest resentment of such criticism, and discussion ensued. The argument for the plaintiff seemed to be well sustained, and one by one the governing boards of the colleges decided to admit new studies to the curriculum, at first grudgingly and then generously, until classical education has become relatively unpopular. Public opinion has accepted the verdict, and many schools have gone so far as to make vocational education supplant numerous academic courses. Similarly criticism, discussion, and change of front have occurred in political theories, in the attitude of theologians to science, in the practice of medicine, and even in methods of athletic training. Criticism and discussion, therefore, instead of being deprecated, ought to be welcome everywhere. Without them society stagnates, the intellect grows rusty, and prejudice takes the place of rational thought and volition. Feeling is bottled up and is likely to ferment until it bursts its confinement and spreads havoc around like a volcano. Free speech and a free press are safety-valves of democracy, the sure hope of progress throughout society. 376. =Socialized Education.=--A second step in the educational process is incitement to action. As criticism and discussion are necessary to stimulate thought, so knowledge and conviction are essential to action. The educational system that is familiar is individualistic in type because it emphasizes individual achievement, and is based on the conviction that individual success is of greatest consequence in life. There is increasing demand for a socialized education which will have as its foundation a body of sociological information that will teach individuals their social relations, a fund of ideas that will be bequeathed from generation to generation as the finest heritage, and a system of social ethics that will produce a conviction of social obligation. The will to do good is the most effective factor that plays a part in social life. This socializing education has its place in the school grades, properly becomes a major subject of study in the higher schools, and ideally belongs to every scheme of continued education in later life. The social sciences seem likely to vie with the physical sciences, if not eventually to surpass them as the most important department of human knowledge, for while the physical sciences unlock the mysteries of the natural world the social sciences hold the key to the meaning of ideal human life. READING REFERENCES ELLWOOD: _Sociology in Its Psychological Aspects_, pages 329-340. GIDDINGS: _Principles of Sociology_, pages 132-152, 376-399. GIDDINGS: _Descriptive and Historical Sociology_, pages 124-185. COOLEY: _Social Organization_, pages 3-22. WARD: _Psychic Factors of Civilization_, pages 291-312. BLACKMAR AND GILLIN: _Outlines of Sociology_, pages 329-348. DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 67-68, 84-87, 243-257. ELLWOOD: _Sociology and Modern Social Problems_, revised edition, pages 354-367. CHAPTER XLVII SOCIAL THEORIES 377. =Theories of Social Order and Efficiency.=--Out of social experience and social study have emerged certain theories of social order and efficiency which have received marked attention and which to-day are supported by cogent arguments. These theories fall under the three following heads: (1) Those theories that make social order and efficiency dependent upon the control of external authority; (2) those theories that trust to the force of public opinion trained by social education; (3) those theories that regard self-control coming through the development of personality as the one essential for a better social order. 378. =External Authority in History.=--The first theory rests its case on the facts of history. Certain social institutions like the family, the state, and the church have thrown restraint about the individual, and when this restraint is removed he tends to run amuck. From the beginning the family was the unit of the social order, and the authority of its head was the source of wisdom. Self-control was not a substitute for paternal discipline, but was a fact only in presence of the dread of paternal discipline. The idea of absolute authority passed over into the state, and absolutism was the theory of efficiency in the ancient state, down to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. It was a theory that made slavery possible. It strengthened the position of the high priest of every religious cult, created the thought of the kingdom of God and moulded the Christian creeds, and made possible the mediæval papacy. It has been the fundamental principle of all monarchical government. It has remained a royal theory in eastern Europe and Asia until our own day, and survives in the political notion of the right of the strongest and in the business principle that capital must control the industrial system if prosperity and efficiency are to endure. Irresponsible absolutism has been giving way slowly to paternalism. This showed itself first in a growing conviction that kings owed it to their subjects to rule well. Certain enlightened monarchs consulted the interests of the people and, relying on their own wisdom, instituted measures of reform. This type of paternalism was not successful, but it has been imitated by modern states, even republics like the United States, in various paternalistic measures of economic and social regulation. Those who hold the theory that external authority is necessary have been urgent in calling for the regulation of railroads, of trusts, and of combinations of labor, until some have felt that the authority of representative democracy bore more heavily than the authority of monarchy. It is the principle of those who favor government regulation that only by governmental restraint can free competition continue, and everybody be assured of a square deal; their opponents argue that such restraint throttles ambition and is destructive of the highest efficiency that comes as a survival of the fittest in the economic struggle. 379. =Socialism.=--Socialism is a third variety of the theory that social order and efficiency depend on external authority. Socialists aim at improving the social welfare by the collective control of industry. While the advocates of government regulation give their main attention to problems of production, the Socialists emphasize the importance of the proper distribution of products to the consumers, and would exercise authority in the partition of the rewards of labor. They propose that collective ownership of the means of production take the place of private ownership, that industry be managed by representatives of the people, that products be distributed on some just basis yet to be devised by the people. All that will be left to them as individuals will be the right to consume and the possession of material things not essential to the socialistic economy. Certain Socialist theories go farther than this, but this is the essence of Socialism. Socialists vary, also, as to the use of revolutionary or evolutionary means of obtaining their ends. The main objections that are made to the theory of Socialism are: (1) That it is contrary to nature, which develops character and progress through struggle; (2) that private property is a natural right, and that it would be unjust to deprive individuals of what they have secured through thrift and foresight, even in the interest of the whole of society; (3) that an equitable distribution of wealth would be impossible in any arbitrary division; (4) that no government can possibly conduct successfully such huge enterprises as would fall to it; (5) that Socialism would destroy private incentive and enterprise by taking away the individual rewards of effort; (6) that a socialistic régime would be as unendurable an interference with individual liberty as any absolutist or paternal government that the past has seen. 380. =Educated Public Opinion.=--The second group of theorists is composed of those who would get rid of prohibitions and regulations as far as possible, and trust to the force of an educated public opinion to maintain a high level of social order and efficiency. It is a part of the theory that constraint exercised by a government established by law marks a stage of lower social development than restraint exercised by the force of public opinion. But it must be an educated public opinion, trained to appreciate the importance of society and its claims upon the individual, to function rationally instead of impulsively, and to seek the methods that will be most useful and least expensive for the social body. This training of public opinion is the task of the school first and then of the press, the pulpit, and the public forum. Public and private commissions, organized and maintained to furnish information and suggest better methods, make useful contributions; public reports, if presented intelligibly, impartially, and concisely, are among the helpful instruments of instruction; reform pamphlets will again perform valuable service, as they have in past days of moral and social intensity; but it is especially through the newspapers and the forums for public discussion that the social thinker can best reach his audience, and through these means that commission reports can best be brought to the attention of the people. It may very likely be necessary that press and platform be subsidized either by government or by private endowment to do this work of social training. 381. =Individualism.=--The third group of theorists rejects all varieties of external control as of secondary value, and has no faith in the working of public opinion, however well educated, unless the character of the individuals that make up the group is what it should be. These theorists regard self-control coming through the development of personal worth as the one essential for a better social order. This individualist theory is held by those who are still in bondage to the individualism that has characterized social thinking in the last four hundred years. There is much in the history of that period that justifies faith in the worth of the individual. Along the lines of material progress, especially, the individualist has made good. Looking upon what has been achieved the modern democrat expects further improvement in society through individual betterment. The arguments in defense of the individualist theory are: (1) That natural science has proved that social development is achieved only through individual competition, and that the best man wins; (2) that experience has shown that progress has been most rapid where the individual has had largest scope; (3) that it is the teaching of Christian ethics that the individual must work out the salvation of his own character, must learn by experience how to gain self-reliance and strength of will, and so has the right to fashion his own course of conduct. 382. =The Development of Personal Worth.=--It is evident, however, that the usefulness of the individual, both to himself and to others, depends on his personal worth. The self-controlled man is the man of personal worth, but self-control is not easy to secure. Defendants of the first two theories may admit that self-control is an ideal, but they claim that in the progress of society it must follow, not antedate, external authority and the cultivation of public opinion, and that time is not yet come. Only the few can be trusted yet to follow their best judgment on all occasions, to be on the alert to maintain in themselves and others highest efficiency. Human nature is slowly in the making. One by one men and women rise to higher levels; social regeneration must therefore wait on individual regeneration. Seeing the need of a dynamic that will create personal worth, the individualist has turned to religion and preached a doctrine of personal salvation. He has seen what religion has done to transform character, and he believes with confidence that it and it alone can create social salvation if we give it time. At the present time there is an increasing number of social thinkers who regard each of these three theories as containing elements of value, but believe that there is something beyond them that is necessary to the highest efficiency. They consider that external authority has been necessary, and look upon a strong centralized government with power to create social efficiency as essential, but they expect that an increasing social consciousness will make the exercise of authority gradually less necessary. They have great confidence in trained public opinion, but do not forget that opinion must be vitalized by a strong motive, and mere education does not readily supply the motive. They look for a time when individual worth will be greater than now, and they recognize religion as a powerful dynamic in the building of character, but they regard religion as turned inward too much upon the individual. They would develop individual character for the sake of society, and make a socialized religion the motive power to vitalize public opinion so that it shall function with increasing efficiency. A socialized religion supplies a principle, a method, and a power. The Hebrew prophets and Jesus laid down the principle that there is a solidarity of interests to which the claims of the individual must be subordinate and must be sacrificed on occasion. The prophets and Jesus taught a method of experimentation, calling upon the people whom they addressed to test the principle and see if it worked. The prophets and Jesus showed that power comes in the will to do and in actual obedience to the principle. They looked for an improved social system reared on this basis which would be a real "kingdom of God," not merely the economic commonwealth of the Socialist, but a commonwealth governed by the principle of consecration to the social welfare, spiritual as well as physical. 383. =Social Ideals.=--At the basis of every theory lies the individual with social relations. To socialize him external authority is the primitive agent. This authority may give way in time to the restraint of public opinion made intelligent by a socialized education, but effective public opinion is dependent on the development of personal worth in the individual. The most powerful dynamic for such development and for social welfare in general is a socialized religion. If all this be true, what is it that comprises social welfare? In a word, it is the efficient functioning of every social group. The family, the community, the nation, and every minor group, will serve effectually the economic, cultural, social, and spiritual needs of the individuals of whom it is composed. Perfect functioning can follow only after a long period of progress. Such progress is the ideal that society sets for itself. In that process there must be full recognition of all the factors that enter into social life. There is the individual with his rights and obligations, who must be protected and encouraged to grow. There are the institutions like the family, the church, and the state that must receive recognition and maintenance. There must be liberty for each group to function freely without arbitrary interference, as long as its privileges and acts do not interfere with the public good. Ideal social control is to be exercised by an enlightened and self-restrained public opinion energized by a socialized religion. All improvements must not be looked for in a moment, but can come only slowly and by frequent testing if they are to be permanently accepted. The system that would result would be neither absolutist, socialistic, nor individualistic, but would contain the best elements of all. It would not be forced upon a people, but would be worked out slowly by education and experiment. Social institutions would not be tyrannous but helpful, and human happiness would be materially increased. READING REFERENCES ELLWOOD: _Sociology in Its Psychological Aspects_, pages 352-381. NEARING AND WATSON: _Economics_, pages 443-493. BLACKMAR AND GILLIN: _Outlines of Sociology_, pages 373-392. DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 351-361. SKELTON: _Socialism_, pages 16-61. CARNEGIE: _Problems of To-day_, pages 121-139. CHAPTER XLVIII THE SCIENCE OF SOCIOLOGY 384. =Sociology vs. Social Philosophy.=--Sociology is one of the recent sciences. It had to wait for the scientific method of exact investigation and the scientific principle of forming conclusions upon abundant data. Naturally, theories of society were held long before any science came into existence, but they were of value only as philosophizing. Some of these theories were published and attracted the attention of thoughtful persons, but they did not affect social life. Some of them developed into philosophies of history, based on the preconceived ideas of their authors. Now and then in the first part of the nineteenth century certain social experiments were made in the form of co-operative communities, which it was fondly hoped would become practical methods for a better social order, but they almost uniformly failed because they were artificial rather than of natural growth, and because they were based on principles that public opinion had not yet sanctioned. The story of the predecessors of modern sociology naturally is preliminary to the history of sociology itself. 385. =Philosophers and Prophets.=--Two classes of men in ancient time worked on the problems of society, one from the practical standpoint, the other from the philosophic. One group of names includes the great statesmen and lawgivers, like Moses, who laid the foundations of the Hebrew nation and gave it the nucleus of a legal system; Solon and Lycurgus, traditional lawgivers of Athens and Sparta, and several of the earlier kings and later emperors of Rome. The other group is composed of men who thought much about human life and disseminated their opinions by writing and teaching. For the most part they were idealistic philosophers, but their influence was far-reaching in time. In the list belong Plato, who in his _Republic_ outlined an ideal society that was the prototype of later fanciful commonwealths; Aristotle, who made a real contribution to political science in his _Politics_; Cicero, who himself participated actively in government and wrote out his theories or spoke them in public, and Augustine, who gave his conception of a Christian state in the _City of God_. During the period when ancient ways were giving place to modern, and a transition was taking place in the realm of ideas, Thomas More, in his _Utopia_, and Campanella in his _City of the Sun_, published their conceptions of an ideal state, while Machiavelli took society as it was, and in his _Prince_ suggested how it might be governed better. These are all evidences that there was dissatisfaction with existing systems, but no unanimity of opinion as to possible improvements. Later theories were no more satisfactory. The French Revolutionary philosophers, especially Rousseau, with his theory of voluntary social contract, and the Utopian dreamers who followed, were longing for justice and political efficiency, but their theories seem crude and visionary from the point of view of the social science of the present day. 386. =Experimenting with Society.=--Robert Owen in England and Fourier and Saint-Simon in France were prophets of an ideal order which they tried to establish. Believing that all men were intended to be happy, and that happiness depended on a reorganization of the social environment in which property should be socialized, at least in part, they organized volunteers into model communities, expecting that their success would attract men everywhere to imitate the new organization. The arrangement of industry was planned in detail, a co-operative system was organized that would keep every man busy at useful labor without working him too hard, would take away the profits of the middleman by a well-planned system of distribution, and would allow liberty in social relations as far as consistent with the general good, but would subordinate the individual to the community. Certain of the Utopians thought that it would be necessary for the state to determine the minutiæ of daily life, and for a few directors to prescribe activities, and they introduced a uniformity in dress, food, and houses that savored of the old-fashioned orphan asylum. These features, together with the failure to understand that social institutions could not be made to order, and that human nature was not of such quality as to make an ideal commonwealth at once actual, soon wrecked these utopian schemes and brought to an end the first period of socialistic experiments. 387. =Biological Sociologists.=--Not a few writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before sociology was born, recognized the need and the possibility of a true science of society. Scholars were studying and writing upon other sciences that are related to sociology--biology, history, economics, and politics. Scientific information about the various races of mankind was accumulating. At length Auguste Comte, a Frenchman, found a place for sociology among the sciences and declared it to be the highest of them all. In 1842 he completed the publication of the _Positive Philosophy_, in which he maintained that human society is an organism similar to biological organisms, and that its activities can be systematized and generalizations be deduced therefrom for the formation of a true science. In his _Descriptive Sociology_ and later works Herbert Spencer in England amplified the theory of Comte and arranged a mass of facts as evidence of its truth. He put too much emphasis on biological resemblances in the opinion of present-day sociologists, but his emphasis on inductive study and his generalizations from biology were important contributions to the development of the new science. 388. =Psychological Sociologists.=--Comte and Spencer were followed by other biological sociologists whose names are well known to students of the science. Interest was aroused in Great Britain, on the continent of Europe, and in America. Students were influenced by conclusions that were being reached in biology, in economics, and in other allied departments of thought, but the one science which became most prominent to the minds of sociologists was psychology. Ward's _Dynamic Sociology_, published in 1883, marked an epoch, because it called special attention to the psychic factors that enter into social life. After him it became increasingly clear that the true social forces were psychic, though physical conditions affected social progress. A younger school of sociologists has come into existence, and the science is being developed on that basis. More than one individual thinker has made his special contribution, and there is still a variety of opinion on details, but the general principles of the science are being worked out in substantial agreement. It is not to be expected that such a complex and comprehensive science could be completed in its short history of approximately half a century, or that it can ever be made exact, like mathematics or the natural sciences, but there is every reason to expect the development of a body of classified facts that will be of inestimable value in attacking social problems, and of principles that will serve as a guide through the labyrinth of social life. The value of any science is not in the perfection of its system, but in the practical application which can be made of it to human progress. 389. =Relation of Sociology to the Natural Sciences.=--Sociology has relations to an outer circle of general sciences and to an inner circle of social sciences. It is itself but one of the social sciences, though it is regarded as chief among them. Man looks out upon the universe, of which he is but an atom, and asks questions. Astronomy brings to him the findings of its telescopes and spectrum analyses. Geology explains the transformations that have taken place in the earth on which he lives. Physics and chemistry analyze its substance and reveal the laws of nature. Biology opens up the field of life. Psychology investigates the structure and functions of the human mind, and shows that all activity is at base mental. At last the new sociology discloses human life in all its complex relationships, the function of the social mind, and the channels through which it works. Since social life is lived in a world where physical and mental factors are constantly in action, there is a close connection between all the sciences. Although social life is not so closely similar to animal life as was thought previously, the principles of biology are important to the sociologist because biology is the science of all life. Psychology is important because it is the science of all mind. 390. =Relations of Sociology and Other Social Sciences.=--There are many phases of human experience and differences of relationship. Obviously the specific sciences that deal with them have a still closer relation to sociology. Economics, for example, has as its field the economic relations and activities that are connected with the business of making a living. The production, distribution, and use of material things is the subject that absorbs the economist. The sociologist makes use of the facts and principles of economics to throw light on the economic functions of society, but the economic field is only one sector of his concern. In a similar way political science is related to sociology. It deals with the organization and development of government and embraces the departments of national and international law, but the governmental function of the social group is but one of the divisions of the interests that absorb the sociologist. He uses the data and conclusions of the political scientists, but in a more general way. It is the same with the sociologist and history. History supplies much of the data of the sociologist from the records of the past. It deals with social life in the concrete, and historical interpretation is essential to an understanding of social phenomena, but sociology takes the past with the present, analyzes both, and generalizes from both as to the laws of the social process. Pedagogy deals with the history and principles of education. Sociology is interested in the educational function of the family, of the community, and of the nation, but again its interest is from the standpoint of abstraction and generalization. Ethics is a science that treats of the right and wrong conduct of human beings. It is very closely associated with sociology, because the valuation of conduct depends on social effects, but the moral functioning of the group is but one phase of social life, and, therefore, ethics is far narrower in its range than sociology. Theology, the science of religion, has sociological implications. As far as it is a science and not a philosophy, it rests upon human interest and human experience, and it is becoming increasingly recognized that these human interests depend on social relationships, but all the religious interests of men are but one part of the field of sociology. It is clear that each of the social sciences holds a relation to sociology of the particular to the general. Sociology seeks out the laws and principles that unify all the rest. It does not include them all, as does the term social science, but it correlates and interprets them all. It is not the same as philosophy, for that subject has for its field all knowledge, and especially tries to probe to the secrets of all being, and to learn the meaning of the universe as a whole, while sociology is restricted to social life. Each has its distinct place among the studies of the human mind, and each should be distinguished carefully from its rivals and associates. 391. =Social Classification.=--When we enter into the field of sociology itself we find other distinctions to be necessary. The novice frequently confounds similar terms. Not infrequently sociology and socialism are used as synonymous terms by persons who know little of either, so that it is necessary to point out that socialism is a particular theory of social organization and functioning, while sociology is the general science that includes all varieties of social theory, along with social fact, and especially is it necessary to explain that any fallacies of socialistic theory do not invalidate well-established conclusions of social science. Another common error is to identify sociology with social reform. Social pathology is too important a branch of sociology to be omitted or minimized, but it is only one division of the subject, and all measures as well as theories of social reform are only a small part of the concern of sociology. Such terms as philanthropy, criminology, and penology all have connection with sociology, but they need to be carefully differentiated from the more general term. Sociology itself has been variously classified under the terms pure and applied, static and dynamic, descriptive and theoretical. Terms have changed somewhat, as the psychological emphasis has supplanted the biological. It is important that terms should be used correctly and should be sanctioned by custom, but it is not necessary to make sharp distinction between all the different divisions, old and new. Classification is a matter of convenience and technic; though it may have a scientific basis, it is entirely a matter of form. There is always danger that a particular classification may become a fetich. It is the life of society that we study, it is the improvement of social relations at which we aim. Whatever method best contributes to this end is valid in classification for all except those who delight in science for science's sake. 392. =The Permanent Place of Sociology.=--The study of the science of social life is eminently worth while, for it deals with matters that are of vital importance to the human race and every one of its individual members. For that reason it is likely to receive growing recognition as among the most important subjects with which the human mind can deal. It is vast in its range, exacting in its demand of unremitting investigation and careful generalization, stimulating in its intense practicality. Its abstractions require the closest reasoning of the scholar, but its basis in the concrete facts of daily life tends to make it popular. Once understood and appreciated, sociology is likely to become the guide-book by which social effort will be directed, and the standard by which it will be measured. As progress becomes in this way more telic it will become more rapid. Social life will approach more nearly the norm that sociology describes, but until the day that society ceases to be pathological, sociology will teach a social ideal as a goal toward which society must bend its energies. As human life is the most precious gift that the world bestows, so the science of that life is worthy of being called the gem of the sciences. READING REFERENCES DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 19-40. BLACKMAR AND GILLIN: _Outlines of Sociology_, pages 13-47, 541-564. GIDDINGS: _Principles of Sociology_, pages 3-51. ELLWOOD: _Sociology in Its Psychological Aspects_, pages 29-65. ROSS: _Foundations of Sociology_, pages 15-28, 256-348. SMALL: _General Sociology_, pages 40-97. INDEX Achievement, 5, 115, 341. Activity, 2-6, 88, 111, 117, 164, 170, 188, 236, 237, 298, 346. Adaptation, 31, 234, 333-335, 342, 343, 349-351. Administration, 320, 321. Adultery, 75-78, 81. Æsthetics, 144. Aggregation, 348. Agricultural clubs, 107, 118. Agricultural colleges, 107, 164. Agricultural fairs, 107. Agriculture, 52, 99, 100, 104, 106, 118. Almshouses, 272. American Civic Federation, 148. American Federation of Labor, 192. American Vigilance Association, 85. Amusements, 86, 164, 238-240. Ancestor-worship, 32. Arbitration, 191, 194, 195, 335, 336. Art, 283. Assimilation, 327. Association, 6-9, 17-23, 53, 54, 88, 108, 109, 111, 118, 133, 152, 164, 170, 188, 233, 236, 240, 254, 294, 307, 308, 337, 338, 344-346, 348, 349. Athletics, 109, 111, 112, 196, 237, 240, 308, 309. Attention, 345, 351. Banks, 106, 307. Big Brother idea, 251. Biological analogies, 342, 343. Birth-rate, 42. Boards of Conciliation, 194, 195. Boy Scouts, 110, 251. Boys' Clubs, 110. Cabinet, 320, 321. Camp-Fire Girls, 112. Catholic Church, 76, 271, 276. Census of marriage and divorce, 35, 74, 77. Change, 10-13, 88, 129, 170, 173-176, 189, 236, 351. Charity, 242, 267, 271-277. Charity organization, 57, 267, 272-276. Charter, 257, 260, 261. Chautauqua Movement, 118, 133, 309. Child labor, 49-53, 190, 191, 235. Children, 42-59. Dependency of, 56-58. Relief of, 57, 58. Rights of, 42, 48, 53-55. Children's aid societies, 58. Chinese Exclusion Act, 329. Christianity, 32, 76. Church, The, 156-161, 252, 287-293, 310, 311, 338, 353. In the city, 287-293. In the country. See Rural church. Church charity, 275, 276. Church organization, 290-293. City, The, 169 ff., 294-299. Attraction of, 171, 172. Characteristics of, 169. Economic interests in, 180. Government of, 256-262. Growth of, 170. History of, 177-179. Importance of, 176. Improvement of, 295-298. In the making, 294-298. Manager, 261, 262. Neighborhood, 284, 285. Opportunities in, 173, 175. Classes, 212-218. Classification, 370. Clubs, 107, 110-112, 116, 118, 133, 134, 148. Collective bargaining, 194. College life, 10, 12, 85, 131, 132. Commerce, 205, 206, 337. Commission government, 260, 261. Commissions, 195, 199, 233. Communication, 116, 118, 281, 288, 294, 307, 336, 337, 349. Community house, 163, 164. Community leadership, 164-168. Community obligation, 154. Competition, 107, 198, 227. Conference, 297, 298. Conflict, 31, 115, 186, 187, 194, 320, 328, 334, 353. Congregational churches, 77. Control, 9, 10, 88, 136, 142, 170, 188, 189, 197-199, 203, 208-210, 234, 246, 256, 258, 298, 303, 314, 352, 357, 358. Co-operation, 31, 53, 63, 89, 90, 105-107, 129, 130, 198-200, 205, 206, 297, 298, 365. Cost of living, 69, 76, 89. Country store, 116. Court of Domestic Relations, 79. Courts. See Judiciary. Craft guilds, 182. Crime, 75, 84, 90, 154, 228, 235, 240, 242, 244, 246, 248-255. Causes of, 248-250. Discharge, 253, 254. Prevention of, 250-252. Punishment, 252-254. Reformation, 252, 254. Criticism, 353. Crowds, 22, 23. Cruelty, 48, 49, 75, 77, 78. Custom, 139, 152, 334, 349. Dance-halls, 82, 84, 238, 240. Decision, 351, 354. Defectives, 84, 86. Degeneracy, 43-46, 218, 219, 228. Delinquency, 154. See Crime. Democracy, 141, 189, 190, 196, 298, 309, 316-319, 327. Democracy in industry, 189, 190. Department stores, 201, 203. Dependency, 56, 57, 271. See Charity. Desertion, 70, 75, 77, 78, 267. Desires, 334, 345-347. Difficulties of working people, 263-270. Discrimination, 345, 351. Discussion, 284-286, 353, 354. Division of labor, 62, 125. Divorce, 74-80, 88. Catholic attitude toward, 76 Causes of, 75, 76, 267. Difficulty of, 77. History of, 76. In Europe, 74-78. Laws of, 74-79. Protestant attitude toward, 76, 77. Remedies for, 78, 79. Divorce court, 79. Divorce proctor, 79. Drama, 283, 284. See Theatre. Duelling, 194. Dynamic society, 2, 10. East, The, 100, 139, 140, 224. Economics, 180, 368. Education, 55, 120-131, 280, 327, 328, 331, 339, 346, 353-355. Agricultural, 124, 127, 128. Cultural, 122, 132. Industrial, 251, 331. Moral and religious, 160, 251, 287, 291. Principles of, 120-124. Rural, 120-131. Vocational, 121, 123, 267, 268, 296. Weaknesses of, 123, 124. Edwards family, 45, 46. Elberfeld system, 275. Election, 317, 318. Employers' liability, 191, 192. Environment, 25, 26, 40, 47, 48, 99, 100, 105, 121, 125, 169, 235, 248, 327, 334, 340-343, 345, 350, 351. Erdman Act, 195. Ethics, 202, 368. Eugenics, 43-47, 90. Euthenics, 47, 48. Evangelical Alliance, 311. Evangelism, 288, 289. Evolution, 342, 343. Exchange, 64, 201-203. Executive, 320, 321. Experimentation, 128, 187. Factory life, 188. Factory system, 51, 182-184. Family, 24 f., 88-90. Changes in, 65, 67-69, 76. Functions of, 26, 27, 88. History of, 29-33. Mediæval, 33, 37-39. On the farm, 25, 26, 64, 65, 350. Reform, 88-90. Roman, 32, 37. Study of, 24. Urban, 68. Farmers' Institute, 118. Farmers' Union, 117. Federal Council of churches, 77, 310, 311. Federation, 334, 335. Feeble-mindedness, 44, 84. Feeling, 344, 345, 355. Feminism, 71, 72. Folk-ways. See Social habits. Forum, 284-286, 360. Friendly visiting, 274. Galveston plan, 260, 261. Gambling, 153, 235, 239. Gangs, 22, 109-111. Germans, 223, 259, 260, 269, 322, 335. Girls' clubs, in, 111, 112. Government, 136-143, 195, 208, 256-262, 313-327. City, 256-262. National, 313-323. Rural, 136-143. Government ownership, 208, 209. Grange, 117, 284. Great Britain, 44, 259, 269, 316, 317, 322. Group consciousness, 18, 192. Habits, 334, 345. Hague Conferences, 335. Health, 85, 144-148, 196, 233, 242, 267, 307, 308. Clubs, 148. Nurses and physicians, 147, 148, 296. Officials, 146, 147. Hebrew Charities, 276. Heredity, 26, 46, 249, 342. History, 368. Home, 37-42. Children in the, 42, 90. Education in the, 39, 55, 56. History of the, 37-39. Ideal, 40. Man in the, 70. Modern, 39, 40, 67-71. Rural, 121, 122. Values of the, 39, 40. Women in the, 69. Home economics, 60-66. Hospitals, 272, 296. Hours of labor, 190, 207. Housing, 86, 89, 230-234, 252, 350. Hull House, 277, 278. Imitation, 349, 351. Immigrants and Immigration, 82, 86, 102, 170, 171, 221-229, 250, 327-329. Asiatic, 328, 329. Causes and effects of, 227, 228. German, 223. History of, 221-226. Irish, 222. Italian, 224, 225. Jewish, 225, 226. Lesser peoples, 226. Problems of, 327. Scandinavians, 223, 224. Slavs, 225. Imprisonment, 78. See Crime. Impulse, 345. Individual, The, 128, 144, 151, 152, 192, 203, 248, 343-347, 360. Individualism, 72, 73, 75, 78, 88, 89, 107, 144, 149, 360. Industrial control, 189, 190. Industrial problem, 183, 186-200. Principles for solution of the, 197-200. Industrial reform, 190. Industrial revolution, 178, 184. Industrial schools, 58. Initiative, 261. Insanity, 44, 78, 244. Instincts, 27, 109, 111, 112, 344, 345, 348. Insurance, 106, 269. Intemperance, 75, 78, 84, 90, 153, 233, 240, 241. Results of, 242-244. See Temperance. Interests, 302-304, 311, 334, 345-347. International law, 320, 335. International Workers of the World, 193. Internationalism, 333-339. Invention, 184, 206, 341, 345. Irish, 222. Italians, 224, 225. Jews, 225, 226. Judiciary, 321, 322. Jukes, 44, 45. Juvenile courts, 154, 254. Kallikak family, 45. Labor, 61-63. Division of, 62. Hired, 63. Organization of, 192, 193. Labor bureaus, 191, 193, 268. Labor conditions, 184. Labor exchanges, 269. Labor unions, 192, 193, 207. Lack of support, 75. Law, 136, 137, 142, 258, 321, 322, 349. Lawgivers, 364. Lawlessness, 54, 55, 235. Legislation, 319, 320. See Social legislation. Liberty, 54, 55. Libraries, 132, 282, 283. License, 83, 246. Like-mindedness, 192, 308. Local Government Act, 259. Local option, 141, 246. Manufacturing, 180-185. History of, 181-183. Marriage, 27, 20-36, 46, 76, 79, 84. Ideals of, 35, 36, 79. Laws of, 34, 35, 77, 78. Reforms, 35. Mass meeting, 19. Massachusetts Society for Promoting Good Citizenship, 260. Maternity benefits, 44. Metronymic period, 30. Misery, 263. Missions, 338, 339. Mobs, 22, SS, 348. Monogamy, 29, 31, 33. Monopoly, 208-210, 242. Morals, 151-155, 175, 230, 232, 235, 237, 242, 349. Definition of, 151. In the city, 175, 230, 232, 235, 237. Rural, 151-155. Morals commission, 86. Morals court, 86. Moving pictures, 82, 86, 112, 238, 240, 283. Municipal ownership, 260. Municipal reform, 260. Music, 133, 164, 165, 237, 241, 283, 284, 310. Nation, The, 300-332. Economics in, 306, 307. Education in, 309. Functions of, 305-311, 314. Government of, 313-323. Health in, 307, 308. History of, 301, 302. Philanthropy in, 310. Problems of, 324-332. Sport in, 308. National Bureau of Education, 309. National Conference of Charities and Corrections, 273, 310. National Conference on Unemployment, 269. National Divorce Reform League, 77. National Education Association, 309. National Insurance Act, 44. National Municipal League, 260. National Reform League, 260. Nature study, 127. Neglect, 48, 75. Negro problem, 329-331. Newspapers, 252, 281, 284, 336, 353, 354, 360. Occupations, 104, 181, 235, 345. Offices, 204. Organization, 2, 8, 9, 22, 23, 109, 110, 111, 118, 133, 140, 149, 182-184, 188, 196, 210, 259, 260, 200-293, 317-323. Organization of labor, 192, 193. Parks, 238. Parole, 253. Paternalism, 358. Patriarchal household, 30, 32, 49, 61. Pauperism, 268. Personality, 1, 54, 344, 347, 349. Personal worth, 360, 361. Persuasion, 352. Philosophers, 364, 365. Placing-out system, 57, 58. Play, 53, 54, 109, 235, 236, 239. Playgrounds, 108, 235, 236. Police, 258, 259. Political science, 368. Politics, 137, 138, 141, 142, 194, 244, 252, 260. Polyandry, 31. Polygyny, 30, 31. Population, 100-103, 176, 177, 223, 232, 248. Characteristics of, 100, 101. Composition of, 101, 102, 223. Congestion of, 207. Growth of, 102. Poverty, 84, 90, 228, 242, 246, 266-270. Causes of, 267-269. Remedies for, 267, 268. Press, The, 280-282. Primaries, 141, 260, 261. Probation, 251, 253. Profanity, 153, 235. Profit-sharing, 196. Progress, 351-353. Genetic, 351, 352. Telic, 352, 353. Prophets, 365, 366. Prosperity, 324, 325. Prostitution, 81-88. Protestant-Episcopal Church, 77. Psychology, 344-346. Public opinion, 34, 35, 59, 78, 79, 81, 82, 123, 142, 210, 237, 246, 252, 282, 320, 359-361. Punishment. See Crime. Race problem, 327-332. Railways, 207, 208. Raines Law hotels, 84. Reading-circles, 133. Reason, 3, 4, 17. Recall, 261. Recreation, 53, 54, 108-114, 164, 196, 235, 238, 252, 254, 308, 309. Referendum, 141, 193, 198, 261. Reformatories, 84, 86. Relief, 57, 58, 267, 271-277. Religion, 34, 39, 230, 287-293, 349, 361. Religious education, 160, 287, 291. Remarriage, 77. Rescue homes, 86. Royal Commission on Divorce, 78. Rural church, 156-161. Function of, 157, 160. Minister of, 158. Needs of, 159, 160. New, 160. Problems of, 158, 159. Value of, 156, 157. Rural emigration, 67, 102, 172, 173. Rural Life Commission, 153, 154. Russell Sage Foundation, 268, 295. St. Vincent de Paul Society, 276. Saloon, The, 84, 173, 238, 240, 241, 243. Salvation Army, 293. Scandinavians, 223, 224. Schools, The, 120-131, 141, 236, 280. Consolidated, 125, 129, Continuation, 129, 165. Curriculum of, 121, 122, 127, 128, 354. District, 124, 125, 284. Normal, 123, 130, 131. State, 58. Teaching in, 124, 129, 130. School districts, 140. Scientific management, 196. Segregation, 83, 85, 250, 272, 296. Self-control, 360, 361. Servant class, 62, 63, 69, 82, 89, 182. Settlements, 277-279. Sewing-circles, 116, 117. Sex hygiene, 55, 90. Sexual impurity, 81, 88, 90, 153, 154, 233. See Prostitution. Slavery, 62, 182. Slavs, 225. Slums, 38, 231-233. Sociability, 108, 111, 164, 171. Social analysis, 340-371. Social centres, 117, 163, 164, 176-179, 241, 242, 284-286. Social characteristics, 2-14, 88, 129. Social contract, 315. Social degeneration, 103. Social development, 2, 334, 342, 360. Social education, 35, 39, 46, 56, 80, 86, 87, 90, 110, 121, 123, 237, 254, 330, 331. Social elements. See Social factors. Social factors, 4, 16, 17, 68, 187, 188, 333, 334, 340-356. Physical, 343. Psychic, 344-356. Social groups, 14-23, 53, 54, 349, 350. Social habits, 349, 351. Social ideals, 362, 363. Social institutions, 21, 24, 57, 58, 90, 115-120, 162, 168, 169, 237, 280, 337-339, 357. Social legislation, 44, 52, 53, 142, 190, 191, 194, 222, 250, 268. Social mind, 17-19, 54, 344, 348. Social organization. See Organization. Social pathology, 369. Social problems, 14, 210, 221, 228, 242, 298. Social reform, 369. Social relations, 1, 6-8, 24, 31, 47, 90, 108, 169, 187, 189, 195, 203, 237, 314, 332, 334, 365. Social science, 128, 129, 298, 355, 365. Social selection, 31, 342, 343. Social service, 89. Social sympathy, 89. Social theories, 315, 357-363, 365. Social utility, 4. Social values, 39, 40, 108, 337. Social weaknesses, 13, 14, 88, 123, 124, 170, 175, 189, 324. Social welfare, 73, 186, 191, 196, 202, 210, 212, 300, 343, 358. Socialism, 197, 314, 358, 359, 369. Objections to, 359. Society, 1, 2. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 57. Sociology, 2, 364-371. Biological, 366. Psychological, 366. Relations of, 367-369. Source material, 2. South, The, 99, 100, 140, 261. South Carolina dispensary system, 242. Southern Sociological Conference, 310. Standard of living, 207, 222, 231, 327, 329. State, The, 57, 272, 313-323. History of, 315, 316. Theories of, 315. State schools, 58. Static society, 2, 10, 139, 169. Sterilization, 250. Stimulus, 18, 56, 238, 283, 341, 344, 345, 347, 351, 352. Stock exchange, 202. Street trades, 235. Strikes, 193, 194. Struggle for existence, 342, 343. Summer visitors, 148, 149, 351. Sweating, 52. Syndicalism, 197. Telephone, 106. Temperance, 244. Anti-Saloon League, 245. Education, 245. Good Templars, 245. No license, 245. Prohibition, 245, 246. Regulation, 246. Total abstinence, 245. Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 245, 338. Tenant farming, 101. Tenements, 69, 82, 84-86, 230-234, 239, 263. Theatre, 82, 238, 240, 283. Theology, 369. Theories. See Social theories. Town meetings, 140-142, 163, 284-286. Toynbee Hall, 278. Tradition, 349, 350. Transportation, 204-208, 336, 337. Trusts, 209, 210. Unemployment, 199, 269. United Mine Workers, 193. United States, 302-304, 335. United States Census, 67. United States Department of Agriculture, 306. United States Patent Office, 306. Universities, 131, 132, 308, 309, 354. University of Wisconsin, 131, 132. University Settlement, 278. Unorganized groups, 16-23. Utopians, 365. Venereal disease, 44, 85. Vice commissions, 83-85. Vice reform, 85, 86. Village, The, 115, 301. Improvement Society, 148, 149. Nurse, 147, 148. Vocational training, 35, 296. Volunteer Prison League, 254. Wages, 84, 86, 89, 203, 204, 207, 222, 228. War, 90, 194, 249, 334. West, The, 99, 102, 223, 224, 261. White-slave traffic, 83, 86, 244. See Prostitution. Will of the individual, 264, 344, 355, 362. Will of the people, 138, 320. Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 245, 338. Woman's clubs, 134. Woman's work, 61, 62, 84, 190, 191. Working people, The, 183, 184, 212, 230-234, 238, 263-270. Worship, 288, 289. Young Men's Christian Association, 153, 163, 173, 241, 293, 298, 338. Young Women's Christian Association, 293, 298. * * * * * 
33944	----	HOW TO OBSERVE. ----- MORALS AND MANNERS. BY HARRIET MARTINEAU. "Hélas! où donc chercher, où trouver le bonheur? ----Nulle part tout entier, partout avec mesure." VOLTAIRE. "Opening my journal-book, and dipping my pen in my ink-horn, I determined, as far as I could, to justify myself and my countrymen in wandering over the face of the earth." ROGERS. LONDON: CHARLES KNIGHT AND CO. 22, LUDGATE STREET. 1838. LONDON: PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY, Dorset Street, Fleet Street. ADVERTISEMENT. "The best mode of exciting the love of observation is by teaching 'How to Observe.' With this end it was originally intended to produce, in one or two volumes, a series of hints for travellers and students, calling their attention to the points necessary for inquiry or observation in the different branches of Geology, Natural History, Agriculture, the Fine Arts, General Statistics, and Social Manners. On consideration, however, it was determined somewhat to extend the plan, and to separate the great divisions of the field of observation, so that those whose tastes led them to one particular branch of inquiry might not be encumbered with other parts in which they do not feel an equal interest." The preceding passage is contained in the notice accompanying the first work in this series--Geology, by Mr. De la Bèche, published in 1835. Thus, the second work in the series is in continuation of the plan above announced. CONTENTS. PART I. REQUISITES FOR OBSERVATION. Page INTRODUCTION 1 CHAP. I. Philosophical Requisites. Section I. 11 Section II. 14 Section III. 21 Section IV. 27 CHAP. II. Moral Requisites 40 CHAP. III. Mechanical Requisites 51 PART II. WHAT TO OBSERVE 61 CHAP. I. Religion 68 Churches 80 Clergy 84 Superstitions 90 Suicide 94 CHAP. II. General Moral Notions 101 Epitaphs 108 Love of Kindred and Birth-place 111 Talk of Aged and Children 113 Character of prevalent Pride 114 Character of popular Idols 118 Epochs of Society 122 Treatment of the Guilty 124 Testimony of Criminals 129 Popular Songs 132 Literature and Philosophy 137 CHAP. III. Domestic State 144 Soil and Aspect of the Country 153 Markets 154 Agricultural Class 155 Manufacturing Class 157 Commercial Class 158 Health 161 Marriage and Woman 167 Children 181 CHAP. IV. Idea of Liberty 183 Police 184 Legislation 188 Classes in Society 190 Servants 192 Imitation of the Metropolis 196 Newspapers 197 Schools 198 Objects and Form of Persecution 203 CHAP. V. Progress 206 Conditions of Progress 209 Charity 213 Arts and Inventions 216 Multiplicity of Objects 218 CHAP. VI. Discourse 221 PART III. MECHANICAL METHODS 231 HOW TO OBSERVE. MORALS AND MANNERS. PART I. REQUISITES FOR OBSERVATION. INTRODUCTION. "Inest sua gratia parvis." "Les petites choses n'ont de valeur que de la part de ceux qui peuvent s'élever aux grandes."--DE JOUY. There is no department of inquiry in which it is not full as easy to miss truth as to find it, even when the materials from which truth is to be drawn are actually present to our senses. A child does not catch a gold fish in water at the first trial, however good his eyes may be, and however clear the water; knowledge and method are necessary to enable him to take what is actually before his eyes and under his hand. So it is with all who fish in a strange element for the truth which is living and moving there: the powers of observation must be trained, and habits of method in arranging the materials presented to the eye must be acquired before the student possesses the requisites for understanding what he contemplates. The observer of Men and Manners stands as much in need of intellectual preparation as any other student. This is not, indeed, generally supposed, and a multitude of travellers act as if it were not true. Of the large number of tourists who annually sail from our ports, there is probably not one who would dream of pretending to make observations on any subject of physical inquiry, of which he did not understand even the principles. If, on his return from the Mediterranean, the unprepared traveller was questioned about the geology of Corsica, or the public buildings of Palermo, he would reply, "Oh, I can tell you nothing about that--I never studied geology; I know nothing about architecture." But few, or none, make the same avowal about the morals and manners of a nation. Every man seems to imagine that he can understand men at a glance; he supposes that it is enough to be among them to know what they are doing; he thinks that eyes, ears, and memory are enough for morals, though they would not qualify him for botanical or statistical observation; he pronounces confidently upon the merits and social condition of the nations among whom he has travelled; no misgiving ever prompts him to say, "I can give you little general information about the people I have been seeing; I have not studied the principles of morals; I am no judge of national manners." There would be nothing to be ashamed of in such an avowal. No wise man blushes at being ignorant of any science which it has not suited his purposes to study, or which it has not been in his power to attain. No linguist wrings his hands when astronomical discoveries are talked of in his presence; no political economist covers his face when shown a shell or a plant which he cannot class; still less should the artist, the natural philosopher, the commercial traveller, or the classical scholar, be ashamed to own himself unacquainted with the science which, of all the sciences which have yet opened upon men, is, perhaps, the least cultivated, the least definite, the least ascertained in itself, and the most difficult in its application. In this last characteristic of the science of Morals lies the excuse of as many travellers as may decline pronouncing on the social condition of any people. Even if the generality of travellers were as enlightened as they are at present ignorant about the principles of Morals, the difficulty of putting those principles to interpretative uses would deter the wise from making the hasty decisions, and uttering the large judgments, in which travellers have hitherto been wont to indulge. In proportion as men become sensible how infinite are the diversities in man, how incalculable the varieties and influences of circumstances, rashness of pretension and decision will abate, and the great work of classifying the moral manifestations of society will be confided to the philosophers, who bear the same relation to the science of society as Herschel does to astronomy, and Beaufort to hydrography. Of all the tourists who utter their decisions upon foreigners, how many have begun their researches at home? Which of them would venture upon giving an account of the morals and manners of London, though he may have lived in it all his life? Would any one of them escape errors as gross as those of the Frenchman who published it as a general fact that people in London always have, at dinner parties, soup on each side, and fish at four corners? Which of us would undertake to classify the morals and manners of any hamlet in England, after spending the summer in it? What sensible man seriously generalizes upon the manners of a street, even though it be Houndsditch or Cranbourn-Alley? Who pretends to explain all the proceedings of his next-door neighbour? Who is able to account for all that is said and done by the dweller in the same house,--by parent, child, brother, or domestic? If such judgments were attempted, would they not be as various as those who make them? And would they not, after all, if closely looked into, reveal more of the mind of the observer than of the observed? If it be thus with us at home, amidst all the general resemblances, the prevalent influences which furnish an interpretation to a large number of facts, what hope of a trustworthy judgment remains for the foreign tourist, however good may be his method of travelling, and however long his absence from home? He looks at all the people along his line of road, and converses with a few individuals from among them. If he diverges, from time to time, from the high road,--if he winds about among villages, and crosses mountains, to dip into the hamlets of the valleys,--he still pursues only a line, and does not command the expanse; he is furnished, at best, with no more than a sample of the people; and whether they be indeed a sample, must remain a conjecture which he has no means of verifying. He converses, more or less, with, perhaps, one man in ten thousand of those he sees; and of the few with whom he converses, no two are alike in powers and in training, or perfectly agree in their views on any one of the great subjects which the traveller professes to observe; the information afforded by one is contradicted by another; the fact of one day is proved error by the next; the wearied mind soon finds itself overwhelmed by the multitude of unconnected or contradictory particulars, and lies passive to be run over by the crowd. The tourist is no more likely to learn, in this way, the social state of a nation, than his valet would be qualified to speak of the meteorology of the country from the number of times the umbrellas were wanted in the course of two months. His children might as well undertake to exhibit the geological formation of the country from the pebbles they picked up in a day's ride. I remember some striking words addressed to me, before I set out on my travels, by a wise man, since dead. "You are going to spend two years in the United States," said he. "Now just tell me,--do you expect to understand the Americans by the time you come back? You do not: that is well. I lived five-and-twenty years in Scotland, and I fancied I understood the Scotch; then I came to England, and supposed I should soon understand the English. I have now lived five-and-twenty years here, and I begin to think I understand neither the Scotch nor the English." What is to be done? Let us first settle what is not to be done. The traveller must deny himself all indulgence of peremptory decision, not only in public on his return, but in his journal, and in his most superficial thoughts. The experienced and conscientious traveller would word the condition differently. Finding peremptory decision more trying to his conscience than agreeable to his laziness, he would call it not indulgence, but anxiety; he enjoys the employment of collecting materials, but would shrink from the responsibility of judging a community. The traveller must not generalize on the spot, however true may be his apprehension--however firm his grasp, of one or more facts. A raw English traveller in China was entertained by a host who was intoxicated, and a hostess who was red-haired; he immediately made a note of the fact that all the men in China were drunkards, and all the women red-haired. A raw Chinese traveller in England was landed by a Thames waterman who had a wooden leg. The stranger saw that the wooden leg was used to stand in the water with, while the other was high and dry. The apparent economy of the fact struck the Chinese; he saw in it strong evidence of design, and wrote home that in England one-legged men are kept for watermen, to the saving of all injury to health, shoe, and stocking, from standing in the river. These anecdotes exhibit but a slight exaggeration of the generalizing tendencies of many modern travellers. They are not so much worse than some recent tourists' tales, as they are better than the old narratives of "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders." Natural philosophers do not dream of generalizing with any such speed as that used by the observers of men; yet they might do it with more safety, at the risk of an incalculably smaller mischief. The geologist and the chemist make a large collection of particular appearances, before they commit themselves to propound a principle drawn from them, though their subject matter is far less diversified than the human subject, and nothing of so much importance as human emotions,--love and dislike, reverence and contempt, depends upon their judgment. If a student in natural philosophy is in too great haste to classify and interpret, he misleads, for a while, his fellow-students (not a very large class); he vitiates the observations of a few successors; his error is discovered and exposed; he is mortified, and his too docile followers are ridiculed, and there is an end; but if a traveller gives any quality which he may have observed in a few individuals as a characteristic of a nation, the evil is not speedily or easily remediable. Abject thinkers, passive readers, adopt his words; parents repeat them to their children; and townspeople spread the judgment into the villages and hamlets--the strongholds of prejudice; future travellers see according to the prepossessions given them, and add their testimony to the error, till it becomes the work of a century to reverse a hasty generalization. It was a great mistake of a geologist to assign a wrong level to the Caspian Sea; and it is vexatious that much time and energy should have been devoted to account for an appearance which, after all, does not exist. It is provoking to geologists that they should have wasted a great deal of ingenuity in finding reasons for these waters being at a different level from what it is now found that they have; but the evil is over; the "pish!" and the "pshaw!" are said; the explanatory and apologetical notes are duly inserted in new editions of geological works, and nothing more can come of the mistake. But it is difficult to foresee when the British public will believe that the Americans are a mirthful nation, or even that the French are not almost all cooks or dancing-masters. A century hence, probably, the Americans will continue to believe that all the English make a regular study of the art of conversation; and the lower orders of French will be still telling their children that half the people in England hang or drown themselves every November. As long as travellers generalize on morals and manners as hastily as they do, it will probably be impossible to establish a general conviction that no civilized nation is ascertainably better or worse than any other on this side barbarism, the whole field of morals being taken into the view. As long as travellers continue to neglect the safe means of generalization which are within the reach of all, and build theories upon the manifestations of individual minds, there is little hope of inspiring men with that spirit of impartiality, mutual deference, and love, which are the best enlighteners of the eyes and rectifiers of the understanding. Above all things, the traveller must not despair of good results from his observations. Because he cannot establish true conclusions by imperfect means, he is not to desist from doing anything at all. Because he cannot safely generalize in one way, it does not follow that there is no other way. There are methods of safe generalization of which I shall speak by-and-by. But, if there were not such within his reach, if his only materials were the discourse, the opinions, the feelings, the way of life, the looks, dress, and manners of individuals, he might still afford important contributions to science by his observations on as wide a variety of these as he can bring within his mental grasp. The experience of a large number of observers would in time yield materials from which a cautious philosopher might draw conclusions. It is a safe rule, in morals as in physics, that no fact is without its use. Every observer and recorder is fulfilling a function; and no one observer or recorder ought to feel discouragement, as long as he desires to be useful rather than shining; to be the servant rather than the lord of science, and a friend to the home-stayers rather than their dictator. One of the wisest men living writes to me, "No books are so little to be trusted as travels. All travellers do and must generalize too rapidly. Most, if not all, take a fact for a principle, or the exception for the rule, more or less; and the quickest minds, which love to reason and explain more than to observe with patience, go most astray. My faith in travels received a mortal wound when I travelled. I read, as I went along, the books of those who had preceded me, and found that we did not see with the same eyes. Even descriptions of nature proved false. The traveller had viewed the prospect at a different season, or in a different light, and substituted the transient for the fixed. Still I think travels useful. Different accounts give means of approximation to truth; and by-and-by what is fixed and essential in a people will be brought out." It ought to be an animating thought to a traveller that, even if it be not in his power to settle any one point respecting the morals and manners of an empire, he can infallibly aid in supplying means of approximation to truth, and of bringing out "what is fixed and essential in a people." This should be sufficient to stimulate his exertions and satisfy his ambition. CHAPTER I. PHILOSOPHICAL REQUISITES. "Only I believe that this is not a bow for every man to shoot in that counts himself a teacher, but will require sinews almost equal to those which Homer gave Ulysses; yet I am withal persuaded that it may prove much more easy in the essay than it now seems at a distance."--MILTON. There are two parties to the work of observation on Morals and Manners--the observer and the observed. This is an important fact which the traveller seldom dwells upon as he ought; yet a moment's consideration shows that the mind of the observer--the instrument by which the work is done, is as essential as the material to be wrought. If the instrument be in bad order, it will furnish a bad product, be the material what it may. In this chapter I shall point out what requisites the traveller ought to make sure that he is possessed of before he undertakes to offer observations on the Morals and Manners of a people. SECTION I. He must have made up his mind as to what it is that he wants to know. In physical science, great results may be obtained by hap-hazard experiments; but this is not the case in Morals. A chemist can hardly fail of learning something by putting any substances together, under new circumstances, and seeing what will arise out of the combination; and some striking discoveries happened in this way, in the infancy of the science; though no one doubts that more knowledge may be gained by the chemist who has an aim in his mind, and who conducts his experiment on some principle. In Morals, the latter method is the only one which promises any useful results. In the workings of the social system, all the agents are known in the gross--all are determined. It is not their nature, but the proportions in which they are combined, which have to be ascertained. What does the traveller want to know? He is aware that, wherever he goes, he will find men, women, and children; strong men and weak men; just men and selfish men. He knows that he will everywhere find a necessity for food, clothing, and shelter; and everywhere some mode of general agreement how to live together. He knows that he will everywhere find birth, marriage, and death; and therefore domestic affections. What results from all these elements of social life does he mean to look for? For want of settling this question, one traveller sees nothing truly, because the state of things is not consistent with his speculations as to how human beings ought to live together; another views the whole with prejudice, because it is not like what he has been accustomed to see at home; yet each of these would shrink from the recognition of his folly, if it were fully placed before him. The first would be ashamed of having tried any existing community by an arbitrary standard of his own--an act much like going forth into the wilderness to see kings' houses full of men in soft raiment; and the other would perceive that different nations may go on judging one another by themselves till doomsday, without in any way improving the chance of self-advancement and mutual understanding. Going out with the disadvantage of a habit of mind uncounteracted by an intellectual aim, will never do. The traveller may as well stay at home, for anything he will gain in the way of social knowledge. The two considerations just mentioned must be subordinated to the grand one,--the only general one,--of the relative amount of human happiness. Every element of social life derives its importance from this great consideration. The external conveniences of men, their internal emotions and affections, their social arrangements, graduate in importance precisely in proportion as they affect the general happiness of the section of the race among whom they exist. Here then is the wise traveller's aim,--to be kept in view to the exclusion of prejudice, both philosophical and national. He must not allow himself to be perplexed or disgusted by seeing the great ends of human association pursued by means which he could never have devised, and to the practice of which he could not reconcile himself. He is not to conclude unfavourably about the diet of the multitude because he sees them swallowing blubber, or scooping out water-melons, instead of regaling themselves with beef and beer. He is not to suppose their social meetings a failure because they eat with their fingers instead of with silver forks, or touch foreheads instead of making a bow. He is not to conclude against domestic morals, on account of a diversity of methods of entering upon marriage. He might as well judge of the minute transactions of manners all over the world by what he sees in his native village. There, to leave the door open or to shut it bears no relation to morals, and but little to manners; whereas, to shut the door is as cruel an act in a Hindoo hut as to leave it open in a Greenland cabin. In short, he is to prepare himself to bring whatever he may observe to the test of some high and broad principle, and not to that of a low comparative practice. To test one people by another, is to argue within a very small segment of a circle; and the observer can only pass backwards and forwards at an equal distance from the point of truth. To test the morals and manners of a nation by a reference to the essentials of human happiness, is to strike at once to the centre, and to see things as they are. SECTION II. Being provided with a conviction of what it is that he wants to know, the traveller must be furthermore furnished with the means of gaining the knowledge he wants. When he was a child, he was probably taught that eyes, ears, and understanding are all-sufficient to gain for him as much knowledge as he will have time to acquire; but his self-education has been a poor one, if he has not become convinced that something more is needful--the enlightenment and discipline of the understanding, as well as its immediate use. It is not enough for a traveller to have an active understanding, equal to an accurate perception of individual facts in themselves; he must also be in possession of principles which may serve as a rallying point for his observations, and without which he cannot determine their bearings, or be secure of putting a right interpretation upon them. A traveller may do better without eyes, or without ears, than without such principles, as there is evidence to prove. Holman, the blind traveller, gains a wonderful amount of information, though he is shut out from the evidence yielded by the human countenance, by way-side groups, by the aspect of cities, and the varying phenomena of country regions. In his motto, he indicates something of his method. "Sightless to see, and judge thro' judgment's eyes, To make four senses do the work of five, To arm the mind for hopeful enterprise, Are lights to him who doth in darkness live." In order to "judge through judgment's eyes," those eyes must be made strong and clear; and a traveller may gain more without the bodily organ than with an untrained understanding. The case of the Deaf Traveller[A] leads us to say the same about the other great avenue of knowledge. His writings prove, to all who are acquainted with them, that, though to a great degree deprived of that inestimable commentary upon perceived facts--human discourse--the Deaf Traveller is able to furnish us with more knowledge of foreign people than Fine-Ear himself could have done without the accompaniments of analytical power and concentrative thought. All senses, and intellectual powers, and good habits, may be considered essential to a perfect observation of morals and manners; but almost any one might be better spared than a provision of principles which may serve as a rallying point and a test of facts. The blind and the deaf travellers must suffer under a deprivation or deficiency of certain classes of facts. The condition of the unphilosophical traveller is much worse. It is a chance whether he puts a right interpretation on any of the facts he perceives. Many may object that I am making much too serious a matter of the department of the business of travelling under present notice. They do not pretend to be moral philosophers;--they do not desire to be oracles;--they attempt nothing more than to give a simple report of what has come under their notice. But what work on earth is more serious than this of giving an account of the most grave and important things which are transacted on this globe? Every true report is a great good; every untrue report is a great mischief. Therefore, let there be none given but by persons in some good degree qualified. Such travellers as will not take pains to provide themselves with the requisite thought and study should abstain from reporting at all. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that the study shown to be requisite is vast and deep. Some knowledge of the principles of Morals and the rule of Manners is required, as in the case of other sciences to be brought into use on a similar occasion; but the principles are few and simple, and the rule easy of application. The universal summary notions of Morals may serve a common traveller in his judgments as to whether he would like to live in any foreign country, and as to whether the people there are as agreeable to him as his own nation. For such an one it may be sufficient to bear about the general notions that lying, thieving, idleness, and licentiousness are bad; and that truth, honesty, industry, and sobriety are good; and for common purposes, such an one may be trusted to pronounce what is industry and what idleness; what is licentiousness and what sobriety. But vague notions, home prepossessions, even on these great points of morals, are not sufficient, in the eyes of an enlightened traveller, to warrant decisions on the moral state of nations who are reared under a wide diversity of circumstances. The true liberality which alone is worthy to contemplate all the nations of the earth, does not draw a broad line through the midst of human conduct, declaring all that falls on the one side vice, and all on the other virtue; such a liberality knows that actions and habits do not always carry their moral impress visibly to all eyes, and that the character of very many must be determined by a cautious application of a few deep principles. Is the Shaker of New England a good judge of the morals and manners of the Arab of the Desert? What sort of a verdict would the shrewdest gipsy pass upon the monk of La Trappe? What would the Scotch peasant think of the magical practices of Egypt? or the Russian soldier of a meeting of electors in the United States? The ideas of right and wrong in the minds of these people are not of the enlarged kind which would enable them to judge persons in situations the most opposite to their own. The true philosopher, the worthy observer, first contemplates in imagination the area of humanity, and then ascertains what principles of morals are applicable to them all, and judges by these. The enlightened traveller, if he explore only one country, carries in his mind the image of all; for, only in its relation to the whole of the race can any one people be judged. Almost without exaggeration, he may be said to see what the rhapsodist in Volney saw. "There, from above the atmosphere, looking down upon the earth I had quitted, I beheld a scene entirely new. Under my feet, floating in empty space, a globe similar to that of the moon, but less luminous, presented to me one of its faces.... 'What!' exclaimed I, 'is that the earth which is inhabited by human beings?'"[B] The differences are, that, instead of "one of its faces," the moralist would see the whole of the earth in one contemplation; and that, instead of a nebulous expanse here, and a brown or grey speck there,--continents, seas, or volcanoes,--he would look into the homes and social assemblies of all lands. In the extreme North, there is the snow-hut of the Esquimaux, shining with the fire within, like an alabaster lamp left burning in a wide waste; within, the beardless father is mending his weapons made of fishbones, while the dwarfed mother swathes her infant in skins, and feeds it with oil and fat. In the extreme East, there is the Chinese family in their garden, treading its paved walks, or seated under the shade of its artificial rocks; the master displaying the claws of his left hand as he smokes his pipe, and his wife tottering on her deformed feet as she follows her child,--exulting over it if it be a boy; grave and full of sighs if heaven have sent her none but girls. In the extreme South, there is the Colonist of the Cape, lazily basking before his door, while he sends his labourer abroad with his bullock-waggon, devolves the business of the farm upon the women, and scares from his door any poor Hottentot who may have wandered hither over the plain. In the extreme West, there is the gathering together on the shores of the Pacific of the hunters laden with furs. The men are trading, or cleaning their arms, or sleeping; the squaws are cooking, or dyeing with vegetable juices the quills of the porcupine or the hair of the moose-deer. In the intervals between these extremities, there is a world of morals and manners, as diverse as the surface of the lands on which they are exhibited. Here is the Russian nobleman on his estate, the lord of the fate of his serfs, but hard pressed by the enmity of rival nobles, and silenced by the despotism of his prince; his wife leads a languid life among her spinning maidens; and his young sons talk of the wars in which they shall serve their emperor in time to come. There is the Frankfort trader, dwelling among equals, fixing his pride upon having wronged no man, or upon having a son distinguished at the university, or a daughter skilled in domestic accomplishments; while his wife emulates her neighbours in supporting the comfort and respectability of the household. Here is the French peasant returning from the field in total ignorance of what has taken place in the capital of late; and there is the English artizan discussing with his brother-workman the politics of the town, or carrying home to his wife some fresh hopes of the interference of parliament about labour and wages. Here is a conclave of Cardinals, consulting upon the interests of the Holy See; there a company of Brahmins setting an offering of rice before their idol. In one direction, there is a handful of citizens building a new town in the midst of a forest; in another, there is a troop of horsemen hovering on the horizon, while a caravan is traversing the Desert. Under the twinkling shadows of a German vineyard, national songs are sung; from the steep places of the Swiss mountains the Alp-horn resounds; in the coffee-house at Cairo, listeners hang upon the voice of the romance reciter; the churches of Italy echo with solemn hymns; and the soft tones of the child are heard, in the New England parlour, as the young scholar reads the Bible to parent or aged grandfather. All these, and more, will a traveller of the most enlightened order revolve before his mind's eye as he notes the groups which are presented to his senses. Of such travellers there are but too few; and vague and general, or merely traditional, notions of right and wrong must serve the purpose of the greater number. The chief evil of moral notions being vague or traditional is, that they are irreconcileable with liberality of judgment; and the great benefit of an ascertainment of the primary principles of morals is, that such an investigation dissolves prejudice, and casts a full light upon many things which cease to be fearful and painful when they are no longer obscure. We all know how different a Sunday in Paris appears to a sectarian, to whom the word of his priest is law; and to a philosopher, in whom religion is indigenous, who understands the narrowness of sects, and sees how much smaller even Christendom itself is than Humanity. We all know how offensive the prayers of Mahomedans at the corners of streets, and the pomp of catholic processions, are to those who know no other way than entering into their closet, and shutting the door when they pray; but how felt the deep thinker who wrote the Religio Medici? He was an orderly member of a Protestant church, yet he uncovered his head at the sight of a crucifix; he could not laugh at pilgrims walking with peas in their shoes, or despise a begging friar; he could "not hear an Ave Maria bell without an elevation;" and it is probable that even the Teraphim of the Arabs would not have been wholly absurd, or the car of Juggernaut itself altogether odious in his eyes. Such is the contrast between the sectary and the philosopher. SECTION III. As an instance of the advantage which a philosophical traveller has over an unprepared one, look at the difference which will enter into a man's judgment of nations, according as he carries about with him the vague popular notion of a Moral Sense, or has investigated the laws under which feelings of right and wrong grow up in all men. It is worth while to dwell a little on this important point. Most persons who take no great pains to think for themselves, have a notion that every human being has feelings, or a conscience, born with him, by which he knows, if he will only attend to it, exactly what is right and wrong; and that, as right and wrong are fixed and immutable, all ought to agree as to what is sin and virtue in every case. Now, mankind are, and always have been, so far from agreeing as to right and wrong, that it is necessary to account in some manner for the wide differences in various ages, and among various nations. A great diversity of doctrines has been put forth for the purpose of lessening the difficulty; but they all leave certain portions of the race under the condemnation or compassion of the rest for their error, blindness, or sin. Moreover, no doctrines yet invented have accounted for some total revolutions in the ideas of right and wrong, which have occurred in the course of ages. A person who takes for granted that there is an universal Moral Sense among men, as unchanging as he who bestowed it, cannot reasonably explain how it was that those men were once esteemed the most virtuous who killed the most enemies in battle, while now it is considered far more noble to save life than to destroy it. They cannot but wonder how it was that it was once thought a great shame to live in misery, and an honour to commit suicide; while now the wisest and best men think exactly the reverse. And, with regard to the present age, it must puzzle men who suppose that all ought to think alike on moral subjects, that there are parts of the world where mothers believe it a duty to drown their children, and that eastern potentates openly deride the king of England for having only one wife instead of one hundred. There is no avoiding illiberality, under this belief,--as the philosopher understands illiberality. There is no avoiding the conclusion that the people who practice infanticide and polygamy are desperately wicked; and that minor differences of conduct are, abroad as at home, so many sins. The observer who sets out with a more philosophical belief, not only escapes the affliction of seeing sin wherever he sees difference, and avoids the suffering of contempt and alienation from his species, but, by being prepared for what he witnesses, and aware of the causes, is free from the agitation of being shocked and alarmed, preserves his calmness, his hope, his sympathy; and is thus far better fitted to perceive, understand, and report upon the morals and manners of the people he visits. His more philosophical belief, derived from all fair evidence and just reflexion, is, that every man's feelings of right and wrong, instead of being born with him, grow up in him from the influences to which he is subjected. We see that in other cases,--with regard to science, to art, and to the appearances of nature,--feelings grow out of knowledge and experience; and there is every evidence that it is so with regard to morals. The feelings begin very early; and this is the reason why they are supposed to be born with men; but they are few and imperfect in childhood, and, in the case of those who are strongly exercised in morals, they go on enlarging and strengthening and refining through life. See the effect upon the traveller's observations of his holding this belief about conscience! Knowing that some influences act upon the minds of all people in all countries, he looks everywhere for certain feelings of right and wrong which are as sure to be in all men's minds as if they were born with them. For instance, to torment another without any reason, real or imaginary, is considered wrong all over the world. In the same manner, to make others happy is universally considered right. At the same time, the traveller is prepared to find an infinite variety of differences in smaller matters, and is relieved from the necessity of pronouncing each to be a vice in one party or another. His own moral education having been a more elevated and advanced one than that of some of the people he contemplates, he cannot but feel sorrow and disgust at various things that he witnesses; but it is ignorance and barbarism that he mourns, and not vice. When he sees the Arab or American Indian offer daughter or wife to the stranger, as a part of the hospitality which is, in the host's mind, the first of duties, the observer regards the fact as he regards the mode of education in old Sparta, where physical hardihood and moral slavery constituted a man most honourable. If he sees an American student spend the whole of his small fortune, on leaving college, in travelling in Europe, he will not blame him as he would blame a young Englishman for doing the same thing. The Englishman would be a spendthrift; the American is wise: and the reason is, that their circumstances, prospects, and therefore their views of duty, are different. The American, being sure of obtaining an independent maintenance, may make the enlargement of his mind, and the cultivation of his tastes by travel, his first object; while the conscientious Englishman must fulfil the hard conditions of independence before he can travel. Capital is to him one of the chief requisites of honest independence; while to the American it is in the outset no requisite at all. To go without clothing was, till lately, perfectly innocent in the South Sea Islands; but now that civilization has been fairly established by the missionaries, it has become a sin. To let an enemy escape with his life is a disgrace in some countries of the world; while in others it is held more honourable to forgive than to punish him. Instances of such varieties and oppositions of conscience might be multiplied till they filled a volume, to the perplexity and grief of the unphilosophical, and the serene instruction of the philosophical observer. The general influences under which universal ideas and feelings of right and wrong are formed, are dispensed by the Providence under which all are educated. That man should be happy is so evidently the intention of his Creator, the contrivances to that end are so multitudinous and so striking, that the perception of the aim may be called universal. Whatever tends to make men happy, becomes a fulfilment of the will of God. Whatever tends to make them miserable, becomes opposition to his will. There are, and must be, a host of obstacles to the express recognition of, and practical obedience to, these great principles; but they may be discovered as the root of religion and morals in all countries. There are impediments from ignorance, and consequent error, selfishness, and passion: the most infantile men mistake the means of human happiness, and the wisest have but a dim and fluctuating perception of them: but yet all men entertain one common conviction, that what makes people happy is good and right, and that what makes them miserable is evil and wrong. This conviction is at the bottom of practices which seem the most inconsistent with it. When the Ashantee offers a human sacrifice, it is in order to secure blessings from his gods. When the Hindoo exposes his sick parent in the Ganges, he thinks he is putting him out of pain by a charmed death. When Sand stabbed Kotzebue, he believed he was punishing and getting rid of an enemy and an obstacle to the welfare of his nation. When the Georgian planter buys and sells slaves, he goes on the supposition that he is preserving the order and due subordination of society. All these notions are shown by philosophy to be narrow, superficial, and mistaken. They have been outgrown by many, and are doubtless destined to be outgrown by all; but, acted upon by the ignorant and deluded, they are very different from the wickedness which is perpetrated against better knowledge. But these things would be wickedness, perpetrated against better knowledge, if the supposition of a universal, infallible Moral Sense were true. The traveller who should consistently adhere to the notion of a Moral Sense, must pronounce the Ashantee worshipper as guilty as Greenacre: the Hindoo son a parricide, not only in fact, but in the most revolting sense of the term: Sand, a Thurtell: and the Georgian planter such a monster of tyranny as a Sussex farmer would be if he set up a whipping-post for his labourers, and sold their little ones to gipsies. Such judgments would be cruelly illiberal. The traveller who is furnished with the more accurate philosophy of Conscience would arrive at conclusions, not only more correct, but far less painful; and, without any laxity of principle, far more charitable. So much for one instance of the advantage to the traveller of being provided with definite principles, to be used as a rallying point and test of his observations, instead of mere vague moral notions and general prepossessions, which can serve only as a false medium, by which much that he sees must necessarily be perverted or obscured. SECTION IV. The traveller having satisfied himself that there are some universal feelings about right and wrong, and that in consequence some parts of human conduct are guided by general rules, must next give his attention to modes of conduct, which seem to him good or bad, prevalent in a nation, or district, or society of smaller limits. His first general principle is, that the law of nature is the only one by which mankind at large can be judged. His second must be, that every prevalent virtue or vice is the result of the particular circumstances amidst which the society exists. The circumstances in which a prevalent virtue or vice originates, may or may not be traceable by a traveller. If traceable, he should spare no pains to make himself acquainted with the whole case. If obscure, he must beware of imputing disgraces to individuals, as if those individuals were living under the influences which have made himself what he is. He will not blame a deficiency of moral independence in a citizen of Philadelphia so severely as in a citizen of London; seeing, as he must do, that the want of moral independence is a prevalent fault in the United States, and that there must be some reason for it. Again, he will not look to the Polish peasant for the political intelligence, activity, and principle which delight him in the log-house of the American farmer. He sees that Polish peasants are generally supine, and American farmers usually interested about politics; and that there must be reasons for the difference. In a majority of cases such reasons are, to a great extent, ascertainable. In Spain, for instance, there is a large class of wretched and irretrievable beggars; and their idleness, dirt, and lying trouble the very soul of the traveller. What is the reason of the prevalence of this degraded class and of its vices? A Court Lady[C] wrote, in ancient days, piteous complaints of the poverty of the sovereign, the nobility, the army, and the destitute ladies who waited upon the queen. The sovereign could not give his attendants their dinners; the nobility melted down their plate and sold their jewels; the soldiers were famishing in garrison, so that the young deserted, and the aged and invalids wasted away, actually starved to death. The lady mentions with surprise, that a particularly large amount of gold and silver had arrived from the foreign possessions of Spain that year, and tries to account for the universal misery by saying that a great proportion of these riches was appropriated by merchants who supplied the Spaniards with the necessaries of life from abroad; and she speaks of this as an evil. She is an example of an unphilosophical observer,--one who could not be trusted to report--much less to account for--the morals and manners of the people before her eyes. What says a philosophical observer?[D] "Spain and Portugal, the countries which possess the mines, are, after Poland, perhaps the two most beggarly countries in Europe."--"Their trade to their colonies is carried on in their own ships, and is much greater" (than their foreign commerce,) "on account of the great riches and extent of those colonies. But it has never introduced any considerable manufactures for distant sale into either of those countries, and the greater part of both remains uncultivated."--"The proportion of gold and silver to the annual produce of the land and labour of Spain is said to be very considerable, and that you frequently find there a profusion of plate in houses where there is nothing else which would in other countries be thought suitable or correspondent to this sort of magnificence. The cheapness of gold and silver, or, what is the same thing, the dearness of all commodities, which is the necessary effect of this redundance of the precious metals, discourages both the agriculture and manufactures of Spain and Portugal, and enables foreign nations to supply them with many sorts of rude, and with almost all sorts of manufactured produce, for a smaller quantity of gold and silver than what they themselves can either raise or make them for at home."--When it is considered that in Spain gold and silver are called wealth, and that there is little other; that manufactures and commerce scarcely exist; that agriculture is discouraged, and that therefore there is a lack of occupation for the lower classes, it may be fairly concluded that the idle upper orders will be found lazy, proud, and poor; the idle lower classes in a state of beggary; and that the most virtuous and happy part of the population will be those who are engaged in tilling the soil, and in the occupations which are absolutely necessary in towns. One may see with the mind's eye the groups of intriguing grandees, who have no business on their estates to occupy their time and thoughts; or the crowd of hungry beggars, thronging round the door of a convent, to receive the daily alms; or the hospitable and courteous peasants, of whom a traveller[E] says, "There is a civility to strangers, and an easy style of behaviour familiar to this class of Spanish society, which is very remote from the churlish and awkward manners of the English and German peasantry. Their sobriety and endurance of fatigue are very remarkable; and there is a constant cheerfulness in their demeanour which strongly prepossesses a stranger in their favour."--"I should be glad if I could, with justice, give as favourable a picture of the higher orders of society in this country; but, perhaps, when we consider their wretched education, and their early habits of indolence and dissipation, we ought not to wonder at the state of contempt and degradation to which they are reduced. I am not speaking the language of prejudice, but the result of the observations I have made, in which every accurate observer among our countrymen has concurred with me, in saying that the figures and countenances of the higher orders are as much inferior to those of the peasants, as their moral qualities are in the view I have given of them."--All this might be foreseen to be unavoidable in a country where the means of living are passively derived from abroad, and where the honour and rewards of successful industry are confined to a class of the community. The mines should bear the blame of the prevalent faults of the saucy beggars and beggarly grandees of Spain. To any one who has at all considered at home the bearings of a social system which is grounded upon physical force, or those of the opposite arrangements which rely upon moral power, it can be no mystery abroad that there should be prevalent moral characteristics among the subjects of such systems; and the vices which exist under them will be, however mourned, leniently judged. Take the Feudal System as an instance, first, and then its opposite. A little thought makes it clear what virtues and vices will be almost certain to subsist under the influences of each. The baron lives in his castle, on a rock or some other eminence, whence he can overlook his domains, or where his ancestor reared his abode for purposes of safety. During this stage of society there is little domestic refinement and comfort. The furniture is coarse; the library is not tempting; and the luxurious ease of cities is out of the question. The pleasures of the owner lie abroad. There he devotes himself to rough sports, and enjoys his darling luxury,--the exercise of power. Within the dwelling the wife and her attendants spend their lives in handiworks, in playing with the children and keeping them in order, in endless conversation on the few events which come under their notice, and in obedience to and companionship with the priest. While the master is hunting, or gathering together his retainers for the feast, the women are spinning or sewing, gossiping, confessing, or doing penance; while the priest studies in his apartment, shares in the mirth, or soothes the troubles of the household, and rules the mind of the noble by securing the confidence of his wife. Out of doors, there are the retainers, by whatever name they may be called. Their poor dwellings are crowded round the castle of the lord; their patches of arable land lie nearest, and the pastures beyond; that, at least, the supply of human food may be secured from any enemy. These portions of land are held on a tenure of service; and, as the retainers have no property in them, and no interest in their improvement, and are, moreover, liable to be called away from their tillage at any moment, to perform military or other service, the soil yields sorry harvests, and the lean cattle are not very ornamental to the pastures. The wives of the peasantry are often left, at an hour's warning, in the unprotected charge of their half-clothed and untaught children, as well as of the cattle and the field.--The festivals of the people are on holy days, and on the return of the chief from war, or from a pre-eminent chase. Now, what must be the morals of such a district as this? and, it may be added, of the whole country of which it forms a part? for, if there be one feudal settlement of the kind, there must be more; and the society is in fact made up of a certain number of complete sets of persons,--of establishments like this.--There is no need to go back some centuries for an original to the picture: it exists in more than one country in Europe now. This kind of society is composed of two classes only; those who have something, and those who have nothing. The chief has property, some knowledge, and great power. With individual differences, the chiefs may be expected to be imperious, from their liberty and indulgence of will; brave, from their exposure to toil and danger; contemptuous of men, from their own supremacy; superstitious, from the influence of the priest in the household; lavish, from the permanency of their property; vain of rank and personal distinction, from the absence of pursuits unconnected with self; and hospitable, partly from the same cause, and partly from their own hospitality being the only means of gratifying their social dispositions. The clergy will be politic, subservient, studious, or indolent, kind-hearted, effeminate, with a strong tendency to spiritual pride, and love of spiritual dominion. It will be surprising, too, if they are not driven into infidelity by the credulity of their pupils. The women will be ignorant and superstitious, for want of varied instruction; brave, from the frequent presence or promise of danger; efficient, from the small division of labour which is practicable in the superintendence of such a family; given to gossip and uncertainty of temper, from the sameness of their lives; devoted to their husbands and children, from the absence of all other important objects; and vain of such accomplishments as they have, from an ignorance of what remains to be achieved. The retainers must be ignorant,--physically strong and imposing, perhaps, but infants in mind, and slaves in morals. Their worship is idolatry--of their chief. The virtues permitted to them are fidelity, industry, domestic attachment, and sobriety. It is difficult to see what others are possible. Their faults are all comprehended in the word barbarism. These characteristics may be extended to the divisions of the nation corresponding to those of the household: for the sovereign is only a higher feudal chief: his nobles are a more exalted sort of serfs; and those who are masters at home become slaves at court. Under this system, who would be so hardy as to treat brutality in a serf, cunning in a priest, prejudice in a lady, and imperiousness in a lord, as any thing but the results--inevitable as mournful--of the state of society? Feudalism is founded upon physical force, and therefore bears a relation to the past alone. Right begins in might, and all the social relations of men have originated in physical superiority. The most prevalent ideas of the feudal period arise out of the past; what has been longest honoured is held most honourable; and the understanding of men, unexercised by learning, and undisciplined by society and political action, falls back upon precedent, and reposes there. The tastes, and even the passions, of the feudal period bear a relation to antiquity. Ambition, prospective as it is in its very nature, has, in this case, a strong retrospective character. The glory that the descendant derives from his fathers, he burns to transmit. The past is everything: the future, except in as far as it may resemble the past, is nothing. Such, with modifications, have been the prevalent ideas, tastes, and passions of the civilized world, till lately. The opposite state of society, which has begun to be realized, occasions prevalent ideas, and therefore prevalent virtues and vices, of an opposite character. As commerce enlarges, as other professions besides the clerical arise, as trades become profitable, as cities swell in importance, as communication improves, raising villages into towns, and hamlets into villages, and the affairs of central communities become spread through the circumference, the lower classes rise, the chiefs lose much of their importance, the value of men for their intrinsic qualifications is discovered, and such men take the lead in managing the affairs of associated citizens. Instead of all being done by orders issued from a central power,--commands carrying forth an imperious will, and bringing back undoubting obedience,--social affairs begin to be managed by the heads and hands of the parties immediately interested. Self-government in municipal affairs takes place; and, having taken place in any one set of circumstances, it appears likely to be employed within a wider and a wider range, till all the government of the community is of that character. The United States are the most remarkable examples now before the world of the reverse of the feudal system,--its principles, its methods, its virtues and vices. In as far as the Americans revert, in ideas and tastes, to the past, this may be attributed to the transition being not yet perfected,--to the generation which organized the republic having been educated amidst the remains of feudalism. There are still Americans who boast of ancestors high in the order of birth rather than of merit; who in talking of rank have ideas of birth in their minds, and whose tastes lie in the past. But such will be the case while the literature of the world breathes the spirit of former ages, and softens the transition to an opposite social state. A new literature, new modes of thought, are daily arising, which point more and more towards the future. We have already records of the immediate state of the minds and fortunes of men and of communities, and not a few speculations which stretch far forward into the future. Every year is the admission more extensively entered into that moral power is nobler than physical force; there is more earnestness in the conferences of nations, and less proneness to war. The highest creations of literature itself, however long ago produced, are now discovered to bear as close a relation to the future as the past. They are for all time, through all its changes. While pillars of light in the dim regions of antiquity, they pass over in the dawn, and are still before us, casting their shadows to our feet as guides into the dazzling future. Pre-eminent among them is the Book which never had any retrospective character in it. It never sanctioned physical force, pride of ancestry, of valour, of influence, or any other pride. It never sanctioned arbitrary division of ranks. It never lauded the virtues of feudalism in their disconnection with other virtues; it never spared the faults of feudalism, on the ground of their being the necessary product of feudal circumstances; neither does it now laud and tolerate the virtues and vices developed by democracy. This guide has never yet taken up its rest. It is in advance of all existing democracies, as it ever was of all despotisms. The fact is, that, while all manifestations of eminent intellectual and moral force have an imperishable quality, this supreme book has not only an immortal freshness, but bears no relation to time:--to it "one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." What are the prevalent virtues and faults which are to be looked for in the future,--or in those countries which represent somewhat of the future, as others afford a weakened image of the past? What allowance is the traveller in America to make? Almost precisely the reverse of what he would make in Russia. In-door luxury has succeeded to out-door sports: the mechanical arts flourish from the elevation of the lower classes, and prowess is gone out of fashion. The consequence of this is that the traveller sees ostentation of personal luxury instead of retinue. In the course of transition to the time when merit will constitute the highest claim to rank, wealth succeeds to birth: but even already, the claims of wealth give way before those of intellect. The popular author has more observance than the millionaire in the United States. This is honourable, and yields promise of a still better graduation of ranks. Where moral force is recognized as the moving power of society, it seems to follow that the condition of Woman must be elevated; that new pursuits will be opened to her, and a wider and stronger discipline be afforded to her powers. It is not so in America; but this is owing to the interference of other circumstances with the full operation of democratic principles. The absence of an aristocratic or a sovereign will impels men to find some other will on which to repose their individual weakness, and with which to employ their human veneration. The will of the majority becomes their refuge and unwritten law. The few free-minded resist this will, when it is in opposition to their own, and the slavish many submit. This is accordingly found to be the most conspicuous fault of the Americans. Their cautious subservience to public opinion,--their deficiency of moral independence,--is the crying sin of their society. Again, the social equality by which the whole of life is laid open to all in a democratic republic, in which every man who has power in him may attain all to which that power is a requisite, cannot but enhance the importance of each in the eyes of all; and the consequence is a mutual respect and deference, and also a mutual helpfulness, which are in themselves virtues of a high order, and preparatives for others. In these the Americans are exercised and accomplished to a degree never generally attained in any other country. This class of virtues constitutes their distinguishing honour, their crowning grace in the company of nations.--Activity and ingenuity are a matter of course where every man's lot is in his own hands. Unostentatious hospitality and charity might, in some democracies, be likely to languish; but the Americans have the wealth of a young country, and the warmth of a young national existence, as stimulus and warrant for pecuniary liberality of every kind.--Popular vanity, and the subservience of political representatives, are the chief dangers which remain to be alluded to; and there will probably be no republic for ages where these will not be found in the form of prevalent vices.--If, under a feudal system, there is a wholesome exercise of reverence in the worship of ancestry, there is, under the opposite system, a no less salutary and perpetual impulse to generosity in the care for posterity. The one has been, doubtless, a benignant influence, tempering the ruggedness and violence of despotism; the other will prove an elevating force, lifting men above the personal selfishness and mutual subservience which are the besetting perils of equals who unite to govern by their common will. Whatever may be his philosophy of individual character, the reflective observer cannot travel, with his mind awake, without admitting that there can be no question but that national character is formed, or largely influenced, by the gigantic circumstances which, being the product of no individual mind, are directly attributable to the great Moral Governor of the human race. Every successive act of research or travel will impress him more and more deeply with this truth, which, for the sake of his own peace and liberality, it would be well that he should carry about with him from the outset. He will not visit individuals with any bitterness of censure for participating in prevalent faults. He will regard social virtues and graces as shedding honour on all whom they overshadow, from the loftiest to the lowliest; while he is not disposed to indulge contempt, or anything but a mild compassion, for any social depravity or deformity which, being the clear result of circumstances, and itself a circumstance, may be considered as surely destined to be remedied, as the wisdom of associated, like that of individual man, grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength. CHAPTER II. MORAL REQUISITES. "I respect knowledge; but I do not despise ignorance. They think only as their fathers thought, worship as they worshipped. They do no more."--ROGERS. "He was alive To all that was enjoyed where'er he went, And all that was endured." WORDSWORTH. The traveller, being furnished with the philosophical requisites for the observation of morals and manners, 1stly. With a certainty of what it is that he wants to know,-- 2ndly. With principles which may serve as a rallying point and test of his observations,-- 3rdly. With, for instance, a philosophical and definite, instead of a popular and vague, notion about the origin of human feelings of right and wrong,-- 4thly. And with a settled conviction that prevalent virtues and vices are the result of gigantic general influences,--is yet not fitted for his object if certain moral requisites be wanting in him. An observer, to be perfectly accurate, should be himself perfect. Every prejudice, every moral perversion, dims or distorts whatever the eye looks upon. But as we do not wait to be perfect before we travel, we must content ourselves with discovering, in order to avoidance, what would make our task hopeless, and how we may put ourselves in a state to learn at least something truly. We cannot suddenly make ourselves a great deal better than we have been, for such an object as observing Morals and Manners; but, by clearly ascertaining what it is that the most commonly, or the most grossly, vitiates foreign observation, we may put a check upon our spirit of prejudice, and carry with us restoratives of temper and spirits which may be of essential service to us in our task. The observer must have sympathy; and his sympathy must be untrammelled and unreserved. If a traveller be a geological inquirer, he may have a heart as hard as the rocks he shivers, and yet succeed in his immediate objects: if he be a student of the fine arts, he may be as silent as a picture, and yet gain his ends: if he be a statistical investigator, he may be as abstract as a column of figures, and yet learn what he wants to know: but an observer of morals and manners will be liable to deception at every turn, if he does not find his way to hearts and minds. Nothing was ever more true than that "as face answers to face in water, so is the heart of man." To the traveller there are two meanings in this wise saying, both worthy of his best attention. It means that the action of the heart will meet a corresponding action, and that the nature of the heart will meet a corresponding nature. Openness and warmth of heart will be greeted with openness and warmth:--this is one truth. Hearts, generous or selfish, pure or gross, gay or sad, will understand, and therefore be likely to report of, only their like:--this is another truth. There is the same human heart everywhere,--the universal growth of mind and life,--ready to open to the sunshine of sympathy, flourishing in the enclosures of cities, and blossoming wherever dropped in the wilderness; but folding up when touched by chill, and drooping in gloom. As well might the Erl-king go and play the florist in the groves and plains of the tropics, as an unsympathizing man render an account of society. It will all turn to stubble and sapless rigidity before his eyes. There is the same human heart everywhere; and, if the traveller has a good one himself, he will presently find this out, whatever may have been his fears at home of checks to his sympathy from difference of education, objects in life, &c. There is no place where people do not suffer and enjoy; where love is not the high festival of life; where birth and death are not occasions of emotion; where parents are not proud of their boy-children; where thoughtful minds do not speculate upon the two eternities; where, in short, there is not broad ground on which any two human beings may meet and clasp hands, if they have but unsophisticated hearts. If a man have not sympathy, there is no point of the universe--none so wide even as the Mahomedan bridge over the bottomless pit--where he can meet with his fellow. Such an one is indeed floundering in the bottomless pit, with only the shadows of men ever flitting about him. I have mentioned elsewhere, what will well bear repetition,--that an American merchant, who had made several voyages to China, dropped a remark by his own fire-side on the narrowness which causes us to conclude, avowedly or silently, that, however well men may use the light they have, they cannot be more than nominally our brethren, unless they have our religion, our philosophy, and our methods of attaining both. He said he often recurred, with delight, to the conversations he had enjoyed with his Chinese friends on some of the highest speculative, and some of the deepest and widest practical subjects, which his fellow-citizens of New England were apt to think could be the business only of Protestant Christians. This American merchant's observations on oriental morals and manners had an incalculable weight after he had said this; for it was known that he had seen into hearts, as well as met faces, and discovered what people's minds were busy about, as their hands were pursuing the universal employment of earning their subsistence. Unless a traveller interprets by his sympathies what he sees, he cannot but misunderstand the greater part of that which comes under his observation. He will not be admitted with freedom into the retirements of domestic life; the instructive commentary on all the facts of life,--discourse,--will be of a slight and superficial character. People will talk to him of the things they care least about, instead of seeking his sympathy about the affairs which are deepest in their hearts. He will be amused with public spectacles, and informed of historical and chronological facts; but he will not be invited to weddings and christenings; he will hear no love-tales; domestic sorrows will be kept as secrets from him; the old folks will not pour out their stories to him, nor the children bring him their prattle. Such a traveller will be no more fitted to report on morals and manners than he would be to give an account of the silver mines of Siberia by walking over the surface, and seeing the entrance and the product. "Human conduct," says a philosopher, "is guided by rules." Without these rules, men could not live together, and they are also necessary to the repose of individual minds. Robinson Crusoe could not have endured his life for a month without rules to live by. A life without purpose is uncomfortable enough; but a life without rules would be a wretchedness which, happily, man is not constituted to bear. The rules by which men live are chiefly drawn from the universal convictions about right and wrong which I have mentioned as being formed everywhere, under strong general influences. When sentiment is connected with these rules, they become religion; and this religion is the animating spirit of all that is said and done. If the stranger cannot sympathize in the sentiment, he cannot understand the religion; and without understanding the religion, he cannot appreciate the spirit of words and acts. A stranger who has never felt any strong political interest, and cannot sympathize with American sentiment about the majesty of social equality, and the beauty of mutual government, can never understand the political religion of the United States; and the sayings of the citizens by their own fire-sides, the perorations of orators in town-halls, the installations of public servants, and the process of election, will all be empty sound and grimace to him. He will be tempted to laugh,--to call the world about him mad,--like one who, without hearing the music, sees a room-full of people begin to dance. The case is the same with certain Americans who have no antiquarian sympathies, and who think our sovereigns mad for riding to St. Stephen's in the royal state-coach, with eight horses covered with trappings, and a tribe of grotesque footmen. I have found it an effort of condescension to inform such observers that we should not think of inventing such a coach and appurtenances at the present day, any more than we should the dress of the Christ-Hospital boys. If an unsympathizing stranger is so perplexed by a mere matter of external arrangement,--a royal procession, or a popular election,--what can he be expected to make of that which is far more important, more intricate, more mysterious,--neighbourly and domestic life? If he knows and feels nothing of the religion of these, he could learn but little about them, even if the roofs of all the houses of a city were made transparent to him, and he could watch all that is done in every parlour, kitchen, and nursery in a circuit of five miles. What strange scenes and transactions must such an one think that there are in the world! What would he have thought of the spectacle one day seen in Hayti, when Toussaint L'Ouverture ranged his negro forces before him, called out thirteen men from the ranks by name, and ordered them to repair to a certain spot to be immediately shot? What would he have thought of these thirteen men for crossing their arms upon their breasts, bowing their heads submissively, and yielding instant obedience? He might have pronounced Toussaint a ferocious despot, and the thirteen so many craven fools: while the facts wear a very different aspect to one who knows the minds of the men. It was necessary to the good-will of a society but lately organized out of chaos, to make no distinction between negro and other insurgents; and these thirteen men were ringleaders in a revolt, Toussaint's nephew being one of them. This accounts for the general's share in the transaction. As for the negroes, the General was also the Deliverer,--an object of worship to people of his colour. Obedience to him was a rule, exalted by every sentiment of gratitude, awe, admiration, pride, and love, into a religion; and a Haytian of that day would no more have thought of resisting a command of Toussaint, than of disputing a thunder-stroke or an earthquake.--What would an unsympathizing observer make of the Paschal supper, as celebrated in the houses of Hebrews throughout the world,--of the care not to break a bone of the lamb,--of the company all standing, the men girded and shod as for a journey, and the youngest child of the household invariably asking what this is all for? What would the observer call it but mummery, if he had no feeling for the awful traditional and religious emotion involved in the symbol?--What would such an one think of the terrified flight of two Spanish nobles from the wrath of their sovereign, incurred by their having saved his beloved queen from being killed by a fall from her horse? What a puzzle is here,--even when all the facts of the case are known;--that the king was looking from a balcony to see his queen mount her Andalusian horse: that the horse reared, plunged, and bolted, throwing the queen, whose foot was entangled in the stirrup: that she was surrounded with gentlemen who stood aloof, because by the law of Spain it was death to any but her little pages to touch the person, and especially the foot of the queen, and her pages were too young to rescue her; that these two gentlemen devoted themselves to save her; and having caught the horse, and extricated the royal foot, fled for their lives from the legal wrath of the king! Whence such a law? From the rule that the queen of Spain has no legs. Whence such a rule? From the meaning that the queen of Spain is a being too lofty to touch the earth. Here we come at last to the sentiment of loyal admiration and veneration which sanctifies the law and the rule, and interprets the incident. To a heartless stranger the whole appears a mere solemn absurdity, fit only to be set aside, as it was apparently by pardon from the king being obtained by the instant intercession of the queen. But in the eyes of every Spaniard the transaction was, in all its parts, as far from absurdity as the danger of the two nobles was real and pressing.--Again, what can a heartless observer understand by the practice, almost universal in the world, of celebrating the naming of children? The Christian parent employs a form by which the infant is admitted as a lamb of Christ's flock: the Chinese father calls his kindred together to witness the conferring first of the surname, and then of "the milk-name,"--some endearing diminutive, to cease with infancy: the Moslem consults an astrologer before giving a name to his child: and the savage selects a name-sake for his infant from among the beasts or birds, with whose characteristic quality he would fain endow his offspring. What a general rule is here, exalted by a universal sentiment into an act of religion! The ceremonial observed in each case is widely different in its aspect to one who sees in it merely a cumbrous way of transacting a matter of convenience, and to another who perceives in it the initiation of a new member into the family of mankind, and a looking forward to,--an attempt to make provision for, the future destiny of an unconscious and helpless being. Thus it will be through the whole range of the traveller's observation. If he be full of sympathy, every thing he sees will be instructive, and the most important matters will be the most clearly revealed. If he be unsympathizing, the most important things will be hidden from him, and symbols (in which every society abounds) will be only absurd or trivial forms. The stranger will be wise to conclude, when he sees anything seriously done which appears to him insignificant or ludicrous, that there is more in it than he perceives, from some deficiency of knowledge or feeling of his own. The other way in which heart is found to answer to heart is too obvious to require to be long dwelt upon. Men not only see according to the light they shed from their own breasts,--whether it be the sunshine of generosity or the hell-flames of bad passions,--but they attract to themselves spirits like their own. The very same persons appear very differently to a traveller who calls into exercise all their best qualities, and to one who has an affinity with their worst: but it is a yet more important consideration that actually different elements of society will range themselves round the observer according to the scepticism or faith of his temper, the purity or depravity of his tastes, and the elevation or insignificance of his objects. The Americans, somewhat nettled with the injustice of English travellers' reports of their country, have jokingly proposed to take lodgings in Wapping for some thorough-bred American vixen, of low tastes and coarse manners, and employ her to write an account of English morals and manners from what she might see in a year's abode in the choice locality selected for her. This would be no great exaggeration of the process of observation of foreigners which is perpetually going on. What should gamesters know of the philanthropists of the society they pass through? or the profligate, of the real state of domestic life? What can the moral sceptic report of religious or philosophical confessorship in any nation? or the sordid trader, of the higher kinds of intellectual cultivation? or the dandy, of the extent and administration of charity? It may be said that neither can the philanthropic traveller--the missionary--see otherwise than partially for want of "knowledge of the world;" that persons of sober habits can learn nothing that is going on in the moral depths of society; and the good are actually scoffed at for their absence from many scenes of human life, and their supposed ignorance of many things in human nature. But it is certain that the best part of every man's mind is far more a specimen of himself than the worst; and that the characteristics of a society, in like manner, are to be traced in the wisest and most genial of its pervading ideas and common transactions, instead of those disgraceful ones which are common to all. Swindlers, drunkards, people of low tastes and bad passions, are found in every country, and nowhere characterise a nation; while the reverence of man in America, the pursuit of speculative truth in Germany, philanthropic enterprise in France, love of freedom in Switzerland, popular education in China, domestic purity in Norway,--each of these great moral beauties is a star on the forehead of a nation. Goodness and simplicity are indissolubly united. The bad are the most sophisticated, all the world over; and the good the least. It may be taken as a rule that the best qualities of a people, as of an individual, are the most characteristic--(what is really _best_ being tested, not by prejudice, but principle). He has the best chance of ascertaining these best qualities who has them in himself; and he who has them not may as well pretend to give a picture of a metropolitan city by showing a map of its drainage, as report of a nation after an intercourse with its knaves and its profligates. To stand on the highest pinnacle is the best way of obtaining an accurate general view, in contemplating a society as well as a city. CHAPTER III. MECHANICAL REQUISITES. "He travels and expatiates, as the bee From flower to flower, so he from land to land: The manners, customs, policy, of all Pay contribution to the stores he gleans."--_The Task._ "Thy speaking of my tongue, and I thine, most truly falsely, must needs be granted to be much at one."--_King Henry V._ No philosophical or moral fitness will qualify a traveller to observe a people if he does not select a mode of travelling which will enable him to see and converse with a great number and variety of persons. An ambassador has no chance of learning much of the people he visits anywhere but in a new country like America. While he is _en route_, he is too stately in appearance to allow of any familiarity on the part of the people by the road-side. His carriages might almost as well roll through a city of the dead, for anything he will learn from intercourse with the living. The case is not much better when a family or a party of friends travel together on the Continent, committing the business of the expedition to servants, and shrinking from intercourse, on all social occasions, with English shyness or pride. The behaviour of the English on the Continent has become a matter of very serious consequence to the best informed and best mannered of their countrymen, as it has long been to the natives into whose society they may happen to fall. I have heard gentlemen say that they lose half their pleasure in going abroad, from the coldness and shyness with which the English are treated; a coldness and shyness which they think fully warranted by the conduct of their predecessors in travel. I have heard ladies say that they find great difficulty in becoming acquainted with their neighbours at the tables-d'hôte; and that, when they have succeeded, an apology for the reluctance to converse has been offered, in the form of explanation that English travellers generally "appear to dislike being spoken to" so much as to render it a matter of civility to leave them alone. The travelling arrangements of the English seem designed to cut them off from companionship with the people they go to see; and they preclude the possibility of studying morals and manners in a way which is perfectly ludicrous to persons of a more social temperament and habits. A good deal may be learned on board steam-boats, and in such vehicles as the American stages; and when accommodations of the kind become common, it will be difficult for the sulkiest Englishman to avoid admitting some ideas into his mind from the conversation and actions of the groups around him. When steam-boats ply familiarly on the Indus, and we have the rail-road to Calcutta which people are joking about, and another across the Pampas,--when we make trips to New Zealand, and think little of a run down the west coast of Africa,--places where we shall go for fashion's sake, and cannot go boxed up in a carriage of Long Acre origin,--our countrymen will, perforce, exchange conversation with the persons they meet, and may chance to get rid of the unsociability for which they are notorious, and by which they cast a veil over hearts and faces, and a shadow over their own path, wherever they go. Meantime, the wisest and happiest traveller is the pedestrian. If gentlemen and ladies want to see pictures, let them post to Florence, and be satisfied with learning what they can from the windows by the way. But if they want to see either scenery or people, let all who have strength and courage go on foot. I prefer this even to horseback. A horse is an anxiety and a trouble. Something is sure to ail it; and one is more anxious about its accommodation than about one's own. The pedestrian traveller is wholly free from care. There is no such freeman on earth as he is for the time. His amount of toil is usually within his own choice,--in any civilized region. He can go on and stop when he likes: if a fit of indolence overtakes him, he can linger for a day or a week in any spot that pleases him. He is not whirled past a beautiful view almost before he has seen it. He is not tantalized by the idea that from this or that point he could see something still finer, if he could but reach it. He can reach almost every point his wishes wander to. The pleasure is indescribable of saying to one's self, "I will go there,"--"I will rest yonder,"--and forthwith accomplishing it. He can sit on a rock in the midst of a rushing stream as often in a day as he likes. He can hunt a waterfall by its sound; a sound which the carriage-wheels prevent other travellers from hearing. He can follow out any tempting glade in any wood. There is no cushion of moss at the foot of an old tree that he may not sit down on if he pleases. He can read for an hour without fear of passing by something unnoticed while his eyes are fixed upon his book. His food is welcome, be its quality what it may, while he eats it under the alders in some recess of a brook. He is secure of his sleep, be his chamber ever so sordid; and when his waking eyes rest upon his knapsack, his heart leaps with pleasure as he remembers where he is, and what a day is before him. Even the weather seems to be of less consequence to the pedestrian than to other travellers. A pedestrian journey presupposes abundance of time, so that the traveller can rest in villages on rainy days, and in the shade of a wood during the hours when the sun is too powerful. And if he prefers not waiting for the rain, it is not the evil to him that it would be in cities and in the pursuit of business. The only evil of rain that I know of, to healthy persons in exercise, is that it spoils the clothes; and the clothes of a pedestrian traveller are not usually of a spoilable quality. Rain does not deform the face of things everywhere as it does in a city. It adds a new aspect of beauty occasionally to a wood, to mountains, to lake and ocean scenery. I remember a hale, cheerful pedestrian tourist whom we met frequently among the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and whom we remarked as being always the briskest of the company at the hotel table in the evening, and the merriest at breakfast. He had the best of it one day, when we passed him in Franconia Defile, after a heavy rain had set in. We were packed in a waggon which seemed likely to fill with water before we got to our destination; and miserable enough we looked, drenched and cold. The traveller was marching on over the rocky road, his book safe in its oil-skin cover, and his clothes-bag similarly protected; his face bright and glowing with exercise, and his summer jacket of linen feeling, as he told us, all the pleasanter for being wet through. As he passed each recess of the defile, he looked up perpetually to see the rain come smoking out of the fissures of the rocks; and when he reached the opening by which he was to descend to the plain, he stood still, to watch the bar of dewy yellow light which lay along the western sky where the sun had just set. He looked just as happy on other days. Sometimes we passed him lying along on a hill side; sometimes talking with a family at the door of a log-house; sometimes reading as he walked under the shade of the forest. I, for one, often longed to dismiss our waggon or barouche, and to follow his example. One peculiar advantage of pedestrian travelling is the pleasure of a gradual approach to celebrated or beautiful places. Every turn of the road gains in interest; every object that meets the eye seems to have some initiative meaning; and when the object itself at last appears, nothing can surpass the delight of flinging one's self on the ground to rest upon the first impression, and to interpose a delicious pause before the final attainment. It is not the same thing to desire your driver to stop when you come to the point of view. The first time that I felt this was on a pedestrian tour in Scotland, when I was at length to see mountains. The imagination of myself and my companion had fixed strongly on Dunkeld, as being a scene of great beauty, and our first resting-place among the mountains. The sensation had been growing all the morning. Men, houses, and trees had seemed to be growing diminutive,--an irresistible impression to the novice in mountain scenery: the road began to follow the windings of the Tay, a sign that the plain was contracting into a pass. Beside a cistern, on a green bank of this pass, we had dined; a tract of heath next lay before us, and we traversed it so freshly and merrily as to be quite unaware that we were getting towards the end of our seventeen miles, though still conscious that the spirit of the mountains was upon us. We were deeply engaged in talk, when a winding of the road brought us in full view of the lovely scene which is known to all who have approached Dunkeld by the Perth road. We could scarcely believe that this was _it_, so soon. We turned to our map and guide-book, and found that we were standing on the site of Birnam wood; that Dunsinane hill was in sight, and that it was indeed the old cathedral tower of Dunkeld that rose so grandly among the beeches behind the bridge. We took such a long and fond gaze as I never enjoyed from a carriage window. If it was thus with an object of no more importance or difficulty of attainment than Dunkeld, what must it be to catch the first view of the mysterious temples that "Stand between the mountains and the sea; Awful memorials, but of whom we know not!" or to survey from a height, at sunrise, the brook Kedron and the valley of Jehoshaphat! What is most to our present purpose, however, is the consideration of the facilities afforded by pedestrian travelling for obtaining a knowledge of the people. We all remember Goldsmith's travels with his flute, his sympathies, his cordiality of heart and manner, and his reliance on the hospitality of the country people. Such an one as he is not bound to take up with such specimens as he may meet with by the side of the high road; he can penetrate into the recesses of the country, and drop into the hamlet among the hills, and the homesteads down the lanes, and now and then spend a day with the shepherd in his fold on the downs; he can stop where there is a festival, and solve many a perplexity by carrying over the conversation of one day into the intercourse of the next, with a fresh set of people; he can obtain access to almost every class of persons, and learn their own views of their own affairs. His opportunities are inestimable. If it were a question which could learn most of Morals and Manners by travel,--the gentleman accomplished in philosophy and learning, proceeding in his carriage, with a courier,--or a simple pedestrian tourist, furnished only with the language, and with an open heart and frank manners,--I should have no doubt that the pedestrian would return more familiar with his subject than the other. If the wealthy scholar and philosopher could make himself a citizen of the world for the time, and go forth on foot, careless of luxury, patient of fatigue, and fearless of solitude, he would be not only of the highest order of tourists, but a benefactor to the highest kind of science; and he would become familiarized with what few are acquainted with,--the best pleasures, transient and permanent, of travel. Those who cannot pursue this method will achieve most by laying aside state, conversing with the people they fall in with, and diverging from the high road as much as possible. Nothing need be said on a matter so obvious as the necessity of understanding the language of the people visited. Some familiarity with it must be attained before anything else can be done. It seems to be unquestioned, however, that a good deal of the unsociability of the English abroad is owing not so much to contempt of their neighbours, as to the natural pride which makes them shrink from attempting what they cannot do well. I am confident that we say much less than we feel about the awkwardness and constraint of our first self-committals to a foreign language. It is impossible but that every one must feel the weight of the penalty of making himself ridiculous at every step, and of presenting a kind of false appearance of himself to every one with whom he converses. A German gentleman in America, who has exactly that right degree of self-respect which enabled him to set strenuously about learning English, of which he did not understand a word, and who mastered it so completely as to lecture in faultless English at the end of two years, astonished a party of friends one day, persuaded as they were that they perfectly knew him, and that the smooth and deliberate flow of his beautiful language was a consequence of the calmness of his temper, and the philosophical character of his mind. A German woman with children came begging to the house while the party were at their dessert. The professor caught her tones when the door of the dining-room was open; he rushed into the hall, presently returned for a dish or two, and emptied the gingerbread, and other material of the dessert, into her lap. The company went out to see, and found the professor transformed; he was talking with a rapidity and vehemence which they had never supposed him capable of; and one of the party told me how sorry she felt, and has felt ever since, to think of the state of involuntary disguise in which he is living among those who would know him best. Difference of language is undeniably a cause of great suffering and difficulty, magnificent and incalculable as are its uses. It is no exception to the general rule that every great good involves some evil. Happily, however, the difficulty may be presently so far surmounted as not to interfere with the object of observing Morals and Manners. Impossible as it may be to attain to an adequate expression of one's self in a foreign tongue, it is easy to most persons to learn to understand it perfectly when spoken by others. During this process, a common and almost unavoidable mistake is to suppose a too solemn and weighty meaning in what is expressed in an unfamiliar language. This arises partly from our having become first acquainted with the language in books; and partly from the meaning having been attained with effort, and seeming, by natural association, worth the pains. The first French dialogues which a child learns, seem more emphatic in their meanings than the same material would in English; and the student of German finds a grandeur in lines of Schiller, and in clauses of Herder's and Krummacher's Parables, which he looks for in vain when he is practised in the language. It is well to bear this in mind on a first entrance into a foreign society, or the traveller may chance to detect himself treasuring up nonsense, and making much of mere trivialities, because they reached him clothed in the mystery of a strange language. He will be like lame Jervas, when he first came up from the mine in which he was born, caressing the weeds he had gathered by the road side, and refusing till the last moment to throw away such wonderful and beautiful things. The raw traveller not only sees something mysterious, picturesque, or classical in every object that meets his eye after passing the frontier, from the children's toys to palaces and general festivals, but is apt to discern wisdom and solemnity in everything that is said to him, from the greeting of the landlord to the speculations of the politician. If not guarded against, this natural tendency will more or less vitiate the observer's first impressions, and introduce something of the ludicrous into his record of them. From the consideration of the requisites for observation in the traveller himself, we now proceed to indicate what he is to observe, in order to inform himself of foreign Morals and Manners. PART II. WHAT TO OBSERVE. "Nous nous en tiendrons aux moeurs, aux habitudes extérieures dont se forme, pour les differentes classes de la société, une sorte de physionomie morale, où se retracent les moeurs privées." DE JOUY. It is a perpetual wonder to an inexperienced person that the students of particular classes of facts can learn so much as they do from a single branch of inquiry. Tell an uninformed man of the daily results of the study of Fossil Remains, and he will ask how the student can possibly know what was done in the world ages before man was created. It will astonish a thoughtless man to hear the statements about the condition of the English nation which are warranted by the single study of the administration of the Poor Laws, since their origin. Some physiognomists fix their attention on a single feature of the human face, and can pretty accurately interpret the general character of the mind from it: and I believe every portrait painter trusts mainly to one feature for the fidelity of his likenesses, and bestows more study and care on that one than on any other. A good many features compose the physiognomy of a nation; and scarcely any traveller is qualified to study them all. The same man is rarely enlightened enough to make investigation at once into the religion of a people, into its general moral notions, its domestic and economical state, its political condition, and the facts of its progress;--all which are necessary to a full understanding of its morals and manners. Few have even attempted an inquiry of this extent. The worst of it is that few dream of undertaking the study of any one feature of society at all. We should by this time have been rich in the knowledge of nations if each intelligent traveller had endeavoured to report of any one department of moral inquiry, however narrow; but, instead of this, the observations offered to us are almost purely desultory. The traveller hears and notes what this and that and the other person says. If three or four agree in their statements on any point, he remains unaware of a doubt, and the matter is settled. If they differ, he is perplexed, does not know whom to believe, and decides, probably, in accordance with prepossessions of his own. The case is almost equally bad, either way. He will hear only one side of every question if he sees only one class of persons,--like the English in America, for instance, who go commonly with letters of introduction from merchants at home to merchants in the maritime cities, and hear nothing but federal politics, and see nothing but aristocratic manners. They come home with notions which they suppose to be indisputable about the great Bank question, the state of parties, and the relations of the General and State governments; and with words in their mouths of whose objectionable character they are unaware,--about the common people, mob government, the encroachment of the poor upon the rich, and so on. Such partial intercourse is fatal to the observations of a traveller; but it is less perplexing and painful at the time than the better process of going from one set of people to another, and hearing what all have to say. No traveller in the United States can learn much of the country without conversing equally with farmers and merchants, with artizans and statesmen, with villagers and planters; but, while discharging this duty, he will be so bewildered with the contrariety of statements and convictions, that he will often shut his note-book in a state of scepticism as to whether there be any truth at all shining steadily behind all this tempest of opinions. Thus it is with the stranger who traverses the streets of Warsaw, and is trusted with the groans of some of the outraged mourners who linger in its dwellings; and then goes to St. Petersburg, and is presented with evidences of the enlightenment of the Czar, of his humanity, his paternal affection for his subjects, and his general superiority to his age. At Warsaw the traveller called him a miscreant; at Petersburg he is required to pronounce him a philanthropist. Such must be the uncertainty of judgment when it is based upon the testimony of individuals. To arrive at the facts of the condition of a people through the discourse of individuals, is a hopeless enterprise. The plain truth is--it is beginning at the wrong end. The grand secret of wise inquiry into Morals and Manners is to begin with the study of THINGS, using the DISCOURSE OF PERSONS as a commentary upon them. Though the facts sought by travellers relate to Persons, they may most readily be learned from Things. The eloquence of Institutions and Records, in which the action of the nation is embodied and perpetuated, is more comprehensive and more faithful than that of any variety of individual voices. The voice of a whole people goes up in the silent workings of an institution; the condition of the masses is reflected from the surface of a record. The Institutions of a nation,--political, religious, or social,--put evidence into the observer's hands as to its capabilities and wants which the study of individuals could not yield in the course of a lifetime. The Records of any society, be they what they may, whether architectural remains, epitaphs, civic registers, national music, or any other of the thousand manifestations of the common mind which may be found among every people, afford more information on Morals in a day than converse with individuals in a year. Thus also must Manners be judged of, since there never was a society yet, not even a nunnery or a Moravian settlement, which did not include a variety of manners. General indications must be looked for, instead of generalizations being framed from the manners of individuals. In cities, do social meetings abound? and what are their purposes and character? Are they most religious, political, or festive? If religious, have they more the character of Passion Week at Rome, or of a camp-meeting in Ohio? If political, do the people meet on wide plains to worship the Sun of the Celestial Empire, as in China; or in town-halls, to remonstrate with their representatives, as in England; or in secret places, to spring mines under the thrones of their rulers, as in Spain? If festive, are they most like an Italian carnival, where everybody laughs; or an Egyptian holiday, when all eyes are solemnly fixed on the whirling Dervishes? Are women there? In what proportions, and under what law of liberty? What are the public amusements? There is an intelligible difference between the opera at Milan, and the theatre at Paris, and a bull-fight at Madrid, and a fair at Leipzig, and a review at St. Petersburg.--In country towns, how is the imitation of the metropolis carried on? Do the provincials emulate most in show, in science, or in the fine arts?--In the villages, what are the popular amusements? Do the people meet to drink or to read, to discuss, or play games, or dance? What are the public houses like? Do the people eat fruit and tell stories? or drink ale and talk politics or call for tea and saunter about? or coffee and play dominoes? or lemonade and laugh at Punch? Do they crowd within four walls, or gather under the elm, or spread themselves abroad over the cricket-field or the yellow sands?--There is as wide a difference among the humbler classes of various countries as among their superiors in rank. A Scotch burial is wholly unlike the ceremonies of the funeral pile among the Cingalese; and an interment in the Greek church little resembles either. A conclave of White Boys in Mayo, assembled in a mud hovel on a heath, to pledge one another to their dreadful oath, is widely different from a similar conclave of Swiss insurgents, met in a pine wood on a steep, on the same kind of errand: and both are as little like as may be to the heroes of the last revolution in Paris, or to the companies of Covenanters that were wont to meet, under a similar pressure of circumstances, in the defiles of the Scottish mountains.--In the manners of all classes, from the highest to the lowest, are forms of manners enforced in action, or dismissed in words? Is there barbarous freedom in the lower, while there is formality in the higher ranks, as in newly settled countries? or have all grown up together to that period of refined civilization when ease has superseded alike the freedom of the Australian peasantry, and the etiquette of the court of Ava?--What are the manners of professional men of the society, from the eminent lawyer or physician of the metropolis down to the village barber? The manners of the great body of the professional men must indicate much of the requisitions of the society they serve.--So, also, must every circumstance connected with the service of society: its character, whether slavish or free, abject or prosperous, comprehensive or narrow in its uses, must testify to the desires and habits, and therefore to the manners of a community, better than the conversation or deportment of any individual in the society can do. A traveller who bears all this in mind can hardly go wrong. Every thing that he looks upon will instruct him, from an aqueduct to a punch-bowl, from a penitentiary to an aviary, from the apparatus of a university to the furniture of an alehouse or a nursery. When it was found that the chiefs of the Red men could not be impressed with any notion of the civilization of the Whites by all that many white men could say, they were brought into the cities of the Whites. The exhibition of a ship was enough for some. The warriors of the prairies were too proud to utter their astonishment,--too noble to hint, even to one another, their fear; but the perspiration stood on their brows as they dumbly gazed, and no word of war passed their lips from that hour. Another, who could listen with calmness to the tales of boastful traders in the wilderness, was moved from his apathy by seeing a workman in a glasshouse put a handle upon a pitcher. He was transported out of his silence and reserve: he seized and grasped the hand of the workman, crying out that it was now plain that he had had intercourse with the Great Spirit. By the evidence of things these Indians had learned more of the manners of the Whites than had ever been taught them by speech.--Which of us would not learn more of the manners of the Pompeians by a morning's walk among the relics of their abodes and public halls than by many a nightly conference with certain of their ghosts? The usual scholastic division of Morals is into personal, domestic, and social or political morals. The three kinds are, however, so apt to run into one another,--so practically inseparable,--that the traveller will find the distinction less useful to him than some others which he can either originate or adopt. It appears to me that the Morals and Manners of a nation may be included in the following departments of inquiry--the Religion of the people; their prevalent Moral Notions; their Domestic State; their Idea of Liberty; and their Progress, actual or in prospect. CHAPTER I. RELIGION. "Dieu nous a dit, Peuples, je vous attends." DE BERANGER. Of religion, in its widest sense, (the sense in which the traveller must recognize it,) there are three kinds; not in all cases minutely distinguishable, but bearing different general impress; viz. the Licentious, the Ascetic, and the Moderate. These kinds are not divided from each other by the boundaries of sects. We cannot say that pagan religions come under one head, and Mahomedanism under another, and Christianity under a third. The difference lies not in creeds, but in spirit. Many pagans have been as moderate as any Christians; many Christians as licentious as any pagans; many Mahomedans as licentious, and many as ascetic, as any pagans or Christians. The truer distinction seems to be that the licentious religions of the world worship unspiritualized nature,--material objects and their movements, and the primitive passions of man: that the ascetic despises nature, and worships its artificial restraints: and that the moderate worships spiritualized nature,--God in his works, both in the material universe and in the disciplined human mind, with its regulated affections. The Licentious religion is always a ritual one. Its gods are natural phenomena and human passions personified; and, when once the power of doing good or harm is attributed to them, the idea of propitiation enters, and a ritual worship begins. Earthquakes, inundations, the chase, love, revenge,--all these agents of evil and good are to be propitiated, and sacrifices and prayers are to be offered to them; in these rites alone religious acts are supposed to be performed. This, however modified, is a low state of religious sentiment. It may show itself among the Hindoos dipping in the Ganges, or among Christians who accept absolution in its grossest sense. In either case its tendency is to render the worshipper satisfied with a low moral state, and to perpetuate his taste for selfish indulgence. The Ascetic religions are ritual also. The Pharisees of old need but be cited to show why; and there is a set of people in the Society Islands now who seem to be spiritually descended from the ascetic priests of Judaism. The inhabitants of the Society Islands are excluded from many innocent privileges and natural pleasures by the Tabu; and the Pharisees in just the same manner laid burdens upon men's shoulders too heavy to be borne, ordaining irksome ceremonies to be proofs of holiness, and extravagant self-denial to be required by devotion. Spiritual licence has always kept pace with this extravagance of self-denial. Spiritual vices,--pride, vanity, and hypocrisy,--are as fatal to high morals under this state of religious sentiment as sensual indulgence under the other: and it does not matter much to the moral welfare of the people sunk in it, whether they exist under a profession of Christianity, or of Mahomedanism, or of paganism. The morals of those people are low who engage themselves to serve God by a slothful life in monastic celibacy, no less than those of the Fakîrs, who let their nails grow through the backs of their hands, or those of the wretched mothers in the islands of the Pacific, who strangle their infants, and cast them at the feet of their grinning idol. The Moderate is the least of a ritual religion of the three, and drops such rites as it has in proportion to its advance towards purity. Religion in its purity is not a pursuit, but a temper; and its expression is not by sacrifices, by prayers in the corners of the streets, by fasts or public exhibitions. The highest manifestations of this order of religion are found in Christian countries; though in others there are individuals, and even orders of men, who understand that the orderly enjoyment of all blessings that Providence has bestowed, and the regulated workings of all human affections, are the truest homage to the Maker of all. As there are Christians whose reliance is upon their ritual worship, and who enter upon a monastic life, so there are Mahomedans and pagans whose high religious aim is self-perfection, sought through the free but disciplined exercise of their whole nature. The dependence of morals upon the character of the religion is clear. It is clear that among a people whose gods are supposed to be licentious, whose priests are licentious, and where worship is associated with the indulgence of the passions, political and domestic morals must be very low. What purity can be expected of a people whose women are demanded in turn for the obscene service of the Buddhist temple; and what humanity from the inhabitants of districts whose dwellings are necessarily closed against the multitudes flocking to the festivals of Juggernaut,--multitudes from amidst which thousands annually drop down dead, so that their skeletons strew the road to the abominable temple?--Where asceticism is the character of the religion, the natural and irrepressible exercise of human affections becomes licentiousness, so called; and, of consequence, it soon becomes licentiousness in fact, according to the general rule that a bad name changes that to which it is affixed into a bad quality.--Hannah and Philip grew up in a Moravian settlement; and, Moravians as they were, they loved. The days came when the destiny of each was decided by lot. It was scarcely possible that they should draw a lot to marry each other; yet both secretly hoped to the last. Philip drew a missionary lot, and Hannah another husband. They were allowed to shake hands once before parting. "Good-bye, Hannah!" "Good-bye, Philip!" was all that was said. If Hannah had gone off with Philip, it would have been called a profligate act; and, if they were sound Moravians, it would in fact have been so: whereas, in a community of really high morals, the profligacy would have been seen to lie in Hannah's marrying a man she did not love. To proceed with the dependence of the morals on the character of the religion,--it is clear that in proportion as any religion encourages licentiousness, either positively or negatively,--encourages, that is to say, the excess of the passions, might will have the victory over right; the weak will succumb to the strong; and thus the condition of the poorer classes depends on the character of the religion of their country. In proportion as the religion tends to licentiousness, will the poorer classes be liable to slavery. In proportion as the religion tends to asceticism, will be the amount (other things being equal) of the hardship and want which they must sustain. In proportion as the religion approximates to the moderate, (the use without the abuse of means of enjoyment,) will the poorer classes rise to a condition of freedom and comfort. The character of the religion serves, in like manner, as an index to that of the government. A licentious religion cannot be adopted by a people who are so moderate in their passions as to be able to govern themselves. One would not look for a display of meats offered to idols in the Capitol of the American Congress. An ascetic religion, too, inflicts personal and mutual wrongs which could never be endured among a people who agree to govern one another. There is no power which could induce such to submit to privations and sufferings which can be tolerable to none but devotees,--a small fraction of every society. Absolutism is commonly the character of the government of any country where either of these religions prevails;--a despotism more or less tempered by a variety of influences. It is the observer's business to bring the religion and the government into comparison, and to see how the latter is modified by the coexistence of the former. The friendly, no less than the domestic and political relations of society, are dependent upon the prevailing religion. Under the licentious, the manners will be made up of the conventional and the gross. A Burmese minister was sitting on the poop of a steam-vessel when a squall came on. "I suggested to his Excellency," says Mr. Crawford, "the convenience of going below, which he long resisted, under the apprehension of committing his dignity by placing himself in a situation where persons might tread over his head; for this singular antipathy is common both to the Burmese and Siamese. The prejudice is more especially directed against the fair sex,--a pretty conclusive proof of the estimation in which they are held. His Excellency seriously demanded to know whether any woman had ever trod upon the poop; and, being assured in the negative, he consented at length to enter the cabin." The house fixed for the residence of an American missionary was not allowed to be fitted up, as it stood on ground which was higher than the king's barge as it lay in the river; and such a spectacle would not become the king's dignity. The prime minister of this same king was one day, for absence from his post at a fire, "spread out in the hot sun." He was extended on his back in the public road for some hours in the most sultry part of the day, with a heavy weight upon his chest,--the public executioners being employed to administer the punishment. Nor is the king alone authorized to perpetrate such barbarisms. A creditor is permitted to seize the wife, children, and slaves of a debtor, and bind them at his door to broil in the sun of Ava. Here we see in perfection the union of the conventional and the gross in manners; and such manners cannot be conceived to coexist with any religion of a higher character than Buddhism. Under ascetic forms, what grossness there is will be partially concealed; but there will be no nearer an approach to simplicity than under the licentious. The religion being made still to consist much in observances, the society becomes formal in proportion as it believes itself growing pure. We must again take an extreme case for an example. The Shakers of America are as sophisticated a set of persons as can be found; with their minds, and even their public discourses, full of the one subject of their celibacy, and their intercourse with each other graduated according to strict rules of etiquette. So extreme an asceticism can never now spread in any nation to such an extent as to bear a relation to its general government: but it is observable that such societies of ascetics live under a despotism;--one of their own appointment, if the general will has not furnished them with one. Under the moderate aspect of religion is an approximation towards simplicity of social manners alone to be found. There is as yet only a remote anticipation of it in any country in the world; only a remote anticipation of that ease of social manners which must exist there alone where the enjoyments of life are freely used without abuse. It matters not that the licentious and the ascetic parties each boast of having attained this consummation,--the one under the name of ease, and the other of simplicity. There is too much pain attendant upon grossness to justify the boast of ease; and too much effort in asceticism to admit of the grace of simplicity. It is the observer's business to mark, wherever he goes, the degree in which the one is chastened and the other relaxed, giving place to the higher form of the moderate, which, if society learns from experience, as the individual does, must finally prevail. When many individuals of a society attain that self-forgetfulness which is promoted by a high and free religious sentiment, but which is incompatible with either licentious or ascetic tendencies, the tone of manners in that society will be much raised. When, free from the grossness of self-indulgence, and from the constraint of self-denial, every one spontaneously thinks more of his neighbour than of himself, the world will witness, at last, the perfection of manners. It is clear that the high morals of which such refined manners will be the expression, must greatly depend on the exaltation of the religious sentiment from which they emanate. The traveller may possibly object the difficulty of classing societies by their religious tendencies, and ask whether minds of every sort are not to be found in all numerous assemblages of persons. This is true: but yet there is a prevailing religious sentiment in all communities. Religious, like other sentiment, is modified by the strong general influences under which each society lives; and in it, as in other kinds, there will be general resemblance, with particular differences under it. It is well known that even sects, exclusive in their opinions and straitened by forms, differ in different countries almost as much as if there were no common bond. Not only is episcopacy not the same religion among born East Indians as in England, but the Quakers of the United States, though like the English in doctrine and in manners, are easily distinguishable from them in religious sentiment: and even the Jews, who might be expected to be the same all over the world, differ in Russia, Persia, and Great Britain as much as if a spirit of division had been sent among them. They not only appear here in furs, there in cotton or silk, and elsewhere in broadcloth; but the hearts they bear beneath the garments, the thoughts that stir under the cap, the turban, and the hat, are modified in their action as the skies under which they move are in aspect. They are strongly tinctured with the national sentiment of Russia, Persia, and England; and if the fond dream of some of them (in which, by the way, large numbers of their body have ceased to sympathize,) could come true, and they should ever be brought together within their ancient borders, they would find that their religion, so unique in its fixedness, though one in word, is many in spirit.--Much more easy is the assimilation between different forms of Christianity, and between Christianity and an elevated natural religion: and the search can never therefore be in vain for a pervading religious sentiment among the various religious institutions of any and every people. It is, of course, more difficult to discover this religious sentiment among a nation enlightened enough to be divided in theological matters, than among a rude people who regulate their devotions by the bidding of a single order of priests. The African traveller, passing up the Niger, sees at a glance what all the worshippers on the banks feel, and must feel, towards the deities to whom their temples are erected. A rude shed, with a doll,--an image of deformity,--perched on a stand, and supposed to be enjoying the fumes of the cooking going on before his face;--a place of worship like this, in its character of the habitation of a deity, and of a sensual deity, leaves no doubt as to what the religious sentiment of a country must be where there is no dissent from such a worship. In such a society there are absolutely none to feel that their deep palm groves are a nobler temple than human hands can rear. There are none who see that it is by a large divine benignity that all the living creatures of that region are made happy in their rank seclusion. There is no feeling of gratitude in the minds of those who see the myriads of gay butterflies that flit in the glare of noon, and the river-horse which bathes in the shady places of the mysterious great stream. There a god is seen only in his temple, and there is nothing known of any works of his. That he is great, is learned only through the word of his priests, who say that yams are too common a food for him, and that nothing less than hippopotamus' flesh must be cooked beneath his shrine. That he is good is an idea which has not yet entered any mind.--In other places, the religious sentiment is almost equally unquestionable; as when every man in Cairo is seen in his turn to put on the dress of pilgrimage, and direct his steps to Mount Arafat. Here the sentiment is of a higher order, but equally evident and uniform.--A further advance, with somewhat less uniformity of sentiment, is found among the followers of the Greek church in a Russian province. The peasants there make a great point of having time for their devotions; and those who have the wherewithal to offer some showy present at a shrine are complacent. They make the sign of the cross, and have therein done their whole duty: and if some speculative worshipper of the Virgin with Three Hands is not satisfied about the way in which his patroness came by her third hand, he keeps his doubts to himself when he tells his sins to his confessor.--A still further advance, with an increased diversity, may be met with among the simple Vaudois, the general characteristics of whose faith are alike, but who entertain it, some more in the spirit of fear, others more in the spirit of love. The prevailing sentiment among them is of the ascetic character, as the stranger may perceive, who sees the peasantry marching in serene gravity to their plain places of worship on the mountain pinnacle, or under the shelter yielded by a clump of black pines amidst a waste of snow: but here the clergy are more guides than dictators; and not a few may be found who doubt their opinions, and find matter for thoughtless delight, rather than religious awe, when they follow the echoes from steep to steep, and watch for the gleams of the summer lightning playing among the defiles.--The diversity grows more striking as civilization advances; but it has not yet become perplexing in the most enlightened nations in the world. In England, in France, in America, there is a distinct religious sentiment: in England, where there is every variety of dissent from the established faith; in America, where there is every variety of opinion, and no establishment at all; and in France, now in that state which most baffles observation,--a state of transition from an exaggerated superstition to a religious faith which is being groped for, but is not yet found. Even in this uncertain state, no one can confound the religious sentiment of New England and of France; and an observation of their places of worship will indicate their differences. In New England, the populous towns have their churches in the midst, spacious and conspicuous,--not exhibiting any of the signs of antique origin which are impressed on those of Europe, and to be accounted for only by the immediate religious tastes of the people. In new settlements, the church rises side by side with the house of entertainment, and is obviously considered one of the necessaries of social life. The first thing to be learned about a fresh inhabitant is, how he stands disposed towards the church, whatever may be its denomination. In France, such of the old churches as are still used for their ancient purpose, bespeak a ritual religion, and therefore a religion light and gay in its spirit; all religions being so which cast responsibility into outward observances, especially where the outward observances are not of a very burdensome character. If nuns in their cloister, and Jews in their synagogues, have been characterized by the lightness of their religious spirit, well may the Catholics of an enlightened country be so, discarding the grossest and most burdensome of their rites, and retaining the ritual principle. The searchers after a new faith in France must increase by millions before they can change the character of the religious sentiment of the country; and perhaps before that which is now gross can be elevated into what is genial, and before a mixture of levity and fear can be changed into the cheerful earnestness of a moderate or truly catholic religious conviction, the ancient churches of France may be standing in ruins,--objects for the research of the antiquary. The rule of examining things before persons must be observed in ascertaining the religious sentiment of any country. A stranger in England might interrogate everybody he saw, and be little wiser at the end of a year. He might meet a fanatic one day, an indifferent person the next, and a calmly convinced one the third: he might go from a Churchman to a Jew; from a Jew to a Quaker; from a Quaker to a Catholic; and every day be farther from understanding the prevailing religious sentiment of the country. A much shorter and surer method is, to examine the Places of Worship, the condition of the Clergy, the Popular Superstitions, the observance of Holy Days, and some other particulars of the kind. * * * * * First, for the Churches. There is that about all places of worship which may tell nearly as plain a tale as the carved idols, with messes of rice before them, in Hindoo temples; or as the human bones hung round the hut of an African god. The proportion and resemblance of modern places of worship to those which were built in dark times of superstition; the suitability or incongruity of all that is of late introduction into their furniture and worship with what had its origin in those dim ages;--such circumstances as these cannot but indicate whether the common religious sentiment is as nearly as possible the same as in centuries past, or whether it is approximating, slowly or rapidly, towards the ascetic or the moderate. There is evidence in the very forms of churches. The early Christian churches were in the basilica form,--bearing a resemblance to the Roman courts of justice. This is supposed to have arisen from the churches being, in fact, the courts of spiritual justice, where penance was awarded by the priest to the guilty, and absolution granted to the penitent. From imitation, the Christian churches of all Europe for centuries bore this form; and even some built since the Reformation preserve it. But they have something of their own which serves as a record of their own times. The history of the Crusades does not present a more vivid picture of feudal society than shines out from the nooks of our own cathedrals. The spirit of monachism is as distinguishable as if the cowled ghosts of the victims were actually seen flitting along the aisles. What say the chantries ranged along the sides? There perpetual prayers were to be kept up for the prosperity of a wealthy family and its retainers in life, and for their welfare after death. What says the chapter-house? There the powerful members of the church hierarchy were wont to assemble, to use and confirm their rule. What say the cloisters? Under their shelter did the monks go to and fro in life; and in the plot of ground enclosed by these sombre passages were they laid in death. What says the Ladye chapel? What say the niches with their stone basins? They tell of the intercessory character of the sentiment, and of the ritual character of the worship of the times when they were set up. The handful of worshippers here collected from among the tens of thousands of a cathedral town also testify to the fact that such establishments could not be originated now, and are no longer in harmony with the spirit of the multitude.--The contrast of the most modern sacred buildings tells as plain a tale:--the red-brick meeting-house of the Friends; the stone chapel of the less rigid dissenters, standing back from the noise of the busy street; the aristocratic chapel nestling amidst the shades of the nobleman's park; and the village church in the meadow, with its neighbouring parsonage. These all tell of a diversity of opinion; but also of something else. The more ancient buildings are scantily attended; the more modern are thronged;--and indeed, if they had not been wanted by numbers, they would not have been built. This speaks the decline of a ritual religion, and the preference of one which is more exclusively spiritual in its action. In Scotland the kirks look exactly suitable to the population which throngs towards them, with sober dress and gait, and countenances of solemnity. These edifices stand in severe simplicity, whether on the green shore of a lake, or in the narrow street of a town; and asceticism is marked on every stone of the walls, and every article of their decorations. No one who has travelled in Ireland can forget the aspect of its places of worship,--the lowly Catholic chapels, with their beggarly ornaments of lace and crucifixes, placed in the midst of villages, the whole of whose inhabitants crowd within those four walls; and a little way off, in a field, or on an eminence by the road side, the Protestant church, one end in ruins, and with ample harbourage for the owl, while the rest is encompassed with nettles and thorns, and the mossy grave-stones are half hidden by rank grass. In a country where the sun rises upon contrasts like these, it is clear in what direction the religious sentiment of the people is indulged. What the stranger may thus learn in our own country, we may learn in his, whatever it be. The large plain churches of Massachusetts, their democratic benches (in the absence of aristocratic pews) silently filled for long hours of a Sabbath, as still as a summer noon, by hundreds and thousands who restore the tones of their pilgrim ancestors in their hymn-singing, and seem to carry about their likeness in their faces, cannot fail to instruct the observer.--Then there is the mosque at Cairo, with its great tank or fountain of ablution in the midst; and its broad pavement spread out for men of every degree to kneel on together; its doors standing wide from sunrise to sunset, for the admission of all but women and strangers; its outside galleries, from which the summons to prayer is sounded;--these things testify to the ritual character of the worship, and to the low type of the morals of a faith which despises women and strangers, giving privileges to the strong from which the weak are excluded.--Then there is the Buddhist temple, rearing its tapering form in a recess of the hills, with its colossal stone figures guarding the entrance, and others sanctifying the interior,--all eloquently explaining that physical force is worshipped here: its images of saints show that the intercessory superstition exists; and the drum and gong, employed to awaken the attention of the gods, can leave little danger of misapprehension to the observer. There are lanterns continually burning, and consecrated water, sanctified to the cure of diseased eyes.--Such places of worship tell a very plain tale; while there is not perhaps a church on earth which does not convey one that is far from obscure. The traveller must diligently visit the temples of nations; he must mark their locality, whether placed among men's dwellings or apart from them; their number, whether multiplied by diversity of theological opinion; and their aspect, whether they are designed for the service of a ritual or a spiritual religion. Thus he may, at the same time, ascertain the character of the most prominent form of religion, and that of the dissent from it; which must always illustrate each other. * * * * * Next to the Churches comes the consideration of the Clergy. The clergy are usually the secondary potentates of a young country. In a young country, physical force, and that which comes to represent it, is the first great power; and knowledge is the next. The clergy are the first learned men of every nation; and when the streams of knowledge are only just issuing from the fountain, and the key is in the hands of the clergy, they enjoy, rightly and unavoidably, a high degree of consequence. Knowledge spreads abroad; and it is as impossible for man to dam it up as for the fool to stop the Danube by filling the narrow channel at its source with his great boots,--crying out the while, "How the people will wonder when the Danube does not come!" As knowledge becomes diffused, the consequence of the clergy declines. If that consequence is to be preserved, it must be by their attaining the same superiority in morals which they once held in intellect. Where the clergy are now a cherished class, it is, in fact, on the supposition of this moral superiority,--a claim for whose justification it would be unreasonable to look, and for the forfeiture of which the clergy should be less blamed than those who expect that, in virtue of a profession, any class of men should be better than others. Moral excellence has no regard to classes and professions; and religion, being not a pursuit but a temper, cannot, in fact, be professionally cultivated with personal advantage. It will be for the traveller to note whether this is more or less understood where he travels; whether the clergy are viewed with indifference as mere professional men; or whether they are reverenced for their supposed holiness; or for their real superiority in learning; or whether the case wears the lowest aspect of all--when the clergy are merely the jugglers and puppet-masters of the multitude. A patient consideration of this will lead to a pretty safe conclusion as to the progress the people have made in knowledge, and the spiritual freedom which it brings;--a freedom which is at once a virtue and a cause of virtue. The observer must note what the clergy themselves consider their function to be;--whether to guide individual minds; or to cultivate theological and other studies, in order to place their results at the disposal of the minds with which they have to deal; or to express in worship the feelings of those minds; or to influence the social institutions by which the minds of the people are modified; or to do any other of the many things which the priests of different countries, and ages, and faiths, have in turn included in their function. He will note whether they are most like the tyrannical Brahmins, who at one stroke--by declaring the institution of Caste to be of divine authority--obtained boundless control over a thousand generations, subjecting all intellects and all hands to a routine which could be easily superintended by the forty thousand of the favoured priestly race; or whether they are like the Christian clergy of the dark ages, a part of whose duty it was to learn the deepest secrets of the proudest and lowliest,--thus obtaining the means of bringing to pass what events they wished, both in public and private life;--or whether they are like such students as have been known in the theological world,--men who have not crossed the threshold of their libraries for eighteen years, and who are satisfied with their lives, if they have been able to elevate Biblical science, and to throw any new light on sacred history;--or whether they are like the American clergy of the present day, whose exertions are directed towards the art of preaching;--or whether they are like the ministers of the Established Church in England, who are politically represented, and large numbers of whom employ their influence for political purposes. Each of these kinds of clergy must be yielded by a particular state of society, and could not belong to any other. The Hindoos must be in a low degree of civilization, and sunk in a deadly superstition, or they would tolerate no Brahmins. The people of four centuries ago must have depended solely upon their priests for knowledge and direction, or they would not have submitted to their inquisitorial practices. Germany must have advanced far in her appreciation of philosophical and critical research in theology, or she would not have such devoted students as she can boast of. The Americans cannot have attained to any high practice of spiritual liberty, or they could not follow preaching so zealously as they do. The English cannot have fully understood, or taken to heart the principles of the Reformation, which have so long been their theme of eulogy, or they would not foster a political hierarchy within the bosom of their church. As the studies of the clergy lie in the past, as the days of their strongest influence are behind, and as the religious feelings of men have hitherto reposed on the antique, and are but just beginning to point towards the future, it is natural, it is unavoidable, that the clergy should retard rather than aid the progress of society. A disposition to assist in the improvement of institutions is what ought not to be looked for from any priestly class; and, if looked for, it will not be found. Such a mode of operation must appear to them suicidal. But much may be learned by comparing the degree of clerical resistance to progression with the proportion of favour in which the clergy are held by the people. Where that resistance is greatest, and a clerical life is one of peculiar worldly ease, the state of morals and manners must be low. Where that resistance is least, where any social improvement whatever is found to originate with the clergy, and where they bear a just share of toil, the condition of morals and manners cannot be very much depressed. Where there is an undue partition of labour and its rewards among the clergy themselves,--where some do the work and others reap the recompence,--the fair inference is that morals and manners are in a state of transition. Such a position of affairs cannot be a permanent one; and the observer may be assured that the morals and manners of the people are about to be better than they have been.--The characteristics of the clergy will indicate, or at least direct attention to, the characteristics of dissent: and any extensive form of dissent is no other than the most recent exposition of the latest condition of morals among a large, active, and influential portion of the people. A foreign traveller in Germany, in Luther's time, could learn but little of the moral state of that empire, if he shut his eyes to the philosophy and the deeds of the reformers. If he saw nothing in the train of nuns winding down into the valleys from their now unconsecrated convent on the steep; if the tidings of the marriage of Catherine de Boria came to him like any other wedding news; if he did not mark the subdued triumph in family faces when the Book--Luther's Bible--was brought out for the daily lecture; if the decrees of Worms seemed to him like the common orders of the church, and the levelling of altars and unroofing of crypts was in his eyes but masons' work, he was not qualified to observe the people of Germany, and had no more title to report of them than if he had never left home. Thus it is now, in less extreme cases. The traveller in Spain knows little of the Spaniards unless he is aware of the theological studies, and the worship without forms, which are carried on in private by those who are keeping alive the fires of liberty in that priest and tyrant-ridden country. The foreigner in England will carry away but a partial knowledge of the religious sentiment of the people if he enters only the cathedrals of cities and the steepled churches in the villages, passing by the square meeting-houses in the manufacturing towns, and hearing nothing of the conferences, the assemblies, and the missionary enterprises of the dissenters. The same may be said of observation in every country enlightened enough to have shaken off its subservience to an unquestioned and irresponsible priesthood: that is, of every country advanced enough to maintain dissent. The expressions of established forms of prayer convey more information as to the state of the clergy than of the people; since these expressions are furnished by the clergy, and continue to be prompted by them, while the people have no means of dismissing or changing the words of their framed prayers for long after the words may have ceased to represent the feeling. The traveller will receive such objectionable expressions as he may hear, not as indications of the then present sentiments of the crowd of worshippers, but rather as evidencing the disinclination of the clergy to change. It would be hard, for instance, to impute to Moslem worshippers in general the formation of such desires as are uttered by the school-boys of Cairo at the close of their daily attendance. "O God! destroy the infidels and polytheists, thine enemies, the enemies of the religion! O God! make their children orphans, and defile their abodes, and cause their feet to slip, and give them and their families, and their households, and their women, and their children, and their relations by marriage, and their brothers, and their friends, and their possessions, and their race, and their wealth, and their lands, as booty to the Moslems! O Lord of all creatures!"--It would be unjust to impute a horror of "sudden death" to all who use the words of prayer against it which are found in the Litany of the Church of England. Sudden death deserved to be classed among the most deadly evils when the Litany was framed,--in the days of the viaticum; but now it would be unjust to a multitude of worshippers who use the Litany to suppose that they are afraid to commit themselves to the hands of their Father without a passport from a priest; and that they are not willing to die in the way which pleases God,--some rather preferring, probably, a mode which will save those who are nearest and dearest to them the anguish of suspense, or of witnessing hopeless decline. In all antique forms of devotion there must be expressions which are inconsistent with the philosophy and the tastes of the time; and these are to be regarded therefore as no indications of such philosophy and taste, but as an evidence, more or less distinct, of the condition of the clergy in enlightenment and temper. * * * * * The splendid topic of human Superstitions can be only just touched upon here. In this boundless field, strewn with all the blossoms of all philosophy, the human observer may wander for ever. He can never have done culling the evidence that it presents, or enjoying the promise which it yields. All that we can now do is just to suggest that as the superstitions of all nations are the embodiment of their idealized convictions, the state of religious sentiment may be learned from them almost without danger of mistake. No society is without its superstitions, any more than it is without its convictions and its imaginations. Even under the moderate form of religion, there is room for superstition; and the ascetic, which glories in having put away the superstitions of the licentious forms, has superstitions of its own.--The followers of an ascetic religion have more or less belief in judgments,--in retributive evils, arbitrarily inflicted. Among them may be gathered a harvest of tales of divine interference,--from the bee stinging the tip of the swearer's tongue to the sudden death of false witnesses. Among them do superstitions about times and seasons flourish, even to the forgetfulness that the Sabbath is made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Some ascetics have faith in the lot,--like the Moravians in ordering marriage, or Wesley in opening his Bible to light upon texts. Others believe in warnings of evil; and most dread the commission of ritual fully as much as of moral sins. To play even a hymn tune on the piano on Sundays is an offence in the Highlands of Scotland; and to miss prayers is a matter of penance in a convent. The superstitions of the ascetic are scarcely fewer or more moderate than those of the licentious form of religion; the chief difference between the two lies in the spirit from which they emanate. The superstitions of the ascetic arise from the spirit of fear; those of the heathen arise perhaps equally from the spirit of love and the spirit of fear. It seems as if the portents which present themselves to ascetic minds must necessarily be of evil, since the only good which their imaginations admit is supposed to be secured by grace, and by acts of service or self-denial. To the Fakîr, to the Shaker, to the nun, no good remains over and above what has been long claimed, while punishment may follow any breach of observance. On the other hand, before one who makes himself gods of the movements of inanimate nature and human passions, the two worlds of evil and good lie open, and he is perpetually on the watch for messengers from both. The poor pagan looks for tokens of his gods being pleased or angry; of their intentions of giving him a good or a bad harvest; or of their sending him a rich present or afflicting him with a bereavement. Whatever he wants to know, he seeks for in portents;--whether he shall live again,--whether his departed friends think of him,--whether his child shall be fortunate or wretched,--whether his enemy or he shall prevail. It is open to the traveller's observation whether these superstitions are of a generous or selfish kind,--whether they elevate the mind with hope, or depress it with fear,--whether they nourish the faith of the spirit, or extort merely the service of the lip and hand. The Swiss herdsmen believe that the three deliverers (the founders of the Helvetic Confederacy) sleep calmly in a cave near the Lake of Lucerne; and that, whenever their country is in her utmost need, they will come forth in their antique garb, and assuredly save her. This is a superstition full of veneration and hope.--When the Arabs see a falling star, they believe it to be a dart thrown by God at a wanderer of the race of the genii, and they exclaim, "May God transfix the enemy of the faith!" Here we find in brief the spirit of their religion.--In Brazil, a bird which sings plaintively at night is listened to with intent emotion, from its being supposed to be sent with tidings from the dead to the living. The choice of a bird with a mournful instead of a lively note speaks volumes.--The three angels in white that come to give presents to good children in Germany at Christmas, come in a good spirit.--There is a superstition in China which has a world of tenderness in it. A father collects a hundred copper coins from a hundred families, and makes the metal into a lock which he hangs, as a charm, round his child's neck, believing that he locks his child to life by this connection with a hundred persons in full vigour.--But, as is natural, death is the region of the Unseen to which the larger number of portents relates. The belief of the return of the dead has been held almost universally among the nations; and their unseen life is the grand theme of speculation wherever there are men to speculate. The Norwegians lay the warrior's horse, and armour, and weapons, beside him. The Hindoos burn the widow. The Malabar Indians release caged birds on the newly-made grave, to sanction the flight of the soul. The Buccaneers (according to Penrose) concealed any large booty that fell into their hands, till they should have leisure to remove it,--murdering and burying near it any helpless wretch whom they might be able to capture, in order that his spirit might watch over the treasure, and drive from the spot all but the parties who had signed their names in a round-robin, in claim of proprietorship. The professors of many faiths resemble each other in practices of propitiation or atonement laboriously executed on behalf of the departed. Some classes of mourners act towards their dead friends in a spirit of awe; some in fear; but very many in love. The trust in the immortality of the affections is the most general feature in superstitions of this class; and it is a fact eloquent to the mind of the observer.--An only child of two poor savages died. The parents appeared inconsolable; and the father soon sank under his grief. From the moment of his death, the mother was cheerful. On being asked what had cheered her, she said she had mourned for her child's loneliness in the world of spirits: now he had his father with him, and she was happy for them both. What a divine spirit of self-sacrifice is here! but there is scarcely a superstition sincerely entertained which does not tell as plain a tale. Those which express fear indicate moral abasement, greater or less. Those which express trust and love indicate greater or less moral elevation and purity. * * * * * The practice of Suicide is worth the contemplation of a traveller, as affording some clear indications as to religious sentiment. Suicide in the largest sense is here intended,--the voluntary surrender of life from any cause. There has been a stage in the moral advancement of every nation when suicide, in one form or another, has been considered a duty; and it is impossible to foresee the time when it will cease to be so considered. It was a necessary result from the idea of honour once prevalent in the most civilized societies, when men and women destroyed themselves to avoid disgrace. The defeated warrior, the baffled statesman, the injured woman, destroyed themselves when the hope of honour was gone. In the same age, as in every succeeding one, there have been suicides who have devoted themselves for others, presenting a series of tales which may almost redeem the disgraces which darken the annals of the race.--The most illustrious of the Christian Fathers, immersed in the superstitions about the transcendent excellence of the virtue of chastity which have extinguished so many other virtues, and injured the morals of society to this day, by sacrificing other principles to fanaticism on this, permitted women to kill themselves to escape from violence which left the mind in its purity, and the will in its rectitude.--Martyrdom for the truth existed also before the venerating eyes of men,--the noblest kind of suicide: it attracted glory to itself from the faithful heart of the race; and, from its thus attracting glory, it became a means of gaining glory, and sank from being martyrdom to be a mere fanatical self-seeking. While the spirit of persecution was roaming abroad, seeking whom it might devour, there were St. Theresas roaming abroad, seeking to be devoured, from a spirit of cupidity after the crown of martyrdom.--Soldiers, in all times and circumstances, pledge themselves to the possible duty of suicide by the very act of becoming soldiers. They engage to make the first charge, and to mount a breach if called upon. And there have been found soldiers for every perilous service that has been required, throughout all wars. There have been volunteers to mount the breach, solitary men or small bands to hold narrow bridges and passes, from the first incursion of tribe upon tribe in barbarous conflict, up to the suicide of Van Speyk, whose monument is still fresh from the chisel in the Nieuw Kerk of Amsterdam. Van Speyk commanded a gun-boat which was stranded in a heavy gale, and boarded by the Belgians,--the foe. Van Speyk had sworn never to surrender his boat, and his suicide was a point of military honour. He seems to have considered the matter thus; for he prayed for pardon of his crime of self-destruction after laying his lighted cigar on the open barrel of powder which blew up the boat. The remaining suicides (except, of course, the insane,) are justified by none. Persons who shrink from suffering so far as to withdraw from their duties, and to forsake those to whom their exertions are due, are objects of contemptuous compassion in the present day, when, moral having succeeded to physical force in men's esteem, it is seen to be nobler to endure evils than to hide one's spirit from them. Every society has its suicides, and much may be learned from their character and number, both as to the notions on morals which prevail, and the religious sentiment which animates to or controls the act. It is with the last that we now have to do.--The act of laying down life is one thing among a people who have dim and mournful anticipations of a future life, like the ancient Greeks; and quite another among those who, like the first Christians, have a clear vision of bliss and triumph in the world on which they rush. Suicide is one thing to a man who is certain of entering immediately upon purgatory; and to another whose first step is to be upon the necks of his enemies; and to a third who believes that he is to lie conscious in his grave for some thousands of years; and to a fourth who has no idea that he shall survive or revive at all. When Curtius leaped into the gulf, he probably leaped into utter darkness, other than physical; but when Guyon of Marseilles sunned himself for the last time in the balcony of the house where he was shut up with the plague-spotted body which he was to die in dissecting, he had faith that he should step out of a waxing and waning sunlight into a region which "had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, the glory of God being the light of it." The sick Moslem who, falling behind his troop, and fearing to lie unburied, scoops his grave and lies down in it, wrapped in his grave-clothes, and covers himself up, except the face, leaving it to the winds to heap sand upon it, trembles the while at the thought of the two examining angels, who are this night to prove and perhaps torture him. The English lady who took laudanum on learning that she had a fatal disease, from fear of becoming loathsome to a husband for whom she had lived, had before her the prominent idea of reunion with him; so that life in one world presented as much of hope as in the other of despair.--Nations share in differences like these, according to the prevalent religious sentiment; and from this species of act may the sentiment be more or less correctly inferred. Suicide is very common among a race of Africans who prefer it to slavery. They believe in a life of tropical ease and freedom after death, and rush into it so eagerly on being reduced to slavery, that the planters of Cuba refuse them in the market, knowing that after a few hours, or days, in spite of all precautions, nothing but their dead bodies will remain in the hands of their masters. The French have, of late years, abounded in suicides, while there are few or none in Ireland. The most vain and the most sympathetic part of the French multitude were found to be the classes which yielded the victims. If a young lady and her lover shot one another with pistols tied with pink ribbons, two or three suicides amidst blue and green ribbons were sure to follow the announcement of the first in the newspaper, till a sensible physician suggested that suicides should not be noticed in newspapers, or should be treated with ridicule: the advice was acted upon, and proved by the result to be sound. This profusion of self-murders could not have taken place amidst a serious belief of an immediate entrance upon purgatory, such as is held by the majority of the Irish. Only in a state of vague speculation as to another life could the future have operated as so slight a check upon the rash impulses of the present. The Irish, an impetuous race, like the French, and with a good share of vanity, of sympathy, and of sentiment, are probably deterred from throwing away life by those religious convictions and sentiments which the French once held in an equal degree, but from which they are now passing over into another state. A single act of suicide is often indicative, negatively or positively, of a state of prevalent sentiment. A single instance of the Suttee testifies to the power of Brahmins, and the condition of Hindoo worshippers, in a way which cannot be mistaken. An American child of six years old accidentally witnessed in India such a spectacle. On returning home, she told her mother she had seen hell, and was whipped for saying so,--not knowing why, for she spoke in all earnestness, and, as it seems to us, with eloquent truth.--The somewhat recent self-destruction of an estimable English officer, on the eve of a court-martial, might fully instruct a stranger on the subject of military honour in this country. This officer fell in the collision of universal and professional principles. His justice and humanity had led him to offer a kindly bearing towards an irresolute mob of rioters, in the absence of authority to act otherwise than as he did, and of all co-operation from the civil power; his military honour was placed in jeopardy, and the innocent man preferred self-destruction to meeting the risk; thus testifying that numbers here sustain an idea of honour which is at variance with that which they expect to prevail elsewhere and hereafter.--Every act of self-devotion for others, extending to death, testifies to the existence of philanthropy, and to its being regarded as an honour and a good. Every voluntary martyrdom tells a national tale as plain as that written in blood and spirit by Arnold Von Winkelried, in 1386. When the Swiss met their oppressors at the battle of Sempach, it appeared impossible for the Swiss to charge with effect, so thick was the hedge of Austrian lances. Arnold Von Winkelried cried, "I will make a lane for you! Dear companions, remember my family!" He clasped an armful of the enemy's lances, and made a sheaf of them in his body. His comrades entered the breach, and won the battle. They remembered his family, and their descendants commemorate the sacrifice to this day; thus bearing testimony to the act being a trait of the national spirit. By observations such as these, may the religious sentiment of a people be ascertained. While making them, or struggling with the difficulties of opposing evidence, the observer has to bear in mind,--first, that the religious sentiment does everywhere exist, however low its tone, and however uncouth its expression; secondly, that personal morals must greatly depend on the low or high character of the religious sentiment; and, thirdly, that the philosophy and morals of government accord with both,--despotism of some sort being the natural rule where licentious and ascetic religions prevail; and democratic government being possible only under a moderate form of religion, where the use without the abuse of all blessings is the spirit of the religion of the majority. CHAPTER II. GENERAL MORAL NOTIONS. "Une différente coutume donnera d'autres principes naturels. Cela se voit par expérience; et s'il y en a d'ineffaçables à la coutume, il y en a aussi de la coutume ineffaçables à la nature."--PASCAL. Next to the religion of a people, it is necessary to learn what are their Ideas of Morals. In speaking of the popular notion of a Moral Sense, it was mentioned that, so far from there being a general agreement on the practice of morals, some things which are considered eminently right in one age or country are considered eminently wrong in another; while the people of each age or country, having grown up under common influences, think and feel sufficiently alike to live together in a general agreement as to right and wrong. It is the business of the traveller to ascertain what this general agreement is in the society he visits. In one society, spiritual attainments will be the most highly honoured, as in most religious communities. In another, the qualities attendant upon intellectual eminence will be worshipped,--as now in countries which are the most advanced in preparation for political freedom,--France, Germany, and the United States. In others, the moral qualities allied to physical or extrinsic power are chiefly venerated,--as in all uncivilized countries, and all which lie under feudal institutions. The lower moral qualities which belong to the last class have been characteristics of nations. The valour of the Spartans, the love of glory of the Romans and the French, the pride of the Spaniards,--these infantile moral qualities have belonged to a people as distinctly as to an individual.--Those which are in alliance with intellectual eminence are not so strikingly characteristic of entire nations; though we praise the Athenians for their love of letters and honour of philosophy; the Italians for their liberality towards art, and their worship of it while a meaner glory was the fashion of the world; the Germans for their speculative enterprise, and patience of research; and the Americans for their reverence for intellect above military fame and the splendour of wealth.--No high spiritual qualities have ever yet characterized a nation, or even--in spite of much profession--any considerable community. Hospitality and beneficence have distinguished some religious societies: the non-resistance of Quakers, the industry of Moravians, and of several kinds of people united on the principle of community of property, may be cited: but this seems to be all. The enforced temperance, piety, and chastity of monastic societies go for nothing in this view; because, being enforced, they indicate nothing of the sentiment subsequent to the taking of the vow. The people of the United States have come the nearest to being characterized by lofty spiritual qualities. The profession with which they set out was high,--a circumstance greatly to their honour, though (as might have been expected) they have not kept up to it. They are still actuated by ambition of territory, and have not faith enough in moral force to rely upon it, as they profess to do. The Swiss, in their unshaken and singularly devoted love of freedom, seem to be spiritually distinguished above other nations: but they have no other strong characteristic of this highest class. The truth is that, whatever may be the moral state of nations when the human world emerges hereafter from its infancy, high spiritual qualities are now matters of individual concern, as those of the intellectual class were once; and their general prevalence is a matter of prospective vision alone. Time was when the swampy earth resounded with the tramp and splash of monstrous creatures, whom there was no reason present to classify, and no language to name. Then, after a certain number of ages, the earth grew drier; palm-groves and tropical thickets flourished where Paris now stands; and the waters were collected into lakes in the regions where the armies of Napoleon were of late encamped. Then came the time when savage, animal man appeared, using his physical force like the lower animals, and taught by the experience of its deficiency that he was in possession of another kind of force. Still, for ages, the use he made of reason was to overcome the physical force of others, and to render available his own portion. On this principle, and for this object, variously modified, and more or less refined, have societies been formed to this day; though, as morals are the fruit of which intellect is the blossom, spiritualism--faith in moral power--has existed in individuals ever since the first free exercise of reason. While all nations were ravaging one another as they had opportunity, there were always parents who did not abuse their physical power over their children. In the midst of a general worship of power, birth, and wealth, the affections have wrought out in individual minds a preference of obscurity and poverty for the sake of spiritual objects. Amidst the supremacy of the worship of honour and social ease, there have always been confessors who could endure disgrace for the truth, and martyrs who could die for it.--Such individual cases have never been wanting: and, in necessary connexion with this fact, there has always been a sympathy in this pure moral taste,--an appreciation which could not but help its diffusion. Thence arose the formation of communities for the fostering of holiness,--projects which, however mistaken in their methods and injurious in their consequences, have always commanded, and do still command, sympathy, from the venerableness of their origin. Not all the stories of the abuses of monastic institutions can destroy the respect of every ingenuous mind for the spiritual preferences out of which they arose. The Crusades are still holy, notwithstanding all their defilements of vain-glory, superstition, and barbarism of various kinds. The retreat of the Pilgrim Fathers to the forests of the New World silences the ridicule of the thoughtless about the extravagances of Puritanism in England. Thus far has the race advanced; and, having thus advanced, there is reason to anticipate that the age may come when the individual worship of spiritual supremacy may expand into national; when a people may agree to govern one another with the smallest possible application of physical force; when goodness shall come to be naturally more honoured than birth, wealth, or even intellect; when ambition of territory shall be given up; when all thought of war shall be over; when the pursuit of the necessaries and luxuries of external life shall be regarded as means to an end; and when the common aim of exertion shall be self and mutual perfection. It does not seem to be rash to anticipate such a state of human affairs as this, when an aspiration like the following has been received with sympathy by thousands of republicans united under a constitution of ideas. "Talent and worth are the only eternal grounds of distinction. To these the Almighty has affixed his everlasting patent of nobility; and these it is which make the bright, 'the immortal names,' to which our children may aspire, as well as others. It will be our own fault if, in our land, society as well as government is not organized on a new foundation."--"Knowledge and goodness,--these make degrees in heaven, and they must be the graduating scale of a true democracy."[F] Meantime, it is the traveller's business to learn what is the species of Moral Sentiment which lies deepest in the hearts of the majority of the people. * * * * * He will find no better place of study than the Cemetery,--no more instructive teaching than Monumental Inscriptions. The brief language of the dead will teach him more than the longest discourses of the living. He will learn what are the prevalent views of death; and when he knows what is the common view of death, he knows also what is the aspect of life to no small number;--that is, he will have penetrated into the interior of their morals.--If it should ever be fully determined that the pyramids of Egypt were designed solely as places of sepulture, they will cease to be the mute witness they have been for ages. They will tell at least that death was not regarded as the great leveller,--that kings and peasants were not to sleep side by side in death, any more than in life. How they contrast with the Moravian burial-grounds, where all are laid in rows as they happen to be brought to the grave, and where memorial is forbidden!--The dead of Constantinople are cast out from among the living in waste, stillness, and solitude. The cemeteries lie beyond the walls, where no hum from the city is heard, and where the dark cypresses overhanging the white marble tombs give an air of mourning and desolation to the scene. In contrast with these are the church-yards of English cities, whose dead thus lie in full view of the living; the school-boy trundles his hoop among them, and the news of the day is discussed above their place of rest. This fact of where the dead are laid is an important one. If out of sight, death and religion may or may not be connected in the general sentiment; if within or near the places of worship, they certainly are so connected. In the cemeteries of Persia, the ashes of the dead are ranged in niches of the walls: in Egypt we have the most striking example of affection to the body, shown in the extraordinary care to preserve it; while some half-civilized people seem to be satisfied with putting their dead out of sight, by summarily sinking them in water, or hiding them in the sand; and the Caffres throw their dead to the hyenas,--impelled to this, however, not so much by disregard of the dead, as by a superstitious fear of death taking place in their habitations, which causes them to remove the dying, and expose them in this state to beasts of prey. The burial of the dead by the road-side by some of the ancients, seems to have brought death into the closest relation with life; and when the place chosen is taken in connexion with the inscriptions on the tombs,--words addressed to the wayfarer as from him who lies within,--from the pilgrim now at rest to the pilgrim still on his way, they give plain indications of the views of death and life entertained by those who placed them. Much may be learned from the monumental inscriptions of all nations. The first epitaph is supposed to be traced back to the year of the world 2700, when the scholars of Linus, the Theban poet, bewailed their master in verses which were inscribed upon his tomb. From that day to this, wherever there have been letters, there have been epitaphs; and, where letters have been wanting, there have been symbols. Mysterious symbolic arrangements are traced in the monumental mounds in the interior of the American continent, where a race of whom we know nothing else flourished before the Red man opened his eyes upon the light. One common rule, drawn from a universal sentiment, has presided at the framing of all epitaphs for some thousands of years. "De mortuis nil nisi bonum" is the universal agreement of mourners.[G] It follows that epitaphs must everywhere indicate what is there considered good. The observer must give his attention to this. Among a people "whose merchants are princes," the praise of the departed will be in a different strain from that which will be found among a warlike nation, or a community of agriculturists. Here one may find monumental homage to public spirit, in the form of active citizenship; there to domestic virtue as the highest honour. The glory of eminent station, of ancient family, of warlike deeds, and of courtly privileges may be conspicuously exhibited in one district; while in another the dead are honoured in proportion to their contempt of human greatness, even when won by achievements; to their having lived with a sole regard "to things unseen and eternal." An inscription which breathes the pride of a noble family in telling that "all the sons were brave, and all the daughters chaste," presents a summary of the morals of the age and class to which it belongs. It tells that the supreme honour of men was to be brave, and of women to be chaste; excluding the supposition of each sharing the virtue of the other: whereas, when courage and purity shall be understood in their full signification, it will have become essential to the honour of a noble family that all the sons should be also pure, and all the daughters brave. Then bravery will signify moral rather than physical courage, and purity of mind will be considered no attribute of sex. Even the nature of the public services commemorated, where public service is considered the highest praise, may indicate much. It is a fact of no small significance whether a man is honoured after death for having made a road, or for having founded a monastery, or endowed a school; whether he introduced a new commodity, or erected a church; whether he marched adventurously in the pursuit of conquest, or fought bravely among his native mountains to guard the homes of his countrymen from aggression. The German, the French, the Swiss monuments of the present century all tell the common tale that men have lived and died: but with what various objects did they live! and in what a variety of hope and heroism did they die! All were proud of their respective differences while they lived; and, now that their contests are at an end, they afford materials of speculation to the stranger who ponders upon their tombs. A variety, perhaps a contrariety of praise, may be found in the epitaphs of a country, a city, or a single cemetery. Where this diversity is found, it testifies to the diversity of views held, and therefore to the freedom of the prevailing religious sentiment. Everywhere, however, there is an affection and esteem for certain virtues. Disinterestedness, fidelity, and love are themes of praise everywhere. Some may have no sympathy for the deeds of the warrior, and others for the discoveries of the philosopher and the adventurer; but the honoured parent, the devoted child, the philanthropic citizen, are sure of their tribute from all hearts. Even if there were a variety of praise proportioned to the diversity of hearts and minds that utter it, the inscriptions of a cemetery cannot but breathe a spirit which must animate, more or less, the morals of the society. For instance, the cemetery of Père la Chaise utters, from end to end, one wail. It is all mourning, and no hope. Every expression of grief, from tender regret to blank despair, is to be found there; but not a hint of consolation, except from memory. All is over, and the future is vacant. A remarkable contrast to this is seen in the cemetery of Mount Auburn, Massachusetts. The religious spirit of New England is that which has hope for one of its largest elements, and which was believed by the Puritan fathers to forbid the expression of sorrow. One of those fathers made an entry in his journal, in the early days of the colony, that it had pleased God to take from him by an accident his beloved son Henry, whom he committed to the Lord's mercy;--and this was all. In a similar spirit are the epitaphs at Mount Auburn framed. There is a religious silence about the sorrows of the living, and every expression of joy, thanksgiving, and hope for the dead. One who had never heard of death, might take this for the seed-field of life; for the oratory of the happy; for the heaven of the hopeful. Parents invite their children from the grave to follow them. Children remind their parents that the term of separation will be short; and all repose their hopes together on an authority which is to them as stable and comprehensive as the blue sky which is over all.--What a contrast is here! and how eloquent as to the moral views of the respective nations! There is not a domestic attachment or social relation which is not necessarily modified, elevated, or depressed by the conviction of its being transient or immortal,--an end or means to a higher end. Though human hearts are so far alike as that there must be a hope of reunion, more or less defined and assured, in all who love, and a practical falling below the elevation of this hope in those even who enjoy the strongest assurance,--yet the moral notions of any society must be very different where the ground of hope is taken for granted, and where it is kept wholly out of sight. * * * * * The observer may obtain further light upon the moral ideas of a people by noting the degree of their Attachment to Kindred and Birth-place. This species of attachment is so natural, that none are absolutely without it; but it varies in degree, according as the moral taste of the people goes to enhance or to subdue it. The Swiss and the American parent both send their children abroad; but with what different feelings and views! The Swiss father dismisses his daughter to teach in a school at Paris or London, and his sons to commerce or war. He resigns himself to a hard necessity, and supports them with suggestions of the honour of virtuous independence, and of the delight of returning when it is achieved. They, in their exile, can never see a purple shade upon a mountain side, a gleaming sheet of water, or a nestling village, without a throb of the heart, and a sickening longing for home.--The New England mother, with her tribe of children around her on her hill-side farm, nourishes them with tales of the noble extent of their country,--how its boundary is ever shifting westwards, and what a wild life it is there in the forest, with the Red men for neighbours, and inexhaustible wealth in the soil, ready for the hand which shall have enterprise to work for it. She tells of one and another, but lately boys like her children, who are now judges and legislators,--founders of towns, or having counties named after them. As her young people grow up, they part off eagerly from the old farm,--one into a southern city, another into the western forest, a third to a prairie in a new territory; and the daughters marry, and go over the mountains too. The mother may have sighs to conceal, but she does conceal them; and the sons, so far from lingering,--are impatient till they are gone. Their idea of national honour,--both their patriotic and their personal ambition,--is concerned; and they welcome the hour of dispersion as the first step towards the great objects of their life. Some return to the old neighbourhood to take a wife; but they do not think of passing their second childhood where they spent their first,--any more than the Greek colonists who swarmed from their narrow native districts. The settlers of the west go there, not to obtain a certain amount of personal property, but land, station, and power.--How different again are the Scotch--the people of the strongest family attachments! In the modified and elevated feudalism of clanship, pride and love of kindred constitute the animating social principle. Their clan-music is to them what the Ranz de Vaches is to the Swiss: the one echoing the harmonics of social intercourses, as the other revives the melodies of mountain life. Through the love of kindred, the love of birth-place flourishes among the Scotch. The Highland emigrants in Canada not only clasp hands when they hear played the march of their clan, but wept when they found that heather would not grow in their newly-adopted soil. * * * * * The traveller must talk with Old People, and see what is the character of the garrulity of age. He must talk with Children, and mark the character of the aspirations of childhood. He will thus learn what is good in the eyes of those who have passed through the society he studies, and in the hopes of those who have yet to enter upon it. Is it the aged mother's pride that her sons are all unstained in honour, and her daughters safe in happy homes? or does she boast that one is a priest, and another a peeress? Does the grandmother relate that all her descendants who are of age are "received church-members"? or that her favourite grandchild has been noticed by the emperor? Do the old men prose of a single happy love, or of exploits of gallantry? or of commercial success, or of political failure? What is the section of life to which the greatest number of ancient memories cling? Is it to struggles for a prince in disguise, or to a revolutionary conflict? Is it to the removal of a social oppression, or to a season of domestic trial, or to an accession of personal consequence? Is it the having acquired an office or a title? or the having assisted in the abolition of slavery? or the having conversed with a great author? or the having received a nod from a prince, or a curtsey from a queen? or have you to listen to details of the year of the scarcity, or the season of the plague?--What are the children's minds full of? The little West Indian will not talk of choosing a profession, any more than the infant Portuguese will ask for books. One nation of children will tell of the last saint's day, and another will refer every thing to the emperor. Elsewhere you will be treated with legends without end; or you will be instructed about bargains and wages; or the boys will ask you why a king's son should be king whether the people like him or not; and the girls will whisper something to you about their brother being President some day. As the minds of the young are formed, generally speaking, to an adaptation to the objects presented to them, their preference of warlike to commercial, or literary to political honour, is an eloquent circumstance: and so of their sense of greatness in any direction,--whether it be of the physical order, or the intellectual, or the spiritual. * * * * * From this, the transition is natural to the study of the character of the Pride of each nation. Learn what people glory in, and you learn much of both the theory and practice of their morals. All nations, like all individuals, have pride, sooner or later, in one thing or another. It is a stage through which they have to pass in their moral progression, and out of which the most civilized have not yet advanced, nor discerned that they will have to advance, though the passion becomes moderated at each remove from barbarism. It is by no means clear that the essential absurdity of each is relieved by its dilution. Hereafter, the most modern pride of the most civilized people may appear as ridiculous in its nature as the grossest conceit of utter barbarians now appears to us; but, still, the direction taken by the general pride must show what class of objects is held in most esteem. The Chinese have no doubt that all other countries are created for the benefit of theirs; they call their own "the central empire," as certain philosophers once called our earth the centre round which everything else was to revolve. They call it the Celestial Empire, of which their ruler is the Sun: "they profess to rule barbarians by misrule, like beasts, and not like native subjects." Here we have the extreme of national pride, which must involve various moral qualities;--all the bad ones which are the consequence of ignorance, subservience to domestic despotism, and contempt of the race of man; and the good ones which are the consequence of national seclusion,--cheerful industry, social complacency, quietness, and order.--The Arab pride bears a resemblance to the Chinese, but is somewhat refined and spiritualized. The Arabs believe that the earth, "spread out like a bed," and upheld by a gigantic angel (the angel standing upon a rock, and the rock upon a bull, and the bull upon a fish, and the fish floating upon water, and the water upon darkness,)--that the earth, thus upheld, is surrounded by the Circumambient Ocean; that the inhabited part of the earth is to the rest but as a tent in the desert; and that in the very centre of this inhabited part is--Mecca. Their exclusive faith makes a part of their nationality, and their insolence shows itself eminently in their devotions. Their spiritual supremacy is their strong point; and they can afford to be somewhat less outwardly contemptuous to the race at large, from the certainty they have that all will be made plain and indisputable at last, when the followers of the Prophet alone will be admitted to bliss, and the punishments of the future world will be eternal to all but wicked Mahomedans. There will be found among the Arabs, in accordance with this pride, a strong mutual fidelity; and, among the best class of believers, a real devotion and a kindly compassion towards outcasts; while, among lower orders of minds, we may expect to witness the extreme exasperation of vindictiveness, insult, and rapacity.--We may pass over the pride of caste in India, of royal race in Africa, and the wild notions of Caribbean and Esquimaux dignity, which are almost as painful to contemplate as the freaks of pride in Bedlam. There is quite enough to look upon in the most civilized parts of the earth.--The whole national character of the Spaniards might be inferred from their particularly notorious pride; the quarterings of German barons are a popular joke; the French pride of military glory is an index to the national morals of France; while, in the United States, the pride of Washington and of territory is oddly combined and contrasted. Nothing can be more indicative of the true moral state of the Americans; they hang between the past and the future, with many of the feudal prepossessions of the past, mingled with the democratic aspirations which relate to the future. The ambition and pride of territory belong to the first, and their pride in the leader of their revolution to the last: he is their personification of that moral power to which they profess allegiance. The consequences of this arbitrary union of two kinds of national pride may be foreseen. The Americans unite some of the low qualities of feudalism with some of the highest of a more equal social organization. Without the first, slavery, cupidity, and ostentation could not exist to any great extent; without the others, there could not be the splendid moral conflict which we now see going on in opposition to slavery, nor the reverence for man which is the loveliest feature of American morals and manners. From the aristocratic pride of the English the stranger might draw inferences no less correct. If it is found that there is scarcely a gamekeeper or a tradesman among us who is not stiffened with prejudices about rank; that gossips can tell what noblemen pay, and which do not pay, their tradesmen's bills; that persons who have never seen a lord can furnish all information about the genealogy and intermarriages of noble families; that every class is emulating the manners of the one above it; and that democratic principles are held chiefly in the manufacturing districts, or, if in country regions, among the tenantry of landlords of liberal politics;--the moral condition of such a people lies, as it were, mapped out beneath the eye of the observer. They must be orderly, eminently industrious, munificent in their grants to rulers, and mechanically oppressive to the lowest class of the ruled; nationally complacent, while wanting in individual self-respect; reverentially inclined towards the lofty minority, and contemptuously disposed towards the lowly majority of their race; a generous devotion being advantageously mingled, however, with the select reverence, and a kindly spirit of protection with the gross contempt. Such, to the eye of an observer, are the qualities involved in English pride. Upon this moral material, everywhere diffused, should the traveller observe and reflect. * * * * * Man-worship is as universal a practice as that of the higher sort of religion. As men everywhere adore some supposed agents of unseen things, they are, in like manner, disposed to do homage to what is venerable when it is presented to their eyes in the actions of a living man. This man-worship is one of the most honourable and one of the most hopeful circumstances in the mind of the race. An individual here and there may scoff at the credulity of others, and profess unbelief in human virtue; but no society has ever yet wanted faith in man. Every community has its saints, its heroes, its sages,--whose tombs are visited, whose deeds are celebrated, whose words have become the rules by which men live. Now, the moral taste of a people is nowhere more clearly shown than in its choice of idols. Of these idols there are two kinds;--those whose divinity is confirmed by the lapse of time, like Gustavus Adolphus among the Swedes, Tell in Switzerland, Henri IV. among the French, and Washington among the Americans; and those who are still living, and upon whose daily doings a multitude of eyes are fixed. Those of the first class reign singly; their uncontested sway is over national character, as well as the affections of individual minds; and from their character may that of the whole people be, in certain respects, inferred. Who supposes that the Swiss would have been the same as they are, if Tell's character and deeds could have been hidden in oblivion from the moment those deeds were done? What would the Americans have been now if every impression of Washington could have been effaced from their minds fifty years ago? This is not the place in which to enlarge on the power--the greatest power we know of--which man exercises over men through their affections; but it is a fact which the observer should keep ever in view. The existence of a great man is one of those gigantic circumstances,--one of those national influences,--which have before been mentioned as modifying the conscience--the feelings about right and wrong--in a whole people. The pursuits of a nation for ever may be determined by the fact of the great man of five centuries being a poet, a warrior, a statesman, or a maritime adventurer. The morals of a nation are influenced to all eternity by the great man's being ambitious or moderate, passionate or philosophical, licentious or self-governed. Certain lofty qualities he must have, or he could not have attained greatness,--energy, perseverance, faith, and consequently earnestness. These are essential to his immortality; upon the others depends the quality of his influence; and upon these must the observer of the present generation reflect. It is not by dogmas that Christianity has permanently influenced the mind of Christendom. No creeds are answerable for the moral revolution by which physical has been made to succumb to moral force; by which unfortunates are cherished by virtue of their misfortunes; by which the pursuit of speculative truth has become an object worthy of self-sacrifice. It is the character of Jesus of Nazareth which has wrought to these purposes. Notwithstanding all the obscuration and defilement which that character has sustained from superstition and other corruption, it has availed to these purposes, and must prevail more and more now that it is no longer possible to misrepresent his sayings and conceal his deeds, as was done in the dark ages. In all advancing time, as corruption is surmounted, there are more and more who vividly feel that life does not consist in the abundance that a man possesses, but in energy of spirit, and in a power and habit of self-sacrifice: there are perpetually more and more who discern and live by the persuasion that the pursuit of worldly power and ease is a matter totally apart from the function of Christianity; and this persuasion has not been wrought into activity by declarations of doctrine in any form, but by the spectacle, vivid before the eye of the mind, of the Holy One who declined the sword and the crown, lived without property, and devoted himself to die by violence, in an unparalleled simplicity of duty. The being himself is the mover here; and every great man is, in a similar manner, however inferior may be the degree, a spring by which spirits are moved. By the study of them may much of the consequent movement be understood. The observer of British morals should gather up the names of their idols; he will hear of Hampden, Bacon, Shakspeare, Newton, Howard, and Wesley. In Scotland, he will hear of Bruce and Knox. What a flood of light do these names shed on our _morale_! It is the same with the Englishman abroad when his attention is referred in France to Henri IV, Richelieu, Turenne, and Napoleon, to Bossuet and Fenelon, to Voltaire, and their glorious list of natural philosophers: in Italy, to Lorenzo de' Medici, Galileo, and their constellations of poets and artists: in Germany, to Charles V, Luther, Schwartz, Göthe, Copernicus, Handel, and Mozart. There is in every nation a succession of throned gods, each of whom is the creator of some region of the national mind, and has formed men into more or less of his own likeness. The other kind of idols are those who are still living, and whose influence upon morals and manners is strong, but may or may not be distinguishably permanent. These afford a less faithful evidence,--but yet an evidence which is not to be neglected. The spirit of the times is seen in the character of the idols of the day, however the nation may be divided in its choice of idols, and however many sects there may be in the man-worship of the generation. In our own day, for instance, how plainly is the movement of society discerned, from the fact of the eminence of philanthropists in many countries! Whether they presently sink, or continue to rise, they testify to a prevailing feeling in society. Père Enfantin in France, Wilberforce in England, Garrison in America,--these are watchmen set on a pinnacle (whoever may object to their being there) who can tell us "what of the night," and how a new morning is breaking. Whether they may be most cause or effect, whether they have more or less decidedly originated the interest of which they are the head, it is clear that there is a certain adaptation between themselves and the general mind, without which they could not have risen to be what they are.--Every society has always its idols. If there are none by merit, at any moment, station is received as a qualification. Large numbers are always worshipping the heads of the aristocracy, of whatever kind they may be; and there is rarely a long interval in which there is not some warrior, some poet, artist, or philanthropist on whom the multitude are flinging crowns and incense. The popularity of Byron testified to the existence of a gloomy discontent in a multitude of minds, as the adoration of De Béranger discloses the political feelings of the French. Statesmen rarely command an overwhelming majority of worshippers, because interest enters much more than sentiment into politics: but every author, or other artist who can reach the general mind,--every preacher, philanthropist, soldier, or discoverer, who has risen into an atmosphere of worship in pursuit of a purpose, is a fresh Peter the Hermit, meeting and stimulating the spirit of his time, and exhibiting its temper to the observer,--foreign as to either clime or century. The physical observer of a new region might as well shut his eyes to the mountains, and omit to note which way the streams run, as the moral observer pass by the idols of a nation with a heedless gaze. * * * * * Side by side with this lies the inquiry into the great Epochs of the society visited. Find out what individuals and nations date from, and you discover what events are most interesting to them. A child reckons from his first journey, or his entrance upon school: a man from his marriage, his beginning practice in his profession, or forming a fresh partnership in trade; if he be a farmer, from the year of a good or bad crop; if he be a merchant, from the season of a currency pressure; if he be an operative, from the winter of the Strike: a matron dates from the birth of her children; her nursemaid from her change of place. Nations, too, date from what interests them most. It is important to learn what this is. The major date of American citizens is the Revolution; their minor dates are elections, and new admissions into the Union. The people at Amsterdam date from the completion of the Stadt Huis; the Spaniards from the achievement of Columbus; the Germans from the deed of Luther; the Haytians from the abduction of Toussaint L'Ouverture; the Cherokees from treaties with the Whites; the people of Pitcairn's Island from the mutiny of the Bounty; the Turks, at present, from the massacre of the Janissaries; the Russians from the founding of St. Petersburgh and the deaths of its monarchs; the Irish (for nearer times than the battle of the Boyne) by the year of the fever, the year of the rebellion, the year of the famine. There is a world of instruction in this kind of fact; and if a new species of epoch, of which there is a promise, should arise,--if the highest works of men should come to be looked upon as the clearest operations of Providence,--if Germany or Europe should date from Göthe as the civilized world does from Columbus,--this sole test might reveal almost the entire moral state of society. * * * * * The treatment of the Guilty is all-important as an index to the moral notions of a society. This class of facts will hereafter yield infallible inferences as to the principles and views of governments and people upon vice, its causes and remedies. At present, such facts must be used with great caution, because the societies of civilized countries are in a state of transition from the old vindictiveness to a purer moral philosophy. The ancient methods, utterly disgraceful as they are, must subsist till society has fully agreed upon and prepared for better ones; and it would be harsh to pronounce upon the humanity of the English from their prisons, or the justice of the French from their galley system. The degrees of reliance upon brute force and upon public opinion are yet by no means proportioned to the civilization of respective societies, as at first sight might be expected, and as must be before punishments and prisons can be taken as indications of morals and manners. The treatment of the guilty in savage lands, and also in countries under a despotism, indicates the morals of rulers only,--except in so far as it points out the political subservience of the people. It is true that the Burmese must needs be in a deplorable social state, if their king can "spread out" his prime minister in the sun, as formerly described: but the mercy or cruelty of his subjects can be inferred only from the liberty they may have and may use to treat one another in the same manner. In their case, we see that such a power is possessed and put to use. The creditor exposes his debtor's wife, children, and slaves, to the same noon-day sun which broils the prime minister. In Austria, it would be harsh to suppose that subjects have any desire to treat one another as the Emperor and his minister treat political offenders within the walls of the castle of Spielburg. The Russians at large are not to be made answerable for the transportation of coffles of nobles and gentlemen to the silver mines of Siberia, and the regiments on the frontier. It is only under a representative government that prisons, and the treatment of criminals under the law, can be fairly considered a test of the feelings of the majority. It is too true, however, that punishments are almost everywhere vindictive in their character; and have more relation to some supposed principle of "not letting vice go unpunished," than either to the security of society, or the reformation of the offender. The few exceptions that exist are a far more conclusive testimony to an advancing state of morals than the old methods are to the vindictiveness of the mind of the society which they corrupt and deform. The Philadelphia penitentiary is a proof of the thoughtful and laborious humanity of those who instituted it; but Newgate cannot be regarded as the expressed decision of the English people as to how criminals should be guarded. Such a prison would not now be instituted by any civilized nation. Its existence is to be interpreted, not as a token of the cruelty and profligacy of the mind of society, but of its ignorance of the case, or of its bigoted adherence to ancient methods, or of its apathy in regard to improvements to which there is no peremptory call of self-interest. Any one of these is enough, Heaven knows, for any society to have to answer for; enough to yield, by contrast, surpassing honour to the philanthropy which has pulled down the pillory, and is labouring to supersede the hangman, and to convert every prison in the civilized world into an hospital for the cure of moral disease. But the reform has begun; the spirit of Howard is on its pilgrimage; and barbarous as is still our treatment of the guilty, better days are in prospect. What the traveller has to observe then is, first, whether there has been any amelioration of the treatment of criminals in countries where the people have a voice upon it: and, in countries despotically ruled, whether public sentiment is moved about the condition of state criminals, and whether men treat one another vindictively in their appeals to the laws of citizenship: whether there is a Burmese cruelty in the exercise of the legal rights of the creditor; whether there is a reluctance to plunge others into the woes of legal penalties; or whether offenders are considered as beyond the pale of sympathy. It may thus appear whether the people entertain the pernicious notion that there is a line drawn for human conduct, on one side of which all is virtue, and on the other all vice; or whether they are approximating to the more philosophical and genial belief that all wickedness is weakness and woe, and that therefore the guilty need more care and tenderness in the arrangement of the circumstances under which they live than those who enjoy greater strength against temptation, and an ease of mind which criminals can never know. In some parts of the United States this general persuasion is remarkably evident, and is an incontestable proof of the advanced state of morals there. In some prisons of the United States, as much care is bestowed on the arrangements by which the guilty are preserved from contaminating one another, are exposed to good influences and precluded from bad, as in any infirmary on the ventilation of the wards, and the diet and nursing of the sick. In such a region, vindictiveness in social punishments must be going out, and Christ-like views of human guilt and infirmity beginning to prevail. The same conclusions may be drawn from an observation of the methods of legal punishment. Recklessness of human life is one of the surest symptoms of barbarism, whether life is taken by law or by assassination. As men grow civilized, and learn to rate the spiritual higher and higher above the physical life, human life grows sacred. The Turk orders off the head of a slave almost without a serious thought. The New Zealanders have murdered men by scores, to supply their dried and grinning heads to English purchasers, who little imagined the cost at which they were obtained. This is the way in which life is squandered in savage societies. Up to a comparatively high point of civilization, the law makes free with life, long after the private expenditure of it has been checked or has ceased. Duels, brawls, assassinations, have nearly been discontinued, and even war in some measure discountenanced, before the law duly recognises the sacredness of human life. But the time comes. One generation after another grows up with a still improving sense of the majesty of life,--of the mystery of the existence of such a being as man,--of the infinity of ideas and emotions in the mind of each, and of the boundlessness of his social relations. These recognitions may not be express; but they are sufficiently real to hold back the hand from quenching life. The reluctance to destroy such a creation is found to be on the increase. Men prefer suffering wrong to being accessary to so fearful an act as what now appears a judicial murder: the law is left unused,--is evaded,--and it becomes necessary to alter it. Capital punishments are restricted,--are further restricted,--are abolished. Such is the process. It is now all but completed in the United States: it is advancing rapidly in England. During its progress further light is thrown on the moral notions of a represented people by a change in the character of other (called inferior) punishments. Bodily torments and disfigurements go out. Torture and mutilation are discontinued, and after a while the grosser mental inflictions. The pillory (as mere ignominious exposure) was a great advance upon the maiming with which it was once connected; but it is now discontinued as barbarous. All ignominious exposure will ere long be considered equally barbarous,--including capital punishment, of which such exposure is the recommendatory principle. To refer once more to the Pennsylvania case,--these notions of ignominious exposure are there so far outgrown, that avoidance of it is the main principle of the management. Seclusion, under the guardianship of the law, is there the method,--on the principle of consideration to the weak, and of supreme regard to the feeling of self-respect in the offender,--the feeling in which he is necessarily most deficient. When we consider the brutalizing methods of punishment in use in former times, and now in some foreign countries, in contrast with the latest instituted and most successful, we cannot avoid perceiving that such are indications of the moral notions of those at whose will they exist, be they a council of despots, or an association of nations. We cannot avoid perceiving from them what barbarism is held to be justice in some ages and countries; and how that which would then and there be condemned as culpable leniency, comes elsewhere to be considered less than justice. The treatment of the guilty is one of the strongest evidences as to the general moral notions of society, when it is evidence at all; that is, when the guilty are in the hands of society. * * * * * There is another species of evidence of which travellers are not in the habit of making use, but which is well worth their attention,--the Conversation of convicted Criminals. There are not many places in the world where it is possible to obtain this, without a greater sacrifice of comfort than the ordinary tourist is disposed to make. There is little temptation to enter prisons where squalid wretches are crowded together in dirt, noise, and utter profligacy; where no one of them could speak seriously for fear of the ridicule of his comrades; where the father sees his young son corrupted before his eyes, and the mother utters cruel jests upon the frightened child that hides its face in her apron. In scenes like these, there is nothing for the stranger to do and to learn. The whole is one great falsehood, where the people are acting falsely under false circumstances. It affords an enterprise for the philanthropist, but no real knowledge for the observer. He may pass by such places, knowing that they are pretty much alike in all countries where they exist. Criminals herded together in virtue of their criminality, and outraged into a diabolical hardihood, must present one uniform aspect of disgust. What variety should there be in them? About as much as in the leper settlements in the wildernesses of the world two thousand years ago. The traveller will not be permitted to see the state prisoners of any despotic government; but wherever the subject of prison reform has been entertained, (and Howard's spirit is at work in many countries of the world,) there will probably be opportunity to converse with offenders in a better way than by singling them out from the crowd, in a spirit of condescension, and asking them a few questions, in the answers to which you can place no confidence. If you can converse face to face with a convict, as man with man, you can hardly fail to be instructed. If he has been long deprived of equal conversation, his heart will be full; his disposition will be to trust you; his impulse will be to confide to you his offence, and all the details connected with it. By thus conversing with a variety of offenders, you will be put in possession of the causes of crime, of the views of society upon the relative gravity of offences, and of the condition of hope or despair in which those are left who have broken the laws, and are delivered over to shame. Much light will also be thrown upon the seat of the disorders of society. Putting political offences aside, as varying in number in proportion to the nature of the government, almost all the rest are offences against property. Nine out of ten convicts, perhaps, are punished for taking the money or money's worth of another. Here is a hint as to the respects in which society is most mistaken in its principles, and weakest in its organization. Of the offences against the person, some are occasioned by the bad habits which attend the practice of depredation on property; thieves are drunkards, and drunkards are brawlers:--but the greater number arise out of domestic miseries. Where there are fewest assaults occasioned by conjugal injuries and domestic troubles, the state of morals is the purest. Where they abound, it is clear that the course of love does not run smooth; and that, from the workings of some bad principles, domestic morals are in a low state. In Austria and Prussia, state criminals abound; while in America such a thing is rarely heard of. In America, a youthful and thriving country, offences against property for the most part arise out of bad personal habits, which again are occasioned by domestic misery of some kind; this domestic misery, however, being itself less common than in an older state of society. In England almost all the offences are against property, and are so multitudinous as to warrant a stranger's conclusion that the distribution of property among us must be extremely faulty, the oppression of certain classes by others very severe, and our political morals very low; in short, that the aristocratic spirit rules in England. From the tales of convicts,--how they were reared, what was the nature of the snares into which they fell, what opportunity of retrieving themselves remained, and what was the character of the influences which sank them into misery,--much cannot but be learned of the moral atmosphere in which they were reared. From their present state of mind,--whether they revert in affection to their homes, or to the society from which they have been snatched,--whether they look forward with hope or fear, or are incapable of looking forward at all,--it will appear whether the justice and benevolence of the community have secured the commonest blessings of moral life to these its lowest members, or whether they have been utterly crushed by the selfishness of the society into which they were born. To have criminals at all may in time come to be a disgrace to a community; meantime, their number and quality are an evidence as to its prevalent moral notions, which the intelligent observer will not disregard. * * * * * [H]"The SONGS of every nation must always be the most familiar and truly popular part of its poetry. They are uniformly the first fruits of the fancy and feeling of rude societies; and, even in the most civilized times, are _the only_ poetry of the great body of the people. Their influence, therefore, upon the character of a country has been universally felt and acknowledged. Among rude tribes, it is evident that their songs must, at first, take their tone from the prevailing character of the people. But, even among them, it is to be observed that, though generally expressive of the fiercest passions, they yet represent them with some tincture of generosity and good feeling, and may be regarded as the first lessons and memorials of savage virtue. An Indian warrior, at the stake of torture, exults, in wild numbers, over the enemies who have fallen by his tomahawk, and rejoices in the anticipated vengeance of his tribe. But it is chiefly by giving expression to the loftiest sentiments of invincible courage and fortitude, that he seeks to support himself in the midst of his torments. 'I am brave and intrepid!' he exclaims,--'I do not fear death nor any kind of torture! He who fears them is a coward--he is less than a woman. Death is nothing to him who has courage!' As it is thus the very best parts of their actual character that are dwelt upon even in the barbarous songs of savages, these songs must contribute essentially to the progress of refinement, by fostering and cherishing every germ of good feeling that is successively developed during the advancement of society. When selfishness begins to give way to generosity,--when mere animal courage is in some degree ennobled by feelings of patriotic self-devotion,--and, above all, when sensual appetite begins to be purified into love,--it is then that the popular songs, by acquiring a higher character themselves, come to produce a still more powerful reaction upon the character of the people. These songs, produced by the most highly-gifted of the tribe,--by those who feel most strongly, and express their feelings most happily,--convey ideas of greater elevation and refinement than are as yet familiar; but not so far removed from the ordinary habits of thinking as to be unintelligible. The hero who devotes himself to death for the safety of his country, with a firmness as yet almost without example in the actual history of the race,--and the lover, who follows his mistress through every danger, and perhaps dies for her sake,--become objects on which every one delights to dwell, and models which the braver and nobler spirits are thus incited to emulate. The songs of rude nations, accordingly, and those in which they take most pleasure, are filled with the most romantic instances of courage, fidelity, and generosity; and it cannot be supposed that such delightful and elevating pictures of human nature can be constantly before the eyes of any people, without producing a great effect on their character. The same considerations are applicable to the effects of popular ballads upon the most numerous classes of society, even in civilized nations." It appears that popular songs are both the cause and effect of general morals: that they are first formed, and then react. In both points of view they serve as an index of popular morals. The ballads of a people present us, not only with vivid pictures of the common objects which are before their eyes,--given with more familiarity than would suit any other style of composition,--but they present also the most prevalent feelings on subjects of the highest popular interest. If it were not so, they would not have been popular songs. The traveller cannot be wrong in concluding that he sees a faithful reflection of the mind of a people in their ballads. When he possesses the popular songs of former centuries, he holds the means of transporting himself back to the scenes of the ancient world, and finds himself a spectator of its most active proceedings. Wars are waged beneath his eye, and the events of the chase grow to a grandeur which is not dreamed of now. Love, the passion of all times, and the staple of all songs, varies in its expression among every people and in every age, and appears still another and yet the same. The lady of ballads is always worthy of love and song; but there are instructive differences in the treatment she receives. Sometimes she is oppressed by a harsh parent; sometimes wrongfully accused by a wicked servant, or a false knight; sometimes her soft nature is exasperated into revenge; sometimes she is represented as fallen, but always, in that case, as enduring retribution. Upon the whole, the testimony is strong in favour of bravery in men, and purity in women, and constancy in both;--and this in the whole range of popular poetry, from ancient Arabic effusions, through centuries of European song, up to the Indian chants which may yet be heard on the shores of the wide western lakes. The distinguishing attributes of great men bear a strong resemblance, from the days when all Greece rang with the musical celebration of Harmodius and Aristogiton, through the age of Charlemagne, up to the triumphs of Bolivar: and women have been adored for the same qualities, however variously set forth, from the virgin with gazelle eyes of three thousand years ago, to the dames who witnessed the conflicts of the Holy Land, and onwards to the squaw who calls upon her husband not to forget her in the world of spirits, and to our Burns' Highland Mary. What the traveller has to look to is, that he does not take one aspect of the popular mind for the whole, or a temporary state of the popular mind for a permanent one,--though, from the powerful action of national song, this temporary state is likely to become a permanent one by its means. As an instance of the first, the observer would be mistaken in judging of more than a class of English from some of the best songs they have,--Dibdin's sea songs. They are too fair a representation of the single class to which they pertain, though they have done much to foster and extend the spirit of generosity, simplicity, activity, gaiety, and constant love, which they breathe. They have undoubtedly raised the character of the British navy, and are to a great degree indicative of the naval spirit with us: but they present only one aspect of the national mind. In Spain, again, the songs with which the mountains are ringing, and whose origin is too remote to be traced, are no picture of the conventional mind of the aristocratic classes. As an instance of the false conclusions which might be drawn from the popular songs of a brief period, we may look to the revolutionary poetry of France. It would be unfair to judge of the French people by their _ça ira_ or the _Carmagnole_, however true an expression such songs may be of the spirit of the hour. The nation had lived before under "une monarchie absolue tempérée par des chansons;" the absolutism grew too galling; and then the songs took the tone of fury which protracted oppression had bred. It was not long before the tone was again changed. Napoleon was harassed on his imperial throne by tokens of a secret understanding, unfriendly to his interests: those tokens were songs ambiguously worded, or set to airs which were used as signs; and treason, which he could not reach, was perpetually spoken and acted within ear-shot and before his eyes. When the royal family returned, the songs of De Béranger passed in like manner from lip to lip, and the restored throne trembled to the echo. In France, morals have for many years found their chief expression in politics; and from the songs of Paris may the traveller learn the political feelings of the time. Under representative governments, where politics are the chief expression of morals, the songs of the people cannot but be an instructive study to the observer; and scarcely less so in countries where, politics being forbidden, the domestic and friendly relations must be the topics through which the most general ideas and feelings will flow out. The rudest and the most advanced nations abound in songs. They are heard under the plantain throughout Africa, as in the streets of Paris. The boatmen on the Nile, and the children of Cairo on their way to school, cheer the time with chants; as do the Germans in their vineyards, and in the leisure hours of the university. The Negro sings of what he sees and feels,--the storm coming over the woods, the smile of his wife, and the coolness of the drink she gives him. The Frenchman sings the woes of the state prisoner, and the shrewd self-cautionings of the citizen. The songs of the Egyptian are amatory, and of the German varied as the accomplishments of the nation,--but in their moral tone earnest and pure. The more this mode of expression is looked into, the more serviceable it will be found to the traveller's purposes of observation. * * * * * The subject of the Literature of nations, as a means of becoming familiar with their moral ideas, is too vast to be enlarged on here. The considerations connected with it are so obvious, too, that the traveller to whom they would not occur can be but little qualified for the work of observing. It is clear that we cannot know the mind of a nation, any more than of an individual, by merely looking at it, without hearing any speech. National literature is national speech. By this are its prevalent ideas and feelings uttered. It is necessarily so; for books which do not meet sympathy from numbers die immediately, and books which strike upon the sympathies of all never die. Between the two extremes, of books which command the sympathies of a class, and those which are the delight of all, there is an extensive gradation, from which the careful observer may almost frame for himself a scale of popular morals and manners. I mean, of course, in countries where there is a copious classical, or a growing modern literature. A people which happens to be without a literature,--the Americans, for instance,--must be judged of, as cautiously as may be, by such other means of utterance as they may have,--the political institutions which the present generation has formed or assented to,--their preferences in selection from the literature of other countries; and so on. But there is a far greater danger of their being misunderstood than there can ever be with regard to a nation which speaks for itself through books. "A country which has no national literature," writes a student of man, "or a literature too insignificant to force its way abroad, must always be to its neighbours, at least in every important spiritual respect, an unknown and misestimated country. Its towns may figure on our maps; its revenues, population, manufactures, political connexions, may be recorded in statistical books: but the character of the people has no symbol and no voice; we cannot know them by speech and discourse, but only by mere sight and outward observation of their habits and procedure."[I] The very fact of there being no literature in a nation may, however, yield inferences as to its mental and moral state. There is a very limited set of reasons why a people is without speech. They are barbarous, or they are politically oppressed; or the nation is young, and busy in providing and securing the means of national existence; or it has the same language with another people, and therefore the full advantage of its literature, as if it were not foreign. These seem to be nearly all the reasons for national silence; and any one of them affords some means of insight into the morals and manners of the dumb people. As for those which have utterance, they either speak freshly from day to day, or they show their principles and temper by the choice they make from among their own classics. Whatever is most accordant with their sympathies, they dwell upon; so that the selection is a sure indication of what the popular sympathies are. The same may be said of the comparative popularity of modern books; but they may reveal only a temporary state of feeling, and the traveller has to separate this species of evidence from the more important kind which testifies to the permanent affections and convictions of a people. The revelling of the French in Voltaire, of the Germans in Werter, and of the English in Byron, was, in each case, a highly important revelation of popular feeling; but it is not a circumstance from which to judge of the fixed national character of any of the three. It was a sign of the times, and not signs of nations. Voltaire pulled down certain erections which could not stand any longer, and was worshipped as a denier of untruths,--the popular mind being then ripe for the exploding of errors. But here ended the vocation of Voltaire. The French are now busy, to the extent of their energy, in doing what ought to follow upon the exposure of errors;--they are searching after truth. Pretences having been destroyed, they are now propounding and trying principles; and works which propose new and sounder erections find favour in preference to such as only expose and ridicule old sins and mistakes.--Werter was popular because it expressed the universal restlessness and discontent under which not only Germany, but Europe was suffering. Multitudes found their uncomfortable feelings uttered for them; and Werter was, in fact, the groan of a continent. Old superstitions, tyrannies, and ignorance were becoming intolerable, and no way was seen out of them; and the voice of complaint was hailed with universal sympathy. So it was with the poetry of Byron, adopted and echoed as it was, and will for some time continue to be, by the sufferers under an aristocratic constitution of society, whether they be oppressed by force from without, or by weariness, satiety, and disgust from within. The permanent state of the English mind is not represented in Byron, and could not be guessed at from his writings, except by inference from the woes of a particular order of minds: but his popularity was an admirable sign of the times, for such observers as were capable of interpreting it. Probably, in all ages since the pen and the press began their work, literature has been the expression of the popular mind; but it seems to have become peculiarly forcible, as a general utterance, of late. Whatever truth there may be in speculations about the growing infrequency of "immortal works,"--about the age being past for the production of books which shall become classics,--it appears that literature is assuming more and more the character of letters written to those whom their subjects may concern, and becoming more and more a familiar utterance of the general mind of the day. In the popular modern works of Germany there is deep and warm religious sentiment, while the most unflinching examination into the philosophy and fact of revelation is widely encouraged. In England, there is a growing taste for works which exhibit the life of the lower orders of society, though all aristocratic prepossessions appear in practice as strong as ever. This seems to indicate that our philosophy has a democratic tendency under which a general opinion will be formed, which will, in time, be expressed in practice. The French, again, are devouring, at the rate of two new volumes every three days, novels which are, in fact, letters to those whom they may concern on the condition and prospects of men and women in society. The pictures are something more than mere delineations. They carry with them principles by which the position of the members of the community is to be tested. The social position of Woman is a prominent topic. The first principles of social organization are involved in the groundwork of the simplest stories: and the universal reception of this product of literature shows that those whom it concerns are all. What an enormous loss of knowledge must the traveller sustain who omits to observe and reflect upon the spirit of the fresh literature of a people, or of its preferences among the literature of the past! He must note whether a people has recent dramatic productions: if not, whether and why the times are unfavourable to that kind of literature; and if there is dramatic production, what are the pictures of life that it presents. He must obtain at least some general idea of what the mental philosophy of the society is,--not so much because mental philosophy affects the national mind, as because it emanates from it. Is it a gross material, or a refined analytical, or a massy mystical philosophy? The first is usually found in the sceptical stage of the mind of a nation; the last in its healthy infancy; while the other is rarely to be found at all, except as the product of an individual mind of a high order. Few travellers will have occasion to give much attention to this part of their task of observation; as, among all the nations of the earth, there is not one in ten that has any mental philosophy at all. All have Fiction (other than dramatic); and this must be one of the observer's high points of view. There is no need to spend words upon this proposition. It requires no proof that the popular fictions of a people, representing them in their daily doings and common feelings, must be a mirror of their moral sentiments and convictions, and of their social habits and manners. The saying this is almost like offering an identical proposition. The traveller should stock his carriage with the most popular fictions, whether of the present day, or of a recent or ancient time. He should fill up his leisure with them. He should separate what they have that is congenial with his own habit of mind, from that with which he can least sympathize, and search into the origin of the latter. This will be something of a guide to him as to what is permanent and universal in the sentiments and convictions of the people, and what is to be regarded as a distinctive feature of the particular society or time. It is impossible but that, by the diligent use of these means, the observer must learn much of the general moral notions of the people he studies,--of what they approve and disapprove,--what they eschew and what they seek,--what they love and hate, desire and fear;--of what, in short, yields them most internal trouble or peace. CHAPTER III. DOMESTIC STATE. "How lived, how loved, how died they?" BYRON. Geologists tell us that they can answer for the modes of life of the people of any extensive district by looking at the geological map of the region. Put a geological map of England before one who understands it, and he will tell you that the inhabitants of the western parts, from Cornwall, through Wales, and up through Cumberland into Scotland, are miners and mountaineers; here living in clusters round the shaft of a mine, and there sprinkled over the hills, and secluded in the valleys. He will tell you that, on the middle portion of the surface, from Devonshire, up through Leicestershire, to the Yorkshire coast, the wide pastures are covered with flocks, while the people are collected into large manufacturing towns; an ordinary map showing, at the same time, that Kidderminster, Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, and Nottingham, Sheffield, Huddersfield, and Leeds, with many others, lie in this district. He will tell you that the third range, comprehending the eastern part of the island, is studded with farms, and that tillage is the great occupation and interest of the inhabitants. The moralist might follow up the observations of the geologist with an account of the general characteristics of societies engaged in these occupations. He knows that a distinct intellectual and moral character belongs to miners, to artisans, and to agriculturists; he knows that miners are prone to superstition, and to speculation in business, from the incalculable nature of their pursuits, the hap-hazard character of their enterprises; he knows that an artisan population is active-minded, communicative, capable and fond of concert; that among them is found the greatest proportion of religious dissent and political sagacity, of knowledge and its results in action. He knows that an agricultural people are less of a society than the others; that they are as mentally sluggish in comparison with operatives, as they are physically superior to them; that they make far less use of speech; are more attached to what is habitual and ancient, and have less enterprise and desire of change. They are, in fact, the representatives of the past,--of feudal times; while an artisan population is a prophecy of the future, and the beginning of the fulfilment. The ideas of equal rights, of representation of person as well as property, and all other democratic notions, originate in towns, and chiefly in manufacturing towns. Loyalty to the person rather than the function of rulers, pride in land and love of it as the blessing of blessings, and jealousy of every other interest, are found wherever corn springs up in the furrows, and there are farm-houses to be miniature representations of the old feudal establishments. Such are the general tendencies, modified according to circumstances. There are influences which make certain artisans in England tories, and certain landlords and tenants liberals; and there may be times and places where whole societies may have their characteristics modified; but there is rarely or never a complete departure from the general rule. Landlords and their posse of tenants, called liberal, soon find a point beyond which they cannot go, and from which they tend back into the politics of their order; and there is often but a single step for tory artisans into ultra-radicalism; it turns out to be a spurious toryism. So it is possible that there might have been here and there a democrat in La Vendée in 1793, and a sprinkling of royalists in Lyons in 1817. Yet La Vendée and Linois may be taken as representatives of the two kinds of society. The weaving population of Lyons are, like that of manufacturing towns generally, disposed to irritability by physical uneasiness, nourishing their ideas and feelings by communication, suffering from the consequences of partial knowledge, having glimpses of a better social state, and laying the blame of their adversities on a deficiency of protection by the government; enterprising and nicely skilled in the improvement of their articles of manufacture, and ever full of aspiration. The inhabitants of La Vendée are so diametrically opposite in their social circumstances and characteristics, that their bias in politics is a matter of course. Here is a description of the face of the district at the time that Lyons was as intensely republican as La Vendée was royalist:-- "Only two great roads traversed this sequestered region, running nearly parallel, at a distance of more than seventy miles from each other. The country, though rather thickly peopled, contained, as may be supposed, few large towns; and the inhabitants, devoted almost entirely to rural occupations, enjoyed a great deal of leisure. The noblesse or gentry of the country were very generally resident on their estates, where they lived in a style of simplicity and homeliness which had long disappeared from every other part of the kingdom. No grand parks, fine gardens, or ornamented villas; but spacious clumsy chateaux, surrounded with farm offices, and cottages for the labourers. Their manners and way of life, too, partook of the same primitive rusticity. There was great cordiality, and even much familiarity, in the intercourse of the seigneurs with their dependants: they were followed by large trains of them in their hunting expeditions, which occupied so great a part of their time. Every man had his fowling-piece, and was a marksman of fame or pretensions. The peasants resorted familiarly to their landlords for advice, both legal and medical; and they repaid the visits in their daily rambles, and entered with interest into all the details of their agricultural operations. From all this there resulted a certain innocence and kindliness of character, joined with great hardihood and gaiety. Though not very well educated, the population were exceedingly devout; though theirs was a kind of superstitious and traditional devotion, it must be owned, rather than an enlightened or rational faith. They had the greatest veneration for crucifixes and images of their saints, and had no idea of any duty more imperious than that of attending on all the solemnities of religion. They were singularly attached also to their curés, who were almost all born and bred in the country, spoke their _patois_, and shared in all their pastimes and occupations. When a hunting-match was to take place, the clergyman announced it from the pulpit after prayers, and then took his fowling-piece and accompanied his congregation to the thicket."[J] The chief contrasting features of these two kinds of society may be recognized in all parts of the civilized world. The most intensely loyal of the loyal Chinese will be found irrigating the terraces of the mountains, or busy in the ploughing-matches of the plains; and the least contented will be found at the loom. Spain is removed from a capacity for social freedom just in proportion to the discouragement of manufactures. The vine-growing districts of Germany are the most, and the commercial towns the least, acquiescent in the rule under which they are living. Russia will be despotically governed as long as she has no manufactures; and England and the United States are rescued, by the full establishment of their manufactures, from all danger of a retrogradation towards feudalism. The way in which these considerations concern us in this place is, that public and private morals, no less than manners, depend on the degree of feudalism which is left in the community. We have spoken before of the morals of the feudal and democratic states of society; and what we are now pointing out is, that these states, with their attendant morals and manners, may be discerned from the face of the country, and the consequent occupations of its inhabitants. It appears as if a geological map might be a useful guide to the researches of the moralist,--an idea which would have appeared insanely ridiculous half a century ago, but now reasonable enough. If the traveller be no geologist, so that he cannot, by his own observation, determine the nature of the soil, and thence infer, for his general guidance, the employments and mental and moral state of the people, he must observe the face of the country along the road he travels. He will do better still by mounting any eminences which may be within reach, whether they be churches, pillars, pyramids, pagodas, baronial castles on rocks, or peaks of mountains; thence he should look abroad, from point to point, through the whole region, and mark out what he sees spread beneath him. Are there pastures extended to the horizon, with herdsmen and flocks sprinkled over them, and in the midst a cloud of smoke overhanging a town, from which roads part off in many directions? Or is it a scene of shadowy mountains, with streams leaping from their fissures, and no signs of human habitation but the machinery of a mine, with rows of dwellings near heaps of piled rubbish? Or is the whole intersected with fences, and here dark with fallows, there yellow with corn, while farmsteads terminate the lanes, and the dwellings and grounds of rich proprietors are seen at intervals, with each a hamlet resting against its boundaries? Is this the kind of scene, whether the great house be called mansion, or chateau, or villa, or schloss; whether the produce be corn, or grapes, or tea, or cotton? A person gifted with a precocity of science in the twelfth century might have prophesied what is now happening from the picture stretched beneath him as he gazed from an eminence on the banks of the Don or the Calder. He might see, with the bodily eye, only "Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks and rivers wide," with clusters of houses in the far distance, and Robin Hood with his merry men lurking in the thickets of the forest, or basking under the oaks: but with the prophetic eye of science he might discern the multitudes that were, in course of time, to be living in Sheffield or Huddersfield; the stimulus that would be given to enterprise, the thronging of merchants to this region, the physical sufferings, the moral pressure, that must come; the awakening of intelligence, and the arousing of ambition. In the real scene, a cloud-shadow might be passing over a meadow; in the ideal, a smoke-cloud would be resting upon a hundred thousand human beings. In the real scene, a warbling lark might be springing from the grass; in the ideal, a singer[K] of a higher order might appear remonstrating with feudalism from amidst the roar of the furnace-blast and the din of the anvil; and then, when his complaint of social oppression is done, starting forwards to the end of all, and singing the requiem of the world itself. "Whose trade is poaching. Honest Jem works not, Begs not; but thrives by plundering beggars here. Wise as a lord, and quite as good a shot, He, like his betters, lives in hate and fear, And feeds on partridge because bread is dear. Sire of six sons apprenticed to the jail, He prowls in arms, the Tory of the night; With them he shares his battles and his ale; With him they feel the majesty of might." "He reads not, writes not, thinks not; scarcely feels: Steals all he gets; serves Hell with all he steals." * * * * * "Yes, and the sail-less worlds which navigate Th' unutterable deep that hath no shore, Will lose their starry splendour soon or late, Like tapers quenched by Him whose will is fate! Yes, and the angel of Eternity, Who numbers worlds and writes their names in light, One day, O Earth, will look in vain for thee, And start, and stop in his unerring flight; And with his wings of sorrow and affright Veil his impassioned brow and heavenly tears!" Somewhat in the same way as such a supposed philosophic observer might be imagined to foresee that democratic strains of remonstrance would here succeed to foresters' and freebooters' songs, may a well-qualified observer of the present day discern the interior mechanism and the remote issues of what lies beneath his eyes. While surveying the vast prairies on the banks of the deep rivers of the Western world, he may safely anticipate the time when self-governing communities will swarm where now a settler's log-house and enclosure are the only break in the wide surface of verdure. While looking down upon the harvests of Volhynia, or watching the processions of wagons laden with corn, and slowly wending their way down to Odessa, he may securely conclude that no vivacious artisan population will enliven this region for a long time to come; that the inhabitants will continue attached to the despotism under which they live; and that the morals of a despotism--the morals which coexist with gross ignorance and social subservience--may be looked for and found for at least an age. Some preparation may thus be made by a glance over the face of the country. Much depends on whether it is flat or mountainous, pasture or arable land. It appears from fact, too, that much depends on minor circumstances,--even on whether it is damp or dry. It is amusing to the traveller in Holland to observe how new points of morals spring up out of its swamps, as in the East from the dryness of the deserts. To injure the piles on which the city is built, is at Amsterdam a capital offence; and no inhabitant could outgrow the shame of tampering with the vegetation by which the soil of the dykes is held together. While Irish children are meritoriously employed in gathering rushes to make candles, and sedges for thatch, "the veriest child in Holland would resent as an injury any suspicion that she had rooted up a sedge or a rush, which had been planted to strengthen the embankments."[L] Such are certain points of morals in a country where water is the great enemy. In the East, where drought is the chief foe, it is a crime to defile or stop up a well, and the greatest of social glories is to have made water flow where all before was dry. In Holland, a malignant enemy cuts the dyke, as the last act of malice: in Arabia, he fills up the wells. In Holland, a distinct sort of moral feeling seems to have grown up about intemperance in drink. The humidity of the climate, and the scarcity of clear, wholesome water, obliges the inhabitants to drink much of other liquids. If moderation in them were not made a point of conscience of the first importance, the consequences of their prevalent use would be dreadful. The success of this particular moral effort is great. Drunkenness is almost as rare in Holland as carelessness in keeping accounts, and tampering with the dykes. There is no country in the world whose morals have more clearly grown out of its circumstances than Holland. On the theory of an infallible Moral Sense, it would be as difficult to account for a Dutchman's tenderness of conscience on any of the above three heads, as for a soldier's agony at the imputation of sleeping upon guard, or an Alabama planter's resentment at being charged with putting the alphabet in the way of a mulatto. * * * * * Having noted the aspect of the country, the observer's next business is to ascertain the condition of the inhabitants as to the supply of the Necessaries of life. He knows that nothing remains to be learned of the domestic morals of people who are plunged in hopeless poverty. There is no foundation for good morals among such. They herd together, desperate or depressed; they have no prospect; their self-respect is prostrated; they have nothing to lose, there is nothing for them to gain by any effort that they can make.--But it is needless to speak of this. When we treat of the domestic morals of any class, it is always presupposed that they are not in circumstances which render total immorality almost inevitable. In agricultural districts, the condition of the inhabitants may be learned by observation of the markets. An observing traveller has said, "To judge at once of a nation, we have only to throw our eyes on the markets and the fields. If the markets are well supplied, the fields well cultivated, all is right. If otherwise, we may say, and say truly, these people are barbarous and oppressed."[M] This, though a rather sweeping judgment, is founded in truth, and is well worthy of being borne in mind in travelling. It so happens that the negroes of Hayti are abundantly supplied with the necessaries, and with many of the comforts of life; that they are by no means barbarous, and far from being oppressed; and yet they have few roads, and scarcely any markets. They grow up in the midst of plenty; but, when a countryman is about to kill a hog, he sends his son round among his neighbours on horseback, to give notice to any who wish for pork, to send for it on a certain day. Their wretched, barbarous, oppressed countrymen in South Carolina, meanwhile, have excellent markets. The Saturday night's market at Charleston might beguile a careless foreigner into the belief that those who throng it are a free and prosperous people. Thus the rule above quoted does not always hold. Yet it is true that the existence and good quality of markets testify to the existence and good quality of other desirable things. Where markets are abundantly and variously supplied, it is clear that there must be a large demand for the comforts of life, and a diversity of domestic wants. It is clear that there must be industry to meet this demand, and competence to justify it. There must be social security, or the industry and competence would not be put to so hazardous a use. It _may_ happen, as at Charleston, that the capital is the masters' (whose the profits may also be, at any moment); that the industry is called forth by a delusive hope; and that the briskness of the transactions at market is ascribable to the pleasure slaves have in social meetings; but better things may usually be inferred from a well-supplied and well-conducted market. * * * * * The traveller's other researches in agricultural regions will be into the Tenure of lands,--whether they are held in small separate properties;--whether such properties are held by individuals, or shared with any kind of partners;--whether portions are rented from landlords; and, if so, whether any order of middlemen are concerned in the business;--whether the land is chiefly held by large owners; and, if so, whether the labourers are attached to the soil under feudal arrangements, or whether they are free labourers working for wages. The homes of the agricultural population will be found to vary in aspect as any one of these systems prevails. In young and prosperous countries, the system of small separate properties is found to conduce to independence and the virtues which result from it, though it is not favourable to knowledge and enlightenment. Families live much to themselves; and thus, while forming strong domestic attachments, they lose sight of what is going on in the world. They become unused to the light of society, and get to dislike and fear it. The labourers, in such case, usually live with the family, whether they be brothers, as often happens in Switzerland; sons, as in many a farm-house of the United States; or hired servants, as in former times in England,--and still in some retired parts. In each case the picture is easily filled in by the imagination. All are engaged, throughout the year, in the business of living. The work is never ending, still beginning; or, if it has intervals, they are dull and weary, from the absence of interests wherewith to occupy them. The employments of life are innocent, and the principle of association is harmless; but if there be ignorance and prejudice in the region, in these farm-houses will they be found; and in company with them morals of a high order are not to be looked for. If small properties are held in partnership, poverty is present or threatening. The condition of affairs cannot be lasting; and this may be well; for narrow means and partnership in a property which requires to be managed by skill are more favourable to discontent and disagreement than to a kindly social state. The middleman system is favourable or unfavourable to morals, just in proportion as it is so to prosperity. Every one knows the wretchedness of it in Ireland, and that there are numerous instances in Italy of the complete success of the métayer plan. Where the land is the property of large owners, and is tilled by labourers, there must be more or less of the feudal temper and manners remaining. Where the labourers are attached to the soil, there must necessarily exist whatever good arises from the certainty of the means of subsistence, coupled with the evils of subservience to the will of the lord, mental sluggishness, and ignorance. Where they are not irremovably attached to the soil, habit and helplessness have usually much of the same effect. The son hedges, ditches, or ploughs where his father hedged, ditched, or ploughed; he takes his beer, or cider, or thin wine, (according to the country he lives in,) at the same house of entertainment, and gossips about the doings of the lord and his family, much as labourers were wont to gossip two hundred years ago. It is the business of the traveller to note which mode of agricultural life prevails, and how the morals which pertain to it are modified by particular circumstances. * * * * * He must make the same kind of observations on the Manufacturing and Commercial Classes of the country he visits. Here again the chief differences in morals and manners arise out of the comparative prosperity or adversity of the class. Take the cotton manufacture. Passing by the Chinese operative plying his shuttle as he sits under his bamboo shed, and the Hindoo drawing out his fine thread under the shade of the palm, what differences there are among artisans of the same race,--Europeans and of European extraction! In Massachusetts there are villages of artisans, where whole streets of houses are their property; the church on the green in the midst is theirs; the Lyceum, with its library and apparatus, is theirs. There are rows of neat frame-dwellings, painted white or yellow, with piazzas before and behind, and Venetian blinds to every window,--all growing up out of the earnings of girls, who bring their widowed mothers to preside over their establishments. Others are paying off the mortgages on their fathers' farms. Others are procuring for their brothers a learned education in a college. In the cotton settlements of Europe what a contrast! At the best, operatives can only provide for their wants, and the placing out of their children, by a life of strenuous toil. At the worst, they herd together, many families in one house,--often in one room; decency is discarded; recklessness succeeds, to such a degree that, in certain sections of the society, there is scarcely a man of thirty-five who is not a grandfather. Among such there is a barbarism as savage as among the most vicious aristocracy of the worst feudal times. The lowest artisan population of the present day may vie in corruption with the noblesse of France on the eve of the first revolution. It is for the traveller to observe what grade in the wide interval between the operatives of Massachusetts, and those of Lyons and Stockport, is occupied by the artisans of the places he visits. * * * * * Upon the extent of the Commerce of a country depends much of the character of its morals. Old virtues and vices dwindle away, and new ones appear. The old members of a rising commercial society complain of the loss of simplicity of manners, of the introduction of new wants, of the relaxation of morals, of the prevalence of new habits. The young members of the same society rejoice that prudery is going out of fashion, that gossip is likely to be replaced by the higher kind of intercourse which is introduced by strangers, and by an extension of knowledge and interests: they even decide that domestic morals are purer from the general enlargement and occupation of mind which has succeeded to the _ennui_ and selfishness in which licentiousness often originates. A highly remarkable picture of the two conditions of the same place may be obtained by comparing Mrs. Grant's account of the town of Albany, New York, in her young days,[N] with the present state of the city. She tells us of the plays of the children on the green slope which is now State Street; of the tea-drinkings and working parties, of the gossip, bickerings, and virulent petty enmities of the young society, with its general regularity and occasional back-sliding; with the gentle despotism of its opulent members, and the more or less restive or servile obedience of the subordinate personages. In place of all this, the stranger now sees a city with magnificent public buildings, and private houses filled with the products of all the countries of the world. The inhabitants are too busy to be given to gossip, too unrestrained in their intercourse with numbers to retain much prudery: social despotism and subservience have become impossible: there is a generous spirit of enterprise, an enlargement of knowledge, an amelioration of opinion. There is, on the other hand, perhaps a decrease of kindly neighbourly regard, and certainly a great increase of the low vices which are the plague of commercial cities. Such is the transformation wrought by commerce. An observer who can also speculate,--one who looks before and after,--will conclude that, amidst some evil, the change is advantageous; and that good must, on the whole, arise from enlarged intercourses between men and societies. Seeing in commerce the instrument by which all the inhabitants of the earth are in time to be brought into common possession of all true ideas, and sympathy in all good feelings, he will mark the progress made by the society he visits towards this end. He will mark whether its merchants as a body have a spirit of generous enterprise or of sordid self-interest; whether they entertain a respect for learning and a taste for art,--bringing the one from abroad, and cherishing the other at home;--whether, in short, the merchants are the princes or the money-grubbers of the community. The spirit of this class will determine that of their subordinates. If the masters of commerce are liberal and enlightened, their servants will be thriving, and will have the virtues which wait upon self-respect: if the contrary, they will be debased. A Jewish money-lender is no more like a merchant of Salem or Bourdeaux than Malay porters at Macao are like the clerk class of Amsterdam. In the mercantile orders of society may be found the extremes of honour, generosity, diligence, and accuracy,--and of treachery, meanness, and selfish carelessness. It is the traveller's business to note the tendencies to the one or the other,--from the vexatious hog and yam traffic of the islands of the South Sea, to the magnificent transactions of the traders of Hamburgh. * * * * * The Health of a community is an almost unfailing index of its morals. No one can wonder at this who considers how physical suffering irritates the temper, depresses energy, deadens hope, induces recklessness, and, in short, poisons life. The domestic affections, too, are apt to languish through disappointment in countries where the average of death is very high. There is least marriage in unhealthy countries, and most in healthy ones,--other circumstances being equal. The same kind of spirit (however largely diluted) prevails in sickly regions as in societies which are visited by a pestilence. Study the tempers of the people who are subject to goîtres, of those who live in marshes, of those who encounter an annual tropical fever; and contrast it with that of dwellers on mountains, and in dry prairies, and in well-ventilated towns. What selfishness, apathy, and discontent in the one class! and what kindliness, briskness, and cheerfulness in the other! In the United States, wide spreading as the country is, and comprehending every variety of people, and almost of climate, the common deficiency of health produces moral effects which must strike the most careless traveller. The epicurean temper of the south, and the puritanic mood of the north, are alike stimulated by this. In the south, the overseers, whose business it is to encounter the fever, seem to be always practically saying, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." There is a recklessness among the trading classes there, a heathen levity and grossness, which are doubtless in a great degree owing to the presence of slavery, but also in part to the certainty of a very large annual mortality. Not the purest Christianity itself could preserve a people so placed from a more or less modified fatalism. The richer members of society leave their homes for some months of every year, and go northwards; and this perpetual unsettling of their families has a bad effect upon the habits of the young people and the comfort of their parents. It operates against domestic diligence, tranquillity, and satisfaction with home pleasures. In the north, there is a perpetual preaching about death, enforced by the never-ceasing recurrence of it; but it has not the effect of making people less worldly-minded than others. It serves only to shade life with apprehension, uncertainty, and bereavement; and, it is to be feared, to give to the vanity of many minds the direction of false heroism about meeting death. This seems too serious a subject for the exercise of human vanity; yet that purpose it has served, perhaps, in all societies; and in none more than in New England. The greater number of very young people, everywhere, who cannot be aware of the importance of life, and of the simplicity of death as its close, have romantic thoughts about dying early; and, in a country where an unusual proportion do die early, this species of vain-glory is likely to flourish. The pain felt everywhere by really enlarged and religious minds on seeing a false resignation exhibited, and hearing shallow sentimentalities given out on the brink of the grave, is peculiarly felt in a region where mourning mothers may be seen who have lost eight, twelve, or fifteen children, and where scarcely an enterprise of any extent can be undertaken which is not almost sure to be interrupted or baffled by sickness or death.--When these considerations are dwelt upon, and when it is remembered what the consequences of a low state of health must be to each future generation, it seems scarcely extravagant to say that the best influence upon the morals of the American nation would be such as might improve their health. Good and bad health are both cause and effect of good and bad morals. No proof of this is needed, nor any further dwelling upon the proposition. The fact, however, points out to the observer the duty of obtaining a correct general estimate of the health of the community he visits. There are two principal methods by which he may obtain the knowledge he wants,--by examining civic registers, and by visiting burial-grounds. A faithful register of births, marriages, and deaths, is wished for by enlightened philanthropists of all advanced countries, far more as a test of national morals and the national welfare, than as a matter of the highest social convenience. For this the physiologist waits as the means of determining the physical condition of the nation; as a guide to him in suggesting and prescribing the methods by which the national health may be improved, and the average of life prolonged.--For this the legislator waits as the means of determining the comparative proneness of the people to certain kinds of social offences, and the causes of that proneness; that the law may be framed so as to include (as all wise laws should include) the largest preventive influence with the greatest certainty of retribution.--For this the philanthropist waits as a guide to him in forming his scheme of universal education; and without this,--without knowing how many need education altogether,--how many under one set of circumstances, and how many under another,--he can proceed only in darkness, or amidst the delusions of false lights. He is only perplexed by the partial knowledge, which is all that his utmost efforts enable him to obtain. If he goes into every house of every town and village in his district, he is no nearer to an understanding of the intellectual and moral condition of the nation than he was before: for other districts have a different soil and different occupations; the employments of the people, their diseases and their resources, are unlike; and, under these diverse influences, their physical, and therefore moral and intellectual condition, must vary. The reports of Philanthropic Societies do little more for him, drawn up as they are with partial objects and under exclusive influences: parliamentary disclosures are of little more use. Vague statements about the increase of drunkenness, resistance to one kind of law or another, alarm and distress him; but such statements again are partial, and so often brought forward for a particular object, that they afford no safe guide to him who would form a general preventive or remedy. Thus it is under all partial methods of observation; but when the philanthropist shall gain access to a register of the national births, marriages, and deaths, he will have under his hand all the materials he requires, as completely as if he were hovering over the kingdom, comprehending all its districts in one view, and glancing at will into all its habitations. The comparative ages of the dead will indicate to him not only the amount of health, but the comparative force of various species of disease; and from the character of its diseases, and the amount of its health, much of the moral state of a people may be safely pronounced upon. The proportion of marriages to births and deaths is always an indication of the degree of comfort enjoyed, and of the consequent purity of morals; and, therefore, of the degree in which education is present or needed. A large number of children, and a large proportion of marriages, indicate physical and moral welfare, and therefore a comparative prevalence of education. A large number of births, and a small proportion of marriages, indicate the reverse. When these circumstances are taken in connexion with the prevailing occupations of the district to which they relate, the philanthropist has arrived at a sufficient certainty as to the means of education required, and the method in which they are to be applied. There is, unfortunately, in all countries, an insufficiency of records framed for the purpose of induction, and subsequent practical use. The chief of a tribe, proud in proportion to his barbarian insignificance, may from time to time indulge himself by numbering the people whom he considers as his property; and an ambitious and warlike emperor may organize a conscription; and these records may remain to fulfil hereafter far more exalted purposes than those for which they were designed: but these instances are few; and in the art of constructing tables, and ascertaining averages, the most civilized people are still, for want of practice, in a state of unskilfulness. But, in the absence of that which would spare observers the task of ascertaining results for themselves, they must take the best they can get. A traveller must inquire for any public registers which may exist in all districts, and note and reflect upon the facts he finds there. In case of there being none such, it is possible that the physicians of the district may be able to afford information from private documents of the same nature. If not, there remain the cemeteries. The calculators of longevity believe that they may now, by taking down the dates from the first thirty tombstones in the cemeteries of the districts they pass through, learn the comparative healthiness and length of life of the inhabitants of the country. However this may be, there is no doubt that a large variety and extent of information may be thus obtained. The observer can ascertain where the fatal diseases of infancy most prevail,--which is the same thing as knowing that the physical and moral condition of the people is low; as a large proportion (not mere number) of deaths in infancy is a most unfavourable symptom of society. He can ascertain where consumption prevails, where fever, and where the largest proportion attains to length of days. It is much to know what character disease and death wear in any district. One character of Morals and Manners prevails where the greater number die young, and another where they die old; one where they are cut off by hardship; another where they waste away under a lingering disease; and yet another where they abide their full time, and then come to their graves like a shock of corn in its season. The grave-yards on the heights of the Alleghanies will tell a different tale of Morals and Manners from the New Orleans' cemetery, glaring in the midst of the swamp; and so would the burial-places in the suburbs of Irish cities, if their contents were known, from those of the hardy Waldenses, or of the decent and thriving colonists of Frederick's-oord. * * * * * The Marriage compact is the most important feature of the domestic state on which the observer can fix his attention. If he be a thinker, he will not be surprised at finding much imperfection in the marriage state wherever he goes. By no arrangements yet attempted have purity of morals, constancy of affection, and domestic peace been secured to any extensive degree in society. Almost every variety of method is still in use, in one part of the world or another. The primitive custom of brothers marrying sisters still subsists in some Eastern regions. Polygamy is very common there, as every one knows. In countries which are too far advanced for this, every restraint of law, all sanction of opinion, has been tried to render the natural method,--the restriction of one husband to one wife,--successful, and therefore universal and permanent. Law and opinion have, however, never availed to anything like complete success. Even in thriving young countries, where no considerations of want, and few of ambition, can interfere with domestic peace,--where the numbers are equal, where love has the promise of a free and even course, and where religious sentiment is directed full upon the sanctity of the marriage state,--it is found to be far from pure. In almost all countries, the corruption of society in this department is so deep and wide-spreading, as to vitiate both moral sentiment and practice in an almost hopeless degree. It neutralizes almost all attempts to ameliorate and elevate the condition of the race.--There must be something fearfully wrong where the general result is so unfortunate as this. As in most other cases of social suffering, the wrong will be found to lie less in the methods ordained and put in practice, than in the prevalent sentiment of society, out of which all methods arise. It is necessary to make mention (however briefly) of the kinds of false sentiment from which the evil of conjugal unhappiness appears to spring.--The sentiment by which courage is made the chief ground of honour in men, and chastity in women, coupled with the inferiority in which women have ever been sunk, was sure to induce profligacy. As long as men were brave nothing more was required to make them honourable in the eyes of society: while the inferior condition of women has ever exposed those of them who were not protected by birth and wealth to the profligacy of men.--The shallowness of the sentiment of honour is another great evil. In its origin, honour includes self-respect and the respect of others. In time, "from its intimate connexion with what is personal in interest and feeling, it is greatly exposed to degenerate into a false and misguiding sentiment. Connecting itself with the notions of character which prevail by chance in the community, rather than with the rule of right and of God, it has erected a false standard of estimate." The requisitions of honour come to be viewed as regarding only equals, or those who are hedged about with honour, and they are neglected with regard to the helpless. Men of honour use treachery with women,--with those to whom they promise marriage, and with those to whom, in marrying, they promised fidelity, love, and care; and yet their honour is, in the eyes of society, unstained.--Feudal ambition is another sentiment fraught with evil to marriage. In a society where pride and ostentation prevail, where rank and wealth are regarded as prime objects of pursuit, marriage comes to be regarded as a means of obtaining these. Wives are selected for their connexions and their fortune, and the love is placed elsewhere.--Any one of these corrupt species of sentiment, and of some others which exist, must ruin domestic peace, if the laws of each country were as wise as they are now, for the most part, faulty, and as powerful as they are now ineffectual.--If the traveller will bear these things in mind, he will gain light upon the moral sentiment of the society by the condition of domestic life in it; and again, what he knows of the prevalent moral sentiment of the society will cast light upon the domestic condition of its members. Another thing to be carefully remembered is, that asceticism and licentiousness universally coexist. All experience proves this; and every principle of human nature might prophesy the proof. Passions and emotions cannot be extinguished by general rules. Self-mortification can spring only out of a home-felt principle, and not from the will of another, or of any number of others. The exhibition only can be restrained, and the visible conduct ordered by rule. In consequence, it is found that no greater impurity of mind exists than among associated ascetics; and nowhere are crimes of the licentious class so gross, other circumstances being equal, as in communities which have the puritanic spirit. Any one well-informed on the subject is aware that there is much coarseness in the manners of the Quakers; and their regard for the pleasures of the table is open to the observation of all. Nowhere are drunkenness and infanticide more disgusting and horrible, when they do occur, than in Calvinistic Scotland. The bottomless corruption of Vienna is notorious; and much of it is traceable to a species of political asceticism,--to artificial restrictions other than religious, but producing similar effects. Politics are a forbidden topic of conversation. Under this rule, literature is a forbidden topic too; for literary and philosophical necessarily induces political communication. In Vienna may be seen the singular spectacle of an assembled multitude who read, not one of whom opens his lips upon books, or their subject matter. What then remains? Gallantry. The intellect being silenced, the passions run riot; and the excessive corruption of the society,--a corruption which is notorious over the civilized world,--is the natural consequence. It may safely be assumed that wherever artificial restraints are imposed on the passions, or on the intellects and pursuits of men, there must be licentiousness, precisely proportioned to the severity of the restraint. Celibacy of the clergy, or of any other class of men, involves polygamy, virtual if not avowed, in some other class. To this the relaxation of domestic morals in the higher orders of all Catholic societies bears testimony as strongly as the existence of allowed polygamy in India. It is everywhere professed that Christianity puts an end to polygamy; and so it does, as Christianity is understood in Protestant countries; but a glance at the state of morals in countries where celibacy is the religion of the clergy,--among the higher ranks in Italy, in France, in Spain,--shows that, while the name of polygamy is disclaimed, the thing is held in no great abhorrence. This is mentioned here simply as matter of fact, necessary to our inquiry as to how to observe morals and manners. It is notorious that, wherever celibacy is extensively professed, there is not only, as a consequence, a frequent breach of profession, but a much larger indulgence extended to other classes, in consequence of the restrictions on one. The methods of marriage in Italy and France,--the disposing of the woman at an early age, and before she is capable of giving an enlightened consent,--often even without the form of asking her consent,--on the understanding, tacit or avowed, that she may hereafter place her affections elsewhere,--these proceedings could have been adopted, could now be persevered in, only in countries where partial asceticism had induced a corresponding licentiousness.--The same fact,--the invariable proportion of asceticism and licentiousness,--exists where by some it would be least looked for,--in societies which have the reputation of being eminently pure; and this consideration is sufficient to extinguish all boasting, all assumption of unquestionable moral superiority in one people over another. It is not only that each nation likes its own notions of morals better than those of its neighbours; but that the very same things which are avowed among those who are called the grossest, happen with that which considers itself the most pure. Such superiority as there is is owing, perhaps, in no case to severity of religious sentiment and discipline, but rather to the worldly ease which blesses a young and thinly peopled country, and to the high cultivation of a society which furnishes its members with an extraordinary diversity of interests and pursuits. Marriage exists everywhere, to be studied by the moral observer. He must watch the character of courtships wherever he goes;--whether the young lady is negociated for and promised by her guardians, without having seen her intended; like the poor girl who, when she asked her mother to point out her future husband from among a number of gentlemen, was silenced with the rebuke, "What is that to you?"--or whether they are left free to exchange their faith "by flowing stream, through wood, or craggy wild," as in the United States;--or whether there is a medium between these two extremes, as in England. He must observe how fate is defied by lovers in various countries. We have seen what was the acquiescence of Philip and Hannah in their eternal separation. None but Moravians, perhaps, would have so parted for ever. Scotch lovers agree to come together after so many years spent in providing the "plenishing." Irish lovers conclude the business, in case of difficulty, by appearing before the priest the next morning. There is recourse to a balcony and rope-ladder in one country; a steam-boat and back-settlement in another; trust and patience in a third; and intermediate flirtations, to pass the time, in a fourth. He must note the degree of worldly ambition which attends marriages, and which may therefore be supposed to stimulate them,--how much space the house with two rooms in humble life, and the country-seat and carriages in higher life, occupy in the mind of bride or bridegroom.--He must observe whether conjugal infidelity excites horror and rage, or whether it is so much a matter of course as that no jealousy interferes to mar the arrangements of mutual convenience.--He must mark whether women are made absolutely the property of their husbands, in mind and in estate; or whether the wife is treated more or less professedly as an equal party in the agreement.--He must observe whether there is an excluded class, victims to their own superstition or to a false social obligation, wandering about to disturb by their jealousy or licentiousness those whose lot is happier.--He must observe whether there are domestic arrangements for home enjoyments, or whether all is planned on the supposition of pleasure lying abroad; whether the reliance is on books, gardens, and play with children, or on the opera, parties, the ale-house, or dances on the green.--He must mark whether the ladies are occupied with their household cares in the morning, and the society of their husbands in the evening, or with embroidery and looking out of balconies; with receiving company all day, or gadding abroad; with the library or the nursery; with lovers or with children.--In each country, called civilized, he will meet with almost all these varieties: but in each there is such a prevailing character in the aspect of domestic life, that intelligent observation will enable him to decide, without much danger of mistake, as to whether marriage is merely an arrangement of convenience, in accordance with low morals, or a sacred institution, commanding the reverence and affection of a virtuous people. No high degree of this sanctity can be looked for till that moderation is attained which, during the prevalence of asceticism and its opposite, is reached only by a few. That it yet exists nowhere as the characteristic of any society,--that all the blessings of domestic life are not yet open to all, so as to preclude the danger of any one encroaching on his neighbour,--is but too evident to the travelled observer. He can only mark the degree of approximation to this state of high morals wherever he goes. The traveller everywhere finds woman treated as the inferior party in a compact in which both parties have an equal interest. Any agreement thus formed is imperfect, and is liable to disturbance; and the danger is great in proportion to the degradation of the supposed weaker party. The degree of the degradation of woman is as good a test as the moralist can adopt for ascertaining the state of domestic morals in any country. The Indian squaw carries the household burdens, trudging in the dust, while her husband on horseback paces before her, unencumbered but by his own gay trappings. She carries the wallet with food, the matting for the lodge, the merchandize (if they possess any), and her infant. There is no exemption from labour for the squaw of the most vaunted chief. In other countries the wife may be found drawing the plough, hewing wood and carrying water; the men of the family standing idle to witness her toils. Here the observer may feel pretty sure of his case. From a condition of slavery like this, women are found rising to the highest condition in which they are at present seen, in France, England, and the United States,--where they are less than half-educated, precluded from earning a subsistence, except in a very few ill-paid employments, and prohibited from giving or withholding their assent to laws which they are yet bound by penalties to obey. In France, owing to the great destruction of men in the wars of Napoleon, women are engaged, and successfully engaged, in a variety of occupations which have been elsewhere supposed unsuitable to the sex. Yet there remains so large a number who cannot, by the most strenuous labour in feminine employments, command the necessaries of life, while its luxuries may be earned by infamy, that the morals of the society are naturally bad. Great attention has of late been given to this subject in France: the social condition of women is matter of thought and discussion to a degree which promises some considerable amelioration. Already, women can do more in France than anywhere else; they can attempt more without ridicule or arbitrary hinderance: and the women of France are probably destined to lead the way in the advance which the sex must hereafter make. At present, society is undergoing a transition from a feudal state to one of mutual government; and women, gaining in some ways, suffer in others during the process. They have, happily for themselves, lost much of the peculiar kind of observance which was the most remarkable feature of the chivalrous age; and it has been impossible to prevent their sharing in the benefits of the improvement and diffusion of knowledge. All cultivation of their powers has secured to them the use of new power; so that their condition is far superior to what it was in any former age. But new difficulties about securing a maintenance have arisen. Marriage is less general; and the husbands of the greater number of women are not secure of a maintenance from the lords of the soil, any more than women are from being married. The charge of their own maintenance is thrown upon large numbers of women, without the requisite variety of employments having been opened to them, or the needful education imparted. A natural consequence of this is, that women are educated to consider marriage the one object in life, and therefore to be extremely impatient to secure it. The unfavourable influence of these results upon the happiness of domestic life may be seen at a glance. This may be considered the sum and substance of female education in England; and the case is scarcely better in France, though the independence and practical efficiency of women there are greater than in any other country. The women in the United States are in a lower condition than either, though there is less striving after marriage, from its greater frequency, and little restriction is imposed upon the book-learning which women may obtain. But the old feudal notions about the sex flourish there, while they are going out in the more advanced countries of Europe; and these notions, in reality, regulate the condition of women. American women generally are treated in no degree as equals, but with a kind of superstitious outward observance, which, as they have done nothing to earn it, is false and hurtful. Coexisting with this, there is an extreme difficulty in a woman's obtaining a maintenance, except by the exercise of some rare powers. In a country where women are brought up to be indulged wives, there is no hope, help, or prospect for such as have not money and are not married. In America, women can earn a maintenance only by teaching, sewing, employment in factories, keeping boarding-houses, and domestic service. Some governesses are tolerably well paid,--comparing their earnings with those of men. Employment in factories, and domestic service, are well paid. Sewing is so wretched an occupation everywhere, that it is to be hoped that machinery will soon supersede the use of human fingers in a labour so unprofitable. In Boston, Massachusetts, a woman is paid ninepence (sixpence English) for making a shirt.--In England, besides these occupations, others are opening; and, what is of yet greater consequence, the public mind is awakening to the necessity of enlarging the sphere of female industry. Some of the inferior branches of the fine arts have lately offered profitable employment to many women. The commercial adversity to which the country has been exposed from time to time, has been of service to the sex, by throwing hundreds and thousands of them upon their own resources, and thus impelling them to urge claims and show powers which are more respected every day.--In France this is yet more conspicuously the case. There, women are shopkeepers, merchants, professional accountants, editors of newspapers, and employed in many other ways, unexampled elsewhere, but natural and respectable enough on the spot. Domestic morals are affected in two principal respects by these differences. Where feminine occupations of a profitable nature are few, and therefore overstocked, and therefore yielding a scanty maintenance with difficulty, there is the strongest temptation to prefer luxury with infamy to hardship with unrecognized honour. Hence arises much of the corruption of cities,--less in the United States than in Europe, from the prevalence of marriage,--but awful in extent everywhere. Where vice is made to appear the interest of large classes of women, the observer may be quite sure that domestic morals will be found impure. If he can meet with any society where the objects of life are as various and as freely open to women as to men, there he may be sure of finding the greatest amount of domestic purity and peace; for, if women were not helpless, men would find it far less easy to be vicious. The other way in which domestic morals are affected by the scope which is allowed to the powers of women, is through the views of marriage which are induced. Marriage is debased by being considered the one worldly object in life,--that on which maintenance, consequence, and power depend. Where the husband marries for connexion, fortune, or an heir to his estate, and the wife for an establishment, for consequence, or influence, there is no foundation for high domestic morals and lasting peace; and in a country where marriage is made the single aim of all women, there is no security against the influence of some of these motives even in the simplest and purest cases of attachment. The sordidness is infused from the earliest years; the taint is in the mind before the attachment begins, before the objects meet; and the evil effects upon the marriage state are incalculable. All this--the sentiment of society with regard to Woman and to Marriage, the social condition of Woman, and the consequent tendency and aim of her education,--the traveller must carefully observe. Each civilized society claims for itself the superiority in its treatment of woman. In one, she is indulged with religious shows, and with masquerades, or Punch, as an occasional variety. In another, she is left in honourable and undisputed possession of the housekeeping department. In a third, she is allowed to meddle, behind the scenes, with the business which is confided to her husband's management. In a fourth, she is satisfied in being the cherished domestic companion, unaware of the injury of being doomed to the narrowness of mind which is the portion of those who are always confined to the domestic circle. In a fifth, she is flattered at being guarded and indulged as a being requiring incessant fostering, and too feeble to take care of herself. In a sixth society, there may be found expanding means of independent occupation, of responsible employment for women; and here, other circumstances being equal, is the best promise of domestic fidelity and enjoyment. It is a matter of course that women who are furnished with but one object,--marriage,--must be as unfit for anything when their aim is accomplished as if they had never had any object at all. They are no more equal to the task of education than to that of governing the state; and, if any unexpected turn of adversity befals them, they have no resource but a convent, or some other charitable provision. Where, on the other hand, women are brought up capable of maintaining an independent existence, other objects remain when the grand one is accomplished. Their independence of mind places them beyond the reach of the spoiler; and their cultivated faculty of reason renders them worthy guardians of the rational beings whose weal or woe is lodged in their hands. There is yet, as may be seen by a mere glance over society, only a very imperfect provision made anywhere for doing justice to the next generation by qualifying their mothers; but the observer of morals may profit by marking the degrees in which this imperfection approaches to barbarism. Where he finds that girls are committed to convents for education, and have no alternative in life but marriage, in which their will has no share, and a return to their convent, he may safely conclude that there a plurality of lovers is a matter of course, and domestic enjoyments of the highest kind undesired and unknown. He may conclude that as are the parents, so will be the children; and that, for one more generation at least, there will be little or no improvement. But where he finds a variety of occupations open to women; where he perceives them not only pursuing the lighter mechanic arts, dispensing charity and organizing schools for the poor, but occupied in education, and in the study of science and the practice of the fine arts, he may conclude that here resides the highest domestic enjoyment which has yet been attained, and the strongest hope of a further advance. * * * * * Children in all countries are, as Mrs. Grant of Laggan says, first vegetables, and then they are animals, and then they come to be people; but their way of growing out of one stage into another is as different, in different societies, as their states of mind when they are grown up. They all have limbs, senses, and intellects; but their growth of heart and mind depends incalculably upon the spirit of the society amidst which they are reared. The traveller must study them wherever he meets them. In one country, multitudes of them lie about in the streets, basking in the sun, and killing vermin; while the children of the very poorest persons of another country are decently clothed, and either busily occupied with such domestic employments as they are capable of, or at school, or playing among the rocks, or climbing trees, or crawling about the wooden bridges, without fear or danger. From this one symptom, the observer might learn the poverty and idleness of the lower classes of Spain, and the comfort and industry of those of the United States. As to the children of the richer classes, there is the widest difference in the world between those who are the idols of their mothers, (as in societies where the heart's love is lavished on the children which has not been engaged by the husband,) and those who are early steeped in corruption, (as in slave countries,) and those who are reared philosophers and saints, and those to whom home is a sunny paradise hedged round with love and care, and those who are little men and women of the world from the time they can walk alone. All these kinds of children exist,--sure breathings of the moral atmosphere of their homes. The traveller must watch them, talk with them, and learn from their bearing towards their parents, and the bent of their affections, what is the spirit of the families of the land. From observation on these classes of facts,--the Occupation of the people, the respective Characters of the occupied classes, the Health of the population, the state of Marriage and of Women, and the character of Childhood,--the moralist may learn more of the private life of a community than from the conversation of any number of the individuals who compose it. CHAPTER IV. IDEA OF LIBERTY. "He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever Can be between the cradle and the grave, Crowned him the King of Life. O vain endeavour, If on his own high will, a willing slave, He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor! What if earth can clothe and feed Amplest millions at their need, And power in thought be as the tree within the seed? Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor, Diving on fiery wings to Nature's throne, Checks the great mother stooping to caress her, And cries, Give me, thy child, dominion Over all height and depth? If Life can breed New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan Rend of thy gifts and her's a thousandfold for one." _Shelley._ The same rule--of observing Things in preference to relying upon the Discourse of persons--holds good in the task of ascertaining the Idea of Liberty entertained and realized by any society. The Things to be observed for this purpose are those which follow. The most obvious consideration of all is the amount of feudal arrangements which remain,--so obvious as to require only a bare mention. If people are satisfied to obey the will of a lord of the soil, to go out to hunt or to fight at his bidding, to require his consent to marriages among his dependants, and to hold whatever they have at his permission, their case is clear. They are destitute of any idea of liberty, and can be considered at best only half-civilized.--It matters little whether all this subservience is yielded to the owner of an estate, or the sovereign of the country, represented by his police or soldiery. Blind, ignorant obedience to any ruling power which the subjects had no hand in constituting, on the one part, and the enforcement of that obedience on the other, is the feudal temper. A sleek Austrian of the middle ranks stood, of late, smoking at his door. A practical joker, who had a mind to see how far the man's deference for the police would carry him, drew towards him, and whispered in his ear, "You must dance." The Austrian stared. "Dance, I say!" repeated the stranger, with an air of authority. "Why must I dance?" asked the Austrian, when he had removed the pipe from his mouth. "Because I, an agent of the police, insist upon it." The Austrian instantly began capering, and continued his exercise till desired to stand still, assured that he had satisfied the police.--In the United States, the contrast is amusing. On occasions of public assembly, the appeal is made to the democratic sentiment of the people to preserve order. If an orator is to hold forth on an anniversary, the soldiers (most citizen-like militia) may be seen putting their arms round the necks of newly arrived listeners, in supplication that they will leave seats vacant for the band. If a piece of plate is to be presented to a statesman, and twice as many people throng to the theatre as the building will hold, harangues may be heard from the neighbouring balconies,--appeals to the gallantry and kindliness of the crowd,--which are found quite as effectual in controlling the movements of the assemblage as any number of bayonets or constables' staves could be. This leads to the mention of the Police of a country as a sure sign of the idea of liberty existing within it. Where the soldiery are the guards of social order, it makes all the difference whether they are royal troops,--a destructive machinery organized against the people,--or a National Guard, springing up when needed from among the people, for the people's sake,--or a militia, like the American, mentioned above,--virtually stewards of the meeting, and nothing more. Whatever may be thought of the comparative ease of proceeding, on any given occasion, between a police like that of Paris, and a constabulary like that of the American cities, (a mockery to European rulers,) it is a striking fact that order has been generally preserved for half a century, in a country where public meetings are a hundred times as numerous as in any kingdom in Europe, by means which would in Europe be no means at all. It is clear that the idea of liberty must be elevated, and the love of social order intelligent and strong, where the peace has been kept through unanimity of will. With the exception of outrages growing out of the institution of slavery, (which require a deeper treatment than any species of constabulary can practise,) the United States, with opportunities of disturbance which have been as a hundred to one, have exhibited fewer instances of a breach of public order than any other country in the same space of time; and this order has been preserved by the popular will, in the full knowledge on all hands that no power existed to control this will. This is a fact which speaks volumes in favour of the principles, if not the policy, of the American people. In the United States, the traveller may proceed a thousand miles in any direction, or live ten years in one place, without the idea of control, beyond that of social convenience, being once presented to his mind. Paul Louis Courier gives us the experience of an acquaintance of his. "Un homme que j'ai vu arrive d'Amérique. Il y est resté trois ans sans entendre parler de ce que nous appelons ici l'autorité. Il a vécu trois ans sans être gouverné, s'ennuyant à périr."--In France, he cannot go in search of the site of the Bastille without finding himself surrounded by watchers before he has stood five minutes.--In Italy, his trunks are opened to examine the books he carries, and compare them with the list of proscribed works.--In Spain, he can say nothing in public that is not likely to be known to the authorities before the day is out; or in private that is not in possession of some priest after the next period of confession.--In Switzerland, he finds that he is free to do any thing but make inquiries about the condition of the country. If he asks, as the Emperor Joseph did before him, "Quels sont les revenues de votre république?" he may receive the same answer, "Ils excedent nos dépenses."--In Germany, his case is like that of the inhabitants of the cities;--his course is open and agreeable as long as he pursues inferior objects, but it is made extremely inconvenient to him to gratify his interest in politics.--In Poland, evidences of authority will meet his observation in every direction, while he will rarely hear the name of its head.--In Russia, he will find the people speaking of their despot as their father, and will perceive that it is more offensive to allude to the mortality of emperors than to talk lightly to children of the death of their parents. A gentleman in the suite of an English ambassador inquired, after having been conducted over the imperial palace at St. Petersburgh, which of the rooms he had seen was that in which the Emperor Paul was killed. No answer was returned to his question, nor to his repetition of it. He imprudently persisted till some reply was necessary. His guide whispered, with white lips, "Paul was not killed. Emperors do not die; they transpire out of life." Such are some of the relations of the people to authority which will strike the observation of the traveller in the most civilized of foreign countries. These will be further illustrated by the smallest circumstances which meet his eye that can in any way indicate what are the functions of the police, and where it has most or least authority. The Emperor Paul issued an ukase about shoestrings, which it was highly penal to disobey. His son has lately ordained the precise measurement of whiskers, and cut of the hair behind, to be observed by the officers of the army. In some regions, all men go armed: in others, it is penal to wear arms: in others, people may do as they please. In some countries, there are costumes of classes enforced by law: in others, by opinion: while fashion is the only dictator in a third. In some societies citizens must obtain leave from the authorities to move from place to place: in others, strangers alone are plagued with passports: in others, there is perfect freedom of locomotion for all.--In his observation of the workings of authority, as embodied in a police, his own experience of restraint or liberty will afford him ample material for thought, and ground of inference. Such restraint as exists derives its character chiefly from its origin. It makes a wide difference whether the police are the creatures of a despotic sovereign who treats his subjects as property; or whether they are the agents of a representative government, appointed by responsible rulers for the public good; or whether they are the servants of a self-governing people, chosen by those among whom their work lies. It makes a wide difference whether they are in the secret pay of an irresponsible individual, or appointed by command of a parliament, or elected by a concourse of citizens. In any case, their existence and their function testify to the absence or presence of a general idea of liberty among the people; and to its nature, if present. * * * * * It is taken for granted that the traveller is informed, before he sets out, respecting the form of Government and general course of Legislation of the nation he studies. He will watch both, attending upon the administration as well as the formation of laws,--visiting, where it is allowed, the courts of justice as well as the halls of parliament. But he must remember that neither the composition of the government, nor the body of the laws, nor the administration of them, is an evidence of what the idea of liberty at present is among the people, except in a democratic republic, where the acts of the government are the result of the last expression of the national will. Every other representative system is too partial for its legislative acts to be more than the expression of the will of a party; and the great body of laws is everywhere, except in America, the work of preceding ages. Though, therefore, the observer will allow no great legislative and administrative acts to pass without his notice, he will apply himself to other sets of circumstances to ascertain what is the existing idea of liberty prevalent among the people. He will observe, from certain facts of their position, what this idea must be; and, from certain classes of their own deeds, what it actually is. One of the most important circumstances is, whether the population is thinly sprinkled over the face of the country, or whether it is collected into neighbourly societies. This all-important condition has been alluded to so often already that it is only necessary to remind the observer never to lose sight of it. "Plus un peuple nombreux se rapproche," says Rousseau, "moins le gouvernement peut usurper sur le souverain. L'avantage d'un gouvernement tyrannique est donc en ceci, d'agir à grandes distances. A l'aide des points d'appui qu'il se donne, sa force augmente au loin, comme celle des léviers. Celle du peuple, au contraire, n'agit que concentrée: elle s'évapore et se perd en s'étendant, comme l'effet de la poudre éparse à terre, et qui ne prend feu que grain à grain. Les pays les moins peuplés sont ainsi les plus propres à la tyrannie. Les bêtes féroces ne règnent que dans les déserts." It is obvious enough that the Idea of Liberty, which can originate only in the intercourse of many minds, as the liberty itself can be wrought out only by the labours of many united hands, is not to be looked for where the people live apart, and are destitute of any knowledge of the interests and desires of the community at large. * * * * * Whether the society is divided into Two Classes, or whether there is a Gradation, is another important consideration. Where there are only two, proprietors and labourers, the Idea of Liberty is deficient or absent. The proprietory class can have no other desires on the subject than to repress the encroachments of the sovereign above them, or of the servile class below them: and in the servile class the conception of liberty is yet unformed. Only in barbarous countries, in countries where slavery subsists, and in some few strongholds of feudalism, is this decided division of society into two classes now to be found. Everywhere else there is more or less gradation; and in the most advanced countries the classes are least distinguishable. Below those members who, in European societies, are distinguished by birth, there is class beneath class of capitalists, though it is usual to comprehend them all, for convenience of speech, under the name of the middle class. Thus society in Great Britain, France, and Germany is commonly spoken of as consisting of three classes; while the divisions of the middle class are, in fact, very numerous. The small shopkeeper is not of the same class with the landowner, or wealthy banker, or professional man; while their views of life, their political principles, and their social aspirations, are as different as those of the peer and the mechanic. There are two pledges of the advancement of the idea of liberty in a community:--the one is the mingling of the functions of proprietor and labourer throughout the whole of a society ruled by a representative government; the other is the graduation of ranks by some other principle than hereditary succession. In ancient times most men were proprietors and labourers too; but under despotic rule. Societies which have once come under the representative principle are not likely to retrograde to this state; while there are influences ever at work to exalt the function of labour, and to extend that of proprietorship. Wherever this mixture of functions has gone the furthest,--wherever the mechanic classes are becoming capitalists, and proprietors are liable to sink down from their ancient honour, unless they can secure respect by personal qualifications, the idea of liberty is, to a considerable degree, confirmed and elevated. In such a case, it is clear that both the power and the desire of encroachment on the part of the upper class must be lessened, and that of resistance on the part of the lower increased.--The other improvement follows upon this. Proprietorship, with its feudal influences, having lost caste (though it has gained in true dignity), some other ground of distinction must succeed. If we may judge by what is before our eyes in the Western world, talent is likely to be the next successor. It is to be hoped that talent will, in its turn, give way to moral worth,--the higher degrees of which imply, however, superiority of mental power. The preference of personal qualifications to those of external endowment has already begun in the world, and is fast making its way. Such distinction of ranks as there is in America originates in mental qualifications. Statesmen, who rise by their own power, rank highest; and then authors. The wealthiest capitalist gives place, in the estimation of all, to a popular orator, a successful author, or an eminent clergyman.--In France, the honours of the peerage and the offices of the state are given to men of science, philosophy, and literature. The same is the case in some parts of Germany: and, even in aristocratic England, the younger members of her Upper House are unsatisfied with being merely peers, and are anxious to push their way in literature, as well as in politics.--The traveller must give earnest heed to symptoms like these, knowing that as the barriers of ranks are thrown down, and personal obtain the ascendant over hereditary qualifications, social coercion must be relaxed, and the sentiment of liberty exalted. * * * * * In close connexion with this, he must observe the condition of Servants. The treatment and conduct of domestics depend on causes which lie far deeper than the principles and tempers of particular servants and masters, as may be seen by a glance at domestic service in England, Scotland, and Ireland. In England, the old Saxon and Norman feud smoulders, (however unconscious the parties may be of the fact,) in the relation of master and servant. Domestics who never heard of either Norman or Saxon entertain a deep-rooted conviction of their masters' interests and their own being directly opposed, and are subject to a strong sense of injury. Masters who never bestow a thought on the transactions of the twelfth century, complain of a doggedness, selfishness, and case-hardened indifference in the class of domestics, which kindness cannot penetrate, or penetrates only to pervert. The relation is therefore a painful one in England. There is little satisfaction to be obtained between the extremes of servility and defiance, by which the conduct of servants is almost as distinctly marked now as when the nation was younger by seven centuries. The English housewives complain that confidence only makes their maid servants conceited, and that indulgence spoils them.--In Ireland, the case is of the same nature, but much aggravated. The injury of having an aristocracy of foreigners forced on the country, to whom the natives are to render service, is more recent, and the impression more consciously retained. The servants are ill-treated, and they yield bad service in return. It is mournful to see the arrangement of Dublin houses. The drawing-rooms are palace-like, while the servants' apartments are dark and damp dungeons. It is wearisome to hear the complaints of the dirt, falsehood, and faithlessness of Irish servants,--complaints which their mistresses have ever ready for the ear of the stranger; and it is disgusting to witness the effects in the household. It is equally sad and ludicrous to see the mistress of some families enter the breakfast room, with a loaf of bread under her arm, the butter-plate in one hand, and a bunch of keys in the other;--to see her cut from the loaf the number of slices required, and send them down to be toasted,--explaining that she is obliged to lock up the very bread from the thievery of her servants, and informing against them as if she expected them to be worthy of trust, while she daily insults them with the refusal of all trust,--even to the care of the bread-pan. In Scotland, the case is widely different. Servitude and clanship are there connected, instead of servitude and conquest. The service is willing in proportion; and the faults of domestics are not those common to the oppressed, but rather those proceeding from pride and self-will. The Scotch domestic has still the pride in the chief of the name which cherishes the self-respect of every member of a clan; and in the service of the chief there is scarcely any exertion which the humblest of his name would not make. The results are obvious. There is a better understanding between the two classes than in the other divisions of the kingdom: and Scotch masters and mistresses obtain a satisfaction from their domestics which no degree of justice and kindness in English and Irish housekeepers can secure. The dregs of an oppression of centuries cannot be purged away by the action of individual tempers, be they of the best. The causes of misunderstanding, as we have said, lie deep. The principles which regulate the condition of domestic servants in every country form thus a deep and wide subject for the traveller's inquiries. In America, he will hear frequent complaints from the ladies of the pride of their maid servants, and of the difficulty of settling them, while he sees that some are the most intimate friends of the families they serve; and that not a few collect books, and attend courses of scientific lectures. The fact is that, in America, a conflict is going on between opposite principles, and the consequences of the struggle show themselves chiefly in the relation between master and servant. The old European notions of the degradation of servitude survive in the minds of their American descendants, and are nourished by the presence of slavery on the same continent, and by the importation of labourers from Europe which is perpetually going on. In conflict with these notions are the democratic ideas of the honourableness of voluntary service by contract. It is found difficult, at first, to settle the bounds of the contract; and masters are liable to sin, from long habit, on the side of imperiousness, and the servants on that of captiousness and jealousy of their own rights. Such are the inconveniences of a transition state;--a state, however, upon which it should be remembered that other societies have yet to enter. In an Irish country-house, the guest sometimes finds himself desired to keep his wardrobe locked up.--In England, he perceives a restraint in the address of each class to the class above it.--In France, a washerwoman speaks with as much ease to a duchess as a duchess to a washerwoman.--In Holland, the domestics have chambers as scrupulously neat as their masters'.--In Ireland, they sleep in underground closets.--In New York, they can command their own accommodation.--In Cuba they sleep, like dogs, in the passages of the family dwellings. These are some of the facts from which the observer is to draw his inferences, rather than from the manners of some individuals of the class whom he may meet. In his conclusions from such facts he can hardly be wrong, though he may chance to become acquainted with a footman of the true heroic order in Dublin, and a master in Cuba who respects his own servants, and a cringing lackey in New York. * * * * * A point of some importance is whether the provincial inhabitants depend upon the management and imitate the modes of life of the metropolis, or have principles and manners of their own. Where there is least freedom and the least desire of it, everything centres in the metropolis. Where there is most freedom, each "city, town, and vill," thinks and acts for itself. In despotic countries, the principle of centralization actuates everything. Orders are issued from the central authorities, and the minds of the provinces are saved all trouble of thinking for themselves. Where self-government is permitted to each assemblage of citizens, they are stimulated to improve their idea and practice of liberty, and are almost independent of metropolitan usages. The traveller will find that "Paris is France," as everybody has heard, and that the government of France is carried on in half-a-dozen apartments in the capital, with little reference to the unrepresented thousands who are living some hundreds of miles off: while, if he casts a glance over Norway, he may see the people on the shores of the fiords, or in the valleys between the pine-steeps, quietly making their arrangements for controlling the central authority, even abolishing the institution of hereditary nobility in opposition to the will of the king; but legally, peaceably, and in all the simplicity of determined independence,--the result of a matured idea of liberty. The observer will note whether the pursuits and amusements of the provincial inhabitants originate in the circumstances of the locality, or whether they are copies from those of the metropolis; whether the great city be spoken of with reverence, scorn, or indifference, or not spoken of at all: whether, as in a Pennsylvanian village, the society could go on if the capital were swallowed up by an earthquake; or whether, as in Prussia, the favour of the central power is as the breath of the nostrils of the people. * * * * * Newspapers are a strong evidence of the political ideas of a people;--not individual newspapers; for no two, perhaps, fully agree in principles and sentiment, and it is to be feared that none are positively honest. Not by individual newspapers must the traveller form his judgment, but by the freedom of discussion which he may find to be permitted, or the restraints upon discussion imposed. The idea of liberty must be low and feeble among a people who permit the government to maintain a severe censorship; and it must be powerful and effectual in a society which can make all its complaints through a newspaper,--be the reports of the newspapers upon the state of social affairs as dismal as they may. Whatever revilings of a tyrannical president, or of a servile congress, a traveller may meet with in any number of American journals, he may fairly conclude that both the one and the other must be nearly harmless if they are discussed in a newspaper. The very existence of the newspapers he sees testifies to the prevalence of a habit of reading, and consequently of education--to the wide diffusion of political power--and to the probable safety and permanence of a government which is founded on so broad a basis, and can afford to indulge so large a licence. Whatever he may be told of the patriotism of a sovereign, let him give it to the winds if he finds a space in a newspaper made blank by the pen of a censor. The tameness of the Austrian journals tells as plain a tale as if no censor had ever suppressed a syllable;--as much so as the small size of a New Orleans paper compared with one of New York, or as the fiercest bluster of a Cincinnati Daily or Weekly, on the eve of the election of a president. * * * * * In countries where there is any Free Education, the traveller must observe its nature; and especially whether the subjects of it are distinguished by any sort of badge. The practice of badging, otherwise than by mutual consent, is usually bad: it is always suspicious. The traveller will note whether free education is conferred by charitable bequest, (a practice originating in times when the doctrine of expiation was prevalent, and continued to this day by its union with charity,) or whether it is framed at the will of the sovereign, that his young subjects may be trained to his own purposes,--as in the case of the Emperor of Russia and his young Polish victims; or whether it arises from the union of such a desire with a more enlightened object,--as may be witnessed in Prussia; or whether it is provided by the sovereign people,--by universal consent, as the right of every individual born into the community, and as the necessary qualification for the enjoyment of social privileges,--as in the United States. The English Christ Hospital boys are badged: Napoleon's Polytechnic pupils were badged; so are the Czar's orphan charge. Wherever the meddling or ostentatious charity of antique times is in existence,--times when the idea of liberty was low and confined,--this badging is to be looked for; and also wherever it is necessary to the purposes of the potentate to keep a register of the young subjects who may become his instruments or his foes:--but where education is absolutely universal, where any citizen has a right to put every child, not otherwise educated, into the school-house of his township, and where the rising generation are destined to take care of themselves, and legislate after their own will, no badging will be found. This apparently trifling fact is worth the attention of the observer. The extent of popular education is a fact of the deepest significance. Under despotisms there will be the smallest amount of it; and in proportion to the national idea of the dignity and importance of man,--idea of liberty, in short,--will be its extent, both in regard to the number it comprehends, and to the enlargement of their studies. The universality of education is inseparably connected with a lofty idea of liberty; and till the idea is realized in a constantly expanding system of national education, the observer may profitably note for reflection the facts whether he is surrounded on a frontier by a crowd of whining young beggars, or whether he sees a parade of charity scholars,--these all in blue caps and yellow stockings, and those all in white tippets and green aprons; or whether he falls in with an annual or quarterly assembly of teachers, met to confer on the best principles and methods of carrying on an education which is itself a matter of course. In countries where there is any popular Idea of Liberty, the universities are considered its stronghold, from their being the places where the young, active, hopeful, and aspiring meet,--the youths who are soon to be citizens, and who have here the means of daily communication of their ideas, for many years together. It would be an interesting inquiry how many revolutions, warlike or bloodless, have issued from seats of learning; and yet more, how many have been planned for which the existing powers, or the habits of society, have been too strong. If the universities are not so constituted as to admit of this fostering of free principles, they are pretty sure to retain the antique notions in accordance with which they were instituted, and to fall into the rear of society in morals and manners. It is the traveller's business to observe the characteristics of these institutions, and to reflect whether they are likely to aid or to retard the progress of the nation in which they stand. There are universities in almost every country; but they are as little like one another as the costumes that are found in Switzerland and India; and the one speak as plainly of morals and manners as the other of climate. It is needless to point out that countries which contain only aristocratic halls of learning, or schools otherwise devoid of an elastic principle, must be in a state of comparative barbarism; because, in such a case, learning (so called there) must be confined to a few, and probably to the few who can make the least practical use of it. Where the universities are on such a plan as that, preserving their primary form, they can admit increasing numbers, the state of intellect is likely to be a more advanced one. But a more favourable symptom is where seats of learning are multiplied as society enlarges, modified in their principles as new departments of knowledge open, and as new classes arise who wish to learn. That country is in a state of transition--of progression--where the ancient universities are honoured for as much as they can give, while new schools arise to supply their deficiencies, and Mechanics' Institutes, or some kindred establishments, flourish by the side of both. This state of things, this variety in the pursuit of knowledge, can exist only where there is a freedom of thought, and consequent diversity of opinion, which argues a vigorous idea of liberty. The observer must not, however, rest satisfied with ascertaining the proportion of the means of education to the people who have to be educated. He must mark the objects for which learning is pursued. The two most strongly contrasted cases which can be found are probably those of Germany and (once more) the United States. In the United States, it is well known, a provision of university education is made as ample as that of schools for an earlier stage; yet no one pretends that a highly finished education is to be looked for in that country. The cause is obvious. In a young nation, the great common objects of life are entered upon earlier, and every preparatory process is gone through in a more superficial manner. Seats of learning are numerous and fully attended, both in Germany and America, and they testify in each to a pervading desire of knowledge. Here the agreement ends. The German student may, without being singular, remain within the walls of his college till time silvers his hairs; or he has even been known to pass eighteen years among his books, without once crossing the threshold of his study. The young American, meanwhile, satisfied at the end of three years that he knows as much as his neighbours, settles in a home, engages in farming or commerce, and plunges into what alone he considers the business of life. Each of these pursues his appropriate objects: each is right in his own way: but the difference of pursuit indicates a wider difference of sentiment between the two countries than the abundance of the means of learning in each indicates a resemblance. The observer must therefore mark, not only what and how many are the seats of learning, but who frequent them; whether there are many, past the season of youth, who make study the business of their lives; or whether all are of that class who regard study merely as a part of the preparation which they are ordained to make for the accomplishment of the commonest aims of life. He can scarcely take his evening walk in the precincts of a university without observing a difference so wide as this. The great importance of the fact lies in this,--that increase of knowledge is necessary to the secure enlargement of freedom. Germany may not, it is true, require learning in her youth for political purposes, but because learning has become the taste, the characteristic honour of the nation; but this knowledge will infallibly work out, sooner or later, her political regeneration. America requires knowledge in her sons because her political existence itself depends upon their mental competency. The two countries will probably approximate gradually towards a sympathy which is at present out of the question. As America becomes more fully peopled, a literature will grow up within her, and study will assume its place among the chief objects of life. The great ideas which are the employment of the best minds of Germany must work their way out into action; and new and immediately practical kinds of knowledge will mingle themselves, more and more largely, with those to which she has been, in times past, devoted. The two countries may thus fall into a sympathetic correspondence on the mighty subjects of human government and human learning, and the grand idea of liberty may be made more manifest in the one, and disciplined and enriched in the other. * * * * * One great subject of observation and speculation remains--the objects and form of Persecution for Opinion in each country. Persecution for opinion is always going on among a people enlightened enough to entertain any opinions at all. There must always be, in such a nation, some who have gone further in research than others, and who, in making such an advance, have overstepped the boundaries of popular sympathy. The existence and sufferings of such are not to be denied because there are no fires at the stake, and no organized and authorized Inquisition, and because formal excommunication is gone out of fashion. Persecution puts on other forms as ages elapse; but it is not extinct. It can be inflicted out of the province of law, as well as through it; by a neighbourhood as well as from the Vatican. A wise and honest man may be wounded through his social affections, and in his domestic relations, as effectually as by flames, fetters, and public ignominy. There are wise and good persons in every civilized country, who are undergoing persecution in one form or another every day. Is it for precocity in science? or for certain opinions in politics? or for a peculiar mode of belief in the Christian religion, or unbelief of it? or for championship of an oppressed class? or for new views in morals? or, for fresh inventions in the arts, apparently interfering with old-established interests? or for bold philosophical speculation? Who suffers arbitrary infliction, in short, and how, for any mode of thinking, and of faithful action upon thought? An observer would reject whatever he might be told of the paternal government of a prince, if he saw upon a height a fortress in which men were suffering _carcere duro_ for political opinions. In like manner, whatever a nation may tell him of its love of liberty should go for little if he sees a virtuous man's children taken from him on the ground of his holding an unusual religious belief; or citizens mobbed for asserting the rights of negroes; or moralists treated with public scorn for carrying out allowed principles to their ultimate issues; or scholars oppressed for throwing new light into the sacred text; or philosophers denounced for bringing fresh facts to the surface of human knowledge, whether they seem to agree or not with long-established suppositions. The kind and degree of infliction for opinion which is possible, and is practised in the time and place, will indicate to the observer the degree of imperfection in the popular idea of liberty. This is a kind of fact easy to ascertain, and worthy of all attention. CHAPTER V. PROGRESS. "'Tis the sublime of man, Our noontide majesty, to know ourselves Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole! This fraternizes man, this constitutes Our charities and bearings." COLERIDGE. "Then let us pray that come it may, As come it will for a' that, That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, May bear the gree, and a' that. For a' that, and a' that, It's coming yet, for a' that, That man to man, the warld o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that." BURNS. However widely men may differ as to the way to social perfection, all whose minds have turned in that direction agree as to the end. All agree that if the whole race could live as brethren, society would be in the most advanced state that can be conceived of. It is also agreed that the spirit of fraternity is to be attained, if at all, by men discerning their mutual relation, as "parts and proportions of one wondrous whole." The disputes which arise are about how these proportions are to be arranged, and what those qualifications should be by which some shall have an ascendancy over others. This cluster of questions is not yet settled with regard to the inhabitants of any one country. The most advanced nations are now in a condition of internal conflict upon them. As for the larger idea,--that nations as well as individuals are "parts and proportions of one wondrous whole," it has hardly yet passed the lips or pen of any but religious men and poets. Its time will come when men have made greater progress, and are more at ease about the domestic arrangements of nations. As long as there are, in every country of the world, multitudes who cannot by any exertion of their own redeem themselves from hardship, and their children from ignorance, there is quite enough for justice and charity to do at home. While this is doing,--while the English are striving to raise the indigent classes of their society, the French speculating to elevate the condition of woman, and to open the career of life to all rational beings, the Germans waiting to throw off the despotism of absolute rulers, and the Americans struggling to free the negroes,--the fraternal sentiment will be growing, in preparation for yet higher results. The principle, acted upon at home, will be gaining strength for exercise abroad; and the more any society becomes like a band of brothers, the more powerful must be the sympathy which it will have to offer to other such bands. Far off as may be the realization of such a prospect, it is a prospect. For many ages poets and philosophers have entertained the idea of a general spirit of fraternity among men. It is the one great principle of the greatest religion which has ever nourished the morals of mankind. It is the loftiest hope on which the wisest speculators have lived. Poets are the prophets, and philosophers the analysers of the fate of men, and religion is the promise and pledge of unseen powers to those who believe in them. That cannot be unworthy of attention, of hope, of expectation, which the poets and the analysers of the race, have reposed upon, and on which the best religion of the world (and that which comprehends all others) is based. That which has never, for all its splendour, been deemed absurd by the wisest of the race is now beginning to be realized. We have now something more to show for our hope than what was before enough for the highest minds. The fraternal spirit has begun to manifest itself by its workings in society. The helpless are now aided expressly on the ground of their helplessness,--not from the emotions of compassion excited by the spectacle of suffering in particular cases, but in a nobler and more abstract way. Classes, crowds, nations of sufferers are aided and protected by strangers, powerful and at ease, who never saw an individual of the suffering thousands, and who have none but a spiritual interest in their welfare. Since missions to barbarous countries, action against slavery, and the care of the blind, deaf and dumb, and paupers, have become labours of society, the fraternity of men has ceased to be a mere aspiration, or even prophecy and promise. It is not only that the high-placed watchmen of the world have announced that the day is coming,--it has dawned; and there is every reason to expect that it will brighten into noon. The traveller must be strangely careless who, in observing upon the morals of a people, omits to mark the manifestations of this principle;--to learn what is its present strength, and what the promise of its growth. By fixing his observation on this he may learn, and no otherwise can he learn, whether the country he studies is advancing in wisdom and happiness, or whether it is stationary, or whether it is going back. The probabilities of its progress are wholly dependent upon this.--It will not take long to point out what are the signs of progression which he must study. * * * * * It is of great consequence whether the nation is insular or continental, independent or colonial. Though the time seems to be come when the sea is to be made a highway, as easy of passage as the land, such has not been the case till now. Even in the case of Great Britain,--the most accessible of islands, and the most tempting to access,--before the last series of wars, a much smaller number of strangers visited her than could have been supposed to come if they had only to pass land frontiers. During the wars, she was almost excluded from continental society. The progress that her people have made in liberality and humanity since communication has been rendered easy, is so striking that it is impossible to avoid supposing the enlarged commerce of mind which has taken place to be one of the chief causes of the improvement. It is probable that the advancement of the nation would have been still greater if the old geological state of junction with the continent had been restored for the last twenty years. She would then have been almost such a centre of influx as France has been, and by which France has so far profited that the French are now, it is believed, the most active-minded and morally progressive nation in the world. Much of the vigour and progression of France is doubtless owing to other causes; but much also to her rapid and extensive intercourse with the minds of many nations. The condition of the inhabitants of other islands is likely to be less favourable to progression than that of the British, in proportion as they have less intercourse. They are likely to have even more than the English proportion of self-satisfaction, dislike of foreigners, and reserve. Generally speaking, the inhabitants of islands are found to be to those of continental countries as villagers to citizens: they have good qualities of their own, but are behind the world. Malta has not the chance that she would have if we could annex her to the South of France; nor will the West India islands advance as they would do if we could throw them all into one, and intersect the whole with roads leading on either side from the great European and American cities. Malta and the West India islands have, however, the additional disadvantage of being colonies. The moral progression of a people can scarcely begin till they are independent. Their morals are overruled by the mother-country,--by the government and legislation she imposes, by the rulers she sends out, by the nature of the advantages she grants and the tribute she requires, by the population she pours in from home, and by her own example. Accordingly, the colonies of a powerful country exhibit an exaggeration of the national faults, with only infant virtues of their own, which wait for freedom to grow to maturity, and among which an enlarged sympathy with the race is seldom found. This is a temper uncongenial with a confined, dependent, and imitative society; and the first strong symptoms of it are usually found in the persons of those whose mission it is to lead the colony out of its minority into independence. These are conditions of a people which may guide the traveller's observations by showing him what to expect. Remembering these conditions, he will mark the greater or less enlargement and generosity of the spirit of society, and learn from these the fact or promise of progression, or whether it is too soon to look for either. There is another important condition which can hardly escape his notice: whether the people are homogeneous or composed of various races. The inhabitants of New England are a remarkable specimen of the first, as the inhabitants of the middle states of America will be of the last, two or three generations hence. Almost all the nations of Europe are mongrel; and those which can trace their descent from the greatest variety of ancestors have, other circumstances remaining the same, the best chance of progression. Among a homogeneous people, ancestral virtues flourish; but these carry with them ancestral faults as their shadow; and there is a liability of a new fault being added,--resistance to the spirit of improvement. If the chances of severity of ancient virtue are lessened in the case of a mongrel people, there is a counterbalancing advantage in the greater diversity of interests, enlargement of sympathy, and vigour of enterprise introduced by the close union of the descendants of different races. The people of New England, almost to a man descended from the pilgrim fathers, have the strong religious principle and feeling, the uprightness, the domestic attachment, and the principled worldly prudence of their ancestors, with much of their asceticism (and necessarily attendant cant) and bigotry. Their neighbours in the middle states are composed of contributions from all countries of the civilized world, and have, as yet, no distinctive character; but it is probable that a very valuable one will be formed, in course of time, from such elements as the genial gaiety of the cavaliers, the patient industry of the Germans and Dutch, the vivacity of the French, the sobriety of the Scotch, the enterprise of the Irish, and the domestic tastes of the Swiss,--all of which, with their attendant drawbacks, go to compose the future American character. The chief pride of the New Englanders is in their unmixed descent;--a virtuous pride, but not the most favourable to a progression which must antiquate some of the qualities to which they are most attached. The European components of the other population cherish some of the feudal prejudices and the territorial pride which they imported with them, and this is their peculiar drawback: but it appears that the enlarged liberality which they enjoy from being intermingled more than countervails the religious spirit of New England in opening the general heart and mind to the interests of the race at large. The progression of the middle states seems likely to be more rapid than that of New England, though the inhabitants of the northern states have hitherto taken and kept the lead. It is the traveller's business to enter upon this course of observation wherever he goes. When he has ascertained the conditions under which the national character is forming,--whether its situation is insular or continental, colonial or independent, and whether it is descended from one race or more, he will proceed to observe the facts which indicate progress or the reverse. * * * * * The most obvious of these facts is the character of charity. Charity is everywhere. The human heart is always tender, always touched by visible suffering, under one form or another. The form which this charity takes is the great question. In young and rude countries, an open-handed charity pervades the land. Everyone who comes in want to a dwelling has his immediate want relieved. The Arab gives from his mess to the hungerer who appears at the entrance of his tent. The negro brings rice and milk to the traveller who lies fainting under the palm. The poor are fed round convent-doors, morning and evening, where there are convents. In Ireland, it is a common practice to beg, in order to rise in the world,--a clear testimony to the practice of charity there. In all societies, the poor help the poorer; the depressed class aids the destitute. The existence of the charity may be considered a certainty. The inquiry is about its direction. The lowest order of charity is that which is satisfied with relieving the immediate pressure of distress in individual cases. A higher is that which makes provision on a large scale for the relief of such distress; as when a nation passes on from common alms-giving to a general provision for the destitute. A higher still is when such provision is made in the way of anticipation, or for distant objects; as when the civilization of savages, the freeing of slaves, the treatment of the insane, or the education of the blind and deaf mutes is undertaken. The highest charity of all is that which aims at the prevention rather than the alleviation of evil. When any considerable number of a society are engaged in this work, the spirit of fraternity is busy there, and the progression of the society is ascertained. In such a community, it is allowed that though it is good to relieve the hungry, it is better to take care that all who work shall eat, as a matter of right: that though it is good to provide for the comfort and reformation of the guilty, it is better to obviate guilt: that though it is good to teach the ignorant who come in one's way, it is better to provide the means of knowledge, as of food, for all. In short, it is a nobler charity to prevent destitution, crime, and ignorance, than to relieve individuals who never ought to have been made destitute, criminal, and ignorant. This war against the evils themselves, in preference to, but accompanied by, relief of the victims, has begun in many countries; and those which are the most busily occupied in the work must be considered the most advanced, and the most certain to advance. The observer must note the state of the work everywhere. In one country he will see the poor fed and clothed by charity, without any effort being made to relieve them from the pressure by which they are sunk in destitution. The spirit of brotherhood is not there; and such charity has nothing of the spirit of hope and progress in it. In another country, he will see the independent insisting on the right of the destitute to relief, and providing by law or custom for such relief. This is a great step, inasmuch as the interests of the helpless are taken up by the powerful,--a movement which must have something of the fraternal spirit for its impulse. In a third, he hears of prison discipline societies, missionary societies, temperance societies, and societies for the abolition of slavery. This is better still. It is looking wide,--so wide as that the spirit of charity acts as seeing the invisible,--the pagan trembling under the tabu, the negro outraged in his best affections, and the criminal hidden in the foul retreat of the common jail. It is also a training for looking deep; for these methods of charity all go to prevent the woes of future heathen generations, future slaves, drunkards, and criminals, as well as to soften the lot of those who exist. If, in a fourth society, the observer finds that the charity has gone deep as well as spread wide, and that the benevolent are tugging at the roots of indigence and crime, he may place this society above all the rest as to the brightness of its prospects. Such a movement can proceed only from the spirit of fraternity,--from the movers feeling it their own concern that any are depressed and endangered as they would themselves refuse to be. The elevation of the depressed classes in such a society, and the consequent progression of the whole, may be considered certain; for "sooner will the mother forget her sucking child" than the friends of their race forsake those for whom they have cared and laboured with disinterested love and toil. Criminals will never be plunged back into their former state in America, nor women in France, nor negroes in the colonies of England. The spirit of justice (which is ultimately one with charity) has gone forth, not only conquering, but still to conquer. To the prospects of the sufferers of society let the observer look; and he will discern the prospects of the society itself. * * * * * Useful arts and inventions spread so rapidly in these days of improving communication, that they are no longer the decisive marks of enlightenment in a people that they were when each nation had the benefit of its own discoveries, and little more. Yet it is worthy of remark what kinds of improvement are the most generally adopted; whether those which enhance the luxury of the rich, or such as benefit the whole society. It is worthy of remark whether the newest delight is in splendid club-houses, where gentlemen may command the rarest luxuries at a smaller expense than would have been possible without the aid of the principle of economy of association, or in the groups of mechanics' dwellings, where the same principle is applied in France to furnishing numbers with advantages of warmth, light, cookery, and cleanliness, which they could no otherwise have enjoyed. It is worth observing whether there are most mechanical inventions dedicated to the selfishness of the rich, or committed to the custom of the working classes. If the rich compose the great body of purchasers who are to be considered by inventors, the working classes are probably depressed. If there are most purchasers among the most numerous classes, the working order is rising, and the state of things is hopeful.--How speed the great discoveries and achievements which cannot, by any management, be confined to the few? How prospers the steam-engine, the rail-road,--strong hands which cannot be held back, by which a multitude of the comforts of life are extended to the poor, who could not reach up to them before? Do men glory most in the activity of these, or in the invention of a new pleasure for the satiated? In the finer arts, for whom are heads and hands employed? The study of the ruins of all old countries tells the antiquary of the lives of the rich alone. There are churches which record the living piety or the dying penitence of the rich; priories and convents which speak of monkish idleness, and the gross luxuries which have cloaked themselves in asceticism; there are palaces of kings, castles of nobles, and villas of opulent commoners; but nowhere, except in countries recently desolated by war, are the relics of the abodes of the poor the study of the traveller. If he now finds skill bestowed on the buildings which are the exclusive resort of the labouring classes, and taste employed in their embellishment, it is clear that the order is rising. The record of each upward heave will remain for the observation of the future traveller, in the buildings to which they resort;--a record as indisputable as a mountain fissure presents to the geologist. Time was when the dwellings of the opulent were ornamented with costly and beautiful works of art, while the eye of the peasant and the artisan found no other beauty to rest on than the face of his beloved, and the forms of his children. At this day, there are countries in Europe where the working man aspires to nothing more than to stick up an image of the Virgin, gay with coloured paper, in a corner of his dwelling. But there are other lands where a higher taste for beauty is gratified. There are good prints provided cheap, to hang in the place of the ancient sampler or daub. Casts from all the finest works of the statuary, ancient and modern, are hawked about the streets, and may be seen in the windows where green parrots and brown cats in plaster used to annoy the eye. In societies where the working class is thus worked for, in the gratification of its finer tastes, the class must be rising. It is rising into the region of intellectual luxury, and must have been borne up thither by the expansion of the fraternal spirit. * * * * * The great means of progress, for individuals, for nations, and for the race at large, is the multiplication of Objects of interest. The indulgence of the passions is the characteristic of men and societies who have but one occupation and a single interest; while the passions cause comparatively little trouble where the intellect is active, and the life diversified with objects. Pride takes a safe direction, jealousy is diverted from its purposes of revenge, and anger combats with circumstances, instead of with human foes. The need of mutual aid, the habit of co-operation caused by interest in social objects, has a good effect upon men's feelings and manners towards each other; and out of this grows the mutual regard which naturally strengthens into the fraternal spirit. The Russian boor, imprisoned in his serfhood, cannot comprehend what it is to care for any but the few individuals who are before his eyes, and the Grand Lama has probably no great sympathy with the race; but in a town within whose compass almost all occupations are going forward, and where each feels more or less interest in what engages his neighbour, nothing of importance to the race can become known without producing more or less emotion. A famine in India, an earthquake in Syria, causes sorrow. The inhabitants meet to petition against the wrongs inflicted on people whom they have never seen, and give of the fruits of their labour to sufferers who have never heard of them, and from whom they can receive no return of acknowledgment. It is found that the more pursuits and aims are multiplied, the more does the appreciation of human happiness expand, till it becomes the interest which predominates over all the rest. This is an interest which works out its own gratification, more surely than any other. Wherever, therefore, the greatest variety of pursuits is met with, it is fair to conclude that the fraternal spirit of society is the most vigorous, and the society itself the most progressive. This is as far as any nation has as yet attained,--to a warmer than common sympathy among its own members, and compassion for distant sufferers. When the time comes for nations to care for one another, and co-operate as individuals, such a people will be the first to hold out the right hand. * * * * * Manners have not been treated of separately from Morals in any of the preceding divisions of the objects of the traveller's observation. The reason is, that manners are inseparable from morals, or, at least, cease to have meaning when separated. Except as manifestations of morals, they have no interest, and can have no permanent existence. A traveller who should report of them exclusively is not only no philosopher, but does not merit the name of an observer; for he can have no insight into the matter which he professes to convey an account of. His interpretation of what is before his eyes is more likely to be wrong than correct, like that of the primitive star-gazers, who reported that the planets went backwards and forwards in the sky. To him, and to him only, who has studied the principles of morals, and thus possessed himself of a key to the mysteries of all social weal and woe, will manners be an index answering as faithfully to the internal movements, harmonious or discordant, of society, as the human countenance to the workings of the human heart. CHAPTER VI. DISCOURSE. "He that questioneth much shall learn much, and content much; but especially if he apply his questions to the skill of the persons whom he asketh; for he shall give them occasion to please themselves in speaking, and himself shall continually gather knowledge." _Bacon._ The Discourse of individuals is an indispensable commentary upon the classes of national facts which the traveller has observed. To begin the work of observation with registering this private discourse, is, as has been said, useless, from the diversity that there is in men's minds, and from the narrowness of the mental vision of each as he stands in a crowd. The testimony of no two would be found to agree; and, if the traveller depended upon them for his general facts, he could never furnish a record which could be trusted. But, the facts being once obtained by stronger evidence than individual testimony,--certain fixed points being provided round which testimony may gather,--the discourse of individuals assumes its proper value, and becomes illustrative where before it would have been only bewildering. The traveller must obtain all that he can of it. He must seek intercourse with all classes of the society he visits,--not only the rich and the poor, but those who may be classed by profession, pursuit, habits of mind, and turn of manners. He must converse with young men and maidens, old men and children, beggars and savans, postillions and potentates. He must study little ones at their mothers' knees, and flirtations in ball-rooms, and dealings in the market-place. He must overhear the mirth of revellers, and the grief of mourners. Wherever there is speech, he must devote himself to hear. One way in which discourse serves as a commentary upon the things he has observed is in the exhibition of certain general characters of its own, which are accordant with the general facts he has registered. The conversation of almost every nation has its characteristics, like that of smaller societies. The style of discourse in an English village is unlike that of a populous town; and the people of a town which is no thoroughfare talk differently from the inhabitants of one which is. In the same way is the general discourse of a whole people modified. In one country less regard is paid to truth in particulars, to circumstantial accuracy, than in another. One nation has more sincerity; another more kindliness in speech. One proses; another is light and sportive. One is frank; another reserved. One flatters the stranger; another is careless of him: and the discourse of the one is designed to produce a certain effect upon him; while that of the other flows out spontaneously, or is restrained, according to the traveller's own apparent humour. Such characteristics of the general discourse may be noted as a corroboration of suppositions drawn from other facts. They may be taken as evidence of the respective societies being catholic or puritanic in spirit; crude or accomplished; free and simple, or restrained and cautious; self-satisfied, or deficient in self-respect. The observer must be very careful not to generalize too hastily upon the discourse addressed to him; but there are everywhere large conclusions which he cannot help making. However wide the variety of individuals with whom he may converse, it is scarcely likely that he will meet in Spain with any number who will prose like the Americans; or in Germany with many who will treat him with the light jests of the French. Such general tendencies of any society as he may have been informed of by the study of things, he will find evidenced also by the general character of its discourse. Another way in which discourse serves as a commentary, is by showing what interests the people most. If the observer goes with a free mind and an open heart, not full of notions and feelings of his own, but ready to resign himself to those of the people he visits,--if he commits himself to his sympathies, and makes himself one with those about him, he cannot but presently discover and appreciate what interests them most. A high Tory in America will be more misled than enlightened by what is said to him, and so will a bigoted Republican in England. A prim Quaker will not understand the French from half a year of Parisian conversation, any more than a mere dandy would feel at home at Jena or Heidelberg. But a traveller free from gross prejudice and selfishness can hardly be many days in a new society without learning what are its chief interests. Even savages would speak to him of the figure-head of their canoe; and others would go through, in time, each its own range of topics, till the German had poured out to him his philosophical views, and the Frenchman his solicitudes for the amelioration of society, and the American his patriotic aspirations, and the Swiss his domestic sentiment. Whatever may be the restrictions imposed by rulers upon discourse, whatever may be the penalties imposed upon particular kinds of communication, all are unavailing in the presence of sympathy. At its touch the abundance of the heart will gush out at the lips. Men are so made that they cannot but speak of what interests them most to those who most share the interest. This is a decree of nature by which the decrees of despots are annulled. The power of a ruler may avail to keep an observer on his own side the frontier; but, if he has once passed it, it is his own fault if he does not become as well acquainted with the prevailing sentiment of the inhabitants, amidst the deadest public silence, as if it were shouted out to the four winds. If he carries a simple mind and an open heart, there is no mine in Siberia so deep but the voice of complaint will come up to him from it, and no home so watched by priests but that he will know what is concealed from the confessor. All this would do little more than mislead him by means of his sympathies, if such confidence were his only means of knowledge; but, coming in corroboration of what he has learned in the large elsewhere, it becomes unquestionable evidence of what it is that interests the people most. He must bear in mind that there are a few universal interests which everywhere stand first, and that it is the modification of these by local influences which he has to observe; and also what comes next in order to these. For instance, the domestic are the primary interests among all human beings. It is so where the New England father dismisses his sons to the West,--and where the Hindoo mother deserts her infants to seek the shade of her husband through the fire,--and where the Spanish parent consigns her youngest to the convent,--as truly as where the Norwegian peasant enlarges his roof to admit another and another family of his descendants. It is for the traveller to trust the words and tones of parental love which meet his ear in every home of every land; and to mark by what it is that this prime and universal interest is modified, so as to produce such sacrifice of itself. Taking the affection for granted, which the private discourse of parents and children compels him to do, what light does he find cast upon the influence of the priests here, and pride of territory there;--upon the superstition which is the weakness of one people, and the social ambition in the midst of poverty which is the curse of another! He must also find out from the conversation of the people he visits what is their particular interest, from observing what ranks next to those which are universal. In one country, parents love their families first, and wealth next; in another, their families first, and glory next; in a third, their families first, and liberty next; and so on, through the whole range of objects of human desire. Once having discerned the mode, he will find it easy to take the suffrage without much danger of mistake. The chief reason why the discourse of individuals, apart from the observation of classes of facts, is almost purely deceptive as to morals, is that the traveller can see no more than one in fifty thousand of the people, and has no security that those he meets are a sample of the whole. This difficulty does not interfere with one very important advantage which he may obtain from conversation,--knowledge of and light upon particular questions. A stranger might wish to learn the state of Christianity in England. If he came to London, and began with conversation, he might meet a Church-of-England-man one day, a Catholic the next, a Presbyterian the third, a Quaker the fourth, a Methodist the fifth, and so on, till the result was pure bewilderment. But if he conversed with intelligent persons, he would find that questions were pending respecting the church and dissent,--involving the very principles of the administration of religion. The opinions he hears upon these questions may be as various as the persons he converses with. He may be unable to learn the true characters of the statesmen and religious leaders concerned in their management: but he gains something of more value. Light is thrown upon the state of things from which alone these questions could have arisen. From free newspapers he might have learned the nature of the controversy; but in social intercourse much more is presented to him. He sees the array of opinions marshalled on each side, or on all the sides of the question; and receives an infinite number of suggestions and illustrations which could never have reached him but from the conflict of intellects, and the diversity of views and statements with which he is entertained in discourse. The traveller in every country should thus welcome the discussion of questions in which the inhabitants are interested, taking strenuous care to hear the statements of every party. From the intimate connexion of certain modes of opinion with all great questions, he will gain light upon the whole condition of opinion from its exhibition in one case. New subjects of research will be brought within his reach; new paths of inquiry will be opened; new trains of ideas will be awakened, and fresh minds brought into communication with his own. If he can secure the good fortune of conversing with the leaders on both sides of great questions,--with the men who have made it a pursuit to collect all the facts of the case, and to follow out its principles,--there is no estimating his advantage. There is, perhaps, scarcely one great subject of national controversy which, thus opened to him, would not afford him glimpses into all the other general affairs of the day; and each time that his mind grasps a definite opposition of popular opinion, he has accomplished a stage in his pilgrimage of inquiry into the tendencies of a national mind. He will therefore be anxious to engage all he meets in full and free conversation on prevailing topics, leaving it to them to open their minds in their own way, and only taking care of his own,--that he preserves his impartiality, and does no injustice to question or persons by bias of his own. In arranging his plans for conversing with all kinds of people, the observer will not omit to cultivate especially the acquaintance of persons who themselves see the most of society. The value of their testimony on particular points must depend much on that of their minds and characters; but, from the very fact of their having transactions with a large portion of society, they cannot avoid affording many lights to a stranger which he could obtain by no other means. The conversation of lawyers in a free country, of physicians, of merchants and manufacturers in central trading situations, of innkeepers and of barbers everywhere, must yield him much which he could not have collected for himself. The minds of a great variety of people are daily acting upon the thoughts of such, and the facts of a great variety of lives upon their experience; and whether they be more or less wise in the use of their opportunities, they must be unlike what they would have been in a state of seclusion. If the stranger listens to what they are most willing to tell, he may learn much of popular modes of thinking and feeling, of modes of living, acting, and transacting, which will confirm and illustrate impressions and ideas which he had previously gained from other sources. The result of the whole of what he hears will probably be to the traveller of the same kind with that which the journey of life yields to the wisest of its pilgrims. As he proceeds, he will learn to condemn less, and to admire, not less, but differently. He will find no intellect infallible, no judgment free from prejudice, and therefore no affections without their bias; but, on the other hand, he will find no error which does not branch out of some truth; no wrath which has not some reason in it; nothing wrong which is not the perversion of something right; no wickedness that is not weakness. If he is compelled to give up the adoration of individuals, the man-worship which is the religion of young days, he surrenders with it the spirit of contempt which ought also to be proper to youth. To a healthy mind it is impossible to mix largely with men, under a variety of circumstances, and wholly to despise either societies or individuals; so magnificent is the intellect of men in combination, so universal are their most privately nourished affections. He must deny himself the repose of implicit faith in the intellect of any one; but he cannot refuse the luxury of trust in the moral power of the whole. Instead of the complete set of dogmas with which he was perhaps once furnished, on the authority of a few individuals, he brings home a store of learning on the great subject of human prejudices: but he cannot have watched the vast effects of a community of sentiment,--he cannot have observed multitudes tranquillized into social order, stimulated to social duty, and even impelled to philanthropic self-sacrifice, without being convinced that men were made to live in a bond of brotherhood. He cannot have sat in conversation under the village elm, or in sunny vineyards, or by the embers of the midnight fire, without knowing how spirit is formed to unfold itself to spirit; and how, when the solitary is set in families, his sympathies bind him to them by such a chain as selfish interest never yet wove. He cannot have travelled wisely and well without being convinced that moral power is the force which lifts man to be not only lord of the earth, but scarcely below the angels; and that the higher species of moral power, which are likely to come more and more into use, clothe him in a kind of divinity to which angels themselves might bow.--No one will doubt this who has been admitted into that range of sanctuaries, the homes of nations; and who has witnessed the godlike achievements of the servants, sages, and martyrs, who have existed wherever man has been. PART III. MECHANICAL METHODS. "In sea-voyages, where there is nothing to be seen but sky and sea, men make diaries; but in land-travel, wherein so much is to be observed, they omit it."--BACON. "Stick to your journal course; the breach of custom Is breach of all."--_Cymbeline._ Travellers cannot be always on the alert, any more than other men. Their hours of weariness and of capricious idleness come, as at home; and there is no security against their occurring at inconvenient times,--just when some characteristic spectacle is to be witnessed, or some long-desired information is in waiting. By a little forethought, the observer may guard against some of the effects of seizures of apathy. If he would rather sleep in the carriage than get out to see a waterfall, he can only feel ashamed, and rouse himself to do his duty: but, by precaution, he may guard himself from passing by some things less beautiful than waterfalls, and to have seen which is less necessary to his reputation as a traveller; but which yet he will be more sorry eventually to have lost. To keep himself up to his business, and stimulate his flagging attention, he should provide himself, before setting out, with a set of queries, so prepared as to include every great class of facts connected with the condition of a people, and so divided and arranged as that he can turn to the right set at the fitting moment.--These queries are not designed to be thrust into the hand of any one who may have information to give. They should not even be allowed to catch his eye. The traveller who has the air of taking notes in the midst of conversation, is in danger of bringing away information imperfect as far as it goes, and much restricted in quantity in comparison with what it would be if he allowed it to be forgotten that he was a foreigner seeking information. If he permits the conversation to flow on naturally, without checking it by the production of the pencil and tablets, he will, even if his memory be not of the best, have more to set down at night than if he noted on the spot, as evidence, what a companion might be saying to him. But a glance in the morning at his list of queries may suggest inquiries which he might not otherwise remember to make; and they will help him afterwards to arrange the knowledge he has gained. He can be constantly adding to them as he goes along, and as new subjects arise, till he is in possession of a catechism on the facts which indicate morals and manners; which must prevent his researches being so capricious, and his information so vague as his moods and his idleness would otherwise occasionally make them. The character of these queries must, of course, depend much on where the traveller means to go. A set which would suit one nation would not completely apply to any other. The observer will do wisely to employ his utmost skill in framing them. His cares will be better bestowed on this than even on his travelling appointments, important as these are to his comfort. When he has done his best in the preparation of his lists, he must still keep on the watch to enlarge them, as occasion arises. Some travellers unite in one the functions of the query list and the journal: having the diary headed and arranged for the reception of classified information. But this seems to be debasing the function of a journal, whose object ought to be to reflect the mind of a traveller, and give back to him hereafter the image of what he thought and felt day by day. This is its primary function;--a most useful one, as every traveller knows who has kept one during a year's wandering in a foreign country. On his return, he laughs at the crudity of the information, and the childishness of the impressions, set down in the opening pages; and traces, with as much wonder as interest, the gradual expansion of his knowledge, education of his perceptions, and maturing of his judgments as to what is before him, as week succeeds to week, and each month mellows the experience of the last. The subordinate purpose of the journal is to record facts; and the way in which this is done ought not to depend on the stationer's rule, but on the nature of the traveller's mind. No man can write down daily all that he learns in a day's travel. It ought to be a matter of serious consideration with him what he will insert, and what trust to his memory. The simplest method seems to be to set down what is most likely to be let slip, and to trust to the memory what the affections and tastes of the traveller will not allow him to forget. One who especially enjoys intimate domestic intercourse will write, not fireside conversations, but the opinions of statesmen, and the doctrine of parties on great social questions. One whose tastes are religious will note less on the subject of public worship and private religious discourse, than dates, numbers, and facts on subjects of subordinate interest. All should record anecdotes and sayings which illustrate character. These are disjointed, and will escape almost any memory, if not secured in writing. Those who do not draw should also note scenery. A very few descriptive touches will bring back a landscape, with all its human interest, after a lapse of years: while perhaps there is no memory in the world which will present unaided the distinctive character of a succession of scenes. The returned traveller is ashamed to see the extent of his record of his personal feelings. His changes of mood, his sufferings from heat or cold, from hunger or weariness, are the most interesting things to him at the moment; and down they go, in the place of things much better worth recording, and he pays the penalty in many a blush hereafter. His best method will be to record as little as possible about himself; and, of other things, most of what he is pretty sure to forget, and least of what he can hardly help remembering. Generally speaking, he will find it desirable to defer the work of generalization till he gets home. In the earlier stages of his journey, at least, he will restrict his pen to the record of facts and impressions; or, if his mind should have an unconquerable theorizing tendency, he will be so far cautious as to put down his inferences conjecturally. It is easy to do this; and it may make an eternal difference to the observer's love of truth, and attainment of it, whether he preserves his philosophic thoughts in the form of dogmas or of queries. Though it is commonly spoken of as a settled thing that the journal should be written at night, there are many who do not agree to this. There are some whose memory fails when the body is tired, and who find themselves clear-headed about many things in the morning which were but imperfectly remembered before they had the refreshment of sleep. The early morning is probably the best time for the greater number; but it is a safe general rule that the journal should be written in the interval when the task is pleasantest. Whether the regularity be pleasant or not, (and to the most conscientious travellers it is the most agreeable,) the entries ought to be made daily, if possible. The loss incurred by delay is manifest to any one who has tried. The shortest entries are always those which have been deferred. The delay of a single day is found to reduce the matter unaccountably. In the midst of his weariness and unwillingness to take out his pen, the traveller may comfort himself by remembering that he will reap the reward of diligence in satisfaction when he gets home. He may assure himself that no lines that he can write can ever be more valuable than those in which he hives his treasures of travel. If he turns away from the task, he will have uneasy feelings connected with his journey as often as he looks back upon it;--feelings of remorse for his idleness, and of regret for irretrievable loss. If, on the other hand, he perseveres in the daily duty, he will go forward each morning with a disburthened mind, and will find, in future years, that he loves the very blots and weather-stains on the pages which are so many remembrancers of his satisfactory labours and profitable pleasures. Besides the journal, the traveller should have a note-book,--always at hand,--not to be pulled out before people's eyes, for the entry of facts related, but to be used for securing the transient appearances which, though revealing so much to an observing mind, cannot be recalled with entire precision. In all the countries of the world, groups by the wayside are the most eloquent of pictures. The traveller who lets himself be whirled past them, unobservant or unrecording, loses more than any devices of inquiry at his inn can repair. If he can sketch, he should rarely allow a characteristic group of persons, or nook of scenery, to escape his pencil. If he cannot use the pencil, a few written words will do. Two lines may preserve for him an exemplification which may be of great future value.--The farmers' wives of New England, talking over the snake-fence at sunset, are in themselves an illustration of many things: so is the stern Indian in his blanket-cloak, standing on a mound on the prairie; so is the chamois hunter on his pinnacle, and the pedestrian student in the valleys of the Hartz, and the pine-cutters on the steeps of Norway, and the travelling merchant on the dyke in Holland, and the vine-dressers in Alsace, and the beggars in the streets of Spanish cities, and all the children of all countries at their play. The traveller does not dream of passing unnoticed the cross in the wilderness, beneath which some brother pilgrim lies murdered; or the group of brigands seen in the shadow of the wood; or a company of Sisters of Charity, going forth to their deeds of mercy; or a pair of inquisitors, busy on the errands of the Holy Office; or anything else which strongly appeals to his imagination or his personal feelings. These pictures, thus engraved in his memory, he may safely leave to be entered in his journal, night or morning: but groups and scenes which ought to be quite as interesting, because they reveal the thoughts and ways of men, (the more familiarly the more faithfully,) should be as earnestly observed; and, to give them a chance of equal preservation, they should be noted on the instant. If a foreigner opens his eyes after a nap in travelling an Irish road, would it not be wise to note at once what he sees that he could not see elsewhere? He perceives that the green lanes which branch off from the road are more crowded with foliage, and less definite in their windings, than any other green lanes he has seen near high roads. The road itself is _sui generis_, with its border of rank grass, with tufts of straggling briers, and its rough stone walls, fringed with weeds, and gay with wild flowers. A beggarly wretch is astride on the top, singing the Doxology to the tune of Paudeen O'Rafferty, and keeping time with his heels: and, some way off, an old man crouches in the grass, playing cards,--the right hand against the left,--reviling the winner, and tenderly consoling the loser. Presently the stranger passes a roofless hut, where he sees, either a party of boys and girls throwing turf for a handful of meal, or a beggar-woman and her children resting in the shade of the walls to eat their cold potatoes. Such scenes could be beheld nowhere but in Ireland: but there is no country in the world where groups and pictures as characteristic do not present themselves to the observing eye, and in such quick succession that they are liable to be confused and lost, if not secured at the moment by brief touches of pencil or pen. The note-book should be the repository of such. Mechanical methods are nothing but in proportion to the power which uses them; as the intellectual accomplishments of the traveller avail him little, and may even bring him back less wise than he went out,--a wanderer from truth, as well as from home,--unless he sees by a light from his heart shining through the eyes of his mind. He may see, and hear, and record, and infer, and conclude for ever; and he will still not understand if his heart be idle,--if he have not sympathy. Sympathy by itself may do much: with fit intellectual and mechanical aids, it cannot but make the traveller a wise man. His journey may be but for a brief year, or even month; but if, by his own sympathy, he grasps and brings home to himself the life of a fresh portion of his race, he gains a wisdom for which he will be the better for ever. FOOTNOTES: [A] Penny Magazine, vol. ii. p. 309. [B] Volney's Survey of the Revolutions of Empires, pp. 25, 26. [C] Mme. D'Aunoy. [D] Adam Smith, "Wealth of Nations." [E] Jacob, "Travels in the South of Spain." [F] HOME, by Miss Sedgwick, pp. 37, 39. [G] An exception to this may meet the eye of a traveller once in a lifetime. There is a village church-yard in England where the following inscription is to be seen. After the name and date occurs the following: He was a Bad Son, A Bad Husband, A Bad Father. "The wicked shall be turned into Hell." [H] Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxix. p. 67. [I] Edinburgh Review, vol. xlvi. p. 309. [J] Edinburgh Review, vol. xxvi. pp. 7, 8. [K] Corn Law Rhymer. Elliott of Sheffield. [L] Travels of Minna and Godfrey in Many Lands, p. 53. 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In July will be published "THE MAID OF ALL WORK," Price Eightpence. "THE PRINTER," Price One Shilling. Transcriber's Notes: Archaic and unexpected spelling and hyphenation have been retained as they appear in the original publication, including recompence, negociated, hinderance, befals, proprietory, tabu and savans. The following changes to the original publication have been made: Page 43 will not pour out their stores _changed to_ will not pour out their stories Page 239 the occupations which the mass o the occupations which the mass of 
45942	----	https://archive.org/details/manpower00andrrich Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). MANPOWER +------------------------------------------+ | _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ | |------------------------------------------| | | | MILITARY MANPOWER | | | | Psychology as Applied to the | | Training of Men and the Increase | | of their Effectiveness. | | | |------------------------------------------| | E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY | +------------------------------------------+ MANPOWER by LINCOLN C. ANDREWS Author of "_Military Manpower_," "_Basic Course for Cavalry_," _etc._ [Illustration] New York E. P. Dutton & Company 681 Fifth Avenue Copyright, 1920 By E. P. Dutton & Company All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America In appreciation of the splendid work of the civilians who qualified as military leaders during the war, I dedicate this book to the officers and non-commissioned officers of civil life. Charged with directing the work of others, they are responsible for both accomplishment and spirit, and their ability to inspire loyalty and cheerful service therefore means quite as much for the nation's welfare now as leadership ever meant in war. CONTENTS PAGE Foreword ix CHAPTER I. Using Human Tools 1 II. Psychological Elements of Organization 34 III. The Principles of Leadership 53 FOREWORD Some years ago, for the instruction of National Guard officers, I undertook the then unique task of analyzing the psychology of military training and leadership, and of putting into written form the principles of the art of handling men. The necessity for quickly training great numbers of inexperienced men as leaders in war proved my chapters on Leadership and Training to be both practical and helpful to thousands of civilians fitting themselves for positions of command. Many of these, business and professional men, have suggested that I rewrite these chapters, adapting my ideas and methods to use in civil life. We believe that the fundamental principles for handling men are universal in application, and that it will be of service to the community to put these principles into form for study by those whose responsibility it is to direct the work of others. The term "leadership" in this restricted sense has been applied to the art of handling men. It has for its purpose the object of arousing and directing that latent force which exists in every man and doubles his accomplishment under the impulsion of loyalty, pride and interest when they are aroused by a skillful leader. Practical leadership is an art, not an exact science. No two leaders succeed in exactly the same way. One may not hope to acquire this art by learning specific rules to guide his conduct. A good leader of men is one whose impulses are right; and these impulses come from a genuine acceptance of principles, from one's own belief, feelings and experiences. It is a question therefore of personal understanding and sincerity of purpose to play the game fairly; of having a sympathetic understanding of the human animal and of what the laws of life make him do under certain circumstances; and finally of having an appreciation of one's own personality and how it affects others. It becomes a live, vital matter, to which one's own personal experiences bring the most valuable contributions. Its infinite variety of elements lends an unending interest to one's daily tasks, while success in dealing with its practical problems brings constant gratification, especially in seeing the development of stronger character and increased efficiency in one's subordinates. The war has enriched our democracy in the awakened individuality of millions of citizens and in the hundreds of thousands of young men whom it has returned to civil life experienced in the responsibilities and possibilities of group leadership. Both these are to be potent influences in the future, and may be made a great national asset if properly directed. The measure of a nation, in peace as now in war, is found in the soul and purpose of all its people. The world has been taught that machines and the cold products of science cannot win in war. They test almost to breaking the endurance of man, but in the end superior manpower emerges the victor. It is the _fiber_ of the bodies and nerves and souls of its manhood which meets the final test and proves the issue. Preparation for war, preparation to meet any test of our nation's claim to worthiness, demands that we give thought to the quality of that fiber. If we are to assure our nation's future success in any endeavor, we must guard her manpower now. To this end everyone who is charged with the control of others should appreciate his responsibility and his opportunity. He may easily so handle his men as not only to increase their efficiency in the work at hand, but so as to ensure that they leave their daily tasks in a frame of mind which will make them happier and better citizens--stronger in character, higher in purpose, more loyal upholders of our democratic institutions. In that thought I have written this book, addressed to all who are responsible for the work of others. I am indebted for particular ideas to an article in the _Infantry Journal_ of April, 1918, by Professor William E. Hocking, of Harvard University; to a lecture by Admiral Sims, U. S. Navy, published in the same journal in February, 1918; to the series of lectures given by Bishop Brent at Harvard University and published under the title "Leadership"; and to "Industry and Humanity" by W. L. Mackenzie King. Lincoln C. Andrews. New York, June 15, 1920. MANPOWER CHAPTER I Using Human Tools "Aw, what do I care!" says the man who is working under a poor leader. "I'd do anything for him!" explains the happy man who has a good chief. A poor leader may even so antagonize his men that each will actually try to do the least that he can and still hold his job; while a good leader may take the same men through the same tasks and so handle them as to inspire a spirit which will make every man try to do his very best. Manpower is thus seen to be a direct function of leadership. And the difference between the results from good leadership and from poor is often astonishing. The wonder is that we have so long neglected this psychological factor for increasing accomplishment. It is probably because we thoughtlessly accepted the idea that leaders have to be "born," and did not stop to realize that this kind of leadership is in reality an art which may be readily acquired by anyone who has enough native character. Recent experience has taught us that this art may be acquired--so we need no longer sit with folded hands in admiration of the "born leader." What is instinctive in him may be analyzed, reduced to principles, and made applicable to ourselves. It was done for the army, and by study many an inexperienced man made himself a successful leader of troops in the late war. It may be quite as easily done in any other field of activity. A knowledge of this art is of practical value in every phase of human endeavor--in bringing up children, in school, college and hospital, in the office and in the field, and most particularly in industry where men are grouped for the purposes of material production. Applied to any large business organization, let every leader from the big chief to the lowest sub-foreman practice the same principles of leadership, and there will soon permeate the whole machine a spirit of loyalty, teamwork and _esprit_ which will drive it with a marvelous degree of efficiency. It appears that industry is quite awake to this fact to-day. Industrial literature abounds with considerations of the humanity of labor. Employers have come to realize that the purchase of labor is a contract for future delivery, and that what they get from it will depend not so much on the bare delivery of the labor they have purchased, as on the continuing spirit in which it is daily and hourly delivered. The employer knows that he wants the loyal, enthusiastic, co-operative service of his employees, and that he cannot get it for money alone. He therefore adopts such organization and policy in his business as will make possible the loyal co-operation of all, and then attempts to have his men so handled as to get this result. The latter consideration is vital, for the best of policies may be ruined by the meanness or incompetence of subordinate executives. The morale officer of one of our largest corporations has recently stated that he has no trouble with the employers or with the men, but that he has all kinds of trouble with the superintendents and foremen, who seem unable to understand how to handle the men. Knowledge of leadership is essential not alone for the chief, but even more for his subordinates who are in direct contact with his men. It is easy to say that leaders must so handle their men as to inspire loyalty and enthusiastic service--but most of them will have to be taught _how_ to do this. That was the failure in army training. The manuals all prescribed that the officer must so handle his men as to build up discipline and a high morale, but nowhere were there any instructions as to how to do it. The art was handed along by tradition, often incorrectly. War brought the need for quickly training hundreds of thousands of leaders, and it was found necessary both here and in foreign armies to reduce this art of handling men to written principles which the young aspirants could study and learn to apply. This was found very efficient in the army. It may well be equally efficient in civil life. The ghastly wastes from poor leadership and consequent inefficient work, the heartburnings and discontent and lack of high purpose which are so common in every field to-day, certainly call for some attention if we are to meet successfully the tests which the next few years have in store. We have got to quit looking for cure-alls and get down to work; and work efficiently and happily, knowing again the homely joy of doing things well and the satisfaction of accomplishment. Our leaders must be "good leaders." This does not mean only employers and their subordinates, or only labor leaders. It means every man in the nation who is responsible for the control and work of others. These men are all leaders in our sense, each one responsible for the effects of his leadership on the members of his group, be it large or small. Let these men sense their responsibility, realize that the quality of their leadership has far reaching effects upon character as well as upon immediate accomplishment, and they may easily by personal example and thoughtful conduct of office arouse a tide of loyal service which will sweep discontent and palliatives into oblivion and fairly flood the country with sanity, prosperity and happy living. As a first step toward this, no matter what his business or profession, each leader should realize that in controlling the work of his men he is _handling human tools_--sentient human beings, like himself. Here is a craftsmanship worthy of study. One may not hope successfully to handle these tools, hit or miss, without special thought or training. Yet many have never thought of this, or considered what it means to them personally as leaders. If they would do this alone, they would find themselves self-prompted to such conduct of office as would give far better results. When a man is charged with directing the efforts of certain individuals to a given end, these individuals become instruments in his hand for the accomplishment of this purpose. They are his tools. He will find them sensitive, difficult instruments, capable of splendid accomplishment if skillfully handled, but blunt and ineffective in unskilled hands. Every leader should realize and continually think of this fact: _My principal tools are human beings and I must think how to handle them as such._ If a man has won promotion to leadership, no matter in what field of activity--in sport, shop, office or the field--he may no longer win success by skill in using the tools he has been using. It is now his job to direct others in using them. These others, these human beings such as he was, are now to be _his tools_. And as he won his promotion by training his body, brain and nerves to use his original tools to best advantage, so now he will succeed as leader by learning to use skillfully these new human ones. As a first step toward learning these tools, the leader should get at least a crude conception of what this human being really is, and how he is controlled in his daily walk. Let us therefore for a moment consider man the animal. We find him in his beginnings running naked and alone with the beasts in the primeval forest--without knowledge of community life, even of family life, and not knowing the use of human speech. But for his "will to improve" he was apparently no more highly endowed by nature than some of his fellow species. Yet that will to improve has in the processes of time enabled him to develop within himself his present marvelous organization of nerve centers and co-ordinated control, and through the power of his self-invented language to store his brain cells with the wisdom of the ages. Thus enabled to analyze and to reason, he has progressed step by step until he has reached his present mastery of the forces of nature. To-day he may fly in the air higher than the eagle, may work at will beneath the ocean, may sit at ease and listen to the natural voice of a friend through thousands of miles of distance, or may analyze the composition of the heavenly bodies and predict with accuracy their every movement. And what the race has thus accomplished in development through the ages, each man is privileged to accomplish in his lifetime. For he is born into the world with brain cells empty and with less nerve control than a kitten, but endowed with hereditary capacity and that wonderful will to improve, which enable him to talk and to read in early childhood, and to develop his faculties in time to a degree limited only by the determined purpose of his ambition. Such is man in the outward manifestations of his prowess. Meantime he is a creature almost pathetically responsive to his inherent instincts and in his daily walk largely controlled by habit. It was the beneficent intention of Nature to leave man's mind free for the contemplation of higher things, free to form visions of better things and to reason out the means for attaining them. She therefore relieved his mind of the trivial cares of deciding just what to do in the thousands of cases for action in his daily life, and designed him to do all these normal things in response to impulses from natural instincts, or in unconscious obedience to the direction of habits which he commences to form in infancy and continues to form throughout his development. So we find man a creature of almost unlimited capacity, but pathetically sensitive to his environment and treatment because so helplessly responsive to instincts and habits. And this capable yet sensitive animal, man, is to be an instrument in the hands of another, a man like himself, except that he has qualified to be the leader. How reasonable that this leader should have to give serious thought to this situation and seek to understand nature's powerful influences in guiding the actions of both himself and his men. What folly for him to expect to be able to handle them blindly, hit or miss, without consideration of man's peculiarities and the fundamental things that control him. Perhaps the most important of these fundamentals for the leader to realize is the deep-seated desire of every individual to maintain his self-respect and to have his right to self-respect recognized by those about him. The biggest step man ever took in the attainment of civilization was that of the ancient fathers when they discarded the worship of Sun and Fire, and conceived a God endowed with human attributes. They thus gave man the right to claim that he was "made in the image of God." On that man founded his philosophy of life and has more and more demanded and fought for and sometimes won a recognition of his claim to self-respect. Made in the image of God; he resented being lashed as a slave in the galleys or driven as one in the chain gangs; he felt the indignity of being a serf; and he came to realize the inconsistency of being arbitrarily governed. He has thus slowly fought his way upward toward his ideal, and has won his right to self-respect in government and in community living, to the profit of both. Out of this evolution came democracy; and the second fundamental for the leader is to appreciate that in handling men to-day he is no longer handling serfs or hirelings. His men are citizens of democracy--made or in the making. Many leaders have not realized this, or thought out what it should mean in determining their methods of control. In reality it is the only foundation for any intelligent modern system of discipline. Democracy requires of each citizen that he be a self-respecting, self-thinking, responsible individual, capable of making decisions and acting on them in his civil capacity. These qualities of citizenship are demanded for participation in community affairs and are publicly appealed to for political purposes. They are of the atmosphere in which each man lives as a member of the community. It is only reasonable that the self-same individuals who operate under the principles of democracy in all their general affairs should do better work under democratic rather than autocratic control. The rights of individuality and of self-direction have been hardly won and are dearly held. They do much toward making the democratic citizen the able man he is to-day, and are in reality a splendid basis for his control. The highest type of army discipline is developed on a thorough recognition of these very qualities in the men. It is practiced by all who have appreciated the meanings of the modern social and political development of the individual, and learned how to benefit by its advantages for getting efficiency. There still exist, however, many unthinking officers who get their ideas of discipline from the traditional rules formerly evolved for the control of serfs and mercenaries. But their day is rapidly passing, as the modern principle is more and more widely accepted that the man in ranks is an intelligent, self-respecting individual, that he may be interested equally with the leader in the success of the cause, and that in large measure he is capable of adding to its success out of his own individual effort and intelligence. The following definition of democracy by Professor Carver presents clearly the two elements which must be given consideration: "Two things and two things only are essential to real democracy. The first is an open road to talent, that is to say that every man shall have an opportunity to rise to positions of power and responsibility in proportion to his ability regardless of birth, privilege, caste or other social barriers. The son of the peasant may become the ruler in government or the employer in business by sheer force of his own merit, if he happens to possess merit. The second essential of pure democracy is that they who are in positions of power and responsibility shall be made sensitive to the needs, the desires and the interests of those over whom they exercise power and responsibility." Such democracy may well be recognized in his dealings if one wants success with his men. The road to advancement must lie wide open to ability and ambition, without a suspicion of favoritism and with encouragement for any individual who may aspire to follow it. Likewise the way for the honest expression of individual opinion and feeling must be open from the ranks to the leader without prejudice and with consideration. This recognizes their rights and develops their powers as individuals interested in a common cause. Such conception of rights in dealing with men is practical, is truly democratic and is highly efficient. It has worked to best advantage in army discipline, it is working successfully in many business organizations, and it is a sure foundation for efficient management in any group working for any purpose. When the interior administration of states' prisons is successfully run on the basis of democratic principles, it would seem possible to apply them to the control of almost any other group of men. The governing idea is therefore for the leader to build up the self-respect of his men and their sense of individual responsibility, and thus to control their actions. He does not want them to be dogs; he must never treat them like dogs. He wants them to show intelligence; he must show confidence that they have intelligence. He wants them able to make decisions and to act on them for the common good; he therefore tells them what is to be done and why, not _how_ to do it, and thus develops their resourcefulness and initiative. He wants their co-operation in loyal teamwork; he therefore asks their ideas as to methods, encourages their suggestions, and assumes that they are intelligently interested in the common success and able to bring something of value toward winning it. In short he considers them to be _active partners_ with himself in the working out of a common purpose, and treats them as such. The only possible excuse--not reason, but excuse--for the old-fashioned "roughneck" foreman with his discipline inspired by fear is the existence of his gang of ignorant immigrant laborers, uninterested in civilization and decent living, apparently willing to live like dogs and to be treated as such. Even these could be better handled by better methods. Furthermore the nation has learned that such citizens do not pay and intends by education and restriction of immigration to free herself of them. This will mean more intelligence among laborers, and that the foreman of the future will have to be able to boss not a group of ignorant foreigners but a group of thinking citizens, many of whom will be properly striving to win the job of being the boss themselves. This will mean that to hold his job he has got to be a good foreman, know his work, and above all know how to handle men decently. Being a foreman is going to be a real job, for which real men will fit themselves in order to make good. A third fundamental consideration is to appreciate how modern conditions have made the possession of personal character an essential to successful leadership. The development of the individual, self-conscious that he is a reasoning being with the rights and responsibilities of self-determination, has put into the discard the divine right of kings and the infallibility of sphinx-like utterances from those in authority. The man who rules to-day does it through personal contacts with his subordinates. He must therefore really have the personal character. It is of course inherent in us to endow the holder of an office with those attributes of dignity and personal character which should go with it. But personal contacts are going to pierce this hereditary veil, and will soon expose the man for what he really is. And he cannot make good unless we find him possessed of _character_--find him a man who always keeps his word, who lives up to the principles of the square deal, and who appreciates that he is dealing with humans and is accordingly considerate. Such qualities preclude his showing injustice, deceit, indifference, or brutality. They thus eliminate fear and suspicion from the minds of those about him and give free play to their better instincts, which makes for getting their best efforts either as followers or as co-workers. It is clear then that it is vitally important to give careful thought in the selection of leaders to their personal characters; and that this possession of character must come to be the _sine qua non_ for candidates for office, political, civil, or industrial. For all this applies quite as forcibly to the leaders of labor as to any other. Here as elsewhere only those can win in the end whose character and purpose are pure; who believe in the square deal; who are unselfishly honest in the administration of office; who consider the human rights of their followers and give them opportunity to grow and develop through the free exercise of their constructive instincts. Democratic leadership is constructive. It builds individual character in its followers, and stands secure on that foundation. A fourth fundamental is to appreciate the big part played in man's control by his own personal instincts and habits. "Man is a reasoning creature. God's image." Yes; but he is also the willing slave of instinctive impulses and personal habits. He uses his reason to determine the course he will pursue, not to regulate the multitudinous details of his actions in carrying it on. As planned by nature, these minor actions are directed by natural impulses and personal habits. Impulses and habits--they rule almost our every act. It is remarkable when we stop to think of it and realize how few things we do actually as the result of thinking. Thus in a well-ordered life a man may get up in the morning, bathe, shave, dress, and go to breakfast without having to make a conscious decision. Instead of having to decide which shoe to put on first, he even laces and ties his shoes without thinking, and thus may occupy his mind with thoughts of the day's work. Habit guides him without thought through all these necessary steps which he must take daily. The interesting fact to the leader is not alone that these habits control so absolutely, but that any habit may be easily and unconsciously formed by repetition of the act or thought, and that a habit once formed is overcome only by conscious effort and even by determined action of the will. The leader uses this for controlling his men. By insisting on certain things always being done in certain ways, he establishes in them habits of daily conduct which make his routine administration of duties free from constant care of details. A wise leader finds the reason for many of the difficulties and seeming derelictions of his men in the fact that they were the acts of previously formed habits not yet eliminated. For this reason also he prefers to train green men rather than old ones. He knows he can readily inculcate in them the habits he wants them to have, and without the great difficulty of eradicating the previously formed habits which he does not like. Equally common with habits in their control of the actions of man, and equally important as a consideration for the leader, are the impulses to action that come from natural instincts. Of course it is true that man's will and determination are stronger than his instincts, and that if they are set to any given purpose they can force every instinctive impulse from his field of consciousness and hold his actions to the predetermined course. But such control of man's actions is fatiguing to the man, and does not give the results that come when his mind is happily at ease and free to entertain the impulses from the constructive instincts with which nature has bountifully endowed him for the good of the race. Thus necessity may make a man determine to do his work in spite of brutal treatment and injured self-respect, and he will carry through the day's work well enough to hold his position, but not much better. Good work, anything like the maximum of a man's accomplishment, cannot be produced in that spirit. Such work comes only with the free play of man's better instincts. It should be clear then that the leader who controls through appeal to these instincts will get better results than he who rules by force or the compulsion of circumstance. A good leader must therefore give thought to these things, until he comes to feel instinctively how men react to the ordinary things of life. They are matters of frequent reference in discussing the principles of leadership. Among these instincts, those of the greatest interest to the leader are naturally the instincts of leadership--the instinct to lead others and the instinct to follow others when we think they know the answer better than we. The manifestations of both these instincts are very common in our daily life, which shows their availability and value to the leader as agents for controlling men. He should therefore understand why they exist and how to appeal to them. Why is it that mankind is always wanting to proselyte, and preach, and teach, and step to the front with suggestions? And why is it that one so readily follows another who presents any proposition which seems reasonable? These instincts were implanted in man to make him play his part in the world's progress. The whole scheme of the universe, physical and spiritual, is one of development and progress--of making everything engage in a constant effort to rise to a higher plane. Man was intended to be the foremost instrument of this purpose to advance civilization. His instincts were given him to ensure progress, to help the race win along, to lead others where he felt he knew best what was to be done, to follow where he felt that another knew better than he. To want to lead is therefore a natural instinct and a good one; and any man may take honest pride in striving to qualify as a good leader. It is an important point that the instinct to follow is likewise an instinct for progress, and therefore that the would-be leader must make his men feel that he best knows the way, that his leadership will bring the best results. This is a fundamental thought in an understanding of leadership; and it explains why knowledge of his job is essential to a leader, and why bluster and arrogance seem so ridiculous. It is clear then that a man is appointed leader because it is believed that he can get the best results; and his men will measure his ability as such by the good work accomplished under his guidance. Inefficiency, lost time and energy, indecision and stupidity, undermine his hold on the men; while the opposites inspire them to enthusiastic following. Another thought of importance in this connection is the significance of the word "leader." It means that this man is the _foremost_ of the group, of his companions. A leader is not a lord or dictator; he is one with his men--the leading one--knowing their pulse and their passions, leading because of superior preparation, experience and ability, not driving through brute force. He should keep his kinship with these fellows whom he leads, not allow himself to feel that he has become a human being of a different class to lord it over them. Great leaders like Lincoln are careful to retain, and to appear to retain, the simpler attributes of their fellows, to continue the close touch and sympathy that spell an understanding of human nature. Nothing so surely ruins the success of the newly appointed leader as a suggestion of pomp and vainglory in his demeanor. A case of swollen ego has wrecked many careers. It is quickly noted by the men as an evidence of smallness of soul and limited experience. Modesty, quiet dignity, even humility, are characteristics of greatness of character and broad experience. It is dangerous for the leader to admit his self-importance even to himself. Magnifying his own importance is likely to make him take credit to himself that should have gone to his men, make him consider his own welfare when he should consider theirs, and end by betraying him as unfit for the leadership. The last of these fundamental considerations of man, and by far the most important to the personal success of any leader, is an appreciation of what his _own personality_ means for success or failure in the effect it has upon his fellows. In some way it should be possible to make each man realize the truth of this, and thus give it due consideration. The leader responds to the fact that he must learn how to use his human-being tools, yet often ignores the equally important fact that he has to use these tools through the instrumentality of his own personality. His ability and success will largely depend on how this personality of his impresses others, on how it affects these sentient tools. His purpose and character, his personal bearing and manner, the tones of his voice, his habits and way of looking at things--all the manifestations of his personality are more or less important influences in determining his ability to handle others. Yet the average of leaders not only accepts himself complacently as he is, but actually ignores the advantages of even finding out what he is, let alone trying to improve himself. The progress of the race depends upon the development of the individual--albeit in co-operation with his fellows. In consideration of this fact nature apparently designed man to accept complacently his own personality and thus be content to use and develop it without being discouraged because he was not as some other man. It is certainly true that we rarely find a man who would exchange his personality for that of another. But nature never intended this complacency to go to the point of ignoring all possibility of improvement, and even of failing to use understandingly the personality one does have. The great trouble with mankind is that they generally see themselves only as they are reflected in the near-by mirror. They rarely get the perspective of themselves as they really exist in the life around them; and so they miss the benefit of measuring their egos by comparison with the realities of life. It would help us all "to see ourselves as others see us." We could then learn each how to use his personality advantageously from seeing how it affected others, and we would then lose some of our arrogance from seeing what unimportant individuals we really are after all. It is good for the soul of any man to visit some height like the tower of the Woolworth building and thence view humanity on the earth below him, hurrying to and fro on its self-important business. These humans then appear of about the size and importance of ants, and the spectator is lead to realize the unimportance of any one individual man in comparison with the world about him, and to wonder just how big he himself really appears to the distant Eye of Omnipotence. He may thus develop a wholesome humility which may lead him to fit himself to play his part more reasonably. Giving thought to oneself and to the meanings of those things that affect the relations and control of men is essential to acquiring leadership. It is what we ourselves believe and feel and live--what comes out of our own inner consciousness--that will make it possible for us to appear before others as their leader. Even the inspired Leader withdrew into the wilderness for long inner communion before He essayed the responsibilities of leadership. We should hardly expect to lead even in our small way without some preparation. And this preparation will not be in learning rules to guide us, but in attaining such an understanding of the principles and realities as will make us do the right thing naturally. For above all a leader must be genuine,--his own true self, not an imitation of some other, be that other ever so successful. There remains for consideration the special case of handling men in those industrial situations where labor unions exist. Though it be true that an application of the principles of leadership will give better results even in the presence of "labor troubles," how infinitely better the results if there exist mutual understanding, confidence and co-operation. There is, however, no thought here of telling any management how to run its business. It is recognized that each business concern has its own problem to solve in accordance with its own peculiar conditions. The questions of welfare, labor turnover, supervision of personnel, self-expression, sharing of profits or savings, etc., have been analyzed and discussed in fullest detail. It is beyond our scope to add anything in these fields. But even where management has adopted the broadest policy looking to the loyal co-operation of its employees, its successful operation will still depend on how the men are handled by those directly in contact with them. We are concerned with that one phase; and for its better understanding in those special cases where labor unions are involved, let us briefly consider the origin and purposes of these unions. When fundamental motives are clear, it becomes possible to understand their manifestations and guide them for the greater good of all concerned. An understanding of the psychology of labor unions is therefore vastly important to employer, to subordinate bosses, and to labor leaders themselves. We may not attempt to cover this subject, but only to suggest certain fundamental thoughts which should be helpful. In the evolution of the race, the processes of time ultimately taught primeval man to leave the isolation of his cave and form a community with his fellows for better protection against the beasts that threatened his existence and for mutual assistance in carrying on the slow developments of civilization. Thus the interdependence of man and the advantages of co-operation were first demonstrated, and organization had its beginnings. The processes of modern industry, through its introduction of machinery and the consequent development of its vast modern enterprises, took the tools of his trade from the personal hands of the laborer into company ownership, stripped him of all but his bare power to work, and cut him off from the former close personal relationship with his employer. So the laboring man found himself again an isolated individual, this time in the competitive markets of labor, where he fought alone for his existence against the cold impersonal organizations which bought his services in the cheapest market and discarded them at will. And as once long ago he found his salvation and opportunity for development through combination with his fellows, so now he again learned that his future could be secured only through combined effort. Thus came organized labor to protect with force if necessary the human rights of its members and to assure their equal opportunity for development in the progress of the race. We thus see that this organization of labor with its potential power to fight was but a natural logical step in the evolution of modern industry--as natural and as necessary as were the organizations and combinations of capital. Both are the products of evolution. And as is generally true, the application of the laws of evolution to individual cases often caused hardship and distress and even loss of life, but without changing their inexorable course in the purpose of progress. It was the accepted philosophy of the time that labor was a commodity to be taken to any market at the will of the laborer and sold to the highest bidder, who was likewise free to buy labor at the lowest figure and to employ it only at his pleasure. The rapid increase in the size of enterprises having eliminated the personal relationship between the employer and his men without finding anything to replace it, it was natural that labor became little more than a chattel and that all consideration of the human equation was forgotten in the excitement and keen competition of managing these enterprises of such novel magnitude and unknown potentialities. Meantime public opinion failed to appreciate that the welfare and social development of these laborers was a matter of vital concern to the community, and that the rights and responsibilities of the management of these big concerns were equally matters of grave importance to community welfare. In short, public opinion had to be taught that the community is a party to industry, and must be concerned with how industry conducts its affairs. It was therefore a naturally accepted condition that labor should be treated as any other soulless commodity. And it is fair to assume that it would have long continued to be but for the valiant spirit of the laborer demanding recognition of his rights as equally a son of God and a self-respecting, responsible member of the democratic community. These rights are now recognized. Splendid minds have given their best efforts toward evolving the means and methods for the conduct of big business on bases which admit full recognition of these rights, with opportunity for the fuller development of the laborer through the free play of his nobler instincts. Many progressive firms have found a way for adopting a policy embodying these ideas--others are seeking a practical solution of this problem as it is presented to them by the peculiar conditions of their particular business. Many are so organized that union leaders themselves find that everything is being done which they could ask. Public opinion has largely accepted the thesis of labor, and feels that its laboring citizenry must be given opportunity to develop. It is futile then for either capital or labor to fight against either of these organizations, and unreasonable to consider either of them the product of man's viciousness or ignorance. It were far better that both parties accept the inevitable fact of their existence and learn to develop their vast possibilities for increasing efficiency. There is no just cause for recriminations--unless for the slowness of human intelligence to grasp the true conditions. So it appears that the fight of the unions is almost won, and this phase of evolution nearing completion. But it is evident that even so unions must persist. They are demanded by strong human instincts and make for fuller development and better service. Organization and co-operation, more and more comprehensive, are pronounced characteristics of modern development. Therefore the present unions may well be continued with the purpose of social betterments and of increasing the efficiency of labor, meantime designed to continue the fight only where employers fail to find the way themselves to give labor its opportunity to work and grow to advantage. Where well organized, each union may certainly render great service to its members, to industry, and to the State, by interesting itself in the development and welfare of all men engaged in its line of work, and by keeping available for immediate reference complete industrial and social data of all this personnel. Such statistical work requires time and expense, but it gives the unions the benefit of feeling that they are rendering a valuable service to the community as well as to themselves. A union of the future, certainly a natural and efficient one, will be the union within each separate enterprise of the two elements essential to its success--management and laborers. And this union will find its greatest usefulness in close liaison with the third party to industrial effort--the community. For the efficient conduct of the community's business of providing law and order, schools, sanitation, transportation, banking, shopping, etc., is as essential to the life of industry as is industry's production and proper management to the life of the community. Many such unions exist already, a most notable example being the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen. Most notable because of its great size, the variety of interests and human types involved, and the vast area covered in its operations. Originally organized for the patriotic purposes of getting out spruce for the war, it soon became a practical co-operative union of employers and employees. Their combined intelligence and effort met the war needs in a tremendously increased production, and have since met the strains of reconstruction without a break. It thus made the unique record of stabilizing labor conditions while doing rush war production instead of upsetting them as was done in many other enterprises. All this resulted from the fact that representatives of both employers and laborers were required to sit around a common council table and there discuss and settle all questions of the conduct of the work. In doing this, both parties learned that they really spoke the same language and that success and good feeling were the natural result of working together. They therefore continued the organization on a permanent basis, with the added element of keeping in touch with local community affairs. These co-operative unit unions should be of great psychological benefit and become strong political influences, particularly in affairs of local government. The topics of informal discussion among the men and of talks from their leaders may be no longer matters of antagonism toward their employer but rather those of common industrial and community interest. And as industry is sure some day to realize how dependent it is on the integrity, wisdom and statesmanship of the public officials chosen by the people to make and administer the laws, so it will surely come to take an active part in selecting these public officials and in determining the policies they are to further. Well for industry then if it be organized and accustomed to the co-operative functioning of capital and labor. No political appeal can then be made to class distinctions, and industry can then bring into the political field the same strong co-operative purpose for the common good that it is accustomed to exercise in its management of business. In these unions employee and employer come to find that both are laborers in the common cause, each according to his skill and training doing his own part in the industrial machine and receiving respect and credit in accordance with how well he does it. Both come to appreciate the true meanings of democracy, that opportunity lies equally open to all on their merits, and that men are classed in accordance with their fitness for positions. Here they come to realize that demagogic appeals to class are unreasonable and often of questionable motive, as the fact is brought home to them that employers are mostly but graduates from the ranks of labor--or more accurately, are but leaders of the class. The word "class" with its European meaning is quite out of place in discussing American conditions. Classifications we have, based on accomplishment, etc., but there are no insurmountable barriers between them. All doors stand wide open for any individual if he but have the will to attain the necessary qualifications. And there are back doors which stand equally wide open, from which the unfit are being daily ejected to find their true level according to their individual worth. Such are the laws of democracy and of progress, and all schemes to thwart them must sooner or later end in failure. As agents of good citizenship these unions could well be a power for good to the community by becoming schools in Americanization and in the practice of democratic government. Good citizenship is as vital a consideration for the industrial state as it is for the political--in fact their interests are so closely interwoven that they must stand or fall together. We know now that cheap labor does not make cheap production, and often does make cheap political government. It is in reality both expensive and dangerous to the community, and we should do without it. And as it is our pride to establish before the political world the worth of our political institutions; so should we solve our industrial problems and show to the industrial world the advantages of democracy operating practically in industry. Let us show that the spirit and aroused skill and ingenuity of our loyally co-operating labor will reduce the costs of production while largely increasing its output, to the advantage of mankind and the credit of our nation founded on individual freedom. CHAPTER II Psychological Elements of Organization If even two persons are going to work together for a common purpose, they will do better if they "organize" for it. The more clearly they define their purpose, their policy and methods, and the responsibilities and functions each is to assume;--the more they will gain in efficiency by avoiding friction, lost motion, and the deadening mental effect of misunderstandings and questionings. As the number engaged increases, the advantages of organization increase, until when many are engaged organization becomes a necessity. And no matter what the purpose, from building a cathedral to robbing a bank--in conducting a school, office, hospital, or factory--the success of the affair will depend largely on the efficiency of its organization and the extent to which all concerned understand its purpose, its policy and methods, and the responsibilities and functions of all engaged. Organization is of course the responsibility of the governing head. The more attention and skill he shows here, the less he will need give to all the varied requirements of his position. Our present interest in organization lies in such a sketch as will show its framework, and thus enable us to analyze such of its psychological elements as affect the question of handling the men who compose it. _The Framework._--No matter how large the number of men brought together for any purpose, proper organization groups them into divisions and subdivisions in accordance with the nature of their work. This grouping is continued until in each case the smallest subdivision contains no more individuals than one man can control in that particular work through direct personal contact and supervision. A chief, or leader, is put in charge of each division and subdivision. He transmits instructions from higher authority, and is held personally responsible for the control, work, discipline and efficiency of everyone under him. Thus organization lines everyone up in his own place, gives him a definite part to play under a prescribed chief, and thus enables the whole body to function smoothly like a machine in exact response to the policies and control of the governing head. In military organization, no matter how large the army, the will of its high command quickly passes from superior to subordinate until in the end it has reached the squad leaders and they have transmitted it to the men in ranks. The whole vast machine may thus move uniformly, accurately responsive to the master mind. So in any large business; department heads, superintendents, foremen and subforemen furnish the line of control from the head to all his men no matter how numerous or how far removed. These subordinates represent his policies, his will, and his spirit. How important that they understand them clearly and execute them fairly and efficiently. It is impossible for one mind to encompass all the details of a large undertaking, and furthermore too much attention to detail crowds out the possibility of vision and future planning. Hence the necessity for organization and for delegating to subordinate leaders the authority and initiative of the chief. For this reason we say that the big man as an executive is he who picks good subordinates, develops them into his responsible and responsive agents, and then gives them wide initiative. And as army officers must be trained for their positions and particularly in the art of handling men, so these subordinate leaders must be so schooled as to assure to the chief that policies and instructions are being carried out properly, and that the men are being handled to the best advantage. _Psychological Elements._--The chief thus finds in the organization of his undertaking a machine with which he is to work out his purpose. And this machine, in all its component parts, is built up of live sentient human beings, capable of splendid work if properly handled. Maximum results depend therefore on the chief's understanding of human nature, and on his applying this understanding to the practical management of the undertaking. Thus the psychological elements assume importance. The wise chief therefore clearly defines his purpose, and his policies and methods for accomplishing it. He provides regulations which define the responsibilities and functions of the various members of the organization, and sees to it that all understand and observe them. As the affair progresses he keeps the requirements of organization ever in mind, makes frequent changes in personnel and methods as developments require, and continually watches the working of the psychological elements which make his organization a going concern. This means to see that all are observing the requirements of _subordination_ and _command_; that there is intelligent _teamwork_; and above all that there exists throughout the whole organization a fine spirit of _discipline_ and _morale_. All these important elements lie directly in the hands of his subordinate leaders, who are responsible under him for their existence and proper use throughout the organization. These leaders must therefore know how to handle their positions so as to develop and maintain these important elements in their subordinates. This introduces the last and most important of the elements, _leadership_, which must be understood by all subordinate leaders. The importance of maintaining all these elements so vital to the success of an organization explains why his qualifications for leadership are so carefully considered in determining a subordinate's fitness for his position, and why his training in leadership may be necessary. _Subordination_ means that everyone shall continually recognize the fact that each individual in his own office has his own particular responsibilities and privileges, and that these must be observed by all both above and below him. Particularly must each superior take pains always to recognize the rights and responsibilities of his subordinates and to give full play to their powers in the proper exercise of the functions of their grades. If the superintendent saw a man going wrong he would properly correct the foreman, not the man himself; if he was so fortunate as to see something praiseworthy he would commend the foreman, or at least be sure that the foreman was present and shared the praise. This makes the men realize that the foreman is held responsible for their work, good or bad, that he is really their leader, thus strengthening his authority over them. It also shows the foreman that superior authority recognized him as the boss and holds him responsible for results, thus developing his initiative, his legitimate pride of office, and his keen interest in the performance of his men. While for the sake of this psychological effect these minor corrections and commendations are thus made in the presence of the men involved, if the foreman needs serious correction for mistaken policy, slackness, poor judgment, anything which corrected in the hearing of his men would necessarily lower their respect for him, he should be corrected in private and given the opportunity to win the added respect of his men by appearing to make the correction on his own initiative. Where the subordinate does not respond to these methods, he is lacking in the essentials of teamwork and leadership and not up to his job. To prevent friction, the function of each of these steps in subordination from the chief down to his men in the ranks should be well defined, and thoroughly understood by all members of the entire force. And as these steps form the quick, sure means of transmitting the will of the chief to his men, so in the ideal case they would be the equally sure means of transmitting to the chief the sentiment, opinions, and suggestions of his men. In any case these steps form the rungs of the ladder by which any man may aspire to climb to advancement in the organization, and there should be an ever present atmosphere of encouragement for every man who will strive to fit himself to do the work of the man next above him. Such an atmosphere frees in the man the instincts of ambition and construction and thus promotes interest, inventiveness and constructive criticism and suggestion. _Teamwork._--The meaning of teamwork and its importance to the success of an undertaking are easily understood, but its practical application to our daily affairs is not always so easily brought about. Too often selfish interests seem to stand in the way, and it is necessary in some way to make the interests of the team appear of greater importance to the individual than his own. It can generally be shown that the greater success of each is dependent on the success of the whole, and if the leader always gives merit where it is due, he should be able to establish this understanding. It should help the leader, particularly in getting this spirit of co-operation into his men, if he realizes how this too is one of the great laws of nature. Bishop Brent says "Bible history--and for that matter all history--begins with a garden and closes with a city." This is because the developments of progress necessarily depend on the co-operative efforts of mankind, and thus force men to live and work together. It is true that progress results from the development of the individual; but not in isolation. He must work in close relations with his fellows. A man can do little alone, but in combination men perform miracles of achievement. So they have got to work together, have got to practice the give and take of common membership in community living, and of common responsibility for accomplishing the progress of the race. This means fellowship and teamwork all along the line. It means that each man has a part to play and is entitled to respect and consideration in accordance with how he plays it rather than what it is; and it means that no man is entitled to consider solely his own selfish interests, but must faithfully play his part in the team with his fellows. Our ideals of fairness and decency in work and play are built on this foundation. Good teamwork assures two states of mind in the individual which are most helpful for efficient work. No matter in what isolation or obscurity the individual has to work he feels sure that his work is a necessary and important part of the whole and that it will receive due appreciation; and he is also borne up by feeling sure that each of his fellows is doing his own part with equal faithfulness and likewise counting on him to do his. In many phases of work as well as in sport this latter feeling is a great incentive to doing one's best. Teamwork is of course intimately connected with leadership; and will be frequently mentioned in discussing the latter. _Command._--It is very important to get a clear conception of the modern theory of command, or way of directing what subordinates shall do. It is important because rather new and not always understood, and particularly because it is the one guiding principle for the leader in all his conduct of office. Command no longer depends solely on the implicit obedience of subordinates, but gets its best results from developing in them the two essential qualities of _loyalty_ and _intelligent initiative_, and then trusting them to play their part in the proposed work. This is a development of the last half century, an intelligent response to changed conditions. It is based on the modern development of the individual as a responsible unit in the social and political community, and more particularly on the fact that the bigness of modern-time enterprises makes impracticable the older-time dictatorial control by a single head. Implicit obedience to exact orders can be successful only when the man who gives the order is on the spot and fully acquainted with the existing conditions at the time, and this is impossible for all the details of large enterprises. The "I order, you obey" and the "you're not paid to think" stuff is entirely inadequate for big affairs, where opportunities for subordinates to do good work must constantly occur beyond the vision of the big chief and go unimproved if the subordinate has to wait for the chief's instructions before acting, and where circumstances will often have arisen without the chief's knowledge which would make it disadvantageous to carry out certain instructions which he had given. So modern command recognizes that the man who is on the spot is in the best position to judge what to do, and that if he has been properly instructed, we will get better results from his acting on his own judgment than from his blindly obeying orders. Sad as it is for romance the man who to-day led a "Charge of the Light Brigade" would be considered stupid, and probably relieved as unfit for command. Subordinates are now required to know what is going on about them, and to use intelligent judgment. Positive orders are of course as rigidly obeyed as ever, but they are not given unless the superior is on the spot in person and knows all the conditions. In the general case the subordinate is instructed as to the plan of action and the part he is to play in it, and then expected to carry on to the best advantage. For this purpose army training is now designed, not only to cultivate the man's exact obedience to positive orders, but even more _to develop his powers of observation and analysis so he may sense conditions; his powers of reason so he may arrive at a logical decision as to what should be done; and his strength of character so he may willingly accept and cheerfully bear the full responsibility of acting on his own initiative._ Can anyone find a better formula for training to play one's part in any of life's activities! This system of command is thoroughly in keeping with the democratic character, and is eminently adapted for use in civil undertakings. The keynote for any successful management is the development and use of loyalty and intelligent initiative in subordinates. Initiative without loyalty would be dangerous, but from the combination flow the big results. _Discipline._--The discipline of any group is the direct responsibility of its particular leader. Many men shrink from this responsibility through distaste for administering discipline as they understand it. And the old ideas of discipline based on fear and punishments are indeed calculated to be repugnant to any democrat of sensibilities. But let him once understand what discipline really is, and how the highest type of discipline is brought about through employing the better qualities of mankind, and his responsibility for it may then become a matter of keen interest and satisfaction. It will make an understanding of discipline much easier to realize how common a thing it is in everyday life. It is perhaps the most common, for it controls us in practically all our personal affairs. Even the cave man has to observe the discipline imposed by the laws of nature; while civilized man must bow more or less cheerfully to social and community regulations ranging in seriousness from some convention as to wearing his hat up to the Eighteenth Constitutional Amendment. We are always the objects of some discipline; that of the home, of school, church, office, the hotel or the street car. The decent man and the happy one is he who accepts this discipline cheerfully--or else flees from the strictures of community living. How absurd therefore is the common conception that army discipline is such a unique affair, and that to be a disciplinarian is necessarily so difficult. In fact the most perfect example of real efficient discipline, and the example most worthy our emulation, is the discipline which a wise father inspires in his son. Here we see the unswerving loyalty, quick, cheerful obedience, and readiness to fight for the honor of his chief that are the characteristics of good discipline and the sure rewards of good leadership. Group discipline may be defined as the spirit which pervades the members of a group--the controlling spirit which governs the impulses of the individuals and makes them try to do right and give their best in the common cause. It is as essential to the successful working of an organized machine of humans as is live steam to the working of a cold engine. Its existence in any group is recognized by a ready, cheerful obedience to instructions, by respect for those in authority, by keenness for the common success, and by a high sense of individual duty. It has been well called the "soul" of armies. This means that it is the responsive animating spirit which leads men to splendid deeds of heroism, gives them heart for cheerful endurance of untold hardships, makes them freely surrender individual wills to the will of the leader, and binds them into a loyal fellowship, aspiring, sacrificing, working together for a common cause. Given a policy of unfailing justice, and no matter for what purpose men are brought together, this spirit of discipline may be made to pervade the whole group. It is the direct result of good leadership, and comes naturally from knowing how to handle men. It cannot exist under poor leadership. Its relative value for attaining results has been measured by Napoleon as seventy-five per cent of all the elements that go to make success in battle. In any undertaking demanding the continued application of the powers of man, its value must be rated very high. An organization that lacks discipline may not hope for efficiency. And as poor leadership thus denies efficiency to an organization, so may its efficiency be increased in direct proportion to the quality of leadership shown by those in control, especially by those in direct contact with the men. The object of discipline is therefore seen to be an increase in the total of results. So do not let the mind get fixed on discipline as the end sought by leadership; it is but a means to the attainment of this real object--better results. As in the army many an officer failed of success because he centered his attention on being a disciplinarian and forgot that the object of all training and discipline was success in action, so in any activity, the leader must not let the importance of discipline in itself obscure his judgment when deciding any step toward attaining or maintaining it. It is not the end, but is to be used as a means toward attaining the real end--one hundred per cent results. _Morale_ is the final development of the highest type of discipline, and is thus the prize reward for good leadership. Based fundamentally on a belief in the cause for which we are working, it can never be inspired in an atmosphere of injustice or suspicion. Having morale means that no matter what obstacle or difficulty we face, we meet it absolutely confident of our ability to overcome it. Confidence--a justified confidence--is therefore the cornerstone of morale. Discipline and experience have made each man confident of his own fitness and ability, confident of the intelligent leadership of his chief, and confident of the ability and loyal co-operation of his fellow-mates in the team. To establish his men's confidence in these three things must therefore be a constant consideration in the mind of the leader. This consideration influences his every decision as to what to do and what to say, and how to do and say it. He uses the words and the method best adapted to work toward these results, well knowing that his men are influenced by his every act toward either confidence in or distrust of his leadership, their own ability, or the worth of their fellows. He thus builds up through honest, intelligent confidence that morale which is going to make his team ready to meet anything. The manifestations of discipline and morale, and the various appeals to inspire them, differ in accordance with the work to be done by the members of the group and with the personalities of both the leader and his men. But all spring from an application of the same principles--and making this application to the specific case in hand becomes the interesting study and exercise of wit for the leader concerned. It is for him to arouse just the kind of spirit he needs for the special work and with the particular men he has. The spirit which holds the stoker faithful to his task in the bowels of the ship is different in form from that which animates the gun crew on the deck above--yet both spring from the same sources. _Leadership._--The development of man as an individual, his inherent qualities of manliness, high purpose, and a self-respecting individuality which still recognizes its responsibility as a citizen of the community--all these developed qualities make him potentially a splendid tool in the hands of a skillful master, and a dangerous one in the hands of a bungler. To handle these tools skillfully has therefore become a recognized art. It will be only when this art is generally known and practiced by our leaders that the nation may hope to benefit by anything like the full measure of its manpower. This art of handling men is called leadership; and during the late war was made a study for practical application in all armies. On his excellence in the practice of this art depended every military leader's ability to deliver that superior manpower of his men which made his unit victorious. In the past this used to be the function of the few "born leaders" who seemed to know instinctively how to inspire others to give their uttermost. But these born leaders were too few to meet modern requirements, so we were forced to make their natural art a matter of analysis and instruction. This art is based on the fact that there is in every man a tremendous latent force which may be aroused and used by a skillful leader who knows how to inspire the man's loyalty, pride, and ambition to do his utmost for the glory of his group and the honor of his cherished leader. The poor leader leaves all this enthusiastic service and devotion dormant in his men, and therefore commands only mediocrity. His men do just well enough to conform to cold requirements. The letter of the law is their sole guide, and they may even seek means to evade that. Such leadership paralyzes efficiency, and does actual harm to the character of the man who must operate under it. Denied the privilege of giving free play to his constructive instincts, he becomes prey to those which breed on discouragement and discontent, and the end of this man is far worse than the beginning. Not so with good leadership. It wins its efficiency and material reward, not at the expense of manhood, but by appeal to the very instincts whose free play gives pleasure to the inner man and results in the upbuilding of his character and his faculties. The end thus finds him a better man and citizen for the kind of work he has done. It is this dual result which so highly commends the practice of this art. The most mercenary may well adopt it for the material gain it will bring; the altruist may adopt it for the inner joy of seeing the character and manliness of his men growing under his hands. And in the end even the leader who accepted it for material reasons will find self-satisfaction in that he must feel that the community is better for his living in it. Leadership is an art, not an exact science. Its seat is in a man's soul rather than in his brain. To attempt to teach it we appeal broadly to a man's understanding and appreciation of what the laws of life require. It is a comprehensive subject which may be far from completely covered in one chapter. But fortunately one need not attain anything like perfection in order to be recognized as a good leader and to win a fine response from his men. So much is man a creature of the better instincts, so responsive is he to fair and decent treatment, that if his leader but be genuine in his practice of but a few of these principles of leadership, his men will deny his weaknesses and failures, and give him their loyalty and service without measure. CHAPTER III The Principles of Leadership Our object in this chapter is to get at the practical elements of leadership; to find out what leadership requires in one's own personal qualities and in the methods of dealing with men. In doing this the first consideration is to understand the object of leadership. To get a clear conception of the object of an undertaking should always be the first step in its execution, for men work to better advantage and leaders lead to better advantage, when the object of their efforts is clearly defined in their minds. One would think that the Allies had been fighting the war to the best of their ability; yet recall the tremendous impetus given their efforts, when, in answer to the President's question, they had clearly defined their object in fighting. _The Object of Leadership_ then is so to handle one's men as to build up and maintain a high spirit of discipline and morale, of individual initiative, of loyalty and of teamwork; and so to direct this spirit as to win the highest efficiency for the accomplishment of the purpose in view. In short its object is to develop the psychological elements of the machine of organization, and thus increase its efficiency by doubling its manpower. So the object of every step in this discussion, the psychologic object of every step in leadership, is to secure better discipline and morale, more intelligent initiative, keener loyalty and better teamwork. The student must keep these objects ever in mind in both study and practice, as furnishing a purpose or guide in all that is said or done. The accomplishment of these objects is a constant inspiration to a good leader; by his comments and criticisms during the progress of the work, by his every act in administration, he seeks to build up morale and initiative and all these essential qualities in the characters of his men. As to the _Personal Qualities_ required in the leader, we only ask that each man use intelligently the ones that he has. It is not intended to enumerate all the high qualities of the great leaders of history, and then expect the reader to adopt them as his own. None of us begin to have all of these qualities, or any of them in perfection. But all of us do have some sense of justice and fairness, are possessed of a degree of manliness and self-control, and can use our judgment and will power. The point is to learn the value of our various qualities, and to cultivate them by intelligent use. We are all human--let us admit it and act accordingly. And that would be a very good first step toward success in leadership, for there is no other one thing so often heard of a good leader from the sincere lips of his admiring men as that "_he is a real human being_." An appreciation of the meaning of that fact alone should serve as an inspiration and an excellent guide. Many men of but mediocre ability have successfully carried through one big job after another simply because they had the faculty for inspiring the loyalty, initiative and best endeavors of their subordinates. Many others of stronger character and higher mental attainments have failed to do so because they failed to inspire, and even antagonized, their subordinates. And while this seeming lack of tact may have been due to natural deficiency, in nine cases out of ten it was due to the fact that they had accepted as their guide some old-time rule about how to enforce discipline, or else that they had never given thought to the subject of handling men and realized its importance. It is not difficult to learn how to avoid their mistakes, and to acquire the art of those who know how to inspire the enthusiastic efforts of others. It is understood then that we are not discussing the high qualities of the superman, or striving to attain to the leadership of a Lincoln. It must also be understood that not all these points will apply to any one case of leadership, in which many of them might be unreasonable. But all are based on the same philosophy of human control, and are consistent with the modern spirit of individualism which has become a prime consideration. So as you read something that may strike you as unreasonable in the case you have in mind, give it fair consideration as applicable to certain cases, and weigh it as a means of adding to your comprehension of the true spirit of leadership. You cannot know too much about this in the general case. The broader your knowledge and the better defined your individual opinions, the better judgment you will be able to bring to your particular problems. _You_ are the big factor. In the end it is going to be what you believe and think and feel that is going to make you successful or not. You will never win by following any abstract rules you do not yourself feel and live by. _Qualifying for Leadership._--Any man of native character may fit himself to lead successfully. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans thus fitted themselves in the late war to lead their fellows as officers, commissioned and non-commissioned. Many had had no previous experience of command to guide them, had never given a direction even to a servant. Yet by application they rapidly learned how to handle themselves more or less successfully as leaders and their men as loyal followers. No one expects perfection. All history records but one Leader without fault. It is impracticable to follow rules or to assume qualities that are not natural. The thing to do is to realize that leadership may be developed, to absorb its ordinary fundamentals into your system, and to study yourself as applying them to the problems of your position. Your own personality is the one big thing for you. Learn to appreciate its strong points and its weak ones, its possibilities for doing the right thing and the wrong, and its probable effect on others. Get it well in hand through practicing self-control, and make it work intelligently in accordance with your wishes. You will make mistakes--the best men do. The point is to have sense enough to recognize the mistake, to correct it and try to avoid repeating it. You watch yourself and you watch others, asking in each case if the best thing was done to get the desired result. There is generally one best thing to say or do, and at least a dozen wrong ones. The chances are largely in favor of using the wrong one, but by giving it thought you learn to pick the right until in the end it becomes quite instinctive for you to do so. We can sum it all up in just about this: that you begin to think seriously about yourself in your job, and determine that you are going to be natural, genuine, fair and self-controlled; that you realize that your instruments are human beings and that you have got to control them through _your own_ personality; and that therefore you determine to study your personality and your tools so you may use them intelligently. Observation and personal application of its results are the great things. No two leaders may act exactly alike, for each must use his own personality. One may be naturally cold, short-spoken and stern, the other suave and gentle, yet both be equally good leaders. But when you analyze their treatment of their men you will find that both observe the same fundamental principles of justice, fairness and regard for their individual development. And as the personalities of leaders must differ, so even more will those of the men. To control them you must have a working knowledge of human nature--for while all mankind respond more or less alike to well-known instincts and habits, there are times when you have to consider the individual. Here is where observation, experience and thinking about it prepare you to act intelligently. As a good horseman soon comes to handle a thoroughbred or a cold blood with equal assurance and success, so the leader of men gets to know instinctively what touch to give the reins or spurs in order to get the result he wants. And if in any given case you are not sure what to do, think what would make you respond cheerfully if you were in his place, and what would make you "buck." Let this decide what you will do. It will generally be the right thing, for at bottom we are all pretty much the same. Above all you must be genuine. You must use the personality God gave you--only use it naturally and with earnest purpose to play the game fairly. If by nature you are gentle and tactful, thank God, and do not try to be a bear, because you have seen and admired some big burly man who was a successful leader. The genuineness and earnestness of your personal efforts to do the right thing will go further than the best possible imitation of some other, be he ever so good. _Self-Control._--You are probably shrinking from the thought of taking yourself in hand in preparation for leadership. But it is quite natural that you should thus train yourselves, for self-control is the one first step toward ability to control others. And you will the more eagerly accomplish your own self-discipline, as you observe human nature and note the blessings of the man who is self-disciplined and the curse both to himself and his fellows of the man who is not. Those parents who allow a child to grow up to manhood undisciplined put a great burden upon the community in which he is to move, and above all a great handicap upon the man himself. Selfish, petulant, flaming into passion at any opposition, egoism coloring everything in life for him, he is a poor member of the team in sport or business, and is more often tolerated by his fellows than heartily welcomed. He has many hard lessons to learn before he comes to appreciate true values in the life about him, and thus become a truly worth-while member of society. Far from being fit to lead others, he is generally the most difficult problem for the leader, who now has to do the work that the parents should have done in the man's childhood. You may assume that you have the requisite native character for leadership, or you would not be in position to use it. It remains for you to prove its worth and improve its natural qualities. You will not do this by any grandstand plays, or even by prayer. You will do it by continued thoughtfulness in meeting the human problems of your position, and by a discipline of self which will make and keep you fit for your duties. _Consideration for Rights of Others._--It is a good thing for any citizen to make himself realize that he is part of a community whose members are entitled to some consideration as well as himself. This certainly is important for the man who is responsible for the conduct of others. Everyone hates a hog as a candidate for fellowship in sport, business or community living. You see him elbowing women and old men aside as he crowds himself to the front at a ticket window; and so through a busy day always jamming and trampling others to get the best for himself. He gains a questionable satisfaction for his swollen ego, but at the cost of the scorn of his fellows who have thought enough about life to realize that his type is a curse to community living and far from desirable as a characteristic of the race. _Put Yourself in His Place._--If you want to put something over with a man you may take an ax or a hammer and drive it into him--in which case you leave him sore and rebellious--or by putting yourself mentally in his place you may so express yourself as to win his cheerful acquiescence--even if, as may often happen, he does not end by thinking he originated the idea himself. The latter method is called being tactful--and compared to the former gets tenfold results, not to mention adding to the joy of life for all concerned. In presenting an idea by this method you give your attention to the form and manner in which you present it, rather than concentrate all your thought on the idea alone, let him take it as he will. It requires only a bit of consideration of what are the probable feelings and thoughts of the other, a realization of his point of view and how you would feel in his place. The leader who has won his promotion from below has an advantage in having experienced the point of view of his men. Yet he often throws it away and exhibits a case of swollen head by bellowing his "Hey you!" in absolute disregard of the outraged feelings which he must know this always engenders. It is so much more efficient to be reasonably tactful--to be considerate. To do it one may sacrifice a bit of vainglory, may not appear to himself and his fellows as such a lord of creation, but he will get better results, make life more worth living for all, and win for himself a place in the estimation of others which may well return him tenfold of advantage in some future contingency. It is never the really big man whose arrogance hurts the feelings of the less fortunate or forbids him to show respect and consideration to each man who does well his appointed task in no matter what capacity. This arrogance is found rather in the toad who is trying to make others think he is an ox--and the humbler a man's station the more likely he is to recognize a toad when he meets one, and the more pain it causes him to have to bow to its bovine pretensions. _Loyalty and Initiative._--We have seen how the leader is responsible for developing these qualities in his subordinates. He wins their loyalty to him by gaining their admiration of the personal qualities he displays; and their loyalty to the larger organization and the cause, by his own example and by timely comments. He develops their intelligent initiative by the policy and methods he employs in handling them in their work. He constantly encourages individual effort, taking pains to commend every display of interest, inventiveness, ingenuity, or improvement. He keeps the group informed of what it is trying to do as a whole, so each may understand the object of his particular part and seek opportunity to do it better. He tells the man what to do, not how to do it, and praises whatever shows original effort and decision. By constructive criticism and explanation he encourages the man so that he wants to do it better next time. In short he encourages his men to observe, to think, to decide, and to act on their decisions. So long as their spirit is loyal, the best results come from such service, and he must be patient in developing these faculties. _Development of the Men's Powers._--How natural it is to be impatient with the man who is bungling his early efforts. How often the master grabs the thing and does it himself rather than wait for inexperienced hands to find the way. The parent says petulantly, "I'd rather do it myself than see John struggling with it." The boss cares more to have a certain thing done exactly as he would do it than he does for all the good that might come from the developed skill and resourcefulness of his men. Of course these are all wrong. Your way is not always the best way. One way is often as good as another, and improvements come out of the interested inventiveness of the worker. Your object is to get the best efforts of your men, and good work is not done in an atmosphere of humiliation and discouragement. You must avoid the natural display of temper at awkwardness and the cutting remarks which indicate that you think the man a hopeless idiot. If he really is that you have a different problem and should avoid wasting your time and that of the others in efforts to use him. You are developing men and their powers. The constructive and inventive instincts thrive in an atmosphere of encouragement, and opportunity to employ them keeps the worker cheerfully at his task. You get a double reward from this system of control--the satisfaction of seeing your subordinates grow in ability under your hands, and the satisfaction of increased output or accomplishment under your management. _Popularity._--Should a leader strive for "popularity" with his men? By all means, if he is man enough to win it on his merits, for it is a large element in establishing their loyalty. But it is very easy for the beginner to have the wrong idea as to how popularity is won. He must clearly understand that it is not gained through easy-going methods, overlooking faults and neglects, playing favorites, sympathy with growling and kicking about the way things have to be done, nor in any of those things which go to undermine discipline and morale. Such popularity is properly called cheap. It takes no manliness to get it, it has no value once you have it. Such leadership is worse than worthless, it does actual damage. It will be exposed for the sham it is by the first occasion for endurance, by the first thing that comes to test the real grit and ability of the group. Then one of two things must happen--failure, or some better man will jump out of the crowd, take the leadership from these weak hands, and lead the men through the emergency. We have seen this illustrated often enough in the army, where authority has held in his peacetime position of leadership some weakling who faded into the ranks in the actual tests of service, while some strong quiet character stepped to the front and successfully assumed the responsibilities of leadership. It is the duty of all management to discover and remove these weak leaders. It is equally the duty of every leader to study himself and his methods, and to make sure that both of them display the qualities which will justify his holding the leadership and will give it such character as to make it proof against any emergency demands. The popularity that counts, that makes men say they would follow so-and-so through anything, makes them brag about their chief and proud to serve under him, is founded on admiration for his real ability, confidence in his fairness and justice, and in the courage and strength of his character. He has won this popularity by being absolutely fair and square to all, by seeing that both privileges and extra hardships are equitably divided among his men, by holding everyone to a strict performance of duty, by reward of merit where due and recognition of delinquency where it exists, by avoiding anything like deceit or duplicity in his conduct of office, by never appearing to ignore any of his men as of no consequence in the group, by showing a sincere personal interest in the welfare of his men as individuals and above all by such use of his own head in planning and forethought as to save his men unnecessary work or trouble and yet increase their efficiency, thus making them realize that he really has the ability to lead them. _Appearance--As to Dignity._--The leader holds his position on the assumption that out of the whole group he is the best all-around man for the job. He must retain this reputation for excellence, and should add to it by further performance. First of all in appearance--in how he carries himself before his men. The nature of the work may determine the amount of dignity which must go with the office, but in every case there is a certain dignity which all men must find in their leaders to which they may instinctively give their respect. This is just about the amount of dignity that comes naturally from earnestness and sincerity of purpose. It is not a virtue to be assumed, a superficial garment to be put on for the work. It has nothing to do with haughtiness or stiffness--unless it be an assumed dignity which is often thus manifested. "It comes simply from seeing things in their right proportion--big things big, small things small," and really has more of humility than of pride. It forbids you to patronize your men, to appear to condescend to them in your dealings, and it does admit your sharing both their earnest concerns and their fun. Professor Hocking says "To make a quick transition from fun to business, and carry your men with you instantly, is the test of real dignity. The two opposites of dignity are permanent solemnity and permanent triviality." Both have a bad effect on humans. _As to Example._--Remember also in the matter of appearance that you are an example. Imitation is a great teacher--the sole teacher of our infancy, not to be despised in our manhood. Your men are going to be very much as you are--if you are really their leader. Your example of cheerfulness, promptness, loyalty to superiors, cleanliness, courtesy, energy and interest, will find response in that of the men. I have seen this carried to the extent of copying the cut of the hair, the angle of the hat and other personal peculiarities. The power of example is a potent force, and very useful in establishing loyalty. An important example for you to give is one of earnestness of purpose and interest in the work. The accomplishment of the work must appear to be a vital matter to you. Listlessness and indifference on your part will be quickly reflected by the men, while they will equally respond to a reasonable amount of smartness and earnestness on your part. You can imagine the amount of earnestness we used to put into our English lessons at West Point where we had an old instructor who closed his eyes and dozed while each cadet recited. There was great keenness to get into his classes but it stopped there. You should appear to care so much for your work that you are indifferent to the little things that affect your own comfort. If the men see you taking advantage of your position to enjoy comforts denied to them it induces a state of mind that interferes with good work. A good example of this was the conduct of a captain of cavalry in the Philippines who, being required to conduct drill during the heat of the day, took up his position under the shade of a solitary tree on the plain and drilled his troop in a circle around him. That drill did not add much to the excellence of the troop or to their loyalty for the captain. _As to Ability._--Again you want to impress the men as being one who knows at once what is to be done in each case that arises, who makes quick decisions, and who carries through what he has undertaken, without changing his mind. We will discuss this more in detail later, enough here to say that by figuring out ahead of time all the details of a certain undertaking and carefully planning for it, you can carry it through with an apparent readiness of decision and resource that will be surprising; and a few such successes will establish your reputation as an able leader. _Knowledge of Details._--Your position presupposes that you know the work better than does any other man in the group. Generally speaking you should be able to do each man's part at least as well as the man, able to know when he is working to best advantage, able to recognize particularly good performance to commend it, able to correct improper methods and point the way to improvement. This superior knowledge gives you the self-confidence to appear before the men as their leader and to give them instructions and orders which you know are reasonable. The men instinctively feel and recognize this superiority, and naturally give it respect and obedience. Of course no one man may reasonably claim to know everything, nor to be more skillful in every detail than certain specialists. This fact is frankly recognized by all the group, and is used to stir the pride of individuals in their particular superior performance, and also as a reason for expecting all to make suggestions for any improvements they may have thought out. _Suggestions from the Men._--These suggestions are to be really encouraged, and given fair consideration when made. If accepted, credit is to be given to the man, if rejected, he is to be told why it is not found good. It is a mistake to feel that the leader loses caste in accepting or even listening to suggestions from his subordinates. "Nobody can tell me how to run this job" is a narrow policy, destroying individual initiative--and it is not true anyway. The very statement shows that the leader does not fully know his job, for everyone is capable of improvement, and any job is better done for the combined interest and resourcefulness of everyone connected with it. _Prestige._--The leader loses none of his prestige in hearing and considering the thoughts of his subordinates. In the end the decision is his and on that they all have to act. And it does not hurt his leadership to have to say frankly "I don't know. I'll have to look into that." If he finds that he has taken a wrong course, it does not hurt even to admit frankly that he was mistaken, especially if his action has happened to do an injustice to one of his men. Mistakes are readily forgiven, but not meanness or injustice. Remember always that the men admire manliness in their leader and demand justice from him. These qualities are better than infallibility, for after all they like to feel that you are human. And above all they will not respect a bluffer. It is hopeless to try to bluff when you do not know. Someone will know and expose you, and away goes the respect of your men. _Asking Men's Opinions._--I have known successful leaders to make it a rule to ask, whenever one of their men came to them with some question or trouble, "What do you think about it? What would you advise doing?" The man has generally been thinking about this for some time before he presented it. If it is a question about the work he has probably in mind some solution which he thinks an improvement and this is his way of getting it considered. By thus asking his opinion you encourage his personal interest in the general success, enlist his co-operation, give opportunity for that self-expression which means so much to every self-respecting man, and not least of all you gain time for consideration of your own answer while he is presenting his. This is often a particularly good way to handle the case of a man brought before you for some dereliction of duty. Ask him what he would do, if he were boss, with a man who had committed the same offense. It is astonishing how this makes him realize the whole situation, which he probably had not thought of before, and nine times out of ten he will suggest a more severe punishment than you would give, and come out of the experience a much more responsive member of the group than he was before. _A Representative of Authority._--In any business undertaking the immediate leader of a group is to his men the direct representative of the authority which holds them to their tasks; of the purpose and policy which inspire their endeavors; and of the management which directs the enterprise. These men will largely get their impressions of the justice and fairness of this authority from that displayed by their leader; they will judge the worthiness of its purpose and policy from his enthusiasm and loyalty; and will estimate the efficiency of its management by that which their leader daily displays. Management considered all this when it selected you as a leader, it is now for you to consider it constantly in dealing with your men. The more ignorant the man, the more nearly are you his sole representative of these elements, and the more important that you treat him fairly and wisely. He may be a poor immigrant unable to understand our language and wholly dependent on how your treatment impresses him for his conceptions of the fairness of our management and the worth of our industrial life and institutions. It is up to you to make him a contented useful laborer and happy citizen--and not to drive him to the ranks of revolution by making him believe that authority is unjust and our institutions unworthy his loyalty. _The Head of the Family._--A good leader is always a jealous guardian of the personal rights of his men. It is only over his dead body that an injustice is done to any of them or to his group as a whole. He is their champion in every contact with the larger organization, and they look up to him for it. The group instinct is one of the strong self-protective instincts. In the multitudinous groupings of the modern community, the individual chooses those groups which he believes offer him the best protection and to them gives his loyalty. The leader but takes advantage of this psychological fact when he makes his men realize that he is constantly on the lookout for their interests. He may row at them himself (in a fatherly way), but he allows no one else to do so. He sees that they get what is coming to them. If hardship has to be borne, he sees that it is borne justly, and shares it with them. If food is short and shelter poor, as often happens on field and engineering jobs, he does not rest until he has exhausted every effort to improve them, and in sharing them is very careful to show himself no favor. He fights for their fair name, and for full recognition of their merit. If one of his men has a trouble, it becomes his trouble until it is adjusted. He thus establishes the feeling that it is a family matter, and that he is the head of the family. (Incidentally he is sure to be rewarded, for the men will soon be taking a keen interest in the welfare of the head of their family.) And in the end the men come to speak of it as "_our_" group--not Smith's or Brown's but "our" gang, for each realizes that his interests are equal in it with any others. And until his men do thus speak of the outfit as ours rather than his, the leader may know that he has not yet got the co-operative spirit which he desires. _The Group Spirit._--Any group of individuals working together for a common purpose are going to establish unconsciously a group spirit of some kind. This has got to happen. The leader knows that success largely depends on what this spirit shall be, and takes pains to make it a helpful one. By getting to know the men and "how they feel about it," he keeps in close touch with the spirit that runs through them all, and by suggestions here and there he does much to build it up in the way it should go and make the men feel a membership in his team. When he has got to know this spirit well, he can count on his men to respond in a certain way to certain appeals or impulses, and he thus makes this group spirit a tool in his hand for getting results. In time of hardship or strain he plays on this spirit to arouse new energy or endurance, and jaded muscles spring anew to life, just as martial music will put renewed life and spring into the lagging steps of tired soldiers. Thus always spirit may make men endure and dare and carry through far beyond the normal accomplishment. Thus the thoroughbred will run unfalteringly till his mighty heart breaks with the strain, while there need be no fear of killing the ambitionless cold bred, who slows down and quits at the early warnings of fatigue. So the good leader is constantly on the lookout for means to build up this splendid spirit in his group. By word and deed, and particularly by thoughtful conduct of the work in hand, he fosters the spirit of putting things across and never being defeated, which is going to carry them through to success when called upon. His men come to realize that what he requires of them is always reasonable and that it makes for efficiency; they find that he is always considering their welfare before his own and taking the greater pride in their success for the team; and they come to realize that while he so directs their work as to make it as interesting for them as he can, he will never accept failure for them or himself, but insist on carrying through to successful accomplishment. It is possible thus to establish so strong a group spirit for doing good work and generally winning out that the men themselves will get after the laggards and expose the worthless for elimination as unfit for membership in the team. _This Spirit Requires Efficiency._--Such results are possible to the leader in direct proportion to his knowledge of his job and his ability to conduct the work with efficiency and without wasted time or energy. Men naturally hate inefficiency. They become critical, caustic in their remarks, and finally disgusted under a leader who wastes their time and efforts, who hesitates over decisions and wonders whether to do this or that and how to do either, who hasn't the tools and material right at hand, who is always picking the wrong man for a piece of work, and who holds up the work of all while he fusses with the clumsy efforts of some "dub." Such a leader will never build up any good spirit. That comes only from the reverse of this picture of incompetence. _Work for the Leader._--But not all leaders may be gods to be always right and sure in their management of affairs. True, but by looking ahead, by planning and preparing for each new task, by headwork and overtime work, they can so fit themselves for each task that they can carry their men through it with such efficient direction that they will seem to their men to be almost godlike. Of course this means work for the leader. But the notion is foolish that work grows less as one ascends the ladder of promotion. In reality the leader who is half as good as he should be in his position is generally earning far more than his pay. His task is no easy one. Ambition for accomplishment, pride in success, joy of meeting manly responsibility, and not that enjoyment of an easy berth which some assume it to be, are the motives which hold the leader to his job. _Where Leadership Really Shows._--As we watch a skillful boss directing his men through a job, tools and material all at hand, every man moving efficiently, all the parts working smoothly toward the result, how natural it is to exclaim, "What teamwork!" and "What a leader!" But out of years of experience I tell you that this leader seems so good, not because God especially endowed him with skill, but because he has previously sat down and planned out how he was going to handle this especial job, and because he took pains to see to it ahead of time that everything was prepared for the work. His superior leadership shows not in the work he is here doing, but in the work he did beforehand in building up the discipline and teamwork of his men and in making preparation for handling this especial job efficiently. That is why he may now appear so quietly sure of himself and his men, and that is the real task for leadership--fitting self, men, and team ahead of time so they may work smoothly to the best advantage without waste or friction. _Assuring the Confidence of the Men._--It is a common fault of leaders to take too much for granted and assume that men understand conditions without bothering to explain them. Remember that a man cannot give good work if his mind is harboring fear, distrust, or even questionings as to his rights, his duties or his assurance of receiving impartial justice and fair dealing. Confidence and a knowledge of the conditions under which he works will keep his mind free from these disturbing invaders. Instead of assuring this mental freedom, many leaders are so poor as positively to inject fear and anxiety. Perhaps nothing can do more to free his mind at once for useful impulses than to provide him with printed rules and regulations which clearly define the policy of the undertaking as regards administration and control; the rights, duties and mutual relations of its members; and particularly the method by which each may secure immediate consideration by superior authority in case of real or fancied invasion of his right to justice and impartial treatment. We all know that in industry the man's distrust of the impartiality and honesty of his boss is often justified, and we can see the advantages of letting the man know his rights and giving him easy sure access to higher authority. The vastness of modern organizations has too often made management forget its responsibility in the matter of discipline and fair treatment among its employees. These laborers find themselves to-day in a case not unlike that of our forefathers who had to force from their tyrant king a written acknowledgement of their rights--yet rights so simple and fundamental as would seem to go without saying, and to require safeguarding only from a selfish, unfeeling brute. _To none will we sell, to none will we deny or delay, right or justice_ may well be borrowed from Magna Charta and published as a fundamental rule for the interior administration of many modern enterprises. _Assuring Justice._--The possession of authority makes a wise man consider the rights of others, lest he do a grave injustice. It is likely to have a far different effect on a man of narrow soul and intellect. He often becomes selfish, mean and arrogant, indifferent to the feelings and rights of others, partial to favorites whom he chooses for selfish reasons. He thus denies justice and forfeits his right to leadership. Such men as bosses in industry are often the cause of serious labor troubles, and are always the cause of reduced production. By deceit and duplicity they may long conceal these qualities from higher authority, while they continue to negative the most humane policies of management. For this reason, when troubles show in any group of men, first seek the source in the defective leadership of their boss. It is for this same reason that successful management finds means to check up the methods of its subordinates, and has it clearly understood by all that every man has ready access to higher authority for the presentation of any grievance. _Joy of Doing Work Well._--A man naturally takes real delight in doing a piece of work well, in the successful play of his constructive instincts. He gets an actual pleasure from doing well whatever he puts his hand to. This was another of Nature's wise endowments when she determined that man should be her main instrument for progress in the world. Whatever a man is doing in an agreeable frame of mind, he finds himself naturally striving for perfection--the farmer looks back with pleasurable reward to see that he has turned a clean, straight furrow, the carpenter and mechanic get an inward glow from the perfect fitting of a joint, and it was not poetic fancy which made David Grey take such delight in digging that drainage ditch under a hot summer sun. These joys from fine execution of work are the result of a natural instinct, and form one of the best means for getting results if the leader knows how to use them. When you see a man taking no interest in his work and not trying to get good results, perhaps even purposely doing poor work, you may be sure that something is fundamentally wrong. Some stronger instinct has been aroused whose force forbids the operation of this happy one for construction. Our strongest instincts are those which regard our self-protection, and one of these may be causing the trouble. If conditions are such as to make the man fearful of his welfare, of his livelihood or of injustice, contrary instincts are likely to overcome or at least confuse the instinct to do well. So we may expect superior results only under a system which assures fairness and justice, and under a leader who honestly practices them. _The Curse of Conscious Deadbeating._--A common complaint of labor is that the end of work finds the man too tired to do anything else that day. This is true, however, not because of the amount of work he has done but because of the small amount of interest and ambition which he has been allowed to put into it. Man is so designed that he is happiest in doing hard work and good work if he may but take the right spirit to it. This is the curse of the lack of trust between employer and employees, and the consequent labor union policies which deny to their members the privilege of giving full play to their constructive instincts. These policies establish a standard of mediocrity, and thus do daily violence to the character of those capable ambitious men who, instead of being free to give their best, are thus forced to work consciously as "deadbeats." No wonder that these men are tired at night and that they have no heart for outside interests. They are working in a spirit which saps their manhood and injures their self-respect as members of the community. You may see this evidenced in their hang-dog faces as they "soldier" on their jobs. Nothing but honest belief in the necessity for this policy of loafing could hold them loyal to it. Even this will not always do it; for men often become more interested in the success of "their business," their undertaking, than they are for the time being in the observance of union regulations. When no particular danger threatens or issue is at stake, a clever boss may so appeal to the constructive instincts as to make them dominate the self-protective ones. Public opinion is likely to play an important part in the above question. The community is interested in anything which so materially affects the character of its citizens and the output of its industries. It may come to a decision; and demand certain action which it believes will correct a situation it finds so injurious. And it may do this without a true conception of the facts, so that its dictum is as likely to offend the best interests of the laborer as of the employer. Far better that the leaders of both should themselves solve their common problem for their own common interest--and many have done this. This question must be a serious consideration for leaders of labor. For only that leadership can last which _makes for progress_. Its purpose must be clear and honest, and must satisfy the constructive instincts. Otherwise its following will fall away, to seek some other which offers this satisfaction. Appeals to passion and prejudice will carry men a long way in a short time, but sooner or later comes the time for serious thinking. Then these men must be convinced that their course makes for progress and greater ultimate good. And unless the leadership has had a broad vision based on realities, they will discover its fallacy or selfishness, and so abandon it. _Depending on a Man._--You can make a man feel so strongly that you are trusting him to play fair in a certain matter, "put it up to him" in such a way, that his sense of manhood and good sportsmanship will make him feel that he owes it to you to make good. This is a strong influence on conduct--too strong to be used constantly. It may easily become burdensome to ordinary mortals, who generally want more freedom from the promptings of conscience. The point is to use it only in special cases, and thus get its good effect both in results obtained and on the man's character. When you do use it, do so quite naturally and easily without too much fuss or talking, and certainly without formally "putting him on his honor." There should be no apparent question of your confidence being justified--it is so sure that you do not have to talk about it. Here is an illustration: I found in my command at Camp Grant a husky soldier who was a prisoner serving a three months sentence, and considered a surly, insubordinate brute who would never be disciplined. Soon thereafter his major brought him to me with a most unusual request for authority to let the man go to Chicago to be with his wife during a serious operation. The man stated his case--too proud and obstinate to ask any favors. I discovered that he felt that his first punishment had been a rank injustice, and that he had thereafter been so sore as willfully to defy authority. I asked how long he would need to be in Chicago--he did not know. I took the chance and authorized the major to let him go in perfect freedom and stay as long as the man found necessary. He was back long before we expected him and in an entirely new frame of mind. He soon had the remainder of his sentence remitted for good behavior, and before we left for France he had become a non-commissioned officer and one of the best subordinate leaders for arousing loyal service. Another good citizen made--or at least saved from the hell he was driving into. If he survived the war he is to-day proud of the service he once hated for its injustice--and some day no doubt he will be championing his major for mayor of the city. _Proprietorship and Self-Expression._--Other strong instincts which the leader should take advantage of are those of proprietorship and of self-expression. To get the full benefit of his instinct to do his work well, the man should be made to feel that he has a personal interest in this job that he is doing, and that in actually doing it he is using his own skill, resourcefulness and inventiveness. So the leader watches for the chance, and drops a remark to show that he sees how well the man has done some step he has taken, and no harm if others overhear the remark! The leader is equally careful to speak of it as Smith's job, to praise the way _Smith_ handled it, to commend the excellent condition of Smith's tools, and thus by rewarding Smith's little success and making it appear to be the result of his individual work on his own job with _his own machine_ or tools, he encourages in all the feeling that each is doing his own work in his own way and will get credit accordingly. It is also well to remember that these same constructive instincts in the men have another meaning for you as their leader. They will cause the men to resent it when they find themselves doing useless work, wasting energy and even approaching failure as a result of your poor judgment, hesitation in making decisions, and blundering through lack of forethought. This makes you see the necessity for knowing your job, and carefully preparing yourself to handle its details. _Knowing the Purpose of Work._--Human nature demands that before men can put their best efforts into work they must know the object of it. Purpose is the big guiding motive in all life, and we are so made that we seek for the purpose in all our efforts, and finding it and believing in it, we naturally give it our best endeavors. It is stated that one of the three greatest faults in handling labor to-day is the fact that the men do not know what they are doing, or why. Yet it is plain that a man must have some interest in his task before he can put much heart or intelligence into it. It is quite possible in assigning a task to make sure that the man understands the object of it, what part it is and its importance in the general work of the team. Then no matter how prosaic this part may be, as the man works he may build a mental picture of the completed whole, see his part fitting into it, and employ his constructive instincts in making his part perfect. Meanwhile, the necessity of thus clearly defining the object of the work to the man reacts advantageously on the leader. It requires him to have a clear conception of this object, and thus enables him to hew truer to the line in carrying on the work. To illustrate the value of knowing why, imagine two men each for a different day carrying buckets of water from a stream to dump into a tank on a near hilltop. One knows that every drop of this water is precious for the necessary irrigation of a garden he can see beyond the hill; the other has no idea why the water is carried--someone may be trying to dry up the stream for all he knows. Not only would the former carry more water, but he would take more pleasure in his work and be trying to invent some means for increasing the amount transported; and when night came he would be far less tired. This illustrates a truth which applies to all human activities, and it is the leader's job to take advantage of it for the good effect it will have on his men and on the work to be accomplished. In starting any new work, new undertaking, or new policy, the one most efficient thing to do is to assemble the whole group of men concerned and explain to them what you and they together are going to try to do; how they are organized for it, and the part each is to take; and finally such a picture of the whole to be accomplished as may serve as an inspiration, or at least appeal to their reason. Do not let it ever be said of your men that they are working in ignorance of what they are trying to do, and thus debarred from putting intelligent interest and co-operation into their respective parts. _Relationship Between Leader and Men._--The relationship which should exist between the leader and his men is a difficult thing to explain accurately. It depends largely on the leader's personality, and accordingly each must work this out for himself. This is almost always a matter of difficulty and embarrassment for beginners, who are apt to go to an unhappy extreme either in surrounding themselves with an atmosphere of isolation and autocracy or in showing too much familiarity and even frivolity. Let them first remember that the leader is not an autocrat or dictator, but the foremost of his companions. This position puts responsibility and authority in his hands, and a certain restraint on the perfect freedom of his relations with the others. He may still be called by his first name in perfect good fellowship; may be even affectionately nick-named; may and should be in relations of mutual and absolutely impartial friendship and confidence with his men; yet there must remain in reserve a something of superiority and true dignity which they recognize and which makes it natural for them to respect him and obey his instructions. He may be intimate, but must not be familiar. He should be courteous and thoughtful for their interests, but must never be patronizing. You will notice if you take pains to observe, that a real gentleman or lady is always courteous to those in subordinate positions. The real superior has no anxiety about his prestige and is quietly at ease in dealing with subordinates. Those who bully them are thus showing that they have not had long experience in exercising authority. The true spirit of America believes in the dignity of labor. Our nation was built in the actual sweat of our forebears, who hewed the forests and tilled the soil with their own hands and did not attempt to enslave the labor of the natives as did the pioneers who colonized the countries further south. That spirit survives and makes it natural for us to respect those who do their parts well in whatever activity fortune has placed them. So the leader and his men, the employer and the laborer, are all companions in labor, and each shows respect for the ability and accomplishment of the other. That is the spirit of the relationship between leader and men by which he is to regulate his conduct. You can see how this spirit is sure to be offended by anything like patronizing or exhibitions of either pompous authority or childish familiarity. Both men and leader are each entitled to the serious consideration of the other, and to respect in direct proportion to the ability each shows in performing his own part on the team; and each will be judged by this test. As an officer in one of the new war organizations put it to his men in explaining the spirit he sought in training, "We are all on the same team. It happens that I am in the pitcher's box now, but some day each one of us will have to come to the bat." _Reception of New Men._--The ultimate success of a new man joining an outfit depends of course on the real stuff that is in him. But much can be done to hasten this success. It has been the practice of the ages to haze the newcomer, and thus bring out this real stuff if it is there. But this is not approved in modern practice, which aims to get good results quicker through encouragement and by showing him how rather than baffing him on the head with a marlin spike for not knowing. Both schools of training have their adherents, and youth--excepting the hazee--is generally in favor of hazing. There is something to be said in favor of enough judicious hazing to remove any tendencies toward "freshness" which might interfere with the new man's progress, and enough to implant in him an appreciation of the seriousness of life where that is lacking. But the difficulty is to make the hazing judicious--to avoid overdoing it, or doing it where not needed. So this becomes another care for the leader, who must see that each new man gets the right start if possible. You can be sure that most new men want to make good. Encourage them along that line and try to prevent the occurrence of anything which will switch them to the other track. To most of them an early exhibition of your friendly personal interest in how they are coming on will be a great help and incentive to better work. There will be many things that they do not understand, and some real or fancied troubles. This is your chance to establish a relation of confidence in which they form the habit of bringing these troubles to you for solution, instead of letting them rankle in their minds and act as deterrents to the good impulses for work. This gives you many opportunities for improving the group spirit and may some day be the means of clearing up real grievances which might otherwise lead to serious trouble. The man's future depends largely on the start he gets, on his first impressions of the spirit and policies of the outfit, and on the habits he personally forms. The smarter he finds the outfit to be, the more pride he will take in belonging to it. The closer attention he is forced to give to the exact performance of little details the sooner he will get the habit of doing things exactly right, and the sooner he will become a helpful member of the team. You can teach new tricks to new men much more easily than you can to old ones, whose well-formed habits you must break before you can implant the new ones. New men are a valuable asset to a live leader, for he can come nearer making them the kind of men he wants. _Take Time to Hear Men._--The leader must have time to listen to his men. He must not be too busy to take up this matter or that which anyone of them may properly bring to him for consideration. It is easy to look important and say "I haven't got time," but each time the leader does it he drives one more nail in the coffin of the team spirit whose life he should really be cherishing. The chances are that he declines the interview because he fears that he does not know the answer. But it is far better to take that chance, make the man feel that he was right in coming to you, and listen to his proposition, even if in the end you have to admit that you do not know. You must "have time," if you want the loyal co-operation of your subordinates. I know an officer who took charge of and straightened out a tangled organization in Paris, and the first thing he did was to tack outside his office door, "I have got time to hear you." It is much harder to get your subordinates to give you the frank timely expressions you need, than it is to avoid being bothered by too many of them. The busiest leader can and should so arrange his affairs and his policy that every subordinate may know that he may personally see the chief if the occasion warrants. In the midst of all the cares of building the Panama Canal, General Goethals still set aside one morning each week for his men; and among all those thousands of employees every Jamaican and Hottentot had the comfort during the week of knowing he could see the big boss in person on Sunday. His gang boss also knew that the Hottentot could go to see the general, which had a salutary effect on his methods--so in the end not so many actually went after all. Let everyone know that anyone having troubles is to bring them direct to you and the troubles will rapidly diminish, and your time be well repaid in added efficiency. _Talking to Men._--There is much for the leader to consider in the matter of talking to his subordinates. He may not talk enough, or he may talk too much. He must explain to all the object, organization, and policy of any new undertaking. He thus gets better results and saves a lot of talking later. On the other hand a reputation for constantly "sounding off" as they say on the street and especially for preaching, would practically ruin him. A leader should observe the rule not to talk unless he has something worth saying, and that _nothing is worth saying unless it is worth being listened to_. The habit of talking without demanding the close attention of those supposed to be interested is bad business, and makes trouble and misunderstandings later. Yet many leaders are guilty of it, and expect to repeat their instructions over and over before they are understood. This is partly their fault and partly that of the listeners--but the leaders are responsible for both. In the first place the leader must talk directly to the point. If he has not this ability, he must self train in it, which he may daily do to advantage, both at home and abroad. Let him first think what he has to say, even exactly how he is going to say it--then say it _and stop_. He will not talk as much, but it will go farther. There are many men so unaccustomed to saying things which really count, that they become embarrassed and confused when they find themselves the object of close attention. Yet the leader must meet this, for holding the close attention of the men is the second and equally important part of his responsibility in talking successfully. _Demanding Attention of All._--When you have anything to say, to one man or to many, get full attention first, and insist on having it while you are talking. We so often see the impossible situation of a leader making remarks which he considers important and the men of his group plainly giving attention to other matters, even engaging in side conversations. When you have to talk to a number of men, call them all about you, in front of you where you can see all their faces, and as near you as practicable so you may speak if possible in a conversational tone. You will have to give this constant attention, for the devil prompts some men always to slip around behind you, while others always take the most distant seats and await the Biblical invitation to come forward. With the men thus before you, you can now make sure that your points tell. If an interruption occurs, immediately stop talking until all can give attention again. If your remarks are for everybody, everybody should hear them, and _you_ are responsible that they do. Make that a rule, stick to it yourself, and you should have no trouble. _Talking to Individuals._--In talking to an individual, try to be so clear and definite that you will not have to repeat, and let it be understood that you expect such attention from him that repetition will not be necessary. Of course, you sometimes have to deal with a mind so untrained in concentration that it cannot take things in and retain them, and you will have to be patient in making yourself understood. The meanest type of mind is that which keeps thinking, while you are talking, of what it is going to say when it gets a chance, and gives your remarks just enough attention to note when a pause comes so it may begin to talk. This kind of man is a curse in any walk of life, and not to be tolerated in business. The art of listening is a valuable one. Everyone should cultivate the habit of concentrated attention to what is being said, if it means anything to him. It is particularly valuable in receiving instructions, and promotion is more likely to come to one of whom his superior can report that "He gives his full attention when you tell him anything, and you never have to repeat." _Example Better Than Talk._--In the line of not talking too much, it is well to remember that American spirit is not aroused by Napoleonic addresses before the fight. If the leader wants keenness and enthusiasm in doing a piece of work, he arouses them rather by example than by words. It is here that actions speak louder than words. You cannot put your men "on their toes" by telling them that you want them there. You must bring the "follow me" spirit to the work, and put so much cheerful energy and vitality into it that your spirit is contagious. By keen direction, happy suggestion, possibly a bit of competition, and most of all by example you put your men on their toes unconsciously, and hold them there till the task is done. Then you may all talk about how good it was, and share the credit. _Proper Subjects for Talk._--On the other hand there are things that you must talk about. Your subordinates must understand your methods and policies, for you want their co-operation in carrying them out. Remember that while you are dealing with intelligent men, they still are not wizards to be able to divine your thoughts. So do not assume a manner of aloofness and superiority, or wrap yourself and the work in an atmosphere of mystery. Explain in frank, homely, man-to-man talks what you are getting at and how you intend to get at it. The atmosphere you want is one of mutual understanding and confidence. You get it, however, not by saying you have it, but by showing that you have it in the way you treat the men. Another subject for you to explain is the spirit of discipline, its objects and its necessity. Many men have never thought about it, never realized the necessity for obedience and the advantages of cheerful obedience, never heard of teamwork or thought of loyalty to comrades. As occasions arise you can explain these things in a way to make them interesting and very real influences on the men's conduct. In this way you may do much toward building up the group spirit you want. In a given case of violation of rules or dereliction of duty it is often possible to explain to all your men how this offense damages the discipline and reputation of the group, and thus get better results than you would from inflicting punishment. You should also take occasion from time to time to explain the affairs of the larger organization, to tell the men what it is trying to do and how it is getting on with it. Tell them anything to increase their knowledge of the whole scheme and their interest in its success, for both these add to loyalty and morale. You want the men to have the stimulation that comes from a live interest in the general result, so keep "the cards on the table," and make the men participants with you in the developments of the work. We Americans are all "from Missouri," and need to be shown. But when we once understand what is wanted, we jump in heartily and put it over. _Talks by the Big Chief._--The head of any organization will get far better results if he will make occasions for assembling all his subordinate leaders in a body and talking to them of his policies, his plans, and of how things are going in general. The day has passed when the source of authority is supposed to be clothed in awe-inspiring majesty, whence issue commands for servile obedience. That chief who denies close relationship to his subordinate leaders, who does not take them into his confidence and let them know his plans and how he proposes to carry them out, creates to-day the suspicion either that he is not sure of himself in his job or that his plans and purposes will not bear the light. The big man does not fear close scrutiny and does seek co-operation and suggestion. The successful business head to-day makes himself the captain of a team whose members co-operate intelligently for the team's success. For this purpose he brings them together in a body where shoulder to shoulder they feel their comradeship in a common cause; where they all get the inspiration of their captain's personal leadership, and absorb enthusiasm from his personal presentation of his hopes and plans. All are thus filled with a common purpose and return to their tasks each better fitted and more highly determined to play his part to the best advantage of the larger organization. Thus the most successful American commanders, like General Summerall, took time and pains to go about before a battle and explain in person to assembled groups of their commands the general plan of the coming action and the exact part this particular group was to play. There was no effort at oratorical appeal to passion or patriotism, simply a recognition of the American's ability and willingness to do his full part if he only knows what it is. It never failed to work, and it will work as well in civil affairs. _Mutual Acquaintance Among Subordinates._--Another important thing is to get these subordinates together in such a way that they will get to know each other personally. They are really partners in the same enterprise, and a knowledge of each other's personal equations is quite indispensable to their successful teamwork. Personal acquaintance and even better, friendship, will add tremendously to their efficiency. The various departments of an organization are more or less interdependent, and Smith will give quicker and better attention to the needs of Jones if he knows him and especially if he thinks him a good fellow. Thus in battle the covering fire of the artillery is far more efficient when its commander knows that his friend Bill is out there commanding the infantry. Therefore army control takes pains to bring those two commanders into personal relationship before the battle. So in business the head should make occasions for getting his subordinates together in friendly personal relations. They will be pleased to find that they all speak pretty much the same language, though some may not have thought so before. This closer association removes the affectation of some and the extreme humility of others, and exposes them all for what they really are, fellow members of the same purpose; equally sincere in striving for its success, and equally to be judged on their sole merits of performance. This has been tried out successfully in many industrial enterprises, with happy surprise for the holier-than-thou skeptics. It is sure to be of advantage if the management goes into it with sincerity of purpose. _Supervision of Workers._--It is plain that the leader's job is one of supervision and direction. It is his business to see that each member of the team does his part to the best advantage for the general result, and so to know the individual capacities of his men that he can assign the right man to each task. This, as in fact do all the other duties of leadership, requires him to be continually watching the individual performances of his men, commending, correcting, and co-ordinating their efforts. This forbids his actually taking part in the work himself, not because to do so would be beneath his dignity, but because to become involved in doing the actual work would distract his attention from the duties of supervision, and many things would be going on without his knowledge. If the boss shows himself anxious to use the pick or shovel, there is always some man willing to lend him the tools and watch his efforts with assumed interest. I recall the case of an officer charged with building a piece of government road in the mountains of California. No one could have been more faithful, he set a wonderful example of energy, but expended it all on personally working the road plow. Meantime the contractor was putting in blind culverts and otherwise so slighting his work that most of the road slid down the mountain that winter. There are always some members of the team who need to be held up to their work. For the leader to allow them to "get away with it" in shirking their parts of the task, would naturally cause chagrin to the others. The leader is responsible for the spirit of teamwork, which requires that each man may feel sure that all the others are equally faithful in doing each his part, and he must therefore see to it that they are. Of course conditions may arise, as when the task is unfamiliar or peculiarly difficult, when the leader may jump in for a minute to show the men how or to set the pace--but he should never put himself in as an actual performer of the work. _Choosing Men for Tasks._--The duties of a leader constantly require him to be picking some man to do this task or that. In the minds of his men this is always a test of both his ability and fairness--and he wants to prove that he has both. He does this by picking the right man for the job--the right man not alone because he is the best qualified but because everything considered it is best for the team that he be chosen. This requires that the leader know their capacities and their spirit, and that he shall have kept general track of their conduct and work. Each group generally has certain cheerful, willing souls who seem almost to invite the task. The leader who is not sure his orders will be obeyed will always pick one of these men to avoid the possibility of disobedience. The shiftless leader will pick one because it is the easiest course. Both would be wrong. They would thus fail in fairness, and, by putting extra work on the more willing, put a premium on being mean spirited and so injure the group discipline. They would do better to choose the lazy or sullen ones for the extra work, thus putting the premium on cheerfulness, and showing that they had a sense of justice and an ability to run the team. _Cheerfulness, a Responsibility._--It is plain that men cannot do good work in an atmosphere of gloom. In fact in happy Burma, "The Land of Mandalay," the people refuse to work at all unless things are cheerful; and the best labor boss there is he who can crack the most jokes and keep his men chuckling. That has its application even in handling stoical Anglo-Saxons--"Angry Saxons" as one of our colored soldiers called it. Elastic muscles, alert minds, superior energy and endurance come from cheerful spirits and happy hearts. That group is unfortunate which does not contain at least one indomitable soul (generally Irish) who will joke and jolly the crowd along through hardships and to far greater accomplishment. You know why the bo's'n always leads the sailors in a swinging song or in cheering as they haul the heavy sheet. He puts this spirit into them for the greater exertions they will make. One group of marching soldiers will sing and joke themselves happily into camp, when other grim and silent ones will barely drag themselves in for their fatigue. Yet true as all this is there are leaders who sacrifice it by such surly, inconsiderate, dominating control as to keep their men sore and heavy-hearted, discouraged with themselves and the work, and indifferent to results. These leaders create an atmosphere of impenetrable gloom, and then expect the impossible in demanding good work. Cheerfulness and hopefulness must always emanate from the leader--no possible hardship or obstacle may justify his failing to radiate these helpful qualities. They shine out from a character too strong and resourceful to be overcome by any obstacle, too confident of the excellence of his men and their ability to overcome it to be other than cheerful in meeting it. You will find occasions when it will test your own courage, physical fitness and vitality to do this; for you must give of your spirit to put spirit into the men, and by the sheer force of your cheerful dominance over the adversity, _lead_ them through to a happy conclusion. _Growling Permissible._--As to growling and "kicking agin the government," it all depends on who does it and how he does it. A certain amount of thus letting off steam seems good for the soul of man--and so far should not be denied to your men. You may ignore it, make light of it, and even sometimes get a good laugh out of it and so clear the atmosphere. It is doubtful if you may ever indulge yourself in it in the hearing of the men. And if it smack of real disloyalty, then you may not tolerate it, for it will undermine their morale, and injure that determined spirit of putting things over at all costs. You must know your men so you may use good sense about taking their vaporings too seriously, and still prevent anything like real disloyalty. As members of a group men lose much of their individual responsibility and become more or less like children. You consider this in judging their real feelings as they talk together. I recall the case of a French lieutenant whose platoon, just out of a severe fight, was ordered to go back into it in fifteen minutes. He sat complacently smoking while his resting men audibly growled about it and told each other the dire things that would take place before they would go in again. He knew his men and let them growl it out, and when the time was up not one of them hesitated to obey his order to fall in and swing back into the fight. In his place a hot-headed youngster could easily have started a mutiny. And equally true, a few vicious disloyal spirits among those men would have made it wrong for the lieutenant to have allowed them to growl and threaten. Such situations require a level head and a knowledge of the true spirit of the men--and are interesting tests of one's qualifications as a leader. _Loyalty by Example._--One of the basic things the leader has to develop in his men is loyalty--and loyalty not alone to him and to the team, but to the larger organization. To this end he may do much by the power of his own example in cheerfully carrying out the instructions from higher authority. If you are told to do some disagreeable thing, do not try for cheap popularity by saying to the men "so and so has ordered this, and we have got to do it." Accept the full responsibility of your subordinate office, and take your men loyally and unquestioningly through the work. Your team is a member of the larger team, and should play its part therein as loyally and keenly as you want the individuals to play their parts in your team. You should try to arouse their pride in having their team do its part well, their interest in the success of the larger team, and their belief in the ability of its leader. _When to Question Instructions._--Any questioning before your men of the wisdom of instructions from higher authority, any grumbling from you about their unfairness, would injure this fine spirit of loyalty and of co-operation in the larger team. It would show you up as unworthy of your responsible position in the organization and thus hurt the men's respect for you. If you have an honest question of the fairness or wisdom of the instructions go to higher authority first and fight it out yourself in the interests of your men, without any question of loyalty. That is part of your business both as guardian of your men's welfare, and as a loyal member of the larger organization. It is a delicate matter, involving your own sense of subordination, and your judgment as to what is really best. It can never be done in a spirit of brag or bluster, but only quietly in a spirit of loyalty, true subordination, and desire for the best interests of the whole. Occasions for such action are happily very rare--if your larger organization is in reasonably good hands. _Receiving Instructions._--When you receive instructions from higher authority be sure you get their true meaning before you begin to act. The subordinate with the quick, cheerful, "Yes, sir," and away to the task, leaves a pleasant sensation until we discover that he has bungled the job because he did not half understand what we wanted. Take time to understand, but do not quibble about little details nor fuss about the way in which the instructions are expressed. You are expected to use your own sense and ingenuity in executing these instructions, so be sure that you have grasped their spirit and purpose, and then go to their execution with an enthusiasm and loyalty which will carry the same spirit to the men. _How to Encourage Suggestions._--We have spoken of the value of encouraging subordinates to make suggestions for improvements, etc., of how they may add to the general efficiency, and how they certainly increase the man's pleasure in his work and thus his personal efficiency through giving play to his constructive instincts and his natural desire for self-expression. The point now is how these suggestions are to be encouraged. Certainly not by superficial methods. For example, an organization which had accepted the idea of the value of suggestions from the men tried simply to buy them off-hand by inaugurating a bi-weekly prize rewarding contest in giving suggestions. It was their notion that for a prize of five dollars some employee was going to tell them how to make two blades of grass grow in place of one. This method missed all appreciation of the fundamental principles involved and of course ended in a farce. These suggestions we want spring naturally from the interest and partnership you have made the men feel in the organization; from the ideas for improvement which they then evolve as they carry on at their work, thinking how it might be done better or how the team might get bigger results. The only encouragement they need is first this atmosphere of partnership; and second, a boss who has sense enough to give their suggestions fair consideration. The leader who has not the time or patience to listen to suggestions can never get the best efforts of the men, and is doing the enterprise real damage. Every man should feel sure that his suggestion will be fairly considered and, if his idea has real value, that he will be given full credit all the way up the line to the big chief. And the way to do this is to take the man in person to higher authority and have him personally explain his idea. This makes very real to him and his fellows his importance as a member of the team. If in a big business concern the man were actually called before the board of directors to explain the details of some improvement he had thought out, nothing could do more to establish a sense of partnership in the undertaking. Appreciating their value, you can make as much as you will of every opportunity thus to increase the men's interest in the work and their sense of co-operation. _Advantage of Ambition._--Ambition for advancement is another of the human instincts to be considered by the leader both in connection with his own career and in handling his subordinates. Every one should feel that he may progress as far as his actual ability warrants--and he certainly may, for good leaders are still rare and to be desired and the truest saying of life is that there is plenty of room at the top. But subordinates must realize that selfish ambition cannot win, that it is only by playing for the team and working for the best interests of the whole outfit that one can win his superior's recommendation for promotion. The unselfish ambition of an individual thus improves both his chances for promotion and the work of the team. Industrial progress and individual promotion both spring from individual effort to increase output or to decrease expenditure of energy. It is generally true throughout industry that "the great stream of intelligence, inventiveness and adaptation flows from the bottom up and not from the top down, and that the top is continually being recruited from the bottom," as employers daily graduate from the classes of laborers. This latter is so common a fact that it is frequently overlooked. It is so wholesome a fact, so characteristic of our democratic institutions and so helpful a thought in times of unrest and discouragement, that it should be emphasized and frequently brought to mind. _Never Deny an Earned Promotion._--An earned promotion should never be denied a man when his opportunity does come, simply because his superior feels that he cannot spare this man's services. As unjust as that is, it is often done, and always to the cost of the group spirit. In reality there are very few men in life so important to their positions that they cannot be replaced--and often to surprising advantage. No matter what pains are necessary to train the man's replacement, it is far better to let him go than it is to keep him and thus lower the morale of all by showing that your selfishness or laziness is going to stand in the way of a deserved promotion. This situation is often avoided by the excellent rule that each man in the organization shall always have at least one other who has qualified to take his place. _How to Win Promotion._--It is not practical here to detail the ways to win advancement,--magazine articles are always giving happy suggestions in this field,--but these are general hints: A man does not win by bragging about his abilities, or by anything that smacks of "freshness." The way to get the superior's attention to your merit is to make the merit conspicuous. You may be sure that management is always seeking the man who can produce, and that superior results will soon catch its eye. So go at each task cheerfully, and above all make it clear that your one big interest is the success of the outfit. One thing that so often denies promotion to a keen man is the statement of his superior that "Jones is keen all right, but he thinks nine times for Jones and once for the company." This is too bad, when the same amount of work and ability unselfishly directed might so easily have carried him ahead. _Value of True Merit._--But the saddest thing is to see a man get sore at heart and quit trying because he thinks that his merit is not recognized. Make the merit big enough, and it is sure to win. Someone will find it out, and buy your superior services. Ralph Parlette well explains this in his so human pamphlet, "It's Up to You," in which he illustrates human experience by what happens when you shake a jar containing a mixture of beans and nuts: The little beans rattle down, the smallest to the very bottom, and the larger nuts shake up, the largest to the very top. Thus we find our place and hold it in life's struggle according not to our wishes but to our actual size. Friendly influence may elevate the little bean to high position, but the jolts of experience soon rattle him back to the place he fits without rattling; adversity may have crowded the big nut to the bottom, but the same jolts will see him shaking up again to the top. It is not luck that takes one up or down, it is size--and the answer to ambition is _grow bigger_. There is so much true human nature in them that a few sentences are quoted: "Everybody wants to go up. But everybody is not willing to pay the price by first growing bigger so that he can shake higher. So many want to be boosted up. Everybody is doing one of three things: holding his place, rattling down, or shaking up. Whatever place we shake into, if we want to hold our place, we must hold our size. We must fill the place, for if we shrink up smaller than the place, we rattle. Nobody can stay long where he rattles. And you observe that in order to hold our size, we must keep on growing enough to supply the loss by evaporation. Evaporation is going on all the time, in lives as well as in liquids. A plum becomes a prune by evaporation. I wish human plums became as valuable when they become prunes." _Joy of Accomplishment._--Akin to man's natural delight in doing things well is the motive for accomplishment, and the pleasure he gets from seeing a thing completed. We all know people who are more or less ruled by this passion, who "get their teeth set" as we say in doing something, and can be interested in nothing else until they have done it. One of America's most successful business men recently replied when asked what he considered the best thing in life, "The satisfaction that comes from accomplishment." This may be enjoyed by every individual no matter in what walk of life, for it means the satisfaction to be had from the accomplishment of the tasks in our own daily life and work. The housewife has it from the contemplation of her glistening shelf of preserves, the farmer gets it from his crops and the schoolboy from his work and play--when he completes a set task, or first swims across the river. The leader may often appeal to this instinct to increase accomplishment. It helps explain the advantage of letting the men know what they are doing as they work, and especially of letting them know from time to time what they have accomplished toward the general result. This is the reason that the posting of progress charts does so much to arouse interest in factory and shop work, and is another reason for including the workman in a knowledge of the general progress of the whole organization. Everyone is supposed to have some underlying purpose, some goal in life--as Bishop Brent says, "even the loafer may be supposed to have the purpose to live as easily as possible." But we do not have to await the satisfaction of having attained this distant goal. We get more satisfaction en route from the successful completion of each of the small steps that bring us a bit nearer the goal, and count that day good in which we have taken one. So the leader may encourage the faith and assure the continued efforts of his subordinates by showing them from time to time where they have made successful progress toward the desired end. _Indifference and Discouragement_ are the natural enemies of this instinct for accomplishment, which may invade our minds and prevent the operation of this instinct. They come from failure, or what seems like failure when long-continued efforts show no results; and from getting stale through the constant repetition of the same task, without variety or the stimulation of new ideas. The leader must combat these enemies by introducing other thoughts to replace them. He must encourage the discouraged and interest those who are bored. He may often stimulate interest in even monotonous work by commenting on the perfection of its execution and the amount of its daily output. It is possible to relieve the monotony of long hours at the same tedious machine by letting two men alternate tasks, if it can be done without offending the instinct of proprietorship which makes a man resent having another touch "his machine." Here is the leader's chance for ingenuity--he knows what is needed, it is up to him to supply it. Learning other jobs in fitting himself for promotion, brief opportunities for supervising the work of others, getting better acquainted with the general work of the whole outfit--are possible suggestions. _Justice and Fairness._--Justice and fairness are generally considered the first essentials for handling men successfully, and yet how often we see leaders who give them no consideration. Human nature demands fair play, and gives its best response only in that atmosphere. No matter what our religious beliefs, we have to recognize that our best advances in civilization and community living have been based on the philosophy of life taught by the Son of the carpenter of Nazareth; a philosophy which recognizes how the natural impulses of mankind react to fair dealing and decent treatment. The eminently successful Endicott Johnson corporation is run on the basic proposition that ninety per cent of mankind are good and will make good when confidence is shown in their good intentions. The working rules for their organization are accordingly made to fit the big majority rather than the ten per cent minority. And this policy works--though it be revolutionary. Rules are generally made to fit the few weaklings who are not man enough to play fair in the team--and the big majority have accordingly had to be cramped in their freedom because of the meanness or ignorance of these few. This has been a common fault in army administration. One ignorant trooper injures a horse by running him on a hard road, and an indifferent commander at once forbids all soldiers ever to ride at a gallop. One man is disorderly in town, and all men are forbidden to visit the town. This may be an easy way to avoid trouble, but it is distinctly arbitrary and unjust--and indicative of unfitness for leadership. This same spirit of indifference to the well being of the good men in making efforts to control the shiftless is to be found in every business and walk of life. The point is that better results may often be obtained by showing confidence in good intentions, allowing more freedom of action, and controlling the meaner spirits through education, elimination, and the spirit and example of their comrades. The leader should remember that fitness for command is proven by ability to arouse a spirit that makes the men want to give one hundred per cent results. It is not shown by control through arbitrary methods--any "dub" can make rules which practically reduce his men to a state of serfdom. This is but one phase of showing fairness. The leader will have all kinds of situations to meet in which he must show it. It is impossible to anticipate them with rules, but you may meet them successfully by a continuing determination not to act in passion or impatience, and to judge each case fairly with thought for the effect on all. In doing this, you will arrive at the best solutions by giving full consideration to the Golden Rule about "doing unto others"; and by remembering that your final decisions must have for their object the development of the individual's character and the group's discipline. _Surplus Spirit._--There are now and then men of so much virility of body and spirit that they are unable to expend enough of it on the ordinary day's affairs--and the surplus often gets them into trouble. A good leader tries to accommodate them with enough hard work and play to keep them comfortably steady, while the poor leader, blind to human nature, punishes their derelictions without effort at remedy, and gives them a reputation for deviltry, and even for worthlessness. Yet these very men were capable of tremendous exertions for good had they been properly directed. War always astonishes the community by bringing such cases of reputed worthlessness to the fore in often brilliant performance. These men found in the demands of war enough to engage all their surplus energies; and because of this very store of surplus energy they were able to outdo their fellows. Giving men work to "keep them out of trouble" is as wise a saying as it is homely--and is well worth remembering when you find some man looking for trouble. It is a well known trick in the army to call up some wild lad who is always getting into mischief, arouse his pride by finding some element of his personality to praise and rely on, and then put him in charge of a squad of men or even appoint him a corporal. Nine times out of ten he will react to this responsibility by giving unusual service. The difficulty is to find opportunity so to promote a seemingly bad man as not to establish an unfortunate standard of performance for winning promotion. Such are the interesting things in leadership. _Self-Respect Essential._--The leader has to guard his own self-respect and that of his men. Self-respect is absolutely essential to having self-confidence, and self-confidence is absolutely essential for either leader or man to play his part successfully. If work is to progress efficiently each will be constantly called upon to make decisions as to what is best to be done, and to act upon them definitely. Each must therefore have enough self-confidence to do this without running to someone to ask what to do in an effort "to pass the buck" of responsibility. _In the Leader._--First, then, the leader must maintain his own self-respect--in his daily contact with life and men, and in the conduct of his office. His relations with his superiors and co-ordinate leaders; his knowledge of his job; his self-control of temper, frivolity, pettiness, etc.; his methods of directing work and handling men--all these are to influence and to evidence his self-respect, and are thus matters for his consideration. He must realize that he stands before his men as a better man on the job than any one of them--and in this light he wants to be an inspiration, not an apology. It need not lessen his self-respect if he lacks either physical stature, or age and long experience--though both these may be helpful. Superior knowledge and moral qualities determine one's fitness for leadership, and enlist the men's loyalty and obedience. How often in the war, especially in the French army, we saw grizzled old fighters loyally following youngsters just out of the training schools because they had confidence in the knowledge these boys had gained. In our draft army training it was not uncommon to see a squad of big Northwestern lumbermen following a keen-eyed little corporal as though they thought him a second Napoleon. It is not the size or age of the body but what emanates from the soul within it, that makes the leader of men. _In the Men._--And second, the leader has to cherish the self-respect of his individual subordinates, be they leaders of smaller groups or the men themselves. He needs their intelligent co-operation and must often depend on their individual judgment and their willingness to carry on without specific instructions. And unless these men believe in themselves and feel that he believes in them they will be afraid to decide what to do, and afraid to do it, for fear of failure and its consequences. So by showing confidence in them, by never ignoring them as individuals, by encouraging and commending good as well as correcting error, the leader develops the self-respect of his men as a sure basis for the self-confidence and strength of character they need in order to meet his requirements. _Courage, Fear and Self-Control._--In many fields of activity a leader is likely to be called upon to meet emergencies requiring a cool head and a stout heart. Some men shrink from assuming the responsibilities of leadership in these fields lest they lack the nerve and show fear when the test comes. It should be helpful to them to understand something about these emotions, why they come and how they are controlled. We may assume that everyone feels fear, for the self-protective instincts are perhaps the strongest, and fear is Nature's instinctive warning of the imminence of danger or of consequences which threaten our well being. The purpose of this warning is to make us take steps to meet the danger, and it thus leads us to action. Then we forget the fear, as it generally disappears when we have gotten into action. A developed mind and character, bodily health, and a determined purpose, all combine to enable one to avoid showing fear or letting it improperly influence his actions. No one would willingly follow a leader who lacked a courageous character, nor could a leader hope to carry on successfully if he was self-conscious of his own moral weakness. So we say that both the leader and his men must have confidence that the leader possesses courage and force of character, so he will be self-controlled and capable of calm reasonable judgments in the crises of his work. The leader establishes this mutual confidence by the self-control and good judgment with which he meets the smaller emergencies of daily administration. If he becomes excited over little things, bellows and shouts because something goes wrong, he is not only failing in self-control, but is making his men question his force of character and his ability to meet a real situation. A new leader should therefore make a point of training himself in self-control under trying circumstances; he should even seek situations which try his nerve and judgment, rather than avoid trouble as the weak man does by quietly slipping around it. _Control by Power of Example._--It is the leader's function to be calm in emergency; unruffled, even sardonic if he has it in him, in the face of hardships; unperturbed and even casual in the face of danger. The psychological power of mental suggestion is now well understood, and accepted as one of the sure means for controlling men. If you are a real leader your men will take their mental attitude from what yours appears to be. In danger they will watch your movements, even facial expression, for reassurance. It is then that you drop some casual remark, "borrow the makings" and roll a cigarette, do any simple thing naturally, showing that you are at ease and confident in these abnormal circumstances; and your men regain their wavering confidence, feeling that you are not afraid. So, in time of unavoidable hardship, you must avoid showing annoyance or impatience. Your sardonic acceptance of necessary conditions will unconsciously lead to theirs, and save the nerve strain and damage to _esprit_ which result from grumbling, and bucking, and cursing out everything in general. And in emergency you must show perfect self-control. Remember that your conduct will determine that of your men. If you are excited, they will be more so. The emergency will call for perhaps the most accurate, determined, self-controlled work, and if your heart has jumped into your throat and made your voice quaver and your ideas confused (and this will happen to the best of men), nothing but disaster can result if you communicate this to your men. You will gain time and success in the end, if you take time now to swallow your heart, and regain perfect self-control, before you say one word to betray your perturbation. Then with calm self-assured demeanor give your directions as becomes a real leader. Directions so given are a great comfort to the men, and assure steady intelligent execution. To begin shouting excited ill-advised instructions in an emergency is one of the most characteristic failures of inexperienced leadership. Try to train yourself so that you will be one of the exceptions, by acquiring the habit in any given situation of being first sure of yourself, and then calmly giving directions to your men. You have opportunity to train for this in the ordinary affairs of life, and may thus acquire a facility for knowing what to do in an emergency and doing it with calm assurance. In any public accident or emergency there is generally some "admirable bystander" whose mind has acted instantaneously, who has jumped in and done the right thing. Question your mental processes to learn why you were not the man, and try to qualify next time. _Decision._--It is characteristic of a successful leader to make good decisions that do not have to be changed and to stick to them, and it is characteristic of the valor of ignorance to make quick ones that are generally wrong. Of course quick decisions are preferable if they are right. They are necessary in the army, though not so as a rule in civil life, where the leader may generally take time to weigh his subject before deciding. In many cases it is even best that he first take time to consult his subordinates. But in every case he must come ultimately to a definite decision as to his course, announce it clearly as his decision, and have the force of character to carry it out without showing hesitation or vacillation. The impossible man as a leader is one who cannot make up his mind; the next better is he who is influenced by the last man who talks to him; and still too poor for his job is he who having come to a decision allows himself to waver and change in the face of each new thought or development which the future presents. If you have any of those tendencies, eliminate them by watching yourself in making decisions. By practice in the small affairs of your daily life cultivate your power to grasp the essential facts of a situation, to arrive promptly at a decision, and to stick to it in spite of unessentials which may come along to make a change seem better. _Value of Thinking._--The more you think about the details and possibilities of your job, the more you keep your mind on your work, the better you will be prepared to make good decisions quickly. "Because I am always thinking about it" was Napoleon's answer when asked how he was able to make such prompt accurate decisions in the art of war. We teach the advance guard commander as he marches to be _thinking constantly_ what he will do if the enemy appears in any of the various situations he meets, and thus to keep his mind prepared to make his decision quickly. So in civil affairs that leader will do best who is a thinker, who thinks of the business in hand and is mentally prepared to meet its demands for direction. It is the unexpected thing catching a man off his guard which causes his uncertainty and indecision. It is the element of surprise in an ambuscade which makes it so advantageous. A leader should be found so resourceful and sure of his judgment that he can successfully meet these occasions for quick decision. He can get a reputation for this ability by carefully planning ahead of time for certain tasks and thus being able to make quick decisions during their execution. But to maintain this reputation he must acquire the habit of giving thought to his work, not only in anticipation of certain jobs, but continually as the work progresses. The mind which does not have to be recalled from a fishing excursion will grasp the essential details of a new situation more quickly and accurately than one that was far afield when the unexpected happened. _Personal Pride._--Pride is another quality of human nature that is very useful to the leader in controlling his men. Just as he guards each individual's self-respect and cherishes it as the necessary basis of that manly and intelligent response he expects them to give to the demands of service, so he builds up their personal pride--in themselves, in what they are doing, and in the organization. This pride is largely established through seeking out cases of superior accomplishment and commending them. Once fairly developed, pride becomes an influence to which the leader may appeal successfully for better conduct, better results, and for patient endurance of hardship. He will not get it in a day, any more than he will get discipline or morale. It comes from the performance of good work that has been recognized as such, and rests in a justified feeling of ability and worth. So do not expect to get it by simply announcing to your men that they are the finest. Bring them to an honest belief in their worth through your recognition of it by praising their good work, and by making suitable remarks to outsiders which some of them may overhear. Find something in which they excel, and brag about it moderately. If possible make an occasion to show their ability publicly. If your outfit can once get a reputation for excellence, it matters little for what, it will become more excellent--good men will seek to join it, its personnel will thus improve, and it will continue to grow better. _Pride in Organization._--Pride in the organization is a tremendous influence for keeping men up to the mark. It makes them keep each other up--and you begin to reap the rewards for having established it. You see them developing the spirit of discipline you have hoped for, and the co-operation in that teamwork which means so much. Every leader should always strive to arouse this pride. While we may not prescribe the exact steps for arousing it to fit the various conditions, your ingenuity will suggest the ways if you will make practical use of your knowledge that men take delight in doing things well and in having their excellence recognized; that the excellence of the individual should be reflected in the reputation of the team; that out of the bodily and mental development which comes from consciously doing things well, grow self-respect, laudable pride, and an assurance which strengthens the individual character; and that these are the elements of the organization spirit which you should seek to establish in your men. _Competition affecting Individuals._--The instinct of rivalry or competition, which makes a man strive to excel among his companions, is another of the leader's instruments. This is so powerful a motive that it has to be used with judgment. Once launched in a real contest most men are likely to sacrifice anything to win. I remember discovering one of my young soldiers cheating in calling the hits at the target he was marking. He was perfectly frank in admitting to me that he had called many hits improperly, and when I asked him why, he ingenuously replied, "I heard the captain say we must beat H troop, and I was trying to help." He was so honest that I had to admit that the fault was half mine, and did not punish him. As a general rule what we want from our men is a high average of performance which may be maintained without any impairment of their powers, so you must judge the case fairly before introducing the spirit of contest. You must not be using it eternally to keep the men on the jump, but only on occasions that are worth while. There are moderate things for which it may be used regularly to stimulate effort, as in making the best record for punctuality, etc. But you would not want a man to be driving himself constantly to capacity--and so you use judgment to guard against individual injury as well as to keep the spirit fresh for use on real occasions. _Team Competitions._--Competition between teams engaged in like undertakings will not only increase results, but its great advantage is that it brings the individuals of each team into close co-operation in order that their team may win, and thus gives them a better comprehension of the spirit of teamwork. As every leader is constantly trying to develop his teamwork, these rivalries are very common. But where your team competes with another _in the same organization_ it must play fair as a member of the larger team. The same rules of co-operation and loyalty apply to the conduct of your team here, as to the individual members of your own team at home. You may not do anything for your team here which injures the other team, or lowers it in the estimation of your men. Building up peacetime infantry spirit by slurs at the artillery, and artillery spirit at the expense of the infantry, was found to have been expensive business when war linked them together in the same team and each found himself dependent for success in battle on the co-operation of the other. "Sure he's good, but we can beat him," is the true mental attitude for contests within an organization. _Care of Your Men._--Looking after your men's bodily welfare is an interesting and important part of the leader's direct responsibilities. I remember during the construction of one of the war training cantonments asking a bright-looking mechanic, who was pretending to be working at a steam heater at eleven o'clock one night, if he thought he could do good work in such long hours as he was keeping. "Certainly not, but I can make good pay." He was a decent-looking American, so I asked him how he justified such a spirit in this time of government need. "Because I am fed like a dog and lodged like one." It was true--and the ignorance or worthlessness of that contractor was thus squandering thousands of government dollars a day through needlessly disaffected labor, and delaying the completion of necessary accommodations for the soldiers. Such cases are common in every activity. Each job presents its own problems to be solved according to the conditions. The big thing here is to realize that the welfare of his men is an important consideration for the leader who expects them to do good work. It would seem unnecessary to state that a man's mental and physical fitness have so much to do with his accomplishment, and yet so many bosses seem absolutely indifferent to a man's condition so long as he is able to drag himself to his work. In reality it should always be the first cause to investigate whenever any man shows a let down in his performance. A man cannot keep up good work on an empty or sour stomach, nor give continued careful attention to details if some trouble is constantly obtruding on his field of consciousness. This latter fact has cost many a good man an accident at his machine, and the intelligent foreman, knowing that sore feelings, grievances and mental troubles interfere with good performance, does all he can to eliminate them. In not keeping your workers in the best possible physical and mental condition, you are throwing away all kinds of potential energy--running a six-cylinder engine that is skipping many of the cylinders. How quickly the superintendent would get after a foreman who did that with a machine, yet possibly never notice that many of the human machines were as badly out of kilter. In this question of looking after the welfare of your men there are two opposing considerations to be kept in mind. You are to build up in them self-respect, initiative, individual responsibility and self-determination, and therefore must not patronize them, coddle them, or treat them like children. On the other hand you have to recognize the characteristic of an individual in a group--he immediately shifts individual responsibility to the shoulders of the group. That is the reason why every man of a company in camp will continue to wade through the mud to reach a spring where five minutes' work by anyone would arrange stepping stones, or to dip water with difficulty from a shallow stream where a few minutes' work would dam it into a comfortable pool--and no one of them would do either of these helpful things until some leader came along and ordered it. This need for oversight is true in every activity, and the leader has to be on the lookout to see that his men do the things that are necessary for their comfort and welfare. This is particularly necessary in out-of-doors jobs, as in engineering and construction. The man may be too tired or inexperienced to see to it himself that he has a comfortable place to sleep. The boss knows that the man's work of the morrow will depend on the restfulness of his sleep, and therefore requires him to make himself reasonably comfortable. Above all he gives constant attention to how his men are fed, especially at their breakfasts. He sees that they have the best available shelter and comfort for the noon rest. All this is simply part of his job of grooming and stoking the human engine which he is using on the work. To keep the men fit and to work them hard is his job--and the beauty of it is that the more thoroughly he does both the happier and more contented they are. For the hard play of tough muscles and the stern conquest of serious obstacles both bring pleasurable satisfaction to natural instincts in a healthy man; instincts designed to make him a cheerful and determined actor in the struggle to conquer nature and advance civilization. These instincts of pugnacity and of joy in a fight, of winning out no matter what the obstacle, are readily responsive to appeal, and most helpful to the leader who knows how to use them. In some industries the physical and mental condition of the workers is made the care of a welfare department, which provides proper environment, sanitation, athletics, hospitals, kitchens, libraries, saving banks, country clubs, etc.--a background for successful management. But there still remains the necessity for the personal touch of the foreman in direct contact with the men. He understands all the facilities offered, their advantages, and what management intends them to do for the men--and he is there in close touch to see that the men get the right ideas and make the most of them. But beyond all that, incapable of general control, and properly in the sole hands of the immediate leader for the sake of their effect on his leadership, there are the thousand little homely things of the daily work and play in which the thoughtful foreman makes his men feel his interest in their welfare, success and happy living. _Creating and Maintaining Discipline._--The inexperienced man is likely to have more apprehension about his ability to maintain discipline than about anything else in connection with taking charge of a group of men. He wonders if they will obey him and is not sure of himself as a disciplinarian. It will help him if he gets a fair idea of how discipline is maintained. It is often said that discipline is the result of the leader's administration of rewards and punishments. This is too narrow a view. In reality the spirit we call discipline is the result of the leader's whole conduct of himself and his job, of his personality and methods, of everything he does for his men, to his men and with them. Among all these, rewards and punishments play an important part. But rewards have a great deal more to do with building up discipline than have punishments, and are given much more easily and pleasantly. In fact if the leader has established at all the spirit of leadership herein pictured he will have but rare occasions to use any punishments. This has been proven over and over again, and with all kinds of men. In every phase of human endeavor, fair treatment and the encouragement that comes from judicious appreciation of good intentions and from praise of good work soon establish a spirit which makes punishment quite out of place and unnecessary. A concrete example of the highest type of rigid discipline based on purely democratic principles is that of a highly trained college football team. Here we have individual manliness and initiative highly developed, together with a sense of subordination, teamwork, and the requirements of leadership and discipline. Here we find instant, unquestioning, cheerful obedience to commands given in action, and an _esprit_ and morale which make the team cheerfully tackle the toughest opponents. Where any leader may need in his group a discipline of quick implicit obedience to orders, let him consider the spirit of the football team as his model, rather than the spirit of whipped obedience which was found in the galleys of old. _Discipline from Rewards._--Probably the most effective reward is the slight word of recognition of individual effort or excellence, sometimes even a nod and smile are enough. The main thing is to show this man and the others that you see and appreciate what he is doing. So as you supervise the work of your men be on the lookout for chances to commend individuals. Do not overdo it, fulsome or unmerited praise does more harm than good. Keep it what nature intended it to be, a reward for excellence which every man likes to receive, and for which he naturally strives so long as he feels sure that he will get it when merited. One leader will go about inspecting his workers and look only for faults and speak only to criticize something as wrong; while another will seek good work to commend it, and correct mistakes in a spirit of showing how it could be done better. The first may by tremendous effort hold his men to a certain level of accomplishment, the second will soon have them all going in a spirit of emulation. Smith does not see why he cannot do as well as Jones next door, whom he heard the boss complimenting. Appreciation of a man's excellence appeals directly to one of his strong instincts, and never fails to inspire continued effort to win further praise. _Influence of Good and Poor Men._--There are always to be found in every group certain men of stronger more cheerful characters than the average, men who make the best of things, who jolly the rest along through the hard tasks, and whose influence is thus a great asset. The leader must note these men, and do what he can to increase their influence with the others. If he has to show favor to some individual, he should pick one of these men to receive it, thus letting everyone see his appreciation of their cheerful willing spirit. On the other hand there are often certain men of the meaner sort. They do the growling and grumbling for all, and their influence is in the direction of lowering the morale of the group. You must know these individuals also, and do what you can to convert them to cheerfulness and a will to win. Where a man's influence is bad, be sure you do nothing to strengthen his standing with his fellows. If someone must draw a disagreeable task, it is often well to let such a man have it as a reward for being a "kicker." A leader who did not think of this and made the mistake of handing the reward to such a one would hurt the morale of the whole by making the men feel that virtue was not recognized, and that their leader lacked good judgment. You must therefore know your men and watch their work and their spirit, so you may reward the deserving, and never appear to support the undeserving. In time of hardship or strain, when the morale of your outfit is being tested, it will win through or break down depending largely on which type of men have the stronger influence. It will be well for you then if you have strengthened the hands of the strong cheerful ones and made them subordinate leaders of sentiment and opinion in your group. _Leader a Maker of Men._--The finest thing about being a leader is the chance it gives to build up the characters of the men--to take hold of the personal equation of a weaker brother, discover his difficulties and weaknesses and also his strong points and possibilities, and so to handle him as to make a man of him. This not only brings you great satisfaction and the personal reward of feeling that you are making the world some better by living in it, but it brings actual material gain to the community and to your work, in that you have made this man able to give more as a citizen and as a laborer. Many an army officer has found his one relief from the tedium of peacetime duties in thus taking a keen interest in the personalities of his men, and in making it his business to build up a reasonably strong useful character out of what may have appeared an almost hopeless wreck of humanity. Every leader is constantly affecting the future of his men, consciously or unconsciously. His power to reward and punish makes this necessarily true. His decisions and acts of authority each tend to build up or to discourage the character of the man affected. This is what makes us shudder to see this power of leadership in the hands of ignorant, unscrupulous, brutal or even thoughtless men. The good leader realizes how by strict fairness, encouragement and guidance he may develop the powers of his men; and how by continued injustice he may break a man's spirit, destroy his manliness, and leave him a worse member of the community than he found him. He accepts this responsibility, and takes pleasure in trying to use his power for the better good of the men, the community, and the work in hand. He is in some measure a "maker of men," and with that thought in the back of his mind he studies his problem in a desire to act to the best advantage. _Discipline by Punishment._--"Punishment" is a severe word to use in connection with ordinary daily affairs, but there is no milder one whose meaning quite fits the case. It has little place in our ideas of handling ordinary situations. In fact it stands only in the background as a last resort. Thus in community life the penalties of the law stand in the background as matters of no personal interest to law-abiding citizens. Yet the existence of those penalties and of the means for administering them are essential elements of community organization, and they must be intelligently understood by the officers responsible for community welfare. In this respect the leader has the same responsibility, and it is necessary to discuss frankly how he shall use this power of punishment, in order that he may meet this responsibility successfully. Punishment is intended to be a corrective. It must be administered for the sole good of the man and of the group, and never in a spirit of vindictiveness or revenge. By punishment we mean all the corrective measures commonly used as means of disciplining men--reprimand, docking pay, deprivation of privilege, suspension, discharge, etc. The severity of any given punishment is largely a matter of the spirit and infrequency with which it is given. It is in every case a matter of prayerful consideration for the leader, until long experience has made him quite infallible in his judgment. It is possible to fix a set standard of punishments, such a punishment to follow such an offense, but this standard cannot be followed arbitrarily. That would ignore the big human factor and all manner of extenuating circumstances. Every case of an offense must in fairness be judged on its own merits. The leader must judge the peculiar circumstances attending it, consider the personality of the offender, and above all discover the underlying motive. It is unquestionably true that most men naturally prefer to do right, and go wrong only for some reason. Very often some sense of offended justice is behind it. In any case the punishment cannot be reasonable unless founded on a true understanding of the facts. And it must be both reasonable and just, for its one big object is the effect it will have on the man's character and the group discipline. This effect is the determining factor. It is most important that both leader and men shall always realize that whatever punishment is given, it is done for the good of all as well as for that of the individual. _Investigation of Offense._--To be able to get at the actual truth of the matter takes tact and knowledge of human nature. You will be interested in developing this ability in yourself. It will often be difficult to get the man to be frank, he cannot quite believe in your desire to be fair, and his instincts of secretiveness, pugnacity, being a good sport, etc., all stand in your way. Put yourself in his place is a good rule during the investigation. It is going to take time and patience and skill, until you have established the tradition of cards on the table and a square deal for all. By avoiding ever acting in passion and by always showing a determination to get the facts and judge fairly, you will soon be able to get at the real truth about each offense, and to learn what it really means in your organization that this man has done as he did. Then you may decide what steps to take for the best interests of all. Do not think that this is Utopian, or that it takes too much time. It is a leader's business to have time for just such things--and you really save time by it. Do it thoroughly a few times, and you will thus discover and root out the cause for soreness and trouble and establish a spirit of fairness and decency which will soon reward you by freedom from having any offenses to handle at all. _Actual Punishment Unnecessary._--A pleasant fact is that while every offense must be taken cognizance of, it does not have to be always actually punished. It may often be made the subject of a plain talk to all of the men, explaining what such an offense means to the success of the undertaking and put so strongly that a better result may be thus obtained without giving any punishment at all. I recall an instance in one of the inexperienced war organizations, where a senior officer, detailed to handle the case of a man actually guilty of the serious offense of sleeping on post as a sentinel, made it so strong an object lesson in his talk to the company that he put the whole outfit, officers and men, on their feet in discipline, and did not punish the sentinel at all. So do not feel that "punishment must always follow and fit the crime." Use your common sense judgment, and do the thing which you believe will best promote the discipline you are trying to inspire in all. A reprimand, with an explanation of what the offense means to discipline, is generally punishment enough. _The Leader's Responsibility._--If in the end you decide that punishment must be given, give it yourself. Be very jealous of the authority over your own men. Do not let anyone interfere with it or exercise it for you if you can help it. You want them to look to you for justice and see in you the seat of authority under which they act and to which they are responsible. This means that you personally handle every case, and make it clear that the decision as to the punishment is the result of your own judgment. If the offense must be punished with more severity than you are empowered to administer, then only send it to higher authority, and with your own recommendation. It is a poor officer who lets a court martial run the discipline of his command. The good one sends a man to court for punishment only in the rarest cases, and then because he is dealing with a recalcitrant who will not respond to decent treatment, and is therefore a candidate for discharge. The same general rule should be true in administering any office in civil affairs. _Prompt Action Necessary._--As the object of both rewards and punishments is the effect they are to have on the individual and particularly on the group, action in both cases should be taken immediately following the occasion, while it is fresh in the minds of all. Let your men realize that you are right on the job of bossing, and that the conduct of each is a matter of real interest to you and to all. To overlook offenses and neglects that appear willful, causes them to multiply, and discourages the faithful workers. The word or nod of recognition of good work is immediate, and has its effect, so also does the first step in recognition or correction of an offense. This first step may be an admonition, or even a reprimand where you are sure it is justified. But the first step is generally to call the man up and ask his reason--and to ask him in a tone that assumes that he has a reason, and that you intend to give it fair consideration. You may have to defer action for further investigation, but you have taken the first step and gotten the immediate effect. It only remains to carry on to a decision as circumstances determine. _Symptoms of Poor Leadership._--We have all seen men in positions of authority who are awful examples of what a leader ought not to be. A little authority in their hands seems to upset the balance in their heads. They lose all sense of how to deal with men, become ridiculously arbitrary and loudmouthed and blustering. They try to rule by "putting the fear of God into them," by main strength and brute force. They are the boss because they have been named the boss, and "they will show them." Their first step when they see anything going wrong is to bellow "what the h---- are you doing?" in a tone that implies that the man is not only a fool but a criminal. They outrage every sensibility of manliness he may have, assume his motives are those of a thief and a liar--and then expect him to respond with good work and loyal service. Of course that is ridiculous. Such methods of control bring only sullen obedience, and even invite open rebellion. Swagger and bluster are but a thin camouflage for incompetence, and it would be a wholesome thing for these leaders to be able to realize the scorn and disgust they are implanting in the hearts of their men. Some do not know any better, and may be made good by training, others lack native strength of character and are hopeless. Neither should be left in authority as they are. _Misconduct--Fault of Leader._--Where you find recurring cases of insubordination, or indifference to good work, you will generally find that the cause for it lies in the presence of a leader who is not good enough for his job. This is true in the army, and must be true in any organization. For it is true that men generally start out on any job with the intention to make good on it, and if many go wrong in an outfit, the answer is pretty sure to be that there is something wrong with its leader. Likewise where a leader finds himself unable to maintain discipline, he may well seek for the cause within himself. We often hear the statement "I've got the worst bunch of anarchists on earth. No one could do anything with them." This is an admission of the leader's own unfitness. Men run about the same, are subject to about the same instincts and controlled by the same general principles. I have seen the same group of men who were all but mutinous under a hard-headed, narrow-minded officer become one of the best disciplined groups of the whole command under a few weeks of a new leadership which embodied principles of fairness and decency in handling men. The lesson is plain, both to the man who wants to be a good leader, and to the employer who wants his subordinates to get good results. _Giving Orders._--Many a beginner questions in his heart whether he can get the men to obey him or not. Perhaps this will be the first time in his life he has ever been in a position of authority to give orders. He has been the servant rather than the master, in the ranks of his boyhood gang rather than its captain. He has never enjoyed the habit of command, and, unless carried along by some dominating influence, is ill at ease in giving orders. This is very common on the part of young corporals in the army, and calls for experience and training before they can make good. If the youngster by tone or manner in giving the order betray that there is any doubt in his heart that it will be obeyed, he simply invites disobedience out of the Adam that is in everyone. Common exhibitions of this uncertainty are--the sickening apologetic tone and even words, high-pitched shouting of the order, accompanying profanity, repeating the order again and again, and threats as to what will happen if it is not obeyed. These are all sad exhibitions of inexperience or incompetence, and are sure to lead to trouble. See to it that you avoid every one of them, and school yourself in the correct methods. Here are some suggestions. _How to Give an Order._--In the first place do not give too many orders, give as few as possible. Remember the requirements of the modern theory of command. Here is where they apply directly. Therefore you first make sure that the order is necessary, and that the thing to be done is reasonable. Then pick a suitable man to do this particular thing, call this man by name and thus get his attention, and then in a quiet tone tell him to do so and so, just as a baseball captain tells a member of the team to cover third base. There is no question of obedience, no thought of it. Your quiet tone does not assume that the man is deaf, or a surly dog, or a criminal, but does assume that he is an intelligent, loyal member of the team of which you are captain. It will not occur to him to disobey such an order. _How Not to Give Orders._--On the other hand you will yourself stimulate his disobedience if by tone or words you insult his manliness, question his loyalty and obedience, or by threats dare him to disobey. We see this often illustrated in the affairs of daily life, where men untrained in authority are required to exercise it, and generally give orders in such a manner as to stir up trouble rather than to get cheerful obedience. This is certainly true with most street car conductors and similar holders of a brief authority. By observation you may get a dozen lessons daily in giving orders--ten how not to give them, and two how to do it to get results without friction. I once visited as their first regular army instructor a rather new troop of National Guard cavalry that had somewhere gotten the idea that obedience to orders would result in proportion to noise. Every order was roared at the men, and generally accompanied by a volley of profanity, in a pathetic effort to exercise authority. It was an astonishing exhibition of not knowing how to handle men, and naturally did not command the respect or obedience of the meanest man in the troop. It was a pleasure to watch the keenness with which they grasped the correct doctrine of command, and to see the discipline of the whole organization develop under the change. Those same men were fast becoming real leaders and no doubt carried through to success. It is clear then that disobedience may often be the direct result of the way in which the order was given, and you should remember this when investigating a case. While that may not justify your overlooking this particular offense, it should enable you to correct the cause of trouble and thus avoid continued offenses. You may be able to teach the subordinate to give orders correctly, or you may have to take away his authority. _The Why of an Order._--It is a good thing where possible to give the reason for doing a thing at the same time that you give the instructions. This not only enlists the man's intelligent interest in carrying them out, but often gives him a chance to do better work because he understands what the desired result is. There are of course occasions for quick action and for simple action when this would not be reasonable. So in using this idea of telling why, there are two things which you must carefully look out for: first, it must never appear that you are apologizing for giving the order. It must be clear that you are explaining what is to be done, not why it is being ordered. And second, avoid cultivating a spirit or habit which would make a man feel free to stop and ask why when simply told to do a thing, as in an emergency. So you give the reason for the action only when it is clear that the circumstances warrant it, and when it will lead to better results. _Necessity for Following up Instructions._--Equally important with giving instructions is to see that they are executed. This does not mean that you are to stand glowering at your man until he has moved. Go about your business in absolute assurance that he is carrying on; but if he does fail, be sure to note it and take action. Too many leaders feel that they have done their full part when they have given the order. To overlook even slight neglects is likely to lead to more serious ones; and for a man to be guilty of direct willful disobedience is a very serious thing in any organization, as it threatens the discipline of all and demands drastic action. Do not let it be true that you have gradually led a man into this through your shiftless leadership, whether due to your laziness, ignorance, or lack of nerve to enforce your authority. In the matter of how instructions are carried out, a most helpful thing is to make it a rule of the organization that whenever a man is given a special task to do he is expected to report the fact as soon as it is done. You can see the advantages of this compared to the method of telling a man to do something and then letting him feel that you have no further interest in it. The man realizes that you will know how much time he takes to do it, and you realize that your duty is not fully done when the instructions are given. It gives you a chance to check up on his execution and to praise his expedition or excellence; and it gives the man a chance to try to win this praise. It is as though a father said, when giving his son a certain task, "let me know when you are through." He would get better results than he would if he left the lad alone with the feeling that his father would take no further interest in it. _Willful Disobedience._--But with all regard for everything on your part, it may yet happen that you will meet a case of direct willful disobedience in some certain matter. Some condition quite outside your knowledge or control may have caused it. If you want to handle this case wisely and save the man to the organization, you must realize how his mind is working and act accordingly. He is concentrating his faculties in opposition to this particular thing--forcing them from the normal easier channels of obedience, he has to concentrate them to the task of breaking out this new channel of disobedience. As the phrase goes, he has "his mind set on it." To win him over to obedience you must first divert his faculties from this concentration by requiring him quietly to do some simple thing like handing you some article or adjusting his clothing, anything that you are quite sure that he will do for you. Then by easy stages you may develop a state of mind which will make it possible to discuss the original trouble reasonably, thus regaining your control and saving him from grave consequences. We have a like case in horse training. Where the trainer persists in making him do some one movement a horse often becomes stubborn and refuses to move at all. The trainer then changes absolutely to some simple thing which the horse will do at command--perhaps to walk and halt and walk again. He thus re-establishes control, and then through steps that the horse will perform returns gradually to the first test of obedience and finds him tractable. It takes patience and a high order of leadership to save a man in such serious cases as this, but you will joy in having done it. "Any dub can fire a man"--you want to do better than that. _Orders Rarely Necessary._--But after all the best thing about giving orders is not to have to give them. In the general case, the better the leadership the fewer the orders given. Teamwork, co-operation, initiative and loyalty of subordinates, all these developments of intelligent leadership make orders largely unnecessary--and things are done in response to suggestions and in carrying out instructions as to what is to be done. We may envy the leader whose men jump in response to his quiet firm tone of command. But do not imagine that he picked this ability ripe for the eating from any tree of knowledge or life. He has developed a strong character and a knowledge of human nature in some practical school, learned that self-control is the first step in controlling others, and that men respond in kind to the treatment they receive. _The Tone of Voice._--Not only in giving orders but in all your verbal intercourse, the tone of your voice plays a part quite worthy of your consideration. It is a potent element of your personality in its effect on others, and easily within your control. It may interest you to the point of regarding your tones hereafter to realize the important part that human speech has played in our development from pure animalism. Centuries no doubt passed before primitive man learned the use of language. It was the one big step by which he proved his superiority over the other animals of creation and assured his progress. For language is the foundation, as it is the agent, of all knowledge; and alone made possible the mental processes necessary for our present accomplishment. Yet we see men to-day so blind to this, so indifferent to this fundamental difference between themselves and the beasts, that they allow themselves to roar and growl and whine and chatter in close similarity to certain well-known species. Others bungle the use of their voice deplorably; so one may barely catch their fading tones, or must shrink inwardly from their rasping one. Men actually attempt to win the minds of others and yet speak in tones so repellent that convention alone makes us stay to listen to them. It is a pity they do not think to hear themselves as others hear them, and thus learn not to sacrifice longer this natural asset. For half the power of speech is in the tone. We can all recall cases where it was the tone of voice that caused the trouble. "It wasn't so much the thing he said, as the nasty way he said it" has caused many a man to go to the mat. But it is not alone in making trouble that the tone of voice can accomplish so much. We have also seen the cool, quiet tone of a leader bringing order out of chaos and re-establishing control and confidence among excited men; the virile animated tone putting "pep" into men's work; and the firm, confident tone winning obedient following through danger and hardship. The power of speech is thus seen to be tremendous--let us use it to advantage, and as becomes members of the human race. _The Mob Spirit._--As any man may have occasion to deal with the "crowd spirit" and even with the "mob spirit," it is well to have some idea of how these things come about and are controlled. In normal circumstances the members of a community as individuals are law-abiding and self-restrained in deference to public opinion and their own sense of responsibility. Some sense of common wrong may unite certain ones into a group for the common purpose of obtaining redress or instituting improvement. This group may start with no intention of committing any overt act or even of actually doing any particular thing, and yet end by being led into most unfortunate excesses. _Individuals in Crowds._--The individuals who compose the group have to a degree lost their identity and have passed much of their individual responsibility to the shoulders of the group. They thus come to find themselves feeling free to do things they would never consider doing as individuals, and being controlled by statements and suggestions which they would know to be absurd in ordinary circumstances. Thus they approach a point where they do not respond to sound reason and logical argument, but rather react to impulses which are aroused by passionate appeals, daring suggestions, almost anything that has a catching sound and is often enough repeated. And thus they may end by becoming a mob, susceptible to blind impulses and ruled by unreason. In its beginnings this group is easily amenable to control, for the "mob will" has not yet taken form, and the individuals still retain some sense of reason, personal responsibility and fear of consequences. But the longer they remain together, the greater their numbers, the more they are harangued as a body having a common purpose, the more surely does this crowd-will take form and make possible their transformation into a mob. Therefore by temporizing with the crowd you strengthen its unity and encourage the growth of its concerted will. Action to control the situation must be prompt and decisive, and directed to an immediate dispersal of the crowd. Let the mob spirit once get really under way, feel its unity and find its peerless leader, and it may be controlled only by similar tactics to those of the demagogue who now leads it, or by the use of the armed forces of the law. These are points well worth the consideration of every citizen, whether he contemplates joining a mob or trying to prevent one. _Conclusion._--As you note that this discussion is ended, it is possible that you are wondering how I could have failed to mention so-and-so as one of the most important elements in leadership. I hope you are, for in so doing you have taken a big step in leadership in that you have yourself considered and weighed its requirements. I repeat in closing that it is only by giving personal thought to these questions and deciding upon your own personal methods and conduct that you will acquire success in handling men. Let your purpose be clear and worthy, and your policy based on square dealing; be yourself genuine, unselfish and just; make your men partners with you in the enterprise, and your personality such as to admit their loyal co-operation and following; keep in mind that your object is to increase their manpower through their developed individual manliness and character; and then work out the details as your own experience and judgment dictate. * * * * * * Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spellings and inconsistent use of hyphens have been preserved. 
4341	----	MUTUAL AID A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION BY P. KROPOTKIN 1902 INTRODUCTION Two aspects of animal life impressed me most during the journeys which I made in my youth in Eastern Siberia and Northern Manchuria. One of them was the extreme severity of the struggle for existence which most species of animals have to carry on against an inclement Nature; the enormous destruction of life which periodically results from natural agencies; and the consequent paucity of life over the vast territory which fell under my observation. And the other was, that even in those few spots where animal life teemed in abundance, I failed to find--although I was eagerly looking for it--that bitter struggle for the means of existence, among animals belonging to the same species, which was considered by most Darwinists (though not always by Darwin himself) as the dominant characteristic of struggle for life, and the main factor of evolution. The terrible snow-storms which sweep over the northern portion of Eurasia in the later part of the winter, and the glazed frost that often follows them; the frosts and the snow-storms which return every year in the second half of May, when the trees are already in full blossom and insect life swarms everywhere; the early frosts and, occasionally, the heavy snowfalls in July and August, which suddenly destroy myriads of insects, as well as the second broods of the birds in the prairies; the torrential rains, due to the monsoons, which fall in more temperate regions in August and September--resulting in inundations on a scale which is only known in America and in Eastern Asia, and swamping, on the plateaus, areas as wide as European States; and finally, the heavy snowfalls, early in October, which eventually render a territory as large as France and Germany, absolutely impracticable for ruminants, and destroy them by the thousand--these were the conditions under which I saw animal life struggling in Northern Asia. They made me realize at an early date the overwhelming importance in Nature of what Darwin described as "the natural checks to over-multiplication," in comparison to the struggle between individuals of the same species for the means of subsistence, which may go on here and there, to some limited extent, but never attains the importance of the former. Paucity of life, under-population--not over-population--being the distinctive feature of that immense part of the globe which we name Northern Asia, I conceived since then serious doubts--which subsequent study has only confirmed--as to the reality of that fearful competition for food and life within each species, which was an article of faith with most Darwinists, and, consequently, as to the dominant part which this sort of competition was supposed to play in the evolution of new species. On the other hand, wherever I saw animal life in abundance, as, for instance, on the lakes where scores of species and millions of individuals came together to rear their progeny; in the colonies of rodents; in the migrations of birds which took place at that time on a truly American scale along the Usuri; and especially in a migration of fallow-deer which I witnessed on the Amur, and during which scores of thousands of these intelligent animals came together from an immense territory, flying before the coming deep snow, in order to cross the Amur where it is narrowest--in all these scenes of animal life which passed before my eyes, I saw Mutual Aid and Mutual Support carried on to an extent which made me suspect in it a feature of the greatest importance for the maintenance of life, the preservation of each species, and its further evolution. And finally, I saw among the semi-wild cattle and horses in Transbaikalia, among the wild ruminants everywhere, the squirrels, and so on, that when animals have to struggle against scarcity of food, in consequence of one of the above-mentioned causes, the whole of that portion of the species which is affected by the calamity, comes out of the ordeal so much impoverished in vigour and health, that no progressive evolution of the species can be based upon such periods of keen competition. Consequently, when my attention was drawn, later on, to the relations between Darwinism and Sociology, I could agree with none of the works and pamphlets that had been written upon this important subject. They all endeavoured to prove that Man, owing to his higher intelligence and knowledge, may mitigate the harshness of the struggle for life between men; but they all recognized at the same time that the struggle for the means of existence, of every animal against all its congeners, and of every man against all other men, was "a law of Nature." This view, however, I could not accept, because I was persuaded that to admit a pitiless inner war for life within each species, and to see in that war a condition of progress, was to admit something which not only had not yet been proved, but also lacked confirmation from direct observation. On the contrary, a lecture "On the Law of Mutual Aid," which was delivered at a Russian Congress of Naturalists, in January 1880, by the well-known zoologist, Professor Kessler, the then Dean of the St. Petersburg University, struck me as throwing a new light on the whole subject. Kessler's idea was, that besides the law of Mutual Struggle there is in Nature the law of Mutual Aid, which, for the success of the struggle for life, and especially for the progressive evolution of the species, is far more important than the law of mutual contest. This suggestion--which was, in reality, nothing but a further development of the ideas expressed by Darwin himself in The Descent of Man--seemed to me so correct and of so great an importance, that since I became acquainted with it (in 1883) I began to collect materials for further developing the idea, which Kessler had only cursorily sketched in his lecture, but had not lived to develop. He died in 1881. In one point only I could not entirely endorse Kessler's views. Kessler alluded to "parental feeling" and care for progeny (see below, Chapter I) as to the source of mutual inclinations in animals. However, to determine how far these two feelings have really been at work in the evolution of sociable instincts, and how far other instincts have been at work in the same direction, seems to me a quite distinct and a very wide question, which we hardly can discuss yet. It will be only after we have well established the facts of mutual aid in different classes of animals, and their importance for evolution, that we shall be able to study what belongs in the evolution of sociable feelings, to parental feelings, and what to sociability proper--the latter having evidently its origin at the earliest stages of the evolution of the animal world, perhaps even at the "colony-stages." I consequently directed my chief attention to establishing first of all, the importance of the Mutual Aid factor of evolution, leaving to ulterior research the task of discovering the origin of the Mutual Aid instinct in Nature. The importance of the Mutual Aid factor--"if its generality could only be demonstrated"--did not escape the naturalist's genius so manifest in Goethe. When Eckermann told once to Goethe--it was in 1827--that two little wren-fledglings, which had run away from him, were found by him next day in the nest of robin redbreasts (Rothkehlchen), which fed the little ones, together with their own youngsters, Goethe grew quite excited about this fact. He saw in it a confirmation of his pantheistic views, and said:--"If it be true that this feeding of a stranger goes through all Nature as something having the character of a general law--then many an enigma would be solved." He returned to this matter on the next day, and most earnestly entreated Eckermann (who was, as is known, a zoologist) to make a special study of the subject, adding that he would surely come "to quite invaluable treasuries of results" (Gespräche, edition of 1848, vol. iii. pp. 219, 221). Unfortunately, this study was never made, although it is very possible that Brehm, who has accumulated in his works such rich materials relative to mutual aid among animals, might have been inspired by Goethe's remark. Several works of importance were published in the years 1872-1886, dealing with the intelligence and the mental life of animals (they are mentioned in a footnote in Chapter I of this book), and three of them dealt more especially with the subject under consideration; namely, Les Societes animales, by Espinas (Paris, 1877); La Lutte pour l'existence et l'association pout la lutte, a lecture by J.L. Lanessan (April 1881); and Louis Buchner's book, Liebe und Liebes-Leben in der Thierwelt, of which the first edition appeared in 1882 or 1883, and a second, much enlarged, in 1885. But excellent though each of these works is, they leave ample room for a work in which Mutual Aid would be considered, not only as an argument in favour of a pre-human origin of moral instincts, but also as a law of Nature and a factor of evolution. Espinas devoted his main attention to such animal societies (ants, bees) as are established upon a physiological division of labour, and though his work is full of admirable hints in all possible directions, it was written at a time when the evolution of human societies could not yet be treated with the knowledge we now possess. Lanessan's lecture has more the character of a brilliantly laid-out general plan of a work, in which mutual support would be dealt with, beginning with rocks in the sea, and then passing in review the world of plants, of animals and men. As to Buchner's work, suggestive though it is and rich in facts, I could not agree with its leading idea. The book begins with a hymn to Love, and nearly all its illustrations are intended to prove the existence of love and sympathy among animals. However, to reduce animal sociability to love and sympathy means to reduce its generality and its importance, just as human ethics based upon love and personal sympathy only have contributed to narrow the comprehension of the moral feeling as a whole. It is not love to my neighbour--whom I often do not know at all--which induces me to seize a pail of water and to rush towards his house when I see it on fire; it is a far wider, even though more vague feeling or instinct of human solidarity and sociability which moves me. So it is also with animals. It is not love, and not even sympathy (understood in its proper sense) which induces a herd of ruminants or of horses to form a ring in order to resist an attack of wolves; not love which induces wolves to form a pack for hunting; not love which induces kittens or lambs to play, or a dozen of species of young birds to spend their days together in the autumn; and it is neither love nor personal sympathy which induces many thousand fallow-deer scattered over a territory as large as France to form into a score of separate herds, all marching towards a given spot, in order to cross there a river. It is a feeling infinitely wider than love or personal sympathy--an instinct that has been slowly developed among animals and men in the course of an extremely long evolution, and which has taught animals and men alike the force they can borrow from the practice of mutual aid and support, and the joys they can find in social life. The importance of this distinction will be easily appreciated by the student of animal psychology, and the more so by the student of human ethics. Love, sympathy and self-sacrifice certainly play an immense part in the progressive development of our moral feelings. But it is not love and not even sympathy upon which Society is based in mankind. It is the conscience--be it only at the stage of an instinct--of human solidarity. It is the unconscious recognition of the force that is borrowed by each man from the practice of mutual aid; of the close dependency of every one's happiness upon the happiness of all; and of the sense of justice, or equity, which brings the individual to consider the rights of every other individual as equal to his own. Upon this broad and necessary foundation the still higher moral feelings are developed. But this subject lies outside the scope of the present work, and I shall only indicate here a lecture, "Justice and Morality" which I delivered in reply to Huxley's Ethics, and in which the subject has been treated at some length. Consequently I thought that a book, written on Mutual Aid as a Law of Nature and a factor of evolution, might fill an important gap. When Huxley issued, in 1888, his "Struggle-for-life" manifesto (Struggle for Existence and its Bearing upon Man), which to my appreciation was a very incorrect representation of the facts of Nature, as one sees them in the bush and in the forest, I communicated with the editor of the Nineteenth Century, asking him whether he would give the hospitality of his review to an elaborate reply to the views of one of the most prominent Darwinists; and Mr. James Knowles received the proposal with fullest sympathy. I also spoke of it to W. Bates. "Yes, certainly; that is true Darwinism," was his reply. "It is horrible what 'they' have made of Darwin. Write these articles, and when they are printed, I will write to you a letter which you may publish." Unfortunately, it took me nearly seven years to write these articles, and when the last was published, Bates was no longer living. After having discussed the importance of mutual aid in various classes of animals, I was evidently bound to discuss the importance of the same factor in the evolution of Man. This was the more necessary as there are a number of evolutionists who may not refuse to admit the importance of mutual aid among animals, but who, like Herbert Spencer, will refuse to admit it for Man. For primitive Man--they maintain--war of each against all was the law of life. In how far this assertion, which has been too willingly repeated, without sufficient criticism, since the times of Hobbes, is supported by what we know about the early phases of human development, is discussed in the chapters given to the Savages and the Barbarians. The number and importance of mutual-aid institutions which were developed by the creative genius of the savage and half-savage masses, during the earliest clan-period of mankind and still more during the next village-community period, and the immense influence which these early institutions have exercised upon the subsequent development of mankind, down to the present times, induced me to extend my researches to the later, historical periods as well; especially, to study that most interesting period--the free medieval city republics, of which the universality and influence upon our modern civilization have not yet been duly appreciated. And finally, I have tried to indicate in brief the immense importance which the mutual-support instincts, inherited by mankind from its extremely long evolution, play even now in our modern society, which is supposed to rest upon the principle: "every one for himself, and the State for all," but which it never has succeeded, nor will succeed in realizing. It may be objected to this book that both animals and men are represented in it under too favourable an aspect; that their sociable qualities are insisted upon, while their anti-social and self-asserting instincts are hardly touched upon. This was, however, unavoidable. We have heard so much lately of the "harsh, pitiless struggle for life," which was said to be carried on by every animal against all other animals, every "savage" against all other "savages," and every civilized man against all his co-citizens--and these assertions have so much become an article of faith--that it was necessary, first of all, to oppose to them a wide series of facts showing animal and human life under a quite different aspect. It was necessary to indicate the overwhelming importance which sociable habits play in Nature and in the progressive evolution of both the animal species and human beings: to prove that they secure to animals a better protection from their enemies, very often facilities for getting food and (winter provisions, migrations, etc.), longevity, therefore a greater facility for the development of intellectual faculties; and that they have given to men, in addition to the same advantages, the possibility of working out those institutions which have enabled mankind to survive in its hard struggle against Nature, and to progress, notwithstanding all the vicissitudes of its history. It is a book on the law of Mutual Aid, viewed at as one of the chief factors of evolution--not on all factors of evolution and their respective values; and this first book had to be written, before the latter could become possible. I should certainly be the last to underrate the part which the self-assertion of the individual has played in the evolution of mankind. However, this subject requires, I believe, a much deeper treatment than the one it has hitherto received. In the history of mankind, individual self-assertion has often been, and continually is, something quite different from, and far larger and deeper than, the petty, unintelligent narrow-mindedness, which, with a large class of writers, goes for "individualism" and "self-assertion." Nor have history-making individuals been limited to those whom historians have represented as heroes. My intention, consequently, is, if circumstances permit it, to discuss separately the part taken by the self-assertion of the individual in the progressive evolution of mankind. I can only make in this place the following general remark:--When the Mutual Aid institutions--the tribe, the village community, the guilds, the medieval city--began, in the course of history, to lose their primitive character, to be invaded by parasitic growths, and thus to become hindrances to progress, the revolt of individuals against these institutions took always two different aspects. Part of those who rose up strove to purify the old institutions, or to work out a higher form of commonwealth, based upon the same Mutual Aid principles; they tried, for instance, to introduce the principle of "compensation," instead of the lex talionis, and later on, the pardon of offences, or a still higher ideal of equality before the human conscience, in lieu of "compensation," according to class-value. But at the very same time, another portion of the same individual rebels endeavoured to break down the protective institutions of mutual support, with no other intention but to increase their own wealth and their own powers. In this three-cornered contest, between the two classes of revolted individuals and the supporters of what existed, lies the real tragedy of history. But to delineate that contest, and honestly to study the part played in the evolution of mankind by each one of these three forces, would require at least as many years as it took me to write this book. Of works dealing with nearly the same subject, which have been published since the publication of my articles on Mutual Aid among Animals, I must mention The Lowell Lectures on the Ascent of Man, by Henry Drummond (London, 1894), and The Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, by A. Sutherland (London, 1898). Both are constructed chiefly on the lines taken in Buchner's Love, and in the second work the parental and familial feeling as the sole influence at work in the development of the moral feelings has been dealt with at some length. A third work dealing with man and written on similar lines is The Principles of Sociology, by Prof. F.A. Giddings, the first edition of which was published in 1896 at New York and London, and the leading ideas of which were sketched by the author in a pamphlet in 1894. I must leave, however, to literary critics the task of discussing the points of contact, resemblance, or divergence between these works and mine. The different chapters of this book were published first in the Nineteenth Century ("Mutual Aid among Animals," in September and November 1890; "Mutual Aid among Savages," in April 1891; "Mutual Aid among the Barbarians," in January 1892; "Mutual Aid in the Medieval City," in August and September 1894; and "Mutual Aid amongst Modern Men," in January and June 1896). In bringing them out in a book form my first intention was to embody in an Appendix the mass of materials, as well as the discussion of several secondary points, which had to be omitted in the review articles. It appeared, however, that the Appendix would double the size of the book, and I was compelled to abandon, or, at least, to postpone its publication. The present Appendix includes the discussion of only a few points which have been the matter of scientific controversy during the last few years; and into the text I have introduced only such matter as could be introduced without altering the structure of the work. I am glad of this opportunity for expressing to the editor of the Nineteenth Century, Mr. James Knowles, my very best thanks, both for the kind hospitality which he offered to these papers in his review, as soon as he knew their general idea, and the permission he kindly gave me to reprint them. Bromley, Kent, 1902. CHAPTER I MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS Struggle for existence. Mutual Aid a law of Nature and chief factor of progressive evolution. Invertebrates. Ants and Bees. Birds, hunting and fishing associations. Sociability. Mutual protection among small birds. Cranes, parrots. The conception of struggle for existence as a factor of evolution, introduced into science by Darwin and Wallace, has permitted us to embrace an immensely wide range of phenomena in one single generalization, which soon became the very basis of our philosophical, biological, and sociological speculations. An immense variety of facts:--adaptations of function and structure of organic beings to their surroundings; physiological and anatomical evolution; intellectual progress, and moral development itself, which we formerly used to explain by so many different causes, were embodied by Darwin in one general conception. We understood them as continued endeavours--as a struggle against adverse circumstances--for such a development of individuals, races, species and societies, as would result in the greatest possible fulness, variety, and intensity of life. It may be that at the outset Darwin himself was not fully aware of the generality of the factor which he first invoked for explaining one series only of facts relative to the accumulation of individual variations in incipient species. But he foresaw that the term which he was introducing into science would lose its philosophical and its only true meaning if it were to be used in its narrow sense only--that of a struggle between separate individuals for the sheer means of existence. And at the very beginning of his memorable work he insisted upon the term being taken in its "large and metaphorical sense including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny."(1) While he himself was chiefly using the term in its narrow sense for his own special purpose, he warned his followers against committing the error (which he seems once to have committed himself) of overrating its narrow meaning. In The Descent of Man he gave some powerful pages to illustrate its proper, wide sense. He pointed out how, in numberless animal societies, the struggle between separate individuals for the means of existence disappears, how struggle is replaced by co-operation, and how that substitution results in the development of intellectual and moral faculties which secure to the species the best conditions for survival. He intimated that in such cases the fittest are not the physically strongest, nor the cunningest, but those who learn to combine so as mutually to support each other, strong and weak alike, for the welfare of the community. "Those communities," he wrote, "which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring" (2nd edit., p. 163). The term, which originated from the narrow Malthusian conception of competition between each and all, thus lost its narrowness in the mind of one who knew Nature. Unhappily, these remarks, which might have become the basis of most fruitful researches, were overshadowed by the masses of facts gathered for the purpose of illustrating the consequences of a real competition for life. Besides, Darwin never attempted to submit to a closer investigation the relative importance of the two aspects under which the struggle for existence appears in the animal world, and he never wrote the work he proposed to write upon the natural checks to over-multiplication, although that work would have been the crucial test for appreciating the real purport of individual struggle. Nay, on the very pages just mentioned, amidst data disproving the narrow Malthusian conception of struggle, the old Malthusian leaven reappeared--namely, in Darwin's remarks as to the alleged inconveniences of maintaining the "weak in mind and body" in our civilized societies (ch. v). As if thousands of weak-bodied and infirm poets, scientists, inventors, and reformers, together with other thousands of so-called "fools" and "weak-minded enthusiasts," were not the most precious weapons used by humanity in its struggle for existence by intellectual and moral arms, which Darwin himself emphasized in those same chapters of Descent of Man. It happened with Darwin's theory as it always happens with theories having any bearing upon human relations. Instead of widening it according to his own hints, his followers narrowed it still more. And while Herbert Spencer, starting on independent but closely allied lines, attempted to widen the inquiry into that great question, "Who are the fittest?" especially in the appendix to the third edition of the Data of Ethics, the numberless followers of Darwin reduced the notion of struggle for existence to its narrowest limits. They came to conceive the animal world as a world of perpetual struggle among half-starved individuals, thirsting for one another's blood. They made modern literature resound with the war-cry of woe to the vanquished, as if it were the last word of modern biology. They raised the "pitiless" struggle for personal advantages to the height of a biological principle which man must submit to as well, under the menace of otherwise succumbing in a world based upon mutual extermination. Leaving aside the economists who know of natural science but a few words borrowed from second-hand vulgarizers, we must recognize that even the most authorized exponents of Darwin's views did their best to maintain those false ideas. In fact, if we take Huxley, who certainly is considered as one of the ablest exponents of the theory of evolution, were we not taught by him, in a paper on the 'Struggle for Existence and its Bearing upon Man,' that, "from the point of view of the moralist, the animal world is on about the same level as a gladiators' show. The creatures are fairly well treated, and set to, fight hereby the strongest, the swiftest, and the cunningest live to fight another day. The spectator has no need to turn his thumb down, as no quarter is given." Or, further down in the same article, did he not tell us that, as among animals, so among primitive men, "the weakest and stupidest went to the wall, while the toughest and shrewdest, those who were best fitted to cope with their circumstances, but not the best in another way, survived. Life was a continuous free fight, and beyond the limited and temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all was the normal state of existence."(2) In how far this view of nature is supported by fact, will be seen from the evidence which will be here submitted to the reader as regards the animal world, and as regards primitive man. But it may be remarked at once that Huxley's view of nature had as little claim to be taken as a scientific deduction as the opposite view of Rousseau, who saw in nature but love, peace, and harmony destroyed by the accession of man. In fact, the first walk in the forest, the first observation upon any animal society, or even the perusal of any serious work dealing with animal life (D'Orbigny's, Audubon's, Le Vaillant's, no matter which), cannot but set the naturalist thinking about the part taken by social life in the life of animals, and prevent him from seeing in Nature nothing but a field of slaughter, just as this would prevent him from seeing in Nature nothing but harmony and peace. Rousseau had committed the error of excluding the beak-and-claw fight from his thoughts; and Huxley committed the opposite error; but neither Rousseau's optimism nor Huxley's pessimism can be accepted as an impartial interpretation of nature. As soon as we study animals--not in laboratories and museums only, but in the forest and the prairie, in the steppe and the mountains--we at once perceive that though there is an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various species, and especially amidst various classes of animals, there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps even more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defence amidst animals belonging to the same species or, at least, to the same society. Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle. Of course it would be extremely difficult to estimate, however roughly, the relative numerical importance of both these series of facts. But if we resort to an indirect test, and ask Nature: "Who are the fittest: those who are continually at war with each other, or those who support one another?" we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have more chances to survive, and they attain, in their respective classes, the highest development of intelligence and bodily organization. If the numberless facts which can be brought forward to support this view are taken into account, we may safely say that mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle, but that, as a factor of evolution, it most probably has a far greater importance, inasmuch as it favours the development of such habits and characters as insure the maintenance and further development of the species, together with the greatest amount of welfare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the least waste of energy. Of the scientific followers of Darwin, the first, as far as I know, who understood the full purport of Mutual Aid as a law of Nature and the chief factor of evolution, was a well-known Russian zoologist, the late Dean of the St. Petersburg University, Professor Kessler. He developed his ideas in an address which he delivered in January 1880, a few months before his death, at a Congress of Russian naturalists; but, like so many good things published in the Russian tongue only, that remarkable address remains almost entirely unknown.(3) "As a zoologist of old standing," he felt bound to protest against the abuse of a term--the struggle for existence--borrowed from zoology, or, at least, against overrating its importance. Zoology, he said, and those sciences which deal with man, continually insist upon what they call the pitiless law of struggle for existence. But they forget the existence of another law which may be described as the law of mutual aid, which law, at least for the animals, is far more essential than the former. He pointed out how the need of leaving progeny necessarily brings animals together, and, "the more the individuals keep together, the more they mutually support each other, and the more are the chances of the species for surviving, as well as for making further progress in its intellectual development." "All classes of animals," he continued, "and especially the higher ones, practise mutual aid," and he illustrated his idea by examples borrowed from the life of the burying beetles and the social life of birds and some mammalia. The examples were few, as might have been expected in a short opening address, but the chief points were clearly stated; and, after mentioning that in the evolution of mankind mutual aid played a still more prominent part, Professor Kessler concluded as follows:-- "I obviously do not deny the struggle for existence, but I maintain that the progressive development of the animal kingdom, and especially of mankind, is favoured much more by mutual support than by mutual struggle.... All organic beings have two essential needs: that of nutrition, and that of propagating the species. The former brings them to a struggle and to mutual extermination, while the needs of maintaining the species bring them to approach one another and to support one another. But I am inclined to think that in the evolution of the organic world--in the progressive modification of organic beings--mutual support among individuals plays a much more important part than their mutual struggle."(4) The correctness of the above views struck most of the Russian zoologists present, and Syevertsoff, whose work is well known to ornithologists and geographers, supported them and illustrated them by a few more examples. He mentioned sone of the species of falcons which have "an almost ideal organization for robbery," and nevertheless are in decay, while other species of falcons, which practise mutual help, do thrive. "Take, on the other side, a sociable bird, the duck," he said; "it is poorly organized on the whole, but it practises mutual support, and it almost invades the earth, as may be judged from its numberless varieties and species." The readiness of the Russian zoologists to accept Kessler's views seems quite natural, because nearly all of them have had opportunities of studying the animal world in the wide uninhabited regions of Northern Asia and East Russia; and it is impossible to study like regions without being brought to the same ideas. I recollect myself the impression produced upon me by the animal world of Siberia when I explored the Vitim regions in the company of so accomplished a zoologist as my friend Polyakoff was. We both were under the fresh impression of the Origin of Species, but we vainly looked for the keen competition between animals of the same species which the reading of Darwin's work had prepared us to expect, even after taking into account the remarks of the third chapter (p. 54). We saw plenty of adaptations for struggling, very often in common, against the adverse circumstances of climate, or against various enemies, and Polyakoff wrote many a good page upon the mutual dependency of carnivores, ruminants, and rodents in their geographical distribution; we witnessed numbers of facts of mutual support, especially during the migrations of birds and ruminants; but even in the Amur and Usuri regions, where animal life swarms in abundance, facts of real competition and struggle between higher animals of the same species came very seldom under my notice, though I eagerly searched for them. The same impression appears in the works of most Russian zoologists, and it probably explains why Kessler's ideas were so welcomed by the Russian Darwinists, whilst like ideas are not in vogue amidst the followers of Darwin in Western Europe. The first thing which strikes us as soon as we begin studying the struggle for existence under both its aspects--direct and metaphorical--is the abundance of facts of mutual aid, not only for rearing progeny, as recognized by most evolutionists, but also for the safety of the individual, and for providing it with the necessary food. With many large divisions of the animal kingdom mutual aid is the rule. Mutual aid is met with even amidst the lowest animals, and we must be prepared to learn some day, from the students of microscopical pond-life, facts of unconscious mutual support, even from the life of micro-organisms. Of course, our knowledge of the life of the invertebrates, save the termites, the ants, and the bees, is extremely limited; and yet, even as regards the lower animals, we may glean a few facts of well-ascertained cooperation. The numberless associations of locusts, vanessae, cicindelae, cicadae, and so on, are practically quite unexplored; but the very fact of their existence indicates that they must be composed on about the same principles as the temporary associations of ants or bees for purposes of migration. As to the beetles, we have quite well-observed facts of mutual help amidst the burying beetles (Necrophorus). They must have some decaying organic matter to lay their eggs in, and thus to provide their larvae with food; but that matter must not decay very rapidly. So they are wont to bury in the ground the corpses of all kinds of small animals which they occasionally find in their rambles. As a rule, they live an isolated life, but when one of them has discovered the corpse of a mouse or of a bird, which it hardly could manage to bury itself, it calls four, six, or ten other beetles to perform the operation with united efforts; if necessary, they transport the corpse to a suitable soft ground; and they bury it in a very considerate way, without quarrelling as to which of them will enjoy the privilege of laying its eggs in the buried corpse. And when Gleditsch attached a dead bird to a cross made out of two sticks, or suspended a toad to a stick planted in the soil, the little beetles would in the same friendly way combine their intelligences to overcome the artifice of Man. The same combination of efforts has been noticed among the dung-beetles. Even among animals standing at a somewhat lower stage of organization we may find like examples. Some land-crabs of the West Indies and North America combine in large swarms in order to travel to the sea and to deposit therein their spawn; and each such migration implies concert, co-operation, and mutual support. As to the big Molucca crab (Limulus), I was struck (in 1882, at the Brighton Aquarium) with the extent of mutual assistance which these clumsy animals are capable of bestowing upon a comrade in case of need. One of them had fallen upon its back in a corner of the tank, and its heavy saucepan-like carapace prevented it from returning to its natural position, the more so as there was in the corner an iron bar which rendered the task still more difficult. Its comrades came to the rescue, and for one hour's time I watched how they endeavoured to help their fellow-prisoner. They came two at once, pushed their friend from beneath, and after strenuous efforts succeeded in lifting it upright; but then the iron bar would prevent them from achieving the work of rescue, and the crab would again heavily fall upon its back. After many attempts, one of the helpers would go in the depth of the tank and bring two other crabs, which would begin with fresh forces the same pushing and lifting of their helpless comrade. We stayed in the Aquarium for more than two hours, and, when leaving, we again came to cast a glance upon the tank: the work of rescue still continued! Since I saw that, I cannot refuse credit to the observation quoted by Dr. Erasmus Darwin--namely, that "the common crab during the moulting season stations as sentinel an unmoulted or hard-shelled individual to prevent marine enemies from injuring moulted individuals in their unprotected state."(5) Facts illustrating mutual aid amidst the termites, the ants, and the bees are so well known to the general reader, especially through the works of Romanes, L. Buchner, and Sir John Lubbock, that I may limit my remarks to a very few hints.(6) If we take an ants' nest, we not only see that every description of work-rearing of progeny, foraging, building, rearing of aphides, and so on--is performed according to the principles of voluntary mutual aid; we must also recognize, with Forel, that the chief, the fundamental feature of the life of many species of ants is the fact and the obligation for every ant of sharing its food, already swallowed and partly digested, with every member of the community which may apply for it. Two ants belonging to two different species or to two hostile nests, when they occasionally meet together, will avoid each other. But two ants belonging to the same nest or to the same colony of nests will approach each other, exchange a few movements with the antennae, and "if one of them is hungry or thirsty, and especially if the other has its crop full ... it immediately asks for food." The individual thus requested never refuses; it sets apart its mandibles, takes a proper position, and regurgitates a drop of transparent fluid which is licked up by the hungry ant. Regurgitating food for other ants is so prominent a feature in the life of ants (at liberty), and it so constantly recurs both for feeding hungry comrades and for feeding larvae, that Forel considers the digestive tube of the ants as consisting of two different parts, one of which, the posterior, is for the special use of the individual, and the other, the anterior part, is chiefly for the use of the community. If an ant which has its crop full has been selfish enough to refuse feeding a comrade, it will be treated as an enemy, or even worse. If the refusal has been made while its kinsfolk were fighting with some other species, they will fall back upon the greedy individual with greater vehemence than even upon the enemies themselves. And if an ant has not refused to feed another ant belonging to an enemy species, it will be treated by the kinsfolk of the latter as a friend. All this is confirmed by most accurate observation and decisive experiments.(7) In that immense division of the animal kingdom which embodies more than one thousand species, and is so numerous that the Brazilians pretend that Brazil belongs to the ants, not to men, competition amidst the members of the same nest, or the colony of nests, does not exist. However terrible the wars between different species, and whatever the atrocities committed at war-time, mutual aid within the community, self-devotion grown into a habit, and very often self-sacrifice for the common welfare, are the rule. The ants and termites have renounced the "Hobbesian war," and they are the better for it. Their wonderful nests, their buildings, superior in relative size to those of man; their paved roads and overground vaulted galleries; their spacious halls and granaries; their corn-fields, harvesting and "malting" of grain;(8) their, rational methods of nursing their eggs and larvae, and of building special nests for rearing the aphides whom Linnaeus so picturesquely described as "the cows of the ants"; and, finally, their courage, pluck, and, superior intelligence--all these are the natural outcome of the mutual aid which they practise at every stage of their busy and laborious lives. That mode of life also necessarily resulted in the development of another essential feature of the life of ants: the immense development of individual initiative which, in its turn, evidently led to the development of that high and varied intelligence which cannot but strike the human observer.(9) If we knew no other facts from animal life than what we know about the ants and the termites, we already might safely conclude that mutual aid (which leads to mutual confidence, the first condition for courage) and individual initiative (the first condition for intellectual progress) are two factors infinitely more important than mutual struggle in the evolution of the animal kingdom. In fact, the ant thrives without having any of the "protective" features which cannot be dispensed with by animals living an isolated life. Its colour renders it conspicuous to its enemies, and the lofty nests of many species are conspicuous in the meadows and forests. It is not protected by a hard carapace, and its stinging apparatus, however dangerous when hundreds of stings are plunged into the flesh of an animal, is not of a great value for individual defence; while the eggs and larvae of the ants are a dainty for a great number of the inhabitants of the forests. And yet the ants, in their thousands, are not much destroyed by the birds, not even by the ant-eaters, and they are dreaded by most stronger insects. When Forel emptied a bagful of ants in a meadow, he saw that "the crickets ran away, abandoning their holes to be sacked by the ants; the grasshoppers and the crickets fled in all directions; the spiders and the beetles abandoned their prey in order not to become prey themselves;" even the nests of the wasps were taken by the ants, after a battle during which many ants perished for the safety of the commonwealth. Even the swiftest insects cannot escape, and Forel often saw butterflies, gnats, flies, and so on, surprised and killed by the ants. Their force is in mutual support and mutual confidence. And if the ant--apart from the still higher developed termites--stands at the very top of the whole class of insects for its intellectual capacities; if its courage is only equalled by the most courageous vertebrates; and if its brain--to use Darwin's words--"is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of man," is it not due to the fact that mutual aid has entirely taken the place of mutual struggle in the communities of ants? The same is true as regards the bees. These small insects, which so easily might become the prey of so many birds, and whose honey has so many admirers in all classes of animals from the beetle to the bear, also have none of the protective features derived from mimicry or otherwise, without which an isolatedly living insect hardly could escape wholesale destruction; and yet, owing to the mutual aid they practise, they obtain the wide extension which we know and the intelligence we admire, By working in common they multiply their individual forces; by resorting to a temporary division of labour combined with the capacity of each bee to perform every kind of work when required, they attain such a degree of well-being and safety as no isolated animal can ever expect to achieve however strong or well armed it may be. In their combinations they are often more successful than man, when he neglects to take advantage of a well-planned mutual assistance. Thus, when a new swarm of bees is going to leave the hive in search of a new abode, a number of bees will make a preliminary exploration of the neighbourhood, and if they discover a convenient dwelling-place--say, an old basket, or anything of the kind--they will take possession of it, clean it, and guard it, sometimes for a whole week, till the swarm comes to settle therein. But how many human settlers will perish in new countries simply for not having understood the necessity of combining their efforts! By combining their individual intelligences they succeed in coping with adverse circumstances, even quite unforeseen and unusual, like those bees of the Paris Exhibition which fastened with their resinous propolis the shutter to a glass-plate fitted in the wall of their hive. Besides, they display none of the sanguinary proclivities and love of useless fighting with which many writers so readily endow animals. The sentries which guard the entrance to the hive pitilessly put to death the robbing bees which attempt entering the hive; but those stranger bees which come to the hive by mistake are left unmolested, especially if they come laden with pollen, or are young individuals which can easily go astray. There is no more warfare than is strictly required. The sociability of the bees is the more instructive as predatory instincts and laziness continue to exist among the bees as well, and reappear each time that their growth is favoured by some circumstances. It is well known that there always are a number of bees which prefer a life of robbery to the laborious life of a worker; and that both periods of scarcity and periods of an unusually rich supply of food lead to an increase of the robbing class. When our crops are in and there remains but little to gather in our meadows and fields, robbing bees become of more frequent occurrence; while, on the other side, about the sugar plantations of the West Indies and the sugar refineries of Europe, robbery, laziness, and very often drunkenness become quite usual with the bees. We thus see that anti-social instincts continue to exist amidst the bees as well; but natural selection continually must eliminate them, because in the long run the practice of solidarity proves much more advantageous to the species than the development of individuals endowed with predatory inclinations. The cunningest and the shrewdest are eliminated in favour of those who understand the advantages of sociable life and mutual support. Certainly, neither the ants, nor the bees, nor even the termites, have risen to the conception of a higher solidarity embodying the whole of the species. In that respect they evidently have not attained a degree of development which we do not find even among our political, scientific, and religious leaders. Their social instincts hardly extend beyond the limits of the hive or the nest. However, colonies of no less than two hundred nests, belonging to two different species (Formica exsecta and F. pressilabris) have been described by Forel on Mount Tendre and Mount Saleve; and Forel maintains that each member of these colonies recognizes every other member of the colony, and that they all take part in common defence; while in Pennsylvania Mr. MacCook saw a whole nation of from 1,600 to 1,700 nests of the mound-making ant, all living in perfect intelligence; and Mr. Bates has described the hillocks of the termites covering large surfaces in the "campos"--some of the nests being the refuge of two or three different species, and most of them being connected by vaulted galleries or arcades.(10) Some steps towards the amalgamation of larger divisions of the species for purposes of mutual protection are thus met with even among the invertebrate animals. Going now over to higher animals, we find far more instances of undoubtedly conscious mutual help for all possible purposes, though we must recognize at once that our knowledge even of the life of higher animals still remains very imperfect. A large number of facts have been accumulated by first-rate observers, but there are whole divisions of the animal kingdom of which we know almost nothing. Trustworthy information as regards fishes is extremely scarce, partly owing to the difficulties of observation, and partly because no proper attention has yet been paid to the subject. As to the mammalia, Kessler already remarked how little we know about their manners of life. Many of them are nocturnal in their habits; others conceal themselves underground; and those ruminants whose social life and migrations offer the greatest interest do not let man approach their herds. It is chiefly upon birds that we have the widest range of information, and yet the social life of very many species remains but imperfectly known. Still, we need not complain about the lack of well-ascertained facts, as will be seen from the following. I need not dwell upon the associations of male and female for rearing their offspring, for providing it with food during their first steps in life, or for hunting in common; though it may be mentioned by the way that such associations are the rule even with the least sociable carnivores and rapacious birds; and that they derive a special interest from being the field upon which tenderer feelings develop even amidst otherwise most cruel animals. It may also be added that the rarity of associations larger than that of the family among the carnivores and the birds of prey, though mostly being the result of their very modes of feeding, can also be explained to some extent as a consequence of the change produced in the animal world by the rapid increase of mankind. At any rate it is worthy of note that there are species living a quite isolated life in densely-inhabited regions, while the same species, or their nearest congeners, are gregarious in uninhabited countries. Wolves, foxes, and several birds of prey may be quoted as instances in point. However, associations which do not extend beyond the family bonds are of relatively small importance in our case, the more so as we know numbers of associations for more general purposes, such as hunting, mutual protection, and even simple enjoyment of life. Audubon already mentioned that eagles occasionally associate for hunting, and his description of the two bald eagles, male and female, hunting on the Mississippi, is well known for its graphic powers. But one of the most conclusive observations of the kind belongs to Syevertsoff. Whilst studying the fauna of the Russian Steppes, he once saw an eagle belonging to an altogether gregarious species (the white-tailed eagle, Haliactos albicilla) rising high in the air for half an hour it was describing its wide circles in silence when at once its piercing voice was heard. Its cry was soon answered by another eagle which approached it, and was followed by a third, a fourth, and so on, till nine or ten eagles came together and soon disappeared. In the afternoon, Syevertsoff went to the place whereto he saw the eagles flying; concealed by one of the undulations of the Steppe, he approached them, and discovered that they had gathered around the corpse of a horse. The old ones, which, as a rule, begin the meal first--such are their rules of propriety-already were sitting upon the haystacks of the neighbourhood and kept watch, while the younger ones were continuing the meal, surrounded by bands of crows. From this and like observations, Syevertsoff concluded that the white-tailed eagles combine for hunting; when they all have risen to a great height they are enabled, if they are ten, to survey an area of at least twenty-five miles square; and as soon as any one has discovered something, he warns the others.(11) Of course, it might be argued that a simple instinctive cry of the first eagle, or even its movements, would have had the same effect of bringing several eagles to the prey. But in this case there is strong evidence in favour of mutual warning, because the ten eagles came together before descending towards the prey, and Syevertsoff had later on several opportunities of ascertaining that the whitetailed eagles always assemble for devouring a corpse, and that some of them (the younger ones first) always keep watch while the others are eating. In fact, the white-tailed eagle--one of the bravest and best hunters--is a gregarious bird altogether, and Brehm says that when kept in captivity it very soon contracts an attachment to its keepers. Sociability is a common feature with very many other birds of prey. The Brazilian kite, one of the most "impudent" robbers, is nevertheless a most sociable bird. Its hunting associations have been described by Darwin and other naturalists, and it is a fact that when it has seized upon a prey which is too big, it calls together five or six friends to carry it away. After a busy day, when these kites retire for their night-rest to a tree or to the bushes, they always gather in bands, sometimes coming together from distances of ten or more miles, and they often are joined by several other vultures, especially the percnopters, "their true friends," D'Orbigny says. In another continent, in the Transcaspian deserts, they have, according to Zarudnyi, the same habit of nesting together. The sociable vulture, one of the strongest vultures, has received its very name from its love of society. They live in numerous bands, and decidedly enjoy society; numbers of them join in their high flights for sport. "They live in very good friendship," Le Vaillant says, "and in the same cave I sometimes found as many as three nests close together."(12) The Urubu vultures of Brazil are as, or perhaps even more, sociable than rooks.(13) The little Egyptian vultures live in close friendship. They play in bands in the air, they come together to spend the night, and in the morning they all go together to search for their food, and never does the slightest quarrel arise among them; such is the testimony of Brehm, who had plenty of opportunities of observing their life. The red-throated falcon is also met with in numerous bands in the forests of Brazil, and the kestrel (Tinnunculus cenchris), when it has left Europe, and has reached in the winter the prairies and forests of Asia, gathers in numerous societies. In the Steppes of South Russia it is (or rather was) so sociable that Nordmann saw them in numerous bands, with other falcons (Falco tinnunculus, F. oesulon, and F. subbuteo), coming together every fine afternoon about four o'clock, and enjoying their sports till late in the night. They set off flying, all at once, in a quite straight line, towards some determined point, and, having reached it, immediately returned over the same line, to repeat the same flight.(14) To take flights in flocks for the mere pleasure of the flight, is quite common among all sorts of birds. "In the Humber district especially," Ch. Dixon writes, "vast flights of dunlins often appear upon the mud-flats towards the end of August, and remain for the winter.... The movements of these birds are most interesting, as a vast flock wheels and spreads out or closes up with as much precision as drilled troops. Scattered among them are many odd stints and sanderlings and ringed-plovers."(15) It would be quite impossible to enumerate here the various hunting associations of birds; but the fishing associations of the pelicans are certainly worthy of notice for the remarkable order and intelligence displayed by these clumsy birds. They always go fishing in numerous bands, and after having chosen an appropriate bay, they form a wide half-circle in face of the shore, and narrow it by paddling towards the shore, catching all fish that happen to be enclosed in the circle. On narrow rivers and canals they even divide into two parties, each of which draws up on a half-circle, and both paddle to meet each other, just as if two parties of men dragging two long nets should advance to capture all fish taken between the nets when both parties come to meet. As the night comes they fly to their resting-places--always the same for each flock--and no one has ever seen them fighting for the possession of either the bay or the resting place. In South America they gather in flocks of from forty to fifty thousand individuals, part of which enjoy sleep while the others keep watch, and others again go fishing.(16) And finally, I should be doing an injustice to the much-calumniated house-sparrows if I did not mention how faithfully each of them shares any food it discovers with all members of the society to which it belongs. The fact was known to the Greeks, and it has been transmitted to posterity how a Greek orator once exclaimed (I quote from memory):--"While I am speaking to you a sparrow has come to tell to other sparrows that a slave has dropped on the floor a sack of corn, and they all go there to feed upon the grain." The more, one is pleased to find this observation of old confirmed in a recent little book by Mr. Gurney, who does not doubt that the house sparrows always inform each other as to where there is some food to steal; he says, "When a stack has been thrashed ever so far from the yard, the sparrows in the yard have always had their crops full of the grain."(17) True, the sparrows are extremely particular in keeping their domains free from the invasions of strangers; thus the sparrows of the Jardin du Luxembourg bitterly fight all other sparrows which may attempt to enjoy their turn of the garden and its visitors; but within their own communities they fully practise mutual support, though occasionally there will be of course some quarrelling even amongst the best friends. Hunting and feeding in common is so much the habit in the feathered world that more quotations hardly would be needful: it must be considered as an established fact. As to the force derived from such associations, it is self-evident. The strongest birds of prey are powerless in face of the associations of our smallest bird pets. Even eagles--even the powerful and terrible booted eagle, and the martial eagle, which is strong enough to carry away a hare or a young antelope in its claws--are compelled to abandon their prey to bands of those beggars the kites, which give the eagle a regular chase as soon as they see it in possession of a good prey. The kites will also give chase to the swift fishing-hawk, and rob it of the fish it has captured; but no one ever saw the kites fighting together for the possession of the prey so stolen. On the Kerguelen Island, Dr. Coues saw the gulls to Buphogus--the sea-hen of the sealers--pursue make them disgorge their food, while, on the other side, the gulls and the terns combined to drive away the sea-hen as soon as it came near to their abodes, especially at nesting-time.(18) The little, but extremely swift lapwings (Vanellus cristatus) boldly attack the birds of prey. "To see them attacking a buzzard, a kite, a crow, or an eagle, is one of the most amusing spectacles. One feels that they are sure of victory, and one sees the anger of the bird of prey. In such circumstances they perfectly support one another, and their courage grows with their numbers."(19) The lapwing has well merited the name of a "good mother" which the Greeks gave to it, for it never fails to protect other aquatic birds from the attacks of their enemies. But even the little white wagtails (Motacilla alba), whom we well know in our gardens and whose whole length hardly attains eight inches, compel the sparrow-hawk to abandon its hunt. "I often admired their courage and agility," the old Brehm wrote, "and I am persuaded that the falcon alone is capable of capturing any of them.... When a band of wagtails has compelled a bird of prey to retreat, they make the air resound with their triumphant cries, and after that they separate." They thus come together for the special purpose of giving chase to their enemy, just as we see it when the whole bird-population of a forest has been raised by the news that a nocturnal bird has made its appearance during the day, and all together--birds of prey and small inoffensive singers--set to chase the stranger and make it return to its concealment. What an immense difference between the force of a kite, a buzzard or a hawk, and such small birds as the meadow-wagtail; and yet these little birds, by their common action and courage, prove superior to the powerfully-winged and armed robbers! In Europe, the wagtails not only chase the birds of prey which might be dangerous to them, but they chase also the fishing-hawk "rather for fun than for doing it any harm;" while in India, according to Dr. Jerdon's testimony, the jackdaws chase the gowinda-kite "for simple matter of amusement." Prince Wied saw the Brazilian eagle urubitinga surrounded by numberless flocks of toucans and cassiques (a bird nearly akin to our rook), which mocked it. "The eagle," he adds, "usually supports these insults very quietly, but from time to time it will catch one of these mockers." In all such cases the little birds, though very much inferior in force to the bird of prey, prove superior to it by their common action.(20) However, the most striking effects of common life for the security of the individual, for its enjoyment of life, and for the development of its intellectual capacities, are seen in two great families of birds, the cranes and the parrots. The cranes are extremely sociable and live in most excellent relations, not only with their congeners, but also with most aquatic birds. Their prudence is really astonishing, so also their intelligence; they grasp the new conditions in a moment, and act accordingly. Their sentries always keep watch around a flock which is feeding or resting, and the hunters know well how difficult it is to approach them. If man has succeeded in surprising them, they will never return to the same place without having sent out one single scout first, and a party of scouts afterwards; and when the reconnoitring party returns and reports that there is no danger, a second group of scouts is sent out to verify the first report, before the whole band moves. With kindred species the cranes contract real friendship; and in captivity there is no bird, save the also sociable and highly intelligent parrot, which enters into such real friendship with man. "It sees in man, not a master, but a friend, and endeavours to manifest it," Brehm concludes from a wide personal experience. The crane is in continual activity from early in the morning till late in the night; but it gives a few hours only in the morning to the task of searching its food, chiefly vegetable. All the remainder of the day is given to society life. "It picks up small pieces of wood or small stones, throws them in the air and tries to catch them; it bends its neck, opens its wings, dances, jumps, runs about, and tries to manifest by all means its good disposition of mind, and always it remains graceful and beautiful."(21) As it lives in society it has almost no enemies, and though Brehm occasionally saw one of them captured by a crocodile, he wrote that except the crocodile he knew no enemies of the crane. It eschews all of them by its proverbial prudence; and it attains, as a rule, a very old age. No wonder that for the maintenance of the species the crane need not rear a numerous offspring; it usually hatches but two eggs. As to its superior intelligence, it is sufficient to say that all observers are unanimous in recognizing that its intellectual capacities remind one very much of those of man. The other extremely sociable bird, the parrot, stands, as known, at the very top of the whole feathered world for the development of its intelligence. Brehm has so admirably summed up the manners of life of the parrot, that I cannot do better than translate the following sentence:-- "Except in the pairing season, they live in very numerous societies or bands. They choose a place in the forest to stay there, and thence they start every morning for their hunting expeditions. The members of each band remain faithfully attached to each other, and they share in common good or bad luck. All together they repair in the morning to a field, or to a garden, or to a tree, to feed upon fruits. They post sentries to keep watch over the safety of the whole band, and are attentive to their warnings. In case of danger, all take to flight, mutually supporting each other, and all simultaneously return to their resting-place. In a word, they always live closely united." They enjoy society of other birds as well. In India, the jays and crows come together from many miles round, to spend the night in company with the parrots in the bamboo thickets. When the parrots start hunting, they display the most wonderful intelligence, prudence, and capacity of coping with circumstances. Take, for instance, a band of white cacadoos in Australia. Before starting to plunder a corn-field, they first send out a reconnoitring party which occupies the highest trees in the vicinity of the field, while other scouts perch upon the intermediate trees between the field and the forest and transmit the signals. If the report runs "All right," a score of cacadoos will separate from the bulk of the band, take a flight in the air, and then fly towards the trees nearest to the field. They also will scrutinize the neighbourhood for a long while, and only then will they give the signal for general advance, after which the whole band starts at once and plunders the field in no time. The Australian settlers have the greatest difficulties in beguiling the prudence of the parrots; but if man, with all his art and weapons, has succeeded in killing some of them, the cacadoos become so prudent and watchful that they henceforward baffle all stratagems.(22) There can be no doubt that it is the practice of life in society which enables the parrots to attain that very high level of almost human intelligence and almost human feelings which we know in them. Their high intelligence has induced the best naturalists to describe some species, namely the grey parrot, as the "birdman." As to their mutual attachment it is known that when a parrot has been killed by a hunter, the others fly over the corpse of their comrade with shrieks of complaints and "themselves fall the victims of their friendship," as Audubon said; and when two captive parrots, though belonging to two different species, have contracted mutual friendship, the accidental death of one of the two friends has sometimes been followed by the death from grief and sorrow of the other friend. It is no less evident that in their societies they find infinitely more protection than they possibly might find in any ideal development of beak and claw. Very few birds of prey or mammals dare attack any but the smaller species of parrots, and Brehm is absolutely right in saying of the parrots, as he also says of the cranes and the sociable monkeys, that they hardly have any enemies besides men; and he adds: "It is most probable that the larger parrots succumb chiefly to old age rather than die from the claws of any enemies." Only man, owing to his still more superior intelligence and weapons, also derived from association, succeeds in partially destroying them. Their very longevity would thus appear as a result of their social life. Could we not say the same as regards their wonderful memory, which also must be favoured in its development by society--life and by longevity accompanied by a full enjoyment of bodily and mental faculties till a very old age? As seen from the above, the war of each against all is not the law of nature. Mutual aid is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle, and that law will become still more apparent when we have analyzed some other associations of birds and those of the mammalia. A few hints as to the importance of the law of mutual aid for the evolution of the animal kingdom have already been given in the preceding pages; but their purport will still better appear when, after having given a few more illustrations, we shall be enabled presently to draw therefrom our conclusions. NOTES: 1. Origin of Species, chap. iii, p. 62 of first edition. 2. Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1888, p. 165. 3. Leaving aside the pre-Darwinian writers, like Toussenel, Fee, and many others, several works containing many striking instances of mutual aid--chiefly, however, illustrating animal intelligence were issued previously to that date. I may mention those of Houzeau, Les facultes etales des animaux, 2 vols., Brussels, 1872; L. Buchner's Aus dem Geistesleben der Thiere, 2nd ed. in 1877; and Maximilian Perty's Ueber das Seelenleben der Thiere, Leipzig, 1876. Espinas published his most remarkable work, Les Societes animales, in 1877, and in that work he pointed out the importance of animal societies, and their bearing upon the preservation of species, and entered upon a most valuable discussion of the origin of societies. In fact, Espinas's book contains all that has been written since upon mutual aid, and many good things besides. If I nevertheless make a special mention of Kessler's address, it is because he raised mutual aid to the height of a law much more important in evolution than the law of mutual struggle. The same ideas were developed next year (in April 1881) by J. Lanessan in a lecture published in 1882 under this title: La lutte pour l'existence et l'association pour la lutte. G. Romanes's capital work, Animal Intelligence, was issued in 1882, and followed next year by the Mental Evolution in Animals. About the same time (1883), Buchner published another work, Liebe und Liebes-Leben in der Thierwelt, a second edition of which was issued in 1885. The idea, as seen, was in the air. 4. Memoirs (Trudy) of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists, vol. xi. 1880. 5. George J. Romanes's Animal Intelligence, 1st ed. p. 233. 6. Pierre Huber's Les fourmis indigees, Geneve, 1861; Forel's Recherches sur les fourmis de la Suisse, Zurich, 1874, and J.T. Moggridge's Harvesting Ants and Trapdoor Spiders, London, 1873 and 1874, ought to be in the hands of every boy and girl. See also: Blanchard's Metamorphoses des Insectes, Paris, 1868; J.H. Fabre's Souvenirs entomologiques, Paris, 1886; Ebrard's Etudes des moeurs des fourmis, Geneve, 1864; Sir John Lubbock's Ants, Bees, and Wasps, and so on. 7. Forel's Recherches, pp. 244, 275, 278. Huber's description of the process is admirable. It also contains a hint as to the possible origin of the instinct (popular edition, pp. 158, 160). See Appendix II. 8. The agriculture of the ants is so wonderful that for a long time it has been doubted. The fact is now so well proved by Mr. Moggridge, Dr. Lincecum, Mr. MacCook, Col. Sykes, and Dr. Jerdon, that no doubt is possible. See an excellent summary of evidence in Mr. Romanes's work. See also Die Pilzgaerten einiger Sud-Amerikanischen Ameisen, by Alf. Moeller, in Schimper's Botan. Mitth. aus den Tropen, vi. 1893. 9. This second principle was not recognized at once. Former observers often spoke of kings, queens, managers, and so on; but since Huber and Forel have published their minute observations, no doubt is possible as to the free scope left for every individual's initiative in whatever the ants do, including their wars. 10. H.W. Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons, ii. 59 seq. 11. N. Syevertsoff, Periodical Phenomena in the Life of Mammalia, Birds, and Reptiles of Voroneje, Moscow, 1855 (in Russian). 12. A. Brehm, Life of Animals, iii. 477; all quotations after the French edition. 13. Bates, p. 151. 14. Catalogue raisonne des oiseaux de la faune pontique, in Demidoff's Voyage; abstracts in Brehm, iii. 360. During their migrations birds of prey often associate. One flock, which H. Seebohm saw crossing the Pyrenees, represented a curious assemblage of "eight kites, one crane, and a peregrine falcon" (The Birds of Siberia, 1901, p. 417). 15. Birds in the Northern Shires, p. 207. 16. Max. Perty, Ueber das Seelenleben der Thiere (Leipzig, 1876), pp. 87, 103. 17. G. H. Gurney, The House-Sparrow (London, 1885), p. 5. 18. Dr. Elliot Coues, Birds of the Kerguelen Island, in Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. xiii. No. 2, p. 11. 19. Brehm, iv. 567. 20. As to the house-sparrows, a New Zealand observer, Mr. T.W. Kirk, described as follows the attack of these "impudent" birds upon an "unfortunate" hawk.--"He heard one day a most unusual noise, as though all the small birds of the country had joined in one grand quarrel. Looking up, he saw a large hawk (C. gouldi--a carrion feeder) being buffeted by a flock of sparrows. They kept dashing at him in scores, and from all points at once. The unfortunate hawk was quite powerless. At last, approaching some scrub, the hawk dashed into it and remained there, while the sparrows congregated in groups round the bush, keeping up a constant chattering and noise" (Paper read before the New Zealand Institute; Nature, Oct. 10, 1891). 21. Brehm, iv. 671 seq. 22. R. Lendenfeld, in Der zoologische Garten, 1889. CHAPTER II MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS (continued) Migrations of birds. Breeding associations. Autumn societies. Mammals: small number of unsociable species. Hunting associations of wolves, lions, etc. Societies of rodents; of ruminants; of monkeys. Mutual Aid in the struggle for life. Darwin's arguments to prove the struggle for life within the species. Natural checks to over-multiplication. Supposed extermination of intermediate links. Elimination of competition in Nature. As soon as spring comes back to the temperate zone, myriads and myriads of birds which are scattered over the warmer regions of the South come together in numberless bands, and, full of vigour and joy, hasten northwards to rear their offspring. Each of our hedges, each grove, each ocean cliff, and each of the lakes and ponds with which Northern America, Northern Europe, and Northern Asia are dotted tell us at that time of the year the tale of what mutual aid means for the birds; what force, energy, and protection it confers to every living being, however feeble and defenceless it otherwise might be. Take, for instance, one of the numberless lakes of the Russian and Siberian Steppes. Its shores are peopled with myriads of aquatic birds, belonging to at least a score of different species, all living in perfect peace--all protecting one another. "For several hundred yards from the shore the air is filled with gulls and terns, as with snow-flakes on a winter day. Thousands of plovers and sand-coursers run over the beach, searching their food, whistling, and simply enjoying life. Further on, on almost each wave, a duck is rocking, while higher up you notice the flocks of the Casarki ducks. Exuberant life swarms everywhere."(1) And here are the robbers--the strongest, the most cunning ones, those "ideally organized for robbery." And you hear their hungry, angry, dismal cries as for hours in succession they watch the opportunity of snatching from this mass of living beings one single unprotected individual. But as soon as they approach, their presence is signalled by dozens of voluntary sentries, and hundreds of gulls and terns set to chase the robber. Maddened by hunger, the robber soon abandons his usual precautions: he suddenly dashes into the living mass; but, attacked from all sides, he again is compelled to retreat. From sheer despair he falls upon the wild ducks; but the intelligent, social birds rapidly gather in a flock and fly away if the robber is an erne; they plunge into the lake if it is a falcon; or they raise a cloud of water-dust and bewilder the assailant if it is a kite.(2) And while life continues to swarm on the lake, the robber flies away with cries of anger, and looks out for carrion, or for a young bird or a field-mouse not yet used to obey in time the warnings of its comrades. In the face of an exuberant life, the ideally-armed robber must be satisfied with the off-fall of that life. Further north, in the Arctic archipelagoes, "you may sail along the coast for many miles and see all the ledges, all the cliffs and corners of the mountain-sides, up to a height of from two to five hundred feet, literally covered with sea-birds, whose white breasts show against the dark rocks as if the rocks were closely sprinkled with chalk specks. The air, near and far, is, so to say, full with fowls."(3) Each of such "bird-mountains" is a living illustration of mutual aid, as well as of the infinite variety of characters, individual and specific, resulting from social life. The oyster-catcher is renowned for its readiness to attack the birds of prey. The barge is known for its watchfulness, and it easily becomes the leader of more placid birds. The turnstone, when surrounded by comrades belonging to more energetic species, is a rather timorous bird; but it undertakes to keep watch for the security of the commonwealth when surrounded by smaller birds. Here you have the dominative swans; there, the extremely sociable kittiwake-gulls, among whom quarrels are rare and short; the prepossessing polar guillemots, which continually caress each other; the egoist she-goose, who has repudiated the orphans of a killed comrade; and, by her side, another female who adopts any one's orphans, and now paddles surrounded by fifty or sixty youngsters, whom she conducts and cares for as if they all were her own breed. Side by side with the penguins, which steal one another's eggs, you have the dotterels, whose family relations are so "charming and touching" that even passionate hunters recoil from shooting a female surrounded by her young ones; or the eider-ducks, among which (like the velvet-ducks, or the coroyas of the Savannahs) several females hatch together in the same nest, or the lums, which sit in turn upon a common covey. Nature is variety itself, offering all possible varieties of characters, from the basest to the highest: and that is why she cannot be depicted by any sweeping assertion. Still less can she be judged from the moralist's point of view, because the views of the moralist are themselves a result--mostly unconscious--of the observation of Nature. Coming together at nesting-time is so common with most birds that more examples are scarcely needed. Our trees are crowned with groups of crows' nests; our hedges are full of nests of smaller birds; our farmhouses give shelter to colonies of swallows; our old towers are the refuge of hundreds of nocturnal birds; and pages might be filled with the most charming descriptions of the peace and harmony which prevail in almost all these nesting associations. As to the protection derived by the weakest birds from their unions, it is evident. That excellent observer, Dr. Coues, saw, for instance, the little cliff-swallows nesting in the immediate neighbourhood of the prairie falcon (Falco polyargus). The falcon had its nest on the top of one of the minarets of clay which are so common in the canons of Colorado, while a colony of swallows nested just beneath. The little peaceful birds had no fear of their rapacious neighbour; they never let it approach to their colony. They immediately surrounded it and chased it, so that it had to make off at once.(4) Life in societies does not cease when the nesting period is over; it begins then in a new form. The young broods gather in societies of youngsters, generally including several species. Social life is practised at that time chiefly for its own sake--partly for security, but chiefly for the pleasures derived from it. So we see in our forests the societies formed by the young nuthatchers (Sitta caesia), together with tit-mouses, chaffinches, wrens, tree-creepers, or some wood-peckers.(5) In Spain the swallow is met with in company with kestrels, fly-catchers, and even pigeons. In the Far West of America the young horned larks live in large societies, together with another lark (Sprague's), the skylark, the Savannah sparrow, and several species of buntings and longspurs.(6) In fact, it would be much easier to describe the species which live isolated than to simply name those species which join the autumnal societies of young birds--not for hunting or nesting purposes, but simply to enjoy life in society and to spend their time in plays and sports, after having given a few hours every day to find their daily food. And, finally, we have that immense display of mutual aid among birds-their migrations--which I dare not even enter upon in this place. Sufficient to say that birds which have lived for months in small bands scattered over a wide territory gather in thousands; they come together at a given place, for several days in succession, before they start, and they evidently discuss the particulars of the journey. Some species will indulge every afternoon in flights preparatory to the long passage. All wait for their tardy congeners, and finally they start in a certain well chosen direction--a fruit of accumulated collective experience--the strongest flying at the head of the band, and relieving one another in that difficult task. They cross the seas in large bands consisting of both big and small birds, and when they return next spring they repair to the same spot, and, in most cases, each of them takes possession of the very same nest which it had built or repaired the previous year.(7) This subject is so vast, and yet so imperfectly studied; it offers so many striking illustrations of mutual-aid habits, subsidiary to the main fact of migration--each of which would, however, require a special study--that I must refrain from entering here into more details. I can only cursorily refer to the numerous and animated gatherings of birds which take place, always on the same spot, before they begin their long journeys north or south, as also those which one sees in the north, after the birds have arrived at their breeding-places on the Yenisei or in the northern counties of England. For many days in succession--sometimes one month--they will come together every morning for one hour, before flying in search of food--perhaps discussing the spot where they are going to build their nests.(8) And if, during the migration, their columns are overtaken by a storm, birds of the most different species will be brought together by common misfortune. The birds which are not exactly migratory, but slowly move northwards and southwards with the seasons, also perform these peregrinations in flocks. So far from migrating isolately, in order to secure for each separate individual the advantages of better food or shelter which are to be found in another district--they always wait for each other, and gather in flocks, before they move north or south, in accordance with the season.(9) Going now over to mammals, the first thing which strikes us is the overwhelming numerical predominance of social species over those few carnivores which do not associate. The plateaus, the Alpine tracts, and the Steppes of the Old and New World are stocked with herds of deer, antelopes, gazelles, fallow deer, buffaloes, wild goats and sheep, all of which are sociable animals. When the Europeans came to settle in America, they found it so densely peopled with buffaloes, that pioneers had to stop their advance when a column of migrating buffaloes came to cross the route they followed; the march past of the dense column lasting sometimes for two and three days. And when the Russians took possession of Siberia they found it so densely peopled with deer, antelopes, squirrels, and other sociable animals, that the very conquest of Siberia was nothing but a hunting expedition which lasted for two hundred years; while the grass plains of Eastern Africa are still covered with herds composed of zebra, the hartebeest, and other antelopes. Not long ago the small streams of Northern America and Northern Siberia were peopled with colonies of beavers, and up to the seventeenth century like colonies swarmed in Northern Russia. The flat lands of the four great continents are still covered with countless colonies of mice, ground-squirrels, marmots, and other rodents. In the lower latitudes of Asia and Africa the forests are still the abode of numerous families of elephants, rhinoceroses, and numberless societies of monkeys. In the far north the reindeer aggregate in numberless herds; while still further north we find the herds of the musk-oxen and numberless bands of polar foxes. The coasts of the ocean are enlivened by flocks of seals and morses; its waters, by shoals of sociable cetaceans; and even in the depths of the great plateau of Central Asia we find herds of wild horses, wild donkeys, wild camels, and wild sheep. All these mammals live in societies and nations sometimes numbering hundreds of thousands of individuals, although now, after three centuries of gunpowder civilization, we find but the debris of the immense aggregations of old. How trifling, in comparison with them, are the numbers of the carnivores! And how false, therefore, is the view of those who speak of the animal world as if nothing were to be seen in it but lions and hyenas plunging their bleeding teeth into the flesh of their victims! One might as well imagine that the whole of human life is nothing but a succession of war massacres. Association and mutual aid are the rule with mammals. We find social habits even among the carnivores, and we can only name the cat tribe (lions, tigers, leopards, etc.) as a division the members of which decidedly prefer isolation to society, and are but seldom met with even in small groups. And yet, even among lions "this is a very common practice to hunt in company."(10) The two tribes of the civets (Viverridae) and the weasels (Mustelidae) might also be characterized by their isolated life, but it is a fact that during the last century the common weasel was more sociable than it is now; it was seen then in larger groups in Scotland and in the Unterwalden canton of Switzerland. As to the great tribe of the dogs, it is eminently sociable, and association for hunting purposes may be considered as eminently characteristic of its numerous species. It is well known, in fact, that wolves gather in packs for hunting, and Tschudi left an excellent description of how they draw up in a half-circle, surround a cow which is grazing on a mountain slope, and then, suddenly appearing with a loud barking, make it roll in the abyss.(11) Audubon, in the thirties, also saw the Labrador wolves hunting in packs, and one pack following a man to his cabin, and killing the dogs. During severe winters the packs of wolves grow so numerous as to become a danger for human settlements, as was the case in France some five-and-forty years ago. In the Russian Steppes they never attack the horses otherwise than in packs; and yet they have to sustain bitter fights, during which the horses (according to Kohl's testimony) sometimes assume offensive warfare, and in such cases, if the wolves do not retreat promptly, they run the risk of being surrounded by the horses and killed by their hoofs. The prairie-wolves (Canis latrans) are known to associate in bands of from twenty to thirty individuals when they chase a buffalo occasionally separated from its herd.(12) Jackals, which are most courageous and may be considered as one of the most intelligent representatives of the dog tribe, always hunt in packs; thus united, they have no fear of the bigger carnivores.(13) As to the wild dogs of Asia (the Kholzuns, or Dholes), Williamson saw their large packs attacking all larger animals save elephants and rhinoceroses, and overpowering bears and tigers. Hyenas always live in societies and hunt in packs, and the hunting organizations of the painted lycaons are highly praised by Cumming. Nay, even foxes, which, as a rule, live isolated in our civilized countries, have been seen combining for hunting purposes.(14) As to the polar fox, it is--or rather was in Steller's time--one of the most sociable animals; and when one reads Steller's description of the war that was waged by Behring's unfortunate crew against these intelligent small animals, one does not know what to wonder at most: the extraordinary intelligence of the foxes and the mutual aid they displayed in digging out food concealed under cairns, or stored upon a pillar (one fox would climb on its top and throw the food to its comrades beneath), or the cruelty of man, driven to despair by the numerous packs of foxes. Even some bears live in societies where they are not disturbed by man. Thus Steller saw the black bear of Kamtchatka in numerous packs, and the polar bears are occasionally found in small groups. Even the unintelligent insectivores do not always disdain association. However, it is especially with the rodents, the ungulata, and the ruminants that we find a highly developed practice of mutual aid. The squirrels are individualist to a great extent. Each of them builds its own comfortable nest, and accumulates its own provision. Their inclinations are towards family life, and Brehm found that a family of squirrels is never so happy as when the two broods of the same year can join together with their parents in a remote corner of a forest. And yet they maintain social relations. The inhabitants of the separate nests remain in a close intercourse, and when the pine-cones become rare in the forest they inhabit, they emigrate in bands. As to the black squirrels of the Far West, they are eminently sociable. Apart from the few hours given every day to foraging, they spend their lives in playing in numerous parties. And when they multiply too rapidly in a region, they assemble in bands, almost as numerous as those of locusts, and move southwards, devastating the forests, the fields, and the gardens; while foxes, polecats, falcons, and nocturnal birds of prey follow their thick columns and live upon the individuals remaining behind. The ground-squirrel--a closely-akin genus--is still more sociable. It is given to hoarding, and stores up in its subterranean halls large amounts of edible roots and nuts, usually plundered by man in the autumn. According to some observers, it must know something of the joys of a miser. And yet it remains sociable. It always lives in large villages, and Audubon, who opened some dwellings of the hackee in the winter, found several individuals in the same apartment; they must have stored it with common efforts. The large tribe, of the marmots, which includes the three large genuses of Arctomys, Cynomys, and Spermophilus, is still more sociable and still more intelligent. They also prefer having each one its own dwelling; but they live in big villages. That terrible enemy of the crops of South Russia--the souslik--of which some ten millions are exterminated every year by man alone, lives in numberless colonies; and while the Russian provincial assemblies gravely discuss the means of getting rid of this enemy of society, it enjoys life in its thousands in the most joyful way. Their play is so charming that no observer could refrain from paying them a tribute of praise, and from mentioning the melodious concerts arising from the sharp whistlings of the males and the melancholic whistlings of the females, before--suddenly returning to his citizen's duties--he begins inventing the most diabolic means for the extermination of the little robbers. All kinds of rapacious birds and beasts of prey having proved powerless, the last word of science in this warfare is the inoculation of cholera! The villages of the prairie-dogs in America are one of the loveliest sights. As far as the eye can embrace the prairie, it sees heaps of earth, and on each of them a prairie-dog stands, engaged in a lively conversation with its neighbours by means of short barkings. As soon as the approach of man is signalled, all plunge in a moment into their dwellings; all have disappeared as by enchantment. But if the danger is over, the little creatures soon reappear. Whole families come out of their galleries and indulge in play. The young ones scratch one another, they worry one another, and display their gracefulness while standing upright, and in the meantime the old ones keep watch. They go visiting one another, and the beaten footpaths which connect all their heaps testify to the frequency of the visitations. In short, the best naturalists have written some of their best pages in describing the associations of the prairie-dogs of America, the marmots of the Old World, and the polar marmots of the Alpine regions. And yet, I must make, as regards the marmots, the same remark as I have made when speaking of the bees. They have maintained their fighting instincts, and these instincts reappear in captivity. But in their big associations, in the face of free Nature, the unsociable instincts have no opportunity to develop, and the general result is peace and harmony. Even such harsh animals as the rats, which continually fight in our cellars, are sufficiently intelligent not to quarrel when they plunder our larders, but to aid one another in their plundering expeditions and migrations, and even to feed their invalids. As to the beaver-rats or musk-rats of Canada, they are extremely sociable. Audubon could not but admire "their peaceful communities, which require only being left in peace to enjoy happiness." Like all sociable animals, they are lively and playful, they easily combine with other species, and they have attained a very high degree of intellectual development. In their villages, always disposed on the shores of lakes and rivers, they take into account the changing level of water; their domeshaped houses, which are built of beaten clay interwoven with reeds, have separate corners for organic refuse, and their halls are well carpeted at winter time; they are warm, and, nevertheless, well ventilated. As to the beavers, which are endowed, as known, with a most sympathetic character, their astounding dams and villages, in which generations live and die without knowing of any enemies but the otter and man, so wonderfully illustrate what mutual aid can achieve for the security of the species, the development of social habits, and the evolution of intelligence, that they are familiar to all interested in animal life. Let me only remark that with the beavers, the muskrats, and some other rodents, we already find the feature which will also be distinctive of human communities--that is, work in common. I pass in silence the two large families which include the jerboa, the chinchilla, the biscacha, and the tushkan, or underground hare of South Russia, though all these small rodents might be taken as excellent illustrations of the pleasures derived by animals from social life.(15) Precisely, the pleasures; because it is extremely difficult to say what brings animals together--the needs of mutual protection, or simply the pleasure of feeling surrounded by their congeners. At any rate, our common hares, which do not gather in societies for life in common, and which are not even endowed with intense parental feelings, cannot live without coming together for play. Dietrich de Winckell, who is considered to be among the best acquainted with the habits of hares, describes them as passionate players, becoming so intoxicated by their play that a hare has been known to take an approaching fox for a playmate.(16) As to the rabbit, it lives in societies, and its family life is entirely built upon the image of the old patriarchal family; the young ones being kept in absolute obedience to the father and even the grandfather.(17) And here we have the example of two very closely-allied species which cannot bear each other--not because they live upon nearly the same food, as like cases are too often explained, but most probably because the passionate, eminently-individualist hare cannot make friends with that placid, quiet, and submissive creature, the rabbit. Their tempers are too widely different not to be an obstacle to friendship. Life in societies is again the rule with the large family of horses, which includes the wild horses and donkeys of Asia, the zebras, the mustangs, the cimarrones of the Pampas, and the half-wild horses of Mongolia and Siberia. They all live in numerous associations made up of many studs, each of which consists of a number of mares under the leadership of a male. These numberless inhabitants of the Old and the New World, badly organized on the whole for resisting both their numerous enemies and the adverse conditions of climate, would soon have disappeared from the surface of the earth were it not for their sociable spirit. When a beast of prey approaches them, several studs unite at once; they repulse the beast and sometimes chase it: and neither the wolf nor the bear, not even the lion, can capture a horse or even a zebra as long as they are not detached from the herd. When a drought is burning the grass in the prairies, they gather in herds of sometimes 10,000 individuals strong, and migrate. And when a snow-storm rages in the Steppes, each stud keeps close together, and repairs to a protected ravine. But if confidence disappears, or the group has been seized by panic, and disperses, the horses perish and the survivors are found after the storm half dying from fatigue. Union is their chief arm in the struggle for life, and man is their chief enemy. Before his increasing numbers the ancestors of our domestic horse (the Equus Przewalskii, so named by Polyakoff) have preferred to retire to the wildest and least accessible plateaus on the outskirts of Thibet, where they continue to live, surrounded by carnivores, under a climate as bad as that of the Arctic regions, but in a region inaccessible to man.(18) Many striking illustrations of social life could be taken from the life of the reindeer, and especially of that large division of ruminants which might include the roebucks, the fallow deer, the antelopes, the gazelles, the ibex, and, in fact, the whole of the three numerous families of the Antelopides, the Caprides, and the Ovides. Their watchfulness over the safety of their herds against attacks of carnivores; the anxiety displayed by all individuals in a herd of chamois as long as all of them have not cleared a difficult passage over rocky cliffs, the adoption of orphans; the despair of the gazelle whose mate, or even comrade of the same sex, has been killed; the plays of the youngsters, and many other features, could be mentioned. But perhaps the most striking illustration of mutual support is given by the occasional migrations of fallow deer, such as I saw once on the Amur. When I crossed the high plateau and its border ridge, the Great Khingan, on my way from Transbaikalia to Merghen, and further travelled over the high prairies on my way to the Amur, I could ascertain how thinly-peopled with fallow deer these mostly uninhabited regions are.(19) Two years later I was travelling up the Amur, and by the end of October reached the lower end of that picturesque gorge which the Amur pierces in the Dousse-alin (Little Khingan) before it enters the lowlands where it joins the Sungari. I found the Cossacks in the villages of that gorge in the greatest excitement, because thousands and thousands of fallow deer were crossing the Amur where it is narrowest, in order to reach the lowlands. For several days in succession, upon a length of some forty miles up the river, the Cossacks were butchering the deer as they crossed the Amur, in which already floated a good deal of ice. Thousands were killed every day, and the exodus nevertheless continued. Like migrations were never seen either before or since, and this one must have been called for by an early and heavy snow-fall in the Great Khingan, which compelled the deer to make a desperate attempt at reaching the lowlands in the east of the Dousse mountains. Indeed, a few days later the Dousse-alin was also buried under snow two or three feet deep. Now, when one imagines the immense territory (almost as big as Great Britain) from which the scattered groups of deer must have gathered for a migration which was undertaken under the pressure of exceptional circumstances, and realizes the difficulties which had to be overcome before all the deer came to the common idea of crossing the Amur further south, where it is narrowest, one cannot but deeply admire the amount of sociability displayed by these intelligent animals. The fact is not the less striking if we remember that the buffaloes of North America displayed the same powers of combination. One saw them grazing in great numbers in the plains, but these numbers were made up by an infinity of small groups which never mixed together. And yet, when necessity arose, all groups, however scattered over an immense territory, came together and made up those immense columns, numbering hundreds of thousands of individuals, which I mentioned on a preceding page. I also ought to say a few words at least about the "compound families" of the elephants, their mutual attachment, their deliberate ways in posting sentries, and the feelings of sympathy developed by such a life of close mutual support.(20) I might mention the sociable feelings of those disreputable creatures the wild boars, and find a word of praise for their powers of association in the case of an attack by a beast of prey.(21) The hippopotamus and the rhinoceros, too, would occupy a place in a work devoted to animal sociability. Several striking pages might be given to the sociability and mutual attachment of the seals and the walruses; and finally, one might mention the most excellent feelings existing among the sociable cetaceans. But I have to say yet a few words about the societies of monkeys, which acquire an additional interest from their being the link which will bring us to the societies of primitive men. It is hardly needful to say that those mammals, which stand at the very top of the animal world and most approach man by their structure and intelligence, are eminently sociable. Evidently we must be prepared to meet with all varieties of character and habits in so great a division of the animal kingdom which includes hundreds of species. But, all things considered, it must be said that sociability, action in common, mutual protection, and a high development of those feelings which are the necessary outcome of social life, are characteristic of most monkeys and apes. From the smallest species to the biggest ones, sociability is a rule to which we know but a few exceptions. The nocturnal apes prefer isolated life; the capuchins (Cebus capucinus), the monos, and the howling monkeys live but in small families; and the orang-outans have never been seen by A.R. Wallace otherwise than either solitary or in very small groups of three or four individuals, while the gorillas seem never to join in bands. But all the remainder of the monkey tribe--the chimpanzees, the sajous, the sakis, the mandrills, the baboons, and so on--are sociable in the highest degree. They live in great bands, and even join with other species than their own. Most of them become quite unhappy when solitary. The cries of distress of each one of the band immediately bring together the whole of the band, and they boldly repulse the attacks of most carnivores and birds of prey. Even eagles do not dare attack them. They plunder our fields always in bands--the old ones taking care for the safety of the commonwealth. The little tee-tees, whose childish sweet faces so much struck Humboldt, embrace and protect one another when it rains, rolling their tails over the necks of their shivering comrades. Several species display the greatest solicitude for their wounded, and do not abandon a wounded comrade during a retreat till they have ascertained that it is dead and that they are helpless to restore it to life. Thus James Forbes narrated in his Oriental Memoirs a fact of such resistance in reclaiming from his hunting party the dead body of a female monkey that one fully understands why "the witnesses of this extraordinary scene resolved never again to fire at one of the monkey race."(22) In some species several individuals will combine to overturn a stone in order to search for ants' eggs under it. The hamadryas not only post sentries, but have been seen making a chain for the transmission of the spoil to a safe place; and their courage is well known. Brehm's description of the regular fight which his caravan had to sustain before the hamadryas would let it resume its journey in the valley of the Mensa, in Abyssinia, has become classical.(23) The playfulness of the tailed apes and the mutual attachment which reigns in the families of chimpanzees also are familiar to the general reader. And if we find among the highest apes two species, the orang-outan and the gorilla, which are not sociable, we must remember that both--limited as they are to very small areas, the one in the heart of Africa, and the other in the two islands of Borneo and Sumatra have all the appearance of being the last remnants of formerly much more numerous species. The gorilla at least seems to have been sociable in olden times, if the apes mentioned in the Periplus really were gorillas. We thus see, even from the above brief review, that life in societies is no exception in the animal world; it is the rule, the law of Nature, and it reaches its fullest development with the higher vertebrates. Those species which live solitary, or in small families only, are relatively few, and their numbers are limited. Nay, it appears very probable that, apart from a few exceptions, those birds and mammals which are not gregarious now, were living in societies before man multiplied on the earth and waged a permanent war against them, or destroyed the sources from which they formerly derived food. "On ne s'associe pas pour mourir," was the sound remark of Espinas; and Houzeau, who knew the animal world of some parts of America when it was not yet affected by man, wrote to the same effect. Association is found in the animal world at all degrees of evolution; and, according to the grand idea of Herbert Spencer, so brilliantly developed in Perrier's Colonies Animales, colonies are at the very origin of evolution in the animal kingdom. But, in proportion as we ascend the scale of evolution, we see association growing more and more conscious. It loses its purely physical character, it ceases to be simply instinctive, it becomes reasoned. With the higher vertebrates it is periodical, or is resorted to for the satisfaction of a given want--propagation of the species, migration, hunting, or mutual defence. It even becomes occasional, when birds associate against a robber, or mammals combine, under the pressure of exceptional circumstances, to emigrate. In this last case, it becomes a voluntary deviation from habitual moods of life. The combination sometimes appears in two or more degrees--the family first, then the group, and finally the association of groups, habitually scattered, but uniting in case of need, as we saw it with the bisons and other ruminants. It also takes higher forms, guaranteeing more independence to the individual without depriving it of the benefits of social life. With most rodents the individual has its own dwelling, which it can retire to when it prefers being left alone; but the dwellings are laid out in villages and cities, so as to guarantee to all inhabitants the benefits and joys of social life. And finally, in several species, such as rats, marmots, hares, etc., sociable life is maintained notwithstanding the quarrelsome or otherwise egotistic inclinations of the isolated individual. Thus it is not imposed, as is the case with ants and bees, by the very physiological structure of the individuals; it is cultivated for the benefits of mutual aid, or for the sake of its pleasures. And this, of course, appears with all possible gradations and with the greatest variety of individual and specific characters--the very variety of aspects taken by social life being a consequence, and for us a further proof, of its generality.(24) Sociability--that is, the need of the animal of associating with its like--the love of society for society's sake, combined with the "joy of life," only now begins to receive due attention from the zoologists.(25) We know at the present time that all animals, beginning with the ants, going on to the birds, and ending with the highest mammals, are fond of plays, wrestling, running after each other, trying to capture each other, teasing each other, and so on. And while many plays are, so to speak, a school for the proper behaviour of the young in mature life, there are others, which, apart from their utilitarian purposes, are, together with dancing and singing, mere manifestations of an excess of forces--"the joy of life," and a desire to communicate in some way or another with other individuals of the same or of other species--in short, a manifestation of sociability proper, which is a distinctive feature of all the animal world.(26) Whether the feeling be fear, experienced at the appearance of a bird of prey, or "a fit of gladness" which bursts out when the animals are in good health and especially when young, or merely the desire of giving play to an excess of impressions and of vital power--the necessity of communicating impressions, of playing, of chattering, or of simply feeling the proximity of other kindred living beings pervades Nature, and is, as much as any other physiological function, a distinctive feature of life and impressionability. This need takes a higher development and attains a more beautiful expression in mammals, especially amidst their young, and still more among the birds; but it pervades all Nature, and has been fully observed by the best naturalists, including Pierre Huber, even amongst the ants, and it is evidently the same instinct which brings together the big columns of butterflies which have been referred to already. The habit of coming together for dancing and of decorating the places where the birds habitually perform their dances is, of course, well known from the pages that Darwin gave to this subject in The Descent of Man (ch. xiii). Visitors of the London Zoological Gardens also know the bower of the satin bower-bird. But this habit of dancing seems to be much more widely spread than was formerly believed, and Mr. W. Hudson gives in his master-work on La Plata the most interesting description, which must be read in the original, of complicated dances, performed by quite a number of birds: rails, jacanas, lapwings, and so on. The habit of singing in concert, which exists in several species of birds, belongs to the same category of social instincts. It is most strikingly developed with the chakar (Chauna chavarris), to which the English have given the most unimaginative misnomer of "crested screamer." These birds sometimes assemble in immense flocks, and in such cases they frequently sing all in concert. W.H. Hudson found them once in countless numbers, ranged all round a pampas lake in well-defined flocks, of about 500 birds in each flock. "Presently," he writes, "one flock near me began singing, and continued their powerful chant for three or four minutes; when they ceased the next flock took up the strains, and after it the next, and so on, until once more the notes of the flocks on the opposite shore came floating strong and clear across the water--then passed away, growing fainter and fainter, until once more the sound approached me travelling round to my side again." On another occasion the same writer saw a whole plain covered with an endless flock of chakars, not in close order, but scattered in pairs and small groups. About nine o'clock in the evening, "suddenly the entire multitude of birds covering the marsh for miles around burst forth in a tremendous evening song.... It was a concert well worth riding a hundred miles to hear."(27) It may be added that like all sociable animals, the chakar easily becomes tame and grows very attached to man. "They are mild-tempered birds, and very rarely quarrel"--we are told--although they are well provided with formidable weapons. Life in societies renders these weapons useless. That life in societies is the most powerful weapon in the struggle for life, taken in its widest sense, has been illustrated by several examples on the foregoing pages, and could be illustrated by any amount of evidence, if further evidence were required. Life in societies enables the feeblest insects, the feeblest birds, and the feeblest mammals to resist, or to protect themselves from, the most terrible birds and beasts of prey; it permits longevity; it enables the species to rear its progeny with the least waste of energy and to maintain its numbers albeit a very slow birth-rate; it enables the gregarious animals to migrate in search of new abodes. Therefore, while fully admitting that force, swiftness, protective colours, cunningness, and endurance to hunger and cold, which are mentioned by Darwin and Wallace, are so many qualities making the individual, or the species, the fittest under certain circumstances, we maintain that under any circumstances sociability is the greatest advantage in the struggle for life. Those species which willingly or unwillingly abandon it are doomed to decay; while those animals which know best how to combine, have the greatest chances of survival and of further evolution, although they may be inferior to others in each of the faculties enumerated by Darwin and Wallace, save the intellectual faculty. The highest vertebrates, and especially mankind, are the best proof of this assertion. As to the intellectual faculty, while every Darwinist will agree with Darwin that it is the most powerful arm in the struggle for life, and the most powerful factor of further evolution, he also will admit that intelligence is an eminently social faculty. Language, imitation, and accumulated experience are so many elements of growing intelligence of which the unsociable animal is deprived. Therefore we find, at the top of each class of animals, the ants, the parrots, and the monkeys, all combining the greatest sociability with the highest development of intelligence. The fittest are thus the most sociable animals, and sociability appears as the chief factor of evolution, both directly, by securing the well-being of the species while diminishing the waste of energy, and indirectly, by favouring the growth of intelligence. Moreover, it is evident that life in societies would be utterly impossible without a corresponding development of social feelings, and, especially, of a certain collective sense of justice growing to become a habit. If every individual were constantly abusing its personal advantages without the others interfering in favour of the wronged, no society--life would be possible. And feelings of justice develop, more or less, with all gregarious animals. Whatever the distance from which the swallows or the cranes come, each one returns to the nest it has built or repaired last year. If a lazy sparrow intends appropriating the nest which a comrade is building, or even steals from it a few sprays of straw, the group interferes against the lazy comrade; and it is evident that without such interference being the rule, no nesting associations of birds could exist. Separate groups of penguins have separate resting-places and separate fishing abodes, and do not fight for them. The droves of cattle in Australia have particular spots to which each group repairs to rest, and from which it never deviates; and so on.(28) We have any numbers of direct observations of the peace that prevails in the nesting associations of birds, the villages of the rodents, and the herds of grass-eaters; while, on the other side, we know of few sociable animals which so continually quarrel as the rats in our cellars do, or as the morses, which fight for the possession of a sunny place on the shore. Sociability thus puts a limit to physical struggle, and leaves room for the development of better moral feelings. The high development of parental love in all classes of animals, even with lions and tigers, is generally known. As to the young birds and mammals whom we continually see associating, sympathy--not love--attains a further development in their associations. Leaving aside the really touching facts of mutual attachment and compassion which have been recorded as regards domesticated animals and with animals kept in captivity, we have a number of well certified facts of compassion between wild animals at liberty. Max Perty and L. Buchner have given a number of such facts.(29) J.C. Wood's narrative of a weasel which came to pick up and to carry away an injured comrade enjoys a well-merited popularity.(30) So also the observation of Captain Stansbury on his journey to Utah which is quoted by Darwin; he saw a blind pelican which was fed, and well fed, by other pelicans upon fishes which had to be brought from a distance of thirty miles.(31) And when a herd of vicunas was hotly pursued by hunters, H.A. Weddell saw more than once during his journey to Bolivia and Peru, the strong males covering the retreat of the herd and lagging behind in order to protect the retreat. As to facts of compassion with wounded comrades, they are continually mentioned by all field zoologists. Such facts are quite natural. Compassion is a necessary outcome of social life. But compassion also means a considerable advance in general intelligence and sensibility. It is the first step towards the development of higher moral sentiments. It is, in its turn, a powerful factor of further evolution. If the views developed on the preceding pages are correct, the question necessarily arises, in how far are they consistent with the theory of struggle for life as it has been developed by Darwin, Wallace, and their followers? and I will now briefly answer this important question. First of all, no naturalist will doubt that the idea of a struggle for life carried on through organic nature is the greatest generalization of our century. Life is struggle; and in that struggle the fittest survive. But the answers to the questions, "By which arms is this struggle chiefly carried on?" and "Who are the fittest in the struggle?" will widely differ according to the importance given to the two different aspects of the struggle: the direct one, for food and safety among separate individuals, and the struggle which Darwin described as "metaphorical"--the struggle, very often collective, against adverse circumstances. No one will deny that there is, within each species, a certain amount of real competition for food--at least, at certain periods. But the question is, whether competition is carried on to the extent admitted by Darwin, or even by Wallace; and whether this competition has played, in the evolution of the animal kingdom, the part assigned to it. The idea which permeates Darwin's work is certainly one of real competition going on within each animal group for food, safety, and possibility of leaving an offspring. He often speaks of regions being stocked with animal life to their full capacity, and from that overstocking he infers the necessity of competition. But when we look in his work for real proofs of that competition, we must confess that we do not find them sufficiently convincing. If we refer to the paragraph entitled "Struggle for Life most severe between Individuals and Varieties of the same Species," we find in it none of that wealth of proofs and illustrations which we are accustomed to find in whatever Darwin wrote. The struggle between individuals of the same species is not illustrated under that heading by even one single instance: it is taken as granted; and the competition between closely-allied animal species is illustrated by but five examples, out of which one, at least (relating to the two species of thrushes), now proves to be doubtful.(32) But when we look for more details in order to ascertain how far the decrease of one species was really occasioned by the increase of the other species, Darwin, with his usual fairness, tells us: "We can dimly see why the competition should be most severe between allied forms which fill nearly the same place in nature; but probably in no case could we precisely say why one species has been victorious over another in the great battle of life." As to Wallace, who quotes the same facts under a slightly-modified heading ("Struggle for Life between closely-allied Animals and Plants often most severe"), he makes the following remark (italics are mine), which gives quite another aspect to the facts above quoted. He says: "In some cases, no doubt, there is actual war between the two, the stronger killing the weaker. But this is by no means necessary, and there may be cases in which the weaker species, physically, may prevail by its power of more rapid multiplication, its better withstanding vicissitudes of climate, or its greater cunning in escaping the attacks of common enemies." In such cases what is described as competition may be no competition at all. One species succumbs, not because it is exterminated or starved out by the other species, but because it does not well accommodate itself to new conditions, which the other does. The term "struggle for life" is again used in its metaphorical sense, and may have no other. As to the real competition between individuals of the same species, which is illustrated in another place by the cattle of South America during a period of drought, its value is impaired by its being taken from among domesticated animals. Bisons emigrate in like circumstances in order to avoid competition. However severe the struggle between plants--and this is amply proved--we cannot but repeat Wallace's remark to the effect that "plants live where they can," while animals have, to a great extent, the power of choice of their abode. So that we again are asking ourselves, To what extent does competition really exist within each animal species? Upon what is the assumption based? The same remark must be made concerning the indirect argument in favour of a severe competition and struggle for life within each species, which may be derived from the "extermination of transitional varieties," so often mentioned by Darwin. It is known that for a long time Darwin was worried by the difficulty which he saw in the absence of a long chain of intermediate forms between closely-allied species, and that he found the solution of this difficulty in the supposed extermination of the intermediate forms.(33) However, an attentive reading of the different chapters in which Darwin and Wallace speak of this subject soon brings one to the conclusion that the word "extermination" does not mean real extermination; the same remark which Darwin made concerning his expression: "struggle for existence," evidently applies to the word "extermination" as well. It can by no means be understood in its direct sense, but must be taken "in its metaphoric sense." If we start from the supposition that a given area is stocked with animals to its fullest capacity, and that a keen competition for the sheer means of existence is consequently going on between all the inhabitants--each animal being compelled to fight against all its congeners in order to get its daily food--then the appearance of a new and successful variety would certainly mean in many cases (though not always) the appearance of individuals which are enabled to seize more than their fair share of the means of existence; and the result would be that those individuals would starve both the parental form which does not possess the new variation and the intermediate forms which do not possess it in the same degree. It may be that at the outset, Darwin understood the appearance of new varieties under this aspect; at least, the frequent use of the word "extermination" conveys such an impression. But both he and Wallace knew Nature too well not to perceive that this is by no means the only possible and necessary course of affairs. If the physical and the biological conditions of a given area, the extension of the area occupied by a given species, and the habits of all the members of the latter remained unchanged--then the sudden appearance of a new variety might mean the starving out and the extermination of all the individuals which were not endowed in a sufficient degree with the new feature by which the new variety is characterized. But such a combination of conditions is precisely what we do not see in Nature. Each species is continually tending to enlarge its abode; migration to new abodes is the rule with the slow snail, as with the swift bird; physical changes are continually going on in every given area; and new varieties among animals consist in an immense number of cases-perhaps in the majority--not in the growth of new weapons for snatching the food from the mouth of its congeners--food is only one out of a hundred of various conditions of existence--but, as Wallace himself shows in a charming paragraph on the "divergence of characters" (Darwinism, p. 107), in forming new habits, moving to new abodes, and taking to new sorts of food. In all such cases there will be no extermination, even no competition--the new adaptation being a relief from competition, if it ever existed; and yet there will be, after a time, an absence of intermediate links, in consequence of a mere survival of those which are best fitted for the new conditions--as surely as under the hypothesis of extermination of the parental form. It hardly need be added that if we admit, with Spencer, all the Lamarckians, and Darwin himself, the modifying influence of the surroundings upon the species, there remains still less necessity for the extermination of the intermediate forms. The importance of migration and of the consequent isolation of groups of animals, for the origin of new varieties and ultimately of new species, which was indicated by Moritz Wagner, was fully recognized by Darwin himself. Consequent researches have only accentuated the importance of this factor, and they have shown how the largeness of the area occupied by a given species--which Darwin considered with full reason so important for the appearance of new varieties--can be combined with the isolation of parts of the species, in consequence of local geological changes, or of local barriers. It would be impossible to enter here into the discussion of this wide question, but a few remarks will do to illustrate the combined action of these agencies. It is known that portions of a given species will often take to a new sort of food. The squirrels, for instance, when there is a scarcity of cones in the larch forests, remove to the fir-tree forests, and this change of food has certain well-known physiological effects on the squirrels. If this change of habits does not last--if next year the cones are again plentiful in the dark larch woods--no new variety of squirrels will evidently arise from this cause. But if part of the wide area occupied by the squirrels begins to have its physical characters altered--in consequence of, let us say, a milder climate or desiccation, which both bring about an increase of the pine forests in proportion to the larch woods--and if some other conditions concur to induce the squirrels to dwell on the outskirts of the desiccating region--we shall have then a new variety, i.e. an incipient new species of squirrels, without there having been anything that would deserve the name of extermination among the squirrels. A larger proportion of squirrels of the new, better adapted variety would survive every year, and the intermediate links would die in the course of time, without having been starved out by Malthusian competitors. This is exactly what we see going on during the great physical changes which are accomplished over large areas in Central Asia, owing to the desiccation which is going on there since the glacial period. To take another example, it has been proved by geologists that the present wild horse (Equus Przewalski) has slowly been evolved during the later parts of the Tertiary and the Quaternary period, but that during this succession of ages its ancestors were not confined to some given, limited area of the globe. They wandered over both the Old and New World, returning, in all probability, after a time to the pastures which they had, in the course of their migrations, formerly left.(34) Consequently, if we do not find now, in Asia, all the intermediate links between the present wild horse and its Asiatic Post-Tertiary ancestors, this does not mean at all that the intermediate links have been exterminated. No such extermination has ever taken place. No exceptional mortality may even have occurred among the ancestral species: the individuals which belonged to intermediate varieties and species have died in the usual course of events--often amidst plentiful food, and their remains were buried all over the globe. In short, if we carefully consider this matter, and, carefully re-read what Darwin himself wrote upon this subject, we see that if the word "extermination" be used at all in connection with transitional varieties, it must be used in its metaphoric sense. As to "competition," this expression, too, is continually used by Darwin (see, for instance, the paragraph "On Extinction") as an image, or as a way-of-speaking, rather than with the intention of conveying the idea of a real competition between two portions of the same species for the means of existence. At any rate, the absence of intermediate forms is no argument in favour of it. In reality, the chief argument in favour of a keen competition for the means of existence continually going on within every animal species is--to use Professor Geddes' expression--the "arithmetical argument" borrowed from Malthus. But this argument does not prove it at all. We might as well take a number of villages in South-East Russia, the inhabitants of which enjoy plenty of food, but have no sanitary accommodation of any kind; and seeing that for the last eighty years the birth-rate was sixty in the thousand, while the population is now what it was eighty years ago, we might conclude that there has been a terrible competition between the inhabitants. But the truth is that from year to year the population remained stationary, for the simple reason that one-third of the new-born died before reaching their sixth month of life; one-half died within the next four years, and out of each hundred born, only seventeen or so reached the age of twenty. The new-comers went away before having grown to be competitors. It is evident that if such is the case with men, it is still more the case with animals. In the feathered world the destruction of the eggs goes on on such a tremendous scale that eggs are the chief food of several species in the early summer; not to, say a word of the storms, the inundations which destroy nests by the million in America, and the sudden changes of weather which are fatal to the young mammals. Each storm, each inundation, each visit of a rat to a bird's nest, each sudden change of temperature, take away those competitors which appear so terrible in theory. As to the facts of an extremely rapid increase of horses and cattle in America, of pigs and rabbits in New Zealand, and even of wild animals imported from Europe (where their numbers are kept down by man, not by competition), they rather seem opposed to the theory of over-population. If horses and cattle could so rapidly multiply in America, it simply proved that, however numberless the buffaloes and other ruminants were at that time in the New World, its grass-eating population was far below what the prairies could maintain. If millions of intruders have found plenty of food without starving out the former population of the prairies, we must rather conclude that the Europeans found a want of grass-eaters in America, not an excess. And we have good reasons to believe that want of animal population is the natural state of things all over the world, with but a few temporary exceptions to the rule. The actual numbers of animals in a given region are determined, not by the highest feeding capacity of the region, but by what it is every year under the most unfavourable conditions. So that, for that reason alone, competition hardly can be a normal condition. But other causes intervene as well to cut, down the animal population below even that low standard. If we take the horses and cattle which are grazing all the winter through in the Steppes of Transbaikalia, we find them very lean and exhausted at the end of the winter. But they grow exhausted not because there is not enough food for all of them--the grass buried under a thin sheet of snow is everywhere in abundance--but because of the difficulty of getting it from beneath the snow, and this difficulty is the same for all horses alike. Besides, days of glazed frost are common in early spring, and if several such days come in succession the horses grow still more exhausted. But then comes a snow-storm, which compels the already weakened animals to remain without any food for several days, and very great numbers of them die. The losses during the spring are so severe that if the season has been more inclement than usual they are even not repaired by the new breeds--the more so as all horses are exhausted, and the young foals are born in a weaker condition. The numbers of horses and cattle thus always remain beneath what they otherwise might be; all the year round there is food for five or ten times as many animals, and yet their population increases extremely slowly. But as soon as the Buriate owner makes ever so small a provision of hay in the steppe, and throws it open during days of glazed frost, or heavier snow-fall, he immediately sees the increase of his herd. Almost all free grass-eating animals and many rodents in Asia and America being in very much the same conditions, we can safely say that their numbers are not kept down by competition; that at no time of the year they can struggle for food, and that if they never reach anything approaching to over-population, the cause is in the climate, not in competition. The importance of natural checks to over-multiplication, and especially their bearing upon the competition hypothesis, seems never to have been taken into due account. The checks, or rather some of them, are mentioned, but their action is seldom studied in detail. However, if we compare the action of the natural checks with that of competition, we must recognize at once that the latter sustains no comparison whatever with the other checks. Thus, Mr. Bates mentions the really astounding numbers of winged ants which are destroyed during their exodus. The dead or half-dead bodies of the formica de fuego (Myrmica saevissima) which had been blown into the river during a gale "were heaped in a line an inch or two in height and breadth, the line continuing without interruption for miles at the edge of the water."(35) Myriads of ants are thus destroyed amidst a nature which might support a hundred times as many ants as are actually living. Dr. Altum, a German forester, who wrote a very interesting book about animals injurious to our forests, also gives many facts showing the immense importance of natural checks. He says, that a succession of gales or cold and damp weather during the exodus of the pine-moth (Bombyx pini) destroy it to incredible amounts, and during the spring of 1871 all these moths disappeared at once, probably killed by a succession of cold nights.(36) Many like examples relative to various insects could be quoted from various parts of Europe. Dr. Altum also mentions the bird-enemies of the pine-moth, and the immense amount of its eggs destroyed by foxes; but he adds that the parasitic fungi which periodically infest it are a far more terrible enemy than any bird, because they destroy the moth over very large areas at once. As to various species of mice (Mus sylvaticus, Arvicola arvalis, and A. agrestis), the same author gives a long list of their enemies, but he remarks: "However, the most terrible enemies of mice are not other animals, but such sudden changes of weather as occur almost every year." Alternations of frost and warm weather destroy them in numberless quantities; "one single sudden change can reduce thousands of mice to the number of a few individuals." On the other side, a warm winter, or a winter which gradually steps in, make them multiply in menacing proportions, notwithstanding every enemy; such was the case in 1876 and 1877.(37) Competition, in the case of mice, thus appears a quite trifling factor when compared with weather. Other facts to the same effect are also given as regards squirrels. As to birds, it is well known how they suffer from sudden changes of weather. Late snow-storms are as destructive of bird-life on the English moors, as they are in Siberia; and Ch. Dixon saw the red grouse so pressed during some exceptionally severe winters, that they quitted the moors in numbers, "and we have then known them actually to be taken in the streets of Sheffield. Persistent wet," he adds, "is almost as fatal to them." On the other side, the contagious diseases which continually visit most animal species destroy them in such numbers that the losses often cannot be repaired for many years, even with the most rapidly-multiplying animals. Thus, some sixty years ago, the sousliks suddenly disappeared in the neighbourhood of Sarepta, in South-Eastern Russia, in consequence of some epidemics; and for years no sousliks were seen in that neighbourhood. It took many years before they became as numerous as they formerly were.(38) Like facts, all tending to reduce the importance given to competition, could be produced in numbers. Of course, it might be replied, in Darwin's words, that nevertheless each organic being "at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction," and that the fittest survive during such periods of hard struggle for life. But if the evolution of the animal world were based exclusively, or even chiefly, upon the survival of the fittest during periods of calamities; if natural selection were limited in its action to periods of exceptional drought, or sudden changes of temperature, or inundations, retrogression would be the rule in the animal world. Those who survive a famine, or a severe epidemic of cholera, or small-pox, or diphtheria, such as we see them in uncivilized countries, are neither the strongest, nor the healthiest, nor the most intelligent. No progress could be based on those survivals--the less so as all survivors usually come out of the ordeal with an impaired health, like the Transbaikalian horses just mentioned, or the Arctic crews, or the garrison of a fortress which has been compelled to live for a few months on half rations, and comes out of its experience with a broken health, and subsequently shows a quite abnormal mortality. All that natural selection can do in times of calamities is to spare the individuals endowed with the greatest endurance for privations of all kinds. So it does among the Siberian horses and cattle. They are enduring; they can feed upon the Polar birch in case of need; they resist cold and hunger. But no Siberian horse is capable of carrying half the weight which a European horse carries with ease; no Siberian cow gives half the amount of milk given by a Jersey cow, and no natives of uncivilized countries can bear a comparison with Europeans. They may better endure hunger and cold, but their physical force is very far below that of a well-fed European, and their intellectual progress is despairingly slow. "Evil cannot be productive of good," as Tchernyshevsky wrote in a remarkable essay upon Darwinism.(39) Happily enough, competition is not the rule either in the animal world or in mankind. It is limited among animals to exceptional periods, and natural selection finds better fields for its activity. Better conditions are created by the elimination of competition by means of mutual aid and mutual Support.(40) In the great struggle for life--for the greatest possible fulness and intensity of life with the least waste of energy--natural selection continually seeks out the ways precisely for avoiding competition as much as possible. The ants combine in nests and nations; they pile up their stores, they rear their cattle--and thus avoid competition; and natural selection picks out of the ants' family the species which know best how to avoid competition, with its unavoidably deleterious consequences. Most of our birds slowly move southwards as the winter comes, or gather in numberless societies and undertake long journeys--and thus avoid competition. Many rodents fall asleep when the time comes that competition should set in; while other rodents store food for the winter, and gather in large villages for obtaining the necessary protection when at work. The reindeer, when the lichens are dry in the interior of the continent, migrate towards the sea. Buffaloes cross an immense continent in order to find plenty of food. And the beavers, when they grow numerous on a river, divide into two parties, and go, the old ones down the river, and the young ones up the river and avoid competition. And when animals can neither fall asleep, nor migrate, nor lay in stores, nor themselves grow their food like the ants, they do what the titmouse does, and what Wallace (Darwinism, ch. v) has so charmingly described: they resort to new kinds of food--and thus, again, avoid competition. "Don't compete!--competition is always injurious to the species, and you have plenty of resources to avoid it!" That is the tendency of nature, not always realized in full, but always present. That is the watchword which comes to us from the bush, the forest, the river, the ocean. "Therefore combine--practise mutual aid! That is the surest means for giving to each and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intellectual, and moral." That is what Nature teaches us; and that is what all those animals which have attained the highest position in their respective classes have done. That is also what man--the most primitive man--has been doing; and that is why man has reached the position upon which we stand now, as we shall see in the subsequent chapters devoted to mutual aid in human societies. NOTES: 1. Syevettsoff's Periodical Phenomena, p. 251. 2. Seyfferlitz, quoted by Brehm, iv. 760. 3. The Arctic Voyages of A.E. Nordenskjold, London, 1879, p. 135. See also the powerful description of the St. Kilda islands by Mr. Dixon (quoted by Seebohm), and nearly all books of Arctic travel. 4. Elliot Coues, in Bulletin U.S. Geol. Survey of Territories, iv. No. 7, pp. 556, 579, etc. Among the gulls (Larus argentatus), Polyakoff saw on a marsh in Northern Russia, that the nesting grounds of a very great number of these birds were always patrolled by one male, which warned the colony of the approach of danger. All birds rose in such case and attacked the enemy with great vigour. The females, which had five or six nests together on each knoll of the marsh, kept a certain order in leaving their nests in search of food. The fledglings, which otherwise are extremely unprotected and easily become the prey of the rapacious birds, were never left alone ("Family Habits among the Aquatic Birds," in Proceedings of the Zool. Section of St. Petersburg Soc. of Nat., Dec. 17, 1874). 5. Brehm Father, quoted by A. Brehm, iv. 34 seq. See also White's Natural History of Selborne, Letter XI. 6. Dr. Coues, Birds of Dakota and Montana, in Bulletin U.S. Survey of Territories, iv. No. 7. 7. It has often been intimated that larger birds may occasionally transport some of the smaller birds when they cross together the Mediterranean, but the fact still remains doubtful. On the other side, it is certain that some smaller birds join the bigger ones for migration. The fact has been noticed several times, and it was recently confirmed by L. Buxbaum at Raunheim. He saw several parties of cranes which had larks flying in the midst and on both sides of their migratory columns (Der zoologische Garten, 1886, p. 133). 8. H. Seebohm and Ch. Dixon both mention this habit. 9. The fact is well known to every field-naturalist, and with reference to England several examples may be found in Charles Dixon's Among the Birds in Northern Shires. The chaffinches arrive during winter in vast flocks; and about the same time, i.e. in November, come flocks of bramblings; redwings also frequent the same places "in similar large companies," and so on (pp. 165, 166). 10. S.W. Baker, Wild Beasts, etc., vol. i. p. 316. 11. Tschudi, Thierleben der Alpenwelt, p. 404. 12. Houzeau's Etudes, ii. 463. 13. For their hunting associations see Sir E. Tennant's Natural History of Ceylon, quoted in Romanes's Animal Intelligence, p. 432. 14. See Emil Huter's letter in L. Buchner's Liebe. 15. With regard to the viscacha it is very interesting to note that these highly-sociable little animals not only live peaceably together in each village, but that whole villages visit each other at nights. Sociability is thus extended to the whole species--not only to a given society, or to a nation, as we saw it with the ants. When the farmer destroys a viscacha-burrow, and buries the inhabitants under a heap of earth, other viscachas--we are told by Hudson--"come from a distance to dig out those that are buried alive" (l.c., p. 311). This is a widely-known fact in La Plata, verified by the author. 16. Handbuch für Jäger und Jagdberechtigte, quoted by Brehm, ii. 223. 17. Buffon's Histoire Naturelle. 18. In connection with the horses it is worthy of notice that the quagga zebra, which never comes together with the dauw zebra, nevertheless lives on excellent terms, not only with ostriches, which are very good sentries, but also with gazelles, several species of antelopes, and gnus. We thus have a case of mutual dislike between the quagga and the dauw which cannot be explained by competition for food. The fact that the quagga lives together with ruminants feeding on the same grass as itself excludes that hypothesis, and we must look for some incompatibility of character, as in the case of the hare and the rabbit. Cf., among others, Clive Phillips-Wolley's Big Game Shooting (Badminton Library), which contains excellent illustrations of various species living together in East Africa. 19. Our Tungus hunter, who was going to marry, and therefore was prompted by the desire of getting as many furs as he possibly could, was beating the hill-sides all day long on horseback in search of deer. His efforts were not rewarded by even so much as one fallow deer killed every day; and he was an excellent hunter. 20. According to Samuel W. Baker, elephants combine in larger groups than the "compound family." "I have frequently observed," he wrote, "in the portion of Ceylon known as the Park Country, the tracks of elephants in great numbers which have evidently been considerable herds that have joined together in a general retreat from a ground which they considered insecure" (Wild Beasts and their Ways, vol. i. p. 102). 21. Pigs, attacked by wolves, do the same (Hudson, l.c.). 22. Romanes's Animal Intelligence, p. 472. 23. Brehm, i. 82; Darwin's Descent of Man, ch. iii. The Kozloff expedition of 1899-1901 have also had to sustain in Northern Thibet a similar fight. 24. The more strange was it to read in the previously-mentioned article by Huxley the following paraphrase of a well-known sentence of Rousseau: "The first men who substituted mutual peace for that of mutual war--whatever the motive which impelled them to take that step--created society" (Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1888, p. 165). Society has not been created by man; it is anterior to man. 25. Such monographs as the chapter on "Music and Dancing in Nature" which we have in Hudson's Naturalist on the La Plata, and Carl Gross' Play of Animals, have already thrown a considerable light upon an instinct which is absolutely universal in Nature. 26. Not only numerous species of birds possess the habit of assembling together--in many cases always at the same spot--to indulge in antics and dancing performances, but W.H. Hudson's experience is that nearly all mammals and birds ("probably there are really no exceptions") indulge frequently in more or less regular or set performances with or without sound, or composed of sound exclusively (p. 264). 27. For the choruses of monkeys, see Brehm. 28. Haygarth, Bush Life in Australia, p. 58. 29. To quote but a few instances, a wounded badger was carried away by another badger suddenly appearing on the scene; rats have been seen feeding a blind couple (Seelenleben der Thiere, p. 64 seq.). Brehm himself saw two crows feeding in a hollow tree a third crow which was wounded; its wound was several weeks old (Hausfreund, 1874, 715; Buchner's Liebe, 203). Mr. Blyth saw Indian crows feeding two or three blind comrades; and so on. 30. Man and Beast, p. 344. 31. L.H. Morgan, The American Beaver, 1868, p. 272; Descent of Man, ch. iv. 32. One species of swallow is said to have caused the decrease of another swallow species in North America; the recent increase of the missel-thrush in Scotland has caused the decrease of the song-thrush; the brown rat has taken the place of the black rat in Europe; in Russia the small cockroach has everywhere driven before it its greater congener; and in Australia the imported hive-bee is rapidly exterminating the small stingless bee. Two other cases, but relative to domesticated animals, are mentioned in the preceding paragraph. While recalling these same facts, A.R. Wallace remarks in a footnote relative to the Scottish thrushes: "Prof. A. Newton, however, informs me that these species do not interfere in the way here stated" (Darwinism, p. 34). As to the brown rat, it is known that, owing to its amphibian habits, it usually stays in the lower parts of human dwellings (low cellars, sewers, etc.), as also on the banks of canals and rivers; it also undertakes distant migrations in numberless bands. The black rat, on the contrary, prefers staying in our dwellings themselves, under the floor, as well as in our stables and barns. It thus is much more exposed to be exterminated by man; and we cannot maintain, with any approach to certainty, that the black rat is being either exterminated or starved out by the brown rat and not by man. 33. "But it may be urged that when several closely-allied species inhabit the same territory, we surely ought to find at the present time many transitional forms.... By my theory these allied species are descended from a common parent; and during the process of modification, each has become adapted to the conditions of life of its own region, and has supplanted and exterminated its original parent-form and all the transitional varieties between its past and present states" (Origin of Species, 6th ed. p. 134); also p. 137, 296 (all paragraph "On Extinction"). 34. According to Madame Marie Pavloff, who has made a special study of this subject, they migrated from Asia to Africa, stayed there some time, and returned next to Asia. Whether this double migration be confirmed or not, the fact of a former extension of the ancestor of our horse over Asia, Africa, and America is settled beyond doubt. 35. The Naturalist on the River Amazons, ii. 85, 95. 36. Dr. B. Altum, Waldbeschadigungen durch Thiere und Gegenmittel (Berlin, 1889), pp. 207 seq. 37. Dr. B. Altum, ut supra, pp. 13 and 187. 38. A. Becker in the Bulletin de la Societe des Naturalistes de Moscou, 1889, p. 625. 39. Russkaya Mysl, Sept. 1888: "The Theory of Beneficency of Struggle for Life, being a Preface to various Treatises on Botanics, Zoology, and Human Life," by an Old Transformist. 40. "One of the most frequent modes in which Natural Selection acts is, by adapting some individuals of a species to a somewhat different mode of life, whereby they are able to seize unappropriated places in Nature" (Origin of Species, p. 145)--in other words, to avoid competition. CHAPTER III MUTUAL AID AMONG SAVAGES Supposed war of each against all. Tribal origin of human society. Late appearance of the separate family. Bushmen and Hottentots. Australians, Papuas. Eskimos, Aleoutes. Features of savage life difficult to understand for the European. The Dayak's conception of justice. Common law. The immense part played by mutual aid and mutual support in the evolution of the animal world has been briefly analyzed in the preceding chapters. We have now to cast a glance upon the part played by the same agencies in the evolution of mankind. We saw how few are the animal species which live an isolated life, and how numberless are those which live in societies, either for mutual defence, or for hunting and storing up food, or for rearing their offspring, or simply for enjoying life in common. We also saw that, though a good deal of warfare goes on between different classes of animals, or different species, or even different tribes of the same species, peace and mutual support are the rule within the tribe or the species; and that those species which best know how to combine, and to avoid competition, have the best chances of survival and of a further progressive development. They prosper, while the unsociable species decay. It is evident that it would be quite contrary to all that we know of nature if men were an exception to so general a rule: if a creature so defenceless as man was at his beginnings should have found his protection and his way to progress, not in mutual support, like other animals, but in a reckless competition for personal advantages, with no regard to the interests of the species. To a mind accustomed to the idea of unity in nature, such a proposition appears utterly indefensible. And yet, improbable and unphilosophical as it is, it has never found a lack of supporters. There always were writers who took a pessimistic view of mankind. They knew it, more or less superficially, through their own limited experience; they knew of history what the annalists, always watchful of wars, cruelty, and oppression, told of it, and little more besides; and they concluded that mankind is nothing but a loose aggregation of beings, always ready to fight with each other, and only prevented from so doing by the intervention of some authority. Hobbes took that position; and while some of his eighteenth-century followers endeavoured to prove that at no epoch of its existence--not even in its most primitive condition--mankind lived in a state of perpetual warfare; that men have been sociable even in "the state of nature," and that want of knowledge, rather than the natural bad inclinations of man, brought humanity to all the horrors of its early historical life,--his idea was, on the contrary, that the so-called "state of nature" was nothing but a permanent fight between individuals, accidentally huddled together by the mere caprice of their bestial existence. True, that science has made some progress since Hobbes's time, and that we have safer ground to stand upon than the speculations of Hobbes or Rousseau. But the Hobbesian philosophy has plenty of admirers still; and we have had of late quite a school of writers who, taking possession of Darwin's terminology rather than of his leading ideas, made of it an argument in favour of Hobbes's views upon primitive man, and even succeeded in giving them a scientific appearance. Huxley, as is known, took the lead of that school, and in a paper written in 1888 he represented primitive men as a sort of tigers or lions, deprived of all ethical conceptions, fighting out the struggle for existence to its bitter end, and living a life of "continual free fight"; to quote his own words--"beyond the limited and, temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all was the normal state of existence."(1) It has been remarked more than once that the chief error of Hobbes, and the eighteenth-century philosophers as well, was to imagine that mankind began its life in the shape of small straggling families, something like the "limited and temporary" families of the bigger carnivores, while in reality it is now positively known that such was not the case. Of course, we have no direct evidence as to the modes of life of the first man-like beings. We are not yet settled even as to the time of their first appearance, geologists being inclined at present to see their traces in the pliocene, or even the miocene, deposits of the Tertiary period. But we have the indirect method which permits us to throw some light even upon that remote antiquity. A most careful investigation into the social institutions of the lowest races has been carried on during the last forty years, and it has revealed among the present institutions of primitive folk some traces of still older institutions which have long disappeared, but nevertheless left unmistakable traces of their previous existence. A whole science devoted to the embryology of human institutions has thus developed in the hands of Bachofen, MacLennan, Morgan, Edwin Tylor, Maine, Post, Kovalevsky, Lubbock, and many others. And that science has established beyond any doubt that mankind did not begin its life in the shape of small isolated families. Far from being a primitive form of organization, the family is a very late product of human evolution. As far as we can go back in the palaeo-ethnology of mankind, we find men living in societies--in tribes similar to those of the highest mammals; and an extremely slow and long evolution was required to bring these societies to the gentile, or clan organization, which, in its turn, had to undergo another, also very long evolution, before the first germs of family, polygamous or monogamous, could appear. Societies, bands, or tribes--not families--were thus the primitive form of organization of mankind and its earliest ancestors. That is what ethnology has come to after its painstaking researches. And in so doing it simply came to what might have been foreseen by the zoologist. None of the higher mammals, save a few carnivores and a few undoubtedly-decaying species of apes (orang-outans and gorillas), live in small families, isolatedly straggling in the woods. All others live in societies. And Darwin so well understood that isolately-living apes never could have developed into man-like beings, that he was inclined to consider man as descended from some comparatively weak but social species, like the chimpanzee, rather than from some stronger but unsociable species, like the gorilla.(2) Zoology and palaeo-ethnology are thus agreed in considering that the band, not the family, was the earliest form of social life. The first human societies simply were a further development of those societies which constitute the very essence of life of the higher animals.(3) If we now go over to positive evidence, we see that the earliest traces of man, dating from the glacial or the early post-glacial period, afford unmistakable proofs of man having lived even then in societies. Isolated finds of stone implements, even from the old stone age, are very rare; on the contrary, wherever one flint implement is discovered others are sure to be found, in most cases in very large quantities. At a time when men were dwelling in caves, or under occasionally protruding rocks, in company with mammals now extinct, and hardly succeeded in making the roughest sorts of flint hatchets, they already knew the advantages of life in societies. In the valleys of the tributaries of the Dordogne, the surface of the rocks is in some places entirely covered with caves which were inhabited by palaeolithic men.(4) Sometimes the cave-dwellings are superposed in storeys, and they certainly recall much more the nesting colonies of swallows than the dens of carnivores. As to the flint implements discovered in those caves, to use Lubbock's words, "one may say without exaggeration that they are numberless." The same is true of other palaeolithic stations. It also appears from Lartet's investigations that the inhabitants of the Aurignac region in the south of France partook of tribal meals at the burial of their dead. So that men lived in societies, and had germs of a tribal worship, even at that extremely remote epoch. The same is still better proved as regards the later part of the stone age. Traces of neolithic man have been found in numberless quantities, so that we can reconstitute his manner of life to a great extent. When the ice-cap (which must have spread from the Polar regions as far south as middle France, middle Germany, and middle Russia, and covered Canada as well as a good deal of what is now the United States) began to melt away, the surfaces freed from ice were covered, first, with swamps and marshes, and later on with numberless lakes.(5) Lakes filled all depressions of the valleys before their waters dug out those permanent channels which, during a subsequent epoch, became our rivers. And wherever we explore, in Europe, Asia, or America, the shores of the literally numberless lakes of that period, whose proper name would be the Lacustrine period, we find traces of neolithic man. They are so numerous that we can only wonder at the relative density of population at that time. The "stations" of neolithic man closely follow each other on the terraces which now mark the shores of the old lakes. And at each of those stations stone implements appear in such numbers, that no doubt is possible as to the length of time during which they were inhabited by rather numerous tribes. Whole workshops of flint implements, testifying of the numbers of workers who used to come together, have been discovered by the archaeologists. Traces of a more advanced period, already characterized by the use of some pottery, are found in the shell-heaps of Denmark. They appear, as is well known, in the shape of heaps from five to ten feet thick, from 100 to 200 feet wide, and 1,000 feet or more in length, and they are so common along some parts of the sea-coast that for a long time they were considered as natural growths. And yet they "contain nothing but what has been in some way or other subservient to the use of man," and they are so densely stuffed with products of human industry that, during a two days' stay at Milgaard, Lubbock dug out no less than 191 pieces of stone-implements and four fragments of pottery.(6) The very size and extension of the shell heaps prove that for generations and generations the coasts of Denmark were inhabited by hundreds of small tribes which certainly lived as peacefully together as the Fuegian tribes, which also accumulate like shellheaps, are living in our own times. As to the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, which represent a still further advance in civilization, they yield still better evidence of life and work in societies. It is known that even during the stone age the shores of the Swiss lakes were dotted with a succession of villages, each of which consisted of several huts, and was built upon a platform supported by numberless pillars in the lake. No less than twenty-four, mostly stone age villages, were discovered along the shores of Lake Leman, thirty-two in the Lake of Constance, forty-six in the Lake of Neuchatel, and so on; and each of them testifies to the immense amount of labour which was spent in common by the tribe, not by the family. It has even been asserted that the life of the lake-dwellers must have been remarkably free of warfare. And so it probably was, especially if we refer to the life of those primitive folk who live until the present time in similar villages built upon pillars on the sea coasts. It is thus seen, even from the above rapid hints, that our knowledge of primitive man is not so scanty after all, and that, so far as it goes, it is rather opposed than favourable to the Hobbesian speculations. Moreover, it may be supplemented, to a great extent, by the direct observation of such primitive tribes as now stand on the same level of civilization as the inhabitants of Europe stood in prehistoric times. That these primitive tribes which we find now are not degenerated specimens of mankind who formerly knew a higher civilization, as it has occasionally been maintained, has sufficiently been proved by Edwin Tylor and Lubbock. However, to the arguments already opposed to the degeneration theory, the following may be added. Save a few tribes clustering in the less-accessible highlands, the "savages" represent a girdle which encircles the more or less civilized nations, and they occupy the extremities of our continents, most of which have retained still, or recently were bearing, an early post-glacial character. Such are the Eskimos and their congeners in Greenland, Arctic America, and Northern Siberia; and, in the Southern hemisphere, the Australians, the Papuas, the Fuegians, and, partly, the Bushmen; while within the civilized area, like primitive folk are only found in the Himalayas, the highlands of Australasia, and the plateaus of Brazil. Now it must be borne in mind that the glacial age did not come to an end at once over the whole surface of the earth. It still continues in Greenland. Therefore, at a time when the littoral regions of the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, or the Gulf of Mexico already enjoyed a warmer climate, and became the seats of higher civilizations, immense territories in middle Europe, Siberia, and Northern America, as well as in Patagonia, Southern Africa, and Southern Australasia, remained in early postglacial conditions which rendered them inaccessible to the civilized nations of the torrid and sub-torrid zones. They were at that time what the terrible urmans of North-West Siberia are now, and their population, inaccessible to and untouched by civilization, retained the characters of early post-glacial man. Later on, when desiccation rendered these territories more suitable for agriculture, they were peopled with more civilized immigrants; and while part of their previous inhabitants were assimilated by the new settlers, another part migrated further, and settled where we find them. The territories they inhabit now are still, or recently were, sub-glacial, as to their physical features; their arts and implements are those of the neolithic age; and, notwithstanding their racial differences, and the distances which separate them, their modes of life and social institutions bear a striking likeness. So we cannot but consider them as fragments of the early post-glacial population of the now civilized area. The first thing which strikes us as soon as we begin studying primitive folk is the complexity of the organization of marriage relations under which they are living. With most of them the family, in the sense we attribute to it, is hardly found in its germs. But they are by no means loose aggregations of men and women coming in a disorderly manner together in conformity with their momentary caprices. All of them are under a certain organization, which has been described by Morgan in its general aspects as the "gentile," or clan organization.(7) To tell the matter as briefly as possible, there is little doubt that mankind has passed at its beginnings through a stage which may be described as that of "communal marriage"; that is, the whole tribe had husbands and wives in common with but little regard to consanguinity. But it is also certain that some restrictions to that free intercourse were imposed at a very early period. Inter-marriage was soon prohibited between the sons of one mother and her sisters, granddaughters, and aunts. Later on it was prohibited between the sons and daughters of the same mother, and further limitations did not fail to follow. The idea of a gens, or clan, which embodied all presumed descendants from one stock (or rather all those who gathered in one group) was evolved, and marriage within the clan was entirely prohibited. It still remained "communal," but the wife or the husband had to be taken from another clan. And when a gens became too numerous, and subdivided into several gentes, each of them was divided into classes (usually four), and marriage was permitted only between certain well-defined classes. That is the stage which we find now among the Kamilaroi-speaking Australians. As to the family, its first germs appeared amidst the clan organization. A woman who was captured in war from some other clan, and who formerly would have belonged to the whole gens, could be kept at a later period by the capturer, under certain obligations towards the tribe. She may be taken by him to a separate hut, after she had paid a certain tribute to the clan, and thus constitute within the gens a separate family, the appearance of which evidently was opening a quite new phase of civilization. Now, if we take into consideration that this complicated organization developed among men who stood at the lowest known degree of development, and that it maintained itself in societies knowing no kind of authority besides the authority of public opinion, we at once see how deeply inrooted social instincts must have been in human nature, even at its lowest stages. A savage who is capable of living under such an organization, and of freely submitting to rules which continually clash with his personal desires, certainly is not a beast devoid of ethical principles and knowing no rein to its passions. But the fact becomes still more striking if we consider the immense antiquity of the clan organization. It is now known that the primitive Semites, the Greeks of Homer, the prehistoric Romans, the Germans of Tacitus, the early Celts and the early Slavonians, all have had their own period of clan organization, closely analogous to that of the Australians, the Red Indians, the Eskimos, and other inhabitants of the "savage girdle."(9) So we must admit that either the evolution of marriage laws went on on the same lines among all human races, or the rudiments of the clan rules were developed among some common ancestors of the Semites, the Aryans, the Polynesians, etc., before their differentiation into separate races took place, and that these rules were maintained, until now, among races long ago separated from the common stock. Both alternatives imply, however, an equally striking tenacity of the institution--such a tenacity that no assaults of the individual could break it down through the scores of thousands of years that it was in existence. The very persistence of the clan organization shows how utterly false it is to represent primitive mankind as a disorderly agglomeration of individuals, who only obey their individual passions, and take advantage of their personal force and cunningness against all other representatives of the species. Unbridled individualism is a modern growth, but it is not characteristic of primitive mankind.(10) Going now over to the existing savages, we may begin with the Bushmen, who stand at a very low level of development--so low indeed that they have no dwellings and sleep in holes dug in the soil, occasionally protected by some screens. It is known that when Europeans settled in their territory and destroyed deer, the Bushmen began stealing the settlers' cattle, whereupon a war of extermination, too horrible to be related here, was waged against them. Five hundred Bushmen were slaughtered in 1774, three thousand in 1808 and 1809 by the Farmers' Alliance, and so on. They were poisoned like rats, killed by hunters lying in ambush before the carcass of some animal, killed wherever met with.(11) So that our knowledge of the Bushmen, being chiefly borrowed from those same people who exterminated them, is necessarily limited. But still we know that when the Europeans came, the Bushmen lived in small tribes (or clans), sometimes federated together; that they used to hunt in common, and divided the spoil without quarrelling; that they never abandoned their wounded, and displayed strong affection to their comrades. Lichtenstein has a most touching story about a Bushman, nearly drowned in a river, who was rescued by his companions. They took off their furs to cover him, and shivered themselves; they dried him, rubbed him before the fire, and smeared his body with warm grease till they brought him back to life. And when the Bushmen found, in Johan van der Walt, a man who treated them well, they expressed their thankfulness by a most touching attachment to that man.(12) Burchell and Moffat both represent them as goodhearted, disinterested, true to their promises, and grateful,(13) all qualities which could develop only by being practised within the tribe. As to their love to children, it is sufficient to say that when a European wished to secure a Bushman woman as a slave, he stole her child: the mother was sure to come into slavery to share the fate of her child.(14) The same social manners characterize the Hottentots, who are but a little more developed than the Bushmen. Lubbock describes them as "the filthiest animals," and filthy they really are. A fur suspended to the neck and worn till it falls to pieces is all their dress; their huts are a few sticks assembled together and covered with mats, with no kind of furniture within. And though they kept oxen and sheep, and seem to have known the use of iron before they made acquaintance with the Europeans, they still occupy one of the lowest degrees of the human scale. And yet those who knew them highly praised their sociability and readiness to aid each other. If anything is given to a Hottentot, he at once divides it among all present--a habit which, as is known, so much struck Darwin among the Fuegians. He cannot eat alone, and, however hungry, he calls those who pass by to share his food. And when Kolben expressed his astonishment thereat, he received the answer. "That is Hottentot manner." But this is not Hottentot manner only: it is an all but universal habit among the "savages." Kolben, who knew the Hottentots well and did not pass by their defects in silence, could not praise their tribal morality highly enough. "Their word is sacred," he wrote. They know "nothing of the corruptness and faithless arts of Europe." "They live in great tranquillity and are seldom at war with their neighbours." They are "all kindness and goodwill to one another.. One of the greatest pleasures of the Hottentots certainly lies in their gifts and good offices to one another." "The integrity of the Hottentots, their strictness and celerity in the exercise of justice, and their chastity, are things in which they excel all or most nations in the world."(15) Tachart, Barrow, and Moodie(16) fully confirm Kolben's testimony. Let me only remark that when Kolben wrote that "they are certainly the most friendly, the most liberal and the most benevolent people to one another that ever appeared on the earth" (i. 332), he wrote a sentence which has continually appeared since in the description of savages. When first meeting with primitive races, the Europeans usually make a caricature of their life; but when an intelligent man has stayed among them for a longer time, he generally describes them as the "kindest" or "the gentlest" race on the earth. These very same words have been applied to the Ostyaks, the Samoyedes, the Eskimos, the Dayaks, the Aleoutes, the Papuas, and so on, by the highest authorities. I also remember having read them applied to the Tunguses, the Tchuktchis, the Sioux, and several others. The very frequency of that high commendation already speaks volumes in itself. The natives of Australia do not stand on a higher level of development than their South African brothers. Their huts are of the same character: very often simple screens are the only protection against cold winds. In their food they are most indifferent: they devour horribly putrefied corpses, and cannibalism is resorted to in times of scarcity. When first discovered by Europeans, they had no implements but in stone or bone, and these were of the roughest description. Some tribes had even no canoes, and did not know barter-trade. And yet, when their manners and customs were carefully studied, they proved to be living under that elaborate clan organization which I have mentioned on a preceding page.(17) The territory they inhabit is usually allotted between the different gentes or clans; but the hunting and fishing territories of each clan are kept in common, and the produce of fishing and hunting belongs to the whole clan; so also the fishing and hunting implements.(18) The meals are taken in common. Like many other savages, they respect certain regulations as to the seasons when certain gums and grasses may be collected.(19) As to their morality altogether, we cannot do better than transcribe the following answers given to the questions of the Paris Anthropological Society by Lumholtz, a missionary who sojourned in North Queensland:(20)-- "The feeling of friendship is known among them; it is strong. Weak people are usually supported; sick people are very well attended to; they never are abandoned or killed. These tribes are cannibals, but they very seldom eat members of their own tribe (when immolated on religious principles, I suppose); they eat strangers only. The parents love their children, play with them, and pet them. Infanticide meets with common approval. Old people are very well treated, never put to death. No religion, no idols, only a fear of death. Polygamous marriage, quarrels arising within the tribe are settled by means of duels fought with wooden swords and shields. No slaves; no culture of any kind; no pottery; no dress, save an apron sometimes worn by women. The clan consists of two hundred individuals, divided into four classes of men and four of women; marriage being only permitted within the usual classes, and never within the gens." For the Papuas, closely akin to the above, we have the testimony of G.L. Bink, who stayed in New Guinea, chiefly in Geelwink Bay, from 1871 to 1883. Here is the essence of his answers to the same questioner:(21)-- "They are sociable and cheerful; they laugh very much. Rather timid than courageous. Friendship is relatively strong among persons belonging to different tribes, and still stronger within the tribe. A friend will often pay the debt of his friend, the stipulation being that the latter will repay it without interest to the children of the lender. They take care of the ill and the old; old people are never abandoned, and in no case are they killed--unless it be a slave who was ill for a long time. War prisoners are sometimes eaten. The children are very much petted and loved. Old and feeble war prisoners are killed, the others are sold as slaves. They have no religion, no gods, no idols, no authority of any description; the oldest man in the family is the judge. In cases of adultery a fine is paid, and part of it goes to the negoria (the community). The soil is kept in common, but the crop belongs to those who have grown it. They have pottery, and know barter-trade--the custom being that the merchant gives them the goods, whereupon they return to their houses and bring the native goods required by the merchant; if the latter cannot be obtained, the European goods are returned.(22) They are head-hunters, and in so doing they prosecute blood revenge. 'Sometimes,' Finsch says, 'the affair is referred to the Rajah of Namototte, who terminates it by imposing a fine.'" When well treated, the Papuas are very kind. Miklukho-Maclay landed on the eastern coast of New Guinea, followed by one single man, stayed for two years among tribes reported to be cannibals, and left them with regret; he returned again to stay one year more among them, and never had he any conflict to complain of. True that his rule was never--under no pretext whatever--to say anything which was not truth, nor make any promise which he could not keep. These poor creatures, who even do not know how to obtain fire, and carefully maintain it in their huts, live under their primitive communism, without any chiefs; and within their villages they have no quarrels worth speaking of. They work in common, just enough to get the food of the day; they rear their children in common; and in the evenings they dress themselves as coquettishly as they can, and dance. Like all savages, they are fond of dancing. Each village has its barla, or balai--the "long house," "longue maison," or "grande maison"--for the unmarried men, for social gatherings, and for the discussion of common affairs--again a trait which is common to most inhabitants of the Pacific Islands, the Eskimos, the Red Indians, and so on. Whole groups of villages are on friendly terms, and visit each other en bloc. Unhappily, feuds are not uncommon--not in consequence of "Overstocking of the area," or "keen competition," and like inventions of a mercantile century, but chiefly in consequence of superstition. As soon as any one falls ill, his friends and relatives come together, and deliberately discuss who might be the cause of the illness. All possible enemies are considered, every one confesses of his own petty quarrels, and finally the real cause is discovered. An enemy from the next village has called it down, and a raid upon that village is decided upon. Therefore, feuds are rather frequent, even between the coast villages, not to say a word of the cannibal mountaineers who are considered as real witches and enemies, though, on a closer acquaintance, they prove to be exactly the same sort of people as their neighbours on the seacoast.(23) Many striking pages could be written about the harmony which prevails in the villages of the Polynesian inhabitants of the Pacific Islands. But they belong to a more advanced stage of civilization. So we shall now take our illustrations from the far north. I must mention, however, before leaving the Southern Hemisphere, that even the Fuegians, whose reputation has been so bad, appear under a much better light since they begin to be better known. A few French missionaries who stay among them "know of no act of malevolence to complain of." In their clans, consisting of from 120 to 150 souls, they practise the same primitive communism as the Papuas; they share everything in common, and treat their old people very well. Peace prevails among these tribes.(24) With the Eskimos and their nearest congeners, the Thlinkets, the Koloshes, and the Aleoutes, we find one of the nearest illustrations of what man may have been during the glacial age. Their implements hardly differ from those of palaeolithic man, and some of their tribes do not yet know fishing: they simply spear the fish with a kind of harpoon.(25) They know the use of iron, but they receive it from the Europeans, or find it on wrecked ships. Their social organization is of a very primitive kind, though they already have emerged from the stage of "communal marriage," even under the gentile restrictions. They live in families, but the family bonds are often broken; husbands and wives are often exchanged.(26) The families, however, remain united in clans, and how could it be otherwise? How could they sustain the hard struggle for life unless by closely combining their forces? So they do, and the tribal bonds are closest where the struggle for life is hardest, namely, in North-East Greenland. The "long house" is their usual dwelling, and several families lodge in it, separated from each other by small partitions of ragged furs, with a common passage in the front. Sometimes the house has the shape of a cross, and in such case a common fire is kept in the centre. The German Expedition which spent a winter close by one of those "long houses" could ascertain that "no quarrel disturbed the peace, no dispute arose about the use of this narrow space" throughout the long winter. "Scolding, or even unkind words, are considered as a misdemeanour, if not produced under the legal form of process, namely, the nith-song."(27) Close cohabitation and close interdependence are sufficient for maintaining century after century that deep respect for the interests of the community which is characteristic of Eskimo life. Even in the larger communities of Eskimos, "public opinion formed the real judgment-seat, the general punishment consisting in the offenders being shamed in the eyes of the people."(28) Eskimo life is based upon communism. What is obtained by hunting and fishing belongs to the clan. But in several tribes, especially in the West, under the influence of the Danes, private property penetrates into their institutions. However, they have an original means for obviating the inconveniences arising from a personal accumulation of wealth which would soon destroy their tribal unity. When a man has grown rich, he convokes the folk of his clan to a great festival, and, after much eating, distributes among them all his fortune. On the Yukon river, Dall saw an Aleonte family distributing in this way ten guns, ten full fur dresses, 200 strings of beads, numerous blankets, ten wolf furs, 200 beavers, and 500 zibelines. After that they took off their festival dresses, gave them away, and, putting on old ragged furs, addressed a few words to their kinsfolk, saying that though they are now poorer than any one of them, they have won their friendship.(29) Like distributions of wealth appear to be a regular habit with the Eskimos, and to take place at a certain season, after an exhibition of all that has been obtained during the year.(30) In my opinion these distributions reveal a very old institution, contemporaneous with the first apparition of personal wealth; they must have been a means for re-establishing equality among the members of the clan, after it had been disturbed by the enrichment of the few. The periodical redistribution of land and the periodical abandonment of all debts which took place in historical times with so many different races (Semites, Aryans, etc.), must have been a survival of that old custom. And the habit of either burying with the dead, or destroying upon his grave, all that belonged to him personally--a habit which we find among all primitive races--must have had the same origin. In fact, while everything that belongs personally to the dead is burnt or broken upon his grave, nothing is destroyed of what belonged to him in common with the tribe, such as boats, or the communal implements of fishing. The destruction bears upon personal property alone. At a later epoch this habit becomes a religious ceremony. It receives a mystical interpretation, and is imposed by religion, when public opinion alone proves incapable of enforcing its general observance. And, finally, it is substituted by either burning simple models of the dead man's property (as in China), or by simply carrying his property to the grave and taking it back to his house after the burial ceremony is over--a habit which still prevails with the Europeans as regards swords, crosses, and other marks of public distinction.(31) The high standard of the tribal morality of the Eskimos has often been mentioned in general literature. Nevertheless the following remarks upon the manners of the Aleoutes--nearly akin to the Eskimos--will better illustrate savage morality as a whole. They were written, after a ten years' stay among the Aleoutes, by a most remarkable man--the Russian missionary, Veniaminoff. I sum them up, mostly in his own words:-- Endurability (he wrote) is their chief feature. It is simply colossal. Not only do they bathe every morning in the frozen sea, and stand naked on the beach, inhaling the icy wind, but their endurability, even when at hard work on insufficient food, surpasses all that can be imagined. During a protracted scarcity of food, the Aleoute cares first for his children; he gives them all he has, and himself fasts. They are not inclined to stealing; that was remarked even by the first Russian immigrants. Not that they never steal; every Aleoute would confess having sometime stolen something, but it is always a trifle; the whole is so childish. The attachment of the parents to their children is touching, though it is never expressed in words or pettings. The Aleoute is with difficulty moved to make a promise, but once he has made it he will keep it whatever may happen. (An Aleoute made Veniaminoff a gift of dried fish, but it was forgotten on the beach in the hurry of the departure. He took it home. The next occasion to send it to the missionary was in January; and in November and December there was a great scarcity of food in the Aleoute encampment. But the fish was never touched by the starving people, and in January it was sent to its destination.) Their code of morality is both varied and severe. It is considered shameful to be afraid of unavoidable death; to ask pardon from an enemy; to die without ever having killed an enemy; to be convicted of stealing; to capsize a boat in the harbour; to be afraid of going to sea in stormy weather; to be the first in a party on a long journey to become an invalid in case of scarcity of food; to show greediness when spoil is divided, in which case every one gives his own part to the greedy man to shame him; to divulge a public secret to his wife; being two persons on a hunting expedition, not to offer the best game to the partner; to boast of his own deeds, especially of invented ones; to scold any one in scorn. Also to beg; to pet his wife in other people's presence, and to dance with her to bargain personally: selling must always be made through a third person, who settles the price. For a woman it is a shame not to know sewing, dancing and all kinds of woman's work; to pet her husband and children, or even to speak to her husband in the presence of a stranger.(32) Such is Aleoute morality, which might also be further illustrated by their tales and legends. Let me also add that when Veniaminoff wrote (in 1840) one murder only had been committed since the last century in a population of 60,000 people, and that among 1,800 Aleoutes not one single common law offence had been known for forty years. This will not seem strange if we remark that scolding, scorning, and the use of rough words are absolutely unknown in Aleoute life. Even their children never fight, and never abuse each other in words. All they may say is, "Your mother does not know sewing," or "Your father is blind of one eye."(33) Many features of savage life remain, however, a puzzle to Europeans. The high development of tribal solidarity and the good feelings with which primitive folk are animated towards each other, could be illustrated by any amount of reliable testimony. And yet it is not the less certain that those same savages practise infanticide; that in some cases they abandon their old people, and that they blindly obey the rules of blood-revenge. We must then explain the coexistence of facts which, to the European mind, seem so contradictory at the first sight. I have just mentioned how the Aleoute father starves for days and weeks, and gives everything eatable to his child; and how the Bushman mother becomes a slave to follow her child; and I might fill pages with illustrations of the really tender relations existing among the savages and their children. Travellers continually mention them incidentally. Here you read about the fond love of a mother; there you see a father wildly running through the forest and carrying upon his shoulders his child bitten by a snake; or a missionary tells you the despair of the parents at the loss of a child whom he had saved, a few years before, from being immolated at its birth, you learn that the "savage" mothers usually nurse their children till the age of four, and that, in the New Hebrides, on the loss of a specially beloved child, its mother, or aunt, will kill herself to take care of it in the other world.(34) And so on. Like facts are met with by the score; so that, when we see that these same loving parents practise infanticide, we are bound to recognize that the habit (whatever its ulterior transformations may be) took its origin under the sheer pressure of necessity, as an obligation towards the tribe, and a means for rearing the already growing children. The savages, as a rule, do not "multiply without stint," as some English writers put it. On the contrary, they take all kinds of measures for diminishing the birth-rate. A whole series of restrictions, which Europeans certainly would find extravagant, are imposed to that effect, and they are strictly obeyed. But notwithstanding that, primitive folk cannot rear all their children. However, it has been remarked that as soon as they succeed in increasing their regular means of subsistence, they at once begin to abandon the practice of infanticide. On the whole, the parents obey that obligation reluctantly, and as soon as they can afford it they resort to all kinds of compromises to save the lives of their new-born. As has been so well pointed out by my friend Elie Reclus,(35) they invent the lucky and unlucky days of births, and spare the children born on the lucky days; they try to postpone the sentence for a few hours, and then say that if the baby has lived one day it must live all its natural life.(36) They hear the cries of the little ones coming from the forest, and maintain that, if heard, they forbode a misfortune for the tribe; and as they have no baby-farming nor creches for getting rid of the children, every one of them recoils before the necessity of performing the cruel sentence; they prefer to expose the baby in the wood rather than to take its life by violence. Ignorance, not cruelty, maintains infanticide; and, instead of moralizing the savages with sermons, the missionaries would do better to follow the example of Veniaminoff, who, every year till his old age, crossed the sea of Okhotsk in a miserable boat, or travelled on dogs among his Tchuktchis, supplying them with bread and fishing implements. He thus had really stopped infanticide. The same is true as regards what superficial observers describe as parricide. We just now saw that the habit of abandoning old people is not so widely spread as some writers have maintained it to be. It has been extremely exaggerated, but it is occasionally met with among nearly all savages; and in such cases it has the same origin as the exposure of children. When a "savage" feels that he is a burden to his tribe; when every morning his share of food is taken from the mouths of the children--and the little ones are not so stoical as their fathers: they cry when they are hungry; when every day he has to be carried across the stony beach, or the virgin forest, on the shoulders of younger people there are no invalid carriages, nor destitutes to wheel them in savage lands--he begins to repeat what the old Russian peasants say until now-a-day. "Tchujoi vek zayedayu, Pora na pokoi!" ("I live other people's life: it is time to retire!") And he retires. He does what the soldier does in a similar case. When the salvation of his detachment depends upon its further advance, and he can move no more, and knows that he must die if left behind, the soldier implores his best friend to render him the last service before leaving the encampment. And the friend, with shivering hands, discharges his gun into the dying body. So the savages do. The old man asks himself to die; he himself insists upon this last duty towards the community, and obtains the consent of the tribe; he digs out his grave; he invites his kinsfolk to the last parting meal. His father has done so, it is now his turn; and he parts with his kinsfolk with marks of affection. The savage so much considers death as part of his duties towards his community, that he not only refuses to be rescued (as Moffat has told), but when a woman who had to be immolated on her husband's grave was rescued by missionaries, and was taken to an island, she escaped in the night, crossed a broad sea-arm, swimming and rejoined her tribe, to die on the grave.(37) It has become with them a matter of religion. But the savages, as a rule, are so reluctant to take any one's life otherwise than in fight, that none of them will take upon himself to shed human blood, and they resort to all kinds of stratagems, which have been so falsely interpreted. In most cases, they abandon the old man in the wood, after having given him more than his share of the common food. Arctic expeditions have done the same when they no more could carry their invalid comrades. "Live a few days more, maybe there will be some unexpected rescue!" West European men of science, when coming across these facts, are absolutely unable to stand them; they can not reconcile them with a high development of tribal morality, and they prefer to cast a doubt upon the exactitude of absolutely reliable observers, instead of trying to explain the parallel existence of the two sets of facts: a high tribal morality together with the abandonment of the parents and infanticide. But if these same Europeans were to tell a savage that people, extremely amiable, fond of their own children, and so impressionable that they cry when they see a misfortune simulated on the stage, are living in Europe within a stone's throw from dens in which children die from sheer want of food, the savage, too, would not understand them. I remember how vainly I tried to make some of my Tungus friends understand our civilization of individualism: they could not, and they resorted to the most fantastical suggestions. The fact is that a savage, brought up in ideas of a tribal solidarity in everything for bad and for good, is as incapable of understanding a "moral" European, who knows nothing of that solidarity, as the average European is incapable of understanding the savage. But if our scientist had lived amidst a half-starving tribe which does not possess among them all one man's food for so much as a few days to come, he probably might have understood their motives. So also the savage, if he had stayed among us, and received our education, may be, would understand our European indifference towards our neighbours, and our Royal Commissions for the prevention of "babyfarming." "Stone houses make stony hearts," the Russian peasants say. But he ought to live in a stone house first. Similar remarks must be made as regards cannibalism. Taking into account all the facts which were brought to light during a recent controversy on this subject at the Paris Anthropological Society, and many incidental remarks scattered throughout the "savage" literature, we are bound to recognize that that practice was brought into existence by sheer necessity. But that it was further developed by superstition and religion into the proportions it attained in Fiji or in Mexico. It is a fact that until this day many savages are compelled to devour corpses in the most advanced state of putrefaction, and that in cases of absolute scarcity some of them have had to disinter and to feed upon human corpses, even during an epidemic. These are ascertained facts. But if we now transport ourselves to the conditions which man had to face during the glacial period, in a damp and cold climate, with but little vegetable food at his disposal; if we take into account the terrible ravages which scurvy still makes among underfed natives, and remember that meat and fresh blood are the only restoratives which they know, we must admit that man, who formerly was a granivorous animal, became a flesh-eater during the glacial period. He found plenty of deer at that time, but deer often migrate in the Arctic regions, and sometimes they entirely abandon a territory for a number of years. In such cases his last resources disappeared. During like hard trials, cannibalism has been resorted to even by Europeans, and it was resorted to by the savages. Until the present time, they occasionally devour the corpses of their own dead: they must have devoured then the corpses of those who had to die. Old people died, convinced that by their death they were rendering a last service to the tribe. This is why cannibalism is represented by some savages as of divine origin, as something that has been ordered by a messenger from the sky. But later on it lost its character of necessity, and survived as a superstition. Enemies had to be eaten in order to inherit their courage; and, at a still later epoch, the enemy's eye or heart was eaten for the same purpose; while among other tribes, already having a numerous priesthood and a developed mythology, evil gods, thirsty for human blood, were invented, and human sacrifices required by the priests to appease the gods. In this religious phase of its existence, cannibalism attained its most revolting characters. Mexico is a well-known example; and in Fiji, where the king could eat any one of his subjects, we also find a mighty cast of priests, a complicated theology,(38) and a full development of autocracy. Originated by necessity, cannibalism became, at a later period, a religious institution, and in this form it survived long after it had disappeared from among tribes which certainly practised it in former times, but did not attain the theocratical stage of evolution. The same remark must be made as regards infanticide and the abandonment of parents. In some cases they also have been maintained as a survival of olden times, as a religiously-kept tradition of the past. I will terminate my remarks by mentioning another custom which also is a source of most erroneous conclusions. I mean the practice of blood-revenge. All savages are under the impression that blood shed must be revenged by blood. If any one has been killed, the murderer must die; if any one has been wounded, the aggressor's blood must be shed. There is no exception to the rule, not even for animals; so the hunter's blood is shed on his return to the village when he has shed the blood of an animal. That is the savages' conception of justice--a conception which yet prevails in Western Europe as regards murder. Now, when both the offender and the offended belong to the same tribe, the tribe and the offended person settle the affair.(39) But when the offender belongs to another tribe, and that tribe, for one reason or another, refuses a compensation, then the offended tribe decides to take the revenge itself. Primitive folk so much consider every one's acts as a tribal affair, dependent upon tribal approval, that they easily think the clan responsible for every one's acts. Therefore, the due revenge may be taken upon any member of the offender's clan or relatives.(40) It may often happen, however, that the retaliation goes further than the offence. In trying to inflict a wound, they may kill the offender, or wound him more than they intended to do, and this becomes a cause for a new feud, so that the primitive legislators were careful in requiring the retaliation to be limited to an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and blood for blood.(41) It is remarkable, however, that with most primitive folk like feuds are infinitely rarer than might be expected; though with some of them they may attain abnormal proportions, especially with mountaineers who have been driven to the highlands by foreign invaders, such as the mountaineers of Caucasia, and especially those of Borneo--the Dayaks. With the Dayaks--we were told lately--the feuds had gone so far that a young man could neither marry nor be proclaimed of age before he had secured the head of an enemy. This horrid practice was fully described in a modern English work.(42) It appears, however, that this affirmation was a gross exaggeration. Moreover, Dayak "head-hunting" takes quite another aspect when we learn that the supposed "headhunter" is not actuated at all by personal passion. He acts under what he considers as a moral obligation towards his tribe, just as the European judge who, in obedience to the same, evidently wrong, principle of "blood for blood," hands over the condemned murderer to the hangman. Both the Dayak and the judge would even feel remorse if sympathy moved them to spare the murderer. That is why the Dayaks, apart from the murders they commit when actuated by their conception of justice, are depicted, by all those who know them, as a most sympathetic people. Thus Carl Bock, the same author who has given such a terrible picture of head-hunting, writes: "As regards morality, I am bound to assign to the Dayaks a high place in the scale of civilization.... Robberies and theft are entirely unknown among them. They also are very truthful.... If I did not always get the 'whole truth,' I always got, at least, nothing but the truth from them. I wish I could say the same of the Malays" (pp. 209 and 210). Bock's testimony is fully corroborated by that of Ida Pfeiffer. "I fully recognized," she wrote, "that I should be pleased longer to travel among them. I usually found them honest, good, and reserved ... much more so than any other nation I know."(43) Stoltze used almost the same language when speaking of them. The Dayaks usually have but one wife, and treat her well. They are very sociable, and every morning the whole clan goes out for fishing, hunting, or gardening, in large parties. Their villages consist of big huts, each of which is inhabited by a dozen families, and sometimes by several hundred persons, peacefully living together. They show great respect for their wives, and are fond of their children; and when one of them falls ill, the women nurse him in turn. As a rule they are very moderate in eating and drinking. Such is the Dayak in his real daily life. It would be a tedious repetition if more illustrations from savage life were given. Wherever we go we find the same sociable manners, the same spirit of solidarity. And when we endeavour to penetrate into the darkness of past ages, we find the same tribal life, the same associations of men, however primitive, for mutual support. Therefore, Darwin was quite right when he saw in man's social qualities the chief factor for his further evolution, and Darwin's vulgarizers are entirely wrong when they maintain the contrary. The small strength and speed of man (he wrote), his want of natural weapons, etc., are more than counterbalanced, firstly, by his intellectual faculties (which, he remarked on another page, have been chiefly or even exclusively gained for the benefit of the community). and secondly, by his social qualities, which led him to give and receive aid from his fellow men.(44) In the last century the "savage" and his "life in the state of nature" were idealized. But now men of science have gone to the opposite extreme, especially since some of them, anxious to prove the animal origin of man, but not conversant with the social aspects of animal life, began to charge the savage with all imaginable "bestial" features. It is evident, however, that this exaggeration is even more unscientific than Rousseau's idealization. The savage is not an ideal of virtue, nor is he an ideal of "savagery." But the primitive man has one quality, elaborated and maintained by the very necessities of his hard struggle for life--he identifies his own existence with that of his tribe; and without that quality mankind never would have attained the level it has attained now. Primitive folk, as has been already said, so much identify their lives with that of the tribe, that each of their acts, however insignificant, is considered as a tribal affair. Their whole behaviour is regulated by an infinite series of unwritten rules of propriety which are the fruit of their common experience as to what is good or bad--that is, beneficial or harmful for their own tribe. Of course, the reasonings upon which their rules of propriety are based sometimes are absurd in the extreme. Many of them originate in superstition; and altogether, in whatever the savage does, he sees but the immediate consequences of his acts; he cannot foresee their indirect and ulterior consequences--thus simply exaggerating a defect with which Bentham reproached civilized legislators. But, absurd or not, the savage obeys the prescriptions of the common law, however inconvenient they may be. He obeys them even more blindly than the civilized man obeys the prescriptions of the written law. His common law is his religion; it is his very habit of living. The idea of the clan is always present to his mind, and self-restriction and self-sacrifice in the interest of the clan are of daily occurrence. If the savage has infringed one of the smaller tribal rules, he is prosecuted by the mockeries of the women. If the infringement is grave, he is tortured day and night by the fear of having called a calamity upon his tribe. If he has wounded by accident any one of his own clan, and thus has committed the greatest of all crimes, he grows quite miserable: he runs away in the woods, and is ready to commit suicide, unless the tribe absolves him by inflicting upon him a physical pain and sheds some of his own blood.(45) Within the tribe everything is shared in common; every morsel of food is divided among all present; and if the savage is alone in the woods, he does not begin eating before he has loudly shouted thrice an invitation to any one who may hear his voice to share his meal.(46) In short, within the tribe the rule of "each for all" is supreme, so long as the separate family has not yet broken up the tribal unity. But that rule is not extended to the neighbouring clans, or tribes, even when they are federated for mutual protection. Each tribe, or clan, is a separate unity. Just as among mammals and birds, the territory is roughly allotted among separate tribes, and, except in times of war, the boundaries are respected. On entering the territory of his neighbours one must show that he has no bad intentions. The louder one heralds his coming, the more confidence he wins; and if he enters a house, he must deposit his hatchet at the entrance. But no tribe is bound to share its food with the others: it may do so or it may not. Therefore the life of the savage is divided into two sets of actions, and appears under two different ethical aspects: the relations within the tribe, and the relations with the outsiders; and (like our international law) the "inter-tribal" law widely differs from the common law. Therefore, when it comes to a war the most revolting cruelties may be considered as so many claims upon the admiration of the tribe. This double conception of morality passes through the whole evolution of mankind, and maintains itself until now. We Europeans have realized some progress--not immense, at any rate--in eradicating that double conception of ethics; but it also must be said that while we have in some measure extended our ideas of solidarity--in theory, at least--over the nation, and partly over other nations as well, we have lessened the bonds of solidarity within our own nations, and even within our own families. The appearance of a separate family amidst the clan necessarily disturbs the established unity. A separate family means separate property and accumulation of wealth. We saw how the Eskimos obviate its inconveniences; and it is one of the most interesting studies to follow in the course of ages the different institutions (village communities, guilds, and so on) by means of which the masses endeavoured to maintain the tribal unity, notwithstanding the agencies which were at work to break it down. On the other hand, the first rudiments of knowledge which appeared at an extremely remote epoch, when they confounded themselves with witchcraft, also became a power in the hands of the individual which could be used against the tribe. They were carefully kept in secrecy, and transmitted to the initiated only, in the secret societies of witches, shamans, and priests, which we find among all savages. By the same time, wars and invasions created military authority, as also castes of warriors, whose associations or clubs acquired great powers. However, at no period of man's life were wars the normal state of existence. While warriors exterminated each other, and the priests celebrated their massacres, the masses continued to live their daily life, they prosecuted their daily toil. And it is one of the most interesting studies to follow that life of the masses; to study the means by which they maintained their own social organization, which was based upon their own conceptions of equity, mutual aid, and mutual support--of common law, in a word, even when they were submitted to the most ferocious theocracy or autocracy in the State. NOTES: 1. Nineteenth Century, February 1888, p. 165. 2. The Descent of Man, end of ch. ii. pp. 63 and 64 of the 2nd edition. 3. Anthropologists who fully endorse the above views as regards man nevertheless intimate, sometimes, that the apes live in polygamous families, under the leadership of "a strong and jealous male." I do not know how far that assertion is based upon conclusive observation. But the passage from Brehm's Life of Animals, which is sometimes referred to, can hardly be taken as very conclusive. It occurs in his general description of monkeys; but his more detailed descriptions of separate species either contradict it or do not confirm it. Even as regards the cercopitheques, Brehm is affirmative in saying that they "nearly always live in bands, and very seldom in families" (French edition, p. 59). As to other species, the very numbers of their bands, always containing many males, render the "polygamous family" more than doubtful further observation is evidently wanted. 4. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, fifth edition, 1890. 5. That extension of the ice-cap is admitted by most of the geologists who have specially studied the glacial age. The Russian Geological Survey already has taken this view as regards Russia, and most German specialists maintain it as regards Germany. The glaciation of most of the central plateau of France will not fail to be recognized by the French geologists, when they pay more attention to the glacial deposits altogether. 6. Prehistoric Times, pp. 232 and 242. 7. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart, 1861; Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization, New York, 1877; J.F. MacLennan, Studies in Ancient History, 1st series, new edition, 1886; 2nd series, 1896; L. Fison and A.W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, Melbourne. These four writers--as has been very truly remarked by Giraud Teulon,--starting from different facts and different general ideas, and following different methods, have come to the same conclusion. To Bachofen we owe the notion of the maternal family and the maternal succession; to Morgan--the system of kinship, Malayan and Turanian, and a highly gifted sketch of the main phases of human evolution; to MacLennan--the law of exogeny; and to Fison and Howitt--the cuadro, or scheme, of the conjugal societies in Australia. All four end in establishing the same fact of the tribal origin of the family. When Bachofen first drew attention to the maternal family, in his epoch-making work, and Morgan described the clan-organization,--both concurring to the almost general extension of these forms and maintaining that the marriage laws lie at the very basis of the consecutive steps of human evolution, they were accused of exaggeration. However, the most careful researches prosecuted since, by a phalanx of students of ancient law, have proved that all races of mankind bear traces of having passed through similar stages of development of marriage laws, such as we now see in force among certain savages. See the works of Post, Dargun, Kovalevsky, Lubbock, and their numerous followers: Lippert, Mucke, etc. 8. None 9. For the Semites and the Aryans, see especially Prof. Maxim Kovalevsky's Primitive Law (in Russian), Moscow, 1886 and 1887. Also his Lectures delivered at Stockholm (Tableau des origines et de l'evolution de la famille et de la propriete, Stockholm, 1890), which represents an admirable review of the whole question. Cf. also A. Post, Die Geschlechtsgenossenschaft der Urzeit, Oldenburg 1875. 10. It would be impossible to enter here into a discussion of the origin of the marriage restrictions. Let me only remark that a division into groups, similar to Morgan's Hawaian, exists among birds; the young broods live together separately from their parents. A like division might probably be traced among some mammals as well. As to the prohibition of relations between brothers and sisters, it is more likely to have arisen, not from speculations about the bad effects of consanguinity, which speculations really do not seem probable, but to avoid the too-easy precocity of like marriages. Under close cohabitation it must have become of imperious necessity. I must also remark that in discussing the origin of new customs altogether, we must keep in mind that the savages, like us, have their "thinkers" and savants-wizards, doctors, prophets, etc.--whose knowledge and ideas are in advance upon those of the masses. United as they are in their secret unions (another almost universal feature) they are certainly capable of exercising a powerful influence, and of enforcing customs the utility of which may not yet be recognized by the majority of the tribe. 11. Col. Collins, in Philips' Researches in South Africa, London, 1828. Quoted by Waitz, ii. 334. 12. Lichtenstein's Reisen im sudlichen Afrika, ii. Pp. 92, 97. Berlin, 1811. 13. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, ii. pp. 335 seq. See also Fritsch's Die Eingeboren Süd-Afrika's, Breslau, 1872, pp. 386 seq.; and Drei Jahre in Süd-Afrika. Also W. Bleck, A Brief Account of Bushmen Folklore, Capetown, 1875. 14. Elisee Reclus, Geographie Universelle, xiii. 475. 15. P. Kolben, The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, translated from the German by Mr. Medley, London, 1731, vol. i. pp. 59, 71, 333, 336, etc. 16. Quoted in Waitz's Anthropologie, ii. 335 seq. 17. The natives living in the north of Sidney, and speaking the Kamilaroi language, are best known under this aspect, through the capital work of Lorimer Fison and A.W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnaii, Melbourne, 1880. See also A.W. Howitt's "Further Note on the Australian Class Systems," in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1889, vol. xviii. p. 31, showing the wide extension of the same organization in Australia. 18. The Folklore, Manners, etc., of Australian Aborigines, Adelaide, 1879, p. 11. 19. Grey's Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, London, 1841, vol. ii. pp. 237, 298. 20. Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie, 1888, vol. xi. p. 652. I abridge the answers. 21. Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie, 1888, vol. xi. p. 386. 22. The same is the practice with the Papuas of Kaimani Bay, who have a high reputation of honesty. "It never happens that the Papua be untrue to his promise," Finsch says in Neuguinea und seine Bewohner, Bremen, 1865, p. 829. 23. Izvestia of the Russian Geographical Society, 1880, pp. 161 seq. Few books of travel give a better insight into the petty details of the daily life of savages than these scraps from Maklay's notebooks. 24. L.F. Martial, in Mission Scientifique au Cap Horn, Paris, 1883, vol. i. pp. 183-201. 25. Captain Holm's Expedition to East Greenland. 26. In Australia whole clans have been seen exchanging all their wives, in order to conjure a calamity (Post, Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Familienrechts, 1890, p. 342). More brotherhood is their specific against calamities. 27. Dr. H. Rink, The Eskimo Tribes, p. 26 (Meddelelser om Gronland, vol. xi. 1887). 28. Dr. Rink, loc. cit. p. 24. Europeans, grown in the respect of Roman law, are seldom capable of understanding that force of tribal authority. "In fact," Dr. Rink writes, "it is not the exception, but the rule, that white men who have stayed for ten or twenty years among the Eskimo, return without any real addition to their knowledge of the traditional ideas upon which their social state is based. The white man, whether a missionary or a trader, is firm in his dogmatic opinion that the most vulgar European is better than the most distinguished native."--The Eskimo Tribes, p. 31. 29. Dall, Alaska and its Resources, Cambridge, U.S., 1870. 30. Dall saw it in Alaska, Jacobsen at Ignitok in the vicinity of the Bering Strait. Gilbert Sproat mentions it among the Vancouver indians; and Dr. Rink, who describes the periodical exhibitions just mentioned, adds: "The principal use of the accumulation of personal wealth is for periodically distributing it." He also mentions (loc. cit. p. 31) "the destruction of property for the same purpose," (of maintaining equality). 31. See Appendix VIII. 32. Veniaminoff, Memoirs relative to the District of Unalashka (Russian), 3 vols. St. Petersburg, 1840. Extracts, in English, from the above are given in Dall's Alaska. A like description of the Australians' morality is given in Nature, xlii. p. 639. 33. It is most remarkable that several writers (Middendorff, Schrenk, O. Finsch) described the Ostyaks and Samoyedes in almost the same words. Even when drunken, their quarrels are insignificant. "For a hundred years one single murder has been committed in the tundra;" "their children never fight;" "anything may be left for years in the tundra, even food and gin, and nobody will touch it;" and so on. Gilbert Sproat "never witnessed a fight between two sober natives" of the Aht Indians of Vancouver Island. "Quarrelling is also rare among their children." (Rink, loc. cit.) And so on. 34. Gill, quoted in Gerland and Waitz's Anthropologie, v. 641. See also pp. 636-640, where many facts of parental and filial love are quoted. 35. Primitive Folk, London, 1891. 36. Gerland, loc. cit. v. 636. 37. Erskine, quoted in Gerland and Waitz's Anthropologie, v. 640. 38. W.T. Pritchard, Polynesian Reminiscences, London, 1866, p. 363. 39. It is remarkable, however, that in case of a sentence of death, nobody will take upon himself to be the executioner. Every one throws his stone, or gives his blow with the hatchet, carefully avoiding to give a mortal blow. At a later epoch, the priest will stab the victim with a sacred knife. Still later, it will be the king, until civilization invents the hired hangman. See Bastian's deep remarks upon this subject in Der Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. Die Blutrache, pp. 1-36. A remainder of this tribal habit, I am told by Professor E. Nys, has survived in military executions till our own times. In the middle portion of the nineteenth century it was the habit to load the rifles of the twelve soldiers called out for shooting the condemned victim, with eleven ball-cartridges and one blank cartridge. As the soldiers never knew who of them had the latter, each one could console his disturbed conscience by thinking that he was not one of the murderers. 40. In Africa, and elsewhere too, it is a widely-spread habit, that if a theft has been committed, the next clan has to restore the equivalent of the stolen thing, and then look itself for the thief. A. H. Post, Afrikanische Jurisprudenz, Leipzig, 1887, vol. i. p. 77. 41. See Prof. M. Kovalevsky's Modern Customs and Ancient Law (Russian), Moscow, 1886, vol. ii., which contains many important considerations upon this subject. 42. See Carl Bock, The Head Hunters of Borneo, London, 1881. I am told, however, by Sir Hugh Law, who was for a long time Governor of Borneo, that the "head-hunting" described in this book is grossly exaggerated. Altogether, my informant speaks of the Dayaks in exactly the same sympathetic terms as Ida Pfeiffer. Let me add that Mary Kingsley speaks in her book on West Africa in the same sympathetic terms of the Fans, who had been represented formerly as the most "terrible cannibals." 43. Ida Pfeiffer, Meine zweite Weltriese, Wien, 1856, vol. i. pp. 116 seq. See also Muller and Temminch's Dutch Possessions in Archipelagic India, quoted by Elisee Reclus, in Geographie Universelle, xiii. 44. Descent of Man, second ed., pp. 63, 64. 45. See Bastian's Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. p. 7. Also Grey, loc. cit. ii. p. 238. 46. Miklukho-Maclay, loc. cit. Same habit with the Hottentots. CHAPTER IV MUTUAL AID AMONG THE BARBARIANS The great migrations. New organization rendered necessary. The village community. Communal work. Judicial procedure. Inter-tribal law. Illustrations from the life of our contemporaries. Buryates. Kabyles. Caucasian mountaineers. African stems. It is not possible to study primitive mankind without being deeply impressed by the sociability it has displayed since its very first steps in life. Traces of human societies are found in the relics of both the oldest and the later stone age; and, when we come to observe the savages whose manners of life are still those of neolithic man, we find them closely bound together by an extremely ancient clan organization which enables them to combine their individually weak forces, to enjoy life in common, and to progress. Man is no exception in nature. He also is subject to the great principle of Mutual Aid which grants the best chances of survival to those who best support each other in the struggle for life. These were the conclusions arrived at in the previous chapters. However, as soon as we come to a higher stage of civilization, and refer to history which already has something to say about that stage, we are bewildered by the struggles and conflicts which it reveals. The old bonds seem entirely to be broken. Stems are seen to fight against stems, tribes against tribes, individuals against individuals; and out of this chaotic contest of hostile forces, mankind issues divided into castes, enslaved to despots, separated into States always ready to wage war against each other. And, with this history of mankind in his hands, the pessimist philosopher triumphantly concludes that warfare and oppression are the very essence of human nature; that the warlike and predatory instincts of man can only be restrained within certain limits by a strong authority which enforces peace and thus gives an opportunity to the few and nobler ones to prepare a better life for humanity in times to come. And yet, as soon as the every-day life of man during the historical period is submitted to a closer analysis and so it has been, of late, by many patient students of very early institutions--it appears at once under quite a different aspect. Leaving aside the preconceived ideas of most historians and their pronounced predilection for the dramatic aspects of history, we see that the very documents they habitually peruse are such as to exaggerate the part of human life given to struggles and to underrate its peaceful moods. The bright and sunny days are lost sight of in the gales and storms. Even in our own time, the cumbersome records which we prepare for the future historian, in our Press, our law courts, our Government offices, and even in our fiction and poetry, suffer from the same one-sidedness. They hand down to posterity the most minute descriptions of every war, every battle and skirmish, every contest and act of violence, every kind of individual suffering; but they hardly bear any trace of the countless acts of mutual support and devotion which every one of us knows from his own experience; they hardly take notice of what makes the very essence of our daily life--our social instincts and manners. No wonder, then, if the records of the past were so imperfect. The annalists of old never failed to chronicle the petty wars and calamities which harassed their contemporaries; but they paid no attention whatever to the life of the masses, although the masses chiefly used to toil peacefully while the few indulged in fighting. The epic poems, the inscriptions on monuments, the treaties of peace--nearly all historical documents bear the same character; they deal with breaches of peace, not with peace itself. So that the best-intentioned historian unconsciously draws a distorted picture of the times he endeavours to depict; and, to restore the real proportion between conflict and union, we are now bound to enter into a minute analysis of thousands of small facts and faint indications accidentally preserved in the relics of the past; to interpret them with the aid of comparative ethnology; and, after having heard so much about what used to divide men, to reconstruct stone by stone the institutions which used to unite them. Ere long history will have to be re-written on new lines, so as to take into account these two currents of human life and to appreciate the part played by each of them in evolution. But in the meantime we may avail ourselves of the immense preparatory work recently done towards restoring the leading features of the second current, so much neglected. From the better-known periods of history we may take some illustrations of the life of the masses, in order to indicate the part played by mutual support during those periods; and, in so doing, we may dispense (for the sake of brevity) from going as far back as the Egyptian, or even the Greek and Roman antiquity. For, in fact, the evolution of mankind has not had the character of one unbroken series. Several times civilization came to an end in one given region, with one given race, and began anew elsewhere, among other races. But at each fresh start it began again with the same clan institutions which we have seen among the savages. So that if we take the last start of our own civilization, when it began afresh in the first centuries of our era, among those whom the Romans called the "barbarians," we shall have the whole scale of evolution, beginning with the gentes and ending in the institutions of our own time. To these illustrations the following pages will be devoted. Men of science have not yet settled upon the causes which some two thousand years ago drove whole nations from Asia into Europe and resulted in the great migrations of barbarians which put an end to the West Roman Empire. One cause, however, is naturally suggested to the geographer as he contemplates the ruins of populous cities in the deserts of Central Asia, or follows the old beds of rivers now disappeared and the wide outlines of lakes now reduced to the size of mere ponds. It is desiccation: a quite recent desiccation, continued still at a speed which we formerly were not prepared to admit.(1) Against it man was powerless. When the inhabitants of North-West Mongolia and East Turkestan saw that water was abandoning them, they had no course open to them but to move down the broad valleys leading to the lowlands, and to thrust westwards the inhabitants of the plains.(2) Stems after stems were thus thrown into Europe, compelling other stems to move and to remove for centuries in succession, westwards and eastwards, in search of new and more or less permanent abodes. Races were mixing with races during those migrations, aborigines with immigrants, Aryans with Ural-Altayans; and it would have been no wonder if the social institutions which had kept them together in their mother countries had been totally wrecked during the stratification of races which took place in Europe and Asia. But they were not wrecked; they simply underwent the modification which was required by the new conditions of life. The Teutons, the Celts, the Scandinavians, the Slavonians, and others, when they first came in contact with the Romans, were in a transitional state of social organization. The clan unions, based upon a real or supposed common origin, had kept them together for many thousands of years in succession. But these unions could answer their purpose so long only as there were no separate families within the gens or clan itself. However, for causes already mentioned, the separate patriarchal family had slowly but steadily developed within the clans, and in the long run it evidently meant the individual accumulation of wealth and power, and the hereditary transmission of both. The frequent migrations of the barbarians and the ensuing wars only hastened the division of the gentes into separate families, while the dispersing of stems and their mingling with strangers offered singular facilities for the ultimate disintegration of those unions which were based upon kinship. The barbarians thus stood in a position of either seeing their clans dissolved into loose aggregations of families, of which the wealthiest, especially if combining sacerdotal functions or military repute with wealth, would have succeeded in imposing their authority upon the others; or of finding out some new form of organization based upon some new principle. Many stems had no force to resist disintegration: they broke up and were lost for history. But the more vigorous ones did not disintegrate. They came out of the ordeal with a new organization--the village community--which kept them together for the next fifteen centuries or more. The conception of a common territory, appropriated or protected by common efforts, was elaborated, and it took the place of the vanishing conceptions of common descent. The common gods gradually lost their character of ancestors and were endowed with a local territorial character. They became the gods or saints of a given locality; "the land" was identified with its inhabitants. Territorial unions grew up instead of the consanguine unions of old, and this new organization evidently offered many advantages under the given circumstances. It recognized the independence of the family and even emphasized it, the village community disclaiming all rights of interference in what was going on within the family enclosure; it gave much more freedom to personal initiative; it was not hostile in principle to union between men of different descent, and it maintained at the same time the necessary cohesion of action and thought, while it was strong enough to oppose the dominative tendencies of the minorities of wizards, priests, and professional or distinguished warriors. Consequently it became the primary cell of future organization, and with many nations the village community has retained this character until now. It is now known, and scarcely contested, that the village community was not a specific feature of the Slavonians, nor even of the ancient Teutons. It prevailed in England during both the Saxon and Norman times, and partially survived till the last century;(3) it was at the bottom of the social organization of old Scotland, old Ireland, and old Wales. In France, the communal possession and the communal allotment of arable land by the village folkmote persisted from the first centuries of our era till the times of Turgot, who found the folkmotes "too noisy" and therefore abolished them. It survived Roman rule in Italy, and revived after the fall of the Roman Empire. It was the rule with the Scandinavians, the Slavonians, the Finns (in the pittaya, as also, probably, the kihla-kunta), the Coures, and the lives. The village community in India--past and present, Aryan and non-Aryan--is well known through the epoch-making works of Sir Henry Maine; and Elphinstone has described it among the Afghans. We also find it in the Mongolian oulous, the Kabyle thaddart, the Javanese dessa, the Malayan kota or tofa, and under a variety of names in Abyssinia, the Soudan, in the interior of Africa, with natives of both Americas, with all the small and large tribes of the Pacific archipelagoes. In short, we do not know one single human race or one single nation which has not had its period of village communities. This fact alone disposes of the theory according to which the village community in Europe would have been a servile growth. It is anterior to serfdom, and even servile submission was powerless to break it. It was a universal phase of evolution, a natural outcome of the clan organization, with all those stems, at least, which have played, or play still, some part in history.(4) It was a natural growth, and an absolute uniformity in its structure was therefore not possible. As a rule, it was a union between families considered as of common descent and owning a certain territory in common. But with some stems, and under certain circumstances, the families used to grow very numerous before they threw off new buds in the shape of new families; five, six, or seven generations continued to live under the same roof, or within the same enclosure, owning their joint household and cattle in common, and taking their meals at the common hearth. They kept in such case to what ethnology knows as the "joint family," or the "undivided household," which we still see all over China, in India, in the South Slavonian zadruga, and occasionally find in Africa, in America, in Denmark, in North Russia, and West France.(5) With other stems, or in other circumstances, not yet well specified, the families did not attain the same proportions; the grandsons, and occasionally the sons, left the household as soon as they were married, and each of them started a new cell of his own. But, joint or not, clustered together or scattered in the woods, the families remained united into village communities; several villages were grouped into tribes; and the tribes joined into confederations. Such was the social organization which developed among the so-called "barbarians," when they began to settle more or less permanently in Europe. A very long evolution was required before the gentes, or clans, recognized the separate existence of a patriarchal family in a separate hut; but even after that had been recognized, the clan, as a rule, knew no personal inheritance of property. The few things which might have belonged personally to the individual were either destroyed on his grave or buried with him. The village community, on the contrary, fully recognized the private accumulation of wealth within the family and its hereditary transmission. But wealth was conceived exclusively in the shape of movable property, including cattle, implements, arms, and the dwelling house which--"like all things that can be destroyed by fire"--belonged to the same category(6). As to private property in land, the village community did not, and could not, recognize anything of the kind, and, as a rule, it does not recognize it now. The land was the common property of the tribe, or of the whole stem, and the village community itself owned its part of the tribal territory so long only as the tribe did not claim a re-distribution of the village allotments. The clearing of the woods and the breaking of the prairies being mostly done by the communities or, at least, by the joint work of several families--always with the consent of the community--the cleared plots were held by each family for a term of four, twelve, or twenty years, after which term they were treated as parts of the arable land owned in common. Private property, or possession "for ever" was as incompatible, with the very principles and the religious conceptions of the village community as it was with the principles of the gens; so that a long influence of the Roman law and the Christian Church, which soon accepted the Roman principles, were required to accustom the barbarians to the idea of private property in land being possible.(7) And yet, even when such property, or possession for an unlimited time, was recognized, the owner of a separate estate remained a co-proprietor in the waste lands, forests, and grazing-grounds. Moreover, we continually see, especially in the history of Russia, that when a few families, acting separately, had taken possession of some land belonging to tribes which were treated as strangers, they very soon united together, and constituted a village community which in the third or fourth generation began to profess a community of origin. A whole series of institutions, partly inherited from the clan period, have developed from that basis of common ownership of land during the long succession of centuries which was required to bring the barbarians under the dominion of States organized upon the Roman or Byzantine pattern. The village community was not only a union for guaranteeing to each one his fair share in the common land, but also a union for common culture, for mutual support in all possible forms, for protection from violence, and for a further development of knowledge, national bonds, and moral conceptions; and every change in the judicial, military, educational, or economical manners had to be decided at the folkmotes of the village, the tribe, or the confederation. The community being a continuation of the gens, it inherited all its functions. It was the universitas, the mir--a world in itself. Common hunting, common fishing, and common culture of the orchards or the plantations of fruit trees was the rule with the old gentes. Common agriculture became the rule in the barbarian village communities. True, that direct testimony to this effect is scarce, and in the literature of antiquity we only have the passages of Diodorus and Julius Caesar relating to the inhabitants of the Lipari Islands, one of the Celt-Iberian tribes, and the Sueves. But there is no lack of evidence to prove that common agriculture was practised among some Teuton tribes, the Franks, and the old Scotch, Irish, and Welsh.(8) As to the later survivals of the same practice, they simply are countless. Even in perfectly Romanized France, common culture was habitual some five and twenty years ago in the Morbihan (Brittany).(9) The old Welsh cyvar, or joint team, as well as the common culture of the land allotted to the use of the village sanctuary are quite common among the tribes of Caucasus the least touched by civilization,(10) and like facts are of daily occurrence among the Russian peasants. Moreover, it is well known that many tribes of Brazil, Central America, and Mexico used to cultivate their fields in common, and that the same habit is widely spread among some Malayans, in New Caledonia, with several Negro stems, and so on.(11) In short, communal culture is so habitual with many Aryan, Ural-Altayan, Mongolian, Negro, Red Indian, Malayan, and Melanesian stems that we must consider it as a universal--though not as the only possible--form of primitive agriculture.(12) Communal cultivation does not, however, imply by necessity communal consumption. Already under the clan organization we often see that when the boats laden with fruits or fish return to the village, the food they bring in is divided among the huts and the "long houses" inhabited by either several families or the youth, and is cooked separately at each separate hearth. The habit of taking meals in a narrower circle of relatives or associates thus prevails at an early period of clan life. It became the rule in the village community. Even the food grown in common was usually divided between the households after part of it had been laid in store for communal use. However, the tradition of communal meals was piously kept alive; every available opportunity, such as the commemoration of the ancestors, the religious festivals, the beginning and the end of field work, the births, the marriages, and the funerals, being seized upon to bring the community to a common meal. Even now this habit, well known in this country as the "harvest supper," is the last to disappear. On the other hand, even when the fields had long since ceased to be tilled and sown in common, a variety of agricultural work continued, and continues still, to be performed by the community. Some part of the communal land is still cultivated in many cases in common, either for the use of the destitute, or for refilling the communal stores, or for using the produce at the religious festivals. The irrigation canals are digged and repaired in common. The communal meadows are mown by the community; and the sight of a Russian commune mowing a meadow--the men rivalling each other in their advance with the scythe, while the women turn the grass over and throw it up into heaps--is one of the most inspiring sights; it shows what human work might be and ought to be. The hay, in such case, is divided among the separate households, and it is evident that no one has the right of taking hay from a neighbour's stack without his permission; but the limitation of this last rule among the Caucasian Ossetes is most noteworthy. When the cuckoo cries and announces that spring is coming, and that the meadows will soon be clothed again with grass, every one in need has the right of taking from a neighbour's stack the hay he wants for his cattle.(13) The old communal rights are thus re-asserted, as if to prove how contrary unbridled individualism is to human nature. When the European traveller lands in some small island of the Pacific, and, seeing at a distance a grove of palm trees, walks in that direction, he is astonished to discover that the little villages are connected by roads paved with big stones, quite comfortable for the unshod natives, and very similar to the "old roads" of the Swiss mountains. Such roads were traced by the "barbarians" all over Europe, and one must have travelled in wild, thinly-peopled countries, far away from the chief lines of communication, to realize in full the immense work that must have been performed by the barbarian communities in order to conquer the woody and marshy wilderness which Europe was some two thousand years ago. Isolated families, having no tools, and weak as they were, could not have conquered it; the wilderness would have overpowered them. Village communities alone, working in common, could master the wild forests, the sinking marshes, and the endless steppes. The rough roads, the ferries, the wooden bridges taken away in the winter and rebuilt after the spring flood was over, the fences and the palisaded walls of the villages, the earthen forts and the small towers with which the territory was dottedall these were the work of the barbarian communities. And when a community grew numerous it used to throw off a new bud. A new community arose at a distance, thus step by step bringing the woods and the steppes under the dominion of man. The whole making of European nations was such a budding of the village communities. Even now-a-days the Russian peasants, if they are not quite broken down by misery, migrate in communities, and they till the soil and build the houses in com mon when they settle on the banks of the Amur, or in Manitoba. And even the English, when they first began to colonize America, used to return to the old system; they grouped into village communities.(14) The village community was the chief arm of the barbarians in their hard struggle against a hostile nature. It also was the bond they opposed to oppression by the cunningest and the strongest which so easily might have developed during those disturbed times. The imaginary barbarian--the man who fights and kills at his mere caprice--existed no more than the "bloodthirsty" savage. The real barbarian was living, on the contrary, under a wide series of institutions, imbued with considerations as to what may be useful or noxious to his tribe or confederation, and these institutions were piously handed down from generation to generation in verses and songs, in proverbs or triads, in sentences and instructions. The more we study them the more we recognize the narrow bonds which united men in their villages. Every quarrel arising between two individuals was treated as a communal affair--even the offensive words that might have been uttered during a quarrel being considered as an offence to the community and its ancestors. They had to be repaired by amends made both to the individual and the community;(15) and if a quarrel ended in a fight and wounds, the man who stood by and did not interpose was treated as if he himself had inflicted the wounds.(16) The judicial procedure was imbued with the same spirit. Every dispute was brought first before mediators or arbiters, and it mostly ended with them, the arbiters playing a very important part in barbarian society. But if the case was too grave to be settled in this way, it came before the folkmote, which was bound "to find the sentence," and pronounced it in a conditional form; that is, "such compensation was due, if the wrong be proved," and the wrong had to be proved or disclaimed by six or twelve persons confirming or denying the fact by oath; ordeal being resorted to in case of contradiction between the two sets of jurors. Such procedure, which remained in force for more than two thousand years in succession, speaks volumes for itself; it shows how close were the bonds between all members of the community. Moreover, there was no other authority to enforce the decisions of the folkmote besides its own moral authority. The only possible menace was that the community might declare the rebel an outlaw, but even this menace was reciprocal. A man discontented with the folkmote could declare that he would abandon the tribe and go over to another tribe--a most dreadful menace, as it was sure to bring all kinds of misfortunes upon a tribe that might have been unfair to one of its members.(17) A rebellion against a right decision of the customary law was simply "inconceivable," as Henry Maine has so well said, because "law, morality, and fact" could not be separated from each other in those times.(18) The moral authority of the commune was so great that even at a much later epoch, when the village communities fell into submission to the feudal lord, they maintained their judicial powers; they only permitted the lord, or his deputy, to "find" the above conditional sentence in accordance with the customary law he had sworn to follow, and to levy for himself the fine (the fred) due to the commune. But for a long time, the lord himself, if he remained a co-proprietor in the waste land of the commune, submitted in communal affairs to its decisions. Noble or ecclesiastic, he had to submit to the folkmote--Wer daselbst Wasser und Weid genusst, muss gehorsam sein--"Who enjoys here the right of water and pasture must obey"--was the old saying. Even when the peasants became serfs under the lord, he was bound to appear before the folkmote when they summoned him.(19) In their conceptions of justice the barbarians evidently did not much differ from the savages. They also maintained the idea that a murder must be followed by putting the murderer to death; that wounds had to be punished by equal wounds, and that the wronged family was bound to fulfil the sentence of the customary law. This was a holy duty, a duty towards the ancestors, which had to be accomplished in broad daylight, never in secrecy, and rendered widely known. Therefore the most inspired passages of the sagas and epic poetry altogether are those which glorify what was supposed to be justice. The gods themselves joined in aiding it. However, the predominant feature of barbarian justice is, on the one hand, to limit the numbers of persons who may be involved in a feud, and, on the other hand, to extirpate the brutal idea of blood for blood and wounds for wounds, by substituting for it the system of compensation. The barbarian codes which were collections of common law rules written down for the use of judges--"first permitted, then encouraged, and at last enforced," compensation instead of revenge.(20) The compensation has, however, been totally misunderstood by those who represented it as a fine, and as a sort of carte blanche given to the rich man to do whatever he liked. The compensation money (wergeld), which was quite different from the fine or fred,(21) was habitually so high for all kinds of active offences that it certainly was no encouragement for such offences. In case of a murder it usually exceeded all the possible fortune of the murderer "Eighteen times eighteen cows" is the compensation with the Ossetes who do not know how to reckon above eighteen, while with the African tribes it attains 800 cows or 100 camels with their young, or 416 sheep in the poorer tribes.(22) In the great majority of cases, the compensation money could not be paid at all, so that the murderer had no issue but to induce the wronged family, by repentance, to adopt him. Even now, in the Caucasus, when feuds come to an end, the offender touches with his lips the breast of the oldest woman of the tribe, and becomes a "milk-brother" to all men of the wronged family.(23) With several African tribes he must give his daughter, or sister, in marriage to some one of the family; with other tribes he is bound to marry the woman whom he has made a widow; and in all cases he becomes a member of the family, whose opinion is taken in all important family matters.(24) Far from acting with disregard to human life, the barbarians, moreover, knew nothing of the horrid punishments introduced at a later epoch by the laic and canonic laws under Roman and Byzantine influence. For, if the Saxon code admitted the death penalty rather freely even in cases of incendiarism and armed robbery, the other barbarian codes pronounced it exclusively in cases of betrayal of one's kin, and sacrilege against the community's gods, as the only means to appease the gods. All this, as seen is very far from the supposed "moral dissoluteness" of the barbarians. On the contrary, we cannot but admire the deeply moral principles elaborated within the early village communities which found their expression in Welsh triads, in legends about King Arthur, in Brehon commentaries,(25) in old German legends and so on, or find still their expression in the sayings of the modern barbarians. In his introduction to The Story of Burnt Njal, George Dasent very justly sums up as follows the qualities of a Northman, as they appear in the sagas:-- To do what lay before him openly and like a man, without fear of either foes, fiends, or fate; ... to be free and daring in all his deeds; to be gentle and generous to his friends and kinsmen; to be stern and grim to his foes [those who are under the lex talionis], but even towards them to fulfil all bounden duties.... To be no truce-breaker, nor tale-bearer, nor backbiter. To utter nothing against any man that he would not dare to tell him to his face. To turn no man from his door who sought food or shelter, even though he were a foe.(26) The same or still better principles permeate the Welsh epic poetry and triads. To act "according to the nature of mildness and the principles of equity," without regard to the foes or to the friends, and "to repair the wrong," are the highest duties of man; "evil is death, good is life," exclaims the poet legislator.(27) "The World would be fool, if agreements made on lips were not honourable"--the Brehon law says. And the humble Shamanist Mordovian, after having praised the same qualities, will add, moreover, in his principles of customary law, that "among neighbours the cow and the milking-jar are in common;" that, "the cow must be milked for yourself and him who may ask milk;" that "the body of a child reddens from the stroke, but the face of him who strikes reddens from shame;"(28) and so on. Many pages might be filled with like principles expressed and followed by the "barbarians." One feature more of the old village communities deserves a special mention. It is the gradual extension of the circle of men embraced by the feelings of solidarity. Not only the tribes federated into stems, but the stems as well, even though of different origin, joined together in confederations. Some unions were so close that, for instance, the Vandals, after part of their confederation had left for the Rhine, and thence went over to Spain and Africa, respected for forty consecutive years the landmarks and the abandoned villages of their confederates, and did not take possession of them until they had ascertained through envoys that their confederates did not intend to return. With other barbarians, the soil was cultivated by one part of the stem, while the other part fought on or beyond the frontiers of the common territory. As to the leagues between several stems, they were quite habitual. The Sicambers united with the Cherusques and the Sueves, the Quades with the Sarmates; the Sarmates with the Alans, the Carpes, and the Huns. Later on, we also see the conception of nations gradually developing in Europe, long before anything like a State had grown in any part of the continent occupied by the barbarians. These nations--for it is impossible to refuse the name of a nation to the Merovingian France, or to the Russia of the eleventh and twelfth century--were nevertheless kept together by nothing else but a community of language, and a tacit agreement of the small republics to take their dukes from none but one special family. Wars were certainly unavoidable; migration means war; but Sir Henry Maine has already fully proved in his remarkable study of the tribal origin of International Law, that "Man has never been so ferocious or so stupid as to submit to such an evil as war without some kind of effort to prevent it," and he has shown how exceedingly great is "the number of ancient institutions which bear the marks of a design to stand in the way of war, or to provide an alternative to it."(29) In reality, man is so far from the warlike being he is supposed to be, that when the barbarians had once settled they so rapidly lost the very habits of warfare that very soon they were compelled to keep special dukes followed by special scholae or bands of warriors, in order to protect them from possible intruders. They preferred peaceful toil to war, the very peacefulness of man being the cause of the specialization of the warrior's trade, which specialization resulted later on in serfdom and in all the wars of the "States period" of human history. History finds great difficulties in restoring to life the institutions of the barbarians. At every step the historian meets with some faint indication which he is unable to explain with the aid of his own documents only. But a broad light is thrown on the past as soon as we refer to the institutions of the very numerous tribes which are still living under a social organization almost identical with that of our barbarian ancestors. Here we simply have the difficulty of choice, because the islands of the Pacific, the steppes of Asia, and the tablelands of Africa are real historical museums containing specimens of all possible intermediate stages which mankind has lived through, when passing from the savage gentes up to the States' organization. Let us, then, examine a few of those specimens. If we take the village communities of the Mongol Buryates, especially those of the Kudinsk Steppe on the upper Lena which have better escaped Russian influence, we have fair representatives of barbarians in a transitional state, between cattle-breeding and agriculture.(30) These Buryates are still living in "joint families"; that is, although each son, when he is married, goes to live in a separate hut, the huts of at least three generations remain within the same enclosure, and the joint family work in common in their fields, and own in common their joint households and their cattle, as well as their "calves' grounds" (small fenced patches of soil kept under soft grass for the rearing of calves). As a rule, the meals are taken separately in each hut; but when meat is roasted, all the twenty to sixty members of the joint household feast together. Several joint households which live in a cluster, as well as several smaller families settled in the same village--mostly debris of joint households accidentally broken up--make the oulous, or the village community; several oulouses make a tribe; and the forty-six tribes, or clans, of the Kudinsk Steppe are united into one confederation. Smaller and closer confederations are entered into, as necessity arises for special wants, by several tribes. They know no private property in land--the land being held in common by the oulous, or rather by the confederation, and if it becomes necessary, the territory is re-allotted between the different oulouses at a folkmote of the tribe, and between the forty-six tribes at a folkmote of the confederation. It is worthy of note that the same organization prevails among all the 250,000 Buryates of East Siberia, although they have been for three centuries under Russian rule, and are well acquainted with Russian institutions. With all that, inequalities of fortune rapidly develop among the Buryates, especially since the Russian Government is giving an exaggerated importance to their elected taishas (princes), whom it considers as responsible tax-collectors and representatives of the confederations in their administrative and even commercial relations with the Russians. The channels for the enrichment of the few are thus many, while the impoverishment of the great number goes hand in hand, through the appropriation of the Buryate lands by the Russians. But it is a habit with the Buryates, especially those of Kudinsk--and habit is more than law--that if a family has lost its cattle, the richer families give it some cows and horses that it may recover. As to the destitute man who has no family, he takes his meals in the huts of his congeners; he enters a hut, takes--by right, not for charity--his seat by the fire, and shares the meal which always is scrupulously divided into equal parts; he sleeps where he has taken his evening meal. Altogether, the Russian conquerors of Siberia were so much struck by the communistic practices of the Buryates, that they gave them the name of Bratskiye--"the Brotherly Ones"--and reported to Moscow. "With them everything is in common; whatever they have is shared in common." Even now, when the Lena Buryates sell their wheat, or send some of their cattle to be sold to a Russian butcher, the families of the oulous, or the tribe, put their wheat and cattle together, and sell it as a whole. Each oulous has, moreover, its grain store for loans in case of need, its communal baking oven (the four banal of the old French communities), and its blacksmith, who, like the blacksmith of the Indian communities,(31) being a member of the community, is never paid for his work within the community. He must make it for nothing, and if he utilizes his spare time for fabricating the small plates of chiselled and silvered iron which are used in Buryate land for the decoration of dress, he may occasionally sell them to a woman from another clan, but to the women of his own clan the attire is presented as a gift. Selling and buying cannot take place within the community, and the rule is so severe that when a richer family hires a labourer the labourer must be taken from another clan or from among the Russians. This habit is evidently not specific to the Buryates; it is so widely spread among the modern barbarians, Aryan and Ural-Altayan, that it must have been universal among our ancestors. The feeling of union within the confederation is kept alive by the common interests of the tribes, their folkmotes, and the festivities which are usually kept in connection with the folkmotes. The same feeling is, however, maintained by another institution, the aba, or common hunt, which is a reminiscence of a very remote past. Every autumn, the forty-six clans of Kudinsk come together for such a hunt, the produce of which is divided among all the families. Moreover, national abas, to assert the unity of the whole Buryate nation, are convoked from time to time. In such cases, all Buryate clans which are scattered for hundreds of miles west and east of Lake Baikal, are bound to send their delegate hunters. Thousands of men come together, each one bringing provisions for a whole month. Every one's share must be equal to all the others, and therefore, before being put together, they are weighed by an elected elder (always "with the hand": scales would be a profanation of the old custom). After that the hunters divide into bands of twenty, and the parties go hunting according to a well-settled plan. In such abas the entire Buryate nation revives its epic traditions of a time when it was united in a powerful league. Let me add that such communal hunts are quite usual with the Red Indians and the Chinese on the banks of the Usuri (the kada).(32) With the Kabyles, whose manners of life have been so well described by two French explorers,(33) we have barbarians still more advanced in agriculture. Their fields, irrigated and manured, are well attended to, and in the hilly tracts every available plot of land is cultivated by the spade. The Kabyles have known many vicissitudes in their history; they have followed for sometime the Mussulman law of inheritance, but, being adverse to it, they have returned, 150 years ago, to the tribal customary law of old. Accordingly, their land-tenure is of a mixed character, and private property in land exists side by side with communal possession. Still, the basis of their present organization is the village community, the thaddart, which usually consists of several joint families (kharoubas), claiming a community of origin, as well as of smaller families of strangers. Several villages are grouped into clans or tribes (arch); several tribes make the confederation (thak'ebilt); and several confederations may occasionally enter into a league, chiefly for purposes of armed defence. The Kabyles know no authority whatever besides that of the djemmaa, or folkmote of the village community. All men of age take part in it, in the open air, or in a special building provided with stone seats. And the decisions of the djemmaa are evidently taken at unanimity: that is, the discussions continue until all present agree to accept, or to submit to, some decision. There being no authority in a village community to impose a decision, this system has been practised by mankind wherever there have been village communities, and it is practised still wherever they continue to exist, i.e. by several hundred million men all over the world. The djemmaa nominates its executive--the elder, the scribe, and the treasurer; it assesses its own taxes; and it manages the repartition of the common lands, as well as all kinds of works of public utility. A great deal of work is done in common: the roads, the mosques, the fountains, the irrigation canals, the towers erected for protection from robbers, the fences, and so on, are built by the village community; while the high-roads, the larger mosques, and the great market-places are the work of the tribe. Many traces of common culture continue to exist, and the houses continue to be built by, or with the aid of, all men and women of the village. Altogether, the "aids" are of daily occurrence, and are continually called in for the cultivation of the fields, for harvesting, and so on. As to the skilled work, each community has its blacksmith, who enjoys his part of the communal land, and works for the community; when the tilling season approaches he visits every house, and repairs the tools and the ploughs, without expecting any pay, while the making of new ploughs is considered as a pious work which can by no means be recompensed in money, or by any other form of salary. As the Kabyles already have private property, they evidently have both rich and poor among them. But like all people who closely live together, and know how poverty begins, they consider it as an accident which may visit every one. "Don't say that you will never wear the beggar's bag, nor go to prison," is a proverb of the Russian peasants; the Kabyles practise it, and no difference can be detected in the external behaviour between rich and poor; when the poor convokes an "aid," the rich man works in his field, just as the poor man does it reciprocally in his turn.(34) Moreover, the djemmaas set aside certain gardens and fields, sometimes cultivated in common, for the use of the poorest members. Many like customs continue to exist. As the poorer families would not be able to buy meat, meat is regularly bought with the money of the fines, or the gifts to the djemmaa, or the payments for the use of the communal olive-oil basins, and it is distributed in equal parts among those who cannot afford buying meat themselves. And when a sheep or a bullock is killed by a family for its own use on a day which is not a market day, the fact is announced in the streets by the village crier, in order that sick people and pregnant women may take of it what they want. Mutual support permeates the life of the Kabyles, and if one of them, during a journey abroad, meets with another Kabyle in need, he is bound to come to his aid, even at the risk of his own fortune and life; if this has not been done, the djemmaa of the man who has suffered from such neglect may lodge a complaint, and the djemmaa of the selfish man will at once make good the loss. We thus come across a custom which is familiar to the students of the mediaeval merchant guilds. Every stranger who enters a Kabyle village has right to housing in the winter, and his horses can always graze on the communal lands for twenty-four hours. But in case of need he can reckon upon an almost unlimited support. Thus, during the famine of 1867-68, the Kabyles received and fed every one who sought refuge in their villages, without distinction of origin. In the district of Dellys, no less than 12,000 people who came from all parts of Algeria, and even from Morocco, were fed in this way. While people died from starvation all over Algeria, there was not one single case of death due to this cause on Kabylian soil. The djemmaas, depriving themselves of necessaries, organized relief, without ever asking any aid from the Government, or uttering the slightest complaint; they considered it as a natural duty. And while among the European settlers all kind of police measures were taken to prevent thefts and disorder resulting from such an influx of strangers, nothing of the kind was required on the Kabyles' territory: the djemmaas needed neither aid nor protection from without.(35) I can only cursorily mention two other most interesting features of Kabyle life; namely, the anaya, or protection granted to wells, canals, mosques, marketplaces, some roads, and so on, in case of war, and the cofs. In the anaya we have a series of institutions both for diminishing the evils of war and for preventing conflicts. Thus the market-place is anaya, especially if it stands on a frontier and brings Kabyles and strangers together; no one dares disturb peace in the market, and if a disturbance arises, it is quelled at once by the strangers who have gathered in the market town. The road upon which the women go from the village to the fountain also is anaya in case of war; and so on. As to the cof it is a widely spread form of association, having some characters of the mediaeval Burgschaften or Gegilden, as well as of societies both for mutual protection and for various purposes--intellectual, political, and emotional--which cannot be satisfied by the territorial organization of the village, the clan, and the con federation. The cof knows no territorial limits; it recruits its members in various villages, even among strangers; and it protects them in all possible eventualities of life. Altogether, it is an attempt at supplementing the territorial grouping by an extra-territorial grouping intended to give an expression to mutual affinities of all kinds across the frontiers. The free international association of individual tastes and ideas, which we consider as one of the best features of our own life, has thus its origin in barbarian antiquity. The mountaineers of Caucasia offer another extremely instructive field for illustrations of the same kind. In studying the present customs of the Ossetes--their joint families and communes and their judiciary conceptions--Professor Kovalevsky, in a remarkable work on Modern Custom and Ancient Law was enabled step by step to trace the similar dispositions of the old barbarian codes and even to study the origins of feudalism. With other Caucasian stems we occasionally catch a glimpse into the origin of the village community in those cases where it was not tribal but originated from a voluntary union between families of distinct origin. Such was recently the case with some Khevsoure villages, the inhabitants of which took the oath of "community and fraternity."(36) In another part of Caucasus, Daghestan, we see the growth of feudal relations between two tribes, both maintaining at the same time their village communities (and even traces of the gentile "classes"), and thus giving a living illustration of the forms taken by the conquest of Italy and Gaul by the barbarians. The victorious race, the Lezghines, who have conquered several Georgian and Tartar villages in the Zakataly district, did not bring them under the dominion of separate families; they constituted a feudal clan which now includes 12,000 households in three villages, and owns in common no less than twenty Georgian and Tartar villages. The conquerors divided their own land among their clans, and the clans divided it in equal parts among the families; but they did not interfere with the djemmaas of their tributaries which still practise the habit mentioned by Julius Caesar; namely, the djemmaa decides each year which part of the communal territory must be cultivated, and this land is divided into as many parts as there are families, and the parts are distributed by lot. It is worthy of note that although proletarians are of common occurrence among the Lezghines (who live under a system of private property in land, and common ownership of serfs(37)) they are rare among their Georgian serfs, who continue to hold their land in common. As to the customary law of the Caucasian mountaineers, it is much the same as that of the Longobards or Salic Franks, and several of its dispositions explain a good deal the judicial procedure of the barbarians of old. Being of a very impressionable character, they do their best to prevent quarrels from taking a fatal issue; so, with the Khevsoures, the swords are very soon drawn when a quarrel breaks out; but if a woman rushes out and throws among them the piece of linen which she wears on her head, the swords are at once returned to their sheaths, and the quarrel is appeased. The head-dress of the women is anaya. If a quarrel has not been stopped in time and has ended in murder, the compensation money is so considerable that the aggressor is entirely ruined for his life, unless he is adopted by the wronged family; and if he has resorted to his sword in a trifling quarrel and has inflicted wounds, he loses for ever the consideration of his kin. In all disputes, mediators take the matter in hand; they select from among the members of the clan the judges--six in smaller affairs, and from ten to fifteen in more serious matters--and Russian observers testify to the absolute incorruptibility of the judges. An oath has such a significance that men enjoying general esteem are dispensed from taking it: a simple affirmation is quite sufficient, the more so as in grave affairs the Khevsoure never hesitates to recognize his guilt (I mean, of course, the Khevsoure untouched yet by civilization). The oath is chiefly reserved for such cases, like disputes about property, which require some sort of appreciation in addition to a simple statement of facts; and in such cases the men whose affirmation will decide in the dispute, act with the greatest circumspection. Altogether it is certainly not a want of honesty or of respect to the rights of the congeners which characterizes the barbarian societies of Caucasus. The stems of Africa offer such an immense variety of extremely interesting societies standing at all intermediate stages from the early village community to the despotic barbarian monarchies that I must abandon the idea of giving here even the chief results of a comparative study of their institutions.(38) Suffice it to say, that, even under the most horrid despotism of kings, the folkmotes of the village communities and their customary law remain sovereign in a wide circle of affairs. The law of the State allows the king to take any one's life for a simple caprice, or even for simply satisfying his gluttony; but the customary law of the people continues to maintain the same network of institutions for mutual support which exist among other barbarians or have existed among our ancestors. And with some better-favoured stems (in Bornu, Uganda, Abyssinia), and especially the Bogos, some of the dispositions of the customary law are inspired with really graceful and delicate feelings. The village communities of the natives of both Americas have the same character. The Tupi of Brazil were found living in "long houses" occupied by whole clans which used to cultivate their corn and manioc fields in common. The Arani, much more advanced in civilization, used to cultivate their fields in common; so also the Oucagas, who had learned under their system of primitive communism and "long houses" to build good roads and to carry on a variety of domestic industries,(39) not inferior to those of the early medieval times in Europe. All of them were also living under the same customary law of which we have given specimens on the preceding pages. At another extremity of the world we find the Malayan feudalism, but this feudalism has been powerless to unroot the negaria, or village community, with its common ownership of at least part of the land, and the redistribution of land among the several negarias of the tribe.(40) With the Alfurus of Minahasa we find the communal rotation of the crops; with the Indian stem of the Wyandots we have the periodical redistribution of land within the tribe, and the clan-culture of the soil; and in all those parts of Sumatra where Moslem institutions have not yet totally destroyed the old organization we find the joint family (suka) and the village community (kota) which maintains its right upon the land, even if part of it has been cleared without its authorization.(41) But to say this, is to say that all customs for mutual protection and prevention of feuds and wars, which have been briefly indicated in the preceding pages as characteristic of the village community, exist as well. More than that: the more fully the communal possession of land has been maintained, the better and the gentler are the habits. De Stuers positively affirms that wherever the institution of the village community has been less encroached upon by the conquerors, the inequalities of fortunes are smaller, and the very prescriptions of the lex talionis are less cruel; while, on the contrary, wherever the village community has been totally broken up, "the inhabitants suffer the most unbearable oppression from their despotic rulers."(42) This is quite natural. And when Waitz made the remark that those stems which have maintained their tribal confederations stand on a higher level of development and have a richer literature than those stems which have forfeited the old bonds of union, he only pointed out what might have been foretold in advance. More illustrations would simply involve me in tedious repetitions--so strikingly similar are the barbarian societies under all climates and amidst all races. The same process of evolution has been going on in mankind with a wonderful similarity. When the clan organization, assailed as it was from within by the separate family, and from without by the dismemberment of the migrating clans and the necessity of taking in strangers of different descent--the village community, based upon a territorial conception, came into existence. This new institution, which had naturally grown out of the preceding one--the clan--permitted the barbarians to pass through a most disturbed period of history without being broken into isolated families which would have succumbed in the struggle for life. New forms of culture developed under the new organization; agriculture attained the stage which it hardly has surpassed until now with the great number; the domestic industries reached a high degree of perfection. The wilderness was conquered, it was intersected by roads, dotted with swarms thrown off by the mother-communities. Markets and fortified centres, as well as places of public worship, were erected. The conceptions of a wider union, extended to whole stems and to several stems of various origin, were slowly elaborated. The old conceptions of justice which were conceptions of mere revenge, slowly underwent a deep modification--the idea of amends for the wrong done taking the place of revenge. The customary law which still makes the law of the daily life for two-thirds or more of mankind, was elaborated under that organization, as well as a system of habits intended to prevent the oppression of the masses by the minorities whose powers grew in proportion to the growing facilities for private accumulation of wealth. This was the new form taken by the tendencies of the masses for mutual support. And the progress--economical, intellectual, and moral--which mankind accomplished under this new popular form of organization, was so great that the States, when they were called later on into existence, simply took possession, in the interest of the minorities, of all the judicial, economical, and administrative functions which the village community already had exercised in the interest of all. NOTES: 1. Numberless traces of post-pliocene lakes, now disappeared, are found over Central, West, and North Asia. Shells of the same species as those now found in the Caspian Sea are scattered over the surface of the soil as far East as half-way to Lake Aral, and are found in recent deposits as far north as Kazan. Traces of Caspian Gulfs, formerly taken for old beds of the Amu, intersect the Turcoman territory. Deduction must surely be made for temporary, periodical oscillations. But with all that, desiccation is evident, and it progresses at a formerly unexpected speed. Even in the relatively wet parts of South-West Siberia, the succession of reliable surveys, recently published by Yadrintseff, shows that villages have grown up on what was, eighty years ago, the bottom of one of the lakes of the Tchany group; while the other lakes of the same group, which covered hundreds of square miles some fifty years ago, are now mere ponds. In short, the desiccation of North-West Asia goes on at a rate which must be measured by centuries, instead of by the geological units of time of which we formerly used to speak. 2. Whole civilizations had thus disappeared, as is proved now by the remarkable discoveries in Mongolia on the Orkhon and in the Lukchun depression (by Dmitri Clements). 3. If I follow the opinions of (to name modern specialists only) Nasse, Kovalevsky, and Vinogradov, and not those of Mr. Seebohm (Mr. Denman Ross can only be named for the sake of completeness), it is not only because of the deep knowledge and concordance of views of these three writers, but also on account of their perfect knowledge of the village community altogether--a knowledge the want of which is much felt in the otherwise remarkable work of Mr. Seebohm. The same remark applies, in a still higher degree, to the most elegant writings of Fustel de Coulanges, whose opinions and passionate interpretations of old texts are confined to himself. 4. The literature of the village community is so vast that but a few works can be named. Those of Sir Henry Maine, Mr. Seebohm, and Walter's Das alte Wallis (Bonn, 1859), are well-known popular sources of information about Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. For France, P. Viollet, Precis de l'histoire du droit francais. Droit prive, 1886, and several of his monographs in Bibl. de l'Ecole des Chartes; Babeau, Le Village sous l'ancien regime (the mir in the eighteenth century), third edition, 1887; Bonnemere, Doniol, etc. For Italy and Scandinavia, the chief works are named in Laveleye's Primitive Property, German version by K. Bucher. For the Finns, Rein's Forelasningar, i. 16; Koskinen, Finnische Geschichte, 1874, and various monographs. For the Lives and Coures, Prof. Lutchitzky in Severnyi Vestnil, 1891. For the Teutons, besides the well-known works of Maurer, Sohm (Altdeutsche Reichs-und Gerichts-Verfassung), also Dahn (Urzeit, Volkerwanderung, Langobardische Studien), Janssen, Wilh. Arnold, etc. For India, besides H. Maine and the works he names, Sir John Phear's Aryan Village. For Russia and South Slavonians, see Kavelin, Posnikoff, Sokolovsky, Kovalevsky, Efimenko, Ivanisheff, Klaus, etc. (copious bibliographical index up to 1880 in the Sbornik svedeniy ob obschinye of the Russ. Geog. Soc.). For general conclusions, besides Laveleye's Propriete, Morgan's Ancient Society, Lippert's Kulturgeschichte, Post, Dargun, etc., also the lectures of M. Kovalevsky (Tableau des origines et de l'evolution de la famille et de la propriete, Stockholm, 1890). Many special monographs ought to be mentioned; their titles may be found in the excellent lists given by P. Viollet in Droit prive and Droit public. For other races, see subsequent notes. 5. Several authorities are inclined to consider the joint household as an intermediate stage between the clan and the village community; and there is no doubt that in very many cases village communities have grown up out of undivided families. Nevertheless, I consider the joint household as a fact of a different order. We find it within the gentes; on the other hand, we cannot affirm that joint families have existed at any period without belonging either to a gens or to a village community, or to a Gau. I conceive the early village communities as slowly originating directly from the gentes, and consisting, according to racial and local circumstances, either of several joint families, or of both joint and simple families, or (especially in the case of new settlements) of simple families only. If this view be correct, we should not have the right of establishing the series: gens, compound family, village community--the second member of the series having not the same ethnological value as the two others. See Appendix IX. 6. Stobbe, Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Rechtes, p. 62. 7. The few traces of private property in land which are met with in the early barbarian period are found with such stems (the Batavians, the Franks in Gaul) as have been for a time under the influence of Imperial Rome. See Inama-Sternegg's Die Ausbildung der grossen Grundherrschaften in Deutschland, Bd. i. 1878. Also, Besseler, Neubruch nach dem alteren deutschen Recht, pp. 11-12, quoted by Kovalevsky, Modern Custom and Ancient Law, Moscow, 1886, i. 134. 8. Maurer's Markgenossenschaft; Lamprecht's "Wirthschaft und Recht der Franken zur Zeit der Volksrechte," in Histor. Taschenbuch, 1883; Seebohm's The English Village Community, ch. vi, vii, and ix. 9. Letourneau, in Bulletin de la Soc. d'Anthropologie, 1888, vol. xi. p. 476. 10. Walter, Das alte Wallis, p. 323; Dm. Bakradze and N. Khoudadoff in Russian Zapiski of the Caucasian Geogr. Society, xiv. Part I. 11. Bancroft's Native Races; Waitz, Anthropologie, iii. 423; Montrozier, in Bull. Soc. d'Anthropologie, 1870; Post's Studien, etc. 12. A number of works, by Ory, Luro, Laudes, and Sylvestre, on the village community in Annam, proving that it has had there the same forms as in Germany or Russia, is mentioned in a review of these works by Jobbe-Duval, in Nouvelle Revue historique de droit francais et etranger, October and December, 1896. A good study of the village community of Peru, before the establishment of the power of the Incas, has been brought out by Heinrich Cunow (Die Soziale Verfassung des Inka-Reichs, Stuttgart, 1896.) The communal possession of land and communal culture are described in that work. 13. Kovalevsky, Modern Custom and Ancient Law, i. 115. 14. Palfrey, History of New England, ii. 13; quoted in Maine's Village Communities, New York, 1876, p. 201. 15. Konigswarter, Etudes sur le developpement des societes humaines, Paris, 1850. 16. This is, at least, the law of the Kalmucks, whose customary law bears the closest resemblance to the laws of the Teutons, the old Slavonians, etc. 17. The habit is in force still with many African and other tribes. 18. Village Communities, pp. 65-68 and 199. 19. Maurer (Gesch. der Markverfassung, sections 29, 97) is quite decisive upon this subject. He maintains that "All members of the community ... the laic and clerical lords as well, often also the partial co-possessors (Markberechtigte), and even strangers to the Mark, were submitted to its jurisdiction" (p. 312). This conception remained locally in force up to the fifteenth century. 20. Konigswarter, loc. cit. p. 50; J. Thrupp, Historical Law Tracts, London, 1843, p. 106. 21. Konigswarter has shown that the fred originated from an offering which had to be made to appease the ancestors. Later on, it was paid to the community, for the breach of peace; and still later to the judge, or king, or lord, when they had appropriated to themselves the rights of the community. 22. Post's Bausteine and Afrikanische Jurisprudenz, Oldenburg, 1887, vol. i. pp. 64 seq.; Kovalevsky, loc. cit. ii. 164-189. 23. O. Miller and M. Kovalevsky, "In the Mountaineer Communities of Kabardia," in Vestnik Evropy, April, 1884. With the Shakhsevens of the Mugan Steppe, blood feuds always end by marriage between the two hostile sides (Markoff, in appendix to the Zapiski of the Caucasian Geogr. Soc. xiv. 1, 21). 24. Post, in Afrik. Jurisprudenz, gives a series of facts illustrating the conceptions of equity inrooted among the African barbarians. The same may be said of all serious examinations into barbarian common law. 25. See the excellent chapter, "Le droit de La Vieille Irlande," (also "Le Haut Nord") in Etudes de droit international et de droit politique, by Prof. E. Nys, Bruxelles, 1896. 26. Introduction, p. xxxv. 27. Das alte Wallis, pp. 343-350. 28. Maynoff, "Sketches of the Judicial Practices of the Mordovians," in the ethnographical Zapiski of the Russian Geographical Society, 1885, pp. 236, 257. 29. Henry Maine, International Law, London, 1888, pp. 11-13. E. Nys, Les origines du droit international, Bruxelles, 1894. 30. A Russian historian, the Kazan Professor Schapoff, who was exiled in 1862 to Siberia, has given a good description of their institutions in the Izvestia of the East-Siberian Geographical Society, vol. v. 1874. 31. Sir Henry Maine's Village Communities, New York, 1876, pp. 193-196. 32. Nazaroff, The North Usuri Territory (Russian), St. Petersburg, 1887, p. 65. 33. Hanoteau et Letourneux, La Kabylie, 3 vols. Paris, 1883. 34. To convoke an "aid" or "bee," some kind of meal must be offered to the community. I am told by a Caucasian friend that in Georgia, when the poor man wants an "aid," he borrows from the rich man a sheep or two to prepare the meal, and the community bring, in addition to their work, so many provisions that he may repay the debt. A similar habit exists with the Mordovians. 35. Hanoteau et Letourneux, La kabylie, ii. 58. The same respect to strangers is the rule with the Mongols. The Mongol who has refused his roof to a stranger pays the full blood-compensation if the stranger has suffered therefrom (Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. 231). 36. N. Khoudadoff, "Notes on the Khevsoures," in Zapiski of the Caucasian Geogr. Society, xiv. 1, Tiflis, 1890, p. 68. They also took the oath of not marrying girls from their own union, thus displaying a remarkable return to the old gentile rules. 37. Dm. Bakradze, "Notes on the Zakataly District," in same Zapiski, xiv. 1, p. 264. The "joint team" is as common among the Lezghines as it is among the Ossetes. 38. See Post, Afrikanische Jurisprudenz, Oldenburg, 1887. Munzinger, Ueber das Recht und Sitten der Bogos, Winterthur 1859; Casalis, Les Bassoutos, Paris, 1859; Maclean, Kafir Laws and Customs, Mount Coke, 1858, etc. 39. Waitz, iii. 423 seq. 40. Post's Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Familien Rechts Oldenburg, 1889, pp. 270 seq. 41. Powell, Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnography, Washington, 1881, quoted in Post's Studien, p. 290; Bastian's Inselgruppen in Oceanien, 1883, p. 88. 42. De Stuers, quoted by Waitz, v. 141. CHAPTER V MUTUAL AID IN THE MEDIAEVAL CITY Growth of authority in Barbarian Society. Serfdom in the villages. Revolt of fortified towns: their liberation; their charts. The guild. Double origin of the free medieval city. Self-jurisdiction, self-administration. Honourable position of labour. Trade by the guild and by the city. Sociability and need of mutual aid and support are such inherent parts of human nature that at no time of history can we discover men living in small isolated families, fighting each other for the means of subsistence. On the contrary, modern research, as we saw it in the two preceding chapters, proves that since the very beginning of their prehistoric life men used to agglomerate into gentes, clans, or tribes, maintained by an idea of common descent and by worship of common ancestors. For thousands and thousands of years this organization has kept men together, even though there was no authority whatever to impose it. It has deeply impressed all subsequent development of mankind; and when the bonds of common descent had been loosened by migrations on a grand scale, while the development of the separated family within the clan itself had destroyed the old unity of the clan, a new form of union, territorial in its principle--the village community--was called into existence by the social genius of man. This institution, again, kept men together for a number of centuries, permitting them to further develop their social institutions and to pass through some of the darkest periods of history, without being dissolved into loose aggregations of families and individuals, to make a further step in their evolution, and to work out a number of secondary social institutions, several of which have survived down to the present time. We have now to follow the further developments of the same ever-living tendency for mutual aid. Taking the village communities of the so-called barbarians at a time when they were making a new start of civilization after the fall of the Roman Empire, we have to study the new aspects taken by the sociable wants of the masses in the middle ages, and especially in the medieval guilds and the medieval city. Far from being the fighting animals they have often been compared to, the barbarians of the first centuries of our era (like so many Mongolians, Africans, Arabs, and so on, who still continue in the same barbarian stage) invariably preferred peace to war. With the exception of a few tribes which had been driven during the great migrations into unproductive deserts or highlands, and were thus compelled periodically to prey upon their better-favoured neighbours--apart from these, the great bulk of the Teutons, the Saxons, the Celts, the Slavonians, and so on, very soon after they had settled in their newly-conquered abodes, reverted to the spade or to their herds. The earliest barbarian codes already represent to us societies composed of peaceful agricultural communities, not hordes of men at war with each other. These barbarians covered the country with villages and farmhouses;(1) they cleared the forests, bridged the torrents, and colonized the formerly quite uninhabited wilderness; and they left the uncertain warlike pursuits to brotherhoods, scholae, or "trusts" of unruly men, gathered round temporary chieftains, who wandered about, offering their adventurous spirit, their arms, and their knowledge of warfare for the protection of populations, only too anxious to be left in peace. The warrior bands came and went, prosecuting their family feuds; but the great mass continued to till the soil, taking but little notice of their would-be rulers, so long as they did not interfere with the independence of their village communities.(2) The new occupiers of Europe evolved the systems of land tenure and soil culture which are still in force with hundreds of millions of men; they worked out their systems of compensation for wrongs, instead of the old tribal blood-revenge; they learned the first rudiments of industry; and while they fortified their villages with palisaded walls, or erected towers and earthen forts whereto to repair in case of a new invasion, they soon abandoned the task of defending these towers and forts to those who made of war a speciality. The very peacefulness of the barbarians, certainly not their supposed warlike instincts, thus became the source of their subsequent subjection to the military chieftains. It is evident that the very mode of life of the armed brotherhoods offered them more facilities for enrichment than the tillers of the soil could find in their agricultural communities. Even now we see that armed men occasionally come together to shoot down Matabeles and to rob them of their droves of cattle, though the Matabeles only want peace and are ready to buy it at a high price. The scholae of old certainly were not more scrupulous than the scholae of our own time. Droves of cattle, iron (which was extremely costly at that time(3)), and slaves were appropriated in this way; and although most acquisitions were wasted on the spot in those glorious feasts of which epic poetry has so much to say--still some part of the robbed riches was used for further enrichment. There was plenty of waste land, and no lack of men ready to till it, if only they could obtain the necessary cattle and implements. Whole villages, ruined by murrains, pests, fires, or raids of new immigrants, were often abandoned by their inhabitants, who went anywhere in search of new abodes. They still do so in Russia in similar circumstances. And if one of the hirdmen of the armed brotherhoods offered the peasants some cattle for a fresh start, some iron to make a plough, if not the plough itself, his protection from further raids, and a number of years free from all obligations, before they should begin to repay the contracted debt, they settled upon the land. And when, after a hard fight with bad crops, inundations and pestilences, those pioneers began to repay their debts, they fell into servile obligations towards the protector of the territory. Wealth undoubtedly did accumulate in this way, and power always follows wealth.(4) And yet, the more we penetrate into the life of those times, the sixth and seventh centuries of our era, the more we see that another element, besides wealth and military force, was required to constitute the authority of the few. It was an element of law and tight, a desire of the masses to maintain peace, and to establish what they considered to be justice, which gave to the chieftains of the scholae--kings, dukes, knyazes, and the like--the force they acquired two or three hundred years later. That same idea of justice, conceived as an adequate revenge for the wrong done, which had grown in the tribal stage, now passed as a red thread through the history of subsequent institutions, and, much more even than military or economic causes, it became the basis upon which the authority of the kings and the feudal lords was founded. In fact, one of the chief preoccupations of the barbarian village community always was, as it still is with our barbarian contemporaries, to put a speedy end to the feuds which arose from the then current conception of justice. When a quarrel took place, the community at once interfered, and after the folkmote had heard the case, it settled the amount of composition (wergeld) to be paid to the wronged person, or to his family, as well as the fred, or fine for breach of peace, which had to be paid to the community. Interior quarrels were easily appeased in this way. But when feuds broke out between two different tribes, or two confederations of tribes, notwithstanding all measures taken to prevent them,(5) the difficulty was to find an arbiter or sentence-finder whose decision should be accepted by both parties alike, both for his impartiality and for his knowledge of the oldest law. The difficulty was the greater as the customary laws of different tribes and confederations were at variance as to the compensation due in different cases. It therefore became habitual to take the sentence-finder from among such families, or such tribes, as were reputed for keeping the law of old in its purity; of being versed in the songs, triads, sagas, etc., by means of which law was perpetuated in memory; and to retain law in this way became a sort of art, a "mystery," carefully transmitted in certain families from generation to generation. Thus in Iceland, and in other Scandinavian lands, at every A11thing, or national folkmote, a lövsögmathr used to recite the whole law from memory for the enlightening of the assembly; and in Ireland there was, as is known, a special class of men reputed for the knowledge of the old traditions, and therefore enjoying a great authority as judges.(6) Again, when we are told by the Russian annals that some stems of North-West Russia, moved by the growing disorder which resulted from "clans rising against clans," appealed to Norman varingiar to be their judges and commanders of warrior scholae; and when we see the knyazes, or dukes, elected for the next two hundred years always from the same Norman family, we cannot but recognize that the Slavonians trusted to the Normans for a better knowledge of the law which would be equally recognized as good by different Slavonian kins. In this case the possession of runes, used for the transmission of old customs, was a decided advantage in favour of the Normans; but in other cases there are faint indications that the "eldest" branch of the stem, the supposed motherbranch, was appealed to to supply the judges, and its decisions were relied upon as just;(7) while at a later epoch we see a distinct tendency towards taking the sentence-finders from the Christian clergy, which, at that time, kept still to the fundamental, now forgotten, principle of Christianity, that retaliation is no act of justice. At that time the Christian clergy opened the churches as places of asylum for those who fled from blood revenge, and they willingly acted as arbiters in criminal cases, always opposing the old tribal principle of life for life and wound for wound. In short, the deeper we penetrate into the history of early institutions, the less we find grounds for the military theory of origin of authority. Even that power which later on became such a source of oppression seems, on the contrary, to have found its origin in the peaceful inclinations of the masses. In all these cases the fred, which often amounted to half the compensation, went to the folkmote, and from times immemorial it used to be applied to works of common utility and defence. It has still the same destination (the erection of towers) among the Kabyles and certain Mongolian stems; and we have direct evidence that even several centuries later the judicial fines, in Pskov and several French and German cities, continued to be used for the repair of the city walls.(8) It was thus quite natural that the fines should be handed over to the sentence-finder, who was bound, in return, both to maintain the schola of armed men to whom the defence of the territory was trusted, and to execute the sentences. This became a universal custom in the eighth and ninth centuries, even when the sentence-finder was an elected bishop. The germ of a combination of what we should now call the judicial power and the executive thus made its appearance. But to these two functions the attributions of the duke or king were strictly limited. He was no ruler of the people--the supreme power still belonging to the folkmote--not even a commander of the popular militia; when the folk took to arms, it marched under a separate, also elected, commander, who was not a subordinate, but an equal to the king.(9) The king was a lord on his personal domain only. In fact, in barbarian language, the word konung, koning, or cyning synonymous with the Latin rex, had no other meaning than that of a temporary leader or chieftain of a band of men. The commander of a flotilla of boats, or even of a single pirate boat, was also a konung, and till the present day the commander of fishing in Norway is named Not-kong--"the king of the nets."(10) The veneration attached later on to the personality of a king did not yet exist, and while treason to the kin was punished by death, the slaying of a king could be recouped by the payment of compensation: a king simply was valued so much more than a freeman.(11) And when King Knu (or Canute) had killed one man of his own schola, the saga represents him convoking his comrades to a thing where he stood on his knees imploring pardon. He was pardoned, but not till he had agreed to pay nine times the regular composition, of which one-third went to himself for the loss of one of his men, one-third to the relatives of the slain man, and one-third (the fred) to the schola.(12) In reality, a complete change had to be accomplished in the current conceptions, under the double influence of the Church and the students of Roman law, before an idea of sanctity began to be attached to the personality of the king. However, it lies beyond the scope of these essays to follow the gradual development of authority out of the elements just indicated. Historians, such as Mr. and Mrs. Green for this country, Augustin Thierry, Michelet, and Luchaire for France, Kaufmann, Janssen, W. Arnold, and even Nitzsch, for Germany, Leo and Botta for Italy, Byelaeff, Kostomaroff, and their followers for Russia, and many others, have fully told that tale. They have shown how populations, once free, and simply agreeing "to feed" a certain portion of their military defenders, gradually became the serfs of these protectors; how "commendation" to the Church, or to a lord, became a hard necessity for the freeman; how each lord's and bishop's castle became a robber's nest--how feudalism was imposed, in a word--and how the crusades, by freeing the serfs who wore the cross, gave the first impulse to popular emancipation. All this need not be retold in this place, our chief aim being to follow the constructive genius of the masses in their mutual-aid institutions. At a time when the last vestiges of barbarian freedom seemed to disappear, and Europe, fallen under the dominion of thousands of petty rulers, was marching towards the constitution of such theocracies and despotic States as had followed the barbarian stage during the previous starts of civilization, or of barbarian monarchies, such as we see now in Africa, life in Europe took another direction. It went on on lines similar to those it had once taken in the cities of antique Greece. With a unanimity which seems almost incomprehensible, and for a long time was not understood by historians, the urban agglomerations, down to the smallest burgs, began to shake off the yoke of their worldly and clerical lords. The fortified village rose against the lord's castle, defied it first, attacked it next, and finally destroyed it. The movement spread from spot to spot, involving every town on the surface of Europe, and in less than a hundred years free cities had been called into existence on the coasts of the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the Baltic, the Atlantic Ocean, down to the fjords of Scandinavia; at the feet of the Apennines, the Alps, the Black Forest, the Grampians, and the Carpathians; in the plains of Russia, Hungary, France and Spain. Everywhere the same revolt took place, with the same features, passing through the same phases, leading to the same results. Wherever men had found, or expected to find, some protection behind their town walls, they instituted their "co-jurations," their "fraternities," their "friendships," united in one common idea, and boldly marching towards a new life of mutual support and liberty. And they succeeded so well that in three or four hundred years they had changed the very face of Europe. They had covered the country with beautiful sumptuous buildings, expressing the genius of free unions of free men, unrivalled since for their beauty and expressiveness; and they bequeathed to the following generations all the arts, all the industries, of which our present civilization, with all its achievements and promises for the future, is only a further development. And when we now look to the forces which have produced these grand results, we find them--not in the genius of individual heroes, not in the mighty organization of huge States or the political capacities of their rulers, but in the very same current of mutual aid and support which we saw at work in the village community, and which was vivified and reinforced in the Middle Ages by a new form of unions, inspired by the very same spirit but shaped on a new model--the guilds. It is well known by this time that feudalism did not imply a dissolution of the village community. Although the lord had succeeded in imposing servile labour upon the peasants, and had appropriated for himself such rights as were formerly vested in the village community alone (taxes, mortmain, duties on inheritances and marriages), the peasants had, nevertheless, maintained the two fundamental rights of their communities: the common possession of the land, and self-jurisdiction. In olden times, when a king sent his vogt to a village, the peasants received him with flowers in one hand and arms in the other, and asked him--which law he intended to apply: the one he found in the village, or the one he brought with him? And, in the first case, they handed him the flowers and accepted him; while in the second case they fought him.(13) Now, they accepted the king's or the lord's official whom they could not refuse; but they maintained the folkmote's jurisdiction, and themselves nominated six, seven, or twelve judges, who acted with the lord's judge, in the presence of the folkmote, as arbiters and sentence-finders. In most cases the official had nothing left to him but to confirm the sentence and to levy the customary fred. This precious right of self-jurisdiction, which, at that time, meant self-administration and self-legislation, had been maintained through all the struggles; and even the lawyers by whom Karl the Great was surrounded could not abolish it; they were bound to confirm it. At the same time, in all matters concerning the community's domain, the folkmote retained its supremacy and (as shown by Maurer) often claimed submission from the lord himself in land tenure matters. No growth of feudalism could break this resistance; the village community kept its ground; and when, in the ninth and tenth centuries, the invasions of the Normans, the Arabs, and the Ugrians had demonstrated that military scholae were of little value for protecting the land, a general movement began all over Europe for fortifying the villages with stone walls and citadels. Thousands of fortified centres were then built by the energies of the village communities; and, once they had built their walls, once a common interest had been created in this new sanctuary--the town walls--they soon understood that they could henceforward resist the encroachments of the inner enemies, the lords, as well as the invasions of foreigners. A new life of freedom began to develop within the fortified enclosures. The medieval city was born.(14) No period of history could better illustrate the constructive powers of the popular masses than the tenth and eleventh centuries, when the fortified villages and market-places, representing so many "oases amidst the feudal forest," began to free themselves from their lord's yoke, and slowly elaborated the future city organization; but, unhappily, this is a period about which historical information is especially scarce: we know the results, but little has reached us about the means by which they were achieved. Under the protection of their walls the cities' folkmotes--either quite independent, or led by the chief noble or merchant families--conquered and maintained the right of electing the military defensor and supreme judge of the town, or at least of choosing between those who pretended to occupy this position. In Italy the young communes were continually sending away their defensors or domini, fighting those who refused to go. The same went on in the East. In Bohemia, rich and poor alike (Bohemicae gentis magni et parvi, nobiles et ignobiles) took part in the election;(15) while, the vyeches (folkmotes) of the Russian cities regularly elected their dukes--always from the same Rurik family--covenanted with them, and sent the knyaz away if he had provoked discontent.(16) At the same time in most cities of Western and Southern Europe, the tendency was to take for defensor a bishop whom the city had elected itself; and so many bishops took the lead in protecting the "immunities" of the towns and in defending their liberties, that numbers of them were considered, after their death, as saints and special patrons of different cities. St. Uthelred of Winchester, St. Ulrik of Augsburg, St. Wolfgang of Ratisbon, St. Heribert of Cologne, St. Adalbert of Prague, and so on, as well as many abbots and monks, became so many cities' saints for having acted in defence of popular rights.(17) And under the new defensors, whether laic or clerical, the citizens conquered full self-jurisdiction and self-administration for their folkmotes.(18) The whole process of liberation progressed by a series of imperceptible acts of devotion to the common cause, accomplished by men who came out of the masses--by unknown heroes whose very names have not been preserved by history. The wonderful movement of the God's peace (treuga Dei) by which the popular masses endeavoured to put a limit to the endless family feuds of the noble families, was born in the young towns, the bishops and the citizens trying to extend to the nobles the peace they had established within their town walls.(19) Already at that period, the commercial cities of Italy, and especially Amalfi (which had its elected consuls since 844, and frequently changed its doges in the tenth century)(20) worked out the customary maritime and commercial law which later on became a model for all Europe; Ravenna elaborated its craft organization, and Milan, which had made its first revolution in 980, became a great centre of commerce, its trades enjoying a full independence since the eleventh century.(21) So also Brugge and Ghent; so also several cities of France in which the Mahl or forum had become a quite independent institution.(22) And already during that period began the work of artistic decoration of the towns by works of architecture, which we still admire and which loudly testify of the intellectual movement of the times. "The basilicae were then renewed in almost all the universe," Raoul Glaber wrote in his chronicle, and some of the finest monuments of medieval architecture date from that period: the wonderful old church of Bremen was built in the ninth century, Saint Marc of Venice was finished in 1071, and the beautiful dome of Pisa in 1063. In fact, the intellectual movement which has been described as the Twelfth Century Renaissance(23) and the Twelfth Century Rationalism--the precursor of the Reform(24) date from that period, when most cities were still simple agglomerations of small village communities enclosed by walls. However, another element, besides the village-community principle, was required to give to these growing centres of liberty and enlightenment the unity of thought and action, and the powers of initiative, which made their force in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. With the growing diversity of occupations, crafts and arts, and with the growing commerce in distant lands, some new form of union was required, and this necessary new element was supplied by the guilds. Volumes and volumes have been written about these unions which, under the name of guilds, brotherhoods, friendships and druzhestva, minne, artels in Russia, esnaifs in Servia and Turkey, amkari in Georgia, and so on, took such a formidable development in medieval times and played such an important part in the emancipation of the cities. But it took historians more than sixty years before the universality of this institution and its true characters were understood. Only now, when hundreds of guild statutes have been published and studied, and their relationship to the Roman collegiae, and the earlier unions in Greece and in India,(25) is known, can we maintain with full confidence that these brotherhoods were but a further development of the same principles which we saw at work in the gens and the village community. Nothing illustrates better these medieval brother hoods than those temporary guilds which were formed on board ships. When a ship of the Hansa had accomplished her first half-day passage after having left the port, the captain (Schiffer) gathered all crew and passengers on the deck, and held the following language, as reported by a contemporary:-- "'As we are now at the mercy of God and the waves,' he said, 'each one must be equal to each other. And as we are surrounded by storms, high waves, pirates and other dangers, we must keep a strict order that we may bring our voyage to a good end. That is why we shall pronounce the prayer for a good wind and good success, and, according to marine law, we shall name the occupiers of the judges' seats (Schoffenstellen).' Thereupon the crew elected a Vogt and four scabini, to act as their judges. At the end of the voyage the Vogt and the scabini abdicated their functions and addressed the crew as follows:--'What has happened on board ship, we must pardon to each other and consider as dead (todt und ab sein lassen). What we have judged right, was for the sake of justice. This is why we beg you all, in the name of honest justice, to forget all the animosity one may nourish against another, and to swear on bread and salt that he will not think of it in a bad spirit. If any one, however, considers himself wronged, he must appeal to the land Vogt and ask justice from him before sunset.' On landing, the Stock with the fredfines was handed over to the Vogt of the sea-port for distribution among the poor."(26) This simple narrative, perhaps better than anything else, depicts the spirit of the medieval guilds. Like organizations came into existence wherever a group of men--fishermen, hunters, travelling merchants, builders, or settled craftsmen--came together for a common pursuit. Thus, there was on board ship the naval authority of the captain; but, for the very success of the common enterprise, all men on board, rich and poor, masters and crew, captain and sailors, agreed to be equals in their mutual relations, to be simply men, bound to aid each other and to settle their possible disputes before judges elected by all of them. So also when a number of craftsmen--masons, carpenters, stone-cutters, etc.--came together for building, say, a cathedral, they all belonged to a city which had its political organization, and each of them belonged moreover to his own craft; but they were united besides by their common enterprise, which they knew better than any one else, and they joined into a body united by closer, although temporary, bonds; they founded the guild for the building of the cathedral.(27) We may see the same till now in the Kabylian. cof:(28) the Kabyles have their village community; but this union is not sufficient for all political, commercial, and personal needs of union, and the closer brotherhood of the cof is constituted. As to the social characters of the medieval guild, any guild-statute may illustrate them. Taking, for instance, the skraa of some early Danish guild, we read in it, first, a statement of the general brotherly feelings which must reign in the guild; next come the regulations relative to self-jurisdiction in cases of quarrels arising between two brothers, or a brother and a stranger; and then, the social duties of the brethren are enumerated. If a brother's house is burned, or he has lost his ship, or has suffered on a pilgrim's voyage, all the brethren must come to his aid. If a brother falls dangerously ill, two brethren must keep watch by his bed till he is out of danger, and if he dies, the brethren must bury him--a great affair in those times of pestilences--and follow him to the church and the grave. After his death they must provide for his children, if necessary; very often the widow becomes a sister to the guild.(29) These two leading features appeared in every brotherhood formed for any possible purpose. In each case the members treated each other as, and named each other, brother and sister;(30) all were equals before the guild. They owned some "chattel" (cattle, land, buildings, places of worship, or "stock") in common. All brothers took the oath of abandoning all feuds of old; and, without imposing upon each other the obligation of never quarrelling again, they agreed that no quarrel should degenerate into a feud, or into a law-suit before another court than the tribunal of the brothers themselves. And if a brother was involved in a quarrel with a stranger to the guild, they agreed to support him for bad and for good; that is, whether he was unjustly accused of aggression, or really was the aggressor, they had to support him, and to bring things to a peaceful end. So long as his was not a secret aggression--in which case he would have been treated as an outlaw--the brotherhood stood by him.(31) If the relatives of the wronged man wanted to revenge the offence at once by a new aggression, the brother-hood supplied him with a horse to run away, or with a boat, a pair of oars, a knife and a steel for striking light; if he remained in town, twelve brothers accompanied him to protect him; and in the meantime they arranged the composition. They went to court to support by oath the truthfulness of his statements, and if he was found guilty they did not let him go to full ruin and become a slave through not paying the due compensation: they all paid it, just as the gens did in olden times. Only when a brother had broken the faith towards his guild-brethren, or other people, he was excluded from the brotherhood "with a Nothing's name" (tha scal han maeles af brodrescap met nidings nafn).(32) Such were the leading ideas of those brotherhoods which gradually covered the whole of medieval life. In fact, we know of guilds among all possible professions: guilds of serfs,(33) guilds of freemen, and guilds of both serfs and freemen; guilds called into life for the special purpose of hunting, fishing, or a trading expedition, and dissolved when the special purpose had been achieved; and guilds lasting for centuries in a given craft or trade. And, in proportion as life took an always greater variety of pursuits, the variety in the guilds grew in proportion. So we see not only merchants, craftsmen, hunters, and peasants united in guilds; we also see guilds of priests, painters, teachers of primary schools and universities, guilds for performing the passion play, for building a church, for developing the "mystery" of a given school of art or craft, or for a special recreation--even guilds among beggars, executioners, and lost women, all organized on the same double principle of self-jurisdiction and mutual support.(34) For Russia we have positive evidence showing that the very "making of Russia" was as much the work of its hunters', fishermen's, and traders' artels as of the budding village communities, and up to the present day the country is covered with artels.(35) These few remarks show how incorrect was the view taken by some early explorers of the guilds when they wanted to see the essence of the institution in its yearly festival. In reality, the day of the common meal was always the day, or the morrow of the day, of election of aldermen, of discussion of alterations in the statutes, and very often the day of judgment of quarrels that had risen among the brethren,(36) or of renewed allegiance to the guild. The common meal, like the festival at the old tribal folkmote--the mahl or malum--or the Buryate aba, or the parish feast and the harvest supper, was simply an affirmation of brotherhood. It symbolized the times when everything was kept in common by the clan. This day, at least, all belonged to all; all sate at the same table and partook of the same meal. Even at a much later time the inmate of the almshouse of a London guild sat this day by the side of the rich alderman. As to the distinction which several explorers have tried to establish between the old Saxon "frith guild" and the so-called "social" or "religious" guilds--all were frith guilds in the sense above mentioned,(37) and all were religious in the sense in which a village community or a city placed under the protection of a special saint is social and religious. If the institution of the guild has taken such an immense extension in Asia, Africa, and Europe, if it has lived thousands of years, reappearing again and again when similar conditions called it into existence, it is because it was much more than an eating association, or an association for going to church on a certain day, or a burial club. It answered to a deeply inrooted want of human nature; and it embodied all the attributes which the State appropriated later on for its bureaucracy and police, and much more than that. It was an association for mutual support in all circumstances and in all accidents of life, "by deed and advise," and it was an organization for maintaining justice--with this difference from the State, that on all these occasions a humane, a brotherly element was introduced instead of the formal element which is the essential characteristic of State interference. Even when appearing before the guild tribunal, the guild-brother answered before men who knew him well and had stood by him before in their daily work, at the common meal, in the performance of their brotherly duties: men who were his equals and brethren indeed, not theorists of law nor defenders of some one else's interests.(38) It is evident that an institution so well suited to serve the need of union, without depriving the individual of his initiative, could but spread, grow, and fortify. The difficulty was only to find such form as would permit to federate the unions of the guilds without interfering with the unions of the village communities, and to federate all these into one harmonious whole. And when this form of combination had been found, and a series of favourable circumstances permitted the cities to affirm their independence, they did so with a unity of thought which can but excite our admiration, even in our century of railways, telegraphs, and printing. Hundreds of charters in which the cities inscribed their liberation have reached us, and through all of them--notwithstanding the infinite variety of details, which depended upon the more or less greater fulness of emancipation--the same leading ideas run. The city organized itself as a federation of both small village communities and guilds. "All those who belong to the friendship of the town"--so runs a charter given in 1188 to the burghesses of Aire by Philip, Count of Flanders--"have promised and confirmed by faith and oath that they will aid each other as brethren, in whatever is useful and honest. That if one commits against another an offence in words or in deeds, the one who has suffered there from will not take revenge, either himself or his people ... he will lodge a complaint and the offender will make good for his offence, according to what will be pronounced by twelve elected judges acting as arbiters, And if the offender or the offended, after having been warned thrice, does not submit to the decision of the arbiters, he will be excluded from the friendship as a wicked man and a perjuror.(39) "Each one of the men of the commune will be faithful to his con-juror, and will give him aid and advice, according to what justice will dictate him"--the Amiens and Abbeville charters say. "All will aid each other, according to their powers, within the boundaries of the Commune, and will not suffer that any one takes anything from any one of them, or makes one pay contributions"--do we read in the charters of Soissons, Compiegne, Senlis, and many others of the same type.(40) And so on with countless variations on the same theme. "The Commune," Guilbert de Nogent wrote, "is an oath of mutual aid (mutui adjutorii conjuratio) ... A new and detestable word. Through it the serfs (capite sensi) are freed from all serfdom; through it, they can only be condemned to a legally determined fine for breaches of the law; through it, they cease to be liable to payments which the serfs always used to pay."(41) The same wave of emancipation ran, in the twelfth century, through all parts of the continent, involving both rich cities and the poorest towns. And if we may say that, as a rule, the Italian cities were the first to free themselves, we can assign no centre from which the movement would have spread. Very often a small burg in central Europe took the lead for its region, and big agglomerations accepted the little town's charter as a model for their own. Thus, the charter of a small town, Lorris, was adopted by eighty-three towns in south-west France, and that of Beaumont became the model for over five hundred towns and cities in Belgium and France. Special deputies were dispatched by the cities to their neighbours to obtain a copy from their charter, and the constitution was framed upon that model. However, they did not simply copy each other: they framed their own charters in accordance with the concessions they had obtained from their lords; and the result was that, as remarked by an historian, the charters of the medieval communes offer the same variety as the Gothic architecture of their churches and cathedrals. The same leading ideas in all of them--the cathedral symbolizing the union of parish and guild in the, city--and the same infinitely rich variety of detail. Self-jurisdiction was the essential point, and self-jurisdiction meant self-administration. But the commune was not simply an "autonomous" part of the State--such ambiguous words had not yet been invented by that time--it was a State in itself. It had the right of war and peace, of federation and alliance with its neighbours. It was sovereign in its own affairs, and mixed with no others. The supreme political power could be vested entirely in a democratic forum, as was the case in Pskov, whose vyeche sent and received ambassadors, concluded treaties, accepted and sent away princes, or went on without them for dozens of years; or it was vested in, or usurped by, an aristocracy of merchants or even nobles, as was the case in hundreds of Italian and middle European cities. The principle, nevertheless, remained the same: the city was a State and--what was perhaps still more remarkable--when the power in the city was usurped by an aristocracy of merchants or even nobles, the inner life of the city and the democratism of its daily life did not disappear: they depended but little upon what may be called the political form of the State. The secret of this seeming anomaly lies in the fact that a medieval city was not a centralized State. During the first centuries of its existence, the city hardly could be named a State as regards its interior organization, because the middle ages knew no more of the present centralization of functions than of the present territorial centralization. Each group had its share of sovereignty. The city was usually divided into four quarters, or into five to seven sections radiating from a centre, each quarter or section roughly corresponding to a certain trade or profession which prevailed in it, but nevertheless containing inhabitants of different social positions and occupations--nobles, merchants, artisans, or even half-serfs; and each section or quarter constituted a quite independent agglomeration. In Venice, each island was an independent political community. It had its own organized trades, its own commerce in salt, its own jurisdiction and administration, its own forum; and the nomination of a doge by the city changed nothing in the inner independence of the units.(42) In Cologne, we see the inhabitants divided into Geburschaften and Heimschaften (viciniae), i.e. neighbour guilds, which dated from the Franconian period. Each of them had its judge (Burrichter) and the usual twelve elected sentence-finders (Schoffen), its Vogt, and its greve or commander of the local militia.(43) The story of early London before the Conquest--Mr. Green says--is that "of a number of little groups scattered here and there over the area within the walls, each growing up with its own life and institutions, guilds, sokes, religious houses and the like, and only slowly drawing together into a municipal union."(44) And if we refer to the annals of the Russian cities, Novgorod and Pskov, both of which are relatively rich in local details, we find the section (konets) consisting of independent streets (ulitsa), each of which, though chiefly peopled with artisans of a certain craft, had also merchants and landowners among its inhabitants, and was a separate community. It had the communal responsibility of all members in case of crime, its own jurisdiction and administration by street aldermen (ulichanskiye starosty), its own seal and, in case of need, its own forum; its own militia, as also its self-elected priests and its, own collective life and collective enterprise.(45) The medieval city thus appears as a double federation: of all householders united into small territorial unions--the street, the parish, the section--and of individuals united by oath into guilds according to their professions; the former being a produce of the village-community origin of the city, while the second is a subsequent growth called to life by new conditions. To guarantee liberty, self-administration, and peace was the chief aim of the medieval city; and labour, as we shall presently see when speaking of the craft guilds, was its chief foundation. But "production" did not absorb the whole attention of the medieval economist. With his practical mind, he understood that "consumption" must be guaranteed in order to obtain production; and therefore, to provide for "the common first food and lodging of poor and rich alike" (gemeine notdurft und gemach armer und richer(46)) was the fundamental principle in each city. The purchase of food supplies and other first necessaries (coal, wood, etc.) before they had reached the market, or altogether in especially favourable conditions from which others would be excluded--the preempcio, in a word--was entirely prohibited. Everything had to go to the market and be offered there for every one's purchase, till the ringing of the bell had closed the market. Then only could the retailer buy the remainder, and even then his profit should be an "honest profit" only.(47) Moreover, when corn was bought by a baker wholesale after the close of the market, every citizen had the right to claim part of the corn (about half-a-quarter) for his own use, at wholesale price, if he did so before the final conclusion of the bargain; and reciprocally, every baker could claim the same if the citizen purchased corn for re-selling it. In the first case, the corn had only to be brought to the town mill to be ground in its proper turn for a settled price, and the bread could be baked in the four banal, or communal oven.(48) In short, if a scarcity visited the city, all had to suffer from it more or less; but apart from the calamities, so long as the free cities existed no one could die in their midst from starvation, as is unhappily too often the case in our own times. However, all such regulations belong to later periods of the cities' life, while at an earlier period it was the city itself which used to buy all food supplies for the use of the citizens. The documents recently published by Mr. Gross are quite positive on this point and fully support his conclusion to the effect that the cargoes of subsistences "were purchased by certain civic officials in the name of the town, and then distributed in shares among the merchant burgesses, no one being allowed to buy wares landed in the port unless the municipal authorities refused to purchase them. This seem--she adds--to have been quite a common practice in England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland."(49) Even in the sixteenth century we find that common purchases of corn were made for the "comoditie and profitt in all things of this.... Citie and Chamber of London, and of all the Citizens and Inhabitants of the same as moche as in us lieth"--as the Mayor wrote in 1565.(50) In Venice, the whole of the trade in corn is well known to have been in the hands of the city; the "quarters," on receiving the cereals from the board which administrated the imports, being bound to send to every citizen's house the quantity allotted to him.(51) In France, the city of Amiens used to purchase salt and to distribute it to all citizens at cost price;(52) and even now one sees in many French towns the halles which formerly were municipal depots for corn and salt.(53) In Russia it was a regular custom in Novgorod and Pskov. The whole matter relative to the communal purchases for the use of the citizens, and the manner in which they used to be made, seems not to have yet received proper attention from the historians of the period; but there are here and there some very interesting facts which throw a new light upon it. Thus there is, among Mr. Gross's documents, a Kilkenny ordinance of the year 1367, from which we learn how the prices of the goods were established. "The merchants and the sailors," Mr. Gross writes, "were to state on oath the first cost of the goods and the expenses of transportation. Then the mayor of the town and two discreet men were to name the price at which the wares were to be sold." The same rule held good in Thurso for merchandise coming "by sea or land." This way of "naming the price" so well answers to the very conceptions of trade which were current in medieval times that it must have been all but universal. To have the price established by a third person was a very old custom; and for all interchange within the city it certainly was a widely-spread habit to leave the establishment of prices to "discreet men"--to a third party--and not to the vendor or the buyer. But this order of things takes us still further back in the history of trade--namely, to a time when trade in staple produce was carried on by the whole city, and the merchants were only the commissioners, the trustees, of the city for selling the goods which it exported. A Waterford ordinance, published also by Mr. Gross, says "that all manere of marchandis what so ever kynde thei be of ... shal be bought by the Maire and balives which bene commene biers [common buyers, for the town] for the time being, and to distribute the same on freemen of the citie (the propre goods of free citisains and inhabitants only excepted)." This ordinance can hardly be explained otherwise than by admitting that all the exterior trade of the town was carried on by its agents. Moreover, we have direct evidence of such having been the case for Novgorod and Pskov. It was the Sovereign Novgorod and the Sovereign Pskov who sent their caravans of merchants to distant lands. We know also that in nearly all medieval cities of Middle and Western Europe, the craft guilds used to buy, as a body, all necessary raw produce, and to sell the produce of their work through their officials, and it is hardly possible that the same should not have been done for exterior trade--the more so as it is well known that up to the thirteenth century, not only all merchants of a given city were considered abroad as responsible in a body for debts contracted by any one of them, but the whole city as well was responsible for the debts of each one of its merchants. Only in the twelfth and thirteenth century the towns on the Rhine entered into special treaties abolishing this responsibility.(54) And finally we have the remarkable Ipswich document published by Mr. Gross, from which document we learn that the merchant guild of this town was constituted by all who had the freedom of the city, and who wished to pay their contribution ("their hanse") to the guild, the whole community discussing all together how better to maintain the merchant guild, and giving it certain privileges. The merchant guild of Ipswich thus appears rather as a body of trustees of the town than as a common private guild. In short, the more we begin to know the mediaeval city the more we see that it was not simply a political organization for the protection of certain political liberties. It was an attempt at organizing, on a much grander scale than in a village community, a close union for mutual aid and support, for consumption and production, and for social life altogether, without imposing upon men the fetters of the State, but giving full liberty of expression to the creative genius of each separate group of individuals in art, crafts, science, commerce, and political organization. How far this attempt has been successful will be best seen when we have analyzed in the next chapter the organization of labour in the medieval city and the relations of the cities with the surrounding peasant population. NOTES: 1. W. Arnold, in his Wanderungen und Ansiedelungen der deutschen Stamme, p. 431, even maintains that one-half of the now arable area in middle Germany must have been reclaimed from the sixth to the ninth century. Nitzsch (Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, Leipzig, 1883, vol. i.) shares the same opinion. 2. Leo and Botta, Histoire d'Italie, French edition, 1844, t. i., p. 37. 3. The composition for the stealing of a simple knife was 15 solidii and of the iron parts of a mill, 45 solidii (See on this subject Lamprecht's Wirthschaft und Recht der Franken in Raumer's Historisches Taschenbuch, 1883, p. 52.) According to the Riparian law, the sword, the spear, and the iron armour of a warrior attained the value of at least twenty-five cows, or two years of a freeman's labour. A cuirass alone was valued in the Salic law (Desmichels, quoted by Michelet) at as much as thirty-six bushels of wheat. 4. The chief wealth of the chieftains, for a long time, was in their personal domains peopled partly with prisoner slaves, but chiefly in the above way. On the origin of property see Inama Sternegg's Die Ausbildung der grossen Grundherrschaften in Deutschland, in Schmoller's Forschungen, Bd. I., 1878; F. Dahn's Urgeschichte der germanischen und romanischen Volker, Berlin, 1881; Maurer's Dorfverfassung; Guizot's Essais sur l'histoire de France; Maine's Village Community; Botta's Histoire d'Italie; Seebohm, Vinogradov, J. R. Green, etc. 5. See Sir Henry Maine's International Law, London, 1888. 6. Ancient Laws of Ireland, Introduction; E. Nys, Etudes de droit international, t. i., 1896, pp. 86 seq. Among the Ossetes the arbiters from three oldest villages enjoy a special reputation (M. Kovalevsky's Modern Custom and Old Law, Moscow, 1886, ii. 217, Russian). 7. It is permissible to think that this conception (related to the conception of tanistry) played an important part in the life of the period; but research has not yet been directed that way. 8. It was distinctly stated in the charter of St. Quentin of the year 1002 that the ransom for houses which had to be demolished for crimes went for the city walls. The same destination was given to the Ungeld in German cities. At Pskov the cathedral was the bank for the fines, and from this fund money was taken for the wails. 9. Sohm, Frankische Rechts-und Gerichtsverfassung, p. 23; also Nitzsch, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, i. 78. 10. See the excellent remarks on this subject in Augustin Thierry's Lettres sur l'histoire de France. 7th Letter. The barbarian translations of parts of the Bible are extremely instructive on this point. 11. Thirty-six times more than a noble, according to the Anglo-Saxon law. In the code of Rothari the slaying of a king is, however, punished by death; but (apart from Roman influence) this new disposition was introduced (in 646) in the Lombardian law--as remarked by Leo and Botta--to cover the king from blood revenge. The king being at that time the executioner of his own sentences (as the tribe formerly was of its own sentences), he had to be protected by a special disposition, the more so as several Lombardian kings before Rothari had been slain in succession (Leo and Botta, l.c., i. 66-90). 12. Kaufmann, Deutsche Geschichte, Bd. I. "Die Germanen der Urzeit," p. 133. 13. Dr. F. Dahn, Urgeschichte der germanischen und romanischen Volker, Berlin, 1881, Bd. I. 96. 14. If I thus follow the views long since advocated by Maurer (Geschichte der Stadteverfassung in Deutschland, Erlangen, 1869), it is because he has fully proved the uninterrupted evolution from the village community to the mediaeval city, and that his views alone can explain the universality of the communal movement. Savigny and Eichhorn and their followers have certainly proved that the traditions of the Roman municipia had never totally disappeared. But they took no account of the village community period which the barbarians lived through before they had any cities. The fact is, that whenever mankind made a new start in civilization, in Greece, Rome, or middle Europe, it passed through the same stages--the tribe, the village community, the free city, the state--each one naturally evolving out of the preceding stage. Of course, the experience of each preceding civilization was never lost. Greece (itself influenced by Eastern civilizations) influenced Rome, and Rome influenced our civilization; but each of them begin from the same beginning--the tribe. And just as we cannot say that our states are continuations of the Roman state, so also can we not say that the mediaeval cities of Europe (including Scandinavia and Russia) were a continuation of the Roman cities. They were a continuation of the barbarian village community, influenced to a certain extent by the traditions of the Roman towns. 15. M. Kovalevsky, Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia (Ilchester Lectures, London, 1891, Lecture 4). 16. A considerable amount of research had to be done before this character of the so-called udyelnyi period was properly established by the works of Byelaeff (Tales from Russian History), Kostomaroff (The Beginnings of Autocracy in Russia), and especially Professor Sergievich (The Vyeche and the Prince). The English reader may find some information about this period in the just-named work of M. Kovalevsky, in Rambaud's History of Russia, and, in a short summary, in the article "Russia" of the last edition of Chambers's Encyclopaedia. 17. Ferrari, Histoire des revolutions d'Italie, i. 257; Kallsen, Die deutschen Stadte im Mittelalter, Bd. I. (Halle, 1891). 18. See the excellent remarks of Mr. G.L. Gomme as regards the folkmote of London (The Literature of Local Institutions, London, 1886, p. 76). It must, however, be remarked that in royal cities the folkmote never attained the independence which it assumed elsewhere. It is even certain that Moscow and Paris were chosen by the kings and the Church as the cradles of the future royal authority in the State, because they did not possess the tradition of folkmotes accustomed to act as sovereign in all matters. 19. A. Luchaire, Les Communes francaises; also Kluckohn, Geschichte des Gottesfrieden, 1857. L. Semichon (La paix et la treve de Dieu, 2 vols., Paris, 1869) has tried to represent the communal movement as issued from that institution. In reality, the treuga Dei, like the league started under Louis le Gros for the defence against both the robberies of the nobles and the Norman invasions, was a thoroughly popular movement. The only historian who mentions this last league--that is, Vitalis--describes it as a "popular community" ("Considerations sur l'histoire de France," in vol. iv. of Aug. Thierry's OEuvres, Paris, 1868, p. 191 and note). 20. Ferrari, i. 152, 263, etc. 21. Perrens, Histoire de Florence, i. 188; Ferrari, l.c., i. 283. 22. Aug. Thierry, Essai sur l'histoire du Tiers Etat, Paris, 1875, p. 414, note. 23. F. Rocquain, "La Renaissance au XIIe siecle," in Etudes sur l'histoire de France, Paris, 1875, pp. 55-117. 24. N. Kostomaroff, "The Rationalists of the Twelfth Century," in his Monographies and Researches (Russian). 25. Very interesting facts relative to the universality of guilds will be found in "Two Thousand Years of Guild Life," by Rev. J. M. Lambert, Hull, 1891. On the Georgian amkari, see S. Eghiazarov, Gorodskiye Tsekhi ("Organization of Transcaucasian Amkari"), in Memoirs of the Caucasian Geographical Society, xiv. 2, 1891. 26. J.D. Wunderer's "Reisebericht" in Fichard's Frankfurter Archiv, ii. 245; quoted by Janssen, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, i. 355. 27. Dr. Leonard Ennen, Der Dom zu Koln, Historische Einleitung, Koln, 1871, pp. 46, 50. 28. See previous chapter. 29. Kofod Ancher, Om gamle Danske Gilder og deres Undergang, Copenhagen, 1785. Statutes of a Knu guild. 30. Upon the position of women in guilds, see Miss Toulmin Smith's introductory remarks to the English Guilds of her father. One of the Cambridge statutes (p. 281) of the year 1503 is quite positive in the following sentence: "Thys statute is made by the comyne assent of all the bretherne and sisterne of alhallowe yelde." 31. In medieval times, only secret aggression was treated as a murder. Blood-revenge in broad daylight was justice; and slaying in a quarrel was not murder, once the aggressor showed his willingness to repent and to repair the wrong he had done. Deep traces of this distinction still exist in modern criminal law, especially in Russia. 32. Kofod Ancher, l.c. This old booklet contains much that has been lost sight of by later explorers. 33. They played an important part in the revolts of the serfs, and were therefore prohibited several times in succession in the second half of the ninth century. Of course, the king's prohibitions remained a dead letter. 34. The medieval Italian painters were also organized in guilds, which became at a later epoch Academies of art. If the Italian art of those times is impressed with so much individuality that we distinguish, even now, between the different schools of Padua, Bassano, Treviso, Verona, and so on, although all these cities were under the sway of Venice, this was due--J. Paul Richter remarks--to the fact that the painters of each city belonged to a separate guild, friendly with the guilds of other towns, but leading a separate existence. The oldest guild-statute known is that of Verona, dating from 1303, but evidently copied from some much older statute. "Fraternal assistance in necessity of whatever kind," "hospitality towards strangers, when passing through the town, as thus information may be obtained about matters which one may like to learn," and "obligation of offering comfort in case of debility" are among the obligations of the members (Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1890, and Aug. 1892). 35. The chief works on the artels are named in the article "Russia" of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition, p. 84. 36. See, for instance, the texts of the Cambridge guilds given by Toulmin Smith (English Guilds, London, 1870, pp. 274-276), from which it appears that the "generall and principall day" was the "eleccioun day;" or, Ch. M. Clode's The Early History of the Guild of the Merchant Taylors, London, 1888, i. 45; and so on. For the renewal of allegiance, see the Jomsviking saga, mentioned in Pappenheim's Altdanische Schutzgilden, Breslau, 1885, p. 67. It appears very probable that when the guilds began to be prosecuted, many of them inscribed in their statutes the meal day only, or their pious duties, and only alluded to the judicial function of the guild in vague words; but this function did not disappear till a very much later time. The question, "Who will be my judge?" has no meaning now, since the State has appropriated for its bureaucracy the organization of justice; but it was of primordial importance in medieval times, the more so as self-jurisdiction meant self-administration. It must also be remarked that the translation of the Saxon and Danish "guild-bretheren," or "brodre," by the Latin convivii must also have contributed to the above confusion. 37. See the excellent remarks upon the frith guild by J.R. Green and Mrs. Green in The Conquest of England, London, 1883, pp. 229-230. 38. None 39. Recueil des ordonnances des rois de France, t. xii. 562; quoted by Aug. Thierry in Considerations sur l'histoire de France, p. 196, ed. 12mo. 40. A. Luchaire, Les Communes francaises, pp, 45-46. 41. Guilbert de Nogent, De vita sua, quoted by Luchaire, l.c., p. 14. 42. Lebret, Histoire de Venise, i. 393; also Marin, quoted by Leo and Botta in Histoire de l'Italie, French edition, 1844, t. i 500. 43. Dr. W. Arnold, Verfassungsgeschichte der deutschen Freistadte, 1854, Bd. ii. 227 seq.; Ennen, Geschichte der Stadt Koeln, Bd. i. 228-229; also the documents published by Ennen and Eckert. 44. Conquest of England, 1883, p. 453. 45. Byelaeff, Russian History, vols. ii. and iii. 46. W. Gramich, Verfassungs und Verwaltungsgeschichte der Stadt Wurzburg im 13. bis zum 15. Jahrhundert, Wurzburg, 1882, p. 34. 47. When a boat brought a cargo of coal to Wurzburg, coal could only be sold in retail during the first eight days, each family being entitled to no more than fifty basketfuls. The remaining cargo could be sold wholesale, but the retailer was allowed to raise a zittlicher profit only, the unzittlicher, or dishonest profit, being strictly forbidden (Gramich, l.c.). Same in London (Liber albus, quoted by Ochenkowski, p. 161), and, in fact, everywhere. 48. See Fagniez, Etudes sur l'industrie et la classe industrielle a Paris au XIIIme et XIVme siecle, Paris, 1877, pp. 155 seq. It hardly need be added that the tax on bread, and on beer as well, was settled after careful experiments as to the quantity of bread and beer which could be obtained from a given amount of corn. The Amiens archives contain the minutes of such experiences (A. de Calonne, l.c. pp. 77, 93). Also those of London (Ochenkowski, England's wirthschaftliche Entwickelung, etc., Jena, 1879, p. 165). 49. Ch. Gross, The Guild Merchant, Oxford, 1890, i. 135. His documents prove that this practice existed in Liverpool (ii. 148-150), Waterford in Ireland, Neath in Wales, and Linlithgow and Thurso in Scotland. Mr. Gross's texts also show that the purchases were made for distribution, not only among the merchant burgesses, but "upon all citsains and commynalte" (p. 136, note), or, as the Thurso ordinance of the seventeenth century runs, to "make offer to the merchants, craftsmen, and inhabitants of the said burgh, that they may have their proportion of the same, according to their necessitys and ability." 50. The Early History of the Guild of Merchant Taylors, by Charles M. Clode, London, 1888, i. 361, appendix 10; also the following appendix which shows that the same purchases were made in 1546. 51. Cibrario, Les conditions economiques de l'Italie au temps de Dante, Paris, 1865, p. 44. 52. A. de Calonne, La vie municipale au XVme siecle dans le Nord de la France, Paris, 1880, pp. 12-16. In 1485 the city permitted the export to Antwerp of a certain quantity of corn, "the inhabitants of Antwerp being always ready to be agreeable to the merchants and burgesses of Amiens" (ibid., pp. 75-77 and texts). 53. A. Babeau, La ville sous l'ancien regime, Paris, 1880. 54. Ennen, Geschichte der Stadt Koln, i. 491, 492, also texts. CHAPTER VI MUTUAL AID IN THE MEDIAEVAL CITY (continued) Likeness and diversity among the medieval cities. The craftguilds: State-attributes in each of them. Attitude of the city towards the peasants; attempts to free them. The lords. Results achieved by the medieval city: in arts, in learning. Causes of decay. The medieval cities were not organized upon some preconceived plan in obedience to the will of an outside legislator. Each of them was a natural growth in the full sense of the word--an always varying result of struggle between various forces which adjusted and re-adjusted themselves in conformity with their relative energies, the chances of their conflicts, and the support they found in their surroundings. Therefore, there are not two cities whose inner organization and destinies would have been identical. Each one, taken separately, varies from century to century. And yet, when we cast a broad glance upon all the cities of Europe, the local and national unlikenesses disappear, and we are struck to find among all of them a wonderful resemblance, although each has developed for itself, independently from the others, and in different conditions. A small town in the north of Scotland, with its population of coarse labourers and fishermen; a rich city of Flanders, with its world-wide commerce, luxury, love of amusement and animated life; an Italian city enriched by its intercourse with the East, and breeding within its walls a refined artistic taste and civilization; and a poor, chiefly agricultural, city in the marsh and lake district of Russia, seem to have little in common. And nevertheless, the leading lines of their organization, and the spirit which animates them, are imbued with a strong family likeness. Everywhere we see the same federations of small communities and guilds, the same "sub-towns" round the mother city, the same folkmote, and the same insigns of its independence. The defensor of the city, under different names and in different accoutrements, represents the same authority and interests; food supplies, labour and commerce, are organized on closely similar lines; inner and outer struggles are fought with like ambitions; nay, the very formulae used in the struggles, as also in the annals, the ordinances, and the rolls, are identical; and the architectural monuments, whether Gothic, Roman, or Byzantine in style, express the same aspirations and the same ideals; they are conceived and built in the same way. Many dissemblances are mere differences of age, and those disparities between sister cities which are real are repeated in different parts of Europe. The unity of the leading idea and the identity of origin make up for differences of climate, geographical situation, wealth, language and religion. This is why we can speak of the medieval city as of a well-defined phase of civilization; and while every research insisting upon local and individual differences is most welcome, we may still indicate the chief lines of development which are common to all cities.(1) There is no doubt that the protection which used to be accorded to the market-place from the earliest barbarian times has played an important, though not an exclusive, part in the emancipation of the medieval city. The early barbarians knew no trade within their village communities; they traded with strangers only, at certain definite spots, on certain determined days. And, in order that the stranger might come to the barter-place without risk of being slain for some feud which might be running between two kins, the market was always placed under the special protection of all kins. It was inviolable, like the place of worship under the shadow of which it was held. With the Kabyles it is still annaya, like the footpath along which women carry water from the well; neither must be trodden upon in arms, even during inter-tribal wars. In medieval times the market universally enjoyed the same protection.(2) No feud could be prosecuted on the place whereto people came to trade, nor within a certain radius from it; and if a quarrel arose in the motley crowd of buyers and sellers, it had to be brought before those under whose protection the market stood--the community's tribunal, or the bishop's, the lord's, or the king's judge. A stranger who came to trade was a guest, and he went on under this very name. Even the lord who had no scruples about robbing a merchant on the high road, respected the Weichbild, that is, the pole which stood in the market-place and bore either the king's arms, or a glove, or the image of the local saint, or simply a cross, according to whether the market was under the protection of the king, the lord, the local church, or the folkmote--the vyeche.(3) It is easy to understand how the self-jurisdiction of the city could develop out of the special jurisdiction in the market-place, when this last right was conceded, willingly or not, to the city itself. And such an origin of the city's liberties, which can be traced in very many cases, necessarily laid a special stamp upon their subsequent development. It gave a predominance to the trading part of the community. The burghers who possessed a house in the city at the time being, and were co-owners in the town-lands, constituted very often a merchant guild which held in its hands the city's trade; and although at the outset every burgher, rich and poor, could make part of the merchant guild, and the trade itself seems to have been carried on for the entire city by its trustees, the guild gradually became a sort of privileged body. It jealously prevented the outsiders who soon began to flock into the free cities from entering the guild, and kept the advantages resulting from trade for the few "families" which had been burghers at the time of the emancipation. There evidently was a danger of a merchant oligarchy being thus constituted. But already in the tenth, and still more during the two next centuries, the chief crafts, also organized in guilds, were powerful enough to check the oligarchic tendencies of the merchants. The craft guild was then a common seller of its produce and a common buyer of the raw materials, and its members were merchants and manual workers at the same time. Therefore, the predominance taken by the old craft guilds from the very beginnings of the free city life guaranteed to manual labour the high position which it afterwards occupied in the city.(4) In fact, in a medieval city manual labour was no token of inferiority; it bore, on the contrary, traces of the high respect it had been kept in in the village community. Manual labour in a "mystery" was considered as a pious duty towards the citizens: a public function (Amt), as honourable as any other. An idea of "justice" to the community, of "right" towards both producer and consumer, which would seem so extravagant now, penetrated production and exchange. The tanner's, the cooper's, or the shoemaker's work must be "just," fair, they wrote in those times. Wood, leather or thread which are used by the artisan must be "right"; bread must be baked "in justice," and so on. Transport this language into our present life, and it would seem affected and unnatural; but it was natural and unaffected then, because the medieval artisan did not produce for an unknown buyer, or to throw his goods into an unknown market. He produced for his guild first; for a brotherhood of men who knew each other, knew the technics of the craft, and, in naming the price of each product, could appreciate the skill displayed in its fabrication or the labour bestowed upon it. Then the guild, not the separate producer, offered the goods for sale in the community, and this last, in its turn, offered to the brotherhood of allied communities those goods which were exported, and assumed responsibility for their quality. With such an organization, it was the ambition of each craft not to offer goods of inferior quality, and technical defects or adulterations became a matter concerning the whole community, because, an ordinance says, "they would destroy public confidence."(5) Production being thus a social duty, placed under the control of the whole amitas, manual labour could not fall into the degraded condition which it occupies now, so long as the free city was living. A difference between master and apprentice, or between master and worker (compayne, Geselle), existed but in the medieval cities from their very beginnings; this was at the outset a mere difference of age and skill, not of wealth and power. After a seven years' apprenticeship, and after having proved his knowledge and capacities by a work of art, the apprentice became a master himself. And only much later, in the sixteenth century, after the royal power had destroyed the city and the craft organization, was it possible to become master in virtue of simple inheritance or wealth. But this was also the time of a general decay in medieval industries and art. There was not much room for hired work in the early flourishing periods of the medieval cities, still less for individual hirelings. The work of the weavers, the archers, the smiths, the bakers, and so on, was performed for the craft and the city; and when craftsmen were hired in the building trades, they worked as temporary corporations (as they still do in the Russian artels), whose work was paid en bloc. Work for a master began to multiply only later on; but even in this case the worker was paid better than he is paid now, even in this country, and very much better than he used to be paid all over Europe in the first half of this century. Thorold Rogers has familiarized English readers with this idea; but the same is true for the Continent as well, as is shown by the researches of Falke and Schonberg, and by many occasional indications. Even in the fifteenth century a mason, a carpenter, or a smith worker would be paid at Amiens four sols a day, which corresponded to forty-eight pounds of bread, or to the eighth part of a small ox (bouvard). In Saxony, the salary of the Geselle in the building trade was such that, to put it in Falke's words, he could buy with his six days' wages three sheep and one pair of shoes.(6) The donations of workers (Geselle) to cathedrals also bear testimony of their relative well-being, to say nothing of the glorious donations of certain craft guilds nor of what they used to spend in festivities and pageants.(7) In fact, the more we learn about the medieval city, the more we are convinced that at no time has labour enjoyed such conditions of prosperity and such respect as when city life stood at its highest. More than that; not only many aspirations of our modern radicals were already realized in the middle ages, but much of what is described now as Utopian was accepted then as a matter of fact. We are laughed at when we say that work must be pleasant, but--"every one must be pleased with his work," a medieval Kuttenberg ordinance says, "and no one shall, while doing nothing (mit nichts thun), appropriate for himself what others have produced by application and work, because laws must be a shield for application and work."(8) And amidst all present talk about an eight hours' day, it may be well to remember an ordinance of Ferdinand the First relative to the Imperial coal mines, which settled the miner's day at eight hours, "as it used to be of old" (wie vor Alters herkommen), and work on Saturday afternoon was prohibited. Longer hours were very rare, we are told by Janssen, while shorter hours were of common occurrence. In this country, in the fifteenth century, Rogers says, "the workmen worked only forty-eight hours a week."(9) The Saturday half-holiday, too, which we consider as a modern conquest, was in reality an old medieval institution; it was bathing-time for a great part of the community, while Wednesday afternoon was bathing-time for the Geselle.(10) And although school meals did not exist--probably because no children went hungry to school--a distribution of bath-money to the children whose parents found difficulty in providing it was habitual in several places. As to Labour Congresses, they also were a regular Feature of the middles ages. In some parts of Germany craftsmen of the same trade, belonging to different communes, used to come together every year to discuss questions relative to their trade, the years of apprenticeship, the wandering years, the wages, and so on; and in 1572, the Hanseatic towns formally recognized the right of the crafts to come together at periodical congresses, and to take any resolutions, so long as they were not contrary to the cities' rolls, relative to the quality of goods. Such Labour Congresses, partly international like the Hansa itself, are known to have been held by bakers, founders, smiths, tanners, sword-makers and cask-makers.(11) The craft organization required, of course, a close supervision of the craftsmen by the guild, and special jurates were always nominated for that purpose. But it is most remarkable that, so long as the cities lived their free life, no complaints were heard about the supervision; while, after the State had stepped in, confiscating the property of the guilds and destroying their independence in favour of its own bureaucracy, the complaints became simply countless.(12) On the other hand, the immensity of progress realized in all arts under the mediaeval guild system is the best proof that the system was no hindrance to individual initiative.(13) The fact is, that the medieval guild, like the medieval parish, "street," or "quarter," was not a body of citizens, placed under the control of State functionaries; it was a union of all men connected with a given trade: jurate buyers of raw produce, sellers of manufactured goods, and artisans--masters, "compaynes," and apprentices. For the inner organization of the trade its assembly was sovereign, so long as it did not hamper the other guilds, in which case the matter was brought before the guild of the guilds--the city. But there was in it something more than that. It had its own self-jurisdiction, its own military force, its own general assemblies, its own traditions of struggles, glory, and independence, its own relations with other guilds of the same trade in other cities: it had, in a word, a full organic life which could only result from the integrality of the vital functions. When the town was called to arms, the guild appeared as a separate company (Schaar), armed with its own arms (or its own guns, lovingly decorated by the guild, at a subsequent epoch), under its own self-elected commanders. It was, in a word, as independent a unit of the federation as the republic of Uri or Geneva was fifty years ago in the Swiss Confederation. So that, to compare it with a modern trade union, divested of all attributes of State sovereignty, and reduced to a couple of functions of secondary importance, is as unreasonable as to compare Florence or Brugge with a French commune vegetating under the Code Napoleon, or with a Russian town placed under Catherine the Second's municipal law. Both have elected mayors, and the latter has also its craft corporations; but the difference is--all the difference that exists between Florence and Fontenay-les-Oies or Tsarevokokshaisk, or between a Venetian doge and a modern mayor who lifts his hat before the sous-prefet's clerk. The medieval guilds were capable of maintaining their independence; and, later on, especially in the fourteenth century, when, in consequence of several causes which shall presently be indicated, the old municipal life underwent a deep modification, the younger crafts proved strong enough to conquer their due share in the management of the city affairs. The masses, organized in "minor" arts, rose to wrest the power out of the hands of a growing oligarchy, and mostly succeeded in this task, opening again a new era of prosperity. True, that in some cities the uprising was crushed in blood, and mass decapitations of workers followed, as was the case in Paris in 1306, and in Cologne in 1371. In such cases the city's liberties rapidly fell into decay, and the city was gradually subdued by the central authority. But the majority of the towns had preserved enough of vitality to come out of the turmoil with a new life and vigour.(14) A new period of rejuvenescence was their reward. New life was infused, and it found its expression in splendid architectural monuments, in a new period of prosperity, in a sudden progress of technics and invention, and in a new intellectual movement leading to the Renaissance and to the Reformation. The life of a mediaeval city was a succession of hard battles to conquer liberty and to maintain it. True, that a strong and tenacious race of burghers had developed during those fierce contests; true, that love and worship of the mother city had been bred by these struggles, and that the grand things achieved by the mediaeval communes were a direct outcome of that love. But the sacrifices which the communes had to sustain in the battle for freedom were, nevertheless, cruel, and left deep traces of division on their inner life as well. Very few cities had succeeded, under a concurrence of favourable circumstances, in obtaining liberty at one stroke, and these few mostly lost it equally easily; while the great number had to fight fifty or a hundred years in succession, often more, before their rights to free life had been recognized, and another hundred years to found their liberty on a firm basis--the twelfth century charters thus being but one of the stepping-stones to freedom.(15) In reality, the mediaeval city was a fortified oasis amidst a country plunged into feudal submission, and it had to make room for itself by the force of its arms. In consequence of the causes briefly alluded to in the preceding chapter, each village community had gradually fallen under the yoke of some lay or clerical lord. His house had grown to be a castle, and his brothers-in-arms were now the scum of adventurers, always ready to plunder the peasants. In addition to three days a week which the peasants had to work for the lord, they had also to bear all sorts of exactions for the right to sow and to crop, to be gay or sad, to live, to marry, or to die. And, worst of all, they were continually plundered by the armed robbers of some neighbouring lord, who chose to consider them as their master's kin, and to take upon them, and upon their cattle and crops, the revenge for a feud he was fighting against their owner. Every meadow, every field, every river, and road around the city, and every man upon the land was under some lord. The hatred of the burghers towards the feudal barons has found a most characteristic expression in the wording of the different charters which they compelled them to sign. Heinrich V. is made to sign in the charter granted to Speier in 1111, that he frees the burghers from "the horrible and execrable law of mortmain, through which the town has been sunk into deepest poverty" (von dem scheusslichen und nichtswurdigen Gesetze, welches gemein Budel genannt wird, Kallsen, i. 307). The coutume of Bayonne, written about 1273, contains such passages as these: "The people is anterior to the lords. It is the people, more numerous than all others, who, desirous of peace, has made the lords for bridling and knocking down the powerful ones," and so on (Giry, Etablissements de Rouen, i. 117, Quoted by Luchaire, p. 24). A charter submitted for King Robert's signature is equally characteristic. He is made to say in it: "I shall rob no oxen nor other animals. I shall seize no merchants, nor take their moneys, nor impose ransom. From Lady Day to the All Saints' Day I shall seize no horse, nor mare, nor foals, in the meadows. I shall not burn the mills, nor rob the flour ... I shall offer no protection to thieves," etc. (Pfister has published that document, reproduced by Luchaire). The charter "granted" by the Besancon Archbishop Hugues, in which he has been compelled to enumerate all the mischiefs due to his mortmain rights, is equally characteristic.(16) And so on. Freedom could not be maintained in such surroundings, and the cities were compelled to carry on the war outside their walls. The burghers sent out emissaries to lead revolt in the villages; they received villages into their corporations, and they waged direct war against the nobles. It Italy, where the land was thickly sprinkled with feudal castles, the war assumed heroic proportions, and was fought with a stern acrimony on both sides. Florence sustained for seventy-seven years a succession of bloody wars, in order to free its contado from the nobles; but when the conquest had been accomplished (in 1181) all had to begin anew. The nobles rallied; they constituted their own leagues in opposition to the leagues of the towns, and, receiving fresh support from either the Emperor or the Pope, they made the war last for another 130 years. The same took place in Rome, in Lombardy, all over Italy. Prodigies of valour, audacity, and tenaciousness were displayed by the citizens in these wars. But the bows and the hatchets of the arts and crafts had not always the upper hand in their encounters with the armour-clad knights, and many castles withstood the ingenious siege-machinery and the perseverance of the citizens. Some cities, like Florence, Bologna, and many towns in France, Germany, and Bohemia, succeeded in emancipating the surrounding villages, and they were rewarded for their efforts by an extraordinary prosperity and tranquillity. But even here, and still more in the less strong or less impulsive towns, the merchants and artisans, exhausted by war, and misunderstanding their own interests, bargained over the peasants' heads. They compelled the lord to swear allegiance to the city; his country castle was dismantled, and he agreed to build a house and to reside in the city, of which he became a co-burgher (com-bourgeois, con-cittadino); but he maintained in return most of his rights upon the peasants, who only won a partial relief from their burdens. The burgher could not understand that equal rights of citizenship might be granted to the peasant upon whose food supplies he had to rely, and a deep rent was traced between town and village. In some cases the peasants simply changed owners, the city buying out the barons' rights and selling them in shares to her own citizens.(17) Serfdom was maintained, and only much later on, towards the end of the thirteenth century, it was the craft revolution which undertook to put an end to it, and abolished personal servitude, but dispossessed at the same time the serfs of the land.(18) It hardly need be added that the fatal results of such policy were soon felt by the cities themselves; the country became the city's enemy. The war against the castles had another bad effect. It involved the cities in a long succession of mutual wars, which have given origin to the theory, till lately in vogue, namely, that the towns lost their independence through their own jealousies and mutual fights. The imperialist historians have especially supported this theory, which, however, is very much undermined now by modern research. It is certain that in Italy cities fought each other with a stubborn animosity, but nowhere else did such contests attain the same proportions; and in Italy itself the city wars, especially those of the earlier period, had their special causes. They were (as was already shown by Sismondi and Ferrari) a mere continuation of the war against the castles--the free municipal and federative principle unavoidably entering into a fierce contest with feudalism, imperialism, and papacy. Many towns which had but partially shaken off the yoke of the bishop, the lord, or the Emperor, were simply driven against the free cities by the nobles, the Emperor, and Church, whose policy was to divide the cities and to arm them against each other. These special circumstances (partly reflected on to Germany also) explain why the Italian towns, some of which sought support with the Emperor to combat the Pope, while the others sought support from the Church to resist the Emperor, were soon divided into a Gibelin and a Guelf camp, and why the same division appeared in each separate city.(19) The immense economical progress realized by most italian cities just at the time when these wars were hottest,(20) and the alliances so easily concluded between towns, still better characterize those struggles and further undermine the above theory. Already in the years 1130-1150 powerful leagues came into existence; and a few years later, when Frederick Barbarossa invaded Italy and, supported by the nobles and some retardatory cities, marched against Milan, popular enthusiasm was roused in many towns by popular preachers. Crema, Piacenza, Brescia, Tortona, etc., went to the rescue; the banners of the guilds of Verona, Padua, Vicenza, and Trevisa floated side by side in the cities' camp against the banners of the Emperor and the nobles. Next year the Lombardian League came into existence, and sixty years later we see it reinforced by many other cities, and forming a lasting organization which had half of its federal war-chest in Genoa and the other half in Venice.(21) In Tuscany, Florence headed another powerful league, to which Lucca, Bologna, Pistoia, etc., belonged, and which played an important part in crushing down the nobles in middle Italy, while smaller leagues were of common occurrence. It is thus certain that although petty jealousies undoubtedly existed, and discord could be easily sown, they did not prevent the towns from uniting together for the common defence of liberty. Only later on, when separate cities became little States, wars broke out between them, as always must be the case when States struggle for supremacy or colonies. Similar leagues were formed in Germany for the same purpose. When, under the successors of Conrad, the land was the prey of interminable feuds between the nobles, the Westphalian towns concluded a league against the knights, one of the clauses of which was never to lend money to a knight who would continue to conceal stolen goods.(22) When "the knights and the nobles lived on plunder, and murdered whom they chose to murder," as the Wormser Zorn complains, the cities on the Rhine (Mainz, Cologne, Speier, Strasburg, and Basel) took the initiative of a league which soon numbered sixty allied towns, repressed the robbers, and maintained peace. Later on, the league of the towns of Suabia, divided into three "peace districts" (Augsburg, Constance, and Ulm), had the same purpose. And even when such leagues were broken,(23) they lived long enough to show that while the supposed peacemakers--the kings, the emperors, and the Church-fomented discord, and were themselves helpless against the robber knights, it was from the cities that the impulse came for re-establishing peace and union. The cities--not the emperors--were the real makers of the national unity.(24) Similar federations were organized for the same purpose among small villages, and now that attention has been drawn to this subject by Luchaire we may expect soon to learn much more about them. Villages joined into small federations in the contado of Florence, so also in the dependencies of Novgorod and Pskov. As to France, there is positive evidence of a federation of seventeen peasant villages which has existed in the Laonnais for nearly a hundred years (till 1256), and has fought hard for its independence. Three more peasant republics, which had sworn charters similar to those of Laon and Soissons, existed in the neighbourhood of Laon, and, their territories being contiguous, they supported each other in their liberation wars. Altogether, Luchaire is of the opinion that many such federations must have come into existence in France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but that documents relative to them are mostly lost. Of course, being unprotected by walls, they could easily be crushed down by the kings and the lords; but in certain favourable circumstances, when they found support in a league of towns and protection in their mountains, such peasant republics became independent units of the Swiss Confederation.(25) As to unions between cities for peaceful purposes, they were of quite common occurrence. The intercourse which had been established during the period of liberation was not interrupted afterwards. Sometimes, when the scabini of a German town, having to pronounce judgment in a new or complicated case, declared that they knew not the sentence (des Urtheiles nicht weise zu sein), they sent delegates to another city to get the sentence. The same happened also in France;(26) while Forli and Ravenna are known to have mutually naturalized their citizens and granted them full rights in both cities. To submit a contest arisen between two towns, or within a city, to another commune which was invited to act as arbiter, was also in the spirit of the times.(27) As to commercial treaties between cities, they were quite habitual.(28) Unions for regulating the production and the sizes of casks which were used for the commerce in wine, "herring unions," and so on, were mere precursors of the great commercial federations of the Flemish Hansa, and, later on, of the great North German Hansa, the history of which alone might contribute pages and pages to illustrate the federation spirit which permeated men at that time. It hardly need be added, that through the Hanseatic unions the medieval cities have contributed more to the development of international intercourse, navigation, and maritime discovery than all the States of the first seventeen centuries of our era. In a word, federations between small territorial units, as well as among men united by common pursuits within their respective guilds, and federations between cities and groups of cities constituted the very essence of life and thought during that period. The first five of the second decade of centuries of our era may thus be described as an immense attempt at securing mutual aid and support on a grand scale, by means of the principles of federation and association carried on through all manifestations of human life and to all possible degrees. This attempt was attended with success to a very great extent. It united men formerly divided; it secured them a very great deal of freedom, and it tenfolded their forces. At a time when particularism was bred by so many agencies, and the causes of discord and jealousy might have been so numerous, it is gratifying to see that cities scattered over a wide continent had so much in common, and were so ready to confederate for the prosecution of so many common aims. They succumbed in the long run before powerful enemies; not having understood the mutual-aid principle widely enough, they themselves committed fatal faults; but they did not perish through their own jealousies, and their errors were not a want of federation spirit among themselves. The results of that new move which mankind made in the medieval city were immense. At the beginning of the eleventh century the towns of Europe were small clusters of miserable huts, adorned but with low clumsy churches, the builders of which hardly knew how to make an arch; the arts, mostly consisting of some weaving and forging, were in their infancy; learning was found in but a few monasteries. Three hundred and fifty years later, the very face of Europe had been changed. The land was dotted with rich cities, surrounded by immense thick walls which were embellished by towers and gates, each of them a work of art in itself. The cathedrals, conceived in a grand style and profusely decorated, lifted their bell-towers to the skies, displaying a purity of form and a boldness of imagination which we now vainly strive to attain. The crafts and arts had risen to a degree of perfection which we can hardly boast of having superseded in many directions, if the inventive skill of the worker and the superior finish of his work be appreciated higher than rapidity of fabrication. The navies of the free cities furrowed in all directions the Northern and the Southern Mediterranean; one effort more, and they would cross the oceans. Over large tracts of land well-being had taken the place of misery; learning had grown and spread. The methods of science had been elaborated; the basis of natural philosophy had been laid down; and the way had been paved for all the mechanical inventions of which our own times are so proud. Such were the magic changes accomplished in Europe in less than four hundred years. And the losses which Europe sustained through the loss of its free cities can only be understood when we compare the seventeenth century with the fourteenth or the thirteenth. The prosperity which formerly characterized Scotland, Germany, the plains of Italy, was gone. The roads had fallen into an abject state, the cities were depopulated, labour was brought into slavery, art had vanished, commerce itself was decaying.(29) If the medieval cities had bequeathed to us no written documents to testify of their splendour, and left nothing behind but the monuments of building art which we see now all over Europe, from Scotland to Italy, and from Gerona in Spain to Breslau in Slavonian territory, we might yet conclude that the times of independent city life were times of the greatest development of human intellect during the Christian era down to the end of the eighteenth century. On looking, for instance, at a medieval picture representing Nuremberg with its scores of towers and lofty spires, each of which bore the stamp of free creative art, we can hardly conceive that three hundred years before the town was but a collection of miserable hovels. And our admiration grows when we go into the details of the architecture and decorations of each of the countless churches, bell-towers, gates, and communal houses which are scattered all over Europe as far east as Bohemia and the now dead towns of Polish Galicia. Not only Italy, that mother of art, but all Europe is full of such monuments. The very fact that of all arts architecture--a social art above all--had attained the highest development, is significant in itself. To be what it was, it must have originated from an eminently social life. Medieval architecture attained its grandeur--not only because it was a natural development of handicraft; not only because each building, each architectural decoration, had been devised by men who knew through the experience of their own hands what artistic effects can be obtained from stone, iron, bronze, or even from simple logs and mortar; not only because, each monument was a result of collective experience, accumulated in each "mystery" or craft(30)--it was grand because it was born out of a grand idea. Like Greek art, it sprang out of a conception of brotherhood and unity fostered by the city. It had an audacity which could only be won by audacious struggles and victories; it had that expression of vigour, because vigour permeated all the life of the city. A cathedral or a communal house symbolized the grandeur of an organism of which every mason and stone-cutter was the builder, and a medieval building appears--not as a solitary effort to which thousands of slaves would have contributed the share assigned them by one man's imagination; all the city contributed to it. The lofty bell-tower rose upon a structure, grand in itself, in which the life of the city was throbbing--not upon a meaningless scaffold like the Paris iron tower, not as a sham structure in stone intended to conceal the ugliness of an iron frame, as has been done in the Tower Bridge. Like the Acropolis of Athens, the cathedral of a medieval city was intended to glorify the grandeur of the victorious city, to symbolize the union of its crafts, to express the glory of each citizen in a city of his own creation. After having achieved its craft revolution, the city often began a new cathedral in order to express the new, wider, and broader union which had been called into life. The means at hand for these grand undertakings were disproportionately small. Cologne Cathedral was begun with a yearly outlay of but 500 marks; a gift of 100 marks was inscribed as a grand donation;(31) and even when the work approached completion, and gifts poured in in proportion, the yearly outlay in money stood at about 5,000 marks, and never exceeded 14,000. The cathedral of Basel was built with equally small means. But each corporation contributed its part of stone, work, and decorative genius to their common monument. Each guild expressed in it its political conceptions, telling in stone or in bronze the history of the city, glorifying the principles of "Liberty, equality, and fraternity,"(32) praising the city's allies, and sending to eternal fire its enemies. And each guild bestowed its love upon the communal monument by richly decorating it with stained windows, paintings, "gates, worthy to be the gates of Paradise," as Michel Angelo said, or stone decorations of each minutest corner of the building.(33) Small cities, even small parishes,(34) vied with the big agglomerations in this work, and the cathedrals of Laon and St. Ouen hardly stand behind that of Rheims, or the Communal House of Bremen, or the folkmote's bell-tower of Breslau. "No works must be begun by the commune but such as are conceived in response to the grand heart of the commune, composed of the hearts of all citizens, united in one common will"--such were the words of the Council of Florence; and this spirit appears in all communal works of common utility, such as the canals, terraces, vineyards, and fruit gardens around Florence, or the irrigation canals which intersected the plains of Lombardy, or the port and aqueduct of Genoa, or, in fact, any works of the kind which were achieved by almost every city.(35) All arts had progressed in the same way in the medieval cities, those of our own days mostly being but a continuation of what had grown at that time. The prosperity of the Flemish cities was based upon the fine woollen cloth they fabricated. Florence, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, before the black death, fabricated from 70,000 to 100,000 panni of woollen stuffs, which were valued at 1,200,000 golden florins.(36) The chiselling of precious metals, the art of casting, the fine forging of iron, were creations of the mediaeval "mysteries" which had succeeded in attaining in their own domains all that could be made by the hand, without the use of a powerful prime motor. By the hand and by invention, because, to use Whewell's words: "Parchment and paper, printing and engraving, improved glass and steel, gunpowder, clocks, telescopes, the mariner's compass, the reformed calendar, the decimal notation; algebra, trigonometry, chemistry, counterpoint (an invention equivalent to a new creation of music); these are all possessions which we inherit from that which has so disparagingly been termed the Stationary Period" (History of Inductive Sciences, i. 252). True that no new principle was illustrated by any of these discoveries, as Whewell said; but medieval science had done something more than the actual discovery of new principles. It had prepared the discovery of all the new principles which we know at the present time in mechanical sciences: it had accustomed the explorer to observe facts and to reason from them. It was inductive science, even though it had not yet fully grasped the importance and the powers of induction; and it laid the foundations of both mechanics and natural philosophy. Francis Bacon, Galileo, and Copernicus were the direct descendants of a Roger Bacon and a Michael Scot, as the steam engine was a direct product of the researches carried on in the Italian universities on the weight of the atmosphere, and of the mathematical and technical learning which characterized Nuremberg. But why should one take trouble to insist upon the advance of science and art in the medieval city? Is it not enough to point to the cathedrals in the domain of skill, and to the Italian language and the poem of Dante in the domain of thought, to give at once the measure of what the medieval city created during the four centuries it lived? The medieval cities have undoubtedly rendered an immense service to European civilization. They have prevented it from being drifted into the theocracies and despotical states of old; they have endowed it with the variety, the self-reliance, the force of initiative, and the immense intellectual and material energies it now possesses, which are the best pledge for its being able to resist any new invasion of the East. But why did these centres of civilization, which attempted to answer to deeply-seated needs of human nature, and were so full of life, not live further on? Why were they seized with senile debility in the sixteenth century? and, after having repulsed so many assaults from without, and only borrowed new vigour from their interior struggles, why did they finally succumb to both? Various causes contributed to this effect, some of them having their roots in the remote past, while others originated in the mistakes committed by the cities themselves. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, mighty States, reconstructed on the old Roman pattern, were already coming into existence. In each country and each region some feudal lord, more cunning, more given to hoarding, and often less scrupulous than his neighbours, had succeeded in appropriating to himself richer personal domains, more peasants on his lands, more knights in his following, more treasures in his chest. He had chosen for his seat a group of happily-situated villages, not yet trained into free municipal life--Paris, Madrid, or Moscow--and with the labour of his serfs he had made of them royal fortified cities, whereto he attracted war companions by a free distribution of villages, and merchants by the protection he offered to trade. The germ of a future State, which began gradually to absorb other similar centres, was thus laid. Lawyers, versed in the study of Roman law, flocked into such centres; a tenacious and ambitious race of men issued from among the burgesses, who equally hated the naughtiness of the lords and what they called the lawlessness of the peasants. The very forms of the village community, unknown to their code, the very principles of federalism were repulsive to them as "barbarian" inheritances. Caesarism, supported by the fiction of popular consent and by the force of arms, was their ideal, and they worked hard for those who promised to realize it.(37) The Christian Church, once a rebel against Roman law and now its ally, worked in the same direction. The attempt at constituting the theocratic Empire of Europe having proved a failure, the more intelligent and ambitious bishops now yielded support to those whom they reckoned upon for reconstituting the power of the Kings of Israel or of the Emperors of Constantinople. The Church bestowed upon the rising rulers her sanctity, she crowned them as God's representatives on earth, she brought to their service the learning and the statesmanship of her ministers, her blessings and maledictions, her riches, and the sympathies she had retained among the poor. The peasants, whom the cities had failed or refused to free, on seeing the burghers impotent to put an end to the interminable wars between the knights--which wars they had so dearly to pay for--now set their hopes upon the King, the Emperor, or the Great Prince; and while aiding them to crush down the mighty feudal owners, they aided them to constitute the centralized State. And finally, the invasions of the Mongols and the Turks, the holy war against the Maures in Spain, as well as the terrible wars which soon broke out between the growing centres of sovereignty--Ile de France and Burgundy, Scotland and England, England and France, Lithuania and Poland, Moscow and Tver, and so on--contributed to the same end. Mighty States made their appearance; and the cities had now to resist not only loose federations of lords, but strongly-organized centres, which had armies of serfs at their disposal. The worst was, that the growing autocracies found support in the divisions which had grown within the cities themselves. The fundamental idea of the medieval city was grand, but it was not wide enough. Mutual aid and support cannot be limited to a small association; they must spread to its surroundings, or else the surroundings will absorb the association. And in this respect the medieval citizen had committed a formidable mistake at the outset. Instead of looking upon the peasants and artisans who gathered under the protection of his walls as upon so many aids who would contribute their part to the making of the city--as they really did--a sharp division was traced between the "families" of old burghers and the newcomers. For the former, all benefits from communal trade and communal lands were reserved, and nothing was left for the latter but the right of freely using the skill of their own hands. The city thus became divided into "the burghers" or "the commonalty," and "the inhabitants."(38) The trade, which was formerly communal, now became the privilege of the merchant and artisan "families," and the next step--that of becoming individual, or the privilege of oppressive trusts--was unavoidable. The same division took place between the city proper and the surrounding villages. The commune had well tried to free the peasants, but her wars against the lords became, as already mentioned, wars for freeing the city itself from the lords, rather than for freeing the peasants. She left to the lord his rights over the villeins, on condition that he would molest the city no more and would become co-burgher. But the nobles "adopted" by the city, and now residing within its walls, simply carried on the old war within the very precincts of the city. They disliked to submit to a tribunal of simple artisans and merchants, and fought their old feuds in the streets. Each city had now its Colonnas and Orsinis, its Overstolzes and Wises. Drawing large incomes from the estates they had still retained, they surrounded themselves with numerous clients and feudalized the customs and habits of the city itself. And when discontent began to be felt in the artisan classes of the town, they offered their sword and their followers to settle the differences by a free fight, instead of letting the discontent find out the channels which it did not fail to secure itself in olden times. The greatest and the most fatal error of most cities was to base their wealth upon commerce and industry, to the neglect of agriculture. They thus repeated the error which had once been committed by the cities of antique Greece, and they fell through it into the same crimes.(39) The estrangement of so many cities from the land necessarily drew them into a policy hostile to the land, which became more and more evident in the times of Edward the Third,(40) the French Jacqueries, the Hussite wars, and the Peasant War in Germany. On the other hand, a commercial policy involved them in distant enterprises. Colonies were founded by the Italians in the south-east, by German cities in the east, by Slavonian cities in the far northeast. Mercenary armies began to be kept for colonial wars, and soon for local defence as well. Loans were contacted to such an extent as to totally demoralize the citizens; and internal contests grew worse and worse at each election, during which the colonial politics in the interest of a few families was at stake. The division into rich and poor grew deeper, and in the sixteenth century, in each city, the royal authority found ready allies and support among the poor. And there is yet another cause of the decay of communal institutions, which stands higher and lies deeper than all the above. The history of the medieval cities offers one of the most striking illustrations of the power of ideas and principles upon the destinies of mankind, and of the quite opposed results which are obtained when a deep modification of leading ideas has taken place. Self-reliance and federalism, the sovereignty of each group, and the construction of the political body from the simple to the composite, were the leading ideas in the eleventh century. But since that time the conceptions had entirely changed. The students of Roman law and the prelates of the Church, closely bound together since the time of Innocent the Third, had succeeded in paralyzing the idea--the antique Greek idea--which presided at the foundation of the cities. For two or three hundred years they taught from the pulpit, the University chair, and the judges' bench, that salvation must be sought for in a strongly-centralized State, placed under a semi-divine authority;(41) that one man can and must be the saviour of society, and that in the name of public salvation he can commit any violence: burn men and women at the stake, make them perish under indescribable tortures, plunge whole provinces into the most abject misery. Nor did they fail to give object lessons to this effect on a grand scale, and with an unheard-of cruelty, wherever the king's sword and the Church's fire, or both at once, could reach. By these teachings and examples, continually repeated and enforced upon public attention, the very minds of the citizens had been shaped into a new mould. They began to find no authority too extensive, no killing by degrees too cruel, once it was "for public safety." And, with this new direction of mind and this new belief in one man's power, the old federalist principle faded away, and the very creative genius of the masses died out. The Roman idea was victorious, and in such circumstances the centralized State had in the cities a ready prey. Florence in the fifteenth century is typical of this change. Formerly a popular revolution was the signal of a new departure. Now, when the people, brought to despair, insurged, it had constructive ideas no more; no fresh idea came out of the movement. A thousand representatives were put into the Communal Council instead of 400; 100 men entered the signoria instead of 80. But a revolution of figures could be of no avail. The people's discontent was growing up, and new revolts followed. A saviour--the "tyran"--was appealed to; he massacred the rebels, but the disintegration of the communal body continued worse than ever. And when, after a new revolt, the people of Florence appealed to their most popular man, Gieronimo Savonarola, for advice, the monk's answer was:--"Oh, people mine, thou knowest that I cannot go into State affairs ... purify thy soul, and if in such a disposition of mind thou reformest thy city, then, people of Florence, thou shalt have inaugurated the reform in all Italy!" Carnival masks and vicious books were burned, a law of charity and another against usurers were passed--and the democracy of Florence remained where it was. The old spirit had gone. By too much trusting to government, they had ceased to trust to themselves; they were unable to open new issues. The State had only to step in and to crush down their last liberties. And yet, the current of mutual aid and support did not die out in the masses, it continued to flow even after that defeat. It rose up again with a formidable force, in answer to the communist appeals of the first propagandists of the reform, and it continued to exist even after the masses, having failed to realize the life which they hoped to inaugurate under the inspiration of a reformed religion, fell under the dominions of an autocratic power. It flows still even now, and it seeks its way to find out a new expression which would not be the State, nor the medieval city, nor the village community of the barbarians, nor the savage clan, but would proceed from all of them, and yet be superior to them in its wider and more deeply humane conceptions. NOTES: 1. The literature of the subject is immense; but there is no work yet which treats of the medieval city as of a whole. For the French Communes, Augustin Thierry's Lettres and Considerations sur l'histoire de France still remain classical, and Luchaire's Communes francaises is an excellent addition on the same lines. For the cities of Italy, the great work of Sismondi (Histoire des republiques italiennes du moyen age, Paris, 1826, 16 vols.), Leo and Botta's History of Italy, Ferrari's Revolutions d'Italie, and Hegel's Geschichte der Stadteverfassung in Italien, are the chief sources of general information. For Germany we have Maurer's Stadteverfassung, Barthold's Geschichte der deutschen Stadte, and, of recent works, Hegel's Stadte und Gilden der germanischen Volker (2 vols. Leipzig, 1891), and Dr. Otto Kallsen's Die deutschen Stadte im Mittelalter (2 vols. Halle, 1891), as also Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes (5 vols. 1886), which, let us hope, will soon be translated into English (French translation in 1892). For Belgium, A. Wauters, Les Libertes communales (Bruxelles, 1869-78, 3 vols.). For Russia, Byelaeff's, Kostomaroff's and Sergievich's works. And finally, for England, we posses one of the best works on cities of a wider region in Mrs. J.R. Green's Town Life in the Fifteenth Century (2 vols. London, 1894). We have, moreover, a wealth of well-known local histories, and several excellent works of general or economical history which I have so often mentioned in this and the preceding chapter. The richness of literature consists, however, chiefly in separate, sometimes admirable, researches into the history of separate cities, especially Italian and German; the guilds; the land question; the economical principles of the time; the economical importance of guilds and crafts; the leagues between, cities (the Hansa); and communal art. An incredible wealth of information is contained in works of this second category, of which only some of the more important are named in these pages. 2. Kulischer, in an excellent essay on primitive trade (Zeitschrift für Volkerpsychologie, Bd. x. 380), also points out that, according to Herodotus, the Argippaeans were considered inviolable, because the trade between the Scythians and the northern tribes took place on their territory. A fugitive was sacred on their territory, and they were often asked to act as arbiters for their neighbours. See Appendix XI. 3. Some discussion has lately taken place upon the Weichbild and the Weichbild-law, which still remain obscure (see Zopfl, Alterthumer des deutschen Reichs und Rechts, iii. 29; Kallsen, i. 316). The above explanation seems to be the more probable, but, of course, it must be tested by further research. It is also evident that, to use a Scotch expression, the "mercet cross" could be considered as an emblem of Church jurisdiction, but we find it both in bishop cities and in those in which the folkmote was sovereign. 4. For all concerning the merchant guild see Mr. Gross's exhaustive work, The Guild Merchant (Oxford, 1890, 2 vols.); also Mrs. Green's remarks in Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, vol. ii. chaps. v. viii. x; and A. Doren's review of the subject in Schmoller's Forschungen, vol. xii. If the considerations indicated in the previous chapter (according to which trade was communal at its beginnings) prove to be correct, it will be permissible to suggest as a probable hypothesis that the guild merchant was a body entrusted with commerce in the interest of the whole city, and only gradually became a guild of merchants trading for themselves; while the merchant adventurers of this country, the Novgorod povolniki (free colonizers and merchants) and the mercati personati, would be those to whom it was left to open new markets and new branches of commerce for themselves. Altogether, it must be remarked that the origin of the mediaeval city can be ascribed to no separate agency. It was a result of many agencies in different degrees. 5. Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, i. 315; Gramich's Wurzburg; and, in fact, any collection of ordinances. 6. Falke, Geschichtliche Statistik, i. 373-393, and ii. 66; quoted in Janssen's Geschichte, i. 339; J.D. Blavignac, in Comptes et depenses de la construction du clocher de Saint-Nicolas a Fribourg en Suisse, comes to a similar conclusion. For Amiens, De Calonne's Vie Municipale, p. 99 and Appendix. For a thorough appreciation and graphical representation of the medieval wages in England and their value in bread and meat, see G. Steffen's excellent article and curves in The Nineteenth Century for 1891, and Studier ofver lonsystemets historia i England, Stockholm, 1895. 7. To quote but one example out of many which may be found in Schonberg's and Falke's works, the sixteen shoemaker workers (Schusterknechte) of the town Xanten, on the Rhine, gave, for erecting a screen and an altar in the church, 75 guldens of subscriptions, and 12 guldens out of their box, which money was worth, according to the best valuations, ten times its present value. 8. Quoted by Janssen, l.c. i. 343. 9. The Economical Interpretation of History, London, 1891, p. 303. 10. Janssen, l.c. See also Dr. Alwin Schultz, Deutsches Leben im XIV und XV Jahrhundert, grosse Ausgabe, Wien, 1892, pp. 67 seq. At Paris, the day of labour varied from seven to eight hours in the winter to fourteen hours in summer in certain trades, while in others it was from eight to nine hours in winter, to from ten to twelve in Summer. All work was stopped on Saturdays and on about twenty-five other days (jours de commun de vile foire) at four o'clock, while on Sundays and thirty other holidays there was no work at all. The general conclusion is, that the medieval worker worked less hours, all taken, than the present-day worker (Dr. E. Martin Saint-Leon, Histoire des corporations, p. 121). 11. W. Stieda, "Hansische Vereinbarungen uber stadtisches Gewerbe im XIV und XV Jahrhundert," in Hansische Geschichtsblatter, Jahrgang 1886, p. 121. Schonberg's Wirthschaftliche Bedeutung der Zunfte; also, partly, Roscher. 12. See Toulmin Smith's deeply-felt remarks about the royal spoliation of the guilds, in Miss Smith's Introduction to English Guilds. In France the same royal spoliation and abolition of the guilds' jurisdiction was begun from 1306, and the final blow was struck in 1382 (Fagniez, l.c. pp. 52-54). 13. Adam Smith and his contemporaries knew well what they were condemning when they wrote against the State interference in trade and the trade monopolies of State creation. Unhappily, their followers, with their hopeless superficiality, flung medieval guilds and State interference into the same sack, making no distinction between a Versailles edict and a guild ordinance. It hardly need be said that the economists who have seriously studied the subject, like Schonberg (the editor of the well-known course of Political Economy), never fell into such an error. But, till lately, diffuse discussions of the above type went on for economical "science." 14. In Florence the seven minor arts made their revolution in 1270-82, and its results are fully described by Perrens (Histoire de Florence, Paris, 1877, 3 vols.), and especially by Gino Capponi (Storia della repubblica di Firenze, 2da edizione, 1876, i. 58-80; translated into German). In Lyons, on the contrary, where the movement of the minor crafts took place in 1402, the latter were defeated and lost the right of themselves nominating their own judges. The two parties came apparently to a compromise. In Rostock the same movement took place in 1313; in Zurich in 1336; in Bern in 1363; in Braunschweig in 1374, and next year in Hamburg; in Lubeck in 1376-84; and so on. See Schmoller's Strassburg zur Zeit der Zunftkampfe and Strassburg's Bluthe; Brentano's Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1871-72; Eb. Bain's Merchant and Craft Guilds, Aberdeen, 1887, pp. 26-47, 75, etc. As to Mr. Gross's opinion relative to the same struggles in England, see Mrs. Green's remarks in her Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, ii. 190-217; also the chapter on the Labour Question, and, in fact, the whole of this extremely interesting volume. Brentano's views on the crafts' struggles, expressed especially in iii. and iv. of his essay "On the History and Development of Guilds," in Toulmin Smith's English Guilds remain classical for the subject, and may be said to have been again and again confirmed by subsequent research. 15. To give but one example--Cambrai made its first revolution in 907, and, after three or four more revolts, it obtained its charter in 1076. This charter was repealed twice (1107 and 1138), and twice obtained again (in 1127 and 1180). Total, 223 years of struggles before conquering the right to independence. Lyons--from 1195 to 1320. 16. See Tuetey, "Etude sur Le droit municipal ... en Franche-Comte," in Memoires de la Societe d'emulation de Montbeliard, 2e serie, ii. 129 seq. 17. This seems to have been often the case in Italy. In Switzerland, Bern bought even the towns of Thun and Burgdorf. 18. Such was, at least, the case in the cities of Tuscany (Florence, Lucca, Sienna, Bologna, etc.), for which the relations between city and peasants are best known. (Luchitzkiy, "Slavery and Russian Slaves in Florence," in Kieff University Izvestia for 1885, who has perused Rumohr's Ursprung der Besitzlosigkeit der Colonien in Toscana, 1830.) The whole matter concerning the relations between the cities and the peasants requires much more study than has hitherto been done. 19. Ferrari's generalizations are often too theoretical to be always correct; but his views upon the part played by the nobles in the city wars are based upon a wide range of authenticated facts. 20. Only such cities as stubbornly kept to the cause of the barons, like Pisa or Verona, lost through the wars. For many towns which fought on the barons' side, the defeat was also the beginning of liberation and progress. 21. Ferrari, ii. 18, 104 seq.; Leo and Botta, i. 432. 22. Joh. Falke, Die Hansa Als Deutsche See-und Handelsmacht, Berlin, 1863, pp. 31, 55. 23. For Aachen and Cologne we have direct testimony that the bishops of these two cities--one of them bought by the enemy opened to him the gates. 24. See the facts, though not always the conclusions, of Nitzsch, iii. 133 seq.; also Kallsen, i. 458, etc. 25. On the Commune of the Laonnais, which, until Melleville's researches (Histoire de la Commune du Laonnais, Paris, 1853), was confounded with the Commune of Laon, see Luchaire, pp. 75 seq. For the early peasants' guilds and subsequent unions see R. Wilman's "Die landlichen Schutzgilden Westphaliens," in Zeitschrift für Kulturgeschichte, neue Folge, Bd. iii., quoted in Henne-am-Rhyn's Kulturgeschichte, iii. 249. 26. Luchaire, p. 149. 27. Two important cities, like Mainz and Worms, would settle a political contest by means of arbitration. After a civil war broken out in Abbeville, Amiens would act, in 1231, as arbiter (Luchaire, 149); and so on. 28. See, for instance, W. Stieda, Hansische Vereinbarungen, l.c., p. 114. 29. Cosmo Innes's Early Scottish History and Scotland in Middle Ages, quoted by Rev. Denton, l.c., pp. 68, 69; Lamprecht's Deutsches wirthschaftliche Leben im Mittelalter, review by Schmoller in his Jahrbuch, Bd. xii.; Sismondi's Tableau de l'agriculture toscane, pp. 226 seq. The dominions of Florence could be recognized at a glance through their prosperity. 30. Mr. John J. Ennett (Six Essays, London, 1891) has excellent pages on this aspect of medieval architecture. Mr. Willis, in his appendix to Whewell's History of Inductive Sciences (i. 261-262), has pointed out the beauty of the mechanical relations in medieval buildings. "A new decorative construction was matured," he writes, "not thwarting and controlling, but assisting and harmonizing with the mechanical construction. Every member, every moulding, becomes a sustainer of weight; and by the multiplicity of props assisting each other, and the consequent subdivision of weight, the eye was satisfied of the stability of the structure, notwithstanding curiously slender aspects of the separate parts." An art which sprang out of the social life of the city could not be better characterized. 31. Dr. L. Ennen, Der Dom zu Koln, seine Construction und Anstaltung, Koln, 1871. 32. The three statues are among the outer decorations of Notre Dame de Paris. 33. Mediaeval art, like Greek art, did not know those curiosity shops which we call a National Gallery or a Museum. A picture was painted, a statue was carved, a bronze decoration was cast to stand in its proper place in a monument of communal art. It lived there, it was part of a whole, and it contributed to give unity to the impression produced by the whole. 34. Cf. J. T. Ennett's "Second Essay," p. 36. 35. Sismondi, iv. 172; xvi. 356. The great canal, Naviglio Grande, which brings the water from the Tessino, was begun in 1179, i.e. after the conquest of independence, and it was ended in the thirteenth century. On the subsequent decay, see xvi. 355. 36. In 1336 it had 8,000 to 10,000 boys and girls in its primary schools, 1,000 to 1,200 boys in its seven middle schools, and from 550 to 600 students in its four universities. The thirty communal hospitals contained over 1,000 beds for a population of 90,000 inhabitants (Capponi, ii. 249 seq.). It has more than once been suggested by authoritative writers that education stood, as a rule, at a much higher level than is generally supposed. Certainly so in democratic Nuremberg. 37. Cf. L. Ranke's excellent considerations upon the essence of Roman Law in his Weltgeschichte, Bd. iv. Abth. 2, pp. 20-31. Also Sismondi's remarks upon the part played by the legistes in the constitution of royal authority, Histoire des Francais, Paris, 1826, viii. 85-99. The popular hatred against these "weise Doktoren und Beutelschneider des Volks" broke out with full force in the first years of the sixteenth century in the sermons of the early Reform movement. 38. Brentano fully understood the fatal effects of the struggle between the "old burghers" and the new-comers. Miaskowski, in his work on the village communities of Switzerland, has indicated the same for village communities. 39. The trade in slaves kidnapped in the East was never discontinued in the Italian republics till the fifteenth century. Feeble traces of it are found also in Germany and elsewhere. See Cibrario. Della schiavitu e del servaggio, 2 vols. Milan, 1868; Professor Luchitzkiy, "Slavery and Russian Slaves in Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries," in Izvestia of the Kieff University, 1885. 40. J.R. Green's History of the English People, London, 1878, i. 455. 41. See the theories expressed by the Bologna lawyers, already at the Congress of Roncaglia in 1158. CHAPTER VII MUTUAL AID AMONGST OURSELVES Popular revolts at the beginning of the State-period. Mutual Aid institutions of the present time. The village community; its struggles for resisting its abolition by the State. Habits derived from the village-community life, retained in our modern villages. Switzerland, France, Germany, Russia. The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that it has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history. It was chiefly evolved during periods of peace and prosperity; but when even the greatest calamities befell men--when whole countries were laid waste by wars, and whole populations were decimated by misery, or groaned under the yoke of tyranny--the same tendency continued to live in the villages and among the poorer classes in the towns; it still kept them together, and in the long run it reacted even upon those ruling, fighting, and devastating minorities which dismissed it as sentimental nonsense. And whenever mankind had to work out a new social organization, adapted to a new phasis of development, its constructive genius always drew the elements and the inspiration for the new departure from that same ever-living tendency. New economical and social institutions, in so far as they were a creation of the masses, new ethical systems, and new religions, all have originated from the same source, and the ethical progress of our race, viewed in its broad lines, appears as a gradual extension of the mutual-aid principles from the tribe to always larger and larger agglomerations, so as to finally embrace one day the whole of mankind, without respect to its divers creeds, languages, and races. After having passed through the savage tribe, and next through the village community, the Europeans came to work out in medieval times a new form of organization, which had the advantage of allowing great latitude for individual initiative, while it largely responded at the same time to man's need of mutual support. A federation of village communities, covered by a network of guilds and fraternities, was called into existence in the medieval cities. The immense results achieved under this new form of union--in well-being for all, in industries, art, science, and commerce--were discussed at some length in two preceding chapters, and an attempt was also made to show why, towards the end of the fifteenth century, the medieval republics--surrounded by domains of hostile feudal lords, unable to free the peasants from servitude, and gradually corrupted by ideas of Roman Caesarism--were doomed to become a prey to the growing military States. However, before submitting for three centuries to come, to the all-absorbing authority of the State, the masses of the people made a formidable attempt at reconstructing society on the old basis of mutual aid and support. It is well known by this time that the great movement of the reform was not a mere revolt against the abuses of the Catholic Church. It had its constructive ideal as well, and that ideal was life in free, brotherly communities. Those of the early writings and sermons of the period which found most response with the masses were imbued with ideas of the economical and social brotherhood of mankind. The "Twelve Articles" and similar professions of faith, which were circulated among the German and Swiss peasants and artisans, maintained not only every one's right to interpret the Bible according to his own understanding, but also included the demand of communal lands being restored to the village communities and feudal servitudes being abolished, and they always alluded to the "true" faith--a faith of brotherhood. At the same time scores of thousands of men and women joined the communist fraternities of Moravia, giving them all their fortune and living in numerous and prosperous settlements constructed upon the principles of communism.(1) Only wholesale massacres by the thousand could put a stop to this widely-spread popular movement, and it was by the sword, the fire, and the rack that the young States secured their first and decisive victory over the masses of the people.(2) For the next three centuries the States, both on the Continent and in these islands, systematically weeded out all institutions in which the mutual-aid tendency had formerly found its expression. The village communities were bereft of their folkmotes, their courts and independent administration; their lands were confiscated. The guilds were spoliated of their possessions and liberties, and placed under the control, the fancy, and the bribery of the State's official. The cities were divested of their sovereignty, and the very springs of their inner life--the folkmote, the elected justices and administration, the sovereign parish and the sovereign guild--were annihilated; the State's functionary took possession of every link of what formerly was an organic whole. Under that fatal policy and the wars it engendered, whole regions, once populous and wealthy, were laid bare; rich cities became insignificant boroughs; the very roads which connected them with other cities became impracticable. Industry, art, and knowledge fell into decay. Political education, science, and law were rendered subservient to the idea of State centralization. It was taught in the Universities and from the pulpit that the institutions in which men formerly used to embody their needs of mutual support could not be tolerated in a properly organized State; that the State alone could represent the bonds of union between its subjects; that federalism and "particularism" were the enemies of progress, and the State was the only proper initiator of further development. By the end of the last century the kings on the Continent, the Parliament in these isles, and the revolutionary Convention in France, although they were at war with each other, agreed in asserting that no separate unions between citizens must exist within the State; that hard labour and death were the only suitable punishments to workers who dared to enter into "coalitions." "No state within the State!" The State alone, and the State's Church, must take care of matters of general interest, while the subjects must represent loose aggregations of individuals, connected by no particular bonds, bound to appeal to the Government each time that they feel a common need. Up to the middle of this century this was the theory and practice in Europe. Even commercial and industrial societies were looked at with suspicion. As to the workers, their unions were treated as unlawful almost within our own lifetime in this country and within the last twenty years on the Continent. The whole system of our State education was such that up to the present time, even in this country, a notable portion of society would treat as a revolutionary measure the concession of such rights as every one, freeman or serf, exercised five hundred years ago in the village folkmote, the guild, the parish, and the city. The absorption of all social functions by the State necessarily favoured the development of an unbridled, narrow-minded individualism. In proportion as the obligations towards the State grew in numbers the citizens were evidently relieved from their obligations towards each other. In the guild--and in medieval times every man belonged to some guild or fraternity two "brothers" were bound to watch in turns a brother who had fallen ill; it would be sufficient now to give one's neighbour the address of the next paupers' hospital. In barbarian society, to assist at a fight between two men, arisen from a quarrel, and not to prevent it from taking a fatal issue, meant to be oneself treated as a murderer; but under the theory of the all-protecting State the bystander need not intrude: it is the policeman's business to interfere, or not. And while in a savage land, among the Hottentots, it would be scandalous to eat without having loudly called out thrice whether there is not somebody wanting to share the food, all that a respectable citizen has to do now is to pay the poor tax and to let the starving starve. The result is, that the theory which maintains that men can, and must, seek their own happiness in a disregard of other people's wants is now triumphant all round in law, in science, in religion. It is the religion of the day, and to doubt of its efficacy is to be a dangerous Utopian. Science loudly proclaims that the struggle of each against all is the leading principle of nature, and of human societies as well. To that struggle Biology ascribes the progressive evolution of the animal world. History takes the same line of argument; and political economists, in their naive ignorance, trace all progress of modern industry and machinery to the "wonderful" effects of the same principle. The very religion of the pulpit is a religion of individualism, slightly mitigated by more or less charitable relations to one's neighbours, chiefly on Sundays. "Practical" men and theorists, men of science and religious preachers, lawyers and politicians, all agree upon one thing--that individualism may be more or less softened in its harshest effects by charity, but that it is the only secure basis for the maintenance of society and its ulterior progress. It seems, therefore, hopeless to look for mutual-aid institutions and practices in modern society. What could remain of them? And yet, as soon as we try to ascertain how the millions of human beings live, and begin to study their everyday relations, we are struck with the immense part which the mutual-aid and mutual-support principles play even now-a-days in human life. Although the destruction of mutual-aid institutions has been going on in practice and theory, for full three or four hundred years, hundreds of millions of men continue to live under such institutions; they piously maintain them and endeavour to reconstitute them where they have ceased to exist. In our mutual relations every one of us has his moments of revolt against the fashionable individualistic creed of the day, and actions in which men are guided by their mutual aid inclinations constitute so great a part of our daily intercourse that if a stop to such actions could be put all further ethical progress would be stopped at once. Human society itself could not be maintained for even so much as the lifetime of one single generation. These facts, mostly neglected by sociologists and yet of the first importance for the life and further elevation of mankind, we are now going to analyze, beginning with the standing institutions of mutual support, and passing next to those acts of mutual aid which have their origin in personal or social sympathies. When we cast a broad glance on the present constitution of European society we are struck at once with the fact that, although so much has been done to get rid of the village community, this form of union continues to exist to the extent we shall presently see, and that many attempts are now made either to reconstitute it in some shape or another or to find some substitute for it. The current theory as regards the village community is, that in Western Europe it has died out by a natural death, because the communal possession of the soil was found inconsistent with the modern requirements of agriculture. But the truth is that nowhere did the village community disappear of its own accord; everywhere, on the contrary, it took the ruling classes several centuries of persistent but not always successful efforts to abolish it and to confiscate the communal lands. In France, the village communities began to be deprived of their independence, and their lands began to be plundered, as early as the sixteenth century. However, it was only in the next century, when the mass of the peasants was brought, by exactions and wars, to the state of subjection and misery which is vividly depicted by all historians, that the plundering of their lands became easy and attained scandalous proportions. "Every one has taken of them according to his powers ... imaginary debts have been claimed, in order to seize upon their lands;" so we read in an edict promulgated by Louis the Fourteenth in 1667.(3) Of course the State's remedy for such evils was to render the communes still more subservient to the State, and to plunder them itself. In fact, two years later all money revenue of the communes was confiscated by the King. As to the appropriation of communal lands, it grew worse and worse, and in the next century the nobles and the clergy had already taken possession of immense tracts of land--one-half of the cultivated area, according to certain estimates--mostly to let it go out of culture.(4) But the peasants still maintained their communal institutions, and until the year 1787 the village folkmotes, composed of all householders, used to come together in the shadow of the bell-tower or a tree, to allot and re-allot what they had retained of their fields, to assess the taxes, and to elect their executive, just as the Russian mir does at the present time. This is what Babeau's researches have proved to demonstration.(5) The Government found, however, the folkmotes "too noisy," too disobedient, and in 1787, elected councils, composed of a mayor and three to six syndics, chosen from among the wealthier peasants, were introduced instead. Two years later the Revolutionary Assemblee Constituante, which was on this point at one with the old regime, fully confirmed this law (on the 14th of December, 1789), and the bourgeois du village had now their turn for the plunder of communal lands, which continued all through the Revolutionary period. Only on the 16th of August, 1792, the Convention, under the pressure of the peasants' insurrections, decided to return the enclosed lands to the communes;(6) but it ordered at the same time that they should be divided in equal parts among the wealthier peasants only--a measure which provoked new insurrections and was abrogated next year, in 1793, when the order came to divide the communal lands among all commoners, rich and poor alike, "active" and "inactive." These two laws, however, ran so much against the conceptions of the peasants that they were not obeyed, and wherever the peasants had retaken possession of part of their lands they kept them undivided. But then came the long years of wars, and the communal lands were simply confiscated by the State (in 1794) as a mortgage for State loans, put up for sale, and plundered as such; then returned again to the communes and confiscated again (in 1813); and only in 1816 what remained of them, i.e. about 15,000,000 acres of the least productive land, was restored to the village communities.(7) Still this was not yet the end of the troubles of the communes. Every new regime saw in the communal lands a means for gratifying its supporters, and three laws (the first in 1837 and the last under Napoleon the Third) were passed to induce the village communities to divide their estates. Three times these laws had to be repealed, in consequence of the opposition they met with in the villages; but something was snapped up each time, and Napoleon the Third, under the pretext of encouraging perfected methods of agriculture, granted large estates out of the communal lands to some of his favourites. As to the autonomy of the village communities, what could be retained of it after so many blows? The mayor and the syndics were simply looked upon as unpaid functionaries of the State machinery. Even now, under the Third Republic, very little can be done in a village community without the huge State machinery, up to the prefet and the ministries, being set in motion. It is hardly credible, and yet it is true, that when, for instance, a peasant intends to pay in money his share in the repair of a communal road, instead of himself breaking the necessary amount of stones, no fewer than twelve different functionaries of the State must give their approval, and an aggregate of fifty-two different acts must be performed by them, and exchanged between them, before the peasant is permitted to pay that money to the communal council. All the remainder bears the same character.(8) What took place in France took place everywhere in Western and Middle Europe. Even the chief dates of the great assaults upon the peasant lands are the same. For England the only difference is that the spoliation was accomplished by separate acts rather than by general sweeping measures--with less haste but more thoroughly than in France. The seizure of the communal lands by the lords also began in the fifteenth century, after the defeat of the peasant insurrection of 1380--as seen from Rossus's Historia and from a statute of Henry the Seventh, in which these seizures are spoken of under the heading of "enormitees and myschefes as be hurtfull ... to the common wele."(9) Later on the Great Inquest, under Henry the Eighth, was begun, as is known, in order to put a stop to the enclosure of communal lands, but it ended in a sanction of what had been done.(10) The communal lands continued to be preyed upon, and the peasants were driven from the land. But it was especially since the middle of the eighteenth century that, in England as everywhere else, it became part of a systematic policy to simply weed out all traces of communal ownership; and the wonder is not that it has disappeared, but that it could be maintained, even in England, so as to be "generally prevalent so late as the grandfathers of this generation."(11) The very object of the Enclosure Acts, as shown by Mr. Seebohm, was to remove this system,(12) and it was so well removed by the nearly four thousand Acts passed between 1760 and 1844 that only faint traces of it remain now. The land of the village communities was taken by the lords, and the appropriation was sanctioned by Parliament in each separate case. In Germany, in Austria, in Belgium the village community was also destroyed by the State. Instances of commoners themselves dividing their lands were rare,(13) while everywhere the States coerced them to enforce the division, or simply favoured the private appropriation of their lands. The last blow to communal ownership in Middle Europe also dates from the middle of the eighteenth century. In Austria sheer force was used by the Government, in 1768, to compel the communes to divide their lands--a special commission being nominated two years later for that purpose. In Prussia Frederick the Second, in several of his ordinances (in 1752, 1763, 1765, and 1769), recommended to the Justizcollegien to enforce the division. In Silesia a special resolution was issued to serve that aim in 1771. The same took place in Belgium, and, as the communes did not obey, a law was issued in 1847 empowering the Government to buy communal meadows in order to sell them in retail, and to make a forced sale of the communal land when there was a would-be buyer for it.(14) In short, to speak of the natural death of the village communities in virtue of economical laws is as grim a joke as to speak of the natural death of soldiers slaughtered on a battlefield. The fact was simply this: The village communities had lived for over a thousand years; and where and when the peasants were not ruined by wars and exactions they steadily improved their methods of culture. But as the value of land was increasing, in consequence of the growth of industries, and the nobility had acquired, under the State organization, a power which it never had had under the feudal system, it took possession of the best parts of the communal lands, and did its best to destroy the communal institutions. However, the village-community institutions so well respond to the needs and conceptions of the tillers of the soil that, in spite of all, Europe is up to this date covered with living survivals of the village communities, and European country life is permeated with customs and habits dating from the community period. Even in England, notwithstanding all the drastic measures taken against the old order of things, it prevailed as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century. Mr. Gomme--one of the very few English scholars who have paid attention to the subject--shows in his work that many traces of the communal possession of the soil are found in Scotland, "runrig" tenancy having been maintained in Forfarshire up to 1813, while in certain villages of Inverness the custom was, up to 1801, to plough the land for the whole community, without leaving any boundaries, and to allot it after the ploughing was done. In Kilmorie the allotment and re-allotment of the fields was in full vigour "till the last twenty-five years," and the Crofters' Commission found it still in vigour in certain islands.(15) In Ireland the system prevailed up to the great famine; and as to England, Marshall's works, which passed unnoticed until Nasse and Sir Henry Maine drew attention to them, leave no doubt as to the village-community system having been widely spread, in nearly all English counties, at the beginning of the nineteenth century.(16) No more than twenty years ago Sir Henry Maine was "greatly surprised at the number of instances of abnormal property rights, necessarily implying the former existence of collective ownership and joint cultivation," which a comparatively brief inquiry brought under his notice.(17) And, communal institutions having persisted so late as that, a great number of mutual-aid habits and customs would undoubtedly be discovered in English villages if the writers of this country only paid attention to village life.(18) As to the Continent, we find the communal institutions fully alive in many parts of France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, the Scandinavian lands, and Spain, to say nothing of Eastern Europe; the village life in these countries is permeated with communal habits and customs; and almost every year the Continental literature is enriched by serious works dealing with this and connected subjects. I must, therefore, limit my illustrations to the most typical instances. Switzerland is undoubtedly one of them. Not only the five republics of Uri, Schwytz, Appenzell, Glarus, and Unterwalden hold their lands as undivided estates, and are governed by their popular folkmotes, but in all other cantons too the village communities remain in possession of a wide self-government, and own large parts of the Federal territory.(19) Two-thirds of all the Alpine meadows and two-thirds of all the forests of Switzerland are until now communal land; and a considerable number of fields, orchards, vineyards, peat bogs, quarries, and so on, are owned in common. In the Vaud, where all the householders continue to take part in the deliberations of their elected communal councils, the communal spirit is especially alive. Towards the end of the winter all the young men of each village go to stay a few days in the woods, to fell timber and to bring it down the steep slopes tobogganing way, the timber and the fuel wood being divided among all households or sold for their benefit. These excursions are real fetes of manly labour. On the banks of Lake Leman part of the work required to keep up the terraces of the vineyards is still done in common; and in the spring, when the thermometer threatens to fall below zero before sunrise, the watchman wakes up all householders, who light fires of straw and dung and protect their vine-trees from the frost by an artificial cloud. In nearly all cantons the village communities possess so-called. Burgernutzen--that is, they hold in common a number of cows, in order to supply each family with butter; or they keep communal fields or vineyards, of which the produce is divided between the burghers, or they rent their land for the benefit of the community.(20) It may be taken as a rule that where the communes have retained a wide sphere of functions, so as to be living parts of the national organism, and where they have not been reduced to sheer misery, they never fail to take good care of their lands. Accordingly the communal estates in Switzerland strikingly contrast with the miserable state of "commons" in this country. The communal forests in the Vaud and the Valais are admirably managed, in conformity with the rules of modern forestry. Elsewhere the "strips" of communal fields, which change owners under the system of re-allotment, are very well manured, especially as there is no lack of meadows and cattle. The high level meadows are well kept as a rule, and the rural roads are excellent.(21) And when we admire the Swiss chalet, the mountain road, the peasants' cattle, the terraces of vineyards, or the school-house in Switzer land, we must keep in mind that without the timber for the chalet being taken from the communal woods and the stone from the communal quarries, without the cows being kept on the communal meadows, and the roads being made and the school-houses built by communal work, there would be little to admire. It hardly need be said that a great number of mutual-aid habits and customs continue to persist in the Swiss villages. The evening gatherings for shelling walnuts, which take place in turns in each household; the evening parties for sewing the dowry of the girl who is going to marry; the calling of "aids" for building the houses and taking in the crops, as well as for all sorts of work which may be required by one of the commoners; the custom of exchanging children from one canton to the other, in order to make them learn two languages, French and German; and so on--all these are quite habitual;(22) while, on the other side, divers modern requirements are met in the same spirit. Thus in Glarus most of the Alpine meadows have been sold during a time of calamity; but the communes still continue to buy field land, and after the newly-bought fields have been left in the possession of separate commoners for ten, twenty, or thirty years, as the case might be, they return to the common stock, which is re-allotted according to the needs of all. A great number of small associations are formed to produce some of the necessaries for life--bread, cheese, and wine--by common work, be it only on a limited scale; and agricultural co-operation altogether spreads in Switzerland with the greatest ease. Associations formed between ten to thirty peasants, who buy meadows and fields in common, and cultivate them as co-owners, are of common occurrence; while dairy associations for the sale of milk, butter, and cheese are organized everywhere. In fact, Switzerland was the birthplace of that form of co-operation. It offers, moreover, an immense field for the study of all sorts of small and large societies, formed for the satisfaction of all sorts of modern wants. In certain parts of Switzerland one finds in almost every village a number of associations--for protection from fire, for boating, for maintaining the quays on the shores of a lake, for the supply of water, and so on; and the country is covered with societies of archers, sharpshooters, topographers, footpath explorers, and the like, originated from modern militarism. Switzerland is, however, by no means an exception in Europe, because the same institutions and habits are found in the villages of France, of Italy, of Germany, of Denmark, and so on. We have just seen what has been done by the rulers of France in order to destroy the village community and to get hold of its lands; but notwithstanding all that one-tenth part of the whole territory available for culture, i.e. 13,500,000 acres, including one-half of all the natural meadows and nearly a fifth part of all the forests of the country, remain in communal possession. The woods supply the communers with fuel, and the timber wood is cut, mostly by communal work, with all desirable regularity; the grazing lands are free for the commoners' cattle; and what remains of communal fields is allotted and re-allotted in certain parts Ardennes--in the usual of France--namely, in the way.(23) These additional sources of supply, which aid the poorer peasants to pass through a year of bad crops without parting with their small plots of land and without running into irredeemable debts, have certainly their importance for both the agricultural labourers and the nearly three millions of small peasant proprietors. It is even doubtful whether small peasant proprietorship could be maintained without these additional resources. But the ethical importance of the communal possessions, small as they are, is still greater than their economical value. They maintain in village life a nucleus of customs and habits of mutual aid which undoubtedly acts as a mighty check upon the development of reckless individualism and greediness, which small land-ownership is only too prone to develop. Mutual aid in all possible circumstances of village life is part of the routine life in all parts of the country. Everywhere we meet, under different names, with the charroi, i.e. the free aid of the neighbours for taking in a crop, for vintage, or for building a house; everywhere we find the same evening gatherings as have just been mentioned in Switzerland; and everywhere the commoners associate for all sorts of work. Such habits are mentioned by nearly all those who have written upon French village life. But it will perhaps be better to give in this place some abstracts from letters which I have just received from a friend of mine whom I have asked to communicate to me his observations on this subject. They come from an aged man who for years has been the mayor of his commune in South France (in Ariege); the facts he mentions are known to him from long years of personal observation, and they have the advantage of coming from one neighbourhood instead of being skimmed from a large area. Some of them may seem trifling, but as a whole they depict quite a little world of village life. "In several communes in our neighbourhood," my friend writes, "the old custom of l'emprount is in vigour. When many hands are required in a metairie for rapidly making some work--dig out potatoes or mow the grass--the youth of the neighbourhood is convoked; young men and girls come in numbers, make it gaily and for nothing; and in the evening, after a gay meal, they dance. "In the same communes, when a girl is going to marry, the girls of the neighbourhood come to aid in sewing the dowry. In several communes the women still continue to spin a good deal. When the winding off has to be done in a family it is done in one evening--all friends being convoked for that work. In many communes of the Ariege and other parts of the south-west the shelling of the Indian corn-sheaves is also done by all the neighbours. They are treated with chestnuts and wine, and the young people dance after the work has been done. The same custom is practised for making nut oil and crushing hemp. In the commune of L. the same is done for bringing in the corn crops. These days of hard work become fete days, as the owner stakes his honour on serving a good meal. No remuneration is given; all do it for each other.(24) "In the commune of S. the common grazing-land is every year increased, so that nearly the whole of the land of the commune is now kept in common. The shepherds are elected by all owners of the cattle, including women. The bulls are communal. "In the commune of M. the forty to fifty small sheep flocks of the commoners are brought together and divided into three or four flocks before being sent to the higher meadows. Each owner goes for a week to serve as shepherd. "In the hamlet of C. a threshing machine has been bought in common by several households; the fifteen to twenty persons required to serve the machine being supplied by all the families. Three other threshing machines have been bought and are rented out by their owners, but the work is performed by outside helpers, invited in the usual way. "In our commune of R. we had to raise the wall of the cemetery. Half of the money which was required for buying lime and for the wages of the skilled workers was supplied by the county council, and the other half by subscription. As to the work of carrying sand and water, making mortar, and serving the masons, it was done entirely by volunteers [just as in the Kabyle djemmaa]. The rural roads were repaired in the same way, by volunteer days of work given by the commoners. Other communes have built in the same way their fountains. The wine-press and other smaller appliances are frequently kept by the commune." Two residents of the same neighbourhood, questioned by my friend, add the following:-- "At O. a few years ago there was no mill. The commune has built one, levying a tax upon the commoners. As to the miller, they decided, in order to avoid frauds and partiality, that he should be paid two francs for each bread-eater, and the corn be ground free. "At St. G. few peasants are insured against fire. When a conflagration has taken place--so it was lately--all give something to the family which has suffered from it--a chaldron, a bed-cloth, a chair, and so on--and a modest household is thus reconstituted. All the neighbours aid to build the house, and in the meantime the family is lodged free by the neighbours." Such habits of mutual support--of which many more examples could be given--undoubtedly account for the easiness with which the French peasants associate for using, in turn, the plough with its team of horses, the wine-press, and the threshing machine, when they are kept in the village by one of them only, as well as for the performance of all sorts of rural work in common. Canals were maintained, forests were cleared, trees were planted, and marshes were drained by the village communities from time immemorial; and the same continues still. Quite lately, in La Borne of Lozere barren hills were turned into rich gardens by communal work. "The soil was brought on men's backs; terraces were made and planted with chestnut trees, peach trees, and orchards, and water was brought for irrigation in canals two or three miles long." Just now they have dug a new canal, eleven miles in length.(25) To the same spirit is also due the remarkable success lately obtained by the syndicats agricoles, or peasants' and farmers' associations. It was not until 1884 that associations of more than nineteen persons were permitted in France, and I need not say that when this "dangerous experiment" was ventured upon--so it was styled in the Chambers--all due "precautions" which functionaries can invent were taken. Notwithstanding all that, France begins to be covered with syndicates. At the outset they were only formed for buying manures and seeds, falsification having attained colossal proportions in these two branches;(26) but gradually they extended their functions in various directions, including the sale of agricultural produce and permanent improvements of the land. In South France the ravages of the phylloxera have called into existence a great number of wine-growers' associations. Ten to thirty growers form a syndicate, buy a steam-engine for pumping water, and make the necessary arrangements for inundating their vineyards in turn.(27) New associations for protecting the land from inundations, for irrigation purposes, and for maintaining canals are continually formed, and the unanimity of all peasants of a neighbourhood, which is required by law, is no obstacle. Elsewhere we have the fruitieres, or dairy associations, in some of which all butter and cheese is divided in equal parts, irrespective of the yield of each cow. In the Ariege we find an association of eight separate communes for the common culture of their lands, which they have put together; syndicates for free medical aid have been formed in 172 communes out of 337 in the same department; associations of consumers arise in connection with the syndicates; and so on.(28) "Quite a revolution is going on in our villages," Alfred Baudrillart writes, "through these associations, which take in each region their own special characters." Very much the same must be said of Germany. Wherever the peasants could resist the plunder of their lands, they have retained them in communal ownership, which largely prevails in Wurttemberg, Baden, Hohenzollern, and in the Hessian province of Starkenberg.(29) The communal forests are kept, as a rule, in an excellent state, and in thousands of communes timber and fuel wood are divided every year among all inhabitants; even the old custom of the Lesholztag is widely spread: at the ringing of the village bell all go to the forest to take as much fuel wood as they can carry.(30) In Westphalia one finds communes in which all the land is cultivated as one common estate, in accordance with all requirements of modern agronomy. As to the old communal customs and habits, they are in vigour in most parts of Germany. The calling in of aids, which are real fetes of labour, is known to be quite habitual in Westphalia, Hesse, and Nassau. In well-timbered regions the timber for a new house is usually taken from the communal forest, and all the neighbours join in building the house. Even in the suburbs of Frankfort it is a regular custom among the gardeners that in case of one of them being ill all come on Sunday to cultivate his garden.(31) In Germany, as in France, as soon as the rulers of the people repealed their laws against the peasant associations--that was only in 1884-1888--these unions began to develop with a wonderful rapidity, notwithstanding all legal obstacles which were put in their way(32) "It is a fact," Buchenberger says, "that in thousands of village communities, in which no sort of chemical manure or rational fodder was ever known, both have become of everyday use, to a quite unforeseen extent, owing to these associations" (vol. ii. p. 507). All sorts of labour-saving implements and agricultural machinery, and better breeds of cattle, are bought through the associations, and various arrangements for improving the quality of the produce begin to be introduced. Unions for the sale of agricultural produce are also formed, as well as for permanent improvements of the land.(33) From the point of view of social economics all these efforts of the peasants certainly are of little importance. They cannot substantially, and still less permanently, alleviate the misery to which the tillers of the soil are doomed all over Europe. But from the ethical point of view, which we are now considering, their importance cannot be overrated. They prove that even under the system of reckless individualism which now prevails the agricultural masses piously maintain their mutual-support inheritance; and as soon as the States relax the iron laws by means of which they have broken all bonds between men, these bonds are at once reconstituted, notwithstanding the difficulties, political, economical, and social, which are many, and in such forms as best answer to the modern requirements of production. They indicate in which direction and in which form further progress must be expected. I might easily multiply such illustrations, taking them from Italy, Spain, Denmark, and so on, and pointing out some interesting features which are proper to each of these countries. The Slavonian populations of Austria and the Balkan peninsula, among whom the "compound family," or "undivided household," is found in existence, ought also to be mentioned.(34) But I hasten to pass on to Russia, where the same mutual-support tendency takes certain new and unforeseen forms. Moreover, in dealing with the village community in Russia we have the advantage: of possessing an immense mass of materials, collected during the colossal house-to-house inquest which was lately made by several zemstvos (county councils), and which embraces a population of nearly 20,000,000 peasants in different parts of the country.(35) Two important conclusions may be drawn from the bulk of evidence collected by the Russian inquests. In Middle Russia, where fully one-third of the peasants have been brought to utter ruin (by heavy taxation, small allotments of unproductive land, rack rents, and very severe tax-collecting after total failures of crops), there was, during the first five-and-twenty years after the emancipation of the serfs, a decided tendency towards the constitution of individual property in land within the village communities. Many impoverished "horseless" peasants abandoned their allotments, and this land often became the property of those richer peasants, who borrow additional incomes from trade, or of outside traders, who buy land chiefly for exacting rack rents from the peasants. It must also be added that a flaw in the land redemption law of 1861 offered great facilities for buying peasants' lands at a very small expense,(36) and that the State officials mostly used their weighty influence in favour of individual as against communal ownership. However, for the last twenty years a strong wind of opposition to the individual appropriation of the land blows again through the Middle Russian villages, and strenuous efforts are being made by the bulk of those peasants who stand between the rich and the very poor to uphold the village community. As to the fertile steppes of the South, which are now the most populous and the richest part of European Russia, they were mostly colonized, during the present century, under the system of individual ownership or occupation, sanctioned in that form by the State. But since improved methods of agriculture with the aid of machinery have been introduced in the region, the peasant owners have gradually begun themselves to transform their individual ownership into communal possession, and one finds now, in that granary of Russia, a very great number of spontaneously formed village communities of recent origin.(37) The Crimea and the part of the mainland which lies to the north of it (the province of Taurida), for which we have detailed data, offer an excellent illustration of that movement. This territory began to be colonized, after its annexation in 1783, by Great, Little, and White Russians--Cossacks, freemen, and runaway serfs--who came individually or in small groups from all corners of Russia. They took first to cattle-breeding, and when they began later on to till the soil, each one tilled as much as he could afford to. But when--immigration continuing, and perfected ploughs being introduced--land stood in great demand, bitter disputes arose among the settlers. They lasted for years, until these men, previously tied by no mutual bonds, gradually came to the idea that an end must be put to disputes by introducing village-community ownership. They passed decisions to the effect that the land which they owned individually should henceforward be their common property, and they began to allot and to re-allot it in accordance with the usual village-community rules. The movement gradually took a great extension, and on a small territory, the Taurida statisticians found 161 villages in which communal ownership had been introduced by the peasant proprietors themselves, chiefly in the years 1855-1885, in lieu of individual ownership. Quite a variety of village-community types has been freely worked out in this way by the settlers.(38) What adds to the interest of this transformation is that it took place, not only among the Great Russians, who are used to village-community life, but also among Little Russians, who have long since forgotten it under Polish rule, among Greeks and Bulgarians, and even among Germans, who have long since worked out in their prosperous and half-industrial Volga colonies their own type of village community.(39) It is evident that the Mussulman Tartars of Taurida hold their land under the Mussulman customary law, which is limited personal occupation; but even with them the European village community has been introduced in a few cases. As to other nationalities in Taurida, individual ownership has been abolished in six Esthonian, two Greek, two Bulgarian, one Czech, and one German village. This movement is characteristic for the whole of the fertile steppe region of the south. But separate instances of it are also found in Little Russia. Thus in a number of villages of the province of Chernigov the peasants were formerly individual owners of their plots; they had separate legal documents for their plots and used to rent and to sell their land at will. But in the fifties of the nineteenth century a movement began among them in favour of communal possession, the chief argument being the growing number of pauper families. The initiative of the reform was taken in one village, and the others followed suit, the last case on record dating from 1882. Of course there were struggles between the poor, who usually claim for communal possession, and the rich, who usually prefer individual ownership; and the struggles often lasted for years. In certain places the unanimity required then by the law being impossible to obtain, the village divided into two villages, one under individual ownership and the other under communal possession; and so they remained until the two coalesced into one community, or else they remained divided still. As to Middle Russia, its a fact that in many villages which were drifting towards individual ownership there began since 1880 a mass movement in favour of re-establishing the village community. Even peasant proprietors who had lived for years under the individualist system returned en masse to the communal institutions. Thus, there is a considerable number of ex-serfs who have received one-fourth part only of the regulation allotments, but they have received them free of redemption and in individual ownership. There was in 1890 a wide-spread movement among them (in Kursk, Ryazan, Tambov, Orel, etc.) towards putting their allotments together and introducing the village community. The "free agriculturists" (volnyie khlebopashtsy), who were liberated from serfdom under the law of 1803, and had bought their allotments--each family separately--are now nearly all under the village-community system, which they have introduced themselves. All these movements are of recent origin, and non-Russians too join them. Thus the Bulgares in the district of Tiraspol, after having remained for sixty years under the personal-property system, introduced the village community in the years 1876-1882. The German Mennonites of Berdyansk fought in 1890 for introducing the village community, and the small peasant proprietors (Kleinwirthschaftliche) among the German Baptists were agitating in their villages in the same direction. One instance more: In the province of Samara the Russian government created in the forties, by way of experiment, 103 villages on the system of individual ownership. Each household received a splendid property of 105 acres. In 1890, out of the 103 villages the peasants in 72 had already notified the desire of introducing the village community. I take all these facts from the excellent work of V.V., who simply gives, in a classified form, the facts recorded in the above-mentioned house-to-house inquest. This movement in favour of communal possession runs badly against the current economical theories, according to which intensive culture is incompatible with the village community. But the most charitable thing that can be said of these theories is that they have never been submitted to the test of experiment: they belong to the domain of political metaphysics. The facts which we have before us show, on the contrary, that wherever the Russian peasants, owing to a concurrence of favourable circumstances, are less miserable than they are on the average, and wherever they find men of knowledge and initiative among their neighbours, the village community becomes the very means for introducing various improvements in agriculture and village life altogether. Here, as elsewhere, mutual aid is a better leader to progress than the war of each against all, as may be seen from the following facts. Under Nicholas the First's rule many Crown officials and serf-owners used to compel the peasants to introduce the communal culture of small plots of the village lands, in order to refill the communal storehouses after loans of grain had been granted to the poorest commoners. Such cultures, connected in the peasants' minds with the worst reminiscences of serfdom, were abandoned as soon as serfdom was abolished but now the peasants begin to reintroduce them on their own account. In one district (Ostrogozhsk, in Kursk) the initiative of one person was sufficient to call them to life in four-fifths of all the villages. The same is met with in several other localities. On a given day the commoners come out, the richer ones with a plough or a cart and the poorer ones single-handed, and no attempt is made to discriminate one's share in the work. The crop is afterwards used for loans to the poorer commoners, mostly free grants, or for the orphans and widows, or for the village church, or for the school, or for repaying a communal debt.(40) That all sorts of work which enters, so to say, in the routine of village life (repair of roads and bridges, dams, drainage, supply of water for irrigation, cutting of wood, planting of trees, etc.) are made by whole communes, and that land is rented and meadows are mown by whole communes--the work being accomplished by old and young, men and women, in the way described by Tolstoi--is only what one may expect from people living under the village-community system.(41) They are of everyday occurrence all over the country. But the village community is also by no means averse to modern agricultural improvements, when it can stand the expense, and when knowledge, hitherto kept for the rich only, finds its way into the peasant's house. It has just been said that perfected ploughs rapidly spread in South Russia, and in many cases the village communities were instrumental in spreading their use. A plough was bought by the community, experimented upon on a portion of the communal land, and the necessary improvements were indicated to the makers, whom the communes often aided in starting the manufacture of cheap ploughs as a village industry. In the district of Moscow, where 1,560 ploughs were lately bought by the peasants during five years, the impulse came from those communes which rented lands as a body for the special purpose of improved culture. In the north-east (Vyatka) small associations of peasants, who travel with their winnowing machines (manufactured as a village industry in one of the iron districts), have spread the use of such machines in the neighbouring governments. The very wide spread of threshing machines in Samara, Saratov, and Kherson is due to the peasant associations, which can afford to buy a costly engine, while the individual peasant cannot. And while we read in nearly all economical treatises that the village community was doomed to disappear when the three-fields system had to be substituted by the rotation of crops system, we see in Russia many village communities taking the initiative of introducing the rotation of crops. Before accepting it the peasants usually set apart a portion of the communal fields for an experiment in artificial meadows, and the commune buys the seeds.(42) If the experiment proves successful they find no difficulty whatever in re-dividing their fields, so as to suit the five or six fields system. This system is now in use in hundreds of villages of Moscow, Tver, Smolensk, Vyatka, and Pskov.(43) And where land can be spared the communities give also a portion of their domain to allotments for fruit-growing. Finally, the sudden extension lately taken in Russia by the little model farms, orchards, kitchen gardens, and silkworm-culture grounds--which are started at the village school-houses, under the conduct of the school-master, or of a village volunteer--is also due to the support they found with the village communities. Moreover, such permanent improvements as drainage and irrigation are of frequent occurrence. For instance, in three districts of the province of Moscow--industrial to a great extent--drainage works have been accomplished within the last ten years on a large scale in no less than 180 to 200 different villages--the commoners working themselves with the spade. At another extremity of Russia, in the dry Steppes of Novouzen, over a thousand dams for ponds were built and several hundreds of deep wells were sunk by the communes; while in a wealthy German colony of the south-east the commoners worked, men and women alike, for five weeks in succession, to erect a dam, two miles long, for irrigation purposes. What could isolated men do in that struggle against the dry climate? What could they obtain through individual effort when South Russia was struck with the marmot plague, and all people living on the land, rich and poor, commoners and individualists, had to work with their hands in order to conjure the plague? To call in the policeman would have been of no use; to associate was the only possible remedy. And now, after having said so much about mutual aid and support which are practised by the tillers of the soil in "civilized" countries, I see that I might fill an octavo volume with illustrations taken from the life of the hundreds of millions of men who also live under the tutorship of more or less centralized States, but are out of touch with modern civilization and modern ideas. I might describe the inner life of a Turkish village and its network of admirable mutual-aid customs and habits. On turning over my leaflets covered with illustrations from peasant life in Caucasia, I come across touching facts of mutual support. I trace the same customs in the Arab djemmaa and the Afghan purra, in the villages of Persia, India, and Java, in the undivided family of the Chinese, in the encampments of the semi-nomads of Central Asia and the nomads of the far North. On consulting notes taken at random in the literature of Africa, I find them replete with similar facts--of aids convoked to take in the crops, of houses built by all inhabitants of the village--sometimes to repair the havoc done by civilized filibusters--of people aiding each other in case of accident, protecting the traveller, and so on. And when I peruse such works as Post's compendium of African customary law I understand why, notwithstanding all tyranny, oppression, robberies and raids, tribal wars, glutton kings, deceiving witches and priests, slave-hunters, and the like, these populations have not gone astray in the woods; why they have maintained a certain civilization, and have remained men, instead of dropping to the level of straggling families of decaying orang-outans. The fact is, that the slave-hunters, the ivory robbers, the fighting kings, the Matabele and the Madagascar "heroes" pass away, leaving their traces marked with blood and fire; but the nucleus of mutual-aid institutions, habits, and customs, grown up in the tribe and the village community, remains; and it keeps men united in societies, open to the progress of civilization, and ready to receive it when the day comes that they shall receive civilization instead of bullets. The same applies to our civilized world. The natural and social calamities pass away. Whole populations are periodically reduced to misery or starvation; the very springs of life are crushed out of millions of men, reduced to city pauperism; the understanding and the feelings of the millions are vitiated by teachings worked out in the interest of the few. All this is certainly a part of our existence. But the nucleus of mutual-support institutions, habits, and customs remains alive with the millions; it keeps them together; and they prefer to cling to their customs, beliefs, and traditions rather than to accept the teachings of a war of each against all, which are offered to them under the title of science, but are no science at all. NOTES: 1. A bulky literature, dealing with this formerly much neglected subject, is now growing in Germany. Keller's works, Ein Apostel der Wiedertaufer and Geschichte der Wiedertaufer, Cornelius's Geschichte des munsterischen Aufruhrs, and Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes may be named as the leading sources. The first attempt at familiarizing English readers with the results of the wide researches made in Germany in this direction has been made in an excellent little work by Richard Heath--"Anabaptism from its Rise at Zwickau to its Fall at Munster, 1521-1536," London, 1895 (Baptist Manuals, vol. i.)--where the leading features of the movement are well indicated, and full bibliographical information is given. Also K. Kautsky's Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation, London, 1897. 2. Few of our contemporaries realize both the extent of this movement and the means by which it was suppressed. But those who wrote immediately after the great peasant war estimated at from 100,000 to 150,000 men the number of peasants slaughtered after their defeat in Germany. See Zimmermann's Allgemeine Geschichte des grossen Bauernkrieges. For the measures taken to suppress the movement in the Netherlands see Richard Heath's Anabaptism. 3. "Chacun s'en est accommode selon sa bienseance ... on les a partages.. pour depouiller les communes, on s'est servi de dettes simulees" (Edict of Louis the Fourteenth, of 1667, quoted by several authors. Eight years before that date the communes had been taken under State management). 4. "On a great landlord's estate, even if he has millions of revenue, you are sure to find the land uncultivated" (Arthur Young). "One-fourth part of the soil went out of culture;" "for the last hundred years the land has returned to a savage state;" "the formerly flourishing Sologne is now a big marsh;" and so on (Theron de Montauge, quoted by Taine in Origines de la France Contemporaine, tome i. p. 441). 5. A. Babeau, Le Village sous l'Ancien Regime, 3e edition. Paris, 1892. 6. In Eastern France the law only confirmed what the peasants had already done themselves. See my work, The Great French Revolution, chaps. xlvii and xlviii, London (Heinemann), 1909. 7. After the triumph of the middle-class reaction the communal lands were declared (August 24, 1794) the States domains, and, together with the lands confiscated from the nobility, were put up for sale, and pilfered by the bandes noires of the small bourgeoisie. True that a stop to this pilfering was put next year (law of 2 Prairial, An V), and the preceding law was abrogated; but then the village Communities were simply abolished, and cantonal councils were introduced instead. Only seven years later (9 Prairial, An XII), i.e. in 1801, the village communities were reintroduced, but not until after having been deprived of all their rights, the mayor and syndics being nominated by the Government in the 36,000 communes of France! This system was maintained till after the revolution of 1830, when elected communal councils were reintroduced under the law of 1787. As to the communal lands, they were again seized upon by the State in 1813, plundered as such, and only partly restored to the communes in 1816. See the classical collection of French laws, by Dalloz, Repertoire de Jurisprudence; also the works of Doniol, Dareste, Bonnemere, Babeau, and many others. 8. This procedure is so absurd that one would not believe it possible if the fifty-two different acts were not enumerated in full by a quite authoritative writer in the Journal des Economistes (1893, April, p. 94), and several similar examples were not given by the same author. 9. Dr. Ochenkowski, Englands wirthschaftliche Entwickelung im Ausgange des Mittelalters (Jena, 1879), pp. 35 seq., where the whole question is discussed with full knowledge of the texts. 10. Nasse, Ueber die mittelalterliche Feldgemeinschaft und die Einhegungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts in England (Bonn, 1869), pp. 4, 5; Vinogradov, Villainage in England (Oxford, 1892). 11. Fr. Seebohm, The English Village Community, 3rd ed., 1884, pp. 13-15. 12. "An examination into the details of an Enclosure Act will make clear the point that the system as above described [communal ownership] is the system which it was the object of the Enclosure Act to remove" (Seebohm, l.c. p. 13). And further on, "They were generally drawn in the same form, commencing with the recital that the open and common fields lie dispersed in small pieces, intermixed with each other and inconveniently situated; that divers persons own parts of them, and are entitled to rights of common on them ... and that it is desired that they may be divided and enclosed, a specific share being let out and allowed to each owner" (p. 14). Porter's list contained 3867 such Acts, of which the greatest numbers fall upon the decades of 1770-1780 and 1800-1820, as in France. 13. In Switzerland we see a number of communes, ruined by wars, which have sold part of their lands, and now endeavour to buy them back. 14. A. Buchenberger, "Agrarwesen und Agrarpolitik," in A. Wagner's Handbuch der politischen Oekonomie, 1892, Band i. pp. 280 seq. 15. G.L. Gomme, "The Village Community, with special reference to its Origin and Forms of Survival in Great Britain" (Contemporary Science Series), London, 1890, pp. 141-143; also his Primitive Folkmoots (London, 1880), pp. 98 seq. 16. "In almost all parts of the country, in the Midland and Eastern counties particularly, but also in the west--in Wiltshire, for example--in the south, as in Surrey, in the north, as in Yorkshire,--there are extensive open and common fields. Out of 316 parishes of Northamptonshire 89 are in this condition; more than 100 in Oxfordshire; about 50,000 acres in Warwickshire; in Berkshire half the county; more than half of Wiltshire; in Huntingdonshire out of a total area of 240,000 acres 130,000 were commonable meadows, commons, and fields" (Marshall, quoted in Sir Henry Maine's Village Communities in the East and West, New York edition, 1876, pp. 88, 89). See also Dr. G. Slater's The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields, London, 1907. 17. Ibid. p. 88; also Fifth Lecture. 18. In quite a number of books dealing with English country life which I have consulted I have found charming descriptions of country scenery and the like, but almost nothing about the daily life and customs of the labourers. 19. In Switzerland the peasants in the open land also fell under the dominion of lords, and large parts of their estates were appropriated by the lords in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (cf. A. Miaskowski, in Schmoller's Forschungen, Bd. ii. 1879, pp. 12 seq.) But the peasant war in Switzerland did not end in such a crushing defeat of the peasants as it did in other countries, and a great deal of the communal rights and lands was retained. The self-government of the communes is, in fact, the very foundation of the Swiss liberties. (cf. K. Burtli, Der Ursprung der Eidgenossenschaft aus der Markgenossenschaft, Zurich, 1891.) 20. Dr. Reichesberg, Handworterbuch des Schweiz. Volkswirthschaft, Bern, 1903. 21. See on this subject a series of works, summed up in one of the excellent and suggestive chapters (not yet translated into English) which K. Bucher has added to the German translation of Laveleye's Primitive Ownership. Also Meitzen, "Das Agrar-und Forst-Wesen, die Allmenden und die Landgemeinden der Deutschen Schweiz," in Jahrbuch für Staatswissenschaft, 1880, iv. (analysis of Miaskowsky's works); O'Brien, "Notes in a Swiss village," in Macmillan's Magazine, October 1885. 22. The wedding gifts, which often substantially contribute in this country to the comfort of the young households, are evidently a remainder of the communal habits. 23. The communes own, 4,554,100 acres of woods out of 24,813,000 in the whole territory, and 6,936,300 acres of natural meadows out of 11,394,000 acres in France. The remaining 2,000,000 acres are fields, orchards, and so on. 24. In Caucasia they even do better among the Georgians. As the meal costs, and a poor man cannot afford to give it, a sheep is bought by those same neighbours who come to aid in the work. 25. Alfred Baudrillart, in H. Baudrillart's Les Populations Rurales de la France, 3rd series (Paris, 1893), p. 479. 26. The Journal des Economistes (August 1892, May and August 1893) has lately given some of the results of analyses made at the agricultural laboratories at Ghent and at Paris. The extent of falsification is simply incredible; so also the devices of the "honest traders." In certain seeds of grass there was 32 per cent. of gains of sand, coloured so as to Receive even an experienced eye; other samples contained from 52 to 22 per cent. only of pure seed, the remainder being weeds. Seeds of vetch contained 11 per cent. of a poisonous grass (nielle); a flour for cattle-fattening contained 36 per cent. of sulphates; and so on ad infinitum. 27. A. Baudrillart, l.c. p. 309. Originally one grower would undertake to supply water, and several others would agee to make use of it. "What especially characterises such associations," A. Baudrillart remarks, "is that no sort of written agreement is concluded. All is arranged in words. There was, however, not one single case of difficulties having arisen between the parties." 28. A. Baudrillart, l.c. pp. 300, 341, etc. M. Terssac, president of the St. Gironnais syndicate (Ariege), wrote to my friend in substance as follows:--"For the exhibition of Toulouse our association has grouped the owners of cattle which seemed to us worth exhibiting. The society undertook to pay one-half of the travelling and exhibition expenses; one-fourth was paid by each owner, and the remaining fourth by those exhibitors who had got prizes. The result was that many took part in the exhibition who never would have done it otherwise. Those who got the highest awards (350 francs) have contributed 10 per cent. of their prizes, while those who have got no prize have only spent 6 to 7 francs each." 29. In Wurttemberg 1,629 communes out of 1,910 have communal property. They owned in 1863 over 1,000,000 acres of land. In Baden 1,256 communes out of 1,582 have communal land; in 1884-1888 they held 121,500 acres of fields in communal culture, and 675,000 acres of forests, i.e. 46 per cent. of the total area under woods. In Saxony 39 per cent. of the total area is in communal ownership (Schmoller's Jahrbuch, 1886, p. 359). In Hohenzollern nearly two-thirds of all meadow land, and in Hohenzollern-Hechingen 41 per cent. of all landed property, are owned by the village communities (Buchenberger, Agrarwesen, vol. i. p. 300). 30. See K. Bucher, who, in a special chapter added to Laveleye's Ureigenthum, has collected all information relative to the village community in Germany. 31. K. Bucher, ibid. pp. 89, 90. 32. For this legislation and the numerous obstacles which were put in the way, in the shape of red-tapeism and supervision, see Buchenberger's Agrarwesen und Agrarpolitik, Bd. ii. pp. 342-363, and p. 506, note. 33. Buchenberger, l.c. Bd. ii. p. 510. The General Union of Agricultural Co-operation comprises an aggregate of 1,679 societies. In Silesia an aggregate of 32,000 acres of land has been lately drained by 73 associations; 454,800 acres in Prussia by 516 associations; in Bavaria there are 1,715 drainage and irrigation unions. 34. For the Balkan peninsula see Laveleye's Propriete Primitive. 35. The facts concerning the village community, contained in nearly a hundred volumes (out of 450) of these inquests, have been classified and summed up in an excellent Russian work by "V.V." The Peasant Community (Krestianskaya Obschina), St. Petersburg, 1892, which, apart from its theoretical value, is a rich compendium of data relative to this subject. The above inquests have also given origin to an immense literature, in which the modern village-community question for the first time emerges from the domain of generalities and is put on the solid basis of reliable and sufficiently detailed facts. 36. The redemption had to be paid by annuities for forty-nine years. As years went, and the greatest part of it was paid, it became easier and easier to redeem the smaller remaining part of it, and, as each allotment could be redeemed individually, advantage was taken of this disposition by traders, who bought land for half its value from the ruined peasants. A law was consequently passed to put a stop to such sales. 37. Mr. V.V., in his Peasant Community, has grouped together all facts relative to this movement. About the rapid agricultural development of South Russia and the spread of machinery English readers will find information in the Consular Reports (Odessa, Taganrog). 38. In some instances they proceeded with great caution. In one village they began by putting together all meadow land, but only a small portion of the fields (about five acres per soul) was rendered communal; the remainder continued to be owned individually. Later on, in 1862-1864, the system was extended, but only in 1884 was communal possession introduced in full.--V.V.'s Peasant Community, pp. 1-14. 39. On the Mennonite village community see A. Klaus, Our Colonies (Nashi Kolonii), St. Petersburg, 1869. 40. Such communal cultures are known to exist in 159 villages out of 195 in the Ostrogozhsk district; in 150 out of 187 in Slavyanoserbsk; in 107 village communities in Alexandrovsk, 93 in Nikolayevsk, 35 in Elisabethgrad. In a German colony the communal culture is made for repaying a communal debt. All join in the work, although the debt was contracted by 94 householders out of 155. 41. Lists of such works which came under the notice of the zemstvo statisticians will be found in V.V.'s Peasant Community, pp. 459-600. 42. In the government of Moscow the experiment was usually made on the field which was reserved for the above-mentioned communal culture. 43. Several instances of such and similar improvements were given in the Official Messenger, 1894, Nos. 256-258. Associations between "horseless" peasants begin to appear also in South Russia. Another extremely interesting fact is the sudden development in Southern West Siberia of very numerous co-operative creameries for making butter. Hundreds of them spread in Tobolsk and Tomsk, without any one knowing wherefrom the initiative of the movement came. It came from the Danish co-operators, who used to export their own butter of higher quality, and to buy butter of a lower quality for their own use in Siberia. After a several years' intercourse, they introduced creameries there. Now, a great export trade, carried on by a Union of the Creameries, has grown out of their endeavours and more than a thousand co-operative shops have been opened in the villages. CHAPTER VIII MUTUAL AID AMONGST OURSELVES (continued) Labour-unions grown after the destruction of the guilds by the State. Their struggles. Mutual Aid in strikes. Co-operation. Free associations for various purposes. Self-sacrifice. Countless societies for combined action under all possible aspects. Mutual Aid in slum-life. Personal aid. When we examine the every-day life of the rural populations of Europe, we find that, notwithstanding all that has been done in modern States for the destruction of the village community, the life of the peasants remains honeycombed with habits and customs of mutual aid and support; that important vestiges of the communal possession of the soil are still retained; and that, as soon as the legal obstacles to rural association were lately removed, a network of free unions for all sorts of economical purposes rapidly spread among the peasants--the tendency of this young movement being to reconstitute some sort of union similar to the village community of old. Such being the conclusions arrived at in the preceding chapter, we have now to consider, what institutions for mutual support can be found at the present time amongst the industrial populations. For the last three hundred years, the conditions for the growth of such institutions have been as unfavourable in the towns as they have been in the villages. It is well known, indeed, that when the medieval cities were subdued in the sixteenth century by growing military States, all institutions which kept the artisans, the masters, and the merchants together in the guilds and the cities were violently destroyed. The self-government and the self-jurisdiction of both, the guild and the city were abolished; the oath of allegiance between guild-brothers became an act of felony towards the State; the properties of the guilds were confiscated in the same way as the lands of the village communities; and the inner and technical organization of each trade was taken in hand by the State. Laws, gradually growing in severity, were passed to prevent artisans from combining in any way. For a time, some shadows of the old guilds were tolerated: merchants' guilds were allowed to exist under the condition of freely granting subsidies to the kings, and some artisan guilds were kept in existence as organs of administration. Some of them still drag on their meaningless existence. But what formerly was the vital force of medieval life and industry has long since disappeared under the crushing weight of the centralized State. In Great Britain, which may be taken as the best illustration of the industrial policy of the modern States, we see the Parliament beginning the destruction of the guilds as early as the fifteenth century; but it was especially in the next century that decisive measures were taken. Henry the Eighth not only ruined the organization of the guilds, but also confiscated their properties, with even less excuse and manners, as Toulmin Smith wrote, than he had produced for confiscating the estates of the monasteries.(1) Edward the Sixth completed his work,(2) and already in the second part of the sixteenth century we find the Parliament settling all the disputes between craftsmen and merchants, which formerly were settled in each city separately. The Parliament and the king not only legislated in all such contests, but, keeping in view the interests of the Crown in the exports, they soon began to determine the number of apprentices in each trade and minutely to regulate the very technics of each fabrication--the weights of the stuffs, the number of threads in the yard of cloth, and the like. With little success, it must be said; because contests and technical difficulties which were arranged for centuries in succession by agreement between closely-interdependent guilds and federated cities lay entirely beyond the powers of the centralized State. The continual interference of its officials paralyzed the trades; bringing most of them to a complete decay; and the last century economists, when they rose against the State regulation of industries, only ventilated a widely-felt discontent. The abolition of that interference by the French Revolution was greeted as an act of liberation, and the example of France was soon followed elsewhere. With the regulation of wages the State had no better success. In the medieval cities, when the distinction between masters and apprentices or journeymen became more and more apparent in the fifteenth century, unions of apprentices (Gesellenverbande), occasionally assuming an international character, were opposed to the unions of masters and merchants. Now it was the State which undertook to settle their griefs, and under the Elizabethan Statute of 1563 the Justices of Peace had to settle the wages, so as to guarantee a "convenient" livelihood to journeymen and apprentices. The Justices, however, proved helpless to conciliate the conflicting interests, and still less to compel the masters to obey their decisions. The law gradually became a dead letter, and was repealed by the end of the eighteenth century. But while the State thus abandoned the function of regulating wages, it continued severely to prohibit all combinations which were entered upon by journeymen and workers in order to raise their wages, or to keep them at a certain level. All through the eighteenth century it legislated against the workers' unions, and in 1799 it finally prohibited all sorts of combinations, under the menace of severe punishments. In fact, the British Parliament only followed in this case the example of the French Revolutionary Convention, which had issued a draconic law against coalitions of workers-coalitions between a number of citizens being considered as attempts against the sovereignty of the State, which was supposed equally to protect all its subjects. The work of destruction of the medieval unions was thus completed. Both in the town and in the village the State reigned over loose aggregations of individuals, and was ready to prevent by the most stringent measures the reconstitution of any sort of separate unions among them. These were, then, the conditions under which the mutual-aid tendency had to make its way in the nineteenth century. Need it be said that no such measures could destroy that tendency? Throughout the eighteenth century, the workers' unions were continually reconstituted.(3) Nor were they stopped by the cruel prosecutions which took place under the laws of 1797 and 1799. Every flaw in supervision, every delay of the masters in denouncing the unions was taken advantage of. Under the cover of friendly societies, burial clubs, or secret brotherhoods, the unions spread in the textile industries, among the Sheffield cutlers, the miners, and vigorous federal organizations were formed to support the branches during strikes and prosecutions.(4) The repeal of the Combination Laws in 1825 gave a new impulse to the movement. Unions and national federations were formed in all trades.(5) and when Robert Owen started his Grand National Consolidated Trades' Union, it mustered half a million members in a few months. True that this period of relative liberty did not last long. Prosecution began anew in the thirties, and the well-known ferocious condemnations of 1832-1844 followed. The Grand National Union was disbanded, and all over the country, both the private employers and the Government in its own workshops began to compel the workers to resign all connection with unions, and to sign "the Document" to that effect. Unionists were prosecuted wholesale under the Master and Servant Act--workers being summarily arrested and condemned upon a mere complaint of misbehaviour lodged by the master.(6) Strikes were suppressed in an autocratic way, and the most astounding condemnations took place for merely having announced a strike or acted as a delegate in it--to say nothing of the military suppression of strike riots, nor of the condemnations which followed the frequent outbursts of acts of violence. To practise mutual support under such circumstances was anything but an easy task. And yet, notwithstanding all obstacles, of which our own generation hardly can have an idea, the revival of the unions began again in 1841, and the amalgamation of the workers has been steadily continued since. After a long fight, which lasted for over a hundred years, the right of combining together was conquered, and at the present time nearly one-fourth part of the regularly-employed workers, i.e. about 1,500,000, belong to trade unions.(7) As to the other European States, sufficient to say that up to a very recent date, all sorts of unions were prosecuted as conspiracies; and that nevertheless they exist everywhere, even though they must often take the form of secret societies; while the extension and the force of labour organizations, and especially of the Knights of Labour, in the United States and in Belgium, have been sufficiently illustrated by strikes in the nineties. It must, however, be borne in mind that, prosecution apart, the mere fact of belonging to a labour union implies considerable sacrifices in money, in time, and in unpaid work, and continually implies the risk of losing employment for the mere fact of being a unionist.(8) There is, moreover, the strike, which a unionist has continually to face; and the grim reality of a strike is, that the limited credit of a worker's family at the baker's and the pawnbroker's is soon exhausted, the strike-pay goes not far even for food, and hunger is soon written on the children's faces. For one who lives in close contact with workers, a protracted strike is the most heartrending sight; while what a strike meant forty years ago in this country, and still means in all but the wealthiest parts of the continent, can easily be conceived. Continually, even now, strikes will end with the total ruin and the forced emigration of whole populations, while the shooting down of strikers on the slightest provocation, or even without any provocation,(9) is quite habitual still on the continent. And yet, every year there are thousands of strikes and lock-outs in Europe and America--the most severe and protracted contests being, as a rule, the so-called "sympathy strikes," which are entered upon to support locked-out comrades or to maintain the rights of the unions. And while a portion of the Press is prone to explain strikes by "intimidation," those who have lived among strikers speak with admiration of the mutual aid and support which are constantly practised by them. Every one has heard of the colossal amount of work which was done by volunteer workers for organizing relief during the London dock-labourers' strike; of the miners who, after having themselves been idle for many weeks, paid a levy of four shillings a week to the strike fund when they resumed work; of the miner widow who, during the Yorkshire labour war of 1894, brought her husband's life-savings to the strike-fund; of the last loaf of bread being always shared with neighbours; of the Radstock miners, favoured with larger kitchen-gardens, who invited four hundred Bristol miners to take their share of cabbage and potatoes, and so on. All newspaper correspondents, during the great strike of miners in Yorkshire in 1894, knew heaps of such facts, although not all of them could report such "irrelevant" matters to their respective papers.(10) Unionism is not, however, the only form in which the worker's need of mutual support finds its expression. There are, besides, the political associations, whose activity many workers consider as more conducive to general welfare than the trade-unions, limited as they are now in their purposes. Of course the mere fact of belonging to a political body cannot be taken as a manifestation of the mutual-aid tendency. We all know that politics are the field in which the purely egotistic elements of society enter into the most entangled combinations with altruistic aspirations. But every experienced politician knows that all great political movements were fought upon large and often distant issues, and that those of them were the strongest which provoked most disinterested enthusiasm. All great historical movements have had this character, and for our own generation Socialism stands in that case. "Paid agitators" is, no doubt, the favourite refrain of those who know nothing about it. The truth, however, is that--to speak only of what I know personally--if I had kept a diary for the last twenty-four years and inscribed in it all the devotion and self-sacrifice which I came across in the Socialist movement, the reader of such a diary would have had the word "heroism" constantly on his lips. But the men I would have spoken of were not heroes; they were average men, inspired by a grand idea. Every Socialist newspaper--and there are hundreds of them in Europe alone--has the same history of years of sacrifice without any hope of reward, and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, even without any personal ambition. I have seen families living without knowing what would be their food to-morrow, the husband boycotted all round in his little town for his part in the paper, and the wife supporting the family by sewing, and such a situation lasting for years, until the family would retire, without a word of reproach, simply saying: "Continue; we can hold on no more!" I have seen men, dying from consumption, and knowing it, and yet knocking about in snow and fog to prepare meetings, speaking at meetings within a few weeks from death, and only then retiring to the hospital with the words: "Now, friends, I am done; the doctors say I have but a few weeks to live. Tell the comrades that I shall be happy if they come to see me." I have seen facts which would be described as "idealization" if I told them in this place; and the very names of these men, hardly known outside a narrow circle of friends, will soon be forgotten when the friends, too, have passed away. In fact, I don't know myself which most to admire, the unbounded devotion of these few, or the sum total of petty acts of devotion of the great number. Every quire of a penny paper sold, every meeting, every hundred votes which are won at a Socialist election, represent an amount of energy and sacrifices of which no outsider has the faintest idea. And what is now done by Socialists has been done in every popular and advanced party, political and religious, in the past. All past progress has been promoted by like men and by a like devotion. Co-operation, especially in Britain, is often described as "joint-stock individualism"; and such as it is now, it undoubtedly tends to breed a co-operative egotism, not only towards the community at large, but also among the co-operators themselves. It is, nevertheless, certain that at its origin the movement had an essentially mutual-aid character. Even now, its most ardent promoters are persuaded that co-operation leads mankind to a higher harmonic stage of economical relations, and it is not possible to stay in some of the strongholds of co-operation in the North without realizing that the great number of the rank and file hold the same opinion. Most of them would lose interest in the movement if that faith were gone; and it must be owned that within the last few years broader ideals of general welfare and of the producers' solidarity have begun to be current among the co-operators. There is undoubtedly now a tendency towards establishing better relations between the owners of the co-operative workshops and the workers. The importance of co-operation in this country, in Holland and in Denmark is well known; while in Germany, and especially on the Rhine, the co-operative societies are already an important factor of industrial life.(11) It is, however, Russia which offers perhaps the best field for the study of cooperation under an infinite variety of aspects. In Russia, it is a natural growth, an inheritance from the middle ages; and while a formally established co-operative society would have to cope with many legal difficulties and official suspicion, the informal co-operation--the artel--makes the very substance of Russian peasant life. The history of "the making of Russia," and of the colonization of Siberia, is a history of the hunting and trading artels or guilds, followed by village communities, and at the present time we find the artel everywhere; among each group of ten to fifty peasants who come from the same village to work at a factory, in all the building trades, among fishermen and hunters, among convicts on their way to and in Siberia, among railway porters, Exchange messengers, Customs House labourers, everywhere in the village industries, which give occupation to 7,000,000 men--from top to bottom of the working world, permanent and temporary, for production and consumption under all possible aspects. Until now, many of the fishing-grounds on the tributaries of the Caspian Sea are held by immense artels, the Ural river belonging to the whole of the Ural Cossacks, who allot and re-allot the fishing-grounds--perhaps the richest in the world--among the villages, without any interference of the authorities. Fishing is always made by artels in the Ural, the Volga, and all the lakes of Northern Russia. Besides these permanent organizations, there are the simply countless temporary artels, constituted for each special purpose. When ten or twenty peasants come from some locality to a big town, to work as weavers, carpenters, masons, boat-builders, and so on, they always constitute an artel. They hire rooms, hire a cook (very often the wife of one of them acts in this capacity), elect an elder, and take their meals in common, each one paying his share for food and lodging to the artel. A party of convicts on its way to Siberia always does the same, and its elected elder is the officially-recognized intermediary between the convicts and the military chief of the party. In the hard-labour prisons they have the same organization. The railway porters, the messengers at the Exchange, the workers at the Custom House, the town messengers in the capitals, who are collectively responsible for each member, enjoy such a reputation that any amount of money or bank-notes is trusted to the artel-member by the merchants. In the building trades, artels of from 10 to 200 members are formed; and the serious builders and railway contractors always prefer to deal with an artel than with separately-hired workers. The last attempts of the Ministry of War to deal directly with productive artels, formed ad hoc in the domestic trades, and to give them orders for boots and all sorts of brass and iron goods, are described as most satisfactory; while the renting of a Crown iron work, (Votkinsk) to an artel of workers, which took place seven or eight years ago, has been a decided success. We can thus see in Russia how the old medieval institution, having not been interfered with by the State (in its informal manifestations), has fully survived until now, and takes the greatest variety of forms in accordance with the requirements of modern industry and commerce. As to the Balkan peninsula, the Turkish Empire and Caucasia, the old guilds are maintained there in full. The esnafs of Servia have fully preserved their medieval character; they include both masters and journeymen, regulate the trades, and are institutions for mutual support in labour and sickness;(12) while the amkari of Caucasia, and especially at Tiflis, add to these functions a considerable influence in municipal life.(13) In connection with co-operation, I ought perhaps to mention also the friendly societies, the unities of oddfellows, the village and town clubs organized for meeting the doctors' bills, the dress and burial clubs, the small clubs very common among factory girls, to which they contribute a few pence every week, and afterwards draw by lot the sum of one pound, which can at least be used for some substantial purchase, and many others. A not inconsiderable amount of sociable or jovial spirit is alive in all such societies and clubs, even though the "credit and debit" of each member are closely watched over. But there are so many associations based on the readiness to sacrifice time, health, and life if required, that we can produce numbers of illustrations of the best forms of mutual support. The Lifeboat Association in this country, and similar institutions on the Continent, must be mentioned in the first place. The former has now over three hundred boats along the coasts of these isles, and it would have twice as many were it not for the poverty of the fisher men, who cannot afford to buy lifeboats. The crews consist, however, of volunteers, whose readiness to sacrifice their lives for the rescue of absolute strangers to them is put every year to a severe test; every winter the loss of several of the bravest among them stands on record. And if we ask these men what moves them to risk their lives, even when there is no reasonable chance of success, their answer is something on the following lines. A fearful snowstorm, blowing across the Channel, raged on the flat, sandy coast of a tiny village in Kent, and a small smack, laden with oranges, stranded on the sands near by. In these shallow waters only a flat-bottomed lifeboat of a simplified type can be kept, and to launch it during such a storm was to face an almost certain disaster. And yet the men went out, fought for hours against the wind, and the boat capsized twice. One man was drowned, the others were cast ashore. One of these last, a refined coastguard, was found next morning, badly bruised and half frozen in the snow. I asked him, how they came to make that desperate attempt? "I don't know myself," was his reply." There was the wreck; all the people from the village stood on the beach, and all said it would be foolish to go out; we never should work through the surf. We saw five or six men clinging to the mast, making desperate signals. We all felt that something must be done, but what could we do? One hour passed, two hours, and we all stood there. We all felt most uncomfortable. Then, all of a sudden, through the storm, it seemed to us as if we heard their cries--they had a boy with them. We could not stand that any longer. All at once we said, "We must go!" The women said so too; they would have treated us as cowards if we had not gone, although next day they said we had been fools to go. As one man, we rushed to the boat, and went. The boat capsized, but we took hold of it. The worst was to see poor drowning by the side of the boat, and we could do nothing to save him. Then came a fearful wave, the boat capsized again, and we were cast ashore. The men were still rescued by the D. boat, ours was caught miles away. I was found next morning in the snow." The same feeling moved also the miners of the Rhonda Valley, when they worked for the rescue of their comrades from the inundated mine. They had pierced through thirty-two yards of coal in order to reach their entombed comrades; but when only three yards more remained to be pierced, fire-damp enveloped them. The lamps went out, and the rescue-men retired. To work in such conditions was to risk being blown up at every moment. But the raps of the entombed miners were still heard, the men were still alive and appealed for help, and several miners volunteered to work at any risk; and as they went down the mine, their wives had only silent tears to follow them--not one word to stop them. There is the gist of human psychology. Unless men are maddened in the battlefield, they "cannot stand it" to hear appeals for help, and not to respond to them. The hero goes; and what the hero does, all feel that they ought to have done as well. The sophisms of the brain cannot resist the mutual-aid feeling, because this feeling has been nurtured by thousands of years of human social life and hundreds of thousands of years of pre-human life in societies. "But what about those men who were drowned in the Serpentine in the presence of a crowd, out of which no one moved for their rescue?" it may be asked. "What about the child which fell into the Regent's Park Canal--also in the presence of a holiday crowd--and was only saved through the presence of mind of a maid who let out a Newfoundland dog to the rescue?" The answer is plain enough. Man is a result of both his inherited instincts and his education. Among the miners and the seamen, their common occupations and their every-day contact with one another create a feeling of solidarity, while the surrounding dangers maintain courage and pluck. In the cities, on the contrary, the absence of common interest nurtures indifference, while courage and pluck, which seldom find their opportunities, disappear, or take another direction. Moreover, the tradition of the hero of the mine and the sea lives in the miners' and fishermen's villages, adorned with a poetical halo. But what are the traditions of a motley London crowd? The only tradition they might have in common ought to be created by literature, but a literature which would correspond to the village epics hardly exists. The clergy are so anxious to prove that all that comes from human nature is sin, and that all good in man has a supernatural origin, that they mostly ignore the facts which cannot be produced as an example of higher inspiration or grace, coming from above. And as to the lay-writers, their attention is chiefly directed towards one sort of heroism, the heroism which promotes the idea of the State. Therefore, they admire the Roman hero, or the soldier in the battle, while they pass by the fisherman's heroism, hardly paying attention to it. The poet and the painter might, of course, be taken by the beauty of the human heart in itself; but both seldom know the life of the poorer classes, and while they can sing or paint the Roman or the military hero in conventional surroundings, they can neither sing nor paint impressively the hero who acts in those modest surroundings which they ignore. If they venture to do so, they produce a mere piece of rhetoric.(14) The countless societies, clubs, and alliances, for the enjoyment of life, for study and research, for education, and so on, which have lately grown up in such numbers that it would require many years to simply tabulate them, are another manifestation of the same everworking tendency for association and mutual support. Some of them, like the broods of young birds of different species which come together in the autumn, are entirely given to share in common the joys of life. Every village in this country, in Switzerland, Germany, and so on, has its cricket, football, tennis, nine-pins, pigeon, musical or singing clubs. Other societies are much more numerous, and some of them, like the Cyclists' Alliance, have suddenly taken a formidable development. Although the members of this alliance have nothing in common but the love of cycling, there is already among them a sort of freemasonry for mutual help, especially in the remote nooks and corners which are not flooded by cyclists; they look upon the "C.A.C."--the Cyclists' Alliance Club--in a village as a sort of home; and at the yearly Cyclists' Camp many a standing friendship has been established. The Kegelbruder, the Brothers of the Nine Pins, in Germany, are a similar association; so also the Gymnasts' Societies (300,000 members in Germany), the informal brotherhood of paddlers in France, the yacht clubs, and so on. Such associations certainly do not alter the economical stratification of society, but, especially in the small towns, they contribute to smooth social distinctions, and as they all tend to join in large national and international federations, they certainly aid the growth of personal friendly intercourse between all sorts of men scattered in different parts of the globe. The Alpine Clubs, the Jagdschutzverein in Germany, which has over 100,000 members--hunters, educated foresters, zoologists, and simple lovers of Nature--and the International Ornithological Society, which includes zoologists, breeders, and simple peasants in Germany, have the same character. Not only have they done in a few years a large amount of very useful work, which large associations alone could do properly (maps, refuge huts, mountain roads; studies of animal life, of noxious insects, of migrations of birds, and so on), but they create new bonds between men. Two Alpinists of different nationalities who meet in a refuge hut in the Caucasus, or the professor and the peasant ornithologist who stay in the same house, are no more strangers to each other; while the Uncle Toby's Society at Newcastle, which has already induced over 260,000 boys and girls never to destroy birds' nests and to be kind to all animals, has certainly done more for the development of human feelings and of taste in natural science than lots of moralists and most of our schools. We cannot omit, even in this rapid review, the thousands of scientific, literary, artistic, and educational societies. Up till now, the scientific bodies, closely controlled and often subsidized by the State, have generally moved in a very narrow circle, and they often came to be looked upon as mere openings for getting State appointments, while the very narrowness of their circles undoubtedly bred petty jealousies. Still it is a fact that the distinctions of birth, political parties and creeds are smoothed to some extent by such associations; while in the smaller and remote towns the scientific, geographical, or musical societies, especially those of them which appeal to a larger circle of amateurs, become small centres of intellectual life, a sort of link between the little spot and the wide world, and a place where men of very different conditions meet on a footing of equality. To fully appreciate the value of such centres, one ought to know them, say, in Siberia. As to the countless educational societies which only now begin to break down the State's and the Church's monopoly in education, they are sure to become before long the leading power in that branch. To the "Froebel Unions" we already owe the Kindergarten system; and to a number of formal and informal educational associations we owe the high standard of women's education in Russia, although all the time these societies and groups had to act in strong opposition to a powerful government.(15) As to the various pedagogical societies in Germany, it is well known that they have done the best part in the working out of the modern methods of teaching science in popular schools. In such associations the teacher finds also his best support. How miserable the overworked and under-paid village teacher would have been without their aid!(16) All these associations, societies, brotherhoods, alliances, institutes, and so on, which must now be counted by the ten thousand in Europe alone, and each of which represents an immense amount of voluntary, unambitious, and unpaid or underpaid work--what are they but so many manifestations, under an infinite variety of aspects, of the same ever-living tendency of man towards mutual aid and support? For nearly three centuries men were prevented from joining hands even for literary, artistic, and educational purposes. Societies could only be formed under the protection of the State, or the Church, or as secret brotherhoods, like free-masonry. But now that the resistance has been broken, they swarm in all directions, they extend over all multifarious branches of human activity, they become international, and they undoubtedly contribute, to an extent which cannot yet be fully appreciated, to break down the screens erected by States between different nationalities. Notwithstanding the jealousies which are bred by commercial competition, and the provocations to hatred which are sounded by the ghosts of a decaying past, there is a conscience of international solidarity which is growing both among the leading spirits of the world and the masses of the workers, since they also have conquered the right of international intercourse; and in the preventing of a European war during the last quarter of a century, this spirit has undoubtedly had its share. The religious charitable associations, which again represent a whole world, certainly must be mentioned in this place. There is not the slightest doubt that the great bulk of their members are moved by the same mutual-aid feelings which are common to all mankind. Unhappily the religious teachers of men prefer to ascribe to such feelings a supernatural origin. Many of them pretend that man does not consciously obey the mutual-aid inspiration so long as he has not been enlightened by the teachings of the special religion which they represent, and, with St. Augustin, most of them do not recognize such feelings in the "pagan savage." Moreover, while early Christianity, like all other religions, was an appeal to the broadly human feelings of mutual aid and sympathy, the Christian Church has aided the State in wrecking all standing institutions of mutual aid and support which were anterior to it, or developed outside of it; and, instead of the mutual aid which every savage considers as due to his kinsman, it has preached charity which bears a character of inspiration from above, and, accordingly, implies a certain superiority of the giver upon the receiver. With this limitation, and without any intention to give offence to those who consider themselves as a body elect when they accomplish acts simply humane, we certainly may consider the immense numbers of religious charitable associations as an outcome of the same mutual-aid tendency. All these facts show that a reckless prosecution of personal interests, with no regard to other people's needs, is not the only characteristic of modern life. By the side of this current which so proudly claims leadership in human affairs, we perceive a hard struggle sustained by both the rural and industrial populations in order to reintroduce standing institutions of mutual aid and support; and we discover, in all classes of society, a widely-spread movement towards the establishment of an infinite variety of more or less permanent institutions for the same purpose. But when we pass from public life to the private life of the modern individual, we discover another extremely wide world of mutual aid and support, which only passes unnoticed by most sociologists because it is limited to the narrow circle of the family and personal friendship.(17) Under the present social system, all bonds of union among the inhabitants of the same street or neighbourhood have been dissolved. In the richer parts of the large towns, people live without knowing who are their next-door neighbours. But in the crowded lanes people know each other perfectly, and are continually brought into mutual contact. Of course, petty quarrels go their course, in the lanes as elsewhere; but groupings in accordance with personal affinities grow up, and within their circle mutual aid is practised to an extent of which the richer classes have no idea. If we take, for instance, the children of a poor neighbourhood who play in a street or a churchyard, or on a green, we notice at once that a close union exists among them, notwithstanding the temporary fights, and that that union protects them from all sorts of misfortunes. As soon as a mite bends inquisitively over the opening of a drain--"Don't stop there," another mite shouts out, "fever sits in the hole!" "Don't climb over that wall, the train will kill you if you tumble down! Don't come near to the ditch! Don't eat those berries--poison! you will die." Such are the first teachings imparted to the urchin when he joins his mates out-doors. How many of the children whose play-grounds are the pavements around "model workers' dwellings," or the quays and bridges of the canals, would be crushed to death by the carts or drowned in the muddy waters, were it not for that sort of mutual support. And when a fair Jack has made a slip into the unprotected ditch at the back of the milkman's yard, or a cherry-cheeked Lizzie has, after all, tumbled down into the canal, the young brood raises such cries that all the neighbourhood is on the alert and rushes to the rescue. Then comes in the alliance of the mothers. "You could not imagine" (a lady-doctor who lives in a poor neighbourhood told me lately) "how much they help each other. If a woman has prepared nothing, or could prepare nothing, for the baby which she expected--and how often that happens!--all the neighbours bring something for the new-comer. One of the neighbours always takes care of the children, and some other always drops in to take care of the household, so long as the mother is in bed." This habit is general. It is mentioned by all those who have lived among the poor. In a thousand small ways the mothers support each other and bestow their care upon children that are not their own. Some training--good or bad, let them decide it for themselves--is required in a lady of the richer classes to render her able to pass by a shivering and hungry child in the street without noticing it. But the mothers of the poorer classes have not that training. They cannot stand the sight of a hungry child; they must feed it, and so they do. "When the school children beg bread, they seldom or rather never meet with a refusal"--a lady-friend, who has worked several years in Whitechapel in connection with a workers' club, writes to me. But I may, perhaps, as well transcribe a few more passages from her letter:-- "Nursing neighbours, in cases of illness, without any shade of remuneration, is quite general among the workers. Also, when a woman has little children, and goes out for work, another mother always takes care of them. "If, in the working classes, they would not help each other, they could not exist. I know families which continually help each other--with money, with food, with fuel, for bringing up the little children, in cases of illness, in cases of death. "'The mine' and 'thine' is much less sharply observed among the poor than among the rich. Shoes, dress, hats, and so on,--what may be wanted on the spot--are continually borrowed from each other, also all sorts of household things. "Last winter the members of the United Radical Club had brought together some little money, and began after Christmas to distribute free soup and bread to the children going to school. Gradually they had 1,800 children to attend to. The money came from outsiders, but all the work was done by the members of the club. Some of them, who were out of work, came at four in the morning to wash and to peel the vegetables; five women came at nine or ten (after having done their own household work) for cooking, and stayed till six or seven to wash the dishes. And at meal time, between twelve and half-past one, twenty to thirty workers came in to aid in serving the soup, each one staying what he could spare of his meal time. This lasted for two months. No one was paid." My friend also mentions various individual cases, of which the following are typical:-- "Annie W. was given by her mother to be boarded by an old person in Wilmot Street. When her mother died, the old woman, who herself was very poor, kept the child without being paid a penny for that. When the old lady died too, the child, who was five years old, was of course neglected during her illness, and was ragged; but she was taken at once by Mrs. S., the wife of a shoemaker, who herself has six children. Lately, when the husband was ill, they had not much to eat, all of them. "The other day, Mrs. M., mother of six children, attended Mrs. M--g throughout her illness, and took to her own rooms the elder child.... But do you need such facts? They are quite general.... I know also Mrs. D. (Oval, Hackney Road), who has a sewing machine and continually sews for others, without ever accepting any remuneration, although she has herself five children and her husband to look after.... And so on." For every one who has any idea of the life of the labouring classes it is evident that without mutual aid being practised among them on a large scale they never could pull through all their difficulties. It is only by chance that a worker's family can live its lifetime without having to face such circumstances as the crisis described by the ribbon weaver, Joseph Gutteridge, in his autobiography.(18) And if all do not go to the ground in such cases, they owe it to mutual help. In Gutteridge's case it was an old nurse, miserably poor herself, who turned up at the moment when the family was slipping towards a final catastrophe, and brought in some bread, coal, and bedding, which she had obtained on credit. In other cases, it will be some one else, or the neighbours will take steps to save the family. But without some aid from other poor, how many more would be brought every year to irreparable ruin!(19) Mr. Plimsoll, after he had lived for some time among the poor, on 7s. 6d. a week, was compelled to recognize that the kindly feelings he took with him when he began this life "changed into hearty respect and admiration" when he saw how the relations between the poor are permeated with mutual aid and support, and learned the simple ways in which that support is given. After a many years' experience, his conclusion was that "when you come to think of it, such as these men were, so were the vast majority of the working classes."(20) As to bringing up orphans, even by the poorest families, it is so widely-spread a habit, that it may be described as a general rule; thus among the miners it was found, after the two explosions at Warren Vale and at Lund Hill, that "nearly one-third of the men killed, as the respective committees can testify, were thus supporting relations other than wife and child." "Have you reflected," Mr. Plimsoll added, "what this is? Rich men, even comfortably-to-do men do this, I don't doubt. But consider the difference." Consider what a sum of one shilling, subscribed by each worker to help a comrade's widow, or 6d. to help a fellow-worker to defray the extra expense of a funeral, means for one who earns 16s. a week and has a wife, and in some cases five or six children to support.(21) But such subscriptions are a general practice among the workers all over the world, even in much more ordinary cases than a death in the family, while aid in work is the commonest thing in their lives. Nor do the same practices of mutual aid and support fail among the richer classes. Of course, when one thinks of the harshness which is often shown by the richer employers towards their employees, one feels inclined to take the most pessimist view of human nature. Many must remember the indignation which was aroused during the great Yorkshire strike of 1894, when old miners who had picked coal from an abandoned pit were prosecuted by the colliery owners. And, even if we leave aside the horrors of the periods of struggle and social war, such as the extermination of thousands of workers' prisoners after the fall of the Paris Commune--who can read, for instance, revelations of the labour inquest which was made here in the forties, or what Lord Shaftesbury wrote about "the frightful waste of human life in the factories, to which the children taken from the workhouses, or simply purchased all over this country to be sold as factory slaves, were consigned"(22)--who can read that without being vividly impressed by the baseness which is possible in man when his greediness is at stake? But it must also be said that all fault for such treatment must not be thrown entirely upon the criminality of human nature. Were not the teachings of men of science, and even of a notable portion of the clergy, up to a quite recent time, teachings of distrust, despite and almost hatred towards the poorer classes? Did not science teach that since serfdom has been abolished, no one need be poor unless for his own vices? And how few in the Church had the courage to blame the children-killers, while the great numbers taught that the sufferings of the poor, and even the slavery of the negroes, were part of the Divine Plan! Was not Nonconformism itself largely a popular protest against the harsh treatment of the poor at the hand of the established Church? With such spiritual leaders, the feelings of the richer classes necessarily became, as Mr. Pimsoll remarked, not so much blunted as "stratified." They seldom went downwards towards the poor, from whom the well-to-do-people are separated by their manner of life, and whom they do not know under their best aspects, in their every-day life. But among themselves--allowance being made for the effects of the wealth-accumulating passions and the futile expenses imposed by wealth itself--among themselves, in the circle of family and friends, the rich practise the same mutual aid and support as the poor. Dr. Ihering and L. Dargun are perfectly right in saying that if a statistical record could be taken of all the money which passes from hand to hand in the shape of friendly loans and aid, the sum total would be enormous, even in comparison with the commercial transactions of the world's trade. And if we could add to it, as we certainly ought to, what is spent in hospitality, petty mutual services, the management of other people's affairs, gifts and charities, we certainly should be struck by the importance of such transfers in national economy. Even in the world which is ruled by commercial egotism, the current expression, "We have been harshly treated by that firm," shows that there is also the friendly treatment, as opposed to the harsh, i.e. the legal treatment; while every commercial man knows how many firms are saved every year from failure by the friendly support of other firms. As to the charities and the amounts of work for general well-being which are voluntarily done by so many well-to-do persons, as well as by workers, and especially by professional men, every one knows the part which is played by these two categories of benevolence in modern life. If the desire of acquiring notoriety, political power, or social distinction often spoils the true character of that sort of benevolence, there is no doubt possible as to the impulse coming in the majority of cases from the same mutual-aid feelings. Men who have acquired wealth very often do not find in it the expected satisfaction. Others begin to feel that, whatever economists may say about wealth being the reward of capacity, their own reward is exaggerated. The conscience of human solidarity begins to tell; and, although society life is so arranged as to stifle that feeling by thousands of artful means, it often gets the upper hand; and then they try to find an outcome for that deeply human need by giving their fortune, or their forces, to something which, in their opinion, will promote general welfare. In short, neither the crushing powers of the centralized State nor the teachings of mutual hatred and pitiless struggle which came, adorned with the attributes of science, from obliging philosophers and sociologists, could weed out the feeling of human solidarity, deeply lodged in men's understanding and heart, because it has been nurtured by all our preceding evolution. What was the outcome of evolution since its earliest stages cannot be overpowered by one of the aspects of that same evolution. And the need of mutual aid and support which had lately taken refuge in the narrow circle of the family, or the slum neighbours, in the village, or the secret union of workers, re-asserts itself again, even in our modern society, and claims its rights to be, as it always has been, the chief leader towards further progress. Such are the conclusions which we are necessarily brought to when we carefully ponder over each of the groups of facts briefly enumerated in the last two chapters. NOTES: 1. Toulmin Smith, English Guilds, London, 1870, Introd. p. xliii. 2. The Act of Edward the Sixth--the first of his reign--ordered to hand over to the Crown "all fraternities, brotherhoods, and guilds being within the realm of England and Wales and other of the king's dominions; and all manors, lands, tenements, and other hereditaments belonging to them or any of them" (English Guilds, Introd. p. xliii). See also Ockenkowski's Englands wirtschaftliche Entwickelung im Ausgange des Mittelalters, Jena, 1879, chaps. ii-v. 3. See Sidney and Beatrice Webb, History of Trade-Unionism, London, 1894, pp. 21-38. 4. See in Sidney Webb's work the associations which existed at that time. The London artisans are supposed to have never been better organized than in 1810-20. 5. The National Association for the Protection of Labour included about 150 separate unions, which paid high levies, and had a membership of about 100,000. The Builders' Union and the Miners' Unions also were big organizations (Webb, l.c. p. 107). 6. I follow in this Mr. Webb's work, which is replete with documents to confirm his statements. 7. Great changes have taken place since the forties in the attitude of the richer classes towards the unions. However, even in the sixties, the employers made a formidable concerted attempt to crush them by locking out whole populations. Up to 1869 the simple agreement to strike, and the announcement of a strike by placards, to say nothing of picketing, were often punished as intimidation. Only in 1875 the Master and Servant Act was repealed, peaceful picketing was permitted, and "violence and intimidation" during strikes fell into the domain of common law. Yet, even during the dock-labourers' strike in 1887, relief money had to be spent for fighting before the Courts for the right of picketing, while the prosecutions of the last few years menace once more to render the conquered rights illusory. 8. A weekly contribution of 6d. out of an 18s. wage, or of 1s. out of 25s., means much more than 9l. out of a 300l. income: it is mostly taken upon food; and the levy is soon doubled when a strike is declared in a brother union. The graphic description of trade-union life, by a skilled craftsman, published by Mr. and Mrs. Webb (pp. 431 seq.), gives an excellent idea of the amount of work required from a unionist. 9. See the debates upon the strikes of Falkenau in Austria before the Austrian Reichstag on the 10th of May, 1894, in which debates the fact is fully recognized by the Ministry and the owner of the colliery. Also the English Press of that time. 10. Many such facts will be found in the Daily Chronicle and partly the Daily News for October and November 1894. 11. The 31,473 productive and consumers' associations on the Middle Rhine showed, about 1890, a yearly expenditure of 18,437,500l.; 3,675,000l. were granted during the year in loans. 12. British Consular Report, April 1889. 13. A capital research on this subject has been published in Russian in the Zapiski (Memoirs) of the Caucasian Geographical Society, vol. vi. 2, Tiflis, 1891, by C. Egiazaroff. 14. Escape from a French prison is extremely difficult; nevertheless a prisoner escaped from one of the French prisons in 1884 or 1885. He even managed to conceal himself during the whole day, although the alarm was given and the peasants in the neighbourhood were on the look-out for him. Next morning found him concealed in a ditch, close by a small village. Perhaps he intended to steal some food, or some clothes in order to take off his prison uniform. As he was lying in the ditch a fire broke out in the village. He saw a woman running out of one of the burning houses, and heard her desperate appeals to rescue a child in the upper storey of the burning house. No one moved to do so. Then the escaped prisoner dashed out of his retreat, made his way through the fire, and, with a scalded face and burning clothes, brought the child safe out of the fire, and handed it to its mother. Of course he was arrested on the spot by the village gendarme, who now made his appearance. He was taken back to the prison. The fact was reported in all French papers, but none of them bestirred itself to obtain his release. If he had shielded a warder from a comrade's blow, he would have been made a hero of. But his act was simply humane, it did not promote the State's ideal; he himself did not attribute it to a sudden inspiration of divine grace; and that was enough to let the man fall into oblivion. Perhaps, six or twelve months were added to his sentence for having stolen--"the State's property"--the prison's dress. 15. The medical Academy for Women (which has given to Russia a large portion of her 700 graduated lady doctors), the four Ladies' Universities (about 1000 pupils in 1887; closed that year, and reopened in 1895), and the High Commercial School for Women are entirely the work of such private societies. To the same societies we owe the high standard which the girls' gymnasia attained since they were opened in the sixties. The 100 gymnasia now scattered over the Empire (over 70,000 pupils), correspond to the High Schools for Girls in this country; all teachers are, however, graduates of the universities. 16. The Verein für Verbreitung gemeinnutslicher Kenntnisse, although it has only 5500 members, has already opened more than 1000 public and school libraries, organized thousands of lectures, and published most valuable books. 17. Very few writers in sociology have paid attention to it. Dr. Ihering is one of them, and his case is very instructive. When the great German writer on law began his philosophical work, Der Zweck im Rechte ("Purpose in Law"), he intended to analyze "the active forces which call forth the advance of society and maintain it," and to thus give "the theory of the sociable man." He analyzed, first, the egotistic forces at work, including the present wage-system and coercion in its variety of political and social laws; and in a carefully worked-out scheme of his work he intended to give the last paragraph to the ethical forces--the sense of duty and mutual love--which contribute to the same aim. When he came, however, to discuss the social functions of these two factors, he had to write a second volume, twice as big as the first; and yet he treated only of the personal factors which will take in the following pages only a few lines. L. Dargun took up the same idea in Egoismus und Altruismus in der Nationalokonomie, Leipzig, 1885, adding some new facts. Buchner's Love, and the several paraphrases of it published here and in Germany, deal with the same subject. 18. Light and Shadows in the Life of an Artisan. Coventry, 1893. 19. Many rich people cannot understand how the very poor can help each other, because they do not realize upon what infinitesimal amounts of food or money often hangs the life of one of the poorest classes. Lord Shaftesbury had understood this terrible truth when he started his Flowers and Watercress Girls' Fund, out of which loans of one pound, and only occasionally two pounds, were granted, to enable the girls to buy a basket and flowers when the winter sets in and they are in dire distress. The loans were given to girls who had "not a sixpence," but never failed to find some other poor to go bail for them. "Of all the movements I have ever been connected with," Lord Shaftesbury wrote, "I look upon this Watercress Girls' movement as the most successful.... It was begun in 1872, and we have had out 800 to 1,000 loans, and have not lost 50l. during the whole period.... What has been lost--and it has been very little, under the circumstances--has been by reason of death or sickness, not by fraud" (The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, by Edwin Hodder, vol. iii. p. 322. London, 1885-86). Several more facts in point in Ch. Booth's Life and Labour in London, vol. i; in Miss Beatrice Potter's "Pages from a Work Girl's Diary" (Nineteenth Century, September 1888, p. 310); and so on. 20. Samuel Plimsoll, Our Seamen, cheap edition, London, 1870, p. 110. 21. Our Seamen, u.s., p. 110. Mr. Plimsoll added: "I don't wish to disparage the rich, but I think it may be reasonably doubted whether these qualities are so fully developed in them; for, notwithstanding that not a few of them are not unacquainted with the claims, reasonable or unreasonable, of poor relatives, these qualities are not in such constant exercise. Riches seem in so many cases to smother the manliness of their possessors, and their sympathies become, not so much narrowed as--so to speak--stratified: they are reserved for the sufferings of their own class, and also the woes of those above them. They seldom tend downwards much, and they are far more likely to admire an act of courage ... than to admire the constantly exercised fortitude and the tenderness which are the daily characteristics of a British workman's life"--and of the workmen all over the world as well. 22. Life of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, by Edwin Hodder, vol. i. pp. 137-138. CONCLUSION If we take now the teachings which can be borrowed from the analysis of modern society, in connection with the body of evidence relative to the importance of mutual aid in the evolution of the animal world and of mankind, we may sum up our inquiry as follows. In the animal world we have seen that the vast majority of species live in societies, and that they find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense--not as a struggle for the sheer means of existence, but as a struggle against all natural conditions unfavourable to the species. The animal species, in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development, are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress. The mutual protection which is obtained in this case, the possibility of attaining old age and of accumulating experience, the higher intellectual development, and the further growth of sociable habits, secure the maintenance of the species, its extension, and its further progressive evolution. The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay. Going next over to man, we found him living in clans and tribes at the very dawn of the stone age; we saw a wide series of social institutions developed already in the lower savage stage, in the clan and the tribe; and we found that the earliest tribal customs and habits gave to mankind the embryo of all the institutions which made later on the leading aspects of further progress. Out of the savage tribe grew up the barbarian village community; and a new, still wider, circle of social customs, habits, and institutions, numbers of which are still alive among ourselves, was developed under the principles of common possession of a given territory and common defence of it, under the jurisdiction of the village folkmote, and in the federation of villages belonging, or supposed to belong, to one stem. And when new requirements induced men to make a new start, they made it in the city, which represented a double network of territorial units (village communities), connected with guilds these latter arising out of the common prosecution of a given art or craft, or for mutual support and defence. And finally, in the last two chapters facts were produced to show that although the growth of the State on the pattern of Imperial Rome had put a violent end to all medieval institutions for mutual support, this new aspect of civilization could not last. The State, based upon loose aggregations of individuals and undertaking to be their only bond of union, did not answer its purpose. The mutual-aid tendency finally broke down its iron rules; it reappeared and reasserted itself in an infinity of associations which now tend to embrace all aspects of life and to take possession of all that is required by man for life and for reproducing the waste occasioned by life. It will probably be remarked that mutual aid, even though it may represent one of the factors of evolution, covers nevertheless one aspect only of human relations; that by the side of this current, powerful though it may be, there is, and always has been, the other current--the self-assertion of the individual, not only in its efforts to attain personal or caste superiority, economical, political, and spiritual, but also in its much more important although less evident function of breaking through the bonds, always prone to become crystallized, which the tribe, the village community, the city, and the State impose upon the individual. In other words, there is the self-assertion of the individual taken as a progressive element. It is evident that no review of evolution can be complete, unless these two dominant currents are analyzed. However, the self-assertion of the individual or of groups of individuals, their struggles for superiority, and the conflicts which resulted therefrom, have already been analyzed, described, and glorified from time immemorial. In fact, up to the present time, this current alone has received attention from the epical poet, the annalist, the historian, and the sociologist. History, such as it has hitherto been written, is almost entirely a description of the ways and means by which theocracy, military power, autocracy, and, later on, the richer classes' rule have been promoted, established, and maintained. The struggles between these forces make, in fact, the substance of history. We may thus take the knowledge of the individual factor in human history as granted--even though there is full room for a new study of the subject on the lines just alluded to; while, on the other side, the mutual-aid factor has been hitherto totally lost sight of; it was simply denied, or even scoffed at, by the writers of the present and past generation. It was therefore necessary to show, first of all, the immense part which this factor plays in the evolution of both the animal world and human societies. Only after this has been fully recognized will it be possible to proceed to a comparison between the two factors. To make even a rough estimate of their relative importance by any method more or less statistical, is evidently impossible. One single war--we all know--may be productive of more evil, immediate and subsequent, than hundreds of years of the unchecked action of the mutual-aid principle may be productive of good. But when we see that in the animal world, progressive development and mutual aid go hand in hand, while the inner struggle within the species is concomitant with retrogressive development; when we notice that with man, even success in struggle and war is proportionate to the development of mutual aid in each of the two conflicting nations, cities, parties, or tribes, and that in the process of evolution war itself (so far as it can go this way) has been made subservient to the ends of progress in mutual aid within the nation, the city or the clan--we already obtain a perception of the dominating influence of the mutual-aid factor as an element of progress. But we see also that the practice of mutual aid and its successive developments have created the very conditions of society life in which man was enabled to develop his arts, knowledge, and intelligence; and that the periods when institutions based on the mutual-aid tendency took their greatest development were also the periods of the greatest progress in arts, industry, and science. In fact, the study of the inner life of the medieval city and of the ancient Greek cities reveals the fact that the combination of mutual aid, as it was practised within the guild and the Greek clan, with a large initiative which was left to the individual and the group by means of the federative principle, gave to mankind the two greatest periods of its history--the ancient Greek city and the medieval city periods; while the ruin of the above institutions during the State periods of history, which followed, corresponded in both cases to a rapid decay. As to the sudden industrial progress which has been achieved during our own century, and which is usually ascribed to the triumph of individualism and competition, it certainly has a much deeper origin than that. Once the great discoveries of the fifteenth century were made, especially that of the pressure of the atmosphere, supported by a series of advances in natural philosophy--and they were made under the medieval city organization,--once these discoveries were made, the invention of the steam-motor, and all the revolution which the conquest of a new power implied, had necessarily to follow. If the medieval cities had lived to bring their discoveries to that point, the ethical consequences of the revolution effected by steam might have been different; but the same revolution in technics and science would have inevitably taken place. It remains, indeed, an open question whether the general decay of industries which followed the ruin of the free cities, and was especially noticeable in the first part of the eighteenth century, did not considerably retard the appearance of the steam-engine as well as the consequent revolution in arts. When we consider the astounding rapidity of industrial progress from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries--in weaving, working of metals, architecture and navigation, and ponder over the scientific discoveries which that industrial progress led to at the end of the fifteenth century--we must ask ourselves whether mankind was not delayed in its taking full advantage of these conquests when a general depression of arts and industries took place in Europe after the decay of medieval civilization. Surely it was not the disappearance of the artist-artisan, nor the ruin of large cities and the extinction of intercourse between them, which could favour the industrial revolution; and we know indeed that James Watt spent twenty or more years of his life in order to render his invention serviceable, because he could not find in the last century what he would have readily found in medieval Florence or Brugge, that is, the artisans capable of realizing his devices in metal, and of giving them the artistic finish and precision which the steam-engine requires. To attribute, therefore, the industrial progress of our century to the war of each against all which it has proclaimed, is to reason like the man who, knowing not the causes of rain, attributes it to the victim he has immolated before his clay idol. For industrial progress, as for each other conquest over nature, mutual aid and close intercourse certainly are, as they have been, much more advantageous than mutual struggle. However, it is especially in the domain of ethics that the dominating importance of the mutual-aid principle appears in full. That mutual aid is the real foundation of our ethical conceptions seems evident enough. But whatever the opinions as to the first origin of the mutual-aid feeling or instinct may be whether a biological or a supernatural cause is ascribed to it--we must trace its existence as far back as to the lowest stages of the animal world; and from these stages we can follow its uninterrupted evolution, in opposition to a number of contrary agencies, through all degrees of human development, up to the present times. Even the new religions which were born from time to time--always at epochs when the mutual-aid principle was falling into decay in the theocracies and despotic States of the East, or at the decline of the Roman Empire--even the new religions have only reaffirmed that same principle. They found their first supporters among the humble, in the lowest, downtrodden layers of society, where the mutual-aid principle is the necessary foundation of every-day life; and the new forms of union which were introduced in the earliest Buddhist and Christian communities, in the Moravian brotherhoods and so on, took the character of a return to the best aspects of mutual aid in early tribal life. Each time, however, that an attempt to return to this old principle was made, its fundamental idea itself was widened. From the clan it was extended to the stem, to the federation of stems, to the nation, and finally--in ideal, at least--to the whole of mankind. It was also refined at the same time. In primitive Buddhism, in primitive Christianity, in the writings of some of the Mussulman teachers, in the early movements of the Reform, and especially in the ethical and philosophical movements of the last century and of our own times, the total abandonment of the idea of revenge, or of "due reward"--of good for good and evil for evil--is affirmed more and more vigorously. The higher conception of "no revenge for wrongs," and of freely giving more than one expects to receive from his neighbours, is proclaimed as being the real principle of morality--a principle superior to mere equivalence, equity, or justice, and more conducive to happiness. And man is appealed to to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at the best tribal, but by the perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support not mutual struggle--has had the leading part. In its wide extension, even at the present time, we also see the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of our race. 
22306	----	HUMAN TRAITS AND THEIR SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE BY IRWIN EDMAN, Ph.D. INSTRUCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE FOREWORD This book was written, originally and primarily, for use in a course entitled "Introduction to Contemporary Civilization," required of all Freshmen in Columbia College. It is an attempt to give a bird's-eye view of the processes of human nature, from man's simple inborn impulses and needs to the most complete fulfillment of these in the deliberate activities of religion, art, science, and morals. It is hoped that the book may give to the student and general reader a knowledge of the fundamentals of human nature and a sense of the possibilities and limits these give to human enterprise. Part I consists of an analysis of the types of behavior, a survey of individual traits and their significance in social life, a brief consideration of the nature and development of the self, individual differences, language and communication, racial and cultural continuity. Those fruits of psychological inquiry have been stressed which bear most strikingly on the relations of men in our present-day social and economic organization. In consequence, there has been a deliberate exclusion of purely technical or controversial material, however interesting. The psychological analysis is in general based upon the results of the objective inquiries into human behavior which have been so fruitfully conducted in the last twenty-five years by Thorndike and Woodworth. To the work of the first-mentioned, the author is particularly indebted. Part II is a brief analysis, chiefly psychological in character, of the four great activities of the human mind and imagination--religion, art, science, and morals. These are discussed as normal though complex activities developed, through the process of reflection, in the fulfillment of man's inborn impulses and needs. Thus descriptively to treat these spiritual enterprises implies on the part of the author a naturalistic viewpoint whose main outlines have been fixed for this generation by James, Santayana, and Dewey. To the last-named the writer wishes to express the very special obligation that a pupil owes to a great teacher. The book as a whole, so far as can be judged from the experience the author and others have had in using it during the past year as a text at Columbia, should fit well into any general course in social psychology. It has been increasingly realized that the student's understanding of contemporary problems of government and industry is immensely clarified by a knowledge of the human factors which they involve. This volume supplies a brief account of the essential facts of human behavior with especial emphasis on their social consequences. Part I may be independently used, as it has been with success, in a general course in social psychology. Part II, the "Career of Reason," presents material which many instructors find it highly desirable to use in introductory philosophy courses, but for which no elementary texts are available. The usual textbooks deal with the more metaphysical problems to the exclusion of religion, art, morals, and science, humanly the most interesting and significant of philosophical problems. Where, as in many colleges, the introductory philosophy course is preceded by a course in psychology, the arrangement of the volume should prove particularly well suited. The illustrative material has been drawn, possibly to an unusual extent, from literature. The latter seems to give the student in the vivid reality of specific situations facts which the psychologist is condemned, from the necessities of scientific method, to discuss in the abstract. The book follows more or less closely that part of the syllabus for the course in Contemporary Civilization, which is called "The World of Human Nature," which section of the outline was chiefly the joint product of collaboration by Professor John J. Coss and the author. To the former the author wishes to express his large indebtedness. Also to Miss Edith G. Taber, for her careful and valuable editing of the manuscript in preparation for the printer, he desires to convey his deep appreciation. I. E. _Columbia University, June_ 1920. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION HUMAN TRAITS AND CIVILIZATION PART I--SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY CHAPTER I TYPES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR The human animal--The number and variety of man's instincts--Learning in animals and men--The prolonged period of infancy--Consciousness of self and reaction to ideas--Human beings alone possess language--Man the only maker and user of tools. CHAPTER II TYPES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR AND THEIR SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE--INSTINCT, HABIT, AND EMOTION Instinctive behavior--The necessity for the control of instinct--Habitual behavior--The mechanism of habit--The acquisition of new modes of response--Trial and error and deliberate learning--Some conditions of habit-formation--Drill _versus_ attentive repetition in learning--Learning affected by age, fatigue, and health--Habit as a time-saver--Habit as a stabilizer of action--Disserviceable habits in the individual--Social inertia--The importance of the learning habit--The specificity of habits--The conscious transference of habits--Emotion. CHAPTER III REFLECTION Instinct and habit _versus_ reflection--The origin and nature of reflection--Illustration of the reflective process--Reflection as the modifier of instinct--Reflective behavior modifies habit--The limits of reflection as a modifier of instinct and habit--How instincts and habits impair the processes of reflection--The value of reflection for life--The social importance of reflective behavior--Reflection removed from immediate application: science--The practical aspect of science--The creation of beautiful objects and the expression of ideas and feelings in beautiful form. CHAPTER IV THE BASIC HUMAN ACTIVITIES Food, shelter, and sex--Physical activity--Mental activity--Quiescence: fatigue--Nervous and mental fatigue. CHAPTER V THE SOCIAL NATURE OF MAN Man as a social being--Gregariousness--Gregariousness important for social solidarity--Gregariousness may hinder the solidarity of large groups--Gregariousness in belief--Gregariousness in habits of action--The effect of gregariousness on innovation--Sympathy (a specialization of gregariousness)--Praise and blame--Praise and blame modify habit--Desire for praise may lead to the profession rather than the practice of virtue--The social effectiveness of praise and blame--Social estimates and standards of conduct--Importance of relating praise and blame to socially important conduct--Education as the agency of social control--Social activity and the social motive. CHAPTER VI CRUCIAL TRAITS IN SOCIAL LIFE The interpenetration of human traits--The fighting instinct--Pugnacity a menace when uncontrolled--Pugnacity as a beneficent social force--The "submissive instinct"--Men display qualities of leadership--Man pities and protects weak and suffering things--Fear--Love and hate--Love--Hate. CHAPTER VII THE DEMAND FOR PRIVACY AND INDIVIDUALITY Privacy and solitude--Satisfaction in personal possession: the acquisitive instinct--Individuality in opinion and belief--The social importance of individuality in opinion. CHAPTER VIII THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE "SELF" Origin and development of a sense of personal selfhood--The social self--Character and will--The enhancement of the self--Egoism _versus_ altruism--Self-satisfaction and dissatisfaction--The contrast between the self and others--Types of self--Self-display or boldness--Self-sufficient modesty--The positive and flexible self--Dogmatism and self-assertion--Enthusiasm--The negative self--Eccentrics--The active and the contemplative--Emotions aroused in the maintenance of the self--The individuality of groups. CHAPTER IX INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES The meaning of individual differences--Causes of individual differences--The influence of sex--The influence of race--The influence of immediate ancestry or family--The influence of the environment--Individual differences--Democracy and education. CHAPTER X LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION Language as a social habit--Language and mental life--The instability of language--Changes in meaning--Uniformities in language--Standardization of language--Counter-tendencies toward differentiation--Language as emotional and logical--Language and logic. CHAPTER XI RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY Restriction of population--Cultural continuity--Uncritical veneration of the past--Romantic idealization of the past--Change synonymous with evil--"Order" _versus_ change--Personal or class opposition to change--Uncritical disparagement--Critical examination of the past--Limitations of the past--Education as the transmitter of the past. PART II--THE CAREER OF REASON INTRODUCTION CHAPTER XII RELIGION AND THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE The religious experience--"The reality of the unseen"--Experiences which frequently find religious expression--Need and impotence--Fear and awe--Regret, remorse: repentance and penance--Joy and enthusiasm: festivals and thanksgivings--Theology--The description of the divine--The divine as the human ideal--The religious experience, theology and science--Mechanistic science and theology--Religion and science--The church as a social institution--The social consequences of institutionalized religion--Intolerance and inquisition--Quietism and consolation: other-worldliness. CHAPTER XIII ART AND THE ÆSTHETIC EXPERIENCE Art _versus_ nature--The emergence of the fine arts--The æsthetic experience--Appreciation _versus_ action--Sense satisfaction--Form--Expression--Art as vicarious experience--Art and æsthetic experience in the social order--Art as an industry--Art and morals. CHAPTER XIV SCIENCE AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD What science is--Science as explanation--Science and a world view--The æsthetic value of science--The danger of "pure science"--Practical or applied science--Analysis of scientific procedure--Science and common sense--Curiosity and scientific inquiry--Thinking begins with a problem--The quality of thinking: suggestion--Classification--Experimental variation of conditions--Generalizations, their elaboration and testing--The quantitative basis of scientific procedure--Statistics and probability--Science as an instrument of human progress. CHAPTER XV MORALS AND MORAL VALUATION The pre-conditions of morality: instinct, impulse, and desire--The conflict of interests between men and groups--The levels of moral action: custom; the establishment of "folkways"--Morality as conformity to the established--The values of customary morality--The defects of customary morality--Custom and progress--Origin and nature of reflective morality--Reflective reconstruction of moral standards--The values of reflective morality--Reflection transforms customs into principles--Reflective action genuinely moral--Reflection sets up ideal standards--The defects of reflective morality--The inadequacy of theory in moral life--The danger of intellectualism in morals--Types of moral theory--Absolutism--Relativistic or teleological morality--Utilitarianism--Moral knowledge--Intuitionalism--Empiricism--Ethics and life--Morality and human nature--Morals, law, and education. INDEX INTRODUCTION HUMAN TRAITS AND CIVILIZATION. Throughout the long enterprise of civilization in which mankind have more or less consciously changed the world they found into one more in conformity with their desires, two factors have remained constant: (1) the physical order of the universe, which we commonly call Nature, and (2) the native biological equipment of man, commonly known as human nature. Both of these, we are almost unanimously assured by modern science, have remained essentially the same from the dawn of history to the present. They are the raw material out of which is built up the vast complex of government, industry, science, art--all that we call civilization. In a very genuine sense, there is nothing new under the sun. Matter and men remain the same. But while this fundamental material is constant, it may be given various forms; and both Nature itself and the nature of man may, with increasing knowledge, be increasingly controlled in man's own interests. The railroad, the wireless, and the aeroplane are striking and familiar testimonies to the efficacy of man's informed mastery of the world into which he is born. In the field of physical science, man has, in the short period of three centuries since Francis Bacon sounded the trumpet call to the study of Nature and Newton discovered the laws of motion, magnificently attained and appreciated the power to know exactly what the facts of Nature are, what consequences follow from them, and how they may be applied to enlarge the boundaries of the "empire of man." In his control of human nature, which is in its outlines as fixed and constant as the laws that govern the movements of the stars, man has been much less conscious and deliberate, and more frequently moved by passion and ignorance than by reason and knowledge. Nevertheless, custom and law, the court, the school, and the market have similarly been man's ways of utilizing the original equipment of impulse and desire which Nature has given him. It is hard to believe, but as certain as it is incredible, that the modern professional and businessman, moving freely amid the diverse contacts and complexities pictured in any casual newspaper, in a world of factories and parliaments and aeroplanes, is by nature no different from the superstitious savage hunting precarious food, living in caves, and finding every stranger an enemy. The difference between the civilization of an American city and that of the barbarian tribes of Western Europe thousands of years ago is an accurate index of the extent to which man has succeeded in redirecting and controlling that fundamental human nature which has in its essential structure remained the same through history. Man's ways of association and coöperation, for the most part, have not been deliberately developed, since men lived and had to live together long before a science of human relations could have been dreamed of. Only to-day are we beginning to have an inkling of the fundamental facts of human nature. But it has become increasingly plain that progress depends not merely on increasing our knowledge and application of the laws which govern man's physical environment. Machinery, factories, and automatic reapers are, after all, only instruments for man's welfare. If man is ever to attain the happiness and rationality of which philosophers and reformers have continually been dreaming, there must also be an understanding of the laws which govern man himself, laws quite as constant as those of physics and chemistry. Education and political organization, the college and the legislature, however remote they may seem from the random impulses to cry and clutch at random objects with which a baby comes into the world, must start from just such materials as these. The same impulse which prompts a five-year-old to put blocks into a symmetrical arrangement is the stuff out of which architects or great executives are made. Patriotism and public spirit find their roots back in the same unlearned impulses which make a baby smile back when smiled at, and makes it, when a little older, cry if left too long alone or in a strange place. All the native biological impulses, which are almost literally our birthright, may, when understood, be modified through education, public opinion, and law, and directed in the interests of human ideals. It is the aim of this book to indicate some of these more outstanding human traits, and the factors which must be taken into account if they are to be controlled in the interests of human welfare. It is too often forgotten that the problems which are to be dealt with in the world of politics, of business, of law, and education, are much complicated by the fact that human beings are so constituted that given certain situations, they will do certain things in certain inevitable ways. These problems are much clarified by knowing what these fundamental ways of men are. HUMAN TRAITS AND THEIR SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE PART I CHAPTER I TYPES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR THE HUMAN ANIMAL. Any attempt to understand what the nature of man is, apart from its training and education during the life of the individual, must start with the realization that man is a human animal. As a human being he is strikingly set off by his upright posture and his large and flexible hand. But chiefly he is distinguished by his plastic brain, upon which depends his capacity to perform the complex mental activities--from administering a railroad to solving problems in calculus--which constitute man's outstanding and exclusive characteristic.[1] [Footnote 1: The thinking process is discussed in detail in chapters III and XIV.] But in his structure and functions man bears, as is now well known, a marked resemblance to the lower animals. His respiratory and digestive organs, for example, may be duplicated as far down in the animal scale as birds and chickens.[2] Man's whole physical apparatus and mode of life, save in complexity and refinement of operations, are the same as those of any of the higher mammals. But more important for the student of human behavior, man's mental life--that is, his way of responding to and dealing with his environment--is in large part identical with that of the lower animals, especially of the most highly developed vertebrates, such as the monkey. They have, up to a certain point, precisely the same equipment for adjusting themselves to the conditions of life. Apart from education, both man and animal are endowed with a set of more or less fixed tendencies to respond in specific ways to specific stimuli. These inborn or congenital tendencies are generally known as reflexes or instincts.[1] These are unlearned ways, exhibited by both human and animal organisms, of responding promptly and precisely, and in a comparatively changeless manner to a given stimulus from the environment. These tendencies to act, while they may be, and most frequently are of advantage to the organism, are not conscious or acquired. They are irresistible impulses to do just such-and-such particular things in such-and-such particular ways when confronted with just such-and-such particular situations. In the well-known words of James: [Footnote 2: With certain modifications accounted for in their historical "descent" with modification from a common ancestor. See Scott: _Theory of Evolution_.] [Footnote 1: The difference between the two is largely one of complexity. By a reflex is meant a very simple and comparatively rigid response; by an instinct a series of reflexes such that when the first is set off, the remainder are set off in a regularly determinate succession.] The cat runs after the mouse, runs or shows fight before the dog, avoids falling from walls and trees, shuns fire and water, etc., not because he has any notion either of life or death, or of self-preservation. He has probably attained to no one of these conceptions in such a way as to react definitely upon it. He acts in each case separately, and simply because he cannot help it; being so framed that when that particular running thing called a mouse appears in his field of vision he _must_ pursue; that when that particular barking and obstreperous thing called a dog appears there he _must_ retire, if at a distance, and scratch if close by; that he _must_ withdraw his feet from water, and his face from flame.[2] [Footnote 2: James: _Psychology_, vol. II, p. 384.] Similarly, the baby's reaching for random objects, and sucking them when seized, its turning its head aside, when it has had enough food, its crying when alone and hungry, are not, for the most part, deliberate methods invented by the infant to maintain its own welfare, but are almost as automatic as the number of sounds omitted by the cuckoo clock at midnight. Why do men always lie down, when they can, on soft beds rather than on hard floors? Why do they sit round the stove on a cold day? ... Why does the maiden interest the youth so that everything about her seems more important and significant than anything else in the world? Nothing more can be said than that these are human ways, and that every creature _likes_ its own ways, and takes to the following of them as a matter of course.... Not one man in a billion, when taking his dinner, thinks of utility. He eats because the food tastes good, and makes him want more. If you ask him _why_ he should want to eat more of what tastes like that, instead of revering you as a philosopher, he will probably laugh at you for a fool.[1] [Footnote 1: James: _Psychology_, vol. II, p. 386.] These inborn tendencies to act vary in complexity from the withdrawing of a hand from a hot stove or the jerking of the knee when touched in a particular spot to startlingly involved trains of action to be found in the behavior of certain of the lower animals. Bergson cites the case of a species of wasp which with a skill, unconscious though it be, resembling that of the expert surgeon, paralyzes a caterpillar without killing it, and carries it home for food for its young.[2] There are again many cases of "insects which invariably lay their eggs in the only places where the grubs, when hatched, will find the food they need and can eat, or where the larvæ will be able to attach themselves as parasites to some host in a way that is necessary to their survival."[3] In many instances these complicated trains of action are performed by the animal in a situation absolutely strange to it, without its ever having seen the act performed before, having been born frequently after its parents had died, and itself destined to die long before its grubs will have hatched. [Footnote 2: Bergson: _Creative Evolution_, p. 172.] [Footnote 3: McDougall: _Social Psychology_, p. 24. (Except where otherwise noted, all references are to the fourth edition.)] THE NUMBER AND VARIETY OF MAN'S INSTINCTS. Various attempts have been made, notably by such men as James, McDougall, and Thorndike, to enumerate and classify the tendencies with which man is at birth endowed, or which, like the sex instinct, make their appearance at a certain stage in biological growth, regardless of the particular training to which the individual has been subjected. Earlier classifications were inclined to speak of instincts as very general and as half consciously purposeful in character. Thus it is still popularly customary to speak of the "instinct of self-preservation," the "instinct of hunger," and the "parental instinct." The tendency of present-day psychology is to note just what responses take place in given specific situations. As a result of such observation, particularly by such biologists as Watson and Jennings,[1] instincts have come to be regarded not as general and purposive but as specific and automatic. Thus it is no instinct of self-preservation that drives the child to blink its eyes at a blinding flash of light; it is solely and simply the very direct and immediate tendency to blink its eyes in just that way whenever such a phenomenon occurs. It is no deliberate intent to inhale the oxygen necessary to the sustenance of life that causes us to breathe. No more is it a conscious plan to provide the organism with nourishment that prompts us to eat our breakfast in the morning; it is simply the immediate and irresistible enticement of food after a night's fast. Not a deliberate motive of maternity prompts the mother to caress and care for her baby, but an inevitable and almost invincible tendency to "cuddle it when it cries, smile when it smiles, fondle it and coo to it in turn." [Footnote 1: Watson: _Behavior_. H. S. Jennings: _Behavior of the Lower Organisms_.] In the last few years, as a result of the observation of animals under laboratory conditions, there has been increasing evidence of a large number of specific tendencies to act in specific ways, in response to specific given stimuli. As no stimuli are ever quite alike, and no animal organism is ever in exactly the same physico-chemical condition at two different times, there are slight but negligible differences in response. Allowing for these, animals may be said to be equipped with a wide variety of tendencies to do precisely the same things under recurrent identical circumstances. The aim of the experimental psychologist is to discover just what actions occur when an animal is placed in any given circumstances, precisely as the chemist notes what reaction occurs when two chemicals are combined. While experiments with the human infant are more difficult and rare (and while it is among infants alone among humans that original tendencies can be observed free from the modifications to which they are so soon subjected by training and environment) careful observers find in the human animal also a great number of these specific ways of acting. Just which of the large number of observed universal modes of behavior are original and unlearned, is a matter still in controversy among psychologists. There is practically complete agreement among them, however, with respect to such comparatively simple acts as grasping, reaching, putting things in the mouth, creeping, standing and walking, and the making of sounds more or less articulate. Most psychologists recognize even such highly complicated tendencies as man's restlessness in the absence of other people, his tendency to attract their attention when present, to be at once pitying and pugnacious, greedy and sympathetic, to take and to follow a lead. In general, it may be said that man possesses not fewer instincts than animals, but more. His superiority consists in the fact that he has at once more tendencies to respond, and that in him these tendencies are more flexible and more susceptible of modification than those of animals. A chicken has at the start the advantage over the human; it can at first do more things and do them better. But it is the human baby who, though it cannot find food for itself at the start, can eventually be taught to distinguish between the nutritive values of food, secure food from remote sources, and make palatable food from materials which when raw are inedible. An inventory and classification of man's original tendencies is made more difficult precisely because these are so easily modifiable and are, even in earliest childhood, seldom seen in their original and simple form. At any given time a human being is being acted upon by a wide variety of competing and contemporaneous stimuli. In walking down a street with a friend, for example, one may be attracted by the array of bright colors, of flowers, jewelry and clothing in the shop windows, blink one's eyes in the glare of the sun, feel a satisfaction in the presence of other people and a loneliness for a particular friend, dodge before a passing automobile, be envious of its occupant, and smile benevolently at a passing child. It would be difficult in so complex and so characteristically familiar a situation to pick out completely and precisely the original human tendencies at work, and trace out all the modifications to which they have been subjected in the course of individual experience. For even single responses in the adult are not the same in quality or scope as they were to start with. Even the simplest stimuli of taste and of sound are different to the adult from what they are to the child. What for the adult is a printed page full of significance is for the baby a blur, or at most chaotic black marks on white paper. But while it is difficult to disentangle out of even a simple, everyday occurrence the original unlearned human impulses at work, experimentation on both humans and animals seems clearly to establish that "in the same organism the same situation will always produce the same response." It also seems clear that in man these native unlearned responses to given stimuli are unusually numerous and unusually controllable. Upon the possibility of the ready modification of these original elements in man's behavior his whole education and social life depend. LEARNING IN ANIMALS AND MEN. Men and animals are alike not only in that they have in common a large number of tendencies to respond in definite ways to definite stimuli, but that these responses may be modified, some strengthened through use, and others weakened or altogether discarded through disuse. In both also the survival and strengthening of some native tendencies, the weakening and even the complete elimination of others, depends primarily upon the satisfaction which flows from their practice. It must be remembered that any situation, while it calls forth on the part of the organism a characteristic response, may also call out others, especially if the first response made fails to secure satisfaction, or if it places the animal in a positively annoying situation. There are certain situations--being fed when hungry, resting when weary, etc.--which are immediate and original satisfiers; there are others such as bitter tastes, being looked at with scorn by others, etc., which are natural annoyers. The first type the animal will try various means of attaining; the second, various means of avoiding. Through "trial and error," through going through every response it can make to a given situation, the animal or human hits upon some response which will secure for it satisfaction or rid it of a positive annoyance. Once this successful response is hit upon, it tends to be retained and becomes habitual in that situation, while other random responses are eliminated. As will be pointed out in the following, man has developed in the process of reflection a much more effective and subtle mode of attaining desirable results, but a large part of human acquisition of skill, whether at the typewriter, the piano, the tennis court, or in dealing with other people, is still a matter of making every random response that the situation provokes until the appropriate and effective one is hit upon, and making this latter response more immediately upon repeated experiences in the same situation. Once this effective response becomes habitual it is just as automatic in character as if it had been made immediately the first time, and it is almost impossible without knowledge of the animal's or the human's earlier modes of response to detect the difference between an acquired response and one that is inborn. This process of trial and error is perhaps best illustrated in the behavior of the lower animals where careful experiments have been conducted for the purpose of tracing the process of learning. In the classic cases reported by Thorndike and Watson, when chickens, rats, and cats were placed in situations where the first response failed to bring satisfaction, their behavior was in each case marked by the following features. At the first trial the animals in every case performed a wide variety of acts useless to secure the satisfaction they were instinctively seeking, whether it was food in a box, or freedom from confinement in a cage. Upon repeated trials the act appropriate to securing satisfaction was performed with increasing elimination of useless acts, and consequent decrease of the time required to perform the act requisite to secure food, or freedom, or both, as the case might be. One of Thorndike's famous cat experiments is best told in his own report: If we take a box twenty by fifteen by twelve inches, replace its cover and front side by bars an inch apart, and make in this front side a door arranged so as to fall open when a wooden button inside is turned from a vertical to a horizontal position, we shall have means to observe such [learning by trial and error]. A kitten, three to six months old, if put in this box when hungry, a bit of fish being left outside, reacts as follows: It tries to squeeze through between the bars, claws at the bars, and at loose things in and out of the box, stretches its paws out between the bars, and bites at its confining walls. Some one of all these promiscuous clawings, squeezings, and bitings turns round the wooden button, and the kitten gains freedom and food. By repeating the experience again and again the animal gradually comes to omit all the useless clawings, and the like, and to manifest only the particular impulse (_e.g._, to claw hard at the top of the button with the paw or to push against one side of it with the nose) which has resulted successfully. It turns the button around without delay whenever put in the box. It has formed an association between the situation _confined in a box with a certain appearance_ and the response of _clawing at a certain part of that box in a certain definite way_. Popularly speaking, it has learned to open a door by pressing a button. To the uninitiated observer the behavior of the six kittens that thus freed themselves from such a box would seem wonderful and quite unlike their ordinary accomplishments of finding their way to their food or beds.... A certain situation arouses, by virtue of accident or more often instinctive equipment, certain responses. One of these happens to be an act appropriate to secure freedom. It is stamped in in connection with that situation.[1] [Footnote 1: Thorndike: _Educational Psychology_, Briefer Course. p. 129.] Perhaps the most significant factor to be noted in this, and in similar cases, is that the successful response to a baffling situation is acquired, and that this acquisition remains a more or less permanent possession of the human or animal organism. Particularly important for the problem and practice of education is the mechanism by which these learned modes of behavior are acquired. For, to attain skill, knowledge, intellect, character, is to attain certain determinate habits of action, certain recurrent and stable ways of responding to a situation. The reason why the cat in the box ceased to perform the hundred and one random acts of clawing and biting, and after a number of trials got down to the immediately necessary business of turning the button was because it had learned that one thing only, out of the multitude of things it could do, would enable it to get out of the box and get its food. To say that it learned this is not to say that it consciously realized it; it means simply that when placed in such a situation again after having been placed in it a sufficient number of times, it will be set off to the turning of the button which gets it food, instead of biting bars and clawing at random--actions which merely serve further to frustrate its hunger. The animal has not consciously learned, but its nervous system has been mechanically directed. A large part of the education of humans as well as of animals consists precisely in the modification of our original responses to situations by a trial-and-error discovery of ways of attaining satisfactory and avoiding annoying situations. Both animals and humans, when they have several times performed a certain act that brings satisfaction, tend, on the recurrence of a similar situation, to repeat that action immediately and to eliminate with successive repetitions almost all the other responses which are possible, but which are ineffective in the attainment of some specific satisfaction. The whole training imposed by civilization on the individual is based ultimately on this fundamental fact that human beings can be taught to modify their behavior, to change their original response to a situation in the light of the consequences that follow it. This means that while man's nature remains on the whole constant, its operations may be indefinitely varied by the results which follow the operation of any given instinct. The child has its original tendency to reach toward bright objects checked by the experience of putting its hand in the flame. Later his tendency to take all the food within reach may be checked by the looks of scorn which follow that manifestation of man's original greed, or the punishment and privation which are correlated with it. Through experience with punishment and reward, humans may be taught to do precisely the opposite of what would have been their original impulse in any given situation, just as the monkey reported by one experimenter may be taught to go to the top of his cage whenever a banana has been placed at the bottom. THE PROLONGED PERIOD OF INFANCY. Probably the most significant and unique fact of human behavior is the period of "prolonged infancy" which is characteristic of human beings alone. Fiske and Butler in particular have stressed the importance of this human trait. In the lower animals the period of infancy--that is, the period during which the young are dependent upon their parents for food, care, and training--is very short, extending even in the highest form of ape to not more than three months. This would appear, at first blush, to be a great advantage possessed by the lower animals. They come into the world equipped with a variety of tendencies to act which, within a week, or, as in the case of chickens, almost immediately after birth, are perfectly adapted to secure for them food, shelter, and protection. They are mechanisms from the beginning perfectly adjusted to their environment. The human infant, while it is born with a greater number of instinctive activities than other animals, is able to make little use of them just as they stand. For years after birth it is helplessly dependent on others to supply its most elementary needs. It must be fed, carried, and sheltered; it cannot by itself even reach for an object, and it cannot for nearly two years after birth specifically communicate its wants to other people. But this comparatively long helplessness of the human infant is perhaps the chief source of human progress. The human baby, because it can do so little at the start, because it has so many tendencies to act and has them all so plastic, undeveloped, and modifiable, has to a unique degree the capacity to learn. This means that it can profit by the experience of others and adjust itself to a great variety and complexity of situations. The chicken or the bird can do a limited number of things perfectly, but it is as if it had a number of special keys opening special locks. The power of modifying these instinctive adjustments, the capacity of learning, is like being put in possession of a pass-key. As Professor Dewey puts it, "An original specialized power of adjustment secures immediate efficiency, but, like a railway ticket, it is good for one route only. A being who, in order to use his eyes, ears, hands, and legs, has to experiment in making varied combinations of their reactions, achieves a control that is flexible and varied."[1] [Footnote 1: Dewey; _Democracy and Education_, p. 53.] The more complex the environment is in which the individual must live, the longer is the period of infancy needed in which the necessary habits and capacities may be acquired. In the human being the period of infancy extends in a literal sense through the first five years of the individual's life. But in civilized societies it extends factually much longer. By the end of the first five years the child's physical infancy is over. It can take care of itself so far as actually feeding itself, moving about, and communicating with others is concerned. But so complex are the habits to which it must become accustomed in our civilization that it is dependent for a much longer period. The whole duration of the child's education is a prolongation of the period of infancy. In most civilized countries, until at least the age of twelve, the child is literally dependent on its parents. And with every advance in civilization has come a lengthening in the period of education, or learning. Intellectually, the period of infancy might be said not really to be over before the age of twenty-five, by which time habits of mind have become fairly well fixed. The brain and the nervous system remain fairly plastic up to that time, and if inquiry and learning have themselves become habitual, plasticity may last even longer. In the cases of the greatest intellects, of a Darwin, or a Newton, one might almost say the period of infancy lasts to old age. To be still learning at sixty is to be still a child in the best sense of the word. It is still to be open rather than rigid, still to be profiting by experience. The great social advantages of the prolonged period of infancy lie in the fact that there is a unique opportunity both for the acquisition by individuals and for the imposition on the part of society of a large number of habits of great social value. The human being, born into a world where there are many things to be learned both of natural law and human relations, is, as it were, fortunately born ignorant. He has instincts which are pliable enough to be modified into habits, and in consequence socially useful habits can be deliberately inculcated in the immature members of a society by their elders. The whole process of education is a utilization of man's prolonged period of infancy, for the deliberate acquisition of habits. This is all the more important since only by such habit formation during the long period of human infancy can the achievements of civilization be handed down from generation to generation. Art, science, industrial methods, social customs, these are not inherited by the individual as are the instincts of sex, pugnacity, etc. They are preserved only because they can be taught as habits to those beings who come into the world with a plastic equipment of instincts which lend themselves for a long time to modification. CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF AND REACTION TO IDEAS. A significant difference between the actions of human beings and those of animals is that human beings are conscious of themselves as agents. They may be said not only to be the only creatures who know what they are doing, but the only ones who realize their individuality in doing it. Dogs and cats are not, so far as we can draw inferences from extended observation of even their most complex actions, conscious of themselves. It is not very long, however, before the human animal begins to set itself off against the remainder of the universe, to discover that it is something different from the chairs, tables, and surrounding people and faces that at first constitute for it only a "blooming, buzzing confusion." A human being performs actions with a feeling of awareness; he is conscious of himself. This consciousness of self (see chapters VII and VIII) becomes more acute as the individual grows older. It has consequences of the gravest character in social, political, and economic life. It is a large factor at once in such different qualities of character as ambition, friendship, humility, and self-sacrifice, and is responsible in large measure for whatever truth there is in the familiarly spoken-of conflict between "the individual and society." Human beings are, furthermore, susceptible to a unique stimulation to action, namely, ideas. Animals respond to things only, that is, to things in gross: It may be questioned whether a dog _sees_ a rainbow any more than he apprehends the political constitution of the country in which he lives. The same principle applies to the kennel in which he sleeps and the meat that he eats. When he is sleepy, he goes to the kennel; when he is hungry, he is excited by the smell and color of meat; beyond this, in what sense does he see an _object?_ Certainly he does not see a house--_i.e._, a thing with all the properties and relations of a permanent residence, _unless_ he is capable of making what is present a uniform sign of what is absent--unless he is capable of thought.[1] [Footnote 1: Dewey: _How We Think_, p. 17.] Human beings can respond to objects as _signs_ of other things, and, what is perhaps more important, can abstract from those gross total objects certain qualities, features, elements, which are universally associated with certain consequences. They can respond to the meaning or bearing of an object; they can respond to ideas. To respond to ideas means to respond to significant similarities in objects and also to significant differences. It means to note certain qualities that objects have in common, and to classify these common qualities and their consequences in the behavior of objects. To note similarities and differences in the behavior of objects is to enable individuals to act in the light of the future. The printing on this page would be to a dog or to a baby merely a blur. To the reader the black imprints are signs or symbols. To the animal a red lantern is a haze of light; to a locomotive engineer it is a sign to halt. To respond to ideas is thus to act in the light of a future. It makes possible acting in the light of the consequences that can be foreseen. Present objects or features of objects are responded to as signs of future or absent opportunities or dangers. Every time we read a letter, or act in response to something somebody has told us, we are responding not to physical stimuli as such, but to those stimuli as signs of other things. HUMAN BEINGS ALONE POSSESS LANGUAGE. The value of the period of infancy in the acquisition of habits and the unique ability of human beings to respond to ideas is inseparably connected with the fact that man alone possesses a language, both oral and written. That is to say, men alone have an instrument whereby to communicate to each other feelings, attitudes, ideas, information. To a very limited degree, of course, animals have vocal and gesture habits; specific cries of hunger, of sex desire, or distress. But they cannot, with their limited number of vocal mechanisms, possibly develop language habits, develop a system of sounds associated with definite actions and capable of controlling actions. Only human beings can produce even the simplest system of written symbols, by which visual stimuli become symbols of actions, objects, emotions, or ideas. Biologists--in particular the experimentalist, Watson--find, in the capacity for language, man's most important distinction from the brute. Language may be said, in fact, to be the most indispensable instrument of civilization. It is the means whereby the whole life of the past has been handed to us in the present. It is the means whereby we in turn record, preserve, and transmit our science, our industrial methods, our laws, our customs. If human relations were possible at all without a language, they would have to begin anew, without any cultural inheritance, in each generation. Education, the transmitter of the achievements of the mature generation to the one maturing, is dependent on this unique human capacity to make seen marks and heard sounds stand for other things. The extent to which civilization may advance is contingent upon the development of adequate language habits. And human beings have perfected a language sufficiently complicated to communicate in precise and permanent form their discoveries of the complex relations between things and between men. MAN THE ONLY MAKER AND USER OF TOOLS. One of the most important ways in which man is distinguished from the lower animals is in his manufacture and use of tools. So far as we know the ability to manufacture and understand the use of tools is possessed by man alone. "Monkeys may be taught a few simple operations with tools, such as cracking nuts with a stone, but usually they merely mimic a man."[1] Man's uniqueness as the exclusive maker and user of tools is made possible by two things. The first is his hand, which with its four fingers and a thumb, as contrasted with the monkey's five fingers, enables him to pick up objects. The second is his capacity for reflection, presently to be discussed, which enables him to foresee the consequences of the things he does. [Footnote 1: Mills: _The Realities of Modern Science_, p. 1.] The use of tools of increasing refinement and complexity is the chief method by which man has progressed from the life of the cave man to the complicated industrial civilization of to-day. Bergson writes in this connection: As regards human intelligence, it has not been sufficiently noted that mechanical invention has been from the first its essential feature, that even to-day our social life gravitates around the manufacture and use of artificial instruments, that the inventions which strew the road of progress have also traced its direction. This we hardly realize, because it takes us longer to change ourselves than to change our tools. Our individual and even social habits survive a good while the circumstances for which they were made, so that the ultimate effects of an invention are not observed until its novelty is already out of sight. A century has elapsed since the invention of the steam engine, and we are only just beginning to feel the depths of the shock it gave us. But the revolution it has effected in industry has nevertheless upset human relations altogether. New ideas are arising, new feelings are on the way to flower. In thousands of years, when, seen from the distance, only the broad lines of the present age will still be visible, our wars and our revolutions will count for little, even supposing they are remembered at all; but the steam engine and the procession of inventions that accompanied it, will perhaps be spoken of as we speak of the bronze or of the chipped stone of prehistoric times: it will serve to define an age. If we could rid ourselves of all pride, if, to define our species, we kept strictly to what the historic and the prehistoric periods show us to be the constant characteristic of man and of intelligence, we should not say _Homo sapiens_, but _Homo faber_.[1] [Footnote 1: Bergson: _Creative Evolution_, pp. 138-39.] Man's intelligence, it has so often been said, enables him to control Nature, but his intelligence in the control of natural resources is dependent for effectiveness on adequate material instruments. One may subscribe, though with qualification, to Bergson's further statement, that "intelligence, considered in what seems to be its original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely varying the manufacture." Anthropologists distinguish the prehistoric epochs, by such terms as the Stone, Copper or Bronze, and Iron Ages, meaning thereby to indicate what progress man had made in the utilization of the natural resources about him. We date the remote periods of mankind chiefly by the mementos we have of the kinds of tools they used and the methods they had developed in the control of their environment. The knowledge of how to start and maintain a fire has been set down as the practical beginning of civilization. Certainly next in importance was the invention of the simplest tools. There came in succession, though æons apart, the use of chipped stone implements, bronze or copper instruments, and instruments made of iron. In the ancient world we find the invention of such simple machines as the pulley, the use of rope, and the inclined plane. Without tracing the history of invention, it will suffice for our purpose to point out that agriculture and industry, men's modes of exploiting Nature, are dependent intimately on the effectiveness of the tools at their disposal. It is a far cry from the flint hatchet to the McCormick reaper and the modern steel works, but these are two ends of the same process, that process which distinguishes man from all other animals, and makes human civilization possible: that is, the use and the manufacture of tools. CHAPTER II TYPES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR AND THEIR SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE--INSTINCT, HABIT, AND EMOTION INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR. We have already noted the fact that both men and animals are equipped with a wide variety of unlearned responses to given stimuli. In the case of human beings, this original equipment varies from such a specific reaction as pulling away the hand when it is pinched or burned, to such general innate tendencies as those of herding or playing with other people. In a later stage of this discussion we shall examine the more important of these primary modes of behavior. At this point our chief concern is with certain general considerations that apply to them all. The equipment of instincts with which a human being is at birth endowed must be considered in two ways. It consists, in the first place, of definite and unlearned mechanisms of behavior, fixed original responses to given stimuli. These are, at the same time, the original driving forces of action. An instinct is at once an unlearned mechanism for making a response and an unlearned tendency to make it. That is, given certain situations, human beings do not simply utilize inborn reactions, but exhibit inborn drives or desires to make those reactions. There is thus an identity in man's native endowment between what he can do and what he wants to do. Instincts must thus be regarded as both native capacities and native desires. Instincts define, therefore, not only what men can do, but what they want to do. They are at once the primary instruments and the primary provocatives to action. As we shall presently see in some detail, human beings may acquire mechanisms of behavior with which they are not at birth endowed. These acquired mechanisms of response are called habits. And with the acquisition of new responses, new motives or tendencies to action are established. Having learned how to do a certain thing, individuals at the same time learn to want to do it. But just as all acquired mechanisms of behavior are modifications of some original instinctive response, so all desires, interests, and ideals are derivatives of such original impulses as fear, curiosity, self-assertion, and sex. All human motives can be traced back to these primary inborn impulses to make these primary inborn responses.[1] [Footnote 1: The clearest statement of the status of instincts as both mechanisms of action and "drives" to action has been made by Professor Woodworth in his _Dynamic Psychology_. No one else, to the best of the author's knowledge, has made the distinction with the same clarity and emphasis, though it has been suggested in the work of Thorndike and McDougall. In McDougall's definition of an instinct he recognizes both the responsive self and the tendency to make the response. An instinct is, for him, an inherited disposition which determines its possessor, in respect to any object, "to act in regard to it in a particular manner, or at least to experience an impulse to such action."] THE NECESSITY FOR THE CONTROL OF INSTINCT. The human being's original equipment of impulses and needs constitutes at once an opportunity and a problem. Instincts are the natural resources of human behavior, the raw materials of action, feeling, and thought. All behavior, whether it be the "making of mud pies or of metaphysical systems," is an expression, however complicated and indirect, of some of the elements of the native endowments of human beings. Instinctive tendencies are, as we have seen, the primary motives and the indispensable instruments of action. Without them there could be no such thing as human purpose or preference; without their utilization in some form no human purpose or preference could be fulfilled. But like other natural resources, men's original tendencies must be controlled and redirected, if they are to be fruitfully utilized in the interests of human welfare. There are a number of conditions that make imperative the control of native tendencies. The first of these is intrinsic to the organization of instincts themselves. Human beings are born with a plurality of desires, and happiness consists in an equilibrium of satisfactions. But impulses are stimulated at random and collide with one another. Often one impulse, be it that of curiosity or pugnacity or sex, can be indulged only at the expense or frustration of many others just as natural, normal, and inevitable. There is a certain school of philosophical radicals who call us back to Nature, to a life of unconsidered impulse. They paint the rapturous and passionate moments in which strong human impulses receive satisfaction without exhibiting the disease and disorganization of which these indulgences are so often the direct antecedents. A life is a long-time enterprise and it contains a diversity of desires. If all of these are to receive any measure of fulfillment there must be compromise and adjustment between them; they must all be subjected to some measure of control. A second cause for the control of instinct lies in the fact that people live and have to live together. The close association which is so characteristic of human life is, as we shall see, partly attributable to a specific gregarious instinct, partly to the increasing need for coöperation which marks the increasing complexity of civilization. But whatever be its causes, group association makes it necessary that men regulate their impulses and actions with reference to one another. Endowed as human beings are with more or less identical sets of original native desires, the desires of one cannot be freely fulfilled without frequently coming into conflict with the similar desires of others. Compromise and adjustment must be brought about by some intelligent modification both of action and desire. The child's curiosity, the acquisitiveness or sex desire or self-assertiveness of the adult must be checked and modified in the interests of the group among which the individual lives. One may take a simple illustration from the everyday life of a large city. There is, for most individuals, an intrinsic satisfaction in fast and free movement. But that desire, exhibited in an automobile on a crowded thoroughfare, will interfere with just as normal, natural, and inevitable desires on the part of other motorists and pedestrians. Still another imperative reason for the control of our instinctive equipment lies in the fact that instincts as such are inadequate to adjust either the individual or the group to contemporary conditions. They were developed in the process of evolution as useful methods for enabling the human animal to cope with a radically different and incomparably simpler environment. While the problems and processes of his life and environment have grown more complex, man's inborn equipment for controlling the world he lives in has, through the long history of civilization, remained practically unchanged. But as his equipment of mechanisms for reacting to situations is the same as that of his prehistoric ancestors, so are his basic desires. And the satisfaction of man's primary impulses is less and less attainable through the simple, unmodified operation of the mechanisms of response with which they are associated. In the satisfaction of the desire for food, for example, which remains the same as it was under primitive forest conditions, much more complex trains of behavior are required than are provided by man's native equipment. To satisfy the hunger of the contemporary citizens of New York or London requires the transformation of capricious instinctive responses into systematic and controlled processes of habit and thought. The elaborate systems of agriculture, transportation, and exchange which are necessary in the satisfaction of the simplest wants of men in civilization could never be initiated or carried on if we depended on the instincts with which we are born. There are thus seen to be at least three distinct reasons why our native endowment of capacities and desires needs control and direction. In the life of the individual, instinctive desires must be adjusted to one another in order that their harmonious fulfillment may be made possible. The desires and native reactions of individuals must be checked and modified if individuals are to live successfully and amiably in group association, in which they must, in any case, live. And, finally, so vastly complicated have become the physical and the social machinery of civilized life that it is literally impossible to depend on instincts to adjust us to an environment far different from that to which they were in the process of evolution adapted. In the light of these conditions men have found that if they are to live happily and fruitfully together, certain original tendencies must be stimulated and developed, others weakened, redirected, and modified, and still others, within limits possibly, altogether repressed. Individuals display at once curiosity and fear, pity and pugnacity, acquisitiveness and sympathy. Some of these it has been found useful to allow free play; others, even if moderately indulged, may bring injury to the individual and the group in which his own life is involved. Education, public opinion, and law are more or less deliberate methods society has provided for the stimulation and repression of specific instinctive tendencies. Curiosity and sympathy are valued and encouraged because they contribute, respectively, to science and to coöperation; pugnacity and acquisitiveness must be kept in check if people are not simply to live, but to live together happily. But the substitution of control for caprice in the living-out of our native possibilities is as difficult as it is imperative. As already noted, instincts are imperious driving forces as well as mechanisms. While we can modify and redirect our native tendencies of fear, curiosity, pugnacity, and the like, they remain as strong currents of human behavior. They can be turned into new channels; they cannot simply be blocked. Indeed, in some cases, it is clearly the social environment that needs to be modified rather than human behavior. Though it be juvenile delinquency for a boy to play baseball on a crowded street, it is not because there is intrinsically anything unwholesome or harmful in play. What is clearly demanded is not a crushing of the play instinct, but better facilities for its expression. A boy's native sociability and gift for leadership may make him, for want of a better opportunity, a gangster. But to cut off those impulses altogether would be to cut off the sources of good citizenship. The settlement clubs or the Boy Scout organizations in our large cities are instances of what may be accomplished in the way of providing a social environment in which native desires can be freely and fruitfully fulfilled. Social conditions can thus be modified so as to give satisfaction to a larger proportion of natural desires. On the other hand, civilization in the twentieth century remains so divergent from the mode of life to which man's inborn nature adapts him that the thwarting of instincts becomes inevitable. Impulses, in the first place, arise capriciously, and one of the conditions of our highly organized life is regularity and canalization of action. Our businesses and professions cannot be conducted on the spontaneous promptings of instinct. The engineer, the factory worker, the business man, cannot allow themselves to follow out whatever casual desire occurs to them whenever it occurs. Stability and regularity of procedure, demanded in most professions, are incompatible with random impulsive behavior. To facilitate the effectiveness of certain industries, for example, it may be necessary to check impulses that commonly receive adequate satisfaction. Thus it may be essential to enforce silence, as in the case of telephone operators or motormen, simply because of the demands of the industry, not because there is anything intrinsically deserving of repression in the impulse to talk. Again, the mere fact that a man lives in a group subjects him to a thousand restraints and restrictions of public opinion and law. A child may come to restrain his curiosity when he finds it condemned as inquisitiveness. We cannot, when we will, vent our pugnacity on those who have provoked it; we cannot be ruthlessly self-assertive in a group; or gratify our native acquisitiveness by appropriating anything and everything within our reach. But because there are all these social forces making for the repression of instincts, it does not mean that these latter therefore disappear. If any one of them is unduly repressed, it does not simply vanish as a driving force in human behavior. It will make its enduring presence felt in roundabout ways, or in sudden extreme and violent outbursts. Or, if it cannot find even such sporadic or fruitive fulfillments, "a balked disposition" will leave the individual with an uneasiness and irritation that may range from mere pique to serious forms of morbidity and hysteria. A man may for eight or ten hours be kept repeating the same operation at a machine in a factory. He may thereby repress those native desires for companionship and for variety of reaction which constitute his biological inheritance. But too often postponed satisfaction takes the violent form of lurid, over-exciting amusements and dissipation. The suppression of the sex instinct not infrequently results in a morbid pruriency in matters of sex, a distortion of all other interests and activities by a preoccupation with the frustrated sex motive. Assaults and lynchings, and the whole calendar of crimes of violence with which our criminal courts are crowded, are frequent evidence of the incompleteness with which man's strong primary instincts have been suppressed by the niceties of civilization. The phenomenal outburst of collective vivacity and exuberance which marked the reported signing of the armistice at the close of the Great War was a striking instance of those immense primitive energies which the control and discipline of civilization cannot altogether repress. There has been, furthermore, a great deal of evidence adduced in recent years by students of abnormal psychology concerning the results of the frustration of native desires. When the individual is "balked" in respect to particular impulses or desires, these may take furtive and obscure fulfillments; they may play serious though obscure and unnoticed havoc with a man's whole mental life. Unfulfilled desires may give rise to various forms of "complex," distortions of thought, action, and emotion of which the individual himself may be unaware. They may make a man unduly sensitive, or fearful, or pugnacious. He may, for example, cover up a sense of mortification at failure by an unwarranted degree of bluster and brag. A particular baffling of desire may be compensated by a bitterness against the whole universe or by a melancholy of whose origin the victim may be quite unconscious. These maladjustments between an individual's desires and his satisfactions are certainly responsible for a considerable degree of that irritation and neurasthenia which are so frequently observable in normal individuals.[1] [Footnote 1: While the evidence in this field has been taken largely from extremely pathological cases, the distortions and perversions of mental behavior, noticeable in such cases, are simply extreme forms of the type of distortion that takes place in the case of normal individuals whose desires are seriously frustrated. See the very clear statement on the subject of "repressions" and "conflicts" in R. B. Hart's _Psychology of Insanity_.] The facts enumerated above should make it clear why it is difficult to modify, much less completely to overcome, these strong original drives to action. They serve to emphasize the fact that by control of instinctive responses is not meant their suppression. For just as instinctive tendencies are our basic instruments of action, so instinctive desires are our basic ingredients of happiness. Just as all we can do is limited by the mechanisms with which we are endowed, so what we want is ultimately determined by the native desires with which we are born. The control of action and of desire is justified in so far as such control will the more surely promote a harmonious satisfaction of all our desires. A society whose arrangements are such that instincts are, on the whole, being repressed rather than stimulated and satisfied, is frustrating happiness rather than promoting it. At the very least, a life whose natural impulses are not being fulfilled is a life of boredom. The ennui which is so often and so conspicuously associated with the routine and desolate "gayeties" of society, the listlessness of those bored with their work or their play, or both, are symptoms of social conditions where the native endowments of man are handicaps rather than assets, dead weights rather than motive forces. It means that society is working against rather than with the grain. Discontent, ranging from mere pique and irritability to overt violence, is the penalty that is likely to be paid by a society the majority of whose members are chronically prevented from satisfying their normal human desires. No one who has seen whole lives immeasurably brightened by the satisfaction of a suitable employment, or melancholy and irritability removed by companionship and stimulating surroundings, can fail to realize how important it is to happiness that human instincts be given generous opportunity for fulfillment. One may say, indeed, that the evils of too complete repression of individual impulses are more than that they produce nervous strain, dissatisfaction, and, not infrequently, crime. Happiness, as Aristotle long ago pointed out, is a complete living-out of all a man's possibilities. It is most in evidence when people are, as we say, doing what they like to do. And people like to do that which they are prompted to do by the nature which is their inheritance. Freshness, originality, and spontaneity are perhaps particularly valued in our own civilization because of the multiple restraints of business and professional occupations. Even under the most perfect social arrangements there will always exist among men conflicts of desire. Their control over their environment will, of necessity, be imperfect, as will their mastery of their own passions and their clear adjustment to one another. That complete agreement between man's desires and the environment in which alone they can find their satisfaction remains at best an ideal. But it is an ideal which indicates clearly the function of control. This is obviously not to crush native desires, but to organize their harmonious fulfillment. Where men have an opportunity to utilize their native gifts they will be satisfied and interested; where native capacities and desires are continually balked, men will be discontented though well-regimented machines. HABITUAL BEHAVIOR. Except for purposes of analysis, life on the purely instinctive level may be said scarcely to exist in contemporary society, or for that matter, since the beginnings of recorded history. As has been already pointed out, while men are born with an even wider variety of tendencies to act than animals, these are much more plastic and modifiable, more susceptible of training, and much more in need of it than those of the sub-human forms. Even among animals under conditions of domestication, instinct tends largely to be replaced by habitual or acquired modes of behavior. The human being, born with a nervous system and a brain in extremely unformed and plastic condition, is so susceptible to every influence current in his environment that most of his actions within a few years after birth are, when they are not the result of deliberate reflection, secondary or habitual rather than genuinely instinctive. That is, few of the simplest actions of human beings are not in some degree modified by experience. They may appear just as automatic and immediate as if they were instinctive, and indeed they are, but they are learned ways rather than the unlearned ways man has as his possession at birth. THE MECHANISM OF HABIT. The implications of habitual behavior can better be understood after a brief analysis of the mechanism of such action. An instinct has been defined as a tendency to act in a given way in response to a given stimulus. What happens when a stimulus prompts the organism to respond in a given way, is that some sensory nerve, whether of taste or touch or sound, sight, smell, or muscular sensitivity, receives a stimulus which passes through the spinal cord to a motor nerve through which some muscle is "innervated" and a response made. In the simplest type of reflex action, such as the winking of an eye in a blinding light, or the withdrawing of a hand from flame, such is the physiology of the process. But where an immediate adjustment cannot be made by an instinctive response, where satisfaction is not secured by the passage of a sensory stimulus to an immediate motor response, the nervous impulse is, as it were, deflected to the brain area, auditory, visual, or whatever it may be, which is associated with that particular type of sensation. The path to the brain area is far from simple; the nervous impulse, which might be compared to an electric current, must pass through many nerve junctions known as "synapses," at which points there is some not completely understood chemical resistance offered to the passage of the nerve current. On passing through the network of nerves in the brain area, the current passes back again through a complicated maze of connections to a motor nerve which insures a muscular response. The first time a stimulus passes through this network the resistance offered at the nerve junction or synapse is very high; at succeeding repetitions of the stimulus the resistance is reduced, the nerve current passes more rapidly and fluently over the paths it has already traveled, and the action resulting becomes as direct and automatic as if it were an original reflex action.[1] [Footnote 1: See McDougall: _Physiological Psychology_.] THE ACQUISITION OF NEW MODES OF RESPONSE. Expressed in less technical language this means simply that human beings can learn by experience, and that they tend to repeat actions they have once learned. Where an animal is perfectly adjusted to its environment, all stimuli issue in immediate and nicely adjusted responses. This happens only where the environment is very simple and stable, and where in consequence no complexity of structure or action is necessary. In the clam and the oyster, and in some of the lower vertebrates, perhaps, instinctive activity is almost exclusively present. But in the case of man, so complicated are the situations to which he is exposed that random instinctive responses will not solve his problems. He must, as with his highly modifiable nervous system he can, acquire new modes of response which will, in the complexity of new situations serve as effectively as his original tendencies to act would serve him in a simpler and stabler environment. A human being in a modern city cannot live by instinct alone; he must acquire an enormous number of habits to meet the variety of complex situations he meets in daily life. A monkey exists with fairly fixed native tendencies to act. But civilization could never have developed if in man new ways could not be acquired to meet new situations, and if these new ways could not be retained and made habitual in the individual and the race. TRIAL AND ERROR AND DELIBERATE LEARNING. Whenever, as happens a large number of times daily in the life of the average man, old ways of response, inborn or formerly acquired, are inadequate to meet a new situation, there are two methods of acquiring a new and more adequate response. One is the method of trial and error, already discussed, whereby animals and humans try every possible instinctive response to a situation until one brings satisfaction and is retained as a habitual reaction when that situation recurs. The other is a delay in response, during which delay reflection, a consideration of possible alternatives, and a conscious decision, take place. The technique of this latter process will be discussed more specifically in the next chapter. Whether acquired by trial and error, or through reflection, learned acts are, the first time they are performed, frequently imperfect, only partly effective, and performed with some difficulty. With successive repetitions their performance becomes more rapid, more immediate, and more adjusted to the specific situation to be met. And as they become more familiar responses to familiar stimuli they cease to be conscious at all. They are performed with almost as little difficulty or attention as normal breathing. SOME CONDITIONS OF HABIT-FORMATION. The acquisition of habits is so important in the education of human beings that the conditions under which they can be acquired and made permanently effective have been closely studied. From experiments certain fundamental conclusions stand out. A habit is acquired by repetition, and the "curves of learning" show certain recurrent features. In the first few repetitions of an acquired activity, there is progress in the rapidity, effectiveness, and accuracy with which the response is made. There is, up to a certain point, an almost vertical rise in the learning curve. After varying numbers of repetitions, depending somewhat on the particular individual, there occur what are known as "plateaux," during which no progress in speed or accuracy of response is to be observed. In experiments with the learning of typewriting, for example, it has been found that the beginner makes rapid progress up to the point, say, where he can write fifty words a minute without error; there is a long interval not infrequently before he can raise his efficiency to the point of writing seventy words a minute correctly. Analogous conditions have been observed in the speed with which the sending and receiving of telegraphic messages is learned. These "plateaux" of learning are sometimes to be accounted for by muscular fatigue. Frequently there is actual progress in learning during these apparent intervals of marking time. Some of the less observable features of skill in performance which only later become overt in speed and accuracy are being attained during these seemingly profitless and discouraging intervals. Not infrequently in the acquisition of skill in the playing of tennis or the piano, or in the solution of mathematical problems, a decided gain in skill and speed comes after what seems to be not only lack of progress but decided backsliding.[1] It is this which led William James to quote with approval the aphorism that one learns to skate in summer and swim in winter. DRILL _VERSUS_ ATTENTIVE REPETITION IN LEARNING. The rapidity with which habits may be acquired and the permanency with which they may be retained depend on other factors than simply that of repetition. Mere mechanical drill is effective in the acquisition of simple mechanical habits. The most attentive appreciation of the proper things to be done in playing tennis or the piano will not by itself make one an expert in those activities. The effective responses must actually be performed in order that the appropriate connections within the nervous system may be made, and may become habitual. A habit is physiologically nothing but a certain set or direction given to paths in the nervous system. These paths become fixed, embedded, and ingrained only when nerve currents pass over them time and time again. [Footnote 1: See Ladd and Woodworth: _Physiological Psychology_, pp. 542-92.] Mere repetition, on the other hand, will not suffice in the acquisition of complex habits of action. The learning of these requires a deliberate noting and appreciation of the significant factors in the performance of an activity, and the consciously chosen repetition of these in succeeding instances until the habit is well fixed. One reason why animals cannot be taught so wide a variety of complex habits as can the human being is that they cannot keep their attention fixed on successive repetitions, and that in learning they literally do not know what they are doing. They cannot, as can humans, break up the activity which they are in process of learning into its significant factors, and attend to these in successive repetitions. The superiority of deliberate learning over the brute method of trial and error consists precisely in that the deliberate and attentive learner can pick out the important steps of any process, and learn rapidly to eliminate random and useless features of his early performances without waiting to have the right way "knocked into him" by experience. He will short-circuit the process of learning by choosing appropriate responses in advance, noting how they may be made more effective and discovering methods for making them so, and for eliminating useless, random, and ineffective acts. What we call the "capacity to learn" is evident in marked degree where there is alert attention to the steps of the process in successive repetitions. The truth in the assertion that an intelligent man will shortly outclass the merely automatically skillful in any occupation or profession requiring training, lies not in any mysterious faculty, but in the peculiarly valuable habit of attending with discriminating interest to any process, and learning it thereby with vastly more economical rapidity. Genius may be more than what one writer described it, "a painstaking attention to detail"; but a painstaking attention to the meaning and bearing of details it most decidedly is. LEARNING AFFECTED BY AGE, FATIGUE, AND HEALTH. There are certain conditions not altogether within the control of the individual which affect the rapidity with which habits are acquired. One of the most important of these is fatigue. Connections among the fibers that go to make up the nervous system cannot be made with ease and rapidity when the organism is fatigued. At such times there seems to be an unusually high resistance at the synapses or nerve junctions (where there is a lowering of resistance to the passage of a nerve current when habits are easily formed). After a certain point of fatigue, whether in the acquisition of motor habits or the memorizing of information, in which the process is much the same, the rate of learning is much slower and the degree of accuracy much less. The length of time through which habits are retained when acquired during a state of fatigue is also much less than under a more healthy and resilient condition of the organism. The point of fatigue varies among different individuals and in consequence the conditions of habit-formation vary. But some conditions remain constant. For instance, in experiments with memory tests (memory being a form of habit in the nervous system), material memorized in the morning seems to be most rapidly acquired and most permanently retained. The age and health of the individual also are important factors in the capacity to learn, or habit-formation. Conditions during disease are similar to those obtaining during fatigue, only to a more acute degree. The toxins and poisons in the nervous system at such times operate to prevent the formation of new habits and the breaking of old ones. For while the synapses (nerve junctions) may offer high resistance to the passage of a new stimulus, they will lend themselves more and more readily to the passage of stimuli by which they have already been traversed. That the age of the individual should make a vast difference in the capacity to acquire new habits and to modify old ones is obvious from the physiology of habit already described. When the brain and nervous system are both young, there are few neural connections established, and the organism is plastic to all stimuli. As the individual grows older, connections once made tend to be repeated and to be, as it were, unconsciously preferred by the nervous system. The capacity to form habits is most pronounced in the young child in whose nervous structure no one action rather than another has yet had a chance to be ingrained. The more connections that are made, the more habits that are acquired, the less, in a sense, can be made. For the organism will tend to repeat those actions to which it has previously been stimulated, and the more frequently it repeats them the more frequently it will tend to. So that, as William James pointed out, by twenty-five we are almost literally bundles of habits. When the majority of acts of life have become routine and fixed, it is almost impossible to acquire new ways of acting, since the acquisition of new habits seriously interferes with the old, and old habits physiologically stay put. HABIT AS A TIME-SAVER. This fact, that habits can be acquired most easily early in life, and that those early acquired become so fixed that they are almost inescapable, is of supreme importance to the individual and society. It is in one sense a great advantage; it is an enormous saver of time. In the famous words of James:[1] The great thing, then, in all education, is to _make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy_. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. _For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can_, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we would guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. If there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my readers, let him begin this very hour to set the matter right.[1] [Footnote 1: James: _Psychology_, vol. I, p. 122.] The ideal of efficiency is the ideal of having the effective thing habitually done with as little effort and difficulty as possible. This in the case of human beings is, as James points out, attained when good habits are early acquired and when as large a proportion as possible of purely routine activity is made effortless and below the level of consciousness. To do as many things as possible without thinking is to free thinking for new situations. Our experiences would be very restricted indeed if we could not reduce a large portion of the things we do to the mechanics of habit. Walking, eating, these, though partly instinctive, were once problems requiring thought, effort, and attention. If we had to spend all our lives learning to dress and undress, to find our way about our own house or city, to spell and to pronounce correctly, it is clear how little variety and diversity we should ever attain in our lives. By the time we are twenty these fundamental habits are so firmly fixed in us that, for better or for worse, they are ours for life, and we are free to give our attention to other things. Again in the words of James: We all of us have a definite routine manner of performing certain daily offices connected with the toilet, with the opening and shutting of familiar cupboards, and the like. Our lower centers know the order of these movements, and show their knowledge by their "surprise" if the objects are altered so as to oblige the movement to be made in a different way. But our higher thought centers know hardly anything about the matter. Few men can tell off-hand which sock, shoe, or trousers-leg they put on first. They must first mentally rehearse the act; and even that is often insufficient--the act must be _performed_. So of the questions, Which valve of my double door opens first? Which way does my door swing? etc. I cannot _tell_ the answer; yet my _hand_ never makes a mistake. No one can _describe_ the order in which he brushes his hair or teeth; yet it is likely that the order is a pretty fixed one in all of us.[1] [Footnote 1: James: _loc. cit._, vol. I, p. 115.] HABIT AS A STABILIZER OF ACTION. Habit not only thus saves time, but stabilizes action, and where the habits acquired are effective ones, this is invaluable. Habits of prompt performance of certain daily duties on the part of the individual are a distinct benefit both to him and to others, as certain customary efficient office practices, when they are really habitual, immensely facilitate the operation of a business. On a larger scale habit is "society's most precious conservative agent." Individuals not only develop personal habits of dress, speech, etc., but become habituated to social institutions, to certain occupations, to the prestige attaching to some types of action and the punishment correlated with others. Education in the broadest sense is simply the acquisition of those habits which adapt an individual to his social environment. It is the instrument society uses to hand down the habits of thinking, feeling, and action which characterize a civilization. Society is protected from murder, theft, and pillage by law and the police, but it is even better protected by the fact that living together peacefully and coöperatively is for most adults habitual. In a positive sense the multifarious occupations and professions of a great modern city are carried on from day to day in all their accustomed detail, not because the lawyers, the business men, the teachers, who practice them continuously reason them out, nor from continuous instinctive promptings. They are striking testimony to the influence of habit. As a recent English writer puts it: The population of London would be starved in a week if the flywheel of habit were removed, if no signalman or clerk or policeman ever did anything which was not suggested by a first-hand impulse, or if no one were more honest or punctual or industrious than he was led to be by his conscious love, on that particular day, for his master or for his work, or by his religion, or by a conviction of danger from the criminal law.[1] [Footnote 1: Graham Wallas: _Great Society_, p. 74.] From etiquette and social distinction, from formalities of conversation and correspondence, of greeting and farewell, of condolence and congratulation to the most important "customs of the country," with respect to marriage, property, and the like, ways of acting are maintained by the mechanism of habit rather than by arbitrary law or equally arbitrary instinctive caprice. DISSERVICEABLE HABITS IN THE INDIVIDUAL. Habitual behavior which can become so completely controlling in the lives of so many people is not without its dangers. The nervous system is originally neutral, and can be involved on the side either of good or evil. A human born with a plastic brain and nervous system must acquire habits, but that he will acquire good habits (that is, habits serviceable to his own happiness and to that of his fellows) is not guaranteed by nature. Habits are indeed more notorious than famous, and examples are more frequently chosen from evil ones than from good. Promptness in the performance of one's professional or domestic duties, care in speech, in dress and in demeanor, are, once they are acquired, permanent assets. But if these fail to be developed, dishonesty or superficiality, slovenliness in dress and speech, and surliness in manner, may and do become equally habitual. The significance of this has been eloquently stated at the close of James's famous discussion: The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, "I won't count this time!" Well, he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it, but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve cells and fibres, the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.[1] [Footnote 1: James: _loc. cit._, vol. I, p. 127.] SOCIAL INERTIA. If the acquisition of bad, that is, disserviceable habits, is disastrous to the individual, it is in some respects even worse in the group. The inertia of the nervous system, the tendency to go on repeating connections that have once been made is one of the strongest obstacles to change, however desirable. It is not only that habits of action have been established, but that with them go deep-seated habits of thought and feeling. The repression of people's accustomed ways of doing things may bring with it a sense of frustration almost as complete and painful as if these obstructed activities were instinctive. This is not true merely in the melodramatic instances of drug addicts and drunkards. It is true in the case of social habits which have become established in a large group. Any Utopian that dreams of revolutionizing society overnight fails to take into account the enormous control of habits over groups which have acquired them, and the powerful emotions, amounting sometimes to passion, which are aroused by their frustration. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE LEARNING HABIT. That habit is at once the conserver and the petrifier of society has long been recognized by social philosophers. There is one habit, however, the acquisition of which is itself a preventive of the complete domination of the individual or the group by hard and fast routine. This is the habit of learning, which is necessary to the acquisition of any habits at all. Man in learning new habits, "learns to learn." This ability to learn is, of course, correlated with a plasticity of brain and nerve fiber which is most present in early youth. The disappearance of this capacity is hastened by the pressure which forces individuals in their business and professional life to cling fast to certain habits which are prized and rewarded by the group. A sedulous cultivation on the part of the individual of the habit of open-minded inquiry, of the habit of learning, and the encouragement of this tendency by the group are the only antidotes that can be provided against this marked physiological tendency to fossilization and the frequent social tendencies in the same direction. Whether habits shall master us, or whether we shall be their masters, depends also on the method by which they were acquired. If they were learned merely through mechanical drill, they will be fixed and rigid. If they were learned deliberately to meet new situations, they will not be retained when the conditions they were acquired to meet are utterly changed. THE SPECIFICITY OF HABITS. One important consideration, finally, that must be brought to consideration is that habits are, like instincts, specific. They are not general "open sesames" which, learned in one situation, will apply with indiscriminate miraculousness to a variety of others. Just as an instinct is a definite response to a definite stimulus, so is a habit. The chief and almost only observable difference is that the former is unlearned, while the latter is learned or acquired. But while habits are specific, they are within limits transferable. Such is the case when a situation which calls out a certain habitual response is paralleled in significant points by another. Thus the situation, one's-room-at-home-cluttered-up-with-a-miscellany-of-books-papers-tennis-apparatus-and-clothing, has sufficiently similar significant points to the situation, one's-office-littered-with-documents-old-letters-manuscripts-blueprints-and-proofs, to call forth, if the habit has been established in one case, the identical response of "tidying up" in the other. But unless there are marked points of similarity between two different sets of circumstances, specific habits remain specific and non-transferable. There is in the laws of habit no guarantee that an industrious application to the batting averages of the major league on the part of an alert twelve-year-old will provoke the same assiduous assimilation of the facts of the American Revolution; that a boy who works hard at his chemistry will work equally hard at his English, or that one who is careful about his manners and pronunciation in school will display the slightest heed to them among his companions on the ball-field. One of the most cogent arguments against the stereotyped teaching of Latin and Greek has been the serious doubt psychologists have held as to whether four years' training in Latin syntax will develop in the student general mental habits which will be applicable or useful outside the Latin classroom. The older "faculty" psychologists presumed that different subjects trained various so-called "faculties" of "memory," "imagination," and "intellect." It has now become clear on experimental evidence that in education we are training no isolated faculties, but are training the individual to certain specific habits. The more widely applicable the habits are, obviously the more valuable or dangerous will they be in the conduct of life. But when habits do become general, such as a habit of promptness, honesty, and regularity, not in one situation but "in general," it is because they are something more than habits in the strict physiological sense. They are intellectual as well as merely motor in character; they are deliberate and conscious methods rather than mechanical rules of thumb. Habits that have been drilled into an individual will appear only when the situation very closely approximates the one in which the drill has been performed. The cat that has learned to get out of a certain type of cage by pressing a button will be utterly at a loss if the familiar features of the cage are changed. The intelligent human will detect and take pains to detect among the minor differences of the situation some significant fact which he has met in another setting, and he will apply a habit useful in this new situation despite the slightly changed accompanying circumstances. The man who can drive an automobile with reflective appreciation of the processes involved, who knows, as we say, what he is doing, will not long be baffled by a car with a slightly different arrangement of levers and steering-gear, nor be completely frustrated when the car for some reason fails to move. As happened in many notable instances during the World War, trained executives were not long at a loss when they shifted from the management of a steel plant to a shipyard, or from large-scale mining operations in Montana to large-scale relief work in Belgium. THE CONSCIOUS TRANSFERENCE OF HABITS. When habits are consciously acquired, they may be consciously transferred with modifications to situations slightly different from those in which they were first learned. Merely mechanical habits are a hindrance in any save the most mechanical work. An alert and conscious method of learning, which means the development of habits _as_ methods of control, will enable the individual to modify habits acquired in slightly different circumstances to new situations where the major conditions remain the same. To be merely habitual is to be at best an efficient machine, utterly unable to do anything except to run along certain grooves, to respond like an animal trained to certain tricks. It means, moreover, a loss of richness in experience. When a profession becomes routinated it becomes meaningless; a mere making of the wheels go round. The spirit of alert and conscious inquiry must be maintained if life is not to become a mere repeated monotony. An alert and conscious adjustment of habits to a changing environment constitutes intelligence. The technique of this adjustment is the technique of thinking or of reflective behavior, which we shall examine in more detail in the following chapter. EMOTION. All human action, whether on the plane of instinct, habit, or reflection, is, to a lesser or greater degree, accompanied by emotion. While there is considerable controversy among psychologists as to the precise nature of emotion, and the precise conditions of its causation, its general features and significance are fairly clear. Emotion may be most generally defined as an awareness or consciousness on the part of the individual of his experiences, both those in which he is the actor and those in which he is being passively acted upon. This awareness or consciousness is not detached intellectual perception, but is accompanied by, as it is by some held to be merely the consciousness of, certain specific bodily disturbances. Thus the emotions of fear and grief are not cold and abstract perceptions of situations that belong in the classes dangerous or deplorable, respectively. The awareness of these situations by the individual is intimately and invariably connected with certain outward bodily manifestations and certain inner organic disturbances. Fear, rage, pity, and the like are not unimpassioned judgments, but highly charged physical changes. So close, indeed, is the connection between specific bodily conditions and the subjective or inner consciousness that we call emotion, that James and Lange simultaneously came to the conclusion that emotions are nothing more nor less than the blending of the complex organic changes that occur in any given emotional state. Thus James: What kind of an emotion of fear would be left if the feeling neither of quickened heart-beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of goose-flesh nor of visceral stirrings, were present, it is impossible for me to think. Can anyone fancy the state of rage, and picture no ebullition in the chest, no flushing of the face, no dilation of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm breathing, and a placid face? The present writer, for one, certainly cannot. The rage is as completely evaporated as the sensations of its so-called manifestations, and the only thing that can possibly be supposed to take its place is some cold blooded and dispassionate judicial sentence, confined entirely to the intellectual realm, to the effect that a certain person or persons merit chastisement for their sins. In like manner of grief; what would it be without its tears, its sobs, its suffocation of the heart, its pang in the breast-bone? A feelingless cognition that certain circumstances are deplorable, and nothing more.[1] [Footnote 1: James: _Psychology_, vol. II, p. 452.] Indeed, so completely did James think the emotions were explicable as the inner feeling of the complex organic sensations which go to make up each of them that he did not think it misleading to say "we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble; we do not cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be." Whether or not emotions are completely to be explained as the inner or subjective aspect of the complex of organic disturbances which accompany fear, rage, and the like, and which are caused immediately by the perception of the appropriate objects of these emotions, it is certainly true that emotional awareness and bodily disturbances are very closely connected.[1] [Footnote 1: Recent experiments by Dr. Cannon at Harvard have shown the specific bodily disturbances which accompany anger, fear, etc. In particular, Dr. Cannon, and others, have noted that in the emotional conditions of fear and anger the glands, located near the kidneys, discharge a fluid into the blood stream, which fluid stimulates the heart to activity, constricts the blood vessels of the internal organs, causes the liver to pour out into the blood its stores of sugar, and affects in one way or another all the organs of the body. The general effect is to put the body into a state of preparedness for the activities connected with the emotion, whether flight in the case of fear, attack as in the case of anger. This has led Professor Woodworth to define emotion as, at least in part, "the way the body feels when it is prepared for a certain reaction." See the latter's _Dynamic Psychology_, pp. 51-59.] Various attempts have been made to classify the emotions which are, in ordinary experience, infinitely subtle and complex. The subtlety and variety of emotion James explains as the result of the subtle and imperceptible differences in the complex of sensations which occur in any given situation. In general, it has been recognized that the emotions are very closely connected with the primary tendencies of man. McDougall, for example, says that each of the great primary impulses is accompanied by an emotion. Indeed, McDougall considers, as earlier noted, that the emotion is the affective or conscious aspect of an instinct which, at the same time, has a perceptual and impulsive aspect; that, in the case of fear, the perceptual aspect is the instinctive mechanism for recognizing objects of danger, the impulsive aspect is the tendency toward flight, and the affective aspect is the inner feeling or awareness of fear. Thus, for McDougall, the tender emotion is the emotional aspect of the instinct of pity, anger of the instinct of pugnacity, which is, as an impulse, the tendency to strike and destroy. As a matter of fact, as McDougall himself admits, emotions are seldom experienced in unmixed forms, and it is very difficult to reduce the infinite variety of emotional experiences to any primary forms. One may well agree with James that "subdivisions [in the psychological demarcation of the emotions] are to a great extent either fictitious or unimportant, and ... pretenses to accuracy, a sham." In general, one may say that emotions are closely connected with the native tendencies of human beings and are aroused by both their fulfillment, their conflict, and their frustration. The variety of emotions results from the fact that no single one of our instincts is stimulated at a time, and that the peculiar specific quality of each emotional experience is due to the specific point of conflict, fulfillment, or frustration in each particular case. It may be further noted that those emotions are, in general, pleasantly toned which accompany the fulfillment or the approach to the fulfillment of a native disposition; and those are unpleasantly toned which accompany their frustration or conflict. The depth and intensity of the emotional disturbance seem to depend on the degree and extent to which strong instinctive or habitual impulses have become involved. For as habits of action may be acquired, so also may emotions become associated habitually with them. The emotional disturbances connected with the fulfillment, frustration, and conflict of habits may be just as intense as those connected with similar phenomena in the case of instincts. In one sense these emotional disturbances impede action, certainly action on the reflective level. It is the capacity and function of reflection to solve and adjust precisely those conflicts of competing impulses during which emotional disturbances occur. But the reflective process is confused and distorted in conflicts of native or habitual desires by these emotional disturbances which accompany them. It is proverbially difficult to think straight when angry; the surgeon in performing an operation must not be moved by pity or fear; and love is notoriously blind. The facts with which reflection must deal are presented in distorted and exaggerated form under the stress of competing impulses. Stimuli become loaded with emotional associations. They are glaring and conspicuous on the basis of their emotional urgency rather than on the ground of their logical significance. The paralysis or complete disorganization of action which occurs in extreme cases of hysteria takes place to some extent in all less extreme instances of emotional disturbances. Emotions, on the other hand, serve to sustain, and, in their less violent form, to facilitate action. It has already been noted that the organic disturbances which are so conspicuous a feature of emotion are extremely important in preparing the body for the overt actions in which these emotions always tend to issue. And it is unquestionable that emotions, though in more or less obscure ways, call up reserves of energy in the service of the activity in connection with which the emotion has been aroused. While very violent emotions, as in the case of extreme anger or fear or pity, confuse, disorganize, and even paralyze action, in more moderate form they rather serve to stimulate and reinforce it. Emotions are, in many cases, merely the inner or subjective awareness of one of these great driving forces, or a complex of them. Anger, pity, and fear, in their less extreme forms, pour floods of energy into the activities in which they take overt expression. It needs no special knowledge to recognize the fact that the normal interests and enterprises of life are quickened and sustained when some great emotional drive can be roused in their support. Ambition, loyalty, love, or hate may stir men to and sustain them in long and difficult enterprises which they would neither undertake nor continue were these motive forces removed. The soldier does not fight persistently and well wholly, or often even in part, because he has thought out the situation and found the cause of his country to be just. He is stirred and sustained by the energies which the emotional complex called "patriotism" has roused and concentrated toward action. A scientist performing long and difficult researches, a father sacrificing rest and comfort that his children may be well provided for, a boy working to pay his way through college, are all persisting in courses of action, because of the driving power which the emotions, more or less mixed, of curiosity, or tenderness, or self-assertion have released. But just as the original nature with which man is born is modifiable, so are his emotional reactions. Each individual's emotional reactions are peculiar and specific, because of the particular contacts to which they have been exposed, and the organization of instincts and habits which have come to be their more or less fixed character. Any emotional experience consists of an intermingling of many and diverse feelings. And these particular complexes of emotions become for each individual organized about particular persons or objects or situations. The emotional reactions of an individual are, indeed, accurately symptomatic of the character of the individual and the culture of his time. They are aroused, it goes without saying, on very different occasions and by very different objects, among different men and different groups. In the sixteenth century pious persons could watch heretics being burned in oil with a sense of deep religious exaltation. Certain Fijian tribes slaughter their aged parents with the most tender filial devotion. In certain savage communities, to eat in public arouses on the part of the individual a sense of acute shame. Since those emotions are, on the whole, pleasantly toned which accompany the fulfillment of instinctive and habitual impulses, and those unpleasantly toned which accompany their frustration, it becomes, as Aristotle pointed out, of the most "serious importance" early to habituate men to the performance of socially useful actions. If good or useful actions are early made habitual, their performance will bring pleasure, and will thereby be better insured than by any amount of preaching or punishment. If the actions which the group approves are not early made habitual in the younger members of the group, they will not be enforced either through logic or electrocution. It is not enough to give people reasons for doing good, they will only do it consistently if the opposite arouses in them more or less abhorrence. People learn to modify their actions on the basis of the pleasure or pain they find in their performance, and the pleasure or pain they will experience depends on the actions to which they are habituated and the emotions which have come to be their characteristic accompaniments. CHAPTER III REFLECTION. INSTINCT AND HABIT _VERSUS_ REFLECTION. In the two types of behavior already discussed, man is, as it were, "pushed from behind." In the case of instinct he performs an action simply because he _must_ perform it. Willy-nilly he withdraws his hand from fire, eats when hungry, and sleeps when tired. In the case of habits, once they are acquired, he is also largely dominated by circumstances beyond his own control. The bottle is to the confirmed drunkard almost an irresistible command to drink, the alarm clock to one accustomed to it an equally imperative and not-to-be-disregarded order to arise. The story of the old veteran who was carrying home his dinner and who dropped his hands to his side and his dinner to the gutter when a practical joker called "Attention"; the pathetic plight of the superannuated business man who is totally at a loss away from his familiar duties, are often quoted illustrations of how completely habit may determine a man's actions. But while in a large portion of our daily duties we are thus at the beck and call of the instincts which are our inheritance and the habits which we have acquired, we may also _control_ our actions. Instead of performing actions as immediate and automatic responses to accustomed stimuli, we may determine our actions, single or consecutive, in the light of absent and future results. To act thus is to act reflectively, and to act reflectively is the only escape from random acts prompted by instinct and routine ones prompted by habit. To act reflectively is to delay response to an instinctive or habitual stimulus until the various possibilities of action and the results associated with each have been considered. An action performed instinctively or habitually is automatic; it is performed not on the basis of what will be the result, but simply as an immediate response to a present stimulus. But an act (or a series of acts) reflectively performed is performed in the light of the results that are prophetically associated with them. In the case of instinct and habit, the individual almost literally does not know what he is about. In reflective activity he does know, and the more thorough the reflective process, the more thorough and precise is his knowledge. He performs actions _because_ they will achieve certain results, and he is conscious of that causal connection, both before the action is performed when he perceives the results imaginatively, and after it is performed when he sees them in fact. THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF REFLECTION. Reflection, it must be noted in the first place, is not a thing, but a process. It is a process whereby human beings adjust themselves to a continuously changing environment. Our instincts and habits suffice to adapt us to that large number of recurrent similar situations of which our experience in no small measure exists. In such cases the habitual response will bring the usual satisfaction. Walking, dressing, getting to familiar places, finding the electric button in well-known rooms, opening often-opened combinations--these operations are all adequately accomplished by the fixed mechanisms of habit. But we meet as frequently with novel situations where the accustomed or instinctive reactions will not bring the desired satisfaction. One response or a number of responses will not adjust the individual satisfactorily to external conditions; or there may be a conflict between a number of impulses all clamoring for satisfaction at once. Reflection thus begins either in a maladjustment between the individual and his environment or in a conflict of impulses within the same person. Where such a maladjustment occurs, the uneasiness, discomfort, and frustration of action may be removed in one of two ways. Adjustment may be achieved, as we have already seen, through physical trial and error, through a hit-and-miss experimentation with every possible response until the appropriate one is made. This is the only way in which animals can learn to modify their instinctive tendencies into habits more adequate to their conditions. The more economical and effective process, one peculiar to human beings, is that of reflection. To think or to reflect means to postpone response to a given problematic situation until the possible consequences of the possible responses have been mentally traced out. Instead of _actually_ making every response that occurs to us, we make all of them _imaginatively_. Instead of consuming time and energy in physical trial and error, we go through the process of mental trial and error. We make no response at all in action until we have surveyed all the possibilities of action and their possible consequences. And when we do make a response we make it on the basis of those foreseen consequences.[1] [Footnote 1: The possibilities of response that do occur to us are, on the whole, determined by past training and native differences in temperament. But part of the process of reflection is, as we shall see in the chapter on "Science and Scientific Method," concerned with deliberately enlarging the field of possible responses in the solution of a given problem.] In other words, the situation is analyzed. What is the end or adjustment sought, what are the possible responses, and how far is each of them suited as a means to achieving the satisfaction sought? Instead of going through every random course of action that suggests itself, each one is "dramatically rehearsed." Finally, that response is made which gives most promise in terms of its prophesied consequences of adjusting us to our situation. ILLUSTRATION OF THE REFLECTIVE PROCESS. A student may, for example, be seated at his study, preparing for an examination. A friend enters and suggests going for a walk or to the theater. If the student were to follow this first immediate impulse he would, before he realized it, be off for an evening's entertainment. But instead of responding immediately, dropping his books, reaching for his hat, opening the door, and ringing for the elevator (a series of habitual acts initiated by the instinctive desire for rest, variety, and companionship), he may rehearse in imagination the various possibilities of action. In general terms, what happens is simply this:[1] [Footnote 1: The technique of reflection will be discussed in detail in the chapter on "Science and Scientific Method."] On the one hand, the gregarious instinct, the desire for rest, native curiosity, and an acquired interest in drama may prompt him strongly to go to the theater. On the other hand, the habits of industry, ambition, self-assertion, and studying in the evening urge him to stay at home and study. The first course of action may, for the moment, be immediately attractive and stimulating. But instead of responding to either immediately, the student rehearses dramatically the possibilities associated with each. On the one hand are the immediate satisfactions of rest, amusement, and companionship. But as further consequences of the impulse to go out to the theater are seen--or, rather, are foreseen--failure in the examination, the loss of a scholarship, pain to one's family or friends, and chagrin at the frustration of one's deepest and most permanent ideals. The second course of action, to stay at home and study, though it is seen to have connected with it certain immediate privations, is foreseen to involve the further consequences of passing the examination, keeping one's scholarship, and maintaining certain personal or intellectual standards one has set one's self. Even if the student decides to follow the first course of action to which an immediate impulse has prompted him, his act is different in quality from what it would have been if he had not reflected at all. The student goes out fully aware of the consequences of what he is doing; he goes _for_ the immediate pleasure and _in spite of_ the possible failure in the examination. The very heart of reflective behavior is thus seen to lie in the fact that present stimuli are reacted to, not for what they are as immediate stimuli, but for what they signify, portend, imply, in the way of consequences or results. And a response made upon reflection is made on the basis of these imaginatively realized consequences. We connect what we do with the results that flow from the doing, and control our action in the light of that prophetically realized connection. The process is obviously not always so simple as that described in the above illustration. In the first place, more than two courses of action may suggest themselves. And the consequences of any one of them may be far more complex and far more obscure than any suggested in the above. For an individual to be able to decide a problem on the basis of consequences imaginatively foreseen, it is often necessary to institute a very elaborate system of connecting links between an immediately suggested course of action and its not at all obvious results. "Thinking a thing out" involves precisely this introduction of connecting links, or "middle terms," between what is immediately given or suggested and what necessarily, though by no means obviously, follows. This is illustrated in the case of any more or less theoretical problem and its solution. To perceive, for example, the connection between atmospheric pressure and the rise of water in a suction pump involves the introduction of connecting links in the form of the general law of gravitation, of which atmospheric pressure is a special case. But the same is true of practical problems. A young man may be trying to decide whether or not to take a nomination to the training course at West Point. He may be attracted by the four years' training, and highly value the results of it. He may think, however, that the training involves an obligation to serve in the army; it may mean, for a long time, service in some remote army post. His decision may be determined by this last consideration, which required a series of intermediate "linking" ideas to bring to light. The technique of scientific or expert thinking is, in large part, concerned with devices for enabling the thinker more securely to trace the obscure and remote connections between actions and their consequences, between causes and effects. But, whether simple or complex, the essential feature of reflective activity is that it is action performed in the light of consequences foreseen in imagination. Physical stimuli are not responded to immediately with physical action. They are responded to as symbols, signs, or portents; they are taken as symptoms of the results that _would_ follow if they _were_ acted upon. That is, they are, until decision is made, reacted to imaginatively. When an actual response is finally made, it is made on the basis of the results that have been more or less accurately and directly anticipated in imagination. REFLECTION AS THE MODIFIER OF INSTINCT. Reflection is primarily a revealer of consequences. Instead of yielding to the first impulse that occurs to him, the thinking man considers where that impulse, if followed out, will lead. And since man is moved by more than one impulse at a time, reflection traces the consequences of each, and determines action on the basis of the relative satisfactions it can prophesy after careful inquiry into the situation. To reflect is primarily to query a stimulus, to find out what it means in terms of its consequences. The more alert, persistent, and careful this inquiry, the more will instinctive tendencies be checked and modified and adjusted to new situations. In the discussion of the acquisition of habits, it was pointed out that useful habits may be acquired most rapidly by an analysis of them into their significant features. The speed with which random instinctive actions are modified into a series of useful habitual ones depends intimately upon how clear and detailed is the individual's appreciation of the results to be achieved by one action rather than another. A large part of learning even among humans is doubtless trial and error, random hit-or-miss attempts, until after successive repetitions, a successful response is made and retained. But human learning and habit-formation are so much more various and fruitful than those of animals precisely because human beings can check and modify instinctive responses in the light of consequences which they can foresee. These foreseen consequences are, of course, derived from previous experience; that is, they are "remembered." But reflection short-circuits the process. The more deliberate and reflective the process of learning, the more the individual notes the connections between the things he does and the results he gets, the fewer repetitions will he need in order effectively to modify his instinctive behavior into useful habits. He will anticipate results; he will experience them in imagination. He will not need to make every wrong move in paddling a canoe until he finally hits upon the right one. He will not need to alienate all his clients before learning to deal with them successfully. In any given set of circumstances he will form the effective habits rapidly. He will calculate, "figure out," find out in advance. To keep one's temper under provocation, to refrain from eating delicious and indigestible foods, to keep at work when one would like to play, and sometimes to play when one is engrossed in work, are familiar instances of how our first impulses become checked, restrained, or modified in the light of the results we have discovered to be associated with them. REFLECTIVE BEHAVIOR MODIFIES HABIT. The same conscious breaking-up of a new type of action into its significant features, the same connection of a given action with a given result which makes the intelligent learner so much more quickly acquire effective new habits than the one who is mechanically drilled, leads also to a continuous criticism of habits, and their discontinuance when they are no longer adequate. Reflection, if it is itself a habit, is the most valuable one of all. It is an important counterpoise to the hardening and fossilization which repeated habitual actions bring about in the nervous system. In acting reflectively we subject our accustomed ways to deliberate analysis, however immediately persuasive these may have become, and deliberately institute new habits in the light of the more desirable consequences they will bring. Habits come to be regarded not as final or as good in themselves, but as methods of accomplishing good. If they fail to bring genuine satisfaction, reflection can indicate wherein they are inadequate, wherein they may be changed, and whether they should be altogether discarded. Reflection thus makes conduct conscious; it is not the substitute for instinct and habit; it is the guide and controller of both. When we act thoughtfully and intelligently, we are doing things not because we have done them that way in the past, or because it is the first response that occurs to us, but because, in the light of analysis, that way will bring about the most desirable results. THE LIMITS OF REFLECTION AS A MODIFIER OF INSTINCT AND HABIT. While our impulses and habits may be subjected to the criticism of reflection in the light of the consequences which it can forecast, reflection is itself seriously limited by our original impulses and our acquired habitual ones. On reflection, we may not follow our first impulse, but to act at all is to act on some original or acquired impulse or a combination of them. Which original tendency we shall follow reflection can tell us; it cannot tell us to follow none. In the illustration already used, the student may upon reflection study rather than go out. But the roots of his studying will also lie back in the instincts and habits which are, for better or for worse, his only equipment for action. They will lie back in the tendencies to be curious, to gain the praise of other people and to be a leader among them, in the habits of knowing work thoroughly, of studying in the evening, of maintaining a scholarship average to which he has been accustomed. Reflection may weigh the relative persuasions of various impulses; it cannot ignore them. We may think in order to attain our desires, and may, through reflection, learn to change them; we cannot abolish them. Whether we are curious about our neighbors' business or about the movements of the stars and the possible reactions of a strange chemical element, depends on our previous training and the extent to which inquiry itself has become a fixed and persistent habit. But in any case we are curious. Whether we fight in street brawls or in campaigns against tuberculosis, we are still, as it were, born fighters. Similarly, in the case of habit, we may upon reflection discover that our habits of walking, writing, or speech are bad; that we ought not to smoke, or drink, or waste time. We may come, through reflection, to realize with the utmost clarity the advantages to ourselves of acquiring the habits of going to bed early, saving money, keeping our papers in order, and persisting at work amid distractions. But the bad habits and the good are already fixed in our nervous system, and in physiology also possession is nine tenths of the law. We may _intend_ to change, but by taking thought alone we cannot add a cubit to our stature. Reflection can do no more than point the way we should go. For unless the wrong actions are systematically and repeatedly refrained from, and the proper ones made habitual, thinking remains merely an impotent summary of what can be done. Conduct is governed, it must be repeated, by the satisfactions action can bring us, and unless actions are made habitual they will not be performed with satisfaction. HOW INSTINCTS AND HABITS IMPAIR THE PROCESSES OF REFLECTION. It is as important as it is paradoxical that thinking is impaired in its efficiency by the instincts and habits in whose service it arises, and whose conflicts and maladjustments it helps to resolve. The situations of conflict or perplexity which provoke thinking are determined by the particular tendencies which, by nature or training, are brought into play in any given situation. If we are committed by tradition or habitual allegiance to a protective tariff, we will be concerned in our thinking with details, what articles need protection and how much do they need; the ultimate desirability of a protective tariff will not be a problem remotely occurring to us. If we are by training committed to capital punishment, we will be concerned, if we think about it at all, with means and methods; we will think about the relative merits of hanging or electrocution; the ultimate justification or desirability of capital punishment will not be a problem or issue for us at all. Thus, it may be said in a sense that our thinking is determined by what we do not think about as much as by what we do think about. What we take for granted limits the field within which we will inquire or reflect at all. But what we take for granted is, on the whole, settled by our habitual reactions. And the more settled habitual convictions we have, the narrower becomes the field within which reflection takes place. Force of habit may leave us blind to many situations genuinely demanding solution. Originality in thinking consists, in part at least, in an ability to see a problem where others, through routine, see none. Apples have fallen on the heads of others than Newton, but a habit-ridden rustic will not be stirred by the falling of an apple to reflection on the problem of falling bodies. The countryman may live all his life serenely oblivious to a thousand problems that would pique the curiosity and reflection of a botanist or geologist. A man may go on for years accepting income on investments earned in very dubious ways without ever pausing to reflect on the sources or the justification of his wealth.[1] [Footnote 1: According to the traditional anecdote, when Marie Antoinette was told that the people were clamoring because they could not get any bread, the one problem that occurred to her was why they didn't eat cake. From the habits and conditions of life to which she was accustomed, there had never arisen a problem as to how to get food at all; it was merely a problem of what kind of food to eat.] Instincts and habits, furthermore, limit the field of possible courses of action that suggest themselves. We come, through habit, to be alive only to certain possibilities to the practical exclusion of all others. Thinking becomes fruitful and suggestive when it is freed from the limited number of suggestions that occur through force of habit. But original thinking is rare precisely because habits do have such a compulsive power in determining the possibilities of action that suggest themselves to us. The man who moves in a rut of habitual reactions will "never think" of possibilities that "stare in the face" a less habit-ridden thinker. Inventiveness, originality, creative intelligence, whatever one chooses to call it, consists, in no small measure, in this ability to remain alive to a wide variety of stimuli, to keep sensitive to all the possibilities that are in a situation, instead of those only to which we are immediately prompted by instinct or habit. The possibility of using the current of a river as power is not the first possibility that flowing water suggests. Past training and individual differences in temperament not only limit the possibilities that do occur to us; they seriously distort, color, and qualify those of which we become conscious. We forecast differently and with differing degrees of accuracy the consequences of those possible courses of action which do occur to us according to the influence and stimulation which particular native traits and acquired impulses have in our conduct. Ideally, the consequences which we imaginatively forecast as following from a given course of action, should tally with the consequences which genuinely follow from it. But there is too often a sad discrepancy between the consequences as they are foreseen by the individual concerned and the genuine consequences that could be foreseen by any disinterested observer. The discrepancy between the genuine and the imagined consequences of given ideas or suggestions is caused more than anything else by the hopes, fears, aversions, and preferences which, by nature or training, are controlling in a man's behavior. Facts are weighed differently according as one or another of these psychological influences is present. We intend unconsciously to substitute a desired or expected consequence for the actual one; we tend to be oblivious to consequences which we fear, and quick to imagine those for which we hope. On the day before an election the campaign managers on both sides, in the glow and momentum of their activities, are confident of the morrow's victory. The opponent of prohibition saw nothing but drug fiends and revolution as its consequences; its extreme advocates saw it as the salvation of mankind. The causes of error in appraising the consequences of any given course of action are partly individual and partly social in character. From Francis Bacon down, there have been various attempts to classify these factors in the distortion of the reflective process. In connection with the particular human traits, especially such as fear and gregariousness, we shall have occasion to examine a few of these. It will suffice to point out here that the aim of reflective thinking is to discover the genuine consequences of things, and to eliminate and discount those prejudices and preferences, bred of early education and training, which might impair our discovery of those consequences. To the untrained, those things look most significant which stir their impulses most strikingly. The beggar's sores seem much more important and terrible than a gifted youngster deprived of education through poverty. Instinctively we shrink back from the sight of blood, but instinct is no safe clue in helping us to distinguish between the poisons and the panaceas among the brightly colored bottles of chemicals ranged along a shelf. The whole technique of scientific method as opposed to the shrewd but unreliable guesses of common sense is one of freeing us from the compulsions of random habitual impulses. It substitutes for caprice the measuring of consequences, the detailed knowing of what we are about. That impartial judgment has its difficulties is clear from the simple fact alone that human beings start by being a bundle of instincts and soon grow into a bundle of habits. To the extent to which they can control these they are masters of themselves. THE VALUE OF REFLECTION FOR LIFE. To many people there is something terrifying about the idea of controlling life by reason. Life (they point out correctly) is a vital process of instincts which appear before thinking, and which are often more powerful than reasoned judgments. Against advice to live consciously, to be in control of ourselves, to know what we are about, comes the call "Back to Nature." A life of reflection appears chilling and arbitrary. Because reflection so often reveals that impulses must be checked if disaster is not to result, it has come to be associated with a metallic and Stoic repression. To many a persuasive impulse we must, after reflection, say, "No." Because of this a certain school of philosophers, poets, and radicals urges us to trust nature, to follow our impulses, which, being natural, must be right. All of these rebels against reason make the mistake of supposing that the aim of reflective thinking is to quell instincts, which, with the best will in the world, it cannot succeed in doing. Instincts are present and powerful. In themselves they are neither worth encouraging, nor ought they to be repressed. The satisfaction of native desires _is_ what we want. The importance of reflective thinking is precisely that it helps us to secure those satisfactions. To surrender to every random impulse or every habitual prompting is to have neither satisfaction nor freedom. Reflection might be compared to the traffic policeman at the junction of two crowded thoroughfares. If everyone were to drive his car pell-mell through the rush, if pedestrians, street cars, and automobiles were not to abide by the rules, no one would get anywhere, and the result would be perpetual accident and collision. In thinking we simply control and direct our impulses in the light of the consequences we can foresee. To thus guide and control action makes us genuinely free. If a man's actions are not guided by thoughtful conclusions, they are guided by inconsiderate impulse, unbalanced appetite, caprice, or the circumstances of the moment. To cultivate unhindered, unreflective external activity is to foster enslavement, for it leaves the person at the mercy of appetite, sense, and circumstance.[1] [Footnote 1: Dewey: _How We Think_, p. 67.] Instincts and habits are fixed responses; being placed in such and such circumstances we _must_ do such and such things. Only when we can vary our actions in the light of our own thinking are we masters of our environment rather than mechanically controlled by it. THE SOCIAL IMPORTANCE OF REFLECTIVE BEHAVIOR. Reflection in the life of the individual insures that he will not become the slave of his own habits. He will regard habits as methods to be followed when they produce good results, to be discarded or modified when they do not. But if habit in the life of the individual needs control lest it become dangerously controlling, it needs it more conspicuously still in the life of the group. Unless the individuals that compose a society are alert and conscious of the bearings of their actions, they will be completely and mechanically controlled by the customs to which they have been exposed in the early periods of their lives. What an individual regards as right or wrong, what he will cherish or champion in industry, government, and art, depends in large measure on his early education and training and on the opinions and beliefs of other people with whom he repeatedly comes in contact. A society may be democratic in its political form and still autocratic in fact if the majority of its citizens are merely machines which can be set off to respond in certain determinate ways to customary stimuli of names, leaders, and party slogans. A society becomes genuinely democratic, precisely to the extent to which there is on the part of its citizens participation in the important decisions affecting all their lives. But the participation will only be a formality if votes are decided and opinions formed on the basis of habit alone. REFLECTION REMOVED FROM IMMEDIATE APPLICATION--SCIENCE. Thus far thinking has been discussed in its more practical aspects. And thinking is in its origins a very practical matter. Literally, most people think when they have to, and only when they have to. Given a problem, a difficulty, a maladjustment between the individual and his environment, thinking occurs. If every instinctive act brought satisfaction, thinking would be much less necessary and much less frequently practiced. This is illustrated in the performance of any act that once required attention and discrimination, and has later become habitual. We do not think how to walk, eat, and spell familiar words, how to find our way about familiar streets or even in familiar dark rooms. We _do_ think about where we shall spend our evenings or our summer, which courses we shall choose at college, which profession we shall enter. Where we are uneasy, drawn by competing impulses, we consider alternatives, measure consequences, and choose our course of action in the light of the results we can forecast. But while a large proportion of reflective behavior is thus practical in its origins and its results, it also occurs not infrequently where there is no immediate problem to be solved. Not all of men's energies are concerned in purely practical concerns. And part of man's superfluous vitality is expended in disinterested and curious inquiry into problems whose solutions afford no immediate practical benefits, but in the mere solving of which man finds satisfaction. From the dawn of history, when some man a little more curious than his fellows, a little less absorbed in the hunting, the food-getting, and the fighting which were in those early days man's chief imperative business, first began to observe the mysterious recurrences in the world about him, the rising and setting of the sun, the return of the seasons, the movements of the tides and the stars, there have been individuals born with a marked and sometimes a passionate desire to observe Nature and to generalize their observations. They have noted that, given certain conditions, certain results follow. They observe that animals with given similarities of form and structure have certain identical ways of life, that some substances are malleable and others not, that dew appears at certain times in the day on certain objects and not on others. They have generalized from these; and we now call such generalizations law. These generalizations when gathered into a system constitute a science. The sciences started out with unconfirmed guesses based on not very accurate information. As man's methods became more precise, he controlled the conditions under which observations were made, and the conditions under which generalizations were drawn from them. The control of the conditions and methods of observation constitute what is known as induction in science. To this phase of the reflective process belong all the instruments for precise observation which characterize the scientific laboratory. The control of the methods by which generalizations or theories are built up from these facts is also part of the logic of induction, and includes all the canons and regulations for inductive inference. But generalizations once made must be tested, and the elaboration of these generalizations, the analysis of them into their precise bearings, constitute that part of the process of reasoning known as deduction. The final verification is again inductive, an experimental corroboration of theories by the facts already at hand and by facts additionally sought out and observed. (These processes will be discussed in detail in the chapter on "Science and Scientific Method.") However complicated the process of inquiry may become, the sciences remain essentially man's mode of satisfying his disinterested curiosity about the world in which he is living. Through the sciences man makes himself, as has been so often said, at home in the world. He substitutes for the "blooming, buzzing confusion" which is the world as he first knows it, order, system, and law. Primitive man, absurd as seems to us his belief in a world of magic, of malicious demons and capricious gods, was trying to make sense out of the meaningless medley in which he seemed to find himself. Through science, modern man is likewise trying to make sense out of his world. The more apparently disconnected and incongruous facts that can be brought within the compass of simple and perfectly regular law, the less threatening or capricious seems the world in which we live. Where everything that happens is part of a system, we do not need, like the savage trembling in a thunderstorm, to be frightened at what will happen next. It is like moving in familiar surroundings among familiar people. Not all that goes on may be pleasant, but we can within limits predict what will happen, and are not puzzled and pained by continuous shocks and surprises. We like order in the places in which we live, in our homes, in our cities, in the universe. The sciences satisfy us not only in that they bring order into what at first seems the chaos of our surroundings, but in that they are themselves beautiful in their spaciousness and their simplicity. We cannot pause here to consider the physiological facts which make us admire symmetry, but it is fundamental in our appreciation of music, poetry, and the plastic arts. From the sciences, likewise, we derive the satisfaction of symmetry on a magnificent scale. There is beauty as of a great symphony in the sweep and movement of the solar system. There is a quiet and infinite splendor about the changeless and comparatively simple structure which physics, in the broadest sense, reveals beneath the seeming multiplicity and variety of things. It is a desire for beauty as well as a thoroughgoing scientific passion which prompts men like Poincaré and Karl Pearson to seek for one law, one formula which, like "one clear chord to reach the ears of God," expresses the whole universe. THE PRACTICAL ASPECT OF SCIENCE. But while the origins of science may lie in man's thirst for system, simplicity, and beauty in the world, the tremendous advance of science has a more immediate and practical cause. To understand the laws of Nature means to have the power of prediction; it means to know that, given certain circumstances, certain others follow always and inevitably; it means to discover causes--and their effects. Man having attained through patient inquiry this capacity to tell in advance, may take advantage of it for his own good. The whole of modern industry with its phenomenal control of natural powers and resources is testimony to the use which man has found for the facts and laws which he would never have found out save for the curiosity which was his endowment and the inquiry which he made his habit. "Knowledge is power," said Francis Bacon, and the three hundred years of science that have made possible the whole modern world of electric transportation, air travel between two continents, and instantaneous communication between remote parts of the world, have proved the aphorism. Man since his origin has tried to control his environment for his own good. The cave and the flint were his first rude attempts. In science with its accurate observation of facts not apparent to the unaided eye, and its discovery and demonstration of laws not found by casual and unsystematic common sense, man has an incomparably more refined instrument, and an incomparably more effective one. Thus, paradoxically enough, man's most disinterested and impartial activity is at the same time his most practical asset. THE CREATION OF BEAUTIFUL OBJECTS AND THE EXPRESSION OF IDEAS AND FEELINGS IN BEAUTIFUL FORM. Most men spend most of their lives necessarily in practical activity. Man's particular equipment of instincts survived in "the struggle for existence" precisely because they were practical, because they did help the human creature to maintain his equilibrium in a half-friendly, half-hostile environment. Man acquires also, as already has been pointed out, habits that are useful to him, that bring him satisfactions not attainable through the random instinctive responses which are his at birth. Reflection, too, is, for the most part, severely practical in its origins and its responsibilities. It guides action into economical and useful channels. Most of man's actions are thus ways of modifying his environment for immediately practical purposes. Man has instincts and habits which enable him to live. But in making those changes in the world which enable him to live better, man, as it were by accident, makes them beautifully. Pottery begins, for example, as a practical art, but the skilled potter cannot help spending a little excess vitality and habitual skill in adding a quite unnecessarily graceful curve, a gratuitous decoration to the utilitarian vessel he is making. In the words of Santayana, "What had to be done was, by imaginative races, done imaginatively; what had to be spoken or made was spoken or made fitly, lovingly, beautifully.... The ceaseless experimentation and fermentation of ideas, in breeding what it had a propensity to breed, came sometimes on figments that gave it delightful pause."[1] [Footnote 1: Santayana: _Reason in Art_, p. 16.] These accidental graces that man makes in the instinctive and habitual control to which he subjects his environment become the most cherished values of his experience. Men may first have come to speak poetry accidentally, for language arose, like other human habits, as a thing of use. But the charming and delightful expression of feelings and ideas came to be cherished in themselves, so that what was first an accident in man's life, may become a deliberate practice. When this creation of beautiful objects, or the beautiful expression of feelings or ideas is intentional, we call it art. In such intentional creation and cherishing of the beautiful man's life becomes enriched and emancipated. He learns not only to live, but to live beautifully. In such activity men, as has been recognized by social reformers from Plato to Bertrand Russell, are genuinely happy, and there alone find freedom. For in the creation of beauty man is not performing actions because he must, under the brutal compulsion of keeping alive. He is acting simply because action is delightful both in the process and in the result. Whether in business, politics, or scholarship, men are happy to the extent to which they have the sense of creation that is peculiarly the artist's. The products of art, moreover, are not desirable because they bring other goods, but because they themselves are intrinsically delightful. Men love to live in a world in which their marble has been made into statues, in which their houses are things of beauty rather than merely places in which to live. Their lives are enriched by living in a society where the thoughts and emotions which they communicate to one another and which they must somehow express can be not infrequently expressed with nobility and music. Through science Nature becomes man's tool; through art it can become a beautiful instrument to work with, and a lovely thing in and for itself. CHAPTER IV THE BASIC HUMAN ACTIVITIES FOOD, SHELTER, AND SEX. Thus far our analysis has been confined to the general types of human behavior. We have found that all human activity is conditioned by a native equipment consisting of certain more or less specific tendencies to action, and that these may be modified into acquired tendencies called "habits." We have found that through the processes of reflection, through imaginative trial and error, both of these may, within limits, be controlled. We must now proceed to an inventory of those elements of our native equipment which have an especial significance in social life. In the first place, we must note the three great primary drives of human action, the unlearned and native demands for food, shelter, and sex gratification.[1] Although the last-named does not display itself in human beings until a considerable degree of maturity has been attained there is indubitable evidence that it is an inborn and not an acquired reaction. The practical utility of the first two is apparent; they are the most essential features of the group of so-called self-preservative instincts, among which may be grouped the natural tendency to recover one's equilibrium and the instinct of flight in the face of dangerous or threatening objects. The utility of the sex instinct is racial rather than individual. The instinctive satisfaction human beings find in sex gratification is the natural guarantee of the continuance of the race. [Footnote 1: The reader must be reminded that the simpler reflexes involved in the use of the heart, lungs, intestines, and all the internal organs, must be classed as part of man's native equipment. They differ from those reactions commonly classed as instincts in that they are simpler and stabler, that in their normal functioning they never rise to consciousness, and that they are almost completely beyond the individual's modification or control.] In a general survey of this nature it IS impossible, as it is unnecessary, to examine in detail the physiological elements of the demand for food and shelter. It will suffice to point out that the first two are the ultimate biological bases of a large proportion of our economic activities. They are primary, not in the sense that they are constantly conscious motives to action, but that their fulfillment is prerequisite to the continuance of any of the other activities of the organism. Agriculture and manufacture, the complicated systems of credit and exchange which human beings have devised, are, for the most part, contrivances for the fulfillment of these fundamental demands. With the complexity of civilization new demands, of course, arise, but these fundamental necessities are still the ultimate mainsprings of economic production. The demand for sex gratification, because of its enormous driving force and the emotional disturbances connected with it, offers a peculiarly acute instance of the difficulties brought about in the control of man's native endowment in his own best interest. While the production of offspring is its chief biological utility, satisfaction of the sex instinct itself is stimulated in human beings quite apart from considerations of the desirability or undesirability of offspring. Since the sex instinct is at once so deep-rooted and intense a driving force in human action, and its consequences of such crucial importance to both those directly involved and to the group as a whole, societies have, through law and custom and tradition, built up elaborate codes for its control. In civilized society the free operation of this instinct is checked in a thousand ways. But, as in the case of other primitive motives to action, the sex instinct, obvious as are the disasters of disease and disorganization which follow as consequences of its uncontrolled indulgence, cannot altogether be repressed. It is generally recognized that in men and animals alike the sex impulse is apt to manifest itself in very vigorous and sustained efforts toward its natural end; and that in ourselves it may determine very strong desires, in the control of which all the organized forces of the developed personality, all our moral sentiments and ideals, and all the restraining influences of religion, law, custom and convention too often are confronted with a task beyond their strength.[1] [Footnote 1: McDougall: _Social Psychology_, 11th ed., pp. 399-400.] There is considerable agreement among students of the subject that the emotional energies aroused in connection with the sex instinct may be drained off into other channels, and serve to quicken and sustain both artistic creation and appreciation and social and religious enthusiasms of various kinds. And the sex instinct, as we shall find in our discussion of Racial Continuity (see p. 243) is the basis of the family. PHYSICAL ACTIVITY. The difference between sticks and stones and living beings consists primarily in the fact that the latter are positively active; the former are passively acted upon. The stone will stay put, unless moved by some external agent, but even the amoeba will do something to its environment. It will stretch out pseudopodia to reach solid objects to which to cling; it will attempt to return to these objects when dislodged; it will actively absorb food. Higher up in the animal scale, "Rats run about, smell, dig, or gnaw, without real reference to the business in hand. In the same way Jack (a dog) scrabbles and jumps, the kitten wanders and picks, the otter slips about everywhere like ground lightning, the elephant fumbles ceaselessly, the monkey pulls things about."[2] "The most casual notice of the activities of a young child reveals a ceaseless display of exploring and testing activity. Objects are sucked, fingered and thumped; drawn and pushed, handled and thrown."[3] [Footnote 2: Hobhouse: _Mind in Evolution_, p. 195.] [Footnote 3 Dewey: _How We Think_, p. 31.] When vitality is at its height in the waking period of a young child, its environment is a succession of stimulations to activity. Man's "innate tendency to fool" is notorious, a tendency particularly noticeable in children. Objects are responded to, not as means to ends, not with reference to their use, but simply for the sheer satisfaction of manipulation. Facial expressions, sounds, gestures, are made almost on any provocation; they are the expressions of an abundant "physiological uneasiness." The two-year-old is a mechanism that simply must and will move about, make all kinds of superfluous gestures and facial expressions, and random sounds, as it were, just to get rid of its stored-up energy. Man's laziness and inertia are not infrequently commented on by moralists, but it is not laziness and inertia _per se_; certainly in normal individuals in the temperate zone, to do _something_ most of their waking time is a natural tendency and one intrinsically pleasant to practice. That the tendency to be active should vary in different individuals and at different times is, of course, as important a fact as it is a familiar one. Some of the causes of this variation will be noted in the succeeding. In adult life for casual and random activity is substituted activity directed by some end or purpose which determines the responses called into play. Professional and business, domestic and social enterprises and obligations take up most of the adult's energy. The contrast between the play of the child and the work of the adult is that in the case of the former actions are done for their own sake; and in the latter for some end. The child, we say, plays "for the fun of the thing," the adult works for pay, for professional success, for power, reputation, etc. But even in the adult the desire for play powerfully persists. Not all the grown-up's energy is absorbed in his work, and even some types of work, like that of the poet or painter, or the building-up of a great business organization, may be intrinsically delightful and self-sufficient activity. Under the conditions of modern industry, however, especially of machine production, much--in many cases, most--of the activity by which an individual earns his living, utilizes only some of his native tendencies to act, while the working day does not, under normal conditions, absorb all his energy. Whatever vitality is not, therefore, absorbed in necessary work goes into forms of purely gratuitous activity. Which form "play" shall take in the adult depends on the degree to which certain impulses are in him stronger than others, either by native endowment or cultivation, and which impulses have not been sufficiently utilized in him during the day's work. A man musically gifted will find his recreation in some performance on a musical instrument, let us say; on the other hand, if his work is music, those impulses, strong though they be, that make him a musician, will have been sufficiently exhausted in the day's work to make some other activity a more satisfactory recreation. The relations between play and work can be better understood by a consideration of the physiological importance of variety in activity. A certain regular recurrence of response may be pleasant, as in rowing or canoeing, or in listening to the rhythms of poetry or music, but a prolonged repetition of precisely the same stimulus or the same set of stimuli may make responses dissatisfying to the degree of pain. Ideal activity, biologically, would be one where every impulse was just sufficiently frequently called upon to make response easy, fluent, and satisfactory. The reason "work" has traditionally come to be regarded as unpleasant and "play" as pleasant is not because the former is activity and the second is torpor. Leisure does not necessarily mean laziness. Many a vacation, a camping party, a walking expedition, is literally more strenuous than the work an individual normally does. But work means human energy expended for the sole purpose of accomplishing some end. And an end involves the deliberate shutting-out of every impulse which does not contribute to its fulfillment. A man weeding a garden may tire of the weeding long before he is really physically exhausted. One response is being repeatedly made, while at the same time a dozen other impulses are being stimulated. When Tom Sawyer, under the compulsion of his aunt, is whitewashing a fence, it is shortly no fun for him. But he can make other boys pay him apple-cores and jackknives for the fun of wielding the brush. What we call the feeling of boredom depends principally upon the too repeated stimulation of one set of activities to the exclusion of all others, the continuous presence of a kind of stimulation to which we have been rendered unsusceptible, as, for example, bad popular music to a cultivated musical taste, or intricate chamber music to an uncultivated one. The feeling of boredom may become physiologically acute, as in the case, so frequent in machine production, of literally monotonous or one-operation jobs. Long hours of labor at acts calling out only one very simple response may have very serious effects. In the first place, in the work itself, since repetitions of one or one simple set of responses may impair speed and accuracy. On the part of the worker, it promotes varying degrees of stupefaction or irritation. Excesses of drink, gambling, and dissipation among factory populations are often traceable to this continual frustration of normal instincts during working hours, followed by a violent search for stimulation and relaxation after work is over. Under conditions of machine production, the responses which the worker must make are becoming increasingly simple and automatic. Hence the problem of bringing variety into work and something of the same vitality and spontaneity into industry that goes into play and art is becoming serious and urgent.[1] [Footnote 1: See Helen Marot: _Creative Impulse in Industry_.] MENTAL ACTIVITY. Just as physical activity is a characteristic of all living beings, so, from almost earliest infancy of human beings, is mental activity. This does not mean that individuals from their babyhood are continually solving problems. Deliberation and reflection are simply the mature and disciplined control of what goes on during all of our waking hours--random play of the fancy, imagination. We are not always controlling our thought, but so long as we are awake something is, as we say, passing through our heads. Everything that happens about us provokes some suggestion or idea. "Day-dreaming, building of castles in the air, that loose flux of casual and disconnected material that floats through our minds in relaxed moments, are, in this random sense, _thinking_. More of our waking life than we should care to admit, even to ourselves, is likely to be whiled away in this inconsequential trifling with idle fancy and unsubstantial hope."[1] [Footnote 1: Dewey: _How We Think_, p. 2.] This play of the imagination is most uncontrolled and spontaneous in childhood, which is often characteristically defined as the period of make-believe or fancy. It is this capacity which enables the child to use chairs as locomotives, sticks as rifles, and wheelbarrows as automobiles. As we grow older we tend to discipline this vagrant dreaming, and to draw only those suggestions from objects which tally with the workaday world we live in. We stop playing with our imagination and put our minds to work. But in adult life desire for the play of the mind, like the desire for the play of the body, persists. The endeavor of education is not to crush but to control it. Imagination, used here in the sense of random mental activity, may be controlled in two ways, both significant for human welfare. When it is controlled with reference to some emotional theme, as in fiction, drama, and poetry, it has no reference necessarily to actual objects or events; it is concerned only with producing the effect of emotional congruity between incidents, objects, forms, or sounds. A great novel does not pretend to be a literal transcript of experience, nor a portrait of an actual person. When random mental activity is thus controlled, it is "imagination," in the popular sense, the sense in which poets, painters, and dramatists are called imaginative artists. Imagination controlled with reference to facts produces genuine reflection and science. To put it in another way, no matter how complicated thinking becomes, no matter how suggestions are examined and regulated with reference to the facts at hand, new ideas, theories, and hypotheses occur to the thinker precisely by this upshoot of irresponsible fancies and suggestions. This free and fertile play of the imagination is what characterizes the original thinker more than any other single fact. Suggestions arise, as it were, willy-nilly, depending on an individual's inheritance, his past experience, his social position, all at the moment uncontrollable features of his situation. We can, through scientific method, examine and regulate suggestions once they arise, but their appearance is in a sense casual and unpredictable, like the fancies in a daydream. The greatest scientific discoveries have been made in a sudden "flash of imagination," as when to the mind of Darwin, after twenty years' painstaking collection of facts, their explanation through the single encompassing formula of evolution occurs, or when to the mind of Newton the hypothesis of gravitation suddenly suggests itself. The encouragement of a lively play of the mind over experience, the stimulation of imagination or what Bertrand Russell calls "the joy of mental adventure" is thus one of the most important sources of art and science. The arousing of imagination depends primarily on the inherited curiosity of man which varies from the random and restless exploring of the child to the careful and persistent investigation of the trained scientist. The curiosity which prompts the child to experiment with objects in a hit-or-miss fashion is little more than the physiological overflow of action which has been noted above. Curiosity becomes more distinctively mental when it is social in character, when the child explores and experiments not by its own manipulations but by communication, by asking questions of other people. When the child learns that he can appeal to others to eke out his store of experiences, so that, if objects fail to respond interestingly to his experiments, he may call upon persons to provide interesting material, a new epoch sets in. "What is that?" "Why?" become the unfailing signs of a child's presence. At first this questioning is hardly more than a projection into social relations of the physical overflow which earlier kept the child pushing and pulling, opening and shutting. He asks in succession what holds up the house, what holds up the soil that holds the house, what holds up the earth that holds the soil; but his questions are not evidence of any genuine consciousness of rational connections. His _why_ is not a demand for scientific explanation; the motive behind it is simply eagerness for a larger acquaintance with the mysterious world in which he is placed. The search is not for a law or principle, but only for a bigger fact.... But in the feeling, however dim, that the facts which directly meet the sense are not the whole story, that there is more behind them and more to come from them, lies the germ of _intellectual_ curiosity.[1] [Footnote 1: Dewey: _loc. cit._, p. 32.] Curiosity passes thus from casual rudimentary inquiry into genuinely scientific investigation. At first it is merely physical manipulation, then merely disconnected questionings; it becomes genuinely intellectual when it passes from "inquisitiveness" to inquiry. To be inquisitive means merely to want to know facts rather than to solve problems. To be scientifically inquiring is to seek on one's own account the significant relations between things. But these earlier and more casual forms of curiosity are not to be despised. If developed and controlled they lead to genuinely disinterested study of Nature and of men, to the spirit and the methods of science. That free play of imagination which was spoken of above as the chief source of original thinking and discovery is stimulated by an active hunting-out of new suggestions. Curiosity might also be defined as aggressive imagination, which, frequent enough in children, remains among adults to a pronounced degree only in geniuses of art and science. We may not agree with Bertrand Russell that "everything is done in education to kill it," but the dogmatism and fixity of mind which so soon settle down on maturity, the inability to be sensitive to new experiences, these are discouragingly familiar phenomena clearly inimical to science and to progress. An active imagination that finds new materials to play over is the basis of both science and art. A skillful manipulation of its materials in words or sounds, colors, or lines makes its result art. Their controlled examination and systematization makes them science. QUIESCENCE--FATIGUE. That all life, animal and human, is characterized by activity of a more or less persistent and positive kind has already been noted. But in human beings, as well as in animals, activity displays a "fatigue curve." The repeated stimulation of certain muscles produces fatigue toxins which impair the efficiency of response and make further stimulation painful. Of the causes of this lessened functional efficiency we may quote from Miss Goldmark's painstaking study: During activity, as will be shown later, the products of chemical change increase. A tired person is literally and actually a poisoned person--poisoned by his own waste products. But so marvellously is the body constructed that, like a running stream, it purifies itself, and during repose these toxic impurities are normally burned up by the oxygen brought by the blood, excreted by the kidneys, destroyed in the liver, or eliminated from the body through the lungs. So rest repaires fatigue.[1] [Footnote 1: Goldmark, J.: _Fatigue and Efficiency_, p. 13.] In physical activity, therefore, periods of lessened activity or change of activity, or nearly complete inactivity as in sleep, are not only desirable but necessary, if efficiency is to be maintained. The demand for rest is an imperative physiological demand. The amount of recuperation demanded by the organism varies in different individuals, but that there are certain limits of human productivity has been made increasingly clear by a careful study of the effects of fatigue upon output in industrial occupations. Repeatedly, the shortening of working hours, especially when they have previously numbered more than eight, has been found to be correlated with an increase in efficiency. Likewise, the provision of rest periods as in telephone-operating and the needle trades, has in nearly every case increased the amount and quality of the work performed. The human machine in order to be most effective cannot be pressed too hard. A striking illustration was offered in England at the beginning of the war. Under pressure of war necessity, the munition factories relaxed all restrictions on working hours and operated on a seven-day week. The folly of this procedure was tersely summarized by the British Commission investigating industrial fatigue, which reported: "It is almost a commonplace that seven days' labor produces six days' output." In the study of industrial conditions, the effects of prolonged and repeated fatigue upon output have not been the only features taken into consideration. Not only are there immediately observable effects in the decreased output of the worker, but fatigue means, among other things, general loss of control. This has the effect of producing on the part of overworked factory hands dissipation and overstimulation in free time, with a consequent permanent impairment of efficiency.[1] Both for the laborer himself and for the efficiency of the industrial system, it has been increasingly recognized that limitation of working hours is imperatively demanded. Rest is as fundamental a need as food, and its deprivation almost as serious in its effects. [Footnote 1: For a striking array of testimony on this point see Goldmark: _loc. cit._, pp. 220-35.] NERVOUS AND MENTAL FATIGUE. The conditions of nervous and mental fatigue have been less adequately studied than the types of purely physiological fatigue just discussed. It is difficult in experiments to discount the effects of muscular fatigue, and to discover how far there is really impairment of nervous tissue and functions. Experimental studies do show that "nervous fatigue is an undoubted fact"[2] and that "we cannot deny fatigue to the psychic centers"[3] which, like any other part of the organism are subject to deterioration by fatigue toxins. Most students report, however, a higher degree of resistance to fatigue in the nerve fibers than in the muscles, and a like high resistance to fatigue in the brain centers.[4] [Footnote 2: Frederick S. Lee: "Physical Exercise from the Standpoint of Physiology," _Science_, N.S., vol. XXIX, no. 744, p. 525.] [Footnote 3: Lee: _Fatigue_. Harvey Lectures, 1905-06, p. 180.] [Footnote 4: For a summary of nervous fatigue and extensive bibliography, see Goldmark: _loc. cit._, p. 32.] The conditions of mental fatigue, however, can be by no means as simply described as those of physical fatigue. Elaborate experiments by Professor Thorndike and others tend to show that, in the strictest sense of the term, there is no such thing as mental fatigue. That is, any mental function may be performed for several hours with the most negligible decrease in the efficiency of the results attained. The subject of one experiment kept continuously for seven hours performing mental multiplications of four-place numbers by four-place numbers with scarcely any perceptible decrease in speed or accuracy in results.[1] Professor Thorndike draws from this and similar experiments the conclusion that it is practically impossible to impair the efficiency of any mental function as such. What happens when we say our mental efficiency is being impaired is rather that we _will not_ than that we _cannot_ perform any given mental function. The causes of loss of efficiency are rather competing impulses[2] than fatigue in specific mental functions. We are tired _of_ the work, not _by_ it. Continuous mental work of any given kind, writing a book, solving problems in calculus, translating French, etc., involves our being withheld from other activities, games, music, or companionship, to which by force of habit or instinct, we are diverted, and diverted more acutely the more we remain at a fixed task. That it is not mental "fatigue" so much as distraction that prevents us from persisting at work is evidenced in the longer time we can stick to work that really interests us than to tasks in which we have only a perfunctory or compulsory interest. The college student who is "too dead tired" to stay up studying trigonometry will, though in the same condition, stay up studying football strategy, rehearsing for a varsity show, or getting out the next morning's edition of his college paper. "If each man did the mental work for which he was fit, and which he enjoyed, men would work willingly much longer than they now do."[1*] The effects of mental fatigue are, when analyzed, due chiefly to the physically injurious effects that do, but do not necessarily, accompany mental work. [Footnote 1: T. Arai: _Mental Fatigue_.] [Footnote 2: Thorndike: _Educational Psychology_, Briefer Course, p. 322.] [Footnote 1*: Thorndike: _Educational Psychology_, Briefer Course, p. 326.] Proper air and light, proper posture and physical exercise, enough food and sleep, and work whose purpose is rational, whose difficulty is adapted to one's powers, and whose rewards are just, should be tried before recourse to the abandonment of work itself. It is indeed doubtful if sheer rest is the appropriate remedy for a hundredth part of the injuries that result from mental work in our present irrational conduct of it.[2] [Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 328.] The study of the conditions of mental work seems to reveal, in brief, that the conditions of fatigue are essentially physical in character. Given adequate physical conditions, in particular guarding against eye-strain, over-excitement (which means distraction from the work in hand), and loss of sleep, mental work is itself peculiarly unaffected by fatigue conditions. The degree in which mental work can be persisted in depends, therefore, other things being equal, on the individual's own interests, the number and intensity of rival interests which persist during a given piece of mental work, and the habits of mind with which the individual approaches his work. The experimental demonstration that so-called mental fatigue is largely physical in its conditions has thus a dual significance. It indicates how arduous and persistent mental endeavor may be and how wide are the possibilities of intellectual accomplishment. It is an important fact for human life that the brain is possibly the most tireless part of the human machine. What seems to be mental fatigue can be materially reduced if the physical conditions under which studying, writing, and all other kinds of mental work are performed are carefully regulated. Another large part of what passes for mental fatigue will be removed if the individual becomes trained to a reflective appreciation of the end of his work. A habit of alert and conscious attention, if it is really habitual, will enable one to persist at work in the face of tempting distractions. Learning to "tend to business" by an intelligent application to the aims of the work to be done, will be a healthy antidote against that yielding to every dissuading impulse which so often passes for mental weariness. CHAPTER V THE SOCIAL NATURE OF MAN MAN AS A SOCIAL BEING. Man has long been defined as the "social animal," and it is certainly characteristic of human activity that it takes place largely with reference to other people. Many of man's native tendencies, such as those of sex, self-assertiveness, and the like, require the presence and contact of other people for their operation. Nineteenth-century philosophers attempted frequently to explain how individuals who were natively self-seeking ever came to act socially. The solution to this problem was usually found in the fact that precisely those self-seeking and self-preservation instincts which governed man's activity could not find satisfaction except through coöperation with a group. All man's social activity was conceived as purely instrumental to the gratification of his own egoistic desires. Man got on with his fellows simply because he could not get on without them. We shall see that, in the light of the specific and natural tendencies toward social behavior which are part of man's original equipment, this sharp psychological isolation between the individual and the group is an altogether unwarranted assumption. For it is just as native to man to act socially as it is for him to be hungry, or curious, or afraid. The element of truth in the nineteenth-century exaggeration of man's individuality lies in the fact that social activity is partly brought about in the satisfaction of the more egoistic impulses of the individual. "The fear motive drives men together in times of insecurity; the pugnacity motive bands them together for group combat; the economic motive brings industrial coöperation and organization; the self-assertive and submissive tendencies bring emulation as well as obedience; the expansion of the self to cover one's family, one's clique, one's class, one's country contributes to loyalty; while the parental instinct, expanding its scope to cover others besides children who are helpless, leads to self-sacrifice and altruism."[1] [Footnote 1: R. S. Woodworth: _Dynamic Psychology_, p. 204.] The fact is, however, that while social activity is promoted because individuals find in coöperation the possibility of the satisfaction of their egoistic desires, social activity is primarily brought about through the specifically social tendencies which are part of our native equipment. It is with these natural bases of social activity that we shall in this chapter be particularly concerned. We shall have to take note, in the first place, of a native tendency to be with other people, to feel an unlearned sense of comfort in their presence, and uneasiness if too much separated from them, physically, or in action, feeling, or thought. Human beings tend, furthermore, to reproduce sympathetically the emotions of others, especially those of their own social and economic groups. Thirdly, man's conduct is natively social in that he is by nature specifically sensitive to praise and blame, that he will modify his conduct so as to secure the one and avoid the other. Finally, besides the specific tendencies to respond to the presence, the feelings, the actions, and the thoughts of others, man displays a "capacity for social behavior." And, as is the case with all native capacities, man has, therefore, a native interest in group or social activity for its own sake. The predominantly social character of human behavior has thus a twofold explanation. It is based, in the first place, on the group of native tendencies of a social character to which we have already referred. It is based, secondly, on the necessity for group activity and coöperation which the individual experiences in the satisfaction of his egoistic impulses and desires. Man, because of his original tendencies, wants to live, act, think, and feel with others; for the satisfaction of his nonsocial impulses he must live with others. And in civilized society human action from almost earliest childhood is in, and with reference to, a group. Human behavior is thus seen to be that of an essentially social nature acting in an essentially social environment. And, as in the case of other instinctive and habitual activities, human beings experience in social activity an immediate satisfaction apart from any satisfactions toward which it may be the instrument. GREGARIOUSNESS. The "herd instinct" is manifested by many animals very low in the scale of animal development. McDougall quotes in this connection Francis Galton's classical account of this instinct in its crudest form: "Describing the South African ox in Damaraland, he says he displays no affection for his fellows, and hardly seems to notice their existence, so long as he is among them; but, if he becomes separated from the herd, he displays an extreme distress that will not let him rest until he succeeds in rejoining it, when he hastens to bury himself in the midst of it, seeking the closest possible contact with the bodies of his fellows."[1] [Footnote 1: McDougall: _Social Psychology_, p. 84.] This original tendency exhibits itself among human beings in a variety of ways. The tendency of human beings to herd together, for which there is evidence in the earliest history of the race, may be observed on any crowded thoroughfare, or in any amusement park, or city. That group life has expanded partly through practical necessity, is, of course, true, but groups of humans tend to become, as in our monster cities, larger than they need be, or can be for economic efficiency. The fascination of city life has not infrequently been set down to the multiplicity of opportunities offered in the way of companions, amusements, and occupations after one's own taste. But the fascination has clearly a more instinctive basis, the desire to be with other people. Many a man, as has been pointed out, lives in a large city as unsociable and secluded a life as if he were surrounded by miles of mountain or prairie, who yet could not be happy elsewhere. Any one who has failed to be amused by a really good comedy when the theater was comparatively empty, or in the presence of thousands of others hugely enjoyed a second-rate baseball game, or gone down to the crowded shopping district to get what he could have purchased on a side-street uptown, can appreciate how instinctive is this undiscriminating desire for companionship. The native intensity of this desire is what makes rural isolation, on the other hand, so unsatisfactory. The bleakness of New England country life as pictured in Edith Wharton's _Ethan Frome_, or in some of Robert Frost's _North of Boston_, is due more than anything else to this privation from companionship. Perhaps nothing better could be said for the rural telephone, the interurban trolley, and the cheap automobile than that they make possible the fulfillment of this normal human longing to be near and with other people in body and spirit. The horror which makes it practically impossible in civilized countries to legalize punishment by solitary confinement and the nervous collapse which such confinement brings about are indications of how deep-seated is this desire. The "herd instinct," like all the other of man's original tendencies, is educable. It can be trained to respond to groups of various sizes and kinds. In its simplest manifestation it tends to be aroused by the family, but in the history of civilization the group tends progressively to enlarge. The family, the town, the nation--the gregarious instinct may be educated to respond to these ever-widening groups. The intensity and controlling power of this instinct over our actions seems to vary with the degree of intimacy and intercommunication between the individual and the group. In primitive society it is most intense among the family and clan, and the family still remains in civilized society, certainly in rural districts, a very closely knit primary group. But as intercommunication widens, a sense of attachment to and solidarity with a larger group begins to make itself felt. That intercommunication is largely important in extending the group in response to which the herd instinct may be aroused, is well illustrated by the utter lack of national group feeling exhibited during the Great War by recruits drafted from the backwoods districts where they had been tied by no railroads or newspapers to the national civilization of which they were a part. The devotion of generous-hearted souls to "lost causes," whether political or religious, of the individual to his family or friends in the face of personal privation, are classic illustrations of the power of men's gregarious instinct even in the face of the dictates of reason. In the perhaps extreme but nevertheless suggestive statement of Mr. Trotter: He [man] is more sensitive to the voice of the herd than to any other influence. It can inhibit or stimulate his thought and conduct. It is the source of his moral codes, of the sanctions of his ethics and philosophy. It can endow him with energy, courage and endurance, and can as easily take these away. It can make him acquiesce in his own punishment, and embrace his executioner, submit to poverty, bow to tyranny, and sink without complaint under starvation. Not merely can it make him accept hardship and suffering unresistingly, but it can make him accept as truth the explanation that his perfectly preventable afflictions are sublimely just and gentle. It is this acme of the power of herd suggestion that is perhaps the most absolutely incontestable proof of the profoundly gregarious nature of man.[1] [Footnote 1: Trotter: _Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War_, pp. 114-15.] To how large a group the individual can respond with spontaneous and instinctive loyalty is questionable. The small child throws out his arms and exclaims passionately, "I love the whole world." Auguste Comte could be imbued with a fervor for "humanity" in the abstract. The idea of a League of Nations arouses in some minds a passionate devotion to a world order that to those themselves habituated to an intense loyalty to the national group seems incredible. Certainly it is true that we rapidly outgrow that state of mind common to enthusiastic adolescence when we can develop a love for the universe in the abstract. The instinct of gregariousness seems unquestionably to be most intense where there is intimacy and vividness of group association. The primary groups, as Professor Ross calls them, are face-to-face associations, the family, the play group, the neighborhood group. If "world patriotism" is a possibility, it is because rapid communication and the frequency of travel, and the education of the industrial classes to "the international mind" tend to break down barriers and to make distant countries and persons vivid and directly imaginable. But there seems to be no substitute for direct personal contact. Even devotion to a country tends to take the form of phrases, places, persons, and symbols, to which we have been familiarized. GREGARIOUSNESS IMPORTANT FOR SOCIAL SOLIDARITY. The gregarious instinct, powerful as it is, is of the greatest significance for social solidarity, and, if misdirected, for seriously limiting it. It is, in the first place, the trait without which social solidarity would be almost impossible. "In early times when population was scanty, it must have played an important part in social evolution by keeping men together, and thereby occasioning the need for social laws and institutions."[1] The coherence of national, political, or religious groups depends primarily on the extent to which the gregarious instinct may be aroused. Allegiance to a group may, of course, be secured through participation in common ideals. This is illustrated in the case of the numerous literary and scientific associations that cut across national boundaries and knit into groups similarly interested persons all over the world. Groups may, again, be formed through common economic interests, as in the case of labor unions, or employers' associations. Groups may be knit and strengthened through law and custom. And all these factors play a smaller or larger part in any important grouping of men in contemporary society. But unless there is, on the part of the members of the group, a deep-seated emotional attachment to the group itself, solidarity will be very precarious. The intensity and solidarity, of feeling exhibited so markedly during war-time is made possible by the intense excitability of this instinct when the group is under conditions of stress or danger. Any scheme for enlisting a great number of individuals in modern society in a scheme of social reform or improvement, must and does, when it is successful, arouse in him a heightened sense of loyalty to a group more than reasoned approval of a cause. Effective recruiting posters more often told the passer-by, "Your country needs you," than they attempted to convince him in black-and-white logic of the justice of his country's aims. [Footnote 1: McDougall: _Social Psychology_, p. 301.] GREGARIOUSNESS MAY HINDER THE SOLIDARITY OF LARGE GROUPS. While gregariousness is the foundation of group solidarity, it also interferes with the solidarity of large groups, and not infrequently brings about conflicts between them, and within groups themselves. Within even so small a community as a college class, cliques may form; and so in a country, attachment to the smaller group may inhibit attachment to the larger. An individual may be vaguely patriotic, but instinctively aroused more by his own economic or local or racial group than by the country as a whole. A man may at heart be more devoted to his town or home than to the United States. (Not infrequently his town or home is what the United States means to the citizen.) Even to-day the sectional feeling that exists in many parts of the country cannot be completely explained as occurring through separate economic interests. The division of classes within a country is largely an economic matter, but even in such a situation a loyalty develops to the class as a class or group. Again, the same instinct to herd with his fellows that makes a man intensely loyal to his own group may operate to make him indifferent to the difficulties or jealous and suspicious of the aims of others Gregariousness is the basis not only of patriotism, but of chauvinism, not only of civic pride, but of provincialism. The narrowness and parochialism of group attachments is most pronounced where groups and communities are rigidly set off one from another. In such circumstances community of feeling and understanding is largely reduced. This may be seen even under contemporary conditions in the comparatively complete inability of different professional, social, and economic groups within the same society to understand each other, and the proverbial ignorance and carelessness of one half of the population as to "how the other half lives." Narrowness of group feeling tends to grow less pronounced under the mobile conditions of modern industry, communication, and education. Trade relations knit the farthest parts of the globe together; this morning's newspaper puts us in touch with the whole of mankind. We have outgrown the days when every stranger was an enemy. But though the barriers between nations are tending to break down, within nations individuals tend, as they grow older, to experience an insulated devotion to their own set or social group, a callous oblivion to the needs and desires of that great majority of mankind with whom they have a less keen sense of "consciousness of kind." GREGARIOUSNESS IN BELIEF. Man's gregarious character, as already pointed out, is manifested not only in his desire to be physically with his fellows, but to be at one with them in their actions, feelings, and thoughts. Beliefs once established tend to remain established if for no other reason than that they are believed in by the majority. That an opinion gains prestige merely because we know other people believe it, is frequently illustrated by the facility with which rumor travels. At the end of the Great War, it will be recalled, the false news of the armistice report flew from mouth to mouth and was accepted with the most amazing credulity simply because "everybody said so." The spread of superstitions and old wives' tales and their long lingering in the minds even of intelligent people is testimony that men tend mentally as well as physically to herd together. The tendency to find comfort in the presence of one's fellows and uneasiness if too much separated from them, is as pronounced in the sphere of moral and intellectual relations as it is in the case of merely physical proximity. We like to be one of a crowd in our opinions and beliefs, as well as in our persons. There is hardly anything more painful than the sense of being utterly alone in one's opinions. Even the extreme dissenter from the accustomed ways of thinking and feeling of the majority is associated with or pictures some little group which agrees with him. And, if we cannot find contemporaries to share our extreme opinions, we at least imagine some ideal group now or in posterity to share it with us. GREGARIOUSNESS IN HABITS OF ACTION. But if men tend to think in groups they tend more emphatically still to act in groups, to be acutely uncomfortable when acting in a fashion different from that customary among the majority of their fellows. Habits of action are more deep-seated physiologically than habits of thought (which is one reason why our theories are so often in advance of our practice). People will accede intellectually to new ideas which they would not and could not practice, the mind being, as it were, more convertible than the emotions. Even in minor matters, in dress, speech, and manners, we like to do the accustomed thing. It is more painful for most people to use the wrong fork at dinner, or to be dressed in a business suit where everyone else is in evening clothes, than to commit a fallacy, or to act upon prejudices rather than upon logical conclusions. The individual's instinctive desire to be identical in action with other members of his group, from the collars and clothes he wears to the way he brings up his children, is greatly reinforced by the punishment meted out to those who differ from the majority. This may vary from ridicule, as in the case of the laughter that greets the poet's proverbial long hair and flowing tie, the foreigner's accent, or a straw hat in April, to the confinement and privation that are the penalties for any marked infringement of the accepted modes of life. Even when the punishments are slight, they are effective. A man who has no moral or religious scruples with reference to gambling on any day of the week will, to avoid the social ostracism of his neighbors, refrain from playing cards on his front porch on Sunday. For no other reason than to avoid being consciously different, many a man will not wear cool white clothes on a hot day in his office who will wear them on a cool evening at the seashore. THE EFFECT OF GREGARIOUSNESS ON INNOVATION. A strong instinctive tendency to community of action and thought is in large part responsible for the comparative absence of innovation in either of these fields. A premium is put upon the conventional, the customary, the common, both in the instinctive satisfaction they give the individual, and in the high value set upon them by society. In advanced societies, however, the habit of inquiry and originality may itself come to be endorsed by the majority, as it is among scientists and artists. The herd instinct need not always act on the side of unreason. Among the intellectual classes, it is already enlisted on the side of free inquiry, which among scholars is the fundamental common habit. If rationality were once to become really respectable, if we feared the entertaining of an unverifiable opinion with the warmth with which we fear using the wrong implement at the dinner table, if the thought of holding a prejudice disgusted us as does a foul disease, then the dangers of man's suggestibility would be turned into advantages.[1] [Footnote 1: Trotter; _loc. cit._, p. 45.] SYMPATHY (A SPECIALIZATION OF GREGARIOUSNESS). Sympathy, in the strict psychological sense of the term, means a "suffering with, the experiencing of any feeling or emotion when and because we observe in other persons or creatures the expression of that feeling of emotion."[2] The behavior of animals exhibits the external features of sympathetic action very clearly. "Two dogs begin to growl or fight, and at once all the dogs within sound and sight stiffen themselves, and show every symptom of anger. Or one beast in a herd stands arrested, gazing in curiosity on some unfamiliar object, and presently his fellows also, to whom the object may be invisible, display curiosity and come up to join in the examination of the object."[1] [Footnote 2: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 92.] [Footnote 1: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 93.] Human beings tend not only sympathetically to reproduce the instinctive actions of others,[2] but they tend, despite themselves, to experience directly and immediately, often involuntarily, the emotions experienced and outwardly manifested by others. Almost everyone has had his mood heightened to at least kindly joy by the presence in a crowded street car of a young child whose inquiring prattle and light-hearted laughter were subdued by the gray restraints and responsibilities of maturity. One melancholy face can crush the joy of a boisterous and cheerful party;[3] the eagerness and enthusiasm of an orator can, irrespective of the merits of the cause he is defending, provoke eagerness and enthusiasm for the same cause among an audience that does not in the least understand what the orator is talking about. [Footnote 2: "In man infectious laughter or yawning, walking in step, imitating the movements of a ropewalker, while watching him, feeling a shock in one's legs when one sees a man falling, and a hundred other occurrences of this kind are cases of physiological sympathy." Ribot: _Psychology of the Emotions_, p. 232. Reproduction of the actions of others has by a certain school of philosophers and psychologists, notably Tarde, Le Bon, and Baldwin, been ascribed to imitation. But no experimental researches have revealed any such specific instinct to imitate (see Thorndike, p. 73 ff.), and "imitations" of acts can generally be traced to sympathy, or suggestion--which is sympathy on an intellectual plane.] [Footnote 3: Such expressions as "kill joy," "wet blanket," "life of the party" are instances of the popular appreciation of the fact of social contagion.] One brand of cigarettes was recently advertised by the face of a young soldier, roguishly irresponsible, palpably and completely given over to joy. One found one's self transported into something of this same mood before one had a chance to speculate at all as to whether there was any causal relation between the specific quality of tobacco the youngster was smoking, and that contagious, undeniable delight. What is called personal magnetism is perhaps more than anything else the ability to provoke in others sympathetic experiences of pleasant and exhilarating emotions. Sensibility to the emotions of others, though possessed by almost all individuals, varies in degree. The complete absence of it marks a man out as "stolid," "cold," "callous," "brutal." Such a type of personality may be efficient and successful in pursuits requiring nothing besides a direct analysis of facts, uncolored by any irrelevant access of feeling, as in the case of mathematics and mechanics. But the geniuses even in strictly intellectual fields have frequently been men of sensitiveness, delicacy, and responsiveness to the feelings of others. That intellectual analysis, however, does frequently blunt the poignancy of feeling is illustrated in the case of John Stuart Mill, who writes in his _Autobiography_: Analytic habits may thus even strengthen the associations between causes and effects, means and ends, but tend altogether to weaken those which are, to speak familiarly, a _mere_ matter of feeling. They are, therefore, I thought, favorable to prudence and clear-sightedness, but a perpetual worm at the root both of the passions and of the virtues; and above all fearfully undermine all desires and ... all except the purely physical and organic; of the entire insufficiency of which to make life desirable, no one had a stronger conviction than I had.... All those to whom I looked up were of the opinion that the pleasure of sympathy with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others, and especially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence, were the greatest and surest sources of happiness. Of the truth of this I was convinced, but to know that a feeling would make me happy if I had it, did not give me the feeling.[1] [Footnote 1: Mill: _Autobiography_ (Holt edition), p. 138.] A generous degree of susceptibility to the emotions of others makes a man what is variously called "mellow," "humane," "large-hearted," "generous-souled." The possession of such susceptibility is an asset, first, in that it enriches life for its possessor. It gives him a warm insight into the feelings, emotions, desires, habits of mind and action of other people, and gives to his experiences with them a vivid and personal significance not attainable by any hollow intellectual analysis. It is an asset, moreover, in the purely utilitarian business of dealing with men. The statesman or executive who deals with men as so many animate machines, may achieve certain mechanical and arbitrary successes. But he will be missing half the data on which his decisions must be based if he does not have a live and sensitive appreciation of how men feel when placed in given situations. The placing of women in positions of labor management where women chiefly are to be dealt with is an illustration of the recognition of the importance of sympathy, fellow-feeling in the management of human affairs. One of the reasons why many university scholars make poor teachers is because they cannot place themselves back at the point where a subject was as live and fresh and virgin to them as it is to their students. An extraordinary degree or a decided hypertrophy of emotional susceptibility is as dangerous a trait as its possession in a reasonable degree is a utility and an enrichment of life. It results in the hysteria or sentimentalism which adds to the real evils and difficulties of life fancied grievances and disasters. Such temperaments when confronted with any good or beautiful action dissolve into ecstasy, and when faced with a problem or a difficulty dissolve into tears. Doctors will not treat their own children because the overplus of sympathy is a hindrance to action. Sentimental ladies are not the most efficient charity workers or prisoner reformers. While there is a general tendency to experience sympathetically the feelings of others, this becomes specialized in most people, and one tends to experience most immediately and intensely the emotions of one's own kind, physically, socially, and intellectually. Sympathy is a specialization of man's general gregariousness, and becomes more specialized as one becomes habituated exclusively to a small group. Within this small group, individuals not only experience the emotions of others, but like to share and communicate their own emotions. The nearer people are to us in mode of life, social status, and intellectual interests, the closer is community of feeling and "consciousness of kind." Two Americans meeting in a foreign country have a quick and sympathetic understanding of each other. Two alumni of the same college meeting in a distant city have a common basis of interest and feeling. This easy give-and-take of feeling and emotion makes the deep attractiveness of intimate companionship. Our companion has but to mention a name or a place, and we experience the same associations, the pleasures, or antipathies which he does. A gesture, a curious glance of the eye, a pause, we understand as quickly as if he had spoken a sentence. But not only do we understand his feelings; he (or she) understands ours. And for most people, all their interests and enjoyments are heightened by the presence of an intimately known companion. Many children manifest very clearly this tendency of active sympathy; they demand that their every emotion shall be shared at once. "Oh, come and look!" is their constant cry when out for a walk, and every object that excites their curiosity or admiration is brought at once, or pointed out, to their companion.... On the other hand, another child, brought up, perhaps, under identical conditions, but in whom this impulse is relatively weak, will explore a garden, interested and excited for hours together, without once feeling the need for sympathy, without once calling on others to share his emotions.[1] [Footnote 1: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 172.] In adult life, few people care to go to theater or concert alone, and a man at a club will wander half through the dining-room until he will find some one with whom he will feel like sitting through a dinner conversation. The fact that emotions exhibited in one individual are readily aroused in another makes art possible and makes it interesting. A poet by a phrase, a musician by a chord or melody, can suddenly reproduce in us his own feeling of gayety or exaltation. A painter by disposition of line and color can suggest the majesty of mountains, or the sadness of a sunset as he himself has experienced it. In novels and dramas we can _relive_ the feelings that the writer imagines to have been experienced by others. It is testimony to the easy excitability of sympathy as well as to an artist's skill that this can sometimes be done in a few lines or paragraphs. Witness the famous opening of Poe's _Fall of the House of Usher:_ During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me--upon the mere house and the simple landscape features of the domain, upon the bleak walls, upon the vacant eye-like windows, upon a few rank sedges, and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium; the bitter lapse into everyday life, the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it--I paused to think--what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? To Aristotle tragedy seemed to afford a cleansing or "katharsis of the soul" through the sympathetic experience of pity or fear. To Schopenhauer music was the greatest of the arts because it made us at one with the sorrows and the strivings of the world. All the representative arts are vivid ways of making us feel with the passions or emotions that stir mankind. And those men are poets, painters, or musicians who, besides having a unique gift of expression, whether in word, tone, or color, have themselves an unusually high sensitivity to the moods of other men and to the imagined moods of the natural scenes among which they move.[1] [Footnote 1: Poets generally are so susceptible to emotional shades and nuances that they read them into situations where they are not present, and then reproduce them sympathetically in their works. The so-called "pathetic fallacy" is an excellent illustration of this. Poets sympathize with the emotions of a landscape, emotions which were in the first place, their own.] In experience, the presence or absence of genuine sympathy with the emotions of others determines to no small extent the character of our dealings with them. Even courts of justice take motives into account and juries have been known to ask for clemency for a murderer because of their keen realization of the provocation which he had undergone. Fellow-feeling with others may again warp our judgments or soften them; in our judgment of the work of our friends, it is difficult altogether to discount our personal interest and affection. On the other hand, we may have the most sincere admiration and respect for a man, and yet be seriously hampered in our dealings with him, socially or professionally, by a total lack of sympathy with his motives and desires. PRAISE AND BLAME. An important part of man's social equipment is his susceptibility to the praise and blame of his fellows. That is, among the things which instinctively satisfy men are objective marks of praise or approval on the part of other people; among the things which annoy them, sometimes to the point of acute distress, are marks of disapproval, scorn, or blame. This is illustrated most simply and directly in the satisfaction felt at "intimate approval as by smiles, pats," kindly words, or epithets applied by other people to one's own actions or ideas, and the discomfort, amounting sometimes to pain, that is felt at frowns, hoots, sneers, and epithets of scorn or derision. One student of this subject notes "as early as the fourth month a 'hurt' way of crying which seemed to indicate a sense of personal slight. It was quite different from the cry of pain or that of anger, but seemed about the same as the cry of fright. The slightest tone of reproof would produce it. On the other hand, if people took notice and laughed and encouraged, she was hilarious."[1] [Footnote 1: Cooley: _Human Nature and the Social Order_, p. 166.] Man's sensitiveness to praise and blame is paralleled by his instinctive tendency to express them. Smiles, respectful stares, and encouraging shouts occur, I think, as instinctive responses to relief from hunger, rescue from fear, gorgeous display, instinctive acts of strength and daring, victory, and other impressive instinctive behavior that is harmless to the onlooker. Similarly, frowns, hoots, and sneers seem bound as original responses to the observation of empty-handedness, deformity, physical meanness, pusillanimity, and defect. As in the case of all original tendencies, such behavior is early complicated and in the end much distorted, by training; but the resulting total cannot be explained by nurture alone.[1] [Footnote 1: Thorndike: _Educational Psychology_, Briefer Course, pp. 32-33.] Man's instinctive tendency to respond to praise and blame and to exhibit them is, next to gregariousness--through which men in the first place are able to live together--the individual human trait most significant for social life. For while the desire for praise, the avoidance of blame, and the expression of both are instinctive, the occasions on which they are called forth depend on the traditions and group habits to which the individual has been exposed. He soon learns that in the society in which he is living, certain acts will bring him the praise of others; certain other acts will bring him their disapproval. The whole scope of his activity may thus be profoundly modified by the penalties and prizes in the way of praise and blame which society attaches to different modes of action. And the more explicit and outward signs there are of the approval or scorn of others, the more will individual action be subject to social control. As Plato said so long ago and said so well: Whenever they [the public] crowd to the popular assembly, the law courts, the theaters, the camp, or any public gathering of large bodies, and there sit in a dense and uproarious mass to censure some of the things said or done, and applaud others, always in excess; shouting and clapping, until, in addition to their own noise, the rocks and the places wherein they are echo back redoubled the uproar of their censure and applause. At such a moment, how is a young man, think you, to retain his self-possession? Can any private education that he has received hold out against such a torrent of censure and applause, and avoid being swept away down the stream, wherever it may lead, until he is brought to adopt the language of these men as to what is honorable and dishonorable, and to imitate all their practices, and to become their very counterpart?[1] [Footnote 1: Plato: _Republic_ (Davies and Vaughn translation), p. 208.] We have already had occasion to point out that education is the method by which society inculcates in its younger members habits which are regarded as socially beneficial. In its broadest sense the whole social environment is an individual's education. And it is an education chiefly through experience with other people, discovering what they will and will not tolerate, what they will cherish and what they will condemn. The elaborate paraphernalia and rites of fashion in clothes exist chiefly by virtue of their value as means of securing diffuse notice and approval. The primitive sex display is now a minor cause: women obviously dress for other women's eyes. Much the same is true of subservience to fashions in furniture, food, manners, morals, and religion. The institution of tipping, which began, perhaps, in kindliness and was fostered by economic self-interest, is now well-nigh impregnable because no man is brave enough to withstand the scorn of a line of lackeys whom he heartily despises, or of a few onlookers whom he will never see again.[2] [Footnote 2: Thorndike: _loc. cit._, p. 32.] One of the things we mean when we say a man is worldly-wise, shrewd, knows human nature, is that he knows what will win people's admiration, and knows, moreover, to distinguish between that which they publicly condemn and secretly approve, and _vice versa_. In the passage quoted above Plato was trying to show how the young Athenian acquired not wisdom itself, but "worldly wisdom," the ability to get along in affairs. This he learned not from the professional teachers, but from the Athenian public, with whose approvals and disapprovals he came in daily contact. PRAISE AND BLAME MODIFY HABIT. In order to avoid censure and gain the expressed approval of others, people learn, either, as we say, through bitter experience, or deliberately, to modify their actions. The well-brought-up child, even when its mother is not about and its appetite unsatisfied, may be ashamed to say "Yes" to a second offering of ice cream. The ten-year-old who likes to be coddled by his mother in private would be acutely embarrassed to be "babied" in the presence of other people. Among adults, likewise, actions are checked, prompted, or modified by the praise and blame that have become habitually associated with them. Men like to appear virtuous, even if they do not like to practice virtue. It is not only the professional politician who does generous acts for public approval, nor is even the most disinterested and conscientious work altogether free from being affected by the expressed attitudes of approval or disapproval of other people. Even transportation companies have found that they can increase the efficiency of their employees by expressing in some form the approval of their employees' courtesy and loyalty.[1] "A man, again, ... may fail to see any 'reason' why an elementary-school teacher or a second-division clerk cannot do his work properly after he has been 'put in his place' by some official who happens to combine personal callousness with social superiority. But no statesman who did so could create an effective educational or clerical service."[2] [Footnote 1: Many transportation companies maintain a merit system. Sometimes they award special insignia, as the green flag to the New York bus-drivers who save gasoline.] [Footnote 2: Wallas: _Great Society_, p. 197.] To say that we are moved to action by praise and blame is not to indicate that actions thus motivated are done in a spirit of hypocrisy or charlatanism. Even the most sincere acts are prompted or sustained, especially where their performance involves serious personal privation or sacrifice, by the imagined or actual approval of those whom we love, admire, or respect. Whose praise and blame individuals will care about depends on their education and temperamental differences. That there will be some group, however small, is almost sure to be the case. The poet who curls his lip at popular taste cherishes the more keenly the applause of those whom he regards as competent judges. The martyr will be unmoved by the curses, the jeers, and the hoots of the contemporary multitude so long as he has the trust of his small band of comrades or faith that the Lord approves his ways. A man who is utterly alone in the approval of his actions is regarded as crazy or is driven so by the perpetual disesteem in which he is held. There have been cases in literature and life of accused criminals who could bear up against the belief of the whole world in their guilt so long as one friend or kinsman had faith in them. That faith gone, they completely collapsed. DESIRE FOR PRAISE MAY LEAD TO THE PROFESSION RATHER THAN THE PRACTICE OF VIRTUE. While the desire for social approval is strong in most men, so are other desires. It happens, moreover, that the actions to which men's instincts prompt them are not always such as would be approved by others.[1] In order, therefore, to have their cake and eat it, to do what they please and yet seem to please others, men often conceal the discrepancy between what they profess and what they practice. One of the least agreeable features of civilized society is the extent to which the codes which men and groups profess differ from those by which they live. Men who have ostensibly Christian codes of honor, and, indeed, practice them in their private lives, will have an actual "ethics" for business that they could not possibly sanction in their dealings as trustees of a church. There are practices within trades and professions, the familiar "trade" practices, and "ethics" of the profession, which, for social as well as for professional reasons, their practitioners would not want known. "Company" manners are a trivial illustration of this, but there are more serious instances. One has but to recall the sensation created a few years ago when a minister of a fashionable congregation called upon his congregation to practice Christianity, or, on a superb scale, Tolstoy's leaving the estates and mode of life of a rich Russian noble, in order to live the simple life he regarded as prescribed by the Christian teaching.[2] [Footnote 1: At least not publicly approved. There is, however, admiration, often unconcealed, for the man who does even an unusual act conspicuously well. One need only mention a Raffles or a Captain Kidd.] [Footnote 2: See Tolstoy's _Diary_ and _Confessions_.] Psychologically, therefore, the cause of the discrepancy between the codes which men preach and profess and those which they practice, is thus seen to be a desire to secure illicit (that is, socially unsanctioned) satisfactions without incurring the penalty of social disapproval. Part of this discrepancy is not to be set down to the evils men actually do so much as the irrationality and fanaticism of the codes which they have been taught to profess. This is the case, for example, where excessive Puritanism or fanaticism, not possible for most men, is imposed upon them by an arbitrary and fanatical teaching. They will then pretend to types of action socially regarded as virtues in order to avoid the penalties incurred by not practicing them. The desire for "respectability" is responsible for no small amount of pretension, illustrated pathetically in cases where individuals, to satisfy the standards of their associates, live beyond their means physically, socially, or intellectually.[1] [Footnote 1: "Many Bostonians, _crede experto_ (and inhabitants of other cities, too, I fear), would be happier men and women to-day if they could once for all abandon the notion of keeping up a Musical Self and without shame let people hear them call a symphony a nuisance." James: _Psychology_, vol. I, p. 311.] Again, codes of action remain formally accepted long after they have ceased to be taken seriously. In States that went "dry" where there was no majority public sentiment in their favor, "bootlegging," the illicit making and selling of whiskey, was practiced freely, because not many people regarded prohibition as a serious matter, or its infringement as a serious crime. Legal codes remain not infrequently a generation behind public opinion, and many ideas are verbally professed that nobody takes quite seriously. THE SOCIAL EFFECTIVENESS OF PRAISE AND BLAME. How far the social estimates of approval and disapproval affect the conduct of the individual depends on the degree to which, through education, public opinion, and law, he is made part of the group. In primitive society, even the slightest details of conduct were regulated by the group, through an elaborate system of punishments for slight infringements. In civilized society, the development of a sense of personal selfhood and social recognition of its importance has to a degree freed individual action from complete domination by the group. This has in part been compensated by the education of the contemporary citizen to national interests, and social sympathy, which render him susceptible to the praise and blame of public opinion. The effectiveness of praise and blame in determining action depends also on the explicitness with which they are expressed. In contemporary life the control of public opinion is made precarious because there is so rarely complete or palpable unanimity on any subject among the variety of groups that constitute a modern society. In a large city there are so many groups, so many sets of opinion, that an individual may not feel any great pressure of praise and blame except from the small circle of people with whom he is associated. In small communities action is restrained by the fear of ostracism or contempt of the whole group among whom one is living. But in large cities, where one may not be known by one's next-door neighbor, this restraint is much reduced. The temptations of a metropolis, so often referred to in the lurid literature of the day, consist not in temptations more numerous than or different from those in smaller places, but in the marked absence of social control as compared with small villages where every one knows everyone else's business. The influence of the social estimate on individual conduct depends finally on individual differences in suggestibility. In normal individuals susceptibility to the praise and blame of others is very high, especially among the close circle of friends, professional and business associates among whom one moves. This susceptibility is heightened when the praise or blame comes from persons superior in social status, though here the element of fear of the consequences of displeasing is perhaps more important than the responsiveness to the praise and blame itself. To the praise and blame of close associates most men are also highly suggestible, not less so when there is equality in social status. "Birds of a feather flock together," but humans tend to _become_ similar _because_ they flock together. There are few men who can withstand the pressure of doing what their group approves, and refraining from doing what it disapproves. In some men susceptibility to the attitudes of others is extremely low, and of such are both criminals and martyrs made. In the prisons of this country there are a large number of men absolutely indifferent to the usual social standards, completely undeterred by the codes of conduct by which other people cannot help but be governed. Such absolute callousness to the feelings which govern the majority of mankind as we read of every now and then in the trial of some desperate criminal, is not infrequently associated with abnormally low intelligence, the sodden stolidity of the traditional criminal type. Where it appears, as it sometimes does, in criminals of high intelligence, it is regarded by psychiatrists as a specific abnormality, comparable to color-blindness or a physical deformity. There are, on the other hand, individuals whose apparent low suggestibility is of the highest social value. There are striking instances, throughout the long struggle toward human liberty, of persons who could withstand the public opinion of their own day in the light of some ideal which they cherished, of men who needed no other approval than their consciences, their better selves, or their god. Socrates drinking the fatal hemlock, Christ upon the cross, the Christian saints, Joan of Arc, the extreme dissenters of every generation, are instances of men and women seemingly unmoved by the praise and blame of their contemporaries. Sustained by their deep inner conviction of the justice and significance of their mission, they have been content to suffer scorn, ridicule, and martyrdom at the hands of their own generation in a persistent devotion to what in their eyes constituted the highest good of mankind. SOCIAL ESTIMATES AND STANDARDS OF CONDUCT. Individuals are early habituated to the customs of the society in which they live, and come to approve, as might be expected from the power of men's habits and from their instinctive gregariousness, those things which they or their companions have always done. That "people don't do such things," or that "everybody does them," is a frequently assigned reason for the approval or condemnation of an act. Social approvals thus become affixed to acts which are regularly done by the majority, and divergences are subjected to varying degrees of censure. In civilized societies variations from customs that are not legally enforced are punished mainly by social ostracism. There is no law against walking down a crowded city street in Elizabethan costume, yet few would indulge their taste for beautiful but archaic dress in the face of all the ridicule they would incur. The whole system of etiquette, of the standard of living of respectable society, is maintained in large part because of the approvals and outward marks of admiration that go to some types of life and the contempt in which others are held. Much of the economic activity of the leisure class, as Professor Veblen has so well pointed out, is devoted to wasting time and spending money conspicuously as outward indications that the individual is living up to established and approved standards.[1] [Footnote 1: Veblen: _Theory of the Leisure Class._] The more significant folkways, standards of importance and unimportance, of the admirable and the despicable, the noble and the base, are determined by approvals and disapprovals that have become socially habitual. When we speak of a country being imperialistic or materialistic, we mean that most individuals in it, or at least those who are articulate or influential, perform or approve of actions leading to national or individual aggrandizement. The amount of money, time, and energy that is spent on amusement, public works, education, the army and navy is a fairly accurate gauge of the relative group approvals they have respectively secured. In the same way the professions and occupations in which men engage are determined by the social prestige attaching to them no less than by economic considerations. The pay of stenographers is no less than that of primary-school teachers; it is often much more; yet many a girl remains a teacher for the gentility which is traditionally associated with the profession. In the same way many girls, in spite of the fact that they are economically and physically better off in domestic service than in factory work, still prefer the latter because of the social inferiority which is associated with the servant's position. Approvals and disapprovals become fixed to acts, in the first place, because of some supposed danger or utility they possess. But whether the acts are really socially useful or not, approvals and censures once fixed tend to remain habitual, even though the conditions which first called them forth are utterly changed. We are to-day still more shocked by errors in etiquette than in logic; we are still horrified by the infringement of a law which, if we stopped to consider it, is not now, if it ever was, of any genuine service to mankind. In advanced societies approvals are not always reserved for the habitual. Certainly in science original research and discovery are generally welcomed. In art originality is cherished, at least by the discriminating.[1] Variation in action is for reasons discussed in other connections less generally welcomed. But in advanced societies, criticism and reflection upon social institutions and habits may themselves come to be sanctioned and encouraged. Already we are beginning to endow the scientific study of government and industrial relations, and regarding with favor genuine inquiry into the possibilities of progress. [Footnote 1: Even in art most people's approvals and disapprovals are fixed by what is called "good taste," which consists not infrequently in approving what other people approve. Æsthetic approval thus becomes approval of the customarily recognized. It took a Ruskin to make the neglected genius of Turner fashionable. Keats and Byron were bitterly attacked by the orthodox critics of their generation.] IMPORTANCE OF RELATING PRAISE AND BLAME TO SOCIALLY IMPORTANT CONDUCT. What people approve and disapprove, if their approval becomes sufficiently emphatic, is fixed by law. Law is the official and permanent preservation and enforcement of public approval and condemnation. When certain acts are regarded as of crucial importance, the group does not depend on the precarious effectiveness of public opinion, but deliberately attaches punishments to the performance of undesired acts, and, more infrequently, rewards to the practices of others. Most of our laws are enforcement of social condemnations, for the performance or the non-performance of specific acts, rather than direct encouragements of action. But which laws will be passed depends in the first place on social approval or public opinion. And if, as happens in our complicated political machinery, laws are passed which have not the sanction of widespread public approval, they remain "dead letters." Outside the field of legal control, individual action is controlled primarily by public opinion. There are many practices, strictly speaking "within the law," that an increasingly enlightened public opinion will not sanction; there are many practices encouraged by an enlightened public which no law compels. There is no law forcing business establishments to close every Saturday during the summer, yet many now do. There are many courtesies practiced by them which are not ordained by law. That adverse public opinion may have economic consequences if disregarded is evidenced by the powerful instrument the Consumers' League found in advertising against firms that maintained particularly unsanitary and morally degrading working conditions for their employees, or the dread that hotels and department stores have for adverse publicity. The phenomenal development of modern advertising is an instance of the direct economic values that have been found in winning public approval. There is more than metaphor in the statement made during the war that Lord Northcliffe, as owner of a chain of English newspapers with an immense circulation, was a "cabinet minister without portfolio." The growth of humanitarian sentiment has frequently enforced the improvement of labor and social conditions before improvements were made compulsory by law. And in that field of personal relations, which constitute so large a part of our daily life, our conduct is controlled almost entirely by the force of the public opinion with which we come in contact. There is much more courtesy and kindliness and coöperation manifested in the ordinary contacts of life of a modern city than is required, or ever could be secured by statute. EDUCATION AS THE AGENCY OF SOCIAL CONTROL. There is enormous power in the habits of approval or disapproval to which we have, in our early days, been subjected by our parents, teachers, and companions. It is through education, in the broadest sense, that the young come to learn, and hence to practice, those actions which are socially approved, and by the same token to avoid those acts which are socially condemned. Through formal education the adult members of a society impress upon the plastic minds of the immature those habits of thought and action which are currently recognized as desirable. Education thus becomes the crucial instrument by which social standards are established and transmitted. Society exists through a process of transmission quite as much as biological life. The transmission occurs by means of communication of habits of doing, thinking, and feeling, from the older to the younger. Without this communication of ideals, hopes, expectations, standards, opinions, from those members of society who are passing out of the group life to those who are coming into it, society could not survive.[1] [Footnote 1: Dewey; _Democracy and Education_, pp. 3-4.] Society survives through education. Just as truly might it be said that the kind of society, art, culture, industry, religion, science that does survive depends on the kind of likes and dislikes that are through education made habitual in the young. Education, however, may not only transmit existing standards, but can be used to inculcate newer and better expectations and ideals. In the adult, habits are already set physiologically, and kept rigid by the demands of economic life. In the young there is a "fairer and freer" field. Through education the immature may be taught to approve ways of action more desirable than those which have become habitual with their adult contemporaries. The children of to-day may acquire habits of action, feeling, and thought that will be their enlightened practice as the adults of to-morrow. All great social reformers, from Plato to our own contemporaries like Bertrand Russell, have seen in education, therefore, the chief instrument, as it is the chief problem, of social betterment. We may train the maturing generation to approve modes of behavior which the best minds of our time may have found reason to think desirable, but which could not be substituted immediately for the fixed habits of the already adult generation. SOCIAL ACTIVITY, AND THE SOCIAL MOTIVE. In our analysis of the social nature of man we have, thus far, been dealing with his specific social tendencies. But apart from these, or rather as an outgrowth of these, men exhibit what Professor Woodworth has well described as a gift for "learning" social behavior. Possessing, as he eminently does, the capacity for group activity, man is interested in such activity. He needs no ulterior motive to attract him to it. It is play for him.... The social interest is part and parcel of the general _objective_ interest of man.[1] [Footnote 1: Woodworth: _Dynamic Psychology_, pp. 202, 203.] In other words, the activity of man as an individual is not simply deflected a little by man's native gregariousness, sympathy, and susceptibility to praise and blame. Rather, group activity becomes to the gregarious human, born into an environment where he must act with and among other human beings, an interesting and exciting activity in and for itself. Men enjoy working in a group or a society for joint and common objects just as they enjoy food or musical composition or golf. The social motive is of the same order as the musical or mathematical motive. Just as one who has the musical gift takes to music naturally and finds it interesting for its own sake, so the socially gifted individual understands other people, sees the possibilities of collective activity, and the ways of coördinating it, and enters into such doings with gusto.... The social gift is a capacity for _learning_ social behavior. Individuals differ in degree in the social gift, as in other capacities; some are capable of becoming creative artists or inventors along social lines.[1] [Footnote 1: Woodworth: _Dynamic Psychology_, p. 203.] The social behavior of man is thus seen to be no curious anomaly and contradiction in the life of an otherwise thoroughly egoistic individual. Man is instinctively social; he finds social activity useful in the satisfaction of his own desires, and he comes from his native tendencies and acquired habits of social behavior to enjoy and take part in social activities for their own sake. The individual does not have to be coerced into social activity; he finds in such behavior the same pleasure that attends the fulfillment of any of his native or acquired reactions. Society has been variously pictured as a force holding the individual in check, as an organism of which he is a part, as a machine of which he is a cog. Society consists rather as the collective name for the coöperative and associated activities of human beings who find such activity, by nature and by habit, interesting for its own sake. CHAPTER VI CRUCIAL TRAITS IN SOCIAL LIFE THE INTERPENETRATION OF HUMAN TRAITS. This chapter is devoted to a consideration of a number of individual human traits--curiosity, pugnacity, leadership, fear, love, hate, etc., and some of their more important social consequences. These are seldom present in isolation. A man is not, under normal circumstances, simply and solely pugnacious, curious, tired, submissive, or acquisitive. One's desire to own a particular house at a particular location may be complicated by the presence of several of these traits at once. The house may be wanted simply as a possession, a crude satisfaction of our native acquisitiveness. It may be sought further as a mode of self-display, an indication of how one has risen in the world. Its attractiveness may be heightened by the fact that it is situated next door to the house of a rather particularly companionable old friend. It may be peculiarly indispensable to one's satisfaction because it is also being sought by a detested rival. Moreover, as we shall see in the discussion of the Self, these traits are interwoven with each other and attain varying degrees of power as motive forces in an individual's character. But while these distinctive human traits are seldom apparent in isolation, it is worth while to consider them separately, not only because the elements of human behavior will thus stand out more clearly, but because in certain individuals one or another of these-traits may be natively of especial strength. And further, in differing social situations, the possession or the cultivation of one or another of these native endowments may be of particular social value or danger. And in any given situation, one or another of them may be predominant, as when a man is intensely angry, or curious, or tired. Thus an individual may have a marked capacity for leadership, or an extraordinarily tireless curiosity, or an abnormally developed pugnacity or acquisitiveness. The capacity for leadership, as will later be discussed in some detail, will be of particular social value in large enterprises; patient and persistent inquiry may produce science; pugnacity when freely expressed may provoke quarrels, bickerings, and war. In the following discussion, the continual interpenetration and qualification of these traits by one another in a complex situation must be recognized. Else it may appear in the discussion of any single trait, as if by means of it all human action were being explained. Rather the aim is to trace them as one might the elements in the pattern of a tapestry, or the recurrent themes in the development of a symphony. But as the symphony is more than a single melody, the tapestry more than one element of line or color, so is human life more than any single trait.[1] [Footnote 1: Philosophers and others have time and again made the mistake of simplifying human life to a single motive or driving power. Hobbes rested his case on fear; Bain and Sutherland on sympathy; Tarde on imitation; Adam Smith and Bentham on enlightened self-interest. In our own day the Freudians interpret everything as being sexual in its motive. And most recently has come an interpretation of life, as in Bertrand Russell and Helen Marot, in terms of the "creative impulse."] THE FIGHTING INSTINCT. Almost all men exhibit in varying degrees the "fighting instinct"; that is, the tendency, when interfered with in the performance of any action prompted by any other instinct, to threaten, attack, and not infrequently, if successful in attack, to punish and bully the individual interfering. The most mean-spirited cur will angrily resent any attempt to take away its bone, if it is hungry; a healthy infant very early displays anger if its meal is interrupted, and all through life most men find it difficult to suppress irritation on similar occasions. In the animal world the most furious excitement of this instinct is provoked in the male of many species by any interference with the satisfaction of the sexual impulse.[2] [Footnote 2: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 60.] This original tendency to fight is very persistent in human beings, but is susceptible of direction, and is not, in civilized life, frequently revealed in its crude and direct form, save among children and among adults under intense provocation and excitement. Occasionally, however, pugnacity is displayed in its simple animal form. "Man shares with many of the animals the tendency to frighten his opponent by loud roars or bellowings.... Many a little boy has, without example or suggestion, suddenly taken to running with open mouth to bite the person who has angered him, much to the distress of his parents."[1] As the individual grows older, he learns to control the outward and immediate expression of this powerful and persistent human trait. He learns in his dealings with other people not to give way, when frustrated in some action or ambition, to mere animal rage. The customs and manners to which a child is early subjected in civilized intercourse are effective hindrances to uncontrolled display of anger and pugnacity; superior intelligence and education find more refined ways than kicking, pummeling, and scratching of overcoming the interferences of others. But even in gentle and cultured persons, an insult, a disappointment, a blow will provoke the tell-tale signs of pugnacity and anger, the flushing of the cheeks, the flash of the eye, the incipient clenching of the fists, the compressing of the teeth and lips, and the trembling of the voice. We substitute sarcasm for punching, and find subtly civilized, and, in the long run, more terrible, ways than bruises of punishing those who oppose us in our play, our passions, our professions. But our ancestors were beasts of prey, and there is still "fighting in our blood." [Footnote 1: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 61.] The fighting instinct is aroused by both personal and impersonal situations, and is occasioned even by very slight interferences, and even when the author of the interference is neither human nor animate. Quite intelligent men have been known to kick angrily at a door as if from pure malice it refused to open. Irate commuters have glared vindictively at trains they have just missed. The glint of anger is roused in our eye by an insolent stare, an ironic comment, or an impertinent retort. The "boiling point" varies in different individuals and races, and pugnacity is generally more readily roused in men than in women. There are some persons, like the proverbial Irishman, who, seeing the slightest opportunity for a fight, "want to know whether it is private, or whether anybody can get in." In most men pugnacity is more intense when it is provoked by persons; except for a moment, one does not try to fight a chair struck in the dark. Under the conditions of civilized life the primitive expression of pugnacity in physical combat has been outlawed and made unnecessary by law and custom. Individuals are prevented by the fear of punishment, besides their early training and habits, from settling disputes by physical force. But as the instinct itself remains strong, it must find some other outlet. This it secures in more refined forms of rivalry, in business and sport, or, all through human history, in fighting between groups, from the squabbling and perpetual raids and killings, and the extermination of whole villages and tribes in Central Borneo, to the wars between nations throughout European history. PUGNACITY A MENACE WHEN UNCONTROLLED. The strength and persistency of this human tendency, when uncontrolled or when fostered between groups, make it a very serious menace. Like all the other instincts, and more than most, it is frustrated and continually checked in the normal peace-time pursuits of contemporary civilization. Participation, imaginative at least, in a great collective combat undoubtedly holds some fascination for the citizens of modern industrial society, despite the large-scale horror which war is in itself, and the desolation it leaves in its wake. During peace the fighting instinct for most men receives satisfaction on a small scale, sometimes in nothing more important than small bickerings and peevishness, or in seeing at first hand or on the ticker a championship prize-fight. The pessimism which many writers have expressed at the possibility of perpetual peace rests in part on their perception of the easy excitability and deep persistence of this impulse, especially among the vigorous and young. Not only may the fighting instinct be aroused by the possibility of international wars, but it may be used by fomenters and agitators to add a sense of intense pugnacity and violent anger to the genuine friction that does exist between conflicting interests in the same society. The theory of a "class war" possibly finds its appeal for many minds as much in its picturesque stimulation of their instincts of pugnacity as in the logic of its economics. PUGNACITY AS A BENEFICENT SOCIAL FORCE. While the power of pugnacity and its easy stimulation makes this instinct a peculiarly inflammable and dangerous motive force in civilized society, it is, on the other hand, an indispensable source of social progress. Many psychologists and sociologists, such as McDougall, Bagehot, and Lang, attribute the superiority in culture and social organization of the European races over, say, the Chinese and East Indians, to the fighting instinct. In the long series of wars that for centuries constituted much of the history of Europe, those nations which survived, as in earlier times those tribes which survived combat, were those which displayed marked qualities of superiority in allegiance, fidelity, and social coöperation. The intensity and effectiveness of social coöperation in our own country was never so well illustrated as during the Great War. In combat between groups those groups survive which do stand out in these respects. William James in a famous essay[1] recognizes clearly the enormous value of the fighting instinct in stimulating action to an intense effectiveness exhibited under no other circumstances, and proposes a "moral equivalent for war"--an army devoted to constructive enterprises, reclaiming the waste places of the land, warring against poverty and disease and the like. Certainly every great reform movement has been intensely stimulated and has gathered about it the energies of men when it has become a "crusade for righteousness." Part of Theodore Roosevelt's power was in his picturesque phrasing of political issues as if they were great moral struggles. No one could forget, or fail to have his heart beat a trifle faster at Roosevelt's trumpet call in the 1912 campaign: "We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord." His "Big Stick" became a potent political symbol. Astute political leaders have not failed to capitalize the fighting instinct, and any social project will enlist the wider enthusiasm and the more energetic support if it is hailed as a battle or fight against somebody or something. [Footnote 1: "A Moral Equivalent of War," in _Memories and Studies_.] In personal life also the instinct of pugnacity and the feeling of anger that goes with it seem to set loose immense floods of reserve energy. McDougall exaggerates but a trifle when he says it supplies the zest and determines the forms of all our games and recreations, and nine tenths of the world's work is done by it. "Our educational system is founded upon it; it is the social force underlying an immense amount of strenuous exertion; to it we owe in a great measure even our science, our literature, and our art; for it is a strong, perhaps an essential, element of ambition, that last infirmity of noble minds."[1] In the overcoming of obstacles, whether in the work itself, or in the difficulties that a surgeon or a scholar meets with, or in frustrations deliberately put in our way by other people, pugnacity is an invaluable stimulant and sustainer of action. Every great personality of strong convictions and dominant energy has possessed it to some extent; in characters of great moral energy it sometimes takes the form of a volcanic and virtuous wrath, as in the case of the Prophets of the Old Testament, or of later religious and social reformers who brought an earnest and bitter anger against the wrongs they saw and literally fought to overcome. [Footnote 1: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 294.] THE "SUBMISSIVE INSTINCT." Of great importance in the social relations of men is their original tendency to find satisfaction in following, partly submitting to, or completely surrendering to a person or cause more dominating than the individual. Thorndike describes this instinct in its simplest form: There is an original tendency to respond to the situation, "the presence of a human being larger than one's self, of angry or mastering aspect," and to blows and restraint by submissive behavior. When weak from wounds, sickness, or fatigue, the tendency is stronger. The man who is bigger, who can outyell and outstare us, who can hit us without our hitting him, and who can keep us from moving, does originally extort a crestfallen, abashed physique and mind. Women in general are thus by original nature submissive to men in general. Every human being thus tends by original nature to arrive at a status of mastery or submission toward every other human being, and even under the more intelligent customs of civilized life somewhat of the tendency persists in many men.[1] [Footnote 1: Thorndike: _Educational Psychology_, briefer course, p. 34.] The impulse to follow and submit to something not ourselves and more dominating than ourselves is very strong in most men, and is called out by stimuli much less violent than those physical manifestations of power mentioned in the above quotation. Men instinctively long to be led, especially if, as happens in the case of most individuals, there is in them a marked absence of definite interest, conviction, or skill. This instinct is aroused by any sign of exceptional power, or, more generally still, by any exceptional conspicuousness, whether socially useful or not. Men follow leaders partly because men live in groups with common interests and in any large-scale organization leadership is necessary. But the power of demagogues, the faithfulness with which men will follow a bad leader as well as a good, are evidence that men find an instinctive satisfaction in submission. Self-dependence stands out as a virtue or an accomplishment precisely because most men feel so utterly at sea without any loyalty, allegiance, or devotion. Any one who has spent a summer at a boy's camp will recall the helplessness of youngsters to mark out a program for themselves and to keep themselves happy on the one afternoon when there was no official program of play. Half the mischief performed on such occasions is initiated by some boy with just a little more independence and persuasiveness than the others. And it is not only among children that there is evinced an almost pathetic bewilderment and unrest in the absence of a leader. There is an equally pathetic and sometimes dangerous attachment among adults to the first sign of leadership that makes its appearance. The demoralizing authority of the ward heeler is sometimes dependent on no more trustworthy an index of real power than a booming voice, a rough _camaraderie_, and a physically "big" personality. And there are, on the other hand, instances where lack of leadership seemed to be the chief reason why certain classes of labor were unable to make their demands effective at a much earlier date than they did. In the first really big strike in the telephone industry in Boston during the autumn of 1918 success seems to have been chiefly due to the remarkable leadership of one of the young women operators, a type of leadership which seems to have appeared nowhere else in the telephone industry.[1] [Footnote 1: See the article by Wm. Hard in the _New Republic_, May 3, 1919.] The instinct of submissiveness, as has been pointed out in connection with the discussion of all the other of man's original tendencies, is not only strong, but may find its outlets in attachment, both to desirable and to undesirable persons or objects. Once aroused, attachment and submission may become as stanch as they are blind. The signs which arouse our loyalty may be and most frequently are glaring rather than important. As Trotter phrases it: The rational basis of the relation [following a leader] is, however, seen to be at any rate open to discussion when we consider the qualities in a leader upon which his authority so often rests, for there can be little doubt that their appeal is more generally to instinct than to reason. In ordinary politics it must be admitted that the gift of public speaking is of more decisive value than anything else. If a man is fluent, dextrous, and ready on the platform, he possesses the one indispensable requisite for statesmanship; if in addition he has the gift of moving deeply the emotions of his hearers, his capacity for guiding the infinite complexities of national life becomes undeniable. Experience has shown that no exceptional degree of any other capacity is necessary to make a successful leader. There need be no specially arduous training, no great weight of knowledge, either of affairs or the human heart, no receptiveness to new ideas, no outlook into reality.[1] [Footnote 1: Trotter, p. 116.] Though these be picturesquely exaggerated statements, they do indicate the fact that the outward signs of leadership, of a conspicuously emotional sort, may be more significant in determining the attachments and loyalties of human beings, than are genuine marks of capacity in the direction of political and social affairs. This pronounced tendency on the part of human beings to follow a lead, and anybody's lead, as it were, has the most serious dangers. It means that a man with qualities that sway men's emotions and stir their imaginations can attach to himself the profoundest loyalties for personal or class ends. The gifts of personal magnetism, of a kindly voice, an air of confidence and calmness, exuberant vitality, and a sensitivity to other people's feelings, along with some of the genuine qualities of effective and expert control of men and affairs, may be used by a demagogue as well as by a really devoted servant of the popular good, by an Alcibiades as well as by a Garibaldi, by a conquering Napoleon as well as by a Lincoln. Our instincts of following and submission, apart from education, are as easily aroused by specious signs of social power and conspicuousness as by signs of mental effectiveness and genuine altruistic interest. The exploitation of these tendencies by selfish leaders is therefore particularly easy. The large circulation of the "yellow press," the power in politics of the unscrupulous, the selfish, and the second-rate, are symptoms of how men's natural tendency to follow has been played upon in support of plans and ambitions which would not be sanctioned by their reason. The genius for leadership has been exhibited in criminal gangs, in conquests and in fanaticism, as well as in the promotion of good government, of better labor conditions and better education. But progress in these last-named is dependent on the utilization of men's submissiveness by leaders interested in the promotion of desirable social enterprises. While men may be so easily led, they are responsive to leadership in good directions as well as bad. No great social movements, the freeing of slaves, the gaining of universal suffrage, the bettering of factory conditions, freedom of thought and action, could have gained headway if men had been born unwilling to follow. There are (see chapter IX) ineradicable differences in capacity between men, and if the uninformed and the socially helpless could not be aroused to follow those great both in mind and magnanimity, it is difficult to see how the lot of mankind ever could have, or ever can improve. A good leader may make men support, out of instinctive loyalty, purposes and plans which, if they completely understood them, they would support out of reason. Up to the present most people have been, and will probably remain for a long time to come, too ill-educated or too poorly endowed by nature to understand the bearings of the great social movements in which they are involved. In consequence, it is a matter of congratulation that their instinct of submission can be utilized in the interests of their welfare which they frequently not only do not know how to obtain, but do not understand. The Roman populace, enchanted by Augustus, follow him to greatness, without comprehending the imperial destiny which they are helping to build. The barbarian hordes affectionately following the lead of Charlemagne incidentally help to build the whole edifice of European civilization. MEN DISPLAY QUALITIES OF LEADERSHIP. The obverse of man's tendency to follow a lead is, of course, his tendency to take it. Individuals tend to display persistently and conspicuously just those qualities which will win them the allegiance of others. The instinct of self-display is manifested by many of the higher social or gregarious animals.... Perhaps among mammals the horse displays it most clearly. The muscles of all parts are strongly innervated, the creature holds himself erect, his neck is arched, his tail lifted, his motions become superfluously vigorous and extensive, he lifts his hoofs high in air as he parades before the eyes of his fellows.... Many children clearly exhibit this instinct of self-display; before they can walk or talk the impulse finds its satisfaction in the admiring gaze or plaudits of the family circle as each new acquirement is practiced; a little later it is still more clearly expressed by the frequently repeated command, "See me do this," or "See how well I can do so and so"; and for many a child more than half the delight of riding on a pony, of wearing a new coat, consists in the satisfaction of this instinct, and vanishes if there be no spectators.[1] [Footnote 1: McDougall; _loc. cit._, pp. 62-64.] Individuals thus instinctively love to stand out from their fellows, to outdistance and outclass them. And the qualities of leadership are not infrequently stimulated by this competition with others, for place, power, distinction. To win the allegiance and loyal affection of men means that one's own personality is enhanced; one stands out as a man of affairs, a social or political leader, a guide to others in action or thought. As has already been pointed out, the qualities that will win the submission and loyalty of others vary widely. In the case of one man it may be a charming smile and a gift of saying striking and stirring rather than significant things. In the case of another it may be his air of immense confidence, restraint, and reserve. It may be brute force or a terrible earnestness; it may even be, as in the case of certain religious reformers, extraordinary gentleness. Garibaldi "inspired among men of the most various temperaments love that nothing could shake, and devotion that fell little short of idolatry." "He enjoyed the worship and cast the spell of a legendary hero." Alcibiades charmed, despite the patent evil he wrought, by his magical personal beauty and grace. Vandamme said of Napoleon: "That devil of a man exercises on me a fascination that I cannot explain to myself, and in such a degree that, though I fear neither God nor devil, when I am in his presence I am ready to tremble like a child, and he could make me go through the eye of a needle to throw myself into the fire." Augereau is stupefied at their first meeting, and confesses afterwards that "this little devil of a general" has inspired him with awe.[1] [Footnote 1: See chapter XXI on "Personality" in Ross's _Social Control_.] Men's qualities of leadership depend, however, not only on their personal charm, but on certain seeming or genuine symptoms of effectiveness. Evidences of strong determination, of a sweeping imagination, of calm, of confidence, of enthusiasm, of qualities possessed by the vast majority only in minor degrees, win men's admiration and devotion because they are associated with the ability to accomplish great ends, to do the unusual, to succeed where most people fail. Most men are so conscious of their limitations and the difficulties of any enterprise which they undertake that at any sign of exceptional talent, whether real or apparent, they will commit their respect, their energies, and sometimes, as in the case of a religious crusade, their lives. For good or evil, the possession, the cultivation, and the exhibition of the qualities of leadership give men enormous power. There was in the nineteenth century a historical fashion, brilliantly exemplified by Carlyle, to assume that history was made by great men. Latterly, there has been wide dissent from this simplification of the processes of history, but it is clear that innovations must be started by individuals, and that a powerful leader is a matchless instrument for initiating, and getting wide and enthusiastic support for changes, whether good or bad. To quote Carlyle's eloquent exaggeration: For, as I take it, Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at the bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, ... the creators of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realization and embodiment, of thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be considered, was the history of these.... Could we see _them_ well, we should get some glimpses into the very marrow of the world's history.[1] [Footnote 1: Carlyle: _Heroes and Hero-Worship_, Lecture I.] Later Nietzsche made much of this same idea, of the Superman striding through the world and changing its destiny, although in Nietzsche the Superman was an end in himself rather than the servant of the world in which he lived. To most historical writers to-day the forces at work in history are much too complex to be dismissed with any such simple melodrama. But there remain striking testimonies of the influence of leaders. The sweep of Mohammedanism into Europe was initiated by the burning and contagious zeal of one religious enthusiast. The campaign against slavery in this country assumed large proportions through the strenuous leadership of the Garrisons and the Wendell Phillipses. In our own day we have seen the same phenomenon; the great political and social changes of the last generation have all had their special advocates and leaders who, if they were merely expressing the "spirit of the times," yet did give that spirit expression. Every reform or revolution has its leading spirits. That leadership is not the one essential goes without saying; there have been great guides of repeatedly lost causes. But many great causes may have been lost through the want of good leadership. In contemporary life leadership is not always directly personal, but is carried on through the medium of the newspapers and periodicals. But this merely means that a leader may reach a wider audience; he reaches thousands through picture and print, instead of hundreds by word of mouth. Qualities of leadership may be utilized in the support of the customary or the established, as well as in initiation and support of the novel. People ape the great, or those that pass for great, in manners and morals. The words of a distinguished public man have prestige in the maintenance of the established. Men _will_ follow, and if the socially conspicuous lead them along the ways of the established, they will follow there as readily and, being creatures of habit, often more readily than along new paths. The immense following among the lower social classes that the Conservative Party had in England all through the nineteenth century in the face of proposed changes that would have bettered their own conditions, is an interesting illustration of this. This is partly because the influence of leaders is dependent on their social status as well as their personal qualities. The opinions of inventors and big business men are taken with eagerness and credulity even when touching matters outside their own field. A man is made, as it were, _ipso facto_, a leader, by being rich, powerful, of a socially distinguished family, or the director of a large industry, although he may have, besides, qualities of leadership that do not depend on his social position. MAN PITIES AND PROTECTS WEAK AND SUFFERING THINGS. Nearly all human beings exhibit a tendency to protect weak and suffering things. This impulse is closely related to, and probably has its origin in the parental instinct, more common, of course, in women than in men. The feeling of affectionate pity and the impulse to rescue from pain are most intense when the distressed thing is a child, and particularly one's own. One of the most poignant instances extant is the speech of Andromache, one of the Trojan women in Euripides's play of that name, to her child who is about to be slain by the Greeks: And none to pity thee!... Thou little thing, That curlest in my arms, what sweet scents cling All round thy neck! Beloved; can it be All nothing, that this bosom cradled thee And fostered; all the weary nights wherethrough I watched upon thy sickness, till I grew Wasted with watching? Kiss me. This one time; Not ever again. Put up thine arms and climb About my neck; now kiss me, lips to lips... O ye have found an anguish that outstrips All tortures of the East, ye gentle Greeks! Why will ye slay this innocent that seeks No wrong?...[1] [Footnote 1: Euripides: ''Trojan Women'' (Gilbert Murray translation), p. 49.] But the "tender emotion" as McDougall calls it, is aroused by other children than one's own, and by others than children. It is called out particularly by things that are by nature helpless and delicate, but may be aroused by adults who are placed in situations where they are suffering and powerless. Samson, shorn of his strength, has been a traditional occasion for pathos. The sick, the bereaved, the down-and-outers, the failures, the forlorn and broken-hearted, call out in most men an impulse to befriend and protect. Those who have been dealt with unjustly or severely by their associates and society and who have no redress, the poverty-stricken, the criminal who has been punished and remains an exile, the maimed and deformed, the widow and orphan, all these, arouse, apart from the restraining force exercised by other instincts and habits, such as anger and disgust, a natural tendency to pity and aid. The parental instinct in its direct and primitive form is responsible for the closeness of family relations, a most important consideration in the case of humans who have, as already discussed, a long period of infancy during which they are absolutely dependent on their elders. In the higher species, writes McDougall, "The protection and cherishing of the young is the constant and all-absorbing occupation of the mother, to which she devotes all her energies, and in the course of which she will at any time undergo privation, pain, and death. The instinct becomes more powerful than any other, and can override any other, even fear itself."[2] Wherever the power of the parental instinct has waned, as in Greek and Roman society, the civilization in which that degeneration occurred was subjected to rapid decay.[3] [Footnote 2: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 67.] [Footnote 3: _Cf. Ibid._, p. 271.] The parental instinct in its more general form of pity and protectiveness toward all weak and suffering things is, in the minds of many moralists, the origin of all altruistic sentiments and actions, and at the same time the moral indignation which insists on the punishment of wrong-doers. It is clearly apparent in such movements as the Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children or to Animals, the antivivisection crusade, and the like. But according to such a distinguished moralist as John Stuart Mill, the whole system of justice and punishment has its origins in this tender feeling for those who have been wronged. FEAR. Fear is one of the least specialized of human traits, being called out in a great variety of situations, and resulting in a great variety of responses. The most obvious symptom of fear is flight, but there may be a dozen other responses. "Crouching, clinging, starting, trembling, remaining stock still, covering the eyes, opening the mouth and eyes, a temporary cessation followed by an acceleration of the heart-beat, difficulty in breathing, paleness, sweating, and erection of the hair are responses of which certain ones seem bound, apart from training, to certain situations, such as sudden loud noises or clutches, the sudden appearance of strange objects, thunder and lightning, loneliness and the dark."[1] [Footnote 1: Thorndike: _loc. cit._, p. 20.] In general, the marked physical reactions and deep emotional disturbance that we call fear are aroused by anything loud or strange, or that has outward signs of possible danger to ourselves, such as a large wild animal approaching us. In civilized man, whose life is comparatively sheltered, there are considerable individual differences in susceptibility to fear, and in the intensity with which it controls the individual. But there are certain typical situations that call it forth. Among young children, and not much less so among adults, fear is aroused by any sudden loud noise, by strange men and strange animals, black things and dark places, "vermin," such as spiders and snakes, among a great many adults fear of high places, and, among a few agaraphobia or fear of open spaces.[1] The deep-seatedness of fear has been explained by the fact that most of the things which instinctively arouse fear were, in primitive life, the source of very real danger and that under those conditions, where it was absolutely essential to beware of the unfamiliar and the strange, only those animals survived who were equipped with such a protective mechanism as fear provides. [Footnote 1: For a discussion of these, see James: _Psychology_, vol. II, p. 415 ff.] The instinct of fear has important social consequences, especially as its influence is not infrequently clothed over with reasons. In savage life, as McDougall points out, "fear of physical punishment inflicted by the anger of his fellows must have been the great agent of discipline of primitive man; through such fear he must first have learned to control and regulate his impulses in conformity with the needs of social life."[2] In contemporary society fear is not so explicitly present, but it is still a deep-seated power over men's lives. Fear of punishment may not be the only reason why citizens remain law-abiding, but it is an important control over many of the less intelligent and the less socially minded. In an unideal society there are still many who will do as much evil as is "within the law," and fear of the consequences of failing a course is among some contemporary undergraduates still an indispensable stimulus of study. [Footnote 2: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 303.] Fear plays a part, however, not only in preventing people from breaking the law, but often from living their lives freely and after their own convictions. As has been strikingly pointed out by Hilaire Belloc and Hobson, one of the greatest evils of our present hit-or-miss methods of employment is the fear of "losing his job," the uncomfortable feeling of insecurity often felt by the workingman who, having so frequently nothing to store up against a rainy day, lives in perpetual fear of sickness or discharge. In earlier times fear of the consequences of expressing dissent from established opinions and beliefs was one of the chief sources of social inertia. Where excommunication, torture, and death followed dissent, it is not surprising that men feared to be dissenters. In contemporary society under normal conditions men have much less to fear in the way of punishment, but may accept the traditional and conventional because they fear the consequences of being different, even if those consequences are not anything more serious than a personal snub. While men fear to dissent because of the disapproval to which they may be subjected, dissent, the novel and strange in action and opinion are themselves feared by most men because of the unknown and unpredictable consequences to which they may lead. Men were at first afraid of the steam-engine and the locomotive. Men still fear novel political and social ideas before they can possibly understand what they have to be afraid of. The fact that thought so continually turns up the novel and the strange is, according to Bertrand Russell, precisely the reason why most men are afraid to think. And fear of the novel, the strange, the unaccustomed is, as in the case of many other instincts, a perfectly natural means of protection that would otherwise have to be sought by elaborate processes of reason. In what we call prudence, caution, and care, fear undoubtedly plays some part, and Plato long ago pointed out it is only the fool, not the brave man, who is utterly unafraid.[l] [Footnote 1: _Protagoras_.] Psychologists may be said to differ largely as to the utility of fear. They are nearly all agreed that in the forest life which was man's originally, fear had its specific marked advantages. Open spaces, dark caverns, loud noises were undoubtedly associated very frequently with danger to the primitive savage, and an instinctive recoil from these centers of disaster was undoubtedly of survival value. But there is an increasing tendency to discount the utility of fear in civilized life. "Many of the manifestations of fear must be regarded as pathological, rather than useful.... A certain amount of timidity obviously adapts us to the world we live in, but the _fear paroxysm_ is surely altogether harmful to him who is its prey."[1] [Footnote 1: James: _Psychology_, vol. II, p. 419.] Fear and worry, which is a continuous form of fear, in general hinder action rather than promote it. In its extreme form it brings about complete paralysis, as in the case of terror-stricken hunted animals. When humans or animals are utterly terrified even death may result. This fact that fear hinders action, sometimes most seriously, seems to some philosophic writers, especially Bertrand Russell, a key fact for social life. "No institution," he writes, "inspired by fear, can further life."[2] And in another connection: "In the world as we have been imagining it, economic fear will be removed out of life.... No one will be haunted by the dread of poverty.... The unsuccessful professional man will not live in terror lest his children should sink in the scale.... In such a world, most of the terrors that lurk in the background of men's minds will no longer exist."[3] "In the daily lives of most men and women, fear plays a _greater part than hope. It is not so that life should be lived_."[4] [Footnote 2: Bertrand Russell: _Why Men Fight_, p. 180.] [Footnote 3: Russell: _Proposed Roads to Freedom_, p. 203.] [Footnote 4: _Ibid._, p. 186. (Italics mine.)] LOVE AND HATE. All human relations are qualified by the presence, more or less intense, of emotion. Human beings are not merely so many items that are coldly counted and handled, as one counts and handles pounds of sugar and pieces of machinery. A man may thus regard human beings when he deals with them in mass, or thinks of them in statistical tables or in the routine of a government office. But human beings experience some emotional accompaniment in their dealings with individuals, especially when face to face, and experience more especially, in varying degrees, the emotions of love or hate. These terms are here used in the general sense of the receptive, positive, or expansive attitude and the cold, negative, repellent, and contractual attitude toward others. These may both be intense and consciously noted, as in the case of long-cherished and deep affections or antipathies to different individuals. They may appear as a half-realized sense of pleasure in the mere presence and poise of a person, or a curious sense of discomfort and irritation at his appearance, his voice, or his gesture. These attitudes, even when slight, color and qualify our relations with other individuals. They may, in their larger manifestations, play so large a part, that they must be considered separately, and in detail. LOVE. Love, used in this broad sense, varies in intensity. It may be nothing more--it certainly frequently starts as nothing more--than the feeling, so native as to be fairly called instinctive, of common sympathy, fellow feeling, immediate affinity with another. The psychological origins of this disposition have already been noted in connection with man's tendency to experience sympathetically immediately the emotions of others. Every business man, lawyer, teacher, any one who comes much into contact with a wide variety of people, knows how, antecedent to any experience with an individual's capacities or talents, or even before one had a chance to draw any inferences from a person's walk, his bearing, or his clothing, one may register an immediate like or dislike. Every one has had the experience in crossing a college campus or riding in a train or street car of noting, in passing some one whom one has never seen before, an immediate reaction of good-will and affection. This has been charmingly expressed by a well-known English poet: "The street sounds to the soldiers' tread, And out we troop to see; A single redcoat turns his head, He turns and looks at me. "My man, from sky to sky's so far, We never crossed before; Such leagues apart the world's ends are, We're like to meet no more. "What thoughts at heart have you and I, We cannot stop to tell; But dead or living, drunk or dry, Soldier, I wish you well."[1] [Footnote 1: A. E. Housman: _The Shropshire Lad_ (John Lane edition), p. 32.] All affection for individuals probably starts in this immediate instinctive liking. "The first note that gives sociability a personal quality and raises the comrade into an incipient friend is doubtless sensuous affinity. Whatever reaction we may eventually make on an impression, after it has had time to soak in and to merge in some practical or intellectual habit, its first assault is always on the senses; and no sense is an indifferent organ. Each has, so to speak, its congenial rate of vibration, and gives its stimuli a varying welcome. Little as we may attend to these instinctive hospitalities of sense, they betray themselves in unjustified likes and dislikes felt for casual persons and things, in the _je ne sais quai_ that makes instinctive sympathy."[2] From this immediate instinctive liking it may rise to deep personal attachments, strikingly manifested in friendship and love between the sexes, both immemorially celebrated by poets and novelists. Love is aroused chiefly by persons, and among persons, especially in the case of sexual love, most frequently by more or less physical beauty and attractiveness. But affection may be aroused and is certainly sustained by other than merely physical qualities. [Footnote 2: Santayana: _Reason in Society_, p. 151.] It is provoked by what we call personal or social charm, a genuine kindliness of manner, an open-handed sincerity and frankness, considerateness, gentleness, whimsicality. Which particular social graces will win our affections depends of course on our own interests, equipment, and fund of instinctive and acquired sympathies. Popular psychology has in various proverbs hit at and not entirely missed some of the obvious and contradictory elements: "Opposites attract," "Birds of a feather flock together," and so on. Intellectual qualities, in persons of marked intellectual interests, will also sustain friendship and deepen an instinctive liking. Friendships thus begin in accident and are continued through community of interest. It is to be questioned whether merely striking intellectual qualities initiate a friendship. They may command admiration and respect, but liking, friendship, and love have a more emotional and personal basis. This same warm affectionate appreciation that nearly all people have for other persons, fewer people--great poets, philosophers, and enthusiastic leaders of men--have for causes, institutions, and ideas. One feels in the works of great thinkers the same warmth and loyalty to ideas and causes that ordinary people display toward their friends. Plato has given for all time the progress of love from attachment to a single individual through to institutions, ideas, and what he called mystically the idea of beauty itself. For he who would proceed rightly in this matter should begin in youth to turn to beautiful forms; and first, if his instructor guide him rightly, he should learn to love one such form only--out of that he should create fair thoughts, and soon he will himself perceive that the beauty of one form is truly related to the beauty of another, and then if beauty in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is one and the same! And when he perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; this will lead him on to consider that the beauty of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him... until his beloved is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws, and understand that all is of one kindred; and that personal beauty is only a trifle; and after laws and institutions, he will lead him on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty... until at length he grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science which is the science of beauty everywhere.[l] [Footnote 1: Plato: _Symposium_ (Jowett translation), p. 502.] There have been again great scientists who have had the same warm affectionate devotion for their subject-matter that most men display toward persons. There are scholars almost literally in love with their subjects. There have been a greater number whose capacity for affection has extended to include the whole human race, and, indeed, all animate creation. Such a type of character is beautifully exemplified in Saint Francis of Assisi: In Francis all living creatures may truly be said to have found a friend and benefactor; his great heart embraced all the men and women who sought his sympathy and advice, and his pity for the dumb helplessness of suffering animals was deep and true. He would lift the worm from his path lest a careless foot should crush it, and would encourage his "little sister grasshopper" to perch upon his hand, and chirp her song to his gentle ear. He tamed the fierce wolf of Gubbio, and fed the robins with crumbs from his table.[1] [Footnote 1: Goff and Kerr-Lawson: _Assisi of Saint Francis_, p. 121.] And Christ stands, of course, in the Christian world, as the supreme symbol of love for mankind. In ordinary men it is this generalized affection which is at the basis of any sustained interest in philanthropic or altruistic enterprises. No less than a large and generous affection for humanity is required to enable men to endure for long the dreariness and disillusion so often incident to philanthropic work, the conflicts and disappointments of public administration. Certainly this is true of the first rank of statesmen; no characterization of Lincoln fails to emphasize his essential humanity and tenderness. Disinterested love for humanity is normally most intense in the adolescent.[2] The pressure of private concerns, of one's narrowing interest in one's own career, one's own family, and small circle of friends, the restriction of one's sympathies by fixed habits and circumscribed experience, all tend to dampen by middle age the ardor of the man who as an undergraduate at eighteen set out to make the world "a better place to live in." But more effective in dampening enthusiasm is the disillusion and weariness that set in after a period of exuberant and romantic benevolence to mankind in general. "We call pessimists," writes a contemporary French philosopher, "those who are in reality only disillusioned optimists."[1] So the cynic may be fairly described as a disheartened lover of men. It is only an unusual gift of affectionate good-will that enables mature men, after rough and disillusioning experiences in public life, to maintain without sentimentality a genuine and persistent interest in the welfare of others. Those in whom the fund of human kindness is slender will, and easily do, become cynical and hard. [Footnote 2: Simeon Strunsky has somewhere remarked: "At eighteen a man is interested in causes; at twenty-eight in commutation tickets."] [Footnote 1: Georges Sorel: _Reflection on Violence_ (English translation), p. 9.] The attitude of affection for others is profoundly influential in stimulating our interest in specific individuals, and modifying our attitudes toward them. We cannot help being more interested in those for whom we entertain affection than in those to whom we are indifferent. In the same way our judgments of our own friends, families, and children are qualified by our affection for them. Parents and lovers are notoriously partial, and a fair judgment of the work of our friends demands unusual clarity, determination, and poise. In a larger way the generally friendly attitude towards others, genial expansive receptivity, is at the basis of what is called "charity for human weakness." The gentle cynic can see and tolerate other men's weaknesses: "He knows how much of what men paint themselves Would blister in the light of what they are; He sees how much of what was great now shares An eminence transformed and ordinary; He knows too much of what the world has hushed In others, to be loud now for himself."[2] [Footnote 2: Edwin Arlington Robinson: "Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford," in his _Man Against the Sky_.] The devoutly religious have displayed keen psychological insight when they made man's salvation dependent on God's charity, and identified, as did Dante, charity with love.[3] [Footnote 3: "Love and the gentle heart are one and the same thing." _The New Life_. XX (son XI) _Amore e cor gentile son una cosa._ To Dante the spontaneous impulse to love is the basis of all altruism. To feel and to follow this impulse is to be truly noble, to have a "_cor gentile_," a gentle heart.] HATE. Hate may be described as an extreme form of disaffection usually provoked by some marked interference with our activities, desires, or ideals. But in less intense degree the negative feeling towards others may be provoked immediately and unmistakably by most casual evidence of voice, manner, or bearing. Such immediate revulsions of feeling contrast with the instances of "instinctive sympathy" previously cited, and are as direct and uncontrollable. Even kindly disposed persons cannot help experiencing in the presence of some persons they have never seen before, a half-conscious thrill of repulsion or a dislike colored with dread. A shifting gaze, a noticeably pretentious manner, a marked obsequiousness, a grating voice, a chillness of demeanor, a physical deformity, these, however little they may have to do with a person's genuine qualities, do affect our attitudes toward them. As the familiar verse has it: "I do not like you, Dr. Fell, The reason why I cannot tell, But this I know, and know full well, I do not like you, Dr. Fell." We may later revise our estimates, but the initial reaction is made, and often remains as a subconscious qualification of our general attitude toward another. People of worldly experience learn to trust their first reactions, to "size a man up" almost intuitively, and to be surprised if their first impressions go astray. From this merely instinctive revulsion the negative attitude may rise to that terrible form of destructive antipathy which is "hate," as popularly understood. In between lie degrees of dislike depending partly on the strength of the initial antipathy, but equally so on the degree to which others, whether persons, institutions, or ideas, interfere with our activities, desires, or ideals. The man who seriously obstructs our love, our pleasure, or our ambition, or who tries to do so, provokes hate, and its concomitants of jealousy, rage, and pugnacity. It is not only that we dislike the mere presence of the person (in the opposite case the mere presence of the beloved object is a joy), but we dislike it for what it portends in danger and threat to ourselves. The more serious the evil or disaster for which a person comes to stand, the more violent the hatred for him, despite his personal fascinations. The villain is not infrequently a "damned smiling villain." The provocation of hate is complicated by the fact that it is closely associated with fear. We dislike those who threaten our happiness partly because we fear them. And we fear, as was pointed out in more detail in the discussion of that powerful human trait, the unfamiliar, the strange, the startling, the unexpected. The facility with which sensational newspapers can work up in an ignorant population a hate for foreign nations, especially those of a totally alien civilization, is made possible by the fear which these uninformed readers can feel at the dangerous possibilities of mysterious foreign hordes. The fomenting of fear is in nearly all such cases a prerequisite to the fomenting of hate. And the promotion of hate has historically been one of the frequent ingredients of international conflicts. Like love, hate is profoundly influential in modifying our interest in persons and situations. To dislike a person moderately is, in his absence, to be indifferent to him. To dislike him intensely, in a sense increases our interest in him, though perversely. Just as we wish the beloved person to succeed, to gain honor and reputation and wealth, so we long for and rejoice in the downfall and discomfiture of our enemies. Thus writes the Psalmist: Arise, O Lord, save me, my God; for thou has smitten all mine enemies upon the cheekbone; thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly.... Thou hast also given me the necks of mine enemies that I might destroy those that hate me. Hate may be directed against persons, and usually it is. But hatred may be directed against institutions and ideas as well. For many persons it will be impossible for a decade to listen to German music or the German language, so closely have these become associated in their minds with ideas and practices which they detest. To a dogmatic Calvinist in the sixteenth century, both an heretical creed and its practitioners, were objects of abomination. Disappointed men may take out in a spleen and hatred of mankind their personal pique and balked desires. Great hates may be present at the same time and in the same persons as great loves. Indeed for some persons strength in the one passion is impossible without a corresponding strength in its opposite. We cannot help hating, more or less, not only those who interfere with our own welfare, but with the welfare of those who, being dear to us, have become, as we say, a part of our lives. Thus writes Bertrand Russell in the introduction to his treatment of some of the radical social tendencies of our own day: Whatever bitterness or hate may be found in the movements which we are to examine, it is not bitterness or hate, but love, that is their mainspring. It is difficult not to hate those who torture the objects of our love. Though difficult, it is not impossible; but it requires a breadth of outlook, and a comprehensiveness of understanding which are not easy to preserve amid a desperate contest.[1] [Footnote 1: Russell: _Proposed Roads to Freedom_, pp. xvii-xviii.] Hate may thus be, as great religious and social reformers illustrate, invoked on the side of good as well as evil. The prophets burned with a "righteous indignation." But hate is a violent and consuming passion, bent on destroying obstacles rather than solving problems. It consumes in hatred for individuals such energy as might more expeditiously be devoted to the improvement of the circumstances which make people do the mean or small or blind actions which arouse our wrath. The complete meekness and humility preached by Christ have not been taken literally by the natively pugnacious peoples of Europe. But as James says suggestively: "Love your enemies!" Mark you not simply those who do not happen to be your friends, but your _enemies_, your positive and active enemies. Either this is a mere Oriental hyperbole, a bit of verbal extravagance, meaning only that we should, in so far as we can, abate our animosities, or else it is sincere and literal. Outside of certain cases of intimate individual relation, it seldom has been taken literally. Yet it makes one ask the question: Can there in general be a level of emotion so unifying, so obliterative of differences between man and man, that even enmity may come to be an irrelevant circumstance and fail to inhibit the friendlier interests aroused. If positive well-wishing could attain so supreme a degree of excitement, those who were swayed by it might well seem superhuman beings. Their life would be morally discrete from the lives of other men, and there is no saying... what the effects might be: they might conceivably transform the world.[1] [Footnote 1: James: _Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 283.] Dislikes, disagreements, native antipathies are not to be abolished, human differences being ineradicable and human interests, even in an ideal society, being in conflict. But a keener appreciation of other viewpoints, which is possible through education, a less violent concern with one's own personal interests to the exclusion of all others, may greatly reduce the amount of hate current in the world, and free men's energies in passions more positive in their fruits. CHAPTER VII THE DEMAND FOR PRIVACY AND INDIVIDUALITY PRIVACY AND SOLITUDE. Although one of man's most powerful tendencies, as has already been pointed out, is his desire to be with his fellows, this desire is not unqualified. Just as men can be satiated with too much eating, and irritated by too much inactivity, so men become "fed up" with companionship. The demand for solitude and privacy is thus fundamentally a physiological demand, like the demand for rest. "The world is too much with us," especially the human world. Companionship, even of the most desirable kind, exhausts nervous energy, and may become positively fatiguing and painful. To crave solitude is thus not a sign of man's unsociability, but a sign merely that sociability, like any other human tendency, becomes annoying, if too long or too strenuously indulged. Much of the neurasthenia of city life has been attributed to the continual contact with other people, and the total inability of most city dwellers to secure privacy for any considerable length of time. In some people a lifelong habit of close contact with large numbers of people makes them abnormally gregarious, so that solitude, the normal method of recuperation from companionship, becomes unbearable. Few city dwellers have not felt after a period of isolation in some remote country place the need for the social stimulus of the city. But a normal human life demands a certain proportion of solitude just as much as it demands the companionship of others. With the spread of education and the general enhancement of the sense of personal selfhood and individuality among large numbers of people, the demand for privacy has increased. The modern reader is shocked to discover in the literature of the Elizabethan period the amazing lack of a sense of privacy there exhibited. In contemporary society this sense and the possibility of its satisfaction are variously displayed on different economic and social levels. In the congested life of the tenements it is almost impossible, and many social evils are to be traced to the promiscuous mingling of large families (and sometimes additional boarders) in congested quarters. The demand for privacy and solitude becomes acute among people who do a great deal of mental work. "Man," says Nietzsche, "cannot think in a herd," and the thinker has traditionally been pictured as a solitary man. This is because quiet seems to be, for most men, an essential condition of really creative thought. There are some men who find it impossible to write when there is another person, even one of whom they are fond, in the same room. "No man," writes Mr. Graham Wallas, "is likely to produce creative thoughts (either consciously or subconsciously) if he is constantly interrupted by irregular noises." Constant association with other people means, moreover, continual distraction by conversation which seriously interrupts a consecutive train of thought. The insistence in public and college reading rooms on absolute quiet is a device for securing as nearly as may be privacy in intellectual work. Privacy is again demanded as a matter of emotional protection in individuals in whom there is a highly sensitive development of personal selfhood. We like to keep our concerns to ourselves, or to share them only with those with whom we have a marked community of interest and feeling. Children love to "have secrets they won't tell," and older people, especially sensitive and intelligent ones, feel a peculiar sense of irritation at having their personal affairs and feelings publicly displayed. Nearly everyone must recall occasions where he was vividly communicative and loquacious with a friend, only to relapse into a clam-like silence on the entry of a third person. This is primarily due to the fact that while men are by nature gregarious, their gregariousness early becomes specialized and aroused exclusively by people for whom they develop a sense of personal affection and common sympathy. Any intrusion from without this circle becomes an intrusion upon privacy. SATISFACTION IN PERSONAL POSSESSION: THE ACQUISITIVE INSTINCT. An almost universal human trait of considerable social consequence is the satisfaction men experience in having objects that are their own. Both animals and humans, apart from training, display a tendency to get and hold objects. This tendency may take extreme forms, as in the case of miserliness or kleptomania. It is evidenced in special ways in the collections that children, and some grown-ups, make of miscellaneous objects without any particular use, and with no particular æsthetic value. The objects which satisfy this instinct of possession may include material goods, family, or larger groups. In primitive tribes under the patriarchal system, the patriarch practically owns the tribe. Our laws not so long ago recognized the marriage relation as a state in which the wife is possessed or owned by the husband. Possession gives the owner various kinds of satisfaction. The instinctive satisfaction in possession itself may be quite irrespective of the values of the objects owned, and deprivation may be fiercely resisted out of all proportion to the value of the objects. Especially will this be the case if the object possessed has become surrounded with other emotional attachments, so that an individual may be as bitterly chagrined and piqued by being deprived of some slight memoir or keepsake as of a large sum of money. In the same way the fighting spirit of a whole tribe or nation may be aroused by the invasion or seizure of a small and unimportant bit of land, or by the chance of its possession. The instinctive sense of satisfaction, as in the last mentioned case is enhanced by the sense of importance which comes from possession, and which enhances one's own individuality and personality. A man's vast holdings in wealth, land, factories, machinery, or private estates is, in a sense, regarded by him as an extension of his personality. He is confirmed in this impression because it is so regarded by his neighbors and the whole social group. A great landowner is a celebrity throughout the countryside, and, as Mr. Veblen points out, a large part of the luxurious display and expenditure of the leisure classes is their way of publicly and conspicuously indicating the amount of their possessions. As in the case of any other strong native tendency, interference with the instinct of acquisition, whether displayed by the individual or the group, provokes often fierce anger and bitter combat. The history of wars of aggrandizement throughout the history of Europe are testimonies to the efficacy of this instinct at least in the initiation of war. The progress of civilization beyond its earliest states is held, by some sociologists and economists, to be ascribed to the power of the acquisitive instinct. The acquisition of material wealth or capital, the development of the institution of private property with its concomitant individual development of land and natural resources is maintained by Lester Ward to be of paramount importance in social advance: ... Objects of desire multiplied themselves and their possession became an end of effort. Slowly the notion of property came into being and in acquiring this, as history shows, the larger share of all human energy has been absorbed. The ruling passion has for a time long anterior to any recorded annals always been proprietary acquisition.... Both the passion and the means of satisfying it were conditions to the development of society itself, and rightly viewed they have also been leading factors in civilization.[1] [Footnote 1: Lester Ward: _The Psychic Factors of Civilization_, p. 156.] There are many other motives to activity than acquisition, but there are many evidences of its intense operation even in modern society. Many men go on working long after they have money enough to enable them to live in comfort, merely for the further satisfaction of this impulse. "While in the course of satisfaction of most other desires, the point of satiety is soon reached, the demands of this one grow greater without limit, so that it knows no satiety."[1] [Footnote 1: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 323.] The power of this tendency to personal acquisition and possession seems an obstacle to all thoroughly communistic forms of political and social organization. The conception of a state where nobody owns anything, but where all is owned in common--an idea which has been repeated in many modern forms of socialism and communism, fails to note this powerful human difficulty. Many socialist writers, it must be noted, however, point out that they wish social ownership of the means of production rather than of every item of personal property, such as books, clothing, and the like. INDIVIDUALITY IN OPINION AND BELIEF. Men frequently display with regard to their opinions and beliefs the same passionate attachment that they exhibit with regard to their physical possessions. Like the latter, these come to be regarded as an extension of the individual's personality, and the same tenacious defense may be made of them as of a house, land, or money. Individual opinions and beliefs are not themselves possessions, from a social point of view, so much as is the right to express them. A man's private opinion may influence his own conduct; his conduct itself may be an expression of opinion. But unless an opinion is communicated, it cannot influence any one else's conduct, and society has never been much concerned about opinions that an individual harbored strictly in his own bosom. Silence, socially, is as good as assent. The insistence on the right to one's own opinions becomes, therefore, an insistence on the right or the freedom to express them.[2] This right is cherished in varying degrees by different individuals in different ages. It becomes pronounced in persons in whom there is marked development of individuality, and, in general, where, as in Anglo-Saxon countries, a social and political tradition of liberty and individuality has become very powerful. [Footnote 2: Beliefs and opinions may come to be regarded as important personal possessions in themselves, as in the case of rival claimants to some theory or idea, as in the case of Leibnitz's and Newton's dispute over the calculus.] Individuality in opinion and belief becomes critical chiefly when the opinions and beliefs expressed are at variance with those generally current among the group. For reasons already discussed in connection with man's instinctive gregariousness and the emotional sway which habits of thought have over men, dissent is regarded with suspicion. Especially is this the case where the dissenting opinions have to do with new social organization and custom. The psychological causes of this opposition are various, but include among other things a positive feeling of fear. It is only recently that men have been abandoning the belief that the welfare of a state depends on rigid stability and on the preservation of its traditions and institutions unchanged. Wherever that belief prevails, novel opinions are felt to be dangerous as well as annoying, and any one who asks inconvenient questions about the why and the wherefore of accepted principles is considered a pestilent person.[1] [Footnote 1: Bury: _History of Freedom of Thought_, p. 9.] Throughout history there has been a long struggle for freedom of thought and discussion, and there have been great landmarks in the degree with which freedom was attained, and the fields wherein it was permitted. For a long time in the history of Europe, dissent from the prevailing opinion on religious matters was regarded both as abominable and socially dangerous, and was severely punished. Since the middle of the nineteenth century there has been no legal punishment provided for dissent from established opinions in religion, although penalties for heterodoxy in countries where religious opinion is strong and fairly unanimous may be exerted in other ways. In social matters also, there has practically ceased to be legal coercion of opinion.[2] The argument for the suppression of individual opinion has been tersely summarized by the author above quoted: [Footnote 2: Except in the recent period of excitement and stress during the Great War, when suppression of opinion was, for better or for worse, taken as a measure of national defense.] Those who have the responsibility of governing a society can argue that it is incumbent on them to prohibit the circulation of pernicious opinions as to prohibit any anti-social actions. They can argue that a man may do far more harm by propagating anti-social doctrines than by stealing his neighbor's horse or making love to his neighbor's wife. They are responsible for the welfare of the State, and if they are convinced that an opinion is dangerous... it is their duty to protect society against it as against any other danger.[1] [Footnote 1: Bury: _loc. cit._, p. 13.] THE SOCIAL IMPORTANCE OF INDIVIDUALITY IN OPINION. There have been many notable documents in support of the belief that society is the gainer and not the loser by permitting and encouraging individuality in thought and belief. The following, taken from one of the most famous of these, John Stuart Mill's _Essay on Liberty_, was written to illustrate the fatal results of prohibiting dissenting opinions merely because most people think or call them immoral: Mankind can hardly be too often reminded that there was once a man named Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities and public opinion of his time there took place a memorable collision. Born in an age and country abounding in individual greatness, this man has been handed down to us by those who best knew both him and the age, as the most virtuous man in it.... This acknowledged master of all the eminent thinkers who have since lived--whose fame, still growing after two thousand years, all but outweighs the whole remainder of the names which make his native city illustrious--was put to death by his countrymen, after a judicial conviction, for impiety and immorality. Impiety, in denying the gods recognized by the State.... Immorality, in being, by his doctrines and instructions, a "corrupter of youth." Of these charges the tribunal, there is every ground for believing, honestly found him guilty, and condemned the man who probably of all then born had deserved best of mankind to be put to death as a criminal.[2] [Footnote 2: J. S. Mill: _Essay on Liberty_, chap. II.] Every important step in human progress has been a variation from the normal or accustomed, something new. Most advances in science have been departures from older and accustomed ways of thinking. Through the permission and encouragement of individual variation in opinion we may discover in the first place that accepted beliefs are wrong. Galileo thought differently from the accepted Ptolemaic astronomy of his day, and the demonstration of his diverging belief proved the Ptolemaic astronomy to be wrong. The evolutionary theory, bitterly attacked in its day, replaced Cuvier's doctrine of the forms of life upon earth coming about through a series of successive catastrophes. Lyell, in the face of the whole scientific world of his day, insisted on the gradual and uniform development of the earth's surface. Half the scientific doctrines now accepted as axiomatic were bitterly denounced when they were first suggested by an inquiring minority. Milton in his famous _Areopagitica_, an address to Parliament written in 1644, protesting against the censorship of printing, stressed the importance of permitting liberty for the securing and developing of new ideas: What should ye do then, should ye suppress all this flowery crop of knowledge and new light sprung up and yet springing daily in this city? Should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers [censors] over it, to bring a famine upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing but what is measured us by their bushel? ... That our hearts are now more capacious, our thoughts more erected to the search and expectation of greatest and exactest things, is the issue of your own virtue propagated in us; ye cannot suppress that unless ye reënforce an abrogated and merciless law.... Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.[1] [Footnote 1: Milton: _Areopagitica_.] Even if the currently accepted doctrines prove to be true, there is, as Mill pointed out, a vast social utility in permitting the expression of contrary opinion though it be an error. New ideas, however extreme, "may and commonly do possess some portion of truth"; they bring to light and emphasize some aspect or point of view which prevailing theories fail to note. Thus the possible over-emphasis of certain contemporary writers on the socialization of man's life is a valuable corrective to the equal over-emphasis on individualism which was current among so many thinkers during the nineteenth century. The insistence with which present-day psychologists call our attention to the power of instinct, though it may possibly be over-emphasized, counterbalances that tendency exhibited by such earlier authors as Bentham to picture man as a purely rational being, whose every action was determined by sheer logic. Finally, unless doctrines are subjected to criticism and inquiry, no matter how beneficial they are to society, they will become merely futile and empty formulæ with very little beyond a mechanical influence on people's lives. The maxims of conventional morality and religion which everybody believes and few practice are solemnly bandied about with little comprehension of their meaning and no tendency to act upon them. A belief becomes, as Mill pointed out, living, vital, and influential in the clash of controversy. Whether novel and dissenting doctrines are true or false, therefore, the encouragement of their expression provides vitality and variation without which progress is not possible. The social appreciation of persons who display marked individual opinions varies in different ages toward the same individual. The martyr stoned to death by one generation becomes the hero and prophet of the next. One has but to look back at the contemporary vilification and ridicule to which Lincoln was subjected to find an illustration. Or, on a more monumental scale: The event which took place on Calvary rather more than eighteen hundred years ago. The man who left on the memory of those who witnessed his life and conversation such an impression of his moral grandeur that eighteen subsequent centuries have done homage to him as the Almighty in person, was ignominiously put to death, as what? As a blasphemer.[1] [Footnote 1: Mill: _Essay on Liberty_, chap. II.] One would suppose that men would have learned not only to tolerate and be receptive to novelty in belief after these repeatedly tardy recognitions of greatness. There are dozens of instances in the history of religious, social, and political belief, of men and women who, suppressed with the bitterest cruelty in one generation, have been in effect, and sometimes in fact, canonized by posterity. And a certain degree of tolerance and receptiveness has come to be the result. But while we no longer burn religious and social heretics, condemnation is still meted out in some form of ostracism. Prejudice, custom, and special interest frequently move men to suppress in milder ways extremists, expression of whose opinions seems to them, as unusual opinions have frequently seemed, fraught only with the greatest of harm. CHAPTER VIII THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE "SELF" ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A SENSE OF PERSONAL SELFHOOD. The expression of individuality in opinion is only one way men have of expressing their personality, individuality, or self. From the beginnings of childhood, men experience an increasing sense of "personal selfhood" which finds various outlets in action or thought. So familiar, indeed, in the normal man is his realization that he is a "self," that it seldom occurs to him that this conception was an attainment gradually accomplished through long years of experience with the world about him. The very young baby does not distinguish between Itself and the Not-Self which constitutes the remainder of the universe. It is nothing but a stream of experiences, of moment to moment pulsations of desire, of hunger and satisfaction, of bodily comfort and bodily pain. As it grows older, it begins dimly to distinguish between Itself and Everything-Else; it finds itself to be something different, more vivid, more personal and interesting than the chairs and tables, the crib and bottle, the faces and hands, the smiles and rattles that are its familiar setting. It discovers that "I am I," and that everything else ministers to or frustrates or remains indifferent to its desires. It becomes a person rather than a bundle of reactions. It develops a consciousness of "self." In its simplest form this consciousness of self is nothing more than a continuous stream of inner organic sensations, and the constant process of the body and limbs "and the special interest of these as the seat of various pleasures and pains." This is what James calls the "bodily self." As it grows older, the baby distinguishes between persons and things. And as, in setting off his own body from other things, it discovers its "bodily self," so in setting off its own opinions, actions, and thoughts from other people, it discovers its "social self." It is because Nature does in some degree the "giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us," that we do discover our "selves" at all. "The normal human being, if it were possible for him to grow up from birth onward in a purely physical environment, deprived, that is, to say, of both animal and human companionship, would develop but a very crude and rudimentary idea of the self."[1] [Footnote 1: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 183.] THE SOCIAL SELF. A man's social self, that is, his consciousness of himself as set over against all the other individuals with whom he comes in contact, develops as his relations with other people grow more complex and various. A man's self, apart from his mere physical body, consists in his peculiar organization of instincts and habits. In common language this constitutes his personality or character. We can infer from it what he will, as we say, characteristically do in any given situation. And a particular organization of instincts and habits is dependent very largely on the individual's social experience, on the types and varieties of contact with other people that he has established. There will be differences, it goes without saying, that depend on initial differences in native capacity. But both the consciousness of self and the overt organization of instinctive and habitual actions are dependent primarily on the groups with which an individual comes in contact. In the formation of habits, both of action and thought, the individual is affected, as we have seen, largely by praise and blame. He very early comes to detect signs of approval and disapproval, and both his consciousness of his individuality and the character of that individuality are, in the case of most persons, largely determined by these outward signs of the praise and blame of others. And since, in normal experience, a man comes into contact with several distinct groups, with varying codes of conduct, he will really have a number of distinct personalities. The professor is a different man in his class and at his club; the judge displays a different character in the court and in the bosom of his family. The self that comes to be most characteristic and distinctive of a man, however, is determined by the group with which he comes most habitually in contact, or to whose approvals he has become most sensitive. Thus there develop certain typical personalities or characters, such as those of the typical lawyer or soldier or judge. Their bearing, action, and consciousness of self are determined by the approvals and disapprovals of the group to which they are most completely and intimately exposed. Both the consciousness of self which most men experience and the overt expression of that selfhood in act are thus seen to be a more or less direct reflex of the praise and blame of the groups with which they are in contact. Men learn from experience with the praise and blame of others to "place" themselves socially, to discover in the mirror of other men's opinions the status and locus of their own lives. As we shall see in a succeeding section, the degree of satisfaction which men experience in their consciousness of themselves is dependent intimately on the praise and blame by which their selfhood is, in the first place, largely determined. In the chapter on the "Social Nature of Man," we examined in some detail the way in which praise and blame modified a man's habits. The total result of this process is to give a man a certain fixed set of overt habits that constitute his character and a more or less fixed consciousness of that character. On the other hand, a man's character and self-consciousness may develop more or less independently of the immediate forces of the public opinion to which he is exposed. One comes in contact in the course of his experience not merely with his immediate contemporaries, but with a wide variety of moral traditions. Except in the rigidly custom-bound life of primitive societies, a man is, even in practical life, exposed to a diversity of codes, standards, and expectations of behavior. His family, his professional, his political, and his social groups expose him to various kinds of emphases and accent in behavior. And a man of some intelligence, education, and culture may be determined in his action by standards whose origin is remote in time, space, and intention from those operative in the predominant public opinion of his day. He may come to act habitually on the basis of ideal standards which he has himself set up through reflection, or which he has acquired from some moral system or tradition, far in advance of those which are the staple determinants of character for most of his contemporaries. He may be one of those rare moral geniuses, singularly unsusceptible to praise and blame, who create a new ideal of character by the dominant individuality of their own. Or, as more frequently happens, he may follow the ideals set up by such a one, instead of accepting the orthodoxies which are generally observed. He may follow Christ instead of the Pharisees, Socrates instead of the habit-crusted citizens of Athens. We are, indeed, inclined to think of a man as a peculiarly distinctive personality, when his sense of selfhood, and the overt actions in which that selfhood finds expression, are not determined by the current dogmas of his day, but by ideal standards to which he has reflectively given allegiance. But so much is the self, both in its consciousness and expression, socially produced that men acting on purely imagined ideal standards, current nowhere in their day and generation, have imagined a group, no matter how small or how remote, who would praise them or a God who noted and approved their ways. CHARACTER AND WILL. From the foregoing it would appear that the self is an organization of habitual tendencies, developed primarily through contact with other people and more specifically through their praise and blame. And consciousness of self is the awareness of the unique or specific character of the habit-organization one has acquired. Individuals differ natively in given capacities, and differences in fully developed personalities depend, certainly in part, on innate initial differences. But differences in the kinds of selfhood displayed and experienced by different men are due to something more than differences in native capacities and native desires. The self that a man exhibits and of which he is conscious, at any given period of his life, depends on the complex system of habits he has in the course of his experience developed. One individual may, as we have seen, develop a number of sets of organized dispositions, a multiple character, as it were, as a consequence of the multiplicity of groups with which he has come in contact. But whether through deliberate or habitual conformity to one group as a norm, or the deliberate organization of habits of action and feeling and thought, on the basis of ideal or reflective standards, a man comes to develop a more or less "permanent self." That is, while men start with somewhat similar native equipments, each man's set of inborn tendencies comes to be fixed in a fairly definite and specific system. While all men start within limits equally responsive and similarly responsive to all stimuli, certain stimuli come to have the "right of way." They are more or less easily and more or less readily responded to, according as they do or as they do not fit in with the habit-organization which the individual has previously acquired. When we say that a man has no character or individuality, we mean that he has developed no stable organization of actions, feelings, and thoughts, with reference to which and by the predominant drive of which his actions are determined. There is no particular system of behavior which he has come consciously to identify as his person or self; no interweaving of motives and stimuli by the persistent momentum of which his conduct is controlled; no single group of stimuli rather than another has, in his pulpy person, attained priority in stimulating power. Such men are chameleons rather than characters. Their actions do not flow from a selfhood or individuality at all; they are merely the random results of the accidental situations in which such men find themselves. The self exists, then, as a well-defined, systematic trend of behavior. Impulses to action attain a certain order of priority in an individual's conduct, and it is by the momentum of these primary drives to action that his life is controlled. What is commonly known as "will" is simply another name for the power and momentum of a man's "personal self." Will exists not as a thing, but as a process. To will an action means to identify it consciously with one's permanent self, to weigh and support it with all the emotions and energies connected with one's consciously realized habitual system of behavior. A man may bring to bear on the accomplishment of a given action the deepest and most powerful motive forces of his developed personality. To pass a course or make a team a student may marshal all the habits of loyalty, of self-assertion (and the emotional energies associated with them) which have become the leading ingredients of his character. The "permanent self" becomes involved in the same way in the case of willing _not_ to perform a certain action. Any stimulus may, on occasion, be strong even if it has ceased to be characteristic or habitual in a man's behavior. This is particularly the case with some of the primary physical drives to action. Even the ascetic feels the strong sting of sense-desire. A man in resisting temptation, in denying the pressure of an immediate stimulus, is setting up to block or inhibit it all the contrary reactions and emotions which have become part of the "permanent self." In more familiar language he is setting will over against desire. The temporary desire may be strong, but it is consciously regarded by the individual as alien to his "real" or "better" self. And _will_ is this whole complex organization of the permanent self set over against an alien intruding impulse. The phenomenon of will contending against desire occurs usually when a stimulus not characteristically powerful in a man's conduct becomes so through special conditions of excitement or fatigue. When a man is tired, or stirred by violent emotion, his systematic organization of habits begins to break down. The ideal permanent or inclusive self is then brought into conflict with a temporary passion. Love conflicts with duty, the lower with the higher self, flesh with spirit, desire with will. Few men have so thoroughly integrated a self that such conflicts altogether cease. Every one carries about with him a more or less divided soul. Fire and ice within me fight Beneath the suffocating night. There are, in the records of abnormal psychology, many cases of really divided personalities, cases of two or more completely separate habit-organizations inhabiting the same physical body. Such a complete Dr.-Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde dissociation of a personality is clearly abnormal. But it is almost as rare to find a completely integrated character. We are all of us more or less multiple personalities. Our various personalities usually keep their place and do not interfere with each other. Our professional and family selves may be different; they do not always collide. But the various characters that we are in various situations not infrequently do clash. The self whose keynote is ambition or learning may conflict with the self whose focus is love. "Resolve to be thyself; and know, that he Who finds himself, loses his misery!" wrote Matthew Arnold. And it does seem to be true that a man whose will is never divided or confused by contending currents of desire, whose character is unified and whose action is consistent, is saved from the perturbations, the confusions, the tossings of spirit which possess less organized souls. But to find one's self, and to keep one's self whole and undivided, is a difficult achievement and a rare one. Even men whose interests and activities are fairly well defined find their characters divided and their wills, consequently, confused. A man's duties as a husband and father may conflict with his professional ambitions; his love of adventure, with his desire for wealth and social position; his artistic interests, with his philanthropic activities; his business principles, with his religious scruples. A man can achieve a selfhood by thrusting out all interests save one, and achieving thereby unity at the expense of breadth. There are men who choose to be, and succeed in being, first and last, scholars or poets or musicians or doctors. All activities, interests, and ideals that do not contribute to that particular and exclusive self are practically negligible in their conduct. Such men, although they have attained a permanent self, have not achieved a broad, comprehensive, or inclusive one. They are like instruments which can sound only one note, however clear that may be; or like singers with only a single song. All lives are necessarily finite and exclusive; every choice of an interest or ideal very possibly precludes some other. A man cannot be all things at once; "the philosopher and the lady-killer," as James merrily remarks, "could not very well keep house in the same tenement of clay." But a strong character need not necessarily mean a narrow one, nor need a determined will be the will of a fanatic. The self may be--in the case of rare geniuses it has been--diverse in its interests, activities, and sympathies, yet unified and consistent in action. A character may be various without being confused; versatility is not synonymous with chaos. A man's interests and activities may be given a certain order, rank, and proportion, so that his life may exhibit at once the color, consistency, clarity, and variety of a finished symphony. The consciousness of "self" which starts as a mere continuum of bodily sensations comes to be the net result of one's social and intellectual as well as physical activities. The "self" of which we are conscious ceases to be our merely physical person, and comes to include our possessions. The house we live in and the garden we tend, our children, our friends, our opinions, creations, or inventions, these become extensions and more or less inalienable parts of our personalities. Our "selfhood" includes not simply us, but ours. Our possessions, and especially such as are the fruits of our own actions, are indications of what we are. We judge, and within limits correctly, of a man by the company he keeps, the clothes he wears, by the books he reads, the pictures with which he decorates his home, the kind of home he builds or has built. And a man may feel as provoked by insult or injury to the person or things which have become an intimate part of his life as if he were being attacked in his physical person. Strip a man one by one of his physical acquisitions, of his associates, of the indications and mementos of the things he has thought and done, and there would be no "self" left. To speak of a man as a nonentity is to imply that he is no "self" worth speaking of; that he can be blown about hither and thither; that neither his opinions nor desires, nor possessions, nor associates make an iota of difference in the world. A man who is a "somebody," a "person to be reckoned with," is one who is a "self." He is one whose physical possessions or personal abilities or standing in the community make him one of the "powers that be." And it is the desire to be a factor in the world, to increase the scope and consequence of one's self that is the leading ingredient in what we call ambition, and the desire for fame, and at least one ingredient in the desire for wealth. Men may want wealth merely for the sake of possession, or for bodily comfort, but part of the desire consists in the ability thereby to spread one's influence, to be "one of the happy sons of earth, who lord it over land and sea, in the full-blown lustihood that wealth and power can give, and before whom, stiffen ourselves as we will ... we cannot escape an emotion, sneaking or open, of dread."[1] [Footnote 1: James: _Psychology_, vol. I, p. 293.] THE ENHANCEMENT OF THE SELF. The building-up of a more or less permanent self is natively satisfactory to most men, and every means will be taken to increase its scope and influence. Biologically we are so constituted as to perform many acts making for our self-preservation. The ordinary reflexes and instincts such as those which prompt us to eat, to defend ourselves against blows and the threatening approach of animals, to keep our equilibrium and recover our balance, are examples of these. The development and preservation of our social self is also made possible as it is initially prompted by our specifically social instincts. There is a native tendency, as already noted, to get ourselves noticed by other people, to seek their praise and avoid their blame. The instincts of self-display and leadership, and many of the non-social instincts, such as curiosity and acquisitiveness, are frequently called into play in the service of the more directly social tendencies of the individual. A large part of our activity, whatever be its other motives, is determined to some degree by the desire to develop the social self, to be a "somebody," to cut a figure in the world. In the enlargement of the social self, various people use various means, and with varying degrees of vigor, intensity, and persistency. There are a few who go through life with almost no sense of selfhood, who go through their daily routine with no more recognition of their acts as their own than that displayed by an animal or a machine. In most men the sense of their personality and their interest in it are high, and the development of the self is sought in all possible or legitimate ways. The ways in which the self is developed, and the kind of self that is sought, help to determine whether a man is self-seeking in the lowest sense of that epithet, or idealistic and ambitious in the approved popular sense. The kind of self we seek to build up depends, as we have seen, largely on the type of praise and blame and the general character of the moral tradition to which we have been exposed. But whichever type of self a man does select as his ideal or permanent self, all his activities will be more or less consciously and more or less consistently controlled by it. His habits of action, his habitual choices, his habitual feelings, will be built up with this ideal self as a standard and control. He will do those things which "carry on" toward the ideal self, leave undone those things which do not. The man or woman who wishes simply to cut a figure "socially" will cultivate the wit, the gayety, the facility, the smartness, which are the familiar ingredients of such a personality. The same persons will be singularly blind to abysses of ignorance which would be painfully in the consciousness of those who had set up for themselves ideals of erudition and culture. A laborer will live and move and have his being serenely in clothes and in surroundings that "would never do" for a professional man who had committed himself to live according to the social standards of his class. Sometimes a man's actions will be directed toward the construction of an ideal self, on standards far in advance of those of his group. A man in developing such a self is, indeed, in some cases practically committing social suicide. The extreme dissenter from the current standards of action is attempting to build up what James has well called a "spiritual self," a self in the light of his own ideals, rather than those current among his contemporaries. EGOISM _VERSUS_ ALTRUISM. The individual in developing his own personality need not, necessarily, be selfish, nor is the enhancement of one's personality incompatible with altruism. One man may find his individuality sufficiently developed in a large bank account, another in discovering a cure for cancer; one man may seek nothing but gratification of his physical appetites; another may find his fulfillment on the battlefield in defense of the national honor. Since man is born with the original tendencies to herd with and have common sympathies with his fellows, and to pity those of them that are weak and distressed, there is nothing more unnatural about altruism than about egoism. It is true that in some men the so-called altruistic impulses, the impulse to sympathize with the emotions, feelings, aspirations and difficulties of others, and to pity them in their distress, are comparatively weak; that in some men the more obviously egoistic impulses, such as the gratification of bodily desires, the acquisition of physical possessions are strong and uncontrollable. But through education the altruistic and social impulses of men may be cultivated and strengthened, so that they may become more powerful and dominant than even the urgency of physical desire. "Man cannot live by bread alone," and a man in whom a passion for reform or for religion, for a cause or for a conquest has become strong, will sacrifice food, sleep, and physical comfort, and may even find the satisfactory fulfillment of self in self-sacrifice and obliteration.[1] [Footnote 1: This is partly because man's sense of selfhood is so largely socially conditioned and affected by praise and blame. Many a man in whom impulses of an egoistic sort are strong cannot resist the scorn of his gang, club, or clique. In this sense even socially beneficial actions may be "selfish."] The old distinction between egoism and altruism is thus an artificial one. A genuinely altruistic individual derives satisfaction from the beneficent things he does, though he does not, as Jeremy Bentham supposed, calculate the benefits he will derive from his beneficence. Altruism is just as natural as egoism in its origins, though the impulses of self-preservation and personal physical satisfaction are natively stronger and more numerous. But human beings can be educated to altruism, and find the same satisfaction in service to others as individuals reared in less humane conditions find in satisfying their immediate physical desires. SELF-SATISFACTION AND DISSATISFACTION. Since the development of selfhood plays so large a part in human action, it is natural that powerful emotions should be associated with it. Individuals become conscious of the kind of self they are and measure it favorably or unfavorably with the kind of self they would be. In so far as the actuality they conceive themselves to be measures up to the ideal self, to the fulfillment of which they have dedicated themselves, they have a feeling of self-satisfaction, of elation. They are jubilant or crestfallen, satisfied or dissatisfied with themselves, in so far as they are in their own estimation making good. In normal individuals, these estimates of triumph and frustration are, of course, colored and qualified by signs of approval and disapproval from other people. There are very few--and these insanely conceited--in whom the opinions of others are not largely influential in determining their own estimates of themselves. The emotions themselves of self-satisfaction and abasement are of a unique sort ... each has its own peculiar physiognomical expression. In self-satisfaction the extensor muscles are innervated, the eye is strong and glorious, the gait rolling and elastic, the nostril dilated, and a peculiar smile plays upon the lips. This complex of symptoms is seen in an exquisite way in lunatic asylums, which always contain some patients who are literally mad with conceit, and whose fatuous expression and absurdly strutting or swaggering gait is in tragic contrast with their lack of any valuable personal quality. It is in these same castles of despair that we find the strongest examples of the opposite physiognomy, in good people who think they have committed "the unpardonable sin" and are lost forever, who crouch and cringe and slink from notice, and are unable to speak aloud or look us in the eye.... We ourselves know how the barometer of our self-esteem and confidence rises and falls from one day to another through causes that seem to be visceral and organic rather than rational, and which certainly answer to no corresponding variations in the esteem in which we are held by our friends.[1] [Footnote 1: James: _loc. cit._, vol. I, p. 307.] Self-satisfaction depends, as has been said, on the kind of self we are aiming at, and that in turn depends on the kind of self we are. A professional bank-robber may take a craftsman's pride in the skill with which he has rifled a safe and made off with the booty, just as a surgeon may take pride in a delicate operation, or a dramatist in a play. The ideal and the measure of satisfaction will again be determined by the group among whom we move. The bank-robber will not boast of his exploits to a missionary conference; the surgeon will prefer to explain the details of his achievement to medical men who can critically appreciate its technique. The ideal self we set ourselves may far outreach our achievements, considerable and generally applauded though these be. A man may know in his heart how futile are his triumphs, how far from the goals he cherished as young ideals. Many a brilliant comedian longs to play Hamlet; the gifted and scholarly musician knows how easy it is to win an audience with sentimental and specious music. The humility of genius has again and again been noted. "The more one knows the less one knows one knows." Many men attain self-satisfaction through negation, through a serene surrender of the unattainable. As the Epicureans counseled, they increase their happiness by lessening their desires. The content which middle-aged people exhibit is not so frequently to be traced to the dazzling character of their achievement as to their resignation to their station. Young people are moody and unhappy not infrequently because they cannot make a reconciliation between what they would be and what they are. Others again attain satisfaction vicariously in the achievements of others, as mediocre fathers do in their brilliant children, or as sympathetic and interested people do in the whole world about them. The magnanimity of these expansive natures is often touching indeed. Such persons can feel a sort of delicate rapture in thinking that, however sick, ill-favored, mean-conditioned, and generally forsaken they may be, they are yet integral parts of the whole of this brave world, have a fellow's share in the strength of the dairy horses, the happiness of the young people, the wisdom of the wise ones, and are not altogether without part or lot in the good fortunes of the Vanderbilts and the Hohenzollerns themselves.[1] [Footnote 1: James: _loc. cit._, vol. I, p. 313 (written in 1890).] In some men a modicum of success will give a disproportionate sense of confidence and power. The man to whom success has always come easily is not baffled by problems that would appall those who, in middle life, "lie among the failures at the foot of the hill." As Goethe, who had always been miraculously successful, said to one who came to complain to him about the difficulty of an undertaking: "You have but to blow on your hands." In a crowd one can hardly fail to note the easy air of competence and confidence that distinguishes the successful man of affairs. THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE SELF AND OTHERS. The consciousness of self increases with the expression of personal opinion and power. The man whose books are translated into half a dozen languages, to whose lectures people come from all parts of the world, cannot help feeling an increased sense of importance, although he may combine this consciousness with a sense of personal humility. In the same way a man who exerts great social power, who controls the economic lives of thousands of employees, or whose benefactions in the way of libraries and charitable institutions dot the land, develops inevitably a sense of his own selfhood as over against that of the group. He begins to realize that he does make a significant difference in the world. This was curiously illustrated in a speech delivered by Andrew Carnegie when, after a prolonged absence in Europe, he came back to the opening of the Carnegie Institute, the building of which had cost him six million dollars: He said he could not bring himself to a realization of what had been done. He felt like Aladdin when he saw this building and was aware that he had put it up, but he could not bring himself to consciousness of having done it any more than if he had produced the same effect by rubbing a lamp. He could not feel the ownership of what he had given, and he could not feel that he had given it away.[1] [Footnote 1: Quoted from the obituary of Andrew Carnegie in the _New York Times_ of August 12, 1919.] This sense of incredulity at one's actions or achievements is rarer than the consciousness of self which it promotes. The intensity of this self-awareness is increased when opinion is expressed or power exerted in the face of opposition. The man who finds himself standing out against the community in which he lives, who is a freethinker among those who are intensely religious, an extremist among those who are custom-ridden, spiritualistic among people who are controlled by materialistic ideas, finds the sense of his own personality heightened by contrast. When dissenting opinions are steadfastly maintained in the face of the opposition of a powerful majority, there develops a personality with edge and strength. The man who can persist in his belief against the prevailing winds of doctrine and of action may be wrong, but he is a personality. He is intensely and persistently aware of himself. Similarly, the exertion of power in the face of opposition increases the sense of one's own power and helps to consolidate it. One derives from it the same exhilaration that one has in feeling a canoe under the impulsion of one's paddle overcome the resistance of the water. In the same way, the exertion of social power in the face of obstacles makes half the exhilaration of politics and business for some types of men in business and political life. One admires the ruthlessness of a Napoleon at war or of a captain of industry in the sharp industrial competition of the nineteenth century, not because it is ruthless, but because it is power. Such men are at least not neutral; they are positive forces. The contrast between the "self" and the others may be friendly, with a recognition of all other selves as equally entitled to existence. One pursues the even tenor of one's way, and is content to let others pursue theirs. Men of very powerful personality have exhibited the utmost gentleness and consideration of others. Lincoln, the typical strong, silent man, displayed a tenderness for the suffering and distressed that has already become proverbial. The contrast between one's self and the world may be one of bitter opposition, as when one's ideas or actions are subjected to social censure. As Mill argued over half a century ago, the forceful suppression of opinion produces a more violent manifestation of it. Socrates was put to death, but the Socratic philosophy rose like the sun in the heavens. A sense of injustice, of unfairness, will not only intensify a man's opinions but his consciousness of his own personality. To meet with opposition is to feel acutely the outlines of one's own person; to be forced to recognize the differences between ourselves and others is to discover what sort of people we ourselves are. The contrast is likewise one of opposition, sometimes to bitterness, when the individual seeks to impose his own opinions or his own personality forcibly on others. A Mohammed, fired with the zeal of a religious enthusiasm, may spread his doctrine by fire and sword and be resisted by similar violence. Others than the Germans have betaken themselves to arms to spread a specific and arbitrary type of life. On a small scale it is seen wherever a fanatical parent tries to force his own belief and type of life upon his children, reared in a younger and freer generation. In contemporary society most individuals are neither tempted nor permitted to coerce people to their own way of thinking, although economic pressure and social ostracism are still powerful instruments by which strategically situated individuals can force their own opinions or types of life upon others. TYPES OF SELF. The consciousness of self varies in its expression and intensity and at different times may display different types or combinations of types. No one is ever utterly consistent, and different situations, different groups, provoke different selves in us. Nobody writes quite the same kind of letter to his different friends, or is, as has been pointed out, the same person in different situations. But, except for those intellectual will-o'-the-wisps, or moral ne'er-do-wells who take on the color of every new circumstance in which they happen to be cast, men do develop predominantly one type of self which constitutes, in familiar language, their character. The manner of our consciousness of our personality may vary in quality, even though it be intense in degree. One may be aware even of one's importance, without being "self-important." One may be quite conscious of one's significance in the world and yet not be "self-conscious." It is indeed usually the little man who has a great air about him. The officiousness and pettiness of the small soul invested with authority has often been commented on. Proverbial wisdom has succinctly recorded the fact that empty barrels make the most noise. Latterly, Freudian psychology has pointed out the mechanisms by which insignificant people compensate for the poverty of their person by bluster and brag.[1] [Footnote 1: On this point see an illuminating brief discussion by Hart in _The Psychology of Insanity_.] SELF-DISPLAY OR BOLDNESS. The most obvious type of consciousness of self is found in individuals who seek mere social conspicuousness, who spend no inconsiderable part of their energy in deliberate display. The child says with naïve frankness, "See how high I can jump." Many adults find more conspicuous or subtle ways of saying the same thing. One need only to take a ride in a bus or street car to find the certain symptoms of self-display. These may consist in nothing more serious than a peculiarly conspicuous collar or hatband, or particularly high heels. It may consist in a loud voice full of pompous references to great banquets recently attended or great sums recently spent. It may be in a raised eyebrow or a disdainful smile. There are people among every one's acquaintance whose conversation is largely made up of reminiscences of more or less personal glory, of deliberate allusions to large salaries and famous friends, to glorious prospects and past laurels.[1] [Footnote 1: Almost every college class has one or two members who enter vociferously and continuously into discussions, less for the contribution of ideas or information than for the propagation of their own personalities.] On a larger scale this is to be found in the almost universal desire to see one's name in print: There is a whole race of beings to-day whose passion is to keep their names in the newspapers, no matter under what heading, "arrivals and departures," "personal paragraphs," "interviews"--gossip, even scandal will suit them if nothing better is to be had. Guiteau, Garfield's assassin, is an example of the extremity to which this craving for notoriety may go in a pathological case. The newspapers bounded his mental horizon; and in the poor wretch's prayer on the scaffold, one of the most heartfelt expressions was: "The newspaper press of this land has a big bill to settle with thee, O Lord!"[2] [Footnote 2: James: _loc. cit._, vol. I, p. 308.] As was pointed out in connection with praise and blame, more of our actions than we should care to admit are determined by this desire for recognition. The loud, the vulgar, the notoriety seekers are merely extreme illustrations of a type of self that most of us are some of the time. SELF-SUFFICIENT MODESTY. The other extreme is exhibited by the type of personality that is markedly averse to display and shrinks from observation. In its intensest and possibly least appealing form it is exhibited by people who become awkwardly embarrassed in the presence of a stranger, however fluent and vivacious they may be with their friends. This type at its best may be described by the epithet of self-sufficient modesty. To be such a person may be said to be an achievement rather than a weakness. To be self-sufficient and modest at the same time means that one is going about one's business, that one is too absorbed in one's work to be continually and anxiously noting what sort of figure one cuts in the world. To quote Matthew Arnold's well-known lines: "Unaffrighted by the silence round them, Undistracted by the sights they see, These demand not that the things without them Yield them love, amusement, sympathy."[1] [Footnote 1: _Self-Dependence._] There are in every great university quiet great men who steadily pursue vital and difficult researches without the slightest reference or desire for cheap conspicuousness. In every profession and business there are known to the discriminating men who are experts, even geniuses in their own field, but who shrink back from the loudness of publicity as from a plague. There are a number of wealthy philanthropists in all our large cities who consistently and steadily do good works in almost complete anonymity. One finds in almost every department of human activity these types of self-effacing men who find their fulfillment in the work they do rather than in moving in the aura of other people's admiration. THE POSITIVE AND FLEXIBLE SELF. But in order to be effective in affairs, some positive force must be displayed, and modesty need not mean pusillanimity. A frequently observable type of personality--and socially one of a highly desirable sort--is the type of man who, himself standing for positive convictions, ideas, and principles of action, and not casually to be deflected from them, has sufficient flexibility and sensitivity to the feelings of others, to accept modification. Such a self not only has its initial force and momentum, but gains as it goes by the experience of others. A personality must be positive to contribute to the solution of difficulties and the management of enterprises, but it must be receptive in order to benefit by the ideas of others and coöperate with them. To have power and humility at once is sometimes sufficient to make a leader among men. Humility prevents us from rushing headlong along the paths of our own dogmatic errors; it enables us further to deal with other people who would be simply antagonized by our flat-footed insistence on every detail of our own initial position. The history of great statesmanship is in part, at least, the history of wise compromise. Nor does this mean sordid temporizing and opportunism. As John Morley puts it: It is the worst of political blunders to insist on carrying an ideal set of principles into execution, where others have rights of dissent, and those others persons whose assent is as indispensable to success as it is difficult to attain. But to be afraid or ashamed of holding such an ideal set of principles in one's mind in their highest and most abstract expression, does more than any other one cause to stunt or petrify those elements of character to which life should owe most of its savor.[1] [Footnote 1: Morley: _On Compromise_, p. 123.] DOGMATISM AND SELF-ASSERTION. Too often, however, a person of powerful and distinctive opinions is so moved by the momentum of his own strong enthusiasms, so fixed by the habitual definiteness of his own position that he cannot be swayed. In its worst form this is rampant egoism and dogmatism. All of us have met the loud-mouthed exponent of his own opinions, who speaks whatever be the subject, as if _his_ position only were plausible or possible, and as if all who gain-said him were either fools or knaves. If we examine the mental furniture of the average man we shall find it made up of a vast number of judgments of a very precise kind upon subjects of very great variety, complexity, and difficulty. He will have fairly settled views upon the origin and nature of the universe, and upon what he will probably call its meaning; he will have conclusions as to what is to happen to him at death and after, as to what is and what should be the basis of conduct. He will know how the country should be governed, and why it is going to the dogs, why this piece of legislation is good and that bad. He will have strong views upon military and naval strategy, the principles of taxation, the use of alcohol and vaccination, the treatment of influenza, the prevention of hydrophobia, upon municipal trading, the teaching of Greek, upon what is permissible in art, satisfactory in literature, and hopeful in science. The bulk of such opinions must necessarily be without rational basis, since many of them are concerned with problems admitted by the expert to be still unsolved, while as to the rest it is clear that the training and experience of no average man can qualify him to have any opinion on them at all.[1] [Footnote 1: Trotter: _Instincts of the Herd_, p. 36.] In action as well as opinion dogmatism and unbridled self-assertion may be the dominant characteristics of a personality. The man who has a strong will and little social sympathy will be ruthlessly insistent on the attainment of his own ends. This type of self has indeed been set up as an ideal by such philosophers as Nietzsche and Max Stirner, who urged that the really great man should express his own personality irrespective of the weaklings whom he might crush in his comet-like career. Thus writes Nietzsche in one of his characteristic passages: The _Superman_ I have at heart; _that_ is the first and only thing to me--and _not_ man: not the neighbor, not the poorest, not the sorriest, not the best.... In that ye have despised, ye higher men, that maketh me hope.... In that ye have despaired, there is much to honor. For ye have not learned to submit yourselves, ye have not learned petty policy. For to-day have the petty people become master; they all preach submission, and humility, and policy, and diligence, and consideration, and the long _et cetera_ of petty virtues. These masters of to-day--surpass them, O my brethren--these petty people: they are the Superman's greatest danger![2] [Footnote 2: _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ (Macmillan edition), pp. 351-52.] It need scarcely be noted that even if the genius or Superman were justified, as this philosophy insists, on ruthlessly asserting his priority, it is a dangerous procedure to identify one's ambitions with one's desserts. As already noted, a flamboyant assurance of one's own importance is sometimes a ludicrous symptom of the reverse. The more legitimate manifestation of strong individualism in action or opinion is in the case of deeply conscientious natures, who will not compromise by a hair's breadth from what they conceive to be the right. The fanatic is seldom an appealing character, but he is a type that enforces admiration. Of such unflinching insistence are martyrs and great leaders made. There are in every community men who will regard it as treachery to their highest ideals to compromise at all from the inviolable principles to which they feel themselves committed. Such men are difficult to deal with in human situations involving coöperation and compromise, and they exhibit frequently a rigid austerity, bitterness, and hate that do not readily win sympathy. But it is to such men as these that many religious and social reforms owe their initiation. Bertrand Russell, who, whether one agrees with him or not, exhibits a puritanical devotion to his social beliefs, has finely described the type: The impatient idealist--and without some impatience a man will hardly prove effective--is almost sure to be led into hatred by the oppositions and disappointments which he encounters in his endeavors to bring happiness to the world. The more certain he is of the purity of his motives and the truth of his gospel, the more indignant will he become when his teaching is rejected.... The intense faith which enables him to withstand persecution for the sake of his beliefs makes him consider these beliefs so luminously obvious that any thinking man who rejects them must be dishonest and must be actuated by some sinister motive of treachery to the cause.[1] [Footnote 1: Russell: _Proposed Roads to Freedom_, pp. xiii-xiv.] ENTHUSIASM. The enthusiast is another type of self that plays an important part in social life and makes not the least attractive of its figures. The exuberant exponent of ideas, causes, persons, or institutions is an effective preacher, teacher, or leader of men, and may be, apart from his utility, intrinsically of the utmost charm. Emotions vividly displayed are, as already pointed out in connection with sympathy, readily duplicated in others, and the ardors of the enthusiast are, when they have the earmarks of sincerity, contagious. A genuinely enthusiastic personality kindles his own fire in the hearts of others, and makes them appreciate as no mere formal analysis could, the vital and moving aspects of things. Good teaching has been defined as communication by contagion, and the teachers whom students usually testify to have influenced them most are not those who doled out flat prescribed wisdom, but those whose own informed ardor for their subject-matter communicated to the student a warm sense of its significance. Leaders of great movements who have been successful in controlling the energies and loyalties of millions of men have been frequently men of this high and contagious voltage. It certainly constituted part of Theodore Roosevelt's political strength, and, in more or less genuine form, is the asset of every successful political speaker and leader. Both for the one controlled by enthusiasm and for the others to whom it spreads, experience becomes richer in significance. Poets and the poetically-minded have to a singular degree the power of clothing with imaginative enthusiasm all the items of their experience. Enthusiasm does not necessarily connote hysteria or sentimentalism. The unstable enthusiast is a familiar type, the man who has another object of eagerness and loyalty each week. Mark Twain describes the type in the person of his brother, who had a dozen different ambitions a year. But enthusiasm may be a long-sustained devotion to a single ideal. A curious instance of it was seen in the case of an Armenian scholar who, so it is reported to the writer by a student of Armenian culture, spent forty years in mastering cuneiform script in order to prove that the Phrygians were descended from the Armenians, and not _vice versa_. Shelley could kindle the spirit of revolution in thousands who would have been bored to death with the same fiery doctrines in the abstract and cold pages of Godwin, from whom Shelley derived his ideas of "political justice." The enthusiast, since he instinctively likes to share his emotions, not infrequently displays an intense desire for leadership, not so much that he may be a leader as that he may win converts to his own cause or creed. Such a personality finds its satisfaction in some form of proselyting zeal, be it for a religion, for a favorite charity, for good books, poetry, or social justice. A well-known literary scholar who died recently was thus described by one of his former students: Dr. Gummere was not a teacher; he was a vital atmosphere and his lectures, as one considered them from an intellectual or emotional angle, were revelations or adventures. There never were such classes as his, we believed. Who could equal him in readiness of wit? Where was there such a raconteur? Who else could put the feel of a poem into one's heart? ... His voice was very deep, and exceedingly free and flexible. It always seemed to brim up as from a spirit overflowing. Everything about him was individual and spontaneous. He was perhaps most like a powerful river that braced one's energies, and carried one along without the slightest desire to resist.[1] [Footnote 1: Charles Wharton Stork: "A Great Teacher," _The Nation_, July 26, 1919.] THE NEGATIVE SELF. All the types of personality or self that have thus far been discussed are in some way positive or assertive. But the self may be exhibited negatively, in a shrinking, not only from observation, but from any positive or pronounced action. This has already been noted in connection with submissiveness. Most people in the presence of their intellectual and social or even their physical superior, experience a sense of, to use McDougall's term, "negative self-feeling." In some people this negation or effacement of the self is a predominant characteristic. It may be mere social timidity, which, in the case of those continually placed in servile positions, as in the case of the proverbial "poor relation," may become chronic. In its most disagreeable form it is exhibited as an obsequious flattering and a pretentious humility. Of this the classic instance is Uriah Heep in _David Copperfield_: "I suppose you are quite a great lawyer," I [David Copperfield] said, after looking at him for some time. "Me, Master Copperfield?" said Uriah. "Oh, no! I'm a very umble person." It was no fancy of mine about his hands, I observed; for he frequently ground the palms against each other, as if to squeeze them dry and warm, besides often wiping them, in a stealthy way, on his pocket-handkerchief. "I am well aware that I am the umblest person going," said Uriah Heep modestly, "let the other be where he may. My mother is likewise a very umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master Copperfield, but have much to be thankful for. My father's former calling was umble. He was a sexton." "What is he now?" I asked. "He is a partaker of glory, at present, Master Copperfield, but we have much to be thankful for. How much have I to be thankful for, in living with Mr. Wickfield." Negative self-feeling may be provoked by a genuine sense of unworthiness or modesty, and when this takes place among religious people, it may become a complete and rapturous submissiveness to God. The records of many mediæval and of some modern mystics emphasize this complete yielding to the will of God, and in His will finding peace. James quotes in this connection Pascal's _Prière pour bien user les maladies_: I ask you, neither for health nor for sickness, for life nor for death; but that you may dispose of my health and my sickness, my life and my death, for your glory.... You alone know what is expedient for me; you are the sovereign master; do with me according to your will. Give to me, or take away from me, only conform my will to yours. I know but one thing, Lord, that it is good to follow you, and bad to offend you. Apart from that, I know not what is good or bad in anything. I know not which is most profitable to me, health or sickness, wealth or poverty, nor anything else in the world. That discernment is beyond the power of men or angels, and is hidden among the secrets of your Providence, which I adore, but do not seek to fathom.[1] [Footnote 1: Quoted in James: _Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 286.] Self-surrender, however, takes other forms than religious absorption or devotion. "Saintliness" is not unknown in secular forms of life, in the devotion of men to any ideal, despite pain and privation of worldly goods and successes. The doctor sacrificing his life in a leper colony is an extreme example. But something of the same humility and submissiveness is exhibited every time a man makes a choice which places the welfare of other people before his own immediate success. It is shown by the thousands of physicians and settlement workers and teachers who spend their lives in patient devotion to labors that bring little remuneration and as little glory. Men of affairs and a large proportion of other men generally measure worth by worldly success. But even from the worldly, such signs of self-surrender elicit admiration. ECCENTRICS. There is one type of self so various and miscellaneous that it can only be subsumed under the general epithet, "eccentric." These are the unexpectedly large number of individuals in our civilization who do not come under any of the usual categories, who display some small or great abnormality which sets them off from the general run of men. That some of these are accounted eccentric is to be explained in the light of man's tendency, as a gregarious animal, to think "queer" and "freakish" anything off the beaten track. Some are clearly and unmistakably abnormal in some physiological or psychological respect. From these are recruited the inmates of our penitentiaries and insane asylums and the candidates for them. But there are eccentricities of social behavior, types of personality which though they cannot be classed as either insane or criminal, yet definitely set an individual apart. These include what Trotter has called the "mentally unstable," as set over against "the great class of normal, sensible, reliable middle age, with its definite views, its resiliency to the depressing influence of facts, and its gift for forming the backbone of the State." There are the large group of slightly neurasthenic, made so, in part, by the high nervous tension under which modern, especially modern urban, life is lived. These include what are commonly called the hysterical or over-emotional, or "temperamental" types. In a civilization where most professions demand regularity, restraint, punctuality, and directness, unstability and excess emotionalism are necessarily at a discount. There are the vagabond types who, like young Georges, Jean-qhristophe's protégé, regard a profession as a prison house, in which most of one's capacities are cruelly confined. There are again those who, possessing singular and exclusive sensitivity to æsthetic values, to music, art, and poetry, find the world outside their own lyric enthusiasms flat, stale, and unprofitable. If, as so frequently happens, these combine, along with their peculiar temperaments, little genius and slender means, social and economic life becomes for them a blind alley. Every year at our great universities we see small groups of young men, who, having spent three or four years on philosophy, literature, and the liberal arts, and having no interest in academic life, are put to it to find a profession in which they can find a genuine interest or possible success. Among these "eccentrics" a few have been reckoned geniuses by their contemporaries or by posterity. In such cases society hesitates to apply its usual formulæ. One cannot condemn out of hand a Shelley. He is not of the run of men. Shelley was one of those spokesmen of the _a priori_, one of those nurslings of the womb, like a bee or a butterfly, a dogmatic, inspired, perfect, and incorrigible creature.... Being a finished child of nature, not a joint product, like most of us, of nature, history, and society, he abounded miraculously in his own clear sense, but was obtuse to the droll miscellaneous lessons of fortune. The cannonade of hard inexplicable facts that knocks into most of us what little wisdom we have, left Shelley dazed and sore, perhaps, but uninstructed.[1] [Footnote 1: Santayana: _Winds of Doctrine_; Shelley, p. 159.] It is difficult to draw the line in some cases between genius and insanity.[1] There have been time and again in society Cassandras who have spoken true prophecies and have been thought mad. There have been, on the other hand, those who, having some of the external eccentricities of genius, have given an illusive impression of greatness. The professional Bohemian likes to make himself great by wearing his hair long and living in a garret. But it is unquestionably true that a highly sensitive and creative mind is often ill at ease in the world of action, and remains a vagabond, an _enfant terrible_ or an eccentric all through life. It remains a fact that in contemporary society there are a small number of people, some of them of considerable talents, who simply cannot be made to fit into the social routine. For such Bertrand Russell suggests a "vagabond's wage." This he conceives as being just large enough to enable them to get along, to give them a chance to wander and experiment, but sufficiently small to penalize them for not settling down to the accustomed social routines.[2] [Footnote 1: Thus Plato: "But he who, not being inspired and having no touch of madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks that he will get into the temple by the help of art--he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man is nowhere at all when he enters into rivalry with the madman." _Phoedrus_ (Jowett translation), p. 550.] [Footnote 2: Russell: _Proposed Roads to Freedom_, p. 177. There was recently introduced to the writer a boy, aged nineteen, for whom this would be an admirable solution. Brought up in a tenement and working as a clerk, this youngster wrote what competent judges pronounced to be really extraordinary lyrics. He was at the same time utterly helpless in the world of affairs. Even at college his casual habits and absorption would have prevented him from getting through his freshman year.] Mill has generalized the situation of the genius: Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow. Genius can only breathe freely in an _atmosphere_ of freedom. Persons of genius are, _ex vi termini_, more individual than any other people--less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their own character.... If they are of a strong character, and break their fetters, they become a mark for the society which has not succeeded in reducing them to commonplace, to point at with solemn warning as "wild," "erratic," and the like; much as if one should complain of the Niagara River for not flowing smoothly between its banks, like a Dutch canal.[1] [Footnote 1: Mill: _Essay on Liberty_, chap. III.] THE ACTIVE AND THE CONTEMPLATIVE. One final distinction must be made, one that cuts across all the types of self hitherto discussed, namely, the distinction between the man of action and the man of thought. One need not go far in literature or in life to find the contrast made. In the Scriptures Mary is set over against Martha, Rachel against Leah. Hamlet and Ulysses are permanent representations of the melancholy thinker and the exuberant adventurer. The business man and the executive may be put over against the poet and the scholar; the strenuous organizer and administrator over against the quiet philosopher. Both have their outstanding uses, and, in their extreme forms, their outstanding defects. The active type, as we say, "gets things done." He builds bridges and industries; he manages markets and men. His eye is on the practical; he is dependable, rapid, and efficient. In an industrial civilization he is the great heroic type. The statesman and the railroad builder, the newspaper editors and the political leaders captivate the imaginations as they control the destinies of mankind. On the other hand, there are those who stand aside (either from incapacity or disinclination or both) from the management of affairs and the life of action, and spend their lives in observation and contemplation. Plato and Aristotle regarded this as the highest type of life; it may have been because they were themselves both philosophers. In its extreme form it is exhibited in such men as Spinoza or Kant, spending their lives in practical obscurity, speculating on time and space and eternity. But it is apparent in less extreme types. The "patient observer," the genial spectator of other men's actions is not infrequent. When he has literary gifts he is a philosopher or a poet. Lucretius in a famous passage stated the contemplative ideal, contrasting it with its opposite: Sweet it is when on the great seas the winds are buffeting, to gaze from the land on another's great struggles; not because it is pleasure or joy that any one should be distressed, but because it is sweet to perceive from what misfortunes you yourself are free. Sweet is it, too, to behold great contests of war in full array over the plains, when you have no part in the danger. But nothing is more gladdening than to dwell in the calm high places, firmly embattled on the heights by the teaching of the wise, whence you can look down on others, and see them wandering hither and thither and going astray, as they seek the way of life, in strife matching their wits or rival claims of birth, struggling night and day by surpassing effort to rise up to the height of power and gain possession of the world.[1] [Footnote 1: Lucretius: _De Rerum Natura_ (Bailey translation), book II, lines 1-12.] But in the two types it is not the fruit of action or contemplation, but action and contemplation themselves that the two types find respectively interesting. The man of action finds an immediate satisfaction in movement, change, the clamor of affairs, the contacts with other people, the making of changes in the practical world. The man of thought finds as immediate enjoyment in noting the ways of men, and reflecting upon them. That contemplation, disinterested thinking, also has its use goes without saying. The thinker and the dreamer may be something at least of what the Irish poet boasts: "... the movers and shakers Of the world, forever, it seems." The scholar, the thinker, the man who stands aside from immediate action, may, often does, help the world of action in a far-reaching way. The researches of a Newton make possible eventually the feats of modern engineering and telegraphy; the abstruse study of the calculus helps to build bridges and skyscrapers. Both types, in their extremes, have their weaknesses. The extremely practical man "may cut off the limb upon which he is sitting," or "see no further than the end of his nose." A really great administrator is not penny-wise; he thinks far ahead, around and into a problem. He is concerned for tomorrow as well as to-day. The contemplative man may come to be "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." There is the hero of one Russian novel who reflects through three hundred pages on his wasted life, all at the ripe age of twenty-three.[1] The practical man gains width and insight by checking himself with reflection; the contemplative finds thought called home and made meaningful by contacts with the world. It was something of this balance which Plato had in mind when he insisted that his future philosopher-king should, after fifteen years' study, go for fifteen years into the "cave" or world to learn to deal with men and affairs. The "mere theorist" is often an absurd if not a dangerous character; the practical man may come to make the wheels go round without ever taking note of his direction. [Footnote 1: Contchareff: _Oblomoff_.] As pointed out in the beginning of this discussion, no one of these types is exclusively exemplified in any one individual. To be exclusively any one of these would be to be a caricature rather than a character.[2] But to be no one of these types to any degree at all is to be no character at all, is to be socially a nonentity, a minus quantity; it is to be determined by the vicissitudes of chance or circumstance; it is to be a succession of vacillations rather than a distinctive self-determined personality. Each of these types, moreover, if not extreme, has its specific excellences, and their various presence lends richness and diversity to social life. [Footnote 2: Dickens's success lay, perhaps chiefly, in his ability to draw these unforgettable exaggerations, these outstanding types: "Micawber" waiting for something to turn up; the fiendish cruelty of "Bill Sikes"; the angelic self-effacement of "Little Nell"; the hypocritical "Mr. Pecksniff"; the gossipy "Sairy Gamp." He had a unique gift for representing psychological traits in large. The so-called psychological novelists like Meredith, trace a character through its moods and fluctuations, making truer, more composite, though less memorable characters.] EMOTIONS AROUSED IN THE MAINTENANCE OF THE SELF. These various types of self may be defended with bitterness and pertinacity, and in their support the most powerful emotions may be enlisted. As pointed out in connection with individuality in opinion, men may be willing to die for their beliefs. Similarly invasion of one's home, infringement or threat against what one regards as one's rights or one's possessions, whether physical or social, may be bitterly contested. And in this conflict in support of the integrity of the self, anger, hate, fear, submissiveness, all the nuances of emotion may be aroused. The themes of great tragedy are built largely on this theme of insistent selfhood. Any obstruction of the self-integrity one has set one's self may provoke a violent reaction. It may be interference with one's love, as in the case of Medea or Othello, the pain of ingratitude as in Lear, the conflict between "the lower and the higher self," as in the case of Macbeth's loyalty and his ambition. These are the staple materials of drama. In common experience, an insult to one's wife or friend, an obstacle placed in the way of one's professional career, deprivation of one's liberty or one's property, or one's unhindered "pursuit of happiness," are the provocations to violent emotions in the sustaining of the self. How violent or what form the reaction will take depends on the situation of the "self" involved. If one has been grossly insulted by another upon whom one is utterly dependent socially and economically, a rankling and impotent rage may be the only outlet. To a person gifted with humility, the disillusions of a false friendship may provoke nothing more than a deep but resigned disappointment. Where passion and determination run high, and retaliation is feasible, a violent hate may find violent fulfillment. In earlier and more bloodthirsty days, the dagger, the duel, and poison were, as illustrated in the history of the Borgias, ways of maintaining the self and venting one's anger or revenge. Even in modern society the still distressingly large number of crimes of violence may be traced in many, perhaps most cases, to blind and bitter hate. To any deep personal injury, hate, whether it takes overt form or not, is still the instinctive answer; just such hate as Euripides represents in the jealous Medea, when she, a barbarian captive among the Greeks, sees Jason, her lover, about to be married to a Greek princess: "... But I, being citiless, am cast aside, By him that wedded me, a savage bride. . . . . . . . . "I ask one thing. If chance yet ope to me Some path, if even now my hand can win, Strength to requite this Jason for his sin, Betray me not! Oh, in all things but this, I know how full of fears a woman is, And faints at need, and shrinking from the light Of battle; but once spoil her of her right In man's love, and there moves, I warn thee well, No bloodier spirit between Heaven and Hell."[1] [Footnote 1: Euripides: _Medea_ (Gilbert Murray translation), p. 16.] In defense of the self in its narrower or broader sense, courage and heroism may be displayed. The martyr will die rather than submit; there have been many to whom Patrick Henry's "Give me Liberty or give me death," was something more than rhetoric. The self for which we will fight, of course, varies. A spoilt child will go into a paroxysm of rage if its toy is taken away. Older people will fight for smaller or larger points of social position. There is the familiar citizen who will insist on his rights, often of a petty sort, in a hotel, theater, or department store. Or a man may display the last extremity of courage in defense of some ideal, as in a man's surrender of his life for his country. Something of the same heroism is displayed by individuals who stand out against their group in the face of ridicule or persecution. It is the general sympathy with the desire to preserve one's selfhood untarnished that gives point to Henley's lines: "Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. . . . . . . . . "It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."[2] [Footnote 2: _Invictus_.] In the same way as the emotions fear, anger, and hate, and their variations and degrees, may be aroused by attack or threat against the self, so help and encouragement of an individual's selfhood arouse love, affection, and gratitude. Even our affection for our parents, though in part instinctive, is undoubtedly increased by the care and persistence with which they have fostered our own life and hopes, have educated us, and made possible for us a career. The same motives play a part in our affection for teachers who have beneficently influenced our lives, for other older people who "give us a start," advice and encouragement or financial aid. Even the love of God has in religious ritual been colored with gratitude for God's mercies and benevolences. THE INDIVIDUALITY OF GROUPS. Groups may display the same individuality and sense of selfhood as is exhibited by individuals. And the members of the group may come to regard the group life as something quite as important and inalienable as their own personalities and possessions. Indeed in defense of the integrity of the group life, as in the case, for example, of national honor, the individual life and possession may come to be reckoned as naught. Man's gregariousness and his instinctive sympathy with his own kind make it easy for the individual to identify his own life with that of the group. What threatens or endangers the group will in consequence arouse in him the same emotions as are aroused by threats or dangers that concern his own personality. An insult to the flag may send a thrill of danger through the millions who read about it, just as would an insult to themselves or their families. Group feeling may exist on various levels. It may be nothing more momentous than local pride, having the tallest tower, the finest amusement park, the best baseball team, or being the "sixth largest city." It may be a belligerent imperialism, a "desire for a place in the sun." It may be a desire for independence and an autonomous group life, manifested so strikingly recently by such small nationalities as Poland and Czecho-Slovakia and influential in keeping Switzerland alive as a nationality through hundreds of years, though surrounded by powerful neighbors.[1] While a group does not exist save as an abstraction, looked at as a whole it may exhibit the same outstanding traits, or the same types of selfhood as an individual. It may be fiercely belligerent and dogmatic; it may, like literary exponents of the German ideal, desire to spread its own conception of Kultur throughout the world.[2] It may be insistent on its own position, or its own possessions or its own glory. It may be fanatic in aggrandizement. It may be interested in the welfare of other groups, as in the case of large nationalities championing and protecting the causes of small or oppressed ones, such an ideal as was expressed, for example, by President Wilson in his address to Congress on the entrance of America into the Great War: [Footnote 1: Group feeling may be displayed under the most disadvantageous conditions, as in the strong sentiment for nationalism current among the Jews, even through all the centuries of dispersion.] [Footnote 2: Thorstein Veblen has pointed out how the "common man" comes to identify his interest with that of the group: "The common man who so lends himself to the aggressive enhancement of the national Culture and its prestige has nothing of a material kind to gain from the increase of renown that comes to his sovereign, his language, his countrymen's art or science, his dietary, or his God. There are no sordid motives in all this. These spiritual assets of self-complacency are indeed to be rated as grounds of high-minded patriotism without afterthought." (_The Nature of Peace_, p. 56.)] ... We shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts--for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.[3] [Footnote 3: Woodrow Wilson: _Address to Congress_, April 2, 1917.] The selfhood displayed by various groups varies with the degree and integration of the individual within the group. In extreme cases, such as that of Germany under the imperial régime, the group individuality may completely overshadow and engulf that of the individual. This ideal was not infrequently expressed by German political writers: To us the state is the most indispensable as well as highest requisite of our earthly existence.... All individualistic endeavor must be unreservedly subordinated to this lofty claim.... The state eventually is of infinitely more value than the sum of the individuals within its jurisdiction. This conception of the state which is as much a part of our life as the blood in our veins, is nowhere to be found in the English constitution, and is quite foreign to English thought, and to that of America as well.[1] [Footnote 1: Eduard Meyer: _England, Its Political Organization and Development and the War Against Germany_ (English translation), pp. 30-31.] While custom-bound and feudal régimes may emphasize the tendency to suppress development of individuality, and insist on regimentation in thought and action--an ideal proclaimed with increasing generality in Germany from Hegel down[2] there may be on the part of both individuals and groups the tendency to promote individuality as itself a social good. In such a case the social structure and educational systems and methods will be designed to promote individuality rather than to suppress it. Individual variations, if it be generally recognized that they are the only source of progress, will be utilized and cultivated instead of suppressed.[3] [Footnote 2: See Dewey: _German Philosophy and Politics_.] [Footnote 3: Individuality is the theme of Montessori kindergarten methods.] Throughout the nineteenth century (indeed throughout the history of political theory), the pendulum swung between individualism and complete socialization. Spencer long ago proclaimed the dominance of the individual; T. H. Green, following the German philosophers, the dominance of the state. Like the contrast between egoism and altruism, an emphasis on either side is bound to be artificial. The individual can only be a self in a social order; the individual is only an individual in contrast with others. It is doubtful, for example, whether a man living all his life alone on a desert island would discover any individuality at all. A man's character is displayed in action, and his actions are always, or nearly always, performed with reference to other people. And a man's best self-realization cannot be achieved save in congenial social order. A man will not readily grow into a saint among a society of sinners, and unless the social order provides opportunities for the highest type of life, it will exist only in a very fortunate and favored few. One of the charges that has been laid against democracy is that it fails to encourage the highest types of scientific and artistic interests, that it is the gospel of the mediocre.[1] [Footnote 1: This is the essence of the aristocratic position, that a choice life lived by a few is better than a vulgar one shared by the many.] It is too often forgotten, on the other hand, by those who emphasize the importance of society, that society is, after all, nothing more than an aggregate of selves. The "state," the "social order" is nothing but the individuals who make it up, and their relations to each other. The group exists, after all, even as the most completely socialized political doctrines insist, for the realization of individual selves, for freedom of opportunity and initiative. It is when "individualism" runs rampant, when self-realization on the part of one individual interferes with self-realization on the part of all others that individualism becomes a menace. Individuality is itself valuable, in the first place, because as Mill pointed out in his essay on _Liberty_ earlier quoted: What has made the European family an improving instead of a stationary portion of mankind? Not any superior excellence in them, which, when it exists, exists as the effect, not the cause; but their remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals, classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another; they have struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something valuable; and although at every period those who traveled in different paths have been intolerant of one another, and each would have thought it an excellent thing if all the rest could have been compelled to travel his road, their attempts to thwart each other's development have rarely had any permanent success, and each has endured in time to receive the good which the others have offered.[2] [Footnote 2: Mill: _Essay on Liberty_, chap. III.] Apart from the variations in group customs and traditions, and their progressive application to changing circumstances which individuality makes possible, it cannot be too strongly emphasized that society is the name for the process by which individuals live together. It is the individuals who are the realities and the happiness of individuals which is the aim of social organization. Such happiness is only attainable when individuals are allowed to make the most of their native capacities and individual interests. The social group as a group will be more interesting, colorful, and various when every experimentation and variety of life are encouraged and promoted. And the individuals in such a society will be personalities, not the mere mechanisms of a regimented routine. CHAPTER IX INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES THE MEANING OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES. The major part of this volume has been devoted to a consideration of those traits, interests, and capacities which all individuals share, and which may in general be described as the "original nature of man." These distinctive inborn tendencies were treated, for purposes of analysis, in the most general terms, and, on the whole, as if they appeared in the same strength and variety in all individuals. When we thus stand off and abstract those characteristics which appear universally in all individuals, human nature appears constant. But there are marked variations in the specific content of human nature with which each individual is at birth endowed. Put in another way, one might say that to be a human being means to be by nature pugnacious, curious, subject to fatigue, responsive to praise and blame, etc., and susceptible to training in all these respects. By virtue of the fact that we are all members of the human race, we have common characteristics; by virtue that we are _individuals_, we all display specific variations in specific human capacities. There is, save abstractly, no such thing as a standard human being. We may intellectually set up a norm or standard, but it will be a norm or standard from which every individual is bound to vary. The fact that individuals do differ, and in specific and definable respects, has most serious consequences for social life. It means, briefly, that while general inferences may be drawn from wide and accurate observations of the workings of human nature, these inferences remain general and tentative, and if taken as rigid rules are sure to be misleading. Theories of education and social reform certainly gain from the general laws that can be formulated about original human traits, fatigue, memory, learning capacity, and the like. But they must, if they are to be applicable, take account also, in a precise and systematic way, of the variety of men's interests and capacities. To this fact of variety in the original nature of different men social institutions and educational methods must be adapted. Arbitrary rules that apply to human nature in general do not apply to the specific cases and specific types of talent and desires. Educational and social organizations can mould these, but the result of these environmental influences will vary with individual differences in original capacities. We can waste an enormous amount of time and energy trying to train a person without mechanical or mathematical gifts to be an engineer. We not only save energy and time, but promote happiness, if we can train individuals so that their specific gifts will be capitalized at one hundred per cent. They will be at once more useful to society and more content with themselves, when they are using to the full their own capacities. They will at once be unproductive and unhappy when they find themselves in activities or social situations where their genuine talents are given no opportunity and where their defects put them at a conspicuous handicap. Individuals differ, it must further be noted, not only in specific traits, but in that complex of traits which is commonly called "intelligence." In the broadest terms, we mean by an individual's intelligence his competence and facility in dealing with his environment, physical, social, and intellectual. This competence and facility, in so far as it is a native endowment, consists of a number of traits present in a more or less high degree, traits, for example, such as curiosity, flexibility of native and acquired reactions, sociability, sympathy, and the like. In a sense an individual possesses not a single intelligence, but many, as many as there are types of activity in which he engages. But one may classify intelligence under three heads, as does Thorndike:[1] mechanical intelligence, involved in dealing with things; social intelligence, involved in dealing with other persons; and abstract intelligence, involved in dealing with the relations between ideas. Each of these types of intelligence involves the presence in a high degree of a group of different traits. Thus, in social intelligence, a high degree of sympathy, sensitivity to praise and blame, leadership, and the like, are more requisite than they are for intelligent behavior in the realm of mechanical operations or of mathematical theory. A person may be highly intelligent in one of these three spheres and mentally helpless in the others. Thus, a brilliant philosopher may be nonplused by a stalled motor; a successful executive may be a babe in the realm of abstract ideas. But what we rate as a person's general intelligence is a kind of average struck between his various competences, an estimate of his general ability to control himself in the miscellaneous variety of situations of which his experience consists. [Footnote 1: "Measuring Intelligence," _Harper's Magazine_, March, 1920.] There have been a number of tests devised for the purpose of estimating an individual's general intelligence.[1] On a rating scale such as is used in these examinations most individuals will come up to a certain standard that may be called average or normal. There will be a certain number so far below the normal rating in a complex of traits that go to produce intelligent (competent and facile) behavior that they will have to be classed as subnormal, ranging from feeblemindedness to idiocy. A certain number will be found so extraordinarily gifted in general traits and in specific abilities--in given subject-matters, as, for example, in mathematics and music--that they will be marked out as geniuses. Following the laws of probability, the greater the inferiority or superiority, the more exceptional it will be. [Footnote 1: These, in large part, deal with words and ideas and are, therefore, weighted in favor of abstract intelligence, and put at a discount individuals whose experience and whose intelligence are predominantly social or mechanical in character. Some of the tests are fairly adequate for mechanical intelligence, but no good tests have been devised for social intelligence. These tests, however, as used in the army and for appraising college entrants, as at Columbia University, have been demonstrated to be fairly good indices of general intelligence.] Individual differences are, therefore, seen to be not simply differences with respect to given mental traits, but differences with respect to general mental capacity. Experimental investigation points to a graded difference in mental capacity, ranging from idiocy to genius, the largest group being normal or average, the size of the group diminishing with further deviation from the average in either direction. Certain important correlations, furthermore, have been found between the level of intelligence and the level of character. The great in mind, it may be said briefly, are also great in spirit. "General moral defect commonly involves intellectual inferiority. Woods and Pearson find the correlation between intellect and character to be about .5.... General moral defect is due in part to a generally inferior nervous organization."[1] [Footnote 1: Thorndike: _Educational Psychology_ (1910), p. 224.] One other important correlation must be noted. While gifts and capacities are specific, superiority in a given trait commonly involves superiority in most others. Exceptional talent in one direction in most cases involves exceptionality in many other respects. While talents are not indiscriminately transferable from one field to another, the same complex of traits which makes a person stand out preëminently in a given field, say law, would make him stand out in any one of half a dozen different fields into which he might have gone. There seems to be no evidence that extraordinary capacity in one direction is balanced by extraordinary incapacity and stupidity in others. The fact that individuals differ not only in specific traits but in general mental capacity has, also, certain obvious practical consequences. It means that there are present in society, in the light of recent tests in the army, an unexpectedly large number of individuals below the level of normal intelligence. One in five hundred, Thorndike estimates, is the "frequency of intellectual ability so defective as to disturb the home, resist school influence, and excite popular derision." These are clearly liabilities in the social order. On the other hand, there is a large number above the level of average intelligence. The importance of this group for human progress can hardly be overestimated. As we have seen in other connections, progress is contingent upon variation from the "normal" or the accustomed, and such variation from the normal is initiated in the majority of cases by members of this comparatively small super-normal group. If civilization is to advance it must capitalize its intelligence; that is, educate up to the highest point of native ability. But in any case, its chief guarantee of progress lies in the comparatively small group in whom native ability is exceptionally high. For it is among this group that original thinking, invention, and discovery almost exclusively occur. CAUSES OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES. Among the chief causes of individual differences may, in general, be set down the following: (1) Sex, (2) Race, (3) Near Ancestry or Family, (4) Environment. The particular fund of human nature which an individual displays, that is, his specific native endowments, as they appear in practice, will be a resultant of these various causes. In the study of each of these characteristics, we should be able ideally to eliminate all the others and to consider them each in isolation. THE INFLUENCE OF SEX. In the case of sex, for example, we should not confuse individual differences due to the fact of sex with individual differences due to divergent training given to each of the sexes. In scientific experiments to determine sex differences in mental traits, there have been careful attempts to eliminate everything but the factor of sex itself. Thus in Karl Pearson's studies of fifty twin brothers and sisters, the factors of ancestry and difference of training and age were practically eliminated. In so far as allowance can be made for other contributing factors, studies of individual differences due to sex have revealed, roughly speaking, the following results. There have been, in the field of sensory discrimination and accuracy of motor response, slight--and negligible--differences of responses made by male and female. The subjects stated were, in most cases, selected so far as possible from the same social strata, social and intellectual interest, and background.[1] [Footnote 1: As, for example, the members of the graduating and junior classes of the co-educational college at the University of Chicago, studied by Dr. Thompson.] Thorndike reports the general results of such tests as follows: The percentages of males reaching or exceeding the median ability of females in such traits as have been subjected to exact investigation are roughly as follows: In speed of naming colors and sorting cards by color and discriminating colors as in a test for color blindness 24 In finding and checking small visual details such as letters 33 In spelling 33 In school "marks" in English 35 In school "marks" in foreign languages 40 In memorizing for immediate recall 42 In lowness of sensory thresholds 43 In retentiveness 47 In tests of speed and accuracy of association 48 In tests of general information 50 In school "marks" in mathematics 50 In school "marks" (total average) 50 In tests of discrimination (other than for color) 51 In range of sensitivity 52 In school "marks" in history 55 In tests of ingenuity 63 In accuracy of arm movements 66 In school "marks" in physics and chemistry 68 In reaction time 70 In speed of finger and arm movement 71 The most important characteristic of these differences is their small amount. The individual differences within one sex so enormously outweigh the differences between the sexes in these intellectual and semi-intellectual traits that for practical purposes the sex difference may be disregarded. So far as ability goes, there could hardly be a stupider way to get two groups alike within each group but differing between the groups than to take the two sexes. As is well known, the experiments of the past generation in educating women have shown their equal competence in school work of elementary, secondary, and collegiate grade. The present generation's experience is showing the same fact for professional education and business service. The psychologists' measurements lead to the conclusion that this equality of achievement comes from an equality of natural gifts, not from an overstraining of the lesser talents of women.[1] [Footnote 1: Thorndike: _Educational Psychology_, briefer course, pp. 345-46.] That is, so far as experiments upon objectively measurable traits have been conducted, the specific differences that individuals display have comparatively nothing to do with the fact that an individual happens to be a man or a woman. These experiments have been conducted with boys and girls as young as seven, and with men and women ranging up to the age of twenty-five.[2] [Footnote 2: There seems, as might be expected to be, a slightly higher differentiation between the two sexes after adolescence than before.] These experiments have been conducted to test sensory discrimination, precision of motor response and some of the simpler types of judgment, such as those involved in the solution of simple puzzles with blocks, matches, etc. The fact of the negligibility of sex difference with regard to certain minor measurable traits has been adequately demonstrated by a wide variety of experiments. The fact of sex equality or mental capacity has been less accurately but fairly universally noted by popular consensus of observation and opinion of the work of women in the various trades and professions. There are differences between men and women in physical strength and in consequent susceptibility to fatigue. These are important considerations in qualifying the amount of work a woman can do as compared with that of a man, and have justly resulted in the regulation of hours for women, as a special class. But there do not seem to be, on the average, significant original differences in mental capacity.[3] [Footnote 3: On this subject there has been collected a large amount of accurate experimental data. See Goldmark: _Fatigue and Efficiency_, part II, pp. 1-22. These refer to physiological differences.] There do exist, as a matter of practical fact, some of the special attributes commonly ascribed to the masculine and feminine mental life, but it is generally agreed by investigators that these are to be accounted for by the different environment and standards socially established for men and for women. There are radical and subtle differences in training to which boys and girls are subjected from early childhood. There are deeply fixed traditions as to the standards of action, feeling, and demeanor to which boys and girls are respectively trained and to which they are expected to conform. If a boy should not live up to this training and expectation, he may be marked out as "effeminate." If a girl does not conform, she is defined as a "hoyden" or a "tomboy." These social distinctions, which are emphasized even in the behavior of young boys and young girls, grow more pronounced as individuals grow older. One need hardly call attention to actions regarded as perfectly legitimate for men which provoke disapproval if practiced by women. Rigid training in these different codes of behavior may cause acquired characteristics to seem inborn. But whether these general features commonly held to distinguish the mental life of man or woman are or are not intrinsic and original, they have been marked out by certain investigators as socially fundamental. Thus Heymans and Wiersma, two German investigators, set down as the differentia of feminine mental life (1) greater activity, (2) greater emotionality, (3) greater unselfishness of the female.[1] [Footnote 1: See Thorndike's _Educational Psychology_ (1910), p. 136.] There are some general differences noted by both layman and psychologist, which, though not subject to quantitative determination, yet seem to differentiate somewhat definitely between feminine and masculine mental activity. These may be set down in general as occurring in the field of emotional susceptibility. Thorndike traces them back to the varying intensity of two human traits earlier discussed: the fighting instinct, relatively much stronger in the male, and the nursing or mothering instinct, much stronger in the female. With this fact are associated important differences in the conduct of men and women in social relations. The maternal instinct is held by some writers, for instance, to be in large measure the basis of altruism, and is closely associated with sensitivity to the needs and desires of others. Thorndike writes: It has been common to talk of women's dependence. This is, I am sure, only an awkward name for less resentment at mastery. The actual nursing of the young seems likewise to involve equally unreasoning tendencies to pet, coddle, and "do for" others. The existence of these two instincts has been long recognized by literature and common knowledge, but their importance in causing differences in the general activities of the two sexes has not. The fighting instinct is in fact the cause of a very large amount of the world's intellectual endeavor. The financier does not think merely for money, nor the scientist for truth, nor the theologian to save souls. Their intellectual efforts are aimed in great measure to outdo the other man, to subdue nature, to conquer assent. The maternal instinct in its turn is the chief source of woman's superiorities in the moral life. The virtues in which she excels are not so much due to either any general moral superiority or any set of special moral talents as to her original impulses to relieve, comfort, and console.[1] [Footnote 1: Thorndike: _loc. cit._, pp. 48-49.] Ordinary observation reveals, as literature has in general recorded, what Havelock Ellis has called the "greater affectability of the female mind." There is evidenced in many women a singular and immediate responsiveness to other people's emotions, a quick intuition, a precise though non-logical discrimination, which, though shared to some extent by all individuals gifted with sympathy and affection, is a peculiarly feminine quality. Indeed when a man possesses it, it is common to speak of him as possessing "almost a woman's intuition." Such emotional susceptibility is manifested in the higher frequency of emotional instability and emotional outbreaks among women than among men, and the decreased power of inhibition which women have over instinctive and emotional reactions. Further than this, women more than men may be said to qualify their judgments of persons and situations by their emotional reactions to them. The common suspicion that in general women's abilities are less than those of men has seemed to gain strength from the greater number of geniuses and eminent persons there have been among men than among women. Professor Cattell writes in this connection: I have spoken throughout of eminent men as we lack in English words including both men and women, but as a matter of fact women do not have an important place on the list. They have in all thirty-two representatives in the thousand. Of these eleven are hereditary sovereigns, and eight are eminent through misfortunes, beauty, or other circumstances. Belles-lettres and fiction--the only department in which woman has accomplished much--give ten names as compared with seventy-two men. Sappho and Joan d'Arc are the only other women on the list. It is noticeable that with the exception of Sappho--a name associated with certain fine fragments--women have not excelled in poetry or art. Yet these are the departments least dependent on environment, and at the same time those in which the environment has been perhaps as favorable to women as to men. Women depart less from the normal than men--a fact that usually holds for the female throughout the animal series; in many closely related species only the male can be readily distinguished.[1] [Footnote 1: Cattell: "A Statistical Study of Eminent Men," _Popular Science Monthly_, vol. LXII. pp. 375-77.] In the facts of higher variability among males, and the hitherto restricted social opportunities provided for women are to be found the chief reasons for the comparatively high achievement of the male sex as compared with the female. But on the average the difference between the two sexes with respect to mental capacity is slight. THE INFLUENCE OF RACE. A second factor in determining individual differences in mental traits is race. There are certain popular presuppositions as to the inherent differences in the mental activity of different races. The Irishman's wit, the negro's joyousness, the emotionality of the Latin races, the stolidity of the Chinese, are all supposed to be fundamental. And in a sense they are. That is, in the life and culture of these groups, such traits may stand out distinctively. But most psychologists and anthropologists question seriously whether these traits are to be traced to radical differences in racial inheritance. For the most part they seem rather to be the result of radical differences in environment. "Many of the mental similarities of an Indian to Indians and of his differences from Anglo-Saxons disappear, if he happens to be adopted and brought up as an Anglo-Saxon."[1] [Footnote 1: Thorndike _loc. cit._, p. 52.] There have been various experimental studies made to determine how much divergences in the mental activity of different races are determined by differences in racial inheritance. Such experiments have been conducted chiefly upon very simple traits and capacities. The accuracy of sensory response among different races has, for example, been examined. There have proved to be, in regard to these, slight differences in the effectiveness and accuracy of response. There are racial differences in hearing, as tested by the ticking of a watch or clock artificially made. In this test, Papuans, to take an instance, were inferior to Europeans. The sense of touch has been similarly tested, and comparatively negligible differences have been found. In regard to the five senses, their efficiency seems to be about equal in all the races of mankind. The proverbial keenness of vision of the Indian, for example, is found to be due to a superior training in its use, a training made imperative by the conditions of Indian life. In reaction time tests--that is, tests in the speed of simple mental and motor performances--the time consumed in response has been found to be about the same for all races tested. The results have been similar with regard to certain simple processes of judgment or inference: There are a number of illusions and constant errors of judgment which are well known in the psychological laboratory, and which seem to depend, not on peculiarities of the sense organs, but on quirks and twists in the process of judgment. A few of these have been made the matter of comparative tests, with the result that peoples of widely different cultures are subject to the same errors, and in about the same degree. There is an illusion which occurs when an object, which looks heavier than it is, is lifted by the hand; it then feels, not only lighter than it looks, but even lighter than it really is. The contrast between the look and the feel of the thing plays havoc with the judgment. Women are, on the average, more subject to this illusion than men. The amount of this illusion has been measured in several peoples, and found to be, with one or two exceptions, about the same in all. Certain visual illusions, in which the apparent length or direction of a line is greatly altered by the neighborhood of other lines, have similarly been found present in all races tested, and to about the same degree. As far as they go, these results tend to show that simple sorts of judgment, being subject to the same disturbances, proceed in the same manner among various peoples; so that the similarity of the races in mental processes extends at least one step beyond sensation.[1] [Footnote 1: Woodworth: "Racial Differences in Mental Traits," _Science_, New Series, vol. 31, pp. 179-81.] Professor Woodworth also points out that these simple tests are not adequate to measure general intelligence. A good test for intelligence would be much appreciated by the comparative psychologist, since, in spite of equal standing in such rudimentary matters as the senses and bodily movement, attention and the simpler sorts of judgment, it might still be that great differences in mental efficiency existed between different groups of men. Probably no single test could do justice to so complex a trait as intelligence. Two important features of intelligent action are quickness in seizing the key to a novel situation, and firmness in limiting activity to the right direction, and suppressing acts which are obviously useless for the purpose in hand. A simple test which calls for these qualities is the so-called "form test." There are a number of blocks of different shapes, and a board with holes to match the blocks. The blocks and board are placed before a person, and he is told to put the blocks in the holes in the shortest possible time. The key to the situation is here the matching of blocks and holes by their shape; and the part of intelligence is to hold firmly to this obvious necessity, wasting no time in trying to force a round block into a square hole. The demand on intelligence certainly seems slight enough; and the test would probably not differentiate between a Newton and you or me; but it does suffice to catch the feeble-minded, the young child, or the chimpanzee, as any of these is likely to fail altogether, or at least to waste much time in random moves and vain efforts. This test was tried on representatives of several races and considerable differences appeared. As between whites, Indians, Eskimos, Ainus, Filipinos, and Singhalese, the average differences were small, and much overlapping occurred. As between these groups, however, and the Igorot and Negrito from the Philippines and a few reputed Pygmies from the Congo, the average differences were great, and the overlapping small.[1] [Footnote 1: Woodworth: _loc. cit._, pp. 171-86.] Equality among races in the various traits that have been measured by psychologists does not imply that common observation is wrong in counting one race as intellectually superior to another. There have, as yet, been no measurements of such general features of social life as energy, self-reliance, inventiveness, and the like. But from indications of experiments already made, these so-called (and for practical purposes genuine) intellectual differences between the individuals of different races must be attributed to differences in environment. Races _as_ races seem to be equally gifted. Professor Boas points out that civilized investigators traveling among savage tribes commit one serious fallacy in insisting on the inferiority of these primitive peoples. They are said to be irrational, for example, when they are quite logical in their way of dealing with the material which is at their disposal. Without any scientific information available, for example, anthropomorphism, or the tendency to interpret cosmic phenomena in human terms is quite natural and reasonable. Again: The difference in the mode of thought of primitive man and that of civilized man seems to consist largely in the difference of character of the traditional material with which the new perception associates itself. The instruction given to the child of primitive man is not based on centuries of experimentation, but consists of the crude experience of generations. When a new experience enters the mind of primitive man, the same process which we observe among civilized man brings about an entirely different series of associations, and therefore results in a different type of explanation. A sudden explosion will associate itself in his mind, perhaps, with the tales he has heard in regard to the mythical history of the world, and consequently will be accompanied by superstitious fear. When we recognize that neither among civilized men nor among primitive men the average individual carries to completion the attempt at causal explanation of phenomena, but carries it only so far as to amalgamate it with other previously known facts, we recognize that the result of the whole process depends entirely upon the character of the traditional material.[1] [Footnote 1: Boas: _Mind of Primitive Man_, pp. 203-04.] This may be illustrated by our immediate reactions of pleasure or disgust at customs or ideas that provoke directly opposite reactions among races reared in another tradition. Again primitive races have been accused of lacking self-control. The fact is that they exhibit self-control about matters which they regard as important, and lack of it in respect to matters which they regard as trivial. "When an Eskimo community is on the point of starvation, and their religious proscriptions forbid them to make use of the seals that are basking on the ice, the amount of self-control of the whole community which restrains them from killing those seals is certainly very great."[2] The case is similar with regard to nearly all the alleged inferiorities of primitive man, his improvidence, unreliability, and the like. In nearly every instance, it has been found that we are holding him to account for not being able to persist in courses of action which do not seem to him, with his training and education, worth persisting in, and for not conforming to standards which, given his background, are meaningless. [Footnote 2: _Ibid_. p. 108.] But if differences in racial attainments are due to differences in environment, it might be said that this itself is testimony to the superiority of the race that has the more complex and exacting environment. This is not by any means clearly the case. The "culture" or civilization which a race exhibits is a very uncertain index of its gifts or its capacities. The culture found in a race is, it may be said without exaggeration, largely a matter of accident or circumstance rather than of heredity. Some of the environmental causes for differences in culture may he explicitly noted. Any modern culture is the result of interminglings of many different cross-streams and cross-borrowings. Races that have long been isolated as, for example the African negroes, have no possibility of picking up all the acquisitions to which races that intermingle have access. Progress in the developments of arts, sciences, and institutions depends on fortunate individual variations. The smaller the race the less the number of variations possible, including those on the side of what we call genius. Again fortunate variations depend not so much on the general average intellectual capacities of the race as on its variability. So one race may possess a relative superiority of achievement because of its high variability, just as, as we have already pointed out, the greater preëminence of the male sex with regard to intellectual accomplishment is due to the greater number of variations both above and below the norm which it displays. The reasons for variability are again, according to Professor Boas, largely environmental. "We have seen, when a people is descended from a small uniform group, that then its variability will decrease; while on the other hand, when a group has a much-varied origin or when the ancestors belong to entirely distinct types the variability may be considerably increased."[1] [Footnote 1: Boas; _loc. cit._, p. 93.] Again a race may be placed in such geographical conditions that a fortuitous variation on the part of one individual may prove of enormous value in the development of its civilization. Or fortunate geographical conditions may stimulate types of activity that lie dormant, although possible, among other races. Thus by some investigators the flexibility and emancipation of the Greek genius were attributed to their access to the sea and their constant intermingling with other cultures, especially the Egyptian. On the subject of the fundamental equality of races despite their seeming disparity, as that at present, let us say, between whites and negroes, Professor Boas writes: Much has been said of the hereditary characteristics of the Jews, of the Gypsies, of the French and Irish, but I do not see that the external and social causes which have moulded the character of members of these people have ever been eliminated satisfactorily; and, moreover, I do not see how this can be accomplished. A number of external factors that influence body and mind may easily be named--climate, nutrition, occupation--but as soon as we enter into a consideration of social factors and mental conditions we are unable to tell definitely what is cause and what is effect. * * * * * The conclusions reached are therefore, on the whole, negative. We are not inclined to consider the mental organization of different races of man as differing in fundamental points. Although, therefore, the distribution of faculty among the races of man is far from being known, we can say this much: the average faculty of the white race is found to the same degree in a large proportion of individuals of all other races, and although it is probable that some of these races may not produce as large a proportion of great men as our own race, there is no reason to suppose that they are unable to reach the level of civilization represented by the bulk of our own people.[1] [Footnote 1: Boas; _loc. cit._, pp. 116, 123.] In contrast must be cited the opinions of a large class of psychologists and anthropologists who are inclined to regard racial differences as intrinsic and original. Of such, for example, is Francis Galton, who claims in his _Hereditary Genius_, that taking negroes on their own ground they still are inferior to Europeans by about one eighth the difference, say, between Aristotle and the lowest idiot. Recent psychological experiments in the army reveal, again, certain fundamental intellectual inferiorities of negroes, though whether this is environmental or to be traced to hereditary causes is open to question. The fact remains that there are, despite the lack of evidence for hereditary mental differences, practical differences in the mental activity of different races that are of social importance. These differences, which seem so fundamental, have been explained primarily by the powerful control exercised over the individual by the habits which he acquires even before the age of five years. These, though unconscious, may be, as the Freudian psychologists maintain, all the more important for that reason. This would appear to be the only explanation of significant racial differences. Cultural differences cannot, biologists are generally agreed, be transmitted in the germs that pass from generation to generation. One may say, in effect, that an individual is differentiated in his mental traits by early association with a certain race, and by his immediate ancestry or family, rather than by the fact of belonging physically to a certain race. THE INFLUENCE OF IMMEDIATE ANCESTRY OR FAMILY. A factor that is, on experimental evidence, rated to be of high importance in the determination of the differences of the mental make-up of human beings, is "immediate ancestry" or family. Stated in the most simple and general terms this means that children of the same parents tend to display marked likenesses in mental traits, and to exhibit less variation among themselves than is exhibited in the same number of individuals chosen at random. A great number of experiments have been conducted to determine how far resemblances in mental traits are due to common parentage. The correlation between membership in the same family and resemblances of social traits has been found to be uniformly high. The inference was made that children of the same family would show great resemblances in mental traits, when accurate experiments showed marked similarity in physical traits under the same conditions. The coefficient of correlation between brothers in the color of the eye, is, according to the results obtained by Karl Pearson, .52.[1] The coefficient of fraternal correlation in the case of the cephalic index (ratio of width to length of head) is .40. The correlation of hair color is found to be .55. The fact of high correlation between resemblance of physical traits and membership in the same family is of crucial importance, because these traits are clearly due to ancestry, and not to environmental differences. If physical traits show such a correlation, it is likely that mental traits will also, mental traits being ultimately dependent on the brain and the nervous system, which are both affected by ancestry. [Footnote 1: These facts are based on the reports of Karl Pearson in his _On the Laws of Inheritance in Man_. What is meant by coefficient of correlation may be explained as follows: If the coefficient of correlation between father and son is .3 and the coefficient of correlation between brother and brother is .5 we may say: a son on the average deviates from the general trend of the population by .3 of the amount of his father's deviation, a brother by .5 of the amount of his brother.] Measurements of measurable traits and observations of less objectively measurable ones, have revealed that immediate ancestry is in itself an influential factor in producing likenesses and differences among men with respect to mental traits. One interesting case, interesting because it was a test of a capacity that might be expected to be largely environmental in its origins, was that of the spelling abilities of children in the St. Xavier School in New York. Thorndike thus reports the test: As the children of this school commonly enter at a very early age, and as the staff and the methods of teaching remain very constant, we have in the case of the 180 brothers and sisters included in the 600 children closely similar school training. Mr. Earle measured the ability of any individual by his deviation from the average for his grade and sex, and found the co-efficient of correlation between children of the same family to be .50. That is, any individual is on the average fifty per cent as much above or below the average for his age and sex as his brother or sister. Similarities in home training might theoretically account for this, but any one experienced in teaching will hesitate to attribute much efficacy to such similarities. Bad spellers remain bad spellers though their teachers change. Moreover, Dr. J. M. Rice in his exhaustive study of spelling ability found little or no relationship between good spelling and any one of the popular methods, and little or none between poor spelling and foreign parentage. Yet the training of a home where parents do not read or spell the language well must be a home of relatively poor training for spelling. Cornman's more careful study of spelling supports the view that ability to spell is little influenced by such differences in school or home training as commonly exist.[1] [Footnote 1: Thorndike: _loc. cit._, p. 78.] In general the influence of heredity may be said far to outweigh the influence of home training. In all the cases reported, the resemblances were about the same in traits subject to training, and in those not subject to training. Thus industry and conscientiousness and public spirit, which are clearly affected by environment, show no greater resemblance than such practically unmodifiable traits as memory, original sensitiveness to colors, sounds, and distances. The influence of parentage, it must be added, consists in the transmission of specific traits, not of a certain "nature" as a whole. There are in the germ and the ovum which constitute the inheritance of each individual, certain determinant elements. The elements that determine the original traits with which each individual will be born vary, of course, in the germs produced by a single parent less than among individuals chosen at random, but they vary none the less. In this variation of the determining elements in the germs of the same individual is to be found the cause of the variation in the physical and mental traits among children of the same parents. Since the determining elements, the unit characters that appear in the sperm or ovum of each individual, do not appear uniformly even in children of the same parents, brother and sister may resemble each other in certain mental traits, and differ in others. "A pair of twins may be indistinguishable in eye color and stature, but be notably different in hair color and tests of intellect." Mental inheritance, as well as physical, is, then, organized in detail. It is not the inheritance of gross total natures, but of particular "mental traits." If we had sufficient data, we should be able to analyze out the unit characters of an individual's mental equipment, so as to be able to predict with some accuracy the mental inheritance of the children of any two parents. In the case of physical inheritance, the laws of the hereditary transmission of any given traits are known in considerable detail. The detailed quantitative investigations of inheritance, following the general lines set by Mendel, have given striking results. Physical traits have been found to be analyzable into unit-characters (that is, traits hereditarily transmitted as units), such as "curliness of hair," "blue eyes," and the like. Mental traits, however, do not seem analyzable into the fixed unit-characters prescribed by the Mendelian laws of inheritance. The success which breeders have had in the control of the reproduction of plants and animals, in the perpetuation of a stock of desirable characteristics and the elimination of the undesirable, has given rise to a somewhat analogous ideal in human reproduction. That eugenics has at least its theoretical possibilities with regard to physical traits, few biologists will question. However difficult it may be in practice to regulate human matings on the exclusive basis of the kind of offspring desired, it is a genuine biological possibility. In a negative way, it has already in part been initiated in the prevention of the marriage of some extreme types of the physically unfit, by the so-called eugenic marriage laws in some states in this country.[1] [Footnote 1: There have been laws, as there is a fairly decided public opinion, adverse to reproduction by the feeble-minded and the morally defective. But (see Richardson: _The Etiology of Arrested Mental Development_, p. 9) there have been a number of cases of feeble-minded parents producing normal children.] But whether scientific regulation of marriages for the production of eugenic offspring is feasible, even apart from the personal and emotional questions involved, is open to question. No mental trait such as vivacity, musical ability, mathematical talent, or artistic sense, has been analyzed into such definitely transmissible unit-characters as "blue eyes" and "curliness of hair." So many unit-characters seem to be involved in any single mental trait that it will be long before a complete analysis of the hereditary invariable determinants of any single trait can be made. It is thus impossible to tell as yet with any security or precision the biological components of any single mental trait. The evidence at our disposal, however, does confirm us in the belief that one of the most significant and certain causes of individual differences, whether physical or mental, is immediate ancestry or family. Individuals are made by what they are initially, and, as we shall presently see, therefore largely by their inheritance. With the latter, environment can do just so much, and no more. And the most significant and effective part of an individual's inheritance is his family for some generations back, rather than the race to which he belongs. THE INFLUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT. Those factors so far discussed which determine individual differences are independent of the particular conditions of life in which an individual happens to be placed. An individual's race, sex, family are beyond modification by anything that happens to him after birth. Maturity, in so far as it is mere growth independent of training, is also largely a fixed and unmodifiable condition. The original nature, determined by race, sex, and immediate ancestry, with which a man starts life is subject to modification by his social environment, by the ideas, customs, companions, beliefs, by which he is surrounded, and with which he comes continuously in contact. Commonly the influence of environment is held to be very high. It is difficult, however, accurately to distinguish between effects which are due to original nature and effects which are due to environment. Differences in training are important, but the results vary with the natures trained. Precisely the same environment will not have the same consequences for two different natures. Two approximately same natures will show something like the same effects in dissimilar environments. Human beings are certainly differentiated by the customs, laws, ideals, friends, and occupations to which they are exposed. But what the net result will be in a specific case, depends on the individual's equipment to start with, an equipment that is fixed before the environment has had a chance to act at all. The kindliness and indulgence that save some children demoralize others. In some people a soft answer turneth away wrath; in others it will kindle it. Andrew Carnegie starts as a bobbin boy, and becomes a millionaire; but there were many other bobbin boys. The sunset that stirs in one man a lyric, leaves another cold. The same course in biology arouses in one student a passion for a life of science; it leaves another hoping never to see a microscope again. On the other hand, the same types of original capacity thrown into different environments will yet attain somewhat comparable results, in the way of character and achievement. The biographies of a few poets, painters, philosophers, and scientists chosen at random, show the most diverse antecedents.[1] [Footnote 1: Taking the social and professional status of a distinguished man's father as some index of the social environment to which he was subjected during his youth, we find some interesting examples: The father of John Keats was a livery stable-keep; his mother the daughter of one. Byron's father was a captain in the Royal Guards; his mother a Scottish heiress. Newton's father was a tanner; Pasteur's, a tanner; Darwin's, a doctor of considerable means. Francis Bacon's father was Lord Keeper of the Great Seal; Newton's was a farmer and the headmaster of a school; Turner was the son of a barber.] An individual, again, to a certain extent, makes his own environment. What kind of an environment he will make depends on the kinds of capacities and interests he has to start with. Similarity of original tendencies and interests brings men together as differences among these keep them apart. The libraries, the theaters, and the baseball parks are all equally possible and accessible features of their environment to individuals of a given economic or social class. Yet a hundred individuals with the same education and social opportunities will make themselves by choice a hundred different environments. They will select, even from the same physical environment, different aspects. The Grand Cañon is a different environment to the artist and to the geologist; a crowd of people at an amusement park constitutes a different environment to the man who has come out to make psychological observations, and the man who has come out for a day's fun. A dozen men, teachers and students, selected at random on a university campus, might well be expected to note largely different though overlapping facts, as the most significant features of the life of the university. The environment is the less important in the moulding of character, the less fixed and unavoidable it becomes. If an individual has the chance to change his environment to suit his own original demands and interests, these are the less likely to undergo modification. This is illustrated in the animal world by the migratory birds, which change their habitations with the seasons. Similarly human beings, to suit the original mental traits with which they are endowed, can and do exchange one environment for another. There are a very large number of individuals living in New York City, in the twentieth century, for example, for whom a multiplicity of environments are possible. The one that becomes habitual with an individual is a matter of his own free choice. That is, it is choice, in the sense that it is independent of the circumstances of the individual's life. But an individual's choice of his environment must be within the limited number of alternatives made possible by the original nature with which he is endowed. As pointed out in connection with our discussion of "Instinctive Behavior," we do originally what gives satisfaction to our native impulses, and avoid what irritates and frustrates them. We may be trained to find satisfactions in acquired activities, but there is a strong tendency to acquire habits that "chime in," as it were, with the tendencies we have to start with. There is, for example, to certain individuals, intrinsic satisfaction in form and color; to others in sound. To the former, pictures and paintings will tend to be the environment selected; to the latter the hearing and the playing of music. To those gifted with sensitivity in neither of these directions, pictures may be through all their lives a bore, and a piano a positive nuisance. These facts of original nature, therefore, determine initially, and consequently in large part, what our environment is going to be. Once we get into, or select through instinctive desires, a certain kind of environment, those desires become strengthened through habit, and that environment becomes fixed through fulfilling those habitual desires. A man may, in the first place, choose artists or scholars as companions because his own gifts and interests are similar. But such an environment will become the more indispensable for him when it has the reinforcement of habit to confirm what is already initially strong in him by birth. "To him who hath shall be given" is most distinctly true of the opportunities and environment open to those with native gifts to begin with. Original nature thus sets the scope and the limits of an individual's character and achievement. It tells "how much" and, in the most general way, "what" his capacities are. Thus a man born with a normal vocal apparatus can speak; a man born with normal vision can see. But what language he shall speak, and what sights he shall see, depend on the social and geographical situation in which he happens to be placed. Again, if a man is born with a "high general intelligence," that is, with keen sensory discriminations and motor responses, precise and accurate powers of analysis of judgment, a capacity for the quick and effective acquisition and modification of habits, we can safely predict that he will excel in some direction. But whether he will stand out as a lawyer, doctor, philosopher, poet, or executive, it is almost impossible from original nature to tell.[1] [Footnote 1: The psychological tests used in the army, and being used now with modifications in the admission of students to Columbia College, are "general intelligence" tests. That is, they show general alertness and intellectual promise, but are not prophetic of any specialized talents or capacities.] INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES--DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION. The fact that individuals differ in ability and interest has important consequences for education and social progress. It means, in the first place, that while current optimistic doctrines about the modifiability of human nature are true, they are true within limits--limits that vary with the individual. Whether or not we shall ever succeed, through the science or the practice of eugenics, in eliminating low ability and perpetuating high exclusively, the fact remains that there are in contemporary society the widest variations both in the kinds of interest and ability displayed, and in their relative efficacy under present social and industrial conditions. There are, it must be noted at the outset, a not inconsiderable number of individuals who must be set down as absolute social liabilities. Even if existing social and educational arrangements were perfect, these would remain unaffected and unavailable for any useful purpose. They would have to be endowed, cared for, or confined. There is the quite considerable class, who, while normal with respect to sensory and motor discrimination, seem to be seriously and irremediably defective in their powers of judgment. These also seem to offer invulnerable resistance to education, and their original natures would not be subject to modification even by an education perfectly adapted to the needs of normal people. But the more significant fact, more significant because it affects so many, is the fact that within the ranks of the great class of normal people, there are fundamental inherited differences in ability and interest. Next in importance to the fact that an individual is human is the fact that he is an individual, with very specific initial capacities and desires. For education the implications are serious. Education aims, among other things, to give the individual habits that will enable him to deal most effectively with his environment. But an individual can be trained best, it goes without saying, in the capacities and interests he has to begin with. Education cannot, therefore, be wholesale in its methods. It must be so adjusted as to utilize and make the most of the multifarious variety of native abilities and interests which individuals display. If it does not utilize these, and instead sets up arbitrary moulds to which individuals must conform, it will be crushing and distorting the specific native activities which are the only raw material it has to work upon. There have not as yet been many detailed quantitative studies of individual differences that would enable educators, if they were free to do so, scientifically to adapt education to specific needs and possibilities. Beginnings in this direction are being made, though rather in advanced than in more elementary education. Professional and trade schools, and group-electives in college courses are attempts in this direction. Any attempt, of course, to adapt education to specific needs and interests, instead of crushing them into _a priori_ moulds, requires, of course, a wider social recognition and support of education than is at present common. For individual differences require attention. And where millions are to be educated, individual attention requires an immense investment in teaching personnel. But in this utilization of original interests and capacities lies the only possibility of genuinely effective education.[1] In the first place to try in education to give individuals habits for which they have no special innate tendencies to begin with, is costly. Secondly, to train individuals for types of life or work for which their gifts and desires are ill adapted is to promote at once inefficiency and unhappiness. One reason why the chance to identify one's life with one's work (as is the case with the artist and the scholar) is so universally recognized as good fortune, is because it is so rare. A general and indiscriminate training of men, as if they were all fitted with the same talents and the same longings, does as much as underpayment or overwork to impair the quality of the work done and the satisfaction derived from it. [Footnote 1: A beginning in the application of this principle has been made by the vocational guidance and employment management work which is being done with increasing scientific accuracy throughout the United States. Individual differences and interests are studied with a view to putting "the right man in the right place." This slogan is borrowed from the Committee on Classification and Personnel, which during the Great War, through its trade tests and other machinery of differentiation, utilized for the national welfare the specific abilities of thousands of drafted men.] It has latterly been recognized that industry offers the crucial opportunity to utilize to the fullest individual differences. By "getting the right man in the right place," we at once get the work done better and make the man better satisfied. If adequate attention is given to "placement," to the specific demands put upon men by specific types of work, and to the specific capacities of individuals for fulfilling those demands, we will be capitalizing variations among men instead of being handicapped by them. As it is, specific differences do exist, and men enter occupations and professions ignoring them. As a result both the job and the man suffer; the former is done poorly, and the latter is unsuccessful and unhappy. It must be noted that the existence of specific differences between individuals does not altogether, or often even in part, imply superiority or inferiority. It implies in each case inferiority or superiority with respect to the performance of a particular type of work. Whether scientific insight and accuracy is better than musical skill, whether a gift for salesmanship surpasses a gift for mathematics, depends on the social situation and the standards that happen to be current among the group. An intensely disagreeable person may be the best man for a particular job. All scientific observation can do is to note individual differences, to note what work makes demands upon what capacities, and try to bring the man and the job together. It must be emphasized that, while individual capacities determine what an individual can do, social ideals and traditions determine what he will do, because they determine what he will be rewarded and encouraged to do. There is no question but that in our industrial civilization certain types of ability, that of the organizer, for example, have a high social value. There is no question but that there are other abilities, which under our present customs and ideals we reward possibly beyond their merit, as, to take an extreme case, that of a championship prize fighter. We can through education and vocational guidance utilize all native capacities. To make provision for the utilization of all native capacities is to have an efficient social life. But to what end our efficient human machinery shall be used depends on the ideals and customs and purposes that happen to be current in the social order at any given time. In the words of Professor Thorndike, "we can invest in profitable enterprises the capital nature provides." But what profiteth a man or a society, is a matter for reflective determination; it is not settled for us, as are our limitations, at birth. The net result of scientific observation in this field is the discovery, in increasingly precise and specific form, that men are most diverse and unequal in interest and capacity. The ideal of equality comes to mean, under scientific analysis, equality of opportunity, leveling all social inequalities; the fact of natural inequalities and divergences remains incontestable. There may even be, as recent psychological tests seem to indicate, a certain proportion of individuals who are not competent to take an intelligent part in democratic government, who, having too little intellectual ability to follow the simplest problem needing coöperative and collective decision, must eternally be governed by others. If these facts come to be authenticated by further data, it merely emphasizes the fact that in a country professedly democratic it is essential to devise an education that will, in the case of each individual, educate up to the highest point of native ability. Where a country is ostensibly democratic, a few informed citizens will govern the many uninformed, unless the latter are educated to an intelligent knowledge and appreciation of their political duties and obligations. Furthermore, the citizens of a community who are prevented from using their native gifts will be both useless and unhappy. Certainly this is an undesirable condition in a society where all individuals are expected, so far as possible, to be ends in themselves and not merely means for the ends of others. CHAPTER X LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION[1] [Footnote 1: Much of the technical material for this chapter is drawn from Leonard Bloomfield's _The Study of Language_, and W. D. Whitney's _The Life and Growth of Language_.] It was earlier pointed out that human beings alone possess language. They alone can make written symbols and heard sounds stand for other things, for objects, actions, qualities, and ideas. In this chapter the consideration of language may best be approached from the spoken tongue, under the influence of which, except in the simplest type of pictorial writing, the written form develops.[2] [Footnote 2: Bloomfield: _loc. cit._, pp. 7-8.] From the point of view of the student of behavior, language, spoken language especially, is a habit, acquired like walking or swimming. It is made possible primarily by the fact that human beings possess a variety and flexibility of vocal reflexes possessed by no other animal. All the higher animals have a number of vocal reflexes, which are called out primarily in the expression of emotion or desire. Cries of pain, hunger, rage, sex desire or desire for companionship, are common to a great number of the animal species. But these cries and vocal utterances are limited, and comparatively unmodifiable. They are moreover expressed, so far as experimental observation can reveal, with no consciousness of the specific significance of particular sounds and are used as the involuntary expression of emotion rather than as a specific means of communication. ... The primates have a much larger number of such vocal instincts than the other mammals, and a much larger number of stimuli can call them out, _e.g._, injury to bodily tissue calls out one group; hunger calls out a certain group; sex stimuli (mate, etc.) another; and similarly cold, swiftly moving objects, tones, strange animals call out others. When attachments are formed between the female and her offspring another large group is called into action. There is no evidence to show in the case of mammals that these vocal instincts are modified by the sounds of other animals.... These throat habits may be cultivated to such an extent in birds that we may get an approximation, more or less complete, to a few such habits possessed by the human being. Such throat habits, however, are not language habits.[1] [Footnote 1: Watson: _Behavior_, p. 323.] In human beings language, it is clear, may attain extraordinary refinement and complexity, and may convey extremely fine shades and subtleties of emotion or idea. This results from the fact that man is born with a vocal apparatus far superior in development to that of any of the animals. It is pretty clear that the mutant man, when thrown off from the primate stock, sprang forth with a vocal apparatus different from that of the parent stock, and possessing abundant richness in reflexes, even far surpassing that found in the bird. It is interesting to observe, too, in this connection, that within the narrow space occupied by the vocal apparatus we have a system of muscular mechanisms which has within it, looking at it now as a whole, the same possibilities of habit formation that we find in the remaining portion of bodily musculature.... It is probable that in a few years we shall undertake the study of such habits from exactly the same standpoint that we now employ in studies upon the acquisition of skill in the human being.[2] [Footnote 2: _Ibid._, pp. 323-24.] The human baby starts its expressive habits by emitting with wide-open mouth an undifferentiated shriek of pain. A little later it yells in the same way at any kind of discomfort. It begins before the end of the first year to croon when it is contented. As it grows older it begins to make different sounds when it experiences different emotions. And with remarkable rapidity its repertoire of articulatory movements has greatly increased. Speech that begins in the child as a mere vague vocal expression of emotion soon begins to exhibit a marked element of mimicry. The child begins to associate the words uttered by his nurse or parents with the specific objects they point to. He comes to connect "milk," "sleep," "mother" with the experiences to which they correspond. The child thus learns to react to certain sounds as significant of certain experiences. Unlike Adam, he does not have to give names to animals, or for that matter to anything else on earth. They all have specific names in the particular language in which he happens to be brought up. In the case of other habits, largely through trial and error, he learns to associate given sounds expressed by other people about him with given experiences, pleasant or unpleasant. He learns further to imitate, so far as possible, these sounds, as a means of more precisely communicating his wants or securing their fulfillment. In this connection students of language frequently have raised the question of how man first came to associate a given sound-sequence with a given experience. Like fire, language was once conceived to be a divine gift. Another theory postulated a genius who took it into his head to give the things of earth their present inevitable names. One other theory equally dubious held that language started in onomatopoetic expressions like "Bow-wow," for dog. Still another hypothesis once highly credited held that the sounds first uttered were the immediate and appropriate expressions called out by particular types of emotional experience. The validity of the last two theories has been rendered particularly dubious. The very instances of imitative words cited, words like "cuckoo," "crash," "flash," were, in their original forms, quite other than they are now. And that words are not immediately apposite expressions of the emotions which they represent, has been generally recognized. In gesture language, the gesture has to remain fairly imitative or expressive to be intelligible. But an examination of half a dozen casual words in contemporary languages shows how arbitrary are the signs used, and how little appositeness or relevance they bear in their sound to the sense which they represent. The detailed study of the perfectly regular changes that so largely characterize the evolution of language, have revealed the inadequacy of any of these views. There seems to be, in fact, no explanation of the origin of the language any more than there is of the origin of life. All that linguistic science can do is to reveal the history of language. And in this history, human language stands revealed as a highly refined development of the crude and undifferentiated expressions which, under emotional stress, are uttered by all the animals. LANGUAGE AS A SOCIAL HABIT. Language, as has repeatedly been pointed out, is essentially social in character. It is, in the first place, primarily an instrument of communication between individuals, and is cultivated as such. In human speech, interjections like "Oh!" or "Ah!" are still involuntary escapes of emotion, but language develops as a vehicle of communication to others rather than as a mere emotional outlet for the individual. Even if it were possible for the mythical man brought up in solitude on a desert island to have a language, it is questionable whether he would use it. Since language is a way of making our wants, desires, information known to others, it is stimulated by the presence of and contact with others. Excess vitality may go into shouting or song,[1] but language as an instrument of specific utterance comes to have a more definite use and provocation. Man, as already pointed out, is a highly gregarious animal, and language is his incomparable instrument for sharing his emotions and ideas and experience with others. The whole process of education, of the transmission of culture from the mature to the younger members of a society, is made possible through this instrument, whereby achievements and traditions are preserved and transmitted in precise and public terms. [Footnote 1: Human song is by some linguistic experts, including Bloomfield, held to have originated in the chant of rhythmic labor, as in rowing or threshing.] Secondly, language is social in that, for the individual at least, it is socially acquired. The child first imitates sounds without any consciousness of their meaning, just as he imitates other actions in sheer "physiological sympathy." But he learns soon, by watching the actions of other people, that given sounds are always performed when these others do given actions. He learns that some sounds are portents of anger and punishment; still others of satisfaction and pleasure. He learns soon to specify his utterances, to use sounds as specific stimuli, to attain through other people specific satisfactions. The child is born with a flexible set of reflexes. In which way they shall be developed depends entirely on the accident of the child's environment. Whether he shall call it "bread" or "pain" or "brod," depends on the particular social environment in which he from the first hears that particular item of experience referred to. A child of American missionaries in Turkey picks up the language of that country as well as that of his own. An English child brought up under a French nurse may learn with perfect ease the foreign tongue, and to the exclusion of that of his native country. Indeed, so completely subject is one in this regard to one's early environment, that it is not only difficult in later life to acquire a new pronunciation, but one finds it impossible to breathe freely, as it were, in the whole psychological atmosphere of a foreign language. Its grammatical categories, its spelling, its logic seem hopelessly irrational. It was perfectly natural of the Englishman in the story, when he was told that the French called it "pain," to insist, "Well, it's bread, anyhow." Many a reader of a foreign language which has become habitual can still not refrain from translating, as he reads, what seem to him irrational idioms into the familiar, facile, and sensible modes of his native tongue. LANGUAGE AND MENTAL LIFE. The connection of language with thought has repeatedly been noted. It has even been questioned whether thought in any effective sense is possible without words. In general it may be said that thinking demands clean-cut and definite symbols to work with, and that language offers these in incomparable form. A word enables one to isolate in thought the dominant elements of an experience and prevents them from "slipping through one's fingers." The importance of having words by which concepts may be distinguished and isolated from one another will become clearer by a brief reminder of the nature of reflection. Thinking is in large part (as will be discussed in detail in chapter XIII) concerned with the breaking-up of an experience into its significant elements. But experience begins with objects, and so far as perceptual experience is concerned, ends there. We perceive objects, not qualities, actions, or ideas apart from objects. And the elements into which thinking analyzes an experience are never present, save in connection with, as parts of, a sensibly perceived object. Thus we never perceive whiteness save in white objects; warmth save in warm objects; red save in red objects. We never, for that matter, perceive so abstract a thing as an "object." We experience red houses or red flags; white flowers, white shoes, white paper; warm stoves, warm soup, and warm plates. Even houses and stoves and shoes are, in a sense, abstractions. No two of these are ever alike. But it is of the highest importance for us to have some means of identifying and preserving in memory the significant resemblances between our experiences. Else we should be, as it were, utterly astounded every time we saw a chair or a table or a fork. Though they may, in each case in which we experience them, differ in detail, chairs, tables, forks have certain common features which we can "abstract" from the gross total experience, and by a word or "term," define, record, communicate, and recall. The advantage of a precise technical vocabulary over a loose "popular" one is that we can by means of the former more accurately single out the specific and important elements of an experience and distinguish them from one another. The common nouns, or "general names" in a language indicate to what extent and in what manner that language, through some or other of its users, classifies its experiences. Highly developed languages make it possible to classify similarities not easily detected in crude experience. They make it possible to identify other things than merely directly sensed objects. In primitive languages experience is described and classified only in so far as it is perceptual. In other words, primitive languages have names for objects only, not for ideas, qualities, or relations. Thus it is impossible in some Indian languages to express the concept of a "brother" by the same word, unless the "brother" is in every case in the same identical circumstances. One cannot use the same word for "man" in different relations: "man-eating," "man-sleeping," "man-standing-here," and "man-running-there" would all be separate compound words. Among the Fuegians there is one word which means "to look at one another, hoping that each will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do."[1] Marett writes in this connection: [Footnote 1: Marett: _Anthropology_, p. 140.] Take the inhabitants of that cheerless spot, Tierra del Fuego, whose culture is as rude as that of any people on earth. A scholar who tried to put together a dictionary of their language found that he had got to reckon with more than thirty thousand words, even after suppressing a large number of forms of lesser importance. And no wonder that the tally mounted up. For the Fuegians had more than twenty words, some containing four syllables, to express what for us would be either "he" or "she"; then they had two names for the sun, two for the moon, and two more for the full moon, each of the last named containing four syllables and having no elements in common.[2] [Footnote 2: _Ibid._, pp. 138-39.] It is easy to see how very little refinement or abstraction from experience could be made with such a cumbersome and inflexible vocabulary. The thirty thousand word vocabulary expressed a poverty of linguistic technique rather than a richness of ideas. At the other extreme stands a language like English, which is, to an extraordinary degree, an "analytic" language. It has comparatively no inflections. This means that words can be used and moved about freely in different situations and relations. Thus the dominant elements of an experience can be freely isolated. A noun standing for a certain object or relation is not chained to a particular set of accompanying circumstances. "Man" stands as a definite concept, whether it be used with reference to an ancient Greek, a wounded man, a brave, a wretched, a competent, or a tall man. We can give the accompanying circumstances by additional adjectives, which are again freely movable verbally and intellectually. Thus we can speak of a brave child and a tall tower as well as a brave man and a tall man. In Marett's words: The evolution of language then, on this view, may be regarded as a movement away from the holophrastic [compound] in the direction of the analytic. When every piece in your playbox of verbal bricks can be dealt with separately, because it is not joined on in all sorts of ways to the other pieces, then only can you compose new constructions to your liking. Order and emphasis, as is shown by English, and still more conspicuously by Chinese, suffice for sentence-building. Ideally, words should be individual and atomic. Every modification they suffer by internal change of sound, or by having prefixes or suffixes tacked on to them, involves a curtailment of their free use and a sacrifice of distinctness. It is quite easy, of course, to think confusedly, even whilst employing the clearest type of language.... On the other hand, it is not feasible to attain a high degree of clear thinking, when the only method of speech available is one that tends toward wordlessness--that is to say, one that is relatively deficient in verbal forms that preserve their identity in all contexts.[1] [Footnote 1: Marett: _loc. cit._, pp. 141-42.] Languages differ not only in being more or less analytic, but in their general modes of classification. That is, not only do they have more or less adequate vocabularies, but in their syntax, their sentence structure, their word forms, they variously organize experience. It is important to note that in these divergent classifications no one of them is more final than another. We are tempted, despite this fact, to think that the grammar, spelling, and phonetics of our own language constitute the last word in the rational conveyance of thought. THE INSTABILITY OF LANGUAGE. Language being a social habit, it is to be expected that it should not stay fixed and changeless. The simpler physiological actions are not performed in the same way by any two individuals, and no social practice is ever performed in the same way by two members of a group, or by two different generations. In this connection writes Professor Bloomfield: The speech of former times, wherever history has given us records of it, differs from that of the present. When we read Shakspere, for example, we are disturbed by subtle deviations from our own habits in the use of words and in construction; if our actors pronounced their lines as Shakspere and his contemporaries did we should say that they had an Irish or German brogue. Chaucer we cannot read without some grammatical explanation or a glossary; correctly pronounced his language would sound to us more like Low German than like our English. If we go back only about forty generations from our time to that of Alfred the Great, we come to English as strange to us as modern German, and quite unintelligible, unless we study carefully both grammar and lexicon.[1] [Footnote 1: Bloomfield: _loc. cit._, p. 195.] There are, in general, three kinds of changes that take place in a language. "Phonetic" changes, that is, changes in the articulation of words, regardless of the meaning they bear. This is illustrated simply by the word "name" which, in the eighteenth century was pronounced ne'm. " Analogic" changes, that is, changes in the articulation of words under the influence of words somewhat similar in meaning. The word "flash," for example, became what it is because of the sound of words associated in meaning, "crash," "dash," "smash." The third process of change in language alters not only the articulate forms of words, not only their sound, but their sense. All these changes, as will be presently pointed out, can easily be explained by the laws of habit early discussed in this book, these laws being applicable to the habit of language as well as to any other. In the case of phonetic change, it is only to be expected that the sounds of a language will not remain eternally changeless. A language is spoken by a large number of individuals, no two of whom are gifted with precisely the same vocal apparatus. In consequence no two of them will utter words in precisely the same way. Before writing and printing were general, these slight variations in articulation were bound to have an effect on the language. People more or less unconsciously imitate the sounds they hear, especially if they are not checked up by the written forms of words. Even to-day changes are going on, and writing is at best a poor representation of phonetics. The Georgian, the Londoner, the Welshman and the Middle Westerner can understand the same printed language, precisely because it does not at all represent their peculiarities of dialect. Variant sounds uttered by one individual may be caught up in the language, especially if the variant articulation is simpler or shorter. Thus the shortening of a word from several syllables to one, though it starts accidentally, is easily made habitual among a large number of speakers because it does facilitate speech. In the classic example, pre-English, "habeda" and "habedun" became in Old English, "hæfde" and" hæfdon," and are in present English (I, we) "had."[1] In the same way variations that reduce the unstressed syllables of a word readily insinuate themselves into the articulatory habits of a people. In the production of stressed syllables, the vocal chords are under high tension and the breath is shut in. It is easier, consequently, to produce the unstressed syllables "with shortened, weakened articulations... lessening as much as possible all interference with the breath stream."[2] Thus "contemporaneous prohibition" becomes "kntempe'rejnjes prhe'bifn." Sound changes thus take place, in general, as lessenings of the labor of articulation, by means of adaptation to prevailing rest positions of the vocal organs. They take place further in more or less accidental adaptations to the particular speech habits of a people. That is, those sounds become discarded that do not fit in with the general articulatory tendencies of a language. Of this the weakening of unstressed syllables in English and palatalization in Slavic are examples.[1*] [Footnote 1: Bloomfield: _loc. cit._, p. 211.] [Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 212.] [Footnote 1*: _Ibid._, p. 218.] These changes of sound in language so far discussed are made independently of the meaning of words. Other changes in articulation occur, as already noted, by analogy of sound or meaning. That is, words that have associated meanings come to be similarly articulated. This is simply illustrated in the case of the child who thinks it perfectly natural to assimilate by analogy "came" to "come." Thus the young child will frequently say, until he is corrected, he "comed," he "bringed," he "fighted." In communities where printing and writing and reading are scarce, such assimilation by analogy has an important effect in modifying the forms of words. CHANGES IN MEANING. The changes in language most important for the student of human behavior are changes in meaning. Language, it must again be stressed, is an instrument for the communication of ideas. The manner in which the store of meanings in a language becomes increased and modified (the etymology of a language) is, in a sense, the history of the mental progress of the people which use it. For changes in meaning are primarily brought about when the words in a language do not suffice for the larger and larger store of experiences which individuals within the group desire to communicate to one another. The meanings of old words are stretched, as it were, to cover new experiences; old words are transferred bodily to new experiences; they are slightly modified in form to apply to new experiences analogous to the old; new words are formed after analogy with ones already in use. A simple illustration of the application of a word already current to a wider situation is the application of the word "head" as a purely objective name, to a new experience, which has certain analogies with the old; as when we speak of a "head" of cabbage, the" head" of an army, the "head" of the class, or the "headmaster." In many such cases the transferred meaning persists alongside of the old. Thus the word "capital" used as the name for the chief city in a country, persists alongside of its use in "capital" punishment, "capital" story, etc. But sometimes the transferred meaning of the word becomes dominant and exclusive. Thus "disease" (dis-ease) once meant discomfort of any kind. Now it means specifically some physical ailment. The older use has been completely discarded. To "spill" once meant, in the most general sense, to destroy. Now all the other uses, save that of pouring out, have lapsed. "Meat" which once meant any kind of nourishment has now come to refer almost exclusively (we still make exceptions as in the case of sweetmeat) to edible flesh. Whenever the special or novel application of the word becomes dominant, then we say the meaning of the word has changed. Mental progress is largely dependent on the transfer of words to newer and larger spheres of experience, the modification of old words or the formation of new ones to express the increasing complexity of relations men discover to exist between things. In the instances already cited some of the transferred words lost their more general meaning and became specialized, as in the case of "meat," "spill," etc. Other words, like "head," though they may keep their specific objective meaning, may come to be used in a generalized intellectual sense. One of the chief ways by which a language remains adequate to the demands of increasing knowledge and experience of the group is through the transfer of words having originally a purely objective sense to emotional and intellectual situations. These words, like "bitter," "sour," "sharp," referring originally only to immediate physical experiences, to objects perceived through the senses, come to have intellectual and emotional significance, as when we speak of a "sour" face, a "bitter" disappointment, a "sharp" struggle. Most of our words that now have abstract emotional or intellectual connotations were once words referring exclusively to purely sensible (sense perceptual) experiences. "Anxiety" once meant literally a "narrow place," just as when we speak of some one having "a close shave." To "refute" once meant literally "to knock out" an argument. To "understand" meant "to stand in the midst of." To "confer" meant "to bring together." Sensation words themselves were once still more concrete in their meaning. "Violet" and "orange" are obviously taken as color names from the specific objects to which they still refer. Language has well been described as "a book of faded metaphors." The history of language has been to a large extent the assimilation and habitual mechanical use of words that were, when first used, strikingly figurative. The novel use of a word that is now a quite regular part of the language may in many cases first be ascribed to a distinguished writer. Shakespeare is full of expressions which have since, and because of his use of them, become literally household words. Many words that have now a general application arose out of a peculiar local situation, myth, or name. "Boycott" which has become a reasonably intelligible and universal word, only less than fifty years ago referred particularly and exclusively to Boycott, a certain unpopular Irish landowner who was subjected to the kind of discrimination for which the word has come to stand. "Burke" used as a verb has its origin in the name of a notorious Edinburgh murderer. Characters in fiction or drama, history or legend come to be standard words. Everyone knows what we mean when we speak of a Quixotic action, a Don Juan, a Galahad, a Chesterfield. To tantalize arises from the mythical perpetual frustration of Tantalus in the Greek story. Expressions that had a special meaning in the works of a philosopher or littérateur come to be generally used, as "Platonic love."[1] Again words that arise as mere popular witticisms or vulgarisms may be brought into the language as permanent acquisitions. "Mob," now a quite legitimate word, was originally a shortening of _mobile vulgum_, and was, only a hundred years ago, suspect in polite discourse. [Footnote 1: Though this is very loosely and inaccurately used.] Outside the deliberate invention by scientists of terms for the new relations they have discovered, more or less spontaneous variation in the use of words and their unconscious assimilation by large numbers with whose other language habits they chance to fit, is the chief source of language growth. One might almost say words are wrenched from their original local setting, and given such a generalized application that they are made available for an infinite complexity of scientific and philosophical thought. UNIFORMITIES IN LANGUAGE. Thus far we have discussed changes in language from the psychological viewpoint, that is, we have considered the human tendencies and habits which bring about changes in the articulation and meaning, in the sound and the sense, of words. It is evident from these considerations that there can be no absolute uniformity in spoken languages, not even in the languages of two persons thrown much together. Within a country where the same language is ostensibly spoken, there are nevertheless differences in the language as spoken by different social strata, by different localities. There are infinite subtle variations between the articulation and the word uses of different individuals. There are languages within languages, the dialects of localities, the jargon of professional and trade groups, the special pronunciations and special and overlapping vocabularies of different social classes. But while there are these many causes, both of individual difference and of differing social environments, why languages do not remain uniform, there are similar causes making for a certain degree of uniformity within a language. There is one very good reason why, to a certain extent, languages do attain uniformity; they are socially acquired. The individual learns to speak a language from those about him, and individuals brought up within the same group will consequently learn to speak, within limits, the same tongue; they will learn to articulate through imitation, and, while no individual ever precisely duplicates the sounds of others, he duplicates them as far as possible. He learns, moreover, as has already been pointed out, to attach given meanings to given words, not for any reason of their peculiar appositeness or individual caprice, but because he learns that others about him habitually attach certain meanings to certain sounds. And since one is stimulated to expression primarily by the desire and necessity of communication of ideas a premium is put upon uniformity. It is of no use to use a language if it conceals one's thoughts. In consequence, within a group individual variations, unless for reasons already discussed they happen to lend themselves to ready assimilation by the group, will be mere slips of the tongue. They will be discarded and forgotten, or, if the individual cannot rid himself of them, will like stammering or stuttering or lisping be set down as imperfections and social handicaps. The uniformity of language within groups whose individual members have much communication with each other is thus to a certain extent guaranteed. A man who is utterly individualistic in his language might just as well have no language at all, unless for the satisfaction of expressing to himself his own emotions.[1] Language is learned from the group among whom one moves, and those sounds and senses of words are, on the whole, retained, which are intelligible to the group. Those sounds and meanings will best be understood which are already in use. No better illustration could be found of how custom and social groups preserve and enforce standards of individual action. [Footnote 1: There have been a few poets, like Emily Dickinson, or mystics like Blake, some of whose work exhibits almost complete unintelligibility to most readers, though doubtless it had a very specific meaning and vividness to the writers concerned.] The obverse of the fact that intercommunication promotes uniformity in language is that lack of communication brings about language differentiation. The less the intercommunication between groups, the more will the languages of the groups differ, however uniform they may be within the groups themselves. The most important factor in differentiation of language is local differentiation. In some European countries every village speaks its own dialect. In passing from one village to another the dialects may be mutually intelligible, but by the time one has passed from the first village in the chain to the last, one may find that the dialect of the first and last are utterly unintelligible to each other. A real break in language, as opposed to dialect variations, occurs where there is a considerable barrier between groups, such as a mountain range, a river, a tribal or political boundary. The more impenetrable the barriers between two groups the more will the languages differ, and the less mutually intelligible will they be. Looking back over the history of language the student of linguistics infers that those languages which bear striking or significant similarities are related. Thus Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Roumanian are traceable directly back to the Latin. This does not mean that all over the areas occupied by the speakers of these languages Latin was originally spoken. But the Romans in their conquests, both military and cultural, were able to make their own language predominant. The variations which make French and Roumanian, say, mutually unintelligible, are due to the fact that Latin was for the natives in these conquered territories assimilated to their own languages. So that, in the familiar example, the Latin "homo" becomes "uomo" in Italian, "homme" in French, "hombre" in Spanish, and "om" in Roumanian. Similarly related but mutually unintelligible languages among the American Indians have been traced to three great source-languages. The history of European languages offers an interesting example of differentiation. English and German, for example, are both traceable back to West-Germanic; from that in turn to a hypothecated primitive West-Germanic. All the European languages are traceable back to a hypothecated Primitive Indo-European.[1] The theory held by most students of this subject is that the groups possessing this single uniform language spread over a wider and wider area, gradually became separated from each other by geographical barriers and tribal affiliations, and gradually (and on the part of individual speakers unconsciously) modified their speech so that slight differences accumulated, and resulted finally in widely different and mutually unintelligible languages. [Footnote 1: By the word "primitive" the linguistic experts mean a language the existence of which is inferred from common features of several related languages, of which written records are current, but of which no actual records exist. Thus, if there were no written records of Latin the approximate reconstruction of it by linguists would be called "Primitive Romance."] The process of differentiation in the languages of different groups is very marked. We find, for example, in the early history of Greece and Rome, a number of widely different dialects. There seems every evidence that these were derived from some more primitive tongue. We find, likewise, on the American continent, several hundred different languages, which--to the untrained observer--bear not the slightest resemblance to each other. This welter and confusion can also be traced back to a few primitive and uniform languages. Thus the history of civilization reveals this striking differentiation in the language of different groups, a counter-tendency making for a wider uniformity of particular languages. One "favored dialect" becomes standard, predominant and exclusive. Thus out of all the French dialects, the one that survives is the speech of Paris; Castilian becomes standard Spanish, and in ancient Greece the language of Athens supersedes all the other dialects. The reasons for the survival of one out of a great welter of dialects may be various. Not infrequently the language of a conquering people has, in more or less pure form, succeeded the language of the conquered. This was the case in the history of the Romance languages, which owe their present forms to the spread of Roman arms and culture. There was, as is well known, a similar development in the case of the English language. The Norman Conquest introduced, under the auspices of a socially superior and victorious group, a language culturally superior to the Anglo-Saxon. The latter was, of course, not entirely replaced, but profoundly modified, especially in the enrichment and enlargement of its vocabulary. One has but to note such words as "place," "choir," "beef," etc., which came entirely to replace in the language the indigenous Anglo-Saxon names for those objects. Colonization and commercial expansion may bring about the replacement of the native language of special localities by the language of the colonizers, at least in hybrid form. The spread of English through Australia, and through the larger part of North America, the spread of Spanish through South America, in each instance practically replacing the native tongues, are cases in point.[1] [Footnote 1: Dialects and jargons are often the result of the partial assimilation by the speakers of one language of another language to which they are exposed. French-Canadian and Pennsylvania Dutch are examples of such a mixture.] STANDARDIZATION OF LANGUAGE. At the present time, and for some time in the past, the differentiation of language has been greatly lessened by the stabilizing influence of print. The printed word continually recalls the standard pronunciation and meaning, and the changes in language (save those deliberately introduced by the addition of scientific terms, or the official modifications of spelling, etc., as in some European countries[2]) are much less rapid, various, and significant than hitherto. It is true that differences in articulation and usage, especially the former, do still, to a degree, persist and develop. Our Southern accent, with its drawling of words and slurring of consonants, our Middle-Western accent, with its stressed articulation of "r's" and its nasalizing tendencies, are instances of this persistence. [Footnote 2: In France the Ministry of Education from time to time settles points of orthography definitely.] But the printed language--English, for example--the official language, which is published in the newspapers, periodicals, and books, which is taught in the schools, and spoken from the pulpit, the platform, on the stage, in cultivated society, is more or less alike all over the United States and wherever English is spoken. It is, of course, only a standard, a norm, an ideal, which like the concept of the circle, never quite appears in practice. The language which is spoken, even in the conversation of the educated, by no means conforms to the ideal of "correct usage." But the important fact is that the standard language _is_ a standard, that it is, moreover, a widely recognized and effective standard. The dictionaries and the grammars become authoritative, and are referred to when people consciously set about discovering what _is_ the accepted or correct meaning or pronunciation. But a more effectual authority is exerted by the teaching they receive at school, and the continuous, though unnoticed, influence of the more or less standard language which they read in print. Even phonetic changes, though they persist, are checked from spreading to the point of mutually unintelligible dialects by the standards enforced in print. The "accents" in various parts of the United States, for example, differ, but not to the point of becoming absolutely divergent languages. The Southerner and the Westerner may be conscious in each other's speech of a quaint and curious difference in pronunciation, but they can, except in extreme cases, completely understand each other.[1] [Footnote 1: Some of the isolated districts in the Kentucky mountains reveal dialects with some important differences in vocabulary and construction. These are shown most strikingly in some of the ballads of that region which have been collected by William Aspinwall Bradley, and by Howard Brockway. Rural schools and the breakdown of complete isolation will probably in time eliminate this divergence.] The most important stabilizing influence of print, however, is its fixation of meanings. It makes possible their maintenance uncorrupted and unmodified over wide stretches in which there are phonetic variations. These variant articulations in different parts of a large country where the same language is spoken, would, if unchecked, eventually modify the sense of words. Print largely prevents this from happening. One can read newspapers published in Maine, California, Virginia, and Iowa, without noticing any significant, or, in many cases, even slight differences in vocabulary or construction. There are, of course, local idioms, but these persist in conversation, rather than in print, save where they are caught up and exploited for literary purposes by a Bret Harte, a Mark Twain, or an O. Henry. COUNTER-TENDENCIES TOWARD DIFFERENTIATION. While the _standard_ language does become fixed and stable, there are, in the daily life of different social groups, varying actual languages. Every class, or profession, every social group, whether of interest, or occupation, has its slight individuality in articulation or vocabulary. We still observe that members of a family talk alike; sometimes households have literally their own household words. And on different economic and social levels, in different sports, intellectual, professional, and business pursuits, we notice slightly different "actual" languages. These partly overlap. The society lady, the business man, the musician, the professor of literature, the mechanic, have specializations of vocabulary and construction, but there is, for each of them, a great common linguistic area. Every individual's speech is a resultant of the various groups with whom he associates. He is affected in his speech habits most predominantly, of course, by his most regular associates, professional and social. In consequence we still mark out a man, as much as anything, by the kind of language he speaks. The mechanic and the man of letters are not likely to be mistaken for each other, if overheard in a street car. Many literary and dramatic characters are memorable for their speech habits. Such types are successful when they do hit upon really significant linguistic peculiarities. Their frequent failures lie in making the language of a particular social type artificially stable. No one ever talks quite as the conventional stage policeman, stage professor, and stage Englishman talk. These actual variations in the language, as it is used by various groups who are brought up under the same standard language, operate to prevent complete stabilization of language. Such variations are remarkably influential, considering the conservative influences upon language of the repeated and continuous suggestion made by the printed page. The language is, in the first place, being continually enriched through increments of new words and modifications of old ones, from the special vocabularies of trades, professions, sciences, and sports. Through some accidental appositeness to some contemporaneous situation, these may become generally current. A recent and familiar example is the term "camouflage," which from its technical sense of protective coloration has become a universally understood name for moral and intellectual pretense. The vocabulary of baseball has by this time already given to the language words that show promise of attaining eventual legitimacy. An increasingly large source of enrichment of the native tongue comes from the "spontaneous generation" of slang, which, starting in the linguistic whimsicality of one individual, gets caught up in conversation, and finds its ultimate way into the language. Important instruments, certainly in the United States, in spreading such neologisms are the humorous and sporting pages of the newspapers, in which places they not infrequently originate.[1] Whether a current slang expression will persist, or perish (as do thousands initiated every year), depends on accidents of contemporary circumstances. If the expression happens to set off aptly a contemporary situation, it may become very widespread until that situation, such as a political campaign, is over. But it may, like the metaphor of a poet, have some universal application. "Log-rolling," "graft," "bluff," have come into the language to stay. Roosevelt's "pussy-foot," and "Ananias Club" are, perhaps, remembered, but show less promise of permanency. "Movies" has already ceased to be a neologism, its ready adoption illustrating a point already mentioned, namely, that a variation that facilitates speech (as "movies" does in comparison with "moving pictures," or "motion pictures ") has a high potentiality of acceptance. [Footnote 1: H. L. Mencken in his suggestive book, _The American Language_, sees in this upshoot of phrases indigenous to the soil and the temper of the American people, and of grammatical constructions also, symptoms of the increasing divergence of the American from the English language. That there are a large number of special expressions exclusively used in the United States, and parts of the United States, that are not found in use in England, goes without saying. Everyone knows that the Englishman says "lift" where we say "elevator," "shop," where we are likely to say "store." There are significant differences to be found even in the casual expressions of American and English newspapers. But it is doubtful whether the divergence can go very far, in view of the constant intercommunication, the rapidity of travel between the two countries, and the promiscuous reading of English books in America, and American books in England.] LANGUAGE AS EMOTIONAL AND LOGICAL. Since language is primarily useful as an instrument of communication, it should ideally be a direct and clean-cut representation of experience. It should be as unambiguous, and immediate, as telegraphy, algebra, or shorthand. But language has two functions, which interfere with one another. Words not only represent logical relations; they provoke emotional responses. They not only explicitly tell; they implicitly suggest. They are not merely skeletons of thought; they are clothed with emotional values. They are not, in consequence, transitive vehicles of thought. Words should, from the standpoint of communication, be mere signals to action, which should attract attention only in so far as they are signals. They should be no more regarded as things in themselves than is the green lamp which signals a locomotive engineer to go ahead. They should be as immediate signals to action as, at a race, the "Ready, set, go" of the starter is to the runner. Yet this rarely happens in the case of words. They frequently impede or mislead action by arousing emotions irrelevant to their intellectual significance, or provoke action on the basis of emotional associations rather than on their merits, so to speak, as logical representations of ideas. To take an example: England, as an intellectual symbol, may be said to be a name given to a small island bounded by certain latitudes and longitudes, having a certain distribution of raw materials and human beings, and a certain topography. It might just as well be represented by X for all practical purposes. Thus in the secret code of the diplomatic corps if X were agreed on as the symbol for England, it would be just as adequate and would even save time. But England (that particular sound) for a large number of individuals who have been brought up there, has become the center of deep and far-reaching emotional associations, so that its utterance in the presence of a particular listener may do much more than represent a given geographical fact. It may be associated with all that he loves, and all that he remembers with affection; it may suggest landscapes that are dear to him, a familiar street and house, a particular set of friends, and a cherished historical tradition of heroic names and storied places. It may arouse such ardor and devotion as Henley expresses in his famous _England, my England_: "What have I done for you, England, my England, What is there I would not do, England, my own? With your glorious eyes austere, As the Lord were walking near, Whispering terrible things and dear, As the song on your bugles blown, England-- Round the world on your bugles blown!" Words thus become powerful provocatives of emotion. They become loaded with all the energies that are aroused by the love, the hate, the anger, the pugnacity, the sympathy, for the persons, objects, ideas, associated with them. People may be set off to action by words (just as a bull is set off by a red rag), although the words may be as little freighted with meaning as they are deeply weighted with emotion. Poets and literary men in general exploit these emotional values that cling to words. Indeed, in epithets suggesting illimitable vistas, inexpressible sorrows, and dim-remembered joys, lies half the charm of poetry. "Before the beginning of years, There came to the making of man, Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a glass that ran; Pleasure with pain for a leaven, Summer with flowers that fell; Remembrance fallen from Heaven, And madness risen from Hell, Strength without hands to smite, Love that endures for a breath, Night the shadow of light, And life, the shadow of death."[1] [Footnote 1: Swinburne: _Atalanta in Calydon_ (David Mackay edition), p. 393.] Swinburne does not, to be sure, give us much information, and what there is is mythical, but he uses words that are fairly alive with suggested feeling. But this emotional aura in which words are haloed, beautiful though it is in literature, and facile though it makes the communication of common feelings, is a serious impediment in the use of words as effective instruments of communication. Language oscillates, to speak metaphorically, between algebra and music. To be useful as an instrument of thought it should keep to the prosaic terseness of a telegraphic code. One should be able to pass immediately from the word to the thing, instead of dissolving in emotions at the associations that the mere sound or music of the epithet arouses. Words should, so to speak, tend to business, which, in their case, is the communication of ideas. But words are used in human situations. And they accumulate during the lifetime of the individual a great mass of psychological values. Thus, to take another illustration, "brother" is a symbol of a certain relationship one person bears to another. "Your" is also a symbolic statement of a relation. But if a telegram contains the statement "Your brother is dead," it is less a piece of information to act on than a deep emotional stimulus to which one responds. Bacon long ago pointed out how men "worshipped words." As we shall see presently, he was thinking of errors in the intellectual manipulation of words. Perhaps as serious is the inveterate tendency of men to respond to the more or less irrelevant emotions suggested by a word, instead of to its strict intellectual content. If the emotions stirred up by an epithet were always appropriate to the word's significance, this might be an advantage. But not infrequently, as we shall see immediately, words suggest and may be used to suggest emotions that, like "the flowers that bloom in the spring," have nothing to do with the case. In practice, political and social leaders, and all who have to win the loyalties and support of masses of men have appreciated the use--and misuse--that might be made of the emotional fringes of words. Words are not always used as direct and transparent representations of ideas; they are as frequently used as stimuli to action. A familiar instance is seen in the use of words in advertisements. Even the honest advertiser is less interested in giving an analysis of his product that will win him the rational estimation and favor of the reader than in creating in the reader through the skillful use of words, emotions and sympathies favorable to his product. The name of a talcum powder or tobacco is the subject of mature consideration by the advertising expert, because he knows that the emotional flavor of a word is more important in securing action than its rational significance.[1] "Ask Dad! He knows!" does not tell us much about the article it advertises, but it gives us the sense of secure trust that we had as a boy in those mysterious things in an almost completely unknown world which our fathers knew and approved. [Footnote 1: It has been pointed out that such an expression as "cellar door," considered merely from the viewpoint of sound, is one of the most romantically suggestive words in the English language. A consideration of some of the names of biscuits and collars will show a similar exploitation of both the euphony and the emotional fringes of words.] On a larger scale, in political and social affairs words are powerful provocatives of emotion and of actions, determining to no small degree the allegiances and loyalties of men and the satisfaction and dissatisfactions which they experience in causes and leaders. A word remains the nucleus of all the associations that have gathered round it in the course of an individual's experience, though the object for which it stands may have utterly changed or vanished. This is illustrated in the history of political parties, whose personnel and principles change from decade to decade, but whose names remain stable entities that continue to secure unfaltering respect and loyalty. In the same way, the name of country has emotional reverberations for one who has been brought up in its traditions. Men trust old words to which they have become accustomed just as they trust old friends. To borrow an illustration from Graham Wallas, for many who call themselves Socialists, Socialism is something more than a movement towards greater social equality, depending for its force upon three main factors, the growing political power of the working classes, the growing social sympathy of many members of all classes, and the belief, based on the growing authority of scientific method, that social arrangements can be transformed by means of conscious and deliberate contrivance.[1] [Footnote 1: Wallas: _Human Nature in Politics._ p. 92.] Rather the need for something for which one may love and work has created for thousands of workingmen a personified Socialism: Socialism, a winged goddess with stern eyes and a drawn sword, to be the hope of the world, and the protector of those that suffer.[2] [Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 93.] Political leaders and advertising experts, no less than poets, have recognized the importance of the suggestive power of words. Half the power of propaganda lies in its arousing of emotions through suggestion, rather than in its effectiveness as an instrument of intellectual conversion.[3] [Footnote 3: During the recent Liberty Loan campaigns, for example, when it was of the most crucial practical importance that bonds be bought, the stimuli used were not in the form of reasoned briefs, but rather emotional admonition: "Finish the lob," "Every miser helps the Kaiser," "If you were out in No Man's Land."] LANGUAGE AND LOGIC. Even where words are freed from irrelevant emotional associations, they are still far from being adequate instruments of thought. To be effectively representative, words must be clean-cut and definitive; they must stand for one object, quality, or idea. Words, if they are to be genuine instruments of communication, must convey the same intent or meaning to the listener as they do to the speaker. If the significance attached to words is so vague and pulpy that they mean different things to different men, they are no more useful in inquiry and communication than the shock of random noise or the vague stir and flutter of music. Words must have their boundaries fixed, they must be terms, fixed and stable meanings, or they will remain instruments of confusion rather than communication. Francis Bacon stated succinctly the dangers involved in the use of words: For men imagine that their reason governs words, whilst in fact words react upon the understanding; and this has rendered philosophy and the sciences sophistical and inactive. Words are generally formed in a popular sense, and define things by those broad lines which are most obvious to the vulgar mind; but when a more acute understanding or more diligent observation is anxious to vary these lines, and adapt them more accurately to nature, words oppose it. Hence the great and solemn disputes of learned men terminate frequently in mere disputes about words and names, in regard to which it would be better to proceed more advisedly in the first instance, and to bring such disputes to a regular issue by definitions. Such definitions, however, cannot remedy the evil ... for they consist themselves of words, and these words produce others.... [Footnote 1: _Novum Organum_. bk. I, aphorism 59.] If, to take an extreme case, a speaker said the word "chair," and by "chair" his listener understood what we commonly mean by the word "table," communication would be impossible. There must be some common agreement in the words used. In the case of simple terms referring to concrete objects there are continual concrete reminders of the meaning of a word. We do not make mistakes as to the meaning of words such as chair, river, stone, stove, books, forks, knives, because we so continually meet and use them. We are continually checked up, and the meanings we attach to these cannot go far astray. But the further terms are removed from physical objects, the more opportunity is there for ambiguity. In the realm of politics and morals, as Socrates was fond of pointing out, the chief difficulties and misunderstandings of men have come from the ambiguities of the terms they use. "Justice," "liberty," "democracy," "good," "true," "beautiful," these have been immemorial bones of contention among philosophers. They are accepted, taken for granted, without any question as to their meaning by the individual, until he finds, perhaps, in discussion that his acceptation of the term is entirely different from that of his opponent. Thus many an argument ends with "if that's what you mean, I agree with you." Intellectual inquiry and discussion to be fruitful must have certain definitive terms to start with. Discussion ... needs to have the ground or basis of its various component statements brought to consciousness in such a way as to define the exact value of each. The Socratic contention is the need compelling the common denominator, the common subject, underlying the diversity of views to exhibit itself. It alone gives a sure standard by which the claims of all assertions may be measured. Until this need is met, discussion is a self-deceiving play with unjudged, unexamined matters, which, confused and shifting, impose themselves upon us.[1] [Footnote 1: Dewey: _Essays in Experimental Logic_, p. 200.] To define our terms means literally to know _what_ we are talking about and what others are talking about. One of the values of discussion is that it enables us more clearly to realize the meaning of the words with which we constantly operate. A man may entertain for a long while a half-conscious definition of democracy as meaning political equality, and suddenly come face to face with another who means by it industrial coöperation and participation on the part of all workers. Whether he agrees with the new definition or not, at least his own becomes clearer by contrast. "Science," wrote Condillac, "is a well-made language." No small part of the technique of science lies in its clear definition of its terms. The chemist knows what he means by an "acid," the biologist by a "mammal." Under these names he classifies all objects having certain determinable properties. Social science will never attain the precision of the physical sciences until it also attains as clear and unambiguous a terminology. As we shall see in the chapter on science, however, the definitions in the physical sciences are arrived at through precise inquiries not yet possible in the field of social phenomena. CHAPTER XI RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY That the history of the race is an unbroken continuum goes without saying. What this means in the way of transmission of the arts, the sciences, the religion, the ideas, the customs of one generation to the next, we shall presently see. Cultural continuity is made possible by the more fundamental fact of the actual biological continuity of the race. This biological continuity extends back, as far as we can infer from the scientific evidence, unbrokenly through the half million years since man has left traces of his presence on earth. The continuity of life itself goes back to that still more remote time when man and ape were indistinguishable, indeed to that postulated epoch when life as it existed on earth was no more complex than it is as it now appears in the one-celled animal. Evolution has taught us that life, however it started, has been one long continuous process which has increased in complexity from the unicellular animals to man. The continuity of the human race is a contrivance of nature rather than of man. It is, as it were, a by-product of the sex instinct. Man is endowed natively with a powerful desire for sex gratification, and though offspring are the chief utility of this instinct, desire for reproduction is not normally its primary stimulus. But while the production of offspring may thus be said to be an incidental result of the sex instinct, human reproduction may be subjected to rational consideration and control, according as offspring are or are not considered desirable. The sense of the desirability of offspring may, in the first place, be determined by social rather than individual considerations. To the group or the state a large birth-rate, a steady increase of the number of births over the number of deaths, may be made desirable by the need of a large population for agriculture, herding, or war. In primitive tribes, superiority in numbers must have been, under conditions of competitive warfare, a pronounced asset. In any imperialistic régime, where military conquest is highly regarded, the maintenance and replenishment of large armies is a factor that has entered into reflection on the question of population. In cases where a small ruling class is benefited by the labor of a slave or serf class, there is, at least for the ruling classes, a marked utility in the increase in population. It means just so much opportunity for increase of wealth on the part of landowning and slaveholding or serf-controlling classes. In any country, increase in the labor supply means just so much more human energy for the control of natural resources, so many more units of energy for the production of national wealth. Offspring may come to be reflectively desired by the individual as a means of perpetuating property, family, or fame. A man cannot nonchalantly face the prospect of obliteration, and the biological fact of death may be circumvented by the equally real fact of reproduction. A man's individuality, we have already had occasion to see, is enhanced by his possessions, and if his fortune or estate is handed down he shall not altogether have been obliterated from the earth. Similarly, where a family has become a great tradition, there may be a deliberate desire on the part of an individual to have the name and tradition carried on, to keep the old lineage current and conspicuous among men. A man may think through his children to keep his own fame alive in posterity. At least his name shall be known, and if, as so often happens, a son follows in his father's profession, carries on his father's business, farm, or philanthropies, the individual attains at least some measure of vicarious immortality. His own ways, habits, traditions are carried on. A man may, moreover, come to desire offspring for the pleasures and responsibilities of domesticity and parenthood. There is a parental instinct as such, certainly very strong in most women, and not lacking to some degree in most men. The joys of caring for and rearing a child have too often been celebrated in literature and in life by parents both young and old to need more explicit statement here. RESTRICTION OF POPULATION. But reproduction has been in human history promiscuous, and increase of population has been less a problem to moralists and economists than has its restriction. The danger of over-increase in population was first powerfully stated by Malthus in his _Essay on Population_. Malthus contended in effect that population always tends to increase up to the limit of subsistence, and gives indications, unless increase is checked, of increasing beyond it. In its extreme form, as it appeared in Malthus's first edition of his _Essay_, it ran somewhat as follows: As things are now, there is a perpetual pressure by population on the sources of food. Vice and misery cut down the number of men when they grow beyond the food. The increase of men is rapid and easy; the increase of food is in comparison, slow, and toilsome. They are to each other as a geometrical increase to an arithmetical; in North America, the population double their number in twenty years.[1] [Footnote 1: Bonar: _Philosophy and Political Economy in their Historic Relations_, p. 205.] Malthus's pessimistic prophecy of the increase of population beyond the means of subsistence has been subjected to refutation by various causes. For one thing, among civilized races at least, the birth-rate is declining. Again, intensive agriculture has vastly increased the possibilities of our natural resources. On this point, writes Kropotkin, who is better acquainted with agricultural conditions than are most social reformers: They [market gardeners] have created a totally new agriculture. They smile when we boast about the rotation system having permitted us to take from the field one crop every year, or four crops each three years, because their ambition is to have six and nine crape from the very same plot of land during the twelve months. They do not understand our talk about good and bad soils, because they make the soils themselves, and make it in such quantities as to be compelled yearly to seed some of it; otherwise it would raise up the levels of their gardens by half an inch, every year. They aim at cropping, not five or six tons of grass on the acre as we do, but from fifty to one hundred tons of various vegetables on the same space; not 51 pounds worth of hay, but 100 pounds worth of vegetables of the plainest description, cabbages and carrots.[1] [Footnote 1: Kropotkin: _Fields, Factories, and Workshops_, p. 74.] Of intensive industry the same might be said. Where formerly a man could produce only enough for one man's consumption, under conditions of machine production one man's work can supply quantities sufficient for many. With a declining birth-rate and the vastly increased productivity of industry and agriculture, there is a greatly reduced danger of the population growing beyond their possible sustenance by the available food supply. Under certain economic and social conditions there are marked variations in the birth-rate. This may be due to various causes which are, by different writers, variously assigned. The variation of the birth-rate among different classes is again a matter of common observation and statistical certainty. Higher standards of living are found regularly to be correlated with a decrease in the number of children in a family. An important factor in the voluntary restriction of population is the desire to give children that are brought into the world adequate education, environment, and social opportunity. CULTURAL CONTINUITY. To the very young the world seems an unprecedented novelty. It seems scarcely older than their own memories, which are few and short, and their own experience, which is necessarily limited and confined. Through education our experience becomes immeasurably widened; we can vicariously live through the experiences of other people through hearing or reading, and can acquire the racial memory which goes back as far as the records of history, or anthropological research. As we grow older we come to learn that our civilization has a history; that our present has a past. This past extends back through the countless æons before man walked upright. The past of human life on earth goes back itself over nearly half a million years. With this long past, the present is continuous, being as it were, additional pages in process of being written. The physical continuity of the race is insured, as we have just seen, by a mechanism, which, though it may be subjected to rational consideration, is instinctive in its operation. The human beings that people the earth to-day are offspring of human ancestors reaching back to the appearance of the human animal in the long process of the evolution of life on earth. So far as we can see, posterity will be for countless generations physically similar to ourselves, as they certainly will, unless all records or evidences of the fact are obscured, trace their ancestry continuously back to us. Not only is there continuity of physical descent, however, but continuity of cultural achievement. The past, in any literal temporal sense, is over and done with. The Romans are physically dead, as are the generations of barbarians of the Dark Ages, and all the inhabitants of mediæval and modern Europe, save our own contemporaries. Yesterdays are irrevocably over. The past, in any real sense, exists only in the form of achievements that have been handed down to us from previous generations. The only parts of the past that survive physically are the actual material products and achievements of bygone generations, the temples and the cathedrals, the sculptures and the manuscripts, the roads and the relics of earlier civilizations. Even these exist in the present; they are evidences, memorials, mementos of the past. These heritages from past civilizations may be interesting, intrinsically, as in the case of paintings and statues, or useful, as in the case of roads, reservoirs, or harbors. But we inherit the past in a more vital sense. We inherit ways of thought and action, social systems, scientific and industrial methods, manners and morals, educational bequests and ideals, all that we have and are. Without these, each generation would have to start anew. If the whole of existing society were destroyed, and a newborn generation could be miraculously preserved to maturity, its members would have to start on the same level, with the same ignorances, uncertainties, and impotences as primitive savages. In order to make the nature and variety of our abject dependence on the past clear, we have only to consider our language, our laws, our political and social institutions, our knowledge and education, our view of this world and the next, our tastes and the means of gratifying them. On every hand the past dominates and controls us, for the most part unconsciously and without protest on our part. We are in the main its willing adherents. The imagination of the most radically-minded cannot transcend any great part of the ideas and customs transmitted to him. When once we grasp this truth, we shall, according to our mood, humbly congratulate ourselves that ... we are permitted to stand on the giant's shoulders, and enjoy an outlook that would be quite hidden to us, if we had to trust to our own short legs; or we may resentfully chafe at our bonds and, like Prometheus, vainly strive to wrest ourselves from the rock of the past, in our eagerness to bring relief to the suffering children of men. In any case, whether we bless or curse the past, we are inevitably its offspring, and it makes us its own long before we realize it. It is, indeed, almost all that we can have.[1] [Footnote 1: Robinson: _The New History_, pp. 256-57.] The cultural achievements of the past, which we inherit chiefly as social habits, are obviously not transmitted to us physically, as are the original human traits with which this volume has so far been chiefly concerned. They are not in our blood; they are acquired like other habits, through contact with others and through repeated practice. We are thus to a very large extent conditioned by the past. It is as if we had inherited a fortune composed of various kinds of properties, houses, books, automobiles, warehouses, musical instruments, and in addition, trade concessions, business secrets, formulæs, methods, and good-will. Our activities will be limited in measure by the extent of the property, its constituent items, and the repair in which we keep it. We may squander or misinvest our principal, as when we use scientific knowledge for dangerous or dubious aims, for example, for conquest or rapine. We may add to it, as in the development of the sciences and industrial arts. We may, so to speak, live on the income. Such is the case when a society ceases to be progressive, and fails to add anything to a highly developed traditional culture, as happened strikingly in the case of China. Again we may have inherited "white elephants," which may be of absolutely no use to us, encumbrances of which we cannot easily rid ourselves, influential ideas which are no longer adequate to our present situation, obsolete emotions, methods, or institutions. We may allow our cultural inheritance, through bad education, to fall into disrepair and decay. Since we are so dependent on the past, our attitude toward it, which in turn determines the use we make of it, is of the most crucial significance. The several characteristic and varying attitudes toward the past which are so markedly current are not determined solely by logical considerations. For individuals and social groups particular features of their heritage have great emotional associations. The living past is composed of habits, traditions, values, which are vivid and vital issues to those who practice them. Traditions, customs, or social methods come to have intrinsic values; they become the center of deep attachments and strong passion. They are a rich element of the atmosphere of the present; they are woven into the intimate fabric of our lives. The awe which we feel in great cathedrals is historical as well as religious. Those vast solemn arches are the voices of the past speaking to us. The moral appeal of tradition appears with beautiful clarity in the opening chapter of Pater's _Marius the Epicurean_. A sense of conscious powers external to ourselves, pleased or displeased by the right or wrong conduct of every circumstance of daily life--that _conscience_, of which the old Roman religion was a formal, habitual recognition, had become in him a powerful current of feeling and observance. The old-fashioned, partly Puritanic awe, the power of which Wordsworth noted and valued so highly in a northern peasantry, had its counterpart in the feeling of the Roman lad, as he passed the spot, "touched of heaven," where the lightning had struck dead an aged laborer in the field: an upright stone, still with moldering garlands about it, marked the place. He brought to that system of symbolic usages, and they in turn developed in him further, a great seriousness, an impressibility to the sacredness of time, of life and its events, and the circumstances of family fellowship--of such gifts to men as fire, water, the earth from labor on which they live, really understood by him as gifts--a sense of religious responsibility in the reception of them. It was a religion for the most part of fear, of multitudinous scruples, of a year-long burden of forms.[1] [Footnote 1: Walter Pater: _Marius the Epicurean_ (A. L. Burt edition), pp. 3-4.] To the past, as it is made familiar to us through song, study, and traditional practice, we may experience a piety amounting almost to religious devotion. In some individuals and in some nations, this sense for tradition is very strong. Every one has felt more or less keenly this sense of being a link in a great tradition, whether of a college, family, or country. Sometimes this sense for tradition takes an æsthetic form, as in the case of ritual, whether social or religious. Old streets, ivied towers, ancient rooms, become symbols of great and dignified achievements; ceremonies come to be invested with a serious beauty and memorable charm. They become reminders of a "torch to be carried on," of a spirit to be cherished and kept alive, of a history to be carried on or a purpose or an ideal to be fulfilled. As we shall see in a moment, this sense for the past, which, as Santayana says, makes a man loyal to the sources of his being, has both its virtues and vices. It is of immense value in preserving continuity and cultural integration, in keeping many men continuously moving toward a single fixed end. It may also wrap dangerously irrelevant habits and institutions in a saving--and illusive--halo. There are, on the other hand, individuals with very little sense for tradition. This may be accounted for in some cases by a marked æsthetic insensibility, which sees in ritual, ceremony, or habit, merely the literal, without any appreciation at all of its symbolic significance.[1] In other cases, individuals are unsusceptible and hostile to tradition, because they have themselves been socially disinherited. This is illustrated not infrequently in the case of foreigners who, for one reason or another, have left and lost interest in their native land, and become men without a country. [Footnote 1: This is illustrated by the crass excesses of certain radical satirists of religious forms. Those who are the enemies of religion for economic, social, or intellectualistic reasons combine a singular sense of the literal absurdities of religious forms with a marked insensibility to their symbolic values. One may find interesting examples, from Voltaire to Robert Ingersoll.] There are others by temperament rebellious and iconoclastic, who combine a keen sense of present difficulties and problems with small reverence, use for, or interest in the past, and small imaginative sympathy with it. The past is to them a "sea of errors." They regard all past achievements as bad scribblings which must be erased, so that we may start with a clean slate. There have been included among such, great historical reformers. Bentham's enthusiasm for progress led him into most intemperate attacks on history and historical method. The most noted of the eighteenth-century philosophers saw nothing but evil in tradition. Such sentiments were echoed in the early nineteenth century by Shelley, Godwin, and their circle, as expressed, for example, in Shelley's "Hellas": "The world's great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn; Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. . . . . . . . . . "Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, The splendor of its prime; And leave, if nought so bright can live, All earth can take or Heaven can give." It is not surprising that men with an eye fixed on the future should develop a contempt or an obliviousness of the past. Utopians nearly always start with "a world various and beautiful and new." Perhaps the chief ingredient in such discounting of all past history is the rebel temperament which wants to break away from what it regards as the chains, the dead weight, the ruts of tradition. It cheerfully says, "Nous changerons tout cela," and does not stop to discriminate between the _roads_ and the _ruts_ that have been made by people in the past. These two temperaments,[1] play a large part in determining attitudes toward the past. The one regards with awe and reverence past achievement, and rests his faith on the experiments which have been tested and proved by time. The other, to state the position extremely, regards each day as the possible glorious dawn of a completely new world. The first attitude, when intemperately preached and practiced, becomes an uncritical veneration of the past; the second, an uncritical disparagement. We shall briefly examine each. [Footnote 1: One is reminded of the song of the sentry before the House of Parliament in Gilbert and Sullivan's "Iolanthe"; "'T is strange how Nature doth contrive That every little boy or gal, That's born into the world alive, Is either a little Liberal, Or else a little Conservative!"] UNCRITICAL VENERATION OF THE PAST. The extreme form of uncritical veneration of the past may be said to take the position that old things are good simply because they are _old_; new things are evil simply because they are _new_. Institutions, Ideas, Customs are, like wines, supposed to attain quality with age. A custom, a law, a code of morals is defined or maintained on the ground of its ancient--and honorable--history, of the great span of years during which it has been current, of the generation after generation that has lived under its auspices. The ways of our fathers, the old time-tested ways, these, we are told, must be our ways. The psychological origins of this position have in part been discussed. There is in some individuals a highly developed sentiment and reverence for tradition as such, and an æsthetic sensibility to the mellowness, ripeness, and charm that so often accompany old things.[1] The new seems, as it often is, loud, brassy, vulgar, and hard. But there are other and equally important causes. Men trust and cherish the familiar in ideas, customs, and social organization, just as they trust and cherish old friends. They know what to expect from them; they have their well-noted excellences, and, while they have their defects, these also are definitely known and can be definitely reckoned with. The old order may not be perfect, but it is an order, and an order whose outlines and possibilities are known and predictable. Change means change to the unaccustomed and the unfamiliar. And the unaccustomed and the unfamiliar, as already pointed out, normally arouse fear. One of the conventional phrases (which has become conventional because it is accurate) with which changes have been greeted is the _cliché_, "we view with alarm." No small part of genuine opposition to change comes from the cautious and conscientious types of mind which will not sanction the reckless taking of chances, especially where the interests of large groups are concerned, which want to know precisely where a change will lead. Such a mind holds off from committing society to making changes that will put a situation beyond control and lead to unforeseen and uncontrollable dangers. Especially is this felt by the administrator, by the man who has experience with the difficulties of putting ideas in practice, who knows how vastly more difficult it is to operate with people than with paper.[2] The man of affairs knows how easy it is to check and change ideas in one's mind, but knows also the uncontrollable momentum of ideas when they are acted upon by vast numbers of men. [Footnote 1: "Oxford," said a distinguished visitor to that venerable institution, "looks just as it ought to look." And one is reminded of the story of the American lady who, admiring the smooth lawns at Oxford, asked a gardener how they managed to give them that velvet gloss. "We roll them, madam," he said, "for eight hundred years."] [Footnote 2: Thus writes Catharine II, in a letter to Diderot, the French philosopher and humanitarian: "M. Diderot, in all your schemes of reform, you entirely forget the difference in our position; you work only on paper, which endures all things; it offers no obstacle, either to your pen or your imagination. But I, poor Empress that I am, work on a far more delicate and irritable substance, the human skin."] Again, the maintenance of ways that have been practiced in the past has a large hold over people, for reasons already discussed in the chapter on Habit. The old and the accustomed are comfortable and facile; change means inconvenience and frustration of habitual desires. This is in part the explanation of the increasing conservatism of men as they grow older. Not only do they have a keener sense of the difficulty of introducing changes, but their own fixed habits of mind and emotion make part of the difficulty. They like the old ways and persist in them just as they like and keep old books, old friends, and old shoes. ROMANTIC IDEALIZATION OF THE PAST. Reverence for the past may also be due to a romantic idealization of it. In such cases, it is not an interest in maintaining the present order; it is rather a contempt for the present and wistful yearning for the "good old days." Everyone indulges more or less in such idealization. Such halos are made possible because we retain the pleasant rather than the painful and dreary aspects of our past experience. The college alumnus returning to the campus tells of the since unsurpassed intellectual and athletic feats of the freshman class of which he was a member. The elderly gentleman sighs over his newspaper at the bad ways into which the world is degenerating, and yearns for the old days when the plays were better, conversation more interesting, houses more comfortable, and men more loyal. In similar trivial instances we are all inclined to indulge in such mythology. The universality and age of this tendency has been well described by a student of Greek civilization. This is the belief of the old school of every age--there was once a "good" time; and it matters not at all in the study of moral ideals that no such time can be shown to have existed. The men of the fourth century [B.C.] say that it was in the fifth; those of the fifth say it was in the sixth; and so on infinitely. The same ideal was at work when William Morris looked to the thirteenth century, forgetting that Dante looked to a still earlier period; and both forgot that the men of that earlier period said the same--"not now, indeed, but before us men were happy." So simpler men incline to say that their grandfathers were fine fellows, but the "old college is going to the dogs," or "the House of Commons is not what it was once," for reverence and faith and manliness once ruled the world. The old school lives upon an ignorance of history; it is genuinely moved by a simple moral ideal of life and character which its own imagination has created. And when evil becomes obvious, it is the new-fangled notions that are to blame. "Trying new dodges" has brought Athens down in the world--as Aristophanes in 393 B.C. makes his protagonist say: "And would it not have saved the Athenian state, If she kept to what was good, and did not try Always some new plan?"[1] [Footnote 1: C. Delisle Burns: _Greek Ideals_, pp. 118-19.] On a large scale the romantic idealization of the past has been made into a philosophy of history. The "golden age," instead of being put in a roseate and remote future, is put in an equally remote and roseate past. The Greek legends were fond of a golden age when the gods moved among men. The Garden of Eden is the Christian apotheosis of the world's perfections. Various philosophers have pointed out the fallacy of finding such a mythological locus for our ideals, and evolution and the general revelations of history have indicated the completely mythical character of the golden age. History may, in general, be said to reveal that, whatever the imperfections of our own age, we have immeasurably improved in many pronounced respects over conditions earlier than our own. The idealized picture of the Middle Ages with its guardsmen and its courtly knights and ladies, is coming, with increasing historical information, to seem insignificant and untrue in comparison with the unspeakable hardships of the mass of men, the evil social and sanitary conditions, the plagues and pestilences which were as much a part of it. The picture of the ideally gentle and benevolent attitude of the master to his slaves is by no means regarded as a typical picture of conditions of slave labor in the South. We know, positively, on the other hand, that our medicine and surgery, our scientific and industrial methods, our production and our resources are incomparably greater than those of any earlier period in history, as are the possibilities of the control of Nature still unrealized. If there were time I might try to show that progress in knowledge and its application to the alleviation of man's estate is more rapid now than ever before. But this scarcely needs formal proof; it is so obvious. A few years ago an eminent French _littérateur_, Brunetière, declared science bankrupt. This was on the eve of the discoveries in radio-activity which have opened up great vistas of possible human readjustments if we could but learn to control and utilize the inexhaustible sources of power that lie in the atom. It was on the eve of the discovery of the function of the white blood corpuscles, which clears the way for indefinite advance in medicine. Only a poor discouraged man of letters could think for a moment that science was bankrupt. No one entitled to an opinion on the subject believes that we have made more than a beginning in penetrating the secrets of the organic and inorganic worlds.[1] [Footnote 1: Robinson: _The New History_, p. 262.] Even in the face of these facts, reverence for the past may amount to such religious veneration that change may come literally to be regarded as sacrilegious. In primitive tribes the reasons for this insistence are clear. Rites and rituals are used to secure the favor of the gods and any departure from traditional customs is looked upon as fraught with actual danger. But the past, as it lives in established forms and practices, is still by many, and in highly advanced societies, almost religiously cherished, sustained, and perpetuated. Every college, religion, and country has its traditional forms of life and practice, any infringement of which is regarded with the gravest disapproval.[2] In social life, generally, there are fixed forms for given occasions, forms of address, greeting, conversation, and clothes, all that commonly goes under the name of the "conventions" or "proprieties." In law, as is well known, there is developed sometimes to an almost absurd degree a ritual of procedure. In religion, traditional values become embodied in fixed rituals of music, processional, and prayer. In education, especially higher education, there has developed a fairly stable tradition in the granting of degrees, the elements of a curriculum, the forms of examination, and the like. To certain types of mind, fixed forms in all these fields have come to be regarded as of intrinsic importance. Love of "good form," the classicist point of view at its best, may develop into sheer pedantry and Pharisaism, an insistence on the fixed form when the intent is changed or forgotten, a regard for the letter rather than the spirit of the law. In a large number of cases, the fixed modes of life and practice which are our inheritance come to be regarded as symbols of eternal and changeless values. Thus many highly intelligent men find ritual in religion and traditional customs in education or in social life freighted with symbolic significance, and any infringement of them as almost sacrilegious in character. [Footnote 2: It has been said that a custom repeated on a college campus two years in succession constitutes a tradition.] CHANGE SYNONYMOUS WITH EVIL. Change, again, may be discouraged by those who hold, with more or less sincerity, that no good can come of it. Such a position may, and frequently is, maintained by those in whom fortunate accident of birth, favored social position, exuberant optimism, or a stanch and resilient faith, induces the belief that the social order and social practices, education, law, customs, economic conditions, science, art, _et al._, are completely satisfactory. Like Pippa, in Browning's poem, they are satisfied that "God's in His Heaven; all's right with the world." That there are no imperfections, in manners, politics, or morals, in our present social order, that there are no improvements which good-will, energy, and intelligence can effect, few will maintain without qualification. To do so implies, when sincere, extraordinary blindness to the facts, for example, of poverty and disease, which, though they do not happen to touch a particular individual, are patent and ubiquitous enough. In the face of undeniable evils the position that the ways we have inherited are completely adequate to our contemporary problems cannot be ingenuously maintained. The position more generally expounded by the opponents of change is that our present modes of life give us the best possible results, considering the limitations of nature and human nature, and that the customs, institutions, and ideas we now have are the fruits of a ripe, a mellow, and a time-tested wisdom, that any radical innovations would, on the whole, put us in a worse position than that in which we find ourselves. Persons taking this attitude discount every suggested improvement on the ground that, even though intrinsically good, it will bring a host of inevitable evils with it, and that, all things considered, we had better leave well enough alone. Some extreme exponents of this doctrine maintain, as did some of the Hebrew prophets, that whatever evils are ours are our own fault, that fault consisting in a lapse from the accustomed ancient ways. To continue without abatement the established ways is the surest road to happiness. Education, social customs, political organization, these are sound and wholesome as they are; and modification means interference with the works and processes of reason. "All Nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good; And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right."[1] [Footnote 1: Pope: _Essay on Man_, epistle I, lines 289 ff.] Later Hegel developed an elaborate philosophy of history in which he tried to demonstrate that the history of the past was one long exemplification of reason; that each event that happened was part of the great cosmic scheme, an indispensable syllable of the Divine Idea as it moved through history; each action part of the increasing purpose that runs through the ages. That these contentions are, to say the least, extreme, will appear presently in the statement of the opposite position which sees nothing in the past but a long succession of blunders, evils, and stupidities. "ORDER" _VERSUS_ CHANGE. Finally, genuine opposition to change arises from those who fear the instability which it implies. Continuation in established ways makes for integration, discipline, and stability. It makes possible the converging of means toward an end, it cumulates efforts resulting in definite achievement. In so far as we do accomplish anything of significance, we must move along stable and determinate lines; we must be able to count on the future.[1] It has already been pointed out that it is man's docility to learning, his long period of infancy[2] which makes his eventual achievements possible. But it is man's persistence in the habits he has acquired that is in part responsible for his progress. In individual life, the utility of persistence, and concentration of effort upon a definite piece of work, have been sufficiently stressed by moralists, both popular and professional. "A rolling stone gathers no moss," is as true psychologically as it is physically. Any outstanding accomplishment, whether in business, scholarship, science, or literature, demands perseverance in definite courses of action. We are inclined, and usually with reason, to suspect the effectiveness of a man who has half a dozen professions in half as many years. Such vacillations produce whimsical and scattered movements; but they are fruitless in results; they literally "get nowhere." [Footnote 1: The uncertainty that business men feel during a presidential campaign is an illustration.] [Footnote 2: See _ante_, p. 10.] Just as, in the case of individuals, any significant achievements require persistent convergence of means toward a definite end, so is it in the case of social groups. No great business organizations are built up through continual variations of policy. Similarly, in the building up of a university, a government department, a state, or a social order, consecutive and disciplined persistence in established ways is a requisite of progress. Without such continuous organization of efforts toward fixed goals, action becomes frivolous and fragmentary, a wind along a waste. The history of the English people has elicited the admiration of philosophers and historians because it has been such a gradual and deliberate movement, such a measured and certain progress toward political and social freedom. To those who appreciate the value of unity of action, of the assured fruits of cumulative and consistent action along a given path, change as such seems fraught with danger. Nor is it specific dangers they fear so much as the loss of moral fiber, the scattering of energies, the waste and futility that are frequently the net result of casual driftings with every wind that blows. No one has more eloquently expressed this view than Edmund Burke in his _Reflections on the French Revolution:_ But one of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and the laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary possessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters; that they should think it among their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to leave to those who come after them a ruin instead of a habitation--and teaching these successors as little to respect their contrivances, as they had themselves respected the institutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways, as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would be little better than the flies of a summer. * * * * * To avoid, therefore, the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the state, that no man should approach to look into its defects or corruptions, but with due caution; that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by its subversion; that he should approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude.[1] [Footnote 1: Edmund Burke: _Reflections on the French Revolution_ (George Bell & Sons, 1888), pp. 366-68.] PERSONAL OR CLASS OPPOSITION TO CHANGE. Sincere fear of the possible evils of novelty in the disorganization which it promotes, habituation to established ways, or a sentimental and æsthetic allegiance to them--all these are factors that determine genuine opposition to change. But aversion to change may be generalized into a philosophical attitude by those who have special personal or class reasons for disliking specific changes. The hand-workers in the early nineteenth century stoned the machinists and machines which threw them out of employment. Every change does discommode some class or classes of persons, and part of the opposition to specific changes comes from those whom they would adversely affect. It is not surprising that liquor interests should be opposed to prohibition, that theatrical managers should have protested against a tax on the theater, or those with great incomes against an excess profits tax. Selfish opposition to specific changes is, indeed, frequently veiled in the disguise of plausible reasons for opposition to change in general. Those who fear the results to their own personal or class interests of some of the radical social legislation of our own day may disguise those more or less consciously realized motives under the form of impartial philosophical opposition to social change in general. They may find philosophical justification for maintaining unmodified an established order which redounds to their own advantage. UNCRITICAL DISPARAGEMENT. The other extreme is represented by the position that old things are bad because they are _old_, and new things good because they are _new_. This is illustrated in an extreme though trivial form by faddists of every kind. There are people who chiefly pride themselves on being up-to-the-minute, and exhibit an almost pathological fear of being behind the times. This thirst for the novel is seen on various levels, from those who wear the newest styles, and dine at the newest hotels, to those who make a point of reading only the newest books, hearing only the newest music, and discussing the latest theories. For such temperaments, and more or less to most people, there is an intrinsic glamour about the word "new." The physical qualities that are so often associated with newness are carried over into social and intellectual matters, where they do not so completely apply. The new is bright and unfrayed; it has not yet suffered senility and decay. The new is smart and striking; it catches the eye and the attention. Just as old things are dog-eared, worn, and tattered, so are old institutions, habits, and ideas. Just as we want the newest books and phonographs, the latest conveniences in housing and sanitation, so we want the latest modernities in political, social, and intellectual matters. Especially about new ideas, there is the freshness and infinite possibility of youth; every new idea is as yet an unbroken promise. It has not been subjected to the frustrations, disillusions, and compromises to which all theory is subjected in the world of action.[1] Every new idea is an experiment, a possibility, a hope. It may be the long-awaited miracle; it may be the prayed-for solution of all our difficulties. [Footnote 1: "Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity embodying in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the perfect from which all great work springs. Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual world." (Bertrand Russell: _Mysticism and Logic_, pp. 60-61.)] This susceptibility to the novel is peculiarly displayed by those who see nothing but evil in the old. Against the outworn past with its disillusions, its errors, its evils, and its hypocrisies, the new shines out in glorious contrast. There are persons who combine a very genuine sense of present evils with a resilient belief in the possibilities of change. The classic instance of this is seen in the Messianic idea. Even in the worst of times, the pious Jew could count on the saving appearance of the Messiah. Every Utopian is as sure of the salvation promised by his prize solution as he is of the evils which it is intended to rectify. The ardent Socialist may equally divide his energies between pointing out the evils of the capitalist system, and the certain bliss of his Socialist republic. The past is nothing but a festering mass of evils; industry is nothing but slavery, religion nothing but superstition, education nothing but dead traditional formalism, social life nothing but hypocrisy. Where the past is so darkly conceived, there comes an uncritical welcoming of anything new, anything that will take men away from it. Nothing could be worse than the present or past; anything as yet untried may be better. As Karl Marx told the working classes: "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win." The past is, by its ruthless critics, conceived not infrequently as enchaining or enslaving. Particularly, the radical insists, are men enslaved by habits of thought, feeling, and action which are totally inadequate to our present problems and difficulties. War-like emotions, he points out, may have been useful in an earlier civilization, but are now a total disutility. Belief in magic may have been an asset to primitive man in his ignorance; it is not to modern man with his science. The institution of private property may have had its values in building up civilization; its utility is over. We still make stereotyped and archaic reactions where the situation has utterly changed. The institutions, ideas, and habits of the past are at once so compelling and so obsolete that we must make a clear break with the past; we must start with a clean slate. To continue, so we are told, is merely going further and further along the wrong paths; it is like continuing with a broken engine, or without a rudder. CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE PAST. That both positions just discussed are extreme, goes without saying. The past is neither all good nor all bad; it has achieved as well as it has erred. But it is, in any case, all we have. Without the knowledge, the customs, the institutions we have inherited, we should have no advantage at all over our ancestors of ten thousand years ago. Biologically we have not changed. The past is our basic material. Each generation starts with what it finds in the way of cultural achievement, and builds upon that. Antiquity deserveth that reverence, that men should take a stand thereupon, and discover what is the best way; but when the discovery is well-taken, then to make progression. And to speak truly, _antiquitas soeculi iuventus mundi_. These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient _ordine retrogrado_, by a computation backwards from ourselves.[1] [Footnote 1: Bacon: _The Advancement of Learning_, Collected Works, vol. I, p. 172.] The past, save what we discover in our generation, is our sole storehouse of materials. And a very small part of our useful knowledge in the industrial arts, in science, in social organization and administration does come from our own generation. It is the accumulated experience of generations of men. We can, out of this mass of materials, select whatever is useful in clarifying the issues of the present, whatever helps us to accomplish those purposes which we have, after critical consideration, decided to be useful and serviceable. If, for example, we decide to build a bridge, it is of importance that we know all that men have in the past discovered of mechanical relations and industrial art which will enable us to build a bridge well. If we want to establish an educational system in some backward portion of the world, it is useful for us to know what methods men have used in similar situations. Whatever we decide to do, we are so much the better off, if we know all that men before us have learned in analogous instances. But to use the inheritance of the past implies an analysis of present problems, and an acceptance of the course to be pursued. The experience of the past, the heritage of knowledge that has come down to us, is so various and extensive that choices must be made. The historian in writing even a comprehensive history of a country must still make choices and omissions. Similarly, in using knowledge inherited from the past as materials, we must have specific problems to govern our choice. The statistician could collect innumerable statistics; he collects only those which have a bearing on his subject. The lawyer searches out that part of the legal tradition which is applicable to his own case. Without some lead or clue we should lose ourselves in the multifariousness of transmitted knowledge at our disposal. To use the past as an instrument for furthering present purposes implies neither veneration nor disparagement of it. We neither condemn nor praise the past as a whole; we regard specific institutions, customs, or ideas, as adequate or inadequate, as serviceable or disserviceable. In general, it may be said that the value of any still extant part of the past, be it a work of art, a habit, a tradition, has very little to do with its origin. The instinct of eating is still useful though it has a long history. The works of the Old Masters are not really great because they are old, nor are the works of contemporaries either good or bad because they are new. Man himself is to be estimated no differently, whether he is descended from the angels or the apes. If we would appreciate our own morals and religion we are often advised to consider primitive man and his institutions. If we would evaluate marriage or property, we are often directed to study our remote ancestors.... Such considerations as these have diverse effects according to our temperaments. They quite uniformly produce, however, disillusionment and sophistication.... This exaltation of the past, as the ancestral home of all that we are, may make us regret our loss of illusions and our disconcerting enlightenment.... We may break with the past, scorn an inheritance so redolent of blood and lust and superstition, revel in an emancipation unguided by the discipline of centuries, strive to create a new world every day, and imagine that, at last, we have begun to make progress.[1] [Footnote 1: Woodbridge: _The Purpose of History_, p. 72.] The standards of value of the things we have or do or say, the approvals or disapprovals we should logically accord them, are determined not by their history, not by their past, but by their uses in the living present in which we live. An institution may have served the purposes of a bygone generation; it does not follow that it thereby serves our own. The reverse may similarly be true. For us the specific features of our social inheritance depend upon the ends or purposes which we reflectively decide upon and accept. Whether capital punishment is good or evil; whether private property is an adequate or inadequate institution for social welfare; whether marriage is a perfect or an imperfect institution; whether collective bargaining, competitive industry, old age insurance, income taxes, nationalization of railroads are useful or pernicious depends neither on their age nor their novelty. Their value is determined by their relevancy to our own ideals, by the extent to which they hinder or promote the results which we consciously desire. The past may be studied with a view to clarifying present issues. In the first place, we may study past successes and failures in order to guide our actions in present similar situations. A man setting out to organize and administer a newspaper will benefit by the experiences others have had in the same situation. In the same way, we can learn from past history something, at least, bearing on present political and social issues. It is true enough that history has been much misused for the drawing of lessons and guidance. As Professor Robinson says: To-day, however, one rarely finds a historical student who would venture to recommend statesmen, warriors, and moralists to place any confidence whatsoever in historical analogies and warnings, for the supposed analogies usually prove illusive on inspection, and the warnings impertinent. Whether or no Napoleon was ever able in his own campaigns to make any practical use of the accounts he had read of those of Alexander and Cæsar, it is quite certain that Admiral Togo would have derived no useful hints from Nelson's tactics at Alexandria or Trafalgar. Our situation is so novel that it would seem as if political and military precedents of even a century ago could have no possible value. As for our present "anxious morality," as Maeterlinck calls it, it seems equally clear that the sinful extravagances of Sardanapalus and Nero, and the conspicuous public virtue of Aristides and the Horatii, are alike impotent to promote it.[1] [Footnote 1: Robinson: _The New History_, p. 36.] But situations are, within limits, duplicated in historical processes, and it is illuminating at least to see wherein men failed and wherein they succeeded in the things they set themselves to do. The history of labor legislation certainly testifies to the effectiveness of "collective bargaining" in securing improved labor conditions, as the history of strikes does also to the public loss and injury incident to this kind of industrial warfare. If compulsory arbitration has been a successful method of dealing with labor difficulties in Australia in the past, we can, by a careful study and comparison of conditions there and conditions current in our country at the present, illuminate and clarify our own problems. A campaign manager in one presidential campaign does not forget what was effective in the last, nor does he hesitate to profit by his mistakes or those of others. An impartial survey of the heritage of the past undertakes critically to examine institutions, customs, ideas still current with a view to determining their relevancy and utility to our present needs. This demands, on the one hand, clarity as to what those needs are, and, on the other hand, freedom from prejudice for or against existing modes of life simply because they have a history. A critical examination of the past amounts practically to a taking stock, a summary of our social assets and liabilities. We shall find our ideas, for example, and our customs, a strange mixture of useful preservations, and absurd or positively harmful relics of the past. Ideas which were natural and useful enough in the situation in which they originated, live on into a totally changed situation, along with other ideas, like that of gravitation, which are as true and as useful now as when they were first enunciated. Many customs and institutions which may be found to have as great utility now as when they were first practiced generations ago, the customs and institutions, let us say, of family life, may be found persisting along with customs and institutions, like excess legal formalism (or, as their opponents claim, a bi-cameral legislative system or a two-party system) which may come generally to be regarded as impediments to progress.[1] The unprejudiced observer, scientifically interested in preserving those forms and mechanisms of social life which are of genuine service to his own generation, will not condemn or applaud "the past" _en masse_. He will, rather, examine it in specific detail. He will not, for example, dismiss classical education, because it is classical or old. He will rather try experimentally to determine the actual consequences in the case of those who study the classics. He will examine the claims made for the study, try in specific cases to find out whether those claims are fulfilled, and condemn or approve the study, say, of Latin and Greek, according to his estimate of the desirability or undesirability of those consequences. If he finds, for example, that the study of Latin does promote general literary appreciation, his decision that it should or should not be continued will depend on his opinion of the value of general literary appreciation as compared with other values in an industrial civilization. Similarly, with "freedom of contract," "freedom of the seas," military service, bi-cameral systems, party caucuses, presidential veto, and all the other political and social heritages of the past. [Footnote 1: The situation in the case of outworn social institutions is paralleled in the case of the human appendix, once possessing a function in the digestive system of primitive man, but now useless and likely on occasion to become a positive disutility.] But a man who impartially examines the past will usually exhibit also an appreciation of its attainments and a sense of the present good to which it has been instrumental. He will not glibly dismiss institutions, habits, methods of life that are the slow accumulations of centuries. He will have a sense of the continuous efforts and energies that have gone into the making of contemporary civilization. He will have, in suggesting ruthless innovations, a sobering sense of the gradual evolution that has made present institutions, habits, ideas, what they are. The student of the past knows, moreover, that the present without its background of history is literally meaningless. In the words of a well-known student of the development of human culture: Progress, degradation, survival, modification, are all modes of the connection that binds together the complex network of civilization. It needs but a glance into the trivial details of our own daily life to set us thinking how far we are really its originators, and how far but the transmitters and modifiers of the results of long past ages. Looking round the rooms we live in, we may try here how far he who knows only his own time can be capable of rightly comprehending even that. Here is the honeysuckle of Assyria, there the fleur-de-lis of Anjou, a cornice with a Greek border runs round the ceiling, the style of Louis XIV and its parent the Renaissance share the looking glass between them. Transformed, shifted or mutilated, such elements of art still carry their history plainly stamped upon them.... It is thus even with the fashion of the clothes men wear. The ridiculous little tails of the German postilion's coat show of themselves how they came to dwindle to such absurd rudiments; but the English clergyman's bands no longer so convey their history to the eye, and look unaccountable enough till one has seen the intermediate stages through which they came down from the more serviceable wide collars, such as Milton wears in his portrait, and which gave their name to the "band-box" they used to be kept in. In fact, the books of costume showing how one garment grew or shrank by gradual stages and passed into another, illustrate with much force and clearness the nature of the change and growth, revival and decay, which go on from year to year in more important matters of life. In books, again, we see each writer not for and by himself, but occupying his proper place in history; we look through each philosopher, mathematician, chemist, poet, into the background of his education--through Leibnitz into Descartes, through Dalton into Priestly, through Milton into Homer.[1] [Footnote 1: Tylor, Edward B.: _Primitive Culture_, vol. I. pp. 17 ff.] Besides understanding the present better in terms of its history, there is much in the heritage of the past, especially of its finished products, that the citizen of contemporary civilization will wish preserved for its own sake. The works of art, of music, and of literature which are handed down to us are "possessions forever." Whatever be the limitations of our social inheritance, as instruments for the solution of our difficulties, those finished products which constitute the "best that has been known and thought" in the world are beyond cavil. They may not solve our problems, but they immensely enrich and broaden our lives. They are enjoyed because they are intrinsically beautiful, but also because they widen men's sympathies and broaden the scope of contemporary purposes and ideals. The culture that this transmission of racial experience makes possible, can be made perfect by the critical spirit alone, and, indeed, may be said to be one with it. For who is the true critic but he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure. And who is the true man of culture, if not he in whom fine scholarship and fastidious rejection... develops that spirit of disinterested curiosity which is the real spirit, as it is the real fruit of the intellectual life, and thus attains to intellectual clarity; and having learned the best that is known and thought in the world, lives--it is not fanciful to say so--among the Immortals.[1] [Footnote 1: Oscar Wilde: _Intentions_, pp. 192-93.] The student of Greek life knows that the Greeks in their view of Nature and of morals, in their conception of the way life should be lived, in their discrimination of the beautiful, have still much to teach us. He knows, however much we may have outlived the hierarchy of obedience which constitutes mediæval social and political life, we should do well to recover the humility in living, the craftsmanship in industry, and precision in thinking which constituted so conspicuous features of mediæval civilization. He knows that progress is not altogether measured by flying machines and wireless telegraphy. He is aware that speed and quantity, the key values in an industrial civilization, are not the only values that ever have been, or ever should be cherished by mankind. LIMITATIONS OF THE PAST. Along with a sensitive appreciation of the achievements and values of the past, goes, in the impartial critic, an acknowledgment of its limitations. We can appreciate the distinctive contributions of Greek culture without setting up Greek life as an ultimate ideal. We know that with all the beauty attained and expressed in their art and, to a certain extent, in their civilization, the Athenians yet sacrificed the majority to a life of slavery in order that the minority might lead a life of the spirit, that their religion had its notable crudities and cruelties, that their science was trivial, and their control of Nature negligible. In the words of one of their most thoroughgoing admirers: The harmony of the Greeks contained in itself the factors of its own destruction. And in spite of the fascination which constantly fixes our gaze on that fairest and happiest halting place in the secular march of man, it was not there, any more than here, that he was destined to find an ultimate reconciliation and repose.[1] [Footnote 1: G. Lowes Dickinson: _Greek View of Life_, p. 248.] Again, we know the many beautiful features of mediæval life through its painting and poetry and religion. We know Saint Francis and are familiar with the heroic records of saintliness and renunciation. We know, the great cathedrals, the pageantry and splendor, the exquisite handicraft, the tapestries and illuminated manuscripts, the vast learning and the incomparable dialectic. We know also the social injustices, the misery and squalor the ignorance in which the mass of the people lived. We can stop, therefore, neither in perpetual adoration of nor perpetual caviling at the past. Each age had its special excellences and its special defects, both from the point of view of the ideals then current, and those current in our own day. In so far as the past is dead and over with, we cannot legitimately criticize it with standards of our own day. We cannot blame the Greeks for sanctioning slavery, nor criticize James I because he was not a thoroughgoing democrat. But in so far as the past still lives, it is open to critical examination and revision. Traditions, customs, ideas, and institutions inherited from the past, which still control us, are subject to modification. We are justified in welcoming changes and modifications which, after careful inquiry, seem clearly to promise betterment in the life of the group. Thus to welcome changes which upon experimental evidence show clearly the benefits that will accrue to the group, is not radicalism. Nor is opposition to changes on the ground that upon critical examination they give promise of harmful consequences, conservatism. Verdicts for or against change reached on such a basis reflect the spirit and technique of experimental science. They reflect the desire to settle a course of action on the basis of its results in practice rather than on any preconceived prejudices in favor either of stability or change. To the critical mind, neither stability nor change is an end in itself. There is no hypnotism about "things as they are"; no lure about things as they have not yet been. The problem is shifted to a detailed and thoroughgoing inquiry into the consequences of specific changes in social habits, ideas and institutions, education, business, and industry. Whether changes should or should not win critical approval depends on the kind of ideals or purposes we set ourselves and, secondly, on the practicability of the proposed changes. Change may thus be opposed or approved, in a given case, on the grounds of desirability or feasibility. Whether a change is or is not desirable depends on the ideals of the individual or the group. Whether it is or is not feasible is a matter open increasingly to scientific determination. Thus a city may hire experts to discover what kind of transportation or educational system will best serve the city's needs. But whether it will or will not spend the money necessary depends on the social interests current. EDUCATION AS THE TRANSMITTER OF THE PAST. Education is the process by which society undertakes the transmission of its social heritage. Indeed the main function of education in static societies is the initiation of the young into already established customs and traditions. It is the method used to hand down those social habits which the influential and articulate classes in a society regard as important enough to have early fixed in its young members. The past is simply transmitted, handed down _en masse_. It is a set of patterns to be imitated, of ideals to be continued, of mechanisms for attaining the fixed purposes which are current in the group. In progressive societies education may be used not simply to hand down habits of doing, feeling, and thinking, from the older generation to the younger, but to make habitual in the young reflective consideration of the ends which must be attained, and reflective inquiry into the means for attaining them. The past will not be handed down in indiscriminate completeness. The present and its problems are regarded as the standard of importance, and the past is considered as an incomparable reservoir of materials and methods which may contribute to the ends sought in the present. But there is so much material and so little time, that selection must be made. Many things in the past, interesting on their own merits, must be omitted in favor of those habits, traditions, and recorded files of knowledge which are most fruitful and enlightening in the attainment of contemporary purposes. What those purposes are depends, of course, on ideals of the group in control of the process of education. But these purposes of ideals may be derived from present situations and not taken merely because they have long been current in the group. Thus, in a predominantly industrial civilization, it may be found more advisable and important to transmit the scientific and technical methods of control which men have acquired in recent generations than the traditional liberal arts. Science may be found more important than the humanities, medicine than moral theory. Even such education that tends to call itself "liberal" or "cultural" is effective and genuine education just in so far as it does illuminate the world in which we live. The religion and art, the literature and life of the past broaden the meaning and the background of our lives. They are valuable just because they do enrich the lives of those who are exposed to their influence. If studying the great literature and the art of the past did not clarify the mind and emancipate the spirit, enabling men to live more richly in the present, they would hardly be as studiously cherished and transmitted as they are. We are, after all, living in the present. The culture of the past either does or does not illuminate it. If it does not it is a competing environment, a shadow world in which we may play truant from actuality, but which brings neither "sweetness nor light" to the actual world in which we live. PART II THE CAREER OF REASON The foregoing analysis of human behavior might thus be briefly summarized. We found that man is born a creature with certain tendencies to act in certain definite ways, tendencies which he largely possesses in common with the lower animals. We found also that man could learn by trial and error, that his original instinctive equipment could be modified. Thus far in his mental life man is indistinguishable from the beasts. But man's peculiar capacity, it appeared, lay in his ability to think, to control his actions in the light of a future, to choose one response rather than another because of its consequences, which he could foresee and prefer. This capacity for reflection, for formulating a purpose and being able to obtain it, we found to be practical in its origins, but persisting on its own account in the disinterested inquiry of philosophy and science and the free imaginative construction of art. And in all man's behavior, whether on the plane of instinct, habit, or reflection, we found action to be accompanied by emotion, by love and hate, anger and awe, which might at once impede action by confusing it, or sustain it by giving it a vivid and compelling motive. The second part of the book was devoted to an analysis of the various specific traits which human beings display and the consequences that these have in men's relations with one another. Under certain conditions, one or another of these may become predominant; in particular historical conditions, one or another of them may have a high social value or the reverse. These traits vary in different individuals; in any of them, a man may be totally defective or abnormally developed. But taken in general, they constitute the changeless pattern of human nature, and fix the conditions and the limits of action. But while these universal traits determine what man may do, and fix definitively the boundaries of human possibility, within these limits the race has a wide choice of ideals and attainments. The standards of what man will and should do, within the boundaries of the nature which is his inheritance, are to be found not in his original impulses, but in his mind and imagination. The human being is gifted with the ability to imagine a future more desirable than the present, and to contrive ingeniously in behalf of anticipated or imagined goods. These anticipated goods we call ideals, and these ideals arise, in the last analysis, out of the initial and inborn hungers and cravings of men. "Intellect is of the same flesh and blood with all the instincts, a brother whose superiority lies in his power to appreciate, harmonize, and save them all." The function of reason is not to set itself over against men's original desires, but to envisage ideals and devise instruments whereby they may all, so far as nature allows, be fulfilled. Man's reason, then, which has its roots in his instincts, is the means of their harmonious fulfillment. It attempts, in the various fields of experience, to effect an adjustment between man's competing desires, and between man and his environment. If instincts were left each to its own free course, they would all be frustrated; if man did not learn reflectively to control his environment, and to make it subserve his own ends, he would be a helpless pygmy soon obliterated by the incomparably more powerful forces of Nature. These various attempts of man to effect an adjustment of his passions with one another, and his life to his environment, may be described as the "Career of Reason." In this career man has formulated many ideals, not a small number of which have led him into error, disillusion, and unhappiness. Sometimes they have misled him by promising him fulfillments that were in the nature of things unattainable. They have added to the real evils of life a longing after impossible goods, goods which an informed intelligence would early have dismissed as unattainable. Man has disappointed himself by counting on joys which, had he been less incorrigibly addicted to imaginative illusions, he should never have expected. Sometimes he has framed ideals which could be fulfilled, but only at the expense of a large proportion of natural and irrepressible human desires. Such, for example, have been the one-sided ascetic ideals of Stoicism or Puritanism, which in their attempt to give order and form to life, crush and distort a considerable portion of it. The same is true of mysticism which seeks frequently to attain life by altogether denying its instinctive animal basis. Yet though reason has led men astray, it is the only and ultimate hope of man's happiness. It is responsible for whatever success man has had in mastering the turmoil of his own passions and the obstacles of an environment "which was not made for him but in which he grew." It has given point and justice to Swinburne's exultant boast: "Glory to man in the highest! For man is the master of things!" This Career of Reason has taken various parallel fulfillments, and in each of them man has in varying degrees attained mastery. Religion arose as one of the earliest ways by which man attempted to win for himself a secure place in the cosmic order. Science, in its earliest forms hardly distinguishable from religion, is man's persistent attempt to discover the nature of things, and to exploit that discovery for his own good. Art is again an instance of man's march toward mastery. Beginning, in the broadest sense, in the industrial arts, in agriculture and handicrafts, it passes, as it were by accident, from the necessary to the beautiful. Having in his needful business fortuitously created beautiful objects, man comes to create them intentionally, both for their own sake and for the sheer pleasure of creation. Finally in morals men have endeavored to construct for themselves codes of conduct, ideals of life, in which no possible good should be needlessly or recklessly sacrificed, and in which men might live together as happily as is permitted by the nature which is at once their life and their habitation. The Career of Reason in these various fields we shall briefly trace and describe. We must expect to find, as in any career, however successful, failures along with the triumphs, and, as in any notable career still unfinished, possibility and great promise. Man's reason and imagination have a long past; they have also an indefinite future. Man has in the name of reason made many errors; but to reason he owes his chief success, and with increasing experience he may be expected to attain continually to a more certain and effective wisdom. With these provisos, let us address ourselves to the Career of Reason, beginning with religion. CHAPTER XII RELIGION AND THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. Since human nature remains constant in its essential traits, despite the variations it exhibits among different individuals, it is to be expected that certain experiences should be fairly common and recurrent among all human beings. Joy and sorrow, love and hate, jubilance and despair, disillusion and rapture, triumph and frustration, these occur often, and to every man. They are, as it were, the sparks generated by the friction of human desires with the natural world in which they must, if anywhere, find fulfillment. Just such a normal, inevitable consequence of human nature in a natural world is the religious experience. It is common in more or less intense degree to almost all men, and may be studied objectively just as may any of the other universal experiences of mankind. There are, however, certain peculiar difficulties in the study of the religious experience. Most men are by training emotionally committed to one particular religious creed which it is very difficult for them impartially to examine or to compare with others. In the second place, there is a confusion in the minds of most people between the personal religious experience, and the formal and external institution we commonly have in mind when we speak of "religion." When we ordinarily use the term, we imply a set of dogmas, an institution, a reasoned theology, a ritual, a priesthood, all the apparatus and earmarks of institutionalized religion. We think of Christianity, Mohammedanism, Judaism, the whole welter of churches and creeds that have appeared in the history of mankind. But these are rather the outward vehicles and vestments of the religious experience than the experience itself. They are the social expressions and external instruments of the inner spiritual occurrence. But the latter is primary. If man had not _first been religious_, these would never have arisen. In the words of William James: In one sense at least, the personal religion will prove itself more fundamental than either theology or ecclesiasticism. Churches when once established live at second hand upon tradition, but the _founders_ of every Church owed their power originally to the fact of their direct personal communion with the divine. Not only the superhuman founders, the Christ, the Buddha, Mahomet, but all the originators of Christian sects have been in this case; so personal religion should still seem the primordial thing, even to those who esteem it incomplete.[1] [Footnote 1: James: _Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 30.] Before we examine the social institutions and fixed apparatus of ritual and of reasoned theology in which the religious experience has become variously embodied, we must pause to analyze the experience itself. To be religious, as a personal experience, is, like being philosophical, to take a total attitude toward the universe. But the religious attitude is one of a somewhat specific kind. It is, one may arbitrarily but also somewhat fairly say, to sense or comprehend one's relation to the divine, however the divine be conceived. It is to have this sense and comprehension not only deeply, as one might in a poetic or a philosophical mood, but to have it suffused with reverence. We shall presently see that the objects of veneration have had a different meaning for different individuals, groups, and generations. But whatever be the conception of the divine object, the religious attitude seems to have this stable feature. It is always an awed awareness on the part of the individual of his relation to that "something not himself," and larger than himself, with whom the destinies of the universe seem to rest. This somehow sensed relation to the divine appears throughout all the varieties of religion that have appeared in the world, and among many individuals not popularly accounted religious. It is just such an experience, for example, that Wordsworth expresses when he says in the "Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey": "... And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things." It is the same sense that comes over so-called worldly people when oppressed suddenly by a great sorrow, or uplifted by a sudden great joy, an awareness of a divine power that moves masterfully and mysteriously through the events of life, provoking on the part of finite creatures a strange and compelling reverence. This "divinity that shapes our ends" may be variously conceived. It may be an intimately realized personal God, "Our Father which art in Heaven." It may be such an abstract conception as the Laws of Nature or Scientific Law, such a religion as is expounded by the Transcendentalists, in particular by Emerson: These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance: thus in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire.... If a man is at heart just, then, in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God, do enter into that man with justice.... For all things proceed out of the same spirit, which is differently named, love, justice, temperance, in its different applications, just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it washes.... The perception of this law awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its power to charm and to command. It is a mountain air. It is the embalmer of the world. It makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the stars is it. It is the beatitude of man. It makes him illimitable.[1] [Footnote 1: Emerson: _Miscellanies_, quoted by James in _Varieties_, pp. 32-33.] It may be conceived as Nature itself, as it was by Spinoza, for whom Nature was identical with God. It may be the World-Soul which Shelley sings with such rapture: "That Light whose smile kindles the universe, That beauty in which all things work and move, That benediction which the eclipsing curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining love, Which through the web of being, blindly wove, By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst--now beams on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality."[1] [Footnote 1: From _Adonais_.] In all these conceptions it still seems to be a hushed sense of reverential relationship to the divine power that most specifically constitutes the religious experience. The latter exhibits certain recurrent elements, any of which may be present in a more intense degree in some individuals than in others, but all of which appear in some degree in most of the phenomena of personal life that we call religious. "THE REALITY OF THE UNSEEN." In the first place may be noted the sense of the actuality and nearness of the divine power, what James calls the "reality of the unseen," and what is frequently spoken of by religious men as "the presence of God." James quotes in this connection an interesting letter of James Russell Lowell's: I had a revelation last Friday evening.... Happening to say something of the presence of spirits of whom, as I said, I was often dimly aware, Mr. Putnam entered into an argument with me on spiritual matters. As I was speaking, the whole system seemed to rise up before me, like a vague destiny looming from the abyss. I never before felt the spirit of God so keenly in me, and around me. The whole room seemed to me full of God. The air seemed to waver to and fro with the presence of something I knew not what. I spoke with the calmness and clearness of a prophet.[2] [Footnote 2: Lowell: _Letters_, I, p. 75.] The archives of the psychology of religion are crowded with instances of men who have felt deeply, intimately, and irrefutably the near and actual presence of God. This sense of the reality of an unseen Thing or Power is not always identified with God. There come moments in the lives of normal men and women when the world of experience seems alive with something that is apprehended through none of the five senses. There are times when things unseen, unheard, and untouched seem to have, nay, for those concerned, do have, a clearer and more unmistakable reality than the things we can touch, hear, and see. Sometimes, in the hearing of beautiful music, we sense a transcendent beauty which is something other than, something more real than, the specific harmonies which we physically hear. In rare moments of rapture, when the imagination or the affections are intensely stirred, we become intensely aware of this reality which is made known to us through none of the ordinary avenues of experience. The Unseen is not only vividly felt, but is deeply felt and regarded as a thing of deep significance, and is experienced in most cases with great inexplicable joy. And, not infrequently, this significant and beautiful Unseen Somewhat is identified with God. The sense of the reality of the divine, is, however, as it were, only the prerequisite of the religious experience. When an individual does have this sense, what interests the student of the psychology of religion is the attitude it provokes and the satisfactions it gives. These we can the better understand if we examine the conditions in an individual's experience which make this longing for the divine presence acute, and the general circumstances of human life which make it a continuous desire in many people. There are, to begin with, constant facts of experience which make the realization of the divine presence not only a satisfaction, but the indispensable "staff of life" for certain human beings. In their unfaltering faith in God's enduring and proximate actuality lies their sole source of security and trust. For such persons a lapse or a lack of faith is the prelude to utter collapse. A vague general assurance of the dependability of the future is, for most people, a prerequisite for a sane and untroubled existence. Even those who live in unreflective satisfaction with the fruits of the moment would find these moments less satisfactory were they not set in a background of reasonably fair promise. The exuberant optimist, when he stops to reflect, has a buoyant and inclusive faith in the essential goodness of man and the universe. Whitman stands out in this connection as the classic type. Evil and good were to him indifferently beautiful. He maintained an incredibly large-hearted and magnanimous receptivity to all things great or small, charming or ugly, that lightened or blackened the face of the planet. While the average man accepts the universe with a less wholesale and indiscriminate appreciation, yet he does feel vaguely assured that the nature of things is ordered, harmonious, dependable, and regular, that affairs are, cosmically speaking, in a sound state. He feels a vast and comfortable solidity about the frame of things in which his life is set; he can depend on the familiar risings and settings of the sun, the recurrent and assured movement of the seasons. Were this trust suddenly removed, were the cosmic guarantee withdrawn, to live would be one long mortal terror. That this is precisely what does happen under such circumstances, the voluminous literature of melancholia sufficiently proves. The sense of insecurity takes various forms. Sometimes the patient experiences a profound and intimate conviction of the unreality of the world about him. His whole physical environment comes to seem a mere phantasy and a delusion. In some cases he finds himself unmoved by the normal interests and excitements of men, unable to find any stimulus, value, or significance in the world. Esquirol observed the case of a very intelligent magistrate.... Every emotion appeared dead within him. He manifested neither perversion nor violence, but a complete absence of emotional reaction. If he went to the theater, which he did out of habit, he could find no pleasure there. The thought of his house, of his home, of his wife, and of his absent children, moved him as little, he said, as a theorem of Euclid.[1] [Footnote 1: Ribot: _Psychology of the Emotions_, p. 54.] The sense of futility, of the flatness, staleness, and unprofitableness of the world, which is felt in such extreme forms by pronounced melancholiacs, is experienced sometimes, though to a lesser degree, by every sensitive mind that reflects much upon life. Such an attitude, it is true, arises principally during moments of fatigue and low vitality, and is undoubtedly organic in its origins, as for that matter is optimism. Again such a sense of world-weariness comes often in moments of personal disappointment and disillusion, when friends have proved false, ambitions empty, efforts wasted. At such times even the normal man echoes Swinburne's beautiful melancholy: "We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure, To-day will die to-morrow, Time stoops to no man's lure; And love grown faint and fretful, With lips but half regretful, Sighs, and with eyes forgetful, Weeps that no loves endure. "From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving, Whatever gods may be, That no life lives, forever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river, Winds somewhere safe to sea."[1] [Footnote 1: From _A Garden of Proserpine_.] Even the eager and exuberant, if sufficiently philosophical and generous-minded, may come, despite their own success, to a deep realization of the utter futility, meaninglessness, and stupidity of life, of the essential blindnesses, cruelties, and insecurities which seem to characterize the nature of things. Unless against this dark insight some reassuring faith arises, life may become almost unbearable. In extreme cases it has driven men to suicide. Take, for example, the picture of the universe as modern materialism presents it: Purposeless... and void of meaning is the world which science reveals for our belief.... That man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving, that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought or feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave, that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievements must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins--all these things if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.[1] [Footnote 1: Bertrand Russell: _Philosophical Essays_, pp. 60-61 ("The Free Man's Worship").] Such a prospect to the serious-minded and sensitive-spirited cannot but provoke the profoundest melancholy. There is, even for the most healthy-minded of us, sufficient ground for pessimism, bitterness, insecurity. Even if we personally--largely through the accidents of circumstance--happen to be successful, "our joy is a vulgar glee, not unlike the snicker of any rogue at his success." The utter futility and evanescence of earthly goods, beauties, and achievements is sensed at least sometimes by normally complacent souls. And so patent and ubiquitous are the evidences of decay, disease, and death at our disposal, that they may easily be erected into a thoroughgoing philosophy of life: Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?... All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good so is the sinner; and he that sweareth as he that feareth an oath.... For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love and their hatred and their envy is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun.[1] [Footnote 1: _Ecclesiastes_.] Religion offers solace to those perturbed and passionate souls, among others, to whom these futilities have become a rankling, continuous torment and depression. When life on earth appears fragmentary and disordered, not only nonsense but terrifying nonsense, full of hideous injustices, sickening uncertainties, and cruel destructions, men have not infrequently found a refuge in the divine. "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." In the religious experience man finds life to be made clear, complete, and beautiful. What seems a contradictory fragment finds its precise niche in the divine scheme, what seems dark and cruel shines out in a setting of eternal beneficence and wisdom. The experience of the individual, even the happiest, is always partial, broken, and disordered. No ideal is ever completely realized, or if realized leaves some perfection to be desired. Men living in a natural existence imagine values and ideals which can never be realized there. In religion, if anywhere, men have found perfection, and ultimate sufficiency. This perfection, completion, and clarification of life has been attained in various ways. The religious experience itself, when intense, may give to the individual apart from a reasoned judgment, or from any actual change in his physical surroundings, a translucent insight during which he sees deeply, calmly, joyously into the beautiful eternal order of things. This mystic insight has been experienced on occasion by quite normal and prosaic men and women. While it lasts, reality seems to take on new colors and dimensions. It becomes vivid, luminous, and intense. The mystic seems to rise to a higher level of consciousness, in which he experiences a universe more significant, ordered, and unified than any commonly experienced through the senses. One may take, as an example, such an instance autobiographically and anonymously reported a few years ago, and well documented: It was not that for a few keyed-up moments I _imagined_ all existence as beautiful, but that my inner vision was cleared to the truth so that I _saw_ the actual loveliness which is always there, but which we so rarely perceive; and I knew that every man, woman, bird, and tree, every living thing before me, was extravagantly beautiful, and extravagantly important. And as I beheld, my heart melted out of me in a rapture of love and delight. A nurse was walking past; the wind caught a strand of her hair and blew it out in a momentary gleam of sunshine, and never in my life before had I seen how beautiful beyond all belief is a woman's hair. Nor had I ever guessed how marvelous it is for a human being to walk. As for the internes in their white suits, I had never realized before the whiteness of white linen; but much more than that, I had never so much as dreamed of the beauty of young manhood. A little sparrow chirped and flew to a near-by branch, and I honestly believe that only "the morning stars singing together, and the sons of God shouting for joy" can in the least express the ecstasy of a bird's flight. I cannot express it, but I have seen it. Once out of all the gray days of my life I have looked into the heart of reality; I have witnessed the truth; I have seen life as it really is--ravishingly, ecstatically, madly beautiful, and filled to overflowing with a wild joy, and a value unspeakable. For those glorified moments I was in love with every living thing before me--the trees in the wind, the little birds flying, the nurses, the internes, the people who came and went. There was nothing that was alive that was not a miracle. Just to be alive was in itself a miracle. My very soul flowed out of me in a great joy.[1] [Footnote 1: "Twenty Minutes of Reality," _The Atlantic Monthly_, vol. 117, p. 592.] The mystic experience is important in the study of religion because it has so frequently given those who have had it a very real feeling of "cosmic consciousness." The individual feels "for one luminously transparent conscious moment," at one with the universe; he has a realization at once rapturous and tranquil of the passionate and wonderful significance of things. He has moved "from the chill periphery to the radiant core." All the discrepancies which bestrew ordinary life are absent. All the negations of disappointment, all conflicts of desire disappear. The mystic lives perfection at first hand: "The One remains, the many change and pass, Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly, Life, like a dome of many colored glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity." This sense of splendid unity in which all the divisive and corroding elements of selfhood are obliterated has "to those who have been there" no refutation. "It is," writes William James, "an open question whether mystic states may not be superior points of view, windows through which the mind looks out on a more extensive and inclusive world." Whatever be the logical validity of the intense mystical insight, of his singular gift for a vivid and intimate union with eternity which has been known by so many mystics, the fruits of this insight are undeniable. During such a vision the world is perfect. There is no fever or confusion, but rapture and rest. And to some degree, at a religious service, a momentous crisis, joy at deliverance or resignation at calamity, during beatific interludes of friendship or of love, men have felt a clear enveloping oneness with divinity. Such states of intense religious experience, however, are as transient as they are ineffable. Though they recur, they are not continuous, and something more than occasional vivid unions with the divine enter into the constant perfection with which the world, as it appears to the religious man, is endowed. He feels himself, in the first place, to be part of a world scheme in which ultimate perfection is secured. It has already been pointed out that any individual human life is characterized by negation, conflict, and disappointment. Our lives seem largely to be at the mercy of circumstance. Our inheritance is fixed for us without our connivance in the matter; accident determines in which social environment we happen to be born. And these two facts are the chief determinants of our careers. Even when successful we realize either the emptiness of the prize we had desired, or the distance we are in reality from the goal we had set ourselves. Generalizing thus from his own experience, the individual notes the similar disheartening discrepancies throughout human life. He sees the good suffer, and the wicked prosper; the innocent die, and the guilty escape. Disease is no respecter of persons, and death comes to the just and the unjust alike. Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power? Their seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them. Their bull gendereth and faileth not; their cow calveth and casteth not her calf. They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance. They take the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ. They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave. Therefore they say unto God; depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty that we should serve him? And what profit should we have if we pray unto him?[1] [Footnote 1: Job, chap. XXI.] In contrast, in the religious experience man feels himself to be a part of a world scheme in which justice and righteousness are assured by an incontestable and invulnerable power; "God's in his Heaven; all's right with the world." Despite the grounds he has for doubt, Job robustly avers: "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." Calamities are but temporary; God will bring all things to a beautiful fruition. Or a man may feel that the evils he or others experience here are not real evils, that, seen _sub specie oeternitatis_, they would cease to be regarded as such. He may feel that God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform, that "somehow good may come of ill." He may feel, as does the Christian believer, that all the evils and pains unjustly experienced in this world will be adjusted in the next. Whatever be my privations from earthly good, "in my Father's house are many mansions." Immortality is, indeed, the religious man's faith in a second chance. The surety of a world to come, in which the blessed shall live in eternal bliss, is a compensation and a redress for the ills and frustrations of life in this world. Whatever be the seeming ills or injustices of life, there is eventual retribution, both to the just and the unjust. Once more to quote Emerson: And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and the reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener, is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighbourhoods of men.[1] [Footnote 1: Emerson: _Essay on Compensation_.] On a larger scale, from the cosmic rather than from the personal point of view, an individual, gifted with a large and charitable interest in the future of mankind, is secured and sustained by the feeling that he is a part of that procession headed to the "one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves." The lugubrious picture of an utterly meaningless world, blind, purposeless, and heartless, which materialistic science reveals, is sufficient to wreck the equanimity of a sensitive and thoughtful mind. That is the sting of it, that in the vast drifting of the cosmic weather, though many a jewelled shore appears, and many an enchanted cloud-bank floats away, long lingering ere it be dissolved--even as our world now lingers for our joy--yet when these transient products are gone, nothing, absolutely _nothing_ remains. Dead and gone are they, gone utterly from the very sphere and room of being. Without an echo, without a memory; without an influence on aught that may come after, to make it care for similar ideals. This utter wreck and tragedy is of the essence of scientific materialism, as at present understood.[1] [Footnote 1: James: _Pragmatism_, p. 105.] A belief that a divine power governs the universe, that all these miscellaneous and inexplicable happenings will be gathered up into a smooth and ultimate perfection, gives faith, comfort, and solace. We are on the side of the angels, or rather the angels are on our side. Human passion, purpose, and endeavor are not wasted. They are small but not altogether negligible contributions to eventual cosmic good. And good is eventual. Perfection may be long delayed, but God's presence assures it. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." A world with a God in it to say the last word may indeed burn up or freeze, but we then think of Him as still mindful of the old ideals, and sure to bring them elsewhere to fruition; so that where He is, tragedy is only provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolution not the absolutely final things.[2] [Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 106.] Amid tragic errors and pitiful disillusions, men have yearned for "a benediction perfect and complete where they might cease to suffer and desire." This perfection religion has, as we have seen, accorded them in various ways. Some have found it in the immediate vision, the ecstatic union with the divine that, in intense degree, is peculiarly the mystic's. Some have found it in the assured belief that evil is itself an illusion, and, if rightly conceived, a beautiful dark shadow to set off by contrast the high lights of a divinely ordered cosmos, a minor note giving lyric and lovely poignancy to the celestial music. Some have rested their faith in a perfect world not here, but hereafter, "where the blessed would enter eternal bliss with God their master." Thus man has in religion found the fulfillment of his ideals, which always outrun the actualities amid which he lives. In the religious experience, in all of its forms throughout the ages, man has had the experience of perfection at first hand, in the immediate and rich intensity of the mystic ecstasy, in the serene faith of a lifelong intuition or of a reasoned belief in the ultimate divinely assured rightness of things. Besides experiencing perfection, man has, in the sense of security and trust afforded by the religious experience, found release from the fret, the fever, the compulsion, and constriction under which so much of life must be lived. Whatever happens, the truly devout man has no fears or qualms. He has attained equanimity; the Lord is his shepherd; he shall not want. There is a serenity experienced by the genuinely faithful that the faithless may well envy. God is the believer's eternal watcher; a wise and merciful Providence, his infinite guarantee. Whoever not only says but feels, "God's will be done" is mailed against every weakness; and the whole historic array of martyrs, missionaries and religious reformers is there to prove the tranquil-mindedness, under naturally agitating or distressing circumstances, which self-surrender brings.[1] [Footnote 1: James; _Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 285.] But peace is attained not only through faith in the fulfillment of desire, but in a marked lessening in the tension of desire itself, in a large and spacious freedom attained through release from the confinement of self. We saw in the chapter on the Consciousness of Self how much exertion and energy may be devoted to the enhancement of Self through fame, achievement, social distinction, power, or possession. We saw how, in the frustration of self, the germ of great tragedy lay. From the tragedy and bitterness of such frustration men have often been reassured by a genuine conversion to the religious life. Through the negation of self rather than through its fulfillment men have found solace and rest. And this negation, when it takes religious form, has consisted in a rapturous submission to the will of God. "Outside, the world is wild and passionate. Man's weary laughter and his sick despair Entreat at their impenetrable gate, They heed no voices in their dream of prayer. "Calm, sad, secure, with faces worn and mild, Surely their choice of vigil is the best. Yea! for our roses fade, the world is wild; But there beside the altar there is rest."[1] [Footnote 1: Ernest Dawson: _Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration._] EXPERIENCES WHICH FREQUENTLY FIND RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION. The religious experience, as pointed out in the beginning of this discussion, has its roots in the same impulses which cause men to love and to hate, to be jubilant and sorrowful, exalted and depressed. All these human experiences sometimes take a religious form, that is, their expressions have some reference to the supernatural and the divine. We find, in surveying the history of religion, that certain experiences more than others tend to find religious expression. We shall examine a few of the chief of these. NEED AND IMPOTENCE. An awed, almost frightened sense of dependence overcomes even the most robust and healthy-minded man when he sees the forces of Nature suddenly unloosed on a magnificent scale. A terrific peal of thunder, an earthquake or a cyclone will send thrills of terror through the normally calm and self-sufficient. Even apart from such vivid and terrifying examples of the range and scale of non-human power, there comes to the reflective a sense of the frailty of human life, of the utter dependability of all human purposes and plans on conditions beyond human control. In our most fundamental industry, agriculture, an untimely frost can undo the work of the most ingenious industry and thrift. A tornado or a snowstorm can disorganize the cunning and subtle, swift mechanisms of communication which men have invented. In the field of humanly built-up relations, again, a fortune or a friendship may depend on some chance meeting; a man's profession and ideals are fixed by a single fortuitous conversation, by a chance encouragement, opportunity or frustration. There is thus a psychological though perhaps not literal truth in the figure of Fate, or in the metaphor that speaks of human destiny as lying on the knees of the gods. Action so often wanders from intent, so much in the best-laid plans is at the mercy of external circumstance! A creature whose being can be snuffed out in a moment, whose life is less than an instant in the magnificent perspective of eternity, comes not unnaturally to be aware of his own insignificance as compared with those vast forces, some auspicious and some terrible, which are patently afoot in the world. But as patent a fact as man's impotence is his desire. The individual realizes how powerless is a human being to fulfill, independently of external forces, those impulses with which these same inexplicable forces have launched him into the world. Thus do we feel even to-day when we have learned that the forces of Nature, obdurate to the ignorant, yet become flexible and fruitful under the knowing manipulation of science. We realize that despite our cunning and contrivance, our successes are, as it were, largely matters of grace; the changes we can make in Nature are as nothing to the slow, gradual processes by which Nature makes mountains into molehills, builds and destroys continents, develops man out of the lower animals, and, by varying climates and topographies, affects the destinies of nations. To primitive man the sense of impotence and need were not derived from any general reflections upon the insecurity of man's place in the cosmos, but rather from the sharp pressure of practical necessity. The helplessness of primitive man set down in the midst of a universe of which he knew not the laws, may perhaps be brought home to the mind of modern man, if we compare the universe to a vast workshop full of the most various and highly-complicated machinery working at full speed. The machinery, if properly handled, is capable of producing everything that the heart of primitive man can wish for, but also, if he sets hand to the wrong part of the machinery, is capable of whirling him off between its wheels, and crushing and killing him in its inexorable and ruthless movement. Further, primitive man cannot decline to submit himself to the perilous test: he must make his experiments or perish, and even so his survival is conditional on his selecting the right part of the machine to handle. Nor can he take his own time and study the dangerous mechanism long and carefully before setting his hand to it: his needs are pressing and his action must be immediate.[1] [Footnote 1: Jevons: _An Introduction to the History of Religion_, p. 17.] The very food of primitive man was to him as precarious as it was essential. His life was practically at the mercy of wind and rain and sun. His food and shelter were desperately lucky chances. Not having attained as yet to a conception of the impersonality of Nature, he regarded these forces which helped and hindered him as friendly and alien powers which it was in the imperative interests of his own welfare to placate and propitiate. It was in this urgent sense of helplessness and need that there were developed the two outstanding modes of communication with the supernatural, _sacrifice_ and _prayer_. Primitive man conceived his universe to be governed by essentially human powers; powers, of course, on a grand scale, but human none the less, with the same weaknesses, moods, and humors as human beings themselves. They could be flattered and cajoled; they could be bribed and paid; they could be moved to tenderness, generosity, and pity. "Holiness," says Socrates in one of Plato's dialogues, "is an art in which gods and men do business with each other, ... Sacrifice is giving to the gods, prayer is asking of them."[2] In Frazer's _Golden Bough_ one finds the remarkably diverse sacrificial rites by which men have sought to win the favor of the divine. Primitive man believed literally that the universe was governed by superhuman personal powers; he believed literally that these are human in their motives. He believed in consequence that sacrifices to the gods would help him to control the controlling powers of Nature for his own good, just as modern man believes that an application of the laws of electricity and mechanics will help him to control the natural world for his own purposes. The sacrifices of primitive man were immensely practical in character; they were made at the crucial moments and pivotal crises of life, at sowing and at harvest time, at the initiation of the young into the responsibilities of maturity, at times of pestilence, famine, or danger. The gods were given the choice part of a meal; the prize calf; in some cases, human sacrifices; the sacrifice, moreover, of the beautiful and best. The chief sacrificial rites of almost all primitive peoples are connected with food, the sustainer, and procreation or birth, the perpetuator, of life. [Footnote 2: See Plato's _Euthyphro_.] As Jane Harrison puts it: If man the individual is to live, he must have food; if his race is to persist, he must have children. To live and to cause to live, to eat food and beget children, these were the primary wants of man in the past, and they will be the primary wants of man in the future, so long as the world lasts. Other things may be added to enrich and beautify life, but unless these wants are first satisfied, humanity itself must cease to exist. These two things, therefore, were what men chiefly sought to procure by the performance of magical rites for the regulation of the seasons.... What he realizes first and foremost is that at certain times the animals, and still more the plants, which form his food, appear, at certain others they disappear. It is these times that become the central points, the focusses of his interest, and the dates of his religious festivals.[1] [Footnote 1: Jane Harrison: _Ancient Art and Ritual_, p. 31.] Sacrifice is only one way primitive man contrives of winning the favor of the gods toward the satisfaction of his desires. Another common method is prayer. In its crudest form prayer is a direct petition from the individual to divinity for the grant of a specific favor. The individual seeks a kindness from a supernatural power whose motives are human, and who may, therefore, be moved by human appeals; whose power is superhuman and can therefore fulfill requests. Prayer may become profoundly spiritualized, but in its primitive form it is, like sacrifice, a certain way of getting things done. They are both to primitive man largely what our science is to us. Both prayer and sacrifice arise in primitive man's need and helplessness and terror before mysterious supernatural powers, but they may rise, in the higher form of religion, to genuine nobility, from this crass commerce with divinity, this religion of bargaining and _quid pro quo_. Sacrifice may change from a desperate reluctant offering made to please a jealous god, to a thanksgiving and a jubilation, an overflowing of happiness, gratitude, and good-will. Greek writers of the fifth century B.C. have a way of speaking of an attitude toward religion, as though it were wholly a thing of joy and confidence, a friendly fellowship with the gods, whose service is but a high festival for man. In Homer, sacrifice is but, as it were, the signal for a banquet of abundant roast flesh and sweet wine; we hear nothing of fasting, cleansing, and atonement. This we might explain as part of the general splendid unreality of the Greek saga, but sober historians of the fifth century B.C. express the same spirit. Thucydides is by nature no reveller, yet religion is to him, in the main, a rest from toil. He makes Pericles say of the Athenians: Moreover we have provided for our spirit very many opportunities of recreation, by the celebration of games and sacrifices throughout the year.[1] [Footnote 1: Jane Harrison: _Prolegomena to Greek Religion_, p. 1.] Sacrifice may become spiritualized, as it is in Christianity, "instead of he-goats and she-goats, there are substituted offerings of the heart for all these vain oblations." The sacrificial heart has at all times been accounted germane to nobility. There is something akin to religion in the laying down of a life for a cause or a country or a friend, in surrendering one's self for others. It is this power and beauty of renunciation that is the spiritual value behind all the rituals of sacrifice that still persist, as in the sacraments of Christianity. It is the tragic necessity of self-negation that haloes, even in secular life, the sacrificial attitude: But there is in resignation a further good element. Even real goods when they are attainable ought not to be fretfully desired. To every man comes sooner or later the great renunciation. For the young there is nothing unattainable; a good thing desired with the whole force of a passionate will, and yet unattainable, is to them not credible. Yet by death, by illness, by poverty, or, by the voice of duty, we must learn, each one of us, that the world was not made for us, and that, however beautiful may be the things we crave, Fate may nevertheless forbid them. It is the part of courage, when misfortune comes, to bear without repining the ruin of our hopes, to turn away our thoughts from vain regrets. This degree of submission to power is not only just and right; it is the very gate of wisdom.[1] [Footnote 1: Bertrand Russell: _Philosophical Essays_, p. 65.] The spiritual meaning and value of sacrifice is thus seen to lie in self-surrender. The human being, born into a world where choices must be made, must make continual abnegation. And when the temporary good is surrendered in the maintenance of an ideal, sacrifice becomes genuinely spiritual in character. Prayer, also, becomes genuinely spiritual in its values when one ceases to believe in its practical efficacy and comes to think it shameful to traffic with the divine. Prayer beautifully illustrates a point previously noted, how speech oscillates between the expression of feeling and the conveyance of ideas. Beginning in primitive religion as a crude and cheap petition for favors, it becomes in more spiritual religious experience, a lyric cry of emotion, a tranquil and serene expression of the soul's desire. Prayer is, moreover, "religion in act." That deep sense of an awed relationship to divine power which was, in the beginning of this discussion, noted as constituting certainly one of the outstanding characteristics of the religious experience, finds its most adequate emotional expression in prayer. Religion is nothing [writes Auguste Sabatier] if it be not the vital act by which the entire mind seeks to save itself by clinging to the principle from which it draws life. This act is prayer, by which I understand no vain exercise of words, no mere repetition of certain sacred formulas, but the very movement itself of the soul, putting itself in a personal relation of contact with the mysterious power of which it feels the presence--it may be even before it has a name by which to call it. Wherever this interior prayer is lacking, there is no religion; wherever, on the other hand, this prayer rises and stirs the soul, even in the absence of forms or doctrines, we have religion.[1] [Footnote 1: A. Sabatier: _Esquisse d'une Philosophie de la Religion_ (ed. 1897), pp. 24-26.] In prayer, furthermore, we may hope to find not the fulfillment of our desires, but what our desires really are. We are released temporarily from tension of temporal and selfish longings. We hold a tranquil and reverential speech with a power not ourselves, and in communion with the infinite purge ourselves of the dross of immediate personal needs. In such a peaceful interlude we may find at once clarity and rest. Prayer, at its highest, might be defined as audible meditation, controlled by the sense of the divinity of the power we are addressing. So that the truly spiritual man prays not for the fulfillment of his own accidental longings, but pleads rather: "Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, 0 Lord, my strength and my redeemer." FEAR AND AWE. Man's attitude toward the divine was noted to have arisen partly in his feeling of dependence on personal forces incomparably superior to himself, and in his urgent need for winning their favor. In primitive man this sense of dependence was certainly bound up with a feeling of fear. It must be borne in mind that uncivilized peoples had pathetically little understanding or control of the forces of Nature. In consequence on being afflicted with some sudden catastrophe of famine or disease, on experiencing a sudden revelation in storm, wind, or volcanic eruption, of the terrible magnificence of elemental forces, he must have been struck with dread. He was living in a world that appeared to him much less ordered and regular than ours appears to us. His prayers and sacrifices were not always friendly and confidential intercourse with the gods; they were as often ways of averting the evils of malicious and terrifying demons. The enemies of religion have been fond of pointing out how much of it has been a quaking fear of the supernatural. It is in this spirit that Lucretius's bitter attack is conceived. When the life of man lay foul to see and grovelling upon the earth, crushed by the weight of religion, which showed her face from the realms of heaven, lowering upon mortals with dreadful mien, 't was a man of Greece who dared first to raise his mortal eyes to meet her, and first to stand forth to meet her; him neither the stories of the gods nor thunderbolts checked, nor the sky with its revengeful roar, but all the more spurred the eager daring of his mind to yearn to be the first to burst through the close-set bolts upon the doors of nature.[1] [Footnote 1: Lucretius: _De Rerum Natura_, book I; lines 28-38.] Primitive man feared the gods as much as he needed them. Jane Harrison points out, for example, that as great a part of Greek religion was given over to the exorcising of the evil and jealous spirits of the underworld, as in friendly communion with the beautiful and gracious Olympians. But what appears in the ignorant and harassed savage as fear may be transformed in civilized man into awe. Long after man's crouching physical terror of the divine has passed away, he may still live awed by the ultimate power that orders the universe. He may, "at twilight, or in a mountain gorge," at a cañon or waterfall, experience an involuntary thrill and breathlessness, a deepened sense of the divinity which so orders these things. He may have the same feeling at the crises of life, at birth, disease, and death. He may sense on occasion that overwhelming and infinite power of which Job becomes aware, as he listens to the voice out of the whirlwind: Who hath divided a water course for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of thunder? To cause it to rain on the earth, where no man is; on the wilderness, wherein there is no man; To satisfy the desolate and waste ground; and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth? ... Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? ... Knowest thou the ordinances of Heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? ... Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go and say unto thee, Here we are? Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? Or who hath given understanding to the heart? Where man experiences such awe, he will become reverential, and, if articulate, will express his reverence in prayer, again not the prayer of practical requests for favors from God, but a hushed meditation upon the assured eternity in which the precarious and finite lives of men are set. REGRET, REMORSE--REPENTANCE AND PENANCE. Regret is a sufficiently common human experience. There are for most men wistful backward glances in which they realize what might have been, what might have been done, what might have been accomplished. For many this never rises above pique and bitterness over personal failure, a chagrin, as it were, over having made the wrong move. But to some regret may take on a deeply spiritual quality. Instead of regretting merely the successes which he hoped, as it proved vainly, to attain, a man may become passionately aware of his own moral and spiritual shortcomings. This sense of dereliction and delinquency may take extreme forms. James quotes a reminiscence of Father Gratry, a Catholic philosopher: ... All day long without respite I suffered an incurable and intolerable desolation, verging on despair. I thought myself, in fact, rejected by God, lost, damned! I felt something like the suffering of hell. Before that I had never even thought of hell.... Now, and all at once, I suffered in a measure what is suffered there.[1] [Footnote 1: Quoted by James in his _Varieties_, p. 146.] Normal individuals may come to a deep consciousness of having left undone the things they ought to have done, of having done the things they ought not to have done. This realization may be at once a "consciousness of sin," and a desire for a new life. If it is the consciousness of sin which becomes predominant, then a desolate and tormenting remorse engulfs the individual. But the consciousness of sin for the religious becomes simply a prelude to entrance upon a better life. The awareness of past sins is combined in the religious, especially in devout Christians, with faith in God's mercy, and in his welcoming of the penitent sinner: The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Have mercy upon me, O God; according to thy loving kindness, blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Again the New Testament call to repentance is symbolic of the experience of millions of religious people. "Repent ye, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand." There is a terrible intensity and immediate imperativeness about this call. But to all there comes at one time or another an urgent sense of spiritual shortcoming and the desire to lead a better life. The lamenting of sins becomes the least part; what is important is the immense new impetus toward a better life. The records of religious conversion are full of instances where men by this sudden penitential revulsion from their past life and a startled realization of new spiritual possibilities, have broken away permanently from lifelong habitual vices. James cites a case of an exceedingly belligerent and pugilistic collier named Richard Weaver, who was by a sudden conversion to religion not only made averse to fighting, but persistently meek and gentle under provocation. Similar cases, genuine and well documented, fill the archives of religious psychology. The religious man in repenting knows that God will, if his repentance is sincere, forgive him, and sustain and support him in his new life. I say unto you that likewise Joy shall be in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance. I say unto you there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.[1] [Footnote 1: Luke, 15: 7,10.] While regret over sin, alienation from a past life of evil, and a persistent dedication to a purified and righteous existence constitute, spiritually, the phenomena of repentance and conversion, repentance has had in religion certain fixed outward forms. If sin had been committed, merely inward spiritual realization was not sufficient, penance must be done. Penance in the early days of the Christian Church was public. Later penance became a private matter (public penance was suppressed by an ordinance of Pope Leo I in 461 A.D.). Private penance took various familiar forms, such as scourgings, fastings on bread and water, reciting a given number of psalms, prayers, and the like. Later penalties could be redeemed by alms. A penitent would be excused from the prescribed works of penance at the cost, _e. g._, of equipping a soldier for the crusade, of building a bridge or road. Gradually in the history of the Christian religion, penances have been lightened. In the Protestant Church, with the enunciation of the principle of justification through faith alone there could be no sacrament of penance. One form in which the penitential mood receives expression is in confession in which the penitent acknowledges his sins. There is no space here to trace the development of this practice in religion. It must suffice to point out that psychologically it is a cleansing or purgation. It clears the moral atmosphere. It is a relief to the tormented and remorseful soul to say "Peccavi," and to confide either directly or indirectly to the divine the burden of his sins. It is for many people the necessary pre-condition, as it is in the Catholic Church, to penitence and the actual performance of penance. The psychological value of confession varies with individual temperaments; for many it is high. There are few so self-contained and self-sufficient that they do not seek to express their emotions to others. It is not surprising that the gregarious human creature should find confession a restorative and a solace. Human beings are not only natively responsive to the emotions of others, but by nature tend to express their own emotions and to be gratified by a sympathetic response. Emotions of any sort, joyous or sorrowful, find some articulation. The oppressive consciousness of sin particularly must find an outlet in expression. And the expression of sin must somewhere be received. The wrong done rankles heavily in the private bosom. The crucified soul demands a sympathetic spirit to receive its painful and personal revelation. He that would confess his sins requires a listener of a large and understanding heart. Just such a merciful, forgiving, and understanding friend is the God whom Christianity pictures. God waits with infinite patience for the confessions and the surrender of the contrite heart. The normal human desire to rid one's self of a tormenting secret, to "exteriorize one's rottenness," finds satisfaction on an exalted plane in confession to God, or to his appointed ministers. JOY AND ENTHUSIASM--FESTIVALS AND THANKSGIVINGS. So far our account has been confined to experiences in which man felt the need or fear of the divine, because of his own desires, weaknesses, or sins. But humans find religious expression for more joyous emotions. Even primitive man lives not always in terror or in tribulation. There are occasions, such as plentiful harvests, successful hunting, the birth of children, which stir him to expressions of enthusiastic appreciation and gratitude toward the divine. Some of the so-called Dionysiac festivals in ancient Greece are examples of the enthusiasm, joy, and abounding vitality to which religion has, among so many other human experiences, given expression. In the religion of the Old Testament, again, we find that the Psalmist is time and again filled with rejoicing: O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, and his mercy endureth forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy. And he gathered them out of the lands from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty their soul fainted in them. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses. And he led them forth by the right way that they might go to a city of habitation. O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men. For he satisfieth the longing soul and filleth the hungry heart with goodness. Nor need this rejoicing be always an explicit thanksgiving for favors received. It may be, as were the dithyrambic festivals of Greece, the riotous overflow of enthusiasm, a joyous, sympathetic exuberance with the vital processes of Nature. Dionysos stood for fertility, life, gladness, all the positive, passionate, and jubilant aspects of Nature. And the well-known satyr choruses, the wine and dance and song of the Greek spring festivals, are classic and beautiful illustrations of the religion of enthusiasm. Euripides gives voice to this spirit in the song of the Mænads in the _Bacchoe_: "Will they ever come to me, ever again, The long, long dances, On through the dark till the dim stars wane? Shall I feel the dew on my throat and the stream Of wind in my hair? Shall our white feet gleam In the dim expanses? O feet of a fawn to the greenward fled, Alone in the grass and the loveliness?"[1] [Footnote 1: Euripides: _Bacchoe_ (Gilbert Murray translation).] Every religion has its festival as well as its fast days. Sacrifices come to be held less as offerings to jealous gods than as sacrificial feasts, in which the worshipers themselves partake, as opportunities for communal rejoicings and for friendly fellowship with divinity. At sacrificial feasts it is as if the gods themselves were at table. Dance and song are a regular accompaniment of primitive religion. Students of Greek drama, such as Jane Harrison and Gilbert Murray, trace Greek tragedy back to the choruses and dances of early Dionysiac festivals. Throughout the history of religion not only have man's sorrow and need been expressed, but also his sympathetic gladness with vitality, fertility, and growth, his rejoicings over the fruitions and glad eventualities of experience. Man has felt the decay and evanescence of human goods. He has felt also the exuberance of natural processes, the triumph of life over death when a child is born, the renewal of life by food, the recurrence of growth and fertility in the processes of the seasons, of sowing and of harvest. And for all these enrichments and enlargements of life, he has rejoiced, and found rituals to express his rejoicings. He has had the impulse and the energy to sing unto the Lord a new song. THEOLOGY. Thus far we have discussed the religious experience _as_ an experience, as normal, natural, and inevitable as are love and hate, melancholy and exaltation, joy and sorrow. Like these latter, the religious experience is subjected to rationalization. Like all other emotions, that of religion finds for itself a logic and a justification. But so profoundly influential is "cosmic emotion" on men's lives that when it is reasoned upon, the results are nothing less than an attitude taken toward the whole of reality. Theology arises as a world view formulated in accordance with a reasoned interpretation of the religious experience. It must be noted again that the experience is primary. If men had not first had the experience of religion, they would not have reflected about it. Every contact of the individual with the world to some degree arouses emotion and provokes thought. It is not different with religion. That theologies should differ and conflict is not surprising. No two individuals, no two groups or ages have precisely the same experiences of the world, and their reasonings upon their religious feelings are bound to differ, overlap, and at times to conflict. The variety of world views are testimony to the genuineness of the religious experience as it fulfills the different needs, emotions, and desires of different ages, groups, and generations of men. THE DESCRIPTION OF THE DIVINE. Reasonings upon religion exhibit, like the religious emotions, certain recurrent features. There is, in the first place, a certain universality in the description of the objects of veneration. These are nearly always regarded as self-sufficient in contrast with man. Man seeks, strives, desires, has partial triumphs and pitiful failures, is always in travail after some ideal. His life is incomplete; at best it is a high aspiration; it is never really fulfilled. But divinity has nearly always been regarded as seeking nothing, asking nothing, needing nothing. This is what infinity in practical terms means. And, with certain exceptions presently to be noted, the divine power has always been regarded as infinite. Thus Aristotle says that in man's best moments, when he lives in reflection a life of self-sufficiency, he lives just such a life as God lives continually. And Plato describes the philosopher as a man who because he can live, at least temporarily, amid eternal, changeless beauty and truth, "lives in recollection among those things among which God always abides, and in beholding which God is what he is." Lucretius also gives a simple picture of the even calmness and still, even security of the life of the gods as he and all the Epicureans conceived it. Tennyson paraphrases the picture: "...The Gods, who haunt The lucid interspace of world and world, Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind, Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar Their sacred everlasting calm!"[1] [Footnote 1: Tennyson: _Lucretius_.] Divinity has, again, quite universally been recognized as exerting over the individual a compelling power, and of insistently arousing his veneration. The psychological origins of this phenomenon have already been noted. Men fear, need, feel themselves dependent on the gods. But further than this many religious thinkers hold that man cannot even be aware of the divine power without wishing to adjust himself harmoniously to it. And they hold, as did Immanuel Kant, that man is born with an awareness of the divine. The attributes of divinity have been differently assigned at different times in the history of religion. In general two qualities have been regarded as characteristic: power and goodness. In primitive belief, the first received the predominant emphasis; the higher religions have emphasized the second. For savage man, as we have seen, the divine personages were conceived in effect as human beings with superhuman powers. They were feared and flattered, needed and praised. Adjustment to them was a practical, imperative necessity. They combined infinite capacity with human and finite caprice. The attention they received from humans was distinctly utilitarian in character. These forces of wind and sun and rain might be brutal or benignant. Primitive man established, therefore, a system of magic, sacrifice, and prayer, whereby he might minimize the precariousness of existence, and keep the gods on his side. In the more spiritualistic monotheistic religions, while the power of God has been insistently reiterated, there has been an increasing emphasis upon the divine goodness. The Psalmist is continually referring to both: Praise ye the Lord. O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: for his mercy endureth forever. Who can utter the mighty acts of the Lord? . . . . . Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men! For he hath broken the gates of brass, and cut the bars of iron in sunder. Wrath and terror gradually give place to mercy and benevolence as the primary attributes of the divine. The power of God, in Christianity, for example, is still regarded as unlimited, but it is completely expended in the loving salvation of mankind. Where the divinity has ceased to be a willful power and has become instead the God of mercy and loving kindness, it is no longer necessary to placate him by material sacrifice, to win his favor by trivial earthly gifts. Divine favor is sought rather by aspiration after and the practice of a better life. The mighty but capricious deity gives place to the God of unfailing charity and love. One earns God's mercies by walking in the ways of the Lord. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.... Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." In both Christianity and Judaism, God's grace and mercies go always to the pure in heart, and the righteous in spirit. "What doth the Lord require of thee," proclaims Micah, "but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?" THE DIVINE AS THE HUMAN IDEAL. There has been in certain latter-day philosophies, a tendency to interpret the divine as the objectification of human ideals. That is, according to this theory, men have found in their imagined divinities the fulfillment of ideals that they could never have realized on earth. Men, says this theory, long to be immortal, so they imagine gods who are. Finite man has infinite desires. In God is infinite fulfillment through eternity. No men are all good; some desire to be. Such fulfillment they find in the divine. Our conception of God is an index of our own ideals. When men were savages, their divinity was a jealous monster. In the refinement and spiritualization of the human imagination, divinity becomes all-beautiful and all-benevolent as well as the wielder of infinite power. John Stuart Mill gives possibly the clearest expression to this attitude which is, if not in the strictest sense religious, at least deeply spiritual: Religion and poetry address themselves, at least in one of their aspects, to the same part of the human constitution; they both supply the same want, that of ideal conceptions grander and more beautiful than we see realized in the prose of human life. Religion, as distinguished from poetry, is the product of the craving to know whether these imaginative conceptions have realities, answering to them in some other world than ours. The mind, in this state, eagerly catches at any rumors respecting other worlds, especially when delivered by persons whom it deems wiser than itself. To the poetry of the supernatural, comes to be thus added a positive belief and expectation, which unpoetical minds can share with the poetical. Belief in a God or gods, and in a life after death, becomes the canvas which every mind, according to its capacity, covers with such ideal pictures as it can either invent or copy. In that other life each hopes to find the good which he has failed to find on earth, or the better which is suggested to him by the good which on earth he has partially seen and known. More especially this belief supplies the finer minds with material for conceptions of beings more awful than they _can_ have known on earth, and more excellent than they probably _have_ known.[1] [Footnote 1: Mill: _Three Essays on Religion_ (Henry Holt & Co.), pp. 103-04.] In his religion, Mill maintains, man thus finds the fulfillment of unfulfilled desire. Religion is thus conceived as an imaginative enterprise of a very high and satisfying kind. It peoples the world with perfections, not true perhaps to actual experience, but true to man's highest aspirations. It gives man companionship with divinity at least in imagination. It enables him to live, at least spiritually, in such a universe as his highest hopes and desires would have him live in, in fact. It must be pointed out, however, that the devoutly religious do not regard their God as a beautiful fiction, but as a dear reality whom they can serenely trust and love, and whose existence is the certain faith by which they live. THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, THEOLOGY, AND SCIENCE. It has already been pointed out that theology is the reasoned formulation of the religious experience which comes to men with varying degrees of intensity, or the revelation by which some man, a Moses or a Mohammed, has been inspired. Such a formulation has a dual importance. For the individual it brings clarity, order, and stability into his religious experience. For the group, it makes possible the social transmission of religious conceptions and ideals. Reason in a man's religion, as in any other experience, introduces stability, consistency, and order. It makes distinctions; it resolves doubts, confusions, and uncertainties. It is true that there have been in religion, as in politics and morals, rebels against reason. There have been mystics who preferred their warm ecstatic visions to the cold formulations and abstractions of theology. But there have been, on the other hand, those gifted or handicapped, according to one's point of view, by an insistence on reason as well as rapture in their religion. These have not been satisfied with an intuition of God. They have wished to know God, as the highest possible object of knowledge. Thus in the Middle Ages philosophy and science were regarded as the Handmaids of Theology. All was dedicated to, as nothing could be more important than, a knowledge of God. So we have, in contrast with ecstatic visions of God, the plodding analysis of the scholastics, the subtle and clean-cut logic by which such men as Saint Anselm sought to give form, clarity, and ultimacy to their sense of the reality of God. There has possibly nowhere in the history of thought been subtler and more thoroughgoing analysis than some of the mediæval schoolmen lavished upon the clarification and demonstration of the concept of God. The necessity for reasoning upon one's sense of the reality of the divine, as it was felt by many mediæval schoolmen, is thus stated by one historian: Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury ... is the true type of the schoolman; firmly convinced of the truth of the dogmas and yet possessed of a strong philosophical impulse, he seeks to prove to reason what has to be accepted on authority. He bravely includes in his attempt to rationalize the faith not only such general propositions as the existence of God, but the entire church scheme of salvation, the Trinity, and Incarnation, and the Redemption of man. We must believe the Catholic doctrine--that is beyond cavil--but we should also try to understand what we believe, understand _why_ it is true.[1] [Footnote 1: Thilly: _History of Philosophy_, p. 169.] But theology has public as well as purely private importance. It must not be forgotten that religion is a social habit as well as a personal activity. From primitive life down to our own day, religion has been intimately associated with the other social activities of a people, and has indeed been one of the chief institutions of moral and social control. Ethical standards have been until very recent times in the history of Christian Europe almost exclusively derived from religion. Where the religious experience is of such crucial importance, it has been necessary to give it a fixed form and content which might be used to initiate the young and the outsider. Theology, though essentially a product of reflection upon the religious experience itself, tends to incorporate extra-religious material into its system. In its demonstration of the divine order and of man's relationship to the divine, it incorporates both science and history. Science becomes for it the manifestation of the divine arrangements of the universe; history becomes a revelation of the divine purpose and its realization. In primitive belief science and religion are practically indistinguishable from each other. The way of the gods is the way of the universe. The attribution of personal motives to the gods was primitive man's literal and serious way of conceiving the government of the cosmos. He believed himself actually to be living in a world governed by living and personal powers, an animistic world. The myths which describe the birth and life of the gods, the creation of man, the bestowing of the gift of fire are conceived as the literal and natural history of creation. Christianity affords a striking example of how theology incorporates science and natural history into its world view. For the early Christian Fathers, natural science was interesting and useful in so far as it illustrated, which it did, the ways of God upon earth. "The sole interest [of the Fathers] in natural fact," writes Henry Osborn Taylor, "lay in its confirmatory evidence of Scriptural truth. They were constantly impelled to understand facts in conformity with their understanding of Scripture, and to accept or deny accordingly. Thus Augustine denies the existence of Antipodes, men on the opposite side of the earth, who walk with their feet opposite to our own. That did not harmonize with his general conception of spiritual cosmogony."[1] [Footnote 1: H. O. Taylor: _The Medioeval Mind_, vol. I, pp. 75-76.] All the natural science current, as represented, for example, in the compilation called the _Physailogus_, is used as symbolical of the ways of the Lord to man. The Pelican is distinguished by its love for its young. As these begin to grow they strike at their parents' faces, and the parents strike back and kill them. Then the parents take pity, and on the third day the mother comes and opens her side and lets the blood flow on the dead young ones, and they become alive again. Thus God cast off mankind after the Fall, and delivered them over to death; but he took pity on us, as a mother, for by the Crucifixion He awoke us with His blood to eternal life.[2] [Footnote 2: Thilly: _loc. cit._, p. 76.] History is treated in the same way. Nearly all the histories written by the early Christian Fathers were written in deliberate advocacy of the Faith. It was to silence the heresies of those who attributed to the Church the entrance of Alaric into Rome that Augustine wrote his famous _City of God_. The whole of history is a revelation of the divine purpose which is eventually to be fulfilled. Orosius, again, a disciple of Augustine, wrote his _Seven Books of Histories against the Pagans_ to prove the abundance of calamities which had afflicted mankind before the birth of Christ. He gathers together all the evidence he can to exhibit at once the patience and the power of God. "Straitened and anxious minds" might not be able to see the purpose always, but all was ordained for one end. Thus he writes at the beginning of his seventh book: The human race from the beginning was so created and appointed that living under religion with peace without labor, by the fruit of obedience it might merit eternity; but it abused the Creator's goodness, turned liberty into wilful license, and through disdain fell into forgetfulness; now the patience of God is just and doubly just, operating that this disdain might not wholly ruin those whom He wished to spare ... and also so that He might always hold out guidance although to an ignorant creature, to whom if penitent He would mercifully restore the means to grace.[1] [Footnote 1: Orosius: _Seven Books of Histories against the Pagans_, II, 3.] History thus comes to reveal the fulfillment of the divine purpose, as science reveals the divine arrangements of the universe. It has already been noted that theology, certainly Christian theology, maintains that God is all-good. In consequence the natural world which scientific inquiry reveals must be all-good in its operations and its fruits. The history of the universe must be a steady and unfaltering fulfillment of the divine, of the beneficent eternal purpose. The ways of the Almighty, so theology tells us, are just ways, and the universe in which we live, so theology tells us, is a revelation of that justice. The eighteenth century "natural theologians" spent much energy in demonstrating how perfectly adapted to his needs are man's natural environment and his organic structure. They pointed to the eye with its delicate membranes so subtly adapted to the function of sight. All Nature was a continuous and magnificent revelation of God's designs, which were good. Christian Wolff, for example, a rationalistic theologian of the late eighteenth century, writes: God has created the sun to keep the changeable conditions on the earth in such an order that living creatures, men and beasts, may inhabit its surface.... The sun makes daylight not only on our earth, but also on the other planets; and daylight is of the utmost utility to us; for by its means we can commodiously carry on those occupations which in the night-time would either be quite impossible, or at any rate impossible without our going to the expense of artificial light.[2] [Footnote 2: Christian Wolff: _Vernünftige Gedanken von den Absichten der natürlichen Dinge_, 1782, pp. 74 ff.; quoted by James in _Varieties of Religious Experience_, p.492.] MECHANISTIC SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY. With the rise of mechanistic science there has come about a sharp collision between the conception of the goodness of the universe as theology declares it, and of its blindnesses and indifference as science seems to unfold it to us. Contrast the picture of a cosmos which was deliberately and considerately made by God to serve every exigency of man's welfare, with the picture earlier quoted from Bertrand Russell as the natural scientist gives it to us. It is no longer easy to say the Heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. As far as we can see natural processes go on without the slightest reference to the welfare of man, who is but an accidental product of their indifferent forces. The universe is a system of blind regularities. "Omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way." Nature is thoroughly impersonal, and indeed, were it to be judged by personal or human standards, it could with more accuracy be maintained that it is evil than that it is good. As Mill puts it in a famous passage: In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are Nature's everyday performances. Killing, the most criminal act recognized by human laws, Nature does once to every being that lives, and in a large proportion of cases, after protracted tortures such as only the greatest monsters whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on their living fellow-creatures.... Nature impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom of her exhalations.... A single hurricane destroys the hopes of a season; a flight of locusts or an inundation desolates a district; a trifling chemical change in an edible root starves a million of people.[1] [Footnote 1: Mill: _Three Essays on Religion_ (Holt), pp. 28-30.] The theology which insists on the patent and ubiquitous evidences of God's beneficent purpose, attempts, as already pointed out, to demonstrate that purpose in the history of mankind. Orthodox Christian doctrine, for example, insists that man has been especially created by God, as were the other animals each after their kind, and that man's ultimate and unique destiny is salvation through God's grace. Man was created in perfection in the Garden of Eden, sinned, and will, through God's mercy, find eventual redemption. Following the publication of Darwin's _Origin of Species_, in 1859, the rapid spread of evolutionary doctrine aroused violent opposition on the part of Christian thinkers and devout Christians generally. In the first place it conflicted sharply with the orthodox version of special creation. Secondly, it made more difficult the insistence on marks of design or purpose in Nature. These two points will be clearer after a brief consideration of the nature of Darwinian evolution, with whose thoroughgoing mechanical principles nineteenth-century theology came most bitterly in conflict. The theory explains the origins of species, somewhat as follows: The variety of species now current developed out of simpler forms of animal life, from which they are lineally descended. Their present forms and structures are modifications from the common forms possessed by their remote ancestors. These modifications are, in the stricter forms of Darwinian evolution, explained in mechanical terms by the theory of the "survival of the fittest." That is, those animals with variations adapted to their environment survive; those without, perish. In consequence when any individual in a species happens to be born with a variation specially adapted to its environment, in the sharp "struggle for existence" that characterizes animal life in a state of nature, it alone will be able to survive and reproduce its kind. All the variations of species current are, therefore, examples of this continuous process of descent with adaptive modifications. The origin of the human species came about through just such a variation or mutation from one of the higher mammals (we have reason to believe, a species similar to that of the anthrapoid ape). Man's ancestry, it seems, from the scientific evidence which has been marshaled, may be traced back biologically, in an almost unbroken chain to unicellular animals.[1] [Footnote 1: For detailed discussion see Scott: _Theory of Evolution_.] This theory profoundly affected theological thinking. In the first place, the evolutionary account not only of the origin of man, but of the origin of all species, as a descent with modification from simpler-animal forms, conflicts with the account of special creation, certainly in the literal form of the Biblical story. Secondly, the arguments from design which had been drawn from the adaptation of organic life to environment were, if not disproved, at least rendered dubious. Although evolution did not account for the first appearance of life on earth, it did account for the processes of adaptation, and without invoking design or purpose. The eye, for example, as explained by the theory of evolution, came to its present perfection through a series of fortunate and cumulative variations through successive generations. Even in its imperfect form, it was a variation with high "survival value." Even when it was no more than a pigmented spot peculiarly sensitive to light, so the theory holds, it was a variation that enabled a species to survive and perpetuate its kind. Those not possessing these fortunate variations were wiped out. The process of Nature, certainly, in the development of biological life thus appears to be no economical convergence of means upon an end. Nature has been recklessly prodigal. Millions more seeds of life are produced than ever come to fruition. And only animals perfectly adapted to their environment survive, while an incomparably greater number perish. Theology, when it incorporates science and sets itself up as a direct and factual description of the universe, thus comes sharply in rivalry with modern mechanistic science. The conflict is crucial with regard to the purpose which theology holds to be evident in the universe, and the lack of purpose, the purely blind regularity, which science seems to reveal. The mechanical laws by which natural processes take place exhibit a fixed and changeless regularity, in which man's good or ill counts absolutely nothing. The earth instead of being the center of the solar system, is a cosmic accident thrown out into space. Man instead of being a little lower than the angels is revealed by science as a little higher than the ape. There is no space in these pages to trace the various reconciliations that have been made between theology and science. It must be pointed out, however, that Christian theology has increasingly accepted modern mechanistic doctrines, including the doctrine of evolution. But it has attempted to show that, granting all the facts of physical science, the universe does still exhibit the divine purpose and its essential beneficence. The very order and symmetry of physical law have been taken as testimony of divine instigation. Mechanism was set in motion by God. In answer to this, it is pointed out by the non-theologian that then God's goodness cannot be maintained. Mechanical processes are indiscriminate in their distribution of goods and evils to the just and the unjust: All this Nature does with the most supercilious disregard both of mercy and of justice, emptying her shafts upon the best and noblest, indifferently with the meanest and worst; upon those who are engaged in the highest and worthiest enterprises, and often as the direct consequence of the noblest acts; and it might almost be imagined as a punishment for them. She mows down those on whose existence hangs the well-being of a whole people; perhaps the prospects of the human race for generations to come, with as little compunction as those whose death is a relief to themselves, or a blessing to those under their noxious influence.[1] [Footnote 1: Mill: _Three Essays on Religion_ (Holt), p. 29.] Modern theology sometimes grants the apparent reality of the evils which are current in a mechanistic world, but insists that they are making for goods which we with our finite understanding cannot comprehend. Were our intelligence infinite, as is God's, we should see how "somehow good will be the final goal of ill." Evolution has also been explained as God's method of accomplishing his ends. By some evolutionists, Driesch and Bergson for example, evolution itself, in its steady production of higher types, has been held to be too purposive in character to permit of a purely mechanical explanation. The process of evolution has itself thus come to be taken by some theologians as a clear manifestation of God's beneficent power at work in the universe. But theology, in the more spiritualistic religions, has always insisted on the primacy of God's goodness. There has been, therefore, in certain theological quarters the tendency to surrender the conception of divine omnipotence in the face of the genuine human evils that are among the fruits of blind mechanical forces. The idea of a finite God who is infinitely good in his intentions, but limited in his powers, has been advocated by such various types of mind as John Stuart Mill, William James, and H. G. Wells. The first mentioned of these writes: One only form of belief in the supernatural--one theory respecting the origin and government of the universe--stands wholly clear both of intellectual contradiction and of moral obliquity. It is that which, resigning irrevocably the idea of an omnipotent creator, regards Nature and Life not as the expression throughout of the moral character and purpose of the Deity, but as the product of a struggle between contriving goodness and an intractable material, as was believed by Plato, or a principle of evil as was believed by the Manicheans. A creed like this ... allows it to be believed that all the mass of evils which exists was undesigned by, and exists not by the appointment of, but in spite of the Being whom we are called upon to worship.[1] [Footnote 1: Mill: _loc, cit._, p. 116.] RELIGION AND SCIENCE. While there have thus been genuine points of conflict between theology and science, these are essentially irrelevant to the religious experience itself. Man is still moved by the same emotions, sensations, needs, and desires which have, from the dawn of history, provoked in him a sense of his relationship with the divine. There comes to nearly all individuals at some time, not without rapture, a sudden awareness of divinity. It is the terror and beauty of phenomena, the "promise" of the dawn and of the rainbow, the "voice" of the thunder, the "gentleness" of the summer rain, the "sublimity" of the stars, and not the physical laws which these things follow, by which the religious mind continues to be most impressed; and just as of yore, the devout man tells you that in the solitude of his room or of the fields he still feels the divine presence, that inflowing of help come in reply to his prayers, and that sacrifices to this unseen reality fill him with security and peace.[1] [Footnote 1: James: _Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 498.] Modern man, just as his savage ancestor cowering before forces he did not understand, realizes sometimes--some persons realize it always--how comparatively helpless is man amid the magnificent and eternal forces in which his own life is infinitesimally set. Even when one has been educated to the sober prose of science, one feels still the ancient emotions of joy, sorrow, and regret. Birth and death, sowing and harvest, conquest or calamity, as of old, evoke a sympathetic feeling with the movement of cosmic processes. All of these emotions to-day, as in less sophisticated times, may take religious form. Nor does the universe because we understand it better seem, to many, less worthy of worship. The most thorough-going scientific geniuses have felt most deeply the nobility and grandeur of that infinite harmony and order which their own genius has helped to discover. It has been well said the "undevout astronomer is mad." And it is not only the student of the stars who has intimations of divinity. As Professor Keyser puts it: "The cosmic times and spaces of modern science are more impressive and more mysterious than a Mosaic cosmogony or Plato's crystal spheres. Day is just as mysterious as night, the mystery of knowledge is more wonderful and awesome than the darkness of the unknown."[2] It is significant that such men as Newton, Pasteur, and Faraday, giants of modern physical inquiry, were devoutly religious. [Footnote 2: Keyser: _Science and Religion_, p. 30.] It would appear indeed that the objects which men revere are not the subject-matter of science. Physics and chemistry can tell us what Nature is like; they cannot tell us to what in Nature we shall give our faith and our allegiance. Religion remains, as ever, "loyalty to the highest values of life." Science instead of making the world less awesome has made it more mysterious than ever. Origins and destinies are still unknown. Science tells how; it describes. It does not tell why things occur as they do; or what is the significance of their occurrence. Worship can never be reduced to molecules or atoms. While man lives and wonders, hopes and fears, feels the clear beauty, the infinite mystery, and the eternal significance of things, the religious experience will remain, and men will find objects worthy of their worship. THE CHURCH AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION. Religion being so crucial a set of social habits, institutions arise for the perpetuation of its traditions, and for the social expression of the religious life. The churches perpetuate the religious tradition in a number of ways. Fixed ecclesiastical systems, recitals and definitions of creeds, the regular and meticulous performance of rites and ceremonies, become powerful instruments for the transmission of religious ideas and standards. Rites frequently performed by men in mass have a deep and moving influence. They have at once all the pressure and prestige of custom, confirmed by the mystery and awe that attends any expression of man's relationship to the divine. The church, moreover, by the mere fact of being an institution, having a hierarchy, an ordered procedure, a definite assignment and division of ecclesiastical labor, becomes thereby an incomparable preserver and transmitter of traditional values. Churches, ecclesiastical organizations in general, may be said to arise because of the necessity felt by men for intermediaries between themselves and the divine. We have already seen of what vast practical moment in savage life was communication with the gods. Upon the success of such addresses to deity, depended not only the salvation of the soul, but the actual welfare of the body--shelter, harvest, and victory. The gods among many tribes were held to be meticulous about the forms and ceremonies which men addressed to them. In consequence it became important to have, as it were, experts in the supernatural, men who knew how to win the favor of these watchful powers. The priests were originally identical with medicine men and magicians. They knew the workings of the providential forces. In their hands lay, at least indirectly, the welfare of the tribe. Their principal duties were to administer and give advice as to the worship of the gods. Often it was necessary for them to point out to the lay members of the tribe which gods to worship on special occasions. The priests being accredited with a superior knowledge of the ways of the gods, they were required to influence the wind and rain, to cause good growth, to ensure success in hunting and fishing, to cure illness, to foretell the future, to work harm upon enemies.[1] [Footnote 1: For a detailed discussion see Hastings: _Encyclopoedia of Religion and Ethics_, vol. II, pp. 278-335.] There is more than one criterion by which men may be set apart as priests. Sometimes they are those who in a mystic state of ecstasy are supposed to be inspired by the gods. During their trance such men are questioned as to the will of the divine. Sometimes they become renowned through their reputed performance of an occasional miracle. Again, as magical and religious ceremonies become more complicated, there is a deliberate training of an expert class to perform these essential acts. And, whatever be the source of the selection of the priestly class, the immense influence which their functions are regarded as having on the welfare of the tribe causes them to be particularly revered and often feared by the lay members of the tribe. In more civilized and spiritual religions, the priestly or professional ecclesiastical class is no longer regarded as possessed of magical powers by which it can coerce divinity. It is the official administrator of the ceremonies of religion, is especially trained, versed and certificated in doctrine, is empowered to receive confession, fix penance, and the like. It is still an intermediary between man and the divine, although itself not possessing any supernatural powers. Where ecclesiastical organization is highly developed and has become controlling in the life of a people, it may be one of the most powerful forces in social life. Such, for example, might be said of the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages: A life in the Church, for the Church, through the Church; a life which she blessed in mass at morning and sent to peaceful rest by the vesper hymn; a life which she supported by the constantly recurring stimulus of the sacraments, relieving it by confession, purifying it by penance, admonishing it by the presentation of visible objects for contemplation and worship--this was the life which they of the Middle Ages conceived as the rightful life of Man; it was the actual life of many, the ideal of all.[1] [Footnote 1: Bryce: _Holy Roman Empire_, p. 423.] Churches may also come to acquire political functions. The history of the Church is for many centuries the leading factor in the political history of Europe, nor is it only in Christendom that political institutions have been inextricably associated with religion. Religious institutions may, as pointed out in the case of primitive tribes, acquire educational functions. The initiation ceremonies in Australian tribes have a markedly religious character. In the higher and more modern religions educational functions still persist. The Catholic Church has been regarded as the educator of Europe. Charlemagne's endowment and encouragement of education was largely made effectual through the Church. The grammarians and didactic writers, the poets, the encyclopædists, the teachers whom Charlemagne endowed and gathered about him, the heads of the schools which he founded, were all churchmen. Until very recently in the history of Europe the universities and education in general were nearly all under the domination of the Church. The secularization of primary education in England took place only late in the nineteenth century, and it is not yet a generation since the battle over the secularization of education was waged in France. All religious sects maintain on a smaller or larger scale educational functions. Parochial and convent schools and denominational colleges are contemporary examples. THE SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF INSTITUTIONALIZED RELIGION. The consequences of institutionalized religion in social development have been very marked. The mere association of large groups in a common faith and a common religious interest has been a considerable factor in their integration. There is to be noted in the first place the common emotional sympathies aroused by the participation of great numbers in identical rites and ceremonies. Any widespread social habit becomes weighted with emotional values for its members. Particularly is this true of religious habits, the mystery and magnificence associated with which deeply intensify their emotional influence. Again religious habits are given a unanimous and high social approval, especially where the prohibitions and commands enforced by religion are conceived intimately to affect the welfare of the tribe. The prophets reiterated to the people of Israel that their calamities were the result of their having ceased to follow in the ways of the Lord. The possession of a common religious history and tradition may also give a people a deepened sense of group solidarity. The national development of the ancient Hebrews was undoubtedly promoted by their sense of being the chosen people, of possessing exclusively the law of Jehovah. Again religious sanction is given to codes of belief, modes of conduct, and to institutions, thus at once strengthening them and making change difficult. It is not merely customs that are obeyed and disobeyed, but the sacred commands. A premium is put upon the regular and traditional because of the divine sanction associated with them. To violate a prohibition, even a slight one, becomes thus the most terrible sacrilege. Customs that, like the hygienic rules of the Mosaic code, may have started as genuine social utilities are maintained because they have become fixed in the religious traditions as enjoined by the Lord. In consequence there may be a Pharisaical insistence on the performance of the letter of the law, long after its practical utility or spiritual significance is forgotten. It is this persistence in the literal fulfillments of religious commands at the expense of the spirit, that the Hebrew prophets so vehemently condemned. Thus proclaims Isaiah: To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? Saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts.... Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me.... Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.... Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.[1] [Footnote 1: Isaiah I: 11-17.]] Institutions and modes of life, even when they are not, strictly speaking, part of the religious tradition proper, are given tremendous sanction and confirmation when they become embodied in the religious tradition. The institution of the family, for example, through the strong religious sanctions and values implied in the marriage ceremony and relationship (especially the marriage sacrament of the Catholic Church), comes to be strongly fortified and entrenched. Change in the form of an institution so hallowed by religion is something more than change; it is sacrilege. Governments and dynasties, again, when they have a religious sanction, when the King rules by "divine right," acquire a strong additional source of persistence and power. The imperial character of the Japanese government to-day, for example, is said to be greatly enhanced in prestige by the widespread popular belief that the Emperor is lineally descended from divinity. Sometimes religious sanctions have inspired and promoted zeal for social enterprise. The Crusades stand out as classic instances, but in the name of religion men have done more than build cathedrals and go on pilgrimages. In the Middle Ages, bridges and roads were constructed, alms were given, pictures were painted, books illuminated, encyclopædias made, education conducted, all under the auspices and inspiration of the Church. The mediæval universities started as church schools. In our own day, the expansion of the churches in the direction of welfare work and social reform, the use of the church as a community center, are examples of this development. Men have found justification by good works as well as faith. INTOLERANCE AND INQUISITION. The influence of religious tradition over the minds of its followers has had, among many noble and beautiful consequences, the dark fruits of intolerance, persecution, inquisition, and torture. Part of the bitter narrow-mindedness which has characterized the history of ecclesiastical institutions is not to be attributed specifically to religion. It is rather to be explained by the general uneasiness which the gregarious human creature feels at any deviation from the accustomed. In addition men have felt frequently that any divergence from the divinely ordained would bring destruction upon the whole group. In the Christian tradition there was an additional reason for intolerance: the heretic was willfully losing his own soul, and it was only humane to compel him to come "into the fold, to rescue him from the pains he would otherwise suffer in Hell." The profound conviction that those who did not believe in its doctrines would be damned eternally, and that God punishes theological error as if it were the most heinous of crimes, led naturally to persecution. It was a duty to impose on men the only true doctrine, seeing that their own eternal interests were at stake, and to hinder errors from spreading. Heretics were more than ordinary criminals, and the pains that man could inflict on them were as nothing to the tortures awaiting them in hell.[1] [Footnote 1: Bury: _History of Freedom of Thought_, pp. 52-53.] In fevered zeal for the Faith began that long hunting and punishment of heresy, which has done so much to darken the history of religion in Western Europe. There were, as in the Albigensian Crusade, wholesale burnings and hangings of men, women, and children.[1] Heresy was hunted out in secret retreats. "It was the foulest of crimes; to prevail against it was to prevail against the legions of Hell." The culmination of intolerance was, of course, the Inquisition. One need not pause to recall its espionage system, its search for the spreaders of false doctrine, its use of any and every witness against the suspect, its granting of indulgences to any one who should bear witness against him, its "relaxing of the criminal to the secular arm," which unfailingly punished him with death. It must be pointed out that in the instance of the Inquisition, just as in the case of all religious persecution, the motives were most frequently of the noblest. "In the Middle Ages and after, men of kindly temper and the purest zeal were absolutely devoid of mercy when heresy was suspected." Nor are intolerance and persecution to be laid exclusively at the door of any one religion. In Protestant countries, in England and Scotland, the persecution and torture of alleged witches is one of the most painful instances of the cruelties into which men can be led by loyalty to their religious convictions. And Mohammedanism vividly taught men how a faith might be spread by fire and sword. [Footnote 1: _Ibid._, pp. 56-57.] QUIETISM AND CONSOLATION--OTHER-WORLDLINESS. Many religions, including Christianity, have emphasized "other-worldliness." This has most frequently taken the form of emphasis on the life to come. This world has been conceived, as it were, as a prelude to eternity. In the Christian world scheme, as most clearly expounded and universally accepted during the Middle Ages, man's chief imperative business was salvation. All else was trivial in comparison with that incomparable eternal bliss which would be the reward of the virtuous, and that unending agony which would be the penalty for the damned. "Salvation was the master Christian motive. The Gospel of Christ was a gospel of salvation unto eternal life. It presented itself in the self-sacrifice of divine love, not without warnings touching its rejection."[1] [Footnote 1: H. O. Taylor: _Medioeval Mind_, vol. I, p. 61.] Where interest is centered on a world to come, there not infrequently results a loss of interest and discrimination in the goods of earthly life. "For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" The beauties, goods, and distinctions of this world coalesce into an indiscriminate triviality in comparison with that infinite glory hereafter to be attained. One does not trouble one's self about the furniture of earthly life any more than one would take pains with the beautification of a room in which one happens to be lodged for a night. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. Though on earth you may live in squalor, poverty, and disease, yet "in my Father's house are many mansions." Poverty, indeed, became in the Middle Ages one of the vows of monastic orders. In the New Testament it is prescribed, "Blessed are the poor in spirit" and the doctrine was in many cases literally accepted. If any one of you will know whether he is really poor in spirit, let him consider whether he loves the ordinary consequences and effects of poverty, which are hunger, thirst, cold, fatigue, and the denudation of all conveniences. See if you are glad to wear a worn-out habit full of patches. See if you are glad when something is lacking to your meal, when you are passed by in serving it, when what you receive is distasteful to you, when your cell is out of repair. If you are not glad of these things, if instead of loving them you avoid them, then there is proof that you have not attained the perfection of poverty of spirit.[2] [Footnote 2: Alfonso Rodriguez: _Pratique de la Perfection Chrétienne_, part III, treatise III, chap. VI; quoted in James's _Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 315.] Contempt for this world's goods, when generalized, promotes an attitude of indifference to the social conditions in which men live. The history of the saints is filled with references to their endurance of pain, ill health, poverty, and disease. And the "world, the flesh, and the devil" are for some types of religious mind all one. For such, to be engaged in social betterment is an irrelevant business, it is to be lost in the world. People's souls must be saved; not their bodies. Religions, on the other hand, have frequently emphasized man's social duty. In Christianity this is largely a derivative of the highly regarded virtue of Charity. Interest in one's own well-being was a prerequisite for the devout, but interest in the welfare of others was equally enjoined. To help the poor and the needy, the widowed and the fatherless, to bring succor to the oppressed and justice to the downtrodden, have been part of the religion whose Founder taught that all men were the children of their Father in Heaven. The mendicant orders of the Middle Ages were devoted to philanthropic works; and with religious institutions, throughout their history, have been associated works of philanthropy and social welfare. Very recently urban churches in this country have been showing a tendency to reorganize with emphasis on the church as an instrument of social coöperation rather than as an aloof exponent of dogmatic theology. It is the ideal of some liberal theologians to use the churches chiefly as instruments for giving social effectiveness to the religious impulse and at the same time for making social betterment a spiritual enterprise. CHAPTER XIII ART AND THE ÆSTHETIC EXPERIENCE ART _VERSUS_ NATURE. In the Career of Reason man has gradually learned to control the world in which he lives in the interests of his own welfare as he imaginatively contemplated it. Deliberate control has been made necessary because of the fact that man is born into a world which was not made for him, but in which he must, if anywhere, grow; in a world which was not designed to fulfill his desires, but where alone his desires can find fulfillment. Art may thus, in the broadest sense, be set over against Nature. It is the activity by which man realizes ideals. He may realize them practically, as when he builds a house which he has first imagined, or reaps a harvest in anticipation of which he has first sown the seeds. He may realize them imaginatively, as when in color, form, or sound he creates some desiderated beauty out of the crude miscellaneous materials of experience. Art, in the broad sense of control or direction of Nature, arises in the double fact of man's instinctive activities and desires and the inadequacy of the environment as it stands to afford them satisfaction. Because nature is not considerate of his needs, man must himself take forethought, and devise means by which the forces and the materials of Nature may be exploited to his own good. And the realization of this forethought is made possible through the fact that natural conditions do lend themselves to modification. Nature, though indifferent to man's welfare, is yet partly congruous with it. While the wind blows careless of the good or ill it does to him, yet man may learn by means of windmills or sailboats to turn the wind to his own interest. Though the river may flow on forever, oblivious to the men that come and go along its shores, yet the passing generations may transform this undeliberate flowing into the power that yields them clothing, machinery, and transportation. All civilization is, as Mill says, an exhibition of Art or Contrivance; it is illustrated by the junction by bridges of shores which Nature had made separate, the draining of Nature's marshes, the excavation of her wells, the dragging to light of what she has buried at immense depths in the earth; the turning away of her thunderbolts by lightning rods; of her inundations by embankments, of her oceans by breakwaters.[1] [Footnote 1: Mill: _Three Essays on Religion_, p. 19 (essay on "Nature").] By irrigation man has learned to make the "wilderness blossom as the rose." By railways, telegraphs, and telephones, he has learned to minimize the obstacles that time and space offer to the fulfillment of his desires. By controlling, by means of education and social organization, his own instincts in the light of the purposes he would attain, by studying "the secret processes of Nature," man has learned to make the world a fit habitation for himself. To dig, to plough, to sow, to reap, are instances of the means whereby man has applied intelligent control to his half-friendly, half-hostile environment. Man's deliberate control of Nature arises thus under the sharp pressure of practical necessity. Man is inherently active, but, as pointed out in an earlier connection, his activity takes coherent and consecutive form primarily under the compulsion of satisfying his physical wants, of finding food, clothing, and shelter. The greater part of human energy, certainly under primitive conditions, is devoted to maintaining a precarious equilibrium among the mysterious and terrifying forces of a half-understood environment. There is not much time for leisure, play, or art, where food is a continuously urgent problem, where one's shelter is likely to be destroyed by storm or wind, where one is threatened incessantly by beasts of prey, and, as primitive man supposed, by capricious supernatural powers. Under such circumstances, life is largely spent in instrumental or imperative pursuits. Action is fixed by necessity. It is controlled with immediate and urgent reference to the business of keeping alive. There is scarcely time for the activity of art, which is spontaneous and free. In civilized life, also, the greater part of human energy must be spent in necessary or instrumental business. Men must, as always, be fed, clothed, and housed, and the fulfillment of these primary human demands absorbs the greater part of the waking hours of the majority of mankind. Our civilization is predominantly industrial; it is devoted almost entirely to the transforming of the world of nature into products for the gratification of the physical wants of men. These wants have, of course, become much complicated and refined: men wish not only to live, but to live commodiously and well. They want not merely a roof over their heads, but a pleasant and comfortable house in which to live. They want not merely something to stave off starvation, but palatable foods. In the satisfaction of these increasingly complicated demands a great diversity of industries arises. With every new want to be fulfilled, there is a new occupation, pursued not for its own sake, but for the sake of the good which it produces. There are industrial leaders, of course, who find in the development and control of the productive energies of thousands of men, in the manipulation of immense natural resources, satisfactions analogous to that of the fine artist. But for most men engaged in the routine operations of industry, the work they do is clearly not pursued on its own account. Industry, viewed in the total context of the activities of civilization, is a practical rather than a fine art. Its ideal is efficiency, which means economy of effort. Its interest is primarily in producing many goods cheaply. THE EMERGENCE OF THE FINE ARTS. In the sharp struggle of man with his environment, those instincts survived which were of practical use. The natural impulses with which a human being is at birth endowed, are chiefly those which enable him to cope successfully and efficiently with his environment. But even in primitive life, so exuberant and resilient is human energy that it is not exhausted by necessary labors. The plastic arts, for example, began in the practical business of pottery and weaving. The weaver and the potter who have acquired skill and who have a little more vitality than is required for turning out something that is merely useful, turn out something that is also beautiful. The decorations which are made upon primitive pottery exhibit the excess vitality and skill of the virtuoso. Similarly, religious ritual, which, as we have seen, arises in practical commerce with the gods, comes to be in itself cherished and beautiful. The chants which are prescribed invocations of divinity, become songs intrinsically interesting to singer and listener alike; the dance ceases to be merely a necessary religious form and becomes an occasion of beauty and delight. Jane Harrison has shown in detail how ritual arises out of practical need, and art out of ritual.[1] Thus the Greek drama had its beginnings in Greek religion; the incidental beauty of the choruses of the Greek festivals developed into the eventual tragic art of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Ceasing to be a practical invocation to the gods it became an artistic enterprise in and for itself. Repeatedly we find in primitive life that activity is not exhausted in agriculture, hunting, and handicraft, or in a desperate commerce with divinity. Harvest becomes a festival, pottery becomes an opportunity for decoration, and prayer, for poetry. Even in primitive life men find the leisure to let their imaginations loiter over these intrinsically lovely episodes in their experience. The potter may be more interested in making a beautifully moulded and decorated vessel than merely in turning out a thing of use; the maker of baskets may come to "play with his materials," to make baskets not so much for their usefulness as for the possible beauty of their patterns. When this interest in beauty becomes highly developed, and when circumstances permit, the fine arts arise. The crafts come to be practiced as intrinsically interesting employments of the creative imagination. The moulding of miscellaneous materials into beautiful forms becomes a beloved habitual practice. [Footnote 1: See Jane Harrison: _Ancient Art and Ritual_, especially chap. I.] The context in which art appears in primitive life is paralleled in civilized society. The energies of men are still largely consumed in necessary pursuits. Men must, as of old, by the inadequacy of the natural order in which they find themselves, find means by which to live; and, being by nature constituted so that they must live together, they must find ways of living together justly and harmoniously. "Industry," writes Santayana, "merely gives to Nature that form which, if more thoroughly humane, she might already have possessed for our benefit." It is creative in so far as it transforms matter from its crude indifferent state to forms better adapted to human ideals. It makes cotton into cloth, wool into clothing, wheat into flour, leather into shoes, coal into light and power, iron into skyscrapers. It is devoted to annulling the discrepancies between nature and human nature. It turns refractory materials and obdurate forces into commodious goods and useful powers. But, in the broadest sense, industry is a means to an end. Interesting and attractive it may well become, as when a bookbinder or a printer takes a craftsman's proud delight in the manner in which he performs his work, and in the quality of its product. But the industrial arts, for the most part, serve more ultimate purposes. It is imaginable that Nature might have provided clothing, food, and shelter ready to our hand. It is questionable whether under such circumstances men would out of deliberate choice continue industries which are now made imperative through necessity. The mines and the stockyards are necessary rather than beautiful or intrinsically attractive occupations. But in the world of fact, those things which are necessary to us are not ready to our hand. Our civilization is predominantly industrial, and must be so, if the billion and a half inhabitants of our world are to be maintained by the resources at our command. Nevertheless despite the absorption of a large proportion of contemporary society in activities pursued not for their own sakes, but for the goods which are their fruits, there is still, as it were, energy left over. This excess vitality may, as it does for most men, take the form of mere unorganized play or recreation. But not so for those born with a singular gift for realizing in color or form or sound the ideal values which they have imagined. For these "play" is creative production. The fine arts are, in a sense, the play of the race. They are the fruits of such energy as is, through some fortunate accident of temperament or circumstance, not caught up in the routine and mechanics of industry or the trivialities of sport or pleasure. They are human activities, freed from the limitations imposed by the exigencies of practical life, and controlled only by the artist's imagined visions. Creative activity is most explicit and most successful in the fine arts, because in these there are fewer obstacles to the material realization of imagined perfections. "The liberal arts bring to spiritual fruition the matter which either nature or industry has prepared and rendered propitious." The industrial arts are, as already pointed out, man's transformation of natural resources to ideal uses. In the same way political and social organization are human arts, enterprises, at their best, in the moulding of men's natures to their highest possible realization. But in the world of action, whether political or industrial, there are incomparably greater hindrances to the realization in practice of imagined goods than there are, at least to the gifted, in the fine arts. Every ideal for which men attempt to find fulfillment in the world of action is subject to a thousand accidental deflections of circumstance. Every enterprise involves conflicting wills; the larger the enterprise, the more various and probably the more conflicting the interests involved. Social movements have their courses determined by factors altogether beyond the control of their originators. Statesmen can start wars, but cannot define their eventual fruits. A man may found a political party, and live to see it wander far from the ideal which he had framed. But in the fine arts, to the imaginatively and technically endowed, the materials are prepared and controllable. In the hands of a master, action does not wander from intent. Language to the poet, for example, is an immediate and responsive instrument; he can mould it precisely to his ideal intention. The enterprise of poetry is less dependent almost than any other undertaking on the accidents of circumstance, outside the poet's initial imaginative resources. In music, even so simple an instrument as a flute can yield perfection of sound. The composer of a symphony can invent a perpetual uncorroded beauty; the sculptor an immortality of irrefutably persuasive form. This explains in part why so many artists, of a reflective turn of mind, are pessimists in practical affairs. The world of action with its perpetual and pitiful frustrations, failures, and compromises, seems incomparably poor, paltry, and sordid, in comparison with the perfection that is attainable in art. Haunting foreshadowings of the temple appear in the realm of imagination, in music, in architecture, in the untroubled kingdom of reason, and in the golden sunset magic of lyrics, where beauty shines and glows, remote from the touch of sorrow, remote from the fear of change, remote from the failures and disenchantment of the world of fact. In the contemplation of these things the vision of heaven will shape itself in our hearts, giving at once a touchstone to judge the world about us, and an inspiration by which to fashion to our needs whatever is capable of serving as a stone in the sacred temple.[1] [Footnote 1: Bertrand Russell: _Philosophical Essays_, pp. 65-66.] The creative artist gives such form to the miscellaneous materials at his disposal that they give satisfaction not only to the senses or the intellect, but to the imagination. What constitute some of the chief elements in the æsthetic experience, we shall presently examine. It must first be pointed out that in general in the fine arts creative genius has found ways of imaginatively attaining perfections not usually accorded in the experiences of the senses, in the life of society, or in the life of the mind. The region called imagination has pleasures more airy and luminous than those of sense, more massive and rapturous than those of intelligence. The values inherent in imagination, in instant intuition, in sense endowed with form, are called æsthetic values; they are found mainly in nature and in living beings, but also in man's artificial works, in images evoked by language, and in the realm of sound.[1] [Footnote 1: Santayana: _Reason in Art_, p. 15.] The painter imagines and seeks to realize hues and intensities of color more satisfying and more suggestive than those commonly experienced in nature, save in the occasional grace of sunset on a mountain lake, or the miracle of moonlight on the ocean. The artist takes his hints from nature, but clothes the suggestions of sense with the values and motives which exist only in his own mind and imagination. A Turner sunset is, as Oscar Wilde points out, in a sense incomparably superior to one provided by nature. It not only gives the beautiful sensations to be had in a landscape suffused with the sunset glow; it infuses into this experience the passionate and penetrating insight of a genius. The artist, to an extent, imitates nature. But, if that were all he did, he would be no more than a photographer. He pictures nature, but gives it "tint and melody and breath"; he gives it a value and significance derived from his own imaginative vision. The musician combines sounds more significant, ordered, and rhythmical than those miscellaneous noises which, in ordinary experience, beat indifferently or painfully upon our ears. The poet selects words whose specific music, rhythmical combinations, and lyrical context produce a something more evocative, compelling, and euphonic than the casual and raucous instrument of communication which constitutes ordinary speech. Not only do poets give imaginative and ideal extensions to sense experience; they do as much with and for social life. In the dreaming of Utopias, in the building of the Perfect City, men have found compensations for the imperfect cities which have been their experiences on earth. They build themselves in imagination a world where all injustices are erased, where beauty is perennial, where truth, courage, kindliness, and merriment are the pervasive colors of life. In the activity of creative art, man's imagination has reached out beyond the confines of nature and of history, and built itself, in marble and in music, in lyrics and in legends, hints of that enchanting possible, of which the impoverished actual gives tentative and tenuous hints. In some men sensitivity to the imaginative possibilities of the materials of Nature is so high, that they can find satisfactory activity nowhere else than in one or another of the fine arts. These are the poets, the musicians, and the sculptors, who seek to give realization in the arts in the technique of which they are especially gifted, to that imagined beauty by the intimate experience of which they live. In one way or another the creative artist seeks to give form and dimension to "The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration and the poet's dream." This creative impulse may find its realization, as already pointed out, in industry, though, with the highly routine character of most men's occupations in present-day industrial life, there is not much opportunity for imaginative activity. That both work and happiness would be promoted by the encouragement of the craftsman ideal goes without saying. Whether or not it is possible to utilize the creative impulses in the processes of industry as now organized, there are instances where the joy of craftsmanship may be exploited both for the happiness of the worker and the good of the work. The William Morris ideal of the artist-worker may be hard to attain, but it is none the less desirable, both for the sake of the worker and his work. In science the uses of the imagination have been frequently commented on, not least by scientists. The patient collection of facts, the digging and measurement and inquiry that characterize so much of scientific investigation are not the whole of it. Inference, the forming of a generalization, is frequently described "as a leap from the known to the unknown," and this discovery of a binding principle that brings together a wide variety of disconnected facts is not unlike the process of the creative artist. The same unconscious method by which a poet hits upon an appropriate epithet, a musician upon a melody, a painter upon an effect of color or line is displayed in that sudden vivid flash of insight by which a scientist sees a mass of facts that have long seemed bafflingly contradictory, gathered up under a single luminous law. In his famous essay on "The Scientific Uses of the Imagination," Tyndall writes: We are gifted with the power of Imagination, ... and by this power we can lighten the darkness which surrounds the world of the senses. There are tories even in science who regard imagination as a faculty to be feared and avoided rather than employed. They had observed its action in weak vessels and were unduly impressed by its disasters. But they might with equal justice point to exploded boilers as an argument against the use of steam. Bounded and conditioned by coöperant Reason, imagination becomes the mightiest instrument of the physical discoverer. Newton's passage from a falling apple to a falling moon was, at the outset, a leap of the imagination. When William Thomson tries to place the ultimate particles of matter between his compass points, and to apply to them a scale of millimetres, he is powerfully aided by this faculty. And in much that has been recently said about protoplasm and life, we have the outgoings of the imagination guided and controlled by the known analogies of science. In fact, without this power, our knowledge of Nature would be a mere tabulation of coexistences and sequences. We should still believe in the succession of day and night, of summer and winter; but the soul of Force would be dislodged from our universe; causal relations would disappear, and with them that science which is now binding the parts of nature into an organic whole.[1] [Footnote 1: Tyndall: _Fragments of Science_, pp. 130-31.] As we shall presently see, this imaginative leap is guarded and controlled, so that no flash of insight, however attractive, is uncritically accepted. But the origin of every eventually accepted hypothesis lies in the upshoot of irresponsible fancy, differing not at all from the images in the mind of a poet or painter or the melodies that unpredictably occur to a musician. THE ÆSTHETIC EXPERIENCE. Art is, on its creative side, as we have seen, the control of Nature in the practical or imaginative realization of ideals. The industrial arts are pursued out of necessity, because man must find himself ways of living in a world which he must inhabit, though it is not _a prior_ arranged for his habitation. The fine arts are pursued as ends in themselves.[1] The genuinely gifted sing, paint, write poetry, apart from fame and reward, for the sheer pleasure of creation. But the products of these creative activities themselves become satisfactions on a par with other natural goods. The objects of art--poems, paintings, statues, symphonies--are themselves prized and sought after. They afford satisfaction to that large number of persons who are sensitive to the beautiful without having a gift for its creation. [Footnote 1: Many industrial processes exhibit elements of the fine arts. This is the case whenever there is opportunity for the worker to feel, and to have some ground for the feeling, that he is not merely turning out a product, but turning out a well-made or a beautiful one, to which his own skill is contributing. The makers of fine books or bindings or furniture, of fine embroidery and the like, are examples. But such conditions occur chiefly in the so-called luxury trades. There is very little opportunity for the display of creative talent in quantity manufacture. On the other hand, every fine art involves some elements of merely technical skill or craftsmanship, which is important in achieving an imaginative result, but is the skill of the mechanic rather than the vision of the artist. In surveying the finished product of art as it appears in a painting by a Turner or a Cezanne, we may forget the "dust and ointment of the calling," but it is none the less there. The drudgery of art, the practicing of scales. the mixing of colors, the rehearsing of plays, are, as it were, the necessary preliminary industry in art.] Æsthetic appreciation is indeed shared by all men, and is called out by other objects than paintings or poems. There is hardly anything men do which is not affected by what has been called "an irrelevant access of æsthetic feeling." We saw in another connection how our estimates of persons and situations are qualified by love and hate, sympathy and revulsion. In the same way all our experiences have an æsthetic coloring. It may be nothing more than the curious jubilance and vivacity, the thrill and tingle of the blood that comes upon a crisp autumn day. It may be, as Mill pointed out, the largeness of thought and vision promoted by habitually working in a spacious and dignified room. Æsthetic influences are always playing upon us; they determine not only our tastes in the decoration of our houses, our choices of places to walk and to eat, but even such seemingly remote and abstract matters as a scientific theory or a philosophy of life. Even the industrial ideal of efficiency has, "with its suggestion of Dutch neatness and cleanliness," order and symmetry, an æsthetic flavor. Similarly is there an appeal to our æsthetic sensibilities in the grouping of a wide variety of facts under sweeping inclusive and simple generalizations. There is, as has often been pointed out, scarcely anything to choose from as regards the relative plausibility of the Copernican over the Ptolemaic system. The former we choose largely because of its greater symmetry and simplicity in accounting for the facts. Even a world view may be chosen on account of its artistic appeal. One feels moved imaginatively, even if one disagrees with the logic of those philosophies which see reality as one luminously transparent conscious whole, in which every experience is delicately reticulated with every other, where discord and division are obliterated, and the multiple variety of mundane facts are gathered up into the symmetrical unity of the eternal. APPRECIATION _VERSUS_ ACTION. Every human experience has thus its particular and curious æsthetic flavor, as an inevitable though undetected obligato. Æsthetic values enter into and qualify our estimates of persons and situations, and help to determine that general sympathy or revulsion, that love or hate for people, institutions, or ideas, which make the pervasive atmosphere of all human action. But in the world of action, we cannot emphasize these irrelevant æsthetic feelings. The appreciative and the practical moods are sharply contrasted. In the latter we are interested in results, and insist on the exclusion of all considerations that do not bear on their accomplishment. The appreciative or æsthetic mood is detached; it is interested not to act, but to pause and consider; it does not want to use the present as a point of departure. It wants to bask in the present perfection of color, word, or sound. The practical man is interested in a present situation for what can be done with it; he wants to know, in the vernacular, "What comes next?" "Where do we go from here?" The appreciator wishes to remain in the lovely interlude of perfection which he experiences in music, poetry, or painting. The æsthetic mood is obviously at a discount in the world of action. To bask in the charm of a present situation, to linger and loiter, as it were, in the sun of beauty, is to accomplish nothing, to interrupt action. It is precisely for this reason that persons with extremely high æsthetic sensibilities are at such a discount in practical life. They are too easily dissolved in appreciation. They are too much absorbed, for practical efficiency, in the tragic, the whimsical, the beautiful, or the comic aspects of men and affairs. The same sensitivity to the innuendoes and colors of life that enable some of such men to give an exquisite and various portraiture of experience, incapacitates them for action. The practical man must not observe anything irrelevant to his immediate business. He must not be dissolved, at every random provocation, into ecstacy, laughter, or sorrow. There is too much to be done in business, government, mechanics, and the laboratory, to allow one's attention to wander dreamingly over the tragic, the beautiful, the pathetic, the comic, and the grotesque qualities of the day's work. To take an extreme case, it would, as Jane Harrison observes, be a monstrosity, when our friend was drowning, to note with lingering appreciation the fluent white curve of his arm in the glimmering waters of the late afternoon. The man to whom every event is flooded with imaginative possibilities and emotional suggestions is a useless or a dangerous character in situations where it is essential to discriminate the immediate and important bearings of facts. We cannot select an expert accountant on the basis of a pleasant smile, nor a chauffeur for his sense of humor. But while, in the larger part of the lives of most men, observation of facts is controlled with reference to their practical bearings, observation may sometimes take place for its own sake. The glory of a sunset is not commonly prized for any good that may come of it; nobody but a general on a campaign or a fire warden looks out from a mountain peak upon the valley below for reasons other than the pleasure of the beholding. In the case of persons, also, we are not always interested in them for their uses; we are sometimes delighted with them in themselves. We pause to watch merry or quaint children, experts at tennis, beautiful faces, for their own sakes. While even in nature and in social experience, we thus sometimes note specifically æsthetic values, the objects of fine art have no other justification than the immediate satisfactions they produce in their beholder. Those intrinsic pleasures which go by the general name of beauty are various and complicated. Our joy may be in the sheer delight of the senses, as in the hearing of a singularly lucid and sustained note of a clarinet, a flute, a voice, or a violin. It may be in the appreciation of form, as in the case of the symmetry of a temple, an arch, or an altar. It may be in the simultaneous stirring of the senses, the imagination, and the intellect, by the presentation of an idea suffused with music and emotion, as in the case of an ode by Wordsworth or a sonnet by Milton. In all these instances we are not interested in anything beyond the experience itself. The objects of the fine arts are not drafts on the future, anticipations of future satisfactions eventually to be cashed in. They are immediate and intrinsic goods, absolute fulfillments. They are not signals to action; they are releases from it. A painting, a poem, a symphony, do not precipitate movement or change. They invite a restful absorption. It was this that made Schopenhauer regard art as a rest from reality. During these interludes, at least, we live amid perfections, and are content there to move and have our being. SENSE SATISFACTION. Appreciation of the arts begins in the senses. Sight and sound, these are unquestionably the chief avenues by which the imagination is stirred.[1] [Footnote 1: The so-called lower senses are not regarded as yielding æsthetic values. Smell, taste, and touch are not generally, certainly in Occidental art, made much of.] In the words of Santayana: For if nothing not once in sense is to be found in the intellect, much less is such a thing to be found in the imagination. If the cedars of Lebanon did not spread a grateful shade, or the winds rustle through the maze of their branches, if Lebanon had never been beautiful to sense, it would not now be a fit or poetic subject of allusion.... Nor would Samarcand be anything but for the mystery of the desert, and the picturesqueness of caravans, nor would an argosy be poetic if the sea had no voices and no foam, the winds and oars no resistance, and the rudder and taut sheets no pull. From these real sensations imagination draws its life, and suggestion its power.[2] [Footnote 2: Santayana: _Sense of Beauty_, p. 68.] Satisfaction in sounds arises from the regular intervals of the vibrations of the air by which it is produced. The rapidity of these regular beats determines the pitch. But sounds also differ in _timbre_ or quality, depending on the number of overtones which occur in different modes of production. This explains why a note on the scale played on the piano, differs from the same note played on the 'cello or the organ. From these fundamental sensuous elements of sound, elaborate symphonic compositions may be built up, but they remain primary nevertheless. Unless the sensuous elements of sound were themselves pleasing it is difficult to imagine that a musical composition could be. Music would then be like an orchestra whose members played in unison, but whose violins were raucous and whose trumpets hoarse. Color again illustrates the æsthetic satisfactions that are found in certain kinds of sense stimulation, apart from the form they are given or the emotions or ideas they express. The elements of color, _as_ color, may be reduced to three simple elements: First may be noted _hue_, as yellow or blue; second, _value_ (or _notan_) dark or light red; and third _intensity_ (or brightness to grayness), as vivid blue or dull blue. Specific vivid æsthetic combinations and variations are made possible by variations or combinations of these three elements of color. If a color scheme is displeasing, the fault may be in the wrong selection of hues, in weak values, in ill-matched intensities or all three. Dutch tiles, Japanese prints and blue towels, Abruzzi towels, American blue quilts, etc., are examples of harmony built up with several values of one hue. With two hues innumerable variations are possible. Japanese prints of the "red and green" period are compositions in light yellow-red, middle green, black, and white.... Color varies not only in hue and value [_notan_] but in intensity--ranging from bright to gray. Every painter knows that a brilliant bit of color, set in grayer tones of the same or neighboring hues, will illuminate the whole group--a distinguished and elusive harmony. The fire opal has a single point of intense scarlet, melting into pearl; the clear evening sky is like this when from the sunken sun the red-orange light grades away through yellow and green to steel gray.[1] [Footnote 1: Dow: _Composition_, p. 109.] These variations in hue, value, and intensity of color afford specific æsthetic satisfactions. The blueness of the sky is its specific beauty; the greenness of foliage in springtime is its characteristic and quite essential charm. Apart from anything else, sensations themselves afford satisfaction or the reverse. A loud color, a strident or a shrill sound may cause a genuine revulsion of feeling. A soft hue or a pellucid note may be an intrinsic pleasure, though a formless one, and one expressive of no meaning at all. FORM. While the imagination is stirred most directly by the immediate material beauty, by the satisfaction of the senses, beauty of form is an important element in the enhancement of appreciation. In the plastic arts and in music, it is, next to the immediate appeal of the sensuous elements involved, the chief ingredient in the effects produced. And even in those arts which are notable for their expressive values, poetry, fiction, drama and painting, the appeal of form, as in the plot of a drama, or the structure of an ode or it sonnet is still very high. Certain dispositions of line and color in painting; of harmony and counterpoint in music; rhythm, refrain, and recurrence in poetry; symmetry and balance in sculpture; all have their specific appeal, apart from the materials used or the emotions or ideas expressed. Certain harmonic relations are interesting in music apart from the particular range of notes employed, or the particular melody upon which variations are made. The pattern of a tapestry may be interesting, apart from the color combinations involved. The structure of a ballade or a sonnet may be beautiful, apart from the melody of the words or the persuasiveness of the emotion or idea. Out of the factors which enter into the appreciation of form certain elements stand out. There is, in the first place, _symmetry_, the charm of which lies partly in recognition and rhythm. "When the eye runs over a façade, and finds the objects that attract it at equal intervals, an expectation, like the anticipation of an inevitable note or requisite word, arises in the mind, and its non-satisfaction involves a shock."[1] [Footnote 1: Santayana: _The Sense of Beauty_, p. 92.] Similarly, form given to material brings a variety of details under a comprehensive unity, enabling us to have at once the stimulation of diversity and the clarification of a guiding principle. We cherish sensations in themselves, when they consist of elements like limpidness of color and lucidity of sound. But too much miscellany of sensation is disquieting; it has an effect analogous to noise. A baby or a barbarian may delight in loud heterogeneity and vivid confusion, but extravagance of sensation does not constitute an æsthetic experience. The discovery of the one in the many, the immediate apprehension of the fluent tracing of a pattern, a form, or a structure, is intrinsically delightful. The pattern of a tapestry design is as striking and suggestive as the colors themselves. When musical taste has passed from a sentimental intoxication with the sensuous beauty of the sounds themselves, the beauty we admire is primarily beauty of form or structure. The musical connoisseur likes to trace the recurrence of a theme in a symphony, its deviations and disappearances, its distribution in the various choirs of wood-wind, brass, and strings, its interweaving with other themes, its resilient, surprising, and apposite emergences, its pervasive penetration of the total scheme. The æsthetic experience, indeed, as specifically æsthetic, rather than merely sensuous or intellectual, is, it might be said, almost wholly a matter of form. It is the artist's function, as it is occasionally his achievement, to give satisfying, determinate forms to the indeterminate and miscellaneous materials at his command. Formlessness is for the creator of beauty the unpardonable sin. To give clarity and coherence to the vague ambiguous scintillations of sound, to chisel a specific perfection out of the indefinite inviting possibilities of marble, to form precise and consecutive suggestions out of the random and uncertain music of words, is to achieve, in so far, success in art. Nor does form mean formality. Experience is so various and fertile, and so far outruns the types under which human invention and imagination can apprehend it, that inexhaustible novelty is possible. Novelty, on the other hand, does not mean formlessness. The artist must, if he is to be successful, always remain something of an artisan. However beautiful his vision, he must have sufficient command of the technical resources to his craft to give a specific and determinate embodiment to his ideal. Every one has haunting premonitions of beauty; it is the business of the artist to give realization in form to the hints of the beautiful which are present in matter as we meet it in experience, and to the imaginative longings which they provoke. In which forms different individuals will find satisfaction depends on all the circumstances which go to make one individual different from another. There cannot be in the case of art, any more than in any other experience, absolute standards. We can be pleased only with those arrangements of sound or color to which our sensibilities have early been educated. Even the most catholic of tastes becomes restricted in the course of education. To Western ears, there is at first no music at all in Chinese music, and Beethoven would appear to the Chinese as barbarous as their compositions appear to us. But while in a wide sense, conformity to the average determines or limits our possible appreciation of the beautiful, within these limits certain elements are intrinsically more pleasing than others. Those elements of experience, in the first place, more readily acquire æsthetic values, which in themselves strikingly impress the senses. Thus tallness in a man, because it is in the first place striking, becomes readily incorporated into our standard of the beautiful. And all elements in themselves beautiful, the human eye, the curve of the arm, the wave of the hair, come to be emphasized. These outstanding elements may themselves become conventionalized and standardized, so that objects of art which conform to them are insured thereby of a certain degree of recognition as beautiful. Too close a conformity produces monotonous formalities, cloying classicisms. Too wide a divergence results in shock and unpleasantness. The history of all the arts, however, is full of instances of how the taste of a people can be educated to new forms. Ruskin had to educate the English people to an appreciation of Turner. The poets of the Romantic period were condemned by the critics brought up on the rigid classic models. The so-called Romantic movements in the arts are, at their best, departures from old forms, not into formlessness, but into new, various, and more fruitful forms. Romanticism at its worst dissolves into mere formlessness and inarticulate ecstacies. Infinite variety of forms the world of experience may be made to wear, but sensations, emotions, and ideas must be given some form, if they are to pass from a fruitless yearning after beauty into its positive incarnation in objects of art. All forms have their characteristic emotional effects, as have all materials, even apart from the emotions or ideas they express. The glitter of gold and the sparkle of diamonds, the strength of marble, the sturdiness of oak--we hardly can think of these materials without thinking of the associations which go with them. Similarly the symmetry of the colonnades of a temple, the multiplicity and variety of Gothic architecture, even so simple a form as a circle, provoke a great or slight characteristic emotional reaction. Likewise, a staccato or a fluent rhythm in music, a march, or a dance movement, have, even apart from their unconscious or intentional expressiveness, specific emotional values. In literature, also, where the value of the words themselves might be expected to give place entirely to the emotions or ideas of which they are the expressive instruments, poems may themselves, by their form and music, be provocative of specific emotional effects. "...And over them the sea wind sang, Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zigzag paths and juts of pointed rock, Came on the shining levels of the lake. Dry clashed his harness in the icy caves, And barren chasms, and all to left and right, The bare black cliff clanged round him, as he based His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang, Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels-- And on a sudden, lo! the level lake, And the long glories of the winter moon."[1] [Footnote 1: From Tennyson's _Morte d'Arthur_.] Here the effect lies partly in the form, but more especially in the _timbre_ and reverberation of the words themselves. In other cases, it is the form that is the chief ingredient in the effect produced. In Alfred Noyes's "The Barrel Organ," apart from the meaning, it is the rhythmic form that is of chief æsthetic value: "Come down to Kew in lilac time, in lilac time, in lilac time, Come down to Kew in lilac time, it is n't far from London, And you shall wander hand-in-hand with love in summer's wonderland. Come down to Kew in lilac time; it is n't far from London. "The cherry trees are seas of bloom and soft perfume and sweet perfume. The cherry trees are seas of bloom (and oh, so near to London!) And there they say, when dawn is high, and all the world's a blaze of sky, The cuckoo, though he's very shy, will sing a song for London." Apart from all considerations of meaning, set the easy fluent grace of this lyric over against the march and majesty of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on. "He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat; Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on." EXPRESSION. The objects of art, as we have seen, are interesting and attractive in themselves, for the material of which they are formed, and for the form which the artist has given them. But they are interesting in another and possibly as important a way: they are instruments of expression. That is, a painting is something more than an intrinsically interesting disposition of line and color, a statue something more than an exquisite or sublime chiseling of marble, a poem more than a rhythmic combination of the music of words. All of these are expressive. Something in their form is associated with something in our past experience. Thus, as James somewhere suggests, "a bare figure by Michelangelo, with unduly flexed joints, may come somehow to suggest the moral tragedy of life." Something in the face of an old man painted by Rembrandt may recall to us a similar outward evidence of inner seriousness, wistfulness, and resignation which we have ourselves beheld in living people. And we clearly value the poems of a Wordsworth, a Milton, a Matthew Arnold, not solely for the magnificent form and music of their words, but also for the sober beauty of their meaning. We may come to appreciate even the highly immediate sensuous and formal pleasure of music for the reverie or rapture into which by suggestion it throws us. "Expression may, therefore, make beautiful by suggestion, things in themselves indifferent, or it may come to heighten the beauty which they already possess." The objects of art may be appreciated chiefly either for their material and form, or for the values which they express. In some cases the actual object may be beautiful; sometimes the beauty may lie almost wholly in the image, emotion, or idea evoked. "Home, Sweet Home," for example, may be plausibly held to win admiration rather for the sentimental associations which it evokes in the singer or hearer than for its verbal or melodic beauty. The enjoyment which people without any musical gifts, out on a camping or canoeing trip, experience from singing a rather cheap and frayed repertory is obviously for sentimental rather than for æsthetic satisfaction. Similarly, we may cherish the mementos of a lost friend or child, not for their intrinsic worth, but for the tenderness of the memories they arouse. The situation is delicately described in Eugene Field's "Little Boy Blue": "The little toy dog is covered with dust, But sturdy and staunch he stands, And the little toy soldier is red with rust, And his musket moulds in his hands. Time was when the little toy dog was new, And the soldier was passing fair, And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue Kissed them and put them there." Some objects of art may indeed become beautiful almost completely through their expressiveness. There are certain poets whose music is raucous and who make little appeal through clarity of form. These survive almost completely by virtue of the persistent strength and enduring sublimity of the ideas which they express. Much of Whitman may be put in this class, and also much of Browning. Similarly a sculptor may not captivate us by the fluent beauty of his marble, but by the power and passion which his crude mighty figures express. In such cases we may even come to regard what, from a purely formal point of view, is unlovely, as a thing of the most extreme beauty. Even the roughness in such direct revelations of strength, may come to be regarded as elements of the beautiful. And where massiveness of effect does not suffice to retrieve a work of art from its essential crudities, we may still come to accept it as beautiful, as it were, in intention, and for what comes to be regarded as its essence, namely, the idea or emotion it expresses. We forgive the imperfections of form as we forgive the stammerings and stutterings of persons whose broken sayings are yet full of wisdom. Usually even where the object, emotion, or idea expressed is beautiful, we demand certain formal and material elements of beauty. A telegram may convey the very apex of felicity, yet be not at all felicitous in its form or in the music of its words. If in such cases, we speak of beauty, the term is altogether metaphorical and imputed; we are using it in the same analogical sense as when we speak of a "beautiful operation" or a "beautiful deed"; it is a moral rather than an æsthetic term. We may find the letter of a friend expressive of the gentleness, fidelity, and charm that have endeared him to us, but unless these have attained sufficiently clear and explicit form and determinate unmistakable music, the letter will have a meaningful beauty only in the light of the peculiar relation existing between us and the writer. From an impartial æsthetic point of view, the epistle can only by affectionate exaggeration be called beautiful. But the arts, through their beauty of form, may present pleasingly objects, emotions, ideas, not in themselves beautiful or pleasing. The clearest case of this kind is tragedy, where we may enjoy at arm's length and through the medium of art, experiences which would in the near actualities of life be only unmitigated horror. Refracted through the medium of poetry and drama, they may appear beautiful pervasively and long. We are enabled through the arts to survey sympathetically universal emotions, those by which our own lives have been touched, or to which they are liable; we are enabled to survey bitterness and frustration calmly because they are set in a perspective, a beautiful perspective, in which they shine out clear and persuasive, purified of that bitter personal tang which makes sorrow in real life so different in tone from the beauty with which in tragedy it is halved. Any sensation, as Max Eastman justly remarks in his "Enjoyment of Poetry," may, if sufficiently mild, become pleasing. And there is hardly any human action or experience, however terrible, which cannot in the hands of a master be made appealing and sublime in its emotional effect. The beauty of Tragedy does but make visible a quality which, in more or less obvious shapes, is present always and everywhere in life. In the spectacle of death, in the endurance of intolerable pain, and in the irrevocableness of a vanished past, there is a sacredness, an overpowering awe, a feeling of the vastness, the depth, the inexhaustible mystery of existence, in which, as by some strange marriage of pain, the sufferer is bound to the world by bonds of sorrow. In these moments of insight we lose all eagerness of temporary desire, all struggling and striving for petty ends, all care for the little trivial things that, to a superficial view, make up the common life of day by day; we see, surrounding the narrow raft, illumined by the flickering light of human comradeship, the dark ocean on whose rolling waves we toss for a brief hour.[1] [Footnote 1: Bertrand Russell: _Philosophical Essays_, pp. 67-68.] But emotions and experiences that in real life are displeasing can be made pleasing in art chiefly by virtue of the qualities of material and form already discussed. The disappointment, disillusion, or terror which tragedy so vividly reveals is made tolerable chiefly through the intrinsic beauty of the vehicle in which it is set forth. The high and breathless beauty of rhythm, the verve, the mystery, and music with which evils are set forth, may make them not only tolerable but tender and appealing. What would be as immediate experience altogether heartrending, for example the torturing remorse of a Macbeth, is made splendid and moving in the incisive majesty and penetration of his monologues. At the end of Hamlet, the utter wreck, unreason, and confusion is made bearable and beautiful by the tender finality of Hamlet's dying words to Horatio: "Absent thee from felicity awhile And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story." Greek tragedy had the additional accouterments of a chorus, of music, of production in a vast amphitheater to give an atmosphere of outward grandeur to the glory of its intent. Tragedy often relieves the net horror which is its burden by the pomp and circumstance of the associations it suggests: We have palaces for our scene, rank, beauty, and virtues in our heroes, nobility in their passions and in their fate, and altogether a sort of glorification of life without which tragedy would lose both in depth of pathos--since things so precious are destroyed--and in subtlety of charm, since things so precious are manifested.[1] [Footnote 1: Santayana: _Sense of Beauty_, p. 228.] Tragedy still more subtly attains the beauty of expressiveness by making the very evils and confusions and terrors it presents somehow the exemplifications of a serene eternal order. The function of the chorus in Greek tragedy was indeed chiefly to indicate in solemn strophe and antistrophe the ordered and harmonious verities of which these particular follies and frustrations were so tender and terrible an illustration. They catch up the present and particular evil into the calm and splendid interplay of cosmic forces. Thus at the end of Euripides's play _Medea_, when the heroine has slain the children she has borne to Jason and in her fury refuses to let him gather up their dead bodies, when Jason in utter inconsolable despair, casts himself upon the earth, out of all this wrack and torture the chorus raises the audience into a contemplation of the ordered eternity by which these things come to be. It sings: "Great treasure halls hath Zeus in Heaven, From whence to man strange dooms be given, Past hope or fear; And the end men looked for cometh not, And a path is there where no man thought: So hath it fallen here."[1] [Footnote 1: Euripides: _Medea_ (Gilbert Murray translation).] ART AS VICARIOUS EXPERIENCE. The drama, art, and painting are, in general, ways by which we can vicariously experience the emotions of others. All of the expressive arts are made possible by the fundamental psychological fact that human beings give certain instinctive and habitual signs of emotion and instinctively respond to them. In consequence, through art experience may be immeasurably broadened, deepened, and mellowed. Through the medium of art, modes of life long past away can leave their imperishable and living mementos. Dante opens to the citizen of the twentieth century the mind and imagination of the Middle Ages. A Grecian urn can arouse, at least to a Keats, the whole stilled magic of the Greek spirit. And not only can we live through the life and emotion of times long dead, but the fiction and drama and poetry of our own day permit us to enter into realms of experience which in extent and variety would not be possible to one man. Indeed, the possibility of vicariously enlarging experience is one of the chief appeals of art. We cannot all be rovers, but we can have in reading Masefield a pungent sense of romantic open spaces, the salt winds, the perilous motion or the broad calm of the sea. We feel something of the same urgency as that of the author when we read: "I must go down to the seas again, the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a gray mist on the sea's face and a gray dawn breaking."[2] [Footnote 2: Masefield: _Sea-Fever_.] Art opens up wide avenues of possibility; it releases us from the limitations to which a particular mode of life, an accidental niche in a business or profession has committed us. It enables us vividly to experience and sympathetically to appreciate the lives which are led by other men, and in which something in our own personalities could have found fulfillment. While the objects of art thus broaden our experience by their precise and contagious communication of emotion, they may also express ideas. Thus a play may have a message, a poem a vision, a painting an allegory. Art is both at an advantage and at a disadvantage in the communication of ideas. Ideas, if they are to be accurately conveyed, should be devoid of emotional flourish, and presented with telegraphic directness and precision. They should have the clarity of formulas, rather than the distracting array and atmosphere of form. But ideas presented in the persuasive garb of beauty, gain in their hold over men what they lose in precision. Thus an eloquent orator, a touching letter, a vivid poem, may do more than volumes of the most definitive and convincing logic to insinuate an idea into men's minds. Compare in effectiveness the most thoroughgoing treatise on the status of the agricultural laborer with the stirring momentum of Edwin Markham's" The Man With the Hoe": "Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back the burden of the world. Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not, and that never hopes, Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow? Whose breath blew out the light within this brain? "Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave To have dominion over sea and land; To trace the stars and search the heavens for power, To feel the passion of Eternity? Is this the Dream he dreamed who shaped the suns, And marked their ways upon the ancient deep? Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf There is no shape more terrible than this-- More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed-- More filled with signs and portents for the soul-- More fraught with menace to the universe." An idea clothed with such music and passion is an incomparably effective means of arousing a response. It is this which makes art so valuable an instrument of propaganda. People will respond actively to ideas set forth with fervor by a Tolstoy or an Ibsen who would be left cold by the flat and erudite accuracy of a volume on economics. And the confirmed Platonist is made so perhaps less by the convincingness of Plato's logic, than by the inevitable and irrefutable grace of his dramatic art. There is, for certain persons educated in the arts, a satisfaction that is neither sensuous nor emotional, but intellectual. These come to discriminate form with the abstract though warm interest of the expert. The well-informed concert-goer begins to appreciate beauties hidden to the uninitiate. He notes with eager anticipation the technical genius of a composition as it unfolds, admiring the craft and skill as well as the vision of the artist. In extreme cases this may, of course, degenerate into mere pedantry. But at its best, it is the satisfaction of the man who, having a keen eye for beauty, is all the more solicitous for its accurate realization. The satisfactions of the connoisseur are merely a refinement of less sophisticated forms of appreciation. To appreciate the bare sounds of music, or the vividness of color in a painting is the prelude to more discriminating tastes. It is impossible for most men to have in all the arts expert judgment, but the ability to be able to discriminate with authority the technical achievements of a work of genius, while it does not supplant the emotional and sense satisfaction derived from the arts, nevertheless enhances them. ART AND ÆSTHETIC EXPERIENCE IN THE SOCIAL ORDER. The creative activity which is, to a peculiar extent, the artist's, is sought and practiced to some degree by all men. Genius is rare, but talent of a minor sort is frequent. In the playing of a musical instrument, in the practice of a handicraft, in the cultivation of a garden, ordinary men in modern society find an outlet for invention, craftsmanship, and imagination. To give this joy of creation, in smaller or larger measure, to all men is to promote social happiness. In the discussion of instinct it was pointed out that men come nearest to attaining happiness when they are doing what is their bent by original nature, when they are acting out of sheer love of the activity rather than from compulsion. And since all men possess, although in moderate degree, the creative impulse, to give this impulse a chance is a distinct social good. The employment of the creative imagination demands both leisure and training. Leisure is needed because, in the routine activities of industry, men's actions are determined not by their imagination, but by the immediacies of practical demands. There may be, as Helen Marot suggests, a possibility of a wide utilization of the creative impulse in industry. But a large part of industrial life must of necessity remain routine. In consequence, during their leisure hours alone, can men find free scope for some form of æsthetic interest and activity. The second requisite is training. Even the poor player of an instrument can derive some pleasure from his performance. And, under the accidents of economic and social circumstance, many a flower may really be born to blush unseen through the fact that its talents receive no opportunity. The occasional "discovery" by a wealthy man of a genius in the slums, indicates how a more liberal and general provision of training in the arts might redound to the general good. And a more widespread endowment of training in the fine arts, if it did not produce many geniuses, might at least produce a number of competent painters and musicians, who, in the practice of their skill, during their leisure, would derive considerable and altogether wholesome pleasure. While high æsthetic capacity may be lacking in most people, æsthetic appreciation is widely diffused, and the education of taste and the growth in appreciation of the arts have been marked. The museums of art in our large cities report a constantly increasing attendance, both of visitors to the galleries and attendants at lectures. And the crowds which regularly attend musical programs of a sustainedly high character in many cities, winter and summer, are evidence of how widespread and eager is appreciation of the fine arts. In the Scandinavian countries and in Germany one of the most remarkable social phenomena has been the growth of a widely supported people's theater movement, in which there has been consistent support of the highest type of operas and plays. ART AS AN INDUSTRY. The fact that objects of art are themselves immediate satisfactions and supply human wants, makes their provision for large numbers an important social enterprise. Certain forms of art, therefore, become highly industrialized. The provision of the objects of art becomes a profitable business, as it is also made possible only by a large economic outlay. Tolstoy in his _What is Art?_ brings out strikingly the economic basis of artistic enterprises in contemporary society: For the support of art in Russia [1898], the government grants millions of roubles in subsidies to academies, conservatories, and theatres. In France, twenty million francs are assigned for art, and similar grants are made in Germany and England. In every large town enormous buildings are erected for museums, academies, conservatories, dramatic schools, and for performances and concerts. Hundreds of thousands of workmen--carpenters, masons, painters, joiners, paperhangers, tailors, hairdressers, jewelers, molders, type-setters--spend their whole lives in hard labor to satisfy the demands of art, so that hardly any other department of human activity, except the military, consumes so much energy as this. Not only is enormous labor spent on this activity, but in it, as in war, the very lives of men are sacrificed. Hundreds of thousands of people devote their lives from childhood to learning to twirl their legs rapidly (dancers), or to touch notes and strings very rapidly (musicians) or to turn every phrase inside out and find a rhyme for every word.[1] [Footnote 1: Tolstoy: _What is Art?_ pp. 1-2 (written in 1898).] Tolstoy's point in thus emphasizing the immense energies devoted to artistic enterprises is to lead us to consider what is the end of all this labor. He points out scathingly the ugliness, frivolity, and crudity of much that passes for drama in the theater, for music in the concert hall, and for literature between covers. He pleads for a simple art that shall express with sincerity the genuine emotions of the great mass of men. Whatever be our estimate of Tolstoy's sweeping condemnation of so much of what has come to be regarded as classic beauty, the point he makes about the commercialization of art is incontrovertible. If art is an industry, the good is determined, as it were, by popular vote. The many must be pleased rather than the discriminating. While, as has been noted, æsthetic appreciation is fairly general, appreciation of the subtler forms of art requires training. The glaring, the conspicuous, the broad effect, is more likely to win rapid popular approval than the subtle, the quiet, and the fragile. That taste is readily educable is true. But when immediate profits are the end, one cannot pause to educate the public. And publishing and the theater are two conspicuous instances of the conflicts that not infrequently arise between standards of economic return and standards of æsthetic merit. Even where there is no deliberate selection of the worse rather than the better, commercial standards operate to put the novel in art at a discount. As already pointed out, we tend to appreciate forms and ideas to which we are accustomed. In consequence, where commercial demands make immediate widespread appreciation necessary, the untried, the odd, the radical innovation in music, literature, or drama, is a questionable venture. There are notable instances of works which, though eventually recognized as great, had to go begging at first for a publisher or a producer. This was the case with some of Meredith's earlier novels; later Meredith, as a publisher's reader, turned down some of Shaw. The same inhospitality met some of the plays of Ibsen and some of the symphonies of Tschaikowsky. ART AND MORALS. Attention has already been called to the fact that objects of art are powerful vehicles for social propaganda. Indeed some works become famous less for their intrinsic beauty than for their moral force.[1] The effectiveness of art forms as instruments of propaganda lies in the fact, previously noted, that the ideas presented, with all the accouterments of color, form, and movement, are incomparably effective in stimulating passion; ideas thus aroused in the beholder have the vivid momentum of emotion to sustain them. There is only rhetorical exaggeration in the saying, "Let me sing a country's songs, and I care not who makes its laws." Plato was one of the first to recognize how influential art could be in influencing men's actions and attitudes. So keenly did he realize its possible influence, that in constructing his ideal state he provided for the rigid regulation of all artistic production by the governing power, and the exile of all poets. He felt deeply how insinuatingly persuasive poets could become with their dangerous "beautiful lies." Artists have, indeed, not infrequently been revolutionaries, at least in the sense that the world which they so ecstatically pictured makes even the best of actual worlds look pale and paltry in comparison. The imaginative genius has naturally enough been discontented with an existing order that could not possibly measure up to his ardent specifications. Shelley is possibly the supreme example of the type; against his incorrigible construction of perfect worlds in imagination he set the real world in which men live, and found it hateful. [Footnote 1: The classic instance of a work that certainly was notable in its early history for its propaganda value is _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. An extreme instance of a book famous almost exclusively for its vivid propaganda is Upton Sinclair's _The Jungle_.] In consequence of this discontent which the imaginative artist so often expresses with the real world, and the power of his enthusiastic visions to win the loyalties and affections of men, many moralists and statesmen have, like Plato, regarded the creative artist with suspicion. They have half believed the lyric boast of the Celtic poet who wrote: "One man with a dream at pleasure, Shall go forth and conquer a crown, And three with a new song's measure, Can trample an empire down. "We, in the ages lying, In the buried past of the earth, Built Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel itself with our mirth; We o'erthrew them with prophesying To the old of the new world's worth, For each age is a dream that, is dying, Or one that is coming to birth."[1] [Footnote 1: O'Shaughnessy: _Ode to the Music-Makers_.] Many, therefore, who have reflected upon art--Plato first and chiefly--have insisted that art must be used to express only those ideas and emotions which when acted upon would have beneficent social consequences. Only those stories are to be told, those pictures to be painted, those songs to be sung, which contribute to the welfare of the state. Many artists have similarly felt a Puritanical responsibility; they have told only those tales which could be pointed with a moral. The supreme example of this dedication of art to a moral purpose is found in the Middle Ages, when all beauty of architecture, painting, and much of literature and drama, was pervaded, as it was inspired, with the Christian message. Later Milton writes at the beginning of _Paradise Lost_: "... What in me is dark, Illumine, what is low--raise and support, That to the height of this great argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to man."[2] [Footnote 2: Milton: _Paradise Lost_, book I, lines 22-26.] In a sense, the supreme achievements of creative genius have been notable instances of the expression of great moral or religious or social ideals. Lucretius's _On the Nature of Things_ is the noblest and most passionate extant rendering of the materialistic conception of life. Goethe's _Faust_ expresses in epic magnificence a whole romantic philosophy of endless exploration and infinite desire. Dante's _Divine Comedy_ sums up in a single magnificent epic the spirit and meaning of the mediæval point of view. As Henry Osborn Taylor writes of it: Yet even the poem itself was a climax long led up to. The power of its feeling had been preparing in the conceptions, even in the reasonings, which through the centuries had been gaining ardour as they became part of the entire natures of men and women. Thus had mediæval thought become emotionalized and plastic and living in poetry and art. Otherwise, even Dante's genius could not have fused the contents of mediæval thought into a poem. How many passages in the _Commedia_ illustrate this--like the lovely picture of Lia moving in the flowering meadow, with her fair hands making her a garland. The twenty-third canto of the _Paradiso_, telling of the triumph of Christ and the Virgin, yields a larger illustration; and within it, as a very concrete lyric instance, floats that flower of angelic love, the song of Gabriel circling the Lady of Heaven with its melody, and giving quintessential utterance to the love and adoration which the Middle Ages had intoned to the Virgin. Yes, if it be Dante's genius, it is also the gathering emotion of the centuries, which lifts the last cantos of the _Paradiso_ from glory to glory, and makes this closing singing of the _Commedia_ such supreme poetry. Nor is it the emotional element alone that reaches its final voice in Dante. Passage after passage of the _Paradiso_ is the apotheosis of scholastic thought and ways of stating it, the very apotheosis, for example, of those harnessed phrases in which the line of great scholastics had endeavoured to put in words the universalities of substance and accident and the absolute qualities of God.[1] [Footnote 1: Taylor: _The Mediæval Mind_, vol. II, pp. 588-89.] In these supreme instances the ideas have been given a genuinely æsthetic expression. They are beautiful in form and music, as well as in content and vision. But not infrequently where propaganda appears, art flies out of the window. Many modern plays and novels might be cited, which in their serious devotion to the enunciation of some social ideal, lapse from song into statistics. The artist with his eye on the social consequences of his work may come altogether to cease to regard standards of beauty. It is only the rare genius who can make poetry out of politics. Even Shelley lapses into deadly and arid prosiness when his chief interest becomes the presentation of the political ideas of Godwin. In contrast with the theory that art has a social responsibility, that so powerful an instrument must be used exclusively in the presentation of adequate social ideals, must be set the doctrine, widely current in the late nineteenth century, of "art for art's sake." To the exponents of this point of view, the artist has only one responsibility, the creation of beauty. It is his to realize in form every pulsation of interest and desire, to provide every possible exquisite sensation. The artist must not be a preacher; he must not tell men what is the good; he must show them the good, which is identical with the beautiful. And he must exhibit the beautiful in every unique and lovely posture which can be imagined, and which he can skillfully realize in color, in word, or in sound. Art is its own justification; "a thing of beauty is a joy forever." Where art is governed by such intentions, form and material become more important than expression. Thus there develops in France in the late nineteenth century a school of Symbolists and Sensationalists in poetry, whose single aim is the production of precise and beautiful sensations through the specific use of evocative words. The form and the style become everything in literature, in painting, and the plastic arts. The emphasis is put upon exquisiteness in decoration, upon precision in technique, upon loveliness of material. The Pre-Raphaelite movement in poetry, with its emphasis on the use of picturesque and decorative epithets, the exclusive emphasis in some modern music on subtlety of technique in tone and color, are recent examples. The position taken has clearly this much justification. A work does not become a work of art through the fact that it expresses noble sentiments. The most righteous sermon may not be beautiful. Whatever be the source of its inspiration, art must make its appeal through the palpable and undeniable beauty of the formal embodiment it has given to its vision. However much an object be prized as a moral instrument, unless it stirs the senses and the imagination, it hardly can be called a work of art. On the other hand, things intrinsically beautiful do seem to be their own justification. A poem of Keats, a Japanese print, a delicate vase, or an exquisite song demand no moral justification. They are their own sufficient excuse for being. But the "art for art's sake" doctrine, carried to extremes, results in mere decadence or triviality. It produces at best exquisite decorative trifles rather than works of a large and serious beauty. Music seems to be the art where sheer beauty of form is its own justification, for music can hardly be used as a specific medium of communication. Those compositions that purport to be "program music," to convey definite impressions of particular scenes or ideas, are somewhat halting attempts to use music as one uses language. Yet even in music, though we may enjoy ingenious and fluent melodic trifles, we regard them less highly than the earnest and magnificent beauty of a Beethoven symphony. But because art is only effective when it appeals to the senses and to the imagination does not mean that the senses and the imagination must be stirred by insignificance. The artist may use the rhythms of music, line and color, the suggestiveness of words, in the interests of ideal values. Gifted, as he is, with imaginative foresight to imagine a world better than the one in which he is living, he may, by picturing ideals in persuasive form, not only bring them before the mind of man, but insinuate them into his heart. The rational artist may note the possibilities afoot in his environment. He may treasure these hints of human happiness, and by giving them vivid reality in the forms of art indicate captivatingly to men where possible perfections lie. "For your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams." The artist may become the most influential of prophets, for his prophecies come to men not as arbitrary counsels, but as pictures of Perfection intrinsically lovely and intriguing. When Socrates is asked whether or not his perfect city exists, he replies that it exists only in Heaven, but that men in beholding it may, in the light of that divine pattern, learn to attain in their earthly cities a not dissimilar beauty. CHAPTER XIV SCIENCE AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD WHAT SCIENCE IS. Science may be considered either as the product of a certain type of human activity, or as a human activity satisfactory even apart from its fruits. As an activity, it is a highly refined form of that process of reflection by which man is, in the first place, enabled to make himself at home in the world. It differs from the ordinary or common-sense process of thinking, as we shall presently see, in being more thoroughgoing, systematic, and sustained. It is common sense of a most extraordinarily refined and penetrating kind. But before examining the procedure of science, we must consider briefly its imposing product, that science whose vast structure seems to the layman so final, imposing, and irrefragable. From the point of view of the product which is the fruit of reflective activity, Science may be defined as _a body of systematized and verified knowledge, expressing in general terms the relations of exactly defined phenomena._ In all the respects here noted, science may be contrasted with those matters of _common knowledge_, of _opinion_ or _belief_ which are the fruit of our casual daily thinking and experience. Science is, in the first place, a body of _systematized_ knowledge. One has but to contrast the presentation of facts in an ordinary textbook in zoölogy with the random presentation of facts in a newspaper or in casual conversation. In science the facts bearing on a given problem are presented as completely as possible and are classified with reference to their significant bearings upon the problem. Moreover the facts gathered and the classifications of relationship made are not more or less accurate, more or less true; they are tested and verified results. That putrefaction, for example, is due to the life of micro-organisms in the rotting substance is not a mere assumption. It has been proved, tested, and verified by methods we shall have occasion presently to examine. Scientific knowledge, moreover, is general knowledge. The relations it expresses are not _true_ in some cases of the precise kind described, _untrue_ in others. The relations hold true whenever these precise phenomena occur. This generality of scientific relations is closely connected with the fact that science expresses relations of exactly defined phenomena. When a scientific law expresses a certain relation between _A_ and _B_, it says in effect: Given _A_ as meaning this particular set of conditions and no others, and _B_ as meaning this particular set of conditions and no others, then this relation holds true. The relations between _exactly_ defined phenomena are expressed in general terms, that is, the relations expressed hold true, given certain conditions, whatever be the accompanying circumstances. It makes no difference what be the kind of objects, the law of gravitation still holds true: the attraction between objects is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Thus science as an activity is marked off by its method and its intent rather than by its subject-matter. As a method it is characterized by thoroughness, persistency, completeness, generality, and system. As regards its intent, it is characterized by its freedom from partiality or prejudice, and its interest in discovering what the facts are, apart from personal expectations and desires. In the scientific mood we wish to know what the nature of things is. There are men who seem to have a boundless, insatiable curiosity, who have a lifelong passion for acquiring facts and understanding the relationship between them. SCIENCE AS EXPLANATION. The satisfactions which scientific investigators derive from their inquiries are various. There is, in the first place, the sheer pleasure of gratifying the normal human impulse of curiosity, developed in some people to an extraordinary degree. Experience to a sensitive and inquiring mind is full of challenges and provocations to look further. The appearance of dew, an eclipse of the sun, a flash of lightning, a peal of thunder, even such commonplace phenomena as the falling of objects, or the rusting of iron, the evaporation of water, the melting of snow, may provoke inquiry, may suggest the question, "Why?" Experience, as it comes to us through the senses, is broken and fragmentary. The connections between the occurrences of Nature seem casual, and connected, as it were, purely by accident. A black sky portends rain. But such an inference made by the untrained mind is merely the result of habit. A black sky has been followed by rain in the past; the same sequence of events may be expected in the future. But the connection between the two is not really understood. Sometimes experiences seem to contradict each other. The straight stick looks crooked or broken in water. The apparent anomalies and contradictions, the welter of miscellaneous facts with which we come in contact through the experiences of the senses, are clarified by the generalizations of science. The world of facts ceases to be random, miscellaneous, and incalculable. Every phenomenon that occurs is seen to be an instance of a general law that holds among all phenomena that resemble it in certain definable respects. Thus the apparent bending of the stick in water is seen to be a special case of the laws of the refraction of light; the apparent anomaly or contradiction of our sense experiences is, as we say, explained. What seemed to be a contradiction and an exception is seen to be a clear case of a regular law. The desire for explanation in some minds is very strong. Science _explains_ in the sense that _it reduces a phenomenon to the terms of a general principle, whatever that principle may be._ When we meet a phenomenon that seems to come under no general law, we are confronted with a mystery and a miracle. We do not know what to expect from it. But when we can place a phenomenon under a general law, applicable in a wide variety of instances, everything that can be said of all the other instances in which the law applies, applies also to this particular case. Think of heat as motion, and whatever is true of motion will be true of heat; but we have had a hundred experiences of motion for everyone of heat. Think of the rays passing through this lens as bending toward the perpendicular, and you substitute for the comparatively unfamiliar lens the very familiar notion of a particular change in direction of a line, of which motion every day brings us countless examples.[1] [Footnote 1: James: _Psychology_, vol. II, p. 342.] It must be noticed that the explanation which science gives, is really in answer to the question, "How?" not the question, "Why?" We are said to understand phenomena when we understand the laws which _govern_ them. But to say that certain given phenomena--the appearance of dew, the falling of rain, the flash of lightning, the putrefaction of animal matter--_obey_ certain laws is purely metaphorical. Phenomena do not _obey_ laws in the sense in which we say the child follows the commands of his parents, or the soldier those of his officer. The laws of science simply describe the relations which have repeatedly been observed to exist between phenomena. They are laws in the sense that they are invariably observed successions. When it has been found that whenever _A_ is present, _B_ is also present, that the presence of _A_ is always correlated with the presence of _B_, and the presence of _B_ is always correlated with the presence of _A_, we say we have discovered a scientific law. Science thus explains in the sense that it reduces the multiplicity and variety of phenomena to simple and general laws. The ideal of unity and simplicity is the constant ideal toward which science moves, and its success in thus reducing the miscellaneous facts of experience has been phenomenal. The history of science in the nineteenth century offers some interesting examples. The discovery of the conservation of energy and its transformations has revealed to us the unity of force. It has shown, for example, that the phenomenon of heat could be explained by molecular motions. "Electricity annexed magnetism." Finally the relations of electricity and light are now known; "the three realms of light, of electricity and of magnetism, previously separated, form now but one; and this annexation seems final." There has been thus an increasing approach toward unity, toward the summation of phenomena under one simple, general formula.[1] Poincaré, in reviewing this progress, writes: [Footnote 1: Poincaré notes also the opposite tendency, for science to grow more complex. As he says: "And Newton's law itself? Its simplicity, so long undetected, is perhaps only apparent. Who knows whether it is not due to some complicated mechanism, to the impact of some subtile matter animated by irregular movements, and whether it has not become simple only through the action of averages and of great numbers? In any case it is difficult not to suppose that the true law contains complementary terms, which would become sensible at small distances." (_Foundations of Science_, p. 132.)] The better one knows the properties of matter the more one sees continuity reign. Since the labors of Andrews and Van der Wals, we get an idea of how the passage is made from the liquid to the gaseous state and that this passage is not abrupt. Similarly there is no gap between the liquid and solid states, and in the proceedings of a recent congress is to be seen, alongside of a work on the rigidity of liquids, a memoir on the flow of solids.... Finally the methods of physics have invaded a new domain, that of chemistry; physical chemistry is born. It is still very young, but we already see that it will enable us to connect such phenomena as electrolysis, osmosis, and the motions of ions. From this rapid exposition what shall we conclude? Everything considered, we have approached unity; we have not been as quick as we had hoped fifty years ago, we have not always taken the predicted way; but, finally, we have gained ever so much ground.[2] [Footnote 2: Poincaré: _loc. cit._, pp. 153-54.] The satisfaction which disinterested science gives to the investigator is thus, in the first place, one of clarification. Science, by enabling us to see the wide general laws of which all phenomena are particular instances, emancipates the imagination. It frees us from being bound by the accidental suggestions which come to us from mere personal caprice, habit, and environment, and enables us to observe facts uncolored by passions and hope, and to discover those laws of the universe which, in the words of Karl Pearson, "hold for all normally constituted minds." In ordinary experience, our impressions and beliefs are the results of inaccurate sense observation colored by hope and fear, aversion and revulsion, and limited by accidental circumstance. Through science we are enabled to detach ourselves from the personal and the particular and to see the world, as, undistorted, it must appear to any man anywhere: The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interests of the desire to know--it involves suppression of hopes and fears, loves and hates, and the whole subjective emotional life, until we become subdued to the material, able to see it frankly, without preconceptions, without bias, without any wish except to see it as it is, and without any belief that what it is must be determined by some relation, positive or negative, to what we should like it to be, or to what we can easily imagine it to be.[1] [Footnote 1: Bertrand Russell: _Mysticism and Logic_, p. 44.] Besides the satisfactions of system and clarity which the sciences give, they afford man power and security. "Knowledge is power," said Francis Bacon, meaning thereby that to know the connection between causes and effects was to be able to regulate conditions so as to be able to produce desirable effects and eliminate undesirable ones. Even the most disinterested inquiry may eventually produce practical results of a highly important character. "Science is," as Bertrand Russell says, "to the ordinary reader of newspapers, represented by a varying selection of sensational triumphs, such as wireless telegraphy and aeroplanes, radio-activity, etc." But these practical triumphs in the control of natural resources are often casual incidents of patiently constructed systems of knowledge which were built up without the slightest reference to their fruits in human welfare. Wireless telegraphy, for example, was made possible by the disinterested and abstract inquiry of three men, Faraday, Maxwell, and Hertz. In alternating layers of experiment and theory these three men built up the modern theory of electromagnetism, and demonstrated the identity of light with electromagnetic waves. The system which they discovered is one of profound intellectual interest, bringing together and unifying an endless variety of apparently detached phenomena, and displaying a cumulative mental power which cannot but afford delight to every generous spirit. The mechanical details which remained to be adjusted in order to utilize their discoveries for a practical system of telegraphy demanded, no doubt, very considerable ingenuity, but had not that broad sweep and that universality which could give them intrinsic interest as an object of disinterested contemplation.[1] [Footnote 1: Bertrand Russell: _Mysticism and Logic_, p. 34 ("Science and Culture").] SCIENCE AND A WORLD VIEW. One of the values of disinterested science that is of considerable psychological importance is the change in attitude it brings about in man's realization of his place in the universe. Lucretius long ago thought to free men's minds from terror and superstition by showing them how regular, ordered, and inevitable was the nature of things. The superstitious savage walks in dread among natural phenomena. He lives in a world which he imagines to be governed by capricious and incalculable forces. To a certain extent he can, as we have seen, control these. But he is ill at ease. He is surrounded by vast ambiguous forces, and moves in a trembling ignorance of what will happen next. To those educated to the scientific point of view, there is a solidity and assurance about the frame of things. Beneath the variability and flux, which they continually perceive, is the changeless law which they have learned to comprehend. Although they discover that the processes of Nature move on indifferent to the welfare of man, they know, nevertheless, that they are dependable and certain, that they are fixed conditions of life which, to a certain extent, can be controlled, and the incidental goods and ills of which are definitely calculable. Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher, noted the eternal flux, yet perceived the steady order beneath, so that he could eventually assert that all things changed save the law of change. The magnificent regularity of natural processes has been repeatedly remarked by students of science. THE ÆSTHETIC VALUE OF SCIENCE. As pointed out in the chapter on Art, scientific discovery is more than a mere tabulation of facts. It is also a work of the imagination, and gives to the worker in the scientific field precisely the same sense of satisfaction as that experienced by the creative artist. Of Kelvin his biographer writes: Like Faraday and the other great masters in science, he was accustomed to let his thoughts become so filled with the facts on which his attention was concentrated that the relations subsisting between the various phenomena gradually dawned upon him, and he _saw_ them, as if by some process of instinctive vision denied to others. ... His imagination was vivid; in his intense enthusiasm, he seemed to be driven rather than to drive himself. The man was lost in his subject, becoming as truly inspired as is the artist in the act of creation.[1] [Footnote 1: Sylvanus P. Thompson; _The Life of William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs_, pp. 1125 ff.] In the working-out of a principle, the systematizing of many facts under a sweeping generalization, the scientist finds a creator's joy. He is giving form and significance to the disordered and chaotic materials of experience. The scientific imagination differs from the artistic imagination simply in that it is controlled with reference to facts. The first flash is subjected to criticism, examination, revision, and testing. But the grand generalizations of science originate in just such an unpredictable original vision. The discovery of the fitting formula which clarifies a mass of facts hitherto chaotic and contradictory is very closely akin to the process by which a poet discovers an appropriate epithet or a musician an apposite chord. But in its products as well as in its processes, scientific investigations have a high æsthetic value. There is symmetry, order, and splendor in the relations which science reveals. The same formal beauty that appeals to us in a Greek statue or a Beethoven symphony is to be found in the universe, but on a far more magnificent scale. There is, in the first place, the sense of rhythm and regularity: There comes [to the scientific investigator] a sense of pervading order. Probably this began at the very dawn of human reason--when man first discovered the year with its magnificent object-lesson of regularly recurrent sequences, and it has been growing ever since. Doubtless the early forms that this perception of order took referred to somewhat obvious uniformities; but is there any essential difference between realizing the orderliness of moons and tides, of seasons and migrations, and discovering Bodes's law of the relations of the planets, or Mendeléeff's "Periodic Law" of the relations of the atomic weights of the chemical elements?[1] [Footnote 1: Thomson: _Introduction to Science_, p. 174.] Ever since Newton's day the harmony of the spheres has been a favorite poetic metaphor. The spaciousness of the solar system has captivated the imagination, as have the time cycles revealed by the paths of comets and meteors. The universe seems indeed, as revealed by science, to present that quality of æsthetic satisfaction which is always derived from unity in multiplicity. The stars are as innumerable as they are ordered. And it was Lucretius, the poet of naturalism, who was wakened to wonder and admiration at the ceaseless productivity, inventiveness, and fertility of Nature. We find in the revelations of science again the same examples of delicacy and fineness of structure that we admire so much in the fine arts. The brain of an ant, as Darwin said, is perhaps the most marvelous speck of matter in the universe. Again "the physicists tell us that the behaviour of hydrogen gas makes it necessary to suppose that an atom of it must have a constitution as complex as a constellation, with about eight hundred separate corpuscles."[2] [Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 176.] THE DANGER OF "PURE SCIENCE." The fascinations of disinterested inquiry are so great that they may lead to a kind of scientific intemperance. The abstracted scientific interest may become so absorbed in the working-out of small details that it becomes over-specialized, narrow, and pedantic. The pure theorist has always been regarded with suspicion by the practical man. His concern over details of flora or fauna, over the precise minutiæ of ancient hieroglyphics, seems absurdly trivial in comparison with the central passions and central purposes of mankind. There are workers in every department of knowledge who become wrapt up in their specialties, forgetting the forest for the trees. There are men so absorbed in probing the crevices of their own little niche of knowledge that they forget the bearings of their researches. Especially in time of stress, of war or social unrest, men have felt a certain callousness about the interests of the abstrusely remote scholar. We shall have occasion to note presently that it is in this coldness and emancipation from the pressing demands of the moment that science has produced its most pronounced eventual benefits for mankind. But an uncontrolled passion for facts and relations may degenerate into a mere play and luxury that may have its fascination for the expert himself, but affords neither sweetness nor light to any one else. One has but to go over the lists of doctors' dissertations published by German universities during the late nineteenth century to find examples of inquiry that seem to afford not the slightest justification in the way of eventual good to mankind.[1] [Footnote 1: It is only fair to say that literary studies have been marked by more barren and fruitless investigations (purely philological inquiry, for example) than have the physical sciences.] PRACTICAL OR APPLIED SCIENCE. Thus far we have been considering science chiefly as an activity which satisfies some men as an activity in itself, by the æsthetic, emotional, and intellectual values they derive from it. But a fact at once paradoxical and significant in the history of human progress is that this most impersonal and disinterested of man's activities has been profoundly influential in its practical fruits. The practical application of the sciences rests on the utilization of the exact formulations of pure science. Through these formulations we can control phenomena by artificially setting up relations of which science has learned the consequences, thus attaining the consequences we desire, and avoiding those we do not. The _direct_ influence of pure science on practical life is enormous. The observations of Newton on the relations between a falling stone and the moon, of Galvani on the convulsive movements of frogs' legs in contact with iron and copper, of Darwin on the adaptation of woodpeckers, of tree-frogs, and of seeds to their surroundings, of Kirchhoff on certain lines which occur in the spectrum of sunlight, of other investigators on the life-history of bacteria--these and kindred observations have not only revolutionized our conception of the universe, but they have revolutionized or are revolutionizing, our practical life, our means of transit, our social conduct, our treatment of disease.[1] [Footnote 1: Karl Pearson: _The Grammar of Science_, pp. 35-36.] Francis Bacon was one of the first to appreciate explicitly the possibilities of the control of nature in the interests of human welfare. He saw the vast possibilities which a careful and comprehensive study of the workings of nature had in the enlargement of human comfort, security, and power. In _The New Atlantis_ he envisages an ideal commonwealth, whose unique and singular institution is a House of Solomon, a kind of Carnegie Foundation devoted to inquiry, the fruits of which might be, as they were, exploited in the interests of human happiness: "The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes and the secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire to the effecting of all things possible."[2] [Footnote 2: _The New Atlantis_.] Science sometimes appears so remote and alien to the immediate concrete objects which meet and interest us in daily experience that we tend to forget that historically it was out of concrete needs and practical interests that science arose. Geometry, seemingly a clear case of abstract and theoretical science, arose out of the requirements of practical surveying and mensuration among the Egyptians. In the same way botany grew out of herb gathering and gardening. The application of the exact knowledge gained by the pure sciences, may, if properly directed, immeasurably increase the sum of human welfare. One has but to review briefly the history of invention to appreciate this truth with vividness and detail. The great variety of the "applied sciences" shows the extent and multiplicity of the fruits of theoretical inquiry. Astronomy plays an important part in navigation; but it also earns its living by helping the surveyor and the mapmaker and by supplying the world with accurate time. Industrial chemistry offers, perhaps, the most striking examples. There is, for example, the fixation of nitrogen, which makes possible the artificial production of ammonia and potash; the whole group of dye industries made possible through the chemical production of coal tar; the industrial utilization of cellulose in the paper, twine, and leather industries; the promise of eventual production on a large scale of synthetic rubber; the electric furnace, which, with its fourteen-thousand-degree range of heat, makes possible untold increase in the effectiveness of all the chemical industries. Industrial chemistry is only one instance. The application of theoretical inquiry in physics has made possible the telegraph, the telephone, wireless telegraphy, electric motors, and flying machines. Mineralogy and oceanography have opened up new stores of natural resources. Biological research has had diverse applications. Bacteriological inquiry has been fruitfully applied in surgery, hygiene, agriculture, and the artificial preservation of food. The principles of Mendelian inheritance have been used in the practical improvement of domestic animals and cultivated plants. The list might be indefinitely extended. The sciences arose as attempts, more or less successful, to solve man's practical problems. They became historically cut off, as they may in the case of the pure scientist still be cut off, from practical considerations. But no matter how remote and abstract they become, they yield again practical fruits. Applied science, if it becomes too narrowly interested in practical results, limits its own resources. Purely theoretical inquiry may be of the most immense ultimate advantage. In a sense the more abstract and remote science becomes, the more eventual promise it contains. By getting away from the confusing and irrelevant details of particular situations, science is enabled to frame generalizations applicable to a wide array of phenomena differing in detail, but having in common significant characteristics. Men can learn fruitfully to control their experience precisely because they can emancipate themselves from the immediate demands of practical life, from the suggestions that arise in the course of instinctive and habitual action. "A certain power of _abstraction_, of deliberate turning away from the habitual responses to a situation, was required before men could be emancipated to follow up suggestions that in the end are fruitful."[1] [Footnote 1: Dewey: _How We Think_, p. 156.] Too complete absorption in immediate problems may operate to deprive action of that sweeping and penetrating vision which a freer inquiry affords. The temporarily important may be the less important in the long run. A practical adjustment of detail may produce immediate benefits in the way of improved industrial processes and more rapid and economical production, but some seemingly obscure discovery in the most abstruse reaches of scientific theory may eventually be of untold practical significance. Only the extremely ignorant can question the utility of, let us say, the prolonged application of the Greek intellect to the laws of conic sections. Whether we think of bridges or projectiles, of the curves of ships, or of the rules of navigation, we must think of conic sections. The rules of navigation, for instance, are in part based on astronomy. Kepler's Laws are foundation stones of that science, but Kepler discovered that Mars moves in an ellipse round the sun in one of the foci by a deduction from conic sections.... Yet the historical fact is that these conic sections were studied as an abstract science for eighteen centuries before they came to be of their highest use.[2] [Footnote 2: Thomson: _Introduction to Science_, pp. 239-40.] Pasteur, whose researches are of such immediate consequence in human health, began his studies in the crystalline forms of tartrates. The tremendous commercial uses which have been made of benzene had their origin "in a single idea, advanced in a masterly treatise by Auguste Kekule in the year 1865."[1] [Footnote 1: Quoted by Thomson from an address on "Technical Chemistry" by C. E. Munroe.] Practical life has been continually enriched by theoretical inquiry. Scientific descriptions increase in value as they become absolutely impersonal, absolutely precise, and especially as they become condensed general formulas, which will be applicable to an infinite variety of particular situations. And such descriptions are necessarily abstract and theoretical. ANALYSIS OF SCIENTIFIC PROCEDURE. Scientific method is merely common sense made more thoroughgoing and systematic. Reflection of a more or less effective kind takes place in ordinary experience wherever instinctive or habitual action is not adequate to meet a situation, whenever the individual has a problem to solve, an adjustment to make. Thinking, of some kind, goes on continually. Scientific thinking merely means careful, safeguarded, systematic thinking. It is thinking alert and critical of its own methods. As contrasted with ordinary common-sense thinking, it is distinguished by "caution, carefulness, thoroughness, definiteness, exactness, orderliness, and methodic arrangement." We think, in any case, because we have to, being creatures born with a set of instincts not adequate to meet the conditions of our environment. We can think carelessly and ineffectively, or carefully and successfully. Scientific method, or orderly, critical, and systematic thinking, is not applicable to one subject-matter exclusively. Examples are commonly drawn from the physical or chemical or biological laboratory, but the elements of scientific method may be illustrated in the procedure of a business man meeting a practical problem, a lawyer sifting evidence, a statesman framing a new piece of legislation. In all these cases the difference between a genuinely scientific procedure and mere casual and random common sense is the same. Science is nothing but _trained and organized common sense_, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only so far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club. The primary power is the same in each case, and perhaps the untutored savage has the more brawny arm of the two. The _real_ advantage lies in the point and polish of the swordsman's weapon; in the trained eye quick to spy out the weakness of the adversary; in the ready hand prompt to follow it on the instant. But, after all, the sword exercise is only the hewing and poking of the clubman refined and developed. So, the vast results obtained by science are won by ... no mental processes, other than those which are practiced by everyone of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones.... Nor does that process of induction and deduction by which a lady finding a stain of a peculiar kind upon her dress, concludes that somebody has upset the inkstand thereon, differ, in any way, in kind, from that by which Adams and Leverrier discovered a new planet. The man of science, in fact, simply uses with scrupulous exactness the methods which we all, habitually and at every moment, use carelessly; and the man of business must as much avail himself of the scientific method--must as truly be a man of science--as the veriest bookworm of us all.[1] [Footnote 1: Huxley: _Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews_, pp. 77, 78 (in "The Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences").] The scientific procedure becomes, as we shall see, highly complicated, involving elaborate processes of observation, classification, generalization, deduction or development of ideas, and testing. But it remains thinking just the same, and originates in some problem or perplexity, just as thinking does in ordinary life. SCIENCE AND COMMON SENSE. It is profitable to note in some detail the ways in which scientific method, in spirit and technique, differs from common-sense thinking. It is more insistent in the first place on including the whole range of relevant data, of bringing to light all the facts that bear on a given problem. In common-sense thinking we make, as we say, snap judgments; we jump at conclusions. Anything plausible is accepted as evidence; anything heard or seen is accepted as a fact. The scientific examiner insists on examining and subjecting to scrutiny the facts at hand, on searching for further facts, and on distinguishing the facts genuinely significant in a given situation from these that happen to be glaring or conspicuous. This is merely another way of saying that both accuracy and completeness of observation are demanded, accuracy in the examination of the facts present, and completeness in the array of facts bearing on the question at hand. Scientific thinking is thus primarily inquiring and skeptical. It queries the usual; it tries, as we say, to penetrate beneath the surface. Common sense, for example, gives suction as the explanation of water rising in a pump. But where, as at a great height above sea level, this mysterious power of suction does not operate, or when it is found that it does not raise water above thirty-two feet, common sense is at a loss. Scientific thinking tries to analyze the gross fact, and by accurately and completely observing all the facts bearing on the phenomenon endeavors to find out "what _special_ conditions are present when the effect occurs" and absent when it does not occur. Instead of trying to fit all unusual, contradictory, or exceptional facts into _a priori_ ideas based on miscellaneous and unsifted facts, it starts without any _fixed_ conclusions beforehand, but carefully observes all the facts which it can secure with reference to a particular problem, deliberately seeking the exceptional and unusual as crucial instances. Thus in a sociological inquiry, the scientist, instead of accepting "common-sense" judgments (based on a variety of miscellaneous, incomplete, and unsifted facts) that certain races are inferior or superior, tries, by specific inquiries, to establish the facts of racial capacities or defects. Instead of accepting proverbial wisdom and popular estimates of the relative capacities of men and women, he tries by careful observation and experiment accurately to discover all the facts bearing on the question, and to generalize from those facts. Scientific method thus discounts prejudice or dogmatism. A prejudice is literally a pre-judgment. Common sense sizes up the situation beforehand. Instead of examining a situation in its own terms, and _arriving_ at a conclusion, it _starts_ with one. The so-called hard-headed man of common sense _knows_ beforehand. He has a definite and stereotyped reaction for every situation with which he comes in contact. These rubber-stamp responses, these unconsidered generalizations, originate in instinctive desires, or in preferences acquired through habit. Common sense finds fixed pigeon holes into which to fit all the variety of specific circumstances and conditions which characterize experience. "When its judgments happen to be correct, it is almost as much a matter of good luck as of method.... That potatoes should be planted only during the crescent moon, that near the sea people are born at high tide and die at low tide, that a comet is an omen of danger, that bad luck follows the cracking of a mirror," all these are the results of common-sense observation. Matters of common knowledge are thus not infrequently matters of common misinformation. Common-sense knowledge is largely a matter of uncritical belief. When there is absent scientific examination of the sources and grounds of belief, those judgments and conclusions are likely to be accepted which happen to have wide social currency and authority. In an earlier chapter, it was shown how the mere fact of an opinion prevailing among a large number of one's group or class gives it great emotional weight. Where opinions are not determined by intelligent examination and decision, they are determined by force of habit, early education, and the social influences to which one is constantly exposed. The scientific spirit is a spirit of emancipated inquiry as contrasted with blind acceptance of belief upon authority. The phenomenal developments of modern science began when men ceased to accept authoritatively their beliefs about man and nature, and undertook to examine phenomena in their own terms. The phenomenal rise of modern science is coincident with the collapse of unquestioning faith as the leading ingredient of intellectual life. Common sense renders men peculiarly insensitive to the possibilities of the novel, peculiarly susceptible to the influence of tradition. It was common sense that credited the influence of the position of the stars upon men's welfare, the power of old women as witches, and the unhealthiness of night air. It was common sense also that ridiculed Fulton's steamboat, laughed at the early attempts of telegraphy and telephony, and dismissed the aeroplane as an interesting toy. The characteristic feature of common sense or empirical thinking is its excess traditionalism, its wholesale acceptance of authority,[1] its reliance upon precedent. Where beliefs are not subjected to critical revision and examination, to the constant surveillance of the inquiring intelligence, there will be no criterion by which to estimate the true and the false, the important and the trivial. All beliefs that have wide social sanction, or that chime in with immediate sense impressions, established individual habits, or social customs will be accepted with the same indiscriminate hospitality. To common sense the sun _does_ appear to go round the earth; the stick _does_ appear broken in water. Thus "totally false opinions may appear to the holder of them to possess all the character of rationally verifiable truth." [Footnote 1: "Authority" in this sense of social prestige must be distinguished from "authority" in the sense of scientific authority. The acceptance of the authority of the expert is the acceptance of opinions that we have good reason to believe are the result of scientific inquiry.] The dangers and falsities of common-sense judgments are conditioned not only by expectations and standards fixed by the social environment, but by one's own personal predilections and aversions. Recent developments in psychology have made much of the fact that many of our so-called reasoned judgments are rationalizations, secondary reasons found after our initial, primary, and deep-seated emotional responses have been made. They are the result of emotional "complexes," fears, expectations, and desires of which we are not ourselves conscious.[1] It is from these limiting conditions of personal preference and social environment that scientific method frees us. [Footnote 1: "When a party politician is called upon to consider a new measure, his verdict is largely determined by certain constant systems of ideas and trends of thought, constituting what is generally known as 'party bias.' We should describe these systems in our newly acquired terminology as his 'political complex.' The complex causes him to take up an attitude toward the proposed measure which is quite independent of any absolute merits that the latter may possess. If we argue with our politician, we shall find that the complex will reinforce in his mind those arguments which support the view of his party, while it will infallibly prevent him from realizing the force of the arguments propounded by the opposite side. Now, it should be observed that the individual himself is probably quite unaware of this mechanism in his mind. He fondly imagines that his opinion is formed solely by the logical pros and cons of the measure before him. We see, in fact, that not only is his thinking determined by a complex of whose action he is unconscious, but that he believes his thoughts to be the result of other causes which are in reality insufficient and illusory. This latter process of self-deception, in which the individual conceals the real foundation of his thought by a series of adventitious props, is termed 'rationalization.' "The two mechanisms which manifest themselves in our example of the politician, the unconscious origin of beliefs and actions, and the subsequent process of rationalization to which they are subjected, are of fundamental importance in psychology." (Bernard Hart: _The Psychology of Insanity_, pp. 64-66.)] Again, even where common-sense judgments are not particularly qualified by such conditions, they are frequently based upon the observation of purely accidental conjunctions of circumstances. A sequence once or twice observed is taken as the basis of a causal relation. This gives rise to what is known in technical logic as the _post hoc ergo propter hoc_ fallacy; that is, the assumption that because one thing happens after another, therefore it happens _because_ of it. Many superstitions probably had their origin in such chance observations, and belief in them is strengthened by some accidental confirmation. Thus if a man walks under a ladder one day and dies the next, the believer in the superstition that walking under a ladder brings fatal results will find in this instance a clear ratification of his belief. There seems to be an inveterate human tendency to seek for causes, and by those who are not scientific inquirers causes are lightly assigned. It is easiest and most plausible to assign as a cause an immediately preceding circumstance. Exceptional or contradictory circumstances are then either unnoticed or pared down to fit the belief. Scientific method does not depend on such chance conjunctions of circumstance, but controls its observations or experimentally arranges conditions so as to discover what are the conditions necessary to produce given effects, or what effects invariably follow from given causes. It does not accept a chance conjunction as evidence of an invariable relation, but seeks, under regulated conditions, to discover what the genuinely invariable relations are. This method of controlling our generalizations about the facts of experience, we shall presently examine in some detail. CURIOSITY AND SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY. Curiosity, the instinctive basis of the desire to know, is the basis of scientific inquiry. Without this fundamental desire, there could be no sustaining motive to deep and thoroughgoing scientific research, for theoretical investigations do not always give promise of immediate practical benefits. The scientific interest is a development of that restless curiosity for a knowledge of the world in which they are living which children so markedly exhibit. Beginning as a kind of miscellaneous and omnivorous appetite for facts of whatever description, it grows into a desire to understand the unsuspected and hidden relations between facts, to penetrate to the unities discoverable beneath the mysteries and multiplicities of things. The scientific mood is thus in the first place a sheer instinctive curiosity, a basic passion for facts. It is this which sustains the scientific worker in the sometimes long and dreary business of collecting specimens, instances, details. Many of the most notable scientific advances, as Lord Kelvin pointed out, must be attributed to the most protracted and unmitigated drudgery in the collection of facts, a thoroughgoing and trying labor in which the scientific worker could persist only when fortified by an eager and insistent curiosity. This "hodman's work" is the basis of the great generalizations which constitute the framework of the modern scientific systems. "The monotonous and quantitative work of star-cataloguing has been continued from Hipparchus, who began his work more than a century before Christ, work which is continued even to the present day. This work, uninspiring as it seems, is yet an essential basis for the applications of astronomy, the determination of time, navigation, surveying. Furthermore, without good star places, we can have no theory of the motions of the solar system, and without accurate catalogues of the stars we can know nothing of the grander problems of the universe, the motion of our sun among the stars, or of the stars among themselves."[1] [Footnote 1: Hinks: _Astronomy_, p. 162.] Not only is curiosity a sustaining motive in the drudgery of collection and research incident and essential to scientific generalization; it alone makes possible that suspense of judgment which is necessary to fruitful scientific inquiry. This suspense is, as we have already seen, difficult for most men. Action demands immediate decision, and inquiry deliberately postpones decision. It is only a persistent desire to "get at the bottom of the matter" that will act as a check upon the demands of social life and of individual impatience which rush us to conclusions. In most men, as earlier noted, the sharp edge of curiosity becomes easily blunted. They are content, outside their own immediate personal interests, "to take things for granted." They glide over the surfaces of events, they cease to query the authenticity of facts, or to examine their relevance and their significance, or to be concerned about their completeness. For an example, one has but to listen to or partake in the average discussion of any political or social issue of the present day. There are few men who retain, even as far as middle life, a genuinely inquiring interest in men and affairs. Their curiosity is dulled by fatigue and the pressure of their own interests and preoccupations, and they allow their prejudices and formulas to pass for judgments and conclusions. The scientist is the man in whom curiosity has become a permanent passion, who, as long as he lives, is unwilling to forego inquiry into the processes of Nature, or of human relations. THINKING BEGINS WITH A PROBLEM. While the general habit of inquiry is developed in the satisfaction of the instinct of curiosity, any particular investigation begins with a felt difficulty. By difficulty is not meant one of an imperative and practical kind, but any problem whether theoretical or practical. For many men, it is true, thinking occurs only when instinct and habit are inadequate to adjust them to their environment. Any problem of daily life affords an example. To borrow an illustration from Professor Dewey: A man traveling in an unfamiliar region comes to a branching of the roads. Having no sure knowledge to fall back upon, he is brought to a standstill of hesitation and suspense. Which road is right? And how shall the perplexity be resolved? There are but two alternatives. He must either blindly and arbitrarily take his course, trusting to luck for the outcome, or he must discover grounds for the conclusion that a given road is right.[1] [Footnote l: Dewey: _How We Think_, p. 10.] To the inquiring mind, purely theoretical difficulties or discrepancies will provoke thought. To the astronomer an unaccounted-for perturbation in the path of a planet provokes inquiry; the chemist is challenged by a curious unexplained reaction of two chemical elements, the biologist, anterior to the discovery of micro-organisms, by the putrefaction of animal tissues. The degree to which curiosity persists and the extent of training a man has had in a given field largely determine the kind of situations that will provoke inquiry. "A primrose by the river's brim" may be simply a primrose to one man, while to another, a botanist, it may suggest an interesting and complex problem of classification. But however remote and recondite thinking becomes, however far removed from immediate practical concerns, it occurs essentially in a situation analogous to the "forked-road situation" described above. The situation as it stands is confused, ambiguous, uncertain. In a practical problem, for example, there are two or more courses of action open to us, all of them giving promise as solutions of our difficulties. We aim through reflection to reduce the uncertainty, to clarify the situation, to discover more clearly the consequences of the various alternatives which suggest themselves to us. When action is unimpeded, suggestions flow on just as they arise in our minds. This is illustrated best in the reveries of a day-dream when casual and disconnected fancies follow each other in random and uncontrolled succession. But when there is a problem to be settled, an ambiguity to be resolved, suggestions are held in check and controlled with reference to the end we have in view; each suggestion is estimated with regard to its relevance to the problem in hand. Every idea that arises is, so to speak, queried: "Is it or is it not a solution to our present difficulty?" We are indebted to Professor Dewey, for an analysis of the thought process. Every instance of thinking reveals five steps: (1) A felt difficulty, (2) its location and definition, (3) suggestions of possible solutions, (4) development by reasoning of the bearings of the most promising suggestion, (5) further observation or experiment leading to its acceptance or rejection, that is a conclusion either of belief or disbelief. When instinct or habit suffices to adjust us to our environment, action runs along smoothly, freely, uninterruptedly. In consequence the provocation to thinking may at first be a mere vague shock or disturbance. We are, as it were, in trouble without knowing precisely what the trouble is. We must carefully inquire into the nature of the problem before undertaking a solution. To take a simple instance, an automobile may suddenly stop. We know there is a difficulty, but whether it is a difficulty with the transmission, with the carburetor, or with the supply of gasoline, we cannot at first tell. Before we do anything else in solving our problem, we find out literally and precisely _what the trouble is_. To take a different situation, a doctor does not undertake to prescribe for a patient until he has diagnosed the difficulty, found out precisely what the features of the problem are. The second step after the situation has been examined and its precise elements defined, is _suggestion_. That is, we consider the various possibilities which _suggest_ themselves as solutions to our problem. There may be several ways of temporarily repairing our engine; the doctor may think of two or three possible treatments for a disease. In one sense, suggestion is uncontrollable. The kind of suggestions that occur to an individual depend on his "genius or temperament," on his past experiences, on his hopes or fears or expectations when that particular situation occurs. We can, however, through the methods of science, control suggestions indirectly. We can do this, in the first place, by reëxamining the facts which give rise to suggestion. If upon close examination, the facts appear differently from what they did at first, we will derive different inferences from them. Different suggestions will arise from the facts _A, B, C_, than from the facts _A', B', C'_. Again we can regulate the conditions under which credence is given to the various suggestions that arise. These suggestions are entertained merely as tentative, and are not accepted until experimentally verified. "The suggested conclusion as only tentatively entertained constitutes an idea." After the variety of suggestions that proffer themselves as solutions to a problem have been considered, the third step is the logical development of the idea or suggestion that gives most promise of solving the difficulty. That is, even before further facts are sought, the idea that gives promise of being a solution is followed out to its logical consequences. Thus, for example, astronomers were for a long time puzzled by unexplained perturbations in the path of the planet Uranus. The suggestion occurred that an unseen planet was deflecting it from the path it should, from observation and calculation, be following. If this were the case, from the amount of deflection it was mathematically calculated, prior to any further observation, that the supposed planet should appear at a certain point in space. It was by this deductive elaboration that the planet Neptune was discovered. It was figured out deductively that a planet deflecting the path of the planet Uranus by just so-and-so much should be found at just such and such a particular point in the heavens. When the telescopes were turned in that direction, the planet Neptune was discovered at precisely the point deductively forecast. The elaboration of an idea through reasoning it out may sometimes lead to its rejection. But in thinking out its details we may for the first time note its appositeness to the solution of the problem in hand. The gross suggestion may seem wild and absurd, but when its bearings and consequences are logically developed there may be some item in the development which dovetails into the problem as its solution. William James gives as the outstanding feature of reasoning, "sagacity, or the perception of the essence."[1] By this he meant the ability to single out of a complex situation or idea the significant or key feature. It is only by a logical development of a suggested solution to a problem that it is possible to hit upon the essence of the matter for a particular situation, to single out of a gross total situation, the key to the phenomenon. "In reasoning, _A_ may suggest _B_; but _B_, instead of being an idea which is simply _obeyed_ by us, is an idea which suggests the distinct additional idea _C_. And where the train of suggestion is one of reasoning distinctively so-called as contrasted with mere 'revery,' ... the ideas bear certain inward relations to each other which we must carefully examine. The result _C_ yielded by a true act of reasoning is apt to be a thing voluntarily _sought_, such as the means to a proposed end, the ground for an observed effect, or the effect of an assumed cause."[2] Thus what at first sight might seem a fantastic suggestion may, when its bearings are logically followed out, be seen in one of its aspects to be the key to the solution of a problem. To primitive man it might have seemed absurd to suggest that flowing water might be used as power; to the man in Franklin's day that the same force that was exhibited in the lightning might be used in transportation and in lighting houses.[1] [Footnote 1: James: _Psychology_, vol. II, p. 343.] [Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 329.] [Footnote 1: James gives an illuminating passage on the importance of the effectiveness of _reasoning_ things out: "I have a student's lamp, of which the flame vibrates most unpleasantly unless the collar which bears the chimney be raised about a sixteenth of an inch. I learned the remedy after much torment by accident, and now always keep the collar up with a small wedge. But my procedure is a mere association of two totals, diseased object and remedy. One learned in pneumatics could have named the _cause_ of the disease, and thence inferred the remedy immediately. By many measurements of triangles, one might find their area always equal to their height multiplied by half their base, and one might formulate an empirical law to that effect. But a reasoner saves himself all this trouble, by seeing that it is the essence (_pro hac vice_) of a triangle to be the half of a parallelogram whose area is the height into the entire base. To see this he must invent additional lines; and the geometer must often draw such to get at the essential properties he may require in a figure. The essence consists in some _relation of the figure to the new lines_, a relation not obvious at all until they are put in. The geometer's sagacity lies in the invention of the new lines." (_Psychology_, vol. II, pp. 339-40.)] But no thinking is conclusive until after the experimental certification and warranting of the idea which has been held in mind as the solution of the problem. By deduction, by logical elaboration of an idea, we find its adoption involves certain consequences. Some of the logical consequences which follow from an idea may indicate that it is a plausible solution of our problem. But no matter how plausible a suggestion looks, until it is verified by observation or experiment the thinking process is not concluded, is not finished, as we say, _conclusively_. When an idea or a suggestion has been developed, and seen to involve--as an idea--certain inevitable logical consequences, the idea must be tested by further observation and experiment. Suggestions arise _from_ facts and must be tested _by_ them. Until the suggestion is verified, it remains merely a suggestion, a theory, a hypothesis, an idea. It is only when the consequences implied logically in the very idea itself are found in the actual situation that the idea is accepted as a solution to the problem. Sometimes the suggestion may be verified by observation; sometimes conditions must be deliberately arranged for testing its adequacy. In either case it is only when the facts of the situation correspond to the conditions theoretically involved that the tentative idea is accepted as a conclusion. Thus a treatment that is regarded by the doctor as a possible cure can be called an actual cure only when its beneficent results are observed. The supposition about the planet Neptune is only verified when the planet is actually observed in the heavens. Thinking ends, as it begins, in observation. At the beginning the facts are carefully examined to see precisely where the difficulty lies; at the end they are again examined to see whether an idea, an entertained hypothesis, a suggested solution, can be verified in actual observable results. THE QUALITY OF THINKING--SUGGESTION. The quality of thinking varies, first, with the fertility of suggestion of the analyzing mind. Ease of suggestion, in the first place, depends on innate individual differences. There are some minds so constituted that every fact provokes a multitude of suggestions. Readiness in responding with "ideas" to any experience is dependent primarily on initial differences in resilience and responsiveness. But differences in training and past experience are also contributory. A man who has much experience in a given field, say in automobile repairing, will, given a difficulty, not only think of more suggestions, but think more rapidly in that field. Again persons differ in range or number of suggestions that occur. The quality of the thinking process and of the results it produces depends, in part, on the variety of suggestions which occur to an individual in the solution of a given problem. If too few suggestions occur one may fail to hit upon any promising solution. If too many suggestions occur one may be too confused to arrive at any conclusion at all. Whether an individual has few or many suggestions depends largely on native differences. It depends, also, however in part, on acquaintance with a given field. And the fertility of suggestions may be increased by a careful survey and re-survey of the facts at hand, and by the deliberate searching-out of further facts from which further suggestions may be derived. Suggestions differ, finally, in regard to depth or significance; by nature and by training, individuals produce ideas of varying degrees of significance in the solution of problems. Ease and versatility of suggestion not infrequently connote superficiality; to make profound and far-reaching suggestions takes time. It is further requisite, as already pointed out, that the analyzing mind be free from prejudice. Thinking is continually qualified, as we have seen, by preferences and aversions. Every prejudice, every _a priori_ belief we have, literally prejudges the inquiry. Whenever we are moved by a "predominant passion," we cannot survey the facts impartially. It is hard to think clearly and justly about people whom we love or hate, or to estimate with precision the morality of actions toward which we are moved by very strong impulses. It is only the mind that remains resolutely emancipated from the compulsions of habit and circumstances, that persists in surveying facts as they are, letting the chips, so to speak, fall where they will, that can be really effective in thinking. In the physical sciences it is comparatively easy to start with no prejudices; in social inquiries where we are bound by traditions, loyalties, and antipathies it is much more difficult. Not the least essential to effective thinking is persistence and thoroughness of investigation. Since we are primarily creatures of action, we crave definiteness and immediacy of decision, and there is a constant temptation to rush to a conclusion. In order to attain genuine completeness of the facts and certainty and accuracy as to what the facts are, long, unwavering persistence is required. There must be persistence, moreover, not merely because of the length of time and the amount of labor involved in the collection of data; steadiness is required in holding in mind the end or purpose of the investigation. Too often in inquiry into the facts of human relations, the specific problem is forgotten and facts are collected with an indiscriminate omnivorousness. There is in such cases plodding, but of an unenlightened and fruitless sort. Not only _persistency_ but _consistency_ is required. The investigation must be steadily carried on with persistent and unwavering reference to the specific business in hand. Effective thinking depends further on familiarity with the field of facts under investigation. Even the most ready and fertile of minds, the most orderly habits of thought, are at a loss without a store of material; that is, facts from which suggestions may arise. And this store of materials can only be attained through a thoroughgoing acquaintance with the particular field of inquiry. Thinking aims to explain the relations between facts, and an intimate acquaintance with facts involved in a given situation is prerequisite to any generalization whatsoever. While the native fertility of given minds cannot be controlled, suggestions can be controlled indirectly. Suggestions arise from the data at hand, but the data themselves change under more precise conditions of observation, and the suggestions that arise from them change in consequence. The whole elaborate apparatus of science, its instruments of precision, are designed to yield an exact determination of the precise nature of the data at hand. The scientist attempts to prevent "reading-in" of meanings. "Reading-in" of meanings may be due to various causes. In the first place there may be purely physical causes: a dim light, a fog, a cracked window-pane are examples of how ordinary observation may lead us astray. Again, physiological causes may be at work to distort sensations: imperfection's in the sense organs, fatigue, illness, and the like are examples. But not least among the causes of error must be set psychological causes. That is, we read facts differently in the light of what we fear or hope, like or dislike, expect or recall. We see things the way we want them to be, or the way previous experience has taught us to expect them to be. Both physiological and psychological causes may be checked up by instruments. Indeed, one of the chief utilities of instruments of precision is that they do serve to check up personal error. They prevent scientific inquirers from reading in meanings to which they are led by hope, fear, preference, or aversion. They help us to see the facts as they are, not as for various social and personal reasons we want or expect them to be. They help to give precise and permanent impressions which are not dependent for their discovery or for their preservation on the precariousness of human observation or memory. CLASSIFICATION. Next only in importance to accurate observation of the facts is their classification. Objects of experience as they come to us through the senses appear in a sequence which is random and chaotic. But in order to deal effectively with our experience we must arrange facts according to their likenesses and differences. Whenever we discover certain striking similarities between facts, we classify them, place them in a class, knowing that what will apply to one will apply to all. Some logicians go so far as to say that science cannot go any further than accurate classification. In the words of Poincaré: The most interesting facts are those which may serve many times; these are the facts which have a chance of coming up again. We have been so fortunate as to have been born in a world where there are such. Suppose that instead of sixty chemical elements there were sixty milliards of them, that they were not some common, the others rare, but that they were equally distributed. Then, every time we picked up a new pebble there would be great probability of its being formed of some unknown substance; all that we knew of other pebbles would be worthless for it; before each new object we should be as the new-born babe; like it we could only obey our caprices or our needs. Biologists would be just as much at a loss if there were only individuals and no species, and if heredity did not make sons like their fathers.[1] [Footnote 1: Poincaré: _Foundations of Science_, p. 363.] The aim of classification in science is grouping in such a way as to make manifest at once similarities in the behavior of objects. That characteristic is selected as a basis of classification with which is correlated the greatest number of other characteristics belonging to the facts in question. It would be possible to classify all living things according to color, but such a classification would be destitute of scientific value. Biology offers some interesting examples of how an illuminating classification may be made on the basis of a single characteristic. It has been found, for example, that the differences or resemblances of animals are correlated with corresponding differences or resemblances in their teeth. In general, the function of classification may be summarized in Huxley's definition as modified by Jevons: By the classification of any series of objects is meant the actual or ideal arrangement together of those things which are like and the separation of those things which are unlike, the purpose of the arrangement being, primarily, to disclose the correlations or laws of union of properties and circumstances, and, secondarily, to facilitate the operations of the mind in clearly conceiving and retaining in memory the characters of the object in question. It should be noted that the object of classification is not simply to indicate similarities but to indicate distinctions or differences. In scientific inquiry, differences are as crucial in the forming of generalizations as similarities. It is only possible to classify a given fact under a scientific generalization when the given fact is set off from other facts, when it is seen to be the result of certain special conditions. If a man infers from a single sample of grain as to the grade of wheat of the car as a whole, it is induction, and under certain circumstances, a _sound_ induction; other cases are resorted to simply for the sake of rendering that induction more guarded and correct. In the case of the various samples of grain, it is the fact that the samples are unlike, at least in the part of the carload from which they are taken, that is important. Were it not for this unlikeness, their likeness in quality would be of no avail in assisting inference.[1] [Footnote 1: Dewey: _How We Think_, pp. 89-90.] EXPERIMENTAL VARIATION OF CONDITIONS. In forming our generalizations from the observation of situations as they occur in Nature, we are at a disadvantage. If we observe cases just as we find them, there is much present that is irrelevant to our problem; much that is of genuine importance in its solution is hidden or obscure. In experimental investigation we are, in the words of Sir John Herschel, "active observers"; we deliberately invent crucial or test cases. That is, we deliberately arrange conditions so that every factor is definitely known and recognized. We then introduce into this set of completely known conditions one change, one new circumstance, and observe its effect. In Mill's phrase, we "take a phenomenon home with us," and watch its behavior. Mill states clearly the outstanding advantage of experimentation over observation: When we can produce a phenomenon artificially, we can take it, as it were, home with us, and observe it in the midst of circumstances with which in all other respects we are accurately acquainted. If we desire to know what are the effects of the cause _A_, and are able to produce _A_ by means at our disposal, we can generally determine at our own discretion ... the whole of the circumstances which shall be present along with it; and thus, knowing exactly the simultaneous state of everything else which is within the reach of _A's_ influence, we have only to observe what alteration is made in that state by the presence of _A_. For example, by the electric machine we can produce, in the midst of known circumstances, the phenomena which Nature exhibits on a grander scale in the form of lightning and thunder. Now let any one consider what amount of knowledge of the effects and laws of electric agency mankind could have obtained from the mere observation of thunderstorms, and compare it with that which they have gained, and may expect to gain, from electrical and galvanic experiments.... When we have succeeded in isolating the phenomenon which is the subject of inquiry, by placing it among known circumstances, we may produce further variations of circumstances to any extent, and of such kinds as we think best calculated to bring the laws of the phenomenon into a clear light. By introducing one well-defined circumstance after another into the experiment, we obtain assurance of the manner in which the phenomenon behaves under an indefinite variety of possible circumstances. Thus, chemists, after having obtained some newly discovered substance in a pure state, ... introduce various other substances, one by one, to ascertain whether it will combine with them, or decompose them, and with what result; and also apply heat or electricity or pressure, to discover what will happen to the substance under each of these circumstances.[1] [Footnote 1: Mill: _Logic_ (London, 1872), vol. I, pp. 441-42.] Through experiment, we are thus enabled to observe the relation of specific elements in a situation. We are, furthermore, enabled to observe phenomena which are so rare in occurrence that it is impossible to form generalizations from them or improbable that we should even notice them: "We might have to wait years or centuries to meet accidentally with facts which we can readily produce at any moment in a laboratory; and it is probable that many of the chemical substances now known, and many excessively useful products, would never have been discovered at all, by waiting till Nature presented them spontaneously to our observation." And phenomena, such as that of electricity, which can only be understood when the conditions of their occurrence are varied, are presented to us in Nature most frequently in a fixed and invariable form. GENERALIZATIONS, THEIR ELABORATION AND TESTING. So far we have been concerned with the steps in the control of suggestion, the reëxamination of the facts so that significant suggestions may be derived, and the elimination of the significant from the insignificant in the elements of the situation as it first confronts us. In logically elaborating a suggestion, as we have already seen, we trace out the bearings of a given situation. We expand it; we see what it _implies_, what it means. Thus, if we came, for example, to a meeting that had been scheduled, and found no one present, we might have several solutions arise in our minds. The meeting, we might suppose, had been transferred to another room. If that were the case, there would probably be some notice posted. In all cases of deductive elaboration, we go through what might be called the If-Then process. If _such-and-such_ is the case, then _such-and-such_ will follow. We can then verify our suggested solution to a problem, by going back to the facts, to see whether they correspond with the implications of our suggestion. We may, to take another example, think that a man who enters our office is an insurance agent, or a book solicitor who had said he would call upon us at a definite date. If such is the case, he will say such-and-such things. If he does say them, then our suggestion is seen to be correct. The advantages of developing a suggestion include the fact that some link in the logical chain may bear a more obvious relation to our problem than did the undeveloped suggestion itself. The systematic sciences consist of such sets of principles so related that any single term implies certain others, which imply certain others and so on _ad infinitum_. After the facts have been elaborated, the generalization, however plausible it may seem, must be subjected to experimental corroboration. That is, if a suggestion is found through local elaboration to mean _A, B, C_, then the situation must be reëxamined to see if the facts to be found tally with the facts deduced. In the case cited, the suggestion that the man who entered the room was the insurance agent we expected would be verified if he immediately broached the subject and the fact, say, of a previous conversation. In the case of disease, if the illness is typhoid, we shall find certain specific conditions in the patient. If these are found, the suggestion of typhoid is verified. The _reliability_ of generalizations made by this scientific procedure varies according to several factors. It varies, in the first place, according to the correspondence of the predictions made on the basis of the generalization, with subsequent events. The reason we say the law of gravitation holds true is because in every instance where observations or experiments have been made, the results have tallied precisely with expectations based upon the generalization. We can, to a certain extent, determine the reliability of a generalization before comparing our predictions with subsequent events. If a generalization made contradicts laws that have been established in so many instances that they are practically beyond peradventure, it is suspect. A law, for example, that should be an exception to the laws of motion or gravitation, is _a priori_ dubious. If an induction conflicts with stronger inductions, or with conclusions capable of being correctly deduced from them, then, unless on reconsideration it should appear that some of the stronger inductions have been expressed with greater universality than their evidence warrants, the weaker one must give way. The opinion so long prevalent that a comet, or any other unusual appearance in the heavenly regions, was the precursor of calamities to mankind, or to those at least who witnessed it; the belief in the veracity of the oracles of Delphi or Dodona; the reliance on astrology, or on the weather prophecies in almanacs, were doubtless inductions supposed to be grounded on experience.... What has really put an end to these insufficient inductions is their inconsistency with the stronger inductions subsequently obtained by scientific inquiry, respecting the causes on which terrestrial events really depend.[1] [Footnote 1: Mill: _Logic_ (London, 1872), vol. I, pp. 370-71.] THE QUANTITATIVE BASIS OF SCIENTIFIC PROCEDURE. Science _is_ science, some scientists insist, in so far as it is mathematical. That is, in the precise determination of facts, and in their repetition with a view to their exact determination, quantities must be known. The sciences have developed in exactness, in so far as they have succeeded in expressing their formulations in numerical terms. The physical sciences, such as physics and chemistry, which have been able to frame their generalizations from precise quantities, have been immeasurably more certain and secure than such sciences as psychology and sociology, where the measurement of exact quantities is more difficult and rare. Jevons writes in his _Principles of Science_: As physical science advances, it becomes more and more accurately quantitative. Questions of simple logical fact resolve themselves after a while into questions of degree, time, distance, or weight. Forces hardly suspected to exist by one generation are clearly recognized by the next, and precisely measured by the third generation.[1] [Footnote 1: Jevons: _Principles of Science_, p. 270.] The history of science exhibits a constant progress from rude guesses to precise measurement of quantities. In the earliest history of astronomy there were attempts at quantitative determinations, very crude, of course, in comparison with the exactness of present-day scientific methods. Every branch of knowledge commences with quantitative notions of a very rude character. After we have far progressed, it is often amusing to look back into the infancy of the science, and contrast present with past methods. At Greenwich Observatory in the present day, the hundredth part of a second is not thought an inconsiderable portion of time. The ancient Chaldreans recorded an eclipse to the nearest hour, and the early Alexandrian astronomers thought it superfluous to distinguish between the edge and center of the sun. By the introduction of the astrolabe, Ptolemy, and the later Alexandrian astronomers could determine the places of the heavenly bodies within about ten minutes of arc. Little progress then ensued for thirteen centuries, until Tycho Brahe made the first great step toward accuracy, not only by employing better instruments, but even more by ceasing to regard an instrument as correct.... He also took notice of the effects of atmospheric refraction, and succeeded in attaining an accuracy often sixty times as great as that of Ptolemy. Yet Tycho and Hevelius often erred several minutes in the determination of a star's place, and it was a great achievement of Roemer and Flamsteed to reduce this error to seconds. Bradley, the modern Hipparchus, carried on the improvement, his errors in right ascension, according to Bessel, being under one second of time, and those of declination under four seconds of arc. In the present day the average error of a single observation is probably reduced to the half or the quarter of what it was in Bradley's time; and further extreme accuracy is attained by the multiplication of observations, and their skillful combination according to the theory of error. Some of the more important constants... have been determined within a tenth part of a second of space.[2] [Footnote 2: _Ibid._, pp. 271-72.] The precise measurement of quantities is important because we can, in the first place, only through quantitative determinations be sure we have made accurate observations, observations uncolored by personal idiosyncrasies. Both errors of observation and errors of judgment are checked up and averted by exact quantitative measurements. The relations of phenomena, moreover, are so complex that specific causes and effects can only be understood when they are given precise quantitative determination. In investigating the solubility of salts, for example, we find variability depending on differences in temperature, pressure, the presence of other salts already dissolved, and the like. The solubility of salt in water differs again from its solubility in alcohol, ether, carbon, bisulphide. Generalization about the solubility of salt, therefore, depends on the exact measurement of the phenomenon under all these conditions.[1] [Footnote 1: See Jevons, p, 279 ff.] The importance of exact measurement in scientific discovery and generalization may be illustrated briefly from one instance in the history of chemistry. The discovery of the chemical element _argon_ came about through some exact measurements by Lord Rayleigh and Sir William Ramsay of the nitrogen and the oxygen in a glass flask. It was found that the nitrogen derived from air was not altogether pure; that is, there were very minute differences in the weighings of nitrogen made from certain of its compounds and the weight obtained by removing oxygen, water, traces of carbonic acid, and other impurities from the atmospheric air. It was found that the very slightly heavier weight in one case was caused by the presence of argon (about one and one third times as heavy as nitrogen) and some other elementary gases. The discovery was here clearly due to the accurate measurement which made possible the discovery of this minute discrepancy. It must be noted in general that accuracy in measurement is immediately dependent on the instruments of precision available. It has frequently been pointed out that the Greeks, although incomparably fresh, fertile, and direct in their thinking, yet made such a comparatively slender contribution to scientific knowledge precisely because they had no instruments for exact measurement. The thermometer made possible the science of heat. The use of the balance has been in large part responsible for advances in chemistry. The degree to which sciences have attained quantitative accuracy varies among the physical sciences. The phenomena of light are not yet subject to accurate measurement; many natural phenomena have not yet been made the subject of measurement at all. Such are the intensity of sound, the phenomena of taste and smell, the magnitude of atoms, the temperature of the electric spark or of the sun's atmosphere.[1] [Footnote 1: See Jevons, p. 273.] The sciences tend, in general, to become more and more quantitative. All phenomena "exist in space and involve molecular movements, measurable in velocity and extent." The ideal of all sciences is thus to reduce all phenomena to measurements of mass and motion. This ideal is obviously far from being attained. Especially in the social sciences are quantitative measurements difficult, and in these sciences we must remain therefore at best in the region of shrewd guesses or fairly reliable probability. STATISTICS AND PROBABILITY. While in the social sciences, exact quantitative measurements are difficult, they are to an extent possible, and to the extent that they are possible we can arrive at fairly accurate generalizations as to the probable occurrence of phenomena. There are many phenomena where the elements are so complex that they cannot be analyzed and invariable causal relations established. In a study of the phenomena of the weather, for example, the phenomena are so exceedingly complex that anything approaching a complete statement of their elements is quite out of the question. The fallibility of most popular generalizations in these fields is evidence of the difficulty of dealing with such facts. Must we be content then simply to guess at such phenomena? ... In instances of this sort, another method ... becomes important: The Method of Statistics. In statistics we have an _exact_ enumeration of cases. If a small number of cases does not enable us to detect the causal relations of a phenomenon, it sometimes happens that a large number, accurately counted, and taken from a field widely extended in time and space, will lead to a solution of the problem.[1] [Footnote 1: Jones; _Logic, Inductive and Deductive_, p. 190.] If we find, in a wide variety of instances, two phenomena occurring in a certain constant correlation, we infer a causal relation. If the variations in the frequency of one correspond to variations in the frequency of the other, there is probability of more than connection by coincidence. The correlation between phenomena may be measured mathematically; it is possible to express in figures the exact relations between the occurrence of one phenomenon and the occurrence of another. The number which expresses this relation is called the coefficient of correlation. This coefficient expresses relationship in terms of the mean values of the two series of phenomena by measuring the amount each individual phenomenon varies from its respective mean. Suppose, for example, that in correlating crime and unemployment, the coefficient of correlation were found to be .47. If in every case of unemployment crime were found and in every case of crime, unemployment, the coefficient of correlation would be +1. If crime were never found in unemployment, and unemployment never in crime, the coefficient of correlation would be -1, indicating a perfect inverse relationship. A coefficient of 0 would indicate that there is no relationship. The coefficient of .47 would accordingly indicate a significant but not a "high" correlation between crime and unemployment. We cannot consider here all the details of statistical methods, but attention may be called to a few of the more significant features of the process. Statistics is a science, and consists in much more than the mere counting of cases. With the collection of statistical data, only the first step has been taken. The statistics in that condition are only raw material showing nothing. They are not an instrument of investigation any more than a kiln of bricks is a monument of architecture. They need to be arranged, classified, tabulated, and brought into connection with other statistics by the statistician. Then only do they become an instrument of investigation, just as a tool is nothing more than a mass of wood or metal, except in the hands of a skilled workman.[1] [Footnote 1: Mayo-Smith: _Statistics and Sociology_, p. 18.] The essential steps in a statistical investigation are: (1) the collection of material, (2) its tabulation, (3) the summary, and (4) a critical examination of the results. The terms are almost self-explanatory. There are, however, several general points of method to be noted. In the collection of data a wide field must be covered, to be sure that we are dealing with invariable relations instead of with mere coincidences, "or overemphasizing the importance of one out of a number of coöperating causes." Tabulation of the data collected is very important, since classification of the data does much to suggest the causal relations sought. The headings under which data will be collected depend on the purposes of the investigation. In general, statistics can suggest generalizations, rather than establish them. They indicate probability, not invariable relation.[2] [Footnote 2: See Jones: _Logic_, pp. 213-25, for a discussion of Probability.] SCIENCE AS AN INSTRUMENT OF HUMAN PROGRESS. We have, in an earlier section of this chapter, referred to the practical value of science. "Man's power of deliberate control of his own affairs depends upon ability to direct energies to use; an ability which is, in turn, dependent upon insight into nature's processes. Whatever natural science may be for the specialist,... it is knowledge of the conditions of human action."[3] And the wider, the more complete and the more penetrating our knowledge of the world in which we live, the more extended become the boundaries of human action. Through a knowledge of natural processes, men have passed from a frightened subjection to Nature to its conscious control. And the fruits of that control are, as we have already had occasion to notice, all-pervading in practical life. That complete transformation of life known as the Industrial Revolution, which came about with such swiftness and completeness in the early nineteenth century, and whose effects have not yet ceased to accumulate, was the direct outcome of the application of the experimental science which had begun in the sixteenth. Some of the consequences of the application of theoretical investigation to practical life have already been noted. There are first the more obvious facts of the inventions, great and small--the railways, steamships, electric transportation, automobiles, and telephones--which have changed in countless details our daily life. There are the profound and all-pervasive changes which have been brought about in industrial and social relations: the building-up of our vast industrial centers, the change from small-scale handicrafts to large-scale machine production, the factory system, with its concomitants of immensely increased resources and immensely complicated problems of human life. Science in the short span of three centuries has shown how rapid and immediate could be the fruits of human control of Nature, and its further fruits are incalculable. [Footnote 3: Dewey: _Democracy and Education_, p. 267.] Science has indeed already begun to affect men's attitude towards experience as well as their material progress. It is only when men set out with the conscious realization that intelligence does make a difference in the world, that science becomes articulate. Science is the guarantee of progress. It has shown men that the future is to some extent in their own hands; that by dint of a laborious and detailed application of intelligence to the processes of nature, those processes can be controlled in the interests of human welfare. Science has led men to look to the future instead of the past. The coincidence of the ideal of progress with the advance of science is not a mere coincidence. Before this advance men placed the golden age in remote antiquity. Now they face the future with a firm belief that intelligence properly used can do away with evils once thought inevitable. To subjugate devastating disease is no longer a dream; the hope of abolishing poverty is not Utopian.[1] [Footnote 1: Dewey: _Democracy and Education_, pp. 262-63.] But science may be used for any end. It reveals the relations of phenomena, relations which hold for all men. It shows what causes are connected with what consequents, and, as already pointed out, in the knowledge of causes lies the possible control of effects. We can secure the results we desire, by discovering what antecedents must first be established. Science is thus a fund of common resources. Specific causes are revealed to be connected with specific effects, and men, by making a choice of antecedents, can secure the consequences they desire. But which effects they will desire depends on the instincts, standards, and habits of the individual, and the traditions and ideals of the group. A knowledge of chemistry may be used for productive industrial processes, or in the invention of poison gas. Expert acquaintance with psychology and educational methods may be used to impress upon a nation an arbitrary type of life (an accusation justly brought against the Prussian educational system), or to promote the specific possibilities that each individual displays. Not only are the fruits of scientific inquiry used in different ways by different individuals and groups, but scientific inquiry is itself affected by the prevailing interests and mode of life. What inquiries shall be furthered depends on _what_ the individual or group feels it important to know. From a social point of view, certain scientific developments are of more urgency and imperativeness than others. During an emergency, as during the Great War, it might be necessary to turn all the energies of scientific men into immediately productive pursuits. And, since the pursuit of inquiry on a large scale demands large resources, those researches which give promise of beneficent human consequences will the more readily command social sanction and approval and will be developed at the expense of more remote speculations however intrinsically interesting these latter may be. Science has proved so valuable a human instrument that it has attained a moral responsibility. Men have increasingly come to realize that the pressing problems of our industrial life require for their solution not the confusions and incompetences of passion and prejudice, but an application of the fruits of scientific inquiry. Science has already so completely demonstrated its vast fruitfulness in human welfare, that it must be watched with jealous vigilance. It must result as it began, in the improvement of human welfare.[1] But what constitutes human welfare is a question which leads us into the final activity of the Career of Reason, Morals and Moral Valuation, man's attempt to determine what happiness is, and how he may attain it. [Footnote 1: We have already noted the danger of too complete a commitment of science to immediately practical results. This narrows instead of broadening possibility. As Mr. F. P. Keppel points out in a recent article, "Scholarship in War" (_Columbia University Quarterly_, July, 1919), some of the most important and immediately practical contributions during the Great War came from the ranks of those who would be regarded as "pure theorists."] CHAPTER XV MORALS AND MORAL VALUATION THE PRE-CONDITIONS OF MORALITY--INSTINCT, IMPULSE, AND DESIRE. In Art and Science, man attempts to transform the world of nature into conditions more in conformity with his desires. In the enterprise of Morals, man attempts to discover how to control his own nature in the attainment of happiness. We have already had occasion to see that Art, in the broad sense of human contrivance, is made necessary by the incongruity between nature and human nature. We shall examine now the conditions which make it necessary and make it possible for man to consider and to control those elementary impulses with which he is endowed. The origin of the moral problem will become clearer after a brief recapitulation of those elements of original nature which form the basis of all human action. We have seen that human beings are equipped, apart from education or training, with certain tendencies to act in certain definite ways, given certain definite stimuli. Any single activity of an average human being in a modern civilized community is compounded of so many modifications of original tendencies to action that these latter seem often altogether obliterated. The conditions of civilized life, moreover, place continual checks on the free activity of any given impulse, and there are so many stimuli playing upon an individual at once that the responses called out tend to inhibit each other. The particular thing we say to an acquaintance we happen to meet is not determined by a single original impulse, by love or hate, fear or sympathy, pugnacity or pity. It is a compound of some or of most of these. On the other hand, no matter how complicated or sophisticated human action becomes, it is built out of these same impulses, which were operative when human beings had not yet passed out of savagery. We may check and control our responses through habitual repressions, through deliberate forethought, through conscious or mechanical acquiescence in the ways of the group among which we live. But these original impulses are still the mainspring of our activities. The complex, highly artificial character of our civilization often obscures the presence of these powerful instinctive tendencies, but that they _are_ present and powerful several facts bear witness. They manifest themselves, as the newer psychology of the subconscious has repeatedly pointed out, in roundabout ways; they are, in the technical phrase, sublimated. Instincts find, as it were, substitute realizations. This process of sublimation of unfulfilled desire has been noted particularly with regard to the sex instinct, but the principle applies to the others. The continual suppression of instincts results in various forms of morbidity, in what Graham Wallas calls "baulked dispositions." To say that instincts are repressed, is to say there is a maladjustment between the individual as he comes into the world, and the world as he finds it. This maladjustment may vary in intensity. It may be exhibited in nothing more serious than boredom, or petulance, or hyper-sensitiveness. It may be a chronic sense of not fitting in, of being lost in a blind alley. One has but to review one's list of acquaintances to see how many people there are who feel somehow frustrated in the work they happen to be doing, who feel themselves inexplicably at odds with the world. Graham Wallas well describes the situation when he writes: For we cannot in Saint Paul's sense mortify our dispositions. If they are not stimulated, they do not therefore die, nor is the human being what he would be if they had never existed. If we leave unstimulated, or, to use a shorter term, if we "baulk" any one of our main dispositions, Curiosity, Property, Trial and Error, Sex, and the rest, we produce in ourselves a state of nervous strain. It may be desirable in any particular case of conduct that we should do so, but we ought to know what we are doing. The baulking of each disposition produces its own type of strain; but the distinctions between the types are, so far, unnamed and unrecognized, and a trained psychologist would do a real service to civilized life if he would carefully observe and describe them.[1] [Footnote 1: Wallas: _The Great Society_, p. 65.] The presence of instinctive activities is seen in stark immediacy and directness every now and then in civilized life. Lynchings and mob violence in general are illustrations of what happens when groups throw to the winds the multiple inhibitions of custom and law. And the records of the criminal courts exhibit more cases than are commonly realized of sheer crimes of violence. In some instances these can be set down as pathological, but in many more they are normal instincts breaking through the fixed channels set by public opinion, tradition, and legal compulsion. On a smaller scale an outburst of anger, a fit of temper, sulk or spleen, exhibits the enduring though often obscured presence of instinctive tendencies in civilized life. THE CONFLICT OF INTERESTS BETWEEN MEN AND GROUPS. How comes it, then, that men whose whole activity is a complication of these powerful original tendencies to action should not follow these native impulses freely? The answer is that men not only live, but live together. Wherever human wants, as in any group, even a small one, must be filled through cooperation, accommodation, compromise, give-and-take, adjustment must be made. "Man," to adapt Kant's phrase, "cannot get on with his fellows; and he cannot get on without them." Other men are necessary to help us fulfill our desires, and yet our desires conflict with theirs. The dual fact of cooperation and conflict is, in a sense, the root of the moral problem. How is one individual to attain happiness without at the same time interfering with the happiness of others? How can the desires with which all men come into the world be fulfilled for all men? The adjustment of these problems is at once complicated and facilitated by the fact that one of man's most powerful native desires is, as we have already seen, his desire to please other men. This extreme sensitivity to the praise and blame of his fellows operates powerfully to qualify men's other instincts. The ruthlessness with which men might otherwise fulfill their desires is checked by the fact that within themselves there is a conflict between the desire to win other sorts of gratification, and the desire to win the praise of others and to avoid their blame. This is simply one instance of what we shall have occasion presently to note, that not only is there a conflict between men in the fulfillment of their native instincts, but within individuals an adjustment must be made between competing impulses themselves. The kinds of conflict that occur between men in the fulfillment of their original native tendencies, are as various as those tendencies and their combinations. It may be a conflict, as in primitive life, between individuals seeking food from the same source. It may be a clash in the pursuit of one form or another of self-enhancement, enhancement which can come to only some individual out of a group. The sex instinct has afforded, in the case of the "eternal triangle," an example of the sharing by two people of an imperious desire for precisely the same object of satisfaction. These conflicts of interest are an inevitable result of the constitution of human nature. It is perfectly natural that human beings constituted with largely identical impulses should not infrequently seek identical satisfactions. Groups as well as individuals may come into collision, and for analogous reasons. Class divisions over the distribution of wealth, international wars over the distribution of territory, are sufficiently familiar examples. THE LEVELS OF MORAL ACTION--CUSTOM--THE ESTABLISHMENT OF "FOLKWAYS." No anthropologist seems to have discovered anywhere individuals living totally alone or in total oblivion to the needs or interests of others. The human necessity for coöperation and the human desire for companionship bring individuals together. And individuals, once living together, find some _modus vivendi_. Adjustments are, in general, effected through established and authoritative "folkways."[1] That is, certain acts come to be recognized as sanctioned or as disapproved by the group. And these sanctions or disapprovals are powerful in the control of human action. The fact that individuals live and must live together is thus the surest guarantee that they will not, once they have grown old enough to communicate with other people, altogether follow their immediate capricious desires. [Footnote 1: Professor Sumner's convenient term.] The reason for the power of social approvals and disapprovals over individuals lies partly in the fact, already noted, of the human being's extremely high sensitivity to the praise and blame of others. But part of the explanation is social rather than psychological. Even primitive tribes take special pains to make public and pervasive the commands and prohibitions which have become affixed to given acts. The mere fact that an act _is_ customary is itself a sufficiently strong guarantee that it will be practiced, since the human being tends to perform, as he likes to perform, the habitual. But in primitive life, the enforcement of custom is not left to the influence of habit. The prohibitions and sanctions, both in savage and in civilized society, are made into law. In the former instance, there are most elaborate devices and institutions for enforcing the traditional approvals and disapprovals. Tabus are one important instrument of the enforcement of social checks upon individual action; "tabus are perhaps not so much a means for enforcing custom as they are themselves customs invested with peculiar and awful sanction. They prohibit or ban any contact with certain persons or objects under penalty of danger from unseen beings." Through ritual certain acts come to be performed with great regularity, thoroughness, detail, and solemnity. "In primitive life it [ritual] is widely and effectively used to insure for educational, political, and domestic customs obedience to the group standards." In contemporary life, certain social forms and observances, as well as certain religious ceremonies, are examples of the enforcement of given acts, by ritual. Praise and blame are equally effective enforcements of certain types of action and of the avoidance of others. In primitive life, praise is as likely as not to take the form of art--decorations, costumes, songs, and tattoos. In modern life, as we have seen, praise and blame take the form of public opinion, as expressed by friends, acquaintances, newspapers, and the like.[1] Praise and blame are not so fixed and rigid in civilized communities; individuals move freely among diverse groups whose standards differ. But group approval is none the less effective. [Footnote 1: See page 106.] In primitive life and, though less patently, in contemporary society, physical force is the ultimate power for enforcing custom. Primitive chiefs are usually the strong men of the tribes; and behind law in modern social organization is the physical power of the State to enforce it. MORALITY AS CONFORMITY TO THE ESTABLISHED. The beginning of morals is thus to be found in conformity to the established or customary. The criterion of morality is compliance--compliance with the regular, the socially approved, the common (that is, the communal) ways of action. Apart from the consequences of violation, violation _per se_ is impure, unholy, immoral. The terms are, in some cases, interchangeable. In primitive life, violations are regarded with particular horror, because they are frequently held to be not only infringements of established ways of the tribe, but as offenses against the gods, offenses which involve the whole tribe in the retributive punishments of the gods. Violation of the customary may, indeed, apart from arousing intellectual disapproval, provoke a genuine revulsion of feeling on the part of a group which has acquired certain fixed habits. We still feel emotionally shocked by the infringement of a custom that we do not intellectually value highly. If we examine our moral furniture we find it made up of an immense number of early acquired inhibitions or "checks." These not only prevent us from violating, at least without qualms, standards to which we have early been trained; they make deviations or irregularities on the part of others appear as "immoral," even before or without our intellectually classifying them as such. There are adults, for example, who cannot outgrow the feeling to which they have early been habituated, that card-playing at any time, or baseball-playing on Sunday, is "evil," even though they are no longer intellectually affected by scruples in those respects. There is significance in the fact that by speaking of "irregularities" in a man's conduct, we signify. or imply moral disapproval. The group, in any stage of civilization, rewards in some form conformity to group standards, and punishes infringements of them. Punishment may be nothing more tangible than disrepute or ostracism; it may be as serious as execution. Reward may range from a decoration or a chorus of praise to all forms of compensation in the way of wealth, rank, and power. We have noted how sanctions and prohibitions are made public and effective among the members of a group. But it is further regarded as important by the group that these customs, positive and negative, should be handed down from the current to succeeding generations. In primitive life transmission of the traditional practices is made a very special occasion in the form of initiation ceremonies. [Initiation ceremonies] are held with the purpose of inducting boys into the privileges of manhood and into the full life of the group. They are calculated at every step to impress upon the initiate his own ignorance and helplessness in contrast with the wisdom and power of the group; and as the mystery with which they are conducted imposes reverence for the elders and the authorities of the group, so the recital of the traditions and performances of the tribe, the long series of ritual acts, common participation in the mystic dance and song and decorations, serve to reinforce the ties that bind the tribe.[1] [Footnote 1: Dewey and Tufts: _Ethics_, pp. 57-58.] In civilized life, the whole institution of education, as has been repeatedly emphasized in these pages, is designed to transmit to the young those habits of thought, feeling, and action which their influential elders wish to perpetuate. As was noted in connection with man's gregariousness, the normal becomes the "respectable," the regular becomes the "proper." We still speak of things that it is not "nice" to do. This tendency to identify the moral with the customary is brought about through early habituating the members of the group to the group standards and securing for them thereby the emotional support that goes with all habitual action. Morality at this stage is clearly social in its origins and its operations. The standards are group standards, and the individual's single duty is obedience and conformity to the established social sanctions. THE VALUES OF CUSTOMARY MORALITY. The problem of morals begins, as we have seen, in the collision of interests of similarly constituted individuals living together. Adjustments of conflicting interests are effected by group standards more or less consciously transmitted and enforced by education, public opinion, and law. We shall note presently that reflection operates to modify and criticize these customary approvals and disapprovals and to substitute more effective standards. But whether on the level of custom or reflection, the moral problem is essentially a _social_ problem, the problem of the adjustment of the desires of individuals living together. For an individual living altogether alone in the world there could hardly be a moral problem, a question of "ought." There might be problems of how to attain satisfaction, but no sense of duty or moral obligation. Custom is the first great stage through which morality passes, and the only form in which morality exists for many people. In civilized life there is, to be sure, considerable reflection and querying of custom, but for the vast majority of men "right" and "wrong" are determined by the standards to which their early education and environment have accustomed them. In primitive life, reflective criticism on the part of the individual is almost unknown, and custom remains the great arbiter of action, the outstanding source of social and moral control. The values of custom as a moral force are, in both primitive and civilized life, notable and not to be despised. Custom is, in the first place, frequently rational in its origin. That is, in general, those acts are made habitual in the group which are associated with the general welfare. The customary is the "right," but those activities most frequently come to be regarded as "right" which are favorable to the welfare of the group. In the literal struggle for existence which characterizes primitive life, those tribes may alone be expected to survive whose customs do promote the welfare of their members. Persistence by a group in customs like infanticide or excessive restriction of population will result in their extinction. Customs are, for the most part, standards of action established in the light of the conceptions of well-being as understood at the time of their origin. The intensity with which they are maintained, enforced, and transmitted is an indication of how supremely and practically important they are regarded by primitive groups. Custom is valuable, if for nothing else, in the fact that it makes possible some accommodation or adjustment of competing individual interests--and on the basis of a widely considered social welfare. Customs are _social_, they are binding on all; they apply to all, and to the extent that they do promote welfare, they promote, within limits, the welfare of all. A man conforming to custom is thereby consulting something other than his arbitrary caprice or personal desire. On the level of customary morality, action through conformity to custom is referred to a wider context than unconsidered individual impulse; it is, for better or worse, performed with reference to the group with whose standards it is in conformity. It is the beginning of the socialization of human interests. Though unconsciously, the man conforming to a custom is considering his fellows, and the values and traditions which have become current among them. Customs, moreover, are the first invasion of moral chaos. They establish enduring standards; they give common and permanent bases of action. It is only through the establishment and transmission of customary standards that one generation is in any way superior to its predecessors. Customs, in civilized life, include all the established effective ways of civilization, its arts, its sciences, its industries, and its useful modes of coöperation. If a plague carried off the members of a society all at once, it is obvious that the group would be permanently done for. Yet the death of each of its constituent members is as certain as if a plague took them off all at once. But the graded difference in age, the fact that some are born as some die, makes possible through transmission of ideas and practices the constant reweaving of the social fabric. Yet this renewal is not automatic. Unless pains are taken to see that genuine and thorough transmission takes place, the most civilized group will relapse into barbarism and then into savagery.[1] [Footnote 1: Dewey: _Democracy and Education_, p. 4.] In all levels of civilization, there is a conscious transmission of those social habits which are regarded as of importance. If this transmission were suddenly to cease, not only would each generation have to start afresh, but it would be altogether impossible for it to grow to maturity. THE DEFECTS OF CUSTOMARY MORALITY. While custom is thus valuable as a moral agent in establishing standards of social life and rendering them continuous and enduring, a morality that is completely based upon it has serious defects. Though customs may start as allegedly or actually useful practices, they tend, so strong is the influence of habit over the individual, to outlive their usefulness, and may become, indeed, altogether disadvantageous conventions. "Dr. Arthur Smith tells of the advantage it would be in some parts of China to build a door on the south side of the house, in order to get the breeze, in hot weather." The simple and sufficient answer to such a suggestion is, "We don't build doors on the south side." We have but to examine our own civilization to see that there are many customs which are practiced not for any good assignable reason, but simply because they have become fixed and traditional. This is not to say that everything that has become "merely conventional" is evil. It is to suggest how, even in civilized society, groups may fall into modes of action that are practiced simply because they _have been_ practiced, rather than from any reasoned consideration that they _should_ be. An illustration may be taken from the experience of civilians drawn into the military routine during the Great War. Men engaged in war work at Washington in civilian capacities reported repeatedly their impatience at the "red tape" of tradition with which certain classes of business were conducted by the military establishment. In law also, progressive practitioners and students have pointed out the well-known fact of the immense and beclogging ritual which has come to surround legal procedure. It is the contention of critics of one or another of our contemporary social habits and institutions that traditionalism, the persistence of custom simply because it _is_ custom, is responsible for many of the anachronisms in our social, political, and industrial life. Space does not permit here a detailed consideration of this question, but it must be noted that social habits, when they are acquired, as they are, unreflectively by the vast majority of people, will tend to be repeated and supported, apart from any consideration of their consequences. This tendency toward social inertia, earlier noted in connection with habit, can only be checked by reflective criticism and appraisement of our current accustomed ways of action.[1] [Footnote 1: See chapter on "Cultural Continuity."] In the case of the group, too complete a domination by custom is dangerous in that it sanctions and promotes the continuance of habits that have become useless or harmful. In the case of the individual, the determination of action by custom alone has its specific dangers and defects. Even though the individual happens to conform to useful customs, his conformity is purely mechanical. It involves no intelligent discrimination. Merely to conform places one at the disposition of the environment in which one chances to be. There is not necessary any intelligent analysis on the part of the agent, of the bearings and consequences of his actions. He takes on with fatal facility the color of his environment. To all men, however critical and reflective, a certain degree of conformity to custom is both necessary and useful. There must, in any social enterprise, be some common basis of action. Because taking the right-hand side of the road is a convention, it is none the less a useful one. But reflective acquiescence in a custom differs from merely mechanical conformity. It transforms a custom from a blind mechanism into a consciously chosen instrument for achieving good. The trivial and the important in a morality based upon custom receive the same unconsidered support. "Tithing mint, anise, and cummin are quite likely to involve the neglect of weightier matters of the law." Physical, emotional, and moral energies that should be devoted to matters genuinely affecting human welfare are lavished upon the trivial and the incidental. We may come to be concerned more with manners than with morals; with ritual, than with right. Customary morality tends to emphasize, moreover, the letter rather than the spirit of the law. It implies complete and punctilious obedience, meticulous conformity. It emphasizes form rather than content. Since conformity is the only criterion, the appearance of conformity is all that is required. The individual may fear to dissent openly rather than actually. This is seen frequently in the ritualistic performance or fulfillment of a duty in all its external details, rather than the actual and positive performance of its content. It is just such Pharisaism that is protested against in the Sermon on the Mount: And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.... But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do; for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Formalism in morality has periodically roused protest from the Prophets down, and formalism is the result of an unconsidered mechanical acquiescence in custom, or deliberate insistence on traditional details when the spirit and motive are forgotten. CUSTOM AND PROGRESS. Emphasis upon customs as already established tends to promote fixity and repetition, and to discourage change regardless of the benefits to be derived from specific changes. Custom is supported by the group merely because it is custom; and the ineffective modes of life are maintained along with those which are more useful. Progress comes about through individual variation, and conformity and individual variation are frequently in diametrical collision. It is only when, in Bagehot's phrase, "the cake of custom" is broken, that changes making for good have a possibility of introduction and support. Where the only moral sanctions are the sanctions of custom, change of whatever sort is at a discount. For change implies deviation from the ways of life sanctioned by the group, and deviation is itself, in a custom-bound morality, regarded with suspicion. It is clear that complete conformity is impossible save in a society of automata. There will be some individuals who will not be able to curb their desires to fit the inhibitions fixed by the group; there will be some who will deliberately stand out against the group commands and prohibitions, and assert their own imperious impulses against their fellows. Where such men are powerful or persuasive they may indeed bring about a transvaluation of all values; they may create a new morality. There are geniuses of the moral as well as the intellectual life, whose sudden insight becomes a standard for succeeding generations. There may, again, be more infringement of the moral code than is overtly noticeable. Frequently, as in a Puritanical régime, there may be, along with fanatic public professions and practice of virtue, private violation of the conventional moral codes. Our civilization is unpleasantly decorated with countless examples of this discrepancy between professed and practiced codes. The desire for praise and the fear of blame and its consequences, the desire, as we say, for the "good-will" and "respect of others," will lead to all the public manifestations of virtue, "with a private vice or two to appease the wayward flesh." The utterance of conventional moral formulas by men in public, and the infringement of those high doctrines in private, needs unfortunately not to be illustrated. Molière drew Tartuffe from real life. ORIGIN AND NATURE OF REFLECTIVE MORALITY. If the customs current were adequate to adjust men to their environment, reflection upon them might never arise. Reflection does arise precisely because customs are not, or do not remain, adequate. An individual is brought up to believe that certain actions are good, and that their performance promotes human happiness. He discovers, by an alert and unclouded insight, that in specific cases the virtues highly regarded by his group do not bring the felicitous results which they are commonly and proverbially held to produce. He observes, let us say, that meekness, humility, honesty are not modes of adaptation that bring happy results. He observes, as Job observed, that the wicked prosper; he notes that those who follow the path called righteous bring unhappiness to themselves and to others. Or the individual's first reflection upon moral standards may arise in his discovery that moral standards are not absolute, that what is virtue in the Occident is vice in the Orient, and _vice versa_. He discovers that those actions which he regards as virtuous are so regarded by him simply because he has been trained to their acceptance. Given another environment, his moral revulsions and approvals might be diametrically reversed. He makes the discovery that Protagoras made two thousand years ago: "Man is the measure of all things"; standards of good and evil depend on the accidents of time, space, and circumstance. In such a discovery an individual may well query, What _is_ the good? Not what passes for good, but what is the essence of goodness? What is justice? Not what is accredited justice in the courts of law, or in the market-place, or in the easy generalizations of common opinion. But what constitutes _justice_ essentially? What is the _standard_ by which actions may be rated just and unjust? Where individuals are habituated to one single tradition or set of customs, such questions may not arise. But where one, through personal experience or acquaintance with history and literature, discovers the multiplicity of standards which have been current with regard to the just and the good in human conduct, the search for some reasonable standard arises. The great historical instance of the discovery of the relativity and irrationality of customary morality and the emergence of reflective standards of moral value is the Athenian period of Greek philosophy. The Sophists pointed out with merciless perspicuity the welter, the confusion, the essential irrationality of current social and religious traditions and beliefs. They went no further in moral analysis than destructive criticism. They pointed out the want of authenticity or reason in the traditional morality by which men lived. Socrates went a step further. If current customs are not authoritative, he said, let us find those that have and _ought_ to have enduring authority over men. If the traditional standards are proved to be futile and inefficacious, let us find the unfaltering standards authenticated by reason. Let us substitute relevant and adequate codes and creeds for those which have by reason been shown to be unreasonable. Beneath the multiplicity of contradictory and often vicious customs, reason must be able to discover ways of life, which, if followed, will lead men to eventual happiness. There are thus two stages in the process of reflection upon morals. In the first stage reflection does no more than to point out the essential discrepancies and absurdities of the current moral codes. Reflection upon morals begins by being critical and querying. It starts when an individual, a little more thoughtful and perspicacious than his fellows, notes the discrepancies between the customs of different men, and notes also the discrepancies between the threatened results of the violation of traditional codes and the actual results. He may then come to the cynic's conclusion that morality is a myth and a delusion, and, in the words of the Sophist in Plato's _Republic_, "justice is merely the right of the stronger." Men in whom reflection or social sympathy extends not very far may, as they frequently do, stop at this point. These are the worldly wise; they are interested not in goodness, truth, and justice, but in those effective representations of those things publicly accounted good, true, and just which will win them public approval and increase their own wealth or power and position. Plato, in the _Republic_, pictures the type with magnificent irony: All those mercenary adventurers who, as we know, are called sophist by the multitude, and regarded as rivals, really teach nothing but the opinions of the majority to which expression is given when large masses are collected, and dignify them with the title of wisdom. As well might a person investigate the caprices and desires of some huge and powerful monster in his keeping, studying how it is to be approached, and how handled,--at what times and under what circumstances it becomes most dangerous, or most gentle--on what occasions it is in the habit of uttering its various cries, and further, what sounds uttered by another person soothe or exasperate it,--and when he has mastered all these particulars, by long-continued intercourse, as well might he call his results wisdom, systematize them into an art, and open a school, though in reality he is wholly ignorant which of these humours and desires is fair, and which foul, which good and which evil, which just and which unjust; and therefore is content to affix all these names to the fancies of the huge animal, calling what it likes good, and what it dislikes evil, without being able to render any other account of them,--nay, giving the titles of "just" and "fair" to things done under compulsion, because he has not discerned himself, and therefore cannot point out to others, that wide distinction which really holds between the nature of the compulsory and the good.[1] [Footnote 1: Plato: _Republic_ (Golden Treasury edition), pp. 209-10.] Throughout human history, there have been periods of individualism, of self-assertion against the traditional morality, which have been marked by loss of moral restraints, by a breakdown of the old standards without a substitution of new and sounder ones. There has been, in the beginning of almost every advance toward a new stage of moral valuation, the accompaniment of liberty by license. Reflection upon morals is not likely to produce immediately good results. The established morality is at least established. In so far as it is controlling in men's actions, it keeps those actions ordered and regular. The traditional code by which a man's life is governed may be a poor code, but it is more satisfactory than no code at all. On discovering the inadequacy of the morality by which he has lived, a man may reject morality altogether. From that time forth he may have no other standard than his own selfish desires. When a whole society, as at the time of the Renaissance, throws its traditional morality to the winds, it may make havoc of its freedom. In place of a bad moral order it may cease to have any moral order at all. The discovery that the codes by which we have lived are misleading and delusive may lead us to have nothing whatsoever to do with morals. The individual may decide simply to employ his superior insight in the exploitation of other people. It is something of this point of view that is expressed in the rampant individualism of Nietzsche and Max Stirner. The customary morality is meant for slaves; the Superman must stride above the signs and shibboleths by which men are led, and create himself a morality more adequate to his own superb and insolent welfare. For the reconstruction of a morality more adequate than the prevailing codes, more is demanded than merely a reflective criticism of prevailing standards. Where reflection goes no further than this, the net result is merely cynicism and libertinism. For moral progress there is needed "a person who is individual in choice, in feeling, in responsibility, and at the same time social in what he regards as good, in his sympathies and in his purposes." REFLECTIVE RECONSTRUCTION OF MORAL STANDARDS. The second stage of reflection upon morals consists in the reconstruction of moral standards, in a deliberate discovery of codes by which men can live together happily. It attempts to establish standards of action which are enforced and recommended not because they have been current and are currently approved, but because they give promise, upon critical examination, of contributing to human happiness. It must be recalled here that reflective morality is not a substitute for action based upon instinct or custom. It merely modifies these types of action in the light of the desirable consequences which would result from such modification. The establishment of reflective standards is limited by two general conditions. The first, previously mentioned, is that human beings come into the world with certain fixed tendencies to act. These original impulses may be obscured, but cannot be abolished. Secondly, reflection upon morals always must occur in a given social situation, that is, in a situation where certain habits of mind, emotion and action, are already in operation. Moral standards are not fresh constructions; they are _reconstructions_. We may want to _change_ current customs and traditions; but that is simply another way of iterating the fact that they _are there to be changed_. The moral reformer who would improve society must take into account the fact that there exist among the adult members of a generation, powerful habits, which may be improved or amended, but which cannot be ignored. Any attempt to improve men's ways of action starts within processes of action already going on. It is not as if we could hold up the processes of human life, and say, "Let us begin afresh." The generation whose habits are to be changed consists of living men, who are acting on the basis of customs which have become intimately and powerfully controlling in their lives. These customs, though they may not be altogether satisfactory, are yet great social economies. They give men certain determinate and efficacious modes of action. Reflection must start with them and from them. Unless men, furthermore, did act according to custom, they would have to reflect in detail about every step of their conduct. The aim of reflection is simply to transform existing customs into more effective methods for achieving the good. Reflection, indeed, must move within certain limits; it must take certain things for granted. We have already seen that reflection arises in a crisis of greater or lesser degree; it settles ambiguities, resolves the obscure and doubtful phases of situations. It is designed to secure adjustments where instinct and habit are inadequate to adapt the individual to his environment. But unless there were certain fixed, determined points to start with, certain limits within which reflection could operate, and which it could use as points of reference or departure, all would be chaos, and reflection would be impossible. It is precisely because we do take certain things as settled, because, as the phrase runs, "they go without saying," that we can think to any purpose whatsoever. Useful customs once established provide precisely these fixed points. If arbitration of labor disputes has become a fixed social habit, for example, attention can be turned to ways and means. If education has become a generally approved social habit, we can spend our time on instruments and methods. Every useful custom firmly established gives a basis of operations. That much is settled; that much does not demand our alert attention and inquiry. A society without any fixed habits would be sheer anarchy. The aim of intelligent consideration of morals is not to abolish customs, but to bring about their modification so that they will be the most effective adjustment of the individual and the group to their environment. Indeed, in advanced societies, reflection may itself become a custom, and the most highly valued of all. For where alert and conscious criticism of existing folkways is habitual among all the members of a society, that society is saved from subjection through inertia to disserviceable habits. It acts as a continual check and control; it prevents social and moral stagnation. The habit of reflection upon conduct, if it could be made generally current, would insure social progress. For customs would be regarded merely as tools, as instruments to be modified and adapted to new circumstances, as provisional modes of attaining the good. Fixity and rigidity in social life would give place to flexibility and wise continual adaptation. THE VALUES OF REFLECTIVE MORALITY. Some of these have already been noted. We may briefly summarize the foregoing discussion, and call attention to some additional values of a morality based upon reason, as contrasted with a morality of mere mechanical conformity to custom. It has already been pointed out that intellectual preferences and valuations are rooted in primary impulses; that is, our desires are anterior to reflection. What we intellectually value and prefer has its roots in primary impulses. Reason can discover how man may attain the good; but what _is_ good is determined by the desires with which man is, willy-nilly, endowed. Our preferences are, within limits, fixed for us. As Santayana writes: Reason was born, as it has since discovered, into a world already wonderfully organized, in which it found its precursor in what is called life, its seat in an animal body of unusual plasticity, and its function in rendering that body's volatile instincts and sensations harmonious with one another and with the outer world on which they depend.[1] [Footnote 1: Santayana: _Life of Reason_, vol. I, p. 40.] Our chief aim in reflective behavior is to discover ways and means by which a harmony may be achieved, a harmony of those very instincts which, left to themselves, would be in perpetual collision, frustrating and checking each other. Reflection not only seeks to find a way of life in which no natural impulse shall be frustrated, but it is through reflection that desires are broadened, and that new desires arise. Out of reflection upon social relations, which is in the first instance prompted by man's innate gregariousness, arise the conception of ideal friendship and the thirst for and movement toward ideal society. Out of reflection upon the animal passion of sex may rise Dante's beatific vision of Beatrice. Conduct, consciously controlled, finds not only ways by which animal desires may be fulfilled without catastrophe; it transmutes animal desires into ideal values. REFLECTION TRANSFORMS CUSTOMS INTO PRINCIPLES. In reflective behavior, as contrasted with that which is controlled by instinct and custom, there are established standards of action to which the individual consciously conforms. That is, instead of merely conforming to custom, an individual comes to act upon principles, consciously avowed and maintained. A man who sets up a standard of action in his professional or business relations is not conforming to an arbitrary code; he is living according to a way of life which he has deliberately and consciously chosen. When a man acts upon principles because he has consciously adopted them in view of the consequences which he believes to be associated with them, he will not make his standard an idol. Reflection establishes standards, but it is not mastered by them. It is persistently critical. Standards are tools, instruments toward the achievement of the good. They are merely general rules, derived from experience and retained so long as they bear desirable fruits in experience. Moral laws are not regarded as arbitrary and eternal, but as good only in so far as they produce good. A virtue is a virtue because it is conducive to human well-being. Standards are not absolute, but relative--relative to their fruits in practice. REFLECTIVE ACTION GENUINELY MORAL. Action is most genuinely moral when it is reflective. It is only then that the individual is a conscious and controlling agent. It is only then that he knows what he is doing. When a machine performs actions that happen to have useful results, we do not speak of the action as moral or virtuous. And action in conformity with custom is purely mechanical and arbitrary. An individual who is merely conforming to the customary is no more moral than an automaton. Given a certain situation, he makes a certain response. It makes no difference that the act happens to have fruitful consequences. It is not a matter of individual choice, of conscious volition. Aristotle long ago stated the indispensable conditions of moral actions: It is necessary that the agent at the time of performing them should satisfy certain conditions, _i.e._ in the first place that he should know what he is doing, secondly that he should deliberately choose to do it and to do it for its own sake, and thirdly that he should do it as an instance of a fixed and immutable moral state.[1] [Footnote 1: Aristotle: _Ethics_, book II, p. 42 (Weldon translation).] Only when the individual is aware of the consequences of his action, and deliberately chooses those consequences, is there any individuality, any exhibition of choice--in other words, any moral value in the act. When an act is prompted by mere habit and custom, we have an evidence of an individual's environment rather than of his character. Creatures thus moved by capricious and arbitrary impulse are hardly persons, and certainly not personalities. They are played upon by every whimsicality of circumstance; their own character makes no difference at all in the world in which they live. To act reflectively is to be the controlling rather than the controlled element in a situation. Action guided by intelligence is freed from the enslavement of passion, prejudice, and routine. It becomes genuinely free. The individual, emancipated from emotion, sense, and circumstance, from the accidental environment in which he happens to be born, is in command of his conduct. "Though shakes the magnet, steady is the pole." Morally, at least, he is "the master of his fate, the captain of his soul." REFLECTION SETS UP IDEAL STANDARDS. Reflection constantly sets up ideal standards by which current codes of conduct are judged and corrected. It is clear that ideals of life, even when sincerely entertained, are not always possible of immediate fulfillment. Theory tends continually to outrun practice, since human reflection tends to set up goals in advance of its achievement. For many individuals, anxious to attain immediate self-enhancement, the current cones are not criticized at all, but are taken for granted, as inevitable and irrefragable bases of operation. Many men, perhaps after a first flush of altruistic rebellion in adolescence, settle down with more or less complacency to the current moral codes. They do in Rome as the Romans do. They may have an intellectual awareness of the crassness, the stupidity, the essential injustice and inadequacy of the codes by which men in contemporary society live, but they may also, out of selfish preoccupation with their own interests, let things go at that. If the established ways are not as they ought to be, at least they are as they are. And since the current system is the one by which a man must live, assent is the better part of wisdom. There are comparatively few who persist in a criticism of prevailing standards, or who are troubled very much beyond their early twenties by a tormenting conviction that things are not done as they ought to be done. It is from the few who realize intellectually the inadequacies of prevailing customs, and are emotionally disturbed by them, that moral criticism arises. And it is only by such criticism that moral progress is made possible. "The duty of some exercise of discriminating intelligence as to existing customs, for the sake of improvement and progress, is thus a mark of reflective morality--of the régime of conscience as over against custom."[1] [Footnote 1: Dewey and Tufts: _Ethics_, pp. 181-82.] Reflection is thus the process by which progress is made possible, although, as we shall presently see, it is not thereby insured. The function of intelligence is precisely to indicate anticipated goods, "to imagine a future which is the projection of the desirable in the present." Even the best ordered life or society reveals some maladjustment, some remove, near or far, from perfection. It is the business of reflection and imagination to note the discrepancy between what is, and what ought to be, and assiduously to foster the vision of the latter, so that in the light of that imagined good, men's ways of life may be amended. Nor does the setting-up of ideal standards mean the construction of fruitless Utopias. Reflection upon the present ways of life and the prospect of their improvement does not mean a mere wistful yearning after better things. It means careful inquiry into those elements of established ways which may be incorporated into the construction of the ideal. It means the resolute application of intelligence to an analysis of present maladjustments in the interests of preserving out of inherited and current ways those factors which point towards the goal desired. It means to be eager for perfection, and sensitive to current imperfections. Moral progress demands a vision of the desirable future, and a persistent and discriminating reflection upon the means of its attainment out of the materials of the present. THE DEFECTS OF REFLECTIVE MORALITY. Reflection, as already pointed out, tends to stop with merely destructive criticism. Provoked by maladjustment and imperfection, it frequently goes no further than to note these, with cynicism or despair. Criticism of established customs and ways of life frequently rests with the exhibition of absurdities in men's ways, finding refuge in laughter or rebellion. There is no one so cynical as the man who has been recently wakened out of dogmatic and innocent faith in the traditions to which he has been reared. The child receives from the herd the doctrines, let us say, that truthfulness is the most valuable of all the virtues, that honesty is the best policy, that to the religious man death has no terrors, and that there is in store a future life of perfect happiness and delight. And yet experience tells him with persistence that truthfulness as often as not brings him punishment, that his dishonest playfellow has as good if not a better time than he, that the religious man shrinks from death with as great a terror as the unbeliever, is as broken-hearted by bereavement, and as determined to continue his hold upon this imperfect life rather than trust himself to what he declares to be the certainty of future bliss.... Who of us is there who cannot remember the vague feeling of dissatisfaction, the obscure and elusive sense of something being wrong, which is left by these and similar conflicts?[1] [Footnote 1: Trotter: _Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War_, p. 49.] A little reflection is, in morals, a dangerous thing. It discovers difficulties, and does not solve them. It finds that human life is darkly strewn with hypocrisies, with shams, with makeshifts and compromises. And having made this discovery, it sighs or satirizes or forgets. It is notorious with what frequency men "go to pieces" when they are loosed from the moorings of their childhood moralities, before they have had a chance to acquire new and more reasonable constraints. Plato, in protesting that young men should not study philosophy too early, has well described the dangers of shallow analysis.[2] [Footnote 2: "And will it not be one great precaution to forbid their meddling with it [philosophy] while young? For I suppose you have noticed, that whenever boys taste dialectic for the first time, they pervert it into an amusement, and always employ it for purposes of contradiction, and imitate in their own persons the artifices of those who study refutation,--delighting, like puppies, in pulling and tearing to pieces with logic any one who comes near them.... Hence, when they have experienced many triumphs and many defeats, they fall, quickly and vehemently, into an utter disbelief of their former sentiments: and thereby both they and the whole cause of philosophy have been prejudiced in the eyes of the world." (Plato: _Republic_, Golden Treasury edition, p. 267.)] THE INADEQUACY OF THEORY IN MORAL LIFE. Reflection upon morals, even when it goes beyond the stage of criticism and proceeds to the reconstruction of habits and customs upon a more reasonable basis, is yet inadequate. However logically convincing a code of morals may be, it is not efficacious simply as logic. In Aristotle's still relevant words: It may fairly be said then that a just man becomes just by doing what is just and a temperate man becomes temperate by doing what is temperate, and if a man did not so act, he would not have so much as a chance of becoming good. But most people, instead of doing such actions, take refuge in theorizing; they imagine that they are philosophers and that philosophy will make them virtuous; in fact they behave like people who listen attentively to their doctors, but never do anything that their doctors tell them. But it is as improbable that a healthy state of the soul will be produced by this kind of philosophizing as that a healthy state of the body will be produced by this kind of medical treatment.[1] [Footnote 1: Aristotle: _Ethics_, book II, chap. III, pp. 42-43 (Weldon translation).] Moral standards, in order to be effective, must have emotional support and be constantly applied. Men must be in love with the good, if good is to be their habitual practice. And only when the good is an habitual practice, can men be said to be living a moral life instead of merely subscribing verbally to a set of moral ideals. Justice, honesty, charity, mercy, benevolence, these are names for types of behavior, and are real in so far as they do describe men's actions. As Aristotle says, in another connection: "A person must be utterly senseless if he does not know that moral states are formed by the exercise of the powers in one way or another." The virtues are not static or frozen; they are names we give to varieties of action, and are exhibited, as they exist, _only_ in action.[2] [Footnote 2: "But the virtues we acquire by first exercising them, as is the case with all the arts, for it is by doing what we ought to do when we have learned the arts, that we learn the arts themselves; we become, _e.g._ builders by building, and harpists by playing the harp. Similarly it is by doing just acts that we become just, by doing temperate acts that we become temperate, by doing courageous acts that we become courageous.... Again the causes and means by which any virtue is produced, and by which it is destroyed, are the same; and it is equally so with any art; for it is by playing the harp that both good and bad harpists are produced, and the case of builders and all other artisans is similar, as it is by building well that they will be good builders, and by building badly that they will be bad builders.... It is by acting in such transactions as take place between man and man that we become either just or unjust. It is by acting in the face of danger and habituating ourselves to fear or courage that we become either cowardly or courageous. It is much the same with our desires and angry passions. Some people become temperate and gentle, others become licentious and passionate, according as they conduct themselves in one way or another way in particular circumstances." (Aristotle: _Ethics_, pp. 35-36, Weldon translation.)] The mere preaching of virtue will thus not produce its practice. Those standards which reflection discovers, however useful in the guidance of life, are not sufficient to improve human conduct. They must, as noted above, be emotionally sanctioned to become habitual, and, on the other hand, only if they are early acquired habits, will the emotions associated with them be pleasant rather than painful. "Accordingly the difference between one training of habits and another from early days is not a light matter, but is serious or rather all-important."[1] Ideals of life, when they remain mere closet-ideals, are interesting academic specimens, but are hardly effective in the helpful amendment of the lives of mankind. "Whoever contemplates the world in the light of an ideal," writes Bertrand Russell, "whether what he seeks be intellect or art, or love, or simple happiness, or all together, must feel a great sorrow in the evils which men allow needlessly to continue and--if he is a man of force and vital energy--an urgent desire to lead men to the realization of the good which inspires his creative vision." Great thinkers upon morals have not been content to work out interesting systems which were logically conclusive, abstract methods of attaining happiness. They have worked out their ethical systems as genuinely preferred ways of life, they have offered them as solutions of the difficulties men experience in controlling their own passions and in adapting their desires to the conditions which limit their fulfillment. [Footnote 1: Aristotle: _loc. cit._, p. 36.] "Our present study," writes Aristotle, "is not, like other studies, purely speculative in its intention; for the object of our inquiry is not to know the nature of virtue, but to become ourselves virtuous, as that is the sole benefit which it conveys."[2] Reflection upon morals can map out the road; it cannot make people travel it. For that, an early habituation to the good is necessary. [Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 36.] But it should be noted further that the greatest ethical reformers have not been those who have convinced men through the impeccability of their logic. They have been rather the supreme seers, the Hebrew prophets, Christ, Saint Francis, who have won followers not so much by the conclusiveness of their demonstration as through the persuasive fervor and splendor of their vision. THE DANGER OF INTELLECTUALISM IN MORALS. There has been throughout the history of ethical theory a tendency to oversimplify life by cramping it into the categories fixed by reason. Reflection tends to set up certain standards which the infinite variety of human experience tends to outrun. In the mere fact of setting up generalizations, reflection is arbitrary. Any generalization, by virtue of the very fact that it does apply to a wide variety of situations, must forego concern with the peculiar colors and qualities inhering in any specific experience. Various ethical writers have set up general rules, which they have attempted to apply to life with indiscriminate ruthlessness. They have tried to shear down the endless rich variety of human situations to fit the categories which they assume to start with. Unsophisticated men have complained with justice against the recurrent attempts of moralists to set up absolute laws, standards, virtues, which were to be applied regardless of the specific circumstances of specific situations. It was such formalism that Aristotle protested against throughout his _Ethics_. There is the same sort of uncertainty with regard to good things, as it often happens that injuries result from them; thus there have been cases in which people were ruined by wealth, or again by courage. As our subjects [moral inquiries] then and our premises are of this nature, we must be content to indicate the truth roughly, and in outline.[1] [Footnote 1: Aristotle: _loc. cit._, pp. 3-4.] He points out repeatedly that situations are specific, that laws or generalization can only be tentatively made. Questions of practice and expediency no more admit of invariable rules than questions of health. But if this is true of general reasoning upon Ethics, still more true is it that scientific exactitude is impossible in reasoning upon particular ethical cases. They do not fall under any art or any law, but the agents themselves are always bound to pay regard to the circumstances of the moment, as much as in medicine or navigation.[1] [Footnote 1: Aristotle: _loc. cit._, p. 37.] Instead of framing absolute general rules, Aristotle points out those specific conditions which must be taken into account in any act that can, without quibbling, be called good or virtuous. It is possible to go too far, or not to go far enough, in respect of fear, courage, desire, anger, pity, and pleasure and pain generally, and the excess and the deficiency are alike wrong; but to experience these emotions at the right time, and on the right occasions and towards the right persons, and for the right causes and in the right manner is the mean or the supreme good, which is characteristic of virtue.[2] [Footnote 2: _Ibid_. p. 46.] Reflection thus unduly simplifies the moral problem by setting up general standards which are not adequate to the multiple variety of specific situations which constitute human experience. But in reasoning upon the conduct of life, there has been displayed, furthermore, by ethical writers an inveterate tendency to identify the processes of life with the process of reason. One may cite as a classic instance of this point of view the ethical theory of Jeremy Bentham and the Utilitarians. According to the Utilitarians human beings judged acts in terms of their utility, as measured in the amount of pleasure and pain produced by an action. The individual figured out the pleasures and pains that would be the consequences of his action. We shall in the next section examine this point of view in more detail; we are referring to it here simply as an illustration of intellectualizing of morals. Few individuals go through anything remotely resembling the "hedonic calculus" laid down by Bentham.[3] The individual is not a static being, mathematically considering the amount of pleasure and pain associated with the performance of specific actions. We are, in the vast majority of cases, prompted to specific responses, not by any mathematical considerations of pleasures and pains, but by the immediate urgency of instinctive and habitual desires. Reflection arises in the process of adjustment of competing impulses, in the effecting of a harmony between various desires that are much more primary and fundamental than the reflection that arises upon them. We may largely agree with McDougall when he writes: [Footnote 3: The hedonic calculus of Bentham was, briefly, the following: "Every proposed act is to be viewed with reference to its probable consequences, in (1) intensity of pleasures and pains, (2) their duration, (3) their certainty or uncertainty, (4) their nearness or remoteness, (5) their fecundity, _i.e._, the tendency of a pleasure to be followed by others, or a pain by other pains; (6) their purity, _i.e._, the tendency of a pleasure to be followed by pains and _vice versa_; (7) their extent, that is, the number or range of persons whose happiness is affected--with reference to whose pleasures and pains each one of the first six items ought in strictness also to be calculated. Then sum up all the pleasures which stand to the credit side of the account; add the pains which are the debit items, or liabilities, on the other; then take their algebraic sum, and the balance of it on the side of pleasure will be the good tendency of the act upon the whole." (Dewey and Tufts: _Ethics_, pp. 275-76.) We may say, then, that directly or indirectly, the instincts are the prime movers of all human activity; by the conative or impulsive force of some instinct (or of some habit derived from an instinct) every train of thought, however cold and passionless it may seem, is borne along towards its end, and every bodily activity is initiated and sustained. The instinctive impulses determine the ends of all activities and supply the driving power by which all mental activities are sustained; and all the complex intellectual apparatus of the most highly developed mind is but a means towards these ends, is but the instrument by which these impulses seek their satisfactions, while pleasure and pain do but serve to guide them in their choice of the means. Take away these instinctive dispositions with their powerful impulses, and the organism would become incapable of activity of any kind; it would lie inert and motionless, like a wonderful clockwork whose mainspring had been removed, or a steam-engine whose fires had been drawn.[1] [Footnote 1: McDougall: _Social Psychology_, p. 44.] Reflection is last rather than first; it is provoked and sustained by instinctive desires, and is the means whereby they may be fulfilled. TYPES OF MORAL THEORY. Reflection upon morals produces certain characteristic types of moral theory. These may be classified, although, because of the complexity of factors involved in any moral theory, cross-division is inevitable. But in the long history of human reflection upon a reasonable way of life, certain divisions stand out clearly. The first great contrast that may be mentioned is that existing between Absolutism and Relativism, the contrast, namely, between theories of morals that regard right and wrong as absolute and _a priori_, unconditioned by time, place, and circumstance; and theories of morals that judge the rightness and wrongness of acts in terms of their consequences, in the happiness or welfare of human beings, however that be conceived. These two points of view represent radically different temperaments and differ radically in their fruits. The contrast will stand out more clearly after a brief discussion of each. ABSOLUTISM. Absolutistic moralities are distinguished by their maintenance of the fundamental moral idea of Duty, Duty consisting in an obligation to conform to the Right. Implied in this obligation of absolute conformity is the conception that the Right is unalterable, universally binding, and imperative. Good and evil are not discoverable in experience, but are standards to which human beings must in experience conform. The right is not simply the desirable--frequently it is, from the standpoint of impulses and emotion, the undesirable; but it is a universal, an _a priori_ standard to which human beings must in experience conform. Morals are "eternal and immutable" principles, absolutely irrefutable and indefeasible in experience. We shall, in approaching the problem from the standpoint of moral knowledge, see that most absolutist moral philosophers have also supposed that these eternal principles of right action are intuitively perceived. What concerns us in this connection, however, is the nature of this absolutistic conception, and its bearings on the governance of human conduct. According to the absolutist, the "goodness" of an act is not at all affected by its immediate consequences. The value of a good or a moral act does not consist in its results. The moral value of an act consists in the "good-will" of the agent, and the "good-will" of the agent consists in his willing and conscious conformity to the absolute moral principle involved. "Nothing is fundamentally good but the good-will." That is, an act to be moral, must be the conscious conformity of a rational agent to the moral law, which he recognizes to be morally binding. To Kant, the classic exponent of this position, an act performed out of mere inclination, if not immoral, certainly was not moral. A moral act could only flow from reason, and reason would dictate to an individual conformity to the moral law, which was a law of reason. Conduct that is determined by mere circumstance is not moral conduct. Morality is above the domain of circumstance. And the moral agent is above the defeats and compromises imposed by time and place. He is a free agent, that is, morally free. He accepts no commands, except those of reason. A man, in following impulse or being dictated to by circumstance, is a mere animal or a machine. He is only a reasonable, that is, a moral being, when he conforms to the laws which are above time and place and circumstance, and above the whirls and eddies of personal inclination. Concretely, one may take the absolutistic attitude toward a specific virtue: honesty. The morality of telling the truth consists in a conscious conformity to the moral standard of honesty in the face of all deflections of inclination and particular situations. It makes no iota of difference what the result of telling the truth in a particular instance may be. It makes no difference what urgent and plausible and practically decent reason one has for not telling the truth. The truth must be told, as justice must be done, though the heavens fall. We have a case, let us suppose, where telling bad news to a very sick man may kill him. That temporally disastrous consequence is, from an absolutistic point of view, a totally irrelevant consideration, as is also the pain we feel in telling the truth under such conditions. But the single moral course is clear; there is no alternative; in absolutistic morals there are no extenuating circumstances. The truth must be told, whatever be the consequences. For to tell the truth is a universal moral law, and conformity to that law a universal moral obligation. The defects of this position, if they are not obvious from its bare statement, will become clearer from the analysis of the relativist or teleological positions. But its specific virtues deserve attention. The Kantian or absolutistic position, by its emphasis on the indefeasible and unwavering character of moral action, suggests something that rouses admiration from common sense, unsophisticated by moral theory. We do not think highly of the man who is at the mercy of every chance appetite, or every casual incident. Morality must be constituted of more enduring stuff. We do not deeply admire the caliber of a man who yields to every pressing exigency, surrendering thereby every ideal, principle, or value, the attainment of which demands some postponement or some privation of the fulfillment of immediate desire. The man who compromises his political ideals in the attainment of his personal success, is a scornful figure morally. And we estimate more highly the character of an individual who can persist in the strenuous attainment of an ideal in the face of the counter-inclination of passing pleasures. In its emphasis on the autonomy and integrity of moral action, even its opponents credit the Kantian or absolutistic position with having hit upon a genuinely moral aspect of human action. It is, as we shall see, in the rigidity and formalism of its conception, in its fanatical allegiance to _a priori_ standards, and its absolute sanctification of given ways of action, that the theory is questionable. RELATIVISTIC OR TELEOLOGICAL MORALITY. Contrasted with the theories of morals that maintain that right and wrong are absolute and eternal principles unaffected by time, place, and circumstance, are those moral philosophies which set out explicitly to discover a way of life by which human happiness in this world of time and place and circumstance may be attained. To know what is the supreme good, and to discover what are the means of its attainment, are, as Aristotle long ago and justly observed, of great importance in the regulation of life. It is this knowledge and discovery that constitute, according to Aristotle, the business of ethics. Regarding this "supreme good," we may quote his own expressions: We speak of that which is sought after for its own sake, as more final than that which is sought after as a means to something else; we speak of that which is never desired as a means to something else as more final than the things which are desired both in themselves and as means to something else; and we speak of a thing as absolutely final, if it is always desired in itself and never as a means to something else. It seems that happiness preëminently answers to this description, as we always desire happiness for its own sake, and never as a means to something else, whereas we desire honour, pleasure, intellect, and every virtue, partly for their own sakes,... but partly also as being means to happiness, because we suppose they will prove the instruments of happiness. Happiness, on the other hand, nobody desires for the sake of these things, nor indeed as a means to anything else at all.[1] [Footnote 1: Aristotle: _loc. cit._, pp. 13-14.] Happiness may, as Aristotle observes, be differently conceived by different people. To some it may mean a life of sensual enjoyment; to some men a life of money-making. But it is the attainment of _complete_ satisfaction and self-realization by the individual that ethical theories should promote; for such self-realization constitutes happiness. It is sufficient here to point out that all so-called "teleological" or "relativistic" moralities, insist that the morality of an action is not determinable _a priori_, or absolutely. They are _relativistic_ in the sense that they insist on taking into account the specific circumstances of action in the determination of its moral value. They are _teleological_ in that they insist on measuring the moral value of an action in terms of its consequences in human well-being or happiness, however those be conceived. To revert to the illustration used in connection with the discussion of Absolutism, to lie in order to save a life would, on this basis, be construed as good rather than evil. UTILITARIANISM. One of the classic statements of relativistic and teleological morality is Utilitarianism. According to the Utilitarians the criterion of the worth of a deed was to be found in an estimation of the relative pleasures and pains produced by it. The view is thus stated by John Stuart Mill: The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded--namely, that pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.[1] [Footnote 1: Mill: _Utilitarianism_ (London, 1907), pp. 9-10.] Simply stated, Utilitarianism says: "Add together all the pleasures promised by a contemplated course of action, then the pains, and note the difference; the nature of the difference will determine whether the course is right or wrong." Pleasures and pains are thus conceived as being open to quantitative determination. Action is determined by mathematical calculation in advance of the pleasure and pain produced by any action. Bentham's name is particularly associated with the dictum, "the greatest happiness for the greatest number." But two implications of this doctrine must be taken into account, at least as Bentham interpreted it. The greatest happiness meant the maximum amount of pleasure. And each individual could desire the greatest happiness, only in so far as it contributed to his own happiness or pleasure. And, for Bentham, as for all strict Utilitarians, there was no qualitative distinction in the amounts of pleasure. "The quantity being the same," said Bentham, "pushpin is as good as poetry." Utilitarianism is here considered as an instance of a type of ethical theory that set human happiness as the end, and made its judgments of actions depend on their consequences in human welfare. It must be pointed out, however, that its conception of happiness was dependent on a psychology now almost unanimously recognized as false: Bentham's assumption that the _reason_ human beings performed certain actions was _because_ they desired certain pleasures, completely reverses the actual situation. It puts, as it were, the cart before the horse. Pleasure is psychologically the accompaniment, what psychologists call the "feeling tone" of the satisfaction of any instinctive or habitual impulse. Human beings have certain native or habitual tendencies to action, and pleasure attends the performance of these. It is not because we want the pleasure of eating, that we decide to eat; we want to eat, and eating is therefore pleasant. If the good Samaritan cared about the present feelings or the future welfare of the man fallen among thieves, it would no doubt give him some pleasure to satisfy that desire for his welfare; if he had desired his good as little as the priest and the Levite, there would have been nothing to suggest the strange idea that to relieve him, to bind up his nasty wounds, and to spend money upon him, would be a source of more pleasure to himself than to pass by on the other side and spend the money upon himself. In the case of the great majority of our pleasures, it will probably be found that the desire is the condition of the pleasure, not the pleasure of the desire.[1] [Footnote 1: Rashdall: _Ethics_, p. 18.] As has been previously pointed out in this and other chapters, action does not start with reflection upon pleasures, or, for that matter, upon anything else. Action is fundamentally initiated by instinctive promptings, or the promptings of habit. Satisfaction or pleasure attends the fulfillment of any inborn or acquired impulse, and dissatisfaction or pain its obstruction or frustration. Apart from the satisfactions experienced in the fulfillment in action of such impulses, pleasure does not exist. Actions, situations, persons, or ideas can be pleasant to us, but "pleasure" as a separate objective entity cannot be said to exist at all. The Utilitarians, again, made the intellectualist error of supposing that men dispassionately and mathematically weighed the consequences of their actions, whereas their relative impulsions to action are determined by the instincts they inherit and the habits they have already acquired. Despite its false psychology, Utilitarianism does stand out as one of the great classic attempts to build an ethical theory squarely designed to promote human happiness. An execution of the same worthy intention, more acceptable to those trained in the modern psychology of instinct, is that moral conception variously known as Behaviorism, or Energism, a point of view maintained by thinkers from Aristotle to Professor Dewey in our own day. All behavioristic theories take the position that in order to find out what is good for man, we must begin by finding out what man is. In order to discover what will give man satisfaction, we must discover what his natural impulses and capacities are. In the utilization and fulfillment of these will man find his most complete realization and happiness. The standard of goodness, therefore, is measured in terms of the extent to which action promotes a complete and harmonious utilization of natural impulses and natural capacities. Ethics, from such a viewpoint, cannot set up arbitrary standards, but must form its standards by inquiries into the fundamental and natural needs and desires of men. Instead of laying down eternal principles to which human beings must be made to conform, it must derive its principles from observations of human experience, and test them there. The good is what does good; the bad what does harm. And what is good for men, and bad for men, depends not on rigid _a priori_ intellectual standards, but on the original nature which is each man's inheritance. To base ethics upon an analysis of the conditions of human nature, as scientific inquiry reveals it, carries with it two implications. It means that nothing that is shown to be a part of man's inevitable original equipment can with justice to man's welfare be ruled out. Every instinct taken by itself is as good as any other. It is only when one instinct competes with another, so that excessive indulgence of one, as, for example, that of sex or pugnacity, interferes with all a man's other instincts or interests (or with those of other men), that an instinct becomes evil. It means, secondly, that since individuals differ, and since situations are infinitely various and individual, no arbitrary and fixed laws can be laid down as fundamental eternal principles. MORAL KNOWLEDGE. The contrast between the two types of morality that have been historically current may be approached from the standpoint of moral knowledge. That is, moral theories may be classified on the basis of their answer to the question: How do moral judgments arise? The chief contrast to be drawn is that between Intuitionalism on the one hand, and Empiricism on the other. Intuitionalism holds briefly that the moral quality of an act is intuitively perceived, and is recognized apart from experience of its consequences. The empirical theory holds that moral judgments come to be attached to acts as a result of experience, and particularly experiences of the approval and disapproval of other people. The contrast will again become clearer by a discussion of each theory separately. INTUITIONALISM. Intuitionalism takes two chief forms. The first, Perceptual Intuitionalism, as Sidgwick calls it, holds that the rightness of each particular act is immediately known. The second, called by the same author Dogmatic Intuitionalism, holds that the general laws of common-sense morality are immediately perceived. The popular view of "conscience," well illustrates the first-mentioned position of the Intuitionalist. We commonly think of the dictates of conscience as relating to particular actions, and when a man is bidden in a particular case to "trust to his conscience," it commonly seems to be meant that he should exercise a faculty of judging morally this particular case without reference to general rules, and even in opposition to conclusions obtained by systematic deduction from such rules.[1] [Footnote 1: Sidgwick: _Methods of Ethics_ (4th edition), p. 99.] Conscience, this organ of immediate moral perception, is frequently taken to be divinely given at birth. There is no one so certain or immovable as the man whose actions are dictated by his "conscience." He does not have to think about his actions; he knows immediately what is right and what is wrong. The intuitionalist does not go into the natural history of scruples for or against the performance of certain actions. He takes these immediate aversions or promptings to act as the revelations of immediate and unquestionable knowledge, frequently presumed to be divinely implanted. Most Intuitionalists hold not that we experience an immediate intuition of the rightness or wrongness of action in every single situation, but that the common rules of morality, such common rules as good faith and veracity, are immediately recognized and assented to as moral. They insist that these are not determined by experience or by reflection, since stealing, lying, and murder are _known_ to be wrong by everyone, though most men could not tell way. Intuitionalism carried out to logical extremes is represented by such men as Tclstoy, and, in general, those who genuinely and persistently act according to the dictates of their conscience, "who hold, and so far as they can, act upon the principle that we must never resist force by force, never arrest a thief, must literally give to him that asketh, up to one's last penny, and so on." EMPIRICISM. To explain the grounds of the Empirical position is to exhibit the arguments in refutation of Intuitionalism. The most obvious and frequent line of attack that empirical moralists make upon Intuitionalism is to examine and compare the various "intuitions" of right conduct which have been held by men in different ages and places. The traditional method of combating intuitionalism from the time of John Locke to that of Herbert Spencer has been to present the reader with a list of cruel and abominable savage customs, ridiculous superstitions, acts of religious fanaticism and intolerance, which have all alike seemed self-evidently good and right to the peoples or individuals who have practised them. There is hardly a vice or a crime (according to our own moral standard) which has not at some time or other in some circumstances been looked upon as a moral and religious duty. Stealing was accounted virtuous for the young Spartan, and among the Indian caste of Thugs. In the ancient world, piracy, that is, robbery and murder, was a respectable profession. To the mediæval Christian, religious persecution was the highest of duties, and so on.[1] [Footnote 1: Rashdall: _loc. cit._, p. 59.] The Empiricist asks: If all these intuitions are absolute; if men at various times and at various places, indeed, if, as is the case, men of different social classes and situations at the present time, differ so profoundly in their "intuitions" of the just, the noble, and the base, which of the conflicting intuitions, all equally absolute, is _the_ absolute? The Intuitionalist continually appeals to the universal intuition and assent of Mankind. But there is scarcely a single moral law for which universal assent in even a single generation can be found. One has but to survey the heterogeneous collection of customs and prohibitions collected in such a work as Frazer's _Golden Bough_, to see how little unanimity there is in the moral intuitions of mankind. The Empiricist finds the origin of these divergent moral convictions in the divergent environments to which individuals in different places, times, and social situations are exposed. The intensity and apparent irrefutability of these convictions, which the Intuitionalist ascribes to their innateness, the Empiricist ascribes to their early acquisition, and the deep emotional hold which early acquired habits have over the individual. Those moral beliefs which we hold with the utmost conviction and intensity are, instead of being thereby guaranteed as most reasonable and genuinely moral, thereby rendered, says the Empiricist, the more suspect. They are evidences of the effectiveness of our early education, or of our high degree of sensitiveness to our fellows. Conscience is thus reduced to habitual emotional reactions produced by the contact of a given individual temperament with a given environment. Thus acts come by the individual to be recognized as right or wrong, according to the tradition to which he has been educated and the contacts with other people to which he is continually exposed. The Empiricist does not deny that there are intuitions, or apparent intuitions. He denies their ultimacy, their unquestionable validity. When ... we find ourselves entertaining an opinion about the basis of which there is a quality of feeling which tells us that to inquire into it would be absurd, obviously unnecessary, unprofitable, undesirable, bad form, or wicked, we may know that that opinion is a non-rational one, and probably, therefore, founded upon inadequate evidence.[1] [Footnote 1: Trotter: _Instincts of the Herd_, p. 44.] These so powerful convictions are the immediate promptings of instincts, or of the habits into which they have been modified. The humane Christian, had he been brought up in the Eskimo tradition, would with the most tender solicitude slaughter his aged parents, just as the humane Christian in the Middle Ages thought it his duty to slay heretics. There is no limit to the excesses to which men have gone on the dictates of conscience. To put actions on the basis of conscience is to put them beyond the control of reflection or the check of inquiry. It is to reduce conduct to caprice; to exalt impulse into a moral command. And the results of accepting blind intuitions as rational knowledge have been in many cases catastrophic. If reason has slain its thousands, the acceptance of instinct as evidence has slain its tens of thousands. Day by day, in the ordinary direction of their lives, men have learned during hundreds of generations how untrustworthy is the interpretation of fact which Instinct offers, and how bitter is the truth contained in such proverbs as "Anger is a bad counsellor," or "Love is blind." ... Wars are often started and maintained, neither from mere blind anger, nor because those on either side find that they desire the results which a cool calculation of the conditions makes them regard as probable, but largely because men insist on treating their feelings as evidence of fact and refuse to believe that they can be so angry without sufficient cause.[1] [Footnote 1: Graham Wallas: _The Great Society_, pp. 224-25.] The Empiricist insists that the morality of an act cannot be told from the intensity of approval or disapproval which it arouses in the individual. Actions are not moral or immoral in themselves, but in their consequences or relations, which are only discoverable in experience. The goodness or badness of an act is measurable in terms of its consequences, and the consequences of action are discoverable only in experience. This does not imply that we calculate the results of every action before performing it, or measure the consequences of the acts of other persons before judging them. Our immediate reactions are frequently not the result of reflection at all, but are responses prompted by previously formed habits, or by instinctive caprice. These immediate intuitions are not to be relied upon as moral standards, precisely because reflection frequently comes to an estimate of an act, directly at variance with our instinctive reaction to it. We come, upon reflection, to approve acts that we are, by instinct, moved to condemn. And the reverse holds true. When we see that a child's clothes have caught fire, we do not need to reflect on any consequences for universal well-being before we make up our minds that it is a duty to extinguish the flames, even at the cost of some risk to ourselves. It is clear that the act will conduce to pleasure and to the avoidance of pain. We should feel an equally instinctive desire to kick out of the room a man whom we saw making incisions in the flesh of a human being if we did not know that he was a surgeon, and that the making of incisions will tend to save the man's life. Were a competent physician to suggest that the burning of the child's clothes upon its back would cure it of a fever, every reasonable person would consider it his duty to reconsider his _prima-facie_ view of the situation.[1] [Footnote 1: Rashdall: _Ethics_, pp, 51-52.] The Empiricist insists that moral standards are matters of discovery; that the laws of conduct must be derived from experience, just as must the laws of the physical sciences. To condemn an act as evil means that the performance of that act has in experience been found to produce harmful results. Those moral laws which at the present stage of civilized society seem to have attained universal assent, _have_ attained it because they are rules whose practice has, in the history of the race, repeatedly been found to produce desirable results. Even the conception of justice, which has by so many thinkers been held to be absolute, to inhere somehow in the nature of things, is by Mill demonstrated at length to be merely a particularly highly regarded utility: It appears ... that justice is a name for certain moral requirements, which, regarded collectively, stand higher in the scale of social utility, and are therefore of more paramount obligation than any others; though particular cases may occur where some other social duty is so important as to overrule any one of the general maxims of justice. Thus, to save a life, it may not only be allowable, but a duty, to steal, or take by force, the necessary food or medicine, or to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the only qualified medical practitioner.[2] [Footnote 2: Mill: _Utilitarianism_ (London, 1907), p. 95.] Indeed it is clear, that in the processes of natural selection those tribes would survive whose rules of morality did in general promote welfare. And it is the business of reflection, says the Empiricist, not to accept either his own conviction or those of others on ethical questions, but in cases of ambiguity to establish, after inquiry, a standard the practice of which promises the widest benefits in human happiness. ETHICS AND LIFE. All ethical theories are more or less deliberately intended as definitions of the good, and as instruments for its attainment. They must, therefore, be immediately tested by their fruits in life. An ethical theory that is only verbally concerned with the good, but does not in practice promote human welfare, is futile pedantry or worse. Reflection upon conduct arises in man's attempt to control the nature which is his inheritance in the interests of his happiness. Men have learned through experience that to follow each impulse without forethought brings them pain, misery, and sometimes destruction. They have found that to achieve happiness some harmony must be established between competing desires, and that only by balances, adjustment, and control, can they make the most of the nature which is theirs inescapably. This nature consists, as we have seen, in certain specific tendencies to action. Men are natively endowed with instincts to love, to fight, to be curious, to long for and enjoy the companionship of their fellows, to wish privacy and solitude, to follow a lead and to take it, to fear and hate, and sympathize with others. The satisfaction of any one of these impulses gives pleasure. Any one of these may become a dominant passion. But it is not through yielding to a single imperious impulse that men attain genuine happiness. To be excessively pugnacious or amorous or fearful is to court unhappiness, both for the individual and his fellows. It is only by giving each instinct its proportionate chance in the total context of all the instincts, that happiness is to be found. It is for this reason that, as Aristotle first pointed out, a study of what is good for man must start with a study of what man himself is. The study of ethics must consequently fall back for its data upon psychology. It must note with precision the things that men can do, before it tells them what they ought to do. For the things they ought to do, are dependent on the conditions which limit and determine their ideals. Any ethical system that deliberately excludes from its formulation natural human desires and capacities, is denying the very sources of all morality. For every ideal has its root back in some unlearned human impulse, and an ideal that has no basis in the nature of man, is not an ideal, but a negation. The ideal "way of life" is one that provides for the harmonious utilization of all those possibilities which lie in man's original nature. To deny a place to the sex impulse is to deny a place to ideal love. To deny the moral legitimacy of the fighting instinct is to take away the basis of that immense energy which goes to sustain great moral reformers. The place of ethical theory is not to deny human impulses, but to turn them to uses in which they will not hinder other impulses either of the individual or of others. Through physical science, men have sought to make the most of their physical environment; through moral science, they can try to make the most of the human equipment which is theirs for better or for worse. This human equipment is an opportunity; and the utilization of this opportunity constitutes happiness. It is in the realization of the possibilities offered by our original human nature that reflection upon morals is justified. It is in the effective fulfillment of this opportunity that its success must be measured. MORALITY AND HUMAN NATURE. A moral theory that is merely coercive and arbitrary, therefore, is not in a genuine sense moral. A morality, to justify itself, must appeal to the heart of man. The good which it recommends must be a good which man can without sophistry approve. And the good for which man can whole-heartedly strive is not determined by logic, but, in the last analysis, by biology. Human beings cannot freely call good that to which they have no spontaneous prompting. Those ascetics who have denied the flesh may have displayed a certain degree of heroism, but they displayed an equal lack of insight. For it is out of physical impulses alone that any ideal values can arise. It is only when one instinct interferes with its neighbors, or one individual with his fellows, that instincts or activities can be called evil. They are called evil in relation, in context, with reference to their consequences. In itself no natural impulse is subject to condemnation. It is just as natural as thunder or sunshine, and is to be taken as a point of departure, as a basis for action, rather than as a chance for censure. Impulses demand control simply because, left to themselves, they collide with each other, just as individuals uncontrolled by custom, law, and education, collide with each other in the pursuit of satisfaction. The ideal is a way of life, which will allow as much spontaneity as the conditions of nature and life allow, and provide as much control as they make necessary. To be thus in control of one's desires is to be free. It is to utilize one's interests and capacities in the light of a harmony both of one's own desires, and in so far as this harmony is universal, of the desires of all men. It is to lead the Life of Reason: Every one leads the Life of Reason in so far as he finds a steady light behind the world's glitter, and a clear residuum of joy beneath pleasure and success. No experience not to be repented of falls without its sphere. Every solution to a doubt, in so far as it is not a new error, every practical achievement not neutralized by a second maladjustment consequent upon it, every consolation not the seed of another, greater sorrow, may be gathered together and built into this edifice. The Life of Reason is the happy marriage of two elements--impulse and ideation--which if wholly divorced would reduce man to a brute or to a maniac. The rational animal is generated by the union of these two monsters. He is constituted by ideas which have ceased to be visionary and actions which have ceased to be vain.[1] [Footnote 1: Santayana: _Reason in Common Sense_, p. 6.] Nor does the leading of a moral life, as Kant and other moralists said or implied, demand a stern and lugubrious countenance and a sad, resigned determination to be good. A moral system should promote rather a hallelujah than a halo. One may suspect the adequacy to human happiness of those moral systems which promote in their holders or practitioners a virtuous somberness and a moral melancholy. A morality that demands such unwholesome outward evidences is inwardly not beautiful. As art is an attempt to give perfection and fulfillment to matter, so is morals an attempt to give perfect and complete fulfillment to human possibility. A genuine morality will, in consequence, be spontaneous and free. In Matthew Arnold's well-known lines: "Then, when the clouds are off the soul, When thou dost bask in Nature's eye, Ask, how _she_ view'd thy self-control, Thy struggling task'd morality. Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair. * * * * * "There is no effort on _my_ brow-- I do not strive, I do not weep. I rush with the swift spheres, and glow In joy, and when I will, I sleep."[1] [Footnote 1: From _Morality_.] MORALS, LAW, AND EDUCATION. No moral code, however adequate in its theoretical formulation or the means of its attainment, is socially effective merely as theory. No matter how completely it takes into account all the natural desires and possibilities which demand fulfillment, it remains merely an academic yearning. It becomes an instrument of happiness only when it has been made the habitual mode of life of the individual and the group, through the long continuous processes of education and law. There is a familiar discrepancy between theory and practice, even when the discrepancy is not due to insincerity. Philosophy cannot make a man virtuous, however much it may convince him of the path to virtue. Socrates thought that if men only knew the good they would follow it. But modern psychologists and ordinary laymen know better. The good must become a habitual practice if men are to follow it, and it can only become a habitual practice if education and social conditions in general provide for the early habituation of the individual to conduct that is socially useful. Aristotle, who himself framed a theory of morals that was built on the firm foundation of human possibility, was aware of the inadequacy of theory by itself to make men good: Some people think that men are made good by nature, others by habit, others again by teaching. Now it is clear that the gift of Nature is not in our own power, but is bestowed through some divine power upon those who are truly fortunate. It is probably true also that reason and teaching are not universally efficacious; the soul of the pupil must first have been cultivated by habit to a right spirit of pleasure and aversion, like the earth that is to nourish the seed.[1] [Footnote 1: Aristotle: Ethics, book X, chap. X, p. 344 (Weldon translation). It is only when people find pleasure in the right actions, that they can be depended upon to perform them. And it is by their early and habitual performance that they will become pleasant. In the formation of such socially and individually useful habits, education is the incomparable instrument. The conduct of individuals is, as we have repeatedly seen, largely fixed by the customary recognition of certain acts as approved, and others as disapproved. These approvals and disapprovals are transmitted through education. Education is used here to refer not simply to the formal institutions of teaching, but to the complete social environment, the approvals and disapprovals with which an individual comes in contact. Formal education is, however, the chief means by which society inculcates into younger members those values, traditions, and customs which its controlling elements regard as of the most pivotal importance. Social customs which are transmitted in education, become fixed in law. So that, as Aristotle points out in this same connection, laws are symptomatic of the moral values which the group regards as of the highest importance. Laws are customs given all the sanction, support, and significance that the group can put into them. Education transmits the values, ideals, and traditions cherished by the group, but the laws and customs already current largely control the scope and methods of education. "Education proceeds ultimately from the patterns furnished by institutions, customs, and laws. Only in a just state will these be such as to give the right education."[1] [Footnote 1: Dewey: _Democracy and Education_, p. 103.] The state of law and education which is exhibited by a society, thus accurately mirrors the degree of moral progress of the group. And what is, perhaps, more significant, the kind of law and education current determines the moral ideals and conditions the moral achievements of the maturing generation. Education, more especially, is the instrument through which the young can be educated not only to ideals and customs already current, but to their reflective modification in the light of our ever-growing knowledge of the conditions of human welfare. INDEX Ability, education and native. Absolutism in morality. Acquisitive instinct. Activity, creative (see Creative activity); mental; physical; social. Æsthetic experience; and form; in industry; in science; sense satisfaction basis of; standards, effect of custom on; value of science; values; _vs._ moral values; _vs._ practical values. _See also_ Art. Affection. _See_ Love. Age, influence of on learning. Altruism. Ambition. Animal, instincts compared with human; man as an; man a social. Appreciation. _See_ Æsthetic. Aristocracy. Aristotle. Arnold, Matthew. Art, and emotion; and morals; and nature; appreciation of; as an industry; as propaganda; as realization of ideals; as recreation; as vicarious experience; expression of ideas by; fine; for art's sake; imagination in; industrial; origin of; standards in. _See also_ Æsthetic. Attention in habit formation. Awe. Bacon, Francis. Bagehot. Bain. Beauty. _See_ Art, and Æsthetic. Behavior, habitual; instinctive; types of human. Behaviorism. Belief, gregariousness in; individuality in. Bentham. Bergson. Bible. Blame. _See_ Praise. Bloomfield, Leonard. Boas. Bryce. Burke, Edmund. Burns, C. Delisle. Bury. Butler. Cannon. Career of reason. Carlyle. Carnegie. Cattell. Change, in customs; in habits; in language; opposition to. Character. _See_ Personality, and Self, development of. Christ. Christianity. Church, the, as a social institution; educational functions of; political functions of. Civilization, and acquisitive instinct; control of instincts in; factors in development of. _See also_ Society. Classification in science. Coefficient of correlation. Common sense and science. Communication. _See_ Language. Companionship. _See_ Gregariousness. Comte, Auguste. Conduct, cultivation of socially desirable; social standards of. Confession. Conscience. Conservatism, place of fear in; of habit. Continuity, cultural. Cooley. Courage. Creative activity, and eccentricity; as sublimation of sex instinct; in art; in industry; in society. _See also_ Imagination. Culture, continuity of; dependent on environment. Curiosity, instinct of; and scientific inquiry. Custom, attitudes toward; and art; and morals; changes in; effects of on progress; preservation of; social value of. Dante. Darwin. Deduction. Democracy. Dewey. Dickens. Dickinson, G. Lowes. Differences, individual, and education; causes of; in industry; in leadership; in reflection: influence of environment on; of heredity; of race; of sex. Discontent, due to repression of instincts. Dislike. _See_ Hate. Divine, as the human ideal; description of. Dogmatism. Dow. Dowson, Ernest. Eccentrics. Education, and individual differences; and morals; as transmitter of the past; by the church; instrument for social betterment and control; made possible by prolonged period of infancy; and by language. _See also_ Learning. Egoism. Emerson. Emotion, accompanies satisfaction or frustration of instincts or habits; and art; and language; aroused in maintenance of self; as driving power; difficulty of classifying; in morals; impedes reflection; James-Lange theory of; of dislike or hate; of fear; of pity; of love; physical indications of. Empirical morality. Enthusiasm; religious. Environment, control of by science; influence of on æsthetic appreciation; on individual differences; on racial differences; on instincts; maladjustment between individual and; possibility of choice of. Ethics, and life; contrast between professed and practiced. _See also_ Morality. Euripedes. Evolution. Experience, art as vicarious; modifies man's instincts. Experiment, to determine learning process in animals; number of instincts in animals; in children. Experimental moral standards. Experimentation in science. Expression, art as means of. _See also_ Æsthetic, and Religion. Fatigue, influence of on learning; in relation to industry; mental; nervous; physical. Fear, and religious experience; instinct of; of the new. Field, Eugene. Fighting instinct. _See_ Pugnacity. Fiske. Folkways. Food, instinct of. Form, and æsthetic experience. Freedom of speech. Freudian psychology. Friendship. _See_ Love. Frost, Robert. Galton, Francis. Garibaldi. Generalization in reflection. Genius. God. Goethe. Goff. Goldmark. Gregariousness, effect of on innovation; importance of for social solidarity; in action; in belief; instinct of. Group-feeling; influence of on language. _See also_ Society. Habit, as time-saver; importance of in morals; language as a; of reflection, importance of; strength of in individual; in society. Habits, and emotion; and instincts; disserviceable; education a deliberate acquisition of; formation of, influence of on thinking; modification of by reflection; of mind; specific not general; transference of. Hard, William. Harrison, Jane. Hart. Hate. Health, influence of on learning. Hegel. Henley. Heraclitus. Herd instinct. _See_ Gregariousness. Heredity. Hinks. History, and religion. Hobhouse. Housman. Hunger, instinct of. Huxley. Ideals, created by reflection; devotion to; foundation of; realization of in art; in morals; in religion. Ideas, expressed in art; fear of the novel in; man alone reacts to. Imagination, as form of mental activity; in art; in science. _See also_ Creative activity. Impotence. _See_ Need. Impulses. _See_ Instincts. Individual, and education; differences (_see_ Differences, individual); maladjustment between environment and. Individualism. Individuality, and progress; consciousness of unique in man; in opinion and belief. Induction. Industry, art as an; individual differences in; need of creative activity in. Infancy, prolonged period of in man. Inquisition. Instinct, and habit; acquisitive; definition of; of curiosity; fear; gregariousness; hunger; leadership; mental activity; parental; physical activity; pity; play; pugnacity; self-preservation; sex; shelter; submission; sympathy. Instincts, and education; and emotion; basis of morals; conflict of; control of; happiness comes from satisfaction of; interpenetration of; modification of; number and variety of; repression of; specific not general; unchanged since prehistoric times. Intelligence, a conscious adjustment of habits; influence of heredity on, of race, of sex; makes possible control of nature; measurement of; types of. Interests, conflict of in society. Intolerance. Intuition. Intuitionalism. Invention of tools. James, William. Jennings. Jevons. Job. Jones, A. L.. Joy, religious expression of. Kant. Kelvin. Kerr-Lawson. Keyser. Kropotkin. Ladd. Lang. Lange. Language, and emotion; and logic; and thought; as a social habit; changes in; importance of for civilization; man alone possesses; origin of; primitive; uniformities in. Law, and morals; and society; scientific. Leadership, instinct of; submission to. Learning, affected by age, fatigue, and health; capacity for in men and animals; drill and attention in; importance of habit of; process of (_see also_ Education, and Reflection); trial-and-error. Le Bon. Lee, Frederick S.. Lincoln. Logic, and language. Love. Lowell. Loyalty. Lucretius. McDougall. Malthus. Man, as social being; primitive; study of, basis of ethics; unique characteristics of. Marett. Markham, Edwin. Marot, Helen. Marx, Karl. Masefield. Mayo-Smith. Mendelian laws of heredity. Mental activity. Meyer, Eduard. Mill, John Stuart. Mills. Milton. Moral action; knowledge; standards; theory, types of; values. Morality, absolutistic; and art; and education; and emotion; and habit; and human nature; and intellectualism; and law; based on instincts; customary; empirical; inadequacy of theory in; intuitional; reflective; relativistic and teleological; spontaneous. Morley, John. Mysticism. Napoleon. Nature, and art; man's control of; science as explanation of; unchangeability of. Need, and religious experience. New, progress and the; distrust of; idealization of. _See also_ Originality. Newton. Nietzsche. Northcliffe, Lord. Noyes, Alfred. Observation in science. Opinion, individuality in; suppression of. Originality in thinking, causes of; encouragement of; fear of, in society. _See also_ New. Orosius. O'Shaughnessy. Other-worldliness. Parental instinct. Pascal. Past, critical examination of; disparagement of; education as transmitter of; idealization of; limitations of; our heritage from; veneration of. Pasteur. Pater, Walter. Pearson, Karl. Penance. Personality. _See also_ Self. Physical activity, instinct of; fatigue. Pity, instinct of. Plato. Play. _See_ Physical activity, and Recreation. Pleasure. Poe. Poincaré. Pope. Population; restriction of. Possession. _See_ Acquisitive. Praise and blame, as instruments of social control; determine professed standards; in development of self; indifference to; man responsive to. Prayer. Prejudice, influences thinking. Primitive and civilized races; language; man's manufacture of tools; morality; religion; science. Principles. Privacy, instinctive demand for. Probability. Progress, and custom; and pugnacity; and reflection; and variation from normal; science as an instrument of. Propaganda, art as; emotional value of words in. Psychological tests. _See_ Intelligence, measurement of. Psychology, and ethics; behavioristic; "faculty"; Freudian; of Utilitarianism. Public opinion; opposition to. Pugnacity, instinct of. Quiescence. Race, continuity of human; influence of on individual differences. Rashdall. Reason, and religion; as director of life; career of; in absolutistic morality. _See also_ Reflection, and Thinking. Recreation; art as; form dependent on work and habits. Reflection, and individual differences; and morality; creates moral standards; in art; in science; inadequacy of in morals; limited by instinct and habit; modifier of instinct and habit; process of; value of for society. _See also_ Learning, Scientific method, and Thinking. Reflex. Relativistic morality. Religion, and history; and science; experiences giving rise to expression of; institutionalized; offers solace; realization of ideals in; primitive; rationalization of personal. Remorse and religion. Repentance. Repetition in habit formation. Repression of instincts. Ribot. Robinson, James Harvey. Robinson, Edwin Arlington. Roosevelt. Ross. Russell, Bertrand. Sabatier. Sacrifice. Santayana. Schopenhauer. Science, æsthetic aspect of; and common sense; and progress; and religion; as explanation of natural phenomena, classification in; definition of; experimentation in; imagination in; innovation in; observation in; practical; primitive; pure; social. Scientific inquiry, curiosity and; law; method. Self-assertion; consciousness of the; development of; display; preservation; sufficiency; surrender; satisfaction and dissatisfaction; the divided; the negative; the permanent; the social; types of the. Sense satisfaction basis of æsthetic experience. Sex, and creative activity; and racial continuity; influence of on individual differences; instinct of. Shakespeare. Shelley. Sidgwick. Smith, Adam. Social activity; being, man as a; consequences of fear; of leadership; of opposition to public opinion; of pity; of submission; inertia; institution, the church as a; motive; sciences; self; solidarity; standards of conduct; value of consciousness of self; of custom; of individuality in opinion; of praise and blame; of prolonged period of infancy; of pugnacity; of reflection. Socialism. Society, and education; and individual happiness; and law; based on instinct of gregariousness; conflict of interests in; control of instincts in. Socrates. Solitude. Sorel, Georges. Specificity of instincts; of habits. Speech (_see also_ Language); freedom of. Standards, æsthetic; _a priori_; experimental; ideal; language; moral; social. Statistics. Stirner, Max. Stork, Charles Wharton. Submissive instinct. Suggestion, in thinking. Sutherland. Swinburne. Sympathy. Tabu. Tarde. Taylor, Henry Osborn. Teleology in morals. Tender emotion. Tennyson. Theology. Theory, inadequacy of in morals. Thilly. Thinking, common sense _vs._ scientific; influence of habit on; analyzes experience; begins with a problem. _See also_ Reflection, and Scientific method. Thompson, Sylvanus P.. Thomson. Thorndike, Edward L. Thought, and language; originality in. Tolstoy. Tools, man only maker and user of. Tradition. _See_ Custom. Trial-and-error, learning; reflection as mental. Trotter. Tufts. Tylor, Edward B. Tyndall. Types of self; of intelligence. Utilitarianism. Values, æsthetic; ideal; moral. Veblen. Verification in scientific procedure. Wallas, Graham. War, and acquisitive instinct; and hate; and pugnacity. Ward, Lester. Watson. Wharton, Edith. Wilde, Oscar. Will. Wilson, Woodrow. Wolff, Christian. Woodbridge. Woodworth. Wordsworth. Work determines form of recreation. 
40914	----	_The_ BEHAVIOR OF CROWDS _A Psychological Study_ _by_ Everett Dean Martin _Lecturer in Social Philosophy and Director of the Cooper Union Forum of the People's Institute of New York_ [Illustration] HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON THE BEHAVIOR OF CROWDS Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America H--W CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE FOREWORD vii I. THE CROWD AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF TO-DAY 1 II. HOW CROWDS ARE FORMED 11 III. THE CROWD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 51 IV. THE EGOISM OF THE CROWD-MIND 73 V. THE CROWD A CREATURE OF HATE 92 VI. THE ABSOLUTISM OF THE CROWD-MIND 133 VII. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF REVOLUTIONARY CROWDS 166 VIII. THE FRUITS OF REVOLUTION--NEW CROWD-TYRANNIES FOR OLD 219 IX. FREEDOM AND GOVERNMENT BY CROWDS 233 X. EDUCATION AS A POSSIBLE CURE FOR CROWD-THINKING 281 INDEX 305 FOREWORD Since the publication of Le Bon's book, _The Crowd_, little has been added to our knowledge of the mechanisms of crowd-behavior. As a practical problem, the habit of crowd-making is daily becoming a more serious menace to civilization. Events are making it more and more clear that, pressing as are certain economic questions, the forces which threaten society are really psychological. Interest in the economic struggle has to a large extent diverted attention from the significance of the problems of social psychology. Social psychology is still a rather embryonic science, and this notwithstanding the fact that psychiatry has recently provided us with a method with which we may penetrate more deeply than ever before into the inner sources of motive and conduct. The remedy which I have suggested in Chapter X deserves a much more extended treatment than I have given it. It involves one of the great mooted questions of modern philosophical discussion. It is, however, not within the province of this book to enter upon a discussion of the philosophy of Humanism. The subject has been thoroughly thrashed over in philosophical journals and in the writings of James, Schiller, Dewey, and others. It is sufficient for my purpose merely to point out the fact that the humanist way of thinking may provide us with just that educational method which will break up the logical forms in which the crowd-mind intrenches itself. Those who expect to find a prescribed formula or ideal scheme of organization as a remedy for our social ills may feel that the solution to which I have come--namely, a new educational method--is too vague. But the problem of the crowd is really concerned with the things of the mind. And if I am correct in my thesis that there is a necessary connection between crowd-thinking and the various traditional systems of intellectualist, absolutist, and rationalist philosophy, the way out must be through the formation of some such habits of thinking as I have suggested. E. D. M. NEW YORK, _October 10, 1919_. THE BEHAVIOR OF CROWDS I THE CROWD AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF TO-DAY Every one at times feels himself in the grip of social forces over which he has no control. The apparently impersonal nature of these forces has given rise to various mechanistic theories of social behavior. There are those who interpret the events of history as by-products of economic evolution. Others, more idealistic but determinists, nevertheless, see in the record of human events the working out of a preordained plan. There is a popular notion, often shared by scholars, that the individual and society are essentially irreconcilable principles. The individual is assumed to be by nature an antisocial being. Society, on the other hand, is opposed in principle to all that is personal and private. The demands of society, its welfare and aims, are treated as if they were a tax imposed upon each and every one by something foreign to the natural will or even the happiness of all. It is as if society as "thing-in-itself" could prosper in opposition to the individuals who collectively constitute it. It is needless to say that both the individual and the social, according to such a view, are empty abstractions. The individual is, in fact, a social entity. Strip him of his social interests, endowments, and habits, and the very feeling of self, or "social me" as William James called it, vanishes and nothing is left but a Platonic idea and a reflex arc. The social also is nothing else than the manner in which individuals habitually react to one another. Society in the abstract, as a principle opposed to individual existence, has no more reality than that of the grin which Alice in Wonderland sees after the famous Cheshire cat has vanished. It is the mere logical concept of others in general, left leering at us after all the concrete others have been thought away. Much social thinking is of this cat-grin sort. Having abstracted from the thought of self everything that is social, and from the idea of the social all that has to do with concrete persons, the task remains to get pure grin and pure cat together again in such a way that neither shall lose its identity in the other. It is, of course, impossible to reconcile these mutually exclusive abstractions either in theory or in practice. It is often difficult enough, even with the aid of empirical thinking, to adjust our relations with the other people about us. But on the Cheshire-cat hypothesis, the social problem can never be solved, because it is not a real problem at all. Since the individual is therefore a social being as such, and the social is just a way of acting together, the social problem does not grow out of a conflict between the self and an impersonal social principle. The conflicts are, in fact, clashes among certain individuals and groups of them, or else--and this is a subject to which social psychology has paid insufficient attention--the social struggle is in certain of its phases a conflict within the personal psyche itself. Suppose that the apparently impersonal element in social behavior is not impersonal in fact, but is, for the most part, the result of an impersonal manner of thinking about ourselves. Every psychic fact must really be an act of somebody. There are no ideas without thinkers to think them, no impersonal thoughts or disembodied impulses, no "independent" truths, no transcendental principles existing in themselves and outside of human heads. Life is everywhere reaction; it is nowhere a mere product or a passive registering of impersonal forces. It is the organism's behavior in the presence of what we call environment. Individual opinions cannot be tossed into a common hat, like small coins. Though we may each learn from the others, there is no magic by which our several thoughts can sum themselves up into a common fund of public opinion or super-personal whole which thinks itself, there being no collective head to think it. No matter how many people think and behave as I do, each of us knows only his own thought and behavior. My thought may be about you and what I judge you are thinking, but it is not the same as your thought. To each the social is _nil_ except in so far as he experiences it himself, and to each it is something unique when viewed from within. The uniformity and illusion of identity--in short, the impersonal aspect of social thinking and activity appears only when we try to view social behavior from without--that is, as objectively manifest in the behavior of others. What then is the secret of this impersonal view of the social? Why do we think of ourselves socially in the same impersonal or external way that we think of others? There is an interesting parallel here in the behavior of certain types of mental pathology. There are neurotics who commonly feel that certain aspects of their behavior are really not of their own authorship, but come to them as the result of influences acting from without. It was such phenomena in part that led psychologists of a generation ago to construct the theory of "multiple personality." It is known now that the psychic material which in these cases appears to be automatic, and impersonal, in the sense that it is not consciously willed, is really motivated by unconscious mechanisms. The apparently "impersonal" behavior of the neurotic is psychologically determined, though unconsciously. May there not be a like unconscious psychic determination of much that is called social behavior? It is my thesis that this is so, and that there are certain types of social behavior which are characterized by unconscious motivation to such a degree that they may be placed in a definite class of psychological phenomena. This group of phenomena I have, following to some extent the terminology of Le Bon, called "The Crowd." I wish there were a more exact word, for it is very difficult to use the word crowd in its psychological sense without causing some confusion in the mind of the reader. In ordinary speech "a crowd" is any gathering of people. In the writings of Le Bon, as we shall see, the word has a special meaning, denoting not a gathering of people as such, but a gathering which behaves in a certain way which may be classified and described psychologically as "crowd mentality." Not every gathering of people shows this crowd-mentality. It is a characteristic which appears under certain circumstances. In this discussion the word "crowd" must be understood to mean the peculiar mental condition which sometimes occurs when people think and act together, either immediately where the members of the group are present and in close contact, or remotely, as when they affect one another in a certain way through the medium of an organization, a party or sect, the press, etc. The crowd while it is a social phenomenon differs greatly from the social as such. People may be social--the family is an example of this--without being a crowd either in thought or action. Again a crowd--a mob is an example of this--may be distinctly antisocial, if we attach any ethical meaning to the term. Both the individual and society suffer, as we shall see, from crowd-behavior. I know of nothing which to-day so menaces not only the values of civilization, but also--it is the same thing in other words, perhaps--the achievement of personality and true knowledge of self, as the growing habit of behaving as crowds. Our society is becoming a veritable babel of gibbering crowds. Not only are mob outbreaks and riots increasing in number, but every interest, patriotic, religious, ethical, political, economic, easily degenerates into a confusion of propagandist tongues, into extravagant partisanship, and intemperance. Whatever be the ideal to which we would attain, we find the path of self-culture too slow; we must become army worms, eating our way to the goal by sheer force of numbers. The councils of democracy are conducted on about the psychological level of commercial advertising and with about the same degree of sincerity. While it cannot be said that the habit of crowd-making is peculiar to our times--other ages, too, have indulged in it--it does seem that the tendency to crowd-mindedness has greatly increased in recent years. Whether it is temperance, or justice, or greater freedom, moral excellence or national glory, that we desire--whether we happen to be conservatives or radicals, reformers or liberals, we must become a cult, write our philosophy of life in flaming headlines, and sell our cause in the market. No matter if we meanwhile surrender every value for which we stand, we must strive to cajole the majority into imagining itself on our side. For only with the majority with us, whoever we are, can we live. It is numbers, not values, that count--quantity not quality. Everybody must "moral-crusade," "agitate," "press-agent," play politics. Everyone is forced to speak as the crowd, think as the crowd, understand as the crowd. The tendency is to smother all that is unique, rare, delicate, secret. If you are to get anywhere in this progressive age you must be vulgar, you must add to your vulgarity unction. You must take sides upon dilemmas which are but half true, change the tempo of your music to ragtime, eat your spiritual food with a knife, drape yourself in the flag of the dominant party. In other words, you must be "one hundred per cent" crowd man. The effect of all this upon the individual is that he is permitted neither to know nor to belong to himself. He becomes a mere banner toter. He must hold himself ever in readiness to wiggle-waggle in the perpetual Simon-says-thumbs-up game which his crowd is playing. He spends his days playing a part which others have written for him; loses much of his genuineness and courage, and pampers himself with imitation virtues and second-hand truths. Upon the social peace the effect is equally bad. Unnecessary and meaningless strife is engendered. An idolatry of phrases is enthroned. A silly game of bullying and deception is carried on among contending crowds, national, religious, moral, social. The great truths of patriotism, morality, and religion become hardly more than caricatures--mere instruments of crowds for putting their rivals on the defensive, and securing obeisance from the members of the crowd itself, easily repudiated in the hour of the crowd's victory. The social harmony is menaced by numerous cliques and parties, ranging in size all the way from the nation-crowd down to the smallest sect, each setting out like a band of buccaneers bent upon nothing but its own dominance, and seeking to justify its piratical conduct by time-worn platitudes. That which is meant by the cry of the Russian Revolution, "All power to the soviets," is peculiar neither to Russia nor to the working class. Such in spirit is the cry of every crowd, for every crowd is, psychologically considered, a soviet. The industrial and political danger of the soviet would amount to little or nothing, were it not for the fact that the modern world is already _spiritually sovietized_. The threatened soviet republic is hardly more than the practical result of a hundred years of crowd-thinking on almost every subject. Whether capitalist or proletarian, reformer or liberal, we have all along been behaving and thinking in soviet fashion. In almost every important matter in life we have ignored Emerson's warning that we must rely upon ourselves, and have permitted ourselves to behave and think as crowds, fastening their labels and dogmas upon our spirits and taking their shibboleths upon our tongues, thinking more of the temporary triumph of our particular sect or party than of the effect of our behavior upon ourselves and others. There is certainly nothing new in the discovery that our social behavior is not what it ought to be. Mediæval thinkers were as much aware of the fact as we are, but they dismissed the social problem with the simple declaration of the "sinfulness of human nature." Nineteenth-century utilitarians felt that the social problem could be solved by more enlightened and more reasonable behavior on the part of individuals. Recent social psychology--of which the writings of Prof. William McDougall are probably the best example, has abandoned the theory that social behavior is primarily governed by reason or by considerations of utility. A better explanation of social phenomena is found in instinct. It is held that the true motives of social behavior are pugnacity, the instinct of self-appreciation or self-debasement, of sex, gregariousness, and the like. Each instinct with its "affective emotion" becomes organized through various complex reactions to the social environment, into fairly well established "sentiments." These sentiments are held to be the controlling social forces. As McDougall says: We may say then that directly or indirectly the instincts are the prime movers of all human activity; by the conative or impulsive force of some instinct (or of some habit derived from an instinct), every train of thought, however cold and passionless it may seem, is borne along toward its end, and every bodily activity is initiated and sustained. The instinctive impulses determine the ends of all activities and supply the driving-power by which all mental activities are sustained; and all the complex intellectual apparatus of the most highly developed mind is but a means toward those ends, is but the instrument by which these impulses seek their satisfactions.... These impulses are the mental forces that maintain and shape all the life of individuals and societies, and in them we are confronted with the central mystery of life and mind and will. This is all very good so far as it goes. But I confess that I am somewhat at loss to know just what it explains so far as crowd-behavior is concerned. Do these instincts and sentiments operate the same under all social conditions? Are some of them suppressed by society and forced to seek their satisfaction in roundabout ways? If so, how? Moreover, I fail to find in present-day social psychology, any more than in the writings of Herbert Spencer, Sumner, Ward, and others, any clear distinction between the characteristic behavior of crowds and other forms of social activity. Only the school of Le Bon has shown any definite appreciation of these facts. It is to Le Bon, therefore, in spite of the many and just criticisms of his work, that we must turn for a discussion of the crowd as a problem apart from social psychology in general. Le Bon saw that the mind of the crowd demanded special psychological study, but many of the psychological principles which he used in solving the problem were inadequate to the task. Certain of his conclusions were, therefore, erroneous. Since the close of the nineteenth century, however, psychology has gained much insight into the secret springs of human activity. Possibly the most significant achievement in the history of this science is Freud's work in analytical psychology. So much light has been thrown upon the unconscious by Freud and other analytical psychologists, that psychology in all its branches is beginning to take some of Freud's discoveries into account. Strictly speaking, psychoanalysis is a therapeutic method. It has, however, greatly enriched our knowledge of mental pathology, and thus much of its data has become indispensable to general psychology and to social psychology in particular. In his book the _Interpretation of Dreams_, Freud has shown that there exist in the wish-fulfilling mechanisms of dream formation certain definite laws. These laws undoubtedly underlie and determine also many of our crowd-ideas, creeds, conventions, and social ideals. In his book, _Totem and Taboo_, Freud has himself led the way to the application of the analytical psychology to the customs and ideas of primitive groups. I am sure that we shall find, as we proceed, that with the analytical method we shall gain an entirely new insight into the causes and meaning of the behavior of crowds. II HOW CROWDS ARE FORMED In his well-known work on the psychology of the crowd Le Bon noted the fact that the unconscious plays a large part in determining the behavior of crowds. But he is not clear in his use of the term "unconscious." In fact, as Graham Wallas justly points out, his terminology is very loose indeed. Le Bon seems to have made little or no attempt to discover in detail the processes of this unconscious. In company with most psychologists of his time, he based his explanation upon the theory of "suggestion and imitation." He saw in the unconscious merely a sort of mystical "common humanity," from which he derived his--also mystical--idea of a common crowd-mind which each individual in the crowd in some unexplained manner shared. He says: The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the following: Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character or their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation.... It is easy to prove how much the individual forming part of a crowd differs from the isolated individual, but it is less easy to discover the causes of this difference. To obtain, at any rate, a glimpse of them it is necessary in the first place to call to mind the truth established by modern psychology, that unconscious phenomena play an altogether preponderating part, not only in organic life, but also in the operations of intelligence.... Our conscious acts are the outcome of an unconscious substratum created in the mind in the main by heredity. This substratum consists of innumerable characteristics handed down from generation to generation which constitute the genius of the race.... It is more especially with respect to those unconscious elements which constitute the genius of a race that all the individuals belonging to it resemble each other.... It is precisely these general qualities of character, governed by forces of which we are unconscious and possessed by the majority of normal individuals of a race in much the same degree--it is precisely these qualities, I say, that in crowds become common property. In the collective mind the intellectual aptitudes of the individuals, and in consequence their individuality, are weakened. The heterogeneous is swamped in the homogeneous and the unconscious qualities obtain the upper hand. It may safely be said, I think, that this assumed impersonal collective mind of the crowd has no existence in a sound psychology. People's minds show, of course, innumerable mutual influences, but they do not fuse and run together. They are in many respects very similar, but similarity is not identity, even when people are crowded together. Our author has doubtless borrowed here rather uncritically from Herbert Spencer's organic conception of society--his later statement, not quoted here, that the alleged merging of the heterogeneous in the homogeneous would logically imply a regression to a lower stage in evolution, is another bit of Spencerian jargon commonly accepted in Le Bon's day. When, however, Graham Wallas, in _The Great Society_, states that Le Bon is not "himself clear whether he means that crowds have no collective consciousness, or that every individual in a crowd is completely unconscious," it seems to me that Wallas is a little unfair. Neither Le Bon nor the relation of the unconscious to the crowd-mind may be dismissed in Wallas's apparently easy manner. Le Bon has established two points which I think cannot be successfully denied: first, that the crowd is essentially a psychological phenomenon, people behaving differently in a crowd from the way they behave when isolated; and second, that the unconscious has something to do with crowd-thinking and acting. Wallas says of Le Bon: Tarde and Le Bon were Frenchmen brought up on vivid descriptions of the Revolution and themselves apprehensive of the spread of socialism. Political movements which were in large part carried out by men conscious and thoughtful, though necessarily ill informed, seemed therefore to them as they watched them from the outside to be due to the blind and unconscious impulses of masses "incapable both of reflection and of reasoning." There is some truth in this criticism. In spite of the attempt of the famous author of crowd-psychology to give us a really scientific explanation of crowd-phenomena, his obviously conservative bias robs his work of much of its power to convince. We find here, just as in the case of Gobineau, Nietzsche, Faguet, Conway, and other supporters of the aristocratic idea, an a priori principle of distrust of the common people as such. In many passages Le Bon does not sufficiently distinguish between the crowd and the masses. Class and mass are opposed to each other as though, due to their superior reasoning powers, the classes were somehow free from the danger of behaving as crowd. This is of course not true. Any class may behave and think as a crowd--in fact it usually does so in so far as its class interests are concerned. Anyone who makes a study of the public mind in America to-day will find that the phenomena of the crowd-mind are not at all confined to movements within the working class or so-called common people. It has long been the habit of conservative writers to identify the crowd with the proletariat and then to feel that the psychology of the situation could be summed up in the statement that the crowd was simply the creature of passion and blind emotion. The psychology which lies back of such a view--if it is psychology rather than class prejudice--is the old intellectualism which sought to isolate the intellect from the emotional nature and make the true mental life primarily a knowledge affair. The crowd, therefore, since it was regarded as an affair of the emotions, was held to be one among many instances of the natural mental inferiority of the common people, and a proof of their general unfitness for self-government. I do not believe that this emotional theory is the true explanation of crowd-behavior. It cannot be denied that people in a crowd become strangely excited. But it is not only in crowds that people show emotion. Feeling, instinct, impulse, are the dynamic of all mental life. The crowd doubtless inhibits as many emotions as it releases. Fear is conspicuously absent in battle, pity in a lynching mob. Crowds are notoriously anæsthetic toward the finer values of art, music, and poetry. It may even be argued that the feelings of the crowd are dulled, since it is only the exaggerated, the obvious, the cheaply sentimental, which easily moves it. There was a time when insanity was also regarded as excessive emotion. The insane man was one who raved, he was mad. The word "crazy" still suggests the condition of being "out of one's mind"--that is, driven by irrational emotion. Psychiatry would accept no such explanation to-day. Types of insanity are distinguished, not with respect to the mere amount of emotional excitement they display, but in accordance with the patient's whole psychic functioning. The analyst looks for some mechanism of controlling ideas and their relation to impulses which are operating in the unconscious. So with our understanding of the crowd-mind. Le Bon is correct in maintaining that the crowd is not a mere aggregation of people. _It is a state of mind._ A peculiar psychic change must happen to a group of people before they become a crowd. And as this change is not merely a release of emotion, neither is it the creation of a collective mind by means of imitation and suggestion. My thesis is that _the crowd-mind is a phenomenon which should best be classed with dreams, delusions, and the various forms of automatic behavior_. The controlling ideas of the crowd are the result neither of reflection nor of "suggestion," but are akin to what, as we shall see later, the psychoanalysts term "complexes." The crowd-self--if I may speak of it in this way--is analogous in many respects to "compulsion neurosis," "somnambulism," or "paranoiac episode." Crowd ideas are "fixations"; they are always symbolic; they are always related to something repressed in the unconscious. They are what Doctor Adler would call "fictitious guiding lines." There is a sense in which all our thinking consists of symbol and fiction. The laws, measurements, and formulas of science are all as it were "shorthand devices"--instruments for relating ourselves to reality, rather than copies of the real. The "truth" of these working ideas is demonstrated in the satisfactoriness of the results to which they lead us. If by means of them we arrive at desired and desirable adaptations to and within our environment, we say they are verified. If, however, no such verification is reached, or the result reached flatly contradicts our hypothesis, the sane thinker holds his conclusions in abeyance, revises his theories, or candidly gives them up and clings to the real as empirically known. Suppose now that a certain hypothesis, or "fiction," instead of being an instrument for dealing with external reality, is unconsciously designed as a refuge from the real. Suppose it is a symbolic compromise among conflicting desires in the individual's unconscious of which he cannot rid himself. Suppose it is a disguised expression of motives which the individual as a civilized being cannot admit to his own consciousness. Suppose it is a fiction necessary to keep up one's ego consciousness or self-appreciative feeling without which either he or his world would instantly become valueless. In these latter cases the fiction is not and cannot be, without outside help, modified by the reality of experience. The complex of ideas becomes a closed system, a world in and of itself. Conflicting facts of experience are discounted and denied by all the cunning of an insatiable, unconscious will. The fiction then gets itself substituted for the true facts of experience; the individual has "lost the function of the real." He no longer admits its disturbing elements as correctives. He has become mentally unadjusted--pathological. Most healthy people doubtless would on analysis reveal themselves as nourishing fictions of this sort, more or less innocent in their effects. It is possible that it is by means of such things that the values of living are maintained for us all. But with the healthy these fictions either hover about the periphery of our known world as shadowy and elusive inhabitants of the inaccessible, or else they are socially acceptable as religious convention, race pride, ethical values, personal ambition, class honor, etc. The fact that so much of the ground of our valuations, at least so far as these affect our self-appreciation, is explicable by psychologists as "pathological" in origin need not startle us. William James in his _Varieties of Religious Experience_, you will remember, took the ground that in judging of matters of this kind, it is not so much by their origins--even admitting the pathological as a cause--but by their fruits that we shall know them. There are "fictions" which are neither innocent nor socially acceptable in their effects on life and character. Many of our crowd-phenomena belong, like paranoia, to this last class. As I shall try to show later, the common confusion of the crowd with "society" is an error. The crowd is a social phenomenon only in the sense that it affects a number of persons at the same time. As I have indicated, people may be highly social without becoming a crowd. They may meet, mingle, associate in all sorts of ways, and organize and co-operate for the sake of common ends--in fact, the greater part of our social life might normally have nothing in common with crowd-behavior. Crowd-behavior is pseudo-social--if social organizations be regarded as a means to the achievement of realizable goods. The phenomena which we call the crowd-mind, instead of being the outgrowth of the directly social, are social only in the sense that all mental life has social significance; they are rather the result of forces hidden in the personal and unconscious psyche of the members of the crowd, forces which are merely _released_ by social gatherings of a certain sort. Let us notice what happens in a public meeting as it develops into a crowd, and see if we can trace some of the steps of the process. Picture a large meeting-hall, fairly well filled with people. Notice first of all what sort of interest it is which as a rule will most easily bring an assemblage of people together. It need not necessarily be a matter of great importance, but it must be something which catches and challenges attention without great effort. It is most commonly, therefore, an _issue_ of some sort. I have seen efforts made in New York to hold mass meetings to discuss affairs of the very greatest importance, and I have noted the fact that such efforts usually fail to get out more than a handful of specially interested persons, no matter how well advertised, if the subject to be considered happens not to be of a controversial nature. I call especial attention to this fact because later we shall see that it is this element of conflict, directly or indirectly, which plays an overwhelming part in the psychology of every crowd. It is the element of contest which makes baseball so popular. A debate will draw a larger crowd than a lecture. One of the secrets of the large attendance of the forum is the fact that discussion--"talking back"--is permitted and encouraged. The evangelist Sunday undoubtedly owes the great attendance at his meetings in no small degree to the fact that he is regularly expected to abuse some one. If the matter to be considered is one about which there is keen partisan feeling and popular resentment--if it lends itself to the spectacular personal achievement of one whose name is known, especially in the face of opposition or difficulties--or if the occasion permits of resolutions of protest, of the airing of wrongs, of denouncing abuse of some kind, or of casting statements of external principles in the teeth of "enemies of humanity," then, however trivial the occasion, we may count on it that our assembly will be well attended. Now let us watch the proceedings. The next thing in importance is the speaker. Preferably he should be an "old war horse," a victor in many battles, and this for a psychological reason which we shall soon examine. Whoever he is, every speaker with any skill knows just when this state of mind which we call "crowd" begins to appear. My work has provided me with rather unusual opportunities for observing this sort of thing. As a regular lecturer and also as director of the forum which meets three nights a week in the great hall of Cooper Union, I have found that the intellectual interest, however intense, and the development of the crowd-spirit are accompanied by wholly different mental processes. Let me add in passing that the audiences which gather at Cooper Union are, on the whole, the most alert, sophisticated, and reflective that I have ever known. I doubt if in any large popular assembly in America general discussion is carried on with such habitual seriousness. When on rare occasions the spirit of the crowd begins to manifest itself--and one can always detect its beginnings before the audience is consciously aware of it--I have noticed that discussion instantly ceases and people begin merely to repeat their creeds and hurl cant phrases at one another. All then is changed, though subtly. There may be laughter as at first; but it is different. Before, it was humorous and playful, now there is a note of hostility in it. It is laughter _at_ some one or something. Even the applause is changed. It is more frequent. It is more vigorous, and instead of showing mere approval of some sentiment, it becomes a means of showing the numerical strength of a group of believers of some sort. It is as if those who applaud were unconsciously seeking to reveal to themselves and others that there is a multitude on their side. I have heard the most exciting and controversial subjects discussed, and seen the discussion listened to with the intensest difference of opinion, and all without the least crowd-phenomena--so long as the speaker refrained from indulging in generalities or time-worn forms of expression. So long as the matter discussed requires close and sustained effort of attention, and the method of treatment is kept free from anything which savors of ritual, even the favorite dogmas of popular belief may be discussed, and though the interest be intense, it will remain critical and the audience does not become a crowd. But let the most trivial bit of bathos be expressed in rhythmical cadences and in platitudinous terms, and the most intelligent audience will react as a crowd. Crowd-making oratory is almost invariably platitudinous. In fact, we think as a crowd only in platitudes, propaganda, ritual, dogma, and symbol. Crowd-ideas are ready-made, they possess finality and universality. They are fixed. They do not develop. They are ends in themselves. Like the obsessions of the insane, there is a deadly inevitability in the logic of them. They are "compulsions." During the time of my connection with the Cooper Union Forum, we have not had a crowd-demonstration in anything more than an incipient form. The best laboratory for the study of such a phenomenon is the political party convention, the mass meeting, or the religious revival. The orators who commonly hold forth at such gatherings know intuitively the functional value of bathos, ridicule, and platitude, and it is upon such knowledge that they base the success of their careers in "getting the crowd." The noisy "demonstrations" which it has of late become the custom to stage as part of the rigmarole of a national party convention have been cited as crowning examples of the stupidity and excess of crowd enthusiasm. But this is a mistake. Anyone who has from the gallery witnessed one or more of these mock "stampedes" will agree that they are exhibitions of endurance rather than of genuine enthusiasm or of true crowd-mindedness. They are so obviously manipulated and so deliberately timed that they can hardly be regarded as true crowd-movements at all. They are chiefly interesting as revelations of the general insincerity of the political life of this republic. True crowd-behavior requires an element of spontaneity--at least on the part of the crowd. And we have abundant examples of this in public meetings of all sorts. As the audience becomes crowd, the speaker's cadence becomes more marked, his voice more oracular, his gestures more emphatic. His message becomes a recital of great abstract "principles." The purely obvious is held up as transcendental. Interest is kept upon just those aspects of things which can be grasped with least effort by all. Emphasis is laid upon those thought processes in which there is greatest natural uniformity. The general, abstract, and superficial come to be exalted at the expense of that which is unique and personal. Forms of thought are made to stand as objects of thinking. It is clear that such meaning as there is in those abstract names, "Justice," "Right," "Liberty," "Peace," "Glory," "Destiny," etc., or in such general phrases as "Brotherly Love," "Grand and Glorious," "Public Weal," "Common Humanity," and many others, must vary with each one's personal associations. Popular orators deal only with the greatest common denominator of the meaning of these terms--that is, only those elements which are common to the associations of all. Now the common associations of words and phrases of this general nature are very few--hardly more than the bare sound of the words, plus a vague mental attitude or feeling of expectancy, a mere turning of the eyes of the mind, as it were, in a certain direction into empty space. When, for instance, I try now to leave out of the content of "justice" all my personal associations and concrete experiences, I can discover no remaining content beyond a sort of grand emptiness, with the intonations of the word booming in my auditory centers like the ringing of a distant bell. As "public property," the words are only a sort of worn banknote, symbols of many meanings and intentions like my own, deposited in individual minds. Interesting as these personal deposits are, and much as we are mutually interested by them and moved to harmonious acting and speaking, it is doubtful if more than the tiniest fragment of what we each mean by "justice" can ever be communicated. The word is a convenient instrument in adjusting our conduct to that of others, and when such adjustment seems to meet with mutual satisfaction we say, "That is just." But the just thing is always a concrete situation. And the general term "justice" is simply a combination of sounds used to indicate the class of things we call just. In itself it is but a form with the content left out. And so with all other such abstractions. Now if attention can be directed to this imaginary and vague "meaning for everybody"--which is really the meaning for nobody--and so directed that the associations with the unique in personal experience are blocked, these abstractions will occupy the whole field of consciousness. The mind will yield to any connection which is made among them almost automatically. As conscious attention is cut away from the psyche as a whole, the objects upon which it is centered will appear to have a reality of their own. They become a closed system, perfectly logical it may be in itself, but with the fatal logic commonly found in paranoia--the fiction may become more real than life itself. It may be substituted, while the spell is on, for the world of actual experience. And just as the manifest content of a dream is, according to Freud, the condensed and distorted symbol of latent dream-thoughts and desires in the unconscious, so, in the case we are discussing, the unconscious invests these abstract terms with its own peculiar meanings. They gain a tremendous, though undefined, importance and an irresistible compelling power. Something like the process I have described occurs when the crowd appears. People are translated to a different world--that is, a different sense of the real. The speaker is transfigured to their vision. His words take on a mysterious importance; something tremendous, eternal, superhuman is at stake. Commonplace jokes become irresistibly amusing. Ordinary truths are wildly applauded. Dilemmas stand clear with all middle ground brushed away. No statement now needs qualification. All thought of compromise is abhorrent. Nothing now must intervene to rob these moments of their splendid intensity. As James once said of drunkenness, "Everything is just utterly utter." They who are not for us are against us. The crowd-mind consists, therefore, first of all, of a disturbance of the function of the real. _The crowd is the creature of Belief._ Every crowd has its peculiar "illusions," ideals, dreams. It maintains its existence as a crowd just so long as these crowd-ideas continue to be held by practically all the members of the group--so long, in fact, as such ideas continue to hold attention and assent to the exclusion of ideas and facts which contradict them. I am aware of the fact that we could easily be led aside at this point into endless metaphysical problems. It is not our purpose to enter upon a discussion of the question, what is the real world? The problem of the real is by no means so simple as it appears "to common sense." Common sense has, however, in practical affairs, its own criteria, and beyond these it is not necessary for us now to stray. The "illusions" of the crowd are almost never illusions in the psychological sense. They are not false perceptions of the objects of sense. They are rather akin to the delusions and fixed ideas commonly found in paranoia. The man in the street does not ordinarily require the technique either of metaphysics or of psychiatry in order to characterize certain individuals as "crazy." The "crazy" man is simply unadjustable in his speech and conduct. His ideas may be real to him, just as the color-blind man's sensations of color may be as real as those of normal people, but they won't work, and that is sufficient. It is not so easy to apply this criterion of the real to our crowd-ideas. Social realities are not so well ordered as the behavior of the forces of nature. Things moral, religious, and political are constantly in the making. The creative role which we all play here is greater than elsewhere in our making of reality. When most of our neighbors are motivated by certain ideas, those ideas become part of the social environment to which we must adjust ourselves. In this sense they are "real," however "crazy." Every struggle-group and faction in society is constantly striving to establish its ideas as controlling forces in the social reality. The conflicts among ideals are therefore in a sense conflicts within the real. Ideas and beliefs which seek their verification in the character of the results to which they lead, may point to very great changes in experience, and so long as the believer takes into account the various elements with which he has to deal, he has not lost his hold upon reality. But when one's beliefs or principles become ends in themselves, when by themselves they seem to constitute an order of being which is more interesting than fact, when the believer saves his faith only by denying or ignoring the things which contradict him, when he strives not to verify his ideas but to "vindicate" them, the ideas so held are pathological. The obsessions of the paranoiac are of this sort. We shall see later that these ideas have a meaning, though the conscious attention of the patient is systematically diverted from that meaning. Crowd-ideas are similar. The reason why their pathology is not more evident is the fact that they are simultaneously entertained by so great a number of people. There are many ideas in which our faith is sustained chiefly by the knowledge that everyone about us also believes them. Belief on such ground has commonly been said to be due to imitation or suggestion. These do play a large part in determining all our thinking, but I can see no reason why they should be more operative in causing the crowd-mind than in other social situations. In fact, the distinctive phenomena which I have called crowd-ideas clearly show that other causes are at work. Among civilized people, social relationships make severe demands upon the individual. Primitive impulses, unchecked eroticism, tendencies to perversions, and antisocial demands of the ego which are in us all, are constantly inhibited, resisted, controlled and diverted to socially acceptable ends. The savage in us is "repressed," his demands are so habitually denied that we learn to keep him down, for the most part, without conscious effort. We simply cease to pay attention to his gnawing desires. We become decently respectable members of society largely at the expense of our aboriginal nature. But the primitive in us does not really die. It asserts itself harmlessly in dreams. Psychoanalysis has revealed the fact that every dream is the realization of some desire, usually hidden from our conscious thought by our habitual repression. For this reason the dream work consists of symbols. The great achievement of Freud is the technique which enables the analyst to interpret this symbolism so that his own unconscious thought and desire are made known to the subject. The dream is harmless and is normally utilized by the unconscious ego because during sleep we cannot move. If one actually did the things he dreamed, a thing which happens in various somnambulisms, the dream would become anything but harmless. Every psychosis is really a dramatized dream of this sort. Now as it is the social which demands the repression of our primitive impulses, it is to be expected that the unconscious would on certain occasions make use of this same social in order to realize its primitive desires. There are certain mental abnormalities, such as dementia præcox, in which the individual behaves in a wholly antisocial manner, simply withdrawing into himself. _In the crowd the primitive ego achieves its wish by actually gaining the assent and support of a section of society. The immediate social environment is all pulled in the same direction as the unconscious desire._ A similar unconscious impulse motivates each member of the crowd. It is as if all at once an unspoken agreement were entered into whereby each member might let himself go, on condition that he approved the same thing in all the rest. Of course such a thing cannot happen consciously. Our normal social consciousness would cause us each to resist, let us say, an exhibition of cruelty--in our neighbors, and also in ourselves. The impulse must therefore be disguised. The term "unconscious" in the psychology of the crowd does not, of course, imply that the people in the crowd are not aware of the fact that they are lynching a negro or demanding the humiliation or extermination of certain of their fellows. Everybody is perfectly aware of what is being said and done; only _the moral significance_ of the thing is changed. The deed or sentiment, instead of being disapproved, appears to be demanded, by moral principle, by the social welfare, by the glory of the state, etc. What is unconscious is the fact that the social is actually being twisted around into giving approval of the things which it normally forbids. Every crowd considers that it is vindicating some sacred principle. The more bloody and destructive the acts to which it is impelled, the more moral are its professions. Under the spell of the crowd's logic certain abstract principles lead inevitably to the characteristic forms of crowd-behavior. They seem to glorify such acts, to make heroes and martyrs of those who lead in their performance. The attention of everyone is first centered on the abstract and universal, as I have indicated. The repressed wish then unconsciously gives to the formulas which the crowd professes a meaning different from that which appears, yet unconsciously associated with it. This unconscious meaning is of course an impulse to act. But the motive professed is not the real motive. Normally our acts and ideas are corrected by our social environment. But in a crowd our test of the real fails us, because, since the attention of all near us is directed in the same way as our own, the social environment for the time fails to check us. As William James said: The sense that anything we think is unreal can only come when that thing is contradicted by some other thing of which we think. Any object which remains uncontradicted is _ipso facto_ believed and posited as "absolute reality." Our immediate social environment is all slipping along with us. It no longer contradicts the thing we want to believe, and, unconsciously, want to do. As the uncontradicted idea is, for the time, reality, so is it a motor impulse. The only normal reason why we do not act immediately upon any one of our ideas is that action is inhibited by ideas of a contradictory nature. As crowd, therefore, we find ourselves moving in a fictitious system of ideas uncritically accepted as real--not as in dreams realizing our hidden wishes, merely in imagination, but also impelled to act them out in much the way that the psychoeurotic is impelled to act out the fixed ideas which are really the symbols of his suppressed wish. In other words, _a crowd is a device for indulging ourselves in a kind of temporary insanity by all going crazy together_. Of the several kinds of crowds, I have selected for our discussion the mass meeting, because we are primarily interested in the _ideas_ which dominate the crowd. The same essential psychological elements are also found in the street crowd or mob. Serious mob outbreaks seldom occur without mass meetings, oratory, and propaganda. Sometimes, as in the case of the French Revolution and of the rise of the Soviets in Russia, the mass meetings are held in streets and public places. Sometimes, as, for instance, the crowds in Berlin when Germany precipitated the World War, a long period of deliberate cultivation of such crowd-ideas as happen to be advantageous to the state precedes. There are instances, such as the Frank case, which brought unenviable fame to Georgia, when no mass meeting seems to have been held. It is possible that in this instance, however, certain newspapers, and also the trial--which, as I remember, was held in a theater and gave an ambitious prosecuting attorney opportunity to play the role of mob leader--served the purpose of the mass meeting. The series of outbreaks in New York and other cities, shortly after the War, between the socialists and certain returned soldiers, seem to have first occurred quite unexpectedly, as do the customary negro lynchings in the South. In each case I think it will be found that the complex of crowd-ideas had been previously built up in the unconscious. A deep-seated antagonism had been unconsciously associated with the self-appreciative feelings of a number of individuals, all of which found justification in the consciousness of these persons in the form of devotion to principle, loyalty, moral enthusiasm, etc. I suspect that under many of our professed principles there lurk elements of unconscious sadism and masochism. All that is then required is an occasion, some casual incident which will so direct the attention of a number of these persons that they provide one another temporarily with a congenial social environment. In the South this mob complex is doubtless formed out of race pride, a certain unconscious eroticism, and will to power, which unfortunately has too abundant opportunity to justify itself as moral indignation. With the returned soldiers the unconscious desires were often rather thinly disguised--primitive impulses to violence which had been aroused and hardly satisfied by the war, a wish to exhibit themselves which found its opportunity in the knowledge that their lawlessness would be applauded in certain influential quarters, a dislike of the nonconformist, the foreign, and the unknown, which took the outward form of a not wholly unjustifiable resentment toward the party which had to all appearances unpatriotically opposed our entrance into the war. Given a psychic situation of this nature, the steps by which it leads to mob violence are much alike in all cases. All together they simply amount to a process of like direction of the attention of a sufficient number of persons so affected as to produce a temporary social environment in which the unconscious impulses may be released with mutual approval. The presence of the disliked object or person gains general attention. At first there is only curiosity; then amusement; there is a bantering of crude witticisms; then ridicule. Soon the joking turns to insults. There are angry exclamations. A blow is struck. There is a sudden rush. The blow, being the act which the members of the crowd each unconsciously wished to do, gains general approval, "it is a blow for righteousness"; a "cause" appears. Casually associated persons at once become a group, brought together, of course, by their interest in vindicating the principles at stake. The mob finds itself suddenly doing things which its members did not know they had ever dreamed of. Different as this process apparently is from that by which a meeting is turned into a crowd by an orator, I think it will be seen that the two are essentially alike. Thus far we have been considering crowd-movements which are local and temporary--casual gatherings, which, having no abiding reason for continued association, soon dissolve into their individual elements. Frequently, after participating in such a movement, the individual, on returning to his habitual relations, "comes to." He wonders what the affair was all about. In the light of his re-established control ideas--he will call it "reason"--the unconscious impulses are again repressed; he may look with shame and loathing upon yesterday's orgy. Acts which he would ordinarily disapprove in his neighbors, he now disapproves in himself. If the behavior of the crowd has not been particularly atrocious and inexcusable to ordinary consciousness, the reaction is less strong. The voter after the political campaign merely "loses interest." The convert in the revival "backslides." The striker returns to work and is soon absorbed by the daily routine of his task. The fiery patriot, after the war, is surprised to find that his hatred of the enemy is gradually waning. Electors who have been swept by a wave of enthusiasm for "reform" and have voted for a piece of ill-considered restrictive legislation easily lapse into indifference, and soon look with unconcern or amusement upon open violations of their own enactments. There is a common saying that the public has a short memory. Pick up an old newspaper and read about the great movements and causes which were only a short time ago stirring the public mind, many of them are now dead issues. But they were not answered by argument; we simply "got over" them. Not all crowd-movements, however, are local and temporary. There are passing moments of crowd-experience which are often too sweet to lose. The lapse into everyday realism is like "falling from grace." The crowd state of mind strives often to keep itself in countenance by perpetuating the peculiar social-psychic conditions in which it can operate. There are certain forms of the ego consciousness which are best served by the fictions of the crowd. An analogy here is found in paranoia, where the individual's morbid fixed ideas are really devices for the protection of his self-esteem. The repressed infantile psyche which exists in us all, and in certain neurotics turns back and attaches itself to the image of the parent, finds also in the crowd a path for expression. It provides a perpetual interest in keeping the crowd-state alive. Notice how invariably former students form alumni associations, and returned soldiers at once effect permanent organizations; persons who have been converted in one of Mr. Sunday's religious campaigns do the same thing--indeed there are associations of all sorts growing out of these exciting moments in people's common past experience, the purpose of which is mutually to recall the old days and aid one another in keeping alive the enlarged self-feeling. In addition to this, society is filled with what might be called "struggle groups" organized for the survival and dominance of similarly constituted or situated people. Each group has its peculiar interests, economic, spiritual, racial, etc., and each such interest is a mixture of conscious and unconscious purposes. These groups become sects, cults, partisan movements, class struggles. They develop propaganda, ritual, orthodoxies, dogma, all of which are hardly anything more than stereotyped systems of crowd-ideas. These systems differ from those of the neurosis in that the former are less idiosyncratic, but they undoubtedly perform much the same function. The primary aim of every such crowd is to keep itself together as a crowd. Hardly less important is the desire of its members to dominate over all outsiders. The professed purpose is to serve some cause or principle of universal import. Thus the crowd idealizes itself as an end, makes sanctities of its own survival values, and holds up its ideals to all men, demanding that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess--which is to say, that the crowd believes in its own future supremacy, the members of the group knowing that such a belief has survival value. This principle is used by every politician in predicting that his party is bound to win at the next election. Hence the crowd is a device by which the individual's "right" may be baptized "righteousness" in general, and this personality by putting on impersonality may rise again to new levels of self-appreciation. He "belongs to something," something "glorious" and deathless. He himself may be but a miserable clod, but the glory of his crowd reflects upon him. Its expected triumph he already shares. It gives him back his lost sense of security. As a good crowd man, true believer, loyal citizen, devoted member, he has regained something of his early innocence. In other members he has new brothers and sisters. In the finality of his crowd-faith there is escape from responsibility and further search. He is willing to be commanded. He is a child again. He has transferred his repressed infantilism from the lost family circle to the crowd. There is a very real sense in which the crowd stands to his emotional life _in loco parentis_. It is to be expected, therefore, that wherever possible the crowd-state of mind will be perpetuated. Every sort of device will be used to keep the members of the crowd from coming to. In almost every organization and social relationship there will be a tendency on part of the unconscious to behave as crowd. Thus permanent crowds exist on every hand--especially wherever political, moral, or religious ideas are concerned. The general and abstract character of these ideas makes them easily accessible instruments for justifying and screening the unconscious purpose. Moreover it is in just those aspects of our social life where repression is greatest that crowd-thinking is most common, for it is by means of such thinking and behavior that the unconscious seeks evasions and finds its necessary compensations. The modern man has in the printing press a wonderfully effective means for perpetuating crowd-movements and keeping great masses of people constantly under the sway of certain crowd-ideas. Every crowd-group has its magazines, press agents, and special "literature" with which it continually harangues its members and possible converts. Many books, and especially certain works of fiction of the "best-seller" type, are clearly reading-mob phenomena. But the leader in crowd-thinking _par excellence_ is the daily newspaper. With few exceptions our journals emit hardly anything but crowd-ideas. These great "molders of public opinion," reveal every characteristic of the vulgar mob orator. The character of the writing commonly has the standards and prejudices of the "man in the street." And lest this man's ego consciousness be offended by the sight of anything "highbrow"--that is, anything indicating that there may be a superior intelligence or finer appreciation than his own--newspaper-democracy demands that everything more exalted than the level of the lowest cranial altitude be left out. The average result is a deluge of sensational scandal, class prejudice, and special pleading clumsily disguised with a saccharine smear of the cheapest moral platitude. Consequently, the thinking of most of us is carried on chiefly in the form of crowd-ideas. A sort of public-meeting self is developed in the consciousness of the individual which dominates the personality of all but the reflective few. We editorialize and press-agent ourselves in our inmost musings. Public opinion is manufactured just as brick are made. Possibly a slightly better knowledge of mechanical engineering is required for making public opinion, but the process is the same. Both can be stamped out in the quantity required, and delivered anywhere to order. Our thinking on most important subjects to-day is as little original as the mental processes of the men who write and the machines which print the pages we read and repeat as our own opinions. Thomas Carlyle was never more sound than when railing at this "paper age." And paper, he wisely asked us to remember, "is made of old rags." Older writers who saw the ragged throngs in the streets were led to identify the mob or crowd with the tattered, illiterate populace. Our mob to-day is no longer merely tramping the streets. We have it at the breakfast table, in the subway, alike in shop and boudoir, and office--wherever, in fact, the newspaper goes. And the raggedness is not exterior, nor is the mob confined to the class of the ill-clad and the poor. The raggedness, and tawdriness have now become spiritual, a universal presence entering into the fabric of nearly all our mental processes. We have now reached a point from which we can look back over the ground we have traversed and note the points of difference between our view and the well-known theory of Le Bon. The argument of the latter is as follows: (1) From the standpoint of psychology, the crowd, as the term is here defined, is not merely a group of people, it is the appearance within such a group of a special mental condition, or crowd-mind. (2) The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction. (3) Conscious personality vanishes. (4) A collective mind is formed: This is Le Bon's "Law of the mental unity of crowds." (5) This collective mind consists in the main of "general qualities of character" which are our common racial inheritance. It is an "unconscious substratum" which in the crowd becomes uppermost, dominating over the unique personal consciousness. (6) Three causes determine the characteristics of the crowd-mind, (a) From purely numerical considerations, the individual acquires a sentiment of invincible power which encourages him in an unrestrained yielding to his instincts, (b) Contagion, or imitation, and (c) hypnotic suggestion cause the individuals in the crowd to become "slaves of all the unconscious activities of the spinal cord." (7) The resulting characteristics of the crowd are (a) a descent of several rungs in the ladder of civilization, (b) a general intellectual inferiority as compared with the isolated individual, (c) loss of moral responsibility, (d) impulsiveness, (e) credulity, (f) exaggeration, (g) intolerance, (h) blind obedience to the leader of the crowd, (i) a mystical emotionalism. (8) The crowd is finally and somewhat inconsistently treated by Le Bon as being identical with the masses, the common people, the herd. Without pausing to review the criticisms of this argument which were made at the beginning of our discussion, our own view may be summarized as follows: (1) The crowd is not the same as the masses, or any class or gathering of people as such, but is a certain mental condition which may occur simultaneously to people in any gathering or association. (2) This condition is not a "collective mind." It is a release of repressed impulses which is made possible because certain controlling ideas have ceased to function in the immediate social environment. (3) This modification in the immediate social environment is the result of mutual concessions on the part of persons whose unconscious impulses to do a certain forbidden thing are similarly disguised as sentiments which meet with conscious moral approval. (4) Such a general disguising of the real motive is a characteristic phenomenon of dreams and of mental pathology, and occurs in the crowd by fixing the attention of all present upon the abstract and general. Attention is thus held diverted from the individual's personal associations, permitting these associations and their accompanying impulses to function unconsciously. (5) The abstract ideas so entertained become symbols of meanings which are unrecognized; they form a closed system, like the obsessions of the paranoiac, and as the whole group are thus moved in the same direction, the "compulsory" logic of these ideas moves forward without those social checks which normally keep us within bounds of the real. Hence, acting and thinking in the crowd become stereotyped and "ceremonial." Individuals move together like automatons. (6) As the unconscious chiefly consists of that part of our nature which is habitually repressed by the social, and as there is always, therefore, an unconscious resistance to this repressive force, it follows that the crowd state, like the neurosis, is a mechanism of escape and of compensation. It also follows that the crowd-spirit will occur most commonly in reference to just those social forms where repression is greatest--in matters political, religious, and moral. (7) The crowd-mind is then not a mere excess of emotion on the part of people who have abandoned "reason"; crowd-behavior is in a sense psychopathic and has many elements in common with somnambulism, the compulsion neurosis, and even paranoia. (8) Crowds may be either temporary or permanent in their existence. Permanent crowds, with the aid of the press, determine in greater or less degree the mental habits of nearly everyone. The individual moves through his social world like a popular freshman on a college campus, who is to be "spiked" by one or another fraternity competing for his membership. A host of crowds standing for every conceivable "cause" and "ideal" hover constantly about him, ceaselessly screaming their propaganda into his ears, bullying and cajoling him, pushing and crowding and denouncing one another, and forcing all willy-nilly to line up and take sides with them upon issues and dilemmas which represent the real convictions of nobody. III THE CROWD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS Throughout the discussion thus far I have been making repeated reference to the psychology of the unconscious, without going into detail any more than was necessary. Let us now take a closer look at some of Freud's discoveries. In this way, what Brill would call the "psychogenesis" of certain characteristic ideas and practices of crowds will be, I think, made clear. Up to this point we have dealt generally with those mental processes by which the crowd is formed. There are certain traits, tendencies, ways of thinking which crowds so uniformly display that one is justified, in want of other explanation, in assuming them to be unconsciously determined. The remarkable blindness of organized crowds to the most obvious of their own performances is so common as to be the regularly expected thing--that is, of crowds other than our own. Long and extensive operations may be carried on for years by crowds whose members repeatedly declare that such things are not being done. The way in which a nation will carefully prepare for war, gradually organizing its whole life on a military basis with tremendous cost and effort, all the while declaring that it is interested only in peace, denying its warlike intentions, and even in the moment of picking a quarrel with its neighbors declare to all the world that it had been wantonly and unexpectedly attacked, is all a matter of general comment. The American colonists, during the decade before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, of course had no conscious thought of separating from Great Britain. Almost to the very last they professed their loyalty to the King; but looking back now it is clear that Independence was the motive all along, and doubtless could not have been achieved more opportunely or with greater finesse if it had been deliberately planned from the start. The Hebrew Scriptures contain a story which illustrates this aspect of crowd-behavior everywhere. The Children of Israel in bondage in Egypt merely wished to go out in the wilderness for a day or so to worship their God. All they asked was religious liberty. How unjust of the authorities to assume they were planning to run away from their masters! You will remember that at the last moment they incidentally borrow some jewelry from their Egyptian neighbors. Of course they will pay it back after their little religious holiday, but ... later a most unforeseen thing happens to that jewelry, a scandalous thing--it is made into an idol. Does it require that one be a psychologist to infer that it was the unconscious intention all along to use this metal for just that, the first good chance they had--and that, too, notwithstanding repeated prohibitions of idolatry? The motive for borrowing the jewelry is evident. Certain crowd-movements in America to-day give marked evidence of this unconscious motivation. Notice how both the radical and reactionary elements behave when, as is frequently the case with both, the crowd-spirit comes over them. Certain radicals, who are fascinated with the idea of the Russian Revolution, are still proclaiming sentiments of human brotherhood, peace, and freedom, while unconsciously they are doing just what their enemies accuse them of--playing with the welcome ideas of violence, class war, and proletarian dictatorship. And conservative crowds, while ostensibly defending American traditions and ideals against destructive foreign influence, are with their own hands daily desecrating many of the finest things which America has given to the world in its struggle of more than a century for freedom and justice. Members of each crowd, while blissfully unaware of the incompatibility of their own motives and professions, have no illusions about those of the counter-crowd. Each crowd sees in the professions of its antagonist convincing proof of the insincerity and hypocrisy of the other side. To the student of social philosophy both are right and both wrong. All propaganda is lies, and every crowd is a deceiver, but its first and worst deception is that of itself. This self-deception is a necessary step in crowd-formation and is a _sine qua non_ of becoming a crowd. It is only necessary for members of a crowd to deceive themselves and one another for the crowd-mind to function perfectly; I doubt if they are often successful in deceiving anybody else. It was this common crowd-phenomenon of self-deception which led Gobineau and Nietzsche to the conclusion that the common people are liars. But as has been said, the crowd is by no means peculiar to the working class; some of its worst features are exhibited these days among employers, law-makers, and the well-to-do classes. This deception is moreover not really conscious and deliberate. If men deliberately set about to invent lies to justify their behavior I have little doubt that most of them would be clever enough to conjure up something a little more plausible. These naïve and threadbare "hypocrisies" of crowds are a commonplace mechanism of the unconscious. It is interesting to note that the delusions of the paranoiac likewise deceive no one but himself, yet within themselves form a perfectly logical _a priori_ system. They also serve the well-understood purpose, like that of crowd-ideas, of keeping their possessor in a certain fixed relation toward portions of his own psychic material. As Brill says, they are "compromise formations." Those who have read Freud's little book, _Delusion and Dream_, an analysis of a psychological romance written by Wilhelm Jensen, will recall how extensive a fabric of plausibilities a delusion may build up in its defense in order at the same time to satisfy a repressed wish, and keep the true meaning of the subject's acts and thoughts from conscious attention. In the story which Freud has here taken as his subject for study, a young student of archæology has apparently conquered all adolescent erotic interest and has devoted himself whole-heartedly to his science. While at the ruins of ancient Pompeii, he finds a bas-relief containing the figure of a young woman represented in the act of walking with peculiar grace. A cast of this figure he brings home. His interest is curiously aroused. At first this interest appears to be scientific only, then æsthetic, and historical. Finally he builds up about it a complete romance. He becomes restless and very much of a misogynist, and is driven, he knows not why, again to the ruins. Here he actually meets the object of his dreams in the solitude of the excavated city. He allows himself to believe that the once living model of his treasured bas-relief has again come to life. For days he meets and talks with the girl, living all the while in a world of complete unreality, until she finally succeeds in revealing herself as the young woman who lives next door to him. It also appears that in their childhood he and this girl had been playmates, and that in spite of all his conscious indifference to her his unconscious interest was the source of his interest in the bas-relief and the motive which led him to return to Pompeii, where he unconsciously expected to find her. The interesting thing about all this for our present study is the series of devices, fictions, and compromises with reality which this repressed interest made use of while having its way with him, and at the same time resisting whatever might force it upon his conscious attention, where a recognition of its significance might result in a deliberate rejection. We shall not go into Freud's ingenious analysis of the mental processes at work here. The following passage is sufficient for our purpose: There is a kind of forgetting which distinguishes itself by the difficulty with which memory is awakened, even by strong appeals, as if a subjective resistance struggled against the revival. Such forgetting has received the name of "repression" in psychopathology ... about repression we can assert that certainly it does not coincide with the destruction, the obliteration of memory. The repressed material can not of itself break through as memory, but remains potent and effective. From this, and from what was said in our previous chapter, it is plain that the term "unconscious" as used in psychology does not mean total absence of psychic activity. It refers to thoughts and feelings which have _purposefully_ been forgotten--to experiences or impulses to which we do not pay attention nor wish to attend to, but which influence us nevertheless. Everyone of us, when he dreams, has immediate knowledge of the unconscious as here defined. Certainly we pass into unconsciousness when we sleep. Yet something is unquestionably going on inside our heads. One wakens and says, "What strange, or exciting, or delightful dreams I have had!" Bergson says that sleep is due to the relaxing of attention to our environment. Yet in dreams attention is never turned away from ourselves. Possibly instead of the word "unconscious" the term "unattended" might be used with less danger of confusion. Consciousness is, therefore, not the whole of our psychic activity. Much of our behavior is reflex and automatic. James used to be fond of showing how much even of our higher psychic activity was reflex in its nature. We may be conscious of various portions of our psychic material, but never of all of it at once. Attention is like a spotlight thrown on a semi-darkened stage, moving here and there, revealing the figures upon which it is directed in vivid contrast with the darkly moving objects which animate the regions outside its circle. A speaker during his discourse will straighten his tie, make various gestures, and toy with any object which happens to be lying on the desk, all without being aware of his movements, until his attention is called to the fact. Absent-minded persons habitually amuse us by frequently performing complete and rather complex series of actions while wholly oblivious to what they are doing. Everyone can recall numerous instances of absent-mindedness in his own experience. Now all pathological types of mental life have in common this quality of absent-mindedness, and it is held that the thing said or done absent-mindedly has in every instance, even when normal, a meaning which is unconscious. But the unconscious or unattended is by no means confined to the infrequent and the trivial. As temperament, or character, its activity is a determining factor in all our thought and conduct. Dream fancies do not really cease when we awake; the dream activity goes on all about our conscious thoughts, our associations now hovering near long-forgotten memories, now pulled in the direction of some unrecognized bit of personal conceit, now skipping on tiptoe over something forbidden and wicked and passing across without looking in; only a part of our mental processes ever directly finding expression in our conscious acts and words. The unchosen and the illogical run along with the desired and the logical material, only we have learned not to pay attention to such things. Under all our logical structures there flows a ceaseless stream of dream stuff. Our conscious thought is like little planks of attention laid end to end on the stones which here and there rise above the surface of our thinking. The mind skips across to a desired conclusion, not infrequently getting its feet wet, and, on occasion, upsetting a plank or slipping off and falling in altogether. We have only to relax our attention a little to enter the world of day dreams, of art, and religion; we can never hold it so rigid as to be wholly rational for long. Those interested in the general psychology of the unconscious are referred to the writings of such authorities in this field as Freud, Jung, Adler, Dr. A. A. Brill, and Dr. William White. In fact, the literature dealing with psychoanalysis is now so widely read that, unless the reader has received his information about this branch of science from hostile sources alone, it is to be assumed that he has a fairly accurate acquaintance with its general history and theory. We must confine our discussions to those aspects of unconscious behavior which can be shown by analogy with the psychoneurosis to be determinants of crowd-thinking. As the details and technical discussions of psychoanalytical material belong strictly to the psychiatric clinic, any attempt at criticism by the medical layman of the scientific processes by which they are established is of course impossible. Consequently, I have sought to make use of only those principles which are now so well established as to become rather generally accepted commonplaces of psychopathology. All analysis reveals the fact that the unconscious of the individual is concerned primarily with himself. This is true in the psychosis, and always in dreams. Freud says: Every dream is absolutely egotistical; in every dream the beloved ego appears, even though it be in a disguised form. The wishes that are realized in dreams are regularly the wishes of this ego; it is only a deceptive appearance if interest in another person is thought to have caused the dream. Freud then proceeds to give analyses of several dreams in which the naïve egoism of childhood which lies at the core of the unconscious psyche is apparently absent, and shows that in each and every case it is there. The hero of our dreams, notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary, is always ourself. Brill, in his book, _Psychoanalysis_, says of the neurosis: Both hysteria and compulsion neurosis belong to the defense neuropsychoses; their symptoms originate through the psychic mechanism of defense, that is, through the attempt to repress a painful idea which was incompatible with the ego of the patient. There is still another more forceful and more successful form of defense wherein the ego misplaces the incompatible idea with its emotions and acts as though the painful idea had never come to pass. When this occurs the person merges into a psychosis which may be called "hallucinatory confusion." Thus the psychoneurosis is in all its forms, I believe, regarded as a drama of the ego and its inner conflicts. The egoism of the unconscious belongs alike to the normal and the unadjusted. The mental abnormalities appear when the ego seeks to escape some such conflict by means of a closed system of ideas or symbolic acts which will divert attention from the unwelcome psychic material. Adler, in _The Neurotic Constitution_, is even, if possible, more emphatic in affirming the egoism of the unconscious as revealed in neurotics. His thesis is that the mainspring of all the efforts of achievement and the source of all the vicissitudes of the psyche is a desire to be important, or will to "be above," not wholly unlike Nietzsche's theory of the "will to power." The neurosis goes back to some organic defect or other cause of childish humiliation. As a result, the cause of such humiliation, a defective bodily organ, or whatever it may be, gains special attention. The whole psyche is modified in the process of adjustment. In cases where the psyche remains normal, adjustment is achieved through stimulation to extra effort to overcome the disadvantage, as in the triumph of Demosthenes, Byron, Pope. On the contrary, this disadvantage may result in a fixed feeling of inferiority. Such a feeling may be brought about in the sensitive child by a variety of circumstances, physical facts such as smallness of stature, adenoids, derangements of the alimentary organs, undersized genitals, homeliness of feature, or any physical deformity or weakness; again by such circumstances as domineering parents or older brothers and sisters. The child then thinks always of himself. He forms the habit of comparing himself with others. He creates, as a protection against the recognition of this feeling of inferiority, what Adler calls the "masculine protest." The feeling which the individual has of his own inferiority, incompetency, the realization of his smallness, of his weakness, of his uncertainty, thus becomes the appropriate working basis which, because of the intrinsically associated feelings of pleasure and pain, furnishes the inner impulse to advance toward an imaginary goal.... In all similar attempts (and the human psyche is full of them), it is the question of the introduction of an unreal and abstract scheme into actual life.... No matter from what angle we observe the psychic development of a normal or neurotic person, he is always found ensnared in the meshes of his particular fiction--a fiction from which the neurotic is unable to find his way back to reality and in which he believes, while the sound and normal person utilizes it for the purpose of reaching a definite goal ... the thing which impels us all, and especially the neurotic and the child, to abandon the direct path of induction and deduction and use such devices as the schematic fiction, originates in the feeling of uncertainty, and is the craving for security, the final purpose of which is to escape from the feeling of inferiority in order to ascend to the full height of the ego consciousness, to complete manliness, to attain the ideal of being "above."... Even our judgments concerning the value of things are determined according to the standard of the imaginary goal, not according to "real" feelings or pleasurable sensations. That repressed sexuality plays an important part in the conflicts of the ego is well known to all who are acquainted with analytical psychology. According to Freud, the sexual impulse dates from earliest childhood and is an essential element in every stage of self-appreciation. A summary of the process by which the infantile ego develops to maturity is as follows: The child is by nature "polymorphous perverse"--that is, both physically and psychically he possesses elements which in the mature individual would be considered perversions. Physiologically, what are known as "erogenous zones"--tissue which is capable of what in mature life is sexual excitation--are diffused through the organism. As the child passes through the "latent period" of later childhood and adolescence, these "erogenous zones" are concentrated as it were in the organs which are to serve the purpose of reproduction. If for any reason this process of concentration is checked, and remains in later life incomplete, the mature individual will be afflicted with certain tendencies to sex perversion. Similarly the psychosexual passes through a metamorphosis in normal development. The erotic interest of the child, at first quite without any object at all, is soon attached to one or the other of the parents, then, in the "narcissus period" is centered upon the individual himself, after which, normally, but not without some storm and stress, it becomes detached and capable of "object love"--that is, love of a person of the opposite sex. This psychic process is by no means a smooth and easy matter. It is attended at every stage with such dangers that a very large number of people never achieve it entire. Various kinds of "shock" and wrong educational influence, or overindulgence on the part of the parents, may cause the psychosexual interest of the ego--or "libido"--to remain "fixed" at some point in its course. It may retain vestiges of its early undifferentiated stage, appearing then in the perverted forms of "masochism"--sexual enjoyment of self-torture--or "sadism"--sexual pleasure in torturing others. Or the libido may remain fixed upon the parent, rendering the individual in some degree incapable of a normal mature love life. He has never quite succeeded in severing his infantile attachment to his mother and transferring his interest to the world of social relations and mature experiences. If he meets with a piece of misfortune, he is likely to seek imaginary security and compensation by a "regression" of the libido and a revival of childlike affection for the mother image. As this return is, in maturity, unconsciously resisted by the horror of incest, a conflict results. The individual then develops certain mechanisms or "complex formations" in defense of his ego against this painful situation. The withdrawal of the libido from the ordinary affairs of life renders the latter valueless. Thoughts of death and like compulsory mechanisms ensue. The patient has become a neurotic. Psychoanalysts make much of this latter situation. They term it the "Oedipus complex." They assert that in its severer forms it is a common feature of psychoneurosis, while in less marked form, according to Jung, it underlies, and is the real explanation of the "birth of tragedy," being also the meaning of much religious symbolism, including the Divine Drama of Christian tradition. It is not, therefore, only the psychoneurotic whose unconscious takes the form of the "Oedipus complex." Under certain conditions it is manifest in normal people. I have already indicated that the crowd is one of those conditions, and shall have something a little more specific to say about this later on. Again the growing libido may become fixed in the "narcissus stage." Between the period of love of parents and object love, the adolescent youth passes through a period when he is "in love with himself." The fact that many people remain in some measure fixed in this period of their development is not surprising when we remember that self-feeling occupies a central place in the unconscious at all times. Many of the world's greatest men have doubtless been characters in which there was a slightly more than average fixation at this point. Inordinate ambition is, I should say, an evidence of such a fixation. If one possesses great natural ability he may under such circumstances be able to forge ahead to his goal, overcoming the conflicts which such a fixation always raises, and show no greater evidence of pathology in his career than is seen in the usual saying that "genius is always a little queer." The typical crowd-leader would, on analysis, I think, show something of this "narcissus complex," as would doubtless the great run of fanatics, bigots, and doctrinaires, "hundred per cent" crowd-men all. According to Brill, these "auto erotic" persons are always homosexual, their homosexuality manifesting itself in various ways. The overt manifestations of this tendency are known as perversions. Certain persons who have suppressed or sublimated these tendencies, by means of certain defense mechanisms, or "fictions," as Adler would call them, get along very well so long as the defense mechanism functions. There are cases when this unconsciously constructed defense breaks down. An inner conflict is then precipitated, a marked form of which is the common type of insanity, "paranoia." Persons suffering with paranoia are characterized by an insatiable demand for love along with a psychic incapacity to give love. They have an exaggerated sense of their own importance which is sustained by a wholly unreal but deadly logical system of _a priori_ ideas, which constitute the "obsessions" common to this type of mentality. The inner conflict becomes external--that is, it is "projected." The paranoiac projects his own inner hostility and lack of adjustment upon others--that is, he attributes his own feeling of hostility to some one else, as if he were the object, not the author, of his hatred. He imagines that he is persecuted, as the following example will show. The passage here quoted is taken from a pamphlet which was several years ago given to me by the author. He ostensibly wished to enlist my efforts in a campaign he believed himself to be conducting to "expose" the atrocious treatment of persons, like himself, who were imprisoned in asylums as the innocent victims of domestic conspiracy. By way of introducing himself the author makes it known that he has several times been confined in various hospitals, each time by the design and instigation of his wife, and after stating that on the occasion described he was very "nervous and physically exhausted" and incidentally confessing that he was arrested while attempting homicide "purely in self-defense," he gives this account of his incarceration: I was locked in a cold cell, and being in poor health, my circulation was poor, and the officer ordered me to go to bed and I obeyed his orders, but I began to get cold, and believing then, as I still believe, that the coffee I got out of the coffee tank for my midnight lunch had been "doped," and fearful that the blood in my veins which began to coagulate would stop circulating altogether, I got out of bed and walked the floor to and fro all the remainder of the night and by so doing I saved my life. For had I remained in bed two hours I would have been a dead man before sunrise next morning. I realized my condition and had the presence of mind to do everything in my power to save my life and put my trust in God, and asked his aid in my extremity. But for divine aid, I would not now have the privilege of writing my awful experiences in that hell-hole of a jail. The officer who arrested me without any warrant of law, and without any unlawful act on my part was the tool of some person or persons who were either paid for their heinous crime, or of the landlady of the ---- hotel (he had been a clerk there) who allowed gambling to go on nearly every night, and thought I was a detective or spy, and so was instrumental in having me thrown into jail. I begged so hard not to be locked in the cell that I was allowed to stay in the corridor in front of the cells. I observed chloral dripping through the roof of the cell-house in different places, and as I had had some experience with different drugs, I detected the smell of chloral as soon as I entered the cell-house. Sometime after midnight some one stopped up the stovepipe and the door of the coal stove was left open so that the coal gas issued from the stove, so that breathing was difficult in the jail. The gases from the stove and other gases poisoned the air ... and your humble servant had the presence of mind to tear up a hair mattress and kept my nostrils continually filled with padding out of the mattress. I would often and instantly change the filling in one nostril, and not during the long hours of that awful night did I once open my mouth. In that manner I inhaled very little gases. Why in my weakened condition and my poor health anyone wanted to deprive me of my life I am at a loss to know, but failing to kill me, I was taken after nearly three days of sojourn in that hell-hole to the courthouse in ----. But such thoughts as an innocent man in my condition would think, in among criminals of all sorts, can better be imagined than described.... I thought of Christ's persecutors and I thought how the innocent suffer because of the wicked. In general we may say that the various forms of psychoneurosis are characterized by a conflict of the ego with primitive impulses inadequately repressed. In defense against these impulses, which though active remain unconsciously so, the individual constructs a fictitious system of ideas, of symbolic acts, or bodily symptoms. These systems are attempts to compromise the conflict in the unconscious, and in just the degree that they are demanded for this function, they fail of their function of adjusting the individual to his external world. Thought and behavior thus serve the purpose of compensating for some psychic loss, and of keeping up the individual's self feeling. Though the unconscious purpose is to enhance the ego consciousness, the mechanisms through which this end is achieved produce through their automatic and stereotyped form a shrinking of personality and a serious lack of adjustment to environment. Now it is not at all the aim of this argument to try to prove that crowds are really insane. Psychoanalysts commonly assert that the difference between the normal and the abnormal is largely one of degree and of success in adjustment. We are told that the conflict exists also in normal people, with whom, however, it is adequately repressed and "sublimated"--that is, normal people pass on out of the stages in which the libido of the neurotic becomes fixed, not by leaving them behind, but by attaching the interests which emerge in such stages to ends which are useful in future experience. The neurotic takes the solitary path of resolving the conflict between his ego and the impulses which society demands shall be repressed. It is altogether conceivable that _another path lies open--that of occasional compromise in our mutual demands on one another_. The force of repression is then relaxed by an unconscious change in the significance of social ideas. Such a change must of course be mutual and unconscious. Compromise mechanisms will again be formed serving a purpose similar to the neurosis. As in the neurosis, thought and action will be compulsory, symbolic, stereotyped, and more or less in conflict with the demands of society as a whole, though functioning in a part of it for certain purposes. Many of the characteristics of the unconscious will then appear and will be similar in some respects to those of neurosis. It is my contention that this is what happens in the crowd, and I will now point out certain phases of crowd-behavior which are strikingly analogous to some of the phenomena which have been described above. IV THE EGOISM OF THE CROWD-MIND The unconscious egoism of the individual in the crowd appears in all forms of crowd-behavior. As in dreams and in the neurosis this self feeling is frequently though thinly disguised, and I am of the opinion that with the crowd the mechanisms of this disguise are less subtle. To use a term which Freud employs in this connection to describe the process of distortion in dreams, the "censor" is less active in the crowd than in most phases of mental life. Though the conscious thinking is carried on in abstract and impersonal formula, and though, as in the neurosis, the "compulsive" character of the mechanisms developed frequently--especially in permanent crowds--well nigh reduces the individual to an automaton, the crowd is one of the most naïve devices that can be employed for enhancing one's ego consciousness. The individual has only to transfer his repressed self feeling to the idea of the crowd or group of which he is a member; he can then exalt and exhibit himself to almost any extent without shame, oblivious of the fact that the supremacy, power, praise, and glory which he claims for his crowd are really claimed for himself. That the crowd always insists on being flattered is a fact known intuitively by every orator and editor. As a member of a crowd the individual becomes part of a public. The worship with which men regard "The Public," simply means that the personal self falls at the feet of the same self regarded as public, and likewise demands that obeisance from all. _Vox populi est vox Dei_ is obviously the apotheosis of one's own voice while speaking as crowd-man. When this "god-almightiness" manifests itself along the solitary path of the psychoneurosis it becomes one of the common symptoms of paranoia. The crowd, in common with paranoia, uniformly shows this quality of "megalomania." Every crowd "boosts for" itself, lauds itself, gives itself airs, speaks with oracular finality, regards itself as morally superior, and will, so far as it has the power, lord it over everyone. Notice how each group and section in society, so far as it permits itself to think as crowd, claims to be "the people." To the working-class agitator, "the cause of labor is the cause of humanity," workers are always, "innocent exploited victims, kept down by the master class whose lust for gain has made them enemies of Humanity and Justice." "Workers should rule because they are the only useful people; the sole creators of wealth; their dominance would mean the end of social wrong, and the coming of the millennium of peace and brotherhood, the Kingdom of Heaven on the Earth, the final triumph of Humanity!" On the other hand, the wealthy and educated classes speak of themselves as "the best people"; they _are_ "society." It is they who "bear the burdens of civilization, and maintain Law and Order and Decency." Racial and national crowds show the same megalomania. Hebrews are "God's chosen." "The Dutch Company is the best Company that ever came over from the Old Country." "The Irish may be ornery, and they ain't worth much, but they are a whole lot better than the ---- ---- Dutch." "Little Nigger baby, black face, and shiny eye, you're just as good as the poor white trash, an' you'll git thar by and by." "He might have been a Russian or a Prussian, ... but it's greatly to his credit that he is an Englishman." The German is the happy bearer of _Kultur_ to a barbarian world. America is "The land of the free and the home of the brave," and so on, wherever a group has become sufficiently a crowd to have a propaganda of its own. Presbyterians are "the Elect," the Catholics have the "true church of God," the Christian Scientists have alone attained "Absolute Truth." A number of years ago, when the interest in the psychology of the crowd led me to attempt a study of Mr. Sunday's revival meetings, then in their earlier stages, certain facts struck me with great force. Whatever else the revival may be, it provides the student of psychology with a delightful specimen for analysis. Every element of the mob or crowd-mind is present and the unconscious manifests itself with an easy naïveté which is probably found nowhere else, not even in the psychiatric clinic. One striking fact, which has since provided me with food for a good deal of reflection, was the place which the revival holds in what I should like to call the spiritual economy of modern democracy. It is an interesting historical fact that each great religious revival, from Savonarola down, has immediately followed--and has been the resistance of the man in the street to--a period of intellectual awakening. Mr. Sunday's meetings undeniably provided a device whereby a certain psychic type, an element which had hitherto received scant recognition in the community, could enormously enhance his ego consciousness. It would be manifestly unfair to say that this is the sole motive of the religious revival, or that only this type of mind is active in it. But it is interesting to see whose social survival values stand out most prominently in these religious crowd-phenomena. The gambler, the drunkard, the loafer, the weak, ignorant, and unsuccessful, whose self-esteem it may be assumed had always been made to suffer in small communities, where everyone knew everyone else, had only to yield himself to the pull of the obviously worked-up mechanism of the religious crowd, and lo! all was changed. He was now the repentant sinner, the new convert, over whom there was more rejoicing in heaven, and, what was more visible, also for a brief time, in the Church, than over the ninety and nine just persons. He was "redeemed," an object now of divine love, a fact which anyone who has studied the effects of these crowd-movements scientifically will agree was at once seized upon by these converts to make their own moral dilemmas the standards of righteousness in the community, and hence secure some measure of dominance. This self-adulation of crowds, with its accompanying will to be important, to dominate, is so constant and characteristic a feature of the crowd-mind that I doubt if any crowd can long survive which fails to perform this function for its members. Self-flattery is evident in the pride with which many people wear badges and other insignia of groups and organizations to which they belong, and in the pompous names by which fraternal orders are commonly designated. In its more "exhibitionist" types it appears in parades and in the favorite ways in which students display their "college spirit." How many school and college "yells" begin with the formula, "Who are We?" obviously designed to call general attention to the group and impress upon people its importance. In this connection I recall my own student days, which are doubtless typical--the pranks which served the purpose of bringing certain groups of students into temporary prominence and permitted them for a brief period to regard themselves as comic heroes, the practices by which the different classes and societies sought to get the better of one another, the "love feasts" of my society which were hardly more than mutual admiration gatherings, the "pajama" parades in which the entire student body would march in costume (the wearing of which by an isolated individual would probably have brought him before a lunacy commission) all through the town and round and round the dormitories of the women's college a mile or so away, in order to announce a victory in some intercollegiate contest or other. There was the brazenness--it seems hardly credible now--with which the victors on such occasions would permit themselves to be carried on their comrades' shoulders through the public square, also the deportment with which a delegation of students would announce their arrival in a neighboring college town and the grinning self-congratulation with which we would sit in chapel and hear a wrathful president denounce our group behavior as "boorishness and hoodlumism." There was the unanimous conviction of us all, for no other reason I imagine than that it was graced with our particular presence, that our own institution was the most superior college in existence, and I well remember the priggishness with which at student banquets we applauded the sentiment repeated _ad nauseam_, that the great aim of education and the highest mark of excellence in our college was the development of character. What is it all but a slightly exaggerated account of the egoism of all organized crowds? Persons of student age are for the most part still in the normal "narcissus" period, and their ego-mania is naturally less disguised than that of older groups. But even then we could never have given such open manifestation to it as isolated individuals; it required the crowd-spirit. The egoism of the crowd commonly takes the form of the will to social dominance and it is in crowd behavior that we learn how insatiable the repressed egoism of mankind really is. Members of the crowd are always promising one another a splendid future triumph of some sort. This promise of victory, which is nearly always to be enjoyed at the expense, discomfiture, and humiliation of somebody else, is of great advantage in the work of propaganda. People have only to be persuaded that prohibition, or equal suffrage, or the single tax "is coming," and thousands whose reason could not be moved by argument, however logical it might be, will begin to look upon it with favor. The crowd is never so much at home as "on the band wagon." Each of the old political parties gains strength through the repeated prediction of victory in the presidential campaign of 1920. The Socialist finds warmth in the contemplation of the "coming dictatorship of the proletariat." The Prohibitionist intoxicates himself by looking forward to a "dry world." So long as the German crowds expected a victorious end of the war, their morale remained unbroken, the Kaiser was popular. When a crowd is defeated and its hope of victory fades, the individual soon abandons the unsuccessful group. The great cause, being now a forlorn hope, is seen in a different light, and the crowd character of the group vanishes. When, however, certain forces still operate to keep the crowd state of mind alive--forces such as race feeling, patriotism, religious belief, or class consciousness--the ego consciousness of the individuals so grouped finds escape in the promise of heaven, the Judgment Day, and that "far off divine event toward which the whole creation moves." Meanwhile the hope of victory is changed into that "impotent resentment" so graphically described by Nietzsche. Another way in which the self feeling of the crowd functions is in idealizing those who succeed in gaining its recognition. The crowd always makes a hero of the public person, living or dead. Regardless of what he really did or was, he is transformed into a symbol of what the crowd wishes to believe him to be. Certain aspects of his teaching and various incidents which would appear in his biography are glossed over, and made into supports for existing crowd-ideas and prejudices. Most of the great characters in history have suffered in this way at the hands of tradition. The secret of their greatness, their uniqueness and spiritual isolation, is in great part ignored. The crowd's own secret is substituted. The great man now appears great because he possessed the qualities of little men. He is representative man, crowd man. Every crowd has a list of heroic names which it uses in its propaganda and in its self-laudation. The greatness which each crowd reveres and demands that all men honor is just that greatness which the crowd treasures as a symbol of itself, the sort of superiority which the members of the crowd may suck up to swell their own ego consciousness. Thus, hero worship is unconsciously worship of the crowd itself, and the constituents thereof. The self-feeling of a crowd is always enhanced by the triumph of its leader or representative. Who, at a ball game or athletic event, has not experienced elation and added self-complacency in seeing the home team win? What other meaning has the excited cheering? Even a horse on a race track may become the representative of a crowd and lift five thousand people into the wildest joy and ecstasy by passing under a wire a few inches ahead of a rival. We have here one of the secrets of the appeal which all such exhibitions make to people. Nothing so easily catches general attention and creates a crowd as a contest of any kind. The crowd unconsciously identifies its members with one or the other competitor. Success enables the winning crowd to "crow over" the losers. Such an occasion becomes symbolic and is utilized by the ego to enhance its feeling of importance. A similar psychological fact may be observed in the "jollifications" of political parties after the election of their candidates for high office. This phenomenon is also seen, if I may say so without being misunderstood, in the new spirit which characterizes a people victorious in war, and is to no small degree the basis of the honor of successful nations. It is seen again in the pride which the citizens of a small town show in the fact that the governor of the state is a native of the place. This same principle finds place in such teachings of the Church as the doctrine of the "communion of the saints," according to which the spiritual grace and superiority of the great and pure become the common property of the Church, and may be shared by all believers as a saving grace. Every organized crowd is jealous of its dignity and honor and is bent upon keeping up appearances. Nothing is more fatal to it than a successful assault upon its prestige. Every crowd, even the casual street mob, clothes the egoistic desires of its members or participants in terms of the loftiest moral motive. No crowd can afford to be laughed at. Crowd men have little sense of humor, certainly none concerning themselves and their crowd-ideas. Any laughter they indulge in is more likely to be directed at those who do not believe with them. The crowd-man resents any suspicion of irreverence or criticism of his professions, because to question them is to weaken the claim of his crowd upon the people, and to destroy in those professed ideals their function of directing his own attention away from the successful compromise of his unconscious conflicts which the crowd had enabled him to make. The crowd would perish if it lost its "ideals." It clings to its fixed ideas with the same tenacity as does the paranoiac. You can no more reason with the former than you can with the latter, and for much the same cause; the beliefs of both are not the fruit of inquiry, neither do they perform the normal intellectual function of adjustment to environment; they are mechanisms of the ego by which it keeps itself in countenance. Much of the activity of the unconscious ego is viewed by psychologists as "compensation." Devices which serve the purpose of compensating the ego for some loss, act of self-sacrifice, or failure, are commonly revealed by both the normal and the unadjusted. The popular notion that unsatisfied desires sooner or later perish of starvation is at best but a half truth. These desires after we have ceased to attend them become transformed. They frequently find satiety in some substitute which the unconscious accepts as a symbol of its real object. Dreams of normal people contain a great deal of material of this sort. So do day-dreams, and art. Many religious beliefs also serve this purpose of compensation. Jung follows Freud in pointing out as a classic example of the compensation in dreams, that of Nebuchadnezzar, in the Bible. Nebuchadnezzar at the height of his power had a dream which foretold his downfall. He dreamed of a tree which had raised its head even up to Heaven and now must be hewn down. This was a dream which is obviously a counterpoise to the exaggerated feeling of royal power. According to Jung, we may expect to find only those things contained in the unconscious which we have not found in the conscious mind. Many conscious virtues and traits of character are thus compensations for their opposite in the unconscious. In the case of abnormal people, the individual entirely fails to recognize the compensating influences which arise in the unconscious. He even continues to accentuate his onesidedness; this is in accord with the well-known psychological fact that the worst enemy of the wolf is the wolfhound, the greatest despiser of the negro is the mulatto, and that the biggest fanatic is the convert; for I should be a fanatic were I to attack a thing outwardly which inwardly I am obliged to concede is right. The mentally unbalanced man tries to defend himself against his own unconscious--that is to say, he battles against his own compensating influences. In normal minds opposites of feeling and valuations lie closely associated; the law of this association is called "ambivalence," about which we shall see more later. In the abnormal, the pairs are torn asunder, the resulting division, or strife, leads to disaster, for the unconscious soon begins to intrude itself violently upon the conscious processes. An especially typical form of unconscious compensation ... is the paranoia of the alcoholic. The alcoholic loses his love for his wife; the unconscious compensation tries to lead him back again to his duty, but only partially succeeds, for it causes him to become jealous of his wife as if he still loved her. As we know, he may go so far as to kill both his wife and himself, merely out of jealousy. In other words, his love for his wife has not been entirely lost. It has simply become subliminal; but from the realm of consciousness it can now only reappear in the form of jealousy.... We see something of a similar nature in the case of the religious convert.... The new convert feels himself constrained to defend the faith he has adopted (since much of the old faith still survives in the unconscious associations) in a more or less fanatical way. It is exactly the same in the paranoiac who feels himself constantly constrained to defend himself against all external criticism, because his delusional system is too much threatened from within. It is not necessary for us to enter here upon a discussion of the processes by which these compensating devices are wrought out in the psychoneurosis. It is significant, though, that Jung calls attention to the likeness between religious fanaticism and paranoia. Now it is obvious that the fanaticism of the religious convert differs psychologically not at all from that of any other convert. We have already noted the fact that most religious conversions are accomplished by the crowd. Moreover the crowd everywhere tends to fanaticism. The fanatic is the crowd-man pure and simple. He is the type which it ever strives to produce. His excess of devotion, and willingness to sacrifice both himself and everyone else for the crowd's cause, always wins the admiration of his fellow crowd-members. He has given all for the crowd, is wholly swallowed by it, is "determined not to know anything save" his crowd and its propaganda. He is the martyr, the true believer, "the red-blooded loyal American" with "my country right or wrong." He is the uncompromising radical whose prison record puts to shame the less enthusiastic members of his group. He is the militant pacifist, the ever-watchful prohibitionist, and keeper of his neighbors' consciences, the belligerent moral purist, who is scandalized even at the display of lingerie in the store windows, the professional reformer who in every community succeeds in making his goodness both indispensable and unendurable. One need not be a psychologist to suspect that the evil against which the fanatic struggles is really in large measure in himself. He has simply externalized, or "projected" the conflict in his own unconscious. Persons who cry aloud with horror at every change in the style of women's clothing are in most cases persons whose ego is gnawed by a secret promiscuous eroticism. The scandalmonger, inhibited from doing the forbidden thing, enjoys himself by a vicarious indulgence in rottenness. The prohibition agitator, if not himself an alcoholic barely snatched from the burning, is likely to be one who at least feels safer in a democracy where it is not necessary to resist temptation while passing a saloon door. Notice that the fanatic or crowd-man always strives to universalize his own moral dilemmas. This is the device by which every crowd seeks dominance in the earth. A crowd's virtues and its vices are really made out of the same stuff. Each is simply the other turned upside down, the compensation for the other. They are alike and must be understood together as the expression of the type of person who constitutes the membership of some particular group or crowd. I'll never use tobacco, it is a filthy weed I'll never put it in my mouth, said little Robert Reed. But obviously, little Robert is already obsessed with a curious interest in tobacco. His first word shows that he has already begun to think of this weed in connection with himself. Should a crowd of persons struggling with Robert's temptation succeed in dominating society, tobacco would become taboo and thus would acquire a moral significance which it does not have at present. So with all our crowd-ethics. The forbidden thing protrudes itself upon consciousness as a negation. The negation reveals what it is that is occupying the inner psyche, and is its compensation. There are certain psychoneuroses in which this negative form of compensation is very marked. Now it is a noteworthy fact that with the crowd the ethical interest always takes this negative form. The healthy moral will is characterized by a constant restating of the problem of living in terms of richer and higher and more significant dilemmas as new possibilities of personal worth are revealed by experience. New and more daring valuations are constantly made. The whole psychic functioning is enriched. Goodness means an increase of satisfactions through a more adequate adjustment to the real--richer experience, more subtle power of appreciation and command, a self-mastery, sureness, and general personal excellence--which on occasions great and small mark the good will as a reality which counts in the sum total of things. Something is achieved because it is really desired; existence is in so far humanized, a self has been realized. As Professor Dewey says: If our study has shown anything it is that the moral _is_ a life, not something ready-made and complete once for all. It is instinct with movement and struggle, and it is precisely the new and serious situations which call out new vigor and lift it to higher levels. It is not so with the crowd-ethic. It is interesting to note that from the "Decalogue" to Kant's "Categorical Imperative," crowd-morals always and everywhere take the form of prohibitions, taboos, and ready-made standards, chiefly negative. Freud has made an analytical study of the Taboo as found in primitive society and has shown that it has a compensatory value similar to that of the taboos and compulsions of certain neurotics. The crowd admits of no personal superiority other than that which consists in absolute conformity to its own negative standards. Except for the valuations expressed by its own dilemmas, "one man is as good as another"--an idea which it can be easily seen serves the purpose of compensation. The goodness which consists of unique personal superiority is very distasteful to the crowd. There must be only one standard of behavior, alike for all. A categorical imperative. The standard as set up is of the sort which is most congenial, possible of attainment, and even necessary for the survival of the members of some particular crowd. It is _their_ good, the converse and compensation of their own vices, temptations, and failures. The crowd then demands that this good shall be THE GOOD, that it become the universal standard. By such means even the most incompetent and unadventurous and timid spirits may pass judgment upon all men. They may cry to the great of the earth, "We have piped unto you and you have not danced." Judged by the measure of their conformity to the standards of the small, the great may be considered no better, possibly not so good as the little spirits. The well are forced to behave like the spiritually sick. The crowd is a dog in the manger. If eating meat maketh my brother to be scandalized, or giveth him the cramps, I shall remain a vegetarian so long as the world standeth. Nietzsche was correct on this point. The crowd--he called it the herd--is a weapon of revenge in the hands of the weaker brother. It is a Procrustean bed on which every spiritual superiority may be lopped off to the common measure, and every little ego consciousness may be stretched to the stature of full manhood. V THE CROWD A CREATURE OF HATE Probably the most telling point of likeness between the crowd-mind and the psychoneurosis--paranoia especially--is the "delusion of persecution." In cases of paranoia the notion that the patient is the victim of all sorts of intrigue and persecution is so common as to be a distinguishing symptom of this disease. Such delusions are known to be defenses, or compensation mechanisms, growing out of the patient's exaggerated feeling of self-importance. The delusion of grandeur and that of being persecuted commonly go together. The reader will recall the passage quoted from the pamphlet given me by a typical paranoiac. The author of the document mentioned feels that he has a great mission, that of exposing and reforming the conditions in hospitals for the insane. He protests his innocence. In jail he feels like Christ among his tormentors. His wife has conspired against him. The woman who owns the hotel where he was employed wishes to put him out of the way. The most fiendish methods are resorted to in order to end his life. "Some one" blocked up the stovepipe, etc., etc. Another illustration of a typical case is given by Doctor Brill. I quote scattered passages from the published notes on the case record of the patient, "E. R." He graduated in 1898 and then took up schoolteaching.... He did not seem to get along well with his principal and other teachers.... He imagined that the principal and other teachers were trying to work up a "badger game" on him, to the effect that he had some immoral relations with his girl pupils.... In 1903 he married, after a brief courtship, and soon thereafter took a strong dislike to his brother-in-law and sister and accused them of immorality.... He also accused his wife of illicit relations with his brother and his brother-in-law, Mr. S. Mr. S., his brother-in-law, was the arch conspirator against him. He also (while in the hospital) imagined that some women made signs to him and were in the hospital for the purpose of liberating him. Whenever he heard anybody talking he immediately referred it to himself. He interpreted every movement and expression as having some special meaning for himself.... Now and then (after his first release by order of the court) he would send mysterious letters to different persons in New York City. At that time one of his delusions was that he was a great statesman and that the United States government had appointed him ambassador (to Canada), but that the "gang" in New York City had some one without ability to impersonate him so that he lost his appointment. (Later, while confined to the hospital again) he thought that the daughter of the President of the United States came to visit him.... After the patient was recommitted to Bellevue Hospital, he told me that I (Doctor Brill) was one of the "gang." I was no longer his wife in disguise (as he has previously imagined) but his enemy. Brill's discussion of this case contains an interesting analysis of the several stages of "regression" and the unconscious mechanisms which characterize paranoia. He holds that such cases show a "fixation" in an earlier stage of psychosexual development. The patient, an unconscious homosexual, is really in love with himself. The resulting inner conflict appears, with its defense formations, as the delusion of grandeur and as conscious hatred for the person or persons who happen to be the object of the patient's homosexual wish fancy. However this may be, the point of interest for our study is the "projection" of this hatred to others. Says Brill: The sentence, "I rather hate him" becomes transformed through projection into the sentence, "he hates (persecutes) me, which justifies my hating him." The paranoiac's delusional system inevitably brings him in conflict with his environment, but his feeling of being persecuted is less the result of this conflict with an external situation than of his own inner conflict. He convinces himself that it is the other, or others, not he, who is the author of this hatred. He is the innocent victim of their malice. This phenomenon of "projection and displacement" has received considerable attention in analytical psychology. Freud, in the book, _Totem and Taboo_, shows the role which projection plays in the primitive man's fear of demons. The demons are of course the spirits of the dead. But how comes it that primitive people fear these spirits, and attribute to them every sort of evil design against the living? To quote Freud: When a wife loses her husband, or a daughter her mother, it not infrequently happens that the survivor is afflicted with tormenting scruples, called "obsessive reproaches," which raise the question whether she herself has not been guilty, through carelessness or neglect, of the death of the beloved person. No recalling of the care with which she nursed the invalid, or direct refutation of the asserted guilt, can put an end to the torture, which is the pathological expression of mourning and which in time slowly subsides. Psychoanalytic investigation of such cases has made us acquainted with the secret mainspring of this affliction. We have ascertained that these obsessive reproaches are in a certain sense justified.... Not that the mourner has really been guilty of the death or that she has really been careless, as the obsessive reproach asserts; but still there was something in her, a wish of which she was unaware, which was not displeased with the fact that death came, and which would have brought it about sooner had it been strong enough. The reproach now reacts against this unconscious wish after the death of the beloved person. Such hostility, hidden in the unconscious behind tender love, exists in almost all cases of intensive emotional allegiance to a particular person; indeed, it represents the classic case, the prototype of the ambivalence of human emotions.... By assuming a similar high degree of ambivalence in the emotional life of primitive races such as psychoanalysis ascribes to persons suffering from compulsion neurosis, it becomes comprehensible that the same kind of reaction against the hostility latent in the unconscious behind the obsessive reproaches of the neurotic should also be necessary here after the painful loss has occurred. But this hostility, which is painfully felt in the unconscious in the form of satisfaction with the demise, experiences a different fate in the case of primitive man: the defense against it is accomplished by a displacement upon the object of hostility--namely, the dead. We call this defense process, frequent in both normal and diseased psychic life, a "projection."... Thus we find that taboo has grown out of the soil of an ambivalent emotional attitude. The taboo of the dead also originates from the opposition between conscious grief and the unconscious satisfaction at death. If this is the origin of the resentment of spirits, it is self-evident that the nearest and formerly most beloved survivors have to feel it most. As in neurotic symptoms, the taboo regulations evince opposite feelings. Their restrictive character expresses mourning, while they also betray very clearly what they are trying to conceal--namely, the hostility toward the dead which is now motivated as self-defense.... The double feeling--tenderness and hostility--against the deceased, which we consider well-founded, endeavors to assert itself at the time of bereavement as mourning and satisfaction. A conflict must ensue between these contrary feelings, and as one of them--namely, the hostility, is altogether, or for the greater part, unconscious, the conflict cannot result in a conscious difference in the form of hostility or tenderness, as, for instance, when we forgive an injury inflicted upon us by some one we love. The process usually adjusts itself through a special psychic mechanism which is designated in psychoanalysis as "projection." This unknown hostility, of which we are ignorant and of which we do not wish to know, is projected from our inner perception into the outer world and is thereby detached from our own person and attributed to another. Not we, the survivors, rejoice because we are rid of the deceased, on the contrary we mourn for him; but now, curiously enough, he has become an evil demon who would rejoice in our misfortune and who seeks our death. The survivors must now defend themselves against this evil enemy; they are freed from inner oppression, but they have only succeeded in exchanging it for an affliction from without. Totem, taboo, demon worship, etc., are clearly primitive crowd-phenomena. Freud's main argument in this book consists in showing the likeness between these phenomena and the compulsion neurosis. The projection of unconscious hostility upon demons is by no means the only sort of which crowds both primitive and modern are capable. Neither must the hostility always be unconscious. Projection is a common device whereby even normal and isolated individuals justify themselves in hating. Most of us love to think evil of our enemies and opponents. Just as two fighting schoolboys will each declare that the other "began it," so our dislike of people often first appears to our consciousness as a conviction that they dislike or entertain unfriendly designs upon us. There is a common type of female neurotic whose repressed erotic wishes appear in the form of repeated accusations that various of her men acquaintances are guilty of making improper advances to her. When the "white slavery" reform movement swept over the country--an awakening of the public conscience which would have accomplished a more unmixed good if it had not been taken up in the usual crowd-spirit--it was interesting to watch the newspapers and sensational propagandist speakers as they deliberately encouraged these pathological phenomena in young people. The close psychological relation between the neurosis and the crowd-mind is shown by the fact that the two so frequently appear at the same moment, play so easily into each other's hands, and are apparently reactions to the very same social situation. In Brill's example of paranoia, it will be remembered that the patient's delusions of persecution took the form of such statements as that the "gang" had intrigued at Washington to prevent his appointment as ambassador, that certain of his relatives were in a "conspiracy against him." How commonly such phrases and ideas occur in crowd-oratory and in the crowd-newspaper is well known to all. We have already seen that the crowd in most cases identifies itself with "the people," "humanity," "society," etc. Listen to the crowd-orator and you will also learn that there are all sorts of abominable "conspiracies" against "the people." "The nation is full of traitors." The Church is being "undermined by cunning heretics." "The Bolshevists are in secret league with the Germans to destroy civilization." "Socialists are planning to corrupt the morals of our youth and undermine the sacredness of the home." "The politicians' gang intends to loot the community." "Wall Street is conspiring to rob the people of their liberties." "England plans to reduce America to a British colony again." "Japan is getting ready to make war on us." "German merchants are conducting a secret propaganda intending to steal our trade and pauperize our nation." "The Catholics are about to seize power and deliver us over to another Inquisition." "The liquor interests want only to make drunkards of our sons and prostitutes of our daughters." And so on and so forth, wherever any crowd can get a hearing for its propaganda. Always the public welfare is at stake; society is threatened. The "wrongs" inflicted upon an innocent humanity are rehearsed. Bandages are taken off every social wound. Every scar, be it as old as Cromwell's mistreatment of Ireland, is inflamed. "The people are being deceived," "kept down," "betrayed." They must rise and throw off their exploiters, or they must purge the nation of disloyalty and "anarchy." It cannot be denied that our present social order is characterized by deep and fundamental social injustices, nor that bitter struggles between the various groups in society are inevitable. But the crowd forever ignores its own share in the responsibility for human ills, and each crowd persists in making a caricature of its enemies, real and imagined, nourishing itself in a delusion of persecution which is like nothing so much as the characteristic obsessions of the paranoiac. This suspiciousness, this habit of misrepresentation and exaggeration of every conceivable wrong, is not only a great hindrance to the conflicting groups in adjusting their differences, it makes impossible, by misrepresenting the real issue at stake, any effective struggle for ideals. As the history of all crowd movements bears witness, the real source of conflict is forgotten, the issue becomes confused with the spectacular, the unimportant, and imaginary. Energy is wasted on side issues, and the settlement finally reached, even by a clearly victorious crowd, is seldom that of the original matter in dispute. In fact, it is not at all the function of these crowd-ideas of self-pity and persecution to deal with real external situations. These ideas are propaganda. Their function is to keep the crowd together, to make converts, to serve as a defense for the egoism of the crowd-man, to justify the anticipated tyranny which it is the unconscious desire of the individual to exercise in the moment of victory for his crowd, and, as "they who are not for us are against us," to project the crowd-man's hatred upon the intended victims of his crowd's will to universal dominion. In other words, these propaganda ideas serve much the same end as do the similar delusions of persecution in paranoia. This likeness between the propaganda of the crowd and the delusions of paranoia is illustrated daily in our newspapers. The following items cut from the New York _Tribune_ are typical. The first needs no further discussion, as it parallels the cases given above. The second is from the published proceedings of "a committee," appointed, as I remember it, by the assembly of the state of New York, to conduct an investigation into certain alleged seditious and anarchist activities. These articles well illustrate the character of the propaganda to which such a committee almost inevitably lends itself. Whether the committee or the newspapers were chiefly responsible for such fabrications, I do not know, but the crowd character of much of the attempt to stamp out Bolshevism is strikingly revealed in this instance. No doubt the members of this committee, as well as the detectives and the press agents who are associated with them, are as honestly convinced that a mysterious gang of radicals is planning to murder us all as is the paranoiac W. H. M. fixed in his delusion that his enemies are trying to asphyxiate him. It will be remembered that Brill's patient "E. S." interpreted "every movement and expression as having some special meaning for himself." This kind of "interpretation" has a curious logic all its own. It is what I would call "compulsive thinking," and is characteristic of both the delusions of paranoia and the rumors of the crowd. First clipping: INVENTOR IS DECLARED INSANE BY A JURY. W. H. M. declares rivals are attempting to asphyxiate him. W. H. M., an inventor, was declared mentally incompetent yesterday by a jury in the Sheriff's court.... Alienists said M. had hallucinations about enemies who he thinks are trying to asphyxiate him. He also imagines that he is under hypnotic influences and that persons are trying to affect his body with "electrical influences." Second clipping: RADICALS HERE SEEK SOLDIERS FOR "RED GUARD." Several hundred men, formerly in United States Service, signify willingness to aid in project. A "Red Guard" composed of men who have served in the American military establishment is contemplated in the elaborate revolutionary plans of Bolshevik leaders here. This was learned yesterday when operatives of the Lusk committee discovered that the radicals were making every effort to enlist the aid of the Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines Protective Association in carrying out a plot to overthrow the government by force. As far as the detectives have been able to ascertain, the great mass of fighting men are not in sympathy with the Reds, but several hundred have signified their willingness to co-operate. Just how far the plans of the Reds have progressed was not revealed. It is known, however, that at a convention of the Left Wing Socialists in Buffalo the movement designed to enlist the support of the Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines Protective Association was launched. This convention was addressed by prominent Left Wingers from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Paterson. They asserted that trained military men must be obtained for the organization if the plans were to be successful. It was from this meeting, which was held in secret, that agitators were sent to various parts of the state to form soviets in the shops and factories. This phase of the radical activity, according to the investigators, has met with considerable success in some large factory districts where most of the workers are foreign-born. In some places the soviets in the shops have become so strong that the employers are alarmed and have notified the authorities of the menace. When sufficient evidence has been gathered, foreign-born agitators working to cause unrest in factories will be apprehended and recommended for deportation. Later report: DENIES FORMATION OF "RED GUARD" IN U. S. Alfred Levitt, secretary of the Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines Protective Association, yesterday emphatically denied that the organization was to be used as a "Red Guard" by the radicals when they started their contemplated revolution. He said he never had heard any of the members of the association discuss the formation of a "Red Guard" but admitted that many of them were radicals. In the two instances given above, fear, suspicion, hatred, give rise in one case to a delusional system in the mind of an isolated individual, and in the other to the circulation of an unfounded rumor by men who in their right minds would, to say the least, carefully scrutinize the evidence for such a story before permitting it to be published. As several months have passed since the publication of this story and nothing more has appeared which would involve our returned service men in any such treasonable conspiracy, I think it is safe to say that this story, like many others circulated by radicals as well as by reactionaries during the unsettled months following the war, has its origin in the unconscious mechanisms of crowd-minded people. Every sort of crowd is prone to give credence to rumors of this nature, and to accuse all those who can not at once give uncritical acceptance to such tales of sympathy with the enemy. Later we shall have something to say about the delusional systems which appear to be common to the crowd-mind and the paranoiac. In this connection I am interested in pointing out only the psychological relation between what I might call the "conspiracy delusion" and unconscious hatred. Commonly the former is the "projection" of the latter. One of the differences between these two forms of "projection" is the fact that the hatred of the crowd is commonly less "rationalized" than in paranoia--that is, less successfully disguised. Like the paranoiac, every crowd is potentially if not actually homicidal in its tendencies. But whereas with the paranoiac the murderous hostility remains for the greater part an unconscious "wish fancy," and it is the mechanisms which disguise it or serve as a defense against it which appear to consciousness, with the crowd the murder-wish will itself appear to consciousness whenever the unconscious can fabricate such defense mechanisms as will provide it with a fiction of moral justification. Consequently, it is this fiction of justification which the crowd-man must defend. The crowd's delusion of persecution, conspiracy, or oppression is thus a defense mechanism of this nature. The projection of this hatred on those outside the crowd serves not so much, as in paranoia, to shield the subject from the consciousness of his own hatred, as to provide him with a pretext for exercising it. Given such a pretext, most crowds will display their homicidal tendencies quite openly. Ordinary mobs or riots would seem to need very little justification of this sort. But even these directly homicidal crowds invariably represent themselves as motivated by moral idealism and righteous indignation. Negroes are lynched in order to protect the white womanhood of the South, also because, once accused, the negro happens to be helpless. If the colored people were in the ascendancy and the whites helpless we should doubtless see the reverse of this situation. A community rationally convinced of the culprit's guilt could well afford to trust the safety of womanhood to the justice meted out by the courts, but it is obvious that these "moral" crowds are less interested in seeing that justice is done than in running no risk of losing their victim, once he is in their power. A recent development of this spirit is the lynching in a Southern town of a juror who voted for the acquittal of a black man accused of a crime. It may be taken as a general law of crowd-psychology that the "morality" of the crowd always demands a victim. Is it likely that one of these mobs would "call off" an interesting lynching party if at the last minute it were demonstrated that the accused was innocent? The practice of lynching has been extended, from those cases where the offense with which the accused is charged is so revolting as justly to arouse extreme indignation, to offenses which are so trivial that they merely serve as a pretext for torture and killing. The homicidal tendencies of the crowd-mind always reveal themselves the minute the crowd becomes sufficiently developed and powerful to relax for the time being the usual social controls. Illustrations of this may be seen in the rioting between the white and the colored races--epidemics of killing--such as occurred recently in East St. Louis, and in the cities of Washington, Chicago, and Omaha. The same thing is evident in the "pogroms" of Russia and Poland, in the acts of revolutionary mobs of Germany and Russia, in the promptness with which the Turks took advantage of the situation created by the war to slaughter the Armenians. This hatred is the specter which forever haunts the conflict between labor and capital. It is what speedily transformed the French Revolution from the dawn of an era of "Fraternity" to a day of terror and intimidation. It is seen again in the curious interest which the public always has in a sensational murder trial. It is evident in the hostility, open or suppressed, with which any community regards the strange, the foreign, the "outlandish"--an example of which is the frequent bullying and insulting of immigrants in this country since the war. Much of the "Americanization propaganda" which we have carried on since the war unfortunately gave the typical crowd-man his opportunity. One need only listen to the speeches or read the publications of certain "patriotic" societies to learn why it was that the exhortation to our foreign neighbors to be loyal did so much more harm than good. The classic example of the killing crowd is, of course, a nation at war. There are, to be sure, wars of national self-defense which are due to political necessity rather than to crowd-thinking, but even in such cases the phenomena of the crowd are likely to appear to the detriment of the cause. At such times not only the army but the whole nation becomes a homicidal crowd. The army, at least while the soldiers are in service, probably shows the crowd-spirit in a less degree than does the civilian population. The mental processes of an entire people are transformed. Every interest--profit-seeking excepted--is subordinated to the one passion to crush the enemy. The moment when war is declared is usually hailed with tremendous popular enthusiasm and joy. There is a general lifting of spirits. There is a sense of release, a nation-wide exultation, a sigh of relief as we feel the deadening hand of social control taken from our throats. The homicidal wish-fancy, which in peace times and in less sovereign crowds exists only as an hypothesis, can now become a reality. And though it is doubtful if more than one person in a million can ever give a rational account of just what issue is really at stake in any war, the conviction is practically unanimous that an occasion has been found which justifies, even demands, the release of all the repressed hostility in our natures. The fact that in war time this crowd hostility may, under certain circumstances, really have survival value and be both beneficial and necessary to the nation, is to my mind not a justification of crowd-making. It is rather a revelation of the need of a more competent leadership in world politics. Unconsciously every national crowd, I mean the crowd-minded element in the nation, carries a chip on its shoulder, and swaggers and challenges its neighbors like a young town-bully on his way home from grammar school. This swaggering, which is here the "compulsive manifestation" of unconscious hostility characteristic of every crowd, appears to consciousness as "national honor." To the consciousness of the nation-crowd the quarrel for which it has been spoiling for a long time always appears to have been "forced upon it." Some nations are much more quarrelsome than others. I cannot believe that our conviction that Imperial Germany was the aggressor in the great war is due merely to patriotic conceit on our part. The difference between our national spirit and that of Imperial Prussia is obvious, but the difference in this respect, great as it is, is one of degree rather than of kind, and is due largely to the fact that the political organization of Germany permitted the Prussian patriots to hold the national mind in a permanent crowd state to a degree which is even now hardly possible in this republic. My point is that a nation becomes warlike to precisely the extent that its people may be made to think and behave as a crowd. Once a crowd, it is always "in the right" however aggressive and ruthless its behavior; every act or proposal which is calculated to involve the nation-crowd in a controversy, which gains some advantage over neighboring peoples, or intensifies hatred once it is released, is wildly applauded. Any dissent from the opinions of our particular party or group is trampled down. He who fails at such a time to be a crowd-man and our own sort of a crowd-man is a "slacker." Everyone's patriotism is put under suspicion, political heresy-hunting is the rule, any personal advantage which can be gained by denouncing as "enemy sympathizers" rival persons or groups within the nation is sure to be snatched up by some one. The crowd-mind, even in times of peace, distorts patriotism so that it is little more than a compulsive expression and justification of repressed hostility. In war the crowd succeeds in giving rein to this hostility by first projecting it upon the enemy. Freud in his little book, _War and Death_, regards war as a temporary "regression" in which primitive impulses which are repressed by civilization, but not eradicated, find their escape. He argues that most people live psychologically "beyond their means." Hence war could be regarded, I suppose, as a sort of "spiritual liquidation." But if the hostility which the war crowd permits to escape is simply a repressed impulse to cruelty, we should be obliged to explain a large part of crowd-behavior as "sadistic." This may be the case with crowds of a certain type, lynching mobs, for instance. But as the homicidal tendencies of paranoia are not commonly explained as sadism, I can see no reason why those of the crowd should be. Sadism is a return to an infantile sex perversion, and in its direct overt forms the resulting conflicts are conscious and are between the subject and environment. It is where a tendency unacceptable to consciousness is repressed--and inadequately--that neurotic conflict ensues. This conflict being inner, develops certain mechanisms for the defense of the ego-feeling which is injured. The hatred of the paranoiac is really a defense for his own injured self-feeling. As the crowd always shows an exaggerated ego-feeling similar to the paranoiac's delusion of grandeur, and as in cases of paranoia this inner conflict is always "projected" in the form of delusions of persecution, may we not hold that the characteristic hostility of the crowd is also in some way a device for protecting this inflated self-appreciation from injury? The forms which this hatred takes certainly have all the appearance of being "compulsive" ideas and actions. We have been discussing crowds in which hostility is present in the form of overt destructive and homicidal acts or other unmistakable expressions of hatred. But are there not also peaceable crowds, crowds devoted to religious and moral propaganda, idealist crowds? Yes, all crowds moralize, all crowds are also idealistic. But the moral enthusiasm of the crowd always demands a victim. The idealist crowd also always makes idols of its ideals and worships them with human sacrifice. The peaceable crowd is only potentially homicidal. The death-wish exists as a fancy only, or is expressed in symbols so as to be more or less unrecognizable to ordinary consciousness. I believe that _every crowd is_ "_against some one_." Almost any crowd will persecute on occasion--if sufficiently powerful and directly challenged. The crowd tends ever to carry its ideas to their deadly logical conclusion. I have already referred to the crowd's interest in games and athletic events as an innocent symbolization of conflict. How easy it is to change this friendly rivalry into sudden riot--its real meaning--every umpire of baseball and football games knows. As an illustration of my point--namely, that the enthusiasm aroused by athletic contests is the suppressed hostility of the crowd, I give the following. In this letter to a New York newspaper, the writer, a loyal "fan," reveals the same mentality that we find in the sectarian fanatic, or good party man, whose "principles" have been challenged. The challenge seems in all such cases to bring the hostility into consciousness as "righteous indignation." _To the Editor_: SIR,--The article under the caption "Giants' Chances for Flag to be Settled in Week," on the sporting page of the _Tribune_, is doubtless intended to be humorous. The section referring to the Cincinnati baseball public is somewhat overdrawn, to say the least, and does not leave a very favorable impression on the average Cincinnatian, such as myself. I have been a reader of your paper for some time, but if this sort of thing continues I shall feel very much like discontinuing. W. L. D. The extremes to which partisan hatred and jealousy can lead even members of the United States Senate, the intolerance and sectarian spirit which frequently characterize crowds, the "bigotry" of reformist crowds, are matters known to us all. Does anyone doubt that certain members of the Society for the Prevention of Vice, or of the Prohibitionists, would persecute if they had power? Have not pacifist mass meetings been known to break up in a row? The Christian religion is fundamentally a religion of love, but the Church has seldom been wholly free from the crowd-spirit, and the Church crowd will persecute as quickly as any other. In each period of its history when Christian believers have been organized as dominant crowds the Church has resorted to the severest forms of persecution. Popular religion always demands some kind of devil to stand as the permanent object of the believer's hostility. Let an editor, or lecturer, or clergyman anywhere attack some one, and he at once gains following and popularity. Evangelists and political orators are always able to "get" their crowd by resorting to abuse of some one. Let any mass meeting become a crowd, and this note of hostility inevitably appears. Notice the inscriptions which commonly appear on the banners carried in political or labor parades. On the day after the armistice was signed with Germany, when the most joyous and spontaneous crowds I have ever seen filled the streets of New York, I was greatly impressed with those homemade banners. Though it was the occasion of the most significant and hard-won victory in human history, there was hardly a reference to the fact. Though it was the glad moment of peace for which all had longed, I did not see ten banners bearing the word "Peace," even in the hands of the element in the city who were known to be almost unpatriotically pacifist. But within less than an hour I counted on Fifth Avenue more than a hundred banners bearing the inscription, "To Hell with the Kaiser." That the man chiefly responsible for the horrors of the war should be the object of universal loathing is only to be expected, but the significant fact is that of all the sentiments which swept into people's minds on that occasion, this and this alone should have been immediately seized upon when the crowd spirit began to appear. I doubt if at the time there was a very clear sense of the enormity of Wilhelm's guilt in the minds of those laughing people. The Kaiser was hardly more than a symbol. The antagonist, whoever he be, was "fallen down to hell," our own sense of triumph was magnified by the depth of his fall. Just so the Hebrew Prophet cried "Babylon is fallen," so the early Christians pictured Satan cast into the bottomless pit, so the Jacobins cried "_A bas les Aristocrats_," our own Revolutionary crowds cried "Down with George III," and the Union soldiers sang, "Hang Jeff Davis on a Sour Apple Tree." I repeat that wherever the crowd-mind appears, it will always be found to be "against" some one. An interesting fact about the hostility of a crowd is its ability on occasion to survive the loss of its object. It may reveal the phenomenon which psychologists call "displacement." That is to say, another object may be substituted for the original one without greatly changing the quality of the feeling. A mob in the street, driven back from the object of its attack, will loot a store or two before it disperses. Or, bent on lynching a certain negro, it may even substitute an innocent man, if robbed of its intended victim--as, for instance, the lynching of the mayor of Omaha. Such facts would seem to show that these hostile acts are really demanded by mechanisms within the psyche. Many symbolic acts of the person afflicted with compulsion neurosis show this same _trait of substitution_. If inhibited in the exercise of one mechanism of escape, the repressed wish will substitute another. Also anyone associated by the unconscious reasoning with the hated object, or anyone who tries to defend him or prove him innocent, may suffer from this crowd's hatred. Freud has analyzed this phenomenon in his study of taboo. He who touches the tabooed object himself becomes taboo. I have said that the hostility of the crowd is a sort of "defense mechanism." That this is so in certain cases, I think can be easily demonstrated. The following news item is an example of the manner in which such hostility may serve as a "defense mechanism" compensating the self-feeling for certain losses and serving to enhance the feeling of self-importance: CHARGES BAKER HAD 57 BRANDS OF ARMY OBJECTOR. ----, OF MINNESOTA, DEFENDING MARINES FATHERS' ASSOCIATION PROTEST; ASSAILS FREEING OF "SLACKERS." WASHINGTON, _July 23_.--A bitter partisan quarrel developed in the House today when Representative ----, of Minnesota, attacked Secretary Baker and the President for the government's policy toward conscientious objectors. The attack was the result of protests by the Marines Fathers' Association of Minneapolis, Minnesota, representing between 500 and 600 young marines now in France, all from the Minneapolis high schools and the University of Minnesota, and many in the famous 6th Regiment of Marines that took a big part in stopping the Germans at Chateau Thierry. Upon learning of the treatment accorded conscientious objectors in this country while their sons were dying in France, the association asked Representative ---- to fix the responsibility for the government's policy. Representative ---- fixed it today as that of Secretary Baker and President Wilson, charging that they extended the definition of those to be exempted from military service laid down by Congress in an act of May 17, 1917. "One variety of conscientious objector was not enough for Mr. Baker," declared Representative ----. "He had 57 kinds...." Representative ----, of Arizona, defended Secretary Baker, asserting that of 20,000 men who were certified as conscientious objectors, 16,000 ultimately went to war. The case of Sergt. Alvin C. York, the Tennessee hero, who had conscientious objections at first, but soon changed his mind, was cited in defense of the War Department's policy. Let us pass over the obviously partisan element in this Congressional debate--a crowd phenomenon in itself, by the way--and consider the mental state of this Fathers' Association. In spite of the fact that the treatment of those who refused military service in this country was so much more severe than the manner with which the British government is reported to have dealt with this class of persons, that many people, including the Secretary of War, whose loyalty except to partisan minds was above suspicion, sought in the name of humanity to alleviate some of the conditions in our military prisons, it was not severe enough to satisfy these "fathers." It is doubtful if anything short of an _auto da fe_ would have met their approval. Now no one believes that these simple farmers from the Northwest are such sadists at heart that they enjoy cruelty for its own sake. I imagine that the processes at work here are somewhat as follows: The telltale phrase here is that these farmers' sons "were dying in France." Patriotic motives rightly demanded that fathers yield their sons to the hardship and danger of battle, and while the sacrifice was made consciously, with willingness and even with pride in having done their painful duty, it was not accomplished without struggle--the unconscious resisted it. It could not be reconciled to so great a demand. In other words, these fathers, and probably many of their sons also, were unconsciously "conscientious objectors." Unconsciously they longed to evade this painful duty, but these longings were put aside, "repressed" as shameful and cowardly--that is, as unacceptable to conscious self-feeling. It was necessary to defend the ego against these longings. Compensation was demanded and found in the nation-wide recognition of the value of this patriotic sacrifice. Expressions of patriotic sentiment on the part of others, therefore, compensated the individual and enhanced his self-feeling. Successful refusal anywhere to recognize the duty which consciously motivated this sacrifice strengthened the unconscious desire to evade it. The unconscious reasoning was something like this: "If those men got out of this thing, why should not we? Since we had to bear this loss, they must also. We have suffered for duty's sake. By making them suffer also, they will be forced to recognize this 'duty' with which we defend ourselves against our sense of loss and desire to escape it." As a witness to the values against which the ego of these fathers has to struggle, the existence of the conscientious objector, in a less degree of suffering than their own, is as intolerable as their own "shameful and cowardly" unconscious longings. Hostility to the conscientious objector is thus a "projection" of their own inner conflict. By becoming a crowd, the members of this "Fathers' Association" make it mutually possible to represent their hostility to conscientious objectors as something highly patriotic. Secretary Baker's alleged leniency to these hated persons is now not only an affront to these fathers, it is an affront to the entire nation. Another and somewhat different example of the function of hatred in the service of the self-feeling is the following item, which throws some light on the motives of the race riots in Washington. This is, of course, a defense of but one of the crowds involved, but it is interesting psychologically. NEGRO EDITOR BLAMES WHITES FOR RACE RIOTS. Dr. W. F. B. DuBois, of 70 Fifth Avenue, editor of _The Crisis_, a magazine published in connection with the work of the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People, yesterday attributed the race riots in Washington to the irritability of all people and the unsettling of many ideas caused by the war, to the influx of a large number of Southerners into Washington, and to the _presence in that city of many of the representatives of the educated, well-dressed class of negroes_ which white racial antagonists dislike. Washington policemen are notoriously unfriendly to the colored people, he added. Time and time again they stand by and witness a dispute between a white man and a negro, and when it is over and the negro has been beaten they arrest the negro, and not the white man who caused the trouble in the first place. The colored editor pointed out the similarity between the present riots in Washington and the Atlanta riots which occurred about twelve years ago. In both places, he said, white hoodlums began rioting and killing negroes. When the latter became aroused and began to retaliate, the authorities stepped in and the rioting stopped. Major J. E. Spingarn, acting treasurer of the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People, said the _soldiers and sailors who have been taking part in the rioting in Washington resent the new attitude of self-respect which the negro has assumed because of the part he played in the war_. "The soldiers," he said, "instead of fighting the negroes because the latter think better of themselves for having fought in the war, should respect them for having proved themselves such good fighters." (The italics are mine.) It is quite possible that in most communities where such race riots occur certain members of the colored race are responsible to the extent that they have made themselves conspicuously offensive to their white neighbors. But such individual cases, even where they exist, do not justify attacks upon hundreds of innocent people. And it must be said that in general the kind of people whose feelings of personal superiority can find no other social support than the mere fact that they happen to belong to the white race--and I think it will be found that the mobs who attack negroes are uniformly made of people who belong to this element--naturally find their self-feeling injured "if a nigger puts on airs." Their fiction is challenged; to accept the challenge would force upon the consciousness of such people a correct estimate of their own worth. Such an idea is unacceptable to consciousness. The presumptuous negroes who serve as such unpleasant reminders "must be put in their proper place"--that is, so completely under the feet of the white element in the community that the mere fact of being a white man may serve as a defense mechanism for just those members of our noble race who approach more closely to the social position of the colored element in our midst. As the moral standards of the community will not permit even this element of the white race to play the hoodlum with self-approval, some disguise or "displacement" for this motive must be found whereby the acts to which it prompts may appear to the consciousness of their perpetrators as justifiable. A misdeed is committed by a black man; instantly this element of the white race becomes a crowd. The deed provides the whites with just the pretext they want. They may now justify themselves and one another in an assault on the whole colored community. Here I believe we have the explanation of much that is called "race prejudice." The hatred between the races, like all crowd-hatred, is a "defense mechanism" designed to protect the ego in its conflict with ideas unacceptable to consciousness. The intensest hatred of the crowd is that directed toward the heretic, the nonconformist, the "traitor." I have sometimes thought that to the crowd-mind there is only one sin, heresy. Every sort of crowd, political, religious, moral, has an ax ready for the person who in renouncing its ideas and leaving it threatens to break it up. The bitter partisan hatred of crowds is nothing compared to their hatred for the renegade. To the crowd of true believers, the heretic or schismatic is "worse than the infidel." The moral crowd will "bear with" the worst _roué_ if only he strives to keep up appearances, has a guilty conscience, asks forgiveness, and professes firm belief in the conventions against which he offends; one may be forgiven his inability to "live up to his principles" if only his professed principles are the same as the crowd's. But let a Nietzsche, though his life be that of an ascetic, openly challenge and repudiate the values of popular morality, and his name is anathema. As an example of the hatred of the political crowd for one who, having once put his hand to the plow and turned back, henceforth is no longer fit for the "kingdom," I quote the following from an ultraradical paper. It is hard to believe that this passage was written by a man who, in his right mind, is really intelligent and kind-hearted, but such is the case: AN EXPLANATION.--Owing to a failure of editorial supervision we published an advertisement of John Spargo's book on Bolshevism. We have returned the money we received for it, and canceled the contract for its future appearances. We do not pretend to protect our readers against patent-medicine swindlers, real-estate sharpers, canned goods prevaricators, ptomaine poisoners, fairy bond-sellers, picaroon nickel-pickers, subway ticket speculators, postage-stamp forgers, pie and pancake counterfeiters, plagiary burglars, lecherous pornographers, and pictorial back-porch climbers, plundering buccaneer blackmailers and defaulting matrimonial agents, journalistic poachers, foragers, pickpockets, thimbleriggers, lick-sauce publicity men, notoriety hunters, typographical body-snatchers, blackletter assassins, and promulgators of licentious meters in free verse. Against these natural phenomena we offer no guarantee to our readers, but we never intended to advertise John Spargo's book on Bolshevism. Here again, it seems, the reason for hatred is "self-defense." One important difference between the crowd-mind and the psychosis is the fact that while the psychic mechanisms of the latter serve to disguise the inadequately repressed wish, those of the crowd-mind permit the escape of the repressed impulse by relaxing the force which demands the repression--namely, the immediate social environment. This relaxation is accomplished by a general fixation of attention which changes for those who share it the moral significance of the social demand. The repressed wish then appears to consciousness in a form which meets with the mutual approval of the individuals so affected. Or, as I have said, the social environment, instead of acting as a check upon the realization of the wish-fancy, slips along in the same direction with it. Hence the will to believe the same, so characteristic of every crowd. As soon as this mutuality is broken the habitual criteria of the real again become operative. Every individual who "comes to" weakens the hold of the crowd-ideas upon all the others to just the extent that his word must be taken into account. The crowd resorts to all sorts of devices to bind its members together permanently in a common faith. It resists disintegration as the worst conceivable evil. Disintegration means that crowd-men must lose their pet fiction--which is to say, their "faith." The whole system elaborated by the unconscious fails to function; its value for compensation, defense, or justification vanishes as in waking out of a dream. Strong spirits can stand this disillusionment. They have the power to create new, more workable ideals. They become capable of self-analysis. They learn to be legislators of value and to revise their beliefs for themselves. Their faiths become not refuges, but instruments for meeting and mastering the facts of experience and giving them meaning. The strong are capable of making their lives spiritual adventures in a real world. The "truths" of such persons are not compulsive ideas, they are working hypotheses which they are ready, as occasion may demand, to verify at great personal risk, or to discard when proved false. Such persons sustain themselves in their sense of personal worth less by defense mechanisms than by the effort of will which they can make. As William James said: If the searching of our heart and reins be the purpose of this human drama, then what is sought seems to be what effort we can make. He who can make none is but a shadow; he who can make much is a hero. The huge world that girdles us about puts all sorts of questions to us, and tests us in all sorts of ways. Some of the tests we meet by actions that are easy, and some of the questions we answer in articulately formulated words. But the deepest question that is ever asked admits of no reply but the dumb turning of the will and tightening of our heartstrings as we say, "Yes, I will even have it so!" When a dreadful object is presented, or when life as a whole turns up its dark abysses to our view, then the worthless ones among us lose their hold on the situation altogether, and either escape from its difficulties by averting their attention, or, if they cannot do that, collapse into yielding masses of plaintiveness and fear. The effort required for facing and consenting to such objects is beyond their power to make. But the heroic mind does differently. To it, too, the objects are sinister and dreadful, unwelcome, incompatible with wished-for things. But it can face them if necessary without losing its hold upon the rest of life. The world thus finds in the heroic man its worthy match and mate.... He can _stand_ this Universe. Indeed the path for all who would make of living a reality rather than an imitation leads along what James used to call "the perilous edge." Every personal history that is a history, and not a mere fiction, contains in it something unique, a fraction for which there is no common denominator. It requires just that effort of attention to concrete reality and the fact of self which in the crowd we always seek to escape by diverting attention to congenial abstractions and ready-made universals. We "find ourselves" only as we "get over" one after another of our crowd-compulsions, until finally we are strong enough, as Ibsen would say, "to stand alone." Timid spirits seldom voluntarily succeed in getting closer to reality than the "philosophy of '_as if_'" which characterizes the thinking both of the crowd and the psychoneurosis. What indeed is the crowd but a fiction of upholding ourselves by all leaning on one another, an "escape from difficulties by averting attention," a spiritual safety-first or "fool-proof" mechanism by which we bear up one another's collapsing ego-consciousness lest it dash its foot against a stone? The crowd-man can, when his fiction is challenged, save himself from spiritual bankruptcy, preserve his defenses, keep his crowd from going to pieces, only by a demur. Anyone who challenges the crowd's fictions must be ruled out of court. He must not be permitted to speak. As a witness to contrary values his testimony must be discounted. The worth of his evidence must be discredited by belittling the disturbing witness. "He is a bad man; the crowd must not listen to him." His motives must be evil; he "is bought up"; he is an immoral character; he tells lies; he is insincere or he "has not the courage to take a stand" or "there is nothing new in what he says." Ibsen's "Enemy of the People," illustrates this point very well. The crowd votes that Doctor Stockman may not speak about the baths, the real point at issue. Indeed, the mayor takes the floor and officially announces that the doctor's statement that the water is bad is "unreliable and exaggerated." Then the president of the Householder's Association makes an address accusing the doctor of secretly "_aiming at revolution_." When finally Doctor Stockman speaks and tells his fellow citizens the real meaning of their conduct, and utters a few plain truths about "the compact majority," the crowd saves its face, not by proving the doctor false, but by howling him down, voting him an "enemy of the people," and throwing stones through his windows. A crowd is like an unsound banking institution. People are induced to carry their deposits of faith in it, and so long as there is no unusual withdrawing of accounts the insolvent condition may be covered up. Many uneasy depositors would like to get their money out if they could do so secretly, or without incurring the displeasure of the others. Meanwhile all insist that the bank is perfectly safe and each does all he can to compel the others to stay in. The thing they all most fear is that some one will "start a run on the bank," force it to liquidate, and everyone will lose. So the crowd functions in its way just so long as its members may be cajoled into an appearance of continued confidence in its ideals and values. The spiritual capital of each depends on the confidence of the others. As a consequence they all spend most of their time exhorting one another to be good crowd-men, fearing and hating no one so much as the person who dares raise the question whether the crowd could really meet its obligations. The classic illustration of the manner in which the crowd is led to discredit the witness to values contrary to its own, is the oration of Mark Antony in Shakespeare's "Julius Cæsar." It is by this means alone that Antony is able to turn the minds of the Roman citizens into the crowd state. It will be remembered that the address of Brutus, just before this, while not at all a bit of crowd-oratory, left a favorable impression. The citizens are convinced that "This Cæsar was a tyrant." When Antony goes up to speak, he thanks them "for Brutus' sake." They say, "'Twere best he speak no harm of Brutus here." He can never make them his crowd unless he can destroy Brutus' influence. This is precisely what he proceeds gradually to do. At first with great courtesy--"The noble Brutus hath told you Cæsar was ambitious; if it were so it was a grievous fault ... for Brutus is an honorable man, so are they all, all honorable men." This sentence is repeated four times in the first section; Cæsar was a good faithful friend to Antony, "But ... and Brutus is an honorable man." Again Cæsar refused the crown, but "Brutus is an honorable man." Cæsar wept when the poor cried, "sure, Brutus is an honorable man, I speak not to disprove what he says" but "men have lost their reason" and "my heart is in the coffin there with Cæsar." The citizens are sorry for the weeping Antony; they listen more intently now. Again--"If I were disposed to stir your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage"--but that would be to wrong Brutus and Cassius, "Who you all know are honorable men"--this time said with more marked irony. Rather than wrong such honorable men, Antony prefers to "wrong the dead, to wrong myself--and you." That sentence sets Brutus squarely in opposition to the speaker and his audience. Cæsar's will is mentioned--if only the commons knew what was in it, but Antony will not read it, "you are not wood, you are not stones, but men." The speaker now resists their demand to hear the will, he ought not have mentioned it. He fears he has, after all, wronged "the honorable men whose daggers have stabbed Cæsar." The citizens have caught the note of irony now; the honorable men are "traitors," "villains," "murderers." From this point on the speaker's task is easy; they have become a crowd. They think only of revenge, of killing everyone of the conspirators, and burning the house of Brutus. Antony has even to remind them of the existence of the will. The mischief is set afloat the moment Brutus is successfully discredited. The development of the thought in this oration is typical. Analysis of almost any propagandist speech will reveal some, if not all, the steps by which Brutus is made an object of hatred. _The crowd hates in order that it may believe in itself._ VI THE ABSOLUTISM OF THE CROWD-MIND Wherever conscious thinking is determined by unconscious mechanisms, and all thinking is more or less so, it is dogmatic in character. Beliefs which serve an unconscious purpose do not require the support of evidence. They persist because they are demanded. This is a common symptom of various forms of psychoneurosis. Ideas "haunt the mind" of the patient; he cannot rid himself of them. He may know they are foolish, but he is compelled to think them. In severe cases, he may hear voices or experience other hallucinations which are symbolic of the obsessive ideas. Or his psychic life may be so absorbed by his one fixed idea that it degenerates into the ceaseless repetition of a gesture or a phrase expressive of this idea. In paranoia the fixed ideas are organized into a system. Brill says: I know a number of paranoiacs who went through a stormy period lasting for years, but who now live contentedly as if in another world. Such transformations of the world are common in paranoia. They do not care for anything, as nothing is real to them. They have withdrawn their sum of libido from the persons of their environment and the outer world. The end of the world is the projection of this internal catastrophe. Their subjective world came to an end since they withdrew their love from it. By a secondary rationalization, the patients then explain whatever obtrudes itself upon them as something intangible and fit it in with their own system. Thus one of my patients who considers himself a sort of Messiah denies the reality of his own parents by saying that they are only shadows made by his enemy, the devil, whom he has not yet wholly subdued. Another paranoiac in the Central Islip State Hospital, who represented himself as a second Christ, spends most of his time sewing out on cloth crude scenes containing many buildings, interspersed with pictures of the doctors. He explained all this very minutely as the _new world system_.... Thus the paranoiac builds up again with his delusions a new world in which he can live.... (Italics mine.) However, a withdrawal of libido is not an exclusive occurrence in paranoia, nor is its occurrence anywhere necessarily followed by disastrous consequences. Indeed, in normal life there is a constant withdrawal of libido from persons and objects without resulting in paranoia or other neuroses. It merely causes a special psychic mood. The withdrawal of the libido as such cannot therefore be considered as pathogenic of paranoia. It requires a special character to distinguish the paranoiac withdrawal of libido from other kinds of the same process. This is readily found when we follow the further utilization of the libido thus withdrawn. Normally, we immediately seek a substitute for the suspended attachment, and until one is found the libido floats freely in the psyche and causes tensions which influence our moods. In hysteria the freed sum of libido becomes transformed into bodily innervations of fear. Clinical indications teach us that in paranoia a special use is made of the libido which is withdrawn from its object ... the freed libido in paranoia is thrown back on the ego and serves to magnify it. Note the fact that there is a necessary relation between the fixed ideal system of the paranoiac and his withdrawal of interest in the outside world. The system gains the function of reality for him in the same measure that, loving not the world nor the things that are in the world, he has rendered our common human world unreal. His love thrown back upon himself causes him to create another world, a world of "pure reason," so to speak, which is more congenial to him than the world of empirical fact. In this system he takes refuge and finds peace at last. Now we see the function, at least so far as paranoia is concerned, of the ideal system. As Brill says, it is a curative process of a mind which has suffered "regression" or turning back of its interest from the affairs of ordinary men and women, to the attachments of an earlier stage in its history. To use a philosophical term, the paranoiac is the Simon-pure "solipsist." And as _a priori_ thinking tends, as Schiller has shown, ever to solipsism, we see here the grain of truth in G. K. Chesterton's witty comparison of rationalism and lunacy. "Regression," or withdrawal of the libido, is present to some degree I believe in all forms of the neurosis. But we are informed that a withdrawal of the libido may, and frequently does, occur also in normal people. Knowledge of the neurosis here, as elsewhere, serves to throw light on certain thought processes of people who are considered normal. Brill says that "normally we seek a substitute for the suspended attachment." New interests and new affections in time take the places of the objects from which the feelings have been torn. In analytical psychology the process by which this is achieved is called a "transference." Now the crowd is in a sense a "transference phenomenon." In the temporary crowd or mob this transference is too transitory to be very evident, though even here I believe there will generally be found a certain _esprit de corps_. In permanent crowds there is often a marked transference to the other members of the group. This is evident in the joy of the new convert or the newly initiated, also in such terms of affection as "comrade" and "brother." I doubt, however, if this affection, so far as it is genuine among individuals of a certain crowd, is very different from the good will and affection which may spring up anywhere among individuals who are more or less closely associated, or that it ever really extends beyond the small circle of personal friends that everyone normally gains through his daily relations with others. But to the crowd-mind this transference is supposed to extend to all the members of the group; they are comrades and brothers not because we like them and know them intimately, but because they are fellow members. In other words, this transference, so far as it is a crowd phenomenon as such, is not to other individuals, but to the idea of the crowd itself. It is not enough for the good citizen to love his neighbors in so far as he finds them lovable; he must love his country. To the churchman the Church herself is an object of faith and adoration. One does not become a humanitarian by being a good fellow; he must love "humanity"--which is to say, the bare abstract idea of everybody. I remember once asking a missionary who was on his way to China what it was that impelled him to go so far in order to minister to suffering humanity. He answered, "It is love." I asked again, "Do you really mean to say that you care so much as that for Chinese, not one of whom you have ever seen?" He answered, "Well, I--you see, I love them through Jesus Christ." So in a sense it is with the crowd-man always; he _loves through the crowd_. The crowd idealized as something sacred, as end in itself, as something which it is an honor to belong to, is to some extent a disguised object of our self-love. But the idea of the crowd disguises more than self-love. Like most of the symbols through which the unconscious functions, it can serve more than one purpose at a time. The idea of the crowd also serves to disguise the parental image, and our own imaginary identification or reunion with it. The nation is to the crowd-man the "Fatherland," the "mother country," "Uncle Sam"--a figure which serves to do more than personalize for cartoonists the initials U. S. Uncle Sam is also the father-image thinly disguised. The Church is "the Mother," again the "Bride." Such religious symbols as "the Heavenly Father" and the "Holy Mother" also have the value of standing for the parent image. For a detailed discussion of these symbols, the reader is referred to Jung's _Psychology of the Unconscious_. In another connection I have referred to the fact that the crowd stands to the member _in loco parentis_. Here I wish to point out the fact that such a return to the parent image is commonly found in the psychoneurosis and is what is meant by "regression." I have also dwelt at some length on the fact that it is by securing a modification in the immediate social environment, ideally or actually, that the crowd permits the escape of the repressed wish. Such a modification in the social at once sets the members of the crowd off as a "peculiar people." Interest tends to withdraw from the social as a whole and center in the group who have become a crowd. The Church is "in the world but not of it." The nation is an end in itself, so is every crowd. Transference to the idea of the crowd differs then from the normal substitutes which we find for the object from which affection is withdrawn. It is itself a kind of regression. In the psychoneurosis--in paranoia most clearly--the patient's attempt to rationalize this shifting of interest gives rise to the closed systems and ideal reconstructions of the world mentioned in the passage quoted from Brill. Does the crowd's thinking commonly show a like tendency to construct an imaginary world of thought-forms and then take refuge in its ideal system? As we saw at the beginning of our discussion, it does. The focusing of general attention upon the abstract and universal is a necessary step in the development of the crowd-mind. The crowd does not think in order to solve problems. To the crowd-mind, as such, there are no problems. It has closed its case beforehand. This accounts for what Le Bon termed the "credulity" of the crowd. But the crowd believes only what it wants to believe and nothing else. Anyone who has been in the position of a public teacher knows how almost universal is the habit of thinking in the manner of the crowd and how difficult it is to get people to think for themselves. One frequently hears it said that the people do not think, that they do not want to know the truth. Ibsen makes his Doctor Stockman say: What sort of truths are they that the majority usually supports? They are truths that are of such advanced age that they are beginning to break up.... These "majority truths" are like last year's cured meat--like rancid tainted ham; and they are the origin of the moral scurvy that is rampant in our communities.... The most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom among us is the compact majority, yes, the damned compact liberal majority ... the majority has might on its side unfortunately, but _right_ it has never. It is not really because so many are ignorant, but because so few are able to resist the appeal which the peculiar logic of crowd-thinking makes to the unconscious, that the cheap, the tawdry, the half-true almost exclusively gain popular acceptance. The average man is a dogmatist. He thinks what he thinks others think he is thinking. He is so used to propaganda that he can hardly think of any matter in other terms. It is almost impossible to keep the consideration of any subject of general interest above the dilemmas of partisan crowds. People will wherever possible change the discussion of a mooted question into an antiphonal chorus of howling mobs, each chanting its ritual as ultimate truth, and hurling its shibboleths in the faces of the others. Pursuit of truth with most people consists in repeating their creed. Nearly every movement is immediately made into a cult. Theology supplants religion in the churches. In popular ethics a dead formalism puts an end to moral advance. Straight thinking on political subjects is subordinated to partisan ends. Catch-phrases and magic formulas become substituted for scientific information. Even the Socialists, who feel that they are the intellectually elect--and I cite them here as an example in no unfair spirit, but just because so many of them are really well-informed and "advanced" in their thinking--have been unable to save themselves from a doctrinaire economic orthodoxy of spirit which is often more dogmatic and intolerant than that of the "religious folks" to whose alleged "narrow-mindedness" every Socialist, even while repeating his daily chapter from the Marxian Koran, feels himself superior. The crowd-mind is everywhere idealistic, and absolutist. Its truths are "given," made-in-advance. Though unconsciously its systems of logic are created to enhance the self-feeling, they appear to consciousness as highly impersonal and abstract. As in the intellectualist philosophies, forms of thought are regarded as themselves objects of thought. Systems of general ideas are imposed upon the minds of men apparently from without. Universal acceptance is demanded. Thought becomes stereotyped. What ought to be is confused with what is, the ideal becomes more real than fact. In the essays on "Pragmatism" William James showed that the rationalist system, even that of the great philosopher, is in large measure determined by the thinker's peculiar "temperament." Elsewhere he speaks of the "Sentiment of Rationality." For a discussion of the various types of philosophical rationalism, the reader is referred to the criticisms by William James, F. C. S. Schiller, Dewey, and other Pragmatists. It is sufficient for our purpose to note the fact that the rationalist type of mind everywhere shows a tendency to assert the unreality of the world of everyday experience, and to seek comfort and security in the contemplation of a logically ordered system or world of "pure reason." Ideals, not concrete things, are the true realities. The world with which we are always wrestling is but a distorted manifestation, a jumbled, stereotyped copy of what James ironically referred to as "the de luxe edition which exists in the Absolute." The parable of the cave which Plato gives in the _Republic_ represents ordinary knowledge as a delusion, and the empirically known world as but dancing shadows on the wall of our subterranean prison. R. W. Livingstone, who sees in Platonism, from the very beginning, a certain world-weariness and turning away of the Greek spirit from the healthy realism which had formerly characterized it, says: For if Greece showed men how to trust their own nature and lead a simply human life, how to look straight in the face of the world and read the beauty that met them on the surface, certain Greek writers preached a different lesson from this. In opposition to directness they taught us to look past the "unimaginary and actual" qualities of things to secondary meanings and inner symbolism. In opposition to liberty and humanism they taught us to mistrust our nature, to see in it weakness, helplessness, and incurable taint, to pass beyond humanity to communion with God, to live less for this world than for one to come.... Perhaps to some people it may seem surprising that this writer is Plato. According to this view reality may be found only by means of "pure knowledge," and, to give a familiar quotation from the Phædo: If we would have pure knowledge of anything we must be quit of the body; the soul in herself must behold things in themselves; and then we shall attain the wisdom which we desire and of which we say that we are lovers; not while we live, but after death; for if, while in company with the body, the soul cannot have pure knowledge, one of two things follows--either knowledge is not to be obtained at all, or if at all after death. Intellectualism may not always be so clearly other-worldly as Plato shows himself to be in this passage. But it commonly argues that behind the visible world of "illusory sense experience" lies the true ground and cause--an unseen order in which the contradictions of experience are either unknown or harmonized, an external and unchangeable "Substance," a self-contained Absolute to which our ephemeral personalities with their imperfections and problems are unknown. A "thing in itself," or principle of Being which transcends our experience. This type of thinking, whether it be known as Idealism, Rationalism, Intellectualism, or Absolutism, finds little sympathy from those who approach the study of philosophy from the standpoint of psychology. The following passages taken from _Studies in Humanism_ by Schiller, show that even without the technique of the analytical method, it was not hard to detect some of the motives which prompted the construction of systems of this sort. The partisanism of one of these motives is rather suggestive for our study of the mind of the crowd. Says our author: Logical defects rarely kill beliefs to which men, for psychological reasons, remain attached.... This may suggest to us that we may have perhaps unwittingly misunderstood Absolutism, and done it a grave injustice.... What if its real appeal was not logical but psychological?... The history of English Absolutism distinctly bears out these anticipations. It was originally a deliberate importation from Germany, with a purpose. And this purpose was a religious one--that of counteracting the antireligious developments of Science. The indigenous philosophy, the old British empiricism, was useless for this purpose. For though a form of intellectualism, its sensationalism was in no wise hostile to Science. On the contrary, it showed every desire to ally itself with, and to promote, the great scientific movement of the nineteenth century, which penetrated into and almost overwhelmed Oxford between 1859 and 1870. But this movement excited natural and not unwarranted alarm in that great center of theology. For Science, flushed with its hard-won liberty, ignorant of philosophy, and as yet unconscious of its proper limitations, was decidedly aggressive and overconfident. It seemed naturalistic, nay, materialistic, by the law of its being. The logic of Mill, the philosophy of Evolution, the faith in democracy, in freedom, in progress (on material lines), threatened to carry all before them. What was to be done? Nothing directly; for on its own ground Science seemed invulnerable, and had the knack of crushing the subtlest dialectics by the knockdown force of sheer scientific fact. But might it not be possible to change the venue, to shift the battleground to a region _ubi instabilis terra unda_ (where the land afforded no firm footing), where the frozen sea could not be navigated, where the very air was thick with mists so that phantoms might well pass for realities--the realm, in short, of metaphysics?... So it was rarely necessary to do more than recite the august table of _a priori_ categories in order to make the most audacious scientist feel that he had got out of his depth; while at the merest mention of the Hegelian dialectic all the "advanced thinkers" of the time would flee affrighted. Schiller's sense of humor doubtless leads him to exaggerate somewhat the deliberateness of this importation of German metaphysics. That these borrowed transcendental and dialectical systems served their purpose in the warfare of traditional theologies against Science is but half the truth. The other half is that these logical formulas provided certain intelligent believers with a defense, or safe refuge, in their own inner conflicts. That this is the case, Schiller evidently has little doubt. After discussing Absolutism itself as a sort of religion, and showing that its "catch-words" taken at their face value are not only emotionally barren, but also logically meaningless because "inapplicable to our actual experience," he then proceeds to an examination of the unconscious motives which determine this sort of thinking. His description of these motives, so far as it goes, is an excellent little bit of analytical psychology. He says: How then can Absolutism possibly be a religion? It must appeal to psychological motives of a different sort, rare enough to account for its total divergence from the ordinary religious feelings and compelling enough to account for the fanaticism with which it is held and the persistence with which the same old round of negations has been reiterated through the ages. Of such psychological motives we shall indicate the more important and reputable. (1) It is decidedly flattering to one's spiritual pride to feel oneself a "part" or "manifestation" or "vehicle" or "reproduction" of the Absolute Mind, and to some this feeling affords so much strength and comfort and such exquisite delight that they refrain from inquiring what these phrases mean.... It is, moreover, the strength of this feeling which explains the blindness of Absolutists toward the logical defects of their own theory.... (2) There is a strange delight in wide generalization merely as such, which, when pursued without reference to the ends which it subserves, and without regard to its actual functioning, often results in a sort of logical vertigo. This probably has much to do with the peculiar "craving for unity" which is held to be the distinctive affliction of philosophers. At any rate, the thought of an all-embracing One or Whole seems to be regarded as valuable and elevating quite apart from any definite function it performs in knowing, or light it throws on any actual problem. (3) The thought of an Absolute Unity is cherished as a guarantee of cosmic stability. In face of the restless vicissitudes of phenomena it seems to secure us against falling out of the Universe. It assures us _a_ _priori_--and that is its supreme value--that the cosmic order cannot fall to pieces and leave us dazed and confounded among the debris.... We want to have an absolute assurance _a priori_ concerning the future, and the thought of the absolute seems designed to give it. It is probably this last notion that, consciously or unconsciously, weighs most in the psychology of the Absolutists' creed. In this connection the reader will recall the passage quoted from Adler's _The Neurotic Constitution_, in which it was shown that the fictitious "guiding-lines" or rational systems of both the neurotic and normal are motivated by this craving for security. But it makes all the difference in the world whether the system of ideas is used, as in science and common sense, to solve real problems in an objective world, or is created to be an artificial and imaginary defense of the ego against a subjective feeling of insecurity; whether, in a word, the craving for security moves one to do something calculated to render the forces with which he must deal concretely more congenial and hospitable to his will, or makes him content to withdraw and file a demur to the challenge of the environment in the form of theoretical denial of the reality of the situation. There is no denying the fact that Absolute Idealism, if not taken too seriously, may have the function for some people of steadying their nerves in the battle of life. And though, as I believe, logically untenable, it not infrequently serves as a rationalization of faith-values which work out beneficially, and, quite apart from their metaphysical trappings, may be even indispensable. Yet when carried to its logical conclusions such thinking inevitably distorts the meaning of personal living, robs our world and our acts of their feeling of reality, serves as an instrument for "regression" or withdrawal of interest from the real tasks and objects of living men and women, and in fact functions for much the same purpose, if not precisely in the same way, as do the ideal systems of the psychopath. In justice to idealism it should be added that this is by no means the only species of Rationalism which may lead to such psychic results. There are various paths by which the craving for artificial security may lead to such attempts to reduce the whole of possible experience to logical unity that the realities of time and change and of individual experience are denied. How many deterministic theories, with all their scientific jargon, are really motivated by an inability to accept a world with an element of chance in it. There is a sense in which all science by subsuming like individuals in a common class, and thus ignoring their individuality, in so far as they are alike in certain respects, gains added power over all of them. There is a sense, too, in which science, by discovering that whenever a given combination of elements occurs, a definitely foreseen result will follow, is justified in ignoring time and treating certain futures as if they were already tucked up the sleeves of the present. It should be remembered that this sort of determinism is purely methodological, and is, like all thinking, done for a purpose--that of effecting desirable ends in a world made up of concrete situations. When this purpose becomes supplanted by a passion to discount all future change in general--when one imagines that he has a formula which enables him to write the equation of the curve of the universe, science has degenerated into scientificism, or head-in-the-sand philosophy. The magic formula has precisely the same psychic value as the "absolute." I know a number of economic determinists, for instance, who just cannot get out of their heads the notion that social evolution is a process absolutely underwritten, guaranteed, and predictable, without the least possible doubt. In such a philosophy of history as this the individual is of course a mere "product of his environment," and his role as a creator of value is nil. On this "materialistic" theory, the individual is as truly a mere manifestation of impersonal evolutionary forces as he is, according to orthodox Platonism, a mere manifestation of the abstract idea of his species. Notwithstanding the professed impersonalism of this view, its value for consolation in minimizing the causes of the spiritual difference in men--that is, its function for enhancing the self-feeling of some people, is obvious. That such an idea should become a crowd-idea is not to be wondered at. And this leads me to my point. _It is no mere accident that the crowd takes to rationalistic philosophies like a duck to water._ The crowd-man, however unsophisticated he may be, is a Platonist at heart. He may never have heard the word epistemology, but his theory of knowledge is essentially the same as Plato's. Religious crowds are, to one familiar with the Dialogues, astonishingly Platonic. There is the same habit of giving ontological rather than functional value to general ideas, the same other-worldliness, the same moral dilemmas, the same contempt for the material, for the human body, for selfhood; the same assertion of finality, and the conformist spirit. Reformist crowds differ only superficially from religious crowds. Patriotic crowds make use of a different terminology, but their mental habits are the same. It has become a cult among crowds with tendencies toward social revolution to paint their faces with the colors of a borrowed nineteenth-century materialism. But all this is mere swagger and "frightfulness," an attempt to make themselves look terrible and frighten the bourgeois. I am sure that no one who has seen all this radical rigmarole, as I have had occasion to see it, can be deceived by it. These dreadful materialist doctrines of the radical crowd are wooden guns, no thicker than the soap-box. As a matter of fact, the radical crowds are extremely idealistic. With all their talk of proletarian opposition to intellectualism, Socialists never become a crowd without becoming as intellectualist as Fichte or Hegel. There is a sense in which Marx himself never succeeded in escaping Hegel's dilemmas, he only followed the fashion in those days of turning them upside down. With radical crowds as with conservative, there is the same substitution of a closed system of ideas for the shifting phenomena of our empirical world; the same worship of abstract forms of thought, the same uncompromising spirit and insistence upon general uniformity of opinions; the same orthodoxy. All orthodoxy is nothing other than the will of the crowd to keep itself together. With all kinds of crowds, also, there is the same diverting of attention from the personal and the concrete to the impersonal and the general; the same flight from reality to the transcendental for escape, for consolation, for defense, for vindication; the same fiction that existence is at bottom a sort of logical proposition, a magic formula or principle of Being to be correctly copied and learned by rote; the same attempt to create the world or find reality by thinking rather than by acting. The intellectualist bias of the average man is doubtless due in great part to the fact that theology, and therefore the religious education of the young, both Christian and Jewish, has throughout the history of these religions been saturated with Platonism. But then, the universal sway of this philosopher may be explained by the fact that there is something in his abstractionism which is congenial to the creed-making propensities of the crowd-mind. The great _a priori_ thinkers, Plato, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Green, etc., have often been called solitary men, but it is significant that their doctrines survive in popularized form in the creeds and shibboleths of permanent crowds of all descriptions. While humanists, nominalists, empiricists, realists, pragmatists, men like Protagoras, Epicurus, Abelard, Bacon, Locke, Hume, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bergson, James, have always had a hard time of it. They are considered destructive, for the reason that the tendency of their teaching is to disintegrate the crowd-mind and call one back to himself. Their names are seldom mentioned in popular assemblies except to discredit them. Yet it is on the whole these latter thinkers who orient us in our real world, make us courageously face the facts with which we have to deal, stimulate our wills, force us to use our ideas for what they are--instruments for better living,--inspire us to finer and more correct valuations of things, and point out the way to freedom for those who dare walk in it. All this, however, is the very thing that the crowd-mind is running headlong away from. As a crowd we do not wish to think empirically. Why should we seek piecemeal goods by tedious and dangerous effort, when we have only to do a little trick of attention, and behold The Good, abstract, perfect, universal, waiting just around the corner in the realm of pure reason, ready to swallow up and demolish all evil? Are we not even now in possession of Love, Justice, Beauty, and Truth by the sheer magic of thinking of them in the abstract, calling them "principles" and writing the words with the initial letters in capitals? The very mental processes by which a group of people becomes a crowd change such abstract nouns from mere class names into copies of supermundane realities. In wholesome thinking principles are of course necessary. They are what I might call "leading ideas." Their function is to lead to more satisfactory thinking--that is, to other ideas which are desired. Or they are useful in leading us to actions the results of which are intended and wished for. They may also be principles of valuation guiding us in the choice of ends. If there were no substantial agreement among us concerning certain principles we could not relate our conduct to one another at all; social life would be impossible. But necessary as such leading ideas are, they are means rather than ends. Circumstances may demand that we alter them or make exceptions to their application. To the crowd-mind a principle appears as an end in itself. It must be vindicated at all costs. To offend against it in one point is to be guilty of breaking the whole law. Crowds are always uncompromising about their principles. They must apply to all alike. Crowds are no respecters of persons. As crowd-men we never appear without some set of principles or some cause over our heads. Crowds crawl under their principles like worms under stones. They cover up the wrigglings of the unconscious, and protect it from attack. Every crowd uses its principles as universal demands. In this way it gets unction upon other crowds, puts them in the wrong, makes them give assent to the crowd's real purpose by challenging them to deny the righteousness of the professed justifications of that purpose. It is said that the Sioux Indians, some years ago, used to put their women and children in front of their firing line. The braves could then crouch behind these innocent ones and shoot at white men, knowing that it would be a violation of the principles of humanity for the white soldiers to shoot back and risk killing women and children. Crowds frequently make just such use of their principles. About each crowd, like the circle of fire which the gods placed about the sleeping Brunhilde, there is a flaming hedge of logical abstractions, sanctions, taboos, which none but the intellectually courageous few dare cross. In this way the slumbering critical faculties of the crowd-mind are protected against the intrusion of realities from outside the cult. The intellectual curiosity of the members of the group is kept within proper bounds. Hostile persons or groups dare not resist us, for in so doing they make themselves enemies of Truth, of Morality, of Liberty, etc. Both political parties, by a common impulse, "drape themselves in the Flag." It is an interesting fact that the most antagonistic crowds profess much the same set of principles. The "secondary rationalization" of crowds, both Northern and Southern, at the time of the Civil War, made use of our traditional principles of American Liberty, and Christian Morality. We have seen both pacifist and militarist crowds setting forth their manifestoes in terms of New Testament teaching. Each religious sect exists only to teach "the one system of doctrine logically deduced from Scripture." As an illustration of this sort of reasoning, I give here a few passages from a propagandist publication in which the crowd-will to dominate takes the typical American method of striving to force its cult ideas upon the community as a whole by means of restrictive moralist legislation--in this case attempt is made to prohibit the exhibition of motion pictures on Sunday. That the demand for such legislation is for the most part a pure class-crowd phenomenon, designed to enhance the self-feeling and economic interests of the "reformers," by keeping the poor from having a good time, is I think, rather obvious. The reasoning here is interesting, as the real motive is so thinly disguised by pietistic platitudes that the two follow each other in alternate succession: (1) Sunday Movies are not needed. The people have six days and six nights each week on which to attend the movies. Is not that plenty of time for all? (2) Sunday Movie Theaters commercialize the Christian Sabbath. While "the Sabbath was made for man," _yet it is God's day_. We have no right to sell it for business purposes. It is a day for rest and worship, not a day for greed and gain. Sunday would, of course, be the best day in the week financially for the movies. It would also be the best day in the week for the open saloons and horse-racing, but that is no reason why these should be allowed on Sunday. _The Sabbath must not be commercialized._ (3) _Sunday Movie Theaters destroy the rest and quiet of many people, especially those who live in the residential district_ of cities and in the neighborhood where such motion-picture theaters are located. Great crowds pour along the streets near such theaters, often breaking the Sunday quiet of that part of the city by loud and boisterous talk. Thousands of people every year are moving away from the downtown noisy districts of the cities out into the quiet residential districts in order to have quiet Sundays. But when a motion-picture theater comes and locates next to their homes, or in their block, as has been done in many cases, and great noisy, boisterous crowds surge back and forth before their homes all Sunday afternoon and evening, going to the movies, they are being robbed of _that for which they paid their money when they bought a home in that quiet part of the city_.... (4) ... Anything that injures the Christian Sabbath injures the Christian churches, and certainly Sunday motion-picture theaters, wherever allowed, do injure the Christian Sabbath.... Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts of Washington, D. C., probably the greatest authority on the Sabbath question in this country, says, "The Sabbath-keeping nations are the strongest physically, mentally, morally, _financially_, and politically." Joseph Cook said, "It is no accident that the nations that keep the Sabbath most carefully are those where there is the most political freedom." _Sabbath-breaking nations gradually lose their political freedom._ (5) Sunday Movie Theaters injure the Christian Sabbath and thus injure the morals of the people. _Anything that injures the morals of the people, injures the nation itself._ From a _patriotic_ standpoint, we ought to stand for strict observance of the Christian Sabbath, as past experience has shown and the testimony of many witnesses proves that a disregard of the Christian Sabbath produces crime and immorality and tends to destroy the free institutions which have helped to make our nation great.... Fundamentally, all such vicious laws are _unconstitutional_. _Sunday Movie Theaters disregard the rights of labor_.... Canon William Sheafe Chase has aptly said, "No man has the Christ spirit who wants a better time on Sunday than he is willing to give everyone else."... Col. Fairbanks, the famous scale manufacturer, said: "I can tell by watching the men at work Monday which spent Sunday in sport and which at home, church, or Sabbath-school. The latter _do more and better work_." Superintendents of large factories in Milwaukee and elsewhere have said, "When our men go on a Sunday excursion, some cannot work Monday, and many who work cannot earn their wages, while _those who had no sport Sunday do their best day's work Monday_." (Italics mine.) We need not be surprised to find that the closed ideational system which in the first instance is a refuge from the real, becomes in turn a device for imposing one's will upon his fellows. The believer's ego is served in both instances. It is interesting to note also that this self-feeling appears in crowd-thinking as its very opposite. _The greatest enemy of personality is the crowd._ The crowd does not want valuable men; it wants only useful men. Everyone must justify his existence by appealing to the not-self. One may do nothing for his own sake. He may not even strive for spiritual excellence for such a reason. He must live for "principle," for "the great cause," for impersonal abstractions--which is to say, he must live for his crowd, and so make it easier for the other members to do the same with a good face. The complex of ideas in which the crowd-mind as we have seen takes refuge, being necessarily made up of abstract generalizations, serves the crowd-will to social dominance through the very claim to universality which such ideas exert. Grant that an idea is an absolute truth, and it follows, of course, that it must be true on all occasions and for everyone. The crowd is justified, therefore, in sacrificing people to its ideal--itself. The idea is no longer an instrument of living; it is an imperative. It is not yours to use the idea; the idea is there to use you. You have ceased to be an end. Anything about you that does not partake of the reality of this idea has no right to be, any experience of yours which happens to be incommensurable with this idea loses its right to be; for experience as such has now only a "phenomenal existence." The crowd, by identifying its will to power with this idea, becomes _itself absolute_. Your personal self, as an end, is quite as unwelcome to the Absolute as to the crowd. There must be no private property in thought or motive. By making everybody's business my business, I have made my business everybody's business. There may be only one standard--that of our crowd, which, because of its very universal and impersonal character is really nobody's. The absolutism of the crowd-mind with its consequent hostility to conscious personality finds a perfect rationalization in the ethical philosophy of Kant. The absolutism of the idea of Duty is less skillfully elaborated in its popular crowd-manifestations, but in its essentials it is always present, as propaganda everywhere when carefully analyzed will show. We must not be deceived by Kant's assertion that the individual is an end. This individual is not you or I, or anyone; it is a mere logical abstraction. By declaring that everyone is equally an end, Kant ignores all personal differences, and therefore the fact of individuality as such. We are each an end in respect to those qualities only in which we are identical--namely, in that we are "rational beings." But this rational being is not a personal intelligence; it is a fiction, a bundle of mental faculties assumed _a priori_ to exist, and then treated as if it were universally and equally applicable to all actually existing intelligences. In arguing that "I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law," Kant may be easily understood as justifying any crowd in seeking to make its peculiar maxims universal laws. Who but a Rationalist or a crowd-man presumes to have found the "universal law," who else would have the effrontery to try to legislate for every conscience in existence? But this presumption has its price. In thus universalizing my moral will, I wholly depersonalize it. He says: It is of extreme importance to remember that we must not allow ourselves to think of deducing the reality of this principle from the particular attributes of human nature. For duty is to be a practical unconditional necessity of action; it must therefore hold for all rational beings (to whom an imperative can apply at all), and for this reason only be also a law for all human wills. On the contrary, whatever it deduces from the particular natural characteristics of humanity, from certain feelings and propensions, nay, even if possible from any particular tendency proper to human reason, and which need not necessarily hold for the will of every rational being, this may indeed supply us with a maxim but not with a law; with a subjective principle on which we may have a propension or inclination to act, but not with an objective principle on which we should be _enjoined_ to act, _even though all our propensions, inclinations, and natural dispositions were opposed_ to it. In fact, the _sublimity and intrinsic dignity_ of the command in duty _are so much the more evident the less subjective impulses favor it, and the more they oppose it_ [italics here are mine], without being able in the slightest degree to weaken the obligation of the law or to diminish its validity. ... An action done from duty derives its moral worth _not from the purpose_ which is to be attained by it, but from the maxim by which it is determined. It (this moral worth) cannot lie anywhere but in the _principle of The Will_, without regard to the ends which can be attained by such action. This loss of the conscious self in the universal, this turning away from the empirically known, this demand that an _a priori_ principle be followed to its deadly practical conclusion _regardless of the ends_ to which it leads, is of utmost importance for our study. It is precisely what the paranoiac does after his own fashion. In crowd-thinking it is often made the instrument of wholesale destruction and human slaughter. The mob is ever motivated by this logic of negation, and of automatic behavior. It is thus that compulsive thinking sways vast hordes of men and women, impelling them, in the very name of truth or righteousness, to actions of the most atrocious character. It is this which robs most popular movements of their intelligent purposiveness, unleashes the fanatic and the bigot, and leads men to die and to kill for a phrase. This way of thinking points straight to Salem, Massachusetts, to the torture-chamber, the pile of fagots and the mill pond at Rosmersholm. The habit of thinking as a crowd is so widespread that it is impossible to trace the influence of its rationalistic negations in the daily mental habits of most of us. We play out our lives as if we were but acting a part which some one had assigned to us. The fact that we are ourselves realities, as inevitable as falling rain, and with the same right to be as the rocks and hills, positively startles us. We feel that we must plead extenuation, apologize for our existence, as if the end and aim of living were to serve or vindicate a Good which, being sufficient in itself and independent of us, can never be realized as actually good for anybody. We behave as if we were unprofitable servants, cringing before wrathful ideas which, though our own creations, we permit to lord it over us. Our virtues we regard not as expressions of ourselves or as habitual ways of reaching desirable goods, but as if they were demanded of us unwillingly by something not self. We should remind ourselves that these big words we idolize have no eyes to see us and no hearts to care what we do, that they are but symbols of ideas which we might find very useful if we dared to become masters of them. The most common use we make of such ideas is to beat one another and ourselves into line with them, or enforce upon ourselves and others the collection of a debt which was contracted only by our unconscious desire to cheat at cards in the game of civilization. A conscious recognition of this desire and its more deliberate and voluntary resistance in ourselves rather than in our neighbors, a candid facing of the fact of what we really are and really want, and a mutual readjustment of our relations on this recognized basis would doubtless deliver us from the compulsion of crowd-thinking in somewhat the same way that psychoanalysis is said to cure the neurotic by revealing to him his unconscious wish. That some such cure is an imperative social need is evident. To-day the mob lurks just under the skin of most of us, both ignorant and educated. The ever-increasing frequency of outbreaks of mob violence has its source in the crowd-thinking which is everywhere encouraged. The mob which may at any time engulf us is, after all, but the logical conclusion and sudden ripening of thought processes which are commonly regarded as highly respectable, idealistic, and moral. VII THE PSYCHOLOGY OF REVOLUTIONARY CROWDS The crowd-mind is seen at its best and at its worst in revolution. To many minds, revolution is so essentially a crowd phenomenon that the terms revolution and crowd-rule are almost synonymous. "Hurrah, the mob rules Russia," cried certain radicals in the spring of 1917--"Let the people rule everywhere." Others, more conservative, saw in every extravagant deed and atrocity alleged to have happened in Russia only the thing logically to be expected where the mob rules. The idea of revolution is itself so commonly a crowd-idea that the thinking--if thinking it may be called--of most people on this subject depends principally upon which crowd we happen to belong to, the crowd which sustains the ego-feeling of its members by the hope of revolution, or the crowd which, for similar reason, brands everything which opposes its interests, real or imaginary, as "anarchy" and "Bolshevism." If the word "revolution" be taken to mean fundamental change in men's habits of thought, and life, and the forms of their relations to one another, then it may be said that great "revolutions may be and have been achieved with a relatively small degree of crowd-thinking and mob violence." Much of the normal development of civilization, for instance, the great scientific advance of the nineteenth century, the spread of culture, the creation of artistic values, the rise in the standard of living, is change of this sort. Such change is, however, gradual. It is brought about by countless concrete adaptations, by thinking always toward realizable ends. New and often unforeseeable results are thus reached; but they are reached, as in all organic growth and in all sound thinking, by a series of successful adjustments within the real. True progress is doubtless made up of changes of this sort. But for the course of progress to run on uninterrupted and undefeated we should have to be, both in our individual and social behavior, the reasonable beings which certain nineteenth-century utilitarians mistook us for. It is the fool thing, the insincere thing, that more commonly happens in matters social and political. The adjustment reached is not often a solution of a social problem worked out deliberately on the "greatest-happiness" principle. It is commonly a _status quo_, or balance of power among contending crowds, each inspired by the fiction of its own importance, by self-idealization, and desire to rule. It is an unstable equilibrium usually held in place for the time by a dominant crowd. This dominant crowd may itself be composed of quarreling factions, but these parties, so long as they share enough of the supremacy to keep up their self-feeling, so long, in fact, as their members may even be able to make themselves believe that they, too, are in the upper set, or so long as they continue to hope for success in the social game as now played, unite in repeating the catchwords which justify their crowd in its supremacy. The dominant group identifies its own interests with the general welfare. And in the sense that some sort of order, or any at all, is to be preferred to social chaos, there is an element of truth in this identification. The fact remains, however, that the dominant crowd possesses always much of the crowd-spirit which originally secured for it its enviable position. Its ideas, like those of all crowds, are devices for sustaining the self-feeling of its members, for protecting itself, for keeping the group together, for justification. They are only secondarily, if at all, instruments for dealing with new and perplexing social situations. It cannot be denied that a certain set of opinions, prejudices, mannerisms, ceremonies "go with" the social position which corresponds to them. They are the ready-made habits of the "set" or class. They are badges by which the "gentleman" is distinguished, the evening clothes of the psyche, as it were. Many of these crowd-forms represent true values of living, some of them are useful in our dealings with reality; if this were not so, if such spiritual tattooings or ceremonial forms were wholly harmful, the crowd which performed them would be at such a disadvantage that it could not hold its own. But that considerations of utility--other than the function which such ceremonialism is known to have for the unconscious always--do not directly govern these forms of thought and behavior is seen in the fact that so many of them, as Sumner says of "folkways," are either harmful or useless in dealing with matters of fact. The dominant crowd, therefore, in just so far as it must remain a crowd in order to secure its own position of supremacy, must strive to force all social realities into the forms of its own conflicts and dilemmas. Inevitably the self-feeling of a great many people, who are forced by the dominant crowd to conform and labor with no compensation, is hurt. They cannot but contrast their own lot with that of their more fortunate neighbors. Of all things, people probably resist most the feeling of inferiority. Any suggestion that the difference in social position is due to a similar difference in personal worth or in ability is hotly resented. The resentment is in no wise abated by the fact that in some cases this suggestion may be true. Compensations are at once created by the unconscious. In mediæval times "all men were brothers and were equal before the altars of the Church and in heaven." Thus distinctions of merit, other than those which prevailed in the social order, were set up in the interest of the common man. As the influence of the Renaissance directed general attention from the realm of the spiritual to practical affairs of earth, these compensations changed from thoughts of the future world to dreams of the future of this world. The injured self-feeling dwells upon the economic or political inequalities which flow from the dominance of the ruling crowd. The injustices and acts of exploitation, which are certainly neither new nor rare occurrences in human relations, are seized upon as if it were these things, not the assumption to superiority, which were the issue at stake. At the time of the French Revolution the Third Estate, or Bourgeois, which showed itself quite as capable of exploiting the poor as ever were the older aristocrats, saw itself only as part of the wronged and exploited "people." The sufferings of the poor, which it was frequently even then profiting in quite as heartily, to say the least, as the titled nobility, were represented as the grievance of all mankind against the hated nobility. That the ideas of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" which these good tradesmen preached may easily become the sort of compensatory ideas we have been discussing is shown by the fact of the genuine astonishment and indignation of the burghers when later their employees made use of this same phrase in the struggles between labor and capital. Sans-culottism had quite as many psychological motives as economic behind it. How pompous, hateful, and snobbish were those titled folk with their powdered wigs, carriages, fine clothes, and their exclusive social gatherings to which honest citizens, often quite as wealthy as themselves, were not invited. If the "people"--that is, the burghers themselves--only had a chance they would be just as fine ladies and gentlemen as those who merely inherited their superiority. Down with the aristocrats! All men were equal and always had been. There must be fraternity and the _carier ouvert les talents_, in other words, brotherhood and free competition. I am sure, from all I have ever seen or read of social revolt and unrest, that this injured self-feeling, or defense against the sense of personal inferiority, while not the only motive, is the most powerful one at work. It crops out everywhere, in the layman's hatred of the clergy during the Reformation, in that curious complex of ideas whereby the uneducated often look upon a college diploma as something little short of magical, and defend their ego against this ridiculously exaggerated mark of distinction and accompanying feeling of self-reproach by a slur at "high-brows." Few people realize how general this feeling is; the trick of making fun of the educated is one of the commonest forms of crowd-humor in America, both in vaudeville and in popular oratory. I have previously pointed out the fact that the religious revival in our day is to a great extent characterized by a popular resistance to scholars. No one can read Mr. Sunday's sermons and deny this fact. The City of New York gave the largest majority in its history to the candidate for the office of mayor who made opposition to "experts" the main issue in his campaign. Scores of times I have heard popular speakers resort to this trick to gain favor with their audiences, and I cannot remember ever having known such sentiments to fail to gain applause--I am not speaking now of strictly academic groups, but of general gatherings. The point of interest here is that these same people have a most extravagant notion of the value of the academic training which they encourage the crowd speaker in ridiculing. I have made it a practice of talking with a great many people personally and drawing them out on this point, and I have found that this is almost uniformly the case. F. B., a cigar maker by trade, says, "Oh, if I had only had sense enough to go on to school when I had the opportunity!" E. L., a mechanic, says, "I might have been somebody, if I had been given any chance to get an education." R., a sort of jack-of-all-trades, says, "If I only had N.'s education, I'd be a millionaire." B., a farmer with limited intellectual interests, says, "I tell you, my boys are not going to be like me; they have got to go to college." G., a waiter, says, "I don't know much," and then proceeds to impress me with the latest bit of academic information which he has picked up. C., a printer, who has been moderately successful, says: "I'd give ten thousand dollars right this minute if I knew Greek; now there is ---- and there is ----, neighbors of mine, they're highly educated. When I'm with them I'm ashamed and feel like a dub." When, on such occasions, I repeatedly say that the average academic student really learns hardly anything at all of the classic languages, and cite the small fruits of my own years of tedious study as an example, the effect produced is invariably comforting--until I add that one need not attend a university seven years or even four to become educated, but that nearly everyone with ability to learn and with genuine intellectual interests may achieve a remarkable degree of learning. The answer of the perplexed person is then often an extenuation. "Well, you see, a busy person or a working man is so tired after the day's work that he has no energy left for study," or it is, "Wait till the working class have more leisure, then they, too, can be cultivated." Passing over this extenuation, which ignores the fact that some of the best informed and clearest thinking people one meets are working people, while the average university graduate leads anything but an intellectual life, it can hardly be denied, I think, that our crowd cult of anti-"highbrowism" is really a defense mechanism against an inner feeling of inferiority. Now the interesting thing about this feeling of inferiority is the exaggerated notion of the superiority of the college-trained, which is entertained chiefly by the uneducated themselves. What appears here is in fact nothing other than a cheapening of the idea of superiority. Personal excellence is something which anyone may attain; it is not something congenital, but something to be added on; one "gets an education," possesses something of advantage, merely by a few years of conventional study of books. Anyone might do that, therefore. "I, too, if I only cared to, or had been given opportunity, might now be famous." "The difference between myself and the world's greatest genius is not a spiritual chasm which I could not myself, at least hypothetically, cross." "It is rather an 'acquired character,' a mere fruit of special opportunity--which in a few cases it doubtless may be--but it is something external; at bottom we are all equal." Many facts may be advanced to corroborate the results of our analysis here. The crowd always resents the Carlyle, William James, Nietzsche, Goethe theory of genius. Genius is not congenital superiority. It is the result of hard work. The genius is not a unique personal fact, he is a "representative man." He says just what his age is thinking. The inarticulate message of his contemporaries simply becomes articulate in some one, and behold a genius. In other words, I suppose, all Vienna, messenger boys and bootblacks especially, were suddenly fascinated by Schiller's "Ode to Joy" and went about whistling improvised musical renderings of the theme of this poem, till the deaf Beethoven heard and wrote these whistlings down in the form of the Ninth Symphony. According to the crowd, Luther did not create the Reformation, or Petrarch the Renaissance; these movements themselves created their leaders and founders; all that the genius did was to interpret and faithfully obey the People's will. Ergo, to be a genius one need only study hard enough to be able to tell the people what they already think. The superiority of genius is therefore no different from that of any educated person; except in degree of application. Anyone of us might possess this superiority. In other words, the "intellectual snobbishness" which the crowd resents is nothing else than the crowd-man's own fiction of self-importance, projected upon those whose imagined superiority he envies. It is recognized, even exaggerated by the unlearned, because it is precisely the sort of superiority which the ignorant man himself, in his ignorance, imagines that he himself would display if he "only had the chance," and even now possesses unrecognized. We have made the foregoing detour because I think it serves to illustrate, in a way, the psychic processes behind much revolutionary propaganda and activity. I would not attempt to minimize the extent of the social injustice and economic slavery which a dominant crowd, whether ecclesiastical, feudal, or capitalistic, is guilty of in its dealings with its subjects. But every dominant crowd, certain sections of the "proletariat" as quickly as any other, will resort to such practices, and will alike justify them by moral catchwords the minute its supremacy over other crowds gives it opportunity. Therefore there is a certain amount of tautology in denouncing the "master class" for its monstrous abuses. That the real point at issue between the dominant crowd and the under crowd is the assumed personal superiority of the members of the former, rather than the economic "exploitation" which it practices, is shown by the fact that the French Revolution was led by wealthy bourgeois, and that the leading revolutionary element in the working class to-day consists, not of the "down and out" victims of capitalist exploitation, but of the members of the more highly skilled and better paid trades, also of certain intellectuals who are not "proletarians" at all. And now we come to our point: the fiction of superiority of the dominant crowd, just as in the case of the assumed personal superiority of the intellectuals, is resented by the under crowd because it is _secretly recognized_ by the under crowd. Of course the dominant crowd, like all crowds, is obsessed by its feelings of self-importance, and this feeling is apparently vindicated by its very social position. But the fiction is recognized at its full face value, and therefore resented by the under crowds, because that is precisely the sort of personal supremacy to which they also aspire. One commonly hears it said to-day, by those who have made the catchwords of democracy their crowd cult, that the issue in modern society is between democracy and capitalism. In a sense this may be true, but only in a superficial sense; the real issue is between the personal self as a social entity and the crowd. Capitalism is, to my mind, the logical first fruit of so-called democracy. Capitalism is simply the social supremacy of the trader-man crowd. For a hundred years and more commercial ability--that of organizing industry and selling goods--has been rewarded out of all proportion to any other kind of ability, because, in the first place, it leads to the kind of success which the ordinary man most readily recognizes and envies--large houses, fine clothes, automobiles, exclusive clubs, etc. A Whittier may be ever so great a poet, and yet sit beside the stove in the general store of his little country village, and no one thinks he is so very wonderful. Some may envy him his fame, but few will envy and therefore be fascinated by that in him which they do not understand. But a multimillionaire in their community is understood; everyone can see and envy his success; he is at once both envied and admired. Moreover, the commercial ability is the sort which the average man most commonly thinks he possesses in some degree. While, therefore, he grumbles at the unjust inequalities in wealth which exist in modern society, and denounces the successful business man as an exploiter and fears his power, the average man will nevertheless endure all this, much in the same spirit that a student being initiated into a fraternity will take the drubbing, knowing well that his own turn at the fun will come later. It is not until the members of the under crowd begin to suspect that their own dreams of "aping the rich" may never come true that they begin to entertain revolutionary ideas. In other words, forced to abandon the hope of joining the present dominating crowd, they begin to dream of supplanting and so dispossessing this crowd by their own crowd. That the dominant crowd is just as much to blame for this state of affairs as the under crowd, perhaps more so, is shown by the history of every period preceding a revolutionary outbreak. I will dwell at some length on this fact later. My point here is that, first, a revolution, in the sense that the word means a violent uprising against the existing order, is a psychological crowd-phenomenon--and second, that it takes two crowds to make a revolution. Writers, like Le Bon, have ignored the part which the dominant crowd plays in such events. They have thought of revolution only as the behavior of the under crowd. They have assumed that the crowd and the people were the same. Their writings are hardly more than conservative warnings against the excess and wickedness of the popular mind once it is aroused. Sumner says: Moral traditions are the guides which no one can afford to neglect. They are in the mores, and they are lost in every great revolution of the mores. Then the men are morally lost. Le Bon says, writing of the French Revolution: The people may kill, burn, ravage, commit the most frightful cruelties, glorify its hero to-day and throw him into the gutter to-morrow; it is all one; the politicians will not cease to vaunt its virtues, its high wisdom, and to bow to its every decision. Now in what does this entity really consist, this mysterious fetich which revolutionists have revered for more than a century? It may be decomposed into two distinct categories. The first includes the peasants, traders, and workers of all sorts who need tranquillity and order that they may exercise their calling. This people forms the majority, but a majority which never caused a revolution. Living in laborious silence, it is ignored by historians. The second category, which plays a capital part in all national disturbances, consists of a subversive social residue dominated by a criminal mentality. Degenerates of alcoholism and poverty, thieves, beggars, destitute "casuals," indifferent workers without employment--these constitute the dangerous bulk of the armies of insurrection.... To this sinister substratum are due the massacres which stain all revolutions.... To elements recruited from the lowest dregs of the populace are added by contagion a host of idle and indifferent persons who are simply drawn into the movement. They shout because there are men shouting, and revolt because there is a revolt, without having the vaguest idea of the cause of the shouting or revolution. The suggestive power of the environment absolutely hypnotized them. This idea, which is held with some variation by Sumner, Gobineau, Faguet, and Conway, is, I believe, both unhistorical and unpsychological, because it is but a half-truth. This substratum of the population does at the moment of revolution become a dangerous mob. Such people are unadjusted to any social order, and the least deviation from the routine of daily life throws them off their balance. The relaxation of authority at the moment when one group is supplanting another in position of social control, is to these people like the two or three days of interregnum between the pontificates of Julius and Leo, described by Cellini. Those who need some one to govern them, and they are many, find their opportunity in the general disturbance. They suddenly react to the revolutionary propaganda which up to this minute they have not heeded, they are controlled by revolutionary crowd-ideas in a somnambulistic manner, and like automatons carry these ideas precipitately to their deadly conclusion. But this mob is not the really revolutionary crowd and in the end it is always put back in its place by the newly dominant crowd. The really revolutionary crowd consists of the group who are near enough the dominant crowd to be able to envy its "airs" with some show of justification, and are strong enough to dare try issue with it for supreme position. Madame Rolland, it will be remembered, justified her opposition to aristocrats on the principle of equality and fraternity, but she could never forget her resentment at being made, in the home of a member of this aristocracy, to eat with the servants. What Le Bon and others seem to ignore is that the ruling class may be just as truly a crowd as the insurrectionary mob, and that the violent behavior of revolutionary crowds is simply the logic of crowd-thinking carried to its swift practical conclusion. It is generally assumed that a revolution is a sudden and violent change in the form of government. From what has been said it will be seen that this definition is too narrow. History will bear me out in this. The Protestant Reformation was certainly a revolution, as Le Bon has shown, but it affected more than the government or even the organization of the Church. The French Revolution changed the form of the government in France several times before it was done, passing through a period of imperial rule and even a restoration of the monarchy. But the revolution as such survived. Even though later a Bourbon or a prince of the House of Orleans sat on the throne of France, the restored king or his successor was hardly more than a figurehead. A new class, the Third Estate, remained in fact master of France. There had been a change in the ownership of the land; power through the control of vested property rested with the group which in 1789 began its revolt under the leadership of Mirabeau. A new dictatorship had succeeded the old. And this is what a revolution is--_the dictatorship of a new crowd_. The Russian revolutionists now candidly admit this fact in their use of the phrase "the dictatorship of the proletariat." Of course it is claimed that this dictatorship is really the dictatorship of "all the people." But this is simply the old fiction with which every dominant crowd disguises seizure of power. Capitalist republicanism is also the rule of all the people, and the pope and the king, deriving their authority from God, are really but "the servants of all." As we have seen, the crowd mind as such wills to dominate. Society is made up of struggle groups, or organized crowds, each seeking the opportunity to make its catchwords realities and to establish itself in the position of social control. The social order is always held intact by some particular crowd which happens to be dominant. A revolution occurs when a new crowd pushes the old one out and itself climbs into the saddle. When the new crowd is only another faction within the existing dominant crowd, like one of our established political parties, the succession will be accomplished without resort to violence, since both elements of the ruling crowd recognize the rules of the game. It will also not result in far-reaching social changes for the same reason. A true revolution occurs when the difference between the dominant crowd and the one which supplants it is so great as to produce a general social upheaval. The Reformation, the French Revolution, and the "Bolshevist" _coup d'etat_ in Russia, all were of this nature. A new social leadership was established and secured by a change in each case in the personnel of the ownership of such property as would give the owners the desired control. In the first case there was a transfer of property in the church estates, either to the local congregations, or the state, or the denomination. In the second case the property transferred was property in land, and with the Russian revolutionists landed property was given to the peasants and vested capital turned over to the control of industrial workers. Those who lay all emphasis on this transfer of property naturally see only economic causes in revolutionary movements. Economics, however, is not a science of impersonal things. It treats rather of men's relations to things, and hence to one another. It has to do with valuations and principles of exchange and ownership, all of which need psychological restatement. The transfer of the ownership of property in times of revolution to a new class is not an end, it is a means to a new crowd's social dominance. The doctrines, ideals, and principles believed by the revolutionary crowd also serve this end of securing its dominance, as do the social changes which it effects, once in power. Revolutions do not occur directly from abuses of power, for in that case there would be nothing but revolution all the time, since every dominant crowd has abused its power. It is an interesting fact that revolution generally occurs after the abuses of which the revolutionists complain have been in great measure stopped--that is, after the ruling crowd has begun to make efforts at reform. The Reformation occurred in the pontificate of Leo X. If it had been the result of intolerable abuse alone, it would have happened in the time of Alexander VI, Borgia. The French Revolution fell upon the mild head of Louis XVI, though the wrongs which it tried to right mostly happened in the reign of his predecessor. In most cases the abuses, the existence of which a revolutionary crowd uses for propaganda purposes, are in turn repeated in new form by itself after it becomes dominant. The Reformers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries resorted to much the same kind of persecution from which they had themselves earlier suffered. The Constituent Assembly, though it had demanded liberty, soon set up a more outrageous tyranny through its own committees than any that the Louies had dreamed of. Bolshevists in capitalist countries are the greatest advocates of free speech; in Russia they are the authors of a very effective press-censorship. No, it is hardly the abuses which men suffer from their ruling crowds which cause insurrection. People have borne the most terrible outrages and suffered in silence for centuries. Russia itself is a good example of this. _A revolution occurs when the dominant crowd begins to weaken._ I think we find proof of this in the psychology of revolutionary propaganda. A general revolution is not made in a day, each such cataclysm is preceded by a long period of unrest and propaganda of opposition to the existing order and its beneficiaries. The Roman Republic began going to pieces about a hundred years before the battle of Actium. The social unrest which followed the Punic Wars and led to the revolt of the brothers Gracchi was never wholly checked during the century which followed. The dominant party had scarcely rid itself of these troublesome "demagogues" than revolt broke out among the slave population of Sicily. This was followed by the revolt of the Italian peasants, then again by the insurrection of Spartacus, and this in turn by the civil war between Marius and Sulla, the conspiracy of Catiline, the brief triumph of Julius Cæsar over the Senate, the revenge of the latter in the assassination of Cæsar, and the years of turmoil during the Second Triumvirate. It is doubtful if there was at any time a very clear or widespread consciousness of the issues which successively arose during that unhappy century. It would seem that first one counter-crowd and then another, representing various elements of the populace, tried issue with the ruling crowd. The one factor which remained constant through all this was the progressive disintegration of the dominant party. The supremacy of the _Patres Conscripti et Equites_ became in fact a social anachronism the day that Tiberius Gracchus demanded the expropriation of the landed aristocracy. The ideas whereby the dominant crowd sought to justify its pre-emptions began to lose their functional value. Only the undisguised use of brute force was left. Such ideas ceased to convince. Men of unusual independence of mind, or men with ambitious motives, who had grown up within the dominant crowd, began to throw off the spell of its control-ideas, and, by leaving it, to weaken it further from within. No sooner was this weakness detected by other groups than every sort of grievance and partisan interest became a moral justification for efforts to supplant the rulers. The attempt of the dominant crowd to retain its hold by repeating its traditional justification-platitudes, unchanged, but with greater emphasis, may be seen in the orations of Cicero. It would be well if some one besides high-school students and their Latin teachers were to take up the study of Cicero; the social and psychological situation which this orator and writer of moral essays reveals has some suggestive similarities to things which are happening to-day. The century and more of unrest which preceded both the Reformation and the French Revolution is in each instance a long story. But in both there is the same gradual loss of prestige on the part of the dominant crowd; the same inability of this crowd to change with the changes of time; to find new sanctions for itself when the old ones were no longer believed; the same unadaptability, the same intellectual and moral bankruptcy, therefore, the same gradual disintegration from within; the same resort to sentimentalism and ineffective use of force, the same circle of hungry counter-crowds waiting around with their tongues hanging out, ready to pounce upon that before which they had previously groveled, and to justify their ravenousness as devotion to principle; the same growing fearlessness, beginning as perfectly loyal desire to reform certain abuses incidental to the existing order, and advancing, with every sign of disillusionment or weakness, to moral indignation, open attack upon fundamental control ideas, bitter hostility, augmented by the repressive measures taken by the dominant crowd to conserve a _status quo_ which no longer gained assent in the minds of a growing counter-crowd; finally force, and a new dominant crowd more successful now in justifying old tyrannies by principles not yet successfully challenged. In the light of these historical analogies the record of events during the last seventy-five years in western Europe and America is rather discomforting reading, and I fear the student of social psychology will find little to reassure him in the pitiable lack of intellectual leadership, the tendency to muddle through, the unteachableness and general want of statesmanlike vision displayed by our present dominant crowds. If a considerable number of people of all classes, those who desire change as well as those who oppose it, could free their thinking from the mechanisms of the crowd-mind, it might be possible to find the working solution of some of our pressing social problems and save our communities from the dreadful experience of another revolution. Our hope lies in the socially minded person who is sufficiently in touch with reality to be also a non-crowd man. Anyone who is acquainted with the state of the public mind at present, knows that _a priori_ arguments against revolution as such are not convincing, except to those who are already convinced on other ground. The dominant crowd in each historical epoch gained its original supremacy by means of revolution. One can hardly make effective use of the commonplace antirevolutionary propaganda of defense of a certain order which has among its most ardent supporters people who are proud to call themselves sons and daughters of the Revolution. Skeptics at once raise the question whether, according to such abstract social ethics, revolutionists become respectable only after they are successful or have been a long time dead. In fact, the tendency to resort to such reasoning is one among many symptoms that the conservative mind has permitted itself to become quite as much a crowd-phenomenon as has the radical mind. The correct approach here is psychological and pragmatic. There is an increasingly critical social situation, demanding far-reaching reconstructive change; only the most hopeless crowd-man would presume to deny this fact. The future all depends upon the mental processes with which we attempt to meet this situation. Nothing but useless misery can result from dividing crowd against crowd. Crowd-thinking, as I have said, does not solve problems. It only creates ideal compensations and defense devices for our inner conflicts. Conservative crowd-behavior has always done quite as much as anything else to precipitate a revolutionary outbreak. Radical crowd-behavior does not resolve the situation, it only inverts it. Any real solution lies wholly outside present crowd-dilemmas. What the social situation demands most is a different kind of thinking, a new education, an increasing number of people who understand themselves and are intellectually and morally independent of the tyranny of crowd-ideas. From what has been said above, it follows that revolutionary propaganda is not directly the cause of insurrection. Such propaganda is itself an effect of the unconscious reaction between a waning and a crescent crowd. It is a symptom of the fact that a large number of people have ceased to believe in or assent to the continued dominance of the present controlling crowd and are looking to another. There is always a tendency among conservative crowds to hasten their own downfall by the manner in which they deal with revolutionary propaganda. The seriousness of the new issue is denied; the crowd seeks to draw attention back to the old issue which it fought and won years ago in the hour of its ascendancy. The fact that the old charms and shibboleths no longer work, that they do not now apply, that the growing counter-crowd is able to psychoanalyze them, discover the hidden motives which they disguise, and laugh at them, is stoutly denied. The fiction is maintained to the effect that present unrest is wholly uncalled-for, that everything is all right, that the agitators who "make people discontented" are alien and foreign and need only be silenced with a time-worn phrase, or, that failing, shut up by force or deported, and all will be well. I do not doubt that before the Reformation and the French Revolution there were ecclesiastics and nobles aplenty who were quite sure that the masses would never have known they were miserable if meddling disturbers had not taken the trouble to tell them so. Even an honest critical understanding of the demands of the opposing crowd is discouraged, possibly because it is rightly felt that the critical habit of mind is as destructive of one crowd-complex as the other and the old crowd prefers to remain intact and die in the last ditch rather than risk dissolution, even with the promise of averting a revolution. Hence the Romans were willing to believe that the Christians worshiped the head of an ass. The mediæval Catholics, even at Leo's court, failed to grasp the meaning of the outbreak in north Germany. Thousands saw in the Reformation only the alleged fact that the monk Luther wanted to marry a wife. To-day one looks almost in vain among business men, editors, and politicians for a more intelligent understanding of socialism. A crowd goes down to its death fighting bogies, and actually running upon the sword of its real enemy, because a crowd, once its constellation of ideas is formed, _never learns anything_. The crowd-group contains in itself, in the very nature of crowd-thinking, the germs which sooner or later lay it low. When a crowd first becomes dominant, it carries into a place of power a number of heterogeneous elements which have, up to this time, been united in a great counter-crowd because of their common dissatisfaction with the old order. Gradually the special interests of these several groups become separated. The struggle for place is continued as a factional fight within the newly ruling crowd. This factional struggle greatly complicates every revolutionary movement. We witness this in the murderously hostile partisan conflicts which broke out in the revolutionary Assemblies in France. It is seen again in the Reformation, which had hardly established itself when the movement was rent by intense sectarian rivalries of all sorts. The same is true of Russia since the fall of the Tsar, and of Mexico ever since the overthrow of the Diaz regime. If these factional struggles go so far as to result in schism--that is, in a conscious repudiation by one or more factions of the revolutionary creed which had formerly united them all, there is disintegration and in all probability a return to the old ruling crowd. This reaction may also be made possible by a refusal of one faction to recognize the others as integral parts of the newly triumphant crowd. If the new crowd after its victory can hold itself together, the revolution is established. It then becomes the task of the leading faction in the newly dominant crowd to grab the lion's share of the spoils for itself, give the other factions only so much prestige as will keep alive in their minds the belief that they, too, share in the new victory for "humanity" and hold the new social order together, while at the same time justifying its own leadership by the compulsive power of the idea which they all alike believe. This belief, as we have seen, is the _sine qua non_ of the continued existence of any crowd. A dominant crowd survives so long as its belief is held uncritically and repeated and acted upon automatically both by the members of the crowd and its victims. When the factions which have been put at a disadvantage by the leading faction renounce the belief, or awake to the fact that they "have been cheated," disintegration begins. Between the crowd's professed belief and the things which it puts into practice there is a great chasm. Yet the fiction is uniformly maintained that the things done are the correct and faithful application of the great principles to which the crowd is devoted. We saw in our study of crowd-ideas in general that such ideas are not working programs, but are screens which disguise and apparently justify the real unconscious motive of crowd-behavior. The crowd secures its control, first, by proclaiming in the most abstract form certain generally accepted principles, such as freedom, righteousness, brotherly love--as though these universal "truths" were its own invention and exclusive monopoly. Next, certain logical deductions are made from these principles which, when carried to their logical conclusions regardless of fact or the effect produced, make the thing which the crowd really wants and does appear to be a vindication of the first principles. It is these inferences which go to make up the conscious thinking or belief of the crowd. Thus in the revolutionary convention in France all agree to the principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. Fidelity to these principles would to a non-crowd mean that the believer should not try to dictate to his fellows what they must believe and choose, that he would exercise good will in his dealings with them and show them the same respect which he wished them to have for himself. But the crowd does not understand principles in this manner. Do all agree to the great slogan of the revolution? Well, then, fidelity to Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity demands that the enemies of these principles and the crowd's definition of them be overthrown. The Mountain is the truly faithful party, hence to the guillotine with the Gironde. This chasm between crowd faith and crowd practice is well illustrated in the case of those Southern patriots in America who were ready to fight and die for the rights of man as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, but refused to apply the principle of the inalienable rights of all men to their own black slaves. Or, again in the case of nineteenth-century capitalism, liberty must be given to all alike. Liberty means equal opportunity. Equal opportunity means free competition in business. Free competition exists only where there is an "incentive"; hence the investor must be encouraged and his gains protected by law. Therefore anti-capitalistic doctrines must be suppressed as subversive of our free institutions. Immigrants to whom for a generation we have extended the hospitality of our slums and labor camps, and the opportunity of freely competing with our well-intrenched corporations, must be made to feel their ingratitude if they are so misguided as to conclude, from the fact that hundreds of leading radicals have been made to serve jail sentences, while after thirty years of enforcing the antitrust law not a single person has ever been sent to prison, that possibly this is not a free land. Or again--one convicts himself of being a crowd-man who shows partiality among crowds--the principle of democracy is generally accepted. Then there should be industrial democracy as well as political--hence the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat"--for the workers are "the people." Parliamentary assemblies elected by all the people do not necessarily represent labor. Organized labor, therefore, though a minority of the whole, should establish "industrial democracy" by force. So, according to Bolshevist crowd-logic, democracy means the rule of a minority by means of force. Now it is this fictitious, paranoiac, crowd-logic which one must be able to dispel before he can extricate himself from the clutches of his crowd. If he subjects the whole fabric of abstractions to critical analysis, revalues it, puts himself above it, assumes a pragmatic attitude toward whatever truths it contains, dares to test these truths by their results in experience and to use them for desired ends; if, in short, he scrutinizes his own disguised impulses, brings them to consciousness as what they are, and refuses to be deceived as to their real import, even when they appear dressed in such sheep's clothing as absolutes and first principles, he becomes a non-crowd man, a social being in the best sense. Those, however, who continue to give assent to the crowd's first principles, who still accept its habit of _a priori_ reasoning, merely substituting for its accepted deductions others of their own which in turn serve to conceal and justify their own unconscious desires, will turn from the old crowd only to be gobbled up by a new and counter-crowd. Such people have not really changed. They denounce the old crowd on the ground that "it has not lived up to its principles." It is a significant fact that a crowd's rule is generally challenged in the name of the very abstract ideas of which it has long posed as the champion. For instance, there is liberty. Every crowd demands it when it is seeking power; no crowd permits it when it is in power. A crowd which is struggling for supremacy is really trying to free itself and as many people as possible from the control of another crowd. Naturally, the struggle for power appears to consciousness as a struggle for liberty as such. The controlling crowd is correctly seen to be a tyrant and oppressor. What the opposition crowd does not recognize is its own wish to oppress, hidden under its struggle for power. We have had occasion to note the intolerance of the crowd-mind as such. A revolutionary crowd, with all its lofty idealism about liberty, is commonly just as intolerant as a reactionary crowd. It must be so in order to remain a crowd. Once it is triumphant it may exert its pressure in a different direction, but the pinch is there just the same. Like its predecessor, it must resort to measures of restraint, possibly even a "reign of terror," in order that the new-won "liberty"--which is to say, its own place at the head of the procession--may be preserved. The denial of freedom appears therefore as its triumph, and for a time people are deceived. They think they are free because everyone is talking about liberty. Eventually some one makes the discovery that people do not become free just by repeating the magic word "liberty." A disappointed faction of the newly emancipated humanity begins to demand its "rights." The crowd hears its own catchwords quoted against itself. It proceeds to prove that freedom exists by denouncing the disturbers and silencing them, if necessary, by force. The once radical crowd has now become reactionary. Its dream of world emancipation is seen to be a hoax. Lovers of freedom now yoke themselves in a new rebel crowd so that oppressed humanity may be liberated from the liberators. Again, the will to power is clothed in the dream symbols of an emancipated society, and so on around and around the circle, until people learn that with crowds freedom is impossible. For men to attain to mastery of themselves is as abhorrent to one crowd as to another. The crowd merely wants freedom to be a crowd--that is, to set up its own tyranny in the place of that which offends the self-feeling of its members. The social idealism of revolutionary crowds is very significant for our view of the crowd-mind. There are certain forms of revolutionary belief which are repeated again and again with such uniformity that it would seem the unconscious of the race changes very little from age to age. The wish-fancy which motivates revolutionary activity always appears to consciousness as the dream of an ideal society, a world set free; the reign of brotherly love, peace, and justice. The folly and wickedness of man is to cease. There will be no more incentive for men to do evil. The lion and the lamb shall lie down together. Old extortions and tyrannies are to be left behind. There is to be a new beginning, poverty is to be abolished, God's will is to be done in earth, or men are at last to live according to reason, and the inalienable rights of all are to be secured; or the co-operative commonwealth is to be established, with no more profit-seeking and each working gladly for the good of all. In other words, the mind of revolutionary crowds is essentially _eschatological_, or Messianic. The crowd always imagines its own social dominance is a millennium. And this trait is common to revolutionary crowds in all historical periods. We have here the psychological explanation of the Messianic faith which is set forth with tremendous vividness in Biblical literature. The revolutionary import of the social teaching of both the Hebrew and Christian religions is so plain that I do not see how any honest and well-informed person can even attempt to deny it. The telling effectiveness with which this element in religious teaching may be used by clever radicals to convict the apologists of the present social order by the words out of their own mouths is evident in much of the socialist propaganda to-day. The tendency of the will to revolt, to express itself in accepted religious symbols, is a thing to be expected if the unconscious plays the important part in crowd-behavior that we have contended that it does. The eighth-century Hebrew prophet mingles his denunciations of those who join house to house and field to field, who turn aside the way of the meek, and sit in Samaria in the corner of a couch and on the silken cushions of a bed, who have turned justice to wormwood and cast down righteousness to the earth, etc., etc.,--reserving his choicest woes of course for the foreign oppressors of "my people"--with promises of "the day of the Lord" with all that such a day implies, not only of triumph of the oppressed over their enemies, but of universal happiness. Similarly the same complex of ideas appears in the writings which deal with the Hebrew "Captivity" in the sixth century B.C., with the revolt of the Maccabeans, and again in the impotent hatred against the Romans about the time of the origin of Christianity. The New Testament dwells upon some phase of this theme on nearly every page. Blessed are ye poor, and woe unto you who are rich, you who laugh now. The Messiah has come and with him the Kingdom of the Heavens, but at present the kingdom is revealed only to the believing few, who are in the world, but not of it. However, the Lord is soon to return; in fact, this generation shall not pass away until all these things be accomplished. After a period of great trial and suffering there is to be a new world, and a new and holy Jerusalem, coming down from the skies and establishing itself in place of the old. All the wicked, chiefly those who oppress the poor, shall be cast into a lake of fire. There shall be great rejoicing, and weeping and darkness and death shall be no more. The above sketch of the Messianic hope is so brief as to be hardly more than a caricature, but it will serve to make my point clear, that _Messianism is a revolutionary crowd phenomenon_. This subject has been presented in great detail by religious writers in recent years, so that there is hardly a member of the reading public who is not more or less familiar with the "social gospel." My point is that _all revolutionary propaganda is "social gospel_." Even when revolutionists profess an antireligious creed, as did the Deists of the eighteenth century, and as do many modern socialists with their "materialist interpretation of history," nevertheless the element of irreligion extends only to the superficial trappings of the revolutionary crowd-faith, and even here is not consistent. At bottom the revolutionists' dream of a new world is religious. I am using the word "religious" in this connection in its popular sense, meaning no more than that the revolutionary crowd rationalizes its dream of a new world-order in imagery which repeats over and over again the essentials of the Biblical "day of the Lord," or "kingdom of heaven" to be established in earth. This notion of cosmic regeneration is very evident in the various "utopian" socialist theories. The Fourierists and St. Simonists of the early part of the nineteenth century were extremely Messianic. So-called "scientific socialists" are now inclined to ridicule such idealistic speculation, but one has only to scratch beneath the surface of present-day socialist propaganda to find under its materialist jargon the same old dream of the ages. A great world-change is to come suddenly. With the triumph of the workers there will be no more poverty or ignorance, no longer any incentive to men to do evil to one another. The famous "Manifesto" is filled with such ideas. Bourgeois society is doomed and about to fall. Forces of social evolution inevitably point to the world-wide supremacy of the working class, under whose mild sway the laborer is to be given the full product of his toil, the exploitation of children is to cease, true liberty will be achieved, prostitution, which is somehow a bourgeois institution, is to be abolished, everyone will be educated, production increased till there is enough for all, the cities shall no more lord it over the rural communities, all alike will perform useful labor, waste places of the earth will become cultivated lands and the fertility of the soil will be increased in accordance with a common plan, the state, an instrument of bourgeois exploitation, will cease to exist; in fact, the whole wicked past is to be left behind, for as The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations, no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas. In fine, In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. Le Bon says of the French Revolution: The principles of the Revolution speedily inspired a wave of mystic enthusiasm analogous to those provoked by the various religious beliefs which had preceded it. All they did was to change the orientation of a mental ancestry which the centuries had solidified. So there is nothing astonishing in the savage zeal of the men of the Convention. Their mystic mentality was the same as that of the Protestants at the time of the Reformation. The principal heroes of the Terror--Couthon, Saint Just, Robespierre, etc.--were apostles. Like Polyeuctes destroying the altars of the false gods to propagate his faith, they dreamed of converting the globe.... The mystic spirit of the leaders of the Revolution was betrayed in the least details of their public life. Robespierre, convinced that he was supported by the Almighty, assured his hearers in a speech that the Supreme Being had "decreed the Republic since the beginning of time." A recent writer, after showing that the Russian revolution has failed to put the Marxian principles into actual operation, says of Lenin and his associates: They have caught a formula of glittering words; they have learned the verbal cadences which move the masses to ecstasy; they have learned to paint a vision of heaven that shall outflare in the minds of their followers the shabby realities of a Bolshevik earth. They are master phraseocrats, and in Russia they have reared an empire on phraseocracy. The alarmists who shriek of Russia would do well to turn their thoughts from Russia's socialistic menace. The peril of Russia is not to our industries, but to our states. The menace of the Bolsheviki is not an economic one, it is a political menace. It is the menace of fanatic armies, drunken with phrases and sweeping forward under Lenin like a Muscovite scourge. It is the menace of intoxicated proletarians, goaded by invented visions to seek to conquer the world. In Nicolai Lenin the Socialist, we have naught to fear. In Nicolai Lenin the political chief of Russia's millions, we may well find a menace, for his figure looms over the world. His Bolshevik abracadabra has seduced the workers of every race. His stealthy propaganda has shattered the morale of every army in the world. His dreams are winging to Napoleonic flights, and well he may dream of destiny; for in an age when we bow to phrases, it is Lenin who is the master phraseocrat of the world. Passing over the question of Lenin's personal ambitions, and whether our own crowd-stupidity, panic, and wrong-headed Allied diplomacy may not have been contributing causes of the menace of Bolshevism, it can hardly be denied that Bolshevism, like all other revolutionary crowd-movements, is swayed by a painted vision of heaven which outflares the miseries of earth. _Every revolutionary crowd of every description is a pilgrimage set out to regain our lost Paradise._ Now it is this dream of paradise, or ideal society, which deserves analytical study. Why does it always appear the minute a crowd is sufficiently powerful to dream of world-power? It will readily be conceded that this dream has some function in creating certain really desirable social values. But such values cannot be the psychogenesis of the dream. If the dream were ever realized, I think William James was correct in saying that we should find it to be but a "sheep's heaven and lubberland of joy," and that life in it would be so "mawkish and dishwatery" that we should gladly return to this world of struggle and challenge, or anywhere else, if only to escape the deadly inanity. We have already noted the fact that this dream has the function of justifying the crowd in its revolt and will to rule. But this is by no means all. The social idealism has well been called a dream, for that is just what it is, the daydream of the ages. It is like belief in fairies, or the Cinderella myth. It is the Jack-and-the-beanstalk philosophy. The dream has exactly the same function as the Absolute, and the ideal world-systems of the paranoiac; _it is an imaginary refuge from the real_. Like all other dreams, it is the realization of a wish. I have long been impressed with the static character of this dream; not only is it much the same in all ages, but it is always regarded as the great culmination beyond which the imagination cannot stretch. Even those who hold the evolutionary view of reality and know well that life is continuous change, and that progress cannot be fixed in any passing moment, however sweet, are generally unable to imagine progress going on after the establishment of the ideal society and leaving it behind. Revolutionary propaganda habitually stops, like the nineteenth-century love story, with a general statement, "and so they lived happily ever after." It is really the end, not the beginning or middle of the story. It is the divine event toward which the whole creation moves, and having reached it, _stops_. Evolution having been wound up to run to just this end, time and change and effort may now be discontinued. There is nothing further to do. In other words, the ideal is lifted clear out of time and all historical connections. As in other dreams, the empirically known sequence of events is ignored. Whole centuries of progress and struggle and piecemeal experience are telescoped into one imaginary symbolic moment. The moment now stands for the whole process, or rather it is _substituted_ for the process. We have taken refuge from the real into the ideal. The "Kingdom of Heaven," "Paradise," "The Return to Man in the State of Nature," "Back to Primitive New Testament Christianity," "The Age of Reason," "Utopia," the "Revolution," the "Co-operative Commonwealth," all mean psychologically the same thing. And that thing is not at all a scientific social program, but a symbol of an easier and better world where desires are realized by magic, and everyone's check drawn upon the bank of existence is cashed. _Social idealism of revolutionary crowds is a mechanism of compensation and escape for suppressed desires._ Is there any easier way of denying the true nature and significance of our objective world than by persuading ourselves that that world is even now doomed, and is bound suddenly to be transformed into the land of our heart's desire? Is it not to be expected that people would soon learn how to give those desires greater unction, and to encourage one another in holding to the fictions by which those desires could find their compensation and escape, by resorting to precisely the crowd-devices which we have been discussing? The Messianists of Bible times expected the great transformation and world cataclysm to come by means of a divine miracle. Those who are affected by the wave of premillennialism which is now running through certain evangelical Christian communions are experiencing a revival of this faith with much of its primitive terminology. Evolutionary social revolutionists expect the great day to come as the culmination of a process of economic evolution. This is what is meant by "evolutionary and revolutionary socialism." The wish-fancy is here rationalized as a doctrine of evolution by revolution. Thus the difference between the social revolutionist and the Second Adventist is much smaller than either of them suspects. As Freud would doubtless say, the difference extends only to the "secondary elaboration of the manifest dream formation"--the latent dream thought is the same in both cases. The Adventist expresses the wish in the terminology of a prescientific age, while the social revolutionist makes use of modern scientific jargon. Each alike finds escape from reality in the contemplation of a new-world system. The faith of each is a scheme of redemption--that is, of "compensation." Each contemplates the sudden, cataclysmic destruction of the "present evil world," and its replacement by a new order in which the meek shall inherit the earth. To both alike the great event is destined, in the fullness of time, to come as a thief in the night. In the one case it is to come as the fulfillment of prophecy; in the other the promise is underwritten and guaranteed by impersonal forces of "economic evolution." This determinism is in the one case what Bergson calls "radical finalism," and in the other "radical mechanism." But whether the universe exists but to reel off a divine plan conceived before all worlds, or be but the mechanical swinging of the shuttle of cause and effect, what difference is there if the point arrived at is the same? In both cases this point was fixed before the beginning of time, and the meaning of the universe is just that and nothing else, since that is what it all comes to in the end. Whether the hand which turns the crank of the world-machine be called that of God or merely "Evolution," it is only a verbal difference; it is in both cases "a power not ourselves which makes for righteousness." And the righteousness? Why, it is just the righteousness of our own crowd--in other words, the crowd's bill of rights painted in the sky by our own wish-fancy, and dancing over our heads like an aurora borealis. It is the history of all crowds that this dazzling pillar of fire in the Arctic night is hailed as the "rosy-fingered dawn" of the Day of the Lord. Or, to change the figure somewhat, the faithful crowd has but to follow its fiery cloud to the promised land which flows with milk and honey; then march for an appointed time about the walls of the wicked bourgeois Jericho, playing its propaganda tune until the walls fall down by magic and the world is ours. _No revolution is possible without a miracle and a brass band._ I have no desire to discourage those who have gone to work at the real tasks of social reconstruction--certainly no wish to make this study an apology for the existing social order. In the face of the ugly facts which on every hand stand as indictments of what is called "capitalism," it is doubtful if anyone could defend the present system without recourse to a certain amount of cynicism or cant. The widespread social unrest which has enlisted in its service so much of the intellectual spirit of this generation surely could never have come about without provocation more real than the work of a mere handful of "mischief-making agitators." The challenge to modern society is not wholly of crowd origin. But it is one thing to face seriously the manifold problems of reconstruction of our social relations, and it is quite another thing to persuade oneself that all these entangled problems have but one imaginary neck which is waiting to be cut with a single stroke of the sword of revolution in the hands of "the people." Hundreds of times I have heard radicals, while discussing certain evils of present society, say, "All these things are but symptoms, effects; to get rid of them you must remove the cause." That cause is always, in substance, the present economic system. If this argument means that, instead of thinking of the various phases of social behavior as isolated from one another, we should conceive of them as so interrelated as to form something like a more or less causally connected organic whole, I agree. But if it means something else--and it frequently does--the argument is based upon a logical fallacy. The word "system" is not a causal term; it is purely descriptive. The facts referred to, whatever connections we may discover among them, are not the effects of a mysterious "system" behind the facts of human behavior; the facts themselves, taken together, are the system. The confusion of causal and descriptive ideas is a habit common to both the intellectualist philosopher and the crowd-minded. It enables people to turn their gaze from the empirical Many to the fictitious One, from the real to the imaginary. The idea of a system behind, over, outside, and something different from the related facts which the term "system" is properly used to describe, whether that system be a world-system, a logical system, or a social system, whether it be capitalism or socialism, "system" so conceived is a favorite crowd-spook. It is the same logical fallacy as if one spoke of the temperature of this May day as the effect of the climate, when all know that the term climate is simply (to paraphrase James) the term by which we characterize the temperature, weather, etc., which we experience on this and other days. We have already seen to what use the crowd-mind puts all such generalizations. A popular revolutionary philosophy of history pictures the procession of the ages as made up of a pageant of spook-social systems, each distinct from the others and coming in its appointed time. But social systems do not follow in a row, like elephants in a circus parade--each huge beast with its trunk coiled about the end of his predecessor's tail. The greater part of this "evolutionary and revolutionary" pageantry is simply dream-stuff. Those who try to march into Utopia in such an imaginary parade are not even trying to reconstruct society; they are sociological somnambulists. The crowd-mind clings to such pageantry because, as we saw in another connection, the crowd desires to believe that evolution guarantees its own future supremacy. It then becomes unnecessary to solve concrete problems. One need only possess an official program of the order of the parade. In other words, the crowd must persuade itself that only one solution of the social problem is possible, and that one inevitable--its own. Such thinking wholly misconceives the nature of the social problem. Like all the practical dilemmas of life, this problem, assuming it to be in any sense a single problem, is real just because more than one solution is possible. The task here is like that of choosing a career. Whole series of partially foreseen possibilities are contingent upon certain definite choices. Aside from our choosing, many sorts of futures may be equally possible. Our intervention at this or that definite point is an act by which we will one series of possibilities rather than another into reality. But the act of intervention is never performed once for all. Each intervention leads only to new dilemmas, among which we must again choose and intervene. It is mainly in order to escape from the necessity of facing this terrifying series of unforeseeable dilemmas that the crowd-man walketh in a vain show. In pointing out the futility of present-day revolutionary crowd-thinking, I am only striving to direct, in however small a degree, our thought and energies into channels which lead toward desired results. It is not by trombones that we are to redeem society, nor is the old order going to tumble down like the walls of Jericho, and a complete new start be given. Civilization cannot be wiped out and begun all over again. It constitutes the environment within which our reconstructive thinking must, by tedious effort, make certain definite modifications. Each such modification is a problem in itself, to be dealt with, not by belief in miracle, but by what Dewey calls "creative intelligence." Each such modification must be achieved by taking all the known facts, which are relevant, into account. As such it is a new adaptation, and the result of a series of such adaptations may be as great and radical a social transformation as one may have the courage to set as the goal of a definite policy of social effort. But there is a world of difference between social thinking of this kind, where faith is a working hypothesis, and that which ignores the concrete problems that must be solved to reach the desired goal, and, after the manner of crowds, dreams of entering fairyland, or of pulling a new world _en bloc_ down out of the blue, by the magic of substituting new tyrannies for old. Revolutionary crowd-thinking is not "creative intelligence." It is _hocus-pocus_, a sort of social magic formula like the "mutabor" in the Arabian Nights; it is an _Aladdin's-lamp_ philosophy. And here we may sum up this part of our argument. The idea of the revolution is to the crowd a symbol, the function of which is compensation for the burdens of the struggle for existence, for the feeling of social inferiority, and for desires suppressed by civilization. It is an imaginary escape from hard reality, a new-world system in which the ego seeks refuge, a defense mechanism under the compulsive influence of which crowds behave like somnambulistic individuals. It is the apotheosis of the under crowd itself and the transcendental expression and justification of its will to rule. It is made up of just those broad generalizations which are of use in keeping that crowd together. It gives the new crowd unction in its fight with the old, since it was precisely these same dream-thoughts which the old crowd wrote on its banners in the day when it, too, was blowing trumpets outside the walls of Jericho. VIII THE FRUITS OF REVOLUTION--NEW CROWD-TYRANNIES FOR OLD So much for the psychology of the revolutionary propaganda. Now let us look at what happens in the moment of revolutionary outbreak. We have dwelt at some length on the fact that a revolution occurs when a new crowd succeeds in displacing an old one in position of social control. At first there is a general feeling of release and of freedom. There is a brief period of ecstasy, of good will, a strange, almost mystical magnanimity. A flood of oratory is released in praise of the "new day of the people." Everyone is a "comrade." Everyone is important. There is an inclination to trust everyone. This Easter-morning state of mind generally lasts for some days--until people are driven by the pinch of hunger to stop talking and take up again the routine tasks of daily living. We have all read how the "citizens" of the French Revolution danced in the streets for sheer joy in their new-won liberty. Those who were in Petrograd during the days which immediately followed the downfall of the Tsar bear witness to a like almost mystical sense of the general goodness of human kind and of joy in human fellowship. With the return to the commonplace tasks of daily life, some effort, and indeed further rationalization, is needed to keep up the feeling that the new and wonderful age has really come to stay. Conflicts of interest and special grievances are viewed as involving the vital principles of the Revolution. People become impatient and censorious. There is a searching of hearts. People watch their neighbors, especially their rivals, to make sure that nothing in their behavior shall confirm the misgivings which are vaguely felt in their own minds. The rejoicing and comradeship which before were spontaneous are now demanded. Intolerance toward the vanquished crowd reappears with increased intensity, not a little augmented by the knowledge that the old enemies are now at "the people's" mercy. There is a demand for revenge for old abuses. The displaced crowd likely as not, foreseeing the doom which awaits its members, seeks escape by attempting a counter-revolution. A propaganda of sympathy is carried on among members of this same class who remain in the dominant crowd in communities not affected by the revolution. There is secret plotting and suspicion of treason on every hand. People resort to extravagant expressions of their revolutionary principles, not only to keep up their own faith in them, but to show their loyalty to the great cause. The most fanatical and uncompromising members of the group gain prominence because of their excessive devotion. By the very logic of crowd-thinking, leadership passes to men who are less and less competent to deal with facts and more and more extreme in their zeal. Hence the usual decline from the Mirabeaus to the Dantons and Cariers, and from these to the Marats and Robespierres, from the Milukoffs to the Kerenskys and from the Kerenskys to the Trotzkys. With each excess the crowd must erect some still new defense against the inevitable disclosure of the fact that the people are not behaving at all as if they were living in the kingdom of heaven. With each farther deviation from the plain meaning of facts, the revolution must resort to more severe measures to sustain itself, until finally an unsurmountable barrier is reached, such as the arrival on the scene of a Napoleon. Then the majority are forced to abandon the vain hope of really attaining Utopia, and content themselves with fictions to the effect that what they have really _is_ Utopia--or with such other mechanisms as will serve to excuse and minimize the significance of existing facts and put off the complete realization of the ideal until some future stage of progress. It is needless to add that those who have most profited by the revolutionary change are also most ready to take the lead in persuading their neighbors to be content with these rational compromises. Meanwhile, however, the revolutionary leaders have set up a dictatorship of their own, which, while necessary to "save the revolution," is itself a practical negation of the revolutionary dream of a free world. This dictatorship, finally passing into the hands of the more competent element of the revolutionary crowd, justifies itself to the many; professing and requiring of all a verbal assent to the revolutionary creed of which its very existence is a fundamental repudiation. This group becomes in time the nucleus about which society finally settles down again in comparative peace and equilibrium. In general, then, it may be said that a revolution does not and cannot realize the age-long dream of a world set free. Its results may be summed up as follows: a newly dominant crowd, a new statement of old beliefs, new owners of property in the places of the old, new names for old tyrannies. Looking back over the history of the several great tidal waves of revolution which have swept over the civilization which is to-day ours, it would appear that one effect of them has been to intensify the hold which crowd-thinking has upon all of us, also to widen the range of the things which we submit to the crowd-mind for final judgment. In confirmation of this it is to be noted that it is on the whole those nations which have been burnt over by both the Reformation and the eighteenth-century revolution which exhibit the most chauvian brand of nationalism and crowd-patriotism. It is these same nations also which have most highly depersonalized their social relationships, political structures, and ideals. It is these nations also whose councils are most determined by spasms of crowd-propaganda. The modern man doubtless has a sense of self in a degree unknown--except by the few--in earlier ages, but along with this there exists in "modern ideas," a complete system of crowd-ideas with which the conscious self comes into conflict at every turn. Just how far the revolutionary crowds of the past have operated to provide the stereotyped forms in which present crowd-thinking is carried on, it is almost impossible to learn. But that their influence has been great may be seen by anyone who attempts a psychological study of "public opinion." Aside from the results mentioned, I think the deposit of revolutionary movements in history has been very small. It may be that, in the general shake-up of such a period, a few vigorous spirits are tossed into a place where their genius has an opportunity which it would otherwise have failed to get. But it would seem that on the whole the idea that revolutions help the progress of the race is a hoax. Where advancement has been achieved in freedom, in intelligence, in ethical values, in art or science, in consideration for humanity, in legislation, it has in each instance been achieved by unique individuals, and has spread chiefly by personal influence, never gaining assent except among those who have power to recreate the new values won in their own experience. Whenever we take up a new idea as a crowd, we at once turn it into a catchword and a fad. Faddism, instead of being merely a hunger for the new is rather an expression of the crowd-will to uniformity. To be "old-fashioned" and out of date is as truly to be a nonconformist as to be a freak or an originator. Faddism is neither radicalism nor a symptom of progress. It is a mark of the passion for uniformity or _the conservatism of the crowd-mind_. It is change; but its change is insignificant. It is often said that religious liberty is the fruit of the Reformation. If so it is an indirect result and one which the reformers certainly did not desire. They sought liberty only for their own particular propaganda, a fact which is abundantly proved by Calvin's treatment of Servetus and of the Anabaptists, by Luther's attitude toward the Saxon peasants, by the treatment of Catholics in England, by the whole history of Cromwell's rule, by the persecution of Quakers and all other "heretics" in our American colonies--Pennsylvania, I believe, excepted--down to the date of the American Revolution. It just happened that Protestantism as _the religion of the bourgeois_ fell into the hands of a group, who, outside their religious-crowd interests were destined to be the greatest practical beneficiaries of the advancement of applied science. Between applied science and science as a cultural discipline--that is, science as a humanistic study--the line is hard to draw. The Humanist spirit of the sciences attained a certain freedom, notwithstanding the fact that the whole Reformation was really a reactionary movement against the Renaissance; in spite, moreover, of the patent fact that the Protestant churches still, officially at least, resist the free spirit of scientific culture. It is to the free spirits of the Italian Renaissance, also to the Jeffersons and Franklins and Paines, the Lincolns and Ingersolls, the Huxleys and Darwins and Spencers, the men who dared alone to resist the religious crowd-mind and to undermine the abstract ideas in which it had intrenched itself, to whom the modern world owes its religious and intellectual liberty. The same is true of political liberty. England, which is the most free country in the world to-day, never really experienced the revolutionary crowd-movement of the eighteenth century. Instead, the changes came by a process of gradual reconstruction. And it is with just such an opportunist reconstructive process that England promises now to meet and solve the problems of the threatened social revolution. In contrast with Russia, Socialism in England has much ground for hope of success. The radical movement in England is on the whole wisely led by men who with few exceptions can think realistically and pragmatically, and refuse to be swept off their feet by crowd-abstractions. The British Labor party is the least crowd-minded of any of the socialistic organizations of our day. The Rochdale group has demonstrated that if it is co-operation that people desire as a solution of the economic problem, the way to solve it is to co-operate along definite and practicable lines; the co-operators have given up belief in the miracle of Jericho. The British trade-union movement has demonstrated the fact that organization of this kind succeeds in just the degree that it can rise above crowd-thinking and deal with a suggestion of concrete problems according to a statesmanlike policy of concerted action. To be sure it cannot be denied that the social reconstruction in England is seriously menaced by the tendency to crowd-behavior. At best it reveals hardly more than the superior advantage to the whole community of a slightly less degree of crowd-behavior; but when compared with the Socialist movement in Russia, Germany, and the United States, it would seem that radicalism in England has at least a remote promise of reaching a working solution of the social problem; and that is more than can at present be said for the others. In the light of what has been said about the psychology of revolution, I think we may hazard an opinion about the vaunted "Dictatorship of the Proletariat"--an idea that has provided some new catchwords for the crowd which is fascinated by the soviet revolution in Russia. Granting for the sake of argument that such a dictatorship would be desirable from any point of view--I do not see how the mere fact that people work proves their capacity to rule, horses also work--would it be possible? I think not. Even the temporary rule of Lenin in Russia can hardly be called a rule of the working class. Bolshevist propaganda will have it that such a dictatorship of the working class is positively necessary if we are ever to get away from the abuses of present "capitalistic society." Moreover, it is argued that this dictatorship of the organized workers could not be undemocratic, for since vested property is to be abolished and everyone forced to work for his living, all will belong to the working class, and therefore the dictatorship of the proletariat is but the dictatorship of all. In the first place, assuming that it is the dictatorship of all who survive the revolution, this dictatorship of all over each is not liberty for anyone; it may leave not the tiniest corner where one may be permitted to be master of himself. The tyranny of all over each is as different from freedom as is pharisaism from spiritual living. Again, what is there to show that this imagined dictatorship of all is to be shared equally by all, and if not have we not merely set up a new privileged class--the very thing which the Socialist Talmud has always declared it is the mission of the workers to destroy forever? While the workers are still a counter-crowd, struggling for power against the present ruling class, they are of course held together by a common cause--namely, their opposition to capital. But with labor's triumph, everybody becomes a worker, and there is no one longer to oppose. That which held the various elements of labor together in a common crowd of revolt has now ceased to exist, "class consciousness" has therefore no longer any meaning. Labor itself has ceased to exist _as a class_ by reason of its very triumph. What then remains to hold its various elements together in a common cause? Nothing at all. The solidarity of the workers vanishes, when the struggle which gave rise to that solidarity ceases. There remains now nothing but the humanitarian principle of the solidarity of the human race. Solidarity has ceased to be an economic fact, and has become purely "ideological." Since by hypothesis everyone is a worker, the dictatorship of the workers is a dictatorship based not on labor as such, but upon a universal human quality. It would be quite as truly a dictatorship of everyone if based upon any other common human quality--say, the fact that we are all bipeds, that we all have noses, or the fact of the circulation of the blood. As the purely proletarian character of this dictatorship becomes meaningless, the crowd-struggle switches from that of labor as a whole against capital, to a series of struggles within the dominant labor group itself. The experience of Russia has even now shown that if the soviets are to save themselves from nation-wide bankruptcy, specially trained men must be found to take charge of their industrial and political activities. Long training is necessary for the successful management of large affairs, and becomes all the more indispensable as industry, education, and political affairs are organized on a large scale. Are specially promising youths to be set apart from early childhood to prepare themselves for these positions of authority? Or shall such places be filled by those vigorous few who have the ambition and the strength to acquire the necessary training while at the same time working at their daily tasks? In either case an _intellectual class_ must be developed. Does anyone imagine that this new class of rulers will hesitate to make use of every opportunity to make itself a privileged class? "But what opportunity can there be," is the reply, "since private capital is to be abolished?" Very well, there have been ruling classes before in history who did not enjoy the privilege of owning private property. The clergy of the Middle Ages was such a class, and their dominance was quite as effective and as enduring as is that of our commercial classes today. But let us not deceive ourselves; in a soviet republic there would be opportunity aplenty for exploitation. As the solidarity of labor vanished, each important trade-group would enter into rivalry with the others for leadership in the co-operative commonwealth. Every economic advantage which any group possessed would be used in order to lord it over the rest. For instance, let us suppose that the workers in a strategic industry, such as the railways, or coal mines, should make the discovery that by going on a strike they could starve the community as a whole into submission and gain practically anything they might demand. Loyalty to the rest of labor would act no more as a check to such ambitions than does loyalty to humanity in general now. As we have seen, the crowd is always formed for the unconscious purpose of relaxing the social control by mechanisms which mutually justify such antisocial conduct on the part of members of the crowd. There is every reason, both economic and psychological, why the workers in each industry would become organized crowds seeking to gain for their particular groups the lion's share of the spoils of the social revolution. What would there be, then, to prevent the workers of the railroads or some other essential industry from exploiting the community quite as mercilessly as the capitalists are alleged to do at present? Nothing but the rivalry of other crowds who were seeking the same dominance. In time a _modus vivendi_ would doubtless be reached whereby social control would be shared by a few of the stronger unions--and their leaders. The strike has already demonstrated the fact that in the hands of a well-organized body of laborers, especially in those trades where the number of apprentices may be controlled, industrial power becomes a much more effective weapon than it is in the hands of the present capitalistic owners. A new dictatorship, therefore, must inevitably follow the social revolution, in support of which a favored minority will make use of the industrial power of the community, just as earlier privileged classes used military power and the power of private property. And this new dominance would be just as predatory, and would justify itself, as did the others, by the platitudes of crowd-thinking. The so-called dictatorship turns out, on examination, to be the dictatorship of one section of the proletariat over the rest of it. The dream of social redemption by such means is a pure _crowd-idea_. IX FREEDOM AND GOVERNMENT BY CROWDS The whole philosophy of politics comes down at last to a question of four words. Who is to govern? Compared with this question the problem of the form of government is relatively unimportant. Crowd-men, whatever political faith they profess, behave much the same when they are in power. The particular forms of political organization through which their power is exerted are mere incidentals. There is the same self-laudation, the same tawdry array of abstract principles, the same exploitation of under crowds, the same cunning in keeping up appearances, the same preference of the charlatan for positions of leadership and authority. Machiavelli's Prince, or Dostoievsky's Grand Inquisitor, would serve just as well as the model for the guidance of a Cæsar Borgia, a leader of Tammany Hall, a chairman of the National Committee of a political party, or a Nicolai Lenin. Ever since the days of Rousseau certain crowds have persisted in the conviction that all tyrannies were foisted upon an innocent humanity by a designing few. There may have been a few instances in history where such was the case, but tyrannies of that kind have never lasted long. For the most part the tyrant is merely the instrument and official symbol of a dominant crowd. His acts are his crowd's acts, and without his crowd to support him he very soon goes the way of the late Sultan of Turkey. The Cæsars were hardly more than "walking delegates," representing the ancient Roman Soldiers' soviet. They were made and unmade by the army which, though Cæsars might come and Cæsars might go, continued to lord it over the Roman world. While the army was pagan, even the mild Marcus Aurelius followed Nero's example of killing Christians. When finally the army itself became largely Christian, and the fiction that the Christians drank human blood, worshiped the head of an ass, and were sexually promiscuous was no longer good patriotic propaganda, the Emperor Constantine began to see visions of the Cross in the sky. The Pope, who is doubtless the most absolute monarch in the Occident, is, however, "infallible" only when he speaks _ex-cathedra_--that is, as the "Church Herself." His infallibility is that of the Church. All crowds in one way or another claim infallibility. The tyrant Robespierre survived only so long as did his particular revolutionary crowd in France. The fate of Savonarola was similar. From his pulpit he could rule Florence with absolute power just so long as he told his crowd what it wished to hear, and so long as his crowd was able to keep itself together and remain dominant. The Stuarts, Hohenzollerns, Hapsburgs, and Romanoffs, with all their claims to divine rights, were little more than the living symbols of their respective nation-crowds. They vanished when they ceased to represent successfully the crowd-will. In general, then, it may be said that _where the crowd is, there is tyranny_. Tyranny may be exercised through one agent or through many, but it nearly always comes from the same source--the crowd. Crowd-rule may exist in a monarchical form of government, or in a republic. The personnel of the dominant crowd will vary with a change in the form of the state, but the spirit will be much the same. Conservative writers are in the habit of assuming that democracy is the rule of crowds pure and simple. Whether crowd-government is more absolute in a democracy than in differently constituted states is a question. The aim of democratic constitutions like our own is to prevent any special crowd from intrenching itself in a position of social control and thus becoming a ruling class. As the experiment has worked out thus far it can hardly be said that it has freed us from the rule of crowds. It has, however, multiplied the number of mutually suspicious crowds, so that no one of them has for long enjoyed a sufficiently great majority to make itself clearly supreme, though it must be admitted that up to the present the business-man crowd has had the best of the deal. The story of the recent Eighteenth Amendment shows how easy it is for a determined crowd, even though in a minority, to force its favorite dogmas upon the whole community. We shall doubtless see a great deal more of this sort of thing in the future than we have in the past. And if the various labor groups should become sufficiently united in a "proletarian" crowd there is nothing to prevent their going to any extreme. We are passing through a period of socialization. All signs point to the establishment of some sort of social state or industrial commonwealth. No one can foresee the extent, to which capital now privately owned is to be transferred to the public. It is doubtful if anything can be done to check this process. The tendency is no sooner blocked along one channel than it begins to seep through another. In itself there need be nothing alarming about this transition. If industry could be better co-ordinated and more wisely administered by non-crowd men for the common good, the change might work out to our national advantage. It is possible to conceive of a society in which a high degree of social democracy, even communism, might exist along with a maximum of freedom and practical achievement. But we should first have to get over our crowd-ways of thinking and acting. People would have to regard the state as a purely administrative affair. They would have to organize for definite practical ends, and select their leaders and administrators very much as certain corporations now do, strictly on the basis of their competency. Political institutions would have to be made such that they could not be seized by special groups to enhance themselves at the expense of the rest. Partisanship would have to cease. Every effort would have to be made to loosen the social control over the individual's personal habits. The kind of people who have an inner gnawing to regulate their neighbors, the kind who cannot accept the fact of their psychic inferiority and must consequently make crowds by way of compensation, would have to be content to mind their own business. Police power would have to be reduced to the minimum necessary to protect life and keep the industries running. People would have to become much more capable of self-direction as well as of voluntary co-operation than they are now. They would have to be more resentful of petty official tyranny, more independent in their judgments and at the same time more willing to accept the advice and authority of experts. They would have to place the control of affairs in the hands of the type of man against whose dominance the weaker brethren have in all ages waged war--that is, the free spirits and natural masters of men. All pet dogmas and cult ideas that clashed with practical considerations would have to be swept away. Such a conception of society is, of course, wholly utopian. It could not possibly be realized by people behaving and thinking as crowds. With our present crowd-making habits, the process of greater socialization of industry means only increased opportunities for crowd-tyranny. In the hands of a dominant crowd an industrial state would be indeed what Herbert Spencer called the "coming slavery." As it is, the state has become overgrown and bureaucratic. Commissions of all sorts are being multiplied year by year. Public debts are piled up till they approach the point of bankruptcy. Taxes are increasing in the same degree. Statutes are increased in number until one can hardly breathe without violating some decree, ordinance, or bit of sumptuary legislation. Every legislative assembly is constantly besieged by the professional lobbyists of a swarm of reformist crowds. Busybodies of every description twist the making and the enforcement of law into conformity with their peculiar prejudices. Censorships of various kinds are growing in number and effrontery. Prohibition is insincerely put forth as a war measure. Ignorant societies for the "suppression of vice" maul over our literature and our art. Parents of already more children than they can support may not be permitted lawfully to possess scientific knowledge of the means of the prevention of conception. The government, both state and national, takes advantage of the war for freedom to pass again the hated sort of "alien and sedition" laws from which the country thought it had freed itself a century ago. A host of secret agents and volunteer "guardians of public safety" are ready to place every citizen under suspicion of disloyalty to the government. Any advocacy of significant change in established political practices is regarded as sedition. An inquisition is set up for the purpose of inquiring into people's private political opinions. Reputable citizens are, on the flimsiest hearsay evidence or rumor that they entertain nonconformist views, subjected to public censure by notoriety-seeking "investigation commissions"--and by an irresponsible press. Only members of an established political party in good standing are permitted to criticize the acts of the President of the United States. Newspapers and magazines are suppressed and denied the privilege of the mails at the whim of opinionated post-office officers or of ignorant employees of the Department of Justice. An intensely patriotic weekly paper in New York, which happened to hold unconventional views on the subject of religion, has had certain issues of its paper suppressed for the offense of publishing accounts of the alleged misconduct of the Y. M. C. A. The stupidity and irresponsibility of the Russian spy-system which has grown up in this country along with our overweening state is illustrated by an amusing little experience which happened to myself several months after the signing of the armistice with Germany. All through the trying months of the war the great audience at Cooper Union had followed me with a loyalty and tolerance which was truly wonderful. Though I knew that many had not always been in hearty accord with my rather spontaneous and outspoken Americanism, the Cooper Union Forum was one of the few places in America where foreign and labor elements were present in large numbers in which there was no outbreak or demonstration of any kind which could possibly be interpreted as un-American. We all felt that perhaps the People's Institute with its record of twenty years' work behind it had been of some real service to the nation in adhering strictly to its educational method and keeping its discussions wholly above the level of any sort of crowd-propaganda. However, in the course of our educational work, it became my task to give to a selected group of advanced students a course of lectures upon the Theory of Knowledge. The course was announced with the title, "How Free Men Think," and the little folder contained the statement that it was to be a study of the Humanist logic, with Professor F. C. S. Schiller's philosophical writings to be used as textbooks. The publication of this folder announcing the course was held up by the printer, and we learned that he had been told not to print it by some official personage whose identity was not revealed. Notwithstanding the fact that Schiller is professor of philosophy in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and is one of the best-known philosophical writers in the English-speaking world, and holds views practically identical with what is called the "American School," led by the late William James, it developed that the government agents--or whoever they were--objected to the publication of the announcement on the ground that they _thought Schiller was a German_. Such is our intellectual freedom regarding matters which have no political significance whatever, in a world made "safe for democracy." But we must not permit ourselves to despair or grow weary of life in this "safety first" world--waves of pseudo-patriotic panic often follow on the heels of easily won victory. Crowd-phenomena of such intensity are usually of short duration, as these very excesses soon produce the inevitable reaction. The question, however, arises, is democracy more conducive to freedom than other forms of political organization? To most minds the terms "liberty" and "democracy" are almost synonymous. Those who consider that liberty consists in having a vote, in giving everyone a voice regardless of whether he has anything to say, will have no doubts in the matter. But to those whose thinking means more than the mere repetition of eighteenth-century crowd-ideas, the question will reduce itself to this: Is democracy more conducive to crowd-behavior than other forms of government? Le Bon and those who identify the crowd with the masses would answer with an _a priori_ affirmative. I do not believe the question may be answered in any such off-hand manner. It is a question of fact rather than of theory. Theoretically, since we have demonstrated I think that the crowd is not the common people as such, but is a peculiar form of psychic behavior, it would seem that there is no logical necessity for holding that democracy must always and everywhere be the rule of the mob. And we have seen that other forms of society may also suffer from crowd-rule. I suspect that the repugnance which certain aristocratic, and bourgeois writers also, show for democracy is less the horror of crowd-rule as such, than dislike of seeing control pass over to a crowd other than their own. Theoretically at least, democracy calls for a maximum of self-government and personal freedom. The fact that democracy is rapidly degenerating into tyranny of all over each may be due, not to the democratic ideal itself, but the growing tendency to crowd-behavior in modern times. It may be that certain democratic ideals are not so much causes as effects of crowd-thinking and action. It cannot be denied that such ideals come in very handy these days in the way of furnishing crowds with effective catchwords for their propaganda and of providing them with ready-made justifications for their will to power. I should say that democracy has _indirectly permitted_, rather than directly caused, an extension in the range of thought and behavior over which the crowd assumes dictatorship. In comparing democracy with more autocratic forms of government, this extent or range of crowd-control over the individual is important. Of course, human beings will never permit to one another a very large degree of personal freedom. It is to the advantage of everyone in the struggle for existence to reduce his neighbors as much as possible to automatons. In this way one's own adjustment to the behavior of others is made easier. If we can induce or compel all about us to confine their actions to perfect routine, then we may predict with a fair degree of accuracy their future behavior, and be prepared in advance to meet it. We all dread the element of the unexpected, and nowhere so much as in the conduct of our neighbors. If we could only get rid of the humanly unexpected, society would be almost fool-proof. Hence the resistance to new truths, social change, progress, nonconformity of any sort; hence our orthodoxies and conventions; hence our incessant preaching to our neighbors to "be good"; hence the fanaticism with which every crowd strives to keep its believers in line. Much of this insistence on regularity is positively necessary. Without it there could be no social or moral order at all. It is in fact the source and security of the accepted values of civilization, as Schiller has shown. But the process of keeping one another in line is carried much farther than is necessary to preserve the social order. It is insisted upon to the extent that will guarantee the survival, even the dominance, of the spiritually sick, the morally timid, the trained-animal men, those who would revert to savagery, or stand utterly helpless the moment a new situation demanded that they do some original thinking in the place of performing the few stereotyped tricks which they have acquired; the dog-in-the-manger people, who because they can eat no meat insist that all play the dyspeptic lest the well-fed outdistance them in the race of life or set them an example in following which they get the stomach ache; the people who, because they cannot pass a saloon door without going in and getting drunk, cannot see a moving-picture, or read a modern book, or visit a bathing beach without being tormented with their gnawing promiscuous eroticism, insist upon setting up their own perverted dilemmas as the moral standard for everybody. Such people exist in great numbers in every society. They are always strong for "brotherly love," for keeping up appearances, for removing temptation from the path of life, for uniform standards of belief and conduct. Each crowd, in its desire to become the majority, to hold the weaker brethren within its fold, and especially as everyone of us has a certain amount of this "little brother" weakness in his own nature, which longs to be pampered if only the pampering can be done without hurting our pride--the crowd invariably plays to this sort of thing and bids for its support. As the little brother always expresses his survival-values in terms of accepted crowd-ideas, no crowd can really turn him down without repudiating its abstract principles. In fact, it is just this weakness in our nature which, as we have seen, leads us to become crowd-men in the first place. Furthermore, we have seen that any assertion of personal independence is resented by the crowd because it weakens the crowd-faith of all. The measure of freedom granted to men will depend, therefore, upon how many things the crowd attempts to consider its business. There is a law of inertia at work here. In monarchical forms of government, where the crowd-will is exercised through a single human agent, the monarch may be absolute in regard to certain things which are necessary to his own and his crowd's survival. In such matters "he can do no wrong"; there is little or no appeal from his decisions. But the very thoroughness with which he hunts down nonconformity in matters which directly concern his authority, leaves him little energy for other things. Arbitrary power is therefore usually limited to relatively few things, since the autocrat cannot busy himself with everything that is going on. Within the radius of the things which the monarch attempts to regulate he may be an intolerable tyrant, but so long as he is obeyed in these matters, so long as things run on smoothly on the surface, there are all sorts of things which he would prefer not to have brought to his attention, as witness, for instance, the letter of Trajan to the younger Pliny. With a democracy it is different. While the exercise of authority is never so inexorable--indeed democratic states frequently pass laws for the purpose of placing the community on record "for righteousness," rather than with the intention of enforcing such laws--the number of things which a democracy will presume to regulate is vastly greater than in monarchical states. As sovereignty is universal, everybody becomes lawmaker and regulator of his neighbors. As the lawmaking power is present everywhere, nothing can escape its multieyed scrutiny. All sorts of foibles, sectional interests, group demands, class prejudices become part of the law of the land. A democracy is no respecter of persons and can, under its dogma of equality before the law, admit of no exceptions. The whole body politic is weighed down with all the several bits of legislation which may be demanded by any of the various groups within it. An unusual inducement and opportunity are thus provided for every crowd to force its own crowd-dilemmas upon all. The majority not only usurps the place of the king, but it tends to subject the whole range of human thought and behavior to its authority--everything, in fact, that anyone, disliking in his neighbors or finding himself tempted to do, may wish to "pass a law against." Every personal habit and private opinion becomes a matter for public concern. Custom no longer regulates; all is rationalized according to the logic of the crowd-mind. Public policy sits on the doorstep of every man's personal conscience. The citizen in us eats up the man. Not the tiniest personal comfort may yet be left us in private enjoyment. All that cannot be translated into propaganda or hold its own in a legislative lobby succumbs. If we are to preserve anything of our personal independence, we must organize ourselves into a crowd like the rest and get out in the streets and set up a public howl. Unless some one pretty soon starts a pro-tobacco crusade and proves to the newspaper-reading public that the use of nicotine by everybody in equal amount is absolutely necessary for the preservation of the American home, for economic efficiency and future military supremacy, we shall doubtless all soon be obliged to sneak down into the cellar and smoke our pipes in the dark. Here we see the true argument for a written constitution, and also, I think, a psychological principle which helps us to decide what should be in a constitution and what should not. The aim of a constitution is to put a limit to the number of things concerning which a majority-crowd may lord it over the individual. I am aware that the appeal to the Constitution is often abused by predatory interests which skulk behind its phraseology in their defense of special economic privilege. But, nevertheless, people in a democracy may be free only so long as they submit to the dictation of the majority in _just and only those few interests concerning which a monarch, were he in existence, would take advantage of them for his personal ends_. There are certain political and economic relations which cannot be left to the chance exploitation of any individual or group that happens to come along. Some one is sure to come along, for you may be sure that if there is a possible opportunity to take advantage, some one will do it sooner or later. Now because people have discovered that there is no possible individual freedom in respect to certain definite phases of their common life which are always exposed to seizure by exploiters, democrats have substituted a tyranny of the majority for the tyranny of the one or the favored few which would otherwise be erected at these points. Since it is necessary to give up freedom in these regions anyway, there is some compensation in spreading the tyrannizing around so that each gets a little share of it. But every effort should be made to _limit the tyranny of the majority to just these points_. And the line limiting the number of things that the majority may meddle with must be drawn as hard and fast as possible, since every dominant crowd, as we have seen, will squeeze the life out of everything human it can get its hands on. The minute a majority finds that it can extend its tyranny beyond this strictly constitutionally limited sphere, nothing remains to stop it; it becomes worse than an autocracy. Tyranny is no less abhorrent just because the number of tyrants is increased. A nation composed of a hundred million little tyrants snooping and prying into every corner may be democratic, but, personally, if that ever comes to be the choice I think I should prefer one tyrant. He might occasionally look the other way and leave me a free man, long enough at least for me to light my pipe. True democrats will be very jealous of government. Necessary as it is, there is no magic about government, no saving grace. Government cannot redeem us from our sins; it will always require all the decency we possess to redeem the government. Government always represents the moral dilemmas of the worst people, not the best. It cannot give us freedom; it can give or grant us nothing but what it first takes from us. It is we who grant to the government certain powers and privileges necessary for its proper functioning. We do not exist for the government; it exists for us. We are not its servants; it is our servant. Government at best is a useful and necessary machine, a mechanism by which we protect ourselves from one another. It has no more rights and dignities of its own than are possessed by any other machine. Its laws should be obeyed, for the same reason that the laws of mechanics should be obeyed--otherwise the machine will not run. As a matter of fact it is not so much government itself against which the democrat must be on guard, but the various crowds which are always seeking to make use of the machinery of government in order to impose their peculiar tyranny upon all and invade the privacy of everyone. By widening the radius of governmental control, the crowd thus pinches down the individuality of everyone with the same restrictions as are imposed by the crowd upon its own members. Conway says: Present-day Democracy rests on a few organized parties. What would a democracy be like if based on millions of independent Joneses each of whom decided to vote this or that way as he pleased? The dominion of the crowd would be at an end, both for better and for worse. We shall not behold any such revolution in the world as we know it.... Thus we must conclude that the crowd by its very nature tends, and always must tend, to diminish (if possible, to the vanishing point) the freedom of its members, and not in one or two respects alone, but in all. The crowd's desire is to swallow up the individuality of its members and reduce them one and all to the condition of crowd units whose whole life is lived according to the crowd-pattern and is sacrificed and devoted to crowd-interests.... An excellent illustration of this crowd-dominance crops up in my afternoon paper.... It appears that in certain parts of the country artisans, by drinking too much alcohol, are reducing their capacity of doing their proper work, which happens at the moment to be of great importance to the country at war. Many interferences with liberty are permitted in war time by general consent. It is accordingly proposed to put difficulties in the way of these drinkers by executive orders. One would suppose that the just way to do this would be to make a list of the drinkers and prohibit their indulgence. But this is not the way the crowd works. To it everyone of its constituent members is like another, and all must be drilled and controlled alike.... Whatever measure is adopted must fall evenly on all classes, upon club, restaurant and hotel as upon public house. Could anything be more absurd? Lest a gunmaker or a shipbuilder in Glasgow should drink too much, Mr. Asquith must not take a glass of sherry with his lunch at the Athenæum!... We live in days when crowd dominion over individuals has been advancing at a headlong pace.... If he is not to drink in London lest a Glasgow engineer should get drunk, why should not his eating be alike limited? Why not the style and cut of his clothes? Why not the size and character of his house? He must cause his children to be taught at least the minimum of muddled information which the government calls education. He must insure for his dependents the attention of an all-educated physician, and the administration of drugs known to be useless. If the crowd had its way every mother and infant would be under the orders of inspectors, regardless of the capacity of the parent. We should all be ordered about in every relation of life from infancy to manhood.... Freedom would utterly vanish, and this, not because the crowd can arrange things better than the individual. It cannot. It lacks the individual's brains. The ultimate reason for all this interference is the crowd's desire to swallow up and control the unit. The instinct of all crowds is to dominate, to capture and overwhelm the individual, to make him their slave, to absorb all his life for their service. The criticism has often been made of democracy that it permits too much freedom; the reverse of this is nearer the truth. It was de Tocqueville, I think, who first called attention to the "tyranny of the majority" in democratic America. Probably one of the most comprehensive and discriminating studies that have ever been made of the habits and institutions of any nation may be found in the work of this observing young Frenchman who visited our country at the close of its first half century of political independence. De Tocqueville's account of Democracy in America is still good reading, much of it being applicable to the present. This writer was in no sense an unfriendly critic. He praised much that he saw, but even in those days (the period of 1830) he was not taken in by the fiction that, because the American people live under laws of their own making, they are therefore free. Much of the following passages taken here and there from Chapters XIV and XV is as true today as it was when it was written: America is therefore a free country in which, lest anybody be hurt by your remarks, you are not allowed to speak freely of private individuals, of the State, or the citizens, or the authorities, of public or private undertakings, in short of anything at all, except perhaps the climate and the soil, and even then Americans will be found ready to defend both as if they had concurred in producing them. The American submits without a murmur to the authority of the pettiest magistrate. This truth prevails even in the trivial details of national life. An American cannot converse--he speaks to you as if he were addressing a meeting. If an American were condemned to confine himself to his own affairs, he would be robbed of one-half of his existence; his wretchedness would be unbearable.... The moral authority of the majority in America is based on the notion that there is more intelligence and wisdom in a number of men united than in a single individual.... The theory of equality is thus applied to the intellects of men. The French, under the old regime, held it for a maxim that the King could do no wrong. The Americans entertain the same opinion with regard to the majority. In the United States, all parties are willing to recognize the rights of the majority, because they all hope at some time to be able to exercise them to their own advantage. The majority therefore in that country exercises a prodigious actual authority and a power of opinion which is nearly as great (as that of the absolute autocrat). No obstacles exist which can impair or even retard its progress so as to make it heed the complaints of those whom it crushes upon its path. This state of things is harmful in itself and dangerous for the future. As the majority is the only power which it is important to court, all its projects are taken up with the greatest ardor; but no sooner is its attention distracted than all this ardor ceases. There is no power on earth so worthy of honor in itself, or clothed with rights so sacred, that I would admit its uncontrolled and all-predominant authority. In my opinion the main evil of the present democratic institutions of the United States does not arise, as is so often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their irresistible strength.... I am not so much alarmed by the excessive liberty which reigns in that country, as by the inadequate securities which one finds against tyranny. When an individual or party is wronged in the United States, to whom can he apply for redress? It is in the examination of the exercise of thought in the United States that we clearly perceive how far the power of the majority surpasses all the powers with which we are acquainted in Europe. At the present time the most absolute monarchs in Europe cannot prevent certain opinions hostile to their authority from circulating in secret through their dominions and even in their courts. It is not so in America. So long as the majority is undecided, discussion is carried on, but as soon as its decision is announced everyone is silent.... I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion. Within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them. Not that he is in danger of an _auto-da-fe_, but he is exposed to continued obloquy and persecution. His political career is closed for ever. Every sort of compensation, even that of celebrity, is refused him. Those who think like him have not the courage to speak out, and abandon him to silence. He yields at length, overcome by the daily effort which he has to make, and subsides into silence as if he felt remorse for having spoken the truth. Fetters and headsmen were coarse instruments ... but civilization has perfected despotism itself. Under absolute despotism of one man, the body was attacked to subdue the soul, but the soul escaped the blows and rose superior. Such is not the course adopted in democratic republics; there the body is left free, but the soul is enslaved.... The ruling power in the United States is not to be made game of. The smallest reproach irritates its sensibilities. The slightest joke which has any foundation in truth renders it indignant. Everything must be the subject of encomium. No writer, whatever his eminence, can escape paying his tribute of adoration to his fellow citizens. The majority lives in the perpetual utterance of self-applause, and there are certain truths which Americans can only learn from strangers, or from experience. If America has not yet had any great writers, the reason is given in these facts--there can be no literary genius without freedom of opinion, and freedom of opinion does not exist in America. Such passages as the above, quoted from the words of a friendly student of American democracy, show the impression which, notwithstanding our popular prattle about freedom, thoughtful foreigners have since the beginning received. And de Tocqueville wrote long before crowd-thinking had reached anything like the development we see at present. To-day the tyrannizing is not confined to the majority-crowd. All sorts of minority-crowds, impatient of waiting until they can by fair means persuade the majority to agree with them, begin to practice coercion upon everyone within reach the minute they fall into possession of some slight advantage which may be used as a weapon. From the industrial side we were first menaced by the "invisible government" of organized vested interests; now, by a growing tendency to government by strikes. Organized gangs of all sorts have at last learned the amusing trick of pointing a pistol at the public's head and threatening it with starvation, and up go its hands, and the gang gains whatever it wants for itself, regardless of anyone else. But this "hold-up game" is by no means confined to labor. Capitalistic soviets have since the beginning of the war taken advantage of situations to enhance their special crowd-interests. The following, quoted from a letter written during the war to the _Atlantic Monthly_, by a thoroughly American writer, Charles D. Stewart, describes a type of mob rule which existed in almost every part of the nation while we were fighting for freedom abroad: Carlyle said that "Of all forms of government, a government of busybodies is the worst." This is true. It is worse than Prussianism, because that is one form of government, at least; and worse than Socialism, because Socialism would be run by law, anyway. But government by busybodies has neither head nor tail; working outside the law, it becomes lawless; and having no law to support it, it finally depends for its enforcement upon hoodlums and mob rule. When the respectable and wealthy elements are resorting to this sort of government, abetted by the newspapers and by all sorts of busybody societies intent upon "government by public sentiment," we finally have a new thing in the world and a most obnoxious one--mob rule by the rich; with the able assistance of the hoodlums--always looking for a chance. It starts as follows: The government wishes a certain amount of money. It therefore appeals to local pride; it sets a "quota," which has been apportioned to each locality, and promises of a fine "over-the-top" flag to be hoisted over the courthouse. All well and good; local pride is a very fine thing, competition is wholesome. But the struggle that ensues is not so much local pride as it looks to be. Milwaukee, for instance, a big manufacturing center, is noted for its German population. This, the local proprietors fear, may affect its trade. It may be boycotted to some extent. A traveling man comes back and says that a certain dealer in stoves refuses to buy stoves made in Milwaukee! Ha!--Milwaukee must redeem its reputation; it must always go over the top: it must be able to affix this stamp to all its letters. Now, as the state has a quota, and the county and city has each its quota, so each individual must have his quota. Each individual must be "assessed" to buy a certain quota [government war loan] of bonds. Success must be made sure: the manufacturers must see the honor of Milwaukee, and Wisconsin, maintained. It is not compulsory to give a certain "assessed" amount to the Y. M. C. A.; and the government does not make a certain quota of bonds compulsory on citizens--oh, no! it is not compulsory, only you must abide by your assessment. And we will see that you do. No excuse accepted.... Picture to yourself the following "collection committee" traveling out of the highly civilized, "kultured" city of Milwaukee. Twenty-five automobiles containing sixty to seventy respectable citizens of Milwaukee. One color guard (a flag at the head) with two home guardsmen in citizens' clothes. Two deputy sheriffs. One "official" photographer. One "official" stenographer. One banker (this personage to make arrangements to lend a farmer the money in case he protests that he has subscribed too much already). This phalanx, entirely lawless, moves down upon a farmer who is urging two horses along a cloddy furrow, doing his fall plowing. They form a semicircle about him; the speechmaker says, "Let us salute the flag" (watching him to see that he does it promptly); and while his horses stand there the speechmaker delivers a speech. He must subscribe his "assessed" amount--no excuses accepted. If he owes for the farm, and has just paid his interest, and has only fifteen dollars to go on with, it makes no difference. He must subscribe the amount of his "assessment," and "sign here." If not, what happens? The farmer all the time, of course, is probably scared out of his wits, or does not know what to make of this delegation of notables bearing down upon his solitary task in the fields. But if he argues too much, he finds this. They have a large package of yellow placards reading: THE OCCUPANT OF THESE PREMISES HAS REFUSED TO TAKE HIS JUST SHARE OF LIBERTY BONDS. And they put them all over his place. He probably signs. Now bear in mind that this method is not practiced merely against farmers who have made unpatriotic remarks, or have refused to support the war. It is practiced against a farmer who has taken only one hundred dollars when he was assessed a hundred and fifty--and this is to make him "come across" with the remainder. You might ask, Is this comic opera or is it government? And now we come to the conclusion. Imagine yourself either a workman in Milwaukee, or a farmer out in the country. You are dealt with in this entirely Prussian manner--possibly the committee, which knows little of your financial difficulties in your home, has just assessed you arbitrarily. Your constitutional rights do not count. There is no remedy. If you are painted yellow, the District Attorney will pass the buck--he knows what the manufacturer expects of him, and the financier. The state officers of these drives, Federal representatives, are always Milwaukee bankers. But for you there is no remedy if you are "assessed" too high. With the Y. M. C. A., and other religious society drives, the same assessment scheme is worked. You cannot give to the Y. M. C. A. You are told right off how much you are to pay. It would seem that in our democracy freedom consists first of freedom to vote; second, of freedom to make commercial profit; third, of freedom to make propaganda; fourth, of freedom from intellectual and moral responsibility. Each of these "liberties" is little more than a characteristic form of crowd-behavior. The vote, our most highly prized modern right, is nearly always so determined by crowd-thinking that as an exercise of individual choice it is a joke. Men are herded in droves and delivered by counties in almost solid blocks by professional traders of political influence. Before each election a campaign of crowd-making is conducted in which every sort of vulgarity and insincerity has survival value, in which real issues are so lost in partisan propaganda as to become unrecognizable. When the vote is cast it is commonly a choice between professional crowd-leaders whose competency consists in their ability to Billy Sundayize the mob rather than in any marked fitness for the office to which they aspire--also between the horns of a dilemma which wholly misstates the issue involved and is trumped up chiefly for purposes of political advertising. Time and again the franchise thus becomes an agency by which rival crowds may fasten their own tyrannies upon one another. Freedom to make commercial profit, to get ahead of others in the race for dollars, is what democracy generally means by "opportunity." Nothing is such a give-away of the modern man as the popular use of the word "individualism." It is no longer a philosophy of _becoming_ something genuine and unique, but of _getting_ something and using it according to your own whims and for personal ends regardless of the effect upon others. This pseudo-individualism encourages the rankest selfishness and exploitation to go hand in hand with the most deadly spiritual conformity and inanity. Such "individualism" is, as I have pointed out, a crowd-idea, for it is motivated by a cheaply disguised ideal of personal superiority through the mere fact of possessing things. Paradoxical as it may appear at first sight, this is really the old crowd notion of "equality," for, great as are the differences of wealth which result, every man may cherish the fiction that he possesses the sort of ability necessary for this kind of social distinction. Such superiority thus has little to do with personal excellence; it is the result of the external accident of success. One man may still be "as good as another." Against this competitive struggle now there has grown up a counter-crowd ideal of collectivism. But here also the fiction of universal spiritual equality is maintained; the competitive struggle is changed from an individual to a gang struggle, while the notion that personal worth is the result of the environment and may be achieved by anyone whose belly is filled still persists. Proletarians for the most part wish, chinch-bug fashion, to crawl into the Elysian fields now occupied by the hated capitalists. The growing tendency to industrial democracy will probably in the near future cut off this freedom to make money, which has been the chief "liberty" of political democracy until now, but whether liberty in general will be the gainer thereby remains to be seen. One rather prominent Socialist in New York declares that liberty is a "myth." He is correct, in so far as the democratic movement, either political or social, is a crowd-phenomenon. Socialist agitators are always demanding "liberty" nevertheless, but the liberty which they demand is little more than freedom to make their own propaganda. And this leads us to the third liberty permitted by modern democracy. The "freedom of speech" which is everywhere demanded in the name of democracy is not at all freedom in the expression of individual opinion. It is only the demand for advertising space on the part of various crowds for the publication of their shibboleths and propaganda. Each crowd, while demanding this freedom for itself, seeks to deny it to other crowds, and all unite in denying it to the non-crowd man wherever possible. The Puritan's "right to worship according to the dictates of a man's own conscience" did not apply to Quakers, Deists, or Catholics. When Republicans were "black abolitionists" they would have regarded any attempt to suppress _The Liberator_, as edited by William Lloyd Garrison, as an assault upon the constitutional liberties of the whole nation. But they are not now particularly interested in preserving the constitutional liberties of the nation as represented in the right of circulation of _The Liberator_, edited by Max Eastman. In Jefferson's time, when Democrats were accused of "Jacobinism," they invoked the "spirit of 1776" in opposition to the alien and sedition laws under which their partisan propaganda suffered limitation. To-day, when they are striving to outdo the Republicans in "Americanization propaganda," they actually stand sponsor for an espionage law which would have made Jefferson or Andrew Jackson froth at the mouth. Socialists are convinced that liberty is dead because Berger and Debs are convicted of uttering opinions out of harmony with temporarily dominant crowd-ideas of patriotism. But when Theodore Dreiser was put under the ban for the crime of writing one of the few good novels produced in America, I do not recall that Socialists held any meetings of protest in Madison Square Garden. I have myself struggled in vain for three hours or more on a street corner in Green Point trying to tell liberty-loving Socialists the truth about the Gary schools. When the politicians in our legislative assemblies were tricked into passing the obviously unliberal Eighteenth Amendment, I was much interested in learning how the bulk of the Socialists in the Cooper Union audiences felt about it. As I had expected, they regarded it as an unpardonable infringement of personal freedom, as a typical piece of American Puritan hypocrisy and pharisaism. But they were, on the whole, in favor of it because they thought it would be an aid to Bolshevist propaganda, since it would make the working class still more discontented! Such is liberty in a crowd-governed democracy.... It is nothing but the _liberty of crowds to be crowds_. The fourth liberty in democratic society to-day is freedom from moral and intellectual responsibility. This is accomplished by the magic of substituting the machinery of the law for self-government, bureaucratic meddlesomeness for conscience, crowd-tyranny for personal decency. Professor Faguet has called democracy the "cult of incompetence" and the "dread of responsibility." He is not far wrong, but these epithets apply not so much to democracy as such as to democracy under the heel of the crowd. The original aim of democracy, so far as its philosophical thinkers conceived of it, was to set genius free from the trammels of tradition, realize a maximum of self-government, and make living something of an adventure. But crowds do not so understand democracy. Every crowd looks upon democracy simply as a scheme whereby it may have its own way. We have seen that the crowd-mind as such is a device for "kidding" ourselves, for representing the easiest path to the enhancement of our self-feeling as something highly moral, for making our personal right appear like universal righteousness, for dressing up our will to lord it over others, as if it were devotion to impersonal principle. As we have seen, the crowd therefore insists upon universal conformity; goodness means only making everyone alike. By taking refuge in the abstract and ready-made system of crowd-ideas, the unconscious will to power is made to appear what it is not; the burden of responsibility is transferred to the group with its fiction of absolute truth. Le Bon noted the fact of the irresponsibility of crowds, but thought that such irresponsibility was due to the fact that the crowd, being an anonymous gathering, the individual could lose his identity in the multitude. The psychology of the unconscious has provided us with what I think is a better explanation, but the fact of irresponsibility remains and is evident in all the influence of crowd-thinking upon democratic institutions. The crowd-ideal of society is one in which every individual is protected not only against exploitation, but against temptation--protected therefore _against himself_. The whole tendency of democracy in our times is toward just such inanity. Without the least critical analysis of accepted moral dilemmas, we are all to be made moral in spite of ourselves, regardless of our worth, without effort on our part, moral in the same way that machines are moral, by reducing the will to mere automatic action, leaving no place for choice and uncertainty, having everyone wound up and oiled and regulated to run at the same speed. Each crowd therefore strives to make its own moral ideas the law of the land. Law becomes thus a sort of anthology of various existing crowd-hobbies. In the end moral responsibility is passed over to legislatures, commissions, detectives, inspectors, and bureaucrats. Anything that "gets by" the public censor, however rotten, we may wallow in with a perfect feeling of respectability. The right and necessity of choosing our way is superseded by a system of statutory taboos, which as often as not represent the survival values of the meanest little people in the community--the kind who cannot look upon a nude picture without a struggle with their perverted eroticism, or entertain a significant idea without losing their faith. The effect of all this upon the intellectual progress and the freedom of art in democratic society is obvious, and is just what, to one who understands the mechanisms of the crowd-mind, might be expected. No wonder de Tocqueville said he found less freedom of opinion in America than elsewhere. Explain it as you will, the fact is here staring us in the face. Genius in our democracy is not free. It must beg the permission of little crowd-men for its right to exist. It must stand, hat in hand, at the window of the commissioner of licenses and may gain a permit for only so much of its inspiration as happens to be of use-value to the uninspired. It must play the conformist, pretend to be hydra-headed rather than unique, useful rather than genuine, a servant of the "least of these" rather than their natural master. It must advertise, but it may not prophesy. It may flatter and patronize the stupid, but it may not stand up taller than they. In short, democracy everywhere puts out the eyes of its Samson, cuts off his golden-rayed locks, and makes him grind corn to fill the bellies of the Philistines. From the beginning of the nineteenth century until now it has been chiefly the business man, the political charlatan, the organizer of trade, the rediscoverer of popular prejudices who have been preferred in our free modern societies. Keats died of a broken heart; Shelley and Wagner were exiled; Beethoven and Schubert were left to starve; Darwin was condemned to hell fire; Huxley was denied his professorship; Schopenhauer was ostracized by the élite; Nietzsche ate his heart out in solitude; Walt Whitman had to be fed by a few English admirers, while his poems were prohibited as obscene in free America; Emerson was for the greater part of his life _persona non grata_ at his own college; Ingersoll was denied the political career which his genius merited; Poe lived and died in poverty; Theodore Parker was consigned to perdition; Percival Lowell and Simon Newcomb lived and died almost unrecognized by the American public. Nearly every artist and writer and public teacher is made to understand from the beginning that he will be popular in just the degree that he strangles his genius and becomes a vulgar, commonplace, insincere clown. On the other hand steel manufacturers and railroad kings, whose business record will often scarcely stand the light, are rewarded with fabulous millions and everyone grovels before them. When one turns from the "commercialism," which everywhere seems to be the dominant and most sincere interest in democratic society, when one seeks for spiritual values to counterbalance this weight of materialism, one finds in the prevailing spirit little more than a cult of naïve sentimentality. It can hardly be denied that if Shakespeare, Boccaccio, Rabelais, Montaigne, Cassanova, Goethe, Dostoievsky, Ibsen, Tolstoi, Rousseau, St. Augustine, Milton, Nietzsche, Swinburne, Rossetti, or even Flaubert, were alive and writing his masterpiece in America to-day, he would be instantly silenced by some sort of society for the prevention of vice, and held up to the public scorn and ridicule as a destroyer of our innocence and a corrupter of public morals. The guardians of our characters are ceaselessly expurgating the classics lest we come to harm reading them. I often think that the only reason why the Bible is permitted to pass through our mails is because hardly anyone ever reads it. It is this same habit of crowd-thinking which accounts to a great extent for the dearth of intellectual curiosity in this country. From what we have seen to be the nature of the crowd-mind, it is to be expected that in a democracy in which crowds play an important part the condition described by de Tocqueville will generally prevail. There is much truth in his statement that it seems at first as if the minds of all the Americans "were formed upon the same model." Spiritual variation will be encouraged only in respect to matters in which one crowd differs from another. The conformist spirit will prevail in all. Intellectual leadership will inevitably pass to the "tight-minded." There will be violent conflicts of ideas, but they will be crowd ideas. The opinions about which people differ are for the most part ready-made. They are concerned with the choice of social mechanisms, but hardly with valuations. With nearly all alike, there is a notion that mankind may be redeemed by the magic of externally manipulating the social environment. There is a wearisome monotony of professions of optimism, idealism, humanitarianism, with little knowledge of what these terms mean. I am thinking of all those young people who, in the decade and a half which preceded the war, represented the finished product of our colleges and universities. What a stretch of imagination is needed before one may call these young people educated! How little of intellectual interest they have brought back from school to their respective communities! How little cerebral activity they have stirred up! Habits of study, of independent thinking, have seldom been acquired. The "educated" have possibly gained a little in social grace; they have in some cases learned things which are of advantage to them in the struggle for position. Out of the confused mass of unassimilated information which they dimly remember as the education which they "got," a sum of knowledge doubtless remains which is greater in extent than that possessed by the average man, but, though greater in extent, this knowledge is seldom different in kind. There is the same superficiality, the same susceptibility to crowd-thinking on every subject. The mental habits of American democracy are probably best reflected to-day by the "best-seller" novel, the _Saturday Evening Post_, the Chautauqua, the Victrola, the moving picture. Nearly everyone in America can read, for the "schoolhouse is the bulwark of democratic freedom." However, with the decrease in illiteracy there has gone a corresponding lowering of literary and intellectual standards, a growing timidity in telling the truth, and a passion for the sensationally commonplace. If it be true that before people may be politically free they must be free to function mentally, one wonders how much of an aid to liberty the public schools in this country have been, or if, with their colossal impersonal systems and stereotyped methods of instruction, they have not rather on the whole succeeded chiefly in making learning uninteresting, dulling curiosity and killing habits of independent thinking. There is probably no public institution where the spirit of the crowd reigns to the extent that it does in the public school. The aim seems to be to mold the child to type, make him the good, plodding citizen, teaching him only so much as some one thinks it is to the public's interest that he should know. I am sure that everyone who is familiar with the actions of the school authorities in New York City during the two years, 1918 and 1919, will be impelled to look elsewhere for much of that liberty which is supposed to go with democracy. Some years ago I conducted a little investigation into the mental habits of the average high-school graduate. An examination was made of twenty or more young people who had been out of school one year. This is doubtless too limited a number to give the findings great general significance, but I give the results in brief for what they are worth. These students had been in school for eleven years. I thought that they ought at least to have a minimum of general cultural information and to be able to express some sort of opinion about the commonplaces of our spiritual heritage. The questions asked were such as follow: What is the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States? What is a dicotyledon? Does the name Darwin mean anything to you? Have you ever heard of William James? What is the significance of the battle of Tours? Who was Thomas Jefferson? There were twenty questions in all. The average grade, even with the most liberal marking, was 44.6. The general average was raised by one pupil who made a grade of 69. But then we should not be too severe upon the public-school graduate. One of the brightest college graduates I know left a large Eastern institution believing that Karl Marx was a philologist. Another, a graduate from a Western college, thought that Venus de Milo was an Italian count who had been born without any arms. I know a prominent physician, whose scientific training is such that he has been a lecturer in a medical college, who believes that Heaven is located just a few miles up in the sky, beyond the Milky Way. These are doubtless exceptional cases, but how many persons with university degrees are there who have really caught the spirit of the humanistic culture, or have ever stopped to think why the humanities are taught in our colleges? How many are capable of discriminating criticism of works of music, or painting, literature, or philosophy? My own experience convinces me, and I am sure that other public teachers who have had a like experience will bear witness to the same lamentable fact, that such little genuine intellectual interest as there is in this country is chiefly confined to immigrant Jews, our American youth being, on the whole, innocent of it. The significance of this fact is obvious, as is its cause. Due to the conformist spirit of the dominant crowd, native-born Americans are losing their intellectual leadership. We must not ignore the fact that there is among the educated here a small and, let us hope, growing group of youthful "intellectuals." But in the first place the proportion of these to the whole mass is tragically small. In the second place intellectual liberalism has been content for the most part to tag along behind the labor movement, as if the chief meaning of the intellectual awakening were economic. It is no disparagement of labor to say that the intellect in this country of crowds has also other work to do, and that, until it strikes out for itself, neither the labor movement nor anything else will rise above commonplace crowd dilemmas. Too much of our so-called intellectualism is merely the substitution of ready-made proletarian crowd-ideas for the traditional crowd-ideas which pass for thinking among the middle classes. All the facts which have been pointed out above are the inevitable consequences of government by crowds. There can be no real liberty with crowds because there can be no personal independence. The psychic mechanisms of the crowd are hostile to conscious personality. The independent thinker cannot be controlled by catchwords. In our day intellectual freedom is not smothered in actual martyr fires, but it is too often strangled in the cradle. The existence of new values, a thing which will inevitably happen where the human spirit is left free in its creative impulses, is disturbing to the crowd-mind. Education must therefore be made "safe for democracy"; it must be guarded carefully lest the youth become an original personal fact, a new spiritual creation. I realize the element of truth in the statement often made, that there is already too much spiritual originality in the youths of this generation. I am not contending that certain phases of egoism should not be checked by education. A solid intellectual basis must be created which will make social living possible. The trouble is, however, that this task is done too well. It is the merely useful man, not the unusual man, whom the crowd loves. Skill is encouraged, for, whether it be skill in serving or in demanding service, skill in itself does not upset existing crowd-values. Reflection is "wicked" for it leads to doubt, and doubt is non-gregarious behavior. Education ceases to be the path of spiritual freedom; it becomes a device for harnessing the spirit of youth in the treadmill of the survival-values of the crowd. It is also the revenge of the old against the young, a way of making them less troublesome. It teaches the rules for success in a crowd-governed world while taking advantage of the natural credulity of childhood to draw the curtain with such terrifying mummery about the figure of wisdom that the average mind, never having the daring or curiosity to lift it, will remain to its dying day a dullard and a mental slave without suspecting the fact. Every "dangerous" thought is denatured and expurgated. The student is skillfully insulated from any mental shock that might galvanize him into original intellectual life. The classic languages are taught for purposes of "discipline." After six or seven years' study of Greek literature in the accepted manner one may be able to repeat most of the rules of Goodwin's _Greek Grammar_, and pride himself upon being a cultivated person, knowing in the end less of the language than a bootblack from modern Athens knows of it, or than a waiter from Bologna knows of English after one year's residence in Greenwich Village. And the all-important thing is that never once has the student been given a glimpse of the beautiful free pagan life which all this literature is about. Science is taught that the student, if he has ability, may learn how to make a geological survey of oil lands, construct and operate a cement factory, make poison gas, remove infected tonsils, or grow a culture of bacteria; but should he cease to hold popular beliefs about the origin of life or the immortality of the soul it is well for him to keep the tragic fact to himself. Those who teach history, economics, and political science in such a way as to stimulate independence of thinking on the part of the students are likely to be dismissed from their faculties by the practical business men who constitute the boards of trustees of our institutions of higher learning; the purpose of these sciences is to make our youth more patriotic. Finally, the average instructor receives less pay than a policeman, or a headwaiter, and the unconscious reason for this is all of a piece with the psychology of the crowd-mind. The ignorant man's resentment toward superiority, or "highbrowism," is thereby vindicated. Moreover, the integrity of the complex of ruling crowd-ideas is less endangered. There is less likelihood of its being undermined in the process of education when vigorous, independent spirits are diverted from intellectual pursuits by richer prizes offered in other fields, and the task of instruction therefore left largely to the underfed and timid who are destined by temperament to trot between the shafts. In this discussion of the government of crowds I have ignored consideration of the mechanisms of political and social organizations which usually characterize the treatment of this subject. It is not that I wish to divert attention from the necessity of more practical and just social arrangements and political forms of organizations. These we must achieve. But the facts which ultimately make for our freedom or slavery are of the mind. The statement that we cannot be politically or economically a free people until we attain mental freedom is a platitude, but it is one which needs special emphasis in this day when all attention is directed to the external form of organization. No tyranny was ever for long maintained by force. All tyrannies begin and end in the tyranny of ideas uncritically accepted. It is of just such ideas that the conscious thinking of the crowd consists, and it is ultimately from the crowd as a psychological mechanism that tyranny as such proceeds. Democracy in America fails of freedom, not because of our political constitution, though that would doubtless be modified by a people who were more free at heart; it fails because freedom of opinion, intellectual alertness, critical thinking about fundamentals, is not encouraged. There is, moreover, little promise of greater freedom in the various revolutionary crowds who to-day want freedom only to add to the number of crowds which pester us. And for this we have, whether we are radicals or reactionaries or simply indifferent, no one to blame but ourselves and our own crowd-thinking. X EDUCATION AS A POSSIBLE CURE FOR CROWD-THINKING We have seen that Democracy in and of itself is no more sure a guarantee of liberty than other forms of government. This does not necessarily mean that we have been forced by our psychological study into an argument against the idea of democracy as such. In fact, it cannot be denied that this form of human association may have decided advantages, both practical and spiritual, if we set about in the right way to realize them. It does not follow that, because the franchise is exercised by all, democracy must necessarily be an orgy of mob rule. If, under our modern political arrangements, it has been shown that the crowd presumes to regulate acts and thought processes hitherto considered purely personal matters, it is also true that the dominance of any particular crowd has, in the long run, been rendered less absolute and secure by the more openly expressed hostility of rival crowds. But crowd-behavior has been known in all historic periods. Democracy cannot be said to have caused it. It may be a mere accident of history that the present development of crowd-mindedness has come along with that of democratic institutions. Democracy has indeed given new kinds of crowds their hope of dominance. It has therefore been made into a cult for the self-justification of various modern crowds. The formula for realizing a more free and humane common life will not be found in any of the proffered cure-alls and propagandas which to-day deafen our ears with their din. Neither are we now in such possession of the best obtainable social order that one would wish to preserve the _status quo_ against all change, which would mean, in other words, the survival of the present ruling crowds. Many existing facts belie the platitudes which these crowds speak in their defense, just as they lay bare the hidden meaning of the magic remedies which are proposed by counter-crowds. There is no single formula for social redemption, and the man who has come to himself will refuse to invest his faith in any such thing--which does not mean, however, that he will refuse to consider favorably the practical possibilities of any proposed plan for improving social conditions. The first and greatest effort must be to _free democracy from crowd-mindedness, by liberating our own thinking_. The way out of this complex of crowd compulsions is the solitary part of self-analysis and intellectual courage. It is the way of Socrates, and Protagoras, of Peter Abelard, and Erasmus, and Montaigne, of Cervantes and Samuel Butler, of Goethe, and Emerson, of Whitman and William James. Just here I know that certain conservatives will heartily agree with me. "That is it," they will say; "begin with the individual." Yes, but which individual shall we begin with? Most of those who speak thus mean, begin with some other individual. Evangelize the heathen, uplift the poor, Americanize the Bolshevists, do something to some one which will make him like ourselves; in other words, bring him into our crowd. The individual with whom I would begin is myself. Somehow or other if I am to have individuality at all it will be by virtue of being an individual, a single, "separate person." And that is a dangerous and at present a more or less lonely thing to do. But the problem is really one of practical psychology. We must come out of the crowd-self, just as, before the neurotic may be normal, he must get over his neurosis. To do that he must trace his malady back to its source in the unconscious, and learn the meaning of his conscious behavior as it is related to his unconscious desires. Then he must do a difficult thing--he must _accept the fact of himself at its real worth_. It is much the same with our crowd-mindedness. If psychoanalysis has therapeutic value by the mere fact of revealing to the neurotic the hidden meaning of his neurosis, then it would seem that an analysis of crowd-behavior such as we have tried to make should be of some help in breaking the hold of the crowd upon our spirits, and thus freeing democracy to some extent from quackery. To see behind the shibboleths and dogmas of crowd-thinking the "cussedness"--that is, the primitive side--of human nature at work is a great moral gain. At least the "cussedness" cannot deceive us any more. We have won our greatest victory over it when we drag it out into the light. We can at least wrestle with it consciously, and maybe, by directing it to desirable ends, it will cease to be so "cussed," and become a useful servant. No such good can come to us so long as this side of our nature is allowed its way only on condition that it paint its face and we encourage it to talk piously of things which it really does not mean. Disillusionment may be painful both to the neurotic and to the crowd-man, but the gain is worth the shock to our pride. The ego, when better understood, becomes at once more highly personalized because more conscious of itself, and more truly social because better adjusted to the demands of others. It is this socialized and conscious selfhood which is both the aim and the hope of true democracy. Such analysis may possibly give us the gift to see ourselves as others do not see us, as we have not wished them to see us, and finally enable us to see ourselves and others and to be seen by them as we really are. We shall be free when we cease pampering ourselves, stop lying to ourselves and to one another, and give up the crowd-mummery in which we indulge because it happens to flatter our hidden weaknesses! In the end we shall only begin to solve the social problem when we can cease together taking refuge from reality in systems made up of general ideas that we should be using as tools in meeting the tasks from which as crowd-men and neurotics people run away; when we discontinue making use of commonly accepted principles and ideals as defense formations for shameful things in which we can indulge ourselves with a clear conscience only by all doing them together. There must be an increase in the number of unambitious men, men who can rise above vulgar dilemmas and are deaf to crowd propaganda, men capable of philosophical tolerance, critical doubt and inquiry, genuine companionship, and voluntary co-operation in the achievement of common ends, free spirits who can smile in the face of the mob, who know the mob and are not to be taken in by it. All this sounds much like the old gospel of conviction of sin and repentance; perhaps it is just that. We must think differently, change our minds. Again and again people have tried the wide way and the broad gate, the crowd-road to human happiness, only to find that it led to destruction in a _cul-de-sac_. Now let us try the other road, "the strait and narrow path." The crowd-path leads neither to self-mastery nor social blessedness. People in crowds are not thinking together; they are not thinking at all, save as a paranoiac thinks. They are not working together; they are _only sticking together_. We have leaned on one another till we have all run and fused into a common mass. The democratic crowd to-day, with its sweet optimism, its warm "brotherly love," is a sticky, gooey mass which one can hardly touch and come back to himself clean. By dissolving everything in "one great union" people who cannot climb alone expect to ooze into the co-operative commonwealth or kingdom of heaven. I am sick of this oozing democracy. There must be something crystalline and insoluble left in democratic America. Somewhere there must be people with sharp edges that cut when they are pressed too hard, people who are still solid, who have impenetrable depths in them and hard facets which reflect the sunlight. They are the hope of democracy, these infusible ones. To change the figure, may their tribe increase. And this is the business of every educator who is not content to be a faker. What we need is not only more education, but a different kind of education. There is more hope in an illiterate community where people hate lying than in a high-school educated nation which reads nothing but trash and is fed up on advertising, newspapers, popular fiction, and propaganda. In the foregoing chapter, reference was made to our traditional educational systems. The subject is so closely related to the mental habits of democracy that it would be difficult to overemphasize its importance for our study. Traditional educational methods have more often given encouragement to crowd-thinking than to independence of judgment. Thinking has been divorced from doing. Knowledge, instead of being regarded as the foresight of ends to be reached and the conscious direction of activity toward such ends, has been more commonly regarded as the copying of isolated things to be learned. The act of learning has been treated as if it were the passive reception of information imposed from without. The subject to be learned has been sequestered and set apart from experience as a whole, with the result that ideas easily come to be regarded as things in themselves. Systems of thought are built up with little or no sense of their connection with everyday problems. Thus our present-day education prepares in advance both the ready-made logical systems in which the crowd-mind takes refuge from the concretely real and the disposition to accept truth second-hand, upon the authority of another, which in the crowd-man becomes the spirit of conformity. Even science, taught in this spirit may be destructive of intellectual freedom. Professor Dewey says that while science has done much to modify men's thoughts, still It must be admitted that to a considerable extent the progress thus procured has been only technical; it has provided more efficient means for satisfying pre-existent desires rather than modified the quality of human purposes. There is, for example, no modern civilization which is the equal of Greek culture in all respects. Science is still too recent to have been absorbed into imaginative and emotional disposition. Men move more swiftly and surely to the realization of their ends, but their ends too largely remain what they were prior to scientific enlightenment. This fact places upon education the responsibility of using science in a way to modify the habitual attitude of imagination and feeling, not leave it just an extension of our physical arms and legs.... The problem of an educational use of science is then to create an intelligence pregnant with belief in the possibility of the direction of human affairs by itself. The method of science ingrained through education in habit means emancipation from rule of thumb and from the routine generated by rule of thumb procedure.... That science may be taught as a set of formal and technical exercises is only too true. This happens whenever information about the world is made an end in itself. The failure of such instruction to procure culture is not, however, evidence of the antithesis of natural knowledge to humanistic concern, but evidence of a wrong educational attitude. The new kind of education, the education which is to liberate the mind, will make much of scientific methods. But let us notice what it is to set a mind free. Mind does not exist in a vacuum, nor in a world of "pure ideas." The free mind is the functioning mind, the mind which is not inhibited in its work by any conflict within itself. Thought is not made free by the mere substitution of naturalistic for theological dogma. It is possible to make a cult of science itself. Crowd-propaganda is often full of pseudoscientific jargon of this sort. Specialization in technical training may produce merely a high-class trained-animal man, of the purely reflex type, who simply performs a prescribed trick which he has learned, whenever an expected motor-cue appears. In the presence of the unexpected such a person may be as helpless as any other animal. It is possible to train circus dogs, horses, and even horned toads, to behave in this same way. Much so-called scientific training in our schools to-day is of this sort. It results not in freedom, but in what Bergson would call the triumph of mechanism over freedom. Science, to be a means of freedom--that is, science as culture--may not be pursued as pure theorizing apart from practical application. Neither may a calculating utilitarianism gain freedom to us by ignoring, in the application of scientific knowledge to given ends, a consideration of the ends themselves and their value for enriching human experience. It is human interest which gives scientific knowledge any meaning. Science must be taught in the humanist spirit. It may not ignore this quality of human interest which exists in all knowledge. To do so is to cut off our relations with reality. And the result may become a negation of personality similar to that with which the crowd compensates itself for its unconscious ego-mania. The reference just made to Humanism leads us next to a consideration of the humanities. It has long been the habit of traditional education to oppose to the teaching of science the teaching of the classic languages and the arts, as if there were two irreconcilable principles involved here. Dewey says that Humanistic studies when set in opposition to study of nature are hampered. They tend to reduce themselves to exclusively literary and linguistic studies, which in turn tend to shrink to "the classics," to languages no longer spoken.... It would be hard to find anything in history more ironical than the educational practices which have identified the "humanities" exclusively with a knowledge of Greek and Latin. Greek and Roman art and institutions made such important contributions to our civilization that there should always be the amplest opportunities for making their acquaintance. But to regard them as _par excellence_ the humane studies involves a deliberate neglect of the possibilities of the subject-matter which is accessible in education to the masses, and tends to cultivate a narrow snobbery--that of a learned class whose insignia are the accidents of exclusive opportunity. Knowledge is humanistic in quality not because it is _about_ human products in the past, but because of what it _does_ in liberating human intelligence and human sympathy. Any subject-matter which accomplishes this result is humane and any subject-matter which does not accomplish it is not even educational. The point is that it is precisely what a correct knowledge of ancient civilization through a study of the classics _does_ that our traditional educators most dread. William James once said that the good which came from such study was the ability to "know a good man when we see him." The student would thus become more capable of discriminating appreciation. He would grow to be a judge of values. He would acquire sharp likes and dislikes and thus set up his own standards of judgment. He would become an independent-thinker and therefore an enemy of crowds. Scholars of the Renaissance knew this well, and that is why in their revolt against the crowd-mindedness of their day they made use of the _litteræ humanores_ to smash to pieces the whole dogmatic system of the Middle Ages. With the picture of ancient life before him the student could not help becoming more cosmopolitan in spirit. Here he got a glimpse of a manner of living in which the controlling ideas and fixations of his contemporary crowds were frankly challenged. Here were witnesses to values contrary to those in which his crowd had sought to bring him up in a docile spirit. Inevitably his thinking would wander into what his crowd considered forbidden paths. One cannot begin to know the ancients as they really were without receiving a tremendous intellectual stimulus. After becoming acquainted with the intellectual freedom and courage and love of life which are almost everywhere manifest in the literature of the ancients, something happens to a man. He becomes acquainted with himself as a valuing animal. Few things are better calculated to make free spirits than these very classics, once the student "catches on." But that is just the trouble; from the Renaissance till now, the crowd-mind, whether interested politically, morally, or religiously; whether Catholic, or Protestant, or merely Rationalist, has done its level best to keep the student from "catching on." Educational tradition, which is for the most part only systematized crowd-thinking, has perverted the classics into instruments for producing spiritual results of the very opposite nature from the message which these literatures contain. Latin and Greek are taught for _purposes of discipline_. The task of learning them has been made as difficult and as uninteresting as possible, with the idea of forcing the student to do something he dislikes, of whipping his spirit into line and rendering him subservient to intellectual authority. Thus, while keeping up the external appearance of culture, the effect is to make the whole thing so meaningless and unpleasant that the student will never have the interest to try to find out what it is all about. I have said that the sciences and classics should be approached in the "humanistic" spirit. The humanist method must be extended to the whole subject-matter of education, even to a revaluation of knowing itself. I should not say _even_, but _primarily_. It is impossible here to enter into an extended discussion of the humanist theories of knowledge as contrasted with the traditional or "intellectualist" theories. But since we have seen that the conscious thinking of the crowd-mind consists in the main of abstract and dogmatic logical systems, similar to the "rationalizations" of the paranoiac, it is important to note the bearing of humanism upon these logical systems wherever they are found. A number of years ago, while discussing certain phases of this subject with one of the physicians in charge of a large hospital for the insane, the significance of education for healthy mental life was brought out with great emphasis. It was at the time when psychiatrists were just beginning to make use of analytical psychology in the treatment of mental and nervous disorders. "The trouble with a great many of our patients," said my friend, "is the fact that they have been wrongly educated." "Do you mean," I said, "that they have not received proper moral instruction?" "Yes, but by the proper moral instruction I do not mean quite the same thing that most people mean by that. It all depends on the way in which the instruction is given. Many of these patients are the mental slaves of convention. They have been terrified by it; its weight crushes them; when they discover that their own impulses or behavior are in conflict with what they regard as absolute standards, they cannot bear the shock. They do not know how to use morality; they simply condemn themselves; they seek reconciliation by all sorts of crazy ideas which develop into the psychoneurosis. And the only hope there is of cure for them is re-education. The physician, when it is not too late, often to do any good has to become an educator." The practice of psychoanalysis as a therapeutic method is really hardly anything more than re-education. The patient must first be led to face the fact of himself as he really is; then he must be taught to revalue conventional ideas in such a way that he can use these ideas as instruments with which he may adjust himself in the various relations of life. This process of education, in a word, is humanistic. It is pragmatic; the patient is taught that his thinking is a way of functioning; that ideas are instruments, ways of acting. He learns to value these tendencies to act and to find himself through the mastery of his own thinking. Now we have seen that the neurosis is but one path of escape from this conflict of self with the imperatives and abstract ideas through which social control is exercised. The second way is to deny, unconsciously, the true meaning of these ideas, and this, as we have seen, is crowd-thinking. Here, as in the other case, the education which is needed is that which acquaints the subject with the functional nature of his own thinking, which directs his attention to results, which dissolves the fictions into which the unconscious takes refuge, by showing that systems of ideas have no other reality than what they do and no other meaning than the difference which their being true makes in actual experience somewhere. We have previously noted the connection between the intellectualist philosophies with their closed systems of ideas, their absolutists, and the conscious thinking of crowds. The crowd finds these systems ready-made and merely backs into them and hides itself like a hermit crab in a deserted seashell. It follows that the humanist, however social he may be, cannot be a crowd-man. He, too, will have his ideals, but they are not made-in-advance goods which all must accept; they are good only as they may be made good in real experience, true only when verified in fact. To such a mind there is no unctuousness, by which ideas may be fastened upon others without their assent. Nothing is regarded as so final and settled that the spirit of inquiry should be discouraged from efforts to modify and improve it. Generalizations, such as justice, truth, liberty, and all other intellectualist- and crowd-abstractions, become to the humanist not transcendental things in themselves, but descriptions of certain qualities of behavior, actual or possible, existing only where they are experienced and in definite situations. He will not be swept into a howling mob by these big words; he will stop to see what particular things are they which in a given instance are to be called just, what particular hypothesis is it which it is sought to verify and thus add to the established body of truth, whose liberty is demanded and what, to be definite, is it proposed that he shall do with the greater opportunity for action? Let the crowd yell itself hoarse, chanting its abstract nouns made out of adjectives, the humanist will know that these are but words and that the realities which they point to, if they have any meaning at all, are what "they are known as." This humanist doctrine of the concreteness of the real is important. It is a reaffirmation of the reality of human experience. William James, who called himself a "radical empiricist," made much of this point. Experience may not be ruled out for the sake of an _a priori_ notion of what this world ought to be. As James used to say, we shall never know what this world really is or is to become until the last man's vote is in and counted. Here, of course, is an emphasis upon the significance of unique personality which no crowd will grant. Crowds will admit personality as an abstract principle, but not as an active will having something of its own to say about the ultimate outcome of things. Another important point in which humanism corrects crowd-thinking is the fact that it regards intellect as an instrument of acting, and not as a mere copyist of realities earthly or supermundane. Dewey says: If it be true that the self or subject of experience is part and parcel of the course of events, it follows that the self becomes a knower. It becomes a mind in virtue of a distinctive way of partaking in the course of events. The significant distinction is no longer between a knower _and_ the world, it is between different ways of being in and of the movement of things; between a physical way and a purposive way.... As a matter of fact the pragmatic theory of intelligence means that the function of mind is to project new and more complex ends to free experience from routine and caprice. Not the use of thought to accomplish purposes already given either in the mechanism of the body or in that of the existent state of society, but the use of intelligence to liberate and liberalize action, is the pragmatic lesson.... Intelligence as intelligence is inherently forward looking; only by ignoring its primary function does it become a means for an end already given. The latter is servile, even when the end is labeled moral, religious, esthetic. But action directed to ends to which the agent has not previously been attached inevitably carries with it a quickened and enlarged spirit. A pragmatic intelligence is a creative intelligence, not a routine mechanic. Hence humanism breaks down the conformist spirit of crowds. From the simplest to the most complex, ideas are regarded as primarily motor, or, rather, as guides to our bodily movements among other things in our environment. James says that the stream of life which runs in at our eyes and ears is meant to run out at our lips, our feet, and our fingertips. Bergson says that ideas are like snapshots of a man running. However closely they are taken together, the movement always occurs between them. They cannot, therefore, give us reality, or the movement of life as such, but only cross-sections of it, which serve as guides in directing the conscious activity of life upon matter. According to James again, there are no permanently existing ideas, or impersonal ones; each idea is an individual activity, known only in the thinking, and is always thought _for a purpose_. As all thinking is purposive, and therefore partial, emphasizing just those aspects of things which are useful for our present problem, it follows that the sum total of partial views cannot give us the whole of reality or anything like a true copy of it. Existence as a whole cannot be reduced to any logical system. The One and the Absolute are therefore meaningless and are only logical fictions, useful, says James, by way of allowing us a sort of temporary irresponsibility, or "moral holiday." From all this follows the humanist view of Truth. Truth is nothing complete and existing in itself independent of human purpose. The word is a noun made out of an adjective, as I have said. An idea becomes true, says James, when it fits into the totality of our experience; truth is what we say about an idea when it works. It must be made true, by ourselves--that is, verified. Truth is therefore of human origin, frankly, man-made. To Schiller it is the same as the good; it is the attainment of satisfactory relations within experience. Or, to quote the famous humanist creed of Protagoras, as Schiller is so fond of doing, "Man is the measure of all things." The meaning of the world is precisely, for all purposes, its meaning for us. Its worth, both logical and moral, is not something given, but just what we through our activity are able to assign to it. The humanist is thus thrown upon his own responsibility in the midst of concrete realities of which he as a knowing, willing being is one. His task is to make such modifications within his environment, physical and social, as will make his own activity and that of others with him richer and more satisfactory in the future. The question arises--it is a question commonly put by crowd-minded people and by intellectual philosophers; Plato asks it of the Protagoreans--how, if the individual man is the measure of all things, is there to be any common measure? How any agreement? May not a thing be good and true for one and not for another? How, then, shall there be any getting together without an outside authority and an absolute standard? The answer, as Schiller and James showed, is obvious; life is a matter of adjustment. We each constitute a part of the other's environment. At certain points our desires conflict, our valuations are different, and yet our experience at these points overlaps, as it were. It is to our common advantage to have agreement at these points. Out of our habitual adjustments to one another, a body of mutual understanding and agreement grows up which constitutes the intellectual and moral order of life. But this order, necessary as it is, is still in the making. It is not something given; it is not a copy of something transcendent, impersonal, and final which crowds may write upon their banners and use to gain uniform submission for anything which they may be able to express in terms which are general and abstract. This order of life is purely practical; it exists for us, not we for it, and because we have agreed that certain things shall be right and true, it does not follow that righteousness and truth are fixed and final and must be worshiped as pure ideas in such a way that the mere repetition of these words paralyzes our cerebral hemispheres. Doubtless one of the greatest aids of the humanist way of thinking in bringing the individual to self-consciousness is the way in which it orients us in the world of present-day events. It inspires one to achieve a working harmony, not a fictitious haven of rest for the mind interested only in its relations to its own ideas. The unity which life demands of us is not that of a perfect rational system. It is rather the unity of a healthy organism all the parts of which can work together. Cut up as we are into what Emerson called "fragments of men," I think we are particularly susceptible to crowd-thinking because we are so disintegrated. Thought and behavior must always be more or less automatic and compulsory where there is no conscious co-ordination of the several parts of it. It is partly because we are the heirs of such a patchwork of civilization that few people to-day are able to think their lives through. There can be little organic unity in the heterogeneous and unrelated aggregation of half-baked information, warring interests, and irreconcilable systems of valuation which are piled together in the modern man's thinking. Life may not be reduced to a logical unity, but it is an organic whole for each of us, and we do not reach that organic unity by adding mutually exclusive partial views of it together. Something happens to one who grasps the meaning of humanism; he becomes self-conscious in a new way. His psychic life becomes a fascinating adventure in a real world. He finds that his choices are real events. He is "set intellectually on fire," as one of our educators has correctly defined education. As Jung would doubtless say, he has "extroverted" himself; his libido, which in the crowd seeks to enhance the ego feeling by means of the mechanism which we have described, now is drawn out and attached to the outer world through the intellectual channel. Selfhood is realized in the satisfactoriness of the results which one is able to achieve in the very fullness of his activity and the richness of his interests. Such a free spirit needs no crowds to keep up his faith, and he is truly social, for he approaches his social relationships with intelligent discrimination and judgments of worth which are his own. He contributes to the social, not a copy or an imitation, not a childish wish-fancy furtively disguised, but a psychic reality and a new creative energy. It is only in the fellowship of such spirits, whatever political or economic forms their association may take, that we may expect to see the Republic of the Free. INDEX Abelard, 153, 283. Absolute, the, 143. Absolutism, 133, 144. Abstract ideas, 2, 49, 160. ---- function of, 154, 155. Adler, Dr. Alfred, 59. ---- _The Neurotic Constitution_, 20, 61, 63. (Translated by Bernard Glueck and John A. Land; Moffat, Yard & Co., New York, 1917.) Adventist, 211. (See also Messianism.) Age of Reason, 209. Agitators, 192. Alcoholic neurosis, 86. _Alice in Wonderland_, 2. Ambition, 66. America, conformist spirit in, 275. ---- crowd movements in, 53. ---- democracy in, 253, 280. ---- education in, 273, 280. ---- freedom of opinion in, 268. ---- leadership in, 275. ---- present condition, 189. American colonists, 52. ---- Declaration of Independence, 196. ---- democracy, mental habits in, 272. ---- revolution, 225. Americanism, 87. Americanisation propaganda, 108. Anabaptists, 225. Analytical psychology, 12, 294. (See also Psychoanalysis, Freud, Jung, Adler, Brill, The Unconscious.) Anselm, 153. _a priori_ ideas in paranoia, 67. Arbitrary power, limits of, 246. Aristocrats, 182. Armenians, persecution of, 107. Armistice, the, 115. Athletic contests, 82. ---- events, symbols of conflict, 113. _Atlantic Monthly_, 258. Attention, 36. ---- direction of, 29. ---- function of, 58. Augustine, Saint, 153, 270. Bacon, Francis, 153. Baker, Secretary Newton D., 117, 119. Beethoven, 175, 269. Behavior, social, 5. Belief, crowd a creature of, 31. Beliefs, as ends in themselves, 33. ---- crowd professions of, 195. Berger, Victor, 265. Bergson, Henri, 153. ---- on sleep, 57. ---- _Creative Evolution_, 211, 299. (Translated by Arthur Mitchell; Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1911.) ---- _Time_ and _Free Will_, 290. (Translated by F. L. Pogson; George Allen & Co., London, 1912.) Bible, 270. Birth control, 239. Boccaccio, 270. Bolshevism, 166, 186, 207. (See also Soviets, Revolution, Russia.) Bolshevist propaganda, 228. Bourgeois, 170, 225. Brill, Dr. A. A., 59. ---- _Psychoanalysis; Its Theories and Application_ (W. B. Saunders, Philadelphia, Pa.), 55, 61, 93, 133, 135. British Labor Party, 226. Butler, Samuel, 283. Byron, 62. Cæsar Borgia, 233. Calvin, 225. Capitalism, 177, 178. Carlyle, 258. ---- _Heroes and Hero Worshipers_, 175. ---- _Sartor Resartus_, 46. Cassanova, 270. Categorical imperative, 90. Catholics, 264. ---- in England, 225. Censorships, 239. Cervantes, 283. Chautauqua, the, 272. Chauvanism, 223. Chesterton, G. K., 135. Chicago, riot in, 107. Child, egoism of, 62. Christianity, primitive, 193, 209. Church, the, 83, 114, 170, 234. Cicero, 188. Citizen, the, 248. Civilization, continuity of, 216. Class, the master, 177. ---- struggle, 43. (See also Revolution.) Classics, the, 292. Clergy of Middle Ages, 230. Collective Mind, 15. College students, egoism of, 78, 79. Communion of the saints, 83. Compensation, 120. ---- mechanisms of, 84. Complex formations, causes of, 65. Compromise mechanisms, 71. Compulsive hatred, 112. ---- thinking, 71, 102. Conflict, psychic, 3. ---- within the psyche, 70. Conformist spirit, 275. Conformity, insisted upon by crowds, 266. Conscientious objector, 120. Consciousness, 57. Conservatism of the crowd-mind, 224. Conservative crowds, 191. Conspiracy, delusion of, 105. (See also Paranoia, Projection, Persecution.) Constantine, 234. Constituent assembly, French, 186. Constitution, 247, 249. Constitutional government, 235. Convert, the, 86. Conway, Sir Martin, 17, 181. ---- _The Crowd in Peace and War._ (Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1915.) Co-operation, 226. Co-operative commonwealth, 209. Cooper Union Forum, 25, 26, 265, 240. Counter crowds, 198. Couthon, 206. _Creative Intelligence_, 298. Cromwell, Oliver, 225. Crowd, the, 6. ---- against some one, 113. (See also Hatred, Paranoia, Delusion of Persecution, Projection.) ---- a creature of belief, 31. ---- a state of mind, 19. ---- compulsive thinking of, 71, 102. ---- defined, 5. ---- delusion of conspiracy in, 105. ---- delusion of persecution, 99. ---- dogma of equality in, 175. ---- dominant, 35, 177. ---- effect on social peace, 8. ---- effect on the individual, 8. ---- ego mania of, 74. ---- enemy of personality, 159. ---- ethics of, 90. ---- fear and suspicion in, 104. ---- function of ideals in, 84. ---- hates in order that it may believe in itself, 132. ---- hatred, a motive of self-defense, 113, 125. ---- homicidal tendencies of, 106-107. ---- ideal of society, 267. ---- idealism of, 160. ---- idealizes itself, 43. ---- itself absolute, 161. ---- its resentment of educated man, 172. ---- movements in America, 53. ---- moral, 124. ---- moral dilemmas of, 88. ---- motives in education, 271, 272. ---- notions of equality, 262. ---- parental function of, 44. ---- restrictions upon freedom, 25. ---- rumor in, 104. ---- self-deception of, 54. ---- self-pity in, 101. ---- sense of responsibility in, 100. ---- transference phenomenon, a 136, 138. ---- truths are _a priori_ concepts, 141. ---- tyranny in, 101. ---- tyranny of, 235. ---- unconscious egoism of, 73. ---- unconscious motives of, 51. ---- virtues and vices of, 88. ---- virtues of, 164. Crowd-behavior, in a democracy, 242. ---- pseudo-social, 22. Crowd-ethics, 267. Crowd-ideas, abstract, 49. Crowd-ideas, moral significance of, 35. ---- pathology of, 37. ---- phenomenon of attention in, 36. ---- ready made, 26. Crowd man, a dogmatist, 140. Crowd mentality, 5. Crowd-mind--and paranoia, 92. ---- absolutism of, chapter vi, 133. ---- conservatism of, 224. ---- distorts patriotism, 111. ---- influence upon education, 277. ---- orthodoxy of, 152. ---- similarity--to paranoia, 98. ---- tendency to exaggerate, 100. Crowd morality, 35, 157-158. ---- demands a victim, 106. Crowd orator, 99. Crowd-propaganda, 289. Crowd-thinking--conservative, 191. ---- destructive tendencies of, 163. ---- finality of, 44. ---- function of, 191. ---- intensified by revolution, 223. ---- logic of, 140. ---- not creative, 217. ---- pageantry of, 215. ---- quest of "magic formulas," 150. ---- rationalisation of, 150-151. ---- wanting in intellectual curiosity, 271. Crowds, claim to infallibility, 234. ---- counter, 198. ---- credulity of, 139-140. ---- dictatorship of, 183. ---- dignity of, 83. ---- disintegration of, 195. ---- dominant, 168. ---- faith of, 126. ---- function of ideas in, 155-156. ---- hostility to freedom, 200. ---- idealism of, 112. ---- illiberalism of, 276. ---- in modern society, 7. ---- liberty of, 266. ---- Messianic faith of, 201. ---- permanent, 42. ---- phenomenon of displacement in, 116. ---- resist disintegration, 129. ---- revolutionary, 180. ---- revolutionary phenomena in, 203. ---- self-adulation of, 77. ---- self-feeling in, 170. ---- slow to learn, 193. ---- spirit of, 298. ---- will to dominance, 79. Curiosity of crowds, 271. Darwin, 225, 269. Day dreams, 84. Day of the Lord, 202. Debs, Eugene V., 265. Decalogue, 90. Defense-mechanism, 94. Deists, 264. Delusion of conspiracy, 105. (See also Paranoia, Persecution.) ---- of grandeur, 92. (See also Paranoia, Egoism, Self-feeling.) ---- of persecution, 68, 69, 92, 99. (See also Paranoia, Projection, Hate.) Democracy, 178, 266, 282. ---- crowd behavior in, 242. ---- genius in, 268. ---- in America, 253, 272, 280. ---- law in, 268. ---- lawmaking power in, 247. ---- liberty in, 248, 261-267. ---- mental habits of, 287. ---- not synonymous with liberty, 242. Democratic constitutions, 235. Democrats, 264. Demons, 95. Demon worship, 97. Demosthenes, 62. Department of Justice, United States, 240. Determination, unconscious, 5. Determinism, psychological motives of, 149. Devil, the, 114. Dewey, John, _Ethics_, by Dewey and Tufts (Henry Holt & Co., New York. 1910), 89. ---- _Essays in Experimental Logic_ (University of Chicago Press, 1916), 142. ----- Creative Intelligence (Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1917), 298. ---- _Democracy and Education_ (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1916), 288-289, 290, 291. Dias, 194. Dictatorship, 222. Dictatorship of crowds, 183. Dictatorship of the proletariat, 193, 228, 229-232. Dignity of crowds, 83. (See also Egoism.) Disguise, mechanisms of, 73. Disintegration of crowds, 129, 195. Dogma of infallibility, 234. Dogmatism, 140. Dominant crowd, 177. Dostoievsky, 270. ---- _The Brothers Karamasov_, 233. Dream, the, 34. ---- fancies, 58. ---- of Paradise, 207. ---- of social redemption, 232. ---- of world set free, 222. Dreams, 57, 84. ---- disguise in, 73. Dreiser, Theodore, 265. ---- _The Genius_, 265. DuBois, W. F. B., 121. Duty, 161. East St. Louis, riot in, 107. Eastman, Max, 264. Economic system, 213. Economics, science of, 185. Educated man, crowd's resentment of, 172. Education, chapter x, 281. ---- crowd motive in, 271-272. ---- of present day, 288. ---- religious, 153. ---- the new, 284, 286, 289. ---- traditional, 292. ---- traditional systems, 277, 278. Ego, consciousness, 70. (See also Self-feeling.) ---- mania, 74. Egoism of the neurotic, 61. ---- unconscious, 73. Eighteenth amendment to Constitution of United States, 236, 265. Emerson, 9, 269, 283, 302. Emotion, theory of, 18. Empiricism, 297. England, political liberty in, 226. ---- Socialism in, 227. Environment, social, 35. Epicurus, 153. Equality, 175, 262. Erasmus, 283. Espionage, in United States, 241. Ethic, of Kant, 162. Ethics, 267. ---- of crowd, 90. Europe, present condition in, 189. Evangelists, 114. (See also Sunday, William.) Evolution, 212. ---- doctrines of, 210. Exaggeration of crowd-mind, 100. Exodus of children of Israel, 52. Exploitation, 170, 177. Extroversion, 303. Fads, 224. Faguet, _The Cult of Incompetence_, 17. (Translated by Beatrice Barstow; E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1916.) ---- _The Dread of Responsibility_, 266. (Translated by Emily James; G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1914.) Faith, 126. Fanaticism, 86. Fear, 104, 128. Feeling of importance, 82. (See also Egoism.) Female neurotic, 98. Fichte, 152. Fiction of justification, 106. Fictions, 20, 128. Fictitious logic, 198. Fixations, phenomenon of, 94. Flaubert, 270. Forgetting, purposeful, 56. Fourierists, 204. Franklin, 225. Freedom, 154, 244, 248. ---- in democracy, 261-267. ---- of speech, 264. ---- to vote, 261. Free spirit, 303. French Revolution, 38, 107, 170, 182-183, 192, 194, 219. Freud, Dr. Sigmund, 30, 34, 59, 117, 210. (See Analytical Psychology.) ---- _Delusion and Dream_, 55. (Translated by Helen Downey; Moffat, Yard & Co., New York, 1917.) ---- _The Interpretation of Dreams_, 12, 59. (Translated by Dr. A. A. Brill; The Macmillan Company, New York, 1915.) ---- _Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory._ "Nervous and Mental Diseases," Monograph Series No. 4, 63. ---- _Totem and Taboo_, 12, 90, 95. (Translated by Dr. A. A. Brill; Moffat, Yard & Co., New York, 1918.) ---- influence upon general psychology, 12. ---- on dream thoughts, 30. Garrison, William Lloyd, 264. Gary schools, 265. Genius, 67, 268. Germany, 110. ---- and the war, 38. ---- Socialist movement in, 227. Gironde, 196. (See also French Revolution.) Gobineau, 17, 54, 181. Goethe, 175, 270, 283. Good, the, 90. Goodness, 89. Government, by crowds, chapter ix, 233. Government, functions of, 251. Grandeur, delusions of, 92. (See also Egoism, Paranoia.) Greatest happiness, principle of, 167. Greece, 143. Greek literature, 277. Hapsburg, the, 235. Hatred, 132. ---- in paranoia, 94, 112. Hebrew prophet, 202. Hegel, 152-153. Heretic, the, 123. Hero worship, 81, 82. Hohenzollerns, the, 235. Homicidal tendencies, 105. (See also Crowd, Paranoia, Hatred.) Homosexuality, 94. Human nature, evil of, 284. ---- weakness of, 245-246. Human sacrifice, 112. Humanism, 225, 290, 293, 298, 300, 302. (See also Pragmatism.) Humanist, the, 296. Hume, David, 153. Huxley, 226, 269. Hypocrisy, among crowds, 54. Idealism, 141, 144. ---- modern, 223. ---- of crowds, 112. ---- psychology of, 148. Ideals, of the crowd, 84. Ideas, _a priori_, 67. ---- descriptive confused with casual, 214. ---- no impersonal, 3. ---- political, moral, religious, 44. ---- tyranny of, 279. Ideational system, 159. (See also Paranoia, Crowd Thinking.) Illusions, 31. Imitation and suggestion, theory of, 33. Individual, the, 150, 283, 297, 301. ---- and society, 1-32. Individualism, 153, 262. Infallibility, dogma of, 234. Inferiority, feeling of, 62, 169-170. (See also Egoism, Compensation.) Ingersoll, Robert, 225, 269. Insanity, 3. Insanity and emotion, 19. (See also Paranoia, Psychoanalysis.) Instinct, 11. Instrumental theory of intellect, 298. Intellectualism, 144, 296. ---- and conservatism, 18. Intellectuals, the, 230. Jackson, Andrew, 265. Jacobinism, 264. Jacobins, the, 116. James, William, 2, 31, 153, 207, 241, 283, 291, 297. James, William, _Essays in Radical Empiricism_ (Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1912), 142. ---- _The Meaning of Truth_, 301. ---- _Pragmatism_ (Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1905), 142. ---- _Principles of Psychology_ (Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1890), 37, 127, 298. ---- _The Will to Believe_ (Longmans, Green & Co., Reprint, 1912), 57, 175. ---- _Varieties of Religious Experience_, (Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1906), 22. Jefferson, 225, 264. Jericho, fall of a Revolutionary symbol, 212. Judgment Day, 81. Julius Cæsar, 130. Julius II, Pope, 181. Jung, Dr. C. G., 59. (See also Psychoanalysis.) ---- _Analytical Psychology_, 85, 303. (Translated by E. Long; Moffat, Yard & Co., New York, 1917.) ---- Psychology of the Unconscious, 66, 138. (Translated by Beatrice Hinkle; Moffat, Yard & Co., New York, 1916.) Justification, mechanism of, 106. Kaiser Wilhelm II, 80, 115. Kant, 153, 161. ---- _Metaphysics of Morals_, 90, 162-163. (Translated by Thos. K. Abbot; Longmans, Green & Co., New York. Sixth edition, 1917.) Keats, 269. Kingdom of Heaven, 202. Labor, assumed triumph of, 229. Law, in a democracy, 268. Leadership, 271. ---- in America, 275. L Bon, Gustave, 5, 17, 19, 139, 205, 242, 269. ---- on the unconscious, 14. ---- summary of his theory, 47. ---- _The Crowd, A Study of the Popular Mind_ (Eleventh edition. T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd., London, 1917), 15. ---- _The Psychology of Revolution_, 180, 182, 205. (Translated by Miall; G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1912.) Lenin, Nicolai, 206, 227, 233. Leo X, Pope, 181, 185. Liberator, the, 124, 125, 264. Liberty, 199. ---- in a democracy, 242, 261-267. ---- of crowds, 266, 276. Libido, 65, 136, 303. Lincoln, 225. Livingstone, R. W., _The Greek Genius and Its Meaning for Us_, 143. Locke, John, 153. Logic, of crowd-thinking, 140. ---- in crowds and in paranoia, 198. Louis XVI, 186. Lowell, Percival, 269. Lusk Committee, the, 103. Luther, Martin, 175, 193, 225. Lynchings, 38, 106. McDougal, Prof. William, 10. _An Introduction to Social Psychology_ (John W. Luce & Co., Boston, 1917), 11. Machiavelli, _The Prince_, 233. Madison Square Garden, 265. Majority, as king, 248. ---- tyranny of, 250. Man in the state of nature, 209. Manifesto, Socialist, 204. (See also Karl Marx.) "Man the Measure of all Things," 300. Marcus Aurelius, 234. Marines' Fathers' Association, 117-118. Marx, Karl, 152. Masculine protest, 62. Masochism, 39, 65. Mass meetings, 23. Master class, 177. Materialism, 150. Mechanisms, of compensation, 84. ---- of defense, 94. ---- of disguise, 73. ---- of justification, 40, 106. Mechanistic theories, 1. Mediæval thinkers, 10. Mental habits, 272. Messianism as a revolutionary crowd phenomenon, 203, 210. Mexico, 194. Millennium, 201. Milton, 270. Milwaukee, pseudo-patriotism in, 259. Mind, collective, 15. Minority crowds, arrogance of, 257. Mirabeau, 183. Mob, 6, 165. ---- outbreaks, 37. Mobs, 107. ---- modern, 47. ---- Southern, 39. Modern society challenged, 213. Modernism, 223. Montaigne, 270, 283. Moral dilemmas, 88. Morality, 106. ---- of crowd-mind, 157-158. ---- of the crowd, 124. Motion pictures, 157. Multiple personality, 5. Mysticism of revolutionary crowds, 219. Napoleon, 221. Narcissus, stage, 66. Nations as crowds, 83. Negation, phenomenon of, 89. Nero, 234. Neurotic, female, 98. ---- similarity to crowd, 71. Newcomb, Simon, 269. Newspapers, 45. New York City, 172. ---- crowds in, 115. New Testament, 202. Nietzsche, Friederich, 153, 269, 270. ---- _Antichrist_ (Third English edition. Dr. Oscar Levy; The Macmillan Company, New York, 1911), 81. ---- _Beyond Good and Evil_ (Third English edition. Dr. Oscar Levy; The Macmillan Company, New York), 17, 124, 194. ---- _Genealogy of Morals_ (Edited by Dr. Oscar Levy; The Macmillan Company, New York. 1911), 91. ---- _Thus Spake Zarathustra_, 175. (Translated by Thomas Gommon.) ---- _The Will to Power_, 62. (Translated by A. M. Ludovici; Oscar Levy edition; The Macmillan Company.) Nonconformist, 123. Non-crowd man, 226, 285. Obsessions, 134. Oedipus complex, 66. Omaha, riot in, 107, 116. Orators, 25. Oratory, 99. Orthodoxy, 152. Pageantry, 216. Paine, Thomas, 225. Parades, 115. Paranoia, 22, 67, 92, 93, 94, 102, 294. ---- and fanaticism, 86. ---- hatred in, 112. ---- obsessive ideas in, 134. ---- rationalization in, 139. ---- similarity to crowd-mind, 98. Paranoiac, 84, 163, 208. Parker, Theodore, 269. Partisanship, 140, 194. Pathological types, 58. Patriotic crowds, 151. Patriotism, 80, 111, 118, 119. People's Institute of New York, 241. Permanent crowds, 42. Persecution, delusion of, 68, 69, 92. Personal liberty, 244. ---- in a democracy, 248. Personality, 297. Perversion, 64. Petrarch, 175. Petrograd, 219. Philosophers, intellectualist, 296. Philosophical idealism, 148. (See also Intellectualism, Rationalism.) Philosophy, humanist, 293. Philosophy of "as if," 128. Platitudes in crowd oratory, 26. Plato, 150, 153, 300. ---- _The Republic_, 143. (Translated by Jowett; Third edition, Oxford Press, 1892.) Pliny, 247. Poe, 269. Pogroms, 107. Poland, 107. Political conventions, 27. Political liberty in England, 226. Politics, philosophy of, 233. Pope, the, 62. Power, abuses of, 185. ---- crowd, will to, 160. Pragmatism, 142, 299, 301. (See also Humanism.) Principles, as justification mechanisms, 40. ---- as leading ideas, 154. Progress, 167. Prohibition, 239, 265. Prohibition agitator, 88. Prohibitionists, the, 80, 114. Projection, phenomenon of, 87, 95, 105. Proletarian crowd, 236. Proletarians, 263. Proletariat, the, 183. ---- dictatorship of, 197, 229-232. Propaganda, 54, 101, 103, 142, 157, 264, 289. ---- Bolshevist, 228, 265. ---- revolutionary, 181, 189, 208. Protagoras, 153, 283, 300. Protestantism, 225. Prussianism, 258. Psychic conflict, 3. Psychoanalysis, 34, 59, 165, 295. ---- therapeutic value of, 165, 284. Psychology of crowd, summary of author's view, 48, 49, 50. Psychology, social, 11. ---- of the unconscious, 12, 51, 56, 57, 58, 64, 70, 138, 267. Psychoneurosis, 92. ---- egoism of, 61. Psychosexual, 64. Public opinion, 4, 46. Public schools, 273-274. Puritanism, 264, 265. Quakers, the, 225, 264. Rabelais, 270. Race riots, 107. ---- motive of, 121. Radical crowds, 152. Rationalism, 144. (See also Intellectualism.) Rationalization, 144, 249. ---- in crowds, 156. ---- of revolutionary wish-fancy, 210. Real, the, concreteness of, 297. Reality, criterion of, 32. ---- sense of, 37. Re-education, 294. Reform, "white slavery," 98. Reformation, the, 182, 192, 225. Reformers, 157, 270. Reformist crowds, 151. Regression, 111, 135. Religion, 201. ---- Messianism and revolution, 204. Religious convert, 86. ---- crowds, 151. ---- education, 153. ---- symbolism, 66. Renaissance, 170, 175, 225, 292. Repression, 34, 45, 63, 64. Republicans, the, 264. Responsibility, sense of, 100. Revenge, 220. Revival meetings, 76. (See also Sunday, William.) Revolution, chapter vii, 166, 183. ---- as a crowd phenomenon, 180. ---- psychic causes of, 171. ---- small fruits of, 224. ---- violence in, 167. Revolution, French, 38, 170, 182, 183, 192, 194, 205, 219. ---- Russian, 9, 183, 206. Revolutionary creed, 222. ---- crowds, 151, 200. ---- propaganda, 181, 188, 189, 208. Riots, 106. Robespierre, 206, 235. Rochdale movement, 226. Rolland, Mme., 182. Roman republic, 187. Romanoffs, the, 235. Rossetti, 270. Rousseau, Jean J., 153, 233, 270. Rumor, 104. Russia, pogroms in, 107. ---- revolution in, 186. ---- Socialist movement in, 227. Russian revolution, 9, 53, 183, 206. Sadism, 39, 65, 111. Saint Just, 206. Saint Simonists, 204. Salem, Massachusetts, 163. Sans-culottism, 171. _Saturday Evening Post_, 272. Savonarola, 235. Saxon peasants, 225. Schiller, F. C. S., 241, 300, 301. ---- _Humanism_ (Second edition. The Macmillan Company, London, 1912), 142. ---- _Studies in Humanism_ (Second edition. The Macmillan Company, London, 1912), 144-147. Schopenhauer, 153, 269. Schubert, 269. Science, 159, 278. ---- humanist spirit of, 225. Self-appreciation, 63. (See also Egoism.) ---- consciousness, 301. ---- deception of crowds, 54. ---- defense, a motive of crowd hatred, 125. Self-appreciation, feeling, 170, 223. ---- hood, 303. ---- pity, 101. Senate of United States, 114. Servetus, 225. Sexuality, repressed, 63. Shakespeare, 270. Shakespeare's "Julius Cæsar," 130. Shelley, 269. Sioux Indians, 156. Social behavior, 1, 2. ---- environment, 35, 37. ---- idealism, 200. ---- order, how possible, 301. ---- order, the present, 100. ---- psychology, 11. ---- reconstruction, task of, 212. ---- redemption, dream of, 207, 222, 232. ---- redemption, no formula for, 282. ---- thinking, 2. Socialism in England, 226. Socialist, 80. ---- movement in Germany, 227. ---- movement in Russia, 227. ---- movement in United States, 227. ---- philosophy, 210. Socialists, the, 141, 204, 265. Socialisation, present tendencies toward, 236. Society, as "Thing-in-itself," 2. Society for the Prevention of Vice, 114. Socrates, 283. South, lynchings in, 106. Southern mobs, 39. Soviet republic, 9. ---- spirit, 9. Soviets, 38. Spargo, John, 124. ---- _The Psychology of Bolshevism_ (Harper & Brothers, 1919), 8. Spencer, Herbert, 16, 226, 238. ---- _Principles of Sociology_ (D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1898), 11. Spingarn, Maj. J. E., 122. Spirit of 1776, 264. Spiritual valuation, 271. State, bureaucratic, 238. Stewart, Charles D., 258. Strikes, 232. Stuarts, the, 235. Substitution, phenomenon of, 116. Suggestion, 33. Sumner, William Graham, 181. ---- _Folkways_ (Ginn & Co., New York, 1906), 11, 181, 169. Sunday, Rev. William, 24, 42, 76, 172. Superiority, idea of, 174. Suppressed wish, 40. Suspicion, 104. Survival values, 77. Swinburne, 270. Symbolic thought, 20. Symbolism, religious, 66. Taboo, 117. Tammany Hall, 233. Tarde, Gabriel, _The Laws of Imitation_, 17. (Translated by Parsons.) Theology, 141. Theory of knowledge, 241. ---- humanist, 293. ---- instrumental, 298. Thinking, compulsive, 102. ---- function of, 299. ---- instrumental nature of, 20. ---- of crowds, 142. ---- social, 2. ---- symbolic nature of, 20. Thomas Aquinas, 153. Tocqueville, de, democracy in America, 253-257, 268, 271. Tolstoi, 270. _Totem and Taboo_, 95. Tragedy, psychological meaning of, 66. Transference phenomenon, 136. Tribune, the, New York, 101, 113. Truth, 299, 300. Truths, 141. Truths, independent, 3. Turkey, Sultan of, 234. Turks, the, 107. Tyranny, 101, 235. ---- of ideas, 279. ---- of the majority, 250. Unconscious, the, chapter iii, 5, 12, 14, 35, 49, 51, 56, 57, 61, 64, 155, 267. ---- desire, 120. ---- determinism, 5. Unction, 210. United States, Socialist movement in, 227. Universal judgments, 88. (See also Absolute, Crowd-thinking, Intellectualism.) Unrest, social, 213. Utilitarianism, nineteenth century, 10. Utopia, 209, 215, 221. Values, 169. ---- creation of, 276. Variation, 271. Violence, causes of, 39. Virtues, 88. ---- of the crowd, 164. Vote, right to, 261. Wagner, 269. Wallas, Graham, _The Great Society_ (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1917), 14, 16. War psychology, 108, 109. Ward, Lester, _Pure Sociology_ (The Macmillan Company, New York. Second edition, 1916), 11. Washington, D. C., riot in, 107. Weakness of human nature, 245-246. White, Dr. William, _Mechanisms of Character Formation_ (The Macmillan Company, New York), 59. White slavery, reform, 98. Whitman, Walt, 268, 283. Whittier, 179. Will, healthy, 89. Will to dominance, 79. Wish-fancy, 303. ---- rationalized, 210. Wish, suppressed, 40. Working class, 18, 204, 227. (See also Proletariat.) World War, 38. Young Men's Christian Association, 240, 259. THE END * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Punctuation and spelling standardized. Inconsistent hyphenation not changed. Page 121, 307: "W. F. B. DuBois" probably should be "W. E. B. DuBois" Page 197: ambiguous quotation marks resolved. 
44094	----	+-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's note: | | | |Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+ CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE _AND OTHER ESSAYS_ (NEWLY-ENLARGED AND COMPLETE EDITION) BY EDWARD CARPENTER AUTHOR OF "TOWARDS DEMOCRACY," "MY DAYS AND DREAMS," ETC. [Illustration: logo] LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.1 First Edition, _June 1889_; Second Edition, _December 1890_; Third Edition, _November 1893_; Fourth Edition, _July 1895_; Fifth Edition, _September 1897_; Sixth Edition, _October 1900_; Seventh Edition, _July 1902_; Eighth Edition, _March 1903_; Ninth Edition, _January 1906_; Tenth Edition, _January 1908_; Eleventh Edition, _October 1910_; Twelfth Edition, _Dec. 1912_; Thirteenth Edition, _Aug. 1914_; Fourteenth Edition, _June 1916_; Fifteenth Edition, _Sept. 1917_; Complete Edition, _Jan. 1921_ (_All rights reserved_) PREFACE TO COMPLETE EDITION (1920) In looking over this volume, first published in 1889, with a view to a final Edition, I am glad to note that after all there is not much in it requiring alteration. Considering that the original issue took place more than 30 years ago, I had thought that the great changes in scientific and philosophic thought which have taken place during that period would probably have rendered "out of date" a good deal of the book. As a matter of fact, the first paper--that on Civilisation--was given as a lecture before the Fabian Society, in 1888; and I shall not easily forget the furious attacks which were made upon it on that occasion. The book--published as a whole in 1889--came in for a very similar reception from the press-critics. They slated it to the top of their bent--except in those not unfrequent cases when they ignored it as almost beneath notice. The whole trend of the thought of the time was against its conclusions; and it is perhaps worth while to recall these facts in order to measure how far we have travelled in these 30 years. For to-day (I think we may say) these conclusions are generally admitted as correct; and the views which seemed so hazarded and precarious at the earlier date are now fairly accepted and established. The word Civilisation has undoubtedly during this period suffered an ominous change of color. It is no longer an easy term denoting all that is ideal and delightful in social life, but on the contrary, carries with it a sense of doubt and of criticism, as of something that is by no means accepted yet, but is rather on its trial--if not actually condemned! I am sorry to note, however, that the suggestion made more than once in the course of my book--namely that the term (Civilisation) should properly be given an _historical_ instead of ideal value, as applicable to a certain period only in the history of each people, has not yet been generally taken up. Yet a paper by some more competent person than myself on the definite marks and signs of the civilisation-period in History--their first appearance in the course of human progress and evolution, and their probable disappearance again at a later stage--would be greatly interesting and instructive. My little essay on this subject was written at the time of its composition with a good deal of imaginative _élan_; and is of course open to criticism on that side, as being mainly enthusiastic in character and only slenderly supported by exact _data_, proofs, historical illustrations, analogies, and so forth. But to largely alter or amend the essay without seriously crippling it would be impossible; and though the form may be hurried or inadequate, yet as far as the actual contents and conclusions are concerned I still adhere to them absolutely, and believe that time will show them to be fully justified. With regard to my views on Modern Science the last quarter of a century has curiously corroborated them. For while on the one hand--as expected--the progress in actual discovery and application of observed facts has been enormous, the _theories_ on the other hand about all these things have receded more and more into the background, and have passed almost out of sight. While knowing, for instance, infinitely more about electrical actions and adaptations than we did, we seem to be if anything further off than ever from any valid theory of what Electricity _is_. The same with regard to Heat and Light, to Astronomical, Biological and Geological "laws," and so forth. On such matters Modern Science is on the verge of confessing itself bankrupt, but not wishing to do that, it keeps a discreet silence. The Atom, which I ventured (to the disgust of my scientific friends) to make fun of 30 years ago, has now exploded of itself as thoroughly as a German "coal-box"; and the fixed Chemical Elements of older days have of late dissolved into protean vapours and emanations, ions and electrons, impossible to follow through their endless transformations. As to the numerous "Laws of Nature" which in the nineteenth century we were just about to establish for all eternity, it is only with the greatest difficulty that any of these can now be discovered--most of them having got secreted away into the darkness of ancient text-books: where they lead forlorn and sightless existences, like the fish in the caves of Kentucky. Here again--in my chapters on Science--though some expressions remain which are now out of date, I have thought it best to leave them as originally written: the meanings and general conclusions being still valid and as they were. It will be seen that the general drift of these chapters is to point the moral that the true field of science is to be found in Life, and that the best way to _know_ things is to _experience_ their meaning and to identify oneself with them through Action. From a study on these principles will ultimately emerge a Science truly humane and creative, masterful, and capable of building a true home for men--instead of the feverish, spectral and self-deluding thing which has usurped the name up to now. Something the same will happen with the conception of Morality. The abstract codes on this subject, which have wrought so much havoc by their fatal intrusion on the field of human Life, are rapidly fading away. These ghosts, like the ghosts of Nature's "Laws," are receiving their _quietus_. And the general outline which was suggested in "The Defence of Criminals" has now been traced more positively in the chapter on "The New Morality" inserted at the end of the present volume. Morality has at last to become truly human, and the real expression of our organic need. Man has to be liberated from the cramps and suppressions and fixations which have hitherto paralysed him in the moral field. He has to emerge from the swathing bands of his pupal stage into the free air of heaven, and to become in the highest sense self-determining and creative. Thus three things, (1) the realisation of a new order of Society, in closest touch with Nature, and in which the diseases of class-domination and Parasitism will have finally ceased; (2) the realisation of a Science which will no longer be a mere thing of the brain, but a part of Actual Life; and (3) the realisation of a Morality which will signalise and express the vital and organic unity of man with his fellows--these three things will become the heralds of a new era of humanity--an era which will possibly prefer _not_ to call itself by the name of Civilisation. In order to corroborate and confirm the first paper in the book an Appendix has now been added containing notes and _data_ on the life and customs of many "uncivilised" peoples; for much of which Appendix I am indebted to the assistance of my widely-read and resourceful friend, E. Bertram Lloyd. E. C. _December, 1920._ CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE TO COMPLETE EDITION 7 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE 15 MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM 79 THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE: A FORECAST 120 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS: A CRITICISM OF MORALITY 143 EXFOLIATION: LAMARCK _versus_ DARWIN 181 CUSTOM 206 A RATIONAL AND HUMANE SCIENCE 219 THE NEW MORALITY 243 APPENDIX--BEING NOTES ON SOME OF THE CHARACTERISTICS AND CUSTOMS OF PRE-CIVILISED PEOPLES 265 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE The friendly and flowing savage, who is he? Is he waiting for civilisation, or is he past it, and mastering it?--WHITMAN. We find ourselves to-day in the midst of a somewhat peculiar state of society, which we call Civilisation, but which even to the most optimistic among us does not seem altogether desirable. Some of us, indeed, are inclined to think that it is a kind of disease which the various races of man have to pass through--as children pass through measles or whooping cough; but if it is a disease, there is this serious consideration to be made, that while History tells us of many nations that have been attacked by it, of many that have succumbed to it, and of some that are still in the throes of it, we know of no single case in which a nation has fairly recovered from and passed through it to a more normal and healthy condition. In other words the development of human society has never yet (that we know of) passed beyond a certain definite and apparently final stage in the process we call Civilisation; at that stage it has always succumbed or been arrested. Of course it may at first sound extravagant to use the word disease in connection with Civilisation at all, but a little thought should show that the association is not ill-grounded. To take the matter on its physical side first, I find that in Mullhall's Dictionary of Statistics (1884) the number of accredited doctors and surgeons in the United Kingdom is put at over 23,000. If the extent of the national sickness is such that we require 23,000 medical men to attend to us, it must surely be rather serious! And _they_ do not cure us. Wherever we look to-day, in mansion or in slum, we see the features and hear the complaints of ill-health; the difficulty is really to find a healthy person. The state of the modern civilised man in this respect--our coughs, colds, mufflers, dread of a waft of chill air, &c.--is anything but creditable, and it seems to be the fact that, notwithstanding all our libraries of medical science, our knowledges, arts, and appliances of life, we are actually less capable of taking care of ourselves than the animals are. Indeed, talking of animals, we are--as Shelley I think points out--fast depraving the _domestic_ breeds. The cow, the horse, the sheep, and even the confiding pussy-cat, are becoming ever more and more subject to disease, and are liable to ills which in their wilder state they knew not of. And finally the savage races of the earth do not escape the baneful influence. Wherever Civilisation touches them, they die like flies from the small-pox, drink, and worse evils it brings along with it, and often its mere contact is sufficient to destroy whole races. But the word Disease is applicable to our social as well as to our physical condition. For as in the body disease arises from the loss of the physical unity which constitutes Health, and so takes the form of warfare or discord between the various parts, or of the abnormal development of individual organs, or the consumption of the system by predatory germs and growths; so in our modern life we find the unity gone which constitutes true society, and in its place warfare of classes and individuals, abnormal development of some to the detriment of others, and consumption of the organism by masses of social parasites. If the word disease is applicable anywhere, I should say it is--both in its direct and its derived sense--to the civilised societies of to-day. Again, mentally, is not our condition most unsatisfactory? I am not alluding to the number and importance of the lunatic asylums which cover our land, nor to the fact that maladies of the brain and nervous system are now so common; but to the strange sense of mental unrest which marks our populations, and which amply justifies Ruskin's cutting epigram: that our two objects in life are, "Whatever we have--to get more; and wherever we are--to go somewhere else." This sense of unrest, of disease, penetrates down even into the deepest regions of man's being--into his moral nature--disclosing itself there, as it has done in all nations notably at the time of their full civilisation, as the sense of Sin.[1] All down the Christian centuries we find this strange sense of inward strife and discord developed, in marked contrast to the naive insouciance of the pagan and primitive world; and, what is strangest, we even find people glorying in this consciousness--which, while it may be the harbinger of better things to come, is and can be in itself only the evidence of loss of unity, and therefore of ill-health, in the very centre of human life. Of course we are aware with regard to Civilisation that the word is sometimes used in a kind of ideal sense, as to indicate a state of future culture towards which we are tending--the implied assumption being that a sufficiently long course of top hats and telephones will in the end bring us to this ideal condition; while any little drawbacks in the process, such as we have just pointed out, are explained as being merely accidental and temporary. Men sometimes speak of civilising and ennobling influences as if the two terms were interchangeable, and of course if they like to use the word Civilisation in this sense they have a right to; but whether the actual tendencies of modern life taken in the mass _are_ ennobling (except in a quite indirect way hereafter to be dwelt upon) is, to say the least, a doubtful question. Any one who would get an idea of the glorious being that is as a matter of fact being turned out by the present process should read Mr. Kay Robinson's article in the _Nineteenth Century_ for May, 1883, in which he prophesies (quite solemnly and in the name of science) that the human being of the future will be a toothless, bald, toeless creature with flaccid muscles and limbs almost incapable of locomotion! Perhaps it is safer on the whole not to use the word Civilisation in such ideal sense, but to limit its use (as is done to-day by all writers on primitive society) to a definite historical stage through which the various nations pass, and in which we actually find ourselves at the present time. Though there is of course a difficulty in marking the commencement of any period of historical evolution very definitely, yet all students of this subject agree that the growth of property and the ideas and institutions flowing from it did at a certain point bring about such a change in the structure of human society that the new stage might fairly be distinguished from the earlier stages of Savagery and Barbarism by a separate term. The growth of Wealth, it is shown, and with it the conception of Private Property, brought on certain very definite new forms of social life; it destroyed the ancient system of society based upon the _gens_, that is, a society of equals founded upon blood-relationship, and introduced a society of classes founded upon differences of material possession; it destroyed the ancient system of mother-right and inheritance through the female line, and turned the woman into the property of the man; it brought with it private ownership of land, and so created a class of landless aliens, and a whole system of rent, mortgage, interest, etc.; it introduced slavery, serfdom and wage-labour, which are only various forms of the dominance of one class over another; and to rivet these authorities it created the State and the policeman. Every race that we know, that has become what we call civilised, has passed through these changes; and though the details may vary and have varied a little, the main order of change has been practically the same in all cases. We are justified therefore in calling Civilisation a historical stage, whose commencement dates roughly from the division of society into classes founded on property and the adoption of class-government. Lewis Morgan in his _Ancient Society_ adds the invention of writing and the consequent adoption of written History and written Law; Engels in his _Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats_ points out the importance of the appearance of the Merchant, even in his most primitive form, as a mark of the civilisation-period; while the French writers of the last century made a good point in inventing the term _nations policées_ (policemanised nations) as a substitute for civilised nations; for perhaps there is no better or more universal mark of the period we are considering, and of its social degradation, than the appearance of the crawling phenomenon in question. [Imagine the rage of any decent North American Indians if they had been told they required _policemen_ to keep them in order!] If we take this historical definition of Civilisation, we shall see that our English Civilisation began hardly more than a thousand years ago, and even so the remains of the more primitive society lasted long after that. In the case of Rome--if we reckon from the later times of the early kings down to the fall of Rome--we have again about a thousand years. The Jewish civilisation from David and Solomon downwards lasted--with breaks--somewhat over a thousand years; the Greek civilisation less; the series of Egyptian civilisations which we can now distinguish lasted altogether very much longer; but the important points to see are, first, that the process has been quite similar in character in these various (and numerous other) cases,[2] quite as similar in fact as the course of the same disease in various persons; and secondly that in no case, as said before, has any nation come _through_ and passed beyond this stage; but that in most cases it has succumbed soon after the main symptoms had been developed. But it will be said, It may be true that Civilisation regarded as a stage of human history presents some features of disease; but is there any reason for supposing that disease in some form or other was any less present in the previous stage--that of Barbarism? To which I reply, I think there is good reason. Without committing ourselves to the unlikely theory that the "noble savage" was an ideal human being physically or in any other respect, and while certain that in many points he was decidedly inferior to the civilised man, I think we must allow him the superiority in some directions; and one of these was his comparative freedom from disease. Lewis Morgan, who grew up among the Iroquois Indians, and who probably knew the North American natives as well as any white man has ever done, says (in his _Ancient Society_, p. 45), "Barbarism ends with the production of grand Barbarians." And though there are no native races on the earth to-day who are actually in the latest and most advanced stage of Barbarism;[3] yet, if we take the most advanced tribes that we know of--such as the said Iroquois Indians of twenty or thirty years ago, some of the Kaffir tribes round Lake Nyassa in Africa, now (and possibly for a few years more) comparatively untouched by civilisation, or the tribes along the river Uaupes, thirty or forty years back, of Wallace's _Travels on the Amazon_--all tribes in what Morgan would call the _middle_ stage of Barbarism--we undoubtedly in each case discover a fine and (which is our point here) _healthy_ people. Captain Cook in his first Voyage says of the natives of Otaheite, "We saw no critical disease during our stay upon the island, and but few instances of sickness, which were accidental fits of the colic;" and, later on, of the New Zealanders, "They enjoy perfect and uninterrupted health. In all our visits to their towns, where young and old, men and women, crowded about us ... we never saw a single person who appeared to have any bodily complaint, nor among the numbers we have seen naked did we once perceive the slightest eruption upon the skin, or any marks that an eruption had left behind." These are pretty strong words. Of course diseases exist among such peoples, even where they have never been in contact with civilisation, but I think we may say that among the higher types of savages they are rarer, and nothing like so various and so prevalent as they are in our modern life; while the power of recovery from _wounds_ (which are of course the most frequent form of disablement) is generally admitted to be something astonishing. Speaking of the Kaffirs, J. G. Wood says, "Their state of health enables them to survive injuries which would be almost instantly fatal to any civilised European." Mr. Frank Oates in his Diary[4] mentions the case of a man who was condemned to death by the king. He was hacked down with axes, and left for dead. "What must have been intended for the _coup de grâce_ was a cut in the back of the head, which had chipped a large piece out of the skull, and must have been meant to cut the spinal cord where it joins the brain. It had, however, been made a little higher than this, but had left such a wound as I should have thought that no one could have survived ... when I held the lanthorn to investigate the wound I started back in amazement to see a hole at the base of the skull, perhaps two inches long and an inch and a half wide, and I will not venture to say how deep, but the depth too must have been an affair of inches. Of course this hole penetrated into the substance of the brain, and probably for some distance. I dare say a mouse could have sat in it." Yet the man was not so much disconcerted. Like Old King Cole, "He asked for a pipe and a drink of brandy," and ultimately made a perfect recovery! Of course it might be said that such a story only proves the lowness of organisation of the brains of savages; but to the Kaffirs at any rate this would not apply; they are a quick-witted race, with large brains, and exceedingly acute in argument, as Colenso found to his cost. Another point which indicates superabundant health is the amazing animal spirits of these native races! The shouting, singing, dancing kept up nights long among the Kaffirs are exhausting merely to witness, while the graver North American Indian exhibits a corresponding power of life in his eagerness for battle or his stoic resistance of pain.[5] Similarly when we come to consider the social life of the wilder races--however rudimentary and undeveloped it may be--the almost universal testimony of students and travelers is that within its limits it is more harmonious and compact than that of the civilised nations. The members of the tribe are not organically at warfare with each other; society is not divided into classes which prey upon each other; nor is it consumed by parasites. There is more true social unity, less of disease. Though the customs of each tribe are rigid, absurd, and often frightfully cruel,[6] and though all outsiders are liable to be regarded as enemies, yet _within those limits_ the members live peacefully together--their pursuits, their work, are undertaken in common, thieving and violence are rare, social feeling and community of interest are strong. "In their own bands Indians are perfectly honest. In all my intercourse with them I have heard of not over half-a-dozen cases of such theft. But this wonderfully exceptional honesty extends no further than to the members of his immediate band. To all outside of it, the Indian is not only one of the most arrant thieves in the world, but this quality or faculty is held in the highest estimation." (Dodge, p. 64.) If a man set out on a journey (this among the Kaffirs) "he need not trouble himself about provisions, for he is sure to fall in with some hut, or perhaps a village, and is equally sure of obtaining both food and shelter."[7] "I have lived," says A. R. Wallace in his _Malay Archipelago_ vol. ii. p. 460, "with communities in South America and the East, who have no laws or law courts, but the public opinion of the village ... yet each man scrupulously respects the rights of his fellows, and any infraction of those rights rarely takes place. In such a community all are nearly equal. There are none of those wide distinctions of education and ignorance, wealth and poverty, master and servant, which are the product of our civilisation." Indeed this _community_ of life in the early societies, this absence of division into classes, and of the contrast between rich and poor, is now admitted on all sides as a marked feature of difference between the conditions of the primitive and of civilised man.[8] Lastly, with regard to the mental condition of the Barbarian, probably no one will be found to dispute the contention that he is more easy-minded and that his consciousness of Sin is less developed than in his civilised brother. Our unrest is the penalty we pay for our wider life. The missionary retires routed from the savage in whom he can awake no sense of his supreme wickedness. An American lady had a servant, a negro-woman, who on one occasion asked leave of absence for the next morning, saying she wished to attend the Holy Communion? "I have no objection," said the mistress, "to grant you leave; but do you think you _ought_ to attend Communion? You know you have never said you were sorry about that goose you stole last week." "Lor' missus," replied the woman, "do ye think I'd let an old goose stand betwixt me and my Blessed Lord and Master?" But joking apart, and however necessary for man's ultimate evolution may be the temporary development of this consciousness of Sin, we cannot help seeing that the condition of the mind in which it is absent is the most distinctively _healthy_; nor can it be concealed that some of the greatest works of Art have been produced by people like the earlier Greeks, in whom it was absent; and could not possibly have been produced where it was strongly developed. Though, as already said, the latest stage of Barbarism, _i.e._, that just preceding Civilisation, is unrepresented on the earth to-day, yet we have in the Homeric and other dawn-literature of the various nations indirect records of this stage; and these records assure us of a condition of man very similar to, though somewhat more developed than, the condition of the existing races I have mentioned above. Besides this, we have in the numerous traditions of the Golden Age,[9] legends of the Fall, etc., a curious fact which suggests to us that a great number of races in advancing towards Civilisation were conscious at some point or other of having lost a primitive condition of ease and contentment, and that they embodied this consciousness, with poetical adornment and licence, in imaginative legends of the earlier Paradise. Some people indeed, seeing the universality of these stories, and the remarkable fragments of wisdom embedded in them and other extremely ancient myths and writings, have supposed that there really was a general pre-historic Eden-garden or Atlantis; but the necessities of the case hardly seem to compel this supposition. That each human soul, however, bears within itself some kind of reminiscence of a more harmonious and perfect state of being, which it has at some time experienced, seems to me a conclusion difficult to avoid; and this by itself might give rise to manifold traditions and myths. II However all this may be, the question immediately before us--having established the more healthy, though more limited, condition of the pre-civilisation peoples--is, why this lapse or fall? What is the meaning of this manifold and intensified manifestation of Disease--physical, social, intellectual, and moral? What is its place and part in the great whole of human evolution? And this involves us in a digression, which must occupy a few pages, on the nature of Health. When we come to analyse the conception of Disease, physical or mental, in society or in the individual, it evidently means, as already hinted once or twice, _loss of unity_. Health, therefore, should mean unity, and it is curious that the history of the word entirely corroborates this idea. As is well known, the words health, whole, holy, are from the same stock; and they indicate to us the fact that far back in the past those who created this group of words had a conception of the meaning of Health very different from ours, and which they embodied unconsciously in the word itself and its strange relatives. These are, for instance, and among others: heal, hallow, hale, holy, whole, wholesome; German heilig, Heiland (the Saviour); Latin salus (as in salutation, salvation); Greek kalos; also compare hail! a salutation, and, less certainly connected, the root _hal_, to breathe, as in inhale, exhale--French haleine--Italian and French alma and âme (the soul); compare the Latin spiritus, spirit or breath, and Sanskrit âtman, breath or soul. Wholeness, holiness ... "if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." ... "thy faith hath made thee _whole_." The idea seems to be a positive one--a condition of the body in which it is an entirety, a unity--a central force maintaining that condition; and disease being the break-up--or break-down--of that entirety into multiplicity. The peculiarity about our modern conception of Health is that it seems to be a purely negative one. So impressed are we by the myriad presence of Disease--so numerous its dangers, so sudden and unforetellable its attacks--that we have come to look upon health as the mere absence of the same. As a solitary spy picks his way through a hostile camp at night, sees the enemy sitting round his fires, and trembles at the crackling of a twig beneath his feet--so the traveller through this world, comforter in one hand and physic-bottle in the other, must pick his way, fearful lest at any time he disturb the sleeping legions of death--thrice blessed if by any means, steering now to the right and now to the left, and thinking only of his personal safety, he pass by without discovery to the other side. Health with us is a negative thing. It is a neutralisation of opposing dangers. It is to be neither rheumatic nor gouty, consumptive nor bilious, to be untroubled by head-ache, back-ache, heart-ache, or any of the "thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to." These are the realities. Health is the mere negation of them. The modern notion, and which has evidently in a very subtle way penetrated the whole thought of to-day, is that the essential fact of life is the existence of innumerable external forces, which, by a very delicate balance and difficult to maintain, concur to produce Man--who in consequence may at any moment be destroyed again by the non-concurrence of those forces. The older notion apparently is that the essential fact of life _is_ Man himself; and that the external forces, so-called, are in some way subsidiary to this fact--that they may aid his expression or manifestation, or that they may hinder it, but that they can neither create nor annihilate the Man. Probably both ways of looking at the subject are important; there is a man that can be destroyed, and there is a man that cannot be destroyed. The old words, soul and body, indicate this contrast; but like all words they are subject to the defect that they are an attempt to draw a line where no line can ultimately be drawn; they mark a contrast where, in fact, there is only continuity--for between the little mortal man who dwells here and now, and the divine and universal Man who also forms a part of our consciousness, is there not a perfect gradation of being, and where (if anywhere) is there a gulf fixed? Together they form a unit, and each is necessary to the other: the first cannot do without the second, and the second cannot get along at all without the first. To use the words of Angelus Silesius (quoted by Schopenhauer), "Ich weiss dass ohne mich Gott nicht ein Nu kann leben." According then to the elder conception, and perhaps according to an elder experience, man, to be really healthy, must be a unit, an entirety--his more external and momentary self standing in some kind of filial relation to his more universal and incorruptible part--so that not only the remotest and outermost regions of the body, and all the assimilative, secretive, and other processes belonging thereto, but even the thoughts and passions of the mind itself, stand in direct and clear relationship to it, the final and absolute transparency of the mortal creature. And thus this divinity in each creature, being that which constitutes it and causes it to cohere together, was conceived of as that creature's saviour, healer--healer of wounds of body and wounds of heart--the Man within the man, whom it was not only possible to know, but whom to know and be united with was the alone salvation. This, I take it, was the law of health--and of holiness--as accepted at some elder time of human history, and by us seen as thro' a glass darkly. And the condition of disease, and of sin, under the same view, was the reverse of this. Enfeeblement, obscuration, duplicity--the central radiation blocked; lesser and insubordinate centres establishing and asserting themselves as against it; division, discord, possession by devils. Thus in the body, the establishment of an insubordinate centre--a boil, a tumor, the introduction and spread of a germ with innumerable progeny throughout the system, the enlargement out of all reason of an existing organ--means disease. In the mind, disease begins when any passion asserts itself as an independent centre of thought and action. The condition of health in the mind is loyalty to the divine Man within it.[10] But if loyalty to money become an independent centre of life, or greed of knowledge, or of fame, or of drink; jealousy, lust, the love of approbation; or mere following after any so-called virtue for itself--purity, humility, consistency, or what not--these may grow to seriously endanger the other. They are, or should be, subordinates; and though over a long period their insubordination may be a necessary condition of human progress, yet during all such time they are at war with each other and with the central Will; the man is torn and tormented, and is not happy. And when I speak thus separately of the mind and body, it must be remembered, as already said, that there is no strict line between them; but probably every affection or passion of the mind has its correlative in the condition of the body--though this latter may or may not be easily observable. Gluttony _is_ a fever of the digestive apparatus. What is a taint in the mind is also a taint in the body. The stomach has started the original idea of becoming itself the centre of the human system. The sexual organs may start a similar idea. Here are distinct threats, menaces made against the central authority--against the Man himself. For the man must rule or disappear; it is impossible to imagine a man presided over by a Stomach--a walking Stomach, using hands, feet, and all other members merely to carry it from place to place, and serve its assimilative mania. We call such a one an Hog. [And thus in the theory of Evolution we see the place of the hog, and all other animals, as fore-runners or off-shoots of special faculties in Man, and why the true man, and rightly, has authority over all animals, and can alone give them their place in creation.] So of the Brain, or any other organ; for the Man is no organ, resides in no organ, but is the central life ruling and radiating among all organs, and assigning them their arts to play. Disease then, in body or mind, is from this point of view the break-up of its unity, its entirety, into multiplicity. It is the abeyance of a central power, and the growth of insubordinate centres--life in each creature being conceived of as a continual exercise of energy or conquest, by which external or antagonistic forces (and organisms) are brought into subjection and compelled into the service of the creature, or are thrown off as harmful to it. Thus, by way of illustration, we find that plants or animals, when in good health, have a remarkable power of throwing off the attacks of any parasites which incline to infest them; while those that are weakly are very soon eaten up by the same. A rose-tree, for instance, brought indoors, will soon fall a prey to the aphis--though when hardened out of doors the pest makes next to no impression on it. In dry seasons when the young turnip plants in the fields are weakly from want of water the entire crop is sometimes destroyed by the turnip fly, which then multiplies enormously; but if a shower or two of rain come before much damage is done the plant will then grow vigorously, its tissues become more robust and resist the attacks of the fly, which in its turn dies. Late investigations seem to show that one of the functions of the white corpuscles in the blood is to devour disease-germs and bacteria present in the circulation--thus absorbing these organisms into subjection to the central life of the body--and that with this object they congregate in numbers toward any part of the body which is wounded or diseased. Or to take an example from society, it is clear enough that if our social life were really vivid and healthy, such parasitic products as the idle shareholder and the policeman above-mentioned would simply be impossible. The material on which they prey would not exist, and they would either perish or be transmuted into useful forms. It seems obvious in fact that life in any organism can only be maintained by some such processes as these--by which parasitic or infesting organisms are either thrown off or absorbed into subjection. To define the nature of the power which thus works towards and creates the distinctive unity of each organism may be difficult, is probably at present impossible, but that some such power exists we can hardly refuse to admit. Probably it is more a subject of the growth of our consciousness, than an object of external scientific investigation. In this view, Death is simply the loosening and termination of the action of this power--over certain regions of the organism; a process by which, when these superficial parts become hardened and osseous, as in old age, or irreparably damaged, as in cases of accident, the inward being sloughs them off, and passes into other spheres. In the case of man there may be noble and there may be ignoble death, as there may be noble and ignoble life. The inward self, unable to maintain authority over the forces committed to its charge, declining from its high prerogative, swarmed over by parasites, and fallen partially into the clutch of obscene foes, may at last with shame and torment be driven forth from the temple in which it ought to have been supreme. Or, having fulfilled a holy and wholesome time, having radiated divine life and love through all the channels of body and mind, and as a perfect workman uses his tools, so having with perfect mastery and nonchalance used all the materials committed to it, it may quietly and peacefully lay these down, and unchanged (absolutely unchanged to all but material eyes) pass on to other spheres appointed. And now a few words on the medical aspect of the subject. If we accept any theory (even remotely similar to that just indicated) to the effect that Health is a positive thing, and not a mere negation of disease, it becomes pretty clear that no mere investigation of the latter will enable us to find out what the former is, or bring us nearer to it. You might as well try to create the ebb and flow of the tides by an organised system of mops. Turn your back upon the Sun and go forth into the wildernesses of space till you come to those limits where the rays of light, faint with distance, fall dim upon the confines of eternal darkness--and phantoms and shadows in the half-light are the product of the wavering conflict betwixt day and night--investigate these shadows, describe them, classify them, record the changes which take place in them, erect in vast libraries these records into a monument of human industry and research; so shall you be at the end as near to a knowledge and understanding of the sun itself--which all this time you have left behind you, and on which you have turned your back--as the investigators of disease are to a knowledge and understanding of what health is. The solar rays illumine the outer world and give to it its unity and entirety; so in the inner world of each individual possibly is there another Sun, which illumines and gives unity to the man, and whose warmth and light would permeate his system. Wait upon the shining forth of this inward sun, give free access and welcome to its rays of love, and free passage for them into the common world around you, and it may be you will get to know more about health than all the books of medicine contain, or can tell you. Or to take the former simile: it is the central force of the Moon which acting on the great ocean makes all its waters one, and causes them to rise and fall in timely consent. But take your moon away; hey! now the tide is flowing too far down this estuary! Station your thousands with mops, but it breaks through in channel and runlet! Block it here, but it overflows in a neighboring bay! Appoint an army of swabs there, but to what end? The infinitest care along the fringe of this great sea can never do, with all imaginable dirt and confusion, what the central power does easily, and with unerring grace and providence. And so of the great (the vast and wonderful) ocean which ebbs and flows within a man--take away the central guide--and not 20,000 doctors, each with 20,000 books to consult and 20,000 phials of different contents to administer, could meet the myriad cases of disease which would ensue, or bolster up into "wholeness" the being from whom the single radiant unity had departed. Probably there has never been an age, nor any country (except Yankee-land?) in which disease has been so generally prevalent as in England to-day; and certainly there has never (with the same exception) been an age or country in which doctors have so swarmed, or in which medical science has been so powerful, in apparatus, in learning, in authority, and in actual organisation and number of adherents. How reconcile this contradiction--if indeed a contradiction it be? But the fact is that medical science does not contradict disease--any more than laws abolish crime. Medical science--and doubtless for very good reasons--makes a fetish of disease, and dances around it. It is (as a rule) only seen where disease is; it writes enormous tomes on disease; it induces disease in animals (and even men) for the purpose of studying it; it knows, to a marvelous extent, the symptoms of disease, its nature, its causes, its goings out and its comings in; its eyes are perpetually fixed on disease, till disease (for it) becomes the main fact of the world and the main object of its worship. Even what is so gracefully called Hygiene does not get beyond this negative attitude. And the world still waits for its Healer, who shall tell us--diseased and suffering as we are--_what_ health is, where it is to be found, whence it flows; and who having touched this wonderful power within himself shall not rest till he has proclaimed and imparted it to men. No, medical science does not, in the main, contradict disease. The same cause (infidelity and decay of the central life in men) which creates disease and makes men liable to it, creates students and a science of the subject. The Moon[11] having gone from over the waters, the good people rush forth with their mops; and the untimely inundations, and the mops and the mess and the pother, are all due to the same cause. As to the lodgment of disease, it is clear that this would take place easily in a disorganised system--just as a seditious adventurer would easily effect a landing, and would find insubordinate materials ready at hand for his use, in a land where the central government was weak. And as to the treatment of a disease so introduced there are obviously two methods: one is to reinforce the central power till it is sufficiently strong of itself to eject the insubordinate elements and restore order; the other is to attack the malady from outside and if possible destroy it--(as by doses and decoctions)--independently of the inner vitality, and leaving that as it was before. The first method would seem the best, most durable and effective; but it is difficult and slow. It consists in the adoption of a healthy life, bodily and mental, and will be spoken of later on. The second may be characterised as the medical method, and is valuable, or rather I should be inclined to say, _will_ be valuable, when it has found its place, which is to be subsidiary to the first. It is too often, however, regarded as superior in importance, and in this way, though easy of application, has come perhaps to be productive of more harm than good. The disease may be broken down for the time being, but, the roots of it not being destroyed, it soon springs up again in the same or a new form, and the patient is as badly off as ever. The great positive force of Health, and the power which it has to _expel_ disease from its neighborhood is a thing realised, I believe, by few persons. But it _has_ been realised on earth, and will be realised again when the more squalid elements of our present-day civilisation have passed away. III The result then of our digression is to show that Health--in body or mind--means unity, integration as opposed to disintegration. In the animals we find this physical unity existing to a remarkable degree. An almost unerring instinct and selective power rules their actions and organisation. Thus a cat before it has fallen (say before it has become a very wheezy fireside pussy!) is in a sense perfect. The wonderful consent of its limbs as it runs or leaps, the adaptation of its muscles, the exactness and inevitableness of its instincts, physical and affectional; its senses of sight and smell, its cleanliness, nicety as to food, motherly tact, the expression of its whole body when enraged, or when watching for prey--all these things are so to speak absolute and instantaneous--and fill one with admiration. The creature is "whole" or in one piece: there is no mentionable conflict or division within it.[12] Similarly with the other animals, and even with the early man himself. And so it would appear returning to our subject--that, if we accept the doctrine of Evolution, there is a progression of animated beings--which, though not perfect, possess in the main the attribute of Health--from the lowest forms up to a healthy and instinctive though certainly limited man. During all this stage the central law is in the ascendant, and the physical frame of each creature is the fairly clean vehicle of its expression--varying of course in complexity and degree according to the point of unfoldment which has been reached. And when thus in the long process of development the inner Man (which has lain hidden or dormant within the animal) at last appears, and the creature consequently takes on the outer frame and faculties of the human being, which are only as they are because of the inner man which they represent; when it has passed through stage after stage of animal life, throwing out tentative types and likenesses of what is to come, and going through innumerable preliminary exercises in special forms and faculties, till at last it begins to be able to wear the full majesty of manhood itself--_then_ it would seem that that long process of development is drawing to a close, and that the goal of creation must be within measurable distance. But then, at that very moment, and when the goal is, so to speak, in sight, occurs this failure of "wholeness" of which we have spoken, this partial break-up of the unity of human nature--and man, instead of going forward any longer in the same line as before, to all appearance _falls_. What is the meaning of this loss of unity? What is the cause and purpose of this fall and centuries-long exile from the earlier Paradise? There can be but one answer. It is self-knowledge--(which involves in a sense the abandonment of self). Man has to become conscious of his destiny--to lay hold of and realise his own freedom and blessedness--to transfer his consciousness from the outer and mortal part of him to the inner and undying. The cat cannot do this. Though perfect in its degree, its interior unfoldment is yet incomplete. The human soul within it has not yet come forward and declared itself; some sheathing leaves have yet to open before the divine flower-bud can be clearly seen. And when at last (speaking as a fool) the cat becomes a man--when the human soul within the creature has climbed itself forward and found expression, transforming the outer frame in the process into that of humanity--(which is the meaning I suppose of the evolution theory)--then the creature, though perfect and radiant in the form of Man, still lacks one thing. It lacks the knowledge of itself; it lacks its own identity, and the realisation of the manhood to which as a fact it has attained. In the animals consciousness has never returned upon itself. It radiates easily outwards; and the creature obeys without let or hesitation, and with little if any _self_-consciousness, the law of its being. And when man first appears on the earth, and even up to the threshold of what we call civilisation, there is much to show that he should in this respect still be classed with the animals. Though vastly superior to them in attainments, physical and mental, in power over nature, capacity of progress, and adaptability, he still in these earlier stages was like an animal in the unconscious instinctive nature of his action; and on the other hand, though his moral and intellectual structures were far less complete than those of the modern man--as was a necessary result of the absence of self-knowledge--he actually lived more in harmony with himself and with nature,[13] than does his descendant; his impulses, both physical and social, were clearer and more unhesitating; and his unconsciousness of inner discord and sin a great contrast to our modern condition of everlasting strife and perplexity. If then to this stage belongs some degree of human perfection and felicity, yet there remains a much vaster height to be scaled. The human soul which has wandered darkling for so many thousands of years, from its tiny spark-like germ in some low form of life to its full splendor and dignity in man, has yet to come to the _knowledge_ of its wonderful heritage, has yet to become finally individualised and free, to know itself immortal, to resume and interpret all its past lives, and to enter in triumph into the kingdom which it has won. It has in fact to face the frightful struggle of self-consciousness, or the disentanglement of the true self from the fleeting and perishable self. The animals and man, unfallen, are healthy and free from care, but unaware of what they are; to attain self-knowledge man must fall; he must become less than his true self; he must endure imperfection; division and strife must enter his nature. To realise the perfect Life, to know what, how wonderful it is--to understand that all blessedness and freedom consists in its possession--he must for the moment suffer divorce from it; the unity, the repose of his nature must be broken up, crime, disease and unrest must enter in, and by contrast he must attain to knowledge. Curious that at the very dawn of the Greek and with it the European civilisation we have the mystic words "Know Thyself" inscribed on the temple of the Delphic Apollo; and that first among the legends of the Semitic race stands that of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of the Knowledge of good and evil! To the animal there is no such knowledge, to the early man there was no such knowledge, and to the perfected man of the future there will be no such knowledge. It is a temporary perversion, indicating the disunion of the present-day man--the disunion of the outer self from the inner--the horrible dual self-consciousness--which is the means ultimately of a more perfect and conscious union than could ever have been realised without it--the death that is swallowed up in victory. "For the first man is of the earth, earthy; but the second man is the Lord from heaven." In order then, at this point in his Evolution, to advance any farther, Man must first fall; in order to know, he must lose. In order to realise what Health is, how splendid and glorious a possession, he must go through all the long negative experience of Disease; in order to know the perfect social life, to understand what power and happiness to mankind are involved in their true relation to each other, he must learn the misery and suffering which come from mere individualism and greed; and in order to find his true Manhood, to discover what a wonderful power it is, he must first lose it--he must become a prey and a slave to his own passions and desires--whirled away like Phaethon by the horses which he cannot control. This moment of divorce, then, this parenthesis in human progress, covers the ground of all History; and the whole of Civilisation, and all crime and disease, are only the materials of its immense purpose--themselves destined to pass away as they arose, but to leave their fruits eternal. Accordingly we find that it has been the work of Civilisation--founded as we have seen on Property--in every way to disintegrate and corrupt man--literally to corrupt--to _break up_ the unity of his nature. It begins with the abandonment of the primitive life and the growth of the sense of shame (as in the myth of Adam and Eve). From this follows the disownment of the sacredness of sex. Sexual acts cease to be a part of religious worship; love and desire--the inner and the outer love--hitherto undifferentiated, now become two separate things. (This no doubt a necessary stage in order for the development of the _consciousness of love_, but in itself only painful and abnormal.) It culminates and comes to an end, as to-day, in a complete divorce between the spiritual reality and the bodily fulfilment--in a vast system of commercial love, bought and sold, in the brothel and in the palace. It begins with the forsaking of the hardy nature-life, and it ends with a society broken down and prostrate, hardly recognisable as human, amid every form of luxury, poverty and disease. He who had been the free child of Nature denies his sonship; he disowns the very breasts that suckled him. He deliberately turns his back upon the light of the sun, and hides himself away in boxes with breathing holes (which he calls houses), living ever more and more in darkness and asphyxia, and only coming forth perhaps once a day to blink at the bright god, or to run back again at the first breath of the free wind for fear of catching cold! He muffles himself in the cast-off furs of the beasts, every century swathing himself in more and more layers, more and more fearfully and wonderfully fashioned, till he ceases to be recognisable as the Man that was once the crown of the animals, and presents a more ludicrous spectacle than the monkey that sits on his own barrel organ. He ceases to a great extent to use his muscles, his feet become partially degenerate, his teeth wholly, his digestion so enervated that he has to cook his food and make pulps of all his victuals, and his whole system so obviously on the decline that at last in the end of time a Kay Robinson arises and prophesies as aforesaid, that he will before long become wholly toothless, bald and toeless. And so with this denial of Nature comes every form of disease; first delicatesse, daintiness, luxury; then unbalance, enervation, huge susceptibility to pain. With the shutting of himself away from the all-healing Power, man inevitably weakens his whole manhood; the central bond is loosened, and he falls a prey to his own organs. He who before was unaware of the existence of these latter, now becomes only too conscious of them (and this--is it not the very object of the process?); the stomach, the liver and the spleen start out into painful distinctness before him, the heart loses its equable beat, the lungs their continuity with the universal air, and the brain becomes hot and fevered; each organ in turn asserts itself abnormally and becomes a seat of disorder, every corner and cranny of the body becomes the scene and symbol of disease, and Man gazes aghast at his own kingdom--whose extent he had never suspected before--now all ablaze in wild revolt against him. And then--all going with this period of his development--sweep vast epidemic trains over the face of the earth, plagues and fevers and lunacies and world-wide festering sores, followed by armies, ever growing, of doctors--they too with their retinues of books and bottles, vaccinations and vivisections, and grinning death's-heads in the rear--a mad crew, knowing not what they do, yet all unconsciously, doubtless, fulfilling the great age-long destiny of humanity. In all this the influence of Property is apparent enough. It is evident that the growth of property through the increase of man's powers of production reacts on the man in three ways: to draw him away namely, (1) from Nature, (2) from his true Self, (3) from his Fellows. In the first place it draws him away from Nature. That is, that as man's power over materials increases he creates for himself a sphere and an environment of his own, in some sense apart and different from the great elemental world of the winds and the waves, the woods and the mountains, in which he has hitherto lived. He creates what we call the artificial life, of houses and cities, and, shutting himself up in these, shuts Nature out. As a growing boy at a certain point, and partly in order to assert his independence, wrests himself away from the tender care of his mother, and even displays--just for the time being--a spirit of opposition to her, so the growing Man finding out his own powers uses them--for the time--even to do despite to Nature, and to create himself a world in which she shall have no part. In the second place the growth of property draws man away from his true Self. This is clear enough. As his power over materials and his possessions increases, man finds the means of gratifying his senses at will. Instead of being guided any longer by that continent and "whole" instinct which characterises the animals, his chief motive is now to use his powers to gratify this or that sense or desire. These become abnormally magnified, and the man soon places his main good in their satisfaction; and abandons his true Self for his organs, the whole for the parts. Property draws the man outwards, stimulating the external part of his being, and for a time mastering him, overpowers the central Will, and brings about his disintegration and corruption. Lastly, Property by thus stimulating the external and selfish nature in Man, draws him away from his Fellows. In the anxiety to possess things for himself, in order to gratify his own bumps, he is necessarily brought into conflict with his neighbor and comes to regard him as an enemy. For the true Self of man consists in his organic relation with the whole body of his fellows; and when the man abandons his true Self he abandons also his true relation to his fellows. The mass-Man must rule in each unit-man, else the unit-man will drop off and die. But when the outer man tries to separate himself from the inner, the unit-man from the mass-Man, then the reign of individuality begins--a false and impossible individuality of course, but the only means of coming to the consciousness of the true individuality. With the advent of a Civilisation then founded on Property the unity of the old tribal society is broken up. The ties of blood relationship which were the foundation of the gentile system and the guarantees of the old fraternity and equality become dissolved in favor of powers and authorities founded on mere possession. The growth of Wealth disintegrates the ancient Society; the temptations of power, of possession, etc., which accompany it, wrench the individual from his moorings; personal greed rules; "each man for himself" becomes the universal motto; the hand of every man is raised against his brother, and at last society itself becomes an organisation by which the rich fatten upon the vitals of the poor, the strong upon the murder of the weak. [It is interesting in this connection to find that Lewis Morgan makes the invention of a written alphabet and the growth of the conception of private property the main characteristics of the civilisation-period as distinguished from the periods of savagery and barbarism which preceded it; for the invention of writing marks perhaps better than anything else could do the period when Man becomes _self-conscious_--when he records his own doings and thoughts, and so commences History proper; and the growth of private property marks the period when he begins to sunder himself from his fellows, when therefore the conception of sin (or separation) first enters in, and with it all the long period of moral perplexity, and the denial of that community of life between himself and his fellows which is really of the essence of man's being.] And then arises the institution of Government. Hitherto this had not existed except in a quite rudimentary form. The early communities troubled themselves little about individual ownership, and what government they had was for the most part essentially democratic--as being merely a choice of leaders among blood-relations and social equals. But when the delusion that man can exist for himself alone--his outer and, as it were, accidental self apart from the great inner and cosmical self by which he is one with his fellows--when this delusion takes possession of him, it is not long before it finds expression in some system of private property. The old community of life and enjoyment passes away, and each man tries to grab the utmost he can, and to retire into his own lair for its consumption. Private accumulations arise; the natural flow of the bounties of life is dammed back, and artificial barriers of Law have to be constructed in order to preserve the unequal levels. Outrage and Fraud follow in the wake of the desire of possession; force has to be used by the possessors in order to maintain the law-barriers against the non-possessors; classes are formed; and finally the formal Government arises, mainly as the expression of such force; and preserves itself, as best it can, until such time as the inequalities which it upholds become too glaring, and the pent social waters gathering head burst through once more and regain their natural levels. Thus Morgan in his "Ancient Society" points out over and over again that the civilised state rests upon territorial and property marks and qualifications, and not upon a personal basis as did the ancient _gens_, or the tribe; and that the civilised government correspondingly takes on quite a different character and function from the simple organisation of the gens. He says (p. 124), "Monarchy is incompatible with gentilism." Also with regard to the relation of Property to Civilisation and Government he makes the following pregnant remarks (p. 505): "It is impossible to over-estimate the influence of property in the civilisation of mankind. It was the power that brought the Aryan and Semitic nations out of barbarism into civilisation. The growth of the idea of property in the human mind commenced in feebleness and ended in becoming its master passion. Governments and Laws are instituted with primary reference to its creation, protection and enjoyment. It introduced human slavery as an instrument in its production; and after the experience of several thousand years it caused the abolition of slavery upon the discovery that a freeman was a better property-making machine." And in another passage on the same subject, "The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim; because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy is the next higher plane. It will be a revival in a higher form of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes." The institution of Government is in fact the evidence in social life that man has lost his inner and central control, and therefore must resort to an outward one. Losing touch with the inward Man--who is his true guide--he declines upon an external law, which must always be false. If each man remained in organic adhesion to the general body of his fellows, no serious dis-harmony could occur; but it is when this vital unity of the body politic becomes weak that it has to be preserved by artificial means, and thus it is that with the decay of the primitive and instinctive social life there springs up a form of government which is no longer the democratic expression of the life of the whole people; but a kind of outside authority and compulsion thrust upon them by a ruling class or caste. Perhaps the sincerest, and often though not always the earliest, form of Government is Monarchy. The sentiment of human unity having been already partly but not quite lost, the people choose--in order to hold society together--a man to rule over them who has this sentiment in a high degree. He represents the true Man and therefore the people. This is often a time of extensive warfare and the formation of nations. And it is interesting in this connection to note that the quite early "Kings" or leaders of each nation just prior to the civilisation period were generally associated with the highest religious functions, as in the case of the Roman _rex_, the Greek _basileus_, the early Egyptian Kings, Moses among the Israelites, and Druid leaders of the Britons, and so on. Later, and as the central authority gets more and more shadowy in each man, and the external attraction of Property greater, so it does in Society. The temporal and spiritual powers part company. The king--who at first represented the Divine Spirit or soul of society, recedes into the background, and his nobles of high degree (who may be compared to the nobler, more generous, qualities of the mind) begin to take his place. This is the Aristocracy and the Feudal Age--the Timocracy of Plato; and is marked by the appearance of large private tenures of land, and the growth of slavery and serfdom--the slavery thus outwardly appearing in society being the symbol of the inward enslavement of the man. Then comes the Commercial Age--the Oligarchy or Plutocracy of Plato. Honour quite gives place to material wealth; the rulers rule not by personal or hereditary, but by property qualifications. Parliaments and Constitutions and general Palaver are the order of the day. Wage-slavery, usury, mortgages, and other abominations, indicate the advance of the mortal process. In the individual man gain is the end of existence; industry and scientific cunning are his topmost virtues. Last of all the break-up is complete. The individual loses all memory and tradition of his heavenly guide and counterpart; his nobler passions fail for want of a leader to whom to dedicate themselves; his industry and his intellect serve but to minister to his little swarming desires. This is the era of anarchy--the democracy of Carlyle; the rule of the rabble, and mob-law; caucuses and cackle, competition and universal greed, breaking out in cancerous tyrannies and plutocracies--a mere chaos and confusion of society. For just as we saw in the human body, when the inner and positive force of Health has departed from it, that it falls a prey to parasites which overspread and devour it; so, when the central inspiration departs out of social life, does it writhe with the mere maggots of individual greed, and at length fall under the dominion of the most monstrous egotist who has been bred from its corruption. Thus we have briefly sketched the progress of the symptoms of the "disease," which, as said before, runs much (though not quite) the same course in the various nations which it attacks. And if this last stage were really the end of all, and the true Democracy, there were indeed little left to hope for. No words of Carlyle could blast that black enough. But this is no true Democracy. Here in this "each for himself" is no rule of the Demos in every man, nor anything resembling it. Here is no solidarity such as existed in the ancient tribes and primæval society, but only disintegration and a dust-heap. The true Democracy has yet to come. Here in this present stage is only the final denial of all outward and class government, in preparation for the restoration of the inner and true authority. Here in this stage the task of civilisation comes to an end; the purport and object of all these centuries is fulfilled; the bitter experience that mankind had to pass through is completed; and out of this Death and all the torture and unrest which accompanies it, comes at last the Resurrection. Man has sounded the depths of alienation from his own divine spirit, he has drunk the dregs of the cup of suffering, he has literally descended into Hell; henceforth he turns, both in the individual and in society, and mounts deliberately and consciously back again towards the unity which he has lost.[14] And the false democracy parts aside for the disclosure of the true Democracy which has been formed beneath it--which is not an external government at all, but an inward rule--the rule of the mass-Man in each unit-man. For no outward government can be anything but a make-shift--a temporary hard chrysalis-sheath to hold the grub together while the new life is forming inside--a device of the civilisation-period. Farther than this it cannot go, since no true life can rely upon an external support, and, when the true life of society comes, all its forms will be fluid and spontaneous and voluntary. IV And now, by way of a glimpse into the future--after this long digression what is the route that man will take? This is a subject that I hardly dare tackle. "The morning wind ever blows," says Thoreau, "the poem of creation is uninterrupted--but few are the ears that hear it." And how can we, gulfed as we are in this present whirlpool, conceive rightly the glory which awaits us? No limits that our present knowledge puts need alarm us; the impossibilities will yield very easily when the time comes; and the anatomical difficulty as to how and where the wings are to grow will vanish when they are felt sprouting! It can hardly be doubted that the tendency will be--indeed is already showing itself--towards a return to nature and community of human life. This is the way back to the lost Eden, or rather forward to the new Eden, of which the old was only a figure. Man has to undo the wrappings and the mummydom of centuries, by which he has shut himself from the light of the sun and lain in seeming death, preparing silently his glorious resurrection--for all the world like the funny old chrysalis that he is. He has to emerge from houses and all his other hiding places wherein so long ago ashamed (as at the voice of God in the garden) he concealed himself--and Nature must once more become his home, as it is the home of the animals and the angels. As it is written in the old magical formula: "Man clothes himself to descend, unclothes himself to ascend." Over his spiritual or wind-like body he puts on a material or earthy body; over his earth-body he puts on the skins of animals and other garments; then he hides this body in a house behind curtains and stone walls--which become to it as secondary skins and prolongations of itself. So that between the man and his true life there grows a dense and impenetrable hedge; and, what with the cares and anxieties connected with his earth-body and all its skins, he soon loses the knowledge that he is a Man at all; his true self slumbers in a deep and agelong swoon. But the instinct of all who desire to deliver the divine _imago_ within them, is, in something more than the literal sense, towards unclothing. And the process of evolution or exfoliation itself is nothing but a continual unclothing of Nature, by which the perfect human Form which is at the root of it comes nearer and nearer to its manifestation. Thus, in order to restore the Health which he has lost, man has in the future to tend in this direction. Life indoors and in houses has to become a fraction only, instead of the principal part of existence as it is now. Garments similarly have to be simplified. How far this process may go it is not necessary now to enquire. It is sufficiently obvious that our domestic life and clothing may be at once greatly reduced in complexity, and with the greatest advantage--made subsidiary instead of being erected into the fetishes which they are. And everyone may feel assured that each gain in this direction is a gain in true life--whether it be the head that goes uncovered to the air of heaven, or the feet that press bare the magnetic earth, or the elementary raiment that allows through its meshes the light itself to reach the vital organs. The life of the open air, familiarity with the winds and waves, clean and pure food, the companionship of the animals--the very wrestling with the great Mother for his food--all these things will tend to restore that relationship which man has so long disowned; and the consequent instreaming of energy into his system will carry him to perfections of health and radiance of being at present unsuspected. Of course, it will be said that many of these things are difficult to realise in our country, that an indoor life, with all its concomitants, is forced upon us by the climate. But if this is to some small--though very small--extent true, it forms no reason why we should not still take advantage of every opportunity to push in the direction indicated. It must be remembered, too, that our climate is greatly of our own creation. If the atmosphere of many of our great towns and of the lands for miles in their neighbourhood is devitalised and deadly--so that in cold weather it grants to the poor mortal no compensating power of resistance, but compels him at peril of his life to swathe himself in greatcoats and mufflers--the blame is none but ours. It is we who have covered the lands with a pall of smoke, and are walking to our own funerals under it. That this climate, however, at its best may not be suited to the highest developments of human life is quite possible. Because Britain has been the scene of some of the greatest episodes of Civilisation, it does not follow that she will keep the lead in the period that is to follow; and the Higher Communities of the future will perhaps take their rise in warmer lands, where life is richer and fuller, more spontaneous and more generous, than it can be here. Another point in this connection is the food question. For the restoration of the central vigour when lost or degenerate, a diet consisting mainly of fruits and grains is most adapted. Animal food often gives for the time being a lot of nervous energy--and may be useful for special purposes; but the energy is of a spasmodic feverish kind; the food has a tendency to inflame the subsidiary centres, and so to diminish the central control. Those who live mainly on animal food are specially liable to disease--and not only physically; for their minds also fall more easily a prey to desires and sorrows. In times therefore of grief or mental trouble of any kind, as well as in times of bodily sickness, immediate recourse should be had to the more elementary diet. The body under this diet endures work with less fatigue, is less susceptible to pain, and to cold; and heals its wounds with extraordinary celerity; all of which facts point in the same direction. It may be noted, too, that foods of the seed kind--by which I mean all manner of fruits, nuts, tubers, grains, eggs, etc. (and I may include milk in its various forms of butter, cheese, curds, and so forth), not only contain by their nature the elements of life in their most condensed forms, but have the additional advantage that they can be appropriated without injury to any living creature--for even the cabbage may inaudibly scream when torn up by the roots and boiled, but the strawberry plant _asks_ us to take of its fruit, and paints it red expressly that we may see and devour it! Both of which considerations must convince us that this kind of food is most fitted to develop the kernel of man's life. Which all means cleanness. The unity of our nature being restored, the instinct of bodily cleanness, _both_ within and without, which is such a marked characteristic of the animals, will again characterise mankind--only now instead of a blind instinct it will be a conscious, joyous one; dirt being only disorder and obstruction. And thus the whole human being, mind and body, becoming clean and radiant from its inmost centre to its farthest circumference--"transfigured"--the distinction between the words spiritual and material disappears. In the words of Whitman, "objects gross and the unseen soul are one." But this return to Nature, and identification in some sort with the great cosmos, does not involve a denial or depreciation of human life and interests. It is not uncommonly supposed that there is some kind of antagonism between Man and Nature, and that to recommend a life closer to the latter means mere asceticism and eremitism; and unfortunately this antagonism does exist to-day, though it certainly will not exist for ever. To-day it is unfortunately perfectly true that Man is the only animal who, instead of adorning and beautifying, makes Nature hideous by his presence. The fox and the squirrel may make their homes in the wood and add to its beauty in so doing; but when Alderman Smith plants his villa there, the gods pack up their trunks and depart; they can bear it no longer. The Bushmen can hide themselves and become indistinguishable on a slope of bare rock; they twine their naked little yellow bodies together, and look like a heap of dead sticks; but when the chimney-pot hat and frock-coat appear, the birds fly screaming from the trees. This was the great glory of the Greeks that they accepted and perfected Nature; as the Parthenon sprang out of the limestone terraces of the Acropolis, carrying the natural lines of the rock by gradations scarce perceptible into the finished and human beauty of frieze and pediment, and as, above, it was open for the blue air of heaven to descend into it for a habitation; so throughout in all their best work and life did they stand in this close relation to the earth and the sky and to all instinctive and elemental things, admitting no gulf between themselves and them, but only perfecting their expressiveness and beauty. And some day we shall again understand this which, in the very sunrise of true Art, the Greeks so well understood. Possibly some day we shall again build our houses or dwelling places so simple and elemental in character that they will fit in the nooks of the hills or along the banks of the streams or by the edges of the woods without disturbing the harmony of the landscape or the songs of the birds. Then the great temples, beautiful on every height, or by the shores of the rivers and the lakes, will be the storehouses of all precious and lovely things. There men, women and children will come to share in the great and wonderful common life, the gardens around will be sacred to the unharmed and welcome animals; there all store and all facilities of books and music and art for every one, there a meeting place for social life and intercourse, there dances and games and feasts. Every village, every little settlement, will have such hall or halls. No need for private accumulations. Gladly will each man, and more gladly still each woman, take his or her treasures, except what are immediately or necessarily in use, to the common centre, where their value will be increased a hundred and a thousand fold by the greater number of those who can enjoy them, and where far more perfectly and with far less toil they can be tended than if scattered abroad in private hands. At one stroke half the labour and all the anxiety of domestic caretaking will be annihilated. The private dwelling places, no longer costly and labyrinthine in proportion to the value and number of the treasures they contain, will need no longer to have doors and windows jealously closed against fellow men or mother nature. The sun and air will have access to them, the indwellers will have unfettered egress. Neither man nor woman will be tied in slavery to the lodge which they inhabit; and in becoming once more a part of nature, the human habitation will at length cease to be what it is now for at least half the human race--a prison. Men often ask about the new Architecture--what, and of what sort, it is going to be. But to such a question there can be no answer till a new understanding of life has entered into people's minds, and then the answer will be clear enough. For as the Greek Temples and the Gothic Cathedrals were built by people who themselves lived but frugally as we should think, and were ready to dedicate their best work and chief treasure to the gods and the common life; and as to-day when we must needs have for ourselves spacious and luxurious villas, we seem to be unable to design a decent church or public building; so it will not be till we once more find our main interest and life in the life of the community and the gods that a new spirit will inspire our architecture. Then when our Temples and Common Halls are not designed to glorify an individual architect or patron, but are built for the use of free men and women, to front the sky and the sea and the sun, to spring out of the earth, companionable with the trees and the rocks, not alien in spirit from the sunlit globe itself or the depth of the starry night--then I say their form and structure will quickly determine themselves, and men will have no difficulty in making them beautiful. And similarly with the homes or dwelling places of the people. Various as these may be for the various wants of men, whether for a single individual or for a family, or for groups of individuals or families, whether to the last degree simple, or whether more or less ornate and complex, still the new conception, the new needs of life, will necessarily dominate them and give them form by a law unfolding from within. In such new human life then--its fields, its farms, its workshops, its cities--always the work of man perfecting and beautifying the lands, aiding the efforts of the sun and soil, giving voice to the desire of the mute earth--in such new communal life near to nature, so far from any asceticism or inhospitality, we are fain to see far more humanity and sociability than ever before: an infinite helpfulness and sympathy, as between the children of a common mother. Mutual help and combination will then have become spontaneous and instinctive: each man contributing to the service of his neighbor as inevitably and naturally as the right hand goes to help the left in the human body--and for precisely the same reason. Every man--think of it!--will do the work which he _likes_, which he desires to do, which is obviously before him to do, and which he knows will be useful, without thought of wages or reward; and the reward will come to him as inevitably and naturally as in the human body the blood flows to the member which is exerting itself. All the endless burden of the adjustments of labour and wages, of the war of duty and distaste, of want and weariness, will be thrown aside--all the huge waste of work done against the grain will be avoided; out of the endless variety of human nature will spring a perfectly natural and infinite variety of occupations, all mutually contributive; Society at last will be free and the human being after long ages will have attained to deliverance. This is the Communism which Civilisation has always _hated_, as it hated Christ. Yet it is inevitable; for the cosmical man, the instinctive elemental man accepting and crowning nature, necessarily fulfils the universal law of nature. As to External Government and Law, they will disappear; for they are only the travesties and transitory substitutes of Inward Government and Order. Society in its final state is neither a Monarchy, nor an Aristocracy nor a Democracy, nor an Anarchy, and yet in another sense it is all of these. It is an Anarchy because there is no outward rule, but only an inward and invisible spirit of life; it is a Democracy because it is the rule of the Mass-man, or Demos, in each unit man; it is an Aristocracy because there are degrees and ranks of such inward power in all men; and it is a Monarchy because all these ranks and powers merge in a perfect unity and central control at last. And so it appears that the outer forms of government which belong to the Civilisation-period are only the expression in separate external symbols of the facts of the true inner life of society. And just as thus the various external forms of government during the Civilisation-period find their justification and interpretation in the ensuing period, so will it be with the mechanical and other products of the present time; they will be taken up, and find their proper place and use in the time to come. They will not be refused; but they will have to be brought into subjection. Our locomotives, machinery, telegraphic and postal systems; our houses, furniture, clothes, books, our fearful and wonderful cookery, strong drinks, teas, tobaccos; our medical and surgical appliances; high-faluting sciences and philosophies, and all other engines hitherto of human bewilderment, have simply to be reduced to abject subjection to the real man. All these appliances, and a thousand others such as we hardly dream of, will come in to perfect his power and increase his freedom; but they will not be the objects of a mere fetish-worship as now. Man will use them, instead of their using him. His real life will lie in a region far beyond them. But in thus for a moment denying and "mastering" the products of Civilisation, will he for the first time discover their true value, and reap from them an enjoyment unknown before. The same with the moral powers. As said before, the knowledge of good and evil at a certain point passes away, or becomes absorbed into a higher knowledge. The perception of Sin goes with a certain weakness in the man. As long as there is conflict and division within him, so long does he seem to perceive conflicting and opposing principles in the world without. As long as the objects of the outer world excite emotions in him which pass beyond his control, so long do those objects stand as the signals of evil--of disorder and sin. Not that the objects are bad in themselves, or even the emotions which they excite, but that all through this period these things serve to the man as indications of _his_ weakness. But when the central power is restored in man and all things are reduced to his service, it is impossible for him to see badness in anything. The bodily is no longer antagonistic to the spiritual love, but is absorbed into it. All his passions take their places perfectly naturally, and become, when the occasions arise, the vehicles of his expression. Vices under existing conditions are vices simply because of the inordinate and disturbing influence they exercise, but will cease again to be vices when the man regains his proper command. Thus Socrates having a clean soul in a clean body could drink his boon companions under the table and then go out himself to take the morning air--what was a blemish and defect in them being simply an added power of enjoyment to himself! The point of difference throughout (being the transference of the centre of gravity of life and consciousness from the partial to the universal man) is symbolised by the gradual resumption of more universal conditions. That is to say that during the civilisation-period, the body being systematically wrapped in clothes, the _head_ alone represents man--the little finnikin, intellectual, _self-conscious_ man in contra-distinction to the cosmical man represented by the entirety of the bodily organs. The body has to be delivered from its swathings in order that the cosmical consciousness may once more reside in the human breast. We have to become "all face" again--as the savage said of himself.[15] Where the cosmic self is, there is no more self-consciousness. The body and what is ordinarily called the self are felt to be only parts of the true self, and the ordinary distinctions of inner and outer, egotism and altruism, etc., lose a good deal of their value. Thought no longer returns upon the local self as the chief object of regard, but consciousness is continually radiant from it, filling the body and overflowing upon external Nature. Thus the Sun in the physical world is the allegory of the true self. The worshiper must adore the Sun, he must saturate himself with sunlight, and take the physical Sun into himself. Those who live by fire and candle-light are filled with phantoms; their thoughts are Will-o'-th'-wisp-like images of themselves, and they are tormented by a horrible self-consciousness. And when the Civilisation-period has passed away, the old Nature-religion--perhaps greatly grown--will come back. This immense stream of religious life which, beginning far beyond the horizon of earliest history, has been deflected into various metaphysical and other channels--of Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and the like--during the historical period, will once more gather itself together to float on its bosom all the arks and sacred vessels of human progress. Man will once more _feel_ his unity with his fellows, he will feel his unity with the animals, with the mountains and the streams, with the earth itself and the slow lapse of the constellations, not as an abstract dogma of Science or Theology, but as a living and ever-present fact. Ages back this has been understood better than now. Our Christian ceremonial is saturated with sexual and astronomical symbols; and long before Christianity existed, the sexual and astronomical were the main forms of religion. That is to say, men instinctively felt and worshiped the great life coming to them through Sex, the great life coming to them from the deeps of Heaven. They deified both. They placed their gods--their own human forms--in sex, they placed them in the sky. And not only so, but wherever they felt this kindred human life--in the animals, in the ibis, the bull, the lamb, the snake, the crocodile; in the trees and flowers, the oak, the ash, the laurel, the hyacinth; in the streams and water-falls, on the mountain-sides or in the depths of the sea--they placed them. The whole universe was full of a life which, though not always friendly, was _human_ and kindred to their own, _felt_ by them, not reasoned about, but simply perceived. To the early man the notion of his having a separate individuality could only with difficulty occur; hence he troubled himself not with the suicidal questionings concerning the whence and whither which now vex the modern mind.[16] For what causes these questions to be asked is simply the wretched feeling of isolation, actual or prospective, which man necessarily has when he contemplates himself as a separate atom in this immense universe--the gulf which lies below seemingly ready to swallow him, and the anxiety to find some mode of escape. But when he feels once more that he, that _he_ himself, is absolutely indivisibly and indestructibly a part of this great whole--why then there is no gulf into which he can possibly fall; when he is sensible of the fact, why then the _how_ of its realisation, though losing none of its interest, becomes a matter for whose solution he can wait and work in faith and contentment of mind. The Sun or Sol, visible image of his very Soul, closest and most vital to him of all mortal things, occupying the illimitable heaven, feeding all with its life; the Moon, emblem and nurse of his own reflective thought, the conscious Man, measurer of Time, mirror of the Sun; the planetary passions wandering to and fro, yet within bounds; the starry destinies; the changes of the earth, and the seasons; the upward growth and unfoldment of all organic life; the emergence of the perfect Man, towards whose birth all creation groans and travails--all these things will return to become realities, and to be the frame or setting of his supra-mundane life. The meaning of the old religions will come back to him. On the high tops once more gathering he will celebrate with naked dances the glory of the human form and the great processions of the stars, or greet the bright horn of the young moon which now after a hundred centuries comes back laden with such wondrous associations--all the yearnings and the dreams and the wonderment of the generations of mankind--the worship of Astarte and of Diana, of Isis or the Virgin Mary; once more in sacred groves will he reunite the passion and the delight of human love with his deepest feelings of the sanctity and beauty of Nature; or in the open, standing uncovered to the Sun, will adore the emblem of the everlasting splendour which shines within. The same sense of vital perfection and exaltation which can be traced in the early and pre-civilisation peoples--only a thousand times intensified, defined, illustrated and purified--will return to irradiate the redeemed and delivered Man. In suggesting thus the part which Civilisation has played in history, I am aware that the word itself is difficult to define--is at best only one of those phantom-generalisations which the mind is forced to employ; also that the account I have given of it is sadly imperfect, leaning perhaps too much to the merely negative and destructive aspect of this thousand-year long lapse of human evolution. I would also remind the reader that though it is perfectly true that under the dissolving influence of civilisation empire after empire has gone under and disappeared, and the current of human progress time after time has only been restored again by a fresh influx of savagery, yet its corruptive tendency has never had a quite unlimited fling; but that all down the ages of its dominance over the earth we can trace the tradition of a healing and redeeming power at work in the human breast and an anticipation of the second advent of the son of man. Certain institutions, too, such as Art and the Family (though it seems not unlikely that both of these will greatly change when the special conditions of their present existence have disappeared), have served to keep the sacred flame alive; the latter preserving in island-miniatures, as it were, the ancient communal humanity when the seas of individualism and greed covered the general face of the earth; the former keeping up, so to speak, a navel-cord of contact with Nature, and a means of utterance of primal emotions else unsatisfiable in the world around. And if it seem extravagant to suppose that Society will ever emerge from the chaotic condition of strife and perplexity in which we find it all down the lapse of historical time, or to hope that the civilisation-process which has terminated fatally so invariably in the past will ever eventuate in the establishment of a higher and more perfect health-condition, we may for our consolation remember that to-day there are features in the problem which have never been present before. In the first place, to-day Civilisation is no longer isolated, as in the ancient world, in surrounding floods of savagery and barbarism, but it practically covers the globe, and the outlying savagery is so feeble as not possibly to be a menace to it. This may at first appear a drawback, for (it will be said) if Civilisation be not renovated by the influx of external Savagery its own inherent flaws will destroy society all the sooner. And there would be some truth in this if it were not for the following consideration, namely, that while for the first time in History Civilisation is now practically continuous over the globe, now also for the first time can we descry forming in continuous line _within its very structure_ the forces which are destined to destroy it and to bring about the new order. While hitherto isolated communisms, as suggested, have existed here and there and from time to time, now for the first time in History both the masses and the thinkers of all the advanced nations of the world are consciously feeling their way towards the establishment of a socialistic and communal life on a vast scale. The present competitive society is more and more rapidly becoming a mere dead formula and husk within which the outlines of the new and _human_ society are already discernible. Simultaneously, and as if to match this growth, a move towards Nature and Savagery is for the first time taking place from within, instead of being forced upon society from without. The nature movement begun years ago in literature and art is now, among the more advanced sections of the civilised world, rapidly realising itself in actual life, going so far even as a denial, among some, of machinery and the complex products of Civilisation, and developing among others into a gospel of salvation by sandals and sunbaths! It is in these two movements--towards a complex human Communism and towards individual freedom and Savagery--in some sort balancing and correcting each other, and both visibly growing up within, though utterly foreign to--our present-day Civilisation, that we have fair grounds, I think, for looking forward to its cure. NOTES (See p. 26) The following remarks by Mr. H. B. Cotterill on the natives around Lake Nyassa, among whom he lived at a time, 1876-8, when the region was almost unvisited, may be of interest. "In regard of merely 'animal' development and well-being, that is in the delicate perfection of bodily faculties (perceptive), the African savage is as a rule incomparably superior to us. One feels like a child, utterly dependent on them, when travelling or hunting with them. It is true that many may be found (especially amongst the weaker tribes that have been slave-hunted or driven into barren corners) who are half-starved and wizened, but as a rule they are splendid animals. In _character_ there is a great want of that strength which in the educated civilised man is secured by the roots striking out into the Past and Future--and in spite of their immense perceptive superiority they feel and acknowledge the superior force of character in the white man. They are the very converse of the Stoic self-sufficient sage--like children in their 'admiration' and worship of the Unknown. Hence their absolute want of _Conceit_, though they possess self-command and dignity. They are, to those they love and respect, faithful and devoted--their faithfulness and truthfulness are dictated by no 'categorical imperative,' but by personal affection. Towards an enemy they can be, without any conscientious scruples, treacherous and inhumanly cruel. I should say that there is scarcely any possible idea that is so foreign to the savage African mind as that of general philanthropy or enemy-love." "In _endurance_ the African savage beats us hollow (except trained athletes). On one occasion my men rowed my boat with 10 foot oars against the wind in a choppy sea for _25 hours at one go_, across Kuwirwe Bay, about 60 miles. They never once stopped or left their seats--just handed round a handful of rice now and then. I was at the helm all the time--and had enough of it!... They carry 80 lbs. on their heads for 10 hours through swamps and jungles. Four of my men carried a sick man weighing 14 stones in a hammock for 200 miles, right across the dreaded Malikata Swamp. But for _sudden_ emergencies, squalls, etc., they are nowhere." (See p. 27) "So lovely a scene made easily credible the suggestion, otherwise highly probable, that the Golden Age was no mere fancy of the poets, but a reminiscence of the facts of social life in its primitive organisation of village and house-communities." (J. S. Stuart-Glennie's _Europe and Asia_, ch. i. Servia.) (See p. 72) "It was only on the up-break of the primitive socialisms that the passionate desire of, and therefore belief in, individual Immortality arose. With an intense feeling, not of an independent individual life, but of a dependent common life, there is no passionate desire of, though there may be more or less of belief in, a continuance after death of individual existence." (_Ibid_, p. 161.) Following is an extract from a letter from my friend Havelock Ellis, which he kindly allows me to reprint. The passage is interesting as indicating _one_ cause, at any rate, of the failure of the modern civilisations. "Your remark that you are re-publishing _Civilisation: its Cause and Cure_ has led me to read it once again, and I see how well adapted it is for reissue just now when there is so widespread a discontent with 'civilisation.' I do not see any reason for changing the essay, though, no doubt, much might be added to supplement it. What has, however, struck me is that you leave out of account the _reason_ for the greater health, vigour, and high spirit of savages (when such conditions exist), and that is _the more stringent natural_ selection among savages owing to the greater hardness of their life. You doubtless know ch. xvii of Westermarck's _Moral Ideas_, where he shows how widespread among savages (when they have got past the first crude primitive stage), and in the ancient civilisations, was the practice of infanticide applied to inferior babies and the habit of allowing sick persons to die. That was evidently the secret of the natural superiority of the savage and of the men of the old civilisation, for the Greeks and Romans were very stringent in this matter. The flabbiness of the civilised and the prevalence of doctors and hygienists, which you make fun of, is due to the modern tenderness for human life which is afraid to kill off even the most worthless specimens and so lowers the whole level of 'civilised' humanity. Introduce a New Hardness in this matter and we should return to the high level of savagery, while the doctors would disappear as if by magic. I don't myself believe we _can_ introduce this hardness; and that is why I attach so much importance to _intelligent_ eugenics, working through birth-control, as the only _now possible_ way of getting towards that high natural level you aim at."--HAVELOCK ELLIS (1920). FOOTNOTES: [1] It is interesting to note that the "sense of Sin" seems now (1920) to have nearly passed away. And this fact probably indicates a considerable impending change in our Social Order. [2] For proof I must refer the reader to Engels, or to his own studies of history. [3] Say like the Homeric Greeks, or the Spartans of the Lycurgus period. [4] _Matabele Land and the Victoria Falls_, p. 209. [5] A similar physical health and power of life are also developed among Europeans who have lived for long periods in more native conditions. It is not to our _race_, which is probably superior to any in capacity, but to the state in which we live that we must ascribe our defect in this particular matter. [6] See Col. Dodge's _Our Wild Indians_. [7] Wood's _Natural History of Man_. [8] See Appendix. [9] See Note at end of this chapter. [10] No words or theory even of morality can express or formulate this--no enthronement of _any_ virtue can take its place; for all virtue enthroned before our humanity becomes vice, and worse than vice. [11] It is curious that this word seems to have the same root as the word Man, the original idea apparently being Order, or Measure. [12] And with regard to disease, though it is not maintained that among the animals there is anything like immunity from it--since diseases of a more or less parasitic character are common in all tribes of plants and animals--still they seem to be rarer, and the organic instinct of health greater, than in the civilised man. [13] As to the unity of these wild races with Nature, that is a matter seemingly beyond dispute; their keenness of sense, sensitiveness to atmospheric changes, knowledge of properties of plants and habits of animals, etc., have been the subject of frequent remark; but beyond this, their strong _feeling_ of union with the universal spirit, probably only dimly self conscious, but expressing itself very markedly and clearly in their customs, is most strange and pregnant of meaning. The dances of the Andaman Islanders on the sands at night, the wild festival of the new moon among the Fans and other African tribes, the processions through the forests, the chants and dull thudding of drums, the torture-dances of the young Red Indian bravos in the burning heat of the sun; the Dionysiac festivals among the early Greeks; and indeed the sacrificial nature-rites and carnivals and extraordinary powers of second-sight found among all primitive peoples; all these things indicate clearly a faculty which, though it had hardly become self-conscious enough to be what we call religion, was yet in truth the foundation element of religion, and the germ of some human powers which wait yet to be developed. [14] There is another point worth noting as characteristic of the civilisation-period. This is the abnormal development of the abstract intellect in comparison with the physical senses on the one hand, and the moral sense on the other. Such a result might be expected, seeing that abstraction from reality is naturally the great engine of that false individuality or apartness, which it is the object of Civilisation to produce. As it is, during this period man builds himself an intellectual world apart from the great actual universe around him; the "ghosts of things" are studied in books; the student lives indoors, he cannot face the open air--his theories "may prove very well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds, and along the landscape and flowing currents"; children are "educated" afar from actual life; huge phantom-temples of philosophy and science are reared upon the most slender foundations; and in these he lives defended from actual fact. For as a drop of water, when it comes in contact with red-hot iron, wraps itself in a cloud of vapor and is saved from destruction, so the little mind of man, lest it should touch the burning truth of Nature and God and be consumed, evolves at each point of contact a veil of insubstantial thought which allows it for a time to exist apart, and becomes the nurse of its self-consciousness. [15] See Alonso di Ovalle's _Account of the Kingdom of Chile_ in Churchill's _Collection of Voyages and Travels_, 1724. [16] See Notes at end of this chapter. MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM [Greek: panti logô logos isos antikeitai.] It is one of the difficulties which meet anyone who suggests that modern science is not wholly satisfactory, that it is immediately assumed that the writer is covertly defending what Ingersoll calls the "rib-story," or that he wishes to restore belief in the literal inspiration of the Bible. But, religious controversy apart, and while admitting that Science has done a great work in cleaning away the kitchen-middens of superstition and opening the path to clearer and saner views of the world, it is possible--and there is already a growing feeling that way--that her positive contributions to our comprehension of the order of the universe have in late times been disappointing, and that even her methods are only of limited applicability. After a glorious burst of perhaps fifty years, amid great acclamations and good hopes that the crafty old universe was going to be caught in her careful net, Science, it must be confessed, now finds herself in almost every direction in the most hopeless quandaries; and, whether the rib-story be true or not, has at any rate provided no very satisfactory substitute for it. And the reason of this failure is very obvious. It goes with a certain defect in the human mind, which, as we have pointed out (note, p. 57), necessarily belongs to the Civilisation-period--the tendency, namely, to separate the logical and intellectual part of man from the emotional and instinctive, and to give it a _locus standi_ of its own. Science has failed, because she has attempted to carry out the investigation of nature from the intellectual side alone--neglecting the other constituents necessarily involved in the problem. She has failed, because she has attempted an impossible task; for the discovery of a permanently valid and purely _intellectual_ representation of the universe is simply impossible. Such a thing does not exist. The various theories and views of nature which we hold are merely the fugitive envelopes of the successive stages of human growth--each set of theories and views belonging organically to the moral and emotional stage which has been reached, and being in some sort the expression of it; so that the attempt at any given time to set up an explanation of phenomena which shall be valid in itself and without reference to the mental condition of those who set it up, necessarily ends in failure; and the present state of confusion and contradiction in which modern Science finds itself is merely the result of such attempt. Of course this limitation of the validity of Science has been recognised by most of those who have thought about the matter;[17] but it is so commonly overlooked, and latterly the notion has so far gained ground that the "laws" of science are immutable facts and eternal statements of verity, that it may be worth while to treat the subject a little more in detail. The method of Science is the method of all mundane knowledge; it is that of limitation or actual ignorance. Placed in face of the great uncontained unity of Nature we can only deal with it in thought by selecting certain details and isolating those (either wilfully or unconsciously) from the rest. That is right enough. But in doing so--in isolating such and such details--we practically beg the question we are in search of; and, moreover, in supposing such isolation we suppose what is false, and therefore vitiate our conclusion. From these two radical defects of all intellectual inquiry we cannot escape. The views of Science are like the views of a mountain; each is only possible as long as you limit yourself to a certain standpoint. Move your position, and the view is changed.[18] Perhaps the word "species" will illustrate our meaning as well as any word; and, in a sense, the word is typical of the method of Science. I see a dog for the first time. It is a fox-hound. Then I see a second fox-hound, and a third and a fourth. Presently I form from these few instances a general conception of "dog." But after a time I see a grey-hound and a terrier and a mastiff, and my old conception is destroyed. A new one has to be formed, and then a new one and a new one. Now I overlook the whole race of civilised dogs and am satisfied with my wisdom; but presently I come upon some wild dogs, and study the habits of the wolf and the fox. Geology turns me up some links, and my conception of dog melts away like a lump of ice into surrounding water. My species exists no more. As long as I knew a few of the facts I could talk very wise about them; or if I limited myself arbitrarily, as we will say, to a study only of animals in England at the present day, I could classify them; but widen the bounds of my knowledge, the area of observation, and all my work has to be done over again. My species is not a valid fact of Nature, but a fiction arising out of my own ignorance or arbitrary isolation of the objects observed. Or to take an instance from Astronomy. We are accustomed to say that the path of the moon is an ellipse. But this is a very loose statement. On enquiry we find that, owing to perturbations said to be produced by the sun, the path deviates considerably from an ellipse. In fact in strict calculations it is taken as being a certain ellipse only for an instant--the next instant it is supposed to be a portion of another ellipse. We might then call the path an irregular curve somewhat resembling an ellipse. This is a new view. But on further enquiry it appears that, while the moon is going round the earth, the earth itself is speeding on through space about the sun--in consequence of which the actual path of the moon does not in the least resemble an ellipse! Finally the sun itself is in motion with regard to the fixed stars, and _they_ are in movement too. What then is the path of the moon? No one knows; we have not the faintest idea--the word itself ceases to have any assignable meaning. It is true that if we agree to ignore the perturbations produced by the sun--as in fact we _do_ ignore perturbations produced by the planets and other bodies--and if we agree to ignore the motion of the earth, and the flight of the solar system through space, and even the movement of any centre round which that may be speeding, we may then _say_ that the moon moves in an ellipse. But this has obviously nothing to do with actual facts. The moon _does_ not move in an ellipse--not even "relatively to the earth"--and probably never has done and never will do so. It may be a convenient view or fiction to say that it would do so under such and such circumstances--but it is still only a fiction. To attempt to isolate a small portion of the phenomena from the rest in a universe of which the _unity_ is one of Science's most cherished convictions, is obviously self-stultifying and useless. But you say it can be proved by mathematics that the ellipse would be the path under these conditions; to which I reply that the mathematical proof, though no doubt cogent to the human mind (as at present constituted in most people), is open to the same objection that it does not deal with actual facts. It deals with a mental supposition, _i.e._, that there are only two bodies acting on each other--a case which never has occurred and never can occur--and then, assuming the law of gravitation (which is just the thing which has to be proved), it arrives at a mental formula, the ellipse. But to argue from this process that the ellipse is really a thing in Nature, and that the heavenly bodies do move or even tend to move in ellipses, is obviously a most unwarrantable leap in the dark. Finally you argue that the leap is warranted because, by assuming that the moon and planets move in ellipses, you can actually foretell things that happen, as for instance the occurrences of eclipses; and in reply to that I can only say that Tycho Brahé foretold eclipses almost as well by assuming that the heavenly bodies moved in epicycles, and that modern astronomers do apply the epicycle theory in their mathematical formulæ. The epicycles were an assumption made for a certain purpose, and the ellipses are an assumption made for the same purpose. In some respects the ellipse is a more convenient fiction than the epicycle, but it is no less a fiction. In other words--with regard to this "path of the moon" (as with regard to any other phenomenon of Nature)--our knowledge of it must be either absolute or relative. But we cannot know the absolute path; and as to the relative, why all we can say is that it does not exist (any more than species exists)--we cannot break up Nature so; it is not a thing in Nature, but in our own minds--it is a view and a fiction.[19] Again, let us take an example from Physics--Boyle's law of the compressibility of gases. This law states that, the temperature remaining constant, the volume of a given quantity of gas is inversely proportional to its pressure. It is a law which has been made a good deal of, and at one time was thought to be true, _i.e._, it was thought to be a statement of fact. A more extended and careful observation, however, shows that it is only true under so many limitations, that, like the ellipse in Astronomy, it must be regarded as a convenient fiction and nothing more. It appears that air follows the supposed law pretty well, but not by any means exactly except within very narrow limits of pressure; other gases, such as carbonic acid and hydrogen, deviate from it very considerably--some more than others, and some in one direction and some in the opposite. It was found, among other things, that the nearer a gas was to its liquefying point, the greater was the deviation from the supposed law, and the conclusion was jumped at that the law was true for _perfect_ gases only. This idea of a perfect gas of course involved the assumption that gases, as they get farther and farther removed from their liquifying point, reach at last a fixed and stable condition, when no further change in their qualities takes place--at any rate for a very long time--and Boyle's law was supposed to apply to this condition. Since then, however, it has been discovered that there is an ultra-gaseous state of matter, and on all sides it is becoming abundantly clear that the change in the condition of matter from the liquid state to the ultra-gaseous state is perfectly continuous--through all modifications of liquidity and condensation and every degree of perfection and imperfection of gasiness to the utmost rarity of the fourth state. At what point, then, does Boyle's law really apply? Obviously it applies _exactly_ at only one point in this long ascending scale--at one metaphysical point--and at every other point it is incorrect. But no gas in Nature remains or can be maintained just at one point in the scale of its innumerable changes. Consequently, all we can say is that out of the innumerable different states that gases are capable of, and the innumerable different laws of compressibility which they therefore follow, we could theoretically find one state to which would correspond the law of compressibility called Boyle's law; and that, _if_ we could preserve a gas in that state (which we can't), Boyle's law really _would_ be true just for that case. In other words, the law is metaphysical. It has no real existence. It is a convenient view or fiction, arising in the first place out of ignorance, and only tenable as long as further observation is limited or wilfully ignored. This then is the Method of Science. It consists in forming a law or statement by only looking at a small portion of the facts; then, when the other facts come in, the law or statement gradually fades away again. Conrad Gessner and other early zoologists began by classifying animals according to the number of their horns! Political Economy begins by classifying social action under a law of Supply and Demand. When people believed that the earth was flat, they generalised the facts connected with the fall of heavy bodies into a conception of "up and down." These were two opposite directions in space. Heavy bodies took the "downward"; it was their nature. But in time, and as fresh facts came in, it became impossible to group animals any longer by their horns; "up and down" ceased to have a meaning when it was known that the earth was round. Then fresh laws and statements had to be formed. In the last-mentioned case--it being conceived that the earth was the centre of the universe--the new law supposed was that all heavy bodies tended to the centre of the earth as such. This was all right and satisfactory for a while; but presently it appeared that the earth was _not_ the centre of the universe, and that some heavy bodies--such as the satellites of Jupiter--did not in fact tend to the centre of the earth at all. Another lump of ignorance (which had enabled the old generalisation to exist) was removed, and a new generalisation, that of universal gravitation, was after a time formed. But it is probable that this law is only conceived of as true through our ignorance; nay it is certain that belief in its truth presents the gravest difficulties. In fact here we come upon an important point. It is sometimes said that, granting the above arguments and the partiality and defectiveness of the laws of Science, still they are approximations to the truth, and as each fresh fact is introduced the consequent modification of the old law brings us _nearer and nearer_ to a limit of rigorous exactness which we shall reach at last if we only have patience enough. But is this so? What kind of rigorous statement shall we reach when we have got _all_ the facts in? Remembering that Nature is _one_, and that if we try to get a rigorous statement for one set of phenomena (as say the lunar theory) by isolating them from the rest, we are thereby condemning ourselves beforehand to a false conclusion, is it not evident that our limit is at all times infinitely far off? If one knew all the facts relating to a given inquiry except two or three, one might reasonably suppose that one was near a limit of exactness in one's knowledge; but seeing that in our investigation of Nature we only know two or three, so to speak, out of a million, it is obvious that at any moment the fresh law arising from increased experience may completely upset our former calculations. There is a difference between approximating to a wall and approximating to the North Star. In the one case you are tending to a speedy conclusion of your labours, in the other case you are only _going in a certain direction_. The theories of Science generally belong under the second head. They mark the direction which the human mind is taking at the moment in question, but they mark no limits. At each point the _appearance_ of a limit is introduced--which becomes, like a mirage in the desert, an object of keen pursuit; but the limit is not really there--it is only an effect of the standpoint, and disappears again after a time as the observer moves. In the case of gravitation there is for the moment an appearance of finality in the law of the inverse square of the distance, but this arises probably from the fact that the law is derived from a limited area of observation only, namely the movements (at great distances from each other) of some of the heavenly bodies.[20] The Cavendish and Schehallien experiments do not show more than that the law at ordinary distances on the earth's surface does not vary _very_ much from the above; while the so-called molecular forces compel us (unless we make the very artificial assumption that a variety of attractions and repulsions co-exist in matter alongside of, and yet totally distinct from, the attraction of gravitation) to suppose very _great_ modifications of the law for small distances. In fact, as we saw of Boyle's law before--the Newtonian law is probably metaphysical--true under certain limited conditions--and the appearance of finality has been given to it by the fact that our observations have been made under such or similar conditions. When we extend our observation into quite other regions of space, the law of the inverse square ceases to appear as even an approximation to the truth--as, for instance, the law of the inverse _fifth_ power has been thought to be nearer the mark for small molecular distances. And indeed the state of the great theories of Science in the present day--the confusion in which the Atomic theory of physics finds itself, the dismal insufficiency of the Darwin theory of the survival of the fittest; the collapse in late times of one of the fundamental theories of Astronomy, namely that of the stability of the lunar and planetary orbits; the cataclysms and convulsions which Geology seems just now to be undergoing; the appalling and indeed insurmountable difficulties which attach to the Undulatory theory of Light; the final wreck and abandonment of the Value-theory, the foundation-theory of Political Economy--all these things do not seem to point to very near limits of rigorous exactness! An impregnable theory, or one nearing the limit of impregnability, is in fact as great an absurdity as an impregnable armour-plate. Certainly, given the cannon-balls, you can generally find an armour-plate which will be proof against them; but given the armour-plate, you can always find cannon-balls which will smash it up. The method of Science, as being a method of artificial limitation or actual ignorance, is curiously illustrated by a consideration of its various branches. I have taken some examples from Astronomy, which is considered the most exact of the physical sciences. Now does it not seem curious that _Astronomy_--the study of the heavenly bodies, which are the most distant from us of all bodies, and most difficult to observe--should yet be the most perfect of the sciences? Yet the reason is obvious. Astronomy is the most perfect science _because we know least about it_--because our ignorance of the actual phenomena is most profound. Situated in fact as we are, on a speck in space, with our observations limited to periods of time which, compared with the stupendous flights of the stars, are merely momentary and evanescent, we are in somewhat the position of a mole surveying a railway track and the flight of locomotives. And as a man seeing a very small arc of a very vast circle easily mistakes it for a straight line, so we are easily satisfied with cheap deductions and solutions in Astronomy which a more extensive experience would cause us to reject. The man may have a long way to go along his "straight line" before he discovers that it is a curve; he may have much farther to go along his curve before he discovers that it is not a circle; and much farther still to go before he finds out whether it is an ellipse or a spiral or a parabola, or none of these; yet _what_ curve it is will make an enormous difference in his ultimate destination. So with the astronomer; and yet Astronomy is allowed to pass as an exact science![21] Well then, as in Astronomy we get an "exact science," because the facts and phenomena are on such a tremendous scale that we only see a minute portion of them--just a few details so to speak--and our ignorance therefore allows us to dogmatise; so at the other end of the scale in Chemistry and Physics we get quasi-exact sciences, because the facts and phenomena are on such a _minute_ scale that we overlook _all the details_ and see only certain general effects here and there. When a solution of cupric sulphate is treated with ammonia, a mass of flocculent green precipitate is formed. No one has the faintest notion of all the various movements and combinations of the molecules of these two fluids which accompany the appearance of the precipitate. They are no doubt very complex. But among all the changes that are taking place, one change has the advantage of being visible to the eye, and the chemist singles that out as the main phenomenon. So chemistry at large consists in a few, very few, facts taken at random as it were (or because they happen to be of such a nature as to be observable) out of the enormous mass of facts really concerned: and because of their fewness the chemist is able to arrange them, as he thinks, in some order, that is, to generalise about them. But it is certain as can be that he only has to extend the number of his facts, or his powers of observation, to get all his generalisations upset. The same may be said of magnetism, light, heat, and the other physical sciences; but it is not necessary to prove in detail what is sufficiently obvious. But now, roughly speaking, there is a third region of human observation--a region which does not, like Astronomy (and Geology), lie so far beyond and above us that we only see a very small portion of it; nor, like Chemistry and Physics, so far below us and under such minute conditions of space and time that we can only catch its general effects; but which lies more on a level with man himself--the so-called organic world--the study of man, as an individual and in society, his history, his development, the study of the animals, the plants even, and the laws of life--the sciences of Biology, Sociology, History, Psychology, and the rest. Now this region is obviously that which man knows most of. I don't say that he generalises most about it, but he knows the facts best. For one observation that he makes of the habits and behaviour of the stars, or of chemical solutions--for one observation in the remote regions of Astronomy or Chemistry--he makes thousands and millions of the habits and behaviour of his fellowmen, and hundreds and thousands of those of the animals and plants. Is it not curious then that in this region he is least sure, least dogmatic, most doubtful whether there be a law or no? Or, rather, is it not quite in accord with our contention, namely that Science, like an uninformed boy, is most definite and dogmatic just where actual knowledge is least. It will however be replied that the phenomena of living beings are far more complex than the phenomena of Astronomy or Physics--and that is the reason why exact science makes so little way with them. Though man knows many million times more about the habits of his fellow-men than about the habits of the stars, yet the former subject is so many million times more complicated than the latter that all his additional knowledge does not avail him. This is the plea. Yet it does not hold water. It is an entire assumption to say that the phenomena of Astronomy are less complicated than the phenomena of vitality. A moment's thought will show that the phenomena of Astronomy are in reality infinitely complex. Take the movement of the moon: even with our present acquaintance with that subject we know that it has some relation to the position and mass of the earth, including its ocean tides; also to the position and mass of the sun; also to the position and mass of every one of the planets; also of the comets, numerous and unknown as they are; also the meteoric rings; and finally of all the stars! The problem, as everyone knows, is absolutely insoluble even for the shortest period; but when the element of Time enters in, and we consider that to do anything like justice to the problem in an astronomical sense we should have to solve it for at least a million years--during which interval the earth, sun, and other bodies concerned would themselves have been changing their relative positions, it becomes obvious that the whole question is infinitely complex--and yet this is only a small fragment of Astronomy. To debate, therefore, whether the infinite complexity of the movements of the stars is greater or less than the infinite complexity of the phenomena of life, is like debating the precedence of the three persons of the Trinity, or whether the Holy Ghost was begotten or proceeding: we are talking about things which we do not understand. Nature is one; she is not, we may guess, less profound and wonderful in one department than another; but from the fact that we live under certain conditions and limitations we see most deeply into that portion which is, as it were, on the same level with us. In humanity we look her in the face; there our glance pierces, and we see that she is profound and wonderful beyond all imagination; what we learn there is the most valuable that we can learn. In the regions where Science rejoices to disport itself we see only the skirts of her garments, so to speak, and though we measure them never so precisely, we still see them and nothing more. There is another point, however, of which much is often made as a plea for the substantial accuracy of the scientific laws and generalisations, namely that they enable us to _predict_ events. But this need not detain us long. J. S. Mill in his "Logic" has pointed out--and a little thought makes it obvious--that the success of a prediction does not prove the truth of the theory on which it is founded. It only proves the theory was good enough for that prediction. There was a time when the sun was a god going forth in his chariot every morning, and there was a time when the earth was the centre of the universe, and the sun a ball of fire revolving round it. In those times men could predict with certainty that the sun would rise next morning, and could even name the hour of its appearance; but we do not therefore think that their theories were true. When Adams and Leverrier foretold the appearance of Neptune in a certain part of the sky, they made a brief prediction to an unknown planet from the observed relations of the movements of the known planets; that does not show, however, that the grand generalisation of these movements, called the "law of gravitation," is correct. It merely shows that it did well enough for this very brief step--brief indeed compared with the real problems of Astronomy, for which latter it is probably quite inadequate. Tycho Brahé, excellent astronomer as he was, kept as we saw to the epicycle theory. He imagined that the moon's path round the earth was a fixed combination of cycle and epicycle. Kepler introduced the conception of the ellipse. Later on the motion of the perigee and other deviations compelled the abandonment of the ellipse and the supposition of an endless curve, similar to an ellipse at any one point, and maintaining a fixed mean distance from the earth, but never returning on itself or making a definite closed figure of any kind. Finally the researches of Mr. George Darwin have destroyed the conception of the fixed mean distance, and introduced that of a continually enlarging spiral. Certainly no four theories could well be more distinct from each other than these; yet if an eclipse had to be calculated for next year it would scarcely matter which theory was used. The truth is that the actual problem is so vast that a prediction of a few years in advance only touches the fringe of it so to speak; yet if the fulfilment of the prediction were taken as a proof of the theory in each of these different cases, it would lead in the end to the most hopelessly contradictory results. The success of a prediction therefore only shows that the theory on which it is founded has had practical value so far as a working hypothesis. As working hypotheses, and as long as they are kept down to brief steps _which can be verified_, the scientific theories are very valuable--indeed we could not do without them; but when they are treated as objective facts--when, for instance, the "law of gravitation"--derived as it is from a brief study of the heavenly bodies--has a universal truth ascribed to it, and is made to apply to phenomena extending over millions of years, and to warrant unverifiable prophecies about the planetary orbits, or statements about the age of the earth and the duration of the solar system--all one can say is that those who argue so are flying off at a tangent from actual facts. For as the tangent represents the direction of a curve over a small arc, so these theories represent the bearing of facts well enough over a small region of observation; but as following the tangent we soon lose the curve, so following these theories for any distance beyond the region of actual observation we speedily part company with facts.[22] To proceed with a few more words about the general method of Science. Science passes from phenomena to laws, from individual details which can be seen and felt to large generalisations of an intangible and phantom-like character. That is to say, that for convenience of thought we classify objects. How is this classification effected? It is effected through the perception of identity amid difference. Among a lot of objects I perceive certain attributes in common; this group of common attributes serves, so to speak, as a band to tie these objects together with--into a bundle convenient for thought. I give a name to the band, and that serves to denote any unit of the bundle by. Thus perceiving common attributes among a lot of dogs--as in an example already given--I give the name foxhound to this group of attributes, and thenceforth use the name foxhound to connect these objects by in my mind; again perceiving other common attributes among other similar objects, I invent the word greyhound to denote these latter by. The concept foxhound differs from the objects which it denotes, in this respect that these latter are (as we say) _real_ dogs with thousands and thousands of attributes each: one of them has a broken tooth, another is nearly all white, another answers to the name "Sally," and so on; while the concept is only an imaginary form in my mind, with only a few attributes and no individual peculiarities--a kind of tiny G.C.M. arising from the contemplation of a long row of big figures. Now having created these concepts "foxhound," "greyhound," and a lot of other similar ones, I find that they in their turn have a few attributes in common and thus give rise to a new concept "dog." Of course this "dog" is more of an abstraction than ever, the concept of a concept. In fact the peculiarity of this whole process is that, as sometimes stated, the broader the generalisation becomes the less is its depth; or in other words and obviously, that as the number of objects compared increases, the number of attributes common to them all decreases. Ultimately as we saw at the beginning, when a sufficient number of objects are taken in, the concept ("dog" or whatever it may be) fades away and ceases to have any meaning. This therefore is the dilemma of Science and indeed of all human knowledge, that in carrying out the process which is peculiar to it, it necessarily leaves the dry ground of reality for the watery region of abstractions, which abstractions become ever more tenuous and ungraspable the farther it goes, and ultimately fade into mere ghosts. Nevertheless the process is a quite necessary one, for only by it can the mind deal with things. To dwell for a moment over this last point: it is clear that every object has relation to every other object in the world--exists in fact only in virtue of such relation to other objects; it has therefore an infinite number of attributes. The mind consequently is powerless to deal with such object--it cannot by any possibility think it. In order to deal with it, the mind is forced to single out a _few_ of its attributes (the _method of ignorance_ or abstraction already alluded to)--that is a few of its relations to other objects, and to think them first. The others it will think afterwards--all in good time. In thus stripping or abstracting the great mass of its attributes from our object, and leaving only a few, which it combines into a concept, the mind practically abandons the real article and takes up with a shadow; but in return for this it gets something which it can handle, which is light to carry about, and which, like paper-money, _for the time and under certain conditions_ does really represent value. The only danger is lest it--the mind--carried away by the extensive applicability of the partial concept which it has thus formed, should credit it with an actual value--should project it on the background of the external world and ascribe to it that reality which belongs only to objects themselves, _i.e._, to things embodying an _infinite_ range of attributes. The peculiar method of Science is now clear to us, and can be abundantly illustrated from modern results. Our experience consists in sensations, we feel the weight of heavy bodies, we see them fall when let go, we have sensations of heat and cold, light and darkness, and so forth. But these sensations are more or less local and variable from man to man, and we naturally seek to find some common measure of them, by which we can talk about and describe them _exactly_, and independently of the peculiarities of individual observers. Thus we seek to find some common phenomenon which underlies (as we say) the sensations of heat and cold, or of light and darkness, or something which explains (_i.e._, is always present in) the case of falling bodies--and to do this we adopt the method of generalisation above described, _i.e._, we observe a great number of individual cases and then see what qualities or attributes they have in common. So far good. But it is just here that the fallacy of the ordinary scientific procedure comes in; for, forgetting that these common qualities are mere abstractions from the real phenomena we credit _them_ with a real existence, and regard the actual phenomena as secondary results, "effects" or what-not of these "causes." This in plain language is putting the cart before the horse--or rather the shadow before the man. Thus finding that a vast number of variously shaped and coloured bodies tend to fall towards the earth, we erect this common attribute of falling into an independent existence which we call "attraction" or "gravitation"--and ultimately posit a universal gravitation _acting_ on all bodies in Nature!--or finding that a number of different substances, such as water, air, wood, etc., convey to us the sensation we call sound, and that in all these cases the common element is vibration, we detach the attribute vibration, credit it with a separate existence, and speak of it as the cause of sound. But though we may thus _think_ of the shadow as separate from the man, the shadow cannot _be_ separate from the man; and though we may try to think of the falling or the vibration as separate from the wood or the stone, such falling and vibration cannot exist apart from these and other such materials, and the effort to speak of it as so existing ends in mere nonsense. More strange still is the fatuity, when, as in the case of the undulatory Theory of light or the Atomic theory of physics, the concepts thus erected into actualities are composed of purely imaginary attributes--of which no one has had any experience--an undulatory ether in the one case, a hard and perfectly elastic atom in the other. The total result is of course--just what we see--Science landing itself in pure absurdities in every direction. Beginning by detaching the attribute of falling from the bodies that fall--beginning that is by an abstraction, which of course is also a falsity--it generalises and generalises this abstraction till at last it reaches a perfectly generalised absurdity and thing without any meaning--the law of gravitation.[23] The statement that "every particle in the universe attracts every other particle with a force proportional to the mass of the attracting particle and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the two" is devoid of meaning--the human mind can give no definite meanings to the words "mass," "attract," and "force," which do not overlap and stultify each other. The law in every way baffles intelligence. Newton, who invented it, declared that no philosophic mind would suppose that bodies could thus act on one another "without the mediation of anything else by and through which their action might be conveyed;" scientific men to-day are fain to see that a material mediation of this kind would only make the law still more remote from our comprehension than it already is, while, on the other hand, an immaterial mediation or a fourth-dimensional mediation, such as some propose, would simply remove the problem out of the regions of scientific analysis.[24] Again, the form of the law is declared to be the inverse square of the distance; but this is the law by the nature of space itself of any perfect radiation, and if true of gravitation involves the conclusion that that radiation of force (whatever its nature may be) takes place without loss or dissipation of any kind. This would make gravitation absolutely unique among phenomena. More than this, its propagation is supposed to be _instantaneous_ over the most enormous distances of space, and to take place always unhindered and unretarded, whatever be the number or the nature of the bodies between! What can be more clear than that the law is simply metaphysical--a projection into a monstrous universality and abstraction, of partially understood phenomena in a particular region of observation--a Brocken-shadow on the background of Nature of the observer's own momentary attitude of thought? Again, the undulatory theory of Light. Studying the phenomena of a vast number of coloured and bright bodies, Science finds that it can think about these phenomena--can generalise and tie them into bundles best by _assuming_ that the bodies are all in a state of vibration; a vibration so minute that (unlike the vibrations connected with Sound) it cannot be directly perceived. So far good. There is no harm in the assumption of vibration, as long as it is understood to be a mere assumption for a temporary convenience of thought. But now Science goes farther than this, and not only supposes a common attribute to all visible bodies, but credits this common attribute with a real existence independent of the visible bodies in which it was supposed to inhere--and makes this the _cause_ of their visibility! Obviously now a common and universal medium is required for this common and universal assumed vibration (just as Newton required a medium for his universal "falling")--and so, hey presto! we have the Undulatory Ether. And having got it we find that to fulfil our requirements it must have a pressure of 17 million million pounds on the square inch, and yet be so rare and tenuous as not to hinder the lightest breath of air; that while it is thus rare enough to surpass all our powers of direct scrutiny, its vibrations must yet be capable of agitating and breaking up the solidest bodies; that it must pass freely through some dense and close structures like glass, and yet be excluded by some light and porous, like cork, and so on and on! In fact we find that it is unthinkable. Against this adamantine, impalpable Ether, as against this instantaneous, untranslatable gravitation, Science bangs its devoted head in vain. Having created these absurdities by the method of "personification of abstractions"[25] or the "reification of concepts,"[26] it seriously and in all good faith tries to understand them; having dressed up its own Mumbo Jumbo (which it once jeered at religion for doing) it piously shuts its eyes and endeavours to believe in it. The Atomic Theory affords a good example of the "method of ignorance." When we try to think about material objects generally--to generalise about them--that is, to find some attribute or attributes common to them, we are at first puzzled. They present such an immense variety. But after a time, by dint of stripping off or abstracting all such attributes or qualities as we think we perceive in one body and not in another--as for example, redness, blueness, warmth, saltness, life, intelligence, or what not--we find an attribute left, namely resistance to touch, which is common to _all_ material bodies. This quality in the body we call "mass," and since it is only known by motion, mass and motion become correlative attributes which we find useful to class bodies by, not because they represent the various bodies particularly well, but because they are found in all bodies; just as you might class people by their boots--not because boots are a very valuable method of classification, but simply because every one wears boots of one kind or another. So far there is no great harm done. But now having by the method of ignorance _thought away_ all the qualities of bodies, except the two correlatives of mass and motion, we set about to _explain_ the phenomena of Nature generally by these two "thinks" that are left. We credit these "thinks" (mass and motion) with an independent existence and proceed to derive the rest of phenomena from them. The proceeding of course is absurd, and ends by exposing its own absurdity. Thinking of mass and motion as existing in the various bodies _apart_ from colour, smell, and so forth--which of course is not the case--we combine the two attributes into one concept, the atom, which we thus assume to exist in all bodies. The atom has neither colour, smell, warmth, taste, life or intelligence; it has only mass and motion; for it came by the method of divesting our thought of everything _but_ mass and motion. It is a projection of a "think" upon the background of nature. And it is an absurdity. No such thing exists in all the wide universe as mass and motion divested from colour, smell, warmth, life and intelligence. The atom is unthinkable. It is perfectly hard and it is perfectly elastic--which is the same as saying that it bends and it doesn't bend at the same time; it has form, and it hasn't form; it has affinities and yet is perfectly indifferent. To justify to men the ways of their Mumbo Jumbo has sorely exercised the votaries of the Atom. One philosopher says that it is mere matter, passive, exercising no force but resistance; another says that it is a centre of force, without matter; a third suggests that it is not itself matter, but only a vortex in other matter! All agree that it is not an object of sense, and there remains no conclusion but that it is nonsense![27] And so on in all directions. Human thought flying off at its tangents from Nature lands itself in infinite nothings afar off, poor ghostly skeletons and abstractions from Nature--which indeed is all right, for human thought as yet can only see ghosts and not realities; but let there be no mistake, let these ghosts not be mistaken for realities--for they are not even compatible with each other. The Atom that suits the physicist does not suit the chemist. The Ether that does for the vehicle of Light will not do for the vehicle of universal Gravitation. It would be hardly worth while entering into these criticisms, were it not evident that Science in modern times, either tacitly or explicitly, has been seeking, as I said at the beginning, to enounce facts independent of Man, the observer. Seeing that the ordinary statements of daily life are obviously inexact and relative to the observer--charged with human sensation in fact--Science has naturally tried to produce something which should be exact and independent of human sensation; but here it has of course condemned itself beforehand to failure; for no statement of isolated phenomena or groups of phenomena _can_ be exact except by the method of ignorance aforesaid, and no statement obviously can be really independent of human sensation. When a man says _It is cold_, his statement, it must be confessed, is deplorably human and vague. _It_--what is that? _Is_--do you mean _is_? or do you mean _feels_, _appears_? _Cold_--in what sense? Cold to yourself, or to other people, or to polar bears, or by the thermometer? And so on. Science therefore steps in with an air of authority and sets him right. It says _the temperature is_ 30° _Fahrenheit_, as if to settle the matter. But does this really settle the matter? _Temperature_--who knows what that is? What is the scientific definition of it? I find (Clerk-Maxwell's Theory of Heat, p. 2.) "the temperature of a body is a quantity which indicates how hot or how cold the body is." This sounds very much like saying, "the colour of a body is a quantity which indicates how blue, red, or yellow the body is." It does not bring us much farther on our way. But in the next paragraph Maxwell shows the object of his definition (which of course is only preliminary) by saying, "By the use, therefore, of the word temperature, we fix in our minds the conviction that it is possible not only to feel, but to _measure_, how hot a body is." That is to say he clearly maintains that it is possible to find an absolute standard of hotness or coldness--or rather of the unknown thing called temperature--outside of ourselves and independent of human sensation. When the man said he was cold he was probably just describing his own sensations, but here Science indicates that it is in search of something which has an independent existence of its own, and which therefore when found we can measure exactly and once for all. What then is that thing? _What_ is temperature? say, what is it? We cudgel our brains in vain. Perhaps the remainder of the sentence will help us. "The temperature is 30° Fahrenheit." "The unknown thing is thirty degrees." What then is a degree? That is the next question. When the Theory of Heat went out from sensation and left it behind, one of its first landing places was in the expansion of liquids--as in thermometer tubes. Here for some time was thought to be a satisfactory register of "temperature." But before long it became apparent that the degree--Fahrenheit, Réaumur, or what-not--was an entirely arbitrary thing, also that it was not the _same_[28] thing at one end of the scale as the other, and finally that the scale itself had no starting point! This was awkward, so a move was made to the air thermometer, and there was some talk about an absolute zero and absolute temperatures; it was thought that the Unknown thing showed itself most clearly and simply in the expansion of air and other gases, and that the "degree" might fairly be measured in terms of this expansion. But in a little time this kind of thermometer--chiefly because no gas turned out to be "theoretically perfect"--broke down, absolute zero and all, and another step had to be made--namely, to the dynamical theory. It was announced that the Unknown thing might be measured in terms of mechanical energy, and Joule at Manchester proclaimed that the work done by any quantity of water falling there a distance of 772 feet is capable of raising that water one degree Fahrenheit.[29] Here seemed something definite. To measure temperature by mass and velocity, to measure a degree by the flight of a stone, or the heat in the human body by the fall of a factory chimney--if rather roundabout and elusive of the main question--seemed at any rate promising of exact results! Unfortunately the difficulty was to pass from the theory to its application. The complicated nature of the problem, the "imperfection" of the gases and other bodies under consideration, the latent and specific heats to be allowed for, the elusive nature of heat in experiment, and the variable value of the degree itself--all render the conclusions on this subject most precarious; and the general equations connecting the Fahrenheit or other temperatures with a thermo-dynamic scale--while they become so unwieldy as to be practically useless--are themselves after all only approximate. Finally, to give a last form to the mechanical theory of heat, the conception of flying atoms or molecules was introduced, and a number of neat generalisations were deduced from dynamical considerations. Of course it was inevitable, having once started with a mechanical theory, that one should arrive at the Atom some time or other--and (from what has already been said) it was also inevitable that the result should be unsatisfactory. It is sufficient to say that the molecular theory of heat is _not_ in accordance with facts. Such things as the law of Charles and the law of Boyle, which according to it should be strictly accurate and of general application, are known to be true only over a most limited range. This failure of the theory may be said to arise partly from its being pursued by the statistical method; but if, on the other hand, we were to try and follow out the individual movement of each molecule we should be landed in a problem far exceeding in complexity the wildest flights of Astronomy, and should have exchanged for the original difficulty about "temperature" a difficulty far greater. The result of all this has been that notwithstanding the talk about energy and atoms, Science has sadly to confess that it can still give no valid meaning to the word temperature: the unknown thing is still unknown, the independent existence round the corner still escapes us. By the very effort to arrive at something independent of human sensation, Science has, in a roundabout way, arrived at an absurdity. When the man said he was cold, his statement--deplorably vague as it certainly was--had some meaning; he was describing his feelings, or possibly he had seen some snow or some ice on the road; but when, in the endeavour to leave out the human and to say something absolute, Science declared that the temperature was thirty degrees, it committed itself to a remark which possibly was exact in form, but to which it has never given and never can give any definite meaning.[30] Similarly with other generalities of Science: the "law" of the Conservation of Energy, the "law" of the Survival of the Fittest--the more you think about them the less possible is it to give any really intelligible sense to them. The very word Fittest really begs the question which is under consideration, and the whole Conservation law is merely an attenuation of the already much attenuated "law" of Gravitation. The Chemical Elements themselves are nothing but the projection on the external world of concepts consisting of three or four attributes each: they are not more real, but very much less real than the individual objects which they are supposed to account for; and their "elementary" character is merely fictional. It probably is in fact as absurd to speak of pure carbon or pure gold, as of a pure monkey or a pure dog. There are no such things, except as they may be arrived at by arbitrary definition and the method of ignorance. In the search for exactness, then, Science has been continually led on to discard the human and personal elements in phenomena, in the hope of finding some residuum as it were behind them which should not be personal and human but absolute and invariable. And the tendency has been (hitherto) in all the sciences to get rid of such terms as blue, red, light, heavy, hot, cold, concord, discord, health, vitality, right, wrong, etc., and to rely on any less human elements discoverable in each case; as for instance in Sound, to deal less and less with the judgments and sensations of the ear, and to rely more and more on measurements of lengths of strings, numbers of vibrations, etc. Each science has been (as far as possible) reduced to its lowest terms. Ethics has been made a question of utility and inherited experience. Political Economy has been exhausted of all conceptions of justice between man and man, of charity, affection, and the instinct of solidarity; and has been founded on its lowest discoverable factor, namely self-interest. Biology has been denuded of the force of personality in plants, animals, and men; the "self" here has been set aside, and the attempt made to reduce the science to a question of chemical and cellular affinities, protoplasm, and the laws of osmose. Chemical affinities, again, and all the wonderful phenomena of Physics are emptied down into a flight of atoms; and the flight of atoms (and of astronomic orbs as well) is reduced to the laws of dynamics--which the student sitting in his chamber may write down on a piece of paper. Thus the idea, formulated by Comte, of a great scale of sciences arising from the simplest to the most complex, has tacitly underlain modern scientific work. It--Science--has sought to "explain" each stage by reference to a lower stage--"blueness" by vibrations, and vibrations by flying atoms--the human always by the sub-human. Going out from humanity dissatisfied, it has wandered through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, through the regions of Chemistry and Physics, into that of Mechanics. "Here at last, in Mechanics, is something outside humanity, something exact in itself, something substantial," it has said. "Let us build again on this as on a foundation, and in time we shall find out what humanity is." This I say has been the dream of Modern Science; yet the fallacy of it is obvious. We have not got outside the human, but only to the outermost verge of it. Mass and motion, which in this process are taken to be real entities and the first progenitors of all phenomena, are simply the last abstractions of sensible experience, and our emptiest concepts. The _material_ explanation of the universe is simply an attempt to account for phenomena by those attributes which appear to us to be common to them all--which is, as said before, like accounting for men by their boots:--it may be possible to get an exact formula this way, but its contents have little or no meaning. The whole process of Science and the Comtian classification of its branches--regarded thus as an attempt to explain Man by Mechanics--is a huge vicious circle. It professes to start with something simple, exact, and invariable, and from this point to mount step by step till it comes to Man himself; but indeed it starts with Man. It plants itself on sensations low down (mass, motion, etc.), and endeavours by means of them to explain sensations high up, which reminds one of nothing so much as that process vulgarly described as "climbing up a ladder to comb your hair." In truth Science has never left the great world, or cosmos, of Man, nor ever really found a _locus standi_ without it; but during the last two or three centuries it has gone in this _direction_, outwards, continually. Leaving the central basis and facts of humanity as too vast and unmanageable, and also as apparently variable from man to man and therefore affording no certain consent to work upon, it has wandered gradually outwards, seeking something of more definite and universal application Discarding thus one by one the interior phases of sensation--as the sense of personal relationship, the sense of justice, duty, fitness in things or what-not (as too uncertain, or perhaps developed to an unequal degree in different persons, embryonic in one and matured in another), drifting past the more specialised bodily senses, of colour, sound, taste, smell, etc., as for similar reasons unavailable--Science at last in the primitive consciousness of muscular contraction and its abstraction "mass" or "matter" comes to a pause. Here in this last sense, common probably to man and the lowest animals, it finds its widest, most universal ground--its farthest limit from the Centre. It has reached the outermost shell, as it were, of the great Man-cosmos. Even this shell is partially human; it is not entirely osseous, and so far not entirely exact and invariable; but Science can go no farther--and there, for the present, it may remain! Some day perhaps, when all this showy vesture of scientific theory (which has this peculiarity that only the learned can see it) has been quasi-completed, and Humanity is expected to walk solemnly forth in its new garment for all the world to admire--as in Anderssen's story of the Emperor's New Clothes--some little child standing on a door-step will cry out: "But he has got nothing on at all," and amid some confusion it will be seen that the child is right. NOTE "I fear I have very imperfectly succeeded in expressing my strong conviction that, before a rigorous logical scrutiny, the Reign of Law will prove to be an unverified hypothesis, the Uniformity of Nature an ambiguous expression, the certainty of our scientific inferences to a great extent a delusion." (Stanley Jevons, _Principles of Science_, p. ix.) FOOTNOTES: [17] See note, p. 119. [18] Since the above was written there has certainly been a great change, and the dogmatic confidence in the verity of the scientific "laws" has now (1920) almost disappeared. [19] Such fictions, however, are (I need not say) quite necessary as our only means of thinking out, however imperfectly, the problems before us (1920). [20] It is not generally realised how feeble a force gravitation is. It is calculated (Encycl. Brit., Art. Gravitation) that two masses, each weighing 415,000 tons, and placed a mile apart, would exert on each other an attractive force of only one pound. If one, therefore, was as far from the other as the moon is from the earth, their attraction would only amount to 1/57,600,000,000th of a pound. This is a small force to govern the movement of a body weighing 415,000 tons! and it is easy to see that a slight variation in the law of the force might for a long period pass undetected, though in the course of hundreds of centuries it might become of the greatest importance. [21] As another instance of the same thing, let me quote a passage from Maxwell's _Theory of Heat_, p. 31; the italics are mine: "In our description of the physical properties of bodies as related to heat we have begun with solid bodies, as those which we can _most easily handle_, and have gone on to liquids, which we can keep in open vessels, and have now come to gases, which will escape from open vessels, and which are generally _invisible_. This is the order which is most natural in our first study of these different states. But as soon as we have been made familiar with the most prominent features of these different conditions of matter the most _scientific_ course of study is in the _reverse_ order, beginning with gases, on account of the greater simplicity of their laws, then advancing to liquids, the more complex laws of which are much more imperfectly known, and concluding with the little that has been hitherto discovered about the constitution of solid bodies." That is to say that Science finds it easier to work among gases--which are invisible and which we can know little about--than among solids, which we are familiar with and which we can easily handle! This seems a strange conclusion, but it will be found to represent a common procedure of Science--the truth probably being that the laws of gases are not one whit _simpler_ than the laws of liquids and solids, but that on account of our knowing so much less about gases it is easier for us to _feign_ laws in their case than in the case of solids, and less easy for our errors to be detected. [22] All our thoughts, theories, "laws," etc., may perhaps be said to _touch_ Nature--as the tangent touches the curve--at a point. They give a direction--and are true--at that point. But make the slightest move, and they all have to be reconstructed. The tangents are infinite in number, but the curve is one. This may not only illustrate the relation of Nature to Science, but also of Art to the materials it uses. The poet radiates thoughts: but he sets no store by them. He knows his thoughts are not true in themselves, but they _touch_ the Truth. His lines are the envelope of the curve which is his poem. [23] See the report of the joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, November 6, 1919, when Einstein's theory was discussed. [24] It is obvious that the Einstein theory, in which Time enters as a kind of fourth dimension in relation to Space, removes us at once out of the whole field of ordinary scientific reasoning and lands us, so to speak, in a new world. The nature of Space (or of the universal medium, whatever it is) in any region--its possible fundamental accelerations there, its "curvature" or non-Euclidean character, and so forth--is supposed, according to this theory, to vary with the amount of matter in, or density of, that region; and the movements of bodies are consequently supposed to take on the characters (accelerations, etc.,) which we ascribe to the action of Gravitation. Gravitation in fact in any region is the manifestation in Time of the attributes of the universal Medium in that region--which latter again is dependent on the degree of Matter present. Thus, Matter, Time, and Space are _one phenomenon_. The whole Einstein theory, in fact, is a device to present these three Protean and variable elements of all material existence (Matter, Time and Space) as so far involved and interlaced in each other that they form always an absolute and complete unity. As such the theory is no doubt suggestive, and along the line of future speculation: but it awaits corroboration. If corroborated it will point the way to a new conception of the Universe. [25] J. S. Mill. [26] See Stallo's excellent _Concepts of Modern Physics_. [27] See, for instance, the last new thing in this style--the Helmholtz molecule as improved upon by Sir William Thomson; it is described as follows: "A heavy mass connected by massless springs with a massless enclosing shell; or there may be several shells enclosing each other connected by springs with a dense mass in the centre (far more dense than the ether)." It is not, of course, seriously maintained that this nonsensical creation exists--but that if it did exist it would account for certain unexplained phenomena in the dispersion of light, etc. Later still (1920) we have the following delightful verdict on the Structure of the Atom, given by Sir Ernest Rutherford--and which I commend to all lovers of clear thinking:-- "The Bakerian Lecture was delivered yesterday before the Royal Society by Sir Ernest Rutherford, whose subject was 'The Nuclear Construction of the Atom.' He said that during recent years much attention had been paid to the nature and structure of atoms. The atomic theory of matter had been definitely proved. The mass of the individual atoms, and the number in any given weight of matter, were now known with considerable accuracy. Not only was matter known to be made up of atoms, but electricity was also atomic in nature, and there was a definite unit of electrical charge which could not further be subdivided. The negative electron, which was a constituent of all atoms of matter, was probably nothing more than an isolated unit of negative electricity, and its small mass was electrical in origin. It had long been considered probable that the atom is an electrical structure, consisting of positive and negative particles, held in equilibrium by electric or magnetic forces. In recent years evidence had accumulated that an atom consists of a positively charged nucleus surrounded at a distance by a distribution of electrons to make it electrically neutral." (From _The Morning Post_ of June 4, 1920.) [28] The very fact alone that the degrees on a thermometer are _equal_ space divisions shows that they must bear a _varying_ relation to the total volume of liquid as that expands from one end of the tube to the other. [29] A statement obviously applying--from what has been already said--at only one point in the scale. [30] I am not, of course, here arguing against the use of thermometers or other instruments for practical purposes. This is certainly the legitimate field of Science. But (as in the case of _prediction_ before mentioned) the exactness of results obtained is a very different matter from the truth of the generalities which are supposed to underlie these results. In using a thermometer you need not even mention the word "temperature." THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE: A FORECAST Once let that [the human ideal] slip out of the thought, and science is of no more use than the invocations in the Egyptian papiri.--RICHARD JEFFERIES. It would appear then, from the preceding paper, that in some sense a mistake has been made in the method of modern scientific work; not that the vast amount of labour expended in it has been altogether wasted, for in return for this there is a mass of practical results and detailed observations to show; but that in attempting to solve the problem of science by the intellect alone, a radical mistake has been made which _could_ only land us in absurdity, and that this mistake has for the time being also vitiated the results that have been attained. For--in reference to this last point--the divorce of the intellectual from the emotional has caused a great portion of our scientific observations to become merely pedantic and trifling; while it has turned the practical results--as industrial and military machinery, etc.--into engines of evil as often as into engines of good. Science in searching for a permanently valid and purely intellectual representation of the universe has, as already said, been searching for a thing which does not exist. The very facts of Nature, as we call them, are at least half feeling. If we try to clean the feeling out of a fact and to produce a statement which shall be devoid of the human or sense element, it simply amounts to cleaning the meaning out; and though our resulting statement may be exact it is nugatory and of no value. We might as well try to take the clay out of a brick. It must never be forgotten that the logical processes--important as they are--cannot stand by themselves, have no standing ground of their own. They presuppose assumptions and are the expression of things that are unreasoning, perhaps illogical. The strictest logic is a mere hooking together of links in a chain, and the last link is of no use--you can put no stress on it--unless the first is secured somewhere. The strength of the intellectual chain is no greater than that of the staple from which it hangs--and that is a human feeling The strength of Euclid is no greater than that of the axioms--and _they_ are feelings; they are unreasoning statements of which all that we can say is, "I _feel_ like that." In fact all the propositions of Geometry are nothing but the analysis and elaborate expression, so to speak, of these primary convictions--and the Geometry-structure stands and falls with them. There is no such thing as intellectual truth--that is, I mean, a truth which can be stated as existing apart from feeling. If, for instance, a proposition in Geometry can be really shown to be based on the axioms, it is true, not intellectually or absolutely, but as an expression of my primary Geometrical sense; and if my giving a few pence to a crossing sweeper is based not on a mere impression of duty, or an anxiety to appear charitable, or wish to escape his importunity, but on genuine regard for the man, then it is true, not in any absolute signification, but just as an expression of what it professes to represent--namely my primary sense of humanity. Indeed the truest truth is that which is the expression of the deepest feeling, and if there is an absolute truth it can only be known and expressed by him who has the absolute feeling or Being within himself. This being so--and the nature of the intellectual processes being, like the links in a chain, transitional--it becomes obvious that the intellectual results may figure as a _means_ but never as an end in themselves. To hang any weight of reliance on them in the latter sense is like the Chinese Trick--described by Marco Polo--of throwing a rope's end up in the air and then climbing up the rope. Hence it appears that our scientific theories are perfectly legitimate, as long as they are formed as a means towards _practical_ applications. In that sense they are transitional; they are formed, not as substantial truths, but merely as links in a chain towards some definite practical result. For this purpose we may form whatever theories are convenient: if we are calculating the strength of bridges, we may adopt what generalisations we like concerning mechanical structure, as long as they give us actual and practical results; if we are predicting eclipses, we may make use of any theory that will do. The theory does not matter, as long as it hauls the practical result after it, just as it does not matter whether your cable is of iron or hemp or silk, as long as you can get your ship into dock with it. In this sense our Modern Science is, I conceive, admirable. For practical results and brief predictions it affords a quantity of useful generalisations--shorthand notes and conventional symbols and pocket summaries of phenomena--which bear about the same relation to the actual world that a map does to the country it is supposed to represent. It cannot be said to have any resemblance to the real thing--but, when you understand the principle on which it is formed, it is exceedingly useful for finding your way about. As long as Science therefore keeps the practical end in view, and starting from sense seeks to return to sense again, its intermediate theorising is perfectly legitimate; but the moment it credits its theory with a positive and authoritative existence, as an actual representation of facts--and endeavours to pass by means of it into unverifiable and abstract regions, as of invisible germs or atoms, or far distances of space, or the remote past or future--it is simply throwing its rope's end into the sky and trying to climb up! That "the wish is father to the thought" is in its wide sense profoundly true. In the individual, feeling precedes thinking--as the body precedes the clothes. In history, the Rousseau precedes the Voltaire. There is, I believe, a physiological parallel; for behind the brain and determining its action stands the great sympathetic nerve--the organ of the emotions. In fact here the brain appears as distinctly transitional. It stands between the nerves of sense on the one hand and the great sympathetic on the other. Change the feeling in an individual, and his whole method of thinking will be revolutionised; change the axiom or primary sensation in a science, and the whole structure will have to be re-created. The current Political Economy is founded on the axiom of individual greed; but let a new axiomatic emotion spring up (as of justice or fair play instead of unlimited grab), and the base of the science will be altered, and will necessitate a new construction. So when people argue (on politics, morality, art, etc.) it will generally be found that they differ at the _base_; they go out, perhaps quite unconsciously, from different axioms and hence they _cannot_ agree. Occasionally of course a strict examination will show that, while agreeing at the base, one of them has made a false step in deduction; in that case his thought does _not_ represent his primary feeling, and when this is pointed out he is forced to alter it. But more often it is found that the difference lies deep down at a point beyond the reach of reason; and they disagree to the end. In this case neither is right and neither is wrong. They simply feel differently; they are different persons. The Thought then is the expression, the outgrowth, the covering of underlying Feeling. And in the great life of Man as a whole, as in the lesser life of the individual, his continual new birth and inward growth causes his thought-systems also continually to change and be replaced by new ones. Like the bud-sheaths and husks in a growing plant or tree they give form for a time to the life within; then they fall off and are replaced. The husk prepares the bud underneath, which is to throw it off. The thought prepares and protects the feeling underneath, which growing will inevitably reject it; and when a thought has been formed it is already _false_, _i.e._, ready to fall. We are now, then, in a position to come back to the question of a genuine Science, truly so-called. As there is no invariable and absolute datum on the fringe of Humanity--no definable flying atom on which we can found our reasonings--and as Modern Science, considered as an actual representation of the universe, falls miserably to pieces in consequence--is it possible that we have made a mistake in the _direction_ in which we have sought for our datum; and may it be that we should look for that in the very Centre of Humanity instead of in its remotest circumference? In that direction evidently, if we could penetrate, we should expect to find, not a shadowy intellectual generalisation, but the very opposite of that--an intense immutable _feeling_ or state, an axiomatic condition of Being. Is it possible that here, blazing like a sun (if we could only see it--and the sun is its allegory in the physical world), there exists within us absolutely such a thing--the one _fact_ in the universe, of which all else are shadows, _to_ which everything has relation, and round which, itself unanalysable, all thought circles and all phenomena stand as indirect modes of expression? Is it possible? That is the question--the question which each one of us has to solve. At any rate, let us throw this out as a suggestion. Let us suggest that as we have got nothing satisfactory by cleaning the sense-element out of phenomena, we should take the opposite course and put as much sense into them as we can! "Facts" are, at least, half feelings. Let us acknowledge this and not empty the feeling out of them, but deepen and enlarge that which we already have in them. Who knows whether we have ever _seen_ the blue sky? Who knows whether we have ever seen each other? Is it not a commonplace to say that one man sees in the common objects of Nature what another is wholly unconscious of? "The primrose on the river's brim a yellow primrose is to him--and nothing more." To what extent may the facts of Nature thus be deepened and made more substantial to us--and whither will this process lead us? Do we not want to feel _more_, not less, in the presence of phenomena--to enter into a living relation with the blue sky, and the incense-laden air, and the plants and the animals--nay, even with poisonous and hurtful things to have a keener _sense_ of their hurtfulness? Is it not a strange kind of science, that which wakes the mind to pursue the shadows of things, but dulls the senses to the reality of them--which causes a man to try to bottle the pure atmosphere of heaven and then to shut himself in a gas-reeking, ill-ventilated laboratory while he analyses it; or allows him to vivisect a dog, unconscious that he is blaspheming the pure and holy relation between man and the animals in doing so? Surely the man of Science (in its higher sense, that is) should be lynx-eyed as an Indian, keen-scented as a hound--with all senses and feelings trained by constant use and a pure and healthy life in close contact with Nature, and with a heart beating in sympathy with every creature. Such a man would have at command, so to speak, the keyboard of the universe; but the mechanical, unhealthy, indoor-living student--is he not really _ignorant of the facts_?--Certainly, since he has not felt them, he is. The process of the true Science consists first in the naming and defining of phenomena (_i.e._, the facts of human consciousness), and secondly, in the discovery of the true relation of these phenomena to each other; and since the definitions of phenomena and their relations keep varying with the standpoint of the observer, the process evidently involves all experience, and ultimately the discovery of that last fact of experience to which and through which all the other facts are related. It is therefore an age-long process, and has to do with the emotional and moral part of man as well as with the logical and intellectual. It is, in fact, the discovery of the nature of Man himself, and of the true order of his being. Modern Science--though seeking for a unity in Nature--fails to find it, because, from the nature of the case, any large body of knowledge in which all people will agree is limited to certain small regions of human experience--regions in which very likely no unity is discoverable. It takes the emerald, and breaks it up; treats of its colour and light-refracting qualities on the one hand; of its crystalline structure and hardness on the other; of its weight and density; and of its chemical properties; all separately, and producing long strings of generalisation from each aspect of the subject. But how all these qualities are conjoined together, what their relation is which _constitutes_ the emerald--yea, even the smallest bit of emerald dust--it (wisely) does not attempt to say. It takes the man and dissects him; treats of his blood, his nerves, his bones, his brain; of his senses of sight, of touch, of hearing; but of that which binds these together into a unity, of their true relation to each other in the man, it is silent. Yet the man knows of himself that he _is_ a unity; he knows that all parts of his body have relation to _him_, and to each other; he knows that his senses of sight and hearing and touch and taste and smell are conjoined in the focus of his individual life, in his "I am;" he knows that all his faculties and powers, however much they may belong to different planes, spiritual or material, or may come under the inquisition of different Sciences, have an order of their own among each other--that there _is_ an ultimate Science of them--even though he be not yet wholly versed in it. And he knows, moreover, that in a grain of dust, or in an emerald, or in an orange, or in any object of Nature, the different attributes of the object--which the Sciences thus treat of separately--are only the reflexion of his different senses; so that the problem of the conjunction of different attributes in a body comes back to the same problem of the union of various senses and powers in himself--each individual object being only a case, externalised as it were, and made a matter of consciousness, of the general relation to each other of his own sensations and feelings. Knowing all his--I say--he sees that the understanding of Nature in general and of the laws or relations which he thinks he perceives among external things must always depend on the relations and laws which he tacitly assumes, or which he is directly conscious of, as existing between the various parts of his own being; and that the ultimate truth which Science--the divine Science--is really in search of is a moral or psychologic Truth--an understanding of what man is, and the discovery of the true relation to each other of all his faculties--involving all experience, and an exercise of every faculty physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual, instead of one set of faculties only. Not till we know the law of ourselves, in fact, shall we know the law of the emerald and the orange, or of Nature generally; and the law of ourselves is not learnt, except subordinately, by intellectual investigation; it is mainly learnt by life. The relation of gravity to vitality is learnt not so much by outer experiment in a laboratory as by long experience within ourselves from the day when as infants we cannot lift ourselves above the floor, through the years of the proud strength of manhood scaling the loftiest mountains, to the hour when our disengaged spirits finally overcome and pass beyond the attraction of the earth; and just as the sense of weight--which first appears as a quite external sensation--is thus at last found to stand in most pregnant relation with our deepest selves, so of the other senses which feed the individual life--the senses of light, of warmth, of taste, of sound, of smell. Taste, which begins as it were on the tip of the tongue, becomes ultimately, if normally developed, a sense which identifies itself with the health and well-being of the whole body; the pleasure of taste becomes vastly more than a mere surface pleasure, and its discrimination of food more than a mere regard for the nutrition of the ordinary corporeal functions. The sense of Light, which begins in the material eye, grows and deepens inwardly till the consciousness of it pervades the whole body and mind with a kind of inward illumination or divine Reason, showing the places of all things and enfolding the sense of beauty in itself. The sense of Warmth in the same manner is related to and leads up to Love; and Sound, in the voices of our friends or the divine chords of music, has passed away from being an external phenomenon and has established itself as the language of our most tender and intimate emotions. All the senses thus, as they develop and deepen, are found to unite in the very focus of individual life. Slowly, and through long experience, their relation to each other, _their very meaning_ unfolds, or will unfold; and as this process takes place the man knows himself _one_, a unity, of which the various faculties are the different manifestations. Then further through his less localised feelings or more glorified senses the individual finds his relation to other individuals. Through his loves and hatreds, through his senses of attraction, repulsion, cohesion, solidarity, order, justice, charity, right, wrong and the rest--these feelings, each like the others deepening back more and more as time goes on--he gradually discovers his true and abiding relationship to other individuals, and to the divine society of which they all form a part--and so at last, if we may venture to say so, his relationship to the absolute and universal. At present, since our most important relation to each other is conceived of as one of rivalry and Competition, we of course think of the objects of Nature as being chiefly engaged in a Struggle for Existence with each other; but when we become aware of all our senses and feelings, and of ourselves as individuals, as having relation to the Absolute and universal, proceeding from it, as the branches and twigs of a tree from the trunk--then we shall become aware of a Divine or absolute science in Nature; we shall at last understand that all objects have a permanent and indissoluble relation to each other, and shall see their true meaning--though not till then. Is it possible then that Science, having hitherto--and we shall see in time that this process has been really most valuable and important--gone outwards from the centre towards the very fringe of Humanity--emptying facts as far as possible as it went of all feeling, and reducing itself at last to the most shadowy generalisations on the very verge of sense and nonsense--is it possible, I say, that it will now return, and _first_ filling up facts with feeling as far as practicable (that is, by direct and the most living contact with Nature in every form, learning to enter into direct personal sense-relationship with every phenomenon and phase), will so gradually ascend to the great central fact and feeling, and then at last and for the first time become fully conscious of a vast organisation--absolutely perfect and intimately knit from its centre to its utmost circumference--(the true cosmos of Man--the conceptions of man and god combined)--existing inchoate or embryonic in every individual man, animal, plant, or other creature--the object of all life, experience, suffering, and toil--the ground of all sensation, and the hidden, yet proper, theme of all thought and study? For this is it possible that Science will, speaking broadly, have to leave the laboratory and become one with Life; or that the great currents of human life will have to be turned on into these often Augean stables of intellectual pruriency?--the investigation of Nature no longer a matter of the intellect alone, but of patient listening and the quiet eye, and of love and faith, and of all deep human experience, bearing not superciliously its weight towards the interpretation of the least phenomenon--every "fact" thus deepened to its utmost--all experience (rather than experiment) courted, and filial walking with Nature, rather than tearing of veils aside--the life of the open air, and on the land and the waters, the companionship of the animals and the trees and the stars, the knowledge of their habits at first hand and through individual relationship to them, the recognition of their voices and languages, and listening well what they themselves have to say; the keenest education of the senses towards the physical powers and elements, and the acceptance of _all_ human experience, without exception--till Science become a reality. Is it possible that in some sense, instead of reducing each branch of Science to its lowest terms, we shall have to read it in the light of its _highest_ factors, and "take it up" into the Science above--that we shall have to take up the mechanical sciences into the physical, the physical into the vital, the vital into the social and ethical, and so forth, before we can understand them? Is it possible that the phenomena of Chemistry only find their due place and importance in their relation to living beings and processes; that the phenomena of vitality and the laws of Biology and Zoology--Evolution included--can only be "explained" by their dependence on self-hood--both in plants and animals; that Political Economy and the Social Sciences (which deal with men as individual selves) must, to be understood aright, be studied in the light of those great ethical principles and enthusiasms, which to a certain extent override the individual self; and that, finally, Ethics or the study of moral problems is only comprehensible when the student has become aware of a region beyond Ethics, into which questions of morality and immorality, of right and wrong, do not and cannot enter? Of this reversal of the ordinary scientific method Ruskin has given a great and signal instance in his treatment of Political Economy; it remains, perhaps, for others to follow his example in the other branches of Science.[31] With regard to the absolute datum question we have seen that Science has two alternatives before it--either to be merely intellectual and to seek for its start-point in some quite external (and imaginary) thing like the Atom, or to be divine and to seek for its absolute in the innermost recesses of humanity. We have two similar alternatives in the doctrine of Evolution, which looks either to one end of the scale or the other for its interpretation--either to the amoeba or to the man--to something it knows next to nothing of, or to that which it knows most of. Goethe, when gazing at a fan-palm at Padua, conceived the idea of leaf-metamorphosis, which he afterwards enunciated in the now accepted doctrine that all parts of a plant--seed-vessel, pistil, stamens, petals, sepals, stalk, etc.--may be regarded as modifications of a leaf or leaves. In this view the distinctions between the parts are effaced, and we have only one part instead of many--but the question is "what is that part?" It is of course arbitrary to call it a leaf, for since it is continually varying it is at one time a leaf, and at another a stalk, and then a petal or a sepal, and so forth. What then is it? For the moment we are baffled. So with the doctrine of Evolution as applied to the whole organic kingdom up to man. Like the doctrine of leaf-metamorphosis it obliterates distinctions. Geoffroy St. Hilaire proposed to show the French Academy that a Cephalopod could be assimilated to a Vertebrate by supposing the latter bent backwards and walking on its hands and feet. There is a continuous variation from the mollusc to the man--all the lines of distinction run and waver--classes and species cease to exist--and Science, instead of many, sees only _one_ thing. What then is that one thing? Is it a mollusc, or is it a man, or what is it? Are we to say that man may be looked upon as a variation of a mollusc or an amoeba, or that the amoeba may be looked on as a variation of man? Here are two directions of thought; which shall we choose? But the plain truth is, the Intellect can give no satisfactory answer. Whichever, or whatever, it chooses, the choice is quite arbitrary--just as much so as the choice of the "leaf" in the other case. There is no answer to be given. And thus it is that _the appearance of the doctrine of Evolution is the signal of the destruction of Science_ (in the ordinary acceptation of the word). For Evolution is the successive obliteration of the arbitrary distinctions and landmarks which by their existence _constitute_ Science, and as soon as Evolution covers the whole ground of Nature inorganic and organic (as before long it will do)--the whole of Nature runs and wavers before the eye of Science, the latter recognises that its distinctions _are_ arbitrary, and turns upon and destroys itself. This has happened before, I believe--ages back in the history of the human race--and probably will happen again. The only conceivable answer to the question, "What is that which is now a mollusc and now a man and now an inorganic atom?"[32] is given by man himself--and his answer is, I fear, not "scientific." It is "I Am." "I am that which varies." And the force of his answer depends on what he means by the word "I." And so also the only conceivable answer to the absolute datum question is to be found in the meaning of the word "I"--in the deepening back of consciousness itself. Man is the measure of all things. If we are to use Science as a minister to the most external part of man--to provide him with cheap boots and shoes, etc.--then we do right to seek our absolute datum in his external part, and to take his _foot_ as our first measure. We found a science on feet and pounds, and it serves its purpose well enough. But if we want to find a garment for his inner being--or, rather, one that shall fit the _whole_ man--to wear which will be a delight to him and, as it were, a very interpretation of himself--it seems obvious that we must not take our measure from outside, but from his very most central principle. The whole question is, whether there _is_ any absolute datum in this direction or not. There have been men through all ages of history (and from before) who have declared that there is. They have perhaps been conscious of it in themselves. On the other hand there have been men who, starting from their feet, declared that consciousness itself was a mere incident of the human machine--as the whistle of the engine--and thus the matter stands. On the whole, at the present day, the _feet_ have it, and (notwithstanding their variety in size and boot-induced conformation) are generally accepted as the best absolute datum available. Under the foot _régime_ the universe is generally conceived of as a medley of objects and forces, more or less orderly and distinct from man, in the midst of which man is placed--the purpose and tendency of his life being "adaptation to his environment." To understand this we may imagine Mrs. Brown in the middle of Oxford Street. 'Buses and cabs are running in different directions, carts and drays are rattling on all sides of her. This is her environment, and she has to adapt herself to it. She has to learn the laws of the vehicles and their movements, to stand on this side or on that, to run here and stop there, conceivably to jump into one at a favourable moment, to make use of the law of its movement, and so get carried to her destination as comfortably as may be. A long course of this sort of thing "adapts" Mrs. Brown considerably, and she becomes more active, both in mind and body, than before. That is all very well. But Mrs. Brown has a _destination_. (Indeed how would she ever have got into the middle of Oxford Street at all, if she had not had one? and if she did get there with no destination at all, but merely to skip about, would there be any Mrs. Brown left in a short time?) The question is, "What is the destination of Man?" About this last question unfortunately we hear little. The theory is (I hope I am not doing it injustice) that by studying your environment sufficiently you will find out--that is, that by investigating Astronomy, Biology, Physics, Ethics, etc., you will discover the destiny of man. But this seems to me the same as saying that by studying the laws of cabs and 'buses sufficiently you will find out where you are going to. These are ways and means. Study them by all means, that is right enough; but do not think _they_ will tell you where to go. You have to use them, not they you. In order therefore for the environment to act, there must be a destination. This I suppose is expressed in the biological dictum, "organism is made by function as well as environment." What then is the function of Man? And here we come back again to the meaning of the word "I." Nothwithstanding then the prevalence of the foot régime, and that the heathen so furiously rage together in their belief in it, let us suggest that there is in man a divine consciousness as well as a foot-consciousness. For, as we saw that the sense of taste may pass from being a mere local thing on the tip of the tongue to pervading and becoming synonymous with the health of the whole body; or as the blue of the sky may be to one person a mere superficial impression of colour, and to another the inspiration of a poem or picture, and to a third--as to the "god-intoxicated" Arab of the desert--a living presence like the ancient Dyaus or Zeus; so may not the whole of human consciousness gradually lift itself from a mere local and temporary consciousness to a divine and universal? There is in every man a local consciousness connected with his quite external body; that we know. Are there not also in every man the makings of a universal consciousness? That there are in us phases of consciousness which transcend the limit of the bodily senses, is a matter of daily experience; that we perceive and know things which are not conveyed to us by our bodily eyes or heard by our bodily ears, is certain; that there rise in us waves of consciousness from those around us, from the people, the race, to which we belong, is also certain; may there not then be in us the makings of a perception and knowledge which shall not be relative to this body which is here and now, but which shall be good for all time and everywhere? Does there not exist, in truth, as we have already hinted--an inner Illumination--of which what we call light in the outer world is the partial expression and manifestation--by which we can ultimately see things, _as they are_, beholding all creation, the animals, the angels, the plants, the figures of our friends and all the ranks and races of human kind, in their true being and order--not by any local act of perception but by a cosmical intuition and presence, identifying ourselves with what we see? Does there not exist a perfected sense of Hearing--as of the morning-stars singing together--an understanding of the words that are spoken all through the universe, the hidden meaning of all things, the word which is creation itself--a profound and far pervading sense, of which our ordinary sense of sound is only the first novitiate and initiation? Do we not become aware of an inner sense of Health and of Holiness--the translation and final outcome of the external sense of taste--which has power to determine for us absolutely and without any ado, without argument and without denial, what is good and appropriate to be done or suffered in every case that can arise? And so on; it is not necessary to say more. If there are such powers in man, then there is indeed an exact science possible. Short of it there is only a temporary and phantom science. "Whatever is known to us by (direct) consciousness," says Stuart Mill in his System of Logic, "is known to us beyond possibility of question;" what is known by our local and temporary consciousness is known _for the moment_ beyond possibility of question; what is known by our permanent and universal consciousness is permanently known beyond possibility of question.[33] FOOTNOTES: [31] Thus the study of Geometry would be primarily an education of the eye, and the mind's eye, to the perception of geometrical forms and facts, the judgment of angles, etc.--and secondarily only a process of deductive reasoning--a body of empirical knowledge strengthened and tied together by bands of logic; the study of Natural History would be primarily an affectionate intimacy with the habits of animals and plants, and classification would be treated as a secondary matter and as a help to the former; Physiology would be studied in the first place by the method of Health--the pure body--becoming gradually transparent with all its organs to the eye of the mind--and dissection would be used to corroborate and correct the results thus attained; and so on. [32] Compare the Sphinx-riddle: What is that which goes on four legs, etc. [33] See for continuation of this subject the chapter on "A Rational and Humane Science," p. 219 _infra_. DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS: A CRITICISM OF MORALITY The State is the actually existing realised moral life. For it is the unity of the universal essential Will with that of the individual, and this is "Morality."--HEGEL. A criminal is literally a person accused--accused, and in the modern sense of the word convicted, of being harmful to Society. But is he there in the dock, the patch-coated brawler or burglar, really harmful to Society? is he more harmful than the mild old gentleman in the wig who pronounces sentence upon him? That is the question. Certainly he has infringed the law: and the law is in a sense the consolidated public opinion of Society: but if no one were to break the law, public opinion would ossify, and Society would die. As a matter of fact Society keeps changing its opinion. How then are we to know when it is right and when it is wrong? The Outcast of one age is the Hero of another. In execration they nailed Roger Bacon's manuscripts out in the sun and rain, to rot crucified upon planks--his bones lie in an unknown and unhonoured grave--yet to-day he is regarded as a pioneer of human thought. The hated Christian holding his ill-famed love-feasts in the darkness of the catacombs has climbed up to the throne of S. Peter and the world. The Jew moneylender whom Front-de-Boeuf could torture with impunity is become a Rothschild--guest of princes and instigator of commercial wars; and Shylock is now a highly respectable Railway Bondholder. And the Accepted of one age is the Criminal of the next. All the glories of Alexander do not condone in our eyes for his cruelty in crucifying the brave defenders of Tyre by thousands along the sea-shore; and if Solomon with his thousand wives and concubines were to appear in London to-morrow, even our most frivolous circles would be shocked, and Brigham Young by contrast seem a domestic model. The judge pronounces sentence on the prisoner now, but Society in its turn and in the lapse of years pronounces sentence on the judge. It holds in its hand a new canon, a new code of morals, and consigns its former representative and the law which he administered to a limbo of contempt. It seems as if Society, as it progresses from point to point, forms ideals--just as the individual does. At any moment each person, consciously or unconsciously, has an ideal in his mind toward which he is working (hence the importance of literature). Similarly Society has an ideal in its mind. These ideals are tangents or vanishing points of the direction in which Society is moving at the time. It does not reach its ideal, but it goes in that direction--then, after a time, the direction of its movement changes, and it has a new ideal. When the ideal of Society is material gain or possession, as it is largely to-day, the object of its special condemnation is the thief--not the rich thief, for he is already in possession and therefore respectable, but the poor thief. There is nothing to show that the poor thief is really more immoral or unsocial than the respectable money-grubber; but it is very clear that the money-grubber has been floating with the great current of Society, while the poor man has been swimming against it, and so has been worsted. Or when, as to-day, Society rests on private property in land, its counter-ideal is the poacher. If you go in the company of the county squire-archy and listen to the after-dinner talk you will soon think the poacher a combination of all human and diabolic vices; yet I have known a good many poachers, and either have been very lucky in my specimens or singularly prejudiced in their favour, for I have generally found them very good fellows--but with just this one blemish that they invariably regard a landlord as an emissary of the evil one! The poacher is as much in the right, probably, as the landlord, but he is not right for the time. He is asserting a right (and an instinct) belonging to a past time--when for hunting purposes all land was held in common--or to a time in the future when such or similar rights shall be restored. Cæsar says of the Suevi that they tilled the ground in common and had no private lands, and there is abundant evidence that all early human communities, before they entered on the stage of modern civilisation, were communistic in character. Some of the Pacific Islanders to-day are in the same condition. In those times private property was theft. Obviously the man who attempted to retain for himself land or goods, or who fenced off a portion of the common ground and--like the modern landlord--would allow no one to till it who did not pay him a tax--was a criminal of the deepest dye. Nevertheless the criminals pushed their way to the front, and have become the respectables of modern Society. And it is quite probable that in like manner the criminals of to-day will push to the front and become the respectables of a later age. The ascetic and monastic ideal of early Christian and mediæval ages is now regarded as foolish, if not wicked; and poverty, which in many times and places has been held in honour as the only garb of honesty, is condemned as criminal and indecent. Nomadism--if accompanied by poverty--is criminal in modern Society. To-day the gipsy and the tramp are hunted down. To have no settled habitation, or worse still, no place to lay your head, are suspicious matters. We close even our outhouses and barns against the son of man, and so to us the son of man comes not. And yet--at one time and in one stage of human progress--the nomadic state is the rule; and the settler is then the criminal. His crops are fired and his cattle driven off. What right has he to lay a limit to the hunting grounds, or to spoil the wild free life of the plains with his dirty agriculture? As to the marriage relation and its attendant moralities, the forms are numerous and notorious enough. Public opinion seems to have varied through all phases and ideals, and yet there is no indication of finality. Modern investigations show that in primitive human societies the affinities admitted or barred in marriage are most various--the relation of brother and sister being even in cases allowed; in the present day such a bond as the last-mentioned would be considered inhuman and monstrous.[34] Polyandry prevails among one people or at one time, polygyny prevails among another people or at another time. In Central Africa to-day the chief offers you his wife as a mark of hospitality, in India the native Prince keeps her hidden even from his most intimate guest. Among the Japanese, public opinion holds young women--even of good birth--singularly free in their intercourse with men, _till they are married_; at Paris they are free after. In the Greek and Roman antiquity marriage seems, with some brilliant exceptions, to have been a prosaic affair--mostly a matter of convenience and housekeeping--the woman an underling--little of the ideal attaching to the relationship of man and wife. The romance of love went elsewhere. The better class of free women or Hetairai were those who gave a spiritual charm to the passion. They were an educated and recognised body, and possibly in their best times exercised a healthy and discriminating influence upon the male youth. The respectful treatment of Theodota by Socrates and the advice which he gives her concerning her lovers: to keep the insolent from her door, and to rejoice greatly when the accepted succeed in anything honourable, indicates this. That their influence was at times immense the mere name of Aspasia is sufficient to show; and if Plato in the Symposium reports correctly the word of Diotima, her teaching on the subject of human and divine love was probably of the noblest and profoundest that has ever been given to the world. With the influx of the North-men over Europe came a new ideal of the sexual relation, and the wife mounted more into equality with her husband than before. The romance of love, however, still went mainly outside marriage, and may, I believe, be traced in two chief forms--that of Chivalry, as an ideal devotion to simple Womanhood; and that of Minstrelsy, which took quite a different hue, individual and sentimental--the lover and his mistress (she in most cases the wife of another), the serenade, secret amour, etc.--both of which forms of Chivalry and Minstrelsy contain in themselves something new and not quite familiar to antiquity. Finally in modern times the monogamic union has risen to pre-eminence--the splendid ideal of an equal and life-long attachment between man and wife, fruitful of children in this life, and hopeful of continuance beyond--and has become the great theme of romantic literature, and the climax of a thousand novels and poems. Yet it is just here and to-day, when this ideal after centuries of struggle has established itself, and among the nations that are in the van of civilisation--that we find the doctrine of perfect liberty in the marriage relationship being most successfully preached, and that the communalisation of social life in the future seems likely to weaken the family bond and to relax the obligation of the marriage tie. If the Greek age, splendid as it was in itself and in its fruits of human progress, did not hold marriage very high, it was partly because the ideal passion of that period, and one which more than all else inspired it, was that of comradeship, or male friendship carried over into the region of love. The two figures of Harmodius and Aristogiton stand at the entrance of Greek history as the type of this passion, bearing its fruit (as Plato throughout maintains is its nature) in united self-devotion to the country's good. The heroic Theban legion, the "sacred band," into which no man might enter without his lover--and which was said to have remained unvanquished till it was annihilated at the battle of Chæronæa--proves to us how publicly this passion and its place in society were recognised; while its universality and the depth to which it had stirred the Greek mind are indicated by the fact that whole treatises on love, in its spiritual aspect, exist, in which no other form of the sentiment seems to be contemplated; and by the magnificent panorama of Greek statuary, which was obviously to a large extent inspired by it. In fact the most remarkable Society known to history, and its greatest men, cannot be properly considered or understood apart from this passion; yet the modern world scarcely recognises it, or if it recognises, does so chiefly to condemn it.[35] Other instances might be quoted to show how differently moral questions are regarded in one age and another--as in the cases of Usury, Magic, Suicide, Infanticide, etc. On the whole we pride ourselves (and justly I believe) on the general advance in humanity; yet we know that to-day the merest savages can only shudder at a civilisation whose public opinion allows--as among us--the rich to wallow in their wealth, while the poor are systematically starving; and it is certain that the vivisection of animals--which on the whole is approved by our educated classes (though not by the healthier sentiment of the uneducated)--would have been stigmatised as one of the most abominable crimes by the ancient Egyptians[36]--if, that is, they could have conceived such a practice possible at all. But not only do the moral judgments of mankind thus vary from age to age and from race to race, but--what is equally remarkable--they vary to an extraordinary degree from class to class of the same society. If the landlord class regards the poacher as a criminal, the poacher, as already hinted, looks upon the landlord as a selfish ruffian who has the police on his side; if the respectable shareholder, politely and respectably subsisting on dividends, dismisses navvies and the frequenters of public-houses as disorderly persons, the navvy in return despises the shareholder as a sneaking thief. And it is not easy to see, after all, which is in the right. It is useless to dismiss these discrepancies by supposing that one class in the nation possesses a monopoly of morality and that the other classes simply rail at the virtue they cannot attain to, for this is obviously not the case. It is almost a commonplace, and certainly a fact that cannot be contested, that every class--however sinful or outcast in the eyes of others--contains within its ranks a large proportion of generous, noble, self-sacrificing characters; so that the public opinion of one such class, however different from that of others, cannot at least be invalidated on the above ground. There are plenty of clergymen at this moment who are models of pastors--true shepherds of the people--though a large and increasing section of society persist in regarding priests as a kind of wolves in sheep's clothing. It is not uncommon to meet with professional thieves who are generous and open-handed to the last degree, and ready to part with their last penny to help a comrade in distress; with women living outside the bounds of conventional morality who are strongly religious in sentiment, and who regard atheists as _really_ wicked people; with aristocrats who have as stern material in them as quarry-men; and even with bondholders and drawing-room loungers who are as capable of bravery and self-sacrifice as many a pitman or ironworker. Yet all these classes mentioned have their codes of morality, differing in greater or lesser degree from each other; and again the question forces itself upon us: Which of them all is the true and abiding code? It may be said, with regard to this variation of codes within the same society, that, though various codes may exist at the same time, one only is really valid, namely, that which has embodied itself in the law--that the others have been rejected because they were unworthy. But, when we come to look into this matter of law, we see that the plea can hardly be maintained. Law represents from age to age the code of the dominant or ruling class, slowly accumulated, no doubt, and slowly modified, but always added to and always administered by the ruling class. To-day the code of the dominant class may perhaps best be denoted by the word Respectability--and if we ask why this code has to a great extent overwhelmed the codes of the other classes and got the law on its side (so far that in the main it characterises those classes who do not conform to it as the criminal classes), the answer can only be: Because it _is_ the code of the classes who are in power. Respectability is the code of those who have the wealth and the command, and as these have also the fluent pens and tongues, it is the standard of modern literature and the press. It is not necessarily a better standard than others, but it is the one that happens to be in the ascendant; it is the code of the classes that chiefly represent modern society; it is the code of the Bourgeoisie. It is different from the Feudal code of the past, of the knightly classes, and of Chivalry; it is different from the Democratic code of the future--of brotherhood and of equality; it is the code of the Commercial age--and its distinctive watchword is property. The respectability of to-day is the respectability of property. There is nothing so respectable as being well-off. The Law confirms this: everything is on the side of the rich; justice is too expensive a thing for the poor man. Offences against the person hardly count for so much as those against property. You may beat your wife within an inch of her life and only get three months; but if you steal a rabbit, you may be "sent" for years. So again, gambling by thousands on Change is respectable enough, but pitch and toss for half-pence in the streets is low, and must be dealt with by the police; while it is a mere commonplace to say that the high-class swindler is "received" in society from which a more honest but patch-coated brother would infallibly be rejected. As Walt Whitman has it, "There is plenty of glamour about the most damnable crimes and hoggish meannesses, special and general, of the feudal and dynastic world over there, with its personnel of lords and queens and courts, so well-dressed and handsome. But the people are ungrammatical, untidy, and their sins gaunt and ill-bred." Thus we see that though there are, for instance in the England of to-day, a variety of classes and a variety of corresponding codes of public opinion and morality, one of these codes, namely that of the ruling class whose watchword is property, is strongly in the ascendant. And we may fairly suppose that in any nation from the time when it first becomes divided into well-marked classes this is or has been the case. In one age--the commercial age--the code of the commercial or money-loving class is dominant; in another--the military--the code of the warrior class is dominant; in another--the religious--the code of the priestly class; and so on. And even before any question of division into classes arises, while races are yet in a rudimentary and tribal state, the utmost diversity of custom and public opinion marks the one from the other. What, then, are we to conclude from all these variations (and the far greater number which I have not mentioned) of the respect or stigma attaching to the _same_ actions, not only among different societies in different ages or parts of the world, but even at any one time among different classes of the same society? Must we conclude that there is no such thing as a permanent moral code valid for all time; or must we still suppose that there is such a thing--though society has hitherto sought for it in vain? I think it is obvious that there is no such thing as a permanent moral code--at any rate as applying to _actions_. Probably the respect or stigma attaching to particular classes of actions arose from the fact that these classes of actions were--or were thought to be--beneficial or injurious to the society of the time; but it is also clear that this good or bad name once created clings to the action long after the action has ceased in the course of social progress to be beneficial in the one case, or injurious in the other; and indeed long after the thinkers of the race have discovered the discrepancy. And so in a short time arises a great confusion in the popular mind between what is really good or evil for the race and what is reputed to be so--the bolder spirits who try to separate the two having to atone for this confusion by their own martyrdom. It is also pretty clear that the actions which are beneficial or injurious to the race must by the nature of the case vary almost indefinitely with the changing conditions of the life of the race--what is beneficial in one age or under one set of conditions being injurious in another age or under other circumstances--so that a permanent or ever-valid code of moral action is not a thing to be expected, at any rate by those who regard morality as a result of social experience, and as a matter of fact is not a thing that we find existing. And, indeed, of those who regard morals as intuitive, there are few who have thought about the matter who would be inclined to say that any _act_ in itself can be either right or wrong. Though there is a superficial judgment of this kind, yet when the matter comes to be looked into, the more general consent seems to be that the rightness or wrongness is in the _motive_. To kill (it is said) is not wrong, but to do so with murderous intent is; to take money out of another person's purse is in itself neither moral nor immoral--all depends upon whether permission has been given, or on what the relations between the two persons are; and so on. Obviously there is no mere act which under given conditions may not be justified, and equally obvious there is no mere act which under given conditions may not become unjustifiable. To talk, therefore, about virtues and vices as permanent and distinct classes of actions is illusory: there is no such distinction, except so far as a superficial and transient public opinion creates it. The theatre of morality is in the passions, and there are (it is said) virtuous and vicious passions--eternally distinct from each other. Here, then, we have abandoned the search for a permanent moral code among the actions; on the understanding that we are more likely to find such a thing among the passions. And I think it would be generally admitted that this is a move in the right direction. There are difficulties however here, and the matter is not one which renders itself up at once. Though, vaguely speaking, some passions seem nobler and more dignified than others, we find it very difficult, in fact impossible, to draw any strict line which shall separate one class, the virtuous, from the other class, the vicious. On the whole we place Prudence, Generosity, Chastity, Reverence, Courage among the virtues--and their opposites, as Rashness, Miserliness, Incontinence, Arrogance, Timidity, among the vices; yet we do not seem able to say that Prudence is always better than Rashness, Chastity than Incontinence, or Reverence than Arrogance. There are situations in which the less honoured quality is the most in place; and if the extreme of this is undesirable, the extreme of its opposite is undesirable too. Courage, it is commonly said, must not be carried over into foolhardiness; Chastity must not go so far as the monks of the early Church took it; there is a limit to the indulgence of the instinct of Reverence. In fact the less dignified passions are necessary sometimes as a counterbalance and set-off to the more dignified, and a character devoid of them would be very insipid; just as among the members of the body, the less honoured have their place as well as the more honoured, and could not well be discarded. Hence a number of writers, abandoning the attempt to draw a fixed line between virtuous and vicious passions, have boldly maintained that vices have their place as well as virtues, and that the true salvation lies in the golden mean. The [Greek: epieikeia] and [Greek: sôphrosunê] of the Greeks seem to have pointed to the idea of a blend or harmonious adjustment of all the powers as the perfection of character. Plutarch says (_Essay on Moral Virtue_), "This, then, is the function of practical reason following nature, to prevent our passions either going too far or too short.... Thus setting bound to the emotional currents, it creates in the unreasoning part of the soul moral habits which are the mean between excess and deficiency." The English word "gentleman" seems to have once conveyed a similar idea. And Emerson, among others, maintains that each vice is only the "excess or acridity of a virtue," and says "the first lesson of history is the good of evil." According to this view rightness or wrongness cannot be predicated of the passions themselves, but should rather be applied to the use of them, and to the way they are proportioned to each other and to circumstances. As, farther back, we left the region of actions to look for morality in the passions that lie behind action, so now we leave the region of the passions to look for it in the power that lies behind the passions and gives them their place. This is a farther move in the same direction as before, and possibly will bring us to a more satisfactory conclusion. There are still difficulties, however, the chief ones lying in the want of definiteness which necessarily attaches to our dealings with these remoter tracts of human nature; and in our own defective knowledge of these tracts. For these reasons, and as the subject is a complex and difficult one, I would ask the reader to dwell for a few minutes longer on the considerations which show that it is really as impossible to draw a fixed line between moral and immoral passions as it is between moral and immoral actions, and which therefore force us, if we are to find any ground of morality at all, to look for it in some further region of our nature. Plato in his allegory of the soul, in the Phædrus, though he apparently divides the passions which draw the human chariot into two classes, the heavenward and the earthward--figured by the white horse and the black horse respectively--does not recommend that the black horse should be destroyed or dismissed, but only that he (as well as the white horse) should be kept under due control by the charioteer. By which he seems to intend that there is a power in man which stands above and behind the passions, and under whose control alone the human being can safely move. In fact, if the fiercer and so-called more earthly passions were removed, half the driving force would be gone from the chariot of the human soul. Hatred may be devilish at times--but, after all, the true value of it depends on what you hate, on the use to which the passion is put. Anger, though inhuman at one time, is magnificent at another. Obstinacy may be out of place in a drawing-room, but it is the latest virtue on a battle-field, when an important position has to be held against the full brunt of the enemy. And Lust, though maniacal and monstrous in its aberrations, cannot in the last resort be separated from its divine companion, Love. To let the more amiable passions have entire sway notoriously does not do: to turn your cheek, too literally, to the smiter, is (_pace_ Tolstoi) only to encourage smiting; and when society becomes so altruistic that everybody runs to fetch the coal-scuttle, we feel sure that something has gone wrong. The white-washed heroes of our biographies, with their many virtues and no faults, do not please us. We have an impression that the man without faults is, to say the least, a vague, uninteresting being--a picture without light and shade--and the conventional semi-pious classification of character into good and bad qualities (as if the good might be kept and the bad thrown away) seems both inadequate and false. What the student of human nature rather has to do is not to divide the virtues (so-called) from the vices (so-called), not to separate the black horse and the white horse, but to find out what is the relation of the one to the other--to see the character as a whole, and the mutual interdependence of its different parts--to find out what that power is which constitutes it a unity, whose presence and control makes the man and all his actions "right," and in whose absence (if it is really possible for it to be entirely absent) the man and his actions must be "wrong." What we call vices, faults, defects, appear often as a kind of limitation: cruelty, for instance, as a limitation of human sympathy, prejudice as a blindness, a want of discernment; but it is just these limitations--in one form or another--which are the necessary conditions of the appearance of a human being in the world. If we are to act or live at all we must act and live under limits. There must be channels along which the stream is forced to run, else it will spread and lose itself aimlessly in all directions--and turn no mill-wheels. One man is disagreeable and unconciliatory--the directions in which his sympathy goes out to others are few and limited--yet there are situations in life (and everyone must know them) when a man who is _able and willing_ to make himself disagreeable is invaluable: when a Carlyle is worth any number of Balaams. Sometimes again vices, etc., appear as a kind of raw material from which the other qualities have to be formed, and without which, in a sense, they could not exist. Sensuality, for instance, underlies all art and the higher emotions. Timidity is the defect of the sensitive imaginative temperament. Bluntness, stupid candor, and want of tact are indispensable in the formation of certain types of Reformers. But what would you have? Would you have a rabbit with the horns of a cow, or a donkey with the disposition of a spaniel? The reformer has not to extirpate his brusqueness and aggressiveness, but to see that he makes good use of these qualities; and the man has not to abolish his sensuality, but to humanise it. And so on. Lecky, in his "History of Morals," shows how in society certain defects necessarily accompany certain excellences of character. "Had the Irish peasants been less chaste they would have been more prosperous," in his blunt assertion, which he supports by the contention that their early marriages (which render the said virtue possible) "are the most conspicuous proofs of the national improvidence, and one of the most fatal obstacles to industrial prosperity." Similarly he says that the gambling table fosters a moral nerve and calmness "scarcely exhibited in equal perfection in any other sphere"--a fact which Bret Harte has finely illustrated in his character of Mr. John Oakhurst in the "Outcasts of Poker Flat;" also that "the promotion of industrial veracity is probably the single form in which the growth of manufactures exercises a favorable influence upon morals;" while, on the other hand, "Trust in Providence, content and resignation in extreme poverty and suffering, the most genuine amiability, and the most sincere readiness to assist their brethren, an adherence to their religious opinions which no persecutions and no bribes can shake, a capacity for heroic, transcendent, and prolonged self-sacrifice, may be found in some nations, in men who are habitual liars and habitual cheats." Again he points out that thriftiness and forethought--which, in an industrial civilisation like ours, are looked upon as duties "of the very highest order"--have at other times (when the teaching was "take no thought for the morrow") been regarded as quite the reverse, and concludes with the general remark that as society advances there is some loss for every gain that is made, and with the special indictment against "civilisation" that it is not favorable to the production of "self-sacrifice, enthusiasm, reverence, or chastity." The point of all which is that the so-called vices and defects--whether we regard them as limitations or whether we regard them as raw materials of character, whether we regard them in the individual solely or whether we regard them in their relation to society--are necessary elements of human life, elements without which the so-called virtues could not exist; and that therefore it is quite impossible to separate vices and virtues into distinct classes with the latent idea involved that one class may be retained and the other in course of time got rid of. Defects and bad qualities will not be treated so--they clamour for their rights and will not be denied; they effect a lodgment in us, and we have to put up with them. Like the grain of sand in the oyster, we are forced to make pearls of them. These are the precipices and chasms which give form to the mountain. Who wants a mountain sprawling indifferently out on all sides, without angle or break, like the oceanic tide-wave of which one cannot say whether it is a hill or a plain? And if you want to grow a lily, chastely white and filling the air with its fragrance, will you not bury the bulb of it deep in the dirt to begin with? Acknowledging, then, that it is impossible to hold permanently to any line of distinction between good and bad passions, there remains no course for us but to accept both, and to _make use_ of them--redeeming them, both good and bad, from their narrowness and limitation by so doing--to make use of them in the service of humanity. For as dirt is only matter in the wrong place, so evil in man consists only in actions or passions which are uncontrolled by the human within him, and undedicated to its service. The evil consists not in the actions or passions themselves, but in the fact that they are inhumanly used. The most unblemished virtue erected into a barrier between one self and a suffering brother or sister--the whitest marble image, howsoever lovely, set up in the Holy Place of the temple of Man, where the spirit alone should dwell--becomes blasphemy and a pollution. Wherein exactly this human service consists is another question. It may be, and, as the reader would gather, probably is, a matter which at the last eludes definition. But though it may elude exact statement, that is no reason why approximations should not be made to the statement of it; nor is its ultimate elusiveness of intellectual definition any proof that it may not become a real and vital force within the man, and underlying inspiration of his actions. To take the two considerations in order. In the first place, as we saw from the beginning, the experience of society is continually leading it to classify actions into beneficial and harmful, good and bad; and thus moral codes are formed which eat their way from the outside into the individual man and become part of him. These codes may be looked upon as approximations in each age to a statement of human service; but, as we have seen, they are by the nature of the case very imperfect; and since the very conditions of the problem are continually changing, it seems obvious that a final and absolute solution of it by this method is impossible. The second way in which man works towards a solution is by the expansion and growth of his own consciousness, and is ultimately by far the most important--though the two methods have doubtless continually to be corrected by each other. In fact, as man actually forms a part of society externally, so he comes to know and _feel_ himself a part of society through his inner nature. Gradually, and in the lapse of ages, through the development of his sympathetic relation with his fellows, the individual man enters into a wider and wider circle of life; the joys and sorrows, the experiences, of his fellows become his own joys and sorrows, his own experiences; he passes into a life which is larger than his own individual life; forces flow in upon him which determine his actions, not for results which return to him directly, but for results which can only return to him indirectly and through others; at last the ground of humanity, as it were, reveals itself within him, the region of human equality--and his actions come to flow directly from the very same source which regulates and inspires the whole movement of society. At this point the problem is solved. The growth has taken place from within; it is not of the nature of an external compulsion, but of an inward compunction. By actual consciousness the man has taken on an ever-enlarging life, and at last the life of humanity, which has no fixed form, no ever-valid code; but is itself the true life, surpassing definition, yet inspiring all actions and passions, all codes and forms, and determining at last their place. It is the gradual growth of this supreme life in each individual which is the great and indeed the only hope of Society--it is that for which Society exists: a life which so far from dwarfing individuality enhances immensely its power, causing the individual to move with the weight of the universe behind him--and exalting what were once his little peculiarities and defects into the splendid manifestations of his humanity. To return then for a moment to the practical bearing of this on the question before us, we see that so soon as we have abandoned all codes of morals there remains nothing for us but to put _all_ our qualities and defects to human use, and to redeem them by so doing. Our defects are our entrances into life, and the gateway of all our dealings with others. Think what it is to be plain and _homely_. The very word suggests an endearment, and a liberty of access denied to the faultlessly handsome. Our very evil passions, so called, are not things to be ashamed of, but things to look straight in the face and to see what they are good for--for a use can be found for them, that is certain. The man should see that he is worthy of his passion, as the mountain should rear its crest conformable to the height of the precipice which bounds it. Is it women? let him see that he is a magnanimous lover. Is it ambition? let him take care that it be a grand one. Is it laziness? let it redeem him from the folly of unrest, to become heaven-reflecting, like a lake among the hills. Is it closefistedness? let it become the nurse of a true economy. The more complicated, pronounced, or awkward the defect is the finer will be the result when it has been thoroughly worked up. Love of approbation is difficult to deal with. Through sloughs of duplicity, of concealment, of vanity, it leads its victim. It sucks his sturdy self-life, and leaves him flattened and bloodless. Yet once mastered, once fairly torn out, cudgeled, and left bleeding on the road (for this probably has to be done with every vice or virtue some time or other), it will rise up and follow you, carrying a magic key round its neck, meek and serviceable now, instead of dangerous and demoniac as before. Deceit is difficult to deal with. In some sense it is the worst fault that can be. It seems to disorganise and ultimately to destroy the character. Yet I am bold to say that this defect has its uses. Severely examined perhaps it will be found that no one can live a day free from it. And beyond that--is not "a noble dissimulation" part and parcel of the very greatest characters: like Socrates, "the white soul in a satyr form"? When the divine has descended among men has it not always, like Moses, worn a veil before its face? and what is Nature herself but one long and organised system of deception? Veracity has an opposite effect. It knits all the elements of a man's character--rendering him solid rather than fluid; yet carried out too literally and pragmatically it condenses and solidifies the character overmuch, making the man woodeny and angular. And even of that essential Truth (truth to the inward and ideal perfection) which more than anything else perhaps _constitutes_ a man--it is to be remembered that even here there must be a limitation. No man can in act or externally be quite true to the ideal--though in spirit he may be. If he is to live in this world and be mortal, it must be by virtue of some partiality, some defect. And so again--since there is an analogy between the Individual and Society--may we not conclude that as the individual has ultimately to recognise his so-called evil passions and find a place and a use for them, society also has to recognise its so-called criminals and discern their place and use? The artist does not omit shadows from his canvas; and the wise statesman will not try to abolish the criminal from society--lest haply he be found to have abolished the driving force from his social machine.[37] From what has now been said it is quite clear that in general we call a man a criminal, not because he violates any eternal code of morality--for there exists no such thing--but because he violates the ruling code of his time, and this depends largely on the ideal of the time. The Spartans appear to have permitted theft because they thought that thieving habits in the community fostered military dexterity and discouraged the accumulation of private wealth. They looked upon the latter as a great evil. But to-day the accumulation of private wealth is our great good and the thief is looked upon as the evil. When however we find, as the historians of to-day teach us, that society is now probably passing through a parenthetical stage of private property from a stage of communism in the past to a stage of more highly developed communism in the future, it becomes clear that the thief (and the poacher before-mentioned) is that person who is protesting against the too-exclusive domination of a passing ideal. Whatever should we do without him? He is keeping open for us, as Hinton I think expresses it, the path to a regenerate society, and is more useful to that end than many a platform orator. He it is that makes Care to sit upon the Crupper of Wealth, and so, in course of time, causes the burden and bother of private property to become so intolerable that society gladly casts it down on common ground. Vast as is the machinery of Law, and multifarious the ways in which it seeks to crush the thief, it has signally failed, and fails ever more and more. The thief will win. He will get what he wants, but (as usual in human life!) in a way and in a form very different from what he expected. And when we regard the thief in himself, we cannot say that we find him less human than other classes of society. The sentiment of large bodies of thieves is highly communistic among themselves; and if they thus represent a survival from an earlier age, they might also be looked upon as the precursors of a better age in the future. They have their pals in every town, with runs and refuges always open, and are lavish and generous to a degree to their own kind. And if they look upon the rich as their natural enemies and fair prey, a view which it might be difficult to gainsay, many of them at any rate are animated by a good deal of the Robin Hood spirit, and are really helpful to the poor. I need not I think quote that famous passage from Lecky in which he shows how the prostitute, through centuries of suffering and ill-fame, has borne the curse and contempt of Society in order that her more fortunate sister might rejoice in the achievement of a pure marriage. The ideal of a monogamic union has been established in a sense directly by the slur cast upon the free woman. If, however, as many people think, a certain latitude in sexual relations is not only admissible but, in the long run, and within bounds, desirable, it becomes clear that the prostitute is that person who against heavy odds, and at the cost of a real degradation to herself, has clung to a tradition which, in itself good, might otherwise have perished in the face of our devotion to the splendid ideal of the exclusive marriage. There has been a time in history when the prostitute (if the word can properly be used in this connection) has been glorified, consecrated to the temple-service and honoured of men and gods (the hierodouloi of the Greeks, the kodeshoth and kodeshim of the Bible, etc.) There has also been a time when she has been scouted and reviled. In the future there will come a time when, as free companion, really free from the curse of modern commercialism, and sacred and respected once more, she will again be accepted by society and take her place with the rest. And so with other cases. On looking back into history we find that almost every human impulse has at some age been held in esteem and allowed full play; thus man came to recognise its beauty and value. But then, lest it should come (as it surely would) to tyrannise over the rest, it has been dethroned, and so in a later age the same quality is scouted and banned. Last of all it has to find its perfect human use and to take its place with the rest. Up to the age of Civilisation (according to writers on primitive Society) the early tribes of mankind, though limited each in their habits, were essentially democratical in structure. In fact, nothing had occurred to make them otherwise. Each member stood on a footing of equality with the rest; individual men had not in their hands an arbitrary power over others; and the tribal life and standard ruled supreme. And when, in the future and on a much higher plane, the true Democracy comes, this equality which has so long been in abeyance will be restored, not only among men but also, in a sense, among all the passions and qualities of manhood: none will be allowed to tyrannise over others, but all will have to be subject to the supreme life of humanity. The chariot of Man instead of two horses will have a thousand; but they will all be under control of the charioteer. Meanwhile it may not be extravagant to suppose that all through the Civilisation-period the so-called criminals are keeping open the possibility of a return to this state of society. They are preserving, in a rough and unattractive husk it may be, the precious seed of a life which is to come in the future; and are as necessary and integral a part of society in the long run as the most respected and most honoured of its members at present. The upshot then of it all is that "morals" as a permanent code of action have to be discarded. There exists no such permanent code. One age, one race, one class, one family, may have a code which the users of it consider valid, but only they consider it valid, and then only for a time. The Decalogue may have been a rough and useful ready-reckoner for the Israelites; but to us it admits of so many exceptions and interpretations that it is practically worthless. "Thou shalt not steal." Exactly; but who is to decide, as we saw at the outset, in what "stealing" consists? The question is too complicated to admit of an answer. And when we _have_ caught our half-starved tramp "sneaking" a loaf, and are ready to condemn him, lo! Lycurgus pats him on the back, and the modern philosopher tells him that he is keeping open the path to a regenerate society! If the tramp had also been a philosopher, he would perhaps have done the same act not merely for his own benefit but for that of society, he would have committed a crime in order to save mankind. There is nothing left but Humanity. Since there is no ever-valid code of morals we must sadly confess that there is no means of proving ourselves right and our neighbours wrong. In fact the very act of thinking whether _we_ are right (which implies a sundering of ourselves, even in thought, from others) itself introduces the element of wrongness; and if we are ever to _be_ "right" at all, it must be at some moment when we fail to notice it--when we have forgotten our apartness from others and have entered into the great region of human equality. Equality--in that region all human defects are redeemed; they all find their place. To love your neighbour _as_ yourself is the whole law and the prophets; to feel that you are "equal" with others, that their lives are as your life, that your life is as theirs--even in what trifling degree we may experience such things--is to enter into another life which includes both sides; it is to pass beyond the sphere of moral distinctions, and to trouble oneself no more with them. Between lovers there are no duties and no rights; and in the life of humanity, there is only an instinctive mutual service expressing itself in whatever way may be best at the time. Nothing is forbidden, there is nothing which may not serve. The law of Equality is perfectly flexible, is adaptable to all times and places, finds a place for all the elements of character, justifies and redeems them all without exception; and to live by it is perfect freedom. Yet not a law: but rather as said, a new life, transcending the individual life, working through it from within, lifting the self into another sphere, beyond corruption, far over the world of Sorrow. The effort to make a distinction between acting for self and acting for one's neighbor is the basis of "morals." As long as a man feels an ultimate antagonism between himself and society, as long as he tries to hold his own life as a thing apart from that of others, so long must the question arise whether he will act for self _or_ for those others. Hence flow a long array of terms--distinctions of right and wrong, duty, selfishness, self-renunciation, altruism, etc. But when he discovers that there is no ultimate antagonism between himself and society; when he finds that the gratification of every desire which he has or can have may be rendered social, or beneficial to his fellows, by being used at the right time and place, and on the other hand that every demand made upon him by society will and must gratify some portion of his nature, some desire of his heart--why, all the distinctions collapse again; they do not hold water any more. A larger life descends upon him, which includes both sides, and prompts actions in accordance with an unwritten and unimagined law. Such actions will sometimes be accounted "selfish" by the world; sometimes they will be accounted "unselfish"; but they are neither, or--if you like--both; and he who does them concerns himself not with the names that may be given to them. The law of Equality includes all the moral codes, and is the standpoint which they cannot reach, but which they all aim at. Judged by this final standard then, it may doubtless fairly be said--since we all fall short of it--that we are all criminals, and deserve a good hiding; and even that some of us are greater criminals than others. Only of this real criminality the actual moral and legal codes afford but ineffectual tests. I may be a far worse or more self-included ("idiotic" or brutal) man than you, but the mere fact that I have violated the laws and been clapped into prison does not prove it. There may be, probably is, a real and eternal difference represented by the words Right and Wrong, but no statement that we can make will ever quite avail to define it. One use, however, of all these laws and codes in the past, imperfect though they were, may have been to gradually excite the consciousness in the individual of his opposition to society, and so prepare the way for a true reconcilement. As Paul says, "I had not known sin, but by the law," and, if we had not been cudgeled and bruised for centuries by this rough bludgeon of social convention, we should not now be so sensitive as we are to the effect of our actions upon our neighbours, nor so ready for a social life in the future which shall be superior to law. Of course, the ultimate reconcilement of the individual with society--of the unit Man with the mass-Man--involves the subordination of the desires, their subjection to the true self. And this is a most important point. It is no easy lapse that is here suggested, from morality into a mere jungle of human passion, but a toilsome and long ascent--involving for a time at any rate a determined self-control--into ascendancy over the passions; it involves the complete mastery, one by one, of them all, and the recognition and allowance of them only because they are mastered. And it is just this training and subjection of the passions--as of winged horses which are to draw the human chariot--which necessarily forms such a long and painful process of human evolution. The old moral codes are a part of this process; but they go on the plan of extinguishing some of the passions--seeing that it is sometimes easier to shoot a restive horse than to ride him. We however do not want to be lords of dead carrion, but of living powers; and every steed that we can add to our chariot makes our progress through creation so much the more splendid, providing Phoebus indeed hold the reins, and not the incapable Phaeton. And by becoming thus one with the social self, the individual, instead of being crushed, is made far vaster, far grander than before. The renunciation (if it must be so called) which he has to accept in abandoning merely individual ends is immediately compensated by the far more vivid life he now enters into. For every force of his nature can now be utilised. Planting himself out by contrast he stands all the firmer because he has a left foot as well as a right, and when he acts, he acts not half-heartedly as one afraid, but, as it were, with the whole weight of Humanity behind him. In abandoning his exclusive individuality he becomes for the first time a real and living individual; and in accepting as his own the life of others he becomes aware of a life in himself that has no limit and no end. That the self of any one man is capable of an infinite gradation from the most petty and exclusive existence to the most magnificent and inclusive seems almost a truism. The one extreme is disease and death, the other is life everlasting. When the tongue for example--which is a member of the body--regards itself as a purely separate existence for itself alone, it makes a mistake, it suffers an illusion, and descends into its pettiest life. What is the consequence? Thinking that it exists apart from the other members, it selects food just such as shall gratify its most local self, it endeavours just to titillate its own sense of taste; and living and acting thus, ere long it ruins that very sense of taste, poisons the system with improper food, and brings about disease and death. Yet, if healthy, how does the tongue act? Why, it does not run counter to its own sense of taste, or stultify itself. It does not talk about sacrificing its own inclinations for the good of the body and the other members; but it just acts as being one in interest with them and they with it. For the tongue _is_ a muscle, and therefore what feeds it feeds all the other muscles; and the membrane of the tongue _is_ a prolongation of the membrane of the stomach, and that is how the tongue knows what the stomach will like; and the tongue _is_ nerves and blood, and so the tongue may act for nerves and blood all over the body, and so on. Therefore the tongue may enter into a wider life than that represented by the mere local sense of taste, and experiences more pleasure often in the drinking of a glass of water which the whole body wants, than in the daintiest sweetmeat which is for itself alone. Exactly so man in a healthy state does not act for himself alone, practically cannot do so. Nor does he talk cant about "serving his neighbors," etc. But he simply acts for them as well as for himself, because they are part and parcel of his life--bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh; and in doing so he enters into a wider life, finds a more perfect pleasure, and becomes more really a man than ever before. Every man contains in himself the elements of all the rest of humanity. They lie in the background; but they are there. In the front he has his own special faculty developed--his individual façade, with its projects, plans and purposes: but behind sleeps the Demos-life with far vaster projects and purposes. Some time or other to every man must come the consciousness of this vaster life. The true Democracy, wherein this larger life will rule society from within--obviating the need of an external government--and in which all characters and qualities will be recognised and have their freedom, waits (a hidden but necessary result of evolution) in the constitution of human nature itself. In the pre-Civilisation period these vexed questions of "morals" practically did not exist; simply because in that period the individual was one with his tribe and moved (unconsciously) by the larger life of his tribe. And in the post-Civilisation period, when the true Democracy is realised, they will not exist, because then the man will know himself a part of humanity at large, and will be consciously moved by forces belonging to these vaster regions of his being. The moral codes and questionings belong to Civilisation, they are part of the forward effort, the struggle, the suffering, and the temporary alienation from true life, which that term implies.[38] FOOTNOTES: [34] Yet there is no doubt that lasting and passionate love may exist between two persons thus nearly related. The danger to the health of the offspring from occasional in-breeding of the kind appears to arise chiefly from the accentuation of infirmities common to the two parents. In a state of society free from the diseases of the civilisation-period, such a danger would be greatly reduced. [35] Modern writers fixing their regard on the physical side of this love (necessary no doubt here, as elsewhere, to define and corroborate the spiritual) have entered their protest as against the mere obscenity into which the thing fell--for instance in the days of Martial--but have missed the profound significance of the heroic attachment itself. It is, however, with the ideals that we are just now concerned and not with their disintegration. [36] In the _later_ Egyptian centuries vivisection apparently became an approved practice. [37] The derivation of the word "wicked" seems uncertain. May it be suggested that it is connected with "wick" or "quick," meaning _alive_? [38] For further on the same subject see the last chapter, _infra_, on "The New Morality." EXFOLIATION "Creation's incessant unrest, exfoliation." WHITMAN. I think it may perhaps be agreed, once for all, that the human mind is incapable of really defining even the smallest fact of nature. The simplest thing, or event, baffles us at the last. It is like trying to look at the front and back of a mirror at the same time. The utmost squinting avails not. The ego and the non-ego dance eluding through creation. To catch them both in any mortal object and pin them there, surpasses our powers. And yet they are there. Montaigne quotes somewhere the words of S. Augustine: _Modus quo corporibus adhaerent spiritus ... omnino mirus est, nec comprehendi ab homine potest; et hoc ipse homo est_. "The manner whereby spirits adhere to bodies is altogether wonderful, and cannot be conceived of by men; and yet this _is_ man." Man himself contains, or rather is, the reconcilement of this and numberless other contradictions. We actually every day perform and exhibit miracles which the mental part of us is utterly powerless to grapple with. Yet the solution, the intelligent solution and understanding of them _is_ in us; only it involves a higher order of consciousness than we usually deal with--a consciousness possibly which includes and transcends the ego and the non-ego, and so can envisage both at the same time and equally--a fourth-dimensional consciousness to whose gaze the interiors of solid bodies are exposed like mere surfaces--a consciousness to whose perception some usual antitheses like cause and effect, matter and spirit, past and future, simply do not exist. I say these higher orders of consciousness are in us waiting for their evolution; and, until they evolve, we are powerless really to understand anything of the world around us. Meanwhile, since we _must_ have formulæ and generalisations to think by, we are fain to accept our local views, and look on the world from this side or from that. Sometimes we are idealists, sometimes we are materialists; sometimes we believe in mechanics, sometimes in human or spiritual forces. The science of the last fifty years has, as pointed out in a preceding paper, looked at things more from the mechanical than the distinctively human side--from the point of view of the non-ego, rather than of the ego. Reacting from an extreme tendency towards a subjective view of phenomena, which characterised the older speculations, and fearing to be swayed by a kind of partiality towards himself, the modern scientist has endeavoured to remove the human and conscious element from his observations of Nature. And he has done valuable work in this way--but of course has been betrayed into a corresponding narrowness. In fact the main scientific doctrine of the day, Evolution, is obviously suffering from this treatment, and the following remarks are merely a few notes by way of suggestion of some things which may be said on its more specially human side. For since each man is a part of nature, and in that sense a part also of the evolution-process, his own subjective experience ought at least to throw some light on the conditions under which evolution takes place, and to contribute something towards an understanding of the problem. If the question is: What is the cause of Variation among animals? some approximation towards an answer ought to be got by each person asking himself, "Why do I vary?" Why--he might say--am I a different person from what I was ten years ago, or when I was a boy? Why have I varied in one direction and my brothers and sisters from the same nest in other directions? Though my individual consciousness only covers the small ground of my own life, and does not extend back to that of my father or forward to that of my son, still the intimate knowledge that I have of the forces acting on me during that short period may help me to an understanding of the forces that bring about the modification of men and animals at large, and the discovery of some laws of my own growth may reveal to me the laws of race-growth. In answer to such a question, it would speedily appear that there were two general causes determining direction of change or growth in the individual, which might be conveniently distinguished from each other--an external and an internal. In the first place the supposed person might say, "External conditions forced me along these lines. My father was a town artisan, but he apprenticed me to a farmer. I grew up a farmer's boy, and became an agricultural type as you see. I did not particularly care for farming, sometimes indeed I would have been glad to be out of it; but practically I succumbed to circumstances, and here I am." But in the second place he might answer thus:--"My father was himself a farmer; I was early used to the craft, and should no doubt have grown up in it, had I not hated it like poison. I loved music, broke away from home, joined a band, got on the musical staff of a small theatre, and am now a professional musician. My frame is comparatively slight, and my hands are of the nervous type, as you see. Of course, I have some of the old agricultural stock left in me, but I feel that that is dying out." The one cause would be a change of external conditions, forcing the man to accommodate himself to them; the other would be a change of internal conditions, an inward growth, expressing itself first in the form of an intense desire, and compelling the man to change himself and probably also his environment in obedience to it. Two such general sets of causes, I say, could be roughly distinguished from each other; and probably indeed are recognised less or more distinctly by everyone as acting to modify his life. Nor can the life of a man at any time be said to be ruled by one of these forces alone. No man is modified by external conditions alone, without any play or reaction of inner needs and desires and growth from within; nor is any man transformed in obedience to an inner expansion without sundry lets and hindrances from without. The two forces are in constant play upon one another; but in some ways that would appear to be the more important which proceeds from the Man (or creature) himself, since this is obviously vital and organic to him, and therefore the most consistent and reliable factor in his modification, while the external force--arising from various and remote causes--must rather be regarded as discontinuous and accidental. I propose, therefore, in these few pages to consider especially this inner force producing modification in man and animals--to try and find out of what nature it is, what is the law, and what are the limits of its action--premising always, as already suggested, that this distinction between "inner" and "outer," which is convenient and easy to handle on certain planes of thought, may ultimately, and in the last resort, prove very difficult or even impossible to maintain. It is often said by Biologists that _function precedes organisation_--that is, man fights with his fellows before he makes weapons to fight with; the rudimentary animal digests food (as in the case of the amoeba) before it acquires a stomach or organ of digestion; it sees or is sensitive to light before it grows an eye; in society letters are carried by private hands before an organised postal system is created. Such facts properly considered are of vital importance. They show us, as it were by a sign-post, the direction of creation. They show how any new thing or modification of an old thing may come into being. They may be supplemented by a second statement--namely that _desire precedes function_. That is, man desires to injure his fellow before he actually fights with him; he experiences the wish to communicate with distant friends before ever he thinks of sending such a thing as a letter; the amoeba craves for food first, and circumvents its prey afterwards. Desire, or inward change, comes first, action follows, and organisation or outward structure is the result. In man this "order of creation," if it may so be called, _i.e._, from within outwards, is very marked. Whenever a man creates anything new he pursues it; when he builds a house, for instance, or composes a poem or piece of music, or designs an Alpine tunnel, or whatever it may be. The order seems to be: first, a feeling--a dim want or desire; then the feeling becomes conscious of itself, takes shape in thought; the thought becomes more defined and issues in a distinct plan; the plan is committed to paper, models are made, etc.; and finally the actual work is begun and completed. The process appears as a movement from within outwards--the earliest and most authentic discernible source of the movement being a feeling--(though there may lie something behind that). Even in ordinary action the same order is manifest; for, though of course _every_ action is not preceded by desire--since we know that actions soon become habitual and more or less unconscious--still a vast number of them are immediately so preceded; and in the case of any action that is _new_, either to the individual or to the race, its inception is generally accompanied by effort so painful that it would not be exerted unless the desire were very strong. The difficulty which a man experiences in learning any new art, and the records of the many failures, struggles, oppositions, persecutions, etc., which have attended every new invention or innovation of any kind in human history, afford plenty of evidence of this last point. Certainly the effort that accompanies a new action is not always faced so much from sheer desire of the new thing itself as from fear perhaps of something else--as it may be contended that monkeys did not take to climbing trees because they loved trees, but because they feared the beasts below, or that the giraffe did not stretch its neck because it particularly desired to feed on leaves, as because it could not get food any other way--but still, even in these cases the desire may be said to exist, though it is secondary--being founded upon another and more elementary desire--the desire namely of escaping pain or obtaining food. In either case a desire of some kind is a precedent condition of the new action. And so as we know of no case of a new action coming into play without being preceded by desire, we seem to be justified in supposing that all our actions when they were first initiated (in our forefathers, if not in ourselves) were so preceded. If this is so, then, since function is always preceded by desire, and organisation is preceded by function, organisation must necessarily be preceded by desire. And if this is the order of creation in man, should we not reasonably look in this direction for the key to the variation of animals and the order of creation in general?[39] If a farmer's son is occasionally born who hates farming and loves music, and who ultimately through the force of his desire (driving him into oppositions and difficulties and penurious struggles) transforms himself into a musician, is it not also likely that occasionally an animal is born who hates the customs of his tribe, and at last (also through struggles) transforms himself into something else? Even if he does not succeed (the animal) in entirely transforming himself, he likely transmits the desire in some degree to his descendants, and the transformation is thus carried on and completed later. For everywhere among the animals there _is_ desire, of some kind or another, obviously acting; and if in man, by our own experience, desire is the precursor and first expression of growth, is there any reason why it should not also be so among animals? Lamarck gives the instance--among others--of a gasteropod; how the need or desire of touching bodies in front of it as it crawled along would result in the formation of tentacles. The gasteropod, he says, would keep making efforts to feel with the front of its head, and the determination of consciousness that way would be accompanied by a supply of nervous and other fluids, which would nourish the part and cause growth there--the _form_ of the growth continuing in the same way to be determined by need--till at last two or more tentacles would appear. True, the inward determinations of consciousness may not be so vivid and varied in animals as they are in men; but they are persistent, and by the very cumulative force of habit which is so strong in animals, must at length penetrate down through function into organisation and external form. Who shall say that the lark, by the mere love of soaring and singing in the face of the sun, has not altered the shape of its wings, or that the forms of the shark or of the gazelle are not the long-stored results of character leaning always in certain directions, as much as the forms of the miser or the libertine are among men? Such modification as this is very different from the "survival of the fittest" of the Darwinian evolution theory. We may fairly suppose that both kinds of modification take place; but the latter is a sort of easy success won by an external accident of birth--a success of the kind that would readily be lost again; while the former is the uphill fight of a nature that has grown inwardly and wins expression for itself in spite of external obstacles--an expression which therefore is likely to be permanent. If the progenitors of man took to going upright on two legs instead of on all fours, merely because a few of them by _chance_ were born with a talent for that position, which enabled them to escape the fanged and pursuing beasts, then when this danger was removed they might have plumped down again into the old attitude; but if the change was part and parcel of a true evolution, the fulfilment of a positive desire for the upright position, a true _unfolding_ of a higher form latent within--an organic growth of the creature itself, then, though the moment of the evolution of this particular faculty might be determined by the fanged beasts, the fact of such evolution could not be determined by them. Besides, are we to suppose that Man, the lord and ruler of the animals, came merely by way of _escape_ from the animals? Do lords and rulers generally come so? Was it fear that made him a man? Were it not likelier that in that case he would have turned into a worm? He would have escaped better perhaps that way. Is it not rather probable that it was some nobler power that worked transforming--some dim desire and prevision of a more perfect form, the desire itself being the first consciousness of the urge of growth in that direction--that prompted him to push in the one direction rather than the other when he had to hold his own against the tigers? In fact is it not thus to-day, when a man has to meet danger, that the ideal which he has within him determines _how_ he shall meet that danger, and others like it, and so ultimately determines the whole attitude and carriage of his body? On the whole then, judging from man himself (and it seems most cautious and scientific to derive our main evidence from the being that we are best acquainted with), it certainly seems to me that, though the external conditions are a very important factor in Variation, the central explanation of this phenomenon should be sought in an inner law of Growth--a law of expansion more or less common to all animate nature. Partly because, as said before, the unfolding of the creature from its own needs and inward nature is an organic process, and likely to be persistent, while its modification by external causes must be more or less fortuitous and accidental and sometimes in one direction and sometimes in another; partly also because the movement from within outwards seems to be most like the law of creation in general. Under this view the external conditions would be considered a secondary--though important cause of modification; and regarded rather as the influences that give form and detail to the great primal impulse of growth from within; while the creature's own ingenuity and good luck would occupy the ground between the two--as the means whereby the external conditions in each individual case would be turned to account to satisfy the inner needs, or the inner life would be accommodated to the external conditions. If we take the external view of Variation--which is the one most favoured by modern science--modification or race-growth appears as an unconscious or accretive process, similar to the formation of a coral reef. There is no line of growth native in the race itself, but at any moment it is supposed to have an equal tendency to vary in any direction. Surrounding conditions act selectively; and by a process of weeding out certain types survive; small successive modifications are thus accumulated; and gradually and in the lapse of ages a more pliable and differentiated creature, and more adaptable to a variety of conditions, is produced--in whom however mind is incidental, and has played but small part in the creature's evolution. This in the main is the Darwinian-evolution theory. If we take the internal view, growth is from the first eminently conscious. Every change begins in the mental region--is felt first as a desire gradually taking form into thought, passes down into the bodily region, expresses itself in action (more or less dependent on conditions), and finally solidifies itself in organisation and structure. The process is not accretive, but exfoliatory--a continual movement from within outwards. When the desire or mental condition, which at first was painfully conscious, has overcome opposition and established itself in altered bodily structure, it has done its work, and becomes unconscious--the bodily function continuing for a long period to act automatically, till finally it is thrown off to make room for some later development. Thus race-growth or Variation is a process by which change begins in the mental region, passes into the bodily region where it becomes organised, and finally is thrown off like a husk. This may be called the theory of Exfoliation. To illustrate our meaning. Let us take the development of an eye. In the amoeba there is a dim pervasive sensitiveness to light over the whole body, but there is no eye, nothing that we should call vision. Still this vague sensitiveness is of use to the amoeba. The shadow of its prey falling upon the creature and exciting a sensation hardly yet differentiated from touch helps to guide its movements. On this dim sensation it relies to some extent; its attention is directed towards it. Gradually, and in some descendant form, there comes to be a point on the body on which this attention is most specially concentrated. The faculty is localised; and from that moment a change is effected there, a differentiation and a special structure; everything that favours sensitiveness is encouraged at that place, everything that dulls it is removed; and before long--there is a rudimentary eye. To-day we use our perfected eyes, and are hardly conscious that we are doing so; but every power of vision that we have was thus won for us by some lowlier creature, step by step, with effort and with concentration. Or to take an illustration from society. To-day society is ill at ease; a dim feeling of discontent pervades all ranks and classes. A new sense of justice, of fraternity, has descended among us, which is not satisfied with mere chatter of demand and supply. For a long time this new sentiment or desire remains vague and unformed, but at last it resolves itself into shape; it takes intellectual form, books are written, plans formed; then after a time definite new organisations, for the distinct purpose of expressing these ideas, begin to exist in the body of the old society; and before so very long the whole outer structure of society will have been reorganised by them. After a few centuries the ideas for whose realisation we now fight and struggle with an intense consciousness will have become commonplace, accepted institutions, more or less effete and ready to succumb before fresh mental births taking place from within. The modern evolution theory would maintain that among many amoebas and descendant forms, one would at last by chance be born having the usual sensitiveness localised in a particular spot, and, surviving by force of this advantage, would transmit this "eye" to its posterity; or that in the progress of society, new economic conditions having arisen, that people would prosper best which most effectually and rapidly adapted itself to them. But though there is doubtless truth in this view, yet it seems, when all has been said, to be inadequate and even feeble; it omits at least one half of the problem. If we look at ourselves, as already pointed out, we see the two forces--the inner and the outer--acting and re-acting on each other. May it not be so in animals? Lamarck, poorly off, blind, derided, was a true poet. "Animals vary from low and primitive types chiefly by dint of wishing"--and the world laughed and still laughs. But it was his deep sympathy even with the worms and insects (which he studied till he could discern them with his mortal eyes no longer) that led Lamarck to see the human nature and the human laws that moved within them; and as his outward sight grew dim there arose before him the inward vision of the true relationship which binds together all living creatures--which was indeed a vision of divine things, and as different from the mere mechanism-theory of the survival of the fittest as the sight of the starry heavens is different from a governess's lesson on the use of the globes. On the theory of Exfoliation, which was practically Lamarck's theory, there is a force at work throughout creation, ever urging each type onward into new and newer forms. This force appears first in consciousness in the form of _desire_. Within each shape of life sleep needs and wants without number, from the lowest and simplest to the most complex and ideal. As each new desire or ideal is evolved, it brings the creature into conflict with its surroundings, then gaining its satisfaction externalises itself in the structure of the creature, and leaves the way open for the birth of a new ideal. If then we would find a key to the understanding of the expansion and growth of all animate creation, such a key may exist in the nature of desire itself and the comprehension of its real meaning. It is not certain that it can be found here; but it may be. What then is desire in Man? Here we come back again, as suggested at the outset, to Man himself. Though we see pretty clearly that desire is at work in the animals, and that it is the same in kind as exists in man, still, among the animals it is but dim and inchoate, while in man it is developed and luminous; in ourselves, too, we know it immediately, while in the animals only by inference. For both reasons, therefore, if we want to know the nature of desire--even to know its nature among animals--we should study it in Man. What then is this desire in Man, which seems to be the instigation and origin of all his growth and development? At first it seems a hydra-headed senseless thing without rhyme or reason; but the more one regards it the more clearly one sees that even in its lowest forms it is steadily building up and liberating all the functions of the human being. In its most perfect form--as in what we call Love--it is the sum and solution of human activities, that in which they converge, for which they all exist, and without which they would be considered useless. The more you look into this matter, the plainer it becomes. The lesser desires--the self-preservation desires--hunger, thirst, the desire of power--exist, but when they are satisfied they empty themselves into this one; they find their interpretation in it. The other desires are nothing by themselves--the most absorbing, avarice, ambition, desire of knowledge, taken alone, stultify themselves--but love perpetuates itself; it is a flame which uses all the rest as its fuel. And this Love, which is the culmination of desire, does it not appear to us as a worship of and desire for the human form? In our bodies a desire for the bodily human form; in our interior selves a perception and worship of an ideal human form, the revelation of a Splendour dwelling in others, which--clouded and dimmed as it inevitably may come to be--remains after all one of the most real, perhaps the most real, of the facts of existence? Desire, therefore--as it exists in man, look at it how you will--as it unfolds and its ultimate aim becomes clearer and clearer to itself, is seen to be the desire and longing for the deliverance and expression of the real human Being. May it not, must it not, be the same thing in animals and all through creation? Beginning in the most elementary and dim shapes, does it not grow through all the stages of organic life clearer and more and more powerful, till at last it attains to self-consciousness in humanity and becomes avowedly the leading factor in our development? The desire which runs through creation is one desire. Rudimentary at first and hardly conscious of itself, throwing out a tentacle here, a foot there, developing an eye, a claw, a nostril, a wing, it seeks in innumerable shapes and with ever partial success to realise the image it has dimly conceived. The animal kingdom is the gymnasium, the school, the antechamber, of humanity; to walk through a zoological garden is to see the inchoate types of man, perched on branches, or browsing grass, or boring holes in the ground; it is to witness a grand rehearsal of some stupendous part, whose character we do not even yet fully see or understand. From such half-conscious beginnings the desire grows, its aim becomes clearer, till in the higher animals--the horse, the dog, the elephant, the bird, and many others--it becomes a marked and unmistakable force drawing them close to man, uniting them to him in a kind of acknowledged kinship, and as obviously at work modifying their structure as can be. Finally in man himself it becomes an absorbing power; love becomes a conscious worship of the divine form; generation itself is the means whereby, in time, the supreme object of desire is realised. When at last the perfect Man appears, the key to all nature is found, every creature falls into its place and finds its Interpreter, and the purpose of creation is at last made manifest. The Theory of Exfoliation then differs from that very specialised form of Evolution which has been adopted by modern science, in this particular among others: that it fixes the attention on that which appears last in order of Time, as the most important in order of causation, rather than on that which appears first; and recalls to us the fact that often in any succession of phenomena, that which is first in order of precedence and importance is the last to be externalised. Thus in the growth of a plant we find leaf after leaf appearing, petal within petal--a continual exfoliation of husks, sepals, petals, stamens and what-not; but the object of all this movement, and that which in a sense sets it all in motion, namely the seed, is the very last thing of all to be manifested. Or when a volcano breaks out--first of all we have a cracking and upheaval of superficial layers of ground, then of layers below these, then the outflow of lava, and _last of all_ the uprush of the inner fires and forces which set it all agoing. What appears first in time, or in the outer world is--in the case of the building of a house, the making of bricks; in the case of the flower, the outermost bracts; in the case of a volcano, the stirring of the surface of the ground; and in the case of Life on the Earth, the appearance of protoplasms and primordial cells. The bricks are not the cause of the house (if indeed the word "cause" should be used here at all) but rather the house--or the conception of the house--is the cause of the bricks; and the cells are not the origin of Man, but Man is the original of the cells. The rationale of sea-anemones and mud-fish and flying foxes and elephants has to be looked for in man: he alone underlies them. And man is not a vertebrate because his ancestors were vertebrate; but the animals are vertebrate, because or in so far as they are forerunners and offshoots of Man. It has been frequently said that great material changes are succeeded by intellectual and finally by moral revolutions--as the conquests of Alexander passed on into the literary expansion of the Alexandrian schools and thence into the establishment of Christianity, or as the mechanical developments of our own time have been followed by immense literary and scientific activities, and are obviously passing over now into a great social regeneration; but a reconsideration of the matter might, I take it, lead us not so much to look on the later changes as _caused_ by the earlier, as to look on the earlier as the indications and first outward and visible signs of the coming of the later. When a man feels in himself the upheaval of a new moral fact, he sees plainly enough that that fact cannot come into the actual world all at once--not without first a destruction of the existing order of society--such a destruction as makes him feel satanic; then an intellectual revolution; and lastly only, a new order embodying the new impulse. When this new impulse has thoroughly materialised itself, then after a time will come another inward birth, and similar changes will be passed through again. So it might be said that the work of each age is not to build _on_ the past, but to rise _out_ of the past and throw it off; only of course in such matters where all forms of thought are inadequate it is hard to say that one way of looking at the subject is truer than another. As before, we should endeavour to look at the thing from different sides. We are obliged to use images to think by--_e.g._ the opening of a flower or the accretive growth of a coral reef--and possibly it would save a good deal of trouble if we did not disguise by long words the truth that all our theories in science and philosophy are simply metaphors of this kind--but the _fact_ still lies behind and below them. Perhaps, if we are to use the word Cause at all, we should do well to use it in the old sense in which the _final_ cause and the _efficient_ cause are one (the _eidos_ of Aristotle)--to use it not so much to link phenomena or externals to _each other_ as to link each phenomenon in a group to the thought or feeling which underlies that group. The notes in the Dead March in Saul, for instance. We cannot say that one note is the cause of another, but we might say that each note stands in a causal subordination to the feeling which inspired the piece--which is the _origin_ of the piece and the _result_ of its performance--the alpha and omega of it. Similarly, the ground floor in a house is not the cause of the first floor, nor the first floor of the second floor, nor that of the roof; but these actualities and the whole house itself stand in strict relationship to a mental something which is not in the same plane with them at all, nor an actuality in the same sense. According to this view the notion that one configuration of atoms or bodies determines the next configuration turns out to be illusive. Both configurations are determined by a third something which does not belong to quite the same order of existence as the said atoms or bodies. Chance "laws" of succession may doubtless be found among physical events, and are valuable for practical purposes, but at any moment--owing to their superficiality--they may fail. Thus, an insect observing the expansion of the petals of a chrysanthemum might frame a law of their order of succession in size and colour, which would be valid for a time, but would fail entirely when the stamens appeared. Or, to take another illustration, physical science acts like a man trying to find direct causal relations between the various leaves of a tree, without first finding the relations of these to the branches and trunk--and so solving the problem indirectly. It deals only with the _surface_ of the world of Man. In thinking about such matters, Music, as Schopenhauer shows, is wonderfully illustrative, because in creating music man recognises that he is creating a world of his own--apart from and not to be confused with that other world of Nature (in which he does not recognise any of his handiwork). Supposing a non-musical person were to examine and analyse the score of a Beethoven symphony, he would be in the same position as a man examining and analysing Nature by purely scientific or intellectual methods. He would discover the recurrence of certain groups among the notes, he would establish laws of their sequences, would make all kinds of curious generalisations about them, and point out some remarkable exceptions, would even very likely be able to predict a bar or two over the page; his treatise would be very learned, and from a certain point of view interesting also, but how far would he be from any real understanding of his subject? Let him change his method: let him train his ear, let him hear the symphony performed, over and over, till he understands its meaning and knows it by heart; and then he will know at any rate something of why each note is there, he will see its fitness and feel in himself the "law" of its occurrence, and possibly in some new case will be able to predict several bars over the page! The symphony is not understood by examination and comparison of the notes alone, but by _experience_ of their relation to deepest feelings; and Nature is not explained by laws, but by its becoming--or rather being felt to be--the body of Man; marvellous interpreter and symbol of his inward being. There is a kind of knowledge or consciousness in us--as of our bodily parts, or affections, or deep-seated mental beliefs--which forms the base of our more obvious and self-conscious thought. This systemic knowledge grows even while the brain sleeps. It is not by any means absolute or infallible, but it affords, at any moment in man's history, the axiomatic ground on which his thought-structures, scientific and other, are built. Thus the axioms of Euclid are part of our present systemic knowledge, and afford the ground of all our geometry structures. But as the systemic consciousness grows, the ground shifts and the structures reared upon it fall. All our modern science, for instance, is founded on the acceptation of mechanical cause and effect as a basic fact of consciousness; but when that base gives way the entire structure will cave in, and a new edifice will have to be reared. Similarly, when the human form becomes distinctly visible to us in the animals--as an unavoidable part of our consciousness--this consciousness will form a new base or axiom for all our thought on the subject, and the theory of evolution, as hitherto conceived by science, will be entirely transformed. Thus, although the experimental investigatory coral-reef accretion method of modern science is very valuable within its range, it must not be forgotten that the human mind does not progress more than temporarily by this method--that its progression is a matter of growth from within, and involves a continual _breaking away of the bases_ of all thought-structures; so that, while this latter--_i.e._, the progression of the systemic consciousness of man--is necessary and continuous, the rise and fall of his thought-systems is accidental, so to speak, and discontinuous. It is then finally in Man--in our own deepest and most vital experience--that we have to look for the key and explanation of the changes that we see going on around us in external Nature, as we call it; and our understanding of the latter, and of History, must ever depend from point to point on the exfoliation of new facts in the individual consciousness. Round the ultimate disclosure of the essential Man all creation (hitherto groaning and travailing towards that perfect birth) ranges itself, as it were, like some vast flower, in concentric cycles; rank beyond rank; first all social life and history, then the animal kingdom, then the vegetable and mineral worlds. And if the outer circles have been the first in fact to show themselves, it is by this last disclosure that light is ultimately thrown on the whole plan; and, as in the myth of the Eden-garden, with the appearance of the perfected human form that the work of creation definitely completes itself. FOOTNOTE: [39] This does not, of course, preclude the action of external conditions, or imply that organisation is determined by desire _alone_. In fact organisation may be regarded as the expression of desire acting under conditions--as in the cases of the monkey and giraffe above. CUSTOM "Whatever is off the hinges of custom is believed to be also off the hinges of reason; though how unreasonably, for the most part, God knows."--MONTAIGNE. Every human being grows up inside a sheath of custom, which enfolds it as the swathing clothes enfold the infant. The sacred customs of its early home, how fixed and immutable they appear to the child! It surely thinks that all the world in all times has proceeded on the same lines which bound its tiny life. It regards a breach of these rules (some of them at least) as a wild step in the dark, leading to unknown dangers. Nevertheless its mental eyes have hardly opened ere it perceives, not without a shock, that whereas in the family dining-room the meat always precedes the pudding, below-stairs and in the cottage the pudding has a way of coming before the meat; that, whereas its father puts the manure on the top of his seed-potatoes in spring, his neighbor invariably places his potatoes on top of the manure. All its confidence in the sanctity of its home life and the truth of things is upset. Surely there must be a right and a wrong way of eating one's dinner or of setting potatoes, and surely, if any one, "father" or "mother" must know what is right. The elders have always said (and indeed it seems only reasonable) that by this time of day everything has been so thoroughly worked over that the best methods of ordering our life--food, dress, domestic practices, social habits, etc., have long ago been determined. If so, why these divergencies in the simplest and most obvious matters? And then other things give way. The sacred seeming-universal customs in which we were bred turn out to be only the practices of a small and narrow class or caste; or they prove to be confined to a very limited locality, and must be left behind when we set out on our travels; or they belong to the tenets of a feeble religious sect; or they are just the products of one age in history and no other. And the question forces itself upon us, Are there really no natural boundaries? has not our life anywhere been founded on reason and necessity, but only on arbitrary habit? What is more important than food, yet in what human matter is there more unaccountable divergence of practice? The Highlander flourishes on oatmeal, which the Sheffield ironworker would rather starve than eat; the fat snail which the Roman country gentleman once so prized now crawls unmolested in the Gloucestershire peasant's garden; rabbits are taboo in Germany; frogs are unspeakable in England; sauer-kraut is detested in France; many races and gangs of people are quite certain they would die if deprived of meat, others think spirits of some kind a necessity, while to others again both these things are an abomination. Every country district has its local practices in food, and the peasants look with the greatest suspicion on any new dish, and can rarely be induced to adopt it. Though it has been abundantly proved that many of the British fungi are excellent eating, such is the force of custom that the mushroom alone is ever publicly recognised, while curiously enough it is said that in some other countries where the claims of other agarics are allowed the mushroom itself is not used! Finally, I feel myself (and the gentle reader probably feels the same) that I would rather die than subsist on _insects_, such is the deep-seated disgust we experience towards this class of food. Yet it is notorious that many races of respectable people adopt a diet of this sort, and only lately a book has been published giving details of the excellent provender of the kind that we habitually overlook--tasty morsels of caterpillars and beetles, and so forth! And indeed, when one comes to think of it, what can it be but prejudice which causes one to eat the periwinkle and reject the land-snail, or to prize the lively prawn and proscribe the cheerful grasshopper? It is useless to say that these local and other divergencies are rooted in the necessities of the localities and times in which they occur. They are nothing of the kind. For the most part they are mere customs, perhaps grown originally out of some necessity, but now perpetuated from simple habit and inherent human laziness. This can perhaps best be illustrated by going below the human to the kingdom of the animals. If customs are strong among men they are far stronger among animals. The sheep lives on grass, the cat lives on mice and other animal food. And it is generally assumed that the respective diets are the most "natural" in each case, and those on which the animals in question will readiest thrive, and indeed that they could not well live on any other. But nothing of the kind. For cats can be bred up to live on oatmeal and milk with next to no meat; and a sheep has been known to get on very comfortably on a diet of port wine and mutton chops! Dogs, whose "natural" food in the wild state is of the animal kind, are undoubtedly much healthier (at any rate in the domestic state) when kept on farinaceous substances with little or no meat, and indeed they take so kindly to a vegetable diet that they sometimes become perfect nuisances in a garden--eating strawberries, gooseberries, peas, etc., freely off the beds when they have once learned the habit. Any one, in fact, who has kept many pets knows what an astonishing variety of food they may be made to adopt, though each animal in the wild state has the most intensely narrow prejudices on the subject, and will perish rather than overstep the customs of its tribe. Thus pheasants will eat fern-roots in winter when snow covers the ground, but the grouse "don't eat fern-roots," and die in consequence. A wolf of an inquiring turn of mind would probably find strawberries and peas as good food as a dog does, but it is practically certain that any ordinary member of the genus would perish in a garden full of the same if deprived of his customary bones. All this seems to indicate what an immensely important part mere custom plays in the life of men and animals. The main part of the power which man acquires over the animals depends upon his establishing habits in them which, once established, they never think of violating: and the almost insuperable nature of this force in animals throws back light on the part it plays in human life. Of course, I am not contending in the above remarks upon food that there is no physiological difference between a dog and a sheep in the matter of their digestive organs, and that the one is not by the nature of its body more fitted for one kind of food than the other; but rather that we should not neglect the importance of mere habit in such matters. Custom changed first; the change of physiological structure followed slowly after. What happened was probably something like this. Some time in the far back past a group of animals, driven perhaps by necessity, took to hunting in packs in the woods; it developed a modified physical structure in consequence, and special habits which in the course of time became deeply fixed in the race. Another group saved its life by taking to grazing. Grass is poor food; but it was the only chance this group had, and in time it got so accustomed to eating grass that it could not imagine any other form of diet, and at first would refuse even oysters when placed in its way! Another group saw an opening in trees; it developed a long neck and became the giraffe. But the fact that the giraffe lives on leaves, and the sheep on grass, and the wolf on animal matter, and that custom is in each so strong that at first the creature will refuse any other kind of diet, does not of itself prove that that diet is the best or most physiologically suitable for it. In other words, it is an assumption to suppose that "adaptation to environment" is the sole or even the main factor in the constitution of well-marked varieties or genera; for this is to neglect (among other things) the force of mere use or wont, which has about the same import in race-growth that momentum has in dynamics; and causes the race, once started in any direction, to maintain its line of movement--and often in despite of its environment--even for thousands of years. Returning to man we see him enveloped in a myriad customs--local customs, class customs, race customs, family customs, religious customs; customs in food, customs in clothing, customs in furniture, form of habitation, industrial production, art, social and municipal and national life, etc.; and the question arises, Where is the grain of necessity which underlies it all? How much in each case is due to a real fitness in nature, and how much to mere otiose habit! The first thing that meets my eye in glancing out of the window is a tile on a neighboring roof. Why are tiles made S-shaped in some localities and flat in others? Surely the conditions of wind and rain are much the same in all places. Perhaps far back there was a reason, but now nothing remains but--custom. Why do we sit on chairs instead of on the floor, as the Japanese do, or on cushions like the Turk? It is a custom, and perhaps it suits with our other customs. The more we look into our life and consider the immense variety of habit in every department of it--even under conditions to all appearances exactly similar--the more are we impressed by the absence of any very serious necessity in the forms we ourselves are accustomed to. Each race, each class, each section of the population, each unit even, vaunts its own habits of life as superior to the rest, as the only true and legitimate forms; and peoples and classes will go to war with each other in assertion of their own special beliefs and practices; but the question that rather presses upon the ingenuous and inquiring mind is, whether any of us have got hold of much true life at all?--whether we are not rather mere multitudinous varieties of caddis-worms shuffled up in the cast-off skins and clothes and débris of those who have gone before us, and with very little vitality of our own perceptible within? How many times a day do we perform an action that is authentic and not a mere mechanical piece of repetition? Indeed, if our various actions and practices were authentic and flowing from the true necessity, perhaps we shouldn't quarrel with each other over them so often as we do. And then to come to the subject of morals. These also are customs--divergent to the last degree among different races, at different times, or in different localities; customs for which it is often difficult to find any ground in reason or the "fitness of things." Thieving is supposed to be discountenanced among us, yet our present-day trade-morality sanctions it in a thousand different forms; and the respectable usurer (who can hardly be said to be other than a thief) takes a high place at the table of life. To hunt the earth for game has from time immemorial been considered the natural birthright and privilege of man, until the landlord class (whom wicked Socialists now denounce!) invented the crime of poaching and hanged men for it. As to marriage customs, in different times and among different peoples, they have been simply innumerable. And here the sense of inviolability in each case is most powerful. The severest penalties, the most stringent public opinion, biting deep down into the individual conscience, enforce the various codes of various times and places; yet they all contradict each other. Polygamy in one country, polyandry in the next; brother and sister marriage allowed at one time, marriage with your mother's cousin forbidden at another; prostitution sacred in the temples of antiquity, trampled under foot in the gutters of our great cities of to-day; monogamy respectable in one land, a mark of class-inferiority in another; celibacy scorned by some sections of people, accepted as the highest state by others; and so on. What are we to conclude from all this? Is it possible, once we have fairly faced the immense variety of human life in _every_ department of arts, manners, and morals--a variety, too, existing in a vast number of cases under conditions to all intents and purposes quite similar--is it possible ever again to suppose that the particular practices which _we_ are accustomed to are very much better (or, indeed, very much worse) than the particular practices which others are accustomed to? We have been born, as I said at first, into a sheath of custom which enfolds us with our swaddling-clothes. When we begin to grow to manhood we see what sort of a thing it is which surrounds us. It is an old husk now. It does not bear looking into; it is rotten, it is inconsistent, it is thoroughly indefensible; yet very likely we have to accept it. The caddis-worm has grown to its tube and cannot leave it. A little spark of vitality amid a heap of dead matter, all it can do is to make its dwelling a little more convenient in shape for itself, or (like the coral insect) to prolong its growth in the most favourable direction for those that come after. The class, the caste, the locality, the age in which we were born has determined our form of life, and in that form very likely we must remain. But a change has come over our minds. The vauntings of earlier days we abandon. _We_, at any rate, are no better than anybody else, and at best, alas! are only half alive. If these, then, are our conclusions, is it not with justice that children and early races keep so rigidly to the narrow path that custom has made for them? Have they not an instinctive feeling that to forsake custom would be to launch out on a trackless sea where life would cease to have any special purpose or direction, and morality would be utterly gulfed? Custom for them is the line of their growth; it is the coral-branch from the end of which the next insect builds; it is the hardening bark of the tree-twig which determines the direction of the growing shoot. It may be merely arbitrary, this custom, but that they do not know; its appearance of finality and necessity may be quite illusive; but the illusion is necessary for life, and the arbitrariness is just what makes one life different from another. _Till he grows to manhood_, the human being, _he cannot do without it_. And when he grows to manhood, what then? Why he dies, and so becomes alive. The caddis-fly leaves his tube behind and soars into the upper air; the creature abandons its barnacle existence on the rock and swims at large in the sea. For it is just when we die to custom that, for the first time, we rise into the true life of humanity; it is just when we abandon all prejudice of our own superiority over others, and become convinced of our entire indefensibleness, that the world opens out with comrade faces in all directions; and when we perceive how entirely arbitrary is the setting of our own life, that the whole structure collapses on which our apartness from others rests, and we pass easily and at once into the great ocean of freedom and equality. This is, as it were, a new departure for man, for which even to-day the old world, overlaid with myriad customs now brought into obvious and open conflict with each other, is evidently preparing. The period of human infancy is coming to an end. Now comes the time of manhood and true vitality. Possibly this is a law of history, that when man has run through every variety of custom a time comes for him to be freed from it--that is, he uses it indifferently according to his requirements, and is no longer a slave to it; all human practices find their use, and none are forbidden. At this point, whenever reached, "morals" come to an end and humanity takes its place--that is to say, there is no longer any code of action, but the one object of all action is the deliverance of the human being and the establishment of equality between oneself and another, the entry into a new life, which new life when entered into is glad and perfect, because there is no more any effort or strain in it; but it is the recognition of oneself in others, eternally. Far as custom has carried man from man, yet when at last in the ever-branching series the complete human being is produced, it knows at once its kinship with all the other forms. "I have passed my spirit in determination and compassion round the whole earth, and found only equals and lovers." More, it knows its kinship with the animals. It sees that it is only habit, an illusion of difference, that divides; and it perceives after all that it is the same human creature that flies in the air, and swims in the sea, or walks biped upon the land. _The two following chapters--though not part of the original work--are included in the present edition because they form continuations or expansions of the chapters which criticise modern Science and modern Morality respectively. The chapter entitled "A Rational and Humane Science" is in fact a reprint of an address given before the Humanitarian League in London in 1896. It was first included in the present volume in 1906. The chapter entitled "The New Morality" is, with slight alterations, a reprint of an article which appeared in the_ Albany Review _in September, 1907, under the title "Morality under Socialism"; and it now appears in the present book for the first time_. A RATIONAL AND HUMANE SCIENCE In bringing before you this subject of a Rational and Humane Science you will perhaps forgive me if I dwell for a few moments on some points of personal history in relation to it. After reading mathematics for some four years at Cambridge, it happened to me for the next ten years or so to be engaged in the study of the physical sciences, and in lectures on these subjects. Naturally, during the earlier part of this period I accepted the current methods and conclusions without any question. But as time went on I became aware of a certain dissatisfaction; I felt that many of the laws of Science, enounced as universal truths, were of very limited application only, that many of the conclusions, so strongly insisted on, were of quite doubtful validity; and at last this increasing dissatisfaction culminated in a rather violent attack or criticism of Modern Science which I wrote and published about the year 1884.[40] Now, looking back, at this interval of time, though I admit that my attack was somewhat hasty and crude in detail, I feel that in its main contention it was thoroughly justified, and I do not feel the least inclined to withdraw it. What was that main contention? It was as follows. Modern Science is an attempt (and no doubt it would accept this definition of itself) to survey and classify the phenomena of the world in the pure dry light of the intellect, uncoloured by feeling; and so far is an effort to separate the intellectual in man from the merely perceptive, the emotional, the moral, and so forth. It was in this very fact that my criticism lay; for I contended that such a separation was in the long run quite impossible. But before proceeding to defend this position, let me admit at once that this attempt of Modern Science to get rid of human feeling and to look at everything in the dry light of the intellect was in some respects a very grand one. When you consider what the Old-time Science was, with its fancies and prejudices, its dragons pasturing upon the sun and moon in eclipses, its immolations of hundreds of human beings to appease some god of pestilence or earthquake, its panics, its superstitions, and its incapability of regarding anything except from the point of view of that thing's influence on man's own comfort and his little hopes and fears, it was indeed a grand advance to try and see _facts_, uncoloured and for themselves alone. It was an effort of Man as it were to rise above himself, to which I accord the fullest credit and honour. And yet, during the time spoken of, it kept growing on me: first, that the attempt was an impossible one; secondly, that the Science so-called was not a true Science; and thirdly, that in its pretence to an intellectual exactitude which it did not really possess, this Modern Science was leading to a narrow-mindedness and a dogmatism as bad as the old. There is in fact (so I think) a fallacy in the attempt. But how shall I describe it? Our relations to the world may, quite roughly speaking, be divided into three groups--those that are sensuous and perceptional, those that are purely intellectual, and those that are of an emotional and moral order. Take any object of Nature--a bird, for instance. We may look upon the bird as an object of sense-perceptions--its form, its colour, its song, and so forth. Some people attain to extraordinary skill and quickness in this department, recognising in a moment the note or even the flight of a songster. Then again we may look upon the bird from the intellectual side--we may study it in relation to its surroundings--the form of its wings, the length of its leg, the character of its beak, and their adaptation to its habits, to its locality, to its food, and so forth. Thus we may get a whole series of purely intellectual results--relations of the bird to the world in which it lives. This is the special field of the present-day Science. But, again, we may regard the bird in its emotional and moral relations to _us_. One man at the sight of it may be affected with admiration of its beauty, with tenderness towards it, or sympathy; another may be stimulated to wonder whether he can kill it, or whether it is good to eat! Modern Science is indifferent to what this last set of relations may be; it does not concern itself much with the first; but it takes the middle term, the purely intellectual, and seeks to abstract that from the others, to study the bird, or whatever the object may be, in the one aspect only. But can that really be done? The answer is, of course, No. To show my general meaning, and why I consider the claim an impossible one, let us imagine a little cell--one of the myriads which constitute the human body--professing in the same sort of way to stand outside the body and explain the laws of the other cells and the body at large. It is obvious that the little cell, swept along in the currents of the body and swayed by its emotions, in close proximity and contact with some portions of the organism, and far remote from others, cannot possibly pretend to any such impartial judgment. It is obvious not only that it would not have all the clues of the problem at its command, but that its own needs and experiences would prejudice it frightfully in the interpretation of such clues as it had. Yet man is such a little cell in the body of Nature, or, if you like, in the body of the Society of which he forms a part. There is, however, one way, it seems to me, in which a cell in the human body _might_ come to an adequate understanding of the body; and that would be rather through experience than through direct reasoning. It is conceivable that there might be some cell in the body which, through the nerves, etc., was in actual touch and sympathetic relationship with every other cell. Then it certainly would have the materials of the required solution. Every change in other parts of the body would register itself in this particular cell; and its little brain (if it had one), without exactly making any great effort, would reflect sympathetically the structure of the whole body--would become, in fact, a mirror of it. This will perhaps give you the key to my notion of what a true Science might be. But before proceeding to that, I want to go a little more in detail into the fallacy of the absolute intellectual view of Science. I say, first, that a complete summary of any object or process in Nature is impossible; secondly, that such summary as we do make is, and must inevitably and necessarily be, coloured by the underlying _feeling_ with which we approach that phase of Nature. To take the first point. You say, Why is a complete summary not possible? A watch or other machine may be completely described and defined; why should not (with a little more knowledge) a fir-tree, or the human eye, or the solar system, be completely described and defined? And this brings us to what may be called the Machine-view of Science. It is curious (and yet I think it will presently be seen that it is quite what might have been expected) that during this century or so, in which Machinery has played such an important part in our daily and social life, mechanical ideas have come to colour all our conceptions of Science and the Universe. Modern Science holds it as a kind of ideal (even though finding it at times difficult to realise) to reduce everything to mechanical action, and to show each process of Nature intelligible in the same sense as a Machine is intelligible. Yet this conception, this ideal, involves a complete fallacy. For the moment you come to think of it, you see that _no_ part of Nature really even resembles a machine. What is a machine in the ordinary sense? It is an aggregation of parts put together to fulfil certain definite actions and no others. A sewing-machine fulfils the purpose of sewing, a watch fulfils that of keeping time, and they fulfil those purposes only. All their parts subserve those actions, and in that sense may be completely described--as far as just their mechanical action is concerned--the same by a thousand mechanicians. But I make bold to say that _no_ object in Nature fulfils just one action, or series of actions, and no others. On the contrary, every object fulfils an endless series of actions. Let us take the Human Eye. And I choose this as an instance most adverse to my position, for there is no doubt that the Human Eye is one of the most highly specialised objects in creation. Helmholtz, as you know, is said to have remarked concerning it that if an Optician had sent him an instrument so defective he should have returned it with his compliments. Helmholtz was a great man, and I will not do him the injustice to suppose that he did not know what he was saying. He knew that, regarded as a machine for focussing rays of light, the eye was decidedly defective; but then he knew well enough, doubtless, _why_ it was defective--namely, because it is by no means merely such a machine, but a great deal more. The Eye, in fact, not only fulfils the action of focussing rays of light--like an Opera Glass or a Telescope--but it might be compared to another instrument, a Photographic Camera, in respect of the fact that it forms a picture of the outer world which it throws on a sensitive plate at the back--the Retina. But then, again, it is unlike any of these "machines," in the fact that it was never made by any Optician, human or divine, for any one definite purpose. On the contrary, as we know, it has grown, it has evolved; it has come down to us over the centuries, and over thousands and thousands of centuries, from dim beginnings in the lowliest organisms who first conceived the faculty of Sight, continually modified, continually shapen by small increments in various directions, in accordance with the myriad needs of a myriad creatures, living, some of them in water, some of them in air, requiring some of them to see at close quarters, some at great distances, some by one kind of light, some by another, and so forth. So that to-day it not only contains a great range of inherited, yet latent, faculties, but it is actually, in its complex structure, an epitome and partial record of its own extraordinary history. As an instance of this last point, let me remind you that Sight was originally a differentiation of Touch. The light, the shadows, falling on the sensitive general surface of a primitive organism provoke a tactile irritation. In the course of evolution this sense specialises itself at some point of the surface into what we call Sight. Now, to-day, when the little picture formed by the fore-part of the Human Eye falls upon the Retina at the back, it falls upon a screen formed by the myriad congregated finger-tips, so to speak, of the optic nerve--the rods and cones, so-called--which cover like a mosaic the whole ground of the Retina, and _feel_ with their sensitive points the images of the objects in the outer world. And so Sight is still Touch--it is the power of feeling or touching at a distance--as one sometimes in fact becomes aware in looking at things. But then again on and beyond all these things--beyond the focussing and photographing of rays, beyond the latent adaptations to the needs of innumerable creatures, and the epitomising of ages of evolution--the Human Eye has faculties even more far-reaching perhaps and wonderful. It is the marvellous organ of human Expression. By the dilatations and contractions of the iris, by the altering convexities of the lens and the eyeball, and in a hundred other ways, it manages somehow to convey intelligence of Command, Control, Power, of Pity, Love, Sympathy, and all those myriad emotions which flit through the human mind--an endless series--a perfect encyclopædia. It is difficult even to imagine the eye without this power of language. And what other functions it may have it is not necessary to inquire. Highly specialised though it is, it is already obvious enough that to call it a Machine for focussing rays of light is monstrously and ludicrously inadequate--even as it would be to call the Heart (the very centre of emotion and life, and the symbol of human love and courage) a common Pump. Nature is an infinitude, and can at no point be circumscribed by the human intellect. Nor obviously is there any sense in taking one little portion of Nature and isolating it from the rest, and then describing it exhaustively _as if_ it really were so isolated. A thousand mechanicians will agree, as I have said, in their description of a machine, because in fact they will agree to view the machine just in the one aspect of its particular action; but ask a thousand people to describe one and the same face--or, better still, get a thousand portrait-painters, skilled in their art, to paint portraits of the same face--and you know perfectly well that all the likenesses will be different. And why will they be different? Simply because every face, however rude, has infinite sides, infinite aspects, and each painter selects what he paints from his own point of view. And the same is true of every object and process in Nature. Then if these things are true (you ask again) how is it that scientific men _do_ arrive at definite conclusions, and do agree with each other so far as they do? It is, and obviously must be, by the method of isolation; by the method of selecting certain aspects of the problems presented to them, and ignoring others. For since _all_ the relations of any phenomenon of Nature cannot possibly be compassed, the only way _must_ be to ignore some and concentrate attention on others; and when there is a kind of tacit agreement as to which aspects shall be passed over and which considered, there is naturally an agreement in the results. Thus by this method, waiving all other aspects of the problem, the Eye may be described and defined as an optical instrument, the Heart as a common Pump, and the Solar System as a neat illustration of certain mechanical laws discovered by Galileo and Newton. On the subject of the Solar System and Astronomy I will dwell for a few moments, as here--in this great example of the perfection of Modern Science--we have again a case apparently most adverse to my contention. The generalisations by which Newton established the nature of the planetary orbits has been a wonder to succeeding generations; the positions of the planets can be foretold, eclipses can be calculated with amazing accuracy. Yet every tyro in Mathematics knows that the equations which give these results can only be solved by what is called "neglecting small quantities"--that is, the problems cannot be solved in their entirety, but by leaving out certain terms and elements, which do not appear important, a solution can be approached. And naturally it has been an important point to show that these small quantities _may_ be safely neglected. In the case, for instance, of the orbits of the planets round the sun, and of the moon round the earth, it was for a long time taken as proved that the small variations in the shape and position of each elliptic orbit would never be accompanied by any permanent increase or diminution in its _size_--that is, that the _mean distances_ of the planets from the sun, and of the moon from the earth, would always remain within certain limits. Of late years however Professor George Darwin, taking up one of these poor little neglected quantities in the theory of the moon, found that it indicated after all very vast and very permanent, though of course very slow, changes in her mean distance from the earth; so that now it appears probable that the Moon's true orbit, instead of being a limited ellipse, is a continually though gradually enlarging Spiral, which may some day carry the Moon to a great distance from the earth. If an eclipse were calculated for twenty years in advance on the Elliptic theory or the Spiral theory, it would probably--so slow would be the divergence--make no perceptible difference; but in a hundred centuries the two theories would lead to results utterly different. Thus the certitude of Astronomy as a Science arises largely from the fact that our _times_ are so brief compared with Celestial periods. The proper periods of Celestial changes are to be reckoned by thousands, perhaps millions, of years; but we, ignoring _that_ aspect of the problem, fix our observations on one little point of time, and are quite satisfied with the result! As another illustration of my meaning, consider the Fixed Stars, so-called. These stars in their groups and clusters, which we know so well by sight, have remained apparently in the very same, or nearly the same, relative positions during all the 2,000 or 3,000 years that we have any record of the shapes of the Constellations. Yet now by minute telescopic and spectroscopic examination we know that they are moving, and have been moving all the time, in various differing directions with great velocities, amounting to miles per second. Nevertheless, so great are the spaces concerned, so great the times, that all this long period has not sufficed to bring them into any greatly changed attitude with regard to each other! What would you think of an intelligent foreigner who, coming to England to study the game of cricket, remained on the cricket field for a quarter of a minute--during which time the players would have hardly changed their positions--and having noted a few points, went away and wrote a volume on the laws of the game? And what are we to think of poor little Man who, having noted the stars for a few centuries, is so sure that he understands their movements, and that he is versed in all the "ordinances of heaven." Thus it would appear that every Nature-problem is so enormously complex that it can only be got at by what we have called the Method of Ignorance. Let us take a practical Science problem like that of Vaccination. The question here, put in its simplest terms, seems to be, Whether Vaccination, with calf or human lymph, prevents or alleviates Smallpox; and if it does, whether it does so without engendering other evils at least as great. At first sight this may appear to you a very simple question, and easy to solve; but the moment you come to think about it, you see its extreme complexity. In the first place, it is obvious that in a question like this, individual cases afford no test. It is obvious that the fact that A. is vaccinated and has not taken small-pox proves nothing, for there is nothing to show that he would have taken it if he had not been vaccinated. And when you have got people vaccinated by the hundred and the thousand, you still are not certain; for these people may belong to a certain class, or a certain locality, or may have certain habits and conditions of life, which may account for their comparative immunity, and these causes must be eliminated before any definite conclusion can be reached. Thus it is not till the great mass of the population is vaccinated that we can expect reliable statistics. But the introduction of a practice of this kind on so great a scale necessarily takes a long period of years, and meanwhile changes are taking place in the habits of the people, Sanitation is being improved, customs of Diet are altering, possibly (as so often happens in the history of an epidemic) the disease, having run its course, is beginning spontaneously to decline. And thus another series of possible causes has to be discussed. Then, supposing the question, notwithstanding all these difficulties, to be so far settled in favour of the present system--there still arises that whole other series of difficulties with regard to the possibility of the spread of _other_ diseases by the practice, and with regard to the _extent_ of such spread, before we can arrive at any finale. This series of questions is almost as complex as the other; and it includes that great element of uncertainty--the question what interval of time may elapse between inoculation with a disease and its actual appearance. For if in several cases children break out with erysipelas immediately after vaccination, of course there is a certain presumption that vaccination has been the cause; but if the erysipelas only appears some years after, its connection with the operation may, though real, be impossible to trace. The matter standing thus, it seems to us almost a mystery how it was that the medical authorities of the early days of Jennerism were so cocksure of their conclusions--until we remember that in arriving at those conclusions they practically _ignored_ all these other points that I have mentioned, like changes of Sanitation, spontaneous decline of Small-pox, the spread of other diseases, etc., and simply limited themselves to one small aspect of the problem. But now, after this interval of time, when the neglected facts and aspects have meanwhile _forced_ themselves on our attention, how remarkable is the change of attitude as evidenced by the finding of the late Royal Commission! (1896). From all this do not understand me to deride Science--for I have no intention of doing that; on the contrary, I think the debt we owe to modern investigation quite incalculable; but I only wish to warn you how complex all these problems are, how impossible that notion of settling even one of them by a cut-and-dried intellectual formula. But you will ask (for this is the second point I mentioned some little time back) _how_ people's emotions and feelings come in to colour their scientific conclusions? And the answer is--very simply, namely by directing their choice as to what aspects of the problem they will ignore and what aspects they will envisage; by determining their point of view, in fact. To return to that illustration of several portrait-painters painting the same face; just as each painter is led by his feeling, his sympathies, his general temperament, to select certain points in the face and to pass over others, so each group of scientific men in each generation is led by its sympathies, its idiosyncrasies, to envisage certain aspects of the problems of the day and to ignore others. The whole history of Science illustrates this. We are all familiar with the way in which the predilections of religious feeling in the time of Copernicus and Galileo retarded the progress of astronomical Science. As long as people believed that a divine drama of redemption had been enacted on this earth alone, they naturally concluded that this earth was the centre of the universe, and refused to look at facts which contradicted their conclusion. When Galileo turned his newly-made telescope on Jupiter and saw it circled by its satellites, he saw in this an image of the Copernican system and of the planets circling round the central Sun; but when he asked others to share his observation and his inference, they would not. "O, my dear Kepler," he writes in a letter to his fellow astronomer, "how I wish we could have one hearty laugh together. Here at Padua is the principal Professor of Philosophy, whom I have repeatedly and urgently requested to look at the moon and planets through my glass; but he pertinaciously refuses to do so. What shouts of laughter we should have at this glorious folly!" And though we laugh at the folly of those before us, we do the same things ourselves to-day. Take the science of Political Economy. A revolution has taken place in that, almost comparable to the change from the geocentric to the heliocentric view in Astronomy. During the distinctively commercial period of the last 100 years, the leading students of social science, being themselves filled with the spirit of the time, have been fain to look upon the acquisition of private wealth as the one absorbing motive of human nature; and so it has come about that the economists, from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill, have founded their science on self-seeking and competition, as the base of their analysis. To-day another series of economists coming to the front--their minds preoccupied with the great facts of Community of life and Co-operation--have discovered that Society is in the main an illustration of these latter principles, and have evolved a quite new phase of the science. It is not that Society has changed so much during this period, as that the altered point of view of the students of Society has caused them simply to fix their attention on a different aspect of the problem and a different range of facts. I have alluded already to the way in which the prevalent use of Machinery in practical life has affected our mental outlook on the world. It is curious that during this mechanical age of the last 100 years or so, we have not only come to regard Society in a mechanical light, as a concourse of separate individuals bound together by a mere cash-nexus, but have extended the same idea to the universe at large, which we look upon as a concourse of separate atoms, associated together by gravitation, or possibly by mere mutual impact. Yet it is certain that both these views are false, since the individuals who compose Society are _not_ separate from each other; and the theory that the universe, in its ultimate analysis, is composed of a vast number of discrete atoms is simply unthinkable. When we come to a practical and modern question like Medicine, the influence of the spirit in which it is approached on the course of the science is very easy to see. For if the science of Medicine is approached (as it perhaps mostly is to-day) in a spirit of combined Fear and Self-indulgence--fear for one's own personal safety, combined with a kind of anxiety to continue living in the indulgence of habits known to be unhealthy--if it is approached in this uncomfortable and contradictory state of mind, it is pretty obvious that its course will be similarly uncomfortable: that it will consist for the most part in a search for drugs which shall, without effort on our part, palliate the effects of our misconduct; in the discovery, as in a kind of nightmare, that the air round us is full of billions of microbes; in a terrified study of these messengers of disease, and in a frantic effort to ward them off by inoculations, vaccinations, vivisections, and so forth, without end. If, on the other hand, the science is approached from quite a different side--from that of the love of Health, and the desire to make life lovely, beautiful and clean; if the student is filled not only with this, but with a great belief in the essential _power_ of Man, and his command in creation, to control not only all these little microbes whose name is Legion, but through his mind all the processes of his body; then it is obvious enough that a whole series of different facts will arise before his eyes and become the subject of his study--facts of sanitation, of the laws of cleanly life, diet, clothing and so forth, methods of control, and the details and practice of the influence of the mental upon the physical part of man--facts quite equally real with the others, equally important, equally numerous perhaps and complex, but forming a totally different range of science. In conclusion, you begin to see doubtless that I do not believe in a science of mere Formulas, which can be poured from one brain to another like water in a pot. I believe in something more organic to Humanity--which shall combine Sense, Intellect and Soul; which shall include the keenest training of the Senses, the exactest use of the Brain, and the subordination of both of these to the finest and most generous attitude of Man towards Nature. To come to quite practical aspects, I think that Physical Science, and for that matter Natural History too, ought to be founded on the closest observation and actual intimacy with Nature. It is notorious that in many respects the perceptions, the Nature-intuitions, of savage races far outdo those of civilised man. We have let that side go slack, and too often the man of science when he comes out of his study is a mere baby in the external world. I look back with a kind of shame when I think that I studied the mathematical side of Astronomy for three or four years at Cambridge and absolutely at the time hardly knew one star from another in the sky. But such are the methods of teaching that have been in use. They ought however to be reversed, and practical acquaintance with the facts should come a long way first, and then be succeeded by inductive and deductive reasoning when the difficulties of the subject have forced themselves on the student's mind. Then in Natural History and Botany I think that we have hitherto not only neglected the perceptive side, but also what may be called the intuitive and emotional aspects. If any one will attend to the subject, I believe they will perceive that there are dormant in the mind the finest intuitions and instincts of relationship to the various animals and plants--intuitions which have played a far more important part in the life of barbaric races than they do to-day.[41] Primitive peoples have a remarkable instinct of the medicinal and dietetic uses of herbs and plants--an instinct which we also find well developed among animals--and I believe that this kind of knowledge would grow largely if, so to speak, it were given a chance. The formal classification of animals and plants--which now forms the main part of these sciences--would then come in simply as an aid and an auxiliary to the more direct and human study. Again, let us take the science of Physiology. At present this is mainly carried on by means of Dissection or Vivisection. But both these methods are unsatisfactory. Dissection, because it amounts to studying the organisation of a living creature by the examination of its dead carcase; and Vivisection, because it is not only open to a similar objection, but because it necessarily violates the highest relation of man to the animal he is studying. There is, I believe, another method--a method which has been known in the East for centuries, though little regarded in the West--which may perhaps be called the method of Health. It consists in rendering the body, by proper habits of life, pure and healthy, till it becomes, as it were, transparent to the inner eye, and then projecting the consciousness _inward_ so as to become almost as sensible of the structure and function of the various internal organs, as it usually is of the outer surface of the body. Of course this is a process which cannot be effectuated at once, and which may need help and corroboration by external methods of study, but I believe it is one which will lead to considerable results. There is no doubt that many of the Yogis of India attain to great skill in it. Similarly, from what we have already said about Political Economy, it is obvious that satisfactory results in that science must depend immensely on the high degree of social instinct and feeling with which the student approaches it, and on the thoroughness of his acquaintance with the _actual life_ of a people; and that the development of these factors is fully as important a part of the science as that which consists in the logical ordering and arrangement of the material obtained. I need not, I think, go any further into detail of new methods in each Science. You remember what I said at the beginning about the Cell studying the Body of which it formed a part. We may imagine, if we like, three stages in this process. In the first stage the Cell regards the other cells and the Body simply from the point of view of how they affect _it_, and its comfort and safety. This might be taken to correspond to the Old-time Science. In the second stage the Cell, with its tiny experience of the other cells and the small part of the body in which it is placed, becomes highly intellectual, and professes to lay down the laws of the structure of the body generally. This corresponds to the attitude of Modern Science. In the third stage the Cell, growing and evolving, and coming daily into closer sympathetic relationship with all parts of the body, begins to find its true relation to the other cells, not to use _them_, but to fulfil its part in the whole. Gradually drawing all the threads together and coming more and more, so to say, into a central position, it at last in its little brain spontaneously and inevitably reflects the whole, and becomes the mirror of it. This would answer to what we have called a really rational and humane Science. Man has to find and to _feel_ his true relation to other creatures and to the whole of which he is a part, and has to use his brain to further this. Science _is_, as we all know, the search for Unity. That is its ideal. It unites innumerable phenomena under one law; and then it unites many laws under one higher; always seeking for the ultimate complete integration. But (is it not obvious?) Man cannot find that unity _of_ the Whole until he feels his unity _with_ the Whole. To found a Science of one-ness on the murderous Warfare and insane Competition of men with each other, and on the Slaughter and Vivisection of animals--the search for unity on the practice of disunity--is an absurdity, which can only in the long run reveal itself as such. I do not know whether it seems obvious to you, but it does to me, that Man will never find in theory the unity of outer Nature till he reaches in practice the unity of his own. When he has learnt to harmonise in himself all his powers, bodily and mental, his desires, faculties, needs, and bring them into perfect co-operation--when he has found the true hierarchy of himself--then somehow I think that Nature round him will reflect this order, and range itself in clear and intelligible harmony about him. But I can say no more. I have dragged you by the neck, as it were, through a recondite and difficult subject; and even so I do not feel that I have by any means done justice to it. But it is possible, perhaps, that I have cast the germ of an idea among you, which, if you think over it at leisure, may develop into something of value. FOOTNOTES: [40] Afterwards reprinted in a modified form, as "Modern Science--a Criticism," in the first edition (1889) of the present book. [41] Elisée Reclus, in his remarkable paper, _La Grande Famille_, points out the wide-reaching _Friendship_, and free alliance for various purposes, of primitive man with the animals, existing long before the so-called "domestication" of the latter. See _Humane Review_, January, 1906. THE NEW MORALITY The tendency of the Evolution Theory, as it penetrates human thought, is to rub out lines--the old lines of formal classification. We no longer now put in a class apart those animals which have horns or cloven hooves, because we find that continuous descent and close kinship weave relations which are not bounded by horns or hooves. And, for a not dissimilar reason, modern thought, based on the theory of evolution, is tending to rub out the hard and fast lines between moral Right and Wrong--the old formal classifications of _actions_ as some in their nature good, and some in their nature bad. The Eastern, or at least Indian, thought and religion rubbed out these lines long ago. Its philosophy indeed was founded on a theory of Evolution--the continuous evolution or emanation of the Many from the One. It could not therefore regard any _class_ of beings or creatures as essentially bad, or any _class_ of actions as essentially wrong, since all sprang from a common Root. The only essential evil was ignorance (_avidya_)--that is, the fact of the being or creature not knowing or perceiving its emanation from, or kinship with, the One--and of course any action done under this condition of _avidya_, however outwardly correct, was essentially wrong; while on the other hand _all_ actions done by beings fully realising and conscious of their union with the One were necessarily right. Of this attitude towards Right and Wrong there are abundant instances in the Upanishads. The choice of the path does not lie _between_ Good and Bad, as in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, but it lies above and in a region transcending them both. "By the serenity of his thoughts a man blots out _all_ actions, whether good or bad."[42] "He does not distress himself with the thought, Why did I not do what is good? Why did I do what is bad?"[43] All religions indeed, by the very fact of their being religions, have indicated a sphere above morality, to which their followers shall and must aspire. What else is St. Paul's reiterated charge to escape from the dominion of sin and law, into the glorious liberty of the children of God? And in all ages the great mystics--those who stand near the fountain-sources of evolution and emanation--have seen and said the same. Says Spinoza:--"With regard to good and evil, these terms indicate nothing positive in things considered in themselves, nor are they anything else than modes of thought, or notions which we form from _the comparison of one thing with another_. For one and the same thing may at the same time be both good and evil, or indifferent."[44] Here indeed, in these pregnant words, we come upon the very root of the matter. A thing, an action, may be called good or bad in respect to a certain purpose or object; but in itself, No. Wine may be good for the encouragement of sociability, but may be bad for the liver. The Sabbath-day may be pronounced a beneficial institution from some points of view, but not from others. A scrupulous respect for private property may certainly be a help to settled social life; but the practice of thieving--as recommended by Plato--may be very useful to check the lust of private riches. To speak of wine as in its nature good or bad is manifestly absurd; and the same of a pious respect for private property or the Sabbath-day. These things are good under certain conditions or for certain purposes, and bad under other conditions or for other purposes. But of course it belongs and goes with the brute externalising tendency of the mind, to stereotype the actual material thing--which should be only the vehicle of the spirit--and give _it_ a character and a cult as good or bad. The Sabbath ceases to be made for man, and man is made for the Sabbath. Law, Custom, Pharisaism, and Self-righteousness spring up and usurp the sphere of morality, and all the histories of savage and civilised nations, with their endless fetishes and taboos and superstitions and ceremonies, and caste-marks and phylacteries, and petty regulations and proprieties,--including bitter scorn and persecution of those who do not fulfil them,--are but illustrations of this process. All the prophets and saviours of the world have been for the Spirit as against the letter--and the teachings of all religions have in their turn become literalised and fossilised! Perhaps there has been no greater anti-literal than Jesus of Nazareth, and yet perhaps no religion has become more a thing of forms and dogmas than that which passes under his name. Even his counsels of Gentleness and Love--which one would indeed have thought might escape this process--have been corrupted into mere prescriptions of morality, such as those of Non-resistance, and of philanthropic Altruism. It seems strange indeed that so great a man as Tolstoy should have lent himself to this process--to the pinning down of the excellent spirit of Christ (who by the way was man enough to drive the money-changers out of the Temple) to a mere formula, as one might pin a dragon-fly to a labelled card--_Thou shalt not use Violence: thou shalt not Resist!_ And all the while to cleave to a formula only means to admit the evil in some other shape which the formula does not meet--to forswear the stick only means to resort to rebuke and sarcasm in self-defence, which may inflict more pain and a deeper scar, and in some cases more injury, than the stick; or if self-defence in any shape is quite forsworn then that only means to resign and abandon one's place in the world completely. And the same of the somewhat spooney Altruism, which was at one time much recommended as the maxim of conduct. For all the while it is notorious that the specially altruistic people are as a rule painfully dull and uninteresting, and afford far less life and charm to those around them than many who are frankly egotistic; and so by following a formula of Altruism it seems they wreck the very work they set before themselves to do--namely, that of making the world brighter! Against these weaknesses of Christianity Nietzsche was a healthy reaction. It was he insisted on the terms "good" and "bad" being restored to their proper use, as terms of relation--"good" for what? "bad" for what? But his reaction against maudlin altruism and non-resistance led him towards a pitfall in the opposite direction, towards the erection of the worship of Force almost into a formula, Thou _shalt_ use Violence, thou _shalt_ Resist. His contempt for the feeble and the spooney and the knock-kneed and the humbug is very delightful and entertaining, and, as I say, healthy in the sense of reaction; but one does not get a very clear idea what the strength which Nietzsche glorifies is for, or whither it is going to lead. His blonde beasts and his laughing lions may represent the Will to Power; but Nietzsche seems to have felt, himself, that this latter alone would not suffice, and so he passed on to his discovery or invention of the Beyond-man,--_i.e._ of a childlike being who, without argument, _affirms_ and creates, and before whom institutions and conventions dissolve, as it were of their own accord.[45] This was a stroke of genius; but even so it leaves doubtful what the relation of such Beyond-men to each other may be, and whether, if they have no common source of life, their actions will not utterly cancel and destroy each other. The truth is that Nietzsche never really penetrated to the realisation of that farther state of consciousness in which the deep underlying unity of man with Nature and his fellows is perceived and felt. He saw apparently that there is a life and an inspiration of life beyond all technical good and evil. But for some reason--partly because of the natural difficulty of the subject, partly perhaps because the Eastern outlook was uncongenial to his mind--he never found the solution which he needed; and his outline of the Superman remains cloudy and uncertain, vague and variously interpreted by followers and critics. The question arises, What do _we_ need? We are to-day, in this matter, in a somewhat parlous state. The old codes of Morality are moribund; the Ten Commandments command only a very qualified assent; the Christian religion as a real inspiration of practical life and conduct is dead; the social conventions and Mrs. Grundy remain, feebly galling and officious. What are we to do? Are we to bolster up the old codes, in which we have largely ceased to believe, merely in order to have a code?--or are we to let them go? Of course, if we have decided what the final purpose or life of Man is, then we may say that what is good for that purpose is finally "good," and what is bad for that purpose is finally "evil." The Eastern philosophy, as I have said, deciding that the final purpose of Man is identification with Brahm, declares _all_ actions to be evil (even the most saintly) which are done by the self as separate from Brahm; and all actions as good which are done in the condition of _vidya_ or conscious union. But here, though a final good and evil are allowed and acknowledged, as existing respectively in the conditions of vidya or avidya, those conditions altogether escape any external rule or classification. Mr. Gilbert Chesterton, taking up this subject not long ago in a criticism[46] of Mr. Orage's little book on Nietzsche, said that all this talk about "beyond good and evil" was nonsense; that we must have some code; and that in effect, any code, even a bad one, was better than none. And one sees what he means. It is perfectly true, in a sense, that the harness, the shafts, and the blinkers keep a large part of the world on the beaten road and out of the ditch, and that folk are always to be found who, rather than use their higher faculties, will rely on these external guides; but to encourage this kind of salvation by blinkers seems the very reverse of what ought to be done; and one might even ask whether salvation by such means is salvation at all--whether the ditch were not better! Besides, what _can_ we do? It is not so much that we are deliberately abandoning the codes as that they are abandoning us. With the gradual infiltration of new ideas, of Eastern thought, of Darwinian philosophy, of customs and creeds of races other than our own, with Bernard Shaw lecturing on the futility of the Ten Commandments, and so forth, it is not difficult to see that in a short while it will be impossible to rehabilitate any of the ancient codes or to give them a sanction and a sense of awe in the public mind. If with Gilbert Chesterton we should succeed in bolstering up such a thing for a time--well, it will only be for a time. And the question is, whether the time has not really come for us to stand up--like sensible men and women--and _do without rules_; whether we cannot trust ourselves at last to throw aside the blinkers. The question is whether we cannot realise that solid and central life which underlies and yet surpasses all rules. For truly, if we cannot do this, our state is pitiable--having ceased to believe in the letter of Morality, and yet unable to find its spirit! It is here, then, that the New Morality comes in, as more or less clearly understood and expressed by the progressive sections to-day. Modern Socialism, in effect, taking up a position in its way somewhat similar to that of Eastern philosophy, says: Morality in its essence is not a code, but simply the realisation of the Common Life;[47] and that is a thing which is not foreign and alien to humanity, but very germane and natural to it--a thing so natural that without doubt it would be more in evidence than it is, did not the institutions and teachings of Western civilisation tend all along to deny and disguise it. To liberate this instinct of the Common Life, freeing it from hard and cramping rules, and to let it take its own form or forms--grafted on and varied of course by the personal and selective element of Affection and Sympathy--is the hope that lies before the world to-day for the solution of all sorts of moral and social problems. And the more this position is thought over, the more, I believe, will it commend itself. The sense of organic unity, of the common welfare, the instinct of Humanity, or of general helpfulness, are things which run in all directions through the very fibre of our individual and social life--just as they do through that of the gregarious animals. In a thousand ways: through heredity and the fact that common ancestral blood flows in our veins--though we be only strangers that pass in the street; through psychology, and the similarity of structure and concatenation in our minds; through social linkage, and the necessity of each and all to the others' economic welfare; through personal affection and the ties of the heart; and through the mystic and religious sense which, diving deep below personalities, perceives the vast flood of universal being--in these and many other ways does this Common Life compel us to recognise itself as a fact--perhaps the most fundamental fact of existence. To teach this simple foundational fact and what flows from it to every child--not only as a theory, but as a practical habit and inspiration of conduct--is not really difficult, but easy. Children, having this sense woven into their very being, grow up in the spirit and practical habitude of it, and from the beginning possess the inspiration of what we call Morality--far more effectually indeed than copy-book maxims can provide. Respect for truth, consideration towards parents and elders, respect for the reasonable properties, dignities, conveniences of others, as well as for one's own needs and dignities, become perfectly natural and habitual. And that this is no mere hypothesis the example of Japan has lately shown where every young thing is brought up so far drenched in the sentiment of community that to give one's life for one's country is looked upon as a privilege.[48] The general lines, I say, of morality would be secure, and much more secure than they now are, if we could only bring the children up in an educational and practical atmosphere of that solidarity which as a matter of fact is demanded to-day by socialism and the economic movement generally. And on this ground-work, as I have hinted, Personal Affection and Sympathy would build a superstructure of their own; they would outline a society as much more beautiful, powerful and closely knit than the present one founded on the Cash-nexus, as, say, the Athenian society of the time of Pericles was superior to that of the Lapithæ who first bitted and bridled the horse. While the general Life, equal, pervasive, and in a sense undifferentiated, is a great fact which has to be acknowledged; so this personal Love and Affection, choosing, selecting, and giving outline and form to that life, is equally a fact, equally undeniable, equally sacred--and one which has to be taken in conjunction with the other. I say equally sacred: because there has been a tendency (no doubt due to certain causes) to look upon personal affection, in its various phases from slight inclinations of sympathy to the stronger compulsions of passion, as something rather dubious in character, at best an amiable weakness not to be encouraged. Tolstoy, in one of his writings, figures the case of a little household in days of famine not really having bread enough for their own wants. Then a stranger child comes to the door and pleads for food. Tolstoy suggests that the mother ought to take the scanty crust from her own child to feed the stranger withal, or at least to share the food equally between the two children. But such a conclusion seems to me doubtful. Whatever "ought" may mean in such a connexion, we know pretty well that such never _will_ be the rule of human life, we may almost say never can be; perhaps we should be equally justified in saying, never "ought" to be. For obviously there must be preferences, selections. Our affections, our affinities, our sympathies, our passions, are not given us for nothing. It is not for nothing that every individual person, every tree, every animal has a _shape_, a shape of its own. If it were not so the world would be infinitely, inconceivably, dull. Yet to ask that a mother should in all cases treat strange children exactly the same as her own, that a man from the oceanic multitude should single out no special or privileged friends, but should love all alike, is to ask that these folk in their mental and moral nature should become as jellyfish--of no distinct shape or satisfaction to themselves or any one else. Profound and indispensable as is the Law of Equality--the law, namely, that there is a region within all beings where they touch to a common and equal life--the other law, that of Individual predilection, is equally indispensable. Try to reduce all to the one motive of the general interest, and you might have a perfect morality, but a morality woodeny, hard and dull, without form and feature. Try to dispense with this, and to found society on individual affection and love, and on individual initiative, without morals, and you would have a flighty, unstable thing, without consistency or backbone. My contention, then, is that our hope for the future society lies in its embodiment of these two great principles jointly: (1) the recognition of the Common Life as providing the foundation-element of general morality, and (2) the recognition of Individual Affection and Expression--and to a much greater degree than hitherto--as building up the higher groupings and finer forms of the structure. And in proportion as (1) provides a solider basis of morals than we have hitherto had, so will it be possible to give to (2) a width of scope and freedom of action hitherto untried or untrusted. Conjointly with the strengthening of these principles of Solidarity and Affection in society must of course come the strengthening of Individuality--the right and the desire of every being to preserve and develop its own proper _shape_, and so to add to the richness and interest of life--and this involves the right of Resistance, and (once more) the relegation of the formula of non-resistance into the background. These considerations, however, are leading us too far afield, and away from the special subject of our paper. I mention them chiefly in order to show that while we are considering Morality as a foundation-element of Society, it must never be lost sight of that it is not the only element, and that it would be comparatively senseless and useless unless grafted on and complemented and completed by the others. The method of the New Morality, then, will be to minimise formulæ, and (except as illustrations) to use them sparely; and to bring children up--and so indirectly all citizens--in such conditions of abounding life and health that their sympathies, overflowing naturally to those around, will cause them to realise in the strongest way their organic part in the great whole of society--and this not as an intellectual theory, so much as an abiding consciousness and foundation-fact of their own existence. Make this the basis of all teaching. Make them realise--by all sorts of habit and example--that to injure or deceive others is to injure themselves--that to help others somehow satisfies and fortifies their own inner life. Let them learn, as they grow up, to regard all human beings, of whatever race or class, as ends in themselves--never to be looked upon as mere things or chattels to be made use of. Let them also learn to look upon the animals in the same light--as beings, they too, who are climbing the great ladder of creation--beings with whom also we humans have a common spirit and interest. And let them learn to respect _themselves_ as worthy and indispensable members of this great Body. Thus will be established a true Morality--a morality far more searching, more considerate of others, more adaptive and more genuine than that of the present day--a morality, we may say, of common-sense. For it may indeed be said that Morality--taking a downright and almost physiological view of it--is simply _abundance of life_. That is, that when a man has so abounding and vital an inner nature that his sympathies and activities overflow the margin of his own petty days and personal advantage, he is by that fact entering the domain of morality. Before that time and while limited to the personal organism, the creative life in each being is either non-moral like that of the animals, or simply selfish like that of the immature man; but when it overflows this limit it necessarily becomes social, and moves to the support and consideration of the neighbour. Having formerly found its complete activity in the sustentation of the personal self it now spreads its helpful energies into the lives of the other selves around. Altruism, in fact, in its healthy forms, is the overflow of abounding vitality. It is a morality without a code, and happily free from limiting formulæ.[49] And if it be again said that a morality of this kind, which rests on a principle and a mental attitude only, is a danger, let us pause for a moment to consider how much more dangerous is one which rests on formulæ. If morality without a code is a serious matter, how much more serious is one which is nailed up _within_ a code! For looking back on history it would sometimes seem that the black-and-white, the this-thing-right-and-that-thing-wrong morality has been the most wicked thing in the world. It has been an excuse for all the most devilish deeds and persecutions imaginable. A formula of the Sabbath-day, a formula about Witchcraft, a formula of Marriage (regardless of the real human relation), a formula concerning Theft (regardless of the dire need of the thief)--and burnings, hangings, torturings without mercy! The terrible thing about this Right-and-Wrong morality is not only that it leads to these dreadful reprisals; but that it brands upon the victim as well as upon the oppressor the fatuous notions that a certain _thing_ is right or wrong, and that what one has to do is to save _oneself_--two notions both of which are directly contrary to true Morality. A boy tells a verbal lie--perhaps through fear, perhaps through inadvertence. He has broken a formula and is immediately caned. Moral: he will keep to verbal truth afterwards--however mean or insidious it may be--and be pharisaically self-satisfied; but he will never realise that the importance of truth and lies rests not in the words, but in the confidence and mutual trust which they either create or destroy. The peculiarly English worship of Duty is open to the same objection. "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds," and splendid as is the conception and practice of Duty, as a self-oblivious inspiration and enthusiasm, it becomes a truly revolting thing when it takes the all-too-common form "I have done _my_ Duty, I'm all right!" "I am going to do _my_ Duty, whatever becomes of you." Can anything be imagined more disintegrating to society, more certain to split it up into a dustheap of self-regarding units, than a formula of this kind? "It is my painful Duty to condemn you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead," says the Judge to the wretched girl who, in a frenzy of despair, has drowned her baby. What he really means is that while he perfectly recognises the monstrosity of the Law which he has sworn to administer, and the soul-killing effect on the girl which his sentence may have, yet in order to save _himself_ from the risk or the wrong of breaking that Law, he is willing and ready to pronounce that sentence. "It is my duty to burn you," says the Inquisitor to the heretic; and the implication is really, "I am afraid that if I do not burn you I shall get burnt myself, in the next world." The sooner an end can be made of this sort of morality, the better--which under the cloak of public advantage or benefit is only thinking about self-promotion and self-interest, either in this world or the next, and which truly is calculated not to further human solidarity but to destroy it. It runs and trickles through all of modern society, poisoning the well-springs of affection, this morality which, having paid its domestic servants their regular wages, is quite satisfied with itself, and expects them to do _their_ duty in return, but is silent about their real needs and welfare; which treats its wage-workers as simple machines for the grinding out of profits, and lifts its eyebrows in serene surprise when they retaliate against such treatment; which can only regard a criminal as a person who has broken a formula, and in return must be punished according to a formula; and a pig as an animal for which you provide reasonable provender and a stye, and which in return you are entitled to _eat_. Pharisaical, self-centred and self-interested, materialistic to the last degree, and really senseless in its outlook, this current morality is indeed, and very seriously, a public peril. Thou shalt not steal: an empty feat, When it's so lucrative to cheat. Keep _within_ the code, within the letter; always speak the nominal truth (whoever may suffer thereby); keep up the accepted formulæ of marriage and the sex-relation (though hearts may be bleeding and perishing); pay every respect to property, and so forth; and you may have the gratification of being looked upon as a bulwark of society. But none the less it is probable that you are undermining and corrupting that society to the core. Your outlook is merely on the surface, while you are condoning deep-seated ill. Of course the New Morality--to look _within_, to feel and refer to the needs of others almost as instinctively as to one's own, to refuse to regard any _thing_ as in itself good or bad, and to look upon all beings, oneself included, as ends in themselves and not as a means of personal self-advancement and glorification--while it is the more natural, is also the more difficult in a sense, as providing no set pattern or rule. But surely the time has arrived for its adoption. It is the morality which must underlie the freer, more varied forms of the society of the future; and it is the only escape from the corruption of the old order. To take particular examples. Truth, in word or act, is--we all feel--very important, very fundamental. It is the basis of the common understanding of which I have spoken. It is the basis of the expression of oneself, and of the recognition of others. Any one who is deeply imbued with the consciousness of the common life will necessarily have a deep respect for the Truth; he will also have a deep respect for the Life, the Property, the good Name, the Affections, and so forth, of others, as well as for his own similar attributes. He will not be able to say, as a formula: I will _never_ deceive another (tell a lie); I will _never_ take the life of others, man or animal (kill); and so on, because he knows there are situations in which that very Life arising within him, or even his own absolute necessity, will demand such actions, will compel him to the performance of them; but all the same he will in his ordinary existence carry out the principle which underlies these formulæ, and much more thoroughly, probably, than the formulæ themselves would demand. Similarly about such matters as sexual morality. There are outcries against Lady-Godiva-shows and living statuary--apparently because folk are afraid of such things rousing the passions. No doubt the things may act that way. But why, we may ask, should people be afraid of rousing passions which, after all, are the great driving forces of human life? Clearly it is because they think the other forces which should guide these passions or give them a helpful and useful direction are too weak. And in this last respect they are right. The guiding and inhibiting forces in our present society are feeble--because they consist only in a few conventional formulæ, which are rapidly being undermined. We are generating steam in a boiler which is already cankered with rust. The cure is not to cut off the passions, or to be weakly afraid of them, but to find a new, sound, healthy engine of general morality and common-sense within which they will work. And this is what in the future we must try to do. This morality, this organic, vital, almost physiological morality of the common life--which means a quick response of each unit to the needs of the other units, and much the same in the body politic as health means in the physical body--must underlie and be the basis of the societies of the future. It will mean the liberation of a thousand and one instincts, desires and capacities which since our childhood's days have lain buried within us, concealed and ignored because we have thought them wrong or unworthy, when really all they have wanted has been recognition and the opportunity to become healthy _by_ recognition--by the process in fact of balancing against each other, and against opposing and complementary elements, and so finding their places in the Whole. On this new Morality of acceptance and recognition and wide-reaching redemption, it will be possible, as I have already said, to graft not only a stronger expression of individuality all round, but also a higher and more varied and more gracious life of _personal affection_--which now alas! lies like a thing wounded and half dead. Its establishment will, I take it, mean the oncoming of a society which will liberate personal affection and love--will liberate forces hitherto artificially crippled because their liberation would tear our current morality of formulæ to mere rags and tatters. It means, I take it, the oncoming of a society whose main motive will no longer be the struggle for Bread (since that is ruled out by the enormous growth of our wealth-producing powers), but the desire for the satisfaction of the Heart--thus preparing no doubt new and unforeseen difficulties and sufferings, yet filling life with such beautiful things that the motives of greed and the mean pursuit of money, which now weigh upon the world, will be like an evil nightmare of the Past from which the dawn delivers us. FOOTNOTES: [42] _Maitrayana-Brahmana-Upanishad_, vi. 34, 4. [43] _Taittiriyaka-Up_, ii. 9, etc. [44] Spinoza's _Ethic_, part iv. [45] It must be remembered that Nietzsche supposes three stages of the spirit--(1) the Camel, (2) the Lion, and (3) the Child. And the Beyond-man properly corresponds to the last stage. [46] _Daily News_, December 29, 1906. [47] I need hardly say that this does not mean, as Nietzsche so often and sardonically suggests, the realisation of the _common-place_ life, but something very different. [48] Many Japanese committed suicide on account of not being allowed to join in the Russian War. See also Lafcadio Hearn's description of the habitual dignity and courtesy of the youth of Japan.--_Life and Letters_, vol. i, pp. 12, 113. [49] This morality, indeed, may be said to be implicit in much of the teaching of Christ; yet, curiously enough, it has never been seriously adopted by the Churches. And as to the regard for animals as ends in themselves, the Roman Catholic Church, I believe, positively repudiates any such attitude. APPENDIX As the author's attacks in the body of this book upon the Civilisation peoples have sometimes been regarded as extreme and unjustified, it has been thought appropriate, here in the Appendix, to collect a few notes from reliable authorities on the characteristics and customs of pre-civilised men--not so much of course with the object of proving the latter always superior to the former, as of bringing to light the many admirable virtues of the early peoples, which a cheap modern civilisation has neglected or somewhat contemptuously ignored. No one would deny that there are many cases of primitive folk--folk unclean and ignorant and absurdly superstitious--who can hardly be said to command our admiration. On the other hand there are a vast number of cases of an opposite sort--cases which present to us the realisation of some remarkable human characteristic or social capacity well worthy of consideration or even of imitation. If our Civilisation is ever to move on to some form better than the present, it is these latter cases which ought to be of assistance; for they not only direct our attention to human possibilities, but by showing what has been realised in the past assure us that such ideals are by no means unattainable now. It is therefore with a view to cases of this kind that the following Appendix has been framed. E. C. +Civilisation does not Engross all the Virtues.+ Quotations from Herman Melville's _Typee_, pp. 225, etc. (John Murray, 1861.) "Civilisation does not engross all the virtues of humanity: she has not even her full share of them. They flourish in greater abundance and attain greater strength among many barbarous people. The hospitality of the wild Arab, the courage of the North American Indian, and the faithful friendships of some of the Polynesian nations, far surpass anything of a similar kind among the polished communities of Europe. If truth and justice, and the better principles of our nature, cannot exist unless enforced by the statute-book, how are we to account for the social condition of the Typees? So pure and upright were they in all the relations of life, that entering their valley, as I did, under the most erroneous impressions of their character, I was soon led to exclaim in amazement: 'Are these the ferocious savages, the bloodthirsty cannibals of whom I have heard such frightful tales! They deal more kindly with each other, and are more humane, than many who study essays on virtue and benevolence, and who repeat every night that beautiful prayer breathed first by the lips of the divine and gentle Jesus.' I will frankly declare, that after passing a few weeks in this valley of the Marquesas, I formed a higher estimate of human nature than I had ever before entertained. But alas! since then I have been one of the crew of a man-of-war, and the pent-up wickedness of five hundred men has nearly overturned all my previous theories. * * * * * "How little do some of these poor islanders comprehend, when they look around them, that no inconsiderable part of their disasters originate in certain tea-party excitements, under the influence of which benevolent-looking gentlemen in white cravats solicit alms, and old ladies in spectacles, and young ladies in sober russet low gowns, contribute sixpences towards the creation of a fund, the object of which is to ameliorate the spiritual condition of the Polynesians, but whose end has almost invariably been to accomplish their temporal destruction! "Let the savages be civilised, but civilise them with benefits, and not with evils; and let heathenism be destroyed, but not by destroying the heathen. The Anglo-Saxon hive have extirpated Paganism from the greater part of the North American continent; but with it they have likewise extirpated the greater portion of the Red race. Civilisation is gradually sweeping from the earth the lingering vestiges of Paganism, and at the same time the shrinking forms of its unhappy worshippers. "Among the islands of Polynesia, no sooner are the images overturned, the temples demolished, and the idolaters converted into _nominal_ Christians, than disease, vice, and premature death make their appearance. The depopulated land is then recruited from the rapacious hordes of enlightened individuals who settle themselves within its borders, and clamorously announce the progress of the Truth. Neat villas, trim gardens, shaven lawns, spires, and cupolas arise, while the poor savage soon finds himself an interloper in the country of his fathers, and that too on the very site of the hut where he was born. * * * * * "During my whole stay on the island I never witnessed a single quarrel, nor any thing that in the slightest degree approached even to a dispute. The natives appeared to form one household, whose members were bound together by the ties of strong affection. The love of kindred I did not so much perceive, for it seemed blended in the general love; and where all were treated as brothers and sisters, it was hard to tell who were actually related to each other by blood. "Let it not be supposed that I have overdrawn this picture. I have not done so. Nor let it be urged that the hostility of this tribe to foreigners, and the hereditary feuds they carry on against their fellow-islanders beyond the mountains, are facts which contradict me. Not so: these apparent discrepancies are easily reconciled. By many a legendary tale of violence and wrong, as well as by events which have passed before their eyes, these people have been taught to look upon white men with abhorrence. The cruel invasion of their country by Porter has alone furnished them with ample provocation; and I can sympathize in the spirit which prompts the Typee warrior to guard all the passes to his valley with the point of his levelled spear, and, standing upon the beach, with his back turned upon his green home, to hold at bay the intruding European." +Influences of "Civilisation"+ From R. L. Stevenson's _In the South Seas_, p. 43. (Chatto and Windus, 1908.) [It is asked] "Was not the Polynesian always unchaste? Doubtless he was so always: doubtless he is more so since the coming of his remarkably chaste visitors from Europe. Take the Hawaiian account of Cook: I have no doubt it is entirely fair. Take Krusenstern's candid, almost innocent description of a Russian man-of-war at the Marquesas; consider the disgraceful history of missions in Hawaii itself ... add the practice of whaling fleets to call at the Marquesas and carry off a complement of women for the cruise ... and bear in mind how it was the custom of the adventurers, and we may almost say the business of the missionaries, to deride and infract even the most salutary _tapus_ (taboos)." +Captain Cook at Owyhee in 1799+ From his _Life and Voyages_, p. 379. (George Newnes, 1904.) "In the progress of the intercourse which was maintained between our voyagers and the natives, the quiet and inoffensive behaviour of the latter took away every apprehension of danger, so that the English trusted themselves among them at all times and in all situations. The instances of kindness and civility which our people experienced from them were so numerous that they could not easily be recounted. A society of priests, in particular, displayed a generosity and munificence of which no equal example had hitherto been given: for they furnished a constant supply of hogs and vegetables to our navigators, without ever demanding a return, or even hinting at it in the most distant manner." Of the island of Wateeoo (p. 309), "the inhabitants are very numerous, and many of the young men were perfect models in shape." +Natives of Tahiti+ From Havelock Ellis' _Sex in relation to Society_, p. 148. (1910.) "The example of Tahiti is instructive as regards the prevalence of chastity among peoples of what we generally consider low grades of civilisation. An early explorer, J. R. Forster (_Observations made on a voyage round the World_, 1778), speaks of the fine climate and the beauty of the females, as inviting powerfully to the enjoyments and pleasures of love. Yet he is over and over again impelled to set down facts which bear testimony to the virtues of these people. Though rather effeminate in build they are athletic, he says. Moreover in their wars they fight with great bravery and valour. They are, for the rest, hospitable. He remarks that they treat their married women with great respect, and that women generally are nearly the equals of men, both in intelligence and social position; he gives a charming description of the women. 'In short their character,' he concludes, 'is as amiable as that of any nation that ever came unimproved out of the hands of Nature'[!]"... "When Cook," continues Ellis, "who visited Tahiti many times, was among this 'benevolent, humane' people, he noted their esteem for chastity, and found that not only were betrothed girls strictly guarded before marriage, but that men also who had refrained from sexual intercourse for some time before marriage were believed to pass at death immediately into the abode of the blessed." +Radack--one of the Caroline Islands+ From Chamisso's _Reise um die Welt_, p. 183. (Leipzig.) "Thus we made acquaintance with a people who have endeared themselves to me more than any others of the children of Earth. The very weaknesses of the Radack folk removed mistrust on our side; their very gentleness and goodness caused them to be trustful towards us, the all-powerful strangers; we became declared friends. I found among them simple, unsophisticated manners, charm, natural grace, and the pleasant bloom of modesty. In the matter, certainly, of strength and manly independence the O-Waihier [Owyhees] are greatly their superiors. My friend, Kadu, who, though not belonging to this island-group, attached himself to us, was one of the finest characters I have ever met and one of the most dear to me of human beings; and he afterwards became my instructor with regard to Radack and the Caroline Islands." +Adaptation of Early Peoples to Surroundings+ THE DINKAS (Central Africa): from Grogan's _Cape to Cairo_, p. 278. (Hurst & Blackett, 1900.) "Every one in Dinka-land carries a long spear, or pointed fish-spear, and a club made of a heavy purple wood, while the more important gentlemen wear enormous ivory bracelets round their upper arm; strict nudity is the fashion, and a marabout feather in the hair is the essence of _chic_. They are all beautifully built, having broad shoulders, small waist, good hips, and well-shaped legs. The stature of some is colossal. It was most curious to see how these Dinkas, living as they do in the marshes, approximate to the type of the waterbird. They have much the same walk as a heron, picking their feet up very high and thrusting them well forward; while their feet are enormous. Their colossal height is indeed a great advantage in the reed grown country in which they live. The favourite pose of a Dinka (on one foot, with the other foot resting on the knee) is in reality the favourite pose of a water bird.... They are the complete antithesis of the pigmy, as the country in which they live is the complete antithesis of the dense forest which is the home of the dwarfs.... Our camp was near a large village where there were at least 1,500 head of cattle, besides sheep and goats, and the chief brought me a fine fat bull-calf--which settled the nervous question of food for two days.... The rambling village with its groups of figures and long lines of home-coming cattle, dimly seen in the smoke of a hundred fires as I approached at sunset, was very picturesque." THE PIGMIES: from _Cape to Cairo_, pp. 144 and 161. "The pigmies have no settled villages, nor do they cultivate anything. They live the life of the brute in the forests, perpetually wandering in search of honey or in pursuit of elephant; when they succeed in killing anything, they throw up a few grass shelters and remain there till all the meat is either eaten or dried. They depend upon the other natives for the necessary grain, which they either steal or barter for elephant meat or honey. All their knives, spearheads and arrow-heads they likewise purchase from other people, but they make their own bows and arrows. So well are these made that they are held in great esteem by the surrounding people." ... "An hour later I met an elderly pigmy in the forest and managed to induce him to talk. He was a splendid little fellow, full of self-confidence, and gave me most concise information, stating that the white man with many belongings had passed near by two days before, and had then gone down to the lake-shore, where he was camped at that moment. These people must have a wonderful code of signs and signals, as despite their isolated and nomadic existence they always know exactly what is happening everywhere. He was a typical pigmy as found on the volcanoes--squat, gnarled, proud, and easy of carriage. His beard hung down over his chest, and his thighs and chest were covered with wiry hair. He carried the usual pigmy bow made of two pieces of cane spliced together with grass, and with a string made of a single strand of a rush that grows in the forests. The pigmies are splendid examples of the adaptability of Nature to her surroundings; the combination of strength and conciseness enabling them to move with astonishing rapidity in the pig-runs that form the only pathway through the impenetrable growth, and to endure the fatigue of elephant-hunting." NATIVES IN RUANDA (near Lake Kivu): _Cape to Cairo_, p. 118. "Society in Ruanda is divided into two castes, the Watusi and the Wahutu. The Watusi are the descendants of a great wave of Galla invasion that reached even to Tanganyika. They still retain their pastoral instincts, and refuse to do any other work than the tending of cattle; and so great is their affection for their beasts, that rather than sever company they will become slaves, and do the menial work of their beloved cattle for the benefit of their conquerors. This is all the more remarkable when one takes into account their inherent pride of race and contempt for other peoples, even for the white man.... Many signs of superior civilisation, observable in the peoples with whom the Watusi have come into contact, are traceable to this Galla influence. "The hills are terraced, thus increasing the area of cultivation, and obviating the denudation of fertile slopes by torrential rains. In many cases irrigation is carried out on a sufficiently extensive scale, and the swamps are drained by ditches. Artificial reservoirs are built with side troughs for watering cattle. The fields are in many cases fenced in by planted hedges of euphorbia and thorn, and similar fences are planted along the narrow parts of the main cattle tracks, to prevent the beasts from straying or trampling down the cultivation. "There is also an exceptional diversity of plants cultivated, such as hungry rice, maize, red and white millet, several kinds of beans, peas, bananas, and the edible arum. Some of the higher growing beans are even trained on sticks planted for the purpose. Pumpkins and sweet potatoes are also common; and the Watusi own and tend enormous herds of cattle, goats and sheep. Owing to the magnificent pasturage the milk is of excellent quality, and they make large quantities of butter. They are exceedingly clever with their beasts, and have many calls which the cattle understand. At milking time they light smoke-fires to keep the flies from irritating the beasts.... They are tall slightly built men of graceful nonchalant carriage, and their features are delicate and refined. I noticed many faces that, bleached and set in a white collar, would have been conspicuous for character in a London drawing-room. The legal type was especially pronounced." ... "The Wahutu are their absolute antithesis. They are the aborigines of the country, and any pristine originality or character has been effectually stamped out of them. Hewers of wood and drawers of water, they do all the hard work, and unquestioning in abject servility give up the proceeds on demand. Their numerical proportion to the Watusi must be at least a hundred to one, yet they defer to them without protest; and in spite of the obvious hatred in which they hold their over lords, there seems to be no friction." +Natives of the Andaman Islands+ The following extracts, about the Andaman-islanders of the Bay of Bengal, the Bushmen of South Africa, and the Eskimo tribes of Northern latitudes, are specially interesting because they deal with peoples whose present-day culture is undoubtedly on a par with, and in all probability directly inherited from, the peoples of a long-past Stone Age. Thus we get indirectly a glimpse of what the culture of the Stone Ages was--both in its material acquisitions and its grade of social and psychological evolution. From _In the Andamans and Nicobars_, p. 184, by C. Boden Kloss. (Murray, 1903.) "The Andaman Islands are inhabited by people of pure Negrito blood, members of perhaps the most ancient race remaining on the earth, and standing closest to the primitive human type.... It would be impossible to find anywhere a race of purer descent than the Andamanese, for ever since they peopled the islands in the Stone Age, they have remained secluded from the outer world.... In stature they are far below the average height; but although they have been called dwarfs and pygmies, these words must not be understood to imply anything in the nature of a monstrosity. Their reputation for hideousness, like their poisoned arrows and cannibalism, has long been a fallacy which, though widely popular, should now be exploded. The average heights of the men and women are found to be 4 feet 10¾ inches, and 4 feet 7¼ inches respectively, and their figures, which are proportionately built, are very symmetrical and graceful. Although not to be described as muscular, they are of good development, the men being agile, yet sturdy, with broad chests and square shoulders." From E. H. Man on _The Aborigines of the Andaman Islands_, p. 14. (Trübner, 1883.) "No idiots, maniacs or lunatics have ever yet been observed among them, and this is not because those so afflicted are killed or confined by their fellows, for the greatest care and attention are invariably paid to the sick, aged and helpless." Mr. Man also remarks (_Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ XII, 92): "It has been observed with regret by all interested in the race, that intercourse with the alien population has, generally speaking, prejudicially affected their morals; and that the candour, veracity, and self-reliance they manifest in their savage and untutored state are, when they become associated with foreigners, to a great extent lost, and habits of untruthfulness, dependence and sloth engendered." +The Bushmen+ Extract from F. C. Selous' _African Nature-Notes_, pp. 344 and 347. (1908.) "When I met with the first Bushmen I ever saw, on the banks of the Orange River in 1872, I was a very young man, and, regarding them with some repugnance, wrote in my diary that they appeared to be removed by a very few steps from the brute creation. That was a very foolish and ignorant remark to make, and I have since found out that though Bushmen may possibly be to-day in the same backward state of material development and knowledge as once were the palæolithic ancestors of the most highly cultured European races in prehistoric times, yet fundamentally there is very little difference between the natures of primitive and civilised men, so that it is quite possible for a member of one of the more cultured races to live for a time quite happily and contentedly amongst beings who are often described as degraded savages, and from whom he is separated by thousands of years in all that is implied by the word 'civilisation.' I have hunted a great deal with Bushmen, and during 1884 I lived amongst these people continuously for several months together. On many and many a night I have slept in their encampments without even any Kafir attendants, and though I was entirely in their power I always felt perfectly safe among them. As most of the men spoke Sechwana I was able to converse with them, and found them very intelligent, good-natured companions, full of knowledge concerning the habits of all the wild animals inhabiting the country in which they lived.... I have never seen their women and children ill-treated by them, and I have seen both the men and the women show affection for their children." Elsewhere Selous speaks of "John"--a member of the close-related Korana clan--who was in his service, as "of a pale yellow-brown colour, beautifully proportioned, with small delicately made hands and feet." From preface by Henry Balfour to the book _Bushmen Paintings Copied_, by Helen Tongue. "It is certain that the designs representing animals, etc., which are painted upon the walls of their caves and rock-shelters, frequently exhibit a realism and freedom in treatment which are quite remarkable in the art of so primitive a people. The skill with which many of the characteristic South African animals are portrayed testifies not only to unusual artistic efficiency, but also to a close observance of and an intimate acquaintanceship with the habits and peculiarities of the animals themselves.... The paintings are remarkable not only for the realism exhibited by so many, but also for a freedom from the limitation to delineation in _profile_ which characterises for the most part the drawings of primitive peoples, especially where animals are concerned. Attitudes of a kind difficult to render were ventured upon without hesitation, and an appreciation even of the rudiments of perspective is occasionally to be noted." Note from the same book, by S. Bleek, daughter of the well-known Dr. Bleek, of the Grey Library at Cape Town (1870). "Bushmen are called liars and thieves all over the Colony, but all those who stayed with us were truthful and very honest. On no occasion did they steal even a pocket-knife lost in the garden, or fruit from the trees. They might have taken sheep from hostile farmers, but they would never rob a friend or neighbour. They were cleanly in their habits, and most particular about manners.... As a people they were grateful and revengeful, independent in spirit, excellent fighters--who preferred death to captivity.... Captives were sometimes made servants, but not often well-treated, nor did they take to a settled life easily. Even kind masters found their longing for freedom hard to conquer." +The Nechilli Eskimo+ From Amundsen's _North West Passage_, vol. i, p. 294. (Constable, 1908.) "We were suddenly brought face to face here with a people from the Stone Age: we were abruptly carried back several thousand years in the advance of human progress, to people who as yet knew no other method of procuring fire than by rubbing two pieces of wood together, and who with great difficulty managed to get their food just lukewarm, over the seal-oil flame on a stone slab, while we cooked our food in a moment with our modern cooking apparatus. We came here, with our most ingenious and most recent inventions in the way of firearms, to people who still used lances, bows and arrows of reindeer horn.... However, we should be wrong if from the weapons, implements, and domestic appliances of these people we were to argue that they were of low intelligence. Their implements, apparently so very primitive, proved to be as well adapted to their existing requirements and conditions as experience and the skilful tests of many centuries could have made them." +Ugpi, an Eskimo+ From Amundsen vol. i, p. 190. "Ugpi or Uglen (the 'Owl') as we always called him, attracted immediate attention by his appearance. With his long black hair hanging over his shoulders, his dark eyes and frank honest expression, he would have been good-looking if his broad face and large mouth had not spoilt his beauty from a European standpoint. There was something serious, almost dreamy, about him. Honesty and truthfulness are unmistakably impressed on his features, and I would never have hesitated for a moment to entrust him with anything. During his association with us he became an exceptionally clever hunter both for birds and reindeer. He was about thirty years old and was married to Kabloka, a very small girl of seventeen." +Eskimo and Civilisation+ From Amundsen vol. ii, p. 48. "During the voyage of the _Gjoa_, we came into contact with ten different Eskimo tribes in all ... and I must state it as my firm conviction that the Eskimo living absolutely isolated from civilisation of any kind are undoubtedly the happiest, healthiest, most honorable and most contented among them. It must therefore be the bounden duty of civilised nations who come into contact with the Eskimo to safeguard them against contaminating influences, and by laws and stringent regulations protect them against the many perils and evils of so-called civilisation. Unless this is done they will inevitably be ruined.... My sincerest wish for our friends the Nechilli Eskimo is that Civilisation may _never_ reach them." +High Standard of Tribal Morality among the Aleoutes+ Witnessed to by the Russian missionary, Veniaminoff. See _Mutual Aid_, pp. 99 and 100, by P. Kropotkin. The high standard of the tribal morality of the Eskimos has often been mentioned in general literature. Nevertheless the following remarks upon the manners of the Aleoutes--nearly akin to the Eskimos--will better illustrate savage morality as a whole. They were written, after a ten years' stay among the Aleoutes, by a most remarkable man--the Russian missionary, Veniaminoff. I sum them up, mostly in his own words:-- Endurability (he wrote) is their chief feature. It is simply colossal. Not only do they bathe every morning in the frozen sea, and stand naked on the beach, inhaling the icy wind, but their endurability, even when at hard work on insufficient food, surpasses all that can be imagined. During a protracted scarcity of food, the Aleoute cares first for his children; he gives them all he has, and himself fasts. They are not inclined to stealing; that was remarked even by the first Russian immigrants. Not that they never steal; every Aleoute would confess having sometime stolen something, but it is always a trifle; the whole is so childish. The attachment of the parents to their children is touching, though it is never expressed in words or pettings. The Aleoute is with difficulty moved to make a promise, but once he has made it he will keep it whatever may happen. (An Aleoute made Veniaminoff a gift of dried fish, but it was forgotten on the beach in the hurry of the departure. He took it home. The next occasion to send it to the missionary was in January; and in November and December there was a great scarcity of food in the Aleoute encampment. But the fish was never touched by the starving people, and in January it was sent to its destination.) +Home Life of the Eskimo+ By Villialm Stefansson. From _Harper's Monthly_, October, 1908. Stefansson lived for thirteen months in the household of a Chief, Ovaynak, on the Mackenzie River, and knew his subject well. He says:-- "With their absolute equality of the sexes and perfect freedom of separation, a permanent union of uncongenial persons is well-nigh inconceivable. But if a couple find each other congenial enough to remain married a year or two, divorce becomes exceedingly improbable, and is much rarer among the middle-aged than among us. People of the age of twenty-five and over are usually very fond of each other, and the family--when once it becomes settled--appears to be on a higher level of affection and mutual consideration than is common among us. In an Eskimo home I have never heard an unpleasant word between a man and his wife, never seen a child punished, nor an old person treated inconsiderately. Yet the household affairs are carried on in an orderly way, and the good behaviour of the children is remarked by practically every traveller. "These charming qualities of the Eskimo home may be largely due to their equable disposition and the general fitness of their character for the communal relations; but it seems reasonable to give a portion of the credit to their remarkable social organisation; for they live under conditions for which some of our best men are striving--conditions that with our idealists are even yet merely dreams." +Religious Beliefs among the Eskimos+ From Rasmussen's _People of the Polar North_, pp. 125 and 127. (1908.) "Their religious opinions do not lead them to any sort of worship of the supernatural, but consist--if they are to be formulated in a creed--of a list of commandments and rules of conduct controlling their relations with unknown forces hostile to man." "A wise and independent thinking Eskimo, Otag the Magician, said to me of death: 'You ask, but I know nothing of death; I am only acquainted with life. I can only say what I believe: either death is the end of life, or else it is the transition into another mode of life. In neither case is there anything to fear. Nevertheless I do not want to die, because I consider that it is good to live.' This calm way of envisaging death is not unusual; I have seen many pagan Eskimos go to meet certain death without a trace of fear." +Periodical Distributions to Obviate Accumulations of Wealth+ From Kropotkin's _Mutual Aid_, p. 97. (Heinemann, 1908.) "(The Eskimos) have an original means for obviating the inconveniences arising from a personal accumulation of wealth--which would soon destroy their tribal unity. When a man has grown rich he convokes the folk of his clan to a great festival, and after much eating, distributes among them all his fortune. On the Yukon river Dall saw an Aleoute family distributing in this way ten guns, ten full fur dresses, two hundred strings of beads, numerous blankets, ten wolf furs, two hundred beavers and five hundred zibellines. After that they took off their festival dresses, and putting on old ragged furs, addressed a few words to their kinsfolk, saying that, though they are now poorer than any one of them, they have won their friendship.[50] Like distributions of wealth appear to be a regular habit with the Eskimos, and to take place at a certain season, after an exhibition of all that has been obtained during the year. In my (Kropotkin) opinion, these distributions reveal a very old institution, contemporaneous with the first apparition of personal wealth; they must have been a means for re-establishing equality among the members of the clan, after it had been disturbed by the enrichment of the few. The periodical redistribution of land and the periodical abandonment of all debts, which took place in historical times with so many different races (Semites, Aryans, etc.), must have been a survival of that old custom." +The Samoyedes+ From _Icebound on the Kolguev_, p. 384, by A. Trevor-Battye. (Constable, 1895.) "Family affection among the Samoyeds is very strongly developed. It would be impossible to find greater evidence of this among any people. Another extremely marked character among them is family order. All everyday offices and occupations are carried out by a well-defined method and subdivision of labour. I never saw a single instance of anything approaching a family quarrel.... They are very handy sailors, patient and successful hunters and fishermen, and admirable workmen with such tools as they understand. No man can repair a damaged boat more quickly than a Samoyed, and from the roughest drift-wood (such as an English carpenter would throw on the fire), they fashion bows, arrows, sleighs, spoons, drinking-cups, bullet-moulds, and a variety of articles of everyday use." +The Belle of Kolguev+ From _Icebound on the Kolguev_, p. 130. "Her sister-in-law Ustynia was really, if you accept the type, a pretty girl.... Her eyes were bright, and a pleasant smile played about her lips. When she laughed--and these people are always laughing--she betrayed the most perfectly beautiful teeth it is possible to imagine. Indeed all these people, even old Uano, had most wonderful teeth--white, regular and perfectly shaped. On her fingers Ustynia wore heavy rings of white and yellow metal, and her hands, like those of all Samoyeds, were faultless in shape and extraordinarily supple. If you add to this a dress reaching to the knees, formed of young reindeer skin, worked in many stripes of white and brown, the skirt banded with scarlet cloth and dogskin fur, and foot and leg coverings of soft patterned skin reaching above the knee--there you have Ustynia, the belle of Kolguev." +The Todas+ Quoted from _The Todas_, by W. H. Rivers (1906). These people live on a very lofty and isolated plateau of the Nilgiri Hills in South India; and are especially interesting to us because till 1812 "they were absolutely unknown to Europeans," and developed their own customs untouched by Western civilisation. "They are a purely pastoral people, limiting their activities almost entirely to the care of their buffaloes and to the complicated ritual which has grown up in association with these animals." (p. 6) ... They have a completely organised and definite system of polyandry. When a woman marries a man, it is understood that she becomes the wife of his brothers at the same time. When a boy is married to a girl, not only are his brothers usually regarded as also the husbands of the girl, but any brother born later will similarly be regarded as sharing his older brother's rights." (p. 515.) "The men are strong and very agile; the agility being most in evidence when they have to catch their infuriated buffaloes at the funeral ceremonies. They stand fatigue well, and often travel great distances.... In going from one part of the hills to another a Toda always travels as nearly as possible in a straight line, ignoring altogether the influence of gravity, and mounting the steepest hills with no apparent effort. In all my work with the men it seemed to me they were extremely intelligent. They grasped readily the points of any enquiry on which I entered, and often showed a marked appreciation of complicated questions.... I can only record my impression, after several months' intercourse with the Todas, that they were just as intelligent as one would have found any average body of educated Europeans.... The characteristic note in their demeanour is their absolute belief in their own superiority over the surrounding races. They are grave and dignified, and yet thoroughly cheerful and well-disposed towards all." (pp. 18-23.) +Nudity+ THE PELEW ISLANDS: from J. G. Wood (vol. _America_, p. 447). _See_ Captain H. Wilson, who was wrecked there in 1783. "The inhabitants are of a dark copper colour, well-made, tall, and remarkable for their stately gait. They employ the tattoo in rather a curious manner, pricking the patterns thickly on their legs from the ankles to a few inches above the knees, so that they look as if their legs were darker in colour than the rest of their bodies. They are cleanly in their habits, bathing frequently and rubbing themselves with coco-nut oil, so as to give a soft and glossy appearance to the skin.... The men wear no clothing, not even the king himself having the least vestige of raiment, the tattoo being supposed to answer the purposes of dress.... In spite, however, of the absence of dress, the deportment of the sexes towards each other is perfectly modest. For example, the men and women will not bathe at the same spot, nor even go near a bathing place of the opposite sex unless it be deserted." +Natives of the Amazon Region+ Alfred Russell Wallace, in his _Travels on the Amazon_ (1853), speaks most warmly about the aborigines of that district--both as to their grace of form, their quickness of hand, and their goodnatured inoffensive disposition. He says (chap. xvii): "Their figures are generally superb; and I have never felt so much pleasure in gazing at the finest statue as at these living illustrations of the human form." In his _My Life_, vol. ii, p. 288, he says: "Their whole aspect and manner were different (from the semi-civilised tribes); they walked with the free step of the independent forest-dweller ... original and self-sustaining as the wild animals of the forest ... living their own lives in their own way, as they had done for countless generations before America was discovered. The true denizen of the Amazonian forests, like the forest itself, is unique and not to be forgotten." From _The Putumayo, or Devil's Paradise_. By W. E. Hardenburg (1912). "The Huitotos are a well-formed race, and although small, are stout and strong, with a broad chest and a prominent bust; but their limbs, especially the lower, are but little developed.... That repugnant sight, a protruding abdomen, so common among the 'whites' and half-breeds on the Amazon, is very rare among these aborigines.... Notwithstanding some defects it is not rare to find among these women many who are really beautiful--so magnificent are their figures, and so free and graceful their movements." (p. 152). "Unions are considered binding among the Huitotos, and it is very rarely that serious disagreements arise between husband and wife. The women are naturally chaste, and it was not till the advent of the rubber collectors that they began to lose this primitive virtue--so generally met with among people not yet in contact with white men" (p. 154). [N.B.--These were some of the people so villainously tortured--men, women and children--for the collection of rubber, by commercial scoundrels, whose atrocities were exposed by Roger Casement and others. E.C.] +Fine Figures and Features of the Dyaks+ Quotations from Beccar's _In the Forests of Borneo_, pp. 325 and 329. (Constable 1904.) "On the morning of October 19, as previously arranged, Ladja, with eight other Dyaks, came to the fort duly equipped for the journey. Ladja was a handsome young man, tall like most of his companions, slender, and beautifully made. His profile was nearly regular, the nose perfectly straight, but the cheek bones rather too prominent and the chin rather pointed. His complexion was very light." ... "Our Arno boatmen in Florence always pole where the river is shallow, and use their poles exactly as the Dyaks do theirs, only they certainly cannot compare with the latter in the length of the journeys thus performed with their light canoes. Ours literally flew over the water handled with incomparable dexterity by my six young savages. There is to my mind no lighter and more pleasant mode of progression, and certainly no kind of work displays so well the elegant movements and perfect proportions of these young Dyaks, who, practically unencumbered with clothing, are truly splendid specimens of humanity." From Ida Pfeiffer's book _Meine zweite Weltreise_, vol. i, p. 116. (Vienna, 1856.) "I must confess that I would gladly have journeyed longer among the free Dayaks. I found them wonderfully honourable, gentle and modest; indeed in these respects I put them above any people that I have as yet become acquainted with. I could leave all my things about, and go away for hours together, and never was the least thing missing. They begged me occasionally for many an object they saw, but immediately gave way when I explained that I needed it myself. They were never over-pressing or tiresome. It will be said, in denial of this, that the beheading of corpses and preservation of skulls does not look exactly like gentleness; but it must be remembered that this sad custom is chiefly the result of rude and ignorant superstition. I stick to my opinion, and as a further proof, would cite their domestic and thoroughly patriarchal mode of life, their morals and manners, the love that they have for their children, and the respect their children show to them." +A Rodiya Boy+ Ernst Haeckel in his _Visit to Ceylon_, describes the devotion to him of his Rodiya serving-boy at Belligam near Galle. The keeper of the rest-house there was an old man whom Haeckel, from his likeness to a well-known head, called by the name of Socrates. And Haeckel continues: "It really seemed as though I should be pursued by the familiar aspects of classical antiquity from the first moment of my arrival at my idyllic home. For as Socrates led me up the steps of the open central hall of the rest-house, I saw before me, with uplifted arms in an attitude of prayer, a beautiful naked brown figure, which could be nothing else than the famous statue of the 'Youth Adoring.' How surprised I was when the graceful bronze statue suddenly came to life, and dropping his arms fell on his knees, and after raising his black eyes imploringly to mine bowed his handsome face so low at my feet that his long black hair fell on the floor! Socrates informed me that this boy was a Pariah, a member of the lowest caste, the Rodiyas, who had lost his parents at an early age. He was told off to my exclusive service, and in answer to the question what I was to call my new body-servant, the old man informed me that his name was Gamameda. Of course I immediately thought of Ganymede, for the favorite of Jove himself could not have been more finely made, or have had limbs more beautifully proportioned and moulded. "Among the many beautiful figures which move in the foreground of my memories of the Paradise of Ceylon, Ganymede remains one of my dearest favorites. Not only did he fulfil his duties with the greatest attention and conscientiousness, but he developed a personal attachment and devotion to me which touched me deeply. The poor boy, as a miserable outcast of the Rodiya caste, had been from his birth the object of the deepest contempt of his fellow-men, and subjected to every sort of brutality and ill-treatment. He was evidently as much surprised as delighted to find me willing to be kind to him from the first.... I owe many beautiful and valuable contributions to my museum to Ganymede's unfailing zeal and dexterity. With the keen eye, the neat hand, and the supple agility of the Cinghalese youth, he could catch a fluttering moth or a gliding fish with equal promptitude; and his nimbleness was really amazing when, out hunting, he climbed the tall trees like a cat, or scrambled through the densest jungle to recover the prize I had killed." (p. 200.) +Second Sight+ Native "diviners" in South Africa, from _The Spiritualism of the Zulu_, by C. H. Bull, of Durban. "Many years ago I was riding transport between Durban and the Umzimkulu. I checked my loads at Durban and found them correct with the waybill, but when I reached my destination I discovered that I was one case short, for which I had to pay. On my return to my farm, I mentioned the fact to my brother, who proposed, more in the spirit of fun than anything else, that we should visit a diviner, and endeavour to discover what had become of it. I consented, and together we repaired to a native diviner. He immediately informed us of the object of our visit, although, so far as I can tell, it was morally impossible for him to have known it through any ordinary channels, and then he went on speaking as though in a dream: 'I see a waggon loaded with cases climbing up the Umgwababa Hill; there has been a lot of rain and the roads are slippery. Half way up the hill the rains have washed a gully; into this the waggon lurches, displacing a small case, which falls to the ground, but the driver, who is busy urging his team up the hill, does not notice it. Now the waggon has passed out of sight, but I see a Kaffir coming up the hill. When he reaches the spot where the case is lying, he stops for a few moments to examine it, and then proceeds to the top of the hill, where he stands for a few moments shading his eyes with his hand, as though looking beyond. Now he returns to where the case is lying, and lifting it up, crosses the road, and pushing his way through some tall tambootie grass, he reaches a large indonie tree; under the tree there is a stunted clump of wild bananas. He places the case in the centre of the clump, and after concealing it with some of the dry leaves, he goes on his way. The case is still there.' "Though wholly incredulous of the truth of the vision, I sent two 'boys' to the spot indicated, and they returned bringing with them the lost case, having found it exactly where the diviner said that he saw it." +The Zulus+ THE ZULUS: Quotations from General Sir W. Butler's _Naboth's Vineyard_, p. 263 (given in Blyden's _African Life and Customs_, p. 43). "In all the sad history of South Africa few things are sadder than the Zulu question. Where the Zulu came (in those days), no lock or key were necessary. No man who knew the Zulu--not even the white colonist, whose rage was largely the result of his being unable to get servile labour from him--could say that he had not found the Zulu honest, truthful, faithful; that the white wife and child had not been entirely safe from insult or harm at the hands of this black man; or that money and property were not immeasurably more secure in Zulu charge than in that of Europeans or Asiatics." From Blyden's _African Life and Customs_, p. 37. "There are to-day hundreds of so-called civilised Africans who are coming back to themselves. They have grasped the principles underlying the European social and economic order and reject them as not equal to their own as means of making adequate provision for the normal needs of all members of society both present and future--from birth all through life to death. They have discovered all the waste places, all the nakedness of the European system, both by reading and travel. The great wealth can no longer dazzle them, or conceal from their view the vast masses of the population living under what they once supposed to be the ideal system--who are of no earthly use to themselves or to others.... Under the African system of communal property and co-operative effort, every member of a community has a home and a sufficiency of food and clothing and other necessaries of life--and for life; and his children after him have the same advantages. In this system there is no workhouse and no necessity for such an arrangement." +Over-government+ From Wallace's _Malay Archipelago_, p. 336. (1894 edition.) "This motley, ignorant, bloodthirsty, thievish population (Papuans, Javanese, Chinese, etc.), live here without the shadow of a government, with no police, no courts, and no lawyers; yet they do not cut each other's throats; do not plunder each other day and night; do not fall into the anarchy such a state of things might be supposed to lead to. It is very extraordinary! It puts strange thoughts into one's head about the mountain-load of government under which people exist in Europe, and suggests the idea that we may be over-governed. Think of the hundred Acts of Parliament annually enacted to prevent us, the people of England, from cutting each other's throats, or from doing to our neighbours as we would _not_ be done by. Think of the thousands of lawyers and barristers whose whole lives are spent in telling us what the hundred Acts of Parliament mean, and one would be led to infer that if Dobbo has too little law England has too much." +Society without Government+ From Morley's _Rousseau_, vol. ii, p. 227, _note_. (Eversley edition, 1910.) "Jefferson, who was American minister in France from 1784 to 1789, and absorbed a great many of the ideas then afloat, writes in words that seem as if they were borrowed from Rousseau: 'I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians), which live without government, enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under European governments. Among the former public opinion is in the state of law, and restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of government, they have divided the nation into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate; this is a true picture of Europe.'" (From Tucker's _Life of Jefferson_, vol. i, p. 255.) +Security without Government+ From _Tafilet_, p. 353. By W. B. Harris. (Blackwood, 1895.) "The Moors have a proverb, and it is a very true one, that safety and security can only be found in the districts where there is no government--that is to say, where the government is a _tribal_ one." +Degradation through "Civilisation"+ From _The Spiritualism of the Zulu_. By C. H. Bull, of Durban. "Thirty-two years ago, I lived for some time in a district in Natal, then thickly populated with natives, still conforming to the primitive customs of their race, yet honest, manly and intelligent people, with very definite ideas in regard to moral questions. After an absence of thirty years, just prior to my sailing for England, I again visited the district and was amazed to observe the change which had taken place in the people; their habits, characters and physique. Sordid poverty, dressed in mean rags or tawdry finery, suggestive of service to vice, had displaced the old dignity, born of conscious physical strength and symmetry of form, which once, though attired only in the trappings that simple art could devise from the rough products of nature, was characteristic; whilst drunkenness, dishonesty and immorality sought shelter under the meagre cloaks of the religion dispensed by the different sections of belief, established in the little iron, or wattle and daub churches, which everywhere disfigured the country side. The change was complete and deplorable, nor were the natives unconscious of their degradation, or without regret for the passing of the old days." +Slavery+ From Waitz's _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, vol. ii, p. 281. (Leipzig, 1860.) "One finds that the fate of Slaves among the ruder peoples is much happier than among the civilised; indeed it seems to grow worse and worse in proportion to the civilisation of the ruling folk. Strange and incredible as at first sight this seems, the following facts establish it beyond doubt. And indeed it is not difficult to explain. The chief reason is that with the increase of _merely material culture_, Time and Labour-force are more and more prized, and consequently always more violently and unscrupulously exploited, while on the contrary among primitive people in general a lesser value is placed on these things." +The Fraud of Western Civilisation+ Extract from "A Letter to a Chinese Gentleman," by Leo Tolstoy. (Published in _Saturday Review_, December 1, 1906.) "Amongst all these Western nations there unceasingly proceeds a strife between the destitute exasperated working people and the government and wealthy, a strife which is restrained only by coercion on the part of deceived men who constitute the army; a similar strife is continually waging between the different states demanding endlessly increasing armaments, a strife which is any moment ready to plunge into the greatest catastrophes. But however dreadful this state of things may be, it does not constitute the essence of the calamity of the Western nations. Their chief and fundamental calamity is that the whole life of these nations who are unable to furnish themselves with food is entirely based on the necessity of procuring means of sustenance by violence and cunning from other nations, who like China, India, Russia and others still preserve a rational agricultural life. "Constitutions, protective tariffs, standing armies, all this together has rendered the Western nations what they are--people who have abandoned agriculture and become unused to it, occupied in towns and factories in the production of articles for the most part unnecessary, people who with their armies are adapted only to every kind of violence and robbery. However brilliant their position may appear at first sight it is a desperate one, and they must inevitably perish if they do not change the whole structure of their life founded as it now is on deceit and the plunder and pillage of the agricultural nations." From O'Brien's _White Shadows in the South Seas_. (New York, 1919.) "A hundred years ago there were 160,000 Marquesans in these [South Sea] Islands. To-day their total number does not reach 2,100." O'Brien describes the bad effects of Christianity on these "savages." For he says the so-called superstitions of these races had a great vitalising influence. Their dancing, their tattooing, their religious rites, their chanting and their warfare gave them a zest in life. But "to-day all Polynesians from Hawaii to Tahiti are dying because of the suppression of the play-instinct that had its expression in most of their customs and occupations." And they are now "nothing but joyless machines" and "tired of life." +Failure of Our Civilisation+ For a searching comparison between our social conditions and those of the many savage communities visited by him--and much to the general advantage of the latter--_see_ A. R. Wallace's _Malay Archipelago_ (1st ed. 1869), pp. 456, 7 (ed. 1894). And he ends the book by saying: "Until there is a more general recognition of this failure of our civilisation--resulting mainly from our neglect to train and develop more thoroughly the sympathetic feelings and moral faculties of our nature, and to allow them a larger share of influence in our legislation, our commerce, and our whole social organisation--we shall never, as regards the whole community, attain to any real or important superiority over the better class of savages. This is the lesson I have been taught by my observations of uncivilised man. "I now bid my readers--Farewell!" FOOTNOTE: [50] Dall, _Alaska and its Resources_, Cambridge, U.S., 1870. _Printed in Great Britain by_ UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED WOKING AND LONDON ADVERTISEMENTS BOOKS BY EDWARD CARPENTER ANGELS' WINGS: Essays on Art and its Relation to Life. Illustrated. Large Cr. 8vo, 6s. 6d. net. [_Fifth Edition._ ART OF CREATION, THE: Essays on the Self and its Powers. Cr. 8vo, 5s. net. 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6568	----	SOCIOLOGY AND MODERN SOCIAL PROBLEMS BY CHARLES A. ELLWOOD, PH. D. Professor of Sociology, University of Missouri PREFACE This book is intended as an elementary text in sociology as applied to modern social problems, for use in institutions where but a short time can be given to the subject, in courses in sociology where it is desired to combine it with a study of current social problems on the one hand, and to correlate it with a course in economics on the other. The book is also especially suited for use in University Extension Courses and in Teachers' Reading Circles. This book aims to teach the simpler principles of sociology concretely and inductively. In Chapters I to VIII the elementary principles of sociology are stated and illustrated, chiefly through the study of the origin, development, structure, and functions of the family considered as a typical human institution; while in Chapters IX to XV certain special problems are considered in the light of these general principles. Inasmuch as the book aims to illustrate the working of certain factors in social organization and evolution by the study of concrete problems, interpretation has been emphasized rather than the social facts themselves. However, the book is not intended to be a contribution to sociological theory, and no attempt is made to give a systematic presentation of theory. Rather, the student's attention is called to certain obvious and elementary forces in the social life, and he is left to work out his own system of social theory. To guide the student in further reading, a brief list of select references in English has been appended to each chapter. Methodological discussions and much statistical and historical material have been omitted in order to make the text as simple as possible. These can be found in the references, or the teacher can supply them at his discretion. The many authorities to whom I am indebted for both facts and interpretations of facts cannot be mentioned individually, except that I wish to express my special indebtedness to my former teachers, Professor Willcox of Cornell and Professors Small and Henderson of the University of Chicago, to whom I am under obligation either directly or indirectly for much of the substance of this book. The list of references will also indicate in the main the sources of whatever is not my own. CHARLES A. ELLWOOD. UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI. CONTENTS CHAPTER I: THE STUDY OF SOCIETY CHAPTER II: THE BEARING OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION UPON SOCIAL PROBLEMS CHAPTER III: THE FUNCTION OF THE FAMILY IN SOCIAL ORGANIZATION CHAPTER IV: THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY CHAPTER V: THE FORMS OF THE FAMILY CHAPTER VI: THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAMILY CHAPTER VII: THE PROBLEM OF THE MODERN FAMILY CHAPTER VIII: THE GROWTH OF POPULATION CHAPTER IX: THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM CHAPTER X: THE NEGRO PROBLEM CHAPTER XI: THE PROBLEM OF THE CITY CHAPTER XII: POVERTY AND PAUPERISM CHAPTER XIII: CRIME CHAPTER XIV: SOCIALISM IN THE LIGHT OF SOCIOLOGY CHAPTER XV: EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS INDEX SOCIOLOGY AND MODERN SOCIAL PROBLEMS CHAPTER I THE STUDY OF SOCIETY What is Society?--Perhaps the great question which sociology seeks to answer is this question which we have put at the beginning. Just as biology seeks to answer the question "What is life?"; zoölogy, "What is an animal?"; botany, "What is a plant?"; so sociology seeks to answer the question "What is society?" or perhaps better, "What is association?" Just as biology, zoölogy, and botany cannot answer their questions until those sciences have reached their full and complete development, so also sociology cannot answer the question "What is society?" until it reaches its final development. Nevertheless, some conception or definition of society is necessary for the beginner, for in the scientific discussion of social problems we must know first of all what we are talking about. We must understand in a general way what society is, what sociology is, what the relations are between sociology and other sciences, before we can study the social problems of to-day from a sociological point of view. The word "society" is used scientifically to designate the reciprocal relations between individuals. More exactly, and using the term in a concrete sense, a society is any group of individuals who have more or less conscious relations to each other. We say conscious relations because it is not necessary that these relations be specialized into industrial, political, or ecclesiastical relations. Society is constituted by the mental interaction of individuals and exists wherever two or three individuals have reciprocal conscious relations to each other. Dependence upon a common economic environment, or the mere contiguity in space is not sufficient to constitute a society. It is the interdependence in function on the mental side, the contact and overlapping of our inner selves, which makes possible that form of collective life which we call society. Plants and lowly types of organisms do not constitute true societies, unless it can be shown that they have some degree of mentality. On the other hand, there is no reason for withholding the term "society" from many animal groups. These animal societies, however, are very different in many respects from human society, and are of interest to us only as certain of their forms throw light upon human society. We may dismiss with a word certain faulty conceptions of society. In some of the older sociological writings the word society is often used as nearly synonymous with the word nation. Now, a nation is a body of people politically organized into an independent government, and it is manifest that it is only one of many forms of human society. Another conception of society, which some have advocated, is that it is synonymous with the cultural group. That is, a society is any group of people that have a common civilization, or that are bearers of a certain type of culture. In this case Christendom, for example, would constitute a single society. Cultural groups no doubt are, again, one of the forms of human society, but only one among many. Both the cultural group and the nation are very imposing forms of society and hence have attracted the attention of social thinkers very often in the past to the neglect of the more humble forms. But it is evident that all forms of association are of equal interest to the sociologist, though, of course, this is not saying that all forms are of equal practical importance. Any form of association, or social group, which may be studied, if studied from the point of view of origin and development, whether it be a family, a neighborhood group, a city, a state, a trade union, or a party, will serve to reveal many of the problems of sociology. The natural or genetic social groups, however, such as the family, the community, and the nation, serve best to exhibit sociological problems. In this text we shall make particular use of the family, as the simplest and, in many ways, the most typical of all the forms of human association, to illustrate concretely the laws and principles of social development. Through the study of the simple and primary forms of association the problems of sociology can be much better attacked than through the study of society at large, or association in general. From what has been said it may be inferred that _society_ as a scientific term means scarcely more than the abstract term _association_, and this is correct. Association, indeed, may be regarded as the more scientific term of the two; at any rate it indicates more exactly what the sociologist deals with. A word may be said also as to the meaning of the word _social_. The sense in which this word will generally be used in this text is that of a collective adjective, referring to all that pertains to or relates to society in any way. The word social, then, is much broader than the words industrial, political, moral, religious, and embraces them all; that is, social phenomena are all phenomena which involve the interaction of two or more individuals. The word social, then, includes the economic, political, moral, religious, etc., and must not be thought of as something set in opposition to, for instance, the industrial or the political. Society and its Products.--Beneath all the forms and processes of human society lies the fact of association itself. Industry, government, and civilization itself must be regarded as expressions of collective human life rather than _vice versa_. Industry, for example, is one side or aspect of man's social life, and must not be mistaken for society itself. Industry, government, religion, education, art, and the like, are all products of the social life of man. Among these coördinate expressions of collective human life, industry, being concerned with the satisfying of the material needs of men, is perhaps fundamental to the rest. But this must not lead to the mistaken view that the social life of man can be interpreted completely through his industrial life; for, as has just been said, beneath industry and all other aspects of man's collective life lies the biological and psychological fact of association. This is equivalent to saying that industry itself must be interpreted in terms of the biology and psychology of human association. In other words, industrial problems, political problems, educational problems, and the like must be viewed from the collective or social standpoint rather than simply as detached problems by themselves. We must understand the biological and psychological aspects of man's social life before we can understand its special phases. The Origin of Society.--From the definition of society that we have given it is evident that society is something which springs from the very processes of life itself. It is not something which has been invented or planned by individuals. Life, in its higher forms at least, could not exist without association. From the very beginning the association of the sexes has been necessary for reproduction and for the care and rearing of offspring, and it has been not less necessary for the procuring of an adequate food supply and for protection against enemies. From the association necessary for reproduction has sprung family life and all the altruistic institutions of human society, while from the association for providing food supply have sprung society's industrial institutions. Neither society nor industry, therefore, has had a premeditated, reflective origin, but both have sprung up spontaneously from the needs of life and both have developed down to the present time at least with but little premeditated guidance. It is necessary that the student should understand at the outset that social organization is not a fabrication of the human intellect to any great degree, and the old idea that individuals who existed independently of society came together and deliberately planned a certain type of social organization is utterly without scientific validity. The individual and society are correlatives. We have no knowledge of individuals apart from society or society apart from individuals. What we do know is that human life everywhere is a collective or associated life, the individual being on the one hand largely an expression of the social life surrounding him and on the other hand society being largely an expression of individual character. The reasons for these assertions will appear later as we develop our subject. What is Sociology?--The science which deals with human association, its origin, development, forms, and functions, is sociology. Briefly, sociology is a science which deals with society as a whole and not with its separate aspects or phases. It attempts to formulate the laws or principles which govern social organization and social evolution. This means that the main problems of sociology are those of the organization of society on the one hand and the evolution of society on the other. These words, _organization_ and _evolution_, however, are used in a broader sense in sociology than they are generally used. By organization we mean any relation of the parts of society to each other. By evolution we mean, not necessarily change for the better, but orderly change of any sort. Sociology is, therefore, a science which deals with the laws or principles of social organization and of social change. Put in more exact terms this makes sociology, as we said at the beginning, the science of the origin, development, structure, and function of the forms of association. We may pass over very rapidly certain faulty conceptions of sociology. The first of these is that it is the study of social evils and their remedies. This conception is faulty because it makes sociology deal primarily with the abnormal rather than the normal conditions in society, and secondly, it is to be criticized because it makes sociology synonymous with scientific philanthropy. It is rather the science of philanthropy, which is an applied science resting upon sociology, that studies social evils and their remedies. This is not saying, of course, that sociology does not consider social evils, but that it considers them as incidents in the normal processes of social evolution rather than as its special matter. A second conception of sociology which is to be dismissed as inadequate is the conception that it is the science of social phenomena. This conception is not incorrect, but is somewhat vague, as there are manifestly other sciences of social phenomena, such as economics and political science. Such a conception of sociology would make it include everything in human society. A third faulty conception is that it is the science of human institutions. This is faulty because it again is too narrow. An institution is a _sanctioned_ form of human association, while sociology deals with the ephemeral and unsanctioned forms, such as we see in the phenomena of mobs, crazes, fads, fashions, and crimes, as well as with the sanctioned forms. A fourth conception which might be criticized is that sociology is the science of social organization. This makes sociology deal with the laws or principles of the relations of individuals to one another, and of institutions to one another. It is to be criticized as faulty because it fails to emphasize the evolution of those relations. All science is now evolutionary in spirit and in method and believes that things cannot be understood except as they are understood in their genesis and development. It would, therefore, perhaps be more correct to define sociology as the science of the evolution of human interrelations than to define it simply as the science of social organization. The Problems of Sociology.--The problems of sociology fall into two great classes; first, problems of the organization of society, and second, problems of the evolution of society. The problems of the organization of society are problems of the relations of individuals to one another and to institutions. Such problems are, for example, the influence of various elements in the physical environment upon the social organization; or, again, the influence of various elements in human nature upon the social order. These problems are, then, problems of society in a hypothetically stationary condition or at rest. For this reason Comte, the founder of modern sociology, called the division of sociology which deals with such problems _Social Statics_. But the problems which are of most interest and importance in sociology are those of social evolution. Under this head we have the problem of the origin of society in general and also of various forms of association. More important still are the problems of social progress and social retrogression; that is, the causes of the advancement of society to higher and more complex types of social organization and the causes of social decline. The former problem, social progress, is in a peculiar sense the central problem of sociology. The effort of theoretical sociology is to develop a scientific theory of social progress. The study of social evolution, then, that is, social changes of all sorts, as we have emphasized above, is the vital part of sociology; and it is manifest that only a general science of society like sociology is competent to deal with such a problem. Inasmuch as the problems of social evolution are problems of change, development, or movement in society, Comte proposed that this division of sociology be called _Social Dynamics_. The Relations of Sociology to Other Sciences. [Footnote: For a fuller discussion of the relations of sociology to other sciences and to philosophy see my article on "Sociology: Its Problems and Its Relations" in the _American Journal of Sociology_ for November, 1907.]--(A) _Relations to Biology and Psychology._ In attempting to give a scientific view of social organization and social evolution, sociology has to depend upon the other natural sciences, particularly upon biology and psychology. It is manifest that sociology must depend upon biology, since biology is the general science of life, and human society is but part of the world of life in general. It is manifest also that sociology must depend upon psychology to explain the interactions between individuals because these interactions are for the most part interactions between their minds. Thus on the one hand all social phenomena are vital phenomena and on the other hand nearly all social phenomena are mental phenomena. Every social problem has, in other words, its psychological and its biological sides, and sociology is distinguished from biology and psychology only as a matter of convenience. The scientific division of labor necessitates that certain scientific workers concern themselves with certain problems. Now, the problems with which the biologist and the psychologist deal are not the problems of the organization and evolution of society. Hence, while the sociologist borrows his principles of interpretation from biology and psychology, he has his own distinctive problems, and it is this fact which makes sociology a distinct science. Sociology is not so easily distinguished from the special social sciences like politics, economics, and others, as it is from the other general sciences. These sciences occupy the same field as sociology, that is, they have to do with social phenomena. But in general, as has already been pointed out, they are concerned chiefly with certain very special aspects or phases of the social life and not with its most general problems. If sociology, then, is dependent upon the other general sciences, particularly upon biology and psychology, it is obvious that its relation to the special sciences is the reverse, namely, these sciences are dependent upon sociology. This is only saying practically the same thing as was said above when we pointed out that industry, government, and religion are but expressions of human social life. In other words, sociology deals with the more general biological and psychological aspects of human association, while the special sciences of economics, politics, and the like, generally deal with certain products or highly specialized phases of society. (B) _Relations to History._ [Footnote: For a discussion of the practical relations between the teaching of history and of sociology, see my paper on "How History can be taught from a Sociological Point of View," in Education for January, 1910.] A word may be said about the relation of sociology to another science which also deals with human society in a general way, and that is history. History is a concrete, descriptive science of society which attempts to construct a picture of the social past. Sociology, however, is an abstract, theoretical science of society concerned with the laws and principles which govern social organization and social change. In a sense, sociology is narrower than history inasmuch as it is an abstract science, and in another sense it is wider than history because it concerns itself not only with the social past but also with the social present. The facts of contemporary social life are indeed even more important to the sociologist than the facts of history, although it is impossible to construct a theory of social evolution without taking into full account all the facts available in human history, and in this sense history becomes one of the very important methods of sociology. Upon its evolutionary or dynamic side sociology may be considered a sort of philosophy of history; at least it attempts to give a scientific theory which will explain the social changes which history describes concretely. (C) Relations to Economics. Economics is that special social science which deals with the wealth-getting and wealth-using activities of man. In other words, it is concerned with the commercial and industrial activities of man. As has already been implied, economics must be considered one of the most important of the special social sciences, if not the most important. Yet it is evident that the wealth-getting and wealth-using activities of man are strictly an outgrowth of his social life, and that economics as a science of human industry must rest upon sociology. Sometimes in the past the mistake has been made of supposing that economics dealt with the most fundamental social phenomena, and even at times economists have spoken of their science as alone sufficient to explain all social phenomena. It cannot be admitted, however, that we can explain social organization in general or social progress in terms of economic development. A theory of progress, for example, in which the sole causes of human progress were found in economic conditions would neglect political, religious, educational, and many other conditions. Only a very one-sided theory of society can be built upon such a basis. Economics should keep to its own sphere of explaining the commercial and industrial activities of man and not attempt to become a general science dealing with social evolution. This is now recognized by practically all economists of standing, and the only question which remains is whether economics is independent of sociology or whether it rests upon sociology. The view which has been presented thus far and which will be adhered to is that economics should rest upon sociology. That economics does rest upon sociology is shown by many considerations. The chief problem of theoretical economics is the problem of economic value. But economic value is but one sort of value which is recognized in society, moral and aesthetic values being other examples of the valuing process, and all values must express the collective judgment of some human group or other. The problem of economic value, in other words, reduces itself to a problem in social psychology, and when this is said it is equivalent to making economics dependent upon sociology, for social psychology is simply the psychological aspect of sociology. Again, industrial organization and industrial evolution are but parts or phases of social evolution in general, and it is safe to say that industry, both in its organization and evolution, cannot be understood apart from the general conditions, psychological and biological, which surround society. Again, many non-economic forces continually obtrude themselves upon the student of industrial conditions, such as custom, invention, imitation, standards, ideals, and the like. These are general social forces which play throughout all phases of human social life and so show the dependence of industry upon society in general, and, therefore, of economics upon sociology. Much more might be said in the way of concretely illustrating these statements, but the purpose of this text precludes anything but the briefest and most elementary statement of these theoretical facts. (D) _Relations to Politics._ We have already said that the state is one of the chief forms of human association. The science which treats of the state or of government is known as political science or politics. It is one of the oldest of the social sciences, having been more or less systematized by Aristotle. The problems of politics are those of the origin, nature, function, and development of government. It is manifest that politics, both on its practical and theoretical sides, has many close relations to sociology. While the state or nation must not be confused with society in general, yet because the state is the most imposing, if not the most important, form of human association, the relations of politics and sociology must be very intimate. On the one hand, political scientists can scarcely understand the origin, nature, and proper functions of government without understanding more or less about the social life generally; and, on the other hand, the sociologist finds that one of the most important facts of human society is that of social control, or of authority. While political science deals only with the organized authority manifested in the state, which we call government, yet inasmuch as this is the most important form of social control, and inasmuch as political organization is one of the chief manifestations of social organization, the sociologist can scarcely deal adequately with the great problems of social organization and evolution without constant reference to political science. An important branch of political science is jurisprudence, or the science of law. This, again, is closely related with sociology, on both its theoretical and practical sides. Law is, perhaps, the most important means of social control made use of by society, and the sociologist needs to understand something of the principles of law in order to understand the nature of the existing social order. On the other hand, the jurist needs to know the principles of social organization and evolution in general before he can understand the nature and purpose of law. (E) _Relations to Ethics._ [Footnote: For a full statement of my views regarding the relations of sociology and ethics, see my article on "The Sociological Basis of Ethics," in the _International Journal of Ethics_ for April, 1910.] Ethics is the science which deals with the right or wrong of human conduct. Its problems are the nature of morality and of moral obligation, the validity of moral ideals, the norms by which conduct is to be judged, and the like. While ethics was once considered to be a science of individual conduct it is now generally conceived as being essentially a social science. The moral and the social are indeed not clearly separable, but we may consider the moral to be the ideal aspect of the social. This view of morality, which, for the most part, is indorsed by modern thought, makes ethics dependent upon sociology for its criteria of rightness or wrongness. Indeed, we cannot argue any moral question nowadays unless we argue it in social terms. If we discuss the rightness or wrongness of the drink habit we try to show its social consequences. So, too, if we discuss the rightness or wrongness of such an institution as polygamy we find ourselves forced to do so mainly in social terms. This is not denying, of course, that there are religious and metaphysical aspects to morality,--these are not necessarily in conflict with the social aspects,--but it is saying that modern ethical theory is coming more and more to base itself upon the study of the remote social consequences of conduct, and that we cannot judge what is right or wrong in our complex society unless we know something of the social consequences. Ethics must be regarded, therefore, as a normative science to which sociology and the other social sciences lead up. It is, indeed, very difficult to separate ethics from sociology. It is the business of sociology to furnish norms and standards to ethics, and it is the business of ethics as a science to take the norms and standards furnished by the social sciences, to develop them, and to criticize them. This text therefore, will not attempt to exclude ethical implications and judgments from sociological discussions, because that would be futile and childish. (F) _Relations to Education._ Among the applied sciences, sociology is especially closely related to education, for education is not simply the art of developing the powers and capacities of the individual; it is rather the fitting of individuals for efficient membership, for proper functioning, in social life. On its individual side, education should initiate the individual into the social life and fit him for social service. It should create the good citizen. On the social or public side, education should be the chief means of social progress. It should regenerate society, by fitting the individual for a higher type of social life than at present achieved. We must have a socialized education if our present complex civilization is to endure. Social problems touch education on every side, and, on the other hand, education must bear upon every social problem. It is evident, therefore, that sociology has a very great bearing upon the problems of education; and the teacher who comes to his task equipped with a knowledge of social conditions and of the laws and principles of social organization and evolution will find a significance and meaning in his work which he could hardly otherwise find. (G) _Relations to Philanthropy._[Footnote: This topic is more fully discussed in my article on "Philanthropy and Sociology" in The Survey for June 4, 1910.] The great science which deals directly with the depressed classes in society and with their uplift may be called the science of philanthropy. It may be regarded as an applied department of sociology. The science of philanthropy is especially concerned with the prevention, as well as with the curative treatment, of dependency, defectiveness, and delinquency. That part which deals with the social treatment of the criminal class is generally called penology, while the subdivision which treats of dependents and defectives is generally known as "charities" or "charitology." It is evident that there are very close relations between the science of philanthropy and sociology. The elimination of hereditary defects, the overcoming of the social maladjustment of individuals, and the correction of defective social conditions, the three great tasks of scientific philanthropy, all require great knowledge of human society. The social or philanthropic worker, therefore, requires thorough equipment in sociology that he may approach his tasks aright. The Relation of Sociology to Socialism.--Curiously enough sociology is often confused with socialism by those who pay but little attention to scientific matters. This comes from the fact that some of the adherents of socialism claim that socialism is a science. As a matter of fact, socialism is primarily a party program. It is the platform of a social and political party that has as the main tenet of its creed the abolition of private property in the means of production. Socialism, in other words, is a scheme to revolutionize the present order of society. It cannot claim to be a science in any sense, though it may rest upon theories which its adherents believe to be scientific. Sociology, on the other hand, is a science, and is concerned not with revolutionizing the social order, but with studying and understanding social conditions, especially the more fundamental conditions upon which social organization and social changes depend. As a science it aims simply at understanding society, at getting at the truth. It is no more related logically to socialism than to the platform of the Republican or the Democratic party. The theories upon which revolutionary socialism rest may be proved or disproved by scientific sociology. It is perhaps too early to say finally whether sociology will pronounce the theoretical assumptions of socialism correct or incorrect; but so far as we can see it seems probable that the theories of social evolution advocated by the Marxian socialists at least will be pronounced erroneous. In any case, there is no logical connection between sociology as a science and socialism as a program for social reconstruction. Nevertheless, there has been a close connection between sociology and socialism historically. It has been largely the agitations of the socialists and other radical social reformers which have called attention to the need of a scientific understanding of human society. The socialists and other radical reformers, in other words, have very largely set the problem which sociology attempts to solve. Practically, moreover, the indictments and charges of the socialists and anarchists against the present social order have made necessary some study of that order to see whether these charges were well founded or not. In this sense sociology may be said to be a scientific answer to socialism, not in the sense that sociology is devoted to refuting socialism, but in the sense that sociology has been devoted very largely to inquiring into many of the theoretical assumptions which revolutionary socialism makes. The further relations of sociology to socialism will be taken up later. Here we are only concerned to have the reader see that there is a sharp distinction between the sociological movement on the one hand, that is, the movement to obtain fuller and more accurate knowledge concerning human social life, and the socialist movement, the movement to revolutionize the present social and economic order. Moreover, it may be remarked that while socialism seems to be mainly an economic program, it involves such total and radical reconstruction of social organization that in the long run the claims of socialism to a scientific validity must be passed upon by sociology rather than by economics. The Relation of Sociology to Social Reform.--From what has been said it is also evident that sociology must not be confused with any particular social reform movement or with the movement for social reform in general. Sociology, as a science, cannot afford to be developed in the interest of any social reform. Certain social reforms, sociology may give its approval to; others it may designate as unwise; but this approval or disapproval will be simply incidental to its discovery of the full truth about human social relations. This is not saying, of course, that social theory should be divorced from social practice, or that the knowledge which sociology and the other social sciences offer concerning human society has no practical bearing upon present social conditions. On the contrary, while all science aims abstractly at the truth, all science is practical also in a deeper sense. No science would ever have been developed if it were not conceived that the knowledge which it discovers will ultimately be of benefit to man. All science exists, therefore, to benefit man, to enable him to master his environment, and the social sciences not less than the other sciences. The physical sciences have already enabled man to attain to a considerable mastery over his physical environment. When the social sciences have been developed it is safe to say that they will enable man not less to master his social environment. Therefore, while sociology and the special social sciences present as yet no program for action, aiming simply at the discovery of the abstract truth, they will undoubtedly in time bring about vast changes for the betterment of social conditions. SELECT REFERENCES _For Brief Reading:_ WARD, _Outlines of Sociology,_ Chaps. I-VIII. ROSS, _The foundations of Sociology,_ Chaps. I and II. DEALEY, _Sociology, Its simpler Teachings and Applications,_ Chap. I. _For More Extended Reading:_ GIDDINGS, _The Principles of Sociology,_ 3d edition. SMALL, _General Sociology._ SPENCER, _The Study of Sociology._ STUCKENBERG, _Sociology: The Science of Human Society._ WARD, _Pure Sociology._ _American Journal of Sociology_, many articles. For a fairly extensive bibliography on sociology, consult Howard's General Sociology: An Analytical Reference Syllabus. CHAPTER II THE BEARING OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION UPON SOCIAL PROBLEMS Since Darwin wrote his _Origin of Species_ all the sciences in any way connected with biology have been profoundly influenced by his theory of evolution. It is important that the student of sociology, therefore, should understand at the outset something of the bearing of Darwin's theory upon social problems. We may note at the beginning, however, that the word _evolution_ has two distinct, though related, meanings. First, it usually means Darwin's doctrine of descent; secondly, it is used to designate Spencer's theory of universal evolution. Let us note somewhat in detail what evolution means in the first of these senses. The Darwinian Theory of Descent.--Darwin's theory of descent is the doctrine that all forms of life now existing or that have existed upon the earth have sprung from a few simple primitive types. According to this theory all forms of animals and plants have sprung from a few primitive stocks, though not necessarily one, because even in the beginning there may have existed a distinction at least between the plant and the animal types. So far as the animal world is concerned, then, this theory amounts to the assertion of the kinship of all life. From one or more simple primitive unicellular forms have arisen the great multitude of multicellular forms that now exist. Popularly, Darwin's theory is supposed to be that man sprang from the apes, but this, strictly speaking, is a misconception. Darwin's theory necessitates the belief, not that man sprang from any existing species of ape, but rather that the apes and man have sprung from some common stock. It is equally true, however, that man and many other of the lower animals, according to this theory, have come from a common stock. As was said above, the theory is not a theory of the descent of man from any particular animal type, but rather the theory of the kinship, the genetic relationship, of all animal species. It is evident that if we assume Darwin's theory of descent in sociology we must look for the beginnings of many peculiarly human things in the animal world below man. Human institutions, according to this theory, could not be supposed to have an independent origin, or human society in any of its forms to be a fact by itself, but rather all human things are connected with the whole world of animal life below man. Thus if we are, according to this theory, to look for the origin of the family, we should have to turn first of all to the habits of animals nearest man. This is only one of the many bearings which Darwin's theory has upon the study of social problems; but it is evident even from this that it revolutionizes sociology. So long as it was possible to look upon human society as a distinct creation, as something isolated, by itself in nature, it was possible to hold to intellectualistic views of the origin of human institutions. But some one may ask: Why should the sociologist accept Darwin's theory? What proofs does it rest upon? What warrant has a student of sociology for accepting a doctrine of such far-reaching consequences? The reply is, that biologists, generally, during the last fifty years, after a careful study of Darwin's arguments and after a careful examination of all other evidence, have come substantially to agree with him. There is no great biologist now living who does not accept the essentials of the doctrine of descent. Five lines of proof may be offered in support of Darwin's theories, and it may be well for us, as students of sociology, briefly to review these. (1) The homologies or similarities of structure of different animals. There are very striking similarities of structure between all the higher animals. Between the ape and man, for example, there are over one hundred and fifty such anatomical homologies; that is, in the ape we find bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, corresponding to the structure of the human body. Even an animal so remotely related to man as the cat has many more resemblances to man in anatomical structure than dissimilarities. Now, the meaning of these anatomical homologies, biologists say, is that these animals are genetically related, that is, they had a common ancestry at some remote period in the past. (2) The presence of vestigial organs in the higher animals supplies another argument for the belief in common descent. In man, for example, there exist over one hundred of these vestigial or rudimentary organs, as the vermiform appendix, the pineal gland, and the like. Many of these vestigal organs, which are now functionless in man, perform functions in lower animals, and this is held to show that at some remote period in the past they also functioned in man's ancestors. (3) The facts of embryology seem to point to the descent of the higher types of animals from the lower types. The embryo or fetus in its development seems to recapitulate the various stages through which the species has passed. Thus the human embryo at one stage of its development resembles the fish; at another stage, the embryo of a dog; and for a long time it is impossible to distinguish between the human embryo and that of one of the larger apes. These embryological facts, biologists say, indicate genetic relation between the various animal forms which the embryo in its different stages simulates. (4) The fossil remains of extinct species of animals are found in the earth's crust which are evidently ancestors of existing species. Until the doctrine of descent was accepted there was no way of explaining the presence of these fossil remains of extinct animals in the earth's crust. It was supposed by some that the earth had passed through a series of cataclysms in which all forms of life upon the earth had been many times destroyed and many times re-created. It is now demonstrated, however, that these fossils are related to existing species, and sometimes it is possible to trace back the evolution of existing forms to very primitive forms in this way. For example, it is possible to trace the horse, which is now an animal with a single hoof, walking on a single toe, back to an animal that walked upon four toes and had four hoofs and was not much larger than a fox. It is not so generally known that it is also possible to trace man back through fossil human remains that have been discovered in the earth's crust to the time when he is apparently just emerging from some apelike form. The latest discovery of the fossil remains of man made by Dr. Dubois in Java in 1894 shows a creature with about half the brain capacity of the existing civilized man and with many apelike characteristics. Thus we cannot except even man from the theory of evolution and suppose that he was especially created, as Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin's contemporary and colaborer, and others, have supposed. (5) The last line of argument in favor of the belief that all existing species have descended from a few simple primitive forms is found in the fact of the variation of animals through artificial selection under domestication. For generations breeders have known that by carefully selecting the type of animal or plant which they have desired, it is possible to produce approximately that type. Thus have originated all the breeds or varieties of domestic plants and animals. Now, Darwin conceived that nature also exercises a selection by weeding out those individuals that are not adapted to their environment. In other words, nature, though unconscious, selects in a negative way the stronger and the better adapted. Animals vary in nature as well as under domestication from causes not yet well understood. The variations that were favorable to survival, Darwin argued, would secure the survival, through the passing on of these variations by heredity of the better adapted types of plants and animals. The natural process of weeding out the inferior or least adapted through early death, or through failure to reproduce, Darwin called "natural selection", and likened it in its effect upon organisms to the artificial selection which breeders consciously use to secure types of plants or animals that they desire. The only great addition to Darwin's theories which has been made since he wrote is that of the Dutch botanist, Hugo de Vries, who has shown that the variations which are fruitful for the production of new species are probably great or discontinuous variations, which he terms "mutations," instead of the small fluctuating variations which Darwin thought were probably most important in the production of new species. De Vries' theory in no way affects the doctrine of descent, nor does it take away from the importance of natural selection in fixing the variations. Darwin's theory, therefore, stands in all of its essentials to-day unquestioned by men of science, and it must be assumed by the student of sociology in any attempt to explain social evolution. Spencer's Theory of Universal Evolution.--A second meaning given to the word _evolution_ is that which Spencer popularized in his _First Principles_. This is a philosophical theory of the universe which asserts that not only have species of animals come to be what they are through a process of development, but everything whatsoever that exists, from molecules of matter to stars and planets. It is the view that the universe is in a process of development. Evolution in this wider sense includes all existing things whatsoever, while evolution in the sense of Darwin's theory is confined to the organic world. While the theory that all things existing have through a process of orderly change come to be what they are, is a very old one, yet it was undoubtedly Spencer's writings which popularized the theory, and to Spencer we also owe the attempt in his Synthetic Philosophy to trace the working of evolution in all the different realms of phenomena. The belief in universal evolution which Spencer popularized has also come to be generally accepted by scientific and philosophical thinkers. While Spencer's particular theories of evolution may not be accepted, some form of universal evolution is very generally believed in. The thought of evolution now dominates all the sciences,--physical, biological, psychological, and sociological. It is evident that the student of society, if he accepts fully the modern scientific spirit, must also assume evolution in this second or universal sense. The Different Phases of Universal Evolution.--It may be well, in order to correlate our knowledge of social evolution with knowledge in general, to note the different well-marked phases of universal evolution. (1) _Cosmic Evolution._ This is the phase the astronomer and the geologist are particularly interested in. It deals with the evolution of worlds. In this phase we are dealing merely with physical matter, and it is supposed that the active principle which works in this phase of evolution is the attraction of particles of matter for one another. This leads to the condensation of matter into suns and their planets, and the geological evolution of the earth, for example. Laplace's nebular hypothesis is an attempt to give an adequate statement of the cosmic phase of evolution. While this hypothesis has been much criticized of late, in its essentials it seems to stand. We are not, however, as students of society, concerned with this phase of evolution. (2) _Organic Evolution._ This is the phase of evolution with which Darwin dealt and which biology, as a science of evolution of living forms, deals with. The great merit of Darwin's work was that he showed that the active principle in this phase of evolution is natural selection; that is, the extermination of the unadapted through death or through failure to reproduce. Types unsuited to their environment thus die before reproduction. The stronger and better fitted survive, and thus the type is raised. Natural selection may be regarded, then, as essentially the creative force in this phase of evolution. (3) _The Evolution of Mind._ This might be included in organic evolution, but all organisms do not apparently have minds. It is evident that among animals those that would stand the best chance of surviving would not be simply those that have the strongest brute strength, but rather those that have the keenest intelligence and that could adapt themselves quickly to their environment, that could see approaching danger and escape it. Natural selection has, therefore, favored in the animal world the survival of those animals with the highest type of intelligence. It cannot be said, however, that natural selection is the only force which has created the mind in all its various expressions. (4) _Social Evolution._ By social evolution we mean the evolution of groups, or, in strict accordance with our definition of society, groups of psychically interconnected individuals. Groups are to be found throughout the animal world, and it is in the human species, as we have already seen, that the highest types of association are found. This is not an accident. Association, or living together in groups, has been one of the devices by which animal species have been enabled to survive. It is evident that not only would intelligence help an animal to survive more than brute strength, but that ability to cooperate with one's fellows would also help in the same way. Consequently we find a degree of combination or coöperation almost at the very beginning of life, and it is without doubt through coöperation that man has become the dominant and supreme species upon the planet. Man's social instincts, in other words, have been perhaps even more important for his survival than his intelligence. The man who lies, cheats, and steals, or who indulges in other unsocial conduct sets himself against his group and places his group at a disadvantage as compared with other groups. Now, natural selection is continually operating upon groups as well as upon individuals, and the group which can command the most loyal, most efficient membership, and has the best organization, is, other things being equal, the group which survives. Natural selection is, then, active in social evolution as well as in general organic evolution. But the distinctive principle of social evolution is coöperation. In other words, it is sympathetic feeling, altruism, which has made the higher types of social evolution possible. While the same factors are at work in the higher phases of evolution which are at work in the lower phases, yet it is evident that the higher phases have new and distinct factors. Sociology, being especially concerned with social evolution, has a new and distinct factor at work which we may call association, coöperation, or combination, and this it is which gives sociology its distinct place in the list of general sciences. Factors In Organic Evolution.--As has already been said, the factors which are at work in organic evolution generally are also at work in social evolution. We need, therefore, to note these factors carefully and to see how they are at work in human society as well as in the animal world below man. While these factors are not all of the factors which are at work in social evolution, still they are the primitive factors, and are, therefore, of fundamental importance. Let us see what these factors are. (1) _The Multiplication of Organisms in Some Geometric Ratio through Reproduction._ It is a law of life that every species must increase so that the number of offspring exceeds the number of parents if the species is to survive. If the offspring only equal in number the parents, some of them will die before maturity is reached or will fail to reproduce, and so the species will gradually become extinct. Every species normally increases, therefore, in some geometric ratio. Now, this tendency to reproduce in some geometric ratio, which characterizes all living organisms, means that any species, if left to itself, would soon reach such numbers as to occupy the whole earth. Darwin showed, for example, that though the elephant is the slowest breeding of all animals, if every elephant lived its normal length of life (one hundred years) and to every pair were born six offspring, then, at the end of seven hundred years there would be nineteen million living elephants descended from a single pair. This illustration shows the enormous possibilities of any species reproducing in geometric ratio, as all species in order to survive must do. That this tendency to increase in some geometric ratio applies also to man is evident from all of the facts which we know concerning human populations. It is not infrequent for a people to double its numbers every twenty-five years. If this were continued for any length of time, it is evident that a single nation could soon populate the whole earth. (2) _Heredity._ Heredity in organic evolution secures a continuity of the species or racial type. By heredity is meant the resemblance between parent and offspring. It is the law that like begets like. Offspring born of a species belong to that species, and usually resemble their parents more closely even than other members of the species. It is evident that heredity is at work also in human society as well as in the animal world. We do not expect that the children born of parents of one race, for example, will belong to another race. Racial heredity is one of the most significant facts of human society, and even family heredity counts in its influence far more than some have supposed. (3) _Variation._ This factor in organic evolution means that no two individuals, even though born of the same parents, are exactly like each other. Neither are they of a type exactly between their two parents, as theoretically they should be, since inheritance is equal from both parents. Every new individual born in the organic world, while it resembles its parents and belongs to its species or race, varies within certain limits. This variation so runs through organic nature that we are told that there are no two leaves on a single tree exactly alike. The result of this variation, the causes of which are not yet well understood, is that some individuals vary in favorable directions, others in unfavorable directions. Some are born strong, some weak; some inferior, some superior. It is evident that variation characterizes the human species quite as much as other species, and indeed the limits of variation are wider, probably, in the human species than in any other species. Man is the most variable of all animals, and human individuality and personality owe not a little of their distinctiveness to this fact. (4) _The Struggle for Existence._ Individuals in all species, as we have seen, are born in larger numbers than is necessary. The result is that a competition is entered into between species and individuals within the species for place and for existence. This competition or struggle results in the dying out of the inferior, that is, of those who are not adapted to their environment. The gradual dying out of the inferior or unadapted through competition results in the survival of the superior or better adapted, and ultimately in the survival of the fittest or those most adapted. Thus the type is raised, and we have evolution through natural selection, that is, through the elimination of the unfit. Some have thought that this struggle for existence which is so evident in the animal world does not take place in human society. This, however, is a mistake. The struggle for existence in human society is not an unmitigated one, as it seems to be very often in the animal world, but it is nevertheless a struggle which has the same consequences. In the human world the competition, except in the lower classes, is not so much for food, as it is for position and for supremacy. But this struggle for place and power results in human society in the weak and inferior going to the wall, and therefore ultimately in their elimination. In all essential respects, then, the struggle for existence goes on in human society as it does in the animal world. This means that in society, as in the animal world, progress comes primarily through the elimination of unfit individuals. The unfit in human society, as we shall see, are especially those who cannot adapt themselves to their social environment. Progress in society, in a certain sense, waits upon death, as it does in all the rest of the animal world. Death is the means by which the stream of life is purged from its inferior and unfit elements. (5) _Another Factor in Organic Evolution is Coöperation_, or altruism, as we have already called it. As Henry Drummond has said, this is the struggle not for one's own life but for the lives of others. Really, however, it is a device which enables a group of individuals to struggle more successfully with the adverse factors in their environment. Something of coöperation,--that is, a group of individuals carrying on a common life,--is found almost at the beginning of life, and, as we rise in the scale of animal creation, the amount of coöperation and of altruistic feelings which accompany it very greatly increases. Perhaps the chief source of this coöperation is to be found in the rearing of offspring. The family group, even in the lower animals, seems to be the chief source of altruism. At any rate, sympathetic or altruistic instincts grow up in all animals, probably chiefly through the necessities of reproduction. It is only in human social life that coöperation, or altruism, attains its full development. Human society is characterized by the protection it affords to its weaker members, and in human society the natural process of eliminating the inferior often seems reversed. As Huxley has pointed out, human society tries to fit as many as possible to survive, and we may add, not only to survive, but to live well. Altruism and its resulting coöperation have come especially to characterize human social evolution. To some extent this is due, no doubt, to the necessities of group survival; for only that nation, for example, can survive that can maintain the most loyal citizenship, the best institutions, and the largest spirit of self-sacrifice in its members. Human social groups, therefore, try to fit as many individuals as possible for the most efficient membership, and this necessitates caring for the temporarily weak, and also for the permanently incapacitated, in order that the sentiments of social solidarity may be strengthened to their utmost. It is evident, then, that all the factors at work in organic evolution are at work also in social evolution, though in some part modified and varying in degree. The struggle for existence in human society, for example, has been greatly modified from the condition in the early animal world, while coöperation, or altruism, is much more highly developed. Nevertheless, these factors of organic evolution are at work in social evolution and must be taken into full account by the student of social problems. Social evolution rests upon organic evolution. Some Effects upon Industry.--These factors in organic evolution express themselves more or less in the industrial phase of human society. Thus, the first factor, the multiplication of organisms through reproduction in some geometric ratio, was first studied by Malthus, an economist in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and exclusively with reference to its effect upon economic conditions. Malthus perceived the tendency for human beings to multiply in some geometric ratio where food supply was sufficiently abundant, and argued from this that if better wages, and so a larger food supply, were given the lower classes, they would multiply so much more rapidly that worse poverty would result than before. There is no doubt that in certain classes of human society there is a tendency for population to press against food supply, and it is in these classes that the struggle for existence takes on its most animal-like forms. Again, the struggle for existence is continually illustrated in the world of human industry. Not only do individuals lose place and power because they are unadapted to their environment, but also economic groups, such as corporations, show the natural competition or struggle for existence sometimes in its most intense form. The result in all cases is the dying out of the least adapted and the survival of the better adapted. Thus, through competition and the survival of the better adapted we secure in industry the evolution of higher types of industrial organization, industrial methods, and the like, just as higher types are secured in the same way in the animal world. Again, in economic matters, as in other social affairs, coöperation continually comes in to modify competition and to lift it to a higher plane. Just as the higher type of societies has been characterized by higher types of coöperation, so it is safe to say that the higher types of industry are characterized by higher types of coöperation. And while, as we shall see later, coöperation can never displace competition in industry any more than elsewhere in life, yet increasing coöperation characterizes the higher types of industry as well as the higher types of society. A word of caution is perhaps necessary against confusing the economic struggle as it exists in modern society with the natural struggle under primitive conditions. It is evident that in present society the economic struggle has been greatly changed in character from the primitive struggle, and therefore can no longer have the same results. Laws of inheritance, of taxation, and many other artificial economic conditions, have greatly interfered with the natural struggle. The rich and economically successful are therefore by no means to be confused with the biologically fit. On the contrary, many of the economically successful are such simply through artificial advantageous circumstances, and from the standpoint of biology and sociology they are often among the less fit, rather than the more fit, elements of society. A Brief Survey of Social Evolution from the Biological Standpoint.--In order to sum up and make clear some of the principal applications to social evolution of the biological principles just stated we shall endeavor to state in a brief way some of the salient features of social evolution from the biological standpoint. From the very beginning there has been no such thing as unmitigated individual struggle among animals. Nowhere in nature does pure individualism exist in the sense that the individual animal struggles alone, except perhaps in a few solitary species which are apparently on the way to extinction. The assumption of such a primitive individual struggle has been at the bottom of many erroneous views of human society. The primary conflict is between species. A secondary conflict, however, is always found between the members of the same species. Usually this conflict within the species is a competition between groups. The human species exactly illustrates these statements. Primitively its great conflict was with other species of animals. The supremacy of man over the rest of the animal world was won only after an age-long conflict between man and his animal rivals. While this conflict went on there was apparently but little struggle within the species itself. The lowest groups of which we have knowledge, while continually struggling against nature, are rarely at war with one another. But after man had won his supremacy and the population of groups came to increase so as to encroach seriously upon food supply, and even on territorial limits of space, then a conflict between human groups, which we call war, broke out and became almost second nature to man. It needs to be emphasized, however, that the most primitive groups are not warlike, but only those that have achieved their supremacy over nature and attained considerable size. In other words, the struggle between groups which we call war was occasioned very largely by numbers and food supply. To this extent at least war primitively arose from economic conditions, and it is remarkable how economic conditions have been instrumental in bringing about all the great wars of recorded human history. The conflict among human groups, which we call war, has had an immense effect upon human social evolution. Five chief effects must be noted. (1) Intergroup struggle gave rise to higher forms of social organization, because only those groups could succeed in competition with other groups that were well organized, and especially only those that had competent leadership. (2) Government, as we understand the word, was very largely an outcome of the necessities of this intergroup struggle, or war. As we have already seen, the groups that were best organized, that had the most competent leadership, would stand the best chance of surviving. Consequently the war leader or chief soon came, through habit, to be looked upon as the head of the group in all matters. Moreover, the exigencies and stresses of war frequently necessitated giving the war chief supreme authority in times of danger, and from this, without doubt, arose despotism in all of its forms. The most primitive tribes are republican or democratic in their form of government, but it has been found that despotic forms of government rapidly take the place of the primitive democratic type, where a people are continually at war with other peoples. (3) A third result of war in primitive times was the creation of social classes. After a certain stage was reached groups tried not so much to exterminate one another as to conquer and absorb one another. This was, of course, after agriculture had been developed and slave labor had reached a considerable value. Under such circumstances a conquered group would be incorporated by the conquerors as a slave or subject class. Later, this enslaved class may have become partially free as compared with some more recently subjugated or enslaved classes, and several classes in this way could emerge in a group through war or conquest. Moreover, the presence of these alien and subject elements in a group necessitated a stronger and more centralized government to keep them in control, and this was again one way in which war favored a development of despotic governments. Later, of course, economic conditions gave rise to classes, and to certain struggles between the classes composing a people. (4) Not only was social and political organization and the evolution of classes favored by intergroup struggle, but also the evolution of morality. The group that could be most efficiently organized would be, other things being equal, the group which had the most loyal and most self-sacrificing membership. The group that lacked a group spirit, that is, strong sentiments of solidarity and harmonious relations between its members, would be the group that would be apt to lose in conflict with other groups, and so its type would tend to be eliminated. Consequently in all human groups we find recognition of certain standards of conduct which are binding as between members of the same group. For example, while a savage might incur no odium through killing a member of another group, he was almost always certain to incur either death or exile through killing a member of his own group. Hence arose a group code of ethics founded very largely upon the conceptions of kinship or blood relationship, which bound all members of a primitive group to one another. (5) A final consequence of war among human groups has been the absorption of weaker groups and the growth of larger and larger political groups, until in modern times a few great nations dominate the population of the whole world. That this was not the primitive condition, we know from human history and from other facts which indicate the disappearance of a vast number of human groups in the past. The earth is a burial ground of tribes and natrons as well as of individuals. In the competition between human groups, only a few that have had efficient organization and government, loyal membership and high standards of conduct within the group, have survived. The number of peoples that have perished in the past is impossible to estimate. But we can get some inkling of the number by the fact that philologists estimate that for every living language there are twenty dead languages. When we remember that a language not infrequently stands for several groups with related cultures, we can guess the immense number of human societies that have perished in the past in this intergroup competition. Even though war passes away entirely, nations can never escape this competition with one another. While the competition may not be upon the low and brutal plane of war, it will certainly go on upon the higher plane of commerce and industry, and will probably be on this higher plane quite as decisive in the life of peoples in future as war was in the past. While the primary struggle within the human species has been in the historic period between nations and races, this is not saying, of course, that struggle and competition have not gone on within these larger groups. On the contrary, as has already been implied, a continual struggle has gone on between classes, first perhaps of racial origin, and later of economic origin. Also there is within the nation a struggle between parties and sects, and sometimes between "sections" and communities. Usually, however, the struggle within the nation is a peaceful one and does not come to bloodshed. Again, within each of these minor groups that we have mentioned struggle and competition in some modified form goes on between its members. Thus within a party or class there is apt to be a struggle or competition between factions. There is, indeed, no human group that is free from struggle or competition between its members, unless it be the family. The family seems to be so constituted that normally there is no competition between its members,--at least, there is good ground tor believing that competition between the members of a family is to be considered exceptional, or even abnormal. From what has been said it is evident that competition and coöperation are twin principles in the evolution of social groups. While competition characterizes in the main the relation between groups, especially independent political groups, and while coöperation characterizes in the main the relation of the members of a given group to one another, still competition and coöperation are correlatives in practically every phase of the social life. Some degree of competition, for example, has to be maintained by every group between its members if it is going to maintain high standards of efficiency or of loyalty. If there were no competition with respect to the matters that concern the inner life of groups, it is evident that the groups would soon lose efficiency in leadership and in membership and would sooner or later be eliminated. Consequently society, from certain points of view, presents itself to the student at the present time as a vast competition, while from other standpoints it presents itself as a vast coöperation. It follows from this that competition and coöperation are both equally important in the life of society. It has been a favorite idea that competition among human beings should be done away with, and that coöperation should be substituted to take its place entirely. It is evident, however, that this idea is impossible of realization. If a social group were to check all competition between its members, it would stop thereby the process of natural selection or of the elimination of the unfit, and, as a consequence, would soon cease to progress. If some scheme of artificial selection were substituted to take the place of natural selection, it is evident that competition would still have to be retained to determine who were the fittest. A society that would give positions of trust and responsibility to individuals without imposing some competitive test upon them would be like a ship built partially of good and partially of rotten wood,--it would soon go to pieces. This leads us to emphasize the continued necessity of selection in society. No doubt natural selection is often a brutal and wasteful means of eliminating the weak in human societies, and no doubt human reason might devise superior means of bringing about the selection of individuals which society must maintain. To some extent it has done this through systems of education and the like, which are, in the main, selective processes for picking out the most competent individuals to perform certain social functions. But the natural competition, or struggle between individuals, has not been done away with, especially in economic matters, and it is evidently impossible to do away with it until some vast scheme of artificial selection can take its place. Such a scheme is so far in the future that it is hardly worth talking about. The best that society can apparently do at the present time is to regulate the natural competition between individuals, and this it is doing increasingly. What people rightfully object to is, not competition, but unregulated or unfair competition. In the interest of solidarity, that is, in the interest of the life of the group as a whole, all forms of competition in human society should be so regulated that the rules governing the competition may be known and the competition itself public. It is evident that in politics and in business we are very far from this ideal as yet, although society is unquestionably moving toward it. A word in conclusion about the nature of moral codes and standards from the social point of view. It is evident that moral codes from the social point of view are simply formulations of standards of conduct which groups find it convenient or necessary to impose upon their members. Even morality, in an idealistic sense, seems from a sociological standpoint to be those forms of conduct which conduce to social harmony, to social efficiency, and so to the survival of the group. Groups, however, as we have already pointed out, cannot do as they please. They are always hard-pressed in competition by other groups and have to meet the standards of efficiency which nature imposes. Morality, therefore, is not anything arbitrarily designed by the group, but is a standard of conduct which necessities of social survival require. In other words, the right, from the point of view of natural science, is that which ultimately conduces to survival, not of the individual, but of the group or of the species. This is looking at morality, of course, from the sociological point of view, and in no way denies the religious and metaphysical view of morality, which may be equally valid from a different standpoint. Finally, we need to note that natural selection does not necessitate in any mechanical sense certain conduct on the part of individuals or groups. Rather, natural selection marks the limits of variation which nature permits, and within those limits of variation there is a large amount of freedom of choice, both to individuals and to groups. Human societies, therefore, may be conceivably free to take one of several paths of development at any particular point. But in the long run they must conform to the ultimate conditions of survival; and this probably means that the goal of their evolution is largely fixed for them. Human groups are free only in the sense that they may go either backward or forward on the path which the conditions of survival mark out for them. They are free to progress or to perish. But social evolution in any case, in the sense of social change either toward higher or toward lower social adaptation, is a necessity that cannot be escaped. Sociology and all social science is, therefore, a study not of what human groups would like to do, but of what they must do in order to survive, that is, how they can control their environment by utilizing the laws which govern universal evolution. From this brief and most elementary consideration of the bearings of evolutionary theory upon social problems it is evident that evolution, in the sense of what we know about the development of life and society in the past, must be the guidepost of the sociologist. Human social evolution, we repeat, rests upon and is conditioned by biological evolution at every point. There is, therefore, scarcely any sanity in sociology without the biological point of view. SELECT REFERENCES _For brief reading:_ FAIRBANKS, _Introduction to Sociology,_ Chaps. XIV.-XV. JORDAN, _Foot-Notes to Evolution,_ Chaps. I.-III. ELY, _Evolution of Industrial Society._ Part II, Chaps. I.-III. _For more extended reading:_ DARWIN, _Descent of Man._ FISKE, _Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy._ WALLACE, _Darwinism._ _On the religious aspects of evolution:_ DRUMMOND, _Ascent of Man._ FISKE, _The Destiny of Man._ FISKE, _Through Nature to God._ CHAPTER III THE FUNCTION OF THE FAMILY IN SOCIAL ORGANIZATION Instead of continuing the study of social evolution in general it will be best now, before we take up some of the problems of modern society, to study the evolution of some important social institution, because in so doing we can see more clearly the working of the biological and psychological forces which have brought about the evolution of human institutions. An institution, as has already been said, is a sanctioned grouping or relation in society. Now, there can be scarcely any doubt that the two most important institutions of human society are the family and property. In Western civilization these take the form of the monogamic family and of private property. It is upon these two institutions that our civilization rests. The state is a third very important institution in society, but it exists largely for the sake of protecting the family and property. Of the two institutions, the family and property, the family is without doubt prior in time and more fundamental,--more important in human association. We shall, therefore, study very briefly the origin and development of the family as a human institution in order to illustrate some of the principles of social evolution in general. But before we can take up the question of the origin of the family it will be well for us to see just what the function of this institution is in the human society of the present, in order to justify the assertion just made that it is the most important and fundamental institution of humanity. The Family the Primary Social Institution.--Let us note first of all that in society, as it exists at present, the family is the simplest group capable of maintaining itself. It is, therefore, we may say, the primary social structure. Because it contains both sexes and all ages it is capable of reproducing itself, and so of reproducing society. For the same reason it contains practically all social relations in miniature. It has therefore often been called, and rightly, "the social microcosm". The relations of superiority, subordination, and equality, which enter so largely into the structure of all social institutions, are especially clearly illustrated in the family in the relations of parents to children, of children to parents, of parents to each other, and of children to one another. Comte, for this reason, claimed that the family was the unit of social organization, not the individual. However this may be, it is evident that families do enter, as units, very largely into our social and industrial life. While the tendency may be to make the individual the unit of modern society, it is nevertheless true that the family remains the simplest social structure in society, and from it, in some sense, all other social relations whatsoever are evolved. _The Family Differs from All Other Social Institutions_, however, in two respects: First, its members have their places fixed in the family group by their organic natures, that is, the relations of husband and wife, parent and child, rest upon biological differences and relations, so that one may say that the family is almost as much a biological structure as it is a social structure. This is not, to any extent, true of other institutions. Secondly, the family is not a product, so far as we can see, of other forms of association, but rather it itself produces these other forms of association. The family, in other words, is not a result of social organization in general, but seems rather to antedate both historically and logically the forms of social life. It is not a product of society, but it itself produces society. THE PRIMARY FUNCTION OF THE FAMILY is continuing the life of the species; that is, the primary function of the family is reproduction in the sense of the birth and rearing of children. While other functions of the family have been delegated in a large measure to other social institutions, it is manifest that this function cannot be so delegated. At least we know of no human society in which the birth and rearing of children has not been the essential function of the family. From a sociological point of view the childless family is a failure. While the childless family may be of social utility to the individuals that form it, nevertheless from the point of view of society such a family has failed to perform its most important function and must be considered, therefore, socially a failure. The Function of the Family in Conserving the Social Order.--The family is still the chief institution in society for transmitting from one generation to another social possessions of all sorts. Property in the form of land or houses or personal property, society permits the family to pass along from generation to generation. Thus, also, the material equipment for industry, that is capital, is so transmitted. While it is obvious that the material goods of society are thus transmitted by the family from one generation to another, it is perhaps not quite so obvious, but equally true, that the spiritual possessions of the race are also thus transmitted. For example, language is very largely transmitted in the family, and students tell us that each family has its own peculiar dialect. Literature, ideas, beliefs on government, law, religion, moral standards, artistic tastes and appreciation--all of these are still largely transmitted in society from one generation to another through the family. While public institutions, such as libraries, art galleries, universities, scientific museums, and the like, are often adopted to conserve and transmit these spiritual possessions of the race, yet it is safe to say that if it were possible for society to depend upon these institutions to transmit knowledge, artistic standards, and moral ideals, there would be great discontinuity in social life. The family has been in the past, and is still, the great conserving agency in human society, preserving and transmitting from generation to generation both the material and spiritual possessions of the race. The Function of the Family in Social Progress.--While the conservative function of the family is very obvious, its function in furthering social progress is perhaps not so obvious. Nevertheless, this is one of the greatest functions of the family life, because the family is the chief or almost sole generator of altruism in human society, and it is upon altruism that society depends for every upward advance in coöperation. It is in the family that children learn to love and obey, to be of service, and to respect one another's rights. The amount of altruism in a given group has a very close relation to the quality of its family life. If the family fails to teach the spirit of service and self-sacrifice to its members, it is hardly probable that they will get very much of that spirit from society at large. The ideal of a human brotherhood has no meaning unless family affection gives it meaning. If the family is the chief generator of altruism in human society and if society depends upon altruism for each forward step in moral progress, then the family is the chief source of social progress. What we have said is a brief presentation of the claims of the family in modern society to count not only as the primary but also as the most important human institution. The family, it is evident, is charged by society with the most important task, not only of producing the new individuals in society, but of training each individual as he comes on the stage of life, adjusting him to society in all of its aspects, such as industry, government, and religion. If the family fails to perform these important functions the chances are that unsocialized individuals will take important places in society, and this means ultimately social anarchy. _The Family Life may be regarded as a School for Socializing the Individual._ We need not trace in detail how the family does this for the child. It is evident that the rudiments of morality, of government, of religion, and even of industry and knowledge, must be learned by the child in the family group. If the child fails, for example, to learn morality, to get moral standards and ideals from his family life, he stands but poor chance of getting them later in society. Again, if the child fails to learn what law is and to get proper ideals of the relation of the citizen to the state in his family life, there are good prospects of his being numbered among the lawless elements of society later. In the family, we repeat, the child first experiences all the essential relations of society, learns the meaning of authority, obedience, loyalty, and all the human virtues. Moreover, the family life furnishes the moral and religious concepts which human society has set before it as its goal. The ideal of human brotherhood, for example, is manifestly derived from the family life; so also the religious idea of the Divine Fatherhood. If a nation's family life fails to illustrate these concepts, it is safe to say that they will not have great influence in society generally. The nation whose family life decays, therefore, rots at the core, dries up the springs of all social and civic virtues. The Family and Industry.--From what has been said in general terms it is evident that the family has a very important relation to the industrial activities of society, and industry a very important bearing upon the family. Primitively all industry centered in the family. Modern industry, as has been well said, is but an enormous expansion of primitive housekeeping; that is, the preparation of food and clothing and shelter by the primitive family group for its own existence is the germ out of which all modern industry has developed. The very word _economics_ means the science or the art of the household. In primitive communities and in newly settled districts the family often carries on all essential industrial activities. It produces all the raw material, manufactures the finished products, and consumes the same. But with the growth of complex societies there has come a great industrial division of labor, and the family has delegated industrial activity after activity to some other institution until at the present time the modern family performs scarcely any industrial activities, except the preparation of food for immediate consumption. Even this, however, in modern cities seems about to be delegated to some other institution. All that need be said at present about the delegation of the industrial activities of the family to other industrial institutions is that the movement is not one which need cause any anxiety so long as it does not interfere with the essential function of the family, namely, the birth and rearing of children. Even though children can no longer learn the rudiments of industry in their home life, still it is possible through manual and industrial training in our public schools to teach all children this. And the removal of industries from the home, even such essential industries as the preparation of food, is to be regarded as a boon if it gives more time to the parents, especially to the mother, for the proper care and bringing up of their children. But the removal of industries from the family group has not always had the beneficent effect of simply giving more time to the parents for the proper care of their children. On the contrary, the removal of these industries has often been followed by the removal of the parents themselves from the home and the practical disintegration of the family. This has been particularly the case where married women have gone into factories. Under such circumstances children have often been neglected, allowed to grow up on the streets, and to grow up as unsocialized individuals in general. It would seem that the labor of married women outside of the home should be forbidden by the state, except in certain instances, with a view to assuring to the state itself a better citizenship. The labor of children in factories and other industrial institutions has sprung very largely from the same general causes. While child labor may have the merit of giving the child some industrial training, still it has been shown that it dwarfs the child in body and mind, produces a one-sided development, fails to prepare for citizenship in the higher sense, and so must be regarded as altogether an evil. Even the labor of the young unmarried women in factories and shops, when they should be preparing for the duties of wifehood and motherhood, is to some extent an evil in society, though not by any means of the same proportions as the labor of married women. _The Subordination of Industry to the Family Life_ is necessary, therefore, from a social point of view. Industry, as we have seen, was primitively an adjunct of the family life, and all modern industry, if rightfully developed, should be but an adjunct to the family life. Industrial considerations must be, therefore, subordinate to domestic considerations, that is, to considerations of the welfare of parents and their children in the family group. One trouble with modern society is that industry has come to dominate as an independent interest that oftentimes does not recognize its reasonable and socially necessary subordination to the higher interests of society. There can be no sane and stable family life until we are willing to subordinate the requirements of industry, that is, of wealth-getting, to the requirements of the family for the good birth and proper rearing of children. SELECT REFERENCES _For brief reading:_ HENDERSON, _Social Elements_, Chap. IV. DEWEY AND TUFTS, _Ethics_, Chap. XXVI. ADLER, _Marriage and Divorce_, Lecture I. _For more extended reading:_ BOSANQUET, _The Family_. SALEEBY, _Parenthood and Race Culture_. CHAPTER IV THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY We must understand the biological roots of the family before we can understand the family as an institution, and especially before we can understand its origin. Let us note, then, briefly the chief biological facts connected with the family life. The Biological Foundations of the Family.--(1)_The Family rests upon the Great Biological Fact of Sex._ While sex does not characterize all animal forms, still it does characterize all except the simplest forms of animal life. These simplest forms multiply or reproduce by fission, but such asexual reproduction is almost entirely confined to the unicellular forms of life. It may be inferred, therefore, that the higher animal types could not have been evolved without sexual reproduction, and something of the meaning or significance of sex in the whole life process will, therefore, be helpful in understanding all of the higher forms of evolution. Biologists tell us that the meaning or purpose of sexual reproduction is to bring about greater organic variation. Now variation, as we have seen, is the raw material upon which natural selection acts to create the higher types. The immense superiority of sexual reproduction over asexual reproduction is due to the fact that it multiplies so greatly the elements of heredity in each new organism, for under sexual reproduction every new organism has two parents, four grandparents, and so on, each of which perhaps contributes something to its heredity. The biological meaning of sex, then, is that it is a device of nature to bring about organic variation. From the point of view of the social life we may note also that sex adds greatly to its variety, enriching it with numerous fruitful variations which undoubtedly further social evolution. The bareness and monotony of a social life without sex can readily be imagined. While the differences between the sexes have been mainly elaborated through the differences of reproductive function, yet these differences have come to be fundamental to the whole nature of the organism. In the higher animals, therefore, the sexes differ profoundly in many ways from each other. Biologists tell us that the chief difference between the male and female organism is a difference in metabolism, that is, in the rapidity of organic change which goes on within the body. In the male metabolism is much more rapid than in the female; hence the male organism is said to be more katabolic. In the female the rapidity of organic change is less; hence the female is said to be more anabolic. Put in more familiar terms, the male tends to expend energy, is more active, hence also stronger; the female tends more to store up energy, is more passive, conservative, and weaker. These fundamental differences between the sexes express themselves in many ways in the social life. The differences between man and woman, therefore, are not to be thought of as due simply to social customs and usages, the different social environment of the two sexes, but are even more due to a radical and fundamental difference in their whole nature. The belief that the two sexes would become like each other in character if given the same environment is, therefore, erroneous. That these differences are original, or inborn, and not acquired, may be readily seen by observing children of different sex. Even from their earliest years boys are more active, restless, energetic, destructive, untidy, and disobedient, while little girls are quieter, less restless, less destructive, neater, more orderly, and more obedient. These different innate qualities fit the sexes naturally for different functions in human society, and there is, therefore, a natural division of labor between them from the first. Indeed, the division of labor between the two sexes may be said to be the fundamental division of labor in human society. The causes which produce sex in the individual are not known to any extent and are probably beyond the control of man. In each species the relative number of the two sexes is fixed by nature, probably through some obscure working of natural selection, and in practically all of the higher species of animals, man included, the number of the two sexes is relatively equal. In human society much depends upon this relative numerical equality of the two sexes. Hence it can be readily seen that it is fortunate that man does not know how to control the sex of offspring, for if he did the numerical equality of the two sexes might be disturbed and serious social results would follow. (2) _The Influence of Parental Care._ Sex alone could never have produced the family in the sense of a relatively permanent group of parents and offspring. We do not begin to find the family until we get to those higher types where we find some parental care. In the lowest types the relation between the sexes is momentary and the survival of offspring is secured simply through the production of enormous numbers. Thus the sturgeon, a low type of fish, produces between one and two million of eggs at a single spawning, from which it is estimated that not more than a dozen individuals survive till maturity is reached. Thus sexual reproduction of itself necessitates no parental care and in itself could give rise in no way to the family; but quite low in the scale of life we begin to find some parental care as a device to protect immature offspring and secure their survival without the expenditure of such an enormous amount of energy in mere physiological reproduction. Even among the fishes we find some that watch over the eggs after they are spawned and care for their young by leading them to suitable feeding grounds. In such cases a much smaller number of young need to be produced in order that a few may survive until maturity is reached. In the mammals the mother, obviously, must care for the young for some time, since mammals are animals that suckle their young. But this care of the young by a single parent only foreshadows the family as we understand it. Among the mammals it is not until we reach the higher types that we find care of offspring by both parents,--a practice, however, which is common among the birds. It is evident that as soon as both parents are concerned in the care of the offspring they have a much better chance of survival. Hence, natural selection favors the growth of this type of group life and develops powerful instincts to keep male and female together till after the birth and rearing of offspring. Such we find to be the condition among many of the higher mammals, such as some of the carnivora, and especially among the monkeys and apes and man. If it is allowable at this point to generalize from the facts given, it must be said that the family life is essentially a device of nature for the preservation of offspring through a more or less prolonged infancy. The family group and the instincts upon which it rests were undoubtedly, therefore, instituted by natural selection. Summing up, we may say, then, the animal family group owes its existence, first, to the production of child or immature forms that need more or less prolonged care; secondly, to the prolongation of this period of immaturity in the higher animals, and especially in man; thirdly, to the development, parallel with these two causes, of parental instincts which keep male and female together for the care of the offspring. It is evident, then, that the family life rests, not upon sex attraction, but upon the fact of the child and the corresponding psychological fact of parental instinct. The family, then, has been created by the very conditions of life itself and is not a man-made institution. The Origin of the Family in the Human Species.--Two great theories of the origin of the family in the human species have in the past been more or less accepted, and these we must now examine and criticize. First, the traditional theory that the human family life was from the beginning a pure monogamy. Secondly, the so-called evolutionary theory that the human family life arose from confused if not promiscuous sex relations. The first of these theories, favored both by the Bible and Aristotle, held undisputed sway down to the middle of the nineteenth century. Then, after the publication of Darwin's _Origin of Species_ in 1859, certain social theorists began to put forward the second theory in the name of evolution. In order that we may see precisely what the origin of the human family life was, and its primitive form, we must now proceed to criticize these two theories, especially the last, which is known as the hypothesis of a primitive state of promiscuity. _The Habits of the Higher Animals_. We have already spoken of the origin of the family group in the animal world generally, but it must be admitted that there are some difficulties in arguing directly from the lower animals to man. Man is so separated from the lower animals through having passed through many higher stages of an independent evolution that in many respects his life is peculiar to itself. This is true especially of his family life. If we survey the whole range of animal life and then the whole range of human life, we find that there are but two or three striking similarities between the family life of man and that of the brutes, but a great many striking dissimilarities. The similarities may be summed up by saying that man exhibits in common with all the animals the phenomena of courtship, that is, of the male seeking to win the female, also the phenomenon of male jealousy, and we may perhaps add an instinctive aversion to crossing with the other species. These characteristics of his family life man shares with the brutes below him. There are, however, many things peculiar to the human family life that are found in no animal species below man. The most striking of these differences may be mentioned. (1) Man has no pairing season, as practically all other animals have. (2) The number of young born in the human species is on the whole much smaller than in any other animal species. (3) The dependence of offspring upon parents is far longer in the human species than in any other species. (4) Man has an antipathy to incest or close inbreeding which seems to be instinctive. This is not found clearly in any animal species below man. (5) There is a tendency among human beings to artificial adornment during the period of courtship, but not to natural ornament to any extent, as among many animal species. (6) The indorsement of society is almost invariably sought, both among uncivilized and civilized peoples, before the establishment of a new family--usually through the forms of a religious marriage ceremony. (7) Chastity in women, especially married women, is universally insisted upon, both among uncivilized and civilized peoples, as the basis of human family life. (8) There is a feeling of modesty or of shame as regards matters of sex among the human beings. (9) In humanity we find, besides animal lust, spiritual affection, or love, as a bond of union between the two sexes. None of these peculiarities of human family life are found in the family life of any animal species below man. It might seem, therefore, that man's family life must be regarded as a special creation unconnected with the family life of the brutes below him. But this view is hardly probable, rather is impossible from the standpoint of evolution. We must say that these peculiarities of human family life are to be explained through the fact that man has passed through many more stages of evolution, particularly of intellectual evolution, than any of the animals below him. If we examine these peculiarities of man's family life carefully, we will see that they all can be explained through natural selection and man's higher intellectual development. That man has no pairing season, has fewer offspring born, and a longer period of dependence of the offspring upon parents, and the like, is directly to be explained through natural selection; while seeking the indorsement of society before forming a new family, sexual modesty, tendencies to artificial adornment, and the like, are to be explained through man's self-consciousness and higher intellectual development, also through the fuller development of his social instincts. The gap between the human family life and brute family life is, therefore, not an unbridgeable one. That this is so, we see most clearly when we consider the family life of the anthropoid or manlike apes--man's nearest cousins in the animal world. All of these apes, of which the chief representatives are the gorilla, orangutan, and the chimpanzee, live in relatively permanent family groups, usually monogamous. These family groups are quite human in many of their characteristics, such as the care which the male parent gives to the mother and her offspring, and the seeming affection which exists between all members of the group. Such a group of parents and offspring among the higher apes is, moreover, a relatively permanent affair, children of different ages being frequently found along with their parents in such groups. So far as the evidence of animals next to man, therefore, goes, there is no reason for supposing that the human family life sprang from confused or promiscuous sex relations in which no permanent union between male and female parent existed. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe, as Westermarck says, that human family life is an inheritance from man's apelike progenitor. The Evidence from the Lower Human Races.--The evidence afforded by the lowest peoples in point of culture even more clearly, if anything, refutes the hypothesis of a primitive state of promiscuity. The habits or customs of the lowest peoples were not well known previous to the nineteenth century. Therefore it was possible for such a theory as the patriarchal theory of the primitive family to remain generally accepted, as we have already said, down to the middle of the nineteenth century. This was the theory that the oldest or most primitive type of human family life is that depicted in the opening pages of the Book of Genesis, namely, a family life in which the father or eldest male of the family group is the absolute ruler of the group and practically owner of all persons and property. The belief that this was the primitive type of the human family life was first attacked by a German-Swiss philologist by the name of Bachofen in a work entitled _Das Mutterrecht_ (The Matriarchate), published in 1861, in which he argued that antecedent to the patriarchal period was a matriarchal period, in which women were dominant socially and politically, and in which relationships were traced through mothers only. Bachofen got his evidence for this theory from certain ancient legends, such as that of the Amazons, and other remains in Greek and Roman literature, which seemed to point to a period antecedent to the patriarchal. In 1876 Mr. J.F. McLennan, a Scotch lawyer, put forth, independently, practically the same theory, basing it upon certain legal survivals which he found among many peoples. With Bachofen, he argued that this matriarchal period must have been characterized by promiscuous relations of the sexes. In 1877 Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, an American ethnologist and sociologist, put forth again, independently, practically the same theory, basing it upon an extensive study of the North American Indian tribes. Morgan had lived among the Iroquois Indians for years and had mastered their system of relationship, which previously had puzzled the whites. He found that they traced relationship through mothers only, and not at all along the male line. This method of reckoning relationship, moreover, he found also characterized practically all of the North American Indian tribes, and he argued that the only explanation of it was that originally sexual relations were of such an unstable or promiscuous character that they would not permit of tracing descent through fathers. From these theories sociological writers put forth the conclusion that the primitive state was one of promiscuity, or, as Sir John Lubbock called it in his _Origin of Civilization_, one of "communism in women." Post, a German student of comparative jurisprudence, for example, summed up the theory by saying that "monogamous marriage originally emerged everywhere from pure communism in women, through the intermediate stages of limited communism in women, polyandry, and polygyny." Even Herbert Spencer in his _Principles of Sociology_, while he avoided accepting such an extreme theory, asserted that in the beginning sex relations were confused and unregulated, and that all forms of marriage--polyandry, polygyny, monogamy, and promiscuity-- existed alongside of one another and that monogamy survived through its being the superior form. Before giving a criticism in detail of this theory let us note whether the evidence from the lowest peoples confirms it. The lowest peoples in point of culture are not the North American Indians nor the African Negroes, but certain isolated groups that live almost in a state of nature, without any attempt to cultivate the soil or to control nature in other respects. Such are the Bushmen of South Africa, the Australian Aborigines, the Negritos of the Philippine Islands and of the Andaman Islands, the Veddahs of Ceylon, and the Fuegians of South America. Now all of these peoples, with a possible exception, practice monogamy and live in relatively stable family groups. Their monogamy, however, is not of the type which we find in patriarchal times or among civilized peoples, but is a simple pairing monogamy, husband and wife remaining together indefinitely if children are born, but if no children are born, separation may easily take place. Westermarck in his _History of Human Marriage_ has reviewed at length all of the evidence from these lower peoples and shows undoubtedly that nothing approaching promiscuity existed among them. Promiscuity is apt to be found at a higher stage of social development, and is especially apt to be found among the nature peoples after the white man has visited them and demoralized their family life. But in all these cases the existence of promiscuity is manifestly something exceptional and abnormal. Perhaps civilized peoples such as the Romans of the decadence have more nearly approximated the condition of promiscuity than any savage people of which we have knowledge. At any rate, one must conclude that the lowest existing savages found in the nineteenth century had definite forms of family life, and that the type usually found was the simple pairing monogamy which we have just mentioned. Objections to the Hypothesis of a Primitive State of Promiscuity.--We may now briefly sum up the main criticisms of this theory of a primitive state of promiscuity, not only as we may derive them from inductive study of the higher animals and the lower peoples, but also as we may deduce them from known psychological and biological facts or principles. (1) In the first place, then, the animals next to man, namely, the anthropoid apes, do not show a condition of promiscuity. (2) The evidence from the lower peoples does not show that such a condition exists or has ever existed among them. (3) A third argument against this hypothesis may be gained from what we know of primitive economic conditions. Under the most primitive conditions, in which man had no mastery over nature, food supply was relatively scarce, and as a rule only very small groups of people could live together. The smallness of primitive groups, on account of the scarcity of food supply, would prevent anything like promiscuity on a large scale. (4) A fourth argument of a deductive nature is that the jealousy of the male, which characterizes all higher animals and especially man, would prevent anything like the existence of sexual promiscuity. The tendency of man would have been to appropriate one or more women for himself and drive away all rivals. Long ago Darwin argued that this would prevent anything like the existence of a general state of promiscuity. (5) A fifth argument against this theory may be got from the general biological fact that sexual promiscuity tends to pathological conditions unfavorable to fecundity, that is, fertility, or the birth of offspring. Physicians have long ago ascertained this fact, and the modern prostitute gives illustration of it by the fact that she has few or no children. Among the lower animal species, in which some degree of promiscuity obtains, moreover, powerful instincts keep the sexes apart except at the pairing season. Now, no such instincts exist in man. Promiscuity in man would, therefore, greatly lessen the birth rate, and any group that practiced it to any extent would soon be eliminated in competition with other groups that did not practice it. (6) We have finally the general social fact that promiscuity would lead to the neglect of children. Promiscuity means that the male parent does not remain with the female parent to care for the offspring and, therefore, in the human species it would mean that the care of children would be thrown wholly upon the mother. This means that the children would have less chance of surviving. Not only would promiscuity lead to lessening the birth rate, but it would lead to a much higher mortality in children born. This is found to be a striking fact wherever we find any degree of promiscuity among any people. Hence, promiscuity would soon exterminate any people that practiced it extensively in competition with other peoples that did not practice it. From all of these lines of argument, without going over the evidence in greater detail, it seems reasonable to conclude with Westermarck "that the hypothesis of a primitive state of promiscuity has no foundation in fact and is essentially unscientific." The facts put forth in support of the theory do not justify the conclusion, Westermarck says, that promiscuity has ever been a general practice among a single people and much less that it was the primitive state. Promiscuity is found, however, more or less in the form of sexual irregularities or immorality among all peoples; more often, however, among the civilized than among the uncivilized, but among no people has it ever existed unqualified by more enduring forms of sex relation. Moreover, because promiscuity breaks up the social bonds, throws the burden of the care of children wholly upon the mother, and lessens the birth rate, we are justified in concluding that promiscuity is essentially an antisocial practice. This agrees with the facts generally shown by criminology and sociology, that the elements practicing promiscuity to any great extent in modern societies are those most closely related with the degenerate and criminal elements. Those elements, in other words, in modern society that practice promiscuity are on the road to extinction, and if a people generally were to practice it there is no reason to believe that such a people would meet with any different fate. _The Earliest Form of the Family Life in the Human Species_, therefore, is probably that of the simple pairing monogamous family found among many of the higher animals, especially the anthropoid apes, and also found among the lower peoples. This primitive monogamy, however, as we have already seen, was not accompanied by the social, legal, and religious elements that the historic monogamic family has largely rested upon. On the contrary, this primitive monogamy rested solely upon an instinctive basis, and, as we have seen, unless children were born it was apt to be relatively unstable. Permanency in family relations among primitive peoples depended largely upon the birth of children. Thus we find confirmed our conclusion drawn some time ago that family life rests primarily upon the parental instinct. That it still so rests is shown by the fact, as we shall see later, that divorce is many times more common among couples that have no children than among those that have children. SOME GENERAL CONCLUSIONS, both of theoretical and practical bearing, may here be pointed out. We have seen that the biological processes of life have created the family, and that the family, as an institution, rests upon these biological conditions. Hence it is not too much to say, first, that the family is not a man-made institution; and, secondly, that it rests upon certain fundamental instincts of human nature. Now, both of these statements are also true to a certain extent as to human society in general. There is a sense in which social organization is not wholly man-made, and it is true that all human institutions rest to some extent upon human instincts. This is not saying, of course, that man has not modified and may not modify social organization and human institutions through his reason, but it is saying that the essential elements in human institutions and in the social order must correspond to the conditions of life generally and to the instincts which natural selection has implanted in the species. To attempt to reorganize human society or to reconstruct institutions regardless of the biological conditions of life, or regardless of human instincts, is to meet with certain failure. A practical conclusion which may be drawn also is that those people who advocate sexual promiscuity in present society, or free love, as they please to style it, are advocating a condition which would result in the elimination of any group that practiced it. Promiscuity, or even great instability in the family life, as we have already seen, would lead to the undermining of everything upon which a higher civilization rests. The people in modern society who advocate such theories as free love, therefore, are more dangerous than the worst anarchist or the most revolutionary socialist. In other words, the modern attack upon the family is more of a menace to all that is worth while in human life than all attacks upon government and property, although it is not usually resented as such; and it is one of the most serious signs of the times that many intellectual people have indorsed such views. We must reemphasize, therefore, the fact that the family is the central institution of human society, that industry and the state must subordinate themselves to its interest. Neither the state nor industry has had much to do with the origin of the family, and neither the state nor industry may safely determine its forms independent of the biological requirements for human survival. Moreover, it is evident that human society from the beginning has in more or less instinctive, and also in more or less conscious, ways attempted to regulate the relations between the sexes with a view to controlling the reproductive process. While material civilization is mainly a control over the food process, moral civilization involves a control over the reproductive process, that is, over the birth and rearing of children; and such control over the reproductive process, which has certainly been one of the aims of all social organization in the past, whether of savage peoples or of civilized peoples, evidently precludes anything like the toleration of promiscuity or even of free love. SELECT REFERENCES _For brief reading:_ WESTERMARCK, _History of Human Marriage_, Chaps. I-VI. HOWARD, _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, Vol. I, Chaps. I-III HEINEMAN, _Physical Basis of Civilization_, Chaps. IV-VII. _For more extended reading:_ CRAWLEY, _The Mystic Rose: A Study of Primitive Marriage_. GEDDES AND THOMSON, _Evolution of Sex_. LETOURNEAU, _The Evolution of Marriage_. MORGAN, _Ancient Society_. STARCKE, _The Primitive Family_. SPENCER, _Principles of Sociology_, Vol. I. CHAPTER V THE FORMS OF THE FAMILY The family as an institution has varied greatly in its forms from age to age and from people to people. This is what we should expect, seeing that all organic structures are variable. Such variations in human institutions are due partially to the influences of the environment, partially to the state of knowledge, and partially to many other causes as yet not well understood. The family illustrates in greater or less degree the working of these causes of variation and of change in human institutions. The Maternal and Paternal Families.--As regards the general form of the family we have to note first of all the two great forms which we may characterize respectively as "the maternal family" and "the paternal family." As we have already seen, Bachofen, Morgan, and others discovered a condition of human society in which relationship was traced through mothers only, and in which property or authority descended along the female line rather than along the male line. Further investigation and research have shown that up to recent times, say up to fifty years ago, one half of all the peoples of the world, if we reckon them by nations and tribes rather than by numbers, practiced this system of reckoning kinship through mothers only, and passed property and authority down along the female line. Ethnologists and sociologists have practically concluded, from the amount of evidence now collected, that this maternal or metronymic system was the primitive system of tracing relationships, and that it was succeeded among the European peoples by the paternal system so long ago that the transition from the one to the other has been forgotten, except as some trace of it has been preserved in customs, legends, and the like. Among many tribes of the North American Indians this metronymic or maternal system was peculiarly well-developed. Children took their mother's name, not their father's name; belonged to their mother's clan, not their father's clan; and the chief transmitted his authority, if hereditary, not to his own son, but to his eldest sister's son. The relatives on the father's side, indeed, were quite ignored. Frequently the maternal uncle had more legal authority over the children than their own father, seeing that the children belonged to his clan, that is, to their mother's clan. Now, Bachofen claimed not only that in this stage was kinship reckoned through mothers only, but that women were dominant socially and politically; that there existed a true matriarchy, or rule of the mothers. Do the facts support Bachofen's theory? Let us see. The Iroquois Indians, among whom Morgan lived, were a typical maternal or metronymic people. Among them, without any doubt, the women had a position of influence socially and even politically which often is not found among peoples of higher culture. For example, among the Iroquois the government of the clan was in the hands of four women councilors (Matrons), who were elected by all the adults in the clan. These four women councilors, however, elected a Peace Sachem, who carried out the will of the clan in all matters pertaining to peace generally. Moreover, the councilors of the several clans, four fifths of whom were women, met together to form the Tribal Council; but in this Tribal Council the women sat separate, not participating in the deliberations, but exercising only a veto power on the decisions of the men. In matters of war, however, government was intrusted to two war chiefs elected from the tribe generally, the women here only having the right to veto the decision of the tribe to enter upon the warpath. Thus we see that while the women of the Iroquois Indians had a great deal of social and political influence, the actual work of government was largely turned over by them to the men, and especially was this true of directing the affairs of the tribe in time of war. There is no doubt, however, that in the maternal stage of social evolution women had an influence in domestic, religious, and social matters much greater than they had at many later stages of social development. Among the Zuni of New Mexico, for example, another well-developed maternal people, marriage is always arranged by the bride's parents. The husband goes to live with his wife, and is practically a guest in his wife's house all his life long, she alone having the right of divorce. Indeed, among all maternal peoples the rule is that the husband goes to live with the wife, and not the wife with the husband, the children, as we have already seen, keeping the mother's name and belonging to her kindred or clan. Nevertheless we cannot agree with Bachofen that a true matriarchy, or government by women, ever existed. On the contrary, among all of these maternal peoples, while the women may have much influence socially and politically, the men, on account of their superior strength, are intrusted with the work not only of protecting and providing for the families and driving away enemies, but also largely with the work of maintaining the internal government and order of the people. Strictly speaking, therefore, there has never been a matriarchal stage of social evolution, but rather a maternal or metronymic stage. We have already said that this stage was probably the primitive one. How are we to explain, then, that primitive man reckoned kinship through mothers only? Was this due, as Morgan thought, to a primitive practice of promiscuity which prevented tracing relationships through fathers? The reply is, that among the many maternal peoples now well known, among whom relationships are traced through mothers only, we find no evidence of the practice of general promiscuity now or even in remote times. The North American Indians, for example, had quite definite forms of the family life and were very far removed from the practice of promiscuity, though they traced relationship through mothers only. It is evident that the causes of the maternal family and the maternal system of relationship are not so simple as Morgan supposed. What, then, were the causes of the maternal system? It is probable that man in the earliest times did not know the physiological connection between father and child. The physiological connection between mother and child, on the other hand, was an obvious fact which required no knowledge of physiology to establish; therefore, nothing was more natural than for primitive man to recognize that the child was of the mother's blood, but not of the father's blood. Therefore, the child belonged to the mother's people and not to the father's people. If it be asked whether it is possible that there could be any human beings so ignorant that they do not know the physiological connection between father and child, the reply is, that this is apparently the case among a number of very primitive peoples, even down to recent times. It is not infrequent among these peoples to find conception and childbirth attributed to the influence of the spirits, rather than to relations between male and female. While, therefore, a social connection between the father and the children was recognized, leading the father to provide in all ways for his children, as fathers do whether among civilized or uncivilized peoples, yet the blood relationship between the father and the child could not have been clear in the most primitive times. Perhaps an even more efficient cause, however, of the maternal system was the fact that the mother in primitive times was the stable element in the family life, the constant center of the family. The husband was frequently away from home, hunting or fighting, and oftentimes failed to return. Nothing was more natural, therefore, than that the child should be reckoned as belonging to the mother, take her name and belong to her kindred or clan. Moreover, after the custom of naming children from mothers and reckoning them as belonging to the mother's clan was established, it could not be displaced by the mere discovery of the physiological connection between the father and the child. On the contrary social habits, like habits in the individual, tend to persist until they work badly. We find, therefore, the maternal system persisting among peoples who for many generations had come fully to recognize the physiological connection of father and child. Indeed, the maternal system could never have been done away with if social evolution had not brought about new and complex conditions which caused the system to break down and to be replaced by the paternal system. _The Paternal or Patriarchal Family._ At a certain stage we find, then, that a vast revolution took place in human society, especially in the family life, and the family and society generally came to be organized more definitely in regard to the male element. At a certain period, indeed, we find that the authority of the husband and father in the family has become supreme, and that he is practically owner of all persons and property of the family group, the wife and children being reduced, if not to the position of property, at least to the position of subject persons. This is the patriarchal family, classical pictures of which we find set forth in the pages of the Old Testament. How, then, did the transition take place from the maternal system, in which the mother was so important in the family, to the paternal system, in which the father was so all-important? What were the causes which brought about the breakdown of the maternal system and the gradual development of the patriarchal family? Some of these causes we can clearly make out from the study of social history. (1) War was unquestionably a cause of the breakdown of the maternal system through the fact that women were captured in war, held as slaves, and made wives or concubines by their captors. These captured wives were regarded as the property of the captor. Any children born to them were, therefore, also regarded as the property of the captor. Furthermore, these captured wives were separated from their kindred, and their children could not possibly belong to any clan except their husband's. Manifestly this cause could not have worked in the earliest times, when slave captives were not valuable; but as soon as slavery became instituted in any form, then women slaves were particularly valued, not only for their labor, but because they might be either concubines or wives. It is evident, then, that war and slavery would thus indirectly tend to undermine the maternal system. (2) Wife purchase would operate in the same way. Among peoples that had developed a commercial life as well as slavery it early became the practice to purchase wives. It is evident that these purchased wives would be regarded as a sort of property, and the husband would naturally claim the children as belonging to him. Among certain North American Indians we find exactly this state of affairs. If a man married a wife without paying the purchase price for her, then her children took her name and belonged to her clan; but if he had purchased her, say with a number of blankets, then the children took his name and belonged to his clan. (3) The decisive cause, however, of the breakdown of the maternal system was the development of the pastoral stage of industry. Now, the grazing of flocks and herds requires considerable territory and necessitates small and compact groups widely separated from one another. Hence, in the pastoral stage the wife must go with the husband and be far removed from the influence and authority of her own kindred. This gave the husband greater power over his wife. Moreover, the care of flocks and herds accentuated the value of the male laborer, while primitively woman had been the chief laborer. In the pastoral stage the man had the main burden of caring for the flocks and herds. Under such circumstances nothing was more natural than that the authority of the owner of the family property should gradually become supreme in all matters, and we find, therefore, among all pastoral peoples that the family is itself a little political unit, the children taking the father's name, property and authority passing down along the male line, while the eldest living male is usually the ruler of the whole group. (4) After all these causes came another factor--ancestor worship. While ancestor worship exists to some extent among maternal peoples, it is usually not well-developed for some reason or other until the paternal stage is reached. Ancestor worship, being the worship of the departed ancestors as heroes, seems to develop more readily where the line of ancestors are males. It may be suggested that the male ancestor is apt to be a more heroic figure than the female ancestor. At any rate, when ancestor worship became fully developed it powerfully tended to reenforce the authority of the patriarch, because he was, as the eldest living ancestor, the representative of the gods upon earth, therefore his power became almost divine. Religion thus finally came in to place the patriarchal family upon a very firm basis. Thus we see how each of these two great forms, the maternal family and the paternal family, arose out of natural conditions, and therefore they may be said to represent two great stages in the social evolution of man. It is hardly necessary to point out that civilized societies are now apparently entering upon a third stage, in which there will be relative equality given to the male and the female elements that go to make up the family. Polyandry.--We must notice now the various forms of marriage by which the family has been constituted among different peoples and in different ages. Marriage, like the family itself, is variable, and an indefinite number of forms may be found among various peoples. We shall notice, however, only the three leading forms,--polyandry, polygyny, and monogamy,--and attempt to show the natural conditions which favor each. It is evident that if we assume that the primitive form of the family was that of a simple pairing monogamy, the burden is laid upon us to show how such different types as polyandry and polygyny arose. Polyandry, or the union of one woman with several men, is a relatively rare form of marriage and the family, found only in certain isolated regions of the world. It is particularly found in Tibet, a barren and inhospitable plateau north of India and forming a part of the Chinese Empire. It is also found in certain other isolated mountainous regions in India, and down to recent times also in Arabia. In none of these places does it exist exclusively, but rather alongside of monogamy and perhaps other forms of the family. Thus in Tibet the upper classes practice polygyny and monogamy, while among the lower classes we find polyandry and monogamy. In all these regions where polyandry occurs, moreover, it is to be noted that the conditions of life are harsh and severe. Tibet is an exceptionally inhospitable region, with a climate of arctic rigor, the people living mainly by grazing. Under such circumstances it is conceivably difficult for one man to support and protect a family. At any rate, the form of polyandry which we find in Tibet suggests that such economic conditions may have been the main cause of its existence. Ordinarily in Tibet a polyandrous family is formed by an older brother taking a wife, and then admitting his younger brothers into partnership with him. The older brother is frequently absent from home, looking after the flocks, and in his absence one of the younger brothers assumes the headship of the family. Under such circumstances we can see how the natural human instincts which would oppose polyandry under ordinary circumstances, namely, the jealousy of the male, might become greatly modified, or cease to act altogether. Certain other conditions besides economic ones might also favor the existence of polyandry, such as the scarcity of women. Summing up, we can say, then, that this rare form of the family seems to have as its causes: (1) In barren and inhospitable countries the labor of one man is sometimes found not sufficient to support a family. (2) Also there probably exists in such regions an excess of males. This might be due to one of two causes: First, the practice of exposing female infants might lead to a scarcity of women; secondly, in such regions it is found that from causes not well understood a larger number of males are born. It may be noted as a general fact that when the conditions of life are hard in human society, owing to famine, war, or barrenness of the soil, a larger number of male births take place. We may therefore infer that this would disturb the numerical proportion of the sexes in such regions. (3) A third cause may be suggested as having something to do with the matter, namely, that habits of close inbreeding, or intermarriage, might perhaps tend to overcome the natural repugnance to such a relation. Moreover, close inbreeding also, as the experiments of stock-breeders show, would tend to produce a surplus of male births, and so would act finally in the same way as the second cause. POLYGYNY, [Footnote: The word "polygamy" is too broad in its meaning to use as a scientific term for this form of the family. "Polygamy" comes from two Greek words meaning "much married;" hence it includes "polyandry" (having several husbands) and "polygyny" (having several wives).] or the union of one man with several women, is a much more common form of marriage. It is, in fact, to be found sporadically among all peoples and in all ages. It has perhaps existed at least sporadically from the most primitive times, because we find that at least one of the anthropoid apes, namely, the gorilla, practices it to some extent. It is manifest, however, that it could not have existed to any extent among primitive men, except where food supply was exceptionally abundant. In the main, polygyny is a later development, then, which comes in when some degree of wealth has been accumulated, that is, sufficient food supply to make it possible for one man to support several families. Polygyny came in especially after women came to be captured in war and kept as slaves or wives. The practice of wife capture, indeed, and the honor attached to the custom, had much to do in making the practice of polygyny common among certain peoples. Wherever slavery has existed, we may also note, polygyny, either in its legal form or in its illegal form of concubinage, has flourished. Polygyny, indeed, is closely related with the institution of slavery and is practically coextensive with it. In the ancient world it existed among the Hebrews and among practically all of the peoples of the Orient, and also sporadically among our own Teutonic ancestors. In modern times polygyny still exists among all the Mohammedan peoples and to a greater or less degree among all semicivilized peoples. It exists in China in the form of concubinage. It even exists in the United States, for all the evidence seems to show that the Utah Mormons still practice polygyny to some extent, although it may be doubted whether polygynous unions are being formed among them at the present time. Two facts always need to be borne in mind regarding polygyny: First, that wherever it is practiced it is relatively confined to the upper and wealthy classes, for the reason that the support of more than one family is something which only the wealthy classes in a given society could assume. Secondly, it follows that under ordinary circumstances only a small minority of a given population practice polygyny, even in countries in which it is sanctioned. In Mohammedan countries like Turkey and Egypt, for example, it is estimated that not more than five per cent of the families are polygynous, while in other regions the percentage seems to be still smaller. The reason for this is not only the economic one just mentioned, but that everywhere the sexes are relatively equal in numbers, and therefore it is impossible for polygyny to become a widespread general custom. If some men have more than one wife it is evident that other men will probably have to forego marriage entirely. This is not saying that under certain circumstances, namely, the importation of large numbers of women, a higher per cent of polygynous families may not exist. It is said that among the negroes on the west coast of Africa the number of polygynous families reaches as high as fifty per cent, owing to the fact that female slaves are largely imported into that district, and that they serve not only as wives, but do the bulk of the agricultural labor, the male negro preferring female slaves, who can do his work and be wives at the same time, to male slaves. But such cases as these are altogether exceptional and manifestly could not become general. Summing up, we may say that the causes of polygyny are, then: (1) First of all, the brutal lust of man. No doubt man's animal propensities have had much to do with the existence of this form of the family. Nevertheless, while male sensuality is at the basis of polygyny, it would be a mistake to think that sensuality is an adequate explanation in all cases. On the contrary, we find many other causes, chiefly, perhaps, economic, operating also to favor the development of polygyny. (2) One of these is wife capture, as we have already seen. The captured women in war were held as trophies and slaves, and later became wives or concubines. Among all peoples at a certain stage the honor of wife capture has alone been a prolific cause of polygyny. (3) Another cause, after slavery became developed, was the high value set on women as laborers. Among many barbarous peoples the women do the main part of the work. They are more tractable as slaves, and consequently a high value is set upon their labor. As we have already seen, these female slaves usually serve at the same time as concubines, if not legal wives of their masters. (4) Another cause which we can perhaps hardly appreciate at the present time is the high valuation set on children. We see this cause operating particularly in the case of the patriarchs of the Old Testament. Under the patriarchal family great value was set upon children as necessary to continue the family line. Where the device of adoption was not resorted to, therefore, in case of barrenness or the birth exclusively of female children, nothing was more natural than that polygyny should be resorted to in order to insure the family succession. In the patriarchal family also a high valuation was necessarily set upon children, because the larger the family grew the stronger it was. (5) Finally, religion came to sanction polygyny. The religious sanction of polygyny cannot be looked upon as one of its original causes, but when once established it reacted powerfully to reenforce and maintain the institution. How the religious sanction came about we can readily see when we remember that very commonly religions confuse the practice of the nobility with what is noble or commendable morally. The polygynous practices of the nobility, therefore, under certain conditions came to receive the sanction of religion. When this took place polygyny became firmly established as a social institution, very difficult to uproot, as all the experience of Christian missionaries among peoples practicing polygyny goes to show. We may note also the general truth, that while religion does not originate human institutions or the forms of human association, it is preeminently that which gives fixity and stability to institutions through the supernatural sanction that it accords them. Some judgment of the social value of polygyny may not be out of place in connection with this subject. Admitting, as all students of social history must, that in certain times and places the polygynous form of family has been advantageous, has served the interests of social survival and even of civilization, yet viewed from the standpoint of present society it seems that our judgment of polygyny must be wholly unfavorable. In the first place, as we have already seen, polygyny is essentially an institution of barbarism. It arose largely through the practice of wife capture and the keeping of female slaves. While often adjusted to the requirements of barbarous societies, it seems in no way adjusted to a high civilization. Polygyny, indeed, must necessarily rest upon the subjection and degradation of women. Necessarily the practice of polygyny must disregard the feelings of women, for women are jealous creatures as well as men. No high regard for the feelings of women, therefore, would be consistent with the practice of polygyny. Finally, all the evidence that we have goes to show that under polygyny children are neglected, and, at least from the standpoint of a high civilization, inadequately socialized. This must necessarily be so, because in the polygynous family the care of the children rests almost entirely with the mother. While we have no statistics of infant mortality from polygynous countries, it seems probable that infant mortality is high, and we know from experience with polygynous families in our own state of Utah, according to the testimony of those who have worked among them, that delinquent children are especially found in such households. Fatherhood, in the full sense of the word, can hardly be said to exist under polygyny. Those philosophers, like Schopenhauer, who advocate the legalizing of polygyny in civilized countries, are hardly worth replying to. It is safe to say that any widespread practice of polygyny in civilized communities would lead to a reversion to the moral standards of barbarism in many if not in all matters. That polygyny is still a burning question in the United States of the twentieth century is merely good evidence that we are not very far removed yet from barbarism. MONOGAMY, as we have already seen, has been the prevalent form of marriage in all ages and in all countries. Wherever other forms have existed monogamy has existed alongside of them as the dominant, even though perhaps not the socially honored, form. All other forms of the family must be regarded as sporadic variations, on the whole unsuited to long survival, because essentially inconsistent with the nature of human society. In civilized Europe monogamy has been the only form of the family sanctioned for ages by law, custom, and religion. The leading peoples of the world, therefore, practice monogamy, and it is safe to say that the connection between monogamy and progressive forms of civilization is not an accident. What, then, are the social advantages of monogamy which favor the development of a higher type of culture? These advantages are numerous, but perhaps the most important of them can be grouped under six heads. (1) The number of the two sexes, as we have already seen, is everywhere approximately equal. This means that monogamy is in harmony with the biological conditions that exist in the human species. The equal number of the two sexes has probably been brought about through natural selection. Why nature should favor this proportion of the sexes can perhaps be in part understood when we reflect that with such proportion there can be the largest number of family groups, and hence the best possible conditions for the rearing of offspring. (2) Monogamy secures the superior care of children in at least two respects. First, it very greatly decreases mortality in children, because under monogamy both husband and wife unite in their care. Again, monogamy secures the superior upbringing and, therefore, the superior socialization of the child. In the monogamous family much greater attention can be given to the training of children by both parents. In other forms of the family not only is the death rate higher among children, but from the point of view of modern civilization, at least, they are inferiorly socialized. (3) The monogamic family alone produces affections and emotions of the higher type. It is only in the monogamic family that the highest type of altruistic affection can be cultivated. It is difficult to understand, for example, how anything like unselfish affection between husband and wife can exist under polygyny. Under monogamy, husband and wife are called upon to sacrifice selfish desires in the mutual care of children. Monogamy is, therefore, fitted as a form of the family to foster altruism in the highest degree, and, as we have seen, the higher the type of altruism produced by the family life, the higher the type of the social life generally, other things being equal. It is especially to the credit of monogamy that it has created fatherhood in the fullest sense of the term, and therefore taught the male element in human society the value of service and self-sacrifice. Under polygynous conditions the father cannot devote himself to any extent to his children or to any one wife, since he is really the head of several households, and therefore, as we have already noted, fatherhood in the fullest sense scarcely exists under polygyny. (4) Under monogamy, moreover, all family relationships are more definite and strong, and thus family bonds, and ultimately social bonds, are stronger. In the polygynous household the children of the different wives are half brothers and half sisters, hence family affection has little chance to develop among them, and as a matter of fact between children of different wives there is constant pulling and hauling. Moreover, because the children in a polygynous family are only half brothers this immensely complicates relationships, and even the line of ancestors. Legal relations and all blood relationships are, therefore, more entangled. It is no inconsiderable social merit of monogamy that it makes blood relationships simple and usually perfectly definite. All of this has an effect upon society at large, because the cohesive power of blood relationship, even in modern societies, is something still worth taking into account. But of course the main influence of all this is to be found in the family group itself, because it is only under such simple and definite relations as we find in the monogamous family that there is ample stimulus to develop the higher family affections. (5) From all this it follows that monogamy favors the development of high types of religion and morals, family affection being an indispensable root of any high type of ethical religion. That form of the family which favors the development of the highest type of this affection will, therefore, favor the development of the highest type of religion. We see this even more plainly, perhaps, in ancient times than in the present time, because it was monogamy that favored the development of ancestor worship through making the line of ancestors clear and definite, and thus monogamy helped to develop this type of religion, which became the basis of still higher types. (6) Monogamy not only favors the preservation of the lives of the children, but also favors the preservation of the lives of the parents, because it is only under monogamy that we find aged parents cared for by their children to any extent. Under polygyny the wife who has grown old is discarded for a young wife, and usually ends her days in bitterness. The father, too, under polygyny is rarely cared for by the children, because the polygynous household has never given the opportunity for close affections between parents and children. That monogamy, therefore, helps to lengthen life through favoring care of parents by children in old age is an element in its favor, for it adds not a little to the happiness of life, and so to the strength of social bonds, that people do not have to look forward to a cheerless and friendless old age. In brief, the monogamic family presents such superior unity and harmony from every point of view that it is much more fitted to produce a higher type of culture. From whatever point of view we may look at it, therefore, there are many reasons why civilized societies cannot afford to sanction any other form of the family than that of monogamy. The Relation of the Form of the Family to the Form of Industry.--As we have already seen, the form of the family is undoubtedly greatly influenced by the form of industry. This is so markedly the case that some sociologists and economists have claimed that the form of the family life is but a reflection of the form of the industrial life; that the family in its changes and variations slavishly follows the changes in economic conditions. That such an extreme view as this is a mistake can readily be seen from a brief review of the causes which have produced certain types of family life in certain periods. Thus, the maternal type of the family cannot be said by any means to have been determined by economic conditions. On the contrary, primarily the maternal family, as we have seen, was determined by certain intellectual conceptions, namely, the absence of knowledge of the physiological connection between father and child, though the economic conditions of primitive life tended powerfully to continue the maternal family long after intellectual conditions had changed. Again, it has been said that the patriarchal family owed its existence entirely to a form of industry, namely, pastoral industry, but, as we have seen, other factors also operated to produce the patriarchal type of the family, such as war, religion, and perhaps man's inherent desire to dominate. Moreover, religion continued the patriarchal family in many cases long after pastoral industry had ceased to be the chief economic form. So too with the forms of marriage. While polygyny has been claimed to be due entirely to economic causes, we have seen that these so-called economic causes have only been the opportunities for the polygynous instincts of man to assert themselves. These polygynous instincts of man have asserted themselves more or less under all conditions of society, but under certain conditions, when there was an accumulation of wealth, and especially with the institution of slavery, they had greater opportunity to assert themselves than elsewhere. Thus the basic cause of polygyny is not economic, but psychological; and given certain moral and economic conditions of society, these polygynous tendencies assert themselves. Monogamy, on the other hand, has in no sense been determined by economic conditions but is fundamentally determined by the biological fact of the numerical equality of the sexes. This is doubtless the main reason why monogamy has been the prevalent form of the family everywhere. Certain moral and psychological factors which go along with the development of higher types of culture have, however, powerfully reenforced monogamy. It is doubtful if economic conditions can to any extent be shown to have equally reenforced the monogamic life. Our conclusion must be, then, that while the form of the family and the form of industry are closely related, so closely that the form of industry continually affects more or less the family life, yet there is no reason for concluding that the form of the family is wholly or even chiefly determined by the form of industry. SELECT REFERENCES _For brief reading:_ WESTERMARCK, _History of Human Marriage_, Chaps. XX-XXII. _For more extended reading:_ MCLENNAN, _The Patriarchal Theory._ MORGAN, _Ancient Society._ PARSONS, _The Family._ WAKE, _The Development of Marriage and Kinship._ CHAPTER VI THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAMILY While we cannot enter into the historical evolution of the family as an institution among the different civilized peoples, still it will be profitable for us to consider the history of the family among some single representative people in order that we may see the forces which have made and unmade the family life, and incidentally also to a great degree, the general social life of that people. We shall select the ancient Romans as the people among whom we can thus best study in outline the development of the family. While the family life of the ancient Hebrews is of particular interest to us because of the close connection of our religion and ethics with that of the Hebrews, yet in the family life of the ancient Romans constructive and destructive factors are more clearly marked and, therefore, the study of ancient Roman family life is best fitted to bring out those factors. The ancient Romans were among the earliest civilized of the Aryan peoples, and their institutions are, therefore, of peculiar interest to us as representing approximately the early Aryan type. What we shall say concerning Roman family life, moreover, will apply, with some modifications and qualifications, to the family life of other Aryan peoples, especially the Greeks. The Greeks and the Romans, indeed, were so closely related in their early culture that for the purpose of institutional history they may be considered practically one people. Without any attempt, then, to sketch the history of the family as an institution in general, let us note some of the salient features of the family life of the ancient Romans. The Early Roman Family.--(1) _Ancestor Worship as the Basis of the Early Roman Family._ What we have said thus far indicates a close connection between the family life and religion among all peoples. This was especially true of the early Romans. It may be said, indeed, that ancestor worship was the constitutive principle of their family life. Among them the family seemed to have lost in part its character as a purely social institution and to have become specialized into a religious institution. At any rate, the early Roman family existed very largely for the sake of perpetuating the worship of ancestors. Of course, ancestor worship could have had nothing to do with the origin of the family life among the Romans. The type of their family life was patriarchal, and we have already noticed the causes which brought about the existence of the patriarchal family. But while ancestor worship had nothing to do with the origin of the family, once it was thoroughly established it became the basis of the family life and transformed the family as an institution. The early Romans shared certain superstitions with many primitive peoples, which, if not the basis of ancestor worship, powerfully reinforced it. They believed, for example, that the soul continued in existence after death, and that persons would be unhappy unless buried in tombs with suitable offerings, and that if left unburied, or without suitable offerings, the souls of these persons would return to torment the living, Inasmuch as in the patriarchal family only sons could perform religious rites, that is, could make offerings to the departed spirits, these superstitions acted as a powerful stimulus to preserve the family in order that offerings might continue to be made at the graves of ancestors. Thus, as we have already said, among the early Romans the family was practically a religious institution with ancestor worship as its constitutive principle. It is supposed by de Coulanges that in the earliest times the dead ancestors were buried beneath the hearth. At any rate, the hearth was the place where offerings were made to the departed ancestors, and the flame on the hearth was believed to represent the spirit of the departed. The house under such circumstances became a temple and the whole atmosphere of the family life was necessarily a religious one. (2) _The Authority in the Early Roman Family_ was vested, as in all patriarchal families, in the father or eldest living male of the family group. Under ancestor worship he became the living representative of the departed ancestors, the link between the living and the dead. Here we may note that the family was not considered as constituted simply of its living members, but that it included also all of its dead members. Inasmuch as the dead were more numerous and were thought to be more powerful than the living, they were by far the more important element in the life of the family. The position of the house father, as representative of the departed ancestors, and as the link between the living and the dead, naturally made his authority almost divine. Hence, the house father was himself, then, almost a deity, having absolute power over all persons within the group, even to the extent of life and death. This absolute power, which was known in the early Roman family as the "patria potestas," could not, however, be exercised arbitrarily. The house father, as representative of the departed ancestors, was necessarily controlled by religious scruples and traditions. It was impossible for him to act other than for what he believed to be the will of the ancestors. Disobedience to him was, therefore, disobedience to the divine ancestors, and hence was sacrilegious. (3) _Relationship in the Early Roman Family_ was determined by community of worship, inasmuch as only descendants upon the male side could perform religious rites, and inasmuch as married women worshiped the household gods of their husbands' ancestors; therefore, only descendants on the male side could worship the same ancestors and were relatives in the full religious and legal sense. These were known as "agnates." Later, some relationship on the mother's side came to be recognized, but relatives on the mother's side were known as a "cognates," and for a long time property could not pass to them. Indeed, in the earliest times the property of the family, as we have already implied, was kept as a unit, held in trust by the eldest living member of the family group for the good of all the family. In other words, the house father in earliest times did not possess the right to make a will but the property of the family passed intact from him to his eldest male heir. (4) _The Marriage Ceremony among the Early Romans_ was necessarily of a religious character. It was constituted essentially of the induction of the bride into the worship of her husband's ancestors. But before this could be done the bride's father had first to free her from the worship of her household gods, in later times a certificate of manumission being given not unlike the manumission of the slave. After the bride had been released from the worship of her father's ancestors, the bridegroom and his friends brought her to his father's house, where a ceremony of adoption was practically gone through with, adopting the bride into the family of her husband. The essence of this ceremony, as we have already said, was the induction of the bride into the worship of her husband's ancestors through their both making an offering on the family hearth and eating a sacrificial meal together. After that the wife worshiped at her husband's altar and had no claim upon the household gods of her father. Under such circumstances it is not surprising that marriage was practically indissoluble. A wife who was driven out of her husband's household or deserted was without family gods of any sort, having no claim upon those of her husband, and became, therefore, a social outcast. Under such circumstances it is not surprising that divorce was practically unknown. It is said, indeed, that for five hundred and twenty years after Rome was founded there was not a single divorce in Rome. While this may be an exaggeration, it is historically certain that divorce was so rare in early Rome as to be practically unknown. In case of a failure of sons to be born there was no taking of a second wife, as among the Hebrews. Polygyny was unknown in early Rome. The Roman device to prevent the failure of the family succession in such cases was adoption. Younger sons of other families were adopted if no sons were born, and these adopted sons, taking the family name, became the same legally as sons by birth. Inasmuch as the position of younger sons in the patriarchal household was not an enviable one there was never lack of candidates for the position of eldest son in some family group in which no sons had been born. Not only was the early Roman family life the most stable that the world has ever known, but it must also be considered to have been of a relatively pure type. Chastity was rigidly enforced among the women, but of course, as in all primitive peoples, was not enforced among the men. Still it was expected that the married men at least should remain relatively faithful to their wives. On the whole, therefore, the early Roman family life must be judged to have been of a singularly high and stable type. While the position of women and children in the early Roman family was one of subjection, the family itself was nevertheless of a high type. But it was inevitable that it should decay, and this decay began comparatively early. Inasmuch as the early Roman family was based upon ancestor worship, a religion which was fitted for relatively small isolated groups, it was inevitable that the family life should decay with this ancestor worship. How early the decay of ancestor worship began it is impossible to say. Perhaps the nature gods, Jupiter, Venus, and the rest, existed alongside of ancestor worship from the earliest times. At any rate, we find their worship growing rapidly within the period of authentic history and undermining the domestic worship, while at a still later period skeptical philosophy undermined both religions. Along with the decay of ancestor worship went many economic and political changes which marked the dissolution of the patriarchal family. Let us see what some of the steps in this decadence were. (5) _The Decadence,_ (a) One of the earliest steps toward the breaking down of the patriarchal family which we find is the limiting of the power of the house father. This took place very early--as soon as the Council of Elders, or Senate, was formed to look after matters of collective interest. Gradually the paternal power diminished, until it was confined to matters concerning the family group proper. (b) A second step was when the right to make a will was conceded. This right, as we have seen, did not exist in the earliest Roman times, but with the development of property and of a more complex economic life the house father was given the right to divide his property among his children, at first only on the male side, but later among any of his children, and still later to bequeath it to whom he pleased. (c) Thus women came to be given the right to hold property, a thing which was unknown in the earliest times; and becoming property holders, their other rights in many respects began to increase. Originally the wife had no right to divorce her husband, but in the second century B.C. women also gained the right of divorcing their husbands. (d) The rights of children were increased along with the rights of women, particularly of younger children. (e) The right of plebeians to intermarry with the noble families became recognized. All of these changes we should perhaps regard as good in themselves, but they nevertheless marked the disintegration of the patriarchal family. The decay of the family life did not stop with these changes, however, but went on to the decay of the family bonds themselves. Later Roman Family Life.--By the beginning of the Christian era the relations between the sexes had become very loose. Men not only frequently divorced their wives, but women frequently divorced their husbands. Indeed, a complete revolution passed over the Roman family. Marriage became a private contract, whereas, as we have seen, in the beginning it was a religious bond. Many loose forms of marriage were developed, which amounted practically to temporary marriages. In all cases it was easy for a husband or wife to divorce each other for very trivial causes. Among certain classes of Roman society the instability of the family became so great that we find Seneca saying that there were women who reckoned their years by their husbands, and Juvenal recording one woman as having eight husbands in five years. Women and children achieved their practical emancipation, as we would say. Women, especially, were free to do as they saw fit. Marriages were formed and dissolved at pleasure among certain classes, and among all classes the instability of the family life had become very great. Along with all this, of course, went a growth of vice. It is not too much to say that the Romans of the first and second centuries A.D. approached as closely to a condition of promiscuity as any civilized people of which we have knowledge. _Causes of the Decadence_. When we examine the causes of this great revolution in Roman family life from the austere morals and stable family of the early Romans to the laxity and promiscuity of the later Romans, we find that these causes can perhaps be grouped under four or five principal heads, (1) First among all the causes we must put the destruction of the domestic religion, namely, ancestor worship, through the growth of nature worship and skeptical philosophy. The destruction of the domestic religion necessarily shattered the foundations of the Roman family, since, as we have already seen, there was the closest connection between the family life of the early Romans and ancestor worship. But it is not probable that ancestor worship was destroyed merely through the growth of nature worship and of skeptical philosophy. As we have already seen, it was a religion which was mainly adapted to isolated groups. Changes in economic and political conditions, therefore, were to some extent prior to the decay of the domestic religion. (2) Changes in economic conditions, that is, in the form of industry, were, then, among the more important causes of the decay of the early Roman family. The patriarchal family, as we have already seen, belonged essentially to the pastoral stage of industry, and as soon as settled agricultural life, commerce, and manufacturing industry developed, this destroyed the isolated patriarchal groups, and so also in time affected even the religion which was their basis. Again, the increase of population going along with the changes in the methods in obtaining a living destroyed the old conditions under which the family had been the political unit. (3) We have therefore as a third cause the breaking up of old political conditions. Family groups were welded into small cities and the authority of the patriarch was destroyed. Legislation designed to meet the new social conditions often profoundly affected the whole family group, and weakened family bonds. (4) The growth of divorce and of vice may be put down as a fourth cause of the decay of the Roman family. Some may say that this was an effect of the decay of the Roman family rather than a cause, but it was also a cause as well as an effect, for it is a peculiarity of social life that what is at one stage an effect reacts to become a cause at a later stage; and this was certainly the case with the growth of divorce and vice in Rome, in its effect upon the Roman family. Moreover, much of this came from Greece through imitation. The family life had decayed in Greece much earlier than it had in Rome, and when Rome conquered Greece it annexed its vices also. While the most radical social changes do not usually come about merely through imitation, yet the imitation of a foreign people is frequently, in the history of a particular nation, one of the most potent causes in bringing about social changes. It was certainly so in the case of the growth of divorce and vice in Rome. To sum up and to generalize: we may say that the causes of the decay of the Roman family life were very complex, and that this is true of nearly all important social changes. It is impossible to reduce the causes of these changes to any single principle or set of causes. While we have seen that changes in economic conditions were undoubtedly very influential in bringing about the profound changes in the Roman family, still we have no ground for regarding the economic changes as determinative of all the rest. We know as yet little of the development of industry in antiquity. What little we do know, however, furnishes good ground for claiming that changes in the methods of getting a living are among the most influential causes of social change in general; but there is nothing which warrants the sweeping generalization of Karl Marx and his followers, "that the method of the production of the material life determines the social, political, and spiritual life process in general." On the contrary, the evolution of the Roman family clearly shows moral and psychological factors at work quite independent of economic causes. The decay of ancestor worship, for example, cannot be wholly attributed to the change in the method of getting a living. The very growth of population and accompanying changes in political conditions probably had quite as much to do with the undermining of ancestor worship. Moreover, while religion may not be an original determining cause of social forms, it is, nevertheless, as we have already seen, especially that which gives them stability and permanency, so much so that the life history of a culture is frequently the life history of a religion. The decay of religious ideas and beliefs, therefore, from any cause, frequently proves the important element working for social change in all societies. So, too, changes in political conditions, especially changes in law through new legislation, frequently prove a profound modifying influence in societies. Lastly, there are certain moral causes inherent in the individual, oftentimes involving perverted expressions of instinct, which lead to profound social changes. Such was the vice which Rome copied very largely from Greece, but which proved the final solvent in its family life. In general we may say, then, that there is no single principle which will explain the evolution of the family from the earliest times down to the present. Any attempt to reduce the evolution of the family to a single principle, or to show that it has been controlled by a single set of causes, must inevitably end in failure. The economic determinism of Marx and his followers, the ideological conceptions of Hegel, the geographical influences of Buckle and his school, and like explanations, are all found wanting when they are applied to the actual history of the family. It is not different with the theories of recent sociologists, who would strive to explain all social changes through a single principle. Professor Giddings' principle of "Consciousness of Kind" and Tarde's principle of "Imitation" will not go further in explaining the changes in the family life than some of the older principles that we have just mentioned. Human life is, indeed, too complex to be explained in terms of any single principle or any single set of causes. The family in particular is an organic structure which responds first to one set of stimuli and then to another. Now it is modified by economic conditions, now by religious ideas, now by legislation, now by imitation, and so on through the whole set of possible stimuli which may impinge upon and modify the activity of a living organism. So it is with all institutions. The Influence of Christianity upon the Family.--While we cannot study further the evolution of the family in any detail, still it is necessary, in order to avoid too great discontinuity, to notice in a few sentences the influence of Christianity upon the family in Western civilization. Early Christianity, as we have already seen, found the family life of the Greco-Roman world demoralized. The reconstruction of the family became, therefore, one of the first tasks of the new religion, and while other circumstances may have aided the church in this work, still on the whole it was mainly the influence of the early church that reconstituted the family life. From the first the church worked to abolish divorce, and fought as evil such vices as concubinage and prostitution, that came to flourish to such an extent in the Pagan world. Only very slowly did the early leaders of the church win the mass of the people to accepting their views as to the permanency of the marriage bond. In order to aid in making this bond more stable the early church recognized marriage as one of the sacraments, and, as implied, steadily opposed the idea of the later Roman Law that marriage was simply a private contract. The result was, eventually, that marriage came to be regarded again as a religious bond, and the family life took on once more the aspect of great stability. After the church had come fully into power in the Western world, legal divorce ceased to be recognized and legal separation was substituted in its stead. Thus the church succeeded in reconstituting the family life upon a stable basis, but the family after being reconstituted, was of a semipatriarchal type. Nothing was more natural than this, for the church had no model to go by except the paternal family of the Hebrew and Greek and Roman civilization. Nevertheless, the place of women and children in this semipatriarchal religious family established by the church was higher on the whole than in the ancient patriarchal family. The church put an end to the exposure of children, which had been common in Rome, and protected childhood in many ways. It also exalted the place of woman in the family, though leaving her subject to her husband. The veneration of the Virgin tended particularly to give women an honored place socially and religiously. Only by the advocacy and practice of ascetic doctrines may the early church be said to have detracted from the social valuation of the family. On the whole the reconstituting of the family by the church must be regarded as its most striking social work. But the thing for us to note particularly is that the type of the family life created by the church was what we might call a semipatriarchal type, in which the importance of husband and father was very much out of proportion to all the rest of the members of the family group. It was this semipatriarchal family which persisted down to the nineteenth century. SELECT REFERENCES _For brief reading:_ DE COULANGES, _The Ancient City_, Chaps. I-X. LECKY, _History of European Morals_, Chap. V. SCHMIDT, _Social Results of Early Christianity_, Chap. II. _For more extended reading:_ HEARN, _The Aryan Household._ HOWARD, _History of Matrimonial Institutions._ GROTE, _History of Greece._ MOMMSEN, _The History of Rome._ _On the early Hebrew family:_ MCCURDY, _History, Prophecy, and the Monuments_, Vol. II. ROBERTSON SMITH, _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_. _On the early German family:_ GUMMERE, _Germanic Origins._ CHAPTER VII THE PROBLEM OF THE MODERN FAMILY Passing over the changes which affected the family during the Middle Ages and the still more striking changes which came through the Reformation, we must now devote ourselves to the study of the problems of the family as it exists at present. The religious theory of the family which prevailed during the Middle Ages, but which was more or less undermined by the Reformation, gave away entirely in those great social changes which ushered in the nineteenth century. Again, the view that marriage was a private contract came to prevail among the mass of the people, and even to be embodied in a great many of the constitutions and laws of the nineteenth century. At the same time profound economic changes tended largely to individualize society, and these were reflected in the democratic movement toward forms of popular government, which have tended on the whole to make the individual the political unit. The nineteenth century was, then, in all respects a period of great social change and unrest. Moreover, the growth of wealth has favored, in certain classes at least, lower moral standards and increasing laxity in family relationships. Thus it happens that we find the family life at the beginning of the twentieth century in a more unstable condition than it has been at any time since the beginning of the Christian era. The instability of the modern family is, indeed, so great that many have thought that the family, as an institution, in its present form at least, of permanent monogamy, will pass away. There can be no doubt, at any rate, that the whole problem of the modern family centers in the matter of its instability, that is, in divorce. The study of the divorce movement, then, will throw more light upon the condition of the modern family than the study of anything else. The instability of the modern family has been most evident in the United States. Hence, it is particularly American conditions that will concern us, although undoubtedly the disintegration of the family is not a peculiarly American phenomenon; rather it has characterized more or less all modern civilization, but is especially in evidence in America because American society has exaggerated the industrialism and individualism which are characteristic of Western civilization in general. Without devoting too much time to the consideration of divorce statistics in their technical aspects, let us note, then, some of the main outlines of the modern divorce movement in this and other civilized countries. Statistics of Divorce in the United States and Other Civilized Countries.--For a long time the United States has led the world in the number of its divorces. Already in 1885 this country had more divorces than all the rest of the Christian civilized world put together. These statistics of the number of divorces granted in different civilized countries in 1885 (taken from Professor W. F. Willcox's monograph on _The Divorce Problem_) are of sufficient interest to cite at length: United States...................... 23,472 France............................. 6,245 Germany............................ 6,161 Russia............................. 1,789 Austria............................ 1,718 Switzerland........................ 920 Denmark............................ 635 Italy.............................. 556 Great Britain and Ireland.......... 508 Roumania........................... 541 Holland............................ 339 Belgium............................ 290 Sweden............................. 229 Australia.......................... 100 Norway............................. 68 Canada............................. 12 It will be noted that in this particular year (1885), when the United States had 23,472 divorces, all the other countries mentioned together had only 20,131. For 1905, twenty years later, the following statistics are available: United States...................... 67,976 Germany............................ 11,147 France............................. 10,860 Austria-Hungary.................... 5,785 Switzerland........................ 1,206 Belgium............................ 901 Holland............................ 900 Italy (1904)....................... 859 Great Britain and Ireland.......... 821 Denmark............................ 549 Sweden............................. 448 Norway............................. 408 Australia.......................... 339 New Zealand........................ 126 Canada............................. 33 It is evident from the above figures that the United States has more than kept its lead over the rest of the world in this matter of dissolving family ties, for it would seem probable from these figures that in 1905, when the United States had nearly 68,000 divorces, all the rest of the Christian civilized world put together had less than 40,000. Moreover, the divorce rates of the different countries tell the same story. In 1905 in France, there was only one divorce to every thirty marriages; in Germany, but one to every forty-four marriages; in England, but one to every four hundred marriages. Even in Switzerland, which has the highest divorce rate of any country of Europe, there was only one divorce in 1905 to every twenty-two marriages. Let us compare these rates with that of the United States, and particularly with the rates of several of the states that lead in the matter of divorces. In 1905 there was in the United States about one divorce to every twelve marriages, but the State of Washington had one divorce to every four marriages; Montana, one divorce to every five marriages; Colorado, Texas, Arkansas, and Indiana all had one divorce to every six marriages; California and Maine had one divorce to every seven marriages; New Hampshire, Missouri, and Kansas, one divorce to every eight marriages. While these rates are those of the states in which divorces are most numerous, yet, nevertheless, the number of states in which the divorce rates range from one to every six marriages to one to ten marriages are so numerous that they may be said to be fairly representative of American conditions generally. Some cities and localities have, of course, even higher divorce rates than any of the states that have been named. According to the United States Census Bulletin No. 20, there was in 1903 one divorce in Kansas City, Missouri, to every four marriages, and one divorce in the city of San Francisco to every three marriages. _Increase of Divorces in the United States._ Not only does the United States lead the world in the number of its divorces, but apparently divorces are increasing in this country much more rapidly than the population. In 1867, the first year for which statistics for the country as a whole were gathered, there were 9937 divorces in the United States, but by 1906, the last year for which we have statistics, the total number of divorces granted in this country, yearly, had reached 72,062. Again, from 1867 to 1886 there were 328,716 divorces granted in the United States, but during the next twenty years, from 1887 to 1906, the number reached 945,625, or almost a total of 1,000,000 divorces granted in twenty years. Again, from 1867 to 1886 the number of divorces increased 157 per cent, while the population increased only about 60 per cent; from 1887 to 1906 the number of divorces increased over 160 per cent, while the population increased only slightly over 50 per cent. Thus it is evident that divorces are increasing in the United States three times as fast as the increase of population. It becomes, therefore, a matter of some curious interest to speculate upon what will be the end of this movement. If divorces should continue to increase as they have during the past forty years, it is evident that it would not be long before all marriages would be terminated by divorce instead of by death. In 1870, 3.5 per cent of all marriages were terminated by divorce; in 1880, 4.8 per cent were terminated by divorce, and in 1900, about 8 per cent. Professor Willcox has estimated that if this increasing divorce rate continues, by 1950 one fourth of all marriages in the United States will be terminated by divorce, and in 1990 one half of all marriages. Thus we are apparently within measurable distance of a time when, if present tendencies continue, the family, as a permanent union between husband and wife, lasting until death, shall cease to be. At least, it is safe to say that in a population where one half of all marriages will be terminated by divorce the social conditions would be no better than those in the Rome of the decadence. We cannot imagine such a state of affairs without the existence alongside of it of widespread promiscuity, neglect of childhood, and general social demoralization. Without, however, stopping at this point to discuss the results or the effects of the divorce movement upon society, let us now consider for a moment how these divorces are distributed among the various elements and classes of our population. _Distribution of Divorces._ It is usually thought by those who have observed the matter most carefully that divorce especially characterizes the wealthy classes and the laboring classes, but is least common among the middle classes. We have no statistics to bear out this belief, but it seems probable that it is substantially correct. The divorce statistics which we have, however, indicate certain striking differences in the distribution of divorces by classes and communities. (1) The divorce rate is higher in the cities than in their surrounding country districts. We have just noted, for example, that the divorce rate in Kansas City, Missouri, is one divorce to every four marriages, while in the state as a whole it is one to every eight marriages. There are, however, certain exceptions to this generalization. (2) A curious fact that the census statistics show is that apparently the divorce rate is about four times as high among childless couples as among couples that have children. This doubtless does not mean that domestic unhappiness is four times more common in families where there are no children than in families that have children, but it does show, nevertheless, that the parental instinct, is now, as in primitive times, a powerful force to bind husband and wife together. (3) While we have no statistics from this country telling us exactly what the distribution of divorces is among the various religious denominations, still we know that because the Roman Catholic Church is strongly against divorce, divorces are very rare in that denomination. In Switzerland, where the number of divorces among Protestants and Catholics has been noted, it is found that divorces are four times as common among Protestants as among Catholics. Some observers in this country have claimed that divorces are most common among those of no religious profession, next most common among Protestants, next among Jews, and least common among Roman Catholics. (4) From this we might expect, as our statistics indicate, that the divorce rate is much higher among the native whites in this country than it is among the foreign born, for many of the foreign born are Roman Catholics, and, in any case, they come from countries where divorce is less common than in the United States. (5) For the last forty years two thirds of all divorces have been granted on demand of the wife. This may indicate, on the one hand, that the increase of divorces is a movement connected with the emancipation of woman, and on the other hand it may indicate that it is the husband who usually gives the ground for divorce. (6) The census statistics show three great centers of divorce in the United States. One is the New England States, one the states of the Central West, and one the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast states. These three centers are also typical centers of American institutions and ideas. The individualism of the New England, the Central West, and the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast regions has always been marked in comparison with some other sections of the country. But during the last twenty years divorce has also been increasing rapidly in the Southern states, and we now find such states as Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma well up toward the front among the states with a high divorce rate. This distribution of divorces among the various elements and classes of the country suggests something as to the causes of divorce, and this will come out fully later in a discussion of the causes of the increase of divorce. The Grounds for Granting Divorce.--There are no less than thirty-six distinct grounds for absolute divorce recognized by the laws of the several states, ranging from only one ground recognized in New York to fourteen grounds recognized in New Hampshire. For this reason some have supposed that many of the divorces in this country are granted on comparatively trivial grounds. Several states have, for example, what is known as an "Omnibus Clause," granting divorce for mere incompatibility and the like. But the examination of divorce statistics shows that very few divorces are granted on trivial grounds. On the contrary, most divorces seem to be granted for grave reasons, such as adultery, desertion, cruelty, imprisonment for crime, habitual drunkenness, and neglect on the part of the husband to provide for his family. These are usually recognized as grave reasons for the dissolution of the marriage tie. None of them at least could be said to be trivial. Professor Willcox showed that for the twenty year period, 1867 to 1886, over ninety-seven per cent of all divorces were granted for these six principal causes. Moreover, he also showed that over sixty per cent were granted for the two most serious causes of all,--adultery and desertion. Again, of the one million divorces granted from 1887 to 1906 over ninety-four per cent were granted for the six principal causes and over fifty-five per cent for adultery and desertion, while in still other cases adultery and desertion figured in combination with other causes (a total of over sixty-two per cent in all). Therefore, it seems probable that in nearly two thirds of the cases the marriage bond had already practically been dissolved before the courts stepped in to make the dissolution formal. We must conclude, therefore, that divorce is prevalent not because of the laxity of our laws, but rather because of the decay of our family life; that divorce is but a symptom of the disintegration of the modern family, particularly the American family. In other words, divorce is but a symptom of more serious evils, and these evils have in certain classes of American society apparently undermined the very virtues upon which the family life subsists. This is not saying that vice is more prevalent to-day than it was fifty years ago. We have no means of knowing whether it is or not, and there may well be a difference of opinion upon such a subject. It is the opinion of some eminent authorities that there has been no growth of vice in the United States along with the growth of divorce, but this would seem to be doubtful. The very causes for which divorce is granted suggest a demoralization of certain classes. While there may not have been, therefore, any general growth of vice in the United States along with the growth of divorce, it is conceivable that it may have increased greatly in certain classes of American society. Be this as it may, it is not necessary to assume that there has been any growth of vice in the American population, for if actual moral practices are no higher than they were fifty years ago that alone would be a sufficient reason to explain considerable disintegration of our family life. It is an important truth in sociology that the morality which suffices for a relatively simple social life, largely rural, such as existed in this country fifty years ago, is not sufficient for a more complex society which is largely urban, such as exists at the present time. Moreover, recognized moral standards within the past fifty years have largely been raised through the growth of general intelligence. It follows that immoral acts, which were condoned fifty years ago and which produced but slight social effect, to-day meet with great reprobation and have far greater social consequences than a generation ago. This is particularly true of the standards which the wife imposes upon the husband. For centuries, as we have already seen, the husband has secured divorce for adultery of the wife, but for centuries no divorce was given to the wife for the adultery of the husband; and this is even true to-day in modern England, unless the adultery of the husband be accompanied by other flagrant violations of morality. Conduct on the part of the husband, which the wife overlooked, therefore, a generation ago, is to-day sufficient to disrupt the family bonds and become a ground for the granting of a divorce. Even if vice, then, has not increased in our population, if moral practices are no higher to-day than fifty years ago, we should expect that this alone would have far different consequences now than then. The growth of intelligence and of higher and more complex forms of social organization necessitates realization of higher standards of conduct if the institutions of society are to retain their stability. But there are grave reasons for believing that there has been in certain classes of society a decay of the very virtues upon which the family rests, for the family life requires not only chastity, but even more the virtues of self-sacrifice, loyalty, obedience, and self-subordination. Now there is abundant evidence to show that these particular virtues which belong to a self-subordinating life are those which have suffered most in the changes and new adjustments of modern society. We have replaced these virtues largely by those of self-interest, self-direction, and self-assertiveness. Causes of the Increase of Divorce in the United States.--Let us note somewhat more in detail the causes of the increased instability of the American family during the past four or five decades. We have already in a rough way indicated some of these causes in studying the distribution of divorce and the grounds upon which it is granted. But the causes of the instability of the family so affect our whole social life and all of our institutions that they are well worth somewhat more detailed study. (1) As the first of these causes of the increase of divorce in the United States we should put the decay of religion, particularly of the religious theory of marriage and the family. As we have already seen, no stable family life has existed anywhere in history without a religious basis, but within the last few decades religious sentiments, beliefs, and ideals have become largely dissociated from marriage and the family, and the result is that many people regard the institutions of marriage and the family as a matter of personal convenience. This decay of the religious view of the marriage bond has, however, had other antecedent causes, partially in the moral and intellectual spirit of our civilization, partially in our industrial conditions. (2) We should put, therefore, as a second cause of the increase of divorces in this country the growing spirit of individualism. By individualism we mean here the spirit of self-assertion and self-interest, the spirit which leads a man to find his law in his own wishes, or even in his whims and caprices. Now, this growing spirit of individualism is undoubtedly more destructive of the social life than anything else. It makes unstable all institutions, and especially the family, because the family must rest upon very opposite characteristics. Our democratic government, the development of our industry, and our education have all been responsible to some extent for making the individual take his own interests and wishes as his law. (3) Moreover, this individualism has spread within the last fifty years especially among the women of the population, and a great movement has sprung up which is known as the "Woman's Rights Movement," or simply the "Woman's Movement." Now this woman's movement has accompanied and in part effected the emancipation of women legally, mentally, and economically. The result is that women, as a class, have become as much individualized as the men, and oftentimes are as great practical individualists. No one would claim that the emancipation of woman, in the sense of freeing her from those things which have prevented the highest and best development of her personality, is not desirable. But this emancipation of woman has brought with it certain opportunities for going down as well as for going up. Woman's emancipation has not, in other words, meant to all classes of women, woman's elevation. On the contrary, it has been to some, if not an opportunity for license, at least an opportunity for self-assertion and selfishness not consistent with the welfare of society and particularly with the stability of the family. We may remind ourselves once more that the Roman women achieved complete emancipation, but they did not thereby better their social position. On the contrary, the emancipation of woman in Rome meant woman's degradation, and ultimately the demoralization of Roman family life. While this is not necessarily an accompaniment of woman's emancipation, still it is a real danger which threatens, and of which we can already see many evidences in modern society. As in all other emancipatory movements, the dangers of freedom are found for some individuals at least to be quite as great as the dangers of subjection. That the woman's movement has had much to do with the growth of divorce in this country gains substantiation from the fact that many of the leaders of that movement, like Miss Susan B. Anthony and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, advocated free divorce, and their inculcation of this doctrine certainly could not have been without some effect. But the woman's movement would have perhaps failed to develop, or at least failed of widespread support, if it had not been for the economic emancipation of woman through the opening to her of many new industrial callings and the securing for her a certain measure of economic independence. This, again, while perhaps a good thing in itself, has, nevertheless, facilitated the growing tendency to form unstable family relations. But this economic independence of woman, we need hardly remark, is the necessary and, indeed, inevitable outcome of modern industrial development. (4) The growth of modern industrialism must, then, be regarded as one of the fundamental factors which has brought about the increase of divorce in the United States. By industrialism we mean manufacturing industry. As we have already noticed, the growth of manufacturing industry has opened a large number of new economic callings to woman and has rendered her largely economically independent of family relations. Moreover, the labor of women in factories has tended to disrupt the home, particularly in the case of married women, as we have already seen. For the laboring classes it has tended to make the home only a lodging place, with little or no development of a true family life. Again, such labor has set the sexes in competition with each other, has tended to reduce their sexual differences and to stimulate immensely their individualism. Finally, inasmuch as modern industrialism has tended to destroy the home, the result has been the production of unsocialized children, and especially of those that had no tradition of a family life. Girls, for example, through industrialism, have failed to learn the domestic arts, failed to have any training in homemaking, and therefore when they came to the position of wife and mother, they were frequently not fitted for such a life, and through their lack of adjustment rendered the homes which they formed unstable. (5) Closely connected with the growth of modern industrialism is the growth of modern cities, and, as we have already seen, divorce is usually much more common in the cities than in the rural districts. The growth of the cities, in other words, has been a cause of the increase of divorce. City populations, on account of the economic conditions under which they live, are peculiarly homeless. A normal home can scarcely exist in the slums and in some of the tenement districts of our cities. Again, in the city there is perhaps more vice and other immorality, less control of the individual by public opinion, and more opportunity, on account of close living together and high standards of living, for friction, both within and without the domestic circle. (6) The higher standards of living and comfort which have come with the growth of our industrial civilization, especially of our cities, must also be set down as a cause of increasing instability of the family. High standards of living are, of course, desirable if they can be realized, that is, if they are reasonable. But many elements of our population have standards of living and comfort which they find are practically impossible to realize with the income which they have. Many classes, in other words, are unable to meet the social demands which they suppose they must meet in order to maintain a home. To found and maintain a home, therefore, with these rising standards of living, and also within the last decade or two with the rising cost of living, requires such a large income that an increasingly smaller proportion of the population are able to do this satisfactorily. From this cause, undoubtedly, a great deal of domestic misery and unhappiness results, which finally shows itself in desertion or in the divorce court. It is evident that higher standards of taste and higher standards of morality may also operate under certain circumstances to render the family life unstable in a similar way. (7) Directly connected with these last mentioned causes is another cause,--the higher age of marriage. Some have thought that a low age of marriage was more prolific in divorces than a relatively high age of marriage. But a low age of marriage cannot be a cause of the increase of divorce in the United States, because the proportion of immature marriages in this country is steadily lessening, that is, the age of marriage is steadily increasing, and all must admit that along with the higher age of marriage has gone increasing divorce; and there may possibly be some connection between the two facts. As we have already seen, the higher standards of living make later marriage necessary. Men in the professions do not think of marriage nowadays until thirty, or until they have an independent income. Now, how may the higher age of marriage possibly increase the instability of the family? It may do so in this way. After thirty, psychologists tell us, one's habits are relatively fixed and hard to change. People who marry after thirty, therefore, usually find greater difficulty in adjusting themselves to each other than people who marry somewhat younger; and every marriage necessarily involves an adjustment of individuals to each other. This being so, we can readily understand that late marriages are more apt to result in faulty adjustments in the family relation than marriages that take place in early maturity. (8) Another cause of the increase of divorce in the United States that has been given is the popularization of law which has accompanied the growth of democratic institutions. Law was once the prerogative of special classes, and courts were rarely appealed to except by the noble or wealthy classes; but with the growth of democratic institutions there has been a great spread of legal education, especially through the modern newspaper, and consequently a greater participation in the remedies offered by the courts for all sorts of wrongs, real or imagined. Many people, for example, who would not have thought of divorce a generation ago, now know how divorce may be secured and are ready to secure it. However, it would seem as though this cause of the increase of divorce might have operated to a greater extent twenty-five or thirty years ago than it has during the last two decades, for it cannot be said that since the nineties there has been much increase of legal education among the masses, or much greater popularization of the law. (9) Increasing laxity of the laws regarding divorce and increasing laxity in the administration of the laws has certainly been a cause of increasing divorce in the United States, though back of these causes doubtless lie all the other causes just mentioned, and also increasing laxity in public opinion regarding marriage and divorce. To assume that laxity of the laws and of legal administration has no influence upon the increase of divorce in a population is to go contrary to all human experience. The people of Canada and of England, for example, are not very different from ourselves in culture and in institutions, yet there is almost no divorce in England and in Canada as compared with the United States. Canada has a few dozen divorces annually, while we have over seventy thousand. Unquestionably the main cause of this great difference between Canada and the United States is to be found in the difference of their laws. This is not saying, however, that instability of the family does not characterize Canada and England as well as the United States, even though such instability does not express itself in the divorce courts. Interesting statistics have been collected in numerous places in the country to show the laxity of the administration of the divorce laws. In many of the divorce courts of our large cities, for example, it has repeatedly been shown that the average time occupied by the court in granting a divorce is not more than fifteen minutes. In other words, divorce cases are frequently rushed through our divorce courts without solemnity, without adequate investigation, with every opportunity for collusion between the parties, so as to favor a very free granting of divorces. On the other hand, about one fourth of all the applications for divorce which come to trial are refused by the courts, showing that the courts are not so lax in all cases as they are sometimes pictured to be. Moreover, the divorce courts have two excuses for their laxity. First, the divorce courts are always greatly overburdened with the number of cases before them; and, secondly, public opinion, which the courts as well as other phases of our government largely reflect, favors this laxity. This is shown by the fact that public opinion stands back of the lax divorce statutes of many states, all efforts to radically change these statutes having failed of recent years. (10) Our study of the family has accustomed us to the thought that the family is an institution which, like all other human institutions, undergoes constant changes. Now at periods of change in any institution, periods of transition from one type to another, there is apt to be a period of confusion. The old type of institution is never replaced at once by a new type of institution ready-made and adjusted to the social life, but only gradually does the new institution emerge from the elements of the old. In the meantime, however, there may be a considerable period of confusion and anarchy. This social principle, we may note, rests upon a deeper psychological principle, that old habits are usually not replaced by new habits without an intervening period of confusion and uncertainty. In other words, in the transition from the old habit to the new habit there is much opportunity for disorganization and disintegration. It is exactly so in human society, because social institutions are but expressions of habit. Now, the old semipatriarchal type of the family, which prevailed down to the beginning of the nineteenth century, the type of the family which we might perhaps properly call the monarchical type, has been disappearing for the past one hundred years,--is in fact already practically extinct, at least in America, but we have not yet built up a new type of the family to take its place. The old semipatriarchal family of our forefathers has gone, but no new type of the family has yet become general. A democratic type of the family in harmony with our democratic civilization must be evolved. But such a democratic type of the family can be stable only upon the condition that its stability is within itself and not without. Authority in various coercive forms made the old type of the family stable, but a stable basis for a new type of the family has not yet been found, or rather it has not been found by large elements of our population. Unquestionably a democratic ethical type of the family in which the rights of every one are respected and all members are bound together, not through fear or through force of authority, but through love and affection, is being evolved in certain classes of our society. The problem before our civilization is whether such a democratic ethical type of the family can become generalized and offer a stable family life to our whole population. It is evident that in order to do this there must be a considerable development, not only of the spirit of equality, but even more, a considerable development of social intelligence and ethical character in the minds of the people. To construct a stable family life of this character, however, which is apparently the only type which will meet the demands of modern civilization,--is not an impossibility, but is a delicate and difficult task which will require all the resources of the state, the school, and the church. There is, however, no ground as yet for pessimism regarding the future of our family life; rather all its instability and demoralization of the present are simply incident, we must believe, to the achievement of a higher type of the family than the world has yet seen. Such a higher type, however, will not come about without effort and forethought on the part of society's leaders. Remedies for the Divorce Evil.--That the instability of the family and divorce, so far as it is an expression of that instability, is an evil in society is implied in all that has thus far been said concerning the origin, development, and functions of the family as an institution. We shall not stop, therefore, to argue this point since all preceding chapters amount to an argument upon this question. It may be added, however, that in so far as observations have been made of the results of divorce upon children, that the argument has been substantiated, for apparently the children of separated or divorced parents are much more apt to drift into poverty, vice, or crime, that is, into the unsocialized classes, than children who do not come from such disrupted homes. Assuming, then, without further argument that divorce, or rather the instability of the family, is an evil in modern society, the question arises, how can it be remedied? If, as has already been implied, the real evil is not so much divorce as the decay of the family life, then it at once becomes evident that legislation can do little to correct the real evil. That it can do nothing, and that an attitude of _laissez-faire_ is justified upon this question, is, of course, not implied. As we have already noted, the difference between the few divorces of the Dominion of Canada and the many divorces of the United States is largely due to a difference of laws; nevertheless, we cannot assume from this that there is a like difference in the state of the family life of the two countries. Unquestionably, however, legislation can do something even in the way of setting moral ideals before a people. Divorce laws should not be too lax if we do not wish a state to set low moral standards for its citizens. It is not too much to say, therefore, that the lax divorce laws of many of our states are a crime against civilization, even though making these laws much stricter might not of itself greatly check the decay of the family. Again, reasonable restrictions upon the remarriage of divorced parties might very well be insisted upon by law for the sake of public decency if nothing more. Present laws in many states permit the remarriage of divorced parties immediately upon granting of divorce. It would seem that a law requiring the innocent party to wait at least six months, and the guilty party to wait from two to five years and then give evidence of good conduct before being permitted to remarry, would work a hardship upon no one. Again, a uniform federal divorce and marriage law might have some good effects upon the family life of the nation. Divorce and marriage are of such general importance that they should be controlled by federal statutes rather than by state laws. If such an amendment to our present federal constitution were enacted, it might not result in greatly decreasing the number of divorces in this country, but it would result in bringing about uniformity in the different states in the matter of marriage as well as in the matter of divorce, which, from many points of view, is desirable. Moreover, if divorce were under federal control this would throw all divorce cases into the federal courts, and would, perhaps, secure a stricter administration of divorce laws. But it is evident that the main reliance in combating the evils which have given rise to the present instability of our family life must be placed upon education rather than upon legislation. Legislation, we may here note, has many shortcomings as an instrument of social reconstruction or reform. Legislation is necessarily external and coercive. It fails oftentimes to change the habits of individuals, and very generally fails to change their opinion. Education, on the other hand, alters human nature directly, changing both the opinions and habits of the individual. Neither education nor legislation can be neglected in social reconstruction. Both are necessary, but supplement each other. But from the time of Plato down all social thinkers have perceived the fact that education is a surer and safer means of reorganizing society than legislation. While, therefore, I would not oppose education to legislation, I would say that emphasis in all social reform should be laid upon education rather than coercive legislative action, and especially in this case of relaying the foundations for a stable family life in our country. The main reliance, then, in this matter must be placed upon the education which the school, the church, and the home can give to the rising generation. Until children are taught to look upon the family as a socially necessary and therefore sacred institution, until they are taught to look upon marriage as something other than an act to suit their own convenience and pleasure, we must expect that our family life will be unstable. The reconstruction of our family life, indeed, practically involves the reconstruction of our whole social life. Things in industry, in business, in politics, in the conventions and ideals and general spirit of our people, that are opposed to stability in family relations, must be remedied before we can strike at the root of the evil. All of this may be taken for granted; but it would seem that the moral education of the young is the key to the situation in any event. The importance of a pure and wholesome family life in society should, therefore, be emphasized by our whole system of public education, while the responsibility which rests upon the church in this connection is especially obvious; but the home itself must, it may be admitted, be the chief means of inculcating in the young the sacredness of the family. Inasmuch as this cannot be done in homes that are already demoralized, the main hope must be that such education will be given to children in homes that are as yet relatively pure and stable. Movements toward such education already exist in society, and, as we have already said, there is no reason for pessimism, if we take a long view of the situation. But it is nevertheless evident that the instability of the family must be regarded as the greatest of our social problems to-day. Summary Regarding the Influence of Industrial Conditions upon the Present Instability of the Family.--As we have already seen, the development of modern industry is one of the chief causes of the decay of modern family life. Certain aspects of our industrialism, such as the labor of women and children in factories, the growth of cities, and the loss of the home through the slum and the tenement, the higher standards of living and comfort, and the resulting higher age of marriage,--all of these have had, to a certain extent at least, a disastrous effect upon the family. Some of these things, like the growth of cities, seem inseparable from modern industrial development. The problem must be, therefore, how to overcome the evil effect of these tendencies in industry upon the home. There is no reason for believing that such evil effects cannot be overcome, although the problem is a difficult one. Our aim should be, not to stop industrial development, but to guide it and control it in the interest of the higher development of the family. That this is entirely feasible may already be seen from what has been accomplished in the way of regulating the labor of women and children and in the way of providing better conditions in the homes of the working population. There is, however, nothing in evidence in the causes of increasing divorce in the United States which warrants the belief that American industrial development is alone responsible for the increasing instability of our family life. The industrial development of America is less peculiar in many ways than its political and social development. Divorce and instability of the family, as we have seen, characterize the American people more than any other civilized population. This fact, then, cannot be explained entirely in terms of American industrial development, but we must look also, as has already been emphasized, to certain peculiarities in American character, American institutions, and American ideas and ideals. The divorce movement in the United States affords no proof of the theory of economic determinism. SELECT REFERENCES _For brief reading:_ WILLCOX, _The Divorce Problem: A Study in Statistics._ ADLER, _Marriage and Divorce_, Lecture II. Special Report on _Marriage and Divorce_, 1867-1906, Bureau of the Census. _For more extended reading:_ HOWARD, _History of Matrimonial Institutions._ LICHTENBERGER, _Divorce: A Study in Social Causation._ WOLSEY, _Divorce and Divorce Legislation._ WRIGHT, _First Special Report of United States Commissioner of Labor: Marriage and Divorce_, 1891. CHAPTER VIII THE GROWTH OF POPULATION Mass is a factor in the survival of a social group. Other things being equal, that society will stand the best chance of surviving which has the largest population. Moreover, the larger the mass of a given group the greater can be the industrial and cultural division of labor in that group. Hence, other things being equal, a large population favors the growth not only of a higher type of industry, but also of a higher type of culture or civilization in a given society. The questions which center around the growth of population, therefore, are among the most important questions which sociology has to deal with. The growth of population is, of course, more or less indirectly connected with the family life, since the growth of population in the world as a whole is dependent upon the surplus of births over deaths. But population has so long been looked at as a national question that perhaps it will be best to study it from the standpoint of the national group. The population of modern national groups, the influences which augment and deter the growth of the population of these groups, and the laws of population in general, will be what will concern us in this chapter. Population Statistics of Some Modern Nations.--The following table of statistics will show the status of the populations of the largest nations of Europe and America in the nineteenth century: Population, Population, Increase per 1801. 1901. Year, per cent. Russia (in Europe) ... 40,000,000 106,159,000 1.36 Germany .............. 24,000,000 56,367,000 1.39 France ............... 26,800,000 38,961,000 0.12 Great Britain and Ireland .............. 16,300,000 41,605,000 1.21 Austria .............. 25,000,000 45,310,000 0.91 Italy ................ 17,500,000 32,449,000 0.73 Spain ................ 10,500,000 18,000,000 0.32 United States ........ 5,308,000 76,303,000 2.09 This table shows, that while the population of nearly all of these nations has increased rapidly within the nineteenth century, that the increase is relatively unequal in some cases. If we project Russia's increase of population to the year 2000 A.D., we shall find that its probable population will be in the neighborhood of 300,000,000; Germany's probable population, say 167,000,000; Great Britain and Ireland's probable population, 135,000,000; while France's probable population in the year two thousand, if it continues to increase only at its present slow rate, will be but 45,000,000. While these forecasts of population cannot be considered certain in any sense, still they are sufficient to show that the growth of modern nations in population is relatively unequal. Inasmuch as the mere element of numbers is one of the greatest factors for the future greatness of any nation, this is a highly important matter. A nation of only 40,000,000 a century hence, it is safe to say, will be no more important than Holland and Belgium are now. On the other hand, it is very probable that a century hence the civilized nations that lead in population will also lead in industrial and cultural development. Many other factors, of course, enter into the situation, but the factor of mere numbers should not be neglected, as all practical statesmen recognize. A century hence it is probable that the population of continental United States will be about 300,000,000. It would be considerably more than this if the present annual rate of increase were to continue, but inasmuch as that is not likely, an estimate of 300,000,000 is sufficiently high. [Footnote: The official estimate by the Census Bureau is 200,000,000; but this for many reasons seems too low.] We have already seen that it is probable that Russia's population may equal 300,000,000 by the year 2000. It seems probable, therefore, that the United States and Russia may be the two great world powers a century hence, particularly if Russia emerges from its present social and political troubles and takes on fully Western civilization, while the other nations may tend to ally themselves with the one or the other of these great world powers. Of course, China is the _X_--the unknown quantity--in the world's future. Should its immense population become civilized and absorb Western ideas, this would certainly bring into the theater of the world's political evolution a new and important factor. The population and vital statistics of the various civilized countries show:-- (1) The population of all civilized countries, with one or two exceptions, has been increasing rapidly since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Previous to that time we have no statistics that are reliable, but it seems probable that the population of Europe stood practically stationary during the Middle Ages and increased only slowly down to the nineteenth century; but during the nineteenth century the population of the leading industrial nations has increased very rapidly. This is due primarily, without doubt, to improved economic conditions, which has made it possible for a larger population to subsist within a given area. Back of these improved economic conditions, however, has been increased scientific knowledge in ways of mastering physical nature, and accompanying them has been a very greatly decreased death rate, due in part at least to the advance of medical science. (2) This increase in population has been due, not to an increase in birth rate, but to a decreased death rate. During the nineteenth century the death rate decreased markedly in practically all civilized countries. As we have already noted, this is due primarily to improved living conditions, particularly in the food, clothing, and shelter for the masses, but it has also been due in no small part to the advance in medical science, and especially that branch of it which we know as "public sanitation." Because the death rate decreases with improved material, and probably also with improved moral conditions, it is a relatively good measure, at least of the material civilization or progress of a people. We may note that the death rate is measured by the number of deaths that occur annually per thousand in a given population. The death rate of the countries most advanced in sanitary science and in industrial improvement apparently tends to go down to about fifteen or sixteen per thousand annually. (3) The birth rate of civilized countries has also fallen markedly during the nineteenth century, especially during the latter half. On the whole, this is a good thing. The birth rate should decrease with the death rate. This leaves more energy to be used in other things; but when the birth rate falls more rapidly than the death rate or falls beyond a certain point, it is evident that the normal growth of a nation is hindered, and even its extinction may be threatened. While an excessively high birth rate is a sign of low culture on the whole, on the other hand an excessively low birth rate is a sign of physical and probably moral degeneracy in the population. When the birth rate is lower than the death rate in a given population, it is evident that the population is on the way to extinction. In order that a birth rate be normal, therefore, it must be sufficiently above the death rate to provide for the normal growth of the population. On the whole, it seems safe to conclude that we have no better index of the vitality of a people, that is, of their capacity to survive, than the surplus of births over deaths. Such a surplus of births over deaths is also a fairly trustworthy index of the living conditions of a population, because if the living conditions are poor, no matter how high the birth rate may be, the death rate will be correspondingly high, and the surplus of births over deaths, therefore, relatively low. Vital statistics are, therefore, an indication of more than the mere health or even the material condition of a given population. Probably there are no social facts from which we may gather a clearer insight into the social conditions of a given population than vital statistics. Without going into the vital statistics of modern nations in any detail, the following table of birth rates and death rates will serve to illustrate the decrease in the death rates and the birth rates of the three leading European nations, the birth rate being computed the same as the death rate, that is, the number of births per thousand annually of the population: DEATH RATE 1871-1890 1893-1902 1904 England ................... 20.3 17.6 16.2 Germany ................... 26.0 21.5 19.6 France .................... 22.8 20.8 19.4 BIRTH RATE 1871-1890 1893-1902 1904 England ................... 34.0 29.3 28.0 Germany ................... 38.1 35.9 35.2 France .................... 24.6 22.8 20.9 From the above table it is evident that while birth rates and death rates have been declining in all civilized peoples, the decline has been unequal in different peoples. Both England and Germany in the above table show still a good surplus of births over deaths; in the case of England in 1904 this surplus being 11.8 per thousand of the population annually, while in the case of Germany it was 15.6. In the case of France, however, the surplus of births over deaths for a number of years has been very insignificant, and in the year 1907 there were actually about 20,000 more deaths than births in all France (773,969 births against 793,889 deaths). France's population has, therefore, been practically stationary for a number of years, while within the last year or two it seems to be actually declining. The causes of the stationary population of France are probably mainly economic, although all the factors which influence the family life in any degree must also influence birth rate. For a number of years the economic conditions of France have not been favorable to the growth of a large population, and at the same time the law necessitating the equal division of the family's property among children has tended to encourage small families. Unquestionably, however, other factors of a more general social or moral nature are also at work in France as well as in all other populations that are decreasing in numbers. _The Decrease in the Native White Stock in the United States._ Certain classes in the United States also show a very slight surplus of births over deaths and in some cases absolutely declining numbers. In general the United States Census statistics seem to indicate that the native white stock in the Northern states is not keeping up its numbers. This is suggested by the decreasing size of the average family in the United States. The average size of the family in the United States in 1850 was 5.6 persons; in 1860, 5.3; in 1870, 5.1; in 1880, 5.0; in 1890, 4.9; and in 1900, 4.7. Moreover, if we include only private families in 1900, the average size of the family was only 4.6. Thus, between 1850 and 1900 the size of the average family in the United States decreased by nearly one full person. This decrease is most evident in the North Atlantic and North Central states. In Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire, for example, the average size of the family in 1900 was 4.1 persons. Moreover, the vital statistics kept by the state of Massachusetts for a number of years show conclusively that the native white stock in that state is tending to die out. In 1896, for example, in Massachusetts the native born had a birth rate of only 16.58, while the foreign born had a birth rate of 50.40. Again, the following table of birth rates and death rates for 1890 in the city of Boston [Footnote: Taken from Bushee's _Ethnic Factors in the Population of Boston_, Publications American Economic Association, Vol. IV., No, 2, 1903.] for the native born and sections of the foreign born shows conclusively that the native-born element is not keeping up its numbers: Birth Rate Death Rate Native born ..................... 16.40 17.20 Irish ........................... 45.60 25.20 Germans ......................... 48.00 15.00 Russian Jews .................... 94.60 15.90 Italians ........................ 104.60 25.30 It is evident from this table that the foreign born are increasing in Boston very rapidly in numbers through birth, while the native born are apparently not even holding their own. The high birth rate of the foreign born is, of course, in part to be explained through the fact that the foreign-born population is made up for the most part of individuals in the prime of life, that is, in the reproductive age. Nevertheless, while this explains the excessively high birth rate of some of these foreign elements, it does not explain the great discrepancy between their birth rate and that of the native born. If the present tendencies continue, it is apparently not difficult to foresee a time in the not very distant future when the old Puritan New England families will be replaced in the population of Boston entirely by the descendants of recent immigrants. Moreover, so far as vital statistics concerning different classes can be gathered in the northern tier of the states, practically everywhere the same tendencies are manifest, that is, everywhere we find the native-born white population failing to hold its own alongside of the more recent immigrants. Apparently, therefore, we must conclude that the birth rate in the native whites in the United States is declining to such an extent that that element in our population threatens to become extinct if present tendencies continue. Only the Southern whites present an exception to this generalization. The Southern white people, from various causes not well understood,--partially, perhaps, from family pride, partially, perhaps, from racial instinct, but even more probably on account of certain economic conditions,--keep up their numbers, increasing more rapidly even than the negro population which exists alongside of them. _Causes of the Decrease in Birth Rate in the Native White Stock in the United States._ What, then, are the causes of this decrease in the birth rate of the native white stock in the United States? It is worth our while to inquire briefly into these causes, for they illustrate the factors which are at work in favoring or deterring the growth of population. (1) Economic conditions are without doubt mainly at the bottom of the decreasing birth rate in the native white American population. Certain unfavorable economic conditions have developed in this country of recent years for this particular element; especially have higher standards of living increased among the native white population in the United States more rapidly than their income. This has led to later marriages and smaller families. Again, more intense competition along all lines has forced certain elements of the native stock into occupations where wages are low in comparison with the standard of living. This has, perhaps, especially come about through the increased competition which the foreign born have offered to the native white element. The foreign born have taken rapidly all the places which might be filled by unskilled labor and many of the places filled by skilled labor. The native born have shrunk from this competition and have retired for the most part to the more socially honorable occupations, such as clerkships in business, the professions, and the like. In many of these occupations, however, as we have already said, the wages are low as compared with the standards of living maintained by that particular occupational class; hence, as we have already said, later marriages and fewer children. Rising standards of living and rising costs of living have, therefore, impinged more heavily upon the native born than upon the foreign born. It is difficult to suggest a remedy for this condition of affairs. No legislator can devise means of encouraging a class to have large families when by so doing that class would necessarily have to sacrifice some of its standards of living. However, it may be that the native born can be protected to some extent from the competition of the foreign born through reasonable restrictions upon immigration, and it may also be that unreasonable advances in standards of living may be checked, but both of these propositions seem to be of somewhat doubtful nature. (2) No doubt the pressure of economic conditions is not responsible for small families in some elements of the native white population in the United States, for oftentimes the smallest families are found among the wealthy, among whom there could be no danger of a large family lowering the standards of living or pressing upon other economic needs. We must accept as a second factor in the situation, therefore, the inherent selfishness in human nature which is not willing to be burdened with the care of children. In other countries, and apparently in all ages, the wealthy have been characterized by smaller families than the poor. The following table from Bertillon, [Footnote: Quoted by Newsholme, Vital Statistics, p. 75.] showing the number of births per thousand women between fifteen and fifty years of age in Paris, Berlin, and London among the various economic classes, shows conclusively that it is not altogether the pressure of economic wants which leads to the limiting of a population: BIRTHS PER THOUSAND WOMEN PER ANNUM Paris Berlin London. Very poor ....... 108 157 147 Poor ............ 95 129 140 Comfortable ..... 72 114 107 Rich ............ 53 63 87 Very rich ....... 34 47 63 (3) Besides economic conditions and individual selfishness we must unfortunately add another cause of decreasing birth rate in our population which has been definitely ascertained, and that is vice. Vice cuts the birth rate chiefly through the diseases which accompany it. About 20 per cent of American marriages are childless, and medical authorities state that in one half of these childless marriages the barrenness is due to venereal diseases. According to Dr. Prince A. Morrow, in his _Social Diseases and Marriage_, 75 per cent of the young men in the United States become impure before marriage. This serves to disseminate venereal diseases among the general population, especially among innocent women and children. The consequence is, on the one hand, a considerable number of sterile marriages and on the other hand a high infant mortality. It need not be assumed, as we have already said, that vice is more prevalent to-day than in previous generations, but on account of the conditions of our social life diseases which accompany vice are now more widely disseminated than they have been at any time in our previous history; therefore, even the physical results of vice are different to-day than they were a generation or more ago. (4) Education has been alleged as a cause of decreasing birth rate in the native white American stock. This, however, is true only in a very qualified sense. While it is a fact, as collected statistics have shown, that if Harvard and other universities depended on children of their alumni for students their attendance would actually decrease in numbers, it is not true that college graduates have had a lower birth rate than the economic and social classes to which they belong. So far as statistics have been collected, indeed, they seem to indicate that the wealthy uneducated are producing fewer children than the educated classes who associate with them. The influence decreasing the birth rate among the educated is, therefore, not education itself, but the high standards of living and the luxury of the classes with whom they associate. On the other hand, the higher education of women seems to be, down to the present time, operating as a distinct influence to lessen the birth rate among the educated classes for the reason that apparently a majority of educated women do not marry. The higher education has not yet gone far enough, however, to give us any definite facts with which to judge what the ultimate effect of woman's higher education will be. If the higher education of woman is going to lead to a large per cent of the best and most intellectual women in society leading lives of celibacy, then, of course, ultimately the higher education of woman will be disastrous to the race. But probably the relative infrequency of marriage among women who are college graduates is a transitory phenomenon due to the fact that neither women nor men are as yet adjusted to the higher education of women. (5) Some phases of the "woman's movement" have without doubt tended to lessen the birth rate in certain sections of American society. Some of the leaders of the woman's movement have advocated, for example, that women should choose a single life, while others have advocated that families should not have more than two children. Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, indeed, has gone so far as to claim that if families would have but two children this would be a cure-all for many social troubles. Indeed, this ideal of two children in the family has been so widely disseminated in this country that it is often spoken of as the "American Idea." Of course, such teachings could not be without some effect. Without attempting to reply to the advocates of this theory of but two children to a family, it will be sufficient to remark that for a population simply to remain stationary three children at least must be born to each family on the average; otherwise, if only two children are born, as one of the children is apt to die or fail to marry, the population will actually decrease in numbers. Under the best modern conditions one out of three children now born either fails to live to maturity or fails to reproduce. There must be, therefore, more than three children born to the average family for a population to grow. From the sociological point of view the ideal family would seem to be one in which from three to six children are born. (6) Finally, not all of the childless and small families in the native American stock are due by any means to voluntary causes, or even involuntary causes of the kind that we have mentioned. There are also certain other obscure physiological causes at work producing sterility in American women. The sterility of American women is greater than that of any other civilized population, even apart from the causes which have just been mentioned. Some say this is due to physical deterioration in the native white American stock, and there are other things which seem to point in that direction. It may be, however, that this deterioration is in no sense racial, but only individual, affecting certain individuals who lead a relatively unnatural life. Our American civilization puts a great strain upon certain elements of our population, and this strain in many cases falls even more upon the women than upon the men. The social life of the American people, in other words, is oftentimes such as to produce exhaustion and physical degeneracy, and this shows itself in the women of a population first of all in sterility. It is evident that the remedy for this cause is a more natural and more simple life on the part of all, if it is possible to bring this about. Thus, the causes which influence birth rate are evidently very complex. In the main they are doubtless economic causes among all peoples, but there is no reason to believe that these economic causes act alone in determining birth rate, nor is there any reason to believe that the other psychological and biological causes may be in any way derived from the economic. So far as we can see, then, industrial conditions are mainly responsible for the lessened birth rate in the native white American stock. But mingled with these industrial conditions, operating as causes, are certain psychological (or moral) and biological factors that have to be considered as in the main independent. It is furthermore evident that the causes which lead to the decline and extinction of any population, whether civilized or uncivilized, are complex. All efforts to explain the extinction of peoples of antiquity, or modern nature peoples, such as the North American Indians and the Polynesians, through any single set of causes, must be looked at as unscientific. It can readily be shown that in all these cases the causes of the decline of the birth rate and the ultimate extinction of the stock are numerous and are not reducible to any single set of causes. _Causes which Influence the Death Rate._ Before we can fully understand the causes of the growth of a population, that is, of the surplus of births over deaths, we must understand something also about the things which influence the death rate as well as the things which influence the birth rate, because, let it be borne in mind, the growth of a given population (excluding immigration always) is due to the combined working of these two factors. Within certain limits the death rate is more easily controlled than the birth rate. It is very difficult for society deliberately to set about to increase the birth rate, but it is comparatively easy for it to take deliberate measures to decrease the death rate, because all individuals have a selfish interest in decreasing the death rate; but the increase of the birth rate does not appeal to the self-interest of individuals. Modern medical science, as we have seen, has done much to decrease the death rate in civilized countries, and it promises to do even more. Fifty years ago a death rate of fifty or sixty per thousand population in urban centers was not unusual, but now a death rate of thirty to forty in a thousand in the same communities is considered an intolerable disgrace, and the time will shortly come, no doubt, when even a death rate of twenty per thousand of the population will be considered disgraceful to any community. As we have already seen, the normal death rate of the most enlightened European and American communities tends to establish itself around fifteen or sixteen. Of course the sanitary and hygienic conditions which influence the death rate are so numerous that we cannot enter into and discuss them. We can only mention some of the more general social influences which are often overlooked and are of particular interest to the sociologist. (1) The effect of war upon the death rate, particularly of the victorious, is not so great as many people suppose. Considerable wars are apparently often waged without very greatly increasing the number of deaths in a given population. This is, however, only true, as has already been said, of the victorious side. With the defeated it is far different. The death rate among the defeated in a modern war is oftentimes very greatly raised, but this is due not so much to the large number killed in battle as to the fact that the defeated have their territory invaded, their industries disturbed, and their general industrial and living conditions depressed. The vital statistics of France and Germany in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 illustrate this point. In Germany the death rate in 1869, the year before the war, was 28.5; in 1870, the first year of the war, 29; and in 1871, the culminating year of the war, 31. These figures include the armies in the field. For France, however, the defeated party, the figures were far different. In 1869 the death rate in France was 23.4; in 1870, 28.3; in 1871, 34.8. Thus, while Germany had its death rate increased by the Franco-Prussian War merely 2.5 per thousand of the population, France had its death rate increased 11.4. From this it is plain that it is the economic disturbances which accompany war, and particularly those which are manifest among the defeated, which cause a very large part of the higher death rate. (2) As already implied, then, economic depression exercises a very considerable influence upon death rate, particularly when economic depression causes very high prices for the necessities of life and even widespread scarcity of food. This cause produces far more deaths in modern nations than war. The doubling of the price of bread in any civilized country would be a far greater calamity than a great war. While modern civilized peoples fear famine but little, there are many classes in the great industrial nations that live upon such a narrow margin of existence that the slightest increase in the cost of the necessities of life means practically the same as a famine to these classes. Statistics, therefore, of all modern countries, and particularly of all great cities, show an enormous increase in sickness and death among the poorer classes in times of economic depression. (3) Climate and season are rather constant factors in the death rate of all communities. The rule here is that in northern countries the death rate is higher in winter, while in southern countries and in great cities the death rate is higher in summer. Taking 100 as an arbitrary standard, in Sweden in February deaths rise to 113, in August they go down to 79; while in Italy in February deaths are at 106 as compared with the standard, and in August at 111,--the period of minimum death rate in Italy being in the spring and autumn. In a great city like Berlin, if 100 be taken as the standard, deaths are 88 in February and 144 in August, owing very largely to the higher death rate of children in the summer months in great cities. (4) The biological fact of sex also influences death rate. Males in general are shorter-lived than females. This is in part due to the fact that in human populations men are more exposed to the dangers of industry in earning a livelihood, while women are more secluded in the home. But this does not explain entirely the discrepancy in the death rate of the two sexes, for boy babies under the same conditions die more frequently than girl babies. As we have already seen, the female organism is the more stable, biologically, and hence females, while having less physical strength, have more vitality than males. In Great Britain the death rate (1872-1880) for the males was 22.7 per thousand of the male population annually, while the death rate for the females was 20.2 per thousand of their population annually. (5) Conjugal condition is also a factor which affects death rate. The differences between the death rates of the married and unmarried have long been noted. The following table of the death rates of males and females of different conjugal classes between the ages of forty and fifty years (in Germany, 1876-1880), taken from Professor Mayo-Smith's _Statistics and Sociology_, illustrates this: Single males ....................... 26.5 per thousand Married males ...................... 14.2 " " Widowed males ...................... 29.9 " " Single females ..................... 15.4 " " Married females .................... 11.4 " " Widows ............................. 13.4 " " It will be seen from these figures that the death rate among the single is in all the more advanced years of life higher than among the married. The probable explanation of this, however, is not that the married state is better physiologically, as has been so often claimed, but that it is better socially. These figures are a testimony, in other words, to the social advantages of the home. Single persons, particularly in the more advanced years of life, who are without homes, are more liable to fall sick, and when sick are less liable to receive proper care. That these figures show the great social advantage of the home in preserving life is evident from the fact that among the widowed males, whose homes have been broken up, the death rate is higher even than among the single males. Moreover, in interpreting such statistics we must bear in mind that the unmarried in the higher ages of life are made up very often of those who are relatively abnormal, either physically or mentally, that is, of the biologically unfit. Inasmuch as the single persons include many of this class, and also lack the comforts of home, it is not surprising that the death rate is much higher among them. (6) Infantile mortality is one of the most interesting phases of vital statistics. We have already said that the death rate is a good rough measure of a people's civilization. Even more can we say that the death rate among children, particularly those under one year of age, is an index to a people's sanitary and moral condition. Taking the world as a whole, it is still estimated that one half of all who are born die before the age of five years. This represents an enormous waste of energy. Even in many of the most civilized countries the death rate among children, and especially among infants under one year of age, is still comparatively high. Most of this death rate is unnecessary, could be avoided, and, as we have already said, represents a waste of life. Dr. Newman [Footnote: In his work on _Infant Mortality_.] gives the following statistics for different civilized countries for the ten-year period of 1894-1903. These statistics, we may note, are based on the percentage of deaths among children under one year of age and not upon the one thousand of their population. In Russia, 27 per cent of all children born during the ten-year period of 1894-1903 died the first year; in Germany, 19.5 per cent; in Italy, 17 per cent; in France, 15.5 per cent; in England, 15 per cent; in Ireland, 10 per cent; in Norway, 9.4 per cent; in New Zealand, 9.7 per cent; while in the United States in 1900, according to the census, 16.2 per cent of all children born in the registration area died the first year. The Laws of the Growth of Population.--Can the growth of population be reduced to any principle or law? This is a problem which has puzzled social thinkers for a long time. Many have thought that the growth of population can be reduced to one or more relatively simple laws, but we have seen from analyzing the statistics of birth rate and death rate that this is hardly probable. A formula that would cover the growth of population would have to cover all of the variable causes influencing birth rate and death rate and so entering into the surplus of births over deaths. It is evident that these causes are too complex to be reduced to any such formula among modern civilized peoples. In the animal world and among uncivilized peoples, however, conditions are quite different, and the growth of population is regulated by certain very simple principles or laws. Thus it is probable that for centuries before the whites came, the Indians of North America were stationary in their population, for the reason that under their stationary condition of culture a given area could support only so many people. In conditions of savagery, and even of barbarism, therefore, we can lay down the principle that population will increase up to the limit of food supply, will stop there and remain stationary until food supply increases. This is the condition which governs the growth of the population of all animal species, and, as we have already said, of the savages and barbarians among the human species. But among civilized men who have attempted the control of physical nature, and to some extent even the control of human nature, many other factors enter in to influence both birth rate and death rate, and so the growth of the population. Nevertheless, many social thinkers of the past have conceived, as has already been said, that the growth of population might be reduced to very simple and definite laws. Among the first who proposed laws governing population was an English economist, Thomas Robert Malthus, whose active career coincides with the first quarter of the nineteenth century. In 1798 Malthus put forth a little book which he entitled _An Essay on the Principle of Population as it affects the future improvement of society_. This essay went through numerous editions and revisions, and in it Malthus elaborated his famous economic theory of the growth of population. Inasmuch as this theory of Malthus has been the storm center of sociological and economic writers for the past one hundred years, it is worth our while to note very briefly what Malthus's theory was, and why it is inadequate as a scientific statement of the laws governing the growth of population. _Malthus's Theory of Population._ In the first edition of his essay Malthus contended that population tends to increase in geometric ratio, while food at best will increase only in arithmetical ratio; and that this means that constant discrepancies between population and food supply would appear, with the result that population would have to be cut down to food supply. Later Malthus saw how crude this statement of his theory was and abandoned any attempt at mathematical statement, presenting substantially the following theory: (1) Population is necessarily limited by food; (2) Population always increases where food increases and tends to increase faster than food; (3) The checks that keep population down to food supply may be classified as positive and preventive. Positive checks are those which increase the death rate, such as famine, poverty, vice, disease, and the like. Preventive checks are those that decrease the birth rate, such as late marriage and prudence in the birth of children. Inasmuch as Malthus believed that the positive checks must always operate where the preventive checks did not, he advocated the use of the preventive checks as the best means to remedy human misery. The inherent tendency of population to outstrip food supply, Malthus believed to be the main source of human misery in all of its forms. _Criticisms of Malthus's Theory._ (1) It is evident that Malthus's theory applies only to a stationary society, that is, a non-progressive society, because in a progressive society human invention and, therefore, food supply, may far outstrip any increase of population. This has been the case in practically all civilized countries during the nineteenth century, where improvements in machinery and agriculture have greatly increased the food supply. If it be replied that this increase of food is but temporary, and that sooner or later Malthus's theory must operate, then it may be said, on the other hand, that as yet we see no limit of man's mastery over nature, and that apparently we are just entering upon the stage of material progress. Moreover, so far as any given country is concerned, wealth is potential food supply, and in the United States during the last fifty years wealth has increased four times as fast as the population. Malthus, of course, did not foresee the inventions and agricultural progress of the nineteenth century. Still, it is evident that his theory is a static one and cannot be made to apply to any progressive society. (2) Similarly, the theory makes no allowance for the increased efficiency which may come with increased population, because increase of population makes possible better coöperation. As we have already seen, coöperation and division of labor in a society depend upon the size of the group to a certain extent, that is, the larger the group there is for organization the better can be the organization and division of labor in that group. Every increase of population, therefore, opens up new and superior ways of applying labor; and coöperation and the division of labor make it possible for men to do more as a group than they could possibly accomplish working as individuals. Improved means of coöperation, therefore, operate very much the same way in human society in controlling nature as new inventions. (3) The theory of Malthus makes no allowance for the general law of animal fertility, which is that as the rate of individual evolution increases the rate of reproduction decreases. Of course, Malthus's theory antedates this law of animal fertility, which was first stated by Herbert Spencer. Some scientists declare that this law does not apply within the human species, and it must be admitted that it is not yet certain that it does. As we have already seen, however, the lower and less individualized classes in human society reproduce much more rapidly than the upper or more individualized classes. Increase of food supply, of wealth, and so on, does not necessarily mean increase of population, and the fatal error in Malthus's theory is that he assumes that wherever food increases population always increases also. (4) The overpopulation which Malthus feared, so far from being an evil, has been shown by the labors of Darwin to be the condition essential to the working of the process of natural selection in the human species. Overpopulation, at least until artificial selection arrives, is not an evil, but a good in human society. Without it there would not be sufficient elimination of the unfit in human society to prevent wholesale social degeneration. Even with artificial selection, however, some overpopulation would be necessary for the working of any scheme of selection. We must conclude, then, that Malthus's theory, either as an explanation of the growth of modern populations or as an implied practical ethical doctrine, is of no value whatever. This is not saying, of course, that Malthus's theory may not have some elements of truth in it. Undoubtedly Malthus's theory does apply to stationary, non-progressive peoples, like savages and barbarians in certain stages of culture, and also perhaps to certain classes in modern society who fail to participate in modern social progress. But these lower classes or elements in human society are constantly decreasing, especially in America, where the tendency to individual improvement is so marked. Again, Malthus's theory, so far as it depends upon the economic law of diminishing returns in agriculture, has also certain elements of truth in it, and in so far as it merely asserts that the struggle for existence in human society is, in the last analysis, a struggle for food. Finally, Malthus meant his theory chiefly as a criticism of socialistic and communistic schemes, which would equalize wealth and do away with competition in society. Unquestionably any such scheme to equalize wealth and do away with competition in society would result in the enormous increase of the lower and more brutal element of society--those that have not yet participated in modern culture. Malthus's theory as a criticism of socialistic schemes that would do away with competition (this, however, does not apply to modern scientific socialism) is unquestionably as good to-day as when it was written. Most modern economists and sociologists recognize the failure of Malthus to formulate a successful theory of population, and so many have attempted to form theories independent of Malthus; but it must be said regarding most of these attempts that they have succeeded no better than Malthus. For example, a French economist and sociologist, Arsène Dumont, has formulated the theory that society is like a sponge so far as population is concerned,--that it will take up just as many new individuals as it has industrial room for, and that population will in all cases expand to meet these increased economic opportunities. Dumont's theory is that population will increase so far as what he calls the power of social capilarity extends. The law of population is, then, the capilarity of society. Where there are new economic opportunities population will increase; where there are no new economic opportunities there will be no increase. France has no new economic opportunities, so the population will not increase. The same is true of certain classes in the United States. This theory tries to make population depend even more entirely upon economic conditions than Malthus's theory. At first it appears more plausible than Malthus's theory, but this is probably because it is more vague. Economic influences are powerful influences, as we have already seen, in determining the growth of a population, but they are not the only ones. The factors which make up the surplus of births over deaths are so complex that they cannot possibly be lumped together and called collectively economic conditions. Dumont's theory of the growth of population has no more scientific value than Malthus's theory. In conclusion, we may say that we are unable to formulate any laws of population which are worthy of the name of laws as yet, and it seems probable that, while we may understand clearly enough the factors which enter into the growth of population, we shall never be able to reduce these factors to a single formula or law. Social phenomena are too complex, we may here note, to reduce to simple formulas or laws as physical phenomena are reduced. Indeed, it is doubtful whether laws exist among social phenomena in the same sense in which they exist among physical phenomena, that is, as fixed relations among variable forces. Human society has in it another element than mechanical causation or physical necessity, namely, the psychic factor, and this so increases the complexity of social phenomena that it is doubtful if we can formulate any such hard and fixed laws of social phenomena as of physical phenomena. This is not saying, however, that social phenomena cannot be understood and that there are not principles which are at work with relative uniformity among them. It is only saying that the social sciences, even in their most biological or physical aspects, cannot be reduced to the same exactness as the physical sciences, though the knowledge which they offer may be in practice just as trustworthy. SELECT REFERENCES _For brief reading:_ MAYO-SMITH, _Statistics and Sociology_, Chaps. IV-VIII. BAILEY, _Modern Social Conditions_, Chaps. III-VI. _For more extended reading:_ BONAR, _Malthus and his Work._ BOWLEY, _Elements of Statistics._ MALTHUS, _Essay on the Principle of Population._ NEWSHOLME, _Vital Statistics._ CHAPTER IX THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM In new countries population may increase by immigration as well as by the surplus of births over deaths. Immigration is, therefore, a secondary means of increasing the population of a country, and in new countries is often of great importance. Immigration, or the migration of a people into a country, along with its correlative emigration, or the migration of a people out of a country, constitutes a most important social phenomenon. All peoples seem more or less migratory in their habits. Man has been a wanderer upon the face of the earth since the earliest times. According to modern anthropology the human species probably evolved in a relatively narrow area and peopled the earth by successive migrations to distant lands. In all ages, therefore, we find more or less migratory movements of populations. But the movements in modern times, particularly in the nineteenth century, probably exceed, in the number of individuals concerned, any other migratory movements of which we have knowledge in history. Ancient migrations were, moreover, somewhat different from modern immigration and emigration. Ancient migrations were largely those of peoples or tribes, while in modern times migration is more of an individual matter. The Huns, for example, came into Europe as a nation, but the immigration into the United States at the present time is wholly an individual movement. The causes of migration are more or less universal, but corresponding to the difference in ancient and modern migrations we find the causes varying somewhat in ancient and modern times. The causes of ancient migrations and the primary causes of all migrations seem to be: (1) lack of food; (2) lack of territory for an expanding population; (3) war. In modern times we find other causes operating, like, (4) the labor market; men now migrate chiefly to get better economic opportunities; (5) government; in modern times the oppression of unjust governments has often caused extensive migration; (6) religion; religious persecution and intolerance have in modern times been important among the causes of migration. History of Immigration into the United States.--The great economic opportunities offered by the settlement of the vast territory of the United States, together with a combination of causes in Europe, partly political, partly religious, and partly economic, have caused, during the last century, a flood of immigrants from practically all European countries, to invade the United States, greater in number of individuals than any recorded migration in history. Between 1820, the first year for which we have immigration statistics, and 1907, 25,318,000 immigrants sought homes, temporarily or permanently, in this country,--more than one half of them coming since 1880. Before 1820 it is improbable that immigration into the United States assumed any large proportions. Even up to 1840 the number of immigrants was comparatively insignificant. Thus in 1839 the number was only 68,000, and not until 1842 did the number of immigrants first cross the 100,000 mark. Owing to the potato famine in Ireland in the forties, however, and to the unsuccessful revolution in Germany in 1848, the number of immigrants from Europe began greatly to increase. From 1851 to 1860 inclusive no less than 2,598,000 immigrants sought homes in this country. The number fell off greatly during the Civil War, and did not reach the same proportions again until the eighties, when from 1881 to 1890 the volume of immigration rose to 5,246,000. The number of immigrants again declined during the nineties, owing largely to the financial depression in the United States, to 3,800,000; but during the decade, 1901-1910, it surpassed all former records, and amounted to nearly 9,000,000. It is curious to note how the maximum periods of immigration have hitherto been about ten or twenty years apart. Thus the first noteworthy maximum of 427,000, in 1854, was not surpassed again until 1873, when another maximum of 459,000 was recorded; in 1882 another maximum was reached of 788,000, and in 1903 another maximum of 857,000. After 1903, however, immigration went on increasing until 1907. These fluctuations in immigration correspond to the economic prosperity of the country, and, as Professor Commons has shown, are almost identical with the fluctuations in foreign imports. This shows very conclusively the prevailing economic character of modern migration. During 1905, 1906, and 1907, indeed, the United States received more immigrants than its total population at the time of the Declaration of Independence. In 1905 the number was 1,027,000; in 1906, 1,100,000; in 1907, 1,285,000. It seems probable, however, that about twenty-five per cent will have to be deducted from these immigration statistics in prosperous years to allow for emigrants returning to their home countries. In a year of economic depression like 1908 when only 782,000 immigrants entered the country, the number of emigrants returning was over one half of the total number who entered. Previous to 1890, nearly all of the immigrants who came to us came from the countries of Northern Europe. It has been claimed that as high as ninety per cent came from Teutonic and Celtic countries, and were, accordingly, almost of the same blood as the early settlers; but since 1890 the character of our immigration has changed so that since that time nearly seventy per cent have come from non-Teutonic countries, such as Russia, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Greece. The period of maximum immigration for the Irish to this country was the forties and fifties; the period of maximum immigration for the Germans was the fifties and eighties; and for the English, the seventies and eighties. But the period of maximum immigration for the Italians can scarcely as yet be reckoned by decades at all. The Italians first began coming in numbers exceeding 100,000 only in 1900, but in 1906, 273,000 of our immigrants were Italians, and in 1907, 285,000. This latter number is larger than any single European nationality ever sent to us in a single year, unless we except the 338,000 people of various nationalities sent to us by Austria-Hungary in the same year. The immigration from Austria-Hungary, also, to the United States did not exceed 100,000 until the year 1900, but by 1905 it had reached 275,000, and, as has been said, in 1907 reached 338,000. The immigration from Russia, consisting largely of Russian Jews and Poles began to be considerable, if we include Poland in Russia, by 1892, when it reached 122,000. In 1903, after falling off, it reached 136,000; in 1906, 215,000; and in 1907, 258,000. _Present Sources of our Immigration_. These statistics have been cited to show the change in the sources from which we are receiving immigrants. This can be brought out still more clearly by contrasting a typical year previous to 1890 with one of the latest years. The year 1882 was the year, previous to 1890, of maximum immigration into this country. During that year we received 788,000 immigrants. Nearly all, as the table which we are about to give will show, came from countries of Northern Europe. In order to contrast the sources of our immigration a quarter of a century ago with the present sources, we will compare the year 1882 with the year 1907, which thus far has been the year of maximum immigration into the United States,--the total number of immigrants for 1907 being 1,285,000: IMMIGRATION, 1882. Per cent. Great Britain and Ireland ................. 179,423 22.8 Germany ................................... 250,630 31.7 Scandinavia ............................... 105,326 13.3 Netherlands, France, Switzerland, etc. .... 27,795 3.5 Total Western Europe ...................... 71.3 Italy ..................................... 32,159 4.1 Austria-Hungary ........................... 29,150 3.7 Russia, etc. .............................. 22,010 2.7 Total Southern and Eastern Europe ......... 10.5 All other countries ....................... 18.2 [Footnote: 1. Of the immigration from "other countries" 98,295 was from British North America, or 12.4 per cent of the total. This,added to the 71.3 per cent from Western Europe, makes a total of 83.7 of the immigrants in 1882 of West European stock.] 100.0 IMMIGRATION, 1907. Per cent. Great Britain and Ireland ................. 113,567 8.8 Scandinavia ............................... 49,965 3.9 Germany ................................... 37,807 2.9 Netherlands, France, Switzerland, etc. .... 26,512 2.1 Total Western Europe ...................... 17.7 Austria-Hungary ........................... 338,452 26.3 Italy ..................................... 285,731 22.2 Russia .................................... 258,943 20.1 Greece, Servia, Roumania, etc. ............ 88,482 6.9 Total Southern and Eastern Europe ......... 75.5 All other countries ....................... 6.8 100.0 It will be noted that while in 1882, 71.3 per cent of our immigrants came from the countries of Western Europe, only 10.5 per cent came from the countries of Southern and Eastern Europe. In 1907 the situation was very nearly reversed. In 1907 Great Britain and Ireland, and Scandinavia, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Switzerland--the countries which had furnished 71.3 per cent of our immigrants in 1882--furnished only 17.7 per cent, while Austria-Hungary, Italy, Russia, Greece, Servia, Roumania, and Turkey in Europe--the countries which had furnished but 10.5 per cent in 1882--furnished 75.5 per cent. This matter of changed sources from which we receive our immigrants evidently is one of first importance in any consideration of the present immigration problem of the United States. _The Distribution of Immigrants._ If immigrants would distribute themselves evenly over the United States, the immigration problem would be quite different from what it is. Instead of this, there is a massing of immigrants in some states and communities, and very little evidence to show that these immigrants ever distribute themselves normally over the whole country. In 1906, for example, the Commissioner of Immigration reported that 68.3 per cent of the 1,100,000 immigrants who came that year went to the North Atlantic states; 22.1 per cent to the North Central states; 4.4 per cent to the Western states; and 4.2 per cent to the Southern states. If these figures are at all trustworthy, they indicate a congestion of our recent immigrants in the North Atlantic states and in certain states of the Central West. So far as the census is concerned, it tends to confirm these statistics of the Commissioner of Immigration. Our last census returns, being for 1900, can show little, of course, of the distribution of the great number of recent immigrants that have come from Southern and Eastern Europe. Still the 1900 census contains some interesting facts regarding the distribution of foreign born, or immigrants, that have been received previous to 1900. According to the census of 1900 the number of foreign born in the United States was 10,460,000, or 13.7 per cent of the total population. But these foreign born were confined almost entirely to the Northern states, that is, the North Atlantic states and North Central states. In 1900 the Southern states (South Atlantic and South Central) contained but 4.6 per cent of the total foreign born of the country. The reason why so few of our immigrants have thus far settled in the South is perhaps chiefly because of the competition which the cheap negro labor of the South would offer to them, and also because the South is still largely agricultural, offering few opportunities for the industrial employments, into which a majority of our immigrants go. In the North Atlantic states in 1900 nearly one fourth of the population was foreign born, and 20.7 per cent in the Western states. The following statistics will show the percentage of foreign born in typical states: North Dakota, 35.4 per cent; Rhode Island, 31.4 per cent; Massachusetts, 30 per cent; Minnesota, 28.9 per cent; New York, 26 per cent; Wisconsin, 24.9 per cent; California, 24.7 per cent; Montana, 27.6 per cent; Indiana, 8.5 per cent; Maryland, 7.9 per cent; Missouri, 7 per cent; North Carolina, 0.2 per cent; and Mississippi, 0.5 per cent. The influence of the foreign born in a community, however, is better shown, perhaps, if we consider the number of those of foreign parentage, that is, the foreign born and their children, than if we consider the number of foreign born alone. In a large number of states more than one half of the population is of foreign parentage. Thus North Dakota had in 1900, 77.5 per cent of its population of foreign parentage; Minnesota, 74.9 per cent; Wisconsin, 71.2 per cent; Rhode Island, 64.2 per cent; Massachusetts, 62.3 per cent; South Dakota, 61.1 per cent; Utah, 61.2 per cent; New York, 59.4 per cent. Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, and California all also had more than one half of their population of foreign parentage in 1900. For the United States as a whole the number of foreign parentage in 1900 amounted to 34.3 per cent, or 26,000,000 out of a total population of 76,000,000. Many of our large cities also have a high percentage of foreign born and of foreign parentage in their population. The percentage of foreign born in some of our largest cities in 1900 was as follows: Per cent. New York........................................... 37 Chicago............................................ 34.6 Philadelphia....................................... 22.8 Saint Louis........................................ 19.4 Boston............................................. 35.1 Baltimore.......................................... 13.5 San Francisco...................................... 34.1 Cleveland.......................................... 32.6 These same cities had the following percentage of foreign parentage in their population: Per cent. New York........................................... 76.9 Chicago............................................ 77.4 Philadelphia....................................... 54.9 St. Louis.......................................... 61.0 Boston............................................. 72.2 Baltimore.......................................... 38.2 San Francisco...................................... 75.2 Cleveland.......................................... 75.6 These figures show the tendency of our immigrants to mass together in certain states and also in our great cities; so that it has come about that it is said that New York is the largest German city in the world except Berlin; the largest Italian city except Rome; the largest Polish city except Warsaw, and by far the largest Jewish city in the world. Only one nationality distributes itself relatively evenly over the country, and that is the British. All other nationalities have certain favorite sections in which they settle. Thus, the Irish settle mainly in the North Atlantic states; the Germans have two favorite settlements in the United States, one of them consisting of New York and Pennsylvania, and the other of Wisconsin and Illinois, though Michigan, Iowa, and Missouri also contain a large number of Germans. The Scandinavians locate chiefly in the Northwest, especially in Minnesota, North and South Dakota; and the large number of foreign parentage in those states is due to Scandinavian immigration. All these nationalities, however, readily assimilate with our population, as they have very largely the same social and political standards and ideals. But this is not true regarding some of the more recent immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, whose massing in large communities of their own must be regarded as a more serious matter. The census does not help us to find out how far these recent immigrants have massed in certain localities, but the Commissioner of Immigration has kept statistics of the destination of these recent immigrants, and they show the following results: In 1907, of the 294,000 Italian speaking immigrants who came to us in that year, 120,000 settled in the state of New York; 53,000 in Pennsylvania; 19,000 in Massachusetts; and 17,000 in New Jersey. Three fourths of the Italian immigrants, in other words, apparently go to these four states. Of the 138,000 Poles who came in 1907, 33,000 were bound to Pennsylvania, 31,000 to New York, 12,000 to New Jersey, and 17,000 to Illinois. These four states seem to constitute the favorite places of settlement for the Slavs. Of the 149,000 Russian and Polish Hebrews who came in 1907, 93,000 settled in New York state, 15,000 in Pennsylvania, and 9000 in Massachusetts, these three states being the favorite places of settlement for recent Jewish immigrants. It seems clear from these figures that the congestion of recent immigrants is serious, and it is a question whether with such congestion it will be possible to assimilate these recent comers, so unlike ourselves in social traditions and ideals, to the American type. It is claimed by some that there is no serious congestion of immigrants in this country, and that the immigrants distribute themselves through the operation of normal economic influences in the places where they are most needed, and that we need not, therefore, be concerned about the congestion of foreign born in certain communities. This view, however, that economic laws or forces will sufficiently attend to this matter of the distribution of our immigrants, is not borne out by the facts of ordinary observation and experience. _The Distribution of Immigrants in Industry_. It is probably safe to say that four fifths of our recent immigrants belong to the unskilled class of laborers, though the percentage of unskilled fluctuates greatly from year to year and from nationality to nationality. Out of the total of 1,285,000 immigrants in 1907 only 12,600 were recorded by the Commissioner of Immigration as belonging to the professional classes; 190,000, or about 15 per cent, were skilled laborers, including all who had any trade; while 760,000 were unskilled laborers, including farm and day laborers, 304,000 being persons of no occupation, including women and children. When we consider the matter by races, the contrast is even more striking. Of the 242,000 South Italian immigrants in 1907 only 701 were professional men; 26,000, or 11 per cent, were skilled laborers; while the number of unskilled amounted to 161,000, or 66 per cent. Of the 138,000 Poles who came in 1907, only 273 were professional men; 8000, or 6 per cent, were skilled laborers; and 107,000, or 77 per cent, were unskilled. In the case of the Hebrews, however, there is a much higher percentage of skilled laborers and professional men. It is claimed by those who favor the policy of unrestricted immigration that what this country needs at present is a large supply of unskilled laborers, and so the fact that the mass of immigrants belong to the unskilled class of laborers, it is said, is no objection to them. Again, the census of 1900 shows a very uneven distribution of the foreign born among the different classes of occupations. Thus, while the foreign born constituted about one seventh of the population, over one third of those engaged in manufacturing were foreign born; one half of those engaged in mining were foreign born; one fourth of those engaged in transportation were foreign born; one fourth of those engaged in domestic service were also foreign born, while only one eighth of those engaged in agriculture were foreign born. This shows that the tendency of the foreign born is to mass in such industries as mining, manufacturing, and transportation. It is undoubtedly in these industries that there is the greatest demand for cheap labor, and the presence of a large number of unskilled foreign laborers has made it possible for the American capitalists to develop these industries under such conditions probably faster than they would otherwise have been developed. At the same time, however, all of this has been a hardship to the native-born American laborer, and the tendency has been to eliminate the native born from these occupations to which the immigrants have flocked. Some Other Social Effects of Immigration.--(1) The influence on the proportion of the sexes of immigration into this country has without doubt been considerable. In 1907, out of a total of 1,285,349 immigrants, 929,976 were males and 355,373 were females. For a long period of years about two thirds of all the immigrants into the United States have been males. This has considerably affected the proportion of the sexes in the United States, making the males about 1,000,000 in excess in our population. The influence of such a discrepancy in the proportion of the sexes is difficult to state, but it is obvious, from all that has previously been said about the importance of the numerical equality of the sexes in society, that the influence must be a considerable one, and that not for good. (2) The following table shows how far the increase of population in the United States in the decennial periods since 1800 has been due to immigration and to reproduction. Until 1840 the increase by immigration was so small as to be hardly noticeable, and therefore no account of it is taken. Total Increase By Immigration By Birth Year Per cent. Per cent. Per cent. 1800 35.70 1810 36.38 1820 34.07 1830 33.55 1840 32.67 4.66 28.01 1850 35.87 10.04 25.83 1860 35.58 11.12 24.46 1870 22.63 7.25 15.38 1880 30.08 7.29 22.79 1890 24.86 10.40 15.40 1900 20.73 5.86 14.87 This table shows that it is not certain that immigration has increased the total population of the United States, as a decrease of the natural birth rate seems to have accompanied increasing immigration. For this reason Professor Francis A. Walker held that it was doubtful that immigration had added anything to the population of the United States. At any rate, the population of the country was increasing just as rapidly before the large volume of immigration was received as it increased at any later time. Again, the Southern states, which have received practically no immigrants since the Civil War, have increased their population as rapidly as the Northern states, that is, the increase of population among the Southern whites has been equal to that of the Northern assisted by immigration. These two facts suggest that the immigrants have simply displaced an equal number of native born who would have been furnished by birth rate if the immigrants had never come. (3) Immigration has very largely aided in maintaining a considerable amount of illiteracy in the United States in spite of the effects of the propaganda for popular education which has been carried on now for the last fifty years or more. In 1900 there were still 6,246,000 illiterates above the age of ten years in the United States, which was 10.7 per cent of the population above that age. Of these, about 3,200,000 were whites, and of this number, again, 1,293,000 were foreign born. Nearly all of the native white illiterates in the United States are found in the Southern states, the white illiteracy in the Northern states being practically confined to the foreign born. Thus, in the state of New York 5.5 per cent are illiterate, but of the native whites only 1.2 per cent are illiterate, while 14 per cent of the foreign population can neither read nor write. Again, in Massachusetts 5 per cent of the population are illiterate, but of the native whites only 0.8 per cent are illiterate, while 14.6 per cent of the foreign born are illiterate. Statistics of illiteracy for our cities show the same results. Thus, in the city of New York 6.8 per cent of the population are illiterate, but only 0.4 per cent of the native whites are illiterate, while 13.9 per cent of the foreign born are illiterate. Boston has 5.1 per cent of its total population illiterate, but only 0.2 per cent of its native white population are illiterate, while 11.3 per cent of its foreign-born population are illiterate. Of the total immigration in 1907, 30 per cent were illiterate. The number of illiterates from different countries varies greatly. In 1907, 53 per cent of the immigrants from Southern Italy were illiterate. In the same year 40 per cent of the Poles were illiterate, 25 per cent of the Slovaks from Austria, 56 per cent of the Ruthenians from Austria, 29 per cent of the Russian Jews, and 54 per cent of the Syrians. The bulk of our immigration is now made up of these people from Southern and Eastern Europe, among whom the illiteracy is high. It is interesting to contrast the condition of these people with the immigrants from Northern and Western Europe, whence our immigration was mainly received a few years ago. The percentage of illiteracy among the immigrants from Western Europe is very low. Thus, in 1907 among the French it was only 4 per cent; among the Germans, 4 per cent; Irish, 3 per cent; English, 2 per cent; and Scandinavians, less than 1 per cent. Connected more or less with this fact of illiteracy is the number in our population who cannot speak English. In 1900 the number of persons in the United States above the age of ten years who could not speak English was reported by the census to be 1,463,000, but it is probable, owing to the recent large immigration, that the number is at least twice that at the present time. (4) Crime and Poverty. It is said that crime is apt to accompany migration. However, down to 1904 our immigrants have not shown any exaggerated tendency to crime. The special prison census of 1904 showed that 23.7 per cent of the male white prisoners were foreign born, while 23 per cent of the general male white population above the age of fifteen years were foreign born. This shows a tendency to crime among the foreign born not greatly out of proportion to their numbers in the population. The same census, however, showed that 29.8 per cent of all white male prisoners committed during 1904 were born of foreign parents, while this element constituted only 18.8 per cent of the general white male population. Thus, among the children of the foreign born there appears to be an exaggerated tendency to crime, while not among the foreign born themselves. The probable explanation of this is that the children of the foreign born are often reared in our large cities, and particularly in the slum districts of those cities. Thus the high criminality of the children of the foreign born is perhaps largely a product of urban life, but it may be suggested also that the children of the foreign born lack adequate parental control in their new American environment. Certain elements among our immigrants, however, seem strongly predisposed to crime. This is especially true of the Southern Italian. For example, the census of 1904 showed that 6.1 per cent of the foreign-born prisoners committed during 1904 were Italian, while Italians constituted but 4.7 per cent of the total foreign-born population. Moreover, if we consider simply serious offenses, the evidence of the criminality of the Italian immigrant is even still more striking, for 14.4 per cent of the foreign-born major offenders committed during 1904 were Italians, while, as was just said, Italians constituted only 4.7 per cent of the total foreign-born population. In the matter of poverty and dependence the foreign born make a more unfavorable showing. In the special census report on paupers for 1904 the proportion of foreign born among almshouse paupers was about twice as great as among the native born. Again, in a special investigation conducted by the Commissioner of Immigration in the year 1907-1908, out of 288,395 inmates of charitable institutions there were 60,025 who were foreign born, or about 21 per cent, and out of 172,185 inmates of insane hospitals, 50,734, or about 29 per cent, were foreign born. Inasmuch as the foreign born probably did not constitute in 1907-1908 more than 15 or 16 per cent of the total population of both sexes, it is seen that the foreign born contribute out of their proportion both to inmates of charitable institutions and to the number of the insane. The experience of Charity Organization Societies in our large cities, especially New York, confirms these findings. It is not surprising, indeed, that many of our immigrants should soon need assistance after landing in this country, inasmuch as a very large proportion of them come to the United States bringing little or no money with them. Thus, for a number of years the amount of money brought by immigrants from Russia has varied from nine to fifteen dollars per head. On account of the difficulties of economic adjustment in a new country it is not surprising, then, that many of the immigrants become more or less dependent, some temporarily and some permanently. Immigration into Other Countries.--It has been suggested that with the opening up of other new countries the immigration problem of the United States would solve itself, and that so many emigrants from Europe will soon be going to South America, South Africa, and Australia that this country will be in no danger of receiving more than its share. Down to recent years, however, there have been little or no signs of such a diversion of the stream of immigration from Europe into those countries. The principal countries which receive immigrants other than the United States are Brazil, Argentina, Canada, and Australia. While Brazil has received between 1855 and 1904 a total of 2,096,000 immigrants, the present number of immigrants into Brazil seems to be comparatively small, for in 1904 it was only 12,400. Argentina, next to the United States, receives the most considerable immigration from Europe. From 1857 to 1906 Argentina received 3,639,000 immigrants. In 1906 the number was 252,000, of whom 127,000 were Italian, 17,000 Russian Hebrews, and the remainder from various European nationalities. The foreign immigration into other South American countries is comparatively insignificant. In 1906 Australia received 148,000 immigrants, most of whom were British, but the emigration from Australia almost equaled the immigration into Australia in that year. Again, in 1906 the Dominion of Canada received 189,000 immigrants, chiefly from Great Britain and the United States. An unknown number, however, of Canadians migrated across the border into the United States,--no record being kept of Canadian immigration into the United States since 1885, except of those who come by way of seaports. Thus it is certain that the United States receives more immigration at the present time than all the other countries of the world combined, and, as we have said, there is as yet little or no evidence that the stream of European emigration will be diverted for some years to come to these other countries. The problem of immigration in the United States is not, therefore, a problem of the past, but is still a problem of the future. Therefore, the question of reasonable restrictions upon immigration into this country and of the improvement of the immigrants that we admit is still a pressing problem of the day. Proposed Immigration Restrictions.--There are no good moral or political grounds to exclude all immigrants from this country. The question is not one of the prohibition of immigration, but one of reasonable restrictions upon immigration, or, as Professor Commons has said, of the _improvement_ of immigration. There can be no question as to the moral right of the United States to restrict immigration. If it is our duty to develop our institutions and our national life in such a way that they will make the largest possible contribution to the good of humanity, then it is manifestly our duty to exclude from membership in American society elements which might prevent our institutions from reaching their highest and best development. All restrictions to immigration, it must be admitted, must be based, not upon national selfishness, but upon the principle of the good of humanity; and there can be no doubt that the good of humanity demands that every nation protect its people and its institutions from elements which may seriously threaten their stability and survival. The arguments in favor of further restrictions upon the immigration into this country may be summed up along four lines: (1) _The Industrial Argument_. Many of the immigrants work for low wages, and, as we have already seen, offer such competition that the native born, in certain lines of industry, are almost entirely eliminated. This has been, no doubt, a hardship to the native-born American workingman. While we have been zealous to protect the American workingman from the unfair competition of European labor by high protective tariffs, yet inconsistently we have permitted great numbers of European laborers to compete with the American workingman upon his own soil. On the other hand, this large supply of cheap labor, as we have already seen, has enabled American capitalists to develop American industries very rapidly, to dominate in many cases the markets of the world, and to add greatly to the wealth of the country. It has been chiefly the large employers of labor in the United States, together with the steamship companies, who have opposed any considerable restrictions upon immigration, and thus far their power with Congress has successfully prevented the passing of stringent immigration laws. On the whole, it is probably true that if industrial arguments alone are to be taken into consideration upon the immigration problem, the weight of the argument would be on the side of unrestricted immigration. But industrial arguments are not the only ones to be taken into consideration in considering the immigration problem, and this has been hitherto one of the great mistakes of many in discussing the problem. (2) _The Social Argument._ Many of our recent immigrants are at least very difficult of social assimilation. They are clannish, tend to form colonies of their own race in which their language, customs, and ideals are preserved. This is especially true of the illiterate immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. As we have already seen, the rate of illiteracy among certain of our recent immigrants is so high that they can scarcely be expected to participate in our social life. Just the social effect of such colonies of different peoples and nationalities upon our own social life and institutions cannot well be foreseen, but it can scarcely be a good effect. The public school, it is true, does much to assimilate to American ideals and standards the children of even the most unassimilable immigrants. The public school is not as yet, however, a perfect agency of socialization, and even when attended by the children of these immigrants they fail to receive from it, in many cases, the higher elements of our culture and still continue to remain essentially foreign in their thought and actions. (3) _The Political Argument._ Many of these immigrants are, therefore, incapable of understanding and appreciating our free institutions. They are not fit to vote intelligently, but are nevertheless quickly naturalized and form a very large per cent of our voting population, especially in our large cities. As a rule, they do not sell their votes, but their votes are often under the control of a few leaders, and thus they are able to hold, oftentimes, the balance of power between parties and factions. It is questionable whether free institutions can work successfully under such conditions. (4) _The Racial or Biological Argument._ Undoubtedly the strongest arguments in favor of further restriction upon immigration into the United States are of a biological nature. The peoples that are coming to us at present belong to a different race from ours. They belong to the Slavic and Mediterranean subraces of the white race. Now, the Slavic and Mediterranean races have never shown the capacity for self-government and free institutions which the peoples of Northern and Western Europe have shown. It is doubtful if they have the same capacity for self-government. Moreover, the whole history of the social life and social ideals of these people shows them to have been in their past development very different from ourselves. Of course, if heredity counts for nothing it will only be a few generations before the descendants of these people will be as good Americans as any. But this is the question, Does heredity count for nothing? or does blood tell? Are habits of acting and, therefore, social and institutional life, dependent, more or less, on the biological heredity of peoples, or are they entirely independent of such biological influence? There is much diversity of opinion upon this question, but perhaps the most trustworthy opinion inclines to the view that racial heredity, even between subraces of the white race, is a factor of great moment and must be taken into account. It is scarcely probable that a people of so different racial heredity from ourselves as the Southern Italians, for example, will develop our institutions and social life exactly as those of the same blood as ourselves. It is impossible to think that the Latin temperament would express itself socially in the same ways as the Teutonic temperament. Certainly the coming to us of the vast numbers of peoples from Southern and Eastern Europe is destined to change our physical type, and it seems also probable that if permitted to go on it will change our mental and social type also. Whether this is desirable or not must be left for each individual to decide for himself. Another phase of this biological argument is the necessity of selection, if we are to avoid introducing into our national blood the degenerate strains of the oppressed peoples of Southern and Eastern Europe. If selection counts in the life of a people, as practically all biologists agree, then the American people certainly have a great opportunity to exercise selection on a large scale to determine who shall be the parents of the future Americans. While it is undesirable, perhaps, to discriminate among immigrants on the ground of race, it would certainly be desirable to select from all peoples those elements that we could most advantageously incorporate into our own life. The biological argument alone, therefore, seems to necessitate the admission of the importance of rigid selection in the matter of whom we shall admit into this country. At present, however, almost nothing is being accomplished in the way of insuring such a selection of the most fit. All that is attempted at the present time is to eliminate the very least fit, and the elimination amounts to only about one per cent of all who come to us. Our present immigration laws debar a number of classes, chiefly, however, persons suffering from loathsome or dangerous diseases, persons who are paupers or likely to become public charges, and contract laborers, besides Chinese laborers. Practically all who are debarred at the present time come under these heads. Other classes who are debarred, however, are idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, insane, criminals, assisted immigrants, polygamists, anarchists, prostitutes, and procurers. Only an insignificant number, however, of immigrants are debarred upon these latter grounds. In 1907, with a total immigration of 1,285,000, only 13,064 were debarred as coming under these excluded classes, or a trifle over one per cent. For a number of years, indeed, since we have had any restriction laws at all, the number debarred has been a trifle over one per cent. Of course, this constitutes no adequate selection of immigrants which would satisfy biological or even high social requirements. It would seem, therefore, that our immigration laws, from a biological and sociological standpoint, are extremely deficient and that some means of more adequate selection among immigrants should speedily be found. It has been suggested that a better selection of immigrants may be secured by imposing an illiteracy test upon all male immigrants between the ages of sixteen and fifty years coming to us, excluding those male immigrants between these ages who cannot read or write in some language. It is not proposed that this test should take the place of the present restrictions, but should be in addition to the present restrictions. It is argued by those who favor this test: (1) that it would exclude those elements that we desire to exclude, namely, the illiterates from Southern and Eastern Europe; (2) that it is easy to apply this test; (3) that immigrants would know before leaving European ports whether they would be admitted or not; (4) that such a test would have a favorable educational and, therefore, social effect upon the countries from which we now draw our largest proportion of illiterate immigrants. It would seem, however, that the more important tests should be certain tests as to biological, social, and economic fitness. It would be no hardship upon any one for this country to require that all immigrants come up to a certain biological standard and that this standard should be a very strict one, say, the same as that required for admission to the United States army; and that furthermore they should possess enough money to insure the probability of their economic adjustment in this country. Such tests, moreover, might be enforced by our government practically without cost, as the burden of making such tests could be placed entirely upon the steamship companies that bring immigrants to the United States. It has been shown that a heavy fine of from one hundred to five hundred dollars for every person that is brought to the United States that does not conform to the requirements of our immigration laws is sufficient to make the steamship companies exercise a very stringent selection upon all whom they bring to us as immigrants. Finally, something may probably be done to secure a better distribution of our immigrants through the coöperation of the federal government with state immigration societies, and with various private employment and philanthropic agencies. In any case the requirement that the immigrant shall possess beyond his ticket a certain amount of money, say $25.00, would help to secure a wider distribution of our immigrants. Asiatic Immigration.--What has been said regarding there being no good social or political argument for the prohibition of immigrants does not apply to Asiatic immigration. Here the importance of the racial factor becomes so pronounced that it may well be doubted if a policy of exclusion toward Asiatic immigration would not be the wisest in the long run for the people of this country. It is true that but few Asiatic immigrants have as yet come to this country, but there are grave reasons for believing that if the policy of exclusion had not been adopted a quarter of a century ago, Asiatic immigration would now constitute a very considerable proportion of our total immigration. It is chiefly the Chinese who are the main element in Asiatic immigration, and between 1851 and 1900 the Chinese sent us a total of only 310,000 immigrants; but in 1882, the year before the first Chinese Exclusion Law was put into effect, 39,000 Chinese immigrants entered the United States, and if their rate of increase had been kept up the Chinese would now be sending us from 100,000 to 300,000 immigrants annually. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, reenacted and strengthened again in 1892 and in 1902, excluded all Chinese laborers from the United States. Consequently in 1890 the census showed only a total of 107,000 Chinese in this country, and in 1900 only 93,283, exclusive of Hawaii. In Hawaii, however, there were 25,767 Chinese in 1900, most of whom were residents of the islands previous to the annexation. The Chinese in continental United States were, moreover, massed in 1900 chiefly in the Pacific Coast states, there being 67,729 Chinese in the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast states, of which number 45,753 were in California alone. In judging this question of Asiatic immigration we should accept to a certain extent the opinion of the people of the Pacific Coast regarding the problems which these Asiatic immigrants create. At any rate, the opinion of any group of people who are closest to a social problem should not be disregarded, as there are probabilities of error on the part of the distant observer of conditions as well as on the part of those who stand very close to a social problem. Just as we should accept the opinion of the Southern people in regard to the negro problem as worth something, so we should accept the judgment of the people of our Western states in regard to the Chinese and Japanese also as worth something. Now, as regards the Chinese, the people of the Pacific Coast say they would rather have the negro among them than the Chinese. They have numerous objections to the Chinese, similar to the various lines of argument which have already been given in favor of the restriction of immigration. They say, namely, (1) that the Chinese work for wages below the minimum necessary to maintain life for the white man, and so reduce the standard of living and crowd out the white working-man. There can scarcely be any question that the white laboring man is not able to compete economically with the Chinese laborer. (2) Again, they claim that the Chinese make no contribution to the welfare of the country; that they come here to remain several years, to attain a competence, and then return to China. (3) It is claimed that the Chinese are grossly immoral, that they are addicted to the opium habit and other vices, and that so few women come among the Chinese immigrants that Chinese men menace the virtue of white women. (4) The Chinese do not readily assimilate. They keep their language, religion, and customs. They live largely by themselves, and are even more completely isolated from American social life than the negro. In comparison with them, indeed, one is struck with the fact that the negro has our customs, our religion, our language, and, in so far as he has been able to attain them, our moral standards, but this is not the case with the Chinese. It is, moreover, impossible for the Chinese to assume the white man's standards without losing his own social position among members of his own race. (5) The last and strongest argument in favor of the general exclusion of Chinese laborers from this country, however, is the racial argument. The Chinese are just as different in race from us as the negro, and if racial heredity counts for anything it is fatuous to hope to assimilate them to the social type of the whites. Moreover, if we should open our doors to the mass of Chinese laborers China would be able to swamp us with Chinese immigrants. With its hundreds of millions of population China could spare to us several hundred thousand immigrants each year without feeling the loss. If we wish to keep the western third of our country, therefore, a white man's country it would be well not to open the doors to Chinese immigrants. It is certain that if we open our doors to the mass of Chinese immigrants we shall have another racial problem in the West such as we now have in the South with the negro. Those who claim upon the basis of sentiment or humanity that we should open our doors and attempt to civilize and christianize the flood of Chinese who would come to us, probably do not appreciate fully the social status of the Chinese or the social status of the American people. The truth is we are not yet ourselves enough civilized to undertake the work of civilizing and christianizing a very considerable number of people alien to ourselves in race, religion and social ideals. Again, those who advocate the free admission of the Chinese probably do not appreciate the importance of the element of racial heredity in social problems. The negro problem should have taught us by this time that this factor of racial heredity is not to be discounted altogether. All that has been said regarding Chinese immigration applies to Asiatic immigration in general. It is not surprising, therefore, that since the Japanese laborers have begun to come to us in large numbers the people of the Pacific Coast should demand the exclusion of the Japanese immigrants. While Japan has not the immense population of China and while the Japanese are perhaps a more adaptable people than the Chinese, still it would seem that in the main the people of the Pacific Coast are justified in their fears of the results of a large Japanese immigration. For the peace of both countries and of the world, therefore, it is to be hoped that the flow of Japanese laborers into the Western states will be checked without any disruption of the friendship of the United States and Japan. The same thing can be said regarding the Hindoo immigrants who are just beginning to come to us. It would appear that the wisest policy, therefore, regarding, all Asiatic immigration is the exclusion of Asiatic laborers, and as these would constitute over nine tenths of all Asiatic immigrants who might come to us, this would assure a practical solution of the problem. SELECT REFERENCES _For brief reading:_ COMMONS, _Races and Immigrants in America_. HALL, _Immigration and Its Effect upon the United States_. MAYO-SMITH, _Emigration and Immigration_. _For more extended reading:_ GROSE, _The Incoming Millions_. STEINER, _On the Trail of the Immigrant_. WHELPLEY, _The Problem of the Immigrant_. Reports of the United States Commissioner-General of Immigration. _On Chinese Immigration:_ COOLIDGE, _Chinese Immigration_. CHAPTER X THE NEGRO PROBLEM Already we have been brought in our study of the immigration problem to race problems--problems of the relations of races to one another and of their mutual adjustment. The negro problem is one of many race problems which the United States has, but because it is the most pressing of all of our race problems it is frequently spoken of as _the race problem_. An unsolved factor in all race problems is the biological influence of racial heredity, and this factor we must seek to understand and estimate at the very outset of any scientific study of the negro problem. Racial Heredity as a Factor in Social Evolution.--We have already seen that racial heredity is the most important and at the same time the least known factor in the problem of immigration. While there is still much disagreement among scientific men as to the importance of racial heredity in social problems, it can be said that the weight of opinion inclines to the view that racial heredity is a very real factor, and one which cannot be left altogether out of account in studying social problems. The view of Buckle that racial heredity counted for nothing in explaining the social life of various peoples is not upheld by modern biologists. On the contrary the biological view would emphasize the importance of species and racial heredity in all problems connected with life; thus no one denies that between different species of animals heredity counts for everything in explaining their life activities, and, as between the different breeds or races of a single species, no other position is possible from the biological point of view. Nevertheless it may be admitted that man no longer lives a purely animal life and that racial heredity as a factor in his social life may be easily exaggerated. On the whole, it is a safe rule to follow that racial heredity should not be invoked to explain the social condition of a people until practically all other factors have been exhausted. Nevertheless as between the different races or great varieties of mankind there must be a great difference in racial heredity. It could not, indeed, be otherwise, since these different races were developed in different geographical environments or "areas of characterization." Natural selection has developed in each race of mankind an innate character fitted to cope with the environment in which it was evolved. This is clearly perceptible in regard to their bodily traits, and all modern research seems to show that their native reactions to different stimuli also vary greatly, that is, heredity affects their thoughts, feelings and mode of conduct as well as the color of skin, texture of hair, and shape of head. In other words, the instincts or native reactions of the different races of man vary considerably in degree if not in quality, and from this it follows that their feelings, ideas, and modes of conduct must also vary considerably. It may be noted, however, that taking racial heredity into full account by no means leads to an attitude of fatalism as regards racial problems. On the contrary modern biology clearly teaches that racial heredity is modifiable both in the individual and in the race. It is modifiable in the individual through education or training; it is modifiable in the race through selection. Therefore racial heredity does not foredoom any people to remain in a low status of culture; only it must be taken into account in explaining the cultural conditions of all peoples, and especially in planning for a people's social amelioration. The Racial Heredity of the Negro.--It is generally agreed by anthropologists and biologists that mankind constitutes but a single species, developed from a single pre-human anthropoid stock. The various races of mankind have had, therefore, a common origin, but having developed in different geographical areas they each present certain peculiar racial traits adapting each to the environment in which it was developed. Now, the negro race is that part of mankind which was developed in the tropics. In all the negro's physical and mental make-up he shows complete adaptation to a tropical environment. The dark color of his skin, for example, was developed by natural selection to exclude the injurious actinic rays of the sun. The various ways in which the negro's tropical environment influenced the development of his mind, particularly of his instincts, cannot be here entered into in detail. Suffice to say that the African environment of the ancestors of the present negroes in the United States deeply stamped itself upon the mental traits and tendencies of the race. For example, the tropical environment is generally unfavorable to severe bodily labor. Persons who work hard in the tropics are, in other words, apt to be eliminated by natural selection. On the other hand, nature furnishes a bountiful supply of food without much labor. Hence, the tropical environment of the negro failed to develop in him any instinct to work, but favored the survival of those naturally shiftless and lazy. Again, the extremely high death rate in Africa necessitated a correspondingly high birth rate in order that any race living there might survive; hence, nature fixed in the negro strong sexual propensities in order to secure such a high birth rate. It is not claimed that the shiftlessness and sensuality of the masses of the American negroes to-day can be wholly attributed to hereditary influences, but it would be a great mistake to suppose that the African environment did not have something to do with these two dominant characteristics of the present American negro. So we might go through the whole list of the conspicuous traits and tendencies of the American negro, and in practically every case we would find good reason for believing that these racial traits and tendencies are at least in part instinctive, that is, due to the influence of racial heredity. The question is frequently raised whether the negro is inferior by nature to the white man or not. It is obvious from what has been said that the negro may, on the side of his instinctive or hereditary equipment, be inferior to the white man in his natural adaptiveness to a complex civilization existing under very different climatic conditions from those in which he was evolved. This does not mean, however, that the negro is in any sense a degenerate. On the contrary, from the point of view of a tropical environment, as we have already made plain, the negro may be regarded as the white man's superior. It is only in countries out of his own natural environment, under strange conditions of life to which he has not yet become biologically adapted, that the negro is inferior to the white man. In Africa he is the white man's superior if we adopt survival as the test of superiority. Influence of Slavery on the Negro.--There is no longer any doubt that the influence of slavery on the negro, as a form of industry, was both beneficent and maleficent. The negroes brought to America by the slave traders were subject to a very severe artificial selection, which, perhaps, secured a better type of negro physically on the whole, and a more docile type mentally; but the chief beneficent influence of slavery on the negro was that it taught him to work, to some extent at least. Moreover, it gave the negro the Anglo-Saxon tongue and the rudiments of our morality, religion, and civilization. On the other hand, slavery did not fit the individual or the race for a life of freedom, and did not raise moral standards much above those of Africa. The monogamic form of the family was, to be sure, enforced upon the slaves, but the family life was often broken up; for even when the owner of the slaves was kind-hearted and humane, on his death his property would be sold and the families of his slaves scattered. Under such conditions it is not surprising that the negro learned little of family morality. Again, being property himself, the negro could not be taught properly to appreciate the rights of property. Finally slavery failed to develop in the slave that self-mastery and self-control which are necessary for free social life. Admirable as slavery was in some ways as a school for an uncultivated people, it failed utterly in other ways; and it surely should not be difficult to devise methods of training at the present time which are superior to anything that slavery as a school for the industrial training of the negro could possibly have accomplished. Statistics of the Negro Problem in the United States. The following table will show the percentage of negroes in the population of the United States at different decades (Negro, in census terminology, includes all persons of negro descent): Per cent. 1790 ................................... 19.37 1800 ................................... 18.88 1810 ................................... 19.03 1830 ................................... 18.10 1840 ................................... 16.84 1850 ................................... 15.69 1860 ................................... 14.13 1870 ................................... 12.60 1880 ................................... 13.12 1890 ................................... 11.93 1900 ................................... 11.63 In 1860 the total number of negroes in the population of the United States was 4,441,000. Forty years later, in 1900, the number had just doubled, having reached 8,840,000. Nevertheless, it will be seen from the above table that the percentage of negroes in the total population has steadily diminished, although the negro population doubled between 1860 and 1900. Between 1890 and 1900 the comparative rates of increase for the whites and negroes were: whites, 21.49 Per cent; negroes, 18.10 per cent. Geographical Distribution of the Negroes. The negro problem would not be so acute in certain sections of the country if negroes were distributed evenly over the country instead of being massed as they are in certain sections. Ninety per cent of the total number of negroes in the country live in the South Atlantic and South Central states. Moreover, over eighty per cent live in the so-called "Black Belt" states,--the "Black Belt" being a chain of counties stretching from Virginia to Texas in which over half of the population are negroes. The following table shows the percentage of negro population in these states of the "Black Belt": Per cent. Alabama............................................. 45.2 Arkansas............................................ 28.0 Florida............................................. 43.6 Georgia............................................. 46.7 Louisiana........................................... 47.1 Mississippi......................................... 58.5 North Carolina...................................... 33.0 South Carolina...................................... 58.4 Tennessee........................................... 23.8 Texas............................................... 20.4 Virginia............................................ 35.7 While in only two of these states there is an absolute preponderance of negroes, yet these statistics give no idea of the massing of negroes in certain localities. In Washington County, Mississippi, for example, the negroes number 44,143, the whites 5002; in Beaufort County, South Carolina, the negroes number 32,137, the whites 3349. In many counties in the "Black Belt" more than three fourths of the population are negroes. It is in these states that the negro population is rapidly increasing. _Increase of Negro in States since 1860_. The following table will show the percentage of negroes in the population in former slave-holding states in 1860 and in 1900: States 1860 1900 Per cent Per cent Alabama .................. 45.4 45.2 Arkansas ................. 25.6 28 Florida .................. 44.6 43.6 Georgia .................. 44 40.7 Kentucky ................. 20.4 13.3 Louisiana ................ 49.5 47.1 Maryland ................. 24.9 19.8 Mississippi .............. 55.3 58.5 Missouri ................. 10 5.2 North Carolina ........... 30.4 33 South Carolina ........... 58.6 58.4 Tennessee ................ 25.5 23.8 Texas .................... 30.3 20.4 Virginia ................. 42 35.7 It will be noted that the states whose relative negro population has increased since the war are Arkansas, Mississippi, and Georgia, while in South Carolina and Alabama, the relative proportion of negroes has stood stationary. In the decade from 1890 to 1900, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas of the above states showed a more rapid increase of their negro population than of their white population. In other Southern states, however, the white population increased more rapidly than the negro population, although in Georgia both races increased about equally. In certain Northern states the census of 1900 shows the negro population to be increasing much more rapidly than the white population. In New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, and Massachusetts, for example, the negro population increased about twice as fast as the white population, but the number of negroes in these states was still in 1900 comparatively small, New York having 99,000; Pennsylvania, 156,000, Illinois, 85,000, Indiana, 57,000; and Massachusetts, 31,000. This increase of negro population in certain Northern states is, of course, due to the immigration of the negro into those states, and may be regarded on the whole as a fortunate movement, serving to distribute the negro population more evenly over the whole country, were it not that the negro death rate in these Northern states is so very high that the negroes who go to these states do not as a rule maintain their numbers. _The Urban Negro Population._--Seventeen per cent of the total negro population in 1900 lived in cities of over 8000 population while the remainder lived in small towns and country districts. The following great cities had a high percentage of negroes: Per cent. Memphis ............................... 48.8 Washington ............................ 31.1 New Orleans ........................... 27.1 Louisville ............................ 19.1 St. Louis ............................. 6.2 Philadelphia .......................... 4.8 Baltimore ............................. 15.6 Some smaller Southern cities have, of course, a much higher percentage of negroes in their population, such as Jacksonville, Florida, 57.1 per cent; Charleston, South Carolina, 56.5 per cent; Savannah, Georgia, 51.8 per cent. On the whole, however, it will be seen that the mass of the negroes in the United States still live in rural districts, although directly after the Civil War and again within recent years there has been a considerable movement of the negroes to the cities. This is extremely significant for the social conditions of the race, because the negro, while not adapted in general to the environment of civilization, is still less adapted to the environment which the modern city affords him. The Social Condition of the Negroes in the United States.--(1) _Intermixture of Races._ Ever since the negro came to this country he has been having his racial characteristics modified by the infusion of white blood. The census of 1890 attempted to make an estimate of the number of negroes of mixed blood in the United States. The number returned as being of mixed blood was 1,132,000, but all authorities agree that this number understates the actual number. The census officials themselves repudiated these figures as being entirely misleading. Experts in ethnology have estimated that from one third to one half of the negroes in the United States show traces of white intermixture. The lower estimate, that one third of the negroes of the United States have more or less white blood, is quite generally accepted by those who have carefully investigated the matter. Of course the proportion of negroes of mixed blood varies greatly in different localities. In communities in the border states frequently more than one half of the negroes show marked traces of white intermixture. But in the isolated rural regions of the South, where the negroes predominate, the full-blood negro is by far the more common type. This infusion of white blood into a portion of the negro population is significant sociologically. It is the negroes of mixed blood who are ambitious socially and who present some of the most acute phases of the negro problem. It is from the mixed bloods that the leaders of the race in this country have come. The pure negro without intermixture has hitherto seemed incapable of leadership. Such men as Booker T. Washington, Professor Du Bois, and most other negro leaders have a considerable mixture of white blood. A list of 2200 negro authors was once compiled by the Librarian of Congress, and investigation showed that with very few exceptions these negro authors came from the mixed stock. Indeed, practically all of the negroes who have been eminent in literature, science, art, or statesmanship have come from this class of mixed bloods. But the infusion of white blood has also in some ways been a detriment to the negro. The illegitimate offspring resulting from the unions of white fathers and negro mothers are frequently the product of conditions of vice. The consequence is that the child of mixed origin frequently has a degenerate heredity and, coming into the world as a bastard, is more or less in disfavor with both races; hence the social environment of the mulatto as well as his heredity is oftentimes peculiarly unfavorable. It is not surprising, therefore, to find among the mulattoes a great amount of constitutional diseases and a great tendency to crime and immorality. Again mulatto women are more frequently debauched by white men than the pure blood negro women, and for this reason negro women of mixed blood are more apt to be immoral. So we see that while the mixed bloods have furnished the leaders of their race, they have also furnished an undue proportion of its vice and crime. This is exactly what we should expect when we understand the social conditions existing between the races and the origin and social environment of the mulatto. The crime and vice and constitutional diseases of the mulatto do not prove that degeneracy results from the intermixture of the two races, as was once supposed. On the contrary, as we have already seen, all of these things result from the fact that the crossing of the races takes place under socially abnormal conditions, that is, under conditions of vice. This is not, however, true in all cases and particularly it was not true of all intermixture that took place under the regime of slavery. Rather intermixture under such circumstances approached not vice, as we understand the word, but polygyny. Consequently some of the best blood of the South runs in the veins of some of the mulattoes. Again, we have examples from other countries of the crossing of the two races, negro and white, without physical degeneracy. In the West Indies and in Brazil this crossing is frequently taking place, and many of the best families of those countries have a slight amount of negro blood in their veins. From instances like this, gathered from all over the world, it has generally been concluded by anthropologists that no evil physiological results necessarily follow the intermixture of races, even the most diverse, but that all supposed physiological evils coming from the intermixture of races really come from social rather than from physiological causes. From the point of view of the white race and from the point of view of the negro race such racial intermixture, outside of the bounds of law, may be for many reasons undesirable. But we are here concerned with noting only the social effect of the intermixture that has gone on in the past; and we see that on the one hand it has resulted in creating a class of so-called negroes in whom white blood and the ambitions and energy of the white race predominate, and on the other hand it has also resulted in creating a degenerate mixed stock who furnish the majority of criminals and vicious persons belonging to the so-called negro race. (2) _Criminality of the Negro._ One of the most important features of the negro problem in the United States is the strong tendency among the negroes toward crime; and this, as we have just seen, is especially manifest in those of mixed origin. Professor Willcox has shown that in 1890 there were in the South six white prisoners to every ten thousand whites, but twenty-nine negro prisoners to every ten thousand negroes, while in the North there were twelve white prisoners to every ten thousand whites, but sixty-nine negro prisoners to every ten thousand negroes. These statistics show that the negro is everywhere more criminal than the white, and that his tendency toward crime increases as we go North, doubtless largely because in the North he is in a strange and more complex environment and finds greater difficulty in making social adjustments. Moreover, negro crime is increasing. From 1880 to 1890 the negro prisoners of the United States increased 29 per cent, while the white prisoners only increased 8 per cent. Later statistics show the same result. As yet there has been no check to the steady increase of negro crime in this country since the Civil War. In some Northern cities, like Chicago, in some years the number of arrests of negroes has equaled one third of the total negro population of those cities. The criminality of the negro is doubtless in part a matter of social environment, because we see that negro crime increases in cities and in the more complex Northern communities; but it is also to some extent a matter of the negro's heredity. Of course vice accompanies crime among the American negroes. The statistics of illegitimacy in Washington cited by Hoffman in his _Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro_ show that in fifteen years in Washington, from 1879 to 1894, the percentage of illegitimate births among the whites was 2.9 per cent, while the percentage among the negroes was 22.5. In other words, from one fifth to one fourth of all the negro births in Washington during that fifteen-year period were illegitimate. Statistics collected in other cities show approximately the same result. Of course statistics of illegitimacy are not exactly the same thing as statistics of vice, but they, at any rate, throw a light upon the moral condition of the negro in this regard, and particularly show the demoralization of his family life. (3) _Negro Pauperism._ We have no good statistics on negro pauperism, but such as we have seem to indicate that the state of dependence of the negro is very great. In the city of Washington, where 30 per cent of the population is made up of negroes, 84 per cent of the pauper burials are those of negroes; and in Charleston, where 57 per cent of the population are negroes, 96.7 per cent of the pauper burials are those of negroes. In nearly all communities where organized charities exist the negroes contribute to the dependent population far out of proportion to their numbers. It is safe to say that from 50 to 75 per cent of the total negro population of the United States live in poverty as distinguished from pauperism, that is, live under such conditions that physical and mental efficiency cannot be maintained. (4) _Negro Vital Statistics_. The negro death and birth rates are both very high. No definite statistics of negro death and birth rates have been kept except in cities and in a few rural districts. In Alabama in a few registered districts the negro birth rate has been found to be equal to about twice the death rate. On the other hand it is a curious fact that in the North the negro fails to reproduce sufficiently to keep up his numbers, consequently the negro population in Northern states would die out if it were not for immigration. In Massachusetts in 1888, for example, there were 511 negro births and 579 negro deaths. Statistics from other Northern communities tell the same story. The vital statistics of Southern cities show that the negro death rate is very much higher than the white death rate. In ten Southern cities, for example, Hoffman gives the average death rate for the whites as 20 per thousand for the white population, and for the negroes as 32.6 per thousand of the negro population. These same cities in 1901-1905 showed an annual average death rate for the whites of 17.5 and for the negroes of 28.4. In several cities the negro death rate is nearly twice that of the whites. When these mortality statistics are analyzed, moreover, while they show that negro mortality at all ages is greater than white mortality, it is greatest among negro children under fifteen years of age. This is of course largely because of the ignorant manner in which negroes care for their children, but it also indicates that natural selection is at work among the American negroes rapidly eliminating the biologically unfit. _Conclusions from Negro Vital Statistics._ Three important conclusions may be drawn from the negro vital and population statistics which are well worth emphasizing. (1) The negro population is not increasing so fast as the white, owing largely to its high death rate, yet it is increasing, and there is no indication as yet that the negro population will decrease. It is probable, indeed, that at the end of the twentieth century the negro population of the United States will be between twenty and thirty millions. The view of some students of the negro problem that the negro is destined to an early extinction in this country is merely a speculative hypothesis, and as yet is not substantiated by any statistical facts. (2) While the negro is destined to be with us always, so far as we can see, yet owing to the fact of intermixture of races he will be less and less a pure negro, so that at the end of the twentieth century the negroes in the United States will be much nearer the white type than at the present time. (3) The high death rate among the negroes indicates that a rapid process of natural selection is going on among them. Now, natural selection means the elimination of the unfit,--the dying out of those who cannot adapt themselves to their environment. This selective process will tend toward the survival of the more fit elements among the negroes, and, therefore, towards bringing the negro up to the standard of the whites. The misery and vice which we see among the present American negroes are simply in a large degree the expression of the working of a process of natural selection among them. It would be preferable, however, if the white race could by education and other means substitute to some degree at least artificial selection for the miseries and brutality of the natural process of eliminating the unfit. This the superior race should do to protect itself as well as to raise the negro. Industrial Conditions Among the Negroes.--Recently a committee of the American Economic Association estimated that all of the taxable property in the United States owned by negroes amounted to $300,000,000, or about $33.00 per head,--this estimate being based upon the 1900 census returns. Thirty-three dollars per head of the negro population seems of course very small when compared to the $1,000.00 per capita owned by the whites; but we must remember that the negro at his emancipation was in no way equipped to acquire property, and, with the exception of a few freedmen, the negro at the close of the war had no property whatsoever. In a few cases their old masters set up the emancipated negroes with small farms. In 1900 there were 746,715 farms occupied by negroes either as tenants or owners. Twenty-five per cent of these farms were owned by negroes and about ten per cent were owned unencumbered. There are, of course, two ways of looking at these statistics. They are discouraging if we care to look at them in that way, but on the other hand, if we consider the disadvantageous position in which the negro was placed at the close of the Civil War, the statistics may be taken as showing a marked advance. It must be said here that, as Booker Washington has urged, the negro problem is largely of an industrial nature. It is the unsatisfactoriness of the negro as a worker, as a producing agent, that gives rise largely to the friction between the two races. The negro has not yet become adapted to a system of free contract and is frequently unreliable as a laborer. This breeds continued antagonism between the races. It is only necessary here to remark that when the negro becomes an efficient producer and a property owner the negro problem will be practically solved. Educational Progress Among the Negroes.--The educational progress among the negroes has been more satisfactory than their industrial progress. At the time of the emancipation 95 per cent of all the negroes in the United States were illiterate, since nearly all the slave states had laws forbidding the education of negroes. Since the emancipation there has been a rapid decrease of illiteracy. In 1880 seventy per cent of the negroes above the age of ten years were still reported as illiterate. In 1890, 56.8 per cent; and in 1900, 44.6 per cent. The number of illiterate negro voters in the United States in 1900 was 47.3 per cent of the total number of negro males above the age of twenty-one. The per cent of illiterate negro voters ranged all the way in former slave-holding states from 61.3 per cent in Louisiana to 31.9 per cent in Missouri, while in Massachusetts the percentage of negro illiteracy was only 10 per cent. In the school year 1907-08, in the sixteen Southern states there were 1,665,000 negro children enrolled in the public schools, this number being 54.36 per cent of the negro population of the school age (five to eighteen). The number of white children enrolled was 4,692,000, or 70.34 per cent of the white population of school age. But these statistics fail to indicate the utter inadequacy of many provisions for the education of the negro children. In many districts of the South the negro schools are open only from three to five months in a year,--the equipment of the school being very inadequate and the teacher poorly trained. Nevertheless the sixteen Southern states have spent, since the emancipation, over $175,000,000 to maintain separate schools for negroes, a much larger sum than all that has been given by Northern philanthropy. In addition to the common schools for negroes there were in 1907-08 one hundred and thirty-five institutions for the higher education of the negro with an annual income of over $2,800,000. In these there were 4185 negro students receiving collegiate or professional training, 17,279 were receiving a high school course, and 23,160 industrial training. The latter figure is important because it indicates that in 1907-08 a little more than one per cent of the total number of negro children in school were receiving industrial training. The percentage is increasing, through the fact that industrial training is being introduced into a number of the city schools for negroes, both North and South; but at present not much over one per cent of the negro children are receiving industrial training. Political Conditions.--Not much need be said concerning the political condition of the negro. The movement to disfranchise the negro by legal means came in 1890 when the new Mississippi constitution adopted in that year provided that every voter should be able to read or interpret a clause in the constitution of the United States. Since then a majority of the Southern states and practically all of the states of the "Black Belt" have embodied either in their constitutions or laws provisions for disfranchising the negro voter. Louisiana made the provision that a person must be able to read and write or be a lineal descendant of some person who voted prior to 1860. This is the famous "Grandfather Clause," which has since proved popular in a number of Southern states. While these laws and constitutional provisions have evidently been designed to disfranchise the negro voter, the Federal Supreme Court has upheld them in spite of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. Regarding all of this legislation it may be said that it has had perhaps both good and bad effects. In so far as it has tended to eliminate the negro from politics this has been a good effect, but it has oftentimes rather succeeded in keeping the negro question in politics; and the evident injustice and inequality of some of the laws must, it would seem, react to lower the whole tone of political morality in the South. Again, the very provision of these laws to insure the disfranchisement of the illiterate negro has tended in some instances, at least, to discourage negro education, because the promoters of these laws in most cases did not aim to exclude simply the illiterate negro vote, but practically the entire negro vote. It is evident that a party designing to disfranchise the negro through this means would not be very zealous for the negro's education. Proposed Solutions of the Negro Problem.--Among the various solutions proposed from time to time for the negro problem, more or less seriously, are: (1) admission at once of the negroes to full social equality with the whites; (2) deportation to Africa or South America; (3) colonization in some state or in territory adjacent to the United States; (4) extinction by natural selection; (5) popular education. Regarding all these solutions it must be said at once that they are either impossible or fatuous. They may be dismissed, then, without further discussion. Mr. Booker T. Washington has said that the negro is bound to become adjusted to our civilization because he is surrounded by the white man's civilization on every hand. This optimistic view, which seems to dismiss the negro problem as requiring no solution, is, however, not well supported by many facts, as we have just seen. Everywhere we have evidence that the negro when left to himself, reverts to a condition approximating his African barbarism, and the statistics of increasing vice and crime which we have just given show quite conclusively that the negro is not becoming adjusted to the white man's civilization in many cases in spite of considerable efforts which are being put forth in his behalf. While we are very far from taking a pessimistic view toward this or any other social problem, we believe that most of the solutions that have thus far been tried or urged are failures, and that more radical methods need to be adopted if the negro becomes a useful social and industrial element in our society. As we have already seen, the negro is still essentially unadjusted to our civilization, and it would not be too much to say that the masses of negroes in this country are still not far removed from barbarism, though living in the midst of civilization. Slavery failed, as we have already seen, to render the mass of negroes capable of participating in our culture, and all that has been done for the negro since emancipation has likewise failed to adjust the mass of the race to the social conditions in which they find themselves. We may say, then, roughly, without any injustice to the negro, that the negro masses of this country are still essentially an uncultivated or a "nature" people living in the midst of civilization. The negro problem, in other words, is not greatly different from what it would be if the present negroes were descendants of savage aborigines that had peopled this country before the white man came. The problem of the negro and of the Indian, and of all the uncivilized races, is essentially the same. The problem is, how a relatively large mass of people, inferior in culture and perhaps also inferior in nature, can be adjusted relatively to the civilization of a people much their superior in culture; how the industrially inefficient nature man can be made over into the industrially efficient civilized man. Undoubtedly the primary adjustment to be made by the American negro is the adjustment on the economic side. Only when the negro becomes adjusted to the economic side of his life will there be a solid foundation for the development of something higher. People must be taught how to be efficient, self-sustaining, productive members of society economically before they can be taught to be good citizens. The American negro in other words must be taught to be "good for something" as well as to be good. The failure of common-school education with the negro has been largely for the reason that it has failed to help him in any efficient way to adjust himself industrially. Oftentimes indeed it has had the contrary effect and the slightly educated negro has been the one who has been least valuable as a producer. The common-school education has not been such a failure with the white child, for the reason that the white child has been taught industry and morality at home, but these the negro frequently fails to get in his home life. Moreover, the common-school education of the white child has usually been simply the foundation upon which after school days he, as a citizen, has built up a wider culture. But the negro, on account of his environment, if not naturally, has proved incapable of going on with his education and building on it after getting out of school. Moreover, as we have already noted, under the present complex conditions of our social life the common school is no longer an efficient socializing agent, even for the white children. The present school system is a failure, not only for the negro race, but also, though not in the same degree, for the white race. Popular education on the old lines can never do very much to solve the negro problem. This does not lead, however, to the conclusion that all training and education for the negro race is foredoomed to failure. On the contrary all the experiments of missionaries in dealing with uncivilized races has led to the conclusion that an all-round education in which industrial and moral training are made prominent can relatively adjust to our civilization even the most backward of human races. Wherever the missionaries have introduced industrial education and adjusted their converts to what is perhaps the fundamental side of our civilization, the economic, they have met with the largest degree of success. This success of missionary endeavors along this line has led to the establishment of similar industrial training schools for the negro in this country, and it must be said regarding such schools for the negro as Hampton and Tuskegee that they have proved an even more unqualified success than their predecessors originated by the missionaries. But these schools are as yet very far from solving the negro problem in this country, for the reason, as we have already seen, that they affect such a relatively small proportion of the negro population. Only about one per cent of negro children at the present time are probably receiving industrial training. It should be remarked that this industrial training in no way precludes an all-round education. It is not meant that industrial education shall replace all other forms of education, but rather that it shall be added to literary education in order to enrich the educational process; and it may be remarked also that industrial training, while of itself having a strong uplifting moral influence, is not sufficient to socialize without explicit moral teaching being also added thereto. Schools that attempted to give such an all-round education to negro children would, of course, in no way cut off the possibility of higher and professional education for the small number who are especially fitted, and who should be encouraged to go on with such studies. Accepting, then, without qualification the now widespread view that industrial training coupled with an all-round education is the best possible solution of the negro problem, let us look into the practical difficulties which confront any attempt to apply such a solution at the present time. These difficulties may be summed up under three heads: (1) The difficulty of securing adequately equipped schools to give such training; (2) the difficulty of obtaining teachers who are qualified to give this training, and who have the right spirit; (3) the present lack of intelligent coöperation by the members of both races. As regards the first of these difficulties, it must be said that it is under our present system of school administration practically insuperable. Adequately equipped schools for industrial education will cost a great deal of money,--money which the whites of the South will probably not be willing to give for many years to come, and which we think they should not be asked to give. As we have already seen, there are more illiterate native whites in the South than in any other section of the Union. This is due in part to the effects of the war which left a majority of the Southern communities poverty-stricken, and in many communities there is still not yet sufficient money to maintain proper school facilities, even on the old lines; much less can it be expected that such communities can start at once industrial schools for the training of negro children. As regards the difficulty of obtaining properly trained teachers with a proper spirit to do this work, it must be said that as yet these teachers could not be found, and certainly they could not within the negro race. The mass of negro teachers are still so far below even the low standards of the white schools that not one half of them would be licensed to teach if the same standards were applied to them as to the whites. Moreover, through the increase of race friction white teachers have gradually, since the Civil War, been excluded from negro schools. This has been brought about largely also by the negroes demanding these positions for themselves. But it is an old adage that "if the blind lead the blind both will fall into the ditch," and it would seem that a majority of negro teachers are unqualified for their task of civilizing and socializing their race; hence one reason for the failure of the negro common school. It would seem also that, while competent negro teachers should be encouraged in every way, white teachers should not be absolutely excluded from negro schools; and particularly that white teachers would be necessary if industrial and moral training were to be emphasized in the education of the negro. This brings us to the third difficulty,--the lack of intelligent coöperation by the members of both races. Unfortunately the negroes do not care for the newer education, the education which emphasizes industrial training. Most of them, misled by unwise leaders, prefer the education of the older type and think that industrial training will only fit them to be "hewers of wood and drawers of water" to the whites. On the other hand, the masses of uneducated Southern people also do not wish the new education for the negro, because they believe that it will give him superior advantages over the white children. They fail to see that anything that is done for a depressed element in society, like the negro, will ultimately benefit all society. They are, therefore, not willing to tax themselves to bring about, even gradually, the new education for the negro. While educated Southern people have supported Booker T. Washington in his propaganda for the industrial training of the negro, it is notorious that Washington's ideas have met with as much opposition from the uneducated whites as from the negroes themselves. On the whole, however, while the situation is a difficult one, it is not, as we have already seen, one which justifies pessimism. Time is the great element in the solution of all problems, and it must be especially an element in the solution of this negro problem. A beginning has been made toward the training and the education of the negro in the right way, and it may be hoped that from centers like Hampton and Tuskegee the influence will gradually radiate which will in time bring about the popularization of industrial education. What is needed, perhaps, most of all is sufficient funds to carry on wider and wider experiments along these lines. The Southern states should not be expected to furnish these funds. They have already done their full share in attempting to educate the negro. The negro problem is a national problem, and as a national problem it should be dealt with by the Federal Government. The burden of educating the negro for citizenship should rest primarily upon the whole nation and not upon any section or community, since the whole nation is responsible for the negro's present condition. The trouble is, however, again, that the mass of the Southern people would at the present time undoubtedly resent any attempt on the part of the Federal Government to aid in the education of the negro. The question, therefore, ultimately becomes a question of educating the whites and forming a proper public sentiment regarding the education of the negro. When the leaders of both races once become united on a plan of training the negro for efficient citizenship, undoubtedly the funds will be forthcoming. While the negro question is, therefore, from one point of view primarily a question of the industrial training and adjustment of the negro, from another point of view it is a moral question which can never be solved until the superior race comes to take a right attitude toward the inferior race, namely, the attitude of service. SELECT REFERENCES _For brief reading:_ HOFFMAN, _Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro,_ Vol. XI of Pub. of Am. Economic Ass'n. STONE, _Studies in the American Race Problem._ BAKER, _Following the Color Line._ _For more extended reading:_ DOWD, _The Negro Races._ DU BOIS, _The Negroes of Philadelphia._ DU BOIS, editor, _The Atlanta University Publications._ KEANE, _Ethnology._ KEANE, _Man, Past and Present._ MERRIAM, _The Negro and the Nation._ PAGE, _The Negro: the Southerner's Problem._ SMITH, _The Color Line._ TILLINGHAST, _The Negro in Africa and America,_ Pub. Am. Economic Ass'n, 3d series, Vol. III. WASHINGTON, _The Future of the American Negro._ CHAPTER XI THE PROBLEM OF THE CITY Professor J.S. McKenzie says "The growth of large cities constitutes perhaps the greatest of all the problems of modern civilization." While the city is a problem in itself, creating certain biological and psychological conditions which are new to the race, the city is perhaps even more an intensification of all our other social problems, such as crime, vice, poverty, and degeneracy. The city is in a certain sense a relatively modern problem, due to modern industrial development. While great cities were known in ancient times, the number was so few that the total population affected by city living conditions was comparatively small. Moreover, the populations of ancient cities have often been exaggerated. Probably at the height of its power, the population of Athens did not exceed 100,000; Carthage, 700,000; Rome, 500,000; Alexandria, 500,000; Nineveh and Babylon, 1,000,000. All the great cities of the ancient world practically disappeared with the fall of Rome. After Rome's fall, Constantinople was the only large city with over 100,000 population in all Europe for centuries. Down to 1600 A.D., indeed, there were only fourteen cities in all Europe with a population of over 100,000; and even in 1800, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were only twenty-two such cities. But at the end of the nineteenth century, in 1900, there were one hundred and thirty-six such cities in Europe, representing twelve per cent of the entire population. Moreover, while in 1800 less than three per cent of the total population of Europe lived in cities, in 1900 the total urban population was twenty-five per cent. Again, all of the great European capitals developed their present enormous population almost wholly within the nineteenth century. Thus, the population of London in 1800 was 864,000, while in 1901 it had reached 4,536,000, or in the total area policed, 6,581,000; the population of Paris in 1800 was 547,000, in 1901 it was 2,714,000; the population of Berlin in 1800 was only 172,000, in 1901 it was 1,888,000; the population of Vienna in 1800 was 232,000, in 1901 it was 1,674,000. These figures are cited to show that from four fifths to nine tenths of the growth of the greatest cities of the world has taken place within the nineteenth century. Dr. Weber in his _Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century_ illustrates the striking difference between the urban development of the nineteenth century and that of the eighteenth century by comparing the population of Australia in 1890 with the population of the United States in 1790. Australia in 1890, out of a population of 3,809,000 had 1,264,000, or 33.2 per cent, living in cities of 10,000 or over; while the United States in 1790, out of a population of 3,929,000 had only 123,000, or 3.14 per cent living in cities. Both countries, it will be noticed, had about the same total population at the two periods and the same area, but Australia in 1890 represented in its population the industrial development of the nineteenth century with its tendency toward urbanization, while the United States in 1790 represented the civilization of the eighteenth century with its predominating rural life. The Growth of Cities in the United States.--A word about census terminology will be helpful before discussing the growth of cities in the United States. According to the United States census, a city is a place with a population of 8000 or over; a _small_ city is a place with a population of 8000 to 25,000; a _large_ city is a place with a population of from 25,000 to 100,000, and a _great_ city is a place with a population above 100,000. These distinctions are necessary in discussing the problems of the city, because the problems of cities change rapidly when the population goes above 100,000. It is mainly the problem of the great city which we shall discuss in this chapter. In 1800 there were only six cities in the United States with over 8000 population. Philadelphia was the largest of these, with 69,000, and New York second with 60,000. These cities contained a fraction less than four per cent of the population of the United States. In 1900, on the other hand, there were 546 cities in the United States with a population of over 8000. Moreover, over thirty-three per cent of the total population of the United States lived in cities of 8000 and over, while nearly one fifth of the total population lived in the thirty-eight great cities. Between 1890 and 1900 the gain in the urban population of the country was sixty per cent, while the gain in the rural population was only fifteen per cent. During that decade, in other words, the cities grew four times as fast as the country districts in population. Moreover, for that particular decade, the great cities grew faster than the smaller ones, but since 1900 certain state census statistics seem to show that the cities from 25,000 to 100,000 population are growing faster than those above 100,000. _Distribution of the Urban Population of the United States._ If the urban population of the United States were distributed relatively uniformly among the several States, perhaps the problem of the city would not be so pressing as it is, but the urban population is largely concentrated in a very few states. Over fifty per cent of the urban population is found in the North Atlantic states alone. The five states of New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Ohio contain also more than half of the urban population of the whole country. If we add to these five states New Jersey and Missouri, then these seven states contain nearly two thirds of the urban population of the United States. It will be noticed that these states with a large urban population are the great manufacturing states of the Union. The proportion of urban to rural population indeed is a good index to industrial progress. The states with over half their population urban in 1900 were, Rhode Island, 81 per cent; Massachusetts, 76 per cent; New York, 68.5 per cent; New Jersey, 61.2 per cent; Connecticut, 53.2 per cent. States with more than one fourth of their population urban were, Illinois, 47.1 per cent; Maryland, 46.9 per cent; Pennsylvania, 45.5 per cent; California, 43.7 per cent; Delaware, 41.4 per cent; New Hampshire, 38.6 per cent; Ohio, 38.5 per cent; Colorado, 38.1 per cent; Washington, 31.9 per cent; Michigan, 30.9 per cent; Missouri, 30.8 per cent; Wisconsin, 30.7 per cent; Louisiana, 29.3 per cent; Montana, 27 per cent; Minnesota, 26.8 per cent; Utah, 25.2 per cent. It will be noticed that only one of these states with the population more than one fourth urban is distinctively southern, namely, Louisiana. This is due to the fact that heretofore the South has been largely agricultural in its industries, consequently only a few of the great cities of the country are found within its borders. There are but few countries in Europe that come up with the most urban of our American states. Certain countries of Western Europe, however, equal the most urban of our states, and the following countries have at least one quarter of their population urban: England and Wales, Scotland, Belgium, Saxony, Holland, Prussia, and France. The most urban of our states, however, such as Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York, surpass all European countries in the number of their population living in cities, with the exception of England and Wales. This again is due to the fact that certain of our states have specialized in manufacturing industries more than any European country, with the exception of England and Wales. Before leaving the statistics of the growth of cities, it is worth our while to note that certain great urban centers are developing in this country which promise to show, even in the near future, the most extensive urbanization of population known to the world; for example, a line of cities and suburban communities is now developing which will in the near future connect New York and Boston on the one hand and New York, Philadelphia, and Washington on the other hand. Thus in a few years, stretching from Washington to Boston, a distance of five hundred miles, there promises to be a continuous chain of urban communities with practically no rural districts between them. In a sense, this will constitute one great city with a population of twenty millions or upwards. Other urban centers, though not so extensive, are also developing at other points in the United States. At the end of the twentieth century it is safe to say that this country will have at least a dozen cities with a population of over one million. Moreover, so far as we can see at the present time, there is no end in the near future to this growth of the urbanization of our population; for the causes of this great growth of cities seem inherent in our civilization. Let us see what these causes are. Causes of the Growth of Great Cities.--There may be distinguished two classes of causes of the growth of cities: (1) general or social causes, and (2) minor or individual causes. It is the social causes, the causes inherent in our civilization, which are of particular interest to us. Among these social causes we shall place: 1. _The Diminishing Importance of Agriculture in the Life of Man._ Once agriculture was the all-embracing occupation. Practically all goods were produced upon the farm. Now, however, man's wants have so greatly increased that the primitive industries of the farm can no longer satisfy these wants, and in order to satisfy them men have developed large manufacturing industries. Moreover, fewer men are needed on the farms to produce the same amount of raw material as was produced formerly by the labor of many. This has come about mostly through labor-saving machines. The invention and application of labor-saving machines to the industries of the farm has made it possible to dispense with a great number of men. It is estimated that fifty men with modern farm machinery can do the work of five hundred European peasants without such machinery. Consequently, the four hundred and fifty who have been displaced by farm machinery must find other work, and they find it mainly in manufacturing industries. Again, the scientific and capitalistic agriculture of the present has much the same effect as labor-saving machines. They have greatly increased agricultural production and at the same time lessened the amount of labor. The opening up also of new and fertile regions which were very productive in the nineteenth century had a similar effect. Every improvement in agricultural industry instead of keeping men on the farm has tended to drive them from it. Scientific agriculture carried on with modern machinery necessarily lessens the need of a great proportion of the population being employed to produce the foodstuff and other raw materials which the world needs. Hence it has tended to free men from the soil and to make it possible for a larger and larger number to go to the city. Therefore the relatively diminishing importance of agriculture has been one of the prime causes of the growth of the cities in the nineteenth century; and so far as we can see this cause will continue to operate for some time to come. 2. _The Growth and Centralization of Manufacturing Industries._ This is perhaps the most vital cause of the growth of cities. The great city, as we have already said, is very largely the product of modern industrialism. Improved machinery, improved transportation, and enlarged markets, together with the increased wants of men, not only have made possible a great growth of manufacturing industries, but also these same factors have tended to centralize manufacturing industries in the cities. Let us note briefly why it is that manufacturing industries are grouped together in great cities rather than scattered throughout the rural communities. In centralizing manufacturing plants in cities, certain industrial economies are secured, such as: (1) economy in motor power, whether it be water or coal; (2) economy in machinery--it is not necessary to duplicate machines; (3) economy in wages--one superintendent, for example, can oversee a large plant; (4) utilization of by-products--when many factories are grouped together by-products, which are sometimes more valuable than the main products, can be better utilized. (5) There is economy in buying raw material and in selling finished products when many factories are grouped together. For all these reasons, along with the further reason that those who labor in factories must live close to them, manufacturing has been a prime cause of the modern city, and, so far as we can see, will continue to further urbanize our population in the future. 3. _The Increase of Trade and Commerce._ Between different communities there developed during the nineteenth century, upon the growth of better transportation, a great increase of trade and commerce, for along with the better transportation went a specialization in industry, on the part of both communities and classes. The modern city is often largely a product of modern transportation. We find all the great cities located at natural breaks in transportation. The cities of the Middle Ages were largely centers of trade and commerce where goods were distributed to various minor centers. The modern city has not lost this characteristic through developing into an industrial center. On the contrary, the status of the city in trade and commerce makes it at the same time a valuable center for the development of manufacturing industries. The break between land and water transportation is particularly favorable to the development of large cities. Thus, we find New York located where goods shipped to Europe must be transferred from land to water transportation; Chicago, located at the head of the water transportation of the Great Lakes; St. Louis, at the head of the navigation of the Mississippi River. Only Denver and Indianapolis among the great cities of the United States in 1910 are not located on a river or some other navigable water. _Minor Causes._ These are the chief social causes of the growth of cities, and, as we have seen, they are wholly industrial in their nature. Undoubtedly the modern city is a product of modern industry. Certain non-economic factors may also enter into the growth of cities, but these are of but slight importance; such are the greater intellectual and educational advantages which the city offers, the great opportunities for pleasure and amusement in the city and the like. Such minor and individual causes have had but little part in the growth of the great cities of the present. Social And Moral Conditions Of City Life.--Certain social conditions in our cities are worthy of attention in order that we may understand the effect of the city upon social and racial evolution. 1. _City Populations have a Larger per Cent of Females than Rural Populations._ All of our fifteen largest cities, except three, contain a larger per cent of females than the states in which they are located. Thus New York state has 50.37 per cent of its population female; New York city, 50.56 per cent; Pennsylvania, 49.29 per cent of its population female; Philadelphia, 51.18 per cent; Missouri, 48.38 per cent of its population female; St. Louis, 49.51 per cent. In towns of the United States of more than 2500 population the per cent of females is 50.03, while the rural districts of the United States have only 48.08 per cent of their population female. The cause of this is perhaps to be found in the fact that in cities there is always a larger infantile mortality among males than among females, and that in towns there is a larger proportion of female children born than in the rural districts. 2. _People in the Active Period of Life, from Fifteen to Sixty-five Years of Age, predominate in the City_. According to Dr. Weber, out of every 1000 individuals in the United States as a whole there are 355 under fifteen years of age, 603 between fifteen and sixty-five, and 29 above sixty-five years of age. But in the great cities there are only 299 under fifteen years of age, and only 29 above sixty-five years of age, while 668 are of the age between fifteen and sixty-five years. (In both cases the age of three in a thousand was unknown.) The cause of the predominance of those in the active period of life is undoubtedly due to the immigration into the cities from the country districts. This makes the life of cities more energetic and active, more strenuous than it would otherwise be. 3. _The Great Cities in the United States have over twice as many Foreign-born in their Population as the United States as a whole_. This has been sufficiently discussed under the head of immigration. 4. _The Birth Rate is higher in the Cities than in the Rural Districts._ This is primarily due to there being more women of child-bearing age in the cities. In the United States it is also due to the presence of so many foreign-born in the cities. The marriage rate is also higher in the cities than in the rural districts. The following statistics based on a thousand population show the relative difference between the cities and the rural districts of the New England States in marriage rate, birth rate, and death rate for 1894-95: Marriage Rate Birth Rate Death Rate Boston........................ 23.10 31.24 23.23 Cities over 50,000............ 18.89 29.72 19.49 Rural Districts............... 13.77 21.76 17.38 5. _The Death Rate in Cities is also higher than in the Rural Districts_, as the above table has just shown. This is undoubtedly due to the poor sanitary and living conditions of large cities. 6. _The Physical Condition of City Populations_. Measurements by Dr. Beddoe and others show that the stature and other measurements of men of the great cities of Great Britain are far below those of the rural population. The latest English commission to investigate the conditions of city life also reports that the population of the British cities at least shows marked signs of physical deterioration. 7. _Mental and Moral Degeneracy in our Cities_. (1) A larger number of insane are found in our cities than in the rural districts. In the United States as a whole there were in 1890 seventeen hundred insane per million of population, while in the cities of over 50,000 there were 2429 insane per million. (2) The suicide rate is much higher in the cities than in other districts. In general the suicide rate in the United States seems to be two or three times as high in our large cities as in the rest of the country. (3) Poverty and pauperism are much more common in our cities than in rural districts. About one third of the population of great cities may safely be said to live below the poverty line, while in such cities as New York and Boston from ten to twenty per cent of the population require more or less charitable assistance during the year. (4) The amount of crime in the cities is about twice as great as in the rural districts. (5) Illegitimacy in the cities is from two to three times as great as in rural districts, and it is well known that vice centers very largely in our cities. All these facts show that mental and moral degeneracy is much more common in our urban population than in our rural populations, and that the biological and moral aspects of our city life present pressing problems. 8. _Educational and Religious Conditions in Cities._ We have already seen that illiteracy for the native white population is much less in our cities than in the rural districts. This is undoubtedly due in the main to the better facilities for education in our cities, and it is here chiefly that we find the bright side of city life; for the cities are not only centers of the evil tendencies of our civilization but are also the centers of all that is best and uplifting. The urban schools in general are open much longer than the rural school, the attendance in them is better, and the teaching is much more efficient. In 1890 the urban schools held 190 days in the year, while the rural schools held only 115 days. The attendance in the urban schools was seventy per cent of the enrollment, while in the rural schools it was only sixty-two per cent. Besides the schools, of course, must be mentioned many other educational facilities to be found in our cities, such as in connection with social settlements, lecture and concert halls, theaters, libraries, art galleries, and museums,--all of which the city has practically exclusively. The census of 1890 included a religious census, and it seemed to show that on the whole religious conditions were better in our cities than in the country districts. In cities above 25,000 the church membership was 37.9 per cent of the population, while it was only 32.85 per cent of the total population. Again, in cities above 100,000 it was 39.1 per cent of their total population, although in the four largest cities--New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and St. Louis--it was only 35.6 per cent of the total population. [Footnote: The special religious census of 1906, the results of which are not yet fully published, shows an even greater preponderance of church membership in cities.] Some recent studies, however, while not extensive enough to justify a conclusion, seem to indicate that in some of the largest cities the church is losing its hold, and that more and more the population of our largest urban centers is becoming churchless, if not without religion. Even if this is so, however, it also remains a fact that the various religious denominations put forth their best efforts in these largest urban centers, and that more is being done for the people religiously and morally in these centers than perhaps for any other portion of the world's population. Proposed Remedies for the Evils of City Life.--The proposed remedies for the evils of city life are well worth attention, not only that we may understand the problem of the city better, but also that we may understand social conditions in general better. Of the remedies which we shall discuss it may be said that four are foolish and two are wise. The foolish ones are those that try to check the growth of the cities; the wise ones are those that recognize that the cities are here to stay and must be dealt with as permanent and even increasingly important factors in our civilization. (1) The first remedy is to make agriculture more attractive and remunerative. This is a good thing in itself, but, as we have seen, it will not check the growth of the cities; rather, every improvement in the conditions of agriculture in the way of making it more productive and remunerative will drive more to the cities. (2) A second remedy, akin to the first, is to make village life more attractive. Like the first remedy, this is good in itself, but it is hardly probable that it will stop the growth of cities; rather, it might be urged that village improvement will give people a taste of the higher comforts and conveniences to be found in cities and will tend to send them to the city. (3) The third proposed remedy is to colonize the poor of the cities in the country. This has been especially advocated by General Booth and other leaders of the Salvation Army. This plan, however, cannot do much toward helping solve the problem of the city. It is a difficult thing to get the poor in the city adjusted again to rural life, and the probability is that in many cases they would be worse off in the country than in the city. Moreover, the vacant places they left would soon be filled by others, and in general the whole plan seems to be against man's instincts as well as against the social forces of the time. (4) Administrative decentralization may be mentioned as a plan adopted by some state legislatures to prevent the growth of cities, that is, to scatter the state institutions through the rural sections of the state instead of locating them in the cities. On the whole, this is a foolish plan. The cities will not be checked in their growth by this, while on the other hand it is the cities which most need the presence of the state institutions. (5) The most important remedy for the cure of the evils of the cities, and one which meets these evils on their own ground, is what has been called "improved municipal housekeeping"; that is, the supervision and control by the city of all those things which are used in common by the people. The idea is that the city is not in its social conditions comparable to the rural community; rather it is more like one big household, and it is necessary, therefore, that there be collective housekeeping, so to speak, in order to keep those things which the people use in common at least in good order. This has also been called "municipal socialism." It is not socialism, however, in the strict sense, for it does not advocate the ownership in common of all capital, but rather municipal control of public utilities. We cannot enter into this large subject, upon which many books have been written; to a few of these the student will find references at the end of this chapter. Here it is only necessary to say that all of this civic improvement implies that the city must own or control adequately its sewer system, its water supply, its streets; that it must control the housing of the people, the disposal of garbage, the smoke nuisance, general sanitary and living conditions; that it must provide adequate protection against fire, an adequate park system, an adequate free school system, with public playgrounds for children, free libraries, free art galleries and museums, municipal theaters, public baths, and gymnasiums. All of this is of course a species of socialism in the sense that it is collective control of the conditions of living together. It advocates, however, that the city should take over only those things that are used in common. The trouble with this so-called municipal socialism is that it presupposes a pretty high degree of intelligence on the part of people. Whether or not a municipality shall own and operate its own street railways, electric light and gas plants, is largely a question of the development of the social consciousness and intelligence in that particular community. In some communities such municipal undertakings have been made a success; in others they have failed. But it is evident that with a large mass of people living together the common conditions of living must be subject to intelligent collective control if human life and character are to have a proper environment in which to develop. (6) The last remedy proposed for the evils of the city is the development of the suburbs through rapid transit. This is already being rapidly accomplished in many of our larger cities. The solution of the mechanical problem of rapid transit will probably, in other words, tend greatly to relieve automatically the present congestion which we find in many of our large cities. Probably the best form of such rapid transit is underground electric roads, or subways. Transportation upon these roads must be made cheap enough to enable workingmen to live at a distance from their labor. With the solution of the problem of rapid transit it should be possible to scatter a city's population anywhere within a radius of thirty miles. But it would be a mistake to think that rapid transit alone will solve the problems of city communities. Stringent regulation by law of sanitary and housing conditions and, as has just been said, of all the things used in common, is necessary to put order and healthfulness into that vast household which we call a modern great city. In conclusion we would emphasize again that the era of the city is just beginning; that a larger and larger proportion of our population must come to live in the cities, and that, therefore, the city will dominate the society of the future. Hence, humanity must solve the problem of the city if social progress is to continue. And the problem is by no means insoluble. Man is not yet adjusted to city life. The city is so new even to civilized man that he has carried into it the habits which he practiced in isolated rural communities. These are the sources of trouble in our cities, and, as we have already seen, new adjustments have to be made by individuals in order to secure harmonious social relationships under the crowded conditions of the city. The city requires, therefore, a higher degree of intelligence on the part of the individual than the rural social life, and a great part of the solution of the problem of the city must come through the development of such higher intelligence and morality by means of education. At any rate, it is foolish to decry the city or to attempt to stop its growth. That is impossible and, we think, undesirable. The ideal social life of man has never been the isolated life of the rural community. The city has always been in a sense man's ideal, as is shown by the fact that nearly all attempts to depict a perfect human society have been pictures of cities. Man's ideal, as Dr. Weber says, is not the city or the country, but the city and the country blended, and this is what the city of the future should become. No doubt the time will come when present cities will be looked back upon with horror, as we look back on eighteenth-century cities. The city of the future need not present any of the hideous, disagreeable, and unwholesome aspects of our present cities. The city can be made, through science and morality, a place in which human beings may find their ideal society. SELECT REFERENCES _For brief reading:_ WEBER, _Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century_. WILCOX, _The American City_. ZUEBLIN, _American Municipal Progress_. _For more extended reading:_ FAIRLIE, _Municipal Administration_. HOWE, _The City: the Hope of Democracy_. PARSONS, _The City for the People_. ROWE, _Problems of City Government_. STRONG, _The Challenge of the City_. CHAPTER XII POVERTY AND PAUPERISM While the many social problems arising from the presence in society of abnormal or socially unadjusted classes, namely, the dependent, defective, and delinquent classes, cannot be discussed in this book adequately, yet they must be briefly noticed in order to correlate them with other social problems, and even more in order to call the attention of the student to the vast literature which exists concerning these problems. Definitions of Poverty and Pauperism.--Poverty is a relative term, difficult to define, but as generally employed in sociological writings at the present it means that economic and social state in which persons have not sufficient income to maintain health and physical efficiency. All who do not receive a sufficient income to maintain the minimum standard of living necessary for efficiency are known as the "poor," or are said to live below the poverty line. Pauperism, on the other hand, is the state of legal dependence in which a person who is unable or unwilling to support himself receives relief from public sources. This is, however, legal pauperism. The word as popularly used has come to mean a degraded state of willing dependence. A pauper in this popular sense is a person unwilling to support himself and who becomes a social parasite. Poverty is closely related to dependence or pauperism, because it is frequently the anteroom, so to speak, to pauperism, although only a small proportion of those who live in poverty actually become dependent in any one year. The Extent of Poverty and Pauperism in the United States.--The census reports showed that in the year 1904 there were about 500,000 dependents in institutions in the United States. While the number who received relief outside of institutions from public and private sources is not known, it is certain that it is many times the total of those in institutions. It is generally estimated that about five per cent of our population are recipients of some sort of charitable relief in a single year. In our large cities the number who receive relief from public and private sources, even in average years, is very much higher. In New York apparently the number who receive relief in an average year reaches fourteen per cent, while in Boston the number who receive relief has reached as high as twenty per cent in a single year. It seems probable, therefore, that taking the country as a whole nearly five per cent of our population have to have some sort of help every year. That would make the number who received relief in 1904 about 4,000,000, and probably this is not an excessive estimate. Upon the basis of these and other known facts Mr. Robert Hunter has estimated that the number of people in the United States living below the poverty line is about 10,000,000 in years of average prosperity. If negroes are included in this estimate of those below the poverty line, it is certainly not excessive. Probably 10,000,000, or fourteen per cent of our population, understates rather than overstates the number of persons in the United States who live upon such a low standard that they fail to maintain physical and mental efficiency. Moreover, investigations in the countries of Europe show that the estimate of fourteen per cent of our population living in poverty is far from excessive. Mr. Charles Booth, in his _Life and Labor of the People of London_, says that about thirty per cent of the population of London live below the poverty line, and Mr. B.S. Rowntree found in the English City of York about the same proportion. While poverty is more prevalent in the old world than in the United States, it would seem that in view of our large negro population it is evidently not excessive to estimate the proportion of our people living in poverty at about fifteen per cent. Moreover, when we extend our view in history we find that poverty has been oftentimes in the past even much more prevalent than it is at present. This question of poverty is, in other words, a world-old question and is intimately bound up with the question of material civilization--that is, man's conquest of nature--and with social organization,--the relations of men to one another. At certain times in history certain institutions like slavery have either obviated or concealed poverty, and particularly its extreme expressions, in dependence and legal pauperism. Nevertheless we can regard these questions of poverty and pauperism as practically existing in all civilizations and in all ages. This is not saying, however, that modern poverty and pauperism may not have certain peculiar foundations in modern social and industrial conditions. It is only saying that it is useless to search wholly for the causes of poverty in conditions that are peculiar to the modern world, because poverty and pauperism are not peculiarly modern problems. The Genesis of the Depressed Classes.--So complex a problem, it might be said at once, cannot manifestly have a simple explanation, yet this has been the mistake of many social thinkers of the past. They have sought some single simple explanation of human misery, and particularly in its form of economic distress or poverty. Malthus, as we have already seen, attributed all human misery to the fact that population tends to increase more rapidly than food supply, and that it is the pressure of population upon food which sufficiently explains poverty in human society. Karl Marx offered an equally sweeping explanation when he attributed all poverty to the fact that labor is not paid a sufficient wage; that the capitalist appropriates an unjust share of the product of labor, leaving to the laborer just enough to maintain existence and reproduce. Henry George in the same spirit, in his _Progress and Poverty_, attributed all poverty to one cause,--the landlord's appropriation of the unearned increment in land values. There is, of course, some truth in all of these sweeping generalizations, but it must be said that there is not sufficient in any of them to stand the test of concrete investigation; rather these men have made the mistake of attempting to explain a very complex social phenomenon in terms of a single set of causes, which, as we have already seen, has been the bane of social science in the past. Even the theory of evolution itself fails to explain, as ordinarily stated, the genesis of the depressed classes in human society. It may explain it in part, however. As we have already seen, biological variations are always found in individuals, making some naturally superior, some naturally inferior, and in the struggle for existence we know that the inferior are more liable to go down; they are less apt to maintain a place in society, and hence more readily fall into the depressed classes. Many well-endowed persons, however, also fall into the dependent classes through accidents and causes inherent in our social organization but in no way natural. Thus, owing to our industrial system and to our laws of property, inheritance, and the like, it often happens that a superior person through sickness or other accident gets caught in a mesh of causes which bring him down to the dependent classes, and on the other hand inferior individuals, through inheritance or "social pull," oftentimes enjoy a very large economic surplus all their lives. It may be admitted, however, that slight defects in personal character or ability enter into practically all cases of dependence. This is more apt to be the case also in a progressive society like our own, where rising standards of efficiency make the economic struggle more severe all the time. Formerly, for example, any employee could drink and retain his position, but now the drinker quickly loses his position in many industries and gives place to the sober man. Oftentimes, however, such defects that give rise to dependence are not inherent but are produced by social conditions themselves, like faulty education, bad surroundings, and the like. Through the improvement of social conditions, therefore, there is no doubt that much of the present poverty of the civilized world can be wiped out. This is not saying, however, that poverty and dependence will ever be wholly eliminated. Probably, no matter how ideal social conditions might be, even under the most just social organization, there would be some accidents and variations in individuals which would produce a condition of dependence. Moreover, the elimination of poverty and pauperism is not so simple as some suppose. It is not wholly a question of the improvement of social conditions; it also involves the control of physical heredity, because many of the principal defects that give rise to dependence are inherent in heredity. But man can control to some extent even the birth of the inferior or unfit classes. This may seem, however, so far in the future that it is idle to discuss it, although, as we shall see, society is undoubtedly taking steps to prevent the propagation of the unfit. In the meantime, however, so long as humanity progresses through natural selection we shall have poverty, to some extent at least, no matter how much industrial and social conditions may be improved. Yet without the control of physical heredity or the substitution of artificial for natural selection, poverty can be undoubtedly greatly lessened, and it is the rational aim of applied social science to discover how this may be done. It would seem that the existence of 10,000,000 persons in the United States living below the poverty line cannot be justified upon either moral or economic grounds; that it represents a great waste of human life and human resources, and that much of the social maladjustment which this poverty is an expression of might easily yield to wisely instituted remedial measures. If the social maladjustment which is undoubtedly the cause of the bulk of modern poverty were done away with, it is safe to say that it would be reduced to less than one third of its present dimensions. The Concrete Causes of Poverty.--It is necessary to inquire somewhat more minutely into the concrete conditions, social and individual, which give rise to poverty and dependence. Manifestly the poor do not constitute any single class in society. All classes, in a sense, are represented among the poor, and the causes of poverty which are manifest will depend very greatly upon the class of the poor that is studied. If, for example, we should study the causes of dependence among defective classes, naturally personal defects of various sorts would be emphasized. Again, if we should study almshouse paupers, we should expect to find the causes of their dependence different from the causes of the temporary dependence of those who are dealt with outside of institutions and largely by private societies, especially the charity organization societies of large cities. It is especially, however, this latter class of temporary dependents that we are most interested in, because they show most clearly the forces operating to produce the various classes of permanent dependents. There are two great classes of causes of poverty: objective causes, or causes outside of the individual, that is, in the environment; and subjective causes, or causes within the individual. We shall take up first the objective causes. _The Objective Causes of Poverty_. The objective causes of poverty may be again divided into causes in the physical environment and causes in the social environment. The causes in the physical environment should not be overlooked, even though to a great extent they may not be amenable to social control. Much poverty in certain regions is caused simply by the unpropitious physical environment, such as unproductive soil, bad climate, and the like. Added to these unpropitious factors in the environment we have also great natural calamities, such as tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. Every one is familiar with the great amount of misery which is caused, temporarily at least, by such calamities. Again, certain things in the organic environment, particularly in the way of disease-producing bacteria, are also productive of much poverty. Certain bacteria exist, we now know, plentifully in nature, such as the malaria germ, to which rightfully has been ascribed the physical degeneracy of people living in certain sections of the earth. But the most important objective causes of poverty are undoubtedly those found in the social environment,--those which spring from certain social conditions or faults in social organization. Among these we may mention: (1) _Economic Causes_. Defective industrial organization and economic evils of various sorts are thought by many persons to be the main productive causes of poverty and dependence in modern society, and there can be no doubt that a very large per cent of poverty may be traced directly to economic evils. This is shown by the fact that in the schedules of all charity organization societies "lack of employment" figures as the first or second most conspicuous cause of distress in the cases with which such societies deal. It is usually estimated that from twenty to forty per cent of all such cases of dependence may be attributed to lack of employment, not due to the employee. It is well known that in periods of industrial depression the number of applicants for aid in our large cities increases enormously, and local strikes and lockouts frequently have the same effect. Again, changes in methods of production through the introduction of new machinery frequently displace large numbers of workingmen, who, on account of age or other reasons, fail to get employment along new lines. Changes in trade brought about through changes in fashions have to some extent at least a similar effect. Again, fluctuations in the value of money may undoubtedly depress a debtor class to the point of dependence. Unwise methods of taxation, such as levying heavy taxes on the necessaries of life, produce a great deal of poverty and economic distress. Systems of land tenure such as prevail in England and even to some extent in the United States, may also be another economic cause of poverty. The free land which has up to the present time existed in this country has been a great aid against poverty. The employment of women and children in factories is another cause of poverty which needs to be mentioned under this head. As we have already seen, this breaks up the home, and in the case of the employment of children stops the development of the child. Still another economic cause of poverty is unhealthful and dangerous occupations. The disease-begetting occupations in modern industry are very numerous, such as hat making, glass blowing, the grinding of tools, and the like--any work in which there is a great deal of dust. Among dangerous occupations must also be included those in which there are numerous accidents, such as mining and railway occupations. The accidents in mines and on railways in the United States each year cause as many deaths and serious injuries as have often resulted in many a petty war. Thus, on the railways of the United States in 1904 there was a total of 10,046 persons killed and 84,155 injured, about three fourths of those injured being employees,--one employee being killed in every three hundred and fifty-seven and one injured in every seventeen. While it is improbable that our great industries can be carried on without some sacrifice of health and life, it seems reasonable to believe that the number of those who are sacrificed at present is far greater than is necessary, and that reasonable precautions in industry might greatly increase the healthfulness of the occupations and diminish the number of accidents to employees. On the whole, it is probable that these economic causes of poverty figure in from 50 to 80 per cent of all cases, not operating alone, to be sure, but often in connection with faults of character or physical or mental defects in the individual; for it is always to be remembered in discussing the causes of poverty that one never finds a case which can be fairly attributed to a single cause. The complexity of causes operating in the case of a single dependent family frequently makes it impossible for any one to say with certainty what is the chief and what are the contributing causes. Oftentimes what appears to be the chief cause, such as lack of employment, has back of it defects in individual character which are not apparent to the investigator. Researches along this line have shown that the number of cases of distress which may be attributed to lack of employment, for example, may be very greatly reduced when all individual defects are taken into consideration. This, however, is not an argument for regarding the economic causes of poverty as any less important than has been indicated. (2) Unsanitary conditions of living are frequent causes of poverty. Among these unsanitary conditions may be mentioned especially the housing of the poor. The housing of the poor in badly ventilated, poorly lighted, and unsanitary dwellings greatly increases sickness and death and undoubtedly contributes greatly to their economic depression. Thus in New York city in the first ward, where there is only one house on each lot, the death rate is 29 per 1000 of the population, but where rear tenements have been erected it is 62 per 1000 of the population. The importance of public sanitation, and especially of the prevention of overcrowding and the securing of properly lighted and ventilated dwellings for the people, is so great that we need not enlarge upon it. (3) Defects in our educational system are certainly productive of poverty. Ignorant and illiterate persons are much more liable to become dependent. In particular the lack of industrial training in our public schools is a prolific cause of dependence in our complex industrial civilization. (4) Defects in government, permitting corruption on the one hand, or failing to check economic or sanitary evils on the other hand, are manifest causes of poverty. Indeed, inasmuch as government exists to regulate the whole social order, wherever it fails to perform this work properly some economic distress must ensue. (5) Corruption in social institutions and customs is certainly a cause of poverty: such, for example, is the custom of social drinking, and such also the unwise and indiscriminate charity which has so often existed in the past. (6) Unrestricted immigration, especially in our Eastern states and cities, is, as we have already seen, a prolific cause of dependence. _The Subjective Causes of Poverty_ are the causes within the individual. Among these must be enumerated: (1) Physical and mental defects of all sorts, especially those arising from sickness and accidents. Sickness causing temporary or permanent disability figures in from 25 to 40 per cent of all cases applying for relief in our large cities. Probably it is the most common and most important single cause of poverty with which charity workers have to deal. Back of sickness, however, are often remote causes in the environment or in personal character. We have already spoken of accident as a cause of poverty in connection with dangerous occupations. It is only necessary to add that good authorities estimate that there are over 1,000,000 serious accidents in the United States every year, in order to see that disabilities resulting from accident are prolific as causes of poverty, especially in our large industrial centers. The physical and mental defects which manifest themselves in the defective classes proper, such as the feeble-minded, the insane, the epileptics, the deaf-mutes, and the blind, do not need to be dwelt upon as causes of dependence. (2) Next after sickness in the list of subjective causes of poverty comes intemperance. While the effect of intemperance in producing poverty has often been exaggerated, there can be no doubt that intemperance is one of the most important causes with which we have to deal. Back of intemperance, of course, may often be again causes in the social environment, or other remote causes, but these do not detract from the fact that practically one fourth of all the cases of distress with which charity organization societies have to deal are attributable, more or less, to intemperance. The Committee of Fifty who investigated this subject found that, in thirty-three cities, out of thirty thousand cases dependence was due to personal intemperance in 18.46 per cent, and due to the intemperance of others in 9.36 per cent, making a total of 27.82 per cent of cases in which intemperance can be traced as a cause of poverty. Other investigations conducted in American cities give substantially the same results, although certain other investigations in English cities give higher percentages. It is noteworthy also that in an investigation conducted by the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor 39 per cent of the cases of poverty were attributed directly or indirectly to drink. Again the Committee of Fifty found that in the case of alms-house paupers a considerably higher per cent owed their condition to the influence of drink either directly or indirectly, the percentage being 41.55. (3) Sexual vice is undoubtedly a prolific cause of poverty, although it is very hard to trace concretely in the study of specific cases. Dr. Dugdale, however, in his study of the Jukes family places sexual vice even ahead of intemperance as a cause of their degradation, and other similar studies of similar families have reached substantially the same results. (4) Shiftlessness and laziness are frequently found in the lists of causes of dependence used by charity organization societies, from 10 to 15 per cent of the cases of distress being attributed more or less to these causes. It is now generally agreed, however, that in most cases these causes may be resolved into more remote causes, laziness being oftentimes attributable to a degenerate or at least undervitalized physical condition. (5) Old age, which has not been rendered destitute by vice, drink, or other faults of character, is frequently in itself a cause of dependence. Old age seems to figure more largely as a cause of dependence in the European statistics than in American; nevertheless, even in America we frequently find old persons who have worked hard all their lives and yet come to poverty in their old age through no fault of their own. It is for this reason that many are urging old-age pensions as a means of preventing dependence among the aged. (6) Neglect and desertion by relatives, or the disregard of family ties, in America at least, may be put down as one of the important causes of dependence. From five to ten per cent of all the cases of distress, for example, which charity organization societies in our large cities deal with are those of deserted wives. Again, it is particularly common in America for children to fail to support aged parents and even the desertion of children by parents is of frequent occurrence. (7) Death of main support must also be mentioned as an important cause of dependence. Widows and their children always figure largely among those helped by charitable societies and institutions. Probably from 10 to 20 per cent of all cases dealt with by societies for relieving temporary distress are cases in which the death of the breadwinner has temporarily rendered the family dependent. (8) Crime, dishonesty, ignorance, and the like are manifest frequent causes of dependence, and as such need no discussion. We have enumerated in detail some of the more important objective and subjective causes of poverty and dependence in order that the student may see that such causes are very complex, and, as we have already said, there rarely exists a dependent family in which three or more of these causes are not found to be active. Certain questions arise from such a brief presentation as this which we may mention but cannot hope adequately to deal with. Such, for example, is the question whether the subjective causes of poverty can all be reduced to objective causes. In our opinion this cannot be done, because the subjective causes have their roots in biological and psychological conditions, which cannot be attributed directly to causes in the environment. No doubt, however, many of the subjective causes of poverty are characteristics which have been acquired by individuals from the influence of their environment. When we attribute a certain per cent of poverty to intemperance, for example, it is probable that that particular personal defect may be ascribed almost wholly to the environment. On the other hand, there are other personal defects, such as sickness, vice, and mental deficiency, that cannot always with certainty be traced to environmental factors. It is safest to conclude that while personality is built up largely out of social influences, society is, on the other hand, also rooted in human nature, so that both objective and subjective causes combine to produce practically all social phenomena, and especially the phenomena of poverty and dependence. It is unscientific, therefore, to disregard either the subjective or the objective causes of poverty. Another question which is frequently raised in connection with poverty or dependence is, whether it is due to misconduct or misfortune. This question really has not much meaning in it when it is analyzed. As we have already seen in practically every case of poverty, personal defects and bad environment combine. Only a few of these personal defects, however, can by any proper use of language be regarded as misconduct. The great mass of poverty, therefore, seems attributable to misfortune rather than to misconduct,--using these words in their popular sense. But such a conclusion as this necessarily rests upon a somewhat superficial examination of the causes of distress which does not enter into the remote springs of personal character and development. On the whole, it seems unwise to attempt to divide the poor into the "worthy" and "unworthy" poor, as has often been done, for no one can say who is the worthy and who is the unworthy in a moral sense. The only sense in which these words may be used scientifically in charitable work is to mean "needy" and "not needy." _Pauperism and Degeneracy._ In order to see more clearly the biological roots of dependence we must notice briefly the relation of habitual pauperism to degeneracy. Studies like that made by Dr. Dugdale of the Jukes family show that unquestionably there is in many instances a close relation between habitual pauperism of various types and degeneracy. Out of 709 in the Jukes family studied by Dugdale 500 had been aided. Pauperism was 7 1_2 times as common among the Jukes as in the ordinary population. Along with the pauperism of the Jukes went prostitution, illegitimacy, crime, and physical disease and defects. Many other studies have shown the same intimate relation between physical degeneracy and habitual dependence or pauperism. There can be no doubt, therefore, that general physical degeneracy, or biological unfitness, is, as we have already asserted in the beginning, a conspicuous factor in the worst cases of chronic pauperism. _The Influence of Heredity upon Pauperism_. Similar studies to those already mentioned have shown that dependence is often times hereditary in families from generation to generation. This is doubtless based upon the inheritance of physical and mental defects. Indirectly, therefore, there is such a thing as hereditary pauperism. Now we know from the labors of Weismann that acquired characteristics are not inherited, but only congenital, or inborn characteristics. It is not the characteristics, in other words, which are acquired from the influence of environment that are transmitted to offspring, but the characteristics that arise through variations in the germ, caused by forces which are not yet well understood. Defects that are acquired by the individual in his lifetime, in other words, will not be transmitted; but the defects that arise through accident or other means in the germ are transmitted. This being so, it follows that acquired pauperism or dependence is not transmitted but only the pauperism which rests upon congenital defects. This is illustrated by the case of the deaf. Deaf-mutes are of two sorts: persons who are born deaf, or the congenital deaf-mutes, and persons who become deaf-mutes through diseases affecting the ear in early childhood. These latter are styled adventitious deaf-mutes. Now when congenital deaf-mutes marry, they show a strong tendency to transmit their defect to offspring, but the children of adventitious deaf-mutes are always normal. Dr. Fay, in his investigations into the marriages of the deaf in the United States shows that only 0.3 per cent of the children born from the marriages of persons adventitiously deaf and having no deaf relatives are born deaf; while on the other hand, 30.3 per cent of the children born from the marriages of persons congenitally deaf, both parents having deaf relatives, are born deaf. In other words, the number of deaf-mutes born where both parents are congenitally deaf and have deaf relatives is one hundred times greater than where both parents are adventitiously deaf and have no deaf relatives. This is pretty conclusive proof that it is only the congenital defects which are transmissible, but these are so highly transmissible that they may express themselves in pauperism from generation to generation. The marriage of all persons in whom there is an hereditary taint of feeble-mindedness, insanity, epilepsy, and the like ought, therefore, to be forbidden by law. But unless these defective classes were segregated in institutions, the only result of this might be to increase illegitimacy; therefore, any step in eradicating degeneracy and pauperism must look to the isolation and custodial care through life of the hopelessly defective classes. All this gives point to our conclusion that poverty and pauperism have roots which are quite independent of defects in economic conditions, and that, until heredity itself can be controlled, we cannot expect to eliminate poverty entirely. Proposed Remedies for Poverty and Pauperism.--The scientific remedies for poverty and pauperism, that is, the scientific methods of dealing with the various dependent classes and of preventing their existence, now form the subject-matter of a great independent science, the science of philanthropy, which, as we have already seen, may be considered a branch of applied sociology. We have not room in this book to discuss adequately these remedies, but we may call the attention of the student again to the vast literature existing upon the subject, and may point out the trend of modern scientific philanthropy in developing scientific methods for removing the causes of dependence and of preventing the existence of the various dependent classes. As we have already seen, poverty is an economic expression of biological or psychological defects of the individual on the one hand, and of a faulty social and industrial organization on the other hand. This implies that the remedies must be along the lines of the biological and psychological adjustment of the individual and of the correction of the faults in social organization. Where biological defects of the individual are the cause of dependence, we have just implied that, unless these defects are relatively superficial, the scientific policy for treating these classes of defective individuals would be that of segregation in institutions. The feeble-minded, the chronic insane, the chronic epileptic, and other hopelessly defective persons, in other words, should be permanently kept in institutions where tender and humane care should be provided, but in such a way that they will not reproduce their kind and burden future generations. The policy of segregating the hopelessly defective is one of the most scientifically approved policies of modern philanthropy. In this way, to a certain extent, the reproduction of unfit elements in society might be lessened, and the spread of degeneracy checked. In the case of slightly defective adults, such as the congenitally deaf and the congenitally blind, it is difficult to say exactly what the policy should be. It would seem that many of these persons may be relatively adjusted to free social life, although if they marry and have offspring we know, if their defect is congenital, that a certain proportion of the offspring, according to Mendel's law, will inherit the defect. In the case of those individuals whose dependence is due to psychological defects, or defective character, it is evident that we have a different problem. Here, in general, the wise policy would seem to be, not to segregate, but to overcome the defective character. Psychological defects, we know, are much more frequently acquired than biological defects and much more easily remedied. The work of scientific philanthropy in dealing with this class of individuals must be, therefore, a work of remedying defects in individual character. This is, perhaps, best done through personal relations between the dependent person and those who may help him. Defective character is, on the whole, therefore, best remedied by such means as education, religious influences, friendly visiting, and the like. The class of dependents whose condition is due to defective character may be on the whole, therefore, best treated outside of institutions, and probably better through voluntary private charity than through public relief systems. There remains another class of dependents whose condition is not due either to biological nor to psychological defects in themselves, but to faulty social and industrial conditions. For these, the best method of treatment consists in remedying the faulty conditions or in removing them, if possible, from them. This means that, in many cases, society must provide pensions, insurance against accident and sickness, legislation to check social abuses, and, above all, proper facilities for education. Here comes in the need of child-labor legislation, of better housing, of industrial insurance, of industrial education, and the like. In the light of these principles, let us review very briefly the different methods of dealing with dependent classes at the present time. _Public and Private Outdoor Relief_. By outdoor relief we mean relief given to the poor outside of an institution. Usually, outdoor relief refers simply to the public relief of dependents outside of institutions, but we shall use the phrase to cover both public and private relief. It is evident from what has already been said that the class of persons to whom this form of relief is appropriate are those in temporary distress, whose condition of dependence is not a permanent one and, therefore, usually those whose condition is due either to defective personal character or to faulty social organization. If the temporary dependence is due to defective personal character, it is evident that the aid may be so given, if given wisely, as to stimulate the overcoming of the moral defect. Hence the need of carefully planned measures of relief in all such cases. Hence, also, the need of the friendly visitor, who by personal contact with such a family will help them to become socially adjusted. If, on the other hand, the temporarily dependent person is simply a victim of circumstances, there is, then, also, the need of wise charity in order to overcome those adverse circumstances without impairing the character of the individual who is helped by destroying his self-respect and the like. It is evident that the task of relieving temporarily dependent persons outside of institutions is a delicate and difficult one, and requires carefully trained workers to do it successfully. For this reason, many have argued that outdoor relief should not be undertaken by the state in any of its branches, such as the city or county. In general, it must be admitted that the private society is, in many cases, naturally better fitted to accomplish this delicate and difficult task of restoring the temporarily dependent person. But, on the other hand, it must be said that the whole matter is simply a question of administration. Private societies may be quite as lax and unscientific in their charity as the state, and it is conceivable that the state can develop a system of outdoor relief which will be administered by experts quite as carefully as any private organization could administer it. Indeed, this is what has been practically done in Germany under the _Elberfeldt System_, which is a state system for dispensing outdoor relief to the temporarily indigent. In the United States, however, this work of relieving the temporarily dependent in their own homes has been, in our large cities, undertaken with great success by the charity organization societies, which, in general, do the work with such thoroughness as to obviate the necessity for public outdoor relief in our large cities. _State Charitable Institutions._ Indoor relief, or relief within institutions, for the permanently dependent classes is probably best undertaken by the state. Originally, the only institution of this sort was the almshouse or the poor house; but with the development of our complex civilization many of the permanently dependent have been provided for in other institutions than the almshouse, and it would seem that ultimately all the permanently dependent would be cared for in specialized state institutions. Thus, the permanently dependent, through various sorts of defects, such as the feeble-minded, chronic epileptic, chronic insane, and the like, are properly cared for in institutions especially provided for the purpose by the state and manned by experts. Into the details of public care of the unfit and defective of various types it is not necessary to go further than to say that such public care should be of the most scientific character, and with the double aim of reclaiming all those that can be reclaimed, and of providing permanently tender and humane care for those who cannot be fitted for free social life. State institutions then, should be manned by experts, and their activities should be coördinated by some central board. In accordance with this principle, it would seem that the best state policy would be to provide expert commissions for the care of different classes, such as the insane, and the like, and a supervisory board to watch over the work of these commissions and the institutions. _Dependent Children_. The care of dependent children is manifestly one of the most important forms of remedial philanthropic work, for it is manifest that the dependent child will make a dependent adult unless proper measures are taken to secure his adjustment to the social life. The dependent child is rarely biologically defective. The problem is, usually, in his case, the development of character under proper social conditions. For this reason, both the state and private societies have claimed the field of care of dependent children. While private societies have accomplished in this respect some of the most notable work, it would seem, however, that the work is one which properly belongs to the state in its capacity of legal guardian of all dependent children. The state, through a properly organized system of child helping, could conceivably guarantee that every neglected and dependent child should have normal opportunities to become adjusted to the social life. The system in the state of Michigan, with its Public School for Dependent Children at Coldwater, and its plan of placing these children, after a few months, in good homes, is a system which cannot receive too high commendation. In general, it is practically agreed by experts that the dependent child cannot be well adjusted to the social life by being reared in an institution, but that the better plan is to find suitable homes in which these children can be placed and reared under state supervision. In this way, practically every dependent child can be guaranteed a good chance in life. In the United States, private societies called "Childrens' Home Societies" are also doing this work with great success. _Public and Private Charity._ As has already been indicated, the ordinary line to be observed between private charity and public relief is that to private charity should be given the more delicate and difficult tasks, such as readjusting the temporarily dependent persons, the care of, in some cases, dependent children and the like, while to public charity should be given the cases which need permanent relief in institutions. This is only a conventional line, however, between private charity and public relief. As has already been pointed out, the state can conceivably, also, undertake the more delicate and difficult tasks of charitable aid, and probably it should do so as rapidly as it demonstrates its fitness to undertake this work, as the state, when once it has achieved certain standards, is a more certain and reliable agency than private institutions or societies. But there is in philanthropic work, a large place for the private society or institution. There will probably always be debatable cases which may better be looked after by private agencies than by public. There is, therefore, in every well-developed community, room for both public and private agencies, although there should be close coöperation where both exist one with the other. The church, through all its history, has undertaken philanthropic work with notable success, and it would be regrettable if the philanthropic activities of the church were to cease at this time, when they are needed as never before, in spite of the large development of public philanthropy. Church charity should, however, be made as scientific as any other form of charity, and should be carefully coördinated with the work of the state and other secular agencies. Among the secular agencies we have already mentioned the charity organization society as typifying in many ways the highest type of philanthropic activity of the present. It would seem that this society, organizing as it does all the philanthropic forces and agencies of the community, could scarcely be displaced by state activity; and that there would remain to this society, as well as many other private philanthropic societies, a very large field of activity in the future. State activity in the field of charity is, therefore, to be encouraged, but it must not be supposed that such activity can take the place of private charity. _Preventive Agencies_. A very large task for both private societies and the state is to be found in the field of prevention. This field is so broad, however, that we cannot attempt to even mention the many different movements alone which characterize our present social development. Such are the movements for better housing, for better sanitation, for purer food, for juster economic conditions, for the prevention of disease, and the like. The main thing to be said with respect to these movements is that they need to be guided by the larger social view, they need synthesis in order that they may work toward a common goal, and in harmony, also, with the activities of the state. In the field of prevention the state has much to do, especially in forwarding education along lines of social need and in creating juster economic conditions. We may, perhaps, sum up this chapter by saying that it is evident that the cure of poverty is not to be sought merely in certain economic rearrangements, but in scientific control of the whole life process of human society. This means that, in order to get rid of poverty, the defects in education, in government, in religion and morality, in philanthropy, and even in physical heredity, must be got rid of. Of course, this can only be done when there is a scientific understanding of the conditions necessary for normal human social life. What some of these requirements for a normal life are will be seen in a subsequent chapter, and it is only necessary to say in conclusion that the wisest measures for removing pauperism will be directed toward the prevention of its causes rather than toward the reclaiming of those who have already been caught in its meshes. SELECT REFERENCES _For brief reading:_ WARNER, _American Charities,_ Revised Edition. DEVINE, _Misery and Its Causes._ HUNTER, _Poverty._ _For more extended reading:_ DUGDALE, _The Jukes._ DEVINE, _Principles of Relief._ HENDERSON, _Dependent, Defective and Delinquent Classes._ RUS, _How the Other Half Lives._ ROWNTREE, _Poverty: a Study of Town Life._ _Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction._ _The Survey_ (formerly _Charities and the Commons_). CHAPTER XIII CRIME The problem of crime is one of the great problems of social pathology. There have been developed, in order to deal with this problem scientifically, a number of subsidiary sciences, especially Criminology and Penology, which are sciences dealing with the causes, nature, and treatment of crime. We cannot therefore deal with this problem adequately in this chapter, but again must refer the student to the literature on the subject. The Definition of Crime.--The best definition of crime and the simplest is that it is a violation of law. It is evident from this definition that crime is primarily a legal matter; and as laws vary from age to age and from country to country, so too the definition of crime varies. Nevertheless, because crime is a variable quantity that does not make it impossible of scientific treatment; for law itself is only one aspect or phase of the social life, namely, that which has to do with the control of conduct through organized social authority. Therefore, while crime is primarily a legal matter, it is also a social matter and has at the same time psychological and biological implications. While crime is an expression of social maladjustment defined by the law differently under different circumstances, it nevertheless has psychological and biological roots; and these we must take into account in a scientific study of crime. The simplest and best definition of the criminal accordingly is a violator of the law. However, because the criminal lacks social adjustment the causes of this lack of adjustment are very often in certain psychological and biological conditions of the individual. While the criminal is defined by the law differently from age to age, he is nevertheless under all circumstances the socially peculiar and sometimes the psychologically and biologically peculiar person. Under all circumstances he is a variation from his group; and whether the causes of his variation are psychological or biological is the problem that concerns us. But in the group of socially maladjusted persons whom we call criminals are many classes and it is necessary to note the chief of these classes before we can understand the many causes of crime. _The classification of criminals_. The legal classification of criminals according to the nature of their crime is manifestly of no use for scientific purposes. What we need is a classification of criminals according to their own peculiar nature. Inasmuch as the nature and conduct of a criminal person is largely a matter of his psychology the most scientific classification of criminals must be upon a psychological basis; and a simple psychological classification can be made upon the basis of habit, that is, as to whether the habit of crime is inborn, acquired, or not yet formed. According to this classification then there are three main classes of criminals: (i) The instinctive or born criminal. This is a person in whom the tendency to crime is inborn, and this inborn tendency is always due to some congenital defect. The most common type of the instinctive or born criminal is the moral imbecile, a person only slightly mentally defective who cannot distinguish right from wrong. It is evident that in the instinctive or born criminal biological causes of crime predominate. This class is however relatively small among the general criminal class, and it is estimated by experts that it constitutes not more than from 10 per cent to 15 per cent of our prison population. (2) The habitual criminal. The habitual criminal is a normal person who has acquired the tendency to crime from his environment. The most marked type of the habitual criminal is the professional criminal, who is frequently a person above the average in ability and who deliberately chooses a career of crime, taking the risks of his calling. It is evident that the professional criminal class is the most dangerous class of criminals with whom society has to deal. A more common type of habitual criminal, however, is the occasional habitual criminal, a weak person who drifts into crime through temptation and who has not strength of character enough to throw off the habit. It is estimated that habitual criminals of both types mentioned constitute from 40 per cent to 50 per cent of our prison population. (3) The single offender. The single offender is a normal person who commits only a single crime through some sudden stress or temptation, but lives ever after a law-abiding life. The two types of the single offender are the criminal by passion and the accidental criminal. The criminal by passion is a moral, and oftentimes a conscientious, person who commits a crime through some sudden stress of passion, under great provocation. The accidental criminal, on the other hand, is the weak type of moral person who yields once through some sudden temptation, but who regrets it ever afterward. It is estimated that single offenders constitute from 40 per cent to 50 per cent of our prison population. Strictly speaking, they are only legal criminals, and not criminals in the sociological sense, being relatively moral and law-abiding citizens whose variation from the normal is confined to some single offense. Nevertheless, single offenders constitute, as we have already seen, a very considerable proportion of our prison population. If this classification of criminals is correct, it is evident that it is very important both in studying the causes of crime and in devising practical measures for dealing with the criminal class; for the instinctive criminal, the habitual criminal, and the single offender manifestly need very different methods of treatment. One of the gravest faults of the criminal law and of penal institutions hitherto is that they have not provided for the different treatment of different classes of criminals. The Extent of Crime in the United States.--According to the United States census there were in prisons on June 30, 1904, a total of 81,772 prisoners above the age of five years serving sentences. Of this number 77,269 were males and 4503 were females; again, 55,111 were whites, and 26,661 were colored. Classified according to the prisons in which they were found, 53,292 were in state penitentiaries, 7261 were in state reformatories, 18,544 were in county jails, and 2675 were in city prisons. These were only the persons serving prison sentences. An unknown number were in county and city jails awaiting trial and serving out fines. Again, it must be remembered that this was simply the prison population on a single day, June 30, 1904. During 1904 there were, according to the census, 149,691 persons committed to prisons to serve sentences. To all of the above we must add also the 23,034 juvenile delinquents who were found, on June 30, 1904, in the juvenile reformatories of the United States. Unfortunately we have no figures from previous censuses with which we can compare the above, as the census of 1890 and previous censuses included prisoners awaiting trial. In 1890, however, there were, deducting the 15,526 awaiting trial and serving out fines, 66,803 persons above the age of five years serving sentences. These prison statistics, however, give us little idea of the actual amount of crime in the United States, because they include only the persons committed to prison to serve sentences, and do not include the vast number who escape the meshes of the law or who simply receive fines, or whose sentences are suspended. It is estimated by competent authorities, basing their estimate upon the number of known convictions of crime in certain large cities, that there are not less than 1,000,000 convictions for crime, annually, in the United States--including, of course, convictions for both felonies and misdemeanors. That this is not an excessive estimate may be indicated by the fact that in the state of New York alone in 1900, a year before the custom of suspending sentence on probation came so largely into vogue, there were nearly 100,000 commitments to prison. All these figures, however, fail to give us any very correct idea of the amount of serious crime in the United States--the prison statistics, because they understate the matter, the statistics of convictions, because they overstate. A peculiarity about serious crime in the United States, it must be remembered, is that so many persons escape through the meshes of the law, and this is particularly true in the case of the characteristic American crime of homicide. An enterprising newspaper, _The Chicago Tribune_, has for years, with the help of the Associated Press, collected statistics of homicide and suicide in the United States. While these statistics seem relatively incomplete and inaccurate for the earlier years, since 1892 they present every appearance of great accuracy, and have not been seriously impugned. According to these statistics the United States has had for the last dozen years from six to ten thousand cases of homicide annually, including all cases where one person has killed another. In 1896 the number was 10,652, in 1899, 6225; in 1900, 8275; in 1904, 8482; in 1906, 9350; in 1908, 8592. The census of 1904 showed only 2444 persons committed to prison for homicide in that year, but these figures are not in conflict with those of _The Chicago Tribune_, because the census statistics omit the vast number of persons who committed homicide but who escaped, were not convicted, were killed, or for some other reason failed to show up in the statistics of commitment. Accepting _The Chicago Tribune's_ figures as relatively accurate, it may be remarked at this point that the number of homicides is far greater in the United States than in other civilized countries, with the exception of Italy, Spain, and some other countries of the Mediterranean region. England, for example, has only between three and four hundred cases of homicide annually as compared with our six to ten thousand, although England's population is about 30,000,000 as against over 80,000,000 for the United States. The greatest number of these homicides take place in the Southern and Western states, Texas leading, according to the statistics, with about one thousand homicides annually. This suggests that to some extent our high homicide rate is due to the survival of frontier conditions in a large number of the states, although it is probably even more due to American individualism and lawlessness, the tendency of every man to take the law into his own hands. There can be no doubt that the amount of serious crime in the United States is relatively high, although there is no reason to believe that the serious crimes against property are proportionate to the serious crimes against persons. _The Cost of Crime in the United States_. The Hon. Eugene Smith, a lawyer of New York city, in a paper read before the National Prison Association in 1900, estimated that the criminal population of the United States costs not less than $600,000,000 annually. He based his estimate upon the cost of crime in New York city and other large cities of the country. He found that the probable expenses of government in the United States attributable to crime, that is, the cost of police, criminal courts, prisons, and other institutions connected with the prevention and repression of crime, amounted to about $200,000,000 per year. This is the amount paid by the taxpayers for the repression and extirpation of crime annually. In addition there is the cost of the criminal class through the destruction of property, their plunder, and the like. Mr. Smith estimated that there were no less than 250,000 dangerous criminals in the United States and that each such criminal cost the people of the United States, on the average $1600 annually. Accordingly, the 250,000 criminals would cost a total of $400,000,000 annually, which, added to the $200,000,000 paid out in taxes for the repression of the criminal class and protection against crime, makes a total of $600,000,000 paid out every year by the people of the United States as the cost of supporting the criminal class. While this figure seems enormous, careful students of the matter consider that it is an underestimate rather than an overestimate of the total cost of crime. We may compare the amount with certain other figures. The cost of public education in the United States is about $350,000,000 annually; the annual value of our wheat crop is about $600,000,000, and of our cotton crop about the same. It is evident that the problem of crime is worthy of serious study even from a financial standpoint alone. _Is Crime Increasing?_ How we answer this question will, of course, depend upon the length of time considered. We have no statistics going back further than fifty years in this country. Moreover, it is entirely possible to hold that while crime has decreased during the historic era among civilized peoples, it has increased during the last twenty-five or fifty years. All statistics of crime in the United States seem to show that it has increased. In 1850 for example, the number of prisoners was 6737 which was one prisoner to every 3442 of the population. But the census of 1850 was seriously defective, and we would better take the census of 1860 as the basis of our comparison. In 1860 the census showed a total prison population of 19,086, which was one prisoner to every 1647 of the population. In 1890 the census showed 82,329 prisoners in the total population, which was one in every 757. In other words, between 1860 and 1890 the total population of the country just doubled, while the number of prisoners quadrupled. Inasmuch as the census of 1904 was taken upon an entirely different basis, we cannot bring the comparison down to that year. The value of these statistics has often been questioned, but it has been questioned chiefly by people who have not taken other corroborative evidence into account. The chief corroborating evidence is to be found in the statistics of prisoners in our state prisons from 1880 to 1904. Now only those are sent to state prisons who are guilty of felonies, and the length of term of sentence in our state prisons has steadily shortened during the last twenty-five years, while within the last few years the practice of suspending sentence on probation for first felons has been largely introduced. We should expect, therefore, a decrease in the state prison population in proportion to the general population. But we find that the number in state prisons rose from 30,659 in 1880, to 45,233 in 1890, an increase of 47.5 per cent, while the general population increased only 24.86 per cent. Again the number rose in 1904 to 60,553, an increase of 33 per cent, while the general population increased about 30 per cent. Apparently, therefore, the amount of serious crime in the United States is increasing more rapidly than the population. Corroborating evidence is also found from Massachusetts statistics, which indicate that between 1850 and 1880 the prison population increased twice as rapidly as the general population. Other evidence could be cited, but the statistics of our state penitentiaries may be considered conclusive when all facts are taken into consideration. There is apparently no escape from the conclusion that serious crime between 1880 and 1904 increased more rapidly than the population. The amount of minor offenses, every one admits, has increased. The statistics of all European countries show this, and there is no reason to suppose that the United States is an exception in this regard. England is the only country of the civilized world in which there has been apparently a decrease in proportion to population of both serious crimes and minor offenses. This decrease of crime in England may be attributed largely to England's excellent prison system, and also to the swiftness and certainty of English courts of justice. The Causes of Crime.--The causes of crime may be classified best, as we classified the causes of poverty, into objective and subjective. Objective causes are those outside of the individual, in the environment; subjective causes are causes in the individual, whether in his bodily make-up or his mental peculiarities. _The Objective Causes of Crime_. The objective causes of crime may be divided into causes in the physical environment and causes in the social environment. The causes in the physical environment are relatively unimportant, but are worthy of note as showing how many various factors enter into this social phenomenon of crime. Climate and season seem to be the two chief physical factors that influence crime; and in connection with these we have two general rules, abundantly verified by statistics; namely, crimes against the person are more numerous in southern climates than crimes against property; and again crimes against the person are more numerous in summer than in winter, while crimes against property are more numerous in winter than in summer. All this is of course simply an outcome of the effect of climate and season upon general living conditions. The causes of crime in the social environment are of course much the most important objective causes of crime, and, many students think, altogether the most important causes of crime in general. Let us briefly note some of the more important social conditions that give rise to crime. (1) Conditions connected with the family life have a great influence on crime; indeed, inasmuch as the family is the chief agency in society for socializing the young, perhaps domestic conditions are more important in the production of crime than any other set of causes. We cannot enter into the discussion of the matter fully, but we have already seen in former chapters that demoralized homes contribute an undue proportion of criminals. It is estimated by those in charge of reform schools for delinquent children that from 85 to 90 per cent of the children in those institutions come from more or less demoralized or disrupted families. Illegitimate children notoriously drift into the criminal classes, while dependent children who grow up in charitable institutions are prone also to take the same course. Domestic conditions have of course an influence on the criminality or non-criminality of adults. This is best shown perhaps by the fact that the great proportion of criminals in our prisons are unmarried persons. Thus the United States prison census of 1904 showed that 64 per cent of all prisoners were single persons. Statistics from other countries are practically the same. This means that, on the one hand, the family life is a preventive of crime, and on the other that the socially abnormal classes who drift into crime are not apt to marry. (2) Industrial conditions also have a profound influence upon criminal statistics. Economic crises, hard times, strikes, lockouts, are all productive of crime. Quetelet, the Belgian statistician, thought that the general rule could be laid down that, as the price of food increases, crimes against property increase, while crimes against persons decrease. At any rate, increase in the cost of the necessities of life is very apt to increase crimes of certain sorts. The various industrial classes show a different ratio of criminality. In general among industrial classes the least crime is committed by the agricultural classes, while the most crime is committed by the unemployed or those with no occupation. The census of 1904 showed that 50 per cent of all prisoners that year were non-agricultural laborers or servants. (3) The demographical conditions, conditions concerning the distribution and density of the population, have an influence upon crime. In general there is more crime in the cities than in the country districts. The statistics of all civilized countries seem to show about twice as great a percentage of crime in their large cities as in the rural districts. (4) The influence of race and nationality seems to be marked in criminal statistics. We have already noted that the ratio of criminality among the negroes in the United States is from four to five times higher than among the whites. We have also seen that among our recent immigrants the Southern Italians have a pronounced tendency to crime, especially serious crime. Among our older immigrants the Irish on the other hand, owing largely to their love of liquor, have a pronounced tendency toward minor offenses. Even in 1904, 36.2 per cent of the foreign-born prisoners were Irish, while the Irish constituted but 15.6 per cent of the total foreign-born population. (5) Defects in government and law are among the most potent causes of crime. These are so numerous that we cannot attempt even to mention all. It is obvious that such things as too great leniency on the part of our judges and shortness of sentence if convicted; difficulty or uncertainty in securing justice in criminal courts; costliness of obtaining justice in our civil courts; bad prison systems in which first offenders and hardened criminals mingle; lack of police surveillance of habitual criminals; corrupt methods of appointing the police; partisanship in the administration of government, and the like, all conduce to crime. And many of these things, we may add, have been especially in evidence in America. (6) Educational conditions have undoubtedly a great influence upon crime. While education in the sense of school education could never in itself stamp out crime, still defective educational conditions greatly increase crime. This is shown sufficiently by the fact that illiterates are much more liable to commit crime than those who have a fair education. The prison census of 1904 showed that 12.6 per cent of the prisoners were illiterate, while only 10.7 per cent of the general population were illiterate; and of the major offenders not less than 20 per cent were illiterate. The defects in our educational conditions which especially favor the development of crime in certain classes are chiefly: lack of facilities for industrial education, lack of physical education, and lack of specific moral instruction. The need of these three things in a socialized school system need not here be more than emphasized. The influence of the press as a popular educator must here be mentioned as one of the important stimuli to crime under modern conditions. The excessive exploitation of crimes in the modern sensational press no doubt conduces to increase criminality in certain classes, for it has been demonstrated that crime is often a matter of suggestion or imitation. When 75 per cent of the space in our daily newspapers is taken up with reports of crime and immorality, as it is in some cases, it is not to be wondered at that the contagion of crime is sown broadcast in society. (7) The influence of certain social institutions in producing crime must be mentioned. Here comes in especially the lack of opportunity for wholesome social amusements among our poorer classes, particularly in our large cities. Lacking these, the masses resort to the saloon, gambling-houses, cheap music and dance halls, and vulgar theatrical entertainments. The influence of all of these institutions is undoubtedly to spread the contagion of vice and crime among their patrons. (8) The influence of manners and customs upon crime cannot be overlooked. The custom in certain communities, for example, of carrying concealed weapons undoubtedly has much to do with the swollen homicide statistics of the United States. Vicious and corrupting customs, such as compulsory social drinking, and the like, undoubtedly greatly influence crime. Even the luxury and extravagance of the rich might easily be shown to have a demoralizing effect, both upon the upper and the lower classes of society. The list of causes of crime in the social environment might be indefinitely extended until the student would perhaps think that practically everything was a cause of crime in one way or another; and it is true that everything that depresses men in society is a cause of crime. However, if the student has gained an impression of the great complexity of the causes of crime, that is the main thing. A question may here be raised whether it is possible to reduce all the causes of crime to causes in the social environment--that is, all subjective causes to objective. Many writers have contended that this is possible, but we shall see that there are causes in heredity and causes in psychological conditions, to say nothing of some possible free will in individuals, which cannot be derived from social conditions and which would produce crime quite independent of objective social conditions, unless these subjective factors were also controlled. There is no reason to believe that a perfectly just social organization which did not attempt to control heredity and the moral character of individuals would succeed in eliminating crime. On the contrary, biological variation alone arising from influences independent of the environment would produce a certain amount of crime. Crime, in other words, is, to a certain extent, like pauperism, an expression of the elimination of the inferior variants in society, and will continue to exist as long as we allow the process of evolution by natural selection to go on. Nevertheless, it is true in a certain sense, as Lacassagne says, that "every society has the criminals it deserves;" that is, every society could, by taking proper means, practically eliminate crime and the criminal class. This would have to be done, however, by something more radical than a mere reorganization of human society in an industrial way. Three things are necessary for society practically to eliminate crime: first, the correction of defects in social conditions, particularly of economic evils in society; second, the proper control of physical heredity by a rational system of eugenics; third, the proper education and training of every child for social life from infancy up. _The Subjective Causes of Crime._ In order to see all that is involved in the above program let us study somewhat the subjective causes of crime. These may be divided into biological and psychological. Among the biological causes of crime, and one which certainly cannot be reduced to the environment, is sex. As we have already seen, crime is a social phenomenon which is chiefly confined to the male sex. In 1904, for example, 94.5 per cent of the prison population in the United States were males, and in the statistics of convictions it is estimated that ninety-one men are convicted for every nine women. The statistics for all civilized countries show practically the same conditions, although in most European countries the proportion of female prisoners is somewhat higher, owing, undoubtedly, to certain influences in the social environment. Another subjective factor in crime, which again cannot be reduced to environment, is age. Practically all crime falls in the active period of life, and the bulk of it between the ages of twenty-one and forty years. The average of men in our state penitentiaries is frequently not above twenty-seven or twenty-eight years. Other subjective biological conditions that cause crime may be summed up under the word "degeneracy." These abnormal conditions, however, we shall examine later. Among the psychological conditions of the individual that give rise to crime the most common are habits, aims, and ideals. Of peculiar interest among personal habits that have an influence upon crime is intemperance, and this is such an important cause of crime that we must stop to examine it in some detail. It is often said that 95 per cent of the crime of our country results from this cause alone. The Committee of Fifty, however, investigated the cases of 13,402 convicts with reference to this matter, and found that intemperance was a cause of crime in the cases of 49.95 per cent. It was a chief cause of crime, however, only in the cases of 31.18 per cent. In the remaining cases the intemperance was that of ancestors or associates. Other investigators have found that intemperance figures as a cause of crime in from 60 to 80 per cent of the cases, but these investigations were not so full as that of the Committee of Fifty, and it is safer to conclude, for the present at least, that intemperance figures as a cause in about fifty per cent in the cases of serious crime. The wonder is that any one cause could figure in so many cases when there are so many varied influences in society depressing men. Of course intemperance can, as has already been said, in large part be ascribed to the influence of external stimuli in the environment, but it has also causes in the biological and psychological make-up of certain individuals that cannot be easily reduced to environmental factors. _Influence of Physical Degeneracy upon Crime_. By degeneracy we mean, to use Morel's definition, "a morbid deviation from the normal type." That is, degeneracy is such an alteration of organic structures and functions that the organism becomes incapable of adapting itself to more or less complex conditions. Ordinary forms of degeneracy that are well recognized are feeble-mindedness, chronic insanity, chronic epilepsy, congenital deaf-mutism, habitual pauperism, and the like. Now there can be no doubt that criminality in some of its forms is related to these functional forms of degeneracy. Even ordinary people have noticed its similarity to insanity, while Lombroso has traced an elaborate parallel between criminality and epilepsy. Without accepting extreme views, it may be claimed that criminality is, in some cases, a form of biological degeneracy for the following reasons: (1) The investigations of criminal anthropologists have established the fact that criminals as a class present a much larger number of structural and functional abnormalities than does the average man. The prisoners in our state prisons, for example, with few exceptions, could not measure up to the requirements laid down by the United States Army authorities for the enlistment of soldiers. (2) Investigations, like that of the Jukes family by Dr. Dugdale, have established the fact that criminals, paupers, imbeciles, drunkards, prostitutes, and other degenerates frequently spring from the same family stock. A very large percentage of the prisoners in our prisons have come from more or less degenerate family stocks. (3) Criminals more often show other forms of degeneracy than criminality than does the average population; that is, criminals often belong to one of the well-recognized degenerate classes, such as imbeciles, epileptics, and insane. These three arguments may be considered to be conclusive proof that criminality is in some cases a manifestation of physiological degeneracy; but they do not show that the bulk of criminals come from physiologically degenerate stocks. On the contrary it is highly probable that the marks of physiological degeneracy are not to be seen in from more than 25 to 30 per cent of our criminal class. These marks of degeneracy are of course especially common among the instinctive or born criminals, and to some extent they are found among the habitual criminals also. _The Influence of Heredity on Crime_. A word must be said about the influence of heredity on crime. The student will remember that, according to the modern theory of heredity, acquired characters, or characteristics, are not transmissible. Accordingly, when we find crime running in a family for generations, as in the Jukes or Zero families, we must assume either that the criminal tendency is transmitted by the social environment or that it is due to some congenital variation in some ancestor. In other words, if a person is a criminal by hereditary defect, if the criminal tendency is born in him, as it is in the instinctive criminal, he will transmit the tendency toward crime to his offspring; but if a normal person becomes a criminal by acquired habit he will transmit no tendency toward crime to his children, although his children may of course acquire the tendency from their social environment. This is not saying, however, that in such cases as habitual drunkenness and habitual vice an impaired constitution may not be transmitted to offspring. But this, strictly speaking, is not the transmission of any specific acquired characteristic, but only a general transmission of impaired vitality which may show itself in crime and in various forms of degeneracy. The germ cells are of course a part of the body, and anything that profoundly impairs the nutrition of the body generally, such as alcoholism and constitutional diseases, would also impair the nutrition of the germ cells, and result in a weakened constitution in offspring. _Lombroso's Theory of Crime_. Lombroso, and the Italian school of criminologists generally, attribute crime chiefly to atavism, that is, reversion to primitive types. They claim that the criminal in modern society is merely a biological reversion to the savage type of man; that the criminal constitutes therefore a distinct "anthropological variety"; and that there is a marked "criminal type" which can be made out even before a person has committed a crime. They say further that the criminal type is marked physically by having five or more of the stigmata of degeneration, and that it is marked mentally by having the characteristics of the savage or nature man. We cannot stop to criticize in full this completely biological theory of crime which is offered by Lombroso and his followers. Undoubtedly crime has biological roots, and these we have attempted to point out in discussing the influence of degeneracy upon crime. But to claim that the criminal constitutes a well-marked "anthropological variety" of the human species, as Lombroso argues, is to set up a claim for which there is no foundation. What Lombroso thinks are the marks of the criminal are simply the marks belonging to the degenerate classes in general. That is, they are found among the insane and feeble-minded, for example, as well as in some classes of criminals. There is then no criminal type which clearly separates the criminal from other classes of degenerates, and which will mark a man out as belonging to the criminal class even before he has committed a crime. Lombroso and some of his school have altogether overemphasized the physical and anatomical side of the study of the criminal, and slighted the sociological side of such study. Moreover, Lombroso's statements, which he makes in very general terms, apply, if they apply at all, not to criminals as a class, but only to instinctive criminals, as indeed he himself has acknowledged. Remedies for Crime.--The remedies for crime are dealt with by the subsidiary science of penology, which may be regarded as a branch of scientific philanthropy. We can only direct the student's attention here to the vast literature on the subject and remark that the cure for crime consists not in some social panacea or in social revolution, but in dealing with the causes of crime so as to prevent the existence of the criminal class. In a general way, we have already indicated in discussing the remedies for poverty and pauperism what the steps must be to eradicate crime. In order practically to wipe out crime in society, as we have already said, three things are necessary. First, every individual must have a good birth; that is, heredity must be controlled so that only those who are physically and mentally sound are allowed to marry and reproduce. The difficulties of doing this we have already noted. Second, every individual must have a good training, both at home and at school, so as to adjust him properly to the social life. His education must fit him to take his place among other men, make him able to take care of himself, and to help others; and make him, in every possible way, acquainted with the social inheritance of the race. Last but not least, just social conditions must be provided. Everything in the social environment must be carefully looked after in order to insure the best development of the individual and to prevent his environment from being in any way a drawback to him. These things, if it were possible to bring them about, would wipe out crime, or, at least, minimize it to the lowest terms. Of course, this cannot be done in a generation, perhaps not in many generations, but it is evident that the problem of crime is in no way an insoluble problem in human society. With time and care and scientific knowledge, crime, as well as poverty and pauperism, could be wiped out. But curative measures are important, also, in dealing with the criminal, and each distinct class must be dealt with differently. We noted in the beginning of the chapter the three great character types in the criminal class: the instinctive criminal, in whom the tendency toward a life of crime is inborn; the habitual criminal, who acquires the habit of crime from his surroundings; and the single offender, who, while committing a single offense, never becomes a criminal in the strictest sense. These three distinct classes of criminals, whom we might style the degenerates, the derelicts, and the accidental offenders, need to be recognized in our criminal law and to be dealt with differently by our criminal courts and correctional institutions. The instinctive criminal can scarcely be adjusted to normal social life. He is, as we have already seen, essentially a defective, usually more or less feeble-minded. Reformation in the fullest sense of the word is almost out of the question in his case. The proper policy for society with reference to the instinctive criminal class, which constitutes but a small portion of our total criminal population, would be segregation for life. Practically, of course, this may have its difficulties until we perfect our means of discovering slight mental defects in individuals which make them incapable of social adjustment, but practically, also, we have found means of recognizing this type by such marks as incorrigibility, recidivism, and the stigmata of degeneracy. The habitual criminal, who originally was a normal person, can be, at least in the early part of his career, fully reformed. Children and adolescents, even though habitual offenders, are easily susceptible of reformation, but this is difficult with the adult habitual offender past thirty years of age who has a long criminal record behind him. Like the instinctive criminal, he is scarcely capable of reformation. Hardened habitual offenders, and especially professional criminals, should, therefore, be sentenced upon indeterminate sentences, terminable only when adequate evidence of their reformation has been secured. This can best be accomplished by what is known as the "habitual criminal act," providing that persons guilty of three or four felonies shall be sent to prison for life, to be released only upon satisfactory evidence of reformation. The single offender, who is usually a reputable citizen who commits crime through passion or through great temptation, can usually best be dealt with outside of prison walls. The young single offender, if not properly handled, may be easily transformed into an habitual criminal. On the whole, a young single offender who has had no criminal record is, perhaps, best dealt with by the system of probation which we will note later. On the other hand, certain single offenders past thirty years of age, such as bribe-givers and bribe-takers, society may have to punish in order to make an example of. Exemplary punishment is, undoubtedly, still necessary in some cases, and in the main it should be reserved for this class of mature offenders in society who have otherwise lived reputable lives. Just how far exemplary punishment should be used in society as a deterrent to crime is a disputed question among penologists. Whether, as in cases of homicide, it should ever go to the extent of capital punishment or not depends very much upon the civilization of the group. In a civilization like ours, where blood vengeance is so often demanded by mobs, it is probably unwise, for the present at least, to seek the abolition of capital punishment for murder in the first degree. _The Prison System._ Every state should have at least six distinct sets of institutions to deal with the criminal class. 1. County and city jails for the detention of offenders awaiting trial. 2. Reform schools for delinquent children under sixteen years of age who require institutional treatment. 3. Industrial reformatories for adult first offenders between sixteen and thirty years of age who require institutional treatment. 4. Special reformatories for vagrants, inebriates, and prostitutes. 5. A hospital prison for the criminal insane. 6. County and state penitentiaries for incorrigible, hardened criminals. If any one of these sets of institutions is lacking in a state, it is impossible for the state to deal properly in a remedial way with the problem of crime. All these institutions, of course, need to be manned by experts and equipped in the best possible way. The present condition of our jails, of our penitentiaries, and to some extent of our reform schools, frequently makes them schools of crime. Nothing is more demoralizing in any community than a bad jail where criminals of all classes are herded together in idleness. Again, the administration of some of our state penitentiaries with an eye to profit only, makes them places for the deformation of character rather than for its reformation. Again, the lack of special institutions to deal with habitual vagrants, drunkards, and prostitutes, is one of the great reasons why we find it so difficult to stamp out crime. Into the details of the organization, construction, and management of these institutions we cannot go in this book. It is sufficient to say that all these institutions should furnish specialized scientific treatment for the various delinquent classes with which they deal, and to do this they should aim to reproduce the conditions and discipline of free life as far as possible. These institutions, in other words, with the exception of the penitentiaries and other institutions for segregation, should aim at overcoming defective character in individuals. Their work is mainly, therefore, a work of remedying psychical defects in the individual which prevent his proper adjustment to society. In the case of penitentiaries, however, the work is one mainly of segregation, of providing humane care under such conditions as least to burden society, and at the same time give such opportunity as there may be for reformation. _Substitutes for Imprisonment._ We have already noted that some classes of offenders may be reformed outside of prison walls. This is especially true of children, of the younger misdemeanants, and of those who have committed their first felony. It has been found that by suspending sentences in such cases, giving the person liberty upon certain conditions, and placing him under the surveillance of an officer of the court who will stand in the relation of friend and quasi-guardian to him, that reformation can, in many cases, be easily accomplished. This is known as the probation system. It has been characterized as "a reformatory without walls." Originating in Massachusetts, it has been increasingly put into practice of recent years in many states with much success. The system, however, will not work well without trained probation officers to watch over those who are given conditional liberty. The practice of placing upon probation without probation officers is a questionable one and is liable to bring in disrepute the whole system. Probation is not mere leniency, as some suppose, but is rather a system of reformation in line with the most scientific approved methods. Coupled with probation should often go fines and restitution to injured parties. In such cases, when the person is placed upon probation, the fine or restitution may often be paid in installments, and it has been found to have a decidedly reformatory effect upon the character of the offender. Fines without probation are, however, but little more than retribution, or exemplary punishment. _Delinquent Children._ The treatment of delinquent children constitutes a special problem in itself. It has recently come to be well recognized that criminal tendencies nearly always appear in childhood, and that if we can overcome these tendencies in the delinquent child, we shall largely prevent the existence of an habitual criminal class. Strictly speaking, of course, the child is a presumptive rather than a real criminal. The delinquent child is socially maladjusted and is scarcely ever to be considered an enemy of organized society. Delinquent children should be dealt with, therefore, as presumptive rather than as genuine criminals. In general, therefore, they should not be arrested, should not be put in jail with older offenders, and should be tried by a special court in which the judge representing the state plays the role of a parent. For the most part, delinquent children may be dealt with, as we have already seen by putting them upon probation under the care of proper probation officers. When the home surroundings are not good, such children may often be placed in families and their reformation more easily secured than if placed in institutions. In any case, they should never be sent to the reform school except as a last resort. The parent or guardian, also, should be held responsible for the delinquency of the child if he is contributory thereto by his negligence or otherwise. We may sum up this chapter, then, by repeating that the problem of crime is in no way an insoluble problem in human society, though, perhaps, a certain amount of occasional and accidental crime will always exist. The solution of the problem, as we have seen, only demands that man should secure the same mastery over his social environment and over human nature that he has already practically achieved over physical nature; and the gradual development of the social sciences will certainly make this possible some time in the future. SELECT REFERENCES _For brief reading:_ ELLIS, _The Criminal._ WINES, _Punishment and Reformation._ BOIES, _The Science of Penology._ _For more extended reading:_ BARROWS, _The Reformatory System in the United States._ BARROWS, _Children's Courts in the United States._ DRAHMS, _The Criminal._ FERRI, _Criminal Sociology._ MORRISON, _Crime and Its Causes._ MORRISON, _Our Juvenile Offenders._ PARMELEE, _Anthropology and Sociology in Relation to Criminal Procedure._ TRAVIS, _The Young Malefactor._ CHAPTER XIV SOCIALISM IN THE LIGHT OF SOCIOLOGY There have been many "short-cuts" proposed to the solution of social problems. Among these the various schemes for reorganizing human society and industry, brought together under the general name of "socialism," have attracted most attention and deserve most serious consideration. In criticizing the most conspicuous of these schemes of social reconstruction, the so-called "scientific socialism," it should be understood at the outset that there is no intention of questioning the general aims of the socialists. Those aims, as voiced by their best representatives, are in entire accord with sound science, religion, and ethics. That humanity should gain collective control over the conditions of its existence is the ultimate and highest aim of all science, all education, and all government. No student of sociology doubts that human society has steadily moved, though with interruptions, toward a larger control over its own processes; and no sane man doubts that such collective control over the conditions of existence is desirable. These general aims, which the socialists share with all workers for humanity, are not in question. What is in question are the specific means or methods by which the socialists propose to reconstruct human society--to gain collective control over the means of existence. In order to criticize socialism we must see a little more narrowly what socialism is and what it proposes to do. Socialism Defined.--As a recent socialist writer has declared, socialism, like Christianity, is a term which has come to have no definite meaning. It is used by all sorts of people to cover all sorts of vague and indefinite schemes to improve or revolutionize society. [Footnote: It has been said that the word "socialism," as currently used, has four distinct meanings: (1) Utopian socialism, i.e., schemes like More's Utopia; (2) the socialist party and its program, i.e., "the socialization of the instruments of production;" (3) The Marxist doctrine of social evolution, i.e., "the materialistic conception of history;" (4) a vague body of beliefs of the working classes, more or less derived from (2) and (3). It is of course only socialism in the second and third senses which is discussed in this chapter.] Such a vague conception would, of course, be impossible of scientific criticism. But fortunately the word historically has come to have a fairly clear and definite meaning. It has come to stand for the social and political program of a party, the Social-Democratic party of Germany and other European states. Karl Marx and his associates were the founders of this party, hence historical socialism is synonymous with Marxian socialism, and we shall so use the word. The cardinal tenet or principle of the socialist party is the public ownership of all capital, that is, of the means of production. Certain other things are, however, involved in this, and we may define the full program of Marxian socialism by saying that it proposes: (1) the common ownership of the means of production (abolition of private property in capital); (2) common management of the means of production (industry) by democratically selected authorities; (3) distribution of the product by these common authorities in accordance with some democratically approved principle; (4) private property in incomes (consumption goods) to be retained. It is evident from this outline of "orthodox" or Marxian socialism that it is primarily and dominantly an economic program. It is true that it emphasizes democratic forms of government, but this is only incidental to its main purpose of securing a just distribution of economic goods. Strictly speaking, in a correct use of scientific terms, Marxian socialism should be called "economic socialism." The Theoretical Basis of Marxian Socialism.--Marx's socialism is frequently called scientific socialism, because its followers believe that it rests upon a scientific theory of social evolution. This theory is best stated in Marx's own words, as he gives it in his _Critique of Political Economy_, namely, that "the method of the production of material life determines the social, political, and spiritual life process in general." We find it stated in other words, though in substance the same, by Engels, Marx's friend and coworker. Engels says, "In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization _necessarily_ following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch." In other words, according to Marx and his followers, the economic element in human society determines all other elements; if the other elements cannot be fully derived from the economic, their form and expression is at least determined by the economic. This is the so-called "materialistic conception of history" upon which Marxian socialists believe their program to have a firm scientific foundation. [Footnote: In several utterances of his later years Marx qualified considerably his "materialistic conception of history," but the more radical or revolutionary wing of his followers have always adhered to the extreme form of the theory.] The followers of Marx, indeed, declare that with this principle Marx explains social evolution quite as fully as Darwin explained organic evolution through natural selection; and they do not hesitate to compare Marx's work in the social sciences with Darwin's work in the biological sciences. It may certainly be agreed that this social philosophy which we have already said is best characterized as "economic determinism," is the logically necessary foundation of economic socialism. If the change of the economic or industrial order of human society is going to work such wonders as the socialists claim, then it must follow that the economic element is the fundamental and determining element in the social life. If what is wrong with human society is chiefly wrong economic conditions, then the changing of those conditions should, of course, change the whole social superstructure. It would seem, therefore, that the dominantly economic program of Marxian socialists must stand or fall with the economic interpretation of social organization and evolution which Marx proposed. If it can be shown that Marx's philosophy of human society is essentially unsound, then the proposition to regenerate human society simply by economic reorganization is also unsound. Let us see whether the positions of the economic socialists are tenable in the light of the sociological principles which have been emphasized in the previous chapters of this book. Criticism of Marxian Socialism.--The student has already been told that human society is a complex of living organisms, responding now this way, now that, to external stimuli in the environment. These stimuli in the environment we have roughly, but inaccurately, spoken of as causes, though they are not causes in a mechanical sense. The responses which are given to these stimuli by individuals and groups vary greatly according to heredity, instincts, and habits,--the inner nature, in other words, of the organisms composing society. Now, the stimuli in the environment which give rise to the activities of individuals and societies, though not in any mechanical way, may be classified into several great groups, such as the economic, the reproductive, the political, the religious, and so on. The economic stimuli would be those that have to do with the processes of production, distribution, and consumption of wealth; that is, the economic stimuli are those which are concerned with economic values. Now, while the student has not been even introduced to the psychological theory of human society, he perhaps knows enough of individual human nature to see that there is no reason in the nature of things why one's responses to economic stimuli, those connected with economic values, should determine his response to all other stimuli; and this is what scientific sociology and scientific psychology exactly find; namely, that there is no reason for believing that economic stimuli determine in any exact way or to any such extent, as Marx thought, responses to other stimuli. It is true that our habits of response to a certain class of stimuli affect to a certain extent our habits of response to all other classes. Thus it follows that the economic phase of human society affects to a very great degree all other phases of human society. But this is simply the doctrine of the unity of personality and the interdependence of all phases of the social life, and it is very different from Marx's theory that the economic determines all the other phases; for under the doctrine of social interdependence we can see it is quite as reasonable to state that the religious and political phases of the social life determine the economic as it is to state that the economic determines the political and religious. Let us bring the discussion down to more concrete terms. The student has seen that in every social problem there are a multitude of factors or stimuli (causes) at work, and that in no problem is the economic factor so all important that it may be said that the other factors are simply subsidiary. On the contrary, in such a problem as crime the methods of production and distribution of material goods, while important factors in the problem of crime, in no way determine that problem; and ideal conditions of the production and distribution of wealth would in no way solve the problem of crime. So, too, the negro problem is hardly touched by the question of the forms of industry or the economic organization of society. We might go on with a whole list of social problems and show that in every case the economic factor is no more important than many other factors, and that the economic reorganization of society would in some cases scarcely affect these problems at all. _The social problem, therefore,--the problem of the relations of men to one another,--is not simply nor fundamentally an economic problem; rather it is fundamentally a biological and psychological problem,_--if you please, a moral problem. This brings us to a second criticism of socialism, namely, that it proposes to reorganize human society upon an economic basis, not upon a biological basis. The program of the socialist looks forward to the satisfaction of economic needs, but it has failed to take into account the biological requirements for existence. It would be far more scientific to reorganize society upon the basis of the needs of the family than to reorganize it simply upon the basis of industry. The reproductive process which the economic socialists ignore, or leave unregulated almost entirely, is far more important for the continued existence of human society than all its economic processes,--if by the reproductive process we mean the rearing as well as the birth of offspring; and if by the economic process we mean merely the forms and methods of the production and distribution of material goods. In other words, the socialistic program leaves the future out of account, and aims simply to satisfy the present generation with a just distribution of material goods. If it could be shown that a just distribution of material goods would insure the future of the race and of civilization, then, of course, the socialist plea would be made good. But this is just what is doubtful. On the whole, it must be said that the socialist program is based upon the wishes and desires of the adult, not upon the needs of the child or of the race. The extreme emphasis which Marxian socialism throws upon economic and industrial conditions in human society is, therefore, not justified by the scientific facts which we know about collective human life. Rather it must be said that this is the vital weakness of Marxian socialism,--that it over-emphasizes the economic element. Of course, we are not saying that control over economic conditions is not necessary to collective control over the general conditions of existence, which society is undoubtedly aiming at, but it is saying that conceivably collective control over the social life process might be upon some other basis than the economic. It might emphasize, for example, the health and continuity of the race, or individual moral character, far more than the distribution of economic values. Modern economic socialism proposes simply to carry a step further our already predominatingly economic social organization by frankly recognizing the economic as the basis of all things in the social life. Modern economic socialism is, therefore, rightfully judged as materialistic. It is really an expression of the industrial and commercial spirit of the present age. When the perspective of life becomes shifted again to the more important biological and spiritual elements in life, socialism will lose its prevailingly economic character, or it will cease to exist. It must be emphasized here that all the material and economic progress of the modern world has not added greatly to the happiness or betterment of man. It is true that material progress is important, yes, necessary for spiritual progress. But material progress alone does not lead to spiritual progress, and therefore mere material progress can never add anything to the real happiness and social betterment of the race. On the contrary, it is possible to conceive of a society in which every one has an economic surplus,--a society rolling in wealth, approximately equally divided, and yet one in which human misery in its worst forms of vice and crime, pessimism and self-destruction, prevail. It is an old truth that making men "better-off" does not necessarily make them "better," and one which cannot be too often emphasized, but one which the modern socialist gets angry at when it is mentioned to him. It is therefore a matter of comparative indifference, from the standpoint of the happiness and ultimate survival of the race, whether economic goods are distributed relatively evenly in human society or not. We say comparative indifference, because, of course, no one can be indifferent to the material needs of life, inasmuch as they are the basis of its higher development. But after a certain minimum is assured it is extremely doubtful whether a surplus will be of benefit or not, and this minimum necessary for the higher spiritual development of the social life can be secured through the reform of present society without trying the doubtful social revolution which the socialists advocate. This brings us to a third criticism of Marxian socialism. Traditionally Marxian socialism has been revolutionary socialism. The vast mass of the socialist party to-day look forward to some revolution which will, as they say, "socialize the instruments of production," that is, transfer capital from private ownership and management to public ownership and management. Probably rightly, many socialists hold that such a wholesale transfer from private to public ownership would be the only way in which a socialistic regime could be successfully inaugurated. But if this revolution were accomplished it is evident that it is highly uncertain whether its results would be permanent. For all that we have learned concerning human society leads us to say that social organization at any particular time is very largely a matter of habit. Now collective habits are less easily changed than individual habits, because any change in collective habits practically necessitates the consent of all the individuals who make up the social group. We know also that even in individual life old habits are not easily supplanted by new ones and that there is always a tendency to revert to the old. All historical evidence shows that revolutions are always followed by periods of reaction, and that this reaction is usually proportionate to the extent and suddenness of change in social organization. Some modern socialists have argued from de Vries's mutation theory in biology that in social evolution we must expect mutations also, and that, therefore, the great changes in human society are normally accomplished by means of revolution. But this argument rests wholly on analogy, and arguments from analogy in science are practically worthless. It may be asserted, on the other hand, that all the great changes in human society which have been desirable have come about only after prolonged preparation and after a series of gradual steps which led up to the final change. The Greco-Roman world, for example, was becoming ripe for Christianity before Christianity finally appeared and became triumphant. The centuries from the fourteenth to the sixteenth had prepared for the protestant reformation in the countries of modern Europe before the reformation became an established fact. Thus, radical reconstruction of the social life by means of revolution is scarcely possible. The instincts and habits of individual human nature upon which the social order rests cannot be easily changed by revolutionary programs in legislation or in institutions. The only probable result of such an attempt would be the collapse of the new social order, because it would have insufficient foundations in individual character upon which to rest. The idea of ushering in the social millennium through some vast social revolution is therefore chimerical. It is not the place in this book to take up the practical objections to economic socialism. These practical objections are for the most part of a political and economic nature, and they accordingly can be better dealt with in treatises on politics and economics than in one on sociology. It is perhaps sufficient to say that the political and economic objections to socialism are not less weighty than the sociological objections. Government, for example, exists in human society to regulate, and not to carry on directly, all social activities. If the state were in its various forms called upon to own and manage all productive wealth in society, it is extremely probable that such an experiment would break down of its own weight, since the state would be attempting that which, in the nature of things, as the chief regulative institution of society, it is not fitted to do. But it is not our purpose, as has just been said, to go into the political and economic objections to economic or Marxian socialism. To understand these the student must consult the leading works on economic and political science. Substitutes for Economic Socialism.--Certain steps sociology and all social sciences already indicate as necessary for larger collective control over the conditions of social existence. These steps, however, aim not at instituting a new social order, but at removing certain demonstrated causes of social maladjustment which exist in present society; and as in the solution of special social problems we have seen reason to reject "short-cuts" and "cure-alls," so in a scientific reconstruction of human society we have good reason to reject the social revolution which the followers of Marx advocate, and to offer as a substitute in its stead some social reforms which will make more nearly possible a normal social life. Perhaps the necessary steps for bringing about such a normal social life have never been better summed up than by Professor Devine in his book on _Misery and its Causes_. Rather than offer a program of our own we shall, therefore, give a brief resume of the conditions which Professor Devine names as essential to normal social life, believing that these offer a program upon which all sane social workers and reformers can unite. Professor Devine names ten conditions essential to a normal social life: (1) the securing of a sound physical heredity, that is, a good birth for every child, by a rational system of eugenics; (2) the securing of a protected childhood, which will assure the normal development of the child, and of a protected motherhood, which will assure the proper care of the child; (3) a system of education which shall be adapted to social needs, inspired by the ideals of rational living and social service; (4) the securing of freedom from preventable disease; (5) the elimination of professional vice and crime; (6) the securing of a prolonged working period for both men and women; (7) a general system of insurance against the ordinary contingencies of life which now cause poverty or dependence; (8) a liberal relief system which will meet the material needs of those who become accidentally dependent; (9) a standard of living sufficiently high to insure full nourishment, reasonable recreation, proper housing, and the other elementary necessities of life; (10) a social religion which shall make the service of humanity the highest aim of all individuals. It is sufficient to say, in closing this chapter, that if these ten essentials of a normal social life could be realized--and there is no reason why they cannot be--there would be no need to try the social revolution which Marxian socialism advocates. There can be no question that the ultimate aim of the social sciences is to provide society with the knowledge necessary for collective control over its own life processes. Sociology and the special social sciences are aiming, therefore, in an indirect way to accomplish the same thing which political socialism aims at accomplishing through economic revolution. There would seem to be no danger in trusting science to work out this problem of collective control over the conditions of existence. There are no risks to run by the scientific method, for it proceeds step by step, adequately testing theories by facts as it goes along. The thing to do, therefore, for those who wish to see "a humanity adjusted to the requirements of its existence" is to encourage scientific social research along all lines. With a fuller knowledge of human nature and human society it will be possible to indicate sane and safe reconstructions in the social order, so that ultimately humanity will control its social environment and its own human nature even more completely than it now controls the forces of physical nature. But the ultimate reliance in all such reconstruction, as we will try to show in the next chapter, must be, not revolution, nor even legislation, but education. SELECT REFERENCES _For brief reading:_ ELY, _Socialism and Social Reform._ SPARGO, _Socialism._ Revised edition. GILMAN, _Socialism and the American Spirit._ _For more extended reading_: HUNTER, _Socialists at Work._ KIRKUP, _History of Socialism._ SCHAEFFLE, _Quintessence of Socialism._ WELLS, _New Worlds for Old._ CHAPTER XV EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS As has just been said, the ultimate reliance in all social reform or social reconstruction must be upon the education of the individual. Social organization can never be more complex or of a higher type than the individual character and intelligence of the members of the group warrants. At any given stage of society, therefore, the intelligence and moral character of its individual members limits social organization. Only by raising the intelligence and character of the individual members of society can a higher type of social life permanently result. Another fact to which the student needs his attention called is that all progress in human society, it follows, from what has just been said, depends upon the relation between one generation and its successor. Only as new life comes into society is there opportunity to improve the character of that life. If at any given time intelligence and character limit the possibilities of social organization, then it is equally manifest that only in the new individuals of society can that intelligence and character be greatly improved. There are, of course, two possible ways of bringing about such improvement:--first, through the selection of the hereditary elements in society, eliminating the unfit and preserving the more fit; but, as we have repeatedly pointed out, such a scheme of artificial selection is far in the future, and in any case its inauguration would have to depend upon the _second_ method of improving individual character, which is through education and training. As we have insisted, not only may the natural instincts and tendencies of individuals be greatly modified by training but through education the habits and hence the character of individuals can be controlled. Therefore the main reliance of society in all forward movements must be upon education, that is, upon artificial means of controlling the formation of character and habit in individuals. The finality of education in social betterment can be, perhaps, further illustrated by reconsidering for a moment some of the social problems which we have just studied. Take for example the problem of crime. There are only three possible means, as we have already seen, of eliminating crime from human society:--first, through changes in individual human nature, brought about by biological selection, that is, through a system of selective breeding, eliminating all who show any criminal tendencies. This method would, perhaps, eliminate certain types of criminals as we have already seen, namely, those in whom the hereditary tendency to crime is dominant. A second means of attacking the problem of crime would be by improving social and economic conditions by means of the interference of the organized authority of society in the form of the state. Legislation and administration directed to social ends might accomplish much in reducing the temptations and opportunities for crime in any group. The correction of evils in social and industrial organization would, no doubt, again greatly lessen crime but it is entirely conceivable, from all that we know of human nature and human society, that crime might still persist under a just social and industrial organization. Crime could be completely eliminated only through a third means, namely, the careful training of each new individual in society as he came on the stage of life, so that he would be moral and law-abiding, respecting the rights of others and the institutions of society. Moreover, neither selective breeding nor governmental interference in social conditions could accomplish very much in eliminating crime unless these were backed by a wise system of social education. Now what is true of crime is equally true of all social problems. They may be approached from either of three sides:--first, from the biological side, or the side of physical heredity; second, from the side of social organization, or the improvement of the social environment; third, from the side of individual character, or the psychical adjustment of the individual to society. As Professor Ward and many other sociologists have emphasized, it is this latter side which is the most available point of attack on all social problems; for when we have secured a right attitude of the individual toward society all social problems will be more than half solved. Thus, as we said at the beginning of this book, education has a bearing upon every social problem, and every social problem also has a bearing upon education. Just how important this reciprocal relationship between education and social life is, we can appreciate only when we have considered somewhat more fully the nature of social progress. The Nature of Social Progress.--Social progress has been defined in many ways by the social thinkers of the past. Without entering into any formal definition of social progress, we believe that it will be evident to the reader of this book that social progress consists, for one thing, in the more complete adaptation of society to the conditions of life. We regard those changes as progressive whether they be moral, intellectual, or material, which bring about a better adaptation of individuals to one another in society, and of social groups to the requirements of their existence. Social progress means, in other words, the adaptation of society to a wider and more universal environment. The ideal of human progress is apparently adaptation to a perfectly universal environment, such an adaptation as shall harmonize all factors whether internal or external, present or remote, in the life of humanity. Social progress means, therefore, greater harmony among the members of a group. It means also greater efficiency of those members in performing their work. Finally, it means greater ability on the part of the group to survive. Social progress includes, therefore, the ideals of social harmony, social efficiency, and social survival. Things which do not ultimately conduce to these ends can scarcely be called progressive. Now it is evident that adaptation on the part of individuals and groups to the requirements of life may be in part accomplished by biological selection, that is, by eliminating the least adapted. But selection is, after all, a very clumsy and imperfect instrument for securing the highest type of adaptation. Again, it is evident that a certain degree of adaptation can be secured through the constraint of government and law; but only a relatively low type of adaptation can be secured in such an external way. It is finally evident, therefore, that the highest type of adaptation in either individual or social life can be secured only by training the intelligence and moral character of individuals so that they will be sufficient to meet the requirements of existence. Another feature of social progress which we have not yet mentioned in this chapter, though we have noted it repeatedly in earlier chapters, is the increased complexity of social organization. This increased complexity is in part due to the mere increase in numbers. It is also due to the various processes themselves by which wider and more universal adaptation is brought about in society. Thus, while every useful mechanical invention aids man to conquer nature, it at the same time increases the complexity of social life. Now in a more complex society there is more opportunity for conflicts of habit between individuals, more opportunity for social maladjustment, and therefore more opportunity for the failure of some part or all of the group in achieving a social life characterized by harmony, efficiency, and capacity for survival. Hence, the adaptation of individuals in the large and complex groups of modern civilized societies becomes a greater and greater problem. The regulative institutions of society, such as government, law, religion, and education, have to grapple with this problem of adjusting individuals to the requirements of an increasingly complex social life. No doubt religion, government, and law have a great function to perform in increasing social regulation, but they can only perform it effectively after they enlist education on their side. The Social Function of Education.--We are now prepared to understand the meaning of educational systems in civilized society and to see what the true function of education is. Education exists to adapt individuals to their social life. It is for the purpose of fitting the individual to take his place in the social group and to add something to the life of the group. Educational systems exist not to train the individual to develop his powers and capacity simply as an individual unit, but rather to fit him effectively to carry on the social life before he actively participates in it. In other words, the social function of education is to guide and control the formation of habit and character on the part of the individual, as well as to develop his capacity and powers, so that he shall become an efficient member of society. This work is not, at least in complex civilizations like our own, one which we carry on simply in order to achieve social perfection, but it is rather something which is necessary for the survival of large and complex groups. Otherwise, as we have pointed out, the conflicts in the acquirement of habit and character on the part of individuals would be so great that there would be no possibility of their working together harmoniously in a common social life. Just so far as the system of education is defective, is insufficient to meet social needs, in so far may we expect the production of individuals who are socially maladjusted, as shown in pauperism, defectiveness, and crime. Education is, then, the great means of controlling habit and character in complex social groups, and as such it is the chief means to which society must look for all substantial social progress. It is the instrument by which human nature may be apparently indefinitely modified, and hence, also, the instrument by which society may be perfected. The task of social regeneration is essentially a task of education. Education as a Factor in Past Social Evolution.--Does past social history justify these large claims for education as a factor in social development? It must be replied that the history of human society undoubtedly substantiates this position, but even if it did not, we should still have good ground for claiming that education can be such an all-powerful factor in the social future. The sociological study of past civilizations, however, shows quite conclusively that all of them have depended in one way or another upon educational processes, not only for continuity, but largely, also, for their development. As we have already seen, the life history of a culture or a civilization is frequently the life history of a religion. But religious beliefs, together with the moral and social beliefs, which become attached to them, were effectively transmitted only through the instruction of the young. The religious element did scarcely more than afford a powerful sanction for the moral and social beliefs upon which the social organization of the past rested; hence, when we ascribe great importance to the religious factor in social evolution, we also ascribe, at the same time, great importance to education, because it was essentially the educational process, together with religious sanction, which made possible most of the civilizations and social progress of the past. Indeed, we have no record of any people of any very considerable culture that did not employ educational processes to the largest degree to preserve and transmit that culture from generation to generation. Culture has been passed down in human history, therefore, essentially by educational processes. These educational processes have controlled the formation of habits and character, of ways of thinking and ways of acting, in successive generations of individuals. The educational processes have had much more to do, therefore, with the civilizations and social organization of the past than industrial conditions. Industrial conditions have been rather relatively external factors in the social environment to which society has had to adapt itself more or less. In the same way, political authority has rested on, and been derived from, the social traditions rather than the reverse. It is therefore not too much for the sociologist to say, agreeing with Thomas Davidson, that education is the last and highest method of social evolution. The lowest method of evolution was by selection, and _that_, as we have already emphasized, cannot be neglected. The next method of social evolution apparently to develop was the method of adaptation by organized authority, and, as we have already seen, organized authority in society, or social regulation by means of authority, must indefinitely persist and perhaps increase, rather than diminish; but the latest and highest method of social evolution is not through biological selection nor through the exercise of despotic authority, but through the education of the individual, so that he shall become adjusted to the social life in habits and character before he participates in it. Human society may be modified, we now see, best through modifying the nature of the individual, and the most direct method to do this is through education. The Socialized Education of the Future.--If what has been said is substantially correct, then education should become conscious of its social mission and purpose. The educator should conserve education as the chief means of social progress, and education should be directed to producing efficient members of society. The education of the future must aim, in other words, not at producing lawyers, physicians, engineers, but at producing citizens. Education for citizenship means that there must be radical reconstruction in the educational processes of the present. The education of the nineteenth century aimed at developing largely power and capacity in the individual as such. Its implicit, and oftentimes its avowed, aim was individual success. The popularity of higher education in the nineteenth century especially rested upon the cult of individual success. It became, therefore, largely commercialized, and emphasized chiefly the professions and occupations which best assured the individual a successful career among a commercial and industrial people. It is needless to say that the individualistic, commercialized education of the latter years of the nineteenth century very often failed to produce the good citizen. On the contrary, with its ideal of individual power and success, it frequently produced the cultured freebooter, which our modern industry has so often afforded examples of. Education, instead of being a socializing agency and the chief instrument of social regeneration, became an individualizing agency dissolving the social order itself. Very slowly our educators are becoming conscious of the fact that this type of education is a social menace, and that our educational system needs reformation from bottom to top in order to become again equal to the social task imposed upon it by the more complex social conditions of the twentieth century. Hence the demand for a socialized education, which is proceeding, not only from sociologists and social workers, but from the progressive leaders of education itself. What this socialized education of the future shall be is not the province of this book to discuss, but a few of its essential characteristics may be noted. As has already been said, such education will aim, first of all, at producing the citizen before it aims at producing the lawyer, the engineer, the physician, or any other professional or occupational type. No doubt, this means, for one thing, that all individuals shall be taught to be good fathers and mothers, good neighbors and members of communities, even more than they are taught the accomplishments of life. No doubt, also, the socialized education of the future will emphasize the adjustment of the individual to the industrial order of society, because it is necessary that individuals shall be producers if they are to be efficient citizens. The necessity and value of industrial training in our system of education has already been emphasized in discussing other social problems. Such training has its place and that place, as we have already seen, is a very important and fundamental one; but it must not be forgotten that the relations of men to one another are more important than the relations of men to nature. In industrial training, the element which is apt to be emphasized is the relations of the individual to the physical facts and forces of nature; but this is only a beginning of the training for citizenship, because good citizenship consists essentially in harmonious and efficient functioning in the social group. Therefore, the study of the relationships of men to one another must be the final and crowning element in a system of social education. Such studies as history, government, economics, ethics, and sociology must occupy a larger and larger place in the education of the future if we are to secure a humanity adjusted to the requirements of its existence. Historical and sociological instruction should lead up, moreover, to direct ethical instruction. If the industrial element in the social life is important, the moral element is even more so, since it is, as we have already said, the ideal aspect of the social. In some way or another, our public schools, from the kindergarten up, must make a place for social and ethical instruction of a direct and explicit character. In the higher education, the social sciences must be especially emphasized, because it is those who receive higher education who become the leaders of society, and it is important, no matter what occupation or profession they may serve society in, that they understand the bearings of their work upon social welfare. They must know their duties as citizens and understand how society may best be served. In other words, our higher education should put to the front the ideal, not of individual power and success, but of social service; and this means that, in addition to the technical or professional education which the more highly educated are giving, there must be a sufficient knowledge of social conditions and of the laws and principles of social progress given them to enable them to serve society rightly. Intelligent social service cannot exist without social knowledge. All this implies that the older idea that education can be given regardless of content is, from the social point of view, a great mistake. Social knowledge is necessary, as we have just said, for efficient social service, and a socialized education can have no other end than social service. Therefore, sociological knowledge in the broadest sense should be required in the education of every citizen, and particularly those who are to become social leaders. Professor Ward has ably argued that if sufficient information of the facts, conditions, and laws of human society could be given to all, that alone would bring about in the highest degree social progress. Whether we agree or not that the mere giving of information will of itself lead to progressive or dynamic action in society, it must be admitted that right social information is indispensable for right social action. As Professor Cooley has said, "We live in a system, and to achieve right ends, or any rational ends whatever, we must learn to understand that system." Hence, the commanding place which sociology and the social sciences should occupy in the education of all classes, and especially in the training of the teacher himself. It is not unreasonable to believe that the development of the social sciences will show us the way to remove many, if not all, social evils; and it is also not unreasonable to believe that the knowledge which these sciences will furnish will stimulate in the vast mass of individuals an impetus to remove these evils. Moreover, training in the social sciences will check many of the most menacing tendencies of our present civilization. For one thing, training in the social sciences will lessen the practical materialism of modern civilization, for it will throw the emphasis on the relations of men to one another rather than on the relations of man to nature. The social sciences, aiming at the control of the social conditions and of social progress, necessarily emphasize the higher life of man, and they therefore set before the student as the goal, not material achievement or individual success, but the service of man. Again, training in the social sciences will check the exaggerated individualism, which, as we have already seen, is one of the most menacing tendencies of our time; for the social sciences show the solidarity of the society and the interdependence of its parts. They show that no individual lives to himself, and that his acts evidently affect the whole of society. Finally, training in the social sciences will insure the development of true moral freedom in our social life, for these sciences involve a searching but impersonal criticism of social institutions and public policies. Now the very breath of life of a free society is intelligent public criticism of its institutions and policies. Without this, there can be no change, no progress. But intelligent criticism implies scientific criticism, that is, criticism based upon adequate scientific knowledge and without personal bias. This means the scientific study of institutions and social organization. If the American people are to perfect their institutions, they must maintain and develop their moral freedom; and to maintain true moral freedom, they must encourage the scientific study of social conditions and institutions. To secure an unbiased attitude toward social and political problems, to train every citizen for social service, to reconstruct social organization along scientific lines, it is necessary, therefore, to give the social sciences an honored place in the education of all classes and professions. SELECT REFERENCES _For brief reading_: WARD, _Applied Sociology_, Chaps. VIII-XII. WARD, _Dynamic Sociology_, Vol. II, Chap. XIV. HORNE, _The Philosophy of Education_, Chaps. IV and V. DEWEY, _The School and Society_. _For more extended reading_: DAVIDSON, _History of Education_. GRAVES, _History of Education_. MONROE, _History of Education_. 
6456	----	PUBLIC OPINION BY WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN Wading River, Long Island. 1921. _"Behold! human beings living in a sort of underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all across the den; they have been here from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them; for the chains are arranged in such a manner as to prevent them from turning round their heads. At a distance above and behind them the light of a fire is blazing, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have before them, over which they show the puppets. I see, he said. And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying vessels, which appear over the wall; also figures of men and animals, made of wood and stone and various materials; and some of the prisoners, as you would expect, are talking, and some of them are silent? This is a strange image, he said, and they are strange prisoners. Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave? True, he said: how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads? And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would see only the shadows? Yes, he said. And if they were able to talk with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?"_ --The Republic of Plato, Book Seven. (Jowett Translation.) CONTENTS PART I. INTRODUCTION I. The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads PART II. APPROACHES TO THE WORLD OUTSIDE II. Censorship and Privacy III. Contact and Opportunity IV. Time and Attention V. Speed, Words, and Clearness PART III. STEREOTYPES VI. Stereotypes VII. Stereotypes as Defense VIII. Blind Spots and Their Value IX. Codes and Their Enemies X. The Detection of Stereotypes PART IV. INTERESTS XI. The Enlisting of Interest XII. Self-Interest Reconsidered PART V. THE MAKING OF A COMMON WILL XIII. The Transfer of Interest XIV. Yes or No XV. Leaders and the Rank and File PART VI. THE IMAGE OF DEMOCRACY XVI. The Self-Centered Man XVII. The Self-Contained Community XVIII. The Role of Force, Patronage, and Privilege XIX. The Old Image in a New Form: Guild Socialism XX. A New Image PART VII. NEWSPAPERS XXI. The Buying Public XXII. The Constant Reader XXIII. The Nature of News XXIV. News, Truth, and a Conclusion PART VIII. ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE XXV. The Entering Wedge XXVI. Intelligence Work XXVII. The Appeal to the Public XXVIII. The Appeal to Reason PART I INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I THE WORLD OUTSIDE AND THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION THE WORLD OUTSIDE AND THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS There is an island in the ocean where in 1914 a few Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans lived. No cable reaches that island, and the British mail steamer comes but once in sixty days. In September it had not yet come, and the islanders were still talking about the latest newspaper which told about the approaching trial of Madame Caillaux for the shooting of Gaston Calmette. It was, therefore, with more than usual eagerness that the whole colony assembled at the quay on a day in mid-September to hear from the captain what the verdict had been. They learned that for over six weeks now those of them who were English and those of them who were French had been fighting in behalf of the sanctity of treaties against those of them who were Germans. For six strange weeks they had acted as if they were friends, when in fact they were enemies. But their plight was not so different from that of most of the population of Europe. They had been mistaken for six weeks, on the continent the interval may have been only six days or six hours. There was an interval. There was a moment when the picture of Europe on which men were conducting their business as usual, did not in any way correspond to the Europe which was about to make a jumble of their lives. There was a time for each man when he was still adjusted to an environment that no longer existed. All over the world as late as July 25th men were making goods that they would not be able to ship, buying goods they would not be able to import, careers were being planned, enterprises contemplated, hopes and expectations entertained, all in the belief that the world as known was the world as it was. Men were writing books describing that world. They trusted the picture in their heads. And then over four years later, on a Thursday morning, came the news of an armistice, and people gave vent to their unutterable relief that the slaughter was over. Yet in the five days before the real armistice came, though the end of the war had been celebrated, several thousand young men died on the battlefields. Looking back we can see how indirectly we know the environment in which nevertheless we live. We can see that the news of it comes to us now fast, now slowly; but that whatever we believe to be a true picture, we treat as if it were the environment itself. It is harder to remember that about the beliefs upon which we are now acting, but in respect to other peoples and other ages we flatter ourselves that it is easy to see when they were in deadly earnest about ludicrous pictures of the world. We insist, because of our superior hindsight, that the world as they needed to know it, and the world as they did know it, were often two quite contradictory things. We can see, too, that while they governed and fought, traded and reformed in the world as they imagined it to be, they produced results, or failed to produce any, in the world as it was. They started for the Indies and found America. They diagnosed evil and hanged old women. They thought they could grow rich by always selling and never buying. A caliph, obeying what he conceived to be the Will of Allah, burned the library at Alexandria. Writing about the year 389, St. Ambrose stated the case for the prisoner in Plato's cave who resolutely declines to turn his head. "To discuss the nature and position of the earth does not help us in our hope of the life to come. It is enough to know what Scripture states. 'That He hung up the earth upon nothing' (Job xxvi. 7). Why then argue whether He hung it up in air or upon the water, and raise a controversy as to how the thin air could sustain the earth; or why, if upon the waters, the earth does not go crashing down to the bottom?... Not because the earth is in the middle, as if suspended on even balance, but because the majesty of God constrains it by the law of His will, does it endure stable upon the unstable and the void." [Footnote: Hexaemeron, i. cap 6, quoted in _The Mediæval Mind_, by Henry Osborn Taylor, Vol. i, p. 73.] It does not help us in our hope of the life to come. It is enough to know what Scripture states. Why then argue? But a century and a half after St. Ambrose, opinion was still troubled, on this occasion by the problem of the antipodes. A monk named Cosmas, famous for his scientific attainments, was therefore deputed to write a Christian Topography, or "Christian Opinion concerning the World." [Footnote: Lecky, _Rationalism in Europe_, Vol. I, pp. 276-8.] It is clear that he knew exactly what was expected of him, for he based all his conclusions on the Scriptures as he read them. It appears, then, that the world is a flat parallelogram, twice as broad from east to west as it is long from north to south., In the center is the earth surrounded by ocean, which is in turn surrounded by another earth, where men lived before the deluge. This other earth was Noah's port of embarkation. In the north is a high conical mountain around which revolve the sun and moon. When the sun is behind the mountain it is night. The sky is glued to the edges of the outer earth. It consists of four high walls which meet in a concave roof, so that the earth is the floor of the universe. There is an ocean on the other side of the sky, constituting the "waters that are above the firmament." The space between the celestial ocean and the ultimate roof of the universe belongs to the blest. The space between the earth and sky is inhabited by the angels. Finally, since St. Paul said that all men are made to live upon the "face of the earth" how could they live on the back where the Antipodes are supposed to be? With such a passage before his eyes, a Christian, we are told, should not 'even speak of the Antipodes.'" [Footnote: _Id._] Far less should he go to the Antipodes; nor should any Christian prince give him a ship to try; nor would any pious mariner wish to try. For Cosmas there was nothing in the least absurd about his map. Only by remembering his absolute conviction that this was the map of the universe can we begin to understand how he would have dreaded Magellan or Peary or the aviator who risked a collision with the angels and the vault of heaven by flying seven miles up in the air. In the same way we can best understand the furies of war and politics by remembering that almost the whole of each party believes absolutely in its picture of the opposition, that it takes as fact, not what is, but what it supposes to be the fact. And that therefore, like Hamlet, it will stab Polonius behind the rustling curtain, thinking him the king, and perhaps like Hamlet add: "Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! I took thee for thy better; take thy fortune." 2 Great men, even during their lifetime, are usually known to the public only through a fictitious personality. Hence the modicum of truth in the old saying that no man is a hero to his valet. There is only a modicum of truth, for the valet, and the private secretary, are often immersed in the fiction themselves. Royal personages are, of course, constructed personalities. Whether they themselves believe in their public character, or whether they merely permit the chamberlain to stage-manage it, there are at least two distinct selves, the public and regal self, the private and human. The biographies of great people fall more or less readily into the histories of these two selves. The official biographer reproduces the public life, the revealing memoir the other. The Charnwood Lincoln, for example, is a noble portrait, not of an actual human being, but of an epic figure, replete with significance, who moves on much the same level of reality as Aeneas or St. George. Oliver's Hamilton is a majestic abstraction, the sculpture of an idea, "an essay" as Mr. Oliver himself calls it, "on American union." It is a formal monument to the state-craft of federalism, hardly the biography of a person. Sometimes people create their own facade when they think they are revealing the interior scene. The Repington diaries and Margot Asquith's are a species of self-portraiture in which the intimate detail is most revealing as an index of how the authors like to think about themselves. But the most interesting kind of portraiture is that which arises spontaneously in people's minds. When Victoria came to the throne, says Mr. Strachey, [Footnote: Lytton Strachey, _Queen Victoria_, p. 72.] "among the outside public there was a great wave of enthusiasm. Sentiment and romance were coming into fashion; and the spectacle of the little girl-queen, innocent, modest, with fair hair and pink cheeks, driving through her capital, filled the hearts of the beholders with raptures of affectionate loyalty. What, above all, struck everybody with overwhelming force was the contrast between Queen Victoria and her uncles. The nasty old men, debauched and selfish, pigheaded and ridiculous, with their perpetual burden of debts, confusions, and disreputabilities--they had vanished like the snows of winter and here at last, crowned and radiant, was the spring." M. Jean de Pierrefeu [Footnote: Jean de Pierrefeu, _G. Q. G. Trois ans au Grand Quartier General_, pp 94-95.] saw hero-worship at first hand, for he was an officer on Joffre's staff at the moment of that soldier's greatest fame: "For two years, the entire world paid an almost divine homage to the victor of the Marne. The baggage-master literally bent under the weight of the boxes, of the packages and letters which unknown people sent him with a frantic testimonial of their admiration. I think that outside of General Joffre, no commander in the war has been able to realize a comparable idea of what glory is. They sent him boxes of candy from all the great confectioners of the world, boxes of champagne, fine wines of every vintage, fruits, game, ornaments and utensils, clothes, smoking materials, inkstands, paperweights. Every territory sent its specialty. The painter sent his picture, the sculptor his statuette, the dear old lady a comforter or socks, the shepherd in his hut carved a pipe for his sake. All the manufacturers of the world who were hostile to Germany shipped their products, Havana its cigars, Portugal its port wine. I have known a hairdresser who had nothing better to do than to make a portrait of the General out of hair belonging to persons who were dear to him; a professional penman had the same idea, but the features were composed of thousands of little phrases in tiny characters which sang the praise of the General. As to letters, he had them in all scripts, from all countries, written in every dialect, affectionate letters, grateful, overflowing with love, filled with adoration. They called him Savior of the World, Father of his Country, Agent of God, Benefactor of Humanity, etc.... And not only Frenchmen, but Americans, Argentinians, Australians, etc. etc.... Thousands of little children, without their parents' knowledge, took pen in hand and wrote to tell him their love: most of them called him Our Father. And there was poignancy about their effusions, their adoration, these sighs of deliverance that escaped from thousands of hearts at the defeat of barbarism. To all these naif little souls, Joffre seemed like St. George crushing the dragon. Certainly he incarnated for the conscience of mankind the victory of good over evil, of light over darkness. Lunatics, simpletons, the half-crazy and the crazy turned their darkened brains toward him as toward reason itself. I have read the letter of a person living in Sydney, who begged the General to save him from his enemies; another, a New Zealander, requested him to send some soldiers to the house of a gentleman who owed him ten pounds and would not pay. Finally, some hundreds of young girls, overcoming the timidity of their sex, asked for engagements, their families not to know about it; others wished only to serve him." This ideal Joffre was compounded out of the victory won by him, his staff and his troops, the despair of the war, the personal sorrows, and the hope of future victory. But beside hero-worship there is the exorcism of devils. By the same mechanism through which heroes are incarnated, devils are made. If everything good was to come from Joffre, Foch, Wilson, or Roosevelt, everything evil originated in the Kaiser Wilhelm, Lenin and Trotsky. They were as omnipotent for evil as the heroes were omnipotent for good. To many simple and frightened minds there was no political reverse, no strike, no obstruction, no mysterious death or mysterious conflagration anywhere in the world of which the causes did not wind back to these personal sources of evil. 3 Worldwide concentration of this kind on a symbolic personality is rare enough to be clearly remarkable, and every author has a weakness for the striking and irrefutable example. The vivisection of war reveals such examples, but it does not make them out of nothing. In a more normal public life, symbolic pictures are no less governant of behavior, but each symbol is far less inclusive because there are so many competing ones. Not only is each symbol charged with less feeling because at most it represents only a part of the population, but even within that part there is infinitely less suppression of individual difference. The symbols of public opinion, in times of moderate security, are subject to check and comparison and argument. They come and go, coalesce and are forgotten, never organizing perfectly the emotion of the whole group. There is, after all, just one human activity left in which whole populations accomplish the union sacrée. It occurs in those middle phases of a war when fear, pugnacity, and hatred have secured complete dominion of the spirit, either to crush every other instinct or to enlist it, and before weariness is felt. At almost all other times, and even in war when it is deadlocked, a sufficiently greater range of feelings is aroused to establish conflict, choice, hesitation, and compromise. The symbolism of public opinion usually bears, as we shall see, [Footnote: Part V.] the marks of this balancing of interest. Think, for example, of how rapidly, after the armistice, the precarious and by no means successfully established symbol of Allied Unity disappeared, how it was followed almost immediately by the breakdown of each nation's symbolic picture of the other: Britain the Defender of Public Law, France watching at the Frontier of Freedom, America the Crusader. And think then of how within each nation the symbolic picture of itself frayed out, as party and class conflict and personal ambition began to stir postponed issues. And then of how the symbolic pictures of the leaders gave way, as one by one, Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George, ceased to be the incarnation of human hope, and became merely the negotiators and administrators for a disillusioned world. Whether we regret this as one of the soft evils of peace or applaud it as a return to sanity is obviously no matter here. Our first concern with fictions and symbols is to forget their value to the existing social order, and to think of them simply as an important part of the machinery of human communication. Now in any society that is not completely self-contained in its interests and so small that everyone can know all about everything that happens, ideas deal with events that are out of sight and hard to grasp. Miss Sherwin of Gopher Prairie, [Footnote: See Sinclair Lewis, _Main Street_.] is aware that a war is raging in France and tries to conceive it. She has never been to France, and certainly she has never been along what is now the battlefront. Pictures of French and German soldiers she has seen, but it is impossible for her to imagine three million men. No one, in fact, can imagine them, and the professionals do not try. They think of them as, say, two hundred divisions. But Miss Sherwin has no access to the order of battle maps, and so if she is to think about the war, she fastens upon Joffre and the Kaiser as if they were engaged in a personal duel. Perhaps if you could see what she sees with her mind's eye, the image in its composition might be not unlike an Eighteenth Century engraving of a great soldier. He stands there boldly unruffled and more than life size, with a shadowy army of tiny little figures winding off into the landscape behind. Nor it seems are great men oblivious to these expectations. M. de Pierrefeu tells of a photographer's visit to Joffre. The General was in his "middle class office, before the worktable without papers, where he sat down to write his signature. Suddenly it was noticed that there were no maps on the walls. But since according to popular ideas it is not possible to think of a general without maps, a few were placed in position for the picture, and removed soon afterwards." [Footnote: _Op. cit._, p. 99.] The only feeling that anyone can have about an event he does not experience is the feeling aroused by his mental image of that event. That is why until we know what others think they know, we cannot truly understand their acts. I have seen a young girl, brought up in a Pennsylvania mining town, plunged suddenly from entire cheerfulness into a paroxysm of grief when a gust of wind cracked the kitchen window-pane. For hours she was inconsolable, and to me incomprehensible. But when she was able to talk, it transpired that if a window-pane broke it meant that a close relative had died. She was, therefore, mourning for her father, who had frightened her into running away from home. The father was, of course, quite thoroughly alive as a telegraphic inquiry soon proved. But until the telegram came, the cracked glass was an authentic message to that girl. Why it was authentic only a prolonged investigation by a skilled psychiatrist could show. But even the most casual observer could see that the girl, enormously upset by her family troubles, had hallucinated a complete fiction out of one external fact, a remembered superstition, and a turmoil of remorse, and fear and love for her father. Abnormality in these instances is only a matter of degree. When an Attorney-General, who has been frightened by a bomb exploded on his doorstep, convinces himself by the reading of revolutionary literature that a revolution is to happen on the first of May 1920, we recognize that much the same mechanism is at work. The war, of course, furnished many examples of this pattern: the casual fact, the creative imagination, the will to believe, and out of these three elements, a counterfeit of reality to which there was a violent instinctive response. For it is clear enough that under certain conditions men respond as powerfully to fictions as they do to realities, and that in many cases they help to create the very fictions to which they respond. Let him cast the first stone who did not believe in the Russian army that passed through England in August, 1914, did not accept any tale of atrocities without direct proof, and never saw a plot, a traitor, or a spy where there was none. Let him cast a stone who never passed on as the real inside truth what he had heard someone say who knew no more than he did. In all these instances we must note particularly one common factor. It is the insertion between man and his environment of a pseudo-environment. To that pseudo-environment his behavior is a response. But because it _is_ behavior, the consequences, if they are acts, operate not in the pseudo-environment where the behavior is stimulated, but in the real environment where action eventuates. If the behavior is not a practical act, but what we call roughly thought and emotion, it may be a long time before there is any noticeable break in the texture of the fictitious world. But when the stimulus of the pseudo-fact results in action on things or other people, contradiction soon develops. Then comes the sensation of butting one's head against a stone wall, of learning by experience, and witnessing Herbert Spencer's tragedy of the murder of a Beautiful Theory by a Gang of Brutal Facts, the discomfort in short of a maladjustment. For certainly, at the level of social life, what is called the adjustment of man to his environment takes place through the medium of fictions. By fictions I do not mean lies. I mean a representation of the environment which is in lesser or greater degree made by man himself. The range of fiction extends all the way from complete hallucination to the scientists' perfectly self-conscious use of a schematic model, or his decision that for his particular problem accuracy beyond a certain number of decimal places is not important. A work of fiction may have almost any degree of fidelity, and so long as the degree of fidelity can be taken into account, fiction is not misleading. In fact, human culture is very largely the selection, the rearrangement, the tracing of patterns upon, and the stylizing of, what William James called "the random irradiations and resettlements of our ideas." [Footnote: James, _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II, p. 638] The alternative to the use of fictions is direct exposure to the ebb and flow of sensation. That is not a real alternative, for however refreshing it is to see at times with a perfectly innocent eye, innocence itself is not wisdom, though a source and corrective of wisdom. For the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. And although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage with it. To traverse the world men must have maps of the world. Their persistent difficulty is to secure maps on which their own need, or someone else's need, has not sketched in the coast of Bohemia. 4 The analyst of public opinion must begin then, by recognizing the triangular relationship between the scene of action, the human picture of that scene, and the human response to that picture working itself out upon the scene of action. It is like a play suggested to the actors by their own experience, in which the plot is transacted in the real lives of the actors, and not merely in their stage parts. The moving picture often emphasizes with great skill this double drama of interior motive and external behavior. Two men are quarreling, ostensibly about some money, but their passion is inexplicable. Then the picture fades out and what one or the other of the two men sees with his mind's eye is reënacted. Across the table they were quarreling about money. In memory they are back in their youth when the girl jilted him for the other man. The exterior drama is explained: the hero is not greedy; the hero is in love. A scene not so different was played in the United States Senate. At breakfast on the morning of September 29, 1919, some of the Senators read a news dispatch in the _Washington Post_ about the landing of American marines on the Dalmatian coast. The newspaper said: FACTS NOW ESTABLISHED "The following important facts appear already _established_. The orders to Rear Admiral Andrews commanding the American naval forces in the Adriatic, came from the British Admiralty via the War Council and Rear Admiral Knapps in London. The approval or disapproval of the American Navy Department was not asked.... WITHOUT DANIELS' KNOWLEDGE "Mr. Daniels was admittedly placed in a peculiar position when cables reached here stating that the forces over which he is presumed to have exclusive control were carrying on what amounted to naval warfare without his knowledge. It was fully realized that the _British Admiralty might desire to issue orders to Rear Admiral Andrews_ to act on behalf of Great Britain and her Allies, because the situation required sacrifice on the part of some nation if D'Annunzio's followers were to be held in check. "It was further realized that _under the new league of nations plan foreigners would be in a position to direct American Naval forces in emergencies_ with or without the consent of the American Navy Department...." etc. (Italics mine). The first Senator to comment is Mr. Knox of Pennsylvania. Indignantly he demands investigation. In Mr. Brandegee of Connecticut, who spoke next, indignation has already stimulated credulity. Where Mr. Knox indignantly wishes to know if the report is true, Mr. Brandegee, a half a minute later, would like to know what would have happened if marines had been killed. Mr. Knox, interested in the question, forgets that he asked for an inquiry, and replies. If American marines had been killed, it would be war. The mood of the debate is still conditional. Debate proceeds. Mr. McCormick of Illinois reminds the Senate that the Wilson administration is prone to the waging of small unauthorized wars. He repeats Theodore Roosevelt's quip about "waging peace." More debate. Mr. Brandegee notes that the marines acted "under orders of a Supreme Council sitting somewhere," but he cannot recall who represents the United States on that body. The Supreme Council is unknown to the Constitution of the United States. Therefore Mr. New of Indiana submits a resolution calling for the facts. So far the Senators still recognize vaguely that they are discussing a rumor. Being lawyers they still remember some of the forms of evidence. But as red-blooded men they already experience all the indignation which is appropriate to the fact that American marines have been ordered into war by a foreign government and without the consent of Congress. Emotionally they want to believe it, because they are Republicans fighting the League of Nations. This arouses the Democratic leader, Mr. Hitchcock of Nebraska. He defends the Supreme Council: it was acting under the war powers. Peace has not yet been concluded because the Republicans are delaying it. Therefore the action was necessary and legal. Both sides now assume that the report is true, and the conclusions they draw are the conclusions of their partisanship. Yet this extraordinary assumption is in a debate over a resolution to investigate the truth of the assumption. It reveals how difficult it is, even for trained lawyers, to suspend response until the returns are in. The response is instantaneous. The fiction is taken for truth because the fiction is badly needed. A few days later an official report showed that the marines were not landed by order of the British Government or of the Supreme Council. They had not been fighting the Italians. They had been landed at the request of the Italian Government to protect Italians, and the American commander had been officially thanked by the Italian authorities. The marines were not at war with Italy. They had acted according to an established international practice which had nothing to do with the League of Nations. The scene of action was the Adriatic. The picture of that scene in the Senators' heads at Washington was furnished, in this case probably with intent to deceive, by a man who cared nothing about the Adriatic, but much about defeating the League. To this picture the Senate responded by a strengthening of its partisan differences over the League. 5 Whether in this particular case the Senate was above or below its normal standard, it is not necessary to decide. Nor whether the Senate compares favorably with the House, or with other parliaments. At the moment, I should like to think only about the world-wide spectacle of men acting upon their environment, moved by stimuli from their pseudo-environments. For when full allowance has been made for deliberate fraud, political science has still to account for such facts as two nations attacking one another, each convinced that it is acting in self-defense, or two classes at war each certain that it speaks for the common interest. They live, we are likely to say, in different worlds. More accurately, they live in the same world, but they think and feel in different ones. It is to these special worlds, it is to these private or group, or class, or provincial, or occupational, or national, or sectarian artifacts, that the political adjustment of mankind in the Great Society takes place. Their variety and complication are impossible to describe. Yet these fictions determine a very great part of men's political behavior. We must think of perhaps fifty sovereign parliaments consisting of at least a hundred legislative bodies. With them belong at least fifty hierarchies of provincial and municipal assemblies, which with their executive, administrative and legislative organs, constitute formal authority on earth. But that does not begin to reveal the complexity of political life. For in each of these innumerable centers of authority there are parties, and these parties are themselves hierarchies with their roots in classes, sections, cliques and clans; and within these are the individual politicians, each the personal center of a web of connection and memory and fear and hope. Somehow or other, for reasons often necessarily obscure, as the result of domination or compromise or a logroll, there emerge from these political bodies commands, which set armies in motion or make peace, conscript life, tax, exile, imprison, protect property or confiscate it, encourage one kind of enterprise and discourage another, facilitate immigration or obstruct it, improve communication or censor it, establish schools, build navies, proclaim "policies," and "destiny," raise economic barriers, make property or unmake it, bring one people under the rule of another, or favor one class as against another. For each of these decisions some view of the facts is taken to be conclusive, some view of the circumstances is accepted as the basis of inference and as the stimulus of feeling. What view of the facts, and why that one? And yet even this does not begin to exhaust the real complexity. The formal political structure exists in a social environment, where there are innumerable large and small corporations and institutions, voluntary and semi-voluntary associations, national, provincial, urban and neighborhood groupings, which often as not make the decision that the political body registers. On what are these decisions based? "Modern society," says Mr. Chesterton, "is intrinsically insecure because it is based on the notion that all men will do the same thing for different reasons.... And as within the head of any convict may be the hell of a quite solitary crime, so in the house or under the hat of any suburban clerk may be the limbo of a quite separate philosophy. The first man may be a complete Materialist and feel his own body as a horrible machine manufacturing his own mind. He may listen to his thoughts as to the dull ticking of a clock. The man next door may be a Christian Scientist and regard his own body as somehow rather less substantial than his own shadow. He may come almost to regard his own arms and legs as delusions like moving serpents in the dream of delirium tremens. The third man in the street may not be a Christian Scientist but, on the contrary, a Christian. He may live in a fairy tale as his neighbors would say; a secret but solid fairy tale full of the faces and presences of unearthly friends. The fourth man may be a theosophist, and only too probably a vegetarian; and I do not see why I should not gratify myself with the fancy that the fifth man is a devil worshiper.... Now whether or not this sort of variety is valuable, this sort of unity is shaky. To expect that all men for all time will go on thinking different things, and yet doing the same things, is a doubtful speculation. It is not founding society on a communion, or even on a convention, but rather on a coincidence. Four men may meet under the same lamp post; one to paint it pea green as part of a great municipal reform; one to read his breviary in the light of it; one to embrace it with accidental ardour in a fit of alcoholic enthusiasm; and the last merely because the pea green post is a conspicuous point of rendezvous with his young lady. But to expect this to happen night after night is unwise...." [Footnote: G. K. Chesterton, "The Mad Hatter and the Sane Householder," _Vanity Fair_, January, 1921, p. 54] For the four men at the lamp post substitute the governments, the parties, the corporations, the societies, the social sets, the trades and professions, universities, sects, and nationalities of the world. Think of the legislator voting a statute that will affect distant peoples, a statesman coming to a decision. Think of the Peace Conference reconstituting the frontiers of Europe, an ambassador in a foreign country trying to discern the intentions of his own government and of the foreign government, a promoter working a concession in a backward country, an editor demanding a war, a clergyman calling on the police to regulate amusement, a club lounging-room making up its mind about a strike, a sewing circle preparing to regulate the schools, nine judges deciding whether a legislature in Oregon may fix the working hours of women, a cabinet meeting to decide on the recognition of a government, a party convention choosing a candidate and writing a platform, twenty-seven million voters casting their ballots, an Irishman in Cork thinking about an Irishman in Belfast, a Third International planning to reconstruct the whole of human society, a board of directors confronted with a set of their employees' demands, a boy choosing a career, a merchant estimating supply and demand for the coming season, a speculator predicting the course of the market, a banker deciding whether to put credit behind a new enterprise, the advertiser, the reader of advertisments.... Think of the different sorts of Americans thinking about their notions of "The British Empire" or "France" or "Russia" or "Mexico." It is not so different from Mr. Chesterton's four men at the pea green lamp post. 6 And so before we involve ourselves in the jungle of obscurities about the innate differences of men, we shall do well to fix our attention upon the extraordinary differences in what men know of the world. [Footnote: _Cf_. Wallas, _Our Social Heritage_, pp. 77 _et seq_.] I do not doubt that there are important biological differences. Since man is an animal it would be strange if there were not. But as rational beings it is worse than shallow to generalize at all about comparative behavior until there is a measurable similarity between the environments to which behavior is a response. The pragmatic value of this idea is that it introduces a much needed refinement into the ancient controversy about nature and nurture, innate quality and environment. For the pseudo-environment is a hybrid compounded of "human nature" and "conditions." To my mind it shows the uselessness of pontificating about what man is and always will be from what we observe man to be doing, or about what are the necessary conditions of society. For we do not know how men would behave in response to the facts of the Great Society. All that we really know is how they behave in response to what can fairly be called a most inadequate picture of the Great Society. No conclusion about man or the Great Society can honestly be made on evidence like that. This, then, will be the clue to our inquiry. We shall assume that what each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him. If his atlas tells him that the world is flat he will not sail near what he believes to be the edge of our planet for fear of falling off. If his maps include a fountain of eternal youth, a Ponce de Leon will go in quest of it. If someone digs up yellow dirt that looks like gold, he will for a time act exactly as if he had found gold. The way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do. It does not determine what they will achieve. It determines their effort, their feelings, their hopes, not their accomplishments and results. The very men who most loudly proclaim their "materialism" and their contempt for "ideologues," the Marxian communists, place their entire hope on what? On the formation by propaganda of a class-conscious group. But what is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another? What is class consciousness but a way of realizing the world? National consciousness but another way? And Professor Giddings' consciousness of kind, but a process of believing that we recognize among the multitude certain ones marked as our kind? Try to explain social life as the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. You will soon be saying that the hedonist begs the question, for even supposing that man does pursue these ends, the crucial problem of why he thinks one course rather than another likely to produce pleasure, is untouched. Does the guidance of man's conscience explain? How then does he happen to have the particular conscience which he has? The theory of economic self-interest? But how do men come to conceive their interest in one way rather than another? The desire for security, or prestige, or domination, or what is vaguely called self-realization? How do men conceive their security, what do they consider prestige, how do they figure out the means of domination, or what is the notion of self which they wish to realize? Pleasure, pain, conscience, acquisition, protection, enhancement, mastery, are undoubtedly names for some of the ways people act. There may be instinctive dispositions which work toward such ends. But no statement of the end, or any description of the tendencies to seek it, can explain the behavior which results. The very fact that men theorize at all is proof that their pseudo-environments, their interior representations of the world, are a determining element in thought, feeling, and action. For if the connection between reality and human response were direct and immediate, rather than indirect and inferred, indecision and failure would be unknown, and (if each of us fitted as snugly into the world as the child in the womb), Mr. Bernard Shaw would not have been able to say that except for the first nine months of its existence no human being manages its affairs as well as a plant. The chief difficulty in adapting the psychoanalytic scheme to political thought arises in this connection. The Freudians are concerned with the maladjustment of distinct individuals to other individuals and to concrete circumstances. They have assumed that if internal derangements could be straightened out, there would be little or no confusion about what is the obviously normal relationship. But public opinion deals with indirect, unseen, and puzzling facts, and there is nothing obvious about them. The situations to which public opinions refer are known only as opinions. The psychoanalyst, on the other hand, almost always assumes that the environment is knowable, and if not knowable then at least bearable, to any unclouded intelligence. This assumption of his is the problem of public opinion. Instead of taking for granted an environment that is readily known, the social analyst is most concerned in studying how the larger political environment is conceived, and how it can be conceived more successfully. The psychoanalyst examines the adjustment to an X, called by him the environment; the social analyst examines the X, called by him the pseudo-environment. He is, of course, permanently and constantly in debt to the new psychology, not only because when rightly applied it so greatly helps people to stand on their own feet, come what may, but because the study of dreams, fantasy and rationalization has thrown light on how the pseudo-environment is put together. But he cannot assume as his criterion either what is called a "normal biological career" [Footnote: Edward J. Kempf, _Psychopathology_, p. 116.] within the existing social order, or a career "freed from religious suppression and dogmatic conventions" outside. [Footnote: _Id_., p. 151.] What for a sociologist is a normal social career? Or one freed from suppressions and conventions? Conservative critics do, to be sure, assume the first, and romantic ones the second. But in assuming them they are taking the whole world for granted. They are saying in effect either that society is the sort of thing which corresponds to their idea of what is normal, or the sort of thing which corresponds to their idea of what is free. Both ideas are merely public opinions, and while the psychoanalyst as physician may perhaps assume them, the sociologist may not take the products of existing public opinion as criteria by which to study public opinion. 7 The world that we have to deal with politically is out of reach, out of sight, out of mind. It has to be explored, reported, and imagined. Man is no Aristotelian god contemplating all existence at one glance. He is the creature of an evolution who can just about span a sufficient portion of reality to manage his survival, and snatch what on the scale of time are but a few moments of insight and happiness. Yet this same creature has invented ways of seeing what no naked eye could see, of hearing what no ear could hear, of weighing immense masses and infinitesimal ones, of counting and separating more items than he can individually remember. He is learning to see with his mind vast portions of the world that he could never see, touch, smell, hear, or remember. Gradually he makes for himself a trustworthy picture inside his head of the world beyond his reach. Those features of the world outside which have to do with the behavior of other human beings, in so far as that behavior crosses ours, is dependent upon us, or is interesting to us, we call roughly public affairs. The pictures inside the heads of these human beings, the pictures of themselves, of others, of their needs, purposes, and relationship, are their public opinions. Those pictures which are acted upon by groups of people, or by individuals acting in the name of groups, are Public Opinion with capital letters. And so in the chapters which follow we shall inquire first into some of the reasons why the picture inside so often misleads men in their dealings with the world outside. Under this heading we shall consider first the chief factors which limit their access to the facts. They are the artificial censorships, the limitations of social contact, the comparatively meager time available in each day for paying attention to public affairs, the distortion arising because events have to be compressed into very short messages, the difficulty of making a small vocabulary express a complicated world, and finally the fear of facing those facts which would seem to threaten the established routine of men's lives. The analysis then turns from these more or less external limitations to the question of how this trickle of messages from the outside is affected by the stored up images, the preconceptions, and prejudices which interpret, fill them out, and in their turn powerfully direct the play of our attention, and our vision itself. From this it proceeds to examine how in the individual person the limited messages from outside, formed into a pattern of stereotypes, are identified with his own interests as he feels and conceives them. In the succeeding sections it examines how opinions are crystallized into what is called Public Opinion, how a National Will, a Group Mind, a Social Purpose, or whatever you choose to call it, is formed. The first five parts constitute the descriptive section of the book. There follows an analysis of the traditional democratic theory of public opinion. The substance of the argument is that democracy in its original form never seriously faced the problem which arises because the pictures inside people's heads do not automatically correspond with the world outside. And then, because the democratic theory is under criticism by socialist thinkers, there follows an examination of the most advanced and coherent of these criticisms, as made by the English Guild Socialists. My purpose here is to find out whether these reformers take into account the main difficulties of public opinion. My conclusion is that they ignore the difficulties, as completely as did the original democrats, because they, too, assume, and in a much more complicated civilization, that somehow mysteriously there exists in the hearts of men a knowledge of the world beyond their reach. I argue that representative government, either in what is ordinarily called politics, or in industry, cannot be worked successfully, no matter what the basis of election, unless there is an independent, expert organization for making the unseen facts intelligible to those who have to make the decisions. I attempt, therefore, to argue that the serious acceptance of the principle that personal representation must be supplemented by representation of the unseen facts would alone permit a satisfactory decentralization, and allow us to escape from the intolerable and unworkable fiction that each of us must acquire a competent opinion about all public affairs. It is argued that the problem of the press is confused because the critics and the apologists expect the press to realize this fiction, expect it to make up for all that was not foreseen in the theory of democracy, and that the readers expect this miracle to be performed at no cost or trouble to themselves. The newspapers are regarded by democrats as a panacea for their own defects, whereas analysis of the nature of news and of the economic basis of journalism seems to show that the newspapers necessarily and inevitably reflect, and therefore, in greater or lesser measure, intensify, the defective organization of public opinion. My conclusion is that public opinions must be organized for the press if they are to be sound, not by the press as is the case today. This organization I conceive to be in the first instance the task of a political science that has won its proper place as formulator, in advance of real decision, instead of apologist, critic, or reporter after the decision has been made. I try to indicate that the perplexities of government and industry are conspiring to give political science this enormous opportunity to enrich itself and to serve the public. And, of course, I hope that these pages will help a few people to realize that opportunity more vividly, and therefore to pursue it more consciously. PART II APPROACHES TO THE WORLD OUTSIDE CHAPTER 2. CENSORSHIP AND PRIVACY " 3. CONTACT AND OPPORTUNITY " 4. TIME AND ATTENTION " 5. SPEED, WORDS, AND CLEARNESS CHAPTER II CENSORSHIP AND PRIVACY 1 The picture of a general presiding over an editorial conference at the most terrible hour of one of the great battles of history seems more like a scene from The Chocolate Soldier than a page from life. Yet we know at first hand from the officer who edited the French communiqués that these conferences were a regular part of the business of war; that in the worst moment of Verdun, General Joffre and his cabinet met and argued over the nouns, adjectives, and verbs that were to be printed in the newspapers the next morning. "The evening communiqué of the twenty-third (February 1916)" says M. de Pierrefeu, [Footnote: _G. Q. G_., pp. 126-129.] "was edited in a dramatic atmosphere. M. Berthelot, of the Prime Minister's office, had just telephoned by order of the minister asking General Pellé to strengthen the report and to emphasize the proportions of the enemy's attack. It was necessary to prepare the public for the worst outcome in case the affair turned into a catastrophe. This anxiety showed clearly that neither at G. H. Q. nor at the Ministry of War had the Government found reason for confidence. As M. Berthelot spoke, General Pellé made notes. He handed me the paper on which he had written the Government's wishes, together with the order of the day issued by General von Deimling and found on some prisoners, in which it was stated that this attack was the supreme offensive to secure peace. Skilfully used, all this was to demonstrate that Germany was letting loose a gigantic effort, an effort without precedent, and that from its success she hoped for the end of the war. The logic of this was that nobody need be surprised at our withdrawal. When, a half hour later, I went down with my manuscript, I found gathered together in Colonel Claudel's office, he being away, the major-general, General Janin, Colonel Dupont, and Lieutenant-Colonel Renouard. Fearing that I would not succeed in giving the desired impression, General Pellé had himself prepared a proposed communiqué. I read what I had just done. It was found to be too moderate. General Pellé's, on the other hand, seemed too alarming. I had purposely omitted von Deimling's order of the day. To put it into the communiqué _would be to break with the formula to which the public was accustomed_, would be to transform it into a kind of pleading. It would seem to say: 'How do you suppose we can resist?' There was reason to fear that the public would be distracted by this change of tone and would believe that everything was lost. I explained my reasons and suggested giving Deimling's text to the newspapers in the form of a separate note. "Opinion being divided, General Pellé went to ask General de Castelnau to come and decide finally. The General arrived smiling, quiet and good humored, said a few pleasant words about this new kind of literary council of war, and looked at the texts. He chose the simpler one, gave more weight to the first phrase, inserted the words 'as had been anticipated,' which supply a reassuring quality, and was flatly against inserting von Deimling's order, but was for transmitting it to the press in a special note ... " General Joffre that evening read the communiqué carefully and approved it. Within a few hours those two or three hundred words would be read all over the world. They would paint a picture in men's minds of what was happening on the slopes of Verdun, and in front of that picture people would take heart or despair. The shopkeeper in Brest, the peasant in Lorraine, the deputy in the Palais Bourbon, the editor in Amsterdam or Minneapolis had to be kept in hope, and yet prepared to accept possible defeat without yielding to panic. They are told, therefore, that the loss of ground is no surprise to the French Command. They are taught to regard the affair as serious, but not strange. Now, as a matter of fact, the French General Staff was not fully prepared for the German offensive. Supporting trenches had not been dug, alternative roads had not been built, barbed wire was lacking. But to confess that would have aroused images in the heads of civilians that might well have turned a reverse into a disaster. The High Command could be disappointed, and yet pull itself together; the people at home and abroad, full of uncertainties, and with none of the professional man's singleness of purpose, might on the basis of a complete story have lost sight of the war in a melee of faction and counter-faction about the competence of the officers. Instead, therefore, of letting the public act on all the facts which the generals knew, the authorities presented only certain facts, and these only in such a way as would be most likely to steady the people. In this case the men who arranged the pseudo-environment knew what the real one was. But a few days later an incident occurred about which the French Staff did not know the truth. The Germans announced [Footnote: On February 26, 1916. Pierrefeu, _G. Q. G._, pp. 133 _et seq_.] that on the previous afternoon they had taken Fort Douaumont by assault. At French headquarters in Chantilly no one could understand this news. For on the morning of the twenty-fifth, after the engagement of the XXth corps, the battle had taken a turn for the better. Reports from the front said nothing about Douaumont. But inquiry showed that the German report was true, though no one as yet knew how the fort had been taken. In the meantime, the German communiqué was being flashed around the world, and the French had to say something. So headquarters explained. "In the midst of total ignorance at Chantilly about the way the attack had taken place, we imagined, in the evening communiqué of the 26th, a plan of the attack which certainly had a thousand to one chance of being true." The communiqué of this imaginary battle read: "A bitter struggle is taking place around Fort de Douaumont which is an advanced post of the old defensive organization of Verdun. The position taken this morning by the enemy, _after several unsuccessful assaults that cost him very heavy losses_, has been reached again and passed by our troops whom the enemy has not been able to drive back." [Footnote: This is my own translation: the English translation from London published in the New York Times of Sunday, Feb. 27, is as follows: London, Feb. 26 (1916). A furious struggle has been in progress around Fort de Douaumont which is an advance element of the old defensive organization of Verdun fortresses. The position captured this morning by the enemy after several fruitless assaults which cost him extremely heavy losses, [Footnote: The French text says "pertes tres elevees." Thus the English translation exaggerates the original text.] was reached again and gone beyond by our troops, which all the attempts of the enemy have not been able to push back."] What had actually happened differed from both the French and German accounts. While changing troops in the line, the position had somehow been forgotten in a confusion of orders. Only a battery commander and a few men remained in the fort. Some German soldiers, seeing the door open, had crawled into the fort, and taken everyone inside prisoner. A little later the French who were on the slopes of the hill were horrified at being shot at from the fort. There had been no battle at Douaumont and no losses. Nor had the French troops advanced beyond it as the communiqués seemed to say. They were beyond it on either side, to be sure, but the fort was in enemy hands. Yet from the communiqué everyone believed that the fort was half surrounded. The words did not explicitly say so, but "the press, as usual, forced the pace." Military writers concluded that the Germans would soon have to surrender. In a few days they began to ask themselves why the garrison, since it lacked food, had not yet surrendered. "It was necessary through the press bureau to request them to drop the encirclement theme." [Footnote: Pierrefeu, _op. cit._, pp. 134-5.] 2 The editor of the French communiqué tells us that as the battle dragged out, his colleagues and he set out to neutralize the pertinacity of the Germans by continual insistence on their terrible losses. It is necessary to remember that at this time, and in fact until late in 1917, the orthodox view of the war for all the Allied peoples was that it would be decided by "attrition." Nobody believed in a war of movement. It was insisted that strategy did not count, or diplomacy. It was simply a matter of killing Germans. The general public more or less believed the dogma, but it had constantly to be reminded of it in face of spectacular German successes. "Almost no day passed but the communiqué.... ascribed to the Germans with some appearance of justice heavy losses, extremely heavy, spoke of bloody sacrifices, heaps of corpses, hecatombs. Likewise the wireless constantly used the statistics of the intelligence bureau at Verdun, whose chief, Major Cointet, had invented a method of calculating German losses which obviously produced marvelous results. Every fortnight the figures increased a hundred thousand or so. These 300,000, 400,000, 500,000 casualties put out, divided into daily, weekly, monthly losses, repeated in all sorts of ways, produced a striking effect. Our formulae varied little: 'according to prisoners the German losses in the course of the attack have been considerable' ... 'it is proved that the losses' ... 'the enemy exhausted by his losses has not renewed the attack' ... Certain formulae, later abandoned because they had been overworked, were used each day: 'under our artillery and machine gun fire' ... 'mowed down by our artillery and machine gun fire' ... Constant repetition impressed the neutrals and Germany itself, and helped to create a bloody background in spite of the denials from Nauen (the German wireless) which tried vainly to destroy the bad effect of this perpetual repetition." [Footnote: _Op. cit._, pp. 138-139.] The thesis of the French Command, which it wished to establish publicly by these reports, was formulated as follows for the guidance of the censors: "This offensive engages the active forces of our opponent whose manpower is declining. We have learned that the class of 1916 is already at the front. There will remain the 1917 class already being called up, and the resources of the third category (men above forty-five, or convalescents). In a few weeks, the German forces exhausted by this effort, will find themselves confronted with all the forces of the coalition (ten millions against seven millions)." [Footnote: _Op. cit._, p. 147.] According to M. de Pierrefeu, the French command had converted itself to this belief. "By an extraordinary aberration of mind, only the attrition of the enemy was seen; it appeared that our forces were not subject to attrition. General Nivelle shared these ideas. We saw the result in 1917." We have learned to call this propaganda. A group of men, who can prevent independent access to the event, arrange the news of it to suit their purpose. That the purpose was in this case patriotic does not affect the argument at all. They used their power to make the Allied publics see affairs as they desired them to be seen. The casualty figures of Major Cointet which were spread about the world are of the same order. They were intended to provoke a particular kind of inference, namely that the war of attrition was going in favor of the French. But the inference is not drawn in the form of argument. It results almost automatically from the creation of a mental picture of endless Germans slaughtered on the hills about Verdun. By putting the dead Germans in the focus of the picture, and by omitting to mention the French dead, a very special view of the battle was built up. It was a view designed to neutralize the effects of German territorial advances and the impression of power which the persistence of the offensive was making. It was also a view that tended to make the public acquiesce in the demoralizing defensive strategy imposed upon the Allied armies. For the public, accustomed to the idea that war consists of great strategic movements, flank attacks, encirclements, and dramatic surrenders, had gradually to forget that picture in favor of the terrible idea that by matching lives the war would be won. Through its control over all news from the front, the General Staff substituted a view of the facts that comported with this strategy. The General Staff of an army in the field is so placed that within wide limits it can control what the public will perceive. It controls the selection of correspondents who go to the front, controls their movements at the front, reads and censors their messages from the front, and operates the wires. The Government behind the army by its command of cables and passports, mails and custom houses and blockades increases the control. It emphasizes it by legal power over publishers, over public meetings, and by its secret service. But in the case of an army the control is far from perfect. There is always the enemy's communiqué, which in these days of wireless cannot be kept away from neutrals. Above all there is the talk of the soldiers, which blows back from the front, and is spread about when they are on leave. [Footnote: For weeks prior to the American attack at St. Mihiel and in the Argonne-Meuse, everybody in France told everybody else the deep secret.] An army is an unwieldy thing. And that is why the naval and diplomatic censorship is almost always much more complete. Fewer people know what is going on, and their acts are more easily supervised. 3 Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct a propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event. Access to the real environment must be limited, before anyone can create a pseudo-environment that he thinks wise or desirable. For while people who have direct access can misconceive what they see, no one else can decide how they shall misconceive it, unless he can decide where they shall look, and at what. The military censorship is the simplest form of barrier, but by no means the most important, because it is known to exist, and is therefore in certain measure agreed to and discounted. At different times and for different subjects some men impose and other men accept a particular standard of secrecy. The frontier between what is concealed because publication is not, as we say, "compatible with the public interest" fades gradually into what is concealed because it is believed to be none of the public's business. The notion of what constitutes a person's private affairs is elastic. Thus the amount of a man's fortune is considered a private affair, and careful provision is made in the income tax law to keep it as private as possible. The sale of a piece of land is not private, but the price may be. Salaries are generally treated as more private than wages, incomes as more private than inheritances. A person's credit rating is given only a limited circulation. The profits of big corporations are more public than those of small firms. Certain kinds of conversation, between man and wife, lawyer and client, doctor and patient, priest and communicant, are privileged. Directors' meetings are generally private. So are many political conferences. Most of what is said at a cabinet meeting, or by an ambassador to the Secretary of State, or at private interviews, or dinner tables, is private. Many people regard the contract between employer and employee as private. There was a time when the affairs of all corporations were held to be as private as a man's theology is to-day. There was a time before that when his theology was held to be as public a matter as the color of his eyes. But infectious diseases, on the other hand, were once as private as the processes of a man's digestion. The history of the notion of privacy would be an entertaining tale. Sometimes the notions violently conflict, as they did when the bolsheviks published the secret treaties, or when Mr. Hughes investigated the life insurance companies, or when somebody's scandal exudes from the pages of Town Topics to the front pages of Mr. Hearst's newspapers. Whether the reasons for privacy are good or bad, the barriers exist. Privacy is insisted upon at all kinds of places in the area of what is called public affairs. It is often very illuminating, therefore, to ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you base your opinion. Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion? Was it the man who told you, or the man who told him, or someone still further removed? And how much was he permitted to see? When he informs you that France thinks this and that, what part of France did he watch? How was he able to watch it? Where was he when he watched it? What Frenchmen was he permitted to talk to, what newspapers did he read, and where did they learn what they say? You can ask yourself these questions, but you can rarely answer them. They will remind you, however, of the distance which often separates your public opinion from the event with which it deals. And the reminder is itself a protection. CHAPTER III CONTACT AND OPPORTUNITY 1 While censorship and privacy intercept much information at its source, a very much larger body of fact never reaches the whole public at all, or only very slowly. For there are very distinct limits upon the circulation of ideas. A rough estimate of the effort it takes to reach "everybody" can be had by considering the Government's propaganda during the war. Remembering that the war had run over two years and a half before America entered it, that millions upon millions of printed pages had been circulated and untold speeches had been delivered, let us turn to Mr. Creel's account of his fight "for the minds of men, for the conquest of their convictions" in order that "the gospel of Americanism might be carried to every corner of the globe." [Footnote: George Creel, _How We Advertised America._] Mr. Creel had to assemble machinery which included a Division of News that issued, he tells us, more than six thousand releases, had to enlist seventy-five thousand Four Minute Men who delivered at least seven hundred and fifty-five thousand, one hundred and ninety speeches to an aggregate of over three hundred million people. Boy scouts delivered annotated copies of President Wilson's addresses to the householders of America. Fortnightly periodicals were sent to six hundred thousand teachers. Two hundred thousand lantern slides were furnished for illustrated lectures. Fourteen hundred and thirty-eight different designs were turned out for posters, window cards, newspaper advertisements, cartoons, seals and buttons. The chambers of commerce, the churches, fraternal societies, schools, were used as channels of distribution. Yet Mr. Creel's effort, to which I have not begun to do justice, did not include Mr. McAdoo's stupendous organization for the Liberty Loans, nor Mr. Hoover's far reaching propaganda about food, nor the campaigns of the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., Salvation Army, Knights of Columbus, Jewish Welfare Board, not to mention the independent work of patriotic societies, like the League to Enforce Peace, the League of Free Nations Association, the National Security League, nor the activity of the publicity bureaus of the Allies and of the submerged nationalities. Probably this is the largest and the most intensive effort to carry quickly a fairly uniform set of ideas to all the people of a nation. The older proselyting worked more slowly, perhaps more surely, but never so inclusively. Now if it required such extreme measures to reach everybody in time of crisis, how open are the more normal channels to men's minds? The Administration was trying, and while the war continued it very largely succeeded, I believe, in creating something that might almost be called one public opinion all over America. But think of the dogged work, the complicated ingenuity, the money and the personnel that were required. Nothing like that exists in time of peace, and as a corollary there are whole sections, there are vast groups, ghettoes, enclaves and classes that hear only vaguely about much that is going on. They live in grooves, are shut in among their own affairs, barred out of larger affairs, meet few people not of their own sort, read little. Travel and trade, the mails, the wires, and radio, railroads, highways, ships, motor cars, and in the coming generation aeroplanes, are, of course, of the utmost influence on the circulation of ideas. Each of these affects the supply and the quality of information and opinion in a most intricate way. Each is itself affected by technical, by economic, by political conditions. Every time a government relaxes the passport ceremonies or the customs inspection, every time a new railway or a new port is opened, a new shipping line established, every time rates go up or down, the mails move faster or more slowly, the cables are uncensored and made less expensive, highways built, or widened, or improved, the circulation of ideas is influenced. Tariff schedules and subsidies affect the direction of commercial enterprise, and therefore the nature of human contracts. And so it may well happen, as it did for example in the case of Salem, Massachusetts, that a change in the art of shipbuilding will reduce a whole city from a center where international influences converge to a genteel provincial town. All the immediate effects of more rapid transit are not necessarily good. It would be difficult to say, for example, that the railroad system of France, so highly centralized upon Paris, has been an unmixed blessing to the French people. It is certainly true that problems arising out of the means of communication are of the utmost importance, and one of the most constructive features of the program of the League of Nations has been the study given to railroad transit and access to the sea. The monopolizing of cables, [Footnote: Hence the wisdom of taking Yap seriously.] of ports, fuel stations, mountain passes, canals, straits, river courses, terminals, market places means a good deal more than the enrichment of a group of business men, or the prestige of a government. It means a barrier upon the exchange of news and opinion. But monopoly is not the only barrier. Cost and available supply are even greater ones, for if the cost of travelling or trading is prohibitive, if the demand for facilities exceeds the supply, the barriers exist even without monopoly. 2 The size of a man's income has considerable effect on his access to the world beyond his neighborhood. With money he can overcome almost every tangible obstacle of communication, he can travel, buy books and periodicals, and bring within the range of his attention almost any known fact of the world. The income of the individual, and the income of the community determine the amount of communication that is possible. But men's ideas determine how that income shall be spent, and that in turn affects in the long run the amount of income they will have. Thus also there are limitations, none the less real, because they are often self-imposed and self-indulgent. There are portions of the sovereign people who spend most of their spare time and spare money on motoring and comparing motor cars, on bridge-whist and post-mortems, on moving-pictures and potboilers, talking always to the same people with minute variations on the same old themes. They cannot really be said to suffer from censorship, or secrecy, the high cost or the difficulty of communication. They suffer from anemia, from lack of appetite and curiosity for the human scene. Theirs is no problem of access to the world outside. Worlds of interest are waiting for them to explore, and they do not enter. They move, as if on a leash, within a fixed radius of acquaintances according to the law and the gospel of their social set. Among men the circle of talk in business and at the club and in the smoking car is wider than the set to which they belong. Among women the social set and the circle of talk are frequently almost identical. It is in the social set that ideas derived from reading and lectures and from the circle of talk converge, are sorted out, accepted, rejected, judged and sanctioned. There it is finally decided in each phase of a discussion which authorities and which sources of information are admissible, and which not. Our social set consists of those who figure as people in the phrase "people are saying"; they are the people whose approval matters most intimately to us. In big cities among men and women of wide interests and with the means for moving about, the social set is not so rigidly defined. But even in big cities, there are quarters and nests of villages containing self-sufficing social sets. In smaller communities there may exist a freer circulation, a more genuine fellowship from after breakfast to before dinner. But few people do not know, nevertheless, which set they really belong to, and which not. Usually the distinguishing mark of a social set is the presumption that the children may intermarry. To marry outside the set involves, at the very least, a moment of doubt before the engagement can be approved. Each social set has a fairly clear picture of its relative position in the hierarchy of social sets. Between sets at the same level, association is easy, individuals are quickly accepted, hospitality is normal and unembarrassed. But in contact between sets that are "higher" or "lower," there is always reciprocal hesitation, a faint malaise, and a consciousness of difference. To be sure in a society like that of the United States, individuals move somewhat freely out of one set into another, especially where there is no racial barrier and where economic position changes so rapidly. Economic position, however, is not measured by the amount of income. For in the first generation, at least, it is not income that determines social standing, but the character of a man's work, and it may take a generation or two before this fades out of the family tradition. Thus banking, law, medicine, public utilities, newspapers, the church, large retailing, brokerage, manufacture, are rated at a different social value from salesmanship, superintendence, expert technical work, nursing, school teaching, shop keeping; and those, in turn, are rated as differently from plumbing, being a chauffeur, dressmaking, subcontracting, or stenography, as these are from being a butler, lady's maid, a moving picture operator, or a locomotive engineer. And yet the financial return does not necessarily coincide with these gradations. 3 Whatever the tests of admission, the social set when formed is not a mere economic class, but something which more nearly resembles a biological clan. Membership is intimately connected with love, marriage and children, or, to speak more exactly, with the attitudes and desires that are involved. In the social set, therefore, opinions encounter the canons of Family Tradition, Respectability, Propriety, Dignity, Taste and Form, which make up the social set's picture of itself, a picture assiduously implanted in the children. In this picture a large space is tacitly given to an authorized version of what each set is called upon inwardly to accept as the social standing of the others. The more vulgar press for an outward expression of the deference due, the others are decently and sensitively silent about their own knowledge that such deference invisibly exists. But that knowledge, becoming overt when there is a marriage, a war, or a social upheaval, is the nexus of a large bundle of dispositions classified by Trotter [Footnote: W. Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in War and Peace.] under the general term instinct of the herd. Within each social set there are augurs like the van der Luydens and Mrs. Manson Mingott in "The Age of Innocence," [Footnote: Edith Wharton, _The Age of Innocence._] who are recognized as the custodians and the interpreters of its social pattern. You are made, they say, if the van der Luydens take you up. The invitations to their functions are the high sign of arrival and status. The elections to college societies, carefully graded and the gradations universally accepted, determine who is who in college. The social leaders, weighted with the ultimate eugenic responsibility, are peculiarly sensitive. Not only must they be watchfully aware of what makes for the integrity of their set, but they have to cultivate a special gift for knowing what other social sets are doing. They act as a kind of ministry of foreign affairs. Where most of the members of a set live complacently within the set, regarding it for all practical purposes as the world, the social leaders must combine an intimate knowledge of the anatomy of their own set with a persistent sense of its place in the hierarchy of sets. The hierarchy, in fact, is bound together by the social leaders. At any one level there is something which might almost be called a social set of the social leaders. But vertically the actual binding together of society, in so far as it is bound together at all by social contact, is accomplished by those exceptional people, frequently suspect, who like Julius Beaufort and Ellen Olenska in "The Age of Innocence" move in and out. Thus there come to be established personal channels from one set to another, through which Tarde's laws of imitation operate. But for large sections of the population there are no such channels. For them the patented accounts of society and the moving pictures of high life have to serve. They may develop a social hierarchy of their own, almost unnoticed, as have the Negroes and the "foreign element," but among that assimilated mass which always considers itself the "nation," there is in spite of the great separateness of sets, a variety of personal contacts through which a circulation of standards takes place. Some of the sets are so placed that they become what Professor Ross has called "radiant points of conventionality." [Footnote: Ross, _Social Psychology_, Ch. IX, X, XI.] Thus the social superior is likely to be imitated by the social inferior, the holder of power is imitated by subordinates, the more successful by the less successful, the rich by the poor, the city by the country. But imitation does not stop at frontiers. The powerful, socially superior, successful, rich, urban social set is fundamentally international throughout the western hemisphere, and in many ways London is its center. It counts among its membership the most influential people in the world, containing as it does the diplomatic set, high finance, the upper circles of the army and the navy, some princes of the church, a few great newspaper proprietors, their wives and mothers and daughters who wield the scepter of invitation. It is at once a great circle of talk and a real social set. But its importance comes from the fact that here at last the distinction between public and private affairs practically disappears. The private affairs of this set are public matters, and public matters are its private, often its family affairs. The confinements of Margot Asquith like the confinements of royalty are, as the philosophers say, in much the same universe of discourse as a tariff bill or a parliamentary debate. There are large areas of governments in which this social set is not interested, and in America, at least, it has exercised only a fluctuating control over the national government. But its power in foreign affairs is always very great, and in war time its prestige is enormously enhanced. That is natural enough because these cosmopolitans have a contact with the outer world that most people do not possess. They have dined with each other in the capitals, and their sense of national honor is no mere abstraction; it is a concrete experience of being snubbed or approved by their friends. To Dr. Kennicott of Gopher Prairie it matters mighty little what Winston thinks and a great deal what Ezra Stowbody thinks, but to Mrs. Mingott with a daughter married to the Earl of Swithin it matters a lot when she visits her daughter, or entertains Winston himself. Dr. Kennicott and Mrs. Mingott are both socially sensitive, but Mrs. Mingott is sensitive to a social set that governs the world, while Dr. Kennicott's social set governs only in Gopher Prairie. But in matters that effect the larger relationships of the Great Society, Dr. Kennicott will often be found holding what he thinks is purely his own opinion, though, as a matter of fact, it has trickled down to Gopher Prairie from High Society, transmuted on its passage through the provincial social sets. 4 It is no part of our inquiry to attempt an account of the social tissue. We need only fix in mind how big is the part played by the social set in our spiritual contact with the world, how it tends to fix what is admissible, and to determine how it shall be judged. Affairs within its immediate competence each set more or less determines for itself. Above all it determines the detailed administration of the judgment. But the judgment itself is formed on patterns [Footnote: _Cf_. Part III] that may be inherited from the past, transmitted or imitated from other social sets. The highest social set consists of those who embody the leadership of the Great Society. As against almost every other social set where the bulk of the opinions are first hand only about local affairs, in this Highest Society the big decisions of war and peace, of social strategy and the ultimate distribution of political power, are intimate experiences within a circle of what, potentially at least, are personal acquaintances. Since position and contact play so big a part in determining what can be seen, heard, read, and experienced, as well as what it is permissible to see, hear, read, and know, it is no wonder that moral judgment is so much more common than constructive thought. Yet in truly effective thinking the prime necessity is to liquidate judgments, regain an innocent eye, disentangle feelings, be curious and open-hearted. Man's history being what it is, political opinion on the scale of the Great Society requires an amount of selfless equanimity rarely attainable by any one for any length of time. We are concerned in public affairs, but immersed in our private ones. The time and attention are limited that we can spare for the labor of not taking opinions for granted, and we are subject to constant interruption. CHAPTER IV TIME AND ATTENTION NATURALLY it is possible to make a rough estimate only of the amount of attention people give each day to informing themselves about public affairs. Yet it is interesting that three estimates that I have examined agree tolerably well, though they were made at different times, in different places, and by different methods. [Footnote: July, 1900. D. F. Wilcox, _The American Newspaper: A Study in Social Psychology_, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. xvi, p. 56. (The statistical tables are reproduced in James Edward Rogers, _The American Newspaper_.) 1916 (?) W. D. Scott, _The Psychology of Advertising_, pp. 226-248. See also Henry Foster Adams, _Advertising and its Mental Laws_, Ch. IV. 1920 _Newspaper Reading Habits of College Students_, by Prof. George Burton Hotchkiss and Richard B. Franken, published by the Association of National Advertisers, Inc., 15 East 26th Street, New York City.] A questionnaire was sent by Hotchkiss and Franken to 1761 men and women college students in New York City, and answers came from all but a few. Scott used a questionnaire on four thousand prominent business and professional men in Chicago and received replies from twenty-three hundred. Between seventy and seventy-five percent of all those who replied to either inquiry thought they spent a quarter of an hour a day reading newspapers. Only four percent of the Chicago group guessed at less than this and twenty-five percent guessed at more. Among the New Yorkers a little over eight percent figured their newspaper reading at less than fifteen minutes, and seventeen and a half at more. Very few people have an accurate idea of fifteen minutes, so the figures are not to be taken literally. Moreover, business men, professional people, and college students are most of them liable to a curious little bias against appearing to spend too much time over the newspapers, and perhaps also to a faint suspicion of a desire to be known as rapid readers. All that the figures can justly be taken to mean is that over three quarters of those in the selected groups rate rather low the attention they give to printed news of the outer world. These time estimates are fairly well confirmed by a test which is less subjective. Scott asked his Chicagoans how many papers they read each day, and was told that 14 percent read but one paper 46 " " two papers 21 " " three papers 10 " " four papers 3 " " five papers 2 " " six papers 3 " " all the papers (eight at the time of this inquiry). The two- and three-paper readers are sixty-seven percent, which comes fairly close to the seventy-one percent in Scott's group who rate themselves at fifteen minutes a day. The omnivorous readers of from four to eight papers coincide roughly with the twenty-five percent who rated themselves at more than fifteen minutes. 2 It is still more difficult to guess how the time is distributed. The college students were asked to name "the five features which interest you most." Just under twenty percent voted for "general news," just under fifteen for editorials, just under twelve for "politics," a little over eight for finance, not two years after the armistice a little over six for foreign news, three and a half for local, nearly three for business, and a quarter of one percent for news about "labor." A scattering said they were most interested in sports, special articles, the theatre, advertisements, cartoons, book reviews, "accuracy," music, "ethical tone," society, brevity, art, stories, shipping, school news, "current news," print. Disregarding these, about sixty-seven and a half percent picked as the most interesting features news and opinion that dealt with public affairs. This was a mixed college group. The girls professed greater interest than the boys in general news, foreign news, local news, politics, editorials, the theatre, music, art, stories, cartoons, advertisements, and "ethical tone." The boys on the other hand were more absorbed in finance, sports, business page, "accuracy" and "brevity." These discriminations correspond a little too closely with the ideals of what is cultured and moral, manly and decisive, not to make one suspect the utter objectivity of the replies. Yet they agree fairly well with the replies of Scott's Chicago business and professional men. They were asked, not what features interested them most, but why they preferred one newspaper to another. Nearly seventy-one percent based their conscious preference on local news (17.8%), or political (15.8%) or financial (11.3%), or foreign (9.5%), or general (7.2%), or editorials (9%). The other thirty percent decided on grounds not connected with public affairs. They ranged from not quite seven who decided for ethical tone, down to one twentieth of one percent who cared most about humor. How do these preferences correspond with the space given by newspapers to various subjects? Unfortunately there are no data collected on this point for the newspapers read by the Chicago and New York groups at the time the questionnaires were made. But there is an interesting analysis made over twenty years ago by Wilcox. He studied one hundred and ten newspapers in fourteen large cities, and classified the subject matter of over nine thousand columns. Averaged for the whole country the various newspaper matter was found to fill: { (a) War News 17.9 { { Foreign 1.2 { (b) General " 21.8 { Politics 6.4 I. News 55.3 { { Crime 3.1 { { Misc. 11.1 { { { Business 8.2 { (c) Special " 15.6 { Sport 5.1 { Society 2.3 II. Illustrations 3.1 III. Literature 2.4 { (a) Editorials 3.9 IV. Opinion 7.1 { (b) Letters & Exchange 3.2 V. Advertisements 32.1 In order to bring this table into a fair comparison, it is necessary to exclude the space given to advertisements, and recompute the percentages. For the advertisements occupied only an infinitesimal part of the conscious preference of the Chicago group or the college group. I think this is justifiable for our purposes because the press prints what advertisements it can get, [Footnote: Except those which it regards as objectionable, and those which, in rare instances, are crowded out.] whereas the rest of the paper is designed to the taste of its readers. The table would then read: {War News 26.4- { {Foreign 1.8- I. News 81.4+{General News 32.0+ {Political 9.4+ { {Crime 4.6- { {Misc. 16.3+ { { {Business 12.1- {Special " 23.0- {Sporting 7.5+ {Society 3.3- II. Illustrations 4.6- III. Literature 3.5+ IV. Opinion 10.5- {Editorials 5.8- {Letters 4.7+ In this revised table if you add up the items which may be supposed to deal with public affairs, that is to say war, foreign, political, miscellaneous, business news, and opinion, you find a total of 76.5% of the edited space devoted in 1900 to the 70.6% of reasons given by Chicago business men in 1916 for preferring a particular newspaper, and to the five features which most interested 67.5% of the New York College students in 1920. This would seem to show that the tastes of business men and college students in big cities to-day still correspond more or less to the averaged judgments of newspaper editors in big cities twenty years ago. Since that time the proportion of features to news has undoubtedly increased, and so has the circulation and the size of newspapers. Therefore, if to-day you could secure accurate replies from more typical groups than college students or business and professional men, you would expect to find a smaller percentage of time devoted to public affairs, as well as a smaller percentage of space. On the other hand you would expect to find that the average man spends more than the quarter of an hour on his newspaper, and that while the percentage of space given to public affairs is less than twenty years ago the net amount is greater. No elaborate deductions are to be drawn from these figures. They help merely to make somewhat more concrete our notions of the effort that goes day by day into acquiring the data of our opinions. The newspapers are, of course, not the only means, but they are certainly the principal ones. Magazines, the public forum, the chautauqua, the church, political gatherings, trade union meetings, women's clubs, and news serials in the moving picture houses supplement the press. But taking it all at the most favorable estimate, the time each day is small when any of us is directly exposed to information from our unseen environment. CHAPTER V SPEED, WORDS, AND CLEARNESS 1 The unseen environment is reported to us chiefly by words. These words are transmitted by wire or radio from the reporters to the editors who fit them into print. Telegraphy is expensive, and the facilities are often limited. Press service news is, therefore, usually coded. Thus a dispatch which reads,-- "Washington, D. C. June I.--The United States regards the question of German shipping seized in this country at the outbreak of hostilities as a closed incident," may pass over the wires in the following form: "Washn i. The Uni Stas rgds tq of Ger spg seized in ts cou at t outbk o hox as a clod incident." [Footnote: Phillip's Code.] A news item saying: "Berlin, June 1, Chancellor Wirth told the Reichstag to-day in outlining the Government's program that 'restoration and reconciliation would be the keynote of the new Government's policy.' He added that the Cabinet was determined disarmament should be carried out loyally and that disarmament would not be the occasion of the imposition of further penalties by the Allies." may be cabled in this form: "Berlin 1. Chancellor Wirth told t Reichstag tdy in outlining the gvts pgn tt qn restoration & reconciliation wd b the keynote f new gvts policy. qj He added ttt cabinet ws dtmd disarmament sd b carried out loyally & tt disarmament wd n b. the ocan f imposition of further penalties bi t alis." In this second item the substance has been culled from a long speech in a foreign tongue, translated, coded, and then decoded. The operators who receive the messages transcribe them as they go along, and I am told that a good operator can write fifteen thousand or even more words per eight hour day, with a half an hour out for lunch and two ten minute periods for rest. 2 A few words must often stand for a whole succession of acts, thoughts, feelings and consequences. We read: "Washington, Dec. 23--A statement charging Japanese military authorities with deeds more 'frightful and barbarous' than anything ever alleged to have occurred in Belgium during the war was issued here to-day by the Korean Commission, based, the Commission said, on authentic reports received by it from Manchuria." Here eyewitnesses, their accuracy unknown, report to the makers of 'authentic reports'; they in turn transmit these to a commission five thousand miles away. It prepares a statement, probably much too long for publication, from which a correspondent culls an item of print three and a half inches long. The meaning has to be telescoped in such a way as to permit the reader to judge how much weight to give to the news. It is doubtful whether a supreme master of style could pack all the elements of truth that complete justice would demand into a hundred word account of what had happened in Korea during the course of several months. For language is by no means a perfect vehicle of meanings. Words, like currency, are turned over and over again, to evoke one set of images to-day, another to-morrow. There is no certainty whatever that the same word will call out exactly the same idea in the reader's mind as it did in the reporter's. Theoretically, if each fact and each relation had a name that was unique, and if everyone had agreed on the names, it would be possible to communicate without misunderstanding. In the exact sciences there is an approach to this ideal, and that is part of the reason why of all forms of world-wide cooperation, scientific inquiry is the most effective. Men command fewer words than they have ideas to express, and language, as Jean Paul said, is a dictionary of faded metaphors. [Footnote: Cited by White, _Mechanisms of Character Formation._] The journalist addressing half a million readers of whom he has only a dim picture, the speaker whose words are flashed to remote villages and overseas, cannot hope that a few phrases will carry the whole burden of their meaning. "The words of Lloyd George, badly understood and badly transmitted," said M. Briand to the Chamber of Deputies, [Footnote: Special Cable to _The New York Times,_ May 25, 1921, by Edwin L, James. ] "seemed to give the Pan-Germanists the idea that the time had come to start something." A British Prime Minister, speaking in English to the whole attentive world, speaks his own meaning in his own words to all kinds of people who will see their meaning in those words. No matter how rich or subtle--or rather the more rich and the more subtle that which he has to say, the more his meaning will suffer as it is sluiced into standard speech and then distributed again among alien minds. [Footnote: In May of 1921, relations between England and France were strained by the insurrection of M. Korfanty in Upper Silesia. The London Correspondence of the _Manchester Guardian_ (May 20, 1921), contained the following item: "The Franco-English Exchange in Words. "In quarters well acquainted with French ways and character I find a tendency to think that undue sensibility has been shown by our press and public opinion in the lively and at times intemperate language of the French press through the present crisis. The point was put to me by a well-informed neutral observer in the following manner. "Words, like money, are tokens of value. They represent meaning, therefore, and just as money, their representative value goes up and down. The French word 'etonnant' was used by Bossuet with a terrible weight of meaning which it has lost to-day. A similar thing can be observed with the English word 'awful.' Some nations constitutionally tend to understate, others to overstate. What the British Tommy called an unhealthy place could only be described by an Italian soldier by means of a rich vocabulary aided with an exuberant mimicry. Nations that understate keep their word-currency sound. Nations that overstate suffer from inflation in their language. "Expressions such as 'a distinguished scholar,' 'a clever writer,' must be translated into French as 'a great savant,' 'an exquisite master.' It is a mere matter of exchange, just as in France one pound pays 46 francs, and yet one knows that that does not increase its value at home. Englishmen reading the French press should endeavour to work out a mental operation similar to that of the banker who puts back francs into pounds, and not forget in so doing that while in normal times the change was 25 it is now 46 on account of the war. For there is a war fluctuation on word exchanges as well as on money exchanges. "The argument, one hopes, works both ways, and Frenchmen do not fail to realize that there is as much value behind English reticence as behind their own exuberance of expression."] Millions of those who are watching him can read hardly at all. Millions more can read the words but cannot understand them. Of those who can both read and understand, a good three-quarters we may assume have some part of half an hour a day to spare for the subject. To them the words so acquired are the cue for a whole train of ideas on which ultimately a vote of untold consequences may be based. Necessarily the ideas which we allow the words we read to evoke form the biggest part of the original data of our opinions. The world is vast, the situations that concern us are intricate, the messages are few, the biggest part of opinion must be constructed in the imagination. When we use the word "Mexico" what picture does it evoke in a resident of New York? Likely as not, it is some composite of sand, cactus, oil wells, greasers, rum-drinking Indians, testy old cavaliers flourishing whiskers and sovereignty, or perhaps an idyllic peasantry à la Jean Jacques, assailed by the prospect of smoky industrialism, and fighting for the Rights of Man. What does the word "Japan" evoke? Is it a vague horde of slant-eyed yellow men, surrounded by Yellow Perils, picture brides, fans, Samurai, banzais, art, and cherry blossoms? Or the word "alien"? According to a group of New England college students, writing in the year 1920, an alien was the following: [Footnote: _The New Republic_: December 29, 1920, p. 142. ] "A person hostile to this country." "A person against the government." "A person who is on the opposite side." "A native of an unfriendly country." "A foreigner at war." "A foreigner who tries to do harm to the country he is in." "An enemy from a foreign land." "A person against a country." etc.... Yet the word alien is an unusually exact legal term, far more exact than words like sovereignty, independence, national honor, rights, defense, aggression, imperialism, capitalism, socialism, about which we so readily take sides "for" or "against." 3 The power to dissociate superficial analogies, attend to differences and appreciate variety is lucidity of mind. It is a relative faculty. Yet the differences in lucidity are extensive, say as between a newly born infant and a botanist examining a flower. To the infant there is precious little difference between his own toes, his father's watch, the lamp on the table, the moon in the sky, and a nice bright yellow edition of Guy de Maupassant. To many a member of the Union League Club there is no remarkable difference between a Democrat, a Socialist, an anarchist, and a burglar, while to a highly sophisticated anarchist there is a whole universe of difference between Bakunin, Tolstoi, and Kropotkin. These examples show how difficult it might be to secure a sound public opinion about de Maupassant among babies, or about Democrats in the Union League Club. A man who merely rides in other people's automobiles may not rise to finer discrimination than between a Ford, a taxicab, and an automobile. But let that same man own a car and drive it, let him, as the psychoanalysts would say, project his libido upon automobiles, and he will describe a difference in carburetors by looking at the rear end of a car a city block away. That is why it is often such a relief when the talk turns from "general topics" to a man's own hobby. It is like turning from the landscape in the parlor to the ploughed field outdoors. It is a return to the three dimensional world, after a sojourn in the painter's portrayal of his own emotional response to his own inattentive memory of what he imagines he ought to have seen. We easily identify, says Ferenczi, two only partially similar things: [Footnote: Internat. Zeitschr, f. Arztl. Psychoanalyse, 1913. Translated and republished by Dr. Ernest Jones in S. Ferenczi, _Contributions to Psychoanalysis_, Ch. VIII, _Stages in the Development of the Sense of Reality_.] the child more easily than the adult, the primitive or arrested mind more readily than the mature. As it first appears in the child, consciousness seems to be an unmanageable mixture of sensations. The child has no sense of time, and almost none of space, it reaches for the chandelier with the same confidence that it reaches for its mother's breast, and at first with almost the same expectation. Only very gradually does function define itself. To complete inexperience this is a coherent and undifferentiated world, in which, as someone has said of a school of philosophers, all facts are born free and equal. Those facts which belong together in the world have not yet been separated from those which happen to lie side by side in the stream of consciousness. At first, says Ferenczi, the baby gets some of the things it wants by crying for them. This is "the period of magical hallucinatory omnipotence." In its second phase the child points to the things it wants, and they are given to it. "Omnipotence by the help of magic gestures." Later, the child learns to talk, asks for what it wishes, and is partially successful. "The period of magic thoughts and magic words." Each phase may persist for certain situations, though overlaid and only visible at times, as for example, in the little harmless superstitions from which few of us are wholly free. In each phase, partial success tends to confirm that way of acting, while failure tends to stimulate the development of another. Many individuals, parties, and even nations, rarely appear to transcend the magical organization of experience. But in the more advanced sections of the most advanced peoples, trial and error after repeated failure has led to the invention of a new principle. The moon, they learn, is not moved by baying at it. Crops are not raised from the soil by spring festivals or Republican majorities, but by sunlight, moisture, seeds, fertilizer, and cultivation. [Footnote: Ferenczi, being a pathologist, does not describe this maturer period where experience is organized as equations, the phase of realism on the basis of science.] Allowing for the purely schematic value of Ferenczi's categories of response, the quality which we note as critical is the power to discriminate among crude perceptions and vague analogies. This power has been studied under laboratory conditions. [Footnote: See, for example, Diagnostische Assoziation Studien, conducted at the Psychiatric University Clinic in Zurich under the direction of Dr. C. G. Jung. These tests were carried on principally under the so-called Krapelin-Aschaffenburg classification. They show reaction time, classify response to the stimulant word as inner, outer, and clang, show separate results for the first and second hundred words, for reaction time and reaction quality when the subject is distracted by holding an idea in mind, or when he replies while beating time with a metronome. Some of the results are summarized in Jung, _Analytical Psychology_, Ch. II, transl. by Dr. Constance E. Long.] The Zurich Association Studies indicate clearly that slight mental fatigue, an inner disturbance of attention or an external distraction, tend to "flatten" the quality of the response. An example of the very "flat" type is the clang association (cat-hat), a reaction to the sound and not to the sense of the stimulant word. One test, for example, shows a 9% increase of clang in the second series of a hundred reactions. Now the clang is almost a repetition, a very primitive form of analogy. 4 If the comparatively simple conditions of a laboratory can so readily flatten out discrimination, what must be the effect of city life? In the laboratory the fatigue is slight enough, the distraction rather trivial. Both are balanced in measure by the subject's interest and self-consciousness. Yet if the beat of a metronome will depress intelligence, what do eight or twelve hours of noise, odor, and heat in a factory, or day upon day among chattering typewriters and telephone bells and slamming doors, do to the political judgments formed on the basis of newspapers read in street-cars and subways? Can anything be heard in the hubbub that does not shriek, or be seen in the general glare that does not flash like an electric sign? The life of the city dweller lacks solitude, silence, ease. The nights are noisy and ablaze. The people of a big city are assaulted by incessant sound, now violent and jagged, now falling into unfinished rhythms, but endless and remorseless. Under modern industrialism thought goes on in a bath of noise. If its discriminations are often flat and foolish, here at least is some small part of the reason. The sovereign people determines life and death and happiness under conditions where experience and experiment alike show thought to be most difficult. "The intolerable burden of thought" is a burden when the conditions make it burdensome. It is no burden when the conditions are favorable. It is as exhilarating to think as it is to dance, and just as natural. Every man whose business it is to think knows that he must for part of the day create about himself a pool of silence. But in that helter-skelter which we flatter by the name of civilization, the citizen performs the perilous business of government under the worst possible conditions. A faint recognition of this truth inspires the movement for a shorter work day, for longer vacations, for light, air, order, sunlight and dignity in factories and offices. But if the intellectual quality of our life is to be improved that is only the merest beginning. So long as so many jobs are an endless and, for the worker, an aimless routine, a kind of automatism using one set of muscles in one monotonous pattern, his whole life will tend towards an automatism in which nothing is particularly to be distinguished from anything else unless it is announced with a thunderclap. So long as he is physically imprisoned in crowds by day and even by night his attention will flicker and relax. It will not hold fast and define clearly where he is the victim of all sorts of pother, in a home which needs to be ventilated of its welter of drudgery, shrieking children, raucous assertions, indigestible food, bad air, and suffocating ornament. Occasionally perhaps we enter a building which is composed and spacious; we go to a theatre where modern stagecraft has cut away distraction, or go to sea, or into a quiet place, and we remember how cluttered, how capricious, how superfluous and clamorous is the ordinary urban life of our time. We learn to understand why our addled minds seize so little with precision, why they are caught up and tossed about in a kind of tarantella by headlines and catch-words, why so often they cannot tell things apart or discern identity in apparent differences. 5 But this external disorder is complicated further by internal. Experiment shows that the speed, the accuracy, and the intellectual quality of association is deranged by what we are taught to call emotional conflicts. Measured in fifths of a second, a series of a hundred stimuli containing both neutral and hot words may show a variation as between 5 and 32 or even a total failure to respond at all. [Footnote: Jung, _Clark Lectures_.] Obviously our public opinion is in intermittent contact with complexes of all sorts; with ambition and economic interest, personal animosity, racial prejudice, class feeling and what not. They distort our reading, our thinking, our talking and our behavior in a great variety of ways. And finally since opinions do not stop at the normal members of society, since for the purposes of an election, a propaganda, a following, numbers constitute power, the quality of attention is still further depressed. The mass of absolutely illiterate, of feeble-minded, grossly neurotic, undernourished and frustrated individuals, is very considerable, much more considerable there is reason to think than we generally suppose. Thus a wide popular appeal is circulated among persons who are mentally children or barbarians, people whose lives are a morass of entanglements, people whose vitality is exhausted, shut-in people, and people whose experience has comprehended no factor in the problem under discussion. The stream of public opinion is stopped by them in little eddies of misunderstanding, where it is discolored with prejudice and far fetched analogy. A "broad appeal" takes account of the quality of association, and is made to those susceptibilities which are widely distributed. A "narrow" or a "special" appeal is one made to those susceptibilities which are uncommon. But the same individual may respond with very different quality to different stimuli, or to the same stimuli at different times. Human susceptibilities are like an alpine country. There are isolated peaks, there are extensive but separated plateaus, and there are deeper strata which are quite continuous for nearly all mankind. Thus the individuals whose susceptibilities reach the rarefied atmosphere of those peaks where there exists an exquisitive difference between Frege and Peano, or between Sassetta's earlier and later periods, may be good stanch Republicans at another level of appeal, and when they are starving and afraid, indistinguishable from any other starving and frightened person. No wonder that the magazines with the large circulations prefer the face of a pretty girl to any other trade mark, a face, pretty enough to be alluring, but innocent enough to be acceptable. For the "psychic level" on which the stimulus acts determines whether the public is to be potentially a large or a small one. 6 Thus the environment with which our public opinions deal is refracted in many ways, by censorship and privacy at the source, by physical and social barriers at the other end, by scanty attention, by the poverty of language, by distraction, by unconscious constellations of feeling, by wear and tear, violence, monotony. These limitations upon our access to that environment combine with the obscurity and complexity of the facts themselves to thwart clearness and justice of perception, to substitute misleading fictions for workable ideas, and to deprive us of adequate checks upon those who consciously strive to mislead. PART III STEREOTYPES CHAPTER 6. STEREOTYPES " 7. STEREOTYPES AS DEFENSE " 8. BLIND SPOTS AND THEIR VALUE " 9. CODES AND THEIR ENEMIES " 10. THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES CHAPTER VI STEREOTYPES 1 Each of us lives and works on a small part of the earth's surface, moves in a small circle, and of these acquaintances knows only a few intimately. Of any public event that has wide effects we see at best only a phase and an aspect. This is as true of the eminent insiders who draft treaties, make laws, and issue orders, as it is of those who have treaties framed for them, laws promulgated to them, orders given at them. Inevitably our opinions cover a bigger space, a longer reach of time, a greater number of things, than we can directly observe. They have, therefore, to be pieced together out of what others have reported and what we can imagine. Yet even the eyewitness does not bring back a naéve picture of the scene. [Footnote: _E. g. cf._ Edmond Locard, _L'Enquête Criminelle et les Méthodes Scientifiques._ A great deal of interesting material has been gathered in late years on the credibility of the witness, which shows, as an able reviewer of Dr. Locard's book says in _The Times_ (London) Literary Supplement (August 18, 1921), that credibility varies as to classes of witnesses and classes of events, and also as to type of perception. Thus, perceptions of touch, odor, and taste have low evidential value. Our hearing is defective and arbitrary when it judges the source and direction of sound, and in listening to the talk of other people "words which are not heard will be supplied by the witness in all good faith. He will have a theory of the purport of the conversation, and will arrange the sounds he heard to fit it." Even visual perceptions are liable to great error, as in identification, recognition, judgment of distance, estimates of numbers, for example, the size of a crowd. In the untrained observer, the sense of time is highly variable. All these original weaknesses are complicated by tricks of memory, and the incessant creative quality of the imagination. _Cf_. also Sherrington, _The Integrative Action of the Nervous System_, pp. 318-327. The late Professor Hugo Münsterberg wrote a popular book on this subject called _On the Witness Stand_.] For experience seems to show that he himself brings something to the scene which later he takes away from it, that oftener than not what he imagines to be the account of an event is really a transfiguration of it. Few facts in consciousness seem to be merely given. Most facts in consciousness seem to be partly made. A report is the joint product of the knower and known, in which the role of the observer is always selective and usually creative. The facts we see depend on where we are placed, and the habits of our eyes. An unfamiliar scene is like the baby's world, "one great, blooming, buzzing confusion." [Footnote: Wm. James, _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. I, p. 488.] This is the way, says Mr. John Dewey, [Footnote: John Dewey, _How We Think_, pg 121.] that any new thing strikes an adult, so far as the thing is really new and strange. "Foreign languages that we do not understand always seem jibberings, babblings, in which it is impossible to fix a definite, clear-cut, individualized group of sounds. The countryman in the crowded street, the landlubber at sea, the ignoramus in sport at a contest between experts in a complicated game, are further instances. Put an inexperienced man in a factory, and at first the work seems to him a meaningless medley. All strangers of another race proverbially look alike to the visiting stranger. Only gross differences of size or color are perceived by an outsider in a flock of sheep, each of which is perfectly individualized to the shepherd. A diffusive blur and an indiscriminately shifting suction characterize what we do not understand. The problem of the acquisition of meaning by things, or (stated in another way) of forming habits of simple apprehension, is thus the problem of introducing (1) _definiteness_ and _distinction_ and (2) _consistency_ or _stability_ of meaning into what is otherwise vague and wavering." But the kind of definiteness and consistency introduced depends upon who introduces them. In a later passage [Footnote: _op. cit._, p. 133.] Dewey gives an example of how differently an experienced layman and a chemist might define the word metal. "Smoothness, hardness, glossiness, and brilliancy, heavy weight for its size ... the serviceable properties of capacity for being hammered and pulled without breaking, of being softened by heat and hardened by cold, of retaining the shape and form given, of resistance to pressure and decay, would probably be included" in the layman's definition. But the chemist would likely as not ignore these esthetic and utilitarian qualities, and define a metal as "any chemical element that enters into combination with oxygen so as to form a base." For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture. Of the great men who assembled at Paris to settle the affairs of mankind, how many were there who were able to see much of the Europe about them, rather than their commitments about Europe? Could anyone have penetrated the mind of M. Clemenceau, would he have found there images of the Europe of 1919, or a great sediment of stereotyped ideas accumulated and hardened in a long and pugnacious existence? Did he see the Germans of 1919, or the German type as he had learned to see it since 1871? He saw the type, and among the reports that came to him from Germany, he took to heart those reports, and, it seems, those only, which fitted the type that was in his mind. If a junker blustered, that was an authentic German; if a labor leader confessed the guilt of the empire, he was not an authentic German. At a Congress of Psychology in Göttingen an interesting experiment was made with a crowd of presumably trained observers. [Footnote: A. von Gennep, _La formation des légendes_, pp. 158-159. Cited F. van Langenhove, _The Growth of a Legend_, pp. 120-122.] "Not far from the hall in which the Congress was sitting there was a public fete with a masked ball. Suddenly the door of the hall was thrown open and a clown rushed in madly pursued by a negro, revolver in hand. They stopped in the middle of the room fighting; the clown fell, the negro leapt upon him, fired, and then both rushed out of the hall. The whole incident hardly lasted twenty seconds. "The President asked those present to write immediately a report since there was sure to be a judicial inquiry. Forty reports were sent in. Only one had less than 20% of mistakes in regard to the principal facts; fourteen had 20% to 40% of mistakes; twelve from 40% to 50%; thirteen more than 50%. Moreover in twenty-four accounts 10% of the details were pure inventions and this proportion was exceeded in ten accounts and diminished in six. Briefly a quarter of the accounts were false. "It goes without saying that the whole scene had been arranged and even photographed in advance. The ten false reports may then be relegated to the category of tales and legends; twenty-four accounts are half legendary, and six have a value approximating to exact evidence." Thus out of forty trained observers writing a responsible account of a scene that had just happened before their eyes, more than a majority saw a scene that had not taken place. What then did they see? One would suppose it was easier to tell what had occurred, than to invent something which had not occurred. They saw their stereotype of such a brawl. All of them had in the course of their lives acquired a series of images of brawls, and these images flickered before their eyes. In one man these images displaced less than 20% of the actual scene, in thirteen men more than half. In thirty-four out of the forty observers the stereotypes preempted at least one-tenth of the scene. A distinguished art critic has said [Footnote: Bernard Berenson, _The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance_, pp. 60, _et seq_.] that "what with the almost numberless shapes assumed by an object. ... What with our insensitiveness and inattention, things scarcely would have for us features and outlines so determined and clear that we could recall them at will, but for the stereotyped shapes art has lent them." The truth is even broader than that, for the stereotyped shapes lent to the world come not merely from art, in the sense of painting and sculpture and literature, but from our moral codes and our social philosophies and our political agitations as well. Substitute in the following passage of Mr. Berenson's the words 'politics,' 'business,' and 'society,' for the word 'art' and the sentences will be no less true: "... unless years devoted to the study of all schools of art have taught us also to see with our own eyes, we soon fall into the habit of moulding whatever we look at into the forms borrowed from the one art with which we are acquainted. There is our standard of artistic reality. Let anyone give us shapes and colors which we cannot instantly match in our paltry stock of hackneyed forms and tints, and we shake our heads at his failure to reproduce things as we know they certainly are, or we accuse him of insincerity." Mr. Berenson speaks of our displeasure when a painter "does not visualize objects exactly as we do," and of the difficulty of appreciating the art of the Middle Ages because since then "our manner of visualizing forms has changed in a thousand ways." [Footnote: _Cf._ also his comment on _Dante's Visual Images, and his Early Illustrators_ in _The Study and Criticism of Italian Art_ (First Series), p. 13. "_We_ cannot help dressing Virgil as a Roman, and giving him a 'classical profile' and 'statuesque carriage,' but Dante's visual image of Virgil was probably no less mediaeval, no more based on a critical reconstruction of antiquity, than his entire conception of the Roman poet. Fourteenth Century illustrators make Virgil look like a mediaeval scholar, dressed in cap and gown, and there is no reason why Dante's visual image of him should have been other than this."] He goes on to show how in regard to the human figure we have been taught to see what we do see. "Created by Donatello and Masaccio, and sanctioned by the Humanists, the new canon of the human figure, the new cast of features ... presented to the ruling classes of that time the type of human being most likely to win the day in the combat of human forces... Who had the power to break through this new standard of vision and, out of the chaos of things, to select shapes more definitely expressive of reality than those fixed by men of genius? No one had such power. People had perforce to see things in that way and in no other, and to see only the shapes depicted, to love only the ideals presented...." [Footnote: _The Central Italian Painters_, pp. 66-67.] 2 If we cannot fully understand the acts of other people, until we know what they think they know, then in order to do justice we have to appraise not only the information which has been at their disposal, but the minds through which they have filtered it. For the accepted types, the current patterns, the standard versions, intercept information on its way to consciousness. Americanization, for example, is superficially at least the substitution of American for European stereotypes. Thus the peasant who might see his landlord as if he were the lord of the manor, his employer as he saw the local magnate, is taught by Americanization to see the landlord and employer according to American standards. This constitutes a change of mind, which is, in effect, when the inoculation succeeds, a change of vision. His eye sees differently. One kindly gentlewoman has confessed that the stereotypes are of such overweening importance, that when hers are not indulged, she at least is unable to accept the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God: "we are strangely affected by the clothes we wear. Garments create a mental and social atmosphere. What can be hoped for the Americanism of a man who insists on employing a London tailor? One's very food affects his Americanism. What kind of American consciousness can grow in the atmosphere of sauerkraut and Limburger cheese? Or what can you expect of the Americanism of the man whose breath always reeks of garlic?" [Footnote: Cited by Mr. Edward Hale Bierstadt, _New Republic_, June 1 1921 p. 21.] This lady might well have been the patron of a pageant which a friend of mine once attended. It was called the Melting Pot, and it was given on the Fourth of July in an automobile town where many foreign-born workers are employed. In the center of the baseball park at second base stood a huge wooden and canvas pot. There were flights of steps up to the rim on two sides. After the audience had settled itself, and the band had played, a procession came through an opening at one side of the field. It was made up of men of all the foreign nationalities employed in the factories. They wore their native costumes, they were singing their national songs; they danced their folk dances, and carried the banners of all Europe. The master of ceremonies was the principal of the grade school dressed as Uncle Sam. He led them to the pot. He directed them up the steps to the rim, and inside. He called them out again on the other side. They came, dressed in derby hats, coats, pants, vest, stiff collar and polka-dot tie, undoubtedly, said my friend, each with an Eversharp pencil in his pocket, and all singing the Star-Spangled Banner. To the promoters of this pageant, and probably to most of the actors, it seemed as if they had managed to express the most intimate difficulty to friendly association between the older peoples of America and the newer. The contradiction of their stereotypes interfered with the full recognition of their common humanity. The people who change their names know this. They mean to change themselves, and the attitude of strangers toward them. There is, of course, some connection between the scene outside and the mind through which we watch it, just as there are some long-haired men and short-haired women in radical gatherings. But to the hurried observer a slight connection is enough. If there are two bobbed heads and four beards in the audience, it will be a bobbed and bearded audience to the reporter who knows beforehand that such gatherings are composed of people with these tastes in the management of their hair. There is a connection between our vision and the facts, but it is often a strange connection. A man has rarely looked at a landscape, let us say, except to examine its possibilities for division into building lots, but he has seen a number of landscapes hanging in the parlor. And from them he has learned to think of a landscape as a rosy sunset, or as a country road with a church steeple and a silver moon. One day he goes to the country, and for hours he does not see a single landscape. Then the sun goes down looking rosy. At once he recognizes a landscape and exclaims that it is beautiful. But two days later, when he tries to recall what he saw, the odds are that he will remember chiefly some landscape in a parlor. Unless he has been drunk or dreaming or insane he did see a sunset, but he saw in it, and above all remembers from it, more of what the oil painting taught him to observe, than what an impressionist painter, for example, or a cultivated Japanese would have seen and taken away with him. And the Japanese and the painter in turn will have seen and remembered more of the form they had learned, unless they happen to be the very rare people who find fresh sight for mankind. In untrained observation we pick recognizable signs out of the environment. The signs stand for ideas, and these ideas we fill out with our stock of images. We do not so much see this man and that sunset; rather we notice that the thing is man or sunset, and then see chiefly what our mind is already full of on those subjects. 3 There is economy in this. For the attempt to see all things freshly and in detail, rather than as types and generalities, is exhausting, and among busy affairs practically out of the question. In a circle of friends, and in relation to close associates or competitors, there is no shortcut through, and no substitute for, an individualized understanding. Those whom we love and admire most are the men and women whose consciousness is peopled thickly with persons rather than with types, who know us rather than the classification into which we might fit. For even without phrasing it to ourselves, we feel intuitively that all classification is in relation to some purpose not necessarily our own; that between two human beings no association has final dignity in which each does not take the other as an end in himself. There is a taint on any contact between two people which does not affirm as an axiom the personal inviolability of both. But modern life is hurried and multifarious, above all physical distance separates men who are often in vital contact with each other, such as employer and employee, official and voter. There is neither time nor opportunity for intimate acquaintance. Instead we notice a trait which marks a well known type, and fill in the rest of the picture by means of the stereotypes we carry about in our heads. He is an agitator. That much we notice, or are told. Well, an agitator is this sort of person, and so _he_ is this sort of person. He is an intellectual. He is a plutocrat. He is a foreigner. He is a "South European." He is from Back Bay. He is a Harvard Man. How different from the statement: he is a Yale Man. He is a regular fellow. He is a West Pointer. He is an old army sergeant. He is a Greenwich Villager: what don't we know about him then, and about her? He is an international banker. He is from Main Street. The subtlest and most pervasive of all influences ere those which create and maintain the repertory of stereotypes. We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception. They mark out certain objects as familiar or strange, emphasizing the difference, so that the slightly familiar is seen as very familiar, and the somewhat strange as sharply alien. They are aroused by small signs, which may vary from a true index to a vague analogy. Aroused, they flood fresh vision with older images, and project into the world what has been resurrected in memory. Were there no practical uniformities in the environment, there would be no economy and only error in the human habit of accepting foresight for sight. But there are uniformities sufficiently accurate, and the need of economizing attention is so inevitable, that the abandonment of all stereotypes for a wholly innocent approach to experience would impoverish human life. What matters is the character of the stereotypes, and the gullibility with which we employ them. And these in the end depend upon those inclusive patterns which constitute our philosophy of life. If in that philosophy we assume that the world is codified according to a code which we possess, we are likely to make our reports of what is going on describe a world run by our code. But if our philosophy tells us that each man is only a small part of the world, that his intelligence catches at best only phases and aspects in a coarse net of ideas, then, when we use our stereotypes, we tend to know that they are only stereotypes, to hold them lightly, to modify them gladly. We tend, also, to realize more and more clearly when our ideas started, where they started, how they came to us, why we accepted them. All useful history is antiseptic in this fashion. It enables us to know what fairy tale, what school book, what tradition, what novel, play, picture, phrase, planted one preconception in this mind, another in that mind. 4 Those who wish to censor art do not at least underestimate this influence. They generally misunderstand it, and almost always they are absurdly bent on preventing other people from discovering anything not sanctioned by them. But at any rate, like Plato in his argument about the poets, they feel vaguely that the types acquired through fiction tend to be imposed on reality. Thus there can be little doubt that the moving picture is steadily building up imagery which is then evoked by the words people read in their newspapers. In the whole experience of the race there has been no aid to visualization comparable to the cinema. If a Florentine wished to visualize the saints, he could go to the frescoes in his church, where he might see a vision of saints standardized for his time by Giotto. If an Athenian wished to visualize the gods he went to the temples. But the number of objects which were pictured was not great. And in the East, where the spirit of the second commandment was widely accepted, the portraiture of concrete things was even more meager, and for that reason perhaps the faculty of practical decision was by so much reduced. In the western world, however, during the last few centuries there has been an enormous increase in the volume and scope of secular description, the word picture, the narrative, the illustrated narrative, and finally the moving picture and, perhaps, the talking picture. Photographs have the kind of authority over imagination to-day, which the printed word had yesterday, and the spoken word before that. They seem utterly real. They come, we imagine, directly to us without human meddling, and they are the most effortless food for the mind conceivable. Any description in words, or even any inert picture, requires an effort of memory before a picture exists in the mind. But on the screen the whole process of observing, describing, reporting, and then imagining, has been accomplished for you. Without more trouble than is needed to stay awake the result which your imagination is always aiming at is reeled off on the screen. The shadowy idea becomes vivid; your hazy notion, let us say, of the Ku Klux Klan, thanks to Mr. Griffiths, takes vivid shape when you see the Birth of a Nation. Historically it may be the wrong shape, morally it may be a pernicious shape, but it is a shape, and I doubt whether anyone who has seen the film and does not know more about the Ku Klux Klan than Mr. Griffiths, will ever hear the name again without seeing those white horsemen. 5 And so when we speak of the mind of a group of people, of the French mind, the militarist mind, the bolshevik mind, we are liable to serious confusion unless we agree to separate the instinctive equipment from the stereotypes, the patterns, and the formulae which play so decisive a part in building up the mental world to which the native character is adapted and responds. Failure to make this distinction accounts for oceans of loose talk about collective minds, national souls, and race psychology. To be sure a stereotype may be so consistently and authoritatively transmitted in each generation from parent to child that it seems almost like a biological fact. In some respects, we may indeed have become, as Mr. Wallas says, [Footnote: Graham Wallas, _Our Social Heritage_, p. 17.] biologically parasitic upon our social heritage. But certainly there is not the least scientific evidence which would enable anyone to argue that men are born with the political habits of the country in which they are born. In so far as political habits are alike in a nation, the first places to look for an explanation are the nursery, the school, the church, not in that limbo inhabited by Group Minds and National Souls. Until you have thoroughly failed to see tradition being handed on from parents, teachers, priests, and uncles, it is a solecism of the worst order to ascribe political differences to the germ plasm. It is possible to generalize tentatively and with a decent humility about comparative differences within the same category of education and experience. Yet even this is a tricky enterprise. For almost no two experiences are exactly alike, not even of two children in the same household. The older son never does have the experience of being the younger. And therefore, until we are able to discount the difference in nurture, we must withhold judgment about differences of nature. As well judge the productivity of two soils by comparing their yield before you know which is in Labrador and which in Iowa, whether they have been cultivated and enriched, exhausted, or allowed to run wild. CHAPTER VII STEREOTYPES AS DEFENSE 1 THERE is another reason, besides economy of effort, why we so often hold to our stereotypes when we might pursue a more disinterested vision. The systems of stereotypes may be the core of our personal tradition, the defenses of our position in society. They are an ordered, more or less consistent picture of the world, to which our habits, our tastes, our capacities, our comforts and our hopes have adjusted themselves. They may not be a complete picture of the world, but they are a picture of a possible world to which we are adapted. In that world people and things have their well-known places, and do certain expected things. We feel at home there. We fit in. We are members. We know the way around. There we find the charm of the familiar, the normal, the dependable; its grooves and shapes are where we are accustomed to find them. And though we have abandoned much that might have tempted us before we creased ourselves into that mould, once we are firmly in, it fits as snugly as an old shoe. No wonder, then, that any disturbance of the stereotypes seems like an attack upon the foundations of the universe. It is an attack upon the foundations of _our_ universe, and, where big things are at stake, we do not readily admit that there is any distinction between our universe and the universe. A world which turns out to be one in which those we honor are unworthy, and those we despise are noble, is nerve-racking. There is anarchy if our order of precedence is not the only possible one. For if the meek should indeed inherit the earth, if the first should be last, if those who are without sin alone may cast a stone, if to Caesar you render only the things that are Caesar's, then the foundations of self-respect would be shaken for those who have arranged their lives as if these maxims were not true. A pattern of stereotypes is not neutral. It is not merely a way of substituting order for the great blooming, buzzing confusion of reality. It is not merely a short cut. It is all these things and something more. It is the guarantee of our self-respect; it is the projection upon the world of our own sense of our own value, our own position and our own rights. The stereotypes are, therefore, highly charged with the feelings that are attached to them. They are the fortress of our tradition, and behind its defenses we can continue to feel ourselves safe in the position we occupy. 2 When, for example, in the fourth century B. C., Aristotle wrote his defense of slavery in the face of increasing skepticism, [Footnote: Zimmern: _Greek Commonwealth_. See his footnote, p. 383.] the Athenian slaves were in great part indistinguishable from free citizens Mr. Zimmern quotes an amusing passage from the Old Oligarch explaining the good treatment of the slaves. "Suppose it were legal for a slave to be beaten by a citizen, it would frequently happen that an Athenian might be mistaken for a slave or an alien and receive a beating;--since the Athenian people is not better clothed than the slave or alien, nor in personal appearance is there any superiority." This absence of distinction would naturally tend to dissolve the institution. If free men and slaves looked alike, what basis was there for treating them so differently? It was this confusion which Aristotle set himself to clear away in the first book of his Politics. With unerring instinct he understood that to justify slavery he must teach the Greeks a way of _seeing_ their slaves that comported with the continuance of slavery. So, said Aristotle, there are beings who are slaves by nature. [Footnote: _Politics_, Bk. 1, Ch. 5.] "He then is by nature formed a slave, who is fitted to become the chattel of another person, _and on that account is so_." All this really says is that whoever happens to be a slave is by nature intended to be one. Logically the statement is worthless, but in fact it is not a proposition at all, and logic has nothing to do with it. It is a stereotype, or rather it is part of a stereotype. The rest follows almost immediately. After asserting that slaves perceive reason, but are not endowed with the use of it, Aristotle insists that "it is the intention of nature to make the bodies of slaves and free men different from each other, that the one should be robust for their necessary purposes, but the other erect; useless indeed for such servile labours, but fit for civil life... It is clear then that some men are free by nature, and others are slaves. ..." If we ask ourselves what is the matter with Aristotle's argument, we find that he has begun by erecting a great barrier between himself and the facts. When he had said that those who are slaves are by nature intended to be slaves, he at one stroke excluded the fatal question whether those particular men who happened to be slaves were the particular men intended by nature to be slaves. For that question would have tainted each case of slavery with doubt. And since the fact of being a slave was not evidence that a man was destined to be one, no certain test would have remained. Aristotle, therefore, excluded entirely that destructive doubt. Those who are slaves are intended to be slaves. Each slave holder was to look upon his chattels as natural slaves. When his eye had been trained to see them that way, he was to note as confirmation of their servile character the fact that they performed servile work, that they were competent to do servile work, and that they had the muscles to do servile work. This is the perfect stereotype. Its hallmark is that it precedes the use of reason; is a form of perception, imposes a certain character on the data of our senses before the data reach the intelligence. The stereotype is like the lavender window-panes on Beacon Street, like the door-keeper at a costume ball who judges whether the guest has an appropriate masquerade. There is nothing so obdurate to education or to criticism as the stereotype. It stamps itself upon the evidence in the very act of securing the evidence. That is why the accounts of returning travellers are often an interesting tale of what the traveller carried abroad with him on his trip. If he carried chiefly his appetite, a zeal for tiled bathrooms, a conviction that the Pullman car is the acme of human comfort, and a belief that it is proper to tip waiters, taxicab drivers, and barbers, but under no circumstances station agents and ushers, then his Odyssey will be replete with good meals and bad meals, bathing adventures, compartment-train escapades, and voracious demands for money. Or if he is a more serious soul he may while on tour have found himself at celebrated spots. Having touched base, and cast one furtive glance at the monument, he buried his head in Baedeker, read every word through, and moved on to the next celebrated spot; and thus returned with a compact and orderly impression of Europe, rated one star, or two. In some measure, stimuli from the outside, especially when they are printed or spoken words, evoke some part of a system of stereotypes, so that the actual sensation and the preconception occupy consciousness at the same time. The two are blended, much as if we looked at red through blue glasses and saw green. If what we are looking at corresponds successfully with what we anticipated, the stereotype is reinforced for the future, as it is in a man who knows in advance that the Japanese are cunning and has the bad luck to run across two dishonest Japanese. If the experience contradicts the stereotype, one of two things happens. If the man is no longer plastic, or if some powerful interest makes it highly inconvenient to rearrange his stereotypes, he pooh- poohs the contradiction as an exception that proves the rule, discredits the witness, finds a flaw somewhere, and manages to forget it. But if he is still curious and open-minded, the novelty is taken into the picture, and allowed to modify it. Sometimes, if the incident is striking enough, and if he has felt a general discomfort with his established scheme, he may be shaken to such an extent as to distrust all accepted ways of looking at life, and to expect that normally a thing will not be what it is generally supposed to be. In the extreme case, especially if he is literary, he may develop a passion for inverting the moral canon by making Judas, Benedict Arnold, or Caesar Borgia the hero of his tale. 3 The role played by the stereotype can be seen in the German tales about Belgian snipers. Those tales curiously enough were first refuted by an organization of German Catholic priests known as Pax. [Footnote: Fernand van Langenhove, _The Growth of a Legend._ The author is a Belgian sociologist.] The existence of atrocity stories is itself not remarkable, nor that the German people gladly believed them. But it is remarkable that a great conservative body of patriotic Germans should have set out as early as August 16, 1914, to contradict a collection of slanders on the enemy, even though such slanders were of the utmost value in soothing the troubled conscience of their fellow countrymen. Why should the Jesuit order in particular have set out to destroy a fiction so important to the fighting morale of Germany? I quote from M. van Langenhove's account: "Hardly had the German armies entered Belgium when strange rumors began to circulate. They spread from place to place, they were reproduced by the press, and they soon permeated the whole of Germany. It was said that the Belgian people, _instigated by the clergy,_ had intervened perfidiously in the hostilities; had attacked by surprise isolated detachments; had indicated to the enemy the positions occupied by the troops; that old men, and even children, had been guilty of horrible atrocities upon wounded and defenseless German soldiers, tearing out their eyes and cutting off fingers, nose or ears; _that the priests from their pulpits had exhorted the people to commit these crimes, promising them as a reward the kingdom of heaven, and had even taken the lead in this barbarity._ "Public credulity accepted these stories. The highest powers in the state welcomed them without hesitation and endorsed them with their authority... "In this way public opinion in Germany was disturbed and a lively indignation manifested itself, _directed especially against the priests_ who were held responsible for the barbarities attributed to the Belgians... By a natural diversion _the anger_ to which they were a prey _was directed_ by the Germans _against the Catholic clergy generally._ Protestants allowed the old religious hatred to be relighted in their minds and delivered themselves to attacks against Catholics. A new _Kulturkampf_ was let loose. "The Catholics did not delay in taking action against this hostile attitude." (Italics mine) [Footnote: _Op. cit._, pp. 5-7] There may have been some sniping. It would be extraordinary if every angry Belgian had rushed to the library, opened a manual of international law, and had informed himself whether he had a right to take potshot at the infernal nuisance tramping through his streets. It would be no less extraordinary if an army that had never been under fire, did not regard every bullet that came its way as unauthorized, because it was inconvenient, and indeed as somehow a violation of the rules of the Kriegspiel, which then constituted its only experience of war. One can imagine the more sensitive bent on convincing themselves that the people to whom they were doing such terrible things must be terrible people. And so the legend may have been spun until it reached the censors and propagandists, who, whether they believed it or not, saw its value, and let it loose on the German civilians. They too were not altogether sorry to find that the people they were outraging were sub-human. And, above all, since the legend came from their heroes, they were not only entitled to believe it, they were unpatriotic if they did not. But where so much is left to the imagination because the scene of action is lost in the fog of war, there is no check and no control. The legend of the ferocious Belgian priests soon tapped an old hatred. For in the minds of most patriotic protestant Germans, especially of the upper classes, the picture of Bismarck's victories included a long quarrel with the Roman Catholics. By a process of association, Belgian priests became priests, and hatred of Belgians a vent for all their hatreds. These German protestants did what some Americans did when under the stress of war they created a compound object of hatred out of the enemy abroad and all their opponents at home. Against this synthetic enemy, the Hun in Germany and the Hun within the Gate, they launched all the animosity that was in them. The Catholic resistance to the atrocity tales was, of course, defensive. It was aimed at those particular fictions which aroused animosity against all Catholics, rather than against Belgian Catholics alone. The _Informations Pax_, says M. van Langenhove, had only an ecclesiastical bearing and "confined their attention almost exclusively to the reprehensible acts attributed to the priests." And yet one cannot help wondering a little about what was set in motion in the minds of German Catholics by this revelation of what Bismarck's empire meant in relation to them; and also whether there was any obscure connection between that knowledge and the fact that the prominent German politician who was willing in the armistice to sign the death warrant of the empire was Erzberger, [Footnote: Since this was written, Erzberger has been assassinated.] the leader of the Catholic Centre Party. CHAPTER VIII BLIND SPOTS AND THEIR VALUE 1 I HAVE been speaking of stereotypes rather than ideals, because the word ideal is usually reserved for what we consider the good, the true and the beautiful. Thus it carries the hint that here is something to be copied or attained. But our repertory of fixed impressions is wider than that. It contains ideal swindlers, ideal Tammany politicians, ideal jingoes, ideal agitators, ideal enemies. Our stereotyped world is not necessarily the world we should like it to be. It is simply the kind of world we expect it to be. If events correspond there is a sense of familiarity, and we feel that we are moving with the movement of events. Our slave must be a slave by nature, if we are Athenians who wish to have no qualms. If we have told our friends that we do eighteen holes of golf in 95, we tell them after doing the course in 110, that we are not ourselves to-day. That is to say, we are not acquainted with the duffer who foozled fifteen strokes. Most of us would deal with affairs through a rather haphazard and shifting assortment of stereotypes, if a comparatively few men in each generation were not constantly engaged in arranging, standardizing, and improving them into logical systems, known as the Laws of Political Economy, the Principles of Politics, and the like. Generally when we write about culture, tradition, and the group mind, we are thinking of these systems perfected by men of genius. Now there is no disputing the necessity of constant study and criticism of these idealized versions, but the historian of people, the politician, and the publicity man cannot stop there. For what operates in history is not the systematic idea as a genius formulated it, but shifting imitations, replicas, counterfeits, analogies, and distortions in individual minds. Thus Marxism is not necessarily what Karl Marx wrote in Das Kapital, but whatever it is that all the warring sects believe, who claim to be the faithful. From the gospels you cannot deduce the history of Christianity, nor from the Constitution the political history of America. It is Das Kapital as conceived, the gospels as preached and the preachment as understood, the Constitution as interpreted and administered, to which you have to go. For while there is a reciprocating influence between the standard version and the current versions, it is these current versions as distributed among men which affect their behavior. [Footnote: But unfortunately it is ever so much harder to know this actual culture than it is to summarize and to comment upon the works of genius. The actual culture exists in people far too busy to indulge in the strange trade of formulating their beliefs. They record them only incidentally, and the student rarely knows how typical are his data. Perhaps the best he can do is to follow Lord Bryce's suggestion [_Modern Democracies_, Vol. i, p. 156] that he move freely "among all sorts and conditions of men," to seek out the unbiassed persons in every neighborhood who have skill in sizing up. "There is a _flair_ which long practise and 'sympathetic touch' bestow. The trained observer learns how to profit by small indications, as an old seaman discerns, sooner than the landsman, the signs of coming storm." There is, in short, a vast amount of guess work involved, and it is no wonder that scholars, who enjoy precision, so often confine their attentions to the neater formulations of other scholars.] "The theory of Relativity," says a critic whose eyelids, like the Lady Lisa's, are a little weary, "promises to develop into a principle as adequate to universal application as was the theory of Evolution. This latter theory, from being a technical biological hypothesis, became an inspiring guide to workers in practically every branch of knowledge: manners and customs, morals, religions, philosophies, arts, steam engines, electric tramways--everything had 'evolved.' 'Evolution' became a very general term; it also became imprecise until, in many cases, the original, definite meaning of the word was lost, and the theory it had been evoked to describe was misunderstood. We are hardy enough to prophesy a similar career and fate for the theory of Relativity. The technical physical theory, at present imperfectly understood, will become still more vague and dim. History repeats itself, and Relativity, like Evolution, after receiving a number of intelligible but somewhat inaccurate popular expositions in its scientific aspect, will be launched on a world-conquering career. We suggest that, by that time, it will probably be called _Relativismus_. Many of these larger applications will doubtless be justified; some will be absurd and a considerable number will, we imagine, reduce to truisms. And the physical theory, the mere seed of this mighty growth, will become once more the purely technical concern of scientific men." [Footnote: _The Times_ (London), _Literary Supplement_, June 2, 1921, p. 352. Professor Einstein said when he was in America in 1921 that people tended to overestimate the influence of his theory, and to under-estimate its certainty.] But for such a world-conquering career an idea must correspond, however imprecisely, to something. Professor Bury shows for how long a time the idea of progress remained a speculative toy. "It is not easy," he writes, [Footnote: J. B. Bury, _The Idea of Progress_, p. 324.] "for a new idea of the speculative order to penetrate and inform the general consciousness of a community until it has assumed some external and concrete embodiment, or is recommended by some striking material evidence. In the case of Progress both these conditions were fulfilled (in England) in the period 1820-1850." The most striking evidence was furnished by the mechanical revolution. "Men who were born at the beginning of the century had seen, before they had passed the age of thirty, the rapid development of steam navigation, the illumination of towns and houses by gas, the opening of the first railway." In the consciousness of the average householder miracles like these formed the pattern of his belief in the perfectibility of the human race. Tennyson, who was in philosophical matters a fairly normal person, tells us that when he went by the first train from Liverpool to Manchester (1830) he thought that the wheels ran in grooves. Then he wrote this line: "Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change." [Footnote: 2 Tennyson, _Memoir by his Son_, Vol. I, p. 195. Cited by Bury, _op. cit_., p. 326.] And so a notion more or less applicable to a journey between Liverpool and Manchester was generalized into a pattern of the universe "for ever." This pattern, taken up by others, reinforced by dazzling inventions, imposed an optimistic turn upon the theory of evolution. That theory, of course, is, as Professor Bury says, neutral between pessimism and optimism. But it promised continual change, and the changes visible in the world marked such extraordinary conquests of nature, that the popular mind made a blend of the two. Evolution first in Darwin himself, and then more elaborately in Herbert Spencer, was a "progress towards perfection." 2 The stereotype represented by such words as "progress" and "perfection" was composed fundamentally of mechanical inventions. And mechanical it has remained, on the whole, to this day. In America more than anywhere else, the spectacle of mechanical progress has made so deep an impression, that it has suffused the whole moral code. An American will endure almost any insult except the charge that he is not progressive. Be he of long native ancestry, or a recent immigrant, the aspect that has always struck his eye is the immense physical growth of American civilization. That constitutes a fundamental stereotype through which he views the world: the country village will become the great metropolis, the modest building a skyscraper, what is small shall be big; what is slow shall be fast; what is poor shall be rich; what is few shall be many; whatever is shall be more so. Not every American, of course, sees the world this way. Henry Adams didn't, and William Allen White doesn't. But those men do, who in the magazines devoted to the religion of success appear as Makers of America. They mean just about that when they preach evolution, progress, prosperity, being constructive, the American way of doing things. It is easy to laugh, but, in fact, they are using a very great pattern of human endeavor. For one thing it adopts an impersonal criterion; for another it adopts an earthly criterion; for a third it is habituating men to think quantitatively. To be sure the ideal confuses excellence with size, happiness with speed, and human nature with contraption. Yet the same motives are at work which have ever actuated any moral code, or ever will. The desire for the biggest, the fastest, the highest, or if you are a maker of wristwatches or microscopes the smallest; the love in short of the superlative and the "peerless," is in essence and possibility a noble passion. Certainly the American version of progress has fitted an extraordinary range of facts in the economic situation and in human nature. It turned an unusual amount of pugnacity, acquisitiveness, and lust of power into productive work. Nor has it, until more recently perhaps, seriously frustrated the active nature of the active members of the community. They have made a civilization which provides them who made it with what they feel to be ample satisfaction in work, mating and play, and the rush of their victory over mountains, wildernesses, distance, and human competition has even done duty for that part of religious feeling which is a sense of communion with the purpose of the universe. The pattern has been a success so nearly perfect in the sequence of ideals, practice, and results, that any challenge to it is called un-American. And yet, this pattern is a very partial and inadequate way of representing the world. The habit of thinking about progress as "development" has meant that many aspects of the environment were simply neglected. With the stereotype of "progress" before their eyes, Americans have in the mass seen little that did not accord with that progress. They saw the expansion of cities, but not the accretion of slums; they cheered the census statistics, but refused to consider overcrowding; they pointed with pride to their growth, but would not see the drift from the land, or the unassimilated immigration. They expanded industry furiously at reckless cost to their natural resources; they built up gigantic corporations without arranging for industrial relations. They grew to be one of the most powerful nations on earth without preparing their institutions or their minds for the ending of their isolation. They stumbled into the World War morally and physically unready, and they stumbled out again, much disillusioned, but hardly more experienced. In the World War the good and the evil influence of the American stereotype was plainly visible. The idea that the war could be won by recruiting unlimited armies, raising unlimited credits, building an unlimited number of ships, producing unlimited munitions, and concentrating without limit on these alone, fitted the traditional stereotype, and resulted in something like a physical miracle. [Footnote: I have in mind the transportation and supply of two million troops overseas. Prof. Wesley Mitchell points out that the total production of goods after our entrance into the war did not greatly increase in volume over that of the year 1916; but that production for war purposes did increase.] But among those most affected by the stereotype, there was no place for the consideration of what the fruits of victory were, or how they were to be attained. Therefore, aims were ignored, or regarded as automatic, and victory was conceived, because the stereotype demanded it, as nothing but an annihilating victory in the field. In peace time you did not ask what the fastest motor car was for, and in war you did not ask what the completest victory was for. Yet in Paris the pattern did not fit the facts. In peace you can go on endlessly supplanting small things with big ones, and big ones with bigger ones; in war when you have won absolute victory, you cannot go on to a more absolute victory. You have to do something on an entirely different pattern. And if you lack such a pattern, the end of the war is to you what it was to so many good people, an anticlimax in a dreary and savorless world. This marks the point where the stereotype and the facts, that cannot be ignored, definitely part company. There is always such a point, because our images of how things behave are simpler and more fixed than the ebb and flow of affairs. There comes a time, therefore, when the blind spots come from the edge of vision into the center. Then unless there are critics who have the courage to sound an alarm, and leaders capable of understanding the change, and a people tolerant by habit, the stereotype, instead of economizing effort, and focussing energy as it did in 1917 and 1918, may frustrate effort and waste men's energy by blinding them, as it did for those people who cried for a Carthaginian peace in 1919 and deplored the Treaty of Versailles in 1921. 3 Uncritically held, the stereotype not only censors out much that needs to be taken into account, but when the day of reckoning comes, and the stereotype is shattered, likely as not that which it did wisely take into account is ship-wrecked with it. That is the punishment assessed by Mr. Bernard Shaw against Free Trade, Free Contract, Free Competition, Natural Liberty, Laissez-faire, and Darwinism. A hundred years ago, when he would surely have been one of the tartest advocates of these doctrines, he would not have seen them as he sees them to-day, in the Infidel Half Century, [Footnote: _Back to Methuselah_. Preface.] to be excuses for "'doing the other fellow down' with impunity, all interference by a guiding government, all organization except police organization to protect legalized fraud against fisticuffs, all attempt to introduce human purpose and design and forethought into the industrial welter being 'contrary to the laws of political economy'" He would have seen, then, as one of the pioneers of the march to the plains of heaven [Footnote: _The Quintessence of Ibsenism_] that, of the kind of human purpose and design and forethought to be found in a government like that of Queen Victoria's uncles, the less the better. He would have seen, not the strong doing the weak down, but the foolish doing the strong down. He would have seen purposes, designs and forethoughts at work, obstructing invention, obstructing enterprise, obstructing what he would infallibly have recognized as the next move of Creative Evolution. Even now Mr. Shaw is none too eager for the guidance of any guiding government he knows, but in theory he has turned a full loop against laissez-faire. Most advanced thinking before the war had made the same turn against the established notion that if you unloosed everything, wisdom would bubble up, and establish harmony. Since the war, with its definite demonstration of guiding governments, assisted by censors, propagandists, and spies, Roebuck Ramsden and Natural Liberty have been readmitted to the company of serious thinkers. One thing is common to these cycles. There is in each set of stereotypes a point where effort ceases and things happen of their own accord, as you would like them to. The progressive stereotype, powerful to incite work, almost completely obliterates the attempt to decide what work and why that work. Laissez-faire, a blessed release from stupid officialdom, assumes that men will move by spontaneous combustion towards a pre-established harmony. Collectivism, an antidote to ruthless selfishness, seems, in the Marxian mind, to suppose an economic determinism towards efficiency and wisdom on the part of socialist officials. Strong government, imperialism at home and abroad, at its best deeply conscious of the price of disorder, relies at last on the notion that all that matters to the governed will be known by the governors. In each theory there is a spot of blind automatism. That spot covers up some fact, which if it were taken into account, would check the vital movement that the stereotype provokes. If the progressive had to ask himself, like the Chinaman in the joke, what he wanted to do with the time he saved by breaking the record, if the advocate of laissez-faire had to contemplate not only free and exuberant energies of men, but what some people call their human nature, if the collectivist let the center of his attention be occupied with the problem of how he is to secure his officials, if the imperialist dared to doubt his own inspiration, you would find more Hamlet and less Henry the Fifth. For these blind spots keep away distracting images, which with their attendant emotions, might cause hesitation and infirmity of purpose. Consequently the stereotype not only saves time in a busy life and is a defense of our position in society, but tends to preserve us from all the bewildering effect of trying to see the world steadily and see it whole. CHAPTER IX CODES AND THEIR ENEMIES ANYONE who has stood at the end of a railroad platform waiting for a friend, will recall what queer people he mistook for him. The shape of a hat, a slightly characteristic gait, evoked the vivid picture in his mind's eye. In sleep a tinkle may sound like the pealing of a great bell; the distant stroke of a hammer like a thunderclap. For our constellations of imagery will vibrate to a stimulus that is perhaps but vaguely similar to some aspect of them. They may, in hallucination, flood the whole consciousness. They may enter very little into perception, though I am inclined to think that such an experience is extremely rare and highly sophisticated, as when we gaze blankly at a familiar word or object, and it gradually ceases to be familiar. Certainly for the most part, the way we see things is a combination of what is there and of what we expected to find. The heavens are not the same to an astronomer as to a pair of lovers; a page of Kant will start a different train of thought in a Kantian and in a radical empiricist; the Tahitian belle is a better looking person to her Tahitian suitor than to the readers of the _National Geographic Magazine_. Expertness in any subject is, in fact, a multiplication of the number of aspects we are prepared to discover, plus the habit of discounting our expectations. Where to the ignoramus all things look alike, and life is just one thing after another, to the specialist things are highly individual. For a chauffeur, an epicure, a connoisseur, a member of the President's cabinet, or a professor's wife, there are evident distinctions and qualities, not at all evident to the casual person who discusses automobiles, wines, old masters, Republicans, and college faculties. But in our public opinions few can be expert, while life is, as Mr. Bernard Shaw has made plain, so short. Those who are expert are so on only a few topics. Even among the expert soldiers, as we learned during the war, expert cavalrymen were not necessarily brilliant with trench-warfare and tanks. Indeed, sometimes a little expertness on a small topic may simply exaggerate our normal human habit of trying to squeeze into our stereotypes all that can be squeezed, and of casting into outer darkness that which does not fit. Whatever we recognize as familiar we tend, if we are not very careful, to visualize with the aid of images already in our mind. Thus in the American view of Progress and Success there is a definite picture of human nature and of society. It is the kind of human nature and the kind of society which logically produce the kind of progress that is regarded as ideal. And then, when we seek to describe or explain actually successful men, and events that have really happened, we read back into them the qualities that are presupposed in the stereotypes. These qualities were standardized rather innocently by the older economists. They set out to describe the social system under which they lived, and found it too complicated for words. So they constructed what they sincerely hoped was a simplified diagram, not so different in principle and in veracity from the parallelogram with legs and head in a child's drawing of a complicated cow. The scheme consisted of a capitalist who had diligently saved capital from his labor, an entrepreneur who conceived a socially useful demand and organized a factory, a collection of workmen who freely contracted, take it or leave it, for their labor, a landlord, and a group of consumers who bought in the cheapest market those goods which by the ready use of the pleasure-pain calculus they knew would give them the most pleasure. The model worked. The kind of people, which the model assumed, living in the sort of world the model assumed, invariably coöperated harmoniously in the books where the model was described. With modification and embroidery, this pure fiction, used by economists to simplify their thinking, was retailed and popularized until for large sections of the population it prevailed as the economic mythology of the day. It supplied a standard version of capitalist, promoter, worker and consumer in a society that was naturally more bent on achieving success than on explaining it. The buildings which rose, and the bank accounts which accumulated, were evidence that the stereotype of how the thing had been done was accurate. And those who benefited most by success came to believe they were the kind of men they were supposed to be. No wonder that the candid friends of successful men, when they read the official biography and the obituary, have to restrain themselves from asking whether this is indeed their friend. 2 To the vanquished and the victims, the official portraiture was, of course, unrecognizable. For while those who exemplified progress did not often pause to inquire whether they had arrived according to the route laid down by the economists, or by some other just as creditable, the unsuccessful people did inquire. "No one," says William James, [Footnote: _The Letters of William James,_ Vol. I, p.65] "sees further into a generalization than his own knowledge of detail extends." The captains of industry saw in the great trusts monuments of (their) success; their defeated competitors saw the monuments of (their) failure. So the captains expounded the economies and virtues of big business, asked to be let alone, said they were the agents of prosperity, and the developers of trade. The vanquished insisted upon the wastes and brutalities of the trusts, and called loudly upon the Department of Justice to free business from conspiracies. In the same situation one side saw progress, economy, and a splendid development; the other, reaction, extravagance, and a restraint of trade. Volumes of statistics, anecdotes about the real truth and the inside truth, the deeper and the larger truth, were published to prove both sides of the argument. For when a system of stereotypes is well fixed, our attention is called to those facts which support it, and diverted from those which contradict. So perhaps it is because they are attuned to find it, that kindly people discover so much reason for kindness, malicious people so much malice. We speak quite accurately of seeing through rose-colored spectacles, or with a jaundiced eye. If, as Philip Littell once wrote of a distinguished professor, we see life as through a class darkly, our stereotypes of what the best people and the lower classes are like will not be contaminated by understanding. What is alien will be rejected, what is different will fall upon unseeing eyes. We do not see what our eyes are not accustomed to take into account. Sometimes consciously, more often without knowing it, we are impressed by those facts which fit our philosophy. 3 This philosophy is a more or less organized series of images for describing the unseen world. But not only for describing it. For judging it as well. And, therefore, the stereotypes are loaded with preference, suffused with affection or dislike, attached to fears, lusts, strong wishes, pride, hope. Whatever invokes the stereotype is judged with the appropriate sentiment. Except where we deliberately keep prejudice in suspense, we do not study a man and judge him to be bad. We see a bad man. We see a dewy morn, a blushing maiden, a sainted priest, a humorless Englishman, a dangerous Red, a carefree bohemian, a lazy Hindu, a wily Oriental, a dreaming Slav, a volatile Irishman, a greedy Jew, a 100% American. In the workaday world that is often the real judgment, long in advance of the evidence, and it contains within itself the conclusion which the evidence is pretty certain to confirm. Neither justice, nor mercy, nor truth, enter into such a judgment, for the judgment has preceded the evidence. Yet a people without prejudices, a people with altogether neutral vision, is so unthinkable in any civilization of which it is useful to think, that no scheme of education could be based upon that ideal. Prejudice can be detected, discounted, and refined, but so long as finite men must compress into a short schooling preparation for dealing with a vast civilization, they must carry pictures of it around with them, and have prejudices. The quality of their thinking and doing will depend on whether those prejudices are friendly, friendly to other people, to other ideas, whether they evoke love of what is felt to be positively good, rather than hatred of what is not contained in their version of the good. Morality, good taste and good form first standardize and then emphasize certain of these underlying prejudices. As we adjust ourselves to our code, we adjust the facts we see to that code. Rationally, the facts are neutral to all our views of right and wrong. Actually, our canons determine greatly what we shall perceive and how. For a moral code is a scheme of conduct applied to a number of typical instances. To behave as the code directs is to serve whatever purpose the code pursues. It may be God's will, or the king's, individual salvation in a good, solid, three dimensional paradise, success on earth, or the service of mankind. In any event the makers of the code fix upon certain typical situations, and then by some form of reasoning or intuition, deduce the kind of behavior which would produce the aim they acknowledge. The rules apply where they apply. But in daily living how does a man know whether his predicament is the one the law-giver had in mind? He is told not to kill. But if his children are attacked, may he kill to stop a killing? The Ten Commandments are silent on the point. Therefore, around every code there is a cloud of interpreters who deduce more specific cases. Suppose, then, that the doctors of the law decide that he may kill in self-defense. For the next man the doubt is almost as great; how does he know that he is defining self-defense correctly, or that he has not misjudged the facts, imagined the attack, and is really the aggressor? Perhaps he has provoked the attack. But what is a provocation? Exactly these confusions infected the minds of most Germans in August, 1914. Far more serious in the modern world than any difference of moral code is the difference in the assumptions about facts to which the code is applied. Religious, moral and political formulae are nothing like so far apart as the facts assumed by their votaries. Useful discussion, then, instead of comparing ideals, reexamines the visions of the facts. Thus the rule that you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you rests on the belief that human nature is uniform. Mr. Bernard Shaw's statement that you should not do unto others what you would have them do unto you, because their tastes may be different, rests on the belief that human nature is not uniform. The maxim that competition is the life of trade consists of a whole tome of assumptions about economic motives, industrial relations, and the working of a particular commercial system. The claim that America will never have a merchant marine, unless it is privately owned and managed, assumes a certain proved connection between a certain kind of profit-making and incentive. The justification by the bolshevik propagandist of the dictatorship, espionage, and the terror, because "every state is an apparatus of violence" [Footnote: See _Two Years of Conflict on the Internal Front_, published by the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, Moscow, 1920. Translated by Malcolm W. Davis for the _New York Evening Post_, January 15, 1921.] is an historical judgment, the truth of which is by no means self-evident to a non-communist. At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply. So far as the facts of personality, of the environment and of memory are different, by so far the rules of the code are difficult to apply with success. Now every moral code has to conceive human psychology, the material world, and tradition some way or other. But in the codes that are under the influence of science, the conception is known to be an hypothesis, whereas in the codes that come unexamined from the past or bubble up from the caverns of the mind, the conception is not taken as an hypothesis demanding proof or contradiction, but as a fiction accepted without question. In the one case, man is humble about his beliefs, because he knows they are tentative and incomplete; in the other he is dogmatic, because his belief is a completed myth. The moralist who submits to the scientific discipline knows that though he does not know everything, he is in the way of knowing something; the dogmatist, using a myth, believes himself to share part of the insight of omniscience, though he lacks the criteria by which to tell truth from error. For the distinguishing mark of a myth is that truth and error, fact and fable, report and fantasy, are all on the same plane of credibility. The myth is, then, not necessarily false. It might happen to be wholly true. It may happen to be partly true. If it has affected human conduct a long time, it is almost certain to contain much that is profoundly and importantly true. What a myth never contains is the critical power to separate its truths from its errors. For that power comes only by realizing that no human opinion, whatever its supposed origin, is too exalted for the test of evidence, that every opinion is only somebody's opinion. And if you ask why the test of evidence is preferable to any other, there is no answer unless you are willing to use the test in order to test it. 4 The statement is, I think, susceptible of overwhelming proof, that moral codes assume a particular view of the facts. Under the term moral codes I include all kinds: personal, family, economic, professional, legal, patriotic, international. At the center of each there is a pattern of stereotypes about psychology, sociology, and history. The same view of human nature, institutions or tradition rarely persists through all our codes. Compare, for example, the economic and the patriotic codes. There is a war supposed to affect all alike. Two men are partners in business. One enlists, the other takes a war contract. The soldier sacrifices everything, perhaps even his life. He is paid a dollar a day, and no one says, no one believes, that you could make a better soldier out of him by any form of economic incentive. That motive disappears out of his human nature. The contractor sacrifices very little, is paid a handsome profit over costs, and few say or believe that he would produce the munitions if there were no economic incentive. That may be unfair to him. The point is that the accepted patriotic code assumes one kind of human nature, the commercial code another. And the codes are probably founded on true expectations to this extent, that when a man adopts a certain code he tends to exhibit the kind of human nature which the code demands. That is one reason why it is so dangerous to generalize about human nature. A loving father can be a sour boss, an earnest municipal reformer, and a rapacious jingo abroad. His family life, his business career, his politics, and his foreign policy rest on totally different versions of what others are like and of how he should act. These versions differ by codes in the same person, the codes differ somewhat among persons in the same social set, differ widely as between social sets, and between two nations, or two colors, may differ to the point where there is no common assumption whatever. That is why people professing the same stock of religious beliefs can go to war. The element of their belief which determines conduct is that view of the facts which they assume. That is where codes enter so subtly and so pervasively into the making of public opinion. The orthodox theory holds that a public opinion constitutes a moral judgment on a group of facts. The theory I am suggesting is that, in the present state of education, a public opinion is primarily a moralized and codified version of the facts. I am arguing that the pattern of stereotypes at the center of our codes largely determines what group of facts we shall see, and in what light we shall see them. That is why, with the best will in the world, the news policy of a journal tends to support its editorial policy; why a capitalist sees one set of facts, and certain aspects of human nature, literally sees them; his socialist opponent another set and other aspects, and why each regards the other as unreasonable or perverse, when the real difference between them is a difference of perception. That difference is imposed by the difference between the capitalist and socialist pattern of stereotypes. "There are no classes in America," writes an American editor. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles," says the Communist Manifesto. If you have the editor's pattern in your mind, you will see vividly the facts that confirm it, vaguely and ineffectively those that contradict. If you have the communist pattern, you will not only look for different things, but you will see with a totally different emphasis what you and the editor happen to see in common. 5 And since my moral system rests on my accepted version of the facts, he who denies either my moral judgments or my version of the facts, is to me perverse, alien, dangerous. How shall I account for him? The opponent has always to be explained, and the last explanation that we ever look for is that he sees a different set of facts. Such an explanation we avoid, because it saps the very foundation of our own assurance that we have seen life steadily and seen it whole. It is only when we are in the habit of recognizing our opinions as a partial experience seen through our stereotypes that we become truly tolerant of an opponent. Without that habit, we believe in the absolutism of our own vision, and consequently in the treacherous character of all opposition. For while men are willing to admit that there are two sides to a "question," they do not believe that there are two sides to what they regard as a "fact." And they never do believe it until after long critical education, they are fully conscious of how second-hand and subjective is their apprehension of their social data. So where two factions see vividly each its own aspect, and contrive their own explanations of what they see, it is almost impossible for them to credit each other with honesty. If the pattern fits their experience at a crucial point, they no longer look upon it as an interpretation. They look upon it as "reality." It may not resemble the reality, except that it culminates in a conclusion which fits a real experience. I may represent my trip from New York to Boston by a straight line on a map, just as a man may regard his triumph as the end of a straight and narrow path. The road by which I actually went to Boston may have involved many detours, much turning and twisting, just as his road may have involved much besides pure enterprise, labor and thrift. But provided I reach Boston and he succeeds, the airline and the straight path will serve as ready made charts. Only when somebody tries to follow them, and does not arrive, do we have to answer objections. If we insist on our charts, and he insists on rejecting them, we soon tend to regard him as a dangerous fool, and he to regard us as liars and hypocrites. Thus we gradually paint portraits of each other. For the opponent presents himself as the man who says, evil be thou my good. He is an annoyance who does not fit into the scheme of things. Nevertheless he interferes. And since that scheme is based in our minds on incontrovertible fact fortified by irresistible logic, some place has to be found for him in the scheme. Rarely in politics or industrial disputes is a place made for him by the simple admission that he has looked upon the same reality and seen another aspect of it. That would shake the whole scheme. Thus to the Italians in Paris Fiume was Italian It was not merely a city that it would be desirable to include within the Italian kingdom. It was Italian. They fixed their whole mind upon the Italian majority within the legal boundaries of the city itself. The American delegates, having seen more Italians in New York than there are in Fiume, without regarding New York as Italian, fixed their eyes on Fiume as a central European port of entry. They saw vividly the Jugoslavs in the suburbs and the non-Italian hinterland. Some of the Italians in Paris were therefore in need of a convincing explanation of the American perversity. They found it in a rumor which started, no one knows where, that an influential American diplomat was in the snares of a Jugoslav mistress. She had been seen.... He had been seen.... At Versailles just off the boulevard. ... The villa with the large trees. This is a rather common way of explaining away opposition. In their more libelous form such charges rarely reach the printed page, and a Roosevelt may have to wait years, or a Harding months, before he can force an issue, and end a whispering campaign that has reached into every circle of talk. Public men have to endure a fearful amount of poisonous clubroom, dinner table, boudoir slander, repeated, elaborated, chuckled over, and regarded as delicious. While this sort of thing is, I believe, less prevalent in America than in Europe, yet rare is the American official about whom somebody is not repeating a scandal. Out of the opposition we make villains and conspiracies. If prices go up unmercifully the profiteers have conspired; if the newspapers misrepresent the news, there is a capitalist plot; if the rich are too rich, they have been stealing; if a closely fought election is lost, the electorate was corrupted; if a statesman does something of which you disapprove, he has been bought or influenced by some discreditable person. If workingmen are restless, they are the victims of agitators; if they are restless over wide areas, there is a conspiracy on foot. If you do not produce enough aeroplanes, it is the work of spies; if there is trouble in Ireland, it is German or Bolshevik "gold." And if you go stark, staring mad looking for plots, you see all strikes, the Plumb plan, Irish rebellion, Mohammedan unrest, the restoration of King Constantine, the League of Nations, Mexican disorder, the movement to reduce armaments, Sunday movies, short skirts, evasion of the liquor laws, Negro self-assertion, as sub-plots under some grandiose plot engineered either by Moscow, Rome, the Free Masons, the Japanese, or the Elders of Zion. CHAPTER X THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES 1 Skilled diplomatists, compelled to talk out loud to the warring peoples, learned how to use a large repertory of stereotypes. They were dealing with a precarious alliance of powers, each of which was maintaining its war unity only by the most careful leadership. The ordinary soldier and his wife, heroic and selfless beyond anything in the chronicles of courage, were still not heroic enough to face death gladly for all the ideas which were said by the foreign offices of foreign powers to be essential to the future of civilization. There were ports, and mines, rocky mountain passes, and villages that few soldiers would willingly have crossed No Man's Land to obtain for their allies. Now it happened in one nation that the war party which was in control of the foreign office, the high command, and most of the press, had claims on the territory of several of its neighbors. These claims were called the Greater Ruritania by the cultivated classes who regarded Kipling, Treitschke, and Maurice Barres as one hundred percent Ruritanian. But the grandiose idea aroused no enthusiasm abroad. So holding this finest flower of the Ruritanian genius, as their poet laureate said, to their hearts, Ruritania's statesmen went forth to divide and conquer. They divided the claim into sectors. For each piece they invoked that stereotype which some one or more of their allies found it difficult to resist, because that ally had claims for which it hoped to find approval by the use of this same stereotype. The first sector happened to be a mountainous region inhabited by alien peasants. Ruritania demanded it to complete her natural geographical frontier. If you fixed your attention long enough on the ineffable value of what is natural, those alien peasants just dissolved into fog, and only the slope of the mountains was visible. The next sector was inhabited by Ruritanians, and on the principle that no people ought to live under alien rule, they were re-annexed. Then came a city of considerable commercial importance, not inhabited by Ruritanians. But until the Eighteenth Century it had been part of Ruritania, and on the principle of Historic Right it was annexed. Farther on there was a splendid mineral deposit owned by aliens and worked by aliens. On the principle of reparation for damage it was annexed. Beyond this there was a territory inhabited 97% by aliens, constituting the natural geographical frontier of another nation, never historically a part of Ruritania. But one of the provinces which had been federated into Ruritania had formerly traded in those markets, and the upper class culture was Ruritanian. On the principle of cultural superiority and the necessity of defending civilization, the lands were claimed. Finally, there was a port wholly disconnected from Ruritania geographically, ethnically, economically, historically, traditionally. It was demanded on the ground that it was needed for national defense. In the treaties that concluded the Great War you can multiply examples of this kind. Now I do not wish to imply that I think it was possible to resettle Europe consistently on any one of these principles. I am certain that it was not. The very use of these principles, so pretentious and so absolute, meant that the spirit of accommodation did not prevail and that, therefore, the substance of peace was not there. For the moment you start to discuss factories, mines, mountains, or even political authority, as perfect examples of some eternal principle or other, you are not arguing, you are fighting. That eternal principle censors out all the objections, isolates the issue from its background and its context, and sets going in you some strong emotion, appropriate enough to the principle, highly inappropriate to the docks, warehouses, and real estate. And having started in that mood you cannot stop. A real danger exists. To meet it you have to invoke more absolute principles in order to defend what is open to attack. Then you have to defend the defenses, erect buffers, and buffers for the buffers, until the whole affair is so scrambled that it seems less dangerous to fight than to keep on talking. There are certain clues which often help in detecting the false absolutism of a stereotype. In the case of the Ruritanian propaganda the principles blanketed each other so rapidly that one could readily see how the argument had been constructed. The series of contradictions showed that for each sector that stereotype was employed which would obliterate all the facts that interfered with the claim. Contradiction of this sort is often a good clue. 2 Inability to take account of space is another. In the spring of 1918, for example, large numbers of people, appalled by the withdrawal of Russia, demanded the "reestablishment of an Eastern Front." The war, as they had conceived it, was on two fronts, and when one of them disappeared there was an instant demand that it be recreated. The unemployed Japanese army was to man the front, substituting for the Russian. But there was one insuperable obstacle. Between Vladivostok and the eastern battleline there were five thousand miles of country, spanned by one broken down railway. Yet those five thousand miles would not stay in the minds of the enthusiasts. So overwhelming was their conviction that an eastern front was needed, and so great their confidence in the valor of the Japanese army, that, mentally, they had projected that army from Vladivostok to Poland on a magic carpet. In vain our military authorities argued that to land troops on the rim of Siberia had as little to do with reaching the Germans, as climbing from the cellar to the roof of the Woolworth building had to do with reaching the moon. The stereotype in this instance was the war on two fronts. Ever since men had begun to imagine the Great War they had conceived Germany held between France and Russia. One generation of strategists, and perhaps two, had lived with that visual image as the starting point of all their calculations. For nearly four years every battle-map they saw had deepened the impression that this was the war. When affairs took a new turn, it was not easy to see them as they were then. They were seen through the stereotype, and facts which conflicted with it, such as the distance from Japan to Poland, were incapable of coming vividly into consciousness. It is interesting to note that the American authorities dealt with the new facts more realistically than the French. In part, this was because (previous to 1914) they had no preconception of a war upon the continent; in part because the Americans, engrossed in the mobilization of their forces, had a vision of the western front which was itself a stereotype that excluded from _their_ consciousness any very vivid sense of the other theatres of war. In the spring of 1918 this American view could not compete with the traditional French view, because while the Americans believed enormously in their own powers, the French at that time (before Cantigny and the Second Marne) had the gravest doubts. The American confidence suffused the American stereotype, gave it that power to possess consciousness, that liveliness and sensible pungency, that stimulating effect upon the will, that emotional interest as an object of desire, that congruity with the activity in hand, which James notes as characteristic of what we regard as "real." [Footnote: _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II, p. 300.] The French in despair remained fixed on their accepted image. And when facts, gross geographical facts, would not fit with the preconception, they were either censored out of mind, or the facts were themselves stretched out of shape. Thus the difficulty of the Japanese reaching the Germans five thousand miles away was, in measure, overcome by bringing the Germans more than half way to meet them. Between March and June 1918, there was supposed to be a German army operating in Eastern Siberia. This phantom army consisted of some German prisoners actually seen, more German prisoners thought about, and chiefly of the delusion that those five thousand intervening miles did not really exist. [Footnote: See in this connection Mr. Charles Grasty's interview with Marshal Foch, _New York Times_, February 26, 1918. "Germany is walking through Russia. America and Japan, who are in a position to do so, should go to meet her in Siberia." See also the resolution by Senator King of Utah, June 10, 1918, and Mr. Taft's statement in the _New York Times_, June 11, 1918, and the appeal to America on May 5, 1918, by Mr. A. J. Sack, Director of the Russian Information Bureau: "If Germany were in the Allied place... she would have 3,000,000 fighting on the East front within a year."] 3 A true conception of space is not a simple matter. If I draw a straight line on a map between Bombay and Hong Kong and measure the distance, I have learned nothing whatever about the distance I should have to cover on a voyage. And even if I measure the actual distance that I must traverse, I still know very little until I know what ships are in the service, when they run, how fast they go, whether I can secure accommodation and afford to pay for it. In practical life space is a matter of available transportation, not of geometrical planes, as the old railroad magnate knew when he threatened to make grass grow in the streets of a city that had offended him. If I am motoring and ask how far it is to my destination, I curse as an unmitigated booby the man who tells me it is three miles, and does not mention a six mile detour. It does me no good to be told that it is three miles if you walk. I might as well be told it is one mile as the crow flies. I do not fly like a crow, and I am not walking either. I must know that it is nine miles for a motor car, and also, if that is the case, that six of them are ruts and puddles. I call the pedestrian a nuisance who tells me it is three miles and think evil of the aviator who told me it was one mile. Both of them are talking about the space they have to cover, not the space I must cover. In the drawing of boundary lines absurd complications have arisen through failure to conceive the practical geography of a region. Under some general formula like self-determination statesmen have at various times drawn lines on maps, which, when surveyed on the spot, ran through the middle of a factory, down the center of a village street, diagonally across the nave of a church, or between the kitchen and bedroom of a peasant's cottage. There have been frontiers in a grazing country which separated pasture from water, pasture from market, and in an industrial country, railheads from railroad. On the colored ethnic map the line was ethnically just, that is to say, just in the world of that ethnic map. 4 But time, no less than space, fares badly. A common example is that of the man who tries by making an elaborate will to control his money long after his death. "It had been the purpose of the first William James," writes his great-grandson Henry James, [Footnote: _The Letters of William James_, Vol. I, p. 6.] "to provide that his children (several of whom were under age when he died) should qualify themselves by industry and experience to enjoy the large patrimony which he expected to bequeath to them, and with that in view he left a will which was a voluminous compound of restraints and instructions. He showed thereby how great were both his confidence in his own judgment and his solicitude for the moral welfare of his descendants." The courts upset the will. For the law in its objection to perpetuities recognizes that there are distinct limits to the usefulness of allowing anyone to impose his moral stencil upon an unknown future. But the desire to impose it is a very human trait, so human that the law permits it to operate for a limited time after death. The amending clause of any constitution is a good index of the confidence the authors entertained about the reach of their opinions in the succeeding generations. There are, I believe, American state constitutions which are almost incapable of amendment. The men who made them could have had but little sense of the flux of time: to them the Here and Now was so brilliantly certain, the Hereafter so vague or so terrifying, that they had the courage to say how life should run after they were gone. And then because constitutions are difficult to amend, zealous people with a taste for mortmain have loved to write on this imperishable brass all kinds of rules and restrictions that, given any decent humility about the future, ought to be no more permanent than an ordinary statute. A presumption about time enters widely into our opinions. To one person an institution which has existed for the whole of his conscious life is part of the permanent furniture of the universe: to another it is ephemeral. Geological time is very different from biological time. Social time is most complex. The statesman has to decide whether to calculate for the emergency or for the long run. Some decisions have to be made on the basis of what will happen in the next two hours; others on what will happen in a week, a month, a season, a decade, when the children have grown up, or their children's children. An important part of wisdom is the ability to distinguish the time-conception that properly belongs to the thing in hand. The person who uses the wrong time-conception ranges from the dreamer who ignores the present to the philistine who can see nothing else. A true scale of values has a very acute sense of relative time. Distant time, past and future, has somehow to be conceived. But as James says, "of the longer duration we have no direct 'realizing' sense." [Footnote: _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. I, p. 638.] The longest duration which we immediately feel is what is called the "specious present." It endures, according to Titchener, for about six seconds. [Footnote: Cited by Warren, _Human Psychology_, p. 255.] "All impressions within this period of time are present to us _at once_. This makes it possible for us to perceive changes and events as well as stationary objects. The perceptual present is supplemented by the ideational present. Through the combination of perceptions with memory images, entire days, months, and even years of the past are brought together into the present." In this ideational present, vividness, as James said, is proportionate to the number of discriminations we perceive within it. Thus a vacation in which we were bored with nothing to do passes slowly while we are in it, but seems very short in memory. Great activity kills time rapidly, but in memory its duration is long. On the relation between the amount we discriminate and our time perspective James has an interesting passage: [Footnote: _Op. cit._, Vol. I, p. 639.] "We have every reason to think that creatures may possibly differ enormously in the amounts of duration which they intuitively feel, and in the fineness of the events that may fill it. Von Baer has indulged in some interesting computations of the effect of such differences in changing the aspect of Nature. Suppose we were able, within the length of a second, to note 10,000 events distinctly, instead of barely 10 as now; [Footnote: In the moving picture this effect is admirably produced by the ultra-rapid camera.] if our life were then destined to hold the same number of impressions, it might be 1000 times as short. We should live less than a month, and personally know nothing of the change of seasons. If born in winter, we should believe in summer as we now believe in the heats of the carboniferous era. The motions of organic beings would be so slow to our senses as to be inferred, not seen. The sun would stand still in the sky, the moon be almost free from change, and so on. But now reverse the hypothesis and suppose a being to get only one 1000th part of the sensations we get in a given time, and consequently to live 1000 times as long. Winters and summers will be to him like quarters of an hour. Mushrooms and the swifter growing plants will shoot into being so rapidly as to appear instantaneous creations; annual shrubs will rise and fall from the earth like restless boiling water springs; the motions of animals will be as invisible as are to us the movements of bullets and cannon-balls; the sun will scour through the sky like a meteor, leaving a fiery trail behind him, etc." 5 In his Outline of History Mr. Wells has made a gallant effort to visualize "the true proportions of historical to geological time" [Footnote: 1 Vol. II, p. 605. See also James Harvey Robinson, _The New History,_ p. 239.] On a scale which represents the time from Columbus to ourselves by three inches of space, the reader would have to walk 55 feet to see the date of the painters of the Altamara caves, 550 feet to see the earlier Neanderthalers, a mile or so to the last of the dinosaurs. More or less precise chronology does not begin until after 1000 B.C., and at that time "Sargon I of the Akkadian-Sumerian Empire was a remote memory,... more remote than is Constantine the Great from the world of the present day.... Hammurabi had been dead a thousand years... Stonehedge in England was already a thousand years old." Mr. Wells was writing with a purpose. "In the brief period of ten thousand years these units (into which men have combined) have grown from the small family tribe of the early neolithic culture to the vast united realms--vast yet still too small and partial--of the present time." Mr. Wells hoped by changing the time perspective on our present problems to change the moral perspective. Yet the astronomical measure of time, the geological, the biological, any telescopic measure which minimizes the present is not "more true" than a microscopic. Mr. Simeon Strunsky is right when he insists that "if Mr. Wells is thinking of his subtitle, The Probable Future of Mankind, he is entitled to ask for any number of centuries to work out his solution. If he is thinking of the salvaging of this western civilization, reeling under the effects of the Great War, he must think in decades and scores of years." [Footnote: In a review of _The Salvaging of Civilization, The Literary Review of the N. Y. Evening Post_, June 18, 1921, p. 5.] It all depends upon the practical purpose for which you adopt the measure. There are situations when the time perspective needs to be lengthened, and others when it needs to be shortened. The man who says that it does not matter if 15,000,000 Chinese die of famine, because in two generations the birthrate will make up the loss, has used a time perspective to excuse his inertia. A person who pauperizes a healthy young man because he is sentimentally overimpressed with an immediate difficulty has lost sight of the duration of the beggar's life. The people who for the sake of an immediate peace are willing to buy off an aggressive empire by indulging its appetite have allowed a specious present to interfere with the peace of their children. The people who will not be patient with a troublesome neighbor, who want to bring everything to a "showdown" are no less the victims of a specious present. 6 Into almost every social problem the proper calculation of time enters. Suppose, for example, it is a question of timber. Some trees grow faster than others. Then a sound forest policy is one in which the amount of each species and of each age cut in each season is made good by replanting. In so far as that calculation is correct the truest economy has been reached. To cut less is waste, and to cut more is exploitation. But there may come an emergency, say the need for aeroplane spruce in a war, when the year's allowance must be exceeded. An alert government will recognize that and regard the restoration of the balance as a charge upon the future. Coal involves a different theory of time, because coal, unlike a tree, is produced on the scale of geological time. The supply is limited. Therefore a correct social policy involves intricate computation of the available reserves of the world, the indicated possibilities, the present rate of use, the present economy of use, and the alternative fuels. But when that computation has been reached it must finally be squared with an ideal standard involving time. Suppose, for example, that engineers conclude that the present fuels are being exhausted at a certain rate; that barring new discoveries industry will have to enter a phase of contraction at some definite time in the future. We have then to determine how much thrift and self-denial we will use, after all feasible economies have been exercised, in order not to rob posterity. But what shall we consider posterity? Our grandchildren? Our great grandchildren? Perhaps we shall decide to calculate on a hundred years, believing that to be ample time for the discovery of alternative fuels if the necessity is made clear at once. The figures are, of course, hypothetical. But in calculating that way we shall be employing what reason we have. We shall be giving social time its place in public opinion. Let us now imagine a somewhat different case: a contract between a city and a trolley-car company. The company says that it will not invest its capital unless it is granted a monopoly of the main highway for ninety-nine years. In the minds of the men who make that demand ninety-nine years is so long as to mean "forever." But suppose there is reason to think that surface cars, run from a central power plant on tracks, are going out of fashion in twenty years. Then it is a most unwise contract to make, for you are virtually condemning a future generation to inferior transportation. In making such a contract the city officials lack a realizing sense of ninety-nine years. Far better to give the company a subsidy now in order to attract capital than to stimulate investment by indulging a fallacious sense of eternity. No city official and no company official has a sense of real time when he talks about ninety-nine years. Popular history is a happy hunting ground of time confusions. To the average Englishman, for example, the behavior of Cromwell, the corruption of the Act of Union, the Famine of 1847 are wrongs suffered by people long dead and done by actors long dead with whom no living person, Irish or English, has any real connection. But in the mind of a patriotic Irishman these same events are almost contemporary. His memory is like one of those historical paintings, where Virgil and Dante sit side by side conversing. These perspectives and foreshortenings are a great barrier between peoples. It is ever so difficult for a person of one tradition to remember what is contemporary in the tradition of another. Almost nothing that goes by the name of Historic Rights or Historic Wrongs can be called a truly objective view of the past. Take, for example, the Franco-German debate about Alsace-Lorraine. It all depends on the original date you select. If you start with the Rauraci and Sequani, the lands are historically part of Ancient Gaul. If you prefer Henry I, they are historically a German territory; if you take 1273 they belong to the House of Austria; if you take 1648 and the Peace of Westphalia, most of them are French; if you take Louis XIV and the year 1688 they are almost all French. If you are using the argument from history you are fairly certain to select those dates in the past which support your view of what should be done now. Arguments about "races" and nationalities often betray the same arbitrary view of time. During the war, under the influence of powerful feeling, the difference between "Teutons" on the one hand, and "Anglo-Saxons" and French on the other, was popularly believed to be an eternal difference. They had always been opposing races. Yet a generation ago, historians, like Freeman, were emphasizing the common Teutonic origin of the West European peoples, and ethnologists would certainly insist that the Germans, English, and the greater part of the French are branches of what was once a common stock. The general rule is: if you like a people to-day you come down the branches to the trunk; if you dislike them you insist that the separate branches are separate trunks. In one case you fix your attention on the period before they were distinguishable; in the other on the period after which they became distinct. And the view which fits the mood is taken as the "truth." An amiable variation is the family tree. Usually one couple are appointed the original ancestors, if possible, a couple associated with an honorific event like the Norman Conquest. That couple have no ancestors. They are not descendants. Yet they were the descendants of ancestors, and the expression that So-and-So was the founder of his house means not that he is the Adam of his family, but that he is the particular ancestor from whom it is desirable to start, or perhaps the earliest ancestor of which there is a record. But genealogical tables exhibit a deeper prejudice. Unless the female line happens to be especially remarkable descent is traced down through the males. The tree is male. At various moments females accrue to it as itinerant bees light upon an ancient apple tree. 7 But the future is the most illusive time of all. Our temptation here is to jump over necessary steps in the sequence; and as we are governed by hope or doubt, to exaggerate or to minimize the time required to complete various parts of a process. The discussion of the role to be exercised by wage-earners in the management of industry is riddled with this difficulty. For management is a word that covers many functions. [Footnote: Cf. Carter L. Goodrich, The Frontier of Control.] Some of these require no training; some require a little training; others can be learned only in a lifetime. And the truly discriminating program of industrial democratization would be one based on the proper time sequence, so that the assumption of responsibility would run parallel to a complementary program of industrial training. The proposal for a sudden dictatorship of the proletariat is an attempt to do away with the intervening time of preparation; the resistance to all sharing of responsibility an attempt to deny the alteration of human capacity in the course of time. Primitive notions of democracy, such as rotation in office, and contempt for the expert, are really nothing but the old myth that the Goddess of Wisdom sprang mature and fully armed from the brow of Jove. They assume that what it takes years to learn need not be learned at all. Whenever the phrase "backward people" is used as the basis of a policy, the conception of time is a decisive element. The Covenant of the League of Nations says, [Footnote: Article XIX.] for example, that "the character of the mandate must differ according to the stage of the development of the people," as well as on other grounds. Certain communities, it asserts, "have reached a stage of development" where their independence can be provisionally recognized, subject to advice and assistance "until such time as they are able to stand alone." The way in which the mandatories and the mandated conceive that time will influence deeply their relations. Thus in the case of Cuba the judgment of the American government virtually coincided with that of the Cuban patriots, and though there has been trouble, there is no finer page in the history of how strong powers have dealt with the weak. Oftener in that history the estimates have not coincided. Where the imperial people, whatever its public expressions, has been deeply convinced that the backwardness of the backward was so hopeless as not to be worth remedying, or so profitable that it was not desirable to remedy it, the tie has festered and poisoned the peace of the world. There have been a few cases, very few, where backwardness has meant to the ruling power the need for a program of forwardness, a program with definite standards and definite estimates of time. Far more frequently, so frequently in fact as to seem the rule, backwardness has been conceived as an intrinsic and eternal mark of inferiority. And then every attempt to be less backward has been frowned upon as the sedition, which, under these conditions, it undoubtedly is. In our own race wars we can see some of the results of the failure to realize that time would gradually obliterate the slave morality of the Negro, and that social adjustment based on this morality would begin to break down. It is hard not to picture the future as if it obeyed our present purposes, to annihilate whatever delays our desire, or immortalize whatever stands between us and our fears. 8 In putting together our public opinions, not only do we have to picture more space than we can see with our eyes, and more time than we can feel, but we have to describe and judge more people, more actions, more things than we can ever count, or vividly imagine. We have to summarize and generalize. We have to pick out samples, and treat them as typical. To pick fairly a good sample of a large class is not easy. The problem belongs to the science of statistics, and it is a most difficult affair for anyone whose mathematics is primitive, and mine remain azoic in spite of the half dozen manuals which I once devoutly imagined that I understood. All they have done for me is to make me a little more conscious of how hard it is to classify and to sample, how readily we spread a little butter over the whole universe. Some time ago a group of social workers in Sheffield, England, started out to substitute an accurate picture of the mental equipment of the workers of that city for the impressionistic one they had. [Footnote: _The Equipment of the Worker_.] They wished to say, with some decent grounds for saying it, how the workers of Sheffield were equipped. They found, as we all find the moment we refuse to let our first notion prevail, that they were beset with complications. Of the test they employed nothing need be said here except that it was a large questionnaire. For the sake of the illustration, assume that the questions were a fair test of mental equipment for English city life. Theoretically, then, those questions should have been put to every member of the working class. But it is not so easy to know who are the working class. However, assume again that the census knows how to classify them. Then there were roughly 104,000 men and 107,000 women who ought to have been questioned. They possessed the answers which would justify or refute the casual phrase about the "ignorant workers" or the "intelligent workers." But nobody could think of questioning the whole two hundred thousand. So the social workers consulted an eminent statistician, Professor Bowley. He advised them that not less than 408 men and 408 women would prove to be a fair sample. According to mathematical calculation this number would not show a greater deviation from the average than 1 in 22. [Footnote: _Op. cit._, p. 65.] They had, therefore, to question at least 816 people before they could pretend to talk about the average workingman. But which 816 people should they approach? "We might have gathered particulars concerning workers to whom one or another of us had a pre-inquiry access; we might have worked through philanthropic gentlemen and ladies who were in contact with certain sections of workers at a club, a mission, an infirmary, a place of worship, a settlement. But such a method of selection would produce entirely worthless results. The workers thus selected would not be in any sense representative of what is popularly called 'the average run of workers;' they would represent nothing but the little coteries to which they belonged. "The right way of securing 'victims,' to which at immense cost of time and labour we rigidly adhered, is to get hold of your workers by some 'neutral' or 'accidental' or 'random' method of approach." This they did. And after all these precautions they came to no more definite conclusion than that on their classification and according to their questionnaire, among 200,000 Sheffield workers "about one quarter" were "well equipped," "approaching three-quarters" were "inadequately equipped" and that "about one-fifteenth" were "mal-equipped." Compare this conscientious and almost pedantic method of arriving at an opinion, with our usual judgments about masses of people, about the volatile Irish, and the logical French, and the disciplined Germans, and the ignorant Slavs, and the honest Chinese, and the untrustworthy Japanese, and so on and so on. All these are generalizations drawn from samples, but the samples are selected by a method that statistically is wholly unsound. Thus the employer will judge labor by the most troublesome employee or the most docile that he knows, and many a radical group has imagined that it was a fair sample of the working class. How many women's views on the "servant question" are little more than the reflection of their own treatment of their servants? The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which supports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it the representative of a whole class. A great deal of confusion arises when people decline to classify themselves as we have classified them. Prophecy would be so much easier if only they would stay where we put them. But, as a matter of fact, a phrase like the working class will cover only some of the truth for a part of the time. When you take all the people, below a certain level of income, and call them the working class, you cannot help assuming that the people so classified will behave in accordance with your stereotype. Just who those people are you are not quite certain. Factory hands and mine workers fit in more or less, but farm hands, small farmers, peddlers, little shop keepers, clerks, servants, soldiers, policemen, firemen slip out of the net. The tendency, when you are appealing to the "working class," is to fix your attention on two or three million more or less confirmed trade unionists, and treat them as Labor; the other seventeen or eighteen million, who might qualify statistically, are tacitly endowed with the point of view ascribed to the organized nucleus. How very misleading it was to impute to the British working class in 1918-1921 the point of view expressed in the resolutions of the Trades Union Congress or in the pamphlets written by intellectuals. The stereotype of Labor as Emancipator selects the evidence which supports itself and rejects the other. And so parallel with the real movements of working men there exists a fiction of the Labor Movement, in which an idealized mass moves towards an ideal goal. The fiction deals with the future. In the future possibilities are almost indistinguishable from probabilities and probabilities from certainties. If the future is long enough, the human will might turn what is just conceivable into what is very likely, and what is likely into what is sure to happen. James called this the faith ladder, and said that "it is a slope of goodwill on which in the larger questions of life men habitually live." [Footnote: William James, _Some Problems of Philosophy_, p. 224.] "1. There is nothing absurd in a certain view of the world being true, nothing contradictory; 2. It _might_ have been true under certain conditions; 3. It _may_ be true even now; 4. It is _fit_ to be true; 5. It _ought_ to be true; 6. It _must_ be true; 7. It _shall_ be true, at any rate true for me." And, as he added in another place, [Footnote: _A Pluralistic Universe_, p. 329.] "your acting thus may in certain special cases be a means of making it securely true in the end." Yet no one would have insisted more than he, that, so far as we know how, we must avoid substituting the goal for the starting point, must avoid reading back into the present what courage, effort and skill might create in the future. Yet this truism is inordinately difficult to live by, because every one of us is so little trained in the selection of our samples. If we believe that a certain thing ought to be true, we can almost always find either an instance where it is true, or someone who believes it ought to be true. It is ever so hard when a concrete fact illustrates a hope to weigh that fact properly. When the first six people we meet agree with us, it is not easy to remember that they may all have read the same newspaper at breakfast. And yet we cannot send out a questionnaire to 816 random samples every time we wish to estimate a probability. In dealing with any large mass of facts, the presumption is against our having picked true samples, if we are acting on a casual impression. 9 And when we try to go one step further in order to seek the causes and effects of unseen and complicated affairs, haphazard opinion is very tricky. There are few big issues in public life where cause and effect are obvious at once. They are not obvious to scholars who have devoted years, let us say, to studying business cycles, or price and wage movements, or the migration and the assimilation of peoples, or the diplomatic purposes of foreign powers. Yet somehow we are all supposed to have opinions on these matters, and it is not surprising that the commonest form of reasoning is the intuitive, post hoc ergo propter hoc. The more untrained a mind, the more readily it works out a theory that two things which catch its attention at the same time are causally connected. We have already dwelt at some length on the way things reach our attention. We have seen that our access to information is obstructed and uncertain, and that our apprehension is deeply controlled by our stereotypes; that the evidence available to our reason is subject to illusions of defense, prestige, morality, space, time, and sampling. We must note now that with this initial taint, public opinions are still further beset, because in a series of events seen mostly through stereotypes, we readily accept sequence or parallelism as equivalent to cause and effect. This is most likely to happen when two ideas that come together arouse the same feeling. If they come together they are likely to arouse the same feeling; and even when they do not arrive together a powerful feeling attached to one is likely to suck out of all the corners of memory any idea that feels about the same. Thus everything painful tends to collect into one system of cause and effect, and likewise everything pleasant. "IId IIm (1675) This day I hear that G[od] has shot an arrow into the midst of this Town. The small pox is in an ordinary ye sign of the Swan, the ordinary Keepers name is Windsor. His daughter is sick of the disease. It is observable that this disease begins at an alehouse, to testify God's displeasure agt the sin of drunkenness & yt of multiplying alehouses!" [Footnote: _The Heart of the Puritan_, p. 177, edited by Elizabeth Deering Hanscom.] Thus Increase Mather, and thus in the year 1919 a distinguished Professor of Celestial Mechanics discussing the Einstein theory: "It may well be that.... Bolshevist uprisings are in reality the visible objects of some underlying, deep, mental disturbance, world-wide in character.... This same spirit of unrest has invaded science." [Footnote: Cited in _The New Republic_, Dec. 24, 1919, p. 120.] In hating one thing violently, we readily associate with it as cause or effect most of the other things we hate or fear violently. They may have no more connection than smallpox and alehouses, or Relativity and Bolshevism, but they are bound together in the same emotion. In a superstitious mind, like that of the Professor of Celestial Mechanics, emotion is a stream of molten lava which catches and imbeds whatever it touches. When you excavate in it you find, as in a buried city, all sorts of objects ludicrously entangled in each other. Anything can be related to anything else, provided it feels like it. Nor has a mind in such a state any way of knowing how preposterous it is. Ancient fears, reinforced by more recent fears, coagulate into a snarl of fears where anything that is dreaded is the cause of anything else that is dreaded. 10 Generally it all culminates in the fabrication of a system of all evil, and of another which is the system of all good. Then our love of the absolute shows itself. For we do not like qualifying adverbs. [Footnote: _Cf_. Freud's discussion of absolutism in dreams, _Interpretation of Dreams_, Chapter VI, especially pp. 288, _et seq_.] They clutter up sentences, and interfere with irresistible feeling. We prefer most to more, least to less, we dislike the words rather, perhaps, if, or, but, toward, not quite, almost, temporarily, partly. Yet nearly every opinion about public affairs needs to be deflated by some word of this sort. But in our free moments everything tends to behave absolutely,--one hundred percent, everywhere, forever. It is not enough to say that our side is more right than the enemy's, that our victory will help democracy more than his. One must insist that our victory will end war forever, and make the world safe for democracy. And when the war is over, though we have thwarted a greater evil than those which still afflict us, the relativity of the result fades out, the absoluteness of the present evil overcomes our spirit, and we feel that we are helpless because we have not been irresistible. Between omnipotence and impotence the pendulum swings. Real space, real time, real numbers, real connections, real weights are lost. The perspective and the background and the dimensions of action are clipped and frozen in the stereotype. PART IV INTERESTS CHAPTER 11. THE ENLISTING OF INTEREST " 12. SELF-INTEREST RECONSIDERED CHAPTER XI THE ENLISTING OF INTEREST I BUT the human mind is not a film which registers once and for all each impression that comes through its shutters and lenses. The human mind is endlessly and persistently creative. The pictures fade or combine, are sharpened here, condensed there, as we make them more completely our own. They do not lie inert upon the surface of the mind, but are reworked by the poetic faculty into a personal expression of ourselves. We distribute the emphasis and participate in the action. In order to do this we tend to personalize quantities, and to dramatize relations. As some sort of allegory, except in acutely sophisticated minds, the affairs of the world are represented. Social Movements, Economic Forces, National Interests, Public Opinion are treated as persons, or persons like the Pope, the President, Lenin, Morgan or the King become ideas and institutions. The deepest of all the stereotypes is the human stereotype which imputes human nature to inanimate or collective things. The bewildering variety of our impressions, even after they have been censored in all kinds of ways, tends to force us to adopt the greater economy of the allegory. So great is the multitude of things that we cannot keep them vividly in mind. Usually, then, we name them, and let the name stand for the whole impression. But a name is porous. Old meanings slip out and new ones slip in, and the attempt to retain the full meaning of the name is almost as fatiguing as trying to recall the original impressions. Yet names are a poor currency for thought. They are too empty, too abstract, too inhuman. And so we begin to see the name through some personal stereotype, to read into it, finally to see in it the incarnation of some human quality. Yet human qualities are themselves vague and fluctuating. They are best remembered by a physical sign. And therefore, the human qualities we tend to ascribe to the names of our impressions, themselves tend to be visualized in physical metaphors. The people of England, the history of England, condense into England, and England becomes John Bull, who is jovial and fat, not too clever, but well able to take care of himself. The migration of a people may appear to some as the meandering of a river, and to others like a devastating flood. The courage people display may be objectified as a rock; their purpose as a road, their doubts as forks of the road, their difficulties as ruts and rocks, their progress as a fertile valley. If they mobilize their dread-naughts they unsheath a sword. If their army surrenders they are thrown to earth. If they are oppressed they are on the rack or under the harrow. When public affairs are popularized in speeches, headlines, plays, moving pictures, cartoons, novels, statues or paintings, their transformation into a human interest requires first abstraction from the original, and then animation of what has been abstracted. We cannot be much interested in, or much moved by, the things we do not see. Of public affairs each of us sees very little, and therefore, they remain dull and unappetizing, until somebody, with the makings of an artist, has translated them into a moving picture. Thus the abstraction, imposed upon our knowledge of reality by all the limitations of our access and of our prejudices, is compensated. Not being omnipresent and omniscient we cannot see much of what we have to think and talk about. Being flesh and blood we will not feed on words and names and gray theory. Being artists of a sort we paint pictures, stage dramas and draw cartoons out of the abstractions. Or, if possible, we find gifted men who can visualize for us. For people are not all endowed to the same degree with the pictorial faculty. Yet one may, I imagine, assert with Bergson that the practical intelligence is most closely adapted to spatial qualities. [Footnote: _Creative Evolution_, Chs. III, IV.] A "clear" thinker is almost always a good visualizer. But for that same reason, because he is "cinematographic," he is often by that much external and insensitive. For the people who have intuition, which is probably another name for musical or muscular perception, often appreciate the quality of an event and the inwardness of an act far better than the visualizer. They have more understanding when the crucial element is a desire that is never crudely overt, and appears on the surface only in a veiled gesture, or in a rhythm of speech. Visualization may catch the stimulus and the result. But the intermediate and internal is often as badly caricatured by a visualizer, as is the intention of the composer by an enormous soprano in the sweet maiden's part. Nevertheless, though they have often a peculiar justice, intuitions remain highly private and largely incommunicable. But social intercourse depends on communication, and while a person can often steer his own life with the utmost grace by virtue of his intuitions, he usually has great difficulty in making them real to others. When he talks about them they sound like a sheaf of mist. For while intuition does give a fairer perception of human feeling, the reason with its spatial and tactile prejudice can do little with that perception. Therefore, where action depends on whether a number of people are of one mind, it is probably true that in the first instance no idea is lucid for practical decision until it has visual or tactile value. But it is also true, that no visual idea is significant to us until it has enveloped some stress of our own personality. Until it releases or resists, depresses or enhances, some craving of our own, it remains one of the objects which do not matter. 2 Pictures have always been the surest way of conveying an idea, and next in order, words that call up pictures in memory. But the idea conveyed is not fully our own until we have identified ourselves with some aspect of the picture. The identification, or what Vernon Lee has called empathy, [Footnote: _Beauty and Ugliness_.] may be almost infinitely subtle and symbolic. The mimicry may be performed without our being aware of it, and sometimes in a way that would horrify those sections of our personality which support our self-respect. In sophisticated people the participation may not be in the fate of the hero, but in the fate of the whole idea to which both hero and villain are essential. But these are refinements. In popular representation the handles for identification are almost always marked. You know who the hero is at once. And no work promises to be easily popular where the marking is not definite and the choice clear. [Footnote: A fact which bears heavily on the character of news. _Cf_. Part VII.] But that is not enough. The audience must have something to do, and the contemplation of the true, the good and the beautiful is not something to do. In order not to sit inertly in the presence of the picture, and this applies as much to newspaper stories as to fiction and the cinema, the audience must be exercised by the image. Now there are two forms of exercise which far transcend all others, both as to ease with which they are aroused, and eagerness with which stimuli for them are sought. They are sexual passion and fighting, and the two have so many associations with each other, blend into each other so intimately, that a fight about sex outranks every other theme in the breadth of its appeal. There is none so engrossing or so careless of all distinctions of culture and frontiers. The sexual motif figures hardly at all in American political imagery. Except in certain minor ecstasies of war, in an occasional scandal, or in phases of the racial conflict with Negroes or Asiatics, to speak of it at all would seem far-fetched. Only in moving pictures, novels, and some magazine fiction are industrial relations, business competition, politics, and diplomacy tangled up with the girl and the other woman. But the fighting motif appears at every turn. Politics is interesting when there is a fight, or as we say, an issue. And in order to make politics popular, issues have to be found, even when in truth and justice, there are none,--none, in the sense that the differences of judgment, or principle, or fact, do not call for the enlistment of pugnacity. [Footnote: _Cf_. Frances Taylor Patterson, _Cinema Craftsmanship_, pp. 31-32. "III. If the plot lacks suspense: 1. Add an antagonist, 2. Add an obstacle, 3. Add a problem, 4. Emphasize one of the questions in the minds of the spectator.,.."] But where pugnacity is not enlisted, those of us who are not directly involved find it hard to keep up our interest. For those who are involved the absorption may be real enough to hold them even when no issue is involved. They may be exercised by sheer joy in activity, or by subtle rivalry or invention. But for those to whom the whole problem is external and distant, these other faculties do not easily come into play. In order that the faint image of the affair shall mean something to them, they must be allowed to exercise the love of struggle, suspense, and victory. Miss Patterson [Footnote: _Op. cit._, pp. 6-7.] insists that "suspense... constitutes the difference between the masterpieces in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the pictures at the Rivoli or the Rialto Theatres." Had she made it clear that the masterpieces lack either an easy mode of identification or a theme popular for this generation, she would be wholly right in saying that this "explains why the people straggle into the Metropolitan by twos and threes and struggle into the Rialto and Rivoli by hundreds. The twos and threes look at a picture in the Art Museum for less than ten minutes--unless they chance to be art students, critics, or connoisseurs. The hundreds in the Rivoli or the Rialto look at the picture for more than an hour. As far as beauty is concerned there can be no comparison of the merits of the two pictures. Yet the motion picture draws more people and holds them at attention longer than do the masterpieces, not through any intrinsic merit of its own, but because it depicts unfolding events, the outcome of which the audience is breathlessly waiting. It possesses the element of struggle, which never fails to arouse suspense." In order then that the distant situation shall not be a gray flicker on the edge of attention, it should be capable of translation into pictures in which the opportunity for identification is recognizable. Unless that happens it will interest only a few for a little while. It will belong to the sights seen but not felt, to the sensations that beat on our sense organs, and are not acknowledged. We have to take sides. We have to be able to take sides. In the recesses of our being we must step out of the audience on to the stage, and wrestle as the hero for the victory of good over evil. We must breathe into the allegory the breath of our life. 3 And so, in spite of the critics, a verdict is rendered in the old controversy about realism and romanticism. Our popular taste is to have the drama originate in a setting realistic enough to make identification plausible and to have it terminate in a setting romantic enough to be desirable, but not so romantic as to be inconceivable. In between the beginning and the end the canons are liberal, but the true beginning and the happy ending are landmarks. The moving picture audience rejects fantasy logically developed, because in pure fantasy there is no familiar foothold in the age of machines. It rejects realism relentlessly pursued because it does not enjoy defeat in a struggle that has become its own. What will be accepted as true, as realistic, as good, as evil, as desirable, is not eternally fixed. These are fixed by stereotypes, acquired from earlier experiences and carried over into judgment of later ones. And, therefore, if the financial investment in each film and in popular magazines were not so exorbitant as to require instant and widespread popularity, men of spirit and imagination would be able to use the screen and the periodical, as one might dream of their being used, to enlarge and to refine, to verify and criticize the repertory of images with which our imaginations work. But, given the present costs, the men who make moving pictures, like the church and the court painters of other ages, must adhere to the stereotypes that they find, or pay the price of frustrating expectation. The stereotypes can be altered, but not in time to guarantee success when the film is released six months from now. The men who do alter the stereotypes, the pioneering artists and critics, are naturally depressed and angered at managers and editors who protect their investments. They are risking everything, then why not the others? That is not quite fair, for in their righteous fury they have forgotten their own rewards, which are beyond any that their employers can hope to feel. They could not, and would not if they could, change places. And they have forgotten another thing in the unceasing war with Philistia. They have forgotten that they are measuring their own success by standards that artists and wise men of the past would never have dreamed of invoking. They are asking for circulations and audiences that were never considered by any artist until the last few generations. And when they do not get them, they are disappointed. Those who catch on, like Sinclair Lewis in "Main Street," are men who have succeeded in projecting definitely what great numbers of other people were obscurely trying to say inside their heads. "You have said it for me." They establish a new form which is then endlessly copied until it, too, becomes a stereotype of perception. The next pioneer finds it difficult to make the public see Main Street any other way. And he, like the forerunners of Sinclair Lewis, has a quarrel with the public. This quarrel is due not only to the conflict of stereotypes, but to the pioneering artist's reverence for his material. Whatever the plane he chooses, on that plane he remains. If he is dealing with the inwardness of an event he follows it to its conclusion regardless of the pain it causes. He will not tag his fantasy to help anyone, or cry peace where there is no peace. There is his America. But big audiences have no stomach for such severity. They are more interested in themselves than in anything else in the world. The selves in which they are interested are the selves that have been revealed by schools and by tradition. They insist that a work of art shall be a vehicle with a step where they can climb aboard, and that they shall ride, not according to the contours of the country, but to a land where for an hour there are no clocks to punch and no dishes to wash. To satisfy these demands there exists an intermediate class of artists who are able and willing to confuse the planes, to piece together a realistic-romantic compound out of the inventions of greater men, and, as Miss Patterson advises, give "what real life so rarely does-the triumphant resolution of a set of difficulties; the anguish of virtue and the triumph of sin... changed to the glorifications of virtue and the eternal punishment of its enemy." [Footnote: _Op. cit._, p. 46. "The hero and heroine must in general possess youth, beauty, goodness, exalted self-sacrifice, and unalterable constancy."] 4 The ideologies of politics obey these rules. The foothold of realism is always there. The picture of some real evil, such as the German threat or class conflict, is recognizable in the argument. There is a description of some aspect of the world which is convincing because it agrees with familiar ideas. But as the ideology deals with an unseen future, as well as with a tangible present, it soon crosses imperceptibly the frontier of verification. In describing the present you are more or less tied down to common experience. In describing what nobody has experienced you are bound to let go. You stand at Armageddon, more or less, but you battle for the Lord, perhaps.... A true beginning, true according to the standards prevailing, and a happy ending. Every Marxist is hard as nails about the brutalities of the present, and mostly sunshine about the day after the dictatorship. So were the war propagandists: there was not a bestial quality in human nature they did not find everywhere east of the Rhine, or west of it if they were Germans. The bestiality was there all right. But after the victory, eternal peace. Plenty of this is quite cynically deliberate. For the skilful propagandist knows that while you must start with a plausible analysis, you must not keep on analyzing, because the tedium of real political accomplishment will soon destroy interest. So the propagandist exhausts the interest in reality by a tolerably plausible beginning, and then stokes up energy for a long voyage by brandishing a passport to heaven. The formula works when the public fiction enmeshes itself with a private urgency. But once enmeshed, in the heat of battle, the original self and the original stereotype which effected the junction may be wholly lost to sight. CHAPTER XII SELF-INTEREST RECONSIDERED 1 THEREFORE, the identical story is not the same story to all who hear it. Each will enter it at a slightly different point, since no two experiences are exactly alike; he will reenact it in his own way, and transfuse it with his own feelings. Sometimes an artist of compelling skill will force us to enter into lives altogether unlike our own, lives that seem at first glance dull, repulsive, or eccentric. But that is rare. In almost every story that catches our attention we become a character and act out the role with a pantomime of our own. The pantomime may be subtle or gross, may be sympathetic to the story, or only crudely analogous; but it will consist of those feelings which are aroused by our conception of the role. And so, the original theme as it circulates, is stressed, twisted, and embroidered by all the minds through which it goes. It is as if a play of Shakespeare's were rewritten each time it is performed with all the changes of emphasis and meaning that the actors and audience inspired. Something very like that seems to have happened to the stories in the sagas before they were definitively written down. In our time the printed record, such as it is, checks the exuberance of each individual's fancy. But against rumor there is little or no checks and the original story, true or invented, grows wings and horns, hoofs and beaks, as the artist in each gossip works upon it. The first narrator's account does not keep its shape and proportions. It is edited and revised by all who played with it as they heard it, used it for day dreams, and passed it on. [Footnote: For an interesting example, see the case described by C. J. Jung, _Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse_, 1911, Vol. I, p. 81. Translated by Constance Long, in _Analytical Psychology_, Ch. IV.] Consequently the more mixed the audience, the greater will be the variation in the response. For as the audience grows larger, the number of common words diminishes. Thus the common factors in the story become more abstract. This story, lacking precise character of its own, is heard by people of highly varied character. They give it their own character. 2 The character they give it varies not only with sex and age, race and religion and social position, but within these cruder classifications, according to the inherited and acquired constitution of the individual, his faculties, his career, the progress of his career, an emphasized aspect of his career, his moods and tenses, or his place on the board in any of the games of life that he is playing. What reaches him of public affairs, a few lines of print, some photographs, anecdotes, and some casual experience of his own, he conceives through his set patterns and recreates with his own emotions. He does not take his personal problems as partial samples of the greater environment. He takes his stories of the greater environment as a mimic enlargement of his private life. But not necessarily of that private life as he would describe it to himself. For in his private life the choices are narrow, and much of himself is squeezed down and out of sight where it cannot directly govern his outward behavior. And thus, beside the more average people who project the happiness of their own lives into a general good will, or their unhappiness into suspicion and hate, there are the outwardly happy people who are brutal everywhere but in their own circle, as well as the people who, the more they detest their families, their friends, their jobs, the more they overflow with love for mankind. As you descend from generalities to detail, it becomes more apparent that the character in which men deal with their affairs is not fixed. Possibly their different selves have a common stem and common qualities, but the branches and the twigs have many forms. Nobody confronts every situation with the same character. His character varies in some degree through the sheer influence of time and accumulating memory, since he is not an automaton. His character varies, not only in time, but according to circumstance. The legend of the solitary Englishman in the South Seas, who invariably shaves and puts on a black tie for dinner, bears witness to his own intuitive and civilized fear of losing the character which he has acquired. So do diaries, and albums, and souvenirs, old letters, and old clothes, and the love of unchanging routine testify to our sense of how hard it is to step twice in the Heraclitan river. There is no one self always at work. And therefore it is of great importance in the formation of any public opinion, what self is engaged. The Japanese ask the right to settle in California. Clearly it makes a whole lot of difference whether you conceive the demand as a desire to grow fruit or to marry the white man's daughter. If two nations are disputing a piece of territory, it matters greatly whether the people regard the negotiations as a real estate deal, an attempt to humiliate them, or, in the excited and provocative language which usually enclouds these arguments, as a rape. For the self which takes charge of the instincts when we are thinking about lemons or distant acres is very different from the self which appears when we are thinking even potentially as the outraged head of a family. In one case the private feeling which enters into the opinion is tepid, in the other, red hot. And so while it is so true as to be mere tautology that "self-interest" determines opinion, the statement is not illuminating, until we know which self out of many selects and directs the interest so conceived. Religious teaching and popular wisdom have always distinguished several personalities in each human being. They have been called the Higher and Lower, the Spiritual and the Material, the Divine and the Carnal; and although we may not wholly accept this classification, we cannot fail to observe that distinctions exist. Instead of two antithetic selves, a modern man would probably note a good many not so sharply separated. He would say that the distinction drawn by theologians was arbitrary and external, because many different selves were grouped together as higher provided they fitted into the theologian's categories, but he would recognize nevertheless that here was an authentic clue to the variety of human nature. We have learned to note many selves, and to be a little less ready to issue judgment upon them. We understand that we see the same body, but often a different man, depending on whether he is dealing with a social equal, a social inferior, or a social superior; on whether he is making love to a woman he is eligible to marry, or to one whom he is not; on whether he is courting a woman, or whether he considers himself her proprietor; on whether he is dealing with his children, his partners, his most trusted subordinates, the boss who can make him or break him; on whether he is struggling for the necessities of life, or successful; on whether he is dealing with a friendly alien, or a despised one; on whether he is in great danger, or in perfect security; on whether he is alone in Paris or among his family in Peoria. People differ widely, of course, in the consistency of their characters, so widely that they may cover the whole gamut of differences between a split soul like Dr. Jekyll's and an utterly singleminded Brand, Parsifal, or Don Quixote. If the selves are too unrelated, we distrust the man; if they are too inflexibly on one track we find him arid, stubborn, or eccentric. In the repertory of characters, meager for the isolated and the self-sufficient, highly varied for the adaptable, there is a whole range of selves, from that one at the top which we should wish God to see, to those at the bottom that we ourselves do not dare to see. There may be octaves for the family,--father, Jehovah, tyrant,--husband, proprietor, male,--lover, lecher,--for the occupation,--employer, master, exploiter,--competitor, intriguer, enemy,--subordinate, courtier, snob. Some never come out into public view. Others are called out only by exceptional circumstances. But the characters take their form from a man's conception of the situation in which he finds himself. If the environment to which he is sensitive happens to be the smart set, he will imitate the character he conceives to be appropriate. That character will tend to act as modulator of his bearing, his speech, his choice of subjects, his preferences. Much of the comedy of life lies here, in the way people imagine their characters for situations that are strange to them: the professor among promoters, the deacon at a poker game, the cockney in the country, the paste diamond among real diamonds. 3 Into the making of a man's characters there enters a variety of influences not easily separated. [Footnote: For an interesting sketch of the more noteworthy early attempts to explain character, see the chapter called "The Antecedents of the Study of Character and Temperament," in Joseph Jastrow's _The Psychology of Conviction_.] The analysis in its fundamentals is perhaps still as doubtful as it was in the fifth century B. C. when Hippocrates formulated the doctrine of the humors, distinguished the sanguine, the melancholic, the choleric, and the phlegmatic dispositions, and ascribed them to the blood, the black bile, the yellow bile, and the phlegm. The latest theories, such as one finds them in Cannon, [Footnote: _Bodily Changes in Pleasure, Pain and Anger_.] Adler, [Footnote: _The Neurotic Constitution_.] Kempf, [Footnote: _The Autonomic Functions and the Personality; Psychopathology. Cf_. also Louis Berman: _The Glands Regulating Personality_.] appear to follow much the same scent, from the outward behavior and the inner consciousness to the physiology of the body. But in spite of an immensely improved technique, no one would be likely to claim that there are settled conclusions which enable us to set apart nature from nurture, and abstract the native character from the acquired. It is only in what Joseph Jastrow has called the slums of psychology that the explanation of character is regarded as a fixed system to be applied by phrenologists, palmists, fortune-tellers, mind-readers, and a few political professors. There you will still find it asserted that "the Chinese are fond of colors, and have their eyebrows much vaulted" while "the heads of the Calmucks are depressed from above, but very large laterally, about the organ which gives the inclination to acquire; and this nation's propensity to steal, etc., is admitted." [Footnote: _Jastrow, op. cit._, p. 156.] The modern psychologists are disposed to regard the outward behavior of an adult as an equation between a number of variables, such as the resistance of the environment, repressed cravings of several maturities, and the manifest personality. [Footnote: Formulated by Kempf, _Psychopathology_, p. 74, as follows: Manifest wishes } over } Later Repressed Wishes } Over } opposed by the resistance of the Adolescent Repressed Wishes } environment=Behavior Over } Preadolescent Repressed Wishes } ] They permit us to suppose, though I have not seen the notion formulated, that the repression or control of cravings is fixed not in relation to the whole person all the time, but more or less in respect to his various selves. There are things he will not do as a patriot that he will do when he is not thinking of himself as a patriot. No doubt there are impulses, more or less incipient in childhood, that are never exercised again in the whole of a man's life, except as they enter obscurely and indirectly into combination with other impulses. But even that is not certain, since repression is not irretrievable. For just as psychoanalysis can bring to the surface a buried impulse, so can social situations. [Footnote: _Cf._ the very interesting book of Everett Dean Martin, _The Behavior of Crowds_. Also Hobbes, _Leviathan_, Part II, Ch. 25. "For the passions of men, which asunder are moderate, as the heat of one brand, in an assembly are like many brands, that inflame one another, especially when they blow one another with orations...." LeBon, _The Crowd_, elaborates this observation of Hobbes's.] It is only when our surroundings remain normal and placid, when what is expected of us by those we meet is consistent, that we live without knowledge of many of our dispositions. When the unexpected occurs, we learn much about ourselves that we did not know. The selves, which we construct with the help of all who influence us, prescribe which impulses, how emphasized, how directed, are appropriate to certain typical situations for which we have learned prepared attitudes. For a recognizable type of experience, there is a character which controls the outward manifestations of our whole being. Murderous hate is, for example, controlled in civil life. Though you choke with rage, you must not display it as a parent, child, employer, politician. You would not wish to display a personality that exudes murderous hate. You frown upon it, and the people around you also frown. But if a war breaks out, the chances are that everybody you admire will begin to feel the justification of killing and hating. At first the vent for these feelings is very narrow. The selves which come to the front are those which are attuned to a real love of country, the kind of feeling that you find in Rupert Brooke, and in Sir Edward Grey's speech on August 3,1914, and in President Wilson's address to Congress on April 2, 1917. The reality of war is still abhorred, and what war actually means is learned but gradually. For previous wars are only transfigured memories. In that honeymoon phase, the realists of war rightly insist that the nation is not yet awake, and reassure each other by saying: "Wait for the casualty lists." Gradually the impulse to kill becomes the main business, and all those characters which might modify it, disintegrate. The impulse becomes central, is sanctified, and gradually turns unmanageable. It seeks a vent not alone on the idea of the enemy, which is all the enemy most people actually see during the war, but upon all the persons and objects and ideas that have always been hateful. Hatred of the enemy is legitimate. These other hatreds have themselves legitimized by the crudest analogy, and by what, once having cooled off, we recognize as the most far-fetched analogy. It takes a long time to subdue so powerful an impulse once it goes loose. And therefore, when the war is over in fact, it takes time and struggle to regain self-control, and to deal with the problems of peace in civilian character. Modern war, as Mr. Herbert Croly has said, is inherent in the political structure of modern society, but outlawed by its ideals. For the civilian population there exists no ideal code of conduct in war, such as the soldier still possesses and chivalry once prescribed. The civilians are without standards, except those that the best of them manage to improvise. The only standards they possess make war an accursed thing. Yet though the war may be a necessary one, no moral training has prepared them for it. Only their higher selves have a code and patterns, and when they have to act in what the higher regards as a lower character profound disturbance results. The preparation of characters for all the situations in which men may find themselves is one function of a moral education. Clearly then, it depends for its success upon the sincerity and knowledge with which the environment has been explored. For in a world falsely conceived, our own characters are falsely conceived, and we misbehave. So the moralist must choose: either he must offer a pattern of conduct for every phase of life, however distasteful some of its phases may be, or he must guarantee that his pupils will never be confronted by the situations he disapproves. Either he must abolish war, or teach people how to wage it with the greatest psychic economy; either he must abolish the economic life of man and feed him with stardust and dew, or he must investigate all the perplexities of economic life and offer patterns of conduct which are applicable in a world where no man is self-supporting. But that is just what the prevailing moral culture so generally refuses to do. In its best aspects it is diffident at the awful complication of the modern world. In its worst, it is just cowardly. Now whether the moralists study economics and politics and psychology, or whether the social scientists educate the moralists is no great matter. Each generation will go unprepared into the modern world, unless it has been taught to conceive the kind of personality it will have to be among the issues it will most likely meet. 4 Most of this the naive view of self-interest leaves out of account. It forgets that self and interest are both conceived somehow, and that for the most part they are conventionally conceived. The ordinary doctrine of self-interest usually omits altogether the cognitive function. So insistent is it on the fact that human beings finally refer all things to themselves, that it does not stop to notice that men's ideas of all things and of themselves are not instinctive. They are acquired. Thus it may be true enough, as James Madison wrote in the tenth paper of the Federalist, that "a landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views." But if you examine the context of Madison's paper, you discover something which I think throws light upon that view of instinctive fatalism, called sometimes the economic interpretation of history. Madison was arguing for the federal constitution, and "among the numerous advantages of the union" he set forth "its tendency to break and control the violence of faction." Faction was what worried Madison. And the causes of faction he traced to "the nature of man," where latent dispositions are "brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for preeminence and power, or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other, than to coöperate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the _most common_ and _durable_ source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property." Madison's theory, therefore, is that the propensity to faction may be kindled by religious or political opinions, by leaders, but most commonly by the distribution of property. Yet note that Madison claims only that men are divided by their relation to property. He does not say that their property and their opinions are cause and effect, but that differences of property are the causes of differences of opinion. The pivotal word in Madison's argument is "different." From the existence of differing economic situations you can tentatively infer a probable difference of opinions, but you cannot infer what those opinions will necessarily be. This reservation cuts radically into the claims of the theory as that theory is usually held. That the reservation is necessary, the enormous contradiction between dogma and practice among orthodox socialists bears witness. They argue that the next stage in social evolution is the inevitable result of the present stage. But in order to produce that inevitable next stage they organize and agitate to produce "class consciousness." Why, one asks, does not the economic situation produce consciousness of class in everybody? It just doesn't, that is all. And therefore the proud claim will not stand that the socialist philosophy rests on prophetic insight into destiny. It rests on an hypothesis about human nature. [Footnote: _Cf._ Thorstein Veblen, "The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx and His Followers," in _The Place of Science in Modern Civilization,_ esp. pp. 413-418.] The socialist practice is based on a belief that if men are economically situated in different ways, they can then be induced to hold certain views. Undoubtedly they often come to believe, or can be induced to believe different things, as they are, for example, landlords or tenants, employees or employers, skilled or unskilled laborers, wageworkers or salaried men, buyers or sellers, farmers or middle-men, exporters or importers, creditors or debtors. Differences of income make a profound difference in contact and opportunity. Men who work at machines will tend, as Mr. Thorstein Veblen has so brilliantly demonstrated, [Footnote: _The Theory of Business Enterprise_.] to interpret experience differently from handicraftsmen or traders. If this were all that the materialistic conception of politics asserted, the theory would be an immensely valuable hypothesis that every interpreter of opinion would have to use. But he would often have to abandon the theory, and he would always have to be on guard. For in trying to explain a certain public opinion, it is rarely obvious which of a man's many social relations is effecting a particular opinion. Does Smith's opinion arise from his problems as a landlord, an importer, an owner of railway shares, or an employer? Does Jones's opinion, Jones being a weaver in a textile mill, come from the attitude of his boss, the competition of new immigrants, his wife's grocery bills, or the ever present contract with the firm which is selling him a Ford car and a house and lot on the instalment plan? Without special inquiry you cannot tell. The economic determinist cannot tell. A man's various economic contacts limit or enlarge the range of his opinions. But which of the contacts, in what guise, on what theory, the materialistic conception of politics cannot predict. It can predict, with a high degree of probability, that if a man owns a factory, his ownership will figure in those opinions which seem to have some bearing on that factory. But how the function of being an owner will figure, no economic determinist as such, can tell you. There is no fixed set of opinions on any question that go with being the owner of a factory, no views on labor, on property, on management, let alone views on less immediate matters. The determinist can predict that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the owner will resist attempts to deprive him of ownership, or that he will favor legislation which he thinks will increase his profits. But since there is no magic in ownership which enables a business man to know what laws will make him prosper, there is no chain of cause and effect described in economic materialism which enables anyone to prophesy whether the owner will take a long view or a short one, a competitive or a cooperative. Did the theory have the validity which is so often claimed for it, it would enable us to prophesy. We could analyze the economic interests of a people, and deduce what the people was bound to do. Marx tried that, and after a good guess about the trusts, went wholly wrong. The first socialist experiment came, not as he predicted, out of the culmination of capitalist development in the West, but out of the collapse of a pre-capitalist system in the East. Why did he go wrong? Why did his greatest disciple, Lenin, go wrong? Because the Marxians thought that men's economic position would irresistibly produce a clear conception of their economic interests. They thought they themselves possessed that clear conception, and that what they knew the rest of mankind would learn. The event has shown, not only that a clear conception of interest does not arise automatically in everyone, but that it did not arise even in Marx and Lenin themselves. After all that Marx and Lenin have written, the social behavior of mankind is still obscure. It ought not to be, if economic position alone determined public opinion. Position ought, if their theory were correct, not only to divide mankind into classes, but to supply each class with a view of its interest and a coherent policy for obtaining it. Yet nothing is more certain than that all classes of men are in constant perplexity as to what their interests are. [Footnote: As a matter of fact, when it came to the test, Lenin completely abandoned the materialistic interpretation of politics. Had he held sincerely to the Marxian formula when he seized power in 1917, he would have said to himself: according to the teachings of Marx, socialism will develop out of a mature capitalism... here am I, in control of a nation that is only entering upon a capitalist development... it is true that I am a socialist, but I am a scientific socialist... it follows that for the present all idea of a socialist republic is out of the question... we must advance capitalism in order that the evolution which Marx predicted may take place. But Lenin did nothing of the sort. Instead of waiting for evolution to evolve, he tried by will, force, and education, to defy the historical process which his philosophy assumed. Since this was written Lenin has abandoned communism on the ground that Russia does not possess the necessary basis in a mature capitalism. He now says that Russia must create capitalism, which will create a proletariat, which will some day create communism. This is at least consistent with Marxist dogma. But it shows how little determinism there is in the opinions of a determinist.] This dissolves the impact of economic determinism. For if our economic interests are made up of our variable concepts of those interests, then as the master key to social processes the theory fails. That theory assumes that men are capable of adopting only one version of their interest, and that having adopted it, they move fatally to realize it. It assumes the existence of a specific class interest. That assumption is false. A class interest can be conceived largely or narrowly, selfishly or unselfishly, in the light of no facts, some facts, many facts, truth and error. And so collapses the Marxian remedy for class conflicts. That remedy assumes that if all property could be held in common, class differences would disappear. The assumption is false. Property might well be held in common, and yet not be conceived as a whole. The moment any group of people failed to see communism in a communist manner, they would divide into classes on the basis of what they saw. In respect to the existing social order Marxian socialism emphasizes property conflict as the maker of opinion, in respect to the loosely defined working class it ignores property conflict as the basis of agitation, in respect to the future it imagines a society without property conflict, and, therefore, without conflict of opinion. Now in the existing social order there may be more instances where one man must lose if another is to gain, than there would be under socialism, but for every case where one must lose for another to gain, there are endless cases where men simply imagine the conflict because they are uneducated. And under socialism, though you removed every instance of absolute conflict, the partial access of each man to the whole range of facts would nevertheless create conflict. A socialist state will not be able to dispense with education, morality, or liberal science, though on strict materialistic grounds the communal ownership of properties ought to make them superfluous. The communists in Russia would not propagate their faith with such unflagging zeal if economic determinism were alone determining the opinion of the Russian people. 5 The socialist theory of human nature is, like the hedonistic calculus, an example of false determinism. Both assume that the unlearned dispositions fatally but intelligently produce a certain type of behavior. The socialist believes that the dispositions pursue the economic interest of a class; the hedonist believes that they pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Both theories rest on a naive view of instinct, a view, defined by James, [Footnote: _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II, p. 383.] though radically qualified by him, as "the faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends and without previous education in the performance." It is doubtful whether instinctive action of this sort figures at all in the social life of mankind. For as James pointed out: [Footnote: _Op. cit._, Vol. II, p. 390.] "every instinctive act in an animal with memory must cease to be 'blind' after being once repeated." Whatever the equipment at birth, the innate dispositions are from earliest infancy immersed in experience which determines what shall excite them as stimulus. "They become capable," as Mr. McDougall says, [Footnote: Introduction to _Social Psychology_, Fourth Edition, pp. 31-32.] "of being initiated, not only by the perception of objects of the kind which directly excite the innate disposition, the natural or native excitants of the instinct, but also by ideas of such objects, and by perceptions and by ideas of objects of other kinds." [Footnote: "Most definitions of instincts and instinctive actions take account only of their conative aspects... and it is a common mistake to ignore the cognitive and affective aspects of the instinctive mental process." Footnote _op. cit._, p. 29.] It is only the "central part of the disposition" [Footnote: p. 34.] says Mr. McDougall further, "that retains its specific character and remains common to all individuals and all situations in which the instinct is excited." The cognitive processes, and the actual bodily movements by which the instinct achieves its end may be indefinitely complicated. In other words, man has an instinct of fear, but what he will fear and how he will try to escape, is determined not from birth, but by experience. If it were not for this variability, it would be difficult to conceive the inordinate variety of human nature. But when you consider that all the important tendencies of the creature, his appetites, his loves, his hates, his curiosity, his sexual cravings, his fears, and pugnacity, are freely attachable to all sorts of objects as stimulus, and to all kinds of objects as gratification, the complexity of human nature is not so inconceivable. And when you think that each new generation is the casual victim of the way a previous generation was conditioned, as well as the inheritor of the environment that resulted, the possible combinations and permutations are enormous. There is no prima facie case then for supposing that because persons crave some particular thing, or behave in some particular way, human nature is fatally constituted to crave that and act thus. The craving and the action are both learned, and in another generation might be learned differently. Analytic psychology and social history unite in supporting this conclusion. Psychology indicates how essentially casual is the nexus between the particular stimulus and the particular response. Anthropology in the widest sense reinforces the view by demonstrating that the things which have excited men's passions, and the means which they have used to realize them, differ endlessly from age to age and from place to place. Men pursue their interest. But how they shall pursue it is not fatally determined, and, therefore, within whatever limits of time this planet will continue to support human life, man can set no term upon the creative energies of men. He can issue no doom of automatism. He can say, if he must, that for his life there will be no changes which he can recognize as good. But in saying that he will be confining his life to what he can see with his eye, rejecting what he might see with his mind; he will be taking as the measure of good a measure which is only the one he happens to possess. He can find no ground for abandoning his highest hopes and relaxing his conscious effort unless he chooses to regard the unknown as the unknowable, unless he elects to believe that what no one knows no one will know, and that what someone has not yet learned no one will ever be able to teach. PART V THE MAKING OF A COMMON WILL CHAPTER 13. THE TRANSFER OF INTEREST " 14. YES OR NO " 15. LEADERS AND THE RANK AND FILE CHAPTER XIII THE TRANSFER OF INTEREST This goes to show that there are many variables in each man's impressions of the invisible world. The points of contact vary, the stereotyped expectations vary, the interest enlisted varies most subtly of all. The living impressions of a large number of people are to an immeasurable degree personal in each of them, and unmanageably complex in the mass. How, then, is any practical relationship established between what is in people's heads and what is out there beyond their ken in the environment? How in the language of democratic theory, do great numbers of people feeling each so privately about so abstract a picture, develop any common will? How does a simple and constant idea emerge from this complex of variables? How are those things known as the Will of the People, or the National Purpose, or Public Opinion crystallized out of such fleeting and casual imagery? That there is a real difficulty here was shown by an angry tilt in the spring of 1921 between the American Ambassador to England and a very large number of other Americans. Mr. Harvey, speaking at a British dinner table, had assured the world without the least sign of hesitancy what were the motives of Americans in 1917. [Footnote: _New York Times_, May 20, 1921.] As he described them, they were not the motives which President Wilson had insisted upon when _he_ enunciated the American mind. Now, of course, neither Mr. Harvey nor Mr. Wilson, nor the critics and friends of either, nor any one else, can know quantitatively and qualitatively what went on in thirty or forty million adult minds. But what everybody knows is that a war was fought and won by a multitude of efforts, stimulated, no one knows in what proportion, by the motives of Wilson and the motives of Harvey and all kinds of hybrids of the two. People enlisted and fought, worked, paid taxes, sacrificed to a common end, and yet no one can begin to say exactly what moved each person to do each thing that he did. It is no use, then, Mr. Harvey telling a soldier who thought this was a war to end war that the soldier did not think any such thing. The soldier who thought that _thought that_. And Mr. Harvey, who thought something else, thought _something else_. In the same speech Mr. Harvey formulated with equal clarity what the voters of 1920 had in their minds. That is a rash thing to do, and, if you simply assume that all who voted your ticket voted as you did, then it is a disingenuous thing to do. The count shows that sixteen millions voted Republican, and nine millions Democratic. They voted, says Mr. Harvey, for and against the League of Nations, and in support of this claim, he can point to Mr. Wilson's request for a referendum, and to the undeniable fact that the Democratic party and Mr. Cox insisted that the League was the issue. But then, saying that the League was the issue did not make the League the issue, and by counting the votes on election day you do not know the real division of opinion about the League. There were, for example, nine million Democrats. Are you entitled to believe that all of them are staunch supporters of the League? Certainly you are not. For your knowledge of American politics tells you that many of the millions voted, as they always do, to maintain the existing social system in the South, and that whatever their views on the League, they did not vote to express their views. Those who wanted the League were no doubt pleased that the Democratic party wanted it too. Those who disliked the League may have held their noses as they voted. But both groups of Southerners voted the same ticket. Were the Republicans more unanimous? Anybody can pick Republican voters enough out of his circle of friends to cover the whole gamut of opinion from the irreconcilability of Senators Johnson and Knox to the advocacy of Secretary Hoover and Chief Justice Taft. No one can say definitely how many people felt in any particular way about the League, nor how many people let their feelings on that subject determine their vote. When there are only two ways of expressing a hundred varieties of feeling, there is no certain way of knowing what the decisive combination was. Senator Borah found in the Republican ticket a reason for voting Republican, but so did President Lowell. The Republican majority was composed of men and women who thought a Republican victory would kill the League, plus those who thought it the most practical way to secure the League, plus those who thought it the surest way offered to obtain an amended League. All these voters were inextricably entangled with their own desire, or the desire of other voters to improve business, or put labor in its place, or to punish the Democrats for going to war, or to punish them for not having gone sooner, or to get rid of Mr. Burleson, or to improve the price of wheat, or to lower taxes, or to stop Mr. Daniels from outbuilding the world, or to help Mr. Harding do the same thing. And yet a sort of decision emerged; Mr. Harding moved into the White House. For the least common denominator of all the votes was that the Democrats should go and the Republicans come in. That was the only factor remaining after all the contradictions had cancelled each other out. But that factor was enough to alter policy for four years. The precise reasons why change was desired on that November day in 1920 are not recorded, not even in the memories of the individual voters. The reasons are not fixed. They grow and change and melt into other reasons, so that the public opinions Mr. Harding has to deal with are not the opinions that elected him. That there is no inevitable connection between an assortment of opinions and a particular line of action everyone saw in 1916. Elected apparently on the cry that he kept us out of war, Mr. Wilson within five months led the country into war. The working of the popular will, therefore, has always called for explanation. Those who have been most impressed by its erratic working have found a prophet in M. LeBon, and have welcomed generalizations about what Sir Robert Peel called "that great compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy and newspaper paragraphs which is called public opinion." Others have concluded that since out of drift and incoherence, settled aims do appear, there must be a mysterious contrivance at work somewhere over and above the inhabitants of a nation. They invoke a collective soul, a national mind, a spirit of the age which imposes order upon random opinion. An oversoul seems to be needed, for the emotions and ideas in the members of a group do not disclose anything so simple and so crystalline as the formula which those same individuals will accept as a true statement of their Public Opinion. 2 But the facts can, I think, be explained more convincingly without the help of the oversoul in any of its disguises. After all, the art of inducing all sorts of people who think differently to vote alike is practiced in every political campaign. In 1916, for example, the Republican candidate had to produce Republican votes out of many different kinds of Republicans. Let us look at Mr. Hughes' first speech after accepting the nomination. [Footnote: Delivered at Carnegie Hall, New York City, July 31, 1916.] The context is still clear enough in our minds to obviate much explanation; yet the issues are no longer contentious. The candidate was a man of unusually plain speech, who had been out of politics for several years and was not personally committed on the issues of the recent past. He had, moreover, none of that wizardry which popular leaders like Roosevelt, Wilson, or Lloyd George possess, none of that histrionic gift by which such men impersonate the feelings of their followers. From that aspect of politics he was by temperament and by training remote. But yet he knew by calculation what the politician's technic is. He was one of those people who know just how to do a thing, but who can not quite do it themselves. They are often better teachers than the virtuoso to whom the art is so much second nature that he himself does not know how he does it. The statement that those who can, do; those who cannot, teach, is not nearly so much of a reflection on the teacher as it sounds. Mr. Hughes knew the occasion was momentous, and he had prepared his manuscript carefully. In a box sat Theodore Roosevelt just back from Missouri. All over the house sat the veterans of Armageddon in various stages of doubt and dismay. On the platform and in the other boxes the ex-whited sepulchres and ex-second-story men of 1912 were to be seen, obviously in the best of health and in a melting mood. Out beyond the hall there were powerful pro-Germans and powerful pro-Allies; a war party in the East and in the big cities; a peace party in the middle and far West. There was strong feeling about Mexico. Mr. Hughes had to form a majority against the Democrats out of people divided into all sorts of combinations on Taft vs. Roosevelt, pro-Germans vs. pro-Allies, war vs. neutrality, Mexican intervention vs. non-intervention. About the morality or the wisdom of the affair we are, of course, not concerned here. Our only interest is in the method by which a leader of heterogeneous opinion goes about the business of securing a homogeneous vote. "This _representative_ gathering is a happy augury. It means the strength of _reunion._ It means that the party of _Lincoln_ is restored...." The italicized words are binders: _Lincoln_ in such a speech has of course, no relation to Abraham Lincoln. It is merely a stereotype by which the piety which surrounds that name can be transferred to the Republican candidate who now stands in his shoes. Lincoln reminds the Republicans, Bull Moose and Old Guard, that before the schism they had a common history. About the schism no one can afford to speak. But it is there, as yet unhealed. The speaker must heal it. Now the schism of 1912 had arisen over domestic questions; the reunion of 1916 was, as Mr. Roosevelt had declared, to be based on a common indignation against Mr. Wilson's conduct of international affairs. But international affairs were also a dangerous source of conflict. It was necessary to find an opening subject which would not only ignore 1912 but would avoid also the explosive conflicts of 1916. The speaker skilfully selected the spoils system in diplomatic appointments. "Deserving Democrats" was a discrediting phrase, and Mr. Hughes at once evokes it. The record being indefensible, there is no hesitation in the vigor of the attack. Logically it was an ideal introduction to a common mood. Mr. Hughes then turns to Mexico, beginning with an historical review. He had to consider the general sentiment that affairs were going badly in Mexico; also, a no less general sentiment that war should be avoided; and two powerful currents of opinion, one of which said President Wilson was right in not recognizing Huerta, the other which preferred Huerta to Carranza, and intervention to both. Huerta was the first sore spot in the record... "He was certainly in fact the head of the Government in Mexico." But the moralists who regarded Huerta as a drunken murderer had to be placated. "Whether or not he should be recognized was a question to be determined in the exercise of a sound discretion, but according to correct principles." So instead of saying that Huerta should have been recognized, the candidate says that correct principles ought to be applied. Everybody believes in correct principles, and everybody, of course, believes he possesses them. To blur the issue still further President Wilson's policy is described as "intervention." It was that in law, perhaps, but not in the sense then currently meant by the word. By stretching the word to cover what Mr. Wilson had done, as well as what the real interventionists wanted, the issue between the two factions was to be repressed. Having got by the two explosive points "_Huerta_" and "_intervention_" by letting the words mean all things to all men, the speech passes for a while to safer ground. The candidate tells the story of Tampico, Vera Cruz, Villa, Santa Ysabel, Columbus and Carrizal. Mr. Hughes is specific, either because the facts as known from the newspapers are irritating, or because the true explanation is, as for example in regard to Tampico, too complicated. No contrary passions could be aroused by such a record. But at the end the candidate had to take a position. His audience expected it. The indictment was Mr. Roosevelt's. Would Mr. Hughes adopt his remedy, intervention? "The nation has no policy of aggression toward Mexico. We have no desire for any part of her territory. We wish her to have peace, stability and prosperity. We should be ready to aid her in binding up her wounds, in relieving her from starvation and distress, in giving her in every practicable way the benefits of our disinterested friendship. The conduct of this administration has created difficulties which we shall have to surmount.... _We shall have to adopt a new policy,_ a policy of _firmness_ and consistency through which alone we can promote an enduring _friendship._" The theme friendship is for the non-interventionists, the theme "new policy" and "firmness" is for the interventionists. On the non-contentious record, the detail is overwhelming; on the issue everything is cloudy. Concerning the European war Mr. Hughes employed an ingenious formula: "I stand for the unflinching maintenance of _all_ American rights on land and sea." In order to understand the force of that statement at the time it was spoken, we must remember how each faction during the period of neutrality believed that the nations it opposed in Europe were alone violating American rights. Mr. Hughes seemed to say to the pro-Allies: I would have coerced Germany. But the pro-Germans had been insisting that British sea power was violating most of our rights. The formula covers two diametrically opposed purposes by the symbolic phrase "American rights." But there was the Lusitania. Like the 1912 schism, it was an invincible obstacle to harmony. "... I am confident that there would have been no destruction of American lives by the sinking of the Lusitania." Thus, what cannot be compromised must be obliterated, when there is a question on which we cannot all hope to get together, let us pretend that it does not exist. About the future of American relations with Europe Mr. Hughes was silent. Nothing he could say would possibly please the two irreconcilable factions for whose support he was bidding. It is hardly necessary to say that Mr. Hughes did not invent this technic and did not employ it with the utmost success. But he illustrated how a public opinion constituted out of divergent opinions is clouded; how its meaning approaches the neutral tint formed out of the blending of many colors. Where superficial harmony is the aim and conflict the fact, obscurantism in a public appeal is the usual result. Almost always vagueness at a crucial point in public debate is a symptom of cross-purposes. 3 But how is it that a vague idea so often has the power to unite deeply felt opinions? These opinions, we recall, however deeply they may be felt, are not in continual and pungent contact with the facts they profess to treat. On the unseen environment, Mexico, the European war, our grip is slight though our feeling may be intense. The original pictures and words which aroused it have not anything like the force of the feeling itself. The account of what has happened out of sight and hearing in a place where we have never been, has not and never can have, except briefly as in a dream or fantasy, all the dimensions of reality. But it can arouse all, and sometimes even more emotion than the reality. For the trigger can be pulled by more than one stimulus. The stimulus which originally pulled the trigger may have been a series of pictures in the mind aroused by printed or spoken words. These pictures fade and are hard to keep steady; their contours and their pulse fluctuate. Gradually the process sets in of knowing what you feel without being entirely certain why you feel it. The fading pictures are displaced by other pictures, and then by names or symbols. But the emotion goes on, capable now of being aroused by the substituted images and names. Even in severe thinking these substitutions take place, for if a man is trying to compare two complicated situations, he soon finds exhausting the attempt to hold both fully in mind in all their detail. He employs a shorthand of names and signs and samples. He has to do this if he is to advance at all, because he cannot carry the whole baggage in every phrase through every step he takes. But if he forgets that he has substituted and simplified, he soon lapses into verbalism, and begins to talk about names regardless of objects. And then he has no way of knowing when the name divorced from its first thing is carrying on a misalliance with some other thing. It is more difficult still to guard against changelings in casual politics. For by what is known to psychologists as conditioned response, an emotion is not attached merely to one idea. There are no end of things which can arouse the emotion, and no end of things which can satisfy it. This is particularly true where the stimulus is only dimly and indirectly perceived, and where the objective is likewise indirect. For you can associate an emotion, say fear, first with something immediately dangerous, then with the idea of that thing, then with something similar to that idea, and so on and on. The whole structure of human culture is in one respect an elaboration of the stimuli and responses of which the original emotional capacities remain a fairly fixed center. No doubt the quality of emotion has changed in the course of history, but with nothing like the speed, or elaboration, that has characterized the conditioning of it. People differ widely in their susceptibility to ideas. There are some in whom the idea of a starving child in Russia is practically as vivid as a starving child within sight. There are others who are almost incapable of being excited by a distant idea. There are many gradations between. And there are people who are insensitive to facts, and aroused only by ideas. But though the emotion is aroused by the idea, we are unable to satisfy the emotion by acting ourselves upon the scene itself. The idea of the starving Russian child evokes a desire to feed the child. But the person so aroused cannot feed it. He can only give money to an impersonal organization, or to a personification which he calls Mr. Hoover. His money does not reach that child. It goes to a general pool from which a mass of children are fed. And so just as the idea is second hand, so are the effects of the action second hand. The cognition is indirect, the conation is indirect, only the effect is immediate. Of the three parts of the process, the stimulus comes from somewhere out of sight, the response reaches somewhere out of sight, only the emotion exists entirely within the person. Of the child's hunger he has only an idea, of the child's relief he has only an idea, but of his own desire to help he has a real experience. It is the central fact of the business, the emotion within himself, which is first hand. Within limits that vary, the emotion is transferable both as regards stimulus and response. Therefore, if among a number of people, possessing various tendencies to respond, you can find a stimulus which will arouse the same emotion in many of them, you can substitute it for the original stimuli. If, for example, one man dislikes the League, another hates Mr. Wilson, and a third fears labor, you may be able to unite them if you can find some symbol which is the antithesis of what they all hate. Suppose that symbol is Americanism. The first man may read it as meaning the preservation of American isolation, or as he may call it, independence; the second as the rejection of a politician who clashes with his idea of what an American president should be, the third as a call to resist revolution. The symbol in itself signifies literally no one thing in particular, but it can be associated with almost anything. And because of that it can become the common bond of common feelings, even though those feelings were originally attached to disparate ideas. When political parties or newspapers declare for Americanism, Progressivism, Law and Order, Justice, Humanity, they hope to amalgamate the emotion of conflicting factions which would surely divide, if, instead of these symbols, they were invited to discuss a specific program. For when a coalition around the symbol has been effected, feeling flows toward conformity under the symbol rather than toward critical scrutiny of the measures. It is, I think, convenient and technically correct to call multiple phrases like these symbolic. They do not stand for specific ideas, but for a sort of truce or junction between ideas. They are like a strategic railroad center where many roads converge regardless of their ultimate origin or their ultimate destination. But he who captures the symbols by which public feeling is for the moment contained, controls by that much the approaches of public policy. And as long as a particular symbol has the power of coalition, ambitious factions will fight for possession. Think, for example, of Lincoln's name or of Roosevelt's. A leader or an interest that can make itself master of current symbols is master of the current situation. There are limits, of course. Too violent abuse of the actualities which groups of people think the symbol represents, or too great resistance in the name of that symbol to new purposes, will, so to speak, burst the symbol. In this manner, during the year 1917, the imposing symbol of Holy Russia and the Little Father burst under the impact of suffering and defeat. 4 The tremendous consequences of Russia's collapse were felt on all the fronts and among all the peoples. They led directly to a striking experiment in the crystallization of a common opinion out of the varieties of opinion churned up by the war. The Fourteen Points were addressed to all the governments, allied, enemy, neutral, and to all the peoples. They were an attempt to knit together the chief imponderables of a world war. Necessarily this was a new departure, because this was the first great war in which all the deciding elements of mankind could be brought to think about the same ideas, or at least about the same names for ideas, simultaneously. Without cable, radio, telegraph, and daily press, the experiment of the Fourteen Points would have been impossible. It was an attempt to exploit the modern machinery of communication to start the return to a "common consciousness" throughout the world. But first we must examine some of the circumstances as they presented themselves at the end of 1917. For in the form which the document finally assumed, all these considerations are somehow represented. During the summer and autumn a series of events had occurred which profoundly affected the temper of the people and the course of the war. In July the Russians had made a last offensive, had been disastrously beaten, and the process of demoralization which led to the Bolshevik revolution of November had begun. Somewhat earlier the French had suffered a severe and almost disastrous defeat in Champagne which produced mutinies in the army and a defeatist agitation among the civilians. England was suffering from the effects of the submarine raids, from the terrible losses of the Flanders battles, and in November at Cambrai the British armies met a reverse that appalled the troops at the front and the leaders at home. Extreme war weariness pervaded the whole of western Europe. In effect, the agony and disappointment had jarred loose men's concentration on the accepted version of the war. Their interests were no longer held by the ordinary official pronouncements, and their attention began to wander, fixing now upon their own suffering, now upon their party and class purposes, now upon general resentments against the governments. That more or less perfect organization of perception by official propaganda, of interest and attention by the stimuli of hope, fear, and hatred, which is called morale, was by way of breaking down. The minds of men everywhere began to search for new attachments that promised relief. Suddenly they beheld a tremendous drama. On the Eastern front there was a Christmas truce, an end of slaughter, an end of noise, a promise of peace. At Brest-Litovsk the dream of all simple people had come to life: it was possible to negotiate, there was some other way to end the ordeal than by matching lives with the enemy. Timidly, but with rapt attention, people began to turn to the East. Why not, they asked? What is it all for? Do the politicians know what they are doing? Are we really fighting for what they say? Is it possible, perhaps, to secure it without fighting? Under the ban of the censorship, little of this was allowed to show itself in print, but, when Lord Lansdowne spoke, there was a response from the heart. The earlier symbols of the war had become hackneyed, and had lost their power to unify. Beneath the surface a wide schism was opening up in each Allied country. Something similar was happening in Central Europe. There too the original impulse of the war was weakened; the union sacrée was broken. The vertical cleavages along the battle front were cut across by horizontal divisions running in all kinds of unforeseeable ways. The moral crisis of the war had arrived before the military decision was in sight. All this President Wilson and his advisers realized. They had not, of course, a perfect knowledge of the situation, but what I have sketched they knew. They knew also that the Allied Governments were bound by a series of engagements that in letter and in spirit ran counter to the popular conception of what the war was about. The resolutions of the Paris Economic Conference were, of course, public property, and the network of secret treaties had been published by the Bolsheviks in November of 1917. [Footnote: President Wilson stated at his conference with the Senators that he had never heard of these treaties until he reached Paris. That statement is perplexing. The Fourteen Points, as the text shows, could not have been formulated without a knowledge of the secret treaties. The substance of those treaties was before the President when he and Colonel House prepared the final published text of the Fourteen Points.] Their terms were only vaguely known to the peoples, but it was definitely believed that they did not comport with the idealistic slogan of self-determination, no annexations and no indemnities. Popular questioning took the form of asking how many thousand English lives Alsace-Lorraine or Dalmatia were worth, how many French lives Poland or Mesopotamia were worth. Nor was such questioning entirely unknown in America. The whole Allied cause had been put on the defensive by the refusal to participate at Brest-Litovsk. Here was a highly sensitive state of mind which no competent leader could fail to consider. The ideal response would have been joint action by the Allies. That was found to be impossible when it was considered at the Interallied Conference of October. But by December the pressure had become so great that Mr. George and Mr. Wilson were moved independently to make some response. The form selected by the President was a statement of peace terms under fourteen heads. The numbering of them was an artifice to secure precision, and to create at once the impression that here was a business-like document. The idea of stating "peace terms" instead of "war aims" arose from the necessity of establishing a genuine alternative to the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. They were intended to compete for attention by substituting for the spectacle of Russo-German parleys the much grander spectacle of a public world-wide debate. Having enlisted the interest of the world, it was necessary to hold that interest unified and flexible for all the different possibilities which the situation contained. The terms had to be such that the majority among the Allies would regard them as worth while. They had to meet the national aspirations of each people, and yet to limit those aspirations so that no one nation would regard itself as a catspaw for another. The terms had to satisfy official interests so as not to provoke official disunion, and yet they had to meet popular conceptions so as to prevent the spread of demoralization. They had, in short, to preserve and confirm Allied unity in case the war was to go on. But they had also to be the terms of a possible peace, so that in case the German center and left were ripe for agitation, they would have a text with which to smite the governing class. The terms had, therefore, to push the Allied governors nearer to their people, drive the German governors away from their people, and establish a line of common understanding between the Allies, the non-official Germans, and the subject peoples of Austria-Hungary. The Fourteen Points were a daring attempt to raise a standard to which almost everyone might repair. If a sufficient number of the enemy people were ready there would be peace; if not, then the Allies would be better prepared to sustain the shock of war. All these considerations entered into the making of the Fourteen Points. No one man may have had them all in mind, but all the men concerned had some of them in mind. Against this background let us examine certain aspects of the document. The first five points and the fourteenth deal with "open diplomacy," "freedom of the seas," "equal trade opportunities," "reduction of armaments," no imperialist annexation of colonies, and the League of Nations. They might be described as a statement of the popular generalizations in which everyone at that time professed to believe. But number three is more specific. It was aimed consciously and directly at the resolutions of the Paris Economic Conference, and was meant to relieve the German people of their fear of suffocation. Number six is the first point dealing with a particular nation. It was intended as a reply to Russian suspicion of the Allies, and the eloquence of its promises was attuned to the drama of Brest-Litovsk. Number seven deals with Belgium, and is as unqualified in form and purpose as was the conviction of practically the whole world, including very large sections of Central Europe. Over number eight we must pause. It begins with an absolute demand for evacuation and restoration of French territory, and then passes on to the question of Alsace-Lorraine. The phrasing of this clause most perfectly illustrates the character of a public statement which must condense a vast complex of interests in a few words. "And the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted. ..." Every word here was chosen with meticulous care. The wrong done should be righted; why not say that Alsace-Lorraine should be restored? It was not said, because it was not certain that all of the French _at that time_ would fight on indefinitely for reannexation if they were offered a plebiscite; and because it was even less certain whether the English and Italians would fight on. The formula had, therefore, to cover both contingencies. The word "righted" guaranteed satisfaction to France, but did not read as a commitment to simple annexation. But why speak of the wrong done by _Prussia_ in _1871_? The word Prussia was, of course, intended to remind the South Germans that Alsace-Lorraine belonged not to them but to Prussia. Why speak of peace unsettled for "fifty years," and why the use of "1871"? In the first place, what the French and the rest of the world remembered was 1871. That was the nodal point of their grievance. But the formulators of the Fourteen Points knew that French officialdom planned for more than the Alsace-Lorraine of 1871. The secret memoranda that had passed between the Czar's ministers and French officials in 1916 covered the annexation of the Saar Valley and some sort of dismemberment of the Rhineland. It was planned to include the Saar Valley under the term "Alsace-Lorraine" because it had been part of Alsace-Lorraine in 1814, though it had been detached in 1815, and was no part of the territory at the close of the Franco-Prussian war. The official French formula for annexing the Saar was to subsume it under "Alsace-Lorraine" meaning the Alsace-Lorraine of 1814-1815. By insistence on "1871" the President was really defining the ultimate boundary between Germany and France, was adverting to the secret treaty, and was casting it aside. Number nine, a little less subtly, does the same thing in respect to Italy. "Clearly recognizable lines of nationality" are exactly what the lines of the Treaty of London were not. Those lines were partly strategic, partly economic, partly imperialistic, partly ethnic. The only part of them that could possibly procure allied sympathy was that which would recover the genuine Italia Irredenta. All the rest, as everyone who was informed knew, merely delayed the impending Jugoslav revolt. 5 It would be a mistake to suppose that the apparently unanimous enthusiasm which greeted the Fourteen Points represented agreement on a program. Everyone seemed to find something that he liked and stressed this aspect and that detail. But no one risked a discussion. The phrases, so pregnant with the underlying conflicts of the civilized world, were accepted. They stood for opposing ideas, but they evoked a common emotion. And to that extent they played a part in rallying the western peoples for the desperate ten months of war which they had still to endure. As long as the Fourteen Points dealt with that hazy and happy future when the agony was to be over, the real conflicts of interpretation were not made manifest. They were plans for the settlement of a wholly invisible environment, and because these plans inspired all groups each with its own private hope, all hopes ran together as a public hope. For harmonization, as we saw in Mr. Hughes's speech, is a hierarchy of symbols. As you ascend the hierarchy in order to include more and more factions you may for a time preserve the emotional connection though you lose the intellectual. But even the emotion becomes thinner. As you go further away from experience, you go higher into generalization or subtlety. As you go up in the balloon you throw more and more concrete objects overboard, and when you have reached the top with some phrase like the Rights of Humanity or the World Made Safe for Democracy, you see far and wide, but you see very little. Yet the people whose emotions are entrained do not remain passive. As the public appeal becomes more and more all things to all men, as the emotion is stirred while the meaning is dispersed, their very private meanings are given a universal application. Whatever you want badly is the Rights of Humanity. For the phrase, ever more vacant, capable of meaning almost anything, soon comes to mean pretty nearly everything. Mr. Wilson's phrases were understood in endlessly different ways in every corner of the earth. No document negotiated and made of public record existed to correct the confusion. [Footnote: The American interpretation of the fourteen points was explained to the allied statesmen just before the armistice.] And so, when the day of settlement came, everybody expected everything. The European authors of the treaty had a large choice, and they chose to realize those expectations which were held by those of their countrymen who wielded the most power at home. They came down the hierarchy from the Rights of Humanity to the Rights of France, Britain and Italy. They did not abandon the use of symbols. They abandoned only those which after the war had no permanent roots in the imagination of their constituents. They preserved the unity of France by the use of symbolism, but they would not risk anything for the unity of Europe. The symbol France was deeply attached, the symbol Europe had only a recent history. Nevertheless the distinction between an omnibus like Europe and a symbol like France is not sharp. The history of states and empires reveals times when the scope of the unifying idea increases and also times when it shrinks. One cannot say that men have moved consistently from smaller loyalties to larger ones, because the facts will not bear out the claim. The Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire bellied out further than those national unifications in the Nineteenth Century from which believers in a World State argue by analogy. Nevertheless, it is probably true that the real integration has increased regardless of the temporary inflation and deflation of empires. 6 Such a real integration has undoubtedly occurred in American history. In the decade before 1789 most men, it seems, felt that their state and their community were real, but that the confederation of states was unreal. The idea of their state, its flag, its most conspicuous leaders, or whatever it was that represented Massachusetts, or Virginia, were genuine symbols. That is to say, they were fed by actual experiences from childhood, occupation, residence, and the like. The span of men's experience had rarely traversed the imaginary boundaries of their states. The word Virginian was related to pretty nearly everything that most Virginians had ever known or felt. It was the most extensive political idea which had genuine contact with their experience. Their experience, not their needs. For their needs arose out of their real environment, which in those days was at least as large as the thirteen colonies. They needed a common defense. They needed a financial and economic regime as extensive as the Confederation. But as long as the pseudo-environment of the state encompassed them, the state symbols exhausted their political interest. An interstate idea, like the Confederation, represented a powerless abstraction. It was an omnibus, rather than a symbol, and the harmony among divergent groups, which the omnibus creates, is transient. I have said that the idea of confederation was a powerless abstraction. Yet the need of unity existed in the decade before the Constitution was adopted. The need existed, in the sense that affairs were askew unless the need of unity was taken into account. Gradually certain classes in each colony began to break through the state experience. Their personal interests led across the state lines to interstate experiences, and gradually there was constructed in their minds a picture of the American environment which was truly national in scope. For them the idea of federation became a true symbol, and ceased to be an omnibus. The most imaginative of these men was Alexander Hamilton. It happened that he had no primitive attachment to any one state, for he was born in the West Indies, and had, from the very beginning of his active life, been associated with the common interests of all the states. Thus to most men of the time the question of whether the capital should be in Virginia or in Philadelphia was of enormous importance, because they were locally minded. To Hamilton this question was of no emotional consequence; what he wanted was the assumption of the state debts because they would further nationalize the proposed union. So he gladly traded the site of the capitol for two necessary votes from men who represented the Potomac district. To Hamilton the Union was a symbol that represented all his interests and his whole experience; to White and Lee from the Potomac, the symbol of their province was the highest political entity they served, and they served it though they hated to pay the price. They agreed, says Jefferson, to change their votes, "White with a revulsion of stomach almost convulsive." [Footnote: _Works,_ Vol. IX, p. 87. Cited by Beard, _Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy,_ p. 172.] In the crystallizing of a common will, there is always an Alexander Hamilton at work. CHAPTER XIV YES OR NO 1 Symbols are often so useful and so mysteriously powerful that the word itself exhales a magical glamor. In thinking about symbols it is tempting to treat them as if they possessed independent energy. Yet no end of symbols which once provoked ecstasy have quite ceased to affect anybody. The museums and the books of folklore are full of dead emblems and incantations, since there is no power in the symbol, except that which it acquires by association in the human mind. The symbols that have lost their power, and the symbols incessantly suggested which fail to take root, remind us that if we were patient enough to study in detail the circulation of a symbol, we should behold an entirely secular history. In the Hughes campaign speech, in the Fourteen Points, in Hamilton's project, symbols are employed. But they are employed by somebody at a particular moment. The words themselves do not crystallize random feeling. The words must be spoken by people who are strategically placed, and they must be spoken at the opportune moment. Otherwise they are mere wind. The symbols must be earmarked. For in themselves they mean nothing, and the choice of possible symbols is always so great that we should, like the donkey who stood equidistant between two bales of hay, perish from sheer indecision among the symbols that compete for our attention. Here, for example, are the reasons for their vote as stated by certain private citizens to a newspaper just before the election of 1920. For Harding: "The patriotic men and women of to-day, who cast their ballots for Harding and Coolidge will be held by posterity to have signed our Second Declaration of Independence." Mr. Wilmot--, inventor. "He will see to it that the United States does not enter into 'entangling alliances,' Washington as a city will benefit by changing the control of the government from the Democrats to the Republicans." Mr. Clarence--, salesman. For Cox: "The people of the United States realize that it is our duty pledged on the fields of France, to join the League of Nations. We must shoulder our share of the burden of enforcing peace throughout the world." Miss Marie--, stenographer. "We should lose our own respect and the respect of other nations were we to refuse to enter the League of Nations in obtaining international peace." Mr. Spencer--, statistician. The two sets of phrases are equally noble, equally true, and almost reversible. Would Clarence and Wilmot have admitted for an instant that they intended to default in our duty pledged on the fields of France; or that they did not desire international peace? Certainly not. Would Marie and Spencer have admitted that they were in favor of entangling alliances or the surrender of American independence? They would have argued with you that the League was, as President Wilson called it, a disentangling alliance, as well as a Declaration of Independence for all the world, plus a Monroe Doctrine for the planet. 2 Since the offering of symbols is so generous, and the meaning that can be imputed is so elastic, how does any particular symbol take root in any particular person's mind? It is planted there by another human being whom we recognize as authoritative. If it is planted deeply enough, it may be that later we shall call the person authoritative who waves that symbol at us. But in the first instance symbols are made congenial and important because they are introduced to us by congenial and important people. For we are not born out of an egg at the age of eighteen with a realistic imagination; we are still, as Mr. Shaw recalls, in the era of Burge and Lubin, where in infancy we are dependent upon older beings for our contacts. And so we make our connections with the outer world through certain beloved and authoritative persons. They are the first bridge to the invisible world. And though we may gradually master for ourselves many phases of that larger environment, there always remains a vaster one that is unknown. To that we still relate ourselves through authorities. Where all the facts are out of sight a true report and a plausible error read alike, sound alike, feel alike. Except on a few subjects where our own knowledge is great, we cannot choose between true and false accounts. So we choose between trustworthy and untrustworthy reporters. [Footnote: See an interesting, rather quaint old book: George Cornewall Lewis, _An Essay on the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion_.] Theoretically we ought to choose the most expert on each subject. But the choice of the expert, though a good deal easier than the choice of truth, is still too difficult and often impracticable. The experts themselves are not in the least certain who among them is the most expert. And at that, the expert, even when we can identify him, is, likely as not, too busy to be consulted, or impossible to get at. But there are people whom we can identify easily enough because they are the people who are at the head of affairs. Parents, teachers, and masterful friends are the first people of this sort we encounter. Into the difficult question of why children trust one parent rather than another, the history teacher rather than the Sunday school teacher, we need not try to enter. Nor how trust gradually spreads through a newspaper or an acquaintance who is interested in public affairs to public personages. The literature of psychoanalysis is rich in suggestive hypothesis. At any rate we do find ourselves trusting certain people, who constitute our means of junction with pretty nearly the whole realm of unknown things. Strangely enough, this fact is sometimes regarded as inherently undignified, as evidence of our sheep-like, ape-like nature. But complete independence in the universe is simply unthinkable. If we could not take practically everything for granted, we should spend our lives in utter triviality. The nearest thing to a wholly independent adult is a hermit, and the range of a hermit's action is very short. Acting entirely for himself, he can act only within a tiny radius and for simple ends. If he has time to think great thoughts we can be certain that he has accepted without question, before he went in for being a hermit, a whole repertory of painfully acquired information about how to keep warm and how to keep from being hungry, and also about what the great questions are. On all but a very few matters for short stretches in our lives, the utmost independence that we can exercise is to multiply the authorities to whom we give a friendly hearing. As congenital amateurs our quest for truth consists in stirring up the experts, and forcing them to answer any heresy that has the accent of conviction. In such a debate we can often judge who has won the dialectical victory, but we are virtually defenseless against a false premise that none of the debaters has challenged, or a neglected aspect that none of them has brought into the argument. We shall see later how the democratic theory proceeds on the opposite assumption and assumes for the purposes of government an unlimited supply of self-sufficient individuals. The people on whom we depend for contact with the outer world are those who seem to be running it. [Footnote: _Cf._ Bryce, _Modern Democracies_ Vol. II, pp. 544-545.] They may be running only a very small part of the world. The nurse feeds the child, bathes it, and puts it to bed. That does not constitute the nurse an authority on physics, zoology, and the Higher Criticism. Mr. Smith runs, or at least hires, the man who runs the factory. That does not make him an authority on the Constitution of the United States, nor on the effects \of the Fordney tariff. Mr. Smoot runs the Republican party in the State of Utah. That in itself does not prove he is the best man to consult about taxation. But the nurse may nevertheless determine for a while what zoology the child shall learn, Mr. Smith will have much to say on what the Constitution shall mean to his wife, his secretary, and perhaps even to his parson, and who shall define the limits of Senator Smoot's authority? The priest, the lord of the manor, the captains and the kings, the party leaders, the merchant, the boss, however these men are chosen, whether by birth, inheritance, conquest or election, they and their organized following administer human affairs. They are the officers, and although the same man may be field marshal at home, second lieutenant at the office, and scrub private in politics, although in many institutions the hierarchy of rank is vague or concealed, yet in every institution that requires the cooperation of many persons, some such hierarchy exists. [Footnote: _Cf._ M. Ostrogorski, _Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, passim;_ R. Michels, _Political Parties, passim;_ and Bryce, _Modern Democracies,_ particularly Chap. LXXV; also Ross, _Principles of Sociology,_ Chaps. XXII-XXIV. ] In American politics we call it a machine, or "the organization." 3 There are a number of important distinctions between the members of the machine and the rank and file. The leaders, the steering committee and the inner circle, are in direct contact with their environment. They may, to be sure, have a very limited notion of what they ought to define as the environment, but they are not dealing almost wholly with abstractions. There are particular men they hope to see elected, particular balance sheets they wish to see improved, concrete objectives that must be attained. I do not mean that they escape the human propensity to stereotyped vision. Their stereotypes often make them absurd routineers. But whatever their limitations, the chiefs are in actual contact with some crucial part of that larger environment. They decide. They give orders. They bargain. And something definite, perhaps not at all what they imagined, actually happens. Their subordinates are not tied to them by a common conviction. That is to say the lesser members of a machine do not dispose their loyalty according to independent judgment about the wisdom of the leaders. In the hierarchy each is dependent upon a superior and is in turn superior to some class of his dependents. What holds the machine together is a system of privileges. These may vary according to the opportunities and the tastes of those who seek them, from nepotism and patronage in all their aspects to clannishness, hero-worship or a fixed idea. They vary from military rank in armies, through land and services in a feudal system, to jobs and publicity in a modern democracy. That is why you can breakup a particular machine by abolishing its privileges. But the machine in every coherent group is, I believe, certain to reappear. For privilege is entirely relative, and uniformity is impossible. Imagine the most absolute communism of which your mind is capable, where no one possessed any object that everyone else did not possess, and still, if the communist group had to take any action whatever, the mere pleasure of being the friend of the man who was going to make the speech that secured the most votes, would, I am convinced, be enough to crystallize an organization of insiders around him. It is not necessary, then, to invent a collective intelligence in order to explain why the judgments of a group are usually more coherent, and often more true to form than the remarks of the man in the street. One mind, or a few can pursue a train of thought, but a group trying to think in concert can as a group do little more than assent or dissent. The members of a hierarchy can have a corporate tradition. As apprentices they learn the trade from the masters, who in turn learned it when they were apprentices, and in any enduring society, the change of personnel within the governing hierarchies is slow enough to permit the transmission of certain great stereotypes and patterns of behavior. From father to son, from prelate to novice, from veteran to cadet, certain ways of seeing and doing are taught. These ways become familiar, and are recognized as such by the mass of outsiders. 4 Distance alone lends enchantment to the view that masses of human beings ever coöperate in any complex affair without a central machine managed by a very few people. "No one," says Bryce, [Footnote: _Op. cit._, Vol. II, p. 542.] "can have had some years' experience of the conduct of affairs in a legislature or an administration without observing how extremely small is the number of persons by whom the world is governed." He is referring, of course, to affairs of state. To be sure if you consider all the affairs of mankind the number of people who govern is considerable, but if you take any particular institution, be it a legislature, a party, a trade union, a nationalist movement, a factory, or a club, the number of those who govern is a very small percentage of those who are theoretically supposed to govern. Landslides can turn one machine out and put another in; revolutions sometimes abolish a particular machine altogether. The democratic revolution set up two alternating machines, each of which in the course of a few years reaps the advantage from the mistakes of the other. But nowhere does the machine disappear. Nowhere is the idyllic theory of democracy realized. Certainly not in trades unions, nor in socialist parties, nor in communist governments. There is an inner circle, surrounded by concentric circles which fade out gradually into the disinterested or uninterested rank and file. Democrats have never come to terms with this commonplace of group life. They have invariably regarded it as perverse. For there are two visions of democracy: one presupposes the self-sufficient individual; the other an Oversoul regulating everything. Of the two the Oversoul has some advantage because it does at least recognize that the mass makes decisions that are not spontaneously born in the breast of every member. But the Oversoul as presiding genius in corporate behavior is a superfluous mystery if we fix our attention upon the machine. The machine is a quite prosaic reality. It consists of human beings who wear clothes and live in houses, who can be named and described. They perform all the duties usually assigned to the Oversoul. 5 The reason for the machine is not the perversity of human nature. It is that out of the private notions of any group no common idea emerges by itself. For the number of ways is limited in which a multitude of people can act directly upon a situation beyond their reach. Some of them can migrate, in one form or another, they can strike or boycott, they can applaud or hiss. They can by these means occasionally resist what they do not like, or coerce those who obstruct what they desire. But by mass action nothing can be constructed, devised, negotiated, or administered. A public as such, without an organized hierarchy around which it can gather, may refuse to buy if the prices are too high, or refuse to work if wages are too low. A trade union can by mass action in a strike break an opposition so that the union officials can negotiate an agreement. It may win, for example, the _right_ to joint control. But it cannot exercise the right except through an organization. A nation can clamor for war, but when it goes to war it must put itself under orders from a general staff. The limit of direct action is for all practical purposes the power to say Yes or No on an issue presented to the mass. [Footnote: _Cf_. James, _Some Problems of Philosophy_, p. 227. "But for most of our emergencies, fractional solutions are impossible. Seldom can we act fractionally." _Cf_. Lowell, _Public Opinion and Popular Government_, pp. 91, 92.] For only in the very simplest cases does an issue present itself in the same form spontaneously and approximately at the same time to all the members of a public. There are unorganized strikes and boycotts, not merely industrial ones, where the grievance is so plain that virtually without leadership the same reaction takes place in many people. But even in these rudimentary cases there are persons who know what they want to do more quickly than the rest, and who become impromptu ringleaders. Where they do not appear a crowd will mill about aimlessly beset by all its private aims, or stand by fatalistically, as did a crowd of fifty persons the other day, and watch a man commit suicide. For what we make out of most of the impressions that come to us from the invisible world is a kind of pantomime played out in revery. The number of times is small that we consciously decide anything about events beyond our sight, and each man's opinion of what he could accomplish if he tried, is slight. There is rarely a practical issue, and therefore no great habit of decision. This would be more evident were it not that most information when it reaches us carries with it an aura of suggestion as to how we ought to feel about the news. That suggestion we need, and if we do not find it in the news we turn to the editorials or to a trusted adviser. The revery, if we feel ourselves implicated, is uncomfortable until we know where we stand, that is, until the facts have been formulated so that we can feel Yes or No in regard to them. When a number of people all say Yes they may have all kinds of reasons for saying it. They generally do. For the pictures in their minds are, as we have already noted, varied in subtle and intimate ways. But this subtlety remains within their minds; it becomes represented publicly by a number of symbolic phrases which carry the individual emotion after evacuating most of the intention. The hierarchy, or, if it is a contest, then the two hierarchies, associate the symbols with a definite action, a vote of Yes or No, an attitude pro or con. Then Smith who was against the League and Jones who was against Article X, and Brown who was against Mr. Wilson and all his works, each for his own reason, all in the name of more or less the same symbolic phrase, register a vote _against_ the Democrats by voting for the Republicans. A common will has been expressed. A concrete choice had to be presented, the choice had to be connected, by the transfer of interest through the symbols, with individual opinion. The professional politicians learned this long before the democratic philosophers. And so they organized the caucus, the nominating convention, and the steering committee, as the means of formulating a definite choice. Everyone who wishes to accomplish anything that requires the cooperation of a large number of people follows their example. Sometimes it is done rather brutally as when the Peace Conference reduced itself to the Council of Ten, and the Council of Ten to the Big Three or Four; and wrote a treaty which the minor allies, their own constituents, and the enemy were permitted to take or leave. More consultation than that is generally possible and desirable. But the essential fact remains that a small number of heads present a choice to a large group. 6 The abuses of the steering committee have led to various proposals such as the initiative, referendum and direct primary. But these merely postponed or obscured the need for a machine by complicating the elections, or as H. G. Wells once said with scrupulous accuracy, the selections. For no amount of balloting can obviate the need of creating an issue, be it a measure or a candidate, on which the voters can say Yes, or No. There is, in fact, no such thing as "direct legislation." For what happens where it is supposed to exist? The citizen goes to the polls, receives a ballot on which a number of measures are printed, almost always in abbreviated form, and, if he says anything at all, he says Yes or No. The most brilliant amendment in the world may occur to him. He votes Yes or No on that bill and no other. You have to commit violence against the English language to call that legislation. I do not argue, of course, that there are no benefits, whatever you call the process. I think that for certain kinds of issues there are distinct benefits. But the necessary simplicity of any mass decision is a very important fact in view of the inevitable complexity of the world in which those decisions operate. The most complicated form of voting that anyone proposes is, I suppose, the preferential ballot. Among a number of candidates presented the voter under that system, instead of saying yes to one candidate and no to all the others, states the order of his choice. But even here, immensely more flexible though it is, the action of the mass depends upon the quality of the choices presented. [Footnote: _Cf._ H. J. Laski, _Foundations of Sovereignty,_ p. 224. "... proportional representation... by leading, as it seems to lead, to the group system... may deprive the electors of their choice of leaders." The group system undoubtedly tends, as Mr. Laski says, to make the selection of the executive more indirect, but there is no doubt also that it tends to produce legislative assemblies in which currents of opinion are more fully represented. Whether that is good or bad cannot be determined a priori. But one can say that successful cooperation and responsibility in a more accurately representative assembly require a higher organization of political intelligence and political habit, than in a rigid two-party house. It is a more complex political form and may therefore work less well.] And those choices are presented by the energetic coteries who hustle about with petitions and round up the delegates. The Many can elect after the Few have nominated. CHAPTER XV LEADERS AND THE RANK AND FILE I BECAUSE of their transcendent practical importance, no successful leader has ever been too busy to cultivate the symbols which organize his following. What privileges do within the hierarchy, symbols do for the rank and file. They conserve unity. From the totem pole to the national flag, from the wooden idol to God the Invisible King, from the magic word to some diluted version of Adam Smith or Bentham, symbols have been cherished by leaders, many of whom were themselves unbelievers, because they were focal points where differences merged. The detached observer may scorn the "star-spangled" ritual which hedges the symbol, perhaps as much as the king who told himself that Paris was worth a few masses. But the leader knows by experience that only when symbols have done their work is there a handle he can use to move a crowd. In the symbol emotion is discharged at a common target, and the idiosyncrasy of real ideas blotted out. No wonder he hates what he calls destructive criticism, sometimes called by free spirits the elimination of buncombe. "Above all things," says Bagehot, "our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it." [Footnote: _The English Constitution,_ p. 127. D. Appleton & Company, 1914.] For poking about with clear definitions and candid statements serves all high purposes known to man, except the easy conservation of a common will. Poking about, as every responsible leader suspects, tends to break the transference of emotion from the individual mind to the institutional symbol. And the first result of that is, as he rightly says, a chaos of individualism and warring sects. The disintegration of a symbol, like Holy Russia, or the Iron Diaz, is always the beginning of a long upheaval. These great symbols possess by transference all the minute and detailed loyalties of an ancient and stereotyped society. They evoke the feeling that each individual has for the landscape, the furniture, the faces, the memories that are his first, and in a static society, his only reality. That core of images and devotions without which he is unthinkable to himself, is nationality. The great symbols take up these devotions, and can arouse them without calling forth the primitive images. The lesser symbols of public debate, the more casual chatter of politics, are always referred back to these proto-symbols, and if possible associated with them. The question of a proper fare on a municipal subway is symbolized as an issue between the People and the Interests, and then the People is inserted in the symbol American, so that finally in the heat of a campaign, an eight cent fare becomes unAmerican. The Revolutionary fathers died to prevent it. Lincoln suffered that it might not come to pass, resistance to it was implied in the death of those who sleep in France. Because of its power to siphon emotion out of distinct ideas, the symbol is both a mechanism of solidarity, and a mechanism of exploitation. It enables people to work for a common end, but just because the few who are strategically placed must choose the concrete objectives, the symbol is also an instrument by which a few can fatten on many, deflect criticism, and seduce men into facing agony for objects they do not understand. Many aspects of our subjection to symbols are not flattering if we choose to think of ourselves as realistic, self-sufficient, and self-governing personalities. Yet it is impossible to conclude that symbols are altogether instruments of the devil. In the realm of science and contemplation they are undoubtedly the tempter himself. But in the world of action they may be beneficent, and are sometimes a necessity. The necessity is often imagined, the peril manufactured. But when quick results are imperative, the manipulation of masses through symbols may be the only quick way of having a critical thing done. It is often more important to act than to understand. It is sometimes true that the action would fail if everyone understood it. There are many affairs which cannot wait for a referendum or endure publicity, and there are times, during war for example, when a nation, an army, and even its commanders must trust strategy to a very few minds; when two conflicting opinions, though one happens to be right, are more perilous than one opinion which is wrong. The wrong opinion may have bad results, but the two opinions may entail disaster by dissolving unity. [Footnote: Captain Peter S. Wright, Assistant Secretary of the Supreme War Council, _At the Supreme War Council,_ is well worth careful reading on secrecy and unity of command, even though in respect to the allied leaders he wages a passionate polemic.] Thus Foch and Sir Henry Wilson, who foresaw the impending disaster to Cough's army, as a consequence of the divided and scattered reserves, nevertheless kept their opinions well within a small circle, knowing that even the risk of a smashing defeat was less certainly destructive, than would have been an excited debate in the newspapers. For what matters most under the kind of tension which prevailed in March, 1918, is less the rightness of a particular move than the unbroken expectation as to the source of command. Had Foch "gone to the people" he might have won the debate, but long before he could have won it, the armies which he was to command would have dissolved. For the spectacle of a row on Olympus is diverting and destructive. But so also is a conspiracy of silence. Says Captain Wright: "It is in the High Command and not in the line, that the art of camouflage is most practiced, and reaches to highest flights. All chiefs everywhere are now kept painted, by the busy work of numberless publicists, so as to be mistaken for Napoleons--at a distance....It becomes almost impossible to displace these Napoleons, whatever their incompetence, because of the enormous public support created by hiding or glossing failure, and exaggerating or inventing success.... But the most insidious and worst effect of this so highly organized falsity is on the generals themselves: modest and patriotic as they mostly are, and as most men must be to take up and follow the noble profession of arms, they themselves are ultimately affected by these universal illusions, and reading it every morning in the paper, they also grow persuaded they are thunderbolts of war and infallible, however much they fail, and that their maintenance in command is an end so sacred that it justifies the use of any means.... These various conditions, of which this great deceit is the greatest, at last emancipate all General Staffs from all control. They no longer live for the nation: the nation lives, or rather dies, for them. Victory or defeat ceases to be the prime interest. What matters to these semi-sovereign corporations is whether dear old Willie or poor old Harry is going to be at their head, or the Chantilly party prevail over the Boulevard des Invalides party." [Footnote: _Op. cit._, pp. 98, 101-105.] Yet Captain Wright who can be so eloquent and so discerning about the dangers of silence is forced nevertheless to approve the silence of Foch in not publicly destroying the illusions. There is here a complicated paradox, arising as we shall see more fully later on, because the traditional democratic view of life is conceived, not for emergencies and dangers, but for tranquillity and harmony. And so where masses of people must coöperate in an uncertain and eruptive environment, it is usually necessary to secure unity and flexibility without real consent. The symbol does that. It obscures personal intention, neutralizes discrimination, and obfuscates individual purpose. It immobilizes personality, yet at the same time it enormously sharpens the intention of the group and welds that group, as nothing else in a crisis can weld it, to purposeful action. It renders the mass mobile though it immobilizes personality. The symbol is the instrument by which in the short run the mass escapes from its own inertia, the inertia of indecision, or the inertia of headlong movement, and is rendered capable of being led along the zigzag of a complex situation. 2 But in the longer run, the give and take increases between the leaders and the led. The word most often used to describe the state of mind in the rank and file about its leaders is morale. That is said to be good when the individuals do the part allotted to them with all their energy; when each man's whole strength is evoked by the command from above. It follows that every leader must plan his policy with this in mind. He must consider his decision not only on "the merits," but also in its effect on any part of his following whose continued support he requires. If he is a general planning an attack, he knows that his organized military units will scatter into mobs if the percentage of casualties rises too high. In the Great War previous calculations were upset to an extraordinary degree, for "out of every nine men who went to France five became casualties." [Footnote: _Op. cit_., p. 37. Figures taken by Captain Wright from the statistical abstract of the war in the Archives of the War Office. The figures refer apparently to the English losses alone, possibly to the English and French.] The limit of endurance was far greater than anyone had supposed. But there was a limit somewhere. And so, partly because of its effect on the enemy, but also in great measure because of its effect on the troops and their families, no command in this war dared to publish a candid statement of its losses. In France the casualty lists were never published. In England, America, and Germany publication of the losses of a big battle were spread out over long periods so as to destroy a unified impression of the total. Only the insiders knew until long afterwards what the Somme had cost, or the Flanders battles; [Footnote: _Op cit._, p. 34, the Somme cost nearly 500,000 casualties; the Arras and Flanders offensives of 1917 cost 650,000 British casualties.] and Ludendorff undoubtedly had a very much more accurate idea of these casualties than any private person in London, Paris or Chicago. All the leaders in every camp did their best to limit the amount of actual war which any one soldier or civilian could vividly conceive. But, of course, among old veterans like the French troops of 1917, a great deal more is known about war than ever reaches the public. Such an army begins to judge its commanders in terms of its own suffering. And then, when another extravagant promise of victory turns out to be the customary bloody defeat, you may find that a mutiny breaks out over some comparatively minor blunder, [Footnote: The Allies suffered many bloodier defeats than that on the Chemin des Dames.] like Nivelle's offensive of 1917, because it is a cumulative blunder. Revolutions and mutinies generally follow a small sample of a big series of evils. [Footnote: _Cf._ Pierrefeu's account, _op. cit._, on the causes of the Soissons mutinies, and the method adopted by Pétain to deal with them. Vol. I, Part III, _et seq._] The incidence of policy determines the relation between leader and following. If those whom he needs in his plan are remote from the place where the action takes place, if the results are hidden or postponed, if the individual obligations are indirect or not yet due, above all if assent is an exercise of some pleasurable emotion, the leader is likely to have a free hand. Those programs are immediately most popular, like prohibition among teetotalers, which do not at once impinge upon the private habits of the followers. That is one great reason why governments have such a free hand in foreign affairs. Most of the frictions between two states involve a series of obscure and long-winded contentions, occasionally on the frontier, but far more often in regions about which school geographies have supplied no precise ideas. In Czechoslovakia America is regarded as the Liberator; in American newspaper paragraphs and musical comedy, in American conversation by and large, it has never been finally settled whether the country we liberated is Czechoslavia or Jugoslovakia. In foreign affairs the incidence of policy is for a very long time confined to an unseen environment. Nothing that happens out there is felt to be wholly real. And so, because in the ante-bellum period, nobody has to fight and nobody has to pay, governments go along according to their lights without much reference to their people. In local affairs the cost of a policy is more easily visible. And therefore, all but the most exceptional leaders prefer policies in which the costs are as far as possible indirect. They do not like direct taxation. They do not like to pay as they go. They like long term debts. They like to have the voters believe that the foreigner will pay. They have always been compelled to calculate prosperity in terms of the producer rather than in terms of the consumer, because the incidence on the consumer is distributed over so many trivial items. Labor leaders have always preferred an increase of money wages to a decrease in prices. There has always been more popular interest in the profits of millionaires, which are visible but comparatively unimportant, than in the wastes of the industrial system, which are huge but elusive. A legislature dealing with a shortage of houses, such as exists when this is written, illustrates this rule, first by doing nothing to increase the number of houses, second by smiting the greedy landlord on the hip, third by investigating the profiteering builders and working men. For a constructive policy deals with remote and uninteresting factors, while a greedy landlord, or a profiteering plumber is visible and immediate. But while people will readily believe that in an unimagined future and in unseen places a certain policy will benefit them, the actual working out of policy follows a different logic from their opinions. A nation may be induced to believe that jacking up the freight rates will make the railroads prosperous. But that belief will not make the roads prosperous, if the impact of those rates on farmers and shippers is such as to produce a commodity price beyond what the consumer can pay. Whether the consumer will pay the price depends not upon whether he nodded his head nine months previously at the proposal to raise rates and save business, but on whether he now wants a new hat or a new automobile enough to pay for them. 3 Leaders often pretend that they have merely uncovered a program which existed in the minds of their public. When they believe it, they are usually deceiving themselves. Programs do not invent themselves synchronously in a multitude of minds. That is not because a multitude of minds is necessarily inferior to that of the leaders, but because thought is the function of an organism, and a mass is not an organism. This fact is obscured because the mass is constantly exposed to suggestion. It reads not the news, but the news with an aura of suggestion about it, indicating the line of action to be taken. It hears reports, not objective as the facts are, but already stereotyped to a certain pattern of behavior. Thus the ostensible leader often finds that the real leader is a powerful newspaper proprietor. But if, as in a laboratory, one could remove all suggestion and leading from the experience of a multitude, one would, I think, find something like this: A mass exposed to the same stimuli would develop responses that could theoretically be charted in a polygon of error. There would be a certain group that felt sufficiently alike to be classified together. There would be variants of feeling at both ends. These classifications would tend to harden as individuals in each of the classifications made their reactions vocal. That is to say, when the vague feelings of those who felt vaguely had been put into words, they would know more definitely what they felt, and would then feel it more definitely. Leaders in touch with popular feeling are quickly conscious of these reactions. They know that high prices are pressing upon the mass, or that certain classes of individuals are becoming unpopular, or that feeling towards another nation is friendly or hostile. But, always barring the effect of suggestion which is merely the assumption of leadership by the reporter, there would be nothing in the feeling of the mass that fatally determined the choice of any particular policy. All that the feeling of the mass demands is that policy as it is developed and exposed shall be, if not logically, then by analogy and association, connected with the original feeling. So when a new policy is to be launched, there is a preliminary bid for community of feeling, as in Mark Antony's speech to the followers of Brutus. [Footnote: Excellently analyzed in Martin, _The Behavior of Crowds,_ pp. 130-132,] In the first phase, the leader vocalizes the prevalent opinion of the mass. He identifies himself with the familiar attitudes of his audience, sometimes by telling a good story, sometimes by brandishing his patriotism, often by pinching a grievance. Finding that he is trustworthy, the multitude milling hither and thither may turn in towards him. He will then be expected to set forth a plan of campaign. But he will not find that plan in the slogans which convey the feelings of the mass. It will not even always be indicated by them. Where the incidence of policy is remote, all that is essential is that the program shall be verbally and emotionally connected at the start with what has become vocal in the multitude. Trusted men in a familiar role subscribing to the accepted symbols can go a very long way on their own initiative without explaining the substance of their programs. But wise leaders are not content to do that. Provided they think publicity will not strengthen opposition too much, and that debate will not delay action too long, they seek a certain measure of consent. They take, if not the whole mass, then the subordinates of the hierarchy sufficiently into their confidence to prepare them for what might happen, and to make them feel that they have freely willed the result. But however sincere the leader may be, there is always, when the facts are very complicated, a certain amount of illusion in these consultations. For it is impossible that all the contingencies shall be as vivid to the whole public as they are to the more experienced and the more imaginative. A fairly large percentage are bound to agree without having taken the time, or without possessing the background, for appreciating the choices which the leader presents to them. No one, however, can ask for more. And only theorists do. If we have had our day in court, if what we had to say was heard, and then if what is done comes out well, most of us do not stop to consider how much our opinion affected the business in hand. And therefore, if the established powers are sensitive and well-informed, if they are visibly trying to meet popular feeling, and actually removing some of the causes of dissatisfaction, no matter how slowly they proceed, provided they are seen to be proceeding, they have little to fear. It takes stupendous and persistent blundering, plus almost infinite tactlessness, to start a revolution from below. Palace revolutions, interdepartmental revolutions, are a different matter. So, too, is demagogy. That stops at relieving the tension by expressing the feeling. But the statesman knows that such relief is temporary, and if indulged too often, unsanitary. He, therefore, sees to it that he arouses no feeling which he cannot sluice into a program that deals with the facts to which the feelings refer. But all leaders are not statesmen, all leaders hate to resign, and most leaders find it hard to believe that bad as things are, the other fellow would not make them worse. They do not passively wait for the public to feel the incidence of policy, because the incidence of that discovery is generally upon their own heads. They are, therefore, intermittently engaged in mending their fences and consolidating their position. The mending of fences consists in offering an occasional scapegoat, in redressing a minor grievance affecting a powerful individual or faction, rearranging certain jobs, placating a group of people who want an arsenal in their home town, or a law to stop somebody's vices. Study the daily activity of any public official who depends on election and you can enlarge this list. There are Congressmen elected year after year who never think of dissipating their energy on public affairs. They prefer to do a little service for a lot of people on a lot of little subjects, rather than to engage in trying to do a big service out there in the void. But the number of people to whom any organization can be a successful valet is limited, and shrewd politicians take care to attend either the influential, or somebody so blatantly uninfluential that to pay any attention to him is a mark of sensational magnanimity. The far greater number who cannot be held by favors, the anonymous multitude, receive propaganda. The established leaders of any organization have great natural advantages. They are believed to have better sources of information. The books and papers are in their offices. They took part in the important conferences. They met the important people. They have responsibility. It is, therefore, easier for them to secure attention and to speak in a convincing tone. But also they have a very great deal of control over the access to the facts. Every official is in some degree a censor. And since no one can suppress information, either by concealing it or forgetting to mention it, without some notion of what he wishes the public to know, every leader is in some degree a propagandist. Strategically placed, and compelled often to choose even at the best between the equally cogent though conflicting ideals of safety for the institution, and candor to his public, the official finds himself deciding more and more consciously what facts, in what setting, in what guise he shall permit the public to know. 4 That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies. The process by which public opinions arise is certainly no less intricate than it has appeared in these pages, and the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the process are plain enough. The creation of consent is not a new art. It is a very old one which was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy. But it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technic, because it is now based on analysis rather than on rule of thumb. And so, as a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power. Within the life of the generation now in control of affairs, persuasion has become a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government. None of us begins to understand the consequences, but it is no daring prophecy to say that the knowledge of how to create consent will alter every political calculation and modify every political premise. Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the old constants of our thinking have become variables. It is no longer possible, for example, to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-deception, and to forms of persuasion that we cannot verify. It has been demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents of casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond our reach. PART VI THE IMAGE OF DEMOCRACY "I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought the image of democracy itself." Alexis de Tocqueville. CHAPTER 16. THE SELF-CENTERED MAN " 17. THE SELF-CONTAINED COMMUNITY " 18. THE ROLE OF FORCE, PATRONAGE AND PRIVILEGE " 19. THE OLD IMAGE IN A NEW FORM: GUILD SOCIALISM " 20. A NEW IMAGE CHAPTER XVI THE SELF-CENTERED MAN I SINCE Public Opinion is supposed to be the prime mover in democracies, one might reasonably expect to find a vast literature. One does not find it. There are excellent books on government and parties, that is, on the machinery which in theory registers public opinions after they are formed. But on the sources from which these public opinions arise, on the processes by which they are derived, there is relatively little. The existence of a force called Public Opinion is in the main taken for granted, and American political writers have been most interested either in finding out how to make government express the common will, or in how to prevent the common will from subverting the purposes for which they believe the government exists. According to their traditions they have wished either to tame opinion or to obey it. Thus the editor of a notable series of text-books writes that "the most difficult and the most momentous question of government (is) how to transmit the force of individual opinion into public action." [Footnote: Albert Bushnell Hart in the Introductory note to A. Lawrence Lowell's _Public Opinion and Popular Government. _] But surely there is a still more momentous question, the question of how to validate our private versions of the political scene. There is, as I shall try to indicate further on, the prospect of radical improvement by the development of principles already in operation. But this development will depend on how well we learn to use knowledge of the way opinions are put together to watch over our own opinions when they are being put together. For casual opinion, being the product of partial contact, of tradition, and personal interests, cannot in the nature of things take kindly to a method of political thought which is based on exact record, measurement, analysis and comparison. Just those qualities of the mind which determine what shall seem interesting, important, familiar, personal, and dramatic, are the qualities which in the first instance realistic opinion frustrates. Therefore, unless there is in the community at large a growing conviction that prejudice and intuition are not enough, the working out of realistic opinion, which takes time, money, labor, conscious effort, patience, and equanimity, will not find enough support. That conviction grows as self-criticism increases, and makes us conscious of buncombe, contemptuous of ourselves when we employ it, and on guard to detect it. Without an ingrained habit of analyzing opinion when we read, talk, and decide, most of us would hardly suspect the need of better ideas, nor be interested in them when they appear, nor be able to prevent the new technic of political intelligence from being manipulated. Yet democracies, if we are to judge by the oldest and most powerful of them, have made a mystery out of public opinion. There have been skilled organizers of opinion who understood the mystery well enough to create majorities on election day. But these organizers have been regarded by political science as low fellows or as "problems," not as possessors of the most effective knowledge there was on how to create and operate public opinion. The tendency of the people who have voiced the ideas of democracy, even when they have not managed its action, the tendency of students, orators, editors, has been to look upon Public Opinion as men in other societies looked upon the uncanny forces to which they ascribed the last word in the direction of events. For in almost every political theory there is an inscrutable element which in the heyday of that theory goes unexamined. Behind the appearances there is a Fate, there are Guardian Spirits, or Mandates to a Chosen People, a Divine Monarchy, a Vice-Regent of Heaven, or a Class of the Better Born. The more obvious angels, demons, and kings are gone out of democratic thinking, but the need for believing that there are reserve powers of guidance persists. It persisted for those thinkers of the Eighteenth Century who designed the matrix of democracy. They had a pale god, but warm hearts, and in the doctrine of popular sovereignty they found the answer to their need of an infallible origin for the new social order. There was the mystery, and only enemies of the people touched it with profane and curious hands. 2 They did not remove the veil because they were practical politicians in a bitter and uncertain struggle. They had themselves felt the aspiration of democracy, which is ever so much deeper, more intimate and more important than any theory of government. They were engaged, as against the prejudice of ages, in the assertion of human dignity. What possessed them was not whether John Smith had sound views on any public question, but that John Smith, scion of a stock that had always been considered inferior, would now bend his knee to no other man. It was this spectacle that made it bliss "in that dawn to be alive." But every analyst seems to degrade that dignity, to deny that all men are reasonable all the time, or educated, or informed, to note that people are fooled, that they do not always know their own interests, and that all men are not equally fitted to govern. The critics were about as welcome as a small boy with a drum. Every one of these observations on the fallibility of man was being exploited ad nauseam. Had democrats admitted there was truth in any of the aristocratic arguments they would have opened a breach in the defenses. And so just as Aristotle had to insist that the slave was a slave by nature, the democrats had to insist that the free man was a legislator and administrator by nature. They could not stop to explain that a human soul might not yet have, or indeed might never have, this technical equipment, and that nevertheless it had an inalienable right not to be used as the unwilling instrument of other men. The superior people were still too strong and too unscrupulous to have refrained from capitalizing so candid a statement. So the early democrats insisted that a reasoned righteousness welled up spontaneously out of the mass of men. All of them hoped that it would, many of them believed that it did, although the cleverest, like Thomas Jefferson, had all sorts of private reservations. But one thing was certain: if public opinion did not come forth spontaneously, nobody in that age believed it would come forth at all. For in one fundamental respect the political science on which democracy was based was the same science that Aristotle formulated. It was the same science for democrat and aristocrat, royalist and republican, in that its major premise assumed the art of government to be a natural endowment. Men differed radically when they tried to name the men so endowed; but they agreed in thinking that the greatest question of all was to find those in whom political wisdom was innate. Royalists were sure that kings were born to govern. Alexander Hamilton thought that while "there are strong minds in every walk of life... the representative body, with too few exceptions to have any influence on the spirit of the government, will be composed of landholders, merchants, and men of the learned professions." [Footnote: _The Federalist_, Nos. 35, 36. _Cf_. comment by Henry Jones Ford in his _Rise and Growth of American Politics_. Ch. V.] Jefferson thought the political faculties were deposited by God in farmers and planters, and sometimes spoke as if they were found in all the people. [Footnote: See below p. 268.] The main premise was the same: to govern was an instinct that appeared, according to your social preferences, in one man or a chosen few, in all males, or only in males who were white and twenty-one, perhaps even in all men and all women. In deciding who was most fit to govern, knowledge of the world was taken for granted. The aristocrat believed that those who dealt with large affairs possessed the instinct, the democrats asserted that all men possessed the instinct and could therefore deal with large affairs. It was no part of political science in either case to think out how knowledge of the world could be brought to the ruler. If you were for the people you did not try to work out the question of how to keep the voter informed. By the age of twenty-one he had his political faculties. What counted was a good heart, a reasoning mind, a balanced judgment. These would ripen with age, but it was not necessary to consider how to inform the heart and feed the reason. Men took in their facts as they took in their breath. 3 But the facts men could come to possess in this effortless way were limited. They could know the customs and more obvious character of the place where they lived and worked. But the outer world they had to conceive, and they did not conceive it instinctively, nor absorb trustworthy knowledge of it just by living. Therefore, the only environment in which spontaneous politics were possible was one confined within the range of the ruler's direct and certain knowledge. There is no escaping this conclusion, wherever you found government on the natural range of men's faculties. "If," as Aristotle said, [Footnote: _Politics_, Bk. VII, Ch. 4.] "the citizens of a state are to judge and distribute offices according to merit, then they must know each other's characters; where they do not possess this knowledge, both the election to offices and the decision of law suits will go wrong." Obviously this maxim was binding upon every school of political thought. But it presented peculiar difficulties to the democrats. Those who believed in class government could fairly claim that in the court of the king, or in the country houses of the gentry, men did know each other's characters, and as long as the rest of mankind was passive, the only characters one needed to know were the characters of men in the ruling class. But the democrats, who wanted to raise the dignity of all men, were immediately involved by the immense size and confusion of their ruling class--the male electorate. Their science told them that politics was an instinct, and that the instinct worked in a limited environment. Their hopes bade them insist that all men in a very large environment could govern. In this deadly conflict between their ideals and their science, the only way out was to assume without much discussion that the voice of the people was the voice of God. The paradox was too great, the stakes too big, their ideal too precious for critical examination. They could not show how a citizen of Boston was to stay in Boston and conceive the views of a Virginian, how a Virginian in Virginia could have real opinions about the government at Washington, how Congressmen in Washington could have opinions about China or Mexico. For in that day it was not possible for many men to have an unseen environment brought into the field of their judgment. There had been some advances, to be sure, since Aristotle. There were a few newspapers, and there were books, better roads perhaps, and better ships. But there was no great advance, and the political assumptions of the Eighteenth Century had essentially to be those that had prevailed in political science for two thousand years. The pioneer democrats did not possess the material for resolving the conflict between the known range of man's attention and their illimitable faith in his dignity. Their assumptions antedated not only the modern newspaper, the world-wide press services, photography and moving pictures, but, what is really more significant, they antedated measurement and record, quantitative and comparative analysis, the canons of evidence, and the ability of psychological analysis to correct and discount the prejudices of the witness. I do not mean to say that our records are satisfactory, our analysis unbiased, our measurements sound. I do mean to say that the key inventions have been made for bringing the unseen world into the field of judgment. They had not been made in the time of Aristotle, and they were not yet important enough to be visible for political theory in the age of Rousseau, Montesquieu, or Thomas Jefferson. In a later chapter I think we shall see that even in the latest theory of human reconstruction, that of the English Guild Socialists, all the deeper premises have been taken over from this older system of political thought. That system, whenever it was competent and honest, had to assume that no man could have more than a very partial experience of public affairs. In the sense that he can give only a little time to them, that assumption is still true, and of the utmost consequence. But ancient theory was compelled to assume, not only that men could give little attention to public questions, but that the attention available would have to be confined to matters close at hand. It would have been visionary to suppose that a time would come when distant and complicated events could conceivably be reported, analyzed, and presented in such a form that a really valuable choice could be made by an amateur. That time is now in sight. There is no longer any doubt that the continuous reporting of an unseen environment is feasible. It is often done badly, but the fact that it is done at all shows that it can be done, and the fact that we begin to know how badly it is often done, shows that it can be done better. With varying degrees of skill and honesty distant complexities are reported every day by engineers and accountants for business men, by secretaries and civil servants for officials, by intelligence officers for the General Staff, by some journalists for some readers. These are crude beginnings but radical, far more radical in the literal meaning of that word than the repetition of wars, revolutions, abdications and restorations; as radical as the change in the scale of human life which has made it possible for Mr. Lloyd George to discuss Welsh coal mining after breakfast in London, and the fate of the Arabs before dinner in Paris. For the possibility of bringing any aspect of human affairs within the range of judgment breaks the spell which has lain upon political ideas. There have, of course, been plenty of men who did not realize that the range of attention was the main premise of political science. They have built on sand. They have demonstrated in their own persons the effects of a very limited and self-centered knowledge of the world. But for the political thinkers who have counted, from Plato and Aristotle through Machiavelli and Hobbes to the democratic theorists, speculation has revolved around the self-centered man who had to see the whole world by means of a few pictures in his head. CHAPTER XVII THE SELF-CONTAINED COMMUNITY 1 THAT groups of self-centered people would engage in a struggle for existence if they rubbed against each other has always been evident. This much truth there is at any rate in that famous passage in the Leviathan where Hobbes says that "though there had never been any time wherein particular men were in a condition of war one against another, yet at all times kings and _persons_ of _sovereign authority because_ of their _independency_, are in continual jealousies and in the state and posture of gladiators, having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another..." [Footnote: _Leviathan_, Ch. XIII. Of the Natural Condition of Mankind as concerning their Felicity and Misery.] 2 To circumvent this conclusion one great branch of human thought, which had and has many schools, proceeded in this fashion: it conceived an ideally just pattern of human relations in which each person had well defined functions and rights. If he conscientiously filled the role allotted to him, it did not matter whether his opinions were right or wrong. He did his duty, the next man did his, and all the dutiful people together made a harmonious world. Every caste system illustrates this principle; you find it in Plato's Republic and in Aristotle, in the feudal ideal, in the circles of Dante's Paradise, in the bureaucratic type of socialism, and in laissez-faire, to an amazing degree in syndicalism, guild socialism, anarchism, and in the system of international law idealized by Mr. Robert Lansing. All of them assume a pre-established harmony, inspired, imposed, or innate, by which the self-opinionated person, class, or community is orchestrated with the rest of mankind. The more authoritarian imagine a conductor for the symphony who sees to it that each man plays his part; the anarchistic are inclined to think that a more divine concord would be heard if each player improvised as he went along. But there have also been philosophers who were bored by these schemes of rights and duties, took conflict for granted, and tried to see how their side might come out on top. They have always seemed more realistic, even when they seemed alarming, because all they had to do was to generalize the experience that nobody could escape. Machiavelli is the classic of this school, a man most mercilessly maligned, because he happened to be the first naturalist who used plain language in a field hitherto preempted by supernaturalists. [Footnote: F. S. Oliver in his _Alexander Hamilton_, says of Machiavelli (p. 174): "Assuming the conditions which exist--the nature of man and of things--to be unchangeable, he proceeds in a calm, unmoral way, like a lecturer on frogs, to show how a valiant and sagacious ruler can best turn events to his own advantage and the security of his dynasty."] He has a worse name and more disciples than any political thinker who ever lived. He truly described the technic of existence for the self-contained state. That is why he has the disciples. He has the bad name chiefly because he cocked his eye at the Medici family, dreamed in his study at night where he wore his "noble court dress" that Machiavelli was himself the Prince, and turned a pungent description of the way things are done into an eulogy on that way of doing them. In his most infamous chapter [Footnote: _The Prince_, Ch. XVIII. "Concerning the way in which Princes should keep faith." Translation by W. K. Marriott.] he wrote that "a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who hears and sees him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result.... One prince of the present time, whom it is not well to name, never preaches anything else but peace and good faith, and to both he is most hostile, and either, if he had kept it, would have deprived him of reputation and kingdom many a time." That is cynical. But it is the cynicism of a man who saw truly without knowing quite why he saw what he saw. Machiavelli is thinking of the run of men and princes "who judge generally more by the eye than by the hand," which is his way of saying that their judgments are subjective. He was too close to earth to pretend that the Italians of his day saw the world steadily and saw it whole. He would not indulge in fantasies, and he had not the materials for imagining a race of men that had learned how to correct their vision. The world, as he found it, was composed of people whose vision could rarely be corrected, and Machiavelli knew that such people, since they see all public relations in a private way, are involved in perpetual strife. What they see is their own personal, class, dynastic, or municipal version of affairs that in reality extend far beyond the boundaries of their vision. They see their aspect. They see it as right. But they cross other people who are similarly self-centered. Then their very existence is endangered, or at least what they, for unsuspected private reasons, regard as their existence and take to be a danger. The end, which is impregnably based on a real though private experience justifies the means. They will sacrifice any one of these ideals to save all of them,... "one judges by the result..." 3 These elemental truths confronted the democratic philosophers. Consciously or otherwise, they knew that the range of political knowledge was limited, that the area of self-government would have to be limited, and that self-contained states when they rubbed against each other were in the posture of gladiators. But they knew just as certainly, that there was in men a will to decide their own fate, and to find a peace that was not imposed by force. How could they reconcile the wish and the fact? They looked about them. In the city states of Greece and Italy they found a chronicle of corruption, intrigue and war. [Footnote: "Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention... and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." Madison, _Federalist_, No. 10.] In their own cities they saw faction, artificiality, fever. This was no environment in which the democratic ideal could prosper, no place where a group of independent and equally competent people managed their own affairs spontaneously. They looked further, guided somewhat perhaps by Jean Jacques Rousseau, to remote, unspoiled country villages. They saw enough to convince themselves that there the ideal was at home. Jefferson in particular felt this, and Jefferson more than any other man formulated the American image of democracy. From the townships had come the power that had carried the American Revolution to victory. From the townships were to come the votes that carried Jefferson's party to power. Out there in the farming communities of Massachusetts and Virginia, if you wore glasses that obliterated the slaves, you could see with your mind's eye the image of what democracy was to be. "The American Revolution broke out," says de Tocqueville, [Footnote: _Democracy in America,_ Vol. I, p. 51. Third Edition] "and the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, which had been nurtured in the townships, took possession of the state." It certainly took possession of the minds of those men who formulated and popularized the stereotypes of democracy. "The cherishment of the people was our principle," wrote Jefferson. [Footnote: Cited in Charles Beard, _Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy._ Ch. XIV. ] But the people he cherished almost exclusively were the small landowning farmers: "Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which He keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example." However much of the romantic return to nature may have entered into this exclamation, there was also an element of solid sense. Jefferson was right in thinking that a group of independent farmers comes nearer to fulfilling the requirements of spontaneous democracy than any other human society. But if you are to preserve the ideal, you must fence off these ideal communities from the abominations of the world. If the farmers are to manage their own affairs, they must confine affairs to those they are accustomed to managing. Jefferson drew all these logical conclusions. He disapproved of manufacture, of foreign commerce, and a navy, of intangible forms of property, and in theory of any form of government that was not centered in the small self-governing group. He had critics in his day: one of them remarked that "wrapt up in the fullness of self-consequence and strong enough, in reality, to defend ourselves against every invader, we might enjoy an eternal rusticity and live, forever, thus apathized and vulgar under the shelter of a selfish, satisfied indifference." [Footnote: _Op. cit_., p. 426.] 4 The democratic ideal, as Jefferson moulded it, consisting of an ideal environment and a selected class, did not conflict with the political science of his time. It did conflict with the realities. And when the ideal was stated in absolute terms, partly through exuberance and partly for campaign purposes, it was soon forgotten that the theory was originally devised for very special conditions. It became the political gospel, and supplied the stereotypes through which Americans of all parties have looked at politics. That gospel was fixed by the necessity that in Jefferson's time no one could have conceived public opinions that were not spontaneous and subjective. The democratic tradition is therefore always trying to see a world where people are exclusively concerned with affairs of which the causes and effects all operate within the region they inhabit. Never has democratic theory been able to conceive itself in the context of a wide and unpredictable environment. The mirror is concave. And although democrats recognize that they are in contact with external affairs, they see quite surely that every contact outside that self-contained group is a threat to democracy as originally conceived. That is a wise fear. If democracy is to be spontaneous, the interests of democracy must remain simple, intelligible, and easily managed. Conditions must approximate those of the isolated rural township if the supply of information is to be left to casual experience. The environment must be confined within the range of every man's direct and certain knowledge. The democrat has understood what an analysis of public opinion seems to demonstrate: that in dealing with an unseen environment decisions "are manifestly settled at haphazard, which clearly they ought not to be." [Footnote: Aristotle, _Politics_, Bk. VII, Ch. IV.] So he has always tried in one way or another to minimize the importance of that unseen environment. He feared foreign trade because trade involves foreign connections; he distrusted manufactures because they produced big cities and collected crowds; if he had nevertheless to have manufactures, he wanted protection in the interest of self-sufficiency. When he could not find these conditions in the real world, he went passionately into the wilderness, and founded Utopian communities far from foreign contacts. His slogans reveal his prejudice. He is for Self-Government, Self-Determination, Independence. Not one of these ideas carries with it any notion of consent or community beyond the frontiers of the self-governing groups. The field of democratic action is a circumscribed area. Within protected boundaries the aim has been to achieve self-sufficiency and avoid entanglement. This rule is not confined to foreign policy, but it is plainly evident there, because life outside the national boundaries is more distinctly alien than any life within. And as history shows, democracies in their foreign policy have had generally to choose between splendid isolation and a diplomacy that violated their ideals. The most successful democracies, in fact, Switzerland, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, and America until recently, have had no foreign policy in the European sense of that phrase. Even a rule like the Monroe Doctrine arose from the desire to supplement the two oceans by a glacis of states that were sufficiently republican to have no foreign policy. Whereas danger is a great, perhaps an indispensable condition of autocracy, [Footnote: Fisher Ames, frightened by the democratic revolution of 1800, wrote to Rufus King in 1802: "We need, as all nations do, the compression on the outside of our circle of a formidable neighbor, whose presence shall at all times excite stronger fears than demagogues can inspire the people with towards their government." Cited by Ford, _Rise and Growth of American Politics,_ p. 69.] security was seen to be a necessity if democracy was to work. There must be as little disturbance as possible of the premise of a self-contained community. Insecurity involves surprises. It means that there are people acting upon your life, over whom you have no control, with whom you cannot consult. It means that forces are at large which disturb the familiar routine, and present novel problems about which quick and unusual decisions are required. Every democrat feels in his bones that dangerous crises are incompatible with democracy, because he knows that the inertia of masses is such that to act quickly a very few must decide and the rest follow rather blindly. This has not made non-resistants out of democrats, but it has resulted in all democratic wars being fought for pacifist aims. Even when the wars are in fact wars of conquest, they are sincerely believed to be wars in defense of civilization. These various attempts to enclose a part of the earth's surface were not inspired by cowardice, apathy, or, what one of Jefferson's critics called a willingness to live under monkish discipline. The democrats had caught sight of a dazzling possibility, that every human being should rise to his full stature, freed from man-made limitations. With what they knew of the art of government, they could, no more than Aristotle before them, conceive a society of autonomous individuals, except an enclosed and simple one. They could, then, select no other premise if they were to reach the conclusion that all the people could spontaneously manage their public affairs. 5 Having adopted the premise because it was necessary to their keenest hope, they drew other conclusions as well. Since in order to have spontaneous self-government, you had to have a simple self-contained community, they took it for granted that one man was as competent as the next to manage these simple and self-contained affairs. Where the wish is father to the thought such logic is convincing. Moreover, the doctrine of the omnicompetent citizen is for most practical purposes true in the rural township. Everybody in a village sooner or later tries his hand at everything the village does. There is rotation in office by men who are jacks of all trades. There was no serious trouble with the doctrine of the omnicompetent citizen until the democratic stereotype was universally applied, so that men looked at a complicated civilization and saw an enclosed village. Not only was the individual citizen fitted to deal with all public affairs, but he was consistently public-spirited and endowed with unflagging interest. He was public-spirited enough in the township, where he knew everybody and was interested in everybody's business. The idea of enough for the township turned easily into the idea of enough for any purpose, for as we have noted, quantitative thinking does not suit a stereotype. But there was another turn to the circle. Since everybody was assumed to be interested enough in important affairs, only those affairs came to seem important in which everybody was interested. This meant that men formed their picture of the world outside from the unchallenged pictures in their heads. These pictures came to them well stereotyped by their parents and teachers, and were little corrected by their own experience. Only a few men had affairs that took them across state lines. Even fewer had reason to go abroad. Most voters lived their whole lives in one environment, and with nothing but a few feeble newspapers, some pamphlets, political speeches, their religious training, and rumor to go on, they had to conceive that larger environment of commerce and finance, of war and peace. The number of public opinions based on any objective report was very small in proportion to those based on casual fancy. And so for many different reasons, self-sufficiency was a spiritual ideal in the formative period. The physical isolation of the township, the loneliness of the pioneer, the theory of democracy, the Protestant tradition, and the limitations of political science all converged to make men believe that out of their own consciences they must extricate political wisdom. It is not strange that the deduction of laws from absolute principles should have usurped so much of their free energy. The American political mind had to live on its capital. In legalism it found a tested body of rules from which new rules could be spun without the labor of earning new truths from experience. The formulae became so curiously sacred that every good foreign observer has been amazed at the contrast between the dynamic practical energy of the American people and the static theorism of their public life. That steadfast love of fixed principles was simply the only way known of achieving self-sufficiency. But it meant that the public opinions of any one community about the outer world consisted chiefly of a few stereotyped images arranged in a pattern deduced from their legal and their moral codes, and animated by the feeling aroused by local experiences. Thus democratic theory, starting from its fine vision of ultimate human dignity, was forced by lack of the instruments of knowledge for reporting its environment, to fall back upon the wisdom and experience which happened to have accumulated in the voter. God had, in the words of Jefferson, made men's breasts "His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue." These chosen people in their self-contained environment had all the facts before them. The environment was so familiar that one could take it for granted that men were talking about substantially the same things. The only real disagreements, therefore, would be in judgments about the same facts. There was no need to guarantee the sources of information. They were obvious, and equally accessible to all men. Nor was there need to trouble about the ultimate criteria. In the self-contained community one could assume, or at least did assume, a homogeneous code of morals. The only place, therefore, for differences of opinion was in the logical application of accepted standards to accepted facts. And since the reasoning faculty was also well standardized, an error in reasoning would be quickly exposed in a free discussion. It followed that truth could be obtained by liberty within these limits. The community could take its supply of information for granted; its codes it passed on through school, church, and family, and the power to draw deductions from a premise, rather than the ability to find the premise, was regarded as the chief end of intellectual training. CHAPTER XVIII THE ROLE OF FORCE, PATRONAGE AND PRIVILEGE 1 "IT has happened as was to have been foreseen," wrote Hamilton, [Footnote: _Federalist,_ No. 15] "the measures of the Union have not been executed; the delinquencies of the States have, step by step, matured themselves to an extreme which has at length arrested all the wheels of the national government and brought them to an awful stand."... For "in our case the concurrence of thirteen distinct sovereign wills is requisite, under the confederation, to the complete execution of every important measure that proceeds from the Union." How could it be otherwise, he asked: "The rulers of the respective members... will undertake to judge of the propriety of the measures themselves. They will consider the conformity of the thing proposed or required to their immediate interests or aims; the momentary conveniences or inconveniences that would attend its adoption. All this will be done, and in a spirit of interested and suspicious scrutiny, without that knowledge of national circumstances and reasons of state which is essential to right judgment, and with that strong predilection in favor of local objects which can hardly fail to mislead the decision. The same process must be repeated in every member of which the body is constituted; and the execution of the plans framed by the councils of the whole, will always fluctuate on the discretion of the ill-informed and prejudiced opinion of every part. Those who have been conversant in the proceedings of popular assemblies, who have seen how difficult it often is, when there is no exterior pressure of circumstances, to bring them to harmonious resolutions on important points, will readily conceive how impossible it must be to induce a number of such assemblies, deliberating at a distance from each other, at different times, and under different impressions, long to coöperate in the same views and pursuits." Over ten years of storm and stress with a congress that was, as John Adams said, [Footnote: Ford, _op. cit._, p. 36.] "only a diplomatic assembly," had furnished the leaders of the revolution "with an instructive but afflicting lesson" [Footnote: _Federalist_, No. 15.] in what happens when a number of self-centered communities are entangled in the same environment. And so, when they went to Philadelphia in May of 1787, ostensibly to revise the Articles of Confederation, they were really in full reaction against the fundamental premise of Eighteenth Century democracy. Not only were the leaders consciously opposed to the democratic spirit of the time, feeling, as Madison said, that "democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention," but within the national frontiers they were determined to offset as far as they could the ideal of self-governing communities in self-contained environments. The collisions and failures of concave democracy, where men spontaneously managed all their own affairs, were before their eyes. The problem as they saw it, was to restore government as against democracy. They understood government to be the power to make national decisions and enforce them throughout the nation; democracy they believed was the insistence of localities and classes upon self-determination in accordance with their immediate interests and aims. They could not consider in their calculations the possibility of such an organization of knowledge that separate communities would act simultaneously on the same version of the facts. We just begin to conceive this possibility for certain parts of the world where there is free circulation of news and a common language, and then only for certain aspects of life. The whole idea of a voluntary federalism in industry and world politics is still so rudimentary, that, as we see in our own experience, it enters only a little, and only very modestly, into practical politics. What we, more than a century later, can only conceive as an incentive to generations of intellectual effort, the authors of the Constitution had no reason to conceive at all. In order to set up national government, Hamilton and his colleagues had to make plans, not on the theory that men would coöperate because they had a sense of common interest, but on the theory that men could be governed, if special interests were kept in equilibrium by a balance of power. "Ambition," Madison said, [Footnote: _Federalist_, No. 51, cited by Ford, _op. cit._, p. 60.] "must be made to counteract ambition." They did not, as some writers have supposed, intend to balance every interest so that the government would be in a perpetual deadlock. They intended to deadlock local and class interest to prevent these from obstructing government. "In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men," wrote Madison, [Footnote: _Id_.] "the great difficulty lies in this: _you must first enable the government to control the governed_, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself." In one very important sense, then, the doctrine of checks and balances was the remedy of the federalist leaders for the problem of public opinion. They saw no other way to substitute "the mild influence of the magistracy" for the "sanguinary agency of the sword" [Footnote: _Federalist, No. 15.] except by devising an ingenious machine to neutralize local opinion. They did not understand how to manipulate a large electorate, any more than they saw the possibility of common consent upon the basis of common information. It is true that Aaron Burr taught Hamilton a lesson which impressed him a good deal when he seized control of New York City in 1800 by the aid of Tammany Hall. But Hamilton was killed before he was able to take account of this new discovery, and, as Mr. Ford says, [Footnote: Ford, _op. cit._, p. 119.] Burr's pistol blew the brains out of the Federal party. 2 When the constitution was written, "politics could still be managed by conference and agreement among gentlemen" [Footnote: _Op. cit._, p. 144] and it was to the gentry that Hamilton turned for a government. It was intended that they should manage national affairs when local prejudice had been brought into equilibrium by the constitutional checks and balances. No doubt Hamilton, who belonged to this class by adoption, had a human prejudice in their favor. But that by itself is a thin explanation of his statecraft. Certainly there can be no question of his consuming passion for union, and it is, I think, an inversion of the truth to argue that he made the Union to protect class privileges, instead of saying that he used class privileges to make the Union. "We must take man as we find him," Hamilton said, "and if we expect him to serve the public we must interest his passions in doing so." [Footnote: _Op. cit._, p. 47] He needed men to govern, whose passions could be most quickly attached to a national interest. These were the gentry, the public creditors, manufacturers, shippers, and traders, [Footnote: Beard, _Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, passim._] and there is probably no better instance in history of the adaptation of shrewd means to clear ends, than in the series of fiscal measures, by which Hamilton attached the provincial notables to the new government. Although the constitutional convention worked behind closed doors, and although ratification was engineered by "a vote of probably not more than one-sixth of the adult males," [Footnote: Beard, _op. cit._, p. 325.] there was little or no pretence. The Federalists argued for union, not for democracy, and even the word republic had an unpleasant sound to George Washington when he had been for more than two years a republican president. The constitution was a candid attempt to limit the sphere of popular rule; the only democratic organ it was intended the government should possess was the House, based on a suffrage highly limited by property qualifications. And even at that, the House, it was believed, would be so licentious a part of the government, that it was carefully checked and balanced by the Senate, the electoral college, the Presidential veto, and by judicial interpretation. Thus at the moment when the French Revolution was kindling popular feeling the world over, the American revolutionists of 1776 came under a constitution which went back, as far as it was expedient, to the British Monarchy for a model. This conservative reaction could not endure. The men who had made it were a minority, their motives were under suspicion, and when Washington went into retirement, the position of the gentry was not strong enough to survive the inevitable struggle for the succession. The anomaly between the original plan of the Fathers and the moral feeling of the age was too wide not to be capitalized by a good politician. 3 Jefferson referred to his election as "the great revolution of 1800," but more than anything else it was a revolution in the mind. No great policy was altered, but a new tradition was established. For it was Jefferson who first taught the American people to regard the Constitution as an instrument of democracy, and he stereotyped the images, the ideas, and even many of the phrases, in which Americans ever since have described politics to each other. So complete was the mental victory, that twenty-five years later de Tocqueville, who was received in Federalist homes, noted that even those who were "galled by its continuance"--were not uncommonly heard to "laud the delights of a republican government, and the advantages of democratic institutions when they are in public." [Footnote: _Democracy in America_, Vol. I, Ch. X (Third Edition, 1838), p. 216.] The Constitutional Fathers with all their sagacity had failed to see that a frankly undemocratic constitution would not long be tolerated. The bold denial of popular rule was bound to offer an easy point of attack to a man, like Jefferson, who so far as his constitutional opinions ran, was not a bit more ready than Hamilton to turn over government to the "unrefined" will of the people. [Footnote: _Cf._ his plan for the Constitution of Virginia, his ideas for a senate of property holders, and his views on the judicial veto. Beard, _Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy_, pp. 450 _et seq._] The Federalist leaders had been men of definite convictions who stated them bluntly. There was little real discrepancy between their public and their private views. But Jefferson's mind was a mass of ambiguities, not solely because of its defects, as Hamilton and his biographers have thought, but because he believed in a union and he believed in spontaneous democracies, and in the political science of his age there was no satisfactory way to reconcile the two. Jefferson was confused in thought and action because he had a vision of a new and tremendous idea that no one had thought out in all its bearings. But though popular sovereignty was not clearly understood by anybody, it seemed to imply so great an enhancement of human life, that no constitution could stand which frankly denied it. The frank denials were therefore expunged from consciousness, and the document, which is on its face an honest example of limited constitutional democracy, was talked and thought about as an instrument for direct popular rule. Jefferson actually reached the point of believing that the Federalists had perverted the Constitution, of which in his fancy they were no longer the authors. And so the Constitution was, in spirit, rewritten. Partly by actual amendment, partly by practice, as in the case of the electoral college, but chiefly by looking at it through another set of stereotypes, the facade was no longer permitted to look oligarchic. The American people came to believe that their Constitution was a democratic instrument, and treated it as such. They owe that fiction to the victory of Thomas Jefferson, and a great conservative fiction it has been. It is a fair guess that if everyone had always regarded the Constitution as did the authors of it, the Constitution would have been violently overthrown, because loyalty to the Constitution and loyalty to democracy would have seemed incompatible. Jefferson resolved that paradox by teaching the American people to read the Constitution as an expression of democracy. He himself stopped there. But in the course of twenty-five years or so social conditions had changed so radically, that Andrew Jackson carried out the political revolution for which Jefferson had prepared the tradition. [Footnote: The reader who has any doubts as to the extent of the revolution that separated Hamilton's opinions from Jackson's practice should turn to Mr. Henry Jones Ford's _Rise and Growth of American Politics_.] 4 The political center of that revolution was the question of patronage. By the men who founded the government public office was regarded as a species of property, not lightly to be disturbed, and it was undoubtedly their hope that the offices would remain in the hands of their social class. But the democratic theory had as one of its main principles the doctrine of the omnicompetent citizen. Therefore, when people began to look at the Constitution as a democratic instrument, it was certain that permanence in office would seem undemocratic. The natural ambitions of men coincided here with the great moral impulse of their age. Jefferson had popularized the idea without carrying it ruthlessly into practice, and removals on party grounds were comparatively few under the Virginian Presidents. It was Jackson who founded the practice of turning public office into patronage. Curious as it sounds to us, the principle of rotation in office with short terms was regarded as a great reform. Not only did it acknowledge the new dignity of the average man by treating him as fit for any office, not only did it destroy the monopoly of a small social class and appear to open careers to talent, but "it had been advocated for centuries as a sovereign remedy for political corruption," and as the one way to prevent the creation of a bureaucracy. [Footnote: Ford, _op. cit._, p. 169.] The practice of rapid change in public office was the application to a great territory of the image of democracy derived from the self-contained village. Naturally it did not have the same results in the nation that it had in the ideal community on which the democratic theory was based. It produced quite unexpected results, for it founded a new governing class to take the place of the submerged federalists. Unintentionally, patronage did for a large electorate what Hamilton's fiscal measures had done for the upper classes. We often fail to realize how much of the stability of our government we owe to patronage. For it was patronage that weaned natural leaders from too much attachment to the self-centered community, it was patronage that weakened the local spirit and brought together in some kind of peaceful cooperation, the very men who, as provincial celebrities, would, in the absence of a sense of common interest, have torn the union apart. But of course, the democratic theory was not supposed to produce a new governing class, and it has never accommodated itself to the fact. When the democrat wanted to abolish monopoly of offices, to have rotation and short terms, he was thinking of the township where anyone could do a public service, and return humbly to his own farm. The idea of a special class of politicians was just what the democrat did not like. But he could not have what he did like, because his theory was derived from an ideal environment, and he was living in a real one. The more deeply he felt the moral impulse of democracy, the less ready he was to see the profound truth of Hamilton's statement that communities deliberating at a distance and under different impressions could not long coöperate in the same views and pursuits. For that truth postpones anything like the full realization of democracy in public affairs until the art of obtaining common consent has been radically improved. And so while the revolution under Jefferson and Jackson produced the patronage which made the two party system, which created a substitute for the rule of the gentry, and a discipline for governing the deadlock of the checks and balances, all that happened, as it were, invisibly. Thus, rotation in office might be the ostensible theory, in practice the offices oscillated between the henchmen. Tenure might not be a permanent monopoly, but the professional politician was permanent. Government might be, as President Harding once said, a simple thing, but winning elections was a sophisticated performance. The salaries in office might be as ostentatiously frugal as Jefferson's home-spun, but the expenses of party organization and the fruits of victory were in the grand manner. The stereotype of democracy controlled the visible government; the corrections, the exceptions and adaptations of the American people to the real facts of their environment have had to be invisible, even when everybody knew all about them. It was only the words of the law, the speeches of politicians, the platforms, and the formal machinery of administration that have had to conform to the pristine image of democracy. 5 If one had asked a philosophical democrat how these self-contained communities were to coöperate, when their public opinions were so self-centered, he would have pointed to representative government embodied in the Congress. And nothing would surprise him more than the discovery of how steadily the prestige of representative government has declined, while the power of the Presidency has grown. Some critics have traced this to the custom of sending only local celebrities to Washington. They have thought that if Congress could consist of the nationally eminent men, the life of the capital would be more brilliant. It would be, of course, and it would be a very good thing if retiring Presidents and Cabinet officers followed the example of John Quincy Adams. But the absence of these men does not explain the plight of Congress, for its decline began when it was relatively the most eminent branch of the government. Indeed it is more probable that the reverse is true, and that Congress ceased to attract the eminent as it lost direct influence on the shaping of national policy. The main reason for the discredit, which is world wide, is, I think, to be found in the fact that a congress of representatives is essentially a group of blind men in a vast, unknown world. With some exceptions, the only method recognized in the Constitution or in the theory of representative government, by which Congress can inform itself, is to exchange opinions from the districts. There is no systematic, adequate, and authorized way for Congress to know what is going on in the world. The theory is that the best man of each district brings the best wisdom of his constituents to a central place, and that all these wisdoms combined are all the wisdom that Congress needs. Now there is no need to question the value of expressing local opinions and exchanging them. Congress has great value as the market-place of a continental nation. In the coatrooms, the hotel lobbies, the boarding houses of Capitol Hill, at the tea-parties of the Congressional matrons, and from occasional entries into the drawing rooms of cosmopolitan Washington, new vistas are opened, and wider horizons. But even if the theory were applied, and the districts always sent their wisest men, the sum or a combination of local impressions is not a wide enough base for national policy, and no base at all for the control of foreign policy. Since the real effects of most laws are subtle and hidden, they cannot be understood by filtering local experiences through local states of mind. They can be known only by controlled reporting and objective analysis. And just as the head of a large factory cannot know how efficient it is by talking to the foreman, but must examine cost sheets and data that only an accountant can dig out for him, so the lawmaker does not arrive at a true picture of the state of the union by putting together a mosaic of local pictures. He needs to know the local pictures, but unless he possesses instruments for calibrating them, one picture is as good as the next, and a great deal better. The President does come to the assistance of Congress by delivering messages on the state of the Union. He is in a position to do that because he presides over a vast collection of bureaus and their agents, which report as well as act. But he tells Congress what he chooses to tell it. He cannot be heckled, and the censorship as to what is compatible with the public interest is in his hands. It is a wholly one-sided and tricky relationship, which sometimes reaches such heights of absurdity, that Congress, in order to secure an important document has to thank the enterprise of a Chicago newspaper, or the calculated indiscretion of a subordinate official. So bad is the contact of legislators with necessary facts that they are forced to rely either on private tips or on that legalized atrocity, the Congressional investigation, where Congressmen, starved of their legitimate food for thought, go on a wild and feverish man-hunt, and do not stop at cannibalism. Except for the little that these investigations yield, the occasional communications from the executive departments, interested and disinterested data collected by private persons, such newspapers, periodicals, and books as Congressmen read, and a new and excellent practice of calling for help from expert bodies like the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Tariff Commission, the creation of Congressional opinion is incestuous. From this it follows either that legislation of a national character is prepared by a few informed insiders, and put through by partisan force; or that the legislation is broken up into a collection of local items, each of which is enacted for a local reason. Tariff schedules, navy yards, army posts, rivers and harbors, post offices and federal buildings, pensions and patronage: these are fed out to concave communities as tangible evidence of the benefits of national life. Being concave, they can see the white marble building which rises out of federal funds to raise local realty values and employ local contractors more readily than they can judge the cumulative cost of the pork barrel. It is fair to say that in a large assembly of men, each of whom has practical knowledge only of his own district, laws dealing with translocal affairs are rejected or accepted by the mass of Congressmen without creative participation of any kind. They participate only in making those laws that can be treated as a bundle of local issues. For a legislature without effective means of information and analysis must oscillate between blind regularity, tempered by occasional insurgency, and logrolling. And it is the logrolling which makes the regularity palatable, because it is by logrolling that a Congressman proves to his more active constituents that he is watching their interests as they conceive them. This is no fault of the individual Congressman's, except when he is complacent about it. The cleverest and most industrious representative cannot hope to understand a fraction of the bills on which he votes. The best he can do is to specialize on a few bills, and take somebody's word about the rest. I have known Congressmen, when they were boning up on a subject, to study as they had not studied since they passed their final examinations, many large cups of black coffee, wet towels and all. They had to dig for information, sweat over arranging and verifying facts, which, in any consciously organized government, should have been easily available in a form suitable for decision. And even when they really knew a subject, their anxieties had only begun. For back home the editors, the board of trade, the central federated union, and the women's clubs had spared themselves these labors, and were prepared to view the Congressman's performance through local spectacles. 6 What patronage did to attach political chieftains to the national government, the infinite variety of local subsidies and privileges do for self-centered communities. Patronage and pork amalgamate and stabilize thousands of special opinions, local discontents, private ambitions. There are but two other alternatives. One is government by terror and obedience, the other is government based on such a highly developed system of information, analysis, and self-consciousness that "the knowledge of national circumstances and reasons of state" is evident to all men. The autocratic system is in decay, the voluntary system is in its very earliest development; and so, in calculating the prospects of association among large groups of people, a League of Nations, industrial government, or a federal union of states, the degree to which the material for a common consciousness exists, determines how far cooperation will depend upon force, or upon the milder alternative to force, which is patronage and privilege. The secret of great state-builders, like Alexander Hamilton, is that they know how to calculate these principles. CHAPTER XIX THE OLD IMAGE IN A NEW FORM: GUILD SOCIALISM. Whenever the quarrels of self-centered groups become unbearable, reformers in the past found themselves forced to choose between two great alternatives. They could take the path to Rome and impose a Roman peace upon the warring tribes. They could take the path to isolation, to autonomy and self-sufficiency. Almost always they chose that path which they had least recently travelled. If they had tried out the deadening monotony of empire, they cherished above all other things the simple freedom of their own community. But if they had seen this simple freedom squandered in parochial jealousies they longed for the spacious order of a great and powerful state. Whichever choice they made, the essential difficulty was the same. If decisions were decentralized they soon floundered in a chaos of local opinions. If they were centralized, the policy of the state was based on the opinions of a small social set at the capital. In any case force was necessary to defend one local right against another, or to impose law and order on the localities, or to resist class government at the center, or to defend the whole society, centralized or decentralized, against the outer barbarian. Modern democracy and the industrial system were both born in a time of reaction against kings, crown government, and a regime of detailed economic regulation. In the industrial sphere this reaction took the form of extreme devolution, known as laissez-faire individualism. Each economic decision was to be made by the man who had title to the property involved. Since almost everything was owned by somebody, there would be somebody to manage everything. This was plural sovereignty with a vengeance. It was economic government by anybody's economic philosophy, though it was supposed to be controlled by immutable laws of political economy that must in the end produce harmony. It produced many splendid things, but enough sordid and terrible ones to start counter-currents. One of these was the trust, which established a kind of Roman peace within industry, and a Roman predatory imperialism outside. People turned to the legislature for relief. They invoked representative government, founded on the image of the township farmer, to regulate the semi-sovereign corporations. The working class turned to labor organization. There followed a period of increasing centralization and a sort of race of armaments. The trusts interlocked, the craft unions federated and combined into a labor movement, the political system grew stronger at Washington and weaker in the states, as the reformers tried to match its strength against big business. In this period practically all the schools of socialist thought from the Marxian left to the New Nationalists around Theodore Roosevelt, looked upon centralization as the first stage of an evolution which would end in the absorption of all the semi-sovereign powers of business by the political state. The evolution never took place, except for a few months during the war. That was enough, and there was a turn of the wheel against the omnivorous state in favor of several new forms of pluralism. But this time society was to swing back not to the atomic individualism of Adam Smith's economic man and Thomas Jefferson's farmer, but to a sort of molecular individualism of voluntary groups. One of the interesting things about all these oscillations of theory is that each in turn promises a world in which no one will have to follow Machiavelli in order to survive. They are all established by some form of coercion, they all exercise coercion in order to maintain themselves, and they are all discarded as a result of coercion. Yet they do not accept coercion, either physical power or special position, patronage, or privilege, as part of their ideal. The individualist said that self-enlightened self-interest would bring internal and external peace. The socialist is sure that the motives to aggression will disappear. The new pluralist hopes they will. [Footnote: See G. D. H. Cole, _Social Theory,_ p. 142.] Coercion is the surd in almost all social theory, except the Machiavellian. The temptation to ignore it, because it is absurd, inexpressible, and unmanageable, becomes overwhelming in any man who is trying to rationalize human life. 2 The lengths to which a clever man will sometimes go in order to escape a full recognition of the role of force is shown by Mr. G. D. H. Cole's book on Guild Socialism. The present state, he says, "is primarily an instrument of coercion;" [Footnote: Cole, _Guild Socialism_, p. 107.] in a guild socialist society there will be no sovereign power, though there will be a coordinating body. He calls this body the Commune. He then begins to enumerate the powers of the Commune, which, we recall, is to be primarily not an instrument of coercion. [Footnote: _Op. cit._ Ch. VIII.] It settles price disputes. Sometimes it fixes prices, allocates the surplus or distributes the loss. It allocates natural resources, and controls the issue of credit. It also "allocates communal labor-power." It ratifies the budgets of the guilds and the civil services. It levies taxes. "All questions of income" fall within its jurisdiction. It "allocates" income to the non-productive members of the community. It is the final arbiter in all questions of policy and jurisdiction between the guilds. It passes constitutional laws fixing the functions of the functional bodies. It appoints the judges. It confers coercive powers upon the guilds, and ratifies their by-laws wherever these involve coercion. It declares war and makes peace. It controls the armed forces. It is the supreme representative of the nation abroad. It settles boundary questions within the national state. It calls into existence new functional bodies, or distributes new functions to old ones. It runs the police. It makes whatever laws are necessary to regulate personal conduct and personal property. These powers are exercised not by one commune, but by a federal structure of local and provincial communes with a National commune at the top. Mr. Cole is, of course, welcome to insist that this is not a sovereign state, but if there is a coercive power now enjoyed by any modern government for which he has forgotten to make room, I cannot think of it. He tells us, however, that Guild society will be non-coercive: "we want to build a new society which will be conceived in the spirit, not of coercion, but of free service." [Footnote: _Op. cit._, p. 141.] Everyone who shares that hope, as most men and women do, will therefore look closely to see what there is in the Guild Socialist plan which promises to reduce coercion to its lowest limits, even though the Guildsmen of to-day have already reserved for their communes the widest kind of coercive power. It is acknowledged at once that the new society cannot be brought into existence by universal consent. Mr. Cole is too honest to shirk the element of force required to make the transition. [Footnote: _Cf. op. cit._, Ch. X. ] And while obviously he cannot predict how much civil war there might be, he is quite clear that there would have to be a period of direct action by the trade unions. 3 But leaving aside the problems of transition, and any consideration of what the effect is on their future action, when men have hacked their way through to the promised land, let us imagine the Guild Society in being. What keeps it running as a non-coercive society? Mr. Cole has two answers to this question. One is the orthodox Marxian answer that the abolition of capitalist property will remove the motive to aggression. Yet he does not really believe that, because if he did, he would care as little as does the average Marxian how the working class is to run the government, once it is in control. If his diagnosis were correct, the Marxian would be quite right: if the disease were the capitalist class and only the capitalist class, salvation would automatically follow its extinction. But Mr. Cole is enormously concerned about whether the society which follows the revolution is to be run by state collectivism, by guilds or cooperative societies, by a democratic parliament or by functional representation. In fact, it is as a new theory of representative government that guild socialism challenges attention. The guildsmen do not expect a miracle to result from the disappearance of capitalist property rights. They do expect, and of course quite rightly, that if equality of income were the rule, social relations would be profoundly altered. But they differ, as far as I can make out, from the orthodox Russian communist in this respect: The communist proposes to establish equality by force of the dictatorship of the proletariat, believing that if once people were equalized both in income and in service, they would then lose the incentives to aggression. The guildsmen also propose to establish equality by force, but are shrewd enough to see that if an equilibrium is to be maintained they have to provide institutions for maintaining it. Guildsmen, therefore, put their faith in what they believe to be a new theory of democracy. Their object, says Mr. Cole, is "to get the mechanism right, and to adjust it as far as possible to the expression of men's social wills." [Reference: _Op. cit._, p. 16.] These wills need to be given opportunity for self-expression in self-government "in any and every form of social action." Behind these words is the true democratic impulse, the desire to enhance human dignity, as well as the traditional assumption that this human dignity is impugned, unless each person's will enters into the management of everything that affects him. The guildsman, like the earlier democrat therefore, looks about him for an environment in which this ideal of self-government can be realized. A hundred years and more have passed since Rousseau and Jefferson, and the center of interest has shifted from the country to the city. The new democrat can no longer turn to the idealized rural township for the image of democracy. He turns now to the workshop. "The spirit of association must be given free play in the sphere in which it is best able to find expression. This is manifestly the factory, in which men have the habit and tradition of working together. The factory is the natural and fundamental unit of industrial democracy. This involves, not only that the factory must be free, as far as possible, to manage its own affairs, but also that the democratic unit of the factory must be made the basis of the larger democracy of the Guild, and that the larger organs of Guild administration and government must be based largely on the principle of factory representation." [Footnote: _Op. cit._, p. 40.] Factory is, of course, a very loose word, and Mr. Cole asks us to take it as meaning mines, shipyards, docks, stations, and every place which is "a natural center of production." [Footnote: _Op. cit._, p. 41] But a factory in this sense is quite a different thing from an industry. The factory, as Mr. Cole conceives it, is a work place where men are really in personal contact, an environment small enough to be known directly to all the workers. "This democracy if it is to be real, must come home to, and be exercisable directly by, every individual member of the Guild." [Footnote: _Op. cit._, p. 40.] This is important, because Mr. Cole, like Jefferson, is seeking a natural unit of government. The only natural unit is a perfectly familiar environment. Now a large plant, a railway system, a great coal field, is not a natural unit in this sense. Unless it is a very small factory indeed, what Mr. Cole is really thinking about is the shop. That is where men can be supposed to have "the habit and tradition of working together." The rest of the plant, the rest of the industry, is an inferred environment. 4 Anybody can see, and almost everybody will admit, that self-government in the purely internal affairs of the shop is government of affairs that "can be taken in at a single view." [Footnote: Aristotle, _Politics_, Bk. VII, Ch. IV.] But dispute would arise as to what constitute the internal affairs of a shop. Obviously the biggest interests, like wages, standards of production, the purchase of supplies, the marketing of the product, the larger planning of work, are by no means purely internal. The shop democracy has freedom, subject to enormous limiting conditions from the outside. It can deal to a certain extent with the arrangement of work laid out for the shop, it can deal with the temper and temperament of individuals, it can administer petty industrial justice, and act as a court of first instance in somewhat larger individual disputes. Above all it can act as a unit in dealing with other shops, and perhaps with the plant as a whole. But isolation is impossible. The unit of industrial democracy is thoroughly entangled in foreign affairs. And it is the management of these external relations that constitutes the test of the guild socialist theory. They have to be managed by representative government arranged in a federal order from the shop to the plant, the plant to the industry, the industry to the nation, with intervening regional grouping of representatives. But all this structure derives from the shop, and all its peculiar virtues are ascribed to this source. The representatives who choose the representatives who choose the representatives who finally "coordinate" and "regulate" the shops are elected, Mr. Cole asserts, by a true democracy. Because they come originally from a self-governing unit, the whole federal organism will be inspired by the spirit and the reality of self-government. Representatives will aim to carry out the workers' "actual will as understood by themselves," [Footnote: _Op. cit._, p. 42.] that is, as understood by the individual in the shops. A government run literally on this principle would, if history is any guide, be either a perpetual logroll, or a chaos of warring shops. For while the worker in the shop can have a real opinion about matters entirely within the shop, his "will" about the relation of that shop to the plant, the industry, and the nation is subject to all the limitations of access, stereotype, and self-interest that surround any other self-centered opinion. His experience in the shop at best brings only aspects of the whole to his attention. His opinion of what is right within the shop he can reach by direct knowledge of the essential facts. His opinion of what is right in the great complicated environment out of sight is more likely to be wrong than right if it is a generalization from the experience of the individual shop. As a matter of experience, the representatives of a guild society would find, just as the higher trade union officials find today, that on a great number of questions which they have to decide there is no "actual will as understood" by the shops. 5 The guildsmen insist, however, that such criticism is blind because it ignores a great political discovery. You may be quite right, they would say, in thinking that the representatives of the shops would have to make up their own minds on many questions about which the shops have no opinion. But you are simply entangled in an ancient fallacy: you are looking for somebody to represent a group of people. He cannot be found. The only representative possible is one who acts for "some particular function," [Footnote: _Op. cit._, pp. 23-24.] and therefore each person must help choose as many representatives "as there are distinct essential groups of functions to be performed." Assume then that the representatives speak, not for the men in the shops, but for certain functions in which the men are interested. They are, mind you, disloyal if they do not carry out the will of the group about the function, as understood by the group. [Footnote: _Cf._ Part V, "The Making of a Common Will."] These functional representatives meet. Their business is to coordinate and regulate. By what standard does each judge the proposals of the other, assuming, as we must, that there is conflict of opinion between the shops, since if there were not, there would be no need to coordinate and regulate? Now the peculiar virtue of functional democracy is supposed to be that men vote candidly according to their own interests, which it is assumed they know by daily experience. They can do that within the self-contained group. But in its external relations the group as a whole, or its representative, is dealing with matters that transcend immediate experience. The shop does not arrive spontaneously at a view of the whole situation. Therefore, the public opinions of a shop about its rights and duties in the industry and in society, are matters of education or propaganda, not the automatic product of shop-consciousness. Whether the guildsmen elect a delegate, or a representative, they do not escape the problem of the orthodox democrat. Either the group as a whole, or the elected spokesman, must stretch his mind beyond the limits of direct experience. He must vote on questions coming up from other shops, and on matters coming from beyond the frontiers of the whole industry. The primary interest of the shop does not even cover the function of a whole industrial vocation. The function of a vocation, a great industry, a district, a nation is a concept, not an experience, and has to be imagined, invented, taught and believed. And even though you define function as carefully as possible, once you admit that the view of each shop on that function will not necessarily coincide with the view of other shops, you are saying that the representative of one interest is concerned in the proposals made by other interests. You are saying that he must conceive a common interest. And in voting for him you are choosing a man who will not simply represent your view of your function, which is all that you know at first hand, but a man who will represent your views about other people's views of that function. You are voting as indefinitely as the orthodox democrat. 6 The guildsmen in their own minds have solved the question of how to conceive a common interest by playing with the word function. They imagine a society in which all the main work of the world has been analysed into functions, and these functions in turn synthesized harmoniously. [Footnote: _Cf. op. cit._, Ch. XIX.] They suppose essential agreement about the purposes of society as a whole, and essential agreement about the role of every organized group in carrying out those purposes. It was a nice sentiment, therefore, which led them to take the name of their theory from an institution that arose in a Catholic feudal society. But they should remember that the scheme of function which the wise men of that age assumed was not worked out by mortal man. It is unclear how the guildsmen think the scheme is going to be worked out and made acceptable in the modern world. Sometimes they seem to argue that the scheme will develop from trade union organization, at other times that the communes will define the constitutional function of the groups. But it makes a considerable practical difference whether they believe that the groups define their own functions or not. In either case, Mr. Cole assumes that society can be carried on by a social contract based on an accepted idea of "distinct essential groups of functions." How does one recognize these distinct essential groups? So far as I can make out, Mr. Cole thinks that a function is what a group of people are interested in. "The essence of functional democracy is that a man should count as many times over as there are functions in which he is interested." [Footnote: _Social Theory,_ p. 102 _et seq._] Now there are at least two meanings to the word interested. You can use it to mean that a man is involved, or that his mind is occupied. John Smith, for example, may have been tremendously interested in the Stillman divorce case. He may have read every word of the news in every lobster edition. On the other hand, young Guy Stillman, whose legitimacy was at stake, probably did not trouble himself at all. John Smith was interested in a suit that did not affect his "interests," and Guy was uninterested in one that would determine the whole course of his life. Mr. Cole, I am afraid, leans towards John Smith. He is answering the "very foolish objection" that to vote by functions is to be voting very often: "If a man is not interested enough to vote, and cannot be aroused to interest enough to make him vote, on, say, a dozen distinct subjects, he waives his right to vote and the result is no less democratic than if he voted blindly and without interest." Mr. Cole thinks that the uninstructed voter "waives his right to vote." From this it follows that the votes of the instructed reveal their interest, and their interest defines the function. [Footnote: _Cf._ Ch. XVIII of this book. "Since everybody was assumed to be interested enough in important affairs, only those affairs came to seem important in which everybody was interested."] "Brown, Jones, and Robinson must therefore have, not one vote each, but as many different functional votes as there are different questions calling for associative action in which they are interested." [Footnote: _Guild Socialism,_ p. 24. ] I am considerably in doubt whether Mr. Cole thinks that Brown, Jones and Robinson should qualify in any election where they assert that they are interested, or that somebody else, not named, picks the functions in which they are entitled to be interested. If I were asked to say what I believe Mr. Cole thinks, it would be that he has smoothed over the difficulty by the enormously strange assumption that it is the uninstructed voter who waives his right to vote; and has concluded that whether functional voting is arranged by a higher power, or "from below" on the principle that a man may vote when it interests him to vote, only the instructed will be voting anyway, and therefore the institution will work. But there are two kinds of uninstructed voter. There is the man who does not know and knows that he does not know. He is generally an enlightened person. He is the man who waives his right to vote. But there is also the man who is uninstructed and does not know that he is, or care. He can always be gotten to the polls, if the party machinery is working. His vote is the basis of the machine. And since the communes of the guild society have large powers over taxation, wages, prices, credit, and natural resources, it would be preposterous to assume that elections will not be fought at least as passionately as our own. The way people exhibit their interest will not then delimit the functions of a functional society. There are two other ways that function might be defined. One would be by the trade unions which fought the battle that brought guild socialism into being. Such a struggle would harden groups of men together in some sort of functional relation, and these groups would then become the vested interests of the guild socialist society. Some of them, like the miners and railroad men, would be very strong, and probably deeply attached to the view of their function which they learned from the battle with capitalism. It is not at all unlikely that certain favorably placed trade unions would under a socialist state become the center of coherence and government. But a guild society would inevitably find them a tough problem to deal with, for direct action would have revealed their strategic power, and some of their leaders at least would not offer up this power readily on the altar of freedom. In order to "coordinate" them, guild society would have to gather together its strength, and fairly soon one would find, I think, that the radicals under guild socialism would be asking for communes strong enough to define the functions of the guilds. But if you are going to have the government (commune) define functions, the premise of the theory disappears. It had to suppose that a scheme of functions was obvious in order that the concave shops would voluntarily relate themselves to society. If there is no settled scheme of functions in every voter's head, he has no better way under guild socialism than under orthodox democracy of turning a self-centered opinion into a social judgment. And, of course, there can be no such settled scheme, because, even if Mr. Cole and his friends devised a good one, the shop democracies from which all power derives, would judge the scheme in operation by what they learn of it and by what they can imagine. The guilds would see the same scheme differently. And so instead of the scheme being the skeleton that keeps guild society together, the attempt to define what the scheme ought to be, would be under guild socialism as elsewhere, the main business of politics. If we could allow Mr. Cole his scheme of functions we could allow him almost everything. Unfortunately he has inserted in his premise what he wishes a guild society to deduce. [Footnote: I have dealt with Mr. Cole's theory rather than with the experience of Soviet Russia because, while the testimony is fragmentary, all competent observers seem to agree that Russia in 1921 does not illustrate a communist state in working order. Russia is in revolution, and what you can learn from Russia is what a revolution is like. You can learn very little about what a communist society would be like. It is, however, immensely significant that, first as practical revolutionists and then as public officials, the Russian communists have relied not upon the spontaneous democracy of the Russian people, but on the discipline, special interest and the noblesse oblige of a specialized class-the loyal and indoctrinated members of the Communist party. In the "transition," on which no time limit has been set, I believe, the cure for class government and the coercive state is strictly homeopathic. There is also the question of why I selected Mr. Cole's books rather than the much more closely reasoned "Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain" by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. I admire that book very much; but I have not been able to convince myself that it is not an intellectual tour de force. Mr. Cole seems to me far more authentically in the spirit of the socialist movement, and therefore, a better witness.] CHAPTER XX A NEW IMAGE 1 THE lesson is, I think, a fairly clear one. In the absence of institutions and education by which the environment is so successfully reported that the realities of public life stand out sharply against self-centered opinion, the common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality. This class is irresponsible, for it acts upon information that is not common property, in situations that the public at large does not conceive, and it can be held to account only on the accomplished fact. The democratic theory by failing to admit that self-centered opinions are not sufficient to procure good government, is involved in perpetual conflict between theory and practice. According to the theory, the full dignity of man requires that his will should be, as Mr. Cole says, expressed "in any and every form of social action." It is supposed that the expression of their will is the consuming passion of men, for they are assumed to possess by instinct the art of government. But as a matter of plain experience, self-determination is only one of the many interests of a human personality. The desire to be the master of one's own destiny is a strong desire, but it has to adjust itself to other equally strong desires, such as the desire for a good life, for peace, for relief from burdens. In the original assumptions of democracy it was held that the expression of each man's will would spontaneously satisfy not only his desire for self-expression, but his desire for a good life, because the instinct to express one's self in a good life was innate. The emphasis, therefore, has always been on the mechanism for expressing the will. The democratic El Dorado has always been some perfect environment, and some perfect system of voting and representation, where the innate good will and instinctive statesmanship of every man could be translated into action. In limited areas and for brief periods the environment has been so favorable, that is to say so isolated, and so rich in opportunity, that the theory worked well enough to confirm men in thinking that it was sound for all time and everywhere. Then when the isolation ended, and society became complex, and men had to adjust themselves closely to one another, the democrat spent his time trying to devise more perfect units of voting, in the hope that somehow he would, as Mr. Cole says, "get the mechanism right, and adjust it as far as possible to men's social wills." But while the democratic theorist was busy at this, he was far away from the actual interests of human nature. He was absorbed by one interest: self-government. Mankind was interested in all kinds of other things, in order, in its rights, in prosperity, in sights and sounds and in not being bored. In so far as spontaneous democracy does not satisfy their other interests, it seems to most men most of the time to be an empty thing. Because the art of successful self-government is not instinctive, men do not long desire self-government for its own sake. They desire it for the sake of the results. That is why the impulse to self-government is always strongest as a protest against bad conditions. The democratic fallacy has been its preoccupation with the origin of government rather than with the processes and results. The democrat has always assumed that if political power could be derived in the right way, it would be beneficent. His whole attention has been on the source of power, since he is hypnotized by the belief that the great thing is to express the will of the people, first because expression is the highest interest of man, and second because the will is instinctively good. But no amount of regulation at the source of a river will completely control its behavior, and while democrats have been absorbed in trying to find a good mechanism for originating social power, that is to say a good mechanism of voting and representation, they neglected almost every other interest of men. For no matter how power originates, the crucial interest is in how power is exercised. What determines the quality of civilization is the use made of power. And that use cannot be controlled at the source. If you try to control government wholly at the source, you inevitably make all the vital decisions invisible. For since there is no instinct which automatically makes political decisions that produce a good life, the men who actually exercise power not only fail to express the will of the people, because on most questions no will exists, but they exercise power according to opinions which are hidden from the electorate. If, then, you root out of the democratic philosophy the whole assumption in all its ramifications that government is instinctive, and that therefore it can be managed by self-centered opinions, what becomes of the democratic faith in the dignity of man? It takes a fresh lease of life by associating itself with the whole personality instead of with a meager aspect of it. For the traditional democrat risked the dignity of man on one very precarious assumption, that he would exhibit that dignity instinctively in wise laws and good government. Voters did not do that, and so the democrat was forever being made to look a little silly by tough-minded men. But if, instead of hanging human dignity on the one assumption about self-government, you insist that man's dignity requires a standard of living, in which his capacities are properly exercised, the whole problem changes. The criteria which you then apply to government are whether it is producing a certain minimum of health, of decent housing, of material necessities, of education, of freedom, of pleasures, of beauty, not simply whether at the sacrifice of all these things, it vibrates to the self-centered opinions that happen to be floating around in men's minds. In the degree to which these criteria can be made exact and objective, political decision, which is inevitably the concern of comparatively few people, is actually brought into relation with the interests of men. There is no prospect, in any time which we can conceive, that the whole invisible environment will be so clear to all men that they will spontaneously arrive at sound public opinions on the whole business of government. And even if there were a prospect, it is extremely doubtful whether many of us would wish to be bothered, or would take the time to form an opinion on "any and every form of social action" which affects us. The only prospect which is not visionary is that each of us in his own sphere will act more and more on a realistic picture of the invisible world, and that we shall develop more and more men who are expert in keeping these pictures realistic. Outside the rather narrow range of our own possible attention, social control depends upon devising standards of living and methods of audit by which the acts of public officials and industrial directors are measured. We cannot ourselves inspire or guide all these acts, as the mystical democrat has always imagined. But we can steadily increase our real control over these acts by insisting that all of them shall be plainly recorded, and their results objectively measured. I should say, perhaps, that we can progressively hope to insist. For the working out of such standards and of such audits has only begun. PART VII NEWSPAPERS CHAPTER XXI. THE BUYING PUBLIC " XXII. THE CONSTANT READER " XXIII. THE NATURE OF NEWS " XXIV. NEWS, TRUTH, AND A CONCLUSION CHAPTER XXI THE BUYING PUBLIC 1 THE idea that men have to go forth and study the world in order to govern it, has played a very minor part in political thought. It could figure very little, because the machinery for reporting the world in any way useful to government made comparatively little progress from the time of Aristotle to the age in which the premises of democracy were established. Therefore, if you had asked a pioneer democrat where the information was to come from on which the will of the people was to be based, he would have been puzzled by the question. It would have seemed a little as if you had asked him where his life or his soul came from. The will of the people, he almost always assumed, exists at all times; the duty of political science was to work out the inventions of the ballot and representative government. If they were properly worked out and applied under the right conditions, such as exist in the self-contained village or the self-contained shop, the mechanism would somehow overcome the brevity of attention which Aristotle had observed, and the narrowness of its range, which the theory of a self-contained community tacitly acknowledged. We have seen how even at this late date the guild socialists are transfixed by the notion that if only you can build on the right unit of voting and representation, an intricate cooperative commonwealth is possible. Convinced that the wisdom was there if only you could find it, democrats have treated the problem of making public opinions as a problem in civil liberties. [Footnote: The best study is Prof. Zechariah Chafee's, _Freedom of Speech_.] "Who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?" [Footnote: Milton, _Areopagitica_, cited at the opening of Mr. Chafee's book. For comment on this classic doctrine of liberty as stated by Milton, John Stuart Mill, and Mr. Bertrand Russel, see my _Liberty and the News_, Ch. II.] Supposing that no one has ever seen it put to the worse, are we to believe then that the truth is generated by the encounter, like fire by rubbing two sticks? Behind this classic doctrine of liberty, which American democrats embodied in their Bill of Rights, there are, in fact, several different theories of the origin of truth. One is a faith that in the competition of opinions, the truest will win because there is a peculiar strength in the truth. This is probably sound if you allow the competition to extend over a sufficiently long time. When men argue in this vein they have in mind the verdict of history, and they think specifically of heretics persecuted when they lived, canonized after they were dead. Milton's question rests also on a belief that the capacity to recognize truth is inherent in all men, and that truth freely put in circulation will win acceptance. It derives no less from the experience, which has shown that men are not likely to discover truth if they cannot speak it, except under the eye of an uncomprehending policeman. No one can possibly overestimate the practical value of these civil liberties, nor the importance of maintaining them. When they are in jeopardy, the human spirit is in jeopardy, and should there come a time when they have to be curtailed, as during a war, the suppression of thought is a risk to civilization which might prevent its recovery from the effects of war, if the hysterics, who exploit the necessity, were numerous enough to carry over into peace the taboos of war. Fortunately, the mass of men is too tolerant long to enjoy the professional inquisitors, as gradually, under the criticism of men not willing to be terrorized, they are revealed as mean-spirited creatures who nine-tenths of the time do not know what they are talking about. [Footnote: _Cf._ for example, the publications of the Lusk Committee in New York, and the public statements and prophecies of Mr. Mitchell Palmer, who was Attorney-General of the United States during the period of President Wilson's illness.] But in spite of its fundamental importance, civil liberty in this sense does not guarantee public opinion in the modern world. For it always assumes, either that truth is spontaneous, or that the means of securing truth exist when there is no external interference. But when you are dealing with an invisible environment, the assumption is false. The truth about distant or complex matters is not self-evident, and the machinery for assembling information is technical and expensive. Yet political science, and especially democratic political science, has never freed itself from the original assumption of Aristotle's politics sufficiently to restate the premises, so that political thought might come to grips with the problem of how to make the invisible world visible to the citizens of a modern state. So deep is the tradition, that until quite recently, for example, political science was taught in our colleges as if newspapers did not exist. I am not referring to schools of journalism, for they are trade schools, intended to prepare men and women for a career. I am referring to political science as expounded to future business men, lawyers, public officials, and citizens at large. In that science a study of the press and the sources of popular information found no place. It is a curious fact. To anyone not immersed in the routine interests of political science, it is almost inexplicable that no American student of government, no American sociologist, has ever written a book on news-gathering. There are occasional references to the press, and statements that it is not, or that it ought to be, "free" and "truthful." But I can find almost nothing else. And this disdain of the professionals finds its counterpart in public opinions. Universally it is admitted that the press is the chief means of contact with the unseen environment. And practically everywhere it is assumed that the press should do spontaneously for us what primitive democracy imagined each of us could do spontaneously for himself, that every day and twice a day it will present us with a true picture of all the outer world in which we are interested. 2 This insistent and ancient belief that truth is not earned, but inspired, revealed, supplied gratis, comes out very plainly in our economic prejudices as readers of newspapers. We expect the newspaper to serve us with truth however unprofitable the truth may be. For this difficult and often dangerous service, which we recognize as fundamental, we expected to pay until recently the smallest coin turned out by the mint. We have accustomed ourselves now to paying two and even three cents on weekdays, and on Sundays, for an illustrated encyclopedia and vaudeville entertainment attached, we have screwed ourselves up to paying a nickel or even a dime. Nobody thinks for a moment that he ought to pay for his newspaper. He expects the fountains of truth to bubble, but he enters into no contract, legal or moral, involving any risk, cost or trouble to himself. He will pay a nominal price when it suits him, will stop paying whenever it suits him, will turn to another paper when that suits him. Somebody has said quite aptly that the newspaper editor has to be re-elected every day. This casual and one-sided relationship between readers and press is an anomaly of our civilization. There is nothing else quite like it, and it is, therefore, hard to compare the press with any other business or institution. It is not a business pure and simple, partly because the product is regularly sold below cost, but chiefly because the community applies one ethical measure to the press and another to trade or manufacture. Ethically a newspaper is judged as if it were a church or a school. But if you try to compare it with these you fail; the taxpayer pays for the public school, the private school is endowed or supported by tuition fees, there are subsidies and collections for the church. You cannot compare journalism with law, medicine or engineering, for in every one of these professions the consumer pays for the service. A free press, if you judge by the attitude of the readers, means newspapers that are virtually given away. Yet the critics of the press are merely voicing the moral standards of the community, when they expect such an institution to live on the same plane as that on which the school, the church, and the disinterested professions are supposed to live. This illustrates again the concave character of democracy. No need for artificially acquired information is felt to exist. The information must come naturally, that is to say gratis, if not out of the heart of the citizen, then gratis out of the newspaper. The citizen will pay for his telephone, his railroad rides, his motor car, his entertainment. But he does not pay openly for his news. He will, however, pay handsomely for the privilege of having someone read about him. He will pay directly to advertise. And he will pay indirectly for the advertisements of other people, because that payment, being concealed in the price of commodities is part of an invisible environment that he does not effectively comprehend. It would be regarded as an outrage to have to pay openly the price of a good ice cream soda for all the news of the world, though the public will pay that and more when it buys the advertised commodities. The public pays for the press, but only when the payment is concealed. 3 Circulation is, therefore, the means to an end. It becomes an asset only when it can be sold to the advertiser, who buys it with revenues secured through indirect taxation of the reader. [Footnote: "An established newspaper is entitled to fix its advertising rates so that its net receipts from circulation may be left on the credit side of the profit and loss account. To arrive at net receipts, I would deduct from the gross the cost of promotion, distribution, and other expenses incidental to circulation." From an address by Mr. Adolph S. Ochs, publisher of _the New York Times,_ at the Philadelphia Convention of the Associated Advertising Clubs of The World, June 26, 1916. Cited, Elmer Davis, _History of The New York Times,_ 1851-1921, pp. 397-398.] The kind of circulation which the advertiser will buy depends on what he has to sell. It may be "quality" or "mass." On the whole there is no sharp dividing line, for in respect to most commodities sold by advertising, the customers are neither the small class of the very rich nor the very poor. They are the people with enough surplus over bare necessities to exercise discretion in their buying. The paper, therefore, which goes into the homes of the fairly prosperous is by and large the one which offers most to the advertiser. It may also go into the homes of the poor, but except for certain lines of goods, an analytical advertising agent does not rate that circulation as a great asset, unless, as seems to be the case with certain of Mr. Hearst's properties, the circulation is enormous. A newspaper which angers those whom it pays best to reach through advertisements is a bad medium for an advertiser. And since no one ever claimed that advertising was philanthropy, advertisers buy space in those publications which are fairly certain to reach their future customers. One need not spend much time worrying about the unreported scandals of the dry-goods merchants. They represent nothing really significant, and incidents of this sort are less common than many critics of the press suppose. The real problem is that the readers of a newspaper, unaccustomed to paying the cost of newsgathering, can be capitalized only by turning them into circulation that can be sold to manufacturers and merchants. And those whom it is most important to capitalize are those who have the most money to spend. Such a press is bound to respect the point of view of the buying public. It is for this buying public that newspapers are edited and published, for without that support the newspaper cannot live. A newspaper can flout an advertiser, it can attack a powerful banking or traction interest, but if it alienates the buying public, it loses the one indispensable asset of its existence. Mr. John L. Given, [Footnote: _Making a Newspaper_, p. 13. This is the best technical book I know, and should be read by everyone who undertakes to discuss the press. Mr. G. B. Diblee, who wrote the volume on _The Newspaper_ in the Home University Library says (p. 253), that "on the press for pressmen I only know of one good book, Mr. Given's."] formerly of the New York Evening Sun, stated in 1914 that out of over two thousand three hundred dailies published in the United States, there were about one hundred and seventy-five printed in cities having over one hundred thousand inhabitants. These constitute the press for "general news." They are the key papers which collect the news dealing with great events, and even the people who do not read any one of the one hundred and seventy-five depend ultimately upon them for news of the outer world. For they make up the great press associations which coöperate in the exchange of news. Each is, therefore, not only the informant of its own readers, but it is the local reporter for the newspapers of other cities. The rural press and the special press by and large, take their general news from these key papers. And among these there are some very much richer than others, so that for international news, in the main, the whole press of the nation may depend upon the reports of the press associations and the special services of a few metropolitan dailies. Roughly speaking, the economic support for general news gathering is in the price paid for advertised goods by the fairly prosperous sections of cities with more than one hundred thousand inhabitants. These buying publics are composed of the members of families, who depend for their income chiefly on trade, merchandising, the direction of manufacture, and finance. They are the clientele among whom it pays best to advertise in a newspaper. They wield a concentrated purchasing power, which may be less in volume than the aggregate for farmers and workingmen; but within the radius covered by a daily newspaper they are the quickest assets. 4 They have, moreover, a double claim to attention. They are not only the best customers for the advertiser, they include the advertisers. Therefore the impression made by the newspapers on this public matters deeply. Fortunately this public is not unanimous. It may be "capitalistic" but it contains divergent views on what capitalism is, and how it is to be run. Except in times of danger, this respectable opinion is sufficiently divided to permit of considerable differences of policy. These would be greater still if it were not that publishers are themselves usually members of these urban communities, and honestly see the world through the lenses of their associates and friends. They are engaged in a speculative business, [Footnote: Sometimes so speculative that in order to secure credit the publisher has to go into bondage to his creditors. Information on this point is very difficult to obtain, and for that reason its general importance is often much exaggerated.] which depends on the general condition of trade, and more peculiarly on a circulation based not on a marriage contract with their readers, but on free love. The object of every publisher is, therefore, to turn his circulation from a medley of catch-as-catch-can news stand buyers into a devoted band of constant readers. A newspaper that can really depend upon the loyalty of its readers is as independent as a newspaper can be, given the economics of modern journalism. [Footnote: "It is an axiom in newspaper publishing--'more readers, more independence of the influence of advertisers; fewer readers and more dependence on the advertiser' It may seem like a contradiction (yet it is the truth) to assert: the greater the number of advertisers, the less influence they are individually able to exercise with the publisher." Adolph S. Ochs, _of. supra._] A body of readers who stay by it through thick and thin is a power greater than any which the individual advertiser can wield, and a power great enough to break up a combination of advertisers. Therefore, whenever you find a newspaper betraying its readers for the sake of an advertiser, you can be fairly certain either that the publisher sincerely shares the views of the advertiser, or that he thinks, perhaps mistakenly, he cannot count upon the support of his readers if he openly resists dictation. It is a question of whether the readers, who do not pay in cash for their news, will pay for it in loyalty. CHAPTER XXII THE CONSTANT READER I THE loyalty of the buying public to a newspaper is not stipulated in any bond. In almost every other enterprise the person who expects to be served enters into an agreement that controls his passing whims. At least he pays for what he obtains. In the publishing of periodicals the nearest approach to an agreement for a definite time is the paid subscription, and that is not, I believe, a great factor in the economy of a metropolitan daily. The reader is the sole and the daily judge of his loyalty, and there can be no suit against him for breach of promise or nonsupport. Though everything turns on the constancy of the reader, there does not exist even a vague tradition to call that fact to the reader's mind. His constancy depends on how he happens to feel, or on his habits. And these depend not simply on the quality of the news, but more often on a number of obscure elements that in our casual relation to the press, we hardly take the trouble to make conscious. The most important of these is that each of us tends to judge a newspaper, if we judge it at all, by its treatment of that part of the news in which we feel ourselves involved. The newspaper deals with a multitude of events beyond our experience. But it deals also with some events within our experience. And by its handling of those events we most frequently decide to like it or dislike it, to trust it or refuse to have the sheet in the house. If the newspaper gives a satisfactory account of that which we think we know, our business, our church, our party, it is fairly certain to be immune from violent criticism by us. What better criterion does the man at the breakfast table possess than that the newspaper version checks up with his own opinion? Therefore, most men tend to hold the newspaper most strictly accountable in their capacity, not of general readers, but of special pleaders on matters of their own experience. Rarely is anyone but the interested party able to test the accuracy of a report. If the news is local, and if there is competition, the editor knows that he will probably hear from the man who thinks his portrait unfair and inaccurate. But if the news is not local, the corrective diminishes as the subject matter recedes into the distance. The only people who can correct what they think is a false picture of themselves printed in another city are members of groups well enough organized to hire publicity men. Now it is interesting to note that the general reader of a newspaper has no standing in law if he thinks he is being misled by the news. It is only the aggrieved party who can sue for slander or libel, and he has to prove a material injury to himself. The law embodies the tradition that general news is not a matter of common concern, [Footnote: The reader will not mistake this as a plea for censorship. It might, however, be a good thing if there were competent tribunals, preferably not official ones, where charges of untruthfulness and unfairness in the general news could be sifted. _Cf. Liberty and the News,_ pp. 73-76. ] except as to matter which is vaguely described as immoral or seditious. But the body of the news, though unchecked as a whole by the disinterested reader, consists of items about which some readers have very definite preconceptions. Those items are the data of his judgment, and news which men read without this personal criterion, they judge by some other standard than their standard of accuracy. They are dealing here with a subject matter which to them is indistinguishable from fiction. The canon of truth cannot be applied. They do not boggle over such news if it conforms to their stereotypes, and they continue to read it if it interests them. [Footnote: Note, for example, how absent is indignation in Mr. Upton Sinclair against socialist papers, even those which are as malignantly unfair to employers as certain of the papers cited by him are unfair to radicals.] 2 There are newspapers, even in large cities, edited on the principle that the readers wish to read about themselves. The theory is that if enough people see their own names in the paper often enough, can read about their weddings, funerals, sociables, foreign travels, lodge meetings, school prizes, their fiftieth birthdays, their sixtieth birthdays, their silver weddings, their outings and clambakes, they will make a reliable circulation. The classic formula for such a newspaper is contained in a letter written by Horace Greeley on April 3, 1860, to "Friend Fletcher" who was about to start a country newspaper: [Footnote: Cited, James Melvin Lee, _The History of American Journalism,_ p. 405.] "I. Begin with a clear conception that the subject of deepest interest to an average human being is himself; next to that he is most concerned about his neighbors. Asia and the Tongo Islands stand a long way after these in his regard.... Do not let a new church be organized, or new members be added to one already existing, a farm be sold, a new house raised, a mill set in motion, a store opened, nor anything of interest to a dozen families occur, without having the fact duly, though briefly, chronicled in your columns. If a farmer cuts a big tree, or grows a mammoth beet, or harvests a bounteous yield of wheat or corn, set forth the fact as concisely and unexceptionally as possible." The function of becoming, as Mr. Lee puts it, "the printed diary of the home town" is one that every newspaper no matter where it is published must in some measure fill. And where, as in a great city like New York, the general newspapers circulated broadcast cannot fill it, there exist small newspapers published on Greeley's pattern for sections of the city. In the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx there are perhaps twice as many local dailies as there are general newspapers. [Footnote: _Cf._ John L. Given, _Making a Newspaper,_ p. 13.] And they are supplemented by all kinds of special publications for trades, religions, nationalities. These diaries are published for people who find their own lives interesting. But there are also great numbers of people who find their own lives dull, and wish, like Hedda Gabler, to live a more thrilling life. For them there are published a few whole newspapers, and sections of others, devoted to the personal lives of a set of imaginary people, with whose gorgeous vices the reader can in his fancy safely identify himself. Mr. Hearst's unflagging interest in high society caters to people who never hope to be in high society, and yet manage to derive some enhancement out of the vague feeling that they are part of the life that they read about. In the great cities "the printed diary of the home town" tends to be the printed diary of a smart set. And it is, as we have already noted, the dailies of the cities which carry the burden of bringing distant news to the private citizen. But it is not primarily their political and social news which holds the circulation. The interest in that is intermittent, and few publishers can bank on it alone. The newspaper, therefore, takes to itself a variety of other features, all primarily designed to hold a body of readers together, who so far as big news is concerned, are not able to be critical. Moreover, in big news the competition in any one community is not very serious. The press services standardize the main events; it is only once in a while that a great scoop is made; there is apparently not a very great reading public for such massive reporting as has made the New York Times of recent years indispensable to men of all shades of opinion. In order to differentiate themselves and collect a steady public most papers have to go outside the field of general news. They go to the dazzling levels of society, to scandal and crime, to sports, pictures, actresses, advice to the lovelorn, highschool notes, women's pages, buyer's pages, cooking receipts, chess, whist, gardening, comic strips, thundering partisanship, not because publishers and editors are interested in everything but news, but because they have to find some way of holding on to that alleged host of passionately interested readers, who are supposed by some critics of the press to be clamoring for the truth and nothing but the truth. The newspaper editor occupies a strange position. His enterprises depend upon indirect taxation levied by his advertisers upon his readers; the patronage of the advertisers depends upon the editor's skill in holding together an effective group of customers. These customers deliver judgment according to their private experiences and their stereotyped expectations, for in the nature of things they have no independent knowledge of most news they read. If the judgment is not unfavorable, the editor is at least within range of a circulation that pays. But in order to secure that circulation, he cannot rely wholly upon news of the greater environment. He handles that as interestingly as he can, of course, but the quality of the general news, especially about public affairs, is not in itself sufficient to cause very large numbers of readers to discriminate among the dailies. This somewhat left-handed relationship between newspapers and public information is reflected in the salaries of newspaper men. Reporting, which theoretically constitutes the foundation of the whole institution, is the most poorly paid branch of newspaper work, and is the least regarded. By and large, able men go into it only by necessity or for experience, and with the definite intention of being graduated as soon as possible. For straight reporting is not a career that offers many great rewards. The rewards in journalism go to specialty work, to signed correspondence which has editorial quality, to executives, and to men with a knack and flavor of their own. This is due, no doubt, to what economists call the rent of ability. But this economic principle operates with such peculiar violence in journalism that newsgathering does not attract to itself anything like the number of trained and able men which its public importance would seem to demand. The fact that the able men take up "straight reporting" with the intention of leaving it as soon as possible is, I think, the chief reason why it has never developed in sufficient measure those corporate traditions that give to a profession prestige and a jealous self-respect. For it is these corporate traditions which engender the pride of craft, which tend to raise the standards of admission, punish breaches of the code, and give men the strength to insist upon their status in society. 3 Yet all this does not go to the root of the matter. For while the economics of journalism is such as to depress the value of news reporting, it is, I am certain, a false determinism which would abandon the analysis at that point. The intrinsic power of the reporter appears to be so great, the number of very able men who pass through reporting is so large, that there must be some deeper reason why, comparatively speaking, so little serious effort has gone into raising the vocation to the level say of medicine, engineering, or law. Mr. Upton Sinclair speaks for a large body of opinion in America, [Footnote: Mr. Hilaire Belloc makes practically the same analysis for English newspapers. _Cf. The Free Press._] when he claims that in what he calls "The Brass Check" he has found this deeper reason: "The Brass Check is found in your pay envelope every week--you who write and print and distribute our newspapers and magazines. The Brass check is the price of your shame--you who take the fair body of truth and sell it in the market place, who betray the virgin hopes of mankind into the loathsome brothel of Big Business." [Footnote: Upton Sinclair, _The Brass Check. A Study of American Journalism._ p. 116.] It would seem from this that there exists a body of known truth, and a set of well founded hopes, which are prostituted by a more or less conscious conspiracy of the rich owners of newspapers. If this theory is correct, then a certain conclusion follows. It is that the fair body of truth would be inviolate in a press not in any way connected with Big Business. For if it should happen that a press not controlled by, and not even friendly with, Big Business somehow failed to contain the fair body of truth, something would be wrong with Mr. Sinclair's theory. There is such a press. Strange to say, in proposing a remedy Mr. Sinclair does not advise his readers to subscribe to the nearest radical newspaper. Why not? If the troubles of American journalism go back to the Brass Check of Big Business why does not the remedy lie in reading the papers that do not in any remote way accept the Brass Check? Why subsidize a "National News" with a large board of directors "of all creeds or causes" to print a paper full of facts "regardless of what is injured, the Steel Trust or the I. W. W., the Standard Oil Company or the Socialist Party?" If the trouble is Big Business, that is, the Steel Trust, Standard Oil and the like, why not urge everybody to read I. W. W. or Socialist papers? Mr. Sinclair does not say why not. But the reason is simple. He cannot convince anybody, not even himself, that the anti-capitalist press is the remedy for the capitalist press. He ignores the anti-capitalist press both in his theory of the Brass Check and in his constructive proposal. But if you are diagnosing American journalism you cannot ignore it. If what you care about is "the fair body of truth," you do not commit the gross logical error of assembling all the instances of unfairness and lying you can find in one set of newspapers, ignore all the instances you could easily find in another set, and then assign as the cause of the lying, the one supposedly common characteristic of the press to which you have confined your investigation. If you are going to blame "capitalism" for the faults of the press, you are compelled to prove that those faults do not exist except where capitalism controls. That Mr. Sinclair cannot do this, is shown by the fact that while in his diagnosis he traces everything to capitalism, in his prescription he ignores both capitalism and anti-capitalism. One would have supposed that the inability to take any non-capitalist paper as a model of truthfulness and competence would have caused Mr. Sinclair, and those who agree with him, to look somewhat more critically at their assumptions. They would have asked themselves, for example, where is the fair body of truth, that Big Business prostitutes, but anti-Big Business does not seem to obtain? For that question leads, I believe, to the heart of the matter, to the question of what is news. CHAPTER XXIII THE NATURE OF NEWS 1 ALL the reporters in the world working all the hours of the day could not witness all the happenings in the world. There are not a great many reporters. And none of them has the power to be in more than one place at a time. Reporters are not clairvoyant, they do not gaze into a crystal ball and see the world at will, they are not assisted by thought-transference. Yet the range of subjects these comparatively few men manage to cover would be a miracle indeed, if it were not a standardized routine. Newspapers do not try to keep an eye on all mankind. [Footnote: See the illuminating chapter in Mr. John L. Given's book, already cited, on "Uncovering the News," Ch. V.] They have watchers stationed at certain places, like Police Headquarters, the Coroner's Office, the County Clerk's Office, City Hall, the White House, the Senate, House of Representatives, and so forth. They watch, or rather in the majority of cases they belong to associations which employ men who watch "a comparatively small number of places where it is made known when the life of anyone... departs from ordinary paths, or when events worth telling about occur. For example, John Smith, let it be supposed, becomes a broker. For ten years he pursues the even tenor of his way and except for his customers and his friends no one gives him a thought. To the newspapers he is as if he were not. But in the eleventh year he suffers heavy losses and, at last, his resources all gone, summons his lawyer and arranges for the making of an assignment. The lawyer posts off to the County Clerk's office, and a clerk there makes the necessary entries in the official docket. Here in step the newspapers. While the clerk is writing Smith's business obituary a reporter glances over his shoulder and a few minutes later the reporters know Smith's troubles and are as well informed concerning his business status as they would be had they kept a reporter at his door every day for over ten years. [Footnote: _Op. cit._, p. 57.] When Mr. Given says that the newspapers know "Smith's troubles" and "his business status," he does not mean that they know them as Smith knows them, or as Mr. Arnold Bennett would know them if he had made Smith the hero of a three volume novel. The newspapers know only "in a few minutes" the bald facts which are recorded in the County Clerk's Office. That overt act "uncovers" the news about Smith. Whether the news will be followed up or not is another matter. The point is that before a series of events become news they have usually to make themselves noticeable in some more or less overt act. Generally too, in a crudely overt act. Smith's friends may have known for years that he was taking risks, rumors may even have reached the financial editor if Smith's friends were talkative. But apart from the fact that none of this could be published because it would be libel, there is in these rumors nothing definite on which to peg a story. Something definite must occur that has unmistakable form. It may be the act of going into bankruptcy, it may be a fire, a collision, an assault, a riot, an arrest, a denunciation, the introduction of a bill, a speech, a vote, a meeting, the expressed opinion of a well known citizen, an editorial in a newspaper, a sale, a wage-schedule, a price change, the proposal to build a bridge.... There must be a manifestation. The course of events must assume a certain definable shape, and until it is in a phase where some aspect is an accomplished fact, news does not separate itself from the ocean of possible truth. 2 Naturally there is room for wide difference of opinion as to when events have a shape that can be reported. A good journalist will find news oftener than a hack. If he sees a building with a dangerous list, he does not have to wait until it falls into the street in order to recognize news. It was a great reporter who guessed the name of the next Indian Viceroy when he heard that Lord So-and-So was inquiring about climates. There are lucky shots but the number of men who can make them is small. Usually it is the stereotyped shape assumed by an event at an obvious place that uncovers the run of the news. The most obvious place is where people's affairs touch public authority. De minimis non curat lex. It is at these places that marriages, births, deaths, contracts, failures, arrivals, departures, lawsuits, disorders, epidemics and calamities are made known. In the first instance, therefore, the news is not a mirror of social conditions, but the report of an aspect that has obtruded itself. The news does not tell you how the seed is germinating in the ground, but it may tell you when the first sprout breaks through the surface. It may even tell you what somebody says is happening to the seed under ground. It may tell you that the sprout did not come up at the time it was expected. The more points, then, at which any happening can be fixed, objectified, measured, named, the more points there are at which news can occur. So, if some day a legislature, having exhausted all other ways of improving mankind, should forbid the scoring of baseball games, it might still be possible to play some sort of game in which the umpire decided according to his own sense of fair play how long the game should last, when each team should go to bat, and who should be regarded as the winner. If that game were reported in the newspapers it would consist of a record of the umpire's decisions, plus the reporter's impression of the hoots and cheers of the crowd, plus at best a vague account of how certain men, who had no specified position on the field moved around for a few hours on an unmarked piece of sod. The more you try to imagine the logic of so absurd a predicament, the more clear it becomes that for the purposes of newsgathering, (let alone the purposes of playing the game) it is impossible to do much without an apparatus and rules for naming, scoring, recording. Because that machinery is far from perfect, the umpire's life is often a distracted one. Many crucial plays he has to judge by eye. The last vestige of dispute could be taken out of the game, as it has been taken out of chess when people obey the rules, if somebody thought it worth his while to photograph every play. It was the moving pictures which finally settled a real doubt in many reporters' minds, owing to the slowness of the human eye, as to just what blow of Dempsey's knocked out Carpentier. Wherever there is a good machinery of record, the modern news service works with great precision. There is one on the stock exchange, and the news of price movements is flashed over tickers with dependable accuracy. There is a machinery for election returns, and when the counting and tabulating are well done, the result of a national election is usually known on the night of the election. In civilized communities deaths, births, marriages and divorces are recorded, and are known accurately except where there is concealment or neglect. The machinery exists for some, and only some, aspects of industry and government, in varying degrees of precision for securities, money and staples, bank clearances, realty transactions, wage scales. It exists for imports and exports because they pass through a custom house and can be directly recorded. It exists in nothing like the same degree for internal trade, and especially for trade over the counter. It will be found, I think, that there is a very direct relation between the certainty of news and the system of record. If you call to mind the topics which form the principal indictment by reformers against the press, you find they are subjects in which the newspaper occupies the position of the umpire in the unscored baseball game. All news about states of mind is of this character: so are all descriptions of personalities, of sincerity, aspiration, motive, intention, of mass feeling, of national feeling, of public opinion, the policies of foreign governments. So is much news about what is going to happen. So are questions turning on private profit, private income, wages, working conditions, the efficiency of labor, educational opportunity, unemployment, [Footnote: Think of what guess work went into the Reports of Unemployment in 1921.] monotony, health, discrimination, unfairness, restraint of trade, waste, "backward peoples," conservatism, imperialism, radicalism, liberty, honor, righteousness. All involve data that are at best spasmodically recorded. The data may be hidden because of a censorship or a tradition of privacy, they may not exist because nobody thinks record important, because he thinks it red tape, or because nobody has yet invented an objective system of measurement. Then the news on these subjects is bound to be debatable, when it is not wholly neglected. The events which are not scored are reported either as personal and conventional opinions, or they are not news. They do not take shape until somebody protests, or somebody investigates, or somebody publicly, in the etymological meaning of the word, makes an _issue_ of them. This is the underlying reason for the existence of the press agent. The enormous discretion as to what facts and what impressions shall be reported is steadily convincing every organized group of people that whether it wishes to secure publicity or to avoid it, the exercise of discretion cannot be left to the reporter. It is safer to hire a press agent who stands between the group and the newspapers. Having hired him, the temptation to exploit his strategic position is very great. "Shortly before the war," says Mr. Frank Cobb, "the newspapers of New York took a census of the press agents who were regularly employed and regularly accredited and found that there were about twelve hundred of them. How many there are now (1919) I do not pretend to know, but what I do know is that many of the direct channels to news have been closed and the information for the public is first filtered through publicity agents. The great corporations have them, the banks have them, the railroads have them, all the organizations of business and of social and political activity have them, and they are the media through which news comes. Even statesmen have them." [Footnote: Address before the Women's City Club of New York, Dec. 11, 1919. Reprinted, _New Republic_, Dec. 31, 1919, p. 44.] Were reporting the simple recovery of obvious facts, the press agent would be little more than a clerk. But since, in respect to most of the big topics of news, the facts are not simple, and not at all obvious, but subject to choice and opinion, it is natural that everyone should wish to make his own choice of facts for the newspapers to print. The publicity man does that. And in doing it, he certainly saves the reporter much trouble, by presenting him a clear picture of a situation out of which he might otherwise make neither head nor tail. But it follows that the picture which the publicity man makes for the reporter is the one he wishes the public to see. He is censor and propagandist, responsible only to his employers, and to the whole truth responsible only as it accords with the employers' conception of his own interests. The development of the publicity man is a clear sign that the facts of modern life do not spontaneously take a shape in which they can be known. They must be given a shape by somebody, and since in the daily routine reporters cannot give a shape to facts, and since there is little disinterested organization of intelligence, the need for some formulation is being met by the interested parties. 3 The good press agent understands that the virtues of his cause are not news, unless they are such strange virtues that they jut right out of the routine of life. This is not because the newspapers do not like virtue, but because it is not worth while to say that nothing has happened when nobody expected anything to happen. So if the publicity man wishes free publicity he has, speaking quite accurately, to start something. He arranges a stunt: obstructs the traffic, teases the police, somehow manages to entangle his client or his cause with an event that is already news. The suffragists knew this, did not particularly enjoy the knowledge but acted on it, and kept suffrage in the news long after the arguments pro and con were straw in their mouths, and people were about to settle down to thinking of the suffrage movement as one of the established institutions of American life. [Footnote: _Cf._ Inez Haynes Irwin, _The Story of the Woman's Party._ It is not only a good account of a vital part of a great agitation, but a reservoir of material on successful, non-revolutionary, non-conspiring agitation under modern conditions of public attention, public interest, and political habit.] Fortunately the suffragists, as distinct from the feminists, had a perfectly concrete objective, and a very simple one. What the vote symbolizes is not simple, as the ablest advocates and the ablest opponents knew. But the right to vote is a simple and familiar right. Now in labor disputes, which are probably the chief item in the charges against newspapers, the right to strike, like the right to vote, is simple enough. But the causes and objects of a particular strike are like the causes and objects of the woman's movement, extremely subtle. Let us suppose the conditions leading up to a strike are bad. What is the measure of evil? A certain conception of a proper standard of living, hygiene, economic security, and human dignity. The industry may be far below the theoretical standard of the community, and the workers may be too wretched to protest. Conditions may be above the standard, and the workers may protest violently. The standard is at best a vague measure. However, we shall assume that the conditions are below par, as par is understood by the editor. Occasionally without waiting for the workers to threaten, but prompted say by a social worker, he will send reporters to investigate, and will call attention to bad conditions. Necessarily he cannot do that often. For these investigations cost time, money, special talent, and a lot of space. To make plausible a report that conditions are bad, you need a good many columns of print. In order to tell the truth about the steel worker in the Pittsburgh district, there was needed a staff of investigators, a great deal of time, and several fat volumes of print. It is impossible to suppose that any daily newspaper could normally regard the making of Pittsburgh Surveys, or even Interchurch Steel Reports, as one of its tasks. News which requires so much trouble as that to obtain is beyond the resources of a daily press. [Footnote: Not long ago Babe Ruth was jailed for speeding. Released from jail just before the afternoon game started, he rushed into his waiting automobile, and made up for time lost in jail by breaking the speed laws on his way to the ball grounds. No policeman stopped him, but a reporter timed him, and published his speed the next morning. Babe Ruth is an exceptional man. Newspapers cannot time all motorists. They have to take their news about speeding from the police.] The bad conditions as such are not news, because in all but exceptional cases, journalism is not a first hand report of the raw material. It is a report of that material after it has been stylized. Thus bad conditions might become news if the Board of Health reported an unusually high death rate in an industrial area. Failing an intervention of this sort, the facts do not become news, until the workers organize and make a demand upon their employers. Even then, if an easy settlement is certain the news value is low, whether or not the conditions themselves are remedied in the settlement. But if industrial relations collapse into a strike or lockout the news value increases. If the stoppage involves a service on which the readers of the newspapers immediately depend, or if it involves a breach of order, the news value is still greater. The underlying trouble appears in the news through certain easily recognizable symptoms, a demand, a strike, disorder. From the point of view of the worker, or of the disinterested seeker of justice, the demand, the strike, and the disorder, are merely incidents in a process that for them is richly complicated. But since all the immediate realities lie outside the direct experience both of the reporter, and of the special public by which most newspapers are supported, they have normally to wait for a signal in the shape of an overt act. When that signal comes, say through a walkout of the men or a summons for the police, it calls into play the stereotypes people have about strikes and disorders. The unseen struggle has none of its own flavor. It is noted abstractly, and that abstraction is then animated by the immediate experience of the reader and reporter. Obviously this is a very different experience from that which the strikers have. They feel, let us say, the temper of the foreman, the nerve-racking monotony of the machine, the depressingly bad air, the drudgery of their wives, the stunting of their children, the dinginess of their tenements. The slogans of the strike are invested with these feelings. But the reporter and reader see at first only a strike and some catchwords. They invest these with their feelings. Their feelings may be that their jobs are insecure because the strikers are stopping goods they need in their work, that there will be shortage and higher prices, that it is all devilishly inconvenient. These, too, are realities. And when they give color to the abstract news that a strike has been called, it is in the nature of things that the workers are at a disadvantage. It is in the nature, that is to say, of the existing system of industrial relations that news arising from grievances or hopes by workers should almost invariably be uncovered by an overt attack on production. You have, therefore, the circumstances in all their sprawling complexity, the overt act which signalizes them, the stereotyped bulletin which publishes the signal, and the meaning that the reader himself injects, after he has derived that meaning from the experience which directly affects him. Now the reader's experience of a strike may be very important indeed, but from the point of view of the central trouble which caused the strike, it is eccentric. Yet this eccentric meaning is automatically the most interesting. [Footnote: _Cf_. Ch. XI, "The Enlisting of Interest."] To enter imaginatively into the central issues is for the reader to step out of himself, and into very different lives. It follows that in the reporting of strikes, the easiest way is to let the news be uncovered by the overt act, and to describe the event as the story of interference with the reader's life. That is where his attention is first aroused, and his interest most easily enlisted. A great deal, I think myself the crucial part, of what looks to the worker and the reformer as deliberate misrepresentation on the part of newspapers, is the direct outcome of a practical difficulty in uncovering the news, and the emotional difficulty of making distant facts interesting unless, as Emerson says, we can "perceive (them) to be only a new version of our familiar experience" and can "set about translating (them) at once into our parallel facts." [Footnote: From his essay entitled _Art and Criticism_. The quotation occurs in a passage cited on page 87 of Professor R. W. Brown's, _The Writer's Art._] If you study the way many a strike is reported in the press, you will find, very often, that the issues are rarely in the headlines, barely in the leading paragraphs, and sometimes not even mentioned anywhere. A labor dispute in another city has to be very important before the news account contains any definite information as to what is in dispute. The routine of the news works that way, with modifications it works that way in regard to political issues and international news as well. The news is an account of the overt phases that are interesting, and the pressure on the newspaper to adhere to this routine comes from many sides. It comes from the economy of noting only the stereotyped phase of a situation. It comes from the difficulty of finding journalists who can see what they have not learned to see. It comes from the almost unavoidable difficulty of finding sufficient space in which even the best journalist can make plausible an unconventional view. It comes from the economic necessity of interesting the reader quickly, and the economic risk involved in not interesting him at all, or of offending him by unexpected news insufficiently or clumsily described. All these difficulties combined make for uncertainty in the editor when there are dangerous issues at stake, and cause him naturally to prefer the indisputable fact and a treatment more readily adapted to the reader's interest. The indisputable fact and the easy interest, are the strike itself and the reader's inconvenience. All the subtler and deeper truths are in the present organization of industry very unreliable truths. They involve judgments about standards of living, productivity, human rights that are endlessly debatable in the absence of exact record and quantitative analysis. And as long as these do not exist in industry, the run of news about it will tend, as Emerson said, quoting from Isocrates, "to make of moles mountains, and of mountains moles." [Footnote: _Id., supra_] Where there is no constitutional procedure in industry, and no expert sifting of evidence and the claims, the fact that is sensational to the reader is the fact that almost every journalist will seek. Given the industrial relations that so largely prevail, even where there is conference or arbitration, but no independent filtering of the facts for decision, the issue for the newspaper public will tend not to be the issue for the industry. And so to try disputes by an appeal through the newspapers puts a burden upon newspapers and readers which they cannot and ought not to carry. As long as real law and order do not exist, the bulk of the news will, unless consciously and courageously corrected, work against those who have no lawful and orderly method of asserting themselves. The bulletins from the scene of action will note the trouble that arose from the assertion, rather than the reasons which led to it. The reasons are intangible. 4 The editor deals with these bulletins. He sits in his office, reads them, rarely does he see any large portion of the events themselves. He must, as we have seen, woo at least a section of his readers every day, because they will leave him without mercy if a rival paper happens to hit their fancy. He works under enormous pressure, for the competition of newspapers is often a matter of minutes. Every bulletin requires a swift but complicated judgment. It must be understood, put in relation to other bulletins also understood, and played up or played down according to its probable interest for the public, as the editor conceives it. Without standardization, without stereotypes, without routine judgments, without a fairly ruthless disregard of subtlety, the editor would soon die of excitement. The final page is of a definite size, must be ready at a precise moment; there can be only a certain number of captions on the items, and in each caption there must be a definite number of letters. Always there is the precarious urgency of the buying public, the law of libel, and the possibility of endless trouble. The thing could not be managed at all without systematization, for in a standardized product there is economy of time and effort, as well as a partial guarantee against failure. It is here that newspapers influence each other most deeply. Thus when the war broke out, the American newspapers were confronted with a subject about which they had no previous experience. Certain dailies, rich enough to pay cable tolls, took the lead in securing news, and the way that news was presented became a model for the whole press. But where did that model come from? It came from the English press, not because Northcliffe owned American newspapers, but because at first it was easier to buy English correspondence, and because, later, it was easier for American journalists to read English newspapers than it was for them to read any others. London was the cable and news center, and it was there that a certain technic for reporting the war was evolved. Something similar occurred in the reporting of the Russian Revolution. In that instance, access to Russia was closed by military censorship, both Russian and Allied, and closed still more effectively by the difficulties of the Russian language. But above all it was closed to effective news reporting by the fact that the hardest thing to report is chaos, even though it is an evolving chaos. This put the formulating of Russian news at its source in Helsingfors, Stockholm, Geneva, Paris and London, into the hands of censors and propagandists. They were for a long time subject to no check of any kind. Until they had made themselves ridiculous they created, let us admit, out of some genuine aspects of the huge Russian maelstrom, a set of stereotypes so evocative of hate and fear, that the very best instinct of journalism, its desire to go and see and tell, was for a long time crushed. [Footnote: _Cf. A Test of the News,_ by Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz, assisted by Faye Lippmann, _New Republic,_ August 4, 1920.] 5 Every newspaper when it reaches the reader is the result of a whole series of selections as to what items shall be printed, in what position they shall be printed, how much space each shall occupy, what emphasis each shall have. There are no objective standards here. There are conventions. Take two newspapers published in the same city on the same morning. The headline of one reads: "Britain pledges aid to Berlin against French aggression; France openly backs Poles." The headline of the second is "Mrs. Stillman's Other Love." Which you prefer is a matter of taste, but not entirely a matter of the editor's taste. It is a matter of his judgment as to what will absorb the half hour's attention a certain set of readers will give to his newspaper. Now the problem of securing attention is by no means equivalent to displaying the news in the perspective laid down by religious teaching or by some form of ethical culture. It is a problem of provoking feeling in the reader, of inducing him to feel a sense of personal identification with the stories he is reading. News which does not offer this opportunity to introduce oneself into the struggle which it depicts cannot appeal to a wide audience. The audience must participate in the news, much as it participates in the drama, by personal identification. Just as everyone holds his breath when the heroine is in danger, as he helps Babe Ruth swing his bat, so in subtler form the reader enters into the news. In order that he shall enter he must find a familiar foothold in the story, and this is supplied to him by the use of stereotypes. They tell him that if an association of plumbers is called a "combine" it is appropriate to develop his hostility; if it is called a "group of leading business men" the cue is for a favorable reaction. It is in a combination of these elements that the power to create opinion resides. Editorials reinforce. Sometimes in a situation that on the news pages is too confusing to permit of identification, they give the reader a clue by means of which he engages himself. A clue he must have if, as most of us must, he is to seize the news in a hurry. A suggestion of some sort he demands, which tells him, so to speak, where he, a man conceiving himself to be such and such a person, shall integrate his feelings with the news he reads. "It has been said" writes Walter Bagehot, [Footnote: On the Emotion of Conviction, _Literary Studies_, Vol. Ill, p. 172.] "that if you can only get a middleclass Englishman to think whether there are 'snails in Sirius,' he will soon have an opinion on it. It will be difficult to make him think, but if he does think, he cannot rest in a negative, he will come to some decision. And on any ordinary topic, of course, it is so. A grocer has a full creed as to foreign policy, a young lady a complete theory of the sacraments, as to which neither has any doubt whatever." Yet that same grocer will have many doubts about his groceries, and that young lady, marvelously certain about the sacraments, may have all kinds of doubts as to whether to marry the grocer, and if not whether it is proper to accept his attentions. The ability to rest in the negative implies either a lack of interest in the result, or a vivid sense of competing alternatives. In the case of foreign policy or the sacraments, the interest in the results is intense, while means for checking the opinion are poor. This is the plight of the reader of the general news. If he is to read it at all he must be interested, that is to say, he must enter into the situation and care about the outcome. But if he does that he cannot rest in a negative, and unless independent means of checking the lead given him by his newspaper exists, the very fact that he is interested may make it difficult to arrive at that balance of opinions which may most nearly approximate the truth. The more passionately involved he becomes, the more he will tend to resent not only a different view, but a disturbing bit of news. That is why many a newspaper finds that, having honestly evoked the partisanship of its readers, it can not easily, supposing the editor believes the facts warrant it, change position. If a change is necessary, the transition has to be managed with the utmost skill and delicacy. Usually a newspaper will not attempt so hazardous a performance. It is easier and safer to have the news of that subject taper off and disappear, thus putting out the fire by starving it. CHAPTER XXIV NEWS, TRUTH, AND A CONCLUSION As we begin to make more and more exact studies of the press, much will depend upon the hypothesis we hold. If we assume with Mr. Sinclair, and most of his opponents, that news and truth are two words for the same thing, we shall, I believe, arrive nowhere. We shall prove that on this point the newspaper lied. We shall prove that on that point Mr. Sinclair's account lied. We shall demonstrate that Mr. Sinclair lied when he said that somebody lied, and that somebody lied when he said Mr. Sinclair lied. We shall vent our feelings, but we shall vent them into air. The hypothesis, which seems to me the most fertile, is that news and truth are not the same thing, and must be clearly distinguished. [Footnote: When I wrote _Liberty and the News,_ I did not understand this distinction clearly enough to state it, but _cf._ p. 89 ff.] The function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them into relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act. Only at those points, where social conditions take recognizable and measurable shape, do the body of truth and the body of news coincide. That is a comparatively small part of the whole field of human interest. In this sector, and only in this sector, the tests of the news are sufficiently exact to make the charges of perversion or suppression more than a partisan judgment. There is no defense, no extenuation, no excuse whatever, for stating six times that Lenin is dead, when the only information the paper possesses is a report that he is dead from a source repeatedly shown to be unreliable. The news, in that instance, is not "Lenin Dead" but "Helsingfors Says Lenin is Dead." And a newspaper can be asked to take the responsibility of not making Lenin more dead than the source of the news is reliable; if there is one subject on which editors are most responsible it is in their judgment of the reliability of the source. But when it comes to dealing, for example, with stories of what the Russian people want, no such test exists. The absence of these exact tests accounts, I think, for the character of the profession, as no other explanation does. There is a very small body of exact knowledge, which it requires no outstanding ability or training to deal with. The rest is in the journalist's own discretion. Once he departs from the region where it is definitely recorded at the County Clerk's office that John Smith has gone into bankruptcy, all fixed standards disappear. The story of why John Smith failed, his human frailties, the analysis of the economic conditions on which he was shipwrecked, all of this can be told in a hundred different ways. There is no discipline in applied psychology, as there is a discipline in medicine, engineering, or even law, which has authority to direct the journalist's mind when he passes from the news to the vague realm of truth. There are no canons to direct his own mind, and no canons that coerce the reader's judgment or the publisher's. His version of the truth is only his version. How can he demonstrate the truth as he sees it? He cannot demonstrate it, any more than Mr. Sinclair Lewis can demonstrate that he has told the whole truth about Main Street. And the more he understands his own weaknesses, the more ready he is to admit that where there is no objective test, his own opinion is in some vital measure constructed out of his own stereotypes, according to his own code, and by the urgency of his own interest. He knows that he is seeing the world through subjective lenses. He cannot deny that he too is, as Shelley remarked, a dome of many-colored glass which stains the white radiance of eternity. And by this knowledge his assurance is tempered. He may have all kinds of moral courage, and sometimes has, but he lacks that sustaining conviction of a certain technic which finally freed the physical sciences from theological control. It was the gradual development of an irrefragable method that gave the physicist his intellectual freedom as against all the powers of the world. His proofs were so clear, his evidence so sharply superior to tradition, that he broke away finally from all control. But the journalist has no such support in his own conscience or in fact. The control exercised over him by the opinions of his employers and his readers, is not the control of truth by prejudice, but of one opinion by another opinion that it is not demonstrably less true. Between Judge Gary's assertion that the unions will destroy American institutions, and Mr. Gomper's assertion that they are agencies of the rights of man, the choice has, in large measure, to be governed by the will to believe. The task of deflating these controversies, and reducing them to a point where they can be reported as news, is not a task which the reporter can perform. It is possible and necessary for journalists to bring home to people the uncertain character of the truth on which their opinions are founded, and by criticism and agitation to prod social science into making more usable formulations of social facts, and to prod statesmen into establishing more visible institutions. The press, in other words, can fight for the extension of reportable truth. But as social truth is organized to-day, the press is not constituted to furnish from one edition to the next the amount of knowledge which the democratic theory of public opinion demands. This is not due to the Brass Check, as the quality of news in radical papers shows, but to the fact that the press deals with a society in which the governing forces are so imperfectly recorded. The theory that the press can itself record those forces is false. It can normally record only what has been recorded for it by the working of institutions. Everything else is argument and opinion, and fluctuates with the vicissitudes, the self-consciousness, and the courage of the human mind. If the press is not so universally wicked, nor so deeply conspiring, as Mr. Sinclair would have us believe, it is very much more frail than the democratic theory has as yet admitted. It is too frail to carry the whole burden of popular sovereignty, to supply spontaneously the truth which democrats hoped was inborn. And when we expect it to supply such a body of truth we employ a misleading standard of judgment. We misunderstand the limited nature of news, the illimitable complexity of society; we overestimate our own endurance, public spirit, and all-round competence. We suppose an appetite for uninteresting truths which is not discovered by any honest analysis of our own tastes. If the newspapers, then, are to be charged with the duty of translating the whole public life of mankind, so that every adult can arrive at an opinion on every moot topic, they fail, they are bound to fail, in any future one can conceive they will continue to fail. It is not possible to assume that a world, carried on by division of labor and distribution of authority, can be governed by universal opinions in the whole population. Unconsciously the theory sets up the single reader as theoretically omnicompetent, and puts upon the press the burden of accomplishing whatever representative government, industrial organization, and diplomacy have failed to accomplish. Acting upon everybody for thirty minutes in twenty-four hours, the press is asked to create a mystical force called Public Opinion that will take up the slack in public institutions. The press has often mistakenly pretended that it could do just that. It has at great moral cost to itself, encouraged a democracy, still bound to its original premises, to expect newspapers to supply spontaneously for every organ of government, for every social problem, the machinery of information which these do not normally supply themselves. Institutions, having failed to furnish themselves with instruments of knowledge, have become a bundle of "problems," which the population as a whole, reading the press as a whole, is supposed to solve. The press, in other words, has come to be regarded as an organ of direct democracy, charged on a much wider scale, and from day to day, with the function often attributed to the initiative, referendum, and recall. The Court of Public Opinion, open day and night, is to lay down the law for everything all the time. It is not workable. And when you consider the nature of news, it is not even thinkable. For the news, as we have seen, is precise in proportion to the precision with which the event is recorded. Unless the event is capable of being named, measured, given shape, made specific, it either fails to take on the character of news, or it is subject to the accidents and prejudices of observation. Therefore, on the whole, the quality of the news about modern society is an index of its social organization. The better the institutions, the more all interests concerned are formally represented, the more issues are disentangled, the more objective criteria are introduced, the more perfectly an affair can be presented as news. At its best the press is a servant and guardian of institutions; at its worst it is a means by which a few exploit social disorganization to their own ends. In the degree to which institutions fail to function, the unscrupulous journalist can fish in troubled waters, and the conscientious one must gamble with uncertainties. The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible enough for a popular decision. The trouble lies deeper than the press, and so does the remedy. It lies in social organization based on a system of analysis and record, and in all the corollaries of that principle; in the abandonment of the theory of the omnicompetent citizen, in the decentralization of decision, in the coordination of decision by comparable record and analysis. If at the centers of management there is a running audit, which makes work intelligible to those who do it, and those who superintend it, issues when they arise are not the mere collisions of the blind. Then, too, the news is uncovered for the press by a system of intelligence that is also a check upon the press. That is the radical way. For the troubles of the press, like the troubles of representative government, be it territorial or functional, like the troubles of industry, be it capitalist, cooperative, or communist, go back to a common source: to the failure of self-governing people to transcend their casual experience and their prejudice, by inventing, creating, and organizing a machinery of knowledge. It is because they are compelled to act without a reliable picture of the world, that governments, schools, newspapers and churches make such small headway against the more obvious failings of democracy, against violent prejudice, apathy, preference for the curious trivial as against the dull important, and the hunger for sideshows and three legged calves. This is the primary defect of popular government, a defect inherent in its traditions, and all its other defects can, I believe, be traced to this one. PART VIII ORGANIZED INTELLIGENCE CHAPTER XXV. THE ENTERING WEDGE " XXVI. INTELLIGENCE WORK " XXVII. THE APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC " XXVIII. THE APPEAL TO REASON CHAPTER XXV THE ENTERING WEDGE 1 If the remedy were interesting, American pioneers like Charles McCarthy, Robert Valentine, and Frederick W. Taylor would not have had to fight so hard for a hearing. But it is clear why they had to fight, and why bureaus of governmental research, industrial audits, budgeting and the like are the ugly ducklings of reform. They reverse the process by which interesting public opinions are built up. Instead of presenting a casual fact, a large screen of stereotypes, and a dramatic identification, they break down the drama, break through the stereotypes, and offer men a picture of facts, which is unfamiliar and to them impersonal. When this is not painful, it is dull, and those to whom it is painful, the trading politician and the partisan who has much to conceal, often exploit the dullness that the public feels, in order to remove the pain that they feel. 2 Yet every complicated community has sought the assistance of special men, of augurs, priests, elders. Our own democracy, based though it was on a theory of universal competence, sought lawyers to manage its government, and to help manage its industry. It was recognized that the specially trained man was in some dim way oriented to a wider system of truth than that which arises spontaneously in the amateur's mind. But experience has shown that the traditional lawyer's equipment was not enough assistance. The Great Society had grown furiously and to colossal dimensions by the application of technical knowledge. It was made by engineers who had learned to use exact measurements and quantitative analysis. It could not be governed, men began to discover, by men who thought deductively about rights and wrongs. It could be brought under human control only by the technic which had created it. Gradually, then, the more enlightened directing minds have called in experts who were trained, or had trained themselves, to make parts of this Great Society intelligible to those who manage it. These men are known by all kinds of names, as statisticians, accountants, auditors, industrial counsellors, engineers of many species, scientific managers, personnel administrators, research men, "scientists," and sometimes just as plain private secretaries. They have brought with them each a jargon of his own, as well as filing cabinets, card catalogues, graphs, loose-leaf contraptions, and above all the perfectly sound ideal of an executive who sits before a flat-top desk, one sheet of typewritten paper before him, and decides on matters of policy presented in a form ready for his rejection or approval. This whole development has been the work, not so much of a spontaneous creative evolution, as of blind natural selection. The statesman, the executive, the party leader, the head of a voluntary association, found that if he had to discuss two dozen different subjects in the course of the day, somebody would have to coach him. He began to clamor for memoranda. He found he could not read his mail. He demanded somebody who would blue-pencil the interesting sentences in the important letters. He found he could not digest the great stacks of type-written reports that grew mellow on his desk. He demanded summaries. He found he could not read an unending series of figures. He embraced the man who made colored pictures of them. He found that he really did not know one machine from another. He hired engineers to pick them, and tell him how much they cost and what they could do. He peeled off one burden after another, as a man will take off first his hat, then his coat, then his collar, when he is struggling to move an unwieldy load. 3 Yet curiously enough, though he knew that he needed help, he was slow to call in the social scientist. The chemist, the physicist, the geologist, had a much earlier and more friendly reception. Laboratories were set up for them, inducements offered, for there was quick appreciation of the victories over nature. But the scientist who has human nature as his problem is in a different case. There are many reasons for this: the chief one, that he has so few victories to exhibit. He has so few, because unless he deals with the historic past, he cannot prove his theories before offering them to the public. The physical scientist can make an hypothesis, test it, revise the hypothesis hundreds of times, and, if after all that, he is wrong, no one else has to pay the price. But the social scientist cannot begin to offer the assurance of a laboratory test, and if his advice is followed, and he is wrong, the consequences may be incalculable. He is in the nature of things far more responsible, and far less certain. But more than that. In the laboratory sciences the student has conquered the dilemma of thought and action. He brings a sample of the action to a quiet place, where it can be repeated at will, and examined at leisure. But the social scientist is constantly being impaled on a dilemma. If he stays in his library, where he has the leisure to think, he has to rely upon the exceedingly casual and meager printed record that comes to him through official reports, newspapers, and interviews. If he goes out into "the world" where things are happening, he has to serve a long, often wasteful, apprenticeship, before he is admitted to the sanctum where they are being decided. What he cannot do is to dip into action and out again whenever it suits him. There are no privileged listeners. The man of affairs, observing that the social scientist knows only from the outside what he knows, in part at least, from the inside, recognizing that the social scientist's hypothesis is not in the nature of things susceptible of laboratory proof, and that verification is possible only in the "real" world, has developed a rather low opinion of social scientists who do not share his views of public policy. In his heart of hearts the social scientist shares this estimate of himself. He has little inner certainty about his own work. He only half believes in it, and being sure of nothing, he can find no compelling reason for insisting on his own freedom of thought. What can he actually claim for it, in the light of his own conscience? [Footnote: Cf. Charles E. Merriam, _The Present State of the Study of Politics_, _American Political Science Review_, Vol. XV. No. 2, May, 1921.] His data are uncertain, his means of verification lacking. The very best qualities in him are a source of frustration. For if he is really critical and saturated in the scientific spirit, he cannot be doctrinaire, and go to Armageddon against the trustees and the students and the Civic Federation and the conservative press for a theory of which he is not sure. If you are going to Armageddon, you have to battle for the Lord, but the political scientist is always a little doubtful whether the Lord called him. Consequently if so much of social science is apologetic rather than constructive, the explanation lies in the opportunities of social science, not in "capitalism." The physical scientists achieved their freedom from clericalism by working out a method that produced conclusions of a sort that could not be suppressed or ignored. They convinced themselves and acquired dignity, and knew what they were fighting for. The social scientist will acquire his dignity and his strength when he has worked out his method. He will do that by turning into opportunity the need among directing men of the Great Society for instruments of analysis by which an invisible and made intelligible. But as things go now, the social scientist assembles his data out of a mass of unrelated material. Social processes are recorded spasmodically, quite often as accidents of administration. A report to Congress, a debate, an investigation, legal briefs, a census, a tariff, a tax schedule; the material, like the skull of the Piltdown man, has to be put together by ingenious inference before the student obtains any sort of picture of the event he is studying. Though it deals with the conscious life of his fellow citizens, it is all too often distressingly opaque, because the man who is trying to generalize has practically no supervision of the way his data are collected. Imagine medical research conducted by students who could rarely go into a hospital, were deprived of animal experiment, and compelled to draw conclusions from the stories of people who had been ill, the reports of nurses, each of whom had her own system of diagnosis, and the statistics compiled by the Bureau of Internal Revenue on the excess profits of druggists. The social scientist has usually to make what he can out of categories that were uncritically in the mind of an official who administered some part of a law, or who was out to justify, to persuade, to claim, or to prove. The student knows this, and, as a protection against it, has developed that branch of scholarship which is an elaborated suspicion about where to discount his information. That is a virtue, but it becomes a very thin virtue when it is merely a corrective for the unwholesome position of social science. For the scholar is condemned to guess as shrewdly as he can why in a situation not clearly understood something or other may have happened. But the expert who is employed as the mediator among representatives, and as the mirror and measure of administration, has a very different control of the facts. Instead of being the man who generalizes from the facts dropped to him by the men of action, he becomes the man who prepares the facts for the men of action. This is a profound change in his strategic position. He no longer stands outside, chewing the cud provided by busy men of affairs, but he takes his place in front of decision instead of behind it. To-day the sequence is that the man of affairs finds his facts, and decides on the basis of them; then, some time later, the social scientist deduces excellent reasons why he did or did not decide wisely. This ex post facto relationship is academic in the bad sense of that fine word. The real sequence should be one where the disinterested expert first finds and formulates the facts for the man of action, and later makes what wisdom he can out of comparison between the decision, which he understands, and the facts, which he organized. 4 For the physical sciences this change in strategic position began slowly, and then accelerated rapidly. There was a time when the inventor and the engineer were romantic half-starved outsiders, treated as cranks. The business man and the artisan knew all the mysteries of their craft. Then the mysteries grew more mysterious, and at last industry began to depend upon physical laws and chemical combinations that no eye could see, and only a trained mind could conceive. The scientist moved from his noble garret in the Latin Quarter into office buildings and laboratories. For he alone could construct a working image of the reality on which industry rested. From the new relationship he took as much as he gave, perhaps more: pure science developed faster than applied, though it drew its economic support, a great deal of its inspiration, and even more of its relevancy, from constant contact with practical decision. But physical science still labored under the enormous limitation that the men who made decisions had only their commonsense to guide them. They administered without scientific aid a world complicated by scientists. Again they had to deal with facts they could not apprehend, and as once they had to call in engineers, they now have to call in statisticians, accountants, experts of all sorts. These practical students are the true pioneers of a new social science. They are "in mesh with the driving wheels" [Footnote: Cf. The Address of the President of the American Philosophical Association, Mr. Ralph Barton Perry, Dec. 28, 1920. Published in the Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting.] and from this practical engagement of science and action, both will benefit radically: action by the clarification of its beliefs; beliefs by a continuing test in action. We are in the earliest beginnings. But if it is conceded that all large forms of human association must, because of sheer practical difficulty, contain men who will come to see the need for an expert reporting of their particular environment, then the imagination has a premise on which to work. In the exchange of technic and result among expert staffs, one can see, I think, the beginning of experimental method in social science. When each school district and budget, and health department, and factory, and tariff schedule, is the material of knowledge for every other, the number of comparable experiences begins to approach the dimensions of genuine experiment. In forty-eight states, and 2400 cities, and 277,000 school houses, 270,000 manufacturing establishments, 27,000 mines and quarries, there is a wealth of experience, if only it were recorded and available. And there is, too, opportunity for trial and error at such slight risk that any reasonable hypothesis might be given a fair test without shaking the foundations of society. The wedge has been driven, not only by some directors of industry and some statesmen who had to have help, but by the bureaus of municipal research, [Footnote: The number of these organizations in the United States is very great. Some are alive, some half dead. They are in rapid flux. Lists of them supplied to me by Dr. L. D. Upson of the Detroit Bureau of Governmental Research, Miss Rebecca B. Rankin of the Municipal Reference Library of New York City, Mr. Edward A. Fitzpatrick, Secretary of the State Board of Education (Wisconsin), Mr. Savel Zimand of the Bureau of Industrial Research (New York City), run into the hundreds.] the legislative reference libraries, the specialized lobbies of corporations and trade unions and public causes, and by voluntary organizations like the League of Women Voters, the Consumers' League, the Manufacturers' Associations: by hundreds of trade associations, and citizens' unions; by publications like the _Searchlight on Congress_ and the _Survey_; and by foundations like the General Education Board. Not all by any means are disinterested. That is not the point. All of them do begin to demonstrate the need for interposing some form of expertness between the private citizen and the vast environment in which he is entangled. CHAPTER XXVI INTELLIGENCE WORK 1 THE practice of democracy has been ahead of its theory. For the theory holds that the adult electors taken together make decisions out of a will that is in them. But just as there grew up governing hierarchies which were invisible in theory, so there has been a large amount of constructive adaptation, also unaccounted for in the image of democracy. Ways have been found to represent many interests and functions that are normally out of sight. We are most conscious of this in our theory of the courts, when we explain their legislative powers and their vetoes on the theory that there are interests to be guarded which might be forgotten by the elected officials. But the Census Bureau, when it counts, classifies, and correlates people, things, and changes, is also speaking for unseen factors in the environment. The Geological Survey makes mineral resources evident, the Department of Agriculture represents in the councils of the nation factors of which each farmer sees only an infinitesimal part. School authorities, the Tariff Commission, the consular service, the Bureau of Internal Revenue give representation to persons, ideas, and objects which would never automatically find themselves represented in this perspective by an election. The Children's Bureau is the spokesman of a whole complex of interests and functions not ordinarily visible to the voter, and, therefore, incapable of becoming spontaneously a part of his public opinions. Thus the printing of comparative statistics of infant mortality is often followed by a reduction of the death rate of babies. Municipal officials and voters did not have, before publication, a place in their picture of the environment for those babies. The statistics made them visible, as visible as if the babies had elected an alderman to air their grievances. In the State Department the government maintains a Division of Far Eastern Affairs. What is it for? The Japanese and the Chinese Governments both maintain ambassadors in Washington. Are they not qualified to speak for the Far East? They are its representatives. Yet nobody would argue that the American Government could learn all that it needed to know about the Far East by consulting these ambassadors. Supposing them to be as candid as they know how to be, they are still limited channels of information. Therefore, to supplement them we maintain embassies in Tokio and Peking, and consular agents at many points. Also, I assume, some secret agents. These people are supposed to send reports which pass through the Division of Far Eastern Affairs to the Secretary of State. Now what does the Secretary expect of the Division? I know one who expected it to spend its appropriation. But there are Secretaries to whom special revelation is denied, and they turn to their divisions for help. The last thing they expect to find is a neat argument justifying the American position. What they demand is that the experts shall bring the Far East to the Secretary's desk, with all the elements in such relation that it is as if he were in contact with the Far East itself. The expert must translate, simplify, generalize, but the inference from the result must apply in the East, not merely on the premises of the report. If the Secretary is worth his salt, the very last thing he will tolerate in his experts is the suspicion that they have a "policy." He does not want to know from them whether they like Japanese policy in China. He wants to know what different classes of Chinese and Japanese, English, Frenchmen, Germans, and Russians, think about it, and what they are likely to do because of what they think. He wants all that represented to him as the basis of his decision. The more faithfully the Division represents what is not otherwise represented, either by the Japanese or American ambassadors, or the Senators and Congressmen from the Pacific coast, the better Secretary of State he will be. He may decide to take his policy from the Pacific Coast, but he will take his view of Japan from Japan. 2 It is no accident that the best diplomatic service in the world is the one in which the divorce between the assembling of knowledge and the control of policy is most perfect. During the war in many British Embassies and in the British Foreign Office there were nearly always men, permanent officials or else special appointees, who quite successfully discounted the prevailing war mind. They discarded the rigmarole of being pro and con, of having favorite nationalities, and pet aversions, and undelivered perorations in their bosoms. They left that to the political chiefs. But in an American Embassy I once heard an ambassador say that he never reported anything to Washington which would not cheer up the folks at home. He charmed all those who met him, helped many a stranded war worker, and was superb when he unveiled a monument. He did not understand that the power of the expert depends upon separating himself from those who make the decisions, upon not caring, in his expert self, what decision is made. The man who, like the ambassador, takes a line, and meddles with the decision, is soon discounted. There he is, just one more on that side of the question. For when he begins to care too much, he begins to see what he wishes to see, and by that fact ceases to see what he is there to see. He is there to represent the unseen. He represents people who are not voters, functions of voters that are not evident, events that are out of sight, mute people, unborn people, relations between things and people. He has a constituency of intangibles. And intangibles cannot be used to form a political majority, because voting is in the last analysis a test of strength, a sublimated battle, and the expert represents no strength available in the immediate. But he can exercise force by disturbing the line up of the forces. By making the invisible visible, he confronts the people who exercise material force with a new environment, sets ideas and feelings at work in them, throws them out of position, and so, in the profoundest way, affects the decision. Men cannot long act in a way that they know is a contradiction of the environment as they conceive it. If they are bent on acting in a certain way they have to reconceive the environment, they have to censor out, to rationalize. But if in their presence, there is an insistent fact which is so obtrusive that they cannot explain it away, one of three courses is open. They can perversely ignore it, though they will cripple themselves in the process, will overact their part and come to grief. They can take it into account but refuse to act. They pay in internal discomfort and frustration. Or, and I believe this to be the most frequent case, they adjust their whole behavior to the enlarged environment. The idea that the expert is an ineffectual person because he lets others make the decisions is quite contrary to experience. The more subtle the elements that enter into the decision, the more irresponsible power the expert wields. He is certain, moreover, to exercise more power in the future than ever he did before, because increasingly the relevant facts will elude the voter and the administrator. All governing agencies will tend to organize bodies of research and information, which will throw out tentacles and expand, as have the intelligence departments of all the armies in the world. But the experts will remain human beings. They will enjoy power, and their temptation will be to appoint themselves censors, and so absorb the real function of decision. Unless their function is correctly defined they will tend to pass on the facts they think appropriate, and to pass down the decisions they approve. They will tend, in short, to become a bureaucracy. The only institutional safeguard is to separate as absolutely as it is possible to do so the staff which executes from the staff which investigates. The two should be parallel but quite distinct bodies of men, recruited differently, paid if possible from separate funds, responsible to different heads, intrinsically uninterested in each other's personal success. In industry, the auditors, accountants, and inspectors should be independent of the manager, the superintendents, foremen, and in time, I believe, we shall come to see that in order to bring industry under social control the machinery of record will have to be independent of the boards of directors and the shareholders. 3 But in building the intelligence sections of industry and politics, we do not start on cleared ground. And, apart from insisting on this basic separation of function, it would be cumbersome to insist too precisely on the form which in any particular instance the principle shall take. There are men who believe in intelligence work, and will adopt it; there are men who do not understand it, but cannot do their work without it; there are men who will resist. But provided the principle has a foothold somewhere in every social agency it will make progress, and the way to begin is to begin. In the federal government, for example, it is not necessary to straighten out the administrative tangle and the illogical duplications of a century's growth in order to find a neat place for the intelligence bureaus which Washington so badly needs. Before election you can promise to rush bravely into the breach. But when you arrive there all out of breath, you find that each absurdity is invested with habits, strong interests, and chummy Congressmen. Attack all along the line and you engage every force of reaction. You go forth to battle, as the poet said, and you always fall. You can lop off an antiquated bureau here, a covey of clerks there, you can combine two bureaus. And by that time you are busy with the tariff and the railroads, and the era of reform is over. Besides, in order to effect a truly logical reorganization of the government, such as all candidates always promise, you would have to disturb more passions than you have time to quell. And any new scheme, supposing you had one ready, would require officials to man it. Say what one will about officeholders, even Soviet Russia was glad to get many of the old ones back; and these old officials, if they are too ruthlessly treated, will sabotage Utopia itself. No administrative scheme is workable without good will, and good will about strange practices is impossible without education. The better way is to introduce into the existing machinery, wherever you can find an opening, agencies that will hold up a mirror week by week, month by month. You can hope, then, to make the machine visible to those who work it, as well as to the chiefs who are responsible, and to the public outside. When the office-holders begin to see themselves,--or rather when the outsiders, the chiefs, and the subordinates all begin to see the same facts, the same damning facts if you like, the obstruction will diminish. The reformer's opinion that a certain bureau is inefficient is just his opinion, not so good an opinion in the eyes of the bureau, as its own. But let the work of that bureau be analysed and recorded, and then compared with other bureaus and with private corporations, and the argument moves to another plane. There are ten departments at Washington represented in the Cabinet. Suppose, then, there was a permanent intelligence section for each. What would be some of the conditions of effectiveness? Beyond all others that the intelligence officials should be independent both of the Congressional Committees dealing with that department, and of the Secretary at the head of it; that they should not be entangled either in decision or in action. Independence, then, would turn mainly on three points on funds, tenure, and access to the facts. For clearly if a particular Congress or departmental official can deprive them of money, dismiss them, or close the files, the staff becomes its creature. 4 The question of funds is both important and difficult. No agency of research can be really free if it depends upon annual doles from what may be a jealous or a parsimonious congress. Yet the ultimate control of funds cannot be removed from the legislature. The financial arrangement should insure the staff against left-handed, joker and rider attack, against sly destruction, and should at the same time provide for growth. The staff should be so well entrenched that an attack on its existence would have to be made in the open. It might, perhaps, work behind a federal charter creating a trust fund, and a sliding scale over a period of years based on the appropriation for the department to which the intelligence bureau belonged. No great sums of money are involved anyway. The trust fund might cover the overhead and capital charges for a certain minimum staff, the sliding scale might cover the enlargements. At any rate the appropriation should be put beyond accident, like the payment of any long term obligation. This is a much less serious way of "tying the hands of Congress" than is the passage of a Constitutional amendment or the issuance of government bonds. Congress could repeal the charter. But it would have to repeal it, not throw monkey wrenches into it. Tenure should be for life, with provision for retirement on a liberal pension, with sabbatical years set aside for advanced study and training, and with dismissal only after a trial by professional colleagues. The conditions which apply to any non-profit-making intellectual career should apply here. If the work is to be salient, the men who do it must have dignity, security, and, in the upper ranks at least, that freedom of mind which you find only where men are not too immediately concerned in practical decision. Access to the materials should be established in the organic act. The bureau should have the right to examine all papers, and to question any official or any outsider. Continuous investigation of this sort would not at all resemble the sensational legislative inquiry and the spasmodic fishing expedition which are now a common feature of our government. The bureau should have the right to propose accounting methods to the department, and if the proposal is rejected, or violated after it has been accepted, to appeal under its charter to Congress. In the first instance each intelligence bureau would be the connecting link between Congress and the Department, a better link, in my judgment, than the appearance of cabinet officers on the floor of both House and Senate, though the one proposal in no way excludes the other. The bureau would be the Congressional eye on the execution of its policy. It would be the departmental answer to Congressional criticism. And then, since operation of the Department would be permanently visible, perhaps Congress would cease to feel the need of that minute legislation born of distrust and a false doctrine of the separation of powers, which does so much to make efficient administration difficult. 5 But, of course, each of the ten bureaus could not work in a watertight compartment. In their relation one to another lies the best chance for that "coordination" of which so much is heard and so little seen. Clearly the various staffs would need to adopt, wherever possible, standards of measurement that were comparable. They would exchange their records. Then if the War Department and the Post Office both buy lumber, hire carpenters, or construct brick walls they need not necessarily do them through the same agency, for that might mean cumbersome over-centralization; but they would be able to use the same measure for the same things, be conscious of the comparisons, and be treated as competitors. And the more competition of this sort the better. For the value of competition is determined by the value of the standards used to measure it. Instead, then, of asking ourselves whether we believe in competition, we should ask ourselves whether we believe in that for which the competitors compete. No one in his senses expects to "abolish competition," for when the last vestige of emulation had disappeared, social effort would consist in mechanical obedience to a routine, tempered in a minority by native inspiration. Yet no one expects to work out competition to its logical conclusion in a murderous struggle of each against all. The problem is to select the goals of competition and the rules of the game. Almost always the most visible and obvious standard of measurement will determine the rules of the game: such as money, power, popularity, applause, or Mr. Veblen's "conspicuous waste." What other standards of measurement does our civilization normally provide? How does it measure efficiency, productivity, service, for which we are always clamoring? By and large there are no measures, and there is, therefore, not so much competition to achieve these ideals. For the difference between the higher and the lower motives is not, as men often assert, a difference between altruism and selfishness. [Footnote: _Cf._ Ch. XII] It is a difference between acting for easily understood aims, and for aims that are obscure and vague. Exhort a man to make more profit than his neighbor, and he knows at what to aim. Exhort him to render more social service, and how is he to be certain what service is social? What is the test, what is the measure? A subjective feeling, somebody's opinion. Tell a man in time of peace that he ought to serve his country and you have uttered a pious platitude, Tell him in time of war, and the word service has a meaning; it is a number of concrete acts, enlistment, or buying bonds, or saving food, or working for a dollar a year, and each one of these services he sees definitely as part of a concrete purpose to put at the front an army larger and better armed, than the enemy's. So the more you are able to analyze administration and work out elements that can be compared, the more you invent quantitative measures for the qualities you wish to promote, the more you can turn competition to ideal ends. If you can contrive the right index numbers [Footnote: I am not using the term index numbers in its purely technical meaning, but to cover any device for the comparative measurement of social phenomena.] you can set up a competition between individual workers in a shop; between shops; between factories; between schools; [Footnote: See, for example, _An Index Number for State School Systems_ by Leonard P. Ayres, Russell Sage Foundation, 1920. The principle of the quota was very successfully applied in the Liberty Loan Campaigns, and under very much more difficult circumstances by the Allied Maritime Transport Council.] between government departments; between regiments; between divisions; between ships; between states; counties; cities; and the better your index numbers the more useful the competition. 6 The possibilities that lie in the exchange of material are evident. Each department of government is all the time asking for information that may already have been obtained by another department, though perhaps in a somewhat different form. The State Department needs to know, let us say, the extent of the Mexican oil reserves, their relation to the rest of the world's supply, the present ownership of Mexican oil lands, the importance of oil to warships now under construction or planned, the comparative costs in different fields. How does it secure such information to-day? The information is probably scattered through the Departments of Interior, Justice, Commerce, Labor and Navy. Either a clerk in the State Department looks up Mexican oil in a book of reference, which may or may not be accurate, or somebody's private secretary telephones somebody else's private secretary, asks for a memorandum, and in the course of time a darkey messenger arrives with an armful of unintelligible reports. The Department should be able to call on its own intelligence bureau to assemble the facts in a way suited to the diplomatic problem up for decision. And these facts the diplomatic intelligence bureau would obtain from the central clearing house. [Footnote: There has been a vast development of such services among the trade associations. The possibilities of a perverted use were revealed by the New York Building Trades investigation of 1921.] This establishment would pretty soon become a focus of information of the most extraordinary kind. And the men in it would be made aware of what the problems of government really are. They would deal with problems of definition, of terminology, of statistical technic, of logic; they would traverse concretely the whole gamut of the social sciences. It is difficult to see why all this material, except a few diplomatic and military secrets, should not be open to the scholars of the country. It is there that the political scientist would find the real nuts to crack and the real researches for his students to make. The work need not all be done in Washington, but it could be done in reference to Washington. The central agency would, thus, have in it the makings of a national university. The staff could be recruited there for the bureaus from among college graduates. They would be working on theses selected after consultation between the curators of the national university and teachers scattered over the country. If the association was as flexible as it ought to be, there would be, as a supplement to the permanent staff, a steady turnover of temporary and specialist appointments from the universities, and exchange lecturers called out from Washington. Thus the training and the recruiting of the staff would go together. A part of the research itself would be done by students, and political science in the universities would be associated with politics in America. 7 In its main outlines the principle is equally applicable to state governments, to cities, and to rural counties. The work of comparison and interchange could take place by federations of state and city and county bureaus. And within those federations any desirable regional combination could be organized. So long as the accounting systems were comparable, a great deal of duplication would be avoided. Regional coordination is especially desirable. For legal frontiers often do not coincide with the effective environments. Yet they have a certain basis in custom that it would be costly to disturb. By coordinating their information several administrative areas could reconcile autonomy of decision with cooperation. New York City, for example, is already an unwieldy unit for good government from the City Hall. Yet for many purposes, such as health and transportation, the metropolitan district is the true unit of administration. In that district, however, there are large cities, like Yonkers, Jersey City, Paterson, Elizabeth, Hoboken, Bayonne. They could not all be managed from one center, and yet they should act together for many functions. Ultimately perhaps some such flexible scheme of local government as Sidney and Beatrice Webb have suggested may be the proper solution. [Footnote: "The Reorganization of Local Government" (Ch. IV), in _A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain_.] But the first step would be a coordination, not of decision and action, but of information and research. Let the officials of the various municipalities see their common problems in the light of the same facts. 8 It would be idle to deny that such a net work of intelligence bureaus in politics and industry might become a dead weight and a perpetual irritation. One can easily imagine its attraction for men in search of soft jobs, for pedants, for meddlers. One can see red tape, mountains of papers, questionnaires ad nauseam, seven copies of every document, endorsements, delays, lost papers, the use of form 136 instead of form 2gb, the return of the document because pencil was used instead of ink, or black ink instead of red ink. The work could be done very badly. There are no fool-proof institutions. But if one could assume that there was circulation through the whole system between government departments, factories, offices, and the universities; a circulation of men, a circulation of data and of criticism, the risks of dry rot would not be so great. Nor would it be true to say that these intelligence bureaus will complicate life. They will tend, on the contrary, to simplify, by revealing a complexity now so great as to be humanly unmanageable. The present fundamentally invisible system of government is so intricate that most people have given up trying to follow it, and because they do not try, they are tempted to think it comparatively simple. It is, on the contrary, elusive, concealed, opaque. The employment of an intelligence system would mean a reduction of personnel per unit of result, because by making available to all the experience of each, it would reduce the amount of trial and error; and because by making the social process visible, it would assist the personnel to self-criticism. It does not involve a great additional band of officials, if you take into account the time now spent vainly by special investigating committees, grand juries, district attorneys, reform organizations, and bewildered office holders, in trying to find their way through a dark muddle. If the analysis of public opinion and of the democratic theories in relation to the modern environment is sound in principle, then I do not see how one can escape the conclusion that such intelligence work is the clue to betterment. I am not referring to the few suggestions contained in this chapter. They are merely illustrations. The task of working out the technic is in the hands of men trained to do it, and not even they can to-day completely foresee the form, much less the details. The number of social phenomena which are now recorded is small, the instruments of analysis are very crude, the concepts often vague and uncriticized. But enough has been done to demonstrate, I think, that unseen environments can be reported effectively, that they can be reported to divergent groups of people in a way which is neutral to their prejudice, and capable of overcoming their subjectivism. If that is true, then in working out the intelligence principle men will find the way to overcome the central difficulty of self-government, the difficulty of dealing with an unseen reality. Because of that difficulty, it has been impossible for any self-governing community to reconcile its need for isolation with the necessity for wide contact, to reconcile the dignity and individuality of local decision with security and wide coordination, to secure effective leaders without sacrificing responsibility, to have useful public opinions without attempting universal public opinions on all subjects. As long as there was no way of establishing common versions of unseen events, common measures for separate actions, the only image of democracy that would work, even in theory, was one based on an isolated community of people whose political faculties were limited, according to Aristotle's famous maxim, by the range of their vision. But now there is a way out, a long one to be sure, but a way. It is fundamentally the same way as that which has enabled a citizen of Chicago, with no better eyes or ears than an Athenian, to see and hear over great distances. It is possible to-day, it will become more possible when more labor has gone into it, to reduce the discrepancies between the conceived environment and the effective environment. As that is done, federalism will work more and more by consent, less and less by coercion. For while federalism is the only possible method of union among self-governing groups, [Footnote: _Cf._ H. J. Laski, _The Foundations of Sovereignty_, and other Essays, particularly the Essay of this name, as well as the Problems of Administrative Areas, The Theory of Popular Sovereignty, and The Pluralistic State.] federalism swings either towards imperial centralization or towards parochial anarchy wherever the union is not based on correct and commonly accepted ideas of federal matters. These ideas do not arise spontaneously. They have to be pieced together by generalization based on analysis, and the instruments for that analysis have to be invented and tested by research. No electoral device, no manipulation of areas, no change in the system of property, goes to the root of the matter. You cannot take more political wisdom out of human beings than there is in them. And no reform, however sensational, is truly radical, which does not consciously provide a way of overcoming the subjectivism of human opinion based on the limitation of individual experience. There are systems of government, of voting, and representation which extract more than others. But in the end knowledge must come not from the conscience but from the environment with which that conscience deals. When men act on the principle of intelligence they go out to find the facts and to make their wisdom. When they ignore it, they go inside themselves and find only what is there. They elaborate their prejudice, instead of increasing their knowledge. CHAPTER XXVII THE APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC 1 IN real life no one acts on the theory that he can have a public opinion on every public question, though this fact is often concealed where a person thinks there is no public question because he has no public opinion. But in the theory of our politics we continue to think more literally than Lord Bryce intended, that "the action of Opinion is continuous," [Footnote: _Modern Democracies_, Vol. I, p. 159.] even though "its action... deals with broad principles only." [Footnote: Id., footnote, p. 158.] And then because we try to think of ourselves having continuous opinions, without being altogether certain what a broad principle is, we quite naturally greet with an anguished yawn an argument that seems to involve the reading of more government reports, more statistics, more curves and more graphs. For all these are in the first instance just as confusing as partisan rhetoric, and much less entertaining. The amount of attention available is far too small for any scheme in which it was assumed that all the citizens of the nation would, after devoting themselves to the publications of all the intelligence bureaus, become alert, informed, and eager on the multitude of real questions that never do fit very well into any broad principle. I am not making that assumption. Primarily, the intelligence bureau is an instrument of the man of action, of the representative charged with decision, of the worker at his work, and if it does not help them, it will help nobody in the end. But in so far as it helps them to understand the environment in which they are working, it makes what they do visible. And by that much they become more responsible to the general public. The purpose, then, is not to burden every citizen with expert opinions on all questions, but to push that burden away from him towards the responsible administrator. An intelligence system has value, of course, as a source of general information, and as a check on the daily press. But that is secondary. Its real use is as an aid to representative government and administration both in politics and industry. The demand for the assistance of expert reporters in the shape of accountants, statisticians, secretariats, and the like, comes not from the public, but from men doing public business, who can no longer do it by rule of thumb. It is in origin and in ideal an instrument for doing public business better, rather than an instrument for knowing better how badly public business is done. 2 As a private citizen, as a sovereign voter, no one could attempt to digest these documents. But as one party to a dispute, as a committeeman in a legislature, as an officer in government, business, or a trade union, as a member of an industrial council, reports on the specific matter at issue will be increasingly welcome. The private citizen interested in some cause would belong, as he does now, to voluntary societies which employed a staff to study the documents, and make reports that served as a check on officialdom. There would be some study of this material by newspaper men, and a good deal by experts and by political scientists. But the outsider, and every one of us is an outsider to all but a few aspects of modern life, has neither time, nor attention, nor interest, nor the equipment for specific judgment. It is on the men inside, working under conditions that are sound, that the daily administrations of society must rest. The general public outside can arrive at judgments about whether these conditions are sound only on the result after the event, and on the procedure before the event. The broad principles on which the action of public opinion can be continuous are essentially principles of procedure. The outsider can ask experts to tell him whether the relevant facts were duly considered; he cannot in most cases decide for himself what is relevant or what is due consideration. The outsider can perhaps judge whether the groups interested in the decision were properly heard, whether the ballot, if there was one, was honestly taken, and perhaps whether the result was honestly accepted. He can watch the procedure when the news indicates that there is something to watch. He can raise a question as to whether the procedure itself is right, if its normal results conflict with his ideal of a good life. [Footnote: _Cf._ Chapter XX. ] But if he tries in every case to substitute himself for the procedure, to bring in Public Opinion like a providential uncle in the crisis of a play, he will confound his own confusion. He will not follow any train of thought consecutively. For the practice of appealing to the public on all sorts of intricate matters means almost always a desire to escape criticism from those who know by enlisting a large majority which has had no chance to know. The verdict is made to depend on who has the loudest or the most entrancing voice, the most skilful or the most brazen publicity man, the best access to the most space in the newspapers. For even when the editor is scrupulously fair to "the other side," fairness is not enough. There may be several other sides, unmentioned by any of the organized, financed and active partisans. The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence. As his civic education takes account of the complexity of his environment, he will concern himself about the equity and the sanity of procedure, and even this he will in most cases expect his elected representative to watch for him. He will refuse himself to accept the burden of these decisions, and will turn down his thumbs in most cases on those who, in their hurry to win, rush from the conference table with the first dope for the reporters. Only by insisting that problems shall not come up to him until they have passed through a procedure, can the busy citizen of a modern state hope to deal with them in a form that is intelligible. For issues, as they are stated by a partisan, almost always consist of an intricate series of facts, as he has observed them, surrounded by a large fatty mass of stereotyped phrases charged with his emotion. According to the fashion of the day, he will emerge from the conference room insisting that what he wants is some soulfilling idea like Justice, Welfare, Americanism, Socialism. On such issues the citizen outside can sometimes be provoked to fear or admiration, but to judgment never. Before he can do anything with the argument, the fat has to be boiled out of it for him. 3 That can be done by having the representative inside carry on discussion in the presence of some one, chairman or mediator, who forces the discussion to deal with the analyses supplied by experts. This is the essential organization of any representative body dealing with distant matters. The partisan voices should be there, but the partisans should find themselves confronted with men, not personally involved, who control enough facts and have the dialectical skill to sort out what is real perception from what is stereotype, pattern and elaboration. It is the Socratic dialogue, with all of Socrates's energy for breaking through words to meanings, and something more than that, because the dialectic in modern life must be done by men who have explored the environment as well as the human mind. There is, for example, a grave dispute in the steel industry. Each side issues a manifesto full of the highest ideals. The only public opinion that is worth respect at this stage is the opinion which insists that a conference be organized. For the side which says its cause is too just to be contaminated by conference there can be little sympathy, since there is no such cause anywhere among mortal men. Perhaps those who object to conference do not say quite that. Perhaps they say that the other side is too wicked; they cannot shake hands with traitors. All that public opinion can do then is to organize a hearing by public officials to hear the proof of wickedness. It cannot take the partisans' word for it. But suppose a conference is agreed to, and suppose there is a neutral chairman who has at his beck and call the consulting experts of the corporation, the union, and, let us say, the Department of Labor. Judge Gary states with perfect sincerity that his men are well paid and not overworked, and then proceeds to sketch the history of Russia from the time of Peter the Great to the murder of the Czar. Mr. Foster rises, states with equal sincerity that the men are exploited, and then proceeds to outline the history of human emancipation from Jesus of Nazareth to Abraham Lincoln. At this point the chairman calls upon the intelligence men for wage tables in order to substitute for the words "well paid" and "exploited" a table showing what the different classes _are_ paid. Does Judge Gary think they are all well paid? He does. Does Mr. Foster think they are all exploited? No, he thinks that groups C, M, and X are exploited. What does he mean by exploited? He means they are not paid a living wage. They are, says Judge Gary. What can a man buy on that wage, asks the chairman. Nothing, says Mr. Foster. Everything he needs, says Judge Gary. The chairman consults the budgets and price statistics of the government. [Footnote: See an article on "The Cost of Living and Wage Cuts," in the _New Republic_, July 27, 1921, by Dr. Leo Wolman, for a brilliant discussion of the naive use of such figures and "pseudo-principles." The warning is of particular importance because it comes from an economist and statistician who has himself done so much to improve the technic of industrial disputes.] He rules that X can meet an average budget, but that C and M cannot. Judge Gary serves notice that he does not regard the official statistics as sound. The budgets are too high, and prices have come down. Mr. Foster also serves notice of exception. The budget is too low, prices have gone up. The chairman rules that this point is not within the jurisdiction of the conference, that the official figures stand, and that Judge Gary's experts and Mr. Foster's should carry their appeals to the standing committee of the federated intelligence bureaus. Nevertheless, says Judge Gary, we shall be ruined if we change these wage scales. What do you mean by ruined, asks the chairman, produce your books. I can't, they are private, says Judge Gary. What is private does not interest us, says the chairman, and, therefore, issues a statement to the public announcing that the wages of workers in groups C and M are so-and-so much below the official minimum living wage, and that Judge Gary declines to increase them for reasons that he refuses to state. After a procedure of that sort, a public opinion in the eulogistic sense of the term [Footnote: As used by Mr. Lowell in his _Public Opinion and Popular Government_.] can exist. The value of expert mediation is not that it sets up opinion to coerce the partisans, but that it disintegrates partisanship. Judge Gary and Mr. Foster may remain as little convinced as when they started, though even they would have to talk in a different strain. But almost everyone else who was not personally entangled would save himself from being entangled. For the entangling stereotypes and slogans to which his reflexes are so ready to respond are by this kind of dialectic untangled. 4 On many subjects of great public importance, and in varying degree among different people for more personal matters, the threads of memory and emotion are in a snarl. The same word will connote any number of different ideas: emotions are displaced from the images to which they belong to names which resemble the names of these images. In the uncriticized parts of the mind there is a vast amount of association by mere clang, contact, and succession. There are stray emotional attachments, there are words that were names and are masks. In dreams, reveries, and panic, we uncover some of the disorder, enough to see how the naive mind is composed, and how it behaves when not disciplined by wakeful effort and external resistance. We see that there is no more natural order than in a dusty old attic. There is often the same incongruity between fact, idea, and emotion as there might be in an opera house, if all the wardrobes were dumped in a heap and all the scores mixed up, so that Madame Butterfly in a Valkyr's dress waited lyrically for the return of Faust. "At Christmas-tide" says an editorial, "old memories soften the heart. Holy teachings are remembered afresh as thoughts run back to childhood. The world does not seem so bad when seen through the mist of half-happy, half-sad recollections of loved ones now with God. No heart is untouched by the mysterious influence.... The country is honeycombed with red propaganda--but there is a good supply of ropes, muscles and lampposts... while this world moves the spirit of liberty will burn in the breast of man." The man who found these phrases in his mind needs help. He needs a Socrates who will separate the words, cross-examine him until he has defined them, and made words the names of ideas. Made them mean a particular object and nothing else. For these tense syllables have got themselves connected in his mind by primitive association, and are bundled together by his memories of Christmas, his indignation as a conservative, and his thrills as the heir to a revolutionary tradition. Sometimes the snarl is too huge and ancient for quick unravelling. Sometimes, as in modern psychotherapy, there are layers upon layers of memory reaching back to infancy, which have to be separated and named. The effect of naming, the effect, that is, of saying that the labor groups C and M, but not X, are underpaid, instead of saying that Labor is Exploited, is incisive. Perceptions recover their identity, and the emotion they arouse is specific, since it is no longer reinforced by large and accidental connections with everything from Christmas to Moscow. The disentangled idea with a name of its own, and an emotion that has been scrutinized, is ever so much more open to correction by new data in the problem. It had been imbedded in the whole personality, had affiliations of some sort with the whole ego: a challenge would reverberate through the whole soul. After it has been thoroughly criticized, the idea is no longer _me_ but _that_. It is objectified, it is at arm's length. Its fate is not bound up with my fate, but with the fate of the outer world upon which I am acting. 5 Re-education of this kind will help to bring our public opinions into grip with the environment. That is the way the enormous censoring, stereotyping, and dramatizing apparatus can be liquidated. Where there is no difficulty in knowing what the relevant environment is, the critic, the teacher, the physician, can unravel the mind. But where the environment is as obscure to the analyst as to his pupil, no analytic technic is sufficient. Intelligence work is required. In political and industrial problems the critic as such can do something, but unless he can count upon receiving from expert reporters a valid picture of the environment, his dialectic cannot go far. Therefore, though here, as in most other matters, "education" is the supreme remedy, the value of this education will depend upon the evolution of knowledge. And our knowledge of human institutions is still extraordinarily meager and impressionistic. The gathering of social knowledge is, on the whole, still haphazard; not, as it will have to become, the normal accompaniment of action. And yet the collection of information will not be made, one may be sure, for the sake of its ultimate use. It will be made because modern decision requires it to be made. But as it is being made, there will accumulate a body of data which political science can turn into generalization, and build up for the schools into a conceptual picture of the world. When that picture takes form, civic education can become a preparation for dealing with an unseen environment. As a working model of the social system becomes available to the teacher, he can use it to make the pupil acutely aware of how his mind works on unfamiliar facts. Until he has such a model, the teacher cannot hope to prepare men fully for the world they will find. What he can do is to prepare them to deal with that world with a great deal more sophistication about their own minds. He can, by the use of the case method, teach the pupil the habit of examining the sources of his information. He can teach him, for example, to look in his newspaper for the place where the dispatch was filed, for the name of the correspondent, the name of the press service, the authority given for the statement, the circumstances under which the statement was secured. He can teach the pupil to ask himself whether the reporter saw what he describes, and to remember how that reporter described other events in the past. He can teach him the character of censorship, of the idea of privacy, and furnish him with knowledge of past propaganda. He can, by the proper use of history, make him aware of the stereotype, and can educate a habit of introspection about the imagery evoked by printed words. He can, by courses in comparative history and anthropology, produce a life-long realization of the way codes impose a special pattern upon the imagination. He can teach men to catch themselves making allegories, dramatizing relations, and personifying abstractions. He can show the pupil how he identifies himself with these allegories, how he becomes interested, and how he selects the attitude, heroic, romantic, economic which he adopts while holding a particular opinion. The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth. As our minds become more deeply aware of their own subjectivism, we find a zest in objective method that is not otherwise there. We see vividly, as normally we should not, the enormous mischief and casual cruelty of our prejudices. And the destruction of a prejudice, though painful at first, because of its connection with our self-respect, gives an immense relief and a fine pride when it is successfully done. There is a radical enlargement of the range of attention. As the current categories dissolve, a hard, simple version of the world breaks up. The scene turns vivid and full. There follows an emotional incentive to hearty appreciation of scientific method, which otherwise it is not easy to arouse, and is impossible to sustain. Prejudices are so much easier and more interesting. For if you teach the principles of science as if they had always been accepted, their chief virtue as a discipline, which is objectivity, will make them dull. But teach them at first as victories over the superstitions of the mind, and the exhilaration of the chase and of the conquest may carry the pupil over that hard transition from his own self-bound experience to the phase where his curiosity has matured, and his reason has acquired passion. CHAPTER XXVIII THE APPEAL TO REASON 1 I HAVE written, and then thrown away, several endings to this book. Over all of them there hung that fatality of last chapters, in which every idea seems to find its place, and all the mysteries, that the writer has not forgotten, are unravelled. In politics the hero does not live happily ever after, or end his life perfectly. There is no concluding chapter, because the hero in politics has more future before him than there is recorded history behind him. The last chapter is merely a place where the writer imagines that the polite reader has begun to look furtively at his watch. 2 When Plato came to the point where it was fitting that he should sum up, his assurance turned into stage-fright as he thought how absurd it would sound to say what was in him about the place of reason in politics. Those sentences in book five of the Republic were hard even for Plato to speak; they are so sheer and so stark that men can neither forget them nor live by them. So he makes Socrates say to Glaucon that he will be broken and drowned in laughter for telling "what is the least change which will enable a state to pass into the truer form," [Footnote: _Republic_, Bk. V, 473. Jowett transl.] because the thought he "would fain have uttered if it had not seemed too extravagant" was that "until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one... cities will never cease from ill,--no, nor the human race..." Hardly had he said these awful words, when he realized they were a counsel of perfection, and felt embarrassed at the unapproachable grandeur of his idea. So he hastens to add that, of course, "the true pilot" will be called "a prater, a star-gazer, a good-for-nothing." [Footnote: 2 Bk. VI, 488-489.] But this wistful admission, though it protects him against whatever was the Greek equivalent for the charge that he lacked a sense of humor, furnished a humiliating tailpiece to a solemn thought. He becomes defiant and warns Adeimantus that he must "attribute the uselessness" of philosophers "to the fault of those who will not use them, and not to themselves. The pilot should not humbly beg the sailors to be commanded by him--that is not the order of nature." And with this haughty gesture, he hurriedly picked up the tools of reason, and disappeared into the Academy, leaving the world to Machiavelli. Thus, in the first great encounter between reason and politics, the strategy of reason was to retire in anger. But meanwhile, as Plato tells us, the ship is at sea. There have been many ships on the sea, since Plato wrote, and to-day, whether we are wise or foolish in our belief, we could no longer call a man a true pilot, simply because he knows how to "pay attention to the year and seasons and sky and stars and winds, and whatever else belongs to his art." [Footnote: Bk. VI, 488-489.] He can dismiss nothing which is necessary to make that ship sail prosperously. Because there are mutineers aboard, he cannot say: so much the worse for us all... it is not in the order of nature that I should handle a mutiny... it is not in the order of philosophy that I should consider mutiny... I know how to navigate... I do not know how to navigate a ship full of sailors... and if they do not see that I am the man to steer, I cannot help it. We shall all go on the rocks, they to be punished for their sins; I, with the assurance that I knew better.... 3 Whenever we make an appeal to reason in politics, the difficulty in this parable recurs. For there is an inherent difficulty about using the method of reason to deal with an unreasoning world. Even if you assume with Plato that the true pilot knows what is best for the ship, you have to recall that he is not so easy to recognize, and that this uncertainty leaves a large part of the crew unconvinced. By definition the crew does not know what he knows, and the pilot, fascinated by the stars and winds, does not know how to make the crew realize the importance of what he knows. There is no time during mutiny at sea to make each sailor an expert judge of experts. There is no time for the pilot to consult his crew and find out whether he is really as wise as he thinks he is. For education is a matter of years, the emergency a matter of hours. It would be altogether academic, then, to tell the pilot that the true remedy is, for example, an education that will endow sailors with a better sense of evidence. You can tell that only to shipmasters on dry land. In the crisis, the only advice is to use a gun, or make a speech, utter a stirring slogan, offer a compromise, employ any quick means available to quell the mutiny, the sense of evidence being what it is. It is only on shore where men plan for many voyages, that they can afford to, and must for their own salvation, deal with those causes that take a long time to remove. They will be dealing in years and generations, not in emergencies alone. And nothing will put a greater strain upon their wisdom than the necessity of distinguishing false crises from real ones. For when there is panic in the air, with one crisis tripping over the heels of another, actual dangers mixed with imaginary scares, there is no chance at all for the constructive use of reason, and any order soon seems preferable to any disorder. It is only on the premise of a certain stability over a long run of time that men can hope to follow the method of reason. This is not because mankind is inept, or because the appeal to reason is visionary, but because the evolution of reason on political subjects is only in its beginnings. Our rational ideas in politics are still large, thin generalities, much too abstract and unrefined for practical guidance, except where the aggregates are large enough to cancel out individual peculiarity and exhibit large uniformities. Reason in politics is especially immature in predicting the behavior of individual men, because in human conduct the smallest initial variation often works out into the most elaborate differences. That, perhaps, is why when we try to insist solely upon an appeal to reason in dealing with sudden situations, we are broken and drowned in laughter. 4 For the rate at which reason, as we possess it, can advance itself is slower than the rate at which action has to be taken. In the present state of political science there is, therefore, a tendency for one situation to change into another, before the first is clearly understood, and so to make much political criticism hindsight and little else. Both in the discovery of what is unknown, and in the propagation of that which has been proved, there is a time-differential, which ought to, in a much greater degree than it ever has, occupy the political philosopher. We have begun, chiefly under the inspiration of Mr. Graham Wallas, to examine the effect of an invisible environment upon our opinions. We do not, as yet, understand, except a little by rule of thumb, the element of time in politics, though it bears most directly upon the practicability of any constructive proposal. [Footnote: _Cf_. H. G. Wells in the opening chapters of _Mankind in the Making._] We can see, for example, that somehow the relevancy of any plan depends upon the length of time the operation requires. Because on the length of time it will depend whether the data which the plan assumes as given, will in truth remain the same. [Footnote: The better the current analysis in the intelligence work of any institution, the less likely, of course, that men will deal with tomorrow's problems in the light of yesterday's facts.] There is a factor here which realistic and experienced men do take into account, and it helps to mark them off somehow from the opportunist, the visionary, the philistine and the pedant. [Footnote: Not all, but some of the differences between reactionaries, conservatives, liberals, and radicals are due, I think, to a different intuitive estimate of the rate of change in social affairs.] But just how the calculation of time enters into politics we do not know at present in any systematic way. Until we understand these matters more clearly, we can at least remember that there is a problem of the utmost theoretical difficulty and practical consequence. It will help us to cherish Plato's ideal, without sharing his hasty conclusion about the perversity of those who do not listen to reason. It is hard to obey reason in politics, because you are trying to make two processes march together, which have as yet a different gait and a different pace. Until reason is subtle and particular, the immediate struggle of politics will continue to require an amount of native wit, force, and unprovable faith, that reason can neither provide nor control, because the facts of life are too undifferentiated for its powers of understanding. The methods of social science are so little perfected that in many of the serious decisions and most of the casual ones, there is as yet no choice but to gamble with fate as intuition prompts. But we can make a belief in reason one of those intuitions. We can use our wit and our force to make footholds for reason. Behind our pictures of the world, we can try to see the vista of a longer duration of events, and wherever it is possible to escape from the urgent present, allow this longer time to control our decisions. And yet, even when there is this will to let the future count, we find again and again that we do not know for certain how to act according to the dictates of reason. The number of human problems on which reason is prepared to dictate is small. 5 There is, however, a noble counterfeit in that charity which comes from self-knowledge and an unarguable belief that no one of our gregarious species is alone in his longing for a friendlier world. So many of the grimaces men make at each other go with a flutter of their pulse, that they are not all of them important. And where so much is uncertain, where so many actions have to be carried out on guesses, the demand upon the reserves of mere decency is enormous, and it is necessary to live as if good will would work. We cannot prove in every instance that it will, nor why hatred, intolerance, suspicion, bigotry, secrecy, fear, and lying are the seven deadly sins against public opinion. We can only insist that they have no place in the appeal to reason, that in the longer run they are a poison; and taking our stand upon a view of the world which outlasts our own predicaments, and our own lives, we can cherish a hearty prejudice against them. We can do this all the better if we do not allow frightfulness and fanaticism to impress us so deeply that we throw up our hands peevishly, and lose interest in the longer run of time because we have lost faith in the future of man. There is no ground for this despair, because all the _ifs_ on which, as James said, our destiny hangs, are as pregnant as they ever were. What we have seen of brutality, we have seen, and because it was strange, it was not conclusive. It was only Berlin, Moscow, Versailles in 1914 to 1919, not Armageddon, as we rhetorically said. The more realistically men have faced out the brutality and the hysteria, the more they have earned the right to say that it is not foolish for men to believe, because another great war took place, that intelligence, courage and effort cannot ever contrive a good life for all men. Great as was the horror, it was not universal. There were corrupt, and there were incorruptible. There was muddle and there were miracles. There was huge lying. There were men with the will to uncover it. It is no judgment, but only a mood, when men deny that what some men have been, more men, and ultimately enough men, might be. You can despair of what has never been. You can despair of ever having three heads, though Mr. Shaw has declined to despair even of that. But you cannot despair of the possibilities that could exist by virtue of any human quality which a human being has exhibited. And if amidst all the evils of this decade, you have not seen men and women, known moments that you would like to multiply, the Lord himself cannot help you. 
4557	----	THE IDEA OF PROGRESS AN INQUIRY INTO ITS ORIGIN AND GROWTH By J. B. Bury Regius Professor Of Modern History, And Fellow Of King's College, In The University Of Cambridge Dedicated to the memories of Charles Francois Castel de Saint-Pierre, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat de Condorcet, Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, and other optimists mentioned in this volume. Tantane uos generis tenuit fiducia uestri? PREFACE We may believe in the doctrine of Progress or we may not, but in either case it is a matter of interest to examine the origins and trace the history of what is now, even should it ultimately prove to be no more than an idolum saeculi, the animating and controlling idea of western civilisation. For the earthly Progress of humanity is the general test to which social aims and theories are submitted as a matter of course. The phrase CIVILISATION AND PROGRESS has become stereotyped, and illustrates how we have come to judge a civilisation good or bad according as it is or is not progressive. The ideals of liberty and democracy, which have their own ancient and independent justifications, have sought a new strength by attaching themselves to Progress. The conjunctions of "liberty and progress," "democracy and progress," meet us at every turn. Socialism, at an early stage of its modern development, sought the same aid. The friends of Mars, who cannot bear the prospect of perpetual peace, maintain that war is an indispensable instrument of Progress. It is in the name of Progress that the doctrinaires who established the present reign of terror in Russia profess to act. All this shows the prevalent feeling that a social or political theory or programme is hardly tenable if it cannot claim that it harmonises with this controlling idea. In the Middle Ages Europeans followed a different guiding star. The idea of a life beyond the grave was in control, and the great things of this life were conducted with reference to the next. When men's deepest feelings reacted more steadily and powerfully to the idea of saving their souls than to any other, harmony with this idea was the test by which the opportuneness of social theories and institutions was judged. Monasticism, for instance, throve under its aegis, while liberty of conscience had no chance. With a new idea in control, this has been reversed. Religious freedom has thriven under the aegis of Progress; monasticism can make no appeal to it. For the hope of an ultimate happy state on this planet to be enjoyed by future generations--or of some state, at least, that may relatively be considered happy--has replaced, as a social power, the hope of felicity in another world. Belief in personal immortality is still very widely entertained, but may we not fairly say that it has ceased to be a central and guiding idea of collective life, a criterion by which social values are measured? Many people do not believe in it; many more regard it as so uncertain that they could not reasonably permit it to affect their lives or opinions. Those who believe in it are doubtless the majority, but belief has many degrees; and one can hardly be wrong in saying that, as a general rule, this belief does not possess the imaginations of those who hold it, that their emotions react to it feebly, that it is felt to be remote and unreal, and has comparatively seldom a more direct influence on conduct than the abstract arguments to be found in treatises on morals. Under the control of the idea of Progress the ethical code recognised in the Western world has been reformed in modern times by a new principle of far-reaching importance which has emanated from that idea. When Isocrates formulated the rule of life, "Do unto others," he probably did not mean to include among "others" slaves or savages. The Stoics and the Christians extended its application to the whole of living humanity. But in late years the rule has received a vastly greater extension by the inclusion of the unborn generations of the future. This principle of duty to posterity is a direct corollary of the idea of Progress. In the recent war that idea, involving the moral obligation of making sacrifices for the sake of future ages, was constantly appealed to; just as in the Crusades, the most characteristic wars of our medieval ancestors, the idea of human destinies then in the ascendant lured thousands to hardship and death. The present attempt to trace the genesis and growth of the idea in broad outline is a purely historical inquiry, and any discussion of the great issue which is involved lies outside its modest scope. Occasional criticisms on particular forms which the creed of Progress assumed, or on arguments which were used to support it, are not intended as a judgment on its general validity. I may, however, make two observations here. The doubts which Mr. Balfour expressed nearly thirty years ago, in an Address delivered at Glasgow, have not, so far as I know, been answered. And it is probable that many people, to whom six years ago the notion of a sudden decline or break-up of our western civilisation, as a result not of cosmic forces but of its own development, would have appeared almost fantastic, will feel much less confident to-day, notwithstanding the fact that the leading nations of the world have instituted a league of peoples for the prevention of war, the measure to which so many high priests of Progress have looked forward as meaning a long stride forward on the road to Utopia. The preponderance of France's part in developing the idea is an outstanding feature of its history. France, who, like ancient Greece, has always been a nursing-mother of ideas, bears the principal responsibility for its growth; and if it is French thought that will persistently claim our attention, this is not due to an arbitrary preference on my part or to neglect of speculation in other countries. J. B. BURY. January, 1920. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I SOME INTERPRETATIONS OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY: BODIN AND LE ROY CHAPTER II UTILITY THE END OF KNOWLEDGE: BACON CHAPTER III CARTESIANISM CHAPTER IV THE DOCTRINE OF DEGENERATION: THE ANCIENTS AND MODERNS CHAPTER V THE PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE: FONTENELLE CHAPTER VI THE GENERAL PROGRESS OF MAN: ABBE DE SAINT-PIERRE CHAPTER VII NEW CONCEPTIONS OF HISTORY: MONTESQUIEU, VOLTAIRE, TURGOT CHAPTER VIII THE ENCYCLOPAEDISTS AND ECONOMISTS CHAPTER IX WAS CIVILISATION A MISTAKE? ROUSSEAU, CHASTELLUX CHAPTER X THE YEAR 2440 CHAPTER XI THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: CONDORCET CHAPTER XII THE THEORY OF PROGRESS IN ENGLAND CHAPTER XIII GERMAN SPECULATIONS ON PROGRESS CHAPTER XIV CURRENTS OF THOUGHT IN FRANCE AFTER THE REVOLUTION CHAPTER XV THE SEARCH FOR A LAW OF PROGRESS: I. SAINT-SIMON CHAPTER XVI SEARCH FOR A LAW OF PROGRESS: II. COMTE CHAPTER XVII "PROGRESS" IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT (1830-1851) CHAPTER XVIII MATERIAL PROGRESS: THE EXHIBITION OF 1851 CHAPTER XIX PROGRESS IN THE LIGHT OF EVOLUTION EPILOGUE APPENDIX: NOTES TO THE TEXT [Proofreaders note: these notes have been interspersed in the main text as Footnotes] INTRODUCTION When we say that ideas rule the world, or exercise a decisive power in history, we are generally thinking of those ideas which express human aims and depend for their realisation on the human will, such as liberty, toleration, equality of opportunity, socialism. Some of these have been partly realised, and there is no reason why any of them should not be fully realised, in a society or in the world, if it were the united purpose of a society or of the world to realise it. They are approved or condemned because they are held to be good or bad, not because they are true or false. But there is another order of ideas that play a great part in determining and directing the course of man's conduct but do not depend on his will--ideas which bear upon the mystery of life, such as Fate, Providence, or personal immortality. Such ideas may operate in important ways on the forms of social action, but they involve a question of fact and they are accepted or rejected not because they are believed to be useful or injurious, but because they are believed to be true or false. The idea of the progress of humanity is an idea of this kind, and it is important to be quite clear on the point. We now take it so much for granted, we are so conscious of constantly progressing in knowledge, arts, organising capacity, utilities of all sorts, that it is easy to look upon Progress as an aim, like liberty or a world-federation, which it only depends on our own efforts and good-will to achieve. But though all increases of power and knowledge depend on human effort, the idea of the Progress of humanity, from which all these particular progresses derive their value, raises a definite question of fact, which man's wishes or labours cannot affect any more than his wishes or labours can prolong life beyond the grave. This idea means that civilisation has moved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction. But in order to judge that we are moving in a desirable direction we should have to know precisely what the destination is. To the minds of most people the desirable outcome of human development would be a condition of society in which all the inhabitants of the planet would enjoy a perfectly happy existence. But it is impossible to be sure that civilisation is moving in the right direction to realise this aim. Certain features of our "progress" may be urged as presumptions in its favour, but there are always offsets, and it has always been easy to make out a case that, from the point of view of increasing happiness, the tendencies of our progressive civilisation are far from desirable. In short, it cannot be proved that the unknown destination towards which man is advancing is desirable. The movement may be Progress, or it may be in an undesirable direction and therefore not Progress. This is a question of fact, and one which is at present as insoluble as the question of personal immortality. It is a problem which bears on the mystery of life. Moreover, even if it is admitted to be probable that the course of civilisation has so far been in a desirable direction, and such as would lead to general felicity if the direction were followed far enough, it cannot be proved that ultimate attainment depends entirely on the human will. For the advance might at some point be arrested by an insuperable wall. Take the particular case of knowledge, as to which it is generally taken for granted that the continuity of progress in the future depends altogether on the continuity of human effort (assuming that human brains do not degenerate). This assumption is based on a strictly limited experience. Science has been advancing without interruption during the last three or four hundred years; every new discovery has led to new problems and new methods of solution, and opened up new fields for exploration. Hitherto men of science have not been compelled to halt, they have always found means to advance further. But what assurance have we that they will not one day come up against impassable barriers? The experience of four hundred years, in which the surface of nature has been successfully tapped, can hardly be said to warrant conclusions as to the prospect of operations extending over four hundred or four thousand centuries. Take biology or astronomy. How can we be sure that some day progress may not come to a dead pause, not because knowledge is exhausted, but because our resources for investigation are exhausted--because, for instance, scientific instruments have reached the limit of perfection beyond which it is demonstrably impossible to improve them, or because (in the case of astronomy) we come into the presence of forces of which, unlike gravitation, we have no terrestrial experience? It is an assumption, which cannot be verified, that we shall not soon reach a point in our knowledge of nature beyond which the human intellect is unqualified to pass. But it is just this assumption which is the light and inspiration of man's scientific research. For if the assumption is not true, it means that he can never come within sight of the goal which is, in the case of physical science, if not a complete knowledge of the cosmos and the processes of nature, at least an immeasurably larger and deeper knowledge than we at present possess. Thus continuous progress in man's knowledge of his environment, which is one of the chief conditions of general Progress, is a hypothesis which may or may not be true. And if it is true, there remains the further hypothesis of man's moral and social "perfectibility," which rests on much less impressive evidence. There is nothing to show that he may not reach, in his psychical and social development, a stage at which the conditions of his life will be still far from satisfactory, and beyond which he will find it impossible to progress. This is a question of fact which no willing on man's part can alter. It is a question bearing on the mystery of life. Enough has been said to show that the Progress of humanity belongs to the same order of ideas as Providence or personal immortality. It is true or it is false, and like them it cannot be proved either true or false. Belief in it is an act of faith. The idea of human Progress then is a theory which involves a synthesis of the past and a prophecy of the future. It is based on an interpretation of history which regards men as slowly advancing--pedetemtim progredientes--in a definite and desirable direction, and infers that this progress will continue indefinitely. And it implies that, as The issue of the earth's great business, a condition of general happiness will ultimately be enjoyed, which will justify the whole process of civilisation; for otherwise the direction would not be desirable. There is also a further implication. The process must be the necessary outcome of the psychical and social nature of man; it must not be at the mercy of any external will; otherwise there would be no guarantee of its continuance and its issue, and the idea of Progress would lapse into the idea of Providence. As time is the very condition of the possibility of Progress, it is obvious that the idea would be valueless if there were any cogent reasons for supposing that the time at the disposal of humanity is likely to reach a limit in the near future. If there were good cause for believing that the earth would be uninhabitable in A.D. 2000 or 2100 the doctrine of Progress would lose its meaning and would automatically disappear. It would be a delicate question to decide what is the minimum period of time which must be assured to man for his future development, in order that Progress should possess value and appeal to the emotions. The recorded history of civilisation covers 6000 years or so, and if we take this as a measure of our conceptions of time-distances, we might assume that if we were sure of a period ten times as long ahead of us the idea of Progress would not lose its power of appeal. Sixty thousand years of HISTORICAL time, when we survey the changes which have come to pass in six thousand, opens to the imagination a range vast enough to seem almost endless. This psychological question, however, need not be decided. For science assures us that the stability of the present conditions of the solar system is certified for many myriads of years to come. Whatever gradual modifications of climate there may be, the planet will not cease to support life for a period which transcends and flouts all efforts of imagination. In short, the POSSIBILITY of Progress is guaranteed by the high probability, based on astro-physical science, of an immense time to progress in. It may surprise many to be told that the notion of Progress, which now seems so easy to apprehend, is of comparatively recent origin. It has indeed been claimed that various thinkers, both ancient (for instance, Seneca) and medieval (for instance, Friar Bacon), had long ago conceived it. But sporadic observations--such as man's gradual rise from primitive and savage conditions to a certain level of civilisation by a series of inventions, or the possibility of some future additions to his knowledge of nature--which were inevitable at a certain stage of human reflection, do not amount to an anticipation of the idea. The value of such observations was determined, and must be estimated, by the whole context of ideas in which they occurred. It is from its bearings on the future that Progress derives its value, its interest, and its power. You may conceive civilisation as having gradually advanced in the past, but you have not got the idea of Progress until you go on to conceive that it is destined to advance indefinitely in the future. Ideas have their intellectual climates, and I propose to show briefly in this Introduction that the intellectual climates of classical antiquity and the ensuing ages were not propitious to the birth of the doctrine of Progress. It is not till the sixteenth century that the obstacles to its appearance definitely begin to be transcended and a favourable atmosphere to be gradually prepared. [Footnote: The history of the idea of Progress has been treated briefly and partially by various French writers; e.g. Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, vi. 321 sqq.; Buchez, Introduction a la science de l'histoire, i. 99 sqq. (ed. 2, 1842); Javary, De l'idee de progres (1850); Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des Anciens et des Modernes (1856); Bouillier, Histoire de la philosophie cartesienne (1854); Caro, Problemes de la morale sociale (1876); Brunetiere, La Formation de l'idee de progres, in Etudes critiques, 5e serie. More recently M. Jules Delvaille has attempted to trace its history fully, down to the end of the eighteenth century. His Histoire de l'idee de progres (1910) is planned on a large scale; he is erudite and has read extensively. But his treatment is lacking in the power of discrimination. He strikes one as anxious to bring within his net, as theoriciens du progres, as many distinguished thinkers as possible; and so, along with a great deal that is useful and relevant, we also find in his book much that is irrelevant. He has not clearly seen that the distinctive idea of Progress was not conceived in antiquity or in the Middle Ages, or even in the Renaissance period; and when he comes to modern times he fails to bring out clearly the decisive steps of its growth. And he does not seem to realise that a man might be "progressive" without believing in, or even thinking about, the doctrine of Progress. Leonardo da Vinci and Berkeley are examples. In my Ancient Greek Historians (1909) I dwelt on the modern origin of the idea (p. 253 sqq.). Recently Mr. R. H. Murray, in a learned appendix to his Erasmus and Luther, has developed the thesis that Progress was not grasped in antiquity (though he makes an exception of Seneca),--a welcome confirmation.] I It may, in particular, seem surprising that the Greeks, who were so fertile in their speculations on human life, did not hit upon an idea which seems so simple and obvious to us as the idea of Progress. But if we try to realise their experience and the general character of their thought we shall cease to wonder. Their recorded history did not go back far, and so far as it did go there had been no impressive series of new discoveries suggesting either an indefinite increase of knowledge or a growing mastery of the forces of nature. In the period in which their most brilliant minds were busied with the problems of the universe men might improve the building of ships, or invent new geometrical demonstrations, but their science did little or nothing to transform the conditions of life or to open any vista into the future. They were in the presence of no facts strong enough to counteract that profound veneration of antiquity which seems natural to mankind, and the Athenians of the age of Pericles or of Plato, though they were thoroughly, obviously "modern" compared with the Homeric Greeks, were never self-consciously "modern" as we are. 1. The indications that human civilisation was a gradual growth, and that man had painfully worked his way forward from a low and savage state, could not, indeed, escape the sharp vision of the Greeks. For instance, Aeschylus represents men as originally living at hazard in sunless caves, and raised from that condition by Prometheus, who taught them the arts of life. In Euripides we find a similar recognition of the ascent of mankind to a civilised state, from primitive barbarism, some god or other playing the part of Prometheus. In such passages as these we have, it may be said, the idea that man has progressed; and it may fairly be suggested that belief in a natural progress lay, for Aeschylus as well as for Euripides, behind the poetical fiction of supernatural intervention. But these recognitions of a progress were not incompatible with the widely-spread belief in an initial degeneration of the human race; nor did it usually appear as a rival doctrine. The old legend of a "golden age" of simplicity, from which man had fallen away, was generally accepted as truth; and leading thinkers combined it with the doctrine of a gradual sequence of social and material improvements [Footnote: In the masterly survey of early Greek history which Thucydides prefixed to his work, he traces the social progress of the Greeks in historical times, and finds the key to it in the increase of wealth.] during the subsequent period of decline. We find the two views thus combined, for instance, in Plato's Laws, and in the earliest reasoned history of civilisation written by Dicaearchus, a pupil of Aristotle. [Footnote: Aristotle's own view is not very clear. He thinks that all arts, sciences, and institutions have been repeatedly, or rather an infinite number of times (word in Greek) discovered in the past and again lost. Metaphysics, xi. 8 ad fin.; Politics, iv. 10, cp. ii. 2. An infinite number of times seems to imply the doctrine of cycles.] But the simple life of the first age, in which men were not worn with toil, and war and disease were unknown, was regarded as the ideal State to which man would lie only too fortunate if he could return. He had indeed at a remote time ill the past succeeded in ameliorating some of the conditions of his lot, but such ancient discoveries as fire or ploughing or navigation or law-giving did not suggest the guess that new inventions might lead ultimately to conditions in which life would be more complex but as happy as the simple life of the primitive world. But, if some relative progress might be admitted, the general view of Greek philosophers was that they were living in a period of inevitable degeneration and decay--inevitable because it was prescribed by the nature of the universe. We have only an imperfect knowledge of the influential speculations of Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and Empedocles, but we may take Plato's tentative philosophy of history to illustrate the trend and the prejudices of Greek thought on this subject. The world was created and set going by the Deity, and, as his work, it was perfect; but it was not immortal and had in it the seeds of decay. The period of its duration is 72,000 solar years. During the first half of this period the original uniformity and order, which were impressed upon it by the Creator, are maintained under his guidance; but then it reaches a point from which it begins, as it were, to roll back; the Deity has loosened his grip of the machine, the order is disturbed, and the second 36,000 years are a period of gradual decay and degeneration. At the end of this time, the world left to itself would dissolve into chaos, but the Deity again seizes the helm and restores the original conditions, and the whole process begins anew. The first half of such a world-cycle corresponds to the Golden Age of legend in which men lived happily and simply; we have now unfortunately reached some point in the period of decadence. Plato applies the theory of degradation in his study of political communities. [Footnote: Plato's philosophy of history. In the myth of the Statesman and the last Books of the Republic. The best elucidation of these difficult passages will be found in the notes and appendix to Book viii. in J. Adam's edition of the Republic (1902).] He conceives his own Utopian aristocracy as having existed somewhere towards the beginning of the period of the world's relapse, when things were not so bad, [Footnote: Similarly he places the ideal society which he describes in the Critias 9000 years before Solon. The state which he plans in the Laws is indeed imagined as a practicable project in his own day, but then it is only a second-best. The ideal state of which Aristotle sketched an outline (Politics, iv. v.) is not set either in time or in place.] and exhibits its gradual deterioration, through the successive stages of timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and despotism. He explains this deterioration as primarily caused by a degeneration of the race, due to laxity and errors in the State regulation of marriages, and the consequent birth of biologically inferior individuals. The theories of Plato are only the most illustrious example of the tendency characteristic of Greek philosophical thinkers to idealise the immutable as possessing a higher value than that which varies. This affected all their social speculations. They believed in the ideal of an absolute order in society, from which, when it is once established, any deviation must be for the worse. Aristotle, considering the subject from a practical point of view, laid down that changes in an established social order are undesirable, and should be as few and slight as possible. [Footnote: Politics, ii. 5.] This prejudice against change excluded the apprehension of civilisation as a progressive movement. It did not occur to Plato or any one else that a perfect order might be attainable by a long series of changes and adaptations. Such an order, being an embodiment of reason, could be created only by a deliberate and immediate act of a planning mind. It might be devised by the wisdom of a philosopher or revealed by the Deity. Hence the salvation of a community must lie in preserving intact, so far as possible, the institutions imposed by the enlightened lawgiver, since change meant corruption and disaster. These a priori principles account for the admiration of the Spartan state entertained by many Greek philosophers, because it was supposed to have preserved unchanged for an unusually long period a system established by an inspired legislator. 2. Thus time was regarded as the enemy of humanity. Horace's verse, Damnosa quid non imminuit dies? "time depreciates the value of the world," expresses the pessimistic axiom accepted in most systems of ancient thought. The theory of world-cycles was so widely current that it may almost be described as the orthodox theory of cosmic time among the Greeks, and it passed from them to the Romans. [Footnote: Plato's world-cycle. I have omitted details not essential; e.g. that in the first period men were born from the earth and only in the second propagated themselves. The period of 36,000 years, known as the Great Platonic Year, was probably a Babylonian astronomical period, and was in any case based on the Babylonian sexagesimal system and connected with the solar year conceived as consisting of 360 days. Heraclitus seems to have accepted it as the duration of the world between his periodic universal conflagrations. Plato derived the number from predecessors, but based it on operations with the numbers 3, 4, 5, the length of the sides of the Pythagorean right-angled triangle. The Great Year of the Pythagorean Philolaus seems to have been different, and that of the Stoics was much longer (6,570,000 years). I may refer here to Tacitus, Dialogus c. 16, as an appreciation of historical perspective unusual in ancient writers: "The four hundred years which separate us from the ancients are almost a vanishing quantity if you compare them with the duration of the ages." See the whole passage, where the Magnus Annus of 12,954 years is referred to.] According to some of the Pythagoreans [Footnote: See Simplicius, Phys. 732, 26.] each cycle repeated to the minutest particular the course and events of the preceding. If the universe dissolves into the original chaos, there appeared to them to be no reason why the second chaos should produce a world differing in the least respect from its predecessor. The nth cycle would be indeed numerically distinct from the first, but otherwise would be identical with it, and no man could possibly discover the number of the cycle in which he was living. As no end seems to have been assigned to the whole process, the course of the world's history would contain an endless number of Trojan Wars, for instance; an endless number of Platos would write an endless number of Republics. Virgil uses this idea in his Fourth Eclogue, where he meditates a return of the Golden Age: Alter erit tum Tiphys, et altera quae uehat Argo Delectos heroas; erunt etiam altera bella, Atque iterum ad Troiam magnus mittetur Achilles. The periodic theory might be held in forms in which this uncanny doctrine of absolute identity was avoided; but at the best it meant an endless monotonous iteration, which was singularly unlikely to stimulate speculative interest in the future. It must be remembered that no thinker had any means of knowing how near to the end of his cycle the present hour might be. The most influential school of the later Greek age, the Stoics, adopted the theory of cycles, and the natural psychological effect of the theory is vividly reflected in Marcus Aurelius, who frequently dwells on it in his Meditations. "The rational soul," he says, "wanders round the whole world and through the encompassing void, and gazes into infinite time, and considers the periodic destructions and rebirths of the universe, and reflects that our posterity will see nothing new, and that our ancestors saw nothing greater than we have seen. A man of forty years, possessing the most moderate intelligence, may be said to have seen all that is past and all that is to come; so uniform is the world." [Footnote: xi. I. The cyclical theory was curiously revived in the nineteenth; century by Nietzsche, and it is interesting to note his avowal that it took him a long time to overcome the feeling of pessimism which the doctrine inspired.] 3. And yet one Stoic philosopher saw clearly, and declared emphatically, that increases in knowledge must be expected in the future. "There are many peoples to-day," Seneca wrote, "who are ignorant of the cause of eclipses of the moon, and it has only recently been demonstrated among ourselves. The day will come when time and human diligence will clear up problems which are now obscure. We divide the few years of our lives unequally between study and vice, and it will therefore be the work of many generations to explain such phenomena as comets. One day our posterity will marvel at our ignorance of causes so clear to them. "How many new animals have we first come to know in the present age? In time to come men will know much that is unknown to us. Many discoveries are reserved for future ages, when our memory will have faded from men's minds. We imagine ourselves initiated in the secrets of nature; we are standing on the threshold of her temple." [Footnote: The quotations from Seneca will be found in Naturales Quaestiones, vii. 25 and 31. See also Epist. 64. Seneca implies continuity in scientific research. Aristotle had stated this expressly, pointing out that we are indebted not only to the author of the philosophical theory which we accept as true, but also to the predecessors whose views it has superseded (Metaphysics, i. ii. chap. 1). But he seems to consider his own system as final.] But these predictions are far from showing that Seneca had the least inkling of a doctrine of the Progress of humanity. Such a doctrine is sharply excluded by the principles of his philosophy and his profoundly pessimistic view of human affairs. Immediately after the passage which I have quoted he goes on to enlarge on the progress of vice. "Are you surprised to be told that human knowledge has not yet completed its whole task? Why, human wickedness has not yet fully developed." Yet, at least, it may be said, Seneca believed in a progress of knowledge and recognised its value. Yes, but the value which he attributed to it did not lie in any advantages which it would bring to the general community of mankind. He did not expect from it any improvement of the world. The value of natural science, from his point of view, was this, that it opened to the philosopher a divine region, in which, "wandering among the stars," he could laugh at the earth and all its riches, and his mind "delivered as it were from prison could return to its original home." In other words, its value lay not in its results, but simply in the intellectual activity; and therefore it concerned not mankind at large but a few chosen individuals who, doomed to live in a miserable world, could thus deliver their souls from slavery. For Seneca's belief in the theory of degeneration and the hopeless corruption of the race is uncompromising. Human life on the earth is periodically destroyed, alternately by fire and flood; and each period begins with a golden age in which men live in rude simplicity, innocent because they are ignorant not because they are wise. When they degenerate from this state, arts and inventions promote deterioration by ministering to luxury and vice. Interesting, then, as Seneca's observations on the prospect of some future scientific discoveries are, and they are unique in ancient literature, [Footnote: They are general and definite. This distinguishes them, for instance, from Plato's incidental hint in the Republic as to the prospect of the future development of solid geometry.] they were far from adumbrating a doctrine of the Progress of man. For him, as for Plato and the older philosophers, time is the enemy of man. [Footnote: The quotations and the references here will be found in Nat. Quaest. i. Praef.; Epist. 104, Sec. 16 (cp. 110, Sec. 8; 117, Sec. 20, and the fine passage in 65, Sec. 16-21); Nat. Quaest. iii. 28-30; and finally Epist. 90, Sec. 45, cp. Sec. 17. This last letter is a criticism on Posidonius, who asserted that the arts invented in primitive times were due to philosophers. Seneca repudiates this view: omnia enim ista sagacitas hominum, non sapientia inuenit. Seneca touches on the possibility of the discovery of new lands beyond the ocean in a passage in his Medea (374 sqq.) which has been often quoted: uenient annis secula seris, quibus oceanus uincula rerum laxet et ingens pateat tellus Tiphysque novos detegat orbes,... nec sit terris ultima Thule.] 4. There was however a school of philosophical speculation, which might have led to the foundation of a theory of Progress, if the historical outlook of the Greeks had been larger and if their temper had been different. The Atomic theory of Democritus seems to us now, in many ways, the most wonderful achievement of Greek thought, but it had a small range of influence in Greece, and would have had less if it had not convinced the brilliant mind of Epicurus. The Epicureans developed it, and it may be that the views which they put forward as to the history of the human race are mainly their own superstructure. These philosophers rejected entirely the doctrine of a Golden Age and a subsequent degeneration, which was manifestly incompatible with their theory that the world was mechanically formed from atoms without the intervention of a Deity. For them, the earliest condition of men resembled that of the beasts, and from this primitive and miserable condition they laboriously reached the existing state of civilisation, not by external guidance or as a consequence of some initial design, but simply by the exercise of human intelligence throughout a long period. [Footnote: Lucretius v. 1448 sqq. (where the word PROGRESS is pronounced): Usus et impigrae simul experientia mentis Paulatim docuit pedetemtim progredientis. Sic unum quicquid paulatim protrahit aetas In medium ratioque in luminis erigit oras. Namque alid ex alio clarescere et ordine debet Artibus, ad summum donee uenere cacumen.] The gradual amelioration of their existence was marked by the discovery of fire and the use of metals, the invention of language, the invention of weaving, the growth of arts and industries, navigation, the development of family life, the establishment of social order by means of kings, magistrates, laws, the foundation of cities. The last great step in the amelioration of life, according to Lucretius, was the illuminating philosophy of Epicurus, who dispelled the fear of invisible powers and guided man from intellectual darkness to light. But Lucretius and the school to which he belonged did not look forward to a steady and continuous process of further amelioration in the future. They believed that a time would come when the universe would fall into ruins, [Footnote: Ib. 95.] but the intervening period did not interest them. Like many other philosophers, they thought that their own philosophy was the final word on the universe, and they did not contemplate the possibility that important advances in knowledge might be achieved by subsequent generations. And, in any case, their scope was entirely individualistic; all their speculations were subsidiary to the aim of rendering the life of the individual as tolerable as possible here and now. Their philosophy, like Stoicism, was a philosophy of resignation; it was thoroughly pessimistic and therefore incompatible with the idea of Progress. Lucretius himself allows an underlying feeling of scepticism as to the value of civilisation occasionally to escape. [Footnote: His eadem sunt omnia semper (iii. 945) is the constant refrain of Marcus Aurelius.] Indeed, it might be said that in the mentality of the ancient Greeks there was a strain which would have rendered them indisposed to take such an idea seriously, if it had been propounded. No period of their history could be described as an age of optimism. They were never, by their achievements in art or literature, in mathematics or philosophy, exalted into self-complacency or lured into setting high hopes on human capacity. Man has resourcefulness to meet everything--[words in Greek],--they did not go further than that. This instinctive pessimism of the Greeks had a religious tinge which perhaps even the Epicureans found it hard entirely to expunge. They always felt that they were in the presence of unknown incalculable powers, and that subtle dangers lurked in human achievements and gains. Horace has taken this feeling as the motif of a criticism on man's inventive powers. A voyage of Virgil suggests the reflection that his friend's life would not be exposed to hazards on the high seas if the art of navigation had never been discovered--if man had submissively respected the limits imposed by nature. But man is audacious: Nequiquam deus abscidit Prudens oceano dissociabili Terras. In vain a wise god sever'd lands By the dissociating sea. Daedalus violated the air, as Hercules invaded hell. The discovery of fire put us in possession of a forbidden secret. Is this unnatural conquest of nature safe or wise? Nil mortalibus ardui est: Man finds no feat too hard or high; Heaven is not safe from man's desire. Our rash designs move Jove to ire, He dares not lay his thunder by. The thought of this ode [Footnote: i. 3.] roughly expresses what would have been the instinctive sense of thoughtful Greeks if the idea of Progress had been presented to them. It would have struck them as audacious, the theory of men unduly elated and perilously at ease in the presence of unknown incalculable powers. This feeling or attitude was connected with the idea of Moira. If we were to name any single idea as generally controlling or pervading Greek thought from Homer to the Stoics, [Footnote: The Stoics identified Moira with Pronoia, in accordance with their theory that the universe is permeated by thought.] it would perhaps be Moira, for which we have no equivalent. The common rendering "fate" is misleading. Moira meant a fixed order in the universe; but as a fact to which men must bow, it had enough in common with fatality to demand a philosophy of resignation and to hinder the creation of an optimistic atmosphere of hope. It was this order which kept things in their places, assigned to each its proper sphere and function, and drew a definite line, for instance, between men and gods. Human progress towards perfection--towards an ideal of omniscience, or an ideal of happiness, would have been a breaking down of the bars which divide the human from the divine. Human nature does not alter; it is fixed by Moira. 5. We can see now how it was that speculative Greek minds never hit on the idea of Progress. In the first place, their limited historical experience did not easily suggest such a synthesis; and in the second place, the axioms of their thought, their suspiciousness of change, their theories of Moira, of degeneration and cycles, suggested a view of the world which was the very antithesis of progressive development. Epicurean, philosophers made indeed what might have been an important step in the direction of the doctrine of Progress, by discarding the theory of degeneration, and recognising that civilisation had been created by a series of successive improvements achieved by the effort of man alone. But here they stopped short. For they had their eyes fixed on the lot of the individual here and now, and their study of the history of humanity was strictly subordinate to this personal interest. The value of their recognition of human progress in the past is conditioned by the general tenor and purpose of their theory of life. It was simply one item in their demonstration that man owed nothing to supernatural intervention and had nothing to fear from supernatural powers. It is however no accident that the school of thought which struck on a path that might have led to the idea of Progress was the most uncompromising enemy of superstition that Greece produced. It might be thought that the establishment of Roman rule and order in a large part of the known world, and the civilising of barbarian peoples, could not fail to have opened to the imagination of some of those who reflected on it in the days of Virgil or of Seneca, a vista into the future. But there was no change in the conditions of life likely to suggest a brighter view of human existence. With the loss of freedom pessimism increased, and the Greek philosophies of resignation were needed more than ever. Those whom they could not satisfy turned their thoughts to new mystical philosophies and religions, which were little interested in the earthly destinies of human society. II 1. The idea of the universe which prevailed throughout the Middle Ages, and the general orientation of men's thoughts were incompatible with some of the fundamental assumptions which are required by the idea of Progress. According to the Christian theory which was worked out by the Fathers, and especially by St. Augustine, the whole movement of history has the purpose of securing the happiness of a small portion of the human race in another world; it does not postulate a further development of human history on earth. For Augustine, as for any medieval believer, the course of history would be satisfactorily complete if the world came to an end in his own lifetime. He was not interested in the question whether any gradual amelioration of society or increase of knowledge would mark the period of time which might still remain to run before the day of Judgment. In Augustine's system the Christian era introduced the last period of history, the old age of humanity, which would endure only so long as to enable the Deity to gather in the predestined number of saved people. This theory might be combined with the widely-spread belief in a millennium on earth, but the conception of such a dispensation does not render it a theory of Progress. Again, the medieval doctrine apprehends history not as a natural development but as a series of events ordered by divine intervention and revelations. If humanity had been left to go its own way it would have drifted to a highly undesirable port, and all men would have incurred the fate of everlasting misery from which supernatural interference rescued the minority. A belief in Providence might indeed, and in a future age would, be held along with a belief in Progress, in the same mind; but the fundamental assumptions were incongruous, and so long as the doctrine of Providence was undisputedly in the ascendant, a doctrine of Progress could not arise. And the doctrine of Providence, as it was developed in Augustine's "City of God," controlled the thought of the Middle Ages. There was, moreover, the doctrine of original sin, an insuperable obstacle to the moral amelioration of the race by any gradual process of development. For since, so long as the human species endures on earth, every child will be born naturally evil and worthy of punishment, a moral advance of humanity to perfection is plainly impossible. [Footnote: It may be added that, as G. Monod observed, "les hommes du moyen age n'avaient pas conscience des modifications successives que le temps apporte avec lui dans les choses humaines" (Revue Historique, i. p. 8).] 2. But there are certain features in the medieval theory of which we must not ignore the significance. In the first place, while it maintained the belief in degeneration, endorsed by Hebrew mythology, it definitely abandoned the Greek theory of cycles. The history of the earth was recognised as a unique phenomenon in time; it would never occur again or anything resembling it. More important than all is the fact that Christian theology constructed a synthesis which for the first time attempted to give a definite meaning to the whole course of human events, a synthesis which represents the past as leading up to a definite and desirable goal in the future. Once this belief had been generally adopted and prevailed for centuries men might discard it along with the doctrine of Providence on which it rested, but they could not be content to return again to such views as satisfied the ancients, for whom human history, apprehended as a whole, was a tale of little meaning. [Footnote: It may be observed that Augustine (De Civ. Dei, x. 14) compares the teaching (recta eruditio) of the people of God, in the gradual process of history, to the education of an individual. Prudentius has a similar comparison for a different purpose (c. Symmachum, ii. 315 sqq.): Tardis semper processibus aucta Crescit vita hominis et longo proficit usu. Sic aevi mortalis habet se mobilis ordo, Sic variat natura vices, infantia repit, etc. Floras (Epitome, ad init.) had already divided Roman history into four periods corresponding to infancy, adolescence, manhood, and old age.] They must seek for some new synthesis to replace it. Another feature of the medieval theory, pertinent to our inquiry, was an idea which Christianity took over from Greek and Roman thinkers. In the later period of Greek history, which began with the conquests of Alexander the Great, there had emerged the conception of the whole inhabited world as a unity and totality, the idea of the whole human race as one. We may conveniently call it the ecumenical idea--the principle of the ecumene or inhabited world, as opposed to the principle of the polis or city. Promoted by the vast extension of the geographical limits of the Greek world resulting from Alexander's conquests, and by his policy of breaking down the barriers between Greek and barbarian, the idea was reflected in the Stoic doctrine that all men are brothers, and that a man's true country is not his own particular city, but the ecumene. [Footnote: Plutarch long ago saw the connection between the policy of Alexander and the cosmopolitan teaching of Zeno. De Alexandri Magni virtute, i. Sec. 6.] It soon became familiar, popularised by the most popular of the later philosophies of Greece; and just as it had been implied in the imperial aspiration and polity of Alexander, so it was implied, still more clearly, in the imperial theory of Rome. The idea of the Roman Empire, its theoretical justification, might be described as the realisation of the unity of the world by the establishment of a common order, the unification of mankind in a single world-embracing political organism. The term "world," orbis (terrarum), which imperial poets use freely in speaking of the Empire, is more than a mere poetical or patriotic exaggeration; it expresses the idea, the unrealised ideal of the Empire. There is a stone from Halicarnassus in the British Museum, on which the idea is formally expressed from another point of view. The inscription is of the time of Augustus, and the Emperor is designated as "saviour of the community of mankind." There we have the notion of the human race apprehended as a whole, the ecumenical idea, imposing upon Rome the task described by Virgil as regere imperio populos, and more humanely by Pliny as the creation of a single fatherland for all the peoples of the world. [Footnote: Pliny, Nat. Hist. iii. 6. 39.] This idea, which in the Roman Empire and in the Middle Ages took the form of a universal State and a universal Church, passed afterwards into the conception of the intercohesion of peoples as contributors to a common pool of civilisation--a principle which, when the idea of Progress at last made its appearance in the world, was to be one of the elements in its growth. 3. One remarkable man, the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon, [Footnote: c. A.D. 1210-92. Of Bacon's Opus Majus the best and only complete edition is that of J. H. Bridges, 2 vols. 1897 (with an excellent Introduction). The associated works, Opus Minus and Opus Tertium, have been edited by Brewer, Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera Inedita, 1859.]who stands on an isolated pinnacle of his own in the Middle Ages, deserves particular consideration. It has been claimed for him that he announced the idea of Progress; he has even been compared to Condorcet or Comte. Such claims are based on passages taken out of their context and indulgently interpreted in the light of later theories. They are not borne out by an examination of his general conception of the universe and the aim of his writings. His aim was to reform higher education and introduce into the universities a wide, liberal, and scientific programme of secular studies. His chief work, the "Opus Majus," was written for this purpose, to which his exposition of his own discoveries was subordinate. It was addressed and sent to Pope Clement IV., who had asked Bacon to give him an account of his researches, and was designed to persuade the Pontiff of the utility of science from an ecclesiastical point of view, and to induce him to sanction an intellectual reform, which without the approbation of the Church would at that time have been impossible. With great ingenuity and resourcefulness he sought to show that the studies to which he was devoted--mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry--were indispensable to an intelligent study of theology and Scripture. Though some of his arguments may have been urged simply to capture the Pope's good-will, there can be no question that Bacon was absolutely sincere in his view that theology was the mistress (dominatrix) of the sciences and that their supreme value lay in being necessary to it. It was, indeed, on this principle of the close interconnection of all branches of knowledge that Bacon based his plea and his scheme of reform. And the idea of the "solidarity" of the sciences, in which he anticipated a later age, is one of his two chief claims to be remembered. [Footnote: Cp. Opus Tertium, c. iv. p. 18, omnes scientiae sunt connexae et mutuis se fovent auxiliis sicut partes ejusdem totius, quarum quaelibet opus suum peragit non solum propter se sed pro aliis.] It is the motif of the Opus Majus, and it would have been more fully elaborated if he had lived to complete the encyclopaedic work, Scriptum Principale, which he had only begun before his death. His other title to fame is well-known. He realised, as no man had done before him, the importance of the experimental method in investigating the secrets of nature, and was an almost solitary pioneer in the paths to which his greater namesake, more than three hundred years later, was to invite the attention of the world. But, although Roger Bacon was inspired by these enlightened ideas, although he cast off many of the prejudices of his time and boldly revolted against the tyranny of the prevailing scholastic philosophy, he was nevertheless in other respects a child of his age and could not disencumber himself of the current medieval conception of the universe. His general view of the course of human history was not materially different from that of St. Augustine. When he says that the practical object of all knowledge is to assure the safety of the human race, he explains this to mean "things which lead to felicity in the next life." [Footnote: Opus Majus, vii. p. 366.] It is pertinent to observe that he not only shared in the belief in astrology, which was then universal, but considered it one of the most important parts of "mathematics." It was looked upon with disfavour by the Church as a dangerous study; Bacon defended its use in the interests of the Church itself. He maintained, like Thomas Aquinas, the physiological influence of the celestial bodies, and regarded the planets as signs telling us what God has decreed from eternity to come to pass either by natural processes or by acts of human will or directly at his own good pleasure. Deluges, plagues, and earthquakes were capable of being predicted; political and religious revolutions were set in the starry rubric. The existence of six principal religions was determined by the combinations of Jupiter with the other six planets. Bacon seriously expected the extinction of the Mohammedan religion before the end of the thirteenth century, on the ground of a prediction by an Arab astrologer. [Footnote: Ib. iv. p. 266; vii. p. 389.] One of the greatest advantages that the study of astrological lore will bring to humanity is that by its means the date of the coming of Anti-Christ may be fixed with certainty, and the Church may be prepared to face the perils and trials of that terrible time. Now the arrival of Anti-Christ meant the end of the world, and Bacon accepted the view, which he says was held by all wise men, that "we are not far from the times of Anti-Christ." Thus the intellectual reforms which he urged would have the effect, and no more, of preparing Christendom to resist more successfully the corruption in which the rule of Anti-Christ would involve the world. "Truth will prevail," by which he meant science will make advances, "though with difficulty, until Anti-Christ and his forerunners appear;" and on his own showing the interval would probably be short. The frequency with which Bacon recurs to this subject, and the emphasis he lays on it, show that the appearance of Anti-Christ was a fixed point in his mental horizon. When he looked forward into the future, the vision which confronted him was a scene of corruption, tyranny, and struggle under the reign of a barbarous enemy of Christendom; and after that, the end of the world. [Footnote: (1) His coming may be fixed by astrology: Opus Majus, iv. p. 269 (inveniretur sufficiens suspicio vel magis certitudo de tempore Antichristi; cp. p. 402). (2) His coming means the end of the world: ib. p. 262. (3) We are not far from it: ib. p. 402. One of the reasons which seem to have made this view probable to Bacon was the irruption of the Mongols into Europe during his lifetime; cp. p. 268 and vii. p. 234. Another was the prevalent corruption, especially of the clergy, which impressed him deeply; see Compendium studii philosophiae, ed. Brewer, p. 402. (4) "Truth will prevail," etc.: Opus Majus, i. pp. 19, 20. He claimed for experimental science that it would produce inventions which could be usefully employed against Antichrist: ib. vii. p. 221.] It is from this point of view that we must appreciate the observations which he made on the advancement of knowledge. "It is our duty," he says, "to supply what the ancients have left incomplete, because we have entered into their labours, which, unless we are asses, can stimulate us to achieve better results"; Aristotle corrected the errors of earlier thinkers; Avicenna and Averroes have corrected Aristotle in some matters and have added much that is new; and so it will go on till the end of the world. And Bacon quotes passages from Seneca's "Physical Inquiries" to show that the acquisition of knowledge is gradual. Attention has been already called to those passages, and it was shown how perverse it is, on the strength of such remarks, to claim Seneca as a teacher of the doctrine of Progress. The same claim has been made for Bacon with greater confidence, and it is no less perverse. The idea of Progress is glaringly incongruous with his vision of the world. If his programme of revolutionising secular learning had been accepted--it fell completely dead, and his work was forgotten for many ages,--he would have been the author of a progressive reform; but how many reformers have there been before and after Bacon on whose minds the idea of Progress never dawned? [Footnote: Bacon quotes Seneca: See Opus Majus, i. pp. 37, 55, 14. Much has been made out of a well-known passage in his short Epistle de secretis operibus artis et naturae et de militate magiae, c. iv. (ed. Brewer, p. 533), in which he is said to PREDICT inventions which have been realised in the locomotives, steam navigation, and aeroplanes of modern times. But Bacon predicts nothing. He is showing that science can invent curious and, to the vulgar, incredible things without the aid of magic. All the inventions which he enumerates have, he declares, been actually made in ancient times, with the exception of a flying-machine (instrumentum volandi quod non vidi nec hominem qui vidisset cognovi, sed sapientem qui hoc artificium excogitavit explere cognosco). Compare the remarks of S. Vogl, Die Physik Roger Bacos (1906), 98 sqq.] 4. Thus Friar Bacon's theories of scientific reform, so far from amounting to an anticipation of the idea of Progress, illustrate how impossible it was that this idea could appear in the Middle Ages. The whole spirit of medieval Christianity excluded it. The conceptions which were entertained of the working of divine Providence, the belief that the world, surprised like a sleeping household by a thief in the night, might at any moment come to a sudden end, had the same effect as the Greek theories of the nature of change and of recurring cycles of the world. Or rather, they had a more powerful effect, because they were not reasoned conclusions, but dogmas guaranteed by divine authority. And medieval pessimism as to man's mundane condition was darker and sterner than the pessimism of the Greeks. There was the prospect of happiness in another sphere to compensate, but this, engrossing the imagination, only rendered it less likely that any one should think of speculating about man's destinies on earth. III 1. The civilised countries of Europe spent about three hundred years in passing from the mental atmosphere of the Middle Ages into the mental atmosphere of the modern world. These centuries were one of the conspicuously progressive periods in history, but the conditions were not favourable to the appearance of an idea of Progress, though the intellectual milieu was being prepared in which that idea could be born. This progressive period, which is conveniently called the Renaissance, lasted from the fourteenth into the seventeenth century. The great results, significant for our present purpose, which the human mind achieved at this stage of its development were two. Self-confidence was restored to human reason, and life on this planet was recognised as possessing a value independent of any hopes or fears connected with a life beyond the grave. But in discarding medieval naivete and superstition, in assuming a freer attitude towards theological authority, and in developing a new conception of the value of individual personality, men looked to the guidance of Greek and Roman thinkers, and called up the spirit of the ancient world to exorcise the ghosts of the dark ages. Their minds were thus directed backwards to a past civilisation which, in the ardour of new discovery, and in the reaction against medievalism, they enthroned as ideal; and a new authority was set up, the authority of ancient writers. In general speculation the men of the Renaissance followed the tendencies and adopted many of the prejudices of Greek philosophy. Although some great discoveries, with far-reaching, revolutionary consequences, were made in this period, most active minds were engaged in rediscovering, elaborating, criticising, and imitating what was old. It was not till the closing years of the Renaissance that speculation began to seek and feel its way towards new points of departure. It was not till then that a serious reaction set in against the deeper influences of medieval thought. 2. To illustrate the limitations of this period let us take Machiavelli, one of the most original thinkers that Italy ever produced. There are certain fundamental principles underlying Machiavelli's science of politics, which he has indicated incidentally in his unsystematic way, but which are essential to the comprehension of his doctrines. The first is that at all times the world of human beings has been the same, varying indeed from land to land, but always presenting the same aspect of some societies advancing towards prosperity, and others declining. Those which are on the upward grade will always reach a point beyond which they cannot rise further, but they will not remain permanently on this level, they will begin to decline; for human things are always in motion and therefore must go up or down. Similarly, declining states will ultimately touch bottom and then begin to ascend. Thus a good constitution or social organisation can last only for a short time. [Footnote: Machiavelli's principle of advance and decline: Discorsi, ii. Introduction; Istorie fiorentine, v. ad init. For the cycle of constitutions through which all states tend to move see Discorsi, ii. 2 (here we see the influence of Polybius).] It is obvious that in this view of history Machiavelli was inspired and instructed by the ancients. And it followed from his premisses that the study of the past is of the highest value because it enables men to see what is to come; since to all social events at any period there are correspondences in ancient times. "For these events are due to men, who have and always had the same passions, and therefore of necessity the effects must be the same." [Footnote: Discorsi, iii. 43.] Again, Machiavelli follows his ancient masters in assuming as evident that a good organisation of society can be effected only by the deliberate design of a wise legislator. [Footnote: Ib. iii. 1. The lawgiver must assume for his purposes that all men are bad: ib. i. 3. Villari has useful remarks on these principles in his Machiavelli, Book ii. cap. iii.] Forms of government and religions are the personal creations of a single brain; and the only chance for a satisfactory constitution or for a religion to maintain itself for any length of time is constantly to repress any tendencies to depart from the original conceptions of its creator. It is evident that these two assumptions are logically connected. The lawgiver builds on the immutability of human nature; what is good for one generation must be good for another. For Machiavelli, as for Plato, change meant corruption. Thus his fundamental theory excluded any conception of a satisfactory social order gradually emerging by the impersonal work of successive generations, adapting their institutions to their own changing needs and aspirations. It is characteristic, and another point of resemblance with ancient thinkers that he sought the ideal state in the past--republican Rome. These doctrines, the sameness of human nature and the omnipotent lawgiver, left no room for anything resembling a theory of Progress. If not held afterwards in the uncompromising form in which Machiavelli presented them, yet it has well been pointed out that they lay at the root of some of the most famous speculations of the eighteenth century. [Footnote: Villari, loc. cit.] Machiavelli's sameness of human nature meant that man would always have the same passions and desires, weaknesses and vices. This assumption was compatible with the widely prevailing view that man had degenerated in the course of the last fifteen hundred years. From the exaltation of Greek and Roman antiquity to a position of unattainable superiority, especially in the field of knowledge, the degeneration of humanity was an easy and natural inference. If the Greeks in philosophy and science were authoritative guides, if in art and literature they were unapproachable, if the Roman republic, as Machiavelli thought, was an ideal state, it would seem that the powers of Nature had declined, and she could no longer produce the same quality of brain. So long as this paralysing theory prevailed, it is manifest that the idea of Progress could not appear. But in the course of the sixteenth century men began here and there, somewhat timidly and tentatively, to rebel against the tyranny of antiquity, or rather to prepare the way for the open rebellion which was to break out in the seventeenth. Breaches were made in the proud citadel of ancient learning. Copernicus undermined the authority of Ptolemy and his predecessors; the anatomical researches of Vesalius injured the prestige of Galen; and Aristotle was attacked on many sides by men like Telesio, Cardan, Ramus, and Bruno. [Footnote: It has been observed that the thinkers who were rebelling against the authority of Aristotle--the most dangerous of the ancient philosophers, because he was so closely associated with theological scholasticism and was supported by the Church--frequently attacked under the standard of some other ancient master; e.g. Telesio resorted to Parmenides, Justus Lipsius to the Stoics, and Bruno is under the influence of Plotinus and Plato (Bouillier, La Philosophie cartesienne, vol. i. p. 5). The idea of "development" in Bruno has been studied by Mariupolsky (Zur Geschichte des Entwicklungsbegriffs in Berner Studien, Bd. vi. 1897), who pointed out the influence of Stoicism on his thought.] In particular branches of science an innovation was beginning which heralded a radical revolution in the study of natural phenomena, though the general significance of the prospect which these researches opened was but vaguely understood at the time. The thinkers and men of science were living in an intellectual twilight. It was the twilight of dawn. At one extremity we have mysticism which culminated in the speculations of Bruno and Campanella; at the other we have the scepticism of Montaigne, Charron, and Sanchez. The bewildered condition of knowledge is indicated by the fact that while Bruno and Campanella accepted the Copernican astronomy, it was rejected by one who in many other respects may claim to be reckoned as a modern--I mean Francis Bacon. But the growing tendency to challenge the authority of the ancients does not sever this period from the spirit which informed the Renaissance. For it is subordinate or incidental to a more general and important interest. To rehabilitate the natural man, to claim that he should be the pilot of his own course, to assert his freedom in the fields of art and literature had been the work of the early Renaissance. It was the problem of the later Renaissance to complete this emancipation in the sphere of philosophical thought. The bold metaphysics of Bruno, for which he atoned by a fiery death, offered the solution which was most unorthodox and complete. His deification of nature and of man as part of nature involved the liberation of humanity from external authority. But other speculative minds of the age, though less audacious, were equally inspired by the idea of freely interrogating nature, and were all engaged in accomplishing the programme of the Renaissance--the vindication of this world as possessing a value for man independent of its relations to any supermundane sphere. The raptures of Giordano Bruno and the sobrieties of Francis Bacon are here on common ground. The whole movement was a necessary prelude to a new age of which science was to be the mistress. It is to be noted that there was a general feeling of complacency as to the condition of learning and intellectual pursuits. This optimism is expressed by Rabelais. Gargantua, in a letter to Pantagruel, studying at Paris, enlarges to his son on the vast improvements in learning and education which had recently, he says, been brought about. "All the world is full of savants, learned teachers, large libraries; and I am of opinion that neither in the time of Plato nor of Cicero nor of Papinian were there such facilities for study as one sees now." It is indeed the study of the ancient languages and literatures that Gargantua considers in a liberal education, but the satisfaction at the present diffusion of learning, with the suggestion that here at least contemporaries have an advantage over the ancients, is the significant point. [Footnote: Rabelais, Book ii. chap. 8.] This satisfaction shines through the observation of Ramus that "in one century we have seen a greater progress in men and works of learning than our ancestors had seen in the whole course of the previous fourteen centuries." [Footnote: Praefat. Scholarum Mathematicarum, maiorem doctorum hominum et operum proventum seculo uno vidimus quam totis antea 14 seculis maiores nostri viderent. (Ed. Basel, 1569.)] [Footnote 1. Guillaume Postel observed in his De magistratibus Atheniensium liber (1541) that the ages are always progressing (secula semper proficere), and every day additions are made to human knowledge, and that this process would only cease if Providence by war, or plague, or some catastrophe were to destroy all the accumulated stores of knowledge which have been transmitted from antiquity in books (Praef., B verso). What is known of the life of this almost forgotten scholar has been collected by G. Weill (De Gulielmi Postelli vita et indole, 1892). He visited the East, brought back oriental MSS., and was more than once imprisoned on charges of heresy. He dreamed of converting the Mohammedans, and of uniting the whole world under the empire of France.] In this last stage of the Renaissance, which includes the first quarter of the seventeenth century, soil was being prepared in which the idea of Progress could germinate, and our history of it origin definitely begins with the work of two men who belong to this age, Bodin, who is hardly known except to special students of political science, and Bacon, who is known to all the world. Both had a more general grasp of the significance of their own time than any of their contemporaries, and though neither of them discovered a theory of Progress, they both made contributions to thought which directly contributed to its subsequent appearance. CHAPTER I. SOME INTERPRETATIONS OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY: BODIN AND LE ROY 1. It is a long descent from the genius of Machiavelli to the French historian, Jean Bodin, who published his introduction to historical studies [Footnote: Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem, 1566.] about forty years after Machiavelli's death. His views and his method differ widely from those of that great pioneer, whom he attacks. His readers were not arrested by startling novelties or immoral doctrine; he is safe, and dull. But Bodin had a much wider range of thought than Machiavelli, whose mind was entirely concentrated on the theory of politics; and his importance for us lies not in the political speculations by which he sought to prove that monarchy is the best form of government [Footnote: Les six livres de la Republique, 1576.], but in his attempt to substitute a new theory of universal history for that which prevailed in the Middle Ages. He rejected the popular conception of a golden age and a subsequent degeneration of mankind; and he refuted the view, generally current among medieval theologians, and based on the prophecies of Daniel, which divided the course of history into four periods corresponding to the Babylonian Persian, Macedonian, and Roman monarchies, the last of which was to endure till the day of Judgement. Bodin suggests a division into three great periods: the first, of about two thousand years, in which the South-Eastern peoples were predominant; the second, of the same duration, in which those whom he calls the Middle (Mediterranean) peoples came to the front; the third, in which the Northern nations who overthrew Rome became the leaders in civilisation. Each period is stamped by the psychological character of the three racial groups. The note of the first is religion, of the second practical sagacity, of the third warfare and inventive skill. This division actually anticipates the synthesis of Hegel. [Footnote: Hegel's division is (1) the Oriental, (2) a, the Greek, b, the Roman, and (3) the Germanic worlds.] But the interesting point is that it is based on anthropological considerations, in which climate and geography are taken into account; and, notwithstanding the crudeness of the whole exposition and the intrusion of astrological arguments, it is a new step in the study of universal history. [Footnote: Climates and geography. The fullest discussion will be found in the Republique, Book v. cap. i. Here Bodin anticipated Montesquieu. There was indeed nothing new in the principle; it had been recognised by Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, and other Greeks, and in a later age by Roger Bacon. But Bodin first developed and applied it methodically. This part of his work was ignored, and in the eighteenth century Montesquieu's speculations on the physical factors in history were applauded as a new discovery.] I have said that Bodin rejected the theory of the degeneration of man, along with the tradition of a previous age of virtue and felicity. [Footnote: See especially Methodus, cap. v. pp. 124, 130, 136.] The reason which he alleged against it is important. The powers of nature have always been uniform. It is illegitimate to suppose that she could at one time produce the men and conditions postulated by the theory of the golden age, and not produce them at another. In other words, Bodin asserts the principle of the permanent and undiminishing capacities of nature, and, as we shall see in the sequel, this principle was significant. It is not to be confounded with the doctrine of the immutability of human things assumed by Machiavelli. The human scene has vastly changed since the primitive age of man; "if that so-called golden age could be revoked and compared with our own, we should consider it iron." [Footnote: Methodus, cap. VII. p. 353.] For history largely depends on the will of men, which is always changing; every day new laws, new customs, new institutions, both secular and religious, come into being, and new errors. [Footnote: Ib. cap. I. p. 12.] But in this changing scene we can observe a certain regularity, a law of oscillation. Rise is followed by fall, and fall by rise; it is a mistake to think that the human race is always deteriorating. [Footnote: Ib. cap. VII. p. 361: "cum aeterna quadam lege naturae conversio rerum omnium velut in orbem redire videatur, ut aeque vitia virtutibus, ignoratio scientiae, turpe honesto consequens sit, atque tenebrae luci, fallunt qui genus hominum semper deterius seipso evadere putant."] If that were so, we should long ago have reached the lowest stage of vice and iniquity. On the contrary, there has been, through the series of oscillations, a gradual ascent. In the ages which have been foolishly designated as gold and silver men lived like the wild beasts; and from that state they have slowly reached the humanity of manners and the social order which prevail to-day. [Footnote: Ib. p. 356.] Thus Bodin recognises a general progress in the past. That is nothing new; it was the view, for instance, of the Epicureans. But much had passed in the world since the philosophy of Epicurus was alive, and Bodin had to consider twelve hundred years of new vicissitudes. Could the Epicurean theory be brought up to date? 2. Bodin deals with the question almost entirely in respect to human knowledge. In definitely denying the degeneration of man, Bodin was only expressing what many thinkers of the sixteenth century had been coming to feel, though timidly and obscurely. The philosophers and men of science, who criticised the ancients in special departments, did not formulate any general view on the privileged position of antiquity. Bodin was the first to do so. Knowledge, letters, and arts have their vicissitudes, he says; they rise, increase, and nourish, and then languish and die. After the decay of Rome there was a long fallow period; but this was followed by a splendid revival of knowledge and an intellectual productivity which no other age has exceeded. The scientific discoveries of the ancients deserve high praise; but the moderns have not only thrown new light on phenomena which they had incompletely explained, they have made new discoveries of equal or indeed greater importance. Take, for instance, the mariner's compass which has made possible the circumnavigation of the earth and a universal commerce, whereby the world has been changed, as it were, into a single state. [Footnote: Cardan had already signalised the compass, printing, and gunpowder as three modern inventions, to which "the whole of antiquity has nothing equal to show." He adds, "I pass over the other inventions of this age which, though wonderful, form rather a development of ancient arts than surpass the intellects of our ancestors." De subtilitate, lib. 3 ad init. (Opera, iii. p. 609).] Take the advances we have made in geography and astronomy; the invention of gunpowder; the development of the woollen and other industries. The invention of printing alone can be set against anything that the ancients achieved. [Footnote: Methodus, cap. VII., pp. 359-61. Bodin also points out that there was an improvement, in some respects, in manners and morals since the early Roman Empire; for instance, in the abolition of gladiatorial spectacles (p. 359).] An inference from all this, obvious to a modern reader, would be that in the future there will be similar oscillations, and new inventions and discoveries as remarkable as any that have been made in the past. But Bodin does not draw this inference. He confines himself to the past and present, and has no word to say about the vicissitudes of the future. But he is not haunted by any vision of the end of the world, or the coming of Antichrist; three centuries of humanism lay between him and Roger Bacon. 3. And yet the influence of medievalism, which it had been the work of those three centuries to overcome, was still pervasively there. Still more the authority of the Greeks and Romans, which had been set up by the revival of learning, was, without their realising it, heavy even upon thinkers like Bodin, who did not scruple freely to criticise ancient authors. And so, in his thoughtful attempt to find a clew to universal history, he was hampered by theological and cosmic theories, the legacy of the past. It is significant of the trend of his mind that when he is discussing the periodic decline of science and letters, he suggests that it may be due to the direct action of God, punishing those who misapplied useful sciences to the destruction of men. But his speculations were particularly compromised by his belief in astrology, which, notwithstanding the efforts of humanists like Petrarch, Aeneas Sylvius, and Pico to discredit it, retained its hold over the minds of many eminent, otherwise emancipated, thinkers throughout the period of the Renaissance. [Footnote: Bodin was also a firm believer in sorcery. His La Demonomanie (1578) is a monument of superstition.] Here Bodin is in the company of Machiavelli and Lord Bacon. But not content with the doctrine of astral influence on human events, he sought another key to historical changes in the influence of numbers, reviving the ideas of Pythagoras and Plato, but working them out in a way of his own. He enumerates the durations of the lives of many famous men, to show that they can be expressed by powers of 7 and 9, or the product of these numbers. Other numbers which have special virtues are the powers of 12, the perfect number [Footnote: I.e. a number equal to the sum of all its factors.] 496, and various others. He gives many examples to prove that these mystic numbers determine the durations of empires and underlie historical chronology. For instance, the duration of the oriental monarchies from Ninus to the Conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great was 1728 (= 12 cubed) years. He gives the Roman republic from the foundation of Rome to the battle of Actium 729 (=9 cubed) years. [Footnote: Methodus, cap. v. pp. 265 sqq.] 4. From a believer in such a theory, which illustrates the limitations of men's outlook on the world in the Renaissance period, we could perhaps hardly expect a vision of Progress. The best that can be said for it is that, both here and in his astrological creed, Bodin is crudely attempting to bring human history into close connection with the rest of the universe, and to establish the view that the whole world is built on a divine plan by which all the parts are intimately interrelated. [Footnote: Cp. Baudrillart, J. Bodin et son temps, p. 148 (1853). This monograph is chiefly devoted to a full analysis of La Republique.] He is careful, however, to avoid fatalism. He asserts, as we have seen, that history depends largely on the will of men. And he comes nearer to the idea of Progress than any one before him; he is on the threshold. For if we eliminate his astrological and Pythagorean speculations, and various theological parentheses which do not disturb his argument, his work announces a new view of history which is optimistic regarding man's career on earth, without any reference to his destinies in a future life. And in this optimistic view there are three particular points to note, which were essential to the subsequent growth of the idea of Progress. In the first place, the decisive rejection of the theory of degeneration, which had been a perpetual obstacle to the apprehension of that idea. Secondly, the unreserved claim that his own age was fully equal, and in some respects superior, to the age of classical antiquity, in respect of science and the arts. He leaves the ancients reverently on their pedestal, but he erects another pedestal for the moderns, and it is rather higher. We shall see the import of this when we come to consider the intellectual movement in which the idea of Progress was afterwards to emerge. In the third place, he had a conception of the common interest of all the peoples of the earth, a conception which corresponded to the old ecumenical idea of the Greeks and Romans, [Footnote: See above, p. 23.] but had now a new significance through the discoveries of modern navigators. He speaks repeatedly of the world as a universal state, and suggests that the various races, by their peculiar aptitudes and qualities, contribute to the common good of the whole. This idea of the "solidarity" of peoples was to be an important element in the growth of the doctrine of Progress. [Footnote: Republique, Book v. cap. 1 (p. 690; ed. 1593); Methodus, cap. vi. p. 194; cap. vii. p. 360.] These ideas were in the air. Another Frenchman, the classical scholar, Louis Le Roy, translator of Plato and Aristotle, put forward similar views in a work of less celebrity, On the Vicissitude or Variety of the Things in the Universe. [Footnote: De la vicissitude ou variete des choses en l'univers, 1577, 2nd ed. (which I have used), 1584.] It contains a survey of great periods in which particular peoples attained an exceptional state of dominion and prosperity, and it anticipates later histories of civilisation by dwelling but slightly on political events and bringing into prominence human achievements in science, philosophy, and the arts. Beginning with the advance of man from primitive rudeness to ordered society--a sketch based on the conjectures of Plato in the Protagoras--Le Roy reviews the history, and estimates the merits, of the Egyptians, Assyrians and Persians, the Greeks, Romans and Saracens, and finally of the modern age. The facts, he thinks, establish the proposition that the art of warfare, eloquence, philosophy, mathematics, and the fine arts, generally flourish and decline together. But they do decline. Human things are not perpetual; all pass through the same cycle--beginning, progress, perfection, corruption, end. This, however, does not explain the succession of empires in the world, the changes of the scene of prosperity from one people or set of peoples to another. Le Roy finds the cause in providential design. God, he believes, cares for all parts of the universe and has distributed excellence in arms and letters now to Asia, now to Europe, again to Africa, letting virtue and vice, knowledge and ignorance travel from country to country, that all in their turn may share in good and bad fortune, and none become too proud through prolonged prosperity. But what of the modern age in Western Europe? It is fully the equal, he assevers, of the most illustrious ages of the past, and in some respects it is superior. Almost all the liberal and mechanical arts of antiquity, which had been lost for about 1200 years, have been restored, and there have been new inventions, especially printing, and the mariner's compass, and "I would give the third place to gunnery but that it seems invented rather for the ruin than for the utility of the human race." In our knowledge of astronomy and cosmography we surpass the ancients. "We can affirm that the whole world is now known, and all the races of men; they can interchange all their commodities and mutually supply their needs, as inhabitants of the same city or world-state." And hence there has been a notable increase of wealth. Vice and suffering, indeed, are as grave as ever, and we are afflicted by the trouble of heresies; but this does not prove a general deterioration of morals. If that inveterate complaint, the refrain chanted by old men in every age, were true, the world would already have reached the extreme limit of wickedness, and integrity would have disappeared utterly. Seneca long ago made the right criticism. Hoc maiores nostri questi sunt, hoc nos querimur, hoc posteri nostri querentur, eversos esse mores.... At ista stant loco eodem. Perhaps Le Roy was thinking particularly of that curious book the Apology for Herodotus, in which the eminent Greek scholar, Henri Estienne, exposed with Calvinistic prejudice the iniquities of modern times and the corruption of the Roman Church. [Footnote: L'Introduction au traite de la conformite des merveilles anciennes avec les modernes, ou traite preparatif a l'Apologie pour Herodote, ed. Ristelhuber, 2 vols., 1879. The book was published in 1566.] But if we are to judge by past experience, does it not follow that this modern age must go the same way as the great ages of the past which it rivals or even surpasses? Our civilisation, too, having reached perfection, will inevitably decline and pass away: is not this the clear lesson of history? Le Roy does not shirk the issue; it is the point to which his whole exposition has led and he puts it vividly. "If the memory of the past is the instruction of the present and the premonition of the future, it is to be feared that having reached so great excellence, power, wisdom, studies, books, industries will decline, as has happened in the past, and disappear--confusion succeeding to the order and perfection of to-day, rudeness to civilisation, ignorance to knowledge. I already foresee in imagination nations, strange in form, complexion, and costume, overwhelming Europe--like the Goths, Huns, Vandals, Lombards, Saracens of old--destroying our cities and palaces, burning our libraries, devastating all that is beautiful. I foresee in all countries wars, domestic and foreign, factions and heresies which will profane all things human and divine; famines, plagues, and floods; the universe approaching an end, world-wide confusion, and the return of things to their original chaos." [Footnote: It is characteristic of the age that in the last sentence the author goes beyond the issue and contemplates the possibility which still haunted men's minds that the end of the world might not be far off.] But having conducted us to this pessimistic conclusion Le Roy finds it repugnant, and is unwilling to acquiesce in it. Like an embarrassed dramatist he escapes from the knot which he has tied by introducing the deus ex machina. "However much these things proceed according to the fatal law of the world, and have their natural causes, yet events depend principally on Divine Providence which is superior to nature and alone knows the predetermined times of events." That is to say, it depends, after all, on Providence whether the argument from past experience is valid. Who knows whether the modern age may not prove the exception to the law which has hitherto prevailed? Let us act as if it would. This is the practical moral that Le Roy enforces in the last book of his dissertation. We must not allow ourselves to be paralysed or dismayed by the destinies of past civilisations, but must work hard to transmit to posterity all that has been achieved, and augment the discoveries of the past by new researches. For knowledge is inexhaustible. "Let us not be so simple as to believe that the ancients have known and said everything and left nothing to their successors. Or that nature gave them all her favours in order to remain sterile ever after." Here Le Roy lays down Bodin's principle which was to be asserted more urgently in the following century--the permanence of natural forces. Nature is the same now as always, and can produce as great intellects as ever. The elements have the same power, the constellations keep their old order, men are made of the same material. There is nothing to hinder the birth in this age of men equal in brains to Plato, Aristotle, or Hippocrates. Philosophically, Le Roy's conclusion is lame enough. We are asked to set aside the data of experience and act on an off-chance. But the determination of the optimist to escape from the logic of his own argument is significant. He has no conception of an increasing purpose or underlying unity in the history of man, but he thinks that Providence--the old Providence of St. Augustine, who arranged the events of Roman history with a view to the coming of Christ--may, for some unknown reason, prolong indefinitely the modern age. He is obeying the instinct of optimism and confidence which was already beginning to create the appropriate atmosphere for the intellectual revolution of the coming century. His book was translated into English, but neither in France nor in England had it the same influence as the speculations of Bodin. But it insinuated, as the reader will have observed, the same three views which Bodin taught, and must have helped to propagate them: that the world has not degenerated; that the modern age is not inferior to classical antiquity; and that the races of the earth form now a sort of "mundane republic." CHAPTER II. UTILITY THE END OF KNOWLEDGE: BACON 1. Among the great precursors of a new order of thought Francis Bacon occupies a unique position. He drew up a definite programme for a "great Renovation" of knowledge; he is more clearly conscious than his contemporaries of the necessity of breaking with the past and making a completely new start; and his whole method of thought seems intellectually nearer to us than the speculations of a Bruno or a Campanella. Hence it is easy to understand that he is often regarded, especially in his own country, as more than a precursor, as the first philosopher, of the modern age, definitely within its precincts. [Footnote: German critics have been generally severe on Bacon as deficient in the scientific spirit. Kuno Fischer, Baco van Verulam (1856). Liebig, Ueber Francis Bacon van Verulam und die Methode der Naturforschung (1863). Lange (Geschichte des Materialismus, i. 195) speaks of "die aberglaubische und eitle Unwissenschaftlichkeit Bacos."] It is not indeed a matter of fundamental importance how we classify these men who stood on the border of two worlds, but it must be recognised that if in many respects Bacon is in advance of contemporaries who cannot be dissociated from the Renaissance, in other respects, such as belief in astrology and dreams, he stands on the same ground, and in one essential point--which might almost be taken as the test of mental progress at this period--Bruno and Campanella have outstripped him. For him Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo worked in vain; he obstinately adhered to the old geocentric system. It must also be remembered that the principle which he laid down in his ambitious programme for the reform of science--that experiment is the key for discovering the secrets of nature--was not a new revelation. We need not dwell on the fact that he had been anticipated by Roger Bacon; for the ideas of that wonderful thinker had fallen dead in an age which was not ripe for them. But the direct interrogation of nature was already recognised both in practice and in theory in the sixteenth century. What Bacon did was to insist upon the principle more strongly and explicitly, and to formulate it more precisely. He clarified and explained the progressive ideas which inspired the scientific thought of the last period of the European Renaissance, from which he cannot, I think, be dissociated. But in clearing up and defining these progressive ideas, he made a contribution to the development of human thought which had far-reaching importance and has a special significance for our present subject. In the hopes of a steady increase of knowledge, based on the application of new methods, he had been anticipated by Roger Bacon, and further back by Seneca. But with Francis Bacon this idea of the augmentation of knowledge has an entirely new value. For Seneca the exploration of nature was a means of escaping from the sordid miseries of life. For the friar of Oxford the principal use of increasing knowledge was to prepare for the coming of Antichrist. Francis Bacon sounded the modern note; for him the end of knowledge is utility. [Footnote; The passages specially referred to are: De Aug. Sc. vii. i; Nov. Org. i. 81 and 3.] 2. The principle that the proper aim of knowledge is the amelioration of human life, to increase men's happiness and mitigate their sufferings--commodis humanis inservire--was the guiding star of Bacon in all his intellectual labour. He declared the advancement of "the happiness of mankind" to be the direct purpose of the works he had written or designed. He considered that all his predecessors had gone wrong because they did not apprehend that the finis scientarum, the real and legitimate goal of the sciences, is "the endowment of human life with new inventions and riches"; and he made this the test for defining the comparative values of the various branches of knowledge. The true object, therefore, of the investigation of nature is not, as the Greek philosophers held, speculative satisfaction, but to establish the reign of man over nature; and this Bacon judged to be attainable, provided new methods of attacking the problems were introduced. Whatever may be thought of his daring act in bringing natural science down from the clouds and assigning to her the function of ministering to the material convenience and comfort of man, we may criticise Bacon for his doctrine that every branch of science should be pursued with a single eye towards practical use. Mathematics, he thought, should conduct herself as a humble, if necessary, handmaid, without any aspirations of her own. But it is not thus that the great progress in man's command over nature since Bacon's age has been effected. Many of the most valuable and surprising things which science has succeeded in doing for civilisation would never have been performed if each branch of knowledge were not guided by its own independent ideal of speculative completeness. [Footnote: This was to be well explained by Fontenelle, Preface sur l'utilite des mathematiques, in Oeuvres (ed. 1729), iii, I sqq.] But this does not invalidate Bacon's pragmatic principle, or diminish the importance of the fact that in laying down the utilitarian view of knowledge he contributed to the creation of a new mental atmosphere in which the theory of Progress was afterwards to develop. 3. Bacon's respect for the ancients and his familiarity with their writings are apparent on almost every page he wrote. Yet it was one of his principal endeavours to shake off the yoke of their authority, which he recognised to be a fatal obstacle to the advancement of science. "Truth is not to be sought in the good fortune of any particular conjuncture of time"; its attainment depends on experience, and how limited was theirs. In their age "the knowledge both of time and of the world was confined and meagre; they had not a thousand years of history worthy of that name, but mere fables and ancient traditions; they were not acquainted with but a small portion of the regions and countries of the world." [Footnote: Nov. Org. i. 84; 56, 72, 73, 74.] In all their systems and scientific speculation "there is hardly one single experiment that has a tendency to assist mankind." Their theories were founded on opinion, and therefore science has remained stationary for the last two thousand years; whereas mechanical arts, which are founded on nature and experience, grow and increase. In this connection, Bacon points out that the word "antiquity" is misleading, and makes a remark which will frequently recur in writers of the following generations. Antiquitas seculi iuventus mundi; what we call antiquity and are accustomed to revere as such was the youth of the world. But it is the old age and increasing years of the world--the time in which we are now living--that deserves in truth to be called antiquity. We are really the ancients, the Greeks and Romans were younger than we, in respect to the age of the world. And as we look to an old man for greater knowledge of the world than from a young man, so we have good reason to expect far greater things from our own age than from antiquity, because in the meantime the stock of knowledge has been increased by an endless number of observations and experiments. Time is the great discoverer, and truth is the daughter of time, not of authority. Take the three inventions which were unknown to the ancients-printing, gunpowder, and the compass. These "have changed the appearance and state of the whole world; first in literature, then in warfare, and lastly in navigation; and innumerable changes have been thence derived, so that no empire, sect, or star appears to have exercised a greater power or influence on human affairs than these mechanical discoveries." [Footnote: Nov. Org. 129. We have seen that these three inventions had already been classed together as outstanding by Cardan and Le Roy. They also appear in Campanella. Bodin, as we saw, included them in a longer list.] It was perhaps the results of navigation and the exploration of unknown lands that impressed Bacon more than all, as they had impressed Bodin. Let me quote one passage. "It may truly be affirmed to the honour of these times, and in a virtuous emulation with antiquity, that this great building of the world had never through-lights made in it till the age of us and our fathers. For although they [the ancients] had knowledge of the antipodes... yet that mought be by demonstration, and not in fact; and if by travel, it requireth the voyage but of half the earth. But to circle the earth, as the heavenly bodies do, was not done nor enterprised till these later times: and therefore these times may justly bear in their word... plus ultra in precedence of the ancient non ultra.... And this proficience in navigation and discoveries may plant also an expectation of the further proficience and augmentation of all sciences, because it may seem that they are ordained by God to be coevals, that is, to meet in one age. For so the prophet Daniel, speaking of the latter times foretelleth, Plurimi pertransibunt, et multiplex erit scientia: as if the openness and through-passage of the world and the increase of knowledge were appointed to be in the same ages; as we see it is already performed in great part: the learning of these later times not much giving place to the former two periods or returns of learning, the one of the Grecians, the other of the Romans." [Footnote: Advancement of Learning, ii. 13, 14.] In all this we have a definite recognition of the fact that knowledge progresses. Bacon did not come into close quarters with the history of civilisation, but he has thrown out some observations which amount to a rough synthesis. [Footnote: Advancement, ii. 1, 6; Nov. Org. i. 78, 79, 85.] Like Bodin, he divided, history into three periods--(1) the antiquities of the world; (2) the middle part of time which comprised two sections, the Greek and the Roman; (3) "modern history," which included what we now call the Middle Ages. In this sequence three particular epochs stand out as fertile in science and favourable to progress--the Greek, the Roman, and our own--"and scarcely two centuries can with justice be assigned to each." The other periods of time are deserts, so far as philosophy and science are concerned. Rome and Greece are "two exemplar States of the world for arms, learning, moral virtue, policy, and laws." But even in those two great epochs little progress was made in natural philosophy. For in Greece moral and political speculation absorbed men's minds; in Rome, meditation and labour were wasted on moral philosophy, and the greatest intellects were devoted to civil affairs. Afterwards, in the third period, the study of theology was the chief occupation of the Western European nations. It was actually in the earliest period that the most useful discoveries for the comfort of human life were made, "so that, to say the truth, when contemplation and doctrinal science began, the discovery of useful works ceased." So much for the past history of mankind, during which many things conspired to make progress in the subjugation of nature slow, fitful, and fortuitous. What of the future? Bacon's answer is: if the errors of the past are understood and avoided there is every hope of steady progress in the modern age. But it might be asked. Is there not something in the constitution of things which determines epochs of stagnation and vigour, some force against which man's understanding and will are impotent? Is it not true that in the revolutions of ages there are floods and ebbs of the sciences, which flourish now and then decline, and that when they have reached a certain point they can proceed no further? This doctrine of Returns or ricorsi [Footnote: Bodin's conversiones.] is denounced by Bacon as the greatest obstacle to the advancement of knowledge, creating, as it does, diffidence or despair. He does not formally refute it, but he marshals the reasons for an optimistic view, and these reasons supply the disproof The facts on which the fatalistic doctrine of Returns is based can be explained without resorting to any mysterious law. [Footnote: Nov. Org. i. 92 sqq.] Progress has not been steady or continuous on account of the prejudices and errors which hindered men from setting to work in the right way. The difficulties in advancing did not arise from things which are not in our power; they were due to the human understanding, which wasted time and labour on improper objects. "In proportion as the errors which have been committed impeded the past, so do they afford reason to hope for the future." 4. But will the new period of advance, which Bacon expected and strove to secure, be of indefinite duration? He does not consider the question. His view that he lived in the old age of the world implies that he did not anticipate a vast tract of time before the end of mankind's career on earth. And an orthodox Christian of that time could hardly be expected to predict. The impression we get is that, in his sanguine enthusiasm, he imagined that a "prudent interrogation" of nature could extort all her secrets in a few generations. As a reformer he was so engaged in the immediate prospect of results that his imagination did not turn to the possibilities of a remoter future, though these would logically follow from his recognition of "the inseparable propriety of time which is ever more and more to disclose truth." He hopes everything from his own age in which learning has made her third visitation to the world, a period which he is persuaded will far surpass that of Grecian and Roman learning. [Footnote: Advancement, ii. 24.] If he could have revisited England in 1700 and surveyed what science had performed since his death his hopes might have been more than satisfied. But, animated though he was with the progressive spirit, as Leonardo da Vinci had been before him, all that he says of the prospects of an increase of knowledge fails to amount to the theory of Progress. He prepares the way, he leads up to it; but his conception of his own time as the old age of humanity excludes the conception of an indefinite advance in the future, which is essential if the theory is to have significance and value. And in regard to progress in the past, though he is clearer and more emphatic than Bodin, he hardly adds anything to what Bodin had observed. The novelty of his view lies not in his recognition of the advance of knowledge and its power to advance still further, but in the purpose which he assigned to it. [Footnote: Campanella held its purpose to be the contemplation of the wisdom of God; cp., for instance, De sensu rerum, Bk. iv. epilogus, where the world is described as statua Dei altissimi (p. 370; ed. 1620).] The end of the sciences is their usefulness to the human race. To increase knowledge is to extend the dominion of man over nature, and so to increase his comfort and happiness, so far as these depend on external circumstances. To Plato or Seneca, or to a Christian dreaming of the City of God, this doctrine would seem material and trivial; and its announcement was revolutionary: for it implied that happiness on earth was an end to be pursued for its own sake, and to be secured by co-operation for mankind at large. This idea is an axiom which any general doctrine of Progress must presuppose; and it forms Bacon's great contribution to the group of ideas which rendered possible the subsequent rise of that doctrine. Finally, we must remember that by Bacon, as by most of his Elizabethan contemporaries, the doctrine of an active intervening Providence, the Providence of Augustine, was taken as a matter of course, and governed more or less their conceptions of the history of civilisation. But, I think, we may say that Bacon, while he formally acknowledged it, did not press it or emphasise it. [Footnote: See Advancement, iii. II. On the influence of the doctrine on historical writing in England at the beginning of the seventeenth century see Firth, Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World (Proc. of British Academy, vol. viii., 1919), p. 8.] 5. Bacon illustrated his view of the social importance of science in his sketch of an ideal state, the New Atlantis. He completed only a part of the work, and the fragment was published after his death. [Footnote: In 1627. It was composed about 1623. It seems almost certain that he was acquainted with the Christianopolis of Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654), which had appeared in Latin in 1614, and contained a plan for a scientific college to reform the civilised world. Andreae, who was acquainted both with More and with Campanella, placed his ideal society in an island which he called Caphar Salama (the name of a village in Palestine). Andreae's work had also a direct influence on the Nova Solyma of Samuel Gott (1648). See the Introduction of F. E. Held to his edition of Christianopolis (1916). In Macaria, another imaginary state of the seventeenth century (A description of the famous Kingdoms of Macaria, 1641, by Hartlib), the pursuit of science is not a feature.] It is evident that the predominating interest that moved his imagination was different from that which guided Plato. While Plato aimed at securing a permanent solid order founded on immutable principles, the design of Bacon was to enable his imaginary community to achieve dominion over nature by progressive discoveries. The heads of Plato's city are metaphysicians, who regulate the welfare of the people by abstract doctrines established once for all; while the most important feature in the New Atlantis is the college of scientific investigators, who are always discovering new truths which may alter the conditions of life. Here, though only in a restricted field, an idea of progressive improvement, which is the note of the modern age, comes in to modify the idea of a fixed order which exclusively prevailed in ancient speculation. On the other hand, we must not ignore the fact that Bacon's ideal society is established by the same kind of agency as the ideal societies of Plato and Aristotle. It has not developed; it was framed by the wisdom of an original legislator Solamona. In this it resembles the other imaginary commonwealths of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The organisation of More's Utopia is fixed initially once for all by the lawgiver Utopus. The origin of Campanella's Civitas Solis is not expressly stated, but there can be no doubt that he conceived its institutions as created by the fiat of a single lawgiver. Harrington, in his Oceana, argues with Machiavelli that a commonwealth, to be well turned, must be the work of one man, like a book or a building. [Footnote: Harrington, Oceana, pp. 77-8, 3rd ed. (1747).] What measure of liberty Bacon would have granted to the people of his perfect state we cannot say; his work breaks off before he comes to describe their condition. But we receive the impression that the government he conceived was strictly paternal, though perhaps less rigorous than the theocratic despotism which Campanella, under Plato's influence, set up in the City of the Sun. But even Campanella has this in common with More--and we may be sure that Bacon's conception would have agreed here--that there are no hard-and-fast lines between the classes, and the welfare and happiness of all the inhabitants is impartially considered, in contrast with Plato's scheme in the Laws, where the artisans and manual labourers were an inferior caste existing less for their own sake than for the sake of the community as a whole. [Footnote: This however does not apply to the Republic, as is so commonly asserted. See the just criticisms of A. A. Trever, A History of Greek Economic Thought (Chicago, 1916), 49 sqq.] It may finally be pointed out that these three imaginary commonwealths stand together as a group, marked by a humaner temper than the ancient, and also by another common characteristic which distinguishes them, on one hand, from the ideal states of Plato and, on the other, from modern sketches of desirable societies. Plato and Aristotle conceived their constructions within the geographical limits of Hellas, either in the past or in the present. More, Bacon, and Campanella placed theirs in distant seas, and this remoteness in space helped to create a certain illusion, of reality. [Footnote: Civitas Solis, p. 461 (ed. 1620). Expectancy of end of world: Ib. p. 455.] The modern plan is to project the perfect society into a period of future time. The device of More and his successors was suggested by the maritime explorations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; the later method was a result of the rise of the idea of Progress. [Footnote: Similarly the ideal communistic states imagined by Euemerus and Iambulus in the southern seas owed their geographical positions to the popular interest in seafaring in the Indian Ocean in the age after Alexander. One wonders whether Campanella knew the account of the fictitious journey of Iambulus to the Islands of the Sun, in Diodorus Siculus, ii. 55-60.] 6. A word or two more may be said about the City of the Sun. Campanella was as earnest a believer in the interrogation of nature as Bacon, and the place which science and learning hold in his state (although research is not so prominent as in the New Atlantis), and the scientific training of all the citizens, are a capital feature. The progress in inventions, to which science may look forward, is suggested. The men of the City of the Sun "have already discovered the one art which the world seemed to lack--the art of flying; and they expect soon to invent ocular instruments which will enable them to see the invisible stars and auricular instruments for hearing the harmony of the spheres." Campanella's view of the present conditions and prospects of knowledge is hardly less sanguine than that of Bacon, and characteristically he confirms his optimism by astrological data. "If you only knew what their astrologers say about the coming age. Our times, they assert, have more history in a hundred years than the whole world in four thousand. More books have been published in this century than in five thousand years before. They dwell on the wonderful inventions of printing, of artillery, and of the use of the magnet,--clear signs of the times--and also instruments for the assembling of the inhabitants of the world into one fold," and show that these discoveries were conditioned by stellar influences. But Campanella is not very sure or clear about the future. Astrology and theology cause him to hesitate. Like Bacon, he dreams of a great Renovation and sees that the conditions are propitious, but his faith is not secure. The astronomers of his imaginary state scrutinise the stars to discover whether the world will perish or not, and they believe in the oracular saying of Jesus that the end will come like a thief in the night. Therefore they expect a new age, and perhaps also the end of the world. The new age of knowledge was about to begin. Campanella, Bruno, and Bacon stand, as it were, on the brink of the dividing stream, tenduntque manus ripae ulterioris amore. CHAPTER III. CARTESIANISM If we are to draw any useful lines of demarcation in the continuous flux of history we must neglect anticipations and announcements, and we need not scruple to say that, in the realm of knowledge and thought, modern history begins in the seventeenth century. Ubiquitous rebellion against tradition, a new standard of clear and precise thought which affects even literary expression, a flow of mathematical and physical discoveries so rapid that ten years added more to the sum of knowledge than all that had been added since the days of Archimedes, the introduction of organised co-operation to increase knowledge by the institution of the Royal Society at London, the Academy of Sciences at Paris, Observatories--realising Bacon's Atlantic dream--characterise the opening of a new era. For the ideas with which we are concerned, the seventeenth century centres round Descartes, whom an English admirer described as "the grand secretary of Nature." [Footnote: Joseph Glanvill, Vanity of Dogmatising, p. 211, 64] Though his brilliant mathematical discoveries were the sole permanent contribution he made to knowledge, though his metaphysical and physical systems are only of historical interest, his genius exercised a more extensive and transforming influence on the future development of thought than any other man of his century. Cartesianism affirmed the two positive axioms of the supremacy of reason, and the invariability of the laws of nature; and its instrument was a new rigorous analytical method, which was applicable to history as well as to physical knowledge. The axioms had destructive corollaries. The immutability of the processes of nature collided with the theory of an active Providence. The supremacy of reason shook the thrones from which authority and tradition had tyrannised over the brains of men. Cartesianism was equivalent to a declaration of the Independence of Man. It was in the atmosphere of the Cartesian spirit that a theory of Progress was to take shape. 1. Let us look back. We saw that all the remarks of philosophers prior to the seventeenth century, which have been claimed as enunciations of the idea of Progress, amount merely to recognitions of the obvious fact that in the course of the past history of men there have been advances and improvements in knowledge and arts, or that we may look for some improvements in the future. There is not one of them that adumbrates a theory that can be called a theory of Progress. We have seen several reasons why the idea could not emerge in the ancient or in the Middle Ages. Nor could it have easily appeared in the period of the Renaissance. Certain preliminary conditions were required, and these were not fulfilled till the seventeenth century. So long as men believed that the Greeks and Romans had attained, in the best days of their civilisation, to an intellectual plane which posterity could never hope to reach, so long as the authority of their thinkers was set up as unimpeachable, a theory of degeneration held the field, which excluded a theory of Progress. It was the work of Bacon and Descartes to liberate science and philosophy from the yoke of that authority; and at the same time, as we shall see, the rebellion began to spread to other fields. Another condition for the organisation of a theory of Progress was a frank recognition of the value of mundane life and the subservience of knowledge to human needs. The secular spirit of the Renaissance prepared the world for this new valuation, which was formulated by Bacon, and has developed into modern utilitarianism. There was yet a third preliminary condition. There can be no certainty that knowledge will continually progress until science has been placed on sure foundations. And science does not rest for us on sure foundations unless the invariability of the laws of nature is admitted. If we do not accept this hypothesis, if we consider it possible that the uniformities of the natural world may be changed from time to time, we have no guarantee that science can progress indefinitely. The philosophy of Descartes established this principle, which is the palladium of science; and thus the third preliminary condition was fulfilled. 2. During the Renaissance period the authority of the Greeks and Romans had been supreme in the realm of thought, and in the interest of further free development it was necessary that this authority should be weakened. Bacon and others had begun the movement to break down this tyranny, but the influence of Descartes was weightier and more decisive, and his attitude was more uncompromising. He had none of Bacon's reverence for classical literature; he was proud of having forgotten the Greek which he had learned as a boy. The inspiration of his work was the idea of breaking sharply and completely with the past, and constructing a system which borrows nothing from the dead. He looked forward to an advancement of knowledge in the future, on the basis of his own method and his own discoveries, [Footnote: Cf. for instance his remarks on medicine, at the end of the Discours de la methode.] and he conceived that this intellectual advance would have far-reaching effects on the condition of mankind. The first title he had proposed to give to his Discourse on Method was "The Project of a Universal Science which can elevate our Nature to its highest degree of Perfection." He regarded moral and material improvement as depending on philosophy and science. The justification of an independent attitude towards antiquity, on the ground that the world is now older and more mature, was becoming a current view. [Footnote: Descartes wrote: Non est quod antiquis multum tribuamus propter antiquitatem, sed nos potius iis seniores dicendi. Jam enim senior est mundus quam tune majoremque habemus rerum experientiam. (A fragment quoted by Baillet, Vie de Descartes, viii. 10.) Passages to the same effect occur in Malebranche, Arnauld, and Nicole. (See Bouillier, Histoire de la philosophie cartesienne, i. 482-3.) A passage in La Mothe Le Vayer's essay Sur l'opiniatrete in Orasius Tubero (ii. 218) is in point, if, as seems probable, the date of that work is 1632-33. "Some defer to the ancients and allow themselves to be led by them like children; others hold that the ancients lived in the youth of the world, and it is those who live to-day who are really the ancients, and consequently ought to carry most weight." See Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, p. 52. The passage of Pascal occurs in the Fragment d'un traite du vide, not published till 1779 (now included in the Pensees, Premiere Partie, Art. I), and therefore without influence on the origination of the theory of progress. It has been pointed out that Guillaume Colletet had in 1636 expressed a similar view (Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, v. 185-6).] Descartes expressed it like Bacon, and it was taken up and repeated by many whom Descartes influenced. Pascal, who till 1654 was a man of science and a convert to Cartesian ideas, put it in a striking way. The whole sequence of men (he says) during so many centuries should be considered as a single man, continually existing and continually learning. At each stage of his life this universal man profited by the knowledge he had acquired in the preceding stages, and he is now in his old age. This is a fuller, and probably an independent, development of the comparison of the race to an individual which we found in Bacon. It occurs in a fragment which remained unpublished for more than a hundred years, and is often quoted as a recognition, not of a general progress of man, but of a progress in human knowledge. To those who reproached Descartes with disrespect towards ancient thinkers he might have replied that, in repudiating their authority, he was really paying them the compliment of imitation and acting far more in their own spirit than those who slavishly followed them. Pascal saw this point. "What can be more unjust," he wrote, "than to treat our ancients with greater consideration than they showed towards their own predecessors, and to have for them this incredible respect which they deserve from us only because they entertained no such regard for those who had the same advantage (of antiquity) over them?" [Footnote: Pensees, ib.] At the same time Pascal recognised that we are indebted to the ancients for our very superiority to them in the extent of our knowledge. "They reached a certain point, and the slightest effort enables us to mount higher; so that we find ourselves on a loftier plane with less trouble and less glory." The attitude of Descartes was very different. Aspiring to begin ab integro and reform the foundations of knowledge, he ignored or made little of what had been achieved in the past. He attempted to cut the threads of continuity as with the shears of Atropos. This illusion [Footnote: He may be reproached himself with scholasticism in his metaphysical reasoning.] hindered him from stating a doctrine of the progress of knowledge as otherwise he might have done. For any such doctrine must take account of the past as well as of the future. But a theory of progress was to grow out of his philosophy, though he did not construct it. It was to be developed by men who were imbued with the Cartesian spirit. 3. The theological world in France was at first divided on the question whether the system of Descartes could be reconciled with orthodoxy or not. The Jesuits said no, the Fathers of the Oratory said yes. The Jansenists of Port Royal were enthusiastic Cartesians. Yet it was probably the influence of the great spiritual force of Jansenism that did most to check the immediate spread of Cartesian ideas. It was preponderant in France for fifty years. The date of the Discourse of Method is 1637. The Augustinus of Jansenius was published in 1640, and in 1643 Arnauld's Frequent Communion made Jansenism a popular power. The Jansenist movement was in France in some measure what the Puritan movement was in England, and it caught hold of serious minds in much the same way. The Jesuits had undertaken the task of making Christianity easy, of finding a compromise between worldliness and religion, and they flooded the world with a casuistic literature designed for this purpose. Ex opinionum varietate jugum Christi suavius deportatur. The doctrine of Jansenius was directed against this corruption of faith and morals. He maintained that there can be no compromise with the world; that casuistry is incompatible with morality; that man is naturally corrupt; and that in his most virtuous acts some corruption is present. Now the significance of these two forces--the stern ideal of the Jansenists and the casuistry of the Jesuit teachers--is that they both attempted to meet, by opposed methods, the wave of libertine thought and conduct which is a noticeable feature in the history of French society from the reign of Henry IV. to that of Louis XV. [Footnote: For the prevalence of "libertine" thought in France at the beginning of the seventeenth century see the work of the Pere Garasse, La Doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps ou pretendus tels, etc. (1623). Cp. also Brunetiere's illuminating study, "Jansenistes et Cartesiens" in Etudes critiques, 4me serie.] This libertinism had its philosophy, a sort of philosophy of nature, of which the most brilliant exponents were Rabelais and Moliere. The maxim, "Be true to nature," was evidently opposed sharply to the principles of the Christian religion, and it was associated with sceptical views which prevailed widely in France from the early years of the seventeenth century. The Jesuits sought to make terms by saying virtually: "Our religious principles and your philosophy of nature are not after all so incompatible in practice. When it comes to the application of principles, opinions differ. Theology is as elastic as you like. Do not abandon your religion on the ground that her yoke is hard." Jansenius and his followers, on the other hand, fought uncompromisingly with the licentious spirit of the time, maintaining the austerest dogmas and denouncing any compromise or condescension. And their doctrine had a wonderful success, and penetrated everywhere. Few of the great literary men of the reign of Louis XIV. escaped it. Its influence can be traced in the Maximes of La Rochefoucauld and the Caracteres of La Bruyere. It was through its influence that Moliere found it difficult to get some of his plays staged. It explains the fact that the court of Louis XIV., however corrupt, was decorous compared with the courts of Henry IV. and Louis XV.; a severe standard was set up, if it was not observed. The genius of Pascal made the fortunes of Jansenism. He outlived his Cartesianism and became its most influential spokesman. His Provinciales (1656) rendered abstruse questions of theology more or less intelligible, and invited the general public to pronounce an opinion on them. His lucid exposition interested every one in the abstruse problem, Is man's freedom such as not to render grace superfluous? But Pascal perceived that casuistry was not the only enemy that menaced the true spirit of religion for which Jansenism stood. He came to realise that Cartesianism, to which he was at first drawn, was profoundly opposed to the fundamental views of Christianity. His Pensees are the fragments of a work which he designed in defence of religion, and it is easy to see that this defence was to be specially directed against the ideas of Descartes. Pascal was perfectly right about the Cartesian conception of the Universe, though Descartes might pretend to mitigate its tendencies, and his fervent disciple, Malebranche, might attempt to prove that it was more or less reconcilable with orthodox doctrine. We need not trouble about the special metaphysical tenets of Descartes. The two axioms which he launched upon the world--the supremacy of reason, and the invariability of natural laws--struck directly at the foundations of orthodoxy. Pascal was attacking Cartesianism when he made his memorable attempt to discredit the authority of reason, by showing that it is feeble and deceptive. It was a natural consequence of his changed attitude that he should speak (in the Pensees) in a much less confident tone about the march of science than he had spoken in the passage which I quoted above. And it was natural that he should be pessimistic about social improvement, and that, keeping his eyes fixed on his central fact that Christianity is the goal of history, he should take only a slight and subsidiary interest in amelioration. The preponderant influence of Jansenism only began to wane during the last twenty years of the seventeenth century, and till then it seems to have been successful in counteracting the diffusion of the Cartesian ideas. Cartesianism begins to become active and powerful when Jansenism is beginning to decline. And it is just then that the idea of Progress begins definitely to emerge. The atmosphere in France was favourable for its reception. 4. The Cartesian mechanical theory of the world and the doctrine of invariable law, carried to a logical conclusion, excluded the doctrine of Providence. This doctrine was already in serious danger. Perhaps no article of faith was more insistently attacked by sceptics in the seventeenth century, and none was more vital. The undermining of the theory of Providence is very intimately connected with our subject; for it was just the theory of an active Providence that the theory of Progress was to replace; and it was not till men felt independent of Providence that they could organise a theory of Progress. Bossuet was convinced that the question of Providence was the most serious and pressing among all the questions of the day that were at issue between orthodox and heretical thinkers. Brunetiere, his fervent admirer, has named him the theologian of Providence, and has shown that in all his writings this doctrine is a leading note. It is sounded in his early sermons in the fifties, and it is the theme of his most ambitious work, the Discourse on Universal History, which appeared in 1681. [Footnote; It has been shown that on one hand he controverts Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicus, and on the other the dangerous methods of Richard Simon, one of the precursors of modern biblical criticism. Brunetiere, op. cit. 74-85.] This book, which has received high praise from those who most heartily dissent from its conclusions, is in its main issue a restatement of the view of history which Augustine had worked out in his memorable book. The whole course of human experience has been guided by Providence for the sake of the Church; that is, for the sake of the Church to which Bossuet belonged. Regarded as a philosophy of history the Discourse may seem little more than the theory of the De Civitate Dei brought up to date; but this is its least important aspect. We shall fail to understand it unless we recognise that it was a pragmatical, opportune work, designed for the needs of the time, and with express references to current tendencies of thought. One main motive of Bossuet in his lifelong concern for Providence was his conviction that the doctrine was the most powerful check on immorality, and that to deny it was to remove the strongest restraint on the evil side of human nature. There is no doubt that the free-living people of the time welcomed the arguments which called Providence in question, and Bossuet believed that to champion Providence was the most efficient means of opposing the libertine tendencies of his day. "Nothing," he declared in one of his sermons (1662), "has appeared more insufferable to the arrogance of libertines than to see themselves continually under the observation of this ever-watchful eye of Providence. They have felt it as an importunate compulsion to recognise that there is in Heaven a superior force which governs all our movements and chastises our loose actions with a severe authority. They have wished to shake off the yoke of this Providence, in order to maintain, in independence, an unteachable liberty which moves them to live at their own fancy, without fear, discipline, or restraint." [Passage from Bossuet, quoted by Brunetiere, op. cit. 58.] Bossuet was thus working in the same cause as the Jansenists. He had himself come under the influence of Descartes, whose work he always regarded with the deepest respect. The cautiousness of the master had done much to disguise the insidious dangers of his thought, and it was in the hands of those disciples who developed his system and sought to reconcile it at all points with orthodoxy that his ideas displayed their true nature. Malebranche's philosophy revealed the incompatibility of Providence--in the ordinary acceptation--with immutable natural laws. If the Deity acts upon the world, as Malebranche maintained, only by means of general laws, His freedom is abolished, His omnipotence is endangered, He is subject to a sort of fatality. What will become of the Christian belief in the value of prayers, if God cannot adapt or modify, on any given occasion, the general order of nature to the needs of human beings? These are some of the arguments which we find in a treatise composed by Fenelon, with the assistance of Bossuet, to demonstrate that the doctrine of Malebranche is inconsistent with piety and orthodox religion. They were right. Cartesianism was too strong a wine to be decanted into old bottles. [Footnote: Fenelon's Refutation of Malebranche's Traite de la nature et de la grace was not published till 1820. This work of Malebranche also provoked a controversy with Arnauld, who urged similar arguments.] Malebranche's doctrine of what he calls divine Providence was closely connected with his philosophical optimism. It enabled him to maintain the perfection of the universe. Admitting the obvious truth that the world exhibits many imperfections, and allowing that the Creator could have produced a better result if he had employed other means, Malebranche argued that, in judging the world, we must take into account not only the result but the methods by which it has been produced. It is the best world, he asserts, that could be framed by general and simple methods; and general and simple methods are the most perfect, and alone worthy of the Creator. Therefore, if we take the methods and the result together, a more perfect world is impossible. The argument was ingenious, though full of assumptions, but it was one which could only satisfy a philosopher. It is little consolation to creatures suffering from the actual imperfections of the system into which they are born to be told that the world might have been free from those defects, only in that case they would not have the satisfaction of knowing that it was created and conducted on theoretically superior principles. Though Malebranche's conception was only a metaphysical theory, metaphysical theories have usually their pragmatic aspects; and the theory that the universe is as perfect as it could be marks a stage in the growth of intellectual optimism which we can trace from the sixteenth century. It was a view which could appeal to the educated public in France, for it harmonised with the general spirit of self-complacency and hopefulness which prevailed among the higher classes of society in the reign of Louis XIV. For them the conditions of life under the new despotism had become far more agreeable than in previous ages, and it was in a spirit of optimism that they devoted themselves to the enjoyment of luxury and elegance. The experience of what the royal authority could achieve encouraged men to imagine that one enlightened will, with a centralised administration at its command, might accomplish endless improvements in civilisation. There was no age had ever been more glorious, no age more agreeable to live in. The world had begun to abandon the theory of corruption, degeneration, and decay. Some years later the optimistic theory of the perfection of the universe found an abler exponent in Leibnitz, whom Diderot calls the father of optimism. [Footnote: See particularly Monadologie, ad fin. published posthumously in German 1720, in Latin 1728; Theodicee, Section 341 (1710); and the paper, De rerum originatione radicali, written in 1697, but not published till 1840 (Opera philosophica, ed. Erdmann, p. 147 sqq).] The Creator, before He acted, had considered all possible worlds, and had chosen the best. He might have chosen one in which humanity would have been better and happier, but that would not have been the best possible, for He had to consider the interests of the whole universe, of which the earth with humanity is only an insignificant part. The evils and imperfections of our small world are negligible in comparison with the happiness and perfection of the whole cosmos. Leibnitz, whose theory is deduced from the abstract proposition that the Creator is perfect, does not say that now or at any given moment the universe is as perfect as it could be; its merit lies in its potentialities; it will develop towards perfection throughout infinite time. The optimism of Leibnitz therefore concerns the universe as a whole, not the earth, and would obviously be quite consistent with a pessimistic view of the destinies of humanity. He does indeed believe that it would be impossible to improve the universal order, "not only for the whole, but for ourselves in particular," and incidentally he notes the possibility that "in the course of time the human race may reach a greater perfection than we can imagine at present." But the significance of his speculation and that of Malebranche lies in the fact that the old theories of degeneration are definitely abandoned. CHAPTER IV. THE DOCTRINE OF DEGENERATION: THE ANCIENTS AND MODERNS 1. Outside the circle of systematic thinkers the prevalent theory of degeneration was being challenged early in the seventeenth century. The challenge led to a literary war, which was waged for about a hundred years in France and England; over the comparative merits of the ancients and the moderns. It was in the matter of literature, and especially poetry, that the quarrel was most acrimonious, and that the interest of the public was most keenly aroused, but the ablest disputants extended the debate to the general field of knowledge. The quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns used commonly to be dismissed as a curious and rather ridiculous episode in the history of literature. [Footnote: The best and fullest work on the subject is Rigault's "Histoire de la querelle des Anciens et des Modernes" (1856).] Auguste Comte was, I think, one of the first to call attention to some of its wider bearings. The quarrel, indeed, has considerable significance in the history of ideas. It was part of the rebellion against the intellectual yoke of the Renaissance; the cause of the Moderns, who were the aggressors, represented the liberation of criticism from the authority of the dead; and, notwithstanding the perversities of taste of which they were guilty, their polemic, even on the purely literary side, was distinctly important, as M. Brunetiere has convincingly shown, [Footnote: See his "L'evolution des genres dans l'histoire de la litterature."] in the development of French criticism. But the form in which the critical questions were raised forced the debate to touch upon a problem of greater moment. The question, Can the men of to-day contend on equal terms with the illustrious ancients, or are they intellectually inferior? implied the larger issue, Has nature exhausted her powers; is she no longer capable of producing men equal in brains and vigour to those whom she once produced; is humanity played out, or are her forces permanent and inexhaustible? The assertion of the permanence of the powers of nature by the champions of the Moderns was the direct contradiction of the theory of degeneration, and they undoubtedly contributed much towards bringing that theory into discredit. When we grasp this it will not be surprising to find that the first clear assertions of a doctrine of progress in knowledge were provoked by the controversy about the Ancients and Moderns. Although the great scene of the controversy was France, the question had been expressly raised by an Italian, no less a person than Alessandro Tassoni, the accomplished author of that famous ironical poem, "La Secchia rapita," which caricatured the epic poets of his day. He was bent on exposing the prejudices of his time and uttering new doctrine, and he created great scandal in Italy by his attacks on Petrarch, as well as on Homer and Aristotle. The earliest comparison of the merits of the ancients and the moderns will be found in a volume of Miscellaneous Thoughts which he published in 1620. [Footnote: Dieci libri di pensieri diversi (Carpi, 1620). The first nine books had appeared in 1612. The tenth contains the comparison. Rigault was the first to connect this work with the history of the controversy.] He speaks of the question as a matter of current dispute, [Footnote: It was incidental to the controversy which arose over the merits of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. That the subject had been discussed long before may be inferred from a remark of Estienne in his Apology for Herodotus, that while some of his contemporaries carry their admiration of antiquity to the point of superstition, others depreciate and trample it underfoot.] on which he proposes to give an impartial decision by instituting a comprehensive comparison in all fields, theoretical, imaginative, and practical. He begins by criticising the a priori argument that, as arts are brought to perfection by experience and long labour, the modern age must necessarily have the advantage. This reasoning, he says, is unsound, because the same arts and studies are not always uninterruptedly pursued by the most powerful intellects, but pass into inferior hands, and so decline or are even extinguished, as was the case in Italy in the decrepitude of the Roman Empire, when for many centuries the arts fell below mediocrity. Or, to phrase it otherwise, the argument would be admissible only if there were no breaches of continuity. [Footnote: Tassoni argues that a decline in all pursuits is inevitable when a certain point of excellence has been reached, quoting Velleius Paterculus (i. 17): difficilisque in perfecto mora est naturaliterque quod procedere non potest recedit.] In drawing his comparison Tassoni seeks to make good his claim that he is not an advocate. But while he awards superiority here and there to the ancients, the moderns on the whole have much the best of it. He takes a wide enough survey, including the material side of civilisation, even costume, in contrast with some of the later controversialists, who narrowed the field of debate to literature and art. Tassoni's Thoughts were translated into French, and the book was probably known to Boisrobert, a dramatist who is chiefly remembered for the part he took in founding the Academie francaise. He delivered a discourse before that body immediately after its institution (February 26, 1635), in which he made a violent and apparently scurrilous attack on Homer. This discourse kindled the controversy in France, and even struck a characteristic note. Homer--already severely handled by Tassoni--was to be the special target for the arrows of the Moderns, who felt that, if they could succeed in discrediting him, their cause would be won. Thus the gauntlet was flung--and it is important to note this--before the appearance of the Discourse of Method (1637); but the influence of Descartes made itself felt throughout the controversy, and the most prominent moderns were men who had assimilated Cartesian ideas. This seems to be true even of Desmarets de Saint Sorlin, who, a good many years after the discourse of Boisrobert, opened the campaign. Saint Sorlin had become a fanatical Christian; that was one reason for hating the ancients. [Footnote: For the views of Saint Sorlin see the Preface to his Clovis and his Traite pour juger des poefes grecs, latins, et francais, chap. iv. (1670). Cp. Rigault, Hist. de la querelle, p. 106. The polemic of Saint Sorlin extended over about five years (1669-73).] He was also, like Boisrobert, a bad poet; that was another. His thesis was that the history of Christianity offered subjects far more inspiring to a poet than those which had been treated by Homer and Sophocles, and that Christian poetry must bear off the palm from pagan. His own Clovis and Mary Magdalene or the Triumph of Grace were the demonstration of Homer's defeat. Few have ever heard of these productions; how many have read them? Curiously, about the same time an epic was being composed in England which might have given to the foolish contentions of Saint Sorlin some illusory plausibility. But the literary dispute does not concern us here. What does concern us is that Saint Sorlin was aware of the wider aspects of the question, though he was not seriously interested in them. Antiquity, he says, was not so happy or so learned or so rich or so stately as the modern age, which is really the mature old age, and as it were the autumn of the world, possessing the fruits and the spoils of all the past centuries, with the power to judge of the inventions, experiences, and errors of predecessors, and to profit by all that. The ancient world was a spring which had only a few flowers. Nature indeed, in all ages, produces perfect works but it is not so with the creations of man, which require correction; and the men who live latest must excel in happiness and knowledge. Here we have both the assertion of the permanence of the forces of nature and the idea, already expressed by Bacon and others, that the modern age has advantages over antiquity comparable to those of old age over childhood. 2. How seriously the question between the Moderns and the Ancients--on whose behalf Boileau had come forward and crossed swords with Saint Sorlin--was taken is shown by the fact that Saint Sorlin, before his death, solemnly bequeathed the championship of the Moderns to a younger man, Charles Perrault. We shall see how he fulfilled the trust. It is illustrated too by a book which appeared in the seventies, Les Entretiens d'Ariste et Eugene, by Bouhours, a mundane and popular Jesuit Father. In one of these dialogues the question is raised, but with a curious caution and evasiveness, which suggests that the author was afraid to commit himself; he did not wish to make enemies. [Footnote: Rigault notes that he makes one contribution to the subject, the idea that the torch of civilisation has passed from country to country, in different ages, e.g. from Greece to Rome, and recently from Italy to France. In the last century the Italians were first in doctrine and politesse. The present century is for France what the last was for Italy: "We have all the esprit and all the science, all other countries are barbarous in comparison" (p. 239, ed. 1782, Amsterdam). But, as we shall see, he had been anticipated by Hakewill, whose work was unknown to Rigault.] The general atmosphere in France, in the reign of Louis XIV., was propitious to the cause of the Moderns. Men felt that it was a great age, comparable to the age of Augustus, and few would have preferred to have lived at any other time. Their literary artists, Corneille, and then Racine and Moliere, appealed so strongly to their taste that they could not assign to them any rank but the first. They were impatient of the claims to unattainable excellence advanced for the Greeks and Romans. "The ancients," said Moliere, "are the ancients, we are the people of to-day." This might be the motto of Descartes, and it probably expressed a very general feeling. It was in 1687 that Charles Perrault--who is better remembered for his collection of fairy-tales than for the leading role which he played in this controversy--published his poem on "The Age of Louis the Great." The enlightenment of the present age surpasses that of antiquity,--this is the theme. La docte Antiquite dans toute sa duree A l'egal de nos jours ne fut point eclairee. Perrault adopts a more polite attitude to "la belle antiquite" than Saint Sorlin, but his criticism is more insidious. Greek and Roman men of genius, he suggests, were all very well in their own times, and might be considered divine by our ancestors. But nowadays Plato is rather tiresome; and the "inimitable Homer" would have written a much better epic if he had lived in the reign of Louis the Great. The important passage, however, in the poem is that in which the permanent power of nature to produce men of equal talent in every age is affirmed. A former les esprits comme a former les corps La Nature en tout temps fait les mesmes efforts; Son etre est immuable, et cette force aisee Dont elle produit tout ne s'est point epuisee; ..... De cette mesme main les forces infinies Produisent en tout temps de semblables genies. The "Age of Louis the Great" was a brief declaration of faith. Perrault followed it up by a comprehensive work, his Comparison of the Ancients and the Moderns (Parallele des Anciens et des Modernes), which appeared in four parts during the following years (1688-1696). Art, eloquence, poetry the sciences, and their practical applications are all discussed at length; and the discussion is thrown into the form of conversations between an enthusiastic champion of the modern age, who conducts the debate, and a devotee of antiquity, who finds it difficult not to admit the arguments of his opponent, yet obstinately persists in his own views. Perrault bases his thesis on those general considerations which we have met incidentally in earlier writers, and which were now almost commonplaces among those who paid any attention to the matter. Knowledge advances with time and experience; perfection is not necessarily associated with antiquity; the latest comers have inherited from their predecessors and added new acquisitions of their own. But Perrault has thought out the subject methodically, and he draws conclusions which have only to be extended to amount to a definite theory of the progress of knowledge. A particular difficulty had done much to hinder a general admission of progressive improvement in the past. The proposition that the posterior is better and the late comers have the advantage seemed to be incompatible with an obvious historical fact. We are superior to the men of the dark ages in knowledge and arts. Granted. But will you say that the men of the tenth century were superior to the Greeks and Romans? To this question--on which Tassoni had already touched--Perrault replies: Certainly not. There are breaches of continuity. The sciences and arts are like rivers, which flow for part of their course underground, and then, finding an opening, spring forth as abundant as when they plunged beneath the earth. Long wars, for instance, may force peoples to neglect studies and throw all their vigour into the more urgent needs of self-preservation; a period of ignorance may ensue but with peace and felicity knowledge and inventions will begin again and make further advances. [Footnote: The passages in Perrault's Parallele specially referred to in the text will be found in vol. i. pp. 35-7, 60-61, 67, 231-3.] It is to be observed that he does not, claim any superiority in talents or brain power for the moderns. On the contrary, he takes his stand on the principle which he had asserted in the "Age of Louis the Great," that nature is immutable. She still produces as great men as ever, but she does not produce greater. The lions of the deserts of Africa in our days do not differ in fierceness from those the days of Alexander the Great, and the best men of all times are equal in vigour. It is their work and productions that are unequal, and, given equally favourable conditions, the latest must be the best. For science and the arts depend upon the accumulation of knowledge, and knowledge necessarily increases as time goes on. But could this argument be applied to poetry and literary art, the field of battle in which the belligerents, including Perrault himself, were most deeply interested? It might prove that the modern age was capable of producing poets and men of letter no less excellent than the ancient masters, but did it prove that their works must be superior? The objection did not escape Perrault, and he answers it ingeniously. It is the function of poetry and eloquence to please the human heart, and in order to please it we must know it. Is it easier to penetrate the secrets of the human heart than the secrets of nature, or will it take less time? We are always making new discoveries about its passions and desires. To take only the tragedies of Corneille you will find there finer and more delicate reflections on ambition, vengeance, and jealousy than in all the books of antiquity. At the close of his Parallel, however, Perrault, while he declares the general superiority of the moderns, makes a reservation in regard to poetry and eloquence "for the sake of peace." The discussion of Perrault falls far short of embodying a full idea of Progress. Not only is he exclusively concerned with progress in knowledge--though he implies, indeed, without developing, the doctrine that happiness depends on knowledge--but he has no eyes for the future, and no interest in it. He is so impressed with the advance of knowledge in the recent past that he is almost incapable of imagining further progression. "Read the journals of France and England," he says, "and glance at the publications of the Academies of these great kingdoms, and you will be convinced that within the last twenty or thirty years more discoveries have been made in natural science than throughout the period of learned antiquity. I own that I consider myself fortunate to know the happiness we enjoy; it is a great pleasure to survey all the past ages in which I can see the birth and the progress of all things, but nothing which has not received a new increase and lustre in our own times. Our age has, in some sort, arrived at the summit of perfection. And since for some years the rate of the progress is much slower and appears almost insensible--as the days seem to cease lengthening when the solstice is near--it is pleasant to think that probably there are not many things for which we need envy future generations." Indifference to the future, or even a certain scepticism about it, is the note of this passage, and accords with the view that the world has reached its old age. The idea of the progress of knowledge, which Perrault expounds, is still incomplete. 3. Independently of this development in France, the doctrine of degeneration had been attacked, and the comparison of the ancients with the moderns incidentally raised, in England. A divine named George Hakewill published in 1627 a folio of six hundred pages to confute "the common error touching Nature's perpetual and universal decay." [Footnote: An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World, consisting in an Examination and Censure of the common Errour, etc. (1627, 1630, 1635).] He and his pedantic book, which breathes the atmosphere of the sixteenth century, are completely forgotten; and though it ran to three editions, it can hardly have attracted the attention of many except theologians. The writer's object is to prove that the power and providence of God in the government of the world are not consistent with the current view that the physical universe, the heavens and the elements, are undergoing a process of decay, and that man is degenerating physically, mentally, and morally. His arguments in general are futile as well as tedious. But he has profited by reading Bodin and Bacon, whose ideas, it would appear, were already agitating theological minds. A comparison between the ancients and the moderns arises in a general refutation of the doctrine of decay, as naturally as the question of the stability of the powers of nature arises in a comparison between the ancients and moderns. Hakewill protests against excessive admiration of antiquity, just because it encourages the opinion of the world's decay. He gives his argument a much wider scope than the French controversialists. For him the field of debate includes not only science, arts, and literature, but physical qualities and morals. He seeks to show that mentally and physically there has been no decay, and that the morals of modern Christendom are immensely superior to those of pagan times. There has been social progress, due to Christianity; and there has been an advance in arts and knowledge. Multa dies uariusque labor mutabilis aeui Rettulit in melius. Hakewill, like Tassoni, surveys all the arts and sciences, and concludes that the moderns are equal to the ancients in poetry, and in almost all other things excel them. [Footnote: Among modern poets equal to the ancients, Hakewill signalises Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser, Marot, Ronsard, Ariosto, Tasso (Book iii. chap. 8, Section 3).] One of the arguments which he urges against the theory of degeneration is pragmatic--its paralysing effect on human energy. "The opinion of the world's universal decay quails the hopes and blunts the edge of men's endeavours." And the effort to improve the world, he implies, is a duty we owe to posterity. "Let not then the vain shadows of the world's fatal decay keep us either from looking backward to the imitation of our noble predecessors or forward in providing for posterity, but as our predecessors worthily provided, for us, so let our posterity bless us in providing for them, it being still as uncertain to us what generations are still to ensue, as it was to our predecessors in their ages." We note the suggestion that history may be conceived as a sequence of improvements in civilisation, but we note also that Hakewill here is faced by the obstacle which Christian theology offered to the logical expansion of the idea. It is uncertain what generations are still to ensue. Roger Bacon stood before the same dead wall. Hakewill thinks that he is living in the last age of the world; but how long it shall last is a question which cannot be resolved, "it being one of those secrets which the Almighty hath locked up in the cabinet of His own counsel." Yet he consoles himself and his readers with a consideration which suggests that the end is not yet very near. [Footnote: See Book i. chap. 2, Section 4, p. 24.] "It is agreed upon all sides by Divines that at least two signs forerunning the world's end remain unaccomplished--the subversion of Rome and the conversion of the Jews. And when they shall be accomplished God only knows, as yet in man's judgment there being little appearance of the one or the other." It was well to be assured that nature is not decaying or man degenerating. But was the doctrine that the end of the world does not "depend upon the law of nature," and that the growth of human civilisation may be cut off at any moment by a fiat of the Deity, less calculated to "quail the hopes and blunt the edge of men's endeavours?" Hakewill asserted with confidence that the universe will be suddenly wrecked by fire. Una dies dabit exitio. Was the prospect of an arrest which might come the day after to-morrow likely to induce men to exert themselves to make provision for posterity? The significance of Hakewill lies in the fact that he made the current theory of degeneration, which stood in the way of all possible theories of progress, the object of a special inquiry. And his book illustrates the close connection between that theory and the dispute over the Ancients and Moderns. It cannot be said that he has added anything valuable to what may be found in Bodin and Bacon on the development of civilisation. The general synthesis of history which he attempts is equivalent to theirs. He describes the history of knowledge and arts, and all things besides, as exhibiting "a kind of circular progress," by which he means that they have a birth, growth, nourishing, failing and fading, and then within a while after a resurrection and reflourishing. [Footnote: Book iii. chap. 6, Section i, p. 259.] In this method of progress the lamp of learning passed from one people to another. It passed from the Orientals (Chaldeans and Egyptians) to the Greeks; when it was nearly extinguished in Greece it began to shine afresh among the Romans; and having been put out by the barbarians for the space of a thousand years it was relit by Petrarch and his contemporaries. In stating this view of "circular progress," Hakewill comes perilously near to the doctrine of Ricorsi or Returns which had been severely denounced by Bacon. In one point indeed Hakewill goes far beyond Bodin. It was suggested, as we saw, by the French thinker that in some respects the modern age is superior in conduct and morals to antiquity, but he said little on the matter. Hakewill develops the suggestion at great length into a severe and partial impeachment of ancient manners and morals. Unjust and unconvincing though his arguments are, and inspired by theological motives, his thesis nevertheless deserves to be noted as an assertion of the progress of man in social morality. Bacon, and the thinkers of the seventeenth century generally, confined their views of progress in the past to the intellectual field. Hakewill, though he overshot the mark and said nothing actually worth remembering, nevertheless anticipated the larger problem of social progress which was to come to the front in the eighteenth century. 4. During the forty years that followed the appearance of Hakewill's book much had happened in the world of ideas, and when we take up Glanvill's Plus ultra, or the Progress and Advancement of Knowledge since the days of Aristotle, [Footnote: The title is evidently suggested by a passage in Bacon quoted above, p. 55.] we breathe a different atmosphere. It was published in 1668, and its purpose was to defend the recently founded Royal Society which was attacked on the ground that it was inimical to the interests of religion and sound learning. For the Aristotelian tradition was still strongly entrenched in the English Church and Universities, notwithstanding the influence of Bacon; and the Royal Society, which realised "the romantic model" of Bacon's society of experimenters, repudiated the scholastic principles and methods associated with Aristotle's name. Glanvill was one of those latitudinarian clergymen, so common in the Anglican Church in the seventeenth century, who were convinced that religious faith must accord with reason, and were unwilling to abate in its favour any of reason's claims. He was under the influence of Bacon, Descartes, and the Cambridge Platonists, and no one was more enthusiastic than he in following the new scientific discoveries of his time. Unfortunately for his reputation he had a weak side. Enlightened though he was, he was a firm believer in witchcraft, and he is chiefly remembered not as an admirer of Descartes and Bacon, and a champion of the Royal Society, but as the author of Saducismus Triumphatus, a monument of superstition, which probably contributed to check the gradual growth of disbelief in witches and apparitions. His Plus ultra is a review of modern improvements of useful knowledge. It is confined to mathematics and science, in accordance with its purpose of justifying the Royal Society; and the discoveries of the past sixty years enable the author to present a far more imposing picture of modern scientific progress than was possible for Bodin or Bacon. [Footnote: Bacon indeed could have made out a more impressive picture of the new age if he had studied mathematics and taken the pains to master the evidence which was revolutionising astronomy. Glanvill had the advantage of comprehending the importance of mathematics for the advance of physical science.] He had absorbed Bacon's doctrine of utility. His spirit is displayed in the remark that more gratitude is due to the unknown inventor of the mariners' compass "than to a thousand Alexanders and Caesars, or to ten times the number of Aristotles. And he really did more for the increase of knowledge and the advantage of the world by this one experiment than the numerous subtile disputers that have lived ever since the erection of the school of talking." Glanvill, however, in his complacency with what has already been accomplished, is not misled into over-estimating its importance. He knows that it is indeed little compared with the ideal of attainable knowledge. The human design, to which it is the function of the Royal Society to contribute, is laid as low, he says, as the profoundest depths of nature, and reaches as high as the uppermost storey of the universe, extends to all the varieties of the great world, and aims at the benefit of universal mankind. Such a work can only proceed slowly, by insensible degrees. It is an undertaking wherein all the generations of men are concerned, and our own age can hope to do little more than to remove useless rubbish, lay in materials, and put things in order for the building. "We must seek and gather, observe and examine, and lay up in bank for the ages that come after." These lines on "the vastness of the work" suggest to the reader that a vast future will be needed for its accomplishment. Glanvill does not dwell on this, but he implies it. He is evidently unembarrassed by the theological considerations which weighed so heavily on Hakewill. He does not trouble himself with the question whether Anti-Christ has still to appear. The difference in general outlook between these two clergymen is an indication how the world had travelled in the course of forty years. Another point in Glanvill's little book deserves attention. He takes into his prospect the inhabitants of the Transatlantic world; they, too, are to share in the benefits which shall result from the subjugation of nature. "By the gaining that mighty continent and the numerous fruitful isles beyond the Atlantic, we have obtained a larger field of nature, and have thereby an advantage for more phenomena, and more helps both for knowledge and for life, which 'tis very like that future ages will make better use of to such purposes than those hitherto have done; and that science also may at last travel into those parts and enrich Peru with a more precious treasure than that of its golden mines, is not improbable." Sprat, the Bishop of Rochester, in his interesting History of the Royal Society, so sensible and liberal--published shortly before Glanvill's book,--also contemplates the extension of science over the world. Speaking of the prospect of future discoveries, he thinks it will partly depend on the enlargement of the field of western civilisation "if this mechanic genius which now prevails in these parts of Christendom shall happen to spread wide amongst ourselves and other civil nations, or if by some good fate it shall pass farther on to other countries that were yet never fully civilised." This then being imagin'd, that there may some lucky tide of civility flow into those lands which are yet salvage, then will a double improvement thence arise both in respect of ourselves and them. For even the present skilful parts of mankind will be thereby made more skilful, and the other will not only increase those arts which we shall bestow upon them, but will also venture on new searches themselves. He expects much from the new converts, on the ground that nations which have been taught have proved more capable than their teachers, appealing to the case of the Greeks who outdid their eastern masters, and to that of the peoples of modern Europe who received their light from the Romans but have "well nigh doubled the ancient stock of trades delivered to their keeping." 5. The establishment of the Royal Society in 1660 and the Academy of Sciences in 1666 made physical science fashionable in London and Paris. Macaulay, in his characteristic way, describes how "dreams of perfect forms of government made way for dreams of wings with which men were to fly from the Tower to the Abbey, and of double-keeled ships which were never to founder in the fiercest storm. All classes were hurried along by the prevailing sentiment. Cavalier and Roundhead, Churchman and Puritan were for once allied. Divines, jurists, statesmen, nobles, princes, swelled the triumph of the Baconian philosophy." The seeds sown by Bacon had at last begun to ripen, and full credit was given to him by those who founded and acclaimed the Royal Society. The ode which Cowley addressed to that institution might have been entitled an ode in honour of Bacon, or still better--for the poet seized the essential point of Bacon's labours--a hymn on the liberation of the human mind from the yoke of Authority. Bacon has broke that scar-crow Deity. Dryden himself, in the Annus Mirabilis, had turned aside from his subject, the defeat of the Dutch and England's mastery of the seas, to pay a compliment to the Society, and to prophesy man's mastery of the universe. Instructed ships shall sail to rich commerce, By which remotest regions are allied; Which makes one city of the universe, Where some may gain and all may be supplied. Then we upon our globe's last verge shall go, And view the ocean leaning on the sky, From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know, And on the lunar world securely pry. [Footnote: It may be noted that John Wilkins (Bishop of Chester) published in 1638 a little book entitled Discovery of a New World, arguing that the moon is inhabited. A further edition appeared in 1684. He attempted to compose a universal language (Sprat, Hist. of Royal Society, p. 251). His Mercury or the Secret and Swift Messenger (1641) contains proposals for a universal script (chap. 13). There is also an ingenious suggestion for the communication of messages by sound, which might be described as an anticipation of the Morse code. Wilkins and another divine, Seth Ward, the Bishop of Salisbury, belonged to the group of men who founded the Royal Society.] Men did not look far into the future; they did not dream of what the world might be a thousand or ten thousand years hence. They seem to have expected quick results. Even Sprat thinks that "the absolute perfection of the true philosophy" is not far off, seeing that "this first great and necessary preparation for its coming"--the institution of scientific co-operation--has been accomplished. Superficial and transient though the popular enthusiasm was, it was a sign that an age of intellectual optimism had begun, in which the science of nature would play a leading role. CHAPTER V. THE PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE: FONTENELLE 1. Nine months before the first part of Perrault's work appeared a younger and more brilliant man had formulated, in a short tract, the essential points of the doctrine of the progress of knowledge. It was Fontenelle. Fontenelle was an anima naturaliter moderna. Trained in the principles of Descartes, he was one of those who, though like Descartes himself, too critical to swear by a master, appreciated unreservedly the value of the Cartesian method. Sometimes, he says, a great man gives the tone to his age; and this is true of Descartes, who can claim the glory of having established a new art of reasoning. He sees the effects in literature. The best books on moral and political subjects are distinguished by an arrangement and precision which he traces to the esprit geometrique characteristic of Descartes. [Footnote: Sur l'utilite des mathematiques el de la physique (Oeuvres, iii. p. 6, ed. 1729).] Fontenelle himself had this "geometrical mind," which we see at its best in Descartes and Hobbes and Spinoza. He had indeed a considerable aptitude for letters. He wrote poor verses, and could not distinguish good poetry from bad. That perhaps was the defect of l'esprit geometrique. But he wrote lucid prose. There was an ironical side to his temper, and he had an ingenious paradoxical wit, which he indulged, with no little felicity, in his early work, Dialogues of the Dead. These conversations, though they show no dramatic power and are simply a vehicle for the author's satirical criticisms on life, are written with a light touch, and are full of surprises and unexpected turns. The very choice of the interlocutors shows a curious fancy, which we do not associate with the geometrical intellect. Descartes is confronted with the Third False Demetrius, and we wonder what the gourmet Apicius will find to say to Galileo. 2. In the Dialogues of the Dead, which appeared in 1683, the Ancient and Modern controversy is touched on more than once, and it is the subject of the conversation between Socrates and Montaigne. Socrates ironically professes to expect that the age of Montaigne will show a vast improvement on his own; that men will have profited by the experience of many centuries; and that the old age of the world will be wiser and better regulated than its youth. Montaigne assures him that it is not so, and that the vigorous types of antiquity, like Pericles, Aristides, and Socrates himself, are no longer to be found. To this assertion Socrates opposes the doctrine of the permanence of the forces of Nature. Nature has not degenerated in her other works; why should she cease to produce reasonable men? He goes on to observe that antiquity is enlarged and exalted by distance: "In our own day we esteemed our ancestors more than they deserved, and now our posterity esteems us more than we deserve. There is really no difference between our ancestors, ourselves, and our posterity. C'est toujours la meme chose." But, objects Montaigne, I should have thought that things were always changing; that different ages had their different characters. Are there not ages of learning and ages of ignorance, rude ages and polite? True, replies Socrates, but these are only externalities. The heart of man does not change with the fashions of his life. The order of Nature remains constant (l'ordre general de la Nature a l'air bien constant). This conclusion harmonises with the general spirit of the Dialogues. The permanence of the forces of Nature is asserted, but for the purpose of dismissing the whole controversy as rather futile. Elsewhere modern discoveries, like the circulation of the blood and the motions of the earth, are criticised as useless; adding nothing to the happiness and pleasures of mankind. Men acquired, at an early period, a certain amount of useful knowledge, to which they have added nothing; since then they have been slowly discovering things that are unnecessary. Nature has not been so unjust as to allow one age to enjoy more pleasures than another. And what is the value of civilisation? It moulds our words, and embarrasses our actions; it does not affect our feelings. [Footnote: See the dialogues of Harvey with Erasistratus (a Greek physician of the third century B.C.); Galileo with Apicius; Montezuma with Fernando Cortez.] One might hardly have expected the author of these Dialogues to come forward a few years later as a champion of the Moderns, even though, in the dedicatory epistle to Lucian, he compared France to Greece. But he was seriously interested in the debated question, as an intellectual problem, and in January 1688 he published his Digression on the Ancients and Moderns, a short pamphlet, but weightier and more suggestive than the large work of his friend Perrault, which began to appear nine months later. 3. The question of pre-eminence between the Ancients and Moderns is reducible to another. Were trees in ancient times greater than to-day? If they were, then Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes cannot be equalled in modern times; if they were not, they can. Fontenelle states the problem in this succinct way at the beginning of the Digression. The permanence of the forces of Nature had been asserted by Saint Sorlin and Perrault; they had offered no proof, and had used the principle rather incidentally and by way of illustration. But the whole inquiry hinged on it. If it can be shown that man has not degenerated, the cause of the Moderns is practically won. The issue of the controversy must be decided not by rhetoric but by physics. And Fontenelle offers what he regards as a formal Cartesian proof of the permanence of natural forces. If the Ancients had better intellects than ours, the brains of that age must have been better arranged, formed of firmer or more delicate fibres, fuller of "animal spirits." But if such a difference existed, Nature must have been more vigorous; and in that case the trees must have profited by that superior vigour and have been larger and finer. The truth is that Nature has in her hands a certain paste which is always the same, which she is ever turning over and over again in a thousand ways, and of which she forms men, animals, and plants. She has not formed Homer, Demosthenes, and Plato of a finer or better kneaded clay than our poets, orators, and philosophers. Do not object that minds are not material. They are connected by a material bond with the brain, and it is the quality of this material bond that determines intellectual differences. But although natural processes do not change from age to age, they differ in their effects in different climates. "It is certain that as a result of the reciprocal dependence which exists between all parts of the material world, differences of climate, which so clearly affect the life of plants, must also produce some effect on human brains." May it not be said then that, in consequence of climatic conditions, ancient Greece and Rome produced men of mental qualities different from those which could be produced in France? Oranges grow easily in Italy; it is more difficult to cultivate them in France. Fontenelle replies that art and cultivation exert a much greater influence on human brains than on the soil; ideas can be transported more easily from one country to another than plants; and as a consequence of commerce and mutual influence, peoples do not retain the original mental peculiarities due to climate. This may not be true of the extreme climates in the torrid and glacial zones, but in the temperate zone we may discount entirely climatic influence. The climates of Greece and Italy and that of France are too similar to cause any sensible difference between the Greeks or Latins and the French. Saint Sorlin and Perrault had argued directly from the permanence of vigour in lions or trees to the permanence of vigour in man. If trees are the same as ever, brains must also be the same. But what about the minor premiss? Who knows that trees are precisely the same? It is an indemonstrable assumption that oaks and beeches in the days of Socrates and Cicero were not slightly better trees than the oaks and beeches of to-day. Fontenelle saw the weakness of this reasoning. He saw that it was necessary to prove that the trees, no less than human brains, have not degenerated. But his a priori proof is simply a statement of the Cartesian principle of the stability of natural processes, which he put in a thoroughly unscientific form. The stability of the laws of nature is a necessary hypothesis, without which science would be impossible. But here it was put to an illegitimate use. For it means that, given precisely the same conditions, the same physical phenomena will occur. Fontenelle therefore was bound to show that conditions had not altered in such a way as to cause changes in the quality of nature's organic productions. He did not do this. He did not take into consideration, for instance, that climatic conditions may vary from age to age as well as from country to country. 4. Having established the natural equality of the Ancients and Moderns, Fontenelle inferred that whatever differences exist are due to external conditions--(1) time; (2) political institutions and the estate of affairs in general. The ancients were prior in time to us, therefore they were the authors of the first inventions. For that, they cannot be regarded as our superiors. If we had been in their place we should have been the inventors, like them; if they were in ours, they would add to those inventions, like us. There is no great mystery in that. We must impute equal merit to the early thinkers who showed the way and to the later thinkers who pursued it. If the ancient attempts to explain the universe have been recently replaced by the discovery of a simple system (the Cartesian), we must consider that the truth could only be reached by the elimination of false routes, and in this way the numbers of the Pythagoreans, the ideas of Plato, the qualities of Aristotle, all served indirectly to advance knowledge. "We are under an obligation to the ancients for having exhausted almost all the false theories that could be formed." Enlightened both by their true views and by their errors, it is not surprising that we should surpass them. But all this applies only to scientific studies, like mathematics, physics, and medicine, which depend partly on correct reasoning and partly on experience. Methods of reasoning improve slowly, and the most important advance which has been made in the present age is the method inaugurated by Descartes. Before him reasoning was loose; he introduced a more rigid and precise standard, and its influence is not only manifest in our best works on physics and philosophy, but is even discernible in books on ethics and religion. We must expect posterity to excel us as we excel the Ancients, through improvement of method, which is a science in itself--the most difficult and least studied of all--and through increase of experience. Evidently the process is endless (il est evident que tout cela n'a point de fin), and the latest men of science must be the most competent. But this does not apply to poetry or eloquence, round which the controversy has most violently raged. For poetry and eloquence do not depend on correct reasoning. They depend principally on vivacity of imagination, and "vivacity of imagination does not require a long course of experiments, or a great multitude of rules, to attain all the perfection of which it is capable." Such perfection might be attained in a few centuries. If the ancients did achieve perfection in imaginative literature, it follows that they cannot be surpassed; but we have no right to say, as their admirers are fond of pretending, that they cannot be equalled. 5. Besides the mere nature of time, we have to take into account external circumstances in considering this question. If the forces of nature are permanent, how are we to explain the fact that in the barbarous centuries after the decline of Rome--the term Middle Ages has not yet come into currency--ignorance was so dense and deep? This breach of continuity is one of the plausible arguments of the advocates of the Ancients. Those ages, they say, were ignorant and barbarous because the Greek and Latin writers had ceased to be read; as soon as the study of the classical models revived there was a renaissance of reason and good taste. That is true, but it proves nothing. Nature never forgot how to mould the head of Cicero or Livy. She produces in every age men who might be great men; but the age does not always allow them to exert their talents. Inundations of barbarians, universal wars, governments which discourage or do not favour science and art, prejudices which assume all variety of shapes--like the Chinese prejudice against dissecting corpses--may impose long periods of ignorance or bad taste. But observe that, though the return to the study of the ancients revived, as at one stroke, the aesthetic ideals which they had created and the learning which they had accumulated, yet even if their works had not been preserved we should, though it would have cost us many long years of labour, have discovered for ourselves "ideas of the true and the beautiful." Where should we have found them? Where the ancients themselves found them, after much groping. 6. The comparison of the life of collective humanity to the life of a single man, which had been drawn by Bacon and Pascal, Saint Sorlin and Perrault, contains or illustrates an important truth which bears on the whole question. Fontenelle puts it thus. An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages; we might say that a single mind was being educated throughout all history. Thus this secular man, who has lived since the beginning of the world, has had his infancy in which he was absorbed by the most urgent needs of life; his youth in which he succeeded pretty well in things of imagination like poetry and eloquence, and even began to reason, but with more courage than solidity. He is now in the age of manhood, is more enlightened, and reasons better; but he would have advanced further if the passion for war had not distracted him and given him a distaste for the sciences to which he has at last returned. Figures, if they are pressed, are dangerous; they suggest unwarrantable conclusions. It may be illuminative to liken the development of humanity to the growth of an individual; but to infer that the human race is now in its old age, merely on the strength of the comparison, is obviously unjustifiable. That is what Bacon and the others had done. The fallacy was pointed out by Fontenelle. From his point of view, an "old age" of humanity, which if it meant anything meant decay as well as the wisdom of experience, was contrary to the principle of the permanence of natural forces. Man, he asserts, will have no old age. He will be always equally capable, of achieving the successes of his youth; and he will become more and more expert in the things which become the age of virility. Or "to drop metaphor, men will never degenerate." In ages to come we may be regarded--say in America--with the same excess of admiration with which we regard the ancients. We might push the prediction further. In still later ages the interval of time which divides us from the Greeks and Romans will appear so relatively small to posterity that they will classify us and the ancients as virtually contemporary; just in the same way as we group together the Greeks and Romans, though the Romans in their own day were moderns in relation to the Greeks. In that remote period men will be able to judge without prejudice the comparative merits of Sophocles and Corneille. Unreasonable admiration for the ancients is one of the chief obstacles to progress (le progres des choses). Philosophy not only did not advance, but even fell into an abyss of unintelligible ideas, because, through devotion to the authority of Aristotle, men sought truth in his enigmatic writings instead of seeking it in nature. If the authority of Descartes were ever to have the same fortune, the results would be no less disastrous. 7. This memorable brochure exhibits, without pedantry, perspicuous arrangement and the "geometrical" precision on which Fontenelle remarked as one of the notes of the new epoch introduced by Descartes. It displays too the author's open-mindedness, and his readiness to follow where the argument leads. He is able already to look beyond Cartesianism; he knows that it cannot be final. No man of his time was more open-minded and free from prejudice than Fontenelle. This quality of mind helped him to turn his eyes to the future. Perrault and his predecessors were absorbed in the interest of the present and the past. Descartes was too much engaged in his own original discoveries to do more than throw a passing glance at posterity. Now the prospect of the future was one of the two elements which were still needed to fashion the theory of the progress of knowledge. All the conditions for such a theory were present. Bodin and Bacon, Descartes and the champions of the Moderns--the reaction against the Renaissance, and the startling discoveries of science--had prepared the way; progress was established for the past and present. But the theory of the progress of knowledge includes and acquires its value by including the indefinite future. This step was taken by Fontenelle. The idea had been almost excluded by Bacon's misleading metaphor of old age, which Fontenelle expressly rejects. Man will have no old age; his intellect will never degenerate; and "the sound views of intellectual men in successive generations will continually add up." But progress must not only be conceived as extending indefinitely into the future; it must also be conceived as necessary and certain. This is the second essential feature of the theory. The theory would have little value or significance, if the prospect of progress in the future depended on chance or the unpredictable discretion of an external will. Fontenelle asserts implicitly the certainty of progress when he declares that the discoveries and improvements of the modern age would have been made by the ancients if they exchanged places with the moderns; for this amounts to saying that science will progress and knowledge increase independently of particular individuals. If Descartes had not been born, some one else would have done his work; and there could have been no Descartes before the seventeenth century. For, as he says in a later work, [Footnote: Preface des elemens de la geometrie de l'infini (OEuvres, x. p. 40, ed. 1790).] "there is an order which regulates our progress. Every science develops after a certain number of preceding sciences have developed, and only then; it has to await its turn to burst its shell." Fontenelle, then, was the first to formulate the idea of the progress, of knowledge, as a complete doctrine. At the moment the import and far-reaching effects of the idea were not realised, either by himself or by others, and his pamphlet, which appeared in the company of a perverse theory of pastoral poetry, was acclaimed merely as an able defence of the Moderns. 8. If the theory of the indefinite progress of knowledge is true, it is one of those truths which were originally established by false reasoning. It was established on a principle which excluded degeneration, but equally excluded evolution; and the whole conception of nature which Fontenelle had learned from Descartes is long since dead and buried. But it is more important to observe that this principle, which seemed to secure the indefinite progress of knowledge, disabled Fontenelle from suggesting a theory of the progress of society. The invariability of nature, as he conceived it, was true of the emotions and the will, as well as of the intellect. It implied that man himself would be psychically always the same--unalterable, incurable. L'ordre general de la Nature a Fair bien constant. His opinion of the human race was expressed in the Dialogues of the Dead, [Footnote: It may be seen too in the Plurality of Worlds.] and it never seems to have varied. The world consists of a multitude of fools, and a mere handful of reasonable men. Men's passions will always be the same and will produce wars in the future as in the past. Civilisation makes no difference; it is little more than a veneer. Even if theory had not stood in his way, Fontenelle was the last man who was likely to dream dreams of social improvement. He was temperamentally an Epicurean, of the same refined stamp as Epicurus himself, and he enjoyed throughout his long life--he lived to the age of a hundred--the tranquillity which was the true Epicurean ideal. He was never troubled by domestic cares, and his own modest ambition was satisfied when, at the age of forty, he was appointed permanent Secretary of the Academy of Sciences. He was not the man to let his mind dwell on the woes and evils of the world; and the follies and perversities which cause them interested him only so far as they provided material for his wit. It remains, however, noteworthy that the author of the theory of the progress of knowledge, which was afterwards to expand into a general theory of human Progress, would not have allowed that this extension was legitimate; though it was through this extension that Fontenelle's idea acquired human value and interest and became a force in the world. 9. Fontenelle did a good deal more than formulate the idea. He reinforced it by showing that the prospect of a steady and rapid increase of knowledge in the future was certified. The postulate of the immutability of the laws of nature, which has been the indispensable basis for the advance of modern science, is fundamental with Descartes. But Descartes did not explicitly insist on it, and it was Fontenelle, perhaps more than any one else, who made it current coin. That was a service performed by the disciple; but he seems to have been original in introducing the fruitful idea of the sciences as confederate and intimately interconnected [Footnote: Roger Bacon, as we saw, had a glimpse of this principle.]; not forming a number of isolated domains, as hitherto, but constituting a system in which the advance of one will contribute to the advance of the others. He exposed with masterly ability the reciprocal relations of physics and mathematics. No man of his day had a more comprehensive view of all the sciences, though he made no original contributions to any. His curiosity was universal, and as Secretary of the Academy he was obliged, according to his own high standard of his duty, to keep abreast of all that was being done in every branch of knowledge. That was possible then; it would be impossible now. In the famous series of obituary discourses which he delivered on savants who were members of the Academy, Fontenelle probably thought that he was contributing to the realisation of this ideal of "solidarity," for they amounted to a chronicle of scientific progress in every department. They are free from technicalities and extraordinarily lucid, and they appealed not only to men of science, but to those of the educated public who possessed some scientific curiosity. This brings us to another important role of Fontenelle--the role of interpreter of the world of science to the world outside. It is closely related to our subject. For the popularisation of science, which was to be one of the features of the nineteenth century, was in fact a condition of the success of the idea of Progress. That idea could not insinuate itself into the public mind and become a living force in civilised societies until the meaning and value of science had been generally grasped, and the results of scientific discovery had been more or less diffused. The achievements of physical science did more than anything else to convert the imaginations of men to the general doctrine of Progress. Before the later part of the seventeenth century, the remarkable physical discoveries of recent date had hardly escaped beyond academic circles. But an interest in these subjects began to become the fashion in the later years of Louis XIV. Science was talked in the salons; ladies studied mechanics and anatomy. Moliere's play, Les Femmes savantes, which appeared in 1672, is one of the first indications. In 1686 Fontenelle published his Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, in which a savant explains the new astronomy to a lady in the park of a country house. [Footnote: The Marquise of the Plurality of Worlds is supposed to be Madame de la Mesangere, who lived near Rouen, Fontenelle's birthplace. He was a friend and a frequent visitor at her chateau. See Maigron, Fontenelle, p. 42. The English translation of 1688 was by Glanvill. A new translation was published at Dublin as late as 1761.] It is the first book--at least the first that has any claim to be remembered--in the literature of popular science, and it is one of the most striking. It met with the success which it deserved. It was reprinted again and again, and it was almost immediately translated into English. The significance of the Plurality of Worlds is indeed much greater than that of a pioneer work in popularisation and a model in the art of making technical subjects interesting. We must remember that at this time the belief that the sun revolves round the earth still prevailed. Only the few knew better. The cosmic revolution which is associated with the names of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo was slow in producing its effects. It was rejected by Bacon; and the condemnation of Galileo by the Church made Descartes, who dreaded nothing so much as a collision with the ecclesiastical authorities unwilling to insist on it. [Footnote: Cp. Bouillier, Histoire de la philosophie cartesienne, i. p. 42-3.] Milton's Raphael, in the Eighth Book of Paradise Lost (published 1667), does not venture to affirm the Copernican system; he explains it sympathetically, but leaves the question open. [Footnote: Masson (Milton's Poetical Works, vol. 2) observes that Milton's life (1608-74) "coincides with the period of the struggle between the two systems" (p. 90). Milton's friends, the Smectymnians, in answer to Bishop Hall's Humble Remonstrance (1641), "had cited the Copernican doctrine as an unquestionable instance of a supreme absurdity." Masson has some apposite remarks on the influence of the Ptolemaic system "upon the thinkings and imaginations of mankind everywhere on all subjects whatsoever till about two hundred years ago."] Fontenelle's book was an event. It disclosed to the general public a new picture of the universe, to which men would have to accustom their imaginations. We may perhaps best conceive all that this change meant by supposing what a difference it would make to us if it were suddenly discovered that the old system which Copernicus upset was true after all, and that we had to think ourselves back into a strictly limited universe of which the earth is the centre. The loss of its privileged position by our own planet; its degradation, from a cosmic point of view, to insignificance; the necessity of admitting the probability that there may be many other inhabited worlds--all this had consequences ranging beyond the field of astronomy. It was as if a man who dreamed that he was living in Paris or London should awake to discover that he was really in an obscure island in the Pacific Ocean, and that the Pacific Ocean was immeasurably vaster than he had imagined. The Marquise, in the Plurality of Worlds, reacts to the startling illumination: "Voila l'univers si grand que je m'y perds, je ne sais plus ou je suis; je ne suis plus rien.--La terre est si effroyablement petite!" Such a revolution in cosmic values could not fail to exert a penetrating influence on human thought. The privileged position of the earth had been a capital feature of the whole doctrine, as to the universe and man's destinies, which had been taught by the Church, and it had made that doctrine more specious than it might otherwise have seemed. Though the Churches could reform their teaching to meet the new situation, the fact remained that the Christian scheme sounded less plausible when the central importance of the human race was shown to be an illusion. Would man, stripped of his cosmic pretensions, and finding himself lost in the immensities of space, invent a more modest theory of his destinies confined to his own little earth--si effroyablement petite? The eighteenth century answered this question by the theory of Progress. 10. Fontenelle is one of the most representative thinkers of that period--we have no distinguishing name for it--which lies between the characteristic thinkers of the seventeenth century and the characteristic thinkers of the eighteenth. It is a period of over sixty years, beginning about 1680, for though Montesquieu and Voltaire were writing long before 1740, the great influential works of the "age of illumination" begin with the Esprit des lois in 1748. The intellectual task of this intervening period was to turn to account the ideas provided by the philosophy of Descartes, and use them as solvents of the ideas handed down from the Middle Ages. We might almost call it the Cartesian period for, though Descartes was dead, it was in these years that Cartesianism performed its task and transformed human thought. When we speak of Cartesianism we do not mean the metaphysical system of the master, or any of his particular views such as that of innate ideas. We mean the general principles, which were to leave an abiding impression on the texture of thought: the supremacy of reason over authority, the stability of the laws of Nature, rigorous standards of proof. Fontenelle was far from accepting all the views of Descartes, whom he does not scruple to criticise; but he was a true Cartesian in the sense that he was deeply imbued with these principles, which generated, to use an expression of his own, "des especes de rebelles, qui conspiraient contre l'ignorance et les prejuges dominants." [Footnote: Eloge de M. Lemery.] And of all these rebels against ruling prejudices he probably did more than any single man to exhibit the consequences of the Cartesian ideas and drive them home. The Plurality of Worlds was a contribution to the task of transforming thought and abolishing ancient error; but the History of Oracles which appeared in the following year was more characteristic. It was a free adaptation of an unreadable Latin treatise by a Dutchman, which in Fontenelle's skilful hands becomes a vehicle for applying Cartesian solvents to theological authority. The thesis is that the Greek oracles were a sacerdotal imposture, and not, as ecclesiastical tradition said, the work of evil spirits, who were stricken silent at the death of Jesus Christ. The effect was to discredit the authority of the early Fathers of the Church, though the writer has the discretion to repudiate such an intention. For the publication was risky; and twenty years later a Jesuit Father wrote a treatise to confute it, and exposed the secret poison, with consequences which might have been disastrous for Fontenelle if he had not had powerful friends among the Jesuits themselves. Fontenelle had none of the impetuosity of Voltaire, and after the publication of the History of Oracles he confined his criticism of tradition to the field of science. He was convinced that "les choses fort etablies ne peuvent etre attaquees que par degrez." [Footnote: Eloge de M. Lemery.] The secret poison, of which Fontenelle prepared this remarkable dose with a touch which reminds us of Voltaire, was being administered in the same Cartesian period, and with similar precautions, by Bayle. Like Fontenelle, this great sceptic, "the father of modern incredulity" as he was called by Joseph de Maistre, stood between the two centuries and belonged to both. Like Fontenelle, he took a gloomy view of humanity; he had no faith in that goodness of human nature which was to be a characteristic dogma of the age of illumination. But he was untouched by the discoveries of science; he took no interest in Galileo or Newton; and while the most important work of Fontenelle was the interpretation of the positive advances of knowledge, Bayle's was entirely subversive. The principle of unchangeable laws in nature is intimately connected with the growth of Deism which is a note of this period. The function of the Deity was virtually confined to originating the machine of nature, which, once regulated, was set beyond any further interference on His part, though His existence might be necessary for its conservation. A view so sharply opposed to the current belief could not have made way as it did without a penetrating criticism of the current theology. Such criticism was performed by Bayle. His works were a school for rationalism for about seventy years. He supplied to the thinkers of the eighteenth century, English as well as French, a magazine of subversive arguments, and he helped to emancipate morality both from theology and from metaphysics. This intellectual revolutionary movement, which was propagated in salons as well as by books, shook the doctrine of Providence which Bossuet had so eloquently expounded. It meant the enthronement of reason--Cartesian reason--before whose severe tribunal history as well as opinions were tried. New rules of criticism were introduced, new standards of proof. When Fontenelle observed that the existence of Alexander the Great could not be strictly demonstrated and was no more than highly probable, [Footnote: Plurality des mondes, sixieme soir.] it was an undesigned warning that tradition would receive short shrift at the hands of men trained in analytical Cartesian methods. 11. That the issue between the claims of antiquity and the modern age should have been debated independently in England and France indicates that the controversy was an inevitable incident in the liberation of the human spirit from the authority of the ancients. Towards the end of the century the debate in France aroused attention in England and led to a literary quarrel, less important but not less acrimonious than that which raged in France. Sir William Temple's Essay, Wotton's Reflexions, and Swift's satire the Battle of the Books are the three outstanding works in the episode, which is however chiefly remembered on account of its connection with Bentley's masterly exposure of the fabricated letters of Phalaris. The literary debate in France, indeed, could not have failed to reverberate across the Channel; for never perhaps did the literary world in England follow with more interest, or appreciate more keenly the productions of the great French writers of the time. In describing Will's coffee-house, which was frequented by Dryden and all who pretended to be interested in polite letters, Macaulay says, "there was a faction for Perrault and the moderns, a faction for Boileau and the ancients." In the discussions on this subject a remarkable Frenchman who had long lived in England as an exile, M. de Saint Evremond, must have constantly taken part. The disjointed pieces of which Saint Evremond's writings consist are tedious and superficial, but they reveal a mind of much cultivation and considerable common sense. His judgement on Perrault's Parallel is that the author "has discovered the defects of the ancients better than he has made out the advantage of the moderns; his book is good and capable of curing us of abundance of errors." [Footnote: In a letter to the Duchess of Mazarin, Works, Eng. tr., iii. 418.] He was not a partisan. But his friend, Sir William Temple, excited by the French depreciations of antiquity, rushed into the lists with greater courage than discretion. Temple was ill equipped for the controversy, though his Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning (1690) is far from deserving the disdain of Macaulay, who describes its matter as "ludicrous and contemptible to the last degree." [Footnote: The only point in it which need be noted here is that the author questioned the cogency of Fontenelle's argument, that the forces of nature being permanent human ability is in all ages the same. "May there not," he asks, "many circumstances concur to one production that do not to any other in one or many ages?" Fontenelle speaks of trees. It is conceivable that various conditions and accidents "may produce an oak, a fig, or a plane-tree, that shall deserve to be renowned in story, and shall not perhaps be paralleled in other countries or times. May not the same have happened in the production, growth, and size of wit and genius in the world, or in some parts or ages of it, and from many more circumstances that contributed towards it than what may concur to the stupendous growth of a tree or animal?"] And it must be confessed that the most useful result of the Essay was the answer which it provoked from Wotton. For Wotton had a far wider range of knowledge, and a more judicious mind, than any of the other controversialists, with the exception of Fontenelle; and in knowledge of antiquity he was Fontenelle's superior. His inquiry stands out as the most sensible and unprejudiced contribution to the whole debate. He accepts as just the reasoning of Fontenelle "as to the comparative force of the geniuses of men in the several ages of the world and of the equal force of men's understandings absolutely considered in all times since learning first began to be cultivated amongst mankind." But this is not incompatible with the thesis that in some branches the ancients excelled all who came after them. For it is not necessary to explain such excellence by the hypothesis that there was a particular force of genius evidently discernible in former ages, but extinct long since, and that nature is now worn out and spent. There is an alternative explanation. There may have been special circumstances "which might suit with those ages which did exceed ours, and with those things wherein they did exceed us, and with no other age nor thing besides." But we must begin our inquiry by sharply distinguishing two fields of mental activity--the field of art, including poetry, oratory, architecture, painting, and statuary; and the field of knowledge, including mathematics, natural science, physiology, with all their dependencies. In the case of the first group there is room for variety of opinion; but the superiority of the Greeks and Romans in poetry and literary style may be admitted without prejudice to the mental equality of the moderns, for it may be explained partly by the genius of their languages and partly by political circumstances--for example, in the case of oratory, [Footnote: This had been noted by Fontenelle in his Digression.] by the practical necessity of eloquence. But as regards the other group, knowledge is not a matter of opinion or taste, and a definite judgement is possible. Wotton then proceeds to review systematically the field of science, and easily shows, with more completeness and precision than Perrault, the superiority of modern methods and the enormous strides which had been made. As to the future, Wotton expresses himself cautiously. It is not easy to say whether knowledge will advance in the next age proportionally to its advance in this. He has some fears that there may be a falling away, because ancient learning has still too great a hold over modern books, and physical and mathematical studies tend to be neglected. But he ends his Reflexions by the speculation that "some future age, though perhaps not the next, and in a country now possibly little thought of, may do that which our great men would be glad to see done; that is to say, may raise real knowledge, upon foundations laid in this age, to the utmost possible perfection to which it may be brought by mortal men in this imperfect state." The distinction, on which Wotton insisted, between the sciences which require ages for their development and the imaginative arts which may reach perfection in a short time had been recognised by Fontenelle, whose argument on this point differs from that of his friend Perrault. For Perrault contended that in literature and art, as well as in science, later generations can, through the advantage of time and longer experience, attain to a higher excellence than their predecessors. Fontenelle, on the other hand, held that poetry and eloquence have a restricted field, and that therefore there must be a time at which they reach a point of excellence which cannot be exceeded. It was his personal opinion that eloquence and history actually reached the highest possible perfection in Cicero and Livy. But neither Fontenelle nor Wotton came into close quarters with the problem which was raised--not very clearly, it is true--by Perrault. Is there development in the various species of literature and art? Do they profit and enrich themselves by the general advance of civilisation? Perrault, as we have seen, threw out the suggestion that increased experience and psychological study enabled the moderns to penetrate more deeply into the recesses of the human soul, and therefore to bring to a higher perfection the treatment of the character, motives, and passions of men. This suggestion admits of being extended. In the Introduction to his Revolt of Islam, Shelley, describing his own intellectual and aesthetic experiences, writes: The poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, and modern Italy, and our own country, has been to me like external nature, a passion and an enjoyment.... I have considered poetry in its most comprehensive sense; and have read the poets and the historians and the metaphysicians whose writings have been accessible to me--and have looked upon the beautiful and majestic scenery of the earth--as common sources of those elements which it is the province of the Poet to embody and combine. And he appends a note: In this sense there may be such a thing as perfectibility in works of fiction, notwithstanding the concession often made by the advocates of human improvement, that perfectibility is a term applicable only to science. In other words, all the increases of human experience, from age to age, all the speculative adventures of the intellect, provide the artist, in each succeeding generation, with more abundant sources for aesthetic treatment. As years go on, life in its widest sense offers more and more materials "which it is the province of the Poet to embody and combine." This is evidently true; and would it not seem to follow that literature is not excluded from participating in the common development of civilisation? One of the latest of the champions of the Moderns, the Abbe Terrasson, maintained that "to separate the general view of the progress of the human mind in regard to natural science, and in regard to belles-lettres, would be a fitting expedient to a man who had two souls, but it is useless to him who has only one." [Footnote: Abbe Terrasson, 1670-1750. His Philosophie applicable a tons les objets de l'esprit et de la raison was issued posthumously in 1754. His Dissertation critique sur l'Iliade appeared in 1715.]He put the matter in too abstract a way to carry conviction; but the nineteenth century was to judge that he was not entirely wrong. For the question was, as we shall see, raised anew by Madame de Stael, and the theory was finally to emerge that art and literature, like laws and institutions, are an expression of society and therefore inextricably linked with the other elements of social development--a theory, it may be observed, which while it has discredited the habit of considering works of art in a vacuum, dateless and detached, as they were generally considered by critics of the seventeenth century, leaves the aesthetic problem much where it was. Perrault's suggestion as to the enrichment of the material of the artist by new acquisitions would have served to bring literature and art into the general field of human development, without compromising the distinction on which Wotton and others insisted between the natural sciences and the aesthetic arts. But that distinction, emphatically endorsed by Voltaire, had the effect of excluding literature and art from the view of those who in the eighteenth century recognised progress in the other activities of man. 12. It is notable that in this literary controversy the Moderns, even Fontenelle, seem curiously negligent of the import of the theory which they were propounding of the intellectual progress of man. They treat it almost incidentally, as part of the case for the defence, not as an immensely important conclusion. Its bearings were more definitely realised by the Abbe Terrasson, whom I have just named. A geometer and a Cartesian, he took part in the controversy in its latest stage, when La Motte and Madame Dacier were the principal antagonists. The human mind, he said, has had its infancy and youth; its maturity began in the age of Augustus; the barbarians arrested its course till the Renaissance; in the seventeenth century, through the illuminating philosophy of Descartes, it passed beyond the stage which it had attained in the Augustan age, and the eighteenth century should surpass the seventeenth. Cartesianism is not final; it has its place in a development. It was made possible by previous speculations, and it will be succeeded by other systems. We must not pursue the analogy of humanity with an individual man and anticipate a period of old age. For unlike the individual, humanity "being composed of all ages," is always gaining instead of losing. The age of maturity will last indefinitely, because it is a progressive, not a stationary, maturity. Later generations will always be superior to the earlier, for progress is "a natural and necessary effect of the constitution of the human mind." CHAPTER VI. THE GENERAL PROGRESS OF MAN: ABBE DE SAINT-PIERRE The revolutionary speculations on the social and moral condition of man which were the outstanding feature of the eighteenth century in France, and began about 1750, were the development of the intellectual movement of the seventeenth, which had changed the outlook of speculative thought. It was one continuous rationalistic movement. In the days of Racine and Perrault men had been complacently conscious of the enlightenment of the age in which they were living, and as time went on, this consciousness became stronger and acuter; it is a note of the age of Voltaire. In the last years of Louis XIV., and in the years which followed, the contrast between this mental enlightenment and the dark background--the social evils and miseries of the kingdom, the gross misgovernment and oppression--began to insinuate itself into men's minds. What was the value of the achievements of science, and the improvement of the arts of life, if life itself could not be ameliorated? Was not some radical reconstruction possible, in the social fabric, corresponding to the radical reconstruction inaugurated by Descartes in the principles of science and in the methods of thought? Year by year the obscurantism of the ruling powers became more glaring, and the most gifted thinkers, towards the middle of the century, began to concentrate their brains on the problems of social science and to turn the light of reason on the nature of man and the roots of society. They wrought with unscrupulous resolution and with far-reaching effects. With the extension of rationalism into the social domain, it came about naturally that the idea of intellectual progress was enlarged into the idea of the general Progress of man. The transition was easy. If it could be proved that social evils were due neither to innate and incorrigible disabilities of the human being nor to the nature of things, but simply to ignorance and prejudices, then the improvement of his state, and ultimately the attainment of felicity, would be only a matter of illuminating ignorance and removing errors, of increasing knowledge and diffusing light. The growth of the "universal human reason"--a Cartesian phrase, which had figured in the philosophy of Malebranche--must assure a happy destiny to humanity. Between 1690 and 1740 the conception of an indefinite progress of enlightenment had been making its way in French intellectual circles, and must often have been a topic of discussion in the salons, for instance, of Madame de Lambert, Madame de Tencin, and Madame Dupin, where Fontenelle was one of the most conspicuous guests. To the same circle belonged his friend the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, and it is in his writings that we first find the theory widened in its compass to embrace progress towards social perfection. [Footnote: For his life and works the best book is J. Drouet's monograph, L'Abbe de Saint-Pierre: l'homme et l'oeuvre (1912), but on some points Goumy's older study (1859) is still worth consulting. I have used the edition of his works in 12 volumes published during his lifetime at Rotterdam, 1733-37.] 1. He was brought up on Cartesian principles, and he idealised Descartes somewhat as Lucretius idealised Epicurus. But he had no aptitude for philosophy, and he prized physical science only as far as it directly administered to the happiness of men. He was a natural utilitarian, and perhaps no one was ever more consistent in making utility the criterion of all actions and theories. Applying this standard he obliterated from the roll of great men most of those whom common opinion places among the greatest. Alexander, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne receive short shrift from the Abbe de Saint-Pierre. [Footnote: Compare Voltaire, Lettres sur les Anglais, xii., where Newton is acclaimed as the greatest man who ever lived.] He was superficial in his knowledge both of history and of science, and his conception of utility was narrow and a little vulgar. Great theoretical discoverers like Newton and Leibnitz he sets in a lower rank than ingenious persons who used their scientific skill to fashion some small convenience of life. Monuments of art, like Notre Dame, possessed little value in his eyes compared with a road, a bridge, or a canal. Like most of his distinguished contemporaries he was a Deist. On his deathbed he received the usual rites of the Church in the presence of his household, and then told the priest that he did not believe a word of all that. His real views are transparent in some of his works through the conventional disguises in which prudent writers of the time were wont to wrap their assaults on orthodoxy. To attack Mohammedanism by arguments which are equally applicable to Christianity was a device for propagating rationalism in days when it was dangerous to propagate it openly. This is what the Abbe did in his Discourse against Mohammedanism. Again, in his Physical Explanation of an Apparition he remarks: "To diminish our fanatical proclivities, it would be useful if the Government were to establish an annual prize, to be awarded by the Academy of Sciences, for the best explanation, by natural laws, of the extraordinary effects of imagination, of the prodigies related in Greek and Latin literature, and of the pretended miracles told by Protestants, Schismatics, and Mohammedans." The author carefully keeps on the right side of the fence. No Catholic authorities could take exception to this. But no intelligent reader could fail to see that all miracles were attacked. The miracles accepted by the Protestants were also believed in by the Catholics. He was one of the remarkable figures of his age. We might almost say that he was a new type--a nineteenth century humanitarian and pacifist in an eighteenth century environment. He was a born reformer, and he devoted his life to the construction of schemes for increasing human happiness. He introduced the word bienfaisance into the currency of the French language, and beneficence was in his eyes the sovran virtue. There were few departments of public affairs in which he did not point out the deficiencies and devise ingenious plans for improvement. Most of his numerous writings are projets--schemes of reform in government, economics, finance, education, all worked out in detail, and all aiming at the increase of pleasure and the diminution of pain. The Abbe's nimble intelligence had a weak side, which must have somewhat compromised his influence. He was so confident in the reasonableness of his projects that he always believed that if they were fairly considered the ruling powers could not fail to adopt them in their own interests. It is the nature of a reformer to be sanguine, but the optimism of Saint-Pierre touched naivete. Thousands might have agreed with his view that the celibacy of the Catholic clergy was an unwholesome institution, but when he drew up a proposal for its abolition and imagined that the Pope, unable to resist his arguments, would immediately adopt it, they might be excused for putting him down as a crank who could hardly be taken seriously. The form in which he put forward his memorable scheme for the abolition of war exhibits the same sanguine simplicity. All his plans, Rousseau observed, showed a clear vision of what their effects would be, "but he judged like a child of means to bring them about." But his abilities were great, and his actual influence was considerable. It would have been greater if he had possessed the gift of style. 2. He was not the first to plan a definite scheme for establishing a perpetual peace. Long ago Emeric Cruce had given to the world a proposal for a universal league, including not only the Christian nations of Europe, but the Turks, Persians, and Tartars, which by means of a court of arbitration sitting at Venice should ensure the settlement of all disputes by peaceful means. [Footnote: Le Nouveau Cynee (Paris, 1623). It has recently been reprinted with an English translation by T. W. Balch, Philadelphia (1909).] The consequence of universal peace, he said, will be the arrival of "that beautiful century which the ancient theologians promise after there have rolled by six thousand years. For they say that then the world will live happily and in repose. Now it happens that that time has nearly expired, and even if it is not, it depends only on the Princes to give beforehand this happiness to their peoples." Later in the century, others had ventilated similar projects in obscure publications, but the Abbe does not refer to any of his predecessors. He was not blinded by the superficial brilliancy of the reign of Louis XIV. to the general misery which the ambitious war-policy of that sovran brought both upon France and upon her enemies. His Annales politiques are a useful correction to the Siecle de Louis Quatorze. It was in the course of the great struggle of the Spanish Succession that he turned his attention to war and came to the conclusion that it is an unnecessary evil and even an absurdity. In 1712 he attended the congress at Utrecht in the capacity of secretary to Cardinal de Polignac, one of the French delegates. His experiences there confirmed his optimistic mind in the persuasion that perpetual peace was an aim which might readily be realised; and in the following year he published the memoir which he had been preparing, in two volumes, to which he added a third four years later. Though he appears not to have known the work of Cruce he did not claim originality. He sheltered his proposal under an august name, entitling it Project of Henry the Great to render Peace Perpetual, explained by the Abbe de Saint-Pierre. The reference is to the "great design" ascribed to Henry IV. by Sully, and aimed at the abasement of the power of Austria: a federation of the Christian States of Europe arranged in groups and under a sovran Diet, which would regulate international affairs and arbitrate in all quarrels. [Footnote: It is described in Sully's Memoires, Book XXX.] Saint-Pierre, ignoring the fact that Sully's object was to eliminate a rival power, made it the text for his own scheme of a perpetual alliance of all the sovrans of Europe to guarantee to one another the preservation of their states and to renounce war as a means of settling their differences. He drew up the terms of such an alliance, and taking the European powers one by one demonstrated that it was the plain interest of each to sign the articles. Once the articles were signed the golden age would begin. [Footnote: For Sully's grand Design compare the interesting article of Sir Geoffrey Butler in the Edinburgh Review, October 1919.] It is not to our present purpose to comment on this plan which the author with his characteristic simplicity seriously pressed upon the attention of statesmen. It is easy to criticise it in the light of subsequent history, and to see that, if the impossible had happened and the experiment had been tried and succeeded, it might have caused more suffering than all the wars from that day to this. For it was based on a perpetuation of the political status quo in Europe. It assumed that the existing political distribution of power was perfectly satisfactory and conformable to the best interests of all the peoples concerned. It would have hindered the Partition of Poland, but it would have maintained the Austrian oppression of Italians. The project also secured to the sovrans the heritage of their authority and guarded against civil wars. This assumed that the various existing constitutions were fundamentally just. The realisation of the scheme would have perpetuated all the evils of autocratic governments. Its author did not perceive that the radical evil in France was irresponsible power. It needed the reign of Louis XV. and the failure of attempts at reform under his successor to bring this home. The Abbe even thought that an increase of the despotic authority of the government was desirable, provided this were accompanied by an increase in the enlightenment and virtue of its ministers. In 1729 he published an abridgment of his scheme, and here he looks beyond its immediate results to its value for distant posterity. No one, he says, can imagine or foresee the advantages which such an alliance of European states will yield to Europe five hundred years after its establishment. Now we can see the first beginnings, but it is beyond the powers of the human mind to discern its infinite effects in the future. It may produce results more precious than anything hitherto experienced by man. He supports his argument by observing that our primitive ancestors could not foresee the improvements which the course of ages would bring in their rudimentary arrangements for securing social order. 3. It is characteristic that the Abbe de Saint-Pierre's ideas about Progress were a by-product of his particular schemes. In 1773 he published a Project to Perfect the Government of States, and here he sketched his view of the progressive course of civilisation. The old legend of the golden age, when men were perfectly happy, succeeded by the ages of silver, bronze, and iron, exactly reverses the truth of history. The age of iron came first, the infancy of society, when men were poor and ignorant of the arts; it is the present condition of the savages of Africa and America. The age of bronze ensued, in which there was more security, better laws, and the invention of the most necessary arts began. There followed the age of silver, and Europe has not yet emerged from it. Our reason has indeed reached the point of considering how war may be abolished, and is thus approaching the golden age of the future; but the art of government and the general regulation of society, notwithstanding all the improvements of the past, is still in its infancy. Yet all that is needed is a short series of wise reigns in our European states to reach the age of gold or, in other words, a paradise on earth. A few wise reigns. The Abbe shared the illusion of many that government is omnipotent and can bestow happiness on men. The imperfections of governments were, he was convinced, chiefly due to the fact that hitherto the ablest intellects had not been dedicated to the study of the science of governing. The most essential part of his project was the formation of a Political Academy which should do for politics what the Academy of Sciences did for the study of nature, and should act as an advisory body to ministers of state on all questions of the public welfare. If this proposal and some others were adopted, he believed that the golden age would not long be delayed. These observations--hardly more than obiter dicta--show that Saint-Pierre's general view of the world was moulded by a conception of civilisation progressing towards a goal of human happiness. In 1737 he published a special work to explain this conception: the Observations on the Continuous Progress of Universal Reason. He recurs to the comparison of the life of collective humanity to that of an individual, and, like Fontenelle and Terrasson, accentuates the point where the analogy fails. We may regard our race as composed of all the nations that have been and will be--and assign to it different ages. For instance, when the race is ten thousand years old a century will be what a single year is in the life of a centenarian. But there is this prodigious difference. The mortal man grows old and loses his reason and happiness through the enfeeblement of his bodily machine; whereas the human race, by the perpetual and infinite succession of generations, will find itself at the end of ten thousand years more capable of growing in wisdom and happiness than it was at the end of four thousand. At present the race is apparently not more than seven or eight thousand years old, and is only "in the infancy of human reason," compared with what it will be five or six thousand years hence. And when that stage is reached, it will only have entered on what we may call its first youth, when we consider what it will be when it is a hundred thousand years older still, continually growing in reason and wisdom. Here we have for the first time, expressed in definite terms, the vista of an immensely long progressive life in front of humanity. Civilisation is only in its infancy. Bacon, like Pascal, had conceived it to be in its old age. Fontenelle and Perrault seem to have regarded it as in its virility; they set no term to its duration, but they did not dwell on future prospects. The Abbe was the first to fix his eye on the remote destinies of the race and name immense periods of time. It did not occur to him to consider that our destinies are bound up with those of the solar system, and that it is useless to operate with millennial periods of progress unless you are assured of a corresponding stability in the cosmic environment. As a test of the progress which reason has already made, Saint-Pierre asserts that a comparison of the best English and French works on morals and politics with the best works of Plato and Aristotle proves that the human race has made a sensible advance. But that advance would have been infinitely greater were it not that three general obstacles retarded it and even, at some times and in some countries, caused a retrogression. These obstacles were wars, superstition, and the Jealousy of rulers who feared that progress in the science of politics would be dangerous to themselves. In consequence of these impediments it was only in the time of Bodin and Bacon that the human race began to start anew from the point which it had reached in the days of Plato and Aristotle. Since then the rate of progress has been accelerated, and this has been due to several causes. The expansion of sea commerce has produced more wealth, and wealth means greater leisure, and more writers and readers. In the second place, mathematics and physics are more studied in colleges, and their tendency is to liberate us from subjection to the authority of the ancients. Again, the foundation of scientific Academies has given facilities both for communicating and for correcting new discoveries; the art of printing provides a means for diffusing them; and, finally, the habit of writing in the vulgar tongue makes them accessible. The author might also have referred to the modern efforts to popularise science, in which his friend Fontenelle had been one of the leaders. He proceeds, in this connection, to lay down a rather doubtful principle, that in any two countries the difference in enlightenment between the lowest classes will correspond to the difference between the most highly educated classes. At present, he says, Paris and London are the places where human wisdom has reached the most advanced stage. It is certain that the ten best men of the highest class at Ispahan or Constantinople will be inferior in their knowledge of politics and ethics to the ten most distinguished sages of Paris or London. And this will be true in all classes. The thirty most intelligent children of the age of fourteen at Paris will be more enlightened than the thirty most intelligent children of the same age at Constantinople, and the same proportional difference will be true of the lowest classes of the two cities. But while the progress of speculative reason has been rapid, practical reason--the distinction is the Abbe's--has made little advance. In point of morals and general happiness the world is apparently much the same as ever. Our mediocre savants know twenty times as much as Socrates and Confucius, but our most virtuous men are not more virtuous than they. The growth of science has added much to the arts and conveniences of life, and to the sum of pleasures, and will add more. The progress in physical science is part of the progress of the "universal human reason," whose aim is the augmentation of our happiness. But there are two other sciences which are much more important for the promotion of happiness--Ethics and Politics--and these, neglected by men of genius, have made little way in the course of two thousand years. It is a grave misfortune that Descartes and Newton did not devote themselves to perfecting these sciences, so incomparably more useful for mankind than those in which they made their great discoveries. They fell into a prevailing error as to the comparative values of the various domains of knowledge, an error to which we must also ascribe the fact that while Academies of Sciences and Belles-Lettres exist there are no such institutions for Politics or Ethics. By these arguments he establishes to his own satisfaction that there are no irremovable obstacles to the Progress of the human race towards happiness, no hindrances that could not be overcome if governments only saw eye to eye with the Abbe de Saint-Pierre. Superstition is already on the decline; there would be no more wars if his simple scheme for permanent peace were adopted. Let the State immediately found Political and Ethical Academies; let the ablest men consecrate their talents to the science of government; and in a hundred years we shall make more progress than we should make in two thousand at the rate we are moving. If these things are done, human reason will have advanced so far in two or three millenniums that the wisest men of that age will be as far superior to the wisest of to-day as these are to the wisest African savages. This "perpetual and unlimited augmentation of reason" will one day produce an increase in human happiness which would astonish us more than our own civilisation would astonish the Kaffirs. 4. The Abbe de Saint-Pierre was indeed terribly at ease in confronting the deepest and most complex problems which challenge the intellect of man. He had no notion of their depth and complexity, and he lightly essayed them, treating human nature, as if it were an abstraction, by a method which he would doubtless have described as Cartesian. He was simply operating with the ideas which were all round him in a society saturated with Cartesianism,--supremacy of human reason, progressive enlightenment, the value of this life for its own sake, and the standard of utility. Given these ideas and the particular bias of his own mind, it required no great ingenuity to advance from the thought of the progress of science to the thought of progress in man's moral nature and his social conditions. The omnipotence of governments to mould the destinies of peoples, the possibility of the creation of enlightened governments, and the indefinite progress of enlightenment--all articles of his belief--were the terms of an argument of the sorites form, which it was a simple matter to develop in his brief treatise. But we must not do him injustice. He was a much more considerable thinker than posterity for a long time was willing to believe. It is easy to ridicule some of his projets, and dismiss him as a crank who was also somewhat of a bore. The truth, however, is that many of his schemes were sound and valuable. His economic ideas, which he thought out for himself, were in advance of his time, and he has even been described by a recent writer as "un contemporain egare au xviii siecle." Some of his financial proposals were put into practice by Turgot. But his significance in the development of the revolutionary ideas which were to gain control in the second half of the eighteenth century has hardly been appreciated yet, and it was imperfectly appreciated by his contemporaries. It is easy to see why. His theories are buried in his multitudinous projets. If, instead of working out the details of endless particular reforms, he had built up general theories of government and society, economics and education, they might have had no more intrinsic value, but he would have been recognised as the precursor of the Encyclopaedists. For his principles are theirs. The omnipotence of government and laws to mould the morals of peoples; the subordination of all knowledge to the goddess of utility; the deification of human reason; and the doctrine of Progress. His crude utilitarianism led him to depreciate the study of mathematical and physical sciences--notwithstanding his veneration for Descartes--as comparatively useless, and he despised the fine arts as waste of time and toil which might be better spent. He had no knowledge of natural science and he had no artistic susceptibility. The philosophers of the Encyclopaedia did not go so far, but they tended in this direction. They were cold and indifferent towards speculative science, and they were inclined to set higher value on artisans than on artists. In his religious ideas the Abbe differed from Voltaire and the later social philosophers in one important respect, but this very difference was a consequence of his utilitarianism. Like them he was a Deist, as we saw; he had imbibed the spirit of Bayle and the doctrine of the English rationalists, which were penetrating French society during the later part of his life. His God, however, was more than the creator and organiser of the Encyclopaedists, he was also the "Dieu vengeur et remunerateur" in whom Voltaire believed. But here his faith was larger than Voltaire's. For while Voltaire referred the punishments and rewards to this life, the Abbe believed in the immortality of the soul, in heaven and hell. He acknowledged that immortality could not be demonstrated, that it was only probable, but he clung to it firmly and even intolerantly. It is clear from his writings that his affection for this doctrine was due to its utility, as an auxiliary to the magistrate and the tutor, and also to the consideration that Paradise would add to the total of human happiness. But though his religion had more articles, he was as determined a foe of "superstition" as Voltaire, Diderot, and the rest. He did not go so far as they in aggressive rationalism--he belonged to an older generation--but his principles were the same. The Abbe de Saint-Pierre thus represents the transition from the earlier Cartesianism, which was occupied with purely intellectual problems, to the later thought of the eighteenth century, which concentrated itself on social problems. He anticipated the "humanistic" spirit of the Encyclopaedists, who were to make man, in a new sense, the centre of the world. He originated, or at least was the first to proclaim, the new creed of man's destinies, indefinite social progress. CHAPTER VII. NEW CONCEPTIONS OF HISTORY: MONTESQUIEU, VOLTAIRE, TURGOT The theory of human Progress could not be durably established by abstract arguments, or on the slender foundations laid by the Abbe de Saint-Pierre. It must ultimately be judged by the evidence afforded by history, and it is not accidental that, contemporaneously with the advent of this idea, the study of history underwent a revolution. If Progress was to be more than the sanguine dream of an optimist it must be shown that man's career on earth had not been a chapter of accidents which might lead anywhere or nowhere, but is subject to discoverable laws which have determined its general route, and will secure his arrival at the desirable place. Hitherto a certain order and unity had been found in history by the Christian theory of providential design and final causes. New principles of order and unity were needed to replace the principles which rationalism had discredited. Just as the advance of science depended on the postulate that physical phenomena are subject to invariable laws, so if any conclusions were to be drawn from history some similar postulate as to social phenomena was required. It was thus in harmony with the general movement of thought that about the middle of the eighteenth century new lines of investigation were opened leading to sociology, the history of civilisation, and the philosophy of history. Montesquieu's De l'esprit des lois, which may claim to be the parent work of modern social science, Voltaire's Essai sur les moeurs, and Turgot's plan of a Histoire universelle begin a new era in man's vision of the past. 1. Montesquieu was not among the apostles of the idea of Progress. It never secured any hold upon his mind. But he had grown up in the same intellectual climate in which that idea was produced; he had been nurtured both on the dissolving, dialectic of Bayle, and on the Cartesian enunciation of natural law. And his work contributed to the service, not of the doctrine of the past, but of the doctrine of the future. For he attempted to extend the Cartesian theory to social facts. He laid down that political, like physical, phenomena are subject to general laws. He had already conceived this, his most striking and important idea, when he wrote the Considerations on the Greatness and Decadence of the Romans (1734), in which he attempted to apply it: It is not Fortune who governs the world, as we see from the history of the Romans. There are general causes, moral or physical, which operate in every monarchy, raise it, maintain it, or overthrow it; all that occurs is subject to these causes; and if a particular cause, like the accidental result of a battle, has ruined a state, there was a general cause which made the downfall of this state ensue from a single battle. In a word, the principal movement (l'allure principale) draws with it all the particular occurrences. But if this excludes Fortune it also dispenses with Providence, design, and final causes; and one of the effects of the Considerations which Montesquieu cannot have overlooked was to discredit Bossuet's treatment of history. The Esprit des lois appeared fourteen years later. Among books which have exercised a considerable influence on thought few are more disappointing to a modern reader. The author had not the gift of what might be called logical architecture, and his work produces the effect of a collection of ideas which he was unable to co-ordinate in the clarity of a system. A new principle, the operation of general causes, is enthroned; but, beyond the obvious distinction of physical and moral, they are not classified. We have no guarantee that the moral causes are fully enumerated, and those which are original are not distinguished from those which are derived. The general cause which Montesquieu impresses most clearly on the reader's mind is that of physical environment--geography and climate. The influence of climate on civilisation was not a new idea. In modern times, as we have seen, it was noticed by Bodin and recognised by Fontenelle. The Abbe de Saint-Pierre applied it to explain the origin of the Mohammedan religion, and the Abbe Du Bos in his Reflexions on Poetry and Painting maintained that climate helps to determine the epochs of art and science. Chardin in his Travels, a book which Montesquieu studied, had also appreciated its importance. But Montesquieu drew general attention to it, and since he wrote, geographical conditions have been recognised by all inquirers as an influential factor in the development of human societies. His own discussion of the question did not result in any useful conclusions. He did not determine the limits of the action of physical conditions, and a reader hardly knows whether to regard them as fundamental or accessory, as determining the course of civilisation or only perturbing it. "Several things govern men," he says, "climate, religion, laws, precepts of government, historical examples, morals, and manners, whence is formed as their result a general mind (esprit general)." This co-ordination of climate with products of social life is characteristic of his unsystematic thought. But the remark which the author went on to make, that there is always a correlation between the laws of a people and its esprit general, was important. It pointed to the theory that all the products of social life are closely interrelated. In Montesquieu's time people were under the illusion that legislation has an almost unlimited power to modify social conditions. We have seen this in the case of Saint-Pierre. Montesquieu's conception of general laws should have been an antidote to this belief. It had however less effect on his contemporaries than we might have expected, and they found more to their purpose in what he said of the influence of laws on manners. There may be something in Comte's suggestion that he could not give his conception any real consistency or vigour, just because he was himself unconsciously under the influence of excessive faith in the effects of legislative action. A fundamental defect in Montesquieu's treatment of social phenomena is that he abstracted them from their relations in time. It was his merit to attempt to explain the correlation of laws and institutions with historical circumstances, but he did not distinguish or connect stages of civilisation. He was inclined to confound, as Sorel has observed, all periods and constitutions. Whatever be the value of the idea of Progress, we may agree with Comte that, if Montesquieu had grasped it, he would have produced a more striking work. His book announces a revolution in the study of political science, but in many ways belongs itself to the pre-Montesquieu era. 2. In the same years in which Montesquieu was busy on the composition of the Esprit des lois, Voltaire was writing his Age of Louis XIV. and his Essay on the Manners and Mind of Nations, and on the Principal Facts of History from Charlemagne to the Death of Louis XIII. The former work, which everybody reads still, appeared in 1751. Parts of the Essay, which has long since fallen into neglect, were published in the Mercure de France between 1745 and 1751; it was issued complete in 1756, along with the Age of Louis XIV., which was its continuation. If we add the Precis of the Reign of Louis XV. (1769), and observe that the Introduction and first fourteen chapters of the Essay sketch the history of the world before Charlemagne, and that China, India, and America are included in the survey, Voltaire's work amounts to a complete survey of the civilisation of the world from the earliest times to his own. If Montesquieu founded social science, Voltaire created the history of civilisation, and the Essay, for all its limitations, stands out as one of the considerable books of the century. In his Age of Louis XIV. he announced that his object was "to paint not the actions of a single man, but the mind of men (l'esprit des hommes) in the most enlightened age that had ever been," and that "the progress of the arts and sciences" was an essential part of his subject. In the same way he proposed in the Essay to trace "l'histoire de l'esprit humain," not the details of facts, and to show by what steps man advanced "from the barbarous rusticity" of the times of Charlemagne and his successors "to the politeness of our own." To do this, he said, was really to write the history of opinion, for all the great successive social and political changes which have transformed the world were due to changes of opinion. Prejudice succeeded prejudice, error followed error; "at last, with time men came to correct their ideas and learn to think." The motif of the book is, briefly, that wars and religions have been the great obstacles to the progress of humanity, and that if they were abolished, with the prejudices which engender them, the world would rapidly improve. "We may believe," he says, "that reason and industry will always progress more and more; that the useful arts will be improved; that of the evils which have afflicted men, prejudices, which are not their least scourge, will gradually disappear among all those who govern nations, and that philosophy, universally diffused, will give some consolation to human nature for the calamities which it will experience in all ages." This indeed is not the tone of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre. Voltaire's optimism was always tempered with cynicism. But the idea of Progress is there, though moderately conceived. And it is based on the same principle--universal reason implanted in man, which "subsists in spite of all the passions which make war on it, in spite of all the tyrants who would drown it in blood, in spite of the imposters who would annihilate it by superstition." And this was certainly his considered view. His common sense prevented him from indulging in Utopian speculations about the future; and his cynicism constantly led him to use the language of a pessimist. But at an early stage of his career he had taken up arms for human nature against that "sublime misanthrope" Pascal, who "writes against human nature almost as he wrote against the Jesuits"; and he returned to the attack at the end of his life. Now Pascal's Pensees enshrined a theory of life--the doctrine of original sin, the idea that the object of life is to prepare for death--which was sternly opposed to the spirit of Progress. Voltaire instinctively felt that this was an enemy that had to be dealt with. In a lighter vein he had maintained in a well-known poem, Le Mondain, [Footnote: 1756.] the value of civilisation and all its effects, including luxury, against those who regretted the simplicity of ancient times, the golden age of Saturn. O le bon temps que ce siecle de fer! Life in Paris, London, or Rome to-day is infinitely preferable to life in the garden of Eden. D'un bon vin frais ou la mousse ou la seve Ne gratta point le triste gosier d'Eve. La soie et l'or ne brillaient point chez eux. Admirez-vous pour cela nos aieux? Il leur manquait l'industrie et l'aisance: Est-ce vertu? c'etait pure ignorance. To return to the Essay, it flung down the gage of battle to that conception of the history of the world which had been brilliantly represented by Bossuet's Discours sur l'histoire universelle. This work was constantly in Voltaire's mind. He pointed out that it had no claim to be universal; it related only to four or five peoples, and especially the little Jewish nation which "was unknown to the rest of the world or justly despised," but which Bossuet made the centre of interest, as if the final cause of all the great empires of antiquity lay in their relations to the Jews. He had Bossuet in mind when he said "we will speak of the Jews as we would speak of Scythians or Greeks, weighing probabilities and discussing facts." In his new perspective the significance of Hebrew history is for the first time reduced to moderate limits. But it was not only in this particular, though central, point that Voltaire challenged Bossuet's view. He eliminated final causes altogether, and Providence plays no part on his historical stage. Here his work reinforced the teaching of Montesquieu. Otherwise Montesquieu and Voltaire entirely differed in their methods. Voltaire concerned himself only with the causal enchainment of events and the immediate motives of men. His interpretation of history was confined to the discovery of particular causes; he did not consider the operation of those larger general causes which Montesquieu investigated. Montesquieu sought to show that the vicissitudes of societies were subject to law; Voltaire believed that events were determined by chance where they were not consciously guided by human reason. The element of chance is conspicuous even in legislation: "almost all laws have been instituted to meet passing needs, like remedies applied fortuitously, which have cured one patient and kill others." On Voltaire's theory, the development of humanity might at any moment have been diverted into a different course; but whatever course it took the nature of human reason would have ensured a progress in civilisation. Yet the reader of the Essay and Louis XIV. might well have come away with a feeling that the security of Progress is frail and precarious. If fortune has governed events, if the rise and fall of empires, the succession of religions, the revolutions of states, and most of the great crises of history were decided by accidents, is there any cogent ground for believing that human reason, the principle to which Voltaire attributes the advance of civilisation, will prevail in the long run? Civilisation has been organised here and there, now and then, up to a certain point; there have been eras of rapid progress, but how can we be sure that these are not episodes, themselves also fortuitous? For growth has been followed by decay, progress by regress; can it be said that history, authorises the conclusion that reason will ever gain such an ascendancy that the play of chance will no longer be able to thwart her will? Is such a conclusion more than a hope, unsanctioned by the data of past experience, merely one of the characteristics of the age of illumination? Voltaire and Montesquieu thus raised fundamental questions of great moment for the doctrine of Progress, questions which belong to what was soon to be known as the Philosophy of History, a name invented by Voltaire, though hardly meant by him in the sense which it afterwards assumed. 3. Six years before Voltaire's Essay was published in its complete form a young man was planning a work on the same subject. Turgot is honourably remembered as an economist and administrator, but if he had ever written the Discourses on Universal History which he designed at the age of twenty-three his position in historical literature might have overshadowed his other claims to be remembered. We possess a partial sketch of its plan, which is supplemented by two lectures he delivered at the Sorbonne in 1750; so that we know his general conceptions. He had assimilated the ideas of the Esprit des lois, and it is probable that he had read the parts of Voltaire's work which had appeared in a periodical. His work, like Voltaire's, was to be a challenge to Bossuet's view of history; his purpose was to trace the fortunes of the race in the light of the idea of Progress. He occasionally refers to Providence but this is no more than a prudent lip-service. Providence has no functions in his scheme. The part which it played in Bossuet is usurped by those general causes which he had learned from Montesquieu. But his systematic mind would have organised and classified the ideas which Montesquieu left somewhat confused. He criticised the inductions drawn in the Esprit des lois concerning the influence of climate as hasty and exaggerated; and he pointed out that the physical causes can only produce their effects by acting on "the hidden principles which contribute to form our mind and character." It follows that the psychical or moral causes are the first element to consider, and it is a fault of method to try to evaluate physical causes till we have exhausted the moral, and are certain that the phenomena cannot be explained by these alone. In other words, the study of the development of societies must be based on psychology; and for Turgot, as for all his progressive contemporaries, psychology meant the philosophy of Locke. General necessary causes, therefore, which we should rather call conditions, have determined the course of history--the nature of man, his passions, and his reason, in the first place; and in the second, his environment,--geography and climate. But its course is a strict sequence of particular causes and effects, "which bind the state of the world (at a given moment) to all those which have preceded it." Turgot does not discuss the question of free-will, but his causal continuity does not exclude "the free action of great men." He conceives universal history as the progress of the human race advancing as an immense whole steadily, though slowly, through alternating periods of calm and disturbance towards greater perfection. The various units of the entire mass do not move with equal steps, because nature is not impartial with her gifts. Some men have talents denied to others, and the gifts of nature are sometimes developed by circumstances, sometimes left buried in obscurity. The inequalities in the march of nations are due to the infinite variety of circumstances; and these inequalities may be taken to prove that the world had a beginning, for in an eternal duration they would have disappeared. But the development of human societies has not been guided by human reason. Men have not consciously made general happiness the end of their actions. They have been conducted by passion and ambition and have never known to what goal they were moving. For if reason had presided, progress would soon have been arrested. To avoid war peoples would have remained in isolation, and the race would have lived divided for ever into a multitude of isolated groups, speaking different tongues. All these groups would have been limited in the range of their ideas, stationary in science, art, and government, and would never have risen above mediocrity. The history of China is an example of the results of restricted intercourse among peoples. Thus the unexpected conclusion emerges, that without unreason and injustice there would have been no progress. It is hardly necessary to observe that this argument is untenable. The hypothesis assumes that reason is in control among the primitive peoples, and at the same time supposes that its power would completely disappear if they attempted to engage in peaceful intercourse. But though Turgot has put his point in an unconvincing form, his purpose was to show that as a matter of fact "the tumultuous and dangerous passions" have been driving-forces which have moved the world in a desirable direction till the time should come for reason to take the helm. Thus, while Turgot might have subscribed to Voltaire's assertion that history is largely "un ramas de crimes, de folies, et de malheurs," his view of the significance of man's sufferings is different and almost approaches the facile optimism of Pope--"whatever is, is right." He regards all the race's actual experiences as the indispensable mechanism of Progress, and does not regret its mistakes and calamities. Many changes and revolutions, he observes, may seem to have had most mischievous effects; yet every change has brought some advantage, for it has been a new experience and therefore has been instructive. Man advances by committing errors. The history of science shows (as Fontenelle had pointed out) that truth is reached over the ruins of false hypotheses. The difficulty presented by periods of decadence and barbarism succeeding epochs of enlightenment is met by the assertion that in such dark times the world has not stood still; there has really been a progression which, though relatively inconspicuous, is not unimportant. In the Middle Ages, which are the prominent case, there were improvements in mechanical arts, in commerce, in some of the habits of civil life, all of which helped to prepare the way for happier times. Here Turgot's view of history is sharply opposed to Voltaire's. He considers Christianity to have been a powerful agent of civilisation, not a hinderer or an enemy. Had he executed his design, his work might well have furnished a notable makeweight to the view held by Voltaire, and afterwards more judicially developed by Gibbon, that "the triumph of barbarism and religion" was a calamity for the world. Turgot also propounded two laws of development. He observed that when a people is progressing, every step it takes causes an acceleration in the rate of progress. And he anticipated Comte's famous "law" of the three stages of intellectual evolution, though without giving it the extensive and fundamental significance which Comte claimed for it. "Before man understood the causal connection of physical phenomena, nothing was so natural as to suppose they were produced by intelligent beings, invisible and resembling ourselves; for what else would they have resembled?" That is Comte's theological stage. "When philosophers recognised the absurdity of the fables about the gods, but had not yet gained an insight into natural history, they thought to explain the causes of phenomena by abstract expressions such as essences and faculties." That is the metaphysical stage. "It was only at a later period, that by observing the reciprocal mechanical action of bodies hypotheses were formed which could be developed by mathematics and verified by experience." There is the positive stage. The observation assuredly does not possess the far-reaching importance which Comte attached to it; but whatever value it has, Turgot deserves the credit of having been the first to state it. The notes which Turgot made for his plan permit us to conjecture that his Universal History would have been a greater and more profound work than the Essay of Voltaire. It would have embodied in a digested form the ideas of Montesquieu to which Voltaire paid little attention, and the author would have elaborated the intimate connection and mutual interaction among all social phenomena--government and morals, religion, science, and arts. While his general thesis coincided with that of Voltaire--the gradual advance of humanity towards a state of enlightenment and reasonableness,--he made the idea of Progress more vital; for him it was an organising conception, just as the idea of Providence was for St. Augustine and Bossuet an organising conception, which gave history its unity and meaning. The view that man has throughout been blindly moving in the right direction is the counterpart of what Bossuet represented as a divine plan wrought out by the actions of men who are ignorant of it, and is sharply opposed to the views, of Voltaire and the other philosophers of the day who ascribed Progress exclusively to human reason consciously striving against ignorance and passion. CHAPTER VIII. THE ENCYCLOPAEDISTS AND ECONOMISTS 1. The intellectual movement which prepared French opinion for the Revolution and supplied the principles for reconstituting society may be described as humanistic in the sense that man was the centre of speculative interest. "One consideration especially that we ought never to lose from sight," says Diderot, "is that, if we ever banish a man, or the thinking and contemplative being, from above the surface of the earth, this pathetic and sublime spectacle of nature becomes no more than a scene of melancholy and silence... It is the presence of man that gives its interest to the existence of other beings... Why should we not make him a common centre?... Man is the single term from which we ought to set out." [Footnote: The passage from Diderot's article Encyclopedie is given as translated by Morley, Diderot, i, 145.] Hence psychology, morals, the structure of society, were the subjects which riveted attention instead of the larger supra-human problems which had occupied Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibnitz. It mattered little whether the universe was the best that could be constructed; what mattered was the relation of man's own little world to his will and capacities. Physical science was important only in so far as it could help social science and minister to the needs of man. The closest analogy to this development of thought is not offered by the Renaissance, to which the description HUMANISTIC has been conventionally appropriated, but rather by the age of illumination in Greece in the latter half of the fifth century B.C., represented by Protagoras, Socrates, and others who turned from the ultimate problems of the cosmos, hitherto the main study of philosophers, to man, his nature and his works. In this revised form of "anthropo-centrism" we see how the general movement of thought has instinctively adapted itself to the astronomical revolution. On the Ptolemaic system it was not incongruous or absurd that man, lord of the central domain in the universe, should regard himself as the most important cosmic creature. This is the view, implicit in the Christian scheme, which had been constructed on the old erroneous cosmology. When the true place of the earth was shown and man found himself in a tiny planet attached to one of innumerable solar worlds, his cosmic importance could no longer be maintained. He was reduced to the condition of an insect creeping on a "tas de boue," which Voltaire so vividly illustrated in Micromegas. But man is resourceful; [words in Greek]. Displaced, along with his home, from the centre of things, he discovers a new means of restoring his self-importance; he interprets his humiliation as a deliverance. Finding himself in an insignificant island floating in the immensity of space, he decides that he is at last master of his own destinies; he can fling away the old equipment of final causes, original sin, and the rest; he can construct his own chart and, bound by no cosmic scheme, he need take the universe into account only in so far as he judges it to be to his own profit. Or, if he is a philosopher, he may say that, after all, the universe for him is built out of his own sensations, and that by virtue of this relativity "anthropo-centrism" is restored in a new and more effective form. Built out of his own sensations: for the philosophy of Locke was now triumphant in France. I have used the term Cartesianism to designate, not the metaphysical doctrines of Descartes (innate ideas, two substances, and the rest), but the great principles which survived the passing of his metaphysical system--the supremacy of reason, and the immutability of natural laws, not subject to providential interventions. These principles still controlled thought, but the particular views of Descartes on mental phenomena were superseded in France by the psychology of Locke, whose influence was established by Voltaire and Condillac. The doctrine that all our ideas are derived from the senses lay at the root of the whole theory of man and society, in the light of which the revolutionary thinkers, Diderot, Helvetius, and their fellows, criticised the existing order and exposed the reigning prejudices. This sensationalism (which went beyond what Locke himself had really meant) involved the strict relativity of knowledge and led at once to the old pragmatic doctrine of Protagoras, that man is the measure of all things. And the spirit of the French philosophers of the eighteenth century was distinctly pragmatic. The advantage of man was their principle, and the value of speculation was judged by its definite service to humanity. "The value and rights of truth are founded on its utility," which is "the unique measure of man's judgements," one thinker asserts; another declares that "the useful circumscribes everything," l'utile circonscrit tout; another lays down that "to be virtuous is to be useful; to be vicious is to be useless or harmful; that is the sum of morality." Helvetius, anticipating Bentham, works out the theory that utility is the only possible basis of ethics. Bacon, the utilitarian, was extolled like Locke. [Footnote: The passages quoted on utility are from d'Holbach, Systems de la nature, i. c. 12, p. 224; c. 15, p. 312; Diderot, De I'interpretation de la nature in OEuvres, ii. p. 13; Raynal, Histoire des deux Indes, vii. p. 416. The effectiveness of the teaching may be illustrated from the Essay on Man, by Antoine Rivarol, whom Burke called the Tacitus of the Revolution. "The virtues are only virtues because they are useful to the human race." OEuvres choisis (ed. de Lescure), i. p. 211.] As, a hundred years before, his influence had inspired the foundation of the Royal Society, so now his name was invoked by the founders of the Encyclopaedia. [Footnote: See d'Alembert's tribute to him in the Discours preliminaire.] Beneath all philosophical speculation there is an undercurrent of emotion, and in the French philosophers of the eighteenth century this emotional force was strong and even violent. They aimed at practical results. Their work was a calculated campaign to transform the principles and the spirit of governments and to destroy sacerdotalism. The problem for the human race being to reach a state of felicity by its own powers, these thinkers believed that it was soluble by the gradual triumph of reason over prejudice and knowledge over ignorance. Violent revolution was far from their thoughts; by the diffusion of knowledge they hoped to create a public opinion which would compel governments to change the tenor of their laws and administration and make the happiness of the people their guiding principle. The optimistic confidence that man is perfectible, which means capable of indefinite improvement, inspired the movement as a whole, however greatly particular thinkers might differ in their views. Belief in Progress was their sustaining faith, although, occupied by the immediate problems of amelioration, they left it rather vague and ill-defined. The word itself is seldom pronounced in their writings. The idea is treated as subordinate to the other ideas in the midst of which it had grown up: Reason, Nature, Humanity, Illumination (lumieres). It has not yet entered upon an independent life of its own and received a distinct label, though it is already a vital force. In reviewing the influences which were forming a new public opinion during the forty years before the Revolution, it is convenient for the present purpose to group together the thinkers (including Voltaire) associated with the Encyclopaedia, who represented a critical and consciously aggressive force against traditional theories and existing institutions. The constructive thinker Rousseau was not less aggressive, but he stands apart and opposed, by his hostility to modern civilisation. Thirdly, we must distinguish the school of Economists, also reformers and optimists, but of more conservative temper than the typical Encyclopaedists. 2. The Encyclopaedia (1751-1765) has rightly been pronounced the central work of the rationalistic movement which made the France of 1789 so different from the France of 1715. [Footnote: The general views which governed the work may be gathered from d'Alembert's introductory discourse and from Diderot's article Encyclopedie. An interesting sketch of the principal contributors will be found in Morley's Diderot, i. chap. v. Another modern study of the Encyclopaedic movement is the monograph of L. Ducros, Les Encyclopidistes (1900). Helvetius has recently been the subject of a study by Albert Keim (Helvetius, sa vie et son oeuvre, 1907). Among other works which help the study of the speculations of this age from various points of view may be mentioned: Marius Roustan, Les Philosophes et la societe francaise au xviii siecle(1906); Espinas, La Philosophie sociale du xviii siecle et la Revolution (1898); Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme au xviii siecle(1895). I have not mentioned in the text Boullanger (1722-1758), who contributed to the Encyclopaedia the article on Political Economy (which has nothing to do with economics but treats of ancient theocracies); the emphasis laid on his views on progress by Buchez (op. cit. i. III sqq.) is quite excessive.] It was the organised section of a vast propaganda, speculative and practical, carried on by men of the most various views, most of whom were associated directly with it. As has well been observed, it did for the rationalism of the eighteenth century in France much what the Fortnightly Review, under the editorship of Mr. Morley (from 1868 to 1882) did for that of the nineteenth in England, as an organ for the penetrating criticism of traditional beliefs. If Diderot, who directed the Encyclopaedia with the assistance of d'Alembert the mathematician, had lived a hundred years later he would probably have edited a journal. We saw that the "solidarity" of the sciences was one of the conceptions associated with the theory of intellectual progress, and that the popularisation of knowledge was another. Both these conceptions inspired the Encyclopaedia, which was to gather up and concentrate the illumination of the modern age. It was to establish the lines of communication among all departments, "to enclose in the unity of a system the infinitely various branches of knowledge." And it was to be a library of popular instruction. But it was also intended to be an organ of propaganda. In the history of the intellectual revolution it is in some ways the successor of the Dictionary of Bayle, which, two generations before, collected the material of war to demolish traditional doctrines. The Encyclopaedia carried on the campaign against authority and superstition by indirect methods, but it was the work of men who were not sceptics like Bayle, but had ideals, positive purposes, and social hopes. They were not only confident in reason and in science, but most of them had also a more or less definite belief in the possibility of an advance of humanity towards perfection. As one of their own band afterwards remarked, they were less occupied in enlarging the bounds of knowledge than in spreading the light and making war on prejudice. [Footnote: Condorcet, Esquisse, p. 206 (ed. 1822).] The views of the individual contributors differed greatly, and they cannot be called a school, but they agreed so far in common tendencies that they were able to form a co-operative alliance. The propaganda of which the Encyclopaedia was the centre was reinforced by the independent publications of some of the leading men who collaborated or were closely connected with their circle, notably those of Diderot himself, Baron d'Holbach, and Helvetius. 3. The optimism of the Encyclopaedists was really based on an intense consciousness of the enlightenment of their own age. The progressiveness of knowledge was taken as axiomatic, but was there any guarantee that the light, now confined to small circles, could ever enlighten the world and regenerate mankind? They found the guarantee they required, not in an induction from the past experience of the race, but in an a priori theory: the indefinite malleability of human nature by education and institutions. This had been, as we saw, assumed by the Abbe de Saint-Pierre. It pervaded the speculation of the age, and was formally deduced from the sensational psychology of Locke and Condillac. It was developed, in an extreme form, in the work of Helvetius, De l'esprit (1758). In this book, which was to exert a large influence in England, Helvetius sought, among other things, to show that the science of morals is equivalent to the science of legislation, and that in a well-organised society all men are capable of rising to the highest point of mental development. Intellectual and moral inequalities between man and man arise entirely from differences in education and social circumstances. Genius itself is not a gift of nature; the man of genius is a product of circumstances--social, not physical, for Helvetius rejects the influence of climate. It follows that if you change education and social institutions you can change the character of men. The error of Helvetius in ignoring the irremovable physical differences between individuals, the varieties of cerebral organisation, was at once pointed out by Diderot. This error, however, was not essential to the general theory of the immeasurable power of social institutions over human character, and other thinkers did not fall into it. All alike, indeed, were blind to the factor of heredity. But the theory in its collective application contains a truth which nineteenth century critics, biassed by their studies in heredity, have been prone to overlook. The social inheritance of ideas and emotions to which the individual is submitted from infancy is more important than the tendencies physically transmitted from parent to child. The power of education and government in moulding the members of a society has recently been illustrated on a large scale in the psychological transformation of the German people in the life of a generation. It followed from the theory expounded by Helvetius that there is no impassable barrier between the advanced and the stationary or retrograde races of the earth. [Footnote: The most informing discussion of the relations between the Advanced and Backward races is Bryce's Romanes Lecture (1902).] "True morality," Baron d'Holbach wrote, "should be the same for all the inhabitants of the globe. The savage man and the civilised; the white man, the red man, the black man; Indian and European, Chinaman and Frenchman, Negro and Lapp have the same nature. The differences between them are only modifications of the common nature produced by climate, government, education, opinions, and the various causes which operate on them. Men differ only in the ideas they form of happiness and the means which they have imagined to obtain it." Here again the eighteenth century theorists held a view which can no longer be dismissed as absurd. Some are coming round to the opinion that enormous differences in capacity which seem fundamental are a result of the differences in social inheritance, and that these again are due to a long sequence of historical circumstances; and consequently that there is no people in the world doomed by nature to perpetual inferiority or irrevocably disqualified by race from playing a useful part in the future of civilisation. 4. This doctrine of the possibility of indefinitely moulding the characters of men by laws and institutions--whether combined or not with a belief in the natural equality of men's faculties--laid a foundation on which the theory of the perfectibility of humanity could be raised. It marked, therefore, an important stage in the development of the doctrine of Progress. It gave, moreover, a new and larger content to that doctrine by its applicability, not only to the peoples which are at present in the van of civilisation, but also to those which have lagged far behind and may appear irreclaimably barbarous--thus potentially including all humanity in the prospect of the future. Turgot had already conceived "the total mass of the human race moving always slowly forward"; he had declared that the human mind everywhere contains the germs of progress and that the inequality of peoples is due to the infinite variety of their circumstances. This enlarging conception was calculated to add strength to the idea of Progress, by raising it to a synthesis comprehending not merely the western civilised nations but the whole human world. Interest in the remote peoples of the earth, in the unfamiliar civilisations of the East, in the untutored races of America and Africa, was vivid in France in the eighteenth century. Everyone knows how Voltaire and Montesquieu used Hurons or Persians to hold up the glass to Western manners and morals, as Tacitus used the Germans to criticise the society of Rome. But very few ever look into the seven volumes of the Abbe Raynal's History of the Two Indies which appeared in 1772. It is however, one of the remarkable books of the century. Its immediate practical importance lay in the array of facts which it furnished to the friends of humanity in the movement against negro slavery. But it was also an effective attack on the Church and the sacerdotal system. The author's method was the same which his greater contemporary Gibbon employed on a larger scale. A history of facts was a more formidable indictment than any declamatory attack. Raynal brought home to the conscience of Europeans the miseries which had befallen the natives of the New World through the Christian conquerors and their priests. He was not indeed an enthusiastic preacher of Progress. He is unable to decide between the comparative advantages of the savage state of nature and the most highly cultivated society. But he observes that "the human race is what we wish to make it," that the felicity of man depends entirely on the improvement of legislation; and in the survey of the history of Europe to which the last Book of his work is devoted, his view is generally optimistic. [Footnote: cp. Raynal, Histoire, vii. 214, 256. This book was first published anonymously; the author's name appeared in the edition of 1780.] 5. Baron d'Holbach had a more powerful brain than Helvetius, but his writings had probably less influence, though he was the spiritual father of two prominent Revolutionaries, Hebert and Chaumette. His System of Nature (1770) develops a purely naturalistic theory of the universe, in which the prevalent Deism is rejected: there is no God; material Nature stands out alone, self-sufficing, dominis privata superbis. The book suggests how the Lucretian theory of development might have led to the idea of Progress. But it sent a chilly shock to the hearts of many and probably convinced few. The effective part was the outspoken and passionate indictment of governments and religions as causes of most of the miseries of mankind. It is in other works, especially in his Social System, that his views of Progress are to be sought. Man is simply a part of nature; he has no privileged position, and he is born neither good nor bad. Erras, as Seneca said, si existumas vitia nobiscum esse: supervenerunt, ingesta sunt. [Footnote: Seneca, Ep. 124.] We are made good or bad by education, public opinion, laws, government; and here the author points to the significance of the instinct of imitation as a social force, which a modern writer, M. Tarde, has worked into a system. The evils, which are due to the errors of tyranny and superstition, the force of truth will gradually diminish if it cannot completely banish them; for our governments and laws may be perfected by the progress of useful knowledge. But the process will be a long one: centuries of continuous mental effort in unravelling the causes of social ill-being and repeated experiments to determine the remedies (des experiences reiterees de la societe). In any case we cannot look forward to the attainment of an unchangeable or unqualified felicity. That is a mere chimera "incompatible with the nature of a being whose feeble machine is subject to derangement and whose ardent imagination will not always submit to the guidance of reason. Sometimes to enjoy, sometimes to suffer, is the lot of man; to enjoy more often than to suffer is what constitutes well-being." D'Holbach was a strict determinist; he left no room for freewill in the rigorous succession of cause and effect, and the pages in which he drives home the theory of causal necessity are still worth reading. From his naturalistic principles he inferred that the distinction between nature and art is not fundamental; civilisation is as rational as the savage state. Here he was at one with Aristotle. All the successive inventions of the human mind to change or perfect man's mode of existence and render it happier were only the necessary consequence of his essence and that of the existences which act upon him. All we do or think, all we are or shall be, is only an effect of what universal nature has made us. Art is only nature acting by the aid of the instruments which she has fashioned. [Footnote: The passages of d'Holbach specially referred to are: Systeme social, i. 1, p. 13; Syst. de la nature, i. 6, p. 88; Syst. soc. i. 15, p. 271; Syst. de la n. i. 1, p. 3.] Progress, therefore, is natural and necessary, and to criticise or condemn it by appealing to nature is only to divide the house of nature against itself. If d'Holbach had pressed his logic further, he would have taken a more indulgent and calmer view of the past history of mankind. He would have acknowledged that institutions and opinions to which modern reason may give short shrift were natural and useful in their day, and would have recognised that at any stage of history the heritage of the past is no less necessary to progress than the solvent power of new ideas. Most thinkers of his time were inclined to judge the past career of humanity anachronistically. All the things that had been done or thought which could not be justified in the new age of enlightenment, were regarded as gratuitous and inexcusable errors. The traditions, superstitions, and customs, the whole "code of fraud and woe" transmitted from the past, weighed then too heavily in France to allow the school of reform to do impartial justice to their origins. They felt a sort of resentment against history. D'Alembert said that it would be well if history could be destroyed; and the general tendency was to ignore the social memory and the common heritage of past experiences which mould a human society and make it something very different from a mere collection of individuals. Belief in Progress, however, took no extravagant form. It did not beguile d'Holbach or any other of the leading thinkers of the Encyclopaedia epoch into optimistic dreams of the future which might await mankind. They had a much clearer conception of obstacles than the good Abbe de Saint-Pierre. Helvetius agrees with d'Holbach that progress will be slow, and Diderot is wavering and sceptical of the question of indefinite social improvement. [Footnote: De l'esprit, Disc. ii. cc. 24, 25.] 6. The reformers of the Encyclopaedia group were not alone in disseminating the idea of Progress. Another group of thinkers, who widely differed in their principles, though some of them had contributed articles to the Encyclopaedia, [Footnote: Quesnay and Turgot, who, though not professedly a Physiocrat, held the same views as the sect.] also did much to make it a power. The rise of the special study of Economics was one of the most significant facts in the general trend of thought towards the analysis of civilisation. Economical students found that in seeking to discover a true theory of the production, distribution, and employment of wealth, they could not avoid the consideration of the constitution and purpose of society. The problems of production and distribution could not be divorced from political theory: production raises the question of the functions of government and the limits of its intervention in trade and industry; distribution involve questions of property, justice, and equality. The employment of riches leads into the domain of morals. The French Economists or "Physiocrats," as they were afterwards called, who formed a definite school before 1760--Quesnay the master, Mirabeau, Mercier de la Riviere, and the rest--envisaged their special subject from a wide philosophical point of view; their general economic theory was equivalent to a theory of human society. They laid down the doctrine of a Natural Order in political communities, and from it they deduced their economic teaching. They assumed, like the Encyclopaedists, that the end of society is the attainment of terrestrial happiness by its members, and that this is the sole purpose of government. The object of a treatise by Mercier de la Riviere [Footnote: L'ordre naturel et essentiel des societes politiqes, 1767.] (a convenient exposition of the views of the sect) is, in his own words, to discover the natural order for the government of men living in organised communities, which will assure to them temporal felicity: an order in which everything is well, necessarily well, and in which the interests of all are so perfectly and intimately consolidated that all are happy, from the ruler to the least of his subjects. But in what does this happiness consist? His answer is that "humanly speaking, the greatest happiness possible for us consists in the greatest possible abundance of objects suitable to our enjoyment and in the greatest liberty to profit by them." And liberty is necessary not only to enjoy them but also to produce them in the greatest abundance, since liberty stimulates human efforts. Another condition of abundance is the multiplication of the race; in fact, the happiness of men and their numbers are closely bound up together in the system of nature. From these axioms may be deduced the Natural Order of a human society, the reciprocal duties and rights whose enforcement is required for the greatest possible multiplication of products, in order to procure to the race the greatest sum of happiness with the maximum population. Now, individual property is the indispensable condition for full enjoyment of the products of human labour; "property is the measure of liberty, and liberty is the measure of property." Hence, to realise general happiness it is only necessary to maintain property and consequently liberty in all their natural extent. The fatal error which has made history what it is has been the failure to recognise this simple fact; for aggression and conquest, the causes of human miseries, violate the law of property which is the foundation of happiness. The practical inference was that the chief function of government was to protect property and that complete freedom should be left to private enterprise to exploit the resources of the earth. All would be well if trade and industry were allowed to follow their natural tendencies. This is what was meant by Physiocracy, the supremacy of the Natural Order. If rulers observed the limits of their true functions, Mercier thought that the moral effect would be immense. "The public system of government is the true education of moral man. Regis ad exemplum totus componitur orbis." [Footnote: The particulars of the Physiocratic doctrine as to the relative values of agriculture and commerce which Adam Smith was soon to criticise do not concern us; nor is it necessary to repeat the obvious criticisms on a theory which virtually reduced the science of society to a science of production and distribution.] While they advocated a thorough reform of the principles which ruled the fiscal policy of governments, the Economists were not idealists, like the Encyclopaedic philosophers; they sowed no seeds of revolution. Their starting-point was that which is, not that which ought to be. And, apart from their narrower point of view, they differed from the philosophers in two very important points. They did not believe that society was of human institution, and therefore they did not believe that there could be any deductive science of society based simply on man's nature. Moreover, they held that inequality of condition was one of its immutable features, immutable because it is a consequence of the inequality of physical powers. But they believed in the future progress of society towards a state of happiness through the increase of opulence which would itself depend on the growth of justice and "liberty"; and they insisted on the importance of the increase and diffusion of knowledge. Their influence in promoting a belief in Progress is vouched for by Condorcet, the friend and biographer of Turgot. As Turgot stands apart from the Physiocrats (with whom indeed he did not identify himself) by his wider views on civilisation, it might be suspected that it is of him that Condorcet was chiefly thinking. Yet we need not limit the scope of his statement when we remember that as a sect the Economists assumed as their first principle the eudaemonic value of civilisation, declared that temporal happiness is attainable, and threw all their weight into the scales against the doctrine of Regress which had found a powerful advocate in Rousseau. 7. By liberty the Economists meant economic liberty. Neither they nor the philosophers nor Rousseau, the father of modern democracy, had any just conception of what political liberty means. They contributed much to its realisation, but their own ideas of it were narrow and imperfect. They never challenged the principle of a despotic government, they only contended that the despotism must be enlightened. The paternal rule of a Joseph or a Catherine, acting under the advice of philosophers, seemed to them the ideal solution of the problem of government; and when the progressive and disinterested Turgot, whom they might regard as one of themselves, was appointed financial minister on the accession of Louis XVI., it seemed that their ideal was about to be realised. His speedy fall dispelled their hopes, but did not teach them the secret of liberty. They had no quarrel with the principle of the censorship, though they writhed under its tyranny; they did not want to abolish it. They only complained that it was used against reason and light, that is against their own writings; and, if the Conseil d'Etat or the Parlement had suppressed the works of their obscurantist opponents, they would have congratulated themselves that the world was marching quickly towards perfection. [Footnote: The principle that intolerance on the part of the wise and strong towards the ignorant and weak is a good thing is not alien to the spirit of the French philosophers, though I do not think any of them expressly asserted it. In the following century it was formulated by Colins, a Belgian (author of two works on social science, 1857-60), who believed that an autocratic government suppressing liberty of conscience is the most effective instrument of Progress. It is possible that democracy may yet try the experiment.] CHAPTER IX. WAS CIVILISATION A MISTAKE? ROUSSEAU, CHASTELLUX. 1. The optimistic theory of civilisation was not unchallenged by rationalists. In the same year (1750) in which Turgot traced an outline of historical Progress at the Sorbonne, Rousseau laid before the Academy of Dijon a theory of historical Regress. This Academy had offered a prize for the best essay on the question whether the revival of sciences and arts had contributed to the improvement of morals. The prize was awarded to Rousseau. Five years later the same learned body proposed another subject for investigation, the origin of Inequality among men. Rousseau again competed but failed to win the prize, though this second essay was a far more remarkable performance. The view common to these two discourses, that social development has been a gigantic mistake, that the farther man has travelled from a primitive simple state the more unhappy has his lot become, that civilisation is radically vicious, was not original. Essentially the same issue had been raised in England, though in a different form, by Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, the scandalous book which aimed at proving that it is not the virtues and amiable qualities of man that are the cement of civilised society, but the vices of its members which are the support of all trades and employments. [Footnote: The expanded edition was published in 1723.] In these vices, he said, "we must look for the true origin of all arts and sciences"; "the moment evil ceases the society must be spoiled, if not totally dissolved." The significance of Mandeville's book lay in the challenge it flung to the optimistic doctrines of Lord Shaftesbury, that human nature is good and all is for the best in this harmonious world. "The ideas he had formed," wrote Mandeville, "of the goodness and excellency of our nature were as romantic and chimerical as they are beautiful and amiable; he laboured hard to unite two contraries that can never be reconciled together, innocence of manners and worldly greatness." Of these two views Rousseau accepted one and rejected the other. He agreed with Shaftesbury as to the natural goodness of man; he agreed with Mandeville that innocence of manners is incompatible with the conditions of a civilised society. He was an optimist in regard to human nature, a pessimist in regard to civilisation. In his first Discourse he begins by appreciating the specious splendour of modern enlightenment, the voyages of man's intellect among the stars, and then goes on to assever that in the first place men have lost, through their civilisation, the original liberty for which they were born, and that arts and science, flinging garlands of flowers on the iron chains which bind them, make them love their slavery; and secondly that there is a real depravity beneath the fair semblance and "our souls are corrupted as our sciences and arts advance to perfection." Nor is this only a modern phenomenon; "the evils due to our vain curiosity are as old as the world." For it is a law of history that morals fall and rise in correspondence with the progress and decline of the arts and sciences as regularly as the tides answer to the phases of the moon. This "law" is exemplified by the fortunes of Greece, Rome, and China, to whose civilisations the author opposes the comparative happiness of the ignorant Persians, Scythians, and ancient Germans. "Luxury, dissoluteness, and slavery have been always the chastisement of the ambitious efforts we have made to emerge from the happy ignorance in which the Eternal Wisdom had placed us." There is the theological doctrine of the tree of Eden in a new shape. Rousseau's attempt to show that the cultivation of science produces specific moral evils is feeble, and has little ingenuity; it is a declamation rather than an argument; and in the end he makes concessions which undo the effect of his impeachment. The essay did not establish even a plausible case, but it was paradoxical and suggestive, and attracted more attention than Turgot's thoughtful discourse in the Sorbonne. D'Alembert deemed it worthy of a courteous expression of dissent; [Footnote: In the Disc. Prel. to the Encyclopaedia.] and Voltaire satirised it in his Timon. 2. In the Discourse on Inequality Rousseau dealt more directly with the effect of civilisation on happiness. He proposed to explain how it came about that right overcame the primitive reign of might, that the strong were induced to serve the weak, and the people to purchase a fancied tranquillity at the price of a real felicity. So he stated his problem; and to solve it he had to consider the "state of nature" which Hobbes had conceived as a state of war and Locke as a state of peace. Rousseau imagines our first savage ancestors living in isolation, wandering in the forests, occasionally co-operating, and differing from the animals only by the possession of a faculty for improving themselves (la faculte de se perfectionner). After a stage in which families lived alone in a more or less settled condition, came the formation of groups of families, living together in a definite territory, united by a common mode of life and sustenance, and by the common influence of climate, but without laws or government or any social organisation. It is this state, which was reached only after a long period, not the original state of nature, that Rousseau considers to have been the happiest period of the human race. This period of the development of human faculties, holding a just mean between the indolence of the primitive state and the petulant activity of our self-love, must be the happiest and most durable epoch. The more we reflect on it, the more we find that this state was the least exposed to revolutions and the best for man; and that he can have left it only through some fatal chance which, for the common advantage, should never have occurred. The example of the savages who have almost all been found in this state seems to bear out the conclusion that humanity was made to remain in it for ever, that it was the true youth of the world, and that all further progresses have been so many steps, apparently towards the perfection of the individual, and really towards the decrepitude of the species. He ascribes to metallurgy and agriculture the fatal resolution which brought this Arcadian existence to an end. Agriculture entailed the origin of property in land. Moral and social inequality were introduced by the man who first enclosed a piece of land and said, This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him. He was the founder of civil society. The general argument amounts to this: Man's faculty of improving himself is the source of his other faculties, including his sociability, and has been fatal to his happiness. The circumstances of his primeval life favoured the growth of this faculty, and in making man sociable they made him wicked; they developed the reason of the individual and thereby caused the species to deteriorate. If the process had stopped at a certain point, all would have been well; but man's capacities, stimulated by fortuitous circumstances, urged him onward, and leaving behind him the peaceful Arcadia where he should have remained safe and content, he set out on the fatal road which led to the calamities of civilisation. We need not follow Rousseau in his description of those calamities which he attributes to wealth and the artificial conditions of society. His indictment was too general and rhetorical to make much impression. In truth, a more powerful and comprehensive case against civilised society was drawn up about the same time, though with a very different motive, by one whose thought represented all that was opposed to Rousseau's teaching. Burke's early work, A Vindication of Natural Society, [Footnote: A.D. 1756.] was written to show that all the objections which Deists like Bolingbroke urged against artificial religion could be brought with greater force against artificial society, and he worked out in detail a historical picture of the evils of civilisation which is far more telling than Rousseau's generalities. [Footnote: In his admirable edition of The Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1915), p. 89, Vaughan suggests that in Rousseau's later works we may possibly detect "the first faint beginnings" of a belief in Progress, and attributes this to the influence of Montesquieu.] 3. If civilisation has been the curse of man, it might seem that the logical course for Rousseau to recommend was its destruction. This was the inference which Voltaire drew in Timon, to laugh the whole theory out of court. But Rousseau did not suggest a movement to destroy all the libraries and all the works of art in the world, to put to death or silence all the savants, to pull down the cities, and burn the ships. He was not a mere dreamer, and his Arcadia was no more than a Utopian ideal, by the light of which he conceived that the society of his own day might be corrected and transformed. He attached his hopes to equality, democracy, and a radical change in education. Equality: this revolutionary idea was of course quite compatible with the theory of Progress, and was soon to be closely associated with it. But it is easy to understand that the two ideas should first have appeared in antagonism to each other. The advance of knowledge and the increase of man's power over nature had virtually profited only a minority. When Fontenelle or Voltaire vaunted the illumination of their age and glorified the modern revolution in scientific thought, they took account only of a small class of privileged people. Higher education, Voltaire observed, is not for cobblers or kitchenmaids; "on n'a jamais pretendu eclairer les cordonniers et les servantes." The theory of Progress had so far left the masses out of account. Rousseau contrasted the splendour of the French court, the luxury of the opulent, the enlightenment of those who had the opportunity of education, with the hard lot of the ignorant mass of peasants, whose toil paid for the luxury of many of the idle enlightened people who amused themselves at Paris. The horror of this contrast, which left Voltaire cold, was the poignant motive which inspired Rousseau, a man of the people, in constructing his new doctrine. The existing inequality seemed an injustice which rendered the self-complacency of the age revolting. If this is the result of progressive civilisation, what is progress worth? The next step is to declare that civilisation is the causa malorum and that what is named progress is really regress. But Rousseau found a way of circumventing pessimism. He asked himself, cannot equality be realised in an organised state, founded on natural right? The Social Contract was his answer, and there we can see the living idea of equality detaching itself from the dead theory of degradation. [Footnote: The consistency of the Social Contract with the Discourse on Inequality has been much debated. They deal with two distinct problems, and the Social Contract does not mark any change in the author's views. Though it was not published till 1762 he had been working at it since 1753.] Arcadianism, which was thus only a side-issue for Rousseau, was the extreme expression of tendencies which appear in the speculations of other thinkers of the day. Morelly and Mably argued in favour of a reversion to simpler forms of life. They contemplated the foundation of socialistic communities by reviving institutions and practices which belonged to a past period of social evolution. Mably, inspired by Plato, thought it possible by legislation to construct a state of antique pattern. [Footnote: For Mably's political doctrines see Guerrier's monograph, L'Abbe de Mably (1886), where it is shown that among "the theories which determined in advance the course of the events of 1789" the Abbe's played a role which has not been duly recognised.] They ascribed evils of civilisation to inequality arising from the existence of private property, but Morelly rejected the view of the "bold sophist" Rousseau that science and art were to blame. He thought that aided by science and learning man might reach a state based on communism, resembling the state of nature but more perfect, and he planned an ideal constitution in his romance of the Floating Islands. [Footnote: Naufrage des isles flottantes ou Basiliade du celebre Pilpai (1753). It begins: "je chante le regne aimable de la Verite et de la Nature." Morelly's other work, Code de la Nature, appeared in 1755.] Different as these views were, they represent the idea of regress; they imply a condemnation of the tendencies of actual social development and recommend a return to simpler and more primitive conditions. Even Diderot, though he had little sympathy with Utopian speculations, was attracted by the idea of the simplification of society, and met Rousseau so far as to declare that the happiest state was a mean between savage and civilised life. "I am convinced," he wrote, "that the industry of man has gone too far and that if it had stopped long ago and if it were possible to simplify the results, we should not be the worse. I believe there is a limit in civilisation, a limit more conformable to the felicity of man in general and far less distant from the savage state than is imagined; but how to return to it, having left it, or how to remain in it, if we were there? I know not." [Footnote: Refutation de l'ouvrage d'Helvetius in OEuvres ii. p. 431. Elsewhere (p. 287) he argues that in a community without arts and industries there are fewer crimes than in a civilised state, but men are not so happy.] His picture of the savages of Tahiti in the Supplement au voyage de Bougainville was not seriously meant, but it illustrates the fact that in certain moods he felt the fascination of Rousseau's Arcadia. D'Holbach met all these theories by pointing out that human development, from the "state of nature" to social life and the ideas and commodities of civilisation, is itself natural, given the innate tendency of man to improve his lot. To return to the simpler life of the forests--or to any bygone stage--would be denaturer l'homme, it would be contrary to nature; and if he could do so, it would only be to recommence the career begun by his ancestors and pass again through the same successive phases of history. [Footnote: Syst. soc. i. 16, p. 190.] There was, indeed, one question which caused some embarrassment to believers in Progress. The increase of wealth and luxury was evidently a salient feature in modern progressive states; and it was clear that there was an intimate connection between the growth of knowledge and the growth of commerce and industrial arts, and that the natural progress of these meant an ever-increasing accumulation of riches and the practice of more refined luxury. The question, therefore, whether luxury is injurious to the general happiness occupied the attention of the philosophers. [Footnote: D'Holbach, ib. iii. 7; Diderot, art. Luxe in the Encylopaedia; Helvetius, De l'esprit, i. 3.] If it is injurious, does it not follow that the forces on which admittedly Progress depends are leading in an undesirable direction? Should they be obstructed, or is it wiser to let things follow their natural tendency (laisser aller les choses suivant leur pente naturelle)? Voltaire accepted wealth with all its consequences. D'Holbach proved to his satisfaction that luxury always led to the ruin of nations. Diderot and Helvetius arrayed the arguments which could be urged on both sides. Perhaps the most reasonable contribution to the subject was an essay of Hume. 4. It is obvious that Rousseau and all other theorists of Regress would be definitely refuted if it could be proved by an historical investigation that in no period in the past had man's lot been happier than in the present. Such an inquiry was undertaken by the Chevalier de Chastellux. His book On Public Felicity, or Considerations on the lot of Men in the various Epochs of History, appeared in 1772 and had a wide circulation. [Footnote: There was a new edition in 1776 with an important additional chapter.] It is a survey of the history of the western world and aims at proving the certainty of future Progress. It betrays the influence both of the Encyclopaedists and of the Economists. Chastellux is convinced that human nature can be indefinitely moulded by institutions; that enlightenment is a necessary condition of general happiness; that war and superstition, for which governments and priests are responsible, are the principal obstacles. But he attempted to do what none of his masters had done, to test the question methodically from the data of history. Turgot, and Voltaire in his way, had traced the growth of civilisation; the originality of Chastellux lay in concentrating attention on the eudaemonic issue, in examining each historical period for the purpose of discovering whether people on the whole were happy and enviable. Has there ever been a time, he inquired, in which public felicity was greater than in our own, in which it would have been desirable to remain for ever, and to which it would now be desirable to return? He begins by brushing away the hypothesis of an Arcadia. We know really nothing about primitive man, there is not sufficient evidence to authorise conjectures. We know man only as he has existed in organised societies, and if we are to condemn modern civilisation and its prospects, we must find our term of comparison not in an imaginary golden age but in a known historical epoch. And we must be careful not to fall into the mistakes of confusing public prosperity with general happiness, and of considering only the duration or aggrandisement of empires and ignoring the lot of the common people. His survey of history is summary and superficial enough. He gives reasons for believing that no peoples from the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians to the Europeans of the Renaissance can be judged happy. Yet what about the Greeks? Theirs was an age of enlightenment. In a few pages he examines their laws and history, and concludes, "We are compelled to acknowledge that what is called the bel age of Greece was a time of pain and torture for humanity." And in ancient history, generally, "slavery alone sufficed to make man's condition a hundred times worse than it is at present." The miseries of life in the Roman period are even more apparent than in the Greek. What Englishman or Frenchman would tolerate life as lived in ancient Rome? It is interesting to remember that four years later an Englishman who had an incomparably wider and deeper knowledge of history declared it to be probable that in the age of the Antonines civilised Europe enjoyed greater happiness than at any other period. Rome declined and Christianity came. Its purpose was not to render men happy on earth, and we do not find that it made rulers less avaricious or less sanguinary, peoples more patient or quiet, crimes rarer, punishments less cruel, treaties more faithfully observed, or wars waged more humanely. The conclusion is that it is only those who are profoundly ignorant of the past who can regret "the good old times." Throughout this survey Chastellux does not, like Turgot, make any attempt to show that the race was progressing, however slowly. On the contrary, he sets the beginning of continuous Progress in the Renaissance--here agreeing with d'Alembert and Voltaire. The intellectual movement, which originated then and resulted in the enlightenment of his own day, was a condition of social progress. But alone it would not have been enough, as is proved by the fact that the intellectual brilliancy of the great age of Greece exerted no beneficent effects on the well-being of the people. Nor indeed was there any perceptible improvement in the prospect of happiness for the people at large during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, notwithstanding the progress of science and the arts. But the terrible wars of this period exhausted Europe, and this financial exhaustion has supplied the requisite conditions for attaining a measure of felicity never realised in the past. Peace is an advantageous condition for the progress of reason, but especially when it is the result of the exhaustion of peoples and their satiety of fighting. Frivolous ideas disappear; political bodies, like organisms, have the care of self-preservation impressed upon them by pain; the human mind, hitherto exercised on agreeable objects, falls back with more energy on useful objects; a more successful appeal can be made to the rights of humanity; and princes, who have become creditors and debtors of their subjects, permit them to be happy in order that they may be more solvent or more patient. This is not very lucid or convincing; but the main point is that intellectual enlightenment would be ineffective without the co-operation of political events, and no political events would permanently help humanity without the progress of knowledge. Public felicity consists--Chastellux follows the Economists--in external and domestic peace, abundance and liberty, the liberty of tranquil enjoyment of one's own; and ordinary signs of it are flourishing agriculture, large populations, and the growth of trade and industry. He is at pains to show the superiority of modern to ancient agriculture, and he avails himself of the researches of Hume to prove the comparatively greater populousness of modern European countries. As for the prospect of peace, he takes a curiously optimistic view. A system of alliances has made Europe a sort of confederated republic, and the balance of power has rendered the design of a universal monarchy, such as that which Louis XIV. essayed, a chimera. [Footnote: So Rivarol, writing in 1783 (OEuvres, i. pp. 4 and 52): "Never did the world offer such a spectacle. Europe has reached such a high degree of power that history has nothing to compare with it. It is virtually a federative republic, composed of empires and kingdoms, and the most powerful that has ever existed."] All the powerful nations are burdened with debt. War, too, is a much more difficult enterprise than it used to be; every campaign of the king of Prussia has been more arduous than all the conquests of Attila. It looks as if the Peace of 1762-3 possessed elements of finality. The chief danger he discerns in the overseas policy of the English--auri sacra fames. Divination of this kind has never been happy; a greater thinker, Auguste Comte, was to venture on more dogmatic predictions of the cessation of wars, which the event was no less utterly to belie. As for equality among men, Chastellux admits its desirability, but observes that there is pretty much the same amount of happiness (le bonheur se compense assez) in the different classes of society. "Courtiers and ministers are not happier than husbandmen and artisans." Inequalities and disportions in the lots of individuals are not incompatible with a positive measure of felicity. They are inconveniences incident to the perfectibility of the species, and they will be eliminated only when Progress reaches its final term. The best that can be done to remedy them is to accelerate the Progress of the race which will conduct it one day to the greatest possible happiness; not to restore a state of ignorance and simplicity, from which it would again escape. The general argument of the book may be resumed briefly. Felicity has never been realised in any period of the past. No government, however esteemed, set before itself to achieve what ought to be the sole object of government, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number of individuals." Now, for the first time in human history, intellectual enlightenment, other circumstances fortunately concurring, has brought about a condition of things, in which this object can no longer be ignored, and there is a prospect that it will gradually gain the ascendant. In the meantime, things have improved; the diffusion of knowledge is daily ameliorating men's lot, and far from envying any age in the past we ought to consider ourselves much happier than the ancients. We may wonder at this writer's easy confidence in applying the criterion of happiness to different societies. Yet the difficulty of such comparisons was, I believe, first pointed out by Comte. [Footnote: Cours de philosophie positive, iv. 379.] It is impossible, he says, to compare two states of society and determine that in one more happiness was enjoyed than in the other. The happiness of an individual requires a certain degree of harmony between his faculties and his environment. But there is always a natural tendency towards the establishment of such an equilibrium, and there is no means of discovering by argument or by direct experience the situation of a society in this respect. Therefore, he concludes, the question of happiness must be eliminated from any scientific treatment of civilisation. Chastellux won a remarkable success. His work was highly praised by Voltaire, and was translated into English, Italian, and German. It condensed, on a single issue, the optimistic doctrines of the philosophers, and appeared to give them a more solid historical foundation than Voltaire's Essay on Manners had supplied. It provided the optimists with new arguments against Rousseau, and must have done much to spread and confirm faith in perfectibility. [Footnote: Soon after the publication of the book of Chastellux--though I do not suggest any direct connection--a society of Illuminati, who also called themselves the Perfectibilists, was founded at Ingoldstadt, who proposed to effect a pacific transformation of humanity. See Javary, De l'idee de progres, p. 73.] CHAPTER X. THE YEAR 2440 1. The leaders of thought in France did not look far forward into the future or attempt to trace the definite lines on which the human race might be expected to develop. They contented themselves with principles and vague generalities, and they had no illusions as to the slowness of the process of social amelioration; a rational morality, the condition of improvement, was only in its infancy. A passage in a work of the Abbe Morellet probably reflects faithfully enough the comfortable though not extravagant optimism which was current. [Footnote: Reflexions sur les avantages d'ecrire et d'imprimer sur les matieres de l'administration (1764); in Melanges, vol. iii. p. 55. Morellet held, like d'Holbach, that society is only the development and improvement of nature itself (ib. p. 6).] Let us hope for the amelioration of man's lot as a consequence of the progress of the enlightenment (des lumieres) and labours of the educated (des gens instruits); let us trust that the errors and even the injustices of our age may not rob us of this consoling hope. The history of society presents a continuous alternation of light and darkness, reason and extravagance, humanity and barbarism; but in the succession of ages we can observe good gradually increasing in ever greater proportion. What educated man, if he is not a misanthrope or misled by vain declamations, would really wish he had lived in the barbarous and poetical time which Homer paints in such fair and terrifying colours? Who regrets that he was not born at Sparta among those pretended heroes who made it a virtue to insult nature, practised theft, and gloried in the murder of a Helot; or at Carthage, the scene of human sacrifices, or at Rome amid the proscriptions or under the rule of a Nero or a Caligula? Let as agree that man advances, though slowly, towards light and happiness. But though the most influential writers were sober in speculating about the future, it is significant of their effectiveness in diffusing the idea of Progress that now for the first time a prophetic Utopia was constructed. Hitherto, as I have before observed, ideal states were either projected into the remote past or set in some distant, vaguely-known region, where fancy could build freely. To project them into the future was a new thing, and when in 1770 Sebastien Mercier described what human civilisation would be in A.D. 2440, it was a telling sign of the power which the idea of Progress was beginning to exercise. 2. Mercier has been remembered, or rather forgotten, as an inferior dramatist. He was a good deal more, and the researches of M. Beclard into his life and works enable us to appreciate him. If it is an overstatement to say that his soul reflected in miniature the very soul of his age, [Footnote: L. Beclard, Sebastien Mercier, sa vie, son oeuvre, son temps (1903), p. vii.] he was assuredly one of its characteristic products. He reminds us in some ways of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, who was one of his heroes. All his activities were urged by the dream of a humanity regenerated by reason, all his energy devoted to bringing about its accomplishment. Saint-Pierre's idea of perpetual peace inspired an early essay on the scourge of war. The theories of Rousseau exercised at first an irresistible attraction, but modern civilisation had too strong a hold on him; he was too Parisian in temper to acquiesce for long in the doctrine of Arcadianism. He composed a book on The Savage to illustrate the text that the true standard of morality is the heart of primitive man, and to prove that the best thing we could do is to return to the forest; but in the process of writing it he seems to have come to the conclusion that the whole doctrine was fallacious. [Footnote: Mercier's early essay: Des malheurs de la guerre et des avantages de la paix (1766). On the savage: L'homme sauvage (1767). For the opposite thesis see the Songes philosophiques (1768). He describes a state of perfect happiness in a planet where beings live in perpetual contemplation of the infinite. He appreciates the work of philosophers from Socrates to Leibnitz, and describes Rousseau as standing before the swelling stream, but cursing it. It may be suspected that the writings of Leibnitz had much to do with Mercier's conversion.] The transformation of his opinions was the work of a few months. He then came forward with the opposite thesis that all events have been ordered for man's felicity, and he began to work on an imaginary picture of the state to which man might find his way within seven hundred years. L'an 2440 was published anonymously at Amsterdam in 1770. [Footnote: The author's name first appeared in the 3rd ed., 1799. A German translation, by C. F. Weisse, was published in London in 1772. The English version, by Dr. Hooper, appeared in the same year, and a new edition in 1802; the translator changed the title to Memoirs of the year Two thousand five hundred.] Its circulation in France was rigorously forbidden, because it implied a merciless criticism of the administration. It was reprinted in London and Neuchatel, and translated into English and German. 3. As the motto of his prophetic vision Mercier takes the saying of Leibnitz that "the present is pregnant of the future." Thus the phase of civilisation which he imagines is proposed as the outcome of the natural and inevitable march of history. The world of A.D. 2440 in which a man born in the eighteenth century who has slept an enchanted sleep awakes to find himself, is composed of nations who live in a family concord rarely interrupted by war. But of the world at large we hear little; the imagination of Mercier is concentrated on France, and particularly Paris. He is satisfied with knowing that slavery has been abolished; that the rivalry of France and England has been replaced by an indestructible alliance; that the Pope, whose authority is still august, has renounced his errors and returned to the customs of the primitive Church; that French plays are performed in China. The changes in Paris are a sufficient index of the general transformation. The constitution of France is still monarchical. Its population has increased by one half; that of the capital remains about the same. Paris has been rebuilt on a scientific plan; its sanitary arrangements have been brought to perfection; it is well lit; and every provision has been made for the public safety. Private hospitality is so large that inns have disappeared, but luxury at table is considered a revolting crime. Tea, coffee, and tobacco are no longer imported. [Footnote: In the first edition of the book commerce was abolished.] There is no system of credit; everything is paid for in ready money, and this practice has led to a remarkable simplicity in dress. Marriages are contracted only through mutual inclination; dowries have been abolished. Education is governed by the ideas of Rousseau, and is directed, in a narrow spirit, to the promotion of morality. Italian, German, English, and Spanish are taught in schools, but the study of the classical languages has disappeared; Latin does not help a man to virtue. History too is neglected and discouraged, for it is "the disgrace of humanity, every page being crowded with crimes and follies." Theatres are government institutions, and have become the public schools of civic duties and morality. [Footnote: In 1769 Mercier began to carry out his programme of composing and adapting plays for instruction and edification. His theory of the true functions of the theatre he explained in a special treatise, Du theatre ou Nouvel Essai sur l'art dramatique (1773).] The literary records of the past had been almost all deliberately destroyed by fire. It was found expedient to do away with useless and pernicious books which only obscured truth or contained perpetual repetitions of the same thing. A small closet in the public library sufficed to hold the ancient books which were permitted to escape the conflagration, and the majority of these were English. The writings of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre were placed next those of Fenelon. "His pen was weak, but his heart was sublime. Seven ages have given to his great and beautiful ideas a just maturity. His contemporaries regarded him as a visionary; his dreams, however, have become realities." The importance of men of letters as a social force was a favourite theme of Mercier, and in A.D. 2440 this will be duly recognised. But the State control which weighed upon them so heavily in 1770 is not to be entirely abolished. There is no preventive censorship to hinder publication, but there are censors. There are no fines or imprisonment, but there are admonitions. And if any one publishes a book defending principles which are considered dangerous, he is obliged to go about in a black mask. There is a state religion, Deism. There is probably no one who does not believe in God. But if any atheist were discovered, he would be put through a course of experimental physics. If he remained obdurate in his rejection of a "palpable and salutary truth," the nation would go into mourning and banish him from its borders. Every one has to work, but labour no longer resembles slavery. As there are no monks, nor numerous domestics, nor useless valets, nor work-men employed on the production of childish luxuries, a few daily hours of labour are sufficient for the public wants. Censors inquire into men's capacities, assign tasks to the unemployed, and if man be found fit for nothing but the consumption of food he is banished from the city. These are some of the leading features of the ideal future to which Mercier's imagination reached. He did not put it forward as a final term. Later ages, he said, will go further, for "where can the perfectibility of man stop, armed with geometry and the mechanical arts and chemistry?" But in his scanty prophecies of what science might effect he showed curiously little resource. The truth is that this had not much interest for him, and he did not see that scientific discoveries might transmute social conditions. The world of 2440, its intolerably docile and virtuous society, reflects two capital weaknesses in the speculation of the Encyclopaedist period: a failure to allow for the strength of human passions and interests, and a deficient appreciation of the meaning of liberty. Much as the reformers acclaimed and fought for toleration, they did not generally comprehend the value of the principle. They did not see that in a society organised and governed by Reason and Justice themselves, the unreserved toleration of false opinions would be the only palladium of progress; or that a doctrinaire State, composed of perfectly virtuous and deferential people, would arrest development and stifle origiality, by its ungenial if mild tyranny. Mercier's is no exception to the rule that ideal societies are always repellent; and there are probably few who would not rather be set down in Athens in the days of the "vile" Aristophanes, whose works Mercier condemned to the flames, than in his Paris of 2440. 4. That Bohemian man of letters, Restif de la Bretonne, whose unedifying novels the Parisians of 2440 would assuredly have rejected from their libraries, published in 1790 a heroic comedy representing how marriages would be arranged in "the year 2000," by which epoch he conceived that all social equalities would have disappeared in a fraternal society and twenty nations be allied to France under the wise supremacy of "our well-beloved monarch Louis Francois XXII." It was the Revolution that converted Restif to the conception of Progress, for hitherto his master had been Rousseau; but it can hardly be doubted that the motif and title of his play were suggested by the romance of Mercier. L'an 2440 and L'an 2000 are the first examples of the prophetic fiction which Mr. Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward was to popularise a hundred years later. The Count de Volney's Ruins was another popular presentation of the hopes which the theory of Progress had awakened in France. Although the work was not published till after the outbreak of the Revolution, [Footnote: Les Ruines des empires, 1789. An English translation ran to a second edition (1795).] the plan had been conceived some years before. Volney was a traveller, deeply interested in oriental and classical antiquities, and, like Louis Le Roy, he approached the problem of man's destinies from the point of view of a student of the revolutions of empires. The book opens with melancholy reflections amid the ruins of Palmyra. "Thus perish the works of men, and thus do nations and empires vanish away... Who can assure us that desolation like this will not one day be the lot of our own country?" Some traveller like himself will sit by the banks of the Seine, the Thames, or the Zuyder Zee, amid silent ruins, and weep for a people inurned and their greatness changed into an empty name. Has a mysterious Deity pronounced a secret malediction against the earth? In this disconsolate mood he is visited by an apparition, who unveils the causes of men's misfortunes and shows that they are due to themselves. Man is governed by natural invariable laws, and he has only to study them to know the springs of his destiny, the causes of his evils and their remedies. The laws of his nature are self-love, desire of happiness, and aversion to pain; these are the simple and prolific principles of everything that happens in the moral world. Man is the artificer of his own fate. He may lament his weakness and folly; but "he has perhaps still more reason to be confident in his energies when he recollects from what point he has set out and to what heights he has been capable of elevating himself." The supernatural visitant paints a rather rosy picture of the ancient Egyptian and Assyrian kingdoms. But it would be a mistake to infer from their superficial splendour that the inhabitants generally were wise or happy. The tendency of man to ascribe perfection to past epochs is merely "the discoloration of his chagrin." The race is not degenerating; its misfortunes are due to ignorance and the mis-direction of self-love. Two principal obstacles to improvement have been the difficulty of transmitting ideas from age to age, and that of communicating them rapidly from man to man. These have been removed by the invention of printing. The press is "a memorable gift of celestial genius." In time all men will come to understand the principles of individual happiness and public felicity. Then there will be established among the peoples of the earth an equilibrium of forces; there will be no more wars, disputes will be decided by arbitration, and "the whole species will become one great society, a single family governed by the same spirit and by common laws, enjoying all the felicity of which human nature is capable." The accomplishment of this will be a slow process, since the same leaven will have to assimilate an enormous mass of heterogeneous elements, but its operation will be effectual. Here the genius interrupts his prophecy and exclaims, turning toward the west, "The cry of liberty uttered on the farther shores of the Atlantic has reached to the old continent." A prodigious movement is then visible to their eyes in a country at the extremity of the Mediterranean; tyrants are overthrown, legislators elected, a code of laws is drafted on the principles of equality, liberty, and justice. The liberated nation is attacked by neighbouring tyrants, but her legislators propose to the other peoples to hold a general assembly, representing the whole world, and weigh every religious system in the balance. The proceedings of this congress follow, and the book breaks off incomplete. It is not an arresting book; to a reader of the present day it is positively tedious; but it suited contemporary taste, and, appearing when France was confident that her Revolution would renovate the earth, it appealed to the hopes and sentiments of the movement. It made no contribution to the doctrine of Progress, but it undoubtedly helped to popularise it. CHAPTER XI. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: CONDORCET I. The authority which the advanced thinkers of France gained among the middle classes during the third quarter of the eighteenth century was promoted by the influence of fashion. The new ideas of philosophers, rationalists, and men of science had interested the nobles and higher classes of society for two generations, and were a common subject of discussion in the most distinguished salons. Voltaire's intimacy with Frederick the Great, the relations of d'Alembert and Diderot with the Empress Catherine, conferred on these men of letters, and on the ideas for which they stood, a prestige which carried great weight with the bourgeoisie. Humbler people, too, were as amenable as the great to the seduction of theories which supplied simple keys to the universe [Footnote: Taine said of the Contrat Social that it reduces political science to the strict application of an elementary axiom which renders all study unnecessary (La Revolution, vol. i. c. iv. Sec. iii.).] and assumed that everybody was capable of judging for himself on the most difficult problems. As well as the Encyclopaedia, the works of nearly all the leading thinkers were written for the general public not merely for philosophers. The policy of the Government in suppressing these dangerous publications did not hinder their diffusion, and gave them the attraction of forbidden fruit. In 1770 the avocat general (Seguier) acknowledged the futility of the policy. "The philosophers," he said, "have with one hand sought to shake the throne, with the other to upset the altars. Their purpose was to change public opinion on civil and religious institutions, and the revolution has, so to speak, been effected. History and poetry, romances and even dictionaries, have been infected with the poison of incredulity. Their writings are hardly published in the capital before they inundate the provinces like a torrent. The contagion has spread into workshops and cottages." [Footnote: Rocquain, L'Esprit revolutionnaire avant la Revolution, p. 278.] The contagion spread, but the official who wrote these words did not see that it was successful because it was opportune, and that the minds of men were prepared to receive the seed of revolutionary ideas by the unspeakable corruption of the Government and the Church. As Voltaire remarked about the same time, France was becoming Encyclopaedist, and Europe too. 2. The influence of the subversive and rationalistic thinkers in bringing about the events of 1789 has been variously estimated by historians. The truth probably lies in the succinct statement of Acton that "the confluence of French theory with American example caused the Revolution to break out" when it did. The theorists aimed at reform, not at political revolution; and it was the stimulus of the Declaration of Rights of 1774 and the subsequent victory of the Colonies that precipitated the convulsion, at a time when the country had a better prospect of improvement than it ever had before 1774, when Louis XVI. came to the throne. But the theories had prepared France for radical changes, and they guided the phases of the Revolution. The leaders had all the optimism of the Encyclopaedists; yet the most powerful single force was Rousseau, who, though he denied Progress and blasphemed civilisation, had promulgated the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, giving it an attractive appearance of mathematical precision; and to this doctrine the revolutionaries attached their optimistic hopes. [Footnote: It is interesting to observe how Robespierre, to whom the doctrines of Rousseau were oracles, could break out into admiration of the progress of civilised man, as he did in the opening passage of his speech of 7th May 1794. proposing the decree for the worship of the Supreme Being (see the text in Stephen, Orators of the French Revolution, ii. 391-92).] The theory of equality seemed no longer merely speculative; for the American constitution was founded on democratic equality, whereas the English constitution, which before had seemed the nearest approximation to the ideal of freedom, was founded on inequality. The philosophical polemic of the masters was waged with weapons of violence by the disciples. Chaumette and Hebert, the followers of d'Holbach, were destroyed by the disciples of Rousseau. In the name of the creed of the Vicaire Savoyard the Jacobin Club shattered the bust of Helvetius. Mably and Morelly had their disciples in Babeuf and the socialists. A naive confidence that the political upheaval meant regeneration and inaugurated a reign of justice and happiness pervaded France in the first period of the Revolution, and found a striking expression in the ceremonies of the universal "Federation" in the Champ-de-Mars on 14th July 1790. The festival was theatrical enough, decreed and arranged by the Constituent Assembly, but the enthusiasm and optimism of the people who gathered to swear loyalty to the new Constitution were genuine and spontaneous. Consciously or subconsciously they were under the influence of the doctrine of Progress which leaders of opinion had for several decades been insinuating into the public mind. It did not occur to them that their oaths and fraternal embraces did not change their minds or hearts, and that, as Taine remarked, they remained what ages of political subjection and one age of political literature had made them. The assumption that new social machinery could alter human nature and create a heaven upon earth was to be swiftly and terribly confuted. Post uarios casus et tot discrimina rerum uenimus in Latium, but Latium was to be the scene of sanguinary struggles. Another allied and fundamental fallacy, into which all the philosophers and Rousseau had more or less fallen, was reflected and exposed by the Revolution. They had considered man in vacuo. They had not seen that the whole development of a society is an enormous force which cannot be talked or legislated away; they had ignored the power of social memory and historical traditions, and misvalued the strength of the links which bind generations together. So the Revolutionaries imagined that they could break abruptly with the past, and that a new method of government, constructed on mathematical lines, a constitution (to use words of Burke) "ready made and ready armed, mature in its birth, a perfect goddess of wisdom and of war, hammered by our blacksmith midwives out of the brain of Jupiter himself," would create a condition of idyllic felicity in France, and that the arrival of the millennium depended only on the adoption of the same principles by other nations. The illusions created by the Declaration of the Rights of Man on the 4th of August died slowly under the shadow of the Terror; but though the hopes of those who believed in the speedy regeneration of the world were belied, some of the thoughtful did not lose heart. There was one at least who did not waver in his faith that the movement was a giant's step on the path of man towards ultimate felicity, however far he had still to travel. Condorcet, one of the younger Encyclopaedists, spent the last months of his life, under the menace of the guillotine, in projecting a history of human Progress. 3. Condorcet was the friend and biographer of Turgot, and it was not unfitting that he should resume the design of a history of civilisation, in the light of the idea of Progress, for which Turgot had only left luminous suggestions. He did not execute the plan, but he completed an elaborate sketch in which the controlling ideas of the scheme are fully set forth. His principles are to be found almost entirely in Turgot. But they have a new significance for Condorcet. He has given them wings. He has emphasised, and made deductions. Turgot wrote in the calm spirit of an inquirer. Condorcet spoke with the verve of a prophet. He was prophesying under the shadow of death. It is amazing that the optimistic Sketch of a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind should have been composed when he was hiding from Robespierre in 1793. [Footnote: Published in 1795.] Condorcet was penetrated with the spirit of the Encyclopaedists, of whom he had been one, and his attitude to Christianity was that of Voltaire and Diderot. Turgot had treated the received religion respectfully. He had acknowledged Providence, and, though the place which he assigned to Providence was that of a sort of honorary President of the development of civilisation who might disappear without affecting the proceedings, there was a real difference between his views and those of his friend as to the role of Christianity and the civilisation of the Middle Ages. A more important difference between the two thinkers is connected with the different circumstances in which they wrote. Turgot did not believe in the necessity of violent changes; he thought that steady reforms under the existing regime would do wonders for France. Before the Revolution Condorcet had agreed, but he was swept away by its enthusiasm. The victory of liberty in America and the increasing volume of the movement against slavery--one of the causes which most deeply stirred his heart--had heightened his natural optimism and confirmed his faith in the dogma of Progress. He felt the exhilaration of the belief that he was living through "one of the greatest revolutions of the human race," and he deliberately designed his book to be opportune to a crisis of mankind, at which "a picture of revolutions of the past will be the best guide." Feeling that he is personally doomed, he consoles himself with brooding on the time, however remote, when the sun will shine "on an earth of none but freemen, with no master save reason; for tyrants and slaves, priests and their stupid or hypocritical tools, will all have disappeared." He is not satisfied with affirming generally the certainty of an indefinite progress in enlightenment and social welfare. He sets himself to think out its nature, to forecast its direction, and determine its goal, and insists, as his predecessors had never done, on the prospects of the distant future. 4. His ambitious design is, in his own words, to show "the successive changes in human society, the influence which each instant exerts on the succeeding instant, and thus, in its successive modifications, the advance of the human species towards truth or happiness." Taken literally, this is an impossible design, and to put it forward as a practical proposition is as if a man were to declare his intention of writing a minute diary of the life of Julius Caesar from his birth to his death. By stating his purpose in such terms, Condorcet reveals that he had no notion of the limitations which confine our knowledge of the past, and that even if he had conceived a more modest and practicable programme he would have been incapable of executing it. His formula, however, is worth remembering. For the unattainable ideal which it expresses reminds us how many periods and passages of human experience must always remain books with seven seals. Condorcet distinguished ten periods of civilisation, of which the tenth lies in the future, but he has not justified his divisions and his epochs are not co-ordinate in importance. Yet his arrangement of the map of history is remarkable as an attempt to mark its sections not by great political changes but by important steps in knowledge. The first three periods--the formation of primitive societies, followed by the pastoral age, and the agricultural age--conclude with the invention of alphabetic writing in Greece. The fourth is the history of Greek thought, to the definite division of the sciences in the time of Aristotle. In the fifth knowledge progresses and suffers obscuration under Roman rule, and the sixth is the dark age which continues to the time of the Crusades. The significance of the seventh period is to prepare the human mind for the revolution which would be achieved by the invention of printing, with which the eighth period opens. Some of the best pages of the book develop the vast consequences of this invention. The scientific revolution effected by Descartes begins a new period, which is now closed by the creation of the French Republic. The idea of the progress of knowledge had created the idea of social Progress and remained its foundation. It was therefore logical and inevitable that Condorcet should take advance in knowledge as the clew to the march of the human race. The history of civilisation is the history of enlightenment. Turgot had justified this axiom by formulating the cohesion of all modes of social activity. Condorcet insists on "the indissoluble union" between intellectual progress and that of liberty, virtue, and the respect for natural rights, and on the effect of science in the destruction of prejudice. All errors in politics and ethics have sprung, he asserts, from false ideas which are closely connected with errors in physics and ignorance of the laws of nature. And in the new doctrine of Progress he sees an instrument of enlightenment which is to give "the last blow to the tottering edifice of prejudices." It would not be useful to analyse Condorcet's sketch or dwell on his obsolete errors and the defects of his historical knowledge. His slight picture of the Middle Ages reflects the familiar view of all the eighteenth century philosophers. The only contribution to social amelioration which he can discover in a period of nearly a millennium is the abolition of domestic slavery. And so this period appears as an interruption of the onward march. His inability to appreciate the historical role of the Roman Empire exhibits more surprising ignorance and prejudice. But these particular defects are largely due to a fundamental error which runs through his whole book and was inherent in the social speculations of the Encyclopaedists. Condorcet, like all his circle, ignored the preponderant part which institutions have played in social development. So far as he considered them at all, he saw in them obstacles to the free play of human reason; not the spontaneous expression of a society corresponding to its needs or embodying its ideals, but rather machinery deliberately contrived for oppressing the masses and keeping them in chains. He did not see that if the Progress in which he believed is a reality, its possibility depends on the institutions and traditions which give to societies their stability. In the following generation, it would be pointed out that he fell into a manifest contradiction when he praised the relative perfection reached in some European countries in the eighteenth century, and at the same time condemned as eminently retrograde all the doctrines and institutions which had been previously in control. [Footnote: Comte. Cours de philosophie positive, iv. 228.] This error is closely connected with the other error, previously noticed, of conceiving man abstracted from his social environment and exercising his reason in vacuo. 5. The study of the history of civilisation has, in Condorcet's eyes, two uses. It enables us to establish the fact of Progress, and it should enable us to determine its direction in the future, and thereby to accelerate the rate of progression. By the facts of history and the arguments they suggest, he undertakes to show that nature has set no term to the process of improving human faculties, and that the advance towards perfection is limited only by the duration of the globe. The movement may vary in velocity, but it will never be retrograde so long as the earth occupies its present place in the cosmic system and the general laws of this system do not produce some catastrophe or change which would deprive the human race of the faculties and resources which it has hitherto possessed. There will be no relapse into barbarism. The guarantees against this danger are the discovery of true methods in the physical sciences, their application to the needs of men, the lines of communication which have been established among them, the great number of those who study them, and finally the art of printing. And if we are sure of the continuous progress of enlightenment, we may be sure of the continuous improvement of social conditions. It is possible to foresee events, if the general laws of social phenomena are known, and these laws can be inferred from the history of the past. By this statement Condorcet justifies his bold attempt to sketch his tenth period of human history which lies in the future; and announces the idea which was in the next generation to be worked out by Comte. But he cannot be said to have deduced himself any law of social development. His forecast of the future is based on the ideas and tendencies of his own age. [Footnote: It is interesting to notice that the ablest of medieval Arabic historians, Ibn Khaldun (fourteenth century), had claimed that if history is scientifically studied future events may be predicted.] Apart from scientific discoveries and the general diffusion of a knowledge of the laws of nature on which moral improvement depends, he includes in his prophetic vision the cessation of war and the realisation of the less familiar idea of the equality of the sexes. If he were alive to-day, he could point with triumph to the fact that of these far-reaching projects one is being accomplished in some of the most progressive countries and the other is looked upon as an attainable aim by statesmen who are not visionaries. The equality of the sexes was only a logical inference from the general doctrine of equality to which Condorcet's social theory is reducible. For him the goal of political progress is equality; equality is to be the aim of social effort--the ideal of the Revolution. For it is the multitude of men that must be considered--the mass of workers, not the minority who live on their labours. Hitherto they have been neglected by the historian as well as by the statesman. The true history of humanity is not the history of some men. The human race is formed by the mass of families who subsist almost entirely on the fruits of their own work, and this mass is the proper subject of history, not great men. You may establish social equality by means of laws and institutions, yet the equality actually enjoyed may be very incomplete. Condorcet recognises this and attributes it to three principal causes: inequality in wealth; inequality in position between the man whose means of subsistence are assured and can be transmitted to his family and the man whose means depend on his work and are limited by the term of his own life [Footnote: He looked forward to the mitigation of this inequality by the development of life insurance which was then coming to the front.]; and inequality in education. He did not propose any radical methods for dealing with these difficulties, which he thought would diminish in time, without, however, entirely disappearing. He was too deeply imbued with the views of the Economists to be seduced by the theories of Rousseau, Mably, Babeuf, and others, into advocating communism or the abolition of private property. Besides equality among the individuals composing a civilised society, Condorcet contemplated equality among all the peoples of the earth,--a uniform civilisation throughout the world, and the obliteration of the distinction between advanced and retrograde races. The backward peoples, he prophesied, will climb up to the condition of France and the United States of America, for no people is condemned never to exercise its reason. If the dogma of the perfectibility of human nature, unguarded by any restrictions, is granted, this is a logical inference, and we have already seen that it was one of the ideas current among the philosophers. Condorcet does not hesitate to add to his picture adventurous conjectures on the improvement of man's physical organisation, and a considerable prolongation of his life by the advance of medical science. We need only note this. More interesting is the prediction that, even if the compass of the human being's cerebral powers is inalterable, the range, precision, and rapidity of his mental operations will be augmented by the invention of new instruments and methods. The design of writing a history of human civilisation was premature, and to have produced a survey of any durable value would have required the equipment of a Gibbon. Condorcet was not even as well equipped as Voltaire. [Footnote: But as he wrote without books the Sketch was a marvellous tour de force.] The significance of his Sketch lies in this, that towards the close of an intellectual movement it concentrated attention on the most important, though hitherto not the most prominent, idea which that movement had disseminated, and as it were officially announced human Progress as the leading problem that claimed the interest of mankind. With him Progress was associated intimately with particular eighteenth century doctrines, but these were not essential to it. It was a living idea; it survived the compromising theories which began to fall into discredit after the Revolution, and was explored from new points of view. Condorcet, however, wedded though his mind was to the untenable views of human nature current in his epoch and his circle, did not share the tendency of leading philosophers to regard history as an unprofitable record of folly and crime which it would be well to obliterate or forget. He recognised the interpretation of history as the key to human development, and this principle controlled subsequent speculations on Progress in France. 6. Cabanis, the physician, was Condorcet's literary executor, and a no less ardent believer in human perfectibility. Looking at life and man from his own special point of view, he saw in the study of the physical organism the key to the intellectual and moral improvement of the race. It is by knowledge of the relations between his physical states and moral states that man can attain happiness, through the enlargement of his faculties and the multiplication of enjoyments, and that he will be able to grasp, as it were, the infinite in his brief existence by realising the certainty of indefinite progress. His doctrine was a logical extension of the theories of Locke and Condillac. If our knowledge is wholly derived from sensations, our sensations depend on our sensory organs, and mind becomes a function of the nervous system. The events of the Revolution quenched in him as little as in Condorcet the sanguine confidence that it was the opening of a new era for science and art, and thereby for the general Progress of man. "The present is one of those great periods of history to which posterity will often look back" with gratitude. [Footnote: Picavet, Les Ideologues, p. 203. Cabanis was born in 1757 and died in 1808.] He took an active part in the coup d'etat of the 18th of Brumaire (1799) which was to lead to the despotism of Napoleon. He imagined that it would terminate oppression, and was as enthusiastic for it as he and Condorcet had been for the Revolution ten years before. "You philosophers," he wrote, [Footnote: Ib. p. 224.] "whose studies are directed to the improvement and happiness of the race, you no longer embrace vain shadows. Having watched, in alternating moods of hope and sadness, the great spectacle of our Revolution, you now see with joy the termination of its last act; you will see with rapture this new era, so long promised to the French people, at last open, in which all the benefits of nature, all the creations of genius, all the fruits of time, labour, and experience will be utilised, an era of glory and prosperity in which the dreams of your philanthropic enthusiasm should end by being realised." It was an over-sanguine and characteristic greeting of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. Cabanis was one of the most important of those thinkers who, living into the new period, took care that the ideas of their own generation should not be overwhelmed in the rising flood of reaction. CHAPTER XII. THE THEORY OF PROGRESS IN ENGLAND 1. The idea of Progress could not help crossing the Channel. France and England had been at war in the first year of the eighteenth century, they were at war in the last, and their conflict for supremacy was the leading feature of the international history of the whole century. But at no period was there more constant intellectual intimacy or more marked reciprocal influence between the two countries. It was a commonplace that Paris and London were the two great foci of civilisation, and they never lost touch of each other in the intellectual sphere. Many of the principal works of literature that appeared in either country were promptly translated, and some of the French books, which the censorship rendered it dangerous to publish in Paris, were printed in London. It was not indeed to be expected that the theory should have the same kind of success, or exert the same kind of effect in England as in France. England had her revolution behind her, France had hers before her. England enjoyed what were then considered large political liberties, the envy of other lands; France groaned under the tyranny of worthless rulers. The English constitution satisfied the nation, and the serious abuses which would now appear to us intolerable were not sufficient to awaken a passionate desire for reforms. The general tendency of British thought was to see salvation in the stability of existing institutions, and to regard change with suspicion. Now passionate desire for reform was the animating force which propagated the idea of Progress in France. And when this idea is translated from the atmosphere of combat, in which it was developed by French men of letters, into the calm climate of England, it appears like a cold reflection. Again, English thinkers were generally inclined to hold, with Locke, that the proper function of government is principally negative, to preserve order and defend life and property, not to aim directly at the improvement of society, but to secure the conditions in which men may pursue their own legitimate aims. Most of the French theorists believed in the possibility of moulding society indefinitely by political action, and rested their hopes for the future not only on the achievements of science, but on the enlightened activity of governments. This difference of view tended to give to the doctrine of Progress in France more practical significance than in England. But otherwise British soil was ready to receive the idea. There was the same optimistic temper among the comfortable classes in both countries. Shaftesbury, the Deist, had struck this note at the beginning of the century by his sanguine theory, which was expressed in Pope's banal phrase: "Whatever is, is right," and was worked into a system by Hutcheson. This optimism penetrated into orthodox circles. Progress, far from appearing as a rival of Providence, was discussed in the interests of Christianity by the Scotch theologian, Turnbull. [Footnote: The Principles of Modern Philosophy, 1740.] 2. The theory of the indefinite progress of civilisation left Hume cold. There is little ground, he argued, to suppose that "the world" is eternal or incorruptible. It is probably mortal, and must therefore, with all things in it, have its infancy, youth, manhood, and old age; and man will share in these changes of state. We must then expect that the human species should, when the world is in the age of manhood, possess greater bodily and mental vigour, longer life, and a stronger inclination and power of generation. But it is impossible to determine when this stage is reached. For the gradual revolutions are too slow to be discernible in the short period known to us by history and tradition. Physically and in mental powers men have been pretty much the same in all known ages. The sciences and arts have flourished now and have again decayed, but when they reached the highest perfection among one people, the neighbouring peoples were perhaps wholly unacquainted with them. We are therefore uncertain whether at present man is advancing to his point of perfection or declining from it. [Footnote: Essay on the Populousness of Ancient Nations, ad init. ] The argument is somewhat surprising in an eighteenth century thinker like Hume, but it did not prevent him from recognising the superiority of modern to ancient civilisation. This superiority forms indeed the minor premiss in the general argument by which he confuted the commonly received opinion as to the populousness of ancient nations. He insisted on the improvements in art and industry, on the greater liberty and security enjoyed by modern men. "To one who considers coolly on the subject," he remarked, "it will appear that human nature in general really enjoys more liberty at present in the most arbitrary government of Europe than it ever did during the most flourishing period of ancient times." [Footnote: The justification of this statement was the abolition of slavery in Europe.] He discussed many of the problems of civilisation, especially the conditions in which the arts and sciences flourish, [Footnote: Essay on the Rise of Arts and Sciences.] and drew some general conclusions, but he was too sceptical to suppose that any general synthesis of history is possible, or that any considerable change for the better in the manners of mankind is likely to occur. [Footnote: Cf. Essay on the Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth, ad init.] The greatest work dealing with social problems, that Britain produced in the eighteenth century, was Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, and his luminous exposition of the effects of the division of labour was the most considerable contribution made by British thinkers of the age to the study of human development. It is much more than a treatise on economic principles; it contains a history of the gradual economic progress of human society, and it suggests the expectation of an indefinite augmentation of wealth and well-being. Smith was entirely at one with the French Economists on the value of opulence for the civilisation and happiness of mankind. But it was indirectly perhaps that his work contributed most effectively to the doctrine of the Progress of collective mankind. [Footnote: It has been observed by Mr. Leslie Stephen that the doctrine of the rights of man lies in the background of Adam Smith's speculations.] His teaching that the free commercial intercourse of all the peoples of the world, unfettered by government policies, was to the greatest advantage of each, presented an ideal of the economic "solidarity" of the race, which was one element in the ideal of Progress. And this principle soon began to affect practice. Pitt assimilated it when he was a young man, and it is one of the distinctions of his statesmanship that he endeavoured to apply the doctrines of his master so far as the prevailing prejudices would allow him. 3. A few writers of less weight and fame than Hume or Smith expressly studied history in the light of Progress. It would not help us, in following the growth of the idea, to analyse the works of Ferguson, Dunbar, or Priestley. [Footnote: In his Essay on the History of Civil Society Adam Ferguson treated the growth of civilisation as due to the progressive nature of man, which insists on carrying him forward to limits impossible to ascertain. He formulated the process as a movement from simplicity to complexity, but contributed little to its explanation.] But I will quote one passage from Priestley, the most eminent of the three, and the most enthusiastic for the Progress of man. As the division of labour--the chief principle of organised society--is carried further he anticipates that ... nature, including both its materials and its laws, will be more at our command; men will make their situation in this world abundantly more easy and comfortable; they will probably prolong their existence in it and will grow daily more happy.... Thus, whatever was the beginning of this world, the end will be glorious and paradisiacal beyond what our imaginations can now conceive. Extravagant as some people may suppose these views to be, I think I could show them to be fairly suggested by the true theory of human nature and to arise from the natural course of human affairs. [Footnote: This passage of Priestley occurs in his Essay on the First Principles of Government and on the Nature of Political, Civil, and Religious Liberty (1768, 2nd ed. 1771), pp. 2-4. His Lectures on History and General Policy appeared in 1788. Priestley was a strict utilitarian, who held that there is nothing intrinsically excellent in justice and veracity apart from their relation to happiness. The degree of public happiness is measured by the excellence of religion, science, government, laws, arts, commerce, conveniences of life, and especially by the degrees of personal security and personal liberty. In all these the ancients were inferior, and therefore they enjoyed less happiness. The present state of Europe is vastly preferable to what it was in any former period. And "the plan of this divine drama is opening more and more." In the future, Knowledge will increase and accumulate and diffuse itself to the lower ranks of society, who, by degrees, will find leisure for speculation; and looking beyond their immediate employment, they will consider the complex machine of society, and in time understand it better than those who now write about it. See his Lectures, pp. 371, 388 sqq., 528-53. The English thinker did not share all the views of his French masters. As a Unitarian, he regarded Christianity as a "great remedy of vice and ignorance," part of the divine plan; and he ascribed to government a lesser role than they in the improvement of humanity. He held, for instance, that the state should not interfere in education, arguing that this art was still in the experimental stage, and that the intervention of the civil power might stereotype a bad system. Not less significant, though less influential, than the writings of Priestley and Ferguson was the work of James Dunbar, Professor of Philosophy at Aberdeen, entitled Essays on the History of Mankind in Rude and Cultivated Ages (2nd ed., 1781). He conceived history as progressive, and inquired into the general causes which determine the gradual improvements of civilisation. He dealt at length with the effects of climate and local circumstances, but unlike the French philosophers did not ignore heredity. While he did not enter upon any discussion of future developments, he threw out incidentally the idea that the world may be united in a league of nations. Posterity, he wrote, "may contemplate, from a concurrence of various causes and events, some of which are hastening into light, the greater part, or even the whole habitable globe, divided among nations free and independent in all the interior functions of government, forming one political and commercial system" (p. 287). Dunbar's was an optimistic book, but his optimism was more cautious than Priestley's. These are his final words: If human nature is liable to degenerate, it is capable of proportionable improvement from the collected wisdom of ages. It is pleasant to infer from the actual progress of society, the glorious possibilities of human excellence. And, if the principles can be assembled into view, which most directly tend to diversify the genius and character of nations, some theory may be raised on these foundations that shall account more systematically for past occurrences and afford some openings and anticipations into the eventual history of the world.] The problem of dark ages, which an advocate of Progress must explain, was waved away by Priestley in his Lectures on History with the observation that they help the subsequent advance of knowledge by "breaking the progress of authority." [Footnote: This was doubtless suggested to him by some remarks of Hume in The Rise of Arts and Sciences.] This is not much of a plea for such periods viewed as machinery in a Providential plan. The great history of the Middle Ages, which in the words of its author describes "the triumph of barbarism and religion," had been completed before Priestley's Lectures appeared, and it is remarkable that he takes no account of it, though it might seem to be a work with which a theory of Progress must come to terms. Yet the sceptical historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, who was more at home in French literature than any of his fellow-countrymen, was not opposed to the theory of Progress, and he even states it in a moderate form. Having given reasons for believing that civilised society will never again be threatened by such an irruption of barbarians as that which oppressed the arms and institutions of Rome, he allows us to "acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion that every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge and perhaps the virtue of the human race." "The discoveries of ancient and modern navigators, and the domestic history or tradition of the most enlightened nations, represent the HUMAN SAVAGE, naked both in mind and body, and destitute of laws, of arts, of ideas, and almost of language. From this abject condition, perhaps the primitive and universal state of man, he has gradually arisen to command the animals, to fertilise the earth, to traverse the ocean, and to measure the heavens. His progress in the improvement and exercise of his mental and corporeal faculties has been irregular and various, infinitely slow in the beginning, and increasing by degrees with redoubled velocity; ages of laborious ascent have been followed by a moment of rapid downfall; and the several climates of the globe have felt the vicissitudes of light and darkness. Yet the experience of four thousand years should enlarge our hopes and diminish our apprehensions; we cannot determine to what height the human species may aspire in their advances towards perfection; but it may safely be presumed that no people, unless the face of nature is changed, will relapse into their original barbarism." [Footnote: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. xxxviii. ad fin.] But Gibbon treats the whole subject as a speculation, and he treats it without reference to any of the general principles on which French thinkers had based their theory. He admits that his reasons for holding that civilisation is secure against a barbarous cataclysm may be considered fallacious; and he also contemplates the eventuality that the fabric of sciences and arts, trade and manufacture, law and policy, might be "decayed by time." If so, the growth of civilisation would have to begin again, but not ab initio. For "the more useful or at least more necessary arts," which do not require superior talents or national subordination for their exercise, and which war, commerce, and religious zeal have spread among the savages of the world, would certainly survive. These remarks are no more than obiter dicta but they show how the doctrine of Progress was influencing those who were temperamentally the least likely to subscribe to extravagant theories. 4. The outbreak of the French Revolution evoked a sympathetic movement among English progressive thinkers which occasioned the Government no little alarm. The dissenting minister Dr. Richard Price, whose Observations on Civil Liberty (1776), defending the action of the American colonies, had enjoyed an immense success, preached the sermon which provoked Burke to write his Reflections; and Priestley, no less enthusiastic in welcoming the Revolution, replied to Burke. The Government resorted to tyrannous measures; young men who sympathised with the French movement and agitated for reforms at home were sent to Botany Bay. Paine was prosecuted for his Rights of Man, which directly preached revolution. But the most important speculative work of the time, William Godwin's Political Justice, escaped the censorship because it was not published at a popular price. [Footnote: Godwin had helped to get Paine's book published in 1791, and he was intimate with the group of revolutionary spirits who were persecuted by the Government. A good account of the episode will be found in Brailsford's Shelley, Godwin, and their Circle.] The Enquiry concerning Political Justice, begun in 1791, appeared in 1793. The second edition, three years later, shows the influence of Condorcet's Sketch, which had appeared in the meantime. Godwin says that his original idea was to produce a work on political science to supersede Montesquieu. The note of Montesquieu's political philosophy was respect for social institutions. Godwin's principle was that social institutions are entirely pernicious, that they perpetuate harmful prejudices, and are an almost insuperable obstacle to improvement. If he particularly denounced monarchical government, he regarded all government as evil, and held that social progress would consist, not in the reformation of government, but in its abolition. While he recognised that man had progressed in the past, he considered history mainly a sequence of horrors, and he was incapable of a calm survey of the course of civilisation. In English institutions he saw nothing that did not outrage the principles of justice and benevolence. The present state of humanity is about as bad as it could be. It is easy to see the deep influence which the teaching of Rousseau exercised on Godwin. Without accepting the theory of Arcadia Godwin followed him in unsparing condemnation of existing conditions. Rousseau and Godwin are the two great champions in the eighteenth century of the toiling and suffering masses. But Godwin drew the logical conclusion from Rousseau's premisses which Rousseau hesitated to draw himself. The French thinker, while he extolled the anarchical state of uncivilised society, and denounced government as one of the sources of its corruption, nevertheless sought the remedy in new social and political institutions. Godwin said boldly, government is the evil; government must go. Humanity can never be happy until all political authority and social institutions disappear. Now the peculiarity of Godwin's position as a doctrinaire of Progress lies in the fact that he entertained the same pessimistic view of some important sides of civilisation as Rousseau, and at the same time adopted the theories of Rousseau's opponents, especially Helvetius. His survey of human conditions seems to lead inevitably to pessimism; then he turns round and proclaims the doctrine of perfectibility. The explanation of this argument was the psychological theory of Helvetius. He taught, as we saw, and Godwin developed the view in his own way, that the natures and characters of men are moulded entirely by their environment--not physical, but intellectual and moral environment, and therefore can be indefinitely modified. A man is born into the world without innate tendencies. His conduct depends on his opinions. Alter men's opinions and they will act differently. Make their opinions conformable to justice and benevolence, and you will have a just and benevolent society. Virtue, as Socrates taught, is simply a question of knowledge. The situation, therefore, is not hopeless. For it is not due to the radical nature of man; it is caused by ignorance and prejudice, by governments and institutions, by kings and priests. Transform the ideas of men, and society will be transformed. The French philosopher considered that a reformed system of educating children would be one of the most powerful means for promoting progress and bringing about the reign of reason; and Condorcet worked out a scheme of universal state education. This was entirely opposed to Godwin's principles. State schools would only be another instrument of power in the hands of a government, worse even than a state Church. They would strengthen the poisonous influence of kings and statesmen, and establish instead of abolishing prejudices. He seems to have relied entirely on the private efforts of enlightened thinkers to effect a gradual conversion of public opinion. In his study of the perfectibility of man and the prospect of a future reign of general justice and benevolence, Godwin was even more visionary than Condorcet, as in his political views he was more radical than the Revolutionists. Condorcet had at least sought to connect his picture of the future with a reasoned survey of the past, and to find a chain of connection, but the perfectibility of Godwin hung in the air, supported only by an abstract theory of the nature of man. It can hardly be said that he contributed anything to the theoretical problem of civilisation. His significance is that he proclaimed in England at an opportune moment, and in a more impressive and startling way than a sober apostle like Priestley, the creed of progress taught by French philosophers, though considerably modified by his own anarchical opinions. 5. Perfectibility, as expounded by Condorcet and Godwin, encountered a drastic criticism from Malthus, whose Essay on the Principle of Population appeared in its first form anonymously in 1798. Condorcet had foreseen an objection which might be raised as fatal to the realisation of his future state. Will not the progress of industry and happiness cause a steady increase in population, and must not the time come when the number of the inhabitants of the globe will surpass their means of subsistence? Condorcet did not grapple with this question. He contented himself with saying that such a period must be very far away, and that by then "the human race will have achieved improvements of which we can now scarcely form an idea." Similarly Godwin, in his fancy picture of the future happiness of mankind, notices the difficulty and shirks it. "Three-fourths of the habitable globe are now uncultivated. The parts already cultivated are capable of immeasurable improvement. Myriads of centuries of still increasing population may pass away and the earth be still found sufficient for the subsistence of its inhabitants." Malthus argued that these writers laboured under an illusion as to the actual relations between population and the means of subsistence. In present conditions the numbers of the race are only kept from increasing far beyond the means of subsistence by vice, misery, and the fear of misery. [Footnote: This observation had been made (as Hazlitt pointed out) before Malthus by Robert Wallace (see A Dissertation on the Numbers of Mankind, p. 13, 1753). It was another book of Wallace that suggested the difficulty to Godwin.] In the conditions imagined by Condorcet and Godwin these checks are removed, and consequently the population would increase with great rapidity, doubling itself at least in twenty-five years. But the products of the earth increase only in an arithmetical progression, and in fifty years the food supply would be too small for the demand. Thus the oscillation between numbers and food supply would recur, and the happiness of the species would come to an end. Godwin and his adherents could reply that one of the checks on over-population is prudential restraint, which Malthus himself recognised, and that this would come more extensively into operation with that progress of enlightenment which their theory assumed. [Footnote: This is urged by Hazlitt in his criticism of Malthus in the Spirit of the Age.] But the criticisms of Malthus dealt a trenchant blow to the doctrine that human reason, acting through legislation and government, has a virtually indefinite power of modifying the condition of society. The difficulty, which he stated so vividly and definitely, was well calculated to discredit the doctrine, and to suggest that the development of society could be modified by the conscious efforts of man only within restricted limits. [Footnote: The recent conclusions of Mr. Knibbs, statistician to the Commonwealth of Australia, in vol. i. of his Appendix to the Census of the Commonwealth, have an interest in this connection. I quote from an article in the Times of August 5, 1918: "An eminent geographer, the late Mr. E. G. Ravenstein, some years ago, when the population of the earth was estimated at 1400 million, foretold that about the middle of this century population would have reached a limit beyond which increase would be disastrous. Mr. Knibbs is not so pessimistic and is much more precise; though he defers the disastrous culmination, he has no doubt as to its inevitability. The limits of human expansion, he assures us, are much nearer than popular opinion imagines; the difficulty of food supplies will soon be most grave; the exhaustion of sources of energy necessary for any notable increase of population, or advance in the standards of living, or both combined, is perilously near. The present rate of increase in the world's population cannot continue for four centuries."] 6. The Essay of Malthus afterwards became one of the sacred books of the Utilitarian sect, and it is interesting to notice what Bentham himself thought of perfectibility. Referring to the optimistic views of Chastellux and Priestley on progressive amelioration he observed that "these glorious expectations remind us of the golden age of poetry." For perfect happiness "belongs to the imaginary region of philosophy and must be classed with the universal elixir and the philosopher's stone." There will always be jealousies through the unequal gifts of nature and of fortune; interests will never cease to clash and hatred to ensue; "painful labour, daily subjection, a condition nearly allied to indigence, will always be the lot of numbers"; in art and poetry the sources of novelty will probably be exhausted. But Bentham was far from being a pessimist. Though he believes that "we shall never make this world the abode of happiness," he asserts that it may be made a most delightful garden "compared with the savage forest in which men so long have wandered." [Footnote: Works, vol. i. p. 193 seq.] 7. The book of Malthus was welcomed at the moment by all those who had been thoroughly frightened by the French Revolution and saw in the "modern philosophy," as it was called, a serious danger to society. [Footnote: Both Hazlitt and Shelley thought that Malthus was playing to the boxes, by sophisms "calculated to lull the oppressors of mankind into a security of everlasting triumph" (Revolt of Islam, Preface). Bentham refers in his Book of Fallacies (Works, ii. p. 462) to the unpopularity of the views of Priestley, Godwin, and Condorcet: "to aim at perfection has been pronounced to be utter folly or wickedness."] Vice and misery and the inexorable laws of population were a godsend to rescue the state from "the precipice of perfectibility." We can understand the alarm occasioned to believers in the established constitution of things, for Godwin's work--now virtually forgotten, while Malthus is still appealed to as a discoverer in social science--produced an immense effect on impressionable minds at the time. All who prized liberty, sympathised with the downtrodden, and were capable of falling in love with social ideals, hailed Godwin as an evangelist. "No one," said a contemporary, "was more talked of, more looked up to, more sought after; and wherever liberty, truth, justice was the theme, his name was not far off." Young graduates left the Universities to throw themselves at the feet of the new Gamaliel; students of law and medicine neglected their professional studies to dream of "the renovation of society and the march of mind." Godwin carried with him "all the most sanguine and fearless understandings of the time." [Footnote: Hazlitt, Spirit of the Age: article on Godwin (written in 1814).] The most famous of his disciples were the poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and afterwards Shelley. Wordsworth had been an ardent sympathiser with the French Revolution. In its early days he had visited Paris: An emporium then Of golden expectations and receiving Freights every day from a new world of hope. He became a Godwinian in 1795, when the Terror had destroyed his faith in Revolutionary France. Southey, who had come under the influence of Rousseau, was initiated by Coleridge into Godwin's theories, and in their utopian enthusiasm they formed the design of founding a "pantisocratic" settlement in America, to show how happiness could be realised in a social environment in which duty and interest coincide and consequently all are virtuous. The plan anticipated the experiments of Owen and Cabet; but the pantisocrats did not experience the disappointments of the socialists, for it was never carried out. Coleridge and Southey as well as Wordsworth soon abandoned their Godwinian doctrines. [Footnote: In letters of 1797 and 1798 Coleridge repudiated the French doctrines and Godwin's philosophy. See Cestre, La Revolution francaise et les poetes anglais (1789-1809), pp. 389, 414.] They had, to use a phrase of Hazlitt, lost their way in Utopia, and they gave up the abstract and mechanical view of society which the French philosophy of the eighteenth century taught, for an organic conception in which historic sentiment and the wisdom of our ancestors had their due place. Wordsworth could presently look back and criticise his Godwinian phase as that of A proud and most presumptuous confidence In the transcendent wisdom of the age And its discernment. [Footnote: Excursion, Book ii.] He and Southey became conservative pillars of the state. Yet Southey, reactionary as he was in politics, never ceased to believe in social Progress. [Footnote: See his Colloquies; and Shelley, writing in 1811, says that Southey "looks forward to a state when all shall be perfected and matter become subjected to the omnipotence of mind" (Dowden, Life of Shelley, i. p. 212). Compare below, p. 325.] Amelioration was indeed to be effected by slow and cautious reforms, with the aid of the Church, but the intellectual aberrations of his youth had left an abiding impression. While these poets were sitting at Godwin's feet, Shelley was still a child. But he came across Political Justice at Eton; in his later life he reread it almost every year; and when he married Godwin's daughter he was more Godwinian than Godwin himself. Hazlitt, writing in 1814, says that Godwin's reputation had "sunk below the horizon," but Shelley never ceased to believe in his theory, though he came to see that the regeneration of man would be a much slower process than he had at first imagined. In the immature poem Queen Mab the philosophy of Godwin was behind his description of the future, and it was behind the longer and more ambitious poems of his maturer years. The city of gold, of the Revolt of Islam, is Godwin's future society, and he describes that poem as "an experiment on the temper of the public mind as to how far a thirst for a happier condition of moral and political society survives, among the enlightened and refined, the tempests which have shaken the age in which we live." As to Prometheus Unbound his biographer observes: [Footnote: Dowden, ib. ii. p. 264. Elsewhere Dowden remarks on the singular insensibility of Shelley's mind "to the wisdom or sentiment of history" (i. p. 55).] All the glittering fallacies of "Political Justice"--now sufficiently tarnished--together with all its encouraging and stimulating truths, may be found in the caput mortuum left when the critic has reduced the poetry of the "Prometheus" to a series of doctrinaire statements. The same dream inspired the final chorus of Hellas. Shelley was the poet of perfectibility. 8. The attraction of perfectibility reached beyond the ranks of men of letters, and in Robert Owen, the benevolent millowner of Lanark, it had an apostle who based upon it a very different theory from that of Political Justice and became one of the founders of modern socialism. The success of the idea of Progress has been promoted by its association with socialism. [Footnote: The word was independently invented in England and France. An article in the Poor Man's Guardian (a periodical edited by H. Hetherington, afterwards by Bronterre O'Brien), Aug. 24, 1833, is signed "A Socialist"; and in 1834 socialisme is opposed to individualism by P. Leroux in an article in the Revue Encyclopedique. The word is used in the New Moral World, and from 1836 was applied to the Owenites. See Dolleans, Robert Owen (1907), p. 305.] The first phase of socialism, what has been called its sentimental phase, was originated by Saint-Simon in France and Owen in England at about the same time; Marx was to bring it down from the clouds and make it a force in practical politics. But both in its earlier and in its later forms the economical doctrines rest upon a theory of society depending on the assumption, however disguised, that social institutions have been solely responsible for the vice and misery which exist, and that institutions and laws can be so changed as to abolish misery and vice. That is pure eighteenth century doctrine; and it passed from the revolutionary doctrinaires of that period to the constructive socialists of the nineteenth century. Owen learned it probably from Godwin, and he did not disguise it. His numerous works enforce it ad nauseam. He began the propagation of his gospel by his "New View of Society, or Essays on the formation of the human character, preparatory to the development of a plan for gradually ameliorating the condition of mankind," which he dedicated to the Prince Regent. [Footnote: 3rd ed. 1817. The Essays had appeared separately in 1813-14.] Here he lays down that "any general character, from the best to the worst, may be given to any community, even to the world at large, by the application of proper means; which means are to a great extent at the command and under the control of those who have influence in the affairs of men." [Footnote: P. 19.] The string on which he continually harps is that it is the cardinal error in government to suppose that men are responsible for their vices and virtues, and therefore for their actions and characters. These result from education and institutions, and can be transformed automatically by transforming those agencies. Owen founded several short-lived journals to diffuse his theories. The first number of the New Moral World (1834-36) [Footnote: This was not a journal, but a series of pamphlets which appeared in 1836-1844. Other publications of Owen were: Outline of the Rational System of Society (6th ed., Leeds, 1840); The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race, or the coming change from Irrationality to Rationality (1849); The Future of the Human Race, or a great, glorious and peaceful Revolution, near at hand, to be effected through the agency of departed spirits of good and superior men and women (1853); The New Existence of Man upon Earth, Parts i.-viii., 1854-55.] proclaimed the approach of an ideal society in which there will be no ignorance, no poverty, and no charity--a system "which will ensure the happiness of the human race throughout all future ages," to replace one "which, so long as it shall be maintained, must produce misery to all." His own experimental attempt to found such a society on a miniature scale in America proved a ludicrous failure. It is to be observed that in these socialist theories the conception of Progress as indefinite tends to vanish or to lose its significance. If the millennium can be brought about at a stroke by a certain arrangement of society, the goal of development is achieved; we shall have reached the term, and shall have only to live in and enjoy the ideal state--a menagerie of happy men. There will be room for further, perhaps indefinite, advance in knowledge, but civilisation in its social character becomes stable and rigid. Once man's needs are perfectly satisfied in a harmonious environment there is no stimulus to cause further changes, and the dynamic character of history disappears. Theories of Progress are thus differentiating into two distinct types, corresponding to two radically opposed political theories and appealing to two antagonistic temperaments. The one type is that of constructive idealists and socialists, who can name all the streets and towers of "the city of gold," which they imagine as situated just round a promontory. The development of man is a closed system; its term is known and is within reach. The other type is that of those who, surveying the gradual ascent of man, believe that by the same interplay of forces which have conducted him so far and by a further development of the liberty which he has fought to win, he will move slowly towards conditions of increasing harmony and happiness. Here the development is indefinite; its term is unknown, and lies in the remote future. Individual liberty is the motive force, and the corresponding political theory is liberalism; whereas the first doctrine naturally leads to a symmetrical system in which the authority of the state is preponderant, and the individual has little more value than a cog in a well-oiled wheel: his place is assigned; it is not his right to go his own way. Of this type the principal example that is not socialistic is, as we shall see, the philosophy of Comte. CHAPTER XIII. GERMAN SPECULATIONS ON PROGRESS 1. The philosophical views current in Germany during the period in which the psychology of Locke was in fashion in France and before the genius of Kant opened a new path, were based on the system of Leibnitz. We might therefore expect to find a theory of Progress developed there, parallel to the development in France though resting on different principles. For Leibnitz, as we saw, provided in his cosmic optimism a basis for the doctrine of human Progress, and he had himself incidentally pointed to it. This development, however, was delayed. It was only towards the close of the period--which is commonly known as the age of "Illumination"--that Progress came to the front, and it is interesting to observe the reason. Wolf was the leading successor and interpreter of Leibnitz. He constrained that thinker's ideas into a compact logical system which swayed Germany till Kant swept it away. In such cases it usually happens that some striking doctrines and tendencies of the master are accentuated and enforced, while others are suffered to drop out of sight. So it was here. In the Wolfian system, Leibnitz's conception of development was suffered to drop out of sight, and the dynamic element which animated his speculation disappeared. In particular, he had laid down that the sum of motive forces in the physical world is constant. His disciples proceeded to the inference that the sum of morality in the ethical world is constant. This dogma obviously eliminates the possibility of ethical improvement for collective humanity. And so we find Mendelssohn, who was the popular exponent of Wolf's philosophy, declaring that "progress is only for the individual; but that the whole of humanity here below in the course of time shall always progress and perfect itself seems to me not to have been the purpose of Providence." [Footnote: See Bock, Jakob Wegelin als Geschichtstheoretiker, in Leipsiger Studien, ix. 4, pp. 23-7 (1902).] The publication of the Nouveaux Essais in 1765 induced some thinkers to turn from the dry bones of Wolf to the spirit of Leibnitz himself. And at the same time French thought was penetrating. In consequence of these influences the final phase of the German "Illumination" is marked by the appearance of two or three works in which Progress is a predominating idea. We see this reaction against Wolf and his static school in a little work published by Herder in 1774--"a philosophy of history for the cultivation of mankind." There is continuous development, he declares, and one people builds upon the work of another. We must judge past ages, not by the present, but relatively to their own particular conditions. What exists now was never possible before, for everything that man accomplishes is conditioned by time, climate, and circumstances. Six years later Lessing's pamphlet on the Education of the Human Race appeared, couched in the form of aphoristic statements, and to a modern reader, one may venture to say, singularly wanting in argumentative force. The thesis is that the drama of history is to be explained as the education of man by a progressive series of religions, a series not yet complete, for the future will produce another revelation to lift him to a higher plane than that to which Christ has drawn him up. This interpretation of history proclaimed Progress, but assumed an ideal and applied a measure very different from those of the French philosophers. The goal is not social happiness, but a full comprehension of God. Philosophy of religion is made the key to the philosophy of history. The work does not amount to more than a suggestion for a new synthesis, but it was opportune and arresting. Herder meanwhile had been thinking, and in 1784 he gave the German world his survey of man's career--Ideas of the Philosophy of the History of Humanity. In this famous work, in which we can mark the influence of French thinkers, especially Montesquieu, as well as of Leibnitz, he attempted, though on very different lines, the same task which Turgot and Condorcet planned, a universal history of civilisation. The Deity designed the world but never interferes in its process, either in the physical cosmos or in human history. Human history itself, civilisation, is a purely natural phenomenon. Events are strictly enchained; continuity is unbroken; what happened at any given time could have happened only then, and nothing else could have happened. Herder's rigid determinism not only excludes Voltaire's chance but also suppresses the free play of man's intelligent will. Man cannot guide his own destinies; his actions and fortunes are determined by the nature of things, his physical organisation and physical environment. The fact that God exists in inactive ease hardly affects the fatalistic complexion of this philosophy; but it is perhaps a mitigation that the world was made for man; humanity is its final cause. The variety of the phases of civilisation that have appeared on earth is due to the fact that the possible manifestations of human nature are very numerous and that they must all be realised. The lower forms are those in which the best, which means the most human, faculties of our nature are undeveloped. The highest has not yet been realised. "The flower of humanity, captive still in its germ, will blossom out one day into the true form of man like unto God, in a state of which no terrestrial man can imagine the greatness and the majesty." [Footnote: Ideen, v. 5.] Herder is not a systematic thinker--indeed his work abounds in contradictions--and he has not made it clear how far this full epiphany results from the experiences of mankind in preceding phases. He believes that life is an education for humanity (he has taken the phrase of Lessing), that good progressively develops, that reason and justice become more powerful. This is a doctrine of Progress, but he distinctly opposes the hypothesis of a final and unique state of perfection as the goal of history, which would imply that earlier generations exist for the sake of the later and suffer in order to ensure the felicity of remote posterity--a theory which offends his sense of justice and fitness. On the contrary, man can realise happiness equally in every stage of civilisation. All forms of society are equally legitimate, the imperfect as well as the perfect; all are ends in themselves, not mere stages on the way to something better. And a people which is happy in one of these inferior states has a perfect right to remain in it. Thus the Progress which Herder sees is, to use his own geometrical illustration, a sequence of unequal and broken curves, corresponding to different maxima and minima. Each curve has its own equation, the history of each people is subject to the laws of its own environment; but there is no general law controlling the whole career of humanity. [Footnote: Ib. xv. 3. The power of ideas in history, which Herder failed to appreciate, was recognised by a contemporary savant from whom he might have learned. Jakob Wegelin, a Swiss, had, at the invitation of Frederick the Great, settled in Berlin, where he spent the last years of his life and devoted his study to the theory of history. His merit was to have perceived that "external facts are penetrated and governed by spiritual forces and guiding ideas, and that the essential and permanent in history is conditioned by the nature and development of ideas." (Dierauer, quoted by Bock, op. cit. p. 13.) He believed in the progressive development of mankind as a whole, but as his learned brochures seem to have exerted no influence, it would be useless here to examine more closely his views, which are buried in the transactions of the Prussian Academy of Science. In Switzerland he came under the influence of Rousseau and d'Alembert. After he moved to Berlin (1765) he fell under that of Leibnitz. It may be noted (1) that he deprecated attempts at writing a universal history as premature until an adequate knowledge of facts had been gained, and this would demand long preliminary labours; (2) that he discussed the question whether history is an indefinite progression or a series of constant cycles, and decided for the former view. (Memoire sur le cours periodique, 1785). Bock's monograph is the best study of Wegelin; but see also Flint's observations in Philosophy of History, vol. i. (1874).] Herder brought down his historical survey only as far as the sixteenth century. It has been suggested [Footnote: Javary, De l'idee de progres, p. 69.] that if he had come down further he might have comprehended the possibility of a deliberate transformation of societies by the intelligent action of the human will--an historical force to which he does not do justice, apparently because he fancied it incompatible with strict causal sequence. The value of his work does not lie in the philosophical principles which he applied. Nor was it a useful contribution to history; of him it has been said, as of Bossuet, that facts bent like grass under his feet. [Footnote: Jouffroy, Melanges, p. 81.] But it was a notable attempt to do for human phenomena what Leibnitz in his Theodicy sought to do for the cosmos, and it pointed the way to the rationalistic philosophies of history which were to be a feature of the speculations of the following century. 2. The short essay of Kant, which he clumsily called the Idea of a Universal History on a Cosmopolitical Plan, [Footnote: 1784. This work of Kant was translated by De Quincey (Works, vol. ix. 428 sqq., ed. Masson), who is responsible for cosmopolitical as the rendering of weltburgerlich.] approaches the problems raised by the history of civilisation from a new point of view. He starts with the principle of invariable law. On any theory of free will, he says, human actions are as completely under the control of universal-laws of nature as any other physical phenomena. This is illustrated by statistics. Registers of births, deaths, and marriages show that these events occur with as much conformity to laws of nature as the oscillations of the weather. It is the same with the great sequence of historical events. Taken alone and individually, they seem incoherent and lawless; but viewed in their connection, as due to the action not of individuals but of the human species, they do not fail to reveal "a regular stream of tendency." Pursuing their own often contradictory purposes, individual nations and individual men are unconsciously promoting a process to which if they perceived it they would pay little regard. Individual men do not obey a law. They do not obey the laws of instinct like animals, nor do they obey, as rational citizens of the world would do, the laws of a preconcerted plan. If we look at the stage of history we see scattered and occasional indications of wisdom, but the general sum of men's actions is "a web of folly, childish vanity, and often even of the idlest wickedness and spirit of destruction." The problem for the philosopher is to discover a meaning in this senseless current of human actions, so that the history of creatures who pursue no plan of their own may yet admit of a systematic form. The clew to this form is supplied by the predispositions of human nature. I have stated this problem almost in Kant's words, and as he might have stated it if he had not introduced the conception of final causes. His use of the postulate of final causes without justifying it is a defect in his essay. He identifies what he well calls a stream of tendency with "a natural purpose." He makes no attempt to show that the succession of events is such that it cannot be explained without the postulate of a purpose. His solution of the problem is governed by this conception of finality, and by the unwarranted assumption that nature does nothing in vain. He lays down that all the tendencies to which any creature is predisposed by its nature must in the end be developed perfectly and agreeably to their final purpose. Those predispositions in man which serve the use of his reason are therefore destined to be fully developed. This destiny, however, cannot be realised in the individual; it can only be realised in the species. For reason works tentatively, by progress and regress. Each man would require an inordinate length of time to make a perfect use of his natural tendencies. Therefore, as life is short, an incalculable series of generations is needed. The means which nature employs to develop these tendencies is the antagonism which in man's social state exists between his gregarious and his antigregarious tendencies. His antigregarious nature expresses itself in the desire to force all things to comply to his own humour. Hence ambition, love of honour, avarice. These were necessary to raise mankind from the savage to the civilised state. But for these antisocial propensities men would be gentle as sheep, and "an Arcadian life would arise, of perfect harmony and mutual love, such as must suffocate and stifle all talents in their very germs." Nature, knowing better than man what is good for the species, ordains discord. She is to be thanked for competition and enmity, and for the thirst of power and wealth. For without these the final purpose of realising man's rational nature would remain unfulfilled. This is Kant's answer to Rousseau. The full realisation of man's rational nature is possible only in a "universal civil society" founded on political justice. The establishment of such a society is the highest problem for the human species. Kant contemplates, as the political goal, a confederation of states in which the utmost possible freedom shall be united with the most rigorous determination of the boundaries of freedom. Is it reasonable to suppose that a universal or cosmopolitical society of this kind will come into being; and if so, how will it be brought about? Political changes in the relations of states are generally produced by war. Wars are tentative endeavours to bring about new relations and to form new political bodies. Are combinations and recombinations to continue until by pure chance some rational self-supporting system emerges? Or is it possible that no such condition of society may ever arrive, and that ultimately all progress may be overwhelmed by a hell of evils? Or, finally, is Nature pursuing her regular course of raising the species by its own spontaneous efforts and developing, in the apparently wild succession of events, man's originally implanted tendencies? Kant accepts the last alternative on the ground that it is not reasonable to assume a final purpose in particular natural processes and at the same time to assume that there is no final purpose in the whole. Thus his theory of Progress depends on the hypothesis of final causes. It follows that to trace the history of mankind is equivalent to unravelling a hidden plan of Nature for accomplishing a perfect civil constitution for a universal society; since a universal society is the sole state in which the tendencies of human nature can be fully developed. We cannot determine the orbit of the development, because the whole period is so vast and only a small fraction is known to us, but this is enough to show that there is a definite course. Kant thinks that such a "cosmopolitical" history, as he calls it, is possible, and that if it were written it would give us a clew opening up "a consolatory prospect into futurity, in which at a remote distance we shall discover the human species seated upon an eminence won by infinite toil, where all the germs are unfolded which nature has implanted and its own destination upon this earth accomplished." 3. But to see the full bearing of Kant's discussion we must understand its connection with his ethics. For his ethical theory is the foundation and the motive of his speculation on Progress. The progress on which he lays stress is moral amelioration; he refers little to scientific or material progress. For him morality was an absolute obligation founded in the nature of reason. Such an obligation presupposes an end to be attained, and this end is a reign of reason under which all men obeying the moral law mutually treat each other as ends in themselves. Such an ideal state must be regarded as possible, because it is a necessary postulate of reason. From this point of view it may be seen that Kant's speculation on universal history is really a discussion whether the ideal state, which is required as a subjective postulate in the interest of ethics, is likely to be realised objectively. Now, Kant does not assert that because our moral reason must assume the possibility of this hypothetical goal civilisation is therefore moving towards it. That would be a fallacy into which he was incapable of falling. Civilisation is a phenomenon, and anything we know about it can only be inferred from experience. His argument is that there are actual indications of progress in this desirable direction. He pointed to the contemporary growth of civil liberty and religious liberty, and these are conditions of moral improvement. So far his argument coincides in principle with that of French theorists of Progress. But Kant goes on to apply to these data the debatable conception of final causes, and to infer a purpose in the development of humanity. Only this inference is put forward as a hypothesis, not as a dogma. It is probable that what hindered Kant from broaching his theory of Progress with as much confidence as Condorcet was his perception that nothing could be decisively affirmed about the course of civilisation until the laws of its movement had been discovered. He saw that this was a matter for scientific investigation. He says expressly that the laws are not yet known, and suggests that some future genius may do for social phenomena what Kepler and Newton did for the heavenly bodies. As we shall see, this is precisely what some of the leading French thinkers of the next generation will attempt to do. But cautiously though he framed the hypothesis Kant evidently considered Progress probable. He recognised that the most difficult obstacle to the moral advance of man lies in war and the burdens which the possibility of war imposes. And he spent much thought on the means by which war might be abolished. He published a philosophical essay on Perpetual Peace, in which he formulated the articles of an international treaty to secure the disappearance of war. He considered that, while a universal republic would be the positive ideal, we shall probably have to be contented with what he calls a negative substitute, consisting in a federation of peoples bound by a peace-alliance guaranteeing the independence of each member. But to assure the permanence of this system it is essential that each state should have a democratic constitution. For such a constitution is based on individual liberty and civil equality. All these changes should be brought about by legal reforms; revolutions--he was writing in 1795---cannot be justified. We see the influence of Rousseau's Social Contract and that of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, with whose works Kant was acquainted. There can be little doubt that it was the influence of French thought, so powerful in Germany at this period, that turned Kant's mind towards these speculations, which belong to the latest period of his life and form a sort of appendix to his philosophical system. The theory of Progress, the idea of universal reform, the doctrine of political equality--Kant examined all these conceptions and appropriated them to the service of his own highly metaphysical theory of ethics. In this new association their spirit was changed. In France, as we saw, the theory of Progress was generally associated with ethical views which could find a metaphysical basis in the sensationalism of Locke. A moral system which might be built on sensation, as the primary mental fact, was worked out by Helvetius. But the principle that the supreme law of conduct is to obey nature had come down as a practical philosophy from Rabelais and Montaigne through Moliere to the eighteenth century. It was reinforced by the theory of the natural goodness of man. Jansenism had struggled against it and was defeated. After theology it was the turn of metaphysics. Kant's moral imperative marked the next stage in the conflict of the two opposite tendencies which seek natural and ultra-natural sanctions for morality. Hence the idea of progress had a different significance for Kant and for its French exponents, though his particular view of the future possibly in store for the human species coincided in some essential points with theirs. But his theory of life gives a different atmosphere to the idea. In France the atmosphere is emphatically eudaemonic; happiness is the goal. Kant is an uncompromising opponent of eudaemonism. "If we take enjoyment or happiness as the measure, it is easy," he says, "to evaluate life. Its value is less than nothing. For who would begin one's life again in the same conditions, or even in new natural conditions, if one could choose them oneself, but of which enjoyment would be the sole end?" There was, in fact, a strongly-marked vein of pessimism in Kant. One of the ablest men of the younger generation who were brought up on his system founded the philosophical pessimism--very different in range and depth from the sentimental pessimism of Rousseau--which was to play a remarkable part in German thought in the nineteenth century. [Footnote: Kant's pessimism has been studied at length by von Hartmann, in Zur Geschichte und Begrundung des Pessimismus (1880).] Schopenhauer's unpleasant conclusion that of all conceivable worlds this is the worst, is one of the speculations for which Kant may be held ultimately responsible. [Footnote: Schopenhauer recognised progress social, economic, and political, but as a fact that contains no guarantee of happiness; on the contrary, the development of the intelligence increases suffering. He ridiculed the optimistic ideals of comfortable, well-regulated states. His views on historical development have been collected by G. Sparlinsky, Schopenhauers Verhaltnis zur Geschichte, in Berner Studien s. Philosophie, Bd. lxxii. (1910).] 4. Kant's considerations on historical development are an appendix to his philosophy; they are not a necessary part, wrought into the woof of his system. It was otherwise with his successors the Idealists, for whom his system was the point of departure, though they rejected its essential feature, the limitation of human thought. With Fichte and Hegel progressive development was directly deduced from their principles. If their particular interpretations of history have no permanent value, it is significant that, in their ambitious attempts to explain the universe a priori, history was conceived as progressive, and their philosophies did much to reinforce a conception which on very different principles was making its way in the world. But the progress which their systems involved was not bound up with the interest of human happiness, but stood out as a fact which, whether agreeable or not, is a consequence of the nature of thought. The process of the universe, as it appeared to Fichte, [Footnote: Fichte's philosophy of history will be found in Die Grundzuge des gegenwartigen Zeitalters (1806), lectures which he delivered at Berlin in 1804-5.] tends to a full realisation of "freedom"; that is its end and goal, but a goal that always recedes. It can never be reached; for its full attainment would mean the complete suppression of Nature. The process of the world, therefore, consists in an indefinite approximation to an unattainable ideal: freedom is being perpetually realised more and more; and the world, as it ascends in this direction, becomes more and more a realm of reason. What Fichte means by freedom may be best explained by its opposition to instinct. A man acting instinctively may be acting quite reasonably, in a way which any one fully conscious of all the implications and consequences of the action would judge to be reasonable. But in order that his actions should be free he must himself be fully conscious of all those implications and consequences. It follows that the end of mankind upon earth is to reach a state in which all the relations of life shall be ordered according to reason, not instinctively but with full consciousness and deliberate purpose. This end should govern the ethical rules of conduct, and it determines the necessary stages of history. It gives us at once two main periods, the earliest and the latest: the earliest, in which men act reasonably by instinct, and the latest, in which they are conscious of reason and try to realise it fully. But before reaching this final stage they must pass through an epoch in which reason is conscious of itself, but not regnant. And to reach this they must have emancipated themselves from instinct, and this process of emancipation means a fourth epoch. But they could not have wanted to emancipate themselves unless they had felt instinct as a servitude imposed by an external authority, and therefore we have to distinguish yet another epoch wherein reason is expressed in authoritarian institutions to which men blindly submit. In this way Fichte deduces five historical epochs: two in which progress is blind, two in which it is free, and an intermediate in which it is struggling to consciousness. [Footnote: First Epoch: that of instinctive reason; the age of innocence. Second: that of authoritarian reason. Third: that of enfranchisement; the age of scepticism and unregulated liberty. Fourth: that of conscious reason, as science. Fifth: that of regnant reason, as art.] But there are no locked gates between these periods; they overlap and mingle; each may have some of the characteristics of another; and in each there is a vanguard leading the way and a rearguard lagging behind. At present (1804) we are in the third age; we have broken with authority, but do not yet possess a clear and disciplined knowledge of reason. [Footnote: Three years later, however, Fichte maintained in his patriotic Discourses to the German Nation (1807) that in 1804 man had crossed the threshold of the fourth epoch. He asserted that the progress of "culture" and science will depend henceforward chiefly on Germany.] Fichte has deduced this scheme purely a priori without any reference to actual experience. "The philosopher," he says, "follows the a priori thread of the world-plan which is clear to him without any history; and if he makes use of history, it is not to prove anything, since his theses are already proved independently of all history." Historical development is thus presented as a necessary progress towards a goal which is known but cannot be reached. And this fact as to the destiny of the race constitutes the basis of morality, of which the fundamental law is to act in such a way as to promote the free realisation of reason upon earth. It has been claimed by a recent critic that Fichte was the first modern philosopher to humanise morals. He completely rejected the individualistic conception which underlay Kantian as well as Christian ethics. He asserted that the true motive of morality is not the salvation of the individual man but the Progress of humanity. In fact, with Fichte Progress is the principle of ethics. That the Christian ideal of ascetic saintliness detached from society has no moral value is a plain corollary from the idea of earthly Progress. [Footnote: X. Leon, La Philosophie de Fichte (1902), pp. 477-9.] One other point in Fichte's survey of history deserves notice--the social role of the savant. It is the function of the savant to discover the truths which are a condition of moral progress; he may be said to incarnate reason in the world. We shall see how this idea played a prominent part in the social schemes of Saint-Simon and Comte. [Footnote: Fichte, Ueber die Bestimmung des Gelehrten (1794).] 5. Hegel's philosophy of history is better known than Fichte's. Like Fichte, he deduced the phases a priori from his metaphysical principles, but he condescended to review in some detail the actual phenomena. He conceived the final cause of the world as Spirit's consciousness of its own freedom. The ambiguous term "freedom" is virtually equivalent to self-consciousness, and Hegel defines Universal History as the description of the process by which Spirit or God comes to the consciousness of its own meaning. This freedom does not mean that Spirit could choose at any moment to develop in a different way; its actual development is necessary and is the embodiment of reason. Freedom consists in fully recognising the fact. Of the particular features which distinguish Hegel's treatment, the first is that he identifies "history" with political history, the development of the state. Art, religion, philosophy, the creations of social man, belong to a different and higher stage of Spirit's self-revelation. [Footnote: The three phases of Spirit are (1) subjective; (2) objective; (3) absolute. Psychology, e.g., is included in (1), law and history in (2), religion in (3).] In the second place, Hegel ignores the primitive prehistoric ages of man, and sets the beginning of his development in the fully-grown civilisation of China. He conceives the Spirit as continually moving from one nation to another in order to realise the successive stages of its self-consciousness: from China to India, from India to the kingdoms of Western Asia; then from the Orient to Greece, then to Rome, and finally to the Germanic world. In the East men knew only that ONE is free, the political characteristic was despotism; in Greece and Rome they knew that SOME are free, and the political forms were aristocracy and democracy; in the modern world they know that ALL are free, and the political form is monarchy. The first period, he compared to childhood, the second to youth (Greece) and manhood (Rome), the third to old age, old but not feeble. The third, which includes the medieval and modern history of Europe, designated by Hegel as the Germanic world--for "the German spirit is the spirit of the modern world"--is also the final period. In it God realises his freedom completely in history, just as in Hegel's own absolute philosophy, which is final, God has completely understood his own nature. And here is the most striking difference between the theories of Fichte and Hegel. Both saw the goal of human development in the realisation of "freedom," but, while with Fichte the development never ends as the goal is unattainable, with Hegel the development is already complete, the goal is not only attainable but has now been attained. Thus Hegel's is what we may call a closed system. History has been progressive, but no path is left open for further advance. Hegel views this conclusion of development with perfect complacency. To most minds that are not intoxicated with the Absolute it will seem that, if the present is the final state to which the evolution of Spirit has conducted, the result is singularly inadequate to the gigantic process. But his system is eminently inhuman. The happiness or misery of individuals is a matter of supreme indifference to the Absolute, which, in order to realise itself in time, ruthlessly sacrifices sentient beings. The spirit of Hegel's philosophy, in its bearing on social life, was thus antagonistic to Progress as a practical doctrine. Progress there had been, but Progress had done its work; the Prussian monarchical state was the last word in history. Kant's cosmopolitical plan, the liberalism and individualism which were implicit in his thought, the democracies which he contemplated in the future, are all cast aside as a misconception. Once the needs of the Absolute Spirit have been satisfied, when it has seen its full power and splendour revealed in the Hegelian philosophy, the world is as good as it can be. Social amelioration does not matter, nor the moral improvement of men, nor the increase of their control over physical forces. 6. The other great representative of German idealism, who took his departure from Kant, also saw in history a progressive revelation of divine reason. But it was the processes of nature, not the career of humanity, that absorbed the best energies of Schelling, and the elaboration of a philosophical idea of organic evolution was the prominent feature of his speculation. His influence--and it was wide, reaching even scientific biologists--lay chiefly in diffusing this idea, and he thus contributed to the formation of a theory which was afterwards to place the idea of Progress on a more imposing base. [Footnote: Schelling's views notoriously varied at various stages of his career. In his System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) he distinguished three historical periods, in the first of which the Absolute reveals itself as Fate, in the second as Nature, in the third as Providence, and asserted that we are still living in the second, which began with the expansion of Rome (Werke, i. 3, p. 603). In this context he says that the conception of an infinite "progressivity" is included in the conception of "history," but adds that the perfectibility of the race cannot be directly inferred. For it may be said that man has no proper history but turns round on a wheel of Ixion. The difficulty of establishing the fact of Progress from the course of events lies in discovering a criterion. Schelling rejects the criterion of moral improvement and that of advance in science and arts as unpractical or misleading. But if we see the sole object of history in a gradual realisation of the ideal state, we have a measure of Progress which can be applied; though it cannot be proved either by theory or by experience that the goal will be attained. This must remain an article of faith (ib. 592 sqq.).] Schelling influenced, among others, his contemporary Krause, a less familiar name, who worked out a philosophy of history in which this idea is fundamental. Krause conceived history, which is the expression of the Absolute, as the development of life; society as an organism; and social growth as a process which can be deduced from abstract biological principles. [Footnote: Krause divided man's earthly career into three Ages--infancy, growth, and maturity. The second of these falls into three periods characterised by (1) polytheism, (2) monotheism (Middle Ages), (3) scepticism and liberty, and we are now in the third of these periods. The third Age will witness the union of humanity in a single social organism, and the universal acceptance of "panentheism" (the doctrine of the unity of all in God), which is the principle of Krause's philosophy and religion. But though this will be the final stage on the earth, Krause contemplates an ulterior career of humanity in other solar systems. Krause never attracted attention in England, but he exerted some influence in France and Spain, and especially in Belgium, notwithstanding the grotesque jargon in which he obscured his thoughts. See Flint, Philosophy of History, pp. 474-5. Flint's account of his speculations is indulgent. The main ideas of his philosophy of history will be found in the Introduction a la philosophie (ed. 2, 1880) of G. Tiberghien, a Belgian disciple.] All these transcendent speculations had this in common that they pretended to discover the necessary course of human history on metaphysical principles, independent of experience. But it has been rightly doubted whether this alleged independence was genuine. We may question whether any of them would have produced the same sequence of periods of history, if the actual facts of history had been to them a sealed book. Indeed we may be sure that they were surreptitiously and subconsciously using experience as a guide, while they imagined that abstract principles were entirely responsible for their conclusions. And this is equivalent to saying that their ideas of progressive movement were really derived from that idea of Progress which the French thinkers of the eighteenth century had attempted to base on experience. The influence, direct and indirect, of these German philosophers reached far beyond the narrow circle of the bacchants or even the wandbearers of idealism. They did much to establish the notion of progressive development as a category of thought, almost as familiar and indispensable as that of cause and effect. They helped to diffuse the idea of "an increasing purpose" in history. Augustine or Bossuet might indeed have spoken of an increasing purpose, but the "purpose" of their speculations was subsidiary to a future life. The purpose of the German idealists could be fulfilled in earthly conditions and required no theory of personal immortality. This atmosphere of thought affected even intelligent reactionaries who wrote in the interest of orthodox Christianity and the Catholic Church. Progressive development is admitted in the lectures on the Philosophy of History of Friedrich von Schlegel. [Footnote: Translated into English in 2 vols., 1835.] He denounced Condorcet, and opposed to perfectibility the corruptible nature of man. But he asserted that the philosophy of history is to be found in "the principles of social progress." [Footnote: Op. cit. ii, p. 194, sqq.] These principles are three: the hidden ways of Providence emancipating the human race; the freewill of man; and the power which God permits to the agents of evil,--principles which Bossuet could endorse, but the novelty is that here they are arrayed as forces of Progress. In fact, the point of von Schlegel's pretentious, unilluminating book is to rehabilitate Christianity by making it the key to that new conception of life which had taken shape among the enemies of the Church. 7. As biological development was one of the constant preoccupations of Goethe, whose doctrine of metamorphosis and "types" helped to prepare the way for the evolutionary hypothesis, we might have expected to find him interested in theories of social progress, in which theories of biological development find a logical extension. But the French speculations on Progress did not touch his imagination; they left him cool and sceptical. Towards the end of his life, in conversation with Eckermann, he made some remarks which indicate his attitude. [Footnote: Gesprache mit Goethe, 23 Oktober 1828.] "'The world will not reach its goal so quickly as we think and wish. The retarding demons are always there, intervening and resisting at every point, so that, though there is an advance on the whole, it is very slow. Live longer and you will find that I am right.' "'The development of humanity,' said Eckermann, 'appears to be a matter of thousands of years.' "'Who knows?' Goethe replied, 'perhaps of millions. But let humanity last as long as it will, there will always be hindrances in its way, and all kinds of distress, to make it develop its powers. Men will become more clever and discerning, but not better nor happier nor more energetic, at least except for limited periods. I see the time coming when God will take no more pleasure in the race, and must again proceed to a rejuvenated creation. I am sure that this will happen and that the time and hour in the distant future are already fixed for the beginning of this epoch of rejuvenation. But that time is certainly a long way off, and we can still for thousands and thousands of years enjoy ourselves on this dear old playing-ground, just as it is.'" That is at once a plain rejection of perfectibility, and an opinion that intellectual development is no highroad to the gates of a golden city. CHAPTER XIV. CURRENTS OF THOUGHT IN FRANCE AFTER THE REVOLUTION 1. The failure of the Revolution to fulfil the visionary hopes which had dazzled France for a brief period--a failure intensified by the horrors that had attended the experiment--was followed by a reaction against the philosophical doctrines and tendencies which had inspired its leaders. Forces, which the eighteenth century had underrated or endeavoured to suppress, emerged in a new shape, and it seemed for a while as if the new century might definitely turn its back on its predecessor. There was an intellectual rehabilitation of Catholicism, which will always be associated with the names of four thinkers of exceptional talent, Chateaubriand, De Maistre, Bonald, and Lamennais. But the outstanding fame of these great reactionaries must not mislead us into exaggerating the reach of this reaction. The spirit and tendencies of the past century still persisted in the circles which were most permanently influential. Many eminent savants who had been imbued with the ideas of Condillac and Helvetius, and had taken part in the Revolution and survived it, were active under the Empire and the restored Monarchy, still true to the spirit of their masters, and commanding influence by the value of their scientific work. M. Picavet's laborious researches into the activities of this school of thinkers has helped us to understand the transition from the age of Condorcet to the age of Comte. The two central figures are Cabanis, the friend of Condorcet, [Footnote: He has already claimed our notice, above, p. 215.] and Destutt de Tracy. M. Picavet has grouped around them, along with many obscurer names, the great scientific men of the time, like Laplace, Bichat, Lamarck, as all in the direct line of eighteenth century thought. "Ideologists" he calls them. [Footnote: Ideology is now sometimes used to convey a criticism; for instance, to contrast the methods of Lamarck with those of Darwin.] Ideology, the science of ideas, was the word invented by de Tracy to distinguish the investigation of thought in accordance with the methods of Locke and Condillac from old-fashioned metaphysics. The guiding principle of the ideologists was to apply reason to observed facts and eschew a priori deductions. Thinkers of this school had an influential organ, the Decade philosophique, of which J. B. Say the economist was one of the founders in 1794. The Institut, which had been established by the Convention, was crowded with "ideologists," and may be said to have continued the work of the Encyclopaedia. [Footnote: Picavet, op. cit. p. 69. The members of the 2nd Class of the Institut, that of moral and political science, were so predominantly Ideological that the distrust of Napoleon was excited, and he abolished it in 1803, distributing its members among the other Classes.] These men had a firm faith in the indefinite progress of knowledge, general enlightenment, and "social reason." 2. Thus the ideas of the "sophists" of the age of Voltaire were alive in the speculative world, not withstanding political, religious, and philosophical reaction. But their limitations were to be transcended, and account taken of facts and aspects which their philosophy had ignored or minimised. The value of the reactionary movement lay in pressing these facts and aspects on the attention, in reopening chambers of the human spirit which the age of Voltaire had locked and sealed. The idea of Progress was particularly concerned in the general change of attitude, intellectual and emotional, towards the Middle Ages. A fresh interest in the great age of the Church was a natural part of the religious revival, but extended far beyond the circle of ardent Catholics. It was a characteristic feature, as every one knows, of the Romantic movement. It did not affect only creative literature, it occupied speculative thinkers and stimulated historians. For Guizot, Michelet, and Auguste Comte, as well as for Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo, the Middle Ages have a significance which Frenchmen of the previous generation could hardly have comprehended. We saw how that period had embarrassed the first pioneers who attempted to trace the course of civilisation as a progressive movement, how lightly they passed over it, how unconvincingly they explained it away. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the medieval question was posed in such a way that any one who undertook to develop the doctrine of Progress would have to explore it more seriously. Madame de Stael saw this when she wrote her book on Literature considered in its Relation to Social Institutions (1801). She was then under the influence of Condorcet and an ardent believer in perfectibility, and the work is an attempt to extend this theory, which she testifies was falling into discredit, to the realm of literature. She saw that, if man regressed instead of progressing for ten centuries, the case for Progress was gravely compromised, and she sought to show that the Middle Ages contributed to the development of the intellectual faculties and to the expansion of civilisation, and that the Christian religion was an indispensable agent. This contention that Progress was uninterrupted is an advance on Condorcet and an anticipation of Saint-Simon and Comte. A more eloquent and persuasive voice was raised in the following year from the ranks of reaction. Chateaubriand's Genie du Christianisme appeared in 1802, "amidst the ruins of our temples," as the author afterwards said, when France was issuing from the chaos of her revolution. It was a declaration of war against the spirit of the eighteenth century which had treated Christianity as a barbarous system whose fall was demanded in the name of Progress. But it was much more than polemic. Chateaubriand arrayed arguments in support of orthodox dogmas, original sin, primitive degeneration, and the rest; but the appeal of the book did not lie in its logic, it lay in the appreciation of Christianity from a new point of view. He approached it in the spirit of an artist, as an aesthete, not as a philosopher, and so far as he proved anything he proved that Christianity is valuable because it is beautiful, not because it is true. He aimed at showing that it can "enchanter l'ame aussi divinement que les dieux de Virgile et d'Homere." He might call to his help the Fathers of the Church, but it was on Dante, Milton, Racine that his case was really based. The book is an apologia, from the aesthetic standpoint of the Romantic school. "Dieu ne defend pas les routes fleuries quand elles servent a revenir a lui." It was a matter of course that the defender of original sin should reject the doctrine of perfectibility. "When man attains the highest point of civilisation," wrote Chateaubriand in the vein of Rousseau, "he is on the lowest stair of morality; if he is free, he is rude; by civilising his manners, he forges himself chains. His heart profits at the expense of his head, his head at the expense of his heart." And, apart from considerations of Christian doctrine, the question of Progress had little interest for the Romantic school. Victor Hugo, in the famous Preface to his Cromwell (1827), where he went more deeply than Chateaubriand into the contrasts between ancient and modern art, revived the old likeness of mankind to an individual man, and declared that classical antiquity was the time of its virility and that we are now spectators of its imposing old age. From other points of view powerful intellects were reverting to the Middle Ages and eager to blot out the whole development of modern society since the Reformation, as the Encyclopaedic philosophers had wished to blot out the Middle Ages. The ideal of Bonald, De Maistre, and Lamennais was a sacerdotal government of the world, and the English constitution was hardly less offensive to their minds than the Revolution which De Maistre denounced as "satanic." Advocates as they were of the dead system of theocracy, they contributed, however, to the advance of thought, not only by forcing medieval institutions on the notice of the world but also by their perception that society had been treated in the eighteenth century in too mechanical a way, that institutions grow, that the conception of individual men divested of their life in society is a misleading abstraction. They put this in extravagant and untenable forms, but there was a large measure of truth in their criticism, which did its part in helping the nineteenth century to revise and transcend the results of eighteenth century speculation. In this reactionary literature we can see the struggle of the doctrine of Providence, declining before the doctrine of Progress, to gain the upper-hand again. Chateaubriand, Bonald, De Maistre, Lamennais firmly held the dogma of an original golden age and the degradation of man, and denounced the whole trend of progressive thought from Bacon to Condorcet. These writers were unconsciously helping Condorcet's doctrine to assume a new and less questionable shape. [Footnote: Bonald indeed in his treatise De pouvoir adopted the idea of development and applied it to religion (as Newman did afterwards) for the purpose of condemning the Reformation as a retrograde movement.] 3. Along with the discovery of the Middle Ages came the discovery of German literature. In the intellectual commerce between the two countries in the age of Frederick the Great, France had been exclusively the giver, Germany the recipient. It was due, above all, to Madame de Stael that the tide began to flow the other way. Among the writers of the Napoleonic epoch, Madame de Stael is easily first in critical talent and intellectual breadth. Her study of the Revolution showed a more dispassionate appreciation of that convulsion than any of her contemporaries were capable of forming. But her chef-d'oeuvre is her study of Germany, De l'Allemagne, [Footnote: A.D. 1813.] which revealed the existence of a world of art and thought, unsuspected by the French public. Within the next twenty years Herder and Lessing, Kant and Hegel were exerting their influence at Paris. She did in France what Coleridge was doing in England for the knowledge of German thought. Madame de Stael had raised anew the question which had been raised in the seventeenth century and answered in the negative by Voltaire: is there progress in aesthetic literature? Her early book on Literature had clearly defined the issue. She did not propose the thesis that there is any progress or improvement (as some of the Moderns had contended in the famous Quarrel) in artistic form. Within the limits of their own thought and emotional experience the ancients achieved perfection of expression, and perfection cannot be surpassed. But as thought progresses, as the sum of ideas increases and society changes, fresh material is supplied to art, there is "a new development of sensibility" which enables literary artists to compass new kinds of charm. The Genie du Christianisme embodied a commentary on her contention, more arresting than any she could herself have furnished. Here the reactionary joined hands with the disciple of Condorcet, to prove that there is progress in the domain of art. Madame de Stael's masterpiece, Germany, was a further impressive illustration of the thesis that the literature of the modern European nations represents an advance on classical literature, in the sense that it sounds notes which the Greek and Roman masters had not heard, reaches depths which they had not conjectured, unlocks chambers which to them were closed,--as a result of the progressive experiences of the human soul. [Footnote: German literature was indeed already known, in some measure, to readers of the Decade philosophique, and Kant had been studied in France long before 1813, the year of the publication of De l'Allemagne. See Picavet, Les Ideologues, p. 99.] [Footnote: We can see the effect of her doctrine in Guizot's remarks (Histoire de la civilisation en Europe, 2e lecon) where he says of modern literatures that "sous le point de vue du fond des sentiments et des idees elles sont plus fortes et plus riches [than the ancient]. On voit que l'ame humaine a ete remuee sur un plus grand nombre de points a une plus grande profondeur"--and to this very fact he ascribes their comparative imperfection in form.] This view is based on the general propositions that all social phenomena closely cohere and that literature is a social phenomenon; from which it follows that if there is a progressive movement in society generally, there is a progressive movement in literature. Her books were true to the theory; they inaugurated the methods of modern criticism, which studies literary works in relation to the social background of their period. 4. France, then, under the Bourbon Restoration began to seek new light from the obscure profundities of German speculation which Madame de Stael proclaimed. Herder's "Ideas" were translated by Edgar Quinet, Lessing's Education by Eugene Rodrigues. Cousin sat at the feet of Hegel. At the same time a new master, full of suggestiveness for those who were interested in the philosophy of history, was discovered in Italy. The "Scienza nuova" of Vico was translated by Michelet. The book of Vico was now a hundred years old. I did not mention him in his chronological place, because he exercised no immediate influence on the world. His thought was an anachronism in the eighteenth century, it appealed to the nineteenth. He did not announce or conceive any theory of Progress, but his speculation, bewildering enough and confused in its exposition, contained principles which seemed predestined to form the basis of such a doctrine. His aim was that of Cabanis and the ideologists, to set the study of society on the same basis of certitude which had been secured for the study of nature through the work of Descartes and Newton. [Footnote: Vico has sometimes been claimed as a theorist of Progress, but incorrectly. See B. Croce, The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico (Eng. tr., 1913), p. 132--an indispensable aid to the study of Vico. The first edition of the Scienza nuova appeared in 1725; the second, which was a new work, in 1730. Vico influenced Ballanche, a writer who enjoyed a considerable repute in his day. He taught the progressive development of man towards liberty and equality within the four corners of the Christian religion, which he regarded as final. His Palingenesie sociale appeared in 1823-30.] His fundamental idea was that the explanation of the history of societies is to be found in the human mind. The world at first is felt rather than thought; this is the condition of savages in the state of nature, who have no political organisation. The second mental state is imaginative knowledge, "poetical wisdom"; to this corresponds the higher barbarism of the heroic age. Finally, comes conceptual knowledge, and with it the age of civilisation. These are the three stages through which every society passes, and each of these types determines law, institutions, language, literature, and the characters of men. Vico's strenuous researches in the study of Homer and early Roman history were undertaken in order to get at the point of view of the heroic age. He insisted that it could not be understood unless we transcended our own abstract ways of thinking and looked at the world with primitive eyes, by a forced effort of imagination. He was convinced that history had been vitiated by the habit of ignoring psychological differences, by the failure to recapture the ancient point of view. Here he was far in advance of his own times. Concentrating his attention above all on Roman antiquity, he adopted--not altogether advantageously for his system--the revolutions of Roman history as the typical rule of social development. The succession of aristocracy (for the early kingship of Rome and Homeric royalty are merely forms of aristocracy in Vico's view), democracy, and monarchy is the necessary sequence of political governments. Monarchy (the Roman Empire) corresponds to the highest form of civilisation. What happens when this is reached? Society declines into an anarchical state of nature, from which it again passes into a higher barbarism or heroic age, to be followed once more by civilisation. The dissolution of the Roman Empire and the barbarian invasions are followed by the Middle Ages, in which Dante plays the part of Homer; and the modern period with its strong monarchies corresponds to the Roman Empire. This is Vico's principle of reflux. If the theory were sound, it would mean that the civilisation of his day must again relapse into barbarism and the cycle begin again. He did not himself state this conclusion directly or venture on any prediction. It is obvious how readily his doctrine could be adapted to the conception of Progress as a spiral movement. Evidently the corresponding periods in his cycles are not identical or really homogeneous. Whatever points of likeness may be discovered between early Greek or Roman and medieval societies, the points of unlikeness are still more numerous and manifest. Modern civilisation differs in fundamental and far-reaching ways from Greek and Roman. It is absurd to pretend that the general movement brings man back again and again to the point from which he started, and therefore, if there is any value in Vico's reflux, it can only mean that the movement of society may be regarded as a spiral ascent, so that each stage of an upward progress corresponds, in certain general aspects, to a stage which has already been traversed, this correspondence being due to the psychical nature of man. A conception of this kind could not be appreciated in Vico's day or by the next generation. The "Scienza nuova" lay in Montesquieu's library, and he made no use of it. But it was natural that it should arouse interest in France at a time when the new idealistic philosophies of Germany were attracting attention, and when Frenchmen, of the ideological school, were seeking, like Vico himself, a synthetic principle to explain social phenomena. Different though Vico was in his point of departure as in his methods from the German idealists, his speculations nevertheless had something in common with theirs. Both alike explained history by the nature of mind which necessarily determined the stages of the process; Vico as little as Fichte or Hegel took eudaemonic considerations into account. The difference was that the German thinkers sought their principle in logic and applied it a priori, while Vico sought his in concrete psychology and engaged in laborious research to establish it a posteriori by the actual data of history. But both speculations suggested that the course of human development corresponds to the fundamental character of mental processes and is not diverted either by Providential intervention or by free acts of human will. 5. These foreign influences co-operated in determining the tendencies of French speculation in the period of the restored monarchy, whereby the idea of Progress was placed on new basements and became the headstone of new "religions." Before we consider the founders of sects, we may glance briefly at the views of some eminent savants who had gained the ear of the public before the July Revolution--Jouffroy, Cousin, and Guizot. Cousin, the chief luminary in the sphere of pure philosophy in France in the first half of the nineteenth century, drew his inspiration from Germany. He was professedly an eclectic, but in the main his philosophy was Hegelian. He might endow God with consciousness and speak of Providence, but he regarded the world-process as a necessary evolution of thought, and he saw, not in religion but in philosophy, the highest expression of civilisation. In 1828 he delivered a course of lectures on the philosophy of history. He divided history into three periods, each governed by a master idea: the first by the idea of the infinite (the Orient); the second by that of the finite (classical antiquity); the third by that of the relation of finite to infinite (the modern age). As with Hegel, the future is ignored, progress is confined within a closed system, the highest circle has already been reached. As an opponent of the ideologists and the sensational philosophy on which they founded their speculations, Cousin appealed to the orthodox and all those to whom Voltairianism was an accursed thing, and for a generation he exercised a considerable influence. But his work--and this is the important point for us--helped to diffuse the idea, which the ideologists were diffusing on very different lines--that human history has been a progressive development. Progressive development was also the theme of Jouffroy in his slight but suggestive introduction to the philosophy of history (1825), [Footnote: "Reflexions sur la philosophie de l'histoire," in Melanges philosophiques, 2nd edition, 1838.] in which he posed the same problem which, as we shall see, Saint-Simon and Comte were simultaneously attempting to solve. He had not fallen under the glamour of German idealism, and his results have more affinity with Vico's than with Hegel's. He begins with some simple considerations which conduct to the doubtful conclusion that all the historical changes in man's condition are due to the operation of his intelligence. The historian's business is to trace the succession of the actual changes. The business of the philosopher of history is to trace the succession of ideas and study the correspondence between the two developments. This is the true philosophy of history: "the glory of our age is to understand it." Now it is admitted to-day, he says, that the human intelligence obeys invariable laws, so that a further problem remains. The actual succession of ideas has to be deduced from these necessary laws. When that deduction is effected--a long time hence--history will disappear; it will be merged in science. Jouffroy then presented the world with what he calls the FATALITY OF INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT, to take the place of Providence or Destiny. It is a fatality, he is careful to explain, which, so far from compromising, presupposes individual liberty. For it is not like the fatality of sensual impulse which guides the brute creation. What it implies is this: if a thousand men have the same idea of what is good, this idea will govern their conduct in spite of their passions, because, being reasonable and free, they are not blindly submissive to passion, but can deliberate and choose. This explanation of history as a necessary development of society corresponding to a necessary succession of ideas differs in two important points from the explanations of Hegel and Cousin. The succession of ideas is not conceived as a transcendent logic, but is determined by the laws of the HUMAN mind and belongs to the domain of psychology. Here Jouffroy is on the same ground as Vico. In the second place, it is not a closed system; room remains for an indefinite development in the future. 6. While Cousin was discoursing on philosophy at Paris in the days of the last Bourbon king, Guizot was drawing crowded audiences to his lectures on the history of European civilisation, [Footnote: Histoire de la civilisation en Europe.] and the keynote of these lectures was Progress. He approached it with a fresh mind, unencumbered with any of the philosophical theories which had attended and helped its growth. Civilisation, he said, is the supreme fact so far as man is concerned, "the fact par excellence, the general and definite fact in which all other facts merge." And "civilisation" means progress or development. The word "awakens, when it is pronounced, the idea of a people which is in motion, not to change its place but to change its state, a people whose condition is expanding and improving. The idea of progress, development, seems to me to be the fundamental idea contained in the word CIVILISATION." There we have the most important positive idea of eighteenth century speculation, standing forth detached and independent, no longer bound to a system. Fifty years before, no one would have dreamed of defining civilisation like that and counting on the immediate acquiescence of his audience. But progress has to be defined. It does not merely imply the improvement of social relations and public well-being. France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was behind Holland and England in the sum and distribution of well-being among individuals, and yet she can claim that she was the most "civilised" country in those ages. The reason is that civilisation also implies the development of the individual life, of men's private faculties, sentiments, and ideas. The progress of man therefore includes both these developments. But they are intimately connected. We may observe how moral reformers generally recommend their proposals by promising social amelioration as a result, and that progressive politicians maintain that the progress of society necessarily induces moral improvement. The connection may not always be apparent, and at different times one or other kind of progress predominates. But one is followed by the other ultimately, though it may be after a long interval, for "la Providence a ses aises dans le temps." The rise of Christianity was one of the crises of civilisation, yet it did not in its early stages aim at any improvement of social conditions; it did not attack the great injustices which were wrought in the world. It meant a great crisis because it changed the beliefs and sentiments of individuals; social effects came afterwards. The civilisation of modern Europe has grown through a period of fifteen centuries and is still progressing. The rate of progress has been slower than that of Greek civilisation, but on the other hand it has been continuous, uninterrupted, and we can see "the vista of an immense career." The effects of Guizot's doctrine in propagating the idea of Progress were all the greater for its divorce from philosophical theory. He did not touch perplexing questions like fatality, or discuss the general plan of the world; he did not attempt to rise above common-sense; and he did not essay any premature scheme of the universal history of man. His masterly survey of the social history of Europe exhibited progressive movement as a fact, in a period in which to the thinkers of the eighteenth century it had been almost invisible. This of course was far from proving that Progress is the key to the history of the world and human destinies. The equation of civilisation with progress remains an assumption. For the question at once arises: Can civilisation reach a state of equilibrium from which no further advance is possible; and if it can, does it cease to be civilisation? Is Chinese civilisation mis-called, or has there been here too a progressive movement all the time, however slow? Such questions were not raised by Guizot. But his view of history was effective in helping to establish the association of the two ideas of civilisation and progress, which to-day is taken for granted as evidently true. 7. The views of these eminent thinkers Cousin, Jouffroy, and Guizot show that--quite apart from the doctrines of ideologists and of the "positivists," Saint-Simon and Comte, of whom I have still to speak--there was a common trend in French thought in the Restoration period towards the conception of history as a progressive movement. Perhaps there is no better illustration of the infectiousness of this conception than in the Historical Studies which Chateaubriand gave to the world in 1831. He had learned much, from books as well as from politics, since he wrote the GENIUS OF CHRISTIANITY. He had gained some acquaintance with German philosophy and with Vico. And in this work of his advanced age he accepts the idea of Progress, so far as it could be accepted by an orthodox son of the Church. He believes that the advance of knowledge will lead to social progress, and that society, if it seems sometimes to move backward, is always really moving forward. Bossuet, for whom he had no word of criticism thirty years before, he now convicts of "an imposing error." That great man, he writes, "has confined historical events in a circle as rigorous as his genius. He has imprisoned them in an inflexible Christianity--a terrible hoop in which the human race would turn in a sort of eternity, without progress or improvement." The admission from such a quarter shows eloquently how the wind was setting. The notions of development and continuity which were to control all departments of historical study in the later nineteenth century were at the same time being independently promoted by the young historical school in Germany which is associated with the names of Eichhorn, Savigny, and Niebuhr. Their view that laws and institutions are a natural growth or the expression of a people's mind, represents another departure from the ideas of the eighteenth century. It was a repudiation of that "universal reason" which desired to reform the world and its peoples indiscriminately without taking any account of their national histories. CHAPTER XV. THE SEARCH FOR A LAW OF PROGRESS: I. SAINT-SIMON Amid the intellectual movements in France described in the last chapter the idea of Progress passed into a new phase of its growth. Hitherto it had been a vague optimistic doctrine which encouraged the idealism of reformers and revolutionaries, but could not guide them. It had waited like a handmaid on the abstractions of Nature and Reason; it had hardly realised an independent life. The time had come for systematic attempts to probe its meaning and definitely to ascertain the direction in which humanity is moving. Kant had said that a Kepler or a Newton was needed to find the law of the movement of civilisation. Several Frenchmen now undertook to solve the problem. They did not solve it; but the new science of sociology was founded; and the idea of Progress, which presided at its birth, has been its principal problem ever since. 1. The three thinkers who claimed to have discovered the secret of social development had also in view the practical object of remoulding society on general scientific principles, and they became the founders of sects, Fourier, Saint-Simon, and Comte. They all announced a new era of development as a necessary sequel of the past, an inevitable and desirable stage in the march of humanity, and delineated its features. Comte was the successor of Saint-Simon, as Saint-Simon himself was the successor of Condorcet. Fourier stands quite apart. He claimed that he broke entirely new ground, and acknowledged no masters. He regarded himself as a Newton for whom no Kepler or Galileo had prepared the way. The most important and sanest part of his work was the scheme for organising society on a new principle of industrial co-operation. His general theory of the universe and man's destinies which lay behind his practical plans is so fantastic that it sounds like the dream of a lunatic. Yet many accepted it as the apocalypse of an evangelist. Fourier was moved by the far-reaching effects of Newton's discovery to seek a law which would coordinate facts in the moral world as the principle of gravitation had co-ordinated facts in the physical world, and in 1808 he claimed to have found the secret in what he called the law of Passional Attraction. [Footnote: Theorie des quatre mouvements et des destinees generales. General accounts of his theories will be found in Charles Fourier, sa vie et sa theorie, by his disciple Dr. Ch. Pellarin (2nd ed., 1843), and in Flint, Hist. of Philosophy of History in France, etc., pp. 408 sqq.] The human passions have hitherto been sources of misery; the problem for man is to make them sources of happiness. If we know the law which governs them, we can make such changes in our environment that none of the passions will need to be curbed, and the free indulgence of one will not hinder or compromise the satisfaction of the others. His worthless law for harmonising the passions without restraining them need not detain us. The structure of society, by which he proposed to realise the benefits of his discovery, was based on co-operation, but was not socialistic. The family as a social unit was to be replaced by a larger unit (PHALANGE), economically self-sufficing, and consisting of about 1800 persons, who were to live together in a vast building (PHALANSTERE), surrounded by a domain sufficient to produce all they required. Private property is not abolished; the community will include both rich and poor; all the products of their work are distributed in shares according to the labour, talents, and capital of each member, but a fixed minimum is assured to every one. The scheme was actually tried on a small scale near the forest of Rambouillet in 1832. This transformation of society, which is to have the effect of introducing harmony among the passions, will mark the beginning of a new epoch. The duration of man's earthly career is 81,000 years, of which 5000 have elapsed. He will now enter upon a long period of increasing harmony, which will be followed by an equal period of decline--like the way up and the way down of Heraclitus. His brief past, the age of his infancy, has been marked by a decline of happiness leading to the present age of "civilisation" which is thoroughly bad--here we see the influence of Rousseau--and from it Fourier's discovery is the clue to lead humanity forth into the epoch in which harmony begins to emerge. But men who have lived in the bad ages need not be pitied, and those who live to-day need not be pessimistic. For Fourier believed in metempsychosis, and could tell you, as if he were the private secretary of the Deity calculating the arithmetical details of the cosmic plan, how many very happy, tolerably happy, and unhappy lives fall to the lot of each soul during the whole 81,000 years. Nor does the prospect end with the life of the earth. The soul of the earth and the human souls attached to it will live again in comets, planets, and suns, on a system of which Fourier knew all the particulars. [Footnote: Details will be found in the Theorie de l'unite universelle, originally published under the title Association domestique-agricole in 1822.] These silly speculations would not deserve even this slight indication of their purport were it not that Fourier founded a sect and had a considerable body of devoted followers. His "discovery" was acclaimed by Beranger: Fourier nous dit: Sors de la fange, Peuple en proie aux deceptions, Travaille, groupe par phalange, Dans un cercle d'attractions; La terre, apres tant de desastres, Forme avec le ciel un hymen, Et la loi qui regit les astres, Donne la paix au genre humain. Ten years after his death (1837) an English writer tells us that "the social theory of Fourier is at the present moment engrossing the attention and exciting the apprehensions of thinking men, not only in France but in almost every country in Europe." [Footnote: R. Blakey, History of the Philosophy of Mind, vol. iv. p. 293 (1848). Fourier, born 1772, died in 1837. His principal disciple was Victor Considerant.] Grotesque as was the theoretical background of his doctrines, he helped to familiarise the world with the idea of indefinite Progress. 2. "The imagination of poets has placed the golden age in the cradle of the human race. It was the age of iron they should have banished there. The golden age is not behind us, but in front of us. It is the perfection of social order. Our fathers have not seen it; our children will arrive there one day, and it is for us to clear the way for them." The Comte de Saint-Simon, who wrote these words in 1814, was one of the liberal nobles who had imbibed the ideas of the Voltairian age and sympathised with the spirit of the Revolution. In his literary career from 1803 to his death in 1825 he passed through several phases of thought, [Footnote: They are traced in G. Weill's valuable monograph, Saint-Simon et son oeuvre, 1894.] but his chief masters were always Condorcet and the physiologists, from whom he derived his two guiding ideas that ethics and politics depend ultimately on physics and that history is progress. Condorcet had interpreted history by the progressive movement of knowledge. That, Saint-Simon said, is the true principle, but Condorcet applied it narrowly, and committed two errors. He did not understand the social import of religion, and he represented the Middle Ages as a useless interruption of the forward movement. Here Saint-Simon learned from the religious reaction. He saw that religion has a natural and legitimate social role and cannot be eliminated as a mere perversity. He expounded the doctrine that all social phenomena cohere. A religious system, he said, always corresponds to the stage of science which the society wherein it appears has reached; in fact, religion is merely science clothed in a form suitable to the emotional needs which it satisfies. And as a religious system is based on the contemporary phase of scientific development, so the political system of an epoch corresponds to the religious system. They all hang together. Medieval Europe does not represent a temporary triumph of obscurantism, useless and deplorable, but a valuable and necessary stage in human progress. It was a period in which an important principle of social organisation was realised, the right relation of the spiritual and temporal powers. It is evident that these views transformed the theory of Condorcet into a more acceptable shape. So long as the medieval tract of time appeared to be an awkward episode, contributing nothing to the forward movement but rather thwarting and retarding it, Progress was exposed to the criticism that it was an arbitrary synthesis, only partly borne out by historical facts and supplying no guarantees for the future. And so long as rationalists of the Encyclopaedic school regarded religion as a tiresome product of ignorance and deceit, the social philosophy which lay behind the theory of Progress was condemned as unscientific; because, in defiance of the close cohesion of social phenomena, it refused to admit that religion, as one of the chief of those phenomena, must itself participate and co-operate in Progress. Condorcet had suggested that the value of history lies in affording data for foreseeing the future. Saint-Simon raised this suggestion to a dogma. But prevision was impossible on Condorcet's unscientific method. In order to foretell, the law of the movement must be discovered, and Condorcet had not found or even sought a law. The eighteenth century thinkers had left Progress a mere hypothesis based on a very insufficient induction; their successors sought to lift it to the rank of a scientific hypothesis, by discovering a social law as valid as the physical law of gravitation. This was the object both of Saint-Simon and of Comte. The "law" which Saint-Simon educed from history was that epochs of organisation or construction, and epochs of criticism or revolution, succeed each other alternately. The medieval period was a time of organisation, and was followed by a critical, revolutionary period, which has now come to an end and must be succeeded by another epoch of organisation. Having discovered the clew to the process, Saint-Simon is able to predict. As our knowledge of the universe has reached or is reaching a stage which is no longer conjectural but POSITIVE in all departments, society will be transformed accordingly; a new PHYSICIST religion will supersede Christianity and Deism; men of science will play the role of organisers which the clergy played in the Middle Ages. As the goal of the development is social happiness, and as the working classes form the majority, the first step towards the goal will be the amelioration of the lot of the working classes. This will be the principal problem of government in reorganising society, and Saint-Simon's solution of the problem was socialism. He rejected the watchwords of liberalism--democracy, liberty, and equality--with as much disdain as De Maistre and the reactionaries. The announcement of a future age of gold, which I quoted above, is taken from a pamphlet which he issued, in conjunction with his secretary, Augustin Thierry the historian, after the fall of Napoleon. [Footnote: De la reorganisation de la societe europeenne, p. 111 (1814).] In it he revived the idea of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre for the abolition of war, and proposed a new organisation of Europe more ambitious and Utopian than the Abbe's league of states. At this moment he saw in parliamentary government, which the restored Bourbons were establishing in France, a sovran remedy for political disorder, and he imagined that if this political system were introduced in all the states of Europe a long step would have been taken to the perpetuation of peace. If the old enemies France and England formed a close alliance there would be little difficulty in creating ultimately a European state like the American Commonwealth, with a parliamentary government supreme over the state governments. Here is the germ of the idea of a "parliament of man." 3. Saint-Simon, however, did not construct a definite system for the attainment of social perfection. He left it to disciples to develop the doctrine which he sketched. In the year of his death (1825) Olinde Rodrigues and Enfantin founded a journal, the Producteur, to present to humanity the one thing which humanity, in the opinion of their master, then most needed, a new general doctrine. [Footnote: The best study of the Saint-Simonian school is that of G. Weill, L'Ecole saint-simonienne, son histoire, son influence jusqu'a nos jours (1896), to which I am much indebted.] History shows that peoples have been moving from isolation to union, from war to peace, from antagonism to association. The programme for the future is association scientifically organised. The Catholic Church in the Middle Ages offered the example of a great social organisation resting on a general doctrine. The modern world must also be a social organisation, but the general doctrine will be scientific, not religious. The spiritual power must reside, not in priests but in savants, who will direct the progress of science and public education. Each member of the community will have his place and duties assigned to him. Society consists of three classes of workers--industrial workers, savants, and artists. A commission of eminent workers of each class will determine the place of every individual according to his capacities. Complete equality is absurd; inequality, based on merit, is reasonable and necessary. It is a modern error to distrust state authority. A power directing national forces is requisite, to propose great ideas and to make the innovations necessary for Progress. Such an organisation will promote progress in all domains: in science by co-operation, in industry by credit, and in art too, for artists will learn to express the ideas and sentiments of their own age. There are signs already of a tendency towards something of this kind; its realisation must be procured, not by revolution but by gradual change. In the authoritarian character of the organisation to which these apostles of Progress wished to entrust the destinies of man we may see the influence of the great theocrat and antagonist of Progress, Joseph de Maistre. He taught them the necessity of a strong central power and the danger of liberty. But the fullest exposition of the Saint-Simonian doctrine of development was given by Bazard, one of the chief disciples, a few years later. [Footnote: Exposition de la doctrine saint-simonienne, 2 vols., 1830-1.] The human race is conceived as a collective being which unfolds its nature in the course of generations, according to a law--the law of Progress--which may be called the physiological law of the human species, and was discovered by Saint-Simon. It consists in the alternation of ORGANIC and CRITICAL epochs. [Footnote: In the Globe, which became an organ of Saint-Simonism in 1831, Enfantin announced a new principle (Weill, op. cit. 107). He defined the law of history as "the harmony, ceaselessly progressive, of flesh and spirit, of industry and science, of east and west, of woman and man." The role of woman played a large part in the teaching of the sect. Saint-Simon's law of organic and critical ages was definitely accepted by H. de Ferron, a thinker who did not belong to the school, as late as 1867. See his Theorie du progres, vol. ii. p. 433.] In an organic epoch men discern a destination and harmonise all their energies to reach it. In a critical epoch they are not conscious of a goal, and their efforts are dispersed and discordant. There was an organic period in Greece before the age of Socrates. It was succeeded by a critical epoch lasting to the barbarian invasions. Then came an organic period in the homogeneous societies of Europe from Charlemagne to the end of the fifteenth century, and a new critical period opened with Luther and has lasted till to-day. Now it is time to prepare the advent of the organic age which must necessarily follow. The most salient fact observable in history is the continual extension of the principle of association, in the series of family, city, nation, supernational Church. The next term must be a still vaster association comprehending the whole race. In consequence of the incompleteness of association, the exploitation of the weak by the strong has been a capital feature in human societies, but its successive forms exhibit a gradual mitigation. Cannibalism is followed by slavery, slavery by serfdom, and finally comes industrial exploitation by the capitalist. This latest form of the oppression of the weak depends on the right of property, and the remedy is to transfer the right of inheriting the property of the individual from the family to the state. The society of the future must be socialistic. The new social doctrine must not only be diffused by education and legislation, it must be sanctioned by a new religion. Christianity will not serve, for Christianity is founded on a dualism between matter and spirit, and has laid a curse on matter. The new religion must be monistic, and its principles are, briefly: God is one, God is all that is, all is God. He is universal love, revealing itself as mind and matter. And to this triad correspond the three domains of religion, science, and industry. In combining their theory with a philosophical religion the Saint-Simonian school was not only true to its master's teaching but obeying an astute instinct. As a purely secular movement for the transformation of society, their doctrine would not have reaped the same success or inspired the same enthusiasm. They were probably influenced too by the pamphlet of Lessing to which Madame de Stael had invited attention, and which one of Saint-Simon's disciples translated. The fortunes of the school, the life of the community at Menilmontant under the direction of Enfantin, the persecution, the heresies, the dispersion, the attempt to propagate the movement in Egypt, the philosophical activity of Enfantin and Lemonnier under the Second Empire, do not claim our attention; the curious story is told in M. Weill's admirable monograph. [Footnote: It may be noticed that Saint-Simonians came to the front in public careers after the revolution of 1848; e.g. Carnot, Reynaud, Charton.] The sect is now extinct, but its influence was wide in its day, and it propagated faith in Progress as the key to history and the law of collective life.[Footnote: Two able converts to the ideas of Saint-Simon seceded from the school at an early stage in consequence of Enfantin's aberrations: Pierre Leroux, whom we shall meet again, and P. J. B. Buchez, who in 1833 published a thoughtful "Introduction a la science de l'histoire," where history is defined as "a science whose end is to foresee the social future of the human species in the order of its free activity" (vol. i. p. 60,. ed. 2, 1842).] CHAPTER XVI. THE SEARCH FOR A LAW OF PROGRESS: II. COMTE 1. Auguste Comte did more than any preceding thinker to establish the idea of Progress as a luminary which could not escape men's vision. The brilliant suggestions of Saint-Simon, the writings of Bazard and Enfantin, the vagaries of Fourier, might be dismissed as curious rather than serious propositions, but the massive system wrought out by Comte's speculative genius--his organic scheme of human knowledge, his elaborate analysis of history, his new science of sociology--was a great fact with which European thought was forced to reckon. The soul of this system was Progress, and the most important problem he set out to solve was the determination of its laws. His originality is not dimmed by the fact that he owed to Saint-Simon more than he afterwards admitted or than his disciples have been willing to allow. He collaborated with him for several years, and at this time enthusiastically acknowledged the intellectual stimulus he received from the elder savant. [Footnote: Comte collaborated with Saint-Simon from 1818-1822. The final rupture came in 1824. The question of their relations is cleared up by Weill (Saint-Simon, chap. xi.). On the quarrel see also Ostwald, Auguste Comte (1914), 13 sqq.] But he derived from Saint-Simon much more than the stimulation of his thoughts in a certain direction. He was indebted to him for some of the characteristic ideas of his own system. He was indebted to him for the principle which lay at the very basis of his system, that the social phenomena of a given period and the intellectual state of the society cohere and correspond. The conception that the coming age was to be a period of organisation like the Middle Ages, and the idea of the government of savants, are pure Saint-Simonian doctrine. And the fundamental idea of a POSITIVE philosophy had been apprehended by Saint-Simon long before he was acquainted with his youthful associate. But Comte had a more methodical and scientific mind, and he thought that Saint-Simon was premature in drawing conclusions as to the reformation of societies and industries before the positive philosophy had been constructed. He published--he was then only twenty-two--in 1822 a "Plan of the scientific operations necessary for the re-organisation of society," which was published under another title two years later by Saint-Simon, and it was over this that the friends quarrelled. This work contains the principles of the positive philosophy which he was soon to begin to work out; it announces already the "law of the Three Stages." The first volume of the "Cours de philisophie positive" appeared in 1830; it took him twelve years more to complete the exposition of his system. [Footnote: With vol. vi., 1842.] 2. The "law of Three Stages" is familiar to many who have never read a line of his writings. That men first attempted to explain natural phenomena by the operation of imaginary deities, then sought to interpret them by abstractions, and finally came to see that they could only be understood by scientific methods, observation, and experiment--this was a generalisation which had already been thrown out by Turgot. Comte adopted it as a fundamental psychological law, which has governed every domain of mental activity and explains the whole story of human development. Each of our principal conceptions, every branch of knowledge, passes successively through these three states which he names the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive or scientific. In the first, the mind invents; in the second, it abstracts; in the third, it submits itself to positive facts; and the proof that any branch of knowledge has reached the third stage is the recognition of invariable natural laws. But, granting that this may be the key to the history of the sciences, of physics, say, or botany, how can it explain the history of man, the sequence of actual historical events? Comte replies that history has been governed by ideas; "the whole social mechanism is ultimately based on opinions." Thus man's history is essentially a history of his opinions; and these are subject to the fundamental psychological law. It must, however, be observed that all branches of knowledge are not in the same stage simultaneously. Some may have reached the metaphysical, while others are still lagging behind in the theological; some may have become scientific, while others have not passed from the metaphysical. Thus the study of physical phenomena has already reached the positive stage; but the study of social phenomena has not. The central aim of Comte, and his great achievement in his own opinion, was to raise the study of social phenomena from the second to the third stage. When we proceed to apply the law of the three stages to the general course of historical development, we are met at the outset by the difficulty that the advance in all the domains of activity is not simultaneous. If at a given period thought and opinions are partly in the theological, partly in the metaphysical, and partly in the scientific state, how is the law to be applied to general development? One class of ideas, Comte says, must be selected as the criterion, and this class must be that of social and moral ideas, for two reasons. In the first place, social science occupies the highest rank in the hierarchy of sciences, on which he laid great stress. [Footnote: Cours de phil. pos. v. 267. Law of consensus: op. cit. iv. 347 sqq., 364, 505, 721, 735.] In the second, those ideas play the principal part for the majority of men, and the most ordinary phenomena are the most important to consider. When, in other classes of ideas, the advance is at any time more rapid, this only means an indispensable preparation for the ensuing period. The movement of history is due to the deeply rooted though complex instinct which pushes man to ameliorate his condition incessantly, to develop in all ways the sum of his physical, moral, and intellectual life. And all the phenomena of his social life are closely cohesive, as Saint-Simon had pointed out. By virtue of this cohesion, political, moral, and intellectual progress are inseparable from material progress, and so we find that the phases of his material development correspond to intellectual changes. The principle of consensus or "solidarity," which secures harmony and order in the development, is as important as the principle of the three stages which governs the onward movement. This movement, however, is not in a right line, but displays a series of oscillations, unequal and variable, round a mean motion which tends to prevail. The three general causes of variation, according to Comte, are race, climate, and deliberate political action (such as the retrograde policies of Julian the Apostate or Napoleon). But while they cause deflections and oscillation, their power is strictly limited; they may accelerate or retard the movement, but they cannot invert its order; they may affect the intensity of the tendencies in a given situation, but cannot change their nature. 3. In the demonstration of his laws by the actual course of civilisation, Comte adopts what he calls "the happy artifice of Condorcet," and treats the successive peoples who pass on the torch as if they were a single people running the race. This is "a rational fiction," for a people's true successors are those who pursue its efforts. And, like Bossuet and Condorcet, he confined his review to European civilisation; he considered only the ELITE or advance guard of humanity. He deprecated the introduction of China or India, for instance, as a confusing complication. He ignored the ROLES of Brahmanism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism. His synthesis, therefore, cannot claim to be a synthesis of universal history; it is only a synthesis of the movement of European history. In accordance with the law of the three stages, the development falls into three great periods. The first or Theological came to an end about A.D. 1400, and the second or Metaphysical is now nearing its close, to make way for the third or Positive, for which Comte was preparing the way. The Theological period has itself three stages, in which Fetishism, Polytheism, and Monotheism successively prevail. The chief social characteristics of the Polytheistic period are the institution of slavery and the coincidence or "confusion" of the spiritual and temporal powers. It has two stages: the theocratic, represented by Egypt, and the military, represented by Rome, between which Greece stands in a rather embarrassing and uneasy position. The initiative for the passage to the Monotheistic period came from Judaea, and Comte attempts to show that this could not have been otherwise. His analysis of this period is the most interesting part of his survey. The chief feature of the political system corresponding to monotheism is the separation of the spiritual and temporal powers; the function of the spiritual power being concerned with education, and that of the temporal with action, in the wide senses of those terms. The defects of this dual system were due to the irrational theology. But the theory of papal infallibility was a great step in intellectual and social progress, by providing a final jurisdiction, without which society would have been troubled incessantly by contests arising from the vague formulae of dogmas. Here Comte had learned from Joseph de Maistre. But that thinker would not have been edified when Comte went on to declare that in the passage from polytheism to monotheism the religious spirit had really declined, and that one of the merits of Catholicism was that it augmented the domain of human wisdom at the expense of divine inspiration. [Footnote: Cours de philosophic positive, vi. 354.] If it be said that the Catholic system promoted the empire of the clergy rather than the interests of religion, this was all to the good; for it placed the practical use of religion in "the provisional elevation of a noble speculative corporation eminently able to direct opinions and morals." But Catholic monotheism could not escape dissolution. The metaphysical spirit began to operate powerfully on the notions of moral philosophy, as soon as the Catholic organisation was complete; and Catholicism, because it could not assimilate this intellectual movement, lost its progressive character and stagnated. The decay began in the fourteenth century, where Comte dates the beginning of the Metaphysical period--a period of revolution and disorder. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the movement is spontaneous and unconscious; from the sixteenth till to-day it has proceeded under the direction of a philosophical spirit which is negative and not constructive. This critical philosophy has only accelerated a decomposition which began spontaneously. For as theology progresses it becomes less consistent and less durable, and as its conceptions become less irrational, the intensity of the emotions which they excite decreases. Fetishism had deeper roots than polytheism and lasted longer; and polytheism surpassed monotheism in vigour and vitality. Yet the critical philosophy was necessary to exhibit the growing need of solid reorganisation and to prove that the decaying system was incapable of directing the world any longer. Logically it was very imperfect, but it was justified by its success. The destructive work was mainly done in the seventeenth century by Hobbes, Spinoza, and Bayle, of whom Hobbes was the most effective. In the eighteenth all prominent thinkers participated in developing this negative movement, and Rousseau gave it the practical stimulus which saved it from degenerating into an unfruitful agitation. Of particular importance was the great fallacy, which Helvetius propagated, that human intellects are equal. This error was required for the full development of the critical doctrine. For it supported the dogmas of popular sovranty and social equality, and justified the principle of the right of private judgement. These three principles--popular sovranty, equality, and what he calls the right of free examination--are in Comte's eyes vicious and anarchical.[Footnote #1 Op. cit. iv. 36-38.] But it was necessary that they should be promulgated, because the transition from one organised social system to another cannot be direct; it requires an anarchical interregnum. Popular sovranty is opposed to orderly institutions and condemns all superior persons to dependence on the multitude of their inferiors. Equality, obviously anarchical in its tendency, and obviously untrue (for, as men are not equal or even equivalent to one another, their rights cannot be identical), was similarly necessary to break down the old institutions. The universal claim to the right of free judgement merely consecrates the transitional state of unlimited liberty in the interim between the decline of theology and the arrival of positive philosophy. Comte further remarks that the fall of the spiritual power had led to anarchy in international relations, and if the spirit of nationality were to prevail too far, the result would be a state of things inferior to that of the Middle Ages. But Comte says for the metaphysical spirit in France that with all its vices it was more disengaged from the prejudices of the old theological regime, and nearer to a true rational positivism than either the German mysticism or the English empiricism of the same period. The Revolution was a necessity, to disclose the chronic decomposition of society from which it resulted, and to liberate the modern social elements from the grip of the ancient powers. Comte has praise for the Convention, which he contrasts with the Constituent Assembly with its political fictions and inconsistencies. He pointed out that the great vice in the "metaphysics" of the crisis--that is, in the principles of the revolutionaries--lay in conceiving society out of relation to the past, in ignoring the Middle Ages, and borrowing from Greek and Roman society retrograde and contradictory ideals. Napoleon restored order, but he was more injurious to humanity than any other historical person. His moral and intellectual nature was incompatible with the true direction of Progress, which involves the extinction of the theological and military regime of the past. Thus his work, like Julian the Apostate's, exhibits an instance of deflection from the line of Progress. Then came the parliamentary system of the restored Bourbons which Comte designates as a political Utopia, destitute of social principles, a foolish attempt to combine political retrogression with a state of permanent peace. 4. The critical doctrine has performed its historical function, and the time has come for man to enter upon the Positive stage of his career. To enable him to take this step forward, it is necessary that the study of social phenomena should become a positive science. As social science is the highest in the hierarchy of sciences, it could not develop until the two branches of knowledge which come next in the scale, biology and chemistry, assumed a scientific form. This has recently been achieved, and it is now possible to found a scientific sociology. This science, like mechanics and biology, has its statics and its dynamics. The first studies the laws of co-existence, the second those of succession; the first contains the theory of order, the second that of progress. The law of consensus or cohesion is the fundamental principle of social statics; the law of the three stages is that of social dynamics. Comte's survey of history, of which I have briefly indicated the general character, exhibits the application of these sociological laws. The capital feature of the third period, which we are now approaching, will be the organisation of society by means of scientific sociology. The world will be guided by a general theory, and this means that it must be controlled by those who understand the theory and will know how to apply it. Therefore society will revive the principle which was realised in the great period of Monotheism, the distinction of a spiritual and a temporal order. But the spiritual order will consist of savants who will direct social life not by theological fictions but by the positive truths of science. They will administer a system of universal education and will draw up the final code of ethics. They will be able, more effectively than the Church, to protect the interests of the lower classes. Comte's conviction that the world is prepared for a transformation of this kind is based principally on signs of the decline of the theological spirit and of the military spirit, which he regarded as the two main obstacles to the reign of reason. Catholicism, he says, is now no more than "an imposing historical ruin." As for militarism, the epoch has arrived in which serious and lasting warfare among the ELITE nations will totally cease. The last general cause of warfare has been the competition for colonies. But the colonial policy is now in its decadence (with the temporary exception of England), so that we need not look for future trouble from this source. The very sophism, sometimes put forward to justify war, that it is an instrument of civilisation, is a homage to the pacific nature of modern society. We need not follow further the details of Comte's forecast of the Positive period, except to mention that he did not contemplate a political federation. The great European nations will develop each in its own way, with their separate "temporal" organisations. But he contemplated the intervention of a common "spiritual" power, so that all nationalities "under the direction of a homogeneous speculative class will contribute to an identical work, in a spirit of active European patriotism, not of sterile cosmopolitanism." Comte claimed, like Saint-Simon, that the data of history, scientifically interpreted, afford the means of prevision. It is interesting to observe how he failed himself as a diviner; how utterly he misapprehended the vitality of Catholicism, how completely his prophecy as to the cessation of wars was belied by the event. He lived to see the Crimean war. [Footnote: He died in 1857.] As a diviner he failed as completely as Saint-Simon and Fourier, whose dream that the nineteenth century would see the beginning of an epoch of harmony and happiness was to be fulfilled by a deadly struggle between capitalism and labour, the civil war in America, the war of 1870, the Commune, Russian pogroms, Armenian massacres, and finally the universal catastrophe of 1914. 5. For the comprehension of history we have perhaps gained as little from Comte's positive laws as from Hegel's metaphysical categories. Both thinkers had studied the facts of history only slightly and partially, a rather serious drawback which enabled them to impose their own constructions with the greater ease. Hegel's method of a PRIORI synthesis was enjoined by his philosophical theory; but in Comte we also find a tendency to a PRIORI treatment. He expressly remarks that the chief social features of the Monotheistic period might almost be constructed a PRIORI. The law of the Three Stages is discredited. It may be contended that general Progress depends on intellectual progress, and that theology, metaphysics, and science have common roots, and are ultimately identical, being merely phases in the movement of the intelligence. But the law of this movement, if it is to rank as a scientific hypothesis, must be properly deduced from known causes, and must then be verified by a comparison with historical facts. Comte thought that he fulfilled these requirements, but in both respects his demonstration was defective. [Footnote: Criticism of Comte's assumption that civilisation begins with animism: Weber's criticisms from this point of view are telling (Le Rythme du progres, 73-95). He observes that if Comte had not left the practical and active side of intelligence in the shade and considered only its speculative side, he could not have formulated the law of the Three Stages. He would have seen that "the positive explanation of phenomena has played in every period a preponderant role, though latent, in the march of the human mind." Weber himself suggests a scheme of two states (corresponding to the two-sidedness of the intellect), technical and speculative, practical and theoretical, through the alternation of which intellectual progress has been effected. The first stage was probably practical (he calls it proto-technic). It is to be remembered that when Comte was constructing his system palaeontology was in its infancy.] The gravest weakness perhaps in his historical sketch is the gratuitous assumption that man in the earliest stage of his existence had animistic beliefs and that the first phase of his progress was controlled by fetishism. There is no valid evidence that fetishism is not a relatively late development, or that in the myriads of years stretching back beyond our earliest records, during which men decided the future of the human species by their technical inventions and the discovery of fire, they had any views which could be called religious or theological. The psychology of modern savages is no clew to the minds of the people who wrought tools of stone in the world of the mammoth and the RHINOCEROS TICHIRHINUS. If the first stage of man's development, which was of such critical importance for his destinies, was pre-animistic, Comte's law of progress fails, for it does not cover the ground. In another way, Comte's system may be criticised for failing to cover the ground, if it is regarded as a philosophy of history. In accordance with "the happy artifice of Condorcet," he assumes that the growth of European civilisation is the only history that matters, and discards entirely the civilisations, for instance, of India and China. This assumption is much more than an artifice, and he has not scientifically justified it. [Footnote: A propos of the view that only European civilisation matters it has been well observed that "human history is not unitary but pluralistic": F. J. Teggart, The Processes of History, p. 24 (1918).] The reader of the PHILOSOPHIE POSITIVE will also observe that Comte has not grappled with a fundamental question which has to be faced in unravelling the woof of history or seeking a law of events. I mean the question of contingency. It must be remembered that contingency does not in the least affect the doctrine of determinism; it is compatible with the strictest interpretation of the principle of causation. A particular example may be taken to show what it implies. [Footnote: On contingency and the "chapter of accidents" see Cournot, Considerations sur la marche des idees et des evenements dans les temps modernes (1872), i. 16 sqq. I have discussed the subject and given some illustrations in a short paper, entitled "Cleopatra's Nose," in the Annual of the Rationalist Press Association for 1916.] It may plausibly be argued that a military dictatorship was an inevitable sequence of the French Revolution. This may not be true, but let us assume it. Let us further assume that, given Napoleon, it was inevitable that he should be the dictator. But Napoleon's existence was due to an independent causal chain which had nothing whatever to do with the course of political events. He might have died in his boyhood by disease or by an accident, and the fact that he survived was due to causes which were similarly independent of the causal chain which, as we are assuming, led necessarily to an epoch of monarchical government. The existence of a man of his genius and character at the given moment was a contingency which profoundly affected the course of history. If he had not been there another dictator would have grasped the helm, but obviously would not have done what Napoleon did. It is clear that the whole history of man has been modified at every stage by such contingencies, which may be defined as the collisions of two independent causal chains. Voltaire was perfectly right when he emphasised the role of chance in history, though he did not realise what it meant. This factor would explain the oscillations and deflections which Comte admits in the movement of historical progression. But the question arises whether it may not also have once and again definitely altered the direction of the movement. Can the factor be regarded as virtually negligible by those who, like Comte, are concerned with the large perspective of human development and not with the details of an episode? Or was Renouvier right in principle when he maintained "the real possibility that the sequence of events from the Emperor Nerva to the Emperor Charlemagne might have been radically different from what it actually was"? [Footnote: He illustrated this proposition by a fanciful reconstruction of European history from 100 to 800 A.D. in his UCHRONIE, 1876. He contended that there is no definite law of progress: "The true law lies in the equal possibility of progress or regress for societies as for individuals."] 6. It does not concern us here to examine the defects of Comte's view of the course of European history. But it interests us to observe that his synthesis of human Progress is, like Hegel's, what I have called a closed system. Just as his own absolute philosophy marked for Hegel the highest and ultimate term of human development, so for Comte the coming society whose organisation he adumbrated was the final state of humanity beyond which there would be no further movement. It would take time to perfect the organisation, and the period would witness a continuous increase of knowledge, but the main characteristics were definitely fixed. Comte did not conceive that the distant future, could he survive to experience it, could contain any surprises for him. His theory of Progress thus differed from the eighteenth century views which vaguely contemplate an indefinite development and only profess to indicate some general tendencies. He expressly repudiated this notion of INDEFINITE progress; the data, he said, justify only the inference of CONTINUOUS progress, which is a different thing. A second point in which Comte in his view of Progress differed from the French philosophers of the preceding age is this. Condorcet and his predecessors regarded it exclusively from the eudaemonic point of view. The goal of Progress for them was the attainment of human felicity. With felicity Comte is hardly more concerned than Hegel. The establishment of a fuller harmony between men and their environment in the third stage will no doubt mean happiness. But this consideration lies outside the theory, and to introduce it would only intrude an unscientific element into the analysis. The course of development is determined by intellectual ideas, and he treats these as independent of, and indifferent to, eudaemonic motives. A third point to be noted is the authoritarian character of the regime of the future. Comte's ideal state would be as ill to live in for any unfortunate being who values personal liberty as a theocracy or any socialistic Utopia. He had as little sympathy with liberty as Plato or as Bossuet, and less than the eighteenth century philosophers. This feature, common to Comte and the Saint-Simonians, was partly due to the reaction against the Revolution, but it also resulted from the logic of the man of science. If sociological laws are positively established as certainly as the law of gravitation, no room is left for opinion; right social conduct is definitely fixed; the proper functions of every member of society admit of no question; therefore the claim to liberty is perverse and irrational. It is the same argument which some modern exponents of Eugenics use to advocate a state tyranny in the matter of human breeding. When Comte was writing, the progressive movement in Europe was towards increase of liberty in all its forms, national, civic, political, and economical. On one hand there was the agitation for the release of oppressed nationalities, on the other the growth of liberalism in England and France. The aim of the liberalism of that period was to restrict the functions of government; its spirit was distrust of the state. As a political theory it was defective, as modern Liberals acknowledge, but it was an important expression of the feeling that the interests of society are best furthered by the free interplay of individual actions and aims. It thus implicitly contained or pointed to a theory of Progress sharply opposed to Comte's: that the realisation of the fullest possible measure of individual liberty is the condition of ensuring the maximum of energy and effectiveness in improving our environment, and therefore the condition of attaining public felicity. Right or wrong, this theory reckons with fundamental facts of human nature which Comte ignored. 7. Comte spent the later years of his life in composing another huge work, on social reorganisation. It included a new religion, in which Humanity was the object of worship, but made no other important addition to the speculations of his earlier manhood, though he developed them further. The Course of Positive Philosophy was not a book that took the public by storm. We are told by a competent student of social theories in France that the author's name was little known in his own country till about 1855, when his greatness began to win recognition, and his influence to operate. [Footnote: Weill, Hist. du mouvement social, p. 21.] Even then his work can hardly have been widely read. But through men like Littre and Taine, whose conceptions of history were moulded by his teaching, and men like Mill, whom he stimulated, as well as through the disciples who adopted Positivism as a religion, his leading principles, detached from his system, became current in the world of speculation. [Footnote: The influence of Comte. The manner in which ideas filter through, as it were, underground and emerge oblivious of their source is illustrated by the German historian Lamprecht's theory of historical development. He surveyed the history of a people as a series of what he called typical periods, each of which is marked by a collective psychical character expressing itself in every department of life. He named this a diapason. Lamprecht had never read Comte, and he imagined that this principle, on which he based his kulturhistorische Methode, was original. But his psychical diapason is the psychical consensus of Comte, whose system, as we have seen, depended on the proposition that a given social organisation corresponds in a definite way to the contemporary stage of mental development; and Comte had derived the principle from Saint-Simon. Cf. his pamphlet Die kulturhistorische Methode (1900). The succession of "typical period" was worked out for Germany in his History of the German People.] He laid the foundations of sociology, convincing many minds that the history of civilisation is subject to general laws, or, in other words, that a science of society is possible. In England this idea was still a novelty when Mill's System of Logic appeared in 1843. The publication of this work, which attempted to define the rules for the investigation of truth in all fields of inquiry and to provide tests for the hypotheses of science, was a considerable event, whether we regard its value and range or its prolonged influence on education. Mill, who had followed recent French thought attentively and was particularly impressed by the system of Comte, recognised that a new method of investigating social phenomena had been inaugurated by the thinkers who set out to discover the "law" of human progression. He proclaimed and welcomed it as superior to previous methods, and at the same time pointed out its limitations. Till about fifty years ago, he said, generalisations on man and society have erred by implicitly assuming that human nature and society will for ever revolve in the same orbit and exhibit virtually the same phenomena. This is still the view of the ostentatiously practical votaries of common sense in Great Britain; whereas the more reflective minds of the present age, analysing historical records more minutely, have adopted the opinion that the human race is in a state of necessary progression. The reciprocal action between circumstances and human nature, from which social phenomena result, must produce either a cycle or a trajectory. While Vico maintained the conception of periodic cycles, his successors have universally adopted the idea of a trajectory or progress, and are endeavouring to discover its law. [Footnote: Philosophical writers in England in the middle of the century paid more attention to Cousin than to Comte or Saint-Simon. J. D. Morell, in his forgotten History and Critical View of Speculative Philosophy (1846), says that eclecticism is the philosophy of human progress (vol. ii. 635, 2nd ed.). He conceived the movement of humanity as that of a spiral, ever tending to a higher perfection (638).] But they have fallen into a misconception in imagining that if they can find a law of uniformity in the succession of events they can infer the future from the past terms of the series. For such a law would only be an "empirical law"; it would not be a causal law or an ultimate law. However rigidly uniform, there is no guarantee that it would apply to phenomena outside those from which it was derived. It must itself depend on laws of mind and character (psychology and ethology). When those laws are known and the nature of the dependence is explained, when the determining causes of all the changes constituting the progress are understood, then the empirical law will be elevated to a scientific law, then only will it be possible to predict. Thus Mill asserted that if the advanced thinkers who are engaged on the subject succeed in discovering an empirical law from the data of history, it may be converted into a scientific law by deducing it a priori from the principles of human nature. In the meantime, he argued that what is already known of those principles justifies the important conclusion that the order of general human progression will mainly depend on the order of progression in the intellectual convictions of mankind. Throughout his exposition Mill uses "progress" in a neutral sense, without implying that the progression necessarily means improvement. Social science has still to demonstrate that the changes determined by human nature do mean improvement. But in warning the reader of this he declares himself to be personally an optimist, believing that the general tendency, saving temporary exceptions, is in the direction of a better and happier state. 8. Twenty years later [Footnote: In later editions of the Logic.] Mill was able to say that the conception of history as subject to general laws had "passed into the domain of newspaper and ordinary political discussion." Buckle's HISTORY OF CIVILISATION IN ENGLAND [Footnote: 2 Vol. i. appeared in 1857, vol. ii. in 1861.] which enjoyed an immediate success, did a great deal to popularise the idea. In this stimulating work Buckle took the fact of Progress for granted; his purpose was to investigate its causes. Considering the two general conditions on which all events depend, human nature and external nature, he arrived at two conclusions: (1) In the early stage of history the influence of man's external environment is the more decisive factor; but as time goes on the roles are gradually inverted, and now it is his own nature that is principally responsible for his development. (2) Progress is determined, not by the emotional and moral faculties, but by the intellect; [Footnote: This was the view of Jouffroy, Comte, and Mill; Buckle popularised it.] the emotional and moral faculties are stationary, and therefore religion is not a decisive influence in the onward movement of humanity. "I pledge myself to show that the progress Europe has made from barbarism to civilisation is entirely due to its intellectual activity.... In what may be called the innate and original morals of mankind there is, so far as we are aware, no progress." [Footnote: Buckle has been very unjustly treated by some critics, but has found an able defender in Mr. J.M. Robertson (Buckle and his Critics (1895)). The remarks of Benn (History of Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, ii. 182 sqq.) are worth reading.] Buckle was convinced that social phenomena exhibit the same undeviating regularity as natural phenomena. In this belief he was chiefly influenced by the investigations of the Belgian statistician Quetelet (1835). "Statistics," he said, "has already thrown more light on the study of human nature than all the sciences put together." From the regularity with which the same crimes recur in the same state of society, and many other constant averages, he inferred that all actions of individuals result directly from the state of society in which they live, and that laws are operating which, if we take large enough numbers into account, scarcely undergo any sensible perturbation. [Footnote: Kant had already appealed to statistics in a similar sense; see above, p. 243.] Thus the evidence of statistics points to the conclusion that progress is not determined by the acts of individual men, but depends on general laws of the intellect which govern the successive stages of public opinion. The totality of human actions at any given time depends on the totality of knowledge and the extent of its diffusion. There we have the theory that history is subject to general laws in its most unqualified form, based on a fallacious view of the significance of statistical facts. Buckle's attempt to show the operation of general laws in the actual history of man was disappointing. When he went on to review the concrete facts of the historical process, his own political principles came into play, and he was more concerned with denouncing the tendencies of which he did not approve than with extricating general laws from the sequence of events. His comments on religious persecution and the obscurantism of governments and churches were instructive and timely, but they did not do much to exhibit a set of rigid laws governing and explaining the course of human development. The doctrine that history is under the irresistible control of law was also popularised by an American physiologist, J. W. Draper, whose HISTORY OF THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPE appeared in 1864 and was widely read. His starting-point was a superficial analogy between a society and an individual. "Social advancement is as completely under the control of natural law as a bodily growth. The life of an individual is a miniature of the life of a nation," and "particles" in the individual organism answer to persons in the political organism. Both have the same epochs--infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old age--and therefore European progress exhibits five phases, designated as Credulity, Inquiry, Faith, Reason, Decrepitude. Draper's conclusion was that Europe, now in the fourth period, is hastening to a long period of decrepitude. The prospect did not dismay him; decrepitude is the culmination of Progress, and means the organisation of national intellect. That has already been achieved in China, and she owes to it her well-being and longevity. "Europe is inevitably hastening to become what China is. In her we may see what we shall be like when we are old." Judged by any standard, Draper's work is much inferior to Buckle's, but both these books, utterly different though they were in both conception and treatment, performed a similar function. Each in its own way diffused the view which had originated in France, that civilisation is progression and, like nature, subject to general laws. CHAPTER XVII. "PROGRESS" IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT (1830-1851) 1. In 1850 there appeared at Paris a small book by M. A. Javary, with the title DE L'IDEE DU PROGRES. Its interest lies in the express recognition that Progress was the characteristic idea of the age, ardently received by some, hotly denounced by others. [Footnote: Lamartine denounced in his monthly journal Le Conseiller du peuple, vol. i. (1849), all the progressive gospels of the day, socialist, communist, Saint-Simonian, Fourierist, Icarian--in fact every school of social reform since the First Republic--as purely materialistic, sprung from the "cold seed of the century of Helvetius" (pp. 224, 287).] "If there is any idea," he says, "that belongs properly to one century, at least by the importance accorded to it, and that, whether accepted or not, is familiar to all minds, it is the idea of Progress conceived as the general law of history and the future of humanity." He observes that some, intoxicated by the spectacle of the material improvements of modern civilisation and the results of science, set no limits to man's power or his hopes; while others, unable to deny the facts, say that this progress serves only the lower part of human nature, and refuse to look with complacency on a movement which means, they assert, a continuous decadence of the nobler part. To which it is replied that, If moral decadence is a fact, it is only transient; it is a necessary phase of a development which means moral progress in the end, for it is due to the process by which the beliefs, ideas, and institutions of the past disappear and make way for new and better principles. And Javary notes a prevailing tendency in France to interpret every contemporary movement as progressive, while all the social doctrinaires justify their particular reforms by invoking the law of Progress. It was quite true that during the July monarchy nearly all serious speculations on society and history were related to that idea. It was common to Michelet and Quinet, who saw in the march of civilisation the gradual triumph of liberty; to Leroux and Cabet, who preached humanitarian communism; to Louis Blanc and to Proudhon; to the bourgeois, who were satisfied with the regime of Louis Philippe and grew rich, following the precept of Guizot, as well as to the workers who overthrew it. It is significant that the journal of Louis Blanc, in which he published his book on the ORGANISATION OF WORK (1839), was entitled REVUS DES PROGRES. The political question as to the due limits between government and individual freedom was discussed in terms of Progress: is personal liberty or state authority the efficient means of progressing? The metaphysical question of necessity and freewill acquired a new interest: is Progress a fatality, independent of human purposes, determined by general, ineluctable, historical laws? Quinet and Michelet argued vigorously against the optimism of Cousin, who with Hegel held that history is just what it ought to be and could not be improved. 2. Among the competing theories of the time, and sharply opposed to the views of Comte, was the idea, derived from the Revolution, that the world is moving towards universal equality and the obliteration of class distinctions, that this is the true direction of Progress. This view, represented by leaders of the popular movement against the bourgeois ascendency, derived powerful reinforcement from one of the most enlightened political thinkers of the day. The appearance of de Tocqueville's renowned study of American democracy was the event of 1834. He was convinced that he had discovered on the other side of the Atlantic the answer to the question whither the world is tending. In American society he found that equality of conditions is the generating fact on which every other fact depends. He concluded that equality is the goal of humanity, providentially designed. "The gradual development of equality of conditions has the principal characteristics of a providential fact. It is universal, it is permanent, it eludes human power; all events and all men serve this development.... This whole book has been written under the impression of a sort of religious terror produced in the author's soul by the view of this irresistible revolution which for so many centuries has been marching across all obstacles, and which is to-day seen still advancing in the midst of the ruins it has made.... If the men of our time were brought to see that the gradual and progressive development of equality is at once the past and the future of their history, this single discovery would give that development the sacred character of the will of the sovran master." Here we have a view of the direction of Progress and the meaning of history, pretending to be based upon the study of facts and announced with the most intense conviction. And behind it is the fatalistic doctrine that the movement cannot be arrested or diverted; that it is useless to struggle against it; that men, whatever they may do, cannot deflect the clock-like motion regulated by a power which de Tocqueville calls Providence but to which his readers might give some other name. 3. It has been conjectured, [Footnote: Georges Sorel, Les Illusions du progres, pp. 247-8 (1908).] and seems probable enough, that de Tocqueville's book was one of the influences which wrought upon the mind of Proudhon. The speculations of this remarkable man, who, like Saint-Simon and Comte, sought to found a new science of society, attracted general attention in the middle of the century. [Footnote: Compare the appreciation by Weill in Histoire du mouvement social en France 1852-1910 (1911, ed. 2), p. 41: "Le grande ecrivain revolutionnaire et anarchiste n'etait au fond ni un revolutionnaire ni un anarchiste, mais un reformateur pratique et modere qui a fait illusion par le ton vibrant de ses pamphlets centre la societe capitaliste."]His hostility to religion, his notorious dictum that "property is theft," his gospel of "anarchy," and the defiant, precipitous phrases in which he clothed his ideas, created an impression that he was a dangerous anti-social revolutionary. But when his ideas are studied in their context and translated into sober language, they are not so unreasonable. Notwithstanding his communistic theory of property and his ideal of equality, he was a strong individualist. He held that the future of civilisation depends on the energy of individuals, that liberty is a condition of its advance, and that the end to be kept in view is the establishment of justice, which means equality. He saw the difficulty of reconciling liberty with complete equality, but hoped that the incompatibility would be overcome by a gradual reduction of the natural differences in men's capacities. He said, "I am an anarchist," but his anarchy only meant that the time would come when government would be superfluous, when every human being could be trusted to act wisely and morally without a restraining authority or external sanctions. Nor was he a Utopian. He comprehended that such a transformation of society would be a long, slow process, and he condemned the schools of Saint-Simon and Fourier for imagining that a millennium might be realised immediately by a change of organisation. He tells us that all his speculations and controversial activities are penetrated with the idea of Progress, which he described as "the railway of liberty"; and his radical criticism on current social theories, whether conservative or democratic, was that they did not take Progress seriously though they invoked it. "What dominates in all my studies, what forms their beginning and end, their summit and their base, their reason, what makes my originality as a thinker (if I have any), is that I affirm Progress resolutely, irrevocably, and everywhere, and deny the Absolute. All that I have ever written, all I have denied or affirmed, I have written, denied or affirmed in the name of one unique idea, Progress. My adversaries, on the other hand, are all partisans of the Absolute, IN OMNI GENERE, CASU, ET NUMERO, to use the phrase of Sganarelle." [Footnote: Philosophie du progres, Premiere lettre (1851).] 4. A vague confidence in Progress had lain behind and encouraged the revolution of 1789, but in the revolution of 1848 the idea was definitely enthroned as the regnant principle. It presided over the session of the Committee which drew up the Constitution of the second Republic. Armand Marrast, the most important of the men who framed that document, based the measure of universal suffrage upon "the invisible law which rules societies," the law of progress which has been so long denied but which is rooted in the nature of man. His argument was this: Revolutions are due to the repression of progress, and are the expression and triumph of a progress which has been achieved. But such convulsions are an undesirable method of progressing; how can they be avoided? Only by organising elastic institutions in which new ideas of amelioration can easily be incorporated, and laws which can be accommodated without struggle or friction to the rise of new opinions. What is needed is a flexible government open to the penetration of ideas, and the key to such a government is universal suffrage. [Footnote: Marrast, "the invisible law"; "Oui," he continues, "toute societe est progressive, parce que tout individu est educable, perfectible; on peut mesurer, limiter, peut-etre les facultes d'un individu; on ne saurait limiter, mesurer ce que peuvent, dans l'ordre des idees, les intelligences dont les produits ne s'ajoutent pas seulement mais se fecondent et se multiplient dans une progression indefinie." No. 393 Republique francoise. Assemblee nationale. Projet de Constitution... precede par un rapport fait au nom de la Commission par le citoyen Armand Marrast. Seance du 30 aout, 1848.] Universal suffrage was practical politics, but the success of the revolution fluttered agreeably all the mansions of Utopia, and social reformers of every type sought to improve the occasion. In the history of the political struggles of 1848 the names are written of Proudhon, of Victor Considerant the disciple of Fourier, of Pierre Leroux the humanitarian communist, and his devoted pupil George Sand. The chief title of Leroux to be remembered is just his influence over the soul of the great novelist. Her later romances are pervaded by ideas derived from his teaching. His communism was vague and ineffectual, but he was one of the minor forces in the thought of the period, and there are some features in his theory which deserve to be pointed out. Leroux had begun as a member of the Saint-Simonian school, but he diverged into a path of his own. He reinstated the ideal of equality which Saint-Simon rejected, and made the approach to that ideal the measure of Progress. The most significant process in history, he held, is the gradual breaking down of caste and class: the process is now approaching its completion; "today MAN is synonymous with EQUAL." In order to advance to the city of the future we must have a force and a lever. Man is the force, and the lever is the idea of Progress. It is supplied by the study of history which displays the improvement of our faculties, the increase of our power over nature, the possibility of organising society more efficaciously. But the force and the lever are not enough. A fulcrum is also required, and this is to be found in the "solidarity" of the human race. But this conception meant for Leroux something different from what is ordinarily meant by the phrase, a deeper and even mystical bond. Human "solidarity" was a corollary from the pantheistic religion of the Saint-Simonians, but with Leroux, as with Fourier, it was derived from the more difficult doctrine of palingenesis. We of this generation, he believed, are not merely the sons and descendants of past generations, we are the past generations themselves, which have come to birth again in us. Through many pages of the two volumes [Footnote: De l'humanite, 1840 (dedicated to Beranger).] in which he set forth his thesis, Leroux expended much useless learning in endeavouring to establish this doctrine, which, were it true, might be the central principle in a new religion of humanity, a transformed Pythagoreanism. It is easy to understand the attractiveness of palingenesis to a believer in Progress: for it would provide a solution of the anomaly that generations after generations are sacrificed for the sake of posterity, and so appear to have no value in themselves. Believers in Progress, who are sensitive to the sufferings of mankind, past and present, need a stoical resolution to face this fact. We saw how Herder refused to accept it. A pantheistic faith, like that of the Saint-Simonian Church, may help some, it cannot do more, to a stoical acquiescence. The palingenesis of Leroux or Fourier removes the radical injustice. The men of each generation are sacrificed and suffer for the sake of their descendants, but as their descendants are themselves come to life again, they are really suffering in their own interests. They will themselves reach the desirable state to which the slow, painful process of history is tending. But palingenesis, notwithstanding all the ancient opinions and traditions that the researches of Leroux might muster, could carry little conviction to those who were ceasing to believe in the familiar doctrine of a future life detached from earth, and Madame Dudevant was his only distinguished convert. 5. The ascendency of the idea of Progress among thoughtful people in France in the middle of the last century is illustrated by the work which Ernest Renan composed under the immediate impression of the events of 1848. He desired to understand the significance of the current revolutionary doctrines, and was at once involved in speculation on the future of humanity. This is the purport of L'AVENIR DE LA SCIENCE. [Footnote: L'Avenir de la science--Pensees de (1848). Published in 1890.] [Footnote: The ascendency of the idea of Progress at this epoch may be further illustrated by E. Pelletan's Profession de foi du dix-neuvieme siecle, 1852 (4th ed., 1857), where Progress is described as the general law of the universe; and by Jean Reynaud's Philosophie religieuse: Terre et ciel (3rd ed., 1858), a religious but not orthodox book, which acclaims the "sovran principle of perfectibility" (cp. p. 138). I may refer also to the rhetorical pages of E. Vacherot on the Doctrine du progres, printed (as part of an essay on the Philosophy of History) in his Essais de philosophie critique (1864).] The author was then convinced that history has a goal, and that mankind tends perpetually, though in an oscillating line, towards a more perfect state, through the growing dominion of reason over instinct and caprice. He takes the French Revolution as the critical moment in which humanity first came to know itself. That revolution was the first attempt of man to take the reins into his own hands. All that went before we may call, with Owen, the irrational period of human existence. We have now come to a point at which we must choose between two faiths. If we despair of reason, we may find a refuge from utter scepticism in a belief in the external authority of the Roman Church. If we trust reason, we must accept the march of the human mind and justify the modern spirit. And it can be justified only by proving that it is a necessary step towards perfection. Renan affirmed his belief in the second alternative, and felt confident that science--including philology, on the human bearings of which he enlarged,--philosophy, and art would ultimately enable men to realise an ideal civilisation, in which all would be equal. The state, he said, is the machine of Progress, and the Socialists are right in formulating the problem which man has to solve, though their solution is a bad one. For individual liberty, which socialism would seriously limit, is a definite conquest, and ought to be preserved inviolate. Renan wrote this work in 1848 and 1849, but did not publish it at the time. He gave it to the world forty years later. Those forty years had robbed him of his early optimism. He continues to believe that the unfortunate conditions of our race might be ameliorated by science, but he denounces the view that men can ever be equal. Inequality is written in nature; it is not only a necessary consequence of liberty, but a necessary postulate of Progress. There will always be a superior minority. He criticises himself too for having fallen into the error of Hegel, and assigned to man an unduly important place in the universe. [Footnote: Renan, speaking of the Socialists, paid a high tribute to Bazard (L'Avenir de la science, p. 104). On the other hand, he criticised Comte severely (p. 149). Renan returned to speculation on the future in 1863, in a letter to M. Marcellin-Berthelot (published in Dialogues et fragments philosophiques, 1876): "Que sera Ie monde quand un million de fois se sera reproduit ce qui s'est passe depuis 1763 quand la chimie, au lieu de quatre-vingt ans de progres, en aura cent millions?" (p. 183). And again in the Dialogues written in 1871 (ib.), where it is laid down that the end of humanity is to produce great men: "le grand oeuvre s'accomplira par la science, non par la democratic. Rien sans grands hommes; le salut se fera par des grands hommes" (p. 103).] In 1890 there was nothing left of the sentimental socialism which he had studied in 1848; it had been blown away by the cold wind of scientific socialism which Marx and Engels created. And Renan had come to think that in this new form socialism would triumph. [Footnote: He reckoned without the new forces, opposed to socialism as well as to parliamentary democracy, represented by Bakunin and men like Georges Sorel.] He had criticised Comte for believing that "man lives exclusively by science, or rather little verbal tags, like geometrical theorems, dry formulae." Was he satisfied by the concrete doctrine of Marx that all the phenomena of civilisation at a given period are determined by the methods of production and distribution which then prevail? But the future of socialism is a minor issue, and the ultimate goal of humanity is quite uncertain. "Ce qu'il y a de consolant, c'est qu'on arrive necessairement quelque part." We may console ourselves with the certainty that we must get somewhere. 6. Proudhon described the idea of Progress as the railway of liberty. It certainly supplied motive power to social ideals which were repugnant and alarming to the authorities of the Catholic Church. At the Vatican it was clearly seen that the idea was a powerful engine driven by an enemy; and in the famous SYLLABUS of errors which Pope Pius IX. flung in the face of the modern world at the end of 1864, Progress had the honour of being censured. The eightieth error, which closes the list, runs thus: Romanus Pontifex potest ac debet cum progressu, cum liberalismo et cum recenti civilitate sese reconciliare et componere. "The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, be reconciled and come to terms with progress, with liberalism, and with modern civilisation." No wonder, seeing that Progress was invoked to justify every movement that offended the nostrils of the Vatican--liberalism, toleration, democracy, and socialism. And the Roman Church well understood the intimate connection of the idea with the advance of rationalism. CHAPTER XVIII. MATERIAL PROGRESS: THE EXHIBITION OF 1851 1. It is not easy for a new idea of the speculative order to penetrate and inform the general consciousness of a community until it has assumed some external and concrete embodiment or is recommended by some striking material evidence. In the case of Progress both these conditions were fulfilled in the period 1820 to 1850. In the Saint-Simonian Church, and in the attempts of Owen and Cabet to found ideal societies, people saw practical enterprises inspired by the idea. They might have no sympathy with these enterprises, but their attention was attracted. And at the same time they were witnessing a rapid transformation of the external conditions of life, a movement to the continuation of which there seemed no reason for setting any limit in the future. The spectacular results of the advance of science and mechanical technique brought home to the mind of the average man the conception of an indefinite increase of man's power over nature as his brain penetrated her secrets. This evident material progress which has continued incessantly ever since has been a mainstay of the general belief in Progress which is prevalent to-day. England was the leader in this material progress, of which the particulars are familiar and need not be enumerated here. The discovery of the power of steam and the potentialities of coal revolutionised the conditions of life. Men who were born at the beginning of the century had seen, before they had passed the age of thirty, the rapid development of steam navigation, the illumination of towns and houses by gas, the opening of the first railway. It was just before this event, the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway, which showed how machinery would abbreviate space as it had SIR THOMAS MORE, OR COLLOQUIES ON THE PROGRESS OF SOCIETY (1829). There we see the effect of the new force on his imagination. "Steam," he says, "will govern the world next,... and shake it too before its empire is established." The biographer of Nelson devotes a whole conversation to the subject of "steam and war." But the theme of the book is the question of moral and social progress, on which the author inclines to the view that "the world will continue to improve, even as it has hitherto been continually improving; and that the progress of knowledge and the diffusion of Christianity will bring about at last, when men become Christian in reality as well as in name, something like that Utopian state of which philosophers have loved to dream." This admission of Progress, cautious though it was, circumscribed by reserves and compromised by hesitations, coming from such a conservative pillar of Church and State as Southey, is a notable sign of the times, when we remember that the idea was still associated then with revolution and heresy. It is significant too that at the same time an octogenarian mathematician of Aberdeen was composing a book on the same subject. Hamilton's PROGRESS OF SOCIETY is now utterly forgotten, but it must have contributed in its day to propagating the same moderate view of Progress, consistent with orthodoxy, which Southey held. "The belief of the perfectibility of human nature and the attainment of a golden age in which vice and misery have no place, will only be entertained by an enthusiast; but an inquiry into the means of improving our nature and enlarging our happiness is consistent with sober reason, and is the most important subject, merely human, that can engage the mind of man." [Footnote: P. 13. The book was published posthumously by Murray in 1830, a year after the author's death.] [Footnote: "Progress of Society." The phrase was becoming common; e.g. Russell's History of Modern Europe (1822) has the sub-title A view of the Progress of Society, etc. The didactic poem of Payne Knight, The Progress of Civil Society (1796), a very dull performance, was quite unaffected by the dreams of Priestley or Godwin. It was towards the middle of the nineteenth century that Progress, without any qualifying phrase, came into use.] 2. We have been told by Tennyson that when he went by the first train from Liverpool to Manchester (1830) he thought that the wheels ran in grooves. "Then I made this line: Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change." [Footnote: See Tennyson, Memoir by his Son, vol. i. p. 195.] LOCKSLEY HALL, which was published in 1842, illustrates how the idea of Progress had begun to creep into the imagination of Englishmen. Though subsidiary to a love story, it is the true theme of the poem. The pulsation of eager interest in the terrestrial destinies of humanity, the large excitement of living in a "wondrous Mother-age," dreams of the future, quicken the passion of the hero's youth. His disappointment in love disenchants him; he sees the reverse side of civilisation, but at last he finds an anodyne for his palsied heart in a more sober version of his earlier faith, a chastened belief in his Mother-age. He can at least discern an increasing purpose in history, and can be sure that "the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns." The novelty of the poem lay in finding a cathartic cure for a private sorrow, not in religion or in nature, but in the modern idea of Progress. It may be said to mark a stage in the career of the idea. The view of civilisation which Tennyson took as his MOTIF had no revolutionary implications, suggested no impatience or anger with the past. The startling prospect unfolding itself before "the long result of time," and history is justified by the promise of to-day: The centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed. Very different was the spirit in which another great poet composed, nearly twenty years later, a wonderful hymn of Progress. Victor Hugo's PLEIN CEIL, in his epic LA LEGENDE DES SIECLES,[Footnote: A.D. 1859.] announces a new era of the world in which man, the triumphant rebel, delivered from his past, will move freely forward on a glorious way. The poet is inspired not by faith in a continuous development throughout the ages, but by the old spirit of the Revolution, and he sees in the past only a heavy chain which the race at last flings off. The horrible past has gone, not to return: "ce monde est mort"; and the poem is at once a paean on man's victorious rebellion against it and a dithyramb on the prospect of his future. Man is imagined as driving through the heavens an aerial car to which the four winds are harnessed, mounting above the clouds, and threatening to traverse the ether. Superbe, il plane, avec un hymne en ses agres; Et l'on voit voir passer la strophe du progres. Il est la nef, il est le phare! L'homme enfin prend son sceptre et jette son baton. Et l'on voit s'envoler le calcul de Newton Monte sur l'ode de Pindare. But if this vision foreshadows the conquest of the air, its significance is symbolic rather than literal, and, like Pindar checking the steeds of his song, Hugo returns to earth: Pas si loin! pas si haut! redescendons. Restons L'homme, restons Adam; mais non l'homme a tatons, Mais non l'Adam tombe! Tout autre reve altere L'espece d'ideal qui convient a la terre. Contentons-nous du mot: meilleur! ecrit partout. Dawn has appeared, after six thousand years in the fatal way, and man, freed by "the invisible hand" from the weight of his chains, has embarked for new shores: Ou va-t-il ce navire? II va, de jour vetu, A l'avenir divin et pur, a la vertu, A la science qu'on voit luire, A la mort des fleaux, a l'oubli genereux, A l'abondance, au caime, au rire, a l'homme heureux, Il va, ce glorieux navire. Oh! ce navire fait le voyage sacre! C'est l'ascension bleue a son premier degre; Hors de l'antique et vil decombre, Hors de la pesanteur, c'est l'avenir fonde; C'est le destin de l'homme a la fin evade, Qui leve l'ancre et sort de l'ombre! The union of humanity in a universal commonwealth, which Tennyson had expressed as "the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World," the goal of many theorists of Progress, becomes in Hugo's imagination something more sublime. The magic ship of man's destiny is to compass the cosmopolis of the Stoics, a terrestrial order in harmony with the whole universe. Nef magique et supreme! elle a, rien qu'eri marchant, Change le cri terrestre en pur et joyeux chant, Rajeuni les races fletries, Etabli l'ordre vrai, montre le chemin sur, Dieu juste! et fait entrer dans l'homme tant d'azur Qu'elle a supprime les patries! Faisant a l'homme avec le ciel une cite, Une pensee avec toute l'immensite, Elle abolit les vieilles regles; Elle abaisse les monts, elle annule les tours; Splendide, elle introduit les peuples, marcheurs lourds, Dans la communion des aigles. 3. Between 1830 and 1850 railway transport spread throughout Great Britain and was introduced on the Continent, and electricity was subdued to man's use by the invention of telegraphy. The great Exhibition of London in 1851 was, in one of its aspects, a public recognition of the material progress of the age and the growing power of man over the physical world. Its aim, said a contemporary, was "to seize the living scroll of human progress, inscribed with every successive conquest of man's intellect."[Footnote: Edinburgh Review (October 1851), p. 562, in a review of the Official Catalogue of the Exhibition.] The Prince Consort, who originated the Exhibition, explained its significance in a public speech: "Nobody who has paid any attention to the peculiar features of our present era will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of most wonderful transition, which tends rapidly to accomplish that great end to which indeed all history points--THE REALISATION OF THE UNITY OF MANKIND.... The distances which separated the different nations and parts of the globe are rapidly vanishing before the achievements of modern invention, and we can traverse them with incredible ease; the languages of all nations are known, and their acquirements placed within the reach of everybody; thought is communicated with the rapidity, and even by the power, of lightning. On the other hand, the GREAT PRINCIPLE OF DIVISION OF LABOUR, which may be called the moving power of civilisation, is being extended to all branches of science, industry, and art... Gentlemen, the Exhibition of 1851 is to give us a true test and a living picture of the point of development at which the whole of mankind has arrived in this great task, and a new starting-point from which all nations will be able to direct their further exertions." [Footnote: Martin, Life of the Prince Consort (ed. 3), iii. p. 247. The speech was delivered at a banquet at the Mansion House on March 21, 1850.] The point emphasised here is the "solidarity" of the world. The Exhibition is to bring home to men's consciousness the community of all the inhabitants of the earth. The assembled peoples, wrote Thackeray, in his "May-day Ode," [Footnote: Published in the Times, April 30, 1851. The Exhibition was opened on May I.] See the sumptuous banquet set, The brotherhood of nations met Around the feast. And this was the note struck in the leading article of the Times on the opening day: "The first morning since the creation that all peoples have assembled from all parts of the world and done a common act." It was claimed that the Exhibition signified a new, intelligent, and moral movement which "marks a great crisis in the history of the world," and foreshadows universal peace. England, said another writer, produced Bacon and Newton, the two philosophers "who first lent direction and force to the stream of industrial science; we have been the first also to give the widest possible base to the watch-tower of international progress, which seeks the formation of the physical well-being of man and the extinction of the meaner jealousies of commerce."[Footnote: Edinburgh Review, loc. cit.] These quotations show that the great Exhibition was at the time optimistically regarded, not merely as a record of material achievements, but as a demonstration that humanity was at last well on its way to a better and happier state, through the falling of barriers and the resulting insight that the interests of all are closely interlocked. A vista was suggested, at the end of which far-sighted people might think they discerned Tennyson's "Federation of the World." 4. Since the Exhibition, western civilisation has advanced steadily, and in some respects more rapidly than any sober mind could have predicted--civilisation, at least, in the conventional sense, which has been not badly defined as "the development of material ease, of education, of equality, and of aspirations to rise and succeed in life." [Footnote: B. Kidd, Social Evolution, p. 368.] The most striking advance has been in the technical conveniences of life--that is, in the control over natural forces. It would be superfluous to enumerate the discoveries and inventions since 1850 which have abridged space, economised time, eased bodily suffering, and reduced in some ways the friction of life, though they have increased it in others. This uninterrupted series of technical inventions, proceeding concurrently with immense enlargements of all branches of knowledge, has gradually accustomed the least speculative mind to the conception that civilisation is naturally progressive, and that continuous improvement is part of the order of things. So far the hopes of 1851 have been fulfilled. But against all this technical progress, with the enormous expansion of industry and commerce, dazzling to the man in the market-place when he pauses to reflect, have to be set the exploitation and sufferings of industrial workers, the distress of intense economic competition, the heavier burdens of preparation for modern war. The very increase of "material ease" seemed unavoidably to involve conditions inconsistent with universal happiness; and the communications which linked the peoples of the world together modified the methods of warfare instead of bringing peace. "Toutes nos merveilleuses inventions sont aussi puissantes pour le mal que pour le bien." [Footnote: H. de Ferron, Theorie du progres (1867), ii. 439.] One fact indeed might be taken as an index that humanity was morally advancing--the abolition of slavery in America at the price of a long and sanguinary war. Yet some triumphs of philanthropy hardly seemed to endanger the conclusion that, while knowledge is indefinitely progressive, there is no good reason for sanguine hopes that man is "perfectible" or that universal happiness is attainable. A thoughtful writer observed, discussing Progress in 1864, that the innumerable individual steps in the growth of knowledge and business organisation have not been combined, so far, to produce a general advance in the happiness of life; each step brings increase of pressure. [Footnote: Lotze, Microcosmus (Eng. tr.), vol. ii. p. 396.] Yet in spite of all adverse facts and many eminent dissenters the belief in social Progress has on the whole prevailed. This triumph of optimism was promoted by the victory of a revolutionary hypothesis in another field of inquiry, which suddenly electrified the world. [Footnote: Against Lotze we might set many opinions which do not seem to have been influenced by the doctrine of evolution. For instance, the optimism of M. Marcellin-Berthelot in a letter to Renan in 1863. He says (Renan, Dialogues, p. 233) that one of the general results of historical study is "the fact of the incessant progress of human societies in science, in material conditions, and in morality, three correlatives.... Societies become more and more civilised, and I will venture to say more and more virtuous. The sum of good is always increasing, and the sum of evil diminishing, in the same measure as the sum of truth increases and the sum of ignorance diminishes." In 1867 Emerson delivered an address at Harvard on the "Progress of Culture" (printed in his Letters and Social Aims), in which he enumerates optimistically the indications of social advance: "the new scope of social science; the abolition of capital punishment and of imprisonment for debt: the improvement of prisons; the efforts for the suppression of intemperance, vice, etc.," and asks: "Who would live in the stone age, or the bronze, or the iron, or the lacustrine? Who does not prefer the age of steel, of gold, of coal, petroleum, cotton, steam, electricity, and the spectroscope?" The discursive Thoughts on the Future of the Human Race, published in 1866, by W. Ellis (1800-81), a disciple of J. S. Mill, would have been remarkable if it had appeared half a century earlier. He is untouched by the theory of evolution, and argues on common-sense grounds that Progress is inevitable.] CHAPTER XIX. PROGRESS IN THE LIGHT OF EVOLUTION 1. In the sixties of the nineteenth century the idea of Progress entered upon the third period of its history. During the FIRST period, up to the French Revolution, it had been treated rather casually; it was taken for granted and received no searching examination either from philosophers or from historians. In the SECOND period its immense significance was apprehended, and a search began for a general law which would define and establish it. The study of sociology was founded, and at the same time the impressive results of science, applied to the conveniences of life, advertised the idea. It harmonised with the notion of "development" which had become current both in natural science and in metaphysics. Socialists and other political reformers appealed to it as a gospel. By 1850 it was a familiar idea in Europe, but was not yet universally accepted as obviously true. The notion of social Progress had been growing in the atmosphere of the notion of biological development, but this development still seemed a highly precarious speculation. The fixity of species and the creation of man, defended by powerful interests and prejudices, were attacked but were not shaken. The hypothesis of organic evolution was much in the same position as the Copernican hypothesis in the sixteenth century. Then in 1859 Darwin intervened, like Galileo. The appearance of the ORIGIN OF SPECIES changed the situation by disproving definitely the dogma of fixity of species and assigning real causes for "transformism." What might be set aside before as a brilliant guess was elevated to the rank of a scientific hypothesis, and the following twenty years were enlivened by the struggle around the evolution of life, against prejudices chiefly theological, resulting in the victory of the theory. The ORIGIN OF SPECIES led to the THIRD stage of the fortunes of the idea of Progress. We saw how the heliocentric astronomy, by dethroning man from his privileged position in the universe of space and throwing him back on his own efforts, had helped that idea to compete with the idea of a busy Providence. He now suffers a new degradation within the compass of his own planet. Evolution, shearing him of his glory as a rational being specially created to be the lord of the earth, traces a humble pedigree for him. And this second degradation was the decisive fact which has established the reign of the idea of Progress. 2. Evolution itself, it must be remembered, does not necessarily mean, applied to society, the movement of man to a desirable goal. It is a neutral, scientific conception, compatible either with optimism or with pessimism. According to different estimates it may appear to be a cruel sentence or a guarantee of steady amelioration. And it has been actually interpreted in both ways. In order to base Progress on Evolution two distinct arguments are required. If it could be shown that social life obeys the same general laws of evolution as nature, and also that the process involves an increase of happiness, then Progress would be as valid a hypothesis as the evolution of living forms. Darwin had concluded his treatise with these words: As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Silurian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of equally inappreciable length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental environments will tend to progress towards perfection. Here the evolutionist struck the note of optimism. And he suggested that laws of Progress would be found in other quarters than those where they had hitherto been sought. The ablest and most influential development of the argument from evolution to Progress was the work of Spencer. He extended the principle of evolution to sociology and ethics, and was the most conspicuous interpreter of it in an optimistic sense. He had been an evolutionist long before Darwin's decisive intervention, and in 1851 he had published his Social Statics, which, although he had not yet worked out the evolutionary laws which he began to formulate soon afterwards and was still a theist, exhibits the general trend of his optimistic philosophy. Progress here appears as the basis of a theory of ethics. The title indicates the influence of Comte, but the argument is sharply opposed to the spirit of Comte's teaching, and sociology is treated in a new way. [Footnote: Social Statics, or the Conditions Essential to Human Happiness specified, and the first of them developed, is the full title.] Spencer begins by arguing that the constancy of human nature, so frequently alleged, is a fallacy. For change is the law of all things, of every single object as well as of the universe. "Nature in its infinite complexity is ever growing to a new development." It would be strange if, in this universal mutation, man alone were unchangeable, and it is not true. "He also obeys the law of indefinite variation." Contrast the houseless savages with Newtons and Shakespeares; between these extremes there are countless degrees of difference. If then humanity is indefinitely variable, perfectibility is possible. In the second place, evil is not a permanent necessity. For all evil results from the non-adaptation of the organism to its conditions; this is true of everything that lives. And it is equally true that evil perpetually tends to disappear. In virtue of an essential principle of life, this non-adaptation of organisms to their conditions is ever being rectified, and one or both continue to be modified until the adaptation is perfect. And this applies to the mental as well as to the physical sphere. In the present state of the world men suffer many evils, and this shows that their characters are not yet adjusted to the social state. Now the qualification requisite for the social state is that each individual shall have such desires only as may fully be satisfied without trenching upon the ability of others to obtain similar satisfaction. This qualification is not yet fulfilled, because civilised man retains some of the characteristics which were suitable for the conditions of his earlier predatory life. He needed one moral constitution for his primitive state, he needs quite another for his present state. The resultant is a process of adaptation which has been going on for a long time, and will go on for a long time to come. Civilisation represents the adaptations which have already been accomplished. Progress means the successive steps of the process. That by this process man will eventually become suited to his mode of life, Spencer has no doubts. All excess and deficiency of suitable faculties must disappear; in other words, all imperfection. "The ultimate development of the ideal man is logically certain--as certain as any conclusion in which we place the most implicit faith; for instance, that all men will die." Here is the theory of perfectibility asserted, on new grounds, with a confidence not less assured than that of Condorcet or Godwin. Progress then is not an accident, but a necessity. Civilisation is a part of nature, being a development of man's latent capabilities under the action of favourable circumstances which were certain at some time or other to occur. Here Spencer's argument assumes a final cause. The ultimate purpose of creation, he asserts, is to produce the greatest amount of happiness, and to fulfil this aim it is necessary that each member of the race should possess faculties enabling him to experience the highest enjoyment of life, yet in such a way as not to diminish the power of others to receive like satisfaction. Beings thus constituted cannot multiply in a world tenanted by inferior creatures; these, therefore, must be dispossessed to make room; and to dispossess them aboriginal man must have an inferior constitution to begin with; he must be predatory, he must have the desire to kill. In general, given an unsubdued earth, and the human being "appointed" to overspread and occupy it, then, the laws of life being what they are, no other series of changes than that which has actually occurred could have occurred. The argument might be put in a form free from the assumption of a final cause, and without introducing the conception of a divine Providence which in this work Spencer adopted, though in his later philosophy it was superseded by the conception of the Unknowable existing behind all phenomena. But the ROLE of the Divine ruler is simply to set in motion immutable forces to realise his design. "In the moral as in the material world accumulated evidence is gradually generating the conviction that events are not at bottom fortuitous, but that they are wrought out in a certain inevitable way by unchanging forces." The optimism of Spencer's view could not be surpassed. "After patient study," he writes, "this chaos of phenomena into the midst of which he [man] was born has begun to generalise itself to him"; instead of confusion he begins to discern "the dim outlines of a gigantic plan. No accidents, no chance, but everywhere order and completeness One by one exceptions vanish, and all becomes systematic." Always towards perfection is the mighty movement--towards a complete development and a more unmixed good; subordinating in its universality all petty irregularities and fallings back, as the curvature of the earth subordinates mountains and valleys. Even in evils the student learns to recognise only a struggling beneficence. But above all he is struck with the inherent sufficingness of things. But the movement towards harmony, the elimination of evil, will not be effected by idealists imposing their constructions upon the world or by authoritarian governments. It means gradual adaptation, gradual psychological change, and its life is individual liberty. It proceeds by the give and take of opposed opinions. Guizot had said, "Progress, and at the same time resistance." And Spencer conceives that resistance is beneficial, so long as it comes from those who honestly think that the institutions they defend are really the best and the proposed innovations absolutely wrong. It will be observed that Spencer's doctrine of perfectibility rests on an entirely different basis from the doctrine of the eighteenth century. It is one thing to deduce it from an abstract psychology which holds that human nature is unresistingly plastic in the hands of the legislator and the instructor. It is another to argue that human nature is subject to the general law of change, and that the process by which it slowly but continuously tends to adapt itself more and more to the conditions of social life--children inheriting the acquired aptitudes of their parents--points to an ultimate harmony. Here profitable legislation and education are auxiliary to the process of unconscious adaptation, and respond to the psychological changes in the community, changes which reveal themselves in public opinion. 3. During the following ten years Spencer was investigating the general laws of evolution and planning his Synthetic Philosophy which was to explain the development of the universe. [Footnote: In an article on "Progress: its Law and Cause," in the Westminster Review, April 1857, Spencer explained that social progress, rightly understood, is not the increase of material conveniences or widening freedom of action, but changes of structure in the social organism which entail such consequences, and proceeded to show that the growth of the individual organism and the growth of civilisation obey the same law of advance from homogeneity to heterogeneity of structure. Here he used progress in a neutral sense; but recognising that a word is required which has no teleological implications (Autobiography, i. 500), he adopted evolution six months later in an article on "Transcendental Physiology" (National Review, Oct. 1857). In his study of organic laws Spencer was indirectly influenced by the ideas of Schelling through von Baer.] He aimed at showing that laws of change are discoverable which control all phenomena alike, inorganic, biological, psychical, and social. In the light of this hypothesis the actual progression of humanity is established as a necessary fact, a sequel of the general cosmic movement and governed by the same principles; and, if that progression is shown to involve increasing happiness, the theory of Progress is established. The first section of the work, FIRST PRINCIPLES, appeared in 1862. The BIOLOGY, the PSYCHOLOGY, and finally the SOCIOLOGY, followed during the next twenty years; and the synthesis of the world-process which these volumes lucidly and persuasively developed, probably did more than any other work, at least in England, both to drive home the significance of the doctrine of evolution and to raise the doctrine of Progress to the rank of a commonplace truth in popular estimation, an axiom to which political rhetoric might effectively appeal. Many of those who were allured by Spencer's gigantic synthesis hardly realised that his theory of social evolution, of the gradual psychical improvement of the race, depends upon the validity of the assumption that parents transmit to their children faculties and aptitudes which they have themselves acquired. On this question experts notoriously differ. Some day it will probably be definitely decided, and perhaps in Spencer's favour. But the theory of continuous psychical improvement by a process of nature encounters an obvious difficulty, which did not escape some critics of Spencer, in the prominent fact of history that every great civilisation of the past progressed to a point at which instead of advancing further it stood still and declined, to become the prey of younger societies, or, if it survived, to stagnate. Arrest, decadence, stagnation has been the rule. It is not easy to reconcile this phenomenon with the theory of mental improvement. The receptive attitude of the public towards such a philosophy as Spencer's had been made possible by Darwin's discoveries, which were reinforced by the growing science of palaeontology and the accumulating material evidence of the great antiquity of man. By the simultaneous advances of geology and biology man's perspective in time was revolutionised, just as the Copernican astronomy had revolutionised his perspective in space. Many thoughtful and many thoughtless people were ready to discern--as Huxley suggested--in man's "long progress through the past, a reasonable ground of faith in his attainment of a nobler future." and Winwood Reade, a young African traveller, exhibited it in a vivid book as a long-drawn-out martyrdom. But he was a disciple of Spencer, and his hopes for the future were as bright as his picture of the past was dark. THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN, published in 1872, was so widely read that it reached an eighth edition twelve years later, and may be counted as one of the agencies which popularised Spencer's optimism. That optimism was not endorsed by all the contemporary leaders of thought. Lotze had asserted emphatically in 1864 that "human nature will not change," and afterwards he saw no reason to alter his conviction. Never one fold and one shepherd, never one uniform culture for all mankind, never universal nobleness. Our virtue and happiness can only flourish amid an active conflict with wrong. If every stumbling-block were smoothed away, men would no longer be like men, but like a flock of innocent brutes, feeding on good things provided by nature as at the very beginning of their course. [Footnote: Microcosmus, Bk. vii. 5 ad fin. (Eng. trans. p. 300). The first German edition (three vols.) appeared in 1856-64, the third, from which the English translation was made, in 1876. Lotze was optimistic as to the durability of modern civilisation: "No one will profess to foreknow the future, but as far as men may judge it seems that in our days there arc greater safeguards than there were in antiquity against unjustifiable excesses and against the external forces which might endanger the continued existence of civilisation."] But even if we reject with Spencer the old dictum, endorsed by Lotze as by Fontenelle, that human nature is immutable, the dictum of ultimate harmony encounters the following objection. "If the social environment were stable," it is easy to argue, "it could be admitted that man's nature, variable EX HYPOTHESI, could gradually adapt itself to it, and that finally a definite equilibrium would be established. But the environment is continually changing as the consequence of man's very efforts to adapt himself; every step he takes to harmonise his needs and his conditions produces a new discord and confronts him with a new problem. In other words, there is no reason to believe that the reciprocal process which goes on in the growth of society between men's natures and the environment they are continually modifying will ever reach an equilibrium, or even that, as the character of the discords changes, the suffering which they cause diminishes." In fact, upon the neutral fact of evolution a theory of pessimism may be built up as speciously as a theory of optimism. And such a theory was built up with great power and ability by the German philosopher E. von Hartmann, whose PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS appeared in 1869. Leaving aside his metaphysics and his grotesque theory of the destiny of the universe, we see here and in his subsequent works how plausibly a convinced evolutionist could revive the view of Rousseau that civilisation and happiness are mutually antagonistic, and that Progress means an increase of misery. Huxley himself, [Footnote: See Agnosticism in Nineteenth Century (Feb. 1889); Government: Anarchy or Regimentation, ib. (May 1890); Essays on Evolution and Ethics (1894).] one of the most eminent interpreters of the doctrine of evolution, did not, in his late years at least, entertain very sanguine views of mankind. "I know of no study which is so saddening as that of the evolution of humanity as it is set forth in the annals of history.... Man is a brute, only more intelligent than other brutes"; and "even the best of modern civilisations appears to me to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the merit of stability." There may be some hope of a large improvement, but otherwise he would "welcome a kindly comet to sweep the whole affair away." And he came to the final conclusion that such an improvement could only set in by deliberately resisting, instead of co-operating with, the processes of nature. "Social progress means the checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another which may be called the ethical process." [Footnote: Huxley considers progress exclusively from an ethical, not from an eudaemonic point of view.] How in a few centuries can man hope to gain the mastery over the cosmic process which has been at work for millions of years? "The theory of evolution encourages no millennial anticipations." I have quoted these views to illustrate that evolution lends itself to a pessimistic as well as to an optimistic interpretation. The question whether it leads in a desirable direction or not is answered according to the temperament of the inquirer. In an age of prosperity and self-complacency the affirmative answer was readily received, and the term evolution attracted to itself in common speech the implications of value which belong to Progress. It may be noticed that the self-complacency of the age was promoted by the popularisation of scientific knowledge. A rapidly growing demand (especially in England) for books and lectures, making the results of science accessible and interesting to the lay public, is a remarkable feature of the second half of the nineteenth century; and to supply this demand was a remunerative enterprise. This popular literature explaining the wonders of the physical world was at the same time subtly flushing the imaginations of men with the consciousness that they were living in an era which, in itself vastly superior to any age of the past, need be burdened by no fear of decline or catastrophe, but trusting in the boundless resources of science might securely defy fate. 4. [It was said in 1881 by an American writer (who strongly dissented from Spencer's theory) that the current view was "fatalistic." See Henry George, Progress and Poverty. But it may be doubted whether those of the general public who optimistically accepted evolution without going very deeply into the question really believed that the future of man is taken entirely out of his hands and is determined exclusively by the nature of the cosmic process. Bagehot was a writer who had a good deal of influence in his day; and in Physics and Politics (1872), where he discusses Progress, there is no suggestion of fatalism. In France, the chief philosophical writers who accepted Progress as a fact protested against a fatalistic interpretation (Renouvier, Cournot, Caro; and cf. L. Carrau's article on Progress in the Revue des deux Mondes (Oct. 1875)). Progress was discussed by Fiske in his Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (1874), vol. ii. 192 sqq. For him (p. 201) "the fundamental characteristic of social progress is the continuous weakening of selfishness and the continuous strengthening of sympathy."] Thus in the seventies and eighties of the last century the idea of Progress was becoming a general article of faith. Some might hold it in the fatalistic form that humanity moves in a desirable direction, whatever men do or may leave undone; others might believe that the future will depend largely on our own conscious efforts, but that there is nothing in the nature of things to disappoint the prospect of steady and indefinite advance. The majority did not inquire too curiously into such points of doctrine, but received it in a vague sense as a comfortable addition to their convictions. But it became a part of the general mental outlook of educated people. When Mr. Frederic Harrison delivered in 1889 at Manchester an eloquent discourse on the "New Era," in which the dominant note is "the faith in human progress in lieu of celestial rewards of the separate soul," his general argument could appeal to immensely wider circles than the Positivists whom he was specially addressing. The dogma--for a dogma it remains, in spite of the confidence of Comte or of Spencer that he had made it a scientific hypothesis--has produced an important ethical principle. Consideration for posterity has throughout history operated as a motive of conduct, but feebly, occasionally, and in a very limited sense. With the doctrine of Progress it assumes, logically, a preponderating importance; for the centre of interest is transferred to the life of future generations who are to enjoy conditions of happiness denied to us, but which our labours and sufferings are to help to bring about. If the doctrine is held in an extreme fatalistic form, then our duty is to resign ourselves cheerfully to sacrifices for the sake of unknown descendants, just as ordinary altruism enjoins the cheerful acceptance of sacrifices for the sake of living fellow-creatures. Winwood Reade indicated this when he wrote, "Our own prosperity is founded on the agonies of the past. Is it therefore unjust that we also should suffer for the benefit of those who are to come?" But if it is held that each generation can by its own deliberate acts determine for good or evil the destinies of the race, then our duties towards others reach out through time as well as through space, and our contemporaries are only a negligible fraction of the "neighbours" to whom we owe obligations. The ethical end may still be formulated, with the Utilitarians, as the greatest happiness of the greatest number; only the greatest number includes, as Kidd observed, "the members of generations yet unborn or unthought of." This extension of the moral code, if it is not yet conspicuous in treatises on Ethics, has in late years been obtaining recognition in practice. 5. Within the last forty years nearly every civilised country has produced a large literature on social science, in which indefinite Progress is generally assumed as an axiom. But the "law" whose investigation Kant designated as the task for a Newton, which Saint-Simon and Comte did not find, and to which Spencer's evolutionary formula would stand in the same relation as it stands to the law of gravitation, remains still undiscovered. To examine or even glance at this literature, or to speculate how theories of Progress may be modified by recent philosophical speculation, lies beyond the scope of this volume, which is only concerned with tracing the origin of the idea and its growth up to the time when it became a current creed. Looking back on the course of the inquiry, we note how the history of the idea has been connected with the growth of modern science, with the growth of rationalism, and with the struggle for political and religious liberty. The precursors (Bodin and Bacon) lived at a time when the world was consciously emancipating itself from the authority of tradition and it was being discovered that liberty is a difficult theoretical problem. The idea took definite shape in France when the old scheme of the universe had been shattered by the victory of the new astronomy and the prestige of Providence, CUNCTA SUPERCILIO MOUENTIS, was paling before the majesty of the immutable laws of nature. There began a slow but steady reinstatement of the kingdom of this world. The otherworldly dreams of theologians, ceux qui reniaient la terre pour patrie, which had ruled so long lost their power, and men's earthly home again insinuated itself into their affections, but with the new hope of its becoming a place fit for reasonable beings to live in. We have seen how the belief that our race is travelling towards earthly happiness was propagated by some eminent thinkers, as well as by some "not very fortunate persons who had a good deal of time on their hands." And all these high-priests and incense-bearers to whom the creed owes its success were rationalists, from the author of the Histoire des oracles to the philosopher of the Unknowable. EPILOGUE In achieving its ascendency and unfolding its meaning, the Idea of Progress had to overcome a psychological obstacle which may be described as THE ILLUSION OF FINALITY. It is quite easy to fancy a state of society, vastly different from ours, existing in some unknown place like heaven; it is much more difficult to realise as a fact that the order of things with which we are familiar has so little stability that our actual descendants may be born into a world as different from ours as ours is from that of our ancestors of the pleistocene age. The illusion of finality is strong. The men of the Middle Ages would have found it hard to imagine that a time was not far off in which the Last Judgement would have ceased to arouse any emotional interest. In the sphere of speculation Hegel, and even Comte, illustrate this psychological limitation: they did not recognise that their own systems could not be final any more than the system of Aristotle or of Descartes. It is science, perhaps, more than anything else--the wonderful history of science in the last hundred years--that has helped us to transcend this illusion. But if we accept the reasonings on which the dogma of Progress is based, must we not carry them to their full conclusion? In escaping from the illusion of finality, is it legitimate to exempt that dogma itself? Must not it, too, submit to its own negation of finality? Will not that process of change, for which Progress is the optimistic name, compel "Progress" too to fall from the commanding position in which it is now, with apparent security, enthroned? [words in Greek]... A day will come, in the revolution of centuries, when a new idea will usurp its place as the directing idea of humanity. Another star, unnoticed now or invisible, will climb up the intellectual heaven, and human emotions will react to its influence, human plans respond to its guidance. It will be the criterion by which Progress and all other ideas will be judged. And it too will have its successor. In other words, does not Progress itself suggest that its value as a doctrine is only relative, corresponding to a certain not very advanced stage of civilisation; just as Providence, in its day, was an idea of relative value, corresponding to a stage somewhat less advanced? Or will it be said that this argument is merely a disconcerting trick of dialectic played under cover of the darkness in which the issue of the future is safely hidden by Horace's prudent god? 
34580	----	THE EGO AND HIS OWN BY MAX STIRNER TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY STEVEN T. BYINGTON WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY J. L. WALKER NEW YORK BENJ. R. TUCKER, PUBLISHER 1907 Copyright. 1907, by BENJAMIN R. TUCKER TO MY SWEETHEART MARIE DÄHNHARDT CONTENTS PAGE PUBLISHER'S PREFACE vii INTRODUCTION xii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE xix ALL THINGS ARE NOTHING TO ME 3 PART FIRST: _MAN_ 7 I.--A HUMAN LIFE 9 II.--MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 17 I.--THE ANCIENTS 17 II.--THE MODERNS 30 § 1.--THE SPIRIT 34 § 2.--THE POSSESSED 42 § 3.--THE HIERARCHY 85 III.--THE FREE 127 § 1.--POLITICAL LIBERALISM 128 § 2.--SOCIAL LIBERALISM 152 § 3.--HUMANE LIBERALISM 163 PART SECOND: _I_ 201 I.--OWNNESS 203 II.--THE OWNER 225 I.--MY POWER 242 II.--MY INTERCOURSE 275 III.--MY SELF-ENJOYMENT 425 III.--THE UNIQUE ONE 484 INDEX 491 PUBLISHER'S PREFACE For more than twenty years I have entertained the design of publishing an English translation of "_Der Einzige und sein Eigentum_." When I formed this design, the number of English-speaking persons who had ever heard of the book was very limited. The memory of Max Stirner had been virtually extinct for an entire generation. But in the last two decades there has been a remarkable revival of interest both in the book and in its author. It began in this country with a discussion in the pages of the Anarchist periodical, "Liberty," in which Stirner's thought was clearly expounded and vigorously championed by Dr. James L. Walker, who adopted for this discussion the pseudonym "Tak Kak." At that time Dr. Walker was the chief editorial writer for the Galveston "News." Some years later he became a practising physician in Mexico, where he died in 1904. A series of essays which he began in an Anarchist periodical, "Egoism," and which he lived to complete, was published after his death in a small volume, "The Philosophy of Egoism." It is a very able and convincing exposition of Stirner's teachings, and almost the only one that exists in the English language. But the chief instrument in the revival of Stirnerism was and is the German poet, John Henry Mackay. Very early in his career he met Stirner's name in Lange's "History of Materialism," and was moved thereby to read his book. The work made such an impression on him that he resolved to devote a portion of his life to the rediscovery and rehabilitation of the lost and forgotten genius. Through years of toil and correspondence and travel, and triumphing over tremendous obstacles, he carried his task to completion, and his biography of Stirner appeared in Berlin in 1898. It is a tribute to the thoroughness of Mackay's work that since its publication not one important fact about Stirner has been discovered by anybody. During his years of investigation Mackay's advertising for information had created a new interest in Stirner, which was enhanced by the sudden fame of the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, an author whose intellectual kinship with Stirner has been a subject of much controversy. "_Der Einzige_," previously obtainable only in an expensive form, was included in Philipp Reclam's Universal-Bibliothek, and this cheap edition has enjoyed a wide and ever-increasing circulation. During the last dozen years the book has been translated twice into French, once into Italian, once into Russian, and possibly into other languages. The Scandinavian critic, Brandes, has written on Stirner. A large and appreciative volume, entitled "_L'Individualisme Anarchiste: Max Stirner_," from the pen of Prof. Victor Basch, of the University of Rennes, has appeared in Paris. Another large and sympathetic volume, "Max Stirner," written by Dr. Anselm Ruest, has been published very recently in Berlin. Dr. Paul Eltzbacher, in his work, "_Der Anarchismus_," gives a chapter to Stirner, making him one of the seven typical Anarchists, beginning with William Godwin and ending with Tolstoi, of whom his book treats. There is hardly a notable magazine or a review on the Continent that has not given at least one leading article to the subject of Stirner. Upon the initiative of Mackay and with the aid of other admirers a suitable stone has been placed above the philosopher's previously-neglected grave, and a memorial tablet upon the house in Berlin where he died in 1856; and this spring another is to be placed upon the house in Bayreuth where he was born in 1806. As a result of these various efforts, and though but little has been written about Stirner in the English language, his name is now known at least to thousands in America and England where formerly it was known only to hundreds. Therefore conditions are now more favorable for the reception of this volume than they were when I formed the design of publishing it, more than twenty years ago. The problem of securing a reasonably good translation (for in the case of a work presenting difficulties so enormous it was idle to hope for an adequate translation) was finally solved by entrusting the task to Steven T. Byington, a scholar of remarkable attainments, whose specialty is philology, and who is also one of the ablest workers in the propaganda of Anarchism. But, for further security from error, it was agreed with Mr. Byington that his translation should have the benefit of revision by Dr. Walker, the most thorough American student of Stirner, and by Emma Heller Schumm and George Schumm, who are not only sympathetic with Stirner, but familiar with the history of his time, and who enjoy a knowledge of English and German that makes it difficult to decide which is their native tongue. It was also agreed that, upon any point of difference between the translator and his revisers which consultation might fail to solve, the publisher should decide. This method has been followed, and in a considerable number of instances it has fallen to me to make a decision. It is only fair to say, therefore, that the responsibility for special errors and imperfections properly rests on my shoulders, whereas, on the other hand, the credit for whatever general excellence the translation may possess belongs with the same propriety to Mr. Byington and his coadjutors. One thing is certain: its defects are due to no lack of loving care and pains. And I think I may add with confidence, while realizing fully how far short of perfection it necessarily falls, that it may safely challenge comparison with the translations that have been made into other languages. In particular, I am responsible for the admittedly erroneous rendering of the title. "The Ego and His Own" is not an exact English equivalent of "_Der Einzige und sein Eigentum_." But then, there is no exact English equivalent. Perhaps the nearest is "The Unique One and His Property." But the unique one is not strictly the _Einzige_, for uniqueness connotes not only singleness but an admirable singleness, while Stirner's _Einzigkeit_ is admirable in his eyes only as such, it being no part of the purpose of his book to distinguish a particular _Einzigkeit_ as more excellent than another. Moreover, "The Unique One and His Property" has no graces to compel our forgiveness of its slight inaccuracy. It is clumsy and unattractive. And the same objections may be urged with still greater force against all the other renderings that have been suggested,--"The Single One and His Property," "The Only One and His Property," "The Lone One and His Property," "The Unit and His Property," and, last and least and worst, "The Individual and His Prerogative." "The Ego and His Own," on the other hand, if not a precise rendering, is at least an excellent title in itself; excellent by its euphony, its monosyllabic incisiveness, and its telling--_Einzigkeit_. Another strong argument in its favor is the emphatic correspondence of the phrase "his own" with Mr. Byington's renderings of the kindred words, _Eigenheit_ and _Eigner_. Moreover, no reader will be led astray who bears in mind Stirner's distinction: "I am not an ego along with other egos, but the sole ego; I am unique." And, to help the reader to bear this in mind, the various renderings of the word _Einzige_ that occur through the volume are often accompanied by foot-notes showing that, in the German, one and the same word does duty for all. If the reader finds the first quarter of this book somewhat forbidding and obscure, he is advised nevertheless not to falter. Close attention will master almost every difficulty, and, if he will but give it, he will find abundant reward in what follows. For his guidance I may specify one defect in the author's style. When controverting a view opposite to his own, he seldom distinguishes with sufficient clearness his statement of his own view from his re-statement of the antagonistic view. As a result, the reader is plunged into deeper and deeper mystification, until something suddenly reveals the cause of his misunderstanding, after which he must go back and read again. I therefore put him on his guard. The other difficulties lie, as a rule, in the structure of the work. As to these I can hardly do better than translate the following passage from Prof. Basch's book, alluded to above: "There is nothing more disconcerting than the first approach to this strange work. Stirner does not condescend to inform us as to the architecture of his edifice, or furnish us the slightest guiding thread. The apparent divisions of the book are few and misleading. From the first page to the last a _unique_ thought circulates, but it divides itself among an infinity of vessels and arteries in each of which runs a blood so rich in ferments that one is tempted to describe them all. There is no progress in the development, and the repetitions are innumerable.... The reader who is not deterred by this oddity, or rather absence, of composition gives proof of genuine intellectual courage. At first one seems to be confronted with a collection of essays strung together, with a throng of aphorisms.... But, if you read this book several times; if, after having penetrated the intimacy of each of its parts, you then traverse it as a whole,--gradually the fragments weld themselves together, and Stirner's thought is revealed in all its unity, in all its force, and in all its depth." A word about the dedication. Mackay's investigations have brought to light that Marie Daehnhardt had nothing whatever in common with Stirner, and so was unworthy of the honor conferred upon her. She was no _Eigene_. I therefore reproduce the dedication merely in the interest of historical accuracy. Happy as I am in the appearance of this book, my joy is not unmixed with sorrow. The cherished project was as dear to the heart of Dr. Walker as to mine, and I deeply grieve that he is no longer with us to share our delight in the fruition. Nothing, however, can rob us of the masterly introduction that he wrote for this volume (in 1903, or perhaps earlier), from which I will not longer keep the reader. This introduction, no more than the book itself, shall that _Einzige_, Death, make his _Eigentum_. _February, 1907._ B. R. T. INTRODUCTION Fifty years sooner or later can make little difference in the case of a book so revolutionary as this. It saw the light when a so-called revolutionary movement was preparing in men's minds, which agitation was, however, only a disturbance due to desires to participate in government, and to govern and to be governed, in a manner different to that which prevails. The "revolutionists" of 1848 were bewitched with an idea. They were not at all the masters of ideas. Most of those who since that time have prided themselves upon being revolutionists have been and are likewise but the bondmen of an idea,--that of the different lodgment of authority. The temptation is, of course, present to attempt an explanation of the central thought of this work; but such an effort appears to be unnecessary to one who has the volume in his hand. The author's care in illustrating his meaning shows that he realized how prone the possessed man is to misunderstand whatever is not moulded according to the fashions in thinking. The author's learning was considerable, his command of words and ideas may never be excelled by another, and he judged it needful to develop his argument in manifold ways. So those who enter into the spirit of it will scarcely hope to impress others with the same conclusion in a more summary manner. Or, if one might deem that possible after reading Stirner, still one cannot think that it could be done so surely. The author has made certain work of it, even though he has to wait for his public; but still, the reception of the book by its critics amply proves the truth of the saying that one can give another arguments, but not understanding. The system-makers and system-believers thus far cannot get it out of their heads that any discourse about the nature of an ego must turn upon the common characteristics of egos, to make a systematic scheme of what they share as a generality. The critics inquire what kind of man the author is talking about. They repeat the question: What does he believe in? They fail to grasp the purport of the recorded answer: "I believe in myself"; which is attributed to a common soldier long before the time of Stirner. They ask, What is the principle of the self-conscious egoist,--the _Einzige_? To this perplexity Stirner says: Change the question; put "who?" instead of "what?" and an answer can then be given by naming him! This, of course, is too simple for persons governed by ideas, and for persons in quest of new governing ideas. They wish to classify the man. Now, that in me which you can classify is not my distinguishing self. "Man" is the horizon or zero of my existence as an individual. Over that I rise as I can. At least I am something more than "man in general." Pre-existing worship of ideals and disrespect for self had made of the ego at the very most a Somebody, oftener an empty vessel to be filled with the grace or the leavings of a tyrannous doctrine; thus a Nobody. Stirner dispels the morbid subjection, and recognizes each one who knows and feels himself as his own property to be neither humble Nobody nor befogged Somebody, but henceforth flat-footed and level-headed Mr. Thisbody, who has a character and good pleasure of his own, just as he has a name of his own. The critics who attacked this work and were answered in the author's minor writings, rescued from oblivion by John Henry Mackay, nearly all display the most astonishing triviality and impotent malice. We owe to Dr. Eduard von Hartmann the unquestionable service which he rendered by directing attention to this book in his "_Philosophie des Unbewussten_," the first edition of which was published in 1869, and in other writings. I do not begrudge Dr. von Hartmann the liberty of criticism which he used; and I think the admirers of Stirner's teaching must quite appreciate one thing which Von Hartmann did at a much later date. In "_Der Eigene_" of August 10, 1896, there appeared a letter written by him and giving, among other things, certain data from which to judge that, when Friedrich Nietzsche wrote his later essays, Nietzsche was not ignorant of Stirner's book. Von Hartmann wishes that Stirner had gone on and developed his principle. Von Hartmann suggests that you and I are really the same spirit, looking out through two pairs of eyes. Then, one may reply, I need not concern myself about you, for in myself I have--us; and at that rate Von Hartmann is merely accusing himself of inconsistency: for, when Stirner wrote this book, Von Hartmann's spirit was writing it; and it is just the pity that Von Hartmann in his present form does not indorse what he said in the form of Stirner,--that Stirner was different from any other man; that his ego was not Fichte's transcendental generality, but "this transitory ego of flesh and blood." It is not as a generality that you and I differ, but as a couple of facts which are not to be reasoned into one. "I" is somewise Hartmann, and thus Hartmann is "I"; but I am not Hartmann, and Hartmann is not--I. Neither am I the "I" of Stirner; only Stirner himself was Stirner's "I." Note how comparatively indifferent a matter it is with Stirner that one is an ego, but how all-important it is that one be a self-conscious ego,--a self-conscious, self-willed person. Those not self-conscious and self-willed are constantly acting from self-interested motives, but clothing these in various garbs. Watch those people closely in the light of Stirner's teaching, and they seem to be hypocrites, they have so many good moral and religious plans of which self-interest is at the end and bottom; but they, we may believe, do not know that this is more than a coincidence. In Stirner we have the philosophical foundation for political liberty. His interest in the practical development of egoism to the dissolution of the State and the union of free men is clear and pronounced, and harmonizes perfectly with the economic philosophy of Josiah Warren. Allowing for difference of temperament and language, there is a substantial agreement between Stirner and Proudhon. Each would be free, and sees in every increase of the number of free people and their intelligence an auxiliary force against the oppressor. But, on the other hand, will any one for a moment seriously contend that Nietzsche and Proudhon march together in general aim and tendency,--that they have anything in common except the daring to profane the shrine and sepulchre of superstition? Nietzsche has been much spoken of as a disciple of Stirner, and, owing to favorable cullings from Nietzsche's writings, it has occurred that one of his books has been supposed to contain more sense than it really does--so long as one had read only the extracts. Nietzsche cites scores or hundreds of authors. Had he read everything, and not read Stirner? But Nietzsche is as unlike Stirner as a tight-rope performance is unlike an algebraic equation. Stirner loved liberty for himself, and loved to see any and all men and women taking liberty, and he had no lust of power. Democracy to him was sham liberty, egoism the genuine liberty. Nietzsche, on the contrary, pours out his contempt upon democracy because it is not aristocratic. He is predatory to the point of demanding that those who must succumb to feline rapacity shall be taught to submit with resignation. When he speaks of "Anarchistic dogs" scouring the streets of great civilized cities, it is true, the context shows that he means the Communists; but his worship of Napoleon, his bathos of anxiety for the rise of an aristocracy that shall rule Europe for thousands of years, his idea of treating women in the oriental fashion, show that Nietzsche has struck out in a very old path--doing the apotheosis of tyranny. We individual egoistic Anarchists, however, may say to the Nietzsche school, so as not to be misunderstood: We do not ask of the Napoleons to have pity, nor of the predatory barons to do justice. They will find it convenient for their own welfare to make terms with men who have learned of Stirner what a man can be who worships nothing, bears allegiance to nothing. To Nietzsche's rhodomontade of eagles in baronial form, born to prey on industrial lambs, we rather tauntingly oppose the ironical question: Where are your claws? What if the "eagles" are found to be plain barnyard fowls on which more silly fowls have fastened steel spurs to hack the victims, who, however, have the power to disarm the sham "eagles" between two suns? Stirner shows that men make their tyrants as they make their gods, and his purpose is to unmake tyrants. Nietzsche dearly loves a tyrant. In style Stirner's work offers the greatest possible contrast to the puerile, padded phraseology of Nietzsche's "_Zarathustra_" and its false imagery. Who ever imagined such an unnatural conjuncture as an eagle "toting" a serpent in friendship? which performance is told of in bare words, but nothing comes of it. In Stirner we are treated to an enlivening and earnest discussion addressed to serious minds, and every reader feels that the word is to him, for his instruction and benefit, so far as he has mental independence and courage to take it and use it. The startling intrepidity of this book is infused with a whole-hearted love for all mankind, as evidenced by the fact that the author shows not one iota of prejudice or any idea of division of men into ranks. He would lay aside government, but would establish any regulation deemed convenient, and for this only _our_ convenience is consulted. Thus there will be general liberty only when the disposition toward tyranny is met by intelligent opposition that will no longer submit to such a rule. Beyond this the manly sympathy and philosophical bent of Stirner are such that rulership appears by contrast a vanity, an infatuation of perverted pride. We know not whether we more admire our author or more love him. Stirner's attitude toward woman is not special. She is an individual if she can be, not handicapped by anything he says, feels, thinks, or plans. This was more fully exemplified in his life than even in this book; but there is not a line in the book to put or keep woman in an inferior position to man, neither is there anything of caste or aristocracy in the book. Likewise there is nothing of obscurantism or affected mysticism about it. Everything in it is made as plain as the author could make it. He who does not so is not Stirner's disciple nor successor nor co-worker. Some one may ask: How does plumb-line Anarchism train with the unbridled egoism proclaimed by Stirner? The plumb-line is not a fetish, but an intellectual conviction, and egoism is a universal fact of animal life. Nothing could seem clearer to my mind than that the reality of egoism must first come into the consciousness of men, before we can have the unbiased Einzige in place of the prejudiced biped who lends himself to the support of tyrannies a million times stronger over me than the natural self-interest of any individual. When plumb-line doctrine is misconceived as duty between unequal-minded men,--as a religion of humanity,--it is indeed the confusion of trying to read without knowing the alphabet and of putting philanthropy in place of contract. But, if the plumb-line be scientific, it is or can be my possession, my property, and I choose it for its use--when circumstances admit of its use. I do not feel bound to use it because it is scientific, in building my house; but, as my will, to be intelligent, is not to be merely wilful, the adoption of the plumb-line follows the discarding of incantations. There is no plumb-line without the unvarying lead at the end of the line; not a fluttering bird or a clawing cat. On the practical side of the question of egoism _versus_ self-surrender and for a trial of egoism in politics, this may be said: the belief that men not moved by a sense of duty will be unkind or unjust to others is but an indirect confession that those who hold that belief are greatly interested in having others live for them rather than for themselves. But I do not ask or expect so much. I am content if others individually live for themselves, and thus cease in so many ways to act in opposition to my living for myself,--to our living for ourselves. If Christianity has failed to turn the world from evil, it is not to be dreamed that rationalism of a pious moral stamp will succeed in the same task. Christianity, or all philanthropic love, is tested in non-resistance. It is a dream that example will change the hearts of rulers, tyrants, mobs. If the extremest self-surrender fails, how can a mixture of Christian love and worldly caution succeed? This at least must be given up. The policy of Christ and Tolstoi can soon be tested, but Tolstoi's belief is not satisfied with a present test and failure. He has the infatuation of one who persists because this _ought_ to be. The egoist who thinks "I should like this to be" still has the sense to perceive that it is not accomplished by the fact of some believing and submitting, inasmuch as others are alert to prey upon the unresisting. The Pharaohs we have ever with us. Several passages in this most remarkable book show the author as a man full of sympathy. When we reflect upon his deliberately expressed opinions and sentiments,--his spurning of the sense of moral obligation as the last form of superstition,--may we not be warranted in thinking that the total disappearance of the sentimental supposition of duty liberates a quantity of nervous energy for the purest generosity and clarifies the intellect for the more discriminating choice of objects of merit? J. L. WALKER. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE If the style of this book is found unattractive, it will show that I have done my work ill and not represented the author truly; but, if it is found odd, I beg that I may not bear all the blame. I have simply tried to reproduce the author's own mixture of colloquialisms and technicalities, and his preference for the precise expression of his thought rather than the word conventionally expected. One especial feature of the style, however, gives the reason why this preface should exist. It is characteristic of Stirner's writing that the thread of thought is carried on largely by the repetition of the same word in a modified form or sense. That connection of ideas which has guided popular instinct in the formation of words is made to suggest the line of thought which the writer wishes to follow. If this echoing of words is missed, the bearing of the statements on each other is in a measure lost; and, where the ideas are very new, one cannot afford to throw away any help in following their connection. Therefore, where a useful echo (and there are few useless ones in the book) could not be reproduced in English, I have generally called attention to it in a note. My notes are distinguished from the author's by being enclosed in brackets. One or two of such coincidences of language, occurring in words which are prominent throughout the book, should be borne constantly in mind as a sort of _Keri perpetuum_: for instance, the identity in the original of the words "spirit" and "mind," and of the phrases "supreme being" and "highest essence." In such cases I have repeated the note where it seemed that such repetition might be absolutely necessary, but have trusted the reader to carry it in his head where a failure of his memory would not be ruinous or likely. For the same reason,--that is, in order not to miss any indication of the drift of the thought,--I have followed the original in the very liberal use of italics, and in the occasional eccentric use of a punctuation mark, as I might not have done in translating a work of a different nature. I have set my face as a flint against the temptation to add notes that were not part of the translation. There is no telling how much I might have enlarged the book if I had put a note at every sentence which deserved to have its truth brought out by fuller elucidation,--or even at every one which I thought needed correction. It might have been within my province, if I had been able, to explain all the allusions to contemporary events, but I doubt whether any one could do that properly without having access to the files of three or four well-chosen German newspapers of Stirner's time. The allusions are clear enough, without names and dates, to give a vivid picture of certain aspects of German life then. The tone of some of them is explained by the fact that the book was published under censorship. I have usually preferred, for the sake of the connection, to translate Biblical quotations somewhat as they stand in the German, rather than conform them altogether to the English Bible. I am sometimes quite as near the original Greek as if I had followed the current translation. Where German books are referred to, the pages cited are those of the German editions even when (usually because of some allusions in the text) the titles of the books are translated. STEVEN T. BYINGTON. THE EGO AND HIS OWN All Things are Nothing to Me[1] What is not supposed, to be my concern[2]! First and foremost, the Good Cause,[3] then God's cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice; further, the cause of my people, my prince, my fatherland; finally, even the cause of Mind, and a thousand other causes. Only _my_ cause is never to be my concern. "Shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!" Let us look and see, then, how they manage _their_ concerns--they for whose cause we are to labor, devote ourselves, and grow enthusiastic. You have much profound information to give about God, and have for thousands of years "searched the depths of the Godhead," and looked into its heart, so that you can doubtless tell us how God himself attends to "God's cause," which we are called to serve. And you do not conceal the Lord's doings, either. Now, what is his cause? Has he, as is demanded of us, made an alien cause, the cause of truth or love, his own? You are shocked by this misunderstanding, and you instruct us that God's cause is indeed the cause of truth and love, but that this cause cannot be called alien to him, because God is himself truth and love; you are shocked by the assumption that God could be like us poor worms in furthering an alien cause as his own. "Should God take up the cause of truth if he were not himself truth?" He cares only for _his_ cause, but, because he is all in all, therefore all is _his_ cause! But we, we are not all in all, and our cause is altogether little and contemptible; therefore we must "serve a higher cause."--Now it is clear, God cares only for what is his, busies himself only with himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes; woe to all that is not well-pleasing to him! He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is--a purely egoistic cause. How is it with mankind, whose cause we are to make our own? Is its cause that of another, and does mankind serve a higher cause? No, mankind looks only at itself, mankind will promote the interests of mankind only, mankind is its own cause. That it may develop, it causes nations and individuals to wear themselves out in its service, and, when they have accomplished what mankind needs, it throws them on the dung-heap of history in gratitude. Is not mankind's cause--a purely egoistic cause? I have no need to take up each thing that wants to throw its cause on us and show that it is occupied only with itself, not with us, only with its good, not with ours. Look at the rest for yourselves. Do truth, freedom, humanity, justice, desire anything else than that you grow enthusiastic and serve them? They all have an admirable time of it when they receive zealous homage. Just observe the nation that is defended by devoted patriots. The patriots fall in bloody battle or in the fight with hunger and want; what does the nation care for that? Joy the manure of their corpses the nation comes to "its bloom!" The individuals have died "for the great cause of the nation," and the nation sends some words of thanks after them and--has the profit of it. I call that a paying kind of egoism. But only look at that Sultan who cares so lovingly for his people. Is he not pure unselfishness itself, and does he not hourly sacrifice himself for his people? Oh, yes, for "his people." Just try it; show yourself not as his, but as your own; for breaking away from his egoism you will take a trip to jail. The Sultan has set his cause on nothing but himself; he is to himself all in all, he is to himself the only one, and tolerates nobody who would dare not to be one of "his people." And will you not learn by these brilliant examples that the egoist gets on best? I for my part take a lesson from them, and propose, instead of further unselfishly serving those great egoists, rather to be the egoist myself. God and mankind have concerned themselves for nothing, for nothing but themselves. Let me then likewise concern myself for _myself_, who am equally with God the nothing of all others, who am my all, who am the only one.[4] If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance enough in themselves to be all in all to themselves, then I feel that _I_ shall still less lack that, and that I shall have no complaint to make of my "emptiness." I am nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything. Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think at least the "good cause" must be my concern? What's good, what's bad? Why, I myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for me. The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is _mine_, and it is not a general one, but is--_unique_,[5] as I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself! Part First Man _Man is to man the supreme being_, says Feuerbach. _Man has just been discovered_, says Burno Bauer. Then let us take a more careful look at this supreme being and this new discovery. I A HUMAN LIFE From the moment when he catches sight of the light of the world a man seeks to find out _himself_ and get hold of _himself_ out of its confusion, in which he, with everything else, is tossed about in motley mixture. But everything that comes in contact with the child defends itself in turn against his attacks, and asserts its own persistence. Accordingly, because each thing _cares for itself_ and at the same time comes into constant collision with other things, the _combat_ of self-assertion is unavoidable. _Victory_ or _defeat_--between the two alternatives the fate of the combat wavers. The victor becomes the lord, the vanquished one the _subject_: the former exercises _supremacy_ and "rights of supremacy," the latter fulfils in awe and deference the "duties of a subject." But both remain _enemies_, and always lie in wait: they watch for each other's _weaknesses_--children for those of their parents and parents for those of their children (_e. g._ their fear); either the stick conquers the man, or the man conquers the stick. In childhood liberation takes the direction of trying to get to the bottom of things, to get at what is "back of" things; therefore we spy out the weak points of everybody, for which, it is well known, children have a sure instinct; therefore we like to smash things, like to rummage through hidden corners, pry after what is covered up or out of the way, and try what we can do with everything. When we once get at what is back of the things, we know we are safe; when, _e. g._, we have got at the fact that the rod is too weak against our obduracy, then we no longer fear it, "have outgrown it." Back of the rod, mightier than it, stands our--obduracy, our obdurate courage. By degrees we get at what is back of everything that was mysterious and uncanny to us, the mysteriously-dreaded might of the rod, the father's stern look, etc., and back of all we find our--ataraxy, _i. e._ imperturbability, intrepidity, our counter force, our odds of strength, our invincibility. Before that which formerly inspired in us fear and deference we no longer retreat shyly, but take _courage_. Back of everything we find our _courage_, our superiority; back of the sharp command of parents and authorities stands, after all, our courageous choice or our outwitting shrewdness. And the more we feel ourselves, the smaller appears that which before seemed invincible. And what is our trickery, shrewdness, courage, obduracy? What else but--_mind!_[6] Through a considerable time we are spared a fight that is so exhausting later--the fight against _reason_. The fairest part of childhood passes without the necessity of coming to blows with reason. We care nothing at all about it, do not meddle with it, admit no reason. We are not to be persuaded to anything by _conviction_, and are deaf to good arguments, principles, etc.; on the other hand, coaxing, punishment, and the like are hard for us to resist. This stern life-and-death combat with _reason_ enter later, and begins a new phase; in childhood we scamper about without racking our brains much. _Mind_ is the name of the _first_ self-discovery, the first undeification of the divine, _i. e._ of the uncanny, the spooks, the "powers above." Our fresh feeling of youth, this feeling of self, now defers to nothing; the world is discredited, for we are above it, we are _mind_. Now for the first time we see that hitherto we have not looked at the world _intelligently_ at all, but only stared at it. We exercise the beginnings of our strength on _natural powers_. We defer to parents as a natural power; later we say: Father and mother are to be forsaken, all natural power to be counted as riven. They are vanquished. For the rational, _i. e._ "intellectual" man there is no family as a natural power; a renunciation of parents, brothers, etc., makes its appearance. If these are "born again" as _intellectual, rational powers_, they are no longer at all what they were before. And not only parents, but _men in general_, are conquered by the young man; they are no hindrance to him, and are no longer regarded; for now he says: One must obey God rather than men. From this high standpoint everything "_earthly_" recedes into contemptible remoteness; for the standby point is--the _heavenly_. The attitude is now altogether reversed; the youth takes up an _intellectual_ position, while the boy, who did not yet feel himself as mind, grew up in mindless learning. The former does not try to get hold of _things_ (_e. g._ to get into his head the _data_ of history), but of the _thoughts_ that lie hidden in things, and so, _e. g._, of the _spirit_ of history. On the other hand, the boy understands _connections_ no doubt, but not ideas, the spirit; therefore he strings together whatever can be learned, without proceeding _a priori_ and theoretically, _i. e._ without looking for ideas. As in childhood one had to overcome the resistance of the _laws of the world_, so now in everything that he proposes he is met by an objection of the mind, of reason, of his _own conscience_. "That is unreasonable, unchristian, unpatriotic," and the like, cries conscience to us, and--frightens us away from it. Not the might of the avenging Eumenides, not Poseidon's wrath, not God, far as he sees the hidden, not the father's rod of punishment, do we fear, but--_conscience_. We "run after our thoughts" now, and follow their commands just as before we followed parental, human ones. Our course of action is determined by our thoughts (ideas, conceptions, _faith_) as it is in childhood by the commands of our parents. For all that, we were already thinking when we were children, only our thoughts were not fleshless, abstract, _absolute, i. e._ NOTHING BUT THOUGHTS, a heaven in themselves, a pure world of thought, _logical_ thoughts. On the contrary, they had been only thoughts that we had about a _thing_; we thought of the thing so or so. Thus we may have thought "God made the world that we see there," but we did not think of ("search") the "depths of the Godhead itself"; we may have thought "that is the truth about the matter," but we did not think of Truth itself, nor unite into one sentence "God is truth." The "depths of the Godhead, who is truth," we did not touch. Over such purely logical, _i. e._ theological questions, "What is truth?" Pilate does not stop, though he does not therefore hesitate to ascertain in an individual case "what truth there is in the thing," _i. e._ whether the _thing_ is true. Any thought bound to a _thing_ is not yet _nothing but a thought_, absolute thought. To bring to light _the pure thought_, or to be of its party, is the delight of youth; and all the shapes of light in the world of thought, like truth, freedom, humanity, Man, etc., illumine and inspire the youthful soul. But, when the spirit is recognized as the essential thing, it still makes a difference whether the spirit is poor or rich, and therefore one seeks to become rich in spirit; the spirit wants to spread out so as to found its empire--an empire that is not of this world, the world just conquered. Thus, then, it longs to become all in all to itself; _i. e._, although I am spirit, I am not yet _perfected_ spirit, and must first seek the complete spirit. But with that I, who had just now found myself as spirit, lose myself again at once, bowing before the complete spirit as one not my own but _supernal_, and feeling my emptiness. Spirit is the essential point for everything, to be sure; but then is every spirit the "right" spirit? The right and true spirit is the ideal of spirit, the "Holy Spirit." It is not my or your spirit, but just--an ideal, supernal one, it is "God." "God is spirit." And this supernal "Father in heaven gives it to those that pray to him."[7] The man is distinguished from the youth by the fact that he takes the world as it is, instead of everywhere fancying it amiss and wanting to improve it, _i. e_. model it after his ideal; in him the view that one must deal with the world according to his _interest_, not according to his _ideals_, becomes confirmed. So long as one knows himself only as _spirit_, and feels that all the value of his existence consists in being spirit (it becomes easy for the youth to give his life, the "bodily life," for a nothing, for the silliest point of honor), so long it is only _thoughts_ that one has, ideas that he hopes to be able to realize some day when he has found a sphere of action; thus one has meanwhile only _ideals_, unexecuted ideas or thoughts. Not till one has fallen in love with his _corporeal_ self, and takes a pleasure in himself as a living flesh-and-blood person,--but it is in mature years, in the man, that we find it so,--not till then has one a personal or _egoistic_ interest, _i. e._ an interest not only of our spirit, for instance, but of total satisfaction, satisfaction of the whole chap, a _selfish_ interest. Just compare a man with a youth, and see if he will not appear to you harder, less magnanimous, more selfish. Is he therefore worse? No, you say; he has only become more definite, or, as you also call it, more "practical." But the main point is this, that he makes _himself_ more the centre than does the youth, who is infatuated about other things, _e. g._ God, fatherland, and so on. Therefore the man shows a _second_ self-discovery. The youth found himself as _spirit_ and lost himself again in the _general_ spirit, the complete, holy spirit, Man, mankind,--in short, all ideals; the man finds himself as _embodied_ spirit. Boys had only _unintellectual_ interests (_i. e._ interests devoid of thoughts and ideas), youths only _intellectual_ ones; the man has bodily, personal, egoistic interests. If the child has not an _object_ that it can occupy itself with, it feels _ennui_; for it does not yet know how to occupy itself with _itself_. The youth, on the contrary, throws the object aside, because for him _thoughts_ arose out of the object; he occupies himself with his _thoughts_, his dreams, occupies himself intellectually, or "his mind is occupied." The young man includes everything not intellectual under the contemptuous name of "externalities." If he nevertheless sticks to the most trivial externalities (_e. g._ the customs of students' clubs and other formalities), it is because, and when, he discovers _mind_ in them, _i. e._ when they are _symbols_ to him. As I find myself back of things, and that as mind, so I must later find _myself_ also back of _thoughts_,--to wit, as their creator and _owner_. In the time of spirits thoughts grew till they overtopped my head, whose offspring they yet were; they hovered about me and convulsed me like fever-phantasies--an awful power. The thoughts had become _corporeal_ on their own account, were ghosts, such as God, Emperor, Pope, Fatherland, etc. If I destroy their corporeity, then I take them back into mine, and say: "I alone am corporeal." And now I take the world as what it is to me, as _mine_, as my property; I refer all to myself. If as spirit I had thrust away the world in the deepest contempt, so as owner I thrust spirits or ideas away into their "vanity." They have no longer any power over me, as no "earthly might" has power over the spirit. The child was realistic, taken up with the things of this world, till little by little he succeeded in getting at what was back of these very things; the youth was idealistic, inspired by thoughts, till he worked his way up to where he became the man, the egoistic man, who deals with things and thoughts according to his heart's pleasure, and sets his personal interest above everything. Finally, the old man? When I become one, there will still be time enough to speak of that. II. MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW How each of us developed himself, what he strove for, attained, or missed, what objects he formerly pursued and what plans and wishes his heart is now set on, what transformations his views have experienced, what perturbations his principles,--in short, how he has to-day become what yesterday or years ago he was not,--this he brings out again from his memory with more or less ease, and he feels with especial vividness what changes have taken place in himself when he has before his eyes the unrolling of another's life. Let us therefore look into the activities our fore-fathers busied themselves with. I.--THE ANCIENTS Custom having once given the name of "the ancients" to our pre-Christian ancestors, we will not throw it up against them that, in comparison with us experienced people, they ought properly to be called children, but will rather continue to honor them as our good old fathers. But how have they come to be antiquated, and who could displace them through his pretended newness? We know, of course, the revolutionary innovator and disrespectful heir, who even took away the sanctity of the fathers' sabbath to hallow his Sunday, and interrupted the course of time to begin at himself with a new chronology; we know him, and know that it is--the Christian. But does he remain forever young, and is he to-day still the new man, or will he too be superseded, as he has superseded the "ancients"? The fathers must doubtless have themselves begotten the young one who entombed them. Let us then peep at this act of generation. "To the ancients the world was a truth," says Feuerbach, but he forgets to make the important addition, "a truth whose untruth they tried to get back of, and at last really did." What is meant by those words of Feuerbach will be easily recognized if they are put alongside the Christian thesis of the "vanity and transitoriness of the world." For, as the Christian can never convince himself of the vanity of the divine word, but believes in its eternal and unshakeable truth, which, the more its depths are searched, must all the more brilliantly come to light and triumph, so the ancients on their side lived in the feeling that the world and mundane relations (_e. g_. the natural ties of blood) were the truth before which their powerless "I" must bow. The very thing on which the ancients set the highest value is spurned by Christians as the valueless, and what they recognized as truth these brand as idle lies; the high significance of the fatherland disappears, and the Christian must regard himself as "a stranger on earth";[8] the sanctity of funeral rites, from which sprang a work of art like the Antigone of Sophocles, is designated as a paltry thing ("Let the dead bury their dead"); the infrangible truth of family ties is represented as an untruth which one cannot promptly enough get clear of;[9] and so in everything. If we now see that to the two sides opposite things appear as truth, to one the natural, to the other the intellectual, to one earthly things and relations, to the other heavenly (the heavenly fatherland, "Jerusalem that is above," etc.), it still remains to be considered how the new time and that undeniable reversal could come out of antiquity. But the ancients themselves worked toward making their truth a lie. Let us plunge at once into the midst of the most brilliant years of the ancients, into the Periclean century. Then the Sophistic culture was spreading, and Greece made a pastime of what had hitherto been to her a monstrously serious matter. The fathers had been enslaved by the undisturbed power of existing things too long for the posterity not to have to learn by bitter experience to _feel themselves_. Therefore the Sophists, with courageous sauciness, pronounce the reassuring words, "Don't be bluffed!" and diffuse the rationalistic doctrine, "Use your understanding, your wit, your mind, against everything; it is by having a good and well-drilled understanding that one gets through the world best, provides for himself the best lot, the pleasantest _life_." Thus they recognize in _mind_ man's true weapon against the world. This is why they lay such stress on dialectic skill, command of language, the art of disputation, etc. They announce that mind is to be used against everything; but they are still far removed from the holiness of the Spirit, for to them it is a _means_, a weapon, as trickery and defiance serve children for the same purpose; their mind is the unbribable _understanding_. To-day we should call that a one-sided culture of the understanding, and add the warning, "Cultivate not only your understanding, but also, and especially, your heart." Socrates did the same. For, if the heart did not become free from its natural impulses, but remained filled with the most fortuitous contents and, as an uncriticised _avidity_, altogether in the power of things, _i. e._ nothing but a vessel of the most various _appetites_,--then it was unavoidable that the free understanding must serve the "bad heart" and was ready to justify everything that the wicked heart desired. Therefore Socrates says that it is not enough for one to use his understanding in all things, but it is a question of what _cause_ one exerts it for. We should now say, one must serve the "good cause." But serving the good cause is--being moral. Hence Socrates is the founder of ethics. Certainly the principle of the Sophistic doctrine must lead to the possibility that the blindest and most dependent slave of his desires might yet be an excellent sophist, and, with keen understanding, trim and expound everything in favor of his coarse heart. What could there be for which a "good reason" might not be found, or which might not be defended through thick and thin? Therefore Socrates says: "You must be 'pure-hearted' if your shrewdness is to be valued." At this point begins the second period of Greek liberation of the mind, the period of _purity of heart_. For the first was brought to a close by the Sophists in their proclaiming the omnipotence of the understanding. But the heart remained _worldly-minded_, remained a servant of the world, always affected by worldly wishes. This coarse heart was to be cultivated from now on--the era of _culture of the heart_. But how is the heart to be cultivated? What the understanding, this one side of the mind, has reached,--to wit, the capability of playing freely with and over every concern,--awaits the heart also; everything _worldly_ must come to grief before it, so that at last family, commonwealth, fatherland, and the like, are given up for the sake of the heart, _i. e._ of _blessedness_, the heart's blessedness. Daily experience confirms the truth that the understanding may have renounced a thing many years before the heart has ceased to beat for it. So the Sophistic understanding too had so far become master over the dominant, ancient powers that they now needed only to be driven out of the heart, in which they dwelt unmolested, to have at last no part at all left in man. This war is opened by Socrates, and not till the dying day of the old world does it end in peace. The examination of the heart takes its start with Socrates, and all the contents of the heart are sifted. In their last and extremest struggles the ancients threw all contents out of the heart and let it no longer beat for anything; this was the deed of the Skeptics. The same purgation of the heart was now achieved in the Skeptical age, as the understanding had succeeded in establishing in the Sophistic age. The Sophistic culture has brought it to pass that one's understanding no longer _stands still_ before anything, and the Skeptical, that his heart is no longer _moved_ by anything. So long as man is entangled in the movements of the world and embarrassed by relations to the world,--and he is so till the end of antiquity, because his heart still has to struggle for independence from the worldly,--so long he is not yet spirit; for spirit is without body, and has no relations to the world and corporality; for it the world does not exist, nor natural bonds, but only the spiritual, and spiritual bonds. Therefore man must first become so completely unconcerned and reckless, so altogether without relations, as the Skeptical culture presents him,--so altogether indifferent to the world that even its falling in ruins would not move him,--before he could feel himself as worldless, _i. e._ as spirit. And this is the result of the gigantic work of the ancients: that man knows himself as a being without relations and without a world, as _spirit_. Only now, after all worldly care has left him, is he all in all to himself, is he only for himself, i. e. he is spirit for the spirit, or, in plainer language, he cares only for the spiritual. In the Christian wisdom of serpents and innocence of doves the two sides--understanding and heart--of the ancient liberation of mind are so completed that they appear young and new again, and neither the one nor the other lets itself be bluffed any longer by the worldly and natural. Thus the ancients mounted to _spirit_, and strove to become _spiritual_. But a man who wishes to be active as spirit is drawn to quite other tasks than he was able to set himself formerly: to tasks which really give something to do to the spirit and not to mere sense or acuteness,[10] which exerts itself only to become master of _things_. The spirit busies itself solely about the spiritual, and seeks out the "traces of mind" in everything; to the _believing_ spirit "everything comes from God," and interests him only to the extent that it reveals this origin; to the _philosophic_ spirit everything appears with the stamp of reason, and interests him only so far as he is able to discover in it reason, _i. e._ spiritual content. Not the spirit, then, which has to do with absolutely nothing unspiritual, with no _thing_, but only with the essence which exists behind and above things, with _thoughts_,--not that did the ancients exert, for they did not yet have it; no, they had only reached the point of struggling and longing for it, and therefore sharpened it against their too-powerful foe, the world of sense (but what would not have been sensuous for them, since Jehovah or the gods of the heathen were yet far removed from the conception "God is _spirit_," since the "heavenly fatherland" had not yet stepped into the place of the sensuous, etc?)--they sharpened against the world of sense their _sense_, their acuteness. To this day the Jews, those precocious children of antiquity, have got no farther; and with all the subtlety and strength of their prudence and understanding, which easily becomes master of things and forces them to obey it, they cannot discover _spirit_, which _takes no account whatever of things_. The Christian has spiritual interests, because he allows himself to be a _spiritual_ man; the Jew does not even understand these interests in their purity, because he does not allow himself to assign _no value_ to things. He does not arrive at pure _spirituality_, a spirituality such as is religiously expressed, _e. g._, in the _faith_, of Christians, which alone (_i. e._ without works) justifies. Their _unspirituality_ sets Jews forever apart from Christians; for the spiritual man is incomprehensible to the unspiritual, as the unspiritual is contemptible to the spiritual. But the Jews have only "the spirit of this world." The ancient acuteness and profundity lies as far from the spirit and the spirituality of the Christian world as earth from heaven. He who feels himself as free spirit is not oppressed and made anxious by the things of this world, because he does not care for them; if one is still to feel their burden, he must be narrow enough to attach _weight_ to them,--as is evidently the case, for instance, when one is still concerned for his "dear life." He to whom everything centres in knowing and conducting himself as a free spirit gives little heed to how scantily he is supplied meanwhile, and does not reflect at all on how he must make his arrangements to have a thoroughly free or enjoyable _life_. He is not disturbed by the inconveniences of the life that depends on things, because he lives only spiritually and on spiritual food, while aside from this he only gulps things down like a beast, hardly knowing it, and dies bodily, to be sure, when his fodder gives out, but knows himself immortal as spirit, and closes his eyes with an adoration or a thought. His life is occupation with the spiritual, is--_thinking_; the rest does not bother him; let him busy himself with the spiritual in any way that he can and chooses,--in devotion, in contemplation, or in philosophic cognition,--his doing is always thinking; and therefore Descartes, to whom this had at last become quite clear, could lay down the proposition: "I think, that is--I am." This means, my thinking is my being or my life; only when I live spiritually do I live; only as spirit am I really, or--I am spirit through and through and nothing but spirit. Unlucky Peter Schlemihl, who has lost his shadow, is the portrait of this man become a spirit; for the spirit's body is shadowless.--Over against this, how different among the ancients! Stoutly and manfully as they might bear themselves against the might of things, they must yet acknowledge the might itself, and got no farther than to protect their _life_ against it as well as possible. Only at a late hour did they recognize that their "true life" was not that which they led in the fight against the things of the world, but the "spiritual life," "turned away" from these things; and, when they saw this, they became--Christians, _i. e._ the moderns, and innovators upon the ancients. But the life turned away from things, the spiritual life, no longer draws any nourishment from nature, but "lives only on thoughts," and therefore is no longer "life," but--_thinking_. Yet it must not be supposed now that the ancients were _without thoughts_, just as the most spiritual man is not to be conceived of as if he could be without life. Rather, they had their thoughts about everything, about the world, man, the gods, etc., and showed themselves keenly active in bringing all this to their consciousness. But they did not know _thought_, even though they thought of all sorts of things and "worried themselves with their thoughts." Compare with their position the Christian saying, "My thoughts are not your thoughts; as the heaven is higher than the earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts," and remember what was said above about our child-thoughts. What is antiquity seeking, then? The true _enjoyment of life_! You will find that at bottom it is all the same as "the true life." The Greek poet Simonides sings: "Health is the noblest good for mortal man, the next to this is beauty, the third riches acquired without guile, the fourth the enjoyment of social pleasures in the company of young friends." These are all _good things of life_, pleasures of life. What else was Diogenes of Sinope seeking for than the true enjoyment of life, which he discovered in having the least possible wants? What else Aristippus, who found it in a cheery temper under all circumstances? They are seeking for cheery, unclouded _life-courage_, for _cheeriness_; they are seeking to "be of good _cheer_." The Stoics want to realize the _wise man_, the man with _practical philosophy_, the man who _knows how to live_,--a wise life, therefore; they find him in contempt for the world, in a life without development, without spreading out, without friendly relations with the world, _i. e._ in the _isolated life_, in life as life, not in life with others; only the Stoic _lives_, all else is dead for him. The Epicureans, on the contrary, demand a moving life. The ancients, as they want to be of good cheer, desire _good living_ (the Jews especially a long life, blessed with children and goods), _eudaemonia_, well-being in the most various forms. Democritus, _e. g._, praises as such the calm of the soul in which one "_lives_ smoothly, without fear and without excitement." So what he thinks is that with this he gets on best, provides for himself the best lot, and gets through the world best. But as he cannot get rid of the world,--and in fact cannot for the very reason that his whole activity is taken up in the effort to get rid of it, that is, in _repelling the world_ (for which it is yet necessary that what can be and is repelled should remain existing, otherwise there would no longer be anything to repel),--he reaches at most an extreme degree of liberation, and is distinguishable only in degree from the less liberated. If he even got as far as the deadening of the earthly sense, which at last admits only the monotonous whisper of the word "Brahm," he nevertheless would not be essentially distinguishable from the _sensual_ man. Even the Stoic attitude and manly virtue amounts only to this,--that one must maintain and assert himself against the world; and the ethics of the Stoics (their only science, since they could tell nothing about the spirit but how it should behave toward the world, and of nature [physics] only this, that the wise man must assert himself against it) is not a doctrine of the spirit, but only a doctrine of the repelling of the world and of self-assertion against the world. And this consists in "imperturbability and equanimity of life," and so in the most explicit Roman virtue. The Romans too (Horace, Cicero, etc.) went no further than this _practical philosophy_. The _comfort (hedone)_ of the Epicureans is the same _practical philosophy_ the Stoics teach, only trickier, more deceitful. They teach only another _behavior_ toward the world, exhort us only to take a shrewd attitude toward the world; the world must be deceived, for it is my enemy. The break with the world is completely carried through by the Skeptics. My entire relation to the world is "worthless and truthless." Timon says, "The feelings and thoughts which we draw from the world contain no truth." "What is truth?" cries Pilate. According to Pyrrho's doctrine the world is neither good nor bad, neither beautiful nor ugly, etc., but these are _predicates_ which I give it. Timon says that "in itself nothing is either good or bad, but man only _thinks_ of it thus or thus"; to face the world only _ataraxia_ (unmovedness) and _aphasia_ (speechlessness--or, in other words, isolated _inwardness_) are left. There is "no longer any truth to be recognized" in the world; things contradict themselves; thoughts about things are without distinction (good and bad are all the same, so that what one calls good another finds bad); here the recognition of "truth" is at an end, and only the _man without power of recognition_, the _man_ who finds in the world nothing to recognize, is left, and this man just leaves the truth-vacant world where it is and takes no account of it. So antiquity gets trough with the _world of things_, the order of the world, the world as a whole; but to the order of the world, or the things of this world, belong not only nature, but all relations in which man sees himself placed by nature, _e. g._ the family, the community,--in short, the so-called "natural bonds." With the _world of the spirit_ Christianity then begins. The man who still faces the world _armed_ is the ancient, the--_heathen_ (to which class the Jew, too, as non-Christian, belongs); the man who has come to be led by nothing but his "heart's pleasure," the interest he takes, his fellow-feeling, his--_spirit_, is the modern, the--Christian. As the ancients worked toward the _conquest of the world_ and strove to release man from the heavy trammels of connection with _other things_, at last they came also to the dissolution of the State and giving preference to everything private. Of course community, family, etc., as _natural_ relations, are burdensome hindrances which diminish my _spiritual freedom_. II.--THE MODERNS "If any man be in Christ, he is a _new creature_; the old is passed away, behold, all is become _new_."[11] As it was said above, "To the ancients the world was a truth," we must say here, "To the moderns the spirit was a truth"; but here, as there, we must not omit the supplement, "a truth whose untruth they tried to get back of, and at last they really do." A course similar to that which antiquity took may be demonstrated in Christianity also, in that the _understanding_ was held a prisoner under the dominion of the Christian dogmas up to the time preparatory to the Reformation, but in the pre-Reformation century asserted itself _sophistically_ and played heretical pranks with all tenets of the faith. And the talk then was, especially in Italy and at the Roman court, "If only the heart remains Christian-minded, the understanding may go right on taking its pleasure." Long before the Reformation people were so thoroughly accustomed to fine-spun "wranglings" that the pope, and most others, looked on Luther's appearance too as a mere "wrangling of monks" at first. Humanism corresponds to Sophisticism, and, as in the time of the Sophists Greek life stood in its fullest bloom (the Periclean age), so the most brilliant things happened in the time of Humanism, or, as one might perhaps also say, of Machiavellianism (printing, the New World, etc.). At this time the heart was still far from wanting to relieve itself of its Christian contents. But finally the Reformation, like Socrates, took hold seriously of the _heart_ itself, and since then hearts have kept growing visibly--more unchristian. As with Luther people began to take the matter to heart, the outcome of this step of the Reformation must be that the heart also gets lightened of the heavy burden of Christian faith. The heart, from day to day more unchristian, loses the contents with which it had busied itself, till at last nothing but empty _warm-heartedness_ is left it, the quite general love of men, the love of Man, the consciousness of freedom, "self-consciousness." Only so is Christianity complete, because it has become bald, withered, and void of contents. There are now no contents whatever against which the heart does not mutiny, unless indeed the heart unconsciously or without "self-consciousness" lets them slip in. The heart _criticises_ to death with _hard-hearted_ mercilessness everything that wants to make its way in, and is capable (except, as before, unconsciously or taken by surprise) of no friendship, no love. What could there be in men to love, since they are all alike "egoists," none of them _man_ as such, _i. e._ none _spirit_ only? The Christian loves only the spirit; but where could one be found who should be really nothing but spirit? To have a liking for the corporeal man with hide and hair,--why, that would no longer be a "spiritual" warm-heartedness, it would be treason against "pure" warm-heartedness, the "theoretical regard." For pure warm-heartedness is by no means to be conceived as like that kindliness that gives everybody a friendly hand-shake; on the contrary, pure warm-heartedness is warm-hearted toward nobody, it is only a theoretical interest, concern for man as man, not as a person. The person is repulsive to it because of being "egoistic," because of not being that abstraction, Man. But it is only for the abstraction that one can have a theoretical regard. To pure warm-heartedness or pure theory men exist only to be criticised, scoffed at, and thoroughly despised; to it, no less than to the fanatical parson, they are only "filth" and other such nice things. Pushed to this extremity of disinterested warm-heartedness, we must finally become conscious that the spirit, which alone the Christian loves, is nothing; in other words, that the spirit is--a lie. What has here been set down roughly, summarily, and doubtless as yet incomprehensibly, will, it is to be hoped, become clear as we go on. Let us take up the inheritance left by the ancients, and, as active workmen, do with it as much as--can be done with it! The world lies despised at our feet, far beneath us and our heaven, into which its mighty arms are no longer thrust and its stupefying breath does not come. Seductively as it may pose, it can delude nothing but our _sense_; it cannot lead astray the spirit--and spirit alone, after all, we really are. Having once got _back_ of things, the spirit has also got _above_ them, and become free from their bonds, emancipated supernal, free. So speaks "spiritual freedom." To the spirit which, after long toil, has got rid of the world, the worldless spirit, nothing is left after the loss of the world and the worldly but--the spirit and the spiritual. Yet, as it has only moved away from the world and made of itself a being _free from the world_, without being able really to annihilate the world, this remains to it a stumbling-block that cannot be cleared away, a discredited existence; and, as, on the other hand, it knows and recognizes nothing but the spirit and the spiritual, it must perpetually carry about with it the longing to spiritualize the world, _i. e._ to redeem it from the "black list." Therefore, like a youth, it goes about with plans for the redemption or improvement of the world. The ancients, we saw, served the natural, the worldly, the natural order of the world, but they incessantly asked themselves whether they could not, then, relieve themselves of this service; and, when they had tired themselves to death in ever-renewed attempts at revolt, then, among their last sighs, was born to them the _God_, the "conqueror of the world." All their doing had been nothing but _wisdom of the world_, an effort to get back of the world and above it. And what is the wisdom of the many following centuries? What did the moderns try to get back of? No longer to get back of the world, for the ancients had accomplished that; but back of the God whom the ancients bequeathed to them, back of the God who "is spirit," back of everything that is the spirit's, the spiritual. But the activity of the spirit, which "searches even the depths of the Godhead," is _theology_. If the ancients have nothing to show but wisdom of the world, the moderns never did nor do make their way further than to theology. We shall see later that even the newest revolts against God are nothing but the extremest efforts of "theology," _i. e._ theological insurrections. § 1.--THE SPIRIT The realm of spirits is monstrously great, there is an infinite deal of the spiritual; yet let us look and see what the spirit, this bequest of the ancients, properly is. Out of their birth-pangs it came forth, but they themselves could not utter themselves as spirit; they could give birth to it, it itself must speak. The "born God, the Son of Man," is the first to utter the word that the spirit, _i. e._ he, God, has to do with nothing earthly and no earthly relationship, but solely with the spirit and spiritual relationships. Is my courage, indestructible under all the world's blows, my inflexibility and my obduracy, perchance already spirit in the full sense, because the world cannot touch it? Why, then it would not yet be at enmity with the world, and all its action would consist merely in not succumbing to the world! No, so long as it does not busy itself with itself alone, so long as it does not have to do with _its_ world, the spiritual, alone, it is not _free_ spirit, but only the "spirit of this world," the spirit fettered to it. The spirit is free spirit, _i. e._ really spirit, only in a world of _its own_; in "this," the world, it is a stranger. Only through a spiritual world is the spirit really spirit, for "this" world does not understand it and does not know how to keep "the maiden from a foreign land"[12] from departing. But where is it to get this spiritual world? Where but out of itself? It must reveal itself; and the words that it speaks, the revelations in which it unveils itself, these are _its_ world. As a visionary lives and has _his_ world only in the visionary pictures that he himself creates, as a crazy man generates for himself his own dream-world, without which he could not be crazy, so the spirit must create for itself its spirit world, and is not spirit till it creates it. Thus its creations make it spirit, and by its creatures we know it, the creator; in them it lives, they are its world. Now, what is the spirit? It is the creator of a spiritual world! Even in you and me people do not recognize spirit till they see that we have appropriated to ourselves something spiritual,--_i. e._, though thoughts may have been set before us, we have at least brought them to life in ourselves; for, as long as we were children, the most edifying thoughts might have been laid before us without our wishing, or being able to reproduce them in ourselves. So the spirit also exists only when it creates something spiritual; it is real only together with the spiritual, its creature. As, then, we know it by its works, the question is what these works are. But the works or children of the spirit are nothing else but--spirits: If I had before me Jews, Jews of the true metal, I should have to stop here and leave them standing before this mystery as for almost two thousand years they have remained standing before it, unbelieving and without knowledge. But, as you, my dear reader, are at least not a full-blooded Jew,--for such a one will not go astray as far as this,--we will still go along a bit of road together, till perhaps you too turn your back on me because I laugh in your face. If somebody told you you were altogether spirit, you would take hold of your body and not believe him, but answer: "I _have_ a spirit, no doubt, but do not exist only as spirit, but am a man with a body." You would still distinguish _yourself_ from "your spirit." "But," replies he, "it is your destiny, even though now you are yet going about in the fetters of the body, to be one day a 'blessed spirit,' and, however you may conceive of the future aspect of your spirit, so much is yet certain, that in death you will put off this body and yet keep yourself, _i. e._ your spirit, for all eternity; accordingly your spirit is the eternal and true in you, the body only a dwelling here below, which you may leave and perhaps exchange for another." Now you believe him! For the present, indeed, _you_ are not spirit only; but, when you emigrate from the mortal body, as one day you must, then you will have to help yourself without the body, and therefore it is needful that you be prudent and care in time for your proper self. "What should it profit a man if he gained the whole world and yet suffered damage in his soul?" But, even granted that doubts, raised in the course of time against the tenets of the Christian faith, have long since robbed you of faith in the immortality of your spirit, you have nevertheless left one tenet undisturbed, and still ingenuously adhere to the one truth, that the spirit is your better part, and that the spiritual has greater claims on you than anything else. Despite all your atheism, in zeal against _egoism_ you concur with the believers in immortality. But whom do you think of under the name of egoist? A man who, instead of living to an idea,--_i. e._ a spiritual thing--and sacrificing to it his personal advantage, serves the latter. A good patriot, _e. g._, brings his sacrifice to the altar of the fatherland; but it cannot be disputed that the fatherland is an idea, since for beasts incapable of mind,[13] or children as yet without mind, there is no fatherland and no patriotism. Now, if any one does not approve himself as a good patriot, he betrays his egoism with reference to the fatherland. And so the matter stands in innumerable other cases: he who in human society takes the benefit of a prerogative sins egoistically against the idea of equality; he who exercises dominion is blamed as an egoist against the idea of liberty,--etc. You despise the egoist because he puts the spiritual in the background as compared with the personal, and has his eyes on himself where you would like to see him act to favor an idea. The distinction between you is that he makes himself the central point, but you the spirit; or that you cut your identity in two and exalt your "proper self," the spirit, to be ruler of the paltrier remainder, while he will hear nothing of this cutting in two, and pursues spiritual and material interests just _as he pleases_. You think, to be sure, that you are falling foul of those only who enter into no spiritual interest at all, but in fact you curse at everybody who does not look on the spiritual interest as his "true and highest" interest. You carry your knightly service for this beauty so far that you affirm her to be the only beauty of the world. You live not to _yourself_, but to your _spirit_ and to what is the spirit's--_i. e._ ideas. As the spirit exists only in its creating of the spiritual, let us take a look about us for its first creation. If only it has accomplished this, there follows thenceforth a natural propagation of creations, as according to the myth only the first human beings needed to be created, the rest of the race propagating of itself. The first creation, on the other hand, must come forth "out of nothing,"--_i. e._, the spirit has toward its realization nothing but itself, or rather it has not yet even itself, but must create itself; hence its first creation is itself, _the spirit_. Mystical as this sounds, we yet go through it as an every-day experience. Are you a thinking being before you think? In creating the first thought you create yourself, the thinking one; for you do not think before you think a thought, _i. e._ have a thought. Is it not your singing that first makes you a singer, your talking that makes you a talker? Now, so too it is the production of the spiritual that first makes you a spirit. Meantime, as you distinguish _yourself_ from the thinker, singer, and talker, so you no less distinguish yourself from the spirit, and feel very clearly that you are something beside spirit. But, as in the thinking ego hearing and sight easily vanish in the enthusiasm of thought, so you also have been seized by the spirit-enthusiasm, and you now long with all your might to become wholly spirit and to be dissolved in spirit. The spirit is your _ideal_, the unattained, the otherworldly; spirit is the name of your--god, "God is spirit." Against all that is not spirit you are a zealot, and therefore you play the zealot against _yourself_ who cannot get rid of a remainder of the non-spiritual. Instead of saying, "I am _more_ than spirit," you say with contrition, "I am less than spirit; and spirit, pure spirit, or the spirit that is nothing but spirit, I can only think of, but am not; and, since I am not it, it is another, exists as another, whom I call 'God'." It lies in the nature of the case that the spirit that is to exist as pure spirit must be an otherworldly one, for, since I am not it, it follows that it can only be _outside_ me; since in any case a human being is not fully comprehended in the concept "spirit," it follows that the pure spirit, the spirit as such, can only be outside of men, beyond the human world,--not earthly, but heavenly. Only from this disunion in which I and the spirit lie; only because "I" and "spirit" are not names for one and the same thing, but different names for completely different things; only because I am not spirit and spirit not I,--only from this do we get a quite tautological explanation of the necessity that the spirit dwells in the other world, _i. e._ is God. But from this it also appears how thoroughly theological is the liberation that Feuerbach[14] is laboring to give us. What he says is that we had only mistaken our own essence, and therefore looked for it in the other world, but that now, when we see that God was only our human essence, we must recognize it again as ours and move it back out of the other world into this. To God, who is spirit, Feuerbach gives the name "Our Essence." Can we put up with this, that "Our Essence" is brought into opposition to _us_,--that we are split into an essential and an unessential self? Do we not therewith go back into the dreary misery of seeing ourselves banished out of ourselves? What have we gained, then, when for a variation we have transferred into ourselves the divine outside us? _Are we_ that which is in us? As little as we are that which is outside us. I am as little my heart as I am my sweetheart, this "other self" of mine. Just because we are not the spirit that dwells in us, just for that reason we had to take it and set it outside us; it was not we, did not coincide with us, and therefore we could not think of it as existing otherwise than outside us, on the other side from us, in the other world. With the strength of _despair_ Feuerbach clutches at the total substance of Christianity, not to throw it away, no, to drag it to himself, to draw it, the long-yearned-for, ever-distant, out of its heaven with a last effort, and keep it by him forever. Is not that a clutch of the uttermost despair, a clutch for life or death, and is it not at the same time the Christian yearning and hungering for the other world? The hero wants not to go into the other world, but to draw the other world to him, and compel it to become this world! And since then has not all the world, with more or less consciousness, been crying that "this world" is the vital point, and heaven must come down on earth and be experienced even here? Let us, in brief, set Feuerbach's theological view and our contradiction over against each other! "The essence of man is man's supreme being;[15] now by religion, to be sure, the _supreme being_ is called _God_ and regarded as an _objective_ essence, but in truth it is only man's own essence; and therefore the turning point of the world's history is that henceforth no longer _God_, but man, is to appear to man as God."[16] To this we reply: The supreme being is indeed the essence of man, but, just because it is his _essence_ and not he himself, it remains quite immaterial whether we see it outside him and view it as "God," or find it in him and call it "Essence of Man" or "Man." _I_ am neither God nor _Man_,[17] neither the supreme essence nor my essence, and therefore it is all one in the main whether I think of the essence as in me or outside me. Nay, we really do always think of the supreme being as in both kinds of otherworldliness, the inward and outward, at once; for the "Spirit of God" is, according to the Christian view, also "our spirit," and "dwells in us."[18] It dwells in heaven and dwells in us; we poor things are just its "dwelling," and, if Feuerbach goes on to destroy its heavenly dwelling and force it to move to us bag and baggage, then we, its earthly apartments, will be badly overcrowded. But after this digression (which, if we were at all proposing to work by line and level, we should have had to save for later pages in order to avoid repetition) we return to the spirit's first creation, the spirit itself. The spirit is something other than myself. But this other, what is it? § 2.--THE POSSESSED. Have you ever seen a spirit? "No, not I, but my grandmother." Now, you see, it's just so with me too; I myself haven't seen any, but my grandmother had them running between her feet all sorts of ways, and out of confidence in our grandmothers' honesty we believe in the existence of spirits. But had we no grandfathers then, and did they not shrug their shoulders every time our grandmothers told about their ghosts? Yes, those were unbelieving men who have harmed our good religion much, those rationalists! We shall feel that! What else lies at the bottom of this warm faith in ghosts, if not the faith in "the existence of spiritual beings in general," and is not this latter itself disastrously unsettled if saucy men of the understanding may disturb the former? The Romanticists were quite conscious what a blow the very belief in God suffered by the laying aside of the belief in spirits or ghosts, and they tried to help us out of the baleful consequences not only by their reawakened fairy world, but at last, and especially, by the "intrusion of a higher world," by their somnambulists, prophetesses of Prevorst, etc. The good believers and fathers of the church did not suspect that with the belief in ghosts the foundation of religion was withdrawn, and that since then it had been floating in the air. He who no longer believes in any ghost needs only to travel on consistently in his unbelief to see that there is no separate being at all concealed behind things, no ghost or--what is naively reckoned as synonymous even in our use of words--no "_spirit_." "Spirits exist!" Look about in the world, and say for yourself whether a spirit does not gaze upon you out of everything. Out of the lovely little flower there speaks to you the spirit of the Creator, who has shaped it so wonderfully; the stars proclaim the spirit that established their order; from the mountain-tops a spirit of sublimity breathes down; out of the waters a spirit of yearning murmurs up; and--out of men millions of spirits speak. The mountains may sink, the flowers fade, the world of stars fall in ruins, the men die--what matters the wreck of these visible bodies? The spirit, the "invisible spirit," abides eternally! Yes, the whole world is haunted! Only _is_ haunted? Nay, it itself "walks," it is uncanny through and through, it is the wandering seeming-body of a spirit, it is a spook. What else should a ghost be, then, than an apparent body, but real spirit? Well, the world is "empty," is "naught," is only glamorous "semblance"; its truth is the spirit alone; it is the seeming-body of a spirit. Look out near or far, a _ghostly_ world surrounds you everywhere; you are always having "apparitions" or visions. Everything that appears to you is only the phantasm of an indwelling spirit, is a ghostly "apparition"; the world is to you only a "world of appearances," behind which the spirit walks. You "see spirits." Are you perchance thinking of comparing yourself with the ancients, who saw gods everywhere? Gods, my dear modern, are not spirits; gods do not degrade the world to a semblance, and do not spiritualize it. But to you the whole world is spiritualized, and has become an enigmatical ghost; therefore do not wonder if you likewise find in yourself nothing but a spook. Is not your body haunted by your spirit, and is not the latter alone the true and real, the former only the "transitory, naught" or a "semblance"? Are we not all ghosts, uncanny beings that wait for "deliverance,"--to wit, "spirits"? Since the spirit appeared in the world, since "the Word became flesh," since then the world has been spiritualized, enchanted, a spook. You have spirit, for you have thoughts. What are your thoughts? "Spiritual entities." Not things, then? "No, but the spirit of things, the main point in all things, the inmost in them, their--idea." Consequently what you think is not only your thought? "On the contrary, it is that in the world which is most real, that which is properly to be called true; it is the truth itself; if I only think truly, I think the truth. I may, to be sure, err with regard to the truth, and _fail to recognize_ it; but, if I _recognize_ truly, the object of my cognition is the truth." So, I suppose, you strive at all times to recognize the truth? "To me the truth is sacred. It may well happen that I find a truth incomplete and replace it with a better, but _the_ truth I cannot abrogate. I _believe_ in the truth, therefore I search in it; nothing transcends it, it is eternal." Sacred, eternal is the truth; it is the Sacred, the Eternal. But you, who let yourself be filled and led by this sacred thing, are yourself hallowed. Further, the sacred is not for your senses,--and you never as a sensual man discover its trace,--but for your faith, or, more definitely still, for your _spirit_; for it itself, you know, is a spiritual thing, a spirit,--is spirit for the spirit. The sacred is by no means so easily to be set aside as many at present affirm, who no longer take this "unsuitable" word into their mouths. If even in a single respect I am still _upbraided_ as an "egoist," there is left the thought of something else which I should serve more than myself, and which must be to me more important than everything; in short, somewhat in which I should have to seek my true welfare,[19] something--"sacred."[20] However human this sacred thing may look, though it be the Human itself, that does not take away its sacredness, but at most changes it from an unearthly to an earthly sacred thing, from a divine one to a human. Sacred things exist only for the egoist who does not acknowledge himself, the _involuntary egoist_, for him who is always looking after his own and yet does not count himself as the highest being, who serves only himself and at the same time always thinks he is serving a higher being, who knows nothing higher than himself and yet is infatuated about something higher; in short, for the egoist who would like not to be an egoist, and abases himself (_i. e._ combats his egoism), but at the same time abases himself only for the sake of "being exalted," and therefore of gratifying his egoism. Because he would like to cease to be an egoist, he looks about in heaven and earth for higher beings to serve and sacrifice himself to; but, however much he shakes and disciplines himself, in the end he does all for his own sake, and the disreputable egoism will not come off him. On this account I call him the involuntary egoist. His toil and care to get away from himself is nothing but the misunderstood impulse to self-dissolution. If you are bound to your past hour, if you must babble to-day because you babbled yesterday,[21] if you can not transform yourself each instant, you feel yourself fettered in slavery and benumbed. Therefore over each minute of your existence a fresh minute of the future beckons to you, and, developing yourself, you get away "from yourself,"--_i. e._ from the self that was at that moment. As you are at each instant, you are your own creature, and in this very "creature" you do not wish to lose yourself, the creator. You are yourself a higher being than you are, and surpass yourself. But that _you_ are the one who is higher than you,--_i. e._ that you are not only creature, but likewise your creator,--just this, as an involuntary egoist, you fail to recognize; and therefore the "higher essence" is to you--an alien[22] essence. Every higher essence, such as truth, mankind, etc., is an essence _over_ us. Alienness is a criterion of the "sacred." In everything sacred there lies something "uncanny," _i. e._ strange,[23] such as we are not quite familiar and at home in. What is sacred to me is _not my own_; and if, _e. g._ the property of others was not sacred to me, I should look on it as _mine_, which I should take to myself when occasion offered. Or, on the other side, if I regard the face of the Chinese emperor as sacred, it remains strange to my eye, which I close at its appearance. Why is an incontrovertible mathematical truth, which might even be called eternal according to the common understanding of words, not--sacred? Because it is not revealed, or not the revelation of a higher being. If by revealed we understand only the so-called religious truths, we go far astray, and entirely fail to recognize the breadth of the concept "higher being." Atheists keep up their scoffing at the higher being, which was also honored under the name of the "highest" or _être suprême_, and trample in the dust one "proof of his existence" after another without noticing that they themselves, out of need for a higher being, only annihilate the old to make room for a new. Is "Man" perchance not a higher essence than an individual man, and must not the truths, rights, and ideas which result from the concept of him be honored and--counted sacred, as revelations of this very concept? For, even though we should abrogate again many a truth that seemed to be made manifest by this concept, yet this would only evince a misunderstanding on our part, without in the least degree harming the sacred concept itself or taking their sacredness from those truths that must rightly be looked upon as its revelations. _Man_ reaches beyond every individual man, and yet--though he be "his essence"--is not in fact _his_ essence (which rather would be as single[24] as he the individual himself), but a general and "higher," yes, for atheists "the highest essence."[25] And, as the divine revelations were not written down by God with his own hand, but made public through "the Lord's instruments," so also the new highest essence does not write out its revelations itself, but lets them come to our knowledge through "true men." Only the new essence betrays, in fact, a more spiritual style of conception than the old God, because the latter was still represented in a sort of embodiedness or form, while the undimmed spirituality of the new is retained, and no special material body is fancied for it. And withal it does not lack corporeity, which even takes on a yet more seductive appearance because it looks more natural and mundane and consists in nothing less than in every bodily man,--yes, or outright in "humanity" or "all men." Thereby the spectralness of the spirit in a seeming-body has once again become really solid and popular. Sacred, then, is the highest essence and everything in which this highest essence reveals or will reveal itself; but hallowed are they who recognize this highest essence together with its own, _i. e._ together with its revelations. The sacred hallows in turn its reverer, who by his worship becomes himself a saint, as likewise what he does is saintly, a saintly walk, saintly thoughts and actions, imaginations and aspirations, etc. It is easily understood that the conflict over what is revered as the highest essence can be significant only so long as even the most embittered opponents concede to each other the main point,--that there is a highest essence to which worship or service is due. If one should smile compassionately at the whole struggle over a highest essence, as a Christian might at the war of words between a Shiite and a Sunnite or between a Brahman and a Buddhist, then the hypothesis of a highest essence would be null in his eyes, and the conflict on this basis an idle play. Whether then the one God or the three in one, whether the Lutheran God or the _être suprême_ or not God at all, but "Man," may represent the highest essence, that makes no difference at all for him who denies the highest essence itself, for in his eyes those servants of a highest essence are one and all--pious people, the most raging atheist not less than the most faith-filled Christian. In the foremost place of the sacred,[26] then, stands the highest essence and the faith in this essence, our "holy[27] faith." THE SPOOK With ghosts we arrive in the spirit-realm, in the realm of _essences_. What haunts the universe, and has its occult, "incomprehensible" being there, is precisely the mysterious spook that we call highest essence. And to get to the bottom of this _spook_, to _comprehend_ it, to discover _reality_ in it (to prove "the existence of God")--this task men set to themselves for thousands of years; with the horrible impossibility, the endless Danaid-labor, of transforming the spook into a non-spook, the unreal into something real, the _spirit_ into an entire and _corporeal_ person,--with this they tormented themselves to death. Behind the existing world they sought the "thing in itself," the essence; behind the _thing_ they sought the _un-thing_. When one looks to the _bottom_ of anything, _i. e._ searches out its _essence_, one often discovers something quite other than what it _seems_ to be; honeyed speech and a lying heart, pompous words and beggarly thoughts, etc. By bringing the essence into prominence one degrades the hitherto misapprehended appearance to a bare _semblance_, a deception. The essence of the world, so attractive and splendid, is for him who looks to the bottom of it--emptiness; emptiness is == world's essence (world's doings). Now, he who is religious does not occupy himself with the deceitful semblance, with the empty appearances, but looks upon the essence, and in the essence has--the truth. The essences which are deduced from some appearances are the evil essences, and conversely from others the good. The essence of human feeling, _e. g._, is love; the essence of human will is the good; that of one's thinking, the true; etc. What at first passed for existence, such as the world and its like, appears now as bare semblance, and the _truly existent_ is much rather the essence, whose realm is filled with gods, spirits, demons, _i. e._ with good or bad essences. Only this inverted world, the world of essences, truly exists now. The human heart may be loveless, but its essence exists, God, "who is love"; human thought may wander in error, but its essence, truth, exists; "God is truth,"--etc. To know and acknowledge essences alone and nothing but essences, that is religion; its realm is a realm of essences, spooks, and ghosts. The longing to make the spook comprehensible, or to realize _non-sense_, has brought about a _corporeal ghost_, a ghost or spirit with a real body, an embodied ghost. How the strongest and most talented Christians have tortured themselves to get a conception of this ghostly apparition! But there always remained the contradiction of two natures, the divine and human, _i. e._ the ghostly and sensual; there remained the most wondrous spook, a thing that was not a thing. Never yet was a ghost more soul-torturing, and no shaman, who pricks himself to raving fury and nerve-lacerating cramps to conjure a ghost, can endure such soul-torment as Christians suffered from that most incomprehensible ghost. But through Christ the truth of the matter had at the same time come to light, that the veritable spirit or ghost is--man. The _corporeal_ or embodied spirit is just man; he himself is the ghastly being and at the same time the being's appearance and existence. Henceforth man no longer, in typical cases, shudders at ghosts _outside_ him, but at himself; he is terrified at himself. In the depth of his breast dwells the _spirit of sin_; even the faintest _thought_ (and this is itself a spirit, you know) may be a _devil_, etc.--The ghost has put on a body, God has become man, but now man is himself the gruesome spook which he seeks to get back of, to exorcise, to fathom, to bring to reality and to speech; man is--_spirit_. What matter if the body wither, if only the spirit is saved? everything rests on the spirit, and the spirit's or "soul's" welfare becomes the exclusive goal. Man has become to himself a ghost, an uncanny spook, to which there is even assigned a distinct seat in the body (dispute over the seat of the soul, whether in the head, etc.). You are not to me, and I am not to you, a higher essence. Nevertheless a higher essence may be hidden in each of us, and call forth a mutual reverence. To take at once the most general, Man lives in you and me. If I did not see Man in you, what occasion should I have to respect you? To be sure you are not Man and his true and adequate form, but only a mortal veil of his, from which he can withdraw without himself ceasing; but yet for the present this general and higher essence is housed in you, and you present before me (because an imperishable spirit has in you assumed a perishable body, so that really your form is only an "assumed" one) a spirit that appears, appears in you, without being bound to your body and to this particular mode of appearance,--therefore a spook. Hence I do not regard you as a higher essence, but only respect that higher essence which "walks" in you; I "respect Man in you." The ancients did not observe anything of this sort in their slaves, and the higher essence "Man" found as yet little response. To make up for this, they saw in each other ghosts of another sort. The People is a higher essence than an individual, and, like Man or the Spirit of Man, a spirit haunting the individual,--the Spirit of the People. For this reason they revered this spirit, and only so far as he served this or else a spirit related to it (_e. g._ the Spirit of the Family, etc.) could the individual appear significant; only for the sake of the higher essence, the People, was consideration allowed to the "member of the people." As you are hallowed to us by "Man" who haunts you, so at every time men have been hallowed by some higher essence or other, like People, Family, and such. Only for the sake of a higher essence has any one been honored from of old, only as a ghost has he been regarded in the light of a hallowed, _i. e._, protected and recognized person. If I cherish you because I hold you dear, because in you my heart finds nourishment, my need satisfaction, then it is not done for the sake of a higher essence whose hallowed body you are, not on account of my beholding in you a ghost, _i. e._ an appearing spirit, but from egoistic pleasure; you yourself with _your_ essence are valuable to me, for your essence is not a higher one, is not higher and more general than you, is unique[28] like you yourself, because it is you. But it is not only man that, "haunts"; so does everything. The higher essence, the spirit, that walks in everything, is at the same time bound to nothing, and only--"appears" in it. Ghosts in every corner! Here would be the place to pass the haunting spirits in review, if they were not to come before us again further on in order to vanish before egoism. Hence let only a few of them be particularized by way of example, in order to bring us at once to our attitude toward them. Sacred above all, _e. g._, is the "holy Spirit," sacred the truth, sacred are right, law, a good cause, majesty, marriage, the common good, order, the fatherland, etc. WHEELS IN THE HEAD. Man, your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head! You imagine great things, and depict to yourself a whole world of gods that has an existence for you, a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself to be called, an ideal that beckons to you. You have a fixed idea! Do not think that I am jesting or speaking figuratively when I regard those persons who cling to the Higher, and (because the vast majority belongs under this head) almost the whole world of men, as veritable fools, fools in a madhouse. What is it, then, that is called a "fixed idea"? An idea that has subjected the man to itself. When you recognize, with regard to such a fixed idea, that it is a folly, you shut its slave up in an asylum. And is the truth of the faith, say, which we are not to doubt; the majesty of (_e. g._) the people, which we are not to strike at (he who does is guilty of--lese-majesty); virtue, against which the censor is not to let a word pass, that morality may be kept pure; etc.,--are these not "fixed ideas"? Is not all the stupid chatter of (_e. g._) most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed idea of morality, legality, Christianity, etc., and only seem to go about free because the madhouse in which they walk takes in so broad a space? Touch the fixed idea of such a fool, and you will at once have to guard your back against the lunatic's stealthy malice. For these great lunatics are like the little so-called lunatics in this point too,--that they assail by stealth him who touches their fixed idea. They first steal his weapon, steal free speech from him, and then they fall upon him with their nails. Every day now lays bare the cowardice and vindictiveness of these maniacs, and the stupid populace hurrahs for their crazy measures. One must read the journals of this period, and must hear the Philistines talk, to get the horrible conviction that one is shut up in a house with fools. "Thou shalt not call thy brother a fool; if thou dost--etc." But I do not fear the curse, and I say, my brothers are arch-fools. Whether a poor fool of the insane asylum is possessed by the fancy that he is God the Father, Emperor of Japan, the Holy Spirit, etc., or whether a citizen in comfortable circumstances conceives that it is his mission to be a good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a loyal citizen, a virtuous man, etc.,--both these are one and the same "fixed idea." He who has never tried and dared not to be a good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a virtuous man, etc., is _possessed_ and prepossessed[29] by faith, virtuousness, etc. Just as the schoolmen philosophized only _inside_ the belief of the church; as Pope Benedict XIV wrote fat books _inside_ the papist superstition, without ever throwing a doubt upon this belief; as authors fill whole folios on the State without calling in question the fixed idea of the State itself; as our newspapers are crammed with politics because they are conjured into the fancy that man was created to be a _zoon politicon_,--so also subjects vegetate in subjection, virtuous people in virtue, liberals in humanity, etc., without ever putting to these fixed ideas of theirs the searching knife of criticism. Undislodgeable, like a madman's delusion, those thoughts stand on a firm footing, and he who doubts them--lays hands on the _sacred_! Yes, the "fixed idea," that is the truly sacred! Is it perchance only people possessed by the devil that meet us, or do we as often come upon people _possessed_ in the contrary way,--possessed by "the good," by virtue, morality, the law, or some "principle" or other? Possessions of the devil are not the only ones. God works on us, and the devil does; the former "workings of grace," the latter "workings of the devil." Possessed[30] people are _set_[31] in their opinions. If the word "possession" displeases you, then call it prepossession; yes, since the spirit possesses you, and all "inspirations" come from it, call it--inspiration and enthusiasm. I add that complete enthusiasm--for we cannot stop with the sluggish, half-way kind--is called fanaticism. It is precisely among cultured people that _fanaticism_ is at home; for man is cultured so far as he takes an interest in spiritual things, and interest in spiritual things, when it is alive, is and must be _fanaticism_; it is a fanatical interest in the sacred (_fanum_). Observe our liberals, look into the _Saechsischen Vaterlandsblaetter_, hear what Schlosser says:[32] "Holbach's company constituted a regular plot against the traditional doctrine and the existing system, and its members were as fanatical on behalf of their unbelief as monks and priests, Jesuits and Pietists, Methodists, missionary and Bible societies, commonly are for mechanical worship and orthodoxy." Take notice how a "moral man" behaves, who to-day often thinks he is through with God and throws off Christianity as a bygone thing. If you ask him whether he has ever doubted that the copulation of brother and sister is incest, that monogamy is the truth of marriage, that filial piety is a sacred duty, etc., then a moral shudder will come over him at the conception of one's being allowed to touch his sister as wife also, etc. And whence this shudder? Because he _believes_ in those moral commandments. This moral _faith_ is deeply rooted in his breast. Much as he rages against the _pious_ Christians, he himself has nevertheless as thoroughly remained a Christian,--to wit, a _moral_ Christian. In the form of morality Christianity holds him a prisoner, and a prisoner under _faith_. Monogamy is to be something sacred, and he who may live in bigamy is punished as a _criminal_; he who commits incest suffers as a _criminal_. Those who are always crying that religion is not to be regarded in the State, and the Jew is to be a citizen equally with the Christian, show themselves in accord with this. Is not this of incest and monogamy a _dogma of faith_? Touch it, and you will learn by experience how this moral man is a _hero of faith_ too, not less than Krummacher, not less than Philip II. These fight for the faith of the Church, he for the faith of the State, or the moral laws of the State; for articles of faith, both condemn him who acts otherwise than _their faith_ will allow. The brand of "crime" is stamped upon him, and he may languish in reformatories, in jails. Moral faith is as fanatical as religious faith! They call that "liberty of faith" then, when brother and sister, on account of a relation that they should have settled with their "conscience," are thrown into prison. "But they set a pernicious example." Yes, indeed: others might have taken the notion that the State had no business to meddle with their relation, and thereupon "purity of morals" would go to ruin. So then the religious heroes of faith are zealous for the "sacred God," the moral ones for the "sacred good." Those who are zealous for something sacred often look very little like each other. How the strictly orthodox or old-style believers differ from the fighters for "truth, light, and justice," from the Philalethes, the Friends of Light, the Rationalists, etc. And yet, how utterly unessential is this difference! If one buffets single traditional truths (_e. g._ miracles, unlimited power of princes, etc.), then the rationalists buffet them too, and only the old-style believers wail. But, if one buffets truth itself, he immediately has both, as _believers_, for opponents. So with moralities; the strict believers are relentless, the clearer heads are more tolerant. But he who attacks morality itself gets both to deal with. "Truth, morality, justice, light, etc.," are to be and remain "sacred." What any one finds to censure in Christianity is simply supposed to be "unchristian" according to the view of these rationalists; but Christianity must remain a fixture, to buffet it is outrageous, "an outrage." To be sure, the heretic against pure faith no longer exposes himself to the earlier fury of persecution, but so much the more does it now fall upon the heretic against pure morals. * * * * * Piety has for a century received so many blows, and had to hear its superhuman essence reviled as an "inhuman" one so often, that one cannot feel tempted to draw the sword against it again. And yet it has almost always been only moral opponents that have appeared in the arena, to assail the supreme essence in favor of--another supreme essence. So Proudhon, unabashed, says:[33] "Man is destined to live without religion, but the moral law is eternal and absolute. Who would dare to-day to attack morality?" Moral people skimmed off the best fat from religion, ate it themselves, and are now having a tough job to get rid of the resulting scrofula. If, therefore, we point out that religion has not by any means been hurt in its inmost part so long as people reproach it only with its superhuman essence, and that it takes its final appeal to the "spirit" alone (for God is spirit), then we have sufficiently indicated its final accord with morality, and can leave its stubborn conflict with the latter lying behind us. It is a question of a supreme essence with both, and whether this is a superhuman or a human one can make (since it is in any case an essence over me, a super-mine one, so to speak) but little difference to me. In the end the relation to the human essence, or to "Man," as soon as ever it has shed the snake-skin of the old religion, will yet wear a religious snake-skin again. So Feuerbach instructs us that, "if one only _inverts_ speculative philosophy, _i. e._ always makes the predicate the subject, and so makes the subject the object and principle, one has the undraped truth, pure and clean."[34] Herewith, to be sure, we lose the narrow religious standpoint, lose the _God_, who from this standpoint is subject; but we take in exchange for it the other side of the religious standpoint, the _moral_ standpoint. _E. g._, we no longer say "God is love," but "Love is divine." If we further put in place of the predicate "divine" the equivalent "sacred," then, as far as concerns the sense, all the old comes back again. According to this, love is to be the _good_ in man, his divineness, that which does him honor, his true _humanity_ (it "makes him Man for the first time," makes for the first time a man out of him). So then it would be more accurately worded thus: Love is what is _human_ in man, and what is inhuman is the loveless egoist. But precisely all that which Christianity and with it speculative philosophy (_i. e._ theology) offers as the good, the absolute, is to self-ownership simply not the good (or, what means the same, it is _only the good_). Consequently, by the transformation of the predicate into the subject, the Christian _essence_ (and it is the predicate that contains the essence, you know) would only be fixed yet more oppressively. God and the divine would entwine themselves all the more inextricably with me. To expel God from his heaven and to rob him of his "_transcendence_" cannot yet support a claim of complete victory, if therein he is only chased into the human breast and gifted with indelible _immanence_. Now they say, "The divine is the truly human!" The same people who oppose Christianity as the basis of the State, _i. e._ oppose the so-called Christian State, do not tire of repeating that morality is "the fundamental pillar of social life and of the State." As if the dominion of morality were not a complete dominion of the sacred, a "hierarchy." So we may here mention by the way that rationalist movement which, after theologians had long insisted that only faith was capable of grasping religious truths, that only to believers did God reveal himself, etc., and that therefore only the heart, the feelings, the believing fancy was religious, broke out with the assertion that the "natural understanding," human reason, was also capable of discerning God. What does that mean but that the reason laid claim to be the same visionary as the fancy?[35] In this sense Reimarus wrote his "Most Notable Truths of Natural Religion." It had to come to this,--that the _whole_ man with all his faculties was found to be _religious_; heart and affections, understanding and reason, feeling, knowledge, and will,--in short, everything in man,--appeared religious. Hegel has shown that even philosophy is religious. And what is not called religion to-day? The "religion of love," the "religion of freedom," "political religion,"--in short, every enthusiasm. So it is, too, in fact. To this day we use the Romance word "religion," which expresses the concept of a condition of being _bound_. To be sure, we remain bound, so far as religion takes possession of our inward parts; but is the mind also bound? On the contrary, that is free, is sole lord, is not our mind, but absolute. Therefore the correct affirmative translation of the word religion would be "_freedom of mind_"! In whomsoever the mind is free, he is religious in just the same way as he in whom the senses have free course is called a sensual man. The mind binds the former, the desires the latter. Religion, therefore, is boundness or _religio_ with reference to me,--I am bound; it is freedom with reference to the mind,--the mind is free, or has freedom of mind. Many know from experience how hard it is on _us_ when the desires run away with us, free and unbridled; but that the free mind, splendid intellectuality, enthusiasm for intellectual interests, or however this jewel may in the most various phrase be named, brings _us_ into yet more grievous straits than even the wildest impropriety, people will not perceive; nor can they perceive it without being consciously egoists. Reimarus, and all who have shown that our reason, our heart, etc., also lead to God, have therewithal shown that we are possessed through and through. To be sure, they vexed the theologians, from whom they took away the prerogative of religious exaltation; but for religion, for freedom of mind, they thereby only conquered yet more ground. For, when the mind is no longer limited to feeling or faith, but also, as understanding, reason, and thought in general, belongs to itself the mind,--when, therefore, it may take part in the spiritual[36] and heavenly truths in the form of understanding, etc., as well as in its other forms,--then the whole mind is occupied only with spiritual things, _i. e._ with itself, and is therefore free. Now we are so through-and-through religious that "jurors," _i. e._ "sworn men," condemn us to death, and every policeman, as a good Christian, takes us to the lock-up by virtue of an "oath of office." Morality could not come into opposition with piety till after the time when in general the boisterous hate of everything that looked like an "order" (decrees, commandments, etc.) spoke out in revolt, and the personal "absolute lord" was scoffed at and persecuted; consequently it could arrive at independence only through liberalism, whose first form acquired significance in the world's history as "citizenship," and weakened the specifically religious powers (see "Liberalism" below). For, when morality not merely goes alongside of piety, but stands on feet of its own, then its principle lies no longer in the divine commandments, but in the law of reason, from which the commandments, so far as they are still to remain valid, must first await justification for their validity. In the law of reason man determines himself out of himself, for "Man" is rational, and out of the "essence of Man" those laws follow of necessity. Piety and morality part company in this,--that the former makes God the lawgiver, the latter Man. From a certain standpoint of morality people reason about as follows: Either man is led by his sensuality, and is, following it, _immoral_, or he is led by the good which, taken up into the will, is called moral sentiment (sentiment and prepossession in favor of the good); then he shows himself _moral_. From this point of view how, _e. g._, can Sand's act against Kotzebue be called immoral? What is commonly understood by unselfish it certainly was, in the same measure as (among other things) St. Crispin's thieveries in favor of the poor. "He should not have murdered, for it stands written, Thou shalt not murder!" Then to serve the good, the welfare of the people, as Sand at least intended, or the welfare of the poor, like Crispin,--is moral; but murder and theft are immoral; the purpose moral, the means immoral. Why? "Because murder, assassination, is something absolutely bad." When the Guerrillas enticed the enemies of the country into ravines and shot them down unseen from the bushes, do you suppose that was not assassination? According to the principle of morality, which commands us to serve the good, you could really ask only whether murder could never in any case be a realization of the good, and would have to endorse that murder which realized the good. You cannot condemn Sand's deed at all; it was moral, because in the service of the good, because unselfish; it was an act of punishment, which the individual inflicted, an--_execution_ inflicted at the risk of the executioner's life. What else had his scheme been, after all, but that he wanted to suppress writings by brute force? Are you not acquainted with the same procedure as a "legal" and sanctioned one? And what can be objected against it from your principle of morality?--"But it was an illegal execution." So the immoral thing in it was the illegality, the disobedience to law? Then you admit that the good is nothing else than--law, morality nothing else than _loyalty_. And to this externality of "loyalty" your morality must sink, to this righteousness of works in the fulfilment of the law, only that the latter is at once more tyrannical and more revolting than the old-time righteousness of works. For in the latter only the _act_ is needed, but you require the _disposition_ too; one must carry _in himself_ the law, the statute; and he who is most legally disposed is the most moral. Even the last vestige of cheerfulness in Catholic life must perish in this Protestant legality. Here at last the domination of the law is for the first time complete. "Not I live, but the law lives in me." Thus I have really come so far as to be only the "vessel of its glory." "Every Prussian carries his _gendarme_ in his breast," says a high Prussian officer. Why do certain _opposition parties_ fail to flourish? Solely for the reason that they refuse to forsake the path of morality or legality. Hence the measureless hypocrisy of devotion, love, etc., from whose repulsiveness one may daily get the most thorough nausea at this rotten and hypocritical relation of a "lawful opposition."--In the _moral_ relation of love and fidelity divided or opposed will cannot have place; the beautiful relation is disturbed if the one wills this and the other the reverse. But now, according to the practice hitherto and the old prejudice of the opposition, the moral relation is to be preserved above all. What is then left to the opposition? Perhaps the will to have a liberty, if the beloved one sees fit to deny it? Not a bit! It may not _will_ to have the freedom, it can only _wish_ for it, "petition" for it, lisp a "Please, please!" What would come of it, if the opposition really _willed_, willed with the full energy of the will? No, it must renounce _will_ in order to live to _love_, renounce liberty--for love of morality. It may never "claim as a right" what it is permitted only to "beg as a favor." Love, devotion, etc., demand with undeviating definiteness that there be only one will to which the others devote themselves, which they serve, follow, love. Whether this will is regarded as reasonable or as unreasonable, in both cases one acts morally when one follows it, and immorally when one breaks away from it. The will that commands the censorship seems to many unreasonable; but he who in a land of censorship evades the censoring of his book acts immorally, and he who submits it to the censorship acts morally. If some one let his moral judgment go, and set up _e. g._ a secret press, one would have to call him immoral, and imprudent into the bargain if he let himself be caught; but will such a man lay claim to a value in the eyes of the "moral"? Perhaps!--That is, if he fancied he was serving a "higher morality." The web of the hypocrisy of to-day hangs on the frontiers of two domains, between which our time swings back and forth, attaching its fine threads of deception and self-deception. No longer vigorous enough to serve _morality_ without doubt or weakening, not yet reckless enough to live wholly to egoism, it trembles now toward the one and now toward the other in the spider-web of hypocrisy, and, crippled by the curse of _halfness_, catches only miserable, stupid flies. If one has once dared to make a "free" motion, immediately one waters it again with assurances of love, and--_shams resignation_; if, on the other side, they have had the face to reject the free motion with _moral_ appeals to confidence, etc., immediately the moral courage also sinks, and they assure one how they hear the free words with special pleasure, etc.; they--_sham approval_. In short, people would like to have the one, but not go without the other; they would like to have a _free will_, but not for their lives lack the _moral will_. Just come in contact with a servile loyalist, you Liberals. You will sweeten every word of freedom with a look of the most loyal confidence, and he will clothe his servilism in the most flattering phrases of freedom. Then you go apart, and he, like you, thinks "I know you, fox!" He scents the devil in you as much as you do the dark old Lord God in him. A Nero is a "bad" man only in the eyes of the "good"; in mine he is nothing but a _possessed_ man, as are the good too. The good see in him an arch-villain, and relegate him to hell. Why did nothing hinder him in his arbitrary course? Why did people put up with so much? Do you suppose the tame Romans, who let all their will be bound by such a tyrant, were a hair the better? In old Rome they would have put him to death instantly, would never have been his slaves. But the contemporary "good" among the Romans opposed to him only moral demands, not their _will_; they sighed that their emperor did not do homage to morality, like them; they themselves remained "moral subjects," till at last one found courage to give up "moral, obedient subjection." And then the same "good Romans" who, as "obedient subjects," had borne all the ignominy of having no will, hurrahed over the nefarious, immoral act of the rebel. Where then in the "good" was the courage for the _revolution_, that courage which they now praised, after another had mustered it up? The good could not have this courage, for a revolution, and an insurrection into the bargain, is always something "immoral," which one can resolve upon only when one ceases to be "good" and becomes either "bad" or--neither of the two. Nero was no viler than his time, in which one could only be one of the two, good or bad. The judgment of his time on him had to be that he was bad, and this in the highest degree: not a milksop, but an arch-scoundrel. All moral people can pronounce only this judgment on him. Rascals such as he was are still living here and there to-day (see _e. g._ the Memoirs of Ritter von Lang) in the midst of the moral. It is not convenient to live among them certainly, as one is not sure of his life for a moment; but can you say that it is more convenient to live among the moral? One is just as little sure of his life there, only that one is hanged "in the way of justice," but least of all is one sure of his honor, and the national cockade is gone before you can say Jack Robinson. The hard fist of morality treats the noble nature of egoism altogether without compassion. "But surely one cannot put a rascal and an honest man on the same level!" Now, no human being does that oftener than you judges of morals; yes, still more than that, you imprison as a criminal an honest man who speaks openly against the existing constitution, against the hallowed institutions, etc., and you entrust portfolios and still more important things to a crafty rascal. So _in praxi_ you have nothing to reproach me with. "But in theory!" Now there I do put both on the same level, as two opposite poles,--to wit, both on the level of the moral law. Both have meaning only in the "moral" world, just as in the pre-Christian time a Jew who kept the law and one who broke it had meaning and significance only in respect to the Jewish law; before Jesus Christ, on the contrary, the Pharisee was no more than the "sinner and publican." So before self-ownership the moral Pharisee amounts to as much as the immoral sinner. Nero became very inconvenient by his possessedness. But a self-owning man would not sillily oppose to him the "sacred," and whine if the tyrant does not regard the sacred; he would oppose to him his will. How often the sacredness of the inalienable rights of man has been held up to their foes, and some liberty or other shown and demonstrated to be a "sacred right of man"! Those who do that deserve to be laughed out of court--as they actually are,--were it not that in truth they do, even though unconsciously, take the road that leads to the goal. They have a presentiment that, if only the majority is once won for that liberty, it will also will the liberty, and will then take what it _will_ have. The sacredness of the liberty, and all possible proofs of this sacredness, will never procure it; lamenting and petitioning only shows beggars. The moral man is necessarily narrow in that he knows no other enemy than the "immoral" man. "He who is not moral is immoral!" and accordingly reprobate, despicable, etc. Therefore the moral man can never comprehend the egoist. Is not unwedded cohabitation an immorality? The moral man may turn as he pleases, he will have to stand by this verdict; Emilia Galotti gave up her life for this moral truth. And it is true, it is an immorality. A virtuous girl may become an old maid; a virtuous man may pass the time in fighting his natural impulses till he has perhaps dulled them, he may castrate himself for the sake of virtue as St. Origen did for the sake of heaven: he thereby honors sacred wedlock, sacred chastity, as inviolable; he is--moral. Unchastity can never become a moral act. However indulgently the moral man may judge and excuse him who committed it, it remains a transgression, a sin against a moral commandment; there clings to it an indelible stain. As chastity once belonged to the monastic vow, so it does to moral conduct. Chastity is a--good.--For the egoist, on the contrary, even chastity is not a good without which he could not get along; he cares nothing at all about it. What now follows from this for the judgment of the moral man? This: that he throws the egoist into the only class of men that he knows besides moral men, into that of the--immoral. He cannot do otherwise; he must find the egoist immoral in everything in which the egoist disregards morality. If he did not find him so, then he would already have become an apostate from morality without confessing it to himself, he would already no longer be a truly moral man. One should not let himself be led astray by such phenomena, which at the present day are certainly no longer to be classed as rare, but should reflect that he who yields any point of morality can as little be counted among the truly moral as Lessing was a pious Christian when, in the well-known parable, he compared the Christian religion, as well as the Mohammedan and Jewish, to a "counterfeit ring." Often people are already further than they venture to confess to themselves. For Socrates, because in culture he stood on the level of morality, it would have been an immorality if he had been willing to follow Crito's seductive incitement and escape from the dungeon; to remain was the only moral thing. But it was solely because Socrates was--a moral man. The "unprincipled, sacrilegious" men of the Revolution, on the contrary, had sworn fidelity to Louis XVI, and decreed his deposition, yes, his death; but the act was an immoral one, at which moral persons will be horrified to all eternity. * * * * * Yet all this applies, more or less, only to "civic morality," on which the freer look down with contempt. For it (like civism, its native ground, in general) is still too little removed and free from the religious heaven not to transplant the latter's laws without criticism or further consideration to its domain instead of producing independent doctrines of its own. Morality cuts a quite different figure when it arrives at the consciousness of its dignity, and raises its principle, the essence of man, or "Man," to be the only regulative power. Those who have worked their way through to such a decided consciousness break entirely with religion, whose God no longer finds any place alongside their "Man," and, as they (see below) themselves scuttle the ship of State, so too they crumble away that "morality" which flourishes only in the State, and logically have no right to use even its name any further. For what this "critical" party calls morality is very positively distinguished from the so-called "civic or political morality," and must appear to the citizen like an "insensate and unbridled liberty." But at bottom it has only the advantage of the "purity of the principle," which, freed from its defilement with the religious, has now reached universal power in its clarified definiteness as "humanity." Therefore one should not wonder that the name "morality" is retained along with others, like freedom, benevolence, self-consciousness, etc., and is only garnished now and then with the addition, a "free" morality,--just as, though the civic State is abused, yet the State is to arise again as a "free State," or, if not even so, yet as a "free society." Because this morality completed into humanity has fully settled its accounts with the religion out of which it historically came forth, nothing hinders it from becoming a religion on its own account. For a distinction prevails between religion and morality only so long as our dealings with the world of men are regulated and hallowed by our relation to a superhuman being, or so long as our doing is a doing "for God's sake." If, on the other hand, it comes to the point that "man is to man the supreme being," then that distinction vanishes, and morality, being removed from its subordinate position, is completed into--religion. For then the higher being who had hitherto been subordinated to the highest, Man, has ascended to absolute height, and we are related to him as one is related to the highest being, _i. e._ religiously. Morality and piety are now as synonymous as in the beginning of Christianity, and it is only because the supreme being has come to be a different one that a holy walk is no longer called a "holy" one, but a "human" one. If morality has conquered, then a complete--_change of masters_ has taken place. After the annihilation of faith Feuerbach thinks to put in to the supposedly safe harbor of _love_. "The first and highest law must be the love of man to man. _Homo homini Deus est_--this is the supreme practical maxim, this the turning point of the world's history."[37] But, properly speaking, only the god is changed,--the _deus_; love has remained: there love to the superhuman God, here love to the human God, to _homo_ as _Deus_. Therefore man is to me--sacred. And everything "truly human" is to me--sacred! "Marriage is sacred of itself. And so it is with all moral relations. Friendship is and must be _sacred_ for you, and property, and marriage, and the good of every man, but sacred _in and of itself_."[38] Haven't we the priest again there? Who is his God? Man with a great M! What is the divine? The human! Then the predicate has indeed only been changed into the subject, and, instead of the sentence "God is love," they say "love is divine"; instead of "God has become man," "Man has become God," etc. It is nothing more or less than a new--_religion_. "All moral relations are ethical, are cultivated with a moral mind, only where of themselves (without religious consecration by the priest's blessing) they are counted _religious_." Feuerbach's proposition, "Theology is anthropology," means only "religion must be ethics, ethics alone is religion." Altogether Feuerbach accomplishes only a transposition of subject and predicate, a giving of preference to the latter. But, since he himself says, "Love is not (and has never been considered by men) sacred through being a predicate of God, but it is a predicate of God because it is divine in and of itself," he might judge that the fight against the predicates themselves, against love and all sanctities, must be commenced. How could he hope to turn men away from God when he left them the divine? And if, as Feuerbach says, God himself has never been the main thing to them, but only his predicates, then he might have gone on leaving them the tinsel longer yet, since the doll, the real kernel, was left at any rate. He recognizes, too, that with him it is "only a matter of annihilating an illusion";[39] he thinks, however, that the effect of the illusion on men is "downright ruinous, since even love, in itself the truest, most inward sentiment, becomes an obscure, illusory one through religiousness, since religious love loves man[40] only for God's sake, therefore loves man only apparently, but in truth God only." Is this different with moral love? Does it love the man, _this_ man for _this_ man's sake, or for morality's sake, for _Man's_ sake, and so--for _homo homini Deus_--for God's sake? * * * * * The wheels in the head have a number of other formal aspects, some of which it may be useful to indicate here. Thus _self-renunciation_ is common to the holy with the unholy, to the pure and the impure. The impure man _renounces_ all "better feelings," all shame, even natural timidity, and follows only the appetite that rules him. The pure man renounces his natural relation to the world ("renounces the world") and follows only the "desire" which rules him. Driven by the thirst for money, the avaricious man renounces all admonitions of conscience, all feeling of honor, all gentleness and all compassion; he puts all considerations out of sight; the appetite drags him along. The holy man behaves similarly. He makes himself the "laughing-stock of the world," is hard-hearted and "strictly just"; for the desire drags him along. As the unholy man renounces _himself_ before Mammon, so the holy man renounces _himself_ before God and the divine laws. We are now living in a time when the _shamelessness_ of the holy is every day more and more felt and uncovered, whereby it is at the same time compelled to unveil itself, and lay itself bare, more and more every day. Have not the shamelessness and stupidity of the reasons with which men antagonize the "progress of the age" long surpassed all measure and all expectation? But it must be so. The self-renouncers must, as holy men, take the same course that they do as unholy men; as the latter little by little sink to the fullest measure of self-renouncing vulgarity and _lowness_, so the former must ascend to the most dishonorable _exaltation_. The mammon of the earth and the _God_ of heaven both demand exactly the same degree of--self-renunciation. The low man, like the exalted one, reaches out for a "good,"--the former for the material good, the latter for the ideal, the so-called "supreme good"; and at last both complete each other again too, as the "materially-minded" man sacrifices everything to an ideal phantasm, his _vanity_, and the "spiritually-minded" man to a material gratification, the _life of enjoyment_. Those who exhort men to "unselfishness"[41] think they are saying an uncommon deal. What do they understand by it? Probably something like what they understand by "self-renunciation." But who is this self that is to be renounced and to have no benefit? It seems that _you_ yourself are supposed to be it. And for whose benefit is unselfish self-renunciation recommended to you? Again for _your_ benefit and behoof, only that through unselfishness you are procuring your "true benefit." You are to benefit _yourself_, and yet you are not seek _your_ benefit. People regard as unselfish the _benefactor_ of men, a Franke who founded the orphan asylum, an O'Connell who works tirelessly for his Irish people; but also the _fanatic_ who, like St. Boniface, hazards his life for the conversion of the heathen, or, like Robespierre, sacrifices everything to virtue,--like Koerner, dies for God, king, and fatherland. Hence, among others, O'Connell's opponents try to trump up against him some selfishness or mercenariness, for which the O'Connell fund seemed to give them a foundation; for, if they were successful in casting suspicion on his "unselfishness," they would easily separate him from his adherents. Yet what could they show further than that O'Connell was working for another _end_ than the ostensible one? But, whether he may aim at making money or at liberating the people, it still remains certain, in one case as in the other, that he is striving for an end, and that _his_ end; selfishness here as there, only that his national self-interest would be beneficial to _others too_, and so would be for the _common_ interest. Now, do you suppose unselfishness is unreal and nowhere extant? On the contrary, nothing is more ordinary! One may even call it an article of fashion in the civilized world, which is considered so indispensable that, if it costs too much in solid material, people at least adorn themselves with its tinsel counterfeit and feign it. Where does unselfishness begin? Right where an end ceases to be _our_ end and our _property_, which we, as owners, can dispose of at pleasure; where it becomes a fixed end or a--fixed idea; where it begins to inspire, enthuse, fanaticize us; in short, where it passes into our _stubbornness_ and becomes our--master. One is not unselfish so long as he retains the end in his power; one becomes so only at that "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise," the fundamental maxim of all the possessed; one becomes so in the case of a _sacred_ end, through the corresponding sacred zeal.-- I am not unselfish so long as the end remains my _own_, and I, instead of giving myself up to be the blind means of its fulfilment, leave it always an open question. My zeal need not on that account be slacker than the most fanatical, but at the same time I remain toward it frostily cold, unbelieving, and its most irreconcilable enemy; I remain its _judge_, because I am its owner. Unselfishness grows rank as far as possessedness reaches, as much on possessions of the devil as on those of a good spirit: there vice, folly, etc.; here humility, devotion, etc. Where could one look without meeting victims of self-renunciation? There sits a girl opposite me, who perhaps has been making bloody sacrifices to her soul for ten years already. Over the buxom form droops a deathly-tired head, and pale cheeks betray the slow bleeding away of her youth. Poor child, how often the passions may have beaten at your heart, and the rich powers of youth have demanded their right! When your head rolled in the soft pillow, how awakening nature quivered through your limbs, the blood swelled your veins, and fiery fancies poured the gleam of voluptuousness into your eyes! Then appeared the ghost of the soul and its eternal bliss. You were terrified, your hands folded themselves, your tormented eye turned its look upward, you--prayed. The storms of nature were hushed, a calm glided over the ocean of your appetites. Slowly the weary eyelids sank over the life extinguished under them, the tension crept out unperceived from the rounded limbs, the boisterous waves dried up in the heart, the folded hands themselves rested a powerless weight on the unresisting bosom, one last faint "Oh dear!" moaned itself away, and--_the soul was at rest_. You fell asleep, to awake in the morning to a new combat and a new--prayer. Now the habit of renunciation cools the heat of your desire, and the roses of your youth are growing pale in the--chlorosis of your heavenliness. The soul is saved, the body may perish! O Lais, O Ninon, how well you did to scorn this pale virtue! One free _grisette_ against a thousand virgins grown gray in virtue! The fixed idea may also be perceived as "maxim," "principle," "standpoint," and the like. Archimedes, to move the earth, asked for a standpoint _outside_ it. Men sought continually for this standpoint, and every one seized upon it as well as he was able. This foreign standpoint is the _world of mind_, of ideas, thoughts, concepts, essences, etc.; it is _heaven_. Heaven is the "standpoint" from which the earth is moved, earthly doings surveyed and--despised. To assure to themselves heaven, to occupy the heavenly standpoint firmly and for ever,--how painfully and tirelessly humanity struggled for this! Christianity has aimed to deliver us from a life determined by nature, from the appetites as actuating us, and so has meant that man should not let himself be determined by his appetites. This does not involve the idea that _he_ was not to _have_ appetites, but that the appetites were not to have him, that they were not to become _fixed_, uncontrollable, indissoluble. Now, could not what Christianity (religion) contrived against the appetites be applied by us to its own precept that _mind_ (thought, conceptions, ideas, faith, etc.) must determine us; could we not ask that neither should mind, or the conception, the idea, be allowed to determine us, to become _fixed_ and inviolable or "sacred"? Then it would end in the _dissolution of mind_, the dissolution of all thoughts, of all conceptions. As we there had to say "We are indeed to have appetites, but the appetites are not to have us," so we should now say "We are indeed to have _mind_, but mind is not to have us." If the latter seems lacking in sense, think _e. g._ of the fact that with so many a man a thought becomes a "maxim," whereby he himself is made prisoner to it, so that it is not he that has the maxim, but rather it that has him. And with the maxim he has a "permanent standpoint" again. The doctrines of the catechism become our _principles_ before we find it out, and no longer brook rejection. Their thought, or--mind, has the sole power, and no protest of the "flesh" is further listened to. Nevertheless it is only through the "flesh" that I can break the tyranny of mind; for it is only when a man hears his flesh along with the rest of him that he hears himself wholly, and it is only when he wholly hears _himself_ that he is a hearing or rational[42] being. The Christian does not hear the agony of his enthralled nature, but lives in "humility"; therefore he does not grumble at the wrong which befalls his _person_; he thinks himself satisfied with the "freedom of the spirit." But, if the flesh once takes the floor, and its tone is "passionate," "indecorous," "not well-disposed," "spiteful," etc. (as it cannot be otherwise), then he thinks he hears voices of devils, voices _against the spirit_ (for decorum, passionlessness, kindly disposition, and the like, is--spirit), and is justly zealous against them. He could not be a Christian if he were willing to endure them. He listens only to morality, and slaps immorality in the mouth; he listens only to legality, and gags the lawless word. The _spirit_ of morality and legality holds him a prisoner; a rigid, unbending _master_. They call that the "mastery of the spirit,"--it is at the same time the _standpoint_ of the spirit. And now whom do the ordinary liberal gentlemen mean to make free? Whose freedom is it that they cry out and thirst for? The _spirit's_! That of the spirit of morality, legality, piety, the fear of God, etc. That is what the anti-liberal gentlemen also want, and the whole contention between the two turns on a matter of advantage,--whether the latter are to be the only speakers, or the former are to receive a "share in the enjoyment of the same advantage." The _spirit_ remains the absolute _lord_ for both, and their only quarrel is over who shall occupy the hierarchical throne that pertains to the "Vicegerent of the Lord." The best of it is that one can calmly look upon the stir with the certainty that the wild beasts of history will tear each other to pieces just like those of nature; their putrefying corpses fertilize the ground for--our crops. We shall come back later to many another wheel in the head,--for instance, those of vocation, truthfulness, love, etc. * * * * * When one's own is contrasted with what is _imparted_ to him, there is no use in objecting that we cannot have anything isolated, but receive everything as a part of the universal order, and therefore through the impression of what is around us, and that consequently we have it as something "imparted"; for there is a great difference between the feelings and thoughts which are _aroused_ in me by other things and those which are _given_ to me. God, immortality, freedom, humanity, etc., are drilled into us from childhood as thoughts and feelings which move our inner being more or less strongly, either ruling us without our knowing it, or sometimes in richer natures manifesting themselves in systems and works of art; but are always not aroused, but imparted, feelings, because we must believe in them and cling to them. That an Absolute existed, and that it must be taken in, felt, and thought by us, was settled as a faith in the minds of those who spent all the strength of their mind on recognizing it and setting it forth. The _feeling_ for the Absolute exists there as an imparted one, and thenceforth results only in the most manifold revelations of its own self. So in Klopstock the religious feeling was an imparted one, which in the "Messiad" simply found artistic expression. If, on the other hand, the religion with which he was confronted had been for him only an incitation to feeling and thought, and if he had known how to take an attitude completely _his own_ toward it, then there would have resulted, instead of religious inspiration, a dissolution and consumption of the religion itself. Instead of that, he only continued in mature years his childish feelings received in childhood, and squandered the powers of his manhood in decking out his childish trifles. The difference is, then, whether feelings are imparted to me or only aroused. Those which are aroused are my own, egoistic, because they are not _as feelings_ drilled into me, dictated to me, and pressed upon me; but those which are imparted to me I receive, with open arms,--I cherish them in me as a heritage, cultivate them, and am _possessed_ by them. Who is there that has never, more or less consciously, noticed that our whole education is calculated to produce _feelings_ in us, _i. e._ impart them to us, instead of leaving their production to ourselves however they may turn out? If we hear thee name of God, we are to feel veneration; if we hear that of the prince's majesty, it is to be received with reverence, deference, submission; if we hear that of morality, we are to think that we hear something inviolable; if we hear of the Evil One or evil ones, we are to shudder; etc. The intention is directed to these _feelings_, and he who _e. g._ should hear with pleasure the deeds of the "bad" would have to be "taught what's what" with the rod of discipline. Thus stuffed with _imparted feelings_, we appear before the bar of majority and are "pronounced of age." Our equipment consists of "elevating feelings, lofty thoughts, inspiring maxims, eternal principles," etc. The young are of age when they twitter like the old; they are driven through school to learn the old song, and, when they have this by heart, they are declared of age. We _must not_ feel at every thing and every name that comes before us what we could and would like to feel thereat; _e. g._, at the name of God we must think of nothing laughable, feel nothing disrespectful, it being prescribed and imparted to us what and how we are to feel and think at mention of that name. That is the meaning of the _care of souls_,--that my soul or my mind be tuned as others think right, not as I myself would like it. How much trouble does it not cost one, finally to secure to oneself a feeling of one's _own_ at the mention of at least this or that name, and to laugh in the face of many who expect from us a holy face and a composed expression at their speeches. What is imparted is _alien_ to us, is not our own, and therefore is "sacred," and it is hard work to lay aside the "sacred dread of it." To-day one again hears "seriousness" praised, "seriousness in the presence of highly important subjects and discussions," "German seriousness," etc. This sort of seriousness proclaims clearly how old and grave lunacy and possession have already become. For there is nothing more serious than a lunatic when he comes to the central point of his lunacy; then his great earnestness incapacitates him for taking a joke. (See madhouses.) § 3.--THE HIERARCHY The historical reflections on our Mongolism which I propose to insert episodically at this place are not given with the claim of thoroughness, or even of approved soundness, but solely because it seems to me that they may contribute toward making the rest clear. The history of the world, whose shaping properly belongs altogether to the Caucasian race, seems till now to have run through two Caucasian ages, in the first of which we had to work out and work off our innate _negroidity_; this was followed in the second by _Mongoloidity_ (Chineseness), which must likewise be terribly made an end of. Negroidity represents _antiquity_, the time of dependence on _things_ (on cocks' eating, birds' flight, on sneezing, on thunder and lightning, on the rustling of sacred trees, etc.); Mongoloidity the time of dependence on thoughts, the _Christian_ time. Reserved for the future are the words "I am owner of the world of things, and I am owner of the world of mind." In the negroid age fall the campaigns of Sesostris and the importance of Egypt and of northern Africa in general. To the Mongoloid age belong the invasions of the Huns and Mongols, up to the Russians. The value of _me_ cannot possibly be rated high so long as the hard diamond of the _not-me_ bears so enormous a price as was the case both with God and with the world. The not-me is still too stony and indomitable to be consumed and absorbed by me; rather, men only creep about with extraordinary _bustle_ on this _immovable_ entity, _i. e._ on this _substance_, like parasitic animals on a body from whose juices they draw nourishment, yet without consuming it. It is the bustle of vermin, the assiduity of Mongolians. Among the Chinese, we know, everything remains as it used to be, and nothing "essential" or "substantial" suffers a change; all the more actively do they work away _at_ that which remains, which bears the name of the "old," "ancestors," etc. Accordingly, in our Mongolian age all change has been only reformatory or ameliorative, not destructive or consuming and annihilating. The substance, the object, _remains_. All our assiduity was only the activity of ants and the hopping of fleas, jugglers' tricks on the immovable tight-rope of the objective, _corvée_-service under the lordship of the unchangeable or "eternal." The Chinese are doubtless the most _positive_ nation, because totally buried in precepts; but neither has the Christian age come out from the _positive, i. e._ from "limited freedom," freedom "within certain limits." In the most advanced stage of civilization this activity earns the name of _scientific_ activity, of working on a motionless presupposition, a _hypothesis_ that is not to be upset. In its first and most unintelligible form morality shows itself as _habit_. To act according to the habit and usage (_morem_) of one's country--is to be moral there. Therefore pure moral action, clear, unadulterated morality, is most straightforwardly practised in China; they keep to the old habit and usage, and hate each innovation as a crime worthy of death. For _innovation_ is the deadly enemy of _habit_, of the _old_, of _permanence_. In fact, too, it admits of no doubt that through habit man secures himself against the obtrusiveness of things, of the world, and founds a world of his own in which alone he is and feels at home, _i. e._ builds himself a _heaven_. Why, heaven has no other meaning than that it is man's proper home, in which nothing alien regulates and rules him any longer, no influence of the earthly any longer makes him himself alien; in short, in which the dross of the earthly is thrown off, and the combat against the world has found an end,--in which, therefore, nothing is any longer _denied_ him. Heaven is the end of _abnegation_, it is _free enjoyment_. There man no longer denies himself anything, because nothing is any longer alien and hostile to him. But now habit is a "second nature," which detaches and frees man from his first and original natural condition, in securing him against every casualty of it. The fully elaborated habit of the Chinese has provided for all emergencies, and everything is "looked out for"; whatever may come, the Chinaman always knows how he has to behave, and does not need to decide first according to the circumstances; no unforeseen case throws him down from the heaven of his rest. The morally habituated and inured Chinaman is not surprised and taken off his guard; he behaves with equanimity (i. e. with equal spirit or temper) toward everything, because his temper, protected by the precaution of his traditional usage, does not lose its balance. Hence, on the ladder of culture or civilization humanity mounts the first round through habit; and, as it conceives that, in climbing to culture, it is at the same time climbing to heaven, the realm of culture or second nature, it really mounts the first round of the--ladder to heaven. If Mongoldom has settled the existence of spiritual beings,--if it has created a world of spirits, a heaven,--the Caucasians have wrestled for thousands of years with these spiritual beings, to get to the bottom of them. What were they doing, then, but building on Mongolian ground? They have not built on sand, but in the air; they have wrestled with Mongolism, stormed the Mongolian heaven, Tien. When will they at last annihilate this heaven? When will they at last become _really Caucasians_, and find themselves? When will the "immortality of the soul," which in these latter days thought it was giving itself still more security if it presented itself as "immortality of mind," at last change to the _mortality of mind_? It was when, in the industrious struggle of the Mongolian race, men had _built a heaven_, that those of the Caucasian race, since in their Mongolian complexion they have to do with heaven, took upon themselves the opposite task, the task of storming that heaven of custom, _heaven-storming_[43] activity. To dig under all human ordinance, in order to set up a new and--better one on the cleared site, to wreck all customs in order to put new and better customs in their place, etc.,--their act is limited to this. But is it thus already purely and really what it aspires to be, and does it reach its final aim? No, in this creation of a "_better_" it is tainted with Mongolism. It storms heaven only to make a heaven again, it overthrows an old power only to legitimate a new power, it only--_improves_. Nevertheless the point aimed at, often as it may vanish from the eyes at every new attempt, is the real, complete downfall of heaven, customs, etc.,--in short, of man secured only against the world, of the _isolation_ or _inwardness_ of man. Through the heaven of culture man seeks to isolate himself from the world, to break its hostile power. But this isolation of heaven must likewise be broken, and the true end of heaven-storming is the--downfall of heaven, the annihilation of heaven. _Improving_ and _reforming_ is the Mongolism of the Caucasian, because thereby he is always setting up again what already existed,--to wit, a _precept_, a generality, a heaven. He harbors the most irreconcilable enmity to heaven, and yet builds new heavens daily; piling heaven on heaven, he only crushes one by another; the Jews' heaven destroys the Greeks', the Christians' the Jews', the Protestants' the Catholics', etc.--If the _heaven-storming_ men of Caucasian blood throw on their Mongolian skin, they will bury the emotional man under the ruins of the monstrous world of emotion, the isolated man under his isolated world, the paradisiacal man under his heaven. And heaven is the _realm of spirits_, the realm _of freedom of the spirit_. The realm of heaven, the realm of spirits and ghosts, has found its right standing in the speculative philosophy. Here it was stated as the realm of thoughts, concepts, and ideas; heaven is peopled with thoughts and ideas, and this "realm of spirits" is then the true reality. To want to win freedom for the _spirit_ is Mongolism; freedom of the spirit is Mongolian freedom, freedom of feeling, moral freedom, etc. We may find the word "morality" taken as synonymous with spontaneity, self-determination. But that is not involved in it; rather has the Caucasian shown himself spontaneous only _in spite of_ his Mongolian morality. The Mongolian heaven, or morals,[44] remained the strong castle, and only by storming incessantly at this castle did the Caucasian show himself moral; if he had not had to do with morals at all any longer, if he had not had therein his indomitable, continual enemy, the relation to morals would cease, and consequently morality would cease. That his spontaneity is still a moral spontaneity, therefore, is just the Mongoloidity of it,--is a sign that in it he has not arrived at himself. "Moral spontaneity" corresponds entirely with "religious and orthodox philosophy," "constitutional monarchy," "the Christian State," "freedom within certain limits," "the limited freedom of the press," or, in a figure, to the hero fettered to a sick-bed. Man has not really vanquished Shamanism and its spooks till he possesses the strength to lay aside not only the belief in ghosts or in spirits, but also the belief in the spirit. He who believes in a spook no more assumes the "introduction of a higher world" than he who believes in the spirit, and both seek behind the sensual world a supersensual one; in short, they produce and believe _another_ world, and this other _world, the product of their mind_, is a spiritual world; for their senses grasp and know nothing of another, a non-sensual world, only their spirit lives in it. Going on from this Mongolian belief in the _existence of spiritual beings_ to the point that the _proper being_ of man too is his _spirit_, and that all care must be directed to this alone, to the "welfare of his soul," is not hard. Influence on the spirit, so-called "moral influence," is hereby assured. Hence it is manifest that Mongolism represents utter absence of any rights of the sensuous, represents non-sensuousness and unnature, and that sin and the consciousness of sin was our Mongolian torment that lasted thousands of years. But who, then, will dissolve the spirit into its _nothing_? He who by means of the spirit set forth nature as the _null_, finite, transitory, he alone can bring down the spirit too to like nullity. _I_ can; each one among you can, who does his will as an absolute I; in a word, the _egoist_ can. * * * * * Before the sacred, people lose all sense of power and all confidence; they occupy a _powerless_ and _humble_ attitude toward it. And yet no thing is sacred of itself, but by my _declaring it sacred_, by my declaration, my judgment, my bending the knee; in short, by my--conscience. Sacred is everything which for the egoist is to be unapproachable, not to be touched, outside his _power_,--_i. e._ above _him_; sacred, in a word, is every _matter of conscience_, for "this is a matter of conscience to me" means simply "I hold this sacred." For little children, just as for animals, nothing sacred exists, because, in order to make room for this conception, one must already have progressed so far in understanding that he can make distinctions like "good and bad," "warranted and unwarranted," etc.; only at such a level of reflection or intelligence--the proper standpoint of religion--can unnatural (_i. e._ brought into existence by thinking) _reverence_, "sacred dread," step into the place of natural _fear_. To this sacred dread belongs holding something outside oneself for mightier, greater, better warranted, better, etc.; _i. e._ the attitude in which one acknowledges the might of something alien--not merely feels it, then, but expressly acknowledges it, _i. e._ admits it, yields, surrenders, lets himself be tied (devotion, humility, servility, submission, etc.) Here walks the whole ghostly troop of the "Christian virtues." Everything toward which you cherish any respect or reverence deserves the name of sacred; you yourselves, too, say that you would feel a "_sacred dread_" of laying hands on it. And you give this tinge even to the unholy (gallows, crime, etc.) You have a horror of touching it. There lies in it something uncanny, _i. e._ unfamiliar or _not your own_. "If something or other did not rank as sacred in a man's mind, why, then all bars would be let down to self-will, to unlimited subjectivity!" Fear makes the beginning, and one can make himself fearful to the coarsest man; already, therefore, a barrier against his insolence. But in fear there always remains the attempt to liberate oneself from what is feared, by guile, deception, tricks, etc. In reverence,[45] on the contrary, it is quite otherwise. Here something is not only feared,[46] but also honored[47]: what is feared has become an inward power which I can no longer get clear of; I honor it, am captivated by it and devoted to it, belong to it; by the honor which I pay it I am completely in its power, and do not even attempt liberation any longer. Now I am attached to it with all the strength of faith; I _believe_. I and what I fear are one; "not I live, but the respected lives in me!" Because the spirit, the infinite, does not allow of coming to any end, therefore it is stationary; it fears _dying_, it cannot let go its dear Jesus, the greatness of finiteness is no longer recognized by its blinded eye; the object of fear, now raised to veneration, may no longer be handled; reverence is made eternal, the respected is deified. The man is now no longer employed in creating, but in _learning_ (knowing, investigating, etc.), _i. e._ occupied with a fixed _object_, losing himself in its depths, without return to himself. The relation to this object is that of knowing, fathoming, basing, etc., not that of _dissolution_ (abrogation, etc.) "Man is to be religious," that is settled; therefore people busy themselves only with the question how this is to be attained, what is the right meaning of religiousness, etc. Quite otherwise when one makes the axiom itself doubtful and calls it in question, even though it should go to smash. Morality too is such sacred conception; one must be moral, and must look only for the right "how," the right way to be so. One dares not go at morality itself with the question whether it is not itself an illusion; it remains exalted above all doubt, unchangeable. And so we go on with the sacred, grade after grade, from the "holy" to the "holy of holies." * * * * * Men are sometimes divided into two classes, _cultured_ and _uncultured_. The former, so far as they were worthy of their name, occupied themselves with thoughts, with mind, and (because in the time since Christ, of which the very principle is thought, they were the ruling ones) demanded a servile respect for the thoughts recognized by them. State, emperor, church, God, morality, order, etc., are such thoughts or spirits, that exist only for the mind. A merely living being, an animal, cares as little for them as a child. But the uncultured are really nothing but children, and he who attends only to the necessities of his life is indifferent to those spirits; but, because he is also weak before them, he succumbs to their power, and is ruled by--thoughts. This is the meaning of hierarchy. _Hierarchy is dominion of thoughts, dominion of mind!_ We are hierarchic to this day, kept down by those who are supported by thoughts. Thoughts are the sacred. But the two are always clashing, now one and now the other giving the offence; and this clash occurs, not only in the collision of two men, but in one and the same man. For no cultured man is so cultured as not to find enjoyment in things too, and so be uncultured; and no uncultured man is totally without thoughts. In Hegel it comes to light at last what a longing for _things_ even the most cultured man has, and what a horror of every "hollow theory" he harbors. With him reality, the world of things, is altogether to correspond to the thought, and no concept to be without reality. This caused Hegel's system to be known as the most objective, as if in it thought and thing celebrated their union. But this was simply the extremest case of violence on the part of thought, its highest pitch of despotism and sole dominion, the triumph of mind, and with it the triumph of _philosophy_. Philosophy cannot hereafter achieve anything higher, for its highest is the _omnipotence of mind_, the almightiness of mind.[48] Spiritual men have _taken into their head_ something that is to be realized. They have _concepts_ of love, goodness, and the like, which they would like to see _realized_; therefore they want to set up a kingdom of love on earth, in which no one any longer acts from selfishness, but each one "from love." Love is to _rule_. What they have taken into their head, what shall we call it but--_fixed idea_? Why, "their head is _haunted_." The most oppressive spook is _Man_. Think of the proverb, "The road to ruin is paved with good intentions." The intention to realize humanity altogether in oneself, to become altogether man, is of such ruinous kind; here belong the intentions to become good, noble, loving, etc. In the sixth part of the "_Denkwuerdigkeiten_" p. 7, Bruno Bauer says: "That middle class, which was to receive such a terrible importance for modern history is capable of no self-sacrificing action, no enthusiasm for an idea, no exaltation; it devotes itself to nothing but the interests of its mediocrity; _i. e._ it remains always limited to itself, and conquers at last only through its bulk, with which it has succeeded in tiring out the efforts of passion, enthusiasm, consistency,--through its surface, into which it absorbs a part of the new ideas." And (p. 6) "It has turned the revolutionary ideas, for which not it, but unselfish or impassioned men sacrificed themselves, solely to its own profit, has turned spirit into money.--That is, to be sure, after it had taken away from those ideas their point, their consistency, their destructive seriousness, fanatical against all egoism." These people, then, are not self-sacrificing, not enthusiastic, not idealistic, not consistent, not zealots; they are egoists in the usual sense, selfish people, looking out for their advantage, sober, calculating, etc. Who, then, is "self-sacrificing"?[49] In the full sense, surely, he who ventures everything else for _one thing_, one object, one will, one passion, etc. Is not the lover self-sacrificing who forsakes father and mother, endures all dangers and privations, to reach his goal? Or the ambitious man, who offers up all his desires, wishes, and satisfactions to the single passion, or the avaricious man who denies himself everything to gather treasures, or the pleasure-seeker, etc.? He is ruled by a passion to which he brings the rest as sacrifices. And are these self-sacrificing people perchance not selfish, not egoists? As they have only one ruling passion, so they provide for only one satisfaction, but for this the more strenuously; they are wholly absorbed in it. Their entire activity is egoistic, but it is a one-sided, unopened, narrow egoism; it is possessedness. "Why, those are petty passions, by which, on the contrary, man must not let himself be enthralled. Man must make sacrifices for a great idea, a great cause!" A "great idea," a "good cause," is, it may be, the honor of God, for which innumerable people have met death; Christianity, which has found its willing martyrs; the Holy Catholic Church, which has greedily demanded sacrifices of heretics; liberty and equality, which were waited on by bloody guillotines. He who lives for a great idea, a good cause, a doctrine, a system, a lofty calling, may not let any worldly lusts, any self-seeking interest, spring up in him. Here we have the concept of _clericalism_, or, as it may also be called in its pedagogic activity, school-masterliness; for the idealists play the schoolmaster over us. The clergyman is especially called to live to the idea and to work for the idea, the truly good cause. Therefore the people feel how little it befits him to show worldly haughtiness, to desire good living, to join in such pleasures as dancing and gaming,--in short, to have any other than a "sacred interest." Hence too, doubtless, is derived the scanty salary of teachers, who are to feel themselves repaid by the sacredness of their calling alone, and to "renounce" other enjoyments. Even a directory of the sacred ideas, one or more of which man is to look upon as his calling, is not lacking. Family, fatherland, science, etc., may find in man a servant faithful to his calling. Here we come upon the old, old craze of the world which has not yet learned to do without clericalism,--that to live and work _for an idea_ is man's calling, and according to the faithfulness of its fulfilment his _human_ worth is measured. This is the dominion of the idea; in other words, it is clericalism. _E. g._, Robespierre, St. Just, etc., were priests through and through, inspired by the idea, enthusiasts, consistent instruments of this idea, idealistic men. So St. Just exclaims in a speech, "There is something terrible in the sacred love of country; it is so exclusive that it sacrifices everything to the public interest without mercy, without fear, without human consideration. It hurls Manlius down the precipice; it sacrifices its private inclinations; it leads Regulus to Carthage, throws a Roman into the chasm, and sets Marat, as a victim of his devotion, in the Pantheon." Now, over against these representatives of ideal or sacred interests stands a world of innumerable "personal" profane interests. No idea, no system, no sacred cause is so great as never to be outrivaled and modified by these personal interests. Even if they are silent momentarily, and in times of rage and fanaticism, yet they soon come uppermost again through "the sound sense of the people." Those ideas do not completely conquer till they are no longer hostile to personal interests, _i. e._ till they satisfy egoism. The man who is just now crying herrings in front of my window has a personal interest in good sales, and, if his wife or anybody else wishes him the like, this remains a personal interest all the same. If, on the other hand, a thief deprived him of his basket, then there would at once arise an interest of many, of the whole city, of the whole country, or, in a word, of all who abhor theft; an interest in which the herring-seller's person would become indifferent, and in its place the category of the "robbed man" would come into the foreground. But even here all might yet resolve itself into a personal interest, each of the partakers reflecting that he must concur in the punishment of the thief because unpunished stealing might otherwise become general and cause him too to lose his own. Such a calculation, however, can hardly be assumed on the part of many, and we shall rather hear the cry that the thief is a "criminal." Here we have before us a judgment, the thief's action receiving its expression in the concept "crime." Now the matter stands thus: even if a crime did not cause the slightest damage either to me or to any of those in whom I take an interest, I should nevertheless _denounce_ it. Why? Because I am enthusiastic for _morality_, filled with the _idea_ of morality; what is hostile to it I everywhere assail. Because in his mind theft ranks as abominable without any question, Proudhon, _e. g._, thinks that with the sentence "Property is theft" he has at once put a brand on property. In the sense of the priestly, theft is always a _crime_, or at least a misdeed. Here the personal interest is at an end. This particular person who has stolen the basket is perfectly indifferent to my person; it is only the thief, this concept of which that person presents a specimen, that I take an interest in. The thief and man are in my mind irreconcilable opposites; for one is not truly man when one is a thief; one degrades _Man_ or "humanity" in himself when one steals. Dropping out of personal concern, one gets into _philanthropism_, friendliness to man, which is usually misunderstood as if it was a love to men, to each individual, while it is nothing but a love of Man, the unreal concept, the spook. It is not [Greek: tous anthrôpous], men, but [Greek: ton anthrôpon], Man, that the philanthropist carries in his heart. To be sure, he cares for each individual, but only because he wants to see his beloved ideal realized everywhere. So there is nothing said here of care for me, you, us; that would be personal interest, and belongs under the head of "worldly love." Philanthropism is a heavenly, spiritual, a--priestly love. _Man_ must be restored in us, even if thereby we poor devils should come to grief. It is the same priestly principle as that famous _fiat justitia, pereat mundus_; man and justice are ideas, ghosts, for love of which everything is sacrificed; therefore the priestly spirits are the "self-sacrificing" ones. He who is infatuated with _Man_ leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. _Man_, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook. Now, things as different as possible can belong to _Man_ and be so regarded. If one finds Man's chief requirement in piety, there arises religious clericalism; if one sees it in morality, then moral clericalism raises its head. On this account the priestly spirits of our day want to make a "religion" of everything, a "religion of liberty," "religion of equality," etc., and for them every idea becomes a "sacred cause," _e. g._ even citizenship, politics, publicity, freedom of the press, trial by jury, etc. Now, what does "unselfishness" mean in this sense? Having only an ideal interest, before which no respect of persons avails! The stiff head of the worldly man opposes this, but for centuries has always been worsted at least so far as to have to bend the unruly neck and "honor the higher power"; clericalism pressed it down. When the worldly egoist had shaken off a higher power (_e. g._ the Old Testament law, the Roman pope, etc.), then at once a seven times higher one was over him again, _e. g._ faith in the place of the law, the transformation of all laymen into divines in place of the limited body of clergy, etc. His experience was like that of the possessed man into whom seven devils passed when he thought he had freed himself from one. In the passage quoted above all ideality, etc., is denied to the middle class. It certainly schemed against the ideal consistency with which Robespierre wanted to carry out the principle. The instinct of its interest told it that this consistency harmonized too little with what its mind was set on, and that it would be acting against itself if it were willing to further the enthusiasm for principle. Was it to behave so unselfishly as to abandon all its aims in order to bring a harsh theory to its triumph? It suits the priests admirably, to be sure, when people listen to their summons, "Cast away everything and follow me," or "Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." Some decided idealists obey this call; but most act like Ananias and Sapphira, maintaining a behavior half clerical or religious and half worldly, serving God and Mammon. I do not blame the middle class for not wanting to let its aims be frustrated by Robespierre, _i. e._ for inquiring of its egoism how far it might give the revolutionary idea a chance. But one might blame (if blame were in place here anyhow) those who let their own interests be frustrated by the interests of the middle class. However, will not they likewise sooner or later learn to understand what is to their advantage? August Becker says:[50] "To win the producers (proletarians) a negation of the traditional conception of right is by no means enough. Folks unfortunately care little for the theoretical victory of the idea. One must demonstrate to them _ad oculos_ how this victory can be practically utilized in life." And (p. 32): "You must get hold of folks by their real interests if you want to work upon them." Immediately after this he shows how a fine looseness of morals is already spreading among our peasants, because they prefer to follow their real interests rather than the commands of morality. Because the revolutionary priests or schoolmasters served _Man_, they cut off the heads of _men_. The revolutionary laymen, those outside the sacred circle, did not feel any greater horror of cutting off heads, but were less anxious about the rights of Man than about their own. How comes it, though, that the egoism of those who affirm personal interest, and always inquire of it, is nevertheless forever succumbing to a priestly or schoolmasterly (_i. e._ an ideal) interest? Their person seems to them too small, too insignificant,--and is so in fact,--to lay claim to everything and be able to put itself completely in force. There is a sure sign of this in their dividing themselves into two persons, an eternal and a temporal, and always caring either only for the one or only for the other, on Sunday for the eternal, on the work-day for the temporal, in prayer for the former, in work for the latter. They have the priest in themselves, therefore they do not get rid of him, but hear themselves lectured inwardly every Sunday. How men have struggled and calculated to get at a solution regarding these dualistic essences! Idea followed upon idea, principle upon principle, system upon system, and none knew how to keep down permanently the contradiction of the "worldly" man, the so-called "egoist." Does not this prove that all those ideas were too feeble to take up my whole will into themselves and satisfy it? They were and remained hostile to me, even if the hostility lay concealed for a considerable time. Will it be the same with _self-ownership_? Is it too only an attempt at mediation? Whatever principle I turned to, it might be to that of _reason_, I always had to turn away from it again. Or can I always be rational, arrange my life according to reason in everything? I can, no doubt, _strive_ after rationality, I can _love_ it, just as I can also love God and every other idea. I can be a philosopher, a lover of wisdom, as I love God. But what I love, what I strive for, is only in my idea, my conception, my thoughts; it is in my heart, my head, it is in me like the heart, but it is not I, I am not it. To the activity of priestly minds belongs especially what one often hears called "_moral influence_." Moral influence takes its start where _humiliation_ begins; yes, it is nothing else than this humiliation itself, the breaking and bending of the temper[51] down to _humility_.[52] If I call to some one to run away when a rock is to be blasted, I exert no moral influence by this demand; if I say to a child "You will go hungry if you will not eat what is put on the table," this is not moral influence. But, if I say to it "You will pray, honor your parents, respect the crucifix, speak the truth, etc., for this belongs to man and is man's calling," or even "this is God's will," then moral influence is complete; then a man is to bend before the _calling_ of man, be tractable, become humble, give up his will for an alien one which is set up as rule and law; he is to _abase_ himself before something _higher_: self-abasement. "He that abaseth himself shall be exalted." Yes, yes, children must early be _made_ to practise piety, godliness, and propriety; a person of good breeding is one into whom "good maxims" have been _instilled_ and _impressed_, poured in through a funnel, thrashed in and preached in. If one shrugs his shoulders at this, at once the good wring their hands despairingly, and cry: "But, for heaven's sake, if one is to give children no good instruction, why, then they will run straight into the jaws of sin, and become good-for-nothing hoodlums!" Gently, you prophets of evil. Good-for-nothing in your sense they certainly will become; but your sense happens to be a very good-for-nothing sense. The impudent lads will no longer let anything be whined and chattered into them by you, and will have no sympathy for all the follies for which you have been raving and driveling since the memory of man began; they will abolish the law of inheritance, _i. e._ they will not be willing to _inherit_ your stupidities as you inherited them from your fathers; they destroy _inherited sin_.[53] If you command them, "Bend before the Most High," they will answer: "If he wants to bend us, let him come himself and do it; we, at least, will not bend of our own accord." And, if you threaten them with his wrath and his punishment, they will take it like being threatened with the bogie-man. If you are no longer successful in making them afraid of ghosts, then the dominion of ghosts is at an end, and nurses' tales find no--_faith_. And is it not precisely the liberals again that press for good education and improvement of the educational system? For how could their liberalism, their "liberty within the bounds of law," come about without discipline? Even if they do not exactly educate to the fear of God, yet they demand the _fear of Man_ all the more strictly, and awaken "enthusiasm for the truly human calling" by discipline. * * * * * A long time passed away, in which people were satisfied with the fancy that they had the _truth_, without thinking seriously whether perhaps they themselves must be true to possess the truth. This time was the _Middle Ages_. With the common consciousness--_i. e._ the consciousness which deals with things, that consciousness which has receptivity only for things, or for what is sensuous and sense-moving--they thought to grasp what did not deal with things and was not perceptible by the senses. As one does indeed also exert his eye to see the remote, or laboriously exercise his hand till its fingers have become dexterous enough to press the keys correctly, so they chastened themselves in the most manifold ways, in order to become capable of receiving the supersensual wholly into themselves. But what they chastened was, after all, only the sensual man, the common consciousness, so-called finite or objective thought. Yet as this thought, this understanding, which Luther decries under the name of reason, is incapable of comprehending the divine, its chastening contributed just as much to the understanding of the truth as if one exercised the feet year in and year out in dancing, and hoped that in this way they would finally learn to play the flute. Luther, with whom the so-called Middle Ages end, was the first who understood that the man himself must become other than he was if he wanted to comprehend truth,--must become as true as truth itself. Only he who already has truth in his belief, only he who _believes_ in it, can become a partaker of it; _i. e._, only the believer finds it accessible and sounds its depths. Only that organ of man which is able to blow can attain the further capacity of flute-playing, and only that man can become a partaker of truth who has the right organ for it. He who is capable of thinking only what is sensuous, objective, pertaining to things, figures to himself in truth only what pertains to things. But truth is spirit, stuff altogether inappreciable by the senses, and therefore only for the "higher consciousness," not for that which is "earthly-minded." With Luther, accordingly, dawns the perception that truth, because it is a _thought_, is only for the _thinking_ man. And this is to say that man must henceforth take an utterly different standpoint, viz., the heavenly, believing, scientific standpoint, or that of _thought_ in relation to its object, the--_thought_,--that of mind in relation to mind. Consequently: only the like apprehend the like. "You are like the spirit that you understand."[54] Because Protestantism broke the mediæval hierarchy, the opinion could take root that hierarchy in general had been shattered by it, and it could be wholly overlooked that it was precisely a "reformation," and so a reinvigoration of the antiquated hierarchy. That mediæval hierarchy had been only a weakly one, as it had to let all possible barbarism of unsanctified things run on uncoerced beside it, and it was the Reformation that first steeled the power of hierarchy. If Bruno Bauer thinks:[55] "As the Reformation was mainly the abstract rending of the religious principle from art, State, and science, and so its liberation from those powers with which it had joined itself in the antiquity of the church and in the hierarchy of the Middle Ages, so too the theological and ecclesiastical movements which proceeded from the Reformation are only the consistent carrying out of this abstraction of the religious principle from the other powers of humanity," I regard precisely the opposite as correct, and think that the dominion of spirits, or freedom of mind (which comes to the same thing), was never before so all-embracing and all-powerful, because the present one, instead of rending the religious principle from art, State, and science, lifted the latter altogether out of secularity into the "realm of spirit" and made them religious. Luther and Descartes have been appropriately put side by side in their "He who believes is a God" and "I think, therefore I am" (_cogito, ergo sum_). Man's heaven is _thought_,--mind. Everything can be wrested from him, except thought, except faith. _Particular_ faith, like faith in Zeus, Astarte, Jehovah, Allah, etc., may be destroyed, but faith itself is indestructible. In thought is freedom. What I need and what I hunger for is no longer granted to me by any _grace_, by the Virgin Mary, by intercession of the saints, or by the binding and loosing church, but I procure it for myself. In short, my being (the _sum_) is a living in the heaven of thought, of mind, a _cogitare_. But I myself am nothing else than mind, thinking mind (according to Descartes), believing mind (according to Luther). My body I am not; my flesh may _suffer_ from appetites or pains. I am not my flesh, but _I_ am _mind_, only mind. This thought runs through the history of the Reformation till to-day. Only by the more modern philosophy since Descartes has a serious effort been made to bring Christianity to complete efficacy, by exalting the "scientific consciousness" to be the only true and valid one. Hence it begins with absolute _doubt_, _dubitare_, with grinding common consciousness to atoms, with turning away from everything that "mind," "thought," does not legitimate. To it _Nature_ counts for nothing; the opinion of men, their "human precepts," for nothing: and it does not rest till it has brought reason into everything, and can say "The real is the rational, and only the rational is the real." Thus it has at last brought mind, reason, to victory; and everything is mind, because everything is rational, because all nature, as well as even the perversest opinions of men, contains reason; for "all must serve for the best," _i. e._ lead to the victory of reason. Descartes's _dubitare_ contains the decided statement that only _cogitare_, thought, mind--_is_. A complete break with "common" consciousness, which ascribes reality to _irrational_ things! Only the rational is, only mind is! This is the principle of modern philosophy, the genuine Christian principle. Descartes in his own time discriminated the body sharply from the mind, and "the spirit 'tis that builds itself the body," says Goethe. But this philosophy itself, Christian philosophy, still does not get rid of the rational, and therefore inveighs against the "merely subjective," against "fancies, fortuities, arbitrariness," etc. What it wants is that the _divine_ should become visible in everything, and all consciousness become a knowing of the divine, and man behold God everywhere; but God never is, without the _devil_. For this very reason the name of philosopher is not to be given to him who has indeed open eyes for the things of the world, a clear and undazzled gaze, a correct judgment about the world, but who sees in the world just the world, in objects only objects, and, in short, everything prosaically as it is; but he alone is a philosopher who sees, and points out or demonstrates, heaven in the world, the supernal in the earthly, the--_divine_ in the mundane. The former may be ever so wise, there is no getting away from this: What wise men see not by their wisdom's art Is practised simply by a childlike heart.[56] It takes this childlike heart, this eye for the divine, to make a philosopher. The first-named man has only a "common" consciousness, but he who knows the divine, and knows how to tell it, has a "scientific" one. On this ground Bacon was turned out of the realm of philosophers. And certainly what is called English philosophy seems to have got no further than to the discoveries of so-called "clear heads", such as Bacon and Hume. The English did not know how to exalt the simplicity of the childlike heart to philosophic significance, did not know how to make--philosophers out of childlike hearts. This is as much as to say, their philosophy was not able to become _theological_ or _theology_, and yet it is only as theology that it can really _live itself out_, complete itself. The field of its battle to the death is in theology. Bacon did not trouble himself about theological questions and cardinal points. Cognition has its object in life. German thought seeks, more than that of others, to reach the beginnings and fountain-heads of life, and sees no life till it sees it in cognition itself. Descartes's _cogito, ergo sum_ has the meaning "One lives only when one thinks." Thinking life is called "intellectual life"! Only mind lives, its life is the true life. Then, just so in nature only the "eternal laws," the mind or the reason of nature, are its true life. In man, as in nature, only the thought lives; everything else is dead! To this abstraction, to the life of generalities or of that which is _lifeless_, the history of mind had to come. God, who is spirit, alone lives. Nothing lives but the ghost. How can one try to assert of modern philosophy or modern times that they have reached freedom, since they have not freed us from the power of objectivity? Or am I perhaps free from a despot when I am not afraid of the personal potentate, to be sure, but of every infraction of the loving reverence which I fancy I owe him? The case is the same with modern times. They only changed the _existing_ objects, the real ruler, etc., into _conceived_ objects, _i. e._ into _ideas_, before which the old respect not only was not lost, but increased in intensity. Even if people snapped their fingers at God and the devil in their former crass reality, people devoted only the greater attention to their ideas. "They are rid of the Evil One; evil is left."[57] The decision having once been made not to let oneself be imposed on any longer by the extant and palpable, little scruple was felt about revolting against the existing State or overturning the existing laws; but to sin against the _idea_ of the State, not to submit to the _idea_ of law, who would have dared that? So one remained a "citizen" and a "law-respecting," loyal man; yes, one seemed to himself to be only so much more law-respecting, the more rationalistically one abrogated the former defective law in order to do homage to the "spirit of the law." In all this the objects had only suffered a change of form; they had remained in their prepollence and pre-eminence; in short, one was still involved in obedience and possessedness, lived in _refection_, and had an object on which one reflected, which one respected, and before which one felt reverence and fear. One had done nothing but transform the _things_ into _conceptions_ of the things, into thoughts and ideas, whereby one's _dependence_ became all the more intimate and indissoluble. So, _e. g._, it is not hard to emancipate oneself from the commands of parents, or to set aside the admonitions of uncle and aunt, the entreaties of brother and sister; but the renounced obedience easily gets into one's conscience, and the less one does give way to the individual demands, because he rationalistically, by his own reason, recognizes them to be unreasonable, so much the more conscientiously does he hold fast to filial piety and family love, and so much the harder is it for him to forgive himself a trespass against the _conception_ which he has formed of family love and of filial duty. Released from dependence as regards the existing family, one falls into the more binding dependence on the idea of the family; one is ruled by the spirit of the family. The family consisting of John, Maggie, etc., whose dominion has become powerless, is only internalized, being left as "family" in general, to which one just applies the old saying, "We must obey God rather than man," whose significance here is this: "I cannot, to be sure, accommodate myself to your senseless requirements, but, as my 'family,' you still remain the object of my love and care"; for "the family" is a sacred idea, which the individual must never offend against.--And this family internalized and desensualized into a thought, a conception, now ranks as the "sacred," whose despotism is tenfold more grievous because it makes a racket in my conscience. This despotism is broken only when the conception, family, also becomes a _nothing_ to me. The Christian dicta, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?"[58] "I am come to stir up a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother,"[59] and others, are accompanied by something that refers us to the heavenly or true family, and mean no more than the State's demand, in case of a collision between it and the family, that we obey _its_ commands. The case of morality is like that of the family. Many a man renounces morals, but with great difficulty the conception, "morality." Morality is the "idea" of morals, their intellectual power, their power over the conscience; on the other hand, morals are too material to rule the mind, and do not fetter an "intellectual" man, a so-called independent, a "freethinker." The Protestant may put it as he will, the "holy[60] Scripture," the "Word of God," still remains sacred[61] for him. He for whom this is no longer "holy" has ceased to--be a Protestant. But herewith what is "ordained" in it, the public authorities appointed by God, etc., also remain sacred for him. For him these things remain indissoluble, unapproachable, "raised above all doubt"; and, as _doubt_, which in practice becomes a _buffeting_, is what is most man's own, these things remain "raised" above himself. He who cannot _get away_ from them will--_believe_; for to believe in them is to be _bound_ to them. Through the fact that in Protestantism the _faith_ became a more inward faith, the _servitude_ has also become a more inward servitude; one has taken those sanctities up into himself, entwined them with all his thoughts and endeavors, made them a "_matter of conscience_," constructed out of them a "_sacred duty_" for himself. Therefore what the Protestant's conscience cannot get away from is sacred to him, and _conscientiousness_ most clearly designates his character. Protestantism has actually put a man in the position of a country governed by secret police. The spy and eavesdropper, "conscience," watches over every motion of the mind, and all thought and action is for it a "matter of conscience," _i. e._ police business. This tearing apart of man into "natural impulse" and "conscience" (inner populace and inner police) is what constitutes the Protestant. The reason of the Bible (in place of the Catholic "reason of the church") ranks as sacred, and this feeling and consciousness that the word of the Bible is sacred is called--conscience. With this, then, sacredness is "laid upon one's conscience." If one does not free himself from conscience, the consciousness of the sacred, he may act unconscientiously indeed, but never consciencelessly. The Catholic finds himself satisfied when he fulfils the _command_; the Protestant acts according to his "best judgment and conscience." For the Catholic is only a _layman_; the Protestant is himself a _clergyman_.[62] Just this is the progress of the Reformation period beyond the Middle Ages, and at the same time its curse,--that _the spiritual_ became complete. What else was the Jesuit moral philosophy than a continuation of the sale of indulgences? only that the man who was relieved of his burden of sin now gained also an _insight_ into the remission of sins, and convinced himself how really his sin was taken from him, since in this or that particular case (Casuists) it was so clearly no sin at all that he committed. The sale of indulgences had made all sins and transgressions permissible, and silenced every movement of conscience. All sensuality might hold sway, if it was only purchased from the church. This favoring of sensuality was continued by the Jesuits, while the strictly moral, dark, fanatical, repentant, contrite, praying Protestants (as the true completers of Christianity, to be sure) acknowledged only the intellectual and spiritual man. Catholicism, especially the Jesuits, gave aid to egoism in this way, found involuntary and unconscious adherents within Protestantism itself, and saved us from the subversion and extinction of _sensuality_. Nevertheless the Protestant spirit spreads its dominion farther and farther; and, as, beside it the "divine," the Jesuit spirit represents only the "diabolic" which is inseparable from everything divine, the latter can never assert itself alone, but must look on and see how in France, _e. g._, the Philistinism of Protestantism wins at last, and mind is on top. Protestantism is usually complimented on having brought the mundane into repute again, _e. g._ marriage, the State, etc. But the mundane itself as mundane, the secular, is even more indifferent to it than to Catholicism, which lets the profane world stand, yes, and relishes its pleasures, while the rational, consistent Protestant sets about annihilating the mundane altogether, and that simply by _hallowing_ it. So marriage has been deprived of its naturalness by becoming sacred, not in the sense of the Catholic sacrament, where it only receives its consecration from the church and so is unholy at bottom, but in the sense of being something sacred in itself to begin with, a sacred relation. Just so the State, etc. Formerly the pope gave consecration and his blessing to it and its princes; now the State is intrinsically sacred, majesty is sacred without needing the priest's blessing. The order of nature, or natural law, was altogether hallowed as "God's ordinance." Hence it is said _e. g._ in the Augsburg Confession, Art. 11: "So now we reasonably abide by the saying, as the jurisconsults have wisely and rightly said: that man and woman should be with each other is a natural law. Now, if it is a _natural law, then it is God's ordinance_, therefore implanted in nature, and therefore a _divine_ law also." And is it anything more than Protestantism brought up to date, when Feuerbach pronounces moral relations sacred, not as God's ordinance indeed, but, instead, for the sake of the _spirit_ that dwells in them? "But marriage--as a free alliance of love, of course--is _sacred of itself_, by the _nature_ of the union that is formed here. _That_ marriage alone is a _religious_ one that is a _true_ one, that corresponds to the _essence_ of marriage, love. And so it is with all moral relations. They are _ethical_, are cultivated with a moral mind, only where they rank as _religious of themselves_. True friendship is only where the _limits_ of friendship are preserved with religious conscientiousness, with the same conscientiousness with which the believer guards the dignity of his God. Friendship is and must be _sacred_ for you, and property, and marriage, and the good of every man, but sacred _in and of itself_."[63] That is a very essential consideration. In Catholicism the mundane can indeed be _consecrated_ or _hallowed_, but it is not sacred without this priestly blessing; in Protestantism, on the contrary, mundane relations are sacred _of themselves_, sacred by their mere existence. The Jesuit maxim, "the end hallows the means," corresponds precisely to the consecration by which sanctity is bestowed. No means are holy or unholy in themselves, but their relation to the church, their use for the church, hallows the means. Regicide was named as such; if it was committed for the church's behoof, it could be certain of being hallowed by the church, even if the hallowing was not openly pronounced. To the Protestant, majesty ranks as sacred; to the Catholic only that majesty which is consecrated by the pontiff can rank as such; and it does rank as such to him only because the pope, even though it be without a special act, confers this sacredness on it once for all. If he retracted his consecration, the king would be left only a "man of the world or layman," an "unconsecrated" man, to the Catholic. If the Protestant seeks to discover a sacredness in the sensual itself, that he may then be linked only to what is holy, the Catholic strives rather to banish the sensual from himself into a separate domain, where it, like the rest of nature, keeps its value for itself. The Catholic church eliminated mundane marriage from its consecrated order, and withdrew those who were its own from the mundane family; the Protestant church declared marriage and family ties to be holy, and therefore not unsuitable for its clergymen. A Jesuit may, as a good Catholic, hallow everything. He needs only _e. g._ to say to himself: "I as a priest am necessary to the church, but serve it more zealously when I appease my desires properly; consequently I will seduce this girl, have my enemy there poisoned, etc.; my end is holy because it is a priest's, consequently it hallows the means." For in the end it is still done for the benefit of the church. Why should the Catholic priest shrink from handing Emperor Henry VII the poisoned wafer for the--church's welfare? The genuinely--churchly Protestants inveighed against every "innocent pleasure," because only the sacred, the spiritual, could be innocent. What they could not point out the holy spirit in, the Protestants had to reject,--dancing, the theatre, ostentation (_e. g._ in the church), and the like. Compared with this puritanical Calvinism, Lutheranism is again more on the religious, _i. e._ spiritual, track,--is more radical. For the former excludes at once a great number of things as sensual and worldly, and _purifies_ the church; Lutheranism, on the contrary, tries to bring _spirit_ into all things as far as possible, to recognize the holy spirit as an essence in everything, and so to _hallow_ everything worldly. ("No one can forbid a kiss in honor." The spirit of honor hallows it.) Hence it was that the Lutheran Hegel (he declares himself such in some passage or other: he "wants to remain a Lutheran") was completely successful in carrying the idea through everything. In everything there is reason, _i. e._ holy spirit, or "the real is rational." For the real is in fact everything, as in each thing, _e. g._ each lie, the truth can be detected: there is no absolute lie, no absolute evil, and the like. Great "works of mind" were created almost solely by Protestants, as they alone were the true disciples and consummators of _mind_. * * * * * How little man is able to control! He must let the sun run its course, the sea roll its waves, the mountains rise to heaven. Thus he stands powerless before the _uncontrollable_. Can he keep off the impression that he is _helpless_ against this gigantic world? It is a fixed _law_ to which he must submit, it determines his _fate_. Now, what did pre-Christian humanity work toward? Toward getting rid of the irruptions of the destinies, not letting oneself be vexed by them. The Stoics attained this in apathy, declaring the attacks of nature _indifferent_, and not letting themselves be affected by them. Horace utters the famous _Nil admirari_, by which he likewise announces the indifference of the _other_, the world; it is not to influence us, not to arouse our astonishment. And that _impavidum ferient ruinae_ expresses the very same _imperturbability_ as Ps. 46.3: "We do not fear, though the earth should perish." In all this there is room made for the Christian proposition that the world is empty, for the Christian _contempt of the world_. The _imperturbable_ spirit of "the wise man," with which the old world worked to prepare its end, now underwent an _inner perturbation_ against which no ataraxy, no Stoic courage, was able to protect it. The spirit, secured against all influence of the world, insensible to its shocks and _exalted_ above its attacks, admiring nothing, not to be disconcerted by any downfall of the world,--foamed over irrepressibly again, because gases (spirits) were evolved in its own interior, and, after the _mechanical shock_ that comes from without had become ineffective, _chemical tensions_, that agitate within, began their wonderful play. In fact, ancient history ends with this,--that _I_ have struggled till I won my ownership of the world. "All things have been delivered, to me by my Father" (Matt. 11.27). It has ceased to be overpowering, unapproachable, sacred, divine, etc., for me; it is _undeified_, and now I treat it so entirely as I please that, if I cared, I could exert on it all miracle-working power, _i. e._ power of mind,--remove mountains, command mulberry trees to tear themselves up and transplant themselves into the sea (Luke 17.6), and do everything possible, _i. e. thinkable_: "All things are possible to him who believes."[64] I am the _lord_ of the world, mine is the "_glory_."[65] The world has become _prosaic_, for the divine has vanished from it: it is my property, which I dispose of as I (to wit, the mind) choose. When I had exalted myself to be the _owner of the world_, egoism had won its first complete victory, had vanquished the world, had become _worldless_, and put the acquisitions of a long age under lock and key. The first property, the first "glory," has been acquired! But the lord of the world is not yet lord of his thoughts, his feelings, his will: he is not lord and owner of the spirit, for the spirit is still sacred, the "Holy Spirit," and the "worldless" Christian is not able to become "godless." If the ancient struggle was a struggle against the _world_, the mediæval (Christian) struggle is a struggle against _self_, the mind; the former against the outer world, the latter against the inner world. The mediæval man is the man "whose gaze is turned inward," the thinking, meditative man. All wisdom of the ancients is _the science of the world_, all wisdom of the moderns is _the science of God_. The heathen (Jews included) got through with the _world_; but now the thing was to get through with self, the _spirit_, too; _i. e._ to become spiritless or godless. For almost two thousand years we have been working at subjecting the Holy Spirit to ourselves, and little by little we have torn off and trodden under foot many bits of sacredness; but the gigantic opponent is constantly rising anew under a changed form and name. The spirit has not yet lost its divinity, its holiness, its sacredness. To be sure, it has long ceased to flutter over our heads as a dove; to be sure, it no longer gladdens its saints alone, but lets itself be caught by the laity too, etc.; but as spirit of humanity, as spirit of Man, it remains still an _alien_ spirit to me or you, still far from becoming our unrestricted _property_, which we dispose of at our pleasure. However, one thing certainly happened, and visibly guided the progress of post-Christian history: this one thing was the endeavor to make the Holy Spirit _more human_, and bring it nearer to men, or men to it. Through this it came about that at last it could be conceived as the "spirit of humanity," and, under different expressions like "idea of humanity, mankind, humaneness, general philanthropy," etc., appeared more attractive, more familiar, and more accessible. Would not one think that now everybody could possess the Holy Spirit, take up into himself the idea of humanity, bring mankind to form and existence in himself? No, the spirit is not stripped of its holiness and robbed of its unapproachableness, is not accessible to us, not our property; for the spirit of humanity is not _my_ spirit. My _ideal_ it may be, and as a thought I call it mine; the _thought_ of humanity is my property, and I prove this sufficiently by propounding it quite according to my views, and shaping it to-day so, to-morrow otherwise; we represent it to ourselves in the most manifold ways. But it is at the same time an entail, which I cannot alienate nor get rid of. Among many transformations, the Holy Spirit became in time the "_absolute idea_," which again in manifold refractions split into the different ideas of philanthropy, reasonableness, civic virtue, etc. But can I call the idea my property if it is the idea of humanity, and can I consider the Spirit as vanquished if I am to serve it, "sacrifice myself" to it? Antiquity, at its close, had gained its ownership of the world only when it had broken the world's overpoweringness and "divinity," recognized the world's powerlessness and "vanity." The case with regard to the _spirit_ corresponds. When I have degraded it to a _spook_ and its control over me to a _cranky notion_, then it is to be looked upon as having lost its sacredness, its holiness, its divinity, and then I _use_ it, as one uses _nature_ at pleasure without scruple. The "nature of the case," the "concept of the relationship," is to guide me in dealing with the case or in contracting the relation. As if a concept of the case existed on its own account, and was not rather the concept that one forms of the case! As if a relation which we enter into was not, by the uniqueness of those who enter into it, itself unique! As if it depended on how others stamp it! But, as people separated the "essence of Man" from the real man, and judged the latter by the former, so they also separate his action from him, and appraise it by "human value." _Concepts_ are to decide everywhere, concepts to regulate life, concepts to _rule_. This is the religious world, to which Hegel gave a systematic expression, bringing method into the nonsense and completing the conceptual precepts into a rounded, firmly-based dogmatic. Everything is sung according to concepts, and the real man, _i. e._ I, am compelled to live according to these conceptual laws. Can there be a more grievous dominion of law, and did not Christianity confess at the very beginning that it meant only to draw Judaism's dominion of law tighter? ("Not a letter of the law shall be lost!") Liberalism simply brought other concepts on the carpet, _viz._, human instead of divine, political instead of ecclesiastical, "scientific" instead of doctrinal, or, more generally, real concepts and eternal laws instead of "crude dogmas" and precepts. Now nothing but _mind_ rules in the world. An innumerable multitude of concepts buzz about in people's heads, and what are those doing who endeavor to get further? They are negating these concepts to put new ones in their place! They are saying: "You form a false concept of right, of the State, of man, of liberty, of truth, of marriage, etc.; the concept of right, etc., is rather that one which we now set up." Thus the confusion of concepts moves forward. The history of the world has dealt cruelly with us, and the spirit has obtained an almighty power. You must have regard for my miserable shoes, which could protect your naked foot, my salt, by which your potatoes would become palatable, and my state-carriage, whose possession would relieve you of all need at once; you must not reach out after them. Man is to recognize the _independence_ of all these and innumerable other things: they are to rank in his mind as something that cannot be seized or approached, are to be kept away from him. He must have regard for it, respect it; woe to him if he stretches out his fingers desirously; we call that "being light-fingered!" How beggarly little is left us, yes, how really nothing! Everything has been removed, we must not venture on anything unless it is given us; we continue to live only by the _grace_ of the giver. You must not pick up a pin, unless indeed you have got _leave_ to do so. And got it from whom? From _respect_! Only when this lets you have it as property, only when you can _respect_ it as property, only then may you take it. And again, you are not to conceive a thought, speak a syllable, commit an action, that should have their warrant in you alone, instead of receiving it from morality or reason or humanity. Happy _unconstraint_ of the desirous man, how mercilessly people have tried to slay you on the altar of _constraint_! But around the altar rise the arches of a church, and its walls keep moving further and further out. What they enclose is--_sacred_. You can no longer get to it, no longer touch it. Shrieking with the hunger that devours you, you wander round about these walls in search of the little that is profane, and the circles of your course keep growing more and more extended. Soon that church will embrace the whole world, and you be driven out to the extreme edge; another step, and the _world of the sacred_ has conquered: you sink into the abyss. Therefore take courage while it is yet time, wander about no longer in the profane where now it is dry feeding, dare the leap, and rush in through the gates into the sanctuary itself. If you _devour the sacred_, you have made it your _own_! Digest the sacramental wafer, and you are rid of it! III.--THE FREE The ancients and the moderns having been presented above in two divisions, it may seem as if the free were here to be described in a third division as independent and distinct. This is not so. The free are only the more modern and most modern among the "moderns," and are put in a separate division merely because they belong to the present, and what is present, above all, claims our attention here. I give "the free" only as a translation of "the liberals," but must with regard to the concept of freedom (as in general with regard to so many other things whose anticipatory introduction cannot be avoided) refer to what comes later. § 1.--POLITICAL LIBERALISM After the chalice of so-called absolute monarchy had been drained down to the dregs, in the eighteenth century people became aware that their drink did not taste human--too clearly aware not to begin to crave a different cup. Since our fathers were "human beings" after all, they at last desired also to be regarded as such. Whoever sees in us something else than human beings, in him we likewise will not see a human being, but an inhuman being, and will meet him as an unhuman being; on the other hand, whoever recognizes us as human beings and protects us against the danger of being treated inhumanly, him we will honor as our true protector and guardian. Let us then hold together and protect the man in each other; then we find the necessary protection in our _holding together_, and in ourselves, _those who hold together_, a fellowship of those who know their human dignity and hold together as "human beings." Our holding together is the _State_; we who hold together are the _nation_. In our being together as nation or State we are only human beings. How we deport ourselves in other respects as individuals, and what self-seeking impulses we may there succumb to, belongs solely to our _private_ life; our _public_ or State life is a _purely human_ one. Everything un-human or "egoistic" that clings to us is degraded to a "private matter" and we distinguish the State definitely from "civil society," which is the sphere of "egoism's" activity. The true man is the nation, but the individual is always an egoist. Therefore strip off your individuality or isolation wherein dwells discord and egoistic inequality, and consecrate yourselves wholly to the true man,--the nation or the State. Then you will rank as men, and have all that is man's; the State, the true man, will entitle you to what belongs to it, and give you the "rights of man"; Man gives you his rights! So runs the speech of the commonalty. The commonalty[66] is nothing else than the thought that the State is all in all, the true man, and that the individual's human value consists in being a citizen of the State. In being a good citizen he seeks his highest honor; beyond that he knows nothing higher than at most the antiquated--"being a good Christian." The commonalty developed itself in the struggle against the privileged classes, by whom it was cavalierly treated as "third estate" and confounded with the _canaille_. In other words, up to this time the State had recognized caste.[67] The son of a nobleman was selected for posts to which the most distinguished commoners aspired in vain, etc. The civic feeling revolted against this. No more distinction, no giving preference to persons, no difference of classes! Let all be alike! No _separate interest_ is to be pursued longer, but the _general interest of all_. The State is to be a fellowship of free and equal men, and every one is to devote himself to the "welfare of the whole," to be dissolved in the _State_, to make the State his end and ideal. State! State! so ran the general cry, and thenceforth people sought for the "right form of State," the best constitution, and so the State in its best conception. The thought of the State passed into all hearts and awakened enthusiasm; to serve it, this mundane god, became the new divine service and worship. The properly _political_ epoch had dawned. To serve the State or the nation became the highest ideal, the State's interest the highest interest, State service (for which one does not by any means need to be an official) the highest honor. So then the separate interests and personalities had been scared away, and sacrifice for the State had become the shibboleth. One must give up _himself_, and live only for the State. One must act "disinterestedly," not want to benefit _himself_, but the State. Hereby the latter has become the true person, before whom the individual personality vanishes; not I live, but it lives in me. Therefore, in comparison with the former self-seeking, this was unselfishness and _impersonality_ itself. Before this god--State--all egoism vanished, and before it all were equal; they were without any other distinction--men, nothing but men. The Revolution took fire from the inflammable material of _property_. The government needed money. Now it must prove the proposition that it is _absolute_, and so master of all property, sole proprietor; it must _take_ to itself _its_ money, which was only in the possession of the subjects, not their property. Instead of this, it calls States-general, to have this money _granted_ to it. The shrinking from strictly logical action destroyed the illusion of an _absolute_ government; he who must have something "granted" to him cannot be regarded as absolute. The subjects recognized that they were _real proprietors_, and that it was _their_ money that was demanded. Those who had hitherto been subjects attained the consciousness that they were _proprietors_. Bailly depicts this in a few words: "If you cannot dispose of my property without my assent, how much less can you of my person, of all that concerns my mental and social position? All this is my property, like the piece of land that I till; and I have a right, an interest, to make the laws myself." Bailly's words sound, certainly, as if _every one_ was a proprietor now. However, instead of the government, instead of the prince, the--_nation_ now became proprietor and master. From this time on the ideal is spoken of as--"popular liberty"--"a free people," etc. As early as July 8, 1789, the declaration of the bishop of Autun and Barrère took away all semblance of the importance of each and every _individual_ in legislation; it showed the complete _powerlessness_ of the constituents; the _majority of the representatives_ has become _master_. When on July 9 the plan for division of the work on the constitution is proposed, Mirabeau remarks that "the government has only power, no rights; only in the _people_ is the source of all _right_ to be found." On July 16 this same Mirabeau exclaims: "Is not the people the source of all _power_?" The source, therefore, of all right, and the source of all--power![68] By the way, here the substance of "right" becomes visible; it is--_power_. "He who has power has right." The commonalty is the heir of the privileged classes. In fact, the rights of the barons, which were taken from them as "usurpations," only passed over to the commonalty. For the commonalty was now called the "nation." "Into the hands of the nation" all _prerogatives_ were given back. Thereby they ceased to be "prerogatives":[69] they became "rights."[70] From this time on the nation demands tithes, compulsory services; it has inherited the lord's court, the rights of vert and venison, the--serfs. The night of August 4 was the death-night of privileges or "prerogatives" (cities, communes, boards of magistrates, were also privileged, furnished with prerogatives and seigniorial rights), and ended with the new morning of "right," the "rights of the State," the "rights of the nation." The monarch in the person of the "royal master" had been a paltry monarch compared with this new monarch, the "sovereign nation." This _monarchy_ was a thousand times severer, stricter, and more consistent. Against the new monarch there was no longer any right, any privilege at all; how limited the "absolute king" of the _ancien régime_ looks in comparison! The Revolution effected the transformation of _limited monarchy_ into _absolute monarchy_. From this time on every right that is not conferred by this monarch is an "assumption"; but every prerogative that he bestows, a "right." The times demanded _absolute royalty_, absolute monarchy; therefore down fell that so-called absolute royalty which had so little understood how to become absolute that it remained limited by a thousand little lords. What was longed for and striven for through thousands of years,--to wit, to find that absolute lord beside whom no other lords and lordlings any longer exist to clip his power,--the _bourgeoisie_ has brought to pass. It has revealed the Lord who alone confers "rightful titles," and without whose warrant _nothing is justified_. "So now we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other god save the one."[71] Against _right_ one can no longer, as against a right, come forward with the assertion that it is "a wrong." One can say now only that it is a piece of nonsense, an illusion. If one called it wrong, one would have to set up _another right_ in opposition to it, and measure it by this. If, on the contrary, one rejects right as such, right in and of itself, altogether, then one also rejects the concept of wrong, and dissolves the whole concept of right (to which the concept of wrong belongs). What is the meaning of the doctrine that we all enjoy "equality of political rights"? Only this,--that the State has no regard for my person, that to it I, like every other, am only a man, without having another significance that commands its deference. I do not command its deference as an aristocrat, a nobleman's son, or even as heir of an official whose office belongs to me by inheritance (as in the Middle Ages countships, etc., and later under absolute royalty, where hereditary offices occur). Now the State has an innumerable multitude of rights to give away, _e. g._ the right to lead a battalion, a company, etc.; the right to lecture at a university; and so forth; it has them to give away because they are its own, _i. e._ State rights or "political" rights. Withal, it makes no difference to it to whom it gives them, if the receiver only fulfils the duties that spring from the delegated rights. To it we are all of us all right, and--_equal_,--one worth no more and no less than another. It is indifferent to me who receives the command of the army, says the sovereign State, provided the grantee understands the matter properly. "Equality of political rights" has, consequently, the meaning that every one may acquire every right that the State has to give away, if only he fulfils the conditions annexed thereto,--conditions which are to be sought only in the nature of the particular right, not in a predilection for the person (_persona grata_): the nature of the right to become an officer brings with it, _e. g._, the necessity that one possess sound limbs and a suitable measure of knowledge, but it does not have noble birth as a condition; if, on the other hand, even the most deserving commoner could not reach that station, then an inequality of political rights would exist. Among the States of to-day one has carried out that maxim of equality more, another less. The monarchy of estates (so I will call absolute royalty, the time of the kings _before_ the revolution) kept the individual in dependence on a lot of little monarchies. These were fellowships (societies) like the guilds, the nobility, the priesthood, the burgher class, cities, communes, etc. Everywhere the individual must regard himself _first_ as a member of this little society, and yield unconditional obedience to its spirit, the _esprit de corps_, as his monarch. More, _e. g._, than the individual nobleman himself must his family, the honor of his race, be to him. Only by means of his _corporation_, his estate, did the individual have relation to the greater corporation, the State,--as in Catholicism the individual deals with God only through the priest. To this the third estate now, showing courage to negate _itself as an estate_, made an end. It decided no longer to be and be called an _estate_ beside other estates, but to glorify and generalize itself into the "_nation_." Hereby it created a much more complete and absolute monarchy, and the entire previously ruling _principle of estates_, the principle of little monarchies inside the great, went down. Therefore it cannot be said that the Revolution was a revolution against the first two privileged estates: it was against the little monarchies of estates in general. But, if the estates and their despotism were broken (the king too, we know, was only a king of estates, not a citizen-king), the individuals freed from the inequality of estate were left. Were they now really to be without estate and "out of gear," no longer bound by any estate, without a general bond of union? No, for the third estate had declared itself the nation only in order not to remain an estate _beside_ other estates, but to become the _sole estate_. This sole _estate_ is the nation, the "_State_." What had the individual now become? A political Protestant, for he had come into immediate connection with his God, the State. He was no longer, as an aristocrat, in the monarchy of the nobility; as a mechanic, in the monarchy of the guild; but he, like all, recognized and acknowledged only--_one lord_, the State, as whose servants they all received the equal title of honor, "citizen." The _bourgeoisie_ is the _aristocracy of_ DESERT; its motto, "Let desert wear its crowns." It fought against the "lazy" aristocracy, for according to it (the industrious aristocracy acquired by industry and desert) it is not the "born" who is free, nor yet I who am free either, but the "deserving" man, the honest _servant_ (of his king; of the State; of the people in constitutional States). Through _service_ one acquires freedom, _i. e._ acquires "deserts," even if one served--mammon. One must deserve well of the State, _i. e._ of the principle of the State, of its moral spirit. He who _serves_ this spirit of the State is a good citizen, let him live to whatever honest branch of industry he will. In its eyes innovators practise a "breadless art." Only the "shopkeeper" is "practical," and the spirit that chases after public offices is as much the shopkeeping spirit as is that which tries in trade to feather its nest or otherwise to become useful to itself and anybody else. But, if the deserving count as the free (for what does the comfortable commoner, the faithful office-holder, lack of that freedom that his heart desires?), then the "servants" are the--free. The obedient servant is the free man! What glaring nonsense! Yet this is the sense of the _bourgeoisie_, and its poet, Goethe, as well as its philosopher, Hegel, succeeded in glorifying the dependence of the subject on the object, obedience to the objective world, etc. He who only serves the cause, "devotes himself entirely to it," has the true freedom. And among thinkers the cause was--_reason_, that which, like State and Church, gives--general laws, and puts the individual man in irons by the _thought of humanity_. It determines what is "true," according to which one must then act. No more "rational" people than the honest servants, who primarily are called good citizens as servants of the State. Be rich as Croesus or poor as Job--the State of the commonalty leaves that to your option; but only have a "good disposition." This it demands of you, and counts it its most urgent task to establish this in all. Therefore it will keep you from "evil promptings," holding the "ill-disposed" in check and silencing their inflammatory discourses under censors' cancelling-marks or press-penalties and behind dungeon walls, and will, on the other hand, appoint people of "good disposition" as censors, and in every way have a _moral influence_ exerted on you by "well-disposed and well-meaning" people. If it has made you deaf to evil promptings, then it opens your ears again all the more diligently to good _promptings_. With the time of the _bourgeoisie_ begins that of _liberalism_. People want to see what is "rational," "suited to the times," etc., established everywhere. The following definition of liberalism, which is supposed to be pronounced in its honor, characterizes it completely: "Liberalism is nothing else than the knowledge of reason, applied to our existing relations."[72] Its aim is a "rational order," a "moral behavior," a "limited freedom," not anarchy, lawlessness, selfhood. But, if reason rules, then the _person_ succumbs. Art has for a long time not only acknowledged the ugly, but considered the ugly as necessary to its existence, and taken it up into itself; it needs the villain, etc. In the religious domain, too, the extremest liberals go so far that they want to see the most religious man regarded as a citizen--_i. e._ the religious villain; they want to see no more of trials for heresy. But against the "rational law" no one is to rebel, otherwise he is threatened with the severest--penalty. What is wanted is not free movement and realization of the person or of me, but of reason,--_i. e._ a dominion of reason, a dominion. The liberals are _zealots_, not exactly for the faith, for God, etc., but certainly for _reason_, their master. They brook no lack of breeding, and therefore no self-development and self-determination; they _play the guardian_ as effectively as the most absolute rulers. "Political liberty," what are we to understand by that? Perhaps the individual's independence of the State and its laws? No; on the contrary, the individual's _subjection_ in the State and to the State's laws. But why "liberty"? Because one is no longer separated from the State by intermediaries, but stands in direct and immediate relation to it; because one is a--citizen, not the subject of another, not even of the king as a person, but only in his quality as "supreme head of the State." Political liberty, this fundamental doctrine of liberalism, is nothing but a second phase of--Protestantism, and runs quite parallel with "religious liberty."[73] Or would it perhaps be right to understand by the latter an independence of religion? Anything but that. Independence of intermediaries is all that it is intended to express, independence of mediating priests, the abolition of the "laity," and so direct and immediate relation to religion or to God. Only on the supposition that one has religion can he enjoy freedom of religion; freedom of religion does not mean being without religion, but inwardness of faith, unmediated intercourse with God. To him who is "religiously free" religion is an affair of the heart, it is to him his _own affair_, it is to him a "sacredly serious matter." So, too, to the "politically free" man the State is a sacredly serious matter; it is his heart's affair, his chief affair, his own affair. Political liberty means that the _polis_, the State, is free; freedom of religion that religion is free, as freedom of conscience signifies that conscience is free; not, therefore, that I am free from the State, from religion, from conscience, or that I am _rid_ of them. It does not mean _my_ liberty, but the liberty of a power that rules and subjugates me; it means that one of my _despots_, like State, religion, conscience, is free. State, religion, conscience, these despots, make me a slave, and _their_ liberty is _my_ slavery. That in this they necessarily follow the principle, "the end hallows the means," is self-evident. If the welfare of the State is the end, war is a hallowed means; if justice is the State's end, homicide is a hallowed means, and is called by its sacred name, "execution," etc.; the sacred State _hallows_ everything that is serviceable to it. "Individual liberty," over which civic liberalism keeps jealous watch, does not by any means signify a completely free self-determination, by which actions become altogether _mine_, but only independence of _persons_. Individually free is he who is responsible to no _man_. Taken in this sense,--and we are not allowed to understand it otherwise,--not only the ruler is individually free, _i. e., irresponsible toward men_ ("before God," we know, he acknowledges himself responsible), but all who are "responsible only to the law." This kind of liberty was won through the revolutionary movement of the century,--to wit, independence of arbitrary will, of _tel est notre plaisir_. Hence the constitutional prince must himself be stripped of all personality, deprived of all individual decision, that he may not as a person, as an _individual man_, violate the "individual liberty" of others. The _personal will of the ruler_ has disappeared in the constitutional prince; it is with a right feeling, therefore, that absolute princes resist this. Nevertheless these very ones profess to be in the best sense "Christian princes." For this, however, they must become a _purely spiritual_ power, as the Christian is subject only to _spirit_ ("God is spirit"). The purely spiritual power is consistently represented only by the constitutional prince, he who, without any personal significance, stands there spiritualized to the degree that he can rank as a sheer, uncanny "spirit," as an _idea_. The constitutional king is the truly _Christian_ king, the genuine, consistent carrying-out of the Christian principle. In the constitutional monarchy individual dominion,--_i. e._, a real ruler that _wills_--has found its end; here, therefore, _individual liberty_ prevails, independence of every individual dictator, of every one who could dictate to me with a _tel est notre plaisir_. It is the completed _Christian_ State-life, a spiritualized life. The behavior of the commonalty is _liberal_ through and through. Every _personal_ invasion of another's sphere revolts the civic sense; if the citizen sees that one is dependent on the humor, the pleasure, the will of a man as individual (_i. e._ as not authorized by a "higher power"), at once he brings his liberalism to the front and shrieks about "arbitrariness." In fine, the citizen asserts his freedom from what is called _orders_ (_ordonnance_): "No one has any business to give me--orders!" _Orders_ carries the idea that what I am to do is another man's will, while _law_ does not express a personal authority of another. The liberty of the commonalty is liberty or independence from the will of another person, so-called personal or individual liberty; for being personally free means being only so free that no other person can dispose of mine, or that what I may or may not do does not depend on the personal decree of another. The liberty of the press, for instance, is such a liberty of liberalism, liberalism fighting only against the coercion of the censorship as that of personal wilfulness, but otherwise showing itself extremely inclined and willing to tyrannize over the press by "press laws"; _i. e._, the civic liberals want liberty of writing _for themselves_; for, as they are _law-abiding_, their writings will not bring them under the law. Only liberal matter, _i. e._ only lawful matter, is to be allowed to be printed; otherwise the "press laws" threaten "press-penalties." If one sees personal liberty assured, one does not notice at all how, if a new issue happens to arise, the most glaring unfreedom becomes dominant. For one is rid of _orders_ indeed, and "no one has any business to give us orders," but one has become so much the more submissive to the--_law_. One is enthralled now in due legal form. In the citizen-State there are only "free people," who are _compelled_ to thousands of things (_e. g._ to deference, to a confession of faith, and the like). But what does that amount to? Why, it is only the--State, the law, not any man, that compels them! What does the commonalty mean by inveighing against every personal order, _i. e._ every order not founded on the "cause," on "reason," etc.? It is simply fighting in the interest of the "cause"[74] against the dominion of "persons"! But the mind's cause is the rational, good, lawful, etc.; that is the "good cause." The commonalty wants an _impersonal_ ruler. Furthermore, if the principle is this, that only the cause is to rule man--to wit, the cause of morality, the cause of legality, etc.,--then no personal balking of one by the other may be authorized either (as formerly, _e. g._, the commoner was balked of the aristocratic offices, the aristocrat of common mechanical trades, etc.); _i. e. free competition_ must exist. Only through the thing[75] can one balk another (_e. g._ the rich man balking the impecunious man by money, a thing), not as a person. Henceforth only one lordship, the lordship of the _State_, is admitted; personally no one is any longer lord of another. Even at birth the children belong to the State, and to the parents only in the name of the State, which, _e. g._, does not allow infanticide, demands their baptism, etc. But all the State's children, furthermore, are of quite equal account in its eyes ("civic or political equality"), and they may see to it themselves how they get along with each other; they may _compete_. Free competition means nothing else than that every one can present himself, assert himself, fight, against another. Of course the feudal party set itself against this, as its existence depended on an absence of competition. The contests in the time of the Restoration in France had no other substance than this,--that the _bourgeoisie_ was struggling for free competition, and the feudalists were seeking to bring back the guild system. Now, free competition has won, and against the guild system it had to win. (See below for the further discussion.) If the Revolution ended in a reaction, this only showed what the Revolution _really_ was. For every effort arrives at reaction when it _comes to discreet reflection_, and storms forward in the original action only so long as it is an _intoxication_, an "indiscretion." "Discretion" will always be the cue of the reaction, because discretion sets limits, and liberates what was really wanted, _i. e._ the principle, from the initial "unbridledness" and "unrestrainedness." Wild young fellows, bumptious students, who set aside all considerations, are _really_ Philistines, since with them, as with the latter, considerations form the substance of their conduct; only that as swaggerers they are mutinous against considerations and in negative relations to them, but as Philistines, later, they give themselves up to considerations and have positive relations to them. In both cases all their doing and thinking turns upon "considerations," but the Philistine is _reactionary_ in relation to the student; he is the wild fellow come to discreet reflection, as the latter is the unreflecting Philistine. Daily experience confirms the truth of this transformation, and shows how the swaggerers turn to Philistines in turning gray. So too the so-called reaction in Germany gives proof that it was only the _discreet_ continuation of the warlike jubilation of liberty. The Revolution was not directed against _the established_, but against _the establishment in question_, against a _particular_ establishment. It did away with _this_ ruler, not with _the_ ruler--on the contrary, the French were ruled most inexorably; it killed the old vicious rulers, but wanted to confer on the virtuous ones a securely established position, _i. e._ it simply set virtue in the place of vice. (Vice and virtue, again, are on their part distinguished from each other only as a wild young fellow from a Philistine.) Etc. To this day the revolutionary principle has gone no farther than to assail only _one_ or _another_ particular establishment, _i. e._ be _reformatory_. Much as may be _improved_, strongly as "discreet progress" may be adhered to, always there is only a _new master_ set in the old one's place, and the overturning is a--building up. We are still at the distinction of the young Philistine from the old one. The Revolution began in _bourgeois_ fashion with the uprising of the third estate, the middle class; in _bourgeois_ fashion it dries away. It was not the _individual man_--and he alone is _Man_--that became free, but the _citizen_, the _citoyen_, the _political_ man, who for that very reason is not _Man_ but a specimen of the human species, and more particularly a specimen of the species Citizen, a _free citizen_. In the Revolution it was not the _individual_ who acted so as to affect the world's history, but a _people_; the _nation_, the sovereign nation, wanted to effect everything. A fancied _I_, an idea, such as the nation is, appears acting; _i. e._, the individuals contribute themselves as tools of this idea, and act as "citizens." The commonalty has its power, and at the same time its limits, in the _fundamental law of the State_, in a charter, in a legitimate[76] or "just"[77] prince who himself is guided, and rules, according to "rational laws"; in short, in _legality_. The period of the _bourgeoisie_ is ruled by the British spirit of legality. An assembly of provincial estates, _e. g._, is ever recalling that its authorization goes only so and so far, and that it is called at all only through favor and can be thrown out again through disfavor. It is always reminding itself of its--_vocation_. It is certainly not to be denied that my father begot me; but, now that I am once begotten, surely his purposes in begetting do not concern me a bit and, whatever he may have _called_ me to, I do what I myself will. Therefore even a called assembly of estates, the French assembly in the beginning of the Revolution, recognized quite rightly that it was independent of the caller. It _existed_, and would have been stupid if it did not avail itself of the right of existence, but fancied itself dependent as on a father. The called one no longer has to ask "what did the caller want when he created me?" but "what do I want after I have once followed the call?" Not the caller, not the constituents, not the charter according to which their meeting was called out, nothing will be to him a sacred, inviolable power. He is _authorized_ for everything that is in his power; he will know no restrictive "authorization," will not want to be _loyal_. This, if any such thing could be expected from chambers at all, would give a completely _egoistic_ chamber, severed from all navel-string and without consideration. But chambers are always devout, and therefore one cannot be surprised if so much half-way or undecided, _i. e._ hypocritical, "egoism" parades in them. The members of the estates are to remain within the _limits_ that are traced for them by the charter, by the king's will, and the like. If they will not or can not do that, then they are to "step out." What dutiful man could act otherwise, could put himself, his conviction, and his will as the _first_ thing? who could be so immoral as to want to assert _himself_, even if the body corporate and everything should go to ruin over it? People keep carefully within the limits of their _authorization_; of course one must remain within the limits of his _power_ anyhow, because no one can do more than he can. "My power, or, if it be so, powerlessness, be my sole limit, but authorizations only restraining--precepts? Should I profess this all-subversive view? No, I am a--law-abiding citizen!" The commonalty professes a morality which is most closely connected with its essence. The first demand of this morality is to the effect that one should carry on a solid business, an honorable trade, lead a moral life. Immoral, to it, is the sharper, the demirep, the thief, robber, and murderer, the gamester, the penniless man without a situation, the frivolous man. The doughty commoner designates the feeling against these "immoral" people as his "deepest indignation." All these lack settlement, the _solid_ quality of business, a solid, seemly life, a fixed income, etc.; in short, they belong, because their existence does not rest on a _secure basis_, to the dangerous "individuals or isolated persons," to the dangerous _prolétariat_; they are "individual bawlers" who offer no "guarantee" and have "nothing to lose," and so nothing to risk. The forming of family ties, _e. g., binds_ a man: he who is bound furnishes security, can be taken hold of; not so the street-walker. The gamester stakes everything on the game, ruins himself and others;--no guarantee. All who appear to the commoner suspicious, hostile, and dangerous might be comprised under the name "vagabonds"; every vagabondish way of living displeases him. For there are intellectual vagabonds too, to whom the hereditary dwelling-place of their fathers seems too cramped and oppressive for them to be willing to satisfy themselves with the limited space any more: instead of keeping within the limits of a temperate style of thinking, and taking as inviolable truth what furnishes comfort and tranquillity to thousands, they overleap all bounds of the traditional and run wild with their impudent criticism and untamed mania for doubt, these extravagating vagabonds. They form the class of the unstable, restless, changeable, _i. e._ of the _prolétariat_, and, if they give voice to their unsettled nature, are called "unruly fellows." Such a broad sense has the so-called _prolétariat_, or pauperism. How much one would err if one believed the commonalty to be desirous of doing away with poverty (pauperism) to the best of its ability! On the contrary, the good citizen helps himself with the incomparably comforting conviction that "the fact is that the good things of fortune are unequally divided and will always remain so--according to God's wise decree." The poverty which surrounds him in every alley does not disturb the true commoner further than that at most he clears his account with it by throwing an alms, or finds work and food for an "honest and serviceable" fellow. But so much the more does he feel his quiet enjoyment clouded by _innovating_ and _discontented_ poverty, by those poor who no longer behave _quietly_ and endure, but begin to _run wild_ and become restless. Lock up the vagabond, thrust the breeder of unrest into the darkest dungeon! He wants to "arouse dissatisfaction and incite people against existing institutions" in the State--stone him, stone him! But from these identical discontented ones comes a reasoning somewhat as follows: It need not make any difference to the "good citizens" who protects them and their principles, whether an absolute king or a constitutional one, a republic, etc., if only they are protected. And what is their principle, whose protector they always "love"? Not that of labor; not that of birth either. But that of _mediocrity_, of the golden mean: a little birth and a little labor, _i. e._, an _interest-bearing possession_. Possession is here the fixed, the given, inherited (birth); interest-drawing is the exertion about it (labor); _laboring capital_, therefore. Only no immoderation, no ultra, no radicalism! Right of birth certainly, but only hereditary possessions; labor certainly, yet little or none at all of one's own, but labor of capital and of the--subject laborers. If an age is imbued with an error, some always derive advantage from the error, while the rest have to suffer from it. In the Middle Ages the error was general among Christians that the church must have all power, or the supreme lordship on earth; the hierarchs believed in this "truth" not less than the laymen, and both were spellbound in the like error. But by it the hierarchs had the _advantage_ of power, the laymen had to _suffer_ subjection. However, as the saying goes, "one learns wisdom by suffering"; and so the laymen at last learned wisdom and no longer believed in the mediæval "truth."--A like relation exists between the commonalty and the laboring class. Commoner and laborer believe in the "truth" of _money_; they who do not possess it believe in it no less than those who possess it: the laymen, therefore, as well as the priests. "Money governs the world" is the keynote of the civic epoch. A destitute aristocrat and a destitute laborer, as "starvelings," amount to nothing so far as political consideration is concerned; birth and labor do not do it, but _money_ brings _consideration_.[78] The possessors rule, but the State trains up from the destitute its "servants," to whom, in proportion as they are to rule (govern) in its name, it gives money (a salary). I receive everything from the State. Have I anything without the _State's assent_? What I have without this it _takes_ from me as soon as it discovers the lack of a "legal title." Do I not, therefore, have everything through its grace, its assent? On this alone, on the _legal title_, the commonalty rests. The commoner is what he is through the _protection of the State_, through the State's grace. He would necessarily be afraid of losing everything if the State's power were broken. But how is it with him who has nothing to lose, how with the proletarian? As he has nothing to lose, he does not need the protection of the State for his "nothing." He may gain, on the contrary, if that protection of the State is withdrawn from the _protégé_. Therefore the non-possessor will regard the State as a power protecting the possessor, which privileges the latter, but does nothing for him, the non-possessor, but to--suck his blood. The State is a--_commoners' State_, is the estate of the commonalty. It protects man not according to his labor, but according to his tractableness ("loyalty"),--to wit, according to whether the rights entrusted to him by the State are enjoyed and managed in accordance with the will, _i. e._ laws, of the State. Under the _régime_ of the commonalty the laborers always fall into the hands of the possessors,--_i. e._ of those who have at their disposal some bit of the State domains (and everything possessible is State domain, belongs to the State, and is only a fief of the individual), especially money and land; of the capitalists, therefore. The laborer cannot _realize_ on his labor to the extent of the value that it has for the consumer. "Labor is badly paid!" The capitalist has the greatest profit from it.--Well paid, and more than well paid, are only the labors of those who heighten the splendor and _dominion_ of the State, the labors of high State _servants_. The State pays well that its "good citizens," the possessors, may be able to pay badly without danger; it secures to itself by good payment its servants, out of whom it forms a protecting power, a "police" (to the police belong soldiers, officials of all kinds, _e. g._ those of justice, education, etc.,--in short, the whole "machinery of the State") for the "good citizens," and the "good citizens" gladly pay high tax-rates to it in order to pay so much lower rates to their laborers. But the class of laborers, because unprotected in what they essentially are (for they do not enjoy the protection of the State as laborers, but as its subjects they have a share in the enjoyment of the police, a so-called protection of the law), remains a power hostile to this State, this State of possessors, this "citizen kingship." Its principle, labor, is not recognized as to its _value_; it is exploited,[79] a _spoil_[80] of the possessors, the enemy. The laborers have the most enormous power in their hands, and, if they once became thoroughly conscious of it and used it, nothing would withstand them; they would only have to stop labor, regard the product of labor as theirs, and enjoy it. This is the sense of the labor disturbances which show themselves here and there. The State rests on the--_slavery of labor_. If _labor_ becomes _free_, the State is lost. § 2.--SOCIAL LIBERALISM We are freeborn men, and wherever we look we see ourselves made servants of egoists! Are we therefore to become egoists too? Heaven forbid! we want rather to make egoists impossible! We want to make them all "ragamuffins"; all of us must have nothing, that "all may have." So say the Socialists. Who is this person that you call "All"?--It is "society"!--But is it corporeal, then?--_We_ are its body!--You? Why, you are not a body yourselves;--you, sir, are corporeal to be sure, you too, and you, but you all together are only bodies, not a body. Accordingly the united society may indeed have bodies at its service, but no one body of its own. Like the "nation" of the politicians, it will turn out to be nothing but a "spirit," its body only semblance. The freedom of man is, in political liberalism, freedom from _persons_, from personal dominion, from the _master_; the securing of each individual person against other persons, personal freedom. No one has any orders to give; the law alone gives orders. But, even if the persons have become _equal_, yet their _possessions_ have not. And yet the poor man _needs_ the rich, the rich the poor, the former the rich man's money, the latter the poor man's labor. So no one needs another as a _person_, but needs him as a _giver_, and thus as one who has something to give, as holder or possessor. So what he _has_ makes the _man_. And in _having_, or in "possessions," people are unequal. Consequently, social liberalism concludes, _no one must have_, as according to political liberalism _no one was to give orders_; _i. e._, as in that case the _State_ alone obtained the command, so now _society_ alone obtains the possessions. For the State, protecting each one's person and property against the other, _separates_ them from one another; each one _is_ his special part and _has_ his special part. He who is satisfied with what he is and has finds this state of things profitable; but he who would like to be and have more looks around for this "more," and finds it in the power of other _persons_. Here he comes upon a contradiction; as a person no one is inferior to another, and yet one person _has_ what another has not but would like to have. So, he concludes, the one person is more than the other, after all, for the former has what he needs, the latter has not; the former is a rich man, the latter a poor man. He now asks himself further, are we to let what we rightly buried come to life again? are we to let this circuitously restored inequality of persons pass? No; on the contrary, we must bring quite to an end what was only half accomplished. Our freedom from another's person still lacks the freedom from what the other's person can command, from what he has in his personal power,--in short, from "personal property." Let us then do away with _personal property_. Let no one have anything any longer, let every one be a--ragamuffin. Let property be _impersonal_, let it belong to--_society_. Before the supreme _ruler_, the sole _commander_, we had all become equal, equal persons, _i. e._ nullities. Before the supreme _proprietor_ we all become equal--_ragamuffins_. For the present, one is still in another's estimation a "ragamuffin," a "have-nothing"; but then this estimation ceases. We are all ragamuffins together, and as the aggregate of Communistic society we might call ourselves a "ragamuffin crew." When the proletarian shall really have founded his purposed "society" in which the interval between rich and poor is to be removed, then he _will be_ a ragamuffin, for then he will feel that it amounts to something to be a ragamuffin, and might lift "Ragamuffin" to be an honorable form of address, just as the Revolution did with the word "Citizen." Ragamuffin is his ideal; we are all to become ragamuffins. This is the second robbery of the "personal" in the interest of "humanity." Neither command nor property is left to the individual; the State took the former, society the latter. Because in society the most oppressive evils make themselves felt, therefore the oppressed especially, and consequently the members in the lower regions of society, think they find the fault in society, and make it their task to discover the _right society_. This is only the old phenomenon,--that one looks for the fault first in everything but _himself_, and consequently in the State, in the self-seeking of the rich, etc., which yet have precisely our fault to thank for their existence. The reflections and conclusions of Communism look very simple. As matters lie at this time,--in the present situation with regard to the State, therefore,--some, and they the majority, are at a disadvantage compared to others, the minority. In this _state_ of things the former are in a _state of prosperity_, the latter in a _state of need_. Hence the present _state_ of things, _i. e._ the State, must be done away with. And what in its place? Instead of the isolated state of prosperity--a _general state of prosperity_, a _prosperity of all_. Through the Revolution the _bourgeoisie_ became omnipotent, and all inequality was abolished by every one's being raised or degraded to the dignity of a _citizen_: the common man--raised, the aristocrat--degraded; the _third_ estate became sole estate,--_viz._, the estate of--_citizens of the State_. Now Communism responds: Our dignity and our essence consist not in our being all--the _equal children_ of our mother, the State, all born with equal claim to her love and her protection, but in our all existing _for each other_. This is our equality, or herein we are _equal_, in that we, I as well as you and you and all of you, are active or "labor" each one for the rest; in that each of us is a _laborer_, then. The point for us is not what we are _for the State_ (_viz._, citizens), not our _citizenship_ therefore, but what we are _for each other_,--_viz._, that each of us exists only through the other, who, caring for my wants, at the same time sees his own satisfied by me. He labors, _e. g._, for my clothing (tailor), I for his need of amusement (comedy-writer, rope-dancer, etc.), he for my food (farmer, etc.), I for his instruction (scientist, etc.). It is _labor_ that constitutes our dignity and our--equality. What advantage does citizenship bring us? Burdens! And how high is our labor appraised? As low as possible! But labor is our sole value all the same; that we are _laborers_ is the best thing about us, this is our significance in the world, and therefore it must be our consideration too and must come to receive _consideration_. What can you meet us with? Surely nothing but--_labor_ too. Only for labor or services do we owe you a recompense, not for your bare existence; not for what you are _for yourselves_ either, but only for what you are _for us_. By what have you claims on us? Perhaps by your high birth, etc.? No, only by what you do for us that is desirable or useful. Be it thus then: we are willing to be worth to you only so much as we do for you; but you are to be held likewise by us. _Services_ determine value,--_i. e._ those services that are worth something to us, and consequently _labors for each other_, _labors for the common good_. Let each one be in the other's eyes a _laborer_. He who accomplishes something useful is inferior to none, or--all laborers (laborers, of course, in the sense of laborers "for the common good," _i. e._ communistic laborers) are equal. But, as the laborer is worth his wages,[81] let the wages too be equal. As long as faith sufficed for man's honor and dignity, no labor, however harassing, could be objected to if it only did not hinder a man in his faith. Now, on the contrary, when every one is to cultivate himself into man, condemning a man to _machine-like labor_ amounts to the same thing as slavery. If a factory-worker must tire himself to death twelve hours and more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor is to have the intent that the man be satisfied. Therefore he must become a _master_ in it too, _i. e._ be able to perform it as a totality. He who in a pin-factory only puts on the heads, only draws the wire, etc., works, as it were, mechanically, like a machine; he remains half-trained, does not become a master: his labor cannot _satisfy_ him, it can only _fatigue_ him. His labor is nothing taken by itself, has no object _in itself_, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only into another's hands, and is _used_ (exploited) by this other. For this laborer in another's service there is no _enjoyment of a cultivated mind_, at most crude amusements: _culture_, you see, is barred against him. To be a good Christian one needs only to _believe_, and that can be done under the most oppressive circumstances. Hence the Christian-minded take care only of the oppressed laborers' piety, their patience, submission, etc. Only so long as the downtrodden classes were _Christians_ could they bear all their misery: for Christianity does not let their murmurings and exasperation rise. Now the _hushing_ of desires is no longer enough, but their _sating_ is demanded. The _bourgeoisie_ has proclaimed the gospel of the _enjoyment of the world_, of material enjoyment, and now wonders that this doctrine finds adherents among us poor: it has shown that not faith and poverty, but culture and possessions, make a man blessed; we proletarians understand that too. The commonalty freed us from the orders and arbitrariness of individuals. But that arbitrariness was left which springs from the conjuncture of situations, and may be called the fortuity of circumstances; favoring _fortune_, and those "favored by fortune," still remain. When _e. g._ a branch of industry is ruined and thousands of laborers become breadless, people think reasonably enough to acknowledge that it is not the individual who must bear the blame, but that "the evil lies in the situation." Let us change the situation then, but let us change it thoroughly, and so that its fortuity becomes powerless, and a _law_! Let us no longer be slaves of chance! Let us create a new order that makes an end of _fluctuations_. Let this order then be sacred! Formerly one had to suit the _lords_ to come to anything; after the Revolution the word was "Grasp _fortune_!" Luck-hunting or hazard-playing, civil life was absorbed in this. Then, alongside this, the demand that he who has obtained something shall not frivolously stake it again. Strange and yet supremely natural contradiction. Competition, in which alone civil or political life unrolls itself, is a game of luck through and through, from the speculations of the exchange down to the solicitation of offices, the hunt for customers, looking for work, aspiring to promotion and decorations, the second-hand dealer's petty haggling, etc. If one succeeds in supplanting and outbidding his rivals, then the "lucky throw" is made; for it must be taken as a piece of luck to begin with that the victor sees himself equipped with an ability (even though it has been developed by the most careful industry) against which the others do not know how to rise, consequently that--no abler ones are found. And now those who ply their daily lives in the midst of these changes of fortune without seeing any harm in it are seized with the most virtuous indignation when their own principle appears in naked form and "breeds misfortune" as--_hazard-playing_. Hazard-playing, you see, is too clear, too barefaced a competition, and, like every decided nakedness, offends honorable modesty. The Socialists want to put a stop to this activity of chance, and to form a society in which men are no longer dependent on _fortune_, but free. In the most natural way in the world this endeavor first utters itself as hatred of the "unfortunate" against the "fortunate," _i. e._, of those for whom fortune has done little or nothing, against those for whom it has done everything. But properly the ill-feeling is not directed against the fortunate, but against _fortune_, this rotten spot of the commonalty. As the Communists first declare free activity to be man's essence, they, like all work-day dispositions, need a Sunday; like all material endeavors, they need a God, an uplifting and edification alongside their witless "labor." That the Communist sees in you the man, the brother, is only the Sunday side of Communism. According to the work-day side he does not by any means take you as man simply, but as human laborer or laboring man. The first view has in it the liberal principle; in the second, illiberality is concealed. If you were a "lazybones," he would not indeed fail to recognize the man in you, but would endeavor to cleanse him as a "lazy man" from laziness and to convert you to the _faith_ that labor is man's "destiny and calling." Therefore he shows a double face: with the one he takes heed that the spiritual man be satisfied, with the other he looks about him for means for the material or corporeal man. He gives man a twofold _post_,--an office of material acquisition and one of spiritual. The commonalty had _thrown open_ spiritual and material goods, and left it with each one to reach out for them if he liked. Communism really procures them for each one, presses them upon him, and compels him to acquire them. It takes seriously the idea that, because only spiritual and material goods make us men, we must unquestionably acquire these goods in order to be man. The commonalty made acquisition free; Communism _compels_ to acquisition, and recognizes only the acquirer, him who practises a trade. It is not enough that the trade is free, but you must _take it up_. So all that is left for criticism to do is to prove that the acquisition of these goods does not yet by any means make us men. With the liberal commandment that every one is to make a man of himself, or every one to make himself man, there was posited the necessity that every one must gain time for this labor of humanization, _i. e._ that it should become possible for every one to labor on _himself_. The commonalty thought it had brought this about if it handed over everything human to competition, but gave the individual a right to every human thing. "Each may strive after everything!" Social liberalism finds that the matter is not settled with the "may," because may means only "it is forbidden to none" but not "it is made possible to every one." Hence it affirms that the commonalty is liberal only with the mouth and in words, supremely illiberal in act. It on its part wants to give all of us the _means_ to be able to labor on ourselves. By the principle of labor that of fortune or competition is certainly outdone. But at the same time the laborer, in his consciousness that the essential thing in him is "the laborer," holds himself aloof from egoism and subjects himself to the supremacy of a society of laborers, as the commoner clung with self-abandonment to the competition-State. The beautiful dream of a "social duty" still continues to be dreamed. People think again that society _gives_ what we need, and we are _under obligations_ to it on that account, owe it everything.[82] They are still at the point of wanting to _serve_ a "supreme giver of all good." That society is no ego at all, which could give, bestow, or grant, but an instrument or means, from which we may derive benefit; that we have no social duties, but solely interests for the pursuance of which society must serve us; that we owe society no sacrifice, but, if we sacrifice anything, sacrifice it to ourselves,--of this the Socialists do not think, because they--as liberals--are imprisoned in the religious principle, and zealously aspire after--a sacred society, such as the State was hitherto. Society, from which we have everything, is a new master, a new spook, a new "supreme being," which "takes us into its service and allegiance"! The more precise appreciation of political as well as social liberalism must wait to find its place further on. For the present we pass this over, in order first to summon them before the tribunal of humane or critical liberalism. § 3.--HUMANE LIBERALISM As liberalism is completed in self-criticising, "critical"[83] liberalism, in which the critic remains a liberal and does not go beyond the principle of liberalism, Man,--this may distinctively be named after Man and called the "humane." The laborer is counted as the most material and egoistical man. He does nothing at all _for humanity_, does everything for _himself_, for his welfare. The commonalty, because it proclaimed the freedom of _Man_ only as to his birth, had to leave him in the claws of the un-human man (the egoist) for the rest of life. Hence under the _régime_ of political liberalism egoism has an immense field for free utilization. The laborer will _utilize_ society for his _egoistic_ ends as the commoner does the State. You have only an egoistic end after all, your welfare! is the humane liberal's reproach to the Socialist; take up a _purely human interest_, then I will be your companion. "But to this there belongs a consciousness stronger, more comprehensive, than a _laborer-consciousness_." "The laborer makes nothing, therefore he has nothing; but he makes nothing because his labor is always a labor that remains individual, calculated strictly for his own want, a labor day by day."[84] In opposition to this one might, for instance, consider the fact that Gutenberg's labor did not remain individual, but begot innumerable children, and still lives to-day; it was calculated for the want of humanity, and was an eternal, imperishable labor. The humane consciousness despises the commoner-consciousness as well as the laborer-consciousness: for the commoner is "indignant" only at vagabonds (at all who have "no definite occupation") and their "immorality"; the laborer is "disgusted" by the _idler_ ("lazybones") and his "immoral," because parasitic and unsocial, principles. To this the humane liberal retorts: The unsettledness of many is only your product, Philistine! But that you, proletarian, demand the _grind_ of all, and want to make _drudgery_ general, is a part, still clinging to you, of your pack-mule life up to this time. Certainly you want to lighten drudgery itself by _all_ having to drudge equally hard, yet only for this reason, that all may gain _leisure_ to an equal extent. But what are they to do with their leisure? What does your "society" do, that this leisure may be passed _humanly_? It must leave the gained leisure to egoistic preference again, and the very _gain_ that your society furthers falls to the egoist, as the gain of the commonalty, the _masterlessness of man_, could not be filled with a human element by the State, and therefore was left to arbitrary choice. It is assuredly necessary that man be masterless: but therefore the egoist is not to become master over man again either, but man over the egoist. Man must assuredly find leisure: but, if the egoist makes use of it, it will be lost for man; therefore you ought to have given leisure a human significance. But you laborers undertake even your labor from an egoistic impulse, because you want to eat, drink, live; how should you be less egoists in leisure? You labor only because having your time to yourselves (idling) goes well after work done, and what you are to while away your leisure time with is left to _chance_. But, if every door is to be bolted against egoism, it would be necessary to strive after completely "disinterested" action, _total_ disinterestedness. This alone is human, because only Man is disinterested, the egoist always interested. * * * * * If we let disinterestedness pass unchallenged for a while, then we ask, do you mean not to take an interest in anything, not to be enthusiastic for anything, not for liberty, humanity, etc.? "Oh, yes, but that is not an egoistic interest, not _interestedness_, but a human, _i. e._ a--_theoretical_ interest, to wit, an interest not for an individual or individuals ('all'), but for the _idea_, for Man!" And you do not notice that you too are enthusiastic only for _your_ idea, _your_ idea of liberty? And, further, do you not notice that your disinterestedness is again, like religious disinterestedness, a heavenly interestedness? Certainly benefit to the individual leaves you cold, and abstractly you could cry _fiat libertas, pereat mundus_. You do not take thought for the coming day either, and take no serious care for the individual's wants anyhow, not for your own comfort nor for that of the rest; but you make nothing of all this, because you are a--dreamer. Do you suppose the humane liberal will be so liberal as to aver that everything possible to man is _human_? On the contrary! He does not, indeed, share the Philistine's moral prejudice about the strumpet, but "that this woman turns her body into a money-getting machine"[85] makes her despicable to him as "human being." His judgment is, The strumpet is not a human being; or, So far as a woman is a strumpet, so far is she unhuman, dehumanized. Further: The Jew, the Christian, the privileged person, the theologian, etc., is not a human being; so far as you are a Jew, etc., you are not a human being. Again the imperious postulate: Cast from you everything peculiar, criticise it away! Be not a Jew, not a Christian, etc., but be a human being, nothing but a human being. Assert your _humanity_ against every restrictive specification; make yourself, by means of it, a human being, and _free_ from those limits; make yourself a "free man," _i. e._ recognize humanity as your all-determining essence. I say: You are indeed more than a Jew, more than a Christian, etc., but you are also more than a human being. Those are all ideas, but you are corporeal. Do you suppose, then, that you can ever become "a human being as such"? Do you suppose our posterity will find no prejudices and limits to clear away, for which our powers were not sufficient? Or do you perhaps think that in your fortieth or fiftieth year you have come so far that the following days have nothing more to dissipate in you, and that you are a human being? The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss. What do you need that later liberty for? If you meant to esteem yourself as nothing before you had become a human being, you would have to wait till the "last judgment," till the day when man, or humanity, shall have attained perfection. But, as you will surely die before that, what becomes of your prize of victory? Rather, therefore, invert the case, and say to yourself, _I am a human being_! I do not need to begin by producing the human being in myself, for he belongs to me already, like all my qualities. But, asks the critic, how can one be a Jew and a man at once? In the first place, I answer, one cannot be either a Jew or a man at all, if "one" and Jew or man are to mean the same; "one" always reaches beyond those specifications, and,--let Isaacs be ever so Jewish,--a Jew, nothing but a Jew, he cannot be, just because he is _this_ Jew. In the second place, as a Jew one assuredly cannot be a man, if being a man means being nothing special. But in the third place--and this is the point--I can, as a Jew, be entirely what I--_can_ be. From Samuel or Moses, and others, you hardly expect that they should have raised themselves above Judaism, although you must say that they were not yet "men." They simply were what they could be. Is it otherwise with the Jews of to-day? Because you have discovered the idea of humanity, does it follow from this that every Jew can become a convert to it? If he can, he does not fail to, and, if he fails to, he--cannot. What does your demand concern him? what the _call_ to be a man, which you address to him? * * * * * As a universal principle, in the "human society" which the humane liberal promises, nothing "special" which one or another has is to find recognition, nothing which bears the character of "private" is to have value. In this way the circle of liberalism, which has its good principle in man and human liberty, its bad in the egoist and everything private, its God in the former, its devil in the latter, rounds itself off completely; and, if the special or private person lost his value in the State (no personal prerogative), if in the "laborers' or ragamuffins' society" special (private) property is no longer recognized, so in "human society" everything special or private will be left out of account; and, when "pure criticism" shall have accomplished its arduous task, then it will be known just what we must look upon as private, and what, "penetrated with a sense of our nothingness," we must--let stand. Because State and society do not suffice for humane liberalism, it negates both, and at the same time retains them. So at one time the cry is that the task of the day is "not a political, but a social, one," and then again the "free State" is promised for the future. In truth, "human society" is both,--the most general State and the most general society. Only against the limited State is it asserted that it makes too much stir about spiritual private interests (_e. g._ people's religious belief), and against limited society that it makes too much of material private interests. Both are to leave private interests to private people, and, as human society, concern themselves solely about general human interests. The politicians, thinking to abolish _personal will_, self-will or arbitrariness, did not observe that through _property_[86] our _self-will_[87] gained a secure place of refuge. The Socialists, taking away _property_ too, do not notice that this secures itself a continued existence in _self-ownership_. Is it only money and goods, then, that are a property, or is every opinion something of mine, something of my own? So every _opinion_ must be abolished or made impersonal. The person is entitled to no opinion, but, as self-will was transferred to the State, property to society, so opinion too must be transferred to something _general_, "Man," and thereby become a general human opinion. If opinion persists, then I have _my_ God (why, God exists only as "my God," he is an opinion or my "faith"), and consequently _my_ faith, my religion, my thoughts, my ideals. Therefore a general human faith must come into existence, the "_fanaticism of liberty_." For this would be a faith that agreed with the "essence of man," and, because only "man" is reasonable (you and I might be very unreasonable!), a reasonable faith. As self-will and property become _powerless_, so must self-ownership or egoism in general. In this supreme development of "free man" egoism, self-ownership, is combated on principle, and such subordinate ends as the social "welfare" of the Socialists, etc., vanish before the lofty "idea of humanity." Everything that is not a "general human" entity is something separate, satisfies only some or one; or, if it satisfies all, it does this to them only as individuals, not as men, and is therefore called "egoistic." To the Socialists _welfare_ is still the supreme aim, as free _rivalry_ was the approved thing to the political liberals; now welfare is free too, and we are free to achieve welfare, just as he who wanted to enter into rivalry (competition) was free to do so. But to take part in the rivalry you need only to be _commoners_; to take part in the welfare, only to be _laborers_. Neither reaches the point of being synonymous with "man." It is "truly well" with man only when he is also "intellectually free"! For man is mind: therefore all powers that are alien to him, the mind,--all superhuman, heavenly, unhuman powers,--must be overthrown, and the name "man" must be above every name. So in this end of the modern age (age of the moderns) there returns again, as the main point, what had been the main point at its beginning: "intellectual liberty." To the Communist in particular the humane liberal says: If society prescribes to you your activity, then this is indeed free from the influence of the individual, _i. e._ the egoist, but it still does not on that account need to be a _purely human_ activity, nor you to be a complete organ of humanity. What kind of activity society demands of you remains _accidental_, you know; it might give you a place in building a temple or something of that sort, or, even if not that, you might yet on your own impulse be active for something foolish, therefore unhuman; yes, more yet, you really labor only to nourish yourself, in general to live, for dear life's sake, not for the glorification of humanity. Consequently free activity is not attained till you make yourself free from all stupidities, from everything non-human, _i. e_. egoistic (pertaining only to the individual, not to the Man in the individual), dissipate all untrue thoughts that obscure man or the idea of humanity: in short, when you are not merely unhampered in your activity, but the substance too of your activity is only what is human, and you live and work only for humanity. But this is not the case so long as the aim of your effort is only your _welfare_ and that of all; what you do for the society of ragamuffins is not yet anything done for "human society." Laboring does not alone make you a man, because it is something formal and its object accidental; the question is who you that labor are. As far as laboring goes, you might do it from an egoistic (material) impulse, merely to procure nourishment and the like; it must be a labor furthering humanity, calculated for the good of humanity, serving historical (_i. e._ human) evolution,--in short, a _humane_ labor. This implies two things: one, that it be useful to humanity; next, that it be the work of a "man." The first alone may be the case with every labor, as even the labors of nature, _e. g._ of animals, are utilized by humanity for the furthering of science, etc.; the second requires that he who labors should know the human object of his labor; and, as he can have this consciousness only when he _knows himself as man_, the crucial condition is--_self-consciousness_. Unquestionably much is already attained when you cease to be a "fragment-laborer,"[88] yet therewith you only get a view of the whole of your labor, and acquire a consciousness about it, which is still far removed from a self-consciousness, a consciousness about your true "self" or "essence," Man. The laborer has still remaining the desire for a "higher consciousness," which, because the activity of labor is unable to quiet it, he satisfies in a leisure hour. Hence leisure stands by the side of his labor, and he sees himself compelled to proclaim labor and idling human in one breath, yes, to attribute the true elevation to the idler, the leisure-enjoyer. He labors only to get rid of labor; he wants to make labor free, only that he may be free from labor. In fine, his work has no satisfying substance, because it is only imposed by society, only a stint, a task, a calling; and, conversely, his society does not satisfy, because it gives only work. His labor ought to satisfy him as a man; instead of that, it satisfies society; society ought to treat him as a man, and it treats him as--a rag-tag laborer, or a laboring ragamuffin. Labor and society are of use to him not as he needs them as a man, but only as he needs them as an "egoist." Such is the attitude of criticism toward labor. It points to "mind," wages the war "of mind with the masses,"[89] and pronounces communistic labor unintellectual mass-labor. Averse to labor as they are, the masses love to make labor easy for themselves. In literature, which is to-day furnished in mass, this aversion to labor begets the universally-known _superficiality_, which puts from it "the toil of research."[90] Therefore humane liberalism says: You want labor; all right, we want it likewise, but we want it in the fullest measure. We want it, not that we may gain spare time, but that we may find all satisfaction in it itself. We want labor because it is our self-development. But then the labor too must be adapted to that end! Man is honored only by human, self-conscious labor, only by the labor that has for its end no "egoistic" purpose, but Man, and is Man's self-revelation; so that the saying should be _laboro, ergo sum_, I labor, therefore I am a man. The humane liberal wants that labor of the _mind_ which _works up_ all material; he wants the mind, that leaves no thing quiet or in its existing condition, that acquiesces in nothing, analyzes everything, criticises anew every result that has been gained. This restless mind is the true laborer, it obliterates prejudices, shatters limits and narrownesses, and raises man above everything that would like to dominate over him, while the Communist labors only for himself, and not even freely, but from necessity,--in short, represents a man condemned to hard labor. The laborer of such a type is not "egoistic," because he does not labor for individuals, neither for himself nor for other individuals, not for _private_ men therefore, but for humanity and its progress: he does not ease individual pains, does not care for individual wants, but removes limits within which humanity is pressed, dispels prejudices which dominate an entire time, vanquishes hindrances that obstruct the path of all, clears away errors in which men entangle themselves, discovers truths which are found through him for all and for all time; in short--he lives and labors for humanity. Now, in the first place, the discoverer of a great truth doubtless knows that it can be useful to the rest of men, and, as a jealous withholding furnishes him no enjoyment, he communicates it; but, even though he has the consciousness that his communication is highly valuable to the rest, yet he has in no wise sought and found his truth for the sake of the rest, but for his own sake, because he himself desired it, because darkness and fancies left him no rest till he had procured for himself light and enlightenment to the best of his powers. He labors, therefore, for his own sake and for the satisfaction of _his_ want. That along with this he was also useful to others, yes, to posterity, does not take from his labor the _egoistic_ character. In the next place, if he did labor only on his own account, like the rest, why should his act be human, those of the rest unhuman, _i. e._ egoistic? Perhaps, because this book, painting, symphony, etc., is the labor of his whole being, because he has done his best in it, has spread himself out wholly and is wholly to be known from it, while the work of a handicraftsman mirrors only the handicraftsman, _i. e._ the skill in handicraft, not "the man"? In his poems we have the whole Schiller; in so many hundred stoves, on the other hand, we have before us only the stove-maker, not "the man." But does this mean more than "in the one work you see _me_ as completely as possible, in the other only my skill"? Is it not _me_ again that the act expresses? And is it not more egoistic to offer _oneself_ to the world in a work, to work out and shape _oneself_, than to remain concealed behind one's labor? You say, to be sure, that you are revealing Man. But the Man that you reveal is you; you reveal only yourself, yet with this distinction from the handicraftsman,--that he does not understand how to compress himself into one labor, but, in order to be known as himself, must be searched out in his other relations of life, and that your want, through whose satisfaction that work came into being, was a--theoretical want. But you will reply that you reveal quite another man, a worthier, higher, greater, a man that is more man than that other. I will assume that you accomplish all that is possible to man, that you bring to pass what no other succeeds in. Wherein, then, does your greatness consist? Precisely in this, that you are more than other men (the "masses"), more than _men_ ordinarily are, more than "ordinary men"; precisely in your elevation above men. You are distinguished beyond other men not by being man, but because you are a "unique"[91] man. Doubtless you show what a man can do; but because you, a man, do it, this by no means shows that others, also men, are able to do as much; you have executed it only as a _unique_ man, and are unique therein. It is not man that makes up your greatness, but you create it, because you are more than man, and mightier than other--men. It is believed that one cannot be more than man. Rather, one cannot be less! It is believed further that whatever one attains is good for Man. In so far as I remain at all times a man--or, like Schiller, a Swabian; like Kant, a Prussian; like Gustavus Adolphus, a near-sighted person--I certainly become by my superior qualities a notable man, Swabian, Prussian, or near-sighted person. But the case is not much better with that than with Frederick the Great's cane, which became famous for Frederick's sake. To "Give God the glory" corresponds the modern "Give Man the glory." But I mean to keep it for myself. Criticism, issuing the summons to man to be "human," enunciates the necessary condition of sociability; for only as a man among men is one _companionable_. Herewith it makes known its _social_ object, the establishment of "human society." Among social theories criticism is indisputably the most complete, because it removes and deprives of value everything that _separates_ man from man: all prerogatives, down to the prerogative of faith. In it the love-principle of Christianity, the true social principle, comes to the purest fulfilment, and the last possible experiment is tried to take away exclusiveness and repulsion from men: a fight against egoism in its simplest and therefore hardest form, in the form of singleness,[92] exclusiveness, itself. "How can you live a truly social life so long as even one exclusiveness still exists between you?" I ask conversely, How can you be truly single so long as even one connection still exists between you? If you are connected, you cannot leave each other; if a "tie" clasps you, you are something only _with another_, and twelve of you make a dozen, thousands of you a people, millions of you humanity. "Only when you are human can you keep company with each other as men, just as you can understand each other as patriots only when you are patriotic!" All right; then I answer, Only when you are single can you have intercourse with each other as what you are. It is precisely the keenest critic who is hit hardest by the curse of his principle. Putting from him one exclusive thing after another, shaking off churchliness, patriotism, etc., he undoes one tie after another and separates himself from the churchly man, from the patriot, etc., till at last, when all ties are undone, he stands--alone. He, of all men, must exclude all that have anything exclusive or private; and, when you get to the bottom, what can be more exclusive than the exclusive, single person himself! Or does he perhaps think that the situation would be better if _all_ became men and gave up exclusiveness? Why, for the very reason that "all" means "every individual" the most glaring contradiction is still maintained, for the "individual" is exclusiveness itself. If the humane liberal no longer concedes to the individual anything private or exclusive, any private thought, any private folly; if he criticises everything away from him before his face, since his hatred of the private is an absolute and fanatical hatred; if he knows no tolerance toward what is private, because everything private is _unhuman_,--yet he cannot criticise away the private person himself, since the hardness of the individual person resists his criticism, and he must be satisfied with declaring this person a "private person" and really leaving everything private to him again. What will the society that no longer cares about anything private do? Make the private impossible? No, but "subordinate it to the interests of society, and, _e. g._, leave it to private will to institute holidays, as many as it chooses, if only it does not come in collision with the general interest."[93] Everything private is _left free_; _i. e._ it has no interest for society. "By their raising of barriers against science the church and religiousness have declared that they are what they always were, only that this was hidden under another semblance when they were proclaimed to be the basis and necessary foundation of the State----a matter of purely private concern. Even when they were connected with the State and made it Christian, they were only the proof that the State had not yet developed its general political idea, that it was only instituting private rights----they were only the highest expression for the fact that the State was a private affair and had to do only with private affairs. When the State shall at last have the courage and strength to fulfil its general destiny and to be free; when, therefore, it is also able to give separate interests and private concerns their true position,--then religion and the church will be free as they have never been hitherto. As a matter of the most purely private concern, and a satisfaction of purely personal want, they will be left to themselves; and every individual, every congregation and ecclesiastical communion, will be able to care for the blessedness of their souls as they choose and as they think necessary. Every one will care for his soul's blessedness so far as it is to him a personal want, and will accept and pay as spiritual caretaker the one who seems to him to offer the best guarantee for the satisfaction of his want. Science is at last left entirely out of the game."[94] What is to happen, though? Is social life to have an end, and all companionableness, all fraternization, everything that is created by the love or society principle, to disappear? As if one will not always seek the other because he _needs_ him; as if one must not accommodate himself to the other when he _needs_ him. But the difference is this, that then the individual really _unites_ with the individual, while formerly they were _bound together_ by a tie; son and father are bound together before majority, after it they can come together independently; before it they _belonged_ together as members of the family, after it they unite as egoists; sonship and fatherhood remain, but son and father no longer pin themselves down to these. The last privilege, in truth, is "Man"; with it all are privileged or invested. For, as Bruno Bauer himself says, "privilege remains even when it is extended to all."[95] Thus liberalism runs its course in the following transformations: "First, the individual _is_ not man, therefore his individual personality is of no account: no personal will, no arbitrariness, no orders or mandates! "Second, the individual _has_ nothing human, therefore no mine and thine, or property, is valid. "Third, as the individual neither is man nor has anything human, he shall not exist at all: he shall, as an egoist with his egoistic belongings, be annihilated by criticism to make room for Man, 'Man, just discovered'." But, although the individual is not Man, Man is yet present in the individual, and, like every spook and everything divine, has its existence in him. Hence political liberalism awards to the individual everything that pertains to him as "a man by birth," as a born man, among which there are counted liberty of conscience, the possession of goods, etc.,--in short, the "rights of man"; Socialism grants to the individual what pertains to him as an _active_ man, as a "laboring" man; finally, humane liberalism gives the individual what he has as "a man," _i. e._ everything that belongs to humanity. Accordingly the single one[96] has nothing at all, humanity everything; and the necessity of the "regeneration" preached in Christianity is demanded unambiguously and in the completest measure. Become a new creature, become "man"! One might even think himself reminded of the close of the Lord's Prayer. To Man belongs the _lordship_ (the "power" or _dynamis_); therefore no individual may be lord, but Man is the lord of individuals;--Man's is the _kingdom_, _i. e._ the world, consequently the individual is not to be proprietor, but Man, "all," commands the world as property;--to Man is due renown, _glorification_ or "glory" (_doxa_) from all, for Man or humanity is the individual's end, for which he labors, thinks, lives, and for whose glorification he must become "man." Hitherto men have always striven to find out a fellowship in which their inequalities in other respects should become "non-essential"; they strove for equalization, consequently for _equality_, and wanted to come all under one hat, which means nothing less than that they were seeking for one lord, one tie, one faith ("'Tis in one God we all believe"). There cannot be for men anything more fellowly or more equal than Man himself, and in this fellowship the love-craving has found its contentment: it did not rest till it had brought on this last equalization, leveled all inequality, laid man on the breast of man. But under this very fellowship decay and ruin become most glaring. In a more limited fellowship the Frenchman still stood against the German, the Christian against the Mohammedan, etc. Now, on the contrary, _man_ stands against men, or, as men are not man, man stands against the un-man. The sentence "God has become man" is now followed by the other, "Man has become I." This is _the human I_. But we invert it and say: I was not able to find myself so long as I sought myself as Man. But, now that it appears that Man is aspiring to become I and to gain a corporeity in me, I note that, after all, everything depends on me, and Man is lost without me. But I do not care to give myself up to be the shrine of this most holy thing, and shall not ask henceforward whether I am man or un-man in what I set about; let this _spirit_ keep off my neck! Humane liberalism goes to work radically. If you want to be or have anything especial even in one point, if you want to retain for yourself even one prerogative above others, to claim even one right that is not a general "right of man," you are an egoist. Very good! I do not want to have or be anything especial above others, I do not want to claim any prerogative against them, but--I do not measure myself by others either, and do not want to have any _right_ whatever. I want to be all and have all that I can be and have. Whether others are and have anything _similar_, what do I care? The equal, the same, they can neither be nor have. I cause no _detriment_ to them, as I cause no detriment to the rock by being "ahead of it" in having motion. If they _could_ have it, they would have it. To cause other men no _detriment_ is the point of the demand to possess no prerogative; to renounce all "being ahead," the strictest theory of _renunciation_. One is not to count himself as "anything especial," such as _e. g._ a Jew or a Christian. Well, I do not count myself as anything especial, but as _unique_.[97] Doubtless I have _similarity_ with others; yet that holds good only for comparison or reflection; in fact I am incomparable, unique. My flesh is not their flesh, my mind is not their mind. If you bring them under the generalities "flesh, mind," those are your _thoughts_, which have nothing to do with _my_ flesh, _my_ mind, and can least of all issue a "call" to mine. I do not want to recognize or respect in you anything, neither the proprietor nor the ragamuffin, nor even the man, but to _use you_. In salt I find that it makes food palatable to me, therefore I dissolve it; in the fish I recognize an aliment, therefore I eat it; in you I discover the gift of making my life agreeable, therefore I choose you as a companion. Or, in salt I study crystallization, in the fish animality, in you men, etc. But to me you are only what you are for me,--to wit, my object; and, because _my_ object, therefore my property. In humane liberalism ragamuffinhood is completed. We must first come down to the most ragamuffin-like, most poverty-stricken condition if we want to arrive at _ownness_, for we must strip off everything alien. But nothing seems more ragamuffin-like than naked--Man. It is more than ragamuffinhood, however, when I throw away Man too because I feel that he too is alien to me and that I can make no pretensions on that basis. This is no longer mere ragamuffinhood: because even the last rag has fallen off, here stands real nakedness, denudation of everything alien. The ragamuffin has stripped off ragamuffinhood itself, and therewith has ceased, to be what he was, a ragamuffin. I am no longer a ragamuffin, but have been one. * * * * * Up to this time the discord could not come to an outbreak, because properly there is current only a contention of modern liberals with antiquated liberals, a contention of those who understand "freedom" in a small measure and those who want the "full measure" of freedom; of the _moderate_ and _measureless_, therefore. Everything turns on the question, _how free_ must _man_ be? That man must be free, in this all believe; therefore all are liberal too. But the un-man[98] who is somewhere in every individual, how is he blocked? flow can it be arranged not to leave the un-man free at the same time with man? Liberalism as a whole has a deadly enemy, an invincible opposite, as God has the devil: by the side of man stands always the un-man, the individual, the egoist. State, society, humanity, do not master this devil. Humane liberalism has undertaken the task of showing the other liberals that they still do not want "freedom." If the other liberals had before their eyes only isolated egoism and were for the most part blind, radical liberalism has against it egoism "in mass," throws among the masses all who do not make the cause of freedom their own as it does, so that now man and un-man, rigorously separated, stand over against each other as enemies, to wit, the "masses" and "criticism";[99] namely, "free, human criticism," as it is called ("_Judenfrage_," p. 114), in opposition to crude, _e. g._ religious, criticism. Criticism expresses the hope that it will be victorious over all the masses and "give them a general certificate of insolvency."[100] So it means finally to make itself out in the right, and to represent all contention of the "faint-hearted and timorous" as an egoistic _stubbornness_,[101] as pettiness, paltriness. All wrangling loses significance, and petty dissensions are given up, because in criticism a common enemy enters the field. "You are egoists altogether, one no better than another!" Now the egoists stand together against criticism. Really the egoists? No, they fight against criticism precisely because it accuses them of egoism; they do not plead guilty to egoism. Accordingly criticism and the masses stand on the same basis: both fight against egoism, both repudiate it for themselves and charge it to each other. Criticism and the masses pursue the same goal, freedom from egoism, and wrangle only over which of them approaches nearest to the goal or even attains it. The Jews, the Christians, the absolutists, the men of darkness and men of light, politicians, Communists,--all, in short,--hold the reproach of egoism far from them; and, as criticism brings against them this reproach in plain terms and in the most extended sense, all _justify_ themselves against the accusation of egoism, and combat--egoism, the same enemy with whom criticism wages war. Both, criticism and masses, are enemies of egoists, and both seek to liberate themselves from egoism, as well by clearing or whitewashing _themselves_ as by ascribing it to the opposite party. The critic is the true "spokesman of the masses" who gives them the "simple concept and the phrase" of egoism, while the spokesmen to whom the triumph is denied in "_Lit. Ztg._" V. 24 were only bunglers. He is their prince and general in the war against egoism for freedom; what he fights against they fight against. But at the same time he is their enemy too, only not the enemy before them, but the friendly enemy who wields the knout behind the timorous to force courage into them. Hereby the opposition of criticism and the masses is reduced to the following contradiction: "You are egoists"! "No, we are not"! "I will prove it to you"! "You shall have our justification"! Let us then take both for what they give themselves out for, non-egoists, and what they take each other for, egoists. They are egoists and are not. Properly criticism says: You must liberate your ego from all limitedness so entirely that it becomes a _human_ ego. I say: Liberate yourself as far as you can, and you have done your part; for it is not given to every one to break through all limits, or, more expressively: not to every one is that a limit which is a limit for the rest. Consequently, do not tire yourself with toiling at the limits of others; enough if you tear down yours. Who has ever succeeded in tearing down even one limit _for all men_? Are not countless persons to-day, as at all times, running about with all the "limitations of humanity"? He who overturns one of _his_ limits may have shown others the way and the means; the overturning of _their_ limits remains their affair. Nobody does anything else either. To demand of people that they become wholly men is to call on them to cast down all human limits. That is impossible, because _Man_ has no limits. I have some indeed, but then it is only _mine_ that concern me any, and only they can be overcome by me. A _human_ ego I cannot become, just because I am I and not merely man. Yet let us still see whether criticism has not taught us something that we can lay to heart! I am not free if I am not without interests, not man if I am not disinterested? Well, even if it makes little difference to me to be free or man, yet I do not want to leave unused any occasion to realize _myself_ or make myself count. Criticism offers me this occasion by the teaching that, if anything plants itself firmly in me, and becomes indissoluble, I become its prisoner and servant, _i. e._ a possessed man. An interest, be it for what it may, has kidnapped a slave in me if I cannot get away from it, and is no longer my property, but I I am its. Let us therefore accept criticism's lesson to let no part of our property become stable, and to feel comfortable only in--_dissolving_ it. So, if criticism says: You are man only when you are restlessly criticising and dissolving! then we say: Man I am without that, and I am I likewise; therefore I want only to be careful to secure my property to myself; and, in order to secure it, I continually take it back into myself, annihilate in it every movement toward independence, and swallow it before it can fix itself and become a "fixed idea" or a "mania." But I do that not for the sake of my "human calling," but because I call myself to it. I do not strut about dissolving everything that it is possible for a man to dissolve, and, _e. g._, while not yet ten years old I do not criticise the nonsense of the Commandments, but I am man all the same, and act humanly in just this,--that I still leave them uncriticised. In short, I have no calling, and follow none, not even that to be a man. Do I now reject what liberalism has won in its various exertions? Far be the day that anything won should be lost! Only, after "Man" has become free through liberalism, I turn my gaze back upon myself and confess to myself openly: What Man seems to have gained, _I_ alone have gained. Man is free when "Man is to man the supreme being." So it belongs to the completion of liberalism that every other supreme being be annulled, theology overturned by anthropology, God and his grace laughed down, "atheism" universal. The egoism of property has given up the last that it had to give when even the "My God" has become senseless; for God exists only when he has at heart the individual's welfare, as the latter seeks his welfare in him. Political liberalism abolished, the inequality of masters and servants: it made people _masterless_, anarchic. The master was now removed from the individual, the "egoist," to become a ghost,--the law or the State. Social liberalism abolishes the inequality of possession, of the poor and rich, and makes people _possessionless_ or propertyless. Property is withdrawn from the individual and surrendered to ghostly society. Humane liberalism makes people _godless_, atheistic. Therefore the individual's God, "my God", must be put an end to. Now masterlessness is indeed at the same time freedom from service, possessionlessness at the same time freedom from care, and godlessness at the same time freedom from prejudice: for with the master the servant falls away; with possession, the care about it; with the firmly-rooted God, prejudice. But, since the master rises again as State, the servant appears again as subject; since possession becomes the property of society, care is begotten anew as labor; and, since God as Man becomes a prejudice, there arises a new faith, faith in humanity or liberty. For the individual's God the God of all, _viz._, "Man," is now exalted; "for it is the highest thing in us all to be man." But, as nobody can become entirely what the idea "man" imports, Man remains to the individual a lofty other world, an unattained supreme being, a God. But at the same time this is the "true God," because he is fully adequate to us,--to wit, our own "_self_"; we ourselves, but separated from us and lifted above us. POSTSCRIPT The foregoing review of "free human criticism" was written by bits immediately after the appearance of the books in question, as was also that which elsewhere refers to writings of this tendency, and I did little more than bring together the fragments. But criticism is restlessly pressing forward, and thereby makes it necessary for me to come back to it once more, now that my book is finished, and insert this concluding note. I have before me the latest (eighth) number of the "_Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung_" of Bruno Bauer. There again "the general interests of society" stand at the top. But criticism has reflected, and given this "society" a specification by which it is discriminated from a form which previously had still been confused with it: the "State," in former passages still celebrated as "free State," is quite given up because it can in no wise fulfil the task of "human society." Criticism only "saw itself compelled to identify for a moment human and political affairs" in 1842; but now it has found that the State, even as "free State," is not human society, or, as it could likewise say, that the people is not "man." We saw how it got through with theology and showed clearly that God sinks into dust before Man; we see it now come to a clearance with politics in the same way, and show that before Man peoples and nationalities fall: so we see how it has its explanation with Church and State, declaring them both unhuman, and we shall see--for it betrays this to us already--how it can also give proof that before Man the "masses," which it even calls a "spiritual being," appear worthless. And how should the lesser "spiritual beings" be able to maintain themselves before the supreme spirit? "Man" casts down the false idols. So what the critic has in view for the present is the scrutiny of the "masses," which he will place before "Man" in order to combat them from the standpoint of Man. "What is now the object of criticism?" "The masses, a spiritual being!" These the critic will "learn to know," and will find that they are in contradiction with Man; he will demonstrate that they are unhuman, and will succeed just as well in this demonstration as in the former ones, that the divine and the national, or the concerns of Church and of State, were the unhuman. The masses are defined as "the most significant product of the Revolution, as the deceived multitude which the illusions of political Illumination, and in general the entire Illumination movement of the eighteenth century, have given over to boundless disgruntlement." The Revolution satisfied some by its result, and left others unsatisfied; the satisfied part is the commonalty (_bourgeoisie_, etc.), the unsatisfied is the--masses. Does not the critic, so placed, himself belong to the "masses"? But the unsatisfied are still in great mistiness, and their discontent utters itself only in a "boundless disgruntlement." This the likewise unsatisfied critic now wants to master: he cannot want and attain more than to bring that "spiritual being," the masses, out of its disgruntlement, and to "uplift" those who were only disgruntled, _i. e._ to give them the right attitude toward those results of the Revolution which are to be overcome;--he can become the head of the masses, their decided spokesman. Therefore he wants also to "abolish the deep chasm which parts him from the multitude." From those who want to "uplift the lower classes of the people" he is distinguished by wanting to deliver from "disgruntlement," not merely these, but himself too. But assuredly his consciousness does not deceive him either, when he takes the masses to be the "natural opponents of theory," and foresees that, "the more this theory shall develop itself, so much the more will it make the masses compact." For the critic cannot enlighten or satisfy the masses with his _presupposition_, Man. If over against the commonalty they are only the "lower classes of the people," politically insignificant masses, over against "Man" they must still more be mere "masses," humanly insignificant--yes, unhuman--masses, or a multitude of un-men. The critic clears away everything human; and, starting from the presupposition that the human is the true, he works against himself, denying it wherever it had been hitherto found. He proves only that the human is to be found nowhere except in his head, but the unhuman everywhere. The unhuman is the real, the extant on all hands, and by the proof that it is "not human" the critic only enunciates plainly the tautological sentence that it is the unhuman. But what if the unhuman, turning its back on itself with resolute heart, should at the same time turn away from the disturbing critic and leave him standing, untouched and unstung by his remonstrance? "You call me the unhuman," it might say to him, "and so I really am--for you; but I am so only because you bring me into opposition to the human, and I could despise myself only so long as I let myself be hypnotized into this opposition. I was contemptible because I sought my 'better self' outside me; I was the unhuman because I dreamed of the 'human'; I resembled the pious who hunger for their 'true self' and always remain 'poor sinners'; I thought of myself only in comparison to another; enough, I was not all in all, was not--_unique_.[102] But now I cease to appear to myself as the unhuman, cease to measure myself and let myself be measured by man, cease to recognize anything above me: consequently--adieu, humane critic! I only have been the unhuman, am it now no longer, but am the unique, yes, to your loathing, the egoistic; yet not the egoistic as it lets itself be measured by the human, humane, and unselfish, but the egoistic as the--unique." We have to pay attention to still another sentence of the same number. "Criticism sets up no dogmas, and wants to learn to know nothing but _things_." The critic is afraid of becoming "dogmatic" or setting up dogmas. Of course: why, thereby he would become the opposite of the critic,--the dogmatist; he would now become bad, as he is good as critic, or would become from an unselfish man an egoist, etc. "Of all things, no dogma!" this is his--dogma. For the critic remains on one and the same ground with the dogmatist,--that of _thoughts_. Like the latter he always starts from a thought, but varies in this, that he never ceases to keep the principle-thought in the _process of thinking_, and so does not let it become stable. He only asserts the thought-process against stationariness in it. From criticism no thought is safe, since criticism is thought or the thinking mind itself. Therefore I repeat that the religious world--and this is the world of thoughts--reaches its completion in criticism, where thinking extends its encroachments over every thought, no one of which may "egoistically" establish itself. Where would the "purity of criticism," the purity of thinking, be left if even one thought escaped the process of thinking? This explains the fact that the critic has even begun already to gibe gently here and there at the thought of Man, of humanity and humaneness, because he suspects that here a thought is approaching dogmatic fixity. But yet he cannot decompose this thought till he has found a--"higher" in which it dissolves; for he moves only--in thoughts. This higher thought might be enunciated as that of the movement or process of thinking itself, _i. e._ as the thought of thinking or of criticism. Freedom of thinking has in fact become complete hereby, freedom of mind celebrates its triumph: for the individual, "egoistic" thoughts have lost their dogmatic truculence. There is nothing left but the--dogma of free thinking or of criticism. Against everything that belongs to the world of thought, criticism is in the right, _i. e._ in might: it is the victor. Criticism, and criticism alone, is "up to date." From the standpoint of thought there is no power capable of being an overmatch for criticism's, and it is a pleasure to see how easily and sportively this dragon swallows all other serpents of thought. Each serpent twists, to be sure, but criticism crushes it in all its "turns." I am no opponent of criticism, _i. e._ I am no dogmatist, and do not feel myself touched by the critic's tooth with which he tears the dogmatist to pieces. If I were a "dogmatist," I should place at the head a dogma, _i. e._ a thought, an idea, a principle, and should complete this as a "systematist," spinning it out to a system, _i. e._ a structure of thought. Conversely, if I were a critic, _viz._, an opponent of the dogmatist, I should carry on the fight of free thinking against the enthralling thought, I should defend thinking against what was thought. But I am neither the champion of a thought nor the champion of thinking; for "I," from whom I start, am not a thought, nor do I consist in thinking. Against me, the unnameable, the realm of thoughts, thinking, and mind is shattered. Criticism is the possessed man's fight against possession as such, against all possession: a fight which is founded in the consciousness that everywhere possession, or, as the critic calls it, a religious and theological attitude, is extant. He knows that people stand in a religious or believing attitude not only toward God, but toward other ideas as well, like right, the State, law, etc.; _i. e._ he recognizes possession in all places. So he wants to break up thoughts by thinking; but I say, only thoughtlessness really saves me from thoughts. It it not thinking, but my thoughtlessness, or I the unthinkable, incomprehensible, that frees me from possession. A jerk does me the service of the most anxious thinking, a stretching of the limbs shakes off the torment of thoughts, a leap upward hurls from my breast the nightmare of the religious world, a jubilant Hoopla throws off year-long burdens. But the monstrous significance of unthinking jubilation could not be recognized in the long night of thinking and believing. "What clumsiness and frivolity, to want to solve the most difficult problems, acquit yourself of the most comprehensive tasks, by a _breaking off_!" But have you tasks if you do not set them to yourself? So long as you set them, you will not give them up, and I certainly do not care if you think, and, thinking, create a thousand thoughts. But you who have set the tasks, are you not to be able to upset them again? Must you be bound to these tasks, and must they become absolute tasks? To cite only one thing, the government has been disparaged on account of its resorting to forcible means against thoughts, interfering against the press by means of the police power of the censorship, and making a personal fight out of a literary one. As if it were solely a matter of thoughts, and as if one's attitude toward thoughts must be unselfish, self-denying, and self-sacrificing! Do not those thoughts attack the governing parties themselves, and so call out egoism? And do the thinkers not set before the attacked ones the _religious_ demand to reverence the power of thought, of ideas? They are to succumb voluntarily and resignedly, because the divine power of thought, Minerva, fights on their enemies' side. Why, that would be an act of possession, a religious sacrifice. To be sure, the governing parties are themselves held fast in a religious bias, and follow the leading power of an idea or a faith; but they are at the same time unconfessed egoists, and right here, against the enemy, their pent-up egoism breaks loose: possessed in their faith, they are at the same time unpossessed by their opponents' faith, _i. e._ they are egoists toward this. If one wants to make them a reproach, it could only be the converse,--to wit, that they are possessed by their ideas. Against thoughts no egoistic power is to appear, no police power and the like. So the believers in thinking believe. But thinking and its thoughts are not sacred to _me_, and I defend _my skin_ against them as against other things. That may be an unreasonable defence; but, if I am in duty bound to reason, then I, like Abraham, must sacrifice my dearest to it! In the kingdom of thought, which, like that of faith, is the kingdom of heaven, every one is assuredly wrong who uses _unthinking_ force, just as every one is wrong who in the kingdom of love behaves unlovingly, or, although he is a Christian and therefore lives in the kingdom of love, yet acts unchristianly; in these kingdoms, to which he supposes himself to belong though he nevertheless throws off their laws, he is a "sinner" or "egoist." But it is only when he becomes a _criminal_ against these kingdoms that he can throw off their dominion. Here too the result is this, that the fight of the thinkers against the government is indeed in the right, _viz___., in might,--so far as it is carried on against the government's thoughts (the government is dumb, and does not succeed in making any literary rejoinder to speak of), but is, on the other hand, in the wrong, _viz._, in impotence, so far as it does not succeed in bringing into the field anything but thoughts against a personal power (the egoistic power stops the mouths of the thinkers). The theoretical fight cannot complete the victory, and the sacred power of thought succumbs to the might of egoism. Only the egoistic fight, the fight of egoists on both sides, clears up everything. This last now, to make thinking an affair of egoistic option, an affair of the single person,[103] a mere pastime or hobby as it were, and to take from it the importance of "being the last decisive power"; this degradation and desecration of thinking; this equalization of the unthinking and thoughtful ego; this clumsy but real "equality,"--criticism is not able to produce, because it itself is only the priest of thinking, and sees nothing beyond thinking but--the deluge. Criticism does indeed affirm, _e. g._, that free criticism may overcome the State, but at the same time it defends itself against the reproach which is laid upon it by the State government, that it is "self-will and impudence"; it thinks, then, that "self-will and impudence" may not overcome, it alone may. The truth is rather the reverse: the State can be really overcome only by impudent self-will. It may now, to conclude with this, be clear that in the critic's new change of front he has not transformed himself, but only "made good an oversight," "disentangled a subject," and is saying too much when he speaks of "criticism criticising itself": it, or rather he, has only criticised its "oversight" and cleared it of its "inconsistencies." If he wanted to criticise criticism, he would have to look and see if there was anything in its presupposition. I on my part start from a presupposition in presupposing _myself_; but my presupposition does not struggle for its perfection like "Man struggling for his perfection," but only serves me to enjoy it and consume it. I consume my presupposition, and nothing else, and exist only in consuming it. But that presupposition is therefore not a presupposition at all: for, as I am the Unique, I know nothing of the duality of a presupposing and a presupposed ego (an "incomplete" and a "complete" ego or man); but this, that I consume myself, means only that I am. I do not presuppose myself, because I am every moment just positing or creating myself, and am I only by being not presupposed but posited, and, again, posited only in the moment when I posit myself; _i. e._, I am creator and creature in one. If the presuppositions that have hitherto been current are to melt away in a full dissolution, they must not be dissolved into a higher presupposition again,--_i. e._ a thought, or thinking itself, criticism. For that dissolution is to be for _my_ good; otherwise it would belong only in the series of the innumerable dissolutions which, in favor of others, (_e. g._ this very Man, God, the State, pure morality, etc.), declared old truths to be untruths and did away with long-fostered presuppositions. Part Second I At the entrance of the modern time stands the "God-man." At its exit will only the God in the God-man evaporate? and can the God-man really die if only the God in him dies? They did not think of this question, and thought they were through when in our days they brought to a victorious end the work of the Illumination, the vanquishing of God; they did not notice that Man has killed God in order to become now--"sole God on high." The _other world outside us_ is indeed brushed away, and the great undertaking of the Illuminators completed; but the _other world in us_ has become a new heaven and calls us forth to renewed heaven-storming: God has had to give place, yet not to us, but to--Man. How can you believe that the God-man is dead before the Man in him, besides the God, is dead? I OWNNESS[104] "Does not the spirit thirst for freedom?"--Alas, not my spirit alone, my body too thirsts for it hourly! When before the odorous castle-kitchen my nose tells my palate of the savory dishes that are being prepared therein, it feels a fearful pining at its dry bread; when my eyes tell the hardened back about soft down on which one may lie more delightfully than on its compressed straw, a suppressed rage seizes it; when--but let us not follow the pains further.--And you call that a longing for freedom? What do you want to become free from, then? From your hardtack and your straw bed? Then throw them away!--But that seems not to serve you: you want rather to have the freedom to enjoy delicious foods and downy beds. Are men to give you this "freedom,"--are they to permit it to you? You do not hope that from their philanthropy, because you know they all think like--you: each is the nearest to himself! How, therefore, do you mean to come to the enjoyment of those foods and beds? Evidently not otherwise than in making them your property! If you think it over rightly, you do not want the freedom to have all these fine things, for with this freedom you still do not have them; you want really to have them, to call them _yours_ and possess them as _your property_. Of what use is a freedom to you, indeed, if it brings in nothing? And, if you became free from everything, you would no longer have anything; for freedom is empty of substance. Whoso knows not how to make use of it, for him it has no value this useless permission; but how I make use of it depends on my personality.[105] I have no objection to freedom, but I wish more than freedom for you: you should not merely _be rid_ of what you do not want, you should also _have_ what you want; you should not only be a "freeman," you should be an "owner" too. Free--from what? Oh! what is there that cannot be shaken off? The yoke of serfdom, of sovereignty, of aristocracy and princes, the dominion of the desires and passions; yes, even the dominion of one's own will, of self-will, for the completest self-denial is nothing but freedom--freedom, to wit, from self-determination, from one's own self. And the craving for freedom as for something absolute, worthy of every praise, deprived us of ownness: it created self-denial. However, the freer I become, the more compulsion piles up before my eyes; and the more impotent I feel myself. The unfree son of the wilderness does not yet feel anything of all the limits that crowd a civilized man: he seems to himself freer than this latter. In the measure that I conquer freedom for myself I create for myself new bounds and new tasks: if I have invented railroads, I feel myself weak again because I cannot yet sail through the skies like the bird; and, if I have solved a problem whose obscurity disturbed my mind, at once there await me innumerable others, whose perplexities impede my progress, dim my free gaze, make the limits of my _freedom_ painfully sensible to me. "Now that you have become free from sin, you have become _servants_ of righteousness."[106] Republicans in their broad freedom, do they not become servants of the law? How true Christian hearts at all times longed to "become free," how they pined to see themselves delivered from the "bonds of this earth-life"! they looked out toward the land of freedom. ("The Jerusalem that is above is the freewoman; she is the mother of us all." Gal. 4. 26.) Being free from anything--means only being clear or rid. "He is free from headache" is equal to "he is rid of it." "He is free from this prejudice" is equal to "he has never conceived it" or "he has got rid of it." In "less" we complete the freedom recommended by Christianity, in sinless, godless, moralityless, etc. Freedom is the doctrine of Christianity. "Ye, dear brethren, are called to freedom."[107] "So speak and so do, as those who are to be judged by the law of freedom."[108] Must we then, because freedom betrays itself as a Christian ideal, give it up? No, nothing is to be lost, freedom no more than the rest; but it is to become our own, and in the form of freedom it cannot. What a difference between freedom and ownness! One can get _rid_ of a great many things, one yet does not get rid of all; one becomes free from much, not from everything. Inwardly one may be free in spite of the condition of slavery, although, too, it is again only from all sorts of things, not from everything; but from the whip, the domineering temper, etc., of the master, one does not as slave become _free_. "Freedom lives only in the realm of dreams!" Ownness, on the contrary, is my whole being and existence, it is I myself. I am free from what I am _rid_ of, owner of what I have in my _power_ or what I _control_. _My own_ I am at all times and under all circumstances, if I know how to have myself and do not throw myself away on others. To be free is something that I cannot truly _will_, because I cannot make it, cannot create it: I can only wish it and--aspire toward it, for it remains an ideal, a spook. The fetters of reality cut the sharpest welts in my flesh every moment. But _my own_ I remain. Given up as serf to a master, I think only of myself and my advantage; his blows strike me indeed, I am not _free_ from them; but I endure them only for _my benefit_, perhaps in order to deceive him and make him secure by the semblance of patience, or, again, not to draw worse upon myself by contumacy. But, as I keep my eye on myself and my selfishness, I take by the forelock the first good opportunity to trample the slaveholder into the dust. That I then become _free_ from him and his whip is only the consequence of my antecedent egoism. Here one perhaps says I was "free" even in the condition of slavery,--to wit, "intrinsically" or "inwardly." But "intrinsically free" is not "really free," and "inwardly" is not "outwardly." I was own, on the other hand, _my own_, altogether, inwardly and outwardly. Under the dominion of a cruel master my body is not "free" from torments and lashes; but it is _my_ bones that moan under the torture, _my_ fibres that quiver under the blows, and _I_ moan because _my_ body moans. That _I_ sigh and shiver proves that I have not yet lost _myself_, that I am still my own. My _leg_ is not "free" from the master's stick, but it is _my_ leg and is inseparable. Let him tear it off me and look and see if he still has my leg! He retains in his hand nothing but the--corpse of my leg, which is as little my leg as a dead dog is still a dog: a dog has a pulsating heart, a so-called dead dog has none and is therefore no longer a dog. If one opines that a slave may yet be inwardly free, he says in fact only the most indisputable and trivial thing. For who is going to assert that any man is _wholly_ without freedom? If I am an eye-servant, can I therefore not be free from innumerable things, _e. g._ from faith in Zeus, from the desire for fame, and the like? Why then should not a whipped slave also be able to be inwardly free from unchristian sentiments, from hatred, of his enemy, etc.? He then has "Christian freedom," is rid of the unchristian; but has he absolute freedom, freedom from everything, _e. g._ from the Christian delusion, or from bodily pain, etc.? In the meantime, all this seems to be said more against names than against the thing. But is the name indifferent, and has not a word, a shibboleth, always inspired and--fooled men? Yet between freedom and ownness there lies still a deeper chasm than the mere difference of the words. All the world desires freedom, all long for its reign to come. O enchantingly beautiful dream of a blooming "reign of freedom," a "free human race"!--who has not dreamed it? So men shall become free, entirely free, free from all constraint! From all constraint, really from all? Are they never to put constraint on themselves any more? "Oh yes, that, of course; don't you see, that is no constraint at all?" Well, then at any rate they are to become free from religious faith, from the strict duties of morality, from the inexorability of the law, from--"What a fearful misunderstanding!" Well, _what_ are they to be free from then, and what not? The lovely dream is dissipated; awakened, one rubs his half-opened eyes and stares at the prosaic questioner. "What men are to be free from?"--From blind credulity, cries one. What's that? exclaims another, all faith is blind credulity; they must become free from all faith. No, no, for God's sake,--inveighs the first again,--do not cast all faith from you, else the power of brutality breaks in. We must have the republic,--a third makes himself heard,--and become--free from all commanding lords. There is no help in that, says a fourth: we only get a new lord then, a "dominant majority"; let us rather free ourselves from this dreadful inequality.--O hapless equality, already I hear your plebeian roar again! How I had dreamed so beautifully just now of a paradise of _freedom_, and what impudence and licentiousness now raises its wild clamor! Thus the first laments, and gets on his feet to grasp the sword against "unmeasured freedom." Soon we no longer hear anything but the clashing of the swords of the disagreeing dreamers of freedom. What the craving for freedom has always come to has been the desire for a _particular_ freedom, _e. g._ freedom of faith; _i. e._, the believing man wanted to be free and independent; of what? of faith perhaps? no! but of the inquisitors of faith. So now "political or civil" freedom. The citizen wants to become free not from citizenhood, but from bureaucracy, the arbitrariness of princes, and the like. Prince Metternich once said he had "found a way that was adapted to guide men in the path of _genuine_ freedom for all the future." The Count of Provence ran away from France precisely at the time when she was preparing the "reign of freedom," and said: "My imprisonment had become intolerable to me; I had only one passion, the desire for--_freedom_; I thought only of it." The craving for a _particular_ freedom always includes the purpose of a new _dominion_, as it was with the Revolution, which indeed "could give its defenders the uplifting feeling that they were fighting for freedom," but in truth only because they were after a particular freedom, therefore a new _dominion_, the "dominion of the law." Freedom you all want, you want _freedom_. Why then do you higgle over a more or less? _Freedom_ can only be the whole of freedom; a piece of freedom is not _freedom_. You despair of the possibility of obtaining the whole of freedom, freedom from everything,--yes, you consider it insanity even to wish this?--Well, then leave off chasing after the phantom, and spend your pains on something better than the--_unattainable_. "Ah, but there is nothing better than freedom!" What have you then when you have freedom, _viz._,--for I will not speak here of your piecemeal bits of freedom,--complete freedom? Then you are rid of everything that embarrasses you, everything, and there is probably nothing that does not once in your life embarrass you and cause you inconvenience. And for whose sake, then, did you want to be rid of it? Doubtless _for your sake_, because it is in _your_ way! But, if something were not inconvenient to you; if, on the contrary, it were quite to your mind (_e. g._ the gently but _irresistibly commanding_ look of your loved one),--then you would not want to be rid of it and free from it. Why not? _For your sake_ again! So you take _yourselves_ as measure and judge over all. You gladly let freedom go when unfreedom, the "sweet _service_ of love," suits _you_; and you take up your freedom again on occasion when it begins to suit _you_ better,--that is, supposing, which is not the point here, that you are not afraid of such a Repeal of the Union for other (perhaps religious) reasons. Why will you not take courage now to really make _yourselves_ the central point and the main thing altogether? Why grasp in the air at freedom, your dream? Are you your dream? Do not begin by inquiring of your dreams, your notions, your thoughts, for that is all "hollow theory." Ask yourselves and ask after yourselves--that is _practical_ and you know you want very much to be "practical." But there the one hearkens what his God (of course what he thinks of at the name God is his God) may be going to say to it, and another what his moral feelings, his conscience, his feeling of duty, may determine about it, and a third calculates what folks will think of it,--and, when each has thus asked his Lord God (folks are a Lord God just as good as, nay, even more compact than, the other-worldly and imaginary one: _vox populi, vox dei_), then he accommodates himself to his Lord's will and listens no more at all for what _he himself_ would like to say and decide. Therefore turn to yourselves rather than to your gods or idols. Bring out from yourselves what is in you, bring it to the light, bring yourselves to revelation. How one acts only from himself, and asks after nothing further, the Christians have realized in the notion "God." He acts "as it pleases him." And foolish man, who could do just so, is to act as it "pleases God" instead.--If it is said that even God proceeds according to eternal laws, that too fits me, since I too cannot get out of my skin, but have my law in my whole nature, _i. e._ in myself. But one needs only admonish you of yourselves to bring you to despair at once. "What am I?" each of you asks himself. An abyss of lawless and unregulated impulses, desires, wishes, passions, a chaos without light or guiding star! How am I to obtain a correct answer, if, without regard to God's commandments or to the duties which morality prescribes, without regard to the voice of reason, which in the course of history, after bitter experiences, has exalted the best and most reasonable thing into law, I simply appeal to myself? My passion would advise me to do the most senseless thing possible.--Thus each deems himself the--_devil_; for, if, so far as he is unconcerned about religion, etc., he only deemed himself a beast, he would easily find that the beast, which does follow only _its_ impulse (as it were, its advice), does not advise and impel itself to do the "most senseless" things, but takes very correct steps. But the habit of the religious way of thinking has biased our mind so grievously that we are--terrified at _ourselves_ in our nakedness and naturalness; it has degraded us so that we deem ourselves depraved by nature, born devils. Of course it comes into your head at once that your calling requires you to do the "good," the moral, the right. Now, if you ask _yourselves_ what is to be done, how can the right voice sound forth from you, the voice which points the way of the good, the right, the true, etc.? What concord have God and Belial? But what would you think if one answered you by saying: "That one is to listen to God, conscience, duties, laws, etc., is flim-flam with which people have stuffed your head and heart and made you crazy"? And if he asked you how it is that you know so surely that the voice of nature is a seducer? And if he even demanded of you to turn the thing about and actually to deem the voice of God and conscience to be the devil's work? There are such graceless men; how will you settle them? You cannot appeal to your parsons, parents, and good men, for precisely these are designated by them as your _seducers_, as the true seducers and corrupters of youth, who busily sow broadcast the tares of self-contempt and reverence to God, who fill young hearts with mud and young heads with stupidity. But now those people go on and ask: For whose sake do you care about God's and the other commandments? You surely do not suppose that this is done merely out of complaisance toward God? No, you are doing it--_for your sake_ again.--Here too, therefore, _you_ are the main thing, and each must say to himself, _I_ am everything to myself and I do everything _on my account_. If it ever became clear to you that God, the commandments, etc., only harm you, that they reduce and ruin _you_, to a certainty you would throw them from you just as the Christians once condemned Apollo or Minerva or heathen morality. They did indeed put in the place of these Christ and afterward Mary, as well as a Christian morality; but they did this for the sake of _their_ souls' welfare too, therefore out of egoism or ownness. And it was by this egoism, this ownness, that they got _rid_ of the old world of gods and became _free_ from it. Ownness _created_ a new _freedom_; for ownness is the creator of everything, as genius (a definite ownness), which is always originality, has for a long time already been looked upon as the creator of new productions that have a place in the history of the world. If your efforts are ever to make "freedom" the issue, then exhaust freedom's demands. Who is it that is to become free? You, I, we. Free from what? From everything that is not you, not I, not we. I, therefore, am the kernel that is to be delivered from all wrappings and--freed from all cramping shells. What is left when I have been freed from everything that is not I? Only I; nothing but I. But freedom has nothing to offer to this I himself. As to what is now to happen further after I have become free, freedom is silent,--as our governments, when the prisoner's time is up, merely let him go, thrusting him out into abandonment. Now why, if freedom is striven after for love of the I after all,--why not choose the I himself as beginning, middle, and end? Am I not worth more than freedom? Is it not I that make myself free, am not I the first? Even unfree, even laid in a thousand fetters, I yet am; and I am not, like freedom, extant only in the future and in hopes, but even as the most abject of slaves I am--present. Think that over well, and decide whether you will place on your banner the dream of "freedom" or the resolution of "egoism," of "ownness." "Freedom" awakens your _rage_ against everything that is not you; "egoism" calls you to _joy_ over yourselves, to self-enjoyment; "freedom" is and remains a _longing_, a romantic plaint, a Christian hope for unearthliness and futurity; "ownness" is a reality, which _of itself_ removes just so much unfreedom as by barring your own way hinders you. What does not disturb you, you will not want to renounce; and, if it begins to disturb you, why, you know that "you must obey _yourselves_ rather than men!" Freedom teaches only: Get yourselves rid, relieve yourselves, of everything burdensome; it does not teach you who you yourselves are. Rid, rid! so rings its rallying-cry, and you, eagerly following its call, get rid even of yourselves, "deny yourselves." But ownness calls you back to yourselves, it says "Come to yourself!" Under the ægis of freedom you get rid of many kinds of things, but something new pinches you again: "you are rid of the Evil One; evil is left."[109] As _own_ you are _really rid of everything_, and what clings to you _you have accepted_; it is your choice and your pleasure. The _own_ man is the _freeborn_, the man free to begin with; the free man, on the contrary, is only the _eleutheromaniac_, the dreamer and enthusiast. The former is _originally free_, because he recognizes nothing but himself; he does not need to free himself first, because at the start he rejects everything outside himself, because he prizes nothing more than himself, rates nothing higher, because, in short, he starts from himself and "comes to himself." Constrained by childish respect, he is nevertheless already working at "freeing" himself from this constraint. Ownness works in the little egoist, and procures him the desired--freedom. Thousands of years of civilization have obscured to you what you are, have made you believe you are not egoists but are _called_ to be idealists ("good men"). Shake that off! Do not seek for freedom, which does precisely deprive you of yourselves, in "self-denial"; but seek for _yourselves_, become egoists, become each of you an _almighty ego_. Or, more clearly: Just recognize yourselves again, just recognize what you really are, and let go your hypocritical endeavors, your foolish mania to be something else than you are. Hypocritical I call them because you have yet remained egoists all these thousands of years, but sleeping, self-deceiving, crazy egoists, you Heautontimorumenoses, you self-tormentors. Never yet has a religion been able to dispense with "promises," whether they referred us to the other world or to this ("long life," etc.); for man is _mercenary_ and does nothing "gratis." But how about that "doing the good for the good's sake without prospect of reward? As if here too the pay was not contained in the satisfaction that it is to afford. Even religion, therefore, is founded on our egoism and--exploits it; calculated for our _desires_, it stifles many others for the sake of one. This then gives the phenomenon of _cheated_ egoism, where I satisfy, not myself, but one of my desires, _e. g._ the impulse toward blessedness. Religion promises me the--"supreme good"; to gain this I no longer regard any other of my desires, and do not slake them.--All your doings are _unconfessed_, secret, covert, and concealed egoism. But because they are egoism that you are unwilling to confess to yourselves, that you keep secret from yourselves, hence not manifest and public egoism, consequently unconscious egoism,--therefore they are _not egoism_, but thraldom, service, self-renunciation; you are egoists, and you are not, since you renounce egoism. Where you seem most to be such, you have drawn upon the word "egoist"--loathing and contempt. I secure my freedom with regard to the world in the degree that I make the world my own, _i. e._ "gain it and take possession of it" for myself, by whatever might, by that of persuasion, of petition, of categorical demand, yes, even by hypocrisy, cheating, etc.; for the means that I use for it are determined by what I am. If I am weak, I have only weak means, like the aforesaid, which yet are good enough for a considerable part of the world. Besides, cheating, hypocrisy, lying, look worse than they are. Who has not cheated the police, the law? who has not quickly taken on an air of honorable loyalty before the sheriff's officer who meets him, in order to conceal an illegality that may have been committed, etc.? He who has not done it has simply let violence be done to him; he was a _weakling_ from--conscience. I know that my freedom is diminished even by my not being able to carry out my will on another object, be this other something without will, like a rock, or something with will, like a government, an individual, etc.; I deny my ownness when--in presence of another--I give myself up, _i. e._ give way, desist, submit; therefore by _loyalty_, _submission_. For it is one thing when I give up my previous course because it does not lead to the goal, and therefore turn out of a wrong road; it is another when I yield myself a prisoner. I get around a rock that stands in my way, till I have powder enough to blast it; I get around the laws of a people, till I have gathered strength to overthrow them. Because I cannot grasp the moon, is it therefore to be "sacred" to me, an Astarte? If I only could grasp you, I surely would, and, if I only find a means to get up to you, you shall not frighten me! You inapprehensible one, you shall remain inapprehensible to me only till I have acquired the might for apprehension and call you my _own_; I do not give myself up before you, but only bide my time. Even if for the present I put up with my inability to touch you, I yet remember it against you. Vigorous men have always done so. When the "loyal" had exalted an unsubdued power to be their master and had adored it, when they had demanded adoration from all, then there came some such son of nature who would not loyally submit, and drove the adored power from its inaccessible Olympus. He cried his "Stand still" to the rolling sun, and made the earth go round; the loyal had to make the best of it; he laid his axe to the sacred oaks, and the "loyal" were astonished that no heavenly fire consumed him; he threw the pope off Peter's chair, and the "loyal" had no way to hinder it; he is tearing down the divine-right business, and the "loyal" croak in vain, and at last are silent. My freedom becomes complete only when it is my--_might_; but by this I cease to be a merely free man, and become an own man. Why is the freedom of the peoples a "hollow word"? Because the peoples have no might! With a breath of the living ego I blow peoples over, be it the breath of a Nero, a Chinese emperor, or a poor writer. Why is it that the G.....[110] legislatures pine in vain for freedom, and are lectured for it by the cabinet ministers? Because they are not of the "mighty"! Might is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for "one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right." You long for freedom? You fools! If you took might, freedom would come of itself. See, he who has might "stands above the law." How does this prospect taste to you, you "law-abiding" people? But you have no taste! The cry for "freedom" rings loudly all around. But is it felt and known what a donated or chartered freedom must mean? It is not recognized in the full amplitude of the word that all freedom is essentially--self-liberation,--_i. e._, that I can have only so much freedom as I procure for myself by my ownness. Of what use is it to sheep that no one abridges their freedom of speech? They stick to bleating. Give one who is inwardly a Mohammedan, a Jew, or a Christian, permission to speak what he likes: he will yet utter only narrow-minded stuff. If, on the contrary, certain others rob you of the freedom of speaking and hearing, they know quite rightly wherein lies their temporary advantage, as you would perhaps be able to say and hear something whereby those "certain" persons would lose their credit. If they nevertheless give you freedom, they are simply knaves who give more than they have. For then they give you nothing of their own, but stolen wares: they give you your own freedom, the freedom that you must take for yourselves; and they _give_ it to you only that you may not take it and call the thieves and cheats to an account to boot. In their slyness they know well that given (chartered) freedom is no freedom, since only the freedom one _takes_ for himself, therefore the egoist's freedom, rides with full sails. Donated freedom strikes its sails as soon as there comes a storm--or calm; it requires always a--gentle and moderate breeze. Here lies the difference between self-liberation and emancipation (manumission, setting free). Those who to-day "stand in the opposition" are thirsting and screaming to be "set free." The princes are to "declare their peoples of age," _i. e._ emancipate them! Behave as if you were of age, and you are so without any declaration of majority; if you do not behave accordingly, you are not worthy of it, and would never be of age even by a declaration of majority. When the Greeks were of age, they drove out their tyrants, and, when the son is of age, he makes himself independent of his father. If the Greeks had waited till their tyrants graciously allowed them their majority, they might have waited long. A sensible father throws out a son who will not come of age, and keeps the house to himself; it serves the noodle right. The man who is set free is nothing but a freedman, a _libertinus_, a dog dragging a piece of chain with him: he is an unfree man in the garment of freedom, like the ass in the lion's skin. Emancipated Jews are nothing bettered in themselves, but only relieved as Jews, although he who relieves their condition is certainly more than a churchly Christian, as the latter cannot do this without inconsistency. But, emancipated or not emancipated, Jew remains Jew; he who is not self-freed is merely an--emancipated man. The Protestant State can certainly set free (emancipate) the Catholics; but, because they do not make themselves free, they remain simply--Catholics. Selfishness and unselfishness have already been spoken of. The friends of freedom are exasperated against selfishness because in their religious striving after freedom they cannot--free themselves from that sublime thing, "self-renunciation." The liberal's anger is directed against egoism, for the egoist, you know, never takes trouble about a thing for the sake of the thing, but for his sake: the thing must serve him. It is egoistic to ascribe to no thing a value of its own, an "absolute" value, but to seek its value in me. One often hears that pot-boiling study which is so common counted among the most repulsive traits of egoistic behavior, because it manifests the most shameful desecration of science; but what is science for but to be consumed? If one does not know how to use it for anything better than to keep the pot boiling, then his egoism is a petty one indeed, because this egoist's power is a limited power; but the egoistic element in it, and the desecration of science, only a possessed man can blame. Because Christianity, incapable of letting the individual count as an ego,[111] thought of him only as a dependent, and was properly nothing but a _social theory_,--a doctrine of living together, and that of man with God as well as of man with man,--therefore in it everything "own" must fall into most woeful disrepute: selfishness, self-will, ownness, self-love, etc. The Christian way of looking at things has on all sides gradually re-stamped honorable words into dishonorable; why should they not be brought into honor again? So _Schimpf_ (contumely) is in its old sense equivalent to jest, but for Christian seriousness pastime became a dishonor,[112] for that seriousness cannot take a joke; _frech_ (impudent) formerly meant only bold, brave; _Frevel_ (wanton outrage) was only daring. It is well known how askance the word "reason" was looked at for a long time. Our language has settled itself pretty well to the Christian standpoint, and the general consciousness is still too Christian not to shrink in terror from everything unchristian as from something incomplete or evil. Therefore "selfishness" is in a bad way too. Selfishness,[113] in the Christian sense, means something like this: I look only to see whether anything is of use to me as a sensual man. But is sensuality then the whole of my ownness? Am I in my own senses when I am given up to sensuality? Do I follow myself, my _own_ determination, when I follow that? I am _my own_ only when I am master of myself, instead of being mastered either by sensuality or by anything else (God, man, authority, law, State, Church, etc.); what is of use to me, this self-owned or self-appertaining one, _my selfishness_ pursues. Besides, one sees himself every moment compelled to believe in that constantly-blasphemed selfishness as an all-controlling power. In the session of February 10, 1844, Welcker argues a motion on the dependence of the judges, and sets forth in a detailed speech that removable, dismissable, transferable, and pensionable judges--in short, such members of a court of justice as can by mere administrative process be damaged and endangered,--are wholly without reliability, yes, lose all respect and all confidence among the people. The whole bench, Welcker cries, is demoralized by this dependence! In blunt words this means nothing else than that the judges find it more to their advantage to give judgment as the ministers would have them than to give it as the law would have them. How is that to be helped? Perhaps by bringing home to the judges' hearts the ignominiousness of their venality, and then cherishing the confidence that they will repent and henceforth prize justice more highly than their selfishness? No, the people does not soar to this romantic confidence, for it feels that selfishness is mightier than any other motive. Therefore the same persons who have been judges hitherto may remain so, however thoroughly one has convinced himself that they behaved as egoists; only they must not any longer find their selfishness favored by the venality of justice, but must stand so independent of the government that by a judgment in conformity with the facts they do not throw into the shade their own cause, their "well-understood interest," but rather secure a comfortable combination of a good salary with respect among the citizens. So Welcker and the commoners of Baden consider themselves secured only when they can count on selfishness. What is one to think, then, of the countless phrases of unselfishness with which their mouths overflow at other times? To a cause which I am pushing selfishly I have another relation than to one which I am serving unselfishly. The following criterion might be cited for it: against the one I can _sin_ or commit a _sin_, the other I can only _trifle away_, push from me, deprive myself of,--_i. e._ commit an imprudence. Free trade is looked at in both ways, being regarded partly as a freedom which may _under certain circumstances_ be granted or withdrawn, partly as one which is to be held _sacred under all circumstances_. If I am not concerned about a thing in and for itself, and do not desire it for its own sake, then I desire it solely as a _means to an end_, for its usefulness; for the sake of another end; _e. g._, oysters for a pleasant flavor. Now will not every thing whose final end he himself is serve the egoist as means? and is he to protect a thing that serves him for nothing,--_e. g._, the proletarian to protect the State? Ownness includes in itself everything own, and brings to honor again what Christian language dishonored. But ownness has not any alien standard either, as it is not in any sense an _idea_ like freedom, morality, humanity, and the like: it is only a description of the--_owner_. II THE OWNER I--do I come to myself and mine through liberalism? Whom does the liberal look upon as his equal? Man! Be only man, and that you are anyway,--and the liberal calls you his brother. He asks very little about your private opinions and private follies, if only he can espy "Man" in you. But, as he takes little heed of what you are _privatim_,--nay, in a strict following out of his principle sets no value at all on it,--he sees in you only what you are _generatim_. In other words, he sees in you, not _you_, but the _species_; not Tom or Jim, but Man; not the real or unique one,[114] but your essence or your concept; not the bodily man, but the _spirit_. As Tom you would not be his equal, because he is Jim, therefore not Tom; as man you are the same that he is. And, since as Tom you virtually do not exist at all for him (so far, to wit, as he is a liberal and not unconsciously an egoist), he has really made "brother-love" very easy for himself: he loves in you not Tom, of whom he knows nothing and wants to know nothing, but Man. To see in you and me nothing further than "men," that is running the Christian way of looking at things, according to which one is for the other nothing but a _concept_ (_e. g._ a man called to salvation, etc.), into the ground. Christianity properly so called gathers us under a less utterly general concept: there we are "sons of God" and "led by the Spirit of God."[115] Yet not all can boast of being God's sons, but "the same Spirit which witnesses to our spirit that we are sons of God reveals also who are the sons of the devil."[116] Consequently, to be a son of God one must not be a son of the devil; the sonship of God excluded certain men. To be _sons of men_,--_i. e._ men,--on the contrary, we need nothing but to belong to the human _species_, need only to be specimens of the same species. What I am as this I is no concern of yours as a good liberal, but is my _private affair_ alone; enough that we are both sons of one and the same mother, to wit, the human species: as "a son of man" I am your equal. What am I now to you? Perhaps this _bodily I_ as I walk and stand? Anything but that. This bodily I, with its thoughts, decisions, and passions, is in your eyes a "private affair" which is no concern of yours: it is an "affair by itself." As an "affair for you" there exists only my concept, my generic concept, only _the Man_, who, as he is called Tom, could just as well be Joe or Dick. You see in me not me, the bodily man, but an unreal thing, the spook, _i. e._ a _Man_. In the course of the Christian centuries we declared the most various persons to be "our equals," but each time in the measure of that _spirit_ which we expected from them,--_e. g._ each one in whom the spirit of the need of redemption may be assumed, then later each one who has the spirit of integrity, finally each one who shows a human spirit and a human face. Thus the fundamental principle of "equality" varied. Equality being now conceived as equality of the _human spirit_, there has certainly been discovered an equality that includes _all_ men; for who could deny that we men have a human spirit, _i. e._ no other than a human! But are we on that account further on now than in the beginning of Christianity? Then we were to have a _divine spirit_, now a _human_; but, if the divine did not exhaust us, how should the human wholly express what we are? Feuerbach, _e. g._, thinks that, if he humanizes the divine, he has found the truth. No, if God has given us pain, "Man" is capable of pinching us still more torturingly. The long and the short of it is this: that we are men is the slightest thing about us, and has significance only in so far as it is one of our _qualities_,[117] _i. e._ our property.[118] I am indeed among other things a man, as I am, _e. g._, a living being, therefore an animal, or a European, a Berliner, and the like; but he who chose to have regard for me only as a man, or as a Berliner, would pay me a regard that would be very unimportant to me. And wherefore? Because he would have regard only for one of my _qualities_, not for _me_. It is just so with the _spirit_ too. A Christian spirit, an upright spirit, and the like may well be my acquired quality, _i. e._ my property, but I am not this spirit: it is mine, not I its. Hence we have in liberalism only the continuation of the old Christian depreciation of the I, the bodily Tom. Instead of taking me as I am, one looks solely at my property, my qualities, and enters into marriage bonds with me only for the sake of my--possessions; one marries, as it were, what I have, not what I am. The Christian takes hold of my spirit, the liberal of my humanity. But, if the spirit, which is not regarded as the _property_ of the bodily ego but as the proper ego itself, is a ghost, then the Man too, who is not recognized as my quality but as the proper I, is nothing but a spook, a thought, a concept. Therefore the liberal too revolves in the same circle as the Christian. Because the spirit of mankind, _i. e._ Man, dwells in you, you are a man, as when the spirit of Christ dwells in you you are a Christian; but, because it dwells in you only as a second ego, even though it be as your proper or "better" ego, it remains otherworldly to you, and you have to strive to become wholly man. A striving just as fruitless as the Christian's to become wholly a blessed spirit! One can now, after liberalism has proclaimed Man, declare openly that herewith was only completed the consistent carrying out of Christianity, and that in truth Christianity set itself no other task from the start than to realize "man," the "true man." Hence, then, the illusion that Christianity ascribes an infinite value to the _ego_ (as _e. g._ in the doctrine of immortality, in the cure of souls, etc.) comes to light. No, it assigns this value to _Man_ alone. Only _Man_ is immortal, and only because I am man am I too immortal. In fact, Christianity had to teach that no one is lost, just as liberalism too puts all on an equality as men; but that eternity, like this equality, applied only to the _Man_ in me, not to me. Only as the bearer and harborer of Man do I not die, as notoriously "the king never dies." Louis dies, but the king remains; I die, but my spirit, Man, remains. To identify me now entirely with Man the demand has been invented, and stated, that I must become a "real generic being."[119] The HUMAN _religion_ is only the last metamorphosis of the Christian religion. For liberalism is a religion because it separates my essence from me and sets it above me, because it exalts "Man" to the same extent as any other religion does its God or idol, because it makes what is mine into something otherworldly, because in general it makes out of what is mine, out of my qualities and my property, something alien,--to wit, an "essence"; in short, because it sets me beneath Man, and thereby creates for me a "vocation." But liberalism declares itself a religion in form too when it demands for this supreme being, Man, a zeal of faith, "a faith that some day will at last prove its fiery zeal too, a zeal that will be invincible."[120] But, as liberalism is a human religion, its professor takes a _tolerant_ attitude toward the professor of any other (Catholic, Jewish, etc.), as Frederick the Great did toward every one who performed his duties as a subject, whatever fashion of becoming blest he might be inclined toward. This religion is now to be raised to the rank of the generally customary one, and separated from the others as mere "private follies," toward which, besides, one takes a highly _liberal_ attitude on account of their unessentialness. One may call it the _State-religion_, the religion of the "free State," not in the sense hitherto current that it is the one favored or privileged by the State, but as that religion which the "free State" not only has the right, but is compelled, to demand from each of those who belong to it, let him be _privatim_ a Jew, a Christian, or anything else. For it does the same service to the State as filial piety to the family. If the family is to be recognized and maintained, in its existing condition, by each one of those who belong to it, then to him the tie of blood must be sacred, and his feeling for it must be that of piety, of respect for the ties of blood, by which every blood-relation becomes to him a consecrated person. So also to every member of the State-community this community must be sacred, and the concept which is the highest to the State must likewise be the highest to him. But what concept is the highest to the State? Doubtless that of being a really human society, a society in which every one who is really a man, _i. e. not an un-man_, can obtain admission as a member. Let a State's tolerance go ever so far, toward an un-man and toward what is inhuman it ceases. And yet this "un-man" is a man, yet the "inhuman" itself is something human, yes, possible only to a man, not to any beast; it is, in fact, something "possible to man." But, although every un-man is a man, yet the State excludes him; _i. e._, it locks him up, or transforms him from a fellow of the State into a fellow of the prison (fellow of the lunatic asylum or hospital, according to Communism). To say in blunt words what an un-man is is not particularly hard: it is a man who does not correspond to the _concept_ man, as the inhuman is something human which is not conformed to the concept of the human. Logic calls this a "self-contradictory judgment." Would it be permissible for one to pronounce this judgment, that one can be a man without being a man, if he did not admit the hypothesis that the concept of man can be separated from the existence, the essence from the appearance? They say, he _appears_ indeed as a man, but _is_ not a man. Men have passed this "self-contradictory judgment" through a long line of centuries! Nay, what is still more, in this long time there were only--_un-men_. What individual can have corresponded to his concept? Christianity knows only one Man, and this one--Christ--is at once an un-man again in the reverse sense, to wit, a superhuman man, a "God." Only the--un-man is a _real_ man. Men that are not men, what should they be but _ghosts_? Every real man, because he does not correspond to the concept "man," or because he is not a "generic man," is a spook. But do I still remain an un-man even if I bring Man (who towered above me and remained otherworldly to me only as my ideal, my task, my essence or concept) down to be my _quality_, my own and inherent in me; so that Man is nothing else than my humanity, my human existence, and everything that I do is human precisely because _I_ do it, but not because it corresponds to the _concept_ "man"? _I_ am really Man and the un-man in one; for I am a man and at the same time more than a man; _i. e._, I am the ego of this my mere quality. It had to come to this at last, that it was no longer merely demanded of us to be Christians, but to become men; for, though we could never really become even Christians, but always remained "poor sinners" (for the Christian was an unattainable ideal too), yet in this the contradictoriness did not come before our consciousness so, and the illusion was easier than now when of us, who are men and act humanly (yes, cannot do otherwise than be such and act so), the demand is made that we are to be men, "real men." Our States of to-day, because they still have all sorts of things sticking to them, left from their churchly mother, do indeed load those who belong to them with various obligations (_e. g._ churchly religiousness) which properly do not a bit concern them, the States; yet on the whole they do not deny their significance, since they want to be looked upon as _human societies_, in which man as man can be a member, even if he is less privileged than other members; most of them admit adherents of every religious sect, and receive people without distinction of race or nation: Jews, Turks, Moors, etc., can become French citizens. In the act of reception, therefore, the State looks only to see whether one is a _man_. The Church, as a society of believers, could not receive every man into her bosom; the State, as a society of men, can. But, when the State has carried its principle clear through, of presupposing in its constituents nothing but that they are men (even the North Americans still presuppose in theirs that they have religion, at least the religion of integrity, of respectability), then it has dug its grave. While it will fancy that those whom it possesses are without exception men, these have meanwhile become without exception _egoists_, each of whom utilizes it according to his egoistic powers and ends. Against the egoists "human society" is wrecked; for they no longer have to do with each other as _men_, but appear egoistically as an _I_ against a You altogether different from me and in opposition to me. If the State must count on our humanity, it is the same if one says it must count on our _morality_. Seeing Man in each other, and acting as men toward each other, is called moral behavior. This is every whit the "spiritual love" of Christianity. For, if I see Man in you, as in myself I see Man and nothing but Man, then I care for you as I would care for myself; for we represent, you see, nothing but the mathematical proposition: A = C and B = C, consequently A = B,--_i. e._, I nothing but man and you nothing but man, consequently I and you the same. Morality is incompatible with egoism, because the former does not allow validity to _me_, but only to the Man in me. But, if the State is a _society of men_, not a union of egos each of whom has only himself before his eyes, then it cannot last without morality, and must insist on morality. Therefore we two, the State and I, are enemies. I, the egoist, have not at heart the welfare of this "human society," I sacrifice nothing to it, I only utilize it; but to be able to utilize it completely I transform it rather into my property and my creature,--_i. e._ I annihilate it, and form in its place the _Union of Egoists_. So the State betrays its enmity to me by demanding that I be a man, which presupposes that I may also not be a man, but rank for it as an "un-man"; it imposes being a man upon me as a _duty_. Further, it desires me to do nothing along with which _it_ cannot last; so _its permanence_ is to be sacred for me. Then I am not to be an egoist, but a "respectable, upright," _i. e._ moral, man. Enough, before it and its permanence I am to be impotent and respectful,--etc. This State, not a present one indeed, but still in need of being first created, is the ideal of advancing liberalism. There is to come into existence a true "society of men," in which every "man" finds room. Liberalism means to realize "Man," _i. e._ create a world for him; and this should be the _human_ world or the general (Communistic) society of men. It was said, "The Church could regard only the spirit, the State is to regard the whole man."[121] But is not "Man" "spirit"? The kernel of the State is simply "Man," this unreality, and it itself is only a "society of men." The world which the believer (believing spirit) creates is called Church, the world which the man (human or humane spirit) creates is called State. But that is not _my_ world. I never execute anything _human_ in the abstract, but always my _own_ things; _i. e._, _my_ human act is diverse from every other human act, and only by this diversity is it a real act belonging to me. The human in it is an abstraction, and, as such, spirit, _i. e._ abstracted essence. Br. Bauer states (_e. g._ "_Judenfrage_," p. 84) that the truth of criticism is the final truth, and in fact the truth sought for by Christianity itself,--to wit, "Man." He says, "The history of the Christian world is the history of the supreme fight for truth, for in it--and in it only!--the thing at issue is the discovery of the final or the primal truth--man and freedom." All right, let us accept this gain, and let us take _man_ as the ultimately found result of Christian history and of the religious or ideal efforts of man in general. Now, who is Man? _I_ am! _Man_, the end and outcome of Christianity, is, as _I_, the beginning and raw material of the new history, a history of enjoyment after the history of sacrifices, a history not of man or humanity, but of--_me_. _Man_ ranks as the general. Now then, I and the egoistic are the really general, since every one is an egoist and of paramount importance to himself. The Jewish is not the purely egoistic, because the Jew still devotes _himself_ to Jehovah; the Christian is not, because the Christian lives on the grace of God and subjects _himself_ to him. As Jew and as Christian alike a man satisfies only certain of his wants, only a certain need, not _himself_: a _half_-egoism, because the egoism of a half-man, who is half he, half Jew, or half his own proprietor, half a slave. Therefore, too, Jew and Christian always half-way exclude each other; _i. e._, as men they recognize each other, as slaves they exclude each other, because they are servants of two different masters. If they could be complete egoists, they would exclude each other _wholly_ and hold together so much the more firmly. Their ignominy is not that they exclude each other, but that this is done only _half-way_. Br. Bauer, on the contrary, thinks Jews and Christians cannot regard and treat each other as "men" till they give up the separate essence which parts them and obligates them to eternal separation, recognize the general essence of "Man," and regard this as their "true essence." According to his representation the defect of the Jews and the Christians alike lies in their wanting to be and have something "particular" instead of only being men and endeavoring after what is human,--to wit, the "general rights of man." He thinks their fundamental error consists in the belief that they are "privileged," possess "prerogatives"; in general, in the belief in _prerogative_.[122] In opposition to this he holds up to them the general rights of man. The rights of man!-- _Man is man in general_, and in so far every one who is a man. Now every one is to have the eternal rights of man, and, according to the opinion of Communism, enjoy them in the complete "democracy," or, as it ought more correctly to be called,--anthropocracy. But it is I alone who have everything that I--procure for myself; as man I have nothing. People would like to give every man an affluence of all good, merely because he has the title "man." But I put the accent on me, not on my being _man_. Man is something only as _my quality_[123] (property[124]), like masculinity or femininity. The ancients found the ideal in one's being _male_ in the full sense; their virtue is _virtus_ and _arete_,--_i. e._ manliness. What is one to think of a woman who should want only to be perfectly "woman"? That is not given to all, and many a one would therein be fixing for herself an unattainable goal. _Feminine_, on the other hand, she is anyhow, by nature; femininity is her quality, and she does not need "true femininity." I am a man just as the earth is a star. As ridiculous as it would be to set the earth the task of being a "thorough star," so ridiculous it is to burden me with the call to be a "thorough man." When Fichte says, "The ego is all," this seems to harmonize perfectly with my theses. But it is not that the ego _is_ all, but the ego _destroys_ all, and only the self-dissolving ego, the never-being ego, the--_finite_ ego is really I. Fichte speaks of the "absolute" ego, but I speak of me, the transitory ego. How natural is the supposition that _man_ and _ego_ mean the same! and yet one sees, _e. g._, by Feuerbach, that the expression "man" is to designate the absolute ego, the _species_, not the transitory, individual ego. Egoism and humanity (humaneness) ought to mean the same, but according to Feuerbach the individual can "only lift himself above the limits of his individuality, but not above the laws, the positive ordinances, of his species."[125] But the species is nothing, and, if the individual lifts himself above the limits of his individuality, this is rather his very self as an individual; he exists only in raising himself, he exists only in not remaining what he is; otherwise he would be done, dead. Man with the great M is only an ideal, the species only something thought of. To be _a_ man is not to realize the ideal of _Man_, but to present _oneself_, the individual. It is not how I realize the _generally human_ that needs to be my task, but how I satisfy myself. _I_ am my species, am without norm, without law, without model, and the like. It is possible that I can make very little out of myself; but this little is everything, and is better than what I allow to be made out of me by the might of others, by the training of custom, religion, the laws, the State, etc. Better--if the talk is to be of better at all--better an unmannerly child than an old head on young shoulders, better a mulish man than a man compliant in everything. The unmannerly and mulish fellow is still on the way to form himself according to his own will; the prematurely knowing and compliant one is determined by the "species," the general demands, etc.,--the species is law to him. He is _determined_[126] by it; for what else is the species to him but his "destiny,"[127] his "calling"? Whether I look to "humanity," the species, in order to strive toward this ideal, or to God and Christ with like endeavor, where is the essential dissimilarity? At most the former is more washed-out than the latter. As the individual is the whole of nature, so he is the whole of the species too. Everything that I do, think, etc.,--in short, my expression or manifestation--is indeed _conditioned_ by what I am. The Jew, _e. g._, can will only thus or thus, can "present himself" only thus; the Christian can present and manifest himself only christianly, etc. If it were possible that you could be a Jew or Christian, you would indeed bring out only what was Jewish or Christian; but it is not possible; in the most rigorous conduct you yet remain an _egoist_, a sinner against that concept--_i. e._, _you_ are not the precise equivalent of Jew. Now, because the egoistic always keeps peeping through, people have inquired for a more perfect concept which should really wholly express what you are, and which, because it is your true nature, should contain all the laws of your activity. The most perfect thing of the kind has been attained in "Man." As a Jew you are too little, and the Jewish is not your task; to be a Greek, a German, does not suffice. But be a--man, then you have everything; look upon the human as your calling. Now I know what is expected of me, and the new catechism can be written. The subject is again subjected to the predicate, the individual to something general; the dominion is again secured to an _idea_, and the foundation laid for a new _religion_. This is a _step forward_ in the domain of religion, and in particular of Christianity; not a step out beyond it. The step out beyond it leads into the _unspeakable_. For me paltry language has no word, and "the Word," the Logos, is to me a "mere word." _My essence_ is sought for. If not the Jew, the German, etc., then at any rate it is--the man. "Man is my essence." I am repulsive or repugnant to myself; I have a horror and loathing of myself, I am a horror to myself, or, I am never enough for myself and never do enough to satisfy myself. From such feelings springs self-dissolution or self-criticism. Religiousness begins with self-renunciation, ends with completed criticism. I am possessed, and want to get rid of the "evil spirit." How do I set about it? I fearlessly commit the sin that seems to the Christian the direst, the sin and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. "He who blasphemes the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness forever, but is liable to the eternal judgment!"[128] I want no forgiveness, and am not afraid of the judgment. _Man_ is the last evil _spirit_ or spook, the most deceptive or most intimate, the craftiest liar with honest mien, the father of lies. The egoist, turning against the demands and concepts of the present, executes pitilessly the most measureless--_desecration_. Nothing is holy to him! It would be foolish to assert that there is no power above mine. Only the attitude that I take toward it will be quite another than that of the religious age: I shall be the _enemy_ of every higher power, while religion teaches us to make it our friend and be humble toward it. The _desecrator_ puts forth his strength against every _fear of God_, for fear of God would determine him in everything that he left standing as sacred. Whether it is the God or the Man that exercises the hallowing power in the God-man,--whether, therefore, anything is held sacred for God's sake or for Man's (Humanity's),--this does not change the fear of God, since Man is revered as "supreme essence," as much as on the specifically religious standpoint God as "supreme essence" calls for our fear and reverence; both overawe us. The fear of God in the proper sense was shaken long ago, and a more or less conscious "atheism," externally recognizable by a wide-spread "unchurchliness," has involuntarily become the mode. But what was taken from God has been superadded to Man, and the power of humanity grew greater in just the degree that that of piety lost weight: "Man" is the God of to-day, and fear of Man has taken the place of the old fear of God. But, because Man represents only another Supreme Being, nothing has in fact taken place but a metamorphosis in the Supreme Being, and the fear of Man is merely an altered form of the fear of God. Our atheists are pious people. If in the so-called feudal times we held everything as a fief from God, in the liberal period the same feudal relation exists with Man. God was the Lord, now Man is the Lord; God was the Mediator, now Man is; God was the Spirit, now Man is. In this threefold regard the feudal relation has experienced a transformation. For now, firstly, we hold as a fief from all-powerful Man our _power_, which, because it comes from a higher, is not called power or might, but "right,"--the "rights of man"; we further hold as a fief from him our position in the world, for he, the mediator, mediates our _intercourse_ with others, which therefore may not be otherwise than "human"; finally, we hold as a fief from him _ourselves_,--to wit, our own value, or all that we are worth,--inasmuch as we are worth nothing when _he_ does not dwell in us, and when or where we are not "human." The power is Man's, the world is Man's, I am Man's. But am I not still unrestrained from declaring _myself_ the entitler, the mediator, and the own self? Then it runs thus: My power _is_ my property. My power _gives_ me property. My power _am_ I myself, and through it am I my property. I.--MY POWER _Right_[129] is the _spirit of society_. If society has a _will_, this will is simply right: society exists only through right. But, as it endures only by exercising a _sovereignty_ over individuals, right is its SOVEREIGN WILL. Aristotle says justice is the advantage of _society_. All existing right is--_foreign law_; some one makes me out to be in the right, "does right by me." But should I therefore be in the right if all the world made me out so? And yet what else is the right that I obtain in the State, in society, but a right of those _foreign_ to me? When a blockhead makes me out in the right, I grow distrustful of my rightness; I don't like to receive it from him. But, even when a wise man makes me out in the right, I nevertheless am not in the right on that account. Whether _I_ am in the right is completely independent of the fool's making out and of the wise man's. All the same, we have coveted this right till now. We seek for right, and turn to the court for that purpose. To what? To a royal, a papal, a popular court, etc. Can a sultanic court declare another right than that which the sultan has ordained to be right? Can it make me out in the right if I seek for a right that does not agree with the sultan's law? Can it, _e. g._, concede to me high treason as a right, since it is assuredly not a right according to the sultan's mind? Can it as a court of censorship allow me the free utterance of opinion as a right, since the sultan will hear nothing of this _my_ right? What am I seeking for in this court, then? I am seeking for sultanic right, not _my_ right; I am seeking for--_foreign_ right. As long as this foreign right harmonizes with mine, to be sure, I shall find in it the latter too. The State does not permit pitching into each other man to man; it opposes the _duel_. Even every ordinary appeal to blows, notwithstanding that neither of the fighters calls the police to it, is punished; except when it is not an I whacking away at a you, but, say, the _head of a family_ at the child. The _family_ is entitled to this, and in its name the father; I as Ego am not. The "_Vossische Zeitung_" presents to us the "commonwealth of right." There everything is to be decided by the judge and a _court_. It ranks the supreme court of censorship as a "court" where "right is declared" What sort of a right? The right of the censorship. To recognize the sentences of that court as right one must regard the censorship as right. But it is thought nevertheless that this court offers a protection. Yes, protection against an individual censor's error: it protects only the censorship-legislator against false interpretation of his will, at the same time making his statute, by the "sacred power of right," all the firmer against writers. Whether I am in the right or not there is no judge but myself. Others can judge only whether they endorse my right, and whether it exists as right for them too. In the meantime let us take the matter yet another way. I am to reverence sultanic law in the sultanate, popular law in republics, canon law in Catholic communities, etc. To these laws I am to subordinate myself; I am to regard them as sacred. A "sense of right" and "law-abiding mind" of such a sort is so firmly planted in people's heads that the most revolutionary persons of our days want to subject us to a new "sacred law," the "law of society," the law of mankind, the "right of all," and the like. The right of "all" is to go before _my_ right. As a right of all it would indeed be my right among the rest, since I, with the rest, am included in all; but that it is at the same time a right of others, or even of all others, does not move me to its upholding. Not as a _right of all_ will I defend it, but as _my_ right; and then every other may see to it how he shall likewise maintain it for himself. The right of all (_e. g._ to eat) is a right of every individual. Let each keep this right unabridged for _himself_, then all exercise it spontaneously; let him not take care for all though,--let him not grow zealous for it as for a right of all. But the social reformers preach to us a "_law of society_." There the individual becomes society's slave, and is in the right only when society _makes him out_ in the right, _i. e._ when he lives according to society's _statutes_ and so is--_loyal_. Whether I am loyal under a despotism or in a "society" _à la_ Weitling, it is the same absence of right in so far as in both cases I have not _my_ right but _foreign_ right. In considerations of right the question is always asked, "What or who gives me the right to it?" Answer: God, love, reason, nature, humanity, etc. No, only _your might_, _your_ power gives you the right (your reason, _e. g._, may give it to you). Communism, which assumes that men "have equal rights by nature," contradicts its own proposition till it comes to this, that men have no right at all by nature. For it is not willing to recognize, _e. g._, that parents have "by nature" rights as against their children, or the children as against the parents: it abolishes the family. Nature gives parents, brothers, etc., no right at all. Altogether, this entire revolutionary or Babouvist principle[130] rests on a religious, _i. e._ false, view of things. Who can ask after "right" if he does not occupy the religious standpoint himself? Is not "right" a religious concept, _i. e._ something sacred? Why, "_equality of rights_," as the Revolution propounded it, is only another name for "Christian equality," the "equality of the brethren," "of God's children," "of Christians," etc.: in short _fraternité_. Each and every inquiry after right deserves to be lashed with Schillers words: Many a year I've used my nose To smell the onion and the rose; Is there any proof which shows That I've a right to that same nose? When the Revolution stamped equality as a "right," it took flight into the religious domain, into the region of the sacred, of the ideal. Hence, since then, the fight for the "sacred, inalienable rights of man." Against the "eternal rights of man" the "well-earned rights of the established order" are quite naturally, and with equal right, brought to bear: right against right, where of course one is decried by the other as "wrong." This has been the _contest of rights_[131] since the Revolution. You want to be "in the right" as against the rest. That you cannot; as against them you remain forever "in the wrong"; for they surely would not be your opponents if they were not in "their right" too; they will always make you out "in the wrong." But, as against the right of the rest, yours is a higher, greater, _more powerful_ right, is it not? No such thing! Your right is not more powerful if you are not more powerful. Have Chinese subjects a right to freedom? Just bestow it on them, and then look how far you have gone wrong in your attempt: because they do not know how to use freedom they have no right to it, or, in clearer terms, because they have not freedom they have not the right to it. Children have no right to the condition of majority because they are not of age, _i. e._ because they are children. Peoples that let themselves be kept in nonage have no right to the condition of majority; if they ceased to be in nonage, then only would they have the right to be of age. This means nothing else than "What you have the _power_ to be you have the _right_ to." I derive all right and all warrant from _me_; I am _entitled_ to everything that I have in my power. I am entitled to overthrow Zeus, Jehovah, God, etc., if I _can_; if I cannot, then these gods will always remain in the right and in power as against me, and what I do will be to fear their right and their power in impotent "god-fearingness," to keep their commandments and believe that I do right in everything that I do according to _their_ right, about as the Russian boundary-sentinels think themselves rightfully entitled to shoot dead the suspicious persons who are escaping, since they murder "by superior authority," _i. e._ "with right." But I am entitled by myself to murder if I myself do not forbid it to myself, if I myself do not fear murder as a "wrong." This view of things lies at the foundation of Chamisso's poem, "The Valley of Murder," where the gray-haired Indian murderer compels reverence from the white man whose brethren he has murdered. The only thing I am not entitled to is what I do not do with a free cheer, _i. e._ what _I_ do not entitle myself to. _I_ decide whether it is the _right thing_ in _me_; there is no right _outside_ me. If it is right for _me_,[132] it is right. Possibly this may not suffice to make it right for the rest; that is their care, not mine: let them defend themselves. And if for the whole world something were not right, but it were right for me, _i. e._ I wanted it, then I would ask nothing about the whole world. So every one does who knows how to value _himself_, every one in the degree that he is an egoist; for might goes before right, and that--with perfect right. Because I am "by nature" a man I have an equal right to the enjoyment of all goods, says Babeuf. Must he not also say: because I am "by nature" a first-born prince I have a right to the throne? The rights of man and the "well-earned rights" come to the same thing in the end, to wit, to _nature_, which _gives_ me a right, _i. e._ to _birth_ (and, further, inheritance, etc.). "I am born as a man" is equal to "I am born as a king's son." The natural man has only a natural right (because he has only a natural power) and natural claims: he has right of birth and claims of birth. But _nature_ cannot entitle me, _i. e._ give me capacity or might, to that to which only my act entitles me. That the king's child sets himself above other children, even this is his act, which secures to him the precedence; and that the other children approve and recognize this act is their act, which makes them worthy to be--subjects. Whether nature gives me a right, or whether God, the people's choice, etc., does so, all of that is the same _foreign_ right, a right that _I_ do not give or take to myself. Thus the Communists say, equal labor entitles man to equal enjoyment. Formerly the question was raised whether the "virtuous" man must not be "happy" on earth. The Jews actually drew this inference: "That it may go well with thee on earth." No, equal labor does not entitle you to it, but equal enjoyment alone entitles you to equal enjoyment. Enjoy, then you are entitled to enjoyment. But, if you have labored and let the enjoyment be taken from you, then--"it serves you right." If you _take_ the enjoyment, it is your right; if, on the contrary, you only pine for it without laying hands on it, it remains as before, a "well-earned right" of those who are privileged for enjoyment. It is _their_ right, as by laying hands on it it would become _your_ right. The conflict over the "right of property" wavers in vehement commotion. The Communists affirm[133] that "the earth belongs rightfully to him who tills it, and its products to those who bring them out." I think it belongs to him who knows how to take it, or who does not let it be taken from him, does not let himself be deprived of it. If he appropriates it, then not only the earth, but the right to it too, belongs to him. This is _egoistic right_: _i. e._, it is right for _me_, therefore it is right. Aside from this, right does have "a wax nose." The tiger that assails me is in the right, and I who strike him down am also in the right. I defend against him not my _right_, but _myself_. As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give. _i. e._ "concede," to each other. If the right to existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them; they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves. It will be objected, the children had nevertheless "by nature" the right to exist; only the Spartans refused _recognition_ to this right. But then they simply had no right to this recognition,--no more than they had to recognition of their life by the wild beasts to which they were thrown. People talk so much about _birthright_, and complain: There is--alas!--no mention of the rights That were born with us.[134] What sort of right, then, is there that was born with me? The right to receive an entailed estate, to inherit a throne, to enjoy a princely or noble education; or, again, because poor parents begot me, to--get free schooling, be clothed out of contributions of alms, and at last earn my bread and my herring in the coal-mines or at the loom? Are these not birthrights, rights that have come down to me from my parents through _birth_? You think--no; you think these are only rights improperly so called, it is just these rights that you aim to abolish through the _real birthright_. To give a basis for this you go back to the simplest thing and affirm that every one is by birth _equal_ to another,--to wit, a _man_. I will grant you that every one is born as man, hence the new-born are therein _equal_ to each other. Why are they? Only because they do not yet show and exert themselves as anything but bare--_children of men_, naked little human beings. But thereby they are at once different from those who have already made something out of themselves, who thus are no longer bare "children of men," but--children of their own creation. The latter possess more than bare birthrights: they have _earned_ rights. What an antithesis, what a field of combat! The old combat of the birthrights of man and well-earned rights. Go right on appealing to your birthrights; people will not fail to oppose to you the well-earned. Both stand on the "ground of right"; for each of the two has a "right" against the other, the one the birthright or natural right, the other the earned or "well-earned" right. If you remain on the ground of right, you remain in--_Rechthaberei_.[135] The other cannot give you your right; he cannot "mete out right" to you. He who has might has--right; if you have not the former, neither have you the latter. Is this wisdom so hard to attain? Just look at the mighty and their doings! We are talking here only of China and Japan, of course. Just try it once, you Chinese and Japanese, to make them out in the wrong, and learn by experience how they throw you into jail. (Only do not confuse with this the "well-meaning counsels" which--in China and Japan--are permitted, because they do not hinder the mighty one, but possibly _help him on_.) For him who should want to make them out in the wrong there would stand open only one way thereto, that of might. If he deprives them of their _might_, then he has _really_ made them out in the wrong, deprived them of their right; in any other case he can do nothing but clench his little fist in his pocket, or fall a victim as an obtrusive fool. In short, if you Chinese and Japanese did not ask after right, and in particular if you did not ask after the rights "that were born with you," then you would not need to ask at all after the well-earned rights either. You start back in fright before others, because you think you see beside them the _ghost of right_, which, as in the Homeric combats, seems to fight as a goddess at their side, helping them. What do you do? Do you throw the spear? No, you creep around to gain the spook over to yourselves, that it may fight on your side: you woo for the ghost's favor. Another would simply ask thus: Do I will what my opponent wills? "No!" Now then, there may fight for him a thousand devils or gods, I go at him all the same! The "commonwealth of right," as the "_Vossische Zeitung_" among others stands for it, asks that office-holders be removable only by the _judge_, not by the _administration_. Vain illusion! If it were settled by law that an office-holder who is once seen drunken shall lose his office, then the judges would have to condemn him on the word of the witnesses, etc. In short, the lawgiver would only have to state precisely all the possible grounds which entail the loss of office, however laughable they might be (_e. g._ he who laughs in his superiors' faces, who does not go to church every Sunday, who does not take the communion every four weeks, who runs in debt, who has disreputable associates, who shows no determination, etc., shall be removed. These things the lawgiver might take it into his head to prescribe, _e. g._, for a court of honor); then the judge would solely have to investigate whether the accused had "become guilty" of those "offences," and, on presentation of the proof, pronounce sentence of removal against him "in the name of the law." The judge is lost when he ceases to be _mechanical_, when he "is forsaken by the rules of evidence." Then he no longer has anything but an opinion like everybody else; and, if he decides according to this _opinion_, his action is _no longer an official action_. As judge he must decide only according to the law. Commend me rather to the old French parliaments, which wanted to examine for themselves what was to be matter of right, and to register it only after their own approval. They at least judged according to a right of their own, and were not willing to give themselves up to be machines of the lawgiver, although as judges they must, to be sure, become their own machines. It is said that punishment is the criminal's right. But impunity is just as much his right. If his undertaking succeeds, it serves him right, and, if it does not succeed, it likewise serves him right. You make your bed and lie in it. If some one goes foolhardily into dangers and perishes in them, we are apt to say, "It serves him right; he would have it so." But, if he conquered the dangers, _i. e._ if his _might_ was victorious, then he would be in the _right_ too. If a child plays with the knife and gets cut, it is served right; but, if it doesn't get cut, it is served right too. Hence right befalls the criminal, doubtless, when he suffers what he risked; why, what did he risk it for, since he knew the possible consequences? But the punishment that we decree against him is only our right, not his. Our right reacts against his, and he is "in the wrong at last" because--we get the upper hand. * * * * * But what is right, what is matter of right in a society, is voiced too--in the _law_.[136] Whatever the law may be, it must be respected by the--loyal citizen. Thus the law-abiding mind of Old England is eulogized. To this that Euripidean sentiment (Orestes, 418) entirely corresponds: "We serve the gods, whatever the gods are." _Law as such, God as such_, thus far we are to-day. People are at pains to distinguish _law_ from arbitrary _orders_, from an ordinance: the former comes from a duly entitled authority. But a law over human action (ethical law, State law, etc.) is always a _declaration of will_, and so an order. Yes, even if I myself gave myself the law, it would yet be only my order, to which in the next moment I can refuse obedience. One may well enough declare what he will put up with, and so deprecate the opposite by a law, making known that in the contrary case he will treat the transgressor as his enemy; but no one has any business to command _my_ actions, to say what course I shall pursue and set up a code to govern it. I must put up with it that he treats me as his _enemy_, but never that he makes free with me as his _creature_, and that he makes _his_ reason, or even unreason, my plumb-line. States last only so long as there is a _ruling will_ and this ruling will is looked upon as tantamount to the own will. The lord's will is--law. What do your laws amount to if no one obeys them? what your orders, if nobody lets himself be ordered? The State cannot forbear the claim to determine the individual's will, to speculate and count on this. For the State it is indispensable that nobody have an _own will_; if one had, the State would have to exclude (lock up, banish, etc.) this one; if all had, they would do away with the State. The State is not thinkable without lordship and servitude (subjection); for the State must will to be the lord of all that it embraces, and this will is called the "will of the State." He who, to hold his own, must count on the absence of will in others is a thing made by these others, as the master is a thing made by the servant. If submissiveness ceased, it would be all over with lordship. The _own will_ of Me is the State's destroyer; it is therefore branded by the State as "self-will." Own will and the State are powers in deadly hostility, between which no "eternal peace" is possible. As long as the State asserts itself, it represents own will, its ever-hostile opponent, as unreasonable, evil, etc.; and the latter lets itself be talked into believing this,--nay, it really is such, for no more reason than this, that it still lets itself be talked into such belief: it has not yet come to itself and to the consciousness of its dignity; hence it is still incomplete, still amenable to fine words, etc. Every State is a _despotism_, be the despot one or many, or (as one is likely to imagine about a republic) if all be lords, _i. e._ despotize one over another. For this is the case when the law given at any time, the expressed volition of (it may be) a popular assembly, is thenceforth to be _law_ for the individual, to which _obedience is due_ from him, or toward which he has the _duty_ of obedience. If one were even to conceive the case that every individual in the people had expressed the same will, and hereby a complete "collective will" had come into being, the matter would still remain the same. Would I not be bound to-day and henceforth to my will of yesterday? My will would in this case be _frozen_. Wretched _stability_! My creature--to wit, a particular expression of will--would have become my commander. But I in my will, I the creator, should be hindered in my flow and my dissolution. Because I was a fool yesterday I must remain such my life long. So in the State-life I am at best--I might just as well say, at worst--a bondman of myself. Because I was a willer yesterday, I am to-day without will: yesterday voluntary, to-day involuntary. How change it? Only by recognizing no _duty_, _i. e._ not _binding_ myself nor letting myself be bound. If I have no duty, then I know no law either. "But they will bind me!" My will nobody can bind, and my disinclination remains free. "Why, everything must go topsy-turvy if every one could do what he would!" Well, who says that every one can do everything? What are you there for, pray, you who do not need to put up with everything? Defend yourself, and no one will do anything to you! He who would break your will has to do with you, and is your _enemy_. Deal with him as such. If there stand behind you for your protection some millions more, then you are an imposing power and will have an easy victory. But, even if as a power you overawe your opponent, still you are not on that account a hallowed authority to him, unless he be a simpleton. He does not owe you respect and regard, even though he will have to consider your might. We are accustomed to classify States according to the different ways in which "the supreme might" is distributed. If an individual has it--monarchy; if all have it--democracy; etc. Supreme might then! Might against whom? Against the individual and his "self-will." The State practises "violence," the individual must not do so. The State's behavior is violence, and it calls its violence "law"; that of the individual, "crime." Crime,[137] then,--so the individual's violence is called; and only by crime does he overcome[138] the State's violence when he thinks that the State is not above him, but he above the State. Now, if I wanted to act ridiculously, I might, as a well-meaning person, admonish you not to make laws which impair my self-development, self-activity, self-creation. I do not give this advice. For, if you should follow it, you would be unwise, and I should have been cheated of my entire profit. I request nothing at all from you; for, whatever I might demand, you would still be dictatorial lawgivers, and must be so, because a raven cannot sing, nor a robber live without robbery. Rather do I ask those who would be egoists what they think the more egoistic,--to let laws be given them by you, and to respect those that are given, or to practise _refractoriness_, yes, complete disobedience. Good-hearted people think the laws ought to prescribe only what is accepted in the people's feeling as right and proper. But what concern is it of mine what is accepted in the nation and by the nation? The nation will perhaps be against the blasphemer; therefore a law against blasphemy. Am I not to blaspheme on that account? Is this law to be more than an "order" to me? I put the question. Solely from the principle that all _right_ and all _authority_ belong to the _collectivity of the people_ do all forms of government arise. For none of them lacks this appeal to the collectivity, and the despot, as well as the president or any aristocracy, etc., acts and commands "in the name of the State." They are in possession of the "authority of the State," and it is perfectly indifferent whether, were this possible, the people as a _collectivity_ (all individuals) exercise this State-_authority_, or whether it is only the representatives of this collectivity, be there many of them as in aristocracies or one as in monarchies. Always the collectivity is above the individual, and has a power which is called _legitimate_, _i. e._ which is _law_. Over against the sacredness of the State, the individual is only a vessel of dishonor, in which "exuberance, malevolence, mania for ridicule and slander, frivolity," etc., are left as soon as he does not deem that object of veneration, the State, to be worthy of recognition. The spiritual _haughtiness_ of the servants and subjects of the State has fine penalties against unspiritual "exuberance." When the government designates as punishable an play of mind _against_ the State, the moderate liberals come and opine that fun, satire, wit, humor, etc., must have free play anyhow, and _genius_ must enjoy freedom. So not the _individual man_ indeed, but still _genius_, is to be free. Here the State, or in its name the government, says with perfect right: He who is not for me is against me. Fun, wit, etc.,--in short, the turning of State affairs into a comedy,--have undermined States from of old: they are not "innocent." And, further, what boundaries are to be drawn between guilty and innocent wit, etc.? At this question the moderates fall into great perplexity, and everything reduces itself to the prayer that the State (government) would please not be so _sensitive_, so _ticklish_; that it would not immediately scent malevolence in "harmless" things, and would in general be a little "more tolerant." Exaggerated sensitiveness is certainly a weakness, its avoidance may be a praiseworthy virtue; but in time of war one cannot be sparing, and what may be allowed under peaceable circumstances ceases to be permitted as soon as a state of siege is declared. Because the well-meaning liberals feel this plainly, they hasten to declare that, considering "the devotion of the people," there is assuredly no danger to be feared. But the government will be wiser, and not let itself be talked into believing anything of that sort. It knows too well how people stuff one with fine words, and will not let itself be satisfied with this Barmecide dish. But they are bound to have their play-ground, for they are children, you know, and cannot be so staid as old folks; boys will be boys. Only for this play-ground, only for a few hours of jolly running about, they bargain. They ask only that the State should not, like a splenetic papa, be too cross. It should permit some Processions of the Ass and plays of fools, as the church allowed them in the Middle Ages. But the times when it could grant this without danger are past. Children that now once come _into the open_, and live through an hour without the rod of discipline, are no longer willing to go into the _cell_. For the open is now no longer a _supplement_ to the cell, no longer a refreshing _recreation_, but its _opposite_, an _aut--aut_. In short, the State must either no longer put up with anything, or put up with everything and perish; it must be either sensitive through and through, or, like a dead man, insensitive. Tolerance is done with. If the State but gives a finger, they take the whole hand at once. There can be no more "jesting," and all jest, such as fun, wit, humor, etc., becomes bitter earnest. The clamor of the Liberals for freedom of the press runs counter to their own principle, their proper _will_. They will what they _do not will_, _i. e._ they wish, they would like. Hence it is too that they fall away so easily when once so-called freedom of the press appears; then they would like censorship. Quite naturally. The State is sacred even to them; likewise morals, etc. They behave toward it only as ill-bred brats, as tricky children who seek to utilize the weaknesses of their parents. Papa State is to permit them to say many things that do not please him, but papa has the right, by a stern look, to blue-pencil their impertinent gabble. If they recognize in him their papa, they must in his presence put up with the censorship of speech, like every child. * * * * * If you let yourself be made out in the right by another, you must no less let yourself be made out in the wrong by him; if justification and reward come to you from him, expect also his arraignment and punishment. Alongside right goes wrong, alongside legality _crime_. What are _you_?--_You_ are a----_criminal_! "The criminal is in the utmost degree the State's own crime!" says Bettina.[139] One may let this sentiment pass, even if Bettina herself does not understand it exactly so. For in the State the unbridled I--I, as I belong to myself alone--cannot come to my fulfilment and realization. Every ego is from birth a criminal to begin with against the people, the State. Hence it is that it does really keep watch over all; it sees in each one an--egoist, and it is afraid of the egoist. It presumes the worst about each one, and takes care, police-care, that "no harm happens to the State," _ne quid respublica detrimenti capiat_. The unbridled ego--and this we originally are, and in our secret inward parts we remain so always--is the never-ceasing criminal in the State. The man whom his boldness, his will, his inconsiderateness and fearlessness lead is surrounded with spies by the State, by the people. I say, by the people! The people (think it something wonderful, you good-hearted folks, what you have in the people)--the people is full of police sentiments through and through.--Only he who renounces his ego, who practises "self-renunciation," is acceptable to the people. In the book cited Bettina is throughout good-natured enough to regard the State as only sick, and to hope for its recovery, a recovery which she would bring about through the "demagogues";[140] but it is not sick; rather is it in its full strength, when it puts from it the demagogues who want to acquire something for the individuals, for "all." In its believers it is provided with the best demagogues (leaders of the people). According to Bettina, the State is to[141] "develop mankind's germ of freedom; otherwise it is a raven-mother[142] and caring for raven-fodder!" It cannot do otherwise, for in its very caring for "mankind" (which, besides, would have to be the "humane" or "free" State to begin with) the "individual" is raven-fodder for it. How rightly speaks the burgomaster, on the other hand:[143] "What? the State has no other duty than to be merely the attendant of incurable invalids?--That isn't to the point. From of old the healthy State has relieved itself of the diseased matter, and not mixed itself with it. It does not need to be so economical with its juices. Cut off the robber-branches without hesitation, that the others may bloom.--Do not shiver at the State's harshness; its morality, its policy and religion, point it to that. Accuse it of no want of feeling; its sympathy revolts against this, but its experience finds safety only in this severity! There are diseases in which only drastic remedies will help. The physician who recognizes the disease as such, but timidly turns to palliatives, will never remove the disease, but may well cause the patient to succumb after a shorter or longer sickness!" Frau Rat's question, "If you apply death as a drastic remedy, how is the cure to be wrought then?" isn't to the point. Why, the State does not apply death against itself, but against an offensive member; it tears out an eye that offends it, etc. "For the invalid State the only way of salvation is to make man flourish in it."[144] If one here, like Bettina, understands by man the concept "Man," she is right; the "invalid" State will recover by the flourishing of "Man," for, the more infatuated the individuals are with "Man," the better it serves the State's turn. But, if one referred it to the individuals, to "all" (and the authoress half does this too, because about "Man" she is still involved in vagueness), then it would sound somewhat like the following: For an invalid band of robbers the only way of salvation is to make the loyal citizen flourish in it! Why, thereby the band of robbers would simply go to ruin as a band of robbers; and, because it perceives this, it prefers to shoot every one who has a leaning toward becoming a "steady man." In this book Bettina is a patriot, or, what is little more, a philanthropist, a worker for human happiness. She is discontented with the existing order in quite the same way as is the title-ghost of her book, along with all who would like to bring back the good old faith and what goes with it. Only she thinks, contrariwise, that the politicians, place-holders, and diplomats ruined the State, while those lay it at the door of the malevolent, the "seducers of the people." What is the ordinary criminal but one who has committed the fatal mistake of endeavoring after what is the people's instead of seeking for what is his? He has sought despicable _alien_ goods, has done what believers do who seek after what is God's. What does the priest who admonishes the criminal do? He sets before him the great wrong of having desecrated by his act what was hallowed by the State, its property (in which, of course, must be included even the life of those who belong to the State); instead of this, he might rather hold up to him the fact that he has befouled _himself_ in not _despising_ the alien thing, but thinking it worth stealing; he could, if he were not a parson. Talk with the so-called criminal as with an egoist, and he will be ashamed, not that he transgressed against your laws and goods, but that he considered your laws worth evading, your goods worth desiring; he will be ashamed that he did not--despise you and yours together, that he was too little an egoist. But you cannot talk egoistically with him, for you are not so great as a criminal, you--commit no crime! You do not know that an ego who is his own cannot desist from being a criminal, that crime is his life. And yet you should know it, since you believe that "we are all miserable sinners"; but you think surreptitiously to get beyond sin, you do not comprehend--for you are devil-fearing--that guilt is the value of a man. Oh, if you were guilty! But now you are "righteous."[145] Well,--just put every thing nicely to rights[146] for your master! When the Christian consciousness, or the Christian man, draws up a criminal code, what can the concept of _crime_ be there but simply--_heartlessness_? Each severing and wounding of a _heart relation_, each _heartless behavior_ toward a sacred being, is crime. The more heartfelt the relation is supposed to be, the more scandalous is the deriding of it, and the more worthy of punishment the crime. Every one who is subject to the lord should love him; to deny this love is a high treason worthy of death. Adultery is a heartlessness worthy of punishment; one has no heart, no enthusiasm, no pathetic feeling for the sacredness of marriage. So long as the heart or soul dictates laws, only the heartful or soulful man enjoys the protection of the laws. That the man of soul makes laws means properly only that the _moral_ man makes them: what contradicts these men's "moral feeling," this they penalize. How, _e. g._, should disloyalty, secession, breach of oaths,--in short, all _radical breaking off_, all tearing asunder of venerable _ties_,--not be flagitious and criminal in their eyes? He who breaks with these demands of the soul has for enemies all the moral, all the men of soul. Only Krummacher and his mates are the right people to set up consistently a penal code of the heart, as a certain bill sufficiently proves. The consistent legislation of the Christian State must be placed wholly in the hands of the--_parsons_, and will not become pure and coherent so long as it is worked out only by--the _parson-ridden_, who are always only _half-parsons_. Only then will every lack of soulfulness, every heartlessness, be certified as an unpardonable crime, only then will every agitation of the soul become condemnable, every objection of criticism and doubt be anathematized; only then is the own man, before the Christian consciousness, a convicted--_criminal_ to begin with. The men of the Revolution often talked of the people's "just revenge" as its "right." Revenge and right coincide here. Is this an attitude of an ego to an ego? The people cries that the opposite party has committed "crimes" against it. Can I assume that one commits a crime against me, without assuming that he has to act as I see fit? And this action I call the right, the good, etc.; the divergent action, a crime. So I think that the others must aim at the _same_ goal with me; _i. e._, I do not treat them as unique beings[147] who bear their law in themselves and live according to it, but as beings who are to obey some "rational" law. I set up what "Man" is and what acting in a "truly human" way is, and I demand of every one that this law become norm and ideal to him; otherwise he will expose himself as a "sinner and criminal." But upon the "guilty" falls the "penalty of the law"! One sees here how it is "Man" again who sets on foot even the concept of crime, of sin, and therewith that of right. A man in whom I do not recognize "Man" is "a sinner, a guilty one." Only against a sacred thing are there criminals; you against me can never be a criminal, but only an opponent. But not to hate him who injures a sacred thing is in itself a crime, as St. Just cries out against Danton: "Are you not a criminal and responsible for not having hated the enemies of the fatherland?"-- If, as in the Revolution, what "Man" is is apprehended as "good citizen," then from this concept of "Man" we have the well-known "political offences and crimes." In all this the individual, the individual man, is regarded as refuse, and on the other hand the general man, "Man," is honored. Now, according to how this ghost is named,--as Christian, Jew, Mussulman, good citizen, loyal subject, freeman, patriot, etc.,--just so do those who would like to carry through a divergent concept of man, as well as those who want to put _themselves_ through, fall before victorious "Man." And with what unction the butchery goes on here in the name of the law, of the sovereign people, of God, etc.! Now, if the persecuted trickily conceal and protect themselves from the stern parsonical judges, people stigmatize them as "hypocrites," as St. Just, _e. g._, does those whom he accuses in the speech against Danton.[148] One is to be a fool, and deliver himself up to their Moloch. Crimes spring from _fixed ideas_. The sacredness of marriage is a fixed idea. From the sacredness it follows that infidelity is a _crime_, and therefore a certain marriage law imposes upon it a shorter or longer _penalty_. But by those who proclaim "freedom as sacred" this penalty must be regarded as a crime against freedom, and only in this sense has public opinion in fact branded the marriage law. Society would have _every one_ come to his right indeed, but yet only to that which is sanctioned by society, to the society-right, not really to _his_ right. But _I_ give or take to myself the right out of my own plenitude of power, and against every superior power I am the most impenitent criminal. Owner and creator of my right, I recognize no other source of right than--me, neither God nor the State nor nature nor even man himself with his "eternal rights of man," neither divine nor human right. Right "in and for itself." Without relation to me, therefore! "Absolute right." Separated from me, therefore! A thing that exists in and for itself! An absolute! An eternal right, like an eternal truth! According to the liberal way of thinking, right is to be obligatory for me because it is thus established by _human reason_, against which _my reason_ is "unreason." Formerly people inveighed in the name of divine reason against weak human reason; now, in the name of strong human reason, against egoistic reason, which is rejected as "unreason." And yet none is real but this very "unreason." Neither divine nor human reason, but only your and my reason existing at any given time, is real, as and because you and I are real. The thought of right is originally my thought; or, it has its origin in me. But, when it has sprung from me, when the "Word" is out, then it has "become flesh," it is a _fixed idea_. Now I no longer get rid of the thought; however I turn, it stands before me. Thus men have not become masters again of the thought "right," which they themselves created; their creature is running away with them. This is absolute right, that which is absolved or unfastened from me. We, revering it as absolute, cannot devour it again, and it takes from us the creative power; the creature is more than the creator, it is "in and for itself." Once you no longer let right run around free, once you draw it back into its origin, into you, it is _your_ right; and that is right which suits you. * * * * * Right has had to suffer an attack within itself, i. e. from the standpoint of right; war being declared on the part of liberalism against "privilege."[149] _Privileged_ and _endowed with equal rights_--on these two concepts turns a stubborn fight. Excluded or admitted--would mean the same. But where should there be a power--be it an imaginary one like God, law, or a real one like I, you--of which it should not be true that before it all are "endowed with equal rights," _i. e._ no respect of persons holds? Every one is equally dear to God if he adores him, equally agreeable to the law if only he is a law-abiding person; whether the lover of God and the law is humpbacked and lame, whether poor or rich, and the like, that amounts to nothing for God and the law; just so, when you are at the point of drowning, you like a negro as rescuer as well as the most excellent Caucasian,--yes, in this situation you esteem a dog not less than a man. But to whom will not every one be also, contrariwise, a preferred or disregarded person? God punishes the wicked with his wrath, the law chastises the lawless, you let one visit you every moment and show the other the door. The "equality of right" is a phantom just because right is nothing more and nothing less than admission, _i. e._ a _matter of grace_, which, be it said, one may also acquire by his desert; for desert and grace are not contradictory, since even grace wishes to be "deserved" and our gracious smile falls only to him who knows how to force it from us. So people dream of "all citizens of the State having to stand side by side, with equal rights." As citizens of the State they are certainly all equal for the State. But it will divide them, and advance them or put them in the rear, according to its special ends, if on no other account; and still more must it distinguish them from one another as good and bad citizens. Bruno Bauer disposes of the Jew question from the standpoint that "privilege" is not justified. Because Jew and Christian have each some point of advantage over the other, and in having this point of advantage are exclusive, therefore before the critic's gaze they crumble into nothingness. With them the State lies under the like blame, since it justifies their having advantages and stamps it as a "privilege" or prerogative, but thereby derogates from its calling to become a "free State." But now every one has something of advantage over another,--_viz._, himself or his individuality; in this everybody remains exclusive. And, again, before a third party every one makes his peculiarity count for as much as possible, and (if he wants to win him at all) tries to make it appear attractive before him. Now, is the third party to be insensible to the difference of the one from the other? Do they ask that of the free State or of humanity? Then these would have to be absolutely without self-interest, and incapable of taking an interest in any one whatever. Neither God (who divides his own from the wicked) nor the State (which knows how to separate good citizens from bad) was thought of as so indifferent. But they are looking for this very third party that bestows no more "privilege." Then it is called perhaps the free State, or humanity, or whatever else it may be. As Christian and Jew are ranked low by Br. Bauer on account of their asserting privileges, it must be that they could and should free themselves from their narrow standpoint by self-renunciation or unselfishness. If they threw off their "egoism," the mutual wrong would cease, and with it Christian and Jewish religiousness in general; it would be necessary only that neither of them should any longer want to be anything peculiar. But, if they gave up this exclusiveness, with that the ground on which their hostilities were waged would in truth not yet be forsaken. In case of need they would indeed find a third thing on which they could unite, a "general religion," a "religion of humanity," and the like; in short, an equalization, which need not be better than that which would result if all Jews became Christians, by which likewise the "privilege" of one over the other would have an end. The _tension_[150] would indeed be done away, but in this consisted not the essence of the two, but only their neighborhood. As being distinguished from each other they must necessarily be mutually resistant,[151] and the disparity will always remain. Truly it is not a failing in you that you stiffen[152] yourself against me and assert your distinctness or peculiarity: you need not give way or renounce yourself. People conceive the significance of the opposition too _formally_ and weakly when they want only to "dissolve" it in order to make room for a third thing that shall "unite." The opposition deserves rather to be _sharpened_. As Jew and Christian you are in too slight an opposition, and are contending only about religion, as it were about the emperor's beard, about a fiddlestick's end. Enemies in religion indeed, _in the rest_ you still remain good friends, and equal to each other, _e. g_. as men. Nevertheless the rest too is unlike in each; and the time when you no longer merely _dissemble_ your opposition will be only when you entirely recognize it, and everybody asserts himself from top to toe as _unique_.[153] Then the former opposition will assuredly be dissolved, but only because a stronger has taken it up into itself. Our weakness consists not in this, that we are in opposition to others, but in this, that we are not completely so; _i. e._ that we are not entirely _severed_ from them, or that we seek a "communion," a "bond," that in communion we have an ideal. One faith, one God, one idea, one hat, for all! If all were brought under one hat, certainly no one would any longer need to take off his hat before another. The last and most decided opposition, that of unique against unique, is at bottom beyond what is called opposition, but without having sunk back into "unity" and unison. As unique you have nothing in common with the other any longer, and therefore nothing divisive or hostile either; you are not seeking to be in the right against him before a _third_ party, and are standing with him neither "on the ground of right" nor on any other common ground. The opposition vanishes in complete--_severance_ or singleness.[154] This might indeed be regarded as the new point in common or a new parity, but here the parity consists precisely in the disparity, and is itself nothing but disparity, a par of disparity, and that only for him who institutes a "comparison." The polemic against privilege forms a characteristic feature of liberalism, which fumes against "privilege" because it itself appeals to "right." Further than to fuming it cannot carry this; for privileges do not fall before right falls, as they are only forms of right. But right falls apart into its nothingness when it is swallowed up by might, _i. e._ when one understands what is meant by "Might goes before right." All right explains itself then as privilege, and privilege itself as power, as--_superior power_. But must not the mighty combat against superior power show quite another face than the modest combat against privilege, which is to be fought out before a first judge, "Right," according to the judge's mind? * * * * * Now, in conclusion, I have still to take back the half-way form of expression of which I was willing to make use only so long as I was still rooting among the entrails of right, and letting the word at least stand. But, in fact, with the concept the word too loses its meaning. What I called "my right" is no longer "right" at all, because right can be bestowed only by a spirit, be it the spirit of nature or that of the species, of mankind, the Spirit of God or that of His Holiness or His Highness, etc. What I have without an entitling spirit I have without right; I have it solely and alone through my _power_. I do not demand any right, therefore I need not recognize any either. What I can get by force I get by force, and what I do not get by force I have no right to, nor do I give myself airs, or consolation, with my imprescriptible right. With absolute right, right itself passes away; the dominion of the "concept of right" is canceled at the same time. For it is not to be forgotten that hitherto concepts, ideas, or principles ruled us, and that among these rulers the concept of right, or of justice, played one of the most important parts. Entitled or unentitled--that does not concern me; if I am only _powerful_, I am of myself _empowered_, and need no other empowering or entitling. Right--is a wheel in the head, put there by a spook; power--that am I myself, I am the powerful one and owner of power. Right is above me, is absolute, and exists in one higher, as whose grace it flows to me: right is a gift of grace from the judge; power and might exist only in me the powerful and mighty. II.--MY INTERCOURSE In society the human demand at most can be satisfied, while the egoistic must always come short. Because it can hardly escape anybody that the present shows no such living interest in any question as in the "social," one has to direct his gaze especially to society. Nay, if the interest felt in it were less passionate and dazzled, people would not so much, in looking at society, lose sight of the individuals in it, and would recognize that a society cannot become new so long as those who form and constitute it remain the old ones. If, _e. g._, there was to arise in the Jewish people a society which should spread a new faith over the earth, these apostles could in no case remain Pharisees. As you are, so you present yourself, so you behave toward men: a hypocrite as a hypocrite, a Christian as a Christian. Therefore the character of a society is determined by the character of its members: they are its creators. So much at least one must perceive even if one were not willing to put to the test the concept "society" itself. Ever far from letting _themselves_ come to their full development and consequence, men have hitherto not been able to found their societies on _themselves_; or rather, they have been able only to found "societies" and to live in societies. The societies were always persons, powerful persons, so-called "moral persons," _i. e._ ghosts, before which the individual had the appropriate wheel in his head, the fear of ghosts. As such ghosts they may most suitably be designated by the respective names "people" and "peoplet": the people of the patriarchs, the people of the Hellenes, etc., at last the--people of men, Mankind (Anacharsis Clootz was enthusiastic for the "nation" of mankind); then every subdivision of this "people," which could and must have its special societies, the Spanish, French people, etc.; within it again classes, cities, in short all kinds of corporations; lastly, tapering to the finest point, the little people of the--_family_. Hence, instead of saying that the person that walked as ghost in all societies hitherto has been the people, there might also have been named the two extremes,--to wit, either "mankind" or the "family," both the most "natural-born units." We choose the word "people"[155] because its derivation has been brought into connection with the Greek _polloi_, the "many" or "the masses," but still more because "national efforts" are at present the order of the day, and because even the newest mutineers have not yet shaken off this deceptive person, although on the other hand the latter consideration must give the preference to the expression "mankind," since on all sides they are going in for enthusiasm over "mankind." The people, then,--mankind or the family,--have hitherto, as it seems, played history: no _egoistic_ interest was to come up in these societies, but solely general ones, national or popular interests, class interests, family interests, and "general human interests." But who has brought to their fall the peoples whose decline history relates? Who but the egoist, who was seeking _his_ satisfaction! If once an egoistic interest crept in, the society was "corrupted" and moved toward its dissolution, as Rome, _e. g._, proves with its highly developed system of private rights, or Christianity with the incessantly-breaking-in "rational self-determination," "self-consciousness," the "autonomy of the spirit," etc. The Christian people has produced two societies whose duration will keep equal measure with the permanence of that people: these are the societies _State_ and _Church_. Can they be called a union of egoists? Do we in them pursue an egoistic, personal, own interest, or do we pursue a popular (_i. e._ an interest of the Christian _people_), to wit, a State and Church interest? Can I and may I be myself in them? May I think and act as I will, may I reveal myself, live myself out, busy myself? Must I not leave untouched the majesty of the State, the sanctity of the Church? Well, I may not do as I will. But shall I find in any society such an unmeasured freedom of maying? Certainly no! Accordingly we might be content? Not a bit! It is a different thing whether I rebound from an ego or from a people, a generalization. There I am my opponent's opponent, born his equal; here I am a despised opponent, bound and under a guardian: there I stand man to man; here I am a schoolboy who can accomplish nothing against his comrade because the latter has called father and mother to aid and has crept under the apron, while I am well scolded as an ill-bred brat, and I must not "argue": there I fight against a bodily enemy; here against mankind, against a generalization, against a "majesty," against a spook. But to me no majesty, nothing sacred, is a limit; nothing that I know how to overpower. Only that which I cannot overpower still limits my might; and I of limited might am temporarily a limited I, not limited by the might _outside_ me, but limited by my _own_ still deficient might, by my _own impotence_. However, "the Guard dies, but does not surrender!" Above all, only a bodily opponent! I dare meet every foeman Whom I can see and measure with my eye, Whose mettle fires my mettle for the fight,--etc. Many privileges have indeed been cancelled with time, but solely for the sake of the common weal, of the State and the State's weal, by no means for the strengthening of me. Vassalage, _e. g._, was abrogated only that a single liege lord, the lord of the people, the monarchical power, might be strengthened: vassalage under the one became yet more rigorous thereby. Only in favor of the monarch, be he called "prince" or "law," have privileges fallen. In France the citizens are not, indeed, vassals of the king, but are instead vassals of the "law" (the Charter). _Subordination_ was retained, only the Christian State recognized that man cannot serve two masters (the lord of the manor and the prince, etc.); therefore one obtained all the prerogatives; now he can again _place_ one above another, he can make "men in high place." But of what concern to me is the common weal? The common weal as such is not _my weal_, but only the furthest extremity of _self-renunciation_. The common weal may cheer aloud while I must "down";[156] the State may shine while I starve. In what lies the folly of the political liberals but in their opposing the people to the government and talking of people's rights? So there is the people going to be of age, etc. As if one who has no mouth could be _muendig_![157] Only the individual is able to be _muendig_. Thus the whole question of the liberty of the press is turned upside down when it is laid claim to as a "right of the people." It is only a right, or better the might, of the _individual_. If a people has liberty of the press, then _I_, although in the midst of this people, have it not; a liberty of the people is not _my_ liberty, and the liberty of the press as a liberty of the people must have at its side a press law directed against _me_. This must be insisted on all around against the present-day efforts for liberty: Liberty of the _people_ is not _my_ liberty! Let us admit these categories, liberty of the people and right of the people: _e. g._ the right of the people that everybody may bear arms. Does one not forfeit such a right? One cannot forfeit his own right, but may well forfeit a right that belongs not to me but to the people. I may be locked, up for the sake of the liberty of the people; I may, under sentence, incur the loss of the right to bear arms. Liberalism appears as the last attempt at a creation of the liberty of the people, a liberty of the commune, of "society," of the general, of mankind; the dream of a humanity, a people, a commune, a "society," that shall be of age. A people cannot be free otherwise than at the individual's expense; for it is not the individual that is the main point in this liberty, but the people. The freer the people, the more bound the individual; the Athenian people, precisely at its freest time, created ostracism, banished the atheists, poisoned the most honest thinker. How they do praise Socrates for his conscientiousness, which makes nun resist the advice to get away from the dungeon! He is a fool that he concedes to the Athenians a right to condemn him. Therefore it certainly serves him right; why then does he remain standing on an equal footing with the Athenians? Why does he not break with them? Had he known, and been able to know, what he was, he would have conceded to such judges no claim, no right. That _he did not escape_ was just his weakness, his delusion of still having something in common with the Athenians, or the opinion that he was a member, a mere member of this people. But he was rather this people itself in person, and could only be his own judge. There was no _judge over him_, as he himself had really pronounced a public sentence on himself and rated himself worthy of the Prytaneum. He should have stuck to that, and, as he had uttered no sentence of death against himself, should have despised that of the Athenians too and escaped. But he subordinated himself and recognized in the _people_ his _judge_; he seemed little to himself before the majesty of the people. That he subjected himself to _might_ (to which alone he could succumb) as to a "right" was treason against himself: it was _virtue_. To Christ, who, it is alleged, refrained from using the power over his heavenly legions, the same scrupulousness is thereby ascribed by the narrators. Luther did very well and wisely to have the safety of his journey to Worms warranted to him in black and white, and Socrates should have known that the Athenians were his _enemies_, he alone his judge. The self-deception of a "reign of law," etc., should have given way to the perception that the relation was a relation of _might_. It was with pettifoggery and intrigues that Greek liberty ended. Why? Because the ordinary Greeks could still less attain that logical conclusion which not even their hero of thought, Socrates, was able to draw. What then is pettifoggery but a way of utilizing something established without doing away with it? I might add "for one's own advantage," but, you see, that lies in "utilizing." Such pettifoggers are the theologians who "wrest" and "force" God's word; what would they have to wrest if it were not for the "established" Word of God? So those liberals who only shake and wrest the "established order." They are all perverters, like those perverters of the law. Socrates recognized law, right; the Greeks constantly retained the authority of right and law. If with this recognition they wanted nevertheless to assert their advantage, every one his own, then they had to seek it in perversion of the law, or intrigue. Alcibiades, an intriguer of genius, introduces the period of Athenian "decay"; the Spartan Lysander and others show that intrigue had become universally Greek. Greek _law_, on which the Greek _States_ rested, had to be perverted and undermined by the egoists within these States, and the _States_ went down that the _individuals_ might become free, the Greek people fell because the individuals cared less for this people than for themselves. In general, all States, constitutions, churches, etc., have sunk by the _secession_ of individuals; for the individual is the irreconcilable enemy of every _generality_, every _tie_, _i. e._ every fetter. Yet people fancy to this day that man needs "sacred ties": he, the deadly enemy of every "tie." The history of the world shows that no tie has yet remained unrent, shows that man tirelessly defends himself against ties of every sort; and yet, blinded, people think up new ties again and again, and think, _e. g._, that they have arrived at the right one if one puts upon them the tie of a so-called free constitution, a beautiful, constitutional tie; decoration ribbons, the ties of confidence between "---- ---- ----," do seem gradually to have become somewhat infirm, but people have made no further progress than from apron-strings to garters and collars. _Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter._ Everything sacred is and must be perverted by perverters of the law; therefore our present time has multitudes of such perverters in all spheres. They are preparing the way for the break-up of law, for lawlessness. Poor Athenians who are accused of pettifoggery and sophistry! poor Alcibiades, of intrigue! Why, that was just your best point, your first step in freedom. Your Æschylus, Herodotus, etc., only wanted to have a free Greek _people_; you were the first to surmise something of _your_ freedom. A people represses those who tower above _its majesty_, by ostracism against too-powerful citizens, by the Inquisition against the heretics of the Church, by the--Inquisition against traitors in the State, etc. For the people is concerned only with its self-assertion; it demands "patriotic self-sacrifice" from everybody. To it, accordingly, every one _in himself_ is indifferent, a nothing, and it cannot do, not even suffer, what the individual and he alone must do,--to wit, _turn him to account_. Every people, every State, is unjust toward the _egoist_. As long as there still exists even one institution which the individual may not dissolve, the ownness and self-appurtenance of Me is still very remote. How can I, _e. g._, be free when I must bind myself by oath to a constitution, a charter, a law, "vow body and soul" to my people? How can I be my own when my faculties may develop only so far as they "do not disturb the harmony of society" (Weitling)? The fall of peoples and mankind will invite _me_ to my rise. Listen, even as I am writing this, the bells begin to sound, that they may jingle in for to-morrow the festival of the thousand years existence of our dear Germany. Sound, sound its knell! You do sound solemn enough, as if your tongue was moved by the presentiment that it is giving convoy to a corpse. The German people and German peoples have behind them a history of a thousand years: what a long life! O, go to rest, never to rise again,--that all may become free whom you so long have held in fetters.--The _people_ is dead.--Up with _me_! O thou my much-tormented German people--what was thy torment? It was the torment of a thought that cannot create itself a body, the torment of a walking spirit that dissolves into nothing at every cock-crow and yet pines for deliverance and fulfilment. In me too thou hast lived long, thou dear--thought, thou dear--spook. Already I almost fancied I had found the word of thy deliverance, discovered flesh and bones for the wandering spirit; then I hear them sound, the bells that usher thee into eternal rest; then the last hope fades out, then the notes of the last love die away, then I depart from the desolate house of those who now are dead and enter at the door of the--living one: For only he who is alive is in the right. Farewell, thou dream of so many millions; farewell, thou who hast tyrannized over thy children for a thousand years! To-morrow they carry thee to the grave; soon thy sisters, the peoples, will follow thee. But, when they have all followed, then----mankind is buried, and I am my own, I am the laughing heir! * * * * * The word _Gesellschaft_ (society) has its origin in the word _Sal_ (hall). If one hall encloses many persons, then the hall causes these persons to be in society. They _are_ in society, and at most constitute a parlor-society by talking in the traditional forms of parlor speech. When it comes to real _intercourse_, this is to be regarded as independent of society: it may occur or be lacking, without altering the nature of what is named society. Those who are in the hall are a society even as mute persons, or when they put each other off solely with empty phrases of courtesy. Intercourse is mutuality, it is the action, the _commercium_, of individuals; society is only community of the hall, and even the statues of a museum-hall are in society, they are "grouped." People are accustomed to say "they _haben inne_[158] this hall in common," but the case is rather that the hall has us _inne_ or in it. So far the natural signification of the word society. In this it comes out that society is not generated by me and you, but by a third factor which makes associates out of us two, and that it is just this third factor that is the creative one, that which creates society. Just so a prison society or prison companionship (those who enjoy[159] the same prison). Here we already hit upon a third factor fuller of significance than was that merely local one, the hall. Prison no longer means a space only, but a space with express reference to its inhabitants: for it is a prison only through being destined for prisoners, without whom it would be a mere building. What gives a common stamp to those who are gathered in it? Evidently the prison, since it is only by means of the prison that they are prisoners. What, then, determines the _manner of life_ of the prison society? The prison! What determines their intercourse? The prison too, perhaps? Certainly they can enter upon intercourse only as prisoners, _i. e._ only so far as the prison laws allow it; but that _they themselves_ hold intercourse, I with you, this the prison cannot bring to pass; on the contrary, it must have an eye to guarding against such egoistic, purely personal intercourse (and only as such is it really intercourse between me and you). That we _jointly_ execute a job, run a machine, effectuate anything in general,--for this a prison will indeed provide; but that I forget that I am a prisoner, and engage in intercourse with you who likewise disregard it, brings danger to the prison, and not only cannot be caused by it, but must not even be permitted. For this reason the saintly and moral-minded French chamber decides to introduce solitary confinement, and other saints will do the like in order to cut off "demoralizing intercourse." Imprisonment is the established and--sacred condition, to injure which no attempt must be made. The slightest push of that kind is punishable, as is every uprising against a sacred thing by which man is to be charmed and chained. Like the hall, the prison does form a society, a companionship, a communion (_e. g._ communion of labor), but no _intercourse_, no reciprocity, no _union_. On the contrary, every union in the prison bears within it the dangerous seed of a "plot," which under favorable circumstances might spring up and bear fruit. Yet one does not usually enter the prison voluntarily, and seldom remains in it voluntarily either, but cherishes the egoistic desire for liberty. Here, therefore, it sooner becomes manifest that personal intercourse is in hostile relations to the prison society and tends to the dissolution of this very society, this joint incarceration. Let us therefore look about for such communions as, it seems, we remain in gladly and voluntarily, without wanting to endanger them by our egoistic impulses. As a communion of the required sort the _family_ offers itself in the first place. Parents, husband and wife, children, brothers and sisters, represent a whole or form a family, for the further widening of which the collateral relatives also may be made to serve if taken into account. The family is a true communion only when the law of the family, piety[160] or family love, is observed by its members. A son to whom parents, brothers, and sisters have become indifferent _has been_ a son; for, as the sonship no longer shows itself efficacious, it has no greater significance than the long-past connection of mother and child by the navel-string. That one has once lived in this bodily juncture cannot as a fact be undone; and so far one remains irrevocably this mother's son and the brother of the rest of her children; but it would come to a lasting connection only by lasting piety, this spirit of the family. Individuals are members of a family in the full sense only when they make the _persistence_ of the family their task; only as _conservative_ do they keep aloof from doubting their basis, the family. To every member of the family one thing must be fixed and sacred,--_viz._, the family itself, or, more expressively, piety. That the family is to _persist_ remains to its member, so long as he keeps himself free from that egoism which is hostile to the family, an unassailable truth. In a word:--If the family is sacred, then nobody who belongs to it may secede from it; else he becomes a "criminal" against the family: he may never pursue an interest hostile to the family, _e. g._ form a misalliance. He who does this has "dishonored the family," "put it to shame," etc. Now, if in an individual the egoistic impulse has not force enough, he complies and makes a marriage which suits the claims of the family, takes a rank which harmonizes with its position, and the like; in short, he "does honor to the family." If, on the contrary, the egoistic blood flows fierily enough in his veins, he prefers to become a "criminal" against the family and to throw off its laws. Which of the two lies nearer my heart, the good of the family or my good? In innumerable cases both go peacefully together; the advantage of the family is at the same time mine, and _vice versa_. Then it is hard to decide whether I am thinking _selfishly_ or _for the common benefit_, and perhaps I complacently flatter myself with my unselfishness. But there comes the day when a necessity of choice makes me tremble, when I have it in mind to dishonor my family tree, to affront parents, brothers, and kindred. What then? Now it will appear how I am disposed at the bottom of my heart; now it will be revealed whether piety ever stood above egoism for me, now the selfish one can no longer skulk behind the semblance of unselfishness. A wish rises in my soul, and, growing from hour to hour, becomes a passion. To whom does it occur at first blush that the slightest thought which may result adversely to the spirit of the family (piety) bears within it a transgression against this? nay, who at once, in the first moment, becomes completely conscious of the matter? It happens so with Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet." The unruly passion can at last no longer be tamed, and undermines the building of piety. You will say, indeed, it is from self-will that the family casts out of its bosom those wilful ones that grant more of a hearing to their passion than to piety; the good Protestants used the same excuse with much success against the Catholics, and believed in it themselves. But it is just a subterfuge to roll the fault off oneself, nothing more. The Catholics had regard for the common bond of the church, and thrust those heretics from them only because these did not have so much regard for the bond of the church as to sacrifice their convictions to it; the former, therefore, held the bond fast, because the bond, the Catholic (_i. e._ common and united) church, was sacred to them; the latter, on the contrary, disregarded the bond. Just so those who lack piety. They are not thrust out, but thrust themselves out, prizing their passion, their wilfulness, higher than the bond of the family. But now sometimes a wish glimmers in a less passionate and wilful heart than Juliet's. The pliable girl brings herself as a _sacrifice_ to the peace of the family. One might say that here too selfishness prevailed, for the decision came from the feeling that the pliable girl felt herself more satisfied by the unity of the family than by the fulfilment of her wish. That might be; but what if there remained a sure sign that egoism had been sacrificed to piety? What if, even after the wish that had been directed against the peace of the family was sacrificed, it remained at least as a recollection of a "sacrifice" brought to a sacred tie? What if the pliable girl were conscious of having left her self-will unsatisfied and humbly subjected herself to a higher power? Subjected and sacrificed, because the superstition of piety exercised its dominion over her! There egoism won, here piety wins and the egoistic heart bleeds; there egoism was strong, here it was--weak. But the weak, as we have long known, are the--unselfish. For them, for these its weak members, the family cares, because they _belong_ to the family, do not belong to themselves and care for themselves. This weakness Hegel, _e. g._, praises when he wants to have match-making left to the choice of the parents. As a sacred communion to which, among the rest, the individual owes obedience, the family has the judicial function too vested in it; such a "family court" is described _e. g._ in the "Cabanis" of Wilibald Alexis. There the father, in the name of the "family council," puts the intractable son among the soldiers and thrusts him out of the family, in order to cleanse the smirched family again by means of this act of punishment.--The most consistent development of family responsibility is contained in Chinese law, according to which the whole family has to expiate the individual's fault. To-day, however, the arm of family power seldom reaches far enough to take seriously in hand the punishment of apostates (in most cases the State protects even against disinheritance). The criminal against the family (family-criminal) flees into the domain of the State and is free, as the State-criminal who gets away to America is no longer reached by the punishments of his State. He who has shamed his family, the graceless son, is protected against the family's punishment because the State, this protecting lord, takes away from family punishment its "sacredness" and profanes it, decreeing that it is only--"revenge": it restrains punishment, this sacred family right, because before its, the State's, "sacredness" the subordinate sacredness of the family always pales and loses its sanctity as soon as it comes in conflict with this higher sacredness. Without the conflict, the State lets pass the lesser sacredness of the family; but in the opposite case it even commands crime against the family, charging, _e. g._, the son to refuse obedience to his parents as soon as they want to beguile him to a crime against the State. Well, the egoist has broken the ties of the family and found in the State a lord to shelter him against the grievously affronted spirit of the family. But where has he run now? Straight into a new _society_, in which his egoism is awaited by the same snares and nets that it has just escaped. For the State is likewise a society, not a union; it is the broadened _family_ ("Father of the Country--Mother of the Country--children of the country"). * * * * * What is called a State is a tissue and plexus of dependence and adherence; it is a _belonging together_, a holding together, in which those who are placed together fit themselves to each other, or, in short, mutually depend on each other: it is the _order_ of this _dependence_. Suppose the king, whose authority lends authority to all down to the beadle, should vanish: still all in whom the will for order was awake would keep order erect against the disorders of bestiality. If disorder were victorious, the State would be at an end. But is this thought of love, to fit ourselves to each other, to adhere to each other and depend on each other, really capable of winning us? According to this the State would be _love_ realized, the being for each other and living for each other of all. Is not self-will being lost while we attend to the will for order? Will people not be satisfied when order is cared for by authority, _i. e._ when authority sees to it that no one "gets in the way of" another; when, then, the _herd_ is judiciously distributed or ordered? Why, then everything is in "the best order," and it is this best order that is called--State! Our societies and States _are_ without our _making_ them, are united without our uniting, are predestined and established, or have an independent standing[161] of their own, are the indissolubly established against us egoists. The fight of the world to-day is, as it is said, directed against the "established." Yet people are wont to misunderstand this as if it were only that what is now established was to be exchanged for another, a better, established system. But war might rather be declared against establishment itself, _i. e._ the _State_, not a particular State, not any such thing as the mere condition of the State at the time; it is not another State (such as a "people's State") that men aim at, but their _union_, uniting, this ever-fluid uniting of everything standing.--A State exists even without my co-operation: I am born in it, brought up in it, under obligations to it, and must "do it homage."[162] It takes me up into its "favor,"[163] and I live by its "grace." Thus the independent establishment of the State founds my lack of independence; its condition as a "natural growth," its organism, demands that my nature do not grow freely, but be cut to fit it. That _it_ may be able to unfold in natural growth, it applies to me the shears of "civilization"; it gives me an education and culture adapted to it, not to me, and teaches me _e. g._ to respect the laws, to refrain from injury to State property (_i. e._ private property), to reverence divine and earthly highness, etc.; in short, it teaches me to be--_unpunishable_, "sacrificing" my ownness to "sacredness" (everything possible is sacred, _e. g._ property, others' life, etc.). In this consists the sort of civilization and culture that the State is able to give me: it brings me up to be a "serviceable instrument," a "serviceable member of society." This every State must do, the people's State as well as the absolute or constitutional one. It must do so as long as we rest in the error that it is an _I_, as which it then applies to itself the name of a "moral, mystical, or political person." I, who really am I, must pull off this lion-skin of the I from the stalking thistle-eater. What manifold robbery have I not put up with in the history of the world! There I let sun, moon, and stars, cats and crocodiles, receive the honor of ranking as I; there Jehovah, Allah, and Our Father came and were invested with the I; there families, tribes, peoples, and at last actually mankind, came and were honored as I's; there the Church, the State, came with the pretension to be I,--and I gazed calmly on all. What wonder if then there was always a real I too that joined the company and affirmed in my face that it was not my _you_ but my real _I_. Why, _the_ Son of Man _par excellence_ had done the like; why should not a son of man do it too? So I saw my I always above me and outside me, and could never really come to myself. I never believed in myself; I never believed in my present, I saw myself only in the future. The boy believes he will be a proper I, a proper fellow, only when he has become a man; the man thinks, only in the other world will he be something proper. And, to enter more closely upon reality at once, even the best are to-day still persuading each other that one must have received into himself the State, his people, mankind, and what not, in order to be a real I, a "free burgher," a "citizen," a "free or true man"; they too see the truth and reality of me in the reception of an alien I and devotion to it. And what sort of an I? An I that is neither an I nor a you, a _fancied_ I, a spook. While in the Middle Ages the church could well brook many States living united in it, the States learned after the Reformation, especially after the Thirty Years' War, to tolerate many churches (confessions) gathering under one crown. But all States are religious and, as the case may be, "Christian States," and make it their task to force the intractable, the "egoists," under the bond of the unnatural, _i. e._ Christianize them. All arrangements of the Christian State have the object of _Christianizing the people_. Thus the court has the object of forcing people to justice, the school that of forcing them to mental culture,--in short, the object of protecting those who act Christianly against those who act unchristianly, of bringing Christian action to _dominion_, of making it _powerful_. Among these means of force the State counted the _Church_, too, it demanded a--particular religion from everybody. Dupin said lately against the clergy, "Instruction and education belong to the State." Certainly everything that regards the principle of morality is a State affair. Hence it is that the Chinese State meddles so much in family concerns, and one is nothing there if one is not first of all a good child to his parents. Family concerns are altogether State concerns with us too, only that our State--puts confidence in the families without painful oversight; it holds the family bound by the marriage tie, and this tie cannot be broken without it. But that the State makes me responsible for my principles, and demands certain ones from me, might make me ask, what concern has it with the "wheel in my head" (principle)? Very much, for the State is the--_ruling principle_. It is supposed that in divorce matters, in marriage law in general, the question is of the proportion of rights between Church and State. Rather, the question is of whether anything sacred is to rule over man, be it called faith or ethical law (morality). The State behaves as the same ruler that the Church was. The latter rests on godliness, the former on morality. People talk of the tolerance, the leaving opposite tendencies free, and the like, by which civilized States are distinguished. Certainly some are strong enough to look with complacency on even the most unrestrained meetings, while others charge their catchpolls to go hunting for tobacco-pipes. Yet for one State as for another the play of individuals among themselves, their buzzing to and fro, their daily life, is an _incident_ which it must be content to leave to themselves because it can do nothing with this. Many, indeed, still strain out gnats and swallow camels, while others are shrewder. Individuals are "freer" in the latter, because less pestered. But _I_ am free in _no_ State. The lauded tolerance of States is simply a tolerating of the "harmless," the "not dangerous"; it is only elevation above pettymindedness, only a more estimable, grander, prouder--despotism. A certain State seemed for a while to mean to be pretty well elevated above _literary_ combats, which might be carried on with all heat; England is elevated above _popular turmoil_ and--tobacco-smoking. But woe to the literature that deals blows at the State itself, woe to the mobs that "endanger" the State. In that certain State they dream of a "free science," in England of a "free popular life." The State does let individuals _play_ as freely as possible, only they must not be in _earnest_, must not forget _it_. Man must not carry on intercourse with man _unconcernedly_, not without "superior oversight and mediation." I must not execute all that I am able to, but only so much as the State allows; I must not turn to account _my_ thoughts, nor _my_ work, nor, in general, anything of mine. The State always has the sole purpose to limit, tame, subordinate, the individual--to make him subject to some _generality_ or other; it lasts only so long as the individual is not all in all, and it is only the clearly-marked _restriction of me_, my limitation, my slavery. Never does a State aim to bring in the free activity of individuals, but always that which is bound to the _purpose of the State_. Through the State nothing _in common_ comes to pass either, as little as one can call a piece of cloth the common work of all the individual parts of a machine; it is rather the work of the whole machine as a unit, _machine work_. In the same style everything is done by the _State machine_ too; for it moves the clockwork of the individual minds, none of which follow their own impulse. The State seeks to hinder every free activity by its censorship, its supervision, its police, and holds this hindering to be its duty, because it is in truth a duty of self-preservation. The State wants to make something out of man, therefore there live in it only _made_ men; every one who wants to be his own self is its opponent and is nothing. "He is nothing" means as much as, The State does not make use of him, grants him no position, no office, no trade, and the like. E. Bauer,[164] in the "_Liberale Bestrebungen_," II, 50, is still dreaming of a "government which, proceeding out of the people, can never stand in opposition to it." He does indeed (p. 69) himself take back the word "government": "In the republic no government at all obtains, but only an executive authority. An authority which proceeds purely and alone out of the people; which has not an independent power, independent principles, independent officers, over against the people; but which has its foundation, the fountain of its power and of its principles, in the sole, supreme authority of the State, in the people. The concept government, therefore, is not at all suitable in the people's State." But the thing remains the same. That which has "proceeded, been founded, sprung from the fountain" becomes something "independent" and, like a child delivered from the womb, enters upon opposition at once. The government, if it were nothing independent and opposing, would be nothing at all. "In the free State there is no government," etc. (p. 94). This surely means that the people, when it is the _sovereign_, does not let itself be conducted by a superior authority. Is it perchance different in absolute monarchy? Is there there for the _sovereign_, perchance, a government standing over him? _Over_ the sovereign, be he called prince or people, there never stands a government: that is understood of itself. But over _me_ there will stand a government in every "State," in the absolute as well as in the republican or "free." _I_ am as badly off in one as in the other. The republic is nothing whatever but--absolute monarchy; for it makes no difference whether the monarch is called prince or people, both being a "majesty." Constitutionalism itself proves that nobody is able and willing to be only an instrument. The ministers domineer over their master the prince, the deputies over their master the people. Here, then, the _parties_ at least are already free,--_videlicet_, the office-holders' party (so-called people's party). The prince must conform to the will of the ministers, the people dance to the pipe of the chambers. Constitutionalism is further than the republic, because it is the _State_ in incipient _dissolution_. E. Bauer denies (p. 56) that the people is a "personality" in the constitutional State; _per contra_, then, in the republic? Well, in the constitutional State the people is--a _party_, and a party is surely a "personality" if one is once resolved to talk of a "political" (p. 76) moral person anyhow. The fact is that a moral person, be it called people's party or people or even "the Lord," is in no wise a person, but a spook. Further, E. Bauer goes on (p. 69): "guardianship is the characteristic of a government." Truly, still more that of a people and "people's State"; it is the characteristic of all _dominion_. A people's State, which "unites in itself all completeness of power," the "absolute master," cannot let me become powerful. And what a chimera, to be no longer willing to call the "people's officials" "servants, instruments," because they "execute the free, rational law-will of the people!" (p. 73). He thinks (p. 74): "Only by all official circles subordinating themselves to the government's views can unity be brought into the State"; but his "people's State" is to have "unity" too; how will a lack of subordination be allowable there? subordination to the--people's will. "In the constitutional State it is the regent and his _disposition_ that the whole structure of government rests on in the end." (_Ibid._, p. 130.) How would that be otherwise in the "people's State"? Shall _I_ not there be governed by the people's _disposition_ too, and does it make a difference _for me_ whether I see myself kept in dependence by the prince's disposition or by the people's disposition, so-called "public opinion"? If dependence means as much as "religious relation," as E. Bauer rightly alleges, then in the people's State the people remains _for me_ the superior power, the "majesty" (for God and prince have their proper essence in "majesty") to which I stand in religious relations.--Like the sovereign regent, the sovereign people too would be reached by no _law_. E. Bauer's whole attempt comes to a _change of masters_. Instead of wanting to make the _people_ free, he should have had his mind on the sole realizable freedom, his own. In the constitutional State _absolutism_ itself has at last come in conflict with itself, as it has been shattered into a duality; the government wants to be absolute, and the people wants to be absolute. These two absolutes will wear out against each other. E. Bauer inveighs against the determination of the regent by _birth_, by _chance_. But, when "the people" have become "the sole power in the State" (p. 132), have _we_ not then in it a master from _chance_? Why, what is the people? The people has always been only the _body_ of the government: it is many under one hat (a prince's hat) or many under one constitution. And the constitution is the--prince. Princes and peoples will persist so long as both do not _col_lapse, _i. e._ fall _together_. If under one constitution there are many "peoples,"--_e. g._ in the ancient Persian monarchy and to-day,--then these "peoples" rank only as "provinces." For me the people is in any case an--accidental power, a force of nature, an enemy that I must overcome. What is one to think of under the name of an "organized" people (_ibid._, p. 132)? A people "that no longer has a government," that governs itself. In which, therefore, no ego stands out prominently; a people organized by ostracism. The banishment of egos, ostracism, makes the people autocrat. If you speak of the people, you must speak of the prince; for the people, if it is to be a subject[165] and make history, must, like everything that acts, have a _head_, its "supreme head." Weitling sets this forth in the "Trio," and Proudhon declares, "_une société, pour ainsi dire acéphale, ne peut vivre_."[166] The _vox populi_ is now always held up to us, and "public opinion" is to rule our princes. Certainly the _vox populi_ is at the same time _vox dei_; but is either of any use, and is not the _vox principis_ also _vox dei_? At this point the "Nationals" may be brought to mind. To demand of the thirty-eight States of Germany that they shall act as _one nation_ can only be put alongside the senseless desire that thirty-eight swarms of bees, led by thirty-eight queen-bees, shall unite themselves into one swarm. _Bees_ they all remain; but it is not the bees as bees that belong together and can join themselves together, it is only that the _subject_ bees are connected with the _ruling_ queens. Bees and peoples are destitute of will, and the _instinct_ of their queens leads them. If one were to point the bees to their beehood, in which at any rate they are all equal to each other, one would be doing the same thing that they are now doing so stormily in pointing the Germans to their Germanhood. Why, Germanhood is just like beehood in this very thing, that it bears in itself the necessity of cleavages and separations, yet without pushing on to the last separation, where, with the complete carrying through of the process of separating, its end appears: I mean, to the separation of man from man. Germanhood does indeed divide itself into different peoples and tribes, _i. e._ beehives; but the individual who has the quality of being a German is still as powerless as the isolated bee. And yet only individuals can enter into union with each other, and all alliances and leagues of peoples are and remain mechanical compoundings, because those who come together, at least so far as the "peoples" are regarded as the ones that have come together, are _destitute of will_. Only with the last separation does separation itself end and change to unification. Now the Nationals are exerting themselves to set up the abstract, lifeless unity of beehood; but the self-owned are going to fight for the unity willed by their own will, for union. This is the token of all reactionary wishes, that they want to set up something _general_, abstract, an empty, lifeless _concept_, in distinction from which the self-owned aspire to relieve the robust, lively _particular_ from the trashy burden of generalities. The reactionaries would be glad to smite a _people_, a _nation_, forth from the earth; the self-owned have before their eyes only themselves. In essentials the two efforts that are just now the order of the day--to wit, the restoration of provincial rights and of the old tribal divisions (Franks, Bavarians, etc., Lusatia, etc.), and the restoration of the entire nationality--coincide in one. But the Germans will come into unison, _i. e._ unite _themselves_, only when they knock over their beehood as well as all the beehives; in other words, when they are more than--Germans: only then can they form a "German Union." They must not want to turn back into their nationality, into the womb, in order to be born again, but let every one turn in _to himself_. How ridiculously sentimental when one German grasps another's hand and presses it with sacred awe because "he too is a German"! With that he is something great! But this will certainly still be thought touching as long as people are enthusiastic for "brotherliness," _i. e._ as long as they have a "_family disposition_." From the superstition of "piety," from "brotherliness" or "childlikeness" or however else the soft-hearted piety-phrases run,--from the _family spirit_,--the Nationals, who want to have a great _family of Germans_, cannot liberate themselves. Aside from this, the so-called Nationals would only have to understand themselves rightly in order to lift themselves out of their juncture with the good-natured Teutomaniacs. For the uniting for material ends and interests, which they demand of the Germans, comes to nothing else than a voluntary union. Carriere, inspired, cries out,[167] "Railroads are to the more penetrating eye the way to a _life of the people_ such as has not yet anywhere appeared in such significance." Quite right, it will be a life of the people that has nowhere appeared, because it is not a--life of the people.--So Carriere then combats himself (p. 10): "Pure humanity or manhood cannot be better represented than by a people fulfilling its mission." Why, by this nationality only is represented. "Washed-out generality is lower than the form complete in itself, which is itself a whole, and lives as a living member of the truly general, the organized." Why, the people is this very "washed-out generality," and it is only a man that is the "form complete in itself." The impersonality of what they call "people, nation," is clear also from this: that a people which wants to bring its I into view to the best of its power puts at its head the ruler _without will_. It finds itself in the alternative either to be subjected to a prince who realizes only _himself, his individual_ pleasure--then it does not recognize in the "absolute master" its own will, the so-called will of the people--, or to seat on the throne a prince who gives effect to _no_ will of his _own_--then it has a prince _without will_, whose place some ingenious clockwork would perhaps fill just as well.--Therefore insight need go only a step farther; then it becomes clear of itself that the I of the people is an impersonal, "spiritual" power, the--law. The people's I, therefore, is a--spook, not an I. I am I only by this, that I make myself; _i. e._ that it is not another who makes me, but I must be my own work. But how is it with this I of the people? _Chance_ plays it into the people's hand, chance gives it this or that born lord, accidents procure it the chosen one; he is not its (the "_sovereign_" people's) product, as I am _my_ product. Conceive of one wanting to talk you into believing that you were not your I, but Tom or Jack was your I! But so it is with the people, and rightly. For the people has an I as little as the eleven planets counted together have an _I_, though they revolve around a common _centre_. Bailly's utterance is representative of the slave-disposition that folks manifest before the sovereign people, as before the prince. "I have," says he, "no longer any extra reason when the general reason has pronounced itself. My first law was the nation's will; as soon as it had assembled I knew nothing beyond its sovereign will." He would have no "extra reason," and yet this extra reason alone accomplishes everything. Just so Mirabeau inveighs in the words, "No power on earth has the _right_ to say to the nation's representatives, It is my will!" As with the Greeks, there is now a wish to make man a _zoon politicon_, a citizen of the State or political man. So he ranked for a long time as a "citizen of heaven." But the Greek fell into ignominy along with his _State_, the citizen of heaven likewise falls with heaven; we, on the other hand, are not willing to go down along with the _people_, the nation and nationality, not willing to be merely _political_ men or politicians. Since the Revolution they have striven to "make the people happy," and in making the people happy, great, and the like, they make Us unhappy: the people's good hap is--my mishap. What empty talk the political liberals utter with emphatic decorum is well seen again in Nauwerk's "On Taking Part in the State." There complaint is made of those who are indifferent and do not take part, who are not in the full sense citizens, and the author speaks as if one could not be man at all if one did not take a lively part in State affairs, _i. e._ if one were not a politician. In this he is right; for, if the State ranks as the warder of everything "human," we can have nothing human without taking part in it. But what does this make out against the egoist? Nothing at all, because the egoist is to himself the warder of the human, and has nothing to say to the State except "Get out of my sunshine." Only when the State comes in contact with his ownness does the egoist take an active interest in it. If the condition of the State does not bear hard on the closet-philosopher, is he to occupy himself with it because it is his "most sacred duty"? So long as the State does according to his wish, what need has he to look up from his studies? Let those who from an interest of their own want to have conditions otherwise busy themselves with them. Not now, nor evermore, will "sacred duty" bring folks to reflect about the State,--as little as they become disciples of science, artists, etc., from "sacred duty." Egoism alone can impel them to it, and will as soon as things have become much worse. If you showed folks that their egoism demanded that they busy themselves with State affairs, you would not have to call on them long; if, on the other hand, you appeal to their love of fatherland and the like, you will long preach to deaf hearts in behalf of this "service of love." Certainly, in your sense the egoists will not participate in State affairs at all. Nauwerk utters a genuine liberal phrase on p. 16: "Man completely fulfils his calling only in feeling and knowing himself as a member of humanity, and being active as such. The individual cannot realize the idea of _manhood_ if he does not stay himself upon all humanity, if he does not draw his powers from it like Antæus." In the same place it is said: "Man's relation to the _res publica_ is degraded to a purely private matter by the theological view; is, accordingly, made away with by denial." As if the political view did otherwise with religion! There religion is a "private matter." If, instead of "sacred duty," "man's destiny," the "calling to full manhood," and similar commandments, it were held up to people that their _self-interest_ was infringed on when they let everything in the State go as it goes, then, without declamations, they would be addressed as one will have to address them at the decisive moment if he wants to attain his end. Instead of this, the theology-hating author says, "If there has ever been a time when the _State_ laid claim to all that are _hers_, such a time is ours.--The thinking man sees in participation in the theory and practice of the State a _duty_, one of the most sacred duties that rest upon him"--and then takes under closer consideration the "unconditional necessity that everybody participate in the State." He in whose head or heart or both the _State_ is seated, he who is possessed by the State, or the _believer in the State_, is a politician, and remains such to all eternity. "The State is the most necessary means for the complete development of mankind." It assuredly has been so as long as we wanted to develop mankind; but, if we want to develop ourselves, it can be to us only a means of hindrance. Can State and people still be reformed and bettered now? As little as the nobility, the clergy, the church, etc.: they can be abrogated, annihilated, done away with, not reformed. Can I change a piece of nonsense into sense by reforming it, or must I drop it outright? Henceforth what is to be done is no longer about the _State_ (the form of the State, etc.), but about me. With this all questions about the prince's power, the constitution, etc., sink into their true abyss and their true nothingness. I, this nothing, shall put forth my _creations_ from myself. To the chapter of society belongs also "the party," whose praise has of late been sung. In the State the _party_ is current. "Party, party, who should not join one!" But the individual is _unique_,[168] not a member of the party. He unites freely, and separates freely again. The party is nothing but a State in the State, and in this smaller bee-State "peace" is also to rule just as in the greater. The very people who cry loudest that there must be an _opposition_ in the State inveigh against every discord in the party. A proof that they too want only a--State. All parties are shattered not against the State, but against the ego.[169] One hears nothing oftener now than the admonition to remain true to his party; party men despise nothing so much as a mugwump. One must run with his party through thick and thin, and unconditionally approve and represent its chief principles. It does not indeed go quite so badly here as with closed societies, because these bind their members to fixed laws or statutes (_e. g._ the orders, the Society of Jesus, etc.). But yet the party ceases to be a union at the same moment at which it makes certain principles _binding_ and wants to have them assured against attacks; but this moment is the very birth-act of the party. As party it is already a _born society_, a dead union, an idea that has become fixed. As party of absolutism it cannot will that its members should doubt the irrefragable truth of this principle; they could cherish this doubt only if they were egoistic enough to want still to be something outside their party, _i. e._ non-partisans. Non-partisan they cannot be as party-men, but only as egoists. If you are a Protestant and belong to that party, you must only justify Protestantism, at most "purge" it, not reject it; if you are a Christian and belong among men to the Christian party, you cannot go beyond this as a member of this party, but only when your egoism, _i. e._ non-partisanship, impels you to it. What exertions the Christians, down to Hegel and the Communists, have put forth to make their party strong! they stuck to it that Christianity must contain the eternal truth, and that one needs only to get at it, make sure of it, and justify it. In short, the party cannot bear non-partisanship, and it is in this that egoism appears. What matters the party to me? I shall find enough anyhow who _unite_ with me without swearing allegiance to my flag. He who passes over from one party to another is at once abused as a "turncoat." Certainly _morality_ demands that one stand by his party, and to become apostate from it is to spot oneself with the stain of "faithlessness"; but ownness knows no commandment of "faithfulness, adhesion, etc.," ownness permits everything, even apostasy, defection. Unconsciously even the moral themselves let themselves be led by this principle when they have to judge one who passes over to _their_ party,--nay, they are likely to be making proselytes; they should only at the same time acquire a consciousness of the fact that one must commit _immoral_ actions in order to commit his own,--_i. e._ here, that one must break faith, yes, even his oath, in order to determine himself instead of being determined by moral considerations. In the eyes of people of strict moral judgment an apostate always shimmers in equivocal colors, and will not easily obtain their confidence; for there sticks to him the taint of "faithlessness," _i. e._ of an immorality. In the lower man this view is found almost generally; advanced thinkers fall here too, as always, into an uncertainty and bewilderment, and the contradiction necessarily founded in the principle of morality does not, on account of the confusion of their concepts, come clearly to their consciousness. They do not venture to call the apostate immoral downright, because they themselves entice to apostasy, to defection from one religion to another, etc.; still, they cannot give up the standpoint of morality either. And yet here the occasion was to be seized to step outside of morality. Are the Own or Unique[170] perchance a party? How could they be _own_ if they were such as _belonged_ to a party? Or is one to hold with no party? In the very act of joining them and entering their circle one forms a _union_ with them that lasts as long as party and I pursue one and the same goal. But to-day I still share the party's tendency, and by to-morrow I can do so no longer and I become "untrue" to it. The party has nothing _binding_ (obligatory) for me, and I do not have respect for it; if it no longer pleases me, I become its foe. In every party that cares for itself and its persistence, the members are unfree (or better, unown) in that degree, they lack egoism in that degree, in which they serve this desire of the party. The independence of the party conditions the lack of independence in the party-members. A party, of whatever kind it may be, can never do without a _confession of faith_. For those who belong to the party must _believe_ in its principle, it must not be brought in doubt or put in question by them, it must be the certain, indubitable thing for the party-member. That is: One must belong to a party body and soul, else one is not truly a party-man, but more or less--an egoist. Harbor a doubt of Christianity, and you are already no longer a true Christian, you have lifted yourself to the "effrontery" of putting a question beyond it and haling Christianity before your egoistic judgment-seat. You have--_sinned_ against Christianity, this party cause (for it is surely not _e. g._ a cause for the Jews, another party). But well for you if you do not let yourself be affrighted: your effrontery helps you to ownness. So then an egoist could never embrace a party or take up with a party? Oh, yes, only he cannot let himself be embraced and taken up by the party. For him the party remains all the time nothing but a _gathering_: he is one of the party, he takes part. * * * * * The best State will clearly be that which has the most loyal citizens, and the more the devoted mind for _legality_ is lost, so much the more will the State, this system of morality, this moral life itself, be diminished in force and quality. With the "good citizens" the good State too perishes and dissolves into anarchy and lawlessness. "Respect for the law!" By this cement the total of the State is held together. "The law is _sacred_, and he who affronts it a _criminal_." Without crime no State: the moral world--and this the State is--is crammed full of scamps, cheats, liars, thieves, etc. Since the State is the "lordship of law," its hierarchy, it follows that the egoist, in all cases where _his_ advantage runs against the State's, can satisfy himself only by crime. The State cannot give up the claim that its _laws_ and ordinances are _sacred_.[171] At this the individual ranks as the _unholy_[172] (barbarian, natural man, "egoist") over against the State, exactly as he was once regarded by the Church; before the individual the State takes on the nimbus of a saint.[173] Thus it issues a law against dueling. Two men who are both at one in this, that they are willing to stake their life for a cause (no matter what), are not to be allowed this, because the State will not have it: it imposes a penalty on it. Where is the liberty of self-determination then? It is at once quite another situation if, as _e. g._ in North America, society determines to let the duelists bear certain evil _consequences_ of their act, _e. g._ withdrawal of the credit hitherto enjoyed. To refuse credit is everybody's affair, and, if a society wants to withdraw it for this or that reason, the man who is hit cannot therefore complain of encroachment on his liberty: the society is simply availing itself of its own liberty. That is no penalty for sin, no penalty for a _crime_. The duel is no crime there, but only an act against which the society adopts counter-measures, resolves on a _defence_. The State, on the contrary, stamps the duel as a crime, _i. e._ as an injury to its sacred law: it makes it a _criminal case_. The society leaves it to the individual's decision whether he will draw upon himself evil consequences and inconveniences by his mode of action, and hereby recognizes his free decision; the State behaves in exactly the reverse way, denying all right to the individual's decision and, instead, ascribing the sole right to its own decision, the law of the State, so that he who transgresses the State's commandment is looked upon as if he were acting against God's commandment,--a view which likewise was once maintained by the Church. Here God is the Holy in and of himself, and the commandments of the Church, as of the State, are the commandments of this Holy One, which he transmits to the world through his anointed and Lords-by-the-Grace-of-God. If the Church had _deadly sins_, the State has _capital crimes_; if the one had _heretics_, the other has _traitors_; the one _ecclesiastical penalties_, the other _criminal penalties_; the one _inquisitorial_ processes, the other _fiscal_; in short, there sins, here crimes, there sinners, here criminals, there inquisition and here--inquisition. Will the sanctity of the State not fall like the Church's? The awe of its laws, the reverence for its highness, the humility of its "subjects," will this remain? Will the "saint's" face not be stripped of its adornment? What a folly, to ask of the State's authority that it should enter into an honorable fight with the individual, and, as they express themselves in the matter of freedom of the press, share sun and wind equally! If the State, this thought, is to be a _de facto_ power, it simply must be a superior power against the individual. The State is "sacred" and must not expose itself to the "impudent attacks" of individuals. If the State is _sacred_, there must be censorship. The political liberals admit the former and dispute the inference. But in any case they concede repressive measures to it, for--they stick to this, that State is _more_ than the individual and exercises a justified revenge, called punishment. _Punishment_ has a meaning only when it is to afford expiation for the injuring of a _sacred_ thing. If something is sacred to any one, he certainly deserves punishment when he acts as its enemy. A man who lets a man's life continue in existence _because_ to him it is sacred and he has a _dread_ of touching it is simply a--_religious_ man. Weitling lays crime at the door of "social disorder," and lives in the expectation that under Communistic arrangements crimes will become impossible, because the temptations to them, _e. g._ money, fall away. As, however, his organized society is also exalted into a sacred and inviolable one, he miscalculates in that good-hearted opinion. Such as with their mouth professed allegiance to the Communistic society, but worked underhand for its ruin, would not be lacking. Besides, Weitling has to keep on with "curative means against the natural remainder of human diseases and weaknesses," and "curative means" always announce to begin with that individuals will be looked upon as "called" to a particular "salvation" and hence treated according to the requirements of this "human calling." _Curative means_ or _healing_ is only the reverse side of _punishment_, the _theory of cure_ runs parallel with the _theory of punishment_; if the latter sees in an action a sin against right, the former takes it for a sin of the man _against himself_, as a decadence from his health. But the correct thing is that I regard it either as an action that _suits me_ or as one that _does not suit me_, as hostile or friendly to _me_, _i. e._ that I treat it as my _property_, which I cherish or demolish. "Crime" or "disease" are not either of them an _egoistic_ view of the matter, _i. e._ a judgment _starting from me_, but starting from _another_,--to wit, whether it injures _right_, general right, or the _health_ partly of the individual (the sick one), partly of the generality (_society_). "Crime" is treated inexorably, "disease" with "loving gentleness, compassion," and the like. Punishment follows crime. If crime falls because the sacred vanishes, punishment must not less be drawn into its fall; for it too has significance only over against something sacred. Ecclesiastical punishments have been abolished. Why? Because how one behaves toward the "holy God" is his own affair. But, as this one punishment, _ecclesiastical punishment_, has fallen, so all _punishments_ must fall. As sin against the so-called God is a man's own affair, so that against every kind of the so-called sacred. According to our theories of penal law, with whose "improvement in conformity to the times" people are tormenting themselves in vain, they want to _punish_ men for this or that "inhumanity"; and therein they make the silliness of these theories especially plain by their consistency, hanging the little thieves and letting the big ones run. For injury to property they have the house of correction, and for "violence to thought," suppression of "natural rights of man," only--representations and petitions. The criminal code has continued existence only through the sacred, and perishes of itself if punishment is given up. Now they want to create everywhere a new penal law, without indulging in a misgiving about punishment itself. But it is exactly punishment that must make room for satisfaction, which, again, cannot aim at satisfying right or justice, but at procuring _us_ a satisfactory outcome. If one does to us what we _will not put up with_, we break his power and bring our own to bear: we satisfy _ourselves_ on him, and do not fall into the folly of wanting to satisfy right (the spook). It is not the _sacred_ that is to defend itself against man, but man against man; as _God_ too, you know, no longer defends himself against man, God to whom formerly (and in part, indeed, even now) all the "servants of God" offered their hands to punish the blasphemer, as they still at this very day lend their hands to the sacred. This devotion to the sacred brings it to pass also that, without lively participation of one's own, one only delivers misdoers into the hands of the police and courts: a non-participating making over to the authorities, "who, of course, will best administer sacred matters." The people is quite crazy for hounding the police on against everything that seems to it to be immoral, often only unseemly, and this popular rage for the moral protects the police institution more than the government could in any way protect it. In crime the egoist has hitherto asserted himself and mocked at the sacred; the break with the sacred, or rather of the sacred, may become general. A revolution never returns, but a mighty, reckless, shameless, conscienceless, proud--_crime_, does it not rumble in distant thunders, and do you not see how the sky grows presciently silent and gloomy? * * * * * He who refuses to spend his powers for such limited societies as family, party, nation, is still always longing for a worthier society, and thinks he has found the true object of love, perhaps, in "human society" or "mankind," to sacrifice himself to which constitutes his honor; from now on he "lives for and serves _mankind_." _People_ is the name of the body, _State_ of the spirit, of that _ruling person_ that has hitherto suppressed me. Some have wanted to transfigure peoples and States by broadening them out to "mankind" and "general reason"; but servitude would only become still more intense with this widening, and philanthropists and humanitarians are as absolute masters as politicians and diplomats. Modern critics inveigh against religion because it sets God, the divine, moral, etc., _outside_ of man, or makes them something objective, in opposition to which the critics rather transfer these very subjects _into_ man. But those critics none the less fall into the proper error of religion, to give man a "destiny," in that they too want to have him divine, human, and the like: morality, freedom and humanity, etc., are his essence. And, like religion, politics too wanted to "_educate_" man, to bring him to the realization of his "essence," his "destiny," to _make_ something out of him,--to wit, a "true man," the one in the form of the "true believer," the other in that of the "true citizen or subject." In fact, it comes to the same whether one calls the destiny the divine or human. Under religion and politics man finds himself at the standpoint of _should_: he _should_ become this and that, should be so and so. With this postulate, this commandment, every one steps not only in front of another but also in front of himself. Those critics say: You should be a whole, free man. Thus they too stand in the temptation to proclaim a new _religion_, to set up a new absolute, an ideal,--to wit, freedom. Men _should_ be free. Then there might even arise _missionaries_ of freedom, as Christianity, in the conviction that all were properly destined to become Christians, sent out missionaries of the faith. Freedom would then (as have hitherto faith as Church, morality as State) constitute itself as a new _community_ and carry on a like "propaganda" therefrom. Certainly no objection can be raised against a getting together; but so much the more must one oppose every renewal of the old _care_ for us, of culture directed toward an end,--in short, the principle of _making something_ out of us, no matter whether Christians, subjects, or freemen and men. One may well say with Feuerbach and others that religion has displaced the human from man, and has transferred it so into another world that, unattainable, it went on with its own existence there as something personal in itself, as a "God": but the error of religion is by no means exhausted with this. One might very well let fall the personality of the displaced human, might transform God into the divine, and still remain religious. For the religious consists in discontent with the _present_ man, _i. e._ in the setting up of a "perfection" to be striven for, in "man wrestling for his completion."[174] ("Ye therefore _should_ be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect." Matt. 5. 48): it consists in the fixation of an _ideal_, an absolute. Perfection is the "supreme good," the _finis bonorum_; every one's ideal is the perfect man, the true, the free man, etc. The efforts of modern times aim to set up the ideal of the "free man." If one could find it, there would be a new--religion, because a new ideal; there would be a new longing, a new torment, a new devotion, a new deity, a new contrition. With the ideal of "absolute liberty," the same turmoil is made as with everything absolute, and according to Hess, _e. g._, it is said to "be realizable in absolute human society."[175] Nay, this realization is immediately afterward styled a "vocation"; just so he then defines liberty as "morality": the kingdom of "justice" (_i. e._ equality) and "morality" (_i. e._ liberty) is to begin, etc. Ridiculous is he who, while fellows of his tribe, family, nation, etc., rank high, is--nothing but "puffed up" over the merit of his fellows; but blinded too is he who wants only to be "man." Neither of them puts his worth in _exclusiveness_, but in _connectedness_, or in the "tie" that conjoins him with others, in the ties of blood, of nationality, of humanity. Through the "Nationals" of to-day the conflict has again been stirred up between those who think themselves to have merely human blood and human ties of blood, and the others who brag of their special blood and the special ties of blood. If we disregard the fact that pride may mean conceit, and take it for consciousness alone, there is found to be a vast difference between pride in "belonging to" a nation and therefore being its property, and that in calling a nationality one's property. Nationality is my quality, but the nation my owner and mistress. If you have bodily strength, you can apply it at a suitable place and have a self-consciousness or pride of it; if, on the contrary, your strong body has you, then it pricks you everywhere, and at the most unsuitable place, to show its strength: you can give nobody your hand without squeezing his. The perception that one is more than a member of the family, more than a fellow of the tribe, more than an individual of the people, etc., has finally led to saying, one is more than all this because one is man, or, the man is more than the Jew, German, etc. "Therefore be every one wholly and solely--man!" Could one not rather say: Because we are more than what has been stated, therefore we will be this, as well as that "more" also? Man and German, then, man and Guelph, etc.? The Nationals are in the right; one cannot deny his nationality: and the humanitarians are in the right; one must not remain in the narrowness of the national. In _uniqueness_[176] the contradiction is solved; the national is my quality. But I am not swallowed up in my quality,--as the human too is my quality, but I give to man his existence first through my uniqueness. History seeks for Man: but he is I, you, we. Sought as a mysterious _essence_, as the divine, first as _God_, then as _Man_ (humanity, humaneness, and mankind), he is found as the individual, the finite, the unique one. I am owner of humanity, am humanity, and do nothing for the good of another humanity. Fool, you who are a unique humanity, that you make a merit of wanting to live for another than you are. The hitherto-considered relation of me to the _world of men_ offers such a wealth of phenomena that it will have to be taken up again and again on other occasions, but here, where it was only to have its chief outlines made clear to the eye, it must be broken off to make place for an apprehension of two other sides toward which it radiates. For, as I find myself in relation not merely to men so far as they present in themselves the concept "man" or are children of men (children of _Man_, as children of God are spoken of), but also to that which they have of man and call their own, and as therefore I relate myself not only to that which they _are_ through man, but also to their human _possessions_: so, besides the world of men, the world of the senses and of ideas will have to be included in our survey, and somewhat said of what men call their own of sensuous goods, and of spiritual as well. According as one had developed and clearly grasped the concept of man, he gave it to us to respect as this or that _person of respect_, and from the broadest understanding of this concept there proceeded at last the command "to respect Man in every one." But, if I respect Man, my respect must likewise extend to the human, or what is Man's. Men have somewhat of their _own_, and _I_ am to recognize this own and hold it sacred. Their own consists partly in outward, partly in inward _possessions_. The former are things, the latter spiritualities, thoughts, convictions, noble feelings, etc. But I am always to respect only _rightful_ or _human_ possessions; the wrongful and unhuman I need not spare, for only _Man's_ own is men's real own. An inward possession of this sort is, _e. g._, religion; because _religion_ is free, _i. e._ is Man's, _I_ must not strike at it. Just so _honor_ is an inward possession; it is free and must not be struck at by me. (Action for insult, caricatures, etc.) Religion and honor are "spiritual property." In tangible property the person stands foremost: my person is my first property. Hence freedom of the person; but only the _rightful_ or human person is free, the other is locked up. Your life is your property; but it is sacred for men only if it is not that of an inhuman monster. What a man as such cannot defend of bodily goods, we may take from him: this is the meaning of competition, of freedom of occupation. What he cannot defend of spiritual goods falls a prey to us likewise: so far goes the liberty of discussion, of science, of criticism. But _consecrated_ goods are inviolable. Consecrated and guaranteed by whom? Proximately by the State, society, but properly by man or the "concept," the "concept of the thing": for the concept of consecrated goods is this, that they are truly human, or rather that the holder possesses them as man and not as un-man.[177] On the spiritual side man's faith is such goods, his honor, his moral feeling,--yes, his feeling of decency, modesty, etc. Actions (speeches, writings) that touch honor are punishable; attacks on "the foundation of all religion"; attacks on political faith; in short, attacks on everything that a man "rightly" has. How far critical liberalism would extend, the sanctity of goods,--on this point it has not yet made any pronouncement, and doubtless fancies itself to be ill-disposed toward all sanctity; but, as it combats egoism, it must set limits to it, and must not let the un-man pounce on the human. To its theoretical contempt for the "masses" there must correspond a practical snub if it should get into power. What extension the concept "man" receives, and what comes to the individual man through it,--what, therefore, man and the human are,--on this point the various grades of liberalism differ, and the political, the social, the humane man are each always claiming more than the other for "man." He who has best grasped this concept knows best what is "man's." The State still grasps this concept in political restriction, society in social; mankind, so it is said, is the first to comprehend it entirely, or "the history of mankind develops it." But, if "man is discovered," then we know also what pertains to man as his own, man's property, the human. But let the individual man lay claim to ever so many rights because Man or the concept man "entitles" him to them, _i. e._ because his being man does it: what do _I_ care for his right and his claim? If he has his right only from Man and does not have it from _me_, then for _me_ he has no right. His life, _e. g._, counts to _me_ only for what it is _worth to me_. I respect neither a so-called right of property (or his claim to tangible goods) nor yet his right to the "sanctuary of his inner nature" (or his right to have the spiritual goods and divinities, his gods, remain unaggrieved). His goods, the sensuous as well as the spiritual, are _mine_, and I dispose of them as proprietor, in the measure of my--might. In the _property question_ lies a broader meaning than the limited statement of the question allows to be brought out. Referred solely to what men call our possessions, it is capable of no solution; the decision is to be found only in him "from whom we have everything." Property depends on the _owner_. The Revolution directed its weapons against everything which came "from the grace of God," _e. g._, against divine right, in whose place the human was confirmed. To that which is granted by the grace of God, there is opposed that which is derived "from the essence of man." Now, as men's relation to each other, in opposition to the religious dogma which commands a "Love one another for God's sake," had to receive its human position by a "Love each other for man's sake," so the revolutionary teaching could not do otherwise than, first as to what concerns the relation of men to the things of this world, settle it that the world, which hitherto was arranged according to God's ordinance, henceforth belongs to "Man." The world belongs to "Man," and is to be respected by me as his property. Property is what is mine! Property in the civic sense means _sacred_ property, such that I must _respect_ your property. "Respect for property!" Hence the politicians would like to have every one possess his little bit of property, and they have in part brought about an incredible parcellation by this effort. Each must have his bone on which he may find something to bite. The position of affairs is different in the egoistic sense. I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as _my_ property, in which I need to "respect" nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property! With this view we shall most easily come to an understanding with each other. The political liberals are anxious that, if possible, all servitudes be dissolved, and every one be free lord on his ground, even if this ground has only so much area as can have its requirements adequately filled by the manure of one person. (The farmer in the story married even in his old age "that he might profit by his wife's dung.") Be it ever so little, if one only has somewhat of his own,--to wit, a _respected_ property! The more such owners, such cotters,[178] the more "free people and good patriots" has the State. Political liberalism, like everything religious, counts on _respect_, humaneness, the virtues of love. Therefore does it live in incessant vexation. For in practice people respect nothing, and every day the small possessions are bought up again by greater proprietors, and the "free people" change into day-laborers. If, on the contrary, the "small proprietors" had reflected that the great property was also theirs, they would not have respectfully shut themselves out from it, and would not have been shut out. Property as the civic liberals understand it deserves the attacks of the Communists and Proudhon: it is untenable, because the civic proprietor is in truth nothing but a propertyless man, one who is everywhere _shut out_. Instead of owning the world, as he might, he does not own even the paltry point on which he turns around. Proudhon wants not the _propriétaire_ but the _possesseur_ or _usufruitier_.[179] What does that mean? He wants no one to own the land; but the benefit of it--even though one were allowed only the hundredth part of this benefit, this fruit--is at any rate one's property, which he can dispose of at will. He who has only the benefit of a field is assuredly not the proprietor of it; still less he who, as Proudhon would have it, must give up so much of this benefit as is not required for his wants; but he is the proprietor of the share that is left him. Proudhon, therefore, denies only such and such property, not _property_ itself. If we want no longer to leave the land to the landed proprietors, but to appropriate it to _ourselves_, we unite ourselves to this end, form a union, a _société_, that makes _itself_ proprietor; if we have good luck in this, then those persons cease to be landed proprietors. And, as from the land, so we can drive them out of many another property yet, in order to make it _our_ property, the property of the--_conquerors_. The conquerors form a society which one may imagine so great that it by degrees embraces all humanity; but so-called humanity too is as such only a thought (spook); the individuals are its reality. And these individuals as a collective mass will treat land and earth not less arbitrarily than an isolated individual or so-called _propriétaire_. Even so, therefore, _property_ remains standing, and that as "exclusive" too, in that _humanity_, this great society, excludes the _individual_ from its property (perhaps only leases to him, gives him as a fief, a piece of it) as it besides excludes everything that is not humanity, _e. g._ does not allow animals to have property.--So too it will remain, and will grow to be. That in which _all_ want to have a _share_ will be withdrawn from that individual who wants to have it for himself alone: it is made a _common estate_. As a _common estate_ every one has his _share_ in it, and this share is his _property_. Why, so in our old relations a house which belongs to five heirs is their common estate; but the fifth part of the revenue is each one's property. Proudhon might spare his prolix pathos if he said: "There are some things that belong only to a few, and to which we others will from now on lay claim or--siege. Let us take them, because one comes to property by taking, and the property of which for the present we are still deprived came to the proprietors likewise only by taking. It can be utilized better if it is in the hands of _us all_ than if the few control it. Let us therefore associate ourselves for the purpose of this robbery (_vol_)."--Instead of this, he tries to get us to believe that society is the original possessor and the sole proprietor, of imprescriptible right; against it the so-called proprietors have become thieves (_La propriété c'est le vol_); if it now deprives of his property the present proprietor, it robs him of nothing, as it is only availing itself of its imprescriptible right.--So far one comes with the spook of society as a _moral person_. On the contrary, what man can obtain belongs to him: the world belongs to _me_. Do you say anything else by your opposite proposition, "The world belongs to _all_"? All are I and again I, etc. But you make out of the "all" a spook, and make it sacred, so that then the "all" become the individual's fearful _master_. Then the ghost of "right" places itself on their side. Proudhon, like the Communists, fights against _egoism_. Therefore they are continuations and consistent carryings-out of the Christian principle, the principle of love, of sacrifice for something general, something alien. They complete in property, _e. g._, only what has long been extant as a matter of fact,--_viz._, the propertylessness of the individual. When the law says, _Ad reges potestas omnium pertinet, ad singulos proprietas; omnia rex imperio possidet, singuli dominio_, this means: The king is proprietor, for he alone can control and dispose of "everything," he has _potestas_ and _imperium_ over it. The Communists make this clearer, transferring that _imperium_ to the "society of all." Therefore: Because enemies of egoism, they are on that account--Christians, or, more generally speaking, religious men, believers in ghosts, dependents, servants of some generality (God, society, etc.). In this too Proudhon is like the Christians, that he ascribes to God that which he denies to men. He names him (_e. g._, page 90) the Propriétaire of the earth. Herewith he proves that he cannot think away the _proprietor as such_; he comes to a proprietor at last, but removes him to the other world. Neither God nor Man ("human society") is proprietor, but the individual. * * * * * Proudhon (Weitling too) thinks he is telling the worst about property when he calls it theft (_vol_). Passing quite over the embarrassing question, what well-founded objection could be made against theft, we only ask: Is the concept "theft" at all possible unless one allows validity to the concept "property"? How can one steal if property is not already extant? What belongs to no one cannot be _stolen_; the water that one draws out of the sea he does _not steal_. Accordingly property is not theft, but a theft becomes possible only through property. Weitling has to come to this too, as he does regard everything as the _property of all_: if something is "the property of all," then indeed the individual who appropriates it to himself steals. Private property lives by grace of the _law_. Only in the law has it its warrant--for possession is not yet property, it becomes "mine" only by assent of the law--; it is not a fact, not _un fait_ as Proudhon thinks, but a fiction, a thought. This is legal property, legitimate property, guaranteed property. It is mine not through _me_ but through the--_law_. Nevertheless, property is the expression for _unlimited dominion_ over somewhat (thing, beast, man) which "I can judge and dispose of as seems good to me." According to Roman law, indeed, _jus utendi et abutendi re sua, quatenus juris ratio patitur_, an _exclusive_ and _unlimited right_; but property is conditioned by might. What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing; if it gets away from me again, no matter by what power, _e. g._ through my recognition of a title of others to the thing,--then the property is extinct. Thus property and possession coincide. It is not a right lying outside my might that legitimizes me, but solely my might: if I no longer have this, the thing vanishes away from me. When the Romans no longer had any might against the Germans, the world-empire of Rome _belonged_ to the latter, and it would sound ridiculous to insist that the Romans had nevertheless remained properly the proprietors. Whoever knows how to take and to defend the thing, to him it belongs till it is again taken from him, as liberty belongs to him who _takes_ it.-- Only might decides about property, and, as the State (no matter whether State of well-to-do citizens or of ragamuffins or of men in the absolute) is the sole mighty one, it alone is proprietor; I, the unique,[180] have nothing, and am only enfeoffed, am vassal and, as such, servitor. Under the dominion of the State there is no property of _mine_. I want to raise the value of myself, the value of ownness, and should I cheapen property? No, as I was not respected hitherto because people, mankind, and a thousand other generalities were put higher, so property too has to this day not yet been recognized in its full value. Property too was only the property of a ghost, _e. g._ the people's property; my whole existence "belonged to the fatherland": _I_ belonged to the fatherland, the people, the State, and therefore also everything that I called _my own_. It is demanded of States that they make away with pauperism. It seems to me this is asking that the State should cut off its own head and lay it at its feet; for so long as the State is the ego the individual ego must remain a poor devil, a non-ego. The State has an interest only in being itself rich; whether Michael is rich and Peter poor is alike to it; Peter might also be rich and Michael poor. It looks on indifferently as one grows poor and the other rich, unruffled by this alternation. As _individuals_ they are really equal before its face; in this it is just: before it both of them are--nothing, as we "are altogether sinners before God"; on the other hand, it has a very great interest in this, that those individuals who make it their ego should have a part in its wealth; it makes them partakers in _its property_. Through property, with which it rewards the individuals, it tames them; but this remains _its_ property, and every one has the usufruct of it only so long as he bears in himself the ego of the State, or is a "loyal member of society"; in the opposite case the property is confiscated, or made to melt away by vexatious lawsuits. The property, then, is and remains _State property_, not property of the ego. That the State does not arbitrarily deprive the individual of what he has from the State means simply that the State does not rob itself. He who is a State-ego, _i. e._ a good citizen or subject, holds his fief undisturbed as _such an ego_, not as being an ego of his own. According to the code, property is what I call mine "by virtue of God and law." But it is mine by virtue of God and law only so long as--the State has nothing against it. In expropriations, disarmaments, and the like (as, _e. g._, the exchequer confiscates inheritances if the heirs do not put in an appearance early enough) how plainly the else-veiled principle that only the _people_, "the State," is proprietor, while the individual is feoffee, strikes the eye! The State, I mean to say, cannot intend that anybody should _for his own sake_ have property or actually be rich, nay, even well-to-do; it can acknowledge nothing, grant nothing to me as me. The State cannot check pauperism, because the poverty of possession is a poverty of me. He who _is_ nothing but what chance or another--to wit, the State--makes out of him also _has_ quite rightly nothing but what another gives him. And this other will give him only what he _deserves_, _i. e._ what he is worth by _service_. It is not he that realizes a value from himself; the State realizes a value from him. National economy busies itself much with this subject. It lies far out beyond the "national," however, and goes beyond the concepts and horizon of the State, which knows only State property and can distribute nothing else. For this reason it binds the possession of property to _conditions_,--as it binds everything to them, _e. g._ marriage, allowing validity only to the marriage sanctioned by it, and wresting this out of my power. But property is _my_ property only when I hold it _unconditionally_: only I, as _unconditioned_ ego, have property, enter a relation of love, carry on free trade. The State has no anxiety about me and mine, but about itself and its: I count for something to it only as _its child_, as "a son of the country"; as _ego_ I am nothing at all for it. For the State's understanding, what befalls me as ego is something accidental, my wealth as well as my impoverishment. But, if I with all that is mine am an accident in the State's eyes, this proves that it cannot comprehend _me_: _I_ go beyond its concepts, or, its understanding is too limited to comprehend me. Therefore it cannot do anything for me either. Pauperism is the _valuelessness of me_, the phenomenon that I cannot realize value from myself. For this reason State and pauperism are one and the same. The State does not let me come to my value, and continues in existence only through my valuelessness: it is forever intent on _getting benefit_ from me, _i. e._ exploiting me, turning me to account, using me up, even if the use it gets from me consists only in my supplying a _proles_ (_prolétariat_); it wants me to be "its creature." Pauperism can be removed only when I as ego _realize value_ from myself, when I give my own self value, and make my price myself. I must rise in revolt to rise in the world. What I produce, flour, linen, or iron and coal, which I toilsomely win from the earth, etc., is _my_ work that I want to realize value from. But then I may long complain that I am not paid for my work according to its value: the payer will not listen to me, and the State likewise will maintain an apathetic attitude so long as it does not think it must "appease" me that _I_ may not break out with my dreaded might. But this "appeasing" will be all, and, if it comes into my head to ask for more, the State turns against me with all the force of its lion-paws and eagle-claws: for it is the king of beasts, it is lion and eagle. If I refuse to be content with the price that it fixes for my ware and labor, if I rather aspire to determine the price of my ware myself, _i. e._ "to pay myself," in the first place I come into a conflict with the buyers of the ware. If this were stilled by a mutual understanding, the State would not readily make objections; for how individuals get along with each other troubles it little, so long as therein they do not get in its way. Its damage and its danger begin only when they do not agree, but, in the absence of a settlement, take each other by the hair. The State cannot endure that man stand in a direct relation to man; it must step between as--_mediator_, must--_intervene_. What Christ was, what the saints, the Church were, the State has become,--to wit, "mediator." It tears man from man to put itself between them as "spirit." The laborers who ask for higher pay are treated as criminals as soon as they want to _compel_ it. What are they to do? Without compulsion they don't get it, and in compulsion the State sees a self-help, a determination of price by the ego, a genuine, free realization of value from his property, which it cannot admit of. What then are the laborers to do? Look to themselves and ask nothing about the State?-- -- But, as is the situation with regard to my material work, so it is with my intellectual too. The State allows me to realize value from all my thoughts and to find customers for them (I do realize value from them, _e. g._, in the very fact that they bring me honor from the listeners, and the like); but only so long as my thoughts are--_its_ thoughts. If, on the other hand, I harbor thoughts that it cannot approve (_i. e._ make its own), then it does not allow me at all to realize value from them, to bring them into _exchange_, into _commerce_. _My_ thoughts are free only if they are granted to me by the State's _grace_, _i. e._ if they are the State's thoughts. It lets me philosophize freely only so far as I approve myself a "philosopher of State"; _against_ the State I must not philosophize, gladly as it tolerates my helping it out of its "deficiencies," "furthering" it.--Therefore, as I may behave only as an ego most graciously permitted by the State, provided with its testimonial of legitimacy and police pass, so too it is not granted me to realize value from what is mine, unless this proves to be its, which I hold as fief from it. My ways must be its ways, else it distrains me; my thoughts its thoughts, else it stops my mouth. The State has nothing to be more afraid of than the value of me, and nothing must it more carefully guard against than every occasion that offers itself to me for _realizing value_ from myself. _I_ am the deadly enemy of the State, which always hovers between the alternatives, it or I. Therefore it strictly insists not only on not letting _me_ have a standing, but also on keeping down what is _mine_. In the State there is no--property, _i. e._ no property of the individual, but only State property. Only through the State have I what I have, as I am only through it what I am. My private property is only that which the State leaves to me of _its, cutting off_ others from it (depriving them, making it private); it is State property. But, in opposition to the State, I feel more and more clearly that there is still left me a great might, the might over myself, _i. e._ over everything that pertains only to me and that _exists_ only in being my own. What do I do if my ways are no longer its ways, my thoughts no longer its thoughts? I look to myself, and ask nothing about it! In _my_ thoughts, which I get sanctioned by no assent, grant, or grace, I have my real property, a property with which I can trade. For as mine they are my _creatures_, and I am in a position to give them away in return for _other_ thoughts: I give them up and take in exchange for them others, which then are my new purchased property. What then is _my_ property? Nothing but what is in my _power_! To what property am I entitled? To every property to which I--_empower_ myself.[181] I give myself the right of property in taking property to myself, or giving myself the proprietor's _power_, full power, empowerment. Everything over which I have might that cannot be torn from me remains my property; well, then let might decide about property, and I will expect everything from my might! Alien might, might that I leave to another, makes me an owned slave: then let my own might make me an owner. Let me then withdraw the might that I have conceded to others out of ignorance regarding the strength of my _own_ might! Let me say to myself, what my might reaches to is my property; and let me claim as property everything that I feel myself strong enough to attain, and let me extend my actual property as far as _I_ entitle, _i. e._--empower, myself to take. Here egoism, selfishness, must decide; not the principle of _love,_ not love-motives like mercy, gentleness, good-nature, or even justice and equity (for _justitia_ too is a phenomenon of--love, a product of love): love knows only _sacrifices_ and demands "self-sacrifice." Egoism does not think of sacrificing anything, giving away anything that it wants; it simply decides, What I want I must have and will procure. All attempts to enact rational laws about property have put out from the bay of _love_ into a desolate sea of regulations. Even Socialism and Communism cannot be excepted from this. Every one is to be provided with adequate means, for which it is little to the point whether one socialistically finds them still in a personal property, or communistically draws them from the community of goods. The individual's mind in this remains the same; it remains a mind of dependence. The distributing _board of equity_ lets me have only what the sense of equity, its _loving_ care for all, prescribes. For me, the individual, there lies no less of a check in _collective wealth_ than in that of _individual others_; neither that is mine, nor this: whether the wealth belongs to the collectivity, which confers part of it on me, or to individual possessors, is for me the same constraint, as I cannot decide about either of the two. On the contrary, Communism, by the abolition of all personal property, only presses me back still more into dependence on another, _viz._, on the generality or collectivity; and, loudly as it always attacks the "State," what it intends is itself again a State, a _status_, a condition hindering my free movement, a sovereign power over me. Communism rightly revolts against the pressure that I experience from individual proprietors; but still more horrible is the might that it puts in the hands of the collectivity. Egoism takes another way to root out the non-possessing rabble. It does not say: Wait for what the board of equity will--bestow on you in the name of the collectivity (for such bestowal took place in "States" from the most ancient times, each receiving "according to his desert," and therefore according to the measure in which each was able to _deserve_ it, to acquire it by _service_), but: Take hold, and take what you require! With this the war of all against all is declared. _I_ alone decide what I will have. "Now, that is truly no new wisdom, for self-seekers have acted so at all times!" Not at all necessary either that the thing be new, if only _consciousness_ of it is present. But this latter will not be able to claim great age, unless perhaps one counts in the Egyptian and Spartan law; for how little current it is appears even from the stricture above, which speaks with contempt of "self-seekers." One is to know just this, that the procedure of taking hold is not contemptible, but manifests the pure deed of the egoist at one with himself. Only when I expect neither from individuals nor from a collectivity what I can give to myself, only then do I slip out of the snares of--love; the rabble ceases to be rabble only when it _takes hold_. Only the dread of taking hold, and the corresponding punishment thereof, makes it a rabble. Only that taking hold is _sin_, crime,--only this dogma creates a rabble. For the fact that the rabble remains what it is, it (because it allows validity to that dogma) is to blame as well as, more especially, those who "self-seekingly" (to give them back their favorite word) demand that the dogma be respected. In short, the lack of _consciousness_ of that "new wisdom," the old consciousness of sin, alone bears the blame. If men reach the point of losing respect for property, every one will have property, as all slaves become free men as soon as they no longer respect the master as master. _Unions_ will then, in this matter too, multiply the individual's means and secure his assailed property. According to the Communists' opinion the commune should be proprietor. On the contrary, _I_ am proprietor, and I only come to an understanding with others about my property. If the commune does not do what suits me, I rise against it and defend my property. I am proprietor, but property is _not sacred_. I should be merely possessor? No, hitherto one was only possessor, secured in the possession of a parcel by leaving others also in possession of a parcel; but now _everything_ belongs to me, I am proprietor of _everything that I require_ and can get possession of. If it is said socialistically, society gives me what I require,--then the egoist says, I take what I require. If the Communists conduct themselves as ragamuffins, the egoist behaves as proprietor. All swan-fraternities,[182] and attempts at making the rabble happy, that spring from the principle of love, must miscarry. Only from egoism can the rabble get help, and this help it must give to itself and--will give to itself. If it does not let itself be coerced into fear, it is a power. "People would lose all respect if one did not coerce them so into fear," says bugbear Law in "_Der gestiefelte Kater_." Property, therefore, should not and cannot be abolished; it must rather be torn from ghostly hands and become _my_ property; then the erroneous consciousness, that I cannot entitle myself to as much as I require, will vanish.-- "But what cannot man require!" Well, whoever requires much, and understands how to get it, has at all times helped himself to it, as Napoleon did with the Continent and France with Algiers. Hence the exact point is that the respectful "rabble" should learn at last to help itself to what it requires. If it reaches out too far for you, why, then defend yourselves. You have no need at all to good-heartedly--bestow anything on it; and, when it learns to know itself, it--or rather: whoever of the rabble learns to know himself, he--casts off the rabble-quality in refusing your alms with thanks. But it remains ridiculous that you declare the rabble "sinful and criminal" if it is not pleased to live from your favors because it can do something in its own favor. Your bestowals cheat it and put it off. Defend your property, then you will be strong; if, on the other hand, you want to retain your ability to bestow, and perhaps actually have the more political rights the more alms (poor-rates) you can give, this will work just as long as the recipients let you work it.[183] In short, the property question cannot be solved so amicably as the Socialists, yes, even the Communists, dream. It is solved only by the war of all against all. The poor become free and proprietors only when they--_rise_. Bestow ever so much on them, they will still always want more; for they want nothing less than that at last--nothing more be bestowed. It will be asked, But how then will it be when the have-nots take heart? Of what sort is the settlement to be? One might as well ask that I cast a child's nativity. What a slave will do as soon as he has broken his fetters, one must--await. In Kaiser's pamphlet, worthless for lack of form as well as substance ("_Die Persoenlichkeit des Eigentuemers in Bezug auf den Socialismus und Communismus_," etc.), he hopes from the _State_ that it will bring about a leveling of property. Always the State! Herr Papa! As the Church was proclaimed and looked upon as the "mother" of believers, so the State has altogether the face of the provident father. * * * * * _Competition_ shows itself most strictly connected with the principle of civism. Is it anything else than _equality_ (_égalité_)? And is not equality a product of that same Revolution which was brought on by the commonalty, the middle classes? As no one is barred from competing with all in the State (except the prince, because he represents the State itself) and working himself up to their height, yes, overthrowing or exploiting them for his own advantage, soaring above them and by stronger exertion depriving them of their favorable circumstances,--this serves as a clear proof that before the State's judgment-seat every one has only the value of a "simple individual" and may not count on any favoritism. Outrun and outbid each other as much as you like and can; that shall not trouble me, the State! Among yourselves you are free in competing, you are competitors; that is your _social_ position. But before me, the State, you are nothing but "simple individuals"![184] What in the form of principle or theory was propounded as the equality of all has found here in competition its realization and practical carrying out; for _égalité_ is--free competition. All are, before the State,--simple individuals; in society, or in relation to each other,--competitors. I need be nothing further than a simple individual to be able to compete with all others aside from the prince and his family: a freedom which formerly was made impossible by the fact that only by means of one's corporation, and within it, did one enjoy any freedom of effort. In the guild and feudality the State is in an intolerant and fastidious attitude, granting _privileges_; in competition and liberalism it is in a tolerant and indulgent attitude, granting only _patents_ (letters assuring the applicant that the business stands open [patent] to him) or "concessions." Now, as the State has thus left everything to the _applicants_, it must come in conflict with _all_, because each and all are entitled to make application. It will be "stormed," and will go down in this storm. Is "free competition" then really "free"? nay, is it really a "competition,"--to wit, one of _persons_,--as it gives itself out to be because on this title it bases its right? It originated, you know, in persons becoming free of all personal rule. Is a competition "free" which the State, this ruler in the civic principle, hems in by a thousand barriers? There is a rich manufacturer doing a brilliant business, and I should like to compete with him. "Go ahead," says the State, "I have no objection to make to your _person_ as competitor." Yes, I reply, but for that I need a space for buildings, I need money! "That's bad; but, if you have no money, you cannot compete. You must not take anything from anybody, for I protect property and grant it privileges." Free competition is not "free," because I lack the THINGS for competition. Against my _person_ no objection can be made, but because I have not the things my person too must step to the rear. And who has the necessary things? Perhaps that manufacturer? Why, from him I could take them away! No, the State has them as property, the manufacturer only as fief, as possession. But, since it is no use trying it with the manufacturer, I will compete with that professor of jurisprudence; the man is a booby, and I, who know a hundred times more than he, shall make his class-room empty. "Have you studied and graduated, friend?" No, but what of that? I understand abundantly what is necessary for instruction in that department. "Sorry, but competition is not 'free' here. Against your person there is nothing to be said, but the _thing_, the doctor's diploma, is lacking. And this diploma I, the State, demand. Ask me for it respectfully first; then we will see what is to be done." This, therefore, is the "freedom" of competition. The State, _my lord_, first qualifies me to compete. But do _persons_ really compete? No, again _things_ only! Moneys in the first place, etc. In the rivalry one will always be left behind another (_e. g._ a poetaster behind a poet). But it makes a difference whether the means that the unlucky competitor lacks are personal or material, and likewise whether the material means can be won by _personal energy_ or are to be obtained only by _grace_, only as a present; as when, _e. g._, the poorer man must leave, _i. e._ present, to the rich man his riches. But, if I must all along wait for the _State's approval_ to obtain or to use (_e. g._ in the case of graduation) the means, I have the means by the _grace of the State_.[185] Free competition, therefore, has only the following meaning: To the State all rank as its equal children, and every one can scud and run to _earn the State's goods and largess_. Therefore all do chase after havings, holdings, possessions (be it of money or offices, titles of honor, etc.), after the _things_. In the mind of the commonalty every one is possessor or "owner." Now, whence comes it that the most have in fact next to nothing? From this, that the most are already joyful over being possessors at all, even though it be of some rags, as children are joyful in their first trousers or even the first penny that is presented to them. More precisely, however, the matter is to be taken as follows. Liberalism came forward at once with the declaration that it belonged to man's essence not to be property, but proprietor. As the consideration here was about "man," not about the individual, the how-much (which formed exactly the point of the individual's special interest) was left to him. Hence the individual's egoism retained room for the freest play in this how-much, and carried on an indefatigable competition. However, the lucky egoism had to become a snag in the way of the less fortunate, and the latter, still keeping its feet planted on the principle of humanity, put forward the question as to the how-much of possession, and answered it to the effect that "man must have as much as he requires." Will it be possible for _my_ egoism to let itself be satisfied with that? What "man" requires furnishes by no means a scale for measuring me and my needs; for I may have use for less or more. I must rather have so much as I am competent to appropriate. Competition suffers from the unfavorable circumstance that the _means_ for competing are not at every one's command, because they are not taken from personality, but from accident. Most are _without means_, and for this reason _without goods_. Hence the Socialists demand the _means_ for all, and aim at a society that shall offer means. Your money value, say they, we no longer recognize as your "competence"; you must show another competence,--to wit, your _working force_. In the possession of a property, or as "possessor," man does certainly show himself as man; it was for this reason that we let the possessor, whom we called "proprietor," keep his standing so long. Yet you possess the things only so long as you are not "put out of this property." The possessor is competent, but only so far as the others are incompetent. Since your ware forms your competence only so long as you are competent to defend it (_i. e._, as _we_ are not competent to do anything with it), look about you for another competence; for we now, by our might, surpass your alleged competence. It was an extraordinarily large gain made, when the point of being regarded as possessors was put through. Therein bondservice was abolished, and every one who till then had been bound to the lord's service, and more or less had been his property, now became a "lord." But henceforth your having, and what you have, are no longer adequate and no longer recognized; _per contra_, your working and your work rise in value. We now respect your _subduing_ things, as we formerly did your possessing them. Your work is your competence! You are lord or possessor only of what comes by _work_, not by _inheritance_. But as at the time everything has come by inheritance, and every copper that you possess bears not a labor-stamp but an inheritance stamp, everything must be melted over. But is my work then really, as the Communists suppose, my sole competence? or does not this consist rather in everything that I am competent for? And does not the workers society itself have to concede this, _e. g._ in supporting also the sick, children, old men,--in short, those who are incapable of work? These are still competent for a good deal, _e. g._ to preserve their life instead of taking it. If they are competent to cause you to desire their continued existence, they have a power over you. To him who exercised utterly no power over you, you would vouchsafe nothing; he might perish. Therefore, what you are _competent_ for is your _competence_! If you are competent to furnish pleasure to thousands, then thousands will pay you an honorarium for it; for it would stand in your power to forbear doing it, hence they must purchase your deed. If you are not competent to _captivate_ any one, you may simply starve. Now am I, who am competent for much, perchance to have no advantage over the less competent? We are all in the midst of abundance; now shall I not help myself as well as I can, but only wait and see how much is left me in an equal division? Against competition there rises up the principle of ragamuffin society,--_partition_. To be looked upon as a mere _part_, part of society, the individual cannot bear--because he is _more_; his uniqueness puts from it this limited conception. Hence he does not await his competence from the I sharing of others, and even in the workers' society there arises the misgiving that in an equal partition the strong will be exploited by the weak; he awaits his competence rather from himself, and says now, What I am competent to have, that is my competence. What competence does not the child possess in its smiling, its playing, its screaming! in short, in its mere existence! Are you capable of resisting its desire? or do you not hold out to it, as mother, your breast; as father, as much of your possessions as it needs? It compels you, therefore it possesses what you call yours. If your person is of consequence to me, you pay me with your very existence; if I am concerned only with one of your qualities, then your compliance, perhaps, or your aid, has a value (a money value) for me, and I _purchase_ it. If you do not know how to give yourself any other than a money value in my estimation, there may arise the case of which history tells us, that Germans, sons of the fatherland, were sold to America. Should those who let themselves be traded in be worth more to the seller? He preferred the cash to this living ware that did not understand how to make itself precious to him. That he discovered nothing more valuable in it was assuredly a defect of his competence; but it takes a rogue to give more than he has. How should he show respect when he did not have it, nay, hardly could have it for such a pack! You behave egoistically when you respect each other neither as possessors nor as ragamuffins or workers, but as a part of your competence, as "_useful bodies_." Then you will neither give anything to the possessor ("proprietor") for his possessions, nor to him who works, but only to him whom _you require_. The North Americans ask themselves, Do we require a king? and answer, Not a farthing are he and his work worth to us. If it is said that competition throws every thing open to all, the expression is not accurate, and it is better put thus: competition makes everything purchasable. In _abandoning_[186] it to them, competition leaves it to their appraisal[187] or their estimation, and demands a price[188] for it. But the would-be buyers mostly lack the means to make themselves buyers: they have no money. For money, then, the purchasable things are indeed to be had ("For money everything is to be had!"), but it is exactly money that is lacking. Where is one to get money, this current or circulating property? Know then, you have as much money[189] as you have--might; for you count[190] for as much as you make yourself count for. One pays not with money, of which there may come a lack, but with his competence, by which alone we are "competent";[191] for one is proprietor only so far as the arm of our power reaches. Weitling has thought out a new means of payment,--work. But the true means of payment remains, as always, _competence_. With what you have "within your competence" you pay. Therefore think on the enlargement of your competence. This being admitted, they are nevertheless right on hand again with the motto, "To each according to his competence!" Who is to _give_ to me according to my competence? Society? Then I should have to put up with its estimation. Rather, I shall _take_ according to my competence. "All belongs to all!" This proposition springs from the same unsubstantial theory. To each belongs only what he is competent for. If I say, The world belongs to me, properly that too is empty talk, which has a meaning only in so far as I respect no alien property. But to me belongs only as much as I am competent for, or have within my competence. One is not worthy to have what one, through weakness, lets be taken from him; one is not worthy of it because one is not capable of it. They raise a mighty uproar over the "wrong of a thousand years" which is being committed by the rich against the poor. As if the rich were to blame for poverty, and the poor were not in like manner responsible for riches! Is there another difference between the two than that of competence and incompetence, of the competent and incompetent? Wherein, pray, does the crime of the rich consist? "In their hardheartedness." But who then have maintained the poor? who have cared for their nourishment? who have given alms, those alms that have even their name from mercy (_eleemosyne_)? Have not the rich been "merciful" at all times? are they not to this day "tender-hearted," as poor-taxes, hospitals, foundations of all sorts, etc., prove? But all this does not satisfy you! Doubtless, then, they are to _share_ with the poor? Now you are demanding that they shall abolish poverty. Aside from the point that there might be hardly one among you who would act so, and that this one would be a fool for it, do ask yourselves: why should the rich let go their fleeces and give up _themselves_, thereby pursuing the advantage of the poor rather than their own? You, who have your thaler daily, are rich above thousands who live on four groschen. Is it for your interest to share with the thousands, or is it not rather for theirs?-- -- With competition is connected less the intention to do the thing _best_ than the intention to make it as _profitable_, as productive, as possible. Hence people study to get into the civil service (pot-boiling study), study cringing and flattery, routine and "acquaintance with business," work "for appearances." Hence, while it is apparently a matter of doing "good service," in truth only a "good business" and earning of money are looked out for. The job is done only ostensibly for the job's sake, but in fact on account of the gain that it yields. One would indeed prefer not to be censor, but one wants to be--advanced; one would like to judge, administer, etc., according to his best convictions, but one is afraid of transference or even dismissal; one must, above all things,--live. Thus these goings-on are a fight for _dear life_, and, in gradation upward, for more or less of a "good living." And yet, withal, their whole round of toil and care brings in for most only "bitter life" and "bitter poverty." All the bitter painstaking for this! Restless acquisition does not let us take breath, take a calm _enjoyment_: we do not get the comfort of our possessions. But the organization of labor touches only such labors as others can do for us, _e. g._ slaughtering, tillage, etc.; the rest remain egoistic, because, _e. g._, no one can in your stead elaborate your musical compositions, carry out your projects of painting, etc.; nobody can replace Raphael's labors. The latter are labors of a unique person,[192] which only he is competent to achieve, while the former deserved to be called "human," since what is anybody's _own_ in them is of slight account, and almost "any man" can be trained to it. Now, as society can regard only labors for the common benefit, _human_ labors, he who does anything _unique_ remains without its care; nay, he may find himself disturbed by its intervention. The unique person will work himself forth out of society all right, but society brings forth no unique person. Hence it is at any rate helpful that we come to an agreement about _human_ labors, that they may not, as under competition, claim all our time and toil. So far Communism will bear its fruits. For before the dominion of the commonalty even that for which all men are qualified, or can be qualified, was tied up to a few and withheld from the rest: it was a privilege. To the commonalty it looked equitable to leave free all that seemed to exist for every "man." But, because left[193] free, it was yet given to no one, but rather left to each to be got hold of by his _human_ power. By this the mind was turned to the acquisition of the human, which henceforth beckoned to every one; and there arose a movement which one hears so loudly bemoaned under the name of "materialism." Communism seeks to check its course, spreading the belief that the human is not worth so much discomfort, and, with sensible arrangements, could be gained without the great expense of time and powers which has hitherto seemed requisite. But for whom is time to be gained? For what does man require more time than is necessary to refresh his wearied powers of labor? Here Communism is silent. For what? To take comfort in himself as the unique, after he has done his part as man! In the first joy over being allowed to stretch out their hands toward everything human, people forgot to want anything else; and they competed away vigorously, as if the possession of the human were the goal of all our wishes. But they have run themselves tired, and are gradually noticing that "possession does not give happiness." Therefore they are thinking of obtaining the necessary by an easier bargain, and spending on it only so much time and toil as its indispensableness exacts. Riches fall in price, and contented poverty, the care-free ragamuffin, becomes the seductive ideal. Should such human activities, that every one is confident of his capacity for, be highly salaried, and sought for with toil and expenditure of all life-forces? Even in the every-day form of speech, "If I were minister, or even the ..., then it should go quite otherwise," that confidence expresses itself,--that one holds himself capable of playing the part of such a dignitary; one does get a perception that to things of this sort there belongs not uniqueness, but only a culture which is attainable, even if not exactly by all, at any rate by many; _i. e._ that for such a thing one need only be an ordinary man. If we assume that, as _order_ belongs to the essence of the State, so _subordination_ too is founded in its nature, then we see that the subordinates, or those who have received preferment, disproportionately _overcharge_ and _overreach_ those who are put in the lower ranks. But the latter take heart (first from the Socialist standpoint, but certainly with egoistic consciousness later, of which we will therefore at once give their speech some coloring) for the question, By what then is your property secure, you creatures of preferment?--and give themselves the answer, By our refraining from interference! And so by _our_ protection! And what do you give us for it? Kicks and disdain you give to the "common people"; police supervision, and a catechism with the chief sentence "Respect what is _not yours_, what belongs to _others_! respect others, and especially your superiors!" But we reply, "If you want our respect, _buy_ it for a price agreeable to us. We will leave you your property, if you give a due equivalent for this leaving." Really, what equivalent does the general in time of peace give for the many thousands of his yearly income? another for the sheer hundred-thousands and millions yearly? What equivalent do you give for our chewing potatoes and looking calmly on while you swallow oysters? Only buy the oysters of us as dear as we have to buy the potatoes of you, then you may go on eating them. Or do you suppose the oysters do not belong to us as much as to you? You will make an outcry over _violence_ if we reach out our hands and help consume them, and you are right. Without violence we do not get them, as you no less have them by doing violence to us. But take the oysters and have done with it, and let us consider our nearer property, labor; for the other is only possession. We distress ourselves twelve hours in the sweat of our face, and you offer us a few groschen for it. Then take the like for your labor too. Are you not willing? You fancy that our labor is richly repaid with that wage, while yours on the other hand is worth a wage of many thousands. But, if you did not rate yours so high, and gave us a better chance to realize value from ours, then we might well, if the case demanded it, bring to pass still more important things than you do for the many thousand thalers; and, if you got only such wages as we, you would soon grow more industrious in order to receive more. But, if you render any service that seems to us worth ten and a hundred times more than our own labor, why, then you shall get a hundred times more for it too; we, on the other hand, think also to produce for you things for which you will requite us more highly than with the ordinary day's wages. We shall be willing to get along with each other all right, if only we have first agreed on this,--that neither any longer needs to--_present_ anything to the other. Then we may perhaps actually go so far as to pay even the cripples and sick and old an appropriate price for not parting from us by hunger and want; for, if we want them to live, it is fitting also that we--purchase the fulfilment of our will. I say "purchase," and therefore do not mean a wretched "alms." For their life is the property even of those who cannot work; if we (no matter for what reason) want them not to withdraw this life from us, we can mean to bring this to pass only by purchase; nay, we shall perhaps (maybe because we like to have friendly faces about us) even want a life of comfort for them. In short, we want nothing presented by you, but neither will we present you with anything. For centuries we have handed alms to you from good-hearted--stupidity, have doled out the mite of the poor and given to the masters the things that are--not the masters'; now just open your wallet, for henceforth our ware rises in price quite enormously. We do not want to take from you anything, anything at all, only you are to pay better for what you want to have. What then have you? "I have an estate of a thousand acres." And I am your plowman, and will henceforth attend to your fields only for one thaler a day wages. "Then I'll take another." You won't find any, for we plowmen are no longer doing otherwise, and, if one puts in an appearance who takes less, then let him beware of us. There is the housemaid, she too is now demanding as much, and you will no longer find one below this price. "Why, then it is all over with me." Not so fast! You will doubtless take in as much as we; and, if it should not be so, we will take off so much that you shall have wherewith to live like us. "But I am accustomed to live better." We have nothing against that, but it is not our lookout; if you can clear more, go ahead. Are we to hire out under rates, that you may have a good living? The rich man always puts off the poor with the words, "What does your want concern me? See to it how you make your way through the world; that is _your affair_, not mine." Well, let us let it be our affair, then, and let us not let the means that we have to realize value from ourselves be pilfered from us by the rich. "But you uncultured people really do not need so much." Well, we are taking somewhat more in order that for it we may procure the culture that we perhaps need. "But, if you thus bring down the rich, who is then to support the arts and sciences hereafter?" Oh, well, we must make it up by numbers; we club together, that gives a nice little sum,--besides, you rich men now buy only the most tasteless books and the most lamentable Madonnas or a pair of lively dancer's legs. "O ill-starred equality!" No, my good old sir, nothing of equality. We only want to count for what we are worth, and, if you are worth more, you shall count for more right along. We only want to be _worth our price_, and think to show ourselves worth the price that you will pay. Is the State likely to be able to awaken so secure a temper and so forceful a self-consciousness in the menial? Can it make man feel himself? nay, may it even do so much as set this goal for itself? Can it want the individual to recognize his value and realize this value from himself? Let us keep the parts of the double question separate, and see first whether the State can bring about such a thing. As the unanimity of the plowmen is required, only this unanimity can bring it to pass, and a State law would be evaded in a thousand ways by competition and in secret. But can the State bear with it? The State cannot possibly bear with people's suffering coercion from another than it; it could not, therefore, admit the self-help of the unanimous plowmen against those who want to engage for lower wages. Suppose, however, that the State made the law, and all the plowmen were in accord with it: could the State bear with it then? In the isolated case--yes; but the isolated case is more than that, it is a case of _principle_. The question therein is of the whole range of _the ego's self-realization of value from himself_, and therefore also of his self-consciousness _against_ the State. So far the Communists keep company; but, as self-realization of value from self necessarily directs itself against the State, so it does against _society_ too, and therewith reaches out beyond the commune and the communistic--out of egoism. Communism makes the maxim of the commonalty, that every one is a possessor ("proprietor"), into an irrefragable truth, into a reality, since the anxiety about _obtaining_ now ceases and every one _has_ from the start what he requires. In his labor-force he _has_ his competence, and, if he makes no use of it, that is his fault. The grasping and hounding is at an end, and no competition is left (as so often now) without fruit, because with every stroke of labor an adequate supply of the needful is brought into the house. Now for the first time one is a _real possessor_, because what one has in his labor-force can no longer escape from him as it was continually threatening to do under the system of competition. One is a _care-free_ and assured possessor. And one is this precisely by seeking his competence no longer in a ware, but in his own labor, his competence for labor; and therefore by being a _ragamuffin_, a man of only ideal wealth. _I_, however, cannot content myself with the little that I scrape up by my competence for labor, because my competence does not consist merely in my labor. By labor I can perform the official functions of a president, a minister, etc.; these offices demand only a general culture,--to wit, such a culture as is generally attainable (for general culture is not merely that which every one has attained, but broadly that which every one can attain, and therefore every special culture, _e. g._ medical, military, philological, of which no "cultivated man" believes that they surpass his powers), or, broadly, only a skill possible to all. But, even if these offices may vest in every one, yet it is only the individual's unique force, peculiar to him alone, that gives them, so to speak, life and significance. That he does not manage his office like an "ordinary man," but puts in the competence of his uniqueness, this he is not yet paid for when he is paid only in general as an official or a minister. If he has done it so as to earn your thanks, and you wish to retain this thankworthy force of the unique one, you must not pay him like a mere man who performed only what was human, but as one who accomplishes what is unique. Do the like with your labor, do! There cannot be a general schedule-price fixed for my uniqueness as there can for what I do as man. Only for the latter can a schedule-price be set. Go right on, then, setting up a general appraisal for human labors, but do not deprive your uniqueness of its desert. _Human_ or _general_ needs can be satisfied through society; for satisfaction of _unique_ needs you must do some seeking. A friend and a friendly service, or even an individual's service, society cannot procure you. And yet you will every moment be in need of such a service, and on the slightest occasions require somebody who is helpful to you. Therefore do not rely on society, but see to it that you have the wherewithal to--purchase the fulfiment of your wishes. Whether money is to be retained among egoists?--To the old stamp an inherited possession adheres. If you no longer let yourselves be paid with it, it is ruined: if you do nothing for this money, it loses all power. Cancel the _inheritance_, and you have broken off the executor's court-seal. For now everything is an inheritance, whether it be already inherited or await its heir. If it is yours, wherefore do you let it be sealed up from you? why do you respect the seal? But why should you not create a new money? Do you then annihilate the ware in taking from it the hereditary stamp? Now, money is a ware, and an essential _means_ or competence. For it protects against the ossification of resources, keeps them in flux and brings to pass their exchange. If you know a better medium of exchange, go ahead; yet it will be a "money" again. It is not the money that does you damage, but your incompetence to take it. Let your competence take effect, collect yourselves, and there will be no lack of money--of your money, the money of _your_ stamp. But working I do not call "letting your competence take effect." Those who are only "looking for work" and "willing to work hard" are preparing for their own selves the infallible upshot--to be out of work. Good and bad luck depend on money. It is a power in the _bourgeois_ period for this reason, that it is only wooed on all hands like a girl, indissolubly wedded by nobody. All the romance and chivalry of _wooing_ for a dear object come to life again in competition. Money, an object of longing, is carried off by the bold "knights of industry."[194] He who has luck takes home the bride. The ragamuffin has luck; he takes her into his household, "society," and destroys the virgin. In his house she is no longer bride, but wife; and with her virginity her family name is also lost. As housewife the maiden Money is called "Labor," for "Labor" is her husband's name. She is a possession of her husband's. To bring this figure to an end, the child of Labor and Money is again a girl, an unwedded one and therefore Money, but with the certain descent from Labor, her father. The form of the face, the "effigy," bears another stamp. Finally, as regards competition once more, it has a continued existence by this very means, that all do not attend to _their affair_ and come to an _understanding_ with each other about it. Bread, _e. g._, is a need of all the inhabitants of a city; therefore they might easily agree on setting up a public bakery. Instead of this, they leave the furnishing of the needful to the competing bakers. Just so meat to the butchers, wine to the wine-dealers, etc. Abolishing competition is not equivalent to favoring the guild. The difference is this: In the _guild_ baking, etc., is the affair of the guild-brothers; in _competition_, the affair of chance competitors; in the _union_, of those who require baked goods, and therefore my affair, yours, the affair of neither the guildic nor the concessionary baker, but the affair of the _united_. If _I_ do not trouble myself about _my_ affair, I must be _content_ with what it pleases others to vouchsafe me. To have bread is my affair, my wish and desire, and yet people leave that to the bakers and hope at most to obtain through their wrangling, their getting ahead of each other, their rivalry,--in short, their competition,--an advantage which one could not count on in the case of the guild-brothers who were lodged _entirely_ and _alone_ in the proprietorship of the baking franchise.--What every one requires, every one should also take a hand in procuring and producing; it is _his_ affair, his property, not the property of the guildic or concessionary master. Let us look back once more. The world belongs to the children of this world, the children of men; it is no longer God's world, but man's. As much as every man can procure of it, let him call his; only the true man, the State, human society or mankind, will look to it that each shall make nothing else his own than what he appropriates as man, _i. e._ in human fashion. Unhuman appropriation is that which is not consented to by man, _i. e._ it is a "criminal" appropriation, as the human, _vice versa_, is a "rightful" one, one acquired in the "way of law." So they talk since the Revolution. But my property is not a thing, since this has an existence independent of me; only my might is my own. Not this tree, but my might or control over it, is what is mine. Now, how is this might perversely expressed? They say I have a _right_ to this tree, or it is my _rightful_ property. So I have _earned_ it by might. That the might must last in order that the tree may also be _held_,--or better, that the might is not a thing existing of itself, but has existence solely in the _mighty ego_, in me the mighty,--is forgotten. Might, like other of my _qualities_ (_e. g._ humanity, majesty, etc.), is exalted to something existing of itself, so that it still exists long after it has ceased to be _my_ might. Thus transformed into a ghost, might is--_right_. This _eternalized_ might is not extinguished even with my death, but is transferred or "bequeathed." Things now really belong not to me, but to right. On the other side, this is nothing but a hallucination of vision. For the individual's might becomes permanent and a right only by others joining their might with his. The delusion consists in their believing that they cannot withdraw their might. The same phenomenon over again; might is separated from me. I cannot take back the might that I gave to the possessor. One has "granted power of attorney," has given away his power, has renounced coming to a better mind. The proprietor can give up his might and his right to a thing by giving the thing away, squandering it, and the like. And _we_ should not be able likewise to let go the might that we lend to him? The rightful man, the _just_, desires to call nothing his own that he does not have "rightly" or have the right to, and therefore only _legitimate property_. Now, who is to be judge, and adjudge his right to him? At last, surely, Man, who imparts to him the rights of man: then he can say, in an infinitely broader sense than Terence, _humani nihil a me alienum puto_, _i. e._ the _human is my property_. However he may go about it, so long as he occupies this standpoint he cannot get clear of a judge; and in our time the multifarious judges that had been selected have set themselves against each other in two persons at deadly enmity,--to wit, in God and Man. The one party appeal to divine right, the other to human right or the rights of man. So much is clear, that in neither case does the individual do the entitling himself. Just pick me out an action to-day that would not be a violation of right! Every moment the rights of man are trampled under foot by one side, while their opponents cannot open their mouth without uttering a blasphemy against divine right. Give an alms, you mock at a right of man, because the relation of beggar and benefactor is an inhuman relation; utter a doubt, you sin against a divine right. Eat dry bread with contentment, you violate the right of man by your equanimity; eat it with discontent, you revile divine right by your repining. There is not one among you who does not commit a crime at every moment; your speeches are crimes, and every hindrance to your freedom of speech is no less a crime. Ye are criminals altogether! Yet you are so only in that you all stand on the _ground of right_; _i. e._, in that you do not even know, and understand how to value, the fact that you are criminals. Inviolable or _sacred_ property has grown on this very ground: it is a _juridical concept_. A dog sees the bone in another's power, and stands off only if it feels itself too weak. But man respects the other's _right_ to his bone. The latter action, therefore, ranks as _human_, the former as _brutal_ or "egoistic." And as here, so in general, it is called "_human_" when one sees in everything something _spiritual_ (here right), _i. e._ makes everything a ghost and takes his attitude toward it as toward a ghost, which one can indeed scare away at its appearance, but cannot kill. It is human to look at what is individual not as individual, but as a generality. In nature as such I no longer respect anything, but know myself to be entitled to everything against it; in the tree in that garden, on the other hand, I must respect _alienness_ (they say in one-sided fashion "property"), I must keep my hand off it. This comes to an end only when I can indeed leave that tree to another as I leave my stick, etc., to another, but do not in advance regard it as alien to me, _i. e._ sacred. Rather, I make to myself no _crime_ of felling it if I will, and it remains my property, however long I resign it to others: it is and remains _mine_. In the banker's fortune I as little see anything alien as Napoleon did in the territories of kings: we have no _dread_ of "_conquering_" it, and we look about us also for the means thereto. We strip off from it, therefore, the _spirit_ of _alienness_, of which we had been afraid. Therefore it is necessary that I do not lay claim to anything more _as man_, but to everything as I, this I; and accordingly to nothing human, but to mine; _i. e._ nothing that pertains to me as man, but--what I will and because I will it. Rightful, or legitimate, property of another will be only that which _you_ are content to recognize as such. If your content ceases, then this property has lost legitimacy for you, and you will laugh at absolute right to it. Besides the hitherto discussed property in the limited sense, there is held up to our reverent heart another property against which we are far less "to sin." This property consists in spiritual goods, in the "sanctuary of the inner nature." What a man holds sacred, no other is to gibe at; because, untrue as it may be, and zealously as one may "in loving and modest wise" seek to convince of a true sanctity the man who adheres to it and believes in it, yet _the sacred_ itself is always to be honored in it: the mistaken man does believe in the sacred, even though in an incorrect essence of it, and so his belief in the sacred must at least be respected. In ruder times than ours it was customary to demand a particular faith, and devotion to a particular sacred essence, and they did not take the gentlest way with those who believed otherwise; since, however, "freedom of belief" spread itself more and more abroad, the "jealous God and sole Lord" gradually melted into a pretty general "supreme being," and it satisfied humane tolerance if only every one revered "something sacred." Reduces to the human expression, this sacred essence is "man himself" and "the human." With the deceptive semblance as if the human were altogether our own, and free from all the otherworldliness with which that divine is tainted,--yes, as if Man were as much as I or you,--there may arise even the proud fancy that the talk is no longer of a "sacred essence" and that we now feel ourselves everywhere at home and no longer in the uncanny,[195] _i. e._ in the sacred and in sacred awe: in the ecstasy over "Man discovered at last" the egoistic cry of pain passes unheard, and the spook that has become so intimate is taken for our true ego. But "Humanus is the saint's name" (see Goethe), and the humane is only the most clarified sanctity. The egoist makes the reverse declaration. For this precise reason, because you hold something sacred, I gibe at you; and, even if I respected everything in you, your sanctuary is precisely what I should not respect. With these opposed views there must also be assumed a contradictory relation to spiritual goods: the egoist insults them, the religious man (_i. e._ every one who puts his "essence" above himself) must consistently--protect them. But what kind of spiritual goods are to be protected, and what left unprotected, depends entirely on the concept that one forms of the "supreme being"; and he who fears God, _e. g._, has more to shelter than he (the liberal) who fears Man. In spiritual goods we are (in distinction from the sensuous) injured in a spiritual way, and the sin against them consists in a direct _desecration_, while against the sensuous a purloining or alienation takes place; the goods themselves are robbed of value and of consecration, not merely taken away; the sacred is immediately compromised. With the word "irreverence" or "flippancy" is designated everything that can be committed as _crime_ against spiritual goods, _i. e._ against everything that is sacred for us; and scoffing, reviling, contempt, doubt, and the like, are only different shades of _criminal flippancy_. That desecration can be practised in the most manifold wise is here to be passed over, and only that desecration is to be preferentially mentioned which threatens the sacred with danger through an _unrestricted press_. As long as respect is demanded even for one spiritual essence, speech and the press must be enthralled in the name of this essence; for just so long the egoist might "trespass" against it by his _utterances_, from which thing he must be hindered by "due punishment" at least, if one does not prefer to take up the more correct means against it, the preventive use of police authority, _e. g._ censorship. What a sighing for liberty of the press! What then is the press to be liberated from? Surely from a dependence, a belonging, and a liability to service! But to liberate himself from that is every one's affair, and it may with safety be assumed that, when you have delivered yourself from liability to service, that which you compose and write will also belong to you as your _own_ instead of having been thought and indited _in the service_ of some power. What can a believer in Christ say and have printed, that should be freer from that belief in Christ than he himself is? If I cannot or may not write something, perhaps the primary fault lies with _me_. Little as this seems to hit the point, so near is the application nevertheless to be found. By a press-law I draw a boundary for my publications, or let one be drawn, beyond which wrong and its _punishment_ follows. I myself _limit_ myself. If the press was to be free, nothing would be so important as precisely its liberation from every coercion that could be put on it in the _name of a law_. And, that it might come to that, I my own self should have to have absolved myself from obedience to the law. Certainly, the absolute liberty of the press is like every absolute liberty, a nonentity. The press can become free from full many a thing, but always only from what I too am free from. If we make ourselves free from the sacred, if we have become _graceless_ and _lawless_, our words too will become so. As little as _we_ can be declared clear of every coercion in the world, so little can our writing be withdrawn from it. But as free as we are, so free we can make it too. It must therefore become our _own_, instead of, as hitherto, serving a spook. People do not yet know what they mean by their cry for liberty of the press. What they ostensibly ask is that the State shall set the press free; but what they are really after, without knowing it themselves, is that the press become free from the State, or clear of the State. The former is a _petition_ to the State, the latter an _insurrection against_ the State. As a "petition for right," even as a serious demanding of the right of liberty of the press, it presupposes the State as the _giver_, and can hope only for a _present_, a permission, a chartering. Possible, no doubt, that a State acts so senselessly as to grant the demanded present; but you may bet everything that those who receive the present will not know how to use it so long as they regard the State as a truth: they will not trespass against this "sacred thing," and will call for a penal press-law against every one who would be willing to dare this. In a word, the press does not become free from what I am not free from. Do I perhaps hereby show myself an opponent of the liberty of the press? On the contrary, I only assert that one will never get it if one wants only it, the liberty of the press; _i. e._ if one sets out only for an unrestricted permission. Only beg right along for this permission: you may wait forever for it, for there is no one in the world who could give it to you. As long as you want to have yourselves "entitled" to the use of the press by a permission, _i. e._ liberty of the press, you live in vain hope and complaint. "Nonsense! Why, you yourself, who harbor such thoughts as stand in your book, can unfortunately bring them to publicity only through a lucky chance or by stealth; nevertheless you will inveigh against one's pressing and importuning his own State till it gives the refused permission to print?" But an author thus addressed would perhaps--for the impudence of such people goes far--give the following reply: "Consider well what you say! What then do I do to procure myself liberty of the press for my book? Do I ask for permission, or do I not rather, without any question of legality, seek a favorable occasion and grasp it in complete recklessness of the State and its wishes? I--the terrifying word must be uttered--I cheat the State. You unconsciously do the same. From your tribunes you talk it into the idea that it must give up its sanctity and inviolability, it must lay itself bare to the attacks of writers, without needing on that account to fear danger. But you are imposing on it; for its existence is done for as soon as it loses its unapproachableness. To _you_ indeed it might well accord liberty of writing, as England has done; you are _believers in the State_ and incapable of writing against the State, however much you would like to reform it and 'remedy its defects.' But what if opponents of the State availed themselves of free utterance, and stormed out against Church, State, morals, and everything 'sacred' with inexorable reasons? You would then be the first, in terrible agonies, to call into life the _September laws_. Too late would you then rue the stupidity that earlier made you so ready to fool and palaver into compliance the State, or the government of the State.--But I prove by my act only two things. This for one, that the liberty of the press is always bound to 'favorable opportunities,' and accordingly will never be an absolute liberty; but secondly this, that he who would enjoy it must seek out and, if possible, create the favorable opportunity, availing himself of his _own advantage_ against the State, and counting himself and his will more than the State and every 'superior' power. Not in the State, but only against it, can the liberty of the press be carried through; if it is to be established, it is to be obtained not as the consequence of a _petition_ but as the work of an _insurrection_. Every petition and every motion for liberty of the press is already an insurrection, be it conscious or unconscious: a thing which Philistine halfness alone will not and cannot confess to itself until, with a shrinking shudder, it shall see it clearly and irrefutably by the outcome. For the requested liberty of the press has indeed a friendly and well-meaning face at the beginning, as it is not in the least minded ever to let the 'insolence of the press' come into vogue; but little by little its heart grows more hardened, and the inference flatters its way in that really a liberty is not a liberty if it stands in the _service_ of the State, of morals, or of the law. A liberty indeed from the coercion of censorship, it is yet not a liberty from the coercion of law. The press, once seized by the lust for liberty, always wants to grow freer, till at last the writer says to himself, Really I am not wholly free till I ask about nothing; and writing is free only when it is my _own_, dictated to me by no power or authority, by no faith, no dread; the press must not be free--that is too little--it must be _mine_:--_ownness of the press_ or _property in the press_, that is what I will take. "Why, liberty of the press is only _permission of the press_, and the State never will or can voluntarily permit me to grind it to nothingness by the press. "Let us now, in conclusion, bettering the above language, which is still vague, owing to the phrase 'liberty of the press,' rather put it thus: _Liberty of the press_, the liberals' loud demand, is assuredly possible in the State; yes, it is possible only _in_ the State, because it is a _permission_, and consequently the permitter (the State) must not be lacking. But as permission it has its limit in this very State, which surely should not in reason permit more than is compatible with itself and its welfare: the State fixes for it this limit as the _law_ of its existence and of its extension. That one State brooks more than another is only a quantitative distinction, which alone, nevertheless, lies at the heart of the political liberals: they want in Germany, _e. g._, only a '_more extended, broader_ accordance of free utterance.' The liberty of the press which is sought for is an affair of the _people's_, and before the people (the State) possesses it I may make no use of it. From the standpoint of property in the press, the situation is different. Let my people, if they will, go without liberty of the press, I will manage to print by force or ruse; I get my permission to print only from--_myself_ and my strength. "If the press is _my own_, I as little need a permission of the State for employing it as I seek that permission in order to blow my nose. The press is my _property_ from the moment when nothing is more to me than myself; for from this moment State, Church, people, society, and the like, cease, because they have to thank for their existence only the disrespect that I have for myself, and with the vanishing of this undervaluation they themselves are extinguished: they exist only when they exist _above me_, exist only as _powers and power-holders_. Or can you imagine a State whose citizens one and all think nothing of it? it would be as certainly a dream, an existence in seeming, as 'united Germany.' "The press is my own as soon as I myself am my own, a self-owned man: to the egoist belongs the world, because he belongs to no power of the world. "With this my press might still be very _unfree_, as _e. g._, at this moment. But the world is large, and one helps himself as well as he can. If I were willing to abate from the _property_ of my press, I could easily attain the point where I might everywhere have as much printed as my fingers produced. But, as I want to assert my property, I must necessarily swindle my enemies. 'Would you not accept their permission if it were given you?' Certainly, with joy; for their permission would be to me a proof that I had fooled them and started them on the road to ruin. I am not concerned for their permission, but so much the more for their folly and their overthrow. I do not sue for their permission as if I flattered myself (like the political liberals) that we both, they and I, could make out peaceably alongside and with each other, yes, probably raise and prop each other; but I sue for it in order to make them bleed to death by it, that the permitters themselves may cease at last. I act as a conscious enemy, overreaching them and _utilizing_ their heedlessness. "The press is _mine_ when I recognize outside myself no _judge_ whatever over its utilization, _i. e._ when my writing is no longer determined by morality or religion or respect for the State laws or the like, but by me and my egoism!"-- Now, what have you to reply to him who gives you so impudent an answer?--We shall perhaps put the question most strikingly by phrasing it as follows: Whose is the press, the people's (State's) or mine? The politicals on their side intend nothing further than to liberate the press from personal and arbitrary interferences of the possessors of power, without thinking of the point that to be really open for everybody it would also have to be free from the laws, _i. e._ from the people's (State's) will. They want to make a "people's affair" of it. But, having become the people's property, it is still far from being mine; rather, it retains for me the subordinate significance of a _permission_. The people plays judge over my thoughts; it has the right of calling me to account for them, or, I am responsible to it for them. Jurors, when their fixed ideas are attacked, have just as hard heads and hearts as the stiffest despots and their servile officials. In the "_Liberale Bestrebungen_"[196] E. Bauer asserts that liberty of the press is impossible in the absolutist and the constitutional State, whereas in the "free State" it finds its place. "Here," the statement is, "it is recognized that the individual, because he is no longer an individual but a member of a true and rational generality, has the right to utter his mind." So not the individual, but the "member," has liberty of the press. But, if for the purpose of liberty of the press the individual must first give proof of himself regarding his belief in the generality, the people; if he does not have this liberty _through might of his own_,--then it is a _people's liberty_, a liberty that he is invested with for the sake of his faith, his "membership." The reverse is the case: it is precisely as an individual that every one has open to him the liberty to utter his mind. But he has not the "right": that liberty is assuredly not his "sacred right." He has only the _might_; but the might alone makes him owner. I need no concession for the liberty of the press, do not need the people's consent to it, do not need the "right" to it, nor any "justification." The liberty of the press too, like every liberty, I must "take"; the people, "as being the sole judge," cannot _give_ it to me. It can put up with the liberty that I take, or defend itself against it; give, bestow, grant it it cannot. I exercise it _despite_ the people, purely as an individual; _i. e._ I get it by fighting the people, my--enemy, and obtain it only when I really get it by such fighting, _i. e. take_ it. But I take it because it is my property. Sander, against whom E. Bauer writes, lays claim (page 99) to the liberty of the press "as the right and the liberty of the _citizen in the State_." What else does E. Bauer do? To him also it is only a right of the free _citizen_. The liberty of the press is also demanded under the name of a "general human right." Against this the objection was well-founded that not every man knew how to use it rightly, for not every individual was truly man. Never did a government refuse it to _Man_ as such; but _Man_ writes nothing, for the reason that he is a ghost. It always refused it to _individuals_ only, and gave it to others, _e. g._ its organs. If then one would have it for all, one must assert outright that it is due to the individual, me, not to man or to the individual so far as he is man. Besides, another than a man (_e. g._ a beast) can make no use of it. The French government, _e. g._, does not dispute the liberty of the press as a right of man, but demands from the individual a security for his really being man; for it assigns liberty of the press not to the individual, but to man. Under the exact pretence that it was _not human_, what was mine was taken from me! what was human was left to me undiminished. Liberty of the press can bring about only a _responsible_ press; the _irresponsible_ proceeds solely from property in the press. * * * * * For intercourse with men an express law (conformity to which one may venture at times sinfully to forget, but the absolute value of which one at no time ventures to deny) is placed foremost among all who live religiously: this is the law--of _love_, to which not even those who seem to fight against its principle, and who hate its name, have as yet become untrue; for they also still have love, yes, they love with a deeper and more sublimated love, they love "man and mankind." If we formulate the sense of this law, it will be about as follows: Every man must have a something that is more to him than himself. You are to put your "private interest" in the background when it is a question of the welfare of others, the weal of the fatherland, of society, the common weal, the weal of mankind, the good cause, and the like! Fatherland, society, mankind, etc., must be more to you than yourself, and as against their interest your "private interest" must stand back; for you must not be an--egoist. Love is a far-reaching religious demand, which is not, as might be supposed, limited to love to God and man, but stands foremost in every regard. Whatever we do, think, will, the ground of it is always to be love. Thus we may indeed judge, but only "with love." The Bible may assuredly be criticised, and that very thoroughly, but the critic must before all things _love_ it and see in it the sacred book. Is this anything else than to say he must not criticise it to death, he must leave it standing, and that as a sacred thing that cannot be upset?--In our criticism on men too, love must remain the unchanged key-note. Certainly judgments that hatred inspires are not at all our _own_ judgments, but judgments of the hatred that rules us, "rancorous judgments." But are judgments that love inspires in us any more our _own_? They are judgments of the love that rules us, they are "loving, lenient" judgments, they are not our _own_, and accordingly not real judgments at all. He who burns with love for justice cries out, _fiat justitia, pereat mundus_! He can doubtless ask and investigate what justice properly is or demands, and _in what_ it consists, but not _whether_ it is anything. It is very true, "He who abides in love abides in God, and God in him." (I John 4. 16.) God abides in him, he does not get rid of God, does not become godless; and he abides in God, does not come to himself and into his own home, abides in love to God and does not become loveless. "God is love! All times and all races recognize in this word the central point of Christianity." God, who is love, is an officious God: he cannot leave the world in peace, but wants to make it _blest_. "God became man to make men divine."[197] He has his hand in the game everywhere, and nothing happens without it; everywhere he has his "best purposes," his "incomprehensible plans and decrees." Reason, which he himself is, is to be forwarded and realized in the whole world. His fatherly care deprives us of all independence. We can do nothing sensible without its being said, God did that! and can bring upon ourselves no misfortune without hearing, God ordained that; we have nothing that we have not from him, he "gave" everything. But, as God does, so does Man. God wants perforce to make the world _blest_, and Man wants to make it _happy_, to make all men happy. Hence every "man" wants to awaken in all men the reason which he supposes his own self to have: everything is to be rational throughout. God torments himself with the devil, and the philosopher does it with unreason and the accidental. God lets no being go _its own_ gait, and Man likewise wants to make us walk only in human wise. But whoso is full of sacred (religious, moral, humane) love loves only the spook, the "true man," and persecutes with dull mercilessness the individual, the real man, under the phlegmatic legal title of measures against the "un-man." He finds it praiseworthy and indispensable to exercise pitilessness in the harshest measure; for love to the spook or generality commands him to hate him who is not ghostly, _i. e._ the egoist or individual; such is the meaning of the renowned love-phenomenon that is called "justice." The criminally arraigned man can expect no forbearance, and no one spreads a friendly veil over his unhappy nakedness. Without emotion the stern judge tears the last rags of excuse from the body of the poor accused; without compassion the jailer drags him into his damp abode; without placability, when the time of punishment has expired, he thrusts the branded man again among men, his good, Christian, loyal brethren! who contemptuously spit on him. Yes, without grace a criminal "deserving of death" is led to the scaffold, and before the eyes of a jubilating crowd the appeased moral law celebrates its sublime--revenge. For only one can live, the moral law or the criminal. Where criminals live unpunished, the moral law has fallen; and, where this prevails, those must go down. Their enmity is indestructible. The Christian age is precisely that of _mercy, love_, solicitude to have men receive what is due them, yes, to bring them to fulfil their human (divine) calling. Therefore the principle has been put foremost for intercourse, that this and that is man's essence and consequently his calling, to which either God has called him or (according to the concepts of to-day) his being man (the species) calls him. Hence the zeal for conversion. That the Communists and the humane expect from man more than the Christians do does not change the standpoint in the least. Man shall get what is human! If it was enough for the pious that what was divine became his part, the humane demand that he be not curtailed of what is human. Both set themselves against what is egoistic. Of course; for what is egoistic cannot be accorded to him or vested in him (a fief); he must procure it for himself. Love imparts the former, the latter can be given to me by myself alone. Intercourse hitherto has rested on love, _regardful_ behavior, doing for each other. As one owed it to himself to make himself blessed, or owed himself the bliss of taking up into himself the supreme essence and bringing it to a _vérité_ (a truth and reality), so one owed it to _others_ to help them realize their essence and their calling: in both cases one owed it to the essence of man to contribute to its realization. But one owes it neither to himself to make anything out of himself, nor to others to make anything out of them; for one owes nothing to his essence and that of others. Intercourse resting on essence is an intercourse with the spook, not with anything real. If I hold intercourse with the supreme essence, I am not holding intercourse with myself, and, if I hold intercourse with the essence of man, I am not holding intercourse with men. The natural man's love becomes through culture a _commandment_. But as commandment it belongs to _Man_ as such, not to _me_; it is my _essence_,[198] about which much ado[199] is made, not my property. _Man_, _i. e._ humanity, presents that demand to me; love is _demanded_, it is my _duty_. Instead, therefore, of being really won for _me_, it has been won for the generality, _Man_, as his property or peculiarity: "it becomes man, _i. e._ every man, to love; love is the duty and calling of man," etc. Consequently I must again vindicate love for _myself_, and deliver it out of the power of Man with the great M. What was originally _mine_, but _accidentally_ mine, instinctively mine, I was invested with as the property of Man; I became feoffee in loving, I became the retainer of mankind, only a specimen of this species, and acted, loving, not as _I_, but as _man_, as a specimen of man, _i. e._ humanly. The whole condition of civilization is the _feudal system_, the property being Man's or mankind's, not _mine_. A monstrous feudal State was founded, the individual robbed of everything, everything left to "man." The individual had to appear at last as a "sinner through and through." Am I perchance to have no lively interest in the person of another, are _his_ joy and _his_ weal not to lie at my heart, is the enjoyment that I furnish him not to be more to me than other enjoyments of my own? On the contrary, I can with joy sacrifice to him numberless enjoyments, I can deny myself numberless things for the enhancement of _his_ pleasure, and I can hazard for him what without him was the dearest to me, my life, my welfare, my freedom. Why, it constitutes my pleasure and my happiness to refresh myself with his happiness and his pleasure. But _myself, my own self_, I do not sacrifice to him, but remain an egoist and--enjoy him. If I sacrifice to him everything that but for my love to him I should keep, that is very simple, and even more usual in life than it seems to be; but it proves nothing further than that this one passion is more powerful in me than all the rest. Christianity too teaches us to sacrifice all other passions to this. But, if to one passion I sacrifice others, I do not on that account go so far as to sacrifice _myself_, nor sacrifice anything of that whereby I truly am myself; I do not sacrifice my peculiar value, my _ownness_. Where this bad case occurs, love cuts no better figure than any other passion that I obey blindly. The ambitious man, who is carried away by ambition and remains deaf to every warning that a calm moment begets in him, has let this passion grow up into a despot against whom he abandons all power of dissolution: he has given up himself, because he cannot _dissolve_ himself, and consequently cannot absolve himself from the passion: he is possessed. I love men too,--not merely individuals, but every one. But I love them with the consciousness of egoism; I love them because love makes _me_ happy, I love because loving is natural to me, because it pleases me. I know no "commandment of love." I have a _fellow-feeling_ with every feeling being, and their torment torments, their refreshment refreshes me too; I can kill them, not torture them. _Per contra_, the high-souled, virtuous Philistine prince Rudolph in "The Mysteries of Paris," because the wicked provoke his "indignation," plans their torture. That fellow-feeling proves only that the feeling of those who feel is mine too, my property; in opposition to which the pitiless dealing of the "righteous" man (_e. g._ against notary Ferrand) is like the unfeelingness of that robber who cut off or stretched his prisoners' legs to the measure of his bedstead: Rudolph's bedstead, which he cuts men to fit, is the concept of the "good." The feeling for right, virtue, etc., makes people hard-hearted and intolerant. Rudolph does not feel like the notary, but the reverse; he feels that "it serves the rascal right"; that is no fellow-feeling. You love man, therefore you torture the individual man, the egoist; your philanthropy (love of men) is the tormenting of men. If I see the loved one suffer, I suffer with him, and I know no rest till I have tried everything to comfort and cheer him; if I see him glad, I too become glad over his joy. From this it does not follow that suffering or joy is caused in me by the same thing that brings out this effect in him, as is sufficiently proved by every bodily pain which I do not feel as he does; his tooth pains him, but his pain pains me. But, because _I_ cannot bear the troubled crease on the beloved forehead, for that reason, and therefore for my sake, I kiss it away. If I did not love this person, he might go right on making creases, they would not trouble me; I am only driving away _my_ trouble. How now, has anybody or anything, whom and which I do not love, a _right_ to be loved by me? Is my love first, or is his right first? Parents, kinsfolk, fatherland, nation, native town, etc., finally fellow-men in general ("brothers, fraternity"), assert that they have a right to my love, and lay claim to it without further ceremony. They look upon it as _their property_, and upon me, if I do not respect this, as a robber who takes from them what pertains to them and is theirs. I _should_ love. If love is a commandment and law, then I must be educated into it, cultivated up to it, and, if I trespass against it, punished. Hence people will exercise as strong a "moral influence" as possible on me to bring me to love. And there is no doubt that one can work up and seduce men to love as one can to other passions,--_e. g._, if you like, to hate. Hate runs through whole races merely because the ancestors of the one belonged to the Guelphs, those of the other to the Ghibellines. But love is not a commandment, but, like each of my feelings, _my property_. _Acquire_, _i. e._ purchase, my property, and then I will make it over to you. A church, a nation, a fatherland, a family, etc., that does not know how to acquire my love, I need not love; and I fix the purchase price of my love quite at my pleasure. Selfish love is far distant from unselfish, mystical, or romantic love. One can love everything possible, not merely men, but an "object" in general (wine, one's fatherland, etc.). Love becomes blind and crazy by a _must_ taking it out of my power (infatuation), romantic by a _should_ entering into it, _i. e._ the "object's" becoming sacred for me, or my becoming bound to it by duty, conscience, oath. Now the object no longer exists for me, but I for it. Love is a possessedness, not as my feeling--as such I rather keep it in my possession as property--, but through the alienness of the object. For religious love consists in the commandment to love in the beloved a "holy one," or to adhere to a holy one; for unselfish love there are objects _absolutely lovable_ for which my heart is to beat,--_e. g._ fellow-men, or my wedded mate, kinsfolk, etc. Holy love loves the holy in the beloved, and therefore exerts itself also to make of the beloved more and more a holy one (_e. g._ a "man"). The beloved is an object that _should_ be loved by me. He is not an object of my love on account of, because of, or by, my loving him, but is an object of love in and of himself. Not I make him an object of love, but he is such to begin with; for it is here irrelevant that he has become so by my choice, if so it be (as with a _fiancée_, a spouse, and the like), since even so he has in any case, as the person once chosen, obtained a "right of his own to my love," and I, because I have loved him, am under obligation to love him forever. He is therefore not an object of _my_ love, but of love in general: an object that _should_ be loved. Love appertains to him, is due to him, or is his _right_, while I am under _obligation_ to love him. My love, _i. e._ the toll of love that I pay him, is in truth _his_ love, which he only collects from me as toll. Every love to which there clings but the smallest speck of obligation is an unselfish love, and, so far as this speck reaches, a possessedness. He who believes that he _owes_ the object of his love anything loves romantically or religiously. Family love, _e. g._, as it is usually understood as "piety," is a religious love; love of fatherland, preached as "patriotism," likewise. All our romantic love moves in the same pattern: everywhere the hypocrisy, or rather self-deception, of an "unselfish love," an interest in the object for the object's sake, not for my sake and mine alone. Religious or romantic love is distinguished from sensual love by the difference of the object indeed, but not by the dependence of the relation to it. In the latter regard both are possessedness; but in the former the one object is profane, the other sacred. The dominion of the object over me is the same in both cases, only that it is one time a sensuous one, the other time a spiritual (ghostly) one. My love is my own only when it consists altogether in a selfish and egoistic interest, and when consequently the object of my love is really _my_ object or my property. I owe my property nothing, and have no duty to it, as little as I might have a duty to my eye; if nevertheless I guard it with the greatest care, I do so on my account. Antiquity lacked love as little as do Christian times; the god of love is older than the God of Love. But the mystical possessedness belongs to the moderns. The possessedness of love lies in the alienation of the object, or in my powerlessness as against its alienness and superior power. To the egoist nothing is high enough for him to humble himself before it, nothing so independent that he would live for love of it, nothing so sacred that he would sacrifice himself to it. The egoist's love rises in selfishness, flows in the bed of selfishness, and empties into selfishness again. Whether this can still be called love? If you know another word for it, go ahead and choose it; then the sweet word love may wither with the departed world; for the present I at least find none in our _Christian_ language, and hence stick to the old sound and "love" _my_ object, my--property. Only as one of my feelings do I harbor love; but as a power above me, as a divine power (Feuerbach), as a passion that I am not to cast off, as a religious and moral duty, I--scorn it. As my feeling it is _mine_; as a principle to which I consecrate and "vow" my soul it is a dominator and _divine_, just as hatred as a principle is _diabolical_; one not better than the other. In short, egoistic love, _i. e._, my love, is neither holy nor unholy, neither divine nor diabolical. "A love that is limited by faith is an untrue love. The sole limitation that does not contradict the essence of love is the self-limitation of love by reason, intelligence. Love that scorns the rigor, the law, of intelligence, is theoretically a false love, practically a ruinous one."[200] So love is in its essence _rational_! So thinks Feuerbach; the believer, on the contrary, thinks, Love is in its essence _believing_. The one inveighs against _irrational_, the other against _unbelieving_, love. To both it can at most rank as a _splen__didum vitium_. Do not both leave love standing, even in the form of unreason and unbelief? They do not dare to say, irrational or unbelieving love is nonsense, is not love; as little as they are willing to say, irrational or unbelieving tears are not tears. But, if even irrational love, etc., must count as love, and if they are nevertheless to be unworthy of man, there follows simply this: love is not the highest thing, but reason or faith; even the unreasonable and the unbelieving can love; but love has value only when it is that of a rational or believing person. It is an illusion when Feuerbach calls the rationality of love its "self-limitation"; the believer might with the same right call belief its "self-limitation." Irrational love is neither "false" nor "ruinous"; it does its service as love. Toward the world, especially toward men, I am to _assume a particular feeling_, and "meet them with love," with the feeling of love, from the beginning. Certainly, in this there is revealed far more free-will and self-determination than when I let myself be stormed, by way of the world, by all possible feelings, and remain exposed to the most checkered, most accidental impressions. I go to the world rather with a preconceived feeling, as if it were a prejudice and a preconceived opinion: I have prescribed to myself in advance my behavior toward it, and, despite all its temptations, feel and think about it only as I have once determined to. Against the dominion of the world I secure myself by the principle of love; for, whatever may come, I--love. The ugly--_e. g._--makes a repulsive impression on me; but, determined to love, I master this impression as I do every antipathy. But the feeling to which I have determined and--condemned myself from the start is a _narrow_ feeling, because it is a predestined one, of which I myself am not able to get clear or to declare myself clear. Because preconceived, it is a _prejudice_. _I_ no longer show myself in face of the world, but my love shows itself. The _world_ indeed does not rule me, but so much the more inevitably does the spirit of _love_ rule me. I have overcome the world to become a slave of this spirit. If I first said, I love the world, I now add likewise: I do not love it, for I _annihilate_ it as I annihilate myself; _I dissolve it_. I do not limit myself to one feeling for men, but give free play to all that I am capable of. Why should I not dare speak it out in all its glaringness? Yes, _I utilize_ the world and men! With this I can keep myself open to every impression without being torn away from myself by one of them. I can love, love with a full heart, and let the most consuming glow of passion burn in my heart, without taking the beloved one for anything else than the _nourishment_ of my passion, on which it ever refreshes itself anew. All my care for him applies only to the _object of my love_, only to him whom my love _requires_, only to him, the "warmly loved." How indifferent would he be to me without this--my love! I feed only my love with him, I _utilize_ him for this only: I _enjoy_ him. Let us choose another convenient example. I see how men are fretted in dark superstition by a swarm of ghosts. If to the extent of my powers I let a bit of daylight fall in on the nocturnal spookery, is it perchance because love to you inspires this in me? Do I write out of love to men? No, I write because I want to procure for _my_ thoughts an existence in the world; and, even if I foresaw that these thoughts would deprive you of your rest and your peace, even if I saw the bloodiest wars and the fall of many generations springing up from this seed of thought,--I would nevertheless scatter it. Do with it what you will and can, that is your affair and does not trouble me. You will perhaps have only trouble, combat, and death from it, very few will draw joy from it. If your weal lay at my heart, I should act as the church did in withholding the Bible from the laity, or Christian governments, which make it a sacred duty for themselves to "protect the common people from bad books." But not only not for your sake, not even for truth's sake either do I speak out what I think. No-- I sing as the bird sings That on the bough alights; The song that from me springs Is pay that well requites. I sing because--I am a singer. But I _use_[201] you for it because I--need[202] ears. Where the world comes in my way--and it comes in my way everywhere--I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but--my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of _usableness_, of utility, of use. We owe _each other_ nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most to myself. If I show you a cheery air in order to cheer you likewise, then your cheeriness is of consequence to _me_, and my air serves _my_ wish; to a thousand others, whom I do not aim to cheer, I do not show it. * * * * * One has to be educated up to that love which founds itself on the "essence of man," or, in the ecclesiastical and moral period, lies upon us as a "commandment." In what fashion moral influence, the chief ingredient of our education, seeks to regulate the intercourse of men shall here be looked at with egoistic eyes in one example at least. Those who educate us make it their concern early to break us of lying and to inculcate the principle that one must always tell the truth. If selfishness were made the basis for this rule, every one would easily understand how by lying he fools away that confidence in him which he hopes to awaken in others, and how correct the maxim proves, Nobody believes a liar even when he tells the truth. Yet, at the same time, he would also feel that he had to meet with truth only him whom _he_ authorized to hear the truth. If a spy walks in disguise through the hostile camp, and is asked who he is, the askers are assuredly entitled to inquire after his name, but the disguised man does not give them the right to learn the truth from him; he tells them what he likes, only not the fact. And yet morality demands, "Thou shalt not lie!" By morality those persons are vested with the right to expect the truth; but by me they are not vested with that right, and I recognize only the right that I impart. In a gathering of revolutionists the police force their way in and ask the orator for his name; everybody knows that the police have the right to do so, but they do not have it from the _revolutionist_, since he is their enemy; he tells them a false name and--cheats them with a lie. The police do not act so foolishly either as to count on their enemies' love of truth; on the contrary, they do not believe without further ceremony, but have the questioned individual "identified" if they can. Nay, the State everywhere proceeds incredulously with individuals, because in their egoism it recognizes its natural enemy; it invariably demands a "voucher," and he who cannot show vouchers falls a prey to its investigating inquisition. The State does not believe nor trust the individual, and so of itself places itself with him in the _convention of lying_; it trusts me only when it has _convinced_ itself of the truth of my statement, for which there often remains to it no other means than the oath. How clearly, too, this (the oath) proves that the State does not count on our credibility and love of truth, but on our _interest_, our selfishness: it relies on our not wanting to fall foul of God by a perjury. Now, let one imagine a French revolutionist in the year 1788, who among friends let fall the now well-known phrase, "the world will have no rest till the last king is hanged with the guts of the last priest." The king then still had all power, and, when the utterance is betrayed by an accident, yet without its being possible to produce witnesses, confession is demanded from the accused. Is he to confess or not? If he denies, he lies and--remains unpunished; if he confesses, he is candid and--is beheaded. If truth is more than everything else to him, all right, let him die. Only a paltry poet could try to make a tragedy out of the end of his life; for what interest is there in seeing how a man succumbs from cowardice? But, if he had the courage not to be a slave of truth and sincerity, he would ask somewhat thus: Why need the judges know what I have spoken among friends? If I had _wished_ them to know, I should have said it to them as I said it to my friends. I will not have them know it. They force themselves into my confidence without my having called them to it and made them my confidants; they _will_ learn what I _will_ keep secret. Come on then, you who wish to break my will by your will, and try your arts. You can torture me by the rack, you can threaten me with hell and eternal damnation, you can make me so nerveless that I swear a false oath, but the truth you shall not press out of me, for I _will_ lie to you because I have given you no claim and no right to my sincerity. Let God, "who is truth," look down ever so threateningly on me, let lying come ever so hard to me, I have nevertheless the courage of a lie; and, even if I were weary of my life, even if nothing appeared to me more welcome than your executioner's sword, you nevertheless should not have the joy of finding in me a slave of truth, whom by your priestly arts you make a traitor to his _will_. When I spoke those treasonable words, I would not have had you know anything of them; I now retain the same will, and do not let myself be frightened by the curse of the lie. Sigismund is not a miserable caitiff because he broke his princely word, but he broke the word because he was a caitiff; he might have kept his word and would still have been a caitiff, a priest-ridden man. Luther, driven by a higher power, became unfaithful to his monastic vow: he became so for God's sake. Both broke their oath as possessed persons: Sigismund, because he wanted to appear as a _sincere_ professor of the divine _truth_, _i. e._ of the true, genuinely Catholic faith; Luther, in order to give testimony for the gospel _sincerely_ and with entire truth, with body and soul; both became perjured in order to be sincere toward the "higher truth." Only, the priests absolved the one, the other absolved himself. What else did both observe than what is contained in those apostolic words, "Thou hast not lied to men, but to God"? They lied to men, broke their oath before the world's eyes, in order not to lie to God, but to serve him. Thus they show us a way to deal with truth before men. For God's glory, and for God's sake, a--breach of oath, a lie, a prince's word broken! How would it be, now, if we changed the thing a little and wrote, A perjury and lie for--_my sake_? Would not that be pleading for every baseness? It seems so assuredly, only in this it is altogether like the "for God's sake." For was not every baseness committed for God's sake, were not all the scaffolds filled for his sake and all the _auto-da-fes_ held for his sake, was not all stupefaction introduced for his sake? and do they not to-day still for God's sake fetter the mind in tender children by religious education? Were not sacred vows broken for his sake, and do not missionaries and priests still go around every day to bring Jews, heathen, Protestants or Catholics, etc., to treason against the faith of their fathers,--for his sake? And that should be worse with the _for my sake_? What then does _on my account_ mean? There people immediately think of "filthy lucre." But he who acts from love of filthy lucre does it on his own account indeed, as there is nothing anyhow that one does not do for his own sake,--among other things, everything that is done for God's glory; yet he, for whom he seeks the lucre, is a slave of lucre, not raised above lucre; he is one who belongs to lucre, the money-bag, not to himself; he is not his own. Must not a man whom the passion of avarice rules follow the commands of this _master_? and, if a weak good-naturedness once beguiles him, does this not appear as simply an exceptional case of precisely the same sort as when pious believers are sometimes forsaken by their Lord's guidance and ensnared by the arts of the "devil"? So an avaricious man is not a self-owned man, but a servant; and he can do nothing for his own sake without at the same time doing it for his lord's sake,--precisely like the godly man. Famous is the breach of oath which Francis II committed against Emperor Charles V. Not later, when he ripely weighed his promise, but at once, when he swore the oath, King Francis took it back in thought as well as by a secret protestation documentarily subscribed before his councillors; he uttered a perjury aforethought. Francis did not show himself disinclined to buy his release, but the price that Charles put on it seemed to him too high and unreasonable. Even though Charles behaved himself in a sordid fashion when he sought to extort as much as possible, it was yet shabby of Francis to want to purchase his freedom for a lower ransom; and his later dealings, among which there occurs yet a second breach of his word, prove sufficiently how the huckster spirit held him enthralled and made him a shabby swindler. However, what shall we say to the reproach of perjury against him? In the first place, surely, this again: that not the perjury, but his sordidness, shamed him; that he did not deserve contempt for his perjury, but made himself guilty of perjury because he was a contemptible man. But Francis's perjury, regarded in itself, demands another judgment. One might say Francis did not respond to the confidence that Charles put in him in setting him free. But, if Charles had really favored him with confidence, he would have named to him the price that he considered the release worth, and would then have set him at liberty and expected Francis to pay the redemption-sum. Charles harbored no such trust, but only believed in Francis's impotence and credulity, which would not allow him to act against his oath; but Francis deceived only this--credulous calculation. When Charles believed he was assuring himself of his enemy by an oath, right there he was freeing him from every obligation. Charles had given the king credit for a piece of stupidity, a narrow conscience, and, without confidence in Francis, counted only on Francis's stupidity, _i. e._ conscientiousness: he let him go from the Madrid prison only to hold him the more securely in the prison of conscientiousness, the great jail built about the mind of man by religion: he sent him back to France locked fast in invisible chains, what wonder if Francis sought to escape and sawed the chains apart? No man would have taken it amiss of him if he had secretly fled from Madrid, for he was in an enemy's power; but every good Christian cries out upon him, that he wanted to loose himself from God's bonds too. (It was only later that the pope absolved him from his oath.) It is despicable to deceive a confidence that we voluntarily call forth; but it is no shame to egoism to let every one who wants to get us into his power by an oath bleed to death by the unsuccessfulness of his untrustful craft. If you have wanted to bind me, then learn that I know how to burst your bonds. The point is whether _I_ give the confider the right to confidence. If the pursuer of my friend asks me where he has fled to, I shall surely put him on a false trail. Why does he ask precisely me, the pursued man's friend? In order not to be a false, traitorous friend, I prefer to be false to the enemy. I might certainly, in courageous conscientiousness, answer "I will not tell" (so Fichte decides the case); by that I should salve my love of truth and do for my friend as much as--nothing, for, if I do not mislead the enemy, he may accidentally take the right street, and my love of truth would have given up my friend as a prey, because it hindered me from the--courage for a lie. He who has in the truth an idol, a sacred thing, must _humble_ himself before it, must not defy its demands, not resist courageously; in short, he must renounce the _heroism of the lie_. For to the lie belongs not less courage than to the truth: a courage that young men are most apt to be defective in, who would rather confess the truth and mount the scaffold for it than confound the enemy's power by the impudence of a lie. To them the truth is "sacred," and the sacred at all times demands blind reverence, submission, and self-sacrifice. If you are not impudent, not mockers of the sacred, you are tame and its servants. Let one but lay a grain of truth in the trap for you, you peck at it to a certainty, and the fool is caught. You will not lie? Well, then, fall as sacrifices to the truth and become--martyrs! Martyrs!--for what? For yourselves, for self-ownership? No, for your goddess,--the truth. You know only two _services_, only two kinds of servants: servants of the truth and servants of the lie. Then in God's name serve the truth! Others, again, serve the truth also; but they serve it "in moderation," and make, _e. g._, a great distinction between a simple lie and a lie sworn to. And yet the whole chapter of the oath coincides with that of the lie, since an oath, everybody knows, is only a strongly assured statement. You consider yourselves entitled to lie, if only you do not swear to it besides? One who is particular about it must judge and condemn a lie as sharply as a false oath. But now there has been kept up in morality an ancient point of controversy, which is customarily treated of under the name of the "lie of necessity." No one who dares plead for this can consistently put from him an "oath of necessity." If I justify my lie as a lie of necessity, I should not be so pusillanimous as to rob the justified lie of the strongest corroboration. Whatever I do, why should I not do it entirely and without reservation (_reservatio mentalis_)? If I once lie, why then not lie completely, with entire consciousness and all my might? As a spy I should have to swear to each of my false statements at the enemy's demand; determined to lie to him, should I suddenly become cowardly and undecided in face of an oath? Then I should have been ruined in advance for a liar and spy; for, you see, I should be voluntarily putting into the enemy's hands a means to catch me.--The State too fears the oath of necessity, and for this reason does not give the accused a chance to swear. But you do not justify the State's fear; you lie, but do not swear falsely. If, _e. g._, you show some one a kindness, and he is not to know it, but he guesses it and tells you so to your face, you deny; if he insists, you say "honestly, no!" If it came to swearing, then you would refuse; for, from fear of the sacred, you always stop half way. _Against_ the sacred you have no _will of your own_. You lie in--moderation, as you are free "in moderation," religious "in moderation" (the clergy are not to "encroach"; over this point the most vapid of controversies is now being carried on, on the part of the university against the church), monarchically disposed "in moderation" (you want a monarch limited by the constitution, by a fundamental law of the State), everything nicely _tempered_, lukewarm, half God's, half the devil's. There was a university where the usage was that every word of honor that must be given to the university judge was looked upon by the students as null and void. For the students saw in the demanding of it nothing but a snare, which they could not escape otherwise than by taking away all its significance. He who at that same university broke his word of honor to one of the fellows was infamous; he who gave it to the university judge derided, in union with these very fellows, the dupe who fancied that a word had the same value among friends and among foes. It was less a correct theory than the constraint of practice that had there taught the students to act so, as, without that means of getting out, they would have been pitilessly driven to treachery against their comrades. But, as the means approved itself in practice, so it has its theoretical probation too. A word of honor, an oath, is one only for him whom _I_ entitle to receive it; he who forces me to it obtains only a forced, _i. e._ a _hostile_ word, the word of a foe, whom one has no right to trust; for the foe does not give us the right. Aside from this, the courts of the State do not even recognize the inviolability of an oath. For, if I had sworn to one who comes under examination that I would not declare anything against him, the court would demand my declaration in spite of the fact that an oath binds me, and, in case of refusal, would lock me up till I decided to become--an oath-breaker. The court "absolves me from my oath";--how magnanimous! If any power can absolve me from the oath, I myself am surely the very first power that has a claim to. As a curiosity, and to remind us of customary oaths of all sorts, let place be given here to that which Emperor Paul commanded the captured Poles (Kosciusko, Potocki, Niemcewicz, etc.) to take when he released them: "We not merely swear fidelity and obedience to the emperor, but also further promise to pour out our blood for his glory; we obligate ourselves to discover everything threatening to his person or his empire that we ever learn; we declare finally that, in whatever part of the earth we may be, a single word of the emperor shall suffice to make us leave everything and repair to him at once." * * * * * In one domain the principle of love seems to have been long outsoared by egoism, and to be still in need only of sure consciousness, as it were of victory with a good conscience. This domain is speculation, in its double manifestation as thinking and as trade. One thinks with a will, whatever may come of it; one speculates, however many may suffer under our speculative undertakings. But, when it finally becomes serious, when even the last remnant of religiousness, romance, or "humanity" is to be done away, then the pulse of religious conscience beats, and one at least _professes_ humanity. The avaricious speculator throws some coppers into the poor-box and "does good," the bold thinker consoles himself with the fact that he is working for the advancement of the human race and that his devastation "turns to the good" of mankind, or, in another case, that he is "serving the idea"; mankind, the idea, is to him that something of which he must say, It is more to me than myself. To this day thinking and trading have been done for--God's sake. Those who for six days were trampling down everything by their selfish aims sacrificed on the seventh to the Lord; and those who destroyed a hundred "good causes" by their reckless thinking still did this in the service of another "good cause," and had yet to think of another--besides themselves--to whose good their self-indulgence should turn: of the people, mankind, and the like. But this other thing is a being above them, a higher or supreme being; and therefore I say, they are toiling for God's sake. Hence I can also say that the ultimate basis of their actions is--_love_. Not a voluntary love however, not their own, but a tributary love, or the higher being's own (_i. e._ God's, who himself is love); in short, not the egoistic, but the religious; a love that springs from their fancy that they _must_ discharge a tribute of love, _i. e._ that they must not be "egoists." If _we_ want to deliver the world from many kinds of unfreedom, we want this not on its account but on ours; for, as we are not world-liberators by profession and out of "love," we only want to win it away from others. We want to make it our own; it is not to be any longer _owned as serf_ by God (the church) nor by the law (State), but to be _our own_; therefore we seek to "win" it, to "captivate" it, and, by meeting it half-way and "devoting" ourselves to it as to ourselves as soon as it belongs to us, to complete and make superfluous the force that it turns against us. If the world is ours, it no longer attempts any force _against_ us, but only _with_ us. My selfishness has an interest in the liberation of the world, that it may become--my property. Not isolation or being alone, but society, is man's original state. Our existence begins with the most intimate conjunction, as we are already living with our mother before we breathe; when we see the light of the world, we at once lie on a human being's breast again, her love cradles us in the lap, leads us in the go-cart, and chains us to her person with a thousand ties. Society is our _state of nature_. And this is why, the more we learn to feel ourselves, the connection that was formerly most intimate becomes ever looser and the dissolution of the original society more unmistakable. To have once again for herself the child that once lay under her heart, the mother must fetch it from the street and from the midst of its playmates. The child prefers the _intercourse_ that it enters into with _its fellows_ to the _society_ that it has not entered into, but only been born in. But the dissolution of _society_ is _intercourse_ or _union_. A society does assuredly arise by union too, but only as a fixed idea arises by a thought,--to wit, by the vanishing of the energy of the thought (the thinking itself, this restless taking back all thoughts that make themselves fast) from the thought. If a union[203] has crystallized into a society, it has ceased to be a coalition;[204] for coalition is an incessant self-uniting; it has become a unitedness, come to a standstill, degenerated into a fixity; it is--_dead_ as a union, it is the corpse of the union or the coalition, _i. e._ it is--society, community. A striking example of this kind is furnished by the _party_. That a society (_e. g._ the society of the State) diminishes my _liberty_ offends me little. Why, I have to let my liberty be limited by all sorts of powers and by every one who is stronger; nay, by every fellow-man; and, were I the autocrat of all the R......, I yet should not enjoy absolute liberty. But _ownness_ I will not have taken from me. And ownness is precisely what every society has designs on, precisely what is to succumb to its power. A society which I join does indeed take from me many liberties, but in return it affords me other liberties; neither does it matter if I myself deprive myself of this and that liberty (_e. g._ by any contract). On the other hand, I want to hold jealously to my ownness. Every community has the propensity, stronger or weaker according to the fulness of its power, to become an _authority_ to its members and to set _limits_ for them: it asks, and must ask, for a "subject's limited understanding"; it asks that those who belong to it be subject to it, be its "subjects"; it exists only by _subjection_. In this a certain tolerance need by no means be excluded; on the contrary, the society will welcome improvements, corrections, and blame, so far as such are calculated for its gain: but the blame must be "well-meaning," it may not be "insolent and disrespectful,"--in other words, one must leave uninjured, and hold sacred, the substance of the society. The society demands that those who belong to it shall not go _beyond it_ and exalt themselves, but remain "within the bounds of legality," _i. e._ allow themselves only so much as the society and its law allow them. There is a difference whether my liberty or my ownness is limited by a society. If the former only is the case, it is a _coalition_, an agreement, a union; but, if ruin is threatened to ownness, it is a _power of itself_, a power _above me_, a thing unattainable by me, which I can indeed admire, adore, reverence, respect, but cannot subdue and consume, and that for the reason that I _am resigned_. It exists by my _resignation_, my _self-renunciation_, my spiritlessness,[205] called--HUMILITY.[206] My humility makes its courage,[207] my submissiveness gives it its dominion. But in reference to _liberty_ State and union are subject to no essential difference. The latter can just as little come into existence, or continue in existence, without liberty's being limited in all sorts of ways, as the State is compatible with unmeasured liberty. Limitation of liberty is inevitable everywhere, for one cannot get _rid_ of everything; one cannot fly like a bird merely because one would like to fly so, for one does not get free from his own weight; one cannot live under water as long as he likes, like a fish, because one cannot do without air and cannot get free from this indispensable necessity; and the like. As religion, and most decidedly Christianity, tormented man with the demand to realize the unnatural and self-contradictory, so it is to be looked upon only as the true logical outcome of that religious overstraining and overwroughtness that finally _liberty itself, absolute liberty_, was exalted into an ideal, and thus the nonsense of the impossible had to come glaringly to the light.--The union will assuredly offer a greater measure of liberty, as well as (and especially because by it one escapes all the coercion peculiar to State and society life) admit of being considered as "a new liberty"; but nevertheless it will still contain enough of unfreedom and involuntariness. For its object is not this--liberty (which on the contrary it sacrifices to ownness), but only _ownness_. Referred to this, the difference between State and union is great enough. The former is an enemy and murderer of _ownness_, the latter a son and co-worker of it; the former a spirit that would be adored in spirit and in truth, the latter my work, my _product_; the State is the lord of my spirit, who demands faith and prescribes to me articles of faith, the creed of legality; it exerts moral influence, dominates my spirit, drives away my ego to put itself in its place as "my true ego,"--in short, the State is _sacred_, and as against me, the individual man, it is the true man, the spirit, the ghost; but the union is my own creation, my creature, not sacred, not a spiritual power above my spirit, as little as any association of whatever sort. As I am not willing to be a slave of my maxims, but lay them bare to my continual criticism without _any warrant_, and admit no bail at all for their persistence, so still less do I obligate myself to the union for my future and pledge my soul to it, as is said to be done with the devil and is really the case with the State and all spiritual authority; but I am and remain _more_ to myself than State, Church, God, and the like; consequently infinitely more than the union too. That society which Communism wants to found seems to stand nearest to _coalition_. For it is to aim at the "welfare of all," oh, yes, of all, cries Weitling innumerable times, of all! That does really look as if in it no one needed to take a back seat. But what then will this welfare be? Have all one and the same welfare, are all equally well off with one and the same thing? If that be so, the question is of the "true welfare." Do we not with this come right to the point where religion begins its dominion of violence? Christianity says, Look not on earthly toys, but seek your true welfare, become--pious Christians; being Christians is the true welfare. It is the true welfare of "all," because it is the welfare of Man as such (this spook). Now, the welfare of all is surely to be _your_ and _my_ welfare too? But, if you and I do not look upon that welfare as _our_ welfare, will care then be taken for that in which _we_ feel well? On the contrary, society has decreed a welfare as the "true welfare"; and, if this welfare were called _e. g._ "enjoyment honestly worked for," but you preferred enjoyable laziness, enjoyment without work, then society, which cares for the "welfare of all," would wisely avoid caring for that in which you are well off. Communism, in proclaiming the welfare of all, annuls outright the well-being of those who hitherto lived on their income from investments and apparently felt better in that than in the prospect of Weitling's strict hours of labor. Hence the latter asserts that with the welfare of thousands the welfare of millions cannot exist, and the former must give up _their_ special welfare "for the sake of the general welfare." No, let people not be summoned to sacrifice their special welfare for the general, for this Christian admonition will not carry you through; they will better understand the opposite admonition, not to let their _own_ welfare be snatched from them by anybody, but to put it on a permanent foundation. Then they are of themselves led to the point that they care best for their welfare if they _unite_ with others for this purpose, _i. e._ "sacrifice a part of their liberty," yet not to the welfare of others, but to their own. An appeal to men's self-sacrificing disposition and self-renouncing love ought at last to have lost its seductive plausibility when, after an activity of thousands of years, it has left nothing behind but the--_misère_ of to-day. Why then still fruitlessly expect self-sacrifice to bring us better times? why not rather hope for them from _usurpation_? Salvation comes no longer from the giver, the bestower, the loving one, but from the _taker_, the appropriater (usurper), the owner. Communism, and, consciously or unconsciously, egoism-reviling humanism, still count on _love_. If community is once a need of man, and he finds himself furthered by it in his aims, then very soon, because it has become his principle, it prescribes to him its laws too, the laws of--society. The principle of men exalts itself into a sovereign power over them, becomes their supreme essence, their God, and, as such,--lawgiver. Communism gives this principle the strictest effect, and Christianity is the religion of society, for, as Feuerbach rightly says although he does not mean it rightly, love is the essence of man; _i. e._ the essence of society or of societary (Communistic) man. All religion is a cult of society, this principle by which societary (cultivated) man is dominated; neither is any god an ego's exclusive god, but always a society's or community's, be it of the society "family" (Lar, Penates) or of a "people" ("national god") or of "all men" ("he is a Father of all men"). Consequently one has a prospect of extirpating religion down to the ground only when one antiquates _society_ and everything that flows from this principle. But it is precisely in Communism that this principle seeks to culminate, as in it everything is to become _common_ for the establishment of--"equality." If this "equality" is won, "liberty" too is not lacking. But whose liberty? _Society's!_ Society is then all in all, and men are only "for each other." It would be the glory of the--love-State. But I would rather be referred to men's selfishness than to their "kindnesses,"[208] their mercy, pity, etc. The former demands _reciprocity_ (as thou to me, so I to thee), does nothing "gratis," and may be won and--_bought_. But with what shall I obtain the kindness? It is a matter of chance whether I am at the time having to do with a "loving" person. The affectionate one's service can be had only by--_begging_, be it by my lamentable appearance, by my need of help, my misery, my--_suffering_. What can I offer him for his assistance? Nothing! I must accept it as a--present. Love is _unpayable_, or rather, love can assuredly be paid for, but only by counter-love ("One good turn deserves another"). What paltriness and beggarliness does it not take to accept gifts year in and year out without service in return, as they are regularly collected _e. g._ from the poor day-laborer? What can the receiver do for him and his donated pennies, in which his wealth consists? The day-laborer would really have more enjoyment if the receiver with his laws, his institutions, etc., all of which the day-laborer has to pay for though, did not exist at all. And yet, with it all, the poor wight _loves_ his master. No, community, as the "goal" of history hitherto, is impossible. Let us rather renounce every hypocrisy of community, and recognize that, if we are equal as men, we are not equal for the very reason that we are not men. We are equal _only in thoughts_, only when "we" are _thought_, not as we really and bodily are. I am ego, and you are ego: but I am not this thought-of ego; this ego in which we are all equal is only _my thought_. I am man, and you are man: but "man" is only a thought, a generality; neither you nor I are speakable, we are _unutterable_, because only _thoughts_ are speakable and consist in speaking. Let us therefore not aspire to community, but to _one-sidedness_. Let us not seek the most comprehensive commune, "human society," but let us seek in others only means and organs which we may use as our property! As we do not see our equals in the tree, the beast, so the presupposition that others are _our equals_ springs from a hypocrisy. No one is _my equal_, but I regard him, equally with all other beings, as my property. In opposition to this I am told that I should be a man among "fellow-men" ("_Judenfrage_," p. 60); I should "respect" the fellow-man in them. For me no one is a person to be respected, not even the fellow-man, but solely, like other beings, an _object_ in which I take an interest or else do not, an interesting or uninteresting object, a usable or unusable person. And, if I can use him, I doubtless come to an understanding and make myself at one with him, in order, by the agreement, to strengthen _my power_, and by combined force to accomplish more than individual force could effect. In this combination I see nothing whatever but a multiplication of my force, and I retain it only so long as it is _my_ multiplied force. But thus it is a--union. Neither a natural ligature nor a spiritual one holds the union together, and it is not a natural, not a spiritual league. It is not brought about by one _blood_, not by one _faith_ (spirit). In a natural league--like a family, a tribe, a nation, yes, mankind--the individuals have only the value of _specimens_ of the same species or genus; in a spiritual league--like a commune, a church--the individual signifies only a _member_ of the same spirit; what you are in both cases as a unique person must be--suppressed. Only in the union can you assert yourself as unique, because the union does not possess you, but you possess it or make it of use to you. Property is recognized in the union, and only in the union, because one no longer holds what is his as a fief from any being. The Communists are only consistently carrying further what had already been long present during religious evolution, and especially in the State; to wit, propertylessness, _i. e._ the feudal system. The State exerts itself to tame the desirous man; in other words, it seeks to direct his desire to it alone, and to _content_ that desire with what it offers. To sate the desire for the desirous man's sake does not come into its mind: on the contrary, it stigmatizes as an "egoistic man" the man who breathes out unbridled desire, and the "egoistic man" is its enemy. He is this for it because the capacity to agree with him is wanting to the State; the egoist is precisely what it cannot "comprehend." Since the State (as nothing else is possible) has to do only for itself, it does not take care for my needs, but takes care only of how it shall make away with me, _i. e._ make out of me another ego, a good citizen. It takes measures for the "improvement of morals."--And with what does it win individuals for itself? With itself, _i. e._ with what is the State's, with _State property_. It will be unremittingly active in making all participants in its "goods," providing all with the "good things of culture": it presents them its education, opens to them the access to its institutions of culture, capacitates them to come to property (_i. e._ to a fief) in the way of industry, etc. For all these _fiefs_ it demands only the just rent of continual _thanks_. But the "unthankful" forget to pay these thanks.--Now, neither can "society" do essentially otherwise than the State. You bring into a union your whole power, your competence, and _make yourself count_; in a society you are _employed_, with your working power; in the former you live egoistically, in the latter humanly, _i. e._ religiously, as a "member in the body of this Lord"; to a society you owe what you have, and are in duty bound to it, are--possessed by "social duties"; a union you utilize, and give it up undutifully and unfaithfully when you see no way to use it further. If a society is more than you, then it is more to you than yourself; a union is only your instrument, or the sword with which you sharpen and increase your natural force; the union exists for you and through you, the society conversely lays claim to you for itself and exists even without you; in short, the society is _sacred_, the union your _own_; the society consumes _you_, _you_ consume the union. Nevertheless people will not be backward with the objection that the agreement which has been concluded may again become burdensome to us and limit our freedom; they will say, we too would at last come to this, that "every one must sacrifice a part of his freedom for the sake of the generality." But the sacrifice would not be made for the "generality's" sake a bit, as little as I concluded the agreement for the "generality's" or even, for any other man's sake; rather I came into it only for the sake of my own benefit, from _selfishness_.[209] But, as regards the sacrificing, surely I "sacrifice" only that which does not stand in my power, _i. e._ I "sacrifice" nothing at all. To come back to property, the lord is proprietor. Choose then whether you want to be lord, or whether society shall be! On this depends whether you are to be an _owner_ or a _ragamuffin!_ The egoist is owner, the Socialist a ragamuffin. But ragamuffinism or propertylessness is the sense of feudalism, of the feudal system, which since the last century has only changed its overlord, putting "Man" in the place of God, and accepting as a fief from Man what had before been a fief from the grace of God. That the ragamuffinism of Communism is carried out by the humane principle into the absolute or most ragamuffinly ragamuffinism has been shown above; but at the same time also, how ragamuffinism can only thus swing around into ownness. The _old_ feudal system was so thoroughly trampled into the ground in the Revolution that since then all reactionary craft has remained fruitless, and will always remain fruitless, because the dead is--dead; but the resurrection too had to prove itself a truth in Christian history, and has so proved itself: for in another world feudalism is risen again with a glorified body, the _new_ feudalism under the suzerainty of "Man." Christianity is not annihilated, but the faithful are right in having hitherto trustfully assumed of every combat against it that this could serve only for the purgation and confirmation of Christianity; for it has really only been glorified, and "Christianity exposed" is the--_human Christianity_. We are still living entirely in the Christian age, and the very ones who feel worst about it are the most zealously contributing to "complete" it. The more human, the dearer has feudalism become to us; for we the less believe that it still is feudalism, we take it the more confidently for ownness and think we have found what is "most absolutely our own" when we discover "the human." Liberalism wants to give me what is mine, but it thinks to procure it for me not under the title of mine, but under that of the "human." As if it were attainable under this mask! The rights of man, the precious work of the Revolution, have the meaning that the Man in me _entitles_[210] me to this and that; I as individual, _i. e._ as this man, am not entitled, but Man has the right and entitles me. Hence as man I may well be entitled; but, as I am more than man, to wit, a _special_ man, it may be refused to this very me, the special one. If on the other hand you insist on the _value_ of your gifts, keep up their price, do not let yourselves be forced to sell out below price, do not let yourselves be talked into the idea that your ware is not worth its price, do not make yourselves ridiculous by a "ridiculous price," but imitate the brave man who says, I will _sell_ my life (property) dear, the enemy shall not have it at a cheap _bargain_; then you have recognized the reverse of Communism as the correct thing, and the word then is not "Give up your property!" but "_Get the value out of_ your property!" Over the portal of our time stands not that "Know thyself" of Apollo, but a "_Get the value out of thyself!_" Proudhon calls property "robbery" (_le vol_). But alien property--and he is talking of this alone--is not less existent by renunciation, cession, and humility; it is a _present_. Why so sentimentally call for compassion as a poor victim of robbery, when one is just a foolish, cowardly giver of presents? Why here again put the fault on others as if they were robbing us, while we ourselves do bear the fault in leaving the others, unrobbed? The poor are to blame for there being rich men. Universally, no one grows indignant at _his_, but at _alien_ property. They do not in truth attack property, but the alienation of property. They want to be able to call _more_, not less, _theirs_; they want to call everything _theirs_. They are fighting, therefore, against _alienness_, or, to form a word similar to property, against alienty. And how do they help themselves therein? Instead of transforming the alien into own, they play impartial and ask only that all property be left to a third party (_e. g._ human society). They revendicate the alien not in their own name but in a third party's. Now the "egoistic" coloring is wiped off, and everything is so clean and--human! Propertylessness or ragamuffinism, this then is the "essence of Christianity," as it is the essence of all religiousness (_i. e._ godliness, morality, humanity), and only announced itself most clearly, and, as glad tidings, became a gospel capable of development, in the "absolute religion." We have before us the most striking development in the present fight against property, a fight which is to bring "Man" to victory and make propertylessness complete: victorious humanity is the victory of--Christianity. But the "Christianity exposed" thus is feudalism completed, the most all-embracing feudal system, _i. e._ perfect ragamuffinism. Once more then, doubtless, a "revolution" against the feudal system?-- Revolution and insurrection must not be looked upon as synonymous. The former consists in an overturning of conditions, of the established condition or _status_, the State or society, and is accordingly a _political_ or _social_ act; the latter has indeed for its unavoidable consequence a transformation of circumstances, yet does not start from it but from men's discontent with themselves, is not an armed rising, but a rising of individuals, a getting up, without regard to the arrangements that spring from it. The Revolution aimed at new _arrangements_; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and sets no glittering hopes on "institutions." It is not a fight against the established, since, if it prospers, the established collapses of itself; it is only a working forth of me out of the established. If I leave the established, it is dead and passes into decay. Now, as my object is not the overthrow of an established order but my elevation above it, my purpose and deed are not a political or social but (as directed toward myself and my ownness alone) an _egoistic_ purpose and deed. The revolution commands one to make _arrangements_, the insurrection[211] demands that he _rise or exalt himself_.[212] What _constitution_ was to be chosen, this question busied the revolutionary heads, and the whole political period foams with constitutional fights and constitutional questions, as the social talents too were uncommonly inventive in societary arrangement (phalansteries and the like). The insurgent[213] strives to become constitutionless. While, to get greater clearness, I am thinking up a comparison, the founding of Christianity comes unexpectedly into my mind. On the liberal side it is noted as a bad point in the first Christians that they preached obedience to the established heathen civil order, enjoined recognition of the heathen authorities, and confidently delivered a command, "Give to the emperor that which is the emperor's." Yet how much disturbance arose at the same time against the Roman supremacy, how mutinous did the Jews and even the Romans show themselves against their own temporal government! in short, how popular was "political discontent"! Those Christians would hear nothing of it; would not side with the "liberal tendencies." The time was politically so agitated that, as is said in the gospels, people thought they could not accuse the founder of Christianity more successfully than if they arraigned him for "political intrigue," and yet the same gospels report that he was precisely the one who took least part in these political doings. But why was he not a revolutionist, not a demagogue, as the Jews would gladly have seen him? why was he not a liberal? Because he expected no salvation from a change of _conditions_, and this whole business was indifferent to him. He was not a revolutionist like _e. g._ Cæsar, but an insurgent; not a State-overturner, but one who straightened _himself_ up. That was why it was for him only a matter of "Be ye wise as serpents," which expresses the same sense as, in the special case, that "Give to the emperor that which is the emperor's"; for he was not carrying on any liberal or political fight against the established authorities, but wanted to walk his _own_ way, untroubled about, and undisturbed by, these authorities. Not less indifferent to him than the government were its enemies, for neither understood what he wanted, and he had only to keep them off from him with the wisdom of the serpent. But, even though not a ringleader of popular mutiny, not a demagogue or revolutionist, he (and every one of the ancient Christians) was so much the more an _insurgent_, who lifted himself above everything that seemed sublime to the government and its opponents, and absolved himself from everything that they remained bound to, and who at the same time cut off the sources of life of the whole heathen world, with which the established State must wither away as a matter of course; precisely because he put from him the upsetting of the established, he was its deadly enemy and real annihilator; for he walled it in, confidently and recklessly carrying up the building of _his_ temple over it, without heeding the pains of the immured. Now, as it happened to the heathen order of the world, will the Christian order fare likewise? A revolution certainly does not bring on the end if an insurrection is not consummated first! My intercourse with the world, what does it aim at? I want to have the enjoyment of it, therefore it must be my property, and therefore I want to win it. I do not want the liberty of men, nor their equality; I want only _my_ power over them, I want to make them my property, _i. e._ _material for enjoyment_. And, if I do not succeed in that, well, then I call even the power over life and death, which Church and State reserved to themselves,--mine. Brand that officer's widow who, in the flight in Russia, after her leg has been shot away, takes the garter from it, strangles her child therewith, and then bleeds to death alongside the corpse,--brand the memory of the--infanticide. Who knows, if this child had remained alive, how much it might have "been of use to the world"! The mother murdered it because she wanted to die _satisfied_ and at rest. Perhaps this case still appeals to your sentimentality, and you do not know how to read out of it anything further. Be it so; I on my part use it as an example for this, that _my_ satisfaction decides about my relation to men, and that I do not renounce, from any access of humility, even the power over life and death. As regards "social duties" in general, another does not give me my position toward others, therefore neither God nor humanity prescribes to me my relation to men, but I give myself this position. This is more strikingly said thus: I have no _duty_ to others, as I have a duty even to myself (_e. g._ that of self-preservation, and therefore not suicide) only so long as I distinguish myself from myself (my immortal soul from my earthly existence, etc.). I no longer _humble_ myself before any power, and I recognize that all powers are only my power, which I have to subject at once when they threaten to become a power _against_ or _above_ me; each of them must be only one of _my means_ to carry my point, as a hound is our power against game, but is killed by us if it should fall upon us ourselves. All powers that dominate me I then reduce to serving me. The idols exist through me; I need only refrain from creating them anew, then they exist no longer: "higher powers" exist only through my exalting them and abasing myself. Consequently my relation to the world is this: I no longer do anything for it "for God's sake," I do nothing "for man's sake," but what I do I do "for my sake." Thus alone does the world satisfy me, while it is characteristic of the religious standpoint, in which I include the moral and humane also, that from it everything remains a _pious wish_ (_pium desiderium_), _i. e._ an other-world matter, something unattained. Thus the general salvation of men, the moral world of a general love, eternal peace, the cessation of egoism, etc. "Nothing in this world is perfect." With this miserable phrase the good part from it, and take flight into their closet to God, or into their proud "self-consciousness." But we remain in this "imperfect" world, because even so we can use it for our--self-enjoyment. My intercourse with the world consists in my enjoying it, and so consuming it for my self-enjoyment. _Intercourse_ is the _enjoyment of the world_, and belongs to my--self-enjoyment. III.--MY SELF-ENJOYMENT We stand at the boundary of a period. The world hitherto took thought for nothing but the gain of life, took care for--_life_. For whether all activity is put on the stretch for the life of this world or of the other, for the temporal or for the eternal, whether one hankers for "daily bread" ("Give us our daily bread") or for "holy bread" ("the true bread from heaven"; "the bread of God, that comes from heaven and _gives life_ to the world"; "the bread of life," John 6), whether one takes care for "dear life" or for "life to eternity,"--this does not change the object of the strain and care, which in the one case as in the other shows itself to be _life_. Do the modern tendencies announce themselves otherwise? People now want nobody to be embarrassed for the most indispensable necessaries of life, but want every one to feel secure as to these; and on the other hand they teach that man has this life to attend to and the real world to adapt himself to, without vain care for another. Let us take up the same thing from another side. When one is anxious only to _live_, he easily, in this solicitude, forgets the _enjoyment_ of life. If his only concern is for life, and he thinks "if I only have my dear life," he does not apply his full strength to using, _i. e._ enjoying, life. But how does one use life? In using it up, like the candle, which one uses in burning it up. One uses life, and consequently himself the living one, in _consuming_ it and himself. _Enjoyment of life_ is using life up. Now--we are in search of the _enjoyment_ of life! And what did the religious world do? It went in search of _life_. "Wherein consists the true life, the blessed life, etc.? How is it to be attained? What must man do and become in order to become a truly living man? How does he fulfil this calling?" These and similar questions indicate that the askers were still seeking for _themselves_,--to wit, themselves in the true sense, in the sense of true living. "What I am is foam and shadow; what I shall be is my true self." To chase after this self, to produce it, to realize it, constitutes the hard task of mortals, who die only to _rise again_, live only to die, live only to find the true life. Not till I am certain of myself, and no longer seeking for myself, am I really my property; I have myself, therefore I use and enjoy myself. On the other hand, I can never take comfort in myself so long as I think that I have still to find my true self and that it must come to this, that not I but Christ or some other spiritual, _i. e._ ghostly, self (_e. g._ the true man, the essence of man, and the like) lives in me. A vast interval separates the two views. In the old I go toward myself, in the new I start from myself; in the former I long for myself, in the latter I have myself and do with myself as one does with any other property,--I enjoy myself at my pleasure. I am no longer afraid for my life, but "squander" it. Henceforth the question runs, not how one can acquire life, but how one can squander, enjoy it; or, not how one is to produce the true self in himself, but how one is to dissolve himself, to live himself out. What else should the ideal be but the sought-for, ever-distant self? One seeks for himself, consequently one does not yet have himself; one aspires toward what one _ought_ to be, consequently one is not it. One lives in _longing_ and has lived thousands of years in it, in _hope_. Living is quite another thing in--_enjoyment_! Does this perchance apply only to the so-called pious? No, it applies to all who belong to the departing period of history, even to its men of pleasure. For them too the work-days were followed by a Sunday, and the rush of the world by the dream of a better world, of a general happiness of humanity; in short, by an ideal. But philosophers especially are contrasted with the pious. Now, have they been thinking of anything else than the ideal, been planning for anything else than the absolute self? Longing and hope everywhere, and nothing but these. For me, call it romanticism. If the _enjoyment of life_ is to triumph over the _longing for life_ or hope of life, it must vanquish this in its double significance, which Schiller introduces in his "Ideal and Life"; it must crush spiritual and secular poverty, exterminate the ideal and--the want of daily bread. He who must expend his life to prolong life cannot enjoy it, and he who is still seeking for his life does not have it and can as little enjoy it: both are poor, but "blessed are the poor." Those who are hungering for the true life have no power over their present life, but must apply it for the purpose of thereby gaining that true life, and must sacrifice it entirely to this aspiration and this task. If in the case of those devotees who hope for a life in the other world, and look upon that in this world as merely a preparation for it, the tributariness of their earthly existence, which they put solely into the service of the hoped-for heavenly existence, is pretty distinctly apparent; one would yet go far wrong if one wanted to consider the most rationalistic and enlightened as less self-sacrificing. Oh, there is to be found in the "true life" a much more comprehensive significance than the "heavenly" is competent to express. Now, is not--to introduce the liberal concept of it at once--the "human" and "truly human" life the true one? And is every one already leading this truly human life from the start, or must he first raise himself to it with hard toil? Does he already have it as his present life, or must he struggle for it as his future life, which will become his part only when he "is no longer tainted with any egoism"? In this view life exists only to gain life, and one lives only to make the essence of man alive in oneself, one lives for the sake of this essence. One has his life only in order to procure by means of it the "true" life cleansed of all egoism. Hence one is afraid to make any use he likes of his life: it is to serve only for the "right use." In short, one has a _calling in life_, a task in life; one has something to realize and produce by his life, a something for which our life is only means and implement, a something that is worth more than this life, a something to which one _owes_ his life. One has a God who asks a _living sacrifice_. Only the rudeness of human sacrifice has been lost with time; human sacrifice itself has remained unabated, and criminals hourly fall sacrifices to justice, and we "poor sinners" slay our own selves as sacrifices for "the human essence," the "idea of mankind," "humanity," and whatever the idols or gods are called besides. But, because we owe our life to that something, therefore--this is the next point--we have no right to take it from us. The conservative tendency of Christianity does not permit thinking of death otherwise than with the purpose to take its sting from it and--live on and preserve oneself nicely. The Christian lets everything happen and come upon him if he--the arch-Jew--can only haggle and smuggle himself into heaven; he must not kill himself, he must only--preserve himself and work at the "preparation of a future abode." Conservatism or "conquest of death" lies at his heart; "the last enemy that is abolished is death."[214] "Christ has taken the power from death and brought life and _imperishable_ being to light by the gospel."[215] "Imperishableness," stability. The moral man wants the good, the right; and, if he takes to the means that lead to this goal, really lead to it, then these means are not _his_ means, but those of the good, right, etc., itself. These means are never immoral, because the good end itself mediates itself through them: the end sanctifies the means. They call this maxim jesuitical, but it is "moral" through and through. The moral man acts _in the service_ of an end or an idea: he makes himself the _tool_ of the idea of the good, as the pious man counts it his glory to be a tool or instrument of God. To await death is what the moral commandment postulates as the good; to give it to oneself is immoral and bad: _suicide_ finds no excuse before the judgment-seat of morality. If the religious man forbids it because "you have not given yourself life, but God, who alone can also take it from you again" (as if, even talking in this conception, God did not take it from me just as much when I kill myself as when a tile from the roof, or a hostile bullet, fells me; for he would have aroused the resolution of death in me too!), the moral man forbids it because I owe my life to the fatherland, etc., "because I do not know whether I may not yet accomplish good by my life." Of course, for in me good loses a tool, as God does an instrument. If I am immoral, the good is served in my _amendment_; if I am "ungodly," God has joy in my _penitence_. Suicide, therefore, is ungodly as well as nefarious. If one whose standpoint is religiousness takes his own life, he acts in forgetfulness of God; but, if the suicide's standpoint is morality, he acts in forgetfulness of duty, immorally. People worried themselves much with the question whether Emilia Galotti's death can be justified before morality (they take it as if it were suicide, which it is too in substance). That she is so infatuated with chastity, this moral good, as to yield up even her life for it is certainly moral; but, again, that she fears the weakness of her flesh is immoral.[216] Such contradictions form the tragic conflict universally in the moral drama; and one must think and feel morally to be able to take an interest in it. What holds good of piety and morality will necessarily apply to humanity also, because one owes his life likewise to man, mankind or the species. Only when I am under obligation to no being is the maintaining of life--my affair. "A leap from this bridge makes me free!" But, if we owe the maintaining of our life to that being that we are to make alive in ourselves, it is not less our duty not to lead this life according to _our_ pleasure, but to shape it in conformity to that being. All my feeling, thinking, and willing, all my doing and designing, belongs to--him. What is in conformity to that being is to be inferred from his concept; and how differently has this concept been conceived! or how differently has that being been imagined! What demands the Supreme Being makes on the Mohammedan; what different ones the Christian, again, thinks he hears from him; how divergent, therefore, must the shaping of the lives of the two turn out! Only this do all hold fast, that the Supreme Being is to _judge_[217] our life. But the pious who have their judge in God, and in his word a book of directions for their life, I everywhere pass by only reminiscently, because they belong to a period of development that has been lived through, and as petrifactions they may remain in their fixed place right along; in our time it is no longer the pious, but the liberals, who have the floor, and piety itself cannot keep from reddening its pale face with liberal coloring. But the liberals do not adore their judge in God, and do not unfold their life by the directions of the divine word, but regulate[218] themselves by man: they want to be not "divine" but "human," and to live so. Man is the liberal's supreme being, man the _judge_ of his life, humanity his _directions_, or catechism. God is spirit, but man is the "most perfect spirit," the final result of the long chase after the spirit or of the "searching in the depths of the Godhead," _i. e._ in the depths of the spirit. Every one of your traits is to be human; you yourself are to be so from top to toe, in the inward as in the outward; for humanity is your _calling_. Calling--destiny--task!-- What one can become he does become. A born poet may well be hindered by the disfavor of circumstances from standing on the high level of his time, and, after the great studies that are indispensable for this, producing _consummate_ works of art; but he will make poetry, be he a plowman or so lucky as to live at the court of Weimar. A born musician will make music, no matter whether on all instruments or only on an oaten pipe. A born philosophical head can give proof of itself as university philosopher or as village philosopher. Finally, a born dolt, who, as is very well compatible with this, may at the same time be a sly-boots, will (as probably every one who has visited schools is in a position to exemplify to himself by many instances of fellow-scholars) always remain a blockhead, let him have been drilled and trained into the chief of a bureau, or let him serve that same chief as bootblack. Nay, the born shallow-pates indisputably form the most numerous class of men. And why, indeed, should not the same distinctions show themselves in the human species that are unmistakable in every species of beasts? The more gifted and the less gifted are to be found everywhere. Only a few, however, are so imbecile that one could not get ideas into them. Hence people usually consider all men capable of having religion. In a certain degree they may be trained to other ideas too, _e. g._ to some musical intelligence, even some philosophy, etc. At this point then the priesthood of religion, of morality, of culture, of science, etc., takes its start, and the Communists, _e. g._, want to make everything accessible to all by their "public school." There is heard a common assertion that this "great mass" cannot get along without religion; the Communists broaden it into the proposition that not only the "great mass," but absolutely all, are called to everything. Not enough that the great mass has been trained to religion, now it is actually to have to occupy itself with "everything human." Training is growing ever more general and more comprehensive. You poor beings who could live so happily if you might skip according to your mind, you are to dance to the pipe of schoolmasters and bear-leaders, in order to perform tricks that you yourselves would never use yourselves for. And you do not even kick out of the traces at last against being always taken otherwise than you want to give yourselves. No, you mechanically recite to yourselves the question that is recited to you: "What am I called to? What _ought_ I to do?" You need only ask thus, to have yourselves _told_ what you ought to do and _ordered_ to do it, to have your _calling_ marked out for you, or else to order yourselves and impose it on yourselves according to the spirit's prescription. Then in reference to the will the word is, I will to do what I _ought_. A man is "called" to nothing, and has no "calling," no "destiny," as little as a plant or a beast has a "calling." The flower does not follow the calling to complete itself, but it spends all its forces to enjoy and consume the world as well as it can,--_i. e._ it sucks in as much of the juices of the earth, as much air of the ether, as much light of the sun, as it can get and lodge. The bird lives up to no calling, but it uses its forces as much as is practicable; it catches beetles and sings to its heart's delight. But the forces of the flower and the bird are slight in comparison to those of a man, and a man who applies his forces will affect the world much more powerfully than flower and beast. A calling he has not, but he has forces that manifest themselves where they are because their being consists solely in their manifestation, and are as little able to abide inactive as life, which, if it "stood still" only a second, would no longer be life. Now, one might call out to the man, "use your force." Yet to this imperative would be given the meaning that it was man's task to use his force. It is not so. Rather, each one really uses his force without first looking upon this as his calling: at all times every one uses as much force as he possesses. One does say of a beaten man that he ought to have exerted his force more; but one forgets that, if in the moment of succumbing he had had the force to exert his forces (_e. g._ bodily forces), he would not have failed to do it: even if it was only the discouragement of a minute, this was yet a--destitution of force, a minute long. Forces may assuredly be sharpened and redoubled, especially by hostile resistance or friendly assistance; but where one misses their application one may be sure of their absence too. One can strike fire out of a stone, but without the blow none comes out; in like manner a man too needs "impact." Now, for this reason that forces always of themselves show themselves operative, the command to use them would be superfluous and senseless. To use his forces is not man's _calling_ and task, but is his _act_, real and extant at all times. Force is only a simpler word for manifestation of force. Now, as this rose is a true rose to begin with, this nightingale always a true nightingale, so I am not for the first time a true man when I fulfil my calling, live up to my destiny, but I am a "true man" from the start. My first babble is the token of the life of a "true man," the struggles of my life are the outpourings of his force, my last breath is the last exhalation of the force of the "man." The true man does not lie in the future, an object of longing, but lies, existent and real, in the present. Whatever and whoever I may be, joyous and suffering, a child or a graybeard, in confidence or doubt, in sleep or in waking, I am it, I am the true man. But, if I am Man, and have really found in myself him whom religious humanity designated as the distant goal, then everything "truly human" is also _my own_. What was ascribed to the idea of humanity belongs to me. That freedom of trade, _e. g._, which humanity has yet to attain,--and which, like an enchanting dream, people remove to humanity's golden future,--I take by anticipation as my property, and carry it on for the time in the form of smuggling. There may indeed be but few smugglers who have sufficient understanding to thus account to themselves for their doings, but the instinct of egoism replaces their consciousness. Above I have shown the same thing about freedom of the press. Everything is my own, therefore I bring back to myself what wants to withdraw from me; but above all I always bring myself back when I have slipped away from myself to any tributariness. But this too is not my calling, but my natural act. Enough, there is a mighty difference whether I make myself the starting-point or the goal. As the latter I do not have myself, am consequently still alien to myself, am my _essence_, my "true essence," and this "true essence," alien to me, will mock me as a spook of a thousand different names. Because I am not yet I, another (like God, the true man, the truly pious man, the rational man, the freeman, etc.) is I, my ego. Still far from myself, I separate myself into two halves, of which one, the one unattained and to be fulfilled, is the true one. The one, the untrue, must be brought as a sacrifice; to wit, the unspiritual one. The other, the true, is to be the whole man; to wit, the spirit. Then it is said, "The spirit is man's proper essence," or, "man exists as man only spiritually." Now there is a greedy rush to catch the spirit, as if one would then have bagged _himself_; and so, in chasing after himself, one loses sight of himself, whom he is. And, as one stormily pursues his own self, the never-attained, so one also despises shrewd people's rule to take men as they are, and prefers to take them as they should be; and, for this reason, hounds every one on after his should-be self and "endeavors to make all into equally entitled, equally respectable, equally moral or rational men."[219] Yes, "if men were what they _should_ be, _could_ be, if all men were rational, all loved each other as brothers," then it would be a paradisiacal life.[220]--All right, men are as they should be, can be. What should they be? Surely not more than they can be! And what can they be? Not more, again, than they--can, _i. e._ than they have the competence, the force, to be. But this they really are, because what they are not they are _incapable_ of being; for to be capable means--really to be. One is not capable for anything that one really is not; one is not capable of anything that one does not really do. Could a man blinded by cataract see? Oh, yes, if he had his cataract successfully removed. But now he cannot see because he does not see. Possibility and reality always coincide. One can do nothing that one does not, as one does nothing that one cannot. The singularity of this assertion vanishes when one reflects that the words "it is possible that ..." almost never contain another meaning than "I can imagine that ...," _e. g._, It is possible for all men to live rationally, _i. e._ I can imagine that all, etc. Now,--since my thinking cannot, and accordingly does not, cause all men to live rationally, but this must still be left to the men themselves,--general reason is for me only thinkable, a thinkableness, but as such in fact a _reality_ that is called a possibility only in reference to what I _can_ not bring to pass, to wit, the rationality of others. So far as depends on you, all men might be rational, for you have nothing against it; nay, so far as your thinking reaches, you perhaps cannot discover any hindrance either, and accordingly nothing does stand in the way of the thing in your thinking; it is thinkable to you. As men are not all rational, though, it is probable that they--cannot be so. If something which one imagines to be easily possible is not, or does not happen, then one may be assured that something stands in the way of the thing, and that it is--impossible. Our time has its art, science, etc.; the art may be bad in all conscience; but may one say that we deserved to have a better, and "could" have it if we only would? We have just as much art as we can have. Our art of to-day is the _only art possible_, and therefore real, at the time. Even in the sense to which one might at last still reduce the word "possible," that it should mean "future," it retains the full force of the "real." If one says, _e. g._, "It is possible that the sun will rise to-morrow,"--this means only, "for to-day to-morrow is the real future"; for I suppose there is hardly need of the suggestion that a future is real "future" only when it has not yet appeared. Yet wherefore this dignifying of a word? If the most prolific misunderstanding of thousands of years were not in ambush behind it, if this single concept of the little word "possible" were not haunted by all the spooks of possessed men, its contemplation should trouble us little here. The thought, it was just now shown, rules the possessed world. Well, then, possibility is nothing but thinkableness, and innumerable sacrifices have hitherto been made to hideous _thinkableness_. It was _thinkable_ that men might become rational; thinkable, that they might know Christ; thinkable, that they might become moral and enthusiastic for the good; thinkable, that they might all take refuge in the Church's lap; thinkable, that they might meditate, speak, and do, nothing dangerous to the State; thinkable, that they _might_ be obedient subjects; but, because it was thinkable, it was--so ran the inference--possible, and further, because it was possible to men (right here lies the deceptive point: because it is thinkable to me, it is possible to _men_), therefore they _ought_ to be so, it was their _calling_; and finally--one is to take men only according to this calling, only as _called_ men, "not as they are, but as they ought to be." And the further inference? Man is not the individual, but man is a _thought_, an _ideal_, to which the individual is related not even as the child to the man, but as a chalk point to a point thought of, or as a--finite creature to the eternal Creator, or, according to modern views, as the specimen to the species. Here then comes to light the glorification of "humanity," the "eternal, immortal," for whose glory (_in majorem humanitatis gloriam_) the individual must devote himself and find his "immortal renown" in having done something for the "spirit of humanity." Thus the _thinkers_ rule in the world as long as the age of priests or of schoolmasters lasts, and what they think of is possible, but what is possible must be realized. They _think_ an ideal of man, which for the time is real only in their thoughts; but they also think the possibility of carrying it out, and there is no chance for dispute, the carrying out is really--thinkable, it is an--idea. But you and I, we may indeed be people of whom a Krummacher can _think_ that we might yet become good Christians; if, however, he wanted to "labor with" us, we should soon make it palpable to him that our Christianity is only _thinkable_, but in other respects _impossible_; if he grinned on and on at us with his obtrusive _thoughts_, his "good belief," he would have to learn that we do not at all _need_ to become what we do not like to become. And so it goes on, far beyond the most pious of the pious. "If all men were rational, if all did right, if all were guided by philanthropy, etc."! Reason, right, philanthropy, etc., are put before the eyes of men as their calling, as the goal of their aspiration. And what does being rational mean? Giving oneself a hearing?[221] No, reason is a book full of laws, which are all enacted against egoism. History hitherto is the history of the _intellectual_ man. After the period of sensuality, history proper begins; _i. e._, the period of intellectuality,[222] spirituality,[223] non-sensuality, supersensuality, nonsensicality. Man now begins to want to be and become _something_. What? Good, beautiful, true; more precisely, moral, pious, agreeable, etc. He wants to make of himself a "proper man," "something proper." _Man_ is his goal, his ought, his destiny, calling, task, his--_ideal_; he is to himself a future, otherworldly he. And _what_ makes a "proper fellow" of him? Being true, being good, being moral, and the like. Now he looks askance at every one who does not recognize the same "what," seek the same morality, have the same faith; he chases out "separatists, heretics, sects," etc. No sheep, no dog, exerts itself to become a "proper sheep, a proper dog"; no beast has its essence appear to it as a task, _i. e._ as a concept that it has to realize. It realizes itself in living itself out, _i. e._ dissolving itself, passing away. It does not ask to be or to become anything _other_ than it is. Do I mean to advise you to be like the beasts? That you ought to become beasts is an exhortation which I certainly cannot give you, as that would again be a task, an ideal ("How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour.... In works of labor or of skill I would be busy too, for Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do"). It would be the same, too, as if one wished for the beasts that they should become human beings. Your nature is, once for all, a human one; you are human natures, _i. e._ human beings. But, just because you already are so, you do not still need to become so. Beasts too are "trained," and a trained beast executes many unnatural things. But a trained dog is no better for itself than a natural one, and has no profit from it, even if it is more companionable for us. Exertions to "form" all men into moral, rational, pious, human, etc., "beings" (_i. e._ training) were in vogue from of yore. They are wrecked against the indomitable quality of I, against own nature, against egoism. Those who are trained never attain their ideal, and only profess with their _mouth_ the sublime principles, or make a _profession_, a profession of faith. In face of this profession they must in _life_ "acknowledge themselves sinners altogether," and they fall short of their ideal, are "weak men," and bear with them the consciousness of "human weakness." It is different if you do not chase after an _ideal_ as your "destiny," but dissolve yourself as time dissolves everything. The dissolution is not your "destiny," because it is present time. Yet the _culture_, the religiousness, of men has assuredly made them free, but only free from one lord, to lead them to another. I have learned by religion to tame my appetite, I break the world's resistance by the cunning that is put in my hand by _science_; I even serve no man: "I am, no man's lackey." But then it comes, You must obey God more than man. Just so I am indeed free from irrational determination by my impulses, but obedient to the master _Reason_. I have gained "spiritual freedom," "freedom of the spirit." But with that _I_ have then become subject to that very _spirit_. The spirit gives me orders, reason guides me, they are my leaders and commanders. The "rational," the "servants of the spirit," rule. But, if _I_ am not flesh, I am in truth not spirit either. Freedom of the spirit is servitude of me, because I am more than spirit or flesh. Without doubt culture has made me _powerful_. It has given me power over all _motives_, over the impulses of my nature as well as over the exactions and violences of the world. I know, and have gained the force for it by culture, that I need not let myself be coerced by any of my appetites, pleasures, emotions, etc.; I am their--_master_; in like manner I become, through the sciences and arts, the _master_ of the refractory world, whom sea and earth obey, and to whom even the stars must give an account of themselves. The spirit has made me _master_.--But I have no power over the spirit itself. From religion (culture) I do learn the means for the "vanquishing of the world," but not how I am to subdue _God_ too and become master of him; for God "is the spirit." And this same spirit, of which I am unable to become master, may have the most manifold shapes: he may be called God or National Spirit, State, Family, Reason, also--Liberty, Humanity, Man. _I_ receive with thanks what the centuries of culture have acquired for me; I am not willing to throw away and give up anything of it: _I_ have not lived in vain. The experience that I have _power_ over my nature, and need not be the slave of my appetites, shall not be lost to me; the experience that I can subdue the world by culture's means is too dear-bought for me to be able to forget it. But I want still more. People ask, what can man do? what can he accomplish? what goods procure? and put down the highest of everything as a calling. As if everything were possible to _me_! If one sees somebody going to ruin in a mania, a passion, etc. (_e. g._ in the huckster-spirit, in jealousy), the desire is stirred to deliver him out of this possession and to help him to "self-conquest." "We want to make a man of him!" That would be very fine if another possession were not immediately put in the place of the earlier one. But one frees from the love of money him who is a thrall to it, only to deliver him over to piety, humanity, or some principle else, and to transfer him to a _fixed standpoint_ anew. This transference from a narrow standpoint to a sublime one is declared in the words that the sense must not be directed to the perishable, but to the imperishable alone: not to the temporal, but to the eternal, absolute, divine, purely human, etc.,--to the _spiritual_. People very soon discerned that it was not indifferent what one set his affections on, or what one occupied himself with; they recognized the importance of the _object_. An object exalted above the individuality of things is the _essence_ of things; yes, the essence is alone the thinkable in them, it is for the _thinking_ man. Therefore direct no longer your _sense_ to the _things_, but your _thoughts_ to the _essence_. "Blessed are they who see not, and yet believe"; _i. e._, blessed are the _thinkers_ for they have to do with the invisible and believe in it. Yet even an object of thought, that constituted an essential point of contention centuries long, comes at last to the point of being "no longer worth speaking of." This was discerned, but nevertheless people always kept before their eyes again a self-valid importance of the object, an absolute value of it, as if the doll were not the most important thing to the child, the Koran to the Turk. As long as I am not the sole important thing to myself, it is indifferent of what object I "make much," and only my greater or lesser _delinquency_ against it is of value. The degree of my attachment and devotion marks the standpoint of my liability to service, the degree of my sinning shows the measure of my ownness. But finally, and in general, one must know how to "put everything out of his mind," if only so as to be able to--go to sleep. Nothing may occupy us with which _we_ do not occupy ourselves: the victim of ambition cannot run away from his ambitious plans, nor the God-fearing man from the thought of God; infatuation and possessedness coincide. To want to realize his essence or live conformably to his concept (which with believers in God signifies as much as to be "pious," and with believers in humanity means living "humanly") is what only the sensual and sinful man can propose to himself, the man so long as he has the anxious choice between happiness of sense and peace of soul, so long as he is a "poor sinner." The Christian is nothing but a sensual man who, knowing of the sacred and being conscious that he violates it, sees in himself a poor sinner: sensualness, recognized as "sinfulness," is Christian consciousness, is the Christian himself. And if "sin" and "sinfulness" are now no longer taken into the mouths of moderns, but, instead of that, "egoism," "self-seeking," "selfishness," and the like, engage them; if the devil has been translated into the "un-man" or "egoistic man,"--is the Christian less present then than before? Is not the old discord between good and evil,--is not a judge over us, man,--is not a calling, the calling to make oneself man--left? If they no longer name it calling, but "task" or, very likely, "duty," the change of name is quite correct, because "man" is not, like God, a personal being that can "call"; but outside the name the thing remains as of old. * * * * * Every one has a relation to objects, and more, every one is differently related to them. Let us choose as an example that book to which millions of men had a relation for two thousand years, the Bible. What is it, what was it, to each? Absolutely, only what he _made out of it_! For him who makes to himself nothing at all out of it, it is nothing at all; for him who uses it as an amulet, it has solely the value, the significance, of a means of sorcery; for him who, like children, plays with it, it is nothing but a plaything; etc. Now, Christianity asks that it shall _be the same for all_: say, the sacred book or the "sacred Scriptures." This means as much as that the Christian's view shall also be that of other men, and that no one may be otherwise related to that object. And with this the ownness of the relation is destroyed, and one mind, one disposition, is fixed as the "_true_," the "only true" one. In the limitation of the freedom to make of the Bible what I will, the freedom of making in general is limited; and the coercion of a view or a judgment is put in its place. He who should pass the judgment that the Bible was a long error of mankind would judge--_criminally_. In fact, the child who tears it to pieces or plays with it, the Inca Atahualpa who lays his ear to it and throws it away contemptuously when it remains dumb, judges just as correctly about the Bible as the priest who praises in it the "Word of God," or the critic who calls it a job of men's hands. For how we toss things about is the affair of our _option_, our _free will_: we use them according to our _heart's pleasure_, or, more clearly, we use them just as we _can_. Why, what do the parsons scream about when they see how Hegel and the speculative theologians make speculative thoughts out of the contents of the Bible? Precisely this, that they deal with it according to their heart's pleasure, or "proceed arbitrarily with it." But, because we all show ourselves arbitrary in the handling of objects, _i. e._ do with them as we _like_ best, at our _liking_ (the philosopher likes nothing so well as when he can trace out an "idea" in everything, as the God-fearing man likes to make God his friend by everything, and so, _e. g._, by keeping the Bible sacred), therefore we nowhere meet such grievous arbitrariness, such a frightful tendency to violence, such stupid coercion, as in this very domain of our--_own free will_. If _we_ proceed arbitrarily in taking the sacred objects thus or so, how is it then that we want to take it ill of the parson-spirits if they take us just as arbitrarily _in their fashion_, and esteem us worthy of the heretic's fire or of another punishment, perhaps of the--censorship? What a man is, he makes out of things; "as you look at the world, so it looks at you again." Then the wise advice makes itself heard again at once, You must only look at it "rightly, unbiasedly," etc. As if the child did not look at the Bible "rightly and unbiasedly" when it makes it a plaything. That shrewd precept is given us, _e. g._, by Feuerbach. One does look at things rightly when one makes of them what one _will_ (by things objects in general are here understood, such as God, our fellow-men, a sweetheart, a book, a beast, etc.). And therefore the things and the looking at them are not first, but I am, my will is. One _will_ bring thoughts out of the things, _will_ discover reason in the world, _will_ have sacredness in it: therefore one shall find them. "Seek and ye shall find." _What_ I will seek, _I_ determine: I want, _e. g._, to get edification from the Bible; it is to be found; I want to read and test the Bible thoroughly; my outcome will be a thorough instruction and criticism--to the extent of my powers. I elect for myself what I have a fancy for, and in electing I show myself--arbitrary. Connected with this is the discernment that every judgment which I pass upon an object is the _creature_ of my will; and that discernment again leads me to not losing myself in the _creature_, the judgment, but remaining the _creator_, the judger, who is ever creating anew. All predicates of objects are my statements, my judgments, my--creatures. If they want to tear themselves loose from me and be something for themselves, or actually overawe me, then I have nothing more pressing to do than to take them back into their nothing, _i. e._ into me the creator. God, Christ, trinity, morality, the good, etc., are such creatures, of which I must not merely allow myself to say that they are truths, but also that they are deceptions. As I once willed and decreed their existence, so I want to have license to will their non-existence too; I must not let them grow over my head, must not have the weakness to let them become something "absolute," whereby they would be eternalized and withdrawn from my power and decision. With that I should fall a prey to the _principle of stability_, the proper life-principle of religion, which concerns itself with creating "sanctuaries that must not be touched," "eternal truths,"--in short, that which shall be "sacred,"--and depriving you of what is _yours_. The object makes us into possessed men in its sacred form just as in its profane; as a supersensuous object, just as it does as a sensuous one. The appetite or mania refers to both, and avarice and longing for heaven stand on a level. When the rationalists wanted to win people for the sensuous world, Lavater preached the longing for the invisible. The one party wanted to call forth _emotion_, the other _motion_, activity. The conception of objects is altogether diverse, even as God, Christ, the world, etc., were and are conceived of in the most manifold wise. In this every one is a "dissenter," and after bloody combats so much has at last been attained, that opposite views about one and the same object are no longer condemned as heresies worthy of death. The "dissenters" reconcile themselves to each other. But why should I only dissent (think otherwise) about a thing? why not push the thinking otherwise to its last extremity, _viz._, that of no longer having any regard at all for the thing, and therefore thinking its nothingness, crushing it? Then the _conception_ itself has an end, because there is no longer anything to conceive of. Why am I to say, let us suppose, "God is not Allah, not Brahma, not Jehovah, but--God"; but not, "God is nothing but a deception"? Why do people brand me if I am an "atheist"? Because they put the creature above the creator ("They honor and serve the creature more than the Creator"[224]) and require a _ruling object_, that the subject may be right _submissive_. I am to bend _beneath_ the absolute, I _ought_ to. By the "realm of thoughts" Christianity has completed itself; the thought is that inwardness in which all the world's lights go out, all existence becomes existenceless, the inward man (the heart, the head) is all in all. This realm of thoughts awaits its deliverance, awaits, like the Sphinx, Oedipus's key-word to the riddle, that it may enter in at last to its death. I am the annihilator of its continuance, for in the creator's realm it no longer forms a realm of its own, not a State in the State, but a creature of my creative--thoughtlessness. Only together and at the same time with the benumbed _thinking_ world can the world of Christians, Christianity and religion itself, come to its downfall; only when thoughts run out are there no more believers. To the thinker his thinking is a "sublime labor, a sacred activity," and it rests on a firm _faith_, the faith in truth. At first praying is a sacred activity, then this sacred "devotion" passes over into a rational and reasoning "thinking," which, however, likewise retains in the "sacred truth" its un-derangeable basis of faith, and is only a marvelous machine that the spirit of truth winds up for its service. Free thinking and free science busy _me_--for it is not I that am free, not _I_ that busy myself, but thinking is free and busies me--with heaven and the heavenly or "divine"; that is, properly, with the world and the worldly, not this world but "another" world; it is only the reversing and deranging of the world, a busying with the _essence_ of the world, therefore a _derangement_. The thinker is blind to the immediateness of things, and incapable of mastering them: he does not eat, does not drink, does not enjoy; for the eater and drinker is never the thinker, nay, the latter forgets eating and drinking, his getting on in life, the cares of nourishment, etc., over his thinking; he forgets it as the praying man too forgets it. This is why he appears to the forceful son of nature as a queer Dick, a _fool_,--even if he does look upon him as holy, just as lunatics appeared so to the ancients. Free thinking is lunacy, because it is _pure movement of the inwardness_, of the merely _inward man_, which guides and regulates the rest of the man. The shaman and the speculative philosopher mark the bottom and top rounds on the ladder of the _inward_ man, the--Mongol. Shaman and philosopher fight with ghosts, demons, _spirits_, gods. Totally different from this _free_ thinking is _own_ thinking, _my_ thinking, a thinking which does not guide me, but is guided, continued, or broken off, by me at my pleasure. The distinction of this own thinking from free thinking is similar to that of own sensuality, which I satisfy at pleasure, from free, unruly sensuality to which I succumb. Feuerbach, in the "Principles of the Philosophy of the Future," is always harping upon _being_. In this he too, with all his antagonism to Hegel and the absolute philosophy, is stuck fast in abstraction; for "being" is abstraction, as is even "the I." Only _I am_ not abstraction alone: _I am_ all in all, consequently even abstraction or nothing; I am all and nothing; I am not a mere thought, but at the same time I am full of thoughts, a thought-world. Hegel condemns the own, mine,[225]--"opinion."[226] "Absolute thinking" is that thinking which forgets that it is _my_ thinking, that I think, and that it exists only through _me_. But I, as I, swallow up again what is mine, am its master; it is only my _opinion_, which I can at any moment _change_, _i. e._ annihilate, take back into myself, and consume. Feuerbach wants to smite Hegel's "absolute thinking" with _unconquered being_. But in me being is as much conquered as thinking is. It is _my_ being, as the other is _my_ thinking. With this, of course, Feuerbach does not get further than to the proof, trivial in itself, that I require the _senses_ for everything, or that I cannot entirely do without these organs. Certainly I cannot think if I do not exist sensuously. But for thinking as well as for feeling, and so for the abstract as well as for the sensuous, I need above all things _myself_, this quite particular myself, this _unique_ myself. If I were not this one, _e. g._ Hegel, I should not look at the world as I do look at it, I should not pick out of it that philosophical system which just I as Hegel do, etc. I should indeed have senses, as do other people too, but I should not utilize them as I do. Thus the reproach is brought up against Hegel by Feuerbach[227] that he misuses language, understanding by many words something else than what natural consciousness takes them for; and yet he too commits the same fault when he gives the "sensuous" a sense of unusual eminence. Thus it is said, p. 69, "the sensuous is not the profane, the destitute of thought, the obvious, that which is understood of itself." But, if it is the sacred, the full of thought, the recondite, that which can be understood only through mediation,--well, then it is no longer what people call the sensuous. The sensuous is only that which exists for _the senses_; what, on the other hand, is enjoyable only to those who enjoy with _more_ than the senses, who go beyond sense-enjoyment or sense-reception, is at most mediated or introduced by the senses, _i. e._ the senses constitute a _condition_ for obtaining it, but it is no longer anything sensuous. The sensuous, whatever it may be, when taken up into me becomes something non-sensuous, which, however, may again have sensuous effects, _e. g._ by the stirring of my emotions and my blood. It is well that Feuerbach brings sensuousness to honor, but the only thing he is able to do with it is to clothe the materialism of his "new philosophy" with what had hitherto been the property of idealism, the "absolute philosophy." As little as people let it be talked into them that one can live on the "spiritual" alone without bread, so little will they believe his word that as a sensuous being one is already everything, and so spiritual, full of thoughts, etc. Nothing at all is justified by _being_. What is thought of _is_ as well as what is not thought of; the stone in the street _is_, and my notion of it _is_ too. Both are only in different _spaces_, the former in airy space, the latter in my head, in _me_; for I am space like the street. The professionals, the privileged, brook no freedom of thought, _i. e._ no thoughts that do not come from the "Giver of all good," be he called God, pope, church, or whatever else. If anybody has such illegitimate thoughts, he must whisper them into his confessor's ear, and have himself chastised by him till the slave-whip becomes unendurable to the free thoughts. In other ways too the professional spirit takes care that free thoughts shall not come at all: first and foremost, by a wise education. He on whom the principles of morality have been duly inculcated never becomes free again from moralizing thoughts, and robbery, perjury, overreaching, and the like, remain to him fixed ideas against which no freedom of thought protects him. He has his thoughts "from above," and gets no further. It is different with the holders of concessions or patents. Every one must be able to have and form thoughts as he will. If he has the patent, or the concession, of a capacity to think, he needs no special _privilege_. But, as "all men are rational," it is free to every one to put into his head any thoughts whatever, and, to the extent of the patent of his natural endowment, to have a greater or less wealth of thoughts. Now one hears the admonitions that one "is to honor all opinions and convictions," that "every conviction is authorized," that one must be "tolerant to the views of others," etc. But "your thoughts are not my thoughts, and your ways are not my ways." Or rather, I mean the reverse: Your thoughts are _my_ thoughts, which I dispose of as I will, and which I strike down unmercifully; they are my property, which I annihilate as I list. I do not wait for authorization from you first, to decompose and blow away your thoughts. It does not matter to me that you call these thoughts yours too, they remain mine nevertheless, and how I will proceed with them is _my affair_, not a usurpation. It may please me to leave you in your thoughts; then I keep still. Do you believe thoughts fly around free like birds, so that every one may get himself some which he may then make good against me as his inviolable property? What is flying around is all--_mine_. Do you believe you have your thoughts for yourselves and need answer to no one for them, or, as you do also say, you have to give an account of them to God only? No, your great and small thoughts belong to me, and I handle them at my pleasure. The thought is my _own_ only when I have no misgiving about bringing it in danger of death every moment, when I do not have to fear its loss as a _loss for me_, a loss of me. The thought is my own only when I can indeed subjugate it, but it never can subjugate me, never fanaticizes me, makes me the tool of its realization. So freedom of thought exists when I can have all possible thoughts; but the thoughts become property only by not being able to become masters. In the time of freedom of thought, thoughts (ideas) _rule_; but, if I attain to property in thought, they stand as my creatures. If the hierarchy had not so penetrated men to the innermost as to take from them all courage to pursue free thoughts, _i. e._ thoughts perhaps displeasing to God, one would have to consider freedom of thought just as empty a word as, say, a freedom of digestion. According to the professionals' opinion, the thought is _given_ to me; according to the freethinkers', _I seek_ the thought. There the _truth_ is already found and extant, only I must--receive it from its Giver by grace; here the truth is to be sought and is my goal, lying in the future, toward which I have to run. In both cases the truth (the true thought) lies outside me, and I aspire to _get_ it, be it by presentation (grace), be it by earning (merit of my own). Therefore, (1) The truth is a _privilege_, (2) No, the way to it is _patent_ to all, and neither the Bible nor the holy fathers nor the church nor any one else is in possession of the truth; but one can come into possession of it by--speculating. Both, one sees, are _propertyless_ in relation to the truth: they have it either as a _fief_ (for the "holy father," _e. g._, is not a unique person; as unique he is this Sixtus, Clement, etc., but he does not have the truth as Sixtus, Clement, etc., but as "holy father," _i. e._ as a spirit) or as an _ideal_. As a fief, it is only for a few (the privileged); as an ideal, for _all_ (the patentees). Freedom of thought, then, has the meaning that we do indeed all walk in the dark and in the paths of error, but every one can on this path approach _the truth_ and is accordingly on the right path ("All roads lead to Rome, to the world's end, etc."). Hence freedom of thought means this much, that the true thought is not my _own_; for, if it were this, how should people want to shut me off from it? Thinking has become entirely free, and has laid down a lot of truths which _I_ must accommodate myself to. It seeks to complete itself into a _system_ and to bring itself to an absolute "constitution." In the State _e. g._ it seeks for the idea, say, till it has brought out the "rational State," in which I am then obliged to be suited; in man (anthropology), till it "has found man." The thinker is distinguished from the believer only by believing _much more_ than the latter, who on his part thinks of much less as signified by his faith (creed). The thinker has a thousand tenets of faith where the believer gets along with few; but the former brings _coherence_ into his tenets, and takes the coherence in turn for the scale to estimate their worth by. If one or the other does not fit into his budget, he throws it out. The thinkers run parallel to the believers in their pronouncements. Instead of "If it is from God you will not root it out," the word is "If it is from the _truth_, is true, etc."; instead of "Give God the glory,"--"Give truth the glory." But it is very much the same to me whether God or the truth wins; first and foremost _I_ want to win. Aside from this, how is an "unlimited freedom" to be thinkable inside of the State or society? The State may well protect one against another, but yet it must not let itself be endangered by an unmeasured freedom, a so-called unbridledness. Thus in "freedom of instruction" the State declares only this,--that it is suited with every one who instructs as the State (or, speaking more comprehensibly, the political power) would have it. The point for the competitors is this "as the State would have it." If the clergy, _e. g._, does not will as the State does, then it itself excludes itself from _competition_ (_vid._ France). The limit that is necessarily drawn in the State for any and all competition is called "the oversight and superintendence of the State." In bidding freedom of instruction keep within the due bounds, the State at the same time fixes the scope of freedom of thought; because, as a rule, people do not think farther than their teachers have thought. Hear Minister Guizot: "The great difficulty of to-day is the _guiding and dominating of the mind_. Formerly the church fulfilled this mission; now it is not adequate to it. It is from the university that this great service must be expected, and the university will not fail to perform it. We, the _government_, have the duty of supporting it therein. The charter calls for the freedom of thought and that of conscience."[228] So, in favor of freedom of thought and conscience, the minister demands "the guiding and dominating of the mind." Catholicism haled the examinee before the forum of ecclesiasticism, Protestantism before that of biblical Christianity. It would be but little bettered if one haled him before that of reason, as Ruge, _e. g._, wants to.[229] Whether the church, the Bible, or reason (to which, moreover, Luther and Huss already appealed) is the _sacred authority_ makes no difference in essentials. The "question of our time" does not become soluble even when one puts it thus: Is anything general authorized, or only the individual? Is the generality (such as State, law, custom, morality, etc.) authorized, or individuality? It becomes soluble for the first time when one no longer asks after an "authorization" at all, and does not carry on a mere fight against "privileges."--A "rational" freedom of teaching, which "recognizes only the conscience of reason,"[230] does not bring us to the goal; we require an _egoistic_ freedom of teaching rather, a freedom of teaching for all ownness, wherein _I_ become _audible_ and can announce myself unchecked. That I make myself "_audible_,"[231] this alone is "reason,"[232] be I ever so irrational; in my making myself heard, and so hearing myself, others as well as I myself enjoy me, and at the same time consume me. What would be gained if, as formerly the orthodox I, the loyal I, the moral I, etc., was free, now the rational I should become free? Would this be the freedom of me? If I am free as "rational I," then the rational in me, or reason, is free; and this freedom of reason, or freedom of the thought, was the ideal of the Christian world from of old. They wanted to make thinking--and, as aforesaid, faith is also thinking, as thinking is faith--free; the thinkers, _i. e._ the believers as well as the rational, were to be free; for the rest freedom was impossible. But the freedom of thinkers is the "freedom of the children of God," and at the same time the most merciless--hierarchy or dominion of the thought; for _I_ succumb to the thought. If thoughts are free, I am their slave; I have no power over them, and am dominated by them. But I want to have the thought, want to be full of thoughts, but at the same time I want to be thoughtless, and, instead of freedom of thought, I preserve for myself thoughtlessness. If the point is to have myself understood and to make communications, then assuredly I can make use only of _human_ means, which are at my command because I am at the same time man. And really I have thoughts only as _man_; as I, I am at the same time _thoughtless_.[233] He who cannot get rid of a thought is so far only man, is a thrall of _language_, this human institution, this treasury of _human_ thoughts. Language or "the word" tyrannizes hardest over us, because it brings up against us a whole army of _fixed ideas_. Just observe yourself in the act of reflection, right now, and you will find how you make progress only by becoming thoughtless and speechless every moment. You are not thoughtless and speechless merely in (say) sleep, but even in the deepest reflection; yes, precisely then most so. And only by this thoughtlessness, this unrecognized "freedom of thought" or freedom from the thought, are you your own. Only from it do you arrive at putting language to use as your _property_. If thinking is not _my_ thinking, it is merely a spun-out thought; it is slave work, or the work of a "servant obeying at the word." For not a thought, but I, am the beginning for my thinking, and therefore I am its goal too, even as its whole course is only a course of my self-enjoyment; for absolute or free thinking, on the other hand, thinking itself is the beginning, and it plagues itself with propounding this beginning as the extremest "abstraction" (_e. g._ as being). This very abstraction, or this thought, is then spun out further. Absolute thinking is the affair of the human spirit, and this is a holy spirit. Hence this thinking is an affair of the parsons, who have "a sense for it," a sense for the "highest interests of mankind," for "the spirit." To the believer, truths are a _settled_ thing, a fact; to the freethinker, a thing that is still to be _settled_. Be absolute thinking ever so unbelieving, its incredulity has its limits, and there does remain a belief in the truth, in the spirit, in the idea and its final victory: this thinking does not sin against the holy spirit. But all thinking that does not sin against the holy spirit is belief in spirits or ghosts. I can as little renounce thinking as feeling, the spirit's activity as little as the activity of the senses. As feeling is our sense for things, so thinking is our sense for essences (thoughts). Essences have their existence in everything sensuous, especially in the word. The power of words follows that of things: first one is coerced by the rod, afterward by conviction. The might of things overcomes our courage, our spirit; against the power of a conviction, and so of the word, even the rack and the sword lose their overpoweringness and force. The men of conviction are the priestly men, who resist every enticement of Satan. Christianity took away from the things of this world only their irresistibleness, made us independent of them. In like manner I raise myself above truths and their power: as I am supersensual, so I am supertrue. _Before me_ truths are as common and as indifferent as things; they do not carry me away, and do not inspire me with enthusiasm. There exists not even one truth, not right, not freedom, humanity, etc., that has stability before me, and to which I subject myself. They are _words_, nothing but words, as all things are to the Christian nothing but "vain things." In words and truths (every word is a truth, as Hegel asserts that one cannot _tell_ a lie) there is no salvation for me, as little as there is for the Christian in things and vanities. As the riches of this world do not make me happy, so neither do its truths. It is now no longer Satan, but the spirit, that plays the story of the temptation; and he does not seduce by the things of this world, but by its thoughts, by the "glitter of the idea." Along with worldly goods, all sacred goods too must be put away as no longer valuable. Truths are phrases, ways of speaking, words ([Greek: logos]); brought into connection, or into an articulate series, they form logic, science, philosophy. For thinking and speaking I need truths and words, as I do foods for eating; without them I cannot think nor speak. Truths are men's thoughts, set down in words and therefore just as extant as other things, although extant only for the mind or for thinking, they are human institutions and human creatures, and, even if they are given out for divine revelations, there still remains in them the quality of alienness for me; yes, as my own creatures they are already alienated from me after the act of creation. The Christian man is the man with faith in thinking, who believes in the supreme dominion of thoughts and wants to bring thoughts, so-called "principles," to dominion. Many a one does indeed test the thoughts, and chooses none of them for his master without criticism, but in this he is like the dog who sniffs at people to smell out "his master": he is always aiming at the _ruling_ thought. The Christian may reform and revolt an infinite deal, may demolish the ruling concepts of centuries; he will always aspire to a new "principle" or new master again, always set up a higher or "deeper" truth again, always call forth a cult again, always proclaim a spirit called to dominion, lay down a _law_ for all. If there is even one truth only to which man has to devote his life and his powers because he is man, then he is subjected to a rule, dominion, law, etc.; he is a servingman. It is supposed that, _e. g._, man, humanity, liberty, etc., are such truths. On the other hand, one can say thus: Whether you will further occupy yourself with thinking depends on you; only know that, _if_ in your thinking you would like to make out anything worthy of notice, many hard problems are to be solved, without vanquishing which you cannot get far. There exists, therefore, no duty and no calling for you to meddle with thoughts (ideas, truths); but, if you will do so, you will do well to utilize what the forces of others have already achieved toward clearing up these difficult subjects. Thus, therefore, he who will think does assuredly have a task, which _he_ consciously or unconsciously sets for himself in willing that; but no one has the task of thinking or of believing.--In the former case it may be said, You do not go far enough, you have a narrow and biased interest, you do not go to the bottom of the thing; in short, you do not completely subdue it. But, on the other hand, however far you may come at any time, you are still always at the end, you have no call to step farther, and you can have it as you will or as you are able. It stands with this as with any other piece of work, which you can give up when the humor for it wears off. Just so, if you can no longer _believe_ a thing, you do not have to force yourself into faith or to busy yourself lastingly as if with a sacred truth of the faith, as theologians or philosophers do, but you can tranquilly draw back your interest from it and let it run. Priestly spirits will indeed expound this your lack of interest as "laziness, thoughtlessness, obduracy, self-deception," and the like. But do you just let the trumpery lie, notwithstanding. No thing,[234] no so-called "highest interest of mankind," no "sacred cause,"[235] is worth your serving it, and occupying yourself with it for _its sake_; you may seek its worth in this alone, whether it is worth anything to _you_ for your sake. Become like children, the biblical saying admonishes us. But children have no sacred interest and know nothing of a "good cause." They know all the more accurately what they have a fancy for; and they think over, to the best of their powers, how they are to arrive at it. Thinking will as little cease as feeling. But the power of thoughts and ideas, the dominion of theories and principles, the sovereignty of the spirit, in short the--_hierarchy_, lasts as long as the parsons, _i. e._ theologians, philosophers, statesmen, philistines, liberals, schoolmasters, servants, parents, children, married couples, Proudhon, George Sand, Bluntschli, etc., etc., have the floor; the hierarchy will endure as long as people believe in, think of, or even criticise, principles; for even the most inexorable criticism, which undermines all current principles, still does finally _believe_ in _the principle_. Every one criticises, but the criterion is different. People run after the "right" criterion. The right criterion is the first presupposition. The critic starts from a proposition, a truth, a belief. This is not a creation of the critic, but of the dogmatist; nay, commonly it is actually taken up out of the culture of the time without further ceremony, like _e. g._ "liberty," "humanity," etc. The critic has not "discovered man," but this truth has been established as "man" by the dogmatist, and the critic (who, besides, may be the same person with him) believes in this truth, this article of faith. In this faith, and possessed by this faith, he criticises. The secret of criticism is some "truth" or other: this remains its energizing mystery. But I distinguish between _servile_ and _own_ criticism. If I criticise under the presupposition of a supreme being, my criticism _serves_ the being and is carried on for its sake: if, _e. g._, I am possessed by the belief in a "free State," then everything that has a bearing on it I criticise from the standpoint of whether it is suitable to this State, for I _love_ this State; if I criticise as a pious man, then for me everything falls into the classes of divine and diabolical, and before my criticism nature consists of traces of God or traces of the devil (hence names like Godsgift, Godmount, the Devil's Pulpit, etc.), men of believers and unbelievers, etc.; if I criticise while believing in man as the "true essence," then for me everything falls primarily into the classes of man and the un-man, etc. Criticism has to this day remained a work of love: for at all times we exercised it for the love of some being. All servile criticism is a product of love, a possessedness, and proceeds according to that New Testament precept, "Test everything and hold fast the _good_."[236] "The good" is the touchstone, the criterion. The good, returning under a thousand names and forms, remained always the presupposition, remained the dogmatic fixed point for this criticism, remained the--fixed idea. The critic, in setting to work, impartially presupposes the "truth," and seeks for the truth in the belief that it is to be found. He wants to ascertain the true, and has in it that very "good." Presuppose means nothing else than put a _thought_ in front, or think something before everything else and think the rest from the starting-point of this that has _been thought_, _i. e._ measure and criticise it by this. In other words, this is as much as to say that thinking is to begin with something already thought. If thinking began at all, instead of being begun, if thinking were a subject, an acting personality of its own, as even the plant is such, then indeed there would be no abandoning the principle that thinking must begin with itself. But it is just the personification of thinking that brings to pass those innumerable errors. In the Hegelian system they always talk as if thinking or "the thinking spirit" (_i. e._ personified thinking, thinking as a ghost) thought and acted; in critical liberalism it is always said that "criticism" does this and that, or else that "self-consciousness" finds this and that. But, if thinking ranks as the personal actor, thinking itself must be presupposed; if criticism ranks as such, a thought must likewise stand in front. Thinking and criticism could be active only starting from themselves, would have to be themselves the presupposition of their activity, as without being they could not be active. But thinking, as a thing presupposed, is a fixed thought, a _dogma_; thinking and criticism, therefore, can start only from a _dogma_, _i. e._ from a thought, a fixed idea, a presupposition. With this we come back again to what was enunciated above, that Christianity consists in the development of a world of thoughts, or that it is the proper "freedom of thought," the "free thought," the "free spirit." The "true" criticism, which I called "servile," is therefore just as much "free" criticism, for it is not _my own_. The case stands otherwise when what is yours is not made into something that is of itself, not personified, not made independent an a "spirit" to itself. _Your_ thinking has for a presupposition not "thinking," but _you_. But thus you do presuppose yourself after all? Yes, but not for myself, but for my thinking. Before my thinking, there is--I. From this it follows that my thinking is not preceded by a _thought_, or that my thinking is without a "presupposition." For the presupposition which I am for my thinking is not one _made by thinking_, not one _thought of_, but it is _posited_ thinking _itself_, it is the _owner_ of the thought, and proves only that thinking is nothing more than--_property_, _i. e._ that an "independent" thinking, a "thinking spirit," does not exist at all. This reversal of the usual way of regarding things might so resemble an empty playing with abstractions that even those against whom it is directed would acquiesce in the harmless aspect I give it, if practical consequences were not connected with it. To bring these into a concise expression, the assertion now made is that man is not the measure of all things, but I am this measure. The servile critic has before his eye another being, an idea, which he means to serve; therefore he only slays the false idols for his God. What is done for the love of this being, what else should it be but a--work of love? But I, when I criticise, do not even have myself before my eyes, but am only doing myself a pleasure, amusing myself according to my taste; according to my several needs I chew the thing up or only inhale its odor. The distinction between the two attitudes will come out still more strikingly if one reflects that the servile critic, because love guides him, supposes he is serving the thing [cause] itself. _The_ truth, or "truth in general," people are bound not to give up, but to seek for. What else is it but the _être suprême_, the highest essence? Even "true criticism" would have to despair if it lost faith in the truth. And yet the truth is only a--_thought_; but it is not merely "a" thought, but the thought that is above all thoughts, the irrefragable thought; it is _the_ thought itself, which gives the first hallowing to all others; it is the consecration of thoughts, the "absolute," the "sacred" thought. The truth wears longer than all the gods; for it is only in the truth's service, and for love of it, that people have overthrown the gods and at last God himself. "The truth" outlasts the downfall of the world of gods, for it is the immortal soul of this transitory world of gods, it is Deity itself. I will answer Pilate's question, What is truth? Truth is the free thought, the free idea, the free spirit; truth is what is free from you, what is not your own, what is not in your power. But truth is also the completely unindependent, impersonal, unreal, and incorporeal; truth cannot step forward as you do, cannot move, change, develop; truth awaits and receives everything from you, and itself is only through you; for it exists only--in your head. You concede that the truth is a thought, but say that not every thought is a true one, or, as you are also likely to express it, not every thought is truly and really a thought. And by what do you measure and recognize the thought? By _your impotence_, to wit, by your being no longer able to make any successful assault on it! When it overpowers you, inspires you, and carries you away, then you hold it to be the true one. Its dominion over you certifies to you its truth; and, when it possesses you, and you are possessed by it, then you feel well with it, for then you have found your--_lord and master_. When you were seeking the truth, what did your heart then long for? For your master! You did not aspire to _your_ might, but to a Mighty One, and wanted to exalt a Mighty One ("Exalt ye the Lord our God!"). The truth, my dear Pilate, is--the Lord, and all who seek the truth are seeking and praising the Lord. Where does the Lord exist? Where else but in your head? He is only spirit, and, wherever you believe you really see him, there he is a--ghost; for the Lord is merely something that is thought of, and it was only the Christian pains and agony to make the invisible visible, the spiritual corporeal, that generated the ghost and was the frightful misery of the belief in ghosts. As long as you believe in the truth, you do not believe in yourself, and you are a--_servant_, a--_religious man_. You alone are the truth, or rather, you are more than the truth, which is nothing at all before you. You too do assuredly ask about the truth, you too do assuredly "criticise," but you do not ask about a "higher truth,"--to wit, one that should be higher than you,--nor criticise according to the criterion of such a truth. You address yourself to thoughts and notions, as you do to the appearances of things, only for the purpose of making them palatable to you, enjoyable to you, and your _own_: you want only to subdue them and become their _owner_, you want to orient yourself and feel at home in them, and you find them true, or see them in their true light, when they can no longer slip away from you, no longer have any unseized or uncomprehended place, or when they are _right for you_, when they are your _property_. If afterward they become heavier again, if they wriggle themselves out of your power again, then that is just their untruth,--to wit, your impotence. Your impotence is their power, your humility their exaltation. Their truth, therefore, is you, or is the nothing which you are for them and in which they dissolve: their truth is their _nothingness_. Only as the property of me do the spirits, the truths, get to rest; and they then for the first time really are, when they have been deprived of their sorry existence and made a property of mine, when it is no longer said "the truth develops itself, rules, asserts itself; history (also a concept) wins the victory," and the like. The truth never has won a victory, but was always my _means_ to the victory, like the sword ("the sword of truth"). The truth is dead, a letter, a word, a material that I can use up. All truth by itself is dead, a corpse; it is alive only in the same way as my lungs are alive,--to wit, in the measure of my own vitality. Truths are material, like vegetables and weeds; as to whether vegetable or weed, the decision lies in me. Objects are to me only material that I use up. Wherever I put my hand I grasp a truth, which I trim for myself. The truth is certain to me, and I do not need to long after it. To do the truth a service is in no case my intent; it is to me only a nourishment for my thinking head, as potatoes are for my digesting stomach, or as a friend is for my social heart. As long as I have the humor and force for thinking, every truth serves me only for me to work it up according to my powers. As reality or worldliness is "vain and a thing of naught" for Christians, so is the truth for me. It exists, exactly as much as the things of this world go on existing although the Christian has proved their nothingness; but it is vain, because it has its _value_ not _in itself_ but _in me_. _Of itself_ it is _valueless_. The truth is a--_creature_. As you produce innumerable things by your activity, yes, shape the earth's surface anew and set up works of men everywhere, so too you may still ascertain numberless truths by your thinking, and we will gladly take delight in them. Nevertheless, as I do not please to hand myself over to serve your newly discovered machines mechanically, but only help to set them running for my benefit, so too I will only use your truths, without letting myself be used for their demands. All truths _beneath_ me are to my liking; a truth _above_ me, a truth that I should have to _direct_ myself by, I am not acquainted with. For me there is no truth, for nothing is more than I! Not even my essence, not even the essence of man, is more than I! than I, this "drop in the bucket," this "insignificant man!" You believe that you have done the utmost when you boldly assert that, because every time has its own truth, there is no "absolute truth." Why, with this you nevertheless still leave to each time its truth, and you quite genuinely create an "absolute truth," a truth that no time lacks, because every time, however its truth may be, still has a "truth." Is it meant only that people have been thinking in every time, and so have had thoughts or truths, and that in the subsequent time these were other than they were in the earlier? No, the word is to be that every time had its "truth of faith"; and in fact none has yet appeared in which a "higher truth" has not been recognized, a truth that people believed they must subject themselves to as "highness and majesty." Every truth of a time is its fixed idea, and, if people later found another truth, this always happened only because they sought for another; they only reformed the folly and put a modern dress on it. For they did want--who would dare doubt their justification for this?--they wanted to be "inspired by an idea." They wanted to be dominated,--possessed, by a _thought_! The most modern ruler of this kind is "our essence," or "man." For all free criticism a thought was the criterion; for own criticism I am, I the unspeakable, and so not the merely thought-of; for what is merely thought of is always speakable, because word and thought coincide. That is true which is mine, untrue that whose own I am; true, _e. g._, the union; untrue, the State and society. "Free and true" criticism takes care for the consistent dominion of a thought, an idea, a spirit; "own" criticism, for nothing but my _self-enjoyment_. But in this the latter is in fact--and we will not spare it this "ignominy"!--like the bestial criticism of instinct. I, like the criticising beast, am concerned only for _myself_, not "for the cause." _I_ am the criterion of truth, but I am not an idea, but more than idea, _i. e._ unutterable. _My_ criticism is not a "free" criticism, not free from me, and not "servile," not in the service of an idea, but an _own_ criticism. True or human criticism makes out only whether something is _suitable_ to man, to the true man; but by own criticism you ascertain whether it is suitable to _you_. Free criticism busies itself with _ideas_, and therefore is always theoretical. However it may rage against ideas, it still does not get clear of them. It pitches into the ghosts, but it can do this only as it holds them to be ghosts. The ideas it has to do with do not fully disappear; the morning breeze of a new day does not scare them away. The critic may indeed come to ataraxy before ideas, but he never gets _rid_ of them, _i. e._ he will never comprehend that above the _bodily man_ there does not exist something higher,--to wit, liberty, his humanity, etc. He always has a "calling" of man still left, "humanity." And this idea of humanity remains unrealized, just because it is an "idea" and is to remain such. If, on the other hand, I grasp the idea as _my_ idea, then it is already realized, because _I_ am its reality; its reality consists in the fact that I, the bodily, have it. They say, the idea of liberty realizes itself in the history of the world. The reverse is the case; this idea is real as a man thinks it, and it is real in the measure in which it is idea, _i. e._ in which I think it or _have_ it. It is not the idea of liberty that develops itself, but men develop themselves, and, of course, in this self-development develop their thinking too. In short, the critic is not yet _owner_; because he still fights with ideas as with powerful aliens,--as the Christian is not owner of his "bad desires" so long as he has to combat them; for him who contends against vice, vice _exists_. Criticism remains stuck fast in the "freedom of knowing," the freedom of the spirit, and the spirit gains its proper freedom when it fills itself with the pure, true idea; this is the freedom of thinking, which cannot be without thoughts. Criticism smites one idea only by another, _e. g._ that of privilege by that of manhood, or that of egoism by that of unselfishness. In general, the beginning of Christianity comes on the stage again in its critical end, egoism being combated here as there. I am not to make myself (the individual) count, but the idea, the general. Why, warfare of the priesthood with _egoism_, of the spiritually-minded with the worldly-minded, constitutes the substance of all Christian history. In the newest criticism this war only becomes all-embracing, fanaticism complete. Indeed, neither can it pass away till it passes thus, after it has had its life and its rage out. * * * * * Whether what I think and do is Christian, what do I care? Whether it is human, liberal, humane, whether unhuman, illiberal, inhuman, what do I ask about that? If only it accomplishes what I want, if only I satisfy myself in it, then overlay it with predicates as you will; it is all alike to me. Perhaps I too, in the very next moment, defend myself against my former thoughts; I too am likely to change suddenly my mode of action; but not on account of its not corresponding to Christianity, not on account of its running counter to the eternal rights of man, not on account of its affronting the idea of mankind, humanity, and humanitarianism, but--because I am no longer all in it, because it no longer furnishes me any full enjoyment, because I doubt the earlier thought or no longer please myself in the mode of action just now practised. As the world as property has become a _material_ with which I undertake what I will, so the spirit too as property must sink down into a _material_ before which I no longer entertain any sacred dread. Then, firstly, I shall shudder no more before a thought, let it appear as presumptuous and "devilish" as it will, because, if it threatens to become too inconvenient and unsatisfactory for _me_, its end lies in my power; but neither shall I recoil from any deed because there dwells in it a spirit of godlessness, immorality, wrongfulness, as little as St. Boniface pleased to desist, through religious scrupulousness, from cutting down the sacred oak of the heathens. If the _things_ of the world have once become vain, the _thoughts_ of the spirit must also become vain. No thought is sacred, for let no thought rank as "devotions";[237] no feeling is sacred (no sacred feeling of friendship, mother's feelings, etc.), no belief is sacred. They are all _alienable_, my alienable property, and are annihilated, as they are created, by _me_. The Christian can lose all _things_ or objects, the most loved persons, these "objects" of his love, without giving up himself (_i. e._, in the Christian sense, his spirit, his soul) as lost. The owner can cast from him all the _thoughts_ that were dear to his heart and kindled his zeal, and will likewise "gain a thousandfold again," because he, their creator, remains. Unconsciously and involuntarily we all strive toward ownness, and there will hardly be one among us who has not given up a sacred feeling, a sacred thought, a sacred belief; nay, we probably meet no one who could not still deliver himself from one or another of his sacred thoughts. All our contention against convictions starts from the opinion that maybe we are capable of driving our opponent out of his intrenchments of thought. But what I do unconsciously I half do, and therefore after every victory over a faith I become again the _prisoner_ (possessed) of a faith which then takes my whole self anew into its _service_, and makes me an enthusiast for reason after I have ceased to be enthusiastic for the Bible, or an enthusiast for the idea of humanity after I have fought long enough for that of Christianity. Doubtless, as owner of thoughts, I shall cover my property with my shield, just as I do not, as owner of things, willingly let everybody help himself to them; but at the same time I shall look forward smilingly to the outcome of the battle, smilingly lay the shield on the corpses of my thoughts and my faith, smilingly triumph when I am beaten. That is the very humor of the thing. Every one who has "sublimer feelings" is able to vent his humor on the pettinesses of men; but to let it play with all "great thoughts, sublime feelings, noble inspiration, and sacred faith" presupposes that I am the owner of all. If religion has set up the proposition that we are sinners altogether, I set over against it the other: we are perfect altogether! For we are, every moment, all that we can be; and we never need be more. Since no defect cleaves to us, sin has no meaning either. Show me a sinner in the world still, if no one any longer needs to do what suits a superior! If I only need do what suits myself, I am no sinner if I do not do what suits myself, as I do not injure in myself a "holy one"; if, on the other hand, I am to be pious, then I must do what suits God; if I am to act humanly, I must do what suits the essence of man, the idea of mankind, etc. What religion calls the "sinner," humanitarianism calls the "egoist." But, once more: if I need not do what suits any other, is the "egoist," in whom humanitarianism has borne to itself a new-fangled devil, anything more than a piece of nonsense? The egoist, before whom the humane shudder, is a spook as much as the devil is: he exists only as a bogie and phantasm in their brain. If they were not unsophisticatedly drifting back and forth in the antediluvian opposition of good and evil, to which they have given the modern names of "human" and "egoistic," they would not have freshened up the hoary "sinner" into an "egoist" either, and put a new patch on an old garment. But they could not do otherwise, for they hold it for their task to be "men." They are rid of the Good One; good is left![238] We are perfect altogether, and on the whole earth there is not one man who is a sinner! There are crazy people who imagine that they are God the Father, God the Son, or the man in the moon, and so too the world swarms with fools who seem to themselves to be sinners; but, as the former are not the man in the moon, so the latter are--not sinners. Their sin is imaginary. Yet, it is insidiously objected, their craziness or their possessedness is at least their sin. Their possessedness is nothing but what they--could achieve, the result of their development, just as Luther's faith in the Bible was all that he was--competent to make out. The one brings himself into the madhouse with his development, the other brings himself therewith into the Pantheon and to the loss of--Valhalla. There is no sinner and no sinful egoism! Get away from me with your "philanthropy"! Creep in, you philanthropist, into the "dens of vice," linger awhile in the throng of the great city: will you not everywhere find sin, and sin, and again sin? Will you not wail over corrupt humanity, not lament at the monstrous egoism? Will you see a rich man without finding him pitiless and "egoistic"? Perhaps you already call yourself an atheist, but you remain true to the Christian feeling that a camel will sooner go through a needle's eye than a rich man not be an "un-man." How many do you see anyhow that you would not throw into the "egoistic mass"? What, therefore, has your philanthropy [love of man] found? Nothing but unlovable men! And where do they all come from? From you, from your philanthropy! You brought the sinner with you in your head, therefore you found him, therefore you inserted him everywhere. Do not call men sinners, and they are not: you alone are the creator of sinners; you, who fancy that you love men, are the very one to throw them into the mire of sin, the very one to divide them into vicious and virtuous, into men and un-men, the very one to befoul them with the slaver of your possessedness; for you love not _men_, but _man_. But I tell you, you have never seen a sinner, you have only--dreamed of him. Self-enjoyment is embittered to me by my thinking I must serve another, by my fancying myself under obligation to him, by my holding myself called to "self-sacrifice," "resignation," "enthusiasm." All right: if I no longer serve any idea, any "higher essence," then it is clear of itself that I no longer serve any man either, but--under all circumstances--_myself_. But thus I am not merely in fact or in being, but also for my consciousness, the--unique.[239] There pertains to _you_ more than the divine, the human, etc.; _yours_ pertains to you. Look upon yourself as more powerful than they give you out for, and you have more power; look upon yourself as more, and you have more. You are then not merely _called_ to everything divine, _entitled_ to everything human, but _owner_ of what is yours, _i. e._ of all that you possess the force to make your own;[240] _i. e._ you are _appropriate_[241] and capacitated for everything that is yours. People have always supposed that they must give me a destiny lying outside myself, so that at last they demanded that I should lay claim to the human because I am = man. This is the Christian magic circle. Fichte's ego too is the same essence outside me, for every one is ego; and, if only this ego has rights, then it is "the ego," it is not I. But I am not an ego along with other egos, but the sole ego: I am unique. Hence my wants too are unique, and my deeds; in short, everything about me is unique. And it is only as this unique I that I take everything for my own, as I set myself to work, and develop myself, only as this. I do not develop man, nor as man, but, as I, I develop--myself. This is the meaning of the--_unique one_. III THE UNIQUE ONE Pre-Christian and Christian times pursue opposite goals; the former wants to idealize the real, the latter to realize the ideal; the former seeks the "holy spirit," the latter the "glorified body." Hence the former closes with insensitiveness to the real, with "contempt for the world"; the latter will end with the casting off of the ideal, with "contempt for the spirit." The opposition of the real and the ideal is an irreconcilable one, and the one can never become the other: if the ideal became the real, it would no longer be the ideal; and, if the real became the ideal, the ideal alone would be, but not at all the real. The opposition of the two is not to be vanquished otherwise than if _some one_ annihilates both. Only in this "some one," the third party, does the opposition find its end; otherwise idea and reality will ever fail to coincide. The idea cannot be so realized as to remain idea, but is realized only when it dies as idea; and it is the same with the real. But now we have before us in the ancients adherents of the idea, in the moderns adherents of reality. Neither can get clear of the opposition, and both pine only, the one party for the spirit, and, when this craving of the ancient world seemed to be satisfied and this spirit to have come, the others immediately for the secularization of this spirit again, which must forever remain a "pious wish." The pious wish of the ancients was _sanctity_, the pious wish of the moderns is _corporeity_. But, as antiquity had to go down if its longing was to be satisfied (for it consisted only in the longing), so too corporeity can never be attained within the ring of Christianness. As the trait of sanctification or purification goes through the old world (the washings, etc.), so that of incorporation goes through the Christian world: God plunges down into this world, becomes flesh, and wants to redeem it, _i. e._ fill it with himself; but, since he is "the idea" or "the spirit," people (_e. g._ Hegel) in the end introduce the idea into everything, into the world, and prove "that the idea is, that reason is, in everything." "Man" corresponds in the culture of to-day to what the heathen Stoics set up as "the wise man"; the latter, like the former, a--_fleshless_ being. The unreal "wise man," this bodiless "holy one" of the Stoics, became a real person, a bodily "Holy One," in God _made flesh_; the unreal "man," the bodiless ego, will become real in the _corporeal ego_, in me. There winds its way through Christianity the question about the "existence of God," which, taken up ever and ever again, gives testimony that the craving for existence, corporeity, personality, reality, was incessantly busying the heart because it never found a satisfying solution. At last the question about the existence of God fell, but only to rise up again in the proposition that the "divine" had existence (Feuerbach). But this too has no existence, and neither will the last refuge, that the "purely human" is realizable, afford shelter much longer. No idea has existence, for none is capable of corporeity. The scholastic contention of realism and nominalism has the same content; in short, this spins itself out through all Christian history, and cannot end _in_ it. The world of Christians is working at _realizing ideas_ in the individual relations of life, the institutions and laws of the Church and the State; but they make resistance, and always keep back something unembodied (unrealizable). Nevertheless this embodiment is restlessly rushed after, no matter in what degree _corporeity_ constantly fails to result. For realities matter little to the realizer, but it matters everything that they be realizations of the idea. Hence he is ever examining anew whether the realized does in truth have the idea, its kernel, dwelling in it; and in testing the real he at the same time tests the idea, whether it is realizable as he thinks it, or is only thought by him incorrectly, and for that reason unfeasibly. The Christian is no longer to care for family, State, etc., as _existences_; Christians are not to sacrifice themselves for these "divine things" like the ancients, but these are only to be utilized to make the _spirit alive_ in them. The _real_ family has become indifferent, and there is to arise out of it an _ideal_ one which would then be the "truly real," a sacred family, blessed by God, or, according to the liberal way of thinking, a "rational" family. With the ancients family, State, fatherland, etc., is divine as a thing _extant_; with the moderns it is still awaiting divinity, as extant it is only sinful, earthly, and has still to be "redeemed," _i. e._ to become truly real. This has the following meaning: The family, etc., is not the extant and real, but the divine, the idea, is extant and real; whether _this_ family will make itself real by taking up the truly real, the idea, is still unsettled. It is not the individual's task to serve the family as the divine, but, reversely, to serve the divine and to bring to it the still undivine family, _i. e._ to subject everything in the idea's name, to set up the idea's banner everywhere, to bring the idea to real efficacy. But, since the concern of Christianity, as of antiquity, is for the _divine_, they always come out at this again on their opposite ways. At the end of heathenism the divine becomes the _extramundane_, at the end of Christianity the _intramundane_. Antiquity does not succeed in putting it entirely outside the world, and, when Christianity accomplishes this task, the divine instantly longs to get back into the world and wants to "redeem" the world. But within Christianity it does not and cannot come to this, that the divine as _intramundane_ should really become the _mundane itself_: there is enough left that does and must maintain itself unpenetrated as the "bad," irrational, accidental, "egoistic," the "mundane" in the bad sense. Christianity begins with God's becoming man, and carries on its work of conversion and redemption through all time in order to prepare for God a reception in all men and in everything human, and to penetrate everything with the spirit: it sticks to preparing a place for the "spirit." When the accent was at last laid on Man or mankind, it was again the idea that they "_pronounced eternal_." "Man does not die!" They thought they had now found the reality of the idea: _Man_ is the I of history, of the world's history; it is he, this _ideal_, that really develops, _i. e._ _realizes_, himself. He is the really real and corporeal one, for history is his body, in which individuals are only members. Christ is the I of the world's history, even of the pre-Christian; in modern apprehension it is man, the figure of Christ has developed into the _figure of man_: man as such, man absolutely, is the "central point" of history. In "man" the imaginary beginning returns again; for "man" is as imaginary as Christ is. "Man," as the I of the world's history, closes the cycle of Christian apprehensions. Christianity's magic circle would be broken if the strained relation between existence and calling, _i. e._ between me as I am and me as I should be, ceased; it persists only as the longing of the idea for its bodiliness, and vanishes with the relaxing separation of the two: only when the idea remains--idea, as man or mankind is indeed a bodiless idea, is Christianity still extant. The corporeal idea, the corporeal or "completed" spirit, floats before the Christian as "the end of the days" or as the "goal of history"; it is not present time to him. The individual can only have a part in the founding of the Kingdom of God, or, according to the modern notion of the same thing, in the development and history of humanity; and only so far as he has a part in it does a Christian, or according to the modern expression human, value pertain to him; for the rest he is dust and a worm-bag. That the individual is of himself a world's history, and possesses his property in the rest of the world's history, goes beyond what is Christian. To the Christian the world's history is the higher thing, because it is the history of Christ or "man"; to the egoist only _his_ history has value, because he wants to develop only _himself_, not the mankind-idea, not God's plan, not the purposes of Providence, not liberty, and the like. He does not look upon himself as a tool of the idea or a vessel of God, he recognizes no calling, he does not fancy that he exists for the further development of mankind and that he must contribute his mite to it, but he lives himself out, careless of how well or ill humanity may fare thereby. If it were not open to confusion with the idea that a state of nature is to be praised, one might recall Lenau's "Three Gypsies."--What, am I in the world to realize ideas? To do my part by my citizenship, say, toward the realization of the idea "State," or by marriage, as husband and father, to bring the idea of the family into an existence? What does such a calling concern me! I live after a calling as little as the flower grows and gives fragrance after a calling. The ideal "Man" is _realized_ when the Christian apprehension turns about and becomes the proposition, "I, this unique one, am man." The conceptual question, "what is man?"--has then changed into the personal question, "who is man?" With "what" the concept was sought for, in order to realize it; with "who" it is no longer any question at all, but the answer is personally on hand at once in the asker: the question answers itself. They say of God, "Names name thee not." That holds good of me: no _concept_ expresses me, nothing that is designated as my essence exhausts me; they are only names. Likewise they say of God that he is perfect and has no calling to strive after perfection. That too holds good of me alone. I am _owner_ of my might, and I am so when I know myself as _unique_. In the _unique one_ the owner himself returns into his creative nothing, out of which he is born. Every higher essence above me, be it God, be it man, weakens the feeling of my uniqueness, and pales only before the sun of this consciousness. If I concern myself for myself,[242] the unique one, then my concern rests on its transitory, mortal creator, who consumes himself, and I may say: All things are nothing to me.[243] THE END INDEX The following index to this translation of "_Der Einzige und sein Eigentum_" is intended to help one, after reading the book, to find a passage which he remembers. It is not a concordance to aid in analytical study. Hence the designations of the matter referred to are in a form intended to be recognized by the person who remembers the passage; I have generally preferred, so far as convenience permitted, to use the words of the text itself, being confident that a description of the subject-matter in words more appropriate to the summary form of the index would never help any person to find his passage. If the designations are recognizable, I have permitted them to be rough. Of necessity the index has been made hastily, and I hereby confess it to be guilty of all the faults that an index can possess, though I hope that the page numbers will prove to be accurate. The faults that I am most ashamed of are the incompleteness which usually omits the shorter occurrences of a given word or idea and the indefiniteness of the "ff." which does not tell the reader how far the reference extends. It has actually not been in my power to avoid either of these faults, and I hope they will not prevent the index from being of very considerable use to those who pay continued attention to the book. These two faults will be found least noticeable in the references to proper names and quotations: therefore the reader who wants to find a passage will do best to remember, if possible, a conspicuous proper name or a quotation whose source is known--perhaps oftenest from the Bible--and look up his passage by that. In the indexing of quotations, however, I have omitted anonymous proverbs, lines of German hymns, and quotations of whose authorship I was (whether pardonably or unpardonably) ignorant. The abbreviations are: ftn., "footnote"; f., "and next page"; ff., "and following pages." S. T. B. Age: coming of age, 220. Alcibiades: 282 f. Alexis, Wilibald: "Cabanis," 291. Algiers: 343. Alien: the same in German as "strange," 47 ftn. America: citizens presumed respectable, 233. duelists how treated, 314. Germans sold to, 351. kings not valued in, 351. Ananias and Sapphira: 102. Anarchism: xv ff. Ancients: 17 ff. conquered the world, 120 ff. Aristippus: 26. Aristotle: "_zoon politicon_," 56, 307. Arnim: see Bettina. Art: support of, 360. Atahualpa: 448. Athanasius: "God making men divine," 382. Athenians: age of their popular freedom, 281 ff. Augsburg Confession: Art. 11, 117 f. Authorization: limits constitutional legislatures, etc., 146 f. Autun and Barrère, bishop of: 131. Babeuf, Babouvism, 245, 248. Bacon: "clear head," no philosopher, 111. Bailly: "no extra reason," 306. what is my property, 131. Bauer, Bruno: "_Anekdota_" 2.152, 108. "_Denkwuerdigkeiten_" 6.6-7: 96, 102. "_Die gute Sache der Freiheit_" pp. 62-63: 178 f. "_Judenfrage_" p. 60: 180, 414. 61: 229. 66: 178. 84: 235. 114: 185. "_Lit. Ztg._" 5.18: 164. No. 8: 190 ff. 8.22: 321. "man just discovered," 8, 180, 326, 467. treats Jew question as relating to privilege, 271 ff. who he was, 163 ftn. Bauer, E.: "_Liberale Bestrebungen_" 2.50-94: 299 ff. 2.95 ff.: 378 f. 2.130: 301. 2.132: 302. Bavaria: its government worth more than a man, 345 ftn. Beasts: how they live, 435, 442 f. Becker, A.: "_Volksphilosophie unserer Tage_" p. 22 f.: 103, 249. 32: 103. Bee: in beehood, 303 ff. little busy, 442. Being: in Feuerbach's philosophy, 453 ff. same word in Grennan as "essence," 41 ftn. see also Essence; also Supreme. Bettina: "This book belongs to the King" pp. 374-385: 261 ff. Bible: Gen. 22.1-12: 198. Ex. 20.13: 65. Deut. 5.16: 216, 249. 32.3: 459. Ps. 46.3: 121. 99.9: 471. Prov. 3.2: 216. Is. 55.8: 338, 456. 55.9: 26. Jer. 13.16: 459. Matt. 4.1-11: 464. 5.18: 125. 5.22: 56. 5.48: 321. 6.11: 426. 6.13: 181. 6.24: 279. 6.34: 166. 7.7: 449. 8.22: 19. 9.11: 70. 10.16: 22, 422. 10.35: 114. 11.27: 122. 12.30: 259. 12.45: 102. 13.25: 213. 16.24: 215. 16.26: 36. 18.3: 466. 19.21: 102. 19.24: 481. 22.21: 359, 422. 23.24: 297. 26.53: 282. Mark 2.21: 480. 3.29: 240. 9.23: 122. 10.29: 11, 19. Luke 5.11: 102. 6.20: 428. 10.7: 157. 11.13: 14. 14.11: 46, 105. 17.6: 122. 23.2: 422. John 1.14: 269. 1.18 Revised Version margin: 34. 2.4: 114. 3.4: 304. 3.6: 34, 35. 4.24a: 14, 23, 33, 39, 40, 60, 112, 140, 433, 444, 472. 4.24b: 410. 6.32-35: 426. 8.44: 240. 16.33: 33. 18.36: 13. 18.38: 13, 28, 471. 20.22: 42. 20.29: 446. Acts 5.1-2: 102. 5.4: 398. 5.29: 11, 215, 444. 5.39: 459. Rom. 1.25: 451. 6.18: 205. 8.9: 42. 8.14, 16: 226. 8.21: 461. 9.21: 259. 12.1: 429. 1 Cor. 2.10: 3, 13, 33, 433. 3.16: 42. 8.4: 133. 15.26, 55: 430. 2 Cor. 5.17: 30. 6.15: 212. Gal. 2.20: 66, 93, 427. 4.26: 19, 205. Phil. 2.9: 170. 1 Thess. 5.21: 468. 2 Tim. 1.10: 430. Heb. 11.13: 18, 34. James 1.17: 455. 2.12: 206. 1 Pet. 2.16(?): 205. 5.2: 399. 1 John 3.10: 226. 4.8: 4, 51, 61, 74, 382. 4.16: 382. different men's relation to, 447 ff. quotations from, xx. Birthright: 248 ff. Blanc, Louis: "_Histoire des Dix Ans_" I. 138: 139. Bluntschli: 466. Body recognized in manhood: 14 ff. Boniface, St.: cuts down sacred oak, 218, 478. risks life as missionary, 77. _Bourgeoisie_: see Commonalty. Burns, Robert: 433. Caitiff: 398. Calling: helping men to realize, 383 f. no calling, one does what he can, 433 ff. Calvinism: puritanical, 120. Capacities: common to all, 434. differ, 433 f., 438 f. Carriere: "_Koelner Dom_," 305. Catholicism: lets the profane world stand, 116 ff. Catholics: had regard for church, 290. Cause: mine and others, 3 ff. Censorship: more legal than murder, 65. Chamisso: "Valley of Murder," 247. Charles V: 399 ff. Children: 9 ff. competent to get a living, 350 f. Chinese: family responsibilty, 291. Chinese ways: 86 ff. Christ: no revolutionist, 422. would not call legions of angels, 282. Christianity: founding of, 422 f. liberalism completes, 226 ff. Christianizing: 296. Christians: asserting their distinctiveness, 271 ff. trying to conquer the Spirit, 122 ff. Cicero: 28. Clericalism: 98 ff. Clootz, Anacharsis: 276. Commonalty: holds that a man's a man, 129 ff. magnifies desert, 136. Communism: see Proudhon, Socialism, Weitling. all for society, 412 f. an advanced feudalism, 415 ff. not advantageous to all, 410 ff. runs to regulations, 340. useful, 355 f. Competence: 348 ff. Competition: characteristic of _bourgeois_ society, 344. how to abolish, 364 f. produces poor work, 354. restricted by control of opportunities, 345 ff. Confidence: breach of, 400 ff. Conscience in Protestantism, 115. Consequences are not penalties, 314 f. Constitutional Monarchy: 300 ff. Corporeity the modern wish, 485 ff. Cotters: 327 f. Crime: a man's own affair, 317. results from the recognition of Man and right, 266 ff. the only way to beat the law, 258. treatment as disease, 316 f. Criminal: how to make him ashamed, 265. ill treated, 383. made by the State, 261 ff. Cripples: wages to, 358 f. Crispin, St.: 64 f. Critical philosophy: its new morality, 72 ff. Criticism: limited by love, 381 f. makes progress, 190 ff. of Bible, 163 ftn, 381, 448 f. servile and own, 467 ff. starts from presuppositions, 467 ff. victorious, 195. what it was, 163 ftn. Crito: 72. Culture: its results, 443 ff. Cultured people: 94 ff. Curative means against crime: 316 f. Curtius leaps into chasm, 99. Custom makes earth a heaven, 87 ff. Daehnhardt, Marie: xi. Descartes: _Cogito, ergo sum_, "I think, therefore I am," 25, 109 f., 112, 173. Despicable: 401. Desert, watchword of _bourgeoisie_, 136. Devil, natural objects named after, 467. Diogenes: 26. "Get out of my sunshine," 307. Directions for life: 432 f. Disgruntlement: 192. Dissolving: the price of liberty, 188. Divine: ancient and modern times are concerned for the, 486 ff. Dogma: 194 f. Dueling: boycotted in America, 314 f. prohibited by State, 243. Dupin: 296. Education: 320 f. Ego: in title of this book, ix f. Egoism: everybody repudiates, 185 ff. exemplified in God, races, States, etc., 3 ff. hypocritical, 216 f. remains under democracy and Socialism, 163 ff. the enemy of liberalism, 185 ff. Egoists: all bodies of men are unjust to, 284. have brought peoples to ruin, 277 ff. involuntary, 46. _Einzige_ (_der_): translation of the word, ix f. Ends: 78 f. England: allows free press, 374. disregards popular turmoil, 297 f. law-abiding, 254. Enjoyment: rather than life, as object, 426 ff. Epicureans: 27 f. Equal: who are our equals? 225 ff. Equality: of political rights, 133 ff. to result from Communism, 154 ff. Essence: essences are spooks, 50 ff. higher and highest essences, 47 ff. See also Supreme Being. of man, as supreme, 40 f. recognized in men, 52 ff. same as "being," 41 ftn. Established: 293 f. Estates: previous to Revolution, 134 f. Euripides: "Orestes," 418: 254. Exclusiveness: criticism excludes, 176 ff. in Jew and Christian, 271 ff. Faith: in morality, 57 ff. Family: as court judging son, 291. depends on piety, 288 ff. respect for idea of, 113 f. self must be sacrificed to, 289 ff. Fellow-feeling: 386 f. Feudalism: ended by Revolution, 132 ff. Feuerbach: "_Anekdota_" 2.64: 60. "Essence of Christianity," 40 ff. p. 394: 391 f. 401: 238. 402: 41. 402, 403: 74. 403: 118. 408: 75. "Principles of the Philosophy of the Future," 453 ff. humanizing the divine, 227. insists on "being," 453 ff. look "rightly and unbiasedly," 449. love a divine power, 391. love is the essence of man, 412. "man the supreme being," 8, 189. opposes Hegel, 453 ff. religion displaces the human, 320. the "divine" exists, 486. "theology is anthropology," 74. "the world a truth to the ancients," 18, 30. Fichte: his ego is not I, 482. on casuistry of lying, 401. "The ego is all," 237. Fixed idea: 55 ff. Forces: man is to exert, 435 f. Fortune: weak point of present society, 158 ff. France: laws about education, 459 f. Francis II (of France): 399 f. Franke: 77. Frederick the Great: his cane, 176. tolerant, 230. Freedom: all want freedom, but not the same freedom, 208 ff. an ignoble cause, 214. if given, is a sham, 219 ff. is riddance, 203 ff., 214 f. of press, 259 ff. of thought, 455 ff. thirsting for, 203 ff. Fun prohibited, 259 ff. Galotti, Emilia: 70, 431. German unity: 303 ff. a dream, 377. Germany: millennial anniversary, 284 f. God: my God and the God of all, 189 f. natural objects named after, 467. God-man: 202, 241. Goethe: "Faust," 159: 108. 1624-5: 250, 252. 2154: 112, 215, 480. "_Vanitas! vanitatum vanitas!_" 3, 196, 328, 330, 353, 377, 490. "Venetian Epigrams," 46. "Humanus the saint's name," 370. "The spirit 'tis that builds itself the body," 110. poet of _bourgeoisie_, 137. in lucky circumstances, 433. Good intentions: as pavement (proverbially), 96. Government: everybody feels competent for, 356 f. Grandmother: saw spirits, 42. Greeks: intrigue ended their liberty, 282 f. their philosophy, 19 f. Guerrillas in Spain: 65. Guizot: 460. Gustavus Adolphus: 176. Gutenberg: served mankind, 164. Habit: see Custom. Half: see Hypocrisy. Hartmann, Eduard von: xiii f. Heart: cultivated by Socrates, 20 ff. cultivated by the Reformation, 31. Heartlessness: is crime, 265 f. Heautontimorumenos: 216. Heaven-storming: 88 f. Hegel: "absolute philosophy," 453 ff. condemns "opinion" and what is "mine," 453. finds his own speculations in Bible, 448. in Christian party, 311. insists on reality, "things," 95. it is impossible to tell a lie, 464. personifies thinking, 468. philosopher of _bourgeoisie_, 137. proves philosophy religious, 62. puts the idea into everything, 485. systematizes religion, 125. wants match-making left to parents, 291. wants to remain Lutheran, 120. Henry VII, Emperor: 120. Hess: "_Ein und zwanzig Bogen_," p. 12: 138. 89 ff.: 321. "_Triarchie_," p. 76: 234. Hierarchy: 95 ff. Higher world: "introduction of," 43, 91. Highest: same as "supreme," 41 ftn. Hinrichs: "_Politische Vorlesungen_," 1.280: 345 ftn. History: as dominant thought, 473, 488 f. Holbach: head of "plot," 57. Holy: the same in German as "sacred," 50 ftn. Holy Spirit: has to be conquered by Christians, 122 ff. Horace: "_impavidum ferient ruinae_" 121. "_nil admirari_," 121. his philosophy, 28. Human: exclusive regard for general human interests, 168 ff. you are more than human being, 166 f. human beings desire democracy, 128. Humanism: 30. Humanity: labor must relate to, 170 ff. laborers must be allowed to develop, 157 ff. Hume: "clear head," 111. Huss: 460. Hypocrisy: half moral and half egoist, 66 ff. Idea: accepted as truth, and fixed, 474 ff. as object of respect, 112 ff. see Fixed. Ideal: constitutes religion, 321. versus real, 484 ff. Immoral: only class known to moralists besides "moral," 69 ff. Imparted feelings: 82 ff. Inca: 448. Individual: "simple," 344 f. Inequality: see Equality. Infanticide: 424. Insurrection: 420 ff. Intercourse: not made by a hall, 285 ff. preferred to society, 407. Interests: ideal and personal, 98 ff. Ireland: suffrage in, 343. Jesuits: substantially grant indulgences, 116 f. "the end hallows the means," 118 ff., 140, 430. Jews: asserting their distinctiveness, 271 ff. emancipated, 220 f. heathen, 29, 123. not altogether egoistic or exclusive, 235 f. unspiritual, 24. whether they are men, 166 ff. will not read this book, 35 f. Judge: Supreme Being as, 432 f. Judges: mechanical: 253. what makes them unreliable, 223 f. Juliet: 290. Justice: a hate commanded by love, 383. Kaiser: worthless pamphlet, 344. Kant: 176. Klopstock: 83. Koerner: 77. "_Kommunisten in der Schweiz_": report on, p. 3: 245. pp. 24, 63: 438. Kosciusko: 404. Kotzebue: 64 f. Krummacher: 58, 266, 441. Labor: fundamental in Communist society, 156 ff. human vs. unique, 354 ff. lofty and petty, 174 ff. must be thoroughly human, 170 ff. must not be drudgery, 157 ff. of the right kind develops man, 173 ff. problem, 149 ff. too narrow, 163 ff. wanting higher pay, 336 f. Lais: 80. Lang, Ritter von: 69. Lavater: 450. Law: common or general law, same word in German as "right," 242 ftn. particular law, not same word as "right," 254 ftn. how to break, 258. is a declaration of will, 255 f. is impersonal, 141 f. paralyzes will, 256 ff. sacred in the State, 313 ff. to be respected as such, 254 ff. Leisure: to be enjoyed humanly, 164 f., 172. to be enjoyed uniquely, 356. Lenau: "Three Gypsies," 489. Lessing: "Emilia Galotti," 70, 431. "Nathan der Weise," 71. Level: rascal and honest man on same, 69 f. Liberalism: completes Christianity, 226 ff. has made valuable gains, 188 f. rational, 137 f. sees only Man in me, 225 ff. Liberals: the most modern moderns, 127. Liberty: individual, does not mean the individual is free, 140 ff. political, means direct subjection State, 138 ff. of the people, is not mine, 280 ff. no objection to its diminution, 408 ff. Lie: 395 ff. Life: caring for, 425 ff. should conform to the Supreme Being, 432 ff. true, 426 ff. "_Lit. Ztg._": 5.12 ff: 185. 5.15, 23: 185. 5.24: 173, 186. 5.26: 166. No. 8: 190 ff. see also Bauer. Love: as law of our intercourse, 380 ff. how it goes wrong, 388 ff. how originated, 388. in egoism, 385 ff. Lunatics: see Fixed Idea. Lusatia: 304. Luther: appealed to reason, 460. broke his vow, 398. demanded safe conduct to Worms, 282. did his best, 481. "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise," 78. "He who believes is a God," 109. not understood at first, 30. shows the way to truth, 107 ff. Lutheranism: goes beyond Puritanism, 120. Mackay, John Henry: vii f., xi, xiii, 163 ftn. Making something out of us: 320 f. Man (adult male): 14 ff. Man (with capital M): by being man we are equal, 225 ff. cared for to the disregard of men, 100 ff. criticism begins to gibe at, 194. every laborer must be, 170 ff. I am not, 41. I am the real, 233 ff. I am true man, 436 ff. nothing else recognized in me, 225 ff. takes the place of God in the new morality, 72 ff. see also Human, Humanity. Manlius: 99. Marat: 99. Marriage: against will of family, 289 ff. Marx: "_Deutsch-franzoesische Jahrbuecher_" p. 197: 229. Masses: attacked by criticism, 185 ff. attacked as "a spiritual being by criticism," 191 ff. Maxim: as fixed idea, 80 f. Metternich: "path of genuine freedom," 209. Middle class: not idealistic, 96 f., 99, 102. Might: stereotyped into right, 366 f. Mind: in antiquity, 19 ff. in youth, 11 ff. same German word as "spirit," 10 ftn. Mirabeau: 131. the people the source of right and power, 131. no power may command the nation's representatives, 306. Misalliance: 289 ff. Moderation: 403. Moderns: 30 ff. Monarchy: Revolution produces an absolute, 132 ff. Money: what we shall do about, 363 ff. Mongolism. 85 ff. Montgelas: 345 ftn. Moral influence: 105 ff. Morality: a form of faith, and Christian, 57 ff. becomes a religion when critically completed, 73 ff. in critical philosophy, 72 ff. is religious, 59 ff. Napoleon: did not object to conquering, 369. helped himself, 343. Nationality: 322. "Nationals" of Germany: 303 ff. Nauwerk: 307 ff. Negroid age of Caucasian history: 86. Nero: 68 ff. Nietzsche: viii, xiv ff. Ninon: 80. Oath: 399 ff., 402 ff. O'Connell: his motives, 77 f. Old: wages to, 358 f. Opposition ends when completed, 273 f. Opposition party: 66 ff. Order: in State, 293. Orders: must not be given, 141 f. Origen: 71. Ownness: inalienable, 206 ff. meaning, 203 ftn. must be defended against society, 408 ff. served by union, 410 ff. Pages cited: xx. Parcellation: 327 ff. Party: 310 ff. Paul, Emperor of Russia: 404. Pauperism a consequence of the State, 333 ff. Penalty: product of right, 266 ff. People: general name for societies, 276 f. German, its thousand years' history, 284 f. hound the police on, 318. its liberty is not mine, 280 ff. peoples have filled history, 276 ff. Periclean age: 19 ff., 281 ff. Personification: 468 f. Pettifoggery: 282 f. Philanthropism: 100 f. Philanthropy: hates men, 481 f. Philosophy: Greek, see Ancients. modern, 109 ff. Piety: family depends on, 288 ff. meaning of word, 288 ftn. Pilate: 13, 28, 471 f. Plowmen: wages for, 359 ff. Plumb-line: xvii. Poles: oath imposed upon, 404 f. Poor-rates: voting by, 343. Possession: the how much of, 347 f. Possessions: depend on the State, 150 ff. fundamental in _bourgeois_ society, 147 ff. inward or spiritual, 324 ff., 369 ff. to be respected, 126 f., 323 ff. Possibility: coincides with reality, 438 ff. means thinkableness, 439 ff. Precepts: are Mongoloid, 87 ff. Press: why not left free, 259 ff. liberty of, how to get, 371 ff. Presupposition: 199 f., 467 ff. Principle: as fixed idea, 80 f. Prison society and intercourse: 286 ff. Private: criticism has to leave the private free, 178 f. the private not recognized by liberalism, 168 ff. Privilege: 270 ff. _Prolétariat_: 147 ff. Propaganda: 320. Property: civic and egoistic, contrasted, 326 ff. definitions in Roman law, 331 ff. derived from man through Right, 365 ff. individual, opposed by Socialism, 154 ff. is what men really want when they say freedom, 204 ff. mine is what I make my might cover, 338 ff. Proudhon on, 328 ff. recognition of under egoism, 369. see Possessions. Proprietors, small: 327 ff. Protestantism: conscientious, 115 ff. consecrates everything, 116 ff. Proudhon: "_Création de l'Ordre_," 60. p. 414: 162. 485: 302. "_Qu'est-ce que la Propriété?_" p. 83: 328. 90: 391. as parson, 466. property a fact, 332. "property is robbery," 100, 330 ff., 419. substantially agrees with Stirner, xv. Provence, Count of: 209. Punishment: involves sacredness, 315 ff. Pyrrho: 28. Rabble: 341 ff. Ragamuffin: 152 ff. going beyond ragamuffinhood, 184. Raphael: 355. Rational: etymology of "rational" in German, 81 ftn. Reality: versus ideality, 484 ff. Realizing value from self: 335 ff., 360 f. Reason: as supreme, 460 f. Reciprocity: 413 f. References to pages: xx. Reform is Mongoloid, 86 ff. Reformation (the Protestant): takes hold of heart, 31. alters hierarchy, 107 ff. Regulus: 99. Reimarus: "Most Notable Truths of Natural Religion," 62 f. Reisach, Count von: 345 ftn. Relation: of different persons to objects, 447 ff. Religion: is freedom of mind, 62 f. morality is religious, 59 ff. of humanity, 229 f. tolerance in, 229 ff. Republic: 299 f. Revenge: the people's just, 266 ff. Reverence: 92 ff. Revolution (the French): began over property, 130. equality of rights, 246. established absolute government, 132 ff. immoral, 72. its true nature, 143 ff. made men citizens, 155 f. Revolutionist: is to lie, 396 f. Rid: freedom is being rid, 203 ff., 214 f. Right: absolute, 269. as basis of property, 366 ff. commonwealth of (_Rechtsstaat_), 244, 253. equality of, 270 ff. is a law foreign to me, 242 ff. my right derived from myself, 245 ff. rights by birth, 248 ff. same word in German as "law," 242 ftn. serves him right, 254. well-earned rights, 248 ff. rights change hands at the Revolution, 132 ff. Robespierre: 77. a priest, 99. consistent, 102. devoted to virtue, 77. not serviceable to middle class, 102 f. Romans: in philosophy, 28. killed children, 250. Romanticists: rehabilitate the idea of spirits, 43. Rome: decline and fall of, 277 f. Rousseau: hostile to culture, 96 ftn. Rudolph (in Sue's story): 387. Ruge: "_Anekdota_" 1. 120, 127: 460. Russia: boundary sentinels, 247. flight of army in, 424. Russians: as Mongolian, 86. Sacred: gibing at, 369 ff. the same in German as "holy," 50 ftn. things are sacred of themselves, 118 ff. wherein the sacred consists, 92 ff. Sacred things: their diagnosis and extension, 45 ff. Sacrifice: when I sacrifice somebody else's comfort to my principles, etc., 97 f. "_Saechsische Vaterlandsblaetter_": 57. Saint-Just: 99. "Political Speeches," 10, p. 153: 268. "criminal for not hating," 267. Sake: acting for one's own sake, 210 ff. immoralities for God's sake and for mine, 398 f. Sand, George: 466. Sand (murderer of Kotzebue): 64 f. Sander: 379. Schiller: "Ideal and Life," 428. "The Maiden from a Foreign Land," 35. "_Worte des Glaubens_," 111. complete in his poems, 175. have I a right to my nose? 246. Swabian, 176. Schlemihl, Peter: 25. Schlosser: "_Achtzehntes Jahrhundert_," 57. Scholarships at universities: 347 ftn. Seducing young people to morality, 212 f. Self: as starting-point or goal, 427 f., 437 f. Self-discovery: first, 11. second, 15. Selfishness: groundlessly decried, 221 ff. in "unselfish" acts, 77 f. the only thing that is really trusted, 223 f. Self-renunciation: of holy and unholy men, 75 ff. Self-sacrificing: discussion of the implications of the German word, 96 ff. literal force of the German word, 97 ftn. Self-seekers always acted so: 341. Sensuality: in Protestantism and Catholicism, 116 ff. September laws: 374. Seriousness: 85. Settled life: necessary to respectability, 147 f. Shabbiness: 400. Shakspere: "Romeo and Juliet," 290. Sick: wages to, 358 f. Sigismund: 398. Simonides: 26. Sinner: does not exist, 479 ff. Skeptics (Greek): 22, 28. Small properties: 327 ff. Socialism: 152 ff. Society: is to be sole owner, 153 ff. its character depends on its members, 276 f. made by a hall, 285 ff. man's state of nature, 406 ff. may provide consequences where State provides penalties, 314 f. Socrates: in history of philosophy, 20 f. should not have respected the sentence of the court, 281 f. too moral to break jail, 72. Sophists: 19 ff. Sordidness: 400. Spartans: killed children, 250. Speculation: 405. Sphinx: 451. Spirit: as the essential part of man, 36 ff. free from the world, 32 ff. has to be conquered by moderns, 122 ff. same German word as "mind," 10 ftn. the seat of equality, 226 ff. Spirits: are all around us, 42 ff. Spiritual goods: shall we hold them sacred? 369 ff. Spook: "essences" are spooks, 50 ff. Spy: 395, 403. Standpoint: as fixed idea, 80 ff. State: a fellowship of human beings, 128 ff. cannot exist if I have a will of my own, 255 ff. cares not for me, but for itself, 333 ff. Christianizes people, 296. claims to be a person, 295 f. criticism gives up, 190 f. has to be harsh, 259 ff., 262 ff. holds laws sacred, 313 ff. is the established, 293 f. its relation to property, 333 ff. means order, 293. officials and plutocrats overcharge us, 151 f., 357 f. sick, 262. taking part in, 307 ff. Stein: his disloyalty to a "simple individual," 345 ftn. Stirner: motives for writing, 393 f., 406. Stoics: 27 f. apathy, 121. "wise man," 121, 485. Strange: the same in German as "alien," 47 ftn. Strike: 359 ff. Students: are immature Philistines, 144. custom of, as to word of honor, 403 f. Sue: "Mysteries of Paris," 387. Suicide: 429 ff. Suit: "it suits me" expressed in German by "right," 248 ftn. Supreme: same as "highest," 41 ftn. Supreme Being: according to Feuerbach, 40 ff. (See also Feuerbach.) see also Essence (highest). Swan-knights: 342 f. Tak Kak: vii, xi ff. Terence: "Heautontimorumenos," 25, 216. "_humani nihil alienum puto_," 367. Theft: 99 f. depends on property, 331 f. Things: essential in competition, 346 ff. Third: end of opposition, 484. Thinkable: real sense of "possible," 122, 439 ff. Thinker: characteristics of 452 ff. Thought: freedom of, 455 ff. I do not respect your independence of, 456 f. necessary conditions of, 465 ff. optional, 465 f. realm of, 451 ff. Thoughts: as owned, 477 ff. combated by disregard, 196 ff. combated by force, 197 ff. combated by thinking, 194 ff. criticism moves only in, 194 ff. Tie: everything sacred is, 283. man the enemy of, 283. Tieck: "_Der gestiefelte Kater_," 342. Timon: 28. Title of this book: ix f. Tolerance: 229 ff. Training: 434 f., 443 ff. Truth: telling, 395 ff. to possess truth you must be true, 106 ff. what is, 471 ff. I am above truths, 463 ff. Understanding: in antiquity, 19 ff. Unhuman: an artificial name for the real, 193. Union: distinction from society, 407 ff., 415 ff. everything is mine in, 415 ff. Uniqueness: constitutes greatness, 175 f. Un-man: real man, 230 ff. the "devil" of liberalism, 184 ff. Unselfishness: literal sense of the German word, 77 ftn. supposed, and real, 77 ff. Vagabonds: 147 ff. Value: of me, 86, 333 ff. to be realized from self, 335 ff., 360 f. Von Hartmann: xiii f. "_Vossische Zeitung_": 244, 253. Wages: instead of alms, 358 f. of the upper classes and the lower, 151 f., 357 ff. Walker, James L.: vii, xi ff. War of all against all: 341, 343. Weitling: "Trio," on head of people 302. Communism seeks welfare of all, 410. "harmony of society," 284. hours of labor, 411. on crime and "curative means," 316 f. on property, 331 f. preaches "society," 245. substitutes work for money, 352. Welcker: on dependence of judges, 223 f. Wheels in the head: formal aspects of, 75 ff. what are such, 54 ff. Will: incompatible with the State, 255 ff. law is a declaration of, 255 f. law paralyzes, 255 ff. morality commands submission of, 66 ff. the only practical agency of reform, 68 ff. Words: power of, 462 ff. Stirner's style of using, xix f. Work: for pay's sake, 354. is not the only competence, 349 ff. World: among ancients, 18 ff. conquered by the ancients, 120 ff. is haunted, and is itself a ghost, 43 f. spirit free from, 32 ff. Writing: Stirner's motives for, 393 f., 406. Youth: 11 ff. * * * * * FOOTNOTES [1] ["_Ich hab' Mein' Sach' auf Nichts gestellt_," first line of Goethe's poem, "_Vanitas! Vanitatum Vanitas!_" Literal translation: "I have set my affair on nothing."] [2] [_Sache_] [3] [_Sache_] [4] [_der Einzige_] [5] [_einzig_] [6] [_Geist._ This word will be translated sometimes "mind" and sometimes "spirit" in the following pages.] [7] Luke 11. 13. [8] Heb. 11. 13. [9] Mark 10. 29. [10] Italicized in the original for the sake of its etymology, _Scharfsinn_--"sharp-sense." Compare next paragraph. [11] 2 Cor. 5. 17. [The words "new" and "modern" are the same in German.] [12] [Title of a poem by Schiller.] [13] [The reader will remember (it is to be hoped he has never forgotten) that "mind" and "spirit" are one and the same word in German. For several pages back the connection of the discourse has seemed to require the almost exclusive use of the translation "spirit," but to complete the sense it has often been necessary that the reader recall the thought of its identity with "mind," as stated in a previous note.] [14] "Essence of Christianity." [15] [Or, "highest essence." The word _Wesen_, which means both "essence" and "being," will be translated now one way and now the other in the following pages. The reader must bear in mind that these two words are identical in German: and so are "supreme" and "highest."] [16] Cf. _e. g._ "Essence of Christianity," p. 402. [17] [That is, the abstract conception of man, as in the preceding sentence.] [18] _E. g._, Rom. 8. 9, 1 Cor. 3. 16, John 20. 22, and innumerable other passages. [19] [_Heil_] [20] [_heilig_] [21] How the priests tinkle! how important they Would make it out, that men should come their way And babble, just as yesterday, to-day! Oh! blame them not! They know man's need, I say; For he takes all his happiness this way, To babble just to-morrow as to-day. --_Translated from Goethe's "Venetian Epigrams."_ [22] [_fremd_] [23] [_fremd_] [24] [_einzig_] [25] ["the supreme being."] [26] [_heilig_] [27] [_heilig_] [28] [_einzig_] [29] [_gefangen und befangen_, literally "imprisoned and prepossessed."] [30] [_besessene_] [31] [_versessen_] [32] "_Achtzehntes Jahrhundert_," II, 519. [33] "_De la Création de l'Ordre_" etc., p. 36. [34] "_Anekdota_," II, 64. [35] [_dieselbe Phantastin wie die Phantasie_] [36] [The same word as "intellectual" as "mind" and "spirit" are the same.] [37] "Essence of Christianity," second edition, p. 402. [38] P. 403. [39] P. 408. [40] [Literally "the man."] [41] [_Uneigennuetzigkeit_, literally "un-self-benefitingness."] [42] [_vernuenftig_, derived from _vernehmen_, to hear.] [43] [A German idiom for destructive radicalism.] [44] [The same word that has been translated "custom" several times in this section.] [45] [_Ehrfurcht_] [46] [_gefuerchtet_] [47] [_geehrt_] [48] Rousseau, the Philanthropists, and others were hostile to culture and intelligence, but they overlooked the fact that this is present in _all_ men of the Christian type, and assailed only learned and refined culture. [49] [Literally, "sacrificing"; the German word has not the prefix "self."] [50] "_Volksphilosophie unserer Tage_," p. 22. [51] [_Muth_] [52] [_Demuth_] [53] [Called in English theology "original sin."] [54] [Goethe, "Faust."] [55] "_Anekdota_," II, 152. [56] [Schiller, "_Die Worte des Glaubens_."] [57] [Parodied from the words of Mephistopheles in the witch's kitchen in "Faust."] [58] John 2. 4. [59] Matt. 10. 35. [60] [_heilig_] [61] [_heilig_] [62] [_Geistlicher_, literally "spiritual man."] [63] "Essence of Christianity," p. 403. [64] Mark 9. 23. [65] [_Herrlichkeit_, which, according to its derivation, means "lordliness."] [66] [Or "citizenhood." The word (_das Buergertum_) means either the condition of being a citizen, or citizen-like principles, or the body of citizens or of the middle or business class, the _bourgeoisie_.] [67] [_Man hatte im Staate "die ungleiche Person angesehen,"_ there had been "respect of unequal persons" in the State.] [68] [_Gewalt_, a word which is also commonly used like the English "violence," denoting especially unlawful violence.] [69] [_Vorrechte_] [70] [_Rechte_] [71] 1 Corinthians 8.4. [72] "_Ein und zwanzig Bogen_," p. 12. [73] Louis Blanc says ("_Histoire des Dix Ans_," I, p. 138) of the time of the Restoration: "_Le protestantisme devint le fond des idées et des moeurs._" [74] [_Sache_, which commonly means _thing_.] [75] [_Sache_] [76] [Or "righteous." German _rechtlich_.] [77] [_gerecht_] [78] [_das Geld gibt Geltung._] [79] [_ausgebeutet_] [80] [_Kriegsbeute_] [81] [In German an exact quotation of Luke 10.7.] [82] Proudhon ("_Création de l'Ordre_") cries out, _e. g._, p. 414, "In industry, as in science, the publication of an invention is the first and _most sacred of duties_!" [83] [In his strictures on "criticism" Stirner refers to a special movement known by that name in the early forties of the last century, of which Bruno Bauer was the principal exponent. After his official separation from the faculty of the university of Bonn on account of his views in regard to the Bible, Bruno Bauer in 1843 settled near Berlin and founded the _Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung_, in which he and his friends, at war with their surroundings, championed the "absolute emancipation" of the individual within the limits of "pure humanity" and fought as their foe "the mass," comprehending in that term the radical aspirations of political liberalism and the communistic demands of the rising Socialist movement of that time. For a brief account of Bruno Bauer's movement of criticism, see John Henry Mackay, "_Max Stirner_. _Sein Leben und sein Werk._"] [84] Br. Bauer. "_Lit. Ztg._" V. 18. [85] "_Lit. Ztg._" V. 26. [86] [_Eigentum_, "owndom."] [87] [_Eigenwille_, "own-will."] [88] [Referring to minute subdivision of labor, whereby the single workman produces, not a whole, but a part.] [89] "_Lit. Ztg._" V. 24. [90] "_Lit. Ztg._" _ibid._ [91] ["_einziger_"] [92] [_Einzigkeit_] [93] Bruno Bauer, "_Judenfrage_," p. 66. [94] Bruno Bauer, "_Die gute Sache der Freiheit_," pp. 62-63. [95] Bruno Bauer, "_Judenfrage_," p. 60. [96] [_Einzige_] [97] [_einzig_] [98] [It should be remembered that to be an _Unmensch_ ("un-man") one must be a man. The word means an inhuman or unhuman man, a man who is not man. A tiger, an avalanche, a drought, a cabbage, is not an un-man.] [99] "_Lit. Ztg._" V. 23; as comment, V. 12 ff. [100] "_Lit. Ztg._" V. 15. [101] [_Rechthaberei_, literally the character of always insisting on making one's self out to be in the right.] [102] [_einzig_] [103] [_des Einzigen_] [104] [This is a literal translation of the German word _Eigenheit_, which, with its primitive _eigen_, "own," is used in this chapter in a way that the German dictionaries do not quite recognize. The author's conception being new, he had to make an innovation in the German language to express it. The translator is under the like necessity. In most passages "self-ownership," or else "personality," would translate the word, but there are some where the thought is so _eigen_, that is, so peculiar or so thoroughly the author's _own_, that no English word I can think of would express it. It will explain itself to one who has read Part First intelligently.] [105] [_Eigenheit_] [106] Rom. 6. 18. [107] 1 Pet. 2. 16. [108] James 2. 12. [109] [See note, p. 112.] [110] [Meaning "German." Written in this form because of the censorship.] [111] [_Einzige_]. [112] [I take _Entbehrung_, "destitution," to be a misprint for _Entehrung_.] [113] [_Eigennutz_, literally "own-use."] [114] [_Einzigen_] [115] Rom. 8. 14. [116] Cf. 1 John 3. 10 with Rom. 8. 16. [117] [_Eigenschaften_] [118] [_Eigentum_] [119] _E. g._ Marx in the "_Deutsch-franzoesische Jahrbuecher_," p. 197. [120] Br. Bauer, "_Judenfrage_," p. 61. [121] Hess, "_Triarchie_," p. 76. [122] [_Vorrecht_, literally "precedent right."] [123] [_Eigenschaft_] [124] [_Eigentum_] [125] "Essence of Christianity," 2d ed., p. 401. [126] [_bestimmt_] [127] [_Bestimmung_] [128] Mark 3. 29. [129] [This word has also, in German, the meaning of "common law," and will sometimes be translated "law" in the following paragraphs.] [130] Cf. "_Die Kommunisten in der Schweiz_," committee report, p. 3. [131] [_Rechtsstreit_, a word which usually means "lawsuit."] [132] [A common German phrase for "it suits me."] [133] A. Becker, "_Volksphilosophie_," p. 22 f. [134] [Mephistopheles in "Faust."] [135] "I beg you, spare my lungs! He who insists on proving himself right, if he but has one of these things called tongues, can hold his own in all the world's despite!" [Faust's words to Mephistopheles, slightly misquoted.--For _Rechthaberei_ see note on p. 185.] [136] [_Gesetz_, statute; no longer the same German word as "right."] [137] [_Verbrechen_] [138] [_brechen_] [139] "This Book Belongs to the King," p. 376. [140] P. 376. [141] P. 374. [142] [An unnatural mother] [143] P. 381. [144] P. 385. [145] [_Gerechte_] [146] [_macht Alles huebsch gerecht_] [147] [_Einzige_] [148] See "Political Speeches," 10, p. 153. [149] [Literally, "precedent right."] [150] [_Spannung_] [151] [_gespannt_] [152] [_spannen_] [153] [_einzig_] [154] [_Einzigkeit_] [155] [_Volk_; but the etymological remark following applies equally to the English word "people." See Liddell & Scott's Greek lexicon, under _pimplemi_.] [156] [_kuschen_, a word whose only use is in ordering dogs to keep quiet.] [157] [This is the word for "of age"; but it is derived from _Mund_, "mouth," and refers properly to the right of speaking through one's own _mouth_, not by a guardian.] [158] ["occupy"; literally, "have within"] [159] [The word _Genosse_, "companion," signifies originally a companion in _enjoyment_.] [160] [This word in German does not mean religion, but, as in Latin, faithfulness to family ties--as we speak of "filial piety." But the word elsewhere translated "pious" (_fromm_) means "religious," as usually in English.] [161] [It should be remembered that the words "establish" and "State" are both derived from the root "stand."] [162] [_huldigen_] [163] [_Huld_] [164] What was said in the concluding remarks after Humane Liberalism holds good of the following,--to wit, that it was likewise written immediately after the appearance of the book cited. [165] [In the philosophical sense (a thinking and acting being), not in the political sense.] [166] ["_Création de l'Ordre_," p. 485.] [167] ["_Koelner Dom_," p. 4.] [168] [_einzig_] [169] [_am Einzigen_] [170] [_Einzigen_] [171] [_heilig_] [172] [_unheilig_] [173] [_Heiliger_] [174] B. Bauer. "_Lit. Ztg._" 8.22. [175] "_E. u. Z. B._," p. 89 ff. [176] [_Einzigkeit_] [177] [See note on p. 184.] [178] [The words "cot" and "dung" are alike in German.] [179] _E. g._, "_Qu'est-ce que la Propriété?_" p. 83. [180] [_Einzige_] [181] [A German idiom for "take upon myself," "assume."] [182] [Apparently some benevolent scheme of the day; compare note on p. 343.] [183] In a registration bill for Ireland the government made the proposal to let those be electors who pay £5 sterling of poor-rates. He who gives alms, therefore, acquires political rights, or elsewhere becomes a swan-knight. [See p. 342.] [184] Minister Stein used this expression about Count von Reisach, when he cold-bloodedly left the latter at the mercy of the Bavarian government because to him, as he said, "a government like Bavaria must be worth more than a simple individual." Reisach had written against Montgelas at Stein's bidding, and Stein later agreed to the giving up of Reisach, which was demanded by Montgelas on account of this very book. See Hinrichs, "_Politische Vorlesungen_," I, 280. [185] In colleges and universities, etc., poor men compete with rich. But they are able to do so in most cases only through scholarships, which--a significant point almost all come down to us from a time when free competition was still far from being a controlling principle. The principle of competition founds no scholarship, but says, Help yourself, _i. e._ provide yourself the means. What the State gives for such purposes it pays out from interested motives, to educate "servants" for itself. [186] [_preisgeben_] [187] [_Preis_] [188] [_Preis_] [189] [_Geld_] [190] [_gelten_] [191] [Equivalent in ordinary German use to our "possessed of a competence."] [192] [_Einzige_] [193] [Literally, "given."] [194] [A German phrase for sharpers.] [195] [Literally, "unhomely."] [196] II, p. 91 ff. (See my note above.) [197] Athanasius. [198] [_Wesen_] [199] [_Wesen_] [200] Feuerbach, "Essence of Chr.," 394. [201] [_gebrauche_] [202] [_brauche_] [203] [_Verein_] [204] [_Vereinigung_] [205] [_Muthlosigkeit_] [206] [_Demuth_] [207] [_Muth_] [208] [Literally, "love-services."] [209] [Literally, "own-benefit."] [210] [Literally, furnishes me with a _right_.] [211] [_Empoerung_] [212] [_sich auf-oder emporzurichten_] [213] To secure myself against a criminal charge I superfluously make the express remark that I choose the word "insurrection" on account of its _etymological sense_, and therefore am not using it in the limited sense which is disallowed by the penal code. [214] 1 Cor. 15. 26. [215] 2 Tim. 1. 10. [216] [See the next to the last scene of the tragedy: ODOARDO. Under the pretext of a judicial investigation he tears you out of our arms and takes you to Grimaldi.... EMILIA. Give me that dagger, father, me!... ODOARDO. No, no! Reflect--You too have only one life to lose. EMILIA. And only one innocence! ODOARDO. Which is above the reach of any violence.-- EMILIA. But not above the reach of any seduction.--Violence! violence! who cannot defy violence? What is called violence is nothing; seduction is the true violence.--I have blood, father; blood as youthful and warm as anybody's. My senses are senses.--I can warrant nothing. I am sure of nothing. I know Grimaldi's house. It is the house of pleasure. An hour there, under my mother's eyes--and there arose in my soul so much tumult as the strictest exercises of religion could hardly quiet in weeks.--Religion! And what religion?--To escape nothing worse, thousands sprang into the water and are saints.--Give me that dagger, father, give it to me.... EMILIA. Once indeed there was a father who, to save his daughter from shame, drove into her heart whatever steel he could quickest find--gave life to her for the second time. But all such deeds are of the past! Of such fathers there are no more! ODOARDO. Yes, daughter, yes! (_Stabs her._) [217] [Or, "_regulate_" (_richten_)] [218] [_richten_] [219] "_Der Kommunismus in der Schweiz_," p. 24. [220] _Ibid._ p. 63. [221] [Cf. note p. 81.] [222] [_Geistigkeit_] [223] [_Geistlichkeit_] [224] Rom. 1. 25. [225] [_das Meinige_] [226] [_die_--"_Meinung_"] [227] P. 47 ff. [228] Chamber of peers, Apr. 25, 1844. [229] "_Anecdota_," 1. 120. [230] "_Anecdota_," 1. 127. [231] [_vernehmbar_] [232] [_Vernunft_] [233] [Literally "thought-rid."] [234] [_Sache_] [235] [_Sache_] [236] 1 Thess. 5. 21. [237] [_Andacht_, a compound form of the word "thought."] [238] [See note on p. 112.] [239] [_Einzige_] [240] [_eigen_] [241] [_geeignet_] [242] [_Stell' Ich auf Mich meine Sache._ Literally, "if I set my affair on myself."] [243] ["_Ich hab' Mein' Sach' auf Nichts gestellt._" Literally, "I have set my affair on nothing." See note on p. 3.] * * * * * Send for BENJ. R. TUCKER'S Unique Catalogue of Advanced Literature THE LITERATURE THAT MAKES FOR EGOISM IN PHILOSOPHY ANARCHISM IN POLITICS ICONOCLASM IN ART 128 pages, representing more than 400 authors and listing nearly 1,000 titles, besides being enriched by about 600 pithy and epigrammatic quotations, of an Anarchistic and Egoistic character, from some of the works catalogued. Benj. R. Tucker carries the most complete line of advanced literature in the English language offered for sale at any one place in the entire world. All books listed in his catalogue are carried constantly in stock, and may be seen at Benj. R. 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DANA A defence of the great French Anarchist; showing the evils of a specie currency, and that interest on capital can and ought to be abolished by a system of free and mutual banking. The series of newspaper articles composing this pamphlet appeared originally in the New York "Tribune," of which Mr. Dana was then managing editor, and a little later in "The Spirit of the Age," a weekly paper published in New York in 1849 by Fowlers & Wells and edited by Rev. William Henry Channing. 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One of the greatest poems of the century, a permanent addition to English literature.... It is the best Lenten and Easter sermon of the year." _Brooklyn Citizen._--"Many of the stanzas are cries out of the lowest hell. The poem, indeed, takes rank with the most extraordinary psychological phenomena of this or any time." _Indianapolis Journal._--"The work is one of singular power, holding the reader fascinated to the last line. Nothing approaching it in strength has been produced in recent years." _Philadelphia Conservator._--"People who imagine themselves superior to the prisoners in jails should read this poem. People who love invasive laws should read this poem. People who think existing governmental methods of meeting social invasion civilized should read this poem. People who do not know that laws may make as well as punish crime should read this poem. In fact, everybody should read this poem. For somewhere it touches everybody, accuses everybody, appeals to everybody." * * * * * God and the State BY MICHAEL BAKOUNINE TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY BENJ. R. TUCKER "One of the most eloquent pleas for liberty ever written. Paine's 'Age of Reason' and 'Rights of Man' consolidated and improved. It stirs the pulse like a trumpet-call."--_The Truth Seeker._ _Price, 15 Cents_ * * * * * Free Political Institutions _Their Nature, Essence, and Maintenance_ AN ABRIDGMENT AND REARRANGEMENT OF LYSANDER SPOONER'S "TRIAL BY JURY" EDITED BY VICTOR YARROS _One of the most important works in the propaganda of Anarchism_ CHAPTERS I.--Legitimate Government and Majority Rule. II.--Trial by Jury as a Palladium of Liberty. III.--Trial by Jury as Defined by Magna Carta. IV.--Objections Answered. V.--The Criminal Intent. VI.--Moral Considerations for Jurors. VII.--Free Administration of Justice. VIII.--Juries of the Present Day Illegal. _Price, 15 cents_ * * * * * A Blow at Trial by Jury BY BENJ. R. TUCKER An examination of the special jury law passed by the New York legislature in 1896. A speech delivered by the editor of Liberty at a mass meeting held in Cooper Union, New York, June 25, 1897, under the auspices of the Central Labor Union, Typographical Union No. 6, and other labor organizations. Distribution of this pamphlet among lawyers and legislators will tend indirectly to interest them in Anarchism. _Price, 5 cents_ * * * * * Instead of a Book BY A MAN TOO BUSY TO WRITE ONE A FRAGMENTARY EXPOSITION OF PHILOSOPHICAL ANARCHISM _Culled from the writings of_ BENJ. R. TUCKER EDITOR OF LIBERTY _With a Full-Page Half-Tone Portrait of the Author_ A large, well-printed, and excessively cheap volume of 524 pages, consisting of articles selected from Liberty and classified under the following headings: (1) State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherein They Differ; (2) The Individual, Society, and the State; (3) Money and Interest; (4) Land and Rent; (5) Socialism; (6) Communism; (7) Methods; (8) Miscellaneous. The whole elaborately indexed. _Cloth, One Dollar; Paper, Fifty cents_ * * * * * MAILED, POST-PAID, BY BENJ. R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1312, NEW YORK CITY * * * * * TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: 1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_. 2. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. 3. Certain words use oe ligature in the original text. 4. The following misprints have been corrected: "p." corrected to "p. 7," (page 96) "aristotocratic" corrected to "aristocratic" (page 143) "woful" corrected to "woeful" (page 222) "peoplet" corrected to "people" (page 277) "heiling" corrected to "heilig" (footnote 20) 5. Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained. 
30610	----	[Transcriber's note: Extensive research found no evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] HISTORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY BY FRANK W. BLACKMAR PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK ---- CHICAGO ---- BOSTON ATLANTA ---- SAN FRANCISCO Copyright, 1926, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Printed in the United States of America {v} PREFACE This book tells what we know of man, how he first lived, how he worked with other men, what kinds of houses he built, what tools he made, and how he formed a government under which to live. So we learn of the activities of men in the past and what they have passed on to us. In this way we may become acquainted with the different stages in the process which we call civilization. The present trend of specialization in study and research has brought about widely differentiated courses of study in schools and a large number of books devoted to special subjects. Each course of study and each book must necessarily represent but a fragment of the subject. This method of intensified study is to be commended; indeed, it is essential to the development of scientific truth. Those persons who can read only a limited number of books and those students who can take only a limited number of courses of study need books which present a connected survey of the movement of social progress as a whole, and which blaze a trail through the accumulation of learning, and give an adequate perspective of human achievement. It is hoped, then, that this book will form the basis of a course of reading or study that will give the picture in small compass of this most fascinating subject. If it serves its purpose well, it will be the introduction to more special study in particular fields or periods. That the story of this book may be always related more closely with the knowledge and experience of the individual reader, questions and problems have been added at the conclusion of each chapter, which may be used as subjects for {vi} discussion or topics for themes. For those who wish to pursue some particular phase of the subject a brief list of books has been selected which may profitably be read more intensively. F. W. B. {vii} CONTENTS _PART I_ CIVILIZATION AND PROGRESS CHAPTER PAGE I. WHAT IS CIVILIZATION? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The human trail. Civilization may be defined. The material evidences of civilization are all around us. Primitive man faced an unknown world. Civilization is expressed in a variety of ways. Modern civilization includes some fundamentals. Progress an essential characteristic of civilization. Diversity is necessary to progress. What is the goal of civilized man? Possibilities of civilization. Civilization can be estimated. II. THE ESSENTIALS OF PROGRESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 How mankind goes forward on the trail. Change is not necessarily progress. Progress expresses itself in a variety of ideals and aims. Progress of the part and progress of the whole. Social progress involves individual development. Progress is enhanced by the interaction of groups and races. The study of uncultured races of to-day. The study of prehistoric types. Progress is indicated by early cultures. Industrial and social life of primitive man. Cultures indicate the mental development of the race. Men of genius cause mutations which permit progress. The data of progress. III. METHODS OF RECOUNTING HUMAN PROGRESS . . . . . . . . . . 35 Difficulty of measuring progress. Progress may be measured by the implements used. The development of art. Progress is estimated by economic stages. Progress is through the food-supply. Progress estimated by the different forms of social order. Development of family life. The growth of political life. Religion important in civilization. Progress through moral evolution. Intellectual development of man. Change from savagery to barbarism. Civilization includes all kinds of human progress. Table showing methods of recounting human progress. _PART II_ FIRST STEPS OF PROGRESS IV. PREHISTORIC MAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 The origin of man has not yet been determined. Methods of recounting prehistoric time: (1) geologic method, (2) paleontology, (3) anatomy, (4) cultures. Prehistoric types of the human race. The unity of the human race. The primitive home of man may be determined in a general way. The antiquity of man is shown in racial differentiation. The evidences of man's ancient life in different localities: (1) caves, (2) shell mounds, (3) river and glacial drifts, (4) burial-mounds, (5) battle-fields and village sites, (6) lake-dwellings. Knowledge of man's antiquity influences reflective thinking. {viii} V. THE ECONOMIC FACTORS OF PROGRESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 The efforts of man to satisfy physical needs. The attempt to satisfy hunger and protect from cold. The methods of procuring food in primitive times. The variety of food was constantly increased. The food-supply was increased by inventions. The discovery and use of fire. Cooking added to the economy of the food-supply. The domestication of animals. The beginnings of agriculture were very meagre. The manufacture of clothing. Primitive shelters and houses. Discovery and use of metals. Transportation as a means of economic development. Trade, or exchange of goods. The struggle for existence develops the individual and the race. VI. PRIMITIVE SOCIAL LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 The character of primitive social life. The family is the most persistent of social origins. Kinship is a strong factor in social organization. The earliest form of social order. The reign of custom. The Greek and Roman family was strongly organized. In primitive society religion occupied a prominent place. Spirit worship. Moral conditions. Warfare and social progress. Mutual aid developed slowly. _PART III_ SEATS OF EARLY CIVILIZATION VII. LANGUAGE AND ART AS A MEANS OF CULTURE AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 The origin of language has been a subject of controversy. Language is an important social function. Written language followed speech in order of development. Phonetic writing was a step in advance of the ideograph. The use of manuscripts and books made permanent records. Language is an instrument of culture. Art as a language of aesthetic ideas. Music is a form of language. The dance as a means of dramatic expression. The fine arts follow the development of language. The love of the beautiful slowly develops. VIII. THE INFLUENCE OF PHYSICAL NATURE ON HUMAN PROGRESS . . 141 Man is a part of universal nature. Favorable location is necessary for permanent civilization. The nature of the soil an essential condition of progress. The use of land the foundation of social order. Climate has much to do with the possibilities of progress. The general aspects of nature determine the type of civilization. Physical nature influences social order. IX. CIVILIZATION OF THE ORIENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 The first nations with historical records in Asia and Africa. Civilization in Mesopotamia. Influences coming from the Far East. Egypt becomes a centre of civilization. The coming of the Semites. The Phoenicians became the great navigators. A comparison of the Egyptian and Babylonian empires. The Hebrews made a permanent contribution to world civilization. The civilization of India and China. The coming of the Aryans. X. THE ORIENTAL TYPE OF CIVILIZATION . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 The governments of the early Oriental civilizations. War existed for conquest and plunder. Religious belief was an important factor in despotic {ix} government. Social organization was incomplete. Economic influences. Records, writing, and paper. The beginnings of science were strong in Egypt, weak in Babylon. The contribution to civilization. XI. BEGINNINGS OF CIVILIZATION IN AMERICA . . . . . . . . . . 186 America was peopled from the Old World. The Incas of Peru. Aztec civilization in Mexico. The earliest centres of civilization in Mexico. The Pueblo Indians of the Southwest. The Mound-Builders of the Mississippi Valley. Other types of Indian life. Why did the civilization of America fail? _PART IV_ WESTERN CIVILIZATION XII. THE OLD GREEK LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 The old Greek life was the starting-point of Western civilization. The Aegean culture preceded the coming of the Greeks. The Greeks were of Aryan stock. The coming of the Greeks. Character of the primitive Greeks. Influence of old Greek life. XIII. GREEK PHILOSOPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 The transition from theology to inquiry. Explanation of the universe by observation and inquiry. The Ionian philosophy turned the mind toward nature. The weakness of Ionian philosophy. The Eleatic philosophers. The Sophists. Socrates the first moral philosopher (b. 469 B.C.). Platonic philosophy develops the ideal. Aristotle the master mind of the Greeks. Other schools. Results obtained in Greek philosophy. XIV. THE GREEK SOCIAL POLITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 The struggle for Greek equality and liberty. The Greek government an expanded family. Athenian government a type of Grecian democracy. Constitution of Solon seeks a remedy. Cleisthenes continues the reforms of Solon. Athenian democracy failed in obtaining its best and highest development. The Spartan state differs from all others. Greek colonization spreads knowledge. The conquests of Alexander. Contributions of Greece to civilization. XV. ROMAN CIVILIZATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250 The Romans differed in nature from the Greeks. The social structure of early Rome and that of early Greece. Civil organization of Rome. The struggle for liberty. The development of government. The development of law is the most remarkable phase of the Roman civilization. Influence of the Greek life on Rome. Latin literature and language. Development of Roman art. Decline of the Roman Empire. Summary of Roman civilization. XVI. THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 Important factors in the foundation of Western civilization. The social contacts of the Christian religion. Social conditions at the beginning of the Christian era. The contact of Christianity with social life. Christianity influenced the legislation of the times. Christians come into conflict with civil authority. The wealth of the church accumulates. Development of the hierarchy. Attempt to dominate the temporal powers. Dogmatism. The church becomes the conservator of knowledge. Service of Christianity. {x} XVII. TEUTONIC INFLUENCE ON CIVILIZATION . . . . . . . . . . 281 The coming of the barbarians. Importance of Teutonic influence. Teutonic liberty. Tribal life. Classes of society. The home and the home life. Political assemblies. General social customs. The economic life. Contributions to law. XVIII. FEUDAL SOCIETY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 Feudalism a transition of social order. There are two elementary sources of feudalism. The feudal system in its developed state based on land-holding. Other elements of feudalism. The rights of sovereignty. The classification of feudal society. Progress of feudalism. State of society under feudalism. Lack of central authority in feudal society. Individual development in the dominant group. XIX. ARABIAN CONQUEST AND CULTURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304 The rise and expansion of the Arabian Empire. The religious zeal of the Arab-Moors. The foundations of science and art. The beginnings of chemistry and medicine. Metaphysics and exact science. Geography and history. Discoveries, inventions, and achievements. Language and literature. Art and architecture. The government of the Arab-Moors was peculiarly centralized. Arabian civilization soon reached its limits. XX. THE CRUSADES STIR THE EUROPEAN MIND . . . . . . . . . . . 319 What brought about the crusades. Specific causes of the crusades. Unification of ideals and the breaking of feudalism. The development of monarchy. The crusades quickened intellectual development. The commercial effects of the crusades. General influence of the crusades on civilization. XXI. ATTEMPTS AT POPULAR GOVERNMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328 The cost of popular government. The feudal lord and the towns. The rise of free cities. The struggle for independence. The affranchisement of cities developed municipal organization. The Italian cities. Government of Venice. Government of Florence. The Lombard League. The rise of popular assemblies in France. Rural communes arose in France. The municipalities of France. The States-General was the first central organization. Failure of attempts at popular government in Spain. Democracy in the Swiss cantons. The ascendancy of monarchy. Beginning of constitutional liberty in England. XXII. THE INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING OF EUROPE . . . . . . . . . 347 Social evolution is dependent upon variation. The revival of progress throughout Europe. The revival of learning a central idea of progress. Influence of Charlemagne. The attitude of the church was retrogressive. Scholastic philosophy marks a step in progress. Cathedral and monastic schools. The rise of universities. Failure to grasp scientific methods. Inventions and discoveries. The extension of commerce hastened progress. XXIII. HUMANISM AND THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING . . . . . . . . . 364 The discovery of manuscripts. Who were the humanists? Relation of humanism to language and literature. Art and architecture. The effect of humanism on social manners. Relation of humanism to science and philosophy. The study of the classics became fundamental in education. General influence of humanism. {xi} XXIV. THE REFORMATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 The character of the Reformation. Signs of the rising storm. Attempts at reform within the church. Immediate causes of the Reformation. Luther was the hero of the Reformation in Germany. Zwingli was the hero of the Reformation in Switzerland. Calvin establishes the Genevan system. The Reformation in England differed from the German. Many phases of reformation in other countries. Results of the Reformation were far-reaching. XXV. CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION . . . . 392 Progress of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The struggle of monarchy with democracy. Struggle for constitutional liberty in England. The place of France in modern civilization. The divine right of kings. The power of the nobility. The misery of the people. The church. Influence of the philosophers. The failure of government. France on the eve of the revolution. The revolution. Results of the revolution. _PART V_ MODERN PROGRESS XXVI. PROGRESS OF POLITICAL LIBERTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 Political liberty in the eighteenth century. The progress of popular government found outside of great nations. Reform measures in England. The final triumph of the French republic. Democracy in America. Modern political reforms. Republicanism in other countries. Influence of democracy on monarchy. XXVII. INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429 Industries radiate from the land as a centre. The early medieval methods of industry. The beginnings of trade. Expansion of trade and transportation. Invention and discoveries. The change from handcraft to power manufacture. The industrial revolution. Modern industrial development. Scientific agriculture. The building of the city. Industry and civilization. XXVIII. SOCIAL EVOLUTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443 The evolutionary processes of society. The social individual. The ethnic form of society. The territorial group. The national group founded on race expansion. The functions of new groups. Great society and the social order. Great society protects voluntary organizations. The widening influence of the church. Growth of religious toleration. Altruism and democracy. Modern society a machine of great complexity. Interrelation of different parts of society. The progress of the race based on social opportunities. The central idea of modern civilization. XXIX. THE EVOLUTION OF SCIENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458 Science is an attitude of mind toward life. Scientific methods. Measurement in scientific research. Science develops from centres. Science and democracy. The study of the biological and physical sciences. The evolutionary theory. Science and war. Scientific progress is cumulative. The trend of scientific investigation. Research foundations. {xii} XXX. UNIVERSAL EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY . . . . . . . . . . . 475 Universal public education is a modern institution. The mediaeval university permitted some freedom of choice. The English and German universities. Early education in the United States. The common, or public, schools. Knowledge, intelligence, and training necessary in a democracy. Education has been universalized. Research an educational process. The diffusion of knowledge necessary in a democracy. Educational progress. Importance of state education. The printing-press and its products. Public opinion. XXXI. WORLD ECONOMICS AND POLITICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486 Commerce and communication. Exchange of ideas modifies political organization. Spread of political ideas. The World War breaks down the barriers of thought. Attempt to form a league for permanent peace. International agreement and progress. The mutual aid of nations. Reorganization of international law. The outlook for a world state. XXXII. THE TREND OF CIVILIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES . . . . 495 The economic outlook. Economics of labor. Public and corporate industries. The political outlook. Equalization of opportunity. The influence of scientific thought on progress. The relation of material comfort to spiritual progress. The balance of social forces. Restlessness vs. happiness. Summary of progress. BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509 {3} _PART I_ CIVILIZATION AND PROGRESS HISTORY OF HUMAN SOCIETY CHAPTER I WHAT IS CIVILIZATION? _The Human Trail_.--The trail of human life beginning in the mists of the past, winding through the ages and stretching away toward an unknown future, is a subject of perennial interest and worthy of profound thought. No other great subject so invites the attention of the mind of man. It is a very long trail, rough and unblazed, wandering over the continents of the earth. Those who have travelled it came in contact with the mysteries of an unknown world. They faced the terrors of the shifting forms of the earth, of volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, storms, and ice fields. They witnessed the extinction of forests and animal groups, and the changing forms of lakes, rivers, and mountains, and, indeed, the boundaries of oceans. It is the trail of human events and human endeavor on which man developed his physical powers, enlarged his brain capacity, developed and enriched his mind, and became efficient through art and industry. Through inventions and discovery he turned the forces of nature to his use, making them serve his will. In association with his fellows, man learned that mutual aid and co-operation were necessary to the survival of the race. To learn this caused him more trouble than all the terrors and mysteries of the natural world around him. Connected with the trail is a long chain of causes and effects, trial and error, success and failure, out of which has come the advancement of the race. The accumulated results of life on the trail are called _civilization_. _Civilization May Be Defined_.--To know what civilization is by study and observation is better than to rely upon a formal {4} definition. For, indeed, the word is used in so many different ways that it admits of a loose interpretation. For instance, it may be used in a narrow sense to indicate the character and quality of the civil relations. Those tribes or nations having a well-developed social order, with government, laws, and other fixed social customs, are said to be civilized, while those peoples without these characters are assumed to be uncivilized. It may also be considered in a somewhat different sense, when the arts, industries, sciences, and habits of life are stimulated--civilization being determined by the degree in which these are developed. Whichever view is accepted, it involves a contrast of present ideals with past ideals, of an undeveloped with a developed state of human progress. But whatever notion we have of civilization, it is difficult to draw a fixed line between civilized and uncivilized peoples. Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, in his _Ancient Society_, asserts that civilization began with the phonetic alphabet, and that all human activity prior to this could be classified as savagery or barbarism. But there is a broader conception of civilization which recognizes all phases of human achievement, from the making of a stone axe to the construction of the airplane; from the rude hut to the magnificent palace; from crude moral and religious conditions to the more refined conditions of human association. If we consider that civilization involves the whole process of human achievement, it must admit of a great variety of qualities and degrees of development, hence it appears to be a relative term applied to the variation of human life. Thus, the Japanese are highly civilized along special lines of hand work, hand industry, and hand art, as well as being superior in some phases of family relationships. So we might say of the Chinese, the East Indians, and the American Indians, that they each have well-established customs, habits of thought, and standards of life, differing from other nations, expressing different types of civilization. When a member of a primitive tribe invented the bow-and-arrow, or began to chip a flint nodule in order to make a stone {5} axe, civilization began. As soon as people began to co-operate with one another in obtaining food, building houses, or for protection against wild animals and wild men, that is, when they began to treat each other civilly, they were becoming civilized. We may say then in reality that civilization has been a continuous process from the first beginning of man's conquest of himself and nature to the modern complexities of social life with its multitude of products of industry and cultural arts. It is very common for one group or race to assume to be highly civilized and call the others barbarians or savages. Thus the Hebrews assumed superiority when they called other people Gentiles, and the Greeks when they called others barbarians. Indeed, it is only within recent years that we are beginning to recognize that the civilizations of China, Japan, and India have qualities worth studying and that they may have something worth while in life that the Western civilization has not. Also there has been a tendency to confuse the terms Christian and heathen with civilized and uncivilized. This idea arose in England, where, in the early history of Christianity, the people of the towns were more cultured than the people of the country. It happened, too, that the townspeople received Christianity before the people of the country, hence heathens were the people who dwelt out on the heath, away from town. This local idea became a world idea when all non-Christian peoples were called uncivilized. It is a fatal error for an individual, neighborhood, tribe, or nation to assume superiority to the extent that it fails to recognize good qualities in others. One should not look with disdain upon a tribe of American Indians, calling them uncivilized because their material life is simple, when in reality in point of honor, faithfulness, and courage they excel a large proportion of the races assuming a higher civilization. _The Material Evidences of Civilization Are All Around Us_.--Behold this beautiful valley of the West, with its broad, {6} fertile fields, yielding rich harvests of corn and wheat, and brightened by varied forms of fruit and flower. Farmhouses and schoolhouses dot the landscape, while towns and cities, with their marts of trade and busy industries, rise at intervals. Here are churches, colleges, and libraries, indicative of the education of the community; courthouses, prisons, and jails, which speak of government, law, order, and protection. Here are homes for the aged and weak, hospitals and schools for the defective, almshouses for the indigent, and reformatories for the wayward. Railroads bind together all parts of the nation, making exchange possible, and bringing to our doors the products of every clime. The telephone and the radio unite distant people with common knowledge, thought, and sentiment. Factories and mills line the streams or cluster in village and city, marking the busy industrial life. These and more mark the visible products of civilization. But civilization is something more than form, it is spirit; and its evidence may be more clearly discerned in the co-operation of men in political organization and industrial life, by their united action in religious worship and charitable service, in social order and educational advancement. Observe, too, the happy homes, with all of their sweet and hallowed influences, and the social mingling of the people searching for pleasure or profit in their peaceful, harmonious association. Witness the evidences of accumulated knowledge in newspapers, periodicals, and books, and the culture of painting, poetry, and music. Behold, too, the achievements of the mind in the invention and discovery of the age; steam and electrical appliances that cause the whirl of bright machinery, that turn night into day, and make thought travel swift as the wings of the wind! Consider the influence of chemistry, biology, and medicine on material welfare, and the discoveries of the products of the earth that subserve man's purpose! And the central idea of all this is man, who walks upright in the dignity and grace of his own manhood, surrounded by the evidence of his own achievements. His knowledge, his power of thought, {7} his moral character, and his capacity for living a large life, are evidences of the real civilization. For individual culture is, after all, the flower and fruit, the beauty and strength of civilization. One hundred years ago neither dwelling, church, nor city greeted the eye that gazed over the broad expanse of the unfilled prairies. Here were no accumulations of wealth, no signs of human habitation, except a few Indians wandering in groups or assembled in their wigwam villages. The evidences of art and industry were meagre, and of accumulated knowledge small, because the natives were still the children of nature and had gone but a little way in the mastery of physical forces or in the accumulation of knowledge. The relative difference in their condition and that of those that followed them is the contrast between barbarism and civilization. Yet how rapid was the change that replaced the latter with the former. Behold great commonwealths built in half a century! What is the secret of this great and marvellous change? It is a transplanted civilization, not an indigenous one. Men came to this fertile valley with the spiritual and material products of modern life, the outcome of centuries of progress. They brought the results of man's struggle, with himself and with nature, for thousands of years. This made it possible to build a commonwealth in half a century. The first settlers brought with them a knowledge of the industrial arts; the theory and practice of social order; individual capacity, and a thirst for education. It was necessary only to set up the machinery already created, and civilization went forward. When they began the life of labor, the accumulated wealth of the whole world was to be had in exchange for the products of the soil. _Primitive Man Faced an Unknown World_.--But how different is the picture of primitive man suddenly brought face to face with an unknown world. With no knowledge of nature or art, with no theory or practice of social order, he began to dig and to delve for the preservation of life. Suffering the pangs of hunger, he obtained food; naked, he clothed himself; {8} buffeted by storm and wind and scorched by the penetrating rays of the sun, he built himself a shelter. As he gradually became skilled in the industrial arts, his knowledge increased. He formed a clearer estimate of how nature might serve him, and obtained more implements with which to work The social order of the family and the state slowly appeared. Man became a co-operating creature, working with his fellows in the satisfaction of material wants and in protecting the rights of individuals. Slow and painful was this process of development, but as he worked his capacity enlarged, his power increased, until he mastered the forces of nature and turned them to serve him; he accumulated knowledge and brought forth culture and learning; he marshalled the social forces in orderly process. Each new mastery of nature or self was a power for the future, for civilization is cumulative in its nature; it works in a geometrical progression. An idea once formed, others follow; one invention leads to another, and each material form of progress furnishes a basis for a more rapid progress and for a larger life. The discovery and use of a new food product increased the power of civilization a hundredfold. One step in social order leads to another, and thus is furnished a means of utilizing without waste all of the individual and social forces. Yet how irregular and faltering are the first steps of human progress. A step forward, followed by a long period of readjustment of the conditions of life; a movement forward here and a retarding force there. Within this irregular movement we discover the true course of human progress. One tribe, on account of peculiar advantages, makes a special discovery, which places it in the ascendancy and gives it power over others. It has obtained a favorable location for protection against oppressors or a fertile soil, a good hunting ground or a superior climate. It survives all opposing factors for a time, and, obtaining some idea of progress, it goes on adding strength unto strength, or is crowded from its favorable position by its warlike neighbors to perish from the earth, or to live a {9} stationary or even a deteriorating life. A strong tribe, through internal development and the domination of other groups, finally becomes a great nation in an advanced state of civilization. It passes through the course of infancy, youth, maturity, old age, and death. But the products of its civilization are handed on to other nations. Another rises and, when about to enter an advanced state of progress, perishes on account of internal maladies. It is overshadowed with despotism, oppressed by priestcraft, or lacking industrial vitality to such a degree that it is forced to surrender the beginnings of civilization to other nations and other lives. The dominance of a group is dependent in part on the natural or inherent qualities of mind and body of its members, which give it power to achieve by adapting itself to conditions of nature and in mastering and utilizing natural resources. Thus the tribe that makes new devices for procuring food or new weapons for defense, or learns how to sow seeds and till the soil, adds to its means of survival and progress and thus forges ahead of those tribes lacking in these means. Also the social heritage or the inheritance of all of the products of industry and arts of life which are passed on from generation to generation, is essential to the rapid development of civilization. _Civilization Is Expressed in a Variety of Ways_.--Different ideals and the adaptation to different environment cause different types of life. The ideals of the Persian, the Greek, the Roman, and the Teuton varied. Still greater is the contrast between these and the Chinese and the Egyptian ideals. China boasts of an ancient civilization that had its origin long before the faint beginnings of Western nations, and the Chinese are firm believers in their own culture and superior advancement. The silent grandeur of the pyramids and temples of the Nile valley bespeak a civilization of great maturity, that did much for the world in general, but little for the Egyptian people. Yet these types of civilization are far different from that of Western nations. Their ideas of culture are in great contrast to our own. But even the Western nations are not uniform in {10} ideals of civil life nor in their practice of social order. They are not identical in religious life, and their ideals of art and social progress vary. Moreover, the racial type varies somewhat and with it the national life and thought. Compare England, Germany, France, and Spain as to the variability in characteristics of literature and art, in moral ideals, in ethical practice, in religious motive, and in social order. Their differences are evident, but they tend to disappear under the influence of rapid transit and close intercommunication, which draw all modern nations nearer together. Yet, granting the variability of ideals and of practice, there is a general consensus of opinion as to what constitutes civilization and what are the elements of progress. Modern writers differ somewhat in opinion as to elements of civilization, but these differences are more apparent than real, as all true civilization must rest upon a solid foundation of common human traits. The fundamental principles and chief characteristics are quite uniform for all nations and for all times, and writers who disagree as to general characteristics may not be classified by national boundaries; they represent the differences of philosophers. _Modern Civilization Includes Some Fundamentals_.--As applied at different periods of the world's progress and as a representation of different phases of life, civilization means more to-day than ever before; its ideal is higher, its conception broader. In the modern, accepted sense it includes (1) _a definite knowledge of man and nature_. The classified knowledge of science and philosophy and all phases of the history of man socially and individually are important in estimating his true progress. All forms of thought and life are to be estimated in considering the full meaning of the term. It also includes (2) _progress in art_. While science deals with principles, art deals with rules of action. Science gives classified knowledge, while art directs to a practical end. Art provides definite plans how to operate. If these plans are carried out, the field of practice is entered. In its broadest conception art includes the making {11} and the doing, as well as the plan. The fine arts and the industrial or practical arts, in all of their varied interests, are included in art as a factor in civilization. This category should include the highest forms of painting, poetry, sculpture, and music, as well as the lowest forms of industrial implements. Civilization includes (3) _a well-developed ethical code_ quite universally observed by a community or nation. The rule of conduct of man toward himself and toward his fellows is one of the essential points of discrimination between barbarism and civilization. While ethical practice began at a very early period in the progress of man, it was a long time before any distinct ethical code became established. But the completed civilization does not exist until a high order of moral practice obtains; no civilization can long prevail without it. Of less importance, but of no less binding force, is (4) the _social code_, which represents the forms and conventionalities of society, built, it is true, largely upon the caprices of fashion, and varying greatly in different communities, yet more arbitrary, if possible, than the moral code. It considers fitness and consistency in conduct, and as such is an important consideration in social usage and social progress. In Europe it has its extreme in the court etiquette; in America, in the punctiliousness of the higher social classes of our large cities. But it affects all communities, and its observance may be noted in rural districts as well as in the city population. The mores, or customs, of man began at a very early time and have been a persistent ruling power in human conduct. Through tradition they are handed down from generation to generation, to be observed with more or less fidelity as a guide to the art of living. Every community, whether primitive or developed, is controlled to a great extent by the prevailing custom. It is common for individuals and families to do as their ancestors did. This habit is frequently carried to such an extent that the deeds of the fathers are held sacred from which no one dare to depart. Isolated communities continue year after year to do things because they had always done so, {12} holding strictly to the ruling custom founded on tradition, even when some better way was at hand. A rare example of this human trait is given by Captain Donald MacMillan, who recently returned from Arctic Greenland. He said: "We took two ultra-modern developments, motion pictures and radio, direct to a people who live and think as their ancestors did two thousand years ago." He was asked: "What did they think?" He replied: "I do not know." Probably it was a case of wonder without thought. While this is a dominant force which makes for the unity and perpetuity of the group, it is only by departure from established tradition that progress is made possible. Civilization involves (5) _government and law_. The tribes and nations in a state of barbarism lived under the binding influence of custom. In this period people were born under _status_, or condition, not under law. Gradually the old family life expanded into the state, and government became more formal. Law appeared as the expression of the will of the people directly or indirectly through their representatives. True, it may have been the arbitrary ruling of a king, but he represented the unity of the race and spoke with the authority of the nation. Law found no expression until there was formed an organic community capable of having a will respecting the control of those who composed it. It implies a governing body and a body governed; it implies an orderly movement of society according to a rule of action called law. While social order is generally obtained through law and government, such is the practice in modern life that the orderly association of men in trade and commerce and in daily contact appears to stand alone and to rise above the control of the law. Indeed, in a true civilization, the civil code, though an essential factor, seems to be outclassed by the higher social instincts based on the practice of social order. (6) _Religion_ must take a large place as a factor in the development of civilization. The character of the religious belief of man is, to a certain extent, the true test of his progressive {13} nature. His faith may prove a source of inspiration to reason and progressive life; it may prove the opposite, and lead to stagnation and retrogression. Upon the whole, it must be insisted that religious belief has subserved a large purpose in the economy of human progress. It has been universal to all tribes, for even the lowest have some form of religious belief--at least, a belief in spiritual beings. Religious belief thus became the primary source of abstract ideas, and it has always been conducive to social order. It has, in modern times especially, furnished the foundation of morality. By surrounding marriage with ceremonies it has purified the home life, upheld the authority of the family, and thus strengthened social order. It has developed the individual by furnishing an ideal before science and positive knowledge made it possible. It strengthened patriotic feeling on account of service rendered in supporting local government, and subjectively religion improved man by teaching him to obey a superior. Again, by its tradition it frequently stifled thought and retarded progress. Among other elements of civilization must be mentioned (7) _social well-being_. The preceding conditions would be almost certain to insure social well-being and prosperity. Yet it might be possible, through lack of harmony of these forces, on account of their improper distribution in a community, that the group might lack in general social prosperity. Unless there is general contentment and happiness there cannot be said to be an ideal state of civilization. And this social well-being is closely allied to (8) _material prosperity_, the most apparent element to be mentioned in the present analysis. The amount of the accumulation of the wealth of a nation, its distribution among the people, and the manner in which it is obtained and expended, determine the state of civilization. This material prosperity makes the better phases of civilization possible. It is essential to modern progress, and our civilization should seek to render it possible for all classes to earn their bread and to have leisure and opportunity for self-culture. The mastery of the forces of nature is the basis for man's {14} material prosperity. Touching nature here and there, by discovery, invention, and toil, causing her to yield her treasures for his service, is the key to all progress. In this, it is not so much conflict with nature as co-operation with her, that yields utility and eventually mastery. The discovery and use of new food products, the coal and other minerals of the earth, the forests, the water power and electric power, coupled with invention and adaptability to continually greater use, are the qualifying opportunity for advancement. Without these the fine theories of the philosopher, exalted religious belief, and high ideals of life are of no avail. From the foregoing it may be said that civilization in its fulness means all of the acquired capabilities of man as evidenced by his conduct and the material products arising from his physical and mental exertion. It is evident that at first the structure called civilization began to develop very slowly and very feebly; just when it began it is difficult to state. The creation of the first utility, the first substantial movement to increase the food supply, the first home for protection, the first religious ceremony, or the first organized household, represents the beginnings of civilization, and these are the landmarks along the trail of man's ascendency. _Progress Is an Essential Characteristic of Civilization_.--The goal is never reached, the victory is never finally achieved. Man must move on, ever on. Intellect must develop, morals improve, liberty increase, social order be perfected, and social growth continue. There must be no halting on the road; the nation that hesitates is lost. Progress in general is marked by the development of the individual, on the one hand, and that of society, on the other. In well-ordered society these two ideas are balanced; they seek an equilibrium. Excessive individualism leads to anarchy and destruction; excessive socialism blights and stagnates individual activity and independence and retards progress. It must be admitted here as elsewhere that the individual culture and the individual life are, after all, the highest aims. But how can these be obtained in {15} modern life without social progress? How can there be freedom of action for the development of the individual powers without social expansion? Truly, the social and the individual life are complementary elements of progress. _Diversity Is Necessary to Progress_.--If progress is an essential characteristic of modern civilization, it may be said that diversity is essential to progress. There is much said about equality and fraternity. It depends on what is meant by the terms as to whether these are good sayings or not. If equality means uniformity, by it man is easily reduced to a state of stagnation. Diversity of life exists everywhere in progressive nature, where plants or animals move forward in the scale of existence. Man is not an exception to the rule, notwithstanding his strong will force. Men differ in strength, in moral and intellectual capacity, and in co-operating ability. Hence they must occupy different stations in life. And the quality and quantity of progress are to be estimated in different nations according to the diversity of life to be observed among individuals and groups. _What Is the Goal of Civilized Man?_--And it may be well to ask, as civilization is progressive: What is our aim in life from our own standpoint? For what do men strive? What is the ultimate of life? What is the best for which humanity can live? If it were merely to obtain food and clothes and nothing more, the question could be easily answered. If it were merely to train a man to be a monk, that he might spend his time in prayer and supplication for a better future life, the question would be simple enough. If to pore over books to find out the knowledge of the past and to spend the life in investigation of truth were the chief aims, it would be easy to determine the object of life. But frequently that which we call success in life is merely a means to an end. And viewed in the complex activity of society, it is difficult to say what is the true end of life; it is difficult to determine the true end of civilization. Some have said it is found in administering the "greatest good to the greatest number," {16} and if we consider in this the generations yet unborn, it reveals the actual tendency of modern civilization. If the perfection of the individual is the highest ideal of civilization, it stops not with one individual, but includes all. And this asserts that social well-being must be included in the final aim, for full and free individual development cannot appear without it. The enlarged capacity for living correctly, enjoying the best of this life righteously, and for associating harmoniously and justly with his fellows, is the highest aim of the individual. Happiness of the greatest number through utility is the formula for modern civilization. _Possibilities of Civilization_.--The possibilities of reaching a still higher state of civilization are indeed great. The future is not full of foreboding, but bright and happy with promise of individual culture and social progress. If opportunities are but wisely used, the twentieth century will witness an advancement beyond our highest dreams. Yet the whole problem hinges on the right use of knowledge. If the knowledge of chemistry is to be used to destroy nations and races with gases and high explosives, such knowledge turns civilization to destruction. If all of the powers of nature under man's control should be turned against him, civilization would be turned back upon itself. Let us have "the will to believe" that we have entered an era of vital progress, of social improvement, of political reforms, which will lead to the protection of those who need protection and the elevation of those who desire it. The rapid progress in art and architecture, in invention and industry, the building of libraries and the diffusion of knowledge, the improvement of our educational system, all being entered upon, will force the world forward at a rapid pace, and on such a rational basis that the delight of living will be greatly enhanced for all classes. _Civilization Can Be Estimated_.--This brief presentation of the meaning of civilization reveals the fact that civilization can be recounted; that it is a question of fact and philosophy that can be measured. It is the story of human progress and {17} the causes which made it. It presents the generalizations of all that is valuable in the life of the race. It is the epitome of the history of humanity in its onward sweep. In its critical sense it cannot be called history, for it neglects details for general statements. Nor is it the philosophy of history, for it covers a broader field. It is not speculation, for it deals with fact. It is the philosophy of man's life as to the results of his activity. It shows alike the unfolding of the individual and of society, and it represents these in every phase embraced in the word "progress." To recount this progress and to measure civilization is the purpose of the following pages, so far as it may be done in the limited space assigned. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. Are people of civilized races happier now than are the uncivilized races? 2. Would the American Indians in time have developed a high state of civilization? 3. Why do we not find a high state of civilization among the African negroes? 4. What are the material evidences of civilization in the neighborhood in which you live? 5. Does increased knowledge alone insure an advanced civilization? 6. Choose an important public building in your neighborhood and trace the sources of architecture of the different parts. {18} CHAPTER II THE ESSENTIALS OF PROGRESS _How Mankind Goes Forward on the Trail_.--Although civilization cannot exist without it, progress is something different from the sum-total of the products of civilization. It may be said to be the process through which civilization is obtained, or, perhaps more fittingly, it is the log of the course that marks civilization. There can be no conception of progress without ideals, which are standards set up toward which humanity travels. And as humanity never rises above its ideals, the possibilities of progress are limited by them. If ideals are high, there are possibilities of a high state of culture; if they are low, the possibilities are lessened, and, indeed, frequently are barren of results. But having established ideals as beacon lights for humanity to follow, the final test is whether there is sufficient knowledge, sufficient ability, and sufficient will-power to approximate them. In other words, shall humanity complete the trail of life, go on higher and higher grounds where are set the standards or goals to be reached; or will humanity rest easily and contentedly on a low level with no attempt to reach a higher level, or, indeed, will humanity, failing in desires for betterment, initiative, and will-power, drift to lower levels? Groups, either tribes, races, or nations, may advance along given lines and be stationary or even retarded along other lines of development. If the accumulation of wealth is the dominant ideal, it may be so strenuously followed as to destroy opportunity for other phases of life. If the flow of energy is all toward a religious belief that absorbs the time and energy of people in the building of pyramids, mausoleums, cathedrals, and mosques, and taboos the inquiry into nature {19} which might yield a large improvement in the race, religion would be developed at the expense of race improvement. _Change Is Not Necessarily Progress_.--It is quite common in a popular sense for people to identify change with progress, or indeed to accept the wonderful changes which take place as causes of progress, when in reality they should have taken more care to search out the elements of progress of the great moving panorama of changing life. Changes are frequently violent, sudden, tremendous in their immediate effect. They move rapidly and involve many complexes, but progress is a slow-going old tortoise that plods along irrespective of storm or sunshine, life or death, of the cataclysms of war or the catastrophes of earthquakes or volcanoes. Progress moves slowly along through political and social revolutions, gaining a little here and a little there, and registering the things that are really worth while out of the ceaseless, changing humanity. Achievement may take place without betterment, but all progress must make a record of betterment with achievement. A man may write a book or invent a machine at great labor. So far as he is concerned it is an achievement, but unless it is a good book, a good invention, better than others, so that they may be used for the advancement of the race, they will not form a betterment. Many of the changes of life represent the results of trial and error. "There is a way that seemeth right" to a nation which may end in destruction. The evil aroused is sometimes greater than the good. The prosperity of the Roman Empire was destroyed because of luxury and corrupt administration. The German Empire developed great powers in government, education, in the arts and sciences, but her military purpose nearly destroyed her. The Spanish Empire that once controlled a good part of the American continent failed because laborers were driven out of Spain and the wealth gained by exploitation was used to support the nobility and royalty in luxury. Whether the United States will continue to carry out her high purposes will depend upon the right use of her immense wealth and power. Likewise the {20} radio, the movie, and the automobile are making tremendous changes. Will the opportunities they furnish improve the moral and intellectual character of the people--a necessary condition to real progress? In considering modern progress, too frequently it is estimated by the greatness of things, by the stupendous changes, or by the marvellous achievements of the age, and we pause and wonder at what has been accomplished; but if we think long enough and clearly enough, we may get a vision of real progress, and we may find it difficult to determine the outcome of it all, so far as the real betterment of the race is concerned. Is the millionaire of to-day any happier, necessarily, and any more moral or of a higher religious standard than the primitive man or the savage of the plains or forest of to-day? True, he has power to achieve in many directions, but is he any happier or better? It may be said that his millions may accomplish great good. This is true if they are properly applied. It is also true that they are capable of great harm if improperly used. As we stand and gaze at the movements of the airplane, or contemplate its rapid flight from ocean to ocean and from land to land around the world, we are impressed with this great wonder of the age, the great achievement of the inventive power of man. But what of the gain to humanity? If it is possible to transport the mails from New York to San Francisco in sixteen hours instead of in five days, is there advantage in that except the quickening process of transportation and life? Is it not worth while to inquire what the man at the other end of the line is going to do by having his mail four days ahead? He will hurry up somebody else and somebody else will hurry the next one, and we only increase the rapidity of motion. Does it really give us more time for leisure, and if so, are we using that leisure time in the development of our reflective intellectual powers or our spiritual life? It is easier to see improvement in the case of the radio, whereby songs and lectures can be broadcast all over the earth, and the {21} community of life and the community of interest are developed thereby, and, also, the leisure hours are devoted to a contemplation of high ideals, of beautiful music, of noble thoughts. We do recognize a modicum of progress out of the great whirring, rapid changes in transportation and creative industry; but let us not be deceived by substituting change for progress, or making the two identical. Thus human progress is something more than achievement, and it is something more than the exhibition of tools. It is determined by the use of the tools and involves betterment of the human race. Hence, all the products of social heredity, of language, of science, of religion, of art, and of government are progressive in proportion as they are successfully used for individual and social betterment. For if government is used to enslave people, or science to destroy them, or religion to stifle them, there can be no progress. _Progress Expresses Itself in a Variety of Ideals and Aims_.--Progress involves many lines of development. It may include biological development of the human race, the development of man, especially his growth of brain power. It may consider man's adaptation to environment under different phases of life. It may consider the efficiency of bodily structure. In a cultural sense, progress may refer to the products of the industrial arts, or to the development of fine arts, or the advancement of religious life and belief--in fact, to the mastery of the resources of nature and their service to mankind in whatever form they may appear or in whatever phase of life they may be expressed. Progress may also be indicated in the improvement in social order and in government, and also the increased opportunity of the individual to receive culture through the process of mutual aid. In fact, progress must be sought for in all phases of human activity. Whatever phase of progress is considered, its line of demarcation is carefully drawn in the process of change from the old to the new, but the results of these changes will be the indices of either progress or retardation. {22} _Progress of the Part and Progress of the Whole_.--An individual might through hereditary qualities have superior mental traits or physical powers. These also may receive specific development under favorable educational environment, but the inertia of the group or the race might render ineffective a salutary use of his powers. A man is sometimes elected mayor of a town and devotes his energies to municipal betterment. But he may be surrounded by corrupt politicians and promoters of enterprises who hedge his way at every turn. Also, in a similar way, a group or tribe may go forward, and yet the products of its endeavor be lost to the world. Thus a productiveness of the part may be exhibited without the progress of the race. The former moves with concrete limitations, the latter in sweeping, cycling changes; but the latter cannot exist without the former, because it is from the parts that the whole is created, and it is the generalization of the accumulated knowledge or activities of the parts that makes it possible for the whole to develop. The evolution of the human race includes the idea of differentiation of parts and a generalization that makes the whole of progress. So it is not easy to determine the result of a local activity as progressive until its relation to other parts is determined, nor until other activities and the whole of life are determined. Local colorings of life may be so provincial in their view-point as to be practically valueless in the estimation of the degree and quality of progress. Certain towns, especially in rural districts not acquainted with better things, boast that they have the best school, the best court-house, the best climate--in fact, everything best. When they finally awaken from their local dream, they discover their own deficiencies. The great development of art, literature, philosophy, and politics among the ancient Greeks was inefficient in raising the great masses of the people to a higher plane of living, but the fruits of the lives of these superiors were handed on to other groups to utilize, and they are not without influence {23} over the whole human group of to-day. So, too, the religious mystic philosophy and literature of India represented a high state of mental development, but the products of its existence left the races of India in darkness because the mystic philosophy was not adaptable to the practical affairs of life. The Indian philosophers may have handed on ideas which caused admiration and wonder, but they have had very little influence of a practical nature on Western civilization. So society may make progress in either art, religion, or government for a time, and then, for the want of adaptation to the conditions imposed by progress, the effects may disappear. Yet not all is lost, for some achievements in the form of tools are passed on through social heredity and utilized by other races. In the long run it is the total of the progress of the race, the progress of the whole, that is the final test. _Social Progress Involves Individual Development_.--If we trace progress backward over the trail which it has followed, there are two lines of development more or less clearly defined. One is the improvement of the racial stock through the hereditary traits of individuals. The brain is enlarged, the body developed in character and efficiency, and the entire physical system has changed through variation in accordance with the laws of heredity. What we observe is development in the individual, which is its primary function. Progress in this line must furnish individuals of a higher type in the procession of the generations. The other line is through social heredity, that is the accumulated products of civilization handed down from generation to generation. This gives each succeeding generation a new, improved kit of tools, it brings each new generation into a better environment and surrounds it with ready-made means to carry on the improvement and add something for the use of the next generation. Knowledge of the arts and industries, language and books, are thus products of social heredity. Also buildings, machinery, roads, educational systems, and school buildings are inherited. Connected with these two methods of development must {24} be the discovery of the use of the human mind evidenced by the beginning of reflective thought. It is said by some writers that we are still largely in the age of instincts and emotions and have just recently entered the age of reason. Such positive statements should be considered with a wider vision of life, for one cannot conceive of civilization at all without the beginning of reflective mental processes. Simple inventions, like the use of fire, the bow-and-arrow, or the flint knife, may have come about primarily through the desire to accomplish something by subjecting means to an end, but in the perfection of the use of these things, which occurred very early in primitive life, there must have been reflective thinking in order to shape the knife for its purpose, make the bow-and-arrow more effective, and utilize fire for cooking, heating, and smelting. All of these must have come primarily through the individual initiative. Frequent advocates of social achievement would lead one to suppose that the tribe in need of some method of cutting should assemble and pass the resolution that a flint knife be made, when any one knows it was the reflective process of the individual mind which sought adaptation to environment or means to accomplish a purpose. Of course the philosopher may read many generalizations into this which may confuse one in trying to observe the simple fact, for it is to be deplored that much of the philosophy of to-day is a smoke screen which obscures the simple truth. The difference of races in achievement and in culture is traced primarily to hereditary traits developed through variation, through intrinsic stimuli, or those originating through so-called inborn traits. These traits enable some races to achieve and adapt themselves to their environment, and cause others to fail. Thus, some groups or races have perished because of living near a swamp infested with malaria-carrying mosquitoes or in countries where the food supply was insufficient. They lacked initiative to move to a more healthful region or one more bountiful in food products, or else they {25} lacked knowledge and skill to protect themselves against mosquitoes or to increase the food supply. Moreover, they had no power within them to seek the better environment or to change the environment for their own advancement. This does not ignore the tremendous influence of environment in the production of race culture. Its influence is tremendous, especially because environmental conditions are more under the direction of intelligence than is the development of hereditary traits. Some writers have maintained that there is no difference in the dynamic, mental, or physical power of races, and that the difference of races which we observe to-day is based upon the fact that some have been retarded by poor environment, and others have advanced because of fortunate environment. This argument is good as far as it goes, but it does not tell the whole story. It does not show why some races under good environment have not succeeded, while others under poor environment have succeeded well. It does not show why some races have the wit to change to a better environment or transform the old environment. There seems to be a great persistency of individual traits, of family traits, and, in a still larger generalization, of racial traits which culture fails to obliterate. As these differences of traits seem to be universal, it appears that the particular combination which gives motor power may also be a differentiation. At least, as all races have had the same earth, why, if they are so equal in the beginning, would they not achieve? Had they no inventive power? Also, when these so-called retarded races came in contact with the more advanced races who were superior in arts and industries, why did they not borrow, adapt, and utilize these productions? There must have been something vitally lacking which neither the qualities of the individual nor the stimulus of his surroundings could overcome. Some have deteriorated, others have perished; some have reached a stationary existence, while others have advanced. Through hereditary changes, nature played the {26} game in her own way with the leading cards in her own hand, and some races lost. Hence so with races, so with individuals. _Progress Is Enhanced by the Interaction of Groups and Races_.--The accumulation of civilization and the state of progress may be much determined by the interaction of races and groups. Just as individual personality is developed by contact with others, so the actions and reactions of tribes and races in contact bring into play the utility of discoveries and inventions. Thus, knowledge of any kind may by diffusion become a heritage of all races. If one tribe should acquire the art of making implements by chipping flint in a certain way, other tribes with which it comes in contact might borrow the idea and extend it, and thus it becomes spread over a wide area. However, if the original discoverer used the chipped flint for skinning animals, the one who would borrow the idea might use it to make implements of warfare. Thus, through borrowing, progress may be a co-operative process. The reference to people in any community reveals the fact that there are few that lead and many that follow; that there is but one Edison, but there are millions that follow Edison. Even in the educational world there are few inventors and many followers. This is evidence of the large power of imitation and adaptation and of the universal habit of borrowing. On the other hand, if one chemical laboratory should discover a high explosive which may be used in blasting rock for making the foundations for buildings, a nation might borrow the idea and use it in warfare for the destruction of man. Mr. Clark Wissler has shown in his book on _Man and Culture_ that there are culture areas originating from culture centres. From these culture centres the bow-and-arrow is used over a wide area. The domestication of the horse, which occurred in central Asia, has spread over the whole world. So stone implements of culture centres have been borrowed and exchanged more or less throughout the world. The theory is that one tribe or race invented one thing because of the {27} adaptability to good environment. The dominant necessity of a race stimulated man's inventive power, while another tribe would invent or discover some other new thing for similar reasons. But once created, not only could the products be swapped or traded, but, where this was impossible, ideas could be borrowed and adapted through imitation. However, one should be careful not to make too hasty generalizations regarding the similar products in different parts of the world, for there is such universality of the traits of the human mind that, with similar stages of advancement and similar environments, man's adaptive power would cause him to do the same thing in very much the same way. Thus, it is possible for two races that have had no contact for a hundred thousand years to develop indigenous products of art which are very similar. To illustrate from a point of contact nearer home, it is possible for a person living in Wisconsin and one in Massachusetts, having the same general environment--physical, educational, ethnic, religious--and having the same general traits of mind, through disconnected lines of differentiation, to write two books very much alike or two magazine articles very much alike. In the question of fundamental human traits subject to the same environmental stimuli, in a general way we expect similar results. With all this differentiation, progress as a whole represents a continuous change from primitive conditions to the present complex life, even though its line of travel leads it through the byways of differentiation. Just as the development of races has been through the process of differentiation from an early parent stock, cultural changes have followed the same law of progressive change. Just as there is a unity of the human race, there is a unity of progress that involves all mankind. _The Study of the Uncultured Races of To-Day_.--It is difficult to determine the beginnings of culture and to trace its slow development. In accomplishing this, there are two main methods of procedure; the first, to find the products or {28} remains of culture left by races now extinct, that is, of nations and peoples that have lived and flourished and passed away, leaving evidence of what they brought to the world; also, by considering what they did with the tools with which they worked, and by determining the conditions under which they lived, a general idea of their state of progress may be obtained. The second method is to determine the state of culture of living races of to-day who have been retarded or whose progress shows a case of arrested development and compare their civilization statistically observed with that of the prehistoric peoples whose state of progress exhibits in a measure similar characteristics to those of the living races. With these two methods working together, more light is continually being thrown upon man's ancient culture. To illustrate this, if a certain kind of tool or implement is found in the culture areas of the extinct Neanderthal race and a similar tool is used by a living Australian tribe, it may be conjectured with considerable accuracy that the use of this tool was for similar purposes, and the thoughts and beliefs that clustered around its use were the same in each tribe. Thus may be estimated the degree of progress of the primitive race. Or if an inscription on a cave of an extinct race showed a similarity to an inscription used by a living race, it would seem that they had the same background for such expression, and that similar instincts, emotions, and reflections were directed to a common end. The recent study of anthropologists and archaeologists has brought to light much knowledge of primitive man which may be judged on its own evidence and own merits. The verification of these early cultures by the living races who have reached a similar degree of progress is of great importance. _The Study of Prehistoric Types_.[1]--The brain capacity of modern man has changed little since the time of the Crô-Magnon race, which is the earliest ancestral type of present European races and whose existence dates back many {29} thousand years. Possibly the weight of the brain has increased during this period because of its development, and undoubtedly its power is much greater in modern man than in this ancient type. Prior to that there are some evidences of extinct species, such as Pithecanthropus Erectus, the Grimaldi man, the Heidelberg man, and the Neanderthal. Judging from the skeletal remains that have been found of these races, there has been a general progress of cranial capacity. It is not necessary here to attempt to determine whether this has occurred from hereditary combinations or through changing environment. Undoubtedly both of these factors have been potential in increasing the brain power of man, and if we were to go farther back by way of analogy, at least, and consider the Anthropoid ape, the animal most resembling man, we find a vast contrast in his cranial capacity as compared with the lowest of the prehistoric types, or, indeed, of the lowest types of the uncultured living races. Starting with the Anthropoid ape, who has a register of about 350 c.c., the Pithecanthropus about 900 c.c., and Neanderthal types registering as high as 1,620 c.c. of brain capacity, the best measures of the highest types of modern man show the brain capacity of 1,650 c.c. Specimens of the Crô-Magnon skulls show a brain capacity equal to that of modern man. There is a great variation in the brain capacity of the Neanderthal race as exhibited in specimens found in different centres of culture, ranging all the way from 1,296 c.c. to 1,620 c.c. Size is only one of several traits that determine brain power. Among others are the weight, convolutions, texture, and education. A small, compact brain may have more power than a larger brain relatively lighter. Also much depends upon the centres of development. The development of the frontal area, shown by the full forehead in connection with the distance above the ear (auditory meatus), in contrast with the development of the anterior lobes is indicative of power. It is interesting to note also that the progress of man as shown in the remnants of arts and industry corresponds in {30} development to the development of brain capacity, showing that the physical power of man kept pace with the mental development as exhibited in his mental power displayed in the arts and industries. The discoveries in recent times of the skeletons of prehistoric man in Europe, Africa, and America, and the increased collection of implements showing cultures are throwing new light on the science of man and indicating a continuous development from very primitive beginnings. _Progress Is Indicated by the Early Cultures_.--It is convenient to divide the early culture of man, based upon his development in art into the Paleolithic, or unpolished, and the Neolithic, or polished, Stone Ages.[2] The former is again divided into the Eolithic, Lower Paleolithic, and the Upper Paleolithic. In considering these divisions of relative time cultures, it must be remembered that the only way we have of measuring prehistoric time is through the geological method, based upon the Ice Ages and changes in the physical contour of the earth. In the strata of the earth, either in the late second inter-glacial period or at the beginning of the third, chipped rocks, or eoliths, are found used by races of which the Piltdown and Heidelberg species are representatives.[3] Originally man used weapons to hammer and to cut already prepared by nature. Sharp-edged flints formed by the crushing of rocks in the descent of the glaciers or by upheavals of earth or by powerful torrents were picked up as needed for the purpose of cutting. Wherever a sharp edge was needed, these natural implements were useful. Gradually man learned to carry the best specimens with him. These he improved by chipping the edges, making them more serviceable, or chipping the eolith, so as to grasp it more easily. This represents the earliest relic of the beginning of civilization through art. Eoliths of this kind are found in Egypt in the hills bordering the Nile Valley, in Asia and America, as well as in southern Europe. Perhaps at the same period of development man selected stones suitable for crushing bones or for other purposes when hammering {31} was necessary. These were gradually fashioned into more serviceable hammers. In the latter part of this period, known as the pre-Chellean, flint implements were considerably improved. In the Lower Paleolithic in the pre-Neanderthal period, including what is known as the Chellean, new forms of implements are added to the earlier beginnings. Almond-shaped flint implements, followed later by long, pointed implements, indicate the future development of the stone spear, arrowhead, knife, and axe. Also smaller articles of use, such as borers, scrapers, and ploughs, appeared. The edges of all implements were rough and uneven, and the forms very imperfect. _Industrial and Social Life of Primitive Man_.--In the industry of the early Neanderthal races (Acheulean) implements were increased in number and variety, being also more perfectly formed, showing the expansive art of man. At this period man was a hunter, having temporary homes in caves and shelters, which gradually became more or less permanent, and used well-fashioned implements of stone. At the close of the third interglacial period the climate was mild and moist, and mankind found the open glades suitable places for assemblages in family groups about the open fires; apparently the cooking of food and the making of implements and clothing on a small scale were the domestic occupations at this time. Hunting was the chief occupation in procuring food. The bison, the horse, the reindeer, the bear, the beaver, the wild boar had taken the place of the rhinoceros, the sabre-tooth tiger, and the elephant. Judging from the stage of life existing at this time, and comparing this with that of the lowest living races, we may safely infer that the family associations existed at this time, even though the habitations in caves and shelters were temporary.[4] "Yet, when at length rude huts they first devised, And fires and garments; and in union sweet Man wedded woman, the pure joys indulged {32} Of chaste connubial love, and children rose, The rough barbarians softened. The warm hearth Their frames so melted they no more could bear, As erst, th' uncovered skies. The nuptial bed Broke their wild vigor, and the fond caress Of prattling children from the bosom chased Their stern, ferocious manners." --LUCRETIUS, "ON THE NATURE OF THINGS." AFTER OSBORN. Thus the Lower Paleolithic merged into the Upper; with the appearance of the Mousterian, Augrignacian, Solutrian, Magdalenian, and Azilian cultures followed the most advanced stage of the Neanderthal race before its final disappearance. The list of tools and implements indicates a widening scope of civilization. For war and chase and fishing, for industry and domestic life, for art, sculpture, and engraving, and for ceremonial use, a great variety of implements of stone and bone survived the life of the races. Spears, daggers, knives, arrowheads, fish-hooks, and harpoons; hand-axes, drills, hammers, scrapers, planes, needles, pins, chisels, wedges, gravers, etchers, mortars, and pilasters; ceremonial staffs and wands--all are expressions of a fulness of industrial and social life not recognized in earlier races. Indications of religious ceremonies represent the changing mind, and the expression of mind in art suggests increased mental power. _Cultures Indicate the Mental Development of the Race_.--As the art and industry to-day represent the mental processes of man, so did these primitive cultures show the inventive skill and adaptive power in the beginnings of progress. Perhaps instinct, emotion, and necessity figured more conspicuously in the early period than reflective thought, while in modern times we have more design and more planning, both in invention and construction. Also the primitive social order was more an unconscious development, and lacked purpose and directing power in comparison with present life. {33} But there must have been inventors and leaders in primitive times, some brains more fertile than others, that made change and progress possible. Who these unknown geniuses were human records do not indicate. In modern times we single out the superiors and call them great. The inventor, the statesman, the warrior, the king, have their achievements heralded and recorded in history. The records of achievement of the great barbarous cultures, of the Assyrians, the Egyptians, and the Hebrews, centre around some king whose tomb preserves the only records, while in reality some man unknown to us was the real author of such progress as was made. The reason is that progress was so slow that the changes passed unnoticed, being the products of many minds, each adding its increment of change. Only the king or ruler who could control the mass mind and the mass labor could make sufficient spectacular demonstration worth recording, and could direct others to build a tomb or record inscriptions to perpetuate his name. _Men of Genius Cause the Mutations Which Permit Progress_.--The toiling multitudes always use the products of some inventive genius. Some individual with specialized mental traits plans something different from social usages or industrial life which changes tradition and modifies the customs and habits of the mass. Whether he be statesman, inventor, philosopher, scientist, discoverer, or military leader, he usually receives credit for the great progressive mutation which he has originated. There can be little progress without these few fertile brains, just as there could be little progress unless they were supported by the laborers who carry out the plans of the genius. While the "unknown man" is less conspicuous in the progress of the race in modern complex society, he is still a factor in all progress. _The Data of Progress_.--Evolution is not necessarily progress; neither is development progress; yet the factors that enter into evolution and development are essential to progress. The laws of differentiation apply to progress as well as to evolution. In the plant and animal life everywhere this law {34} obtains. In man it is subservient to the domination of intelligent direction, yet it is in operation all of the time. Some races are superior in certain lines, other races show superiority in other lines. Likewise, individuals exhibit differences in a similar way. Perhaps the dynamic physical or mental power of the individual or the race will not improve in itself, having reached its maximum. There is little hope that the brain of man will ever be larger or stronger, but it may become more effective through training and increased knowledge. Hence in the future we must look for achievement along co-operative and social lines. It is to social expansion and social perfection that we must look for progress in the future. For here the accumulated power of all may be utilized in providing for the welfare of the individual, who, in turn, will by his inventive power cause humanity to progress. The industrial, institutional, humanitarian, and educational machinery represents progress in action, but increased knowledge, higher ideals of life, broader concepts of truth, liberty of individual action which is interested in human life in its entirety, are the real indices of progress. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. Why do some races progress and others deteriorate? 2. Compare different communities to show to what extent environment determines progress. 3. Show how the airplane is an evidence of progress. The radio. The gasoline-engine. 4. Discuss the effects of religious belief on progress. 5. Is the mental capacity of the average American greater than the average of the Greeks at the time of their highest culture? 6. What are the evidences that man will not advance in physical and mental capacity? 7. Show that the improvement of the race will be through social activity. [1] See Chapter IV. [2] See Chapter III. [3] See Chapter IV. [4] See Chapter VI. {35} CHAPTER III METHODS OF RECOUNTING HUMAN PROGRESS _Difficulty of Measuring Progress_.--In its larger generalization, progress may move in a straight line, but it has such a variety of expression and so many tributary causes that it is difficult to reduce it to any classification. Owing to the difficulties that attend an attempt to recite all of the details of human progress, philosophers and historians have approached the subject from various sides, each seeking to make, by means of higher generalizations, a clear course of reasoning through the labyrinth of materials. By adopting certain methods of marking off periods of existence and pointing out the landmarks of civilization, they have been able to estimate more truly the development of the race. Civilization cannot be readily measured by time; indeed, the time interval in history is of little value save to mark order and continuity. It has in itself no real significance; it is merely an arbitrary division whose importance is greatly exaggerated. But while civilization is a continuous quantity, and cannot be readily marked off into periods without destroying its movement, it is necessary to make the attempt, especially in the study of ancient or prehistoric society; for any method which groups and classifies facts in logical order is helpful to the study of human progress. _Progress May Be Measured by the Implements Used_.--A very common method, based largely upon the researches of archaeologists, is to divide human society into four great periods, or ages, marked by the progress of man in the use of implements. The first of these periods is called the Stone Age, and embraces the time when man used stone for all {36} purposes in the industrial arts so far as they had been developed. For convenience this period has been further divided into the age of ancient or unpolished implements and the age of modern or polished implements. The former includes the period when rude implements were chipped out of flint or other hard stone, without much idea of symmetry and beauty, and with no attempt to perfect or beautify them by smoothing and polishing their rough surface. In the second period man learned to fashion more perfectly the implements, and in some instances to polish them to a high degree. Although the divisions are very general and very imperfect, they map out the great prehistoric era of man; but they must be considered as irregular, on account of the fact that the Stone Era of man occurred at different times in different tribes. Thus the inhabitants of North America were in the Stone Age less than two centuries ago, while some of the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands are in the Stone Age during the present century. It is quite remarkable that the use of stone implements was universal to all tribes and nations at some period of their existence. After the long use of stone, man gradually became acquainted with some of the metals, and subsequently discovered the method of combining copper with tin and other alloys to form bronze, which material, to a large extent, added to the implements already in use. The Bronze Age is the most hypothetical of all these divisions, as it does not appear to have been as universal as the Stone, on account of the difficulty of obtaining metals. The use of copper by the Indians of the Lake Superior region was a very marked epoch in their development, and corresponds to the Bronze Age of other nations, although their advancement in other particulars appears to be less than that of other tribes of European origin which used bronze freely. Bronze implements have been found in great plenty in Scandinavia and Peru, and to a limited extent in North America. They certainly mark a stage of progress in advance of that of the inhabitants of the Stone Age. Bronze {37} was the chief metal for implements throughout the early civilization of Europe. Following the age of bronze is the Iron Age, in which the advancement of man is especially marked. The bronze implements were at first supplemented in their use by those of iron. But gradually iron implements superseded the bronze. The Iron Age still is with us. Possibly it has not yet reached its highest point. Considering the great structures built of iron, and the excessive use of iron in machinery, implements, and furniture, it is easy to realize that we are yet in this great period. Though we continue to use stone more than the ancients and more bronze for decoration and ornament than they, yet both are subordinate to the use of iron. General as the above classification is, it helps in an indefinite way to give us a central idea of progress and to mark off, somewhat indefinitely, periods of development. _The Development of Art_.--Utility was the great purpose underlying the foundation of the industrial arts. The stone axe, or celt, was first made for a distinct service, but, in order to perfect its usefulness, its lines became more perfect and its surface more highly polished. So we might say for the spear-head, the knife, or the olla. Artistic lines and decorative beauty always followed the purpose of use. This could be applied to all of the products of man's invention to transform parts of nature to his use. On account of the durability of form, the attempt to trace the course of civilization by means of the development of the fine arts has met with much success. Though the idea of beauty is not essential to the preservation of man or to the making of the state, it has exerted a great influence in individual-building and in society-building. In our higher emotional natures aesthetic ideas have ruled with imperial sway. But primitive ideas of beauty appear to us very crude, and even repulsive. The adornment of person with bright though rudely colored garments, the free use of paint on the person, and the promiscuous use of jewelry, as {38} practised by the primitive peoples, present a great contrast to modern usage. Yet it is easy to trace the changes in custom and, moreover, to determine the origin of present customs. So also in representative art, the rude sketch of an elephant or a buffalo on ivory or stone and the finished picture by a Raphael are widely separated in genius and execution, but there is a logical connection between the two found in the slowly evolving human activities. The rude figure of a god moulded roughly from clay and the lifelike model by an Angelo have the same relations to man in his different states. The same comparison may be made between the low, monotonous moaning of the savage and the rapturous music of a Patti, or between the beating of the tom-tom and the lofty strains of a Mozart. _Progress Is Estimated by Economic Stages_.--The progress of man is more clearly represented by the successive economic stages of his life. Thus we have first the _primal nomadic_ period, in which man was a wanderer, subsisting on roots and berries, and with no definite social organization. This period, like all primary periods, is largely hypothetical. Having learned to capture game and fish, he entered what might be called the _fisher-hunter_ stage, although he was still a nomad, and rapidly spread over a large part of the earth's surface, wandering from forest to forest and from stream to stream, searching for the means of subsistence and clothing. When man learned to domesticate animals he made a great step forward and entered what is known as the _pastoral_ period, in which his chief occupation was the care of flocks and herds. This contributed much to his material support and quickened his social and intellectual movement. After a time, when he remained in one place a sufficient time to harvest a short crop, he began agriculture in a tentative way, while his chief concern was yet with flocks and herds. He soon became permanently settled, and learned more fully the art of agriculture, and then entered the permanent _agricultural_ stage. It was during this period that he made the most rapid advances in {39} the industrial arts and in social order. This led to more densely populated communities, with permanent homes and the necessary development of law and government. As the products of industry increased men began to exchange "the relatively superfluous for the relatively necessary," and trade in the form of barter became a permanent custom. This led to the use of money and a more extended system of exchange, and man entered the _commercial_ era. This gave him a wider intercourse with surrounding tribes and nations, and brought about a greater diversity of ideas. The excessive demand for exchangeable goods, the accumulation of wealth, and the enlarged capacity for enjoyment centred the activities of life in industry, and man entered the _industrial_ stage. At first he employed hand power for manufacturing goods, but soon he changed to power manufacture, brought about by discovery and invention. Water and steam were now applied to turn machinery, and the new conditions of production changed the whole industrial life. A revolution in industrial society caused an immediate shifting of social life. Classes of laborers in the great industrial army became prominent, and production was carried on in a gigantic way. We are still in this industrial world, and as electricity comes to the aid of steam we may be prepared for even greater changes in the future than we have witnessed in the past.[1] In thus presenting the course of civilization by the different periods of economic life, we must keep the mind free from conventional ideas. For, while the general course of economic progress is well indicated, there was a slow blending of each period into the succeeding one. There is no formal procedure in the progress of man. Yet we might infer from the way in which some writers present this matter that society moved forward in regular order, column after column. From the formal and forcible way in which they have presented the history of early society, one might imagine that a certain tribe, having become weary of tending cattle and goats, resolved one {40} fine morning to change from the pastoral life to agriculture, and that all of the tribes on earth immediately concluded to do the same, when, in truth, the change was slow and gradual, while the centuries passed away. It is well to consider that in the expanded industrial life of man the old was not replaced, but supplemented, by the new, and that after the pastoral stage was entered, man continued to hunt and fish, and that after formal agriculture was begun the tending of flocks and herds continued, and fishing was practised at intervals. But each succeeding occupation became for the time the predominant one, while others were relatively subordinate. Even to-day, while we have been rushing forward in recent years at a rapid rate, under the power of steam and electricity, agriculture and commerce have made marvellous improvement. Though we gain the new, nothing of the old is lost. The use of flocks and herds, as well as fish and game, increases each year, although not relatively. _Progress Is Through the Food Supply_.--This is only another view of the economic life. The first period is called the natural subsistence period, when man used such food as he found prepared for him by nature. It corresponds to the primal nomadic period of the last classification. From this state he advanced to the use of fish for food, and then entered the third period, when native grains were obtained through a limited cultivation of the soil. After this followed a period in which meat and milk were the chief articles of food. Finally the period of extended and permanent agriculture was reached, and farinaceous food by cultivation became the main support of life. The significance of this classification is observed in the fact that the amount, variety, and quality of the food available determine the possibility of man's material and spiritual advancement. As the food supply lies at the foundation of human existence, prosperity is measured to a large extent by the food products. The character of the food affects to a great extent the mental and moral capabilities of man; that is, it {41} limits the possibilities of civilization. Even in modern civilization the effect of poor food on intellect, morals, and social order is easily observed. _Progress Is Estimated by Different Forms of Social Order_.--It is only a more general way of estimating political life, and perhaps a broader way, for it includes the entire social development. By this classification man is first represented as wandering in a solitary state with the smallest amount of association with his fellows necessary to his existence and perpetuation, and with no social organization. This status of man is hypothetical, and gives only a starting point for the philosophy of higher development. No savage tribes have yet been discovered in which there was not at least association of individuals in groups, although organization might not yet have appeared. It is true that some of the lower tribes, like the Fuegians of South America, have very tentative forms of social and political association. They wander in loosely constructed groups, which constantly shift in association, being without permanent organization. Yet the purely solitary man is merely conjectural. It is common for writers to make a classification of social groups into primary and secondary.[2] The primary social groups are: first, the family based upon biological relations, supported by the habit of association; second, the play group of children, in which primitive characters of social order appear, and a third group is the association of adults in a neighborhood meeting. In the formation of these groups, the process of social selection is always in evidence. Impulse, feeling, and emotion play the greater parts in the formation of these primitive groups, while choice based on rational selection seldom appears. The secondary groups are those which originate through the differentiation of social functions in which the contact of individuals is less intimate than in the primary group. Such voluntary associations as a church, labor organization, or {42} scientific society may be classified as secondary in time and in importance. Next above the human horde is represented the forced association of men in groups, each group struggling for its own existence. Within the group there was little protection and little social order, although there was more or less authority of leadership manifested. This state finally led to the establishment of rudimentary forms of government, based upon blood relationship. These groups enlarged to full national life. This third stage finally passed to the larger idea of international usage, and is prospective of a world state. These four stages of human society, so sweeping in their generalization, still point to the idea of the slow evolution of social order. _The Development of Family Life_.--Starting with the hypothesis that man at one time associated in a state of promiscuity, he passed through the separate stages of polyandry and polygamy, and finally reached a state of monogamy and the pure home life of to-day. Those who have advocated this doctrine have failed to substantiate it clearly so as to receive from scholars the recognition of authority. All these forms of family life except the first have been observed among the savage tribes of modern life, but there are not sufficient data to prove that the human race, in the order of its development, must have passed through these four stages. However, it is true that the modern form of marriage and pure home life did not always exist, but are among the achievements of modern civilization. There certainly has been a gradual improvement in the relations of the members of the household, and notwithstanding the defects of faithlessness and ignorance, the modern family is the social unit and the hope of modern social progress. _The Growth of Political Life_.--Many have seen in this the only true measure of progress, for it is affirmed that advancement in civil life is the essential element of civilization. Its importance in determining social order makes it a central factor in all progress. The _primitive family_ represents the germ {43} of early political foundation. It was the first organized unit of society, and contained all of the rudimentary forms of government. The executive, the judicial, the legislative, and the administrative functions of government were all combined in one simple family organization. The head of the family was king, lord, judge, priest, and military commander all in one. As the family expanded it formed the _gens_ or _clan_, with an enlarged family life and more systematic family government. The religious life expanded also, and a common altar and a common worship were instituted. A slight progress toward social order and the tendency to distribute the powers of government are to be observed. Certain property was held in common and certain laws regulated the family life. The family groups continued to enlarge by natural increase and by adoption, all those coming into the gens submitting to its laws, customs, and social usage. Finally several gentes united into a brotherhood association called by the Greeks a _phratry_, by the Romans a _curia_. This brotherhood was organized on a common religious basis, with a common deity and a central place of worship. It also was used partially as the basis of military organization. This group represents the first unit based upon locality. From it spring the ward idea and the idea of local self-government. The _tribe_ represented a number of gentes united for religious and military purposes. Although its principal power was military, there were a common altar and a common worship for all members of the tribe. The chief, or head of the tribe, was the military leader, and usually performed an important part in all the affairs of the tribe. As the tribe became the seat of power for military operations, the gens remained as the foundation of political government, for it was the various heads of the gentes who formed the council of the chief or king and later laid the foundation of the senate, wherever instituted. It was common for the tribe in most instances to pass into a village community before developing full national life. There were exceptions to this, where tribes have passed directly into {44} well-organized groups without the formation of the village or the city. The _village community_, next in logical order, represents a group of closely related people located on a given territory, with a half-communal system of government. There were the little group of houses forming the village proper and representing the different homes of the family group. There were the common pasture-land, the common woodland, and the fertile fields for cultivation. These were all owned, except perhaps the house lot, by the entire community, and every year the tillable land was parcelled out by the elders of the community to the heads of families for tillage. Usually the tiller of the soil had a right to the crop, although among the early Greeks the custom seems to be reversed, and the individual owned the land, but was compelled to place its proceeds into a common granary. The village community represents the transition from a nomadic to a permanent form of government, and was common to all of the Aryan tribes. The federation of the village communities or the expansion of the tribes formed the Greek city-state, common to all of the Greek communities. It represents the real beginning of civic life among the nations. The old family organization continued to exist, although from this time on there was a gradual separation of the functions of government. The executive, legislative, and judicial processes became more clearly defined, and special duties were assigned to officers chosen for a particular purpose. Formal law, too, appeared as the expression of the will of a definitely organized community. Government grew more systematic, and expanded into a well-organized municipality. There was less separation of the duties of officers than now, but there was a constant tendency for government to unfold and for each officer to have his specific powers and duties defined. A deity watched over the city, and a common shrine for worship was set up for all members of the municipality. The next attempt to enlarge government was by federation {45} and by conquest and domination.[3] The city of Rome represents, first, a federation of tribal city groups, and, finally, the dominant city ruling over many other cities and much territory. From this it was only a step to the empire and imperial sway. Athens in her most prosperous period attempted to do the same, but was not entirely successful. After the decline of the Roman power there arose from the ruins of the fallen empire the modern nationalities, which used all forms of government hitherto known. They partook of democracy, aristocracy, or imperialism, and even attempted, in some instances, to combine the principles of all three in one government. While the modern state developed some new characteristics, it included the elements of the Greek and Roman governments. The relations of these new states developed a new code of law, based upon international relations. Though treaties were made between the Greeks and the Romans in their first international relations, and much earlier between the Hebrews and the Phoenicians, international law is of practically modern origin. At present modern nations have an extended and intricate code of laws governing their relations. It is an extension of government beyond the boundaries of nationality. Through commerce, trade, and political intercourse the nations of the Western World are drawn more closely together, and men talk of a world citizenship. A wide philanthropy, rapid and cheap transportation, the accompanying influences of travel, and a world market for the products of the earth, all tend to level the barriers of nationality and to develop universal citizenship. The prophets of our day talk of the coming world state, which is not likely to appear so long as the barriers of sea and mountain remain; yet each year witnesses a closer blending of the commercial, industrial, and political interests of all nations. Thus we see how governments have been evolved and national life expanded in accordance {46} with slowly developing civilization. Although good government and a high state of civilization are not wholly in the relation of cause and effect, they always accompany each other, and the progress of man may be readily estimated from the standpoint of the development of political institutions and political life. _Religion Important in Civilization_.--It is not easy to trace the development of man by a consideration of the various religious beliefs entertained at different periods of his existence. Yet there is unmistakably a line of constant development to be observed in religion, and as a rule its progress is an index of the improvement of the race. No one can contrast the religion of the ancient nations with the modern Christian religion without being impressed with the vast difference in conception and in practice existing between them. In the early period of barbarism, and even of savagery, religious belief was an important factor in the development of human society. It is no less important to-day, and he who recounts civilization without giving it a prominent place has failed to obtain a comprehensive view of the philosophy of human development. From the family altar of the Greeks to the state religion; from the rude altar of Abraham in the wilderness to the magnificent temple of Solomon at Jerusalem; from the harsh and cruel tenets of the Oriental religions to the spiritual conception and ethical practice of the Christian religion, one observes a marked progress. We need only go to the crude unorganized superstition of the savage or to the church of the Middle Ages to learn that the power and influence of religion is great in human society building. _The Progress Through Moral Evolution_.--The moral development of the race, although more difficult to determine than the intellectual, may prove an index to the progress of man. The first formal expression of moral practice is the so-called race morality or group morality, based upon mutual aid for common defense. This is found to-day in all organized groups, such as the boy gang, the Christian church, the political party, {47} the social set, the educational institution, and, indeed, the state itself; but wherever found it has its source in a very primitive group action. In the primitive struggle for existence man had little sympathy for his fellows, the altruistic sentiment being very feeble. But gradually through the influence of the family life sympathy widened and deepened in its onward flow until, joining with the group morality, it entered the larger world of ethical practice. This phase of moral culture had its foundation in the sympathy felt by the mother for her offspring, a sympathy that gradually extended to the immediate members of the household. As the family expanded into the state, human sympathy expanded likewise, until it became national in its significance. Through this process there finally came a world-wide philanthropy which recognizes the sufferings of all human beings. This sympathy has been rapidly increased by the culture of the intellect, the higher development of the sensibilities, and the refinement of the emotions; thus along the track of altruism or ethical development, which had its foundation in primitive life, with its ever widening and enlarging circles, the advancement of humanity may be traced. The old egoism, the savage warfare for existence, has been constantly tempered by altruism, which has been a saving quality in the human race. _Intellectual Development of Man_.--Some philosophers have succeeded in recounting human progress by tracing the intellectual development of the race. This is possible, for everything of value that has been done, and which has left a record, bears the mark of man's intellect. In the early period of his existence, man had sufficient intellect to direct his efforts to satisfy the common wants of life. This exercise of the intellectual faculty has accompanied man's every movement, but it is best observed in the products of his industry and the practice of social order. By doing and making, the intellect grows, and it is only by observing the phenomena of active life that we get a hint or trace of the powers and capacities of the mind. {48} But after man begins the process of reflective thinking, his intellectual activities become stronger, and it is much easier to trace his development by considering the condition of religion, law, philosophy, literature, sculpture, art, and architecture. These represent the best products of the mind, and it is along this intellectual highway that the best results of civilization are found. During the modern period of progressive life systematic education has forced the intellectual faculties through a more rapid course, giving predominance to intellectual life everywhere. The intellectual development of nations or the intellectual development of man in general is a theme of never-tiring interest, as it represents his noblest achievements. Man from the very beginning has had a desire for knowledge, to satisfy curiosity. Gradually, however, he had a desire to know in order to increase utility, and finally he reaches the highest state of progress in desiring to know for the sake of knowing. Thus he proceeds from mere animal curiosity to the idealistic state of discovering "truth for truth's sake." These are qualities not only of the individual in his development but of the racial group and, indeed, in a larger way of all mankind; intelligence developed in the attempt of man to discover the nature of the results of his instinctive, impulsive, or emotional actions. Later he sought causes of these results. Here we have involved increased knowledge as a basis of human action and the use of that knowledge through discriminating intelligence. The intellect thus represents the selective and directive process in the use of knowledge. Hence, intelligent behavior of the individual or of the group comes only after accumulated knowledge based on experience. The process of trial and error thus gives rise to reflective thinking. It is a superior use of the intellect that more than anything else distinguishes the adult from the child or modern man from the primitive. _Change from Savagery to Barbarism_.--Perhaps one of the broadest classifications of ancient society, based upon general characteristics of progress, makes the two general divisions of {49} savagery and barbarism, and subdivides each of these into three groups. The lowest status of savagery represents man as little above the brute creation, subsisting upon roots and berries, and with no knowledge of art or of social order. The second period, called the middle status of savagery, represents man using fire, and using fish for food, and having corresponding advancement in other ways. The upper status of savagery begins with the use of the bow-and-arrow and extends to the period of the manufacture and use of pottery. At this point the period of barbarism begins. Its lower status, beginning with the manufacture of pottery, extends to the time of the domestication of animals. The middle status includes not only the domestication of animals in the East but the practice of irrigation in the West and the building of walls from stone and adobe brick. The upper status is marked by the use of iron and extends to the introduction of the phonetic alphabet and literary composition. At this juncture civilization is said to dawn. "Commencing," says Mr. Morgan, the author of this classification, in his _Ancient Society_, "with the Australians and the Polynesians, following with the American Indian tribes, and concluding with the Roman and Grecian, which afford the best exemplification of the six great stages of human progress, the sum of their united experiences may be supposed to fairly represent that of the human family from the middle status of savagery to the end of the ancient civilization." By this classification the Australians would be placed in the middle status of savagery, and the early Greeks and Romans in the upper status of barbarism, while the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico would be placed in the middle status of barbarism. This is an excellent system for estimating the progress of ancient society, for around these initial periods may be clustered all of the elements of civilization. It is of especial value in the comparative study of different races and tribes. _Civilization Includes All Kinds of Human Progress_.--The above representation of the principal methods of recounting {50} civilization shows the various phases of human progress. Although each one is helpful in determining the progress of man from a particular point of view, none is sufficient to marshal all of the qualities of civilization in a completed order. For the entire field of civilization should include all the elements of progress, and this great subject must be viewed from every side before it can be fairly represented to the mind of the student. The true nature of civilization has been more clearly presented in thus briefly enumerating the different methods of estimating human progress. But we must remember that civilization, though continuous, is not uniform. The qualities of progress which are strong in one tribe or nation are weak in others. It is the total of the characteristics of man and the products of his activity that represents his true progress. Nations have arisen, developed, and passed away; tribes have been swept from the face of the earth before a complete development was possible; and races have been obliterated by the onward march of civilization. But the best products of all nations have been preserved for the service of others. Ancient Chaldea received help from central Asia; Egypt and Judea from Babylon; Greece from Egypt; Rome from Greece; and all Europe and America have profited from the culture of Greece and Rome and the religion of Judea. There may be a natural growth, maturity, and decay of nations, but civilization moves ever on toward a higher and more diversified life. The products of human endeavor arrange themselves on the side of man in his attempt to master himself and nature. TABLE SHOWING METHODS OF RECOUNTING HUMAN PROGRESS I. Method of the Kind of Implements Used. 1. Paleolithic, or Old Stone, Age. 2. Neolithic, or New Stone, Age. 3. Incidental use of copper, tin, and other metals. 4. The making of pottery. 5. The age of bronze. 6. The iron age. {51} II. Method by Art Development. 1. Primitive drawings in caves and engraving on ivory and wood. 2. The use of color in decoration of objects, especially in decoration of the body. 3. Beginnings of sculpture and carving figures, animals, gods, and men. 4. Pictorial representations--the pictograph. 5. Representative art in landscapes. 6. Perspective drawing. 7. Idealistic art. 8. Industrial arts. III. Method of Economic Stages. 1. The Nomadic Stage. 2. The Hunter-Fisher Stage. 3. The Pastoral Period. 4. The Agricultural Period. 5. The Commercial Period. 6. The Period of Industrial Organization. IV. Progress Estimated by the Food Supply. 1. Natural subsistence Period. 2. Fish and shell fish. 3. Cultivation of native grains. 4. Meat and milk. 5. Farinaceous foods by systematic agriculture. V. Method of Social Order. 1. Solitary state of man (hypothetical). 2. The human horde. 3. Small groups for purposes of association. 4. The secret society. 5. The religious cult. 6. Closely integrated groups for defense. 7. Amalgamated or federated groups. 8. The Race. VI. The Family Development. 1. State of promiscuity (hypothetical). 2. Polyandry. 3. Polygamy. 4. Patriarchal family with polygamy. 5. The Monogamic family. VII. Progress Measured by Political Organization. 1. The organized horde about religious ideas. {52} 2. The completed family organization. _a_. Family. _b_. Gens. _c_. The Phratry. _d_. Patriarchal family. _e_. Tribe. 3. The Ethnic state. 4. State formed by conflict and amalgamation. 5. International relations. 6. The World State (Idealistic). VIII. Religious Development. 1. Belief in spiritual beings. 2. Recognition of the spirit of man and other spirits. 3. Animism. 4. Anthropomorphic religion. 5. Spiritual concept of religion. 6. Ethnical religions. 7. Forms of religious worship and religious practice. IX. Moral Evolution. 1. Race morality (gang morality). 2. Sympathy for fellow beings. 3. Sympathy through blood relationship. 4. Patriotism: love of race and country. 5. World Ethics. X. Progress Through Intellectual Development. 1. Sensation and reflex action. 2. Instinct and emotion. 3. Impulse and adaptability. 4. Reflective thought. 5. Invention and discovery. 6. Rational direction of human life. 7. Philosophy. 8. Science. XI. Progress Through Savagery and Barbarism. 1. Lower status of savagery. 2. Middle status of savagery. 3. Upper status of savagery. 4. Lower status of barbarism. 5. Middle status of barbarism. 6. Upper status of barbarism. 7. Civilization (?). {53} SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. In what other ways than those named in this chapter may we estimate the progress of man? 2. Discuss the evidences of man's mental and spiritual progress. 3. The relation of wealth to progress. 4. The relation of the size of population to the prosperity of a nation. 5. Enumerate the arguments that the next destructive war will destroy civilization. 6. In what ways do you think man is better off than he was one hundred years ago? One thousand years ago? 7. In what ways did the suffering caused by the Great War indicate an increase in world ethics? [1] See Chapter XXVII. [2] See Cooley, _Social Organization_, chap. III. [3] The transition from the ethnic state to the modern civic state was through conflict, conquest, and race amalgamation. {57} _PART II_ FIRST STEPS OF PROGRESS CHAPTER IV PREHISTORIC MAN _The Origin of Man Has not Yet Been Determined_.--Man's origin is still shrouded in mystery, notwithstanding the accumulated knowledge of the results of scientific investigation in the field and in the laboratory. The earliest historical records and relics of the seats of ancient civilization all point backward to an earlier period of human life. Looking back from the earliest civilizations along the Euphrates and the Nile that have recorded the deeds of man so that their evidences could be handed down from generation to generation, the earlier prehistoric records of man stretch away in the dim past for more than a hundred thousand years. The time that has elapsed from the earliest historical records to the present is only a few minutes compared to the centuries that preceded it. Wherever we go in the field of knowledge, we shall find evidences of man's great antiquity. We know at least that he has been on earth a long, long period. As to the method of his appearance, there is no absolutely determining evidence. Yet science has run back into the field of conjecture with such strong lines that we may assume with practical certainty something of his early life. He stands at the head of the zoological division of the animal kingdom. The Anthropoid Ape is the animal that most nearly resembles man. It might be said to stand next to man in the procession of species. So far as our knowledge can ascertain, it appears that man was developed in the same manner as the higher types in the animal and vegetable world, namely, by the process of evolution, and by evolution we mean continuous progressive change according to law, from external and internal stimuli. The process of evolution is not a process of creation, nor does evolution move in {58} a straight line, but through the process of differentiation. In no other way can one account for the multitudes of the types and races of the human being, except by this process of differentiation which is one of the main factors of evolution. Accompanying the process of differentiation is that of specialization and integration. When types become highly specialized they fail to adapt themselves to new environments, and other types not so highly specialized prevail. So far as the human race is concerned, it seems to be evolved according to the law of sympodial development--that is, a certain specialized part of the human race develops certain traits and is limited in its adaptability to a specific environment. Closely allied with this are some individuals or groups possessing human traits that are less highly specialized, and hence are adaptable to new conditions. Under new conditions the main stem of development perishes and the budded branch survives. We have abundant pictures of this in prehistoric times, and records show that this also has been the common lot of man. Modern man thus could not have been developed from any of the living species of the Anthropoid Apes, but he might have had a common origin in the physical, chemical, and vital forces that produced the apes. One line of specialization made the ape, another line made man. Subsequently the separation of man into the various races and species came about by the survival of some races for a time, and then to be superseded by a branch of the same race which differentiated in a period of development before high specialization had taken place. _Methods of Recounting Prehistoric Time_.[1]--Present time is measured in terms of centuries, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds, but the second is the determining power of mechanical measurement, though it is derived mainly by the movement of the earth around the sun and the turning of the earth on its axis. Mechanically we have derived the second as the unit. It is easy for us to think in hours or days or weeks, though it may be the seconds tick off unnoticed {59} and the years glide by unnoticed; but it is difficult to think in centuries--more difficult in millions of years. The little time that man has been on earth compared with the creation of the earth makes it difficult for us to estimate the time of creation. The much less time in the historical period makes it seem but a flash in the movement of the creation. ====================================================================== TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR DIAL ILLUSTRATING HUMAN CHRONOLOGY[2] Twenty-five thousand years equals one hour [Illustration: Twenty-four hour dial] Age of modern man 10,000 years = less than half an hour. Age of Crô-Magnon type 25,000 years = one hour. Age of Neanderthal type 50,000 years = two hours. Age of Piltdown type 150,000 years = six hours. Age of Heidelberg type 375,000 years = fifteen hours. Age of Pithecanthropus 500,000 years = twenty hours. Beginning of Christian era 2,000 years = 4.8 minutes. Discovery of America 431 years = about 1 minute. Declaration of Independence 137 years = about 21 seconds. ====================================================================== There are four main methods of determining prehistoric {60} time.[3] One is called the (1) _geologic method_, which is based upon the fact that, in a slowly cooling earth and the action of water and frost, cold and heat, storm and glacier and volcanic eruption, the rocks on the earth are of different ages. If they had never been disturbed from where they were first laid down, it would be very easy to reckon time by geological processes. If you had a stone column twenty feet high built by a machine in ten hours' time, and granting that it worked uniformly, it would be easy to see just at what hour of the period a layer of stone four feet from the bottom, or ten feet from the top, was laid. If, however, in the building of the wall, it should have toppled over several times and had to be rebuilt, it would require considerable study to see just at what hour a certain stone was put in the wall. Studying the geology of the earth in a large way, it is easy to determine what strata of the earth are oldest, and this may be verified by a consideration of the process in which these rocks were being made. Chemistry and physics are thus brought to the aid of geology. It is easy to determine whether a rock has been fused by a fire or whether it has been constructed by the slow action of water and pressure of other rocks. If to-day we should find in an old river bed which had been left high and dry on a little mesa or plateau above the present river bottom, layers of earth that had been put down by water, and we could find how much of each layer was made in a single year, it would be easy to estimate the number of years it took to make the whole deposit. Also if we could find in the lowest layer certain relics of the human race, we could know that the race lived at that time. If we should find relics later on of a different nature, we should be able to estimate the progress of civilization. The second method is of (2) _paleontology_, which is developed along with geology. In this we have both the vertebrate and invertebrate paleontology, which are divisions of the science which treats of ancient forms of animal and vegetable life. There are many other divisions of paleontology, some {61} devoting themselves entirely to animal life and others to vegetable, as, for instance, paleobotany. As plants and animals have gradually developed from lower to higher forms and the earth has been built gradually by formations at different periods of existence, by a comparison of the former development with the latter, that is, comparison with the earth, or inorganic, development to the life, or organic, development, we are enabled to get a comparative view of duration. Thus, if in a layer of earth, geological time is established and there should be found bones of an animal, the bones of a man, and fossilized forms of ancient plants, it would be easy to determine their relative ages. The third method is that of (3) _anatomy_, which is a study of the comparative size and shape of the bones of man and other animals as a method of showing relative periods of existence. Also, just as the structure of the bones of a child, as compared with that of a man, would determine their relative ages, so the bones of the species that have been preserved through fossilization may show the relative ages of different types of animals. The study of the skeletons of animals, including those of man, has led to the science of anthropometry. The fourth method is to study the procession of man by (4) _cultures_, or the industrial and ornamental implements that have been preserved in the river drift, rocks, and caves of the earth from the time that man used them until they were discovered. Just as we have to-day models of the improvement of the sewing-machine, the reaper, or the flying-machine, each one a little more perfect, so we shall find in the relics of prehistoric times this same gradual development--first a stone in its natural state used for cutting, then chipped to make it more perfect, and finally beautified in form and perfected by polishing. Thus we shall find progress from the natural stone boulder used for throwing and hammering, the developed product made by chipping and polishing the natural boulder, making it more useful and more beautiful, and so for all the {62} multitude of implements used in the hunt and in domestic affairs. Not only do we have here an illustration of continuous progress in invention and use, but also an adaptation of new material, for we pass from the use of stone to that of metals, probably in the prehistoric period, although the beginnings of the use of bronze and iron come mainly within the periods of historical records. It is not possible here to follow the interesting history of the glacial movement, but a few words of explanation seem necessary. The Ice Age, or the glacial period, refers to a span of time ranging from 500,000 years ago, at the beginning of the first glaciation, to the close of the post-glacial period, about 25,000 years ago. During this period great ice caps, ranging in the valleys and spreading out on the plains over a broad area, proceeded from the north of Europe to the south, covering at the extreme stages nearly the entire surface of the continent. This great movement consists of four distinct forward movements and their return movements. There is evidence to show that before the south movement of the first great ice cap, a temperate climate extended very far toward the pole and gave opportunity for vegetation now extinct in that region. But as the river of ice proceeded south, plants and animals retreated before it, some of them changing their nature to endure the excessive cold. Then came a climatic change which melted the ice and gradually drove the margin of the glacier farther north. Immediately under the influence of the warm winds the vegetation and animals followed slowly at a distance the movement of the glacier. Then followed a long inter-glacial period before the southerly movement of the returning ice cap. This in turn retreated to the north, and thus four separate times this great movement, one of the greatest geological phenomena of the earth, occurred, leaving an opportunity to study four different glacial periods with three warmer interglacial and one warm post-glacial. This movement gave great opportunity for the study of {63} geology, paleontology, and the archeology of man. That is, the story of the relationship of the earth to plant, animal, and man was revealed. The regularity of these movements and the amount of material evidence found furnish a great opportunity for measuring geological time movements and hence the life of plants and animals, including man. The table on page 64 will contribute to the clearness of this brief statement about the glacial periods. ====================================================================== {64} THE ICE AGE IN EUROPE[5] Geological time-unit 25,000 years RELA- TIVE TOTAL TIME TIME HUMAN ANIMAL AND GLACIERS UNIT YRS. YRS. LIFE PLANT LIFE ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post-Glacial 1 25,000 25,000 Crô-Magnon Horse, Stag, Rein- Daum Azilian deer, Musk-Ox, Geschintz Magdalenian Arctic Fox, Pine, Bühl Solutrian Birch, Oak Aurignacian ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4th Glacial 1 25,000 50,000 Mousterian Reindeer, period of Wurm Ice Neanderthal Tundra, Alpine, Steppe, Meadow ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q 3d Inter- 4 100,000 150,000 Pre-Neander- Last warm Asiatic U glacial thal and African ani- A Piltdown mals R --------------------------------------------------------------------------- T 3d Glacial 1 25,000 175,000 Woolly Mammoth, E Riss Rhinoceros, R Reindeer N --------------------------------------------------------------------------- A 2d Inter- 8 200,000 375,000 Heidelberg African and Asiatic R glacial Race Animals, Ele- Y Mindel-Riss phant, Hippo- potamus ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2d Glacial 1 25,000 400,000 Cold weather Mindel animals ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1st Inter- 3 75,000 475,000 Pithecan- Hippopotamus, glacial thropus Elephant, Afri- Erectus can and Asiatic plants ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1st Glacial 1 25,000 500,000 ============================================================================= T E R T I A R Y ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ====================================================================== _Prehistoric Types of the Human Race_.--The earliest record of human life yet discovered is the _Pithecanthropus Erectus_ (Trinil), the apelike man who walked upright, found in Java by Du Bois, about the year 1892. Enough of the skeletal remains of human beings were found at this time to indicate a man of rather crude form and low brain capacity (about 885 c.c.), with possible powers of speech but with no probably developed language or no assumption of the acquaintance with the arts of life.[4] The remains of this man associated with the remains of one other skeleton, probably a woman, and with the bones of extinct animals, were found in a geological stratum which indicates his age at about 500,000 years. Professor McGregor, after a careful anatomical study, has reproduced the head and bust of Pithecanthropus, which helps us to visualize this primitive species as of rather low cultural type. The low forehead, massive jaw, and receding chin give us a vision of an undeveloped species of the human race, in some respects not much above the anthropoid apes, yet in other characters distinctly human. There follows a long interval of human development which is only conjectural until the discovery of the bones of the Heidelberg man, found at the south of the River Neckar. These are the first records of the human race found in southern Europe. The type of man is still apelike in some respects, but far in advance of the Pithecanthropus in structure and general appearance. The restoration by the Belgian artist Mascré {65} under the direction of Professor A. Rotot, of Brussels, is indicative of larger brain capacity than the Trinil race. It had a massive jaw, distinctive nose, heavy arched brows, and still the receding chin. Not many cultural remains were found in strata of the second interglacial period along with the remains of extinct animals, such as the ancient elephant, Etruscan rhinoceros, primitive bison, primitive ox, Auvergne bear, and lion. A fauna and a flora as well as a geological structure were found which would indicate that this race existed at this place about 375,000 years ago. From these evidences very little may be determined of the Heidelberg man's cultural development, but much may be inferred. Undoubtedly, like the Pithecanthropus, he was a man without the tools of civilization, or at least had not developed far in this way. About 150,000 years ago there appeared in Europe races of mankind that left more relics of their civilization.[6] These were the Neanderthaloid races. There is no evidence of the connection of these races with the Java man or the Heidelberg man. Here, as elsewhere in the evolution of races and species, nature does not work in a straight line of descent, but by differentiation and variation. In 1856 the first discovery of a specimen of the Neanderthal man was found at the entrance of a small ravine on the right bank of the River Dussel, in Rhenish Prussia. This was the first discovery of the Paleolithic man to cause serious reflection on the possibility of a prehistoric race in Europe. Its age is estimated at 50,000 years. This was followed by other discoveries of the Mid-Pleistocene period, until there were a number of discoveries of similar specimens of the Neanderthal race, varying in some respects from each other. The first had a brain capacity of 1230 c.c., while that of the average European is about 1500 c.c. Some of the specimens showed a skull capacity larger than the first specimen, but the average is lower than that of any living race, unless it be that of the Australians. {66} Later were discovered human remains of a somewhat higher type, known as the Aurignacian, of the Crô-Magnon race. These are probably ancestors of the living races of Europe existing 25,000 to 50,000 years ago. They represent the first races to which may be accorded definite relationship with the recent races. Thus we have evidences of the great antiquity of man and a series of remains showing continual advancement over a period of nearly 500,000 years--the Pithecanthropus, Heidelberg, Piltdown, and Neanderthal, though expressing gradations of development in the order named, appear to be unrelated in their origin and descent, and are classed as separate species long since extinct. The Crô-Magnon people seem more directly related to modern man. Perhaps in the Neolithic Age they may have been the forebears of present races, either through direct or indirect lines. _The Unity of the Human Race_.--Though there are evidences, as shown above, that there were many branches of the human race, or species, some of which became extinct without leaving any records of the passing on of their cultures to others, there is a pretty generally concerted opinion that all branches of the human race are related and have sprung from the same ancestors. There have been differences of opinion regarding this view, some holding that there are several centres of development in which the precursor of man assumed a human form (polygenesis), and others holding that according to the law of differentiation and zoological development there must have been at some time one origin of the species (monogenesis). So far as the scientific investigation of mankind is concerned, it is rather immaterial which theory is accepted. We know that multitudes of tribes and races differ in minor parts of structure, differ in mental capacity, and hence in qualities of civilization, and yet in general form, brain structure, and mental processes, it is the same human being wherever found. So we may assume that there is a unity of the race. If we consider the human race to have sprung from a single {67} pair, or even the development of man from a single species, it must have taken a long time to have developed the great marks of racial differences that now exist. The question of unity or plurality of race origins has been much discussed, and is still somewhat in controversy, although the predominance of evidence is much in favor of the descent of man from a single species and from a single place. The elder Agassiz held that there were several separate species of the race, which accounts for the wide divergence of characteristics and conditions. But it is generally admitted from a zoological standpoint that man originated from a single species, although it does not necessarily follow that he came from a single pair. It is the diversity or the unity of the race from a single pair which gives rise to the greatest controversy. There is a wide diversity of opinion among ethnologists on this question. Agassiz was followed by French writers, among whom were Topinard and Hervé, who held firmly to the plurality of centres of origin and distribution. Agassiz thought there were at least nine centres in which man appeared, each independent of the others. Morton thought he could point out twenty-two such centres, and Nott and Gliddon advanced the idea that there were distinct races of people. But Darwin, basing his arguments upon the uniformity of physical structure and similarity of mental characteristics, held that man came from a single progenitor. This theory is the most acceptable, and it is easily explained, if we admit time enough for the necessary changes in the structure and appearance of man. It is the simplest hypothesis that is given, and explains the facts relative to the existence of man much more easily than does the theory in reference to diversity of origins. The majority of ethnologists of America and Europe appear to favor the idea that man came from a single pair, arose from one place, and spread thence over the earth's surface. _The Primitive Home of Man May Be Determined in a General Way_.--The location of the cradle of the race has not {68} yet been satisfactorily established. The inference drawn from the Bible story of the creation places it in or near the valley of the Euphrates River. Others hold that the place was in Europe, and others still in America. A theory has also been advanced that a continent or group of large islands called Lemuria, occupying the place where the Indian Ocean now lies, and extending from Ceylon to Madagascar, was the locality in which the human race originated. The advocates of this theory hold to it chiefly on the ground that it is necessary to account for the peopling of Australia and other large islands and continents, and that it is the country best fitted by climate and other physical conditions for the primitive race. This submerged continent would enable the races to migrate readily to different parts of the world, still going by dry land. There is little more than conjecture upon this subject, and the continent called Lemuria is as mythical as the Ethiopia of Ptolemy and the Atlantis of Plato. It is a convenient theory, as it places the cradle of the race near the five great rivers, the Tigris, Euphrates, Indus, Ganges, and the Nile. The supposed home also lies in a zone in which the animals most resembling man are found, which is an important consideration; as, in the development of the earth, animals appeared according to the conditions of climate and food supply, so the portion of the earth best prepared for man's early life is most likely to be his first home. Although it is impossible to determine the first home of man, either from a scientific or an historical standpoint, there are a few well-acknowledged theories to be observed: First, as the islands of the ocean were not peopled when first discovered by modern navigators, it is reasonable to suppose that the primitive home of man was on one of the continents. As man is the highest and last development of organic nature, it is advocated, with considerable force of argument, that his first home was in a region suitable to the life of the anthropoid apes. As none of these, either living or fossil, are found in Australia or America, these continents are practically excluded from the probable list of places for the early home of man. {69} In considering the great changes which have taken place in the earth's surface, southern India and southern Africa were large islands at the time of man's appearance; hence, there is little probability of either of these being the primitive home. None of the oldest remains of man have been found in the high northern latitudes of Europe or America. We have then left a strip of country on the southern slope of the great mountain chain which begins in western Europe and extends to the Himalaya Mountains, in Asia, which appears to be the territory in which was situated the early home of man. The geological relics and the distribution of the race both point to the fact that in this belt man's life began; but it is not determined whether it was in Europe or in Asia, there being adherents to both theories. _The Antiquity of Man Is Shown in Racial Differentiation_.--Granted that the life of the human race has originated from a common biological origin and from a common geographical centre, it has taken a very long time for the races to be differentiated into the physical traits they possess to-day, as it has taken a long time for man to spread over the earth. The generalized man wandering along the streams and through the forests in search of food, seeking for shelter under rocks and in caves and trees, was turned aside by the impassable barriers of mountains, or the forbidding glacier, the roaring torrent, or the limits of the ocean itself, and spread over the accessible parts of the earth's surface until he had covered the selected districts on the main portions of the globe. Then came race specialization, where a group remained a long time in the same environment and inbred in the same stock, developing specialized racial characters. These changes were very slow, and the wide difference to-day between the Asiatic, the African, and the European is indicative of the long period of years which brought them about. Certainly, six thousand years would not suffice to make such changes. Of course one must realize that just as, in the period of childhood, the plastic state of life, changes of structure and appearance are more rapid than in the mature man, after {70} traits and characters have become more fixed, so by analogy we may assume that this was the way of the human race and that in the earlier period changes were more rapid than they are to-day. Thus in the cross-fertilizations and amalgamation of races we would expect a slower development than under these earlier conditions, yet when we realize the persistence of the types of Irish and German, of Italian and Greek, of Japanese and Chinese, even though the races become amalgamated, we must infer that the racial types were very slow in developing. If we consider the variations in the structure and appearance of the several tribes and races with which we come in contact in every-day life, we are impressed with the amount of time necessary to make these changes. Thus the Anglo-American, whom we sometimes call Caucasian, taken as one type of the perfection of physical structure and mental habit, with his brown hair, having a slight tendency to curl, his fair skin, high, prominent, and broad forehead, his great brain capacity, his long head and delicately moulded features, contrasts very strongly with the negro, with his black skin, long head, with flat, narrow forehead, thick lips, projecting jaw, broad nose, and black and woolly hair. The Chinese, with his yellow skin, flat nose, black, coarse hair, and oblique, almond-shaped eyes, and round skull, marks another distinct racial type. Other great races have different characteristics, and among our own race we find a further separation into two great types, the blonds and the brunettes. What a long period of time must have elapsed to have changed the racial characteristics! From pictures made three thousand years ago in Egypt the differences of racial characteristics were very clearly depicted in the hair, the features of the face, and, indeed, the color of the skin. If at this period the racial differences were clearly marked, at what an early date must they have been wanting! So, also, the antiquity of man is evinced in the fact that the oldest skeletons found show him at that early period to be in possession of an average {71} brain capacity and a well-developed frame. If changes in structure have taken place, they have gradually appeared only during a long period of years. Yet, when it is considered that man is a migratory creature, who can adapt himself to any condition of climate or other environment, and it is realized that in the early stage of his existence his time was occupied for a long period in hunting and fishing, and that from this practice he entered the pastoral life to continue, to a certain extent, his wanderings, it is evident that there is sufficient opportunity for the development of independent characteristics. Also the effects of sun and storm, of climate and other environments have a great influence in the slow changes of the race which have taken place. The change in racial traits is dependent largely upon biological selection, but environment and social selection probably had at least indirect influence in the evolution of racial characters. _The Evidences of Man's Ancient Life in Different Localities_.--The sources of the remains of the life of primitive man are (1) Caves, (2) Shell Mounds, (3) River and Glacial Drift, (4) Burial Mounds, (5) Battlefields and Village Sites, and (6) Lake Dwellings. It is from these sources that most of the evidence of man's early life has come. _Caves_ (1).--It has been customary to allude to the cave man as if he were a distinct species or group of the human race, when in reality men at all times through many thousands of years dwelt in caves according to their convenience. However, there was a period in European life when groups of the human race used caves for permanent habitations and thus developed certain racial types and habits. Doubtless these were established long enough in permanent seats to develop a specialized type which might be known as the cave man, just as racial types have been developed in other conditions of habitation and life. What concerns us most here is that the protection which the cave afforded this primitive man has been a means of protecting the records of his life, and thus added to the evidence of human progress. Many of these {72} caves were of limestone with rough walls and floor, and in most instances rifts in the roof allowed water to percolate and drop to the floor. Frequently the water was impregnated with limestone solution, which became solidified as each drop left a deposit at the point of departure. This formed rough stalactites, which might be called stone icicles, because their formation was similar to the formation of an icicle of the water dropping from the roof. So likewise on the floor of the cave where the limestone solution dropped was built up from the bottom a covering of limestone with inverted stone icicles called stalagmites. Underneath the latter were found layer after layer of relics from the habitation of man, encased in stone to be preserved forever or until broken into by some outside pressure. Of course, comparatively few of all the relics around these habitations were preserved, because those outside of the stone encasement perished, as did undoubtedly large masses of remains around the mouth of the cave. In these caves of Europe are found the bones of man, flint implements, ornaments of bone with carvings, and the necklaces of animals' teeth, along with the bones of extinct animals. In general the evidence shows the habits of the life of man and also the kind of animals with which he associated whose period of life was determined by other evidence. Besides this general evidence, there was a special determination of the progress of man, because the relics were in layers extending over a long period of years, giving evidence that from time to time implements of higher order were used, either showing progress or that different races may have occupied the cave at different times and left evidences of their industrial, economic, and social life. In some of the caves skulls have been discovered showing a brain case of an average capacity, along with others of inferior size. Probably the greater part of this cave life was in the upper part of the Paleolithic Stone Age. In some of these caves at the time of the Magdalenian {73} culture, which was a branch of the Crô-Magnon culture, there are to be found drawings and paintings of the horse, the cave bear, the mammoth, the bison, and many other animals, showing strong beginnings of representative art. Also, in these caves were found bones and stone implements of a more highly finished product than those of the earlier primitive types of Europe. _Shell Mounds_ (2).--Shell mounds of Europe and America furnish definite records of man's life. The shell mounds of greatest historic importance are found along the shores of the Baltic in Denmark. Here are remains of a primitive people whose diet seems to be principally shell-fish obtained from the shores of the sea. Around their kitchens the shells of mussels, scallops, and oysters were piled in heaps, and in these shell mounds, or Kitchenmiddens, as they are called (Kjokkenmoddings), are found implements, the bones of birds and mammals, as well as the remains of plants. Also, by digging to the bottom of these mounds specimens of pottery are found, showing that the civilization belonged largely to the Neolithic period of man. There are evidences also of the succession of the varieties of trees corresponding to the evidences found in the peat bogs, the oak following the fir, which in turn gave way to the beech. These refuse heaps are usually in ridgelike mounds, sometimes hundreds of yards in length. The weight of the millions of shells and other refuse undoubtedly pressed the shells down into the soft earth and still the mound enlarged, the habitation being changed or raised higher, rather than to take the trouble to clear away the shells from the habitation. The variety of implements and the degrees of culture which they exhibit give evidence that men lived a long time in this particular locality. Undoubtedly it was the food quest that caused people to assemble here. The evidences of the coarse, dark pottery, the stone axes, clubs, and arrow-heads, and the bones of dogs show a state of civilization in which differentiation of life existed. Shell mounds are also found along the {74} Pacific coast, showing the life of Indians from the time when they first began to use shell-fish for food. In these mounds implements showing the relative stages of development have been found. _River and Glacial Drift_ (3).--The action of glaciers and glacial rivers and lakes has through erosion changed the surface of the soil, tearing out some parts of the earth's surface and depositing the soil elsewhere. These river floods carried out bones of man and the implements in use, and deposited them, together with the bones of animals with which he lived. Many of these relics have been preserved through thousands of years and frequently are brought to light. The geological records are thus very important in throwing light upon the antiquity of man. It is in the different layers or strata of the earth caused by these changes that we find the relics of ancient life. The earth thus reveals in its rocks and gravel drift the permanent records of man's early life. Historical geology shows us that the crust of the earth has been made by a series of layers, one above the other, and that the geologist determining the order of their creation has a means of ascertaining their relative age, and thus can measure approximately the life of the plants and animals connected with each separate layer.[7] The relative ages of fishes, reptiles, and mammals, including man, are thus readily determined. It is necessary to refer to the method of classification adopted by geologists, who have divided the time of earth-making into three great periods, representing the growth of animal life, determined by the remains found in the strata or drift. These periods mark general portions of time. Below the first is the period of earliest rock formation (Archaean), in which there is no life, and which is called Azoic for that reason. There is a short period above this, usually reckoned as outside the ancient life, on account of the few forms of animals found there; but the first great period (Paleozoic) represents non-vertebrate life, as well as the life of fishes and reptiles, and includes {75} also the coal measures, which represent a period of heavy vegetation. The middle period (Mesozoic) includes the more completely developed lizards and crocodiles, and the appearance of mammals and birds. The animal life of the third period (Cenozoic) resembles somewhat the modern species. This period includes the Tertiary and the Quaternary and the recent sub-periods. Man, the highest being in the order of creation, appears in the Quaternary period. Of the immense ages of time represented by the geological periods the life of man represents but a small portion, just as the existence of man as recorded in history is but a modern period of his great life. The changes, then, which have taken place in the animals and plants and the climate in the different geological periods have been instrumental in determining the age of man; that is, if in a given stratum human remains are found, and the relative age of that stratum is known, it is easy to estimate the relative age of man. Whether man existed prior to the glacial epoch is still in doubt. Some anthropologists hold that he appeared at the latter part of the Tertiary, that is, in the Pliocene. Reasons for assumption exist, though there is not sufficient evidence to make it conclusive. The question is still in controversy, and doubtless will be until new discoveries bring new evidence. If there is doubt about the finding of human relics in the Tertiary, there is no doubt about the evidence of man during the Quaternary, including the whole period of the glacial epoch, extending 500,000 years into the past. The relics of man which are found in the drift and elsewhere are the stone implements and the flakes chipped from the flint as he fashioned it into an axe, knife, or hatchet. The implements commonly found are arrow-heads, knives, lance-heads, pestles, etc. Human bones have been found imbedded in the rock or the sand. Articles made of horn, bones of animals, especially the reindeer, notched or cut pieces of wood have been found. Also there are evidences of rude drawings on stone, bone, or ivory; fragments of charcoal, which give {76} evidence of the use of fire in cooking or creating artificial heat, are found, and long bones split longitudinally to obtain marrow for food, and, finally, the remnants of pottery. These represent the principal relics found in the Stone Age; to these may be added the implements in bronze and iron of later periods. A good example of the use of these relics to determine chronology is shown in the peat bogs of Denmark. At the bottom are found trees of pine which grew on the edges of the bog and have fallen in. Nearer the top are found oak and white birch-trees, and in the upper layer are found beech-trees closely allied to the species now covering the country. The pines, oaks, and birches are not to be seen in that part of the country at present. Here, then, is evidence of the successive replacement of different species of trees. It is evident that it must have taken a long time for one species thus to replace another, but how long it is impossible to say. In some of these bogs is found a gradation of implements, unpolished stone at the bottom, polished stone above, followed by bronze, and finally iron. These are associated with the different forms of vegetable remains. In Europe stone implements occur in association with fossil remains of the cave lion, the cave hyena, the old elephant and rhinoceros--all extinct species. Also the bones and horns of the reindeer are prominent in these remains, for at that time the reindeer came farther south than at present. In southern France similar implements are associated with ivory and bones, with rude markings, and the bones of man--even a complete skeleton being found at one place. These are all found in connection with the bones of the elk, ibex, aurochs, and reindeer. _Burial Mounds_ (4).--It is difficult to determine at just what period human beings began to bury their dead. Primarily the bodies were disposed of the same as any other carrion that might occur--namely, they were left to decay wherever they dropped, or were subject to the disposal by wild {77} animals. After the development of the idea of the perpetuation of life in another world, even though it were temporary or permanent, thoughts of preparing the body for its journey into the unknown land and for its residence thereafter caused people to place food and implements and clothing in the grave. This practice probably occurred about the beginning of the Neolithic period of man's existence, and has continued on to the present date. Hence it is that in the graves of primitive man we find deposited the articles of daily use at the period in which he lived. These have been preserved many centuries, showing something of the life of the people whose remains were deposited in the mounds. Also in connection with this in furtherance of a religious idea were great dolmens and stone temples, where undoubtedly the ancients met to worship. They give some evidence at least of the development of the religious and ceremonial life among these primitive people and to that extent they are of great importance. It is evidence also, in another way, that the religious idea took strong hold of man at an early period of his existence. Evidences of man in Britain from the tumuli, or burial mounds, from rude stone temples like the famous Stonehenge place his existence on the island at a very early date. Judging from skulls and skeletons there were several distinct groups of prehistoric man in Britain, varying from the extreme broad skulls to those of excessive length. They carry us back to the period of the Early Stone Age. Relics, too, of the implements and mounds show something of the primitive conditions of the inhabitants in Britain of which we have any permanent record. _Battlefields and Village Sites_ (5).--In the later Neolithic period of man the tribes had been fully developed over a great part of the earth's surface, and fought for their existence, principally over territories having a food supply. Other reasons for tribal conflict, such as real or imagined race differences and the ambition for race survival, caused constant warfare. {78} Upon these battlefields were left the implements of war. Those of stone, and, it may be said secondarily, of iron and bronze, were preserved. It is not uncommon now in almost any part of the United States where the rains fall upon a ploughed field over which a battle had been fought, to find exposed a large number of arrow-heads and stone axes, all other perishable implements having long since decayed. Or in some instances the wind blowing the sand exposes the implements which were long ago deposited during a battle. Also, wherever the Indian villages were located for a period of years, the accumulations of utensils and implements occurred which were buried by the action of wind or water. This represents a source of evidence of man's early life. _Lake Dwellings_ (6).--The idea of protection is evidenced everywhere in the history of primitive man; protection against the physical elements, protection against wild beasts and wilder men. We find along the lakes and bays in both Europe and America the tendency to build the dwelling out in the water and approach it from the land with a narrow walk which could be taken up when not used, or to approach it by means of a rude boat. In this way the dwellers could defend themselves against the onslaughts of tribal enemies. These dwellings have been most numerous along the Swiss lakes, although some are found in Scotland, in the northern coast of South America, and elsewhere. Their importance rests in the fact that, like the shell mounds (Kitchenmiddens), the refuse from these cabins shows large deposits of the implements and utensils that were in use during the period of tribal residence. Here we find not only stone implements, running from the crude form of the Unpolished Stone Age to the highly polished, but also records of implements of bronze and small implements for domestic use of bone and polished stone. Also there are evidences that different tribes or specialized races occupied these dwellings at different times, because of the variation of civilization implied by the implements in use. The British Museum has a very large classified collection of {79} the implements procured from lake dwellings of Switzerland. Other museums also have large collections. A part of them run back into the prehistoric period of man and part extend even down to the historic. _Knowledge of Man's Antiquity Influences Reflective Thinking_.--The importance of studying the antiquity of man is the light which it throws upon the causes of later civilization. In considering any phase of man's development it is necessary to realize he has been a long time on earth and that, while the law of the individual life is development, that of the human race is slowly evolutionary; hence, while we may look for immediate and rapid change, we can only be assured of a very slow progressive movement at all periods of man's existence. The knowledge of his antiquity will give us a historical view which is of tremendous importance in considering the purpose and probable result of man's life on earth. When we realize that we have evidence of the struggle of man for five hundred thousand years to get started as far as we have in civilization, and that more changes affecting man's progress may occur in a single year now than in a former thousand years, we realize something of the background of struggle before our present civilization could appear. We realize, also, that his progress in the arts has been very slow and that, while there are many changes in art formation of to-day, we still have the evidences of the primitive in every completed picture, or plastic form, or structural work. But the slow progress of all this shows, too, that the landmarks of civilization of the past are few and far between--distant mile-posts appearing at intervals of thousands of years. Such a contemplation gives us food for thought and should invite patience when we wish in modern times for social transformations to become instantaneous, like the flash of the scimitar or the burst of an electric light. The evidence that man has been a long time on earth explodes the long-accepted theory of six thousand years as the age of man. It also explodes the theory of instantaneous {80} creation which was expressed by some of the mediaeval philosophers. Indeed, it explodes the theory of a special creation of man without connection with the creation of other living beings. No doubt, there was a specialized creation of man, otherwise he never would have been greater than the anthropoids nor, indeed, than other mammals, but his specialization came about as an evolutionary process which gave him a tremendous brain-power whereby he was enabled to dominate all the rest of the world. So far as philosophy is concerned as to man's life, purpose, and destiny, the influence of the study of anthropology would change the philosopher's vision of life to a certain extent. The recognition that man is "part and parcel" of the universe, subject to cosmic law, as well as a specialized type, subject to the laws of evolution, and, indeed, that he is of a spiritual nature through which he is subjected to spiritual law, causes the philosopher to pause somewhat before he determines the purpose, the life, or the destiny of man. If we are to inquire how man came into the world, when he came, what he has been doing, how he developed, and whither the human trail leads, we shall encounter many unsolved theories. Indeed, the facts of his life are suggestive of the mystery of being. If it be suggested that he is "part and parcel" of nature and has slowly arisen out of lower forms, it should not be a humiliating thought, for his daily life is dependent upon the lower elements of nature. The life of every day is dependent upon the dust of the earth. The food he eats comes from the earth just the same as that of the hog, the rabbit, or the fish. If, upon this foundation, he has by slow evolution built a more perfect form, developed a brain and a mind which give him the greatest flights of philosophy, art, and religion, is it not a thing to excite pride of being? Could there be any greater miracle than evolving nature and developing life? Indeed, is there any greater than the development of the individual man from a small germ not visible to the naked eye, through the egg, the embryo, infant, youth, to full-grown man? Why not the working of the same law to {81} the development of man from the beginning. Does it lessen the dignity of creation if this is done according to law? On the other hand, does it not give credit to the greatness and power of the Creator if we recognize his wisdom in making the universe, including man, the most important factor, according to a universal plan worked out by far-reacting laws? SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. Evidences of the great antiquity of man. 2. Physical and mental traits of the anthropoid apes. 3. The life and culture of the Neanderthal Race. 4. What are the evidences in favor of the descent of man from a single progenitor? 5. Explain the law of differentiation as applied to plants and animals. 6. Compare in general the arts of man in the Old Stone Age with those of the New Stone Age. 7. What has been the effect of the study of prehistoric man on modern thought as shown in the interpretation of History? Philosophy? Religion? [1] See Diagram, p. 59. [2] See Haeckel, Schmidt, Ward, Robinson, Osborn, Todd. [3] See Osborn, _Men of the Old Stone Age_. [4] See Chapter II. [5] After Osborn. Read from bottom up. [6] Estimates of Neanderthal vary from 150,000 to 50,000 years ago. [7] See p. 64. {82} CHAPTER V THE ECONOMIC FACTORS OF PROGRESS _The Efforts of Man to Satisfy Physical Needs_.--All knowledge of primitive man, whether derived from the records of cultures he has left or assumed from analogy of living tribes of a low order of civilization, discovers him wandering along the streams in the valleys or by the shores of lakes and oceans, searching for food and incidentally seeking protection in caves and trees. The whole earth was his so far as he could appropriate it. He cared nothing for ownership; he only wanted room to search for the food nature had provided. When he failed to find sufficient food as nature left it, he starved. So in his wandering life he adapted himself to nature as he found it. In the different environments he acquired different customs and habits of life. If he came in contact with other tribes, an exchange of knowledge and customs took place, and both tribes were richer thereby. However, the universality of the human mind made it possible for two detached tribes, under similar environment and similar stimuli, to develop the same customs and habits of life, provided they had the same degree of development. Hence, we have independent group development and group borrowing. When nature failed to provide him with sufficient food, he learned to force her to yield a larger supply. When natural objects were insufficient for his purposes, he made artificial tools to supplement them. Slowly he became an inventor. Slowly he mastered the art of living. Thus physical needs were gradually satisfied, and the foundation for the superstructure of civilization was laid. _The Attempt to Satisfy Hunger and to Protect from Cold_.--To this statement must be added the fact that struggle with {83} his fellows arose from the attempt to obtain food, and we have practically the whole occupation of man in a state of savagery. At least, the simple activities represent the essential forces at the foundation of human social life. The attempt to preserve life either through instinct, impulse, emotion, or rational selection is fundamental in all animal existence. The other great factor at the foundation of human effort is the desire to perpetuate the species. This, in fact, is the mere projection of the individual life into the next generation, and is fundamentally important to the individual and to the race alike. All modern efforts can be traced to these three fundamental activities. But in seeking to satisfy the cravings of hunger and to avoid the pain of cold, man has developed a varied and active life. About these two centres cluster all the simple forces of human progress. Indeed, invention and discovery and the advancement of the industrial arts receive their initial impulses from these economic relations. We have only to turn our attention to the social life around us to observe evidences of the great importance of economic factors. Even now it will be observed that the greater part of economic activities proceeds from the effort to procure food, clothing, and shelter, while a relatively smaller part is engaged in the pursuit of education, culture, and pleasure. The excellence of educational systems, the highest flights of philosophy, the greatest achievement of art, and the best inspiration of religion cannot exist without a wholesome economic life at the foundation. It should not be humiliating to man that this is so, for in the constitution of things, labor of body and mind, the struggle for existence and the accumulations of the products of industry yield a large return in themselves in discipline and culture; and while we use these economic means to reach higher ideal states, they represent the ladder on which man makes the first rounds of his ascent. _The Methods of Procuring Food in Primitive Times_.--Judging from the races and tribes that are more nearly in a state of nature than any other, it may be reasonably assumed that {84} in his first stage of existence, man subsisted almost wholly upon a vegetable diet, and that gradually he gave more and more attention to animal food. His structure and physiology make it possible for him to use both animal and vegetable food. Primarily, with equal satisfaction the procuring of food must have been rather an individual than a social function. Each individual sought his own breakfast wherever he might find it. It was true then, as now, that people proceeded to the breakfast table in an aggregation, and flocked around the centres of food supply; so we may assume the picture of man stealing away alone, picking fruits, nuts, berries, gathering clams or fish, was no more common than the fact of present-day man getting his own breakfast alone. The main difference is that in the former condition individuals obtained the food as nature left it, and passed it directly from the bush or tree to the mouth, while in modern times thousands of people have been working indirectly to make it possible for a man to wait on himself. Jack London, in his _Before Adam_, gives a very interesting picture of the tribe going out to the carrot field for its breakfast, each individual helping himself. However, such an aggregation around a common food supply must eventually lead to co-operative economic methods. But we do find even among modern living tribes of low degree of culture the group following the food quest, whether it be to the carrot patch, the nut-bearing trees, the sedgy seashore for mussels and clams, the lakes for wild rice, or to the forest and plains where abound wild game. We find it difficult to think otherwise than that the place of man's first appearance was one abounding in edible fruits. This fact arises from the study of man's nature and evidences of the location of his first appearance, together with the study of climate and vegetation. There are a good many suggestions also that man in his primitive condition was prepared for a vegetable diet, and indications are that later he acquired use of meat as food. Indeed, the berries and edible roots of {85} certain regions are in sufficient quantity to sustain life throughout a greater part of the year. The weaker tribes of California at the time of the first European invaders, and for many centuries previous, found a greater part of their sustenance in edible roots extracted from the soil, in nuts, seeds of wild grains, and grasses. It is true they captured a little wild game, and in certain seasons many of them made excursions to the ocean or frequented the streams for fish or shell-fish, but their chief diet was vegetable. It must be remembered, also, that all of the cultivated fruits to-day formerly existed, in one variety or another, in the wild species. Thus the citrous fruits, the date, the banana, breadfruit, papaw, persimmon, apple, cherry, plum, pear, all grew in a wild state, providing food for man if he were ready to take it as provided. Rational selection has assisted nature in improving the quality of grains and fruits and in developing new varieties. In the tropical regions was found the greatest supply of edible fruits. Thus the Malays and the Papuans find sufficient food on trees to supply their wants. Many people in some of the groups in the South Sea Islands live on cocoanuts. In South America several species of trees are cultivated by the natives for the food they furnish. The palm family contributes much food to the natives, and also furnishes a large supply of food to the markets of the world. The well-known breadfruit tree bears during eight successive months in the year, and by burying the fruit in the ground it may be preserved for food for the remaining four months. Thus a single plant may be made to provide a continuous food supply for the inhabitants of the Moluccas and Philippines. Many other instances of fruits in abundance, such as the nuts from the araucarias of South America, and beans from the mesquite of Mexico, might be given to show that it is possible for man to subsist without the use of animal food. _The Variety of Food Was Constantly Increased_.--Undoubtedly, one of the chief causes of the wandering of primitive man over the earth, in the valleys, along stream, lake, and ocean, {86} over the plains and through the hills, was the quest for food to preserve life; and even after tribes became permanent residents in a certain territory, there was a constant shifting from one source of food supply to another throughout the seasons. However, after tribes became more settled, the increase of population encroached upon the native food supply, and man began to use his invention for the purpose of its increase. He learned how to plant seeds which were ordinarily believed to be sown by the gods, and to till the soil and raise fruits and vegetables for his own consumption. This was a period of accidental agriculture, or hoe culture, whereby the ground was tilled by women with hoes of stone, or bone, or wood. In the meantime, the increase of animal food became a necessity. Man learned how to snare and trap animals, to fish and to gather shell-fish, learning by degrees to use new foods as discovered as nature left them. Life become a veritable struggle for existence as the population increased and the lands upon which man dwelt yielded insufficient supply of food. The increased variety of food allowed man to adapt himself to the different climates. Thus in the colder climates animal food became desirable to enable him to resist more readily the rigors of climate. It was not necessary, it is supposed, to give him physical courage or intellectual development, for there appear to be evidences of tribes like the Maoris of New Zealand, who on the diet of fish and roots became a most powerful and sagacious people. But the change from a vegetable diet to a meat-and-fish diet in the early period brought forth renewed energy of body and mind, not only on account of the necessary physical exertion but on account of the invention of devices for the capture of fish and game. _The Food Supply Was Increased by Inventions_.--Probably the first meat food supply was in the form of shell-fish which could be gathered near the shores of lakes and streams. Probably small game was secured by the use of stones and sticks and by running the animal down until he was exhausted or until he hid in a place inaccessible to the pursuer. The {87} boomerang, as used by the Australians in killing game, may have been an early product of the people of Neolithic Europe. In the latter part of the Paleolithic Age, fish-hooks of bone were used, and probably snares invented for small game. The large game could not be secured without the use of the spear and the co-operation of a number of hunters. In all probability this occurred in the New Stone Age. The invention of the bow-and-arrow was of tremendous importance in securing food. It is not known what led to its invention, although the discovery of the flexible power of the shrub, or the small sapling, must have occurred to man as he struggled through the brush. It is thought by some that the use of the bow fire-drill, which was for the purpose of striking fire by friction, might have displayed driving power when the drill wound up in the string of the bow flew from its confinement. However, this is conjectural; but, judging from the inventions of known tribes, it is evident that necessity has always been the moving power in invention. The bow-and-arrow was developed in certain centres and probably through trade and exchange extended to other tribes and groups until it was universally used. It is interesting to note how many thousands of years this must have been the chief weapon for destroying animals or crippling game at a distance. Even as late as the Norman conquest, the bow-and-arrow was the chief means of defense of the Anglo-Saxon yeoman, and for many previous centuries in the historic period had been the chief implement in warfare and in the chase. The use of the spear in fishing supplemented that of the hook, and is found among all low-cultured tribes of the present day. The American Indian will stand on a rock in the middle of a stream, silently, for an hour if necessary, watching for a chance to spear a salmon. These small devices were of tremendous importance in increasing the food supply, and the making of them became a permanent industry. Along with the bow and arrow were developed many kinds of spears, axes, and hammers, invented chiefly to be used in {88} war, but also used for economic reasons. In the preparation of animal food, in the tanning of skins, in the making of clothing, another set of stone implements was developed. So, likewise, in the grinding of seeds, the mortar and pestle were used, and the small hand-mill or grinder was devised. The sign of the mortar and pestle at the front of drug-stores brings to mind the fact that its first use was not for preparing medicines, but for grinding grains and seeds. _The Discovery and Use of Fire_.--The use of fire was practised in the early history of man. Among the earliest records in caves are found evidences of the use of fire. Charcoal is practically indestructible, and, although it may be crushed, the small particles maintain their shape in the clays and sands. In nearly all of the relics of man discovered in caves, the evidences of fire are to be found, and no living tribe has yet been discovered so low in the scale of life as to be without the knowledge of fire and probably its simple uses, although a few tribes have been for the time being without fire when first discovered. This might seem to indicate that at a very early period man did not know how to create fire artificially, but carried it and preserved it in his wanderings. There are indications that a certain individual was custodian of the fire, and later it was carried by the priest or _cacique_. Here, as in other instances in the development of the human race, an economic factor soon assumes a religious significance, and fire becomes sacred. There are many conjectures respecting the discovery of fire. Probably the two real sources are of lightning that struck forest trees and set them on fire and the action of volcanoes in throwing out burning lava, which ignited combustible material. Either one or the other, and perhaps both, of these methods may have furnished man with fire. Others have suggested that the rubbing together of dead limbs of trees in the forests after they were moved by the winds, may have created fire by friction. It is possible, also, that the sun's rays may have, when concentrated on combustible {89} material, caused spontaneous ignition. The idea has been advanced that some of the forest fires of recent times have been ignited in this way. However, it is evident that there are enough natural sources in the creation of fire to enable tribes to use it for the purposes of artificial heat, cooking, and later, in the age of metals, of smelting ores. There has always been a mystery connected with the origin and use of fire, which has led to many myths. Thus, the Greeks insisted that Prometheus, in order to perform a great service to humanity, stole fire from heaven and gave it to man. For this crime against the authority of the gods, he was chained to a rock to suffer the torture of the vulture who pecked at his vitals. Aeschylus has made the most of this old legend in his great drama of _Prometheus Bound_. Nearly every tribe or nation has some tradition regarding the origin of fire. Because of its mystery and its economic value, it was early connected with religion and made sacred in many instances. It was thus preserved at the altar, never being allowed to become extinct without the fear of dire calamity. Perhaps the economic and religious ideas combined, because tribes in travelling from place to place exercised great care to preserve it. The use of fire in worship became almost universal among tribes and ancient nations. Thus the Hebrews and the Aryans, including Greeks, Romans, and Persians, as well as the Chinese and Japanese, used fire in worship. Among other tribes it was worshipped as a symbol or even as a real deity. Even in the Christian religion, the use of the burning incense may have some psychological connection with the idea of purification through fire. Whether its mysterious nature led to its connection with worship, and the superstition connected with its continued burning, or whether from economic reasons it became a sacred matter, has never been determined. The custom that a fire should never go out upon the altar, and that it should be carried in migrations from place to place, would seem to indicate that these two motives were closely allied, if not related in cause and effect. {90} Evidently, fire was used for centuries before man invented methods of reproducing it. Simple as the process involved, it was a great invention; or it may be stated that many devices were resorted to for the creation of artificial fire. Perhaps the earliest was that of rubbing two pieces of dry wood together, producing fire by friction. This could be accomplished by persistent friction of two ordinary pieces of dry wood, or by drilling a hole in a dry piece of wood with a pointed stick until heat was developed and a spark produced to ignite pieces of dry bark or grass. Another way was to make a groove in a block of wood and run the end of a stick rapidly back and forth through the groove. An invention called the fire-drill was simply a method of twirling rapidly in the hand a wooden drill which was in contact with dry wood, or by winding a string of the bow several times around the drill and moving the bow back and forth horizontally, giving rapid motion to the drill. As tribes became more advanced, they used two pieces of flint with which to strike fire, and after the discovery of iron, the flint and iron were used. How many centuries these simple devices were essential to the progress and even to the life of tribes, is not known; but when we realize that but a few short years ago our fathers lighted the fire with flint and steel, and that before the percussion cap was invented, the powder in the musket was ignited by flint and hammer, we see how important to civilization were these simple devices of producing fire artificially. So simple an invention as the discovery of the friction match saved hours of labor and permitted hours of leisure to be used in other ways. It is one of the vagaries of human progress that a simple device remains in use for thousands of years before its clumsy method gives way to a new invention only one step in advance of the old. _Cooking Added to the Economy of the Food Supply_.--Primitive man doubtless consumed his food raw. The transition of the custom of uncooked food to cooked food must have been gradual. We only know that many of the backward tribes of {91} to-day are using primitive methods of cooking, and the man of the Stone Ages had methods of cooking the meat of animals. In all probability, the suggestion came as people were grouped around the fire for artificial heat, and then, either by intention or desire, the experiment of cooking began. After man had learned to make water-tight baskets, a common device of cooking was to put water in the basket and, after heating stones on a fire, put them in the basket to heat the water and then place the food in the basket to be cooked. This method is carried on by the Indians in some parts of Alaska to this day, where they use a water-tight basket for this purpose. Probably this method of cooking food was a later development than the roasting of food on coals or in the ashes, or in the use of the wooden spit. Catlin, in his _North American Indians_, relates that certain tribes of Indians dig a hole in the ground and line it with hide filled with water, then place hot stones in the water, in which they place their fish, game, or meat for cooking. This is interesting, because it carries out a more or less universal idea of adaptation to environment. Probably the plains Indians had no baskets or other vessels to use for this purpose, but they are found to have used similar methods of cooking grasshoppers. They dig a hole in the ground, build a fire in the hole, and take the fire out and put in the grasshoppers. Thus, they have an exhibition of the first fireless cooker. It is thought by some that the need of vessels which would endure the heat was the cause of the invention of pottery. While there seems to be little evidence of this, it is easy to conjecture that when water was needed to be heated in a basket, a mass of clay would be put on the bottom of the basket before it was put over the coals of fire. After the cooking was done, the basket could easily be detached from the clay, leaving a hard-baked bowl. This led to the suggestion of making bowls of clay and baking them for common use. Others suggest that the fact of making holes in the ground for cooking purposes gave the suggestion that by the use of clay a portable vessel might be made for similar purposes. {92} The economic value of cooking rests in the fact that a larger utility comes from the cooked than from the raw food. Though the phenomena of physical development of tribes and nations cannot be explained by the chemical constituents of food, although they are not without a positive influence. Evidently the preparation of food has much to do with man's progress, and the art of cooking was a great step in advance. The better utilization of food was a time-saving process--and, indeed, in many instances may have been a life-saving affair. _The Domestication of Animals_.--The time and place of the domestication of animals are not satisfactorily determined. We know that Paleolithic man had domesticated the dog, and probably for centuries this was the only animal domesticated; but it is known that low forest tribes have tamed monkeys and parrots for pets, and savage tribes frequently have a band of dogs for hunting game or guarding the hut. While it may be supposed that domestication of animals may have occurred in the prehistoric period, the use of such animals has been in the historic period. There are many evidences of the domesticated dog at the beginning of the Neolithic period. However, these animals may have still been nearly half wild. It is not until the period of the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland that we can discriminate between the wild animals and those that have been tamed. In the Lake Dwelling débris are found the bones of the wild bull, or _urus_, of Europe. Probably this large, long-horned animal was then in a wild state, and had been hunted for food. Alongside of these remains are those of a small, short-horned animal, supposed to have been domesticated. Later, though still in the Neolithic period, remains of short-horned tame cattle appear in the refuse of the Lake Dwellings. It is thought by some that these two varieties--the long-horned _urus_ and the short-horned domesticated animal brought from the south--were crossed, which gave rise to the origin of the present stock of modern cattle in central Europe. Pigs and sheep were probably domesticated in Asia {93} and brought into Europe during the later Neolithic or early Bronze period. The horse was domesticated in Asia, and Clark Wissler[1] shows that to be one great centre of cultural distribution for this animal. It spread from Asia into Europe, and from Europe into America. The llama was early domesticated in South America. The American turkey had its native home in Mexico, the hen in Asia. The dog, though domesticated very early in Asia, has gone wherever the human race has migrated, as the constant companion of man. The horse, while domesticated in Asia, depends upon the culture of Europe for his large and extended use, and has spread over the world. We find that in the historic period the Aryan people everywhere made use of the domesticated goat, horse, and dog. In the northern part of Europe, the reindeer early became of great service to the inhabitants for milk, meat, and clothing. The great supply of milk and meat from domesticated animals added tremendously to the food supply of the race, and made it possible for it to develop in other lines. Along with the food supply has been the use of these animals for increasing the clothing supply through hides, furs, skins, and wool. The domestication of animals laid the foundation for great economic advancement. _The Beginnings of Agriculture Were Very Meagre_.--Man had gathered seeds and fruit and berries for many years before he conceived the notion of planting seeds and cultivating crops. It appears to be a long time before he knew enough to gather seeds and plant them for a harvest. Having discovered this, it was only necessary to have the will and energy to prepare the soil, sow the seed, and harvest a crop in order to enter upon agriculture. But to learn this simple act must have required many crude experiments. In the migrations of mankind they adopted a little intermittent agriculture, planting the grains while the tribe paused for pasture of flocks and herds, and resting long enough for a crop to be harvested. {94} They gradually began to supplement the work of the pastoral with temporary agriculture, which was used as a means of supplementing the food supply. It was not until people settled in permanent habitations and ceased their pastoral wanderings that real agriculture became established. Even then it was a crude process, and, like every other economic industry of ancient times, its development was excessively slow. The wandering tribes of North America at the time of the discovery had reached the state of raising an occasional crop of corn. Indeed, some tribes were quite constant in limited agriculture. The sedentary Indians of New Mexico, old Mexico, and Peru also cultivated corn and other plants, as did those of Central America. The first tillage of the soil was meagre, and the invention of agricultural implements proceeded slowly. At first wandering savages carried a pointed stick to dig up the roots and tubers used for food. The first agriculturists used sticks for stirring the soil, which finally became flattened in the form of a paddle or rude spade. The hoe was evolved from the stone pick or hatchet. It is said that the women of the North American tribes used a hoe made of an elk's shoulder-blade and a handle of wood. In Sweden the earliest records of tillage represent a huge hoe made from a stout limb of spruce with the sharpened root. This was finally made heavier, and men dragged it through the soil in the manner of ploughing. Subsequently the plough was made in two pieces, a handle having been added. Finally a pair of cows yoked together were compelled to drag the plough. Probably this is a fair illustration of the manner of the evolution of the plough in other countries. It is also typical of the evolution of all modern agricultural implements. We need only refer to our own day to see how changes take place. The writer has cut grain with the old-fashioned sickle, the scythe, the cradle, and the reaper, and has lived to see the harvester cut and thresh the grain in the field. The Egyptians use until this day wooden ploughs of an ancient type formed from limbs of trees, having a share pointed with metal. {95} The old Spanish colonists used a similar plough in California and Mexico as late as the nineteenth century. From these ploughs, which merely stirred the soil imperfectly, there has been a slow evolution to the complete steel plough and disk of modern times. A glance at the collection of perfected farm machinery at any modern agricultural fair reveals what man has accomplished since the beginning of the agricultural art. In forest countries the beginning of agriculture was in the open places, or else the natives cut and burned the brush and timber, and frequently, after one or two crops, moved on to other places. The early settlers of new territories pursue the same method with their first fields, while the turning of the prairie sod of the Western plains was frequently preceded by the burning of the prairie grass and brush. The method of attachment to the soil determined economic progress. Man in his early wanderings had no notion of ownership of the land. All he wished was to have room to go wherever the food quest directed him, and apparently he had no reflections on the subject. The matters of fact regarding mountain, sea, river, ocean, and glacier which influenced his movements were practically no different from the fact of other tribes that barred his progress or interfered with his methods of life. In the hunter-fisher stage of existence, human contacts became frequent, and led to contention and warfare over customary hunting grounds. Even in the pastoral period the land was occupied by moving upon it, and held as long as the tribe could maintain itself against other tribes that wished the land for pasture. Gradually, however, even in temporary locations, a more permanent attachment to the soil came through clusters of dwellings and villages, and the habit of using territory from year to year for pastorage led to a claim of the tribe for that territory. So the idea of possession grew into the idea of permanent ownership and the idea of rights to certain parts of the territory became continually stronger. This method of settlement had much to do with not only the economic life of people, but in determining the nature of their {96} social organizations and consequently the efficiency of their social activity. Evidently, the occupation of a certain territory as a dwelling-place was the source of the idea of ownership in land. Nearly all of Europe, at least, came into permanent cultivation through the village community.[2] A tribe settled in a given valley and held the soil in common. There was at a central place an irregular collection of rude huts, called the village. Each head of the family owned and permanently occupied one of these. The fertile or tillable land was laid out in lots, each family being allowed the use of a lot for one or more years, but the whole land was the common property of the tribe, and was under the direction of the village elders. The regulation of the affairs of the agricultural community developed government, law, and social cohesion. The social advancement after the introduction of permanent agriculture was great in every way. The increased food supply was an untold blessing; the closer association necessary for the new kind of life, the building of distinct homes, and the necessity of a more general citizenship and a code of public law brought forth the social or community idea of progress. Side by side with the village community system there was a separate development of individual ownership and tillage, which developed into the manorial system. It is not necessary to discuss this method here except to say that this, together with the permanent occupation of the house-lot in the village, gave rise to the private ownership of property in land. As to how private ownership of personal property began, it is easy to suppose that, having made an implement or tool, the person claimed the right of perpetual possession or ownership; also, that in the chase the captured game belonged to the one who made the capture; the clothing to the maker. In some instances where game was captured by the group, each was given a share in proportion to his station in life, or again in proportion to the service each performed in the capture. Yet, in this {97} early period possessory right was frequently determined on the basis that might makes right. _The Manufacture of Clothing_.--The motive of clothing has been that of ornament and protection from the pain of cold. The ornamentation of the body was earlier in its appearance in human progress than the making of clothing for the protection of the body; and after the latter came into use, ornamentation continued, thus making clothing more and more artistic. As to how man protected his body before he began to kill wild animals for food, is conjectural. Probably he dwelt in a warm climate, where very little clothing was needed, but, undoubtedly, the cave man and, in fact, all of the groups of the race occurring in Europe and Asia in the latter part of the Old Stone Age and during the New Stone Age used the skins of animals for clothing. Later, after weaving had begun, grasses and fibres taken from plants in a rude way were plaited for making clothing. Subsequently these fibres were prepared, twisted into thread, and woven regularly into garments. The main source of supply came from reeds, rushes, wild flax, cotton, fibres of the century plant, the inner bark of trees, and other sources according to the environment. Nothing can be more interesting than the progress made in clothing, combining as it does the objects of protection from cold, the adornment of the person, and the preservation of modesty. Indians of the forests of the tropical regions and on the Pacific coast, when first discovered, have been found entirely naked. These were usually without modesty. That is, they felt no need of clothing on account of the presence of others. There are many evidences to show that the first clothing was for ornament and for personal attraction rather than for protection. The painting of the body, the dressing of the hair, the wearing of rings in the nose, ears, and lips, the tattooing of the body, all are to be associated with the first clothing, which may be merely a narrow belt or an ornamental piece of cloth--all merely for show, for adornment and attraction. {98} There are relics of ornaments found in caves of early man, and, as before mentioned, relics of paints. The clothing of early man can be conjectured by the implements with which he was accustomed to dress the skins of animals. Among living tribes the bark of trees represents the lowest form of clothing. In Brazil there is found what is known as the "shirt tree," which provides covering for the body. When a man wants a new garment he pulls the bark from a tree of a suitable size, making a complete girdle. This he soaks and beats until it is soft, and, cutting holes for the arms, dons his tailor-made garment. In some countries, particularly India, aprons are made of leaves. But the garment made of the skins of animals is the most universal among living savage and barbarous tribes, even after the latter have learned to spin and weave fabrics. The tanning of skins is carried on with a great deal of skill, and rich and expensive garments are worn by the wealthier members of savage tribes. The making of garments from threads, strings, or fibres was an art discovered a little later. At first rude aprons were woven from long strips of bark. The South Sea Islanders made short gowns of plaited rushes, and the New Zealanders wore rude garments from strings made of native flax. These early products were made by the process of working the fibres by hand into a string or thread. The use of a simple spindle, composed of a stone like a large button, with a stick run through a hole in the centre, facilitated the making of thread and the construction of rude looms. It was but a step from these to the spinning-wheels and looms of the Middle Ages. When the Spaniards discovered the Pueblo Indians, they were wearing garments of their own weaving from cotton and wood fibres. Strong cords attached to the limbs of trees and to a piece of wood on the ground formed the framework of the loom, and the native sat down to weave the garment. With slight improvements on this old style, the Navajos continue to weave their celebrated blankets. What an effort it must have cost, what a necessity must have crowded man to have compelled him to resort to this method of procuring clothing! {99} The artistic taste in dress has always accompanied the development of the useful, although dress has always been used more or less for ornament, and taste has changed by slow degrees. The primitive races everywhere delighted in bright colors, and in most instances these border on the grotesque in arrangement and combination. But many people not far advanced in barbarism have colors artistically arranged and dress with considerable skill. Ornaments change in the progress of civilization from coarse, ungainly shells, pieces of wood, or bits of metal, to more finely wrought articles of gold and silver. _Primitive Shelters and Houses_.--The shelters of primitive man were more or less temporary, for wherever he happened to be in his migrations he sought shelter from storm or cold in the way most adaptable to his circumstances. There was in this connection, also, the precaution taken to protect against predatory animals and wild men. As his stay in a given territory became more permanent, the home or shelter gradually grew more permanent. So far as we can ascertain, man has always been known to build some sort of shelter. As apes build their shelters in trees, birds build their nests, and beavers dam water to make their homes, it is impossible to suppose that man, with superior intelligence, was ever simple enough to continue long without some sort of shelter constructed with his own hands. At first the shelter of trees, rocks, and caves served his purpose wherever available. Subsequently, when he had learned to build houses, their structure was usually dependent more upon environment than upon his inventive genius. Whether he built a platform house or nest in a tree, or provided a temporary brush shelter, or bark hut, or stone or adobe building, depended a good deal upon the material at hand and the necessity of protection. The main thing was to protect against cold or storm, wild animals, and, eventually, wild men. The progress in architecture among the nations of ancient civilization was quite rapid. Massive structures were built for capacity and strength, which the natives soon learned to {100} decorate within and without. The buildings were made of large blocks of hewn stone, fitted together mechanically by the means of cement, which made secure foundations for ages. When in the course of time the arch was discovered, it alone became a power to advance the progress of architecture. We have seen pass before our eyes a sudden transition in dwelling houses. The first inhabitants of some parts of the Western prairies dwelt in tents. These were next exchanged for the "dugout," and this for a rude hut. Subsequently the rude hut was made into a barn or pig-pen, and a respectable farmhouse was built; and finally this, too, has been replaced by a house of modern style and conveniences. If we could consider this change to have extended over thousands of years, from the first shelter of man to the finished modern building, it would be a picture of the progress of man in the art of building. In this slow process man struggled without means and with crude notions of life in every form. The aim, first, was for protection, then comfort and durability, and finally for beauty. The artistic in building has kept pace with other forms of civilization evinced in other ways. One of the most interesting exhibits of house-building for protection is found in the cliff dwellings, whose ruins are to be seen in Arizona and New Mexico. Tradition and other evidences point to the conclusion that certain tribes had developed a state of civilization as high as a middle period of barbarism, on the plains, where they had made a beginning of systematic agriculture, and that they were afterward driven out by wilder tribes and withdrew, seeking the cliffs for protection. There they built under the projecting cliffs the large communal houses, where they dwelt for a long period of time. Subsequently their descendants went into the valleys and developed the Pueblo villages, with their large communal houses of _adobe_. _Discovery and Use of Metals_.--It is not known just when the human race first discovered and used any one of the metals {101} now known to commerce and industry, but it can be assumed that their discovery occurred at a very early period and their use followed quickly. Reasoning back from the nature and condition of the wild tribes of to-day, who are curiously attracted by bright colors, whether in metals or beads or clothing, and realizing how universally they used the minerals and plants for coloring, it would be safe to assume that the satisfaction of the curiosity of primitive man led to the discovery of bright metals at a very early time. Pieces of copper, gold, and iron would easily have been found in a free state in metal-bearing soil, and treasured as articles of value. Copper undoubtedly was used by the American Indians, and probably by the inhabitants of Europe during the Neolithic Age--it being found in a native state in sufficient quantities to be hammered into implements. Thus copper has been found in large pieces in its native state, not only in Europe but in Mexico and other parts of North America, particularly in the Lake Superior region; but as the soft hematite iron was found in larger quantities in a free state, it would seem that the use of iron in a small degree must have occurred at about the same time, or perhaps a little later. The process of smelting must have been suggested by the action of fire built on or near ore beds, where a crude process of accidental smelting took place. Combined with tin ore, the copper was made into bronze in Peru and Mexico at the time of the discovery. In Europe there are abundant remains to show the early use of metals. Probably copper and tin were in use before iron, although iron may have been discovered first. There are numerous tin mines in Asia and copper mines in Cyprus. At first, metals were probably worked while cold through hammering, the softest metals doubtless being used before others. It is difficult to tell how smelting was discovered, although the making and use of bronze implements is an indication of the first process of smelting ores and combining metals. When tin was first discovered is not known, but we know that bronze {102} implements made from an alloy of copper, tin, and usually other metals were used by the Greeks and other Aryan peoples in the early historic period, about six thousand years ago. In Egypt and Babylon many of the inscriptions make mention of the use of iron as well as bronze, although the extended use of the former must have come about some time after the latter. At first all war instruments were stone and wood and later bronze, which were largely replaced by iron at a still later period. The making of spears, swords, pikes, battle-axes, and other implements of war had much to do with the development of ingenious work in metals. The final perfection of metal work could only be attained by the manufacture of finely treated steel. Probably the tempering of steel began at the time iron came prominently into use. Other metals, such as silver, quicksilver, gold, and lead, came into common use in the early stages of civilization, all of which added greatly to the arts and industries. Nearly all of the metals were used for money at various times. The aids to trade and commerce which these metals gave on account of their universal use and constant measure of value cannot be overestimated. _Transportation as a Means of Economic Development_.--Early methods of carrying goods from one place to another were on the backs of human beings. Many devices were made for economy of service and strength in carrying. Bands over the shoulders and over the head were devised for the purpose of securing the pack on the back. An Indian woman of the Southwest would carry a large basket, or _keiho_, on her back, secured by a band around her head for the support of the load. A Pueblo woman will carry a large bowl filled with water or other material, on the top of her head, balancing it by walking erect. Indeed, in more recent times washerwomen in Europe, and of the colored race in America, carry baskets of clothes and pails of water on their heads. The whole process of the development of transportation came about through invention to be relieved from this bodily service. {103} As the dog was the first animal domesticated, he was early used to help in transportation by harnessing him to a rude sled, or drag, by means of which he pulled articles from one place to another. The Eskimos have used dogs and the sled to a greater extent than any other race. The use of the camel, the llama, the horse, and the ass for packing became very common after their domestication. Huge packs were strapped upon the backs of these animals, and goods thus transported from one place to another. To such an extent was the camel used, even in the historic period, for transportation in the Orient that he has been called the "ship of the desert." The plains Indians had a method of attaching two poles, one at each side of an Indian pony, which extended backward, dragging on the ground. Upon these poles was built a little platform, on which goods were deposited and thus transported from one camp to another. It must have been a long time before water transportation performed any considerable economic service. It is thought by some that primitive man conceived the idea of the use of water for transportation through his experience of floating logs, or drifts, or his own process of swimming and floating. Jack London pictures two primitives playing on the logs near the shore of a stream. Subsequently the logs cast loose, and the primitives were floated away from the shore. They learned by putting their hands in the water and paddling that they could make the logs move in the direction which they wished to go. Perhaps this explanation is as good as any, inasmuch as the beginnings of modern transportation still dwell in the mist of the past. However, in support of the log theory is the fact that modern races use primitive boats made of long reeds tied together, forming a loglike structure. The _balsa_ of the Indians of the north coasts of South America is a very good representation of this kind of boat. Evidently, the first canoes were made by hollowing logs and sharpening the ends at bow and stern. This form of boat-making has been carried to a high degree of skill by the {104} Indians of the northwest coast of America and by the natives of the Hawaiian Islands. The birch-bark canoe, made for lighter work and overland transportation, is more suggestive of the light reed boat than of the log canoe. Also, the boats made of a framework covered with the skins of animals were prominent at certain periods of the development of races who lived on animal food. But later the development of boats with frames covered with strips of board and coated with pitch became the great vehicle of commerce through hundreds of years. It certainly is a long journey from the floating log to the modern floating passenger palace, freight leviathan, or armed dreadnought, but the journey was accomplished by thousands of steps, some short and some long, through thousands of years of progress. _Trade, or Exchange of Goods_.--In Mr. Clark Wissler's book on _Man and Culture_, he has shown quite conclusively that there are certain culture areas whereby certain inventions, discoveries, or customs have originated and spread over a given territory. This recognition of a centre of origin of custom or invention is in accordance with the whole process of social development. For instance, in a given area occupied by modern civilized people, there are a very few who invent or originate things, and others follow through imitation or suggestion. So it was with the discoveries and inventions of primitive man. For example, we know that in Oklahoma and Arkansas, as well as in other places in the United States, certain stone quarries or mines are found that produce a certain kind of flint or chert used in making arrow-heads or spearheads and axes. Tribes that developed these traded with other tribes that did not have them, so that from these centres implements were scattered all over the West. A person may pick up on a single village site or battle-ground different implements coming from a dozen or more different quarries or centres and made by different tribes hundreds of miles apart in residence. This diffusion of knowledge and things of material {105} workmanship, or of methods of life, is through a system of borrowing, trading, or swapping--or perhaps sometimes through conquest and robbery; but as soon as an article of any kind could be made which could be subjected to general use of different tribes in different localities, it began to travel from a centre and to be used over a wide area. Certain tribes became special workers in specialized lines. Thus some were bead-makers, others expert tanners of hides, others makers of bows and arrows of peculiar quality, and others makers of stone implements. The incidental swapping of goods by tribes finally led to a systematic method of a travelling trader who brought goods from one tribe to another, exchanging as he went. This early trade had an effect in more rapid extension of culture, because in that case one tribe could have the invention, discovery, and art of all tribes. In connection with this is to be noted the slow change of custom regarding religious belief and ceremony or tribal consciousness. The pride of family and race development, the assumption of superiority leading to race aversion, interfered with intelligence and the spread of ideas and customs; but most economic processes that were not bound up with religious ceremonies or tribal customs were easily exchanged and readily accepted between the tribes. Exchange of goods and transportation went hand in hand in their development, very slowly and surely. After trade had become pretty well established, it became necessary to have a medium of exchange. Some well-known article whose value was very well recognized among the people who were trading became the standard for fixing prices in exchange. Thus, in early Anglo-Saxon times the cow was the unit of the measure of value. Sometimes a shell, as a _cowrie_ of India or the wampum of the American Indian, was used for this purpose. Wheat has been at one time in America, and tobacco in another, a measure of exchange because of the scarcity of money. Gradually, as the discovery and use of precious metals became common and desirable because of their brightness {106} and service in implement and ornament, they became the medium of exchange. Thus, copper and gold, iron and bronze have been used as metallic means of exchange--that is, as money. So from the beginning of trade and swapping article for article, it came to be common eventually to swap an article for something called money and then use the money for the purchase of other desirable articles. This made it possible for the individual to carry about in a small compass the means of obtaining any article in the market within the range of the purchasing power of his money. Trade, transportation, and exchange not only had a vast deal to do with economic progress but were of tremendous importance in social development. They were powerful in diffusion, extension, and promotion of culture. _The Struggle for Existence Develops the Individual and the Race_.--The remnants and relics of the arts and industries of man give us a fair estimate of the process of man's mind and the accomplishment of his physical labor. It is through the effort involved in the struggle for existence that he has made his various steps forward. Truly the actual life of primitive man tends to verify the adage that "necessity is the mother of invention." It was this tremendous demand on him for the means of existence that caused him to create the things that protected and improved his life. It was the insistent struggle which forced him to devise means of taking advantage of nature and thus led to invention and discovery. Every new invention and every new discovery showed the expansion of his mind, as well as gave him the means of material improvement. It also added to his bodily vigor and added much to the development of his physical powers. Upon this economic foundation has been built a superstructure of intellectual power, of moral worth and social improvement, for these in their highest phases of existence may be traced back to the early beginnings of life, where man was put to his utmost effort to supply the simplest of human wants. {107} SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. The change in social life caused by the cultivation of the soil. 2. The effect of the discovery and use of fire on civilization. 3. What was the social effect of the exchange of economic products? 4. What influence had systematic labor on individual development? 5. Show how the discovery and use of a new food advances civilization. 6. Compare primitive man's food supply with that of a modern city dweller. 7. Trace a cup of coffee to its original source and show the different classes of people engaged in its production. [1] _Man and Culture_. [2] See Chapter III. {108} CHAPTER VI PRIMITIVE SOCIAL LIFE _The Character of Primitive Social Life_.--Judging from the cultures of prehistoric man in Europe and from analogies of living races that appear to have the same state of culture, strong inferences may be drawn as to the nature of the beginnings of human association. The hypothesis that man started as an individual and developed social life through mutual aid as he came in contact with his fellows does not cover the whole subject. It is not easy to conceive man in a state of isolation at any period of his life, but it appears true that his early associations were simple and limited to a few functions. The evidence of assemblage in caves, the kind of implements used, and the drawings on the walls of caves would appear to indicate that an early group life existed from the time of the first human cultures. The search for food caused men to locate at the same place. The number that could be supplied with food from natural subsistence in a given territory must have been small. Hence, it would appear that the early groups consisted of small bands. They moved on if the population encroached upon the food supply. Also, the blood-related individuals formed the nucleus of the group. The dependency of the child on the mother led to the first permanent location as the seat of the home and the foundation of the family. As the family continued to develop and became the most permanent of all social institutions, it is easy to believe as a necessity that it had a very early existence. It came out of savagery into barbarism and became one of the principal bulwarks of civilization. It may be accepted as a hypothesis that there was a time in the history of every branch of the human race when social order was indefinite and that out of this incoherence came by {109} degrees a complex organized society. It was in such a rude state that the relations of individuals to each other were not clearly defined by custom, but were temporary and incidental. Family ties were loose and irregular, custom had not become fixed, law was unheard of, government was unknown unless it was a case of temporary leadership, and unity of purpose and reciprocal social life were wanting. Indeed, it is a picture of a human horde but little above the animal herd in its nature and composition. Living tribes such as the Fuegians and Australians, and the extinct Tasmanians, represent very nearly the status of the horde--a sort of social protoplasm. They wander in groups, incidentally through the influence of temporary advantage or on account of a fitful social instinct. Co-operation, mutual aid, and reciprocal mental action were so faint that in many cases life was practically non-social. Nevertheless, even these groups had aggregated, communicated, and had language and other evidences of social heredity. _The Family Is the Most Persistent of Social Origins_.--The relation of parent and child was the most potent influence in establishing coherency of the group, and next to it, though of later development, was the relation of man and woman--that is, the sex relation. While the family is a universal social unit, it appears in many different forms in different tribes and, indeed, exhibits many changes in its development in the same tribe. There is no probability that mankind existed in a complete state of promiscuity in sex relations, yet these relations varied in different tribes. Mating was always a habit of the race and early became regulated by custom. The variety of forms of mating leads us to think the early sex life of man was not of a degraded nature. Granted that matrimony had not reached the high state of spiritual life contemplated in modern ideals, there are instances of monogamic marriage and pure, dignified rites in primitive peoples. Polygamy and polyandry were of later development. A study of family life within the historic period, especially of Greeks, Romans, and Teutons, and possibly the Hebrews, {110} compared with the family life of the Australian and some of the North American Indian tribes, reveals great contrasts in the prevailing customs of matrimony. All forms of marriage conceivable may be observed from rank animalism to high spiritual union; of numerous ideals, customs, and usages and ceremonies, as well as great confusion of purpose. It may be assumed, therefore, that there was a time in the history of every branch of the human race when family customs were indefinite and family coherence was lacking. Also that society was in a rude state in which the relations of individuals to each other and to the general social group were not clearly defined. There are found to-day among the lower races, in the Pacific islands, Africa, and South America, evidences of lack of cohesive life. They represent groups of people without permanent organization, held together by temporary advantage, with crude, purposeless customs, with the exercise of fitful social instinct. However, it is out of such conditions that the tribes, races, and nations of the early historic period have evolved into barbaric organization. Reasoning backward by the comparative method, one may trace the survivals of ancient customs. Following the social heredity of the oldest civilized tribes, such as the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, and Teutonic peoples, there is evidence of the rise from a rude state of savagery to a higher social life. Historical records indicate the passage from the middle state of barbarism to advanced civil life, even though the earlier phases of social life of primitive man remain obscure. The study of tradition and a comparison of customs and language of races yield a definite knowledge of the evolution of society. _Kinship Is a Strong Factor in Social Organization_.--Of all causes that held people in coherent union, perhaps kinship, natural and artificial, was the most potent. All of the direct and indirect offspring of a single pair settled in the same family group. This enlarged family took its place as the only organ of social order. Not only did all the relatives settle and {111} become members of one body, but also strangers who needed protection were admitted to the family by subscribing to their customs and religion. Thus the father of the family had a numerous following, composed of relatives by birth and by adoption. He was the ruler of this enlarged household, declaring the customs of his fathers, leading the armed men in war, directing the control of property, for he alone was the owner of all their possessions, acting as priest in the administration of religious ceremonies--a service performed only by him--and acting as judge in matters of dispute or discipline. Thus the family was a compact organization with a central authority, in which both chief and people were bound by custom. Individuals were born under status and must submit to whatever was customary in the rule of the family or tribe. There was no law other than custom to determine the relation of individuals to one another. Each must abide in the sphere of activity into which he was born. He could not rise above it, but must submit to the arbitrary rule of traditional usage. The only position an individual had was in the family, and he must observe what custom had taught. This made family life arbitrary and conventional. _The Earliest Form of Social Order_.--The family is sometimes called the unit of society. The best historical records of the family are found in the Aryan people, such as the Greeks, the Romans, and the Teutons. Outside of this there are many historical references to the Aryans in their primitive home in Asia, and the story of the Hebrew people, a branch of the Semitic race, shows many phases of tribal and family life. The ancient family differed from the modern in organization and composition. The first historical family was the patriarchal, by which we mean a family group in which descent was traced in the male line, and in which authority was vested in the eldest living male inhabitant. It is held by some that this is the original family type, and that the forms which we find among savage races are degenerate forms of the above. Some have {112} advocated that the patriarchal family was the developed form of the family, and only occurred after a long evolution through states of promiscuity, polygamy, and polyandry. There is much evidence that the latter assumption is true. But there is evidence that the patriarchal family was the first political unit of all the Aryan races, and also of the Semitic as well, and that monogamic marriage was developed in these ancient societies so far as historical evidence can determine. The ancient Aryans in their old home, those who came into India, Greece, Rome, and the northern countries of Europe, whether Celt or Teuton, all give evidence of the permanency of early family organization. _The Reign of Custom_.--For a long period custom reigned supreme, and arbitrary social life became conventionalized, and the change from precedent became more and more difficult. The family was despotic, exacting, unyielding in its nature, and individual activity was absorbed in it. So powerful was this early sway of customary law that many tribes never freed themselves from its bondage. Others by degrees slowly evolved from its crystallizing influences. Changes in custom came about largely through the migration of tribes, which brought new scenes and new conditions, the intercourse of one tribe with another in trade and war, and the gradual shifting of the internal life of the social unit. Those tribes that were isolated were left behind in the progress of the race, and to many of them still clung the customs practised thousands of years before. Those that went forward from this first status grew by practice rather than by change of ideals. It is the law of all progress that ideals are conservative, and that they can be broken away from only by the procedure of actual practice. Gradually the reign of customary law gave way to the laws framed by the people. The family government gave way to the political; the individual eventually became the political unit, and freedom of action prevailed in the entire social body. _The Greek and Roman Family Was Strongly Organized_.--In Greece and Rome the family enlarged and formed the gens, {113} the gentes united into a tribe, and the tribe passed into the nation. In all of this formulated government the individual was represented by his family and received no recognition except as a member of such. The tribal chief became the king, or, as he is sometimes called, the patriarchal president, because he presided over a band of equals in power, namely, the assembled elders of the tribe. The heads of noble families were called together to consider the affairs of government, and at a common meal the affairs of the nation were discussed over viands and wine. The king thus gathered the elders about him for the purpose of considering measures to be laid before the people. The popular assembly, composed of all the citizens, was called to sanction what the king and the elders had decreed. Slowly the binding forms of traditional usage were broken down, and the king and his people were permitted to enact those laws which best served the immediate ends of government. True, the old formal life of the family continued to exist. There were the gentes, tribes, and phratries, or brotherhoods, that still existed, and the individual entered the state in civil capacity through his family. But by degrees the old family régime gave way to the new political life, and sovereign power was vested in monarchy, democracy, or aristocracy, according to the nature of the sovereignty. The functions or activities and powers of governments, which were formerly vested in the patriarchal chief, or king, and later in king, people, and council, gradually became separated and were delegated to different authorities, though the sharp division of legislative, judicial, and executive functions which characterizes our modern governments did not exist. These forms of government were more or less blended, and it required centuries to distribute the various powers of government into special departments and develop modern forms. _In Primitive Society Religion Occupied a Prominent Place_.--While kinship was first in order in the foundation of units of social organization, religion was second to it in importance. {114} Indeed, it is considered by able writers as the foundation of the family and, as the ethnic state is but the expanded family, the vital power in the formation of the state. Among the Aryan tribes religion was a prominent feature of association. In the Greek household stood the family altar, resting upon the first soil in possession of the family. Only members of the household could worship at this shrine, and only the eldest male members of the family in good standing could conduct religious service. When the family grew into the gens it also had a separate altar and a separate worship. Likewise, the tribe had its own worship, and when the city was formed it had its own temple and a particular deity, whom the citizens worshipped. In the ancient family the worship of the house spirit or a deified ancestor was the common practice. This practice of the worship of departed heroes and ancestors, which prevailed in all of the various departments of old Greek society, tended to develop unity and purity of family and tribe. As family forms passed into political, the religion changed from a family to a national religion. Among the lower tribes the religious life is still most powerful in influencing their early life. Mr. Tylor, in his valuable work on _Primitive Culture_, has devoted a good part of two large volumes to the treatment of early religious belief. While recognizing that there is no complete definition of religion, he holds that "belief in spiritual beings" is a minimum definition which will apply to all religions, and, indeed, about the only one that will. The lower races each had simple notions of the spiritual world. They believed in a soul and its existence after death. Nearly all believed in both good and evil spirits, and in one or more greater gods or spirits who ruled and managed the universe. In this early stage of religious belief philosophy and religion were one. The belief in the after life of the spirit is evidenced by implements which were placed in the grave for the use of the departed, and by food which was placed at the grave for his subsistence on the journey. Indeed, some even set aside food at each meal for the departed; others, as {115} instanced by the Greeks, placed tables in the burying ground for the dead. Many views were entertained by the early people concerning the origin of the soul and its course after death. But in all of the rude conditions of life religion was indefinite and uncultured. From lower simple forms it arose to more complex systems and to higher generalizations. Religious influence on progress has been very great. There are those who have neglected the subject of religion in the discussion of the history of civilization. Other writers have considered it of little importance, and still others believe it to have been a positive hindrance to the development of the race. Religion, in general, as practised by savage and barbarous races, based, as it is largely, on superstition, must of a necessity be conservative and non-progressive. Yet the service which it performs in making the tribe or family cohesive and in giving an impetus to the development of the mind before the introduction of science and art as special studies is, indeed, great. The early forms of culture are found almost wholly in religious belief and practice. The religious ceremonies at the grave of a departed companion, around the family altar or in the congregation, whether in the temple or in the open air, tended to social cohesion and social activity. The exercise of religious belief in a superior being and a recognition of his authority, had a tendency to bring the actions of individuals into orderly arrangement and to develop unity of life. It also had a strong tendency to prepare the simple mind of the primitive man for later intellectual development. It gave the mind something to contemplate, something to reason about, before it reached a stage of scientific investigation. Its moral influence is unquestioned. While some of the early religions are barbarous in the extreme in their degenerate state, as a whole they teach man to consider himself and his fellows, and develop an ethical relationship. And while altruism as a great factor in religious and in social progress appeared at a comparatively recent period, it has been in existence from the earliest associations of men to {116} the present time, and usually makes its strongest appeal through religious belief. Religion thus becomes a great society-builder, as well as a means of individual culture. _Spirit Worship_.--The recognition of the continued journey of the spirit after death was in itself an altruistic practice. Much of the worship of the controlling spirit was conducted to secure especial favor to the departed soul. The burial service in early religious practice became a central idea in permanent religious rites. Perhaps the earliest phase of religious belief arises out of the idea that the spirit or soul of man has control over the body. It gives rise to the notion of spirit and the idea of continued existence. Considering the universe as material existence, according to primitive belief, it is the working of the superior spirit over the physical elements that gives rise to natural phenomena. One of the early stages of religious progress is to attempt to form a meeting-place with the spirit. This desire is seen in the lowest tribes and in the highest civilization of to-day. When Cabrillo came to the coast of southern California he found natives that had never before come in contact with civilized people. He describes a rude temple made by driving stakes in the ground in a circular form, and partitioning the enclosure by similar rows of stakes. At the centre was a rude platform, on which were placed the feathers of certain birds pleasing to the spirit. The natives came to this temple occasionally, and, circling around it, went through many antics of worship. This represents the primitive idea of location in worship. Not different in its fundamental conception from the rude altar of stones built by Abraham at Bethel, the Greek altar, or the mighty columns of St. Peter's, it was the simple meeting-place of man and the spirit. For all of these represent location in worship, and just as the modern worshipper enters the church or cathedral to meet God, so did the primitive savage fix locations for the meeting of the spirit. Man finally attempted to control the spirit for his own advantage. A rude form of religion was reached, found in {117} certain stages of the development of all religions, in which man sought to manipulate or exorcise the spirits who existed in the air or were located in trees, stones, and other material forms. Out of this came a genuine worship of the powerful, and supplication for help and support. Seeking aid and favor became the fundamental ideas in religious worship. Simple in the beginning, it sought to appease the wrath of the evil spirit and gain the favor of the good. But finally it sought to worship on account of the sublimity and power possessed by the object of worship. With the advancement of religious practice, religious beliefs and religious ceremonies became more complex. Great systems of mythology sprang up among nations about to enter the precincts of civilization, and polytheism predominated. Purely ethical religions were of a later development, for the notion of the will of the gods concerning the treatment of man by his fellows belongs to an advanced stage of religious belief. The ethical importance of religion reaches its culmination in the religion of Jesus Christ. _Moral Conditions_.--The slow development of altruistic notions presages a deficiency of moral action in the early stages of human progress. True it is that moral conditions seem never to be entirely wanting in this early period. There are many conflicting accounts of the moral practice of different savage and barbarous tribes when first discovered by civilized man. Tribes differ much in this respect, and travellers have seen them from different standpoints. Wherever a definite moral practice cannot be observed, it may be assumed that the standard is very low. Moral progress seems to consist in the constantly shifting standards of right and wrong, of justice and injustice. Perhaps the moral action of the savage should be viewed from two standpoints--namely, the position of the average savage of the tribe, and from the vantage of modern ethical standards. It is only by considering it from these two views that we have the true estimation of his moral status. There must be a difference between conventionality and morality, and many who have judged the moral status of {118} the savage have done so more from a conventional than from a moral standard. True that morality must be judged from the individual motive and from social effects of individual action. Hence it is that the observance of conventional rules must be a phase of morality; yet it is not all of morality. Where conventionality does not exist, the motive of action must be the true moral test. The actions of some savages and of barbarous people are revolting in the extreme, and so devoid of sympathy for the sufferings of their fellow-beings as to lead us to assume that they are entirely without moral sentiment. The repulsive spectacle of human sacrifice is frequently brought about by religious fervor, while the people have more or less altruistic practice in other ways. This practice was common to very many tribes, and indeed to some nations entering the pale of civilization. Cannibalism, revolting as it may seem, may be practised by a group of people which, in every other respect, shows moral qualities. It is composed of kind husbands, mothers, brothers, and sisters, who look after each other's welfare. The treatment of infants, not only by savage tribes but by the Greek and Roman nations after their entrance into civilized life, represents a low status of morality, for it was the common custom to expose infants, even in these proud nations. The degraded condition of woman, as slave and tool of man in the savage state, and indeed in the ancient civilization, does not speak well for the high standard of morality of the past. More than this, the disregard of the rights of property and person and the common practice of revolting brutality, are conclusive evidence of the low moral status of early mankind. Speaking of the Sioux Indians, a writer says: "They regard most of the vices as virtues. Theft, arson, rape, and murder are among them regarded with distinction, and the young Indian from childhood is taught to regard killing as the highest of virtues." And a writer who had spent many years among the natives of the Pacific coast said that "whatever is {119} falsehood in the European is truth in the Indian, and vice versa." Whether we consider the savages or barbarians of modern times, or the ancient nations that laid claim to civilization, we find a gradual evolution of the moral practice and a gradual change of the standard of right. This standard has constantly advanced until it rests to-day on the Golden Rule and other altruistic principles of Christian teaching. _Warfare and Social Progress_.--The constant warfare of savages and barbarians was not without its effects in developing the individual and social life. Cruel and objectionable as it is, the study and practice of war was an element of strength. It developed physical courage, and taught man to endure suffering and hardships. It developed intellectual power in the struggle to circumvent and overcome enemies. It led to the device and construction of arms, machines, engines, guns, and bridges, for facilitating the carrying on of successful warfare; all of this was instrumental in developing the inventive genius and engineering skill of man. In a political way warfare developed tribal or national unity, and bound more closely together the different groups in sympathy and common interest. It thus became useful in the preparation for successful civil government. It prepared some to rule and others to obey, and divided the governing from the governed, an essential characteristic of all forms of government. Military organization frequently accompanied or preceded the formation of the modern state. Sparta and Rome, and in more modern times Prussia, were built upon military foundations. The effect of war in depopulating countries has proved a detriment to civilization by disturbing economic and social development and by destroying thousands of lives. Looking back over the track which the human race has made in its persistent advance, it is easy to see that the ravages of war are terrible. While ethical considerations have entered into warfare and made its effects less terrible, it still is deplorable. It is not a necessity to modern civilization for the {120} development of intellectual or physical strength, nor for the development of either patriotism or courage. Modern warfare is a relic of barbarism, and the sooner we can avoid it the better. Social progress means the checking of war in every way and the development of the arts of peace. It is high time that the ethical process between nations should take the place of the art of war. _Mutual Aid Developed Slowly_.--Owing to ignorance and to the instinct for self-preservation, man starts on his journey toward progress on an individualistic and selfish basis. Gradually he learns to associate with his fellows on a co-operative basis. The elements which enter into this formal association are the exercise of a general blood relationship, religion, economic life, social and political organization. With the development of each of these, social order progresses. Yet, in the clashing interests of individuals and tribes, in the clumsy methods adopted in the mastery of nature, what a waste of human energy; what a loss of human life! How long it has taken mankind to associate on rational principles, to develop a pure home life, to bring about toleration in religion, to develop economic co-operation, to establish liberality in government, and to promote equality and justice! By the rude master, experience, has man been taught all this at an immense cost. Yet there was no other way possible. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. Study your community to determine that society is formed by the interactions of individuals. 2. Discuss the earliest forms of mutual aid. 3. Why is the family called the unit of social organization? 4. Why did religion occupy such an important place in primitive society? 5. To what extent and in what manner did the patriarchal family take the place of the state? 6. What is the relation of morals to religion? 7. What are the primary social groups? What the secondary? {121} CHAPTER VII LANGUAGE AND ART AS A MEANS OF CULTURE AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT _The Origin of Language Has Been a Subject of Controversy_.--Since man began to philosophize on the causes of things, tribes and races and, indeed, philosophers of all times have attempted to determine the origin of language and to define its nature. In early times language was a mystery, and for lack of better explanation it was frequently attributed to the direct gift of the Deity. The ancient Aryans deified language, and represented it by a goddess "which rushes onward like the wind, which bursts through heaven and earth, and, awe-inspiring to each one that it loves, makes him a Brahmin, a poet, and a sage." Men used language many centuries before they seriously began to inquire into its origin and structure. The ancient Hindu philosophers, the Greeks, and all early nations that had begun a speculative philosophy, wonderingly tried to ascertain whence language came. Modern philologists have carried their researches so far as to ascertain with tolerable accuracy the history and life of language and to determine with the help of other scientists the facts and phenomena of its origin. Language, in its broadest sense, includes any form of expression by which thoughts and feelings are communicated from one individual to another. Words may be spoken, gestures made, cries uttered, pictures or characters drawn, or letters made as means of expression. The deaf-mute converses with his fingers and his lips; the savage communicates by means of gesticulation. It is easy to conceive of a community in which all communication is carried on in sign language. It is said that the Grebos of Africa carry this mode of expression {122} to such an extent that the persons and tenses of the mood are indicated with the hands alone. It has been advocated by some that man first learned to talk by imitating the sounds of nature. It is sometimes called the "bow-wow" theory of the origin of language. Words are used to express the meaning of nature. Thus the purling of the brook, the lowing of the cow, the barking of the dog, the moaning of the wind, the rushing of water, the cry of animals, and other expressions of nature were imitated, and thus formed the root words of language. This theory was very commonly upheld by the philosophers of the eighteenth century, but is now regarded as an entirely inadequate explanation of the process of the development of language. It is true that every language has words formed by the imitation of sound, but these are comparatively few, and as languages are traced toward their origin, such words seem to have continually less importance. Nothing conclusive has been proved concerning the origin of any language by adopting this theory. Another theory is that the exclamations and interjections suddenly made have been the formation of root words, which in turn give rise to the complex forms of language. This can scarcely be considered of much force, for the difference between sudden explosive utterance and words expressing full ideas is so great as to be of little value in determining the real formation of language. These sudden interjections are more of the nature of gesture than of real speech. The theologians insisted for many years that language was a gift of God, but failed to show how man could learn the language after it was given him. They tried to show that man was created with his full powers of speech, thought, and action, and that a vocabulary was given him to use on the supposition that he would know how to use it. But, in fact, nothing yet has been proved concerning the first beginnings of language. There is no reason why man should be fully equipped in language any more than in intellect, moral quality, or economic condition, and it is shown conclusively that in all these {123} characteristics he has made a slow evolution. Likewise the further back towards its origin we trace any language or any group of languages the simpler we find it, coming nearer and yet nearer to the root speech. If we could have the whole record of man, back through that period into which historical records cannot go, and into which comparative philology throws but a few rays of light, doubtless we should find that at one time man used gesture, facial expression, and signs, interspersed with sounds at intervals, as his chief means of expression. Upon this foundation mankind has built the superstructure of language. Some philosophers hold that the first words used were names applied to familiar objects. Around these first names clustered ideas, and gradually new words appeared. With the names and gestures it was easy to convey thought. Others, refuting this idea, have held that the first words represented general notions and not names. From these general notions there were gradually instituted the specific words representing separate ideas. Others have held that language is a gift, and springs spontaneously in the nature of man, arising from his own inherent qualities. Possibly from different standpoints there is a grain of truth in each one of these theories, although all combined are insufficient to explain the whole truth. No theory yet devised answers all the questions concerning the origin of language. It may be truly asserted that language is an acquisition, starting with the original capacity for imperfect speech found in the physiological structure of man. This is accompanied by certain tendencies of thought and life which furnish the psychical notion of language-formation. These represent the foundations of language, and upon this, through action and experience, the superstructure of language has been built. There has been a continuous evolution from simple to complex forms. _Language Is an Important Social Function_.--Whatever conjectures may be made by philosophers or definite knowledge determined by philologists, it is certain that language has been {124} built up by human association. Granted that the physiological function of speech was a characteristic of the first beings to bear the human form, it is true that its development has come about by the mental interactions of individuals. No matter to what extent language was used by a given generation, it was handed on through social heredity to the next generation. Thus, language represents a continuous stream of word-bearing thought, moving from the beginning of human association to the present time. It is through it that we have a knowledge of the past and frame the thoughts of the present. While it is easy to concede that language was built up in the attempt of man to communicate his feelings, emotions, and thoughts to others, it in turn has been a powerful coercive influence and a direct social creation. Only those people who could understand one another could be brought into close relationships, and for this purpose some generally accepted system of communicating ideas became essential. Moreover, the tribes and assimilated nations found the force of common language in the coherency of group life. Thus it became a powerful instrument in developing tribal, racial, or national independence. If the primal force of early family or tribal organization was that of sex and blood relationship, language became a most powerful ally in forcing the group into formal social action, and in furnishing a means of defense against the social encroachments of other tribes and nations. It must be observed, however, that the social boundaries of races are not coincident with the divisions of language. In general the tendency is for a race to develop an independent language, for racial development was dependent upon isolation from other groups. But from the very earliest associations to the present time there has been a tendency for assimilation of groups even to the extent of direct amalgamation of those occupying contiguous territory, or through conquest. In the latter event, the conquered group usually took the language of the conquerors, although this has not always followed, as eventually the stronger language becomes the more important {125} through use. For instance, for a time after the Norman Conquest, Norman French became, in the centres of government and culture at least, the dominant language, but eventually was thrown aside by a more useful language as English institutions came to the front. As race and language may not represent identical groups, it is evident that a classification of language cannot be taken as conclusive evidence in the classification of races. However, in the main it is true. A classification of all of the languages of the Indians of North America would be a classification of all the tribes that have been differentiated in physical structure and other racial traits, as well as of habits and customs. Yet a tribe using a common language may be composed of a number of racial elements. When it comes to the modern state, language does not coincide with natural boundaries. Thus, in Switzerland German is spoken in the north and northeast, French in the southwest, and Italian in the southeast. However, in this case, German is the dominant language taught in schools and used largely in literature. Also, in Belgium, where one part of the people speak Flemish and the other French, they are living under the same national unity so far as government is concerned, although there have always remained distinctive racial types. In Mexico there are a number of tribes that, though using the dominant Spanish language, called Mexican, are in their closer associations speaking the primitive languages of their race or tribe which have come down to them through long ages of development. Sometimes, however, a tribe shows to be a mosaic of racial traits and languages, brought about by the complete amalgamation of tribes. A very good example of this complete amalgamation would be that of the Hopi Indians of New Mexico, where distinctive group words and racial traits may be traced to three different tribes. But to refer to a more complete civilization, where the Spanish language is spoken in Spain, we find the elements of Latin, Teutonic, Arabic, and Old Iberian speech, which are suggestive of different racial traits pointing to different racial origins. {126} Regardless of origin and tradition, language gradually conforms to the type of civilization in existence. A strong, vigorous industrial nation would through a period of years develop a tendency for a vigorous language which would express the spirit and life of the people, while a dreamy, conservative nation would find little change in the language. Likewise, periods of romance or of war have a tendency to make changes in the form of speech in conformity to ideals of life. On the other hand, social and intellectual progress is frequently dependent upon the character of the language used to the extent that it may be said that language is an indication of the progress of a people in the arts of civilized life. It is evident in comparing the Chinese language with the French, great contrasts are shown in the ease in which ideas are represented and the stream of thought borne on its way. The Chinese language is a clumsy machine as compared with the flexible and smooth-gliding French. It appears that if it were possible for the Chinese to change their language for a more flexible, smooth-running instrument, it would greatly facilitate their progress in art, science, and social life. _Written Language Followed Speech in Order of Development_.--Many centuries elapsed before any systematic writing or engraving recorded human events. The deeds of the past were handed on through tradition, in the cave, around the campfire, and in the primitive family. Stories of the past, being rehearsed over and over, became a permanent heritage, passing on from generation to generation. But this method of descent of knowledge was very indefinite, because story-tellers, influenced by their environment, continually built the present into the past, and so the truth was not clearly expressed. Slowly man began to make a permanent record of deeds and events, the first beginnings of which were very feeble, and were included in drawings on the walls of caves, inscriptions on bone, stone, and ivory, and symbols woven in garments. All represented the first beginnings of the representative art of language. {127} Gradually picture-writing became so systematized that an expression of continuous thought might be recorded and transferred from one to another through the observation of the symbols universally recognized. But these pictures on rocks and ivory, and later on tablets, have been preserved, and are expressive of the first steps of man in the art of written language. The picture-writing so common to savages and barbarians finally passes from a simple _rebus_ to a very complex written language, as in the case of the Egyptian or Mexican. The North American Indians used picture-writing in describing battles, or an expedition across a lake, or an army on a march, or a buffalo hunt. A simple picture shows that fifty-one warriors, led by a chief and his assistant, in five canoes, took three days to cross a lake and land their forces on the other side. The use of pictographs is the next step in the process of written language. It represents a generalized form of symbols which may be put together in such a way as to express complete thoughts. Originally they were merely symbols or signs of ideas, which by being slightly changed in form or position led to the expression of a complete thought. Following the pictograph is the ideograph, which is but one more step in the progress of systematic writing. Here the symbol has become so generalized that it has a significance quite independent of its origin. In other words, it becomes idealized and conventionalized, so that a specific symbol stood for a universal idea. It could be made specific by changing its form or position. All that was necessary now was to have a sufficient number of general symbols representing ideas, to build up a constructive language. The American Indian and the Chinese have apparently passed through all stages of the picture-writing, the use of the pictograph and of the ideograph. In fact, the Chinese language is but an extension of these three methods of expression. The objects were originally designated by a rude drawing, and then, to modify the meaning, different characters were attached to the picture. Thus a monosyllabic {128} language was built up, and the root word had many meanings by the modification of its form and sometimes by the change of its position. The hieroglyphic writings of the Egyptians, Moabites, Persians, and Assyrians went through these methods of language development, as their records show to this day. _Phonetic Writing Was a Step in Advance of the Ideograph_.--The difference between the phonetic writing and the picture-writing rests in the fact that the symbol representing the object is expressive of an idea or a complete thought, while in phonetic writing the symbol represents a sound which combined with other sounds expresses an idea called a word and complete thoughts through combination of words. The discovery and use of a phonetic alphabet represent the key to modern civilization. The invention of writing elevated man from a state of barbarism to a state of civilization. About the tenth century before Christ the Phoenicians, Hebrews, and other allied Semitic races began to use the alphabet. Each letter was named from a word beginning with it. The Greeks learned the alphabet from the Phoenicians, and the Greeks, in turn, passed it to the Romans. The alphabet continually changed from time to time. The old Phoenician was weak in vowel sounds, but the defect was remedied in the Greek and Roman alphabets and in the alphabets of the Teutonic nations. Fully equipped with written and spoken speech, the nations of the world were prepared for the interchange of thought and ideas and for the preservation of knowledge in an accurate manner. History could be recorded, laws written and preserved, and the beginnings of science elaborated. _The Use of Manuscripts and Books Made Permanent Records_.--At first all records were made by pen, pencil, or stylus, and manuscripts were represented on papyrus paper or parchment, and could only be duplicated by copying. In Alexandria before the Christian era one could buy a copy of the manuscript of a great author, but it was at a high price. It finally became customary for monks, in their secluded retreats, to spend a good part of their lives in copying and preserving {129} the manuscript writings of great authors. But it was not until printing was invented that the world of letters rapidly moved forward. Probably about the sixth century A.D. the Chinese began to print a group of characters from blocks, and by the tenth century they were engaged in keeping their records in this way. Gutenberg, Faust, and others improved upon the Chinese method by a system of movable type. But what a wonderful change since the fourteenth century printing! Now, with modern type-machines, fine grades of paper made by improved machinery, and the use of immense steam presses, the making of an ordinary book is very little trouble. Looking back over the course of events incident to the development of the modern complex and flexible language we observe, first, the rude picture scrawled on horn or rock. This was followed by the representation of the sound of the name of the picture, which passed into the mere sound sign. Finally, the relation between the figure and the sound becomes so arbitrary that the child learns the a, b, c as pure signs representing sounds which, in combination, make words which stand for ideas. _Language Is an Instrument of Culture_.--Culture areas always spread beyond the territory of language groups. Culture depends upon the discovery and utilization of the forces of nature through invention and adaptation. It may spread through imitation over very large human territory. Man has universal mental traits, with certain powers and capacities that are developed in a relative order and in a degree of efficiency; but there are many languages and many civilizations of high and low degree. Through human speech the life of the past may be handed on to others and the life of the present communicated to one another. The physiological power of speech which exists in all permits every human group to develop a language in accordance with its needs and as influenced by its environment. Thus language advanced very rapidly as an instrument of communication even at a very early period of cultural development. A recent study of the {130} languages of the American Indians has shown the high degree of the art of expression among people of the Neolithic culture. This would seem to indicate that primitive peoples are more definite in thought and more observant in the relation of cause and effect than is usually supposed. Thus, definite language permits more precise thought, and definite thought, in turn, insists on more exact expression in language. The two aid each other in development of cultural ideas, and invention and language move along together in the development of the human race. It becomes a great human invention, and as such it not only preserves the thoughts of the past but unlocks the knowledge of the present. Not only is language the means of communication, and the great racial as well as social bond of union, but it represents knowledge, culture, and refinement. The strength and beauty of genuine artistic expression have an elevating influence on human life and become a means of social progress. The drama and the choicest forms of prose and poetry in their literary aspects furnish means of presenting great thoughts and high ideals, and, thus combined with the beauty of expression, not only furnish the best evidence of moral and intellectual progress but make a perennial source of information in modern social life. Hence it is that language and culture in all of their forms go hand in hand so closely that a high degree of culture is not attained without a dignified and expressive language. _Art as a Language of Aesthetic Ideas_.--The development of aesthetic ideas and aesthetic representations has kept pace with progress in other phases of civilization. The notion of beauty as entertained by the savage is crude, and its representation is grotesque. Its first expression is observed in the adornment of the body, either by paint, tattooing, or by ornaments. The coarse, glaring colors placed upon the face or body, with no regard for the harmony of color, may attract attention, but has little expression of beauty from a modern standard. The first adornment in many savage tribes consisted in tattooing the body, an art which was finally rendered {131} useless after clothing was fully adopted, except as a totemic design representing the unity of the tribe. This custom was followed by the use of rude jewelry for arms, neck, ears, nose, or lips. Other objects of clothing and ornament were added from time to time, the bright colors nearly always prevailing. There must have been in all tribes a certain standard of artistic taste, yet so low in many instances as to suggest only the grotesque. The taste displayed in the costumes of savages within the range of our own observation is remarkable for its variety. It ranges all the way from a small piece of cloth to the elaborate robes made of highly colored cotton and woollen goods. The Celts were noted for their highly colored garments and the artistic arrangement of the same. The Greeks displayed a grace and simplicity in dress never yet surpassed by any other nation. Yet the dress of early Greeks, Romans, and Teutons was meagre in comparison with modern elaborate costumes. All of this is a method of expression of the emotions and ideas and, in one sense, is a language of the aesthetic. Representative art, even among primitive peoples, carries with it a distinctive language. It is a representation of ideas, as well as an attempt at beauty of expression. The figures on pottery and basketry frequently carry with them religious ideas for the expression and perpetuation of religious emotion and belief. Even rude drawings attempt to record the history of the deeds of the race. Progress is shown in better lines, in better form, and a more exquisite blending of colors. That many primitive people display a high degree of art and a low degree of general culture is one of the insoluble problems of the race. Perhaps it may be attributed primarily to the fact that all artistic expression originally sprang from the emotional side of life, and, in addition, may be in part attributed to the early training in the acute observation of the forms of nature by primitive people upon which depended their existence. _Music Is a Form of Language_.--Early poetry was a recital of deeds, and a monotonous chant, which finally became recorded as language developed. The sagas and the war songs {132} were the earliest expressions which later were combined with dramatic action. The poetry of primitive races has no distinguishing characteristics except metre or rhythm. It is usually an oft-recurring expression of the same idea. Yet there are many fragmentary examples of lyric poetry, though it is mostly egoistic, the individual reciting his deeds or his desires. From the natives of Greenland we have the following about the hovering of the clouds about the mountain: "The great Koonak mountain, over there-- I see it; The great Koonak mountain, over there-- I am looking at it; The bright shining in the South, over there-- I admire it; The other side of Koonak-- It stretches out-- That which Koonak-- Seaward encloses. See how they in the South Move and change-- See how in the South They beautify one another; While it toward the sea Is veiled--by changing clouds Veiled toward the sea Beautifying one another." The emotional nature of savages varies greatly in different tribes. The lives of some seem to be moved wholly through the emotions, while others are stolid or dull. The variations in musical ability and practice of savage and barbarous races are good evidence of this. Many of the tribes in Africa have their rude musical instruments, and chant their simple, monotonous music. The South Sea Islanders beat hollow logs with clubs, marking time and creating melody by these notes. The Dahomans use a reed fife, on which they play music of several notes. In all primitive music, time is the chief element, and this is not always kept with any degree of accuracy. The {133} chanting of war songs, the moaning of the funeral dirge, or the sprightly singing with the dance, shows the varied expression of the emotional nature. No better illustration of the arts of pleasure may be observed than the practices of the Zuñi Indians and other Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. The Zuñi melodies are sung on various festival occasions. Some are sacred melodies, used in worship; others are on the occasion of the celebration of the rabbit hunt, the rain dances, and the corn dances. Among the Pueblo Indians the cachina dance is for the purpose of invoking bountiful rains and good harvests. In all of their feasts, games, plays, and dances there are connected ceremonies of a religious nature. Religion occupies a very strong position in the minds of the people. Possessed of a superstitious nature, it was inevitable that all the arts of pleasure should partake somewhat of the religious ceremony. The song and the dance and the beating of the drums always accompanied every festival. _The Dance as a Means of Dramatic Expression_.--Among primitive peoples the dance, poetry, and music were generally introduced together, and were parts of one drama. As such it was a social institution, with the religious, war, or play element fully represented. Most primitive dances were conducted by men only. In the celebrated _Corroboree_ of the Australians, men danced and the women formed the orchestra.[1] This gymnastic dance was common to many tribes. The dances of the Moros and Igorrotes at the St. Louis Exposition partook, in a similar way, of the nature of the gymnastic dance. The war dances of the plains Indians of America are celebrated for their grotesqueness. The green-corn dance and the cachina of the Pueblos and the snake dance of the Moqui all have an economic foundation. In all, however, the play element in man and the desire for dramatic expression and the art of mimicry are evident. The chief feature of the dance of the primitive people is the regular time beat. This is more prominent than the grace of movement. Yet this agrees with {134} the nature of their music, for in this the time element is more prominent than the tune. Rhythm is the strong element in the primitive art of poetry, music, or the dance, but all have an immense socializing influence. The modern dance has added to rhythm the grace of expression and developed the social tendencies. In it love is a more prominent feature than war or religion. Catlin, in his _North American Indians_, describes the buffalo dance of the Mandan Indians, which appears to be more of a service toward an economic end than an art of pleasure. After an unsuccessful hunt the returned warriors bring out their buffalo masks, made of the head and horns and tail of the buffalo. These they don, and continue to dance until worn out. Ten or fifteen dancers form a ring and, accompanied by drumming, yelling, and rattling, dance until the first exhausted one goes through the pantomime of being shot with the bow and arrow, skinned, and cut up; but the dance does not lag, for another masked dancer takes the place of the fallen one. The dance continues day and night, without cessation, sometimes for two or three weeks, or until a herd of buffaloes appears in sight; then the warriors change the dance for the hunt. The dancing of people of lower culture was carried on in many instances to express feelings and wishes. Many of the dances of Egypt, Greece, and other early civilizations were of this nature. Sacred hymns to the gods were chanted in connection with the dancing; but the sacred dance has become obsolete, in Western civilization its place being taken by modern church music. _The Fine Arts Follow the Development of Language_.--While art varied in different tribes, we may assume in general that there was a continuity of culture development from the rude clay idol of primitive folk to the Venus de Milo or the Winged Victory; from the pictures on rocks and in caves to the Sistine Madonna; from the uncouth cooking bowl of clay to the highest form of earthenware vase; and from the monotonous {135} strain of African music to the lofty conception of Mozart. But this is a continuity of ideas covering the whole human race as a unit, rather than the progressive development of a single branch of the race. Consider for a moment the mental and physical environment of the ancient cave or forest dweller. The skies to him were marked only as they affected his bodily comfort in sunshine or storm; the trees invited his attention as they furnished him food or shelter; the roaring torrent was nothing to him except as it obstructed his journey; the sun and the moon and the stars in the heavens filled him with portentous awe, and the spirits in the invisible world worked for his good or for his evil. Beyond his utilitarian senses no art emotion stirred in these signs of creation. Perhaps the first art emotion was aroused in contemplation of the human body. Through vanity, fear, or love he began to decorate it. He scarifies or tattoos his naked body with figures upon his back, arms, legs, and face to represent an idea of beauty. While the tribal or totemic design may have originated the custom, he wishes to be attractive to others, and his first emotions of beauty are thus expressed. The second step is to paint his face and body to express love, fear, hate, war, or religious emotions. This leads on to the art of decorating the body with ornaments, and subsequently to the ornamentation of clothing. The art of representation at first possessed little artistic beauty, though the decorations on walls of caves show skill in lines and color. The first representations sought only intelligence in communicating thought. The bas-reliefs of the ancients showed skill in representation. The ideal was finally developed until the aesthetic taste was improved, and the Greek sculpture shows a high development of artistic taste. In it beauty and truth were harmoniously combined. The arts of sculpture and painting are based upon the imagination. Through its perfect development, and the improvement in the art of execution, have been secured the aesthetic products of man. Yet there is always a mingling of the emotional nature {136} in the development of fine arts. The growth of the fine arts consists in intensifying the pleasurable sensations of eye and ear. This is done by enlarging the capacity for pleasure and increasing the opportunity for its satisfaction. The beginnings of the fine arts were small, and the capacity to enjoy must have been slowly developed. Of the arts that appeal to the eye there may be enumerated sculpture, painting, drawing, landscape-gardening, and architecture. The pleasure from all except the last comes from an attempt to represent nature. Architecture is founded upon the useful, and combines the industrial and the fine arts in one. The attempt to imitate nature is to satisfy the emotions aroused in its contemplation. _The Love of the Beautiful Slowly Develops_.--There must have developed in man the desire to make a more perfect arrow-head, axe, or celt for the efficiency of service, and later for beauty of expression. There must early have developed an idea of good form and bright colors in clothing. So, too, in the mixing of colors for the purpose of expressing the emotions there gradually came about a refinement in blending. Nor could man's attention be called constantly to the beautiful plants and flowers, to the bright-colored stones, metals, and gems found in the earth without developing something more than mere curiosity concerning them. He must early have discovered the difference between objects which aroused desire for possession and those that did not. Ultimately he preferred a more beautifully finished stone implement than one crudely constructed--a more beautiful and showy flower than one that was imperfect, and likewise more beautiful human beings than those that were crude and ugly. The pleasure of sound manifested itself at an earlier stage than the pleasure of form, although the degree of advancement in music varies in different tribes. Thus the inhabitants of Africa have a much larger capacity for recognizing and enjoying the effect of harmonious sounds than the aborigines of America. While all nations have the faculty of obtaining pleasure from harmonious sounds, it varies greatly, yet not more {137} widely than between separate individuals. It may be considered quite a universal faculty. The love of the beautiful in form, color, and in harmonious sound, is a permanent social force, and has much to do in the progress of civilization. Yet it is not an essential force, for the beginnings of civilization could have been made without it. However, it gives relief to the cold business world; the formal association of men is softened and embellished by painting, poetry, and music. Thus considered, it represents an important part of the modern social development. Art culture, which represents the highest expression of our civilization, has its softening influences on human life. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. The importance of language in the development of culture. 2. Does language always originate the same way in different localities? 3. Does language develop from a common centre or from many centres? 4. What bearing has the development of language upon the culture of religion, music, poetry, and art? 5. Which were the more important impulses, clothing for protection or for adornment? 6. Show that play is an important factor in society-building. 7. Compare pictograph, ideograph, and phonetic writing. [1] Keane, _The World's Peoples_, p. 49. {141} _PART III_ THE SEATS OF EARLY CIVILIZATIONS CHAPTER VIII THE INFLUENCE OF PHYSICAL NATURE ON HUMAN PROGRESS _Man Is a Part of Universal Nature_.--He is an integral part of the universe, and as such he must ever be subject to the physical laws which control it. Yet, as an active, thinking being, conscious of his existence, it is necessary to consider him in regard to the relations which he sustains to the laws and forces of physical nature external to himself. He is but a particle when compared to a planet or a sun, but he is greater than a planet because he is conscious of his own existence, and the planet is not. Yet his whole life and being, so far as it can be reasoned about, is dependent upon his contact with external nature. By adaptation to physical environment he may live; without adaptation he cannot live. As a part of evolved nature, man comes into the world ignorant of his surroundings. He is ever subject to laws which tend to sweep him onward with the remaining portions of the system of which he is a part, but his slowly awakening senses cause him to examine his surroundings. First, he has a curiosity to know what the world about him is like, and he begins a simple inquiry which leads to investigation. The knowledge he acquires is adapted to his use day by day as his vision extends. Through these two processes he harmonizes his life with the world about him. By degrees he endeavors to bring the materials and the forces of nature into subjection to his will. Thus he progresses from the student to the master. External nature is unconscious, submitting passively to the laws that control it, but man, ever conscious of himself and his effort, attempts to dominate the forces surrounding him and this struggle to overcome environment has characterized his {142} progress. But in this struggle, nature has reciprocated its influence on man in modifying his development and leaving her impress on him. Limited he has ever been and ever will be by his environment. Yet within the limits set by nature he is master of his own destiny and develops by his own persistent endeavor. Indeed, the epitome of civilization is a struggle of nature and thought, the triumph of the psychical over the physical; and while he slowly but surely overcomes the external physical forces and makes them subordinate to his own will and genius, civilization must run along natural courses even though its products are artificial. In many instances nature appears bountiful and kind to man, but again she appears mean and niggardly. It is man's province to take advantage of her bounty and by toil and invention force her to yield her coveted treasures. Yet the final outcome of it all is determined by the extent to which man masters himself. _Favorable Location Is Necessary for Permanent Civilization_.--In the beginning only those races have made progress that have sought and obtained favorable location. Reflect upon the early civilizations of the world and notice that every one was begun in a favorable location. Observe the geographical position of Egypt, in a narrow, fertile valley bounded by the desert and the sea, cut off from contact with other races. There was an opportunity for the Egyptians to develop continuity of life sufficient to permit the beginnings of civilization. Later, when wealth and art had developed, Egypt became the prey of covetous invading nations. So ancient Chaldea, for a time far removed from contact with other tribes, and protected by desert, mountain, and sea, was able to begin a civilization. But far more favorable, not only for a beginning of civilization but for a high state of development, was the territory occupied by the Grecian tribes. Shut in from the north by a mountain range, surrounded on every other side by the sea, a fertile and well-watered land, of mild climate, it was protected {143} from the encroachments of "barbarians." The influence of geographical contour is strongly marked in the development of the separate states of Greece. The small groups that settled down on a family basis were separated from each other by ranges of hills, causing each community to develop its own characteristic life. These communities had a common language, differing somewhat in dialect, and the foundation of a common religion, but there never could exist sufficient similarity of character or unity of sentiment to permit them to unite into a strong central nation. A variety of life is evinced everywhere. Those who came in contact with the ocean differed from those who dwelt in the interior, shut in by the mountains. The contact with the sea gives breadth of thought, largeness of life, while those who are enclosed by mountains lead a narrow life, intense in thought and feeling. Without the protection of nature, the Grecian states probably would never have developed the high state of civilization which they reached. Rome presents a similar example. It is true that the Italian tribes that entered the peninsula had considerable force of character and thorough development as they were about to enter upon a period of civilization. Like the Greeks, the discipline of their early Aryan ancestors had given them much of strength and character. Yet the favorable location of Italy, bounded on the north by a high mountain range and enclosed by the sea, gave abundant opportunity for the national germs to thrive and grow. Left thus to themselves, dwelling under the protection of the snow-capped Alps, and surrounded by the beneficent sea, national life expanded, government and law developed and thrived, and the arts of civilized life were practised. The national greatness of the Romans may in part be attributed to the period of repose in which they pursued unmolested the arts of peace before their era of conquest began. Among the mountains of Switzerland are people who claim never to have been conquered. In the wild rush of the {144} barbarian hordes into the Roman Empire they were not overrun. They retain to this day their early sentiments of liberty; their greatness is in freedom and equality. The mountains alone protected them from the assaults of the enemy and the crush of moving tribes. Other nations might be mentioned that owe much to geographical position. More than once in the early part of her history it protected Spain from destruction. The United States, in a large measure, owes her independent existence to the fact that the ocean rolls between her and the mother country. On the other hand, Ireland has been hampered in her struggle for independent government on account of her proximity to England. The natural defense against enemies, the protection of mountains and forests, the proximity to the ocean, all have had their influence in the origin and development of nations. Yet races, tribes, and nations, once having opportunity to develop and become strong, may flourish without the protecting conditions of nature. They may defy the mountains, seas, and the streams, and the onslaughts of the wild tribes. _The Nature of the Soil an Essential Condition of Progress_.--But geography alone, although a great factor in progress, is powerless without a fertile soil to yield a food supply for a large population. The first great impetus of all early civilizations occurred through agriculture. Not until this had developed so as to give a steady food supply were people able to have sufficient leisure to develop the other arts of life. The abundant food supply furnished by the fertility of the Nile valley was the key to the Egyptian civilization. The valley was overflowed annually by the river, which left a fertilizing sediment upon the land already prepared for cultivation. Thus annually without excessive labor the soil was watered, fertilized, and prepared for the seed. Even when irrigation was introduced, in order to obtain a larger supply of food, the cultivation of the soil was a very easy matter. Agriculture consisted primarily in sowing seed on ready prepared ground and {145} reaping the harvest. The certainty of the crop assured a living. The result of cheap food was to rapidly multiply the race, which existed on a low plane. It created a mass of inferior people ruled by a few despots. What is true of Egypt is true of all of the early civilizations, as they each started where a fertile soil could easily be tilled. The inhabitants of ancient Chaldea developed their civilization on a fertile soil. The great cities of Nineveh and Babylon were surrounded by rich valleys, and the yield of agricultural products made civilization possible. The earliest signs of progress in India were along the valleys of the Ganges and the Indus. Likewise, in the New World, the tribes that approached the nearest to civilization were situated in fertile districts in Peru, Central America, Mexico, and New Mexico. _The Use of Land the Foundation of Social Order_.--The manner in which tribes and nations have attached themselves to the soil has determined the type of social organization. Before the land was treated as property of individuals or regarded as a permanent possession by tribes, the method in which the land was held and its use determined the quality of civilization, and the land factor became more important as a determiner of social order as civilization progressed. It was exceedingly important in determining the quality of the Greek life, and the entire structure of Roman civilization was based on the land question. Master the land tenure of Rome and you have laid the foundation of Roman history. The desire for more land and for more room was the chief cause of the barbarian invasion of the empire. All feudal society, including lords and vassals, government and courts, was based upon the plan of feudal land-holding. In modern times in England the land question has been at times the burning political and economic question of the nation, and is a disturbing factor in recent times. In the United States, rapid progress is due more to the bounteous supply of free, fertile lands than to any other single cause. Broad, fertile valleys are more pertinent as the foundation {146} of nation-building than men are accustomed to believe; and now that nearly all the public domain has been apportioned among the citizens, intense desire for land remains unabated, and its method of treatment through landlord and tenant is rapidly becoming a troublesome question. The relation of the soil to the population presents new problems, and the easy-going civilization will be put to a new test. _Climate Has Much to Do with the Possibilities of Progress_.--The early seats of civilization mentioned above were all located in warm climates. Leisure is essential to all progress. Where it takes man all of his time to earn a bare subsistence there is not much room for improvement. A warm climate is conducive to leisure, because its requirements of food and clothing are less imperative than in cold countries. The same quantity of food will support more people in warm than in cold climates. This, coupled with the fact that nature is more spontaneous in furnishing a bountiful supply in warm climates than in cold, renders the first steps in progress much more possible. The food in warm climates is of a light vegetable character, which is easily prepared for use; indeed, in many instances it is already prepared. In cold countries, where it is necessary to consume large amounts of fatty food to sustain life, the food supply is meagre, because this can only be obtained from wild animals. In this region it costs immense labor to obtain sufficient food for the support of life; likewise, in a cold climate it takes much time to tame animals for use and to build huts to protect from the storm and the cold. The result is that the propagation of the race is slow, and progress in social and individual life is retarded. We should expect, therefore, all of the earliest civilization to be in warm regions. In this we are not disappointed, in noting Egypt, Babylon, Mexico, and Peru. Soil and climate co-operate in furnishing man a suitable place for his first permanent development. There is, however, in this connection, one danger to be pointed out, arising from the conditions of cheap food--namely, a rapid propagation of the race, which {147} entails misery through generations. In these early populous nations, great want and misery frequently prevailed among the masses of the people. Thousands of laborers, competing for sustenance, reduce the earning capacity to a very small amount, and this reduces the standard of life. Yet because food and shelter cost little, they are able to live at a low standard and to multiply rapidly. Human life becomes cheap, is valued little by despotic rulers, who enslave their fellows. Another danger in warm climates which counteracts the tendency of nations to progress, is the fact that warm climates enervate man and make him less active; hence it occurs that in colder climates with unfavorable surroundings great progress is made on account of the excessive energy and strong will-force of the inhabitants. In temperate climates man has reached the highest state of progress. In this zone the combination of a moderately cheap food supply and the necessity of excessive energy to supply food, clothing, and protection has been most conducive to the highest forms of progress. While, therefore, the civilization of warm climates has led to despotism, inertia, and the degradation of the masses, the civilization of temperate climates has led to freedom, elevation of humanity, and progress in the arts. This illustrates how essential is individual energy in taking advantage of what nature has provided. _The General Aspects of Nature Determine the Type of Civilization_.--While the general characteristics of nature have much to do with the development of the races of the earth, it is only a single factor in the great complex of influences. People living in the mountain fastnesses, those living at the ocean side, and those living on great interior plains vary considerably as to mental characteristics and views of life in general. Buckle has expanded this idea at some length in his comparison of India and Greece. He has endeavored to show that "the history of the human mind can only be understood by connecting with it the history and aspects of the material universe." He holds that everything in India tended to depress the {148} dignity of man, while everything in Greece tended to exalt it. After comparing these two countries of ancient civilization in respect to the development of the imagination, he says: "To sum up the whole, it may be said that the Greeks had more respect for human powers; the Hindus for superhuman. The first dealt with the known and available, the second with the unknown and mysterious." He attributes this difference largely to the fact that the imagination was excessively developed in India, while the reason predominated in Greece. The cause attributed to the development of the imagination in India is the aspect of nature. Everything in India is overshadowed with the immensity of nature. Vast plains, lofty mountains, mighty, turbulent rivers, terrible storms, and demonstrations of natural forces abound to awe and terrify. The causes of all are so far beyond the conception of man that his imagination is brought into play to furnish images for his excited and terrified mind. Hence religion is extravagant, abstract, terrible. Literature is full of extravagant poetic images. The individual is lost in the system of religion, figures but little in literature, and is swallowed up in the immensity of the universe. While, on the other hand, the fact that Greece had no lofty mountains, no great plains; had small rivulets in the place of rivers, and few destructive storms, was conducive to the development of calm reflection and reason. Hence, in Greece man predominated over nature; in India, nature overpowered man.[1] There is much of truth in this line of argument, but it must not be carried too far. For individual and racial characteristics have much to do with the development of imagination, reason, and religion. The difference, too, in the time of development, must also be considered, for Greece was a later product, and had the advantage of much that had preceded in human progress. And so far as can be determined, the characteristics of the Greek colonists were quite well established {149} before they left Asia. The supposition, also, that man is subject entirely to the influence of physical nature for his entire progress, must be taken with modification. His mind-force, his individual will-force, must be accounted for, and these occupy a large place in the history of his progress. No doubt the thunders of Niagara and the spectacle of the volume of water inspire poetic admiration in the minds of the thousands who have gazed on this striking physical phenomenon of nature. It is awe-inspiring; it arouses the emotions; it creates poetic imagination. But the final result of contact with the will of man is to turn part of that force from its channels, to move the bright machinery engaged in creating things useful and beautiful which contribute to the larger well-being of man. Granting that climate, soil, geographical position, and the aspects of nature have a vast influence in limiting the possibilities of man's progress, and in directing his mental as well as physical characteristics, it must not be forgotten that in the contact with these it is his mastery over them which constitutes progress, and this involves the activity of his will-power. Man is not a slave to his environment. He is not a passive creature acted upon by sun and storm and subjected to the powers of the elements. True, that there are set about him limitations within which he must ever act. Yet from generation to generation he forces back these limits, enlarges the boundary of his activities, increases the scope of his knowledge, and brings a larger number of the forces of nature in subjection to his will. _Physical Nature Influences Social Order_.--Not only is civilization primarily based upon the physical powers and resources of nature, but the quality of social order is determined thereby. Thus, people following the streams, plains, and forests would develop a different type of social order from those who would settle down to permanent seats of agriculture. The Bedouin Arabs of the desert, although among the oldest of organized groups, have changed very little through the passing centuries, because their mode of life permits only a {150} simple organization. Likewise, it is greatly in contrast with the modern nations, built upon industrial and commercial life, with all of the machinery run by the powers of nature. When Rome developed her aristocratic proprietors to whom the land was apportioned in great estates, the old free farming population disappeared and slavery became a useful adjunct in the methods adopted for cultivating the soil. On the other hand, the old village community where land was held in common developed a small co-operative group closely united on the basis of mutual aid. The great landed estates of England and Germany must, so long as they continue, influence the type of social order and of government that will exist in those countries. As the individual is in a measure subservient to the external laws about him, so must the social group of which he forms a part be so controlled. The flexibility and variability of human nature, with its power of adaptation, make it possible to develop different forms of social order. The subjective side of social development, wherein the individual seeks to supply his own wants and follow the directions of his own will, must ever be a modifying power acting upon the social organization. Thus society becomes a great complex of variabilities which cannot be reduced to exact laws similar to those found in physical nature. Nevertheless, if society in its development is not dependent upon immutable laws similar to those discovered in the forces of nature, yet as part of the great scheme of nature it is directly dependent upon the physical forces that permit it to exist the same as the individual. This would give rise to laws of human association which are modified by the laws of external nature. Thus, while society is psychical in its nature, it is ever dependent upon the material and the physical for its existence. However, through co-operation, man is able to more completely master his environment than by working individually. It is only by mutual aid and social organization that he is able to survive and conquer. {151} SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. Give examples coming within your own observation of the influence of soil and climate on the character of society. 2. Does the character of the people in Central America depend more on climate than on race? 3. In what ways does the use of land determine the character of social order? 4. Are the ideals and habits of thought of the people living along the Atlantic Coast different from those of the Middle West? If so, in what respect? 5. Is the attitude toward life of the people of the Dakota wheat belt different from those of New York City? 6. Compare a mining community with an agricultural community and record the differences in social order and attitude toward life. [1] Henry Thomas Buckle, _History of Civilization in England_. General Introduction. {152} CHAPTER IX CIVILIZATION OF THE ORIENT _The First Nations with Historical Records in Asia and Africa_.--The seats of the most ancient civilizations are found in the fertile valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile. These centres of civilization were founded on the fertility of the river valleys and the fact of their easy cultivation. Just when the people began to develop these civilizations and whence they came are not determined. It is out of the kaleidoscopic picture of wandering humanity seeking food and shelter, the stronger tribes pushing and crowding the weaker, that these permanent seats of culture became established. Ceasing to wander after food, they settled down to make the soil yield its products for the sustenance of life. Doubtless they found other tribes and races had been there before them, though not for permanent habitation. But the culture of any one group of people fades away toward its origins, mingling its customs and life with those who preceded them. Sometimes, indeed, when a tribe settled down to permanent achievement, its whole civilization is swept away by more savage conquerors. Sometimes, however, the blood of the invaders mingled with the conquered, and the elements of art, religion, and language of both groups have built up a new type of civilization. The geography of the section comprising the nations where the earliest achievements have left permanent records, indicates a land extending from a territory east of the Tigris and Euphrates westward to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and southward into Egypt. Doubtless, this region was one much traversed by tribes of various languages and cultures. Emerging from the Stone Age, we find the civilization ranging from northern Africa and skirting Arabia through Palestine {153} and Assyria down into the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Doubtless, the civilization that existed in this region was more or less closely related in general type, but had derived its character from many primitive sources. As history dawns on the achievements of these early nations, it is interesting to note that there was a varied rainfall within this territory. Some parts were well watered, others having long seasonal periods of drought followed by periodical rains. It would appear, too, the uncertainty of rainfall seemed to increase rather than diminish, for in the valley of the Euphrates, as well as in the valley of the Nile, the inhabitants were forced to resort to artificial irrigation for the cultivation of their crops. It is not known at what time the Chaldeans began to build their artificial systems of irrigation, but it must have been brought about by the gain of the population on the food supply, or perhaps an increased uncertainty of rainfall. At any rate, the irrigation works became a systematic part of their industry, and were of great size and variety. It took a great deal of engineering skill to construct immense ditches necessary to control the violent floods of the Euphrates and the Tigris. So far as evidence goes, the irrigation was carried on by the gravity system, by which canals were built from intakes from the river and extended throughout the cultivated district. In Egypt for a long time the periodical overflow of the Nile brought in the silt for fertilizer and water for moisture. When the flood subsided, seed was planted and the crop raised and harvested. As the population spread, the use of water for irrigation became more general, and attempts were made to distribute its use not only over a wider range of territory but more regularly throughout the seasons, thus making it possible to harvest more than one crop a year, or to develop diversified agriculture. The Egyptians used nearly all the modern methods of procuring, storing, and distributing water. Hence, in these centres of warm climate, fertile land, and plenty of moisture, the earth was made to yield an immense harvest, which made it possible to support a large population. {154} The food supply having been established, the inhabitants could devote themselves to other things, and slowly developed the arts and industries. _Civilization in Mesopotamia_.--The Tigris and Euphrates, two great rivers having their sources in mountain regions, pouring their floods for centuries into the Persian Gulf, made a broad, fertile valley along their lower courses. The soil was of inexhaustible fertility and easy of cultivation. The climate was almost rainless, and agriculture was dependent upon artificial irrigation. The upper portion of this great river valley was formed of undulating plains stretching away to the north, where, almost treeless, they furnished great pasture ranges for flocks and herds, which also added to the permanency of the food supply and helped to develop the wealth and prosperity of the country. It was in this climate, so favorable for the development of early man, and with this fertile soil yielding such bountiful productions, that the ancient Chaldean civilization started, which was followed by the Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations, each of which developed a great empire. These empires, ruling in turn, not only represented centres of civilization and wealth, but they acquired the overlordship of territories far and wide, their monarchs ruling eastward toward India and westward toward Phoenicia. In early times ancient Chaldea, located on the lower Euphrates, was divided into two parts, the lower portion known as Sumer, and the other, the upper, known as Akkad. While in the full development of these civilizations the Semitic race was dominant, there is every appearance that much of the culture of these primitive peoples came from farther east. _Influences Coming from the Far East_.--The early inhabitants of this country have sometimes been called Turanian to distinguish them from Aryans, Semites, and other races sometimes called Hamitic. They seem to have been closely allied to the Mongolian type of people who developed centres of culture in the Far East and early learned the use of metals and developed a high degree of skill in handicraft. The Akkadians, {155} or Sumer-Akkadians, appear to have come from the mountain districts north and east, and entered this fertile valley to begin the work of civilization at a very early period. Their rude villages and primitive systems of life were to be superseded by civilizations of other races that, utilizing the arts and industries of the Akkadians, carried their culture to a much higher standard. The Akkadians are credited with bringing into this country the methods of making various articles from gold and iron which have been found in their oldest tombs. They are credited with having laid the foundation of the industrial arts which were manifested at an early time in ancient Chaldea, Egypt, and later in Babylonia and Phoenicia. Whatever foundation there may be for this theory, the subsequent history of the civilizations which have developed from Thibet as a centre would seem to attribute the early skill in handiwork in the metals and in porcelain and glass to these people. They also early learned to make inscriptions for permanent record in a crude way and to construct buildings made of brick. The Akkadians brought with them a religious system which is shown in a collection of prayers and sacred texts found recorded in the ruins at the great library at Nineveh. Their religion seemed to be a complex of animism and nature-worship. To them the universe was peopled with spirits who occupied different spheres and performed different services. Scores of evil spirits working in groups of seven controlled the earth and man. Besides these there were numberless demons which assailed man in countless forms, which worked daily and hourly to do him harm, to control his spirit, to bring confusion to his work, to steal the child from the father's knee, to drive the son from the father's house, or to withhold from the wife the blessings of children. They brought evil days. They brought ill-luck and misfortune. Nothing could prevent their destructiveness. These spirits, falling like rain from the skies to the earth, could leap from house to house, penetrating the doors like serpents. Their dwelling-places were scattered in {156} the marshes by the sea, where sickly pestilence arose, and in the deserts, where the hot winds drifted the sands. Sickness and disease were represented by the demons of pestilence and of fever, which bring destruction upon man. It was a religion of fatalism, which held that man was ever attacked by unseen enemies against whom there was no means of defense. There was little hope in life and none after death. There was no immortality and no eternal life. These spirits were supposed to be under the control of sorcerers and magicians or priests, resembling somewhat the medicine men of the wild tribes of North America, who had power to compel them, and to inflict death or disaster upon the objects of their censure and wrath. Thus, these primitive peoples of early Chaldea were terrorized by the spirits of the earth and by the wickedness of those who manipulated the spirits. The only bright side of this picture was the creation of other spirits conceived to be essentially good and beneficial, and to whom prayers were directed for protection and help. Such beings were superior to all evil spirits, provided their support could be invoked. So the spirit of heaven and the spirit of earth both appealed to the imagination of these primitive people, who thought that these unseen creatures called gods possessed all knowledge and wisdom, which was used to befriend and protect. Especially would they look to the spirit of earth as their particular protector, who had power to break the spell of the spirits, compel obedience, and bring terror into the hearts of the wicked ones. Such, in brief, was the religious system which these people created for themselves. Later, after the Semitic invasion, a system of religion developed more colossal in its imagination and yet not less cruel in its final decrees regarding human life and destiny. It passed into the purely imaginative religion, and the worship of the sun and moon and the stars gave man's imagination a broader vision, even if it did not lift him to a higher standard of moral conduct. It is not known at what date these early civilizations began, {157} but there is some evidence that the Akkadians appeared in the valley not less than four thousand years before Christ, and that subsequently they were conquered by the Elamites in the east, who obtained the supremacy for a season, and then were reinforced by the Semitic peoples, who ranged northeast, and, from northern Africa through Arabia, eastward to the Euphrates.[1] _Egypt Becomes a Centre of Civilization_.--The men of Egypt are supposed to be related racially to the Caucasian people who dwelt in the northern part of Africa, from whom they separated at a very early period, and went into the Nile valley to settle. Their present racial connection makes them related to the well-known Berber type, which has a wide range in northern Africa. Some time after the departure of the Hamitic branch of the Caucasian race into Egypt, it is supposed that another people passed on beyond, entering Arabia, later spreading over Assyria, Babylon, Palestine, and Phoenicia. These were called the Semites. Doubtless, this passage was long continued and irregular, and there are many intermixtures of the races now distinctly Berber and Arabic, so that in some parts of Egypt, and north of Egypt, we find an Arab-Berber mongrel type. Doubtless, when the Egyptian stock of the Berber type came into Egypt they found other races whose life dates back to the early Paleolithic, as the stone implements found in the hills and caves and graves showed not only Neolithic but Paleolithic culture. Also, the wavering line of Sudan negro types extended across Africa from east to west and came in contact with the Caucasian stock of northern Africa, and we find many negroid intermixtures. The Egyptians, however, left to themselves for a number of centuries, began rapid ascendency. First, as before stated, their food supply was permanent and abundant. Second, there were inducements also for the development of the art of measurement of land which later led to the development of general principles of measurement. There was observation of {158} the sun and moon and the stars, and a development of the art of building of stone and brick, out of which the vast pyramid tombs of kings were built. The artificers, too, had learned to work in precious stones and metals and weave garments, also to write inscriptions on tombs and also on the papyrus. It would seem as if the civilization once started through so many centuries had become sufficiently substantial to remain permanent or to become progressive, but Egypt was subject to a great many drawbacks. The nation that has the food supply of the world is sooner or later bound to come into trouble. So it appears in the case of Egypt, with her vast food resources and accumulation of wealth; she was eventually doomed to the attacks of jealous and envious nations. The history of Egypt is represented by dynasties of kings and changes of government through a long period interrupted by the invasion of tribes from the west and the north, which interfered with the uniformity of development. It is divided into two great centres of development, Lower Egypt, or the Delta, and Upper Egypt, frequently differing widely in the character of civilization. Yet, in the latter part of her supremacy Egypt went to war with the Semitic peoples of Babylon and Assyria for a thousand years. It was the great granary of the world and a centre of wealth and culture. The kings of Egypt were despots who were regarded by the people as gods. They were the head not only of the state but of the religious system, and consequently through this double headship were enabled to rule with absolute sway. The priesthood, together with a few nobles, represented the intellectual and social aristocracy of the country. Next to them were the warriors, who were an exclusive class. Below these came the shepherds and farmers, and finally the slaves. While the caste system did not prevail with as much rigidity here as in India, all groups of people were bound by the influence of class environment, from which they were unable to extricate themselves. Poorer classes became so degraded that in times of famine they were obliged to sell their liberty, their lives, or {159} their labor to kings for food. They became merely toiling animals, forced for the want of bread to build the monuments of kings. The records of Egyptian civilization through art, writing, painting, sculpture, architecture, and the great pyramids, obelisks, and sphinxes were but the records of the glory of kings, built upon the shame of humanity. True, indeed, there was some advance in the art of writing, in the science of astronomy and geometry, and the manufacture of glass, pottery, linens, and silk in the industrial arts. The revelations brought forth in recent years from the tombs of these kings, where were stored the art treasures representing the civilization of the time, exhibit something of the splendors of royalty and give some idea of the luxuries of the civilization of the higher classes. Here were stored the finest products of the art of the times. The wonders of Egypt were manifested in the structure of the pyramids, which were merely tombs of kings, which millions of laborers spent their lives in building. They represent the most stupendous structures of ancient civilization whose records remain. Old as they appear, as we look backward to the beginning of history, they represent a culminating period of Egyptian art. Sixty-seven of these great structures extended for about sixty miles above the city of Cairo, along the edge of the Libyan Desert. They are placed along the great Egyptian natural burying place in the western side of the Nile valley, as a sort of boulevard of the tombs of kings and nobles. Most of them are constructed of stone, although several are of adobe or sun-dried brick. The latter have crumbled into great conical mountains, like those of the pyramid temples of Babylon. The largest pyramid, Cheops, rises to a height of 480 feet, having a base covering 13 acres. The historian Herodotus relates that 120,000 men were employed for 20 years in the erection of this great structure. It has never been explained how these people, not yet well developed in practical mechanics, and not having discovered the use of steam and with no {160} use of iron, could have reared these vast structures. Besides the pyramids, great palaces and temples of the kings of Thebes in Upper Egypt rivalled in grandeur the lonely pyramids of Memphis. Age after age, century after century, witnessed the building of these temples, palaces, and tombs. It is said that the palace of Karnak, the most wonderful structure of ancient or modern times, was more than five hundred years in the process of building, and it is unknown how many hundreds of thousands of men spent their lives for this purpose. So, too, the mighty sphinxes and colossal statues excite the wonder and admiration of the world. Especially to be mentioned in this connection are the colossi of Thebes, which are forty-seven feet high, each hewn from a single block of granite. Upon the solitary plain these mute figures sat, serene and vigilant, keeping their untiring watch through the passage of the centuries. _The Coming of the Semites_.--While the ancient civilization at the mouth of the Euphrates had its origin in primitive peoples from the mountains eastward beyond the Euphrates, and the ancient Egyptian civilization received its impetus from a Caucasian tribe of northern Africa, the great civilization from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indus River was developed by the Semites. Westward from the Euphrates, over Arabia, and through Syria to the Mediterranean coast were wandering tribes of Arabs. Perhaps the most typical ancient type of the Semitic race is found in Arabia. In these desert lands swarms of people have passed from time to time over the known world. Their early life was pastoral and nomadic; hence they necessarily occupied a large territory and were continually on the move. The country appears to have been, from the earliest historic records, gradually growing drier--having less regular rainfall. So these people were forced at times to the mountain valleys and the grasslands of the north, and as far as the agricultural lands in the river valleys, hovering around the settled districts for food supplies for themselves and their herds. After {161} the early settlement of Sumer and Akkad, these Semitic tribes moved into the valley of the Euphrates, and under Sargon I conquered ancient Babylonia at Akkad and afterward extended the conquest south over Sumer. They found two main cities to the west of the Euphrates, Ur and Eridu. Having invaded this territory, they adopted the arts and industries already established, but brought in the dominant power and language of the conquerors. Four successive invasions of these people into this territory eventually changed the whole life into Semitic civilization. Later a branch moved north and settled higher up on the Tigris, founding the city of Nineveh. The Elamites, another Semitic tribe on the east of the Euphrates, founded the great cities of Susa and Ecbatana. Far to the northwest were the Armenian group of Semites, and directly east on the shores of the Mediterranean were the Phoenicians. This whole territory eventually became Semitic in type of civilization. Also, the Hixos, or shepherd kings, invaded Egypt and dominated that territory for two hundred years. Later the Phoenicians became the great sea-going people of the world and extended their colonies along the coasts through Greece, Italy, northern Africa, and Spain. So there was the Semitic influence from the Pillars of Hercules far east to the River Indus, in India. Strange to say, the mighty empires of Babylon and Nineveh and Phoenicia and Elam failed, while a little territory including the valley of the Jordan, called Palestine, containing a small and insignificant branch of the Semitic race, called Hebrews, developed a literature, language, and religion which exercised a most powerful influence in all civilizations even to the present time. _The Phoenicians Became the Great Navigators_.--While the Phoenicians are given credit for establishing the first great sea power, they were not the first navigators. Long before they developed, boats plied up and down the Euphrates River, and in the island of Crete and elsewhere the ancient Aegeans carried on their trade in ships with Egypt and the eastern {162} Mediterranean. The Aegean civilization preceded the Greeks and existed at a time when Egypt and Babylon were young. The principal city of Cnossus exhibited also a high state of civilization, as shown in the ruins discovered by recent explorers in the island of Crete. It is known that they had trade with early Egypt, but whether their city was destroyed by an earthquake or by the savage Greek pirates of a later day is undetermined. The Phoenicians, however, developed a strip of territory along the east shore of the Mediterranean, and built the great cities of Tyre and Sidon. From these parent cities they extended their trade down through the Mediterranean and out through the Pillars of Hercules, and founded their colonies in Africa, Greece, Italy, and Spain. Long after Tyre and Sidon, the parent states, had declined, Carthage developed one of the most powerful cities and governments of ancient times. No doubt, the Phoenicians deserve great credit for advancing shipbuilding, trade, and commerce, and in extending their explorations over a wide range of the known earth. To them, also, we give credit for the perfection of the alphabet and the manufacture of glass, precious stones, and dyes; but their prominence in history appears in the long struggle between the Carthaginians and the Romans. _A Comparison of the Egyptian and Babylonian Civilizations_.--Taken as a whole, there is a similarity in some respects between the Egyptian and the Babylonian civilizations. Coming from different racial groups, from different centres, there must necessarily be contrasts in many of the arts of life. Egypt was an isolated country with a long river flowing through its entire length, which brought from the mountains the detritus which kept its valleys fertile. Communication was established through the whole length by boats, which had a tendency to promote social intercourse and establish national life. With the Mediterranean on the north, the Red Sea on the east, and the Libyan Desert to the west, it was tolerably well protected even though not shut in by high mountain ranges. Yet it was open at all times for the hardy invaders who sought food for {163} flocks and herds and people. There was always "corn in Egypt" to those people suffering from drought in the semi-arid districts of Africa and Arabia. Nevertheless, while Egypt suffered many invasions, she maintained with considerable constancy the ancient racial traits, and had a continuity of development through the passing centuries which retained many of the primitive characteristics. The valley of the Euphrates was kept fertile by the flow of the great rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, which, having a large watershed in the mountains, brought floods down through the valleys bearing the silt which made the land fertile. But in both countries at an early period the population encroached upon the natural supply of food, and methods of irrigation were introduced to increase the food supply. The attempts to build palaces, monuments, and tombs were characteristic of both peoples. On account of the dryness of the climate, these great monuments have been preserved with a freshness through thousands of years. In the valley of the Euphrates many of the cities that were reduced to ruin were covered with the drifting sands and floods until they are buried beneath the surface. In sculpture, painting, and in art, as well as in permanency of her mighty pyramids, sphinxes, and tombs, Egypt stands far ahead of Babylonia. The difference is mainly expressed in action, for in Egypt there is an expression of calm, solemnity, and peace in the largest portions of the architectural works, while in Babylonia there is less skill and more action. The evidences of the type of civilization are similar in one respect, namely, that during the thousand years of development the great monuments were left to show the grandeur of kings, monarchs, and priests, built by thousands of slaves suffering from the neglect of their superiors through ages of toil. Undoubtedly, this failure to recognize the rights of suffering humanity gradually brought destruction upon these great nations. If the strength of a great nation was spent in building up the mighty representations of the glory and power of kings {164} to the neglect of the improvement of the race as a whole, it could mean nothing else but final destruction. While we contemplate with wonder the greatness of the monuments of the pyramids and the sphinxes of Egypt and the winged bulls of Assyria, it is a sad reflection on the cost of material and life which it took to build them. No wonder, then, that to-day, where once people lived and thought and toiled, where nations grew and flourished, where fields were tilled and harvests were abundant, and where the whole earth was filled with national life, there is nothing remaining but a barren waste and drifting sands, all because men failed to fully estimate real human values and worth. Marvellous as many of the products of these ancient civilizations appear, there is comparatively little to show when it is considered that four thousand years elapsed to bring them about. Mighty as the accomplishments were, the slow process of development shows a lack of vital progress. We cannot escape the idea that the despotism existing in Oriental nations must have crushed out the best life and vigor of a people. It is mournful to contemplate the destruction of these mighty civilizations, yet we may thoughtfully question what excuse could be advanced for their continuance. It is true that Egypt had an influence on Greece, which later became so powerful in her influences on Western civilizations; and doubtless Babylon contributed much to the Hebrews, who in turn have left a lasting impression upon the world. The method of dispersion of cultures of a given centre shows that all races have been great borrowers, and usually when one art, industry, or custom has been thoroughly established, it may continue to influence other races after the race that gave the product has passed away, or other nations, while the original nation has perished. _The Hebrews Made a Permanent Contribution to World Civilization_.--Tradition, pretty well supported by history, shows that Abraham came out of Ur of Chaldea about 1,900 years before Christ, and with his family moved northward into {165} Haran for larger pasture for his flocks on the grassy plains of Mesopotamia. Thence he proceeded westward to Palestine, made a trip to Egypt, and returned to the upper reaches of the Jordan. Here his tribe grew and flourished, and finally, after the manner of pastoral peoples, moved into Egypt for corn in time of drought. There his people lived for several hundred years, attached to the Egyptian nation, and adopting many phases of the Egyptian civilization. When he turned his back upon his people in Babylon, he left polytheism behind. He obtained conception of one supreme being, ruler and creator of the universe, who could not be shown in the form of an image made by man. This was not the first time in the history of the human race when nations had approximated the idea of one supreme God above all gods and men, but it was the first time the conception that He was the only God and pure monotheism obtained the supremacy. No doubt, in the history of the Hebrew development this idea came as a gradual growth rather than as an instantaneous inspiration. In fact, all nations who have reached any advanced degree of religious development have approached the idea of monotheism, but it remained for the Hebrews to put it in practice in their social life and civil polity. It became the great central controlling thought of national life. Compared with the great empires of Babylon and Nineveh and Egypt, the Hebrew nation was small, crude, barbarous, insignificant, but the idea of one god controlling all, who passed in conception from a god of authority, imminence, and revenge, to a god of justice and righteousness, who controlled the affairs of men, developed the Hebrew concept of human relations. It led them to develop a legal-ethical system which became the foundation of the Hebrew commonwealth and established a code of laws for the government of the nation, which has been used by all subsequent nations as the foundation of the moral element in their civil code. Moses was not the first lawgiver of the world of nations. Indeed, before {166} Abraham left his ancient home in Chaldea there was ruling in Babylon King Hammurabi, who formulated a wise code of laws, said to be the first of which we have any record in the history of the human race. The Hebrew nation was always subordinate to other nations, but after its tribes developed into a kingdom and their king, Saul, was succeeded by David and Solomon, it reached a high state of civilization in certain lines. Yet, at its best, under the reign of David and Solomon, it was upon the whole a barbarous nation. When the Hebrews were finally conquered and led into captivity in Babylon, they reflected upon their ancient life, their laws, their literature, and there was compiled a greater part of the Bible. This instrument has been greater than the palaces of Babylon or the pyramids of Egypt, or great conquests of military hosts in the perpetuation of the life of a nation. Its history, its religion, its literature in proverbs and songs, its laws, its moral code, all have been enduring monuments that have lasted and will last as long as the human race continues its attempt to establish justice among men. _The Civilizations of India and China_.--Before leaving the subject of the Oriental civilizations, at least brief mention must be made of the development of the Hindu philosophy and religion. In the valleys of the great rivers of India, in the shadow of the largest mountains rising to the skies, there developed a great people of great learning and wonderful philosophy. In their abstract conceptions they built up the most wonderful and complex theogony and theology ever invented by men. This system, represented by elements of law, theology, philosophy and language, literature and learning, is found in the Vedas and the great literary remnants of the poets. They reveal to us the intensity of learning at the time of the highest development of the Indian philosophy. However, its influence, wrapped up in the Brahminical religion of fatalism, was largely non-progressive. Later, about 500 years before Christ, when Gautama Buddha developed his ethical philosophy of life, new hope came {167} into the world. But this did not stay for the regeneration of India, but, rather, declined and passed on into China and Japan. The influence of Indian civilization on Western civilization has been very slight, owing to the great separation between the two, and largely because their objectives have been different. The former devoted itself to the reflection of life, the latter resolved itself into action. Nevertheless, we shall find in the Greek philosophy and Greek religion shadows of the learning of the Orient. But the Hindu civilization, while developing much that is grand and noble, like many Oriental civilizations, left the great masses of the people unaided and unhelped. When it is considered what might have been accomplished in India, it is well characterized as a "land of regrets." In the dispersion of the human race over the earth, one of the first great centres of culture was found in Thibet, in Asia. Here is supposed to be the origin of the Mongolian peoples, and the Chinese represent one of the chief branches of the Mongolian race. At a very early period they developed an advanced stage of civilization with many commendable features. Their art, the form of pottery and porcelain, their traditional codes of law, were influential in the Far East. Their philosophy culminated in Confucius, who lived about 500 years before Christ, and their religion was founded by Tao Tse, who existed many centuries before. He was the founder of the Taoan religion of China. But the civilization of China extended throughout the Far East, spread into Korea, and then into Japan. It has had very little contact with the Western civilization, and its history is still obscure, but there are many marvellous things done in China which are now in more recent years being faithfully studied and recorded. Their art in porcelain and metals had its influence on other nations and has been of a lasting nature. _The Coming of the Aryans_.--The third great branch of the Caucasian people, whose primitive home seems to have been in central Asia, is the Aryan. Somewhere north of the great {168} territory of the Semites, there came gradually down into Nineveh and Babylon and through Armenia a people of different type from the Semites and from the Egyptians. They lived on the great grassy plains of central Asia, wandering with their flocks and herds, and settling down long enough to raise a crop, and then move on. They lived a simple life, but were a vigorous, thrifty, and family-loving people; and while the great civilization of Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt was developing, they were pushing down from the north. They finally developed in Persia a great national life. Subsequently, under Darius I, a great Aryan empire was established in the seats of the old civilization which he had conquered, whose extent was greater than the world had hitherto known. It extended over the old Assyrian and Babylonian empires, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Syria, in Caucasian and Caspian regions; covered Media and Persia, and extended into India as far as the Indus. The old Semitic civilizations were passing away, and the control of the Aryan race was appearing. Later these Persians found themselves at war with the Greeks, who were of the same racial stock. The Persian Empire was no great improvement over the later Babylonian and Assyrian Empires. It had become more specifically a world empire, which set out to conquer and plunder other nations. It might have been enlightened to a certain extent, but it had received the idea of militarism and conquest. It was the first great empire of the Orient to come in contact with a rising Western civilization, then centering in Greece. This Aryan stock, when considered in Europe or Western civilization, is known as the Nordic race. In the consideration of Western civilization further discussion will be given of the origin and dispersion of this race. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. Study the economic foundation of Egypt. Babylon. Arabia. 2. Why did Oriental nations go to war? Show by example. 3. What did Egypt and Babylon contribute of lasting value to civilization? {169} 4. What was the Hebrew contribution? 5. Why did these ancient empires decline and disappear? 6. Study the points of difference between the civilization of Babylon and Egypt and Western civilization. 7. Contrast the civilization of India and China with Western civilization. [1] L. W. King, _History of Sumer and Akkad_. _History of Babylon_. {170} CHAPTER X THE ORIENTAL TYPE OF CIVILIZATION _The Governments of the Early Oriental Civilizations_.--In comparing the Oriental civilizations which sprang up almost independently in different parts of Asia and Africa with European civilizations, we shall be impressed with the despotism of these ancient governments. It is not easy to determine why this feature should have been so universal, unless it could be attributed to human traits inherent in man at this particular stage of his development. Perhaps, also, in emerging from a patriarchal state of society, where small, independent groups were closely united with the oldest male member as leader and governor of all, absolute authority under these conditions was necessary for the preservation of the tribe or group, and it became a fixed custom which no one questioned. Subsequently, when the population increased around a common centre and various tribes and groups were subjected to a central organization, the custom of absolute rule was transferred from the small group to the king, who ruled over all. Also, the nature of most of these governments may have been influenced by the type of religion which prevailed. It became systematized under the direction of priests, who stood between the people and the great unknown, holding absolute sway but working on the emotion of fear. Perhaps, also, a large group of people with a limited food supply were easily reduced to a state of slavery and dwelt in a territory as a mass of unorganized humanity, subservient only to the superior directing power. It appears to be a lack of organized popular will. The religions, too, looked intensely to the authority of the past, developing fixity of customs, habits, laws, {171} and social usages. These conditions were conducive to the exercise of the despotism of those in power. _War Existed for Conquest and Plunder_.--The kings of these Oriental despotisms seemed to be possessed with inordinate vanity, and when once raised to power used not only all the resources of the nation and of the people for magnifying that power, but also used the masses of the people at home at labor, and abroad in war, for the glory of the rulers. Hence, wars of conquest were frequent, always accompanied with the desire for plunder of territory, the wealth of temples, and the coffers of the rulers. Many times wars were based upon whims of kings and rulers and trivial matters, which can only be explained through excessive egoism and vanity; yet in nearly every instance the idea of conquest was to increase the wealth of the nation and power of the king by going to war. There was, of course, jealousy of nations and rivalry for supremacy, as the thousand years of war between Egypt and Babylonia illustrates, or as the conquest of Babylon by Assyria, or, indeed, the later conquest of the whole East by the Persian monarchs, testifies. These great wars were characterized by the crude struggle and slaughter of hordes of people. Not until the horse and chariot came into use was there any great improvement in methods of warfare. Bronze weapons and, later, iron were used in most of these wars. It was merely barbarism going to war with barbarism in order to increase barbaric splendor. _Religious Belief Was an Important Factor in Despotic Government_.--In the beginning we shall find that animism, or the belief in spirits, was common to all nations and tribes. There was in the early religious life of people a wild, unorganized superstition, which brought them in subjection to the control of the spirits of the world. In the slow development of the masses, these ideas always remained prominent, and however highly developed religious life became, however pure the system of religious philosophy and religious worship, as represented by the most intelligent and farthest advanced of the {172} people, it yet remains true that the masses of the people were mastered and ruled by a gross superstition; and possibly this answers the question to a large extent as to why the religion of the Orient could, on the one hand, reach such heights of purity of spirit and worship and, on the other, such a degradation in thought, conception, and practice. It could reach to the skies with one arm and into the grossest phases of nature-worship with the other. It appears the time came when, as a matter of self-defense, man must manipulate and control spirits to save himself from destruction, and there were persons particularly adapted to this process, who formed the germs of the great system of priesthood. They stood between the masses and the spirits, and as the system developed and the number of priests increased, they became the ones who ruled the masses in place of the spirits. The priesthood, then, wherever it has developed a great system, has exercised an almost superhuman power over the ignorant, the debased, and the superstitious. It was the policy of kings to cultivate and protect this priesthood, and it was largely this which enabled them to have power over the masses. Having once obtained this power, and the military spirit having arisen in opposition to foreign tribes, the priests were at the head of the military, religious, and civil systems of the nation. Indeed, the early king was the high priest of the tribe, and he inherited through long generations the particular function of leader of religious worship. It will be easy to conceive that where the art of embalming was carried on, people believed in the future life of the soul. The religious system of the Egyptians was, indeed, of very remarkable character. The central idea in their doctrine was the unity of God, whom they recognized as the one Supreme Being, who was given the name of Creator, Eternal Father, to indicate the various characters in which he appeared. This pure monotheism was seldom grasped by the great masses of the people; indeed, it is to be supposed that many of the priestly order scarcely rose to its pure conceptions. But there {173} were other groups or dynasties of gods which were worshipped throughout Egypt. These were mostly mythical beings, who were supposed to perform especial functions in the creation and control of the universe. Among these Osiris and Isis, his wife and sister, were important, and their worship common throughout all Egypt. Osiris came upon the earth in the interests of mankind, to manifest the true and the good in life. He was put to death by the machinations of the evil spirit, was buried and rose, and became afterward the judge of the dead. In this we find the greatest mystery in the Egyptian religion. Typhon was the god of the evil spirits, a wicked, rebellious devil, who held in his grasp all the terrors of disease and of the desert. Sometimes he was in the form of a frightful serpent, again in the form of a crocodile or hippopotamus. Seeking through the light of religious mystery to explain all the natural phenomena observed in physical nature, the Egyptians fell into the habit of coarse animal worship. The cat, the snake, the crocodile, and the bull became sacred animals, to kill which was the vilest sacrilege. Even if one was so unfortunate as to kill one of these sacred animals by accident, he was in danger of his life at the hands of the infuriated mob. It is related that a Roman soldier, having killed a sacred cat, was saved from destruction by the multitude only by the intercession of the great ruler Ptolemy. The taking of the life of one of these sacred creatures caused the deepest mourning, and frequently the wildest terror, while every member of the family shaved his head at the death of a dog. There was symbolism, too, in all this worship. Thus the scarabeus, or beetle, which was held to be especially sacred, was considered as the emblem of the sun. Thousands of these relics may be found in the different museums, having been preserved to the present time. The bull, Apis, not only was a sacred creature, but was held to be a real god. It was thought that the soul of Osiris pervaded the spirit of the bull, and at the bull's death it passed on into that of his successor. The worship of the lower forms of life led to a coarseness in religious {174} belief and practice. How it came about is difficult to ascertain. It is supposed by some scholars that the animal worship had its origin in the low form of worship belonging to the indigenous tribes of Egypt, and that the higher order was introduced by the Hamites, or perhaps by the Semites who mingled with and overcame the original inhabitants of the Nile valley. In all probability, the advanced ideas of religious belief and thought were the essential outcome of the learning and speculative philosophy of the Egyptians, while the old animal worship became the most convenient for the great masses of low and degraded beings who spent their lives in building tombs for the great. The religious life of the Egyptians was protected and guarded by an elaborate priesthood. It formed a perfect hierarchy of priest, high priest, scribes, keepers of the sacred robes and animals, sculptors, embalmers, besides all the attendants upon the services of worship and religion. Not only was this class privileged among all the castes of Egypt as representing the highest class of individuals, but it enjoyed immunity from taxation and had the privilege of administering the products of one-third of the land to carry on the expenses of the temple and religious worship. The ceremonial life of the priests was almost perfect. Scrupulous in the care of their person, they bathed twice each day and frequently at night, and every third day shaved the entire body. Their linen was painfully neat, and they lived on plain, simple food, as conducive to the service of religion. They exerted a great power not only over the religious life of the Egyptians but, on account of the peculiar relation of religion to government, over the entire development of Egypt. The religion of Oriental nations was non-progressive in its nature. It had a tendency to repress freedom of thought and freedom of action. Connected as it was with the binding influence of caste, man could not free himself from the dictates of religion. The awful sublimity of nature found its counterpart in the terrors of religion; and that religion attempted to {175} answer all the questions that might arise concerning external nature. It rested upon the basis of authority built through ages of tradition, and through a continuous domineering priest-craft. The human mind struggling within its own narrow bounds could not overcome the stultifying and sterilizing influence of such a religion. The lower forms of religion were "of the earth, earthy." The higher forms consisted of such abstract conceptions concerning the creation of the earth, and the manipulation of all the forces of nature and the control of all the powers of man, as to be entirely non-progressive. There could be no independent scientific investigation. There could be no rational development of the mind. The religion of the Orient brought gloom to the masses and cut off hope forever. The people became subject to the grinding forces of fate. How, then, could there be intellectual development based upon freedom of action? How could there be any higher life of the soul, any moral culture, any great advancement in the arts and sciences, or any popular expression regarding war and government? _Social Organization Was Incomplete_.--All social organization tended toward the common centre, the king, and there was very little local organization except as it was necessary to bring the people under control of official rule. There were apparently very few voluntary associations. Among the nobility, the priests, and ladies of rank, we find frequently elaborate costumes of dress, manifold ornaments, necklaces, rings, and earrings; but whatever went to the rich seemed to be a deprivation of the poor. Indeed, when we consider that it cost only a few shillings at most to rear a child to the age of twenty-one years in Egypt, we can imagine how meagre and stinted that life must have been. The poorer classes of people dressed in a very simple style, wearing a single linen shirt and over it a woollen mantle; while among the very poor much less was worn. However, it seems that there was time for some of the population to engage in sports such as laying snares for birds, {176} angling for fish, popular hunts, wrestling, playing checkers, chess, and ball, and it appears that many of these people were gifted in these sports. Just what classes of people engaged in this leisure is difficult to determine. Especially in the case of Egypt, most of the people were condemned to hard and toilsome labor. Probably the nobility and people of wealth were the only classes who had time for sports. The great temples and palaces were built with solid masonry of stone and brick, but the dwelling-houses were constructed in a light, graceful style, surrounded with long galleries and terraces common at this period of development in Oriental civilization. The gardening was symmetrical and accurate, the walks led in well-defined lines and were carefully conventional. The rooms of the houses, too, were well arranged and tastefully decorated, and members of the household distributed in its generous apartments, each individual finding his special place for position and service. For the comparatively small number of prosperous and influential people, life was refined and luxurious so far as the inventions and conveniences for comfort would permit. They had well-constructed and well-appointed houses, and, judging from the relics discovered in tombs and from the records and inscriptions, people wore richly decorated clothing and lovely jewels. They had numerous feasts with music and dancing and servants to wait upon them in every phase of life. It is related, too, that excursions were common in summer on the great rivers. But even though there was a life of ease among the wealthy, they were without many comforts known to modern times. They had cotton and woollen fabrics for clothing, but no silk. They had dentists and doctors in those days, and teeth were filled with gold as in modern times. Their articles of food consisted of meat and vegetables, but there were no hens and no eggs. They used the camel in Mesopotamia and walked mostly in Egypt, or went by boat on the river. However, when we consider the change of ancient Babylon to Nineveh, and the Egyptian civilization of old Thebes to that {177} which developed later, there is evidence of progress. The religious life lost a good many of its crudities, abolished human sacrifice, and developed a refined mysticism which was more elevating than the crude nature-worship. The rule of caste which settled down over the community in this early period relegated every individual to his particular place. From this place there could be no escape. The common laborers moving the great blocks of stone to build the mighty pyramids of the valley of the Nile could be nothing but common laborers. And their sons and their daughters for generation after generation must keep the same sphere of life. And though the warriors fared much better, they, too, were confined to their own group. The shepherd class must remain a shepherd class forever; they could never rise superior to their own surroundings. So, too, in Babylon and India. There was, indeed, a slight variation from the caste system in Egypt and in Babylon, but in India it settled down from the earliest times, and the people and their customs were crystallized; they were bound by the chain of fate in the caste system forever. We shall see, then, that the relation of the population to the soil and the binding influences of early custom tended to develop despotism in Oriental civilization. The result of all this was that there was no freedom or liberty of the individual anywhere. With caste and despotism and degradation men moved forward in political and religious life as on a plane which inclined so slightly that, except as we look over its surface through the passing centuries, little change can be observed. The king was a god; the government possessed supernatural power; its authority was not to be questioned. The rule of the army was final. The cruelty of kings and the oppression of government were customary, and thus crushed and oppressed, the ordinary individual had no opportunity to arise and walk in the dignity of his manhood. The government, if traced to its source at all, was of divine origin, and though those who ruled might stop to consider for an instant their own despotic actions, and in special cases yield {178} in clemency to their subjects, from the subject's standpoint there could be nothing but to yield to the despotism of kings and the unrelenting rule of government. We shall find, then, that with all of the efforts put forth the greater part was wasted. Millions of people were born, lived, and died, leaving scarcely a mark of their existence. No wonder that, as the great kings of Egypt saw the wasting elements of time, the waste of labor in its dreary rounds, having employed the millions in building the mighty temples dedicated to the worship of the gods; or having built great canals and aqueducts to develop irrigation that greater food supply might be assured, thus observing the majesty of their condition in relation to other human beings, they should have employed these millions of serfs in building their own tombs and monuments to remain the only lasting vestige of the civilization long since passed away. Everywhere in the Oriental civilization, then, are lack of freedom and the appearance of despotism. Everywhere is evidence of waste of individual life. No deep conception can be found in either the philosophy or the practice of the Egyptians or the Babylonians of the real object of human life. And yet the few meagre products of art and of learning handed down to European civilization from these Oriental countries must have had a vast influence in laying the foundations of modern civilized life. _Economic Influences_.--In the first place, the warm climate of these countries required but little clothing; for a few cents a year a person could be clothed sufficiently to protect himself from the climate and to observe the rules of modesty so far as they existed in those times. In the second place, in hot climates less food is required than in cold. In cold countries people need a large quantity of heavy, oily foods, while in hot climates they need a lighter food and, indeed, less of it. Thus we have in these fertile valleys of the Orient the conditions which supply sustenance for millions at a very small amount of exertion or labor. Now, it is a well-established fact that cheap food among classes of people who have not developed {179} a high state of civilization favors a rapid increase of population. The records show in Babylon and Egypt, as well as in Palestine, that the population multiplied at a very rapid rate. And this principle is enhanced by the fact that in tropical climates, where less pressure of want and cold is brought to bear, the conditions for successful propagation of the human race are present. And this is one reason why the earliest civilizations have always been found in tropical climates, and it was not until man had more vigor of constitution and higher development of physical and mental powers that he could undertake the mastery of himself and nature under less favorable circumstances. The result was that human life became cheap. The great mass of men became so abundant as to press upon the food supply to its utmost limit. And they who had the control of this food supply controlled the bodies and souls of the great poverty-stricken mass who toiled for daily bread. Here we find the picture of abject slavery of the masses. The rulers, through the government, strengthened by the priests, who held over the masses of the lower people in superstitious awe the tenets of their faith, forced them into subjection. There was no value placed upon a human life; why, then, should there be upon the masses of individuals? We shall find, too, as the result of all this, that the civilization became more or less stationary. True, there must have been a slow development of religious ideas, a slow development of art, a slow development of government, and yet when the type was once set there was but little change from century to century in the relation of human beings to one another, and their relation to the products of nature. When we consider the accomplishments of these people we must not forget the length of time it took to produce them. Reckon back from the present time 6,000 years, and then consider what has been accomplished in America in the last century. Think back 2,000 years, and see what had been accomplished in Rome from the year of the founding of the imperial city until the Caesars lived {180} in their mighty palaces, a period of seven and a half centuries. Observe, too, what was accomplished in Greece from the time of Homer until the time of Aristotle, a period of about six and a half centuries; then observe the length of time it took to develop the Egyptian civilization, and we shall see its slow progress. It is also to be observed that the Egyptian civilization had reached its culmination when Greece began, and had begun its slow decline. After considering this we shall understand that the civilization of Egypt finally became stationary, conventionalized, non-progressive; that it was only a question of time when other nations should rule the land of the Pharaohs, and that sands should drift where once were populous cities, covering the relics of this ancient civilization far beneath the surface. The progress in industrial arts and the use of implements was, of necessity, very slow. Where the laboring man was considered of little value, treated as a mere physical machine, to be fed and used for mechanical purposes alone, it mattered little with what tools he worked. In the building of the pyramids we find no mighty engines for the movement of the great stones, we find no evidence of mechanical genius to provide labor-saving machines. The inclined plane and rollers, the simplest of all contrivances, were about the only inventions. Also, in the buildings of Babylon, the tools with which men worked must of necessity have been very poor. It is remarkable to what extent modern invention depends upon the elevation of the standard of life of labor, and how man through intelligence continually makes certain contrivances for the perfection of human industry. However, if we consider the ornaments used to adorn the person, or for the service of the rich, or the elaborate clothing of the wealthy, we shall find quite a high state of development in these lines, showing the greatest contrast between the condition of the laboring multitudes on the one hand and the luxurious few on the other. Along this line of the rapid development of ornaments we find evidence of luxury and ease, and, in the slow development of {181} industrial arts, the sacrifice of labor. And all of the advancement in the mighty works of art and industry was made at the sacrifice of human labor. To sum this up, we find, then, that the influence of despotic government, of the binding power of caste, of the prevalence of custom, of the influence of priestcraft, the retarding power of a non-progressive religion, concentration of intelligence in a privileged class that seeks its own ease, the slow development of industrial implements, and the rapid development of ornaments, brought decay. We see in all of this a retarding of improvement, a stagnation of organizing effort, and the crystallization of ancient civilization about old forms, to be handed down from generation to generation without progress. _Records, Writing, and Paper_.--At an early period papyrus, a paper made of a reed that grows along the Nile valley, was among the first inventions. It was the earliest artificial writing material discovered by any nation of which we have a record; and we are likely to remember it from its two names, _biblos_ and _papyrus_, for from these come two of our most common words, bible and paper. Frequently, however, leather, pottery, tiles, and stone, and even wooden tablets, were used as substitutes for the papyrus. In the early period the Egyptians used the hieroglyphic form of writing, which consisted of rude pictures of objects which had a peculiar significance. Finally the hieratic simplified this form by symbolizing and conventionalizing to a large extent the hieroglyphic characters. Later came the demotic, which was a further departure from the old concrete form of representation, and had the advantage of being more readily written than either of the others.[1] These characters were used to inscribe the deeds of kings on monuments and tablets, and when in 1798 the key to the Egyptian writing was obtained through means of the Rosetta stone, the opportunity for a large addition to the history of Egypt was made. Strange as it may seem, these ancient people had written romances and fairy tales; one especially to be mentioned {182} is the common _Cinderella and the Glass Slipper_, written more than thirteen centuries B.C. But in addition to these were published documents, private letters, fables, epics, and autobiographies, and treatises on astronomy, medicine, history, and scientific subjects. The Babylonians and Assyrians developed the cuneiform method of writing. They had no paper, but made their inscriptions on clay tablets and cylinders. These were set away in rooms called libraries. The discovery of the great library of Ashur-bani-pal, of Nineveh, revealed the highest perfection of this ancient method of recording events. The art of Egypt was manifested in the dressing of precious stones, the weaving of fine fabrics, and fine work in gold ornaments. Sculpture and painting were practically unknown as arts, although the use of colors was practised to a considerable extent. Artistic energy was worked out in the making of the tombs of kings, the obelisks, the monuments, the sphinxes, and the pyramids. It was a conception of the massive in artistic expression. In Babylon and Nineveh, especially the latter, the work of sculpture in carving the celebrated winged bulls gives evidence of the attempt to picture power and strength rather than beauty. Doubtless the Babylonians developed artistic taste in the manufacture of jewelry out of precious stones and gold. _The Beginnings of Science Were Strong in Egypt, Weak in Babylon_.--The greatest expression of the Egyptian learning was found in science. The work in astronomy began at a very early date from a practical standpoint. The rising of the Nile occurred at a certain time annually, coinciding with the time of the rise of the Dog-star, which led these people to imagine that they stood in the relation of effect and cause, and from these simple data began the study of astronomy. The Egyptians, by the study of the movement of the stars, were enabled to determine the length of the sidereal year, which they divided into twelve months, of thirty days each, adding five days to complete the year. This is the calendar which was {183} introduced from Egypt into the Roman Empire by Julius Caesar. It was revised by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, and has since been the universal system for the Western civilized world. Having reached their limit of fact in regard to the movement of the heavenly bodies, their imagination related the stars to human conduct, and astrology became an essential outcome. It was easy to believe that the heavenly bodies, which, apparently, had such great influence in the rise of the river and in the movement of the tides, would have either a good influence or a baneful influence, not only over the vegetable world but upon human life and human destiny as well. Hence, astrology, in Egypt as in Babylonia, became one of the important arts. From the measurement of the Nile and the calculation of the lands, which must be redistributed after each annual overflow, came the system of concrete measurement which later developed into the science of geometry. Proceeding from the simple measurement of land, step by step were developed the universal abstract problems of geometry, and the foundation for this great branch of mathematics was laid. The use of arithmetic in furnishing numerical expressions in the solution of geometrical and arithmetical problems became common. The Egyptians had considerable knowledge of many drugs and medicines, and the physicians of Egypt had a great reputation among the ancients; for every doctor was a specialist and pursued his subject and his practice to the utmost limit of fact and theory. But the physician must treat cases according to customs already established in the past. There was but little opportunity for the advancement of his art. Yet it became very much systematized and conventionalized. The study of anatomy developed also the art of embalming, one of the most distinctive features of Egyptian civilization. This art was carried on by the regular physicians, who made use of resins, oils, bitumens, and various gums. It was customary to embalm the bodies of wealthy persons by filling them with resinous substances and wrapping them closely in linen {184} bandages. The poorer classes were cured very much as beef is cured before drying, and then wrapped in coarse garments preparatory to burial. The number of individuals who were thus disposed of after death is estimated at not less than 420,000,000 between 2000 B.C. and 700 A.D. _The Contribution to Civilization_.--The building of the great empires on the Tigris and Euphrates had a tendency to collect the products of civilization so far as they existed, and to distribute them over a large area. Thus, the industries that began in early Sumer and Akkad, coming from farther east, were passed on to Egypt and Phoenicia and were further distributed over the world. Especially is this true in the work of metals, the manufacture of glass, and the development of the alphabet, which probably originated in Babylon and was improved by the Phoenicians, and, through them as traders, had a wide dispersion. Perhaps one ought to consider that the study of the stars and the heavenly bodies, although it led no farther than astrology and the development of magic, was at least a beginning, although in a crude way, of an inquiry into nature. In Egypt, however, we find that there was more or less scientific study and invention and development of reflective thinking. Moreover, the advancement in the arts of life, especially industrial, had great influence over the Greeks, whose early philosophers were students of the Egyptian system. Also, the contact of the Hebrews and Phoenicians with Egypt gave a strong coloring to their civilization. Especially is this true of the Hebrews, who dwelt so long in the shadow of the Egyptian civilization. The Hebrews, after their captivity in Babylon, contributed the Bible, with its sacred literature, to the world, which with its influence through the legal-ethicalism, or moral code, its monotheistic doctrines, and its attempted development of a commonwealth based on justice, had a lasting influence on civilization. But in the life of the Hebrew people in Palestine its influence on surrounding nations was not so great as in the later times when the Jews were scattered over the {185} world. The Bible has been a tremendous civilizer of the world. Hebrewism became a universal state of mind, which influenced all nations that came in contact with it. But what did this civilization leave to the world? The influence of Egypt on Greece and Greek philosophy must indeed have been great, for the greatest of the Greeks looked upon the Egyptian philosophy as the expression of the highest wisdom. Nor can we hesitate in claiming that the influence of the Egyptians upon the Hebrews was considerable. There is a similarity in many respects between the Egyptian and the Hebrew code of learning; but the art and the architecture, the learning and the philosophy, had their influence likewise on all surrounding nations as soon as Egypt was opened up to communication with other parts of the world. A careful study of the Greek philosophy brings clearly before us the influence of the Egyptian learning. Thus Thales, the first of the philosophers to break away from the Grecian religion and mythology to inquire into the natural cause of the universe, was a student of Egyptian life and philosophy. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. What are the evidences of civilization discovered in Tut-Ankh-Amen's tomb? 2. Give an outline of the chief characteristics of Egyptian civilization? 3. What caused the decline of Egyptian civilization? 4. What did Oriental civilization contribute to the subsequent welfare of the world? 5. The influence of climate on industry in Egypt and Babylon. 6. Why did the Egyptian religion fail to improve the lot of the common man? 7. Retarding influence of the caste system in India and Egypt. [1] See Chapter VII. {186} CHAPTER XI BEGINNINGS OF CIVILIZATION IN AMERICA _America Was Peopled from the Old World_.--The origin of the people of America has been the subject of perennial controversy. Gradually, however, as the studies of the human race and their migrations have increased, it is pretty well established that the one stream of migration came from Asia across a land connection along the Aleutian Islands, which extended to Alaska. At an early period, probably from 15,000 to 20,000 years age, people of the Mongoloid type crossed into America and gradually passed southward, some along the coast line, others through the interior of Alaska and thence south. This stream of migration continued down through Mexico, Central America, South America, and even to Patagonia. It also had a reflex movement eastward toward the great plains and the Mississippi valley. There is a reasonable conjecture, however, that another stream of migration passed from Europe at a time when the British Islands were joined to the mainland, and the great ice cap made a solid bridge to Iceland, Greenland, and possibly to Labrador. It would have been possible for these people to have come during the third glacial period, at the close of the Old Stone Age, or soon after in the Neolithic period. The traditions of the people on the west coast all state their geographical origin in the northwest. The traditions of the Indians of the Atlantic coast trace their origins to the northeast. The people of the west coast are mostly of the round-headed type (brachycephalic), while those of the east coast have been of the long-headed type (dolichocephalic). The two types have mingled in their migration southward until we have the long heads and the round or broad heads extending the whole {187} length of the two continents. Intermingled with these are those of the middle derivative type, or mesocephalic. From these sources there have developed on the soil of America, the so-called American Indians of numerous tribes, each with its own language and with specialized physical and mental types. While the color of the skin has various shades, the coarse, straight black hair and brown eyes are almost general features of the whole Indian race. At different centres in both North and South America, tribes have become more or less settled and developed permanent phases of early civilization, strongly marked by the later Neolithic cultures. In some exceptional cases, the uses of copper, bronze, and gold are to be noted. Perhaps the most important centres are those of the Incas in Peru, the Mayas, Aztecs, and Terra-humares of Mexico, the cliff-dwellers and Pueblos of southwestern United States, the mound-builders of the Mississippi valley, and the Iroquois nation of northeastern United States and Canada. At the time of the coming of the Europeans to America, the Indian population in general was nomadic, in the hunter-fisher stage of progress; but many of the tribes had tentatively engaged in agriculture, cultivating maize, squashes, and in some cases fruits. Probably the larger supply of food was from animals, birds, fish, and shell-fish, edible roots and grains, such as the wild rice, and fruits from the native trees in the temperate and tropical countries. The social organization was based upon the family and the tribe, and, in a few instances, a federation of tribes like that of the Iroquois nation. _The Incas of Peru_.--When the Spaniards under Pizarro undertook the conquest of the Peruvians, they found the Inca civilization at its highest state of development. However, subsequent investigations discovered other and older seats of civilization of a race in some ways more highly developed than those with whom they came in contact. Among the evidences of this ancient civilization were great temples built of stone, used as public buildings for the administration of religious {188} rights [Transcriber's note: rites?], private buildings of substantial order, and paved roads with numerous bridges. There were likewise ruins of edifices apparently unfinished, and traditions of an ascendent race which had passed away before the development of the Incas of Pizarro's time. In the massive architecture of their buildings there was an attempt to use sculpture on an elaborate scale. They showed some skill in the arts and industries, such as ornamental work in gold, copper, and tin, and the construction of pottery on a large scale. They had learned to weave and spin, and their clothing showed some advancement in artistic design. In agriculture they raised corn and other grains, and developed a state of pastoral life, although the llama was the only domesticated animal of service. Great aqueducts were built and fertilizers were used to increase the productive value of the soil. The dry climate of this territory necessitated the use of water by irrigation, and the limited amount of tillable soil had forced them to use fertilizers to get the largest possible return per acre. The Peruvians, or Incas, were called the children of the sun. They had a sacred feeling for the heavenly bodies, and worshipped the sun as the creator and ruler of the universe. They had made some progress in astronomy, by a characterization of the sun and moon and chief planets, mostly for a religious purpose. However, they had used a calendar to represent the months, the year, and the changing seasons. Here, as elsewhere in primitive civilization, religion becomes an important factor in social control. The priest comes in as the interpreter and controller of mysteries, and hence an important member of the community. Religious sacrifices among the Peruvians were commonly of an immaculate nature, being mostly of fruits and flowers. This relieved them of the terrors of human sacrifices so prevalent in early beginnings of civilization where religion became the dominant factor of life. Hence their religious life was more moderate than that of many nations where religious control was more powerful. Yet in governmental {189} affairs and in social life, here as in other places, religion was made the means of enslaving the masses of the people. The government of the Incas was despotic. It was developed through the old family and tribal life to a status of hereditary aristocracy. Individuals of the oldest families became permanent in government, and these were aided and supported by the priestly order. Caste prevailed to a large extent, making a great difference between the situation of the nobility and the peasants and slaves. Individuals born into a certain group must live and die within that group. Hence the people were essentially peaceable, quiet, and not actively progressive. But we find that the social life, in spite of the prominence of the priest and the nobility, was not necessarily burdensome. Docile and passive in nature, they were ready to accept what appeared to them a well-ordered fate. If food, clothing, and shelter be furnished, and other desires remain undeveloped, and life made easy, what occasion was there for them to be moved by nobler aspirations? Without higher ideals, awakened ambition, and the multiplication of new desires, there was no hope of progress. The people seemed to possess considerable nobility of character, and were happy, peaceful, and well disposed toward one another, even though non-progressive conditions gave evidence that they had probably reached the terminal bud of progress of their branch of the human race. As to what would have been the outcome of this civilization had not the ruthless hand of the Spaniard destroyed it, is a matter of conjecture. How interesting it would have been if these people could have remained unmolested for 400 years as an example of progress or retardation of a race. Students then could, through observation, have learned a great lesson concerning the development of the human race. Is it possible when a branch of the human race has only so much potential power based upon hereditary development, upon attitude toward life, and upon influence of environmental conditions, that after working out its normal existence it grows old and decays and dies, just as even the sturdy oak has its normal life {190} and decay? At any rate, it seems that the history of the human race repeats itself over and over again with thousands of examples of this kind. When races become highly specialized along certain lines and are unadaptable along other lines, changes in climate, soil, food supply, or conflict with other races cause them to perish. If we admit this to be the universal fate of tribes and races, there is one condition in which the normal life of the race can be prolonged, and that is by contact with other races which bring in new elements, and make new accommodations, not only through biological heredity, but through social heredity which causes a new lease of life to the tribe. Of course the deteriorating effects of a race of less culture would have a tendency to shorten the spiritual if not the physical life of the race. Whatever conjecture we may have as to the past and the probable future of such a race, it is evident that the Peruvians had made a strong and vigorous attempt at civilization. Their limited environment and simple life were not conducive to progressive ideas, and gave little inducement for inventive genius to lead the race forward. But even as we find them, the sum-total of their civilization compares very favorably with the sum-total of the civilization of the Spaniards, who engaged to complete their destruction. Different were these Spaniards in culture and learning, it is true, but their great difference is in the fact that the Spaniards had the tools and equipment for war and perhaps a higher state of military organization than the peace-loving Peruvians. _Aztec Civilization in Mexico_.--When Cortez in 1525 began his conquest of Mexico, he found a strong political organization under the Emperor Montezuma, who had through conquest, diplomacy, and assumption of power united all of the tribes in and around Mexico City in a strong federation. These people were made up of many different tribes. At this period they did not show marked development in any particular line, except that of social organization. The people that occupied this great empire ruled by Montezuma, with the seat of power {191} at Mexico City, were called Aztecs. The empire extended over all of lower Mexico and Yucatan. As rapidly as possible Montezuma brought adjacent tribes into subjection, and at the time of the Spanish conquest he exercised lordship over a wide country. So far as can be ascertained, arts and industries practised by most of these tribes were handed down from extinct races that had a greater inventive genius and a higher state of progress. The conquering tribes absorbed and used the arts of the conquered, as the Greeks did those of the conquered Aegeans. The practice of agriculture, of the industrial arts, such as clothing, pottery, and implements of use and ornaments for adornment, showed advancement in industrial life. They built large temples and erected great buildings for the worship of their gods. There was something in their worship bordering on sun-worship, although not as distinctive as the sun-worship of the Peruvians. They were highly developed in the use of gold and copper, and produced a good quality of pottery. They had learned the art of decorating the pottery, and their temples also were done in colors and in bas-relief. They had developed a language of merit and had a hieroglyphic expression of the same. They had a distinct mythology, comprising myths of the sun and of the origin of various tribes, the origin of the earth and of man. They had developed the idea of charity, and had a system of caring for the poor, with hospitals for the sick. Notwithstanding this altruistic expression, they offered human sacrifices of maidens to their most terrible god. As before stated, there were many tribes, consequently many languages, although some of them were near enough alike that members of different tribes could be readily understood. Also the characteristic traits varied in different tribes. It is not known whence they came, although their tradition points to the origin of the northwest. Undoubtedly, each tribe had a myth of its own origin, but, generally speaking, they all came from the northwest. Without doubt, at the time of the coming of the Spaniards, the tribes were non-progressive except in {192} government. The coming of the Spaniards was a rude shock to their civilization, and with a disintegration of the empire, the spirit of thrift and endeavor was quenched. They became, as it were, slaves to a people with so-called higher civilization, who at least had the tools with which to conquer if they had not higher qualities of human character than those of the conquered. _The Earliest Centres of Civilization in Mexico_.--Prior to the formation of the empire of the Aztecs, conquered by the Spaniards, there existed in Mexico centres of development of much greater antiquity. The more important among these were Yucatan and Mitla. A large number of the ruins of these ancient villages have been discovered and recorded. The groups of people who developed these contemporary civilizations were generally known as Toltecs. The Maya race, the important branch of the Toltecs, which had its highest development in Yucatan, was supposed to have come from a territory northeast of Mexico City, and traces of its migrations are discovered leading south and east into Yucatan. It is not known at what period these developments began, but probably their beginnings might have been traced back to 15,000 years, although the oldest known tablet found gives a record of 202 years B.C. Other information places their coming much later, at about 387 A.D. All through Central America and southern Mexico ruins of these ancient villages have been discovered. While the civilizations of all were contemporaneous, different centres show different lines of development. There is nothing certain concerning the origin of the Toltecs, and they seemed to have practically disappeared so far as independent tribal life existed after their conquest by the Aztecs, although the products of their civilization were used by many other tribes that were living under the Aztec rule, and, indeed, traces of their civilization exist to-day in the living races of southern and central Mexico. Tradition states that the Toltecs reached their highest state of power between the seventh and the twelfth {193} centuries, but progress in the interpretation of their hieroglyphics gives us but few permanent records. The development of their art was along the line of heavy buildings with bas-reliefs and walls covered with inscriptions recording history and religious symbols. One bas-relief represents the human head, with the facial angle shown at forty-five degrees. It was carved in stone of the hardest composition and was left unpainted. Ethnologists have tried repeatedly and in vain to show there was a resemblance of this American life to the Egyptian civilization. In art, architecture, and industry, in worship and the elements of knowledge, there may be some resemblance to Egyptian models, but there is no direct evidence sufficient to connect these art products with those of Egypt or to assume that they must have come from the same centre. The construction of pyramids and terraces on a large scale does remind us of the tendency of the Oriental type of civilization. In all of their art, however, there was a symmetrical or conventional system which demonstrated that the indigenous development must have been from a common centre. Out of the fifty-two cities that have been explored which exhibit the habitations of the Toltec civilization, many exhibit ruins of art and architecture worthy of study. In the construction of articles for use and ornament, copper and gold constituted the chief materials, and there was also a great deal of pottery. The art of weaving was practised, and the soil cultivated to a considerable extent. The family life was well developed, though polygamy appears to have been practised as a universal custom. The form of government was the developed family of the patriarchal type, and, where union of tribes had taken place, an absolute monarchy prevailed. War and conquest here, as in all other places where contact of tribes appeared, led to slavery. The higher classes had a large number of slaves, probably taken as prisoners of war. This indicates a degree of social progress in which enemies were preserved for slavery rather than exterminated in war. Their laws and regulations indicate a high sense of {194} justice in establishing the relationship of individuals within the tribe or nation. These people were still in the later Neolithic Age, but with signs of departure from this degree of civilization in the larger use of the metals. There were some indications that bronze might have been used in making ornaments. Perhaps they should be classified in the later Neolithic Age of the upper status of barbarism. Recent excavations in Central America, Yucatan, and more recently in the valley near Mexico City, have brought to light many new discoveries. Representations of early and later cultures show a gradual progress in the use of the arts, some of the oldest of which show a great resemblance to the early Mongolian culture of Asia. _The Pueblo Indians of the Southwest_.--In northern Mexico and Arizona there are remains of ancient buildings which seem to indicate that at one time a civilization existed here that has long since become extinct. Long before the arrival of the Spaniards, irrigation was practised in this dry territory. Indeed, in the Salt River valley of Arizona, old irrigation ditches were discovered on the lines of which now flow the waters that irrigate the modern orchards and vineyards. The discoveries in recent years in the southwest territory indicate that this ancient civilization had been destroyed by the warlike tribes that were ever ready to take possession of centres of culture and possess or destroy the accumulation of wealth of the people who toiled. If one could fill in the missing links of history with his imagination, it would be easy to conjecture that the descendants of these people fled to the mountains, and became the Cliff-Dwellers of the Southwest. These people built their homes high on the cliffs, in caves or on projecting prominences. Here they constructed great communal dwellings, where they could defend themselves against all enemies. They were obliged to procure their food and water from the valley, and to range over the surrounding _mesas_ in the hunt. Gradually they stole down out of the cliffs to live in the valleys and built large communal houses, many of which now are in existence in this territory. {195} These people have several centres of civilization which are similar in general, but differ in many particulars. They are classed as Pueblo Indians. Among these centres are the Hopi Indians, the Zuñian, Taoan, Shoshonean, and many others.[1] The pre-history of these widely extended groups of Indians is not known, but in all probability they have been crowded into this southwest arid region by warlike tribes, and for the shelter and protection of the whole tribe have built large houses of stone or adobe. The idea of protection seems to have been the dominant one in building the cliff houses and the adobe houses of the plain. The latter were entered by means of ladders placed upon the wall, so that they could ascend from one story to another. The first story had no doors or windows, but could be entered by means of a trap-door. The Pueblos were, as a rule, people of low stature, but of an intelligent and pleasing appearance. They dressed in cotton goods or garments woven from the fibre of the yucca plant, or from coarse bark, and later, under Spanish rule, from specially prepared wool. Their feet were protected by sandals made from the yucca, or moccasins from deer or rabbit skins. Leggings coming above the knee were formed by wrapping long strips of buckskin around the leg. The women and men dressed very much alike. The women banged their hair to the eyebrows, allowing it to hang loosely behind, although in some instances maidens dressed their hair with two large whirls above the ears. The Zuñi Indians practised this custom after the coming of the Spaniards. The Pueblos were well organized into clans, and descent in the female line was recognized. The clans were divided usually into the north, south, east, and west clans by way of designation, showing that the communal idea had been established with recognition of government by locality. Here, as elsewhere among the American aborigines, the clans were named after the animals chosen as their totem, but there were in addition {196} to these ordinary clans, the Sun clan, the Live Oak, the Turquoise, or others named from objects of nature. Each group of clans was governed by a priest chief, who had authority in all religious matters and, consequently, through religious influences, had large control in affairs pertaining to household government, and to social and political life in general. The duties and powers of these chiefs were carefully defined. The communal houses in which the people lived were divided into apartments for different clans and families. In some instances there was a common dining-hall for the members of the tribe. The men usually resided outside of the communal house, but came to the common dining-hall for their meals. There were many secret societies among these people which seemed to mingle religious and political sentiments. The members of these societies dwelt to a large extent in the Estufa, or Kiva, a large half-subterranean club-house where they could meet in secret. In every large tribe there were four to seven of these secret orders, and they were recognized as representing the various organizations. These "cult societies," so called by Mr. Powell, had charge of the mythical rites, the spirit lore, the mysteries, and the medicines of the part of the tribe which they represented. They conducted the ceremonies at all festivals and celebrations. It is difficult to determine the exact nature of their religion. It was a worship full of superstition, recognizing totemism and direct connection with the spirits of nature. Their religion was of a joyous nature, and always was associated with their games and feasts. The games were usually given in the celebration of some great event, or for some economic purpose, and were accompanied with dancing, music, pantomime, and symbolism. Perhaps of all of the North American Indians, the Pueblos showed the greatest fondness for music and had made some advancement in the arts of poetry and song. The noted snake dance, the green-corn dance, and the cachina all had at foundation an economic purpose. They were done ostensibly to gain the favor of the gods of nature. {197} When discovered by the Spaniards, the Pueblos had made good beginnings in agriculture and the industrial arts, were living in a state of peace and apparently contented, there seeming to be little war between the tribes. Their political organization in connection with the secret societies and their shamanistic religion gave them a good development of social order. After nearly 400 years of Spanish and American rule, they appear to have retained many of their original traits and characteristics, and cherish their ancient customs. Apparently the Spanish and the American civilization is merely a gloss over their ancient life which they seek every opportunity to express. They are to-day practically non-assimilative and live to a large extent their own life in their own way, although they have adopted a few of the American customs. While quite a large number of these villages are now to be seen very much in their primitive style of architecture and life, more than 3,000 architectural ruins in the Southwest, chiefly in Arizona and New Mexico, have been discovered. Many of them are partially obscured in the drifting sands, but they show attempts at different periods by different people to build homes. The devastation of flood and famine and the destruction of warlike tribes retarded their progress and caused their extinction. The Pueblo Indians were in the middle status of barbarism when the Spaniards arrived, and there they would have remained forever or become extinct had not the Spanish and American civilizations overtaken them. Even now self-determined progress seems not to possess them. However, through education the younger generations are being slowly assimilated into American life. But it appears that many generations will pass before their tribal life is entirely absorbed into a common democracy. _The Mound-Builders of the Mississippi Valley_.--At the coming of the Europeans this ancient people had nearly all disappeared. Only a few descendants in the southern part of the great valley of the Mississippi represented living traces of the Mound-Builders. They had left in their burial mounds {198} and monuments many relics of a high type of the Neolithic civilization which they possessed. As to their origin, history has no direct evidence. However, they undoubtedly were part of that great stream of early European migration to America which gradually spread down the Ohio valley and the upper Mississippi. At what time they flourished is not known, although their civilization was prehistoric when compared with that of the Algonquins, Athabascans, and Iroquois tribes that were in existence at the time of the coming of the Europeans. Although the tradition of these Indians traces them to the Southwest, and that they became extinct by being driven out by more savage and more warlike people, whence they came and whither they went are both alike open to conjecture. Their civilization was not very different from that of many other tribes of North American Indians. Their chief characteristic consisted in the building of extensive earth mounds as symbolical of their religious and tribal life. They also built immense enclosures for the purpose of fortification. Undoubtedly on the large mounds were originally built public houses or dwellings or temples for worship or burial. Those in the form of a truncated pyramid were used for the purposes of building sites for temples and dwellings, and those having circular bases and a conical shape were used as burial places. Besides these two kinds was another, called effigy mounds, which represented the form of some animal or bird, which undoubtedly was the totem of the tribe. These latter mounds were seldom more than three or four feet high, but were of great extent. They indicated the unity of the gens, either by representing it through the totem or a mythical ancestry. Other mounds of less importance were used in religious worship, namely, for the location of the altar to be used for sacrificial purposes. All were used to some extent as burial mounds. Large numbers of their implements made of quartz, chert, bone, and slate for the household and for the hunt have been found. They used copper to some extent, which was obtained in a free or native state and hammered into implements and ornaments. {199} Undoubtedly, the centre of the distribution of copper was the Lake Superior region, which showed that there was a diffusion of cultures from this centre at this early period. They made some progress in agriculture, cultivating maize and tobacco. Apparently their commerce with surrounding tribes was great, which no doubt gave them a variety of means of life. The pottery, judging from specimens that have been preserved, was inferior to that of the Mexicans or the Arizona Indians, but, nevertheless, in the lower Mississippi fine collections of pottery showing beautiful lines and a large number of designs were found. It fills one with wonder that a tribe of such power should have begun the arts of civilization and developed a powerful organization, and then have been so suddenly destroyed--why or how is not known. In all probability it is the old story of a sedentary group being destroyed by the more hardy, savage, and warlike conquerors. _Other Types of Indian Life_.--While the great centres of culture were found in Peru, Central America, Mexico, southwest United States, and the Mississippi valley, there were other cultures of a less pronounced nature worthy of mention. On the Pacific coast, in the region around Santa Barbara, are the relics of a very ancient tribe of Indians who had developed some skill in the making of pottery and exhibit other forms of industrial life. Recently an ancient skeleton has been discovered which seems to indicate a life of great antiquity. Nevertheless, it is a lower state of civilization than those of the larger centres already mentioned. Yet it is worthy of note that there was here started a people who had adopted village habits and attained a considerable degree of progress. Probably they were contemporary with other people of the most ancient civilizations of America. So far as the advancement of government is concerned, the Iroquois Indians of Canada and New York showed considerable advancement. As represented by Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, who made a careful study of the Iroquois, their tribal divisions and their federation of tribes show an advancement along {200} governmental lines extending beyond the mere family or tribal life. Their social order showed civil progress, and their industrial arts, in agriculture especially, were notable. _Why Did the Civilization of America Fail?_--There is a popular theory that the normal advancement of the Indian races of America was arrested or destroyed by the coming of the Europeans. Undoubtedly the contact of the higher civilization with the latter had much to do with the hastening of the decay of the former. The civilizations were so widely apart that it was not easy for the primitive or retarded race to adopt the civilization of the more advanced. But when it is assumed that if the Europeans had never come to the American continent, native tribes and races would eventually, of their own initiative, develop a high state of civilization, such an assumption is not well founded, because at the time of the coming of the Europeans there was no great show of progress. It seems as if no branch of the race could go forward very far without being destroyed by more warlike tribes. Or, if let alone, they seemed to develop a stationary civilization, reaching their limit, beyond which they could not go. As the races of Europe by specialization along certain lines became inadaptable to new conditions and passed away to give place to others, so it appears that this was characteristic of the civilization of America. Evidently the prehistoric Peruvians, Mexicans, Pueblos, and Mound-Builders had elements of civilization greater than the living warring Indian tribes which came in contact with the early European settlers in America. It may not be wise to enter a plea that all tribes and races have their infancy, youth, age, and decay, with extinction as their final lot, but it has been repeated so often in the history of the human race that one may assume it to be almost, if not quite, universal. The momentum of racial power gained by biological heredity and social achievement, reaches its limit when it can no longer adapt itself to new conditions, with the final end and inevitable result of extinction. The Nordic race, with all of its vigor and persistency, has {201} had a long and continuous life on account of its roving disposition and its perpetual contact with new conditions of its own choice. It has always had power to overcome, and its vigor has kept it exploiting and inventing and borrowing of others the elements of civilization, which have continually forced it forward. When it, too, reaches a state when it cannot adapt itself to new conditions, perhaps it will give way to some other branch of the human race, which, gathering new strength or new vigor from sources not available to the Nordic, will be able to overpower it; but the development of science and art with the power over nature, is greater in this race than in any other, and the maladies which destroy racial life are less marked than in other races. It would seem, then, that it still has great power of continuance and through science can adapt itself to nature and live on. But what would the American Indian have contributed to civilization? Would modern civilization have been as far advanced as now, had the Europeans found no human life at all on the American continent? True, the Europeans learned many things of the Indians regarding cultivation of maize and tobacco, and thus increased their food supply, but would they not have learned this by their own investigations, had there been no Indians to teach? The arts of pottery have been more highly developed by the Etruscans, the Aegeans, and the Greeks than by the American Indians. The Europeans had long since passed the Stone Age and entered the Iron Age, which they brought to the American Indians. But the studies of ethnology have been greatly enlarged by the fact of these peculiar and wonderful people, who exhibited so many traits of nobility of character in life. Perhaps it would not be liberal to say the world would have been just as well off had they never existed. At any rate, we are glad of the opportunity to study what their life was and what it was worth to them, and also its influence on the life and character of the Europeans. The most marked phases of this civilization are found in the development of basketry and pottery, and the exquisite work {202} in stone implements. Every conceivable shape of the arrow-head, the spear, the stone axe and hammer, the grinding board for grains, the bow-and-arrow, is evidence of the skill in handiwork of these primitive peoples. Also, the skill in curing and tanning hides for clothing, and the methods of hunting and trapping game are evidences of great skill. Perhaps, also, there is something in the primitive music of these people which not only is worthy of study but has added something to the music culture of more advanced peoples. At least, if pressed to learn the real character of man, we must go to primitive peoples and primitive life and customs. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. What contributions did the American Indians make to European civilization? 2. What are the chief physical and mental traits of the Indian? 3. What is the result of education of the Indian? 4. How many Indians are there in the United States? (_a_) Where are they located? (_b_) How many children in school? Where? 5. If the Europeans made a better use of the territory than did the Indians, had the Europeans the right to dispossess them? Did they use the right means to gain possession? 6. Study an Indian tribe of your own selection regarding customs, habits, government, religion, art, etc. [1] Recent discoveries in Nevada and Utah indicate a wide territorial extension of the Pueblo type. {205} _PART IV_ WESTERN CIVILIZATION CHAPTER XII THE OLD GREEK LIFE _The Old Greek Life Was the Starting Point of Western Civilization_.--Civilization is a continuous movement--hence there is a gradual transition from the Oriental civilization to the Western. The former finally merges into the latter. Although the line of demarcation is not clearly drawn, some striking differences are apparent when the two are placed in juxtaposition. Perhaps the most evident contrast is observed in the gradual freedom of the mind from the influences of tradition and religious superstition. Connected with this, also, is the struggle for freedom from despotism in government. It has been observed how the ancient civilizations were characterized by the despotism of priests and kings. It was the early privilege of European life to gradually break away from this form of human degradation and establish individual rights and individual development. Kings and princes, indeed, ruled in the Western world, but they learned to do so with a fuller recognition of the rights of the governed. There came to be recognized, also, free discussion as the right of people in the processes of government. It is admitted that the despotic governments of the Old World existed for the few and neglected the many. While despotism was not wanting in European civilization, the struggle to be free from it was the ruling spirit of the age. The history of Europe centres around this struggle to be free from despotism and traditional learning, and to develop freedom of thought and action. Among Oriental people the idea of progress was wanting in their philosophy. True, they had some notion of changes that take place in the conditions of political and social life, and in individual accomplishments, yet there was nothing hopeful in their presentation of the theory of life or in their practices {206} of religion; and the few philosophers who recognized changes that were taking place saw not in them a persistent progress and growth. Their eyes were turned toward the past. Their thoughts centred on traditions and things that were fixed. Life was reduced to a dull, monotonous round by the great masses of the people. If at any time a ray of light penetrated the gloom, it was turned to illuminate the accumulated philosophies of the past. On the other hand, in European civilization we find the idea of progress becoming more and more predominant. The early Greeks and Romans were bound to a certain extent by the authority of tradition on one side and the fixity of purpose on the other. At times there was little that was hopeful in their philosophy, for they, too, recognized the decline in the affairs of men. But through trial and error, new discoveries of truth were made which persisted until the revival of learning in the Middle Ages, at the time of the formation of new nations, when the ideas of progress became fully recognized in the minds of the thoughtful, and subsequently in the full triumph of Western civilization came the recognition of the possibility of continuous progress. Another great distinction in the development of European civilization was the recognition of humanity. In ancient times humanitarian spirit appeared not in the heart of man nor in the philosophy of government. Even the old tribal government was for the few. The national government was for selected citizens only. Specific gods, a special religion, the privilege of rights and duties were available to a few, while all others were deprived of them. This invoked a selfishness in practical life and developed a selfish system even among the leaders of ancient culture. The broad principle of the rights of an individual because he was human was not taken into serious consideration even among the more thoughtful. If he was friendly to the recognized god he was permitted to exist. If he was an enemy, he was to be crushed. On the other hand, the triumph of Western civilization is the recognition of the value of a human being and his right to engage in all human associations {207} for which he is fitted. While the Greeks came into contact with the older civilizations of Egypt and Asia, and were influenced by their thought and custom, they brought a vigorous new life which gradually dominated and mastered the Oriental influences. They had sufficient vigor and independence to break with tradition, wherever it seemed necessary to accomplish their purpose of life. _The Aegean Culture Preceded the Coming of the Greeks_.--Spreading over the islands of the Aegean Sea was a pre-Greek civilization known as Minoan. Its highest centre of development was in the Island of Crete, whose principal city was Cnossos. Whence these people came and what their ethnological classification are still unsettled.[1] They had a number of centres of development, which varied somewhat in type of culture. They were a dark-haired people, who probably came from Africa or Asia Minor, settling in Crete about 5,000 years B.C. It is thought by some that the Etruscans of Italy were of Aegean origin. Prior to the Minoans there existed a Neolithic culture throughout the islands of Greece. In the great city of Cnossos, which was sacked and burned about the fourteenth century B.C., were found ruins which show a culture of relatively high degree. By the excavations in Crete at this point a stratum of earth twenty feet thick was discovered, in which were found evidences of all grades of civilization, from the Neolithic implements to the highest Minoan culture. Palaces with frescoes and carvings, ornaments formed of metal and skilfully wrought vases with significant colorings, all evinced a civilization worthy of intensive study. These people had developed commerce and trade with Egypt, and their boats passed along the shores of the Mediterranean, carrying their civilization to Italy, northern Africa, and everywhere among the islands of Greece, as well as on the mainland. The cause of the decline of their civilization is {208} not known, unless it could be attributed to the Greek pirates who invaded their territory, and possibly, like all nations that decline, they were beset by internal maladies which marked their future destiny. Possibly, high specialization along certain lines of life rendered them unadaptable to new conditions, and they passed away because of this lack. _The Greeks Were of Aryan Stock_.--Many thousand years ago there appeared along the shores of the Baltic, at the beginning of the Neolithic period of culture, a group of people who seem to have come from central Asia. It is thought by some that these were at least the forerunners of the great Nordic race. Whatever conjectures there may be as to their origin, it is known that about 2,000 years before Christ, wandering tribes extended from the Baltic region far eastward to the Caspian Sea, to the north of Persia, down to the borderland of India. These people were of Caucasian features, with fair hair and blue eyes--a type of the Nordic race. They were known as the Aryan branch of the Caucasian race. Whether this was their primitive abode, or whether their ancestors had come at a much earlier time from a central home in northern Africa, which is considered by ethnologists as the centre from which developed the Caucasian race, is not known. They were not a highly cultured people, but were living a nomadic life, engaged in hunting, fishing, piratical exploits, and carrying on agriculture intermittently. They had also become acquainted with the use of metals, having passed during this period from the Neolithic into the Bronze Age. About the year 1500 B.C. they had become acquainted with iron, and about the same time had come into possession of the horse, probably through their contact with central Asia. The social life of these people was very simple. While they undoubtedly met and mingled with many tribes, they had a language sufficiently common for ordinary intercourse. They had no writing or means of records at all, but depended upon the recital of deeds of warriors and nations and tribes. Wherever the Aryan people have been found, whether in Greece, {209} Italy, Germany, along the Danube, central Asia, or India, they have been noted for their epics, sagas, and vedas, which told the tales of historic deeds and exploits of the tribal or national life. It is thought that this was the reason they developed such a strong and beautiful language. They came in contact with Semitic civilization in northern Persia, with the primitive tribes in Italy, with the Dravidian peoples of India, and represented the vigorous fighting power of the Scythians, Medes, and Persians. They or their kindred later moved up the Danube into Spain and France, with branches into Germany and Russia, and others finally into the British Islands. It was a branch of these people that came into the Grecian peninsula and overthrew and supplanted the Aegean civilization--where they were known as the Greeks. _The Coming of the Greeks_.--It is not known when they came down through Asia Minor. Not earlier than 2000 B.C. nor later than 1500 B.C. the invasion began. In successive waves came the Phrygians, Aeolians, the Ionians, and the Dorians--different divisions of the same race. Soon they spread over the mainland of Greece and all the surrounding islands, and established their trading cities along the borders of the Mediterranean Sea. These people, though uncultured, seemed to absorb culture wherever they went. They learned the methods of the civilization that had been established in the Orient wherever they came in contact with other peoples, and also in the Aegean country. In fact, though they conquered and occupied the Aegean country, they took on the best of the Minoan civilization.[2] As marauders, pirates, and conquerors, they were masterful, but they came in conflict with the ideas developed among the Semitic people of Asia and the Hamitic of Egypt. Undoubtedly, this conquest of the Minoan civilization furnished the origin of many of the tales or folklore that afterward were woven into the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ by {210} Homer. It is not known how early in Greek life these songs originated, but it is a known fact that in the eighth century the Greeks were in possession of their epics, and at this period not only had conquered the Minoan civilization but had absorbed it so far as they had use for it. They came into this territory in the form of the old tribal government, with their primitive social customs, and as they settled in different parts of the territory in tribes, they developed independent communities of a primitive sort. They had what was known in modern historical literature as the village community, which was always found in the primitive life of the Aryans. Their mode of life tended to develop individualism, and when the group life was established, it became independent and was lacking in co-operation--that is, it became a self-sufficient social order. Later in the development of the Greek life the individual, so far as political organization goes, was absorbed in the larger state, after it had developed from the old Greek family life. These primitive Greeks soon had a well-developed language. They began systematic agriculture, became skilled in the industrial arts, domesticated animals, and had a pure home life with religious sentiments of a high order. Wherever they went they carried with them the characteristics of nation-building and progressive life. They mastered the earth and its contents by living it down with force and vigor. The Greek peninsula was favorably situated for development. Protected on the north by a mountain range from the rigors of a northern climate and from the predatory tribes, with a range of mountains through the centre, with its short spurs cutting the entire country into valleys, in which were developed independent community states, circumstances were favorable to local self-government of the several tribes. This independent social life was of great importance in the development of Greek thought. In the north the grains and cereals were grown, and in the south the citrus and the orange. This wide range from a temperate to a semi-tropical climate {211} furnished a variety of fruits and diversity of life which gave great opportunity for development. The variety of scenery caused by mountain and valley and proximity to the sea, the thousand islands washed by the Aegean Sea, brought a new life which tended to impress the sensitive mind of the Greek and to develop his imagination and to advance culture in art. _Character of the Primitive Greeks_.--The magnificent development of the Greeks in art, literature, philosophy, and learning, together with the fortunate circumstance of having powerful writers, gives us rather an exaggerated notion of the Greeks, if we attempt to apply a lofty manner and a magnificent culture to the Homeric period. They had a good deal of piratical boldness, and, after the formation of their small states, gave examples of spurts of courage such as that at Marathon and Thermopylae. Yet these evidences were rare exceptions rather than the rule, for even the Spartan, trained on a military basis, seldom evinced any great degree of bravery. Perhaps the gloomy forebodings of the future, characteristic of the Greeks, made them fear death, and consequently caused them to lack in courage. However, this is a disputed point. Pages of the earlier records are full of the sanction of deception of enemies, friends, and strangers. Evidently, there was a low moral sense regarding truth. While the Greek might be loyal to his family and possibly to his tribe, there are many examples of disloyalty to one another, and, in the later development, a disloyalty of one state toward another. Excessive egoism seems to have prevailed, and this principle was extended to the family and local government group. Each group appeared to look out for its own interests, irrespective of the welfare of others. How much a united Greece might have done to have continued the splendors and the service of a magnificent civilization is open to conjecture. The Greeks were not sympathetic with children nor with the aged. Far from being anxious to preserve the life of the aged, their greatest trouble was in disposing of them. The honor and rights of women were not observed. In war women {212} were the property of their captors. Yet the home life of the Greeks seems to have been in its purity and loyalty an advance on the Oriental home life. In their treatment of servants and slaves, in the care of the aged and helpless, the Greeks were cold and without compassion. While the poets, historians, and philosophers have been portraying with such efficiency the character of the higher classes; while they have presented such a beautiful exterior of the old Greek life; the Greeks, in common with other primitive peoples, were not lacking in coarseness, injustice, and cruelty in their internal life. Here, as elsewhere in the beginnings of civilization, only the best of the real and the ideal of life was represented, while the lower classes were suffering a degraded life. The family was closely organized in Greece. Monogamic marriage and the exclusive home life prevailed at an early time. The patriarchal family, in which the oldest male member was chief and ruler, was the unit of society. Within this group were the house families, formed whenever a separate marriage took place and a separate altar was erected. The house religion was one of the characteristic features of Greek life. Each family had its own household gods, its own worship, its private shrine. This tended to unify the family and promote a sacred family life. A special form of ancestral worship, from the early Aryan house-spirit worship, prevailed to a certain extent. The worship of the family expanded with the expansion of social life. Thus the gens, and the tribe, and the city when founded, had each its separate worship. Religion formed a strong cement to bind the different social units of a tribe together. The worship of the Greeks was associated with the common meal and the pouring of libations to the gods. As religion became more general, it united to make a more common social practice, and in the later period of Greek life was made the basis of the games and general social gatherings. Religion brought the Greeks together in a social way, and finally led to the mutual advantage of members of society. {213} Later, mutual advantage superseded religion in its practice. The Greeks, at an early period, attempted to explain the origin of the earth and unknown phenomena by referring it to the supernatural powers. Every island had its myth, every phenomenon its god, and every mountain was the residence of some deity. They sought to find out the causes of the creation of the universe, and developed a theogony. There was the origin of the Greeks to be accounted for, and then the origin of the earth, and the relation of man to the deities. Everything must be explained, but as the imagination was especially strong, it was easier to create a god as a first cause than to ascertain the development of the earth by scientific study. _Influence of Old Greek Life_.--In all of the traditions and writings descriptive of the old Greek social life, with the exception of the _Works and Days_ of Hesiod, the aristocratic class appears uppermost. Hesiod "pictures a hopeless and miserable existence, in which care and the despair of better things tended to make men hard and selfish and to blot out those fairer features which cannot be denied to the courts and palaces of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_." It appears that the foundation of aristocracy--living in comparative luxury, in devotion to art and the culture of life--was early laid by the side of the foundation of poverty and wretchedness of the great mass of the people. While, then, the Greeks derived from their ancestry the beautiful pictures of heroic Greece, they inherited the evils of imperfect social conditions. As we pass to the historical period of Greece, these different phases of life appear and reappear in changeable forms. If to the nobleman life was full of inspiration; if poetry, religion, art, and politics gave him lofty thoughts and noble aspirations; to the peasant and the slave, life was full of misery and degradation. If one picture is to be drawn in glowing colors, let not the other be omitted. The freedom from great centralized government, the development of the individual life, the influences of the early ideas of art and life, and the religious conceptions, were of great importance in shaping the Greek philosophy and the Greek {214} national character. They had a tendency to develop men who could think and act. It is not surprising, therefore, that the first real historical period was characterized by struggles of citizens within the town for supremacy. Fierce quarrels between the upper and the lower classes prevailed everywhere, and resulted in developing an intense hatred of the former for the latter. This hatred and selfishness became the uppermost causes of action in the development of Greek social polity. Strife led to compromise, and this in turn to the recognition of the rights and privileges of different classes. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. The Aegean culture. 2. The relation of Greek to Egyptian culture. 3. What were the great Greek masterpieces of (_a_) Literature, (_b_) Sculpture, (_c_) Architecture, (_d_) Art, (_e_) Philosophy? 4. Compare Greek democracy with American democracy. 5. What historical significance have Thermopylae, Marathon, Alexandria, Crete, and Delphi? [1] Sergi, in his _Mediterranean Race_, says that they came from N. E. Africa. Beginning about 5000 years B.C., they gradually infiltrated the whole Mediterranean region. This is becoming the general belief among ethnologists, archaeologists, and historians. [2] Recent studies indicate that some of the Cretan inscriptions are prototypes of the Greece-Phoenician alphabet. The Phoenicians evidently derived the original characters of their alphabet from a number of sources. The Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet about 800-1000 B.C. {215} CHAPTER XIII GREEK PHILOSOPHY _The Transition from Theology to Inquiry_.--The Greek theology prepared the way for the Ionian philosophy. The religious opinions led directly up to the philosophy of the early inquirers. The Greeks passed slowly from accepting everything with a blind faith to the rational inquiry into the development of nature. The beginnings of knowing the scientific causes were very small, and sometimes ridiculous, yet they were of immense importance. To take a single step from the "age of credulity" toward the "age of reason" was of great importance to Greek progress. To cease to accept on faith the statements that the world was created by the gods, and ordered by the gods, and that all mysteries were in their hands, and to endeavor to find out by observation of natural phenomena something of the elements of nature, was to gradually break from the mythology of the past as explanatory of the creation. The first feeble attempt at this was to seek in a crude way the material structure and source of the universe. _Explanation of the Universe by Observation and Inquiry_.--The Greek mind had settled down to the fact that there was absolute knowledge of truth, and that cosmogony had established the method of creation; that theogony had accounted for the creation of gods, heroes, and men, and that theology had foretold their relations. A blind faith had accepted what the imagination had pictured. But as geographical study began to increase, doubts arose as to the preconceived constitution of the earth. As travel increased and it was found that none of the terrible creatures that tradition had created inhabited the islands of the sea or coasts of the mainland, earth lost its terrors and disbelief in the system of established {216} knowledge prevailed. Free inquiry was slowly substituted for blind credulity. This freedom of inquiry had great influence on the intellectual development of man. It was the discovery of truth through the relation of cause and effect, which he might observe by opening his eyes and using his reason. The development of theories of the universe through tradition and the imagination gave exercise to the emotions and beliefs; but change from faith in the fixity of the past to the future by observation led to intellectual development. The exercise of faith and the imagination even in unproductive ways prepared the way for broader service of investigation. But these standing alone could permit nothing more than a childish conception of the universe. They could not discover the reign of law. They could not advance the observing and reflecting powers of man; they could not develop the stronger qualities of his intellect. Individual action would be continually stultified by the process of accepting through credulity the trite sayings of the ancients. The attempt to find out how things were made was an acknowledgment of the powers of the individual mind. It was a recognition that man has a mind to use, and that there is truth around him to be discovered. This was no small beginning in intellectual development. _The Ionian Philosophy Turned the Mind Toward Nature_.--Greek philosophy began in the seventh century before Christ. The first philosopher of note was Thales, born at Miletus, in Asia Minor, about 640 B.C. Thales sought to establish the idea that water is the first principle and cause of the universe. He held that water is filled with life and soul, the essential element in the foundation of all nature. Thales had great learning for his time, being well versed in geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy. He travelled in Egypt and the Orient, and became acquainted with ancient lore. It is said that being impressed with the importance of water in Egypt, where the Nile is the source of all life, he was led to assert the importance of water in animate nature. In his attempts to break away from the {217} old cosmogony, he still exhibits traces of the old superstitions, for he regarded the sun and stars as living beings, who received their warmth and life from the ocean, in which they bathed at the time of setting. He held that the whole world was full of soul, manifested in individual daemons, or spirits. Puerile as his philosophy appears in comparison with the later development of Greek philosophy, it created violent antagonism with mythical theology and led the way to further investigation and speculation. Anaximander, born at Miletus 611 B.C., an astronomer and geographer, following Thales chronologically, wrote a book on "Nature," the first written on the subject in the philosophy of Greece. He held that all things arose from the "infinite," a primordial chaos in which was an internal energy. From a universal mixture things arose by separation, the parts once formed remaining unchanged. The earth was cylindrical in shape, suspended in the air in the centre of the universe, and the stars and planets revolved around it, each fastened in a crystalline ring; the moon and sun revolved in the same manner, only at a farther distance. The generation of the universe was by the action of contraries, by heat and cold, the moist and the dry. From the moisture all things were originally generated by heat. Animals and men came from fishes by a process of evolution. There is evidence in his philosophy of a belief in the development of the universe by the action of heat and cold on matter. It is also evident that the principles of biology and the theory of evolution are hinted at by this philosopher. Also, he was the first to observe the obliquity of the ecliptic; he taught that the moon received its light from the sun and that the earth is round. Anaximenes, born at Miletus 588 B.C., asserted that air was the first principle of the universe; indeed, he held that on it "the very earth floats like a broad leaf." He held that air was infinite in extent; that it touched all things, and was the source of life of all. The human soul was nothing but air, since life consists in inhaling and exhaling, and when this is no longer {218} continued death ensues. Warmth and cold arose from rarefaction and condensation, and probably the origin of the sun and planets was caused by the rarefaction of air; but when air underwent great condensation, snow, water, and hail appeared, and, indeed, with sufficient condensation, the earth itself was formed. It was only a step further to suppose that the infinite air was the source of life, the god of the universe. Somewhat later Diogenes of Apollonia asserted that all things originated from one essence, and that air was the soul of the world, eternal and endowed with consciousness. This was an attempt to explain the development of the universe by a conscious power. It led to the suggestion of psychology, as the mind of man was conscious air. "But that which has knowledge is what men call air; it is it that regulates all and governs all, and hence it is the use of air to pervade all, and to dispose all, and to be in all, for there is nothing that has not part in it." Other philosophers of this school reasoned or speculated upon the probable first causes in the creation. In a similar manner Heraclitus asserted that fire was the first principle, and states as the fundamental maxim of his philosophy that "all is convertible into fire, and fire into all." There was so much confusion in his doctrines as to give him the name of "The Obscure." "The moral system of Heraclitus was based on the physical. He held that heat developed morality, moisture immorality. He accounted for the wickedness of the drunkard by his having a moist soul, and inferred that a warm, dry soul was noblest and best." Anaxagoras taught the mechanical processes of the universe, and advanced many theories of the origin of animal life and of material objects. Anaxagoras was a man of wealth, who devoted all of his time and means to philosophy. He recognized two principles, one material and the other spiritual, but failed to connect the two, and in determining causes he came into open conflict with the religion of the times, and asserted that the "divine miracles" were nothing more than natural {219} causes. He was condemned for his atheism and thrown into prison, but, escaping, he was obliged to end his days in exile. Another notable example of the early Greek philosophy is found in Pythagoras, who asserted that number was the first principle. He and his followers found that the "whole heaven was a harmony of number." The Pythagoreans taught that all comes from one, but that the odd number is finite, the even infinite; that ten was a perfect number. They sought for a criterion of truth in the relation of numbers. Nothing could exist or be formed without harmony, and this harmony depended upon number, that is, upon the union of contrary elements. The musical octave was their best example to illustrate their meaning. The union of the atoms in modern chemistry illustrates in full the principle of number after which they were striving. It emphasized the importance of measurements in investigation. Much more might be said about the elaborate system of the Pythagoreans; but the main principle herein stated must suffice. _The Weakness of Ionian Philosophy_.--Viewed from the modern standpoint of scientific research, the early philosophers of Greece appear puerile and insignificant. They directed their thoughts largely toward nature, but instead of systematic observation and comparison they used the speculative and hypothetical methods to ascertain truth. They had turned from the credulity of ancient tradition to simple faith in the mind to determine the nature and cause of the universe. But this was followed by a scepticism as to the sense perception, a scepticism which could only be overcome by a larger observation of facts. Simple as it appears, this process was an essential transition from the theology of the Greeks to the perfected philosophy built upon reason. The attitude of the mind was of great value, and the attention directed to external nature was sure to turn again to man, and the supernatural. While there is a mixture of the physical, metaphysical, and mystical, the final lesson to be learned is the recognition of reality of nature as external to mind. {220} _The Eleatic Philosophers_.--About 500 B.C., and nearly contemporary with the Pythagoreans, flourished the Eleatic philosophers, among whom Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, and Melissus were the principal leaders. They speculated about the nature of the mind, or soul, and departed from the speculations respecting the origin of the earth. The nature of the infinite and the philosophy of being suggested by the Ionian philosophers were themes that occupied the attention of this new school. Parmenides believed in the knowledge of an absolute being, and affirmed the unity of thought and being. He won the distinction of being the first logical philosopher among the Greeks, and was called the father of idealism. Zeno is said to have been the most remarkable of this school. He held that if there was a distinction between _being_ and _not being_, only _being_ existed. This led him to the final assumption that the laws of nature are unchangeable and God remains permanent. His method of reasoning was to reduce the opposite to absurdity. Upon the whole, the Eleatic philosophy is one relating to knowledge and being, which considered thought primarily as dependent upon being. It holds closely to monism, that is, that nature and mind are of the same substance; yet there is a slight distinction, for there is really a dualism expressed in knowledge and being. Many other philosophers followed, who discoursed upon nature, mind, and being, but they arrived at no definite conclusions. The central idea in the early philosophy up to this time was to account for the existence and substance of nature. It gave little consideration to man in himself, and said little of the supernatural. Everything was speculative in nature, hypothetical in proposition, and deductive in argument. The Greek mind, departing from its dependence upon mythology, began boldly to assert its ability to find out nature, but ended in a scepticism as to its power to ascertain certainty. There was a final determination as to the distinction of reality as external to mind, and this represents the best product of the early philosophers. {221} _The Sophists_.--Following the Eleatics was a group of philosophers whose principle characteristic was scepticism. Man, not nature, was the central idea in their philosophy, and they changed the point of view from objective to subjective contemplation. They accomplished very little in their speculation except to shift the entire attitude of philosophy from external nature to man. They were interested in the culture of the individual, yet, in their psychological treatment of man, they relied entirely upon sense perception. In the consideration of man's ethical nature they were individualistic, considering private right and private judgment the standards of truth. They led the way to greater speculation in this subject and to a higher philosophy. _Socrates the First Moral Philosopher (b. 469 B.C.)_.--Following the sophists in the progressive development of philosophy, Socrates turned his attention almost exclusively to human nature. He questioned all things, political, ethical, and theological, and insisted upon the moral worth of the individual man. While he cast aside the nature studies of the early philosophy and repudiated the pseudo-wisdom of the sophists, he was not without his own interpretation of nature. He was interested in questions pertaining to the order of nature and the wise adaptation of means to an end. Nature is animated by a soul, yet it is considered as a wise contrivance for man's benefit rather than a living, self-determining organism. In the subordination of all nature to the good, Socrates lays the foundation of natural theology. But the ethical philosophy of Socrates is more prominent and positive. He asserted that scientific knowledge is the sole condition to virtue; that vice is ignorance. Hence virtue will always follow knowledge because they are a unity. His ethical principles are founded on utility, the good of which he speaks is useful, and is the end of individual acts and aims. Wisdom is the foundation of all virtues; indeed, every virtue is wisdom. Socrates made much of friendship and love, and thought temperance to be the fundamental virtue. Without {222} temperance, men were not useful to themselves or to others, and temperance meant the complete mastery of self. Friendship and love were cardinal points in the doctrine of ethical life. The proper conduct of life, justice in the treatment of man by his fellow-man, and the observance of the duties of citizenship, were part of the ethical philosophy of Socrates. Beauty is only another name for goodness, but it is only a harmony or adaptation of means to an end. The Socratic method of ascertaining truth by the art of suggestive questioning was a logical mode of procedure. The meeting of individuals in conversation was a method of arriving at the truth of ethical conduct and ethical relations. It was made up of induction and definition. No doubt the spirit of his teaching was sceptical in the extreme. While having a deeper sense of the reality of life than others, he realized that he did not know much. He criticized freely the prevailing beliefs, customs, and religious practice. For this he was accused of impiety, and forced to drink the hemlock. With an irony in manner and thought, Socrates introduced the problem of self-knowledge; he hastened the study of man and reason; he instituted the doctrine of true manhood as an essential part in the philosophy of life. Conscience was enthroned, and the moral life of man began with Socrates. _Platonic Philosophy Develops the Ideal_.--Plato was the pupil of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle. These three represent the culmination of Greek philosophy. In its fundamental principles the Platonic philosophy represents the highest flight of the mind in its conception of being and of the nature of mind and matter, entertained by the philosophers. The doctrine of Plato consisted of three primary principles: matter, ideas, and God. While matter is co-eternal with God, he created all animate and inanimate things from matter. Plato maintained that there was a unity in design. And as God was an independent and individual creator of the world, who fashioned the universe, and is father to all creatures, there was unity in God. Plato advanced the doctrine of reminiscences, {223} in which he accounted for what had otherwise been termed innate ideas. Plato also taught, to a certain extent, the transmigration of souls. He was evidently influenced in many ways by the Indian philosophy; but the special doctrine of Plato made ideas the most permanent of all things. Visible things are only fleeting shadows, which soon pass away; only ideas remain. The universal concept, or notion, is the only real thing. Thus the perfect globe is the concept held in the mind; the marble, ball, or sphere of material is only an imperfect representation of the same. The horse is a type to which all individual horses tend to conform; they pass away, but the type remains. His work was purely deductive. His major premise was accepted on faith rather than determined by his reason. Yet in philosophical speculations the immortality of the soul, future rewards and punishments, the unity of the creation and the unity of the creator, and an all-wise ruler of the universe, were among the most important points of doctrine. _Aristotle the Master Mind of the Greeks_.--While Aristotle and Plato sought to prove the same things, and agreed with each other on many principles of philosophy, the method employed by the former was exactly the reverse of that of the latter. Plato founded his doctrine on the unity of all being, and observed the particular only through the universal. For proof he relied on the intuitive and the synthetic. Aristotle, on the contrary, found it necessary to consider the particular in order that the universal might be established. He therefore gathered facts, analyzed material, and discoursed upon the results. He was patient and persistent in his investigations, and not only gave the world a great lesson by his example, but he obtained better results than any other philosopher of antiquity. It is generally conceded that he showed the greatest strength of intellect, the deepest insight, the greatest breadth of speculative thought, and the clearest judgment of all philosophers, either ancient or modern. Perhaps his doctrine of the necessity of a final cause, or sufficient reason, which gives a rational explanation of individual {224} things, is Aristotle's greatest contribution to pure philosophy. The doctrine of empiricism has been ascribed to Aristotle, but he fully recognized the universal, and thought it connected with the individual, and not separated from it, as represented by Plato. The universal is self-determining in its individualization, and is, therefore, a process of identification rather than of differentiation. The attention which Aristotle gave to fact as opposed to theory, to investigation as opposed to speculation, and to final cause, led men from a condition of necessity to that of freedom, and taught philosophers to substantiate their theories by reason and by fact. There is no better illustration of his painstaking investigation than his writing 250 constitutional histories as the foundation of his work on "Politics." In this masterly work will be found an exposition of political theories and practice worthy the attention of all modern political philosophers. The service given by Aristotle to the learning of the Middle Ages, and, in fact, to modern philosophy, was very great. Aristotle was of a more practical turn of mind than Plato. While he introduced the formal syllogism in logic, he also introduced the inductive method. Perhaps Aristotle represented the wisest and most learned of the Greeks, because he advanced beyond the speculative philosophy to a point where he attempted to substantiate theory by facts, and thus laid the foundation for comparative study. _Other Schools_.--The Epicureans taught a philosophy based upon pleasure-seeking--or, as it may be stated, making happiness the highest aim of life. They said that to seek happiness was to seek the highest good. This philosophy in its pure state had no evil ethical tendency, but under the bad influences of remote followers of Epicurus it led to the degeneration of ethical practice. "Beware of excesses," says Epicurus, "for they will lead to unhappiness." Beware of folly and sin, for they lead to wretchedness. Nothing could have been better than this, until people began to follow sensuality as the immediate return of efforts to secure happiness. Then it led to {225} corruption, and was one of the causes of the downfall of Greek as well as the Roman civilization. The Stoics were a group of philosophers who placed great emphasis upon ethics in comparison with logic and physics. They looked on the world from the pessimistic side and made themselves happy by becoming martyrs. They taught that suffering, the endurance of pain without complaint, was the highest virtue. To them logic was the science of thought and of expression, physics was the science of nature, and ethics the science of the good. All ideas originated from sensation, and perception was the only criterion of truth. "We know only what we perceive (by sense); only those ideas contain certain knowledge for us which are ideas of real objects." The soul of man was corporeal and material, hence physics and metaphysics were almost identical. There is much incoherency in their philosophy; it abounds in paradoxes. For instance, it recognizes sense as the criterion and source of knowledge, and asserts that reason is universal and knowable. Yet it asserts that there is no rational element in sense that is universal. It confuses individual human nature and universal nature, though its final result was to unite both in one concept. The result of their entire philosophy was to create confusion, although they had much influence on the practical life. The Sceptics doubted all knowledge obtained by the senses. There was no criterion of truth in the intellect, consequently no knowledge. If truth existed it was in conduct, and thus the judgment must be suspended. They held that there was nothing that could be determined of specific nature, nothing that could be of certainty. Eventually the whole Greek philosophy went out in scepticism. The three schools, the sceptic, the Epicurean, and the stoic, though widely differing in many ways, agreed upon one thing, in basing their philosophy on subjectivity, on mind rather than on objective nature. _Results Obtained in Greek Philosophy_.--The philosophical conclusions aimed at by the Greeks related to the origin and destiny of the world. The world is an emanation from God, {226} and in due time it will return to Him. It may be considered as a part of the substance of God, or it may be considered as something objective proceeding from him. The visible world around us becomes thus but an expression of the God mind. But as it came forth a thing of beauty, so it will return again to Him after its mission is fulfilled. On the existence and attributes of God the Greeks dwelt with great force. There is established first a unity of God, and this unity is the first cause in the creation. To what extent this unity is independent and separate in existence from nature, is left in great doubt. It was held that God is present everywhere in nature, though His being is not limited by time or space. Much of the philosophy bordered upon, if it did not openly avow, a belief in pantheism. The highest conception recognizes design in creation, which would give an individual existence to the Creator. Yet the most acute mind did not depart from the assumption of the idea of an all-pervading being of God extending throughout the universe, mingling with nature and to a certain extent inseparable from it. In their highest conception the most favored of the Greeks were not free from pantheistic notions. The nature of the soul occupied much of the attention of the Greeks. They began by giving material characteristics to the mind. They soon separated it in concept from material nature and placed it as a part of God himself, who existed apart from material form. The soul has a past life, a present, and a future, as a final outcome of philosophical speculations. The attributes of the soul were confused with the attributes of the Supreme Being. These conceptions of the Divine Being and of the soul border on the Hindu philosophy. Perhaps the subject which caused the most discussion was the attempt to determine a criterion of truth. Soon after the time when they broke away from the ancient religious faith, the thinkers of Greece began to doubt the ability of the mind to ascertain absolute truth. This arose out of the imperfections of knowledge obtained through the senses. Sense perception {227} was held in much doubt. The world is full of delusions. Man thinks he sees when he does not. The rainbow is but an illusion when we attempt to analyze it. The eye deceives, the ear hears what does not exist; even touch and taste frequently deceive us. What, then, can be relied upon as accurate in determining knowledge? To this the Greek mind answers, "Nothing"; it reaches no definite conclusion, and this is the cardinal weakness of the philosophy. Indeed, the great weakness of the entire age of philosophy was want of data. It was a time of intense activity of the mind, but the lack of data led to much worthless speculation. The systematic method of scientific observation had not yet been discovered. But how could this philosophical speculation affect civilization? It determined the views of life entertained by the Greeks, and human progress depended upon this. The progress of the world depends upon the attitude of the human mind toward nature, toward man and his life. The study of philosophy developed the mental capacity of man, gave him power to cope with nature, and enhanced his possibility of right living. More than this, it taught man to rely upon himself in explaining the origin and growth of the universe and the development of human life. Though these points were gained only by the few and soon lost sight of by all, yet they were revived in after years, and placed man upon the right basis for improvement. The quickening impulse of philosophy had its influence on art and language. The language of the Greeks stands as their most powerful creation. The development of philosophy enlarged the scope of language and increased its already rich vocabulary. Art was a representation of nature. The predominance given to man in life, the study of heroes and gods, gave ideal creations and led to the expression of beauty. Philosophy, literature, language, and art, including architecture, represent the products of Greek civilization, and as such have been the lasting heritage of the nations that have followed. The philosophy and practice of social life and government {228} received a high development in Greece. They will be treated in a separate chapter. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. What was the importance of Socrates' teaching? Why was he put to death? 2. What has been the influence of Plato's teaching on modern life? 3. Why is Aristotle considered the greatest of the Greeks? 4. What was the influence of the library at Alexandria? 5. What caused the decline in Greek philosophy? 6. What was the influence on civilization of the Greek attitudes of mind toward nature? 7. Compare the use of Greek philosophy with modern science as to their value in education. {229} CHAPTER XIV THE GREEK SOCIAL POLITY _The Struggle for Greek Equality and Liberty_.--The greater part of the activity of Western nations has been a struggle for social equality and for political and religious liberty. These phases of European social life are clearly discerned in the development of the Greek states. The Greeks were recognized as having the highest intellectual culture and the largest mental endowments of all the ancients, characteristics which gave them great prestige in the development of political life and social philosophy. The problem of how communities of people should live together, their relations to one another, and their rights, privileges, and duties, early concerned the philosophers of Greece; but more potent than all the philosophies that have been uttered, than all of the theories concerning man's social relation, is the vivid portrayal of the actual struggle of men to live together in community life, pictured in the course of Grecian history. In the presentation of this life, writers have differed much in many ways. Some have eulogized the Greeks as a liberty-loving people, who sought to grant rights and duties to every one on an altruistic basis; others have pictured them as entirely egoistic, with a morality of a narrow nature, and with no sublime conception of the relation of the rights of humanity as such. Without entering into a discussion of the various views entertained by philosophers concerning the characteristics of the Greeks, it may be said that, with all their noble characteristics, the ideal pictures which are presented to us by the poet, the philosopher, and the historian are too frequently of the few, while the great mass of the people remained in a state of ignorance, superstition, and slavery. With a due recognition of the existence of the germs of democracy, {230} we find that Greece, after all, was in spirit an aristocracy. There was an aristocracy of birth, of wealth, of learning, and of hereditary power. While we must recognize the greatness of the Greek life in comparison with that of Oriental nations, it must still be evident to us that the best phases of this life and the magnificent features of Greek learning have been emphasized much by writers, while the wretched and debasing conditions of the people of Greece have seldom been recounted. _The Greek Government an Expanded Family_.--The original family was ruled by the father, who acted as king, priest, and lawgiver. As long as life lasted he had supreme control over all members of his family, whether they were so by birth or adoption. All that they owned, all of the products of their hands, all the wealth of the family, belonged to him; even their lives were at his disposal. As the family becomes stronger and is known as a gens, it represents a close, compact organization, looking after its own interests, and with definite customs concerning its own government. As the gentes are multiplied they form tribes, and the oldest male member of the tribal group acts as its leader and king, while the heads of the various gentes thus united become his counsellors and advisers in later development, and the senate after democratic government organization takes place. As time passes the head of this family is called a king or chief, and rules on the ground that he has descended from the gods, is under the divine protection, and represents the oldest aristocratic family in the tribe. In the beginning this tribal chief holds unlimited sway over all of his subjects. But to maintain his power well he must be a soldier who is able to command the forces in war; he must be able to lead in the councils with the chiefs and, when occasion requires, discuss matters with the people. Gradually passing from the ancient hereditary power, he reaches a stage when it becomes a custom to consult with all the chiefs of the tribe in the management of the affairs. The earliest picture of Greek government represents a king who is equal in birth with {231} other heads of the gentes, presiding over a group of elders deliberating upon the affairs of the state. The influence of the nobles over whom he presided must have been great. It appears that the king or chief must convince his associates in council before any decision could be considered a success. The second phase of Greek government represents this same king as appearing in the assembly of all the people and presenting for their consideration the affairs of the state. It is evident from this that, although he was a hereditary monarch, deriving his power from aristocratic lineage traced even to the gods themselves, he was responsible to the people for his government, and this principle extends all the way through the development of Greek social and political life. The right to free discussion of affairs in open council, the right to object to methods of procedure, were cardinal principles in Greek politics; but while the great mass of people were not taken into account in the affairs of the government, there was an equality among all those called citizens which had much to do with the establishment of the civil polity of all nations. The whole Greek political life, then, represents the slow evolution from aristocratic government of hereditary chiefs toward a complete democracy, which unfortunately it failed to reach before the decline of the Greek state. As before related, the Greeks had established a large number of independent communities which developed into small states. These small states were mostly isolated from one another, hence they developed an independent social and political existence. This was of great consequence in the establishing of the character of the Greek government. In the first place, the kings, chiefs, and rulers were brought closely in contact with the people. Everybody knew them, understood the character of the men, realizing that they had passions and prejudices similar to other men, and that, notwithstanding they were elevated to positions of power, they nevertheless were human beings like the people themselves. This led to a democratic feeling. {232} Again, the development of these separate small states led to great diversity of government. All kinds of government were exercised in Greece, from the democracy to the hereditary monarchy. Many of these governments passed in their history through all stages of government to be conceived of--the monarchy, absolute and constitutional, the aristocracy, the oligarchy, the tyranny, the democracy, and the polity. All phases of politics had their representation in the development of the Greek life. In a far larger way the development of these isolated communities made local self-government the primary basis of the state. When the Greek had developed his own small state he had done his duty so far as government was concerned. He might be on friendly terms with the neighboring states, especially as they might use the same language as his own and belonged to the same race, but he could in no way be responsible for the success or the failure of men outside of his community. This was many times a detriment to the development of the Greek race, as the time arrived when it should stand as a unit against the encroachments of foreign nations. No unity of national life found expression in the repulsion of the Persians, no unity in the Peloponnesian war, no unity in the defense against the Romans; indeed, the Macedonians found a divided people, which made conquering easy. There was another phase of this Greek life worthy of notice: the fact that it developed extreme selfishness and egoism respecting government. We shall find in this development, in spite of the pretensions for the interests of the many, that government existed for the few; notwithstanding the professions of an enlarged social life, we shall find a narrowness almost beyond belief in the treatment of Greeks by one another in the social life. It is true that the recognition of citizenship was much wider than in the Orient, and that the individual life of man received more marked attention than in any ancient despotism; yet, after all, when we recognize the multitudes of slaves, who were considered not worthy to take part in {233} government affairs, the numbers of the freedmen and non-citizens, and realize that the few who had power or privilege of government looked with disdain upon all others, it gives us no great enthusiasm for Greek democracy when compared with the modern conception of that term. As Mr. Freeman says in his _Federal Government_, the citizen "looked down upon the vulgar herd of slaves, the freedmen and unqualified residents, as his own plebeian fathers had been looked down upon by the old Eupatrides in the days of Cleisthenes and Solon." Whatever phase of this Greek society we discuss, we must not forget that there was a large class excluded from rights of government, and that the few sought always to maintain their own rights and privileges supported by the many, and the pretensions of an enlarged privilege of citizenship had little effect in changing the actual conditions of the aristocratic government. _The Athenian Government a Type of Grecian Democracy_.--Indeed, it was the only completed government in Greece. The civilization of Athens shows the character of the Greek race in its richest and most beautiful development. Here art, learning, culture, and government reached their highest development. It was a small territory that surrounded the city of Athens, containing a little over 850 English square miles, possibly less, as some authorities say. The soil was poor, but the climate was superb. It was impossible for the Athenian to support a high civilization from the soil of Attica, hence trade sprang up and Athens grew wealthy on account of its great maritime commerce. The population of all Attica in the most flourishing times was about 500,000 people, 150,000 of whom were slaves, 45,000 settlers, or unqualified people, while the free citizens did not exceed 90,000--so that the equality so much spoken of in Grecian democracies belonged to only 90,000 out of 500,000, leaving 410,000 disfranchised. The district was thickly populous for Greece, and the stock of the Athenian had little mixture of foreign blood in it. The city itself was formed of {234} villages or cantons, united into one central government. These appear to be survivals of the old village communities united under the title of city-state. It was the perfection of this city-state that occupied the chief thought of the Athenian political philosophers. The ancient kingship of Athens passed, on deposition of the last of the Medoutidae, about 712 B.C., into the hands of the nobles. This was the first step in the passage from monarchy toward democracy; it was the beginning of the foundation of the republican constitution. In 682 B.C. the government passed into the hands of nine archons, chosen from all the rest of the nobles. It was a movement on the part of the nobles to obtain a partition of the government, while the common people were not improved at all by the process. The kings, indeed, in the ancient time made a better government for the people than did the nobles. The people at this period were in great trouble. The nobles had loaned money to their wretched neighbors and, as the law was very strict, the creditor might take possession of the property and even of the person of the debtor, making of him a slave. In this way the small proprietors had become serfs, and the masters took from them five-sixths of the products of the soil, and would, no doubt, have taken their lands had these not been inalienable. Sometimes the debtors were sold into foreign countries as slaves, and at other times their children were taken as slaves according to the law. On account of the oppression of the poor by the nobility, there sprang up a hatred between these two classes. A few changes were made by the laws of Draco and others, but nothing gave decided relief to the people. The nine archons, representing the power of the state, managed nearly all of its affairs, and retained likewise their seats in the council of nobles. The old national council formed by the aristocratic members of the community still retained its hold, and the council of archons, though it divided the country into administrative districts and sought to secure more specific {235} management of the several districts, failed to keep down internal disorders or to satisfy the people. The people were formed into three classes: the wealthy nobility, or land-owners of the plain, the peasants of the mountains districts, and the people of the coast country, the so-called middle classes. The hatred of the nobility by the peasants of the mountains was intense. The nobles demanded their complete suppression and subordination to the rule of their own class. The people of the coast would have been contented with moderate concessions from the nobility, which would give them a part in the government and leave them unmolested. _Constitution of Solon Seeks a Remedy_.--Such was the condition of affairs when Solon proposed his reforms. He sought to remove the burdens of the people, first, by remitting all fines which had been imposed; second, by preventing the people from offering their persons as security against debt; and third, by depreciating the coin so as to make payment of debt easy. He replaced the Pheidonian talent by that of the Euboic coinage, thus increasing the debt-paying capacity of money twenty-seven per cent, or, in other words, reduced the debt about that amount. It was further provided that all debts could be paid in three annual instalments, thus allowing poor farmers with mortgages upon their farms an opportunity to pay their debts. There was also granted an amnesty to all persons who had been condemned to payment of money penalties. By further measures the exclusive privileges of the old nobility were broken down, and a new government established on the basis of wealth. People were divided into classes according to their property, and their privileges in government, as well as their taxes, were based upon these classes. Revising the old council of 401, Solon established a council (Boule) of 400, 100 from each district. These were probably elected at first, but later were chosen by lot. The duties of this council were to prepare all business for passage in the popular assembly. No business could come before the assembly of the people except by decree of the council, and in nearly {236} every case the council could decide what measures should be brought before the assembly. While in some instances the law made it obligatory for certain cases to be brought before the assembly, there were some measures which could be disposed of by the council without reference to the assembly. The administration of justice was distributed among the nine archons, each one of whom administered some particular department. The archon as judge could dispose of matters or refer them to an arbitrator for decision. In every case the dissatisfied party had a right to appeal to the court made up of a collective body of 6,000 citizens, called the Heliaea. This body was annually chosen from the whole body of citizens, and acted as jurors and judges. In civil matters the services of the Heliaea were slight. They consisted in holding open court on certain matters appealed to them from the archons. In criminal matters the Heliaea frequently acted immediately as a sole tribunal, whose decision was final. It is one of the remarkable things in the Greek polity that the supreme court or court of appeals should be elected from the common people, while in other courts judges should hold their offices on account of position. Solon also recognized what is known as the Council of the Areopagus. The functions of this body had formerly belonged to the old council included in the Draconian code. The Council of the Areopagus was formed from the ex-archons who had held the office without blame. It became a sort of supreme advisory council, watching over the whole collective administration. It took account of the behavior of the magistrates in office and of the proceedings of the public assembly, and could interpose in other cases when, in its judgment, it thought it necessary. It could advise as to the proper conducting of affairs and criticise the process of administration. It could also administer private discipline and call citizens to account for their individual acts. In this respect it somewhat resembled the Ephors of Sparta. {237} The popular assembly would meet and consider the questions put before it by the council, voting yes or no, but the subject was not open for discussion. However, it was possible for the assembly to bring other subjects up for discussion and, through motion, refer them to the consideration of the council. It was also possible to attach to the proposition of the council a motion, called in modern terms "a rider," and thus enlarge upon the work of the council; but it was so arranged that the preponderance of all the offices went to the nobility and that the council be made up of this class, and hence there was no danger that the government would fall into the hands of the people. Solon claimed to have put into the hands of the people all the power that they deserved, and to have established numerous checks on government which made it possible for each group of people to be well represented. Thus the council limited the power of the assembly, the Areopagus supervised the council, while the courts of the people had the final decision in cases of appeal. As is well known, Solon could not carry out his own reforms, but was forced to leave the country. Had he been of a different nature and at once seized the government, or appealed to the people, as did his successor, Pisistratus, he might have made his measures of reform more effective. As it was, he was obliged to leave their execution to others. _Cleisthenes Continues the Reforms of Solon_.--Some years later (509 B.C.) Cleisthenes instituted other reforms, increasing the council to 500, the members of which might be drawn from the first three classes rather than the first, limiting the archonship to the first class, and breaking up the four ancient tribes formed from the nobility. He formed ten new tribes of religious and political unions, thus intending to break down the influence of the nobility. Although the popular assembly was composed of all citizens of the four classes, the functions of this body in the early period were very meagre. It gave them the privilege of voting on the principal affairs of the nation when the council desired them to assume the responsibility. The {238} time for holding it was in the beginning indefinite, it being only occasionally convened, but in later times there were ten[1] assemblies in each year, when business was regularly placed before it. Meetings were held in the market-place at first; later a special building was erected for this purpose. Sometimes, however, special assemblies were held elsewhere. The assembly was convoked by the prytanes, while the right of convoking extraordinary assemblies fell to the lot of the strategi. There were various means for the compulsion of the attendance of the crowd. There was a fine for non-attendance, and police kept out people who ought not to appear. Each assembly opened with religious service. Usually sucking pigs were sacrificed, which were carried around to purify the place, and their blood was sprinkled over the floor. This ceremony was followed by the offering of incense. This having been done, the president stated the question to be considered and summoned the people to vote. As the assembly developed in the advanced stage of Athenian life, every member in good standing had a right to speak. The old men were called upon first and then the younger men. This discussion was generally upon open questions, and not upon resolutions prepared by the council, though amendments to these resolutions were sometimes allowed. No speaker could be interrupted except by the presiding officer, and no member could speak more than once. As each speaker arose, he mounted the rostrum and placed a wreath of myrtle upon his head, which signified that he was performing a duty to the state. The Greeks appear to have developed considerable parliamentary usage and to have practised a system of voting similar to our ballot reform. Each individual entered an enclosure and voted by means of pebbles. Subsequently the functions of the assembly grew quite large. The demagogues found it to their interests to extend its powers. They tried to establish the principle in Athens that the people were the rulers of everything by right. {239} The powers of the assembly were generally divided into four groups, the first including the confirmation of appointments, the accusation of offenders against the state, the confiscation of goods, and claims to succession of property. The second group considered petitions of the people, the third acted upon motions for the remission of sentences, and the fourth had charge of dealings with foreign states and religious matters in general. It is observed that the Athenians represented the highest class of the Greeks and that government received its highest development among them. But the only real political liberty in Greece may be summed up in the principle of hearing both sides of a question and of obtaining a decision on the merits of the case presented. Far different is this from the old methods of despotic rule, under which kings were looked upon as authority in themselves, whose will must be carried out without question. The democracy of Athens, too, was the first instance of the substitution of law for force. It is true that in the beginning all of the Greek communities rested upon a military basis. Their foundations were laid in military exploits, and they maintained their position by the force of arms for a long period. But this is true of nearly all states and nations when they make their first attempt at permanent civilization. But after they were once established they sought to rule their subjects by the introduction of well-regulated laws and not by the force of arms. The military discipline, no doubt, was the best foundation for a state of primitive people, but as this passed away the newer life was regulated best by law and civil power. Under this the military became subordinate. To Greece must be given the credit of founding the city, and, indeed, this is one of the chief characteristics of the Greek people. They established the city-state, or polis. It represented a full and complete sovereignty in itself. When they had accomplished this idea of sovereignty the political organization had reached its highest aim. {240} _Athenian Democracy Failed in Obtaining Its Best and Highest Development_.--It is a disappointment to the reader that Athens, when in the height of power, when the possibilities for extending and promoting the best interests of humanity in social capacity were greatest, should end in decline and failure. In the first place, extreme democracy in that early period was more open than now to excessive dangers. It was in danger of control by mobs, who were ignorant of their own real interests and the interests of popular government; it was in danger of falling into the hands of tyrants, who would rule for their own private interests; it was in danger of falling into the hands of a few, which frequently happened. And this democracy in the ancient time was a rule of class--class subordination was the essence of its constitution. There was no universal rule by the majority. The franchise was an exclusive privilege extended to a minority, hence it differed little from aristocracy, being a government of class with a rather wider extension. The ancient democracies were pure in form, in which the people governed immediately. For every citizen had a right to appear in the assembly and vote, and he could sit in the assembly, which acted as an open court. Indeed, the elective officers of the democracy were not considered as representatives of the people. They were the state and not subject to impeachment, though they should break over all law. After they returned among the citizens and were no longer the state they could be tried for their misdemeanors in office. Now, a state of this nature and form must of necessity be small, and as government expanded and its functions increased, the representative principle should have been introduced as a mainstay to the public system. The individual in the ancient democracy lived for the state, being subordinate to its existence as the highest form of life. We find this entirely different from the modern democracy, in which slavery and class subordination are both excluded, as opposed to its theory and antagonistic to its very being. Its citizenship is wide, extending to its native population, and its suffrage is universal to all who qualify as citizens. The citizens, too, in {241} modern democracies, live for themselves, and believe that the state is made by them for themselves. The decline of the Athenian democracy was hastened, also, by the Peloponnesian war, caused first by the domineering attitude of Athens, which posed as an empire, and the jealousy of Sparta. This struggle between Athens and Sparta amounted almost to civil war. And although it brought Sparta to the front as the most powerful state in all Greece, she was unable to advance the higher civilization, but really exercised a depressing influence upon it. It might be mentioned briefly, too, that the overthrow of Athens somewhat later, and the establishment of the 400 as rulers, soon led to political disintegration. It was the beginning of the founding of Athenian clubs, or political factions, which attempted to control the elections by fear or force. These, by their power, forced the decrees of the assembly to suit themselves, and thus gave the death-blow to liberty. There was the reaction from this to the establishment of 5,000 citizens as a controlling body, and restricting the constitution, which attempted to unite all classes into one body and approximated the modern democracy, or that which is represented in the "polity" of Aristotle. After the domination of Sparta, Lysander and the thirty tyrants rose to oppress the citizens, and deposed a previous council of ten made for the ruling of the city. But once more after this domination democracy was restored, and under the Theban and Macedonian supremacies the old spirit of "equality of equals" was once more established. But Athens could no longer maintain her ancient position; her warlike ambitions had passed away, her national intelligence had declined; the dangers of the populace, too, threatened her at every turn, and the selfishness of the nobility in respect to the other classes, as well as the selfishness of the Spartan state outside, soon led to her downfall. At first, too, all the officers were not paid, it being considered a misdemeanor to take pay for office; but finally regular salaries were paid, and this forced the leaders to establish free theatres for the people. And finally, it may be said, that the power for good or evil {242} in the democracy lacking in permanent foundations is so great that it can never lead on to perfect success. It will prosper to-day and decline to-morrow. So the attempt of the Athenians to found a democracy led not to permanent success; nevertheless, it gave to the world for the first time the principles of government founded upon equality and justice, and these principles have remained unchanged in the practice of the more perfect republics of modern times. _The Spartan State Differs from All Others_.--If we turn our attention to Sparta we shall find an entirely different state--a state which may be represented by calling it an aristocratic republic. Not only was it founded on a military basis, but its very existence was perpetuated by military form. The Dorian conquest brought these people in from the north to settle in the Peloponnesus, and by degrees they obtained a foothold and conquered their surrounding neighbors. Having established themselves on a small portion of the land, the Dorians, or Spartans, possessed themselves of superior military skill in order to obtain the overlordship of the surrounding territory. Soon they had control of nearly all of the Peloponnesus. Although Argos was at first the ruling city of the conquerors, Sparta soon obtained the supremacy, and the Spartan state became noted as the great military state of the Greeks. The population of Sparta was composed of the Dorians, or citizens, who were the conquerors, and the independent subjects, who had been conquered but who had no part in the government, and the serfs or helots, who were the lower class of the conquered ones. The total population is estimated at about 380,000 to 400,000, while the serfs numbered at least 175,000 to 224,000. These serfs were always a cause of fear and anxiety to the conquerors, and they were watched over by night and day by spies who kept them from rising. The helots were employed in peace as well as in war, and in all occupations where excessive toil was needed. The middle class (Perioeci) were subjects dependent upon the citizens. They had no share in the Spartan state except to obey its {243} administration. They were obliged to accept the obligations of military service, to pay taxes and dues when required. Their occupations were largely the promotion of agriculture and the various trades and industries. Their proportion to the citizens was about thirty to nine, or, as is commonly given, there was one citizen to four of the middle class and twelve of the helots, making the ratio of citizens to the entire population about one-seventeenth, or every seventeenth man was a citizen. Attempts were made to divide the lands of the rich among the poor, and this redistribution of lands occurred from time to time. There were other semblances of pure democracy of communistic nature. It was a pure military state, and all were treated as soldiers. There was a common table, or "mess," for a group, called the social union. There all the men were obliged to assemble at meal-time, the women remaining at home. The male children were taken at the age of seven years and trained as soldiers. These were then in charge of the state, and the home was relieved of its responsibility concerning them. The state also adopted many sumptuary laws regulating what should be eaten and what should be used, and what not. All male persons were subjected to severe physical training, for Sparta, in her education, always dwelt upon physical development and military training. The development of language and literature, art and sculpture, was not observed here as it was in Athens. The ideal of aristocracy was the rule of the nobler elements of the nation and the subordination of the mass. This was supposed to be the best that could be done for the state and hence the best for the people. There was no opportunity for subjects to rise to citizenship--nor, indeed, was this true in Athens, except by the gradual widening force of legal privilege. Individual life in Sparta was completely subordinate to the state life, and here the citizen existed more fully for the state than in Athens in her worst days. Finally abuses grew. It was the old story of the few rich {244} dominating and oppressing the many poor. The minority had grown insolent and overbearing, and attempted to rule a hopeless and discontented majority. The reforms of Lycurgus led to some improvements, by the institution of new divisions of citizens and territory and the division of the land, not only among citizens but the half-citizens and dependents. Nevertheless, it appears that in spite of these attempted reforms, in spite of the establishment of the council, the public assembly, and the judicial process, Sparta still remained an arbitrary military power. Yet the government continued to expand in form and function until it had obtained a complex existence. But there was a non-progressive element in it all. The denial of rights of marriage between citizens and other groups limited the increase of the number of citizens, and while powers were gradually extended to those outside of the pale of citizenship, they were given so niggardly, and in such a manner, as to fail to establish the great principle of civil government on the basis of a free democracy. The military régime was non-progressive in its nature. It could lead to conquest of enemies, but could not lead to the perpetuation of the rights and privileges of citizens; it could lead to domination of others, but could not bring about the subordination of universal citizenship to law and order, nor permit the expansion and growth of individual life under benevolent institutions of government. So the Greek government, the democracy with all of its great promises and glorious prospects, declined certainly from the height which was great in contrast to the Oriental despotisms. It declined at a time when, as we look back from the present, it ought apparently to have gone on to the completion of the modern representative government. Probably, had the Greeks adopted the representative principle and enlarged their citizenship, their government would have been more lasting. It is quite evident, also, that had they adopted the principle of federation and, instead of allowing the operation of government to cease when one small state had been perfected, united {245} these small states into a great nation throbbing with patriotism for the entire country, Greece might have withstood the warlike shocks of foreign nations. But, thus unprepared alike to resist internal dissension and foreign oppression, the Greek states, notwithstanding all of their valuable contributions to government and society, were forced to yield their position of establishing a permanent government for the people. Some attempts were made to unify and organize Greek national life, not entirely without good results. The first instance of this arose out of temple worship, where members of different states met about a common shrine erected to a special deity. This led to temporary organization and mutual aid. Important among these centres was the shrine of Apollo at Delphi. This assemblage was governed by a council of general representation. Important customs were established, such as the keeping of roads in repair which led to the shrine, and providing that pilgrims should have safe conduct and be free from tolls and taxes on their way to and from the shrine. The members of the league were sworn not to destroy a city member or to cut off running water from the city. This latter rule was the foundation of the law of riparian rights--one of the oldest and most continuous in Western civilization. The inspiration for the great national Olympic Games came from these early assemblages about shrines.[2] Also the Aetolian and Achaean leagues, which occurred in the later development of Greece, after the Macedonian conquest, were serious attempts for federal unity. Although they were meritorious and partially successful, they came too late to make a unified nation of Greece. In form and purpose these federal leagues are suggestive of the early federation of the colonies of America. _Greek Colonization Spreads Knowledge_.--The colonies of Greece, established on the different islands and along the shores of the Mediterranean, were among the important {246} civilizers of this early period. Its colonies were established for the purpose of relieving the population of congested districts, on the one hand, and for the purpose of increasing trade, on the other. They were always independent in government of the mother country, but were in sympathy with her in language, in customs, and in laws and religion. As the ships plied their trade between the central government and these distant colonies, they carried with them the fundamentals of civilization--the language, the laws, the customs, the art, the architecture, the philosophy and thought of the Greeks. There was a tendency, then, to spread abroad over a large territory the Grecian philosophy and life. More potent, indeed, than war is the civilizing influence of maritime trade. It brings with it exchange of ideas, inspiration, and new life; it enables the planting of new countries with the best products. No better evidence of this can be seen than in the planting of modern English colonies, which has spread the civilization of England around the world. This was begun by the Greeks in that early period, and in the dissemination of knowledge it represents a wide influence. _The Conquests of Alexander_.--Another means of the dissemination of Greek thought, philosophy, and learning was the Alexandrian conquest and domination. The ambitious Alexander, extending the plan of Philip of Macedon, who attempted to conquer the Greeks and the surrounding countries, desired to master the whole known world. And so into Egypt and Asia Minor, into Central Asia, and even to the banks of the Ganges, he carried his conquests, and with them the products of Greek learning and literature. And most potent of all these influences was the founding of Alexandria in Egypt, which he hoped to make the central city of the world. Into this place flowed the products of learning, not only of Greece but of the Orient, and developed a mighty city with its schools and libraries, with its philosophy and doctrines and strange religious influences. And for many years the learning of the world centred about Alexandria, forming a great rival to Athens, which, {247} though never losing its prominence in certain lines of culture, was dominated by the greater Alexandria. _The Age of Pericles_.--In considering all phases of life the splendors of Greece culminated in a period of 50 years immediately following the close of the Persian wars. This period is known as the Age of Pericles. Although the rule of Pericles was about thirty years (466-429), his influence extended long after. The important part Athens performed in the Persian wars gave her the political ascendancy in Greece and enabled her to assume the beginning of the states; in fact, enabled her to establish an empire. Pericles rebuilt Athens after the destructive work of the Persians. The public buildings, the Parthenon and the Acropolis, were among the noted structures of the world. A symmetrical city was planned on a magnificent scale hitherto unknown. Pericles gathered about him architects, sculptors, poets, dramatists, teachers, and philosophers. The age represents a galaxy of great men: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Socrates, Thucydides, Phidias, Ictinus, and others. Greek government reached its culmination and society had its fullest life in this age. The glory of the period extended on through the Peloponnesian war, and after the Macedonian conquest it gradually waned and the splendor gradually passed from Athens to Alexandria. _Contributions of Greece to Civilization_.--It is difficult to enumerate all of the influences of Greece on modern civilization. First of all, we might mention the language of Greece, which became so powerful in the development of the Roman literature and Roman civilization and, in the later Renaissance, a powerful engine of progress. Associated with the language is the literature of the Greeks. The epic poems of Homer, the later lyrics, the drama, the history, and the polemic, all had their highest types presented in the Greek literature. Latin and modern German, English and French owe to these great originators a debt of gratitude for every form of modern literature. The architecture of Greece was broad enough to lay the foundation of the future, and so we find, even in our {248} modern life, the Grecian elements combined in all of our great buildings. Painting and frescoing were well established in principle, though not carried to a high state until the mediaeval period; but in sculpture nothing yet has exceeded the perfection of the Greek art. It stands a monument of the love of the beauty of the human form and the power to represent it in marble. The Greek philosophy finds its best results not only in developing the human mind to a high state but in giving to us the freedom of thought which belongs by right to every individual. An attempt to find out things as they are, to rest all philosophy upon observation, and to determine by the human reason the real essence of truth, is of such stupendous magnitude in the development of the human mind that it has entered into the philosophy of every educational system presented since by any people or any individual. The philosophers of modern times, while they may not adopt the principles of the ancient philosophy, still recognize their power, their forms of thought, and their activities, and their great influence on the intellectual development of the world. Last, but not least, are the great lessons recounted of the foundations of civil liberty. Incomplete as the ancient democracies were, they pointed to the world the great lessons of the duties of man to man and the relations of mankind in social life. When we consider the greatness of the social function and the prominence of social organization in modern life, we shall see how essential it is that, though the development of the individual may be the highest aim of civilization, the social organization must be established upon a right basis to promote individual interests. Freedom, liberty, righteousness, justice, free discussion, all these were given to us by the Greeks, and more--the forms of government, the assembly, the senate, the judiciary, the constitutional government, although in their imperfect forms, are represented in the Greek government. These represent the chief contributions of the Greeks to civilization. {249} SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. What were the achievements of the Age of Pericles? 2. Which are more important to civilization, Greek ideals or Greek practice? 3. The ownership of land in Greece. 4. The characteristics of the city-state of Athens. 5. Alexandria as an educational centre. 6. Why did the Greeks fail to make a strong central nation? 7. The causes of the decline of Greek civilization. 8. Give a summary of the most important contributions of Greece to modern civilization. [1] Some authorities state forty assemblies were held each year. [2] The Confederation of Delos, the Athenian Empire, and the Peloponnesian League were attempts to federalize Greece. They were successful only in part. {250} CHAPTER XV ROMAN CIVILIZATION _The Romans Differed in Nature from the Greeks_.--Instead of being of a philosophic, speculative nature, the Romans were a practical, even a stoical, people of great achievement. They turned their ideas always toward the concrete, and when they desired to use the abstract they borrowed the principles and theories established by other nations. They were poor theorizers, both in philosophy and in religion, but were intensely interested in that which they could turn to immediate and practical benefit. They were great borrowers of the products of other people's imagination. In the very early period they borrowed the gods of the Greeks and somewhat of their forms of religion! Later they borrowed forms of art from other nations and developed them to suit their own, and, still later, they used the literary language of the Greeks to enrich their own. This method of borrowing the best products of others and putting them to practical service led to immense consequences in the development of civilization. The Romans lacked not in originality, for practical application leads to original creation, but their best efforts in civilization were wrought out from this practical standpoint. Thus, in the improvement of agriculture, in the perfection of the art of war, in the development of law and of government, their work was masterly in the extreme; and to this extent it was worked out rather than thought out. Indeed, their whole civilization was evolved from the practical standpoint. _The Social Structure of Early Rome and That of Early Greece_.--Rome started, like Greece, with the early patriarchal kings, who ruled over the expanded family, but with this difference, that these kings, from the earliest historical records, were {251} elected by the people. Nevertheless there is no evidence that the democratic spirit was greater in early Rome than in early Greece, except in form. In the early period all Italy was filled with tribes, mostly of Aryan descent, and in the regal period the small territory of Latium was filled with independent city communities; but all these cities were federated on a religious basis and met at Alba Longa as a centre, where they conducted their worship and duly instituted certain regulations concerning the government of all. Later, after the decline of Alba Longa, the seat of this federal government was removed to Rome, which was another of the federated cities. Subsequently this territory was invaded by the Sabines, who settled at Rome, and, as an independent community, allied themselves with the Romans. And, finally, the invasion of the Etruscans gave the last of three separate communities, which were federated into one state and laid the foundation of the imperial city. But if some leader founded Rome in the early period, it is quite natural that he should be called Romulus, after the name of Rome. Considering the nature of the Romans and the tendency to the old ancestral worship among them, it does not seem strange that they should deify this founder and worship him. Subsequently, we find that this priestly monarchy was changed to a military monarchy, in which everything was based upon property and military service. Whatever may be the stories of early Rome, so much may be mentioned as historical fact. The foundation was laid in three great tribes, composed of the ancient families, or patricians, who formed the body of the league. Those who settled at Rome at an early period became the aristocracy; they were members of the tribes of immemorial foundation. At first the old tribal exclusiveness prevailed, and people who came later into Rome were treated as unequal to those who long had a right to the soil. This led to a division among the people based on hereditary right, which lasted in its effect as long as Rome endured. It became the {252} custom to call those persons belonging to the first families patricians, and all who were not patricians plebeians, representing that class who did not belong to the first families. The plebeians were composed of foreigners, who had only commercial rights, of the clients who attached themselves to these ancient families, but who gradually passed into the plebeian rank, and of land-holders, craftsmen, and laborers. The plebeians were free inhabitants, without political rights. As there was no great opportunity for the patricians to increase in number, the plebeians, in the regal period, soon grew to outnumber them. They were increased by those conquered ones who were permitted to come to Rome and dwell. Also the tradesmen and immigrants who dwelt at Rome increased rapidly, for they could have the protection of the Roman state without having the responsibility of Roman soldiers. It was of great significance in the development of the Roman government that these two great classes existed. _Civil Organization of Rome_.--The organization of the government of early Rome rested in a peculiar sense upon the family group. The first tribes that settled in the territory were governed upon a family basis, and their land was held by family holdings. No other nation appears to have perpetuated such a power of the family in the affairs of the state. The father, as the head of the family, had absolute power over all; the son never became of age so far as the rights of property are considered as long as the father lived. The father was priest, king, and legislator for all in the family group. Parental authority was arbitrary, and when the head of the family passed away the oldest male member of the family took his place, and ruled as his father had ruled. A group of these families constituted a clan, and a group of clans made a tribe, and three tribes, according to the formula for the formation of Rome, made a state. Whether this formal process was carried out exactly remains to be proved, but the families related to one another by ties of blood were united in distinct groups, which were again reorganized into larger {253} groups, and the formula at the time of the organization of the state was that there were 30 cantons formed by 300 clans, and these clans averaged about 10 families each. This is based upon the number of representatives which afterward formed the senate, and upon the number of soldiers furnished by the various families. The state became then an enlarged family, with a king at the head, whose prerogatives were somewhat limited by his position. There were also a popular assembly, consisting of all the freeholders of the state, and the senate, formed by the heads of all the most influential families, for the government of Rome. These ancient hereditary forms of government extended with various changes in the progress of Rome. _The Struggle for Liberty_.--The members of the Roman senate were chosen from the noble families of Rome, and were elected for life, which made the senate of Rome a perpetual body. Having no legal declaration of legislative, judicial, executive, or administrative authority, it was, nevertheless, the most powerful body of its kind ever in existence. Representing the power of intellect, and having within its ranks men of the foremost character and ability of the city, this aristocracy overpowered and ruled the affairs of Rome until the close of the republic, and afterward became a service to the imperial government of the Caesars. From a very early period in the history of the Roman nation the people struggled for their rights and privileges against this aristocracy of wealth and hereditary power. At the expulsion of the kings, in 500 B.C., the senate lived on, as did the old popular assembly of the people, the former gaining strength, the latter becoming weakened. Realizing what they had lost in political power, having lost their farms by borrowing money of the rich patricians, and suffered imprisonment and distress on that account, the plebeians, resolved to endure no longer, marched out upon the hill, Mons Sacer, and demanded redress by way of tribunes and other officers. This was the beginning of an earnest struggle for 50 years {254} for mere protection, to be followed by a struggle of 150 years for equality of power and rights. The result of this was that a compromise was made with the senate, which allowed the people to have tribunes chosen from the plebeians, and a law was passed giving them the right of protection against the oppression of any official, and subsequently the right of intercession against any administrative or judicial act, except in the case when a dictator was appointed. This gave the plebeians some representation in the government of Rome. They worked at first for protection, and also for the privilege of intermarriage among the patricians. After this they began to struggle for equal rights and privileges. A few years after the revolt in 486 B.C. Spurius Cassius brought forward the first agrarian law. The lands of the original Roman territory belonged at first to the great families, and were divided and subdivided among the various family groups. But a large part of the land obtained by conquest of the Italians became the public domain, the property of the entire people of Rome. It became necessary for these lands to be leased by the Roman patricians, and as these same Roman patricians were members of the senate, they became careless about collecting rent of themselves, and so the lands were occupied year after year, and, indeed, century after century, by the Roman families, who were led to claim them as their own without rental. Cassius proposed to divide a part of these lands among the needy plebeians and the Latins as well, and to lease the rest for the profit of the public treasury. The patricians fought against Cassius because he was to take away their lands, and the plebeians were discontented with him because he had favored the Latins. The result was that at the close of his office he was sentenced and executed for the mere attempt to do justice to humanity. The tribunes of the people finally gained more power, and a resolution was introduced in the senate providing that a body of ten men should be selected to reduce the laws of the state to a written code. In 451 B.C. the ten men were chosen {255} from the patricians, who formed ten tables of laws, had them engraved on copper plates, and placed them where everybody could read them. The following year ten men were again appointed, three of whom were plebeians, who added two more tables; the whole body became known as the Laws of the Twelve Tables. It was a great step in advance when the laws of a community could be thus published. Soon after this the laws of Valerius and Horatius made the acts of the assembly of the tribunes of equal force with those of the assembly of the centuries, and established that every magistrate, including the dictator, was obliged in the future to allow appeals from his decision. They also recognized the inviolability of the tribunes of the people and of the aediles who represented them. But in order to circumvent the plebeians, two quaestors were appointed in charge of the military treasury. Indeed, at every step forward which the people made for equality and justice, the senate, representing the aristocracy, passed laws to circumvent the plebeians. In 445 B.C. the tribune Canuleius introduced a law legalizing marriage between the patricians and plebeians. The children were to inherit the rank of their father. This tribune further attempted to pass a law allowing consuls to be chosen from the plebeians. To this a fierce opposition sprang up, and a compromise measure was adopted which allowed military tribunes to be elected from the plebeians, who had consular power. But again the senate sought to circumvent the plebeians, and created the new patrician office of censor, to take the census, make lists of citizens and taxes, appoint senators, prepare the publication of the budget, manage the state property, farm out the taxes, and superintend public buildings; also he might supervise the public morality. With the year 587 B.C. came the invasion of the Gauls from the north and the famous battle of the Allia, in which the Romans suffered defeat and were forced to the right bank of the Tiber, leaving the city of Rome defenseless. Abandoned by the citizens, the city was taken, plundered, and burned by {256} the Gauls. Senators were slaughtered, though the capitol was not taken. Finally, surprised and overcome by a contingent of the Roman army, the enemy was forced to retire and the inhabitants again returned. But no sooner had they returned than the peaceful struggle of the plebeians against the patricians began again. First, there were the poor, indebted plebeians, who sought the reform of the laws relating to debtor and creditor and desired a share in the public lands. Second, the whole body of the plebeians were engaged in an attempt to open the consulate to their ranks. In 367 B.C. the Licinian laws were passed, which gave relief to the debtors by deducting the interest already accrued from the principal, and allowing the rest to be paid in three annual instalments; and a second law forbade that any one should possess more than 500 jugera of the public lands. This was to prevent the wealthy patricians from holding lands in large tracts and keeping them from the plebeians. This law also abolished the military tribuneship and insisted that one at least of the two consuls should be chosen from the plebeians--giving a possibility of two. The patricians, in order to counteract undue influence in this respect, established the praetorship, the praetor having jurisdiction and vicegerence of the consuls during their absence. There also sprang up about this time the new nobility (_optimates_), composed of the plebeians and patricians who had held office for a long time, and representing the aristocracy of the community. From this time on all the Roman citizens tended to go into two classes, the _optimates_ and, exclusive of these, the great Roman populace. In the former all the wealth and power were combined; in the latter the poverty, wretchedness, and dependence. Various other changes in the constitution succeeded, until the great wars of the Samnites and those of the Carthaginians directed the attention of the people to foreign conquest. After the close of these great wars and the firm establishment of the universal power of Rome abroad, there sprang up a great civil war, induced largely by the disturbance {257} of the Gracchi, who sought to carry out the will of the people in regard to popular democracy and the division of the public lands. Thus, step by step, the plebeians, by a peaceful civil struggle, had obtained the consulship, and, indeed, the right to all other civil offices. They had obtained a right to sit in the senate, had obtained the declaration of social equality, had settled the great land question; and yet the will of the people never prevailed. The great Roman senate, made up of the aristocracy of Rome, an aristocracy of both plebeians and patricians, ruled with unyielding sway, and the common people never obtained full possession of their rights and privileges. Civil strife continued; the gulf between the rich and the poor, the nobility and the proletariat representing a few rich political manipulators, on the one side, and the half-fed, half-mad populace, on the other, grew wider and wider, finally ending in civil war. In the midst of the strife the republic passed away, and only the coming of the imperial power of the Caesars perpetuated Roman institutions. _Rome Becomes a Dominant City_.--In all of this struggle at home and abroad, foreign conquest led to the establishment of Rome as the central city. The constitution of Rome was the typical constitution for all provincial cities, and from this one centre all provinces were ruled. No example heretofore had existed of the centralization of government similar to this. The overlordship of the Persians was only for the purpose of collecting tribute; there was little attempt to carry abroad the Persian institutions or to amalgamate the conquered provinces in one great homogeneous nation. The empire of Athens was but a temporary hegemony over tributary states. But the Roman government conquered and absorbed. Wherever went the Roman arms, there the Roman laws and the Roman government followed; there followed the Roman language, architecture, art, institutions, and civilization. Great highways passed from the Eternal City to all parts of the territory, binding together the separate elements of {258} national life, and levelling down the barriers between all nations. Every colony planted by Rome in the new provinces was a type of the old Roman life, and the provincial government everywhere became the type of this central city. Here was reached a state in the development of government which no nation had hitherto attained--the dominant city and the rule of a mighty empire from central authority. _The Development of Government_.--The remarkable development of Rome in government from the old hereditary nobility, in which priest-kings ruled the people, to a military king who was leader, subsequently into a republic which stood the test for several centuries of a fierce struggle for the rights of the people, finally into an imperial government to last for 450 years, represents the growth of one of the most remarkable governments in the world's history. The fundamental idea in government was the ruling of an entire state from the central city, and out of this idea grew imperialism as a later development, vesting all authority in a single monarch. The governments of conquered provinces were gradually made over into the Roman system. The Roman municipal government was found in all the cities of the provinces, and the provincial government became an integral part of the Roman system. The provinces were under the supervision of imperial officers appointed by the emperor. Thus the tendency was to bind the whole government into one unified system, with its power and authority at Rome. So long as this central authority remained and had its full sway there was little danger of the decline of Roman power, but when disintegration began in the central government the whole structure was doomed. One of the remarkable characteristics of the Roman government was a system of checks of one part by every other part. Thus, in the republic, the consuls were checked by the senate, the senate by the consular power, the various assemblies, such as the Curiata, Tributa, and Centuriata, each having its own particular powers, were checks upon each other and upon other departments of the government. The whole system of {259} magistrates was subject to the same checks or limits in authority. And while impeachment was not introduced, each officer, at the close of his term, was accountable for his actions while in office. But under imperialism the tendency was to break down the power of each separate form of government and to absorb it in the imperial power. Thus Augustus soon attributed to himself the power of the chief magistrates and obtained a dominating power in the senate until the functions of government were all centralized in the emperor. While this made a strong government, in many phases it was open to great dangers, and in due time it failed, as a result of the corruption that clustered around the despotism of a single ruler unchecked by constitutional power. _The Development of Law Is the Most Remarkable Phase of the Roman Civilization_.--Perhaps the most lasting effect of the Roman civilization is observed in the contribution of law to the nations which arose at the time of the decline of the imperial sway. From the time of the posting of the Twelve Tables in a public place, where they could be read by all the citizens of Rome, there was a steady growth of the Roman law. The decrees of the senate, as well as the influence of judicial decisions, gradually developed a system of jurisprudence. There sprang up, also, interpreters of the law, who had much influence in shaping its course. Also, in the early period of the republic, the acts of the popular assemblies became laws. This was before the senate became the supreme lawmaking body of the state. During the imperial period the emperor acted somewhat through the senate, but the latter body was more or less under his control, for he frequently dictated its actions. Having assumed the powers of a magistrate, he could issue an edict; as a judge he could give decrees and issue commands to his own officials, all of which tended to increase the body of Roman law. In the selection of jurists for the interpretation of the law the emperor also had great control over its character. The great accomplishment of the lawmaking methods of {260} the Romans was, in the first place, to allow laws to be made by popular assemblies and the senate, according to the needs of a developing social organization. This having once been established, the foundation of lawmaking was laid for all nations to follow. The Roman law soon passed into a complex system of jurisprudence which has formed a large element in the structure, principles, and practice of all modern legal systems. The character of the law in itself was superior and masterly, and its universality was accomplished through the universal rule of the empire. The later emperors performed a great service to the world by collecting and codifying Roman laws. The Theodosian code (Theodosius II, 408-450 A.D.) was a very important one on account of the influence it exercised over the various Teutonic systems of law practised by the different barbarian tribes that came within the borders of the Roman Empire. The jurists who gave the law a great development had by the close of the fourth century placed on record all the principal legal acts of the empire. They had collected and edited all the sources of law and made extensive commentaries of great importance upon them, but it remained for Theodosius to arrange the digests of these jurists and to codify the later imperial decrees. But the Theodosian code went but a little way in the process of digesting the laws. The Justinian code, however, gave a complete codification of the law in four distinct parts, known as (1) "the Pandects, or digest of the scientific law literature; (2) the Codex, or summary of imperial legislation; (3) the Institutes, a general review or text-book, founded upon the digest and code, an introductory restatement of the law; and (4) the Novels, or new imperial legislation issued after the codification, to fill the gaps and cure the inconsistencies discovered in the course of the work of codification and manifest in its published results."[1] Thus the whole body of the civil law was incorporated. Here, then, is seen the progress of the Roman law from the {261} semireligious rules governing the patricians in the early patriarchal period, whose practice was generally a form of arbitration, to the formal writing of the Twelve Tables, the development of the great body of the law through interpretation, the decrees of magistrates, acts of legislative assemblies, and finally the codification of the laws under the later emperors. This accumulation of legal enactments and precedents formed the basis of legislation under the declining empire and in the new nationalities. It also occupied an important place in the curriculum of the university. _Influence of the Greek Life on Rome_.--The principal influence of the Greeks on Roman civilization was found first in the early religion and its development in the Latin race at Rome. The religion of the Romans was polytheistic, but far different from that of the Greeks. The deification of nature was not so analytic, and their deities were not so human as those of the Greek religion. There was no poetry in the Roman religion; it all had a practical tendency. Their gods were for use, and, while they were honored and worshipped, they were clothed with few fancies. The Romans seldom speculated on the origin of the gods and very little as to their personal character, and failed to develop an independent theogony. They were behind the Greeks in their mental effort in this respect, and hence we find all the early religion was influenced by the ideas of the Latins, the Etruscans, and the Greeks, the last largely through the colonies which were established in Italy. Archaeology points conclusively to the fact of early Greek influence. In later development the conquest of the Greeks brought to Rome the religion, art, paintings, and philosophy of the conquered. The Romans were shrewd and acute in the appreciation of all which they had found that was good in the Greeks. From the time of this contact there was a constant and continued adoption of Grecian models in Rome. The first Roman writers, Fabius Pictor and Quintus Ennius, both wrote in Greek. All the early Roman writers considered Greek the {262} finished style. The influence of the Greek language was felt at Rome on the first acquaintance of the Italians with it, through trade and commerce and through the introduction of Greek forms of religion. The early influence of language was less than the influence of art. While the Phoenicians and Etruscans furnished some of the models, they were usually unproductive and barren types, and not to be compared with those furnished by Greece. The young Romans who devoted themselves to the state and its service were from the fifth century B.C. well versed in the Greek language. No education was considered complete in the latter days of the republic, and under the imperial power, until it had been finished at Athens or Alexandria. The effect on literature, particularly poetry and the drama, was great in the first period of Roman literature, and even Horace, the most original of all Latin poets, began his career by writing Greek verse, and no doubt his beautiful style was acquired by his ardent study of the Greek language. The plays of Plautus and Terence deal also with the products of Athens, and, indeed, every Roman comedy was to a certain extent a copy, either in form or spirit, of the Greek. In tragedy, the spirit of Euripides, the master, came into Rome. The influence of the Greek philosophy was more marked than that of language. Its first contact with Rome was antagonistic. The philosophers and rhetoricians, because of the disturbance they created, were expelled from Rome in the second century. As early as 161 A.D. those who pursued the study of philosophy always read and disputed in Greek. Many Greek schools of philosophy of an elementary nature were established temporarily at Rome, while the large number of students of philosophy went to Athens, and those of rhetoric to Rhodes, for the completion of their education. The philosophy of Greece that came into Rome was something of a degenerate Epicureanism, fragments of a broken-down system, which created an unwholesome atmosphere. The only science which Rome developed was that of {263} jurisprudence, and the scientific writings of the Greeks had comparatively little influence upon Roman culture. Mr. Duruy, in speaking of the influence of the Greeks on Rome, particularly in the days of its decline, says: "In conclusion, we find in certain sciences, for which Rome cared nothing, great splendor, but in art and poetry no mighty inspiration; in eloquence, vain chatter of words and images (the rhetoricians), habits but no faith; in philosophy, the materialism which came from the school of Aristotle, the doubt born of Plato, the atheism of Theodorus, the sensualism of Epicurus vainly combated by the moral protests of Zeno; and lastly, in the public life, the enfeeblement or the total loss of all of those virtues which make the man and the citizen; such were the Greeks at the time. And now we say, with Cato, Polybius, Livy, Pliny, Justinian, and Plutarch, that all this passed into the Eternal City. The conquest of Greece by Rome was followed by the conquest of Rome by Greece. _Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit_." _Latin Literature and Language_.--The importance of the Latin language and literature in the later history of the Romans and throughout the Middle Ages is a matter of common knowledge. The language of the Latin tribes congregating at Rome finally predominated over all Italy and followed the Roman arms through all the provinces. It became to a great extent the language of the common people and subsequently the literary language of the empire. It became finally the great vehicle of thought in all civil and ecclesiastical proceedings in the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the modern era. As such it has performed a great service to the world. Cato wrote in Latin, and so did the annalists of the early period of Latin literature. Livy became a master of his own language, and Cicero presents the improved and elevated speech. The study of these masterpieces, full of thought and beauty of expression, has had a mighty influence in the education of the youth of modern times. It must be conceded, however, that in Rome the productions of the great masters were not as universally {264} known or as widely celebrated as one would suppose. But, like all great works of art, they have lived on to bear their influence through succeeding ages. _Development of Roman Art_.--The elements of art and architecture were largely borrowed from the Greeks. We find, however, a distinctive style of architecture called Roman, which varies from that of the Greek, although the influence of Greek form is seen not only in the decorations but in the massive structure of the buildings. Without doubt, in architecture the Romans perfected the arch as their chief characteristic and contribution to art progress. But this in itself was a great step in advance and laid the foundation of a new style. As might be expected from the Romans, it became a great economic advantage in building. In artistic decoration they made but little advancement until the time of the Greek influence. _Decline of the Roman Empire_.--The evolution of the Roman nation from a few federated tribes with archaic forms of government to a fully developed republic with a complex system of government, and the passage of the republic into an imperialism, magnificent and powerful in its sway, are subjects worthy of our most profound contemplation; and the gradual decline and decay of this great superstructure is a subject of great interest and wonder. In the contemplation of the progress of human civilization, it is indeed a mournful subject. It seems to be the common lot of man to build and destroy in order to build again. But the Roman government declined on account of causes which were apparent to every one. It was an impossibility to build up such a great system without its accompanying evils, and it was impossible for such a system to remain when such glaring evils were allowed to continue. If it should be asked what caused the decline of this great civilization, it may be said that the causes were many. In the first place, the laws of labor were despised and capital was consumed without any adequate return. There was consequently nothing left of an economic nature to withstand the rude {265} shocks of pestilence and war. The few home industries, when Rome ceased to obtain support from the plunder of war, were not sufficient to supply the needs of a great nation. The industrial condition of Rome had become deplorable. In all the large cities there were a few wealthy and luxurious families, a small number of foreigners and freedmen who were superintending a large number of slaves, and a large number of free citizens who were too proud to work and yet willing to be fed by the government. The industrial conditions of the rural districts and small cities were no better. There were a few non-residents who cultivated the soil by means of slaves, or by _coloni_, or serfs who were bound to the soil. These classes were recruited from the conquered provinces. Farming had fallen into disrepute. The small farmers, through the introduction of slavery, were crowded from their holdings and were compelled to join the great unfed populace of the city. Taxation fell heavily and unjustly upon the people. The method of raising taxes by farming them out was a pernicious system that led to gross abuse. All enterprise and all investments were discouraged. There was no inducement for men to enter business, as labor had been dishonored and industry crippled. The great body of Roman people were divided into two classes, those who formed the lower classes of laborers and those who had concentrated the wealth of the country in their own hands and held the power of the nation in their own control. The mainstay of the nation had fallen with the disappearance of the sterling middle class. The lower classes were reduced to a mob by the unjust and unsympathetic treatment received at the hands of the governing class. In the civil administration there was a division of citizens into two classes: those who had influence in the local affairs of their towns or neighborhood, and those who were simply interested in the central organization. During the days of the republic these people were closely related, because all citizens were forced to come to Rome in order to have a voice in the political interests of the government. But during the empire {266} there came about a change, and the citizens of a distant province were interested only in the management of their own local affairs and lost their interest in the general government, so that when the central government weakened there was a tendency for the local interests to destroy the central. After the close of Constantine's reign very great evils threatened the Roman administration. First of these was the barbarians; second, the populace; and third, the soldiers. The barbarians continually made inroads upon the territory, broke down the governmental system, and established their own, not so much for the sake of destruction and plunder, as is usually supposed, but to seek the betterment of their condition as immigrants into a new territory. That they were in some instances detrimental to the Roman institutions is true, but in others they gave new life to the declining empire. The populace was a rude, clamorous mass of people, seeking to satisfy their hunger in the easiest possible way. These were fed by the politicians for the sake of their influence. The soldiery of Rome had changed. Formerly made up of patriots who marched out to defend their own country or to conquer surrounding provinces in the name of the Eternal City, the ranks were filled with mercenary soldiers taken from the barbarians, who had little interest in the perpetuation of the Roman institutions. They had finally obtained so much power that they set up an emperor, or dethroned him, at their will. And finally it may be said that of all these internal maladies and external dangers, the decline in moral worth of the Roman nation is the most appalling. Influenced by a broken-down philosophy, degenerated in morals, corrupt in family and social life, the whole system decayed, and could not withstand the shock of external influence. _Summary of Roman Civilization_.--The Roman contribution, then, to civilization is largely embraced in the development of a system of government with forms and functions which have been perpetuated to this day; the development of a system of law which has found its place in all modern legal {267} codes; a beautiful and rich language and literature; a few elements of art and architecture; the development of agriculture on a systematic basis; the tendency to unify separate races in one national life; the practice of the art of war on a humane basis, and the development of the municipal system of government which has had its influence on every town of modern life. These are among the chief contributions of the Roman system to the progress of humanity. While it is common to talk of the fall of the Roman Empire, Rome is greater to-day in the perpetuity of her institutions than during the glorious days of the republic or of the magnificent rule of the Caesars. Rome also left a questionable inheritance to the posterity of nations. The idea of imperialism revived in the empire of Charlemagne, and later in the Holy Roman Empire, and, cropping out again and again in the monarchies of new nations, has not become extinct to this day. The recent World War gave a great shock to the idea of czarism. The imperial crowns of the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs, the Romanoffs, and the royal crowns of minor nations fell from the heads of great rulers, because the Emperor of Germany overworked the idea of czarism after the type of imperial Rome. But the idea is not dead. In shattered Europe, the authority and infallibility of the state divorced from the participation of the people, though put in question, is yet a smouldering power to be reckoned with. It is difficult to erase Rome's impress upon the world. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. How were the Greeks and Romans related racially? 2. Difference between the Greek and the Roman attitude toward life. 3. What were the land reforms of the Gracchi? 4. What advancement did the Romans make in architecture? 5. What were the internal causes of the decline of Rome? 6. Why did the Celts and the Germans invade Rome? 7. Enumerate the permanent contributions of Rome to subsequent civilization. [1] Hadley, _Introduction to Roman Law_. {268} CHAPTER XVI THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION _Important Factors in the Foundation of Western Civilization_.--When the European world entered the period of the Middle Ages, there were a few factors more important than others that influenced civilization.[1] (1) The Oriental cultures, not inspiring as a whole, left by-products from Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Egypt. These were widely spread through the influence of world wars and world empires. (2) The Greek cultures in the form of art, architecture, philosophy, and literature, and newer forms of political and social organization were widely diffused. (3) The Romans had established agriculture, universal centralized government and citizenship, and developed a magnificent body of law; moreover, they had formed a standing army which was used in the support of monarchy, added some new features to architecture and industrial structures, and developed the Latin language, which was to be the carrier of thought for many centuries. (4) The Christian religion with a new philosophy of life was to penetrate and modify all society, all thought, government, law, art, and, in fact, all phases of human conduct. (5) The barbarian invasion carried with it the Teutonic idea of individual liberty and established a new practice of human relationships. It was vigor of life against tradition and convention. With these contributions, the European world was to start out with the venture of mediaeval civilization, after the decline of the Roman Empire. _The Social Contacts of the Christian Religion_.--Of the factors enumerated above, none was more powerful than the teaching of the Christians. For it came in direct contrast and opposition to established opinions and old systems. It was also constructive, for it furnished a definite plan of social order different from all existing ones, which it opposed. The {269} religions of the Orient centred society around the temple. Among all the Semitic races, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Hebrew, temple worship was an expression of religious and national unity. National gods, national worship, and a priesthood were the rule. Egypt was similar in many respects, and the Greeks used the temple worship in a limited degree, though no less real in its influences. The Romans, though they had national gods, yet during the empire had liberalized the right of nations to worship whom they pleased, provided nothing was done to militate against the Roman government, which was committed to the worship of certain gods, in which the worship of the emperor became a more or less distinctive feature. The Christian teaching recognized no national gods, no national religion, but a world god who was a father of all men. Furthermore, it recognized that all men, of whatsoever race and country, were brethren. So this doctrine of love crossed boundaries of all nations and races, penetrated systems of religion and philosophy, and established the idea of international and universal brotherhood. _Social Conditions at the Beginning of the Christian Era_.--The philosophy of the Greeks and Romans had reached a state of degeneracy at the time of the coming of Christ. Thought had become weak and illogical. Trusting to the influence of the senses, which were at first believed to be infallible, scepticism of the worst nature influenced all classes of the people. Epicureanism, not very bad in the beginning, had come to a stage of decrepitude. To seek immediate pleasure regardless of consequences was far different from avoiding extravagance and intemperance, in order to make a higher happiness. Licentiousness, debauchery, the demoralized condition of the home and family ties, made all society corrupt. Stoicism had been taken up by the Romans; it agreed with their nature, and, coupled with Epicureanism, led to the extinction of faith. There was no clear vision of life; no hope, no high and worthy aspirations, no inspiration for a noble life. {270} The character of worship of the Romans of their various gods led to a non-religious attitude of mind. Religion, like everything else, had become a commercial matter, to be used temporarily for the benefit of all parties who indulged. While each separate nationality had its own shrine in the temple, and while the emperor was deified, all worship was carried on in a selfish manner. There was no reverence, no devout attitude of worship, and consequently no real benefit derived from the religious life. The Roman merchant went to the temple to offer petitions for the safety of his ship on the seas, laden with merchandise. After its safe entrance, the affair troubled him no more; his religious emotion was satisfied. Moral degeneration could be the only outcome of following a broken-down philosophy and an empty religion. Men had no faith in one another, and consequently felt no obligation to moral actions. Dishonesty in all business transactions was the rule. Injustice in the administration of the law was worked by the influence of factions and cliques. The Roman world was politically corrupt. Men were struggling for office regardless of the effect of their methods on the social welfare. The marriage relation became indefinite and unholy. The home life lost its hallowed influence as a support to general, social, and political life. The result of a superficial religion, an empty philosophy, and a low grade of morality, was to drive men to scepticism, to a doubt in all things, or to a stoic indifference to all things, or perhaps in a minority of cases to a search for light. To nearly all there was nothing in the world to give permanent satisfaction to the sensual nature, or nothing to call out the higher qualities of the soul. Men turned with loathing from their own revels and immoral practices and recognized nothing worthy of their thoughts in life. Those who held to a moral plane at all found no inspiration in living, had no enthusiasm for anything or any person. It were as well that man did not exist; that there was no earth, no starry firmament, no heaven, no hell, no present, no future. The few who sought for the {271} light did so from their inner consciousness or through reflection. Desiring a better life, they advocated higher aspirations of the soul and an elevated, moral life, and sought consolation in the wisdom of the sages. Their life bordered on the monastic. _The Contact of Christianity with Social Life_.--The most striking contrast to be observed in comparing the state of the world with Christianity is the novelty of its teachings. No doctrine like the fatherhood of God had hitherto been taught in the European world. Plato reached, in his philosophy, a conception of a universal creator and father of all, but his doctrine was influenced by dualism. There was no conception of the fatherly care which Christians supposed God to exercise over all of his creatures. It also taught the brotherhood of man, that all people of every nation are brethren, with a common father, a doctrine that had never been forcibly advanced before. The Jehovah of the Jews watched over their especial affairs and was considered in no sense the God of the Gentiles. For how could Jehovah favor Jews and also their enemies at the same time? So, too, for the Greek and the barbarian, the Roman and the Teuton, the jurisdiction of deities was limited by national boundaries, or, in case of family worship, by the tribe, for the household god belonged only to a limited number of worshippers. A common brotherhood of all men on a basis of religious equality of right and privilege was decidedly new. Christianity taught of the nature and punishment of sin. This, too, was unknown to the degenerate days of the Roman life. To sin against the Creator and Father was new in their conception, and to consider such as worthy of punishment was also beyond their philosophy. Christianity clearly pointed out what sin is, and asserted boldly that there is a just retribution to all lawbreakers. It taught of righteousness and justice, and that acts were to be performed because they were right. Individuals were to be treated justly by their fellows, regardless of birth or position. And finally, making marriage a {272} divine institution, Christianity introduced a pure moral code in the home. While a few philosophers, following after Plato, conjectured respecting the immortality of the soul, Christianity was the first religious system to teach eternal life as a fundamental doctrine. Coupled with this was the doctrine of the future judgment, at which man should give an account of his actions on this side of the grave. This was a new doctrine to the people of the world. The Christians introduced a new phase of social life by making their practice agree with their profession. It had been the fault of the moral sentiments of the ancient sages that they were never carried out in practice. Many fine precepts respecting right conduct had been uttered, but these were not realized by the great mass of humanity, and were put in practice by very few people. They had seldom been vitalized by humanizing use. Hence Christianity appeared in strong relief in the presence of the artificial system with which it came in contact. It had a faith and genuineness which were vigorous and refreshing. The Christians practised true benevolence, which was a great point in these latter days of selfishness and indifference. They systematically looked after their own poor and cared for the stranger at the gates. Later the church built hospitals and refuges and prepared for the care of all the oppressed. Thousands who were careworn, oppressed, or disgusted with the ways of the world turned instinctively to Christianity for relief, and were not disappointed. The Greeks and the Romans had never practised systematic charity until taught by the Christians. The Romans gave away large sums for political reasons, to appease the populace, but with no spirit of charity. But one of the most important of the teachings of the early church was to dignify labor. There was a new dignity lent to service. Prior to the dominion of the church, labor had become degrading, for slavery had supplanted free labor to such an extent that all labor appeared dishonorable. Another {273} potent cause of the demoralization of labor was the entrance of a large amount of products from the conquered nations. The introduction of these supplies, won by conquest, paralyzed home industries and developed a spirit of pauperism. The actions of the nobility intensified the evils. They spent their time in politics, and purchased the favor of the populace for the right of manipulating the wealth and power of the community. The Christians taught that labor was honorable, and they labored with their own hands, built monasteries, developed agriculture, and in many other ways taught that it is noble to labor. _Christianity Influenced the Legislation of the Times_.--At first Christians were a weak and despised group of individuals. Later they obtained sufficient force to become partners with the empire and in a measure dictate some of the laws of the community. The most significant of these were to abolish the inhuman treatment of criminals, who were considered not so well as the beasts of the field. Organized Christianity secured human treatment of prisoners while they were in confinement, and the abolition of punishment by crucifixion. Gladiatorial shows were suppressed, and laws permitting the freer manumission of slaves were passed. The exposure of children, common to both Greeks and Romans, was finally forbidden by law. The laws of marriage were modified so that the sanctity of the home was secured; and, finally, a law was passed securing Sunday as a day of rest to be observed by the whole nation. This all came about gradually as the church came into power. This early influence of the Christian religion on the legislation of the Roman government presaged a time when, in the decline of the empire, the church would exercise the greatest power of any organization, political or religious, in western Europe. _Christians Come Into Conflict with Civil Authority_.--It was impossible that a movement so antagonistic to the usual condition of affairs as Christianity should not come into conflict with the civil authority. Its insignificant beginning, although {274} it excited the hatred and the contempt of the jealous and the discontented, gave no promise of a formidable power sufficient to contend with the imperial authority. But as it gained power it excited the alarm of rulers, as they beheld it opposing cherished institutions. Nearly all of the persecutions came about through the attitude of the church toward the temporal rulers. The Roman religion was a part of the civil system, and he who would not subscribe to it was in opposition to the state. The Christians would not worship the emperor, nor indeed would they, in common with other nations, set up an image or shrine in the temple at Rome and worship according to the privilege granted. They recognized One higher in power than the emperor. The Romans in their practical view of life could not discriminate between spiritual and temporal affairs, and a recognition of a higher spiritual being as giving authority was in their sight the acknowledgment of allegiance to a foreign power. The fact that the Christians met in secret excited the suspicions of many, and it became customary to accuse them on account of any mishap or evil that came upon the people. Thus it happened at the burning of Rome that the Christians were accused of setting it on fire, and many suffered persecution on account of these suspicions. Christians also despised civic virtues, or made light of their importance. In this they were greatly mistaken in their practical service, for they could have wielded more power had they given more attention to civic life. Like many good people of modern times, they observed the corruption of government, and held themselves aloof from it rather than to enter in and attempt to make it better. The result of this indifference of the Christians was to make the Romans believe that they were antagonistic to the best interests of the community. The persecution of the Christians continued at intervals with greater or less intensity for more than two centuries; the Christians were early persecuted by the Jews, later by the Romans. In the first century they were persecuted under Nero and Domitian, through personal spite or selfish interests. After {275} this their persecution was political; there was a desire to suppress a religion that was held to be contrary to law. The persecution under Hadrian arose on account of the supposition that the Christians were the cause of plagues and troubles on account of their impiety. Among later emperors it became customary to attribute to them any unusual occurrence or strange phenomenon which was destructive of life or property. Organized Christianity grew so strong that it came in direct contact with the empire, and the latter had need of real apprehension, for the conflict brought about by the divergence of belief suddenly precipitated a great struggle within the empire. The strong and growing power of the Christians was observed everywhere. It was no insignificant opponent, and it attacked the imperial system at all points. Finally Constantine, who was a wise ruler as well as an astute politician, saw that it would be good policy to recognize the church as an important body in the empire and to turn this growing social force to his own account. From this time on the church may be said to have become a part of the imperial system, which greatly influenced its subsequent history. While in a measure it brought an element of strength into the social and political world, it rapidly undermined the system of government, and was a potent force in the decline of the empire by rendering obsolete many phases of the Roman government. _The Wealth of the Church Accumulates_.--As Rome declined and new governments arose, the church grew rapidly in the accumulation of wealth, particularly in church edifices and lands. It is always a sign of growing power when large ownership of property is obtained. The favors of Constantine, the gifts of Pepin and Charlemagne, and the large number of private gifts of property brought the church into the Middle Ages with large feudal possessions. This gave it prestige and power, which it could not otherwise have held, and hastened the development of a system of government which was powerful in many ways. {276} _Development of the Hierarchy_.--The clergy finally assumed powers of control of the church separate from the laity. Consequently there was a gradual decline in the power of lay members to have a voice in the affairs of the church. While the early church appeared as a simple democratic association, the organization had developed into a formal system or hierarchy, which extended from pope to simple lay members. The power of control falling into the hands of high officials, there soon became a distinction between the ordinary membership and the machinery of government. Moreover, the clergy were exempt from taxation and any control or discipline similar to that imposed on ordinary lay members. These conditions soon led to the exercise of undue authority of the hierarchy over the lay membership. This dominating principle became dogmatic, until the members of the church became slaves to an arbitrary government. The only saving quality in this was the fact that the members of the clergy were chosen from the laity, which kept up the connection between the higher and lower members of the church. The separation of the governors from the governed proceeded slowly but surely until the higher officers were appointed from the central authority of the church, and all, even to the clergy, were directly under the imperial control of the papacy. Moreover, the clergy assumed legal powers and attempted to regulate the conduct of the laymen. There finally grew up a great body of canon law, according to which the clergy ruled the entire church and, to a certain extent, civil life. But the church, under the canon law, must add a penalty to its enforcement and must assume the punishment of offenders within its own jurisdiction. This led to the assumption that all crime is sin, and as its particular function was to punish sin, the church claimed jurisdiction over all sinners and the right to apprehend and sentence criminals; but the actual punishment of the more grievous offenses was usually given over to the civil authority. {277} _Attempt to Dominate the Temporal Powers_.--Having developed a strong hierarchy which completely dominated the laity, from which it had separated, having amassed wealth and gained power, and having invaded the temporal power in the apprehension and punishment of crime, the church was prepared to go a step farther and set its authority above kings and princes in the management of all temporal affairs. In this it almost succeeded, for its power of excommunication was so great as to make the civil authorities tremble and bow down before it. The struggle of church and empire in the Middle Ages, and, indeed, into the so-called modern era, represents one of the important phases of history. The idea of a world empire had long dominated the minds of the people, who looked to the Roman imperialism as the final solution of all government. But as this gradually declined and was replaced by the Christian church, the idea of a world religion finally became prevalent. Hence the ideas of a world religion and a world empire were joined in the Holy Roman Empire, begun by Charlemagne and established by Otto the Great. In this combination the church assumed first place as representing the eternal God, as the head of all things temporal and spiritual. In this respect the church easily overreached itself in the employment of force to carry out its plans. Assuming to control by love, it had entered the lists to contend with force and intrigue, and it became subject to all forms of degradation arising from political corruption. In this respect its high object became degraded to the mere attempt to dominate. The greed for power and force was very great, and this again and again led the church into error and lessened its influence in the actual regeneration of man and society. _Dogmatism_.--The progress of the imperial power of the church finally settled into the condition of absolute authority over the thoughts and minds of the people. The church assumed to be absolutely correct in its theory of authority, and assumed to be infallible in regard to matters of right and wrong. It went farther, and prescribed what men should {278} believe, and insisted that they should accept that dictum without question, on the authority of the church. This monopoly of religious belief assumed by the church had a tendency to stifle free inquiry and to retard progress. It more than once led to irregularities of practice on the part of the church in order to maintain its position, and on the part of the members to avoid the harsh treatment of the church. Religious progress, except in government-building, was not rapid, spirituality declined, and the fervent zeal for the right and for justice passed into fanaticism for purity. This caused the church to fail to utilize the means of progress. It might have advanced its own interest more rapidly by encouraging free inquiry and developing a struggle for the truth. By exercising liberality it could have ingratiated itself into the government of all nations as a helpful adviser, and thus have conserved morality and justice; but by its illiberality it retarded the progress of the mind and the development of spirituality. While it lowered the conception of religion, on the one hand, it lowered the estimate of knowledge, on the other, and in all suppressed truth through dogmatic belief. This course not only affected the character and quality of the clergy, and created discontent in the laymen, but finally lessened respect for the church, and consequently for the gospel, in the minds of men. _The Church Becomes the Conservator of Knowledge_.--Very early in the days of the decline of the Roman Empire, when the inroads of the barbarian had destroyed reverence for knowledge, and, indeed, when within the tottering empire all philosophy and learning had fallen into contempt, the church possessed the learning of the times. Through its monasteries and its schools all the learning of the period was found. It sought in a measure to preserve, by copying, the manuscripts of many of the ancient and those of later times. Thus the church preserved the knowledge which otherwise must have passed away through Roman degeneration and barbarian influences. {279} _Service of Christianity_.[2]--The service of Christianity to European civilization consists chiefly in: (1) the respect paid to woman; (2) the establishment of the home and the enthronement of the home relation; (3) the advancement of the idea of humanity; (4) the development of morality; (5) the conservation of spiritual power; (6) the conservation of knowledge during the Dark Ages; (7) the development of faith; (8) the introduction of a new social order founded on brotherhood, which manifested itself in many ways in the development of community life. If the church fell into evil habits it was on account of the conditions under which it existed. Its struggle with Oriental despotism, as well as with Oriental mysticism, a degenerate philosophy, corrupt social and political conditions, could not leave it unscathed. If evil at times, it was better than the temporal government. If its rulers were dogmatic, arbitrary, and inconsistent, they were better, nevertheless, than the ruling temporal princes. The church represented the only light there was in the Dark Ages. It was far superior in morality and justice to all other institutions. If it assumed too much power it must be remembered that it came naturally to this assumption by attending specifically to its apparent duty in exercising the power that the civil authority failed to exercise. The development of faith in itself is a great factor in civilization. It must not be ignored, although it is in great danger of passing into dogmatism. A world burdened with dogmatism is a dead world; a world without faith is a corrupt world leading on to death. The Christian religion taught the value of the individual, but also taught of the Kingdom of God, which involved a community spirit--the universal citizenship of the Romans prepared the way, and the individual liberty of the Germans strengthened it. Whenever the church adhered to the teachings of the four gospels, it made for liberty of thought, freedom of life, progress in knowledge and in the arts of right living. {280} Whenever it ceased to follow these and put institutionalism first, it retarded progress, in learning, science, and philosophy, and likewise in justice and righteousness. To the church organization as an institution are due the preservation, perpetuation, and propagation of the teachings of Jesus, which otherwise might have been lost or passed into legend. All the way through the development of the Christian doctrine in Europe, under the direction of the church there are two conflicting forces--the rule by dogma and the freedom of individual belief. The former comes from the Greeks and Latins, the latter from the Nordic idea of personal liberty. Both have been essential to the development of the Christian religion and the political life alike. The dominant force in the religious dogma of the church was necessary to a people untutored in spiritual development. Its error was to insist that the individual had no right to personal belief. Yet the former established rules of faith and prevented the dissipation of the treasured teachings of Jesus. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. In what ways was the Christian religion antagonistic to other religions? 2. What new elements did it add to human progress? 3. How did the fall of Rome contribute to the power of the church? 4. What particular service did the church contribute to social order during the decline of the Roman Empire? 5. How did the church conserve learning and at the same time suppress freedom of thought? 6. How do you discriminate between Christianity as a religious culture and the church as an institution? [1] Adams, _Civilization During the Middle Ages_. [2] Adams, _Civilization During the Middle Ages_, chap. I. {281} CHAPTER XVII TEUTONIC INFLUENCE ON CIVILIZATION _The Coming of the Barbarians_.--The picture usually presented by the historical story-tellers of the barbarian hordes that invaded the Roman Empire is that of bold pirates, plunderers of civilization, and destroyers of property. No doubt, as compared with the Roman system of warfare and plunder, their conduct was somewhat irregular. They were wandering groups or tribes, who lived rudely, seeking new territory for exploitation after the manner of their lives. They were largely a pastoral people with cattle as the chief source of industry with intermittent agriculture. Doubtless, they were attracted by the splendor of Rome, its wealth and its luxury, but primarily they were seeking a chance to live. It was the old luring food quest, which is the foundation of most migrations, that was the impelling force of their invasion. In accordance with their methods of life, the northern territory was over-crowded, and tribe pressed upon tribe in the struggle for existence. Moreover, the pressure of the Asiatic populations drove one tribe upon another and forced those of northern Europe south and east. All of the invaders, except the Huns who settled in Pannonia, were of the Aryan branch of the Caucasian race. They were nearly all of the Nordic branch of the Aryan stock and were similar in racial characteristics and social life to the Greeks, who conquered the ancient Aegean races of Greece, and to those others who conquered the primitive inhabitants of Italy prior to the founding of the Roman nation. The Celts were of Aryan stock but not of Nordic race. They appeared at an early time along the Danube, moved westward into France, Spain, and Britain, and took side excursions into Italy, the most notable of which was the invasion of Rome {282} 390 B.C. Wherever the Nordic people have gone, they have brought vigor of life and achieved much after they had acquired the tools of civilization. If they were pirates of property, they also were appropriators of the civilization of other nations, into which they projected the vigor of their own life. _Importance of Teutonic Influence_.--Various estimates have been made as to the actual influence of the Teutonic races in shaping the civilization of western Europe. Mr. Guizot insists that this influence is entirely overestimated, and also, to a certain extent, misrepresented: that much has been done in their name which does not rightfully belong to them. He freely admits that the idea of law came from the Romans, morality from the Christian church, and the principle of liberty from the Germans. Yet he fails to emphasize the result of the union of liberty with the law, with morality, and with the church. It is just this leaven of liberty introduced into the various elements of civilization that gave it a new life and brought about progress, the primary element of civilization. France, in the early period of European history, had an immense prestige in the advancement of civilization. There was a large population in a compact territory, with a closely organized government, both civil and ecclesiastical, and a large use of the Roman products of language, government, law, and other institutions. Consequently, France took the lead in progress, and Mr. Guizot is quite right in assuming that every element of progress passed through France to give it form, before it became recognized. Yet, in the later development of political liberty, law, and education, the Teutonic element becomes more prominent, until it would seem that the native and acquired qualities of the Teutonic life have the stronger representation in modern civilization. In stating this, due acknowledgment must be made to the Roman influence through law and government. But the spirit of progress is Teutonic, although the form, in many instances, may be Roman. It must be observed, too, that the foundation of local government in Germany, England, and the United States was of Teutonic {283} origin; that the road from imperialism to democracy is lined with Teutonic institutions and lighted with Teutonic liberty, and that the whole system of individual rights and popular government has been influenced by the attitude of the Teutonic spirit toward government and law. _Teutonic Liberty_.--All writers recognize that the Germanic tribes contributed the quality of personal liberty to the civilization of the West. The Roman writers, in setting forth their own institutions, have left a fair record of the customs and habits of the so-called barbarians. Titus said of them: "Their bodies are, indeed, great, but their souls are greater." Caesar had a remarkable method of eulogizing his own generalship by praising the valor and strength of the vanquished foes. "Liberty," wrote Lucanus, "is the German's birthright." And Florus, speaking of liberty, said: "It is a privilege which nature has granted to the Germans, and which the Greeks, with all of their arts, knew not how to obtain." At a later period Montesquieu was led to exclaim: "Liberty, that lovely thing, was discovered in the wild forests of Germany." While Hume, viewing the results of this discovery, said: "If our part of the world maintains sentiments of liberty, honor, equity, and valor superior to the rest of mankind, it owes these advantages to the seeds implanted by the generous barbarians." More forcible than all these expressions of sentiment are the results of the study of modern historians of the laws and customs of the early Teutons, and the tracing of these laws in the later civilization. This shows facts of the vitalizing process of the Teutonic element. The various nations to-day which speak the Teutonic languages, of which the English is the most important, are carrying the burden of civilization. These, rather than those overcome by a preponderance of Roman influences, are forwarding the progress of the world. _Tribal Life_.--Referring to the period of Germanic history prior to the influence of the Romans on the customs, laws, and institutions of the people, which transformed them from {284} wandering tribes into settled nationalities, it is easy to observe, even at this time, the Teutonic character. The tribes had come in contact with Roman civilization, and many of them were already being influenced by the contact. Their social life and habits were becoming somewhat fixed, and the elements of feudalism were already prominent as the foundation of the great institution of the Middle Ages. This period also embraces the time when the tribes were about to take on the influence of the Christian religion, and when there was a constant mingling of the Christian spirit with the spirit of heathenism. In fact, the subject should cover all that is known of the Germanic tribes prior to the Roman contact and after it, down to the full entrance of the Middle Ages and the rise of new nationalities. In this period we shall miss the full interest of the society of the Middle Ages after the feudal system had transformed Europe or, rather, after Europe had entered into a great period of transformation from the indefinite, broken-down tribal life into the new life of modern nations. Tribal society has its limitations and types distinctive from every other. The very name "tribe" suggests to us something different from the conditions of a modern nation. Caesar and Tacitus were accustomed to speak of the Germanic tribes as _nationes_, although with no such fulness of meaning as we attach to our modern nations. The Germanic, like the Grecian, tribe is founded upon two cardinal principles, and is a natural and not an artificial assemblage of people. These two principles are religion and kinship, or consanguinity. In addition to this there is a growth of the tribe by adoption, largely through the means of matrimony and the desire for protection. These principles in the formation of the tribe are universal with the Aryan people, and, probably, with all other races. There is a clustering of the relatives around the eldest parent, who becomes the natural leader of the tribe and who has great power over the members of the expanded family. There is no state, there are no citizens, consequently the social life must be far different from that which we are accustomed to see. At {285} the time of our first knowledge of the Germans, the family had departed a step from the conditions which bound the old families of Greece and Rome into such compact and firmly organized bodies. There was a tendency toward individualism, freedom, and the private ownership of land. All of these points, and more, must be taken into consideration, as we take a brief survey of the characteristics of the early Teutonic society. What has been said in reference to the tribe, points at once to the fact that there must have been different ranks of society, according to the manner in which a person became a member of the tribe. _Classes of Society_.--The classes of people were the freemen of noble blood, or the nobility, the common freemen, the freedmen, or half-free, and the slaves. The class of the nobility was based largely upon ancient lineage, some of whom could trace their ancestry to such a distance that they made tenable the claim that they were descended from the gods. The position of a noble was so important in the community that he found no difficulty in making good his claim to pure blood and a title of reverence, but this in no way gave him any especial political privilege. It assured a consideration which put him in the way of winning offices of preferment by his wealth and influence, but he must submit to the decision of the people for his power rather than depend upon the virtues of his ancestry. This is why, in a later period, the formation of the new kingship left out the idea of nobility and placed the right of government upon personal service. The second class represented the rank and file of the German freemen, the long-haired and free-necked men, who had never felt the yoke of bondage. Those were the churls of society, but upon them fell the burden of service and the power of leadership. Out of this rank came the honest yeomen of England. The third class represented those who held lands of the freemen as serfs, and in the later period of feudal society they became attached to the soil and were bought with the land and {286} sold with the land, though not slaves in the common acceptation of the term. The fourth class were those who were reduced to the personal service of others. They were either captives taken in war or those who had lost their freedom by gambling. This body was not large in the early society, although it tended to increase as society developed. It will be seen at once that in the primitive life of a people like the one we are studying, there is a mingling of the political, religious, and social elements of society. There are no careful lines of distinction to be drawn as in present society, and more than this--there was a tendency to consolidate and simplify all of the forms of political and social life. There was a simplicity of forms and a lack of conventional usage, with a complexity of functions. _The Home and the Home Life_.--The family of the Germans, like the family of all other Aryan races, was the social, political, and religious unit of the larger organization. As compared with the Oriental nations, the family was monogamic and noted for purity and virtue. Add to this the idea of reverence for women that characterized the early German people, and we may infer that the home life, though of a somewhat rude nature, was genuine, and that the home circle was not without a salutary influence in those times of wandering and war. The mother, as we may well surmise, was the ruler of the home, had the care of the household, deliberated with the husband in the affairs of the tribe, and even took her place by his side in the field of battle when it seemed necessary. In truth, if we may believe the chroniclers, woman was supposed to be the equal of man. But returning to the tribal life, we find that the houses were of the rudest kind, made of undressed lumber or logs, with a hole in the roof for the smoke to pass out, with but one door and sometimes no window. There were no cities among the Germans until they were taught by contact with Rome to build them. The villages were, as a rule, an irregular collection of houses, more or less scattered, as is customary where land is {287} plentiful and of no particular value. There were no regularly laid out streets, the villagers being a group of kinsmen of the same tribe, grouped together for convenience. Around the village was constructed a ditch and a hedge as a rampart for protection. This was called a "tun" (German _Zoun_), from which word we derive our name "town." The house generally had but one room, which was used for all purposes. There was another class of houses, belonging to the nobility and the chiefs, called halls. They consisted of one long room, which sometimes had transepts or alcoves for the women, partitioned off by curtains from the main hall. This large room was the place where the lord and his companions were accustomed to sit at the great feasts after their return from a successful expedition. This is the "beer hall" that we read so much about in song, epic, and legend. Here the beer and the mead were passed; here arose the songs and the mirth of the warriors. On the walls of the hall might be seen the rude arms of the warrior, the shield and the spear, or decorations composed of the heads and the skins of wild beasts--all of which bring us to the early type of the hall of the great baron of the feudal age. Until the age of chivalry, women were not present at these rude feasts. The religious life of the early Germans was tribal rather than personal or of the simple family. There were certain times at which members of the same tribe were wont to assemble and sacrifice to the gods. There was a common meeting-place from year to year. As it has been related, this had a tendency to cement the tribe together and enhance political unity. This custom must have had its influence on social order and must have, in a measure, arrested the tendency of the people to an unsocial and selfish life. _Political Assemblies_.--The political assemblies, where all of the freemen met to discuss the affairs of the community, must have been powerful factors in the establishment of social customs and usage. The kinsmen or fellow tribesmen were grouped in villages, and each village maintained its privilege {288} of self-government, and consequently the freemen met in the village assembly to consider the affairs of the community. We find combined in the political representation the ideas of tribal unity and individuality, or at least family independence. As the tribes federated, there was a tendency to make the assemblies more general, and thus the family exclusiveness tended to give way in favor of the development of the individual as a member of the tribal state. It was a slow transition from an ethnic to a democratic type of society. This association created a feeling of common interest akin to patriotism. Mr. Freeman has given us a graphic representation of the survival of the early assembly in the Swiss cantons.[1] In the forest cantons the freemen met in the open field on stated occasions to enact the laws and transact the duties of legislators and judges. But although there was a tendency to sectional and clannish relations in society, this became much improved by the communal associations for political and economic life. But society, as such, could not advance very far when the larger part of the occupation of the freemen was that of war. The youth were educated in the field, and the warriors spent much of their time fighting with neighboring tribes. The entire social structure, resting as it did upon kinship, found its changes in developing economic, political, and religious life. Especially is this seen in the pursuit of the common industries. As soon as the tribes obtained permanent seats and had given themselves mostly to agriculture, the state of society became more settled, and new customs were gradually introduced. At the same time society became better organized, and each man had his proper place, not only in the social scale but also in the industrial and political life of the tribe. _General Social Customs_.--In the summer-time the clothing was very light. The men came frequently to the Roman camp clad in a short jacket and a mantle; the more wealthy ones {289} wore a woollen or linen undergarment. But in the cold weather sheepskins and the pelts of wild animals, as well as hose for the legs and shoes made of leather for the feet, were worn. The mantle was fastened with a buckle, or with a thorn and a belt. In the belt were carried shears and knives for daily use. The women were not as a general thing dressed differently from the men. After the contact with the Romans the methods of dress changed, and there was a greater difference in the garments worn by men and women. Marriage was a prominent social institution among the tribes, as it always is where the monogamic family prevails. There were doubtless traces of the old custom, common to most races, of wife capture, a custom which long continued as a mere fiction to some extent among the peasantry of certain localities in Germany. In this survival the bride makes feint to escape, and is chased and captured by the bridegroom. Some modern authorities have tried to show that there is a survival of this old custom of courtship, whereby the advances are supposed to be made by the men. The engagement to be married meant a great deal more in those days than at present. It was more than half of the marriage ceremony. Just as among the Hebrews, the engagement was the real marriage contract, and the latter ceremony only a form, so among the Germans the same custom prevailed. After engagement, until marriage they were called the Bräut and Bräutigam, but when wedded they ceased to be thus entitled. The betrothal contained the essential bonds of matrimony, and was far more important before the law than the later ceremony. In modern usage the opposite custom prevails. The woman was always under wardship; her father was her natural guardian and made the marriage contract or the engagement. When a woman married, she brought with her a dower, furnished by her parents. This consisted of all house furnishings, clothes, and jewelry, and a more substantial dower in lands, money, or live stock. On the morning of the day after marriage the husband gave to the wife the "Morgengabe," {290} which thereafter was her own property. It was the wedding-present of the groom. This is but a survival of the time when marriage among the Germans meant a simple purchase of a wife. It is said that "ein Weib zu kaufen" (to buy a wife) was the common term for getting engaged, and that this phrase was so used as late as the eleventh century. The wardship was called the _mundium_, and when the maid left her father's house for another home, her _mundium_ was transferred from her father to her husband. This dower began, indeed, with the engagement, and the price of the _mundium_ was paid over to the guardian at the time of the contract. From this time suit for breach of promise could be brought. These are the primitive customs of the marriage ceremony, but they were changed from time to time. Through the influence of Christianity, the woman finally attained prominence in the matter of choosing a husband, and learned, much to her satisfaction, to make her own contracts in matrimony. _The Economic Life_.--The economic life was of the most meagre kind in the earlier stages of society. We find that Tacitus, writing 150 years after Caesar, shows that there had been some changes in the people. In the time of Caesar, the tribes were just making their transition from the pastoral-nomadic to the pastoral-agricultural state, and by the time of Tacitus this transition was so general that most of the tribes had settled to a more or less permanent agricultural life. It must be observed that the development of the tribes was not symmetrical, and that which reads very pleasantly on paper represents a very confused state of society. However much the tribes practised agriculture, they had but little peace, for warfare continued to be one of their chief occupations. It was in the battle that a youth received his chief education, and in the chase that he occupied much of his spare time. But the ground was tilled, and barley, wheat, oats, and rye were raised. Flax was cultivated, and the good housewife did the spinning and weaving--all that was done--for the household. Greens, or herbage, were also cultivated, but {291} fruit-trees seldom were cultivated. With the products of the soil, of the chase, and of the herds, the Teutons lived well. They had bread and meat, milk, butter and cheese, beer and mead, as well as fish and wild game. The superintending of the fields frequently fell to the lot of the hausfrau, and the labor was done by serfs. The tending of the fields, the pursuit of wild animals or the catching of fish, the care of the cattle or herds, and the making of butter and cheese, the building of houses, the bringing of salt from the sea, the making of garments, and the construction of weapons of war and utensils of convenience--these represent the chief industries of the people. Later, the beginnings of commerce sprang up between the separate tribes, and gradually extended to other nationalities. _Contributions to Law_.--The principle of the trial by jury, which was developed in the English common law, was undoubtedly of Teutonic origin. That a man should be tried by his peers for any misdemeanor was considered to be a natural right. The idea of personal liberty made a personal law, which gradually gave way to civil law, although the personal element was never entirely obliterated. The Teutonic tribes had no written law, yet they had a distinct legal system. The comparison of this legal system with the Roman or with our modern system brings to light the individual character of the early Germanic laws. The Teuton claimed rights on account of his own personality and his relation to a family, not because he was a member of a state. When the Teutons came in contact with the Romans they mingled their principles of law with those of the latter, and thus made law more formal. Nearly all of the tribes, after this contact, had their laws codified and written in Latin, by Roman scholars, chiefly of the clergy, who incorporated not only many elements of Roman law but also more or less of the elements of Christian usage. Those tribes which had been the longer time in contact with the Romans had a greater body of laws, more systematized and of more Roman {292} characteristics. Finally, as modern nationality arose, the laws were codified, combining the Roman and the Teutonic practice. The forms of judicial procedure remained much the same on account of the character of Teutonic social organization. The personal element was so strong in the Teutonic system as to yield a wide influence in the development of judicial affairs. The trial by combat and the early ordeals, the latter having been instituted largely through the church discipline, and the idea of local courts based upon a trial of peers, had much to do with shaping the course of judicial practice. The time came, however, when nearly every barbarian judicial process was modified by the influence of the Roman law, until the predominance of the state, in judicial usage, was recognized in place of the personal element which so long prevailed in the early Teutonic customs. But in the evolution of the judicial systems of the various countries the Teutonic element of individual liberty and individual offenses never lost its influences. These simple elements of life indicate the origin of popular government, individual and social liberty, and the foundation of local self-government. Wherever the generous barbarians have gone they have carried the torch of liberty. In Italy, Greece, England, Germany, Spain, and the northern nations, wherever the lurid flames of revolt against arbitrary and conventional government have burst forth, it can be traced to the Teutonic spirit of freedom. This was the greatest contribution of the Teutonic people to civilization.[2] {293} SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. The vital elements of modern civilization contributed by the Germans. 2. Teutonic influence on Roman civilization. 3. Compare the social order of the Teutons with that of the early Greeks. 4. Causes of the invasion of Rome by the Teutonic tribes. 5. What were the racial relations of Romans, Greeks, Germans, Celts, and English? 6. Modern contributions to civilization by Germany. [1] See Chapter XXI. [2] The modern Prussian military state was a departure from the main trend of Teutonic life. It represented a combination of later feudalism and the Roman imperialism. It was a perversion of normal development, a fungous growth upon institutions of freedom and justice. {294} CHAPTER XVIII FEUDAL SOCIETY _Feudalism a Transition of Social Order_.--Feudalism represents a change from the ancient form of imperialism to the newer forms of European government. It arose out of the ruins of the Roman system as an essential form of social order. It appears to be the only system fitted to bring order out of the chaotic conditions of society, but by the very nature of affairs it could not long continue as an established system. It is rather surprising, indeed, that it became so universal, for every territory in Europe was subjected to its control in a greater or less degree. Frequently those who were forced to adopt its form condemned its principle, and those who sought to maintain the doctrine of Roman imperialism were subjected to its sway. The church itself, seeking to maintain its autocracy, came into direct contact with feudal theory and opposed it bitterly. The people who submitted to the yoke of personal bondage which it entailed hated the system. Yet the whole European world passed under feudalism. But notwithstanding its universality, feudalism could offer nothing permanent, for in the development of social order it was forced to yield to monarchy, although it made a lasting influence on social life and political and economic usage. _There Are Two Elementary Sources of Feudalism_.--The spirit of feudalism arises out of the early form of Teutonic social life. It sprang from the personal obligation of the comitatus, which was composed of a military leader and his followers or companions. The self-constituted assembly elected the leader who was most noted for courage and prowess in battle. To him was consigned the task of leading in battle the host, which was composed of all the freemen in arms. Usually {295} these chiefs were chosen for a single campaign, but it not infrequently happened that their leadership was continuous, with all the force of hereditary selection. Another phase of the comitatus is represented by the leader's setting forth in time of peace with his companions to engage in fighting, exploiting, and plunder on his own account. The courageous young men of the tribe, thirsting for adventure in arms, gathered about their leader, whom they sought to excel in valor. He who was bravest and strongest in battle was considered most honorable. The principal feature to be noted is the personal allegiance of the companions to their leader, for they were bound to him with the closest ties. For the service which they rendered, the leader gave them sustenance and also reward for personal valor. They sat at his table and became his companions, and thus continually increased his power in the community. This custom represents the germ of the feudal system. The leader became the lord, the companions his vassals. When the lord became a tribal chief or king, the royal vassals became the king's thegns, or represented the nobility of the realm. The whole system was based upon service and personal allegiance. As conquest of territory was made, the land was parcelled out among the followers, who received it from the leader as allodial grants and, later, as feudal grants. The allodial grant resembled the title in fee simple, the feudal grant was made on condition of future service. The Roman element of feudalism finds its representation in clientage. This was a well-known institution at the time of the contact of the Romans with their invaders. The client was attached to the lord, on whom he depended for support and for representation in the community. Two of the well-known feudal aids, namely, the ransom of the lord from captivity and the gift of dowry money on the marriage of his eldest daughter, are similar to the services rendered by the Roman client to his lord. The personal tie of clientage resembled the personal {296} allegiance in the comitatus, with the difference that the client stood at a great distance from the patron, while in the comitatus the companions were nearly equal to their chief. The Roman influence tended finally to make the wide difference which existed between the lord and vassal in feudal relations. Other forms of Roman usage, such as the institution of the _coloni_, or half-slaves of the soil, and the custom of granting land for use without actual ownership, seem to have influenced the development of feudalism. Without doubt the Roman institutions here gave form and system to feudalism, as they did in other forms of government. _The Feudal System in Its Developed State Based on Land-Holding_.--In the early period in France, where feudalism received its most perfect development, several methods of granting land were in vogue. First, the lands in the immediate possession of the conquered were retained by them on condition that they pay tribute to the conquerors; the wealthy Romans were allowed to hold all or part of their large estates. Second, many lands were granted in fee simple to the followers of the chiefs. Third was the beneficiary grant, most common to feudal tenure in its developed state. By this method land was granted as a reward for services past or prospective. The last method to be named is that of commendation, by which the small holder of land needing protection gave his land to a powerful lord, who in turn regranted it to the original owner on condition that the latter became his vassal. Thus the lands conquered by a chief or lord were parcelled out to his principal supporters, who in turn regranted them to those under them, so that all society was formed in a gradation of classes based on the ownership of land. Each lord had his vassal, every vassal his lord. Each man swore allegiance to the one next above him, and this one to his superior, until the king was reached, who himself was but a powerful feudal lord. As the other forms and functions of state life developed, feudalism became the ruling principle, from which many strove in vain to free themselves. There were in France, in the time {297} of Hugh Capet, according to Kitchen, "about a million of souls living on and taking their names from about 70,000 separate fiefs or properties; of these about 3,000 carried titles with them. Of these again, no less than a hundred were sovereign states, greater or smaller, whose lords could coin money, levy taxes, make laws, and administer their own justice."[1] Thus the effect of feudal tenure was to arrange society into these small, compact social groups, each of which must really retain its power by force of arms. The method gave color to monarchy, which later became universal. _Other Elements of Feudalism_.--Prominent among the characteristics of feudalism was the existence of a close personal bond between the grantor and the receiver of an estate. The receiver did homage to the grantor in the form of oath, and also took the oath of fealty. In the former he knelt before the lord and promised to become his man on account of the land which he held, and to be faithful to him in defense of life and limb against all people. The oath of fealty was only a stronger oath of the same tenor, in which the vassal, standing before the lord, appealed to God as a witness. These two oaths, at first entirely separate, became merged into one, which passed by the name of the oath of fealty. When the lord desired to raise an army he had only to call his leading vassals, and they in turn called those under them. When he needed help to harvest his grain the vassals were called upon for service. Besides the service rendered, there were feudal aids to be paid on certain occasions. The chief of these were the ransom of the lord when captured, the amount paid when the eldest son was knighted, and the dowry on the marriage of the eldest daughter. There were lesser feudal taxes called reliefs. Of these the more important were the payment of a tax by the heir of a deceased vassal upon succession to property, one-half year's profit paid when a ward became of age, and the right to escheated lands of the vassal. The lord also had the right to land forfeited on account of certain heinous crimes. {298} Wardship entitled the lord to the use of lands during the minority of the ward. The lord also had a right to choose a husband for the female ward at the age of fourteen; if she refused to accept the one chosen, the lord had the use of her services and property until she was twenty-one. Then he could dispose of her lands as he chose and refuse consent for her to marry. These aids and reliefs made a system of slavery for serfs and vassals. _The Rights of Sovereignty_.--The feudal lord had the right of sovereignty over all of his own vassal domain. Not only did he have military sovereignty on account of allegiance of vassals, but political sovereignty also, as he ruled the assemblies in his own way. He had legal jurisdiction, for all the courts were conducted by him or else under his jurisdiction, and this brought his own territory completely under his control as proprietor, and subordinated everything to his will. In this is found the spirit of modern absolute monarchy. _The Classification of Feudal Society_.--In France, according to Duruy, under the perfection of feudalism, the people were grouped in the following classes: First, there was a group of Gallic or Frankish freemen, who were obliged to give military service to the king and give aids when called upon. Second, the vassals, who rendered service to those from whom they held their lands. Third, the royal vassals, from whom the king usually chose his dukes and counts to lead the army or to rule over provinces and cities. Fourth, the _liti_, who, like the Roman _coloni_, were bound to the soil, which they cultivated as farmers, and for which they paid a small rent. Finally, there were the ordinary slaves. The character of the _liti_, or _glebe_, serfs varied according to the degree of liberty with which they were privileged. They might have emancipation by charter or by the grant of the king or the church, but they were never free. The feudal custom was binding on all, and no one escaped from its control. Even the clergy became feudal, there being lords and vassals within the church. Yet the ministry, in their preaching, recognized the opportunity of {299} advancement, for they claimed that even a serf might become a bishop, although there was no great probability of this. _Progress of Feudalism_.--The development of feudalism was slow in all countries, and it varied in character in accordance with the condition of the country. In England the Normans in the eleventh century found feudalism in an elementary state, and gave formality to the system. In Germany feudalism was less homogeneous than in France. It lacked the symmetrical finish of the Roman institutions, although it was introduced from French soil through overlordship and proceeded from the sovereign to the serf, rather than springing from the serf to the sovereign. It varied somewhat in characteristics from French feudalism, although the essentials of the system were not wanting. In the Scandinavian provinces the Teutonic element was too strong, and in Spain and Italy the Romanic, to develop in these countries perfect feudalism. But in France there was a regular, progressive development. The formative period began in Caesar's time and ended with the ninth century. This was followed by the period of complete domination and full power, extending to the end of the thirteenth century, at the close of which offices and benefices were in the hands of the great vassals of Charles the Bald. Then followed a period of transformation of feudalism, which extended to the close of the sixteenth century. Finally came the period of the decay of feudalism, beginning with the seventeenth century and extending to the present time. There are found now, both in Europe and America, laws and usages which are vestiges of the ancient forms of feudalism, which the formal organization of the state has failed to eradicate. The autocratic practice of the feudal lord survived in the new monarch, and, except in the few cases of constitutional limitation, became imperialistic. The Prussian state, built upon a military basis, exercised the rights of feudal conquest over neighboring states. After the war with Austria, Prussia exercised an overlordship over part of the smaller German {300} states, with a show of constitutional liberty. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the German Empire was formed, still with a show of constitutional liberty, but with the feudal idea of overlordship dominant. Having feudalized the other states of Germany, Prussia sought to extend the feudal idea to the whole world, but was checked by the World War of 1914. _State of Society Under Feudalism_.--In searching for the effects of feudalism on human progress, the family deserves our first consideration. The wife of the feudal lord and her equal associates were placed on a higher plane. The family in no wise represented the ancient patriarchal family nor the modern family. The head of the family stood alone, independent of every form of government. He was absolute proprietor of himself and of all positions under him. He was neither magistrate, priest, nor king, nor subordinate to any system except as he permitted. His position developed arbitrary power and made him proud and aristocratic. With a few members of his family, he lived in his castle, far removed from serfs and vassals. He spent his life alternately in feats of arms or in systematic idleness. Away from home much of the time, fighting to defend his castle or obtain new territory, or engaging in hunting, while the wife and mother cared for the home, he developed strength and power. It was in the feudal family that woman obtained her position of honor and power in the home. It was this position that developed the chivalry of the Middle Ages. The improvement of domestic manners and the preponderance of home society among the few produced the moral qualities of the home. Coupled with this was the idea of nobility on one side, and the idea of inheritance on the other, which had a tendency to unify the family under one defender and to perpetuate the right and title to property of future generations. It was that benign spirit which comes from the household in more modern life, giving strength and permanence to character. While there was a relation of common interest between the {301} villagers clustered around the feudal castle, the union was not sufficient to make a compact organization. Their rights were not common, as there was a recognized superiority on one hand and a recognized inferiority on the other. This grew into a common hatred of the lower classes for the upper, which has been a thousand times detrimental to human progress. The little group of people had their own church, their own society. Those who had a fellow-feeling for them had much influence directly, but not in bridging over the chasm between them and the feudal lord. Feudalism gave every man a place, but developed the inequalities of humanity to such an extent that it could not be lasting as a system. Society became irregular, in which extreme aristocracy was divorced from extreme democracy. Relief came slowly, through the development of monarchy and the citizenship of the modern state. It was a rude attempt to find the secret of social organization. The spirit of revolt of the oppressed lived on suppressed by a galling tyranny. To maintain his position as proprietor of the soil and ruler over a class of people treated as serfs required careful diplomacy on the part of the lord, or else intolerant despotism. He usually chose the latter, and sought to secure his power by force of arms. He cared little for the wants or needs of his people. He did not associate with them on terms of equality, and only came in contact with them as a master meets a servant. Consulting his own selfish interest, he made his rule despotic, and all opposition was suppressed with a high hand. The only check upon this despotism was the warlike attitude of other similar despotic lords, who always sought to advance their own interests by the force of arms. Feudalism in form of government was the antithesis of imperialism, yet in effect something the same. It substituted a horde of petty despots for one and it developed a petty local tyranny in the place of a general despotism. _Lack of Central Authority in Feudal Society_.--So many feudal lords, each master of his own domain, contending with one {302} another for the mastery, each resting his course on the hereditary gift of his ancestors, or, more probably, on his force of armed men and the strength of his castle, made it impossible that there should be any recognized authority in government, or any legal determination of the rights of the ruler and his subjects. Feudal law was the law of force; feudal justice the right of might. Among all of these feudal lords there was not one to force by will all others into submission, and thus create a central authority. There was no permanent legislative body, no permanent judicial machinery, no standing army, no uniform and regular system of taxation. There could be no guaranty to permanent political power under such circumstances. There was little progress in social order under the rule of feudalism. Although we recognize that it was an essential form of government necessary to control the excesses of individualism; although we realize that a monarchy was impossible until it was created by an evolutionary process, that a republic could not exist under the irregularity of political forces, yet it must be maintained that social progress did not exist under the feudal régime. There was no unity of social action, no co-operation of classes in government. The line between the governed and the governing, though clearly marked at times, was an irregular, wavering line. Outside of the family life--which was limited in scope--and of the power of the church--which failed to unify society--there was no vital social growth. _Individual Development in the Dominant Group_.--Feudalism established a strong individualism among leaders, a strong personality based on sterling intellectual qualities. It is evident that this excessive individual development became very prominent in the later evolution of social order, and is recognized as a gain in social advancement. Individual culture is essential to social advancement. To develop strong, independent, self-reliant individuals might tend to produce anarchy rather than social order, yet it must eventually lead to the latter; and so it proved in the case of feudalism, for its very {303} chaotic state brought about, as a necessity, social order. But it came about through survival of the fittest, in conquest and defense. Nor did the most worthy always succeed, but rather those who had the greatest power in ruthless conquest. Unity came about through the unbridled exercise of the predatory spirit, accompanied by power to take and to hold. This chaotic state of individualistic people was the means of bringing about an improvement in intellectual development. The strong individual character with position and leisure becomes strong intellectually in planning defense and in meditating upon the philosophy of life. The notes of song and of literature came from the feudal times. The determination of the mind to intellectual pursuits appeared in the feudal régime, and individual culture and independent intellectual life, though of the few and at the expense of the majority, were among the important contributions to civilization. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. What was the basis of feudal society? 2. What elements of feudalism were Roman and what Teutonic? 3. What service did feudalism render civilization? 4. Show that feudalism was transition from empire to modern nationality. 5. How did feudal lords obtain titles to their land? Give examples. 6. What survivals of feudalism may be observed in modern governments? 7. When King John of England wrote after his signature "King of _England_," what was its significance? 8. How did feudalism determine the character of monarchy in modern nations? [1] _History of France_. {304} CHAPTER XIX ARABIAN CONQUEST AND CULTURE The dissemination of knowledge, customs, habits, and laws from common centres of culture has been greatly augmented by population movements or migrations, by great empires established, by wars of conquest, and systems of intercommunication and transportation. The Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Alexandrian, and Roman empires are striking examples of the diffusion of knowledge and the spread of ideas over different geographical boundaries and through tribal and national organizations; and, indeed, the contact of the barbarian hordes with improved systems of culture was but a process of interchange and intermingling of qualities of strength and vigor with the conventionalized forms of human society. One of the most remarkable movements was that of the rise and expansion of the Arabian Empire, which was centred about religious ideals of Mohammed and the Koran. Having accepted the idea of one God universal, which had been so strongly emphasized by the Hebrews, and having accepted in part the doctrine of the teachings of Jesus regarding the brotherhood of man, Mohammed was able through the mysticism of his teaching, in the Koran, to excite his followers to a wild fanaticism. Nor did his successors hesitate to use force, for most of their conquests were accomplished by the power of the sword. At any rate, nation after nation was forced to bow to Mohammedanism and the Koran, in a spectacular whirlwind of conquest such as the world had not previously known. It is remarkable that after the decline of the old Semitic civilization, as exhibited in the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, the practical extinction of the Phoenicians, the conquest of Jerusalem, and the spread of the Jews over the whole world, there should have risen a new Semitic movement to disrupt {305} and disorganize the world. It is interesting to note in this connection, also, that wherever the Arabs went they came in contact with learned Jews of high mentality, who co-operated with them in advancing learning. _The Rise and Expansion of the Arabian Empire_.--Mohammedanism, which arose in the beginning of the seventh century, spread rapidly over the East and through northern Africa, and extended into Spain. All Arabia was converted to the Koran, and Persia and Egypt soon after came under its influence. In the period 623-640, Syria was conquered by the Mohammedans, upper Asia in 707, and Spain in 711. They established a great caliphate, extending from beyond the Euphrates through Egypt and northern Africa to the Pyrenees in Spain. They burned the great library at Alexandria, founded by Ptolemy, destroying the manuscripts and books in a relentless zeal to blot out all vestiges of Christian learning. In their passage westward they mingled with the Moors of northern Africa, whom they had subdued after various struggles, the last one ending in 709. In this year they crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and encountered the barbarians of the north. The Visigothic monarchy was in a ruined condition. Frequent internal quarrels had led to the dismemberment of the government and the decay of all fortifications, hence there was little organized resistance to the incoming of the Arabs. All Spain, except in the far north in the mountains of the Asturias, was quickly reduced to the sway of the Arabs. They crossed the Pyrenees, and the broad territory of Gaul opened before them, awaiting their conquest. But on the plains between Tours and Poitiers they met Charles Martel with a strong army, who turned the tide of invasion back upon itself and set the limits of Mohammedan dominion in Europe. In the tenth century the great Arabian Empire began to disintegrate. One after another of the great caliphates declined. The caliphate of Bagdad, which had existed so long in Oriental splendor, was first dismembered by the loss of Africa. The fatimate caliphate of northern Africa next lost its power, {306} and the caliphate of Cordova, in Spain, brilliant in its ascendancy, followed the course of the other two. The Arabian conquest of Spain left the country in a state of tolerable freedom, but Cordova, like the others, was doomed to be destroyed by anarchy and confusion. All the principal cities became in the early part of the eleventh century independent principalities. Thus the Mohammedan conquest, which built an extensive Arabian Empire, ruling first in Asia, then Africa, and finally Europe, spreading abroad with sudden and irresistible expansion, suddenly declined through internal dissensions and decay, having lasted but a few centuries. The peculiar tribal nature of the Arabian social order had not developed a strong central organization, nor permitted the practice of organized political effort on a large scale, so that the sudden transition from the small tribe, with its peculiar government, to that of the organization and management of a great empire was sufficient to cause the disintegration and downfall of the empire. So far as political power was concerned, the passion for conquest was the great impelling motive of the Mohammedans. _The Religious Zeal of the Arab-Moors_.--The central idea of the Mohammedan conquest seems to have been a sort of religious zeal or fanaticism. The whole history of their conquest shows a continual strife to propagate their religious doctrine. The Arabians were a sober people, of vivid imagination and excessive idealism, with religious natures of a lofty and peculiar character. Their religious life in itself was awe-inspiring. Originally dwelling on the plains of Arabia, where nature manifested itself in strong characteristics, living in one sense a narrow life, the imagination had its full play, and the mystery of life had centred in a sort of wisdom and lore, which had accumulated through long generations of reflection. There always dwelt in the minds of this branch of the Semitic people a conception of the unity of God, and when the revelation of God came to them through Mohammed, when they realized "Allah is Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet," they were swept entirely away by this religious conception. When once {307} this idea took firm hold upon the Arabian mind, it remained there a permanent part of life. Under military organization the conquest was rapidly extended over surrounding disintegrated tribes, and the strong unity of government built on the basis of religious zeal. So strong was this religious zeal that it dominated their entire life. It turned a reflective and imaginative people, who had sought out the hidden mysteries of life by the acuteness of their own perception, to base their entire operations upon faith. Faith dominated the reason to such an extent that the deep and permanent foundations of progress could not be laid, and the vast opportunities granted to them by position and conquest gradually declined for the lack of vital principles of social order. Not only had the Arabians laid the foundations of culture and learning through their own evolution, but they had borrowed much from other Oriental countries. Their contact with learning of the Far East, of Palestine, of Egypt, of the Greeks, and of the Italians, had given them an opportunity to absorb most of the elements of ancient culture. Having borrowed these products, they were able to combine them and use them in building an empire of learning in Spain. If their own subtle genius was not wanting in the combination of the knowledge of the ancients, and in its use in building up a system, neither lacked they in original conception, and on the early foundation they built up a superstructure of original knowledge. They advanced learning in various forms, and furnished means for the advancement of civilization in the west. _The Foundations of Science and Art_.--In the old caliphates of Bagdad and Damascus there had developed great interest in learning. The foundation of this knowledge, as has been related, was derived from the Greeks and the Orientals. It is true that the Koran, which had been accepted by them as gospel and law, had aroused and inspired the Arabian mind to greater desires for knowledge. Their knowledge, however, could not be set by the limitations of the Koran, and the desire {308} for achievement in learning was so great that scarcely a century had passed after the burning of the libraries of Alexandria before all branches of knowledge were eagerly cultivated by the Arabians. They ran a rapid course from the predominance of physical strength and courage, through blind adherence to faith, to the position of superior learning. The time soon came when the scholar was as much revered as the warrior. In every conquered country the first duty of the conquerors was to build a mosque in which Allah might be worshipped and his prophet honored. Attached to this mosque was a school, where people were first taught to read and write and study the Koran. From this initial point they enlarged the study of science, literature, and art, which they pursued with great eagerness. Through the appreciation of these things they collected the treasures of art and learning wherever they could be found, and, dwelling upon these, they obtained the results of the culture of other nations and other generations. From imitation they passed to the field of creation, and advances were made in the contributions to the sum of human knowledge. In Spain schools were founded, great universities established, and libraries built which laid the permanent foundation of knowledge and art and enabled the Arab-Moors to advance in science, art, invention, and discovery. _The Beginnings of Chemistry and Medicine_.--In chemistry the careful study of the elements of substances and the agents in composition was pursued by the Arab-Moors in Spain, but it must be remembered that the chemistry of their day is now known as alchemy. Chemistry then was in its formative period and not a science as viewed in the modern sense. Yet when we consider that the science of modern chemistry is but a little over a century old, we find the achievements of the Arabians in their own time, as compared with the changes which took place in the following seven centuries, to be worthy of note. In the eleventh century a philosopher named Geber knew the chemical affinities of quicksilver, tin, lead, copper, iron, {309} gold, and silver, and to each one was given a name of the planet which was supposed to have special influence over it. Thus silver was named for the moon, gold for the sun, copper for Venus, tin for Jupiter, iron for Vulcan, quicksilver for Mercury, and lead for Saturn. The influences of the elements were supposed to be similar to the influence of the heavenly bodies over men. This same chemist was acquainted with oxidizing and calcining processes, and knew methods of obtaining soda and potash salts, and the properties of saltpetre. Also nitric acid was obtained from the nitrate of potassium. These and other similar examples represent something of the achievements of the Arabians in chemical knowledge. Still, their lack of knowledge is shown in their continued search for the philosopher's stone and the attempt to create the precious metals. The art of medicine was practised to a large extent in the Orient, and this knowledge was transferred to Spain. The entire knowledge of these early physicians, however, was limited to the superficial diagnosis of cases and to a knowledge of medicinal plants. By the very law of their religion, anatomy was forbidden to them, and, indeed, the Arabians had a superstitious horror of dissection. By ignorance of anatomy their practice of surgery was very imperfect. But their physicians, nevertheless, became renowned throughout the world by their use of medicines and by their wonderful cures. They plainly led the world in the art of healing. It is true their superstition and their astrology constantly interfered with their better judgment in many things, but notwithstanding these drawbacks they were enabled to develop great interest in the study of medicine and to accomplish a great work in the advancement of the science. In _Al Makkari_ it is stated "that disease could be more effectively checked by diet than by medicine, and that when medicine became necessary, simples were far preferable to compound medicaments, and when these latter were required, as few drugs as possible ought to enter into their composition." This exhibits the thoughtful reflection that was {310} given to the administration of drugs in this early period, and might prove a lesson to many a modern physician. Toward the close of their career, the Arabian doctors began the practice of dissecting and the closer study of anatomy and physiology, which added much to the power of the science. Yet they still believed in the "elixir of life," and tried to work miracle cures, which in many respects may have been successful. It is a question whether they went any farther into the practice of miracle cures than the quacks and charlatans and faith doctors of modern times have gone. The influence of their study of medicine was seen in the great universities, and especially in the foundation of the University at Salerno at a later time, which was largely under the Arabian influence. _Metaphysics and Exact Science_.--It would seem that the Arab-Moors were well calculated to develop psychological science. Their minds seemed to be in a special measure metaphysical. They laid the foundation of their metaphysical speculations on the philosophy of the Greeks, particularly that of Aristotle, but later they attempted to develop originality, although they succeeded in doing little more, as a rule, than borrowing from others. In the early period of Arabian development the Koran stood in the way of any advancement in philosophy. It was only at intervals that philosophy could gain any advancement. Indeed, the philosophers were driven away from their homes, but they carried with them many followers into a larger field. The long list of philosophers who, after the manner of the Greeks, each attempted to develop his own separate system, might be mentioned, showing the zeal with which they carried on inquiry into metaphysical science. As may be supposed, they added little to the sum of human knowledge, but developed a degree of culture by their philosophical speculations. But it is in the exact sciences that the Arabs seem to have met with the greatest success. The Arabic numerals, probably brought from India to Bagdad, led to a new and larger use of arithmetic. The decimal system and the art of figures were {311} introduced into Spain in the ninth century, and gave great advancement in learning. But, strange to relate, these numerals, though used so early by the Arabs in Spain, were not common in Germany until the fifteenth century. The importance of their use cannot be overestimated, for by means of them the Arabians easily led the world in astronomy, mechanics, and mathematics. The science of algebra is generally attributed to the Arabians. Its name is derived from gabara, to bind parts together, and yet the origin of this science is not certain. It is thought that the Arabs derived their knowledge from the Greeks, but in all probability algebra had its first origin among the philosophers of India. The Arabians used geometry, although they added little to its advancement. Geometry had reached at this period an advanced stage of progress in the problems of Euclid. It was to the honor of the Arabians that they were the first of any of the Western peoples to translate Euclid and use it, for it was not until the sixteenth century that it was freely translated into the modern languages. But in trigonometry the Arabians, by the introduction of the use of the sine, or half-chord, of the double arc in the place of the arc itself, made great advancement, especially in the calculations of surveying and astronomy. In the universities and colleges of Spain under Arabian dominion we find, then, that students had an opportunity of mastering nearly all of the useful elementary mathematics. Great attention was paid to the study of astronomy. Here, as before, they used the Greek knowledge, but they advanced the study of the science greatly by the introduction of instruments, such as those for measuring time by the movement of the pendulum and the measurement of the heavenly bodies by the astrolabe. Likewise they employed the word "azimuth" and many other terms which show a more definite knowledge of the relation of the heavenly bodies. They were enabled, also, to {312} measure approximately a degree of latitude. They knew that the earth was of spheroid form. But we find astrology accompanying all this knowledge of astronomy. While the exact knowledge of the heavenly bodies had been developed to a certain degree, the science of star influence, or astrology, was cultivated to a still greater extent. Thus they sought to show the control of mind forces on earth, and, indeed, of all natural forces by the heavenly bodies. This placed mystical lore in the front rank of their philosophical speculations. _Geography and History_.--In the study of the earth the Arabians showed themselves to be practical and accurate geographers. They applied their mathematical and astronomical knowledge to the study of the earth, and thus gave an impulse to exploration. While their theories of the origin of the earth were crude and untenable, their practical writings on the subject derived from real knowledge, and the practical instruction in schools by the use of globes and maps, were of immense practical value. Their history was made up chiefly of the histories of cities and the lives of prominent men. There was no national history of the rise and development of the Arabian kingdom, for historical writing and study were in an undeveloped state. _Discoveries, Inventions, and Achievements_.--It cannot be successfully claimed that the Arabians exhibited very much originality in the advancement of the civilized arts, yet they had the ability to take what they found elsewhere developed by other scholars, improve upon it, and apply it to the practical affairs of life. Thus, although the Chinese discovered gunpowder over 3,000 years ago, it remained for the Arabs to bring it into use in the siege of Mecca in the year 690, and introduce it into Spain some years later. The Persians called it Chinese salt, the Arabians Indian snow, indicating that it might have originated in different countries. The Arab-Moors used it in their wars with the Christians as early as the middle of the thirteenth century. They excelled also in making paper from flax, or cotton, which was probably an imitation {313} of the paper made by the Chinese from silk. We find also that the Arabs had learned to print from movable type, and the introduction of paper made the printing-press possible. Linen paper made from old clothes was said to be in use as early as 1106. Without doubt the Arab-Moors introduced into Spain the use of the magnet in connection with the mariner's compass. But owing to the fact that it was not needed in the short voyages along the coast of the Mediterranean, it did not come into a large use until the great voyages on the ocean, in the beginning of the fourteenth century. Yet the invention of the mariner's compass, so frequently attributed to Flavio Giorgio, may be as well attributed to the Arab-Moors. Knives and swords of superior make, leather, silk, and glass, as well as large collections of delicate jewelry, show marked advancement in Arabian industrial art and mechanical skill. One of the achievements of the Arab-Moors in Spain was the introduction of agriculture, and its advancement to an important position among the industries by means of irrigation. The great, fertile valleys of Spain were thus, through agricultural skill, made "to blossom as the rose." Seeds were imported from different parts of the world, and much attention was given to the culture of all plants which could be readily raised in this country. Rice and cotton and sugar-cane were cultivated through the process of irrigation. Thus Spain was indebted to the Arab-Moors not only for the introduction of industrial arts and skilled mechanics, but the establishment of agriculture on a firm foundation. _Language and Literature_.--The language of the Arabians is said to be peculiarly rich in synonyms. For instance, it is said there are 1,000 expressions for the word "camel," and the same number for the word "sword," while there are 4,000 for the word "misfortune." Very few remnants of the Arabic remain in the modern European languages. Quite a number of words in the Spanish language, fewer in English and in {314} other modern languages, are the only remnants of the use of this highly developed Arabian speech. It represents the southern branch of the Semitic language, and is closely related to the Hebrew and the Aramaic. The unity and compactness of the language are very much in evidence. Coming little in contact with other languages, it remained somewhat exclusive, and retained its original form. When it came into Spain the Arabic language reigned almost supreme, on account of the special domination of Arabic influences. Far in the north of Spain, however, among the Christians who had adopted the Low Latin, was the formation of the Spanish language. The hatred of the Spaniards for the Arabs led these people to refuse to use the language of the conquerors. Nevertheless, the Arabic had some influence in the formation of the Spanish language. The isolated geographic terms, and especial names of things, as well as idioms of speech, show still that the Arabian influence may be traced in the Spanish language. In literature the Arabians had a marked development. The Arabian poetry, though light in its character, became prominent. There were among these Arabians in Spain ardent and ready writers, with fertile fancy and lively perception, who recited their songs to eager listeners. The poet became a universal teacher. He went about from place to place singing his songs, and the troubadours of the south of France received in later years much of their impulse indirectly from the Arabic poets. While the poetry was not of a high order, it was wide-reaching in its influence, and extended in later days to Italy, Sicily, and southern France, and had a quickening influence in the development of the light songs of the troubadours. The influence of this lighter literature through Italy, Sicily, and southern France on the literature of Europe and of England in later periods is well marked by the historians. In the great schools rhetoric and grammar were also taught to a considerable extent. In the universities these formed one of the great branches of special culture. We find, then, on the linguistic {315} side that the Arabians accomplished a great deal in the advancement of the language and literature of Europe. _Art and Architecture_.--Perhaps the Arabians in Spain are known more by their architecture than any other phase of their culture. Not that there was anything especially original in it, except in the combination which they made of the architecture of other nations. In the building of their great mosques, like that of Cordova and of the Alhambra, they perpetuated the magnificence and splendor of the East. Even the actual materials with which they constructed these magnificent buildings were obtained from Greece and the Orient, and placed in their positions in a new combination. The great original feature of the Mooresque architecture is found in the famous horseshoe arch, which was used so extensively in their mosques and palaces. It represented the Roman arch, slightly bent into the form of a horseshoe. Yet from architectural strength it must be considered that the real support resting on the pillar was merely the half-circle of the Roman arch, while the horseshoe was a continuation for ornamental purposes. The Arab-Moors were forbidden the use of sculpture, which they never practised, and hence the artistic features were limited to architectural and art decorations. Many of the interior decorations of the walls of these great buildings show advanced skill. Upon the whole, their buildings are remarkable mainly in the perpetuation of Oriental architecture rather than in the development of any originality except in skill of decoration and combination. _The Government of the Arab-Moors Was Peculiarly Centralized_.--The caliph was at the head as an absolute monarch. He appointed viceroys in the different provinces for their control. The only thing that limited the actual power of the caliph was the fact that he was a theocratic governor. Otherwise he was supreme in power. There was no constitutional government, and, indeed, but little precedent in law. The government depended somewhat upon the whims and caprices {316} of a single individual. It was said that in the beginning the caliph was elected by the people, but in a later period the office became hereditary. It is true the caliph, who was called the "vicar of God," or "the shadow of God," had his various ministers appointed from the wise men to carry out his will. Yet, such was the power of the people what when in Spain they were displeased with the rulings of the judges, they would pelt the officers or storm the palace, thus in a way limiting the power of these absolute rulers. The government, however, was in a precarious condition. There could be nothing permanent under such a régime, for permanency of government is necessary to the advancement of civilization. The government was non-progressive. It allowed no freedom of the people and gave no incentive to advancement, and it was a detriment many times to the progressive spirit. Closely connected with a religion which in itself was non-progressive, we find limitations set upon the advancement of the civilization of the Arab-Moors in Spain. _Arabian Civilization Soon Reached Its Limits_.--One views with wonder and astonishment the brilliant achievements of the Arabian civilization, extending from the Tagus to the Indus. But brilliant as it was, one is impressed at every turn with the instability of the civilization and with its peculiar limitations. It reached its culmination long before the Christian conquest. What the Arabians have given to the European world was formulated rapidly and given quickly, and the results were left to be used by a more slowly developing people, who rested their civilization upon a permanent basis. Much stress has been laid by Mr. Draper and others upon the great civilization of the Arabians, comparing it favorably with the civilization of Christian Europe. But it must be remembered that the Arab-Moors, especially in Spain, had come so directly in contact with Oriental nations that they were enabled to borrow and utilize for a time the elements of civilization advanced by these more mature peoples. However, built as it was upon borrowed materials, the structure once completed, {317} there was no opportunity for growth or original development. It reached its culmination, and would have progressed no further in Spain, even had not the Christians under Ferdinand and Isabella conquered the Arab-Moors and eventually overcome and destroyed their civilization. In this conquest, in which the two leading faiths of the Western world were fighting for supremacy, doubtless the Christian world could not fully appreciate what the Arab-Moors accomplished, nor estimate their value to the economic system of Spain. Subsequent facts of history show that, the Christian religion once having a dominant power in Spain, the church became less liberal in its views and its rule than that exhibited by the government of the Arab-Moors. Admitting that the spirit of liberty had burst forth in old Asturias, a seat of Nordic culture, it soon became obscure in the arbitrary domination of monarchy, and of the church through the instrumentality of Torquemada and the Inquisition. Nevertheless, the civilization of the Arab-Moors cannot be pictured as an ideal one, because it was lacking in the fundamentals of continuous progress. Knowledge had not yet become widely disseminated, nor truth free enough to arouse vigorous qualities of life which make for permanency in civilization. With all of its borrowed art and learning and its adaptation to new conditions, still the civilization was sufficiently non-progressive to be unsuited to carry the burden of the development of the human race. Nevertheless, in the contemplation of human progress, the Arab-Moors of Spain are deserving of attention because of their universities and their studies, which influenced other parts of mediaeval Europe at a time when they were breaking away from scholastic philosophy and assuming a scientific attitude of mind. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. What contributions to art and architecture did the Arab-Moors make in Spain? 2. The nature of their government. {318} 3. How did their religion differ from the Christian religion in principle and in practice? 4. The educational contribution of the universities of the Arab-Moors. 5. What contributions to science and learning came from the Arabian civilization? 6. Why and by whom were the Arab-Moors driven from Spain? What were the economic and political results? 7. What was the influence of the Arabs on European civilization? {319} CHAPTER XX THE CRUSADES STIR THE EUROPEAN MIND _What Brought About the Crusades_.--We have learned from the former chapters that the Arabs had spread their empire from the Euphrates to the Strait of Gibraltar, and that the Christian and Mohammedan religions had compassed and absorbed the entire religious life over this whole territory. As Christianity had become the great reforming religion of the western part of Europe, so Mohammedanism had become the reforming religion of Asia. The latter was more exacting in its demands and more absolute in its sway than the former, spreading its doctrines mainly by force, while the former sought more to extend its doctrine by a leavening process. Nevertheless, when the two came in contact, a fierce struggle for supremacy ensued. The meteorlike rise of Mohammedanism had created consternation and alarm in the Christian world as early as the eighth century. There sprang up not only fear of Islamism, but a hatred of its followers. After the Arabian Empire had become fully established, there arose to the northeast of Bagdad, the Moslem capital, a number of Turkish tribes that were among the more recent converts to Mohammedanism. Apparently they took the Mohammedan religion as embodied in the Koran literally and fanatically, and, considering nothing beyond these, sought to propagate the doctrine through conquest by sword. They are frequently known as Seljuks. It is to the credit of the Arabs, whether in Mesopotamia, Africa, or Spain, that their minds reached beyond the Koran into the wider ranges of knowledge, a fact which tempered their fanatical zeal, but the Seljuk Turks swept forward with their armies until they conquered the Byzantine Empire of the East, the last branch of the great Roman Empire. They had also conquered Jerusalem and {320} taken possession of the holy sepulchre, to which pilgrimages of Christians were made annually, and aroused the righteous indignation of the Christians of the Western world. The ostensible purpose of the crusades was to free Palestine, the oppressed Christians, and the holy sepulchre from the domination of the Turks. It must be remembered that the period of the Middle Ages was represented by fancies and theories and an evanescent idealism which controlled the movements of the people to a large extent. Born of religious sentiment, there dwelt in the minds of Christian people a reverence for the land of the birth of Christ, to which pilgrims passed every year to show their adoration for the Saviour and patriotism for the land of his birth. These pilgrims were interfered with by the Mohammedans and especially by the Seljuk Turks. The Turks in their blind zeal for Mohammedanism could see nothing in the Christian belief worthy of respect or even civil treatment. The persecution of Christians awakened the sympathy of all Europe and filled the minds of people with resentment against the occupation of Jerusalem by the Turks. This is one of the earliest indications of the development of religious toleration, which heralded the development of a feeling that people should worship whom they pleased unmolested, though it was like a voice crying in the wilderness, for many centuries passed before religious toleration could be acknowledged. There were other considerations which made occasion for the crusades. Gregory VII preached a crusade to protect Constantinople and unify the church under one head. But trouble with Henry IV of Germany caused him to abandon the enterprise. There still dwelt in the minds of the people an ideal monarchy, as represented by the Roman Empire. It was considered the type of all good government, the one expression of the unity of all people. Many dreamed of the return of this empire to its full temporal sway. It was a species of idealism which lived on through the Middle Ages long after the {321} Western Empire had passed into virtual decay. In connection with this idea of a universal empire controlling the whole world was the idea of a universal religion which should unite all religious bodies under one common organization. The centre of this organization was to be the papal authority at Rome. There dwelt then in the minds of all ecclesiastics this common desire for the unity of all religious people in one body regardless of national boundaries. And it must be said that these two ideas had much to do with giving Europe unity of thought and sentiment. Disintegrated as it was, deflected and disturbed by a hundred forces, thoughts of a common religion and of universal empire nevertheless had much to do to harmonize and unify the people of Europe. Hence, it was when Urban II, who had inherited all of the great religious improvements instituted by Gregory VII, preached a crusade to protect Constantinople, on the one hand, and to deliver Jerusalem, on the other, and made enthusiastic inflammatory speeches, that Europe awoke like an electric flash. Peter the Hermit, on the occasion of the first crusade, was employed to travel throughout Europe to arouse enthusiasm in the minds of the people. The crusades so suddenly inaugurated extended over a period of nearly two hundred years, in which all Europe was in a restless condition. The feudal life which had settled down and crystallized all forms of human society throughout Europe had failed to give that variety and excitement which it entertained in former days. Thousands of knights in every nation were longing for the battle-field. Many who thought life at home not worth living, and other thousands of people seeking opportunities for change, sought diversion abroad. All Europe was ready to exclaim "God wills it!" and "On to Jerusalem!" to defend the Holy City against the Turk. _Specific Causes of the Crusades_.--If we examine more specifically into the real causes of the crusades we shall find, as Mr. Guizot has said, that there were two causes, the one moral, the other social. The moral cause is represented in the {322} desire to relieve suffering humanity and fight against the injustice of the Turks. Both the Mohammedan and the Christian, the two most modern of all great religions, were placed upon a moral basis. Morality was one of the chief phases of both religions; yet they had different conceptions of morality, and no toleration for each other. Although prior to the Turkish invasion the Mohammedans, through policy, had tolerated the visitations of the Christians, the two classes of believers had never gained much respect for each other, and after the Turkish invasion the enmity between them became intense. It was the struggle of these two systems of moral order that was the great occasion and one of the causes of the crusades. The social cause, however, was that already referred to--the desire of individuals for a change from the monotony which had settled down over Europe under the feudal régime. It was the mind of man, the enthusiasm of the individual, over-leaping the narrow bounds of his surroundings, and looking for fields of exploitation and new opportunities for action. The social cause represents, then, the spontaneous outburst of long-pent-up desires, a return to the freedom of earlier years, when wandering and plundering were among the chief occupations of the Teutonic tribes. To state the causes more specifically, perhaps it may be said that the ambition of temporal and spiritual princes and the feudal aristocracy for power, the general poverty of the community on account of overpopulation leading the multitudes to seek relief through change, and a distinct passion for pilgrimages were influential in precipitating this movement. _Unification of Ideals and the Breaking of Feudalism_.--It is to be observed that the herald of the crusades thrilled all Europe, and that, on the basis of ideals of empire and church, there were a common sentiment or feeling and a common ground for action. All Europe soon placed itself on a common plane in the interest of a common cause. At first it would seem that this universal movement would have tended to {323} develop a unity of Western nations. To the extent of breaking down formal custom, destroying the sterner aspects of feudalism, and levelling the barriers of classes, it was a unifier of European thought and life. But a more careful consideration reveals the fact that although all groups and classes of people ranged themselves on one side of the great and common cause, the effect was not merely to break down feudalism but, in addition, to build up nationality. There was a tendency toward national unity. The crusades in the latter part of the period became national affairs, rather than universal or European affairs, even though the old spirit of feudalism, whereby each individual followed by his own group of retainers sought his own power and prestige, still remained. The expansion of this spirit to larger groups invoked the national spirit and national life. While, in the beginning, the papacy and the church were all-powerful in their controlling influence on the crusades, in the later period we find different nationalities, especially England, France, and Germany, struggling for predominance, the French nation being more strongly represented than any other. Among the important results of the crusades, then, were the breaking down of feudalism and the building up of national life. The causes of this result are evident. Many of the nobility were slain in battle or perished through famine and suffering, or else had taken up their abode under the new government that had been established at Jerusalem. This left a larger sway to those who were at home in the management of the affairs of the territory. Moreover, in the later period, the stronger national lines had been developed, which caused the subordination of the weaker feudal lords to the more powerful. Many, too, of the strong feudal lords had lost their wealth, as well as their position, in carrying on the expenses of the crusades. There was, consequently, the beginning of the remaking of all Europe upon a national basis. First, the enlarged ideas of life broke the bounds of feudalism; second, the failure to unite the nations in the common sentiment of a Western {324} Empire had left the political forces to cluster around new nationalities which sprang up in different sections of Europe. _The Development of Monarchy_.--The result of this centralization was to develop monarchy, an institution which became universal in the process of the development of government in Europe. It became the essential form of government and the type of national unity. Through no other known process of the time could the chaotic state of the feudal régime be reduced to a system. Constitutional liberty could not have survived under these conditions. The monarchy was not only a permanent form of government, but it was possessed of great flexibility, and could adapt itself to almost any conditions of the social life. While it may, primarily, have rested on force and the predominance of power of certain individuals, in a secondary sense it represented not only the unity of the race from which it had gained great strength, but also the moral power of the tribe, as the expression of their will and sentiments of justice and righteousness. It is true that it drew a sharp line between the governing and the governed; it made the one all-powerful and the other all-subordinate; yet in many instances the one man represented the collective will of the people, and through him and his administration centred the wisdom of a nation. Among the Teutonic peoples, too, there was something more than sentiment in this form of government. It was an old custom that the barbarian monarch was elected by the people and represented them; and whether he came through hereditary rank, from choice of nobles, or from the election of the people, this idea of monarchy was never lost sight of in Europe in the earliest stages of existence, and it was perverted to a great extent only by the Louis's of France and the Stuarts of England, in the modern era. Monarchy, then, as an institution, was advanced by the crusades; for a national life was developed and centralization took place, the king expressed the unity of it all, and so everywhere throughout Europe it became the universal type. {325} _The Crusades Quickened Intellectual Development_.--The intense activity of Europe in a common cause could not do otherwise than stimulate intellectual life. In a measure, it was an emancipation of mind, the establishment of large and liberal ideas. This freedom of the mind arose, not so much from any product of thought contributed by the Orientals to the Christians, although in truth the former were in many ways far more cultured than the latter, but rather from the development which comes from observation and travel. A habit of observing the manners and customs, the government, the laws, the life of different nations, and the action and reaction of the different elements of human life, tended to develop intellectual activity. Both Greek and Mohammedan had their influence on the minds of those with whom they came in contact, and Christians returned to their former homes possessed of new information and new ideas, and quickened with new impulses. The crusades also furnished material for poetic imagination and for literary products. It was the development of the old saga hero under new conditions, those of Christianity and humanity, and this led to greater and more profound sentiments concerning life. The crusades also took men out from their narrow surroundings and the belief that the Christian religion, supported by the monasteries, or cloisters, embodied all that was worth living in this life and a preparation for a passage into a newer, happier future life beyond. Humanity, according to the doctrine of the church, had not been worth the attention of the thoughtful. Life, as life, was not worth living. But the mingling of humanity on a broader basis and under new circumstances quickened the thoughts and sentiments of man in favor of his fellows. It gave an enlarged view of the life of man as a human creature. There was a thought engendered, feeble though it was at first, that the life on earth was really important and that it could be enlarged and broadened in many ways, and hence it was worth saving here for its own sake. The culmination of this idea appeared in the period of the Renaissance, a century later. {326} _The Commercial Effects of the Crusades_.--A new opportunity for trade was offered, luxuries were imported from the East in exchange for money or for minerals and fish of the West. Cotton, wine, dyestuffs, glassware, grain, spice, fruits, silk, and jewelry, as well as weapons and horses, came pouring in from the Orient to enlarge and enrich the life of the Europeans. For, with all the noble spirit manifested in government and in social life, western Europe was semibarbaric in the meagreness of the articles of material wealth there represented. The Italian cities, seizing the opportunity of the contact of the West with the East, developed a surprising trade with the Oriental cities and with the northwest of Europe, and thus enhanced their power.[1] From this impulse of trade that carried on commerce with the Orient largely through the Italian cities, there sprang up a group of Hanse towns in the north of Europe. From a financial standpoint we find that money was brought into use and became from this time on a necessity. Money-lending became a business, and those who had treasure instead of keeping it lying idle and unfruitful were now able to develop wealth, not only for the borrower but also for the lender. This tended to increase the rapid movement of wealth and to stimulate productive industry and trade in every direction. _General Influence of the Crusades on Civilization_.--We see, then, that it mattered little whether Jerusalem was taken by the Turks or the Christians, or whether thousands of Christians lost their lives in a great and holy cause, or whether the Mohammedans triumphed or were defeated at Jerusalem--the great result of the crusades was one of education of the people of Europe. The boundaries of life were enlarged, the power of thought increased, the opportunities for doing and living multiplied. It was the breaking away from the narrow shell of its own existence to the newly discovered life of the Orient that gave Europe its first impulse toward a larger life. And to this extent the crusades may be said to have been a {327} great civilizer. Many regard them as merely accidental phenomena difficult to explain, and yet, by tracing the various unobserved influences at work in their preparation, we shall see it was merely one phase of a great transitional movement in the progress of human life, just as we have seen that the feudal system was transitional between one form of government and another. The influence of the crusades on civilization was immense in giving it an impulse forward. Under the general intellectual awakening, commercial enterprise was quickened, industry developed, and new ideas of government and art obtained. The boundaries of Christian influences were extended and new nationalities were strengthened. Feudalism was undermined by means of the consolidation of fiefs, the association of lord and vassal, the introduction of a new military system, the transfer of estates, and the promotion of the study and use of Roman jurisprudence. Ecclesiasticism was greatly strengthened at Rome, through the power of the pope and the authority of his legates, the development of monastic orders, by the introduction of force and the use of the engine of excommunication. But something was gained for the common people, for serfs could be readily emancipated and there was a freer movement among all people. Ideas of equality began to be disseminated, which had their effect on the relation of affairs. Upon the whole it may be stated in conclusion that the emancipation of the mind had begun. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. Show how the crusades helped to break down feudalism and prepare for monarchy. 2. What intellectual benefit were the crusades to Europe? 3. Were there humanitarian and democratic elements of progress in the crusades? 4. What was the effect of the crusades on the power of the church? 5. What was the general influence of the crusades on civilization? 6. How did the crusades stimulate commerce? [1] See Chapter XXI. {328} CHAPTER XXI ATTEMPTS AT POPULAR GOVERNMENT _The Cost of Popular Government_.--The early forms of government were for the most part based upon hereditary authority or upon force. The theories of government first advanced seldom had reference to the rule of the popular will. The practice of civil affairs, enforcing theories of hereditary government or the rule of force, interfered with the rights of self-government of the people. Hence every attempt to assume popular government was a struggle against old systems and old ideas. Freedom has been purchased by money or blood. Men point with interest to the early assemblies of the Teutonic people to show the germs of democratic government, afterward to be overshadowed by imperialism, but a careful consideration would show that even this early stage of pure democracy was only a developed state from the earlier hereditary nobility. The Goddess of Liberty is ideally a creature of beautiful form, but really her face is scarred and worn, her figure gnarled and warped with time, and her garments besprinkled with blood. The selfishness of man, the struggle for survival, and the momentum of governmental machinery, have prevented the exercise of justice and of political equality. The liberty that has been gained is an expensive luxury. It has cost those who have tried to gain it the treasures of accumulated wealth and the flower of youth. When it has once been gained, the social forces have rendered the popular will non-expressive of the best government. Popular government, although ideally correct, is difficult to approximate, and frequently when obtained in name is far from real attainment. After long oppression and subservience to monarchy or aristocracy, when the people, suddenly gaining power through great expense of treasure and blood, assume self-government, they find to their distress that they are incapable of it when {329} struggling against unfavorable conditions. The result is a mismanaged government and an extra expense to the people. There has been through many centuries a continual struggle for popular government. The end of each conflict has seen something gained, yet the final solution of the problem has not been reached. Nevertheless, imperfect as government by the people may be, it is, in the long run, the safest and best, and it undoubtedly will triumph in the end. The democratic government of great nations is the most difficult of all forms to maintain, and it is only through the increased wisdom of the people that its final success may be achieved. The great problem now confronting it arises from purely economic considerations. _The Feudal Lord and the Towns_.--Feudalism made its stronghold in country life. The baronial castle was built away from cities and towns--in a locality favorable for defense. This increased the importance of country life to a great extent, and placed the feudal lord in command of large tracts of territory. Many of the cities and towns were for a time accorded the municipal privileges that had been granted them under Roman rule; but in time these wore away, and the towns, with a few exceptions, became included in large feudal tracts, and were held, with other territory, as feudatories. In Italy, where feudalism was less powerful, the greater barons were obliged to build their castles in the towns, or, indeed, to unite with the towns in government. But in France and Germany, and even to a certain extent in England, the feudal lord kept aloof from the town. There was, consequently, no sympathy existing between the feudal lord and the people of the cities. It was his privilege to collect feudal dues and aids from the cities, and beyond this he cared nothing for their welfare. It became his duty and privilege to hold the baronial court in the towns at intervals and to regulate their internal affairs, but he did this through a subordinate, and troubled himself little about any regulation or administration except to further his own ends. {330} _The Rise of Free Cities_.--Many of the towns were practically run by the surviving machinery of the old Roman municipal system, while many were practically without government except the overlordship of the feudal chief by his representative officer. The Romans had established a complete system of municipal government in all their provinces. Each town or city of any importance had a complete municipal machinery copied after the government of the imperial city. When the Roman system began to decay, the central government failed first, and the towns found themselves severed from any central imperial government, yet in possession of machinery for local self-government. When the barbarians invaded the Roman territory, and, avoiding the towns, settled in the country, the towns fell into the habit of managing their own affairs as far as feudal régime would permit. It appears, therefore, that the first attempts at local self-government were made in the cities and towns. In fact, liberty of government was preserved in the towns, through the old Roman municipal life, which lived on, and, being shorn of the imperial idea, took on the spirit of Roman republicanism. It was thus that the principles of Roman municipal government were kept through the Middle Ages and became useful in the modern period, not only in developing independent nationality but in perpetuating the rights of a people to govern themselves. The people of the towns organized themselves into municipal guilds to withstand the encroachments of the barons on their rights and privileges. This gave a continued coherence to the city population, which it would not otherwise have had or perpetuated. In thus perpetuating the idea of self-government, this cohesive organization, infused with a common sentiment of defense, made it possible to wrest liberty from the feudal baron. When he desired to obtain money or supplies in order to carry on a war, or to meet other expenditures, he found it convenient to levy on the cities for this purpose. His exactions, coming frequently and irregularly, aroused the {331} citizens to opposition. A bloody struggle ensued, which usually ended in compromise and the purchase of liberty by the citizens by the payment of an annual tax to the feudal lord for permission to govern themselves in regard to all internal affairs. It was thus that many of the cities gained their independence of feudal authority, and that some, in the rise of national life, gained their independence as separate states, such, for instance, as Hamburg, Venice, Lübeck, and Bremen. _The Struggle for Independence_.--In this struggle for independent life the cities first strove for just treatment. In many instances this was accorded the citizens, and their friendly relations with the feudal lord continued. When monarchy arose through the overpowering influence of some feudal lord, the city remained in subjection to the king, but in most instances the free burgesses of the towns were accorded due representation in the public assembly wherever one existed. Many cities, failing to get justice, struggled with more or less success for independence. The result of the whole contest was to develop the right of self-government and finally to preserve the principle of representation. It was under these conditions that the theory of "taxation without representation is tyranny" was developed. A practical outcome of this struggle for freedom has been the converse of this principle--namely, that representation without taxation is impossible. Taxation, therefore, is the badge of liberty--of a liberty obtained through blood and treasure. _The Affranchisement of Cities Developed Municipal Organization_.--The effect of the affranchisement of cities was to develop an internal organization, usually on the representative plan. There was not, as a rule, a pure democracy, for the influences of the Roman system and the feudal surroundings, rapidly tending toward monarchy, rendered it impossible that the citizens of the so-called free cities should have the privileges of a pure democracy, hence the representative plan prevailed. There was not sufficient unity of purpose, nor common sentiment of the ideal government, sufficient to maintain {332} permanently the principles and practice of popular government. Yet there was a popular assembly, in which the voice of the people was manifested in the election of magistrates, the voting of taxes, and the declaration of war. In the mediaeval period, however, the municipal government was, in its real character, a business corporation, and the business affairs of the town were uppermost after defense against external forces was secured, hence it occurred that the wealthy merchants and the nobles who dwelt within the town became the most influential citizens in the management of municipal affairs. There sprang up, as an essential outcome of these conditions, an aristocracy within the city. In many instances this aristocracy was reduced to an oligarchy, and the town was controlled by a few men; and in extreme cases the control fell into the hands of a tyrant, who for a time dominated the affairs of the town. Whatever the form of the municipal government, the liberties of the people were little more than a mere name, recognized as a right not to be denied. Having obtained their independence of foreign powers, the towns fell victims to internal tyranny, yet they were the means of preserving to the world the principles of local self-government, even though they were not permitted to enjoy to a great extent the privileges of exercising them. It remained for more favorable circumstances to make this possible. _The Italian Cities_.--The first cities to become prominent after the perpetuation of the Roman system by the introduction of barbarian blood were those of northern Italy. These cities were less influenced by the barbarian invasion than others, on account of, first, their substantial city organization; second, the comparatively small number of invaders that surrounded them; and, third, the opportunity for trade presented by the crusades, which they eagerly seized. Their power was increased because, as stated above, the feudal nobility, unable to maintain their position in the country, were forced to live in the cities. The Italian cities were, therefore, less interfered with by barbarian and feudal influences, and continued to {333} develop strength. The opportunity for immense trade and commerce opened up through the crusades made them wealthy. Another potent cause of the rapid advancement of the Italian cities was their early contact with the Greeks and the Saracens, for they imbibed the culture of these peoples, which stimulated their own culture and learning. Also, the invasions of the Saracens on the south and of the Hungarians on the north caused them to strengthen their fortifications. They enclosed their towns with walls, and thus made opportunity for the formation of small, independent states within the walls. Comparatively little is known of the practice of popular government, although most of these cities were in the beginning republican and had popular elections. In the twelfth century freedom was granted, in most instances, to the peasantry. There were a parliament, a republican constitution, and a secret council (_credenza_) that assisted the consuls. There was also a great council called a senate, consisting of about a hundred representatives of the people. The chief duty of the senate was to discuss important public measures and refer them to the parliament for their approval. In this respect it resembled the Greek senate (_boule_). The secret council superintended the public works and administered the public finance. These forms of government were not in universal use, but are as nearly typical as can be found, as the cities varied much in governmental practice. It is easy to see that the framework of the government is Roman, while the spirit of the institutions, especially in the earlier part of their history, is affected by Teutonic influence. There was a large number of these free towns in Italy from the close of the twelfth to the beginning of the fourteenth century. At the close of this period, the republican phase of their government declined, and each was ruled by a succession of tyrants, or despots (_podestas_). In vain did the people attempt to regain their former privileges; they succeeded only in introducing a new kind of despotism in the captains of the people. The cities had fallen {334} into the control of the wealthy families, and it mattered not what was the form of government, despotism prevailed. In many of the cities the excessive power of the despots made their reign a prolonged terror. As long as enlightened absolutism prevailed, government was administered by upright rulers and judges in the interests of the people; but when the power fell into the hands of unscrupulous men, the privileges and rights of the people were lost. It is said that absolutism, descending from father to son, never improves in the descent; in the case of some of the Italian cities it produced monsters. As the historian says: "The last Visconti, the last La Scalas, the last Sforzas, the last Farnesi, the last Medici--magnificent promoters of the humanities as their ancestors had been--were the worst specimens of the human race." The situation of government was partially relieved by the introduction at a later period of the trade guilds. All the industrial elements were organized into guilds, each one of which had its representation in the government. This was of service to the people, but nothing could erase the blot of despotism. The despots were of different classes, according to the method by which they obtained power. First, there were nobles, who were representatives of the emperor, and governed parts of Lombardy while it was under the federated government, a position which enabled them to obtain power as captains of the people. Again, there were some who held feudal rights over towns and by this means became rulers or captains. There were others who, having been raised to office by the popular vote, had in turn used the office as a means to enslave the people and defeat the popular will. The popes, also, appointed their nephews and friends to office and by this means obtained supremacy. Merchant princes, who had become wealthy, used their money to obtain and hold power. Finally, there were the famous _condottieri_, who captured towns and made them principalities. Into the hands of such classes as these the rights and privileges of the people were continually falling, and the result was disastrous to free government. {335} _Government of Venice_.--Florence and Venice represent the two typical towns of the group of Italian cities. Wealthy, populous, and aggressive, they represent the greatest power, the highest intellectual development, becoming cities of culture and learning. In 1494 the inhabitants of Florence numbered 90,000, of whom only 3,200 were burghers, or full citizens, while Venice had 100,000 inhabitants and only 5,000 burghers. This shows what a low state popular government had reached--only one inhabitant in twenty was allowed the rights of citizens. Venice was established on the islands and morasses of the Adriatic Coast by a few remnants of the Beneti, who sought refuge upon them from the ravages of the Huns. These people were early engaged in fishing, and later began a coast trade which, in time, enlarged into an extensive commerce. In early times it had a municipal constitution, and the little villages had their own assemblies, discussed their own affairs, and elected their own magistrates. Occasionally the representatives of the several tribal villages met to discuss the affairs of the whole city. This led to a central government, which, in 697 A.D., elected a doge for life. The doges possessed most of the attributes of kings, became despotic and arbitrary, and finally ruled with absolute sway, so that the destinies of the republic were subjected to the rule of one man. Aristocracy established itself, and the first families struggled for supremacy. Venice was the oldest republic of modern times, and continued the longest. "It was older by 700 years than the Lombard republics, and it survived them for three centuries. It witnessed the fall of the Roman Empire; it saw Italy occupied by Odoacer, by Charlemagne, and by Napoleon." Its material prosperity was very great, and great buildings remain to this day as monuments of an art and architecture the foundations of which were mostly laid before the despots were at the height of their power. _Government of Florence_.--There was a resemblance between Florence and Athens. Indeed, the former has been called the {336} Athens of the West, for in it the old Greek idea was first revived; in it the love for the artistic survived. Both cities were devoted to the accumulating of wealth, and both were interested in the struggles over freedom and general politics. Situated in the valley of the Arno, under the shadow of the Apennines, Florence lacked the charm of Venice, situated on the sea. It was early conquered by Sulla and made into a military city of the Romans, and by a truce the Roman government and the Roman spirit prevailed in the city. It was destroyed by the Goths and rebuilt by the Franks, but still retained the Roman spirit. It was then a city of considerable importance, surrounded by a wall six miles in circumference, having seventy towers. After it was rebuilt, the city was governed by a senate, but finally the first families predominated. Then there arose, in 1215, the great struggle between the papal and the imperial parties, the Ghibellines and the Guelphs--internal dissensions which were not quieted until these two opposing factions were driven out and a popular government established, with twelve _seignors_, or rulers, as the chief officers. Soon after this the art guilds obtained considerable power. They elected _priors_ of trades every two months. At first there were seven guilds that held control in Florence; they were the lawyers, who were excluded from all offices, the physicians, the bankers, the mercers, the woollen-drapers, the dealers in foreign cloths, and the dealers in pelts from the north. Subsequently, men following the baser arts--butchers, retailers of cloth, blacksmiths, bakers, shoemakers, builders--were admitted to the circle of arts, until there were twenty-one. After having a general representative council, it was finally (1266) determined that each of the seven greater arts should have a council of its own. The next step in government was the appointment of a _gonfalconier_ of justice by the companies of arts that had especial command of citizens. But soon a struggle began between the commons and the nobility, in which for a long time the former were successful. Under the {337} leadership of Giano della Bella they enacted ordinances of justice destroying the power of the nobles, making them ineligible to the office of _prior_, and fining each noble 13,000 pounds for any offense against the law. The testimony of two credible persons was sufficient to convict a person if their testimony agreed; hence it became easy to convict persons of noble blood. Yet the commons were in the end obliged to succumb to the power of the nobility and aristocracy, and the light of popular government went out. _The Lombard League_.--The Lombard cities of the north of Italy were established subsequent to the invasion of the Lombards, chiefly through the peculiar settlement of the Lombard dukes over different territories in a loose confederation. But the Lombards found cities already existing, and became the feudal proprietors of these and the territory. There were many attempts to unite these cities into a strong confederation, but owing to the nature of the feudal system and the general independence and selfishness of each separate city, they proved futile. We find here the same desire for local self-government that existed in the Greek cities, the indulgence of which was highly detrimental to their interests in time of invasion or pressure from external power. There were selfishness and rivalry between all these cities, not only in the attempt to outdo each other in political power, but by reason of commercial jealousy. "Venice first, Christians next, and Italy afterward" was the celebrated maxim of Venice. To the distressing causes which kept the towns apart, the strife between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines increased the trouble. Nor had the pope any desire to see a strong, unified government so near him. In those days popes were usually not honored in their own country, and, moreover, had enough to do to control their refractory subjects to the north of the Alps. Unity was impossible among cities so blindly and selfishly opposed to one another, and it was, besides, especially prevented by jealous sovereigns from without, who wished rather to see these cities acting independently and separately {338} than effectively, in a strong, united government. Under these circumstances it was impossible there should be a strong and unified government; yet, could they have been properly utilized, all the materials were at hand for developing a national life which would have withstood the shock of opposing nationalities through centuries. The attempt to make a great confederation, a representative republic, failed, however, and with it failed the real hopes of republicanism in Italy. _The Rise of Popular Assemblies in France_.--In the early history of France, while feudalism yet prevailed, it became customary for the provinces to have their popular assemblies. These assemblies usually were composed of all classes of the people, and probably had their origin in the calls made by feudal lords to unite all those persons within their feudatories who might have something to say respecting the administration of the government and the law. In them the three estates were assembled--the clergy, the nobility, and the commons. Many of these old provincial assemblies continued for a long time, for instance, in Brittany and Languedoc, where they remained until the period of the revolution. It appears that every one of these provinces had its own provincial assembly, and a few of these assemblies survived until modern times, so that we know somewhat of their nature. Although their powers were very much curtailed on the rise of monarchy, especially in the time of the Louis's, yet the provinces in which they continued had advantages over those provinces which had lost the provincial assemblies. They had purchased of the crown the privilege of collecting all taxes demanded by the central government, and they retained the right to tax themselves for the expenses of their local administration and to carry on improvements, such as roads and water-courses, without any administration of the central government. Notwithstanding much restriction upon their power within their own domain, they moved with a certain freedom which other provinces did not possess. _Rural Communes Arose in France_.--Although feudalism had prevailed over the entire country, there was a continual growth {339} of local self-government at the time when feudalism was gradually passing into monarchial power. It was to the interest of the kings to favor somewhat the development of local self-government, especially the development of the cities while the struggle for dominion over feudalism was going on; but when the kings had once obtained power they found themselves confronted with the uprising spirit of local government. The struggle between king and people went on for some centuries, until the time when everything ran to monarchy and all the rights of the people were wrested from them; indeed, the perfection of the centralized government of the French monarch left no opportunity for the voice of the people to be heard. The rural communes existed by rights obtained from feudal lords who had granted them charters and given them self-government over a certain territory. These charters allowed the inhabitants of a commune to regulate citizenship and the administration of property, and to define feudal rights and duties. Their organ of government was a general assembly of all the inhabitants, which either regulated the affairs of a commune directly or else delegated especial functions to communal officers who had power to execute laws already passed or to convoke the general assembly of the people on new affairs. The collection of taxes for both the central and the local government, the management of the property of the commune, and the direction of the police system represented the chief powers of the commune. The exercise of these privileges led into insistence upon the right of every man, whether peasant, freeman, or noble, to be tried by his peers. _The Municipalities of France_.--As elsewhere related, the barbarians found the cities and towns of France well advanced in their own municipal system. This system they modified but little, only giving somewhat of the spirit of political freedom. In the struggle waged later against the feudal nobility these towns gradually obtained their rights, by purchase or agreement, and became self-governing. In this struggle we find the Christian church, represented by the bishop, always arraying itself on the side of the commons against the nobility, {340} and thus establishing democracy. Among the municipal privileges which were wrested from the nobility was included the right to make all laws that might concern the people; to raise their own taxes, both local and for the central government; to administer justice in their own way, and to manage their own police system. The relations of the municipality to the central government or the feudal lord forced them to pay a certain tribute, which gave them a legal right to manage themselves. Their pathway was not always smooth, however, but, on the contrary, full of contention and struggle against overbearing lords who sought to usurp authority. Their internal management generally consisted of two assemblies--one a general assembly of citizens, in which they were all well represented, the other an assembly of notables. The former elected the magistrates, and performed all legislative actions; the latter acted as a sort of advisory council to assist the magistrates. Sometimes the cities had but one assembly of citizens, which merely elected magistrates and exercised supervision over them. The magistracy generally consisted of aldermen, presided over by a mayor, and acted as a general executive council for the city. Municipal freedom gradually declined through adverse circumstances. Within the city limits tyranny, aristocracy, or oligarchy sometimes prevailed, wresting from the people the rights which they had purchased or fought for. Without was the pressure of the feudal lord, which gradually passed into the general fight of the king for royal supremacy. The king, it is true, found the towns very strong allies in his struggle against the nobility. They too had commenced a struggle against the feudal lords, and there was a common bond of sympathy between them. But when the feudal lords were once mastered, the king must turn his attention to reducing the liberties of the people, and gradually, through the influence of monarchy and centralization of government, the rights and privileges of the people of the towns of France passed away. {341} _The States-General Was the First Central Organization_.--It ought to be mentioned here that after the monarchy was moderately well established, Philip the Fair (1285-1314) called the representatives of the nation together. He called in the burghers of the towns, the nobility, and the clergy and formed a parliament for the discussion of the affairs of the realm. It appeared that the constitutional development which began so early in England was about to obtain in France. But it was not to be realized, for in the three centuries that followed--namely, the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth--the monarchs of France managed to keep this body barely in existence, without giving it any real power. When the king was secure upon his throne and imperialism had received its full power, the nobility, the clergy, and the commons were no longer needed to support the throne of France, and, consequently, the will of the people was not consulted. It is true that each estate of nobility, clergy, and commons met separately from time to time and made out its own particular grievances to the king, but the representative power of the people passed away and was not revived again until, on the eve of the revolution, Louis XVI, shaken with terror, once more called together the three estates in the last representative body held before the political deluge burst upon the French nation. _Failure of Attempts at Popular Government in Spain_.--There are signs of popular representation in Spain at a very early date, through the independent towns. This representation was never universal or regular. Many of the early towns had charter rights which they claimed as ancient privileges granted by the Roman government. These cities were represented for a time in the popular assembly, or Cortes, but under the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Cortes were seldom called, and when they were, it was for the advantage of the sovereign rather than of the people. Many attempts were made in Spain, from time to time, to fan into flame this enthusiasm for popular representation, but the predominance of monarchy and the dogmatic centralized power of the church tended to {342} repress all real liberty. Even in these later days sudden bursts of enthusiasm for constitutional liberty and constitutional privilege are heard from the southern peninsula; but the transition into monarchy was so sudden that the rights of the people were forever curtailed. The frequent outbursts for liberty and popular government came from the centres where persisted the ideas of freedom planted by the northern barbarians. _Democracy in the Swiss Cantons_.--It is the boast of some of the rural districts of Switzerland, that they never submitted to the feudal régime, that they have never worn the yoke of bondage, and, indeed, that they were never conquered. It is probable that several of the rural communes of Switzerland have never known anything other than a free peasantry. They have continually practised the pure democracy exemplified by the entire body of citizens meeting in the open field to make the laws and to elect their officers. Although it is true that in these rural communities of Switzerland freedom has been a continuous quantity, yet during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Switzerland, as a whole, was dominated by feudalism. This feudalism differed somewhat from the French feudalism, for it represented a sort of overlordship of absentee feudal chiefs, which, leaving the people more to themselves, made vassalage less irksome. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, in the year 1309, the cantons, Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden, lying near Lake Lucerne, gained, through the emperor, Henry VII, the recognition of their independence in all things except allegiance to the empire. Each of these small states had its own government, varying somewhat from that of its neighbors. Yet the rural cantons evinced a strong spirit of pure democracy, for they had already, about half a century previous, formed themselves into a league which proved the germ of confederacy, which perpetuated republican institutions in the Middle Ages. The spirit of freedom prevailing throughout diverse communities brought the remainder of the Swiss cantons into the confederation. {343} The first liberties possessed by the various cantons were indigenous to the soil. From time immemorial they had clung to the ancient right of self-government, and had developed in their midst a local system which feudalism never succeeded in eradicating. It mattered not how diverse their systems of local government, they had a common cause against feudal domination, and this brought them into a close union in the attempt to throw off such domination. It is one of the remarkable phenomena of political history, that proud, aristocratic cities with monarchial tendencies could be united with humble and rude communes which held expressly to pure democracy. It is but another illustration of the truth that a particular form of government is not necessary to the development of liberty, but it is the spirit, bravery, independence, and unity of the people that make democracy possible. Another important truth, also, is illustrated here--that Italian, German, and French people who respect each other's liberty and have a common cause may dwell together on a basis of unity and mutual support. Switzerland stands, then, for the perpetuation of the early local liberties of the people. It has always been the synonym of freedom and the haven of refuge for the politically oppressed of all nations, and its freedom has always had a tendency to advance civilization, not only within the boundaries of the Swiss government, but throughout all Europe. Progressive ideas of religion and education have ever accompanied liberty in political affairs. The long struggle with the feudal lords and the monarchs of European governments, and with the Emperor of Germany, united the Swiss people on a basis of common interests and developed a spirit of independence. At the same time, it had a tendency to warp their judgments respecting the religious rights and liberties of a people, and more than once the Swiss have shown how narrow in conception of government a republic can be. Yet, upon the whole, it must be conceded that the watch-fires of liberty have never been extinguished in Switzerland, and that the light they {344} have shed has illumined many dark places in Europe and America. _The Ascendancy of Monarchy_.--Outside of Switzerland the faint beginning of popular representation was gradually overcome by the ascendancy of monarchy. Feudalism, after its decline, was rapidly followed by the development of monarchy throughout Europe. The centralization of power became a universal principle, uniting in one individual the government of an entire nation. It was an expression of unity, and was essential to the redemption of Europe from the chaotic state in which it had been left by declining feudalism. Monarchy is not necessarily the rule of a single individual. It may be merely the proclamation of the will of the people through one man, the expression of the voice of the people from a single point. Of all forms of government a monarchy is best adapted to a nation or people needing a strong central government able to act with precision and power. As illustrative of this, it is a noteworthy fact that the old Lombard league of confederated states could get along very well until threatened with foreign invasion; then they needed a king. The Roman republic, with consuls and senate, moved on very well in times of peace, but in times of war it was necessary to have a dictator, whose voice should have the authority of law. The President of the United States is commander-in-chief of the army, which position in time of war gives him a power almost resembling imperialism. Could Greece have presented against her invaders a strong monarchy which could unite all her heroes in one common command, her enemies would not so easily have prevailed against her. Monarchy, then, in the development of European life seemed merely a stage of progress not unlike that of feudalism itself--a stage of progressive government; and it was only when it was carried to a ridiculous extreme in France and in England--in France under the Louis's and in England under the Stuarts--that it finally appeared detrimental to the highest interests of the people. On the other hand, the weak {345} republicanism of the Middle Ages had not sufficient unity or sufficient aggressiveness to maintain itself, and gave way to what was then a form of government better adapted to conditions and surroundings. But the fires of liberty, having been once lighted, were to burst forth again in a later period and burn with sufficient heat to purify the governments of the world. _Beginning of Constitutional Liberty in England_.--When the Normans entered England, feudalism was in its infancy and wanted yet the form of the Roman system. The kings of the English people soon became the kings of England, and the feudal system spread over the entire island. But this feudalism was already in the grasp of monarchy which prevailed much more easily in England than in France. There came a time in England, as elsewhere, when the people, seeking their liberties, were to be united with the king to suppress the feudal nobility, and there sprang up at this time some elements of popular representative government, most plainly visible in the parliament of Simon de Montfort (1265) and the "perfect parliament" of 1295, the first under the reign of Henry III, and the second under Edward I. In one or two instances prior to this, county representation was summoned in parliament in order to facilitate the method of assessing and collecting taxes, but these two parliaments marked the real beginnings of constitutional liberty in England, so far as local representation is concerned. Prior to this, in 1215, the nobles and the commons, working together, had wrested the concession of the great _Magna Charta_ from King John, and thus had established a precedent of the right of each class of individuals to have its share in the government of the realm; under its declaration king, nobility, and commons, each a check upon the other, each struggling for power, and all developing through the succeeding generations the liberty of the people under the constitution. This long, slow process of development, reminding one somewhat of the struggle of the plebeians of Rome against the patricians, {346} finally made the lower house of parliament, which represents the people of the realm, the most prominent factor in the government of the English people--and at last, without a cataclysm like the French Revolution, established liberty of speech, popular representation, and religious liberty. We find, then, that in England and in other parts of Europe a liberalizing tendency set in after monarchy had been established and become predominant, which limited the actions of kings and declared for the liberties of the people. Imperialism in monarchy was limited by the constitution of the people. England laid the foundations of democracy in recognizing the rights of representation of all classes. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. What phases of popular government are to be noted in the Italian cities? 2. What is the relation of "enlightened absolutism" to social progress? 3. The characteristics of mediaeval guilds. 4. Why were the guilds discontinued? 5. The rise and decline of popular assemblies and rural communes of France. 6. The nature of the government of the Swiss cantons. 7. The transition from feudalism to monarchy. 8. In what ways was the idea of popular government perpetuated in Europe? {347} CHAPTER XXII THE INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING OF EUROPE _Social Evolution Is Dependent Upon Variation_.--The process by which ideas are born and propagated in human society is strangely analogous to the methods of biological evolution. The laws of survival, of adaptation, of variation and mutation prevail, and the evidence of conspicuous waste is ever present. The grinding and shifting of human nature under social law is similar to the grinding and shifting of physical nature under organic law. When we consider the length of time it takes physical nature to accomplish the ultimate of fixed values, seventy millions of years or more to produce an oak-tree, millions of years to produce a horse or a man, we should not be impatient with the slow processes of human society nor the waste of energy in the process. For human society arises out of the confusion of ideas and progresses according to the law of survival. New ideas must be accepted, diffused, used, and adapted to new conditions. It would seem that Europe had sufficient knowledge of life contributed by the Orient, by Greek, Roman, and barbarian to go forward; but first must come a period of readjustment of old truth to new environment and the discovery of new truth. For several centuries, in the Dark Ages, the intellectual life of man lay dormant. Then must come a quickening of the spirit before the world could advance. However, in considering human progress, the day of small things must "not be despised." For in the days of confusion and low tide of regression there are being established new modes of life and thought which through right adaptation will flow on into the full tide of progress. Revivals come which gather up and utilize the scattered and confused ideas of life, adapting and utilizing them by setting new standards and imparting new impulses of progress. {348} _The Revival of Progress Throughout Europe_.--Human society, as a world of ideas, is a continuous quantity, and therefore it is difficult to mark off any definite period of time to show social causation. Roughly speaking, the period from the beginning of the eighth century to the close of the fifteenth is a period of intellectual ferment, the climax of which extended from the eleventh to the close of the fifteenth century. It was in this period that the forces were gathering in preparation for the achievements of the modern era of progress. There was one general movement, an awakening along the whole line of human endeavor in the process of transition from the old world to the new. It was a revival of art, language, literature, philosophy, theology, politics, law, trade, commerce, and the additions of invention and discovery. It was the period of establishing schools and laying the foundation of universities. In this there was a more or less continuous progress of the freedom of the mind, which permitted reflective thought, which subsequently led on to the religious reformation that permitted freedom of belief, and the French Revolution, which permitted freedom of political action. It was the rediscovery of the human mind, a quickening of intellectual liberty, a desire of alert minds for something new. It was a call for humanity to move forward. _The Revival of Learning a Central Idea of Progress_.--As previously stated, the church had taken to itself by force of circumstances the power in the Western world relinquished by the fallen Roman Empire. In fighting the battles against unbelief, ignorance, and political corruption, it had become a powerful hierarchy. As the conservator of learning, it eventually began to settle the limits of knowledge and belief on its own interpretation and to force this upon the world. It saved the elements of knowledge from the destruction of the barbarians, but in turn sought to lock up within its own precincts of belief the thoughts of the ages, presuming to do the thinking for the world. It became dogmatic, arbitrary, conservative, and conventional. Moreover, this had become the {349} attitude of all inert Europe. The several movements that sought to overcome this stifling condition of the mind are called the "revival of learning." A more specific use of the term renaissance, or revival of learning, refers especially to the restoration of the intellectual continuity of Europe, or the rebirth of the human mind. It is generally applied to what is known as humanism, or the revival of classical learning. Important as this phase of general progress is, it can be considered only as a part of the great revival of progress. Humanism, or the revival of classical learning, having its origin and first great impulse in Italy, it has become customary to use humanism and the Italian renaissance interchangeably, yet without careful consideration; for although the Italian renaissance is made up largely of humanism, it had such wide-reaching consequences on the progress of all Europe as not to be limited by the single influence of the revival of the classical learning. _Influence of Charlemagne_.--Clovis founded the Frankish kingdom, which included the territory now occupied by France and the Netherlands. Subsequently this kingdom was enlarged under the rule of Charles Martel, who turned back the Moslem invasion at Poitiers in 732, and became ruler of Europe north of the Alps. His son Pepin enlarged and strengthened the kingdom, so that when his successor Charlemagne came into power in 768 he found himself in control of a vast inland empire. He conquered Rome and all north Italy and assumed the title of Roman emperor. The movement of Charlemagne was a slight and even a doubtful beginning of the revival. Possibly his reform was a faint flickering of the watch-fires of intellectual and civil activity, but they went out and darkness obscured the horizon until the breaking of the morn of liberty. Yet in the darkness of the ages that followed new forces were forming unobserved by the contemporary historian--forces which should give a new awakening to the mind of all Europe. Charlemagne re-established the unity of government which {350} had been lost in the decline of the old Roman government; he enlarged the boundary of the empire, established an extensive system of administration, and promoted law and order. He did more than this: he promoted religion by favoring the church in the advancement of its work throughout the realm. But unfortunately, in the attempt to break down feudalism, he increased it by giving large donations to the church, and so helped to develop ecclesiastical feudalism, and laid the foundation of subsequent evils. He was a strong warrior, a great king, and a master of civil government. Charlemagne believed in education, and insisted that the clergy should be educated, and he established schools for the education of his subjects. He promoted learning among his civil officers by establishing a school all the graduates of which were to receive civil appointments. It was the beginning of the civil service method in Europe. Charlemagne was desirous, too, of promoting learning of all kinds, and gathered together the scattered fragments of the German language, and tried to advance the educational interests of his subjects in every direction. But the attempts to make learning possible, apparently, passed for naught in later days when the iron rule of Charlemagne had passed away, and the weaker monarchs who came after him were unable to sustain his system. Darkness again spread over Europe, to be dispelled finally by other agencies. _The Attitude of the Church Was Retrogressive_.--The attitude of the Christian church toward learning in the Middle Ages was entirely arbitrary. It had become thoroughly institutionalized and was not in sympathy with the changes that were taking place outside of its own policy. It assumed an attitude of hostility to everything that tended toward the development of free and independent thought outside the dictates of the authorities of the church. It found itself, therefore, in an attitude of bitter opposition to the revival of learning which had spread through Europe. It was unfortunate that the church appeared so diametrically opposed to freedom of {351} thought and independent activity of mind. Even in England, when the new learning was first introduced, although Henry VIII favored it, the church in its blind policy opposed it, and when the renaissance in Germany had passed continuously into the Reformation, Luther opposed the new learning with as much vigor as did the papalists themselves. But from the fact of the church's assuming this attitude toward the new learning, it must not be inferred that there was no learning within the church, for there were scholars in theology, logic, and law, astute and learned. Yet the church assumed that it had a sort of proprietorship or monopoly of learning, and that only what it might see fit to designate was to receive attention, and then only in the church's own way; all other knowledge was to be opposed. The ecclesiastical discussions gave evidence of intense mental activity within the church, but, having little knowledge of the outside world to invigorate it or to give it something tangible upon which to operate, the mind passed into speculative fields that were productive of little permanent culture. Dwelling only upon a few fundamental conceptions at first, it soon tired itself out with its own weary round. The church recognized in all secular advocates of literature and learning its own enemies, and consequently began to expunge from the literary world as far as possible the remains of the declining Roman and Greek culture. It became hostile to Greek and Latin literature and art and sought to repress them. In the rise of new languages and literature in new nationalities every attempt was made by the church to destroy the effects of the pagan life. The poems and sagas treating of the religion and mythologies of these young, rising nationalities were destroyed. The monuments of the first beginnings of literature, the products of a period so hard to compass by the historian, were served in the same way as were the Greek and Latin masterpieces. The church said, if men will persist in study, let them ponder the precepts of the gospels as interpreted by the church. {352} For those who inquired about the problems of life, the churchmen pointed to the creeds and the dogmas of the church, which had settled all things. If men were too persistent in inquiring about the nature of this world, they were told that it is of little importance, only a prelude to the world to come; that they should spend their time in preparation for the future. Even as great a man as Gregory of Tours said: "Let us shun the lying fables of the poets and forego the wisdom of the sages at enmity with God, lest we incur the condemnation of endless death by the sentence of our Lord." Saint Augustine deplored the waste of time spent in reading Virgil, while Alcuin regretted that in his boyhood he had preferred Virgil to the legends of the saints. With the monks such considerations gave excuse for laziness and disregard of rhetoric. But in this movement of hostility to the new learning, the church went too far, and soon found the entire ecclesiastical system face to face with a gross ignorance, which must be eradicated or the superstructure would fall. As Latin was the only vehicle of thought in those days, it became a necessity that the priests should study Virgil and the other Latin authors, consequently the churches passed from their opposition to pagan authors to a careful utilization of them, until the whole papal court fell under the influence of the revival of learning, and popes and prelates became zealous in the promotion and, indeed, in the display of learning. When the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent became Pope Leo X, the splendor of the ducal court of Florence passed to the papal throne, and no one was more zealous in the patronage of learning than he. He encouraged learning and art of every kind, and built a magnificent library. It was merely the transferrence of the pomp of the secular court to the papacy. Such was the attitude of the church toward the new learning--first, a bitter opposition; second, a forced toleration; and third, the absorption of its best products. Yet in all this the spirit of the church was not for the freedom of mind nor independence of thought. It could not recognize this freedom nor {353} the freedom of religious belief until it had been humiliated by the spirit of the Reformation. _Scholastic Philosophy Marks a Step in Progress_.--There arose in the ninth century a speculative philosophy which sought to harmonize the doctrine of the church with the philosophy of Neo-Platonism and the logic of Aristotle. The scholastic philosophy may be said to have had its origin with John Scotus Erigena, who has been called "the morning star of scholasticism." He was the first bold thinker to assert the supremacy of reason and openly to rebel against the dogma of the church. In laying the foundation of his doctrine, he starts with a philosophical explanation of the universe. His writings and translations were forerunners of mysticism and set forth a peculiar pantheistic conception. His doctrine appears to ignore the pretentious authority of the church of his time and to refer to the earlier church for authority. In so doing he incorporated the doctrine of emanation advanced by the Neo-Platonists, which held that out of God, the supreme unity, evolve the particular forms of goodness, and that eventually all things will return to God. In like manner, in the creation of the universe the species comes from the genera by a process of unfolding. The complete development and extension of scholastic philosophy did not come until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The term "scholastics" was first applied to those who taught in the cloister schools founded by Charlemagne. It was at a later period applied to the teachers of the seven liberal arts--grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, in the _Trivium,_ and arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, in the _Quadrivium_. Finally it was applied to all persons who occupied themselves with science or philosophy. Scholastic philosophy in its completed state represents an attempt to harmonize the doctrines of the church with Aristotelian philosophy. There were three especial doctrines developed in the scholastic philosophy, called respectively nominalism, realism, and conceptualism. The first asserted that there are no generic {354} types, and consequently no abstract concepts. The formula used to express the vital point in nominalism is "_Universalia post rem_." Its advocates asserted that universals are but names. Roscellinus was the most important advocate of this doctrine. In the fourteenth century William of Occam revived the subject of nominalism, and this had much to do with the downfall of scholasticism, for its inductive method suggested the acquiring of knowledge through observation. Realism was a revival of the Platonic doctrine that ideas are the only real things. The formula for it was "_Universalia ante rem_." By it the general name preceded that of the species. Universal concepts represent the real; all else is merely illustrative of the real. The only real sphere is the one held in the mind, mathematically correct in every way. Balls and globes and other actual things are but the illustrations of the genus. Perhaps Anselm was the strongest advocate of this method of reasoning. It remained for Abelard to unite these two theories of philosophical reasoning into one, called conceptualism. He held that universals are not ideals, but that they exist in the things themselves. The formula given was "_Universalia in re_." This was a step in advance, and laid something of a foundation for the philosophy of classification in modern science. The scholastic philosophers did much to sharpen reason and to develop the mind, but they failed for want of data. Indeed, this has been the common failure of man, for in the height of civilization men speculate without sufficient knowledge. Even in the beginning of scientific thought, for lack of facts, men spent much of their time in speculation. The scholastic philosophers were led to consider many unimportant questions which could not be well settled. They asked the church authorities why the sacramental wine and bread turned into blood and flesh, and what was the necessity of the atonement? And in considering the nature of pure being they asked: "How many angels can dance at once on the point of a needle?" and "In moving from point to point, do angels pass through {355} intervening space?" They asked seriously whether "angels had stomachs," and "if a starving ass were placed exactly midway between two stacks of hay would he ever move?" But it must not be inferred that these people were as ridiculous as they appear, for each question had its serious side. Having no assistance from science, they fell single-handed upon dogmatism; yet many times they busied themselves with unprofitable discussions, and some of them became the advocates of numerous doctrines and dogmas which had a tendency to confuse knowledge, although in defense of which wits were sharpened. Lord Bacon, in a remarkable passage, has characterized the scholastic philosophers as follows: "This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign among the schoolmen, who--having sharp and strong wits and abundance of leisure and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle, their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and having little history, either of nature or of time--did, out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit, spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh its web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit."[1] Scholasticism, as the first phase of the revival of learning, though overshadowed by tradition and mediaeval dogmatism, showed great earnestness of purpose in ascertaining the truth by working "the wit and mind of man"; but it worked not "according to the stuff," and, having little to feed upon, it produced only speculations of truth and indications of future possibilities. There were many bright men among the scholastic {356} philosophers, especially in the thirteenth century, who left their impress upon the age; yet scholasticism itself was affected by dogmatism and short-sightedness, and failed to utilize the means at its hand for the improvement of learning. It exercised a tyranny over all mental endeavor, for the reason that it was obliged in all of its efforts to carry through all of its reasoning the heavy weight of dogmatic theology. Whatever else it attempted, it could not shake itself free from this incubus of learning, through a great system of organized knowledge, which hung upon the thoughts and lives of men and attempted to explain all things in every conceivable way. But to show that independent thinking was a crime one has only to refer to the results of the knowledge of Roger Bacon, who advanced his own methods of observation and criticism. Had the scholastics been able to accept what he clearly pointed out to them, namely, that reason can advance only by finding, through observation, new material upon which to work, science might have been active a full century in advance of what it was. He laid the foundation of experimental science, and pointed out the only way in which the revival of learning could be made permanent, but his voice was unheeded by those around him, and it remained for the philosophers of succeeding generations to estimate his real worth. _Cathedral and Monastic Schools_.--There were two groups of schools under the management of the church, known as the cathedral and monastic schools. The first represented the schools that had developed in the cathedrals for the sons of lay members of the church; the second, those in the monasteries that were devoted largely to the education of the ministry. To understand fully the position of these schools it is necessary to go back a little and refer to the educational forces of Europe. For a long period after Alexandria had become established as a great centre of learning, Athens was really the centre of education in the East, and this city held her sway in educational affairs down to the second century. The influence of the traditions of great teachers and the encouragement and {357} endowments given by emperors kept up a school at Athens, to which flocked the youth of the land who desired a superior education. Finally, when the great Roman Empire joined to itself the Greek culture, there sprang up what was known as the Greek and Roman schools, or Graeco-Roman schools, although Rome was not without its centre of education at the famous Athenaeum. In these Graeco-Roman schools were taught grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. The grammar of that day frequently included language, criticism, history, literature, metre; the dialectic considered logic, metaphysics, and ethics; while rhetoric contemplated the fitting of the youth for public life and for the law. But these schools, though dealing in real knowledge for a time, gradually declined, chiefly on account of the declining moral powers of the empire and the relaxation of intellectual activity, people thinking more of ease and luxury and the power of wealth than of actual accomplishment. The internal disorganization, unjust taxation, and unjust rule of the empire had also a tendency to undermine education. The coming of the barbarians, with their honest, illiterate natures, had its influence, likewise, in overthrowing the few schools that remained. The rise of Christianity, which supposed that all pagan literature and pagan knowledge were of the devil, and hence to be suppressed, opposed secular teaching, and tended to dethrone these schools. Constantine's effort to unite the church and state tended for a while to perpetuate secular institutions. But the pagan schools passed away; the philosophy of the age had run its course until it had become a hollow assumption, a desert of words, a weary round of speculation without vitality of expression; and the activity of the sophists in these later times narrowed all literary courses until they dwindled into mere matters of form. Perhaps, owing to its force, power, and dignity, the Roman law retained a vital {358} position in the educational curriculum. The school at Athens was suppressed in 529 by Justinian, because, as it had been claimed, it was tainted with Oriental philosophy and allied with Egyptian magic, and hence could not develop ethical standards. It is easy to observe how the ideas of Christian learning came into direct competition with the arrogant self-assumption and the hollowness of the selfish teachings of the old Graeco-Roman schools. The Christian doctrine, advocating the development of the individual life, intimate relations with God, the widening of social functions, with its teachings of humility, and humanity, could not tolerate the instruction given in these schools. Moreover, the Christian doctrine of education consisted, on the one hand, in preparing for the future life, and on the other, in the preparation of Christian ministers to teach this future life. As might be expected, when narrowed to this limit, Christian education had its dwarfing influence. If salvation were an important thing and salvation were to be obtained only by the denial of the life of this world, then there would be no object in perpetuating learning, no attempt to cultivate the mind, no tendency to develop the whole man on account of his moral and intellectual worth. The use of secular books was everywhere discouraged. As a result the instruction of the religious schools was of a very meagre nature. Within the monasteries devotional exercises and the study of the Scriptures represented the chief intellectual development of the monks. The Western monks required a daily service and a systematic training, but the practice of the Eastern monks was not educational in its nature at all. After a while persons who were not studying for religious vows were admitted to the schools that they might understand the Bible and the services of the church. They were taught to write, that they might copy the manuscripts of the church fathers, the sacred books, and the psalter; they were taught arithmetic, that they might be able to calculate the return of Easter and the other festivals; they were taught music, that they might {359} be able to chant well. But the education in any line was in itself superficial and narrow. The Benedictine order was exceptional in the establishment of better schools and in promoting better educational influences. Their curriculum consisted of the Old and New Testaments, the exposition of the Scriptures by learned theologians, and the discourses, or conversations, of Cassianus; yet, as a rule, the monks cared little for knowledge as such, not even for theological knowledge. The monasteries, however, constituted the great clerical societies, where many prepared for secular pursuits. The monasteries of Ireland furnished many learned scholars to England, Scotland, and Germany, as well as to Ireland; yet it was only a monastic education which they exported. Finally it became customary to found schools within the monasteries, and this was the beginning of the church schools of the Middle Ages. Formal and meagre as the instruction of these schools was, it represents a beginning in church education. But in the seventh and eighth centuries they again declined, and learning retrograded very much; literature was forgotten; the monks and friars boasted of their ignorance. The reforms of Charlemagne restored somewhat the educational status of the new empire, and not only developed the church schools and cathedral schools but also founded some secular schools. The cathedral schools became in many instances centres of learning apart from monasticism. The textbooks, however, of the Middle Ages were chiefly those of Boethius, Isidor, and Capella, and were of the most meagre content and character. That of Capella, as an illustration, was merely an allegory, which showed the seven liberal arts in a peculiar representation. The logic taught in the schools was that given by Alcuin; the arithmetic was limited to the reckoning of holidays and festivals; astronomy was limited to a knowledge of the names and courses of the stars; geometry was composed of the first four books of Euclid, and supplemented with a large amount of geography. {360} But all this learning was valued merely as a support to the church and the church authorities, and for little else. Yet there had been schools of importance founded at Paris, Bologna, and Padua, and at other places which, although they were not the historical foundations of the universities, no doubt became the means, the traditional means, of the establishment of universities at these places. Also, many of the scholars, such as Theodore of Tarsus, Adalbert, Bede, and Alcuin, who studied Latin and Greek and also became learned in other subjects, were not without their influence. _The Rise of Universities_.[2]--An important phase of this period of mediaeval development was the rise of universities. Many causes led to their establishment. In the eleventh century the development of independent municipal power brought the noble and the burgher upon the same level, and developed a common sentiment for education. The activity of the crusades, already referred to, developed a thirst for knowledge. There was also a gradual growth of traditional learning, an accumulation of knowledge of a certain kind, which needed classification, arrangement, and development. By degrees the schools of Arabia, which had been prominent in their development, not only of Oriental learning but of original investigation, had given a quickening impulse to learning throughout southern Europe. The great division of the church between the governed and governing had led to the development of a strong lay feeling as opposed to monasticism or ecclesiasticism. Perhaps the growth of local representative government had something to do with this. But the time came when great institutions were chartered at these centres of learning. Students flocked to Bologna, where law was taught; to Salerno, where medicine was the chief subject; and to Paris, where philosophy and theology predominated. At first these schools were open to all, without special rules. Subsequently they were organized, and finally were chartered. In those days students elected their own {361} instructors and built up their own organization. The schools were usually called _universitas magistrorum et scholarium_. They were merely assemblages of students and instructors, a sort of scholastic guild or combination of teachers and scholars, formed first for the protection of their members, and later allowed by pope and emperor the privilege of teaching, and finally given the power by these same authorities to grant degrees. The result of these schools was the widening of the influence of education. The universities proposed to teach what was found in a new and revived literature and to adopt a new method of presenting truth. Yet, with all these widening foundations, there was a tendency to be bound by traditional learning. The scholastic philosophy itself invaded the universities and had its influence in breaking down the scientific spirit. Not only was this true of the universities of the continent, but of those of England as well. The German universities, however, were less affected by this tendency of scholasticism. Founded at a later period, when the Renaissance was about to be merged into the Reformation, there was a wider foundation of knowledge, a more earnest zeal in its pursuit, and also a tendency for the freedom and activity of the mind which was not observed elsewhere. The universities may be said to mark an era in the development of intellectual life. They became centres where scholars congregated, centres for the collection of knowledge; and when the humanistic idea fully prevailed, in many instances they encouraged the revival of classical literature and the study of those things pertaining to human life. The universities entertained and practised free discussion of all subjects, which made an important landmark of progress. They encouraged people to give a reason for philosophy and faith, and prepared the way for scientific investigation and experiment. _Failure to Grasp Scientific Methods_.--Perhaps the greatest wonder in all this accumulation of knowledge, quickening of the mind, philosophy, and speculation, is that men of so much {362} learning failed to grasp scientific methods. Could they but have turned their attention to systematic methods of investigation based upon facts logically stated, the vast intellectual energy of the Middle Ages might have been turned to more permanent account. It is idle, however, to deplore their ignorance of these conditions or to ridicule their want of learning. When we consider the ignorance that overshadowed the land, the breaking down of the old established systems of Greece and Rome, the struggle of the church, which grew naturally into its power and made conservatism an essential part of its life; indeed, when we consider that the whole medieval system was so impregnated with dogmatism and guided by tradition, it is a marvel that so many men of intellect and power raised their voices in the defense of truth, and that so much advancement was made in the earnest desire for truth. _Inventions and Discoveries_.--The quickening influence of discovery was of great moment in giving enlarged views of life. The widening of the geographical horizon tended to take men out of their narrow boundaries and their limited conceptions of the world, into a larger sphere of mental activity, and to teach them that there was much beyond their narrow conceptions to be learned. The use of gunpowder changed the method of warfare and revolutionized the financial system of nations. The perfection of the mariner's compass reformed navigation and made great sea voyages possible; the introduction of printing increased the dissemination of knowledge; the building of great cathedrals had a tendency to develop architecture, and the contact with Oriental learning developed art. These phases tended to assist the mind in the attempt to free itself from bondage. _The Extension of Commerce Hastened Progress_.--But more especially were men's ideas enlarged and their needs supplied by the widening reach of commerce. Through its exchanges it distributed the food-supply, and thus not only preserved thousands from want but furnished leisure for others to study. It had a tendency to distribute the luxuries of manufactured {363} articles, and to quicken the activity of the mind by giving exchange of ideas. Little by little the mariners, plying their trade, pushed farther and farther into unknown seas, and at last brought the products of every clime in exchange for those of Europe. The manner in which commerce developed the cities of Italy and of the north has already been referred to. Through this development the foundations of local government were laid. The manner in which it broke down the feudal system after receiving the quickening impulse of the crusades has also been dealt with. In addition to its influence in these changes, it brought about an increased circulation of money--which also struck at the root of feudalism, in destroying the mediaeval manor and serfdom, for men could buy their freedom from serfdom with money--which also made taxation possible; and the possibility of taxation had a vast deal to do with the building up of new nations and stimulating national life. Moreover, as a distributer of habits and customs, commerce developed uniformity of political and social life and made for national solidarity. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. What is meant by Renaissance, Revival of Learning, Revival of Progress and Humanism, as applied to the mediaeval period? 2. The causes of the Revival of Progress. 3. The direct influence of humanism. 4. The attitude of the church toward freedom of thought. 5. The scholastic philosophy, its merits and its defects. 6. What did the following persons stand for in human progress: Dante, Savonarola, Charlemagne, John Scotus Erigena, Thomas Aquinas, Abelard, William of Occam, Roger Bacon? 7. Rise of universities. How did they differ from modern universities? [1] _Advancement of Learning_, iv, 5. [2] See Chapter XXIX. {364} CHAPTER XXIII HUMANISM AND THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING Perhaps the most important branch of the revival of learning is that which is called humanism, or the revival of the study of the masterpieces of Greek and Latin literature. The promoters of this movement are called humanists, because they held that the study of the classics, or _litterae humaniores_, is the best humanizing agent. It has already been shown how scholasticism developed as one of the important phases of the renaissance, and how, close upon its track, the universities rose as powerful aids to the revival of learning, and that the cathedral and monastic schools were the traditional forerunners of the great universities. Primarily, then, were taught in the universities scholastic philosophy, theology, the Roman and the canon law, with slight attention to Greek and Hebrew, the real value of the treasures of antiquity being unknown to the Western world. The Arabic or Saracen schools of Spain had taken high rank in learning, and through their efforts the scientific works of Aristotle were presented to the mediaeval world. There were many men of importance, such as Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, who were leaders in universities and who lent their influence to the development of learning in Europe. The translation of the scientific works of Aristotle into Latin at the beginning of the thirteenth century by Thomas Aquinas had its influence. But, after all, scholasticism had settled down to speculative ideas within the universities and without, and little attention was paid to the old classical authors. _The Discovery of Manuscripts_.--The real return to the study of Greek literature and art finally came through the fortunate discoveries of ancient sculpture and ancient manuscripts on the occasion of the turning of the mind of Europe {365} toward the Eastern learning. The fall of the Eastern Empire accelerated the transfer of learning and culture to the West. The discovery and use of old manuscripts brought a survival of classical literature and of the learning of antiquity. The bringing of this literature to light gave food for thought and means of study, and turned the mind from its weary round of speculative philosophy to a large body of literature containing the views of the ancients respecting the progress and development of man. As has been heretofore shown, the Greeks, seeking to explain things by the human reason, although not advanced far in experimental science, had accomplished much by way of logical thought based upon actual facts. They had turned from credulity to inquiry. _Who Were the Humanists?_--Dante was not a humanist, but he may be said to have been the forerunner of the Italian humanists, for he furnished inspiration to Petrarch, the so-called founder of humanism. His magnificent creation of _The Divine Comedy_, his service in the foundation of the Italian language, and his presentation of the religious influence of the church in a liberal manner made him a great factor in the humanizing of Europe. Dante was neither modern nor ancient. He stood at the parting of the ways controlling the learning of the past and looking toward the open door of the future, and directed thought everywhere to the Latin. His masterpiece was well received through all Italy, and gave an impulse to learning in many ways. Petrarch was the natural successor of Dante. The latter immortalized the past; the former invoked the spirit of the future. He showed great enthusiasm in the discovery of old manuscripts, and brought into power more fully the Latin language. He also attempted to introduce Greek into the Western world, but in this he was only partially successful. But in his wide search for manuscripts, monasteries and cathedrals were ransacked and the literary treasures which the monks had copied and preserved through centuries, the products of the classical writers of the early times, were brought to {366} light. Petrarch was an enthusiast, even a sentimentalist. But he was bold in his expression of the full and free play of the intellect, in his denunciation of formalism and slavery to tradition. The whole outcome of his life, too, was a tendency toward moral and aesthetic aggrandizement. Inconsistent in many things, his life may be summed up as a bold remonstrance against the binding influences of tradition and an enthusiasm for something new. "We are, therefore," says Symonds,[1] "justified in hailing Petrarch as the Columbus of a new spiritual hemisphere, the discoverer of modern culture. That he knew no Greek, that his Latin verse was lifeless and his prose style far from pure, that his contributions to history and ethics have been superseded, and that his epistles are now read only by antiquaries, cannot impair his claim to this title. From him the inspiration needed to quicken curiosity and stimulate zeal for knowledge proceeded. But for his intervention in the fourteenth century it is possible that the revival of learning, and all that it implies, might have been delayed until too late." His influence was especially felt by those who followed him, and his enthusiasm made him a successful promoter of the new learning. But it remained for Boccaccio, who was of a more practical turn of mind than Petrarch, to systematize the classical knowledge of antiquity. If Petrarch was an enthusiastic collector, Boccaccio was a practical worker. With the aid of Petrarch, he was the first to introduce a professor of Greek language and literature into Italy, and through this influence he secured a partial translation of Homer. Boccaccio began at an early age to read the classical authors and to repent the years he had spent in the study of law and in commercial pursuits. It was Petrarch's example, more than anything else, which caused Boccaccio to turn his attention to literature. By persistence and vigor in study, he was enabled to accomplish much by his own hand in the translation of the authors, and in middle life {367} he began a persistent and successful study of Greek. His contributions to learning were great, and his turn toward naturalism was of immense value in the foundation of modern literature. He infused a new spirit in the common literature of the times. He turned away from asceticism, and frankly and openly sought to justify the pleasures of life. Although his teaching may not be of the most wholesome kind, it was far-reaching in its influence in turning the mind toward the importance and desirability of the things of this life. Stories of "beautiful gardens and sunny skies, fair women and luxurious lovers" may not have been the most healthful diet for universal consumption; they introduced a new element into the literature of the period and turned the thoughts of men from the speculative to the natural. A long line of Italian writers followed these three great master spirits and continued to develop the desire for classical literature. For such power and force did these men have that they turned the whole tide of thought toward the masterpieces of the Greeks and Romans. _Relation of Humanism to Language and Literature_.--When the zeal for the classical learning declined somewhat, there sprang up in Italy a group of Italian poets who were the founders of an Italian literature. They received their impulse from the classical learning, and, turning their attention to the affairs which surrounded them, developed a new literature. The inspiration which humanism had given to scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had a tendency to develop a literary spirit among all classes of students. The products of the Italian literature, however, brought out through the inspiration of humanistic studies, were not great masterpieces. While the number and variety were considerable, the quality was inferior when the intellectual power of the times is considered. The great force of Italian intellect had been directed toward classical manuscripts, and hence failed to develop a literature that had real originality. Perhaps among the few great Italian writers of these times {368} may be mentioned Guicciardini and Machiavelli. The former wrote a history of Italy, and the latter is rendered immortal by his _Prince_. Guicciardini was a native of Florence, who had an important position in the service of Leo X. As professor of jurisprudence, ambassador to Spain, and subsequently minister of Leo X, governor of Modena, lieutenant-general of the pope in the campaign against the French, president of the Romagna and governor of Bologna, he had abundant opportunity for the study of the political conditions of Italy. He is memorable for his admirable history of Italy, as a talented Florentine and as a member of the Medicean party. Machiavelli, in his _Prince_, desired to picture the type of rulers needed to meet the demands of Italy at the time he wrote. It is a picture of imperialism and, indeed, of despotism. The prince or ruler was in no way obliged to consider the feelings and rights of individuals. Machiavelli said it was not necessary that a prince should be moral, humane, religious, or just; indeed, that if he had these qualities and displayed them they would harm him, but if he were new to his place in the principality he might seem to have them. It would be as useful to him to keep the path of rectitude when this was not too inconvenient as to know how to deviate from it when circumstances dictate. In other words, a prudent prince cannot and ought not really to keep his word except when he can do it without injury to himself. Among other Italian writers may be mentioned Boiardo, on account of his _Orlando Innamorato_, and Ariosto, who wrote _Orlando Furioso_. Upon the whole, the writings of the period were not worthy of its intellectual development, although Torquato Tasso, in his _Jerusalem Delivered_, presents the first crusade as Homer presented the Trojan War. The small amount of really worthy literature of this age has been attributed to the lack of moral worth. _Art and Architecture_.--Perhaps the renaissance art exceeded that which it replaced in beauty, variety, and naturalness, as well as in exuberance. There was an attempt to make {369} all things beautiful, and no attempt to follow the spirit of asceticism in degrading the human body, but rather to try to delineate every feature as noble in itself. The movement, life, and grace of the human form, the beauty of landscape, all were enjoyed and presented by the artists of the renaissance. The beauty of this life is magnified, and the artists represented in joyous mood the best qualities that are important in the world. They turned the attention from asceticism to the importance of the present life. Perhaps the Italians reached the highest point of development in painting, for the Madonnas of Italy have given her celebrity in art through all succeeding generations. Cimabue was the first to paint the Madonna as a beautiful woman. Giotto followed next, and a multitude of succeeding Madonnas have given Italy renown. Raphael excelled all others in the representation of the Madonna, and was not only the greatest painter of all Italy, but a master artist of all ages. Architecture, however, appears to be the first branch of art that defied the arbitrary power of tradition. It could break away more readily than any other form of art, because of the great variety which existed in different parts of the Roman Empire--the Byzantine in the south of Italy, the Gothic in the north, and Romanesque in Rome and the provinces. There was no conventional law for architectural style, hence innovations could be made with very little opposition. In the search for classical remains, a large number of buildings had already become known, and many more were uncovered as the searching continued. These gave types of architecture which had great influence in building the renaissance art. The changes, beginning with Brunelleschi, were continued until nearly all buildings were completely Romanized. Then came Michael Angelo, who excelled in both architecture and sculpture at Rome, and Palladio, who worked at Venice and Verona. In the larger buildings the Basilica of Rome became the model, or at least the principles of its construction became the prevailing element in architectural design. {370} Florence became the centre of art and letters in the Italian renaissance.[2] Though resembling Athens in many respects, and bearing the same relations to surrounding cities that Athens did to cities in the classic times, her scholars were more modern than those of Greece or Rome, and, indeed, more modern than the scholars who followed after the Florentines, two centuries later. It was an important city, on the Arno, surrounded by hills, a city of flowers, interesting to-day to the modern scholar and student of history. Surrounded by walls, having magnificent gates, with all the modern improvements of paved streets, of sewers, gardens, and spacious parks, it represented in this early period the ideal city life. Even to-day the traveller finds the Palazzo Vecchio, or ancient official residence of the city fathers, and very near this the Loggia dei Lanzi, now filled with the works of precious art, and the Palazzo del Podesta, now used as a national museum, the great cathedral, planned in 1294 by Arnolfo, ready for consecration in 1498, and not yet completed, and many other remarkable relics of this wonderful era. The typical idea in building the cathedral was to make it so beautiful that no other in the world could ever surpass it. Opposite the main door were the gates of Ghiberti, which Michael Angelo, for their great beauty, thought worthy to be the gates of paradise. They close the entrance of the temple of Saint John the Baptist, the city's patron saint. More than a hundred other churches, among them the Santa Croce and the Santa Maria Novella, the latter the resting-place of the Medici, were built in this magnificent city. The churches were not only used for religious worship, but were important for meeting-places of the Florentines. The Arno was crossed by four bridges, of which the Ponte Vecchio, built in the middle of the fourteenth century, alone remains in its original form. Upon it rest two rows of houses, each three stories high, and over this is the passageway from the Palazzo Pitti to the Palazzo Vecchio. In addition to the public buildings of {371} Florence, there were many private residences and palaces of magnificence and splendor. _The Effect of Humanism on Social Manners_.--By the intellectual development of Italy, fresh ideas of culture were infused into common society. To be a gentleman meant to be conversant with poetry, painting, and art, intelligent in conversation and refined in manners. The gentleman must be acquainted with antiquity sufficiently to admire the great men of the past and to reverence the saints of the church. He must understand archaeology in order to speak intelligently of the ancient achievements of the classical people. But this refinement was to a large extent conventional, for there was a lack of genuine moral culture throughout the entire renaissance. These moral defects of Italy in this period have often been the occasion of dissertations by philosophers, and there is a question as to whether this moral condition was caused by the revival of classical learning or the decline of morality in the church. It ought to be considered, without doubt, as an excessive development of certain lines of intellectual supremacy without the accustomed moral guide. The church had for years assumed to be the only moral conservator, indeed the only one morally responsible for the conduct of the world. Yet its teachings at this time led to no self-developed morality; helped no one to walk alone, independent, in the dignity of manhood, for all of its instructions were superimposed and not vital. At last the church fell into flagrant discord under the rule of worldly popes, and this gave a great blow to Italy through the loss of the one great moral control. But the renaissance had in its day a wide-spread influence throughout Europe, and gave us as its result a vitalizing influence to the whole world for centuries to come, although Italy suffered a decline largely on account of its lack of the stable moral character of society. The awakening of the mind from lethargy, the turning away from dogmatism to broader views of life, enlarged duties, and new surroundings causing {372} the most Intense activity of thought, needed some moral stay to make the achievements permanent and enduring. _Relation of Humanism to Science and Philosophy_.--The revival of the freedom of thought of the Greeks brought an antagonism to the logic and the materialistic views of the times. It set itself firmly against tradition of whatsoever sort. The body of man had not been considered with care until anatomy began to be studied in the period of the Italian renaissance. The visionary notions of the world which the people had accepted for a long time began gradually to give way to careful consideration of the exact facts. Patience and loving admiration in the study of man and nature yielded immense returns to the scholars of Italy. It changed the attitude of the thoughtful mind toward life, and prepared the way for new lines of thought and new accomplishments in the world of philosophy and science. Through the scientific discoveries of Galileo and Copernicus and exploration of Columbus, brought about largely by the influence of humanistic studies, were wrought far-reaching consequences in the thought of the age. And finally the scholars of Italy not only threw off scholasticism but also disengaged themselves from the domineering influence of the classical studies and laid the foundation of modern freedom of inquiry. _The Study of the Classics Became Fundamental in Education_.--The modern classical education received its first impulse from the Italian renaissance. As before stated, it was customary for the universities to teach, with some vigor,[3] physics, medicine, law, and philosophy, largely after the manner of the medieval period, though somewhat modified and broadened in the process of thought. But in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, those who taught the ancient languages and literature were much celebrated. Under the title of rhetoric we find progress not only in the study of the Greek and Roman masterpieces, but in a large number of subjects which had a tendency to widen the views of students and to change {373} the trend of the education in universities. It became customary for the towns and cities to have each a public place, an academy, a university, or a hall, for the means of studying the humanistic branches. The professors of the classics passed from town to town, giving instruction where the highest pay was offered. The direct influence of the renaissance on the Italian education, and, indeed, on the English classical education, introduced somewhat later, has continued until this day. Closely connected with the educational influences of the renaissance was the introduction of literary criticism. There was a tendency among the early humanists to be uncritical, but as intelligence advanced and scholarship developed, we find the critical spirit introduced. Form, substance, and character of art and letters were carefully examined. This was the essential outcome of the previous sharp criticism of dogmatic theology and philosophy. _General Influence of Humanism_.--The development of new intellectual ideals was the most important result of this phase of the renaissance. Nor did this extend in any particular direction. A better thought came to be held of God and man's relation to him. Instead of being an arbitrary, domineering creature, he had become in the minds of the people rational and law-loving; instead of being vindictive and fickle, as he was wont to be pictured, he had been endowed with benevolence toward his creatures. The result of all this was that religion itself became more spiritual and the conscience more operative. There was less of formality and conventionality in religion and more of real, devout feeling and consciousness of worthy motive in life, but the church must have more strenuous lessons before spiritual freedom could be fulfilled. Life, too, came to be viewed as something more than merely a temporary expedient, a thing to be viewed as a necessary evil. It had come to be regarded as a noble expression worthy of the thought and the best attention of every individual. This world, too, was meant to be of use and to make people happy. It was to be enjoyed and used as best it might be. {374} The old guild classes finally broke down, and where formerly men thought in groups, a strong individuality developed and man became an independent, thinking being in himself, bound by neither religion nor philosophy. He was larger than either philosophy or religion made him. He was a being of capacity and strength, and enabled to take the best of this life in order to enhance the delight of living. There came, also, with this a large belief in the law and order of the universe. Old beliefs had become obsolete because the people could no longer depend on them. And when these dogmatic formulas ceased to give satisfaction to the human mind, it sought for order in the universe and the laws which controlled it, and the intellectual world then entered the field of research for truth--the field of experiment. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. How did the Revival of Learning prepare the way for modern science? 2. What contributions to progress were made by Petrarch, Boccaccio, Michael Angelo, Justinian, Galileo, Copernicus, Columbus? 3. The nature of Machiavelli's political philosophy. 4. Compare Gothic, Romanesque, and Arabian architecture. 5. The status of morals during the period of the intellectual development of Europe. 6. The great weakness of the philosophy of this period. 7. What was the state of organized society and what was the "common man" doing? [1] _Revival of Learning_. [2] See Chapter XXI. [3] See preceding chapter. {375} CHAPTER XXIV THE REFORMATION _The Character of the Reformation_.--The Reformation, or Protestant Revolution, as it is sometimes called, was a movement of such extended relations as to be difficult to define. In general, it was the liberalizing movement of the revival of learning applied to the church. As the church had attempted to be all things to all men, the movement was necessarily far-reaching in its results, affecting not only the religious but the social, educational, and political affairs of Europe. In its religious aspect it shows an attempt to reform the church. This failing, the revolution followed, resulting in the independence of certain parts of the church, which were then organized under separate constitutions and governments. Then followed a partial reform within the Catholic Church. The whole movement may be characterized as a revolt against papal authority and ecclesiastical usurpation of power. It was an assertion of independence of the mind respecting religious beliefs and a cry for a consistent life of righteousness and purity. The church had assumed an attitude which made either a speedy reformation or else a revolution necessary. The "reforming councils" of Pisa, Constance, and Basel failed to adopt adequate reform measures. The result of these councils was merely to confirm the absolutism of papal authority. At the same time there were a very large number of adherents to the church who were anxiously seeking a reform in church government, as well as a reform in the conduct of the papacy, the clergy, and the lay membership. The papal party succeeded in suppressing all attempts of this nature, the voice of the people being silenced by a denial of constitutional government; nor was assurance given that the intrigues of the papacy, and of the church in general, would be removed. {376} The people had lost faith in the assumptions of infallibility of the papacy. The great schism in the church, in which three popes, each claiming to be the rightful successor of Saint Peter, each one having the "keys," each one calling the others impostors, and seeking by all possible means to dethrone them, was a great shock to the claims of infallible authority. For many years, to maintain their position as a ruling power, the popes had engaged in political squabbles with the princes of Europe. While the popes at times were victorious, the result of their course was to cause a feeling of contempt for their conduct, as well as of fear of their power. The quarrel of Henry IV and Gregory VII, of Innocent III and John of England, of Boniface and Philip the Fair, the Babylonian captivity, and many lesser difficulties, had placed the papacy in a disreputable light. Distrust, fear, and contempt for the infallible assumptions were growing. The papacy had been turned into a political engine to maintain the temporal possessions of the church and to increase its temporal power. The selfishness of the ruling prince became uppermost in all papal affairs, which was so different from the teachings of the Christ who founded his kingdom on love that the contrast became observable, and even painful, to many devout people. Added to this, the corruption of the members of religious orders, who had departed from their vows of chastity, was so evident to the people with whom they came in daily contact as to bring shame and disgrace upon the cause of religion. Consequently, from these and other irregularities there developed a strong belief that the church needed reforming from the lowest to the highest offices. _Signs of the Rising Storm_.--For several centuries before the religious revolution broke out there were signs of its coming. In the first place, the rise of the laical spirit was to be observed, especially after the establishment of local self-government in the free cities. The desire for representative government had extended to the lay members of the church. There was a growing feeling that the clergy, headed by the papacy, had {377} no right to usurp all the governing power of the church. Many bold laymen asserted that the lay members of the church should have a voice in its government, but every such plea was silenced, every aspiration for democratic government suppressed, by a jealous papacy. There arose a number of religious sects which opposed the subordination to dogma, and returned to the teachings of the Bible for authority. Prominent among these were the Albigenses, who became the victims of the cruel crusade instigated by the pope and led by Simon de Montfort. They were a peaceable, religious people who dwelt far and wide in the south of France, who refused to obey implicitly the harsh and arbitrary mandates of the pope. The Waldenses were another society, composed of the followers of Peter Waldo, known at first as the "Poor Man of Lyons," believing in a return to the Scriptures, which they persistently read. Like the Albigenses, they were zealous for purity of life, and bitterly opposed to the usurpation and profligacy of the clergy. They, too, suffered bitter persecution, which indicated to many that a day of retribution was coming. There were also praying societies, formed in the church to read the Scriptures and to promote a holy life. All these had their influence in preparing for a general reformation. The revival of learning had specific influences in bringing about the Reformation. The two movements were blended in one in several countries, but the revival of learning in Germany was overtaken by the Reformation. The former sought freedom of the mind respecting philosophy and learning, the latter sought liberty of conscience respecting religious belief. The revival of learning broke down scholasticism, and thus freed the mind from dogmatic philosophy. Seeking for the truth, the works of the church fathers were brought forth and read, and the texts of the Old and the New Testament were also used, as a criterion of authority. They showed to what extent the papacy had gone in its assumption of power, and making more prominent the fact that the church, particularly {378} the clergy, had departed from a life of purity. The result of the quickening thought of the revival was to develop independent characteristics of mind, placing it in the attitude of revolt against ecclesiastical dogmatism. _Attempts at Reform Within the Church_.--Many attempts were made, chiefly on the part of individuals, to work a reform of abuses within the church. Many devout men, scholars engaged in theological research and living lives of purity, sought by precept and example to bring about better spiritual and moral conditions. Others sought to bring about changes in ecclesiastical government, not only in the "reforming councils" but through efforts at the papal court and in the strong bishoprics. Had the church listened to these cries of the laity and zealously availed itself of the many opportunities presented, possibly the religious revolution would not have come. Although it is difficult to say what would have been the result had the church listened to the voice of reform, yet it is certain that the revolution would at least have taken a different course, and the position of the church before the world would have been greatly changed. Powerful individual reformers exercised great influence in bringing on the religious revolution. The voices of John Wyclif, John Huss, John Tauler, and John Wessel, like the voice of John the Baptist, cried out for repentance and a return to God. These reformers desired among other things a change in the constitutional government of the church. They sought a representation of the laity and the re-establishment of the authority of the general councils. Through influence such as theirs the revolution was precipitated. Others in a different way, like Savonarola, hastened the coming of the revolution by preaching liberty of thought and attacking the abuses of the church and its methods of government. Wyclif in England advocated a simple form of church worship, rebelled against the arbitrary power of popes and priests, preached against transubstantiation, and advocated the practice of morality. He was greatly influenced by William of {379} Occam, who asserted that the pope, or even a general council, might err in declaring the truth, and that the hierarchy might be given up if the good of the church demanded it. Wyclif, in England, started a movement for freedom and purity which never died out. His translation of the Bible was the most valuable of all his work. Though he preceded the religious revolution by nearly two centuries, his influence was of such great importance that his enemies, who failed to burn him at the stake in life, ordered his grave to be desecrated. At first Wyclif had the support of the king and of the university, as well as the protection of the Prince of Wales. But when, in 1381, he lectured at Oxford against transubstantiation, he lost the royal protection, and by a senate of twelve doctors was forbidden longer to lecture at the university, although he continued preaching until his death. As his opinions agreed very nearly with those of Calvin and Luther, he has been called "the morning star of the Reformation." The Council of Constance, before burning John Huss and Jerome of Prague at the stake, condemned the doctrines of Wyclif in forty-five articles, declared him a heretic, and ordered his body to be removed from consecrated ground and thrown upon a dunghill. Thirteen years later Clement VIII, hyena-like, ordered his bones to be burned and the ashes thrown into the Swift. Thus his short-sighted enemies thought to stay the tide of a great reformation. John Huss, a Bohemian reformer, followed closely after the doctrine of Wyclif, although he disagreed with him in his opposition to transubstantiation. He preached for constitutional reform of the church, reformative administration, and morality. He urged a return to the Bible as a criterion for belief and a guide to action. Finally he was summoned to the Council of Constance to answer for his heresy, and guaranteed safe-conduct by the Emperor Sigismund, who presided; but, notwithstanding this promise, the council declared him a heretic and burned him at the stake with Jerome of Prague. This was one of the results of the so-called reforming Council of {380} Constance--its reform consisted in silencing the opponents of papal authority and corruption. John Tauler belonged to a group of people called mystic philosophers, who, though remaining within the church, opposed dogmatism and formalism and advocated spiritual religion. Their doctrine was to leave formality and return to God. Many other societies, calling themselves "Friends of God," sprang up in the Netherlands and in the south and west of Germany. John Tauler was the most prominent of all their preachers. He held that man is justified by faith alone, and Luther, who republished Tauler's book on German theology,[1] asserted that it had more influence over him than any other books, except the Bible and the works of Saint Augustine. Savonarola, a most powerful orator and great scholar of Italy, lifted his voice in favor of reform in the church administration and in favor of the correction of abuses. He transcended the teachings of the schools of philosophy, departed from the dogma of the church, and preached in the name of God and His Son. He was shocked at the signs of immorality which he saw in common society. As a preacher of righteousness, he prophesied a judgment speedily to come unless men turned from the error of their ways. But in the ways of the world he paid for his boldness and his enthusiasm, for the pope excommunicated him, and his enemies created distrust of him in the hearts of the people. He was put in prison, afterward brought to trial and condemned to death, and finally hanged and burned and his ashes thrown into the Arno--all because the pope hoped to stay the tide of religious and social reform. _Immediate Causes of the Reformation_.--Mr. Bryce, in his _Holy Roman Empire_,[2] says: "There is perhaps no event in history which has been represented in so great a variety of lights as the Reformation. {381} It has been called a revolt of the laity against the clergy, or of the Teutonic races against the Italians, or of the kingdoms of Europe against the universal monarchy of the popes. Some have seen in it only a burst of long-repressed anger at the luxury of the prelates and the manifold abuses of the ecclesiastical system; others a renewal of the youth of the church by a return to primitive forms of doctrine. All these, indeed, to some extent it was; but it was also something more profound, and fraught with mightier consequences than any of them. It was in its essence the assertion of the principle of individuality--that is to say, of true spiritual freedom." The primary nature of the Reformation was, first, a return to primitive belief and purity of worship. This was accompanied by a protest against the vices and the abuses of the church and of formalism in practice. It was also an open revolt against the authority of the church, authority not only in constitution and administration but in spiritual affairs. According to Bryce, "true spiritual freedom" was the prime motive in the religious revolution. And Guizot, in his chapter on the Reformation, clusters all statements around a single idea, the idea that it was freedom of the mind in religious belief and practice which was the chief purpose of the Reformation.[3] But the immediate causes of the precipitation of the Reformation may be stated as follows: _First_.--The great and continued attack on the unreasonableness of the Roman Catholic Church, caused by the great mental awakening which had taken place everywhere in Europe, the persistent and shameless profligacy of the clergy and the various monastic orders and sects, the dissolute and rapacious character of many of the popes, and the imperial attitude of the entire papacy. _Second_.--We may consider as another cause the influence of the art of printing, which scattered the Bible over the land, so that it could be read by a large number of people, who were thus incited to independent belief. {382} _Finally_.--It may be said that the sale of indulgences, and particularly the pretensions of many of the agents of the pope as to their power to release from the bondage of sin, created intense disgust and hatred of the church, and caused the outbreak of the Reformation.[4] _Luther Was the Hero of the Reformation in Germany_.--He was not the cause of the Reformation, only its most powerful and efficient agency, for the Reformation would have taken place in time had Luther never appeared. Somebody would have led the phalanx, and, indeed, Luther, led steadily on in his thought and researches, became a reformer and revolutionist almost before he was aware. He began (1517) by preaching against the sale of indulgences. He claimed that works had been made a substitute for faith, while man is justified by faith alone. His attack on indulgences brought him in direct conflict with one Tetzel, who stirred up the jealousy of other monks, who reported Luther to Pope Leo X.[5] Luther, in a letter to the pope, proclaimed his innocence, saying that he is misrepresented and called heretic "and a thousand ignominious names; these things shock and amaze me; one thing only sustains me--the sense of my innocence." He had pinned his ninety-five theses on the door of the church at Wittenberg. In writing to the pope he claimed that these were set forth for their own local interest at the university, and that he knows not why they "should go forth into all the earth." Then he says: "But what shall I do? Recall them I cannot, and yet I see their notoriety bringeth upon me great odium." But Luther, in spite of the censure of the pope and his friends, was still an ardent adherent to the papal power and the authority of the church. He says to the pope: "Save or slay, kill or recall, approve or disapprove, as it shall please you, I will acknowledge you even as the voice of Christ {383} presiding and speaking in you." In writing to Spalatine, he says that he may err in disputation, but that he is never to be a heretic, that he wishes to decide no doctrine, "only I am not willing to be the slave of the opinions of men." Luther persisted in his course of criticism. To Staupitz he wrote: "I see that attempts are made at Rome that the kingdom of truth, _i.e._, of Christ, be no longer the kingdom of truth." After the pope had issued his first brief condemning him, Luther exclaimed: "It is incredible that a thing so monstrous should come from the chief pontiff, especially Leo X. If in truth it be come forth from the Roman court, then I will show them their most licentious temerity and their ungodly ignorance." These were bold words from a man who did not wish to become a reformer, a revolutionist, or a heretic. Now the pope regarded this whole affair as a quarrel of monks, and allowed Luther to give his side of the story. He was induced to send a certain cardinal legate, Cajetan, to Augsburg to bring this heretic into submission, but the legate failed to bring Luther into subjection. Luther then appealed to the pope, and when the pope issued a bull approving of the sale of indulgences, Luther appealed to the council. Thus far Luther had only protested against the perversion of the rules of the church and of the papal doctrine, but there followed the public disputations with Doctor John Eck, the vice-chancellor of the University of Ingolstadt, in which the great subject under discussion was the primacy of the pope. Luther held that the pope was not infallible that he might err in matters of doctrine, and that the general council, which represented the universal church, should decide the case. Now Luther had already asserted that certain doctrines of Huss were true, but the Council of Constance had condemned these and burned Huss at the stake. Luther was compelled by his shrewd opponent to acknowledge that a council also might err, and he had then to maintain his position that the pope and the council both might err and to commit himself to the proposition that there is no absolute authority on the {384} face of the earth to interpret the will of God. But now Luther was forced to go yet a step farther. When the papal bull condemning him and excommunicating him was issued, he took the bull and burned it in the presence of a concourse of people, and then wrote his address to the German nobles. He thus set at defiance the whole church government and authority. He had become an open revolutionist. The Catholic Church, to defend itself from the position it had taken against Luther, reasoned in this way: "Where there is difference of opinion, there is doubt; where there is doubt, there is no certainty; where there is no certainty, there is no knowledge. Therefore, if Luther is right, that there is room for difference of opinion about divine revelation, then we have no knowledge of that revelation." In this way did the Roman Church attempt to suppress all freedom of religious belief. For the opposition which Luther made, he was summoned to appear before the Diet of Augsburg, which condemned him as a heretic. Had it not been that Charles V, who presided, had promised him a safe-conduct to and from the diet, Luther would have suffered the same fate as John Huss. Indeed, it is said that Charles V, when near his death, regretted that he had not burned Luther at the stake. It shows how little the emperor knew of the real spiritual scope of the Reformation, that he hoped to stay its tide by the burning of one man. The safe-conduct of Luther by Charles V was decided on account of the existing state of European politics. The policy followed by the emperor at the diet was not based upon the arguments which Luther so powerfully presented before the diet, but upon a preconceived policy. Had the Emperor of Germany been only King of Spain in seeking to keep the pretentious power of the pope within bounds he might have gained a great advantage by uniting with Luther in the Reformation. But as emperor he needed the support of the pope, on account of the danger of invasion of Italy by Francis I of France. He finally concluded it would be best to declare Luther a heretic, but he was impotent to enforce {385} punishment by death. In this way he would set himself directly in opposition to the Reformation and save his crown. Apparently Charles cared less for the Reformation than he did for his own political preservation.[6] From this time on the Reformation in Germany became wholly political. Its advantages and disadvantages hung largely upon the political intrigues and manipulations of the European powers. It furnished the means of an economic revolt, which Luther, having little sympathy with the common people in their political and social bondage, was called to suppress from the castle of Wartburg. The Reformation spread rapidly over Germany until the time of the organization of the Jesuits, in 1542, when fully two-thirds of all Germany had revolted from papal authority and had become Protestant. After the organization of the Jesuits, the Reformation declined, on account of the zeal of that organization and the dissensions which arose among the Protestants. _Zwingli Was the Hero of the Reformation in Switzerland_.--The Reformation which was begun by Zwingli at first took on a social and a political aspect and, being soon taken up by the state, resulted in a decision by the Council of Zurich that no preacher could advance any arguments not found in the Old or New Testament. This position, with some variations, was maintained through the entire Reformation. The moral and religious condition of the people of Switzerland was at a very low ebb, and the course of the Reformation was to preach against abuses. Zwingli drew his knowledge and faith from the Bible, holding that for authority one ought to return to it or to the primitive church. He advocated the abolition of image-worship, and, in addition, the abolition of enforced celibacy, nunneries, and the celebration of the mass. He held, too, that there ought to be a return to local church government, and {386} that all of the cloisters should be converted into schools. He objected to so many days being devoted to the festivals of the saints, because it lessened the productive power of the people. The whole tenor of his preaching was that the Bible should be used as the basis of doctrine, and that there is no mediation except through Jesus Christ. As to the doctrine of the sacrament, he believed that the bread and wine are merely symbols, thus approximating the belief as established by the Protestants of the present day. On the other hand, Luther persistently held to the doctrine of transubstantiation, though the organized Protestant churches held to "consubstantiation." The Reformation in Switzerland tended to develop more strongly an independent political existence, to make for freedom and righteousness, to work practical reforms in the abuses of both church and state, and to promote a deeper spiritual religion among the people. _Calvin Establishes the Genevan System_.--John Calvin was driven out of France on account of his preaching. He went to Geneva and there perfected a unique system of religious organization. Perhaps it is the most complete system of applied theology developed by any of the reformers. While it did not strongly unite the church and the state on the same foundation of government, it placed them in such a close unity that the religious power would be felt in every department of state life. The Genevan system was well received in France, became the foundation of the reform party there, and subsequently extended its influence to Scotland, and, finally, to England. It became the foundation of Presbyterianism throughout the world. While Calvinism was severe and arbitrary in its doctrine, on account of its system of administration, it greatly advanced civil liberty and gave a strong impulse toward democracy. It was the central force in the Commonwealth of England, and upheld the representative system of government, which led to the establishment of constitutional liberty. _The Reformation in England Differed from the German_.--The work of John Wyclif and his followers was so remote from {387} the period of the Reformation as to have very little immediate influence. Yet, in a general way, the influence of the teachings of Wyclif continued throughout the Reformation. The religious change came about slowly in England and was modified by political affairs. People gradually became liberal on the subject of religion, and began to exercise independent thought as to church government. Yet, outwardly, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the followers of John Wyclif made no impression upon religious affairs. The new learning, advocated by such men as Erasmus, Colet, and More, was gaining ground rapidly in England. Its quickening influence was observed everywhere. It was confined to no particular field, but touched all departments, religious, social, political. It invaded the territory of art, of education, of literature. Henry VIII favored the new learning and gave it great impulse by his patronage. But the new learning in England was antagonistic to the Reformation of Luther. The circumstances were different, and Luther attacked the attitude of the English reformers, who desired a slow change in church administration and a gradual purification of the ecclesiastical atmosphere. The difference of opinion called out a fierce attack by Henry VIII on Luther, which gave the king the title of "Defender of the Faith." The real beginning of the Reformation in England was a revolt from the papacy by the English king for political reasons. England established a national church, with the king at its head, and made changes in the church government and reformed abuses. The national, or Anglican, Church once formed, the struggle began, on the one hand, between it and the Catholic Church, and on the other, at a later date, against Puritanism. The Anglican Church was not fully established until the reign of Elizabeth. The real spirit of the Reformation in England is best exhibited in the rise of Puritanism, which received its impulse largely from the Calvinistic branch of the Reformation. The whole course of the Reformation outside of the influence of the new learning, or humanism, was of a political nature. The {388} revolt from Rome was prompted by political motives; the Puritan movement was accompanied with political democracy. The result was to give great impetus to constitutional liberty, stimulate intellectual activity, and to declare for freedom of conscience in religious matters. Yet it was a long way from complete religious toleration and the full establishment of the rights and liberties of the people. _Many Phases of Reformation in Other Countries_.--The Reformation in Spain was crushed by the power of the church, which used the weapon of the Inquisition so effectively. In Italy the papal power prevailed almost exclusively. In the Netherlands we find almost complete conversion to Protestantism, and in the other northern countries we find Protestantism prevailing to a great extent. Indeed, we shall find between the north and the south an irregular line dividing Protestantism from Catholicism, in the north the former predominating, in the south the latter. In France a long, severe struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism took place. It was combined with the struggle of political factions, and led to bitter, hard oppression. In fact, the Reformation varied in different countries according to the political, social, and intellectual state of each. Interesting as the history of these countries is, it is not necessary to follow it to determine the spirit and results of the Reformation. _Results of the Reformation Were Far-Reaching_.--The results of the Reformation interest us in this discussion far more than its historical progress. In the first place, we shall find, as the primary result, that the northern nations were separated from the power of Rome and the great ecclesiastical power that the papacy possessed was broken. It could no longer maintain its position of supremacy throughout the world. Although it still was powerful, especially in Italy and Austria, it could no longer rest its assumption on absolute authority, but must demonstrate that power by intrigue and political prowess in order to cope with the nations of Europe. In the second place, there was a development of political liberty. The nations had freed {389} themselves from the domination and imperial power of the church, and were left alone to carry on their own affairs and develop their national freedom. But there was something more in the development of the Reformation than those things which made for religious liberty. To the desire of freedom of the mind in religious belief the desire for freedom in political life had joined itself, and we shall find that the Reformation everywhere stirred up a desire for political liberty. The fires of freedom, thus lighted, never went out, but slowly burned on until they burst out in the great conflagration of the French Revolution. Political liberty, then, was engendered and developed in the hearts of men and nations. Again, the foundation of religious toleration was laid by the Reformation, although it was not yet secured, for it must be maintained that even Luther was as persistent and dogmatic in his own position, as intolerant of the beliefs of other people, as was the papal authority itself. Convinced that he was right, he recognized no one's right to differ from his opinion, even though he himself had revolted from the authority of the church. He showed his bigotry and lack of tolerance in his treatment of Zwingli, of Calvin, and of Erasmus. Most of the early reformers, indeed, were intolerant of the opinions of others; the development of religious toleration has been a very slow process, not only in Europe but in America. The many and various phases of the Reformation nevertheless made as a whole for religious toleration. When in the Reformation in Germany it was decided at the religious peace of Augsburg that Catholics and Protestants should have the same privileges, only one division of Protestants was recognized, and that was the Lutheran division. Calvinists were entirely excluded. It was not until the peace of Westphalia in 1648, which closed the great struggle known as the Thirty Years' War, that all denominations were recognized upon the same basis. The struggle for religious toleration in England is a history in itself, and it was not until the last century that it might be said that toleration really existed {390} in the United Kingdom, for during two centuries or more there was a state religion supported by revenues raised by taxing the people, although other churches were tolerated. Another great result of the Reformation was the advancement of intellectual progress. All progress rests primarily upon freedom of the mind, and whatever enhances that freedom has a tendency to promote intellectual progress. The advancement of language and letters, of philosophy and science, and of all forms of knowledge, became rapid on account of this intense activity of the mind. The revival of learning received a new impulse in the development of man's spiritual nature--an impulse which was felt throughout the entire world. In this respect the Reformation was far-reaching in its consequences. The church no longer assumed the sole power to think for the people. Again, it may be said that the Reformation improved man's material progress. The development of the independent individual life brought about strength of character, industry, and will force, which, in turn, built up material affairs and made great improvements in the economic conditions of man. Everywhere that Protestantism prevailed there was a rapid increase of wealth and better economic conditions. Trade and commerce improved rapidly, and the industrial life went through a process of revolution. Freedom upon a rational basis always brings about this vital prosperity, while despotism suppresses the desires of man for a better economic life. So we shall find that intellectual and material progress followed everywhere in the course of the Reformation, while those states and nations over which the papal authority retained its strongest hold began to decline in intellectual power and material welfare. Such was the force of the Reformation to renovate and rejuvenate all which it touched. It made possible the slow evolution of the independence of the common man and established the dignity of labor. Finally, let it be said that the Reformation caused a counter-reformation within the Catholic Church. For many years {391} there was an earnest reform going on within the Romanist Church. Abuses were corrected, vices eradicated, the religious tone of church administration improved, and the general character of church polity changed in very many ways. But once having reformed itself, the church became more arbitrary than before. In the Council of Trent, in clearly defining its position, it declared its infallibility and absolute authority, thus relapsing into the old imperial régime. But the Reformation, after all, was the salvation of the Roman Church, for through it that church was enabled to correct a sufficient number of abuses to regain its power and re-establish confidence in itself among the people. The Reformation, like the Renaissance, has been going on ever since it started, and we may say to-day that, so far as most of the results are concerned, we are yet in the midst of both. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. Needed reforms in the church and why they failed. 2. Enumerate the causes that led to the Reformation prior to Luther. 3. Compare the main characteristics in the Reformation in the following countries: Germany, England, Switzerland, and France. 4. What were the characteristics of the Genevan system instituted by John Calvin? 5. The results of the Reformation on intellectual development, political freedom, scientific thought, and, in general, on human progress. 6. The effect of the Reformation on the character and policy of the Romanist Church (Catholic). 7. What was the nature of the quarrels of Henry IV and Gregory VII, of Innocent III and John of England, of Boniface and Philip the Fair? [1] _Theologia Germania_, generally accredited to Tauler, but written by one of his followers. [2] _The Holy Roman Empire_, p. 327. [3] _History of Civilization_, vol. I, pp. 255-257. [4] Recent writers emphasize the economic and national causes, which should be added to this list. [5] Luther sent his ninety-five theses to Archbishop Albert of Mainz. [6] Luther had many friends In the diet. Also he was in his own country before a German national assembly. Huss was in a foreign country before a church assembly. {392} CHAPTER XXV CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION _Progress in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries_.--It is not easy to mark in brief space the steps of progress in the complex activities of the great movements of society of the first centuries of the period of modern history. It is not possible to relate the details of the great historical movements, with their many phases of life moving on toward great achievements. Only a few of the salient and vital features may be presented, but these will be sufficient to show the resultant general achievements coming from the interaction of a multitude of forces of an expanding civilization. The great determiners of this period are found in the national life of England, France, Germany, and America. Out of many complex movements and causes the dominant factor is the struggle of monarchy and democracy. The revival of learning, the Protestant revolution, and the attempts at popular government heralded the coming of political liberty and the recognition of the rights of man. The whole complex is a vivid example of the processes of social evolution through the interaction of groups, each moving about a central idea. Again and again when freedom of mind and liberty of action seem to be successful, they have been obscured by new social maladies or retarded by adverse environmental conditions. _The Struggle of Monarchy with Democracy_.--In a previous chapter, in which were recounted the early attempts at popular representation, it was shown that in nearly every instance the rise of popular power was suppressed by the rapid and universal growth of monarchy. Having obtained power by combining with the people in their struggle against the nobility, monarchy finally denied the people the right to {393} participate in the government. It was recognized nearly everywhere in Europe as the dominant type of government through which all nations must pass. Through it the will of the people was to find expression, or, to use a more exact statement, monarchy proposed to express the will of the people without asking their permission. The intellectual revival which spread over Europe tended to free the mind from the binding power of tradition, prestige, and dogmatism, and to give it freedom in religious belief. But while these great movements were taking place, monarchy was being established in Europe, and wherever monarchy was established without proper checks of constitutional government, it became powerful and arbitrary to such a degree as to force the people into a mighty cry for political liberty. In France royalty ran rapidly into imperialism; in Spain it became oppressive; but in England there was a decided check upon its absolute assumptions by way of slowly developing constitutional liberty. _Struggle for Constitutional Liberty in England_.--For a long period monarchy had to struggle fiercely with the feudal nobility of England, but finally came off conqueror, and then assumed such arbitrary powers as appeared necessary for the government of the realm of England. It was inevitable, however, that in a people whose minds had been emancipated from absolute spiritual power and given freedom of thought, a conflict would eventually occur with monarchy which had suppressed municipal liberty, feudal nobility, and popular representation. Pure monarchy sought at all times the suppression of political liberty. Hence, in England, there began a struggle against the assumptions of absolute monarchy and in favor of the liberty of the people. There grew up in England under the Tudors an advocacy of the inherited rights of kings. There was a systematic development of arbitrary power until monarchy in England declared itself superior to all laws and to all constitutional rights and duties. In another place it has been told how the English {394} Reformation was carried on by the kings as a political institution, how the authority of Rome was overthrown and the kings of England seized the opportunity to enhance their power and advance their own interests. When the people realized that they had exchanged an arbitrary power in Rome for an arbitrary power in England, centred in the king, they cried out again at this latter tyranny, and sought for religious reform against the authority of the church. This movement was accompanied by a desire for political reform, also. Indeed, all civil and religious authority centred in one person, the king, and a reform of religious administration could not take place without a reform of the political. The activity of English commerce and the wide-spread influence of the revival of learning, which developed a new and independent literary culture, made life intense and progress rapid. When this spirit of political liberty sought expression in England, it found it in the ancient privileges and rights of the English people, to which they sought to return. It was unfortunate that the desires for political liberty on the continent found no such means to which they could attach their ideas of a liberal government. In England we find these old rights and privileges a ready support for the principles of constitutional liberty. There were many precedents and examples of liberty which might be recalled for the purpose of quickening the zeal of the people--many, indeed, had been continued in local communities. Nor were the English government and law wanting in the principles of liberty which had been handed down from former generations. Moreover, it became necessary, as a practical measure, for the kings of England, if they desired to maintain their position, to call a parliament of the people for the sake of their co-operation and help in the support of the government. It is seen, therefore, that in England the spirit of constitutional liberty, though perhaps suppressed at times, never perished, though the assumption of royal power was very great, and when the party which was seeking to carry forward {395} religious reform joined itself to the party seeking political liberty, there was aroused a force in England which would be sure to prove a check on royalty and insure the rights and privileges of a free people. Though the sentiment for religious reform was general throughout England, this principle was viewed in many different ways by different parties. Thus the pure-monarchy party saw many evils in the laws of England and in the administration of affairs, and sought reform, but without yielding anything of the high conception of the absolute power of the king. They believed that the ancient laws and precedents of England were a check upon monarchy sufficient to reform all abuses of power that might arise. They acknowledged the divine right of kings and thought that royalty possessed a superior power, but they held that it was obliged, for its own preservation and the proper government of the realm, to confine its activity within certain limits. Two other parties, the one political and the other religious, went hand in hand, both for revolution. The former denied the absolute sovereignty of the king and sought a great change in the form, the spirit, and the structure of government. They held that the ultimate power of control should rest in the House of Commons as the representative of the people. The latter party sought the same process within the church. They held that it should be controlled by assemblages of the people, maintained that decentralization should take place and the constitution of the church be changed as well as its form of administration. It is easy to see that the leaders of either of these parties were also leaders of the other. A fourth party sought to repudiate the constitution, as radically wrong, and to build up an entirely new political system. It disregarded the past life of England and repudiated all precedents, desiring to build up a new government founded upon abstract theories of right and justice. The course of history under these four parties is plain. Each one, struggling for power, tried to manage the government {396} upon its particular theory, and signally failed. The struggle in the House of Commons, had it not finally brought about such great consequences, would be disgusting and discouraging in the extreme. The struggle in England for liberty of conscience and for government of the people through Parliament went on through turmoil and disgrace for two centuries. It was king against the people, Catholic against Protestant, and, within the latter group, Anglican, Presbyterian, and independent, each against one another. All sorts of unjust and inhuman practices were indulged in. It would seem that the spirit of Magna Charta and of the Christian religion was constantly outraged. When Henry VIII, in 1521, wrote his attack on Luther embodied in the _Assertion of the Seven Sacraments_, Pope Leo X gave him the title of "Defender of the Faith." Subsequently, when he appealed to the pope to help him settle his marital difficulties, the pope refused to support him, and finally excommunicated him for divorcing his wife Catherine. This led to a break with Rome, and the Supremacy Act, which made the king protector and only supreme head of the church and clergy of England. This inaugurated the long struggle between Catholic and Protestant, with varying fortunes to each side. The Tudor period closed with the death of Elizabeth, in 1603, with a fairly well-established conformity to the Anglican Church; but Puritanism was growing slowly but surely, which meant a final disruption. From this time on there was confusion of political and religious affairs for another century. In 1621 Parliament rebuked King James I for his high-handed proceedings with protestation: "That the liberties, franchises, privileges, and jurisdictions of Parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England, and that the arduous and urgent affairs of the king, state, and defense of the realm ... are proper subjects and matters of council and debate in Parliament." The king tore the page containing the resolution from the journal of Parliament; but this did not retard the struggle for the {397} recognition of ancient rights. The strife went on throughout the reign of the Stuarts, until Charles I lost his head and the nation was plunged into a great civil war. There finally appeared on the scene of action a man of destiny. Cromwell, seizing the opportunity, turned everything toward democracy, and ruled republicans, Puritans, and royalists with such an iron hand that his painful democracy came to a sudden close through reaction under the rule of his successor. The Stuarts again came into power, and, believing in the divine right of kings--a principle which seems to have been imbibed from the imperialism of France--sought to bring everything into subordination to royalty. The people, weary of the irregular government caused by the attempts of the different parties to rule, and tired of the abuses and irregularities of the administration, welcomed the restoration of royalty as an advantage to the realm. But the Stuarts sought not only to rule with high hand, regardless of the wants, desires, and will of the people, but also to bring back the absolute authority of the papacy. By their arbitrary, high-handed proceedings, they brought the English government to a crisis which was ended only by the coming of William of Orange to rule upon the throne with constitutional right; for the people seized their opportunity to demand a guaranty of the rights of freemen which would thoroughly establish the principle of constitutional liberty in England. But the declaration of Parliament at the accession of William and Mary, which subsequently was enacted as a famous Bill of Rights, showed a great permanent gain in constitutional liberty. It centred the power in Parliament, whose authority was in the Commons. It was true the arbitrary power of kings came to the front during the rule of the four Georges, but it was without avail, and reform measures followed their reign. Constitutional government had won. It is true that the revolution failed to establish religious toleration, but it led the way with rapid strides. In the progress of civil liberty and freedom of conscience in {398} England, the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had a powerful influence. In the world of ideas, freedom of thought found expression through the great writers. While few attacked the evils of government, they were not wanting in setting forth high ideals of life, liberty, and justice. Such men as John Milton, John Locke, John Bunyan, and Shakespeare turned the thinking world toward better things in government and life. Thus England had a check on the growth of monarchy, while freedom of investigation led to an inquiry about the rights of the people; hence, the seeds of popular liberty were growing at the time monarchy was making its greatest assumption. The people never yielded, in theory at least, their ancient rights to the absolute control of royalty. Kingship in England was developed through service, and while the English were strong for monarchy because it expressed a unity of the nation, they expected the king to consider the rights of the people, which gave rise to a complex movement in England, making for religious and political liberty, in which all classes were engaged in some degree at different times. In France, however, it was different. At first the feudal nobility ruled with absolute sway. It continued in power long enough to direct the thoughts of the people toward it and to establish itself as a complete system. It had little opposition in the height of its power. When monarchy arose it, too, had the field all to itself. People recognized this as the only legitimate form of government. Again, when monarchy failed, people rushed enthusiastically to democracy, and in their wild enthusiasm made of it a government of terror. How different were the results. In England there was a slow evolution of constitutional government in which the rights of the people, the king, the nobility, and the clergy were respected, and each class fell into its proper place in the government. In France, each separate power made its attempt to govern, and failed. Its history points to a truth, namely, that no kind of government is safe without a system of checks. {399} _The Place of France in Modern Civilization_.--Guizot tries to show that in the seventeenth century France led the civilization of the world; that while Louis XIV was carrying absolute government to its greatest height, philosophy, art, and letters flourished; that France, by furnishing unique and completed systems, has led the European world in civilization. To a great extent this is true, for France had better opportunities to develop an advanced civilization than any other European nation. It must be remembered that France, at an early period, was completely Romanized, and never lost the force and example of the Roman civilization; and, also, that in the invasion of the Norman, the northern spirit gave France vigor, while its crude forms were overcome by the more cultured forms of French life. While other nations were still in turmoil France developed a distinct and separate nationality. At an early period she cast off the power of Rome and maintained a separate ecclesiastical system which tended to develop an independent spirit and further increase nationality. Her population was far greater than that of any other nation, and her wealth and national resources were vastly superior to those of others. These elements gave France great prestige and great power, and fitted her to lead in civil progress. They permitted her to develop a high state of civilization. If the genius of the French people gave them adaptability in communicating their culture to others, it certainly was of service to Europe. Yet the service of France must not be too highly estimated. If, working in the dark, other nations, not so far advanced as France on account of material causes, were laying a foundation of the elements of civilization, which were to be of vast importance in the development of the race, it would appear that as great credit should be given them as to the French manners, genius, and culture which gave so little permanent benefit to the world. Guizot wisely refrains from elaborating the vices of the French monarchy, and fails to point out the failure of the French system of government. {400} _The Divine Right of Kings_.--From the advent of the Capetian dynasty of French kings royalty continually increased its power until it culminated under Louis XIV. The court, the clergy, and, in fact, the greater number of the preachers of France, advocated the divine origin and right of kings. If God be above all and over all, his temporal rulers as well as his spiritual rulers receive their power from him; hence the king receives his right to rule from God. Who, then, has the right to oppose the king? Upon this theory the court preachers adored him and in some instances deified him. People sought to touch the hem of his garment, or receive from his divine majesty even a touch of the hand, that they might be healed of their infirmities. In literature Louis was praised and deified. The "Grand Monarch" was lauded and worshipped by the courtiers and nobles who circled around him. He maintained an extravagant court and an elaborate etiquette, so extravagant that it depleted the rural districts of money, and drew the most powerful families to revolve around the king. The extravagant life paralyzed the energies of kings and ministers, who built a government for the advantage of the governing and not the governed. "I am the state!" said the Grand Monarch. Although showing in many ways an enlightened absolutism, his rule plunged French royalty into despotism. Louis XV held strongly to absolutism, but lacked the power to render it attractive and magnificent. Louis XVI attempted to stem the rising tide, but it was too late. The evils were too deeply seated; they could not be changed by any temporary expedient. French royalty reached a logical outcome from all power to no power. Louis XIV had built a strong, compact administration under the direction of able men, but it was wanting in liberty, it was wanting in justice, and it is only a matter of time when these deficiencies in a nation lead to destruction. _The Power of the Nobility_.--The French nobility had been mastered by the king, but to keep them subservient, to make them circle around royalty and chant its praises, they were {401} given a large extension of rights and privileges. They were exempt from the responsibilities for crime; they occupied all of the important places in church and state; they were exempt from taxation; many who dwelt at the court with the king lived off the government; many were pensioned by the government, their chief recommendation apparently being idleness and worthlessness. There was a great gulf between the peasantry and the nobility. The latter had control of all the game of the forests and the fish in the rivers; one-sixth of all the grain grown in the realm went to the nobility, as did also one-sixth of all the land sold, and all confiscated property fell to them. The peasants had no rights which the nobility were bound to respect. The nobility, with all of the emoluments of office, owned, with the clergy, two-thirds of all the land. Yet this unproductive class numbered only about 83,000 families. _The Misery of the People_.--If the nobility despised the lower classes and ignored their rights, they in turn were hated intensely by those whom they sought to degrade. The third estate in France was divided into the bourgeoisie and the peasantry and small artisans. The former gradually deteriorated in character and tended toward the condition of the lowest classes. By the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, a large number of the bourgeoisie, or middle class, was driven from France. This deprived France of the class that would have stood by the nation when it needed support, and would have stood for moderate constitutional government against the radical democrats like Robespierre and Marat. The lowest class, composed of small peasant farmers, laborers, and artisans, were improved a little under the reign of Louis XIV, but this made them feel more keenly the degradation in succeeding years, from which there was no relief. The condition of the people indicated that a revolution was on its way. In the evolution of European society the common man was crowded down toward the condition of serfdom. The extravagances and luxuries of life, the power of kings, bishops, and nobles bore like a burden of heavy weight upon his {402} shoulders. He was the common fodder that fed civilization, and because of this more than anything else, artificial systems of society were always running for a fall, for the time must come when the burdens destroy the foundation and the superstructure comes tumbling down. _The Church_.--The church earned an important position in France soon after the conquest by the Romans; seizing opportunities, it came into power by right of service. It brought the softening influences of religion; it established government where there was no government; it furnished a home for the vanquished and the oppressed; it preserved learning from the barbarians; it conquered and controlled the warlike spirit of the Germans; it provided the hungry with food, and by teaching agriculture added to the economic wealth of the community; and finally, it became learned, and thus brought order out of chaos. Surely the church earned its great position, and reaped its reward. Taine says: "Its popes for two hundred years were the dictators of Europe. It organized crusades, dethroned monarchs, and distributed kingdoms. Its bishops and abbots became here sovereign princes and there veritable founders of dynasties. It held in its grasp a third of the territory, one-half the revenue, and two-thirds of the capital of Europe." The church was especially strong in France. It was closely allied to the state, and opposed everything that opposed the state. When the king became the state, the church upheld the king. The church of France, prior to the revolution, was rich and aristocratic. In 1789 its property was valued at 4,000,000,000 francs, and its income at 200,000,000 francs; to obtain a correct estimate according to our modern measure of value, these amounts should be doubled. In some territories the clergy owned one-half the soil, in others three-fourths, and in one, at least, fourteen-seventeenths of the land. The Abbey of St.-Germain-des-Prés possessed 900,000 acres. Yet within the church were found both the wealthy and the poverty-stricken. In one community was a bishop rolling in luxury {403} and ease, in another a wretched, half-starved country curate trying to carry the gospel to half-starved people. Such extremes were shocking commentaries upon a church founded on democracy. The church persecuted the literary men who expressed freedom of thought and opinion. It ignored facts and the people distrusted it. The religious reformation in France became identified with political factions, which brought the church into a prominent place in the government and made it take an important place in the revolution. It had succeeded in suppressing all who sought liberty, either political or religious, and because of its prominence in affairs, it was the first institution to feel the storm of the revolution. The church in France was attacked fully forty years before the king and the nobility were arraigned by the enraged populace. _Influence of the Philosophers_.--There appeared in France in the reign of Louis XV what was known as "the new literature," in contrast with the classic literature of the previous reign. The king and the church combined fought this new literature, because it had a tendency to endanger absolutism. It was made by such brilliant men as Helvetius, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Condillac, and Rousseau. Perhaps the writings of these men had more to do with the precipitation of the revolution than the arbitrary assumptions of royalty, the wretchedness of the people, the supercilious abuses of the nobility, and the corruption of the church. Without presenting the various philosophies of these writers, it may be said that they attacked the systems of government, religion, and philosophy prevailing in France, and each succeeding writer more boldly proclaimed the evils of the day. Condillac finally convinced the people that they owed their evil conditions to the institutions of church and state under which they lived, and showed that, if they desired a change, all it was necessary to do was to sweep those institutions away. Other philosophers speculated on the best means of improving the government. Presenting ideal forms of {404} government and advocating principles not altogether certain in practice, they made it seem, through these speculative theories, that a perfect government is possible. Of the great writers of France prior to the revolution who had a tremendous power in hastening the downfall of the royal régime, three stand out more prominently than others, namely, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. Voltaire, keen critic and satirist, attacked the evils of society, the maladministration of courts and government, the dogmatism of the church, and aided and defended the victims of the system. He was a student of Shakespeare, Locke, and Newton, and of English government. He was highly critical but not constructive. Montesquieu, more philosophical, in his _Spirit of the Laws_ pointed out the cause of evils, expounded the nature of governments, and upheld English liberty as worthy the consideration of France. Rousseau, although he attacked civilization, depicting its miseries and inconsistencies, was more constructive, for in his _Social Contract_ he advocated universal suffrage and government by the people through the principles of natural rights and mutual aid. These writers aroused a spirit of liberty among the thoughtful which could not do otherwise than prove destructive to existing institutions. _The Failure of Government_.--It soon became evident to all that a failure of the government from a practical standpoint was certain. The burdens of unequal taxation could no longer be borne; the treasury was empty; there was no means of raising revenue to support the government as it was run; there was no one who could manage the finances of the nation; the administration of justice had fallen into disrepute; even if there had been an earnest desire to help the various classes of people in distress, there were no opportunities to do so. Louis XVI, in his weakness, called the States-General for counsel and advice. It was the first time the people had been called in council for more than 200 years; monarchy had said it could run the government without the people, and now, on the verge of destruction, called upon the people to save it from the {405} wreck. The well-intended king invoked a storm; his predecessors had sown the wind, he reaped the whirlwind. _France on the Eve of the Revolution_.--The causes of the revolution were dependent, in part, upon the peculiarity of the character of the French people, for in no other way can the sudden outburst or the course of the revolution be accounted for. Yet a glimpse at the condition of France before the storm burst will cause one to wonder, not that it came, but that it was so long delayed. A careful examination of the facts removes all mystery respecting the greatest political phenomenon of all history, and makes of it an essential outcome of previous conditions. The French people were grossly ignorant of government. The long period of misrule had distorted every form of legitimate government. One school of political philosophers gave their attention to pointing out the evils of the system; another to presenting bright pictures of ideal systems of government which had never been put in practice. The people found no difficulty in realizing the abuses of government, for they were intense sufferers from them, and, having no expression in the management of affairs, they readily adopted ideal theories for the improvement of social conditions. Moreover, there was no national unity, no coherence of classes such as in former days brought strength to the government. Monarchy was divided against itself; the lay nobility had no loyalty, but were disintegrated by internal feuds; the people were divided into opposing classes; the clergy were rent asunder. Monarchy, though harsh, arbitrary, and unjust, did not have sufficient coercive force to give a strong rule. The church had lost its moral influence--indeed, morality was lacking within its organization. It could persecute heretics and burn books which it declared to be obnoxious to its doctrines, but it could not work a moral reform, much less stem the tide that was carrying away its ancient prerogatives. The nobility had no power in the government, and the dissension between the crown, the nobility, and the church was continuous and {406} destructive of all authority. Continuous and disreputable quarrels, profligacy, extravagance, and idleness characterized each group. Worst of all was the condition of the peasantry. The commons of France, numbering twenty-five millions of people, had, let it be said in their favor, no part in the iniquitous and oppressive government. They were never given a thought by the rulers except as a means of revenue. There had grown up another, a middle class, especially in towns, who had grown wealthy by honest toil, and were living in ease and luxury, possessed of some degree of culture. They disliked the nobles, on the one hand, and the peasants, on the other; hated and opposed the nobility and ignored the common people. This class did not represent the sterling middle class of England or of modern life, but were the product of feudalism. The condition of the rural peasantry is almost beyond description. Suffering from rack-rents, excessive taxation, and the abuses of the nobility, they presented a squalor and wretchedness worse than that of the lowest vassals of the feudal regime. In the large cities collected the dangerous classes who hated the rich. Ignorant, superstitious, half-starved, they were ready at a moment's notice to attack the wealthy and to destroy property. The economic and financial conditions of the nation were deplorable, for the yield of wealth decreased under the poorly organized state. The laborers received such wages as left them at the verge of starvation and prepared them for open revolution. The revenues reserved for the support of the government were insufficient for the common needs, and an empty treasury was the result. The extravagance of king, court, and nobility had led to excessive expenditures and gross waste. There were no able ministers to manage the affairs of the realm on an economic basis. Add to these evils lack of faith, raillery at decency and virtue, and the poisonous effects of a weak and irresponsible philosophy, and there are represented sufficient evils to make a revolution whenever there is sufficient vigor to start it. {407} _The Revolution_.--The revolution comes with all of its horrors. The church is humbled and crushed, the government razed to the ground, monarchy is beheaded, and the flower of nobility cut off. The wild mob at first seeks only to destroy; later it seeks to build a new structure on the ruins. The weak monarch, attempting to stem the tide, is swept away by its force. He summons the States-General, and the commons declare themselves the national assembly. Stupendous events follow in rapid succession--the revolt in Paris, the insubordination of the army, the commune of Paris, and the storming of the Bastile. The legislative assembly brings about the constitutional assembly, and laws are enacted for the relief of the people. Intoxicated with increasing liberty, the populace goes mad, and the legislators pass weak and harmful laws. The law-making and constitutional bodies cannot make laws fast enough to regulate the affairs of the state. Lawlessness and violence increase until the "reign of terror" appears with all its indescribable horrors. The rest is plain. Having levelled all government to the ground, having destroyed all authority, having shown themselves incapable of self-government, the French people are ready for Napoleon. Under his command and pretense they march forth to liberate humanity from oppression in other nations, but in reality to a world conquest. _Results of the Revolution_.--The French Revolution was by far the most stupendous event of modern history. It settled forever in the Western world the relation of man to government. It taught that absolutism of any class, if unchecked, must lead sooner or later to the destruction of all authority. It taught that men, to be capable of self-government, must be educated in its principles through a long period, yet proclaimed to the Western world the freedom of man, and asserted his right to participate in government. While France temporarily failed to bring about this participation, it awoke the cry for independence, equality, and fraternity around the world. The results of the revolution became the common property {408} of all nations, and a universal sentiment arising from it pervaded every country, shaping its destiny. The severe blow given to absolutism and exclusive privilege in church and state settled forever the theory of the divine right of kings and prelates to govern. The revolution asserted that the precedent in religious and political affairs must yield to the necessities of the people; that there is no fixed principle in government except the right of man to govern himself. The establishment of the theory of the natural right of man to participate in government had great influence on succeeding legislation and modified the policy of surrounding nations. The social-contract theory was little understood and gave an incorrect notion of the nature of government. In its historical creation, government was a growth, continually suiting itself to the changing needs of a people. Its practice rested upon convenience and precedent, but the real test for participation in government was capability. But the French Revolution startled the monarchs of Europe with the assumption of the natural right of people to self-government. Possibly it is incorrect when carried to extremes, for the doctrine of natural right must be merged into the practice of social rights, duties, and privileges. But it was a check on despotism. The revolution had an influence on economic life also. It was only a step from freedom of intellectual opinion to freedom of religious belief, and only a step from religious freedom to political liberty. Carried to its legitimate outcome, the growing sentiment of freedom asserted industrial liberty and economic equality. Its influence in the emancipation of labor was far-reaching. Many of the theories advanced in the French Revolution were impracticable; sentiments engendered were untrue, which in the long run would lead to injustice. Many of its promises remain unfulfilled, yet its lessons are still before us, its influence for good or evil continues unabated. {409} SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. The progress in constitutional government was made in England during the Commonwealth. 2. Changes in the social and economic condition of England from 1603 to 1760. 3. When did the Industrial Revolution begin? What were its causes? What its results? 4. The rise of British commerce. 5. Effect of commerce on English economic and social life. 6. Of what use to England were her American colonies? 7. The effect of the American Revolution on the French Revolution. 8. The effect of the French Revolution on American liberty. {413} _PART V_ MODERN PROGRESS CHAPTER XXVI PROGRESS OF POLITICAL LIBERTY _Political Liberty in the Eighteenth Century_.--Looking backward from the standpoint of the close of the eighteenth century and following the chain of events in the previous century, the real achievement in social order is highly disappointing. The French Revolution, which had levelled the monarchy, the church, and the nobility, and brought the proletariat in power for a brief season and lifted the hopes of the people toward a government of equality, was hurrying on from the directorate to the consulate to the empire, and finally returning to the old monarchy somewhat worn and dilapidated, indeed, but sufficient in power to smother the hopes of the people for the time being. Numerous French writers, advocating anarchy, communism, and socialism, set up ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity which were not to be realized as the immediate result of the revolution. Babeuf, Saint-Simon, Cabet, and Louis Blanc set forth new ideals of government, which were diametrically opposed to the practices of the French government in preceding centuries. Though some of their ideals were lofty, the writers were critical and destructive rather than constructive. England, after the coming of William and Mary and the passing of the Bill of Rights in 1689, witnessed very little progress in political rights and liberty until the reform measures of the nineteenth century. On the continent, Prussia had risen to a tremendous power as a military state and developed an autocratic government with some pretenses to political liberty. But the dominant force of Prussia working on the basis of the ancient feudalism was finally to crush out the liberties of the German people and establish autocratic government. {414} The Holy Roman Empire, which had continued so long under the union of Austria and Italy, backed by the papacy, had reached its height of arbitrary power, and was destroyed by the Napoleonic wars. In the whole period there were political struggles and intrigues within the various states, and political struggles and intrigues and wars between the nations. It was a period of the expression of national selfishness which sought enlarged territory and the control of commerce and trade. Taken as a whole, there is little that is inspiring in the movement of nations in this period. Indeed, it is highly disappointing when we consider the materials at their hand for political advancement. The political game at home played by cliques and factions and politicians struggling for power frequently led to disgraces abroad, such as the war against the American colonies and the extension of power and domination in India. There is scarcely a war, if any, in this whole period that should not have been settled without difficulty, provided nations were honest with each other and could exercise, if not reason, common sense. The early great movements, such as the revival of learning and progress centring in Italy and extending to other nations, the religious revolution which brought freedom of belief, the revolution of England and the Commonwealth, the French Revolution with its projections of new ideals of liberty on the horizon of political life, promised better things. Also, during this period the development of literature and the arts and sciences should have been an enlightened aid to political liberty. Nevertheless, the higher ideals of life and liberty which were set forth during these lucid intervals of the warring nations of the world were never lost. The seeds of liberty, once having been sown, were to spring up in future years and develop through a normal growth. _The Progress of Popular Government Found Outside of the Great Nations_.--The rise of democracy in Switzerland and the Netherlands and its development in America, although {415} moving indirectly and by reaction, had a lasting influence on the powerful nations like Germany, England, France, and Austria. In these smaller countries the warfare against tyranny, despotism, and ignorance was waged with success. Great gain was made in the overthrow of the accumulated power of traditional usage and the political monopoly of groups of people who had seized and held the power. Through trial and error, success and failure, these people, not noted for their brilliant warfare but for their love of peace, succeeded in establishing within their boundaries a clear definition of human rights and recognizing the right of the people to have a better government. _Reform Measures in England_.--The famous Bill of Rights of 1689 in England has always been intact in theory. It laid the foundation for popular government in which privileges and rights of the people were guaranteed. It may have been a good expedient to have declared that no papist should sit upon the throne of England, thus declaring for Protestantism, but it was far from an expression of religious toleration. The prestige of the House of Lords, an old and well-established aristocratic body, built upon ancient privilege and the power of the monarchy which too frequently acknowledged constitutional rights and then proceeded to trample upon them, made the progress in popular government very slow. One great gain had been made when the nation agreed to fight its political battles in Parliament and at elections. The freedom of the press and the freedom of speech gradually became established facts. Among the more noted acts for the benefit of popular government was the Reform Bill of 1832, which enlarged the elective franchise. This was bitterly opposed by the Lords, but the persistency of the Commons won the day and the king signed the bill. Again in 1867 the second Reform Bill enlarged the franchise, and more modern acts of Parliament have given greater liberties to the English people. England opposed independent local government of Scotland and Ireland and of her colonies. Ireland had been oppressed {416} by the malady of English landlordism, which had always been a bone of contention in the way of any amicable adjustment of the relations between England and Ireland. Throughout the whole century had waged this struggle. England at times had sought through a series of acts to relieve the country, but the conservative element in Parliament had usually thwarted any rational system like that proposed by Mr. Gladstone. On the other hand, the Irish people themselves desired absolute freedom and independence and were restive under any form of restraint. Nothing short of entire independence from the English nation or the establishment of home rule on some practical basis could insure peace and contentment in Ireland. Nor in the past could one be assured at any time that Ireland would have been contented for any length of time had she been given or acquired what she asked for. Being forced to support a large population on an infertile soil where landlordism dominated was a cause of a continual source of discontent, and the lack of practice of the Irish people in the art of local government always gave rise to doubts in the minds of her friends as to whether she could succeed as an independent nation or not. But the final triumph of Ireland in establishing a free state with the nominal control of the British Empire shows that Ireland has power to govern herself under fair treatment. What a great gain it would have been if many years ago England had yielded to the desire of Ireland for an independent constitutional government similar to that of Canada! Tremendous changes have taken place in recent years in the liberalizing movement in England. The state church still exists, but religious toleration is complete. Women have been allowed the right to vote and are taking deep interest in political affairs, three women already having seats in Parliament. The labor movement, which has always been strong and independent in England, by the exercise of its right at the polls finally gained control of the government and, for the first time {417} in the history of England, a leading labor-union man and a socialist became premier of England. _The Final Triumph of the French Republic_.--On account of ignorance of the true theories of government, as well as on account of lack of practical exercise in administration, for several decades the government which the French people established after the destruction of the monarchy of Louis XVI failed. The democracy of the French Revolution was iconoclastic, not creative. It could tear down, but could not rebuild. There were required an increased intelligence and the slow process of thought, a meditation upon the principles for which the people had fought and bled, and an enlarged view of the principles of government, before a republic could be established in France. Napoleon, catching the spirit of the times, gratified his ambition by obtaining the mastery of national affairs and leading the French people against foreign nations under the pretext of overthrowing despotism in Europe. In so doing he established absolutism once more in France. He became the imperial monarch of the old type, with the exceptions that intelligence took the place of bigotry and the welfare of the people took the place of the laudation of kings. But in attempting to become the dictator of all Europe, he caused other nations to combine against him, and finally he closed his great career with a Waterloo. The monarchy, on its restoration, became constitutional; the government was composed of two chambers--the peers, nominated by the king, and the lower house, elected by the people. A system of responsible ministers was established, and of judges, who were not removable. Much had been gained in religious and civil liberty and the freedom of the press. But monarchy began to grow again, urged by the middle class of France, until in July, 1830, another revolution broke out on account of election troubles. The charter was violated in the prohibition of the publication of newspapers and pamphlets, and the elective system arbitrarily changed so as to restrict the suffrage to the landowners. The reaction {418} from this was to gain something more for democratic government. In the meantime there had been a growth of socialism, the direct product of the revolution. The king finally abdicated in favor of his grandson, and then a provisional government was established, and finally a republic, the second republic of France. Louis Napoleon, who became president of the republic under the constitution, gradually absorbed all powers to himself and proclaimed himself emperor. After the close of the Franco-German War, in 1871, France became a republic for the third time. A constitution was formed, under which the legislative power was exercised by two chambers--the Chamber of Deputies, elected by direct vote and manhood suffrage for four years, and the Senate, consisting of 300 senators, 75 of whom were elected for life by the national assembly, the rest for nine years, by electoral colleges. These latter were composed of deputies, councils of the departments, and delegates of communes. The executive power was vested in a president, who was assisted by a responsible ministry. Republicanism was at last secured to France. Many changes have taken place in the application of the constitution to popular government since then, and much progress has been made in the practice of free government. The whole composition of the government reminds one of constitutional monarchy, with the exception that the monarch is chosen by the people for a short period of time. _Democracy in America_.--The progress of democracy in America has been rapid. The first colonists were oppressed by the authority of European nations and bound by unyielding precedent. While the principle of local self-government obtained to a large extent in many of them, they partook more of aristocracies, or of governments based on class legislation, than of pure democracies. When independence from foreign countries was won by the united efforts of all the colonies, the real struggle for universal liberty began. A government was founded, so far as it was possible, on the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which asserted "that all men {419} are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights"; and that "for securing these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." The creation of a federal constitution and the formation of a perfect union guaranteed these rights to every citizen. Yet in the various states forming a part of the Union, and, indeed, in the national government itself, it took a long time to approximate, in practice, the liberty and justice which were set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Still, in the past century, the people have become more and more closely connected with the state, and a "government of the people, for the people, and by the people" is a certainty. The laws which have been made under the Constitution increase in specific declarations of the rights of the people. Justice is more nearly meted out to all classes at present than in any decade for a century. The political powers of citizens have constantly enlarged. The elective franchise has been extended to all citizens of both sexes. The requirements as to naturalization of foreigners are exceedingly lenient, and thus free government is offered to all people. Of necessity the central government has been strengthened on account of the enlargement of territory and the great extension of national governmental powers. It has been necessary that the central forces which bind the separate parts of the nation together in a common union should be strengthened. The result has been a decline in the importance and power of the state governments. On the other hand, the large increase of population in the great cities has tended to enhance the power and importance of local government. The government of a single large city now becomes more difficult and of greater vital importance to the people than that of a state. The enlarged territory and increased population, and the enormous amount of legislative machinery, have tended to extend to its utmost limit the principle of representative government. Congress represents the people of the whole nation, {420} but committees represent Congress and subcommittees represent committees. There is a constant tendency to delegate powers to others. Pure democracy has no place in the great American republic, except as it is seen in the local government unit. Here the people always have a part in the caucus, in the primary or the town meeting, in the election of local officers and representatives for higher offices, in the opportunity to exercise their will and raise their voice in the affairs of the nation. To some extent the supposed greater importance of the national government has led the people to underestimate the opportunities granted them for exercising their influence as citizens within the precinct in which they live. But there is to-day a tendency to estimate justly the importance of local government as the source of all reforms and the means of the preservation of civil liberty. It has been pointed out frequently by the enemies of democracy that the practice of the people in self-government has not always been of the highest type. In many instances this criticism is true, for experience is always a dear teacher. The principles of democracy have come to people through conviction and determination, but the practices of self-government come through rough experiences, sometimes marked by a long series of blunders. The cost of a republican form of government to the people has frequently been very expensive on account of their ignorance, their apathy, and their unwillingness to take upon themselves the responsibilities of government. Consider, for instance, the thousands of laws that are made and placed upon the statute-books which have been of no value, possibly of detriment, to the community--laws made through the impulse of half-informed, ill-prepared legislators. Consider also the constitutions, constitutional amendments, and other important acts upon which the people express their opinion. The smallness of the vote of a people who are jealous of their own rights and privileges is frequently surprising. Notice, too, how frequently popular power has voted against its {421} own rights and interests. See the clumsy manner by which people have voted away their birthrights or, failing to vote at all, have enslaved themselves to political or financial monopoly. Observe, too, the expenses of the management of democratic governments, the waste on account of imperfect administration, and the failure of the laws to operate. Consideration of these points brings us to the conclusion that the perfection of democracy or republican government has not been reached, and that while liberty may be an expensive affair, it is so on account of the negligence of the people in qualifying for self-government. If a democratic form of government is to prevail, if popular government is to succeed, if the freedom of the people is to be guaranteed, there must be persistent effort on the part of the people to prepare themselves for their own government; a willingness to sacrifice for liberty, for liberty will endure only so long as people are willing to pay the price it costs. They must govern themselves, or government will pass from them to others. Eternal vigilance is the price of good government. _Modern Political Reforms_.--Political reform has been proceeding recently in many particular ways. Perhaps the most noticeable in America is that of civil service reform. Strong partisanship has been a ruling factor in American politics, often to the detriment of the financial and political interests of the country. Jealous of their prerogative, the people have insisted that changes in government shall occur often, and that the ruling party shall have the privilege of appointing the officers of the government. This has made it the almost universal practice for the incoming party to remove the officers of the old administration and replace them with its own appointments. To such an extent has this prevailed that it has come to be known as the "spoils system." But there is now a general tendency for the principles of civil service to prevail in all parts of the national government, and a growing feeling that they should be instituted in the various states and municipalities of the Union. The {422} federal government has made rapid progress in this line in recent years, and it is to be hoped that before long the large proportion of appointive offices will be put upon a merit basis and the persons who are best qualified to fill these places retained from administration to administration. Attempts are being made in nearly all of our cities for business efficiency in government, though there is much room for improvement. The government of the United States is especially weak in administration, and is far behind many of the governments of the Old World in this respect. With a thoroughly established civil service system, the effectiveness of the administration would be increased fully fifty per cent. Under the present party system the waste is enormous, and as the people must ultimately pay for this waste, the burden thrown upon them is great. In the first place, the partisan system necessarily introduces large numbers of inexperienced, inefficient officers who must spend some years in actual practice before they are really fitted for the positions which they occupy. In the second place, the time spent by congressmen and other high officials in attention to applicants for office and in urging of appointments, prevents them from improving their best opportunity for real service to the people. The practice of civil service reform is being rapidly adopted in the nations of the world which have undertaken the practice of self-government, and in those nations where monarchy or imperialism still prevails, persons in high authority feel more and more impelled to appoint efficient officers to carry out the plans of administrative government. It is likely that the time will soon come when all offices requiring peculiar skill or especial training will be filled on the basis of efficiency, determined by competitive examination or other tests of ability. Another important reform, which has already been begun in the United States, and which, in its latest movement, originated in Australia, is ballot reform. There has been everywhere in democratic government a tendency for fraud to increase on election days. The manipulation of the votes of {423} individuals through improper methods has been the cause of fraud and a means of thwarting the will of the people. It is well that the various states and cities have observed this and set themselves to the task of making laws to guard properly the ballot-box and give free, untrammelled expression to the will of the people. Though nearly all the states in the Union have adopted some system of balloting (based largely upon the Australian system), many of them are far from perfection in their systems. Yet the progress in this line is encouraging when the gains in recent years are observed. Since the decline of the old feudal times, in which our modern tax system had its origin, there has been a constant improvement in the system of taxation. Yet this has been very slow and apparently has been carried on in a bungling way. The tendency has been to tax every form of property that could be observed or described. And so our own nation, like many others, has gone on, step by step, adding one tax after another, without carefully considering the fundamental principles of taxation or the burdens laid upon particular classes. To-day we have a complex system, full of irregularities and imperfections. Our taxes are poorly and unjustly assessed, and the burdens fall heavily upon some, while others have an opportunity of escaping. We have just entered an era of careful study of our tax systems, and the various reports from the different states and the writings of economists are arousing great interest on these points. When once the imperfections are clearly understood and defined, there may be some hope of a remedy of present abuses. To be more specific, it may be said that the assessments of the property in counties of the same state vary between seventeen and sixty per cent of the market valuation. Sometimes this discrepancy is between the assessments of adjacent counties, and so great is the variation that seldom two counties have the same standard for assessing valuation. The personal-property tax shows greater irregularity than this, especially in our large cities. The tax on imports, though {424} apparently meeting the approval of a majority of the American people, makes, upon the whole, a rather expensive system of taxation, and it is questionable whether sufficient revenue can be raised from this source properly to support the government without seriously interfering with our foreign commerce. The internal revenue has many unsatisfactory phases. The income tax has been added to an imperfect system of taxation, instead of being substituted for the antiquated personal-property tax. Taxes on franchises, corporations, and inheritances are among those more recently introduced in attempts to reform the tax system. The various attempts to obtain sufficient revenue to support the government or to reform an unjust and unequal tax have led to double taxation, and hence have laid the burden upon persons holding a specific class of property. There are to-day no less than five methods in which double taxation occurs in the present system of taxation of corporations. The taxation of mortgages, because it may be shifted to the borrower, is virtually a double tax. The great question of the incidence of taxation, or the determination upon whom the tax ultimately falls, has not received sufficient care in the consideration of improved systems of taxation. Until it has, and until statesmen use more care in tax legislation and the regulation of the system, and officers are more conscientious in carrying it out, we need not hope for any rapid movement in tax reform. The tendency here, as in all other reforms, especially where needed, is for some person to suggest a certain political nostrum--like the single tax--for the immediate and complete reform of the system and the entire renovation and purification of society. But scientific knowledge, clear insight, and wisdom are especially necessary for any improvement, and even then improvement will come through a long period of practice, more or less painful on account of the shifting of methods of procedure. The most appalling example of the results of modern government is to be found in the municipal management of our {425} large cities. It has become proverbial that the American cities are the worst ruled of any in the world. In European countries the evils of city government were discovered many years ago, and in most of the nations there have been begun and carried out wisely considered reforms, until many of the cities of the Old World present examples of tolerably correct municipal government. In America there is now a general awakening in every city, but to such an extent have people, by their indifference or their wickedness, sold their birthrights to politicians and demagogues and the power of wealth, that it seems almost impossible to work any speedy radical reform. Yet many changes are being instituted in our best cities, and the persistent effort to manage the city as a business corporation rather than as a political engine is producing many good results. The large and growing urban population has thrown the burden of government upon the city--a burden which it was entirely unprepared for--and there have sprung up sudden evils which are difficult to eradicate. Only persistent effort, loyalty, sacrifice, and service, all combined with wisdom, can finally accomplish the reforms needed in cities. There is a tendency everywhere for people to get closer to the government, and to become more and more a part of it.[1] Our representative system has enabled us to delegate authority to such an extent that people have felt themselves irresponsible for all government, except one day in the year, when they vote at the polls; we need, instead, a determination to govern 365 days in the year, and nothing short of this perpetual interest of the people will secure to them the rights of self-government. Even then it is necessary that every citizen shall vote at every election. _Republicanism in Other Countries_.--The remarkable spread of forms of republican government in the different nations of the world within the present century has been unprecedented. {426} Every independent nation in South America to-day has a republican form of government. The Republic of Mexico has made some progress in the government of the people, and the dependencies of Great Britain all over the world have made rapid progress in local self-government. In Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, we find many of the most advanced principles and practices of free government. It is true that many of these nations calling themselves republics have not yet guaranteed the rights and privileges of a people to any greater extent than they would have done had they been only constitutional monarchies; for it must be maintained at all times that it depends more upon the characteristics of the people--upon their intelligence, their social conditions and classes, their ideas of government, and their character--what the nature of their government shall be, than upon the mere form of government, whether that be aristocracy, monarchy, or democracy. Many of the evils which have been attributed to monarchy ought more truly to have been attributed to the vital conditions of society. Vital social and political conditions are far more important to the welfare of the people than any mere form of government. Among the remarkable expressions of liberal government in modern times has been the development of the Philippine Islands under the protecting care of the United States, the establishment of republicanism in Porto Rico and Hawaii, now parts of the territory of the United States, and the development of an independent and democratic government in Cuba through the assistance of the United States. These expressions of an extended democracy have had far-reaching consequences on the democratic idealism of the world. _Influence of Democracy on Monarchy_.--But the evidences of the progress of popular government are not all to be observed in republics. It would be difficult to estimate the influence of the rise of popular government in some countries upon the monarchial institutions of others. This can never be {427} properly determined, because we know not what would have taken place in these monarchies had republicanism never prevailed anywhere. When republicanism arose in France and America, monarchy was alarmed everywhere; and again, when the revolutionary wave swept over Europe in 1848, monarchy trembled. Wherever, indeed, the waves of democracy have swept onward they have found monarchy raising breakwaters against them. Yet with all this opposition there has been a liberalizing tendency in these same monarchial governments. Monarchy has been less absolute and less despotic; the people have had more constitutional rights granted them, greater privileges to enjoy; and monarchies have been more careful as to their acts, believing that the people hold in their hands the means of retribution. The reforming influence of democratic ideas has been universal and uninterrupted. The World War has been iconoclastic in breaking up old forms of government and has given freedom to the democratic spirit and in many cases has developed practical democracy. Along with this, forces of radicalism have come to the front as an expression of long-pent feelings of injustice, now for the first time given opportunity to assert and express themselves. The ideal of democracy historically prevalent in Europe has been the rule of the "lower classes" at the expense of the "upper classes." This theory has been enhanced by the spread of Marxian socialism, which advocates the dominance and rule of the wage-earning class. The most serious attempt to put this idea in practice occurred in Russia with disastrous results. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. Why did the French Revolution fail to establish liberty? 2. What were the lasting effects of the English Commonwealth? 3. What were the causes of liberal government in the Netherlands? 4. The reform acts in 1832 and in 1867 in England. 5. The chief causes of trouble between England and Ireland. 6. The growth of democracy in the United States. {428} 7. Enumerate the most important modern political reforms. What are some needed political reforms? 8. England's influence on American law and government. 9. Investigate the population in your community to determine the extent of human equality. 10. City government under the municipal manager plan; also commission plan. [1] Consider the commission form of city government and the municipal manager plan. {429} CHAPTER XXVII INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS _Industries Radiate from the Land as a Centre_.--In primitive civilizations industry was more or less incidental to life. The food quest, protection of the body from storm and sun by improvised habitation and the use of skins, furs, bark, and rushes for clothing, together with the idea of human association for the perpetuation of the species, are the fundamental notions regarding life. Under such conditions industry was fitful and uncertain. Hunting for vegetable products and for animals to sustain life, the protection of the life of individuals from the elements and, incidentally, from the predatory activities of human beings, were the objectives of primitive man. As the land is the primary source of all economic life, systematic industry has always begun in its control and cultivation. Not until man settled more or less permanently with the idea of getting his sustenance from the soil did industrial activities become prominent. In the development of civilization one must recognize the ever-present fact that the method of treatment of the land is a determining factor in its fundamental characteristics, for it must needs be always that the products that we utilize come from the action of man on nature and its reaction on him. While the land is the primary source of wealth, and its cultivation a primal industry, it does not include the whole category of industrial enterprises, for tools must be made, art developed, implements provided, and machinery constructed. Likewise, clothing and ornaments were manufactured, and habitations constructed, and eventually transportation begun to carry people and goods from one place to another. These all together make an enlarged group of activities, all radiating from the soil as a common centre. {430} We have already referred to the cultivation of the valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile by systems of irrigation and the tilling of the soil in the valleys of Greece in the crude and semibarbarous methods introduced by the barbarians from the north. We have referred to the fact that the Romans were the first to develop systematic agriculture, and even the Teutonic people, the invaders of Rome, were rude cultivators of the soil. Social organization is dependent to a large extent upon the method of attachment to the soil--whether people wander over a large area in the hunter-fisher and the nomadic stages, or whether they become attached to the soil permanently. Thus, the village community developed a united, neighborly community, built on the basis of mutual aid. The feudal system was built upon predatory tribal warfare, where possession was determined by might to have and to hold. In the mediaeval period the manorial system of landholding developed, whereby the lord and his retainers claimed the land by their right of occupation and the power to hold, whether this came through conquest, force of arms, or agreement. This manorial system prevailed to a large extent in England, France, and parts of Germany. These early methods of landholding were brought about by people attempting to make their social adjustments, primarily in relation to survival, and subsequently in relation to the justice among individuals within the group, or in relation to the reactions between the groups themselves. After the breaking down of the Roman Empire, the well-established systems of landholding in the empire and the older nations of the Orient in the Middle Ages developed into the feudal system, which forced all society into groups or classes, from the lord to the serf. Subsequently there sprang up the individual system of landholding, which again readjusted the relation of society to the land system and changed the social structure. _The Early Mediaeval Methods of Industry_.--Outside of the tilling of the soil, the early industries were centred in the home, which gave rise to the well-known house system of {431} culture. "Housework" has primary relation to goods which are created for the needs of the household. Much of the early manufacturing industry was carried on within the household. Gradually this has disappeared to a large extent through the multiplication of industries outside the home, power manufacture, and the organization of labor and capital. In many instances house culture preceded that of systematic agriculture. The natural order was the house culture rising out of the pursuits of fishing, hunting, and tending flocks and herds, and the incidental hoe culture which represented the first tilling of the soil about the tent or hut. The Indians of North America are good examples of the development of the house culture in the making of garments from the skins of animals or from weeds and rushes, the weaving of baskets, the making of pottery and of boats, and the tanning of hides. During all this period, agriculture was of slow growth, it being the incidental and tentative process of life, while the house culture represented the permanent industry. Industries varied in different tribes, one being skilled in basket-making, another in stone implements for warfare and domestic use, another in pottery, another in boats, and still another in certain kinds of clothing--especially the ornaments made from precious stones or bone. This made it possible to spread the culture of one group to other groups, and later there developed the wandering peddler who went from tribe to tribe trading and swapping goods. This is somewhat analogous to the first wage-work system of England, where the individual went from house to house to perform services for which he received pay in goods, or, as we say, in kind. Subsequently the wage-earner had his own shop, where raw material was sent to him for finishing. All through Europe these customs prevailed and, indeed, in some parts of America exist to the present day. We see survivals of these customs which formerly were permanent, in the people who go from house to house performing certain types of work or bringing certain kinds of goods for sale, and, {432} indeed, in the small shop of modern times where goods are repaired or manufactured. They represent customs which now are irregular, but which formerly were permanent methods. It was a simple system, requiring no capital, no undertaker or manager, no middleman. Gradually these customs were replaced by many varied methods, such as the establishment of the laborer in his individual shop, who at first only made the raw material, which people brought him, into the finished product; later he was required to provide his own raw material, taking orders for certain classes of goods. After the handcraft system was well established, there was a division between the manufacturer of goods and those who produced the raw material, a marked distinction in the division of labor. The expansion of systems of industry developed the towns and town life, and as the manor had been self-sufficient in the manufacture of goods, so now the town becomes the unit of production, and independent town economy springs up. Later we find the towns beginning to trade with each other, and with this expanded industry the division of labor came about and the separation of laborers into classes. First, the merchant and the manufacturer were united. It was common for the manufacturer of goods to have his shop in his own home and, after he had made the goods, to put them on the shelf until called for by customers. Later he had systems of distribution and trade with people in the immediate locality. Soon weavers, spinners, bricklayers, packers, tanners, and other classes became distinctive. It was some time before manufacturers and traders, however, became separate groups, and a longer time before the manufacturer was separated from the merchant, because the manufacturer must market his own goods. Industries by degrees thus became specialized, and trades became clearly defined in their scope. This led, of course, to a distinct division of occupation, and later to a division of labor within the occupation. The introduction of money after the development of town economy brought about the wage system, whereby people were paid in money rather than {433} kind. This was a great step forward in facilitating trade and industry. One of the earliest methods of developing organized industrial society was through the various guilds of the Middle Ages. They represented the organization of the industries of a given town, with the purpose of establishing a monopoly in trade of certain kinds of goods, and secondarily to develop fraternal organization, association, and co-operation among groups of people engaged in the same industry. Perhaps it should be mentioned that the first in order of development of the guilds was known as the "guild-merchant," which was an organization of all of the inhabitants of the town engaged in trading or selling. This was a town monopoly of certain forms of industry controlled by the members of that industry. It partook of the nature of monopoly of trade, and had a vast deal to do with the social organization of the town. Its power was exercised in the place of more systematic political town government. However, after the political town government became more thoroughly established, the guild-merchant declined, but following the decline of the guild-merchant, the craft guild developed, which was an organization of all of the manufacturers and traders in a given craft. This seemed to herald the coming of the trade-union after the industrial machinery of society had made a number of changes. English industrial society became finally completely dominated, as did societies in countries on the Continent, by the craft guilds. All the payments in the handcraft system were at first in kind. When the laborer had finished his piece of goods, his pay consisted in taking a certain part of what he had created in the day or the week. Also, when he worked by the day he received his pay in kind. This system prevailed until money became sufficiently plentiful to enable the payment of wages for piecework and by the day. The payment in kind, of course, was a very clumsy and wasteful method of carrying on industry. Many methods of payment in kind prevailed for centuries, even down to recent times in America. Before the great {434} flour-mills were developed, the farmer took his wheat to the mill, out of which the miller took a certain percentage for toll in payment for grinding. The farmer took the remainder home with him in the form of flour. So, too, we have in agriculture the working of land on shares, a certain percentage of the crops going to the owner and the remainder to the tiller of the soil. Fruit is frequently picked on shares, which is nothing more than payment for services in kind. _The Beginnings of Trade_.--While these simple changes were slowly taking place in the towns and villages of Europe, there were larger movements of trade being developed, not only between local towns, but between the towns of one country and those of another, which led later to international trade and commerce. Formerly trade had become of world importance in the early Byzantine trade with the Orient and Phoenicia. After the crusades, the trade of the Italian cities with the Orient and northwest Europe was of tremendous importance.[1] In connection with this, the establishment of the Hanseatic League, of which Hamburg was a centre, developed trade between the east and the west and the south. These three great mediaeval trade movements represent powerful agencies in the development of Europe. They carried with them an exchange of goods and an exchange of ideas as well. This interchange stimulated thought and industrial activity throughout Europe. _Expansion of Trade and Transportation_.--The great discoveries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had a vast deal to do with the expansion of trade. The discovery of America, the establishment of routes to the Philippines around South America and to India around South Africa opened up wide vistas, not only for exploration but for the exchange of goods. Also, this brought about national trade, and with it national competition. From this time on the struggle for the supremacy of the sea was as important as the struggle of the various nations for extended territory. Portugal, the {435} Netherlands, England, and Spain were competing especially for the trade routes of the world. France and England were drawn into sharp competition because of the expansion of English trade and commerce. Portugal became a great emporium for the distribution of Oriental goods after she became a maritime power, with a commercial supremacy in India and China. Subsequently she declined and was forced to unite with Spain, and even after she obtained her freedom, in the seventeenth century, her war with the Netherlands caused her to lose commercial supremacy. The rise of the Dutch put the Netherlands to the front and Antwerp and Amsterdam became the centres of trade for the Orient. Dutch trade continued to lead the world until the formation of the English East and West India companies, which, with their powerful monopoly on trade, brought England to the front. Under the monopolies of these great companies and other private monopolies, England forged ahead in trade and commerce. But the private monopolies became so powerful that Cromwell, by the celebrated Navigation Acts of 1651, made a gigantic trade monopoly of the English nation. The development of agricultural products and manufactures in England, together with her immense carrying trade, made her mistress of the seas. The results of this trade development were to bring the products of every clime in exchange for the manufactured goods of Europe, and to bring about a change of ideas which stimulated thought and life, not only in material lines but along educational and spiritual lines as well. _Invention and Discoveries_.--One of the most remarkable eras of progress in the whole range of modern civilization appeared at the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, especially in England. The expanded trade and commerce of England had made such a demand for economic goods that it stimulated invention of new processes of production. The spinning of yarn became an important industry. It was a slow process, and could not supply the {436} weavers so that they could keep their looms in operation. Moreover, Kay introduced what is known as the drop-box and flying shuttle in 1738, which favored weaving to the detriment of spinning, making the trouble worse. In the extremity of trade the Royal Society offered a prize to any person who would invent a machine to spin a number of threads at the same time. As a result of this demand, James Hargreaves in 1764 invented the spinning-jenny, which was followed by Arkwright's invention of spinning by rollers, which was patented in 1769. Combining Arkwright's and Hargreaves's inventions, Crompton in 1779 invented the spinning-"mule." This quickened the process of spinning and greatly increased the production of the weavers. But one necessity satisfied leads to another in invention, and Cartwright's powerloom, which was introduced in 1784, came into general use at the beginning of the nineteenth century. During this period America had become a producer of cotton, and Eli Whitney's cotton-gin, invented in 1792, which separated the seeds from the cotton fibre in the boll, greatly stimulated the production of cotton in the United States. In the meanwhile the steam-engine, which had been perfected in 1769, was applied to power manufacture in 1785 by James Watt. This was the final stroke that completed the power manufacture of cotton and woollen goods. Other changes were brought about by the new method of smelting ore by means of coal, charcoal having been hitherto used for the process, and the invention of the blast-furnace in 1760 by Roebuck, which brought the larger use of metals into the manufactures of the world. To aid in the carrying trade, the building of canals between the large manufacturing towns in England to the ocean, and the building of highways over England, facilitated transportation and otherwise quickened industry. Thus we have in a period of less than forty years the most remarkable and unprecedented change in industry, which has never been exceeded in importance even by the introduction of the gasoline-engine and electrical power. {437} _The Change of Handcraft to Power Manufacture_.--Prior to the development of the mechanical contrivances for spinning and weaving and the application of steam-power to manufacturing, nearly everything in Europe was made by hand. All clothing, carpets, draperies, tools, implements, furniture--everything was hand-made. In this process no large capital was needed, no great factories, no great assemblage of laborers, no great organization of industry. The work was done in homes and small shops by individual enterprise, mainly, or in combinations of laborers and masters. Power manufacture and the inventions named above changed the whole structure of industrial society. _The Industrial Revolution_.--The period from 1760 to about 1830 is generally given as that of the industrial revolution, because this period is marked by tremendous changes in the industrial order. It might be well to remark, however, that if the industrial revolution began about 1760, it has really never ended, for new inventions and new discoveries have continually come--a larger use of steam-power, the introduction of transportation by railroads and steamship-lines, the modern processes of agriculture, the large use of electricity, with many inventions, have constantly increased power manufacture and drawn the line more clearly between the laborers on one side and the capitalists or managers on the other. In the first place, because the home and the small shop could not contain the necessary machinery, large factories equipped with great power-machines became necessary, and into the factories flocked the laborers, who formerly were independent handcraft manufacturers or merchants. It was necessary to have people to organize this labor and to oversee its work--that is, "bosses" were necessary. Under these circumstances the capitalistic managers were using labor with as little consideration or, indeed, less than they used raw material in the manufacture of goods. The laborers must seek employment in the great factories. The managers forced them down to the lowest rate of wage, caused them to live in {438} ill-ventilated factories in danger of life and health from the machinery, and to work long hours. They employed women and children, who suffered untold miseries. The production of goods demanded more and more coal, and women went into the coal-mines and worked fourteen to sixteen hours a day. Society was not ready for the great and sudden change and could not easily adjust itself to new conditions. Capital was necessary, and must have its reward. Factories were necessary to give the laborers a chance to labor. Labor was necessary, but it did not seem necessary to give any consideration to the justice of the laborer nor to his suffering. The wage system and the capitalistic system developed--systems that the socialists have been fighting against for more than a century. Labor, pressed down and suffering, arose in its own defense and organized. It was successively denied the right to assemble, to organize, to strike, but in each separate case the law prevailed in its favor. All through the development of European history the ordinary laborer never received full consideration regarding his value and his rights. It is true at times that he was happy and contented without improvement, but upon the whole the history of Europe has been the history of kings, queens, princes, and nobility, and wars for national aggrandizement, increased territory, or the gratification of the whims of the dominant classes. The laborer has endured the toil, fought the battles, and paid the taxes. Here we find the introduction of machinery, which in the long run will make the world more prosperous, happier, and advance it in civilization, yet the poor laborer must be the burden-bearer. Gradually, however, partly by his own demands, partly by the growing humanity of capitalistic employers, and partly because of the interest of outside philanthropic statesmen, labor has been protected by laws. In the first place, all trades are organized, and nearly all organizations are co-operating sympathetically with one another. Labor has been able thus to demand things and to obtain them, not only by the persistency {439} of demand, but by the force of the strike which compels people to yield. To-day the laborer has eight hours a day of work in a factory well ventilated and well lighted, protected from danger and accident, insured by law, better wages than he has ever had, better opportunities for life and the pursuit of happiness, better fed, better clothed, and better housed than ever before in the history of the world. Yet the whole problem is far from being settled, because it is not easy to define the rights, privileges, and duties of organized labor. Some things we know, and one is that the right to strike does not carry with it the right to destroy, or the right to organize the right to oppress others. But let us make the lesson universal and apply the same to capitalistic organizations and the employers' associations. And while we make the latter responsible for their deeds, let us make the organization of the former also responsible, and let the larger community called the state determine justice between groups and insure freedom and protection to all. _Modern Industrial Development_.--It was stated above that the industrial revolution is still going on. One need only to glance at the transformation caused by the introduction of railway transportation and steam navigation in the nineteenth century, to the uses of the telegraph, the telephone, the gasoline-engine, and later the radio and the airplane, to see that the introduction of these great factors in civilization must continue to make changes in the social order. They have brought about quantity transportation, rapidity of manufacture, and rapidity of trade, and stimulated the activities of life everywhere. This stimulation, which has brought more things for material improvement, has caused people to want paved streets, electric lights, and modern buildings, which have added to the cost of living through increased taxation. The whole movement has been characterized by the accumulated stress of life, which demands greater activity, more goods consumed, new desires awakened, and greater efforts to satisfy them. The quickening process goes on unabated. {440} In order to carry out these great enterprises, the industrial organization is complex in the extreme and tremendous in its magnitude. Great corporations capitalized by millions, great masses of laborers assembled which are organized from the highest to the lowest in the great industrial army, represent the spectacular display. And to be mentioned above all is the great steam-press that sends the daily paper to every home and the great public-school system that puts the book in every hand. _Scientific Agriculture_.--It has often been repeated that man's wealth comes originally from the soil, and that therefore the condition of agriculture is an index of the opportunity offered for progress. What has been done in recent years, especially in England and America, in the development of a higher grade stock, so different from the old scrub stock of the Colonial period; in the introduction of new grains, new fertilizers, improved soils, and the adaptability of the crop to the soil in accordance with the nature of both; the development of new fruits and flowers by scientific culture--all have brought to the door of man an increased food-supply of great variety and of improved quality. This is conducive to the health and longevity of the race, as well as to the happiness and comfort of everybody. Moreover, the introduction of agricultural machinery has changed the slow, plodding life of the farmer to that of the master of the steam-tractor, thresher, and automobile, changed the demand from a slow, inactive mind to the keenest, most alert, best-educated man of the nation, who must study the highest arts of production, the greatest economy, and the best methods of marketing. Truly, the industrial revolution applies not to factories alone. _The Building of the City_.--The modern industrial development has forced upon the landscape the great city. No one particularly wanted it. No one called it into being--it just came at the behest of the conditions of rapid transportation, necessity of centralization of factories where cheap distribution could be had, not only for the raw material but for the {441} finished product, and where labor could be furnished with little trouble--all of these things have developed a city into which rush the great products of raw material, and out of which pour the millions of manufactured articles and machinery; into which pours the great food-supply to keep the laborers from starving. Into the city flows much of the best blood of the country, which seeks opportunity for achievement. The great city is inevitable so long as great society insists on gigantic production and as great consumption, but the city idea is overwrought beyond its natural condition. If some power could equalize the transportation question, so that a factory might be built in a smaller town, where raw material could be furnished as cheaply as in the large city, and the distribution of goods be as convenient, there is no reason why the population might not be more evenly distributed, to its own great improvement. _Industry and Civilization_.--But what does this mean so far as human progress is concerned? We have increased the material production of wealth and added to the material comfort of the inhabitants of the world. We have extended the area of wealth to the dark places of the world, giving means of improvement and enlightenment. We have quickened the intellect of man until all he needs to do is to direct the machinery of his own invention. Steam, electricity, and water-power have worked for him. It has given people leisure to study, investigate, and develop scientific discoveries for the improvement of the race, protecting them from danger and disease and adding to their comfort. It has given opportunity for the development of the higher spiritual power in art, music, architecture, religion, and science. Industrial progress is something more than the means of heaping up wealth. It has to do with the well-being of humanity. It is true we have not yet been able to carry out our ideals in this matter, but slowly and surely industrial liberty and justice are following in the wake of the freedom of the mind to think, the freedom of religious belief, and the {442} political freedom of self-government. We are to-day in the fourth great period of modern development, the development of justice in industrial relations. Moreover, all of this quickening of industry has brought people together from all over the world. London is nearer New York than was Philadelphia in revolutionary times. Not only has it brought people closer together in industry, but in thought and sympathy. There have been developed a world ethics, a world trade, and a world interchange of science and improved ideas of life. It has given an increased opportunity for material comforts and an increased opportunity for the achievement of the ordinary man who seeks to develop all the capacities and powers granted him by nature. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. Show that land is the foundation of all industry. 2. Compare condition of laborers now with conditions before the industrial revolution. 3. Are great organizations of business necessary to progress? 4. Do railroads create wealth? 5. Does the introduction of machinery benefit the wage-earner? 6. How does rapid ocean-steamship transportation help the United States? 7. If England should decline in wealth and commerce, would the United States be benefited thereby? 8. How does the use of electricity benefit industry? 9. To what extent do you think the government should control or manage industry? 10. Is Industrial Democracy possible? 11. Cutting and hammering two processes of primitive civilization. What mechanical inventions take the place of the stone hammer and the stone knife? [1] See Chapter XXI. {443} CHAPTER XXVII SOCIAL EVOLUTION _The Evolutionary Processes of Society_.--Social activity is primarily group activity. Consequently the kind and nature of the group, the methods which brought its members together, its organization and purpose, indicate the type of civilization and the possibility of achievement. As group activity means mutual aid of members, and involves processes of co-operation in achievement, the type of society is symbolic of the status of progress. The function of the group is to establish social order of its members, protect them from external foes, as well as internal maladies, and to bring into existence a new force by which greater achievement is possible than when individuals are working separately. _The Social Individual_.--While society is made of physio-psychic individuals, as a matter of fact the social individual is made by interactions and reactions arising from human association. Society on one hand and the social individual on the other are both developed at the same time through the process of living together in co-operation and mutual aid. Society once created, no matter how imperfect, begins its work for the good of all its members. It begins to provide against cold and hunger and to protect from wild animals and wild men. It becomes a feeling, thinking, willing group seeking the best for all. It is in the fully developed society that the social process appears of providing a water-supply, sanitation through sewer systems, preventative medicine and health measures, public education, means of establishing its members in rights, duties, and privileges, and protecting them in the pursuit of industry. _The Ethnic Society_.--Just at what period society became well established is not known, but there are indications that some forms of primitive family life and social activities were {444} in existence among the men of the Old Stone Age, and certainly in the Neolithic period. After races had reached a stage of permanent historical records, or had even handed down traditions from generation to generation, there are evidences of family life and tribal or national achievements. Though there are evidences of religious group activities prior to formal tribal life, it may be stated in general that the first permanent organization was on a family or ethnic basis. Blood relationship was the central idea of cohesion, which was early aided by religious superstition and belief. Following this idea, all of the ancient monarchies and empires were based on the ethnic group or race. All of this indicates that society was based on natural law, and from that were gradually evolved the general and political elements which foreshadowed the enlarged functions of the more complex society of modern times. _The Territorial Group_.--Before the early tribal groups had settled down to permanent habitations, they had developed many social activities, but when they became permanently settled they passed from the ethnic to the demographic form of social order--that is, they developed a territorial group that performed all of its functions within a given boundary which they called their own. From this time on population increased and occupied territory expanded, and the group became self-sufficient and independent in character. Then it could co-operate with other groups and differentiate functions within. Industrial, religious, and political groups, sacred orders, and voluntary associations became prominent, all under the protection of the general social order. _The National Group Founded on Race Expansion_.--Through conquest, amalgamation, and assimilation, various independent groups were united in national life. All of the interior forces united in the perpetuation of the nation, which became strong and domineering in its attitude toward others. This led to warfare, conquest, or plunder, the union of the conquered with the conquerors, and imperialism came into being. Growth of wealth and population led to the demand for more territory {445} and the continuation of strife and warfare. The rise and fall of nations, the formation and dissolving of empires under the constant shadow of war continued through the ages. While some progress was made, it was in the face of conspicuous waste of life and energy, and the process of national protection of humanity has been of doubtful utility. Yet the development of hereditary leadership, the dominance of privileged classes, and the formation of traditions, laws, and forms of government went on unabated, during which the division of industrial and social functions within, causing numerous classes to continually differentiate, took place. _The Functions of New Groups_.--In all social groupings the function always precedes the form or structure of the social order. Society follows the method of organic evolution in growing by differentiation. New organs or parts are formed, which in time become strengthened and developed. The organs or parts become more closely articulated with each other and with the whole social body, and finally over all is the great society, which defends, shields, protects, and fights for all. The individual may report for life service in many departments, through which his relation to great society must be manifested. He no longer can go alone in his relation to the whole mass. He may co-operate in a general way, it is true, with all, but must have a particularly active co-operation in the smaller groups on which his life service and life sustenance depend. The multiplication of functions leads to increased division of service and to increased co-operation. In the industrial life the division of labor and formation of special groups are more clearly manifested. _Great Society and the Social Order_.--This is manifested chiefly in the modern state and the powerful expression of public opinion. No matter how traditional, autocratic, and arbitrary the centralized government becomes, there is continually arising modifying power from local conditions. There are things that the czar or the king does not do if he wishes to continue in permanent authority. From the masses of the {446} people there arises opposition to arbitrary power, through expressed discontent, public opinion, or revolution. The whole social field of Europe has been a seething turmoil of action and reaction, of autocracy and the demand for human rights. Thirst for national aggrandizement and power and the lust of the privileged classes have been modified by the distressing cry of the suffering people. What a slow process is social evolution and what a long struggle has been waged for human rights! _Great Society Protects Voluntary Organizations_.--Freedom of assembly, debate, and organization is one of the important traits of social organization. With the ideal of democracy comes also freedom of speech and the press. Voluntary organizations for the good of the members or for a distinctive agency for general good may be made and receive protection in society at large through law, the courts, and public opinion; but the right to organize does not carry with it the right to destroy, and all such organizations must conform to the general good as expressed in the laws of the land. Sometimes organizations interested in their own institutions have been detrimental to the general good. Even though they have law and public opinion with them, in their zeal for propaganda they have overstepped the rules of progress. But such conditions cannot last; progress will cause them to change their attitude or they meet a social death. _The Widening Service of the Church_.--The importance of the religious life in the progress of humanity is acknowledged by all careful scholars. Sometimes, it is true, this religious belief has been detrimental to the highest interests of social welfare. Religion itself is necessarily conservative, and when overcome by superstition, tradition, and dogmatism, it may stifle the intellect and retard progress. The history of the world records many instances of this. The modern religious life, however, has taken upon it, as a part of its legitimate function, the ethical relations of mankind. Ethics has been prominent in the doctrine and service of the church. When the church turned its attention to the {447} future life, with undue neglect of the present, it became non-progressive and worked against the best interests of social progress. When it based its operation entirely upon faith, at the expense of reason and judgment, it tended to enslave the intellect and to rob mankind of much of its best service. But when it turned its attention to sweetening and purifying the present, holding to the future by faith, that man might have a larger and better life, it opened the way for social progress. Its motto has been, in recent years, the salvation of this life that the future may be assured. Its aim is to seize the best that this life furnishes and to utilize it for the elevation of man, individually and socially. Its endeavor is to save this life as the best and holiest reality yet offered to man. Faith properly exercised leads to invention, discovery, social activity, and general culture. It gives an impulse not only to religious life, but to all forms of social activity. But it must work with the full sanction of intelligence and allow a continual widening activity of reason and judgment. The church has shown a determination to take hold of all classes of human society and all means of reform and regeneration. It has evinced a tendency to seize all the products of culture, all the improvements of science, all the revelations of truth, and turn them to account in the upbuilding of mankind on earth, in perfecting character and relieving mankind, in developing the individual and improving social conditions. The church has thus entered the educational world, the missionary field, the substratum of society, the political life, and the field of social order, everywhere becoming a true servant of the people. _Growth of Religious Toleration_.--There is no greater evidence of the progress of human society than the growth of religious toleration. In the first hundred years of the Reformation, religious toleration was practically unknown. Indeed, the last fifty years has seen a more rapid growth in this respect than in the previous three hundred. Luther and his followers could not tolerate Calvinists any more than they could {448} Catholics, and Calvinists, on the other hand, could tolerate no other religious opinion. The slow evolution of religious toleration in England is one of the most remarkable things in history. Henry VIII, "Defender of the Faith," was opposed to religious liberty. Queen Mary persecuted all except Catholics. Elizabeth completed the establishment of the Anglican Church, though, forced by political reasons, she gave more or less toleration to all parties. But Cromwell advocated unrelenting Puritanism by legislation and by the sword. James I, though a Protestant wedded to imperialism in government, permitted oppression. The Bill of Rights, which secured to the English people the privileges of constitutional government, insisted that no person who should profess the "popish" religion or marry a "papist" should be qualified to wear the crown of England. At the close of the sixteenth century it was a common principle of belief that any person who adhered to heterodox opinions in religion should be burned alive or otherwise put to death. Each church adhered to this sentiment, though, it is true, many persons believed differently, and at the close of the seventeenth century Bossuet, the great French ecclesiastic, maintained with close argument that the right of the civil magistrate to punish religious errors was a point on which nearly all churches agreed, and asserted that only two bodies of Christians, the Socinians and the Anabaptists, denied it. In 1673 all persons holding office under the government of England were compelled to take the oath of supremacy and of allegiance, to declare against transubstantiation, and to take the sacrament according to the ritual of the established church. In 1689 the Toleration Act was passed, exempting dissenters from the Church of England from the penalties of non-attendance on the service of the established church. This was followed by a bill abolishing episcopacy in Scotland. In 1703 severe laws were passed in Ireland against those who professed the Roman Catholic religion. The Test Act was not repealed until 1828, when the oath was taken "on the true {449} faith of a Christian," which was substituted for the sacrament test. From this time on Protestant dissenters might hold office. In the year following, the Catholic Relief Act extended toleration to the Catholics, permitting them to hold any offices except those of regent, lord chancellor of England or Ireland, and of viceroy of Ireland. In 1858, by act of Parliament, Jews were for the first time admitted to that body. In 1868 the Irish church was disestablished and disendowed, and a portion of its funds devoted to education. But it was not until 1871 that persons could lecture in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge without taking the sacrament of the established church and adhering to its principles. The growth of toleration in America has been evinced in the struggle of the different denominations for power. The church and the state, though more or less closely connected in the colonies of America, have been entirely separated under the Constitution, and therefore the struggle for liberal views has been between the different denominations themselves. In Europe and in America one of the few great events of the century has been the entire separation of church and state. It has gone so far in America that most of the states have ceased to aid any private or denominational institutions. There is a tendency, also, not to support Indian schools carried on by religious denominations, or else to have them under the especial control of the United States government. There has been, too, a liberalizing tendency among the different denominations themselves. In some rural districts, and among ignorant classes, bigotry and intolerance, of course, break out occasionally, but upon the whole there is a closer union of the various denominations upon a co-operative basis of redeeming men from error, and a growing tendency to tolerate differing beliefs. _Altruism and Democracy_.--The law of evolution that involves the survival of the fittest of organic life when applied to humanity was modified by social action. But as man must {450} always figure as an individual and his development is caused by intrinsic and extrinsic stimuli, he has never been free from the exercise of the individual struggle for existence, no matter how highly society is developed nor to what extent group activity prevails. The same law continues in relation to the survival of the group along with other groups, and as individual self-interest, the normal function of the individual, may pass into selfishness, so group interest may pass into group selfishness, and the dominant idea of the group may be its own survival. This develops institutionalism, which has been evidenced in every changing phase of social organization. Along with this have grown altruistic principles based on the law of love, which in its essentials is antagonistic to the law of the survival of the fittest. It has been developed from two sources--one which originally was founded on race morality, that is, the protection of individuals for the good of the order, and the other that of sympathy with suffering of the weak and unprotected. In the progress of modern society the application of Christian principles to life has kept pace with the application of democratic principles in establishing the rights of man. Gradually the duty of society to protect and care for the weak has become generally recognized. This idea has been entirely overemphasized in many cases, on the misapplication of the theory that one individual is as good as another and entitled to equality of treatment by all. At least it is possible for the normal progress of society to be retarded if the strong become weakened by excessive care of the weak. The law of love must be so exercised that it will not increase weakness on the part of those being helped, nor lessen the opportunities of the strong to survive and manifest their strength. The history of the English Poor Law is an account of the systematic care of pauperism to the extent that paupers were multiplied so that those who were bearing the burden of taxation for their support found it easier and, indeed, sometimes necessary to join the pauper ranks in order to live at all. {451} Many are alarmed to-day at the multiplication of the number of insane, weak-minded, imbeciles, and paupers who must be supported by the taxation of the people and helped in a thousand ways by the altruism of individuals and groups. Unless along with this excessive altruistic care, scientific principles of breeding, of prevention, and of care can be introduced, the dependent, defective, and delinquent classes of the world will eventually become a burden to civilization. Society cannot shirk its duty to care for these groups, but it would be a misfortune if they reach a status where they can demand support and protection of society. It is a question whether we have not already approached in a measure this condition. Fortunately there is enough knowledge in the world of science regarding man and society to prevent any such catastrophe, if it could only be applied. Hence, since one of the great ideals of life is to develop a perfect society built upon rational principles, the study of social pathology has become important. The care of the weak and the broken-down classes of humanity has something more than altruism as a foundation. Upon it rest the preservation of the individual and the perpetuation of a healthy social organism. The care of the insane, of imbeciles, of criminals, and of paupers is exercised more nearly on a scientific basis each succeeding year. Prevention and reform are the fundamental ideas in connection with the management of these classes. Altruism may be an initial motive power, prompting people to care for the needy and the suffering, but necessity for the preservation of society is more powerful in its final influences. To care for paupers without increasing pauperism is a great question, and is rapidly putting all charity upon a scientific basis. To care for imbeciles without increasing imbecility, and to care for criminals on the basis of the prevention and decrease of crime, are among the most vital questions of modern social life. As the conditions of human misery become more clearly revealed to humanity, and their evil effects on the social system become more apparent, greater efforts will be {452} put forward--greater than ever before--in the care of dependents, defectives, and delinquents. Not only must the pathology of the individual be studied, for the preservation of his physical system, but the pathology of human society must receive scientific investigation in order to perpetuate the social organism. _Modern Society a Machine of Great Complexity_.--While the family remains as the most persistent primary unit of social organization out of which differentiated the great social functions of to-day, it now expresses but a very small part of the social complex. It is true it is still a conserving, co-operating, propagating group of individuals, in which appear many of the elemental functions of society. While it represents a group based on blood relationship, as in the old dominant family drawn together by psychical influences and preserved on account of the protection of the different members of the group and the various complex relations between them, still within its precincts are found the elementary practices of economic life, the rights of property, and the beginnings of education and religion. Outside of this family nucleus there have been influences of common nationality and common ancestry or race, which are natural foundations of an expanded society. Along with this are the secondary influences, the memories and associations of a common birthplace or a common territorial community, and by local habitation of village, town, city, or country. But the differentiation of industrial functions or activities has been most potent in developing social complexity. The multiplication of activities, the choice of occupation, and the division of labor have multiplied the economic groups by the thousand. Following this, natural voluntary social groups spring up on every hand. Again, partly by choice and partly by environment, we find society drawn together in other groups, more or less influenced by those just enumerated. From the earliest forms of social existence we find men are grouped together on the basis of wealth. The interests of the rich are common, as are also the {453} interests of the poor and those of the well-to-do. Nor is it alone a matter of interest, but in part of choice, that these groupings occur. This community of interests brings about social coherence. Again, the trades, professions, and occupations of men draw them together in associated groups. It is not infrequent that men engaged in the same profession are thrown together in daily contact, have the same interests, sentiments, and thought, and form in this way a group which stands almost aloof from other groups in social life; tradesmen dealing in a certain line of goods are thrown together in the same way. But the lines in these groupings must not be too firmly drawn, for groups formed on the basis of friendship may cover a field partaking in part of all these different groups. Again, we shall find that the school lays the foundation of early associations, and continues to have an influence in creating social aggregates. Fraternal societies and political parties in the same way form associated groups. The church at large forms a great organizing centre, the influence of which in political and social life enlarges every day. The church body arranges itself in different groups on the basis of the different sects and denominations, and within the individual church organization there are small groups or societies, which again segregate religious social life. But over and above all these various social groups and classes is the state, binding and making all cohere in a common unity. The tendency of this social life is to differentiate into more and more groups, positive in character, which renders our social existence complex and difficult to analyze. The social groups overlap one another, and are interdependent in all their relations. In one way the individual becomes more and more self-constituted and independent in his activity; in another way he is dependent on all his fellows for room or opportunity for action. This complexity of social life renders it difficult to estimate the real progress of society; yet, taking any one of these {454} individual groups, it will be found to be improving continually. School life and school associations show a marked improvement; family life, notwithstanding the various evidences of the divorce courts, shows likewise an improved state as intelligence increases; the social life of the church becomes larger and broader. The spread of literature and learning, the increase of education, renders each social group more self-sustaining and brings about a higher life, with a better code of morals. Even political groups have their reactions, in which, notwithstanding the great room for improvement, they stand for morality and justice. The relations of man to man are becoming better understood every day. His fickleness and selfishness are more readily observed in recent than in former times, and as a result the evils of the present are magnified, because they are better understood; in reality, social conditions are improving, and the fact that social conditions are understood and evils clearly observed promises a great improvement for the future. _Interrelation of Different Parts of Society_.--The various social aggregates are closely interrelated and mutually dependent upon one another. The state itself, though expressing the unity of society, is a highly complex organization, consisting of forms of local and central government. These parts, having independent functions, are co-ordinated to the general whole. Voluntary organizations have their specific relation to the state, which fosters and protects them on an independent basis. The school, likewise, has its relation to the social life, having an independent function, yet touching all parts of the social life. We find the closest interdependence of individuals in the economic life. Each man performs a certain service which he exchanges for the services of others. The wealth which he creates with his own hand, limited in kind, must be exchanged for all the other commodities which he would have. More than this, all people are ranged in economic groups, each group dependent upon all the others--the farmers dependent upon {455} the manufacturers of implements and goods, upon bankers, lawyers, ministers, and teachers; the manufacturers dependent upon the farmers and all the other classes; and so with every class. This interdependent relation renders it impossible to improve one group without improving the others, or to work a great detriment to one group without injuring the others. If civilization is to be perpetuated and improved, the banker must be interested in the welfare of the farmer, the farmer in the welfare of the banker, both in the prosperity of manufacturers, and all in the welfare of the common laborer. The tendency for this mutual interest to increase is evinced in all human social relations, and speaks well for the future of civilization. _The Progress of the Race Based on Social Opportunities_.--Anthropologists tell us that no great change in the physical capacity of man has taken place for many centuries. The maximum brain capacity has probably not exceeded that of the Crô-Magnon race in the Paleolithic period of European culture. Undoubtedly, however, there has been some change in the quality of the brain, increasing its storage batteries of power and through education the utilization of that power. We would scarcely expect, however, with all of our education and scientific development, to increase the stature of man or to enlarge his brain. Much is being done, however, in getting the effective service of the brain not only through natural selective processes, but through education. The improvement of human society has been brought about largely by training and the increased knowledge which it has brought to us through invention and discovery, and their application to the practical and theoretical arts. All these would have been buried had it not been for the protection of co-operative society and the increased power derived therefrom. Even though we exercise the selective power of humanity under the direction of our best intelligence, the individual must find his future opportunity in the better {456} conditions furnished by society. Granted that individual and racial powers are essential through hereditary development, progress can only be obtained by the expression of these powers through social activity. For it is only through social co-operation that a new power is brought into existence, namely, achievement by mutual aid. This assertion does not ignore the fact that the mutations of progress arise from the brain centres of geniuses, and that by following up these mutations by social action they may become productive and furnish opportunity for progress. _The Central Idea of Modern Civilization_.--The object of life is not to build a perfect social mechanism. It is only a means to a greater end, namely, that the individual shall have opportunity to develop and exercise the powers which nature has given him. This involves an opportunity for the expression of his whole nature, physical and mental, for the satisfaction of his normal desires for home, happiness, prosperity, and achievement. It involves, too, the question of individual rights, privileges, and duties. The history of man reveals to us somewhat of his progress. There is ever before us the journey which he has taken in reaching his present status. The road has been very long, very rough, very crooked. What he has accomplished has been at fearful expense. Thousands have perished, millions have been swept away, that a single idea for the elevation and culture of the race might remain. Deplore it as we may, the end could be reached only thus. The suffering of humanity is gradually lessening, and destruction and waste being stayed, yet we must recognize, in looking to the future, that all means of improvement will be retarded by the imperfection of human life and human conditions. The central principle, however, the great nucleus of civilization, becomes more clearly defined, in turn revealing that man's happiness on earth, based upon duty and service, is the end of progress. If the achievements of science, the vast accumulations of wealth, the perfection of social organization, {457} the increased power of individual life--if all these do not yield better social conditions, if they do not give to humanity at large greater contentment, greater happiness, a larger number of things to know and enjoy, they must fail in their service. But they will not fail. Man is now a larger creature in every way than ever before. He has better religion; a greater God in the heavens, ruling with beneficence and wisdom; a larger number of means for improvement everywhere; and the desire and determination to master these things and turn them to his own benefit. The pursuit of truth reveals man to himself and God to him. The promotion of justice and righteousness makes his social life more complete and happy. The investigations of science and the advances of invention and discovery increase his material resources, furnishing him means with which to work; and with increasing intelligence he will understand more clearly his destiny--the highest culture of mind and body and the keenest enjoyment of the soul. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. What were the chief causes of aggregation of people? 2. Are there evidences of groups without the beginning of social organization? 3. What is the relation of the individual to society? 4. The basis of national groups. 5. Factors in the progress of the human race. 6. Growth of religious toleration in the world. 7. Name ten "American institutions" that should be perpetuated. 8. Race and democracy. 9. What per cent of the voters of your town take a vital interest in government? 10. The growth of democratic ideas in Europe. In Asia. 11. Study the welfare organizations in your town, comparing objects and results. 12. The trend of population from country to city and its influence on social organization. 13. Explain why people follow the fashions. {458} CHAPTER XXIX THE EVOLUTION OF SCIENCE _Science Is an Attitude of Mind Toward Life_.--As usually defined, science represents a classified body of knowledge logically arranged with the purpose of arriving at definite principles or truths by processes of investigation and comparison. But the largest part of science is found in its method of approaching the truth as compared with religion, philosophy, or disconnected knowledge obtained by casual observation. In many ways it is in strong contrast with speculative philosophy and with dogmatic theology, both of which lack sufficient data for scientific development. The former has a tendency to interpret what is assumed to have already been established. With the latter the laboratory of investigation of truth has been closed. The laboratory of science is always open. While scientists work with hypotheses, use the imagination, and even become dogmatic in their assertions, the degree of certainty is always tested in the laboratory. If a truth is discovered to-day, it must be verified in the laboratory or shown to be incorrect or only a partial truth. Science has been built up on the basis of the inquiry into nature's processes. It is all the time inquiring: "What do we find under the microscope, through the telescope, in the chemical and physical reactions, in the examination of the earth and its products, in the observation of the functions of animals and plants, or in the structure of the brain of man and the laws of his mental functioning?" If it establishes an hypothesis as a means of procedure, it must be determined true or abandoned. If the imagination ventures to be far-seeing, observation, experimentation, and the discovery of fact must all come to its support before it can be called scientific. _Scientific Methods_.--We have already referred to the turning of the minds of the Greeks from the power of the gods to {459} a look into nature's processes. We have seen how they lacked a scientific method and also scientific data sufficient to verify their assumptions. We have observed how, while they took a great step forward, their conclusions were lost in the Dark Ages and in the early mediaeval period, and how they were brought to light in the later medieval period and helped to form the scholastic philosophy and to stimulate free inquiry, and how the weakness of all systems was manifested in all these periods of human life by failure to use the simple process of observing the facts of nature, getting them and classifying them so as to demonstrate truth. It will not be possible to recount in this chapter a full description of the development of science and scientific thought. Not more can be done than to mention the turning-points in its development and expansion. Though other influences of minor importance might be mentioned, it is well to note that Roger Bacon (1214-1294) stands out prominently as the first philosopher of the mediaeval period who turned his attitude of mind earnestly toward nature. It is true that he was not free from the taint of dogmatic theology and scholastic philosophy which were so strongly prevailing at the time, but he advocated the discovery of truth by observation and experiment, which was a bold assumption at that time. He established as one of his main principles that experimental science "investigates the secrets of nature by its own competency and out of its own qualities, irrespective of any connection with the other sciences." Thus he did not universalize his method as applicable to all sciences. Doubtless Roger Bacon received his inspiration from the Greek and Arabian scientists with whom he was familiar. It is interesting that, following the lines of observation and discovery in a very primitive way, he let his imagination run on into the future, predicting many things that have happened already. Thus he says: "Machines for navigation are possible without rowers, like great ships suited to river or ocean, going with greater velocity than if they were full of rowers; likewise {460} wagons may be moved _cum impetu inaestimabili_, as we deem the chariots of antiquity to have been. And there may be flying-machines, so made that a man may sit in the middle of the machine and direct it by some device; and again, machines for raising great weights."[1] In continuity with the ideas of Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) gave a classification of human learning and laid the real foundation on which the superstructure of science has been built. Between the two lives much had been done by Copernicus, who taught that the earth was not the centre of the universe, and that it revolved on its axis from west to east. This gave the traditions of fourteen centuries a severe jolt, and laid the foundation for the development of the heliocentric system of astronomy. Bacon's classification of all knowledge showed the relationship of the branches to a comprehensive whole. His fundamental theory was that nature was controlled and modified by man. He recognized the influence of natural philosophy, but insisted that the "history mechanical" was a strong support to it. His usefulness seems to have been in the presentation of a wide range of knowledge distinctly connected, the demonstration of the utility of knowledge, and the suggestion of unsolved problems which should be investigated by observation and experiment. Without giving his complete classification of human learning, it may be well to state his most interesting classification of physical science to show the middle ground which he occupied between mediaeval thought and our modern conception of science. This classification is as follows: 1. Celestial phenomena. 2. Atmosphere. 3. Globe. 4. Substance of earth, air, fire, and water. 5. Genera, species, etc.[2] {461} Descartes, following Bacon, had much to do with the establishment of method, although he laid more stress upon deduction than upon induction. With Bacon he believed that there was need of a better method of finding out the truth than that of logic. He was strong in his refusal to recognize anything as true that he did not understand, and had no faith in the mere assumption of truth, insisting upon absolute proof derived through an intelligent order. Perhaps, too, his idea was to establish universal mathematics, for he recognized measurements and lines everywhere in the universe, and recognized the universality of all natural phenomena, laying great stress on the solution of problems by measurement. He was a fore runner of Newton and many other scientists, and as such represents an epoch-making period in scientific development. The trend of thought by a few leaders having been directed to the observation of nature and the experimentation with natural phenomena, the way was open for the shifting of the centre of thought of the entire world. It only remained now for each scientist to work out in his own way his own experiments. The differentiation of knowledge brought about many phases of thought and built up separate divisions of science. While each one has had an evolution of its own, all together they have worked out a larger progress of the whole. Thus Gilbert (1540-1603) carried on practical experiments and observations with the lodestone, or magnet, and thus made a faint beginning of the study of electrical phenomena which in recent years has played such an important part in the progress of the world. Harvey (1578-1657) by his careful study of the blood determined its circulation through the heart by means of the arterial and venous systems. This was an important step in leading to anatomical studies and set the world far ahead of the medical studies of the Arabians. Galileo (1564-1642), in his study of the heavenly bodies and the universe, carried out the suggestion of Copernicus a century before of the revolution of the earth on its axis, to {462} take the place of the old theory that the sun revolved around the earth. Indeed, this was such a disturbing factor among churchmen, theologians, and pseudo-philosophers that Galileo was forced to recant his statements. In 1632 he published at Florence his _Dialogue on the Ptolemaic and Copernican Systems of the World_. For this he was cited to Rome, his book ordered to be burned, and he was sentenced to be imprisoned, to make a recantation of his errors, and by way of penance to recite the seven penitential psalms once a week. It seems very strange that a man who could make a telescope to study the heavenly bodies and carry on experiments with such skill that he has been called the founder of experimental science could be forced to recant the things which he was convinced by experiment and observation to be true. However, it must be remembered that the mediaeval doctrine of authority had taken possession of the minds of the world of thinkers to such an extent that to oppose it openly seemed not only sacrilege but the tearing down of the walls of faith and destroying the permanent structure of society. Moreover, the minds of all thinkers were trying to hold on to the old while they developed the new, and not one could think of destroying the faith of the church. But the church did not so view this, and took every opportunity to suppress everything new as being destructive of the church. No one could contemplate the tremendous changes that might have been made in the history of the world if the church could have abandoned its theological dogmas far enough to welcome all new truth that was discovered in God's workshop. To us in the twentieth century who have such freedom of expressing both truth and untruth, it is difficult to realize to what extent the authorities of the Middle Ages tried to seal the fountains of truth. Picture a man kneeling before the authorities at Rome and stating: "With a sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the said errors and heresies. I swear that for the future I will never say nor assert anything verbally or in writing which may give rise to a {463} similar suspicion against me."[3] Thus he was compelled to recant and deny his theory that the earth moves around the sun. _Measurement in Scientific Research_.--All scientific research involves the recounting of recurring phenomena within a given time and within a given space. In order, therefore, to carry on systematic research, methods of measuring are necessary. We can thus see how mathematics, although developed largely through the study of astronomy, has been necessary to all investigation. Ticho Brahe and Kepler may be said to have accentuated the phase of accurate measurement in investigation. They specialized in chemistry and astronomy, all measurements being applied to the heavenly bodies. Their main service was found in accurate records of data. Kepler maintained "that every planet moved in an ellipse of which the sun occupied one focus." He also held "that the square of the periodic time of any planet is proportional to the cube of its mean distance from the sun," and "that the area swept by the radius vector from the planet to the sun is proportional to the time."[4] He was much aided in his measurements by the use of a system of logarithms invented by John Napier (1614). Many measurements were established regarding heat, pressure of air, and the relation of solids and liquids. Isaac Newton, by connecting up a single phenomenon of a body falling a distance of a few feet on the earth with all similar phenomena, through the law of gravitation discovered the unity of the universe. Though Newton carried on important investigations in astronomy, studied the refraction of light through optic glasses, was president of the Royal Society, his chief contribution to the sciences was the tying together of the sun, the planets, and the moons of the solar system by the attraction of gravitation. Newton was able to carry along with his scientific investigations a profound reverence for Christianity. That he was not attacked shows that there had {464} been considerable progress made in toleration of new ideas. With all of his greatness of vision, he had the humbleness of a true scientist. A short time before his death he said: "I know not what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble, or a prettier shell, than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." _Science Develops from Centres_.--Bodies of truth in the world are all related one to another. Hence, when a scientist investigates and experiments along a particular line, he must come in contact more or less with other lines. And while there is a great differentiation in the discovery of knowledge by investigation, no single truth can ever be established without more or less relation to all other truths. Likewise, scientists, although working from different centres, are each contributing in his own way to the establishment of universal truth. Even in the sixteenth century scientists began to co-operate and interchange views, and as soon as their works were published, each fed upon the others as he needed in advancing his own particular branch of knowledge. It is said that Bacon in his _New Atlantis_ gave such a magnificent dream of an opportunity for the development of science and learning that it was the means of forming the Royal Society in England. That association was the means of disseminating scientific truth and encouraging investigation and publication of results. It was a tremendous advancement of the cause of science, and has been a type for the formation of hundreds of other organizations for the promotion of scientific truth. _Science and Democracy_.--While seeking to extend knowledge to all classes of people, science paves the way for recognition of equal rights and privileges. Science is working all the time to be free from the slavery of nature, and the result of its operations is to cause mankind to be free from the slavery of man. Therefore, liberty and science go hand in hand in {465} their development. It is interesting to note in this connection that so many scientists have come from groups forming the ordinary occupations of life rather than, as we might expect, from the privileged classes who have had leisure and opportunity for development. Thus, "Pasteur was the son of a tanner, Priestley of a cloth-maker, Dalton of a weaver, Lambert of a tailor, Kant of a saddler, Watt of a ship-builder, Smith of a farmer, and John Ray was, like Faraday, the son of a blacksmith. Joule was a brewer. Davy, Scheele, Dumas, Balard, Liebig, Wöhler, and a number of other distinguished chemists were apothecaries' apprentices."[5] Science also is a great leveller because all scientists are bowing down to the same truth discovered by experimentation or observation, and, moreover, scientists are at work in the laboratories and cannot be dogmatic for any length of time. But scientists arise from all classes of people, so far as religious or political belief is concerned. Many of the foremost scientists have been distributed among the Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Calvinists, Quakers, Unitarians, and Agnostics. The only test act that science knows is that of the recognition of truth. Benjamin Franklin was a printer whose scientific investigations were closely intermingled with the problems of human rights. His experiments in science were subordinate to the experiments of human society. His great contribution to science was the identification of lightning and the spark from a Leyden jar. For the identification and control of lightning he received a medal from the Royal Society. The discussion of liberty and the part he took in the independence of the colonies of America represent his greatest contribution to the world. To us he is important, for he embodied in one mind the expression of scientific and political truth, showing that science makes for democracy and democracy for science. In each case it is the choice of the liberalized mind. _The Study of the Biological and Physical Sciences_.--The last century is marked by scientific development along several {466} rather distinct lines as follows: the study of the earth, or geology; animal and vegetable life, or biology; atomic analysis, or chemistry; biochemistry; physics, especially that part relating to electricity and radioactivity; and more recently it might be stated that investigations are carried on in psychology and sociology, while mathematics and astronomy have made progress. The main generalized point of research, if it could be so stated, is the discovery of law and order. This has been demonstrated in the development of chemistry under the atomic theory; physics in the molecular theory; the law of electrons in electricity, and the evolutionary theory in the study of biology. Great advance has been made in the medical sciences, including the knowledge of the nature and prevention of disease. Though a great many new discoveries and, out of new discoveries, new inventions have appeared along specific lines and various sciences have advanced with accuracy and precision, perhaps the evolutionary theory has changed the thought of the world more than any other. It has connected man with the rest of the universe and made him a definite part of it. _The Evolutionary Theory_.--The geography of the earth as presented by Lyell, the theory of population of Malthus, and the _Origin of the Species_ and the _Descent of Man_ by Darwin changed the preconceived notions of the creation of man. Slowly and without ostentation science everywhere had been forcing all nature into unity controlled by universal laws. Traditional belief was not prepared for the bold statement of Darwin that man was part of the slow development of animal life through the ages. For 2,000 years or more the philosophic world had been wedded to the idea of a special creation of man entirely independent of the creation of the rest of the universe. All conceptions of God, man, and his destiny rested upon the recognition of a separate creation. To deny this meant a reconstruction of much of the religious philosophy of the world. Persons {467} were needlessly alarmed and began to attack the doctrine on the assumption that anything interfering with the long-recognized interpretation of the relation of man to creation was wrong and was instituted for the purpose of tearing down the ancient landmarks. Darwin accepted in general the Lamarckian doctrine that each succeeding generation would have new characters added to it by the modification of environmental factors and by the use and disuse of organs and functions. Thus gradually under such selection the species would be improved. But Darwin emphasized selection through hereditary traits. Subsequently, Weismann and others reinterpreted Darwin's theory and strengthened its main propositions, abandoning the Lamarckian theory of use and disuse. Mendel, De Vries, and other biologists have added to the Darwinian theory by careful investigations into the heredity of plants and animals, but because Darwin was the first to give clear expression to the theory of evolution, "Darwinism" is used to express the general theory. Cosmic evolution, or the development of the universe, has been generally acknowledged by the acceptance of the results of the studies of geology, astronomy, and physics. History of plant and animal life is permanently written in the rocks, and their evolutionary process so completely demonstrated in the laboratory that few dare to question it. Modern controversy hinges upon the assumption that man as an animal is not subjected to the natural laws of other animals and of plants, but that he had a special creation. The maintenance of this belief has led to many crude and unscientific notions of the origin of man and the meaning of evolution. Evolution is very simple in its general traits, but very complex in its details. It is a theory of process and not a theory of creation. It is continuous, progressive change, brought about by natural forces and in accordance with natural laws. The evolutionist studies these changes and records the results obtained thereby. The scientist thus discovers new truths, {468} establishes the relation of one truth to another, enlarges the boundary of knowledge, extends the horizon of the unknown, and leaves the mystery of the beginning of life unsolved. His laboratory is always open to retest and clarify his work and to add new knowledge as fast as it is acquired. Evolution as a working theory for science has correlated truths, unified methods, and furnished a key to modern thought. As a co-operative science it has had a stimulating influence on all lines of research, not only in scientific study of physical nature, but also in the study of man, for there are natural laws as well as man-made laws to be observed in the development of human society. Some evolutionary scientists will be dogmatic at times, but they return to their laboratories and proceed to reinterpret what they have assumed, so that their dogmatism is of short duration. Theological dogmatists are not so fortunate, because of persistence of religious tradition which has not yet been put fully to the laboratory test. Some of them are continuously and hopelessly dogmatic. They still adhere to belief founded on the emotions which they refuse to put to scientific test. Science makes no attempt to undermine religion, but is unconsciously laying a broader foundation on which religion may stand. Theologians who are beginning to realize this are forced to re-examine the Bible and reinterpret it according to the knowledge and enlightenment of the time. Thus science becomes a force to advance Christianity, not to destroy it. On the other hand, science becomes less dogmatic as it applies its own methods to religion and humanity and recognizes that there is a great world of spiritual truth which cannot be determined by experiments in the physical laboratory. It can be estimated only in the laboratory of human action. Faith, love, virtue, and spiritual vision cannot be explained by physical and chemical reactions. If in the past science has rightly pursued its course of investigation regardless of spiritual truth, the future is full of promise that religion and human reactions and science will eventually work together in the pursuit of {469} truth in God's great workshop. The unity of truth will be thus realized. The area of knowledge will be enlarged while the horizon of the unknown will be extended. The mystery of life still remains unsolved. Galton followed along in the study of the development of race and culture, and brought in a new study of human life. Pasteur and Lister worked out their great factors of preventive medicine and health. Madame Curie developed the radioactivity as a great contribution to the evolution of science. All of this represents the slow evolution of science, each new discovery quickening the thought of the age in which it occurred, changing the attitude of the mind toward nature and life, and contributing to human comfort and human welfare. But the greatest accomplishment always in the development of science is its effect on the mental processes of humanity, stimulating thought and changing the attitude of mind toward life. _Science and War_.--It is a travesty on human progress, a social paradox, that war and science go hand in hand. On one side are all of the machines of destruction, the battleships, bombing-planes, huge guns, high explosives, and poisonous gases, products of scientific experiment and inventive genius, and on the other ambulances, hospitals, medical and surgical care, with the uses of all medical discoveries. The one seeks destruction, the other seeks to allay suffering; one force destroys life, the other saves it. And yet they march forth under the same flag to conquer the enemy. It is like the conquest of the American Indians by the Spaniards, in which the warrior bore in one hand a banner of the cross of Christ and in the other the drawn sword. War has achieved much in forcing people into national unity, in giving freedom to the oppressed and protecting otherwise helpless people, but in the light of our ideals of peace it has never been more than a cruel necessity, and, more frequently, a grim, horrible monster. Chemistry and physics and their discoveries underlying the vast material prosperity of moderns have contributed much to the mechanical and {470} industrial arts and increased the welfare and happiness of mankind. But when war is let loose, these same beneficent sciences are worked day and night for the rapid destruction of man. All the wealth built up in the passing years is destroyed along with the lives of millions of people. Out of the gloom of the picture proceeds one ray of beneficent light, that of the service rendered by the discoveries of medical science and surgical art. The discoveries arising from the study of anatomy, physiology, bacteriology, and neurology, with the use of anaesthetics and antiseptics in connection with surgery, have made war less horrible and suffering more endurable. Scientists like Pasteur, Lister, Koch, Morton, and many others brought forth from their laboratories the results of their study for the alleviation of suffering. Yet it seems almost incredible that with all of the horrid experiences of war, an enterprise that no one desires, and which the great majority of the world deplore, should so long continue. Nothing but the discovery and rise of a serum that will destroy the germs of national selfishness and avarice will prevent war. Possibly it stimulates activity in invention, discovery, trade and commerce, but of what avail is it if the cycle returns again from peace to war and these products of increased activity are turned to the destruction of civilization? Does not the world need a baptism of common sense? Some gain is being made in the changing attitude of mind toward the warrior in favor of the great scientists of the world. But nothing will be assured until the hero-worship of the soldier gives way to the respect for the scholar, and ideals of truth and right become mightier than the sword. _Scientific Progress Is Cumulative_.--One discovery leads to another, one invention to others. It is a law of science. Science benefits the common man more than does politics or religion. It is through science that he has means of use and enjoyment of nature's progress. It is true this is on the side of materialistic culture, and it does not provide all that is needed for the completed life. Even though the scientific {471} experiments and discoveries are fundamentally more essential, the common man cannot get along without social order, politics, or religion. Perhaps we can get the largest expression of the value of science to man through a consideration of the inventions and discoveries which he may use in every-day life.[6] Prior to the nineteenth century we have to record the following important inventions: alphabetic writing, Arabic numbers, mariner's compass, printing, the telescope, the barometer and thermometer, and the steam-engine. In the nineteenth century we have to record: railroads, steam navigation, the telegraph, the telephone, friction matches, gas lighting, electrical lighting, photography, the phonograph, electrical transmission of power, Röntgen rays, spectrum analysis, anaesthetics, antiseptic surgery, the airplane, gasoline-engine, transmission of news by radio, and transportation by automobile. Also we shall find in the nineteenth century thirteen important theoretical discoveries as compared with seven in all previous centuries. It is interesting to note what may have taken place also in the last generation. A man who was born in the middle of the last century might reflect on a good many things that have taken place. Scientifically he has lived to see the development of electricity from a mere academic pursuit to a tremendous force of civilization. Chemistry, although supposed to have been a completed science, was scarcely begun. Herbert Spencer's _Synthetic Philosophy_ and Darwin's _Origin of the Species_ had not yet been published. Huxley and Tyndall, the great experimental scientists, had not published their great works. Transportation with a few slow steam-propelled vessels crossing the ocean preceded the era of the great floating palaces. The era of railroad-building had only just started in America. Horseless carriages propelled by gas or electricity were in a state of conjecture. Politically in America the Civil War had not been fought or the Constitution really completed. The great wealth and stupendous business organization of {472} to-day were unknown in 1850. In Europe there was no German Empire, only a German Federation. The Hapsburgs were still holding forth in Austria and the Hohenzollerns in Prussia and the Romanoffs in Russia. The monarchial power of the old régime was the rule of the day. These are institutions of the past. Civilization in America, although it had invaded the Mississippi valley, had not spread over the great Western plains nor to the Pacific coast. Tremendous changes in art and industries, in inventions and discoveries have been going on in this generation. The flying-machine, the radio, the automobile, the dirigible balloon, and, more than all, the tremendous business organization of the factories and industries of the age have given us altogether a complete revolution. _Research Foundations_.--All modern universities carry on through instructors and advanced students many departments of scientific research. The lines of research extend through a wide range of subjects--Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Anatomy, Physiology, Medicine, Geology, Agriculture, History, Sociology, and other departments of learning. These investigations have led to the discovery of new knowledge and the extension of learning to mankind. Outside of colleges and universities there have been established many foundations of research and many industrial laboratories. Prominent among those in the United States are The Carnegie Corporation and The Rockefeller Foundation, which are devoting hundreds of millions of dollars to the service of research, for the purpose of advancing science and directly benefiting humankind. The results play an important part in the protection and daily welfare of mankind. The Mellon Institute contributes much to the solution of problems of applied chemistry.[7] It is interesting to note how the investigation carried on by these and other foundations is contributing directly to human welfare by mastering disease. The elimination of the hookworm disease, the fight to control malaria, the {473} mastery of yellow fever, the promotion of public health, and the study of medicine, the courageous attack on tuberculosis, and the suppression of typhoid fever, all are for the benefit of the public. The war on disease and the promotion of public health by preventive measures have lowered the death-rate and lengthened the period of life. _The Trend of Scientific Investigations_.--While research is carried on in many lines, with many different objectives, it may be stated that intense study is devoted to the nature of matter and the direct connection of it with elemental forces. The theories of the molecule and the atom are still working hypotheses, but the investigator has gone further and disintegrated the atom, showing it to be a complex of corpuscles or particles. Scientists talk of electrons and protons as the two elemental forces and of the mechanics of the atom. In chemistry, investigation follows the problems of applied chemistry, while organic chemistry or biochemistry opens continually new fields of research. It appears that biology and chemistry are becoming more closely allied as researches continue and likewise physics and chemistry. In the field of surgery the X-ray is in daily use, and radium and radioactivity may yet be great aids to medicine. In medical investigation much is dependent upon the discoveries in neurology. This also will throw light upon the studies in psychology, for the relation of nerve functions to mind functions may be more clearly defined. Explorations of the earth and of the heavens continually add new knowledge of the extent and creation of the universe. The study of anthropology and archaeology throw new light upon the origin and early history of man. Experimental study of animals, food, soils, and crops adds increased means of sustenance for the race. Recent investigations of scientific education, along with psychology, are throwing much light on mental conditions and progress. And more recently serious inquiry into social life through the study of the social sciences is revealing the great problems of life. All of knowledge, all of science, and all of human invention which add to material {474} comforts will be of no avail unless men can learn to live together harmoniously and justly. But the truths discovered in each department of investigation are all closely related. Truly there is but one science with many divisions, one universe with many parts, and though man is a small particle of the great cosmos, it is his life and welfare that are at the centres of all achievements. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. In what ways has science contributed to the growth of democracy? 2. How has the study of science changed the attitude of the mind toward life? 3. How is every-day life of the ordinary man affected by science? 4. Is science antagonistic to true Christianity? 5. What is the good influence of science on religious belief and practice? 6. What are the great discoveries of the last twenty-five years in Astronomy? Chemistry? Physics? Biology? Medicine? Electricity? 7. What recent inventions are dependent upon science? 8. Relation between investigation in the laboratory and the modern automobile. 9. How does scientific knowledge tend to banish fear? 10. Give a brief history of the development of the automobile. The flying-machine. 11. Would a law forbidding the teaching of science in schools advance the cause of Christianity? [1] Taylor, _The Mediaeval Mind_, vol. II, p. 508. [2] Libby, _History of Science_, p. 63. [3] Copernicus's view was not published until thirty-six years after its discovery. A copy of his book was brought to him at his death-bed, but he refused to look at it. [4] Libby, p. 91. [5] Libby, _History of Science_, p. 280. [6] Libby, _Introduction to the History of Science_. [7] The newly created department at Johns Hopkins University for the study of international relations may assist in the abolition of war. {475} CHAPTER XXX UNIVERSAL EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY _Universal Public Education Is a Modern Institution_.--The Greeks valued education and encouraged it, but only those could avail themselves of its privileges who were able to pay for it. The training by the mother in the home was followed by a private tutor. This system conformed to the idea of leadership and was valuable in the establishment of an educated class. However, at the festivals and the theatres there were opportunities for the masses to learn much of oratory, music, and civic virtues. The education of Athens conformed to the class basis of society. Sparta as an exception trained all citizens for the service of state, making them subordinate to its welfare. The state took charge of children at the age of seven, put them in barracks, and subjected them to the most severe discipline. But there was no free education, no free development of the ordinary mind. It was in the nature of civic slavery for the preservation of the state in conflict with other states. During the Middle Ages Charlemagne established the only public schools for civic training, the first being established at Paris, although he planned to extend them throughout the empire. The collapse of his great empire made the schools merely a tradition. But they were a faint sign of the needs of a strong empire and an enlightened community. The educational institutions of the Middle Ages were monasteries, and cathedral schools for the purpose of training men for the service of the church and for the propagating of religious doctrine. They were all institutional in nature and far from the idea of public instruction for the enlightenment of the people. _The Mediaeval University Permitted Some Freedom of Choice_.--There was exhibited in some of them especially a desire to discover the truth through traditional knowledge. They were {476} composed of groups of students and masters who met for free discussion, which led to the verification of established traditions. But this was a step forward, and scholars arose who departed from dogma into new fields of learning. While the universities of the Middle Ages were a step in advance, full freedom of the mind had not yet manifested itself, nor had the idea of universal education appeared. Opportunity came to a comparatively small number; moreover, nearly all scientific and educational improvement came from impulses outside of the centres of tradition. _The English and German Universities_.--The English universities, particularly Oxford and Cambridge, gave a broader culture in mathematics, philosophy, and literature, which was conducive to liberality in thought, but even they represented the education of a selected class. The German universities, especially in the nineteenth century, emphasized the practical or applied side of education. By establishing laboratories, they were prepared to apply all truths discovered, and by experimentation carry forward learning, especially in the chemical and other physical sciences. The spirit of research was strongly invoked for new scientific discoveries. While England was developing a few noted secondary schools, like Harrow and Eton, Germany was providing universal real _schule_, and _gymnasia_, as preparatory for university study and for the general education of the masses. As a final outcome the Prussian system was developed, which had great influence on education in the United States in the latter part of the nineteenth century. _Early Education in the United States_.--The first colleges and universities in the United States were patterned after the English universities and the academies and high schools of England. These schools were of a selected class to prepare for the ministry, law, statesmanship, and letters. The growth of the American university was rapid, because it continually broadened its curriculum. From the study of philosophy, classical languages, mathematics, literature, it successively {477} embraced modern languages, physical sciences, natural science, history, and economics, psychology, law, medicine, engineering, and commerce. In the present-day universities there is a wide differentiation of subjects. The subjects have been multiplied to meet the demand of scientific development and also to fit students for the ever-increasing number of occupations which the modern complex society demands. The result of all this expansion is democratic. The college class is no longer an exclusive selection. The plane of educational selection continually lowers until the college draws its students from all classes and prepares them for all occupations. In the traditional college certain classes were selected to prepare for positions of learning. There was developed a small educated class. In the modern way there is no distinctive educated class. University education has become democratic. _The Common, or Public, Schools_.--In the Colonial and early national period of the United States, education was given by a method of tutors, or by a select pay school taught by a regularly employed teacher under private contract. Finally the sympathy for those who were not able to pay caused the establishing of "common schools." This was the real beginning of universal education, for the practice expanded and the idea finally prevailed of providing schools by taxation "common" to all, and free to all who wish to attend. Later, for civic purposes, primary education has become compulsory in most states. Following the development of the primary grades, a complete system of secondary schools has been provided. Beyond these are the state schools of higher education, universities, agricultural and mechanical schools, normal schools and industrial schools, so that a highway of learning is provided for the child, leading from the kindergarten through successive stages to the university. _Knowledge, Intelligence, and Training Necessary in a Democracy_.--Washington, after experimenting with the new nation for eight years, having had opportunity to observe the defects {478} and virtues of the republic, said in his Farewell Address: "Promote, then, as an object of primary importance institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened."[1] Again and again have the leaders of the nation who have had at heart the present welfare and future destiny of their country urged public education as a necessity. And right well have the people responded to these sentiments. They have poured out their hard-earned money in taxation to provide adequate education for the youth of the land. James Bryce, after studying in detail American institutions, declared that "the chief business of America is education." This observation was made nearly forty years ago. If it was true then, how much more evident is it now with wonderful advance of higher education in colleges and universities, and in the magnificent system of secondary education that has been built up in the interval. The swarming of students in high school and college is evidence that they appreciate the opportunities furnished by the millions of wealth, largely in the form of taxes, given for the support of schools. _Education Has Been Universalized_.--Having made education universal, educators are devoting their energies to fit the education to the needs of the student and to assist the student in choosing the course of instruction which will best fit him for his chosen life-work. The victory has been won to give every boy and girl an educational chance. To give him what he actually needs and see that he uses it for a definite purpose is the present problem of the educator. This means a careful inquiry into mental capacity and mental traits, into temperament, taste, ambition, and choice of vocation. It means further provision of the special education that will best prepare him for his chosen work, and, indeed, it means sympathetic co-operation of the teacher and student in determining the course to be pursued. {479} _Research an Educational Process_.--Increased knowledge comes from observation or systematic investigation in the laboratory. Every child has by nature the primary element of research, a curiosity to know things. Too often this is suppressed by conventional education instead of continued into systematic investigation. One of the great defects of the public school is the failure to keep alive, on the part of the student, the desire to know things. Undue emphasis on instruction, a mere imparting of knowledge, causes the student to shift the responsibility of his education upon the teacher, who, after all, can do no more than help the student to select the line of study, and direct him in methods of acquiring. Together teacher and student can select the trail, and the teacher, because he has been over it, can direct the student over its rough ways, saving him time and energy. Perhaps the greatest weakness in popular government to-day is indifference of citizens to civic affairs. This leads to a shifting of responsibility of public affairs frequently to those least competent to conduct them. Perhaps a training in individual responsibility in the schools and more vital instruction in citizenship would prepare the coming generation to make democracy efficient and safe to the world. The results of research are of great practical benefit to the so-called common man in the ordinary pursuits of life. The scientist in the laboratory, spending days and nights in research, finally discovers a new process which becomes a life-saver or a time-saver to general mankind. Yet the people usually accept this as a matter of fact as something that just happened. They forget the man in the laboratory and exploit the results of his labor for their own personal gain. How often the human mind is in error, and unobserving, not to see that the discovery of truth and its adaptation to ordinary life is one of the fundamental causes of the progress of the race. Man has advanced in proportion as he has become possessed of the secrets of nature and has adapted them to his service. The number of ways he touches nature and forces {480} her to yield her treasures, adapting them to his use, determines the possibility of progress. The so-called "common man," the universal type of our democracy, is worthy of our admiration. He has his life of toil and his round of duties alternating with pleasure, bearing the burdens of life cheerfully, with human touch with his fellows; amid sorrow and joy, duty and pleasure, storm and sunshine, he lives a normal existence and passes on the torch of life to others. But the man who shuts himself in his laboratory, lives like a monk, losing for a time the human touch, spends long days of toil and "nights devoid of ease" until he discovers a truth or makes an invention that makes millions glad, is entitled to our highest reverence. The ordinary man and the investigator are complementary factors of progress and both essential to democracy. _The Diffusion of Knowledge Necessary to Democracy_.--Always in progress is a deflecting tendency, separating the educated class from the uneducated. This is not on account of the aristocracy of learning, but because of group activity, the educated man following a pursuit different from the man of practical affairs. Hence the effort to broadcast knowledge through lectures, university extension, and the radio is essential to the progress of the whole community. One phase of enlightenment is much neglected, that of making clear that the object of the scholar and the object of the man of practical affairs should be the same--that of establishing higher ideals of life and providing means for approximating these ideals. It frequently occurs that the individual who has centred his life on the accumulation of wealth ignores the educator and has a contempt for the impractical scholar, as he terms him. Not infrequently state legislatures, when considering appropriations for education, have shown more interest in hogs and cattle than in the welfare of children. It would be well if the psychology of the common mind would change so as to grasp the importance of education and scientific investigation to every-day life. Does it occur to the {481} man who seats himself in his car to whisk away across the country in the pursuit of ordinary business, to pause to inquire who discovered gasoline or who invented the gasoline-engine? Does he realize that some patient investigator in the laboratory has made it possible for even a child to thus utilize the forces of nature and thus shorten time and ignore space? Whence comes the improvement of live-stock in this country? Compare the cattle of early New England with those on modern farms. Was the little scrubby stock of our forefathers replaced by large, sleek, well-bred cattle through accident? No, it was by the discovery of investigators and its practical adaptation by breeders. Compare the vineyards and the orchards of the early history of the nation, the grains and the grasses, or the fruits and the flowers with those of present cultivation. What else but investigation, discovery, and adaptation wrought the change? My common neighbor, when your child's poor body is racked with pain and likely to die, and the skilled surgeon places the child on the operating-table, administers the anaesthetic to make him insensible to pain, and with knowledge gained by investigation operates with such skill as to save the child's life and restore him to health, are you not ready to say that scientific investigation is a blessing to all mankind? Whence comes this power to restore health? Is it a dispensation from heaven? Yes, a dispensation brought about through the patient toil and sacrifice of those zealous for the discovery of truth. What of the knowledge that leads to the mastery of the yellow-fever bacillus, of the typhoid germ, to the fight against tuberculosis and other enemies of mankind? Again, it is the man in the laboratory who is the first great cause that makes it possible for humanity to protect itself from disease. Could our methods of transportation by steamship, railroad, or air, our great manufacturing processes, our vast machinery, or our scientific agriculture exist without scientific research? Nothing touches ordinary life with such potent force as the results of the investigation in the laboratory. Clearly it is {482} understood by the thoughtful that education in all of its phases is a democratic process, and a democratic need, for its results are for everybody. Knowledge is thus humanized, and the educated and the non-educated must co-operate to keep the human touch. Educational Progress.--One of the landmarks of the present century of progress will be the perfecting of educational systems. Education is no longer for the exclusive few, developing an aristocracy of learning for the elevation of a single class; it has become universal. The large number of universities throughout the world, well endowed and well equipped, the multitudes of secondary schools, and the universality of the primary schools, now render it possible for every individual to become intelligent and enlightened. But these conditions are comparatively recent, so that millions of individuals to-day, even in the midst of great educational systems, remain entirely unlettered. Nevertheless, the persistent effort on the part of people everywhere to have good schools, with the best methods of instruction, certainly must have its effect in bringing the masses of unlearned into the realm of letters. The practical tendency of modern education, by which discipline and culture may be given while at the same time preparing the student for the active duties of life, makes education more necessary for all persons and classes. The great changes that have taken place in methods of instruction and in the materials of scientific investigation, and the tendency to develop the man as well as to furnish him with information, evince the masterly progress of educational systems, and demonstrate their great worth. _The Importance of State Education_.--So necessary has education become to the perpetuation of free government that the states of the world have deemed it advisable to provide on their own account a sufficient means of education. Perpetuation of liberty can be secured only on the basis of intellectual progress. From the time of the foundation of the universities of Europe, kings and princes and state authorities have {483} encouraged and developed education, but it remained for America to begin a complete and universal free-school system. In the United States educators persistently urge upon the people the necessity of popular education and intelligence as the only means of securing to the people the benefits of a free government, and other statesmen from time to time have insisted upon the same principle. The private institutions of America did a vast work for the education of the youth, but proved entirely inadequate to meet the immediate demands of universal education, and the public-school system sprang up as a necessary means of preparation for citizenship. It found its earliest, largest, and best scope in the North and West, and has more recently been established in the South, and now is universal. The grant by the United States government at the time of the formation of the Ohio territory of lands for the support of universities led to the provision in the act of formation of each state and territory in the Union for the establishment of a university. Each state, since the admission of Ohio, has provided for a state university, and the Act of 1862, which granted lands to each state in the Union for the establishment of agricultural and mechanical colleges, has also given a great impulse to state education. In the organizing acts of some of the newer states these two grants have been joined in one for the upbuilding of a university combining the ideas of the two kinds of schools. The support insured to these state institutions promises their perpetuity. The amount of work which they have done for the education of the masses in higher learning has been prodigious, and they stand to-day as the greatest and most perfect monument of the culture and learning of the Western states. The tremendous growth of state education has increased the burden of taxation to the extent that the question has arisen as to whether there is not a limit to the amount people are willing to pay for public education. If it can be shown that they receive a direct benefit in the education of their children there {484} will be no limit within their means to the support of both secondary schools and universities. But there must be evidence that the expenditure is economically and wisely administered. The princely endowments of magnificent universities like the Leland Stanford Junior University, the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, Harvard, Yale, and others, have not interfered with the growth and development of state education, for it rests upon the permanent foundation of a popular demand for institutions supported by the contributions of the whole people for the benefit of the state at large. State institutions based upon permanent foundations have been zealous in obtaining the best quality of instruction, and the result is that a youth in the rural districts may receive as good undergraduate instruction as he can obtain in one of the older and more wealthy private institutions, and at very little expense. _The Printing-Press and Its Products_.--Perhaps of all of the inventions that occurred prior to the eighteenth century, printing has the most power in modern civilization. No other one has so continued to expand its achievements. Becoming a necessary adjunct of modern education, it continually extends its influence in the direct aid of every other art, industry, or other form of human achievement. The dissemination of knowledge through books, periodicals, and the newspaper press has made it possible to keep alive the spirit of learning among the people and to assure that degree of intelligence necessary for a self-governed people. The freedom of the press is one of the cardinal principles of progress, for it brings into fulness the fundamental fact of freedom of discussion advocated by the early Greeks, which was the line of demarcation between despotism and dogmatism and the freedom of the mind and will. In common with all human institutions, its power has sometimes been abused. But its defect cannot be remedied by repression or by force, but by the elevation of the thought, judgment, intelligence, and good-will of a people by an education which causes them to {485} demand better things. The press in recent years has been too susceptible to commercial dominance--a power, by the way, which has seriously affected all of our institutions. Here, as in all other phases of progress, wealth should be a means rather than an end of civilization. _Public Opinion_.--Universal education in school and out, freedom of discussion, freedom of thought and will to do are necessary to social progress. Public opinion is an expression of the combined judgments of many minds working in conscious or unconscious co-operation. Laws, government, standards of right action, and the type of social order are dependent upon it. The attempt to form a League of Nations or a Court of International Justice depends upon the support of an intelligent public opinion. War cannot be ended by force of arms, for that makes more war, but by the force of mutually acquired opinion of all nations based on good-will. Every year in the United States there are examples of the failure of the attempt to enforce laws which are not well supported by public opinion. Such laws are made effective by a gradual education of those for whom they are made to the standard expressed in the laws, or they become obsolete. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. Show from observations in your own neighborhood the influence of education on social progress. 2. Imperfections of public schools and the difficulties confronting educators. 3. Should all children in the United States be compelled to attend the public schools? 4. What part do newspapers and periodicals play in education? 5. Relation of education to public opinion. 6. Should people who cannot read and write be permitted to vote? 7. Study athletics in your school and town to determine their educational value. 8. Show by investigation the educational value of motion-pictures and their misuse. 9. In what ways may social inequality be diminished? 10. Would a law compelling the reading of the Bible in public schools make people more religious? [1] Richardson, _Messages and Papers of the Presidents_, I, 220. {486} CHAPTER XXXI WORLD ECONOMICS AND POLITICS _Commerce and Communication_.--The nations of the world have been drawn together in thought and involuntary co-operation by the stimulating power of trade. The exchange of goods always leads to the exchange of ideas. By commerce each nation may profit by the products of all others, and thus all may enjoy the material comforts of the world. At times some countries are deficient in the food-supply, but there has been in recent years a sufficient world supply for all, when properly distributed through commerce. Some countries produce goods that cannot be produced by others, but by exchange all may receive the benefits of everything discovered, produced, or manufactured. Rapid and complete transportation facilities are necessary to accomplish this. Both trade and transportation are dependent upon rapid communication, hence the telegraph, the cable, and the wireless have become prime necessities. The more voluminous reports of trade relations found in printed documents, papers, and books, though they represent a slower method of communication, are essential to world trade, but the results of trade are found in the unity of thought, the development of a world mind, and growing similarity of customs, habits, usages, and ideals. Slowly there is developing a world attitude toward life. _Exchange of Ideas Modifies Political Organization_.--The desire for liberty of action is universal among all people who have been assembled in mass under co-operation. The arbitrary control by the self-constituted authority of kings and governments without the consent of the governed is opposed by all human associations, whether tribal, territorial, or national. Since the world settled down to the idea of monarchy as a necessary form of government, men have been trying to {487} substitute other forms of government. The spread of democratic ideas has been slowly winning the world to new methods of government. The American Revolution was the most epoch-making event of modern times. While the French Revolution was about to burst forth, the example of the American colonies was fuel to the flames. In turn, after the United States had won their freedom and were well on their way in developing a republican government, the influence of the radical democracy was seen in the laws and constitutions of the states, particularly in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Spanish-American War led to the development of democracy, not only in Cuba and Porto Rico but in the Philippine Islands. But the planting of democracy in the Philippines had a world influence, manifested especially in southeastern Asia, China, Japan, and India. _Spread of Political Ideas_.--The socialism of Karl Marx has been one of the most universal and powerful appeals to humanity for industrial freedom. His economic system is characterized by the enormous emphasis placed upon labor as a factor in production. Starting from the hypothesis that all wealth is created by labor, and limiting all labor to the wage-earner, there is no other conclusion, if the premise be admitted, than that the product of industry belongs to labor exclusively. His theories gained more or less credence in Germany and to a less extent in other countries, but they were never fully tested until the Russian revolution in connection with the Great War. After the downfall of Czarism, leaders of the revolution attacked and overthrew capitalism, and instituted the Soviet government. The proletariat came to the top, while the capitalists, nobility, and middle classes went to the bottom. This was brought about by sudden revolution through rapid and wild propaganda. Strenuous efforts to propagate the Soviet doctrine and the war against capitalism in other countries have taken place, without working a revolution similar to that in Russia. But the International is slowly developing a world idea among {488} laborers, with the ultimate end of destroying the capitalistic system and making it possible for organized wage-earners to rule the world. It is not possible here to discuss the Marxian doctrine of socialism nor to recount what its practical application did to Russia. Suffice it to say that the doctrine has a fatal fallacy in supposing that wage-earners are the only class of laborers necessary to rational economic production. _The World War Breaks Down the Barriers of Thought_.--The Great War brought to light many things that had been at least partially hidden to ordinary thinking people. It revealed the national selfishness which was manifested in the struggle for the control of trade, the extension of territory, and the possession of the natural resources of the world. This selfishness was even more clearly revealed when, in the Treaty of Versailles and the formation of the League of Nations, each nation was unwilling to make necessary sacrifice for the purpose of establishing universal peace. They all appeared to feel the need of some international agreement which should be permanent and each favored it, could it first get what it wanted. Such was the power of tradition regarding the sanctity of national life and the sacredness of national territory and, moreover, of national prerogatives! Nevertheless, the interchange of ideas connecting with the gruelling of war caused change of ideas about government and developed, if not an international mind, new modes of national thinking. The war brought new visions of peace, and developed to a certain extent a recognition of the rights of nations and an interest in one another's welfare. There was an advance in the theory at least of international justice. Also the world was shocked with the terror of war as well as its futility and terrible waste. While national selfishness was not eradicated, it was in a measure subdued, and a feeling of co-operation started which eventually will result in unity of feeling, thought, and action. The war brought into being a sentiment among the national peoples that they will not in the future be forced into war without their consent. {489} _Attempt to Form a League for Permanent Peace_.--Led by the United States, a League of Nations was proposed which should settle all disputes arising between nations without going to war. The United States having suggested the plan and having helped to form the League, finally refused to become a party to it, owing in part to the tradition of exclusiveness from European politics--a tradition that has existed since the foundation of the nation. Yet the United States was suggesting a plan that it had long believed in, and a policy which it had exercised for a hundred years with most nations. It took a prominent part in the first peace conference called by the Czar of Russia in 1899. The attempt to establish a permanent International Tribunal ended in forming a permanent Court of Arbitration, which was nothing more than an intelligence office with a body of arbitrators composed of not more than four men from each nation, from whom nations that had chosen to arbitrate a dispute might choose arbitrators. The conference adjourned with the understanding that another would be called within a few years. The Boxer trouble in China and the war between Japan and Russia delayed the meeting. Through the initiation of Theodore Roosevelt, of the United States, a second Hague Conference met in 1907. Largely through the influence of Elihu Root a permanent court was established, with the exception that a plan for electing delegates could not be agreed upon. It was agreed to hold another conference in 1915 to finish the work. Thus it is seen that the League of Nations advocated by President Wilson was born of ideas already fructifying on American soil. McKinley, Roosevelt, John Hay, Elihu Root, Joseph H. Choate, James Brown Scott, and other statesmen had favored an International Tribunal. The League of Nations provided in its constitution among other things for a World Court of Nations. In the first draft of the constitution of the League no mention was made of a World Court. But through a cablegram of Elihu Root to Colonel E. M. House, the latter was able to place articles 13 {490} and 14, which provided that the League should take measures for forming a Court of International Justice. Subsequently the court was formed by the League, but national selfishness came to the front and crippled the court. Article 34 originally read: "Between states which are members of the League of Nations, the court shall have jurisdiction, and this without any convention giving it jurisdiction to hear and determine cases of legal nature." It was changed to read; "The jurisdiction of the court comprises all cases which the parties refer to it and all matters specially provided for in treaties and conventions in force." It is to be observed that in the original statement, either party to a dispute could bring a case into court without the consent of the other, thus making it a real court of justice, and in the modified law both parties must agree to bring the case in court, thus making it a mere tribunal of arbitration. The great powers--England, France, Italy, and Japan--were opposed to the original draft, evidently being unwilling to trust their disputes to a court, while the smaller nations favored the court as provided in the original resolution. However, it was provided that such nations who desired could sign an agreement to submit all cases of dispute to the court with all others who similarly signed. Nearly all of the smaller nations have so signed, and President Harding urged the United States, though not a member of the League, to sign. The judges of the court, eleven in all, are nominated by the old Arbitration Court of the Hague Tribunal, and elected by the League of Nations, the Council and Assembly voting separately. Only one judge may be chosen from a nation, and of course every nation may not have a judge. In cases where a dispute involves a nation which has no member in the court, an extra judge may be appointed. The first court was chosen from the following nations: Great Britain, France, Italy, United States, Cuba, Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark, Japan, and Brazil. So the Court of International Justice is functioning in an incomplete way, born of the spirit of {491} America, and the United States, though not a member of the League of Nations, has a member in the court sitting in judgment on the disputes of the nations of the world. So likewise the League of Nations, which the United States would not join, is functioning in an incomplete way. _International Agreement and Progress_.--But who shall say that the spirit of international justice has not grown more rapidly than appears from the workings of the machinery that carries it out? Beneath the selfish interests of nations is the international consciousness that some way must be devised and held to for the settlement of disputes without war; that justice between nations may be established similar to that practised within the boundaries of a single nation. No progress comes out of war itself, though it may force other lines of conduct. Progress comes from other sources than war. Besides, it brings its burdens of crime, cripples, and paupers, and its discontent and distrust. It may hasten production and stimulate invention of destruction, but it is not constructive and always it develops an army of plunderers who prey upon the suffering and toil of others. These home pirates are more destructive of civilization than poison gases or high explosives. _The Mutual Aid of Nations_.--In a previous chapter it was shown that mutual aid of individuals was the beginning of society. It now is evident that the mutual aid of nations is their salvation. As the establishment of justice between individuals through their reactions does not destroy their freedom nor their personalities, so the establishment of justice among nations does not destroy their autonomy nor infringe upon their rights. It merely insists that brutal national selfishness shall give way to a friendly co-operation in the interest and welfare of all nations. "A nation, like an individual, will become greater as it cherishes a high ideal and does service and helpful acts to its neighbors, whether great or small, and as it co-operates with them in working toward a common end."[1] {492} Truly "righteousness exalteth a nation," and it will become strong and noble as it seeks to develop justice among all nations and to exercise toward them fair dealing and friendly relations that make for peace. _Reorganization of International Law_.--The public opinion of the nations of the world is the only durable support of international law. The law represents a body of principles, usages, and rules of action regarding the rights of nations in peace and in war. As a rule nations have a wholesome respect for international law, because they do not wish to incur the unfriendliness and possible hatred of their fellow nations nor the contempt and criticism of the world. This fear of open censure has in a measure led to the baneful secret treaties, such an important factor in European diplomacy, whose results have been suspicion, distrust, and war. Germany is the only modern nation that felt strong enough to defy world opinion, the laws of nations, and to assume an entirely independent attitude. But not for long. This attitude ended in a disastrous war, in which she lost the friendship and respect of the world--lost treasure and trade, lives and property. It is unfortunate that modern international law is built upon the basis of war rather than upon the basis of peace. In this respect there has not been much advance since the time of Grotius, the father of modern international law. However, there has been a remarkable advance among most nations in settling their difficulties by arbitration. This has been accompanied by a strong desire to avoid war when possible, and a longing for its entire abandonment. Slowly but surely public opinion realizes not only the desire but the necessity of abandoning great armaments and preparation for war. But the nations cannot go to a peace basis without concerted action. This will be brought about by growth in national righteousness and a modification of crude patriotism and national selfishness. It is now time to codify and revise international law on a peace basis, and new measures adopted in accordance to the progress nations have made in recent {493} years toward permanent peace. Such a move would lead to a better understanding and furnish a ready guide to the Court of International Justice and all other means whereby nations seek to establish justice among themselves. _The Outlook for a World State_.--If it be understood that a world state means the abandonment of all national governments and their absorption in a world government, then it may be asserted truly that such is an impossibility within the range of the vision of man. Nor would it be desirable. If by world state is meant a political league which unites all in a co-operative group for fair dealing in regard to trade, commerce, territory, and the command of national resources, and in addition a world court to decide disputes between nations, such a state is possible and desirable. Great society is a community of groups, each with its own life to live, its own independence to maintain, and its own service to perform. To absorb these groups would be to disorganize society and leave the individual helpless before the mass. For it is only within group activity that the individual can function. So with nations, whose life and organization must be maintained or the individual would be left helpless before the world. But nations need each other and should co-operate for mutual advantage. They are drawn closer each year in finance, in trade and commerce, in principles of government and in life. A serious injury to one is an injury to all. The future progress of the world will not be assured until they cease their squabbles over territory, trade, and the natural resources of the world--not until they abandon corroding selfishness, jealousy, and suspicion, and covenant with each other openly to keep the peace. To accomplish this, as Mr. Walter Hines Page said: "Was there ever a greater need than there is now for first-class minds unselfishly working on world problems? The ablest ruling minds are engaged on domestic tasks. There is no world-girdling intelligence at work on government. The present order must change. It holds the Old World still. It keeps all {494} parts of the world apart, in spite of the friendly cohesive forces of trade and travel. It keeps back self-government of men." These evils cannot be overcome by law, by formula, by resolution or rule of thumb, but rather by long, patient study, research, and work of many master-minds in co-operative leadership, who will create a sound international public opinion. The international mind needs entire regeneration, not dominance of the powers. The recent war was but a stupendous breaking with the past. It furnished opportunity for human society to move forward in a new adjustment on a larger and broader plan of life. Whether it will or not depends upon the use made of the opportunity. The smashing process was stupendous, horrible in its moment. Whether society will adapt itself to the new conditions remains to be seen. Peace, a highly desirable objective, is not the only consideration. There are even more important phases of human adjustment. SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. What were the results of the first (1899) and the second (1907) Hague Conference? 2. What is meant by "freedom of the seas"? 3. Should a commission of nations attempt to equalize the ownership and distribution of the natural products and raw materials, such as oil, coal, copper, etc.? 4. How did the World War make opportunity for democracy? 5. Believing that war should be abolished, how may it be done? 6. What are the dangers of extreme radicalism regarding government and social order? 7. The status of the League of Nations and the Court of International Justice. 8. National selfishness and the League of Nations. 9. The consolidation or co-operation of churches in your town. 10. The union of social agencies to improve social welfare. 11. Freedom of the press; freedom of speech. 12. Public opinion. [1] Cosmos, _The Basis of Durable Peace_. {495} CHAPTER XXXII THE TREND OF CIVILIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES _The Economic Outlook_.--The natural resources of forest, mines, and agriculture are gradually being depleted. The rapidity of movement in the economic world, the creation of wealth by vast machinery, and the organization of labor and industry are drawing more and more from the wealth stored by nature in her treasure-houses. There is a strong agitation for the conservation of these resources, but little has been accomplished. The great business organizations are exploiting the resources, for the making of the finished products, not with the prime motive of adding to the material comforts and welfare of mankind, but to make colossal fortunes under private control. While the progress of man is marked by mastery of nature, it should also be marked by co-operation with nature on a continued utility basis. Exploitation of natural resources leads to conspicuous waste which may lead to want and future deterioration. The development of scientific agriculture largely through the influence of the Agricultural Department at Washington and the numerous agricultural colleges and experiment stations has done something to preserve and increase the productivity of the soil. Scientific study and practical experiment have given improved quality of seed, a better grade of stock, and better quality of fruits and vegetables. They have also given improved methods of cultivation and adaptability of crops to the land, and thus have increased the yield per acre. The increased use of selected fertilizers has worked to the same end. The use of a large variety of labor-saving machines has conduced to increase the amount of the product. But all of this improvement is small, considering the amount that needs to be done. The population is increasing rapidly from {496} the native stock and by immigration. There is need for wise conservation in the use of land to prevent economic waste and to provide for future generations. The greedy consumers, with increasing desire for more and better things, urge, indirectly to be sure, for larger production and greater variety of finished products. _The Economics of Labor_.--In complex society there are many divisions or groups of laborers--laborers of body and laborers of mind. Every one who is performing a legitimate service, which is sought for and remunerative to the laborer and serviceable to the public, is a laborer. At the base of all industry and social activity are the industrial wage-earners, who by their toil work the mines, the factories, the great steel and iron industries, the railroads, the electric-power plants and other industries. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the latter part of the eighteenth century, labor has been working its way out of slavery into freedom. As a result laborers have better wages, better conditions of life, more of material comforts, and a higher degree of intelligence than ever before. Yet there is much improvement needed. While the hours of labor have been reduced in general to eight per day, the irregularity of employment leads to unrest and frequently to great distress. There is a growing tendency to make laborers partners in the process of production. This does not mean that they shall take over the direction of industry, but co-operate with the managers regarding output, quality of goods, income, and wages, so as to give a solidarity to productive processes and eliminate waste of time, material, and loss by strikes. The domestic peace in industry is as important as the world peace of nations in the economy of the world's progress. A direct interest of the wage-earner in the management of production and in the general income would have a tendency to equalize incomes and prevent laborers from believing that the product of industry as well as its management should be under their direct control. Public opinion usually favors the {497} laborer and, while it advocates the freedom and dignity of labor, does not favor the right of labor to exploit industry nor concede the right to destroy. But it believes that labor organizations should be put on the same basis as productive corporations, with equal degree of rights, privileges, duties, and responsibilities. _Public and Corporate Industries_.--The independent system of organized industry so long dominant in America, known by the socialists as capitalistic production, has become so thoroughly established that there is no great tendency to communistic production and distribution. There is, however, a strong tendency to limit the power of exploitation and to control larger industries in the interest of the public. Especially is this true in regard to what are known as public utilities, such as transportation, lighting, telephone, and telegraph companies, and, in fact, all companies that provide necessaries common to the public, that must be carried on as monopolies. Public opinion demands that such corporations, conducting their operations as special privileges granted by the people, shall be amenable to the public so far as conduct and income are concerned. They must be public service companies and not public exploitation companies. The great productive industries are supposed to conduct their business on a competitive basis, which will determine price and income. As a matter of fact, this is done only in a general way, and the incomes are frequently out of proportion to the power of the consuming public to purchase. Great industries have the power to determine the income which they think they ought to have, and, not receiving it, may cease to carry on their industry and may invest their capital in non-taxable securities. While under our present system there is no way of preventing this, it would be a great boon to the public, and a new factor in progress, if they were willing to be content with a smaller margin of profit and a slower accumulation of wealth. At least some change must take place or the people of small incomes will be obliged to give up many {498} of the comforts of life of which our boasted civilization is proud, and gradually be reduced to the most sparing economy, if not to poverty. The same principle might be applied to the great institutions of trade. _The Political Outlook_.--In our earlier history the struggle for liberty of action was the vital phase of our democracy. To-day the struggle is to make our ideal democracy practical. In theory ours is a self-governed people; in practice this is not wholly true. We have the power and the opportunity for self-government, but we are not practising it as we might. There is a real danger that the people will fail to assume the responsibility of self-government, until the affairs of government are handed over to an official class of exploiters. For instance, the free ballot is the vital factor in our government, but there are many evidences that it is not fully exercised for the political welfare of the country. It frequently occurs that men are sent to Congress on a small percentage of voters. Other elective offices meet the same fate. Certainly, more interest must be taken in selecting the right kind of men to rule over them or the people will barter away their liberties by indifference. Officials should be brought to realize that they are to serve the public and it is largely a missionary job they are seeking rather than an opportunity to exploit the office for personal gain. The expansive process of political society makes a larger number of officers necessary. The people are demanding the right to do more things by themselves, which leads to increased expenses in the cost of administration, great bonded indebtedness, and higher taxation. It will be necessary to curb expansion and reduce overhead charges upon the government. This may call for the reorganization of the machinery of government on the basis of efficiency. At least it must be shown to the people that they have a full return for the money paid by taxation. It is possible only by study, care, civic responsibility, and interest in government affairs, as well as by increased intelligence, that our democratic idealism may be put {499} into practice. Laboratory methods in self-government are a prime necessity. _The Equalization of Opportunity_.--Popular education is the greatest democratic factor in existence. It is the one great institution which recognizes that equal opportunities should be granted to everybody. Yet it has its limits in establishing equal opportunities in the accepted meaning of the term. There is a false idea of equality which asserts that one man is as good as another before he has proved himself to be so. True equality means justice to all. It does not guarantee that equality of power, of intellect, of wealth, and social standing shall obtain. It seeks to harmonize individual development with social development, and to insure the individual the right to achieve according to his capacity and industry. "The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is a household word, but the right to _pursue_ does not insure success. The excessive altruism of the times has led to the protecting care of all classes. In its extreme processes it has made the weak more helpless. What is needed is the cultivation of individual responsibility. Society is so great, so well organized, and does so much that there is a tendency of the individual to shift his responsibility to it. Society is composed of individuals, and its quality will be determined by the character and quality of the individual working especially for himself and generally for the good of all. A little more of the law of the survival of the fittest would temper our altruism to more effective service. The world is full of voluntary altruistic and social betterment societies, making drives for funds. They should re-examine their motives and processes and carefully estimate what they are really accomplishing. Is the institution they are supporting merely serving itself, or has it a working power and a margin of profit in actual service? _The Influence of Scientific Thought on Progress_.--The effect of scientific discovery on material welfare has been referred to elsewhere. It remains to determine how scientific thought changes the attitude of the mind toward life. The laboratory {500} method continually tests everything, and what he finds to be true the scientist believes. He gradually ignores tradition and adheres to those things that are shown to be true by experimentation or recorded observation. It is true that he uses hypotheses and works the imagination. But his whole tendency is to depart from the realm of instinct and emotions and lay a foundation for reflective thinking. The scientific attitude of mind influences all philosophy and all religion. "Let us examine the facts in the case" is the attitude of scientific thought. The study of anthropology and sociology has, on the one hand, discovered the natural history of man and, on the other, shown his normal social relations. Both of these studies have co-operated with biology to show that man has come out of the past through a process of evolution; that all that he is individually and socially has been attained through long ages of development. Even science, philosophy, and religion, as well as all forms of society, have had a slow, painful evolution. This fact causes people to re-examine their traditional belief to see how far it corresponds to new knowledge. It has helped men to realize on their philosophy of life and to test it out in the light of new truth and experience. This has led the church to a broader conception of the truth and to a more direct devotion to service. It is becoming an agency for visualizing truth rather than an institution of dogmatic belief. The religious traditionalists yield slowly to the new religious liberalism. But the influence of scientific thought has caused the church to realize on the investment which it has been preaching these many centuries. _The Relation of Material Comfort to Spiritual Progress_.--The material comforts which have been multiplying in recent centuries do not insure the highest spiritual activity. The nations that have achieved have been forced into activity by distressing conditions. In following the history of any nation along any line of achievement, it will be noticed that in its darkest, most uncomfortable days, when progress seemed least {501} in evidence, forces were in action which prepared for great advancement. It has been so in literature, in science, in liberty, in social order; it is so in the sum-total of the world's achievements. Granting that the increase of material comforts, in fact, of wealth, is a great achievement of the age, the whole story is not told until the use of the wealth is determined. If it leads to luxurious living, immorality, injustice, and loss of sense of duty, as in some of the ancient nations, it will prove the downfall of Western civilization. If the leisure and strength it offers are utilized in raising the standard of living, of establishing higher ideals, and creating a will to approximate them, then they will prove a blessing and an impulse to progress. Likewise, the freedom of the mind and freedom in governmental action furnish great opportunities for progress, but the final result will be determined by use of such opportunities in the creation of a higher type of mind characterized by a well-balanced social attitude. _The Balance of Social Forces_.--There are two sources of the origin of social life, one arising out of the attitude of the individual toward society, and the other arising out of the attitude of society toward the individual. These two attitudes seem, at first view, paradoxical in many instances, for both individual and society must survive. But in the long run they are not antagonistic, for the good of one must be the good of the other. The perfect balancing of the two forces would make a perfect society. The modern social problem is to determine how much choice shall be left to individual initiative and how much shall be undertaken by the group. In recent years the people have been doing more and more for themselves through group action. The result has been a multiplication of laws, many of them useless; the creation of a vast administrative force increasing overhead charges, community control or operation of industries, and the vast amount of public, especially municipal, improvements. All of these have been of advantage to the people in common, but have {502} greatly increased taxation until it is felt to be a burden. Were it not for the great war debts that hang heavily on the world, probably the increased taxation for legitimate expenses would not have been seriously felt. But it seems certain that a halt in excessive public expenditures will be called until a social stock-taking ensues. At any rate, people will demand that useless expenditures shall cease and that an ample return for the increased taxation shall be shown in a margin of profit for social betterment. A balance between social enterprise and individual effort must be secured. _Restlessness Versus Happiness_.--Happiness is an active principle arising from the satisfaction of individual desires. It does not consist in the possession of an abundance of material things. It may consist in the harmony of desires with the means of satisfying them. Perhaps the "right to achieve" and the successful process of achievement are the essential factors in true happiness. Realizing how wealth will furnish opportunities for achievement, and how it will furnish the luxuries of life as well as furnish an outlet for restless activity, great energy is spent in acquiring it. Indeed, the attitude of mind has been centred so strongly on the possession of the dollar that this seems to be the end of pursuit rather than a means to higher states of life. It is this wrong attitude of life that brings about so much restlessness and so little real happiness. Only the utilization of material wealth to develop a higher spiritual life of man and society will insure continuous progress. The vast accumulations of material wealth in the United States and the wonderful provisions for material comfort are apt to obscure the vision of real progress. Great as are the possible blessings of material progress, it is possible that eventually they may prove a menace. Other great civilizations have fallen because they stressed the importance of the material life and lost sight of the great adventure of the spirit. Will the spiritual wealth rise superior, strong, and dominant to overcome the downward drag of material prosperity and {503} thus be able to support the burdens of material civilization that must be borne? _Summary of Progress_.--If one were to review the previous pages from the beginnings of human society to the present time, he would observe that mind is the ruling force of all human endeavor. Its freedom of action, its inventive power, and its will to achieve underlie every material and social product of civilization. Its evolution through action and reaction, from primitive instincts and emotions to the dominance of rational planning and reflective thinking, marks the trail of man's ascendancy over nature and the establishing of ideals of social order. Has man individual traits, physical and mental, sufficiently strong to stand the strain of a highly complex social order? It will depend upon the strength of his moral character, mental traits, and physical resistance, and whether justice among men shall prevail, manifested in humane and sound social action. Future progress will depend upon a clearness of vision, a unity of thought, the standardization of the objectives of social achievement, and, moreover, an elevation of human conduct. Truly, "without vision the people perish." SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. What measures are being taken to conserve the natural resources? 2. What plan would you suggest for settling the labor problem so as to avoid strikes? 3. How shall we determine what people shall do in group activity and what shall be left to private initiative? 4. How may our ideals of democracy be put to effective practice? 5. To what extent does future progress of the race depend upon science? 6. 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W.: The Crusades. Croiset, Maurice: Hellenic Civilization. (Translated by Paul B. Thomas.) Deniker, J.: The Races of Men. Dewey, John: Human Nature and Conduct. Draper, John W.: History of the Intellectual Development of Europe. Duncan, Robert K.: The Chemistry of Commerce. The New Knowledge. Duruy, Victor: History of France. History of the Middle Ages. History of Rome. Edman, Erwin: Human Traits. Elliot, G. F. Scott: Prehistoric Man and His Story. Ely, Richard T.: Evolution of Industrial Society. Emerton, Ephraim: Introduction to the Middle Ages. Mediaeval Europe. Fisher, George P.: History of the Christian Church. Fowler, Ward: The City State of the Greeks and Romans. Gardiner, Samuel R.: The Puritan Revolution. Gibbon, Edward: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Goldenweiser, Alexander A.: Early Civilization. Gordon, Childe: The Dawn of European Civilization. Green, John Richard: A Short History of the English People. Green, William Chase: The Achievement of Greece. Guizot, F.: History of Civilization. Hadley, James: Introduction to Roman Law. Hayes, Carlton J. H.: A Brief History of the Great War. A Political and Social History of Modern Europe. Henderson, Ernest F.: History of Germany in the Middle Ages. Hobson, J. A.: The Problems of the New World. Hodgkin, Thomas: Italy and Her Invaders. Holm, Adolph: History of Greece. Hudson, J. W.: The College and New America. {506} Ihne, W. H.: Early Rome. Inge, W. R.: The Idea of Progress. Irving, Washington: The Conquest of Granada. James, E. O.: An Introduction to Anthropology. Kelsey, Carl: The Physical Basis of Society. Keynes, J. M.: The Economic Consequences of the Peace. King, L. W.: A History of Babylon. A History of Sumer and Akkad. Kirkup, Thomas: The History of Socialism. Kitchen, G. W.: History of France. Kroeber, A. L.: Anthropology. Lawrence, I. J.: The Society of Nations. Libby, Walter: An Introduction to the History of Science. Lipton, Walter: Drift and Mastery. Liberty and the News. Lowell, A. Lawrence: Public Opinion and Popular Government. Lowie, Robert H.: Culture and Ethnology. Primitive Society. Mahaffy, J. P.: The Story of Alexander's Empire. Mason, Otis Tufton: The Origins of Inventions. Mason, Wm. A.: The History of the Art of Writing. May, Thos. E.: Democracy in Europe. McCarthy, Justin: The Epoch of Reform. McGiffert, Arthur C.: The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas. Meyers, J. L.: The Dawn of History. Mills, John: Within the Atom. Monroe, Dana Carlton: The Middle Ages. Monroe, Paul: History of Education. Morris, Charles: Civilization: An Historical Review of Its Elements. Morris, William O'Connor: The French Revolution and the First Empire. Murray, Gilbert: Ancient Greece. O'Leary, De Lacy: Arabic Thought and Its Place in History. Osborn, Henry Fairfield: Men of the Old Stone Age. Peet, Stephen: The Cliff Dwellers. Plato's Republic: Translation by Jowett. Powell, I. W.: The Pueblo Indians. Preston and Dodge: The Private Life of the Romans. Ragozin, Z. A.: The Story of Chaldea. Rawlinson, George: Ancient Monarchies. The Story of Egypt. {507} Robinson, James Harvey: The Mind in the Making. Sayre, Francis B.: Experiments in International Administration. Scott, J. B. (editor): President Wilson's Foreign Policy: Messages, Addresses, and Papers. Sedgwick, W. J., and Tyler, H. W.: A Short History of Science. Seebohm, Frederick: The Era of the Protestant Revolt. Semple, Ellen C.: Influences of Geographic Environment. Sloane, W. M.: The Powers and Aims of Western Democracy. Slosson, Edwin E.: Creative Chemistry. Smith, J. Russell: The World and Its Food Resources. Smith, Walter R.: Educational Sociology. Spinden, H. J.: Ancient Civilization of Mexico. Stubbs, William: The Early Plantagenets. Symonds, John Addington: The Renaissance in Italy. Taylor, Edward B.: Researches Into the Early History of Mankind. The Development of Civilization. Thwing, Charles F. and Carrie F.: The Family. Todd, Arthur James: Theories of Social Progress. Turner, F. J.: The Rise of the New West. Tyler, John M.: The New Stone Age of Northern Europe. Van Hook, La Rue: Greek Life and Thought. Walker, Francis A.: The Making of a Nation. Wallas, Graham: Great Society. Principles of Western Civilization. Weber, Alfred, and R. B. Perry: History of Philosophy. Weigall, Arthur: The Story of the Pharaohs. White, Andrew D.: The French Revolution and the First Empire. Whitney, Wm. Dwight: The Life and Growth of Language. Wilder, H. H.: Man's Prehistoric Past. Wissler, Clark: The American Indian. Man and Culture. {508} INDEX Abelard, 354. Aegean culture, 207. Ages of culture, stone, bronze, 36. Agriculture, beginning of, 93; modern, 440. Akkadians, religion of, 155, 156. Alexander, conquests of, 246. Allia, battle of the, 387. Altruism and democracy, 449-462. America, peopling of, 185. American Indians, culture of, 200; contributions to civilization, 201. Anaxagoras, 218. Anaximander, 217. Anaximenes, 217. Ancient society, Morgan, 4, 49, Animals, domestication of, 92. Anselm, 354. Antiquity of man shown by race development, 69. Arabian empire, 305; science and art, 307. Arab-Moors in Spain, 305; cultures, 308-315; science and art, 307-310; discoveries, 312; language and literature, 313; architecture, 315; achievement, 316; decline, 317. Arab-Moors, religious zeal of, 308. Aristotle, 223. Arkwright, Richard, spinning by rollers, 436. Art, development of, 37; as a language of aesthetic ideas, 130; representative, 131; and architecture, 368. Aryans, coming of the, 167. Athens, Government of, 233; character of democracy, 240; decline of, 241. Aztecs, culture of, 190. Babylon, 146. Bacon, Francis, 355, 460. Bacon, Roger, 459. Barbarians, 281. Beautiful, the love of, develops slowly, 135-136; a permanent social force, 137. Bill of Rights, 397, 413. Boccaccio, 366. Books, 128. Bow and arrow, 87. Brahe, Ticho, 463. Bryce, James, 380. Bunyan, John, 398. Burial mounds, 76. Cabrillo, 116. Calvin, John, and the Genevan system, 386. Canuleius, 255. Cassius, Spurius, agrarian laws, 254. Catholic Church, the, 384. Catlin, North American Indians, 134. Caves, 71. Chaldea, early civilization of, 153-156. Charlemagne, 349. Chemistry, 308. China, 166. Christian influence on Roman legislation, 273. Christian religion, social contacts of, 268. Christianity and the social life, 271; service of, 279; opposes pagan literature, 357; competition with Graeco-Roman schools, 357. Christians come into conflict with civil authority, 273. Church, the wealth of, 275; development of hierarchy, 270; control of temporal power, 277; service of, 278; retrogressive attitude, 350; in France, 402; widening influences of, 446; organizing centre, 453. Cities, rise of free, 330-332; modern, 440. Civilization, material evidences of, 4; fundamentals of, 10-14; possibilities of, 15; can be estimated, 16; modern, 456. Cleisthenes, reforms of, 237. Cliff Dwellers, 194. Clothing, manufacture of, 97. Cnossos, 207. Colonization, Greek, 246; Phoenician, 161. Commerce and communication, 486. Commerce, hastens progress, 362. Common schools, 477. Constitutional liberty in England, 393. Copernicus, 461. Crete, island of, 207. Crô-Magnon, earliest ancestral type, 28; cultures of, 72. Crompton, Samuel, spinning "mule," 436. Crusades, causes of, 319, 320, 321; results of, 322-323; effect on monarchy, 324; intellectual development, 325; impulse to commerce, 326; social effect, 327. Cultures, evidence of primitive, 28; mental development and, 32; early European, 32. Curie, Madame, 469. Custom, 112, 288, 295. Dance, the, as dramatic expression, 133; economic, religious, and social functions of, 134. Darius I, founded Persian Empire, 168. Darwin, Charles, 467. Democracy, 342, 392, 449. Democracy in America, 418; characteristics of, 419-421; modern political reforms of, 421-425. Descartes, René, 461. Diogenes, 218. Discovery and invention, 362. Duruy, Victor, 363. Economic life, 170-180, 290, 429. Economic outlook, 495. Education and democracy, 477-482. Education, universal, 475, 478; in the United States, 476. Educational progress, 482. Egypt, 145, 146; centre of civilization, 157-160; compared with Babylon, 162; pyramids, 160; religion, 172; economic life, 178; science, 182. England, beginnings of constitutional liberty in, 345. Environment, physical, determines the character of civilization, 141; quality of soil, 144; climate and progress, 146; social order, 149. Equalization of opportunities, 499. Euphrates valley, seat of early civilization, 152. Evidences of man's antiquity, 69; localities of, 71-78; knowledge of, develops reflective thinking, 77. Evolution, 467-469. Family, the early, 109-112; Greek and Roman, 212-213; German, 286. Feudalism, nature of, 294-299; sources of, 294, based on land tenure, 296; social classification under, 298; conditions of society under, 300; individual development under, 302; influence on world progress, 303. Fire and its economy, 88. Florence, 336. Food supply, determines progress, 83-85; increased by discovery and invention, 86. France, free cities of, 330; rise of popular assemblies, 338; rural communes, 338; place in modern civilization, 399; philosophers of, 403; return to monarchy, 417; character of constitutional monarchy, 418. France, in modern civilization, 399; philosophers of, 403. Franklin, Benjamin, 465. Freedom of the press, 484. Freeman, E. A., 233. French republic, triumph of, 417. French Revolution, 405-407; results of, 407. Galileo, 461. Gabon, Francis, 469. Geography, 312. Germans, social life of, 283; classes of society, 285; home life, 286; political organization, 287; social customs, 288; contribution to law, 291; judicial system, 292. Gilbert, William, 461. Glacial epoch, 62. Greece, 148, 205, 210. Greece and Rome compared, 250. Greek equality and liberty, 229. Greek federation, 245. Greek government, an expanded family, 229; diversity of, 231; admits free discussion, 231; local self-government, 232; independent community life, 231; group selfishness, 232; city state, 239. Greek influence on Rome, 261. Greek life, early, 205; influence of, 213. Greek philosophy, observation and inquiry, 215; Ionian philosophy, 216; weakness of, 219; Eleatic philosophy, 220; Sophists, 221; Epicureans, 224; influence of, 225. Greek social life, 241, 243. Greeks, origin of, 209; early social life of, 208; character of primitive, 209; family life of, 212; religion of, 212. Guizot, 399. Hargreaves, James, invents the spinning jenny, 436. Harvey, William, 461. Hebrew influence, 164. Henry VIII and the papacy, 387; defender of the faith, 396. Heraclitus, 218. Hierarchy, development of, 276. History, 312. Holy Roman Empire, 414. Human chronology, 59. Humanism, 349, 364, 366; relation of language and literature to, 367; effect on social manners, 371; relation to science and philosophy, 372; advances the study of the classics, 373; general influence on life, 373. Huss, John, 378, 379. Huxley, Thomas H., 471. Ice ages, the, 62, 64. Incas, culture of, 187. India, 148, 166. Individual culture and social order, 150. Industrial development, 429-433, 439; revolution, 437. Industries, radiate from land as a centre, 429; early mediaeval, 430; public, 497; corporate, 497. Industry and civilization, 441. International law, reorganization of, 492. Invention, 86, 362, 436. Iroquois, social organization of, 198. Italian art and architecture, 368. Italian cities, 332; popular government of, 333. Jesuits, the, 385. Justinian Code, 260. Kepler, 463. Knowledge, diffusion of, 480. Koch, 470. Koran, the, 304, 310. Labor, social economics of, 496. Lake dwellings, 78. Lamarck, J. P., 467. Land, use of, determines social life, 145. Language, origin of, 121; a social function, 123; development of, 126-129; an instrument of culture, 129. Latin language and literature, 261. League for permanent peace, 489-492 Licinian laws, 256. Lister, 469, 470. Locke, John, 398. Lombard League, 337. Louis XIV, the divine right of kings, 400. Luther, Martin, and the German Reformation, 382-385. Lycurgus, reforms of, 244. Lysander, 241. Magdalenian cultures, 72. Man, origin of, 57; primitive home of, 66, antiquity of, 73-70; and nature, 141; not a slave to environment, 149. Manorial system, 430. Manuscripts, discovery of, 364. Marxian socialism in Russia, 427. Maya race, 192. Medicine, 308. Medontidae, 234. Men of genius, 33. Mesopotamia, 154. Metals, discovery and use of, 100. Metaphysics, 310. Mexico, 146. Michael Angelo, 370. Milton, John, 398. Minoan civilization, 207. Monarchy, a stage of progress in Europe, 344. Monarchy versus democracy, 392. Mongolian race, 167. Montesquieu, 404. Morgan, Lewis H., beginning of civilization, 4; classification of social development, 49. Morton, William, T. G., 470. Mound builders, 197. Music, as language, 131; as a socializing factor, 133, 137. Mutual aid, 120; of nations, 491. Napier, John, 463. Napoleon Bonaparte, 417. Nationality and race, 444. Nature, aspects of, determine types of social life, 147. Neanderthal man, 29, 65. Newton, Sir Isaac, 463. Nile, valley, seat of early civilization, 152. Nobility, the French, 400. Occam, William of, 379. Oriental civilization, character of, 170; war for conquest and plunder, 171; religious belief, 171-174; social condition, 175; social organization, 176-178; economic life, 178-180; writing, 181; science, 182; contribution to world progress, 184. Parliament, rebukes King James I, 396; declaration of, 397. Pasteur, Louis, 469, 470. Peloponnesian War, 241. People, the condition of, in France, 401. Pericles, age of, 247. Petrarch, 365, 366. Philosophy, Ionian, 216; Eleatic, 220; sophist, 221; stoic, 225; sceptic, 225; influence of Greek on civilization, 226, 228. Phoenicians, the, become great navigators, 161; colonization by, 161. Physical needs, efforts to satisfy, 82-85. Picture writing, 126. Pithecanthropus erectus, 29. Plato, 222. Political ideas, spread of, 486-488. Political liberty in XVIII century. [Transcriber's note: no page number in source] Polygenesis, monogenesis, 66. Popular government, expense of, 328, 414. Power manufacture, 437. Pre-historic human types, 63, 65, 66. Pre-historic man, types of, 28, Pre-historic time, 60-61. Primitive man, social life of, 31, 32; brain capacity of, 29. Progress and individual development, 23; and race development, 22; influence of heredity on, 24; influence of environment on, 25; race interactions and, 26; early cultural evidence of, 32; mutations in, 33; data of, 34; increased by the implements used, 35; revival of, throughout Europe, 348; and revival of learning, 372-373. Progress, evidence of, 456. Public opinion, 485. Pueblo Indians, culture of, 194; social life, 195; secret societies, 196. Pythagoras, 219. Race and language, 124. Races, cause of decline, 201, 202. Racial characters, 70. Recounting human progress, methods of 37-52; economic development, 39-40. Reform measures in England, 415. Reformation, the, character of, 375; events leading to, 376-380; causes of, 380-382; far-reaching results of, 388-391. Religion and social order, 113-116. Religious toleration, growth of, 447. Renaissance, the, 349, 370. Republicanism, spread of, 425. Research, foundations of, 472; educational process of, 479. Revival of learning, 364. River and glacial drift, 74. Roebuck, John, the blast furnace, 436. Roman civil organization, 258. Roman empire, and its decline, 264. Roman government, 258; law, 259; imperialism, 267. Roman social life, 264. Rome a dominant city, 257; development of government, 258. Rome, political organization, 252; struggle for liberty, 243; social conditions, 255; invasion of the Gauls, 255; Agrarian laws, 254, 256; plebeians and patricians, 256; optimates, 256; influence on world civilization, 266. Rousseau, 404. Savonarola, 380. Scholastic philosophy, 353. Schools, cathedral and monastic, 356; Graeco-Roman, 357. Science, in Egypt, 182; in Spain, 306; nature of, 307, 458; and democracy, 464, 465. Scientific classification, 460; men, 465; progress, 470; investigation, trend of, 473. Scientific methods, 459. Scientific research, 463. Semites, 160. Shakespeare, 398. Shell mounds, 73. Shelters, primitive, 99. Social conditions at the beginning of the Christian era, 269. Social contacts of the Christian religion, 268. Social development, 13, 23, 49, 104, 114, 347, 443. Social evolution, depends on variation, 347; character of, 443. Social forces, balance of, 501. Social groups, interrelation of, 454. Social life, 31, 133, 145, 147, 171, 178-180, 208, 241, 243, 247, 255, 258, 283, 285, 289, 298, 300, 327, 371. Social life of primitive man, 31, 32; development of social order, 41-45; intellectual character of, 47; religious and moral condition of, 46, 47; character of, 108; moral status of, 117. Social opportunities, 455. Social order, 8, 41, 122, 149, 150, 176-178, 193, 196, 444, 445. Social organization, 145, 176-178, 210, 250-252, 432, 433, 444. Social unrest, 502. Society, 5, 175, 205, 255, 256, 268-273, 285, 301, 316, 443, 445, 446, 450, 451, 452. Society, complexity of modern, 452. Socrates, 221. Solon, constitution of, 235. Spain, attempts at popular government in, 341. Sparta, domination of, 241; character of Spartan state, 242. Spencer, Herbert, 471. Spiritual progress and material comfort, 500. State education, 482. States-general, 341. Struggle for existence develops the individual and the race, 106. Summary of progress, 503. Switzerland, democracy in cantons, 342. Symonds, J. A., 366. Teutonic liberty, 281; influence of, 282, 291, 292; laws, 291. Theodosian Code, 260. Toltecs, 192. Towns, in the Middle Ages, 329. Trade,434. Trade and its social Influence, 104. Transportation, 102. Tylor, E. B., Primitive Culture, 114. Tyndall, John, 471. Unity of the human race, 66. Universities, mediaeval, 475; English, 476; German, 476; American, 476; endowed, 484. Universities, rise of, 360; nature of, 361; failure in scientific methods, 361. Venice, 335. Village community, 44. Village sites, 77. Voltaire, 404. Waldenses, 378. Warfare and social progress, 119. Watt, James, power manufacture, 436. Weissman, A., 467. Western civilisation, important factors in its foundation, 268. Whitney, Ely, the cotton gin, 436. Wissler, Clark, culture areas, 26; trade, 104. World state, 493. World war, breaks the barriers of thought, 488. World War, iconoclastic effects of, 427. Writing, 181. Wyclif, John, and the English reformation, 378, 386. Zeno, 220. Zenophanes, 220. Zwingli and the reformation in Switzerland, 385. Transcriber's notes: In the Table of Contents, the "PART III" division precedes Chapter VII, but in the body of the book it precedes Chapter VIII. Page numbers in this book are enclosed in curly braces. For its Index, a page number has been placed only at the start of that section. In the HTML version of this book, page numbers are placed in the left margin. Footnote numbers are enclosed in square brackets. Each chapter's footnotes have been renumbered sequentially and moved to the end of that chapter. 
28496	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by Case Western Reserve University Preservation Department Digital Library.) INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE OF SOCIOLOGY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY NEW YORK THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO, FUKUOKA, SENDAI THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY SHANGHAI INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE OF SOCIOLOGY _By_ ROBERT E. PARK AND ERNEST W. BURGESS THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS COPYRIGHT 1921 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO All rights Reserved Published September 1921 Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected. Footnotes have been moved to the end of the chapters. Italicized letters, such as (_a_), have been changed to unitalicized (a) for easier reading. PREFACE The materials upon which this book is based have been collected from a wide range of sources and represent the observation and reflection of men who have seen life from very different points of view. This was necessary in order to bring into the perspective of a single volume the whole wide range of social organization and human life which is the subject-matter of a science of society. At the same time an effort has been made to bring this material within the limits of a very definite series of sociological conceptions which suggest, at any rate, where they do not clearly exhibit, the fundamental relations of the parts to one another and to the concepts and contents of the volume as a whole. The _Introduction to the Science of Sociology_ is not conceived as a mere collection of materials, however, but as a systematic treatise. On the other hand, the excerpts which make up the body of the book are not to be regarded as mere illustrations. In the context in which they appear, and with the headings which indicate their place in the volume, they should enable the student to formulate for himself the principles involved. An experience of some years, during which this book has been in preparation, has demonstrated the value to the teacher of a body of materials that are interesting in themselves and that appeal to the experience of the student. If students are invited to take an active part in the task of interpretation of the text, if they are encouraged to use the references in order to extend their knowledge of the subject-matter and to check and supplement classroom discussion by their personal observation, their whole attitude becomes active rather than passive. Students gain in this way a sense of dealing at first hand with a subject-matter that is alive and with a science that is in the making. Under these conditions sociology becomes a common enterprise in which all members of the class participate; to which, by their observation and investigation, they can and should make contributions. The first thing that students in sociology need to learn is to observe and record their own observations; to read, and then to select and record the materials which are the fruits of their readings; to organize and use, in short, their own experience. The whole organization of this volume may be taken as an illustration of a method, at once tentative and experimental, for the collection, classification, and interpretation of materials, and should be used by students from the very outset in all their reading and study. Social questions have been endlessly discussed, and it is important that they should be. What the student needs to learn, however, is how to get facts rather than formulate opinions. The most important facts that sociologists have to deal with are opinions (attitudes and sentiments), but until students learn to deal with opinions as the biologists deal with organisms, that is, to dissect them--reduce them to their component elements, describe them, and define the situation (environment) to which they are a response--we must not expect very great progress in sociological science. It will be noticed that every single chapter, except the first, falls naturally into four parts; (1) the introduction, (2) the materials, (3) investigations and problems, and (4) bibliography. The first two parts of each chapter are intended to raise questions rather than to answer them. The last two, on the other hand, should outline or suggest problems for further study. The bibliographies have been selected mainly to exhibit the recognized points of view with regard to the questions raised, and to suggest the practical problems that grow out of, and are related to, the subject of the chapter as a whole. The bibliographies, which accompany the chapters, it needs to be said, are intended to be representative rather than authoritative or complete. An attempt has been made to bring together literature that would exhibit the range, the divergence, the distinctive character of the writings and points of view upon a single topic. The results are naturally subject to criticism and revision. A word should be said in regard to chapter i. It seemed necessary and important, in view of the general vagueness and uncertainty in regard to the place of sociology among the sciences and its relation to the other social sciences, particularly to history, to state somewhere, clearly and definitely, what, from the point of view of this volume, sociology is. This resulted finally in the imposition of a rather formidable essay upon what is in other respects, we trust, a relatively concrete and intelligible book. Under these circumstances we suggest that, unless the reader is specially interested in the matter, he begin with the chapter on "Human Nature," and read the first chapter last. The editors desire to express their indebtedness to Dr. W. I. Thomas for the point of view and the scheme of organization of materials which have been largely adopted in this book.[1] They are also under obligations to their colleagues, Professor Albion W. Small, Professor Ellsworth Faris, and Professor Leon C. Marshall, for constant stimulus, encouragement, and assistance. They wish to acknowledge the co-operation and the courtesy of their publishers, all the more appreciated because of the difficult technical task involved in the preparation of this volume. In preparing copy for publication and in reading proof, invaluable service was rendered by Miss Roberta Burgess. Finally the editors are bound to express their indebtedness to the writers and publishers who have granted their permission to use the materials from which this volume has been put together. Without the use of these materials it would not have been possible to exhibit the many and varied types of observation and reflection which have contributed to present-day knowledge of social life. In order to give this volume a systematic character it has been necessary to tear these excerpts from their contexts and to put them, sometimes, into strange categories. In doing this it will no doubt have happened that some false impressions have been created. This was perhaps inevitable and to be expected. On the other hand these brief excerpts offered here will serve, it is hoped, as an introduction to the works from which they have been taken, and, together with the bibliographies which accompany them, will serve further to direct and stimulate the reading and research of students. The co-operation of the following publishers, organizations and journals, in giving, by special arrangement, permission to use selections from copyright material, was therefore distinctly appreciated by the editors: D. Appleton & Co.; G. Bell & Sons; J. F. Bergmann; Columbia University Press; George H. Doran Co.; Duncker und Humblot; Duffield & Co.; Encyclopedia Americana Corporation; M. Giard et Cie; Ginn & Co.; Harcourt, Brace & Co.; Paul B. Hoeber; Houghton Mifflin Co.; Henry Holt & Co.; B. W. Huebsch; P. S. King & Son; T. W. Laurie, Ltd.; Longmans, Green & Co.; John W. Luce & Co.; The Macmillan Co.; A. C. McClurg & Co.; Methuen & Co.; John Murray; Martinus Nijhoff; Open Court Publishing Co.; Oxford University Press; G. P. Putnam's Sons; Rütten und Loening; Charles Scribner's Sons; Frederick A. Stokes & Co.; W. Thacker & Co.; University of Chicago Press; University Tutorial Press, Ltd.; Wagnerische Univ. Buchhandlung; Walter Scott Publishing Co.; Williams & Norgate; Yale University Press; American Association for International Conciliation; American Economic Association; American Sociological Society; Carnegie Institution of Washington; _American Journal of Psychology_; _American Journal of Sociology_; _Cornhill Magazine_; _International Journal of Ethics_; _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_; _Journal of Delinquency_; _Nature_; _Pedagogical Seminary_; _Popular Science Monthly_; _Religious Education_; _Scientific Monthly_; _Sociological Review_; _World's Work_; _Yale Review_. CHICAGO June 18, 1921 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I. SOCIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES PAGE I. Sociology and "Scientific" History 1 II. Historical and Sociological Facts 6 III. Human Nature and Law 12 IV. History, Natural History, and Sociology 16 V. The Social Organism: Humanity or Leviathan? 24 VI. Social Control and Schools of Thought 27 VII. Social Control and the Collective Mind 36 VIII. Sociology and Social Research 43 _Representative Works in Systematic Sociology and Methods of Sociological Research_ 57 _Topics for Written Themes_ 60 _Questions for Discussion_ 60 CHAPTER II. HUMAN NATURE I. Introduction 1. Human Interest in Human Nature 64 2. Definition of Human Nature 65 3. Classification of the Materials 68 II. Materials A. The Original Nature of Man 1. Original Nature Defined. _Edward L. Thorndike_ 73 2. Inventory of Original Tendencies. _Edward L. Thorndike_ 75 3. Man Not Born Human. _Robert E. Park_ 76 4. The Natural Man. _Milicent W. Shinn_ 82 5. Sex Differences. _Albert Moll_ 85 6. Racial Differences. _C. S. Myers_ 89 7. Individual Differences. _Edward L. Thorndike_ 92 B. Human Nature and Social Life 1. Human Nature and Its Remaking. _W. E. Hocking_ 95 2. Human Nature, Folkways, and the Mores. _William G. Sumner_ 97 3. Habit and Custom, the Individual and the General Will. _Ferdinand Tönnies_ 100 4. The Law, Conscience, and the General Will. _Viscount Haldane_ 102 C. Personality and the Social Self 1. The Organism as Personality. _Th. Ribot_ 108 2. Personality as a Complex. _Morton Prince_ 110 3. The Self as the Individual's Conception of His Rôle. _Alfred Binet_ 113 4. The Natural Person versus the Social and Conventional Self. _L. G. Winston_ 117 5. The Divided Self and Moral Consciousness. _William James_ 119 6. Personality of Individuals and of Peoples. _W. v. Bechterew_ 123 D. Biological and Social Heredity 1. Nature and Nurture. _J. Arthur Thomson_ 126 2. Inheritance of Original Nature. _C. B. Davenport_ 128 3. Inheritance of Acquired Nature: Tradition. _Albert G. Keller_ 134 4. Temperament, Tradition, and Nationality. _Robert E. Park_ 135 III. Investigations and Problems 1. Conceptions of Human Nature Implicit in Religious and Political Doctrines 139 2. Literature and the Science of Human Nature 141 3. Research in the Field of Original Nature 143 4. The Investigation of Human Personality 143 5. The Measurement of Individual Differences 145 _Selected Bibliography_ 147 _Topics for Written Themes_ 154 _Questions for Discussion_ 155 CHAPTER III. SOCIETY AND THE GROUP I. Introduction 1. Society, the Community, and the Group 159 2. Classification of the Materials 162 II. Materials A. Society and Symbiosis 1. Definition of Society. _Alfred Espinas_ 165 2. Symbiosis (literally "living together"). _William M. Wheeler_ 167 3. The Taming and the Domestication of Animals. _P. Chalmers Mitchell_ 170 B. Plant Communities and Animal Societies 1. Plant Communities. _Eugenius Warming_ 173 2. Ant Society. _William E. Wheeler_ 180 C. Human Society 1. Social Life. _John Dewey_ 182 2. Behavior and Conduct. _Robert E. Park_ 185 3. Instinct and Character. _L. T. Hobhouse_ 190 4. Collective Representation and Intellectual Life. _Émile Durkheim_ 193 D. The Social Group 1. Definition of the Group. _Albion W. Small_ 196 2. The Unity of the Social Group. _Robert E. Park_ 198 3. Types of Social Groups. _S. Sighele_ 200 4. _Esprit de Corps_, Morale, and Collective Representations of Social Groups. _William E. Hocking_ 205 III. Investigations and Problems 1. The Scientific Study of Societies 210 2. Surveys of Communities 211 3. The Group as a Unit of Investigation 212 4. The Study of the Family 213 _Selected Bibliography_ 217 _Topics for Written Themes_ 223 _Questions for Discussion_ 224 CHAPTER IV. ISOLATION I. Introduction 1. Geological and Biological Conceptions of Isolation 226 2. Isolation and Segregation 228 3. Classification of the Materials 230 II. Materials A. Isolation and Personal Individuality 1. Society and Solitude. _Francis Bacon_ 233 2. Society in Solitude. _Jean Jacques Rousseau_ 234 3. Prayer as a Form of Isolation. _George Albert Coe_. 235 4. Isolation, Originality, and Erudition. _T. Sharper Knowlson_ 237 B. Isolation and Retardation 1. Feral Men. _Maurice H. Small_ 239 2. From Solitude to Society. _Helen Keller_ 243 3. Mental Effects of Solitude. _W. H. Hudson_ 245 4. Isolation and the Rural Mind. _C. J. Galpin_ 247 5. The Subtler Effects of Isolation. _W. I. Thomas_. 249 C. Isolation and Segregation 1. Segregation as a Process. _Robert E. Park_ 252 2. Isolation as a Result of Segregation. _L. W. Crafts and E. A. Doll_ 254 D. Isolation and National Individuality 1. Historical Races as Products of Isolation. _N. S. Shaler_ 257 2. Geographical Isolation and Maritime Contact. _George Grote_ 260 3. Isolation as an Explanation of National Differences. _William Z. Ripley_ 264 4. Natural versus Vicinal Location in National Development. _Ellen C. Semple_ 268 III. Investigations and Problems 1. Isolation in Anthropogeography and Biology 269 2. Isolation and Social Groups 270 3. Isolation and Personality 271 _Bibliography: Materials for the Study of Isolation_ 273 _Topics for Written Themes_ 277 _Questions for Discussion_ 278 CHAPTER V. SOCIAL CONTACTS I. Introduction 1. Preliminary Notions of Social Contact 280 2. The Sociological Concept of Contact 281 3. Classification of the Materials 282 II. Materials A. Physical Contact and Social Contact 1. The Frontiers of Social Contact. _Albion W. Small_ 288 2. The Land and the People. _Ellen C. Semple_ 289 3. Touch and Social Contact. _Ernest Crawley_ 291 B. Social Contact in Relation to Solidarity and to Mobility 1. The In-Group and the Out-Group. _W. G. Sumner_. 293 2. Sympathetic Contacts versus Categoric Contacts. _N. S. Shaler_ 294 3. Historical Continuity and Civilization. _Friedrich Ratzel_ 298 4. Mobility and the Movement of Peoples. _Ellen C. Semple_ 301 C. Primary and Secondary Contacts 1. Village Life in America (from _the Diary of a Young Girl_). _Caroline C. Richards_ 305 2. Secondary Contacts and City Life. _Robert E. Park_. 311 3. Publicity as a Form of Secondary Contact. _Robert E. Park_ 315 4. From Sentimental to Rational Attitudes. _Werner Sombart_ 317 5. The Sociological Significance of the "Stranger." _Georg Simmel_ 322 III. Investigations and Problems 1. Physical Contacts 327 2. Touch and the Primary Contacts of Intimacy 329 3. Primary Contacts of Acquaintanceship 330 4. Secondary Contacts 331 _Bibliography: Materials for the Study of Social Contacts_ 332 _Topics for Written Themes_ 336 _Questions for Discussion_ 336 CHAPTER VI. SOCIAL INTERACTION I. Introduction 1. The Concept of Interaction 339 2. Classification of the Materials 341 II. Materials A. Society as Interaction 1. The Mechanistic Interpretation of Society. _Ludwig Gumplowicz_ 346 2. Social Interaction as the Definition of the Group in Time and Space. _Georg Simmel_ 348 B. The Natural Forms of Communication 1. Sociology of the Senses: Visual Interaction. _Georg Simmel_ 356 2. The Expression of the Emotions. _Charles Darwin_ 361 3. Blushing. _Charles Darwin_ 365 4. Laughing. _L. Dugas_ 370 C. Language and the Communication of Ideas 1. Intercommunication in the Lower Animals. _C. Lloyd Morgan_ 375 2. The Concept as the Medium of Human Communication. _F. Max Müller_ 379 3. Writing as a Form of Communication. _Charles H. Judd_ 381 4. The Extension of Communication by Human Invention. _Carl Bücher_ 385 D. Imitation 1. Definition of Imitation. _Charles H. Judd_ 390 2. Attention, Interest, and Imitation. _G. F. Stout_ 391 3. The Three Levels of Sympathy. _Th. Ribot_ 394 4. Rational Sympathy. _Adam Smith_ 397 5. Art, Imitation, and Appreciation. _Yrjö Hirn_ 401 E. Suggestion 1. A Sociological Definition of Suggestion. _W. v. Bechterew_ 408 2. The Subtler Forms of Suggestion. _Albert Moll_ 412 3. Social Suggestion and Mass or "Corporate" Action. _W. v. Bechterew_ 415 III. Investigations and Problems 1. The Process of Interaction 420 2. Communication 421 3. Imitation 423 4. Suggestion 424 _Selected Bibliography_ 425 _Topics for Written Themes_ 431 _Questions for Discussion_ 431 CHAPTER VII. SOCIAL FORCES I. Introduction 1. Sources of the Notion of Social Forces 435 2. History of the Concept of Social Forces 436 3. Classification of the Materials 437 II. Materials A. Trends, Tendencies, and Public Opinion 1. Social Forces in American History. _A. M. Simons_ 443 2. Social Tendencies as Social Forces. _Richard T. Ely_ 444 3. Public Opinion and Legislation in England. _A. V. Dicey_ 445 B. Interests, Sentiments, and Attitudes 1. Social Forces and Interaction. _Albion W. Small_ 451 2. Interests. _Albion W. Small_ 454 3. Social Pressures. _Arthur F. Bentley_ 458 4. Idea-Forces. _Alfred Fouillée_ 461 5. Sentiments. _William McDougall_ 464 6. Social Attitudes. _Robert E. Park_ 467 C. The Four Wishes: A Classification of Social Forces 1. The Wish, the Social Atom. _Edwin B. Holt_ 478 2. The Freudian Wish. _John B. Watson_ 482 3. The Person and His Wishes. _W. I. Thomas_ 488 III. Investigations and Problems 1. Popular Notions of Social Forces 491 2. Social Forces and History 493 3. Interests, Sentiments, and Attitudes as Social Forces 494 4. Wishes and Social Forces 497 _Selected Bibliography_ 498 _Topics for Written Themes_ 501 _Questions for Discussion_ 502 CHAPTER VIII. COMPETITION I. Introduction 1. Popular Conceptions of Competition 505 2. Competition a Process of Interaction 507 3. Classification of the Materials 511 II. Materials A. The Struggle for Existence 1. Different Forms of the Struggle for Existence. _J. Arthur Thomson_ 513 2. Competition and Natural Selection. _Charles Darwin_ 515 3. Competition, Specialization, and Organization. _Charles Darwin_ 519 4. Man: An Adaptive Mechanism. _George W. Crile_ 522 B. Competition and Segregation 1. Plant Migration, Competition, and Segregation. _F. E. Clements_ 526 2. Migration and Segregation. _Carl Bücher_ 529 3. Demographic Segregation and Social Selection. _William Z. Ripley_ 534 4. Inter-racial Competition and Race Suicide. _Francis A. Walker_ 539 C. Economic Competition 1. Changing Forms of Economic Competition. _John B. Clark_ 544 2. Competition and the Natural Harmony of Individual Interests. _Adam Smith_ 550 3. Competition and Freedom. _Frédéric Bastiat_ 551 4. Money and Freedom. _Georg Simmel_ 552 III. Investigations and Problems 1. Biological Competition 553 2. Economic Competition 554 3. Competition and Human Ecology 558 4. Competition and the "Inner Enemies": the Defectives, the Dependents, and the Delinquents 559 _Selected Bibliography_ 562 _Topics for Written Themes_ 562 _Questions for Discussion_ 563 CHAPTER IX. CONFLICT I. Introduction 1. The Concept of Conflict 574 2. Classification of the Materials 576 II. Materials A. Conflict as Conscious Competition 1. The Natural History of Conflict. _W. I. Thomas_ 579 2. Conflict as a Type of Social Interaction. _Georg Simmel_ 582 3. Types of Conflict Situations. _Georg Simmel_ 586 B. War, Instincts, and Ideals 1. War and Human Nature. _William A. White_ 594 2. War as a Form of Relaxation. _G. T. W. Patrick_ 598 3. The Fighting Animal and the Great Society. _Henry Rutgers Marshall_ 600 C. Rivalry, Cultural Conflicts, and Social Organization 1. Animal Rivalry. _William H. Hudson_ 604 2. The Rivalry of Social Groups. _George E. Vincent_ 605 3. Cultural Conflicts and the Organization of Sects. _Franklin H. Giddings_ 610 D. Racial Conflicts 1. Social Contacts and Race Conflict. _Robert E. Park_ 616 2. Conflict and Race Consciousness. _Robert E. Park_ 623 3. Conflict and Accommodation. _Alfred H. Stone_ 631 III. Investigations and Problems 1. The Psychology and Sociology of Conflict, Conscious Competition, and Rivalry 638 2. Types of Conflict 639 3. The Literature of War 641 4. Race Conflict 642 5. Conflict Groups 643 _Selected Bibliography_ 645 _Topics for Written Themes_ 660 _Questions for Discussion_ 661 CHAPTER X. ACCOMMODATION I. Introduction 1. Adaptation and Accommodation 663 2. Classification of the Materials 666 II. Materials A. Forms of Accommodation 1. Acclimatization. _Daniel G. Brinton_ 671 2. Slavery Defined. _H. J. Nieboer_ 674 3. Excerpts from the Journal of a West India Slave Owner. _Matthew G. Lewis_ 677 4. The Origin of Caste in India. _John C. Nesfield_ 681 5. Caste and the Sentiments of Caste Reflected in Popular Speech. _Herbert Risley_ 684 B. Subordination and Superordination 1. The Psychology of Subordination and Superordination. _Hugo Münsterberg_ 688 2. Social Attitudes in Subordination: Memories of an Old Servant. _An Old Servant_ 692 3. The Reciprocal Character of Subordination and Superordination. _Georg Simmel_ 695 4. Three Types of Subordination and Superordination. _Georg Simmel_ 697 C. Conflict and Accommodation 1. War and Peace as Types of Conflict and Accommodation. _Georg Simmel_ 703 2. Compromise and Accommodation. _Georg Simmel_ 706 D. Competition, Status, and Social Solidarity 1. Personal Competition, Social Selection, and Status. _Charles H. Cooley_ 708 2. Personal Competition and the Evolution of Individual Types. _Robert E. Park_ 712 3. Division of Labor and Social Solidarity. _Émile Durkheim_ 714 III. Investigations and Problems 1. Forms of Accommodation 718 2. Subordination and Superordination 721 3. Accommodation Groups 721 4. Social Organization 723 _Selected Bibliography_ 725 _Topics for Written Themes_ 732 _Questions for Discussion_ 732 CHAPTER XI. ASSIMILATION I. Introduction 1. Popular Conceptions of Assimilation 734 2. The Sociology of Assimilation 735 3. Classification of the Materials 737 II. Materials A. Biological Aspects of Assimilation 1. Assimilation and Amalgamation. _Sarah E. Simons_ 740 2. The Instinctive Basis of Assimilation. _W. Trotter_ 742 B. The Conflict and Fusion of Cultures 1. The Analysis of Blended Cultures. _W. H. R. Rivers_ 746 2. The Extension of Roman Culture in Gaul. _John H. Cornyn_ 751 3. The Competition of the Cultural Languages. _E. H. Babbitt_ 754 4. The Assimilation of Races. _Robert E. Park_ 756 C. Americanization as a Problem in Assimilation 1. Americanization as Assimilation 762 2. Language as a Means and a Product of Participation 763 3. Assimilation and the Mediation of Individual Differences 766 III. Investigations and Problems 1. Assimilation and Amalgamation 769 2. The Conflict and Fusion of Cultures 771 3. Immigration and Americanization 772 _Selected Bibliography_ 775 _Topics for Written Themes_ 783 _Questions for Discussion_ 783 CHAPTER XII. SOCIAL CONTROL I. Introduction 1. Social Control Defined 785 2. Classification of the Materials 787 II. Materials A. Elementary Forms of Social Control 1. Control in the Crowd and the Public. _Lieut. J. S. Smith_ 800 2. Ceremonial Control. _Herbert Spencer_ 805 3. Prestige. _Lewis Leopold_ 807 4. Prestige and Status in South East Africa. _Maurice S. Evans_ 811 5. Taboo. _W. Robertson Smith_ 812 B. Public Opinion 1. The Myth. _Georges Sorel_ 816 2. The Growth of a Legend. _Fernand van Langenhove_ 819 3. Ritual, Myth, and Dogma. _W. Robertson Smith_ 822 4. The Nature of Public Opinion. _A. Lawrence Lowell_ 826 5. Public Opinion and the Mores. _Robert E. Park_ 829 6. News and Social Control. _Walter Lippmann_ 834 7. The Psychology of Propaganda. _Raymond Dodge_ 837 C. Institutions 1. Institutions and the Mores. _W. G. Sumner_ 841 2. Common Law and Statute Law. _Frederic J. Stimson_ 843 3. Religion and Social Control. _Charles A. Ellwood_ 846 III. Investigations and Problems 1. Social Control and Human Nature 848 2. Elementary Forms of Social Control 849 3. Public Opinion and Social Control 850 4. Legal Institutions and Law 851 _Selected Bibliography_ 854 _Topics for Written Themes_ 862 _Questions for Discussion_ 862 CHAPTER XIII. COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR I. Introduction 1. Collective Behavior Defined 865 2. Social Unrest and Collective Behavior 866 3. The Crowd and the Public 867 4. Crowds and Sects 870 5. Sects and Institutions 872 6. Classification of the Materials 874 II. Materials A. Social Contagion 1. An Incident in a Lancashire Cotton Mill 878 2. The Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages. _J. F. C. Hecker_ 879 B. The Crowd 1. The "Animal" Crowd 881 a) The Flock. _Mary Austin_ 881 b) The Herd. _W. H. Hudson_ 883 c) The Pack. _Ernest Thompson Seton_ 886 2. The Psychological Crowd. _Gustave Le Bon_ 887 3. The Crowd Defined. _Robert E. Park_ 893 C. Types of Mass Movements 1. Crowd Excitements and Mass Movements: The Klondike Rush. _T. C. Down_ 895 2. Mass Movements and the Mores: The Woman's Crusade. _Annie Wittenmyer_ 898 3. Mass Movements and Revolution a) The French Revolution. _Gustave Le Bon_ 905 b) Bolshevism. _John Spargo_ 909 4. Mass Movements and Institutions: Methodism. _William E. H. Lecky_ 915 III. Investigations and Problems 1. Social Unrest 924 2. Psychic Epidemics 926 3. Mass Movements 927 4. Revivals, Religious and Linguistic 929 5. Fashion, Reform, and Revolution 933 _Selected Bibliography_ 934 _Topics for Written Themes_ 951 _Questions for Discussion_ 951 CHAPTER XIV. PROGRESS I. Introduction 1. Popular Conceptions of Progress 953 2. The Problem of Progress 956 3. History of the Concept of Progress 958 4. Classification of the Materials 962 II. Materials A. The Concept of Progress 1. The Earliest Conception of Progress. _F. S. Marvin_ 965 2. Progress and Organization. _Herbert Spencer_ 966 3. The Stages of Progress. _Auguste Comte_ 968 4. Progress and the Historical Process. _Leonard T. Hobhouse_ 969 B. Progress and Science 1. Progress and Happiness. _Lester F. Ward_ 973 2. Progress and Prevision. _John Dewey_ 975 3. Progress and the Limits of Scientific Prevision. _Arthur J. Balfour_ 977 4. Eugenics as a Science of Progress. _Francis Galton_ 979 C. Progress and Human Nature 1. The Nature of Man. _George Santayana_ 983 2. Progress and the Mores. _W. G. Sumner_ 983 3. War and Progress. _James Bryce_ 984 4. Progress and the Cosmic Urge a) The _Élan Vitale. Henri Bergson_ 989 b) The _Dunkler Drang. Arthur Schopenhauer_ 994 III. Investigations and Problems 1. Progress and Social Research 1000 2. Indices of Progress 1002 _Selected Bibliography_ 1004 _Topics for Written Themes_ 1010 _Questions for Discussion_ 1010 FOOTNOTES: [1] See _Source Book for Social Origins_. Ethnological materials, psychological standpoint, classified and annotated bibliographies for the interpretation of savage society (Chicago, 1909). CHAPTER I SOCIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES[2] I. SOCIOLOGY AND "SCIENTIFIC" HISTORY Sociology first gained recognition as an independent science with the publication, between 1830 and 1842, of Auguste Comte's _Cours de philosophie positive_. Comte did not, to be sure, create sociology. He did give it a name, a program, and a place among the sciences. Comte's program for the new science proposed an extension to politics and to history of the positive methods of the natural sciences. Its practical aim was to establish government on the secure foundation of an exact science and give to the predictions of history something of the precision of mathematical formulae. We have to contemplate social phenomena as susceptible of prevision, like all other classes, within the limits of exactness compatible with their higher complexity. Comprehending the three characteristics of political science which we have been examining, prevision of social phenomena supposes, first, that we have abandoned the region of metaphysical idealities, to assume the ground of observed realities by a systematic subordination of imagination to observation; secondly, that political conceptions have ceased to be absolute, and have become relative to the variable state of civilization, so that theories, following the natural course of facts, may admit of our foreseeing them; and, thirdly, that permanent political action is limited by determinate laws, since, if social events were always exposed to disturbance by the accidental intervention of the legislator, human or divine, no scientific prevision of them would be possible. Thus, we may concentrate the conditions of the spirit of positive social philosophy on this one great attribute of scientific prevision.[3] Comte proposed, in short, to make government a technical science and politics a profession. He looked forward to a time when legislation, based on a scientific study of human nature, would assume the character of natural law. The earlier and more elementary sciences, particularly physics and chemistry, had given man control over external nature; the last science, sociology, was to give man control over himself. Men were long in learning that Man's power of modifying phenomena can result only from his knowledge of their natural laws; and in the infancy of each science, they believed themselves able to exert an unbounded influence over the phenomena of that science.... Social phenomena are, of course, from their extreme complexity, the last to be freed from this pretension: but it is therefore only the more necessary to remember that the pretension existed with regard to all the rest, in their earliest stage, and to anticipate therefore that social science will, in its turn, be emancipated from the delusion.... It [the existing social science] represents the social action of Man to be indefinite and arbitrary, as was once thought in regard to biological, chemical, physical, and even astronomical phenomena, in the earlier stages of their respective sciences.... The human race finds itself delivered over, without logical protection, to the ill-regulated experimentation of the various political schools, each one of which strives to set up, for all future time, its own immutable type of government. We have seen what are the chaotic results of such a strife; and we shall find that there is no chance of order and agreement but in subjecting social phenomena, like all others, to invariable natural laws, which shall, as a whole, prescribe for each period, with entire certainty, the limits and character of political action: in other words, introducing into the study of social phenomena the same positive spirit which has regenerated every other branch of human speculation.[4] In the present anarchy of political opinion and parties, changes in the existing social order inevitably assume, he urged, the character, at the best, of a mere groping empiricism; at the worst, of a social convulsion like that of the French Revolution. Under the direction of a positive, in place of a speculative or, as Comte would have said, metaphysical science of society, progress must assume the character of an orderly march. It was to be expected, with the extension of exact methods of investigation to other fields of knowledge, that the study of man and of society would become, or seek to become, scientific in the sense in which that word is used in the natural sciences. It is interesting, in this connection, that Comte's first name for sociology was _social physics_. It was not until he had reached the fourth volume of his _Positive Philosophy_ that the word sociological is used for the first time. Comte, if he was foremost, was not first in the search for a positive science of society, which would give man that control over men that he had over external nature. Montesquieu, in his _The Spirit of Laws_, first published in 1747, had distinguished in the organization of society, between form, "the particular structure," and the forces, "the human passions which set it in motion." In his preface to this first epoch-making essay in what Freeman calls "comparative politics," Montesquieu suggests that the uniformities, which he discovered beneath the wide variety of positive law, were contributions not merely to a science of law, but to a science of mankind. I have first of all considered mankind; and the result of my thoughts has been, that amidst such an infinite diversity of laws and manners, they are not solely conducted by the caprice of fancy.[5] Hume, likewise, put politics among the natural sciences.[6] Condorcet wanted to make history positive.[7] But there were, in the period between 1815 and 1840 in France, conditions which made the need of a new science of politics peculiarly urgent. The Revolution had failed and the political philosophy, which had directed and justified it, was bankrupt. France, between 1789 and 1815, had adopted, tried, and rejected no less than ten different constitutions. But during this period, as Saint-Simon noted, society, and the human beings who compose society, had not changed. It was evident that government was not, in any such sense as the philosophers had assumed, a mere artefact and legislative construction. Civilization, as Saint-Simon conceived it, was a part of nature. Social change was part of the whole cosmic process. He proposed, therefore, to make politics a science as positive as physics. The subject-matter of political science, as he conceived it, was not so much political forms as social conditions. History had been literature. It was destined to become a science.[8] Comte called himself Saint-Simon's pupil. It is perhaps more correct to say Saint-Simon formulated the problem for which Comte, in his _Positive Philosophy_, sought a solution. It was Comte's notion that with the arrival of sociology the distinction which had so long existed, and still exists, between philosophy, in which men define their wishes, and natural science, in which they describe the existing order of nature, would disappear. In that case ideals would be defined in terms of reality, and the tragic difference between what men want and what is possible would be effaced. Comte's error was to mistake a theory of progress for progress itself. It is certainly true that as men learn what is, they will adjust their ideals to what is possible. But knowledge grows slowly. Man's knowledge of mankind has increased greatly since 1842. Sociology, "the positive science of humanity," has moved steadily forward in the direction that Comte's program indicated, but it has not yet replaced history. Historians are still looking for methods of investigation which will make history "scientific." No one who has watched the course of history during the last generation can have felt doubt of its tendency. Those of us who read Buckle's first volume when it appeared in 1857, and almost immediately afterwards, in 1859, read the _Origin of Species_ and felt the violent impulse which Darwin gave to the study of natural laws, never doubted that historians would follow until they had exhausted every possible hypothesis to create a science of history. Year after year passed, and little progress has been made. Perhaps the mass of students are more skeptical now than they were thirty years ago of the possibility that such a science can be created. Yet almost every successful historian has been busy with it, adding here a new analysis, a new generalization there; a clear and definite connection where before the rupture of idea was absolute; and, above all, extending the field of study until it shall include all races, all countries, and all times. Like other branches of science, history is now encumbered and hampered by its own mass, but its tendency is always the same, and cannot be other than what it is. That the effort to make history a science may fail is possible, and perhaps probable; but that it should cease, unless for reasons that would cause all science to cease, is not within the range of experience. Historians will not, and even if they would they can not, abandon the attempt. Science itself would admit its own failure if it admitted that man, the most important of all its subjects, could not be brought within its range.[9] Since Comte gave the new science of humanity a name and a point of view, the area of historical investigation has vastly widened and a number of new social sciences have come into existence--ethnology, archaeology, folklore, the comparative studies of cultural materials, i.e., language, mythology, religion, and law, and in connection with and closely related with these, folk-psychology, social psychology, and the psychology of crowds, which latter is, perhaps, the forerunner of a wider and more elaborate political psychology. The historians have been very much concerned with these new bodies of materials and with the new points of view which they have introduced into the study of man and of society. Under the influences of these sciences, history itself, as James Harvey Robinson has pointed out, has had a history. But with the innovations which the new history has introduced or attempted to introduce, it does not appear that there have been any fundamental changes in method or ideology in the science itself. Fifty years have elapsed since Buckle's book appeared, and I know of no historian who would venture to maintain that we had made any considerable advance toward the goal he set for himself. A systematic prosecution of the various branches of social science, especially political economy, sociology, anthropology, and psychology, is succeeding in explaining many things; but history must always remain, from the standpoint of the astronomer, physicist, or chemist, a highly inexact and fragmentary body of knowledge.... History can no doubt be pursued in a strictly scientific spirit, but the data we possess in regard to the past of mankind are not of a nature to lend themselves to organization into an exact science, although, as we shall see, they may yield truths of vital importance.[10] History has not become, as Comte believed it must, an exact science, and sociology has not taken its place in the social sciences. It is important, however, for understanding the mutations which have taken place in sociology since Comte to remember that it had its origin in an effort to make history exact. This, with, to be sure, considerable modifications, is still, as we shall see, an ambition of the science. II. HISTORICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL FACTS Sociology, as Comte conceived it, was not, as it has been characterized, "a highly important point of view," but a fundamental science, i.e., a method of investigation and "a body of discoveries about mankind."[11] In the hierarchy of the sciences, sociology, the last in time, was first in importance. The order was as follows: mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology including psychology, sociology. This order represented a progression from the more elementary to the more complex. It was because history and politics were concerned with the most complex of natural phenomena that they were the last to achieve what Comte called the positive character. They did this in sociology. Many attempts have been made before and since Comte to find a satisfactory classification of the sciences. The order and relation of the sciences is still, in fact, one of the cardinal problems of philosophy. In recent years the notion has gained recognition that the difference between history and the natural sciences is not one of degree, but of kind; not of subject-matter merely, but of method. This difference in method is, however, fundamental. It is a difference not merely in the interpretation but in the _logical character_ of facts. Every historical fact, it is pointed out, is concerned with a unique event. History never repeats itself. If nothing else, the mere circumstance that every event has a _date_ and _location_ would give historical facts an individuality that facts of the abstract sciences do not possess. Because historical facts always are located and dated, and cannot therefore be repeated, they are not subject to experiment and verification. On the other hand, a fact not subject to verification is not a fact for natural science. History, as distinguished from natural history, deals with individuals, i.e., individual events, persons, institutions. Natural science is concerned, not with individuals, but with classes, types, species. All the assertions that are valid for natural science concern classes. An illustration will make this distinction clear. Sometime in October, 1838, Charles Darwin happened to pick up and read Malthus' book on _Population_. The facts of "the struggle for existence," so strikingly presented in that now celebrated volume, suggested an explanation of a problem which had long interested and puzzled him, namely, the origin of species. This is a statement of a historical fact, and the point is that it is not subject to empirical verification. It cannot be stated, in other words, in the form of a hypothesis, which further observation of other men of the same type will either verify or discredit. On the other hand, in his _Descent of Man_, Darwin, discussing the rôle of sexual selection in evolution of the species, makes this observation: "Naturalists are much divided with respect to the object of the singing of birds. Few more careful observers ever lived than Montagu, and he maintained that the 'males of songbirds and of many others do not in general search for the female, but, on the contrary, their business in spring is to perch on some conspicuous spot, breathing out their full and amorous notes, which, by instinct, the female knows and repairs to the spot to choose her mate.'" This is a typical statement of a fact of natural history. It is not, however, the rather vague generality of the statement that makes it scientific. It is its representative character, the character which makes it possible of verification by further observation which makes it a scientific fact. It is from facts of this kind, collected, compared, and classified, irrespective of time or place, that the more general conclusions are drawn, upon which Darwin based his theory of the "descent of man." This theory, as Darwin conceived it, was not an _interpretation_ of the facts but an _explanation_. The relation between history and sociology, as well as the manner in which the more abstract social sciences have risen out of the more concrete, may be illustrated by a comparison between history and geography. Geography as a science is concerned with the visible world, the earth, its location in space, the distribution of the land masses, and of the plants, animals, and peoples upon its surface. The order, at least the fundamental order, which it seeks and finds among the objects it investigates is _spatial_. As soon as the geographer begins to compare and classify the plants, the animals, and the peoples with which he comes in contact, geography passes over into the special sciences, i.e., botany, zoölogy, and anthropology. History, on the other hand, is concerned with a world of events. Not everything that happened, to be sure, is history, but every event that ever was or ever will be significant is history. Geography attempts to reproduce for us the visible world as it exists in space; history, on the contrary, seeks to re-create for us in the present the significance of the past. As soon as historians seek to take events out of their historical setting, that is to say, out of their time and space relations, in order to compare them and classify them; as soon as historians begin to emphasize the typical and representative rather than the unique character of events, history ceases to be history and becomes sociology. The differences here indicated between history and sociology are based upon a more fundamental distinction between the historical and the natural sciences first clearly defined by Windelband, the historian of philosophy, in an address to the faculty of the University of Strassburg in 1894. The distinction between natural science and history begins at the point where we seek to convert facts into knowledge. Here again we observe that the one (natural science) seeks to formulate laws, the other (history) to portray events. In the one case thought proceeds from the description of particulars to the general relations. In the other case it clings to a genial depiction of the individual object or event. For the natural scientist the object of investigation which cannot be repeated never has, as such, scientific value. It serves his purpose only so far as it may be regarded as a type or as a special instance of a class from which the type may be deduced. The natural scientist considers the single case only so far as he can see in it the features which serve to throw light upon a general law. For the historian the problem is to revive and call up into the present, in all its particularity, an event in the past. His aim is to do for an actual event precisely what the artist seeks to do for the object of his imagination. It is just here that we discern the kinship between history and art, between the historian and the writer of literature. It is for this reason that natural science emphasized the abstract; the historian, on the other hand, is interested mainly in the concrete. The fact that natural science emphasizes the abstract and history the concrete will become clearer if we compare the results of the researches of the two sciences. However finespun the conceptions may be which the historical critic uses in working over his materials, the final goal of such study is always to create out of the mass of events a vivid portrait of the past. And what history offers us is pictures of men and of human life, with all the wealth of their individuality, reproduced in all their characteristic vivacity. Thus do the peoples and languages of the past, their forms and beliefs, their struggles for power and freedom, speak to us through the mouth of history. How different it is with the world which the natural sciences have created for us! However concrete the materials with which they started, the goal of these sciences is theories, eventually mathematical formulations of laws of change. Treating the individual, sensuous, changing objects as mere unsubstantial appearances (phenomena), scientific investigation becomes a search for the universal laws which rule the timeless changes of events. Out of this colorful world of the senses, science creates a system of abstract concepts, in which the true nature of things is conceived to exist--a world of colorless and soundless atoms, despoiled of all their earthly sensuous qualities. Such is the triumph of thought over perception. Indifferent to change, science casts her anchor in the eternal and unchangeable. Not the change as such but the unchanging form of change is what she seeks. This raises the question: What is the more valuable for the purposes of knowledge in general, a knowledge of law or a knowledge of events? As far as that is concerned, both scientific procedures may be equally justified. The knowledge of the universal laws has everywhere a practical value in so far as they make possible man's purposeful intervention in the natural processes. That is quite as true of the movements of the inner as of the outer world. In the latter case knowledge of nature's laws has made it possible to create those tools through which the control of mankind over external nature is steadily being extended. Not less for the purposes of the common life are we dependent upon the results of historical knowledge. Man is, to change the ancient form of the expression, the animal who has a history. His cultural life rests on the transmission from generation to generation of a constantly increasing body of historical memories. Whoever proposes to take an active part in this cultural process must have an understanding of history. Wherever the thread is once broken--as history itself proves--it must be painfully gathered up and knitted again into the historical fabric. It is, to be sure, true that it is an economy for human understanding to be able to reduce to a formula or a general concept the common characteristics of individuals. But the more man seeks to reduce facts to concepts and laws, the more he is obliged to sacrifice and neglect the individual. Men have, to be sure, sought, in characteristic modern fashion, "to make of history a natural science." This was the case with the so-called philosophy of history of positivism. What has been the net result of the laws of history which it has given us? A few trivial generalities which justify themselves only by the most careful consideration of their numerous exceptions. On the other hand it is certain that all interest and values of life are concerned with what is unique in men and events. Consider how quickly our appreciation is deadened as some object is multiplied or is regarded as one case in a thousand. "She is not the first" is one of the cruel passages in _Faust_. It is in the individuality and the uniqueness of an object that all our sense of value has its roots. It is upon this fact that Spinoza's doctrine of the conquest of the passions by knowledge rests, since for him knowledge is the submergence of the individual in the universal, the "once for all" into the eternal. The fact that all our livelier appreciations rest upon the unique character of the object is illustrated above all in our relations to persons. Is it not an unendurable thought, that a loved object, an adored person, should have existed at some other time in just the form in which it now exists for us? Is it not horrible and unthinkable that one of us, with just this same individuality should actually have existed in a second edition? What is true of the individual man is quite as true of the whole historical process: it has value only when it is unique. This is the principle which the Christian doctrine successfully maintained, as over against Hellenism in the Patristic philosophy. The middle point of their conception of the world was the fall and the salvation of mankind as a unique event. That was the first and great perception of the inalienable metaphysical right of the historian to preserve for the memory of mankind, in all their uniqueness and individuality, the actual events of life.[12] Like every other species of animal, man has a natural history. Anthropology is the science of man considered as one of the animal species, _Homo sapiens_. History and sociology, on the other hand, are concerned with man as a person, as a "political animal," participating with his fellows in a common fund of social traditions and cultural ideals. Freeman, the English historian, said that history was "past politics" and politics "present history." Freeman uses the word politics in the large and liberal sense in which it was first used by Aristotle. In that broad sense of the word, the political process, by which men are controlled and states governed, and the cultural process, by which man has been domesticated and human nature formed, are not, as we ordinarily assume, different, but identical, procedures. All this suggests the intimate relations which exist between history, politics, and sociology. The important thing, however, is not the identities but the distinctions. For, however much the various disciplines may, in practice, overlap, it is necessary for the sake of clear thinking to have their limits defined. As far as sociology and history are concerned the differences may be summed up in a word. Both history and sociology are concerned with the life of man as man. History, however, seeks to reproduce and interpret concrete events as they actually occurred in time and space. Sociology, on the other hand, seeks to arrive at natural laws and generalizations in regard to human nature and society, irrespective of time and of place. In other words, history seeks to find out what actually happened and how it all came about. Sociology, on the other hand, seeks to explain, on the basis of a study of other instances, the nature of the process involved. By nature we mean just that aspect and character of things in regard to which it is possible to make general statements and formulate laws. If we say, in explanation of the peculiar behavior of some individual, that it is natural or that it is after all "simply human nature," we are simply saying that this behavior is what we have learned to expect of this individual or of human beings in general. It is, in other words, a law. Natural law, as the term is used here, is any statement which describes the behavior of a class of objects or the character of a class of acts. For example, the classic illustration of the so-called "universal proposition" familiar to students of formal logic, "all men are mortal," is an assertion in regard to a class of objects we call men. This is, of course, simply a more formal way of saying that "men die." Such general statements and "laws" get meaning only when they are applied to particular cases, or, to speak again in the terms of formal logic, when they find a place in a syllogism, thus: "Men are mortal. This is a man." But such syllogisms may always be stated in the form of a hypothesis. If this is a man, he is mortal. If a is b, a is also c. This statement, "Human nature is a product of social contact," is a general assertion familiar to students of sociology. This law or, more correctly, hypothesis, applied to an individual case explains the so-called feral man. Wild men, in the proper sense of the word, are not the so-called savages, but the men who have never been domesticated, of which an individual example is now and then discovered. To state a law in the form of a hypothesis serves to emphasize the fact that laws--what we have called natural laws at any rate--are subject to verification and restatement. Under the circumstances the exceptional instance, which compels a restatement of the hypothesis, is more important for the purposes of science than other instances which merely confirm it. Any science which operates with hypotheses and seeks to state facts in such a way that they can be compared and verified by further observation and experiment is, so far as method is concerned, a natural science. III. HUMAN NATURE AND LAW One thing that makes the conception of natural history and natural law important to the student of sociology is that in the field of the social sciences the distinction between natural and moral law has from the first been confused. Comte and the social philosophers in France after the Revolution set out with the deliberate purpose of superseding legislative enactments by laws of human nature, laws which were to be positive and "scientific." As a matter of fact, sociology, in becoming positive, so far from effacing, has rather emphasized the distinctions that Comte sought to abolish. Natural law may be distinguished from all other forms of law by the fact that it aims at nothing more than a description of the behavior of certain types or classes of objects. A description of the way in which a class, i.e., men, plants, animals, or physical objects, may be expected under ordinary circumstances to behave, tells us what we may in a general way expect of any individual member of that class. If natural science seeks to predict, it is able to do so simply because it operates with concepts or class names instead, as is the case with history, with concrete facts and, to use a logical phrase, "existential propositions." That the chief end of science is descriptive formulation has probably been clear to keen analytic minds since the time of Galileo, especially to the great discoverers in astronomy, mechanics, and dynamics. But as a definitely stated conception, corrective of misunderstandings, the view of science as essentially descriptive began to make itself felt about the beginning of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and may be associated with the names of Kirchhoff and Mach. It was in 1876 that Kirchhoff defined the task of mechanics as that of "describing completely and in the simplest manner the motions which take place in nature." Widening this a little, we may say that the aim of science is to describe natural phenomena and occurrences as exactly as possible, as simply as possible, as completely as possible, as consistently as possible, and always in terms which are communicable and verifiable. This is a very different rôle from that of solving the riddles of the universe, and it is well expressed in what Newton said in regard to the law of gravitation: "So far I have accounted for the phenomena presented to us by the heavens and the sea by means of the force of gravity, but I have as yet assigned no cause to this gravity.... I have not been able to deduce from phenomena the _raison d'être_ of the properties of gravity and I have not set up hypotheses." (Newton, _Philosophiae naturalis principia Mathematica_, 1687.) "We must confess," said Prof. J. H. Poynting (1900, p. 616), "that physical laws have greatly fallen off in dignity. No long time ago they were quite commonly described as the Fixed Laws of Nature, and were supposed sufficient in themselves to govern the universe. Now we can only assign to them the humble rank of mere descriptions, often erroneous, of similarities which we believe we have observed.... A law of nature explains nothing, it has no governing power, it is but a descriptive formula which the careless have sometimes personified." It used to be said that "the laws of Nature are the thoughts of God"; now we say that they are the investigator's formulae summing up regularities of recurrence.[13] If natural law aims at prediction it tells us what we can do. Moral laws, on the other hand, tell us, not what we can, but what we ought to do. The civil or municipal law, finally, tells us not what we can, nor what we ought, but what we must do. It is very evident that these three types of law may be very intimately related. We do not know what we ought to do until we know what we can do; and we certainly should consider what men can do before we pass laws prescribing what they must do. There is, moreover, no likelihood that these distinctions will ever be completely abolished. As long as the words "can," "ought," and "must" continue to have any meaning for us the distinctions that they represent will persist in science as well as in common sense. The immense prestige which the methods of the natural sciences have gained, particularly in their application to the phenomena of the physical universe, has undoubtedly led scientific men to overestimate the importance of mere conceptual and abstract knowledge. It has led them to assume that history also must eventually become "scientific" in the sense of the natural sciences. In the meantime the vast collections of historical facts which the industry of historical students has accumulated are regarded, sometimes even by historians themselves, as a sort of raw material, the value of which can only be realized after it has been worked over into some sort of historical generalization which has the general character of scientific and ultimately, mathematical formula. "History," says Karl Pearson, "can never become science, can never be anything but a catalogue of facts rehearsed in a more or less pleasing language until these facts are seen to fall into sequences which can be briefly resumed in scientific formulae."[14] And Henry Adams, in a letter to the American Historical Association already referred to, confesses that history has thus far been a fruitless quest for "the secret which would transform these odds and ends of philosophy into one self-evident, harmonious, and complete system." You may be sure that four out of five serious students of history who are living today have, in the course of their work, felt that they stood on the brink of a great generalization that would reduce all history under a law as clear as the laws which govern the material world. As the great writers of our time have touched one by one the separate fragments of admitted law by which society betrays its character as a subject for science, not one of them can have failed to feel an instant's hope that he might find the secret which would transform these odds and ends of philosophy into one self-evident, harmonious, and complete system. He has seemed to have it, as the Spanish say, in his inkstand. Scores of times he must have dropped his pen to think how one short step, one sudden inspiration, would show all human knowledge; how, in these thickset forests of history, one corner turned, one faint trail struck, would bring him on the highroad of science. Every professor who has tried to teach the doubtful facts which we now call history must have felt that sooner or later he or another would put order in the chaos and bring light into darkness. Not so much genius or favor was needed as patience and good luck. The law was certainly there, and as certainly was in places actually visible, to be touched and handled, as though it were a law of chemistry or physics. No teacher with a spark of imagination or with an idea of scientific method can have helped dreaming of the immortality that would be achieved by the man who should successfully apply Darwin's method to the facts of human history.[15] The truth is, however, that the concrete facts, in which history and geography have sought to preserve the visible, tangible, and, generally speaking, the experiential aspects of human life and the visible universe, have a value irrespective of any generalization or ideal constructions which may be inferred from or built up out of them. Just as none of the investigations or generalizations of individual psychology are ever likely to take the place of biography and autobiography, so none of the conceptions of an abstract sociology, no scientific descriptions of the social and cultural processes, and no laws of progress are likely, in the near future at any rate, to supersede the more concrete facts of history in which are preserved those records of those unique and never fully comprehended aspects of life which we call _events_. It has been the dream of philosophers that theoretical and abstract science could and some day perhaps would succeed in putting into formulae and into general terms all that was significant in the concrete facts of life. It has been the tragic mistake of the so-called intellectuals, who have gained their knowledge from textbooks rather than from observation and research, to assume that science had already realized its dream. But there is no indication that science has begun to exhaust the sources or significance of concrete experience. The infinite variety of external nature and the inexhaustible wealth of personal experience have thus far defied, and no doubt will continue to defy, the industry of scientific classification, while, on the other hand, the discoveries of science are constantly making accessible to us new and larger areas of experience. What has been said simply serves to emphasize the instrumental character of the abstract sciences. History and geography, all of the concrete sciences, can and do measurably enlarge our experience of life. Their very purpose is to arouse new interests and create new sympathies; to give mankind, in short, an environment so vast and varied as will call out and activate all his instincts and capacities. The more abstract sciences, just to the extent that they are abstract and exact, like mathematics and logic, are merely methods and tools for converting experience into knowledge and applying the knowledge so gained to practical uses. IV. HISTORY, NATURAL HISTORY, AND SOCIOLOGY Although it is possible to draw clear distinctions in theory between the purpose and methods of history and sociology, in practice the two forms of knowledge pass over into one another by almost imperceptible gradations. The sociological point of view makes its appearance in historical investigation as soon as the historian turns from the study of "periods" to the study of institutions. The history of institutions, that is to say, the family, the church, economic institutions, political institutions, etc., leads inevitably to comparison, classification, the formation of class names or concepts, and eventually to the formulation of law. In the process, history becomes natural history, and natural history passes over into natural science. In short, history becomes sociology. Westermarck's _History of Human Marriage_ is one of the earliest attempts to write the natural history of a social institution. It is based upon a comparison and classification of marriage customs of widely scattered peoples, living under varied physical and social conditions. What one gets from a survey of this kind is not so much history as a study of human behavior. The history of marriage, as of any other institution, is, in other words, not so much an account of what certain individuals or groups of individuals did at certain times and certain places, as it is a description of the responses of a few fundamental human instincts to a variety of social situations. Westermarck calls this kind of history sociology.[16] It is in the firm conviction that the history of human civilization should be made an object of as scientific a treatment as the history of organic nature that I write this book. Like the phenomena of physical and psychical life those of social life should be classified into certain groups and each group investigated with regard to its origin and development. Only when treated in this way can history lay claim to the rank and honour of a science in the highest sense of the term, as forming an important part of Sociology, the youngest of the principal branches of learning. Descriptive historiography has no higher object than that of offering materials to this science.[17] Westermarck refers to the facts which he has collected in his history of marriage as phenomena. For the explanation of these phenomena, however, he looks to the more abstract sciences. The causes on which social phenomena are dependent fall within the domain of different sciences--Biology, Psychology, or Sociology. The reader will find that I put particular stress upon the psychological causes, which have often been deplorably overlooked, or only imperfectly touched upon. And more especially do I believe that the mere instincts have played a very important part in the origin of social institutions and rules.[18] Westermarck derived most of his materials for the study of marriage from ethnological materials. Ethnologists, students of folklore (German _Völkerkunde_), and archaeology are less certain than the historians of institutions whether their investigations are historical or sociological. Jane Harrison, although she disclaims the title of sociologist, bases her conception of the origin of Greek religion on a sociological theory, the theory namely that "among primitive peoples religion reflects collective feeling and collective thinking." Dionysius, the god of the Greek mysteries, is according to her interpretation a product of the group consciousness. The mystery-god arises out of those instincts, emotions, desires which attend and express life; but these emotions, desires, instincts, in so far as they are religious, are at the outset rather of a group than of individual consciousness.... It is a necessary and most important corollary to this doctrine, that the form taken by the divinity reflects the social structure of the group to which the divinity belongs. Dionysius is the Son of his Mother because he issues from a matrilinear group.[19] This whole study is, in fact, merely an application of Durkheim's conception of "collective representations." Robert H. Lowie, in his recent volume, _Primitive Society_, refers to "ethnologists and other historians," but at the same time asks: "What kind of an historian shall the ethnologist be?" He answers the question by saying that, "If there are laws of social evolution, he [the ethnologist] must assuredly discover them," but at any rate, and first of all, "his duty is to ascertain the course civilization has _actually_ followed.... To strive for the ideals of another branch of knowledge may be positively pernicious, for it can easily lead to that factitious simplification which means falsification." In other words, ethnology, like history, seeks to tell what actually happened. It is bound to avoid abstraction, "over-simplification," and formulae, and these are the ideals of another kind of scientific procedure. As a matter of fact, however, ethnology, even when it has attempted nothing more than a description of the existing cultures of primitive peoples, their present distribution and the order of their succession, has not freed itself wholly from the influence of abstract considerations. Theoretical problems inevitably arise for the solution of which it is necessary to go to psychology and sociology. One of the questions that has arisen in the study, particularly the comparative study, of cultures is: how far any existing cultural trait is borrowed and how far it is to be regarded as of independent origin. In the historical reconstruction of culture the phenomena of distribution play, indeed, an extraordinary part. If a trait occurs everywhere, it might veritably be the product of some universally operative social law. If it is found in a restricted number of cases, it may still have evolved through some such instrumentality acting under specific conditions that would then remain to be determined by analysis of the cultures in which the feature is embedded.... Finally, the sharers of a cultural trait may be of distinct lineage but through contact and borrowing have come to hold in common a portion of their cultures.... Since, as a matter of fact, cultural resemblances abound between peoples of diverse stock, their interpretation commonly narrows to a choice between two alternatives. Either they are due to like causes, whether these can be determined or not; or they are the result of borrowing. A predilection for one or the other explanation has lain at the bottom of much ethnological discussion in the past; and at present influential schools both in England and in continental Europe clamorously insist that all cultural parallels are due to diffusion from a single center. It is inevitable to envisage this moot-problem at the start, since uncompromising championship of either alternative has far-reaching practical consequences. For if every parallel is due to borrowing, then sociological laws, which can be inferred only from independently developing likenesses, are barred. Then the history of religion or social life or technology consists exclusively in a statement of the place of origin of beliefs, customs and implements, and a recital of their travels to different parts of the globe. On the other hand, if borrowing covers only part of the observed parallels, an explanation from like causes becomes at least the ideal goal in an investigation of the remainder.[20] An illustration will exhibit the manner in which problems originally historical become psychological and sociological. Tyler in his _Early History of Mankind_ has pointed out that the bellows used by the negro blacksmiths of continental Africa are of a quite different type from those used by natives of Madagascar. The bellows used by the Madagascar blacksmiths, on the other hand, are exactly like those in use by the Malays of Sumatra and in other parts of the Malay Archipelago. This indication that the natives of Madagascar are of Malay origin is in accordance with other anthropological and ethnological data in regard to these peoples, which prove the fact, now well established, that they are not of African origin. Similarly Boas' study of the Raven cycle of American Indian mythology indicated that these stories originated in the northern part of British Columbia and traveled southward along the coast. One of the evidences of the direction of this progress is the gradual diminution of complexity in the stories as they traveled into regions farther removed from the point of origin. All this, in so far as it seeks to determine the point of origin, direction, speed, and character of changes that take place in cultural materials in the process of diffusion, is clearly history and ethnology. Other questions, however, force themselves inevitably upon the attention of the inquiring student. Why is it that certain cultural materials are more widely and more rapidly diffused than others? Under what conditions does this diffusion take place and why does it take place at all? Finally, what is the ultimate source of customs, beliefs, languages, religious practices, and all the varied technical devices which compose the cultures of different peoples? What are the circumstances and what are the processes by which cultural traits are independently created? Under what conditions do cultural fusions take place and what is the nature of this process? These are all fundamentally problems of human nature, and as human nature itself is now regarded as a product of social intercourse, they are problems of sociology. The cultural processes by which languages, myth, and religion have come into existence among primitive peoples have given rise in Germany to a special science. Folk-psychology (_Völkerpsychologie_) had its origin in an attempt to answer in psychological terms the problems to which a comparative study of cultural materials has given rise. From two different directions ideas of folk-psychology have found their way into modern science. First of all there was a demand from the different social sciences [_Geisteswissenschaften_] for a psychological explanation of the phenomena of social life and history, so far as they were products of social [_geistiger_] interaction. In the second place, psychology itself required, in order to escape the uncertainties and ambiguities of pure introspection, a body of objective materials. Among the social sciences the need for psychological interpretation first manifested itself in the studies of language and mythology. Both of these had already found outside the circle of the philological studies independent fields of investigation. As soon as they assumed the character of comparative sciences it was inevitable that they should be driven to recognize that in addition to the historical conditions, which everywhere determines the concrete form of these phenomena, there had been certain fundamental psychical forces at work in the development of language and myth.[21] The aim of folk-psychology has been, on the whole, to explain the genesis and development of certain cultural forms, i.e., language, myth, and religion. The whole matter may, however, be regarded from a quite different point of view. Gabriel Tarde, for example, has sought to explain, not the genesis, but the transmission and diffusion of these same cultural forms. For Tarde, communication (transmission of cultural forms and traits) is the one central and significant fact of social life. "Social" is just what can be transmitted by imitation. Social groups are merely the centers from which new ideas and inventions are transmitted. Imitation is the social process. There is not a word that you say, which is not the reproduction, now unconscious, but formerly conscious and voluntary, of verbal articulations reaching back to the most distant past, with some special accent due to your immediate surroundings. There is not a religious rite that you fulfil, such as praying, kissing the icon, or making the sign of the cross, which does not reproduce certain traditional gestures and expressions, established through imitation of your ancestors. There is not a military or civil requirement that you obey, nor an act that you perform in your business, which has not been taught you, and which you have not copied from some living model. There is not a stroke of the brush that you make, if you are a painter, nor a verse that you write, if you are a poet, which does not conform to the customs or the prosody of your school, and even your very originality itself is made up of accumulated commonplaces, and aspires to become commonplace in its turn. Thus, the unvarying characteristic of every social fact whatsoever is that it is imitative. And this characteristic belongs exclusively to social facts.[22] Tarde's theory of transmission by imitation may be regarded, in some sense, as complementary, if not supplementary, to Wundt's theory of origins, since he puts the emphasis on the fact of transmission rather than upon genesis. In a paper, "Tendencies in Comparative Philology," read at the Congress of Arts and Sciences at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904, Professor Hanns Oertel, of Yale University, refers to Tarde's theory of imitation as an alternative explanation to that offered by Wundt for "the striking uniformity of sound changes" which students of language have discovered in the course of their investigation of phonetic changes in widely different forms of speech. It seems hard to maintain that the change in a syntactical construction or in the meaning of a word owes its universality to a simultaneous and independent primary change in all the members of a speech-community. By adopting the theory of imitative spread, all linguistic changes may be viewed as one homogeneous whole. In the second place, the latter view seems to bring linguistic changes into line with the other social changes, such as modifications in institutions, beliefs, and customs. For is it not an essential characteristic of a social group that its members are not co-operative in the sense that each member actively participates in the production of every single element which goes to make up either language, or belief, or customs? Distinguishing thus between _primary_ and _secondary_ changes and between the _origin_ of a change and its _spread_, it behooves us to examine carefully into the causes which make the members of a social unit, either consciously or unconsciously, willing to accept the innovation. What is it that determines acceptance or rejection of a particular change? What limits one change to a small area, while it extends the area of another? Before a final decision can be reached in favor of the second theory of imitative spread it will be necessary to follow out in minute detail the mechanism of this process in a number of concrete instances; in other words to fill out the picture of which Tarde (_Les lois de l'imitation_) sketched the bare outlines. If his assumptions prove true, then we should have here a uniformity resting upon other causes than the physical uniformity that appears in the objects with which the natural sciences deal. It would enable us to establish a second group of uniform phenomena which is psycho-physical in its character and rests upon the basis of social suggestion. The uniformities in speech, belief, and institutions would belong to this second group.[23] What is true of the comparative study of languages is true in every other field in which a comparative study of cultural materials has been made. As soon as these materials are studied from the point of view of their similarities rather than from the point of view of their historical connections, problems arise which can only be explained by the more abstract sciences of psychology or sociology. Freeman begins his lectures on _Comparative Politics_ with the statement that "the comparative method of study has been the greatest intellectual achievement of our time. It has carried light and order into whole branches of human knowledge which before were shrouded in darkness and confusion. It has brought a line of argument which reaches moral certainty into a region which before was given over to random guess-work. Into matters which are for the most part incapable of strictly external proof it has brought a form of strictly internal proof which is more convincing, more unerring." Wherever the historian supplements _external_ by _internal_ proof, he is in a way to substitute a sociological explanation for historical interpretation. It is the very essence of the sociological method to be comparative. When, therefore, Freeman uses, in speaking of comparative politics, the following language he is speaking in sociological rather than historical terms: For the purposes then of the study of Comparative Politics, a political constitution is a specimen to be studied, classified, and labelled, as a building or an animal is studied, classified, and labelled by those to whom buildings or animals are objects of study. We have to note the likenesses, striking and unexpected as those likenesses often are, between the political constitutions of remote times and places; and we have, as far as we can, to classify our specimens according to the probable causes of those likenesses.[24] Historically sociology has had its origin in history. It owes its existence as a science to the attempt to apply exact methods to the explanation of historical facts. In the attempt to achieve this, however, it has become something quite different from history. It has become like psychology with which it is most intimately related, a natural and relatively abstract science, and auxiliary to the study of history, but not a substitute for it. The whole matter may be summed up in this general statement: history interprets, natural science explains. It is upon the interpretation of the facts of experience that we formulate our creeds and found our faiths. Our explanations of phenomena, on the other hand, are the basis for technique and practical devices for controlling nature and human nature, man and the physical world. V. THE SOCIAL ORGANISM: HUMANITY OR LEVIATHAN? After Comte the first great name in the history of sociology is Spencer. It is evident in comparing the writings of these two men that, in crossing the English Channel, sociology has suffered a sea change. In spite of certain similarities in their points of view there are profound and interesting differences. These differences exhibit themselves in the different ways in which they use the term "social organism." Comte calls society a "collective organism" and insists, as Spencer does, upon the difference between an organism like a family, which is made up of independent individuals, and an organism like a plant or an animal, which is a physiological unit in which the different organs are neither free nor conscious. But Spencer, if he points out the differences between the social and the biological organisms, is interested in the analogy. Comte, on the other hand, while he recognizes the analogy, feels it important to emphasize the distinctions. Society for Comte is not, as Lévy-Bruhl puts it, "a polyp." It has not even the characteristics of an animal colony in which the individuals are physically bound together, though physiologically independent. On the contrary, "this 'immense organism' is especially distinguished from other beings in that it is made up of separable elements of which each one can feel its own co-operation, can will it, or even withhold it, so long as it remains a direct one."[25] On the other hand, Comte, although he characterized the social _consensus_ and solidarity as "collective," nevertheless thought of the relations existing between human beings in society--in the family, for example, which he regards as the unit and model of all social relations--as closer and more intimate than those which exist between the organs of a plant or an animal. The individual, as Comte expressed it, is an abstraction. Man exists as man only by participation in the life of humanity, and "although the individual elements of society appear to be more separable than those of a living being, the social _consensus_ is still closer than the vital."[26] Thus the individual man was, in spite of his freedom and independence, in a very real sense "an organ of the Great Being" and the great being was humanity. Under the title of humanity Comte included not merely all living human beings, i.e., the human race, but he included all that body of tradition, knowledge, custom, cultural ideas and ideals, which make up the social inheritance of the race, an inheritance into which each of us is born, to which we contribute, and which we inevitably hand on through the processes of education and tradition to succeeding generations. This is what Comte meant by the social organism. If Comte thought of the social organism, the great being, somewhat mystically as itself an individual and a person, Herbert Spencer, on the other hand, thought of it realistically as a great animal, a leviathan, as Hobbes called it, and a very low-order leviathan at that.[27] Spencer's manner of looking at the social organism may be illustrated in what he says about growth in "social aggregates." When we say that growth is common to social aggregates and organic aggregates, we do not thus entirely exclude community with inorganic aggregates. Some of these, as crystals, grow in a visible manner; and all of them on the hypothesis of evolution, have arisen by integration at some time or other. Nevertheless, compared with things we call inanimate, living bodies and societies so conspicuously exhibit augmentation of mass, that we may fairly regard this as characterizing them both. Many organisms grow throughout their lives; and the rest grow throughout considerable parts of their lives. Social growth usually continues either up to times when the societies divide, or up to times when they are overwhelmed. Here, then, is the first trait by which societies ally themselves with the organic world and substantially distinguish themselves from the inorganic world.[28] In this same way, comparing the characteristic general features of "social" and "living bodies," noting likeness and differences, particularly with reference to complexity of structure, differentiation of function, division of labor, etc., Spencer gives a perfectly naturalistic account of the characteristic identities and differences between societies and animals, between sociological and biological organizations. It is in respect to the division of labor that the analogy between societies and animals goes farthest and is most significant. This division of labour, first dwelt upon by political economists as a social phenomenon, and thereupon recognized by biologists as a phenomenon of living bodies, which they called the "physiological division of labour," is that which in the society, as in the animal, makes it a living whole. Scarcely can I emphasize enough the truth that in respect of this fundamental trait, a social organism and an individual organism are entirely alike.[29] The "social aggregate," although it is "discrete" instead of "concrete"--that is to say, composed of spatially separated units--is nevertheless, because of the mutual dependence of these units upon one another as exhibited in the division of labor, to be regarded as a living whole. It is "a living whole" in much the same way that the plant and animal communities, of which the ecologists are now writing so interestingly, are a living whole; not because of any intrinsic relations between the individuals who compose them, but because each individual member of the community, finds in the community as a whole, a suitable milieu, an environment adapted to his needs and one to which he is able to adapt himself. Of such a society as this it may indeed be said, that it "exists for the benefit of its members, not its members for the benefit of society. It has ever to be remembered that great as may be the efforts made for the prosperity of the body politic, yet the claims of the body politic are nothing in themselves, and become something only in so far as they embody the claims of its component individuals."[30] In other words, the social organism, as Spencer sees it, exists not for itself but for the benefit of the separate organs of which it is composed, whereas, in the case of biological organism the situation is reversed. There the parts manifestly exist for the whole and not the whole for the parts. Spencer explains this paradoxical conclusion by the reflection that in social organisms sentience is not localized as it is in biological organisms. This is, in fact, the cardinal difference between the two. There is no _social sensorium_. In the one (the individual), consciousness is concentrated in a small part of the aggregate. In the other (society), it is diffused throughout the aggregate: all the units possess the capacities for happiness and misery, if not in equal degrees, still in degrees that approximate. As then, there is no social sensorium, the welfare of the aggregate, considered apart from that of the units, is not an end to be sought. The society exists for the benefit of its members; not its members for the benefit of the society.[31] The point is that society, _as distinct from the individuals_ who compose it, has no apparatus for feeling pain or pleasure. There are no _social_ sensations. Perceptions and mental imagery are individual and not social phenomena. Society lives, so to speak, only in its separate organs or members, and each of these organs has its own brain and organ of control which gives it, among other things, the power of independent locomotion. This is what is meant when society is described as a collectivity. VI. SOCIAL CONTROL AND SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT The fundamental problem which Spencer's paradox raises is that of social control. How does a mere collection of individuals succeed in acting in a corporate and consistent way? How in the case of specific types of social group, for example an animal herd, a boys' gang, or a political party, does the group control its individual members; the whole dominate the parts? What are the specific _sociological_ differences between plant and animal communities and human society? What kind of differences are _sociological differences_, and what do we mean in general by the expression "sociological" anyway? Since Spencer's essay on the social organism was published in 1860,[32] this problem and these questions, in one form or another, have largely absorbed the theoretical interest of students of society. The attempts to answer them may be said to have created the existing schools into which sociologists are divided. A certain school of writers, among them Paul Lilienfeld, Auguste Schäffle, and René Worms, have sought to maintain, to extend, or modify the biological analogy first advanced by Spencer. In doing so they have succeeded sometimes in restating the problem but have not solved it. René Worms has been particularly ingenious in discovering identities and carrying out the parallelism between the social and the biological organizations. As a result he has reached the conclusion that, as between a social and a biological organism, there is no difference of kind but only one of degree. Spencer, who could not find a "social sensorium," said that society was conscious only in the individuals who composed it. Worms, on the other hand, declares that we must assume the existence of a social consciousness, even without a sensorium, because we see everywhere the evidence of its existence. Force manifests itself by its effects. If there are certain phenomena that we can only make intelligible, provided we regard them as the products of collective social consciousness, then we are bound to assume the existence of such a consciousness. There are many illustrations ... the attitude for example, of a crowd in the presence of a crime. Here the sentiment of indignation is unanimous. A murderer, if taken in the act, will get summary justice from the ordinary crowd. That method of rendering justice, "lynch law," is deplorable, but it illustrates the intensity of the sentiment which, at the moment, takes possession of the social consciousness. Thus, always in the presence of great and common danger the collective consciousness of society is awakened; for example France of the Valois after the Treaty of Troyes, or modern France before the invasion of 1791 and before the German invasion in 1870; or Germany, herself, after the victories of Napoleon I. This sentiment of national unity, born of resistance to the stranger, goes so far that a large proportion of the members of society do not hesitate to give their lives for the safety and glory of the state, at such a moment the individual comprehends that he is only a small part of a large whole and that he belongs to the collectivity of which he is a member. The proof that he is entirely penetrated by the social consciousness is the fact that in order to maintain its existence he is willing to sacrifice his own.[33] There is no question that the facts of crowd excitement, of class, caste, race, and national consciousness, do show the way in which the individual members of a group are, or seem to be, dominated, at certain moments and under certain circumstances, by the group as a whole. Worms gives to this fact, and the phenomena which accompany it, the title "collective consciousness." This gives the problem a name, to be sure, but not a solution. What the purpose of sociology requires is a description and an explanation. Under what conditions, precisely, does this phenomenon of collective consciousness arise? What are the mechanisms--physical, physiological, and social--by which the group imposes its control, or what seems to be control, upon the individual members of the group? This question had arisen and been answered by political philosophers, in terms of political philosophy, long before sociology attempted to give an objective account of the matter. Two classic phrases, Aristotle's "Man is a political animal" and Hobbes's "War of each against all," _omnes bellum omnium_, measure the range and divergence of the schools upon this topic. According to Hobbes, the existing moral and political order--that is to say the organization of control--is in any community a mere artefact, a control resting on consent, supported by a prudent calculation of consequences, and enforced by an external power. Aristotle, on the other hand, taught that man was made for life in society just as the bee is made for life in the hive. The relations between the sexes, as well as those between mother and child, are manifestly predetermined in the physiological organization of the individual man and woman. Furthermore, man is, by his instincts and his inherited dispositions, predestined to a social existence beyond the intimate family circle. Society must be conceived, therefore, as a part of nature, like a beaver's dam or the nests of birds. As a matter of fact, man and society present themselves in a double aspect. They are at the same time products of nature and of human artifice. Just as a stone hammer in the hand of a savage may be regarded as an artificial extension of the natural man, so tools, machinery, technical and administrative devices, including the formal organization of government and the informal "political machine," may be regarded as more or less artificial extensions of the natural social group. So far as this is true, the conflict between Hobbes and Aristotle is not absolute. Society is a product both of nature and of design, of instinct and of reason. If, in its formal aspect, society is therefore an artefact, it is one which connects up with and has its roots in nature and in human nature. This does not explain social control but simplifies the problem of corporate action. It makes clear, at any rate, that as members of society, men act as they do elsewhere from motives they do not fully comprehend, in order to fulfil aims of which they are but dimly or not at all conscious. Men are activated, in short, not merely by interests, in which they are conscious of the end they seek, but also by instincts and sentiments, the source and meaning of which they do not clearly comprehend. Men work for wages, but they will die to preserve their status in society, or commit murder to resent an insult. When men act thus instinctively, or under the influence of the mores, they are usually quite unconscious of the sources of the impulses that animate them or of the ends which are realized through their acts. Under the influence of the mores men act typically, and so representatively, not as individuals but as members of a group. The simplest type of social group in which we may observe "social control" is in a herd or a flock. The behavior of a herd of cattle is, to be sure, not so uniform nor so simple a matter as it seems to the casual observer, but it may be very properly taken as an illustration of the sort of follow-the-leader uniformity that is more or less characteristic of all social groups. We call the disposition to live in the herd and to move in masses, gregariousness, and this gregariousness is ordinarily regarded as an instinct and undoubtedly is pretty largely determined in the original nature of gregarious animals. There is a school of thought which seeks in the so-called gregarious instincts an explanation of all that is characteristically social in the behavior of human beings. The cardinal quality of the herd is homogeneity. It is clear that the great advantage of the social habit is to enable large numbers to act as one, whereby in the case of the hunting gregarious animal strength in pursuit and attack is at once increased to beyond that of the creatures preyed upon, and in protective socialism the sensitiveness of the new unit to alarms is greatly in excess of that of the individual member of the flock. To secure these advantages of homogeneity, it is evident that the members of the herd must possess sensitiveness to the behaviour of their fellows. The individual isolated will be of no meaning, the individual as a part of the herd will be capable of transmitting the most potent impulses. Each member of the flock tending to follow its neighbour and in turn to be followed, each is in some sense capable of leadership; but no lead will be followed that departs widely from normal behaviour. A lead will be followed only from its resemblance to the normal. If the leader go so far ahead as definitely to cease to be in the herd, he will necessarily be ignored. The original in conduct, that is to say, resistiveness to the voice of the herd, will be suppressed by natural selection; the wolf which does not follow the impulses of the herd will be starved; the sheep which does not respond to the flock will be eaten. Again, not only will the individual be responsive to impulses coming from the herd, but he will treat the herd as his normal environment. The impulse to be in and always to remain with the herd will have the strongest instinctive weight. Anything which tends to separate him from his fellows, as soon as it becomes perceptible as such, will be strongly resisted.[34] According to sociologists of this school, public opinion, conscience, and authority in the state rest upon the natural disposition of the animal in the herd to conform to "the decrees of the herd." Conscience, then, and the feelings of guilt and of duty are the peculiar possessions of the gregarious animal. A dog and a cat caught in the commission of an offence will both recognize that punishment is coming; but the dog, moreover, knows that he has done _wrong_, and he will come to be punished, unwillingly it is true, and as if dragged along by some power outside him, while the cat's sole impulse is to escape. The rational recognition of the sequence of act and punishment is equally clear to the gregarious and to the solitary animal, but it is the former only who understands that he has committed a _crime_, who has, in fact, the _sense of sin_.[35] The concepts upon which this explanation of society rests is _homogeneity_. If animals or human beings act under all circumstances in the same way, they will act or seem to act, as if they had a common purpose. If everybody follows the crowd, if everyone wears the same clothes, utters the same trite remarks, rallies to the same battles cries and is everywhere dominated, even in his most characteristically individual behavior, by an instinctive and passionate desire to conform to an external model and to the wishes of the herd, then we have an explanation of everything characteristic of society--except the variants, the nonconformists, the idealists, and the rebels. The herd instinct may be an explanation of conformity but it does not explain variation. Variation is an important fact in society as it is in nature generally. Homogeneity and like-mindedness are, as explanations of the social behavior of men and animals, very closely related concepts. In "like response to like stimulus," we may discern the beginning of "concerted action" and this, it is urged, is the fundamental social fact. This is the "like-mindedness" theory of society which has been given wide popularity in the United States through the writings of Professor Franklin Henry Giddings. He describes it as a "developed form of the instinct theory, dating back to Aristotle's aphorism that man is a political animal." Any given stimulus may happen to be felt by more than one organism, at the same or at different times. Two or more organisms may respond to the same given stimulus simultaneously or at different times. They may respond to the same given stimulus in like or in unlike ways; in the same or in different degrees; with like or with unlike promptitude; with equal or with unequal persistence. I have attempted to show that in like response to the same given stimulus we have the beginning, the absolute origin, of all concerted activity--the inception of every conceivable form of co-operation; while in unlike response, and in unequal response, we have the beginning of all those processes of individuation, of differentiation, of competition, which in their endlessly varied relations to combination, to co-operation, bring about the infinite complexity of organized social life.[36] Closely related, logically if not historically, to Giddings' conception of "like-mindedness" is Gabriel Tarde's conception of "imitation." If for Giddings "like response to like stimulus" is the fundamental social fact, for Tarde "imitation" is the process through which alone society exists. Society, said Tarde, exists in imitation. As a matter of fact, Tarde's doctrine may be regarded as a corollary to Giddings'. Imitation is the process by which that like-mindedness, by which Giddings explains corporate action, is effected. Men are not born like-minded, they are made so by imitation. This minute inter-agreement of minds and wills, which forms the basis of the social life, even in troublous times--this presence of so many common ideas, ends, and means, in the minds and wills of all members of the same society at any given moment--is not due, I maintain, to organic heredity, which insures the birth of men quite similar to one another, nor to mere identity of geographical environment, which offers very similar resources to talents that are nearly equal; it is rather the effect of that suggestion-imitation process which, starting from one primitive creature possessed of a single idea or act, passed this copy on to one of its neighbors, then to another, and so on. Organic needs and spiritual tendencies exist in us only as potentialities which are realizable under the most diverse forms, in spite of their primitive similarity; and, among all these possible realizations, the indications furnished by some first initiator who is imitated determine which one is actually chosen.[37] In contrast with these schools, which interpret action in terms of the herd and the flock--i.e., men act together because they act alike--is the theory of Émile Durkheim who insists that the social group has real corporate existence and that, in human societies at least, men act together not because they have like purposes but a _common purpose_. This common purpose imposes itself upon the individual members of a society at the same time as an ideal, a wish and an obligation. Conscience, the sense of obligation which members of a group feel only when there is conflict between the wishes of the individual and the will of the group, is a manifestation, _in_ the individual consciousness, of the collective mind and the group will. The mere fact that in a panic or a stampede, human beings will sometimes, like the Gadarene swine, rush down a steep place into the sea, is a very positive indication of like-mindedness but not an evidence of a common purpose. The difference between an animal herd and a human crowd is that the crowd, what Le Bon calls the "organized crowd," the crowd "in being" to use a nautical term, is dominated by an impulse to achieve a purpose that is common to every member of the group. Men in a state of panic, on the other hand, although equally under the influence of the mass excitement, act not corporately but individually, each individual wildly seeking to save his own skin. Men in a state of panic have like purposes but no common purpose. If the "organized crowd," "the psychological crowd," is a society "in being," the panic and the stampede is a society "in dissolution." Durkheim does not use these illustrations nor does he express himself in these terms. The conception of the "organized" or "psychological" crowd is not his, but Le Bon's. The fact is that Durkheim does not think of a society as a mere sum of particulars. Neither does he think of the sentiments nor the opinions which dominate the social group as private and subjective. When individuals come together _under certain circumstances_, the opinions and sentiments which they held as individuals are modified and changed under the influence of the new contacts. Out of the fermentation which association breeds, a new something (_autre chose_) is produced, an opinion and sentiment, in other words, that is not the sum of, and not like, the sentiments and opinions of the individuals from which it is derived. This new sentiment and opinion is public, and social, and the evidence of this is the fact that it imposes itself upon the individuals concerned as something more or less external to them. They feel it either as an inspiration, a sense of personal release and expansion, or as an obligation, a pressure and an inhibition. The characteristic social phenomenon is just this control by the group as a whole of the individuals that compose it. This fact of control, then, is the fundamental social fact. Now society also gives the sensation of a perpetual dependence. Since it has a nature which is peculiar to itself and different from our individual nature, it pursues ends which are likewise special to it; but, as it cannot attain them except through our intermediacy; it imperiously demands our aid. It requires that, forgetful of our own interests, we make ourselves its servitors, and it submits us to every sort of inconvenience, privation, and sacrifice, without which social life would be impossible. It is because of this that at every instant we are obliged to submit ourselves to rules of conduct and of thought which we have neither made nor desired, and which are sometimes even contrary to our most fundamental inclinations and instincts. Even if society were unable to maintain these concessions and sacrifices from us except by a material constraint, it might awaken in us only the idea of a physical force to which we must give way of necessity, instead of that of a moral power such as religions adore. But as a matter of fact, the empire which it holds over consciences is due much less to the physical supremacy of which it has the privilege than to the moral authority with which it is invested. If we yield to its orders, it is not merely because it is strong enough to triumph over our resistance; it is primarily because it is the object of a venerable respect. Now the ways of action to which society is strongly enough attached to impose them upon its members, are, by that very fact, marked with a distinctive sign provocative of respect. Since they are elaborated in common, the vigour with which they have been thought of by each particular mind is retained in all the other minds, and reciprocally. The representations which express them within each of us have an intensity which no purely private states of consciousness could ever attain; for they have the strength of the innumerable individual representations which have served to form each of them. It is society who speaks through the mouths of those who affirm them in our presence; it is society whom we hear in hearing them; and the voice of all has an accent which that of one alone could never have. The very violence with which society reacts, by way of blame or material suppression, against every attempted dissidence, contributes to strengthening its empire by manifesting the common conviction through this burst of ardour. In a word, when something is the object of such a state of opinion, the representation which each individual has of it gains a power of action from its origins and the conditions in which it was born, which even those feel who do not submit themselves to it. It tends to repel the representations which contradict it, and it keeps them at a distance; on the other hand it commands those acts which will realize it, and it does so, not by a material coercion or by the perspective of something of this sort, but by the simple radiation of the mental energy which it contains.[38] But the same social forces, which are found organized in public opinion, in religious symbols, in social convention, in fashion, and in science--for "if a people did not have faith in science all the scientific demonstrations in the world would be without any influence whatsoever over their minds"--are constantly re-creating the old order, making new heroes, overthrowing old gods, creating new myths, and imposing new ideals. And this is the nature of the cultural process of which sociology is a description and an explanation. VII. SOCIAL CONTROL AND THE COLLECTIVE MIND Durkheim is sometimes referred to, in comparison with other contemporary sociologists, as a realist. This is a reference to the controversy of the medieval philosophers in regard to the nature of concepts. Those who thought a concept a mere class-name applied to a group of objects because of some common characteristics were called nominalists. Those who thought the concept was _real_, and not the name of a mere collection of individuals, were realists. In this sense Tarde and Giddings and all those writers who think of society as a collection of actually or potentially _like-minded_ persons would be nominalists, while other writers like Simmel, Ratzenhofer, and Small, who think of society in terms of interaction and social process may be called realists. They are realist, at any rate, in so far as they think of the members of a society as bound together in a system of mutual influences which has sufficient character to be described as a process. Naturally this process cannot be conceived of in terms of space or physical proximity alone. Social contacts and social forces are of a subtler sort but not less real than physical. We know, for example, that vocations are largely determined by personal competition; that the solidarity of what Sumner calls the "in" or "we" group is largely determined by its conflict with the "out" or "other" groups. We know, also, that the status and social position of any individual inside any social group is determined by his relation to all other members of that group and eventually of all other groups. These are illustrations of what is meant concretely by social interaction and social process and it is considerations of this kind which seem to justify certain writers in thinking of individual persons as "parts" and of society as a "whole" in some other sense than that in which a dust heap is a whole of which the individual particles are parts. Society not only continues to exist _by_ transmission, _by_ communication, but it may fairly be said to exist _in_ transmission, _in_ communication. There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication.[39] Communication, if not identical with, is at least a form of, what has been referred to here as social interaction. But communication as Dewey has defined the term, is something more and different than what Tarde calls "inter-stimulation." Communication is a process by which we "transmit" an experience from an individual to another but it is also a process by which these same individuals get a common experience. Try the experiment of communicating, with fullness and accuracy, some experience to another, especially if it be somewhat complicated, and you will find your own attitude toward your experience changing; otherwise you resort to expletives and ejaculations. Except in dealing with commonplaces and catch phrases one has to assimilate, imaginatively, something of another's experience in order to tell him intelligently of one's own experience. All communication is like art.[40] Not only does communication involve the creation, out of experiences that are individual and private, of an experience that is common and public but such a common experience becomes the basis for a common and public existence in which every individual, to greater or less extent, participates and is himself a part. Furthermore, as a part of this common life, there grows up a body of custom, convention, tradition, ceremonial, language, social ritual, public opinion, in short all that Sumner includes under the term "mores" and all that ethnologists include under the term "culture." The thing that characterizes Durkheim and his followers is their insistence upon the fact that all cultural materials, and expressions, including language, science, religion, public opinion, and law, since they are the products of social intercourse and social interaction, are bound to have an objective, public, and social character such as no product of an individual mind either has or can have. Durkheim speaks of these mental products, individual and social, as representations. The characteristic product of the individual mind is the percept, or, as Durkheim describes it, the "individual representation." The percept is, and remains, a private and an individual matter. No one can reproduce, or communicate to another, subjective impressions or the mental imagery in the concrete form in which they come to the individual himself. My neighbor may be able to read my "thoughts" and understand the motives that impel me to action better than I understand myself, but he cannot reproduce the images, with just the fringes of sense and feeling with which they come to my mind. The characteristic product of a group of individuals, in their efforts to communicate is, on the other hand, something objective and understood, that is, a gesture, a sign, a symbol, a word, or a concept in which an experience or purpose that was private becomes public. This gesture, sign, symbol, concept, or representation in which a common object is not merely indicated, but in a sense created, Durkheim calls a "collective representation." Dewey's description of what takes place in communication may be taken as a description of the process by which these collective representations come into existence. "To formulate an experience," as Dewey says, "requires getting outside of it, seeing it as another would see it, considering what points of contact it has with the life of another so that it may be gotten into such form that he can appreciate its meaning." The result of such a conscious effort to communicate an experience is to transform it. The experience, after it has been communicated, is not the same for either party to the communication. To publish or to give publicity to an event is to make of that event something other than it was before publication. Furthermore, the event as published is still something different from the event as reflected in the minds of the individuals to whom the publication is addressed. It will be evident upon reflection that public opinion is not the opinion of all, nor even of a majority of the persons who compose a public. As a matter of fact, what we ordinarily mean by public opinion is never the opinion of anyone in particular. It is composite opinion, representing a general tendency of the public as a whole. On the other hand, we recognize that public opinion exists, even when we do not know of any individual person, among those who compose the public, whose private and personal opinion exactly coincides with that of the public of which he or she is a part. Nevertheless, the private and personal opinion of an individual who participates in making public opinion is influenced by the opinions of those around him, and by public opinion. In this sense every opinion is public opinion. Public opinion, in respect to the manner in which it is formed and the manner in which it exists--that is to say relatively independent of the individuals who co-operate to form it--has the characteristics of collective representation in general. Collective representations are objective, in just the sense that public opinion is objective, and they impose themselves upon the individual as public opinion does, as relatively but not wholly external forces--stabilizing, standardizing, conventionalizing, as well as stimulating, extending, and generalizing individual representations, percepts. The collective representations are exterior to the individual consciousness because they are not derived from the individuals taken in isolation but from their convergence and union (concours).... Doubtless, in the elaboration of the common result, each (individual) bears his due share; but the private sentiments do not become social except by combining under the action of the forces _sui generis_ which association develops. As a result of these combinations, and of the mutual alterations which result therefrom, they (the private sentiments) become something else (_autre chose_). A chemical synthesis results, which concentrates, unifies, the elements synthetized, and by that very process transforms them.... The resultant derived therefrom extends then beyond (_deborde_) the individual mind as the whole is greater than the part. To know really what it is, one must take the aggregate in its totality. It is this that thinks, that feels, that wills, although it may not be able to will, feel, or act save by the intermediation of individual consciousnesses.[41] This, then, after nearly a century of criticism, is what remains of Comte's conception of the social organism. If society is, as the realists insist, anything more than a collection of like-minded individuals, it is so because of the existence (1) of a social process and (2) of a body of tradition and opinion--the products of this process--which has a relatively objective character and imposes itself upon the individual as a form of control, social control. This process and its product are the social consciousness. The social consciousness, in its double aspect as process and product, is the social organism. The controversy between the realists and the nominalists reduces itself apparently to this question of the objectivity of social tradition and of public opinion. For the present we may let it rest there. Meanwhile the conceptions of the social consciousness and the social mind have been adopted by writers on social topics who are not at all concerned with their philosophical implications or legitimacy. We are just now seeing the first manifestations of two new types of sociology which call themselves, the one rural and the other urban sociology. Writers belonging to these two schools are making studies of what they call the "rural" and the "urban" minds. In using these terms they are not always quite certain whether the mind of which they are thinking is a collective mind, in Durkheim's realistic sense of the word, or whether it is the mind of the typical inhabitant of a rural or an urban community, an instance of "like-mindedness," in the sense of Giddings and the nominalists. A similar usage of the word "mind," "the American mind," for example, is common in describing characteristic differences in the attitudes of different nations and their "nationals." The origin of the phrase, "the American mind," was political. Shortly after the middle of the eighteenth century, there began to be a distinctly American way of regarding the debatable question of British Imperial control. During the period of the Stamp Act agitation our colonial-bred politicians and statesmen made the discovery that there was a mode of thinking and feeling which was native--or had by that time become a second nature--to all the colonists. Jefferson, for example, employs those resonant and useful words "the American mind" to indicate that throughout the American colonies an essential unity of opinion had been developed as regards the chief political question of the day.[42] Here again, it is not quite clear, whether the American mind is a name for a characteristic uniformity in the minds of individual Americans; whether the phrase refers rather to an "essential unity of opinion," or whether, finally, it is intended to cover both the uniformity and the unity characteristic of American opinion. Students of labor problems and of the so-called class struggle, on the other hand, use the term "psychology" in much the same way that the students of rural and urban sociology use the term "mind." They speak of the "psychology" of the laboring class, the "psychology" of the capitalistic class, in cases where psychology seems to refer indifferently either to the social attitudes of the members of a class, or to attitude and morale of the class as a whole. The terms "class-conscious" and "class-consciousness," "national" and "racial" consciousness are now familiar terms to students although they seem to have been used, first of all, by the so-called "intelligentsia", who have been the leaders in the various types of mass movement to which these terms apply. "Consciousness," in the sense in which it is here used, has a similar, though somewhat different, connotation than the word "mind" when applied to a group. It is a name not merely for the attitudes characteristic of certain races or classes, but for these attitudes when they are in the focus of attention of the group, in the "fore-consciousness" to use a Freudian term. In this sense "conscious" suggests not merely the submergence of the individual and the consequent solidarity of the group, but it signifies a mental mobilization and preparedness of the individual and of the group for collective or corporate action. To be class-conscious is to be prepared to act in the sense of that class. There is implicit in this rather ambiguous popular usage of the terms "social mind" and "social consciousness" a recognition of the dual aspect of society and of social groups. Society may be regarded at the same time from an individualistic and a collectivistic point of view. Looking at it from the point of view of the individual, we regard as social just that character of the individual which has been imparted to, and impressed upon, him as a result of his participation in the life of the group. Social psychology, from Baldwin's first studies of the development of personality in the child to Ellwood's studies of the society in its "psychological aspects" has been mainly concerned with the investigation of the effects upon the individual of his contacts with other individuals.[43] On the other hand, we have had, in the description of the crowd and the public by Le Bon, Tarde, Sighele, and their successors, the beginnings of a study of collective behavior and "corporate action." In these two points of view we seem to have again the contrast and the opposition, already referred to, between the nominalistic and realistic conceptions of society. Nominalism represented by social psychology emphasizes, or seems to emphasize, the independence of the individual. Realism, represented by collective psychology, emphasizes the control of the group over the individual, of the whole over the part. While it is true that society has this double aspect, the individual and the collective, it is the assumption of this volume that the touchstone of society, the thing that distinguishes a mere collection of individuals from a society is not like-mindedness, but corporate action. We may apply the term social to any group of individuals which is capable of consistent action, that is to say, action, consciously or unconsciously, directed to a common end. This existence of a common end is perhaps all that can be legitimately included in the conception "organic" as applied to society. From this point of view social control is the central fact and the central problem of society. Just as psychology may be regarded as an account of the manner in which the individual organism, as a whole, exercises control over its parts or rather of the manner in which the parts co-operate together to carry on the corporate existence of the whole, so sociology, speaking strictly, is a point of view and a method for investigating the processes by which individuals are inducted into and induced to co-operate in some sort of permanent corporate existence which we call society. To put this emphasis on corporate action is not to overlook the fact that through this corporate action the individual member of society is largely formed, not to say created. It recognized, however, that if corporate action tends to make of the individual an instrument, as well as an organic part, of the social group, it does not do this by making him "like" merely; it may do so by making him "different." The division of labor, in making possible an ever larger and wider co-operation among men, has indirectly multiplied individual diversities. What like-mindedness must eventually mean, if it is to mean anything, is the existence of so much of a consensus among the individuals of a group as will permit the group to act. This, then, is what is meant here by society, the social organism and the social group. Sociology, so far as it can be regarded as a fundamental science and not mere congeries of social-welfare programs and practices, may be described as the science of collective behavior. With this definition it is possible to indicate in a general and schematic way its relation to the other social sciences. Historically, sociology has had its origin in history. History has been and is the great mother science of all the social sciences. Of history it may be said nothing human is foreign to it. Anthropology, ethnology, folklore, and archaeology have grown up largely, if not wholly, to complete the task which history began and answer the questions which historical investigation first raised. In history and the sciences associated with it, i.e., ethnology, folklore, and archaeology, we have the concrete records of that human nature and experience which sociology has sought to explain. In the same sense that history is the concrete, sociology is the abstract, science of human experience and human nature. [Illustration: FIG. 1] On the other hand, the technical (applied) social sciences, that is, politics, education, social service, and economics--so far as economics may be regarded as the science of business--are related to sociology in a different way. They are, to a greater or lesser extent, applications of principles which it is the business of sociology and of psychology to deal with explicitly. In so far as this is true, sociology may be regarded as fundamental to the other social sciences. VIII. SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH Among the schools which, since Comte and Spencer, have divided sociological thinking between them the realists have, on the whole, maintained the tradition of Comte; the nominalists, on the other hand, have preserved the style and manner, if not the substance, of Spencer's thought. Later writers, however, realist as well as nominalist, have directed their attention less to society than to societies, i.e., social groups; they have been less interested in social progress than in social process; more concerned with social problems than with social philosophy. This change marks the transformation of sociology from a philosophy of history to a science of society. The steps in this transition are periods in the history of the science, that is: 1. The period of Comte and Spencer; sociology, conceived in the grand style, is a philosophy of history, a "science" of progress (evolution). 2. The period of the "schools"; sociological thought, dispersed among the various schools, is absorbed in an effort to define its point of view and to describe the kinds of facts that sociology must look for to answer the questions that sociology asks. 3. The period of investigation and research, the period into which sociology is just now entering. Sociological research is at present (1921) in about the situation in which psychology was before the introduction of laboratory methods, in which medicine was before Pasteur and the germ theory of disease. A great deal of social information has been collected merely for the purpose of determining what to do in a given case. Facts have not been collected to check social theories. Social problems have been defined in terms of common sense, and facts have been collected, for the most part, to support this or that doctrine, not to test it. In very few instances have investigations been made, disinterestedly, to determine the validity of a hypothesis. Charles Booth's studies of poverty in London, which extended over eighteen years and were finally embodied in seventeen volumes, is an example of such a disinterested investigation. It is an attempt to put to the test of fact the popular conception of the relation between wages and welfare. He says: My object has been to attempt to show the numerical relation which poverty, misery, and depravity bear to regular earnings and comparative comfort, and to describe the general conditions under which each class lives. If the facts thus stated are of use in helping social reformers to find remedies for the evils which exist, or do anything to prevent the adoption of false remedies, my purpose is answered. It was not my intention to bring forward any suggestions of my own, and if I have ventured here and there, and especially in the concluding chapters, to go beyond my programme, it has been with much hesitation. With regard to the disadvantages under which the poor labour, and the evils of poverty, there is a great sense of helplessness: the wage earners are helpless to regulate their work and cannot obtain a fair equivalent for the labour they are willing to give; the manufacturer or dealer can only work within the limits of competition; the rich are helpless to relieve want without stimulating its sources. To relieve this helplessness a better stating of the problems involved is the first step.... In this direction must be sought the utility of my attempt to analyze the population of a part of London.[44] This vast study did, indeed, throw great light, not only upon poverty in London, but upon human nature in general. On the other hand, it raised more questions than it settled and, if it demonstrated anything, it was the necessity, as Booth suggests, for a restatement of the problem. Sociology seems now, however, in a way to become, in some fashion or other, an experimental science. It will become so as soon as it can state existing problems in such a way that the results in one case will demonstrate what can and should be done in another. Experiments are going on in every field of social life, in industry, in politics, and in religion. In all these fields men are guided by some implicit or explicit theory of the situation, but this theory is not often stated in the form of a hypothesis and subjected to a test of the negative instances. We have, if it is permitted to make a distinction between them, investigation rather than research. What, then, in the sense in which the expression is here used, is social research? A classification of problems will be a sort of first aid in the search for an answer. 1. _Classification of social problems._--Every society and every social group, _capable of consistent action_, may be regarded as an organization of the wishes of its members. This means that society rests on, and embodies, the appetites and natural desires of the individual man; but it implies, also, that wishes, in becoming _organized_, are necessarily disciplined and controlled in the interest of the group as a whole. Every such society or social group, even the most ephemeral, will ordinarily have (a) some relatively formal method of defining its aim and formulating its policies, making them explicit, and (b) some machinery, functionary, or other arrangement for realizing its aim and carrying its policies into effect. Even in the family there is government, and this involves something that corresponds to legislation, adjudication, and administration. Social groups, however, maintain their organizations, agencies, and all formal methods of behavior on a basis and in a setting of instinct, of habit, and of tradition which we call human nature. Every social group has, or tends to have, its own culture, what Sumner calls "folkways," and this culture, imposing its patterns upon the natural man, gives him that particular individuality which characterizes the members of groups. Not races merely but nationalities and classes have marks, manners, and patterns of life by which we infallibly recognize and classify them. Social problems may be conveniently classified with reference to these three aspects of group life, that is to say, problems of (a) organization and administration, (b) policy and polity (legislation), and (c) human nature (culture). a) Administrative problems are mainly practical and technical. Most problems of government, of business and social welfare, are technical. The investigations, i.e., social surveys, made in different parts of the country by the Bureau of Municipal Research of New York City, are studies of local administration made primarily for the purpose of improving the efficiency of an existing administrative machine and its personnel rather than of changing the policy or purpose of the administration itself. b) Problems of policy, in the sense in which that term is used here, are political and legislative. Most social investigations in recent years have been made in the interest of some legislative program or for the purpose of creating a more intelligent public opinion in regard to certain local problems. The social surveys conducted by the Sage Foundation, as distinguished from those carried out by the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, have been concerned with problems of policy, i.e., with changing the character and policy of social institutions rather than improving their efficiency. This distinction between administration and policy is not always clear, but it is always important. Attempts at reform usually begin with an effort to correct administrative abuses, but eventually it turns out that reforms must go deeper and change the character of the institutions themselves. c) Problems of human nature are naturally fundamental to all other social problems. Human nature, as we have begun to conceive it in recent years, is largely a product of social intercourse; it is, therefore, quite as much as society itself, a subject for sociological investigation. Until recent years, what we are now calling the human factor has been notoriously neglected in most social experiments. We have been seeking to reform human nature while at the same time we refused to reckon with it. It has been assumed that we could bring about social changes by merely formulating our wishes, that is, by "arousing" public opinion and formulating legislation. This is the "democratic" method of effecting reforms. The older "autocratic" method merely decreed social changes upon the authority of the monarch or the ruling class. What reconciled men to it was that, like Christian Science, it frequently worked. The oldest but most persistent form of social technique is that of "ordering-and-forbidding"--that is, meeting a crisis by an arbitrary act of will decreeing the disappearance of the undesirable or the appearance of the desirable phenomena, and the using arbitrary physical action to enforce the decree. This method corresponds exactly to the magical phase of natural technique. In both, the essential means of bringing a determined effect is more or less consciously thought to reside in the act of will itself by which the effect is decreed as desirable and of which the action is merely an indispensable vehicle or instrument; in both, the process by which the cause (act of will and physical action) is supposed to bring its effect to realization remains out of reach of investigation; in both, finally, if the result is not attained, some new act of will with new material accessories is introduced, instead of trying to find and remove the perturbing causes. A good instance of this in the social field is the typical legislative procedure of today.[45] 2. _Types of social group._--The varied interests, fields of investigation, and practical programs which find at present a place within the limits of the sociological discipline are united in having one common object of reference, namely, _the concept of the social group_. All social problems turn out finally to be problems of group life, although each group and each type of group has its own distinctive problems. Illustrations may be gathered from the most widely separated fields to emphasize the truth of this assertion.[46] Religious conversion may be interpreted from one point of view as a change from one social group to another. To use the language of religious sentiment, the convert "comes out of a life of sin and enters into a life of grace." To be sure, this change involves profound disturbances of the personality, but permanence of the change in the individual is assured by the breaking up of the old and the establishment of new associations. So the process by which the immigrant makes the transition from the old country to the new involves profound changes in thought and habit. In his case the change is likely to take place slowly, but it is not less radical on that account. The following paragraph from a recent social survey illustrates, from a quite different point of view, the manner in which the group is involved in changes in community life. In short, the greatest problem for the next few years in Stillwater is the development of a _community consciousness_. We must stop thinking in terms of city of Stillwater, and country outside of Stillwater, and think in terms of _Stillwater Community_. We must stop thinking in terms of small groups and think in terms of the entire community, no matter whether it is industry, health, education, recreation or religion. Anything which is good will benefit the entire community. Any weakness will be harmful to all. Community co-operation in all lines indicated in this report will make this, indeed, the Queen of the St. Croix.[47] In this case the solution of the community problem was the creation of "community consciousness." In the case of the professional criminal the character of the problem is determined, if we accept the description of a writer in the _Atlantic Monthly_, by the existence among professional criminals of a primary group consciousness: The professional criminal is peculiar in the sense that he lives a very intense emotional life. He is isolated in the community. He is in it, but not of it. His social life--for all men are social--is narrow; but just because it is narrow, it is extremely tense. He lives a life of warfare and has the psychology of the warrior. He is at war with the whole community. Except his very few friends in crime he trusts no one and fears everyone. Suspicion, fear, hatred, danger, desperation and passion are present in a more tense form in his life than in that of the average individual. He is restless, ill-humored, easily roused and suspicious. He lives on the brink of a deep precipice. This helps to explain his passionate hatred, his brutality, his fear, and gives poignant significance to the adage that dead men tell no tales. He holds on to his few friends with a strength and passion rare among people who live a more normal existence. His friends stand between him and discovery. They are his hold upon life, his basis of security. Loyalty to one's group is the basic law in the underworld. Disloyalty is treason and punishable by death; for disloyalty may mean the destruction of one's friends; it may mean the hurling of the criminal over the precipice on which his whole life is built. To the community the criminal is aggressive. To the criminal his life is one of defense primarily. The greater part of his energy, of his hopes, and of his successes, centres around escapes, around successful flight, around proper covering-up of his tracks, and around having good, loyal, and trustworthy friends to participate in his activities, who will tell no tales and keep the rest of the community outside. The criminal is thus, from his own point of view--and I am speaking of professional criminals--living a life of defensive warfare with the community; and the odds are heavy against him. He therefore builds up a defensive psychology against it--a psychology of boldness, bravado, and self-justification. The good criminal--which means the successful one, he who has most successfully carried through a series of depradations against the enemy, the common enemy, the public--is a hero. He is recognized as such, toasted and feasted, trusted and obeyed. But always by a little group. They live in a world of their own, a life of their own, with ideals, habits, outlook, beliefs, and associations which are peculiarly fitted to maintain the morale of the group. Loyalty, fearlessness, generosity, willingness to sacrifice one's self, perseverance in the face of prosecution, hatred of the common enemy--these are the elements that maintain the morale, but all of them are pointed against the community as a whole.[48] The manner in which the principle of the primary group was applied at Sing Sing in dealing with the criminal within the prison walls is a still more interesting illustration of the fact that social problems are group problems.[49] Assuming, then, that every social group may be presumed to have its own (a) administrative, (b) legislative, and (c) human-nature problems, these problems may be still further classified with reference to the type of social group. Most social groups fall naturally into one or the other of the following classes: a) The family. b) Language (racial) groups. c) Local and territorial communities: (i) neighborhoods, (ii) rural communities, (iii) urban communities. d) Conflict groups: (i) nationalities, (ii) parties, (iii) sects, (iv) labor organizations, (v) gangs, etc. e) Accommodation groups: (i) classes, (ii) castes, (iii) vocational, (iv) denominational groups. The foregoing classification is not quite adequate nor wholly logical. The first three classes are more closely related to one another than they are to the last two, i.e., the so-called "accommodation" and "conflict" groups. The distinction is far-reaching, but its general character is indicated by the fact that the family, language, and local groups are, or were originally, what are known as primary groups, that is, groups organized on intimate, face-to-face relations. The conflict and accommodation groups represent divisions which may, to be sure, have arisen within the primary group, but which have usually arisen historically by the imposition of one primary group upon another. Every state in history was or is a _state of classes_, a polity of superior and inferior social groups, based upon distinctions either of rank or of property. This phenomenon must, then, be called the "State."[50] It is the existence at any rate of conflict and accommodation within the limits of a larger group which distinguishes it from groups based on primary relations, and gives it eventually the character described as "secondary." When a language group becomes militant and self-conscious, it assumes the character of a nationality. It is perhaps true, also, that the family which is large enough and independent enough to be self-conscious, by that fact assumes the character of a clan. Important in this connection is the fact that a group in becoming group-conscious changes its character. External conflict has invariably reacted powerfully upon the internal organization of social groups. Group self-consciousness seems to be a common characteristic of conflict and accommodation groups and distinguishes them from the more elementary forms of society represented by the family and the local community. 3. _Organization and structure of social groups._--Having a general scheme for the classification of social groups, it is in order to discover methods of analysis that are applicable to the study of all types of groups, from the family to the sect. Such a scheme of analysis should reveal not only the organization and structure of typical groups, but it should indicate the relation of this organization and structure to those social problems that are actual and generally recognized. The sort of facts which are now generally recognized as important in the study, not merely of society, but the problems of society are: a) Statistics: numbers, local distribution, mobility, incidence of births, deaths, disease, and crime. b) Institutions: local distribution, classification (i.e., (i) industrial, (ii) religious, (iii) political, (iv) educational, (v) welfare and mutual aid), communal organization. c) Heritages: the customs and traditions transmitted by the group, particularly in relation to religion, recreation and leisure time, and social control (politics). d) Organization of public opinion: parties, sects, cliques, and the press. 4. _Social process and social progress._--Social process is the name for all changes which can be regarded as changes in the life of the group. A group may be said to have a life when it has a history. Among social processes we may distinguish (a) the historical, (b) the cultural, (c) the political, and (d) the economic. a) We describe as historical the processes by which the fund of social tradition, which is the heritage of every permanent social group, is accumulated and transmitted from one generation to another. History plays the rôle in the group of memory in the individual. Without history social groups would, no doubt, rise and decline, but they would neither grow old nor make progress. Immigrants, crossing the ocean, leave behind them much of their local traditions. The result is that they lose, particularly in the second generation, that control which the family and group tradition formerly exercised over them; but they are, for that very reason, all the more open to the influence of the traditions and customs of their adopted country. b) If it is the function of the historical process to accumulate and conserve the common fund of social experience, it is the function of the cultural process to shape and define the social forms and the social patterns which each preceding generation imposes upon its successors. The individual living in society has to fit into a pre-existing social world, to take part in the hedonistic, economic, political, religious, moral, aesthetic, intellectual activities of the group. For these activities the group has objective _systems_, more or less complex sets of schemes, organized either by traditional association or with a conscious regard to the greatest possible efficiency of the result, but with only a secondary, or even with no interest in the particular desires, abilities and experiences of the individuals who have to perform these activities. There is no pre-existing harmony whatever between the individual and the social factors of personal evolution, and the fundamental tendencies of the individual are always in some disaccordance with the fundamental tendencies of social control. Personal evolution is always a struggle between the individual and society--a struggle for self-expression on the part of the individual, for his subjection on the part of society--and it is in the total course of this struggle that the personality--not as a static "essence" but as a dynamic, continually evolving set of activities--manifests and constructs itself.[51] c) In general, standards of behavior that are in the mores are not the subject of discussion, except so far as discussion is necessary to determine whether this or that act falls under one or the other of the accepted social sanctions. The political as distinguished from the cultural process is concerned with just those matters in regard to which there is division and difference. Politics is concerned with issues. The Negro, particularly in the southern states, is a constant theme of popular discussion. Every time a Negro finds himself in a new situation, or one in which the white population is unaccustomed to see him, the thing provokes comment in both races. On the other hand, when a southerner asks the question: "Would you want your daughter to marry a Negro?" it is time for discussion to cease. Any questions of relations between the races can always be immediately disposed of as soon as it is seen to come, directly or indirectly, under the intolerable formula. Political questions are matters of compromise and expediency. Miscegenation, on the other hand, is contrary to the mores. As such the rule against it is absolute. The political process, by which a society or social group formulates its wishes and enforces them, goes on within the limits of the mores and is carried on by public discussion, legislation, and the adjudication of the courts. d) The economic process, so far as it can be distinguished from the production and distribution of goods, is the process by which prices are made and an exchange of values is effected. Most values, i.e., my present social status, my hopes of the future, and memory of the past, are personal and not values that can be exchanged. The economic process is concerned with values that can be treated as commodities. All these processes may, and do, arise within most but not every society or social group. Commerce presupposes the freedom of the individual to pursue his own profit, and commerce can take place only to the extent and degree that this freedom is permitted. Freedom of commerce is, however, limited on the one hand by the mores and on the other by formal law, so that the economic process takes place ordinarily within limitations that are defined by the cultural and the political processes. It is only where there is neither a cultural nor a political order that commerce is absolutely free. The areas of (1) the cultural, (2) the political, (3) the economic processes and their relations to one another may be represented by concentric circles. In this representation the area of widest cultural influences is coterminous with the area of commerce, because commerce in its widest extension is invariably carried on under some restraints of custom and customary law. Otherwise it is not commerce at all, but something predacious outside the law. But if the area of the economic process is almost invariably coterminous with the widest areas of cultural influence, it does not extend to the smaller social groups. As a rule trade does not invade the family. Family interests are always personal even when they are carried on under the forms of commerce. Primitive society, within the limits of the village, is usually communistic. All values are personal, and the relations of individuals to one another, economic or otherwise, are preordained by custom and law. The impersonal values, values for exchange, seem to be in any given society or social group in inverse relation to the personal values. The attempt to describe in this large way the historical, cultural, political, and economic processes, is justified in so far as it enables us to recognize that the aspects of social life, which are the subject-matter of the special social sciences, i.e., history, political science, and economics, are involved in specific forms of change that can be viewed abstractly, formulated, compared, and related. The attempt to view them in their interrelations is at the same time an effort to distinguish and to see them as parts of one whole. [Illustration: FIG. 2 a = area of most extended cultural influences and of commerce; b = area of formal political control; c = area of purely personal relationships, communism.] In contrast with the types of social change referred to there are other changes which are unilateral and progressive; changes which are described popularly as "movements," mass movements. These are changes which eventuate in new social organizations and institutions. All more marked forms of social change are associated with certain social manifestations that we call social unrest. Social unrest issues, under ordinary conditions, as an incident of new social contacts, and is an indication of a more lively tempo in the process of communication and interaction. All social changes are preceded by a certain degree of social and individual disorganization. This will be followed ordinarily under normal conditions by a movement of reorganization. All progress implies a certain amount of disorganization. In studying social changes, therefore, that, if not progressive, are at least unilateral, we are interested in: (1) Disorganization: accelerated mobility, unrest, disease, and crime as manifestations and measures of social disorganization. (2) Social movements (reorganization) include: (a) crowd movements (i.e., mobs, strikes, etc.); (b) cultural revivals, religious and linguistic; (c) fashion (changes in dress, convention, and social ritual); (d) reform (changes in social policy and administration); (e) revolutions (changes in institutions and the mores). 5. _The individual and the person._--The person is an individual who has status. We come into the world as individuals. We acquire status, and become persons. Status means position in society. The individual inevitably has some status in every social group of which he is a member. In a given group the status of every member is determined by his relation to every other member of that group. Every smaller group, likewise, has a status in some larger group of which it is a part and this is determined by its relation to all the other members of the larger group. The individual's self-consciousness--his conception of his rôle in society, his "self," in short--while not identical with his personality is an essential element in it. The individual's conception of himself, however, is based on his status in the social group or groups of which he is a member. The individual whose conception of himself does not conform to his status is an isolated individual. The completely isolated individual, whose conception of himself is in no sense an adequate reflection of his status, is probably insane. It follows from what is said that an individual may have many "selves" according to the groups to which he belongs and the extent to which each of these groups is isolated from the others. It is true, also, that the individual is influenced in differing degrees and in a specific manner, by the different types of group of which he is a member. This indicates the manner in which the personality of the individual may be studied sociologically. Every individual comes into the world in possession of certain characteristic and relatively fixed behavior patterns which we call instincts. This is his racial inheritance which he shares with all members of the species. He comes into the world, also, endowed with certain undefined capacities for learning other forms of behavior, capacities which vary greatly in different individuals. These individual differences and the instincts are what is called original nature.[52] Sociology is interested in "original nature" in so far as it supplies the raw materials out of which individual personalities and the social order are created. Both society and the persons who compose society are the products of social processes working in and through the materials which each new generation of men contributes to it. Charles Cooley, who was the first to make the important distinction between primary and secondary groups, has pointed out that the intimate, face-to-face associations of primary groups, i.e., the family, the neighborhood, and the village community, are fundamental in forming the social nature and ideals of the individual.[53] There is, however, an area of life in which the associations are more intimate than those of the primary group as that group is ordinarily conceived. Such are the relations between mother and child, particularly in the period of infancy, and the relations between men and women under the influence of the sexual instinct. These are the associations in which the most lasting affections and the most violent antipathies are formed. We may describe it as the area of touch relationships. Finally, there is the area of secondary contacts, in which relationships are relatively impersonal, formal, and conventional. It is in this region of social life that the individual gains, at the same time, a personal freedom and an opportunity for distinction that is denied him in the primary group. As a matter of fact, many, if not most, of our present social problems have their source and origin in the transition of great masses of the population--the immigrants, for example--out of a society based on primary group relationships into the looser, freer, and less controlled existence of life in great cities. The "moral unrest" so deeply penetrating all western societies, the growing vagueness and indecision of personalities, the almost complete disappearance of the "strong and steady character" of old times, in short, the rapid and general increase of Bohemianism and Bolshevism in all societies, is an effect of the fact that not only the early primary group controlling all interests of its members on the general social basis, not only the occupational group of the mediaeval type controlling most of the interests of its members on a professional basis, but even the special modern group dividing with many others the task of organizing permanently the attitudes of each of its members, is more and more losing ground. The pace of social evolution has become so rapid that special groups are ceasing to be permanent and stable enough to organize and maintain organized complexes of attitudes of their members which correspond to their common pursuits. In other words, society is gradually losing all its old machinery for the determination and stabilization of individual characters.[54] Every social group tends to create, from the individuals that compose it, its own type of character, and the characters thus formed become component parts of the social structure in which they are incorporated. All the problems of social life are thus problems of the individual; and all problems of the individual are at the same time problems of the group. This point of view is already recognized in preventive medicine, and to some extent in psychiatry. It is not yet adequately recognized in the technique of social case work. Further advance in the application of social principles to social practice awaits a more thoroughgoing study of the problems, systematic social research, and an experimental social science. REPRESENTATIVE WORKS IN SYSTEMATIC SOCIOLOGY AND METHODS OF SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH I. THE SCIENCE OF PROGRESS (1) Comte, Auguste. _Cours de philosophie positive_, 5th ed. 6 vols. Paris, 1892. (2) ----. _Positive Philosophy._ Translated by Harriet Martineau, 3d ed. London, 1893. (3) Spencer, Herbert. _Principles of Sociology._ 3d ed. 3 vols. New York, 1906. (4) Schaeffle, Albert. _Bau und Leben des socialen Körpers._ 2d ed., 2 vols. Tuebingen, 1896. (5) Lilienfeld, Paul von. _Gedanken über die Socialwissenschaft der Zukunft._ 5 vols. Mitau, 1873-81. (6) Ward, Lester F. _Dynamic Sociology._ 2 vols. New York, 1883. (7) De Greef, Guillaume. _Introduction à la sociologie._ 3 vols. Paris, 1886. (8) Worms, René. _Organisme et société._ Paris, 1896. II. THE SCHOOLS A. _Realists_ (1) Ratzenhofer, Gustav. _Die sociologische Erkenntnis._ Leipzig, 1898. (2) Small, Albion W. _General Sociology._ Chicago, 1905. (3) Durkheim, Émile. _De la Division du travail social._ Paris, 1893. (4) Simmel, Georg. _Soziologie._ Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. Leipzig, 1908. (5) Cooley, Charles Horton. _Social Organization._ A study of the larger mind. New York, 1909. (6) Ellwood, Charles A. _Sociology and Its Psychological Aspects._ New York and London, 1912. B. _Nominalists_ (1) Tarde, Gabriel. _Les Lois de l'imitation._ Paris, 1895. (2) Giddings, Franklin H. _The Principles of Sociology._ New York, 1896. (3) Ross, Edward Alsworth. _The Principles of Sociology._ New York, 1920. C. _Collective Behavior_ (1) Le Bon, Gustave. _The Crowd._ A study of the popular mind. New York, 1903. (2) Sighele, Scipio. _Psychologie des sectes._ Paris, 1898. (3) Tarde, Gabriel. _L'Opinion et la foule._ Paris, 1901. (4) McDougall, William. _The Group Mind._ Cambridge, 1920. (5) Vincent, George E. _The Social Mind and Education._ New York, 1897. III. METHODS OF SOCIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION A. _Critical Observation on Methods of Research_ (1) Small, Albion W. _The Meaning of Social Science._ Chicago, 1910. (2) Durkheim, Émile. _Les Règles de la méthode sociologique._ Paris, 1904. (3) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and America._ "Methodological Note," I, 1-86. 5 vols. Boston, 1918-20. B. _Studies of Communities_ (1) Booth, Charles. _Labour and Life of the People: London._ 2 vols. London, 1891. (2) ----. _Life and Labour of the People in London._ 9 vols. London, 1892-97. 8 additional vols. London, 1902. (3) _The Pittsburgh Survey._ Edited by Paul U. Kellogg. 6 vols. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1909-14. (4) _The Springfield Survey._ Edited by Shelby M. Harrison. 3 vols. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1918-20. (5) _Americanization Studies of the Carnegie Corporation of New York._ Edited by Allen T. Burns. 10 vols. New York, 1920-21. (6) Chapin, F. Stuart. _Field Work and Social Research._ New York, 1920. C. _Studies of the Individual_ (1) Healy, William. _The Individual Delinquent._ Boston, 1915. (2) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and America._ "Life Record of an Immigrant," Vol. III. Boston, 1919. (3) Richmond, Mary. _Social Diagnosis._ Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1917. IV. PERIODICALS (1) _American Journal of Sociology._ Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1896-. (2) _American Sociological Society, Papers and Proceedings._ Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1907-. (3) _Annales de l'institut international de sociologie._ Paris, M. Giard et Cie., 1895. (4) _L'Année sociologique._ Paris, F. Alcan, 1898-1912. (5) _The Indian Journal of Sociology._ Baroda, India, The College, 1920-. (6) _Kölner Vierteljahrshefte für Sozialwissenschaften._ Leipzig and München, Duncker und Humblot, 1921-. (7) _Rivista italiana di sociologia._ Roma, Fratelli Bocca, 1897-. (8) _Revue del'institut de sociologie._ Bruxelles, l'Institut de Sociologie, 1920-. [Successor to _Bulletin del'institut de sociologie Solvay_. Bruxelles, 1910-14.] (9) _Revue internationale de sociologie._ Paris, M. Giard et Cie., 1893-. (10) _The Sociological Review._ Manchester, Sherratt and Hughes, 1908-. [Preceded by Sociological Papers, Sociological Society, London, 1905-7.] (11) _Schmollers Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im deutschen Reiche._ Leipzig, Duncker und Humblot, 1877-. (12) _Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft._ Berlin, G. Reimer, 1898-. TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES 1. Comte's Conception of Humanity 2. Herbert Spencer on the Social Organism 3. The Social Process as Defined by Small 4. Imitation and Like-mindedness as Fundamental Social Facts 5. Social Control as a Sociological Problem 6. Group Consciousness and the Group Mind 7. Investigation and Research as Illustrated by the Pittsburgh Survey and the Carnegie Americanization Studies 8. The Concept of the Group in Sociology 9. The Person, Personality, and Status 10. Sociology in Its Relation to Economics and to Politics QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. What do you understand was Comte's purpose in demanding for sociology a place among the sciences? 2. Are social phenomena susceptible to scientific prevision? Compare with physical phenomena. 3. What is Comte's order of the sciences? What is your explanation for the late appearance of sociology in the series? 4. What do you understand by the term "positive" when applied to the social sciences? 5. Can sociology become positive without becoming experimental? 6. "Natural science emphasizes the abstract, the historian is interested in the concrete." Discuss. 7. How do you distinguish between the historical method and the method of natural science in dealing with the following phenomena: (a) electricity, (b) plants, (c) cattle, (d) cities? 8. Distinguish between history, natural history, and natural science. 9. Is Westermarck's _Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_ history, natural history, or sociology? Why? 10. "History is past politics, politics is present history." Do you agree? Elaborate your position. 11. What is the value of history to the person? 12. Classify the following formulas of behavior under either (a) natural law (social law in the scientific sense), and (b) moral law (customary sanction, ethical principles), (c) civil law: "birds of a feather flock together"; "thou shalt not kill"; an ordinance against speeding; "honesty is the best policy"; monogamy; imitation tends to spread in geometric ratio; "women first"; the Golden Rule; "walk in the trodden paths"; the federal child-labor statute. 13. Give an illustration of a sociological hypothesis. 14. Of the following statements of fact, which are historical and which sociological? Auguste Comte suffered from myopia. "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." "Science works not at all for nationality or its spirit. It makes entirely for cosmopolitanism." 15. How would you verify each of the foregoing statements? Distinguish between the sociological and historical methods of verification. 16. Is the use of the comparative method that of history or that of natural science? 17. "The social organism: humanity or Leviathan?" What is your reaction to this alternative? Why? 18. What was the difference in the conception of the social organism held by Comte and that held by Spencer? 19. "How does a mere collection of individuals succeed in acting in a corporate and consistent way?" What was the answer to this question given by Hobbes, Aristotle, Worms? 20. "Man and society are at the same time products of nature and of human artifice." Explain. 21. What are the values and limitations of the following explanations of the control of the group over the behavior of its members: (a) homogeneity, (b) like-mindedness, (c) imitation, (d) common purpose? 22. What bearing have the facts of a panic or a stampede upon the theories of like-mindedness, imitation, and common purpose as explanations of group behavior? 23. "The characteristic social phenomenon is just this control by the group as a whole of the individuals which compose it. This fact of control is the fundamental social fact." Give an illustration of the control of the group over its members. 24. What is the difference between group mind and group consciousness as indicated in current usage in the phrases "urban mind," "rural mind," "public mind," "race consciousness," "national consciousness," "class consciousness"? 25. What do you understand by "a group in being"? Compare with the nautical expression "a fleet in being." Is "a fleet in being" a social organism? Has it a "social mind" and "social consciousness" in the sense that we speak of "race consciousness", for example, or "group consciousness"? 26. In what sense is public opinion objective? Analyze a selected case where the opinion of the group as a whole is different from the opinion of its members as individuals. 27. For what reason was the fact of "social control" interpreted in terms of "the collective mind"? 28. Which is the social reality (a) that society is a collection of like-minded persons, or (b) that society is a process and a product of interaction? What is the bearing upon this point of the quotation from Dewey: "Society may fairly be said to exist in transmission"? 29. What three steps were taken in the transformation of sociology from a philosophy of history to a science of society? 30. What value do you perceive in a classification of social problems? 31. Classify the following studies under (a) administrative problems or (b) problems of policy or (c) problems of human nature: a survey to determine the feasibility of health insurance to meet the problem of sickness; an investigation of the police force; a study of attitudes toward war; a survey of the contacts of racial groups; an investigation for the purpose of improving the technique of workers in a social agency; a study of the experiments in self-government among prisoners in penal institutions. 32. Is the description of great cities as "social laboratories" metaphor or fact? 33. What do you understand by the statement: Sociology will become an experimental science as soon as it can state its problems in such a way that the results in one instance show what can be done in another? 34. What would be the effect upon political life if sociology were able to predict with some precision the effects of political action, for example, the effect of prohibition? 35. Would you favor turning over the government to control of experts as soon as sociology became a positive science? Explain. 36. How far may the politician who makes a profession of controlling elections be regarded as a practicing sociologist? 37. What is the distinction between sociology as an art and as a science? 38. Distinguish between research and investigation as the terms are used in the text. 39. What illustrations in American society occur to you of the (a) autocratic and (b) democratic methods of social change? 40. "All social problems turn out finally to be problems of group life." Are there any exceptions? 41. Select twelve groups at random and enter under the heads in the classification of social groups. What groups are difficult to classify? 42. Study the organization and structure of one of the foregoing groups in terms of (a) statistical facts about it; (b) its institutional aspect; (c) its heritages; and (d) its collective opinion. 43. "All progress implies a certain amount of disorganization." Explain. 44. What do you understand to be the differences between the various social processes: (a) historical, (b) cultural, (c) economic, (d) political? 45. What is the significance of the relative diameters of the areas of the cultural, political, and economic processes? 46. "The person is an individual who has status." Does an animal have status? 47. "In a given group the status of every member is determined by his relation to every other member of that group." Give an illustration. 48. Why are the problems of the person, problems of the group as well? 49. What does the organization of the bibliography and the sequence of the volumes referred to suggest in regard to the development of sociological science? 50. How far does it seem to you that the emphasis upon process rather than progress accounts for the changes which have taken place in the sociological theory and point of view? FOOTNOTES: [2] From Robert E. Park, "Sociology and the Social Sciences," _American Journal of Sociology_, XXVI (1920-21), 401-24; XXVII (1921-22), 1-21; 169-83. [3] Harriet Martineau, _The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte_, freely translated and condensed (London, 1893), II, 61. [4] Harriet Martineau, _op. cit._, II, 59-61. [5] Montesquieu, Baron M. de Secondat, _The Spirit of Laws_, translated by Thomas Nugent (Cincinnati, 1873), I, xxxi. [6] David Hume, _Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding_, Part II, sec. 7. [7] Condorcet, _Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain_ (1795), 292. See Paul Barth, _Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Sociologie_ (Leipzig, 1897), Part I, pp. 21-23. [8] _Oeuvres de Saint-Simon et d'Enfantin_ (Paris, 1865-78), XVII, 228. Paul Barth, _op. cit._, Part I, p. 23. [9] Henry Adams, _The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma_ (New York, 1919), p. 126. [10] James Harvey Robinson, _The New History, Essays Illustrating the Modern Historical Outlook_ (New York, 1912), pp. 54-55. [11] James Harvey Robinson, _op. cit._, p. 83. [12] Wilhelm Windelband, _Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft, Rede zum Antritt des Rectorats der Kaiser-Wilhelms Universität Strassburg_ (Strassburg, 1900). The logical principle outlined by Windelband has been further elaborated by Heinrich Rickert in _Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung, eine logische Einleitung in die historischen Wissenschaften_ (Tübingen u. Leipzig, 1902). See also Georg Simmel, _Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, eine erkenntnistheoretische Studie_ (2d ed., Leipzig, 1915). [13] J. Arthur Thomson, _The System of Animate Nature_ (New York, 1920), pp. 8-9. See also Karl Pearson, _The Grammar of Science_ (2d ed.; London, 1900), chap. iii, "The Scientific Law." [14] Karl Pearson, _op. cit._, p. 359. [15] Henry Adams, _op. cit._, p. 127. [16] Professor Robertson Smith (_Nature_, XLIV, 270), criticizing Westermarck's _History of Human Marriage_, complains that the author has confused history with natural history. "The history of an institution," he writes, "which is controlled by public opinion and regulated by law is not natural history. The true history of marriage begins where the natural history of pairing ends.... To treat these topics (polyandry, kinship through the female only, infanticide, exogamy) as essentially a part of the natural history of pairing involves a tacit assumption that the laws of society are at bottom mere formulated instincts, and this assumption really underlies all our author's theories. His fundamental position compels him, if he will be consistent with himself, to hold that every institution connected with marriage that has universal validity, or forms an integral part of the main line of development, is rooted in instinct, and that institutions which are not based on instinct are necessarily exceptional and unimportant for scientific history." [17] Edward Westermarck, _The History of Human Marriage_ (London, 1901), p. 1. [18] _Ibid._, p. 5. [19] Jane Ellen Harrison, _Themis_, _A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion_ (Cambridge, 1912), p. ix. [20] Robert H. Lowie, _Primitive Society_ (New York, 1920), pp. 7-8. [21] Wilhelm Wundt, _Völkerpsychologie, eine Untersuchung der Entwicklungsgesetze von Sprache, Mythus und Sitte_. Erster Band, _Die Sprache_, Erster Theil (Leipzig, 1900), p. 13. The name folk-psychology was first used by Lazarus and Steinthal, _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_, I, 1860. Wundt's folk-psychology is a continuation of the tradition of these earlier writers. [22] G. Tarde, _Social Laws, An Outline of Sociology_, translated from the French by Howard C. Warren (New York, 1899), pp. 40-41. [23] Hanns Oertel, "Some Present Problems and Tendencies in Comparative Philology," _Congress of Arts and Science, Universal Exposition, St. Louis, 1904_ (Boston, 1906), III, 59. [24] Edward A. Freeman, _Comparative Politics_ (London, 1873), p. 23. [25] L. Lévy-Bruhl, _The Philosophy of Auguste Comte_, authorized translation; an Introduction by Frederic Harrison (New York, 1903), p. 337. [26] _Ibid._, p. 234. [27] Hobbes's statement is as follows: "For by art is created that great _Leviathan_ called a _Commonwealth_, or _State_, in Latin _Civitas_, which is but an artificial man; though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which the _sovereignty_ is an artificial _soul_, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the _magistrates_, and other _officers_ of judicature, artificial _joints_; _reward_ and _punishment_, by which fastened to the seat of the sovereignty every joint and member is moved to perform his duty, are the _nerves_, that do the same in the body natural." Spencer criticizes this conception of Hobbes as representing society as a "factitious" and artificial rather than a "natural" product. Herbert Spencer, _The Principles of Sociology_ (London, 1893), I, 437, 579-80. See also chap. iii, "Social Growth," pp. 453-58. [28] Herbert Spencer, _op. cit._, I, 437. [29] _Ibid._, p. 440. [30] _Ibid._, p. 450. [31] _Ibid._, pp. 449-50. [32] _Westminster Review_, January, 1860. [33] René Worms, _Organisme et Société_, "Bibliothèque Sociologique Internationale" (Paris, 1896), pp. 210-13. [34] W. Trotter, _Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War_ (New York, 1916), pp. 29-30. [35] _Ibid._, pp. 40-41. [36] Franklin Henry Giddings, _The Concepts and Methods of Sociology_, Congress of Arts and Science, Universal Exposition (St. Louis, 1904), pp. 789-90. [37] G. Tarde, _op. cit._, pp. 38-39. [38] Émile Durkheim, _Elementary Forms of Religious Life_ (New York, 1915), pp. 206-8. [39] John Dewey, _Democracy and Education_ (New York, 1916), p. 5. [40] _Ibid._, pp. 6-7. [41] Émile Durkheim, "Représentations individuelles et représentations collectives," _Revue métaphysique_, VI (1898), 295. Quoted and translated by Charles Elmer Gehlke, "Émile Durkheim's Contributions to Sociological Theory," _Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law_, LXIII, 29-30. [42] Bliss Perry, _The American Mind_ (Boston, 1912), p. 47. [43] James Mark Baldwin, _Mental Development in the Child and the Race_ (New York and London, 1895); Charles A. Ellwood, _Sociology in Its Psychological Aspects_ (New York and London, 1912). [44] _Labour and Life of the People_ (London, 1889), I, pp. 6-7. [45] Thomas and Znaniecki, _The Polish Peasant in Europe and America_ (Boston, 1918), I, 3. [46] Walter B. Bodenhafer, "The Comparative Rôle of the Group Concept in Ward's Dynamic Sociology and Contemporary American Sociology," _American Journal of Sociology_, XXVI (1920-21), 273-314; 425-74; 588-600; 716-43. [47] _Stillwater, the Queen of the St. Croix_, a report of a social survey, published by The Community Service of Stillwater, Minnesota, 1920, p. 71. [48] Frank Tannenbaum, "Prison Democracy," _Atlantic Monthly_, October, 1920, pp. 438-39. (Psychology of the criminal group.) [49] _Ibid._, pp. 443-46. [50] Franz Oppenheimer, _The State_ (Indianapolis, 1914), p. 5. [51] Thomas and Znaniecki, _op. cit._, III, 34-36. [52] Original nature in its relation to social welfare and human progress has been made the subject-matter of a special science, eugenics. For a criticism of the claims of eugenics as a social science see Leonard T. Hobhouse, _Social Evolution and Political Theory_ (Columbia University Press, 1917). [53] Charles H. Cooley, _Social Organization_, p. 28. [54] Thomas and Znaniecki, _op. cit._, III, 63-64. CHAPTER II HUMAN NATURE I. INTRODUCTION 1. Human Interest in Human Nature The human interest in human nature is proverbial. It is an original tendency of man to be attentive to the behavior of other human beings. Experience heightens this interest because of the dependence of the individual upon other persons, not only for physical existence, but for social life. The literature of every people is to a large extent but the crystallization of this persistent interest. Old saws and proverbs of every people transmit from generation to generation shrewd generalizations upon human behavior. In joke and in epigram, in caricature and in burlesque, in farce and in comedy, men of all races and times have enjoyed with keen relish the humor of the contrast between the conventional and the natural motives in behavior. In Greek mythology, individual traits of human nature are abstracted, idealized, and personified into gods. The heroes of Norse sagas and Teutonic legends are the gigantic symbols of primary emotions and sentiments. Historical characters live in the social memory not alone because they are identified with political, religious, or national movements but also because they have come to typify human relationships. The loyalty of Damon and Pythias, the grief of Rachel weeping for her children, the cynical cruelty of the egocentric Nero, the perfidy of Benedict Arnold, the comprehending sympathy of Abraham Lincoln, are proverbial, and as such have become part of the common language of all the peoples who participate in our occidental culture. Poetry, drama, and the plastic arts are interesting and significant only so far as they reveal in new and ever changing circumstances the unchanging characteristics of a fundamental human nature. Illustrations of this naïve and unreflecting interest in the study of mankind are familiar enough in the experience and observation of any of us. Intellectual interest in, and the scientific observation of, human traits and human behavior have their origin in this natural interest and unreflective observation by man of his fellows. History, ethnology, folklore, all the comparative studies of single cultural traits, i.e., of language, of religion, and of law, are but the more systematic pursuit of this universal interest of mankind in man. 2. Definition of Human Nature The natural history of the expression "human nature" is interesting. Usage has given it various shades of meaning. In defining the term more precisely there is a tendency either unwarrantedly to narrow or unduly to extend and overemphasize some one or another of the different senses of the term. A survey of these varied uses reveals the common and fundamental meaning of the phrase. The use which common sense makes of the term human nature is significant. It is used in varied contexts with the most divergent implications but always by way of explanation of behavior that is characteristically human. The phrase is sometimes employed with cynical deprecation as, "Oh, that's human nature." Or as often, perhaps, as an expression of approbation, "He's so human." The weight of evidence as expressed in popular sayings is distinctly in depreciation of man's nature. It's human natur', p'raps,--if so, Oh, isn't human natur' low, are two lines from Gilbert's musical comedy "Babette's Love." "To err is human, to forgive divine" reminds us of a familiar contrast. "Human nature is like a bad clock; it might go right now and then, or be made to strike the hour, but its inward frame is to go wrong," is a simile that emphasizes the popular notion that man's behavior tends to the perverse. An English divine settles the question with the statement, "Human nature is a rogue and a scoundrel, or why would it perpetually stand in need of laws and religion?" Even those who see good in the natural man admit his native tendency to err. Sir Thomas Browne asserts that "human nature knows naturally what is good but naturally pursues what is evil." The Earl of Clarendon gives the equivocal explanation that "if we did not take great pains to corrupt our nature, our nature would never corrupt us." Addison, from the detached position of an observer and critic of manners and men, concludes that "as man is a creature made up of different extremes, he has something in him very great and very mean." The most commonly recognized distinction between man and the lower animals lies in his possession of reason. Yet familiar sayings tend to exclude the intellectual from the human attributes. Lord Bacon shrewdly remarks that "there is in human nature, generally, more of the fool than of the wise." The phrase "he is a child of nature" means that behavior in social relations is impulsive, simple, and direct rather than reflective, sophisticated, or consistent. Wordsworth depicts this human type in his poem "She Was a Phantom of Delight": A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles. The inconsistency between the rational professions and the impulsive behavior of men is a matter of common observation. "That's not the logic, reason, or philosophy of it, but it's the human nature of it." It is now generally recognized that the older English conception of the "economic man" and the "rational man," motivated by enlightened self-interest, was far removed from the "natural man" impelled by impulse, prejudice, and sentiment, in short, by human nature. Popular criticism has been frequently directed against the reformer in politics, the efficiency expert in industry, the formalist in religion and morals on the ground that they overlook or neglect the so-called "human factor" in the situation. Sir Arthur Helps says: No doubt hard work is a great police-agent; if everybody were worked from morning till night, and then carefully locked up, the register of crimes might be greatly diminished. But what would become of human nature? Where would be the room for growth in such a system of things? It is through sorrow and mirth, plenty and need, a variety of passions, circumstances, and temptations, even through sin and misery, that men's natures are developed. Certain sayings already quoted imply that the nature of man is a fact to be reckoned with in controlling his behavior. "There are limits to human nature" which cannot lightly be overstepped. "Human nature," according to Periander, "is hard to overcome." Yet we also recognize with Swift that "it is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another." Finally, nothing is more trite and familiar than the statement that "human nature is the same all over the world." This fundamental likeness of human nature, despite artificial and superficial cultural differences, has found a classic expression in Kipling's line: "The Colonel's Lady an' Judy O'Grady are sisters under their skins!" Human nature, then, as distinct from the formal wishes of the individual and the conventional order of society, is an aspect of human life that must be reckoned with. Common sense has long recognized this, but until recently no systematic attempt has been made to _isolate_, describe, and explain the distinctively human factors in the life either of the individual or of society. Of all that has been written on this subject the most adequate statement is that of Cooley. He has worked out with unusual penetration and peculiar insight an interpretation of human nature as a product of group life. By human nature we may understand those sentiments and impulses that are human in being superior to those of lower animals, and also in the sense that they belong to mankind at large, and not to any particular race or time. It means, particularly, sympathy and the innumerable sentiments into which sympathy enters, such as love, resentment, ambition, vanity, hero-worship, and the feeling of social right and wrong. Human nature in this sense is justly regarded as a comparatively permanent element in society. Always and everywhere men seek honor and dread ridicule, defer to public opinion, cherish their goods and their children, and admire courage, generosity, and success. It is always safe to assume that people are and have been human. Human nature is not something existing separately in the individual, but a _group nature or primary phase of society_, a relatively simple and general condition of the social mind. It is something more, on the one hand, than the mere instinct that is born in us--though that enters into it--and something less, on the other, than the more elaborate development of ideas and sentiments that makes up institutions. It is the nature which is developed and expressed in those simple, face-to-face groups that are somewhat alike in all societies; groups of the family, the playground, and the neighborhood. In the essential similarity of these is to be found the basis, in experience, for similar ideas and sentiments in the human mind. In these, everywhere, human nature comes into existence. Man does not have it at birth; he cannot acquire it except through fellowship, and it decays in isolation.[55] 3. Classification of the Materials With the tacit acceptance by biologists, psychologists, and sociologists of human behavior as a natural phenomenon, materials upon human nature have rapidly accumulated. The wealth and variety of these materials are all the greater because of the diversity of the points of view from which workers in this field have attacked the problem. The value of the results of these investigations is enhanced when they are brought together, classified, and compared. The materials fall naturally into two divisions: (a) "The Original Nature of Man" and (b) "Human Nature and Social Life." This division is based upon a distinction between traits that are inborn and characters socially acquired; a distinction found necessary by students in this field. Selections under the third heading, "Personality and the Social Self" indicate the manner in which the individual develops under the social influences, from the raw material of "instinct" into the social product "the person." Materials in the fourth division, "Biological and Social Inheritance," contrast the method of the transmission of original tendencies through the germ plasm with the communication of the social heritage through education. a) _The original nature of man._--No one has stated more clearly than Thorndike that human nature is a product of two factors, (a) tendencies to response rooted in original nature and (b) the accumulated effects of the stimuli of the external and social environment. At birth man is a bundle of random tendencies to respond. Through experience, and by means of the mechanisms of habit and character, control is secured over instinctive reactions. In other words, the original nature of man is, as Comte said, an abstraction. It exists only in the psychic vacuum of antenatal life, or perhaps only in the potentiality of the germ plasm. The fact of observation is that the structure of the response is irrevocably changed in the process of reaction to the stimulus. The _Biography of a Baby_ gives a concrete picture of the development of the plastic infant in the environment of the social group. The three papers on differences between sexes, races, and individuals serve as an introduction into the problem of differentiating the aspects of behavior which are in _original nature_ from those that are _acquired_ through social experience. Are the apparent differences between men and women, white and colored, John and James, those which arise from differences in the germ plasm or from differences in education and in cultural contacts? The selections must not be taken as giving the final word upon the subject. At best they represent merely the conclusions reached by three investigators. Attempts to arrive at positive differences in favor either of original nature or of education are frequently made in the interest of preconceived opinion. The problem, as far as science is concerned, is to discover what limitations original nature places upon response to social copies, and the ways in which the inborn potentialities find expression or repression in differing types of social environment. b) _Human nature and social life._--Original nature is represented in human responses in so far as they are determined by the _innate structure of the individual organism_. The materials assembled under this head treat of inborn reactions as influenced, modified, and reconstructed by the _structure of the social organization_. The actual reorganization of human nature takes place in response to the folkways and mores, the traditions and conventions, of the group. So potentially fitted for social life is the natural man, however, so manifold are the expressions that the plastic original tendencies may take, that instinct is replaced by habit, precedent, personal taboo, and good form. This remade structure of human nature, this objective mind, as Hegel called it, is fixed and transmitted in the folkways and mores, social ritual, i.e., _Sittlichkeit_, to use the German word, and convention. c) _Personality and the social self._--The selections upon "Personality and the Social Self" bring together and compare the different definitions of the term. These definitions fall under three heads: (1) _The organism as personality:_ This is a biological statement, satisfactory as a definition only as preparatory to further analysis. (2) _Personality as a complex:_ Personality defined in terms of the unity of mental life is a conception that has grown up in the recent "individual psychology," so called. Personality includes, in this case, not only the memories of the individual and his stream of consciousness, but also the characteristic organization of mental complexes and trends which may be thought of as a supercomplex. The phenomena of double and multiple personalities occur when this unity becomes disorganized. Disorganization in releasing groups of complexes from control may even permit the formation of independent organizations. Morton Prince's book _The Dissociation of a Personality_ is a classic case study of multiple personality. The selections upon "The Natural Person versus the Social and Conventional Person" and "The Divided Self and the Moral Consciousness" indicate the more usual and less extreme conflicts of opposing sentiments and interests within the organization of personality. (3) _Personality as the rôle of the individual in the group:_ The word personality is derived from the Latin _persona_, a mask used by actors. The etymology of the term suggests that its meaning is to be found in the rôle of the individual in the social group. By usage, personality carries the implication of the social expression of behavior. Personality may then be defined as the sum and organization of those traits which determine the rôle of the individual in the group. The following is a classification of the characteristics of the person which affect his social status and efficiency: (a) physical traits, as physique, physiognomy, etc.; (b) temperament; (c) character; (d) social expression, as by facial expression, gesture, manner, speech, writing, etc.; (e) prestige, as by birth, past success, status, etc.; (f) the individual's conception of his rôle. The significance of these traits consists in the way in which they enter into the rôle of the individual in his social milieu. Chief among these may be considered the individual's conception of the part which he plays among his fellows. Cooley's discriminating description of "the looking-glass self" offers a picture of the process by which the person conceives himself in terms of the attitudes of others toward him. The reflected or looking-glass self seems to have three principal elements: the imagination of our appearance to the other person; the imagination of his judgment of that appearance; and some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification. The comparison with a looking-glass self hardly suggests the second element, the imagined judgment, which is quite essential. The thing that moves us to pride or shame is not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves, but an imputed sentiment, the imagined effect of this reflection upon another's mind. This is evident from the fact that the character and weight of that other, in whose mind we see ourselves, makes all the difference with our feeling.[56] Veblen has made a subtle analysis of the way in which conduct is controlled by the individual's conception of his social rôle in his analysis of "invidious comparison" and "conspicuous expenditure."[57] d) _Biological and social inheritance._--The distinction between biological and social inheritance is sharply made by the noted biologist, J. Arthur Thomson, in the selection entitled "Nature and Nurture." The so-called "acquired characters" or modifications of original nature through experience, he points out, are transmitted not through the germ plasm but through communication. Thorndike's "Inventory of Original Tendencies" offers a detailed classification of the traits transmitted biologically. Since there exists no corresponding specific analysis of acquired traits, the following brief inventory of types of social heritages is offered. TYPES OF SOCIAL HERITAGES (a) means of communication, as language, gesture, etc.; (b) social attitudes, habits, wishes, etc.; (c) character; (d) social patterns, as folkways, mores, conventions, ideals, etc.; (e) technique; (f) culture (as distinguished from technique, formal organization, and machinery); (g) social organization (primary group life, institutions, sects, secondary groups, etc.). On the basis of the work of Mendel, biologists have made marked progress in determining the inheritance of specific traits of original nature. The selection from a foremost American student of heredity and eugenics, C. B. Davenport, entitled "Inheritance of Original Nature" indicates the precision and accuracy with which the prediction of the inheritance of individual innate traits is made. The mechanism of the transmission of social heritages, while more open to observation than biological inheritance, has not been subjected to as intensive study. The transmission of the social heritage takes place by communication, as Keller points out, through the medium of the various senses. The various types of the social heritages are transmitted in two ways: (a) by tradition, as from generation to generation, and (b) by acculturation, as from group to group. In the communication of the social heritages, either by tradition or by acculturation, two aspects of the process may be distinguished: (a) Because of temperament, interest, and run of attention of the members of the group, the heritage, whether a word, an act of skill, or a social attitude, may be selected, appropriated, and incorporated into its culture. This is communication by _imitation_. (b) On the other hand, the heritage may be imposed upon the members of the group through authority and routine, by tabu and repression. This is communication by _inculcation_. In any concrete situation the transmission of a social heritage may combine varying elements of both processes. Education, as the etymology of the term suggests, denotes culture of original tendencies; yet the routine of a school system is frequently organized about formal discipline rather than around interest, aptitude, and attention. Historically, the scientific interest in the question of biological and social inheritance has concerned itself with the rather sterile problem of the weight to be attached on the one hand to physical heredity and on the other to social heritage. The selection, "Temperament, Tradition, and Nationality" suggests that a more important inquiry is to determine how the behavior patterns and the culture of a racial group or a social class are determined by the interaction of original nature and the social tradition. According to this conception, racial temperament is an active selective agency, determining interest and the direction of attention. The group heritages on the other hand represent a detached external social environment, a complex of stimuli, effective only in so far as they call forth responses. The culture of a group is the sum total and organization of the social heritages which have acquired a social meaning because of racial temperament and of the historical life of the group. II. MATERIALS A. THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 1. Original Nature Defined[58] A man's nature and the changes that take place in it may be described in terms of the responses--of thought, feeling, action, and attitude--which he makes, and of the bonds by which these are connected with the situations which life offers. Any fact of intellect, character, or skill means a tendency to respond in a certain way to a certain situation--involves a _situation_ or state of affairs influencing the man, a _response_ or state of affairs in the man, and a _connection_ or bond whereby the latter is the result of the former. Any man possesses at the very start of his life--that is, at the moment when the ovum and spermatozoön which are to produce him have united--numerous well-defined tendencies to future behavior. Between the situations which he will meet and the responses which he will make to them, pre-formed bonds exist. It is already determined by the constitution of these two germs that under certain circumstances he will see and hear and feel and act in certain ways. His intellect and morals, as well as his bodily organs and movements, are in part the consequence of the nature of the embryo in the first moment of its life. What a man is and does throughout life is a result of whatever constitution he has at the start and of the forces that act upon it before and after birth. I shall use the term "original nature" for the former and "environment" for the latter. His original nature is thus a name for the nature of the combined germ-cells from which he springs, and his environment is a name for the rest of the universe, so far as it may, directly or indirectly, influence him. Three terms, reflexes, instincts, and inborn capacities, divide the work of naming these unlearned tendencies. When the tendency concerns a very definite and uniform response to a very simple sensory situation, and when the connection between the situation and the response is very hard to modify and is also very strong so that it is almost inevitable, the connection or response to which it leads is called a reflex. Thus the knee-jerk is a very definite and uniform response to the simple sense-stimulus of sudden hard pressure against a certain spot. When the response is more indefinite, the situation more complex, and the connection more modifiable, instinct becomes the customary term. Thus one's misery at being scorned is too indefinite a response to too complex a situation and is too easily modifiable to be called a reflex. When the tendency is to an extremely indefinite response or set of responses to a very complex situation, as when the connection's final degree of strength is commonly due to very large contributions from training, it has seemed more appropriate to replace reflex and instinct by some term like capacity, or tendency, or potentiality. Thus an original tendency to respond to the circumstances of school education by achievement in learning the arts and sciences is called the capacity for scholarship. There is, of course, no gap between reflexes and instincts, or between instincts and the still less easily describable original tendencies. The fact is that original tendencies range with respect to the nature of the responses from such as are single, simple, definite, uniform within the individual and only slightly variable amongst individuals, to responses that are highly compound, complex, vague, and variable within one individual's life and amongst individuals. A typical reflex, or instinct, or capacity, as a whole, includes the ability to be sensitive to a certain situation, the ability to make a certain response, and the existence of a bond or connection whereby that response is made to that situation. For instance, the young chick is sensitive to the absence of other members of his species, is able to peep, and is so organized that the absence of other members of the species makes him peep. But the tendency to be sensitive to a certain situation may exist without the existence of a connection therewith of any further exclusive response, and the tendency to make a certain response may exist without the existence of a connection limiting that response exclusively to any single situation. The three-year-old child is by inborn nature markedly sensitive to the presence and acts of other human beings, but the exact nature of his response varies. The original tendency to cry is very strong, but there is no one situation to which it is exclusively bound. Original nature seems to decide that the individual will respond somehow to certain situations more often than it decides just what he will do, and to decide that he will make certain responses more often than it decides just when he will make them. So, for convenience in thinking about man's unlearned equipment, this appearance of _multiple response_ to one same situation and _multiple causation_ of one same response may be taken roughly as the fact. 2. Inventory of Original Tendencies[59] I. _Sensory capacities_ II. _Original attentiveness_ III. _Gross bodily control_ IV. _Food getting and habitation_ A. Food getting 1. Eating. 2. Reaching, grasping, putting into the mouth. 3. Acquisition and possession. 4. Hunting (a) a small escaping object, (b) a small or moderate-sized object not of offensive mien, moving away from or past him. 5. Possible specialized tendencies. 6. Collecting and hoarding. 7. Avoidance and repulsion. 8. Rivalry and co-operation B. Habitation 1. Responses to confinement. 2. Migration and domesticity V. _Fear, fighting, and anger_ A. Fear 1. Unpleasant expectation and dread. 2. Anxiety and worry. 3. Dislike and avoidance. 4. Shock. 5. Flight, paralysis, etc. B. Fighting 1. Escape from restraint. 2. Overcoming a moving obstacle. 3. Counter-attack. 4. Irrational response to pain. 5. Combat in rivalry. 6. Resentment of presence of other males in courtship. 7. Angry behavior at persistent thwarting. C. Anger VI. _Responses to the behavior of other human beings_ A. Motherly behavior B. Filial behavior C. Responses to presence, approval, and scorn of men 1. Gregariousness. 2. Attention to human beings. 3. Attention-getting. 4. Responses to approval and scorn. 5. Responses by approval and scorn D. Mastering and submissive behavior 1. Display. 2. Shyness. 3. Self-conscious behavior E. Other social instincts 1. Sex behavior. 2. Secretiveness. 3. Rivalry. 4. Co-operation. 5. Suggestibility and opposition. 6. Envious and jealous behavior. 7. Greed. 8. Ownership. 9. Kindliness. 10. Teasing, tormenting, and bullying F. Imitation 1. General imitativeness. 2. Imitation of particular forms of behavior VII. _Original satisfiers and annoyers_ VIII. _Minor bodily movements and cerebral connections_ A. Vocalization B. Visual exploration C. Manipulation D. Other possible specializations 1. Constructiveness. 2. Cleanliness. 3. Adornment and art E. Curiosity and mental control 1. Curiosity. 2. The instinct of multiform mental activity. 3. The instinct of multiform physical activity. 4. The instinct of workmanship and the desire for excellence F. Play IX. _The emotions and their expression_ X. _Consciousness, learning, and remembering_ 3. Man Not Born Human[60] Man is not born human. It is only slowly and laboriously, in fruitful contact, co-operation, and conflict with his fellows, that he attains the distinctive qualities of human nature. In the course of his prenatal life he has already passed roughly through, or, as the biologists say, "recapitulated," the whole history of his animal ancestors. He brings with him at birth a multitude of instincts and tendencies, many of which persist during life and many of which are only what G. Stanley Hall calls "vestigial traces" of his brute ancestry, as is shown by the fact that they are no longer useful and soon disappear. These non-volitional movements of earliest infancy and of later childhood (such as licking things, clicking with the tongue, grinding the teeth, biting the nails, shrugging corrugations, pulling buttons, or twisting garments, strings, etc., twirling pencils, etc.) are relics of past forms of utilities now essentially obsolete. Ancient modes of locomotion, prehension, balancing, defense, attack, sensuality, etc., are all rehearsed, some quite fully and some only by the faintest mimetic suggestion, flitting spasmodic tensions, gestures, or facial expressions. Human nature may therefore be regarded on the whole as a superstructure founded on instincts, dispositions, and tendencies, inherited from a long line of human and animal ancestors. It consists mainly in a higher organization of forces, a more subtle distillation of potencies latent in what Thorndike calls "the original nature of man." The original nature of man is roughly what is common to all men minus all adaptations to tools, houses, clothes, furniture, words, beliefs, religions, laws, science, the arts, and to whatever in other men's behavior is due to adaptations to them. From human nature as we find it, take away, first, all that is in the European but not in the Chinaman, all that is in the Fiji Islander but not in the Esquimaux, all that is local or temporary. Then take away also the effects of all products of human art. What is left of human intellect and character is largely original--not wholly, for all those elements of knowledge which we call ideas and judgments must be subtracted from his responses. Man originally possesses only capacities which, after a given amount of education, will produce ideas and judgments. Such, in general, is the nature of human beings before that nature has been modified by experience and formed by the education and the discipline of contact and intercourse with their fellows. Several writers, among them William James, have attempted to make a rough inventory of the special instinctive tendencies with which human beings are equipped at birth. First of all there are the simpler reflexes such as "crying, sneezing, snoring, coughing, sighing, sobbing, gagging, vomiting, hiccuping, starting, moving the limb in response to its being tickled, touched or blown upon, spreading the toes in response to its being touched, tickled, or stroked on the sole of the foot, extending and raising the arms at any sudden sensory stimulus, or the quick pulsation of the eyelid." Then there are the more complex original tendencies such as sucking, chewing, sitting up, and gurgling. Among the more general unlearned responses of children are fear, anger, pugnacity, envy, jealousy, curiosity, constructiveness, love of festivities, ceremonies and ordeals, sociability and shyness, secretiveness, etc. Thorndike, who quotes this list at length, has sought to give definiteness to its descriptions by clearly defining and distinguishing the character of the situation to which the behavior cited is a response. For example, to the situation, "strange man or animal, to solitude, black things, dark places, holes and corners, a human corpse," the native and unlearned response is fear. The original response of man to being alone is an experience of discomfort, to perceiving a crowd, "a tendency to join them and do what they are doing and an unwillingness to leave off and go home." It is part of man's original nature when he is in love to conceal his love affairs, and so forth. It is evident from this list that what is meant by original nature is not confined to the behavior which manifests itself at birth, but includes man's spontaneous and unlearned responses to situations as they arise in the experience of the individual. The widespread interest in the study of children has inspired in recent years a considerable literature bearing upon the original and inherited tendencies of human nature. The difficulty of distinguishing between what is original and what is acquired among the forms of behavior reported upon, and the further difficulty of obtaining accurate descriptions of the situations to which the behavior described was a response, has made much of this literature of doubtful value for scientific purposes. These studies have, nevertheless, contributed to a radical change in our conceptions of human nature. They have shown that the distinction between the mind of man and that of the lower animals is not so wide nor so profound as was once supposed. They have emphasized the fact that human nature rests on animal nature, and the transition from one to the other, in spite of the contrast in their separate achievements, has been made by imperceptible gradations. In the same way they have revealed, beneath differences in culture and individual achievement, the outlines of a pervasive and relatively unchanging human nature in which all races and individuals have a common share. The study of human nature begins with description, but it goes on from that point to explanation. If the descriptions which we have thus far had of human nature are imperfect and lacking in precision, it is equally true that the explanations thus far invented have, on the whole, been inadequate. One reason for this has been the difficulty of the task. The mechanisms which control human behavior are, as might be expected, tremendously complicated, and the problem of analyzing them into their elementary forms and reducing their varied manifestations to precise and lucid formulas is both intricate and perplexing. The foundation for the explanation of human nature has been laid, however, by the studies of behavior in animals and the comparative study of the physiology of the nervous system. Progress has been made, on the one hand, by seeking for the precise psycho-chemical process involved in the nervous reactions, and on the other, by reducing all higher mental processes to elementary forms represented by the tropisms and reflex actions. In this, science has made a considerable advance upon common sense in its interpretations of human behavior, but has introduced no new principle; it has simply made its statements more detailed and exact. For example, common sense has observed that "the burnt child shuns the fire," that "the moth seeks the flame." These are both statements of truths of undoubted generality. In order to give them the validity of scientific truth, however, we need to know what there is in the nature of the processes involved that makes it inevitable that the child should shun the fire and the moth should seek the flame. It is not sufficient to say that the action in one case is instinctive and in the other intelligent, unless we are able to give precise and definite meanings to those terms; unless, in short, we are able to point out the precise mechanisms through which these reactions are carried out. The following illustration from Loeb's volume on the comparative physiology of the brain will illustrate the distinction between the common sense and the more precise scientific explanation of the behavior in man and the lower animals. It is a well-known fact that if an ant be removed from a nest and afterward put back it will not be attacked, while almost invariably an ant belonging to another nest will be attacked. It has been customary to use the words memory, enmity, friendship, in describing this fact. Now Bethe made the following experiment: an ant was placed in the liquids (blood and lymph) squeezed out from the bodies of nest companions and was then put back into its nest; it was not attacked. It was then put in the juice taken from the inmates of a "hostile" nest and was at once attacked and killed. Bethe was able to prove by special experiments that these reactions of ants are not learned by experience, but are inherited. The "knowing" of "friend and foe" among ants is thus reduced to different reactions, depending upon the nature of the chemical stimulus and in no way depending upon memory. Here, again, there is no essential difference between the common sense and the scientific explanation of the behavior of the ant except so far as the scientific explanation is more accurate, defining the precise mechanisms by which the recognition of "friend and foe" is effected, and the limitations to which it is subject. Another result of the study of the comparative behavior of man and the lower animals has been to convince students that there is no fundamental difference between what was formerly called intelligent and instinctive behavior; that they may rather be reduced, as has been said, to the elementary form of reaction represented by the simple reflex in animals and the tropism in plants. Thus Loeb says: A prominent psychologist has maintained that reflexes are to be considered as the mechanical effects of acts of volition of past generations. The ganglion-cell seems the only place where such mechanical effects could be stored up. It has therefore been considered the most essential element of the reflex mechanism, the nerve-fibers being regarded, and probably correctly, merely as conductors. Both the authors who emphasize the purposefulness of the reflex act, and those who see in it only a physical process, have invariably looked upon the ganglion-cell as the principal bearer of the structures for the complex co-ordinated movements in reflex action. I should have been as little inclined as any other physiologist to doubt the correctness of this conception had not the establishment of the identity of the reactions of animals and plants to light proved the untenability of this view and at the same time offered a different conception of reflexes. The flight of the moth into the flame is a typical reflex process. The light stimulates the peripheral sense organs, the stimulus passes to the central nervous system, and from there to the muscles of the wings, and the moth is caused to fly into the flame. This reflex process agrees in every point with the heliotropic effects of light on plant organs. Since plants possess no nerves, this identity of animal with plant heliotropism can offer but one inference--these heliotropic effects must depend upon conditions which are common to both animals and plants. On the other hand, Watson, in his _Introduction to Comparative Psychology_, defines the reflex as "a unit of analysis of instinct," and this means that instinctive actions in man and in animals may be regarded as combinations of simple reflex actions, that is to say of "fairly definite and generally predictable but unlearned responses of lower and higher organisms to stimuli." Many of these reflex responses are not fixed, as they were formerly supposed to be, but "highly unstable and indefinite." This fact makes possible the formation of habits, by combination and fixation of these inherited responses. These views in the radical form in which they are expressed by Loeb and Watson have naturally enough been the subject of considerable controversy, both on scientific and sentimental grounds. They seem to reduce human behavior to a system of chemical and physical reactions, and rob life of all its spiritual values. On the other hand, it must be remembered that human beings, like other forms of nature, have this mechanical aspect and it is precisely the business of natural science to discover and lay them bare. It is only thus that we are able to gain control over ourselves and of others. It is a matter of common experience that we do form habits and that education and social control are largely dependent upon our ability to establish habits in ourselves and in others. Habit is, in fact, a characteristic example of just what is meant by "mechanism," in the sense in which it is here used. It is through the fixation of habit that we gain that control over our "original nature," which lifts us above the brutes and gives human nature its distinctive character as human. Character is nothing more than the sum and co-ordination of those mechanisms which we call habit and which are formed on the basis of the inherited and instinctive tendencies and dispositions which we share in so large a measure with the lower animals. 4. The Natural Man[61] "Its first act is a cry, not of wrath, as Kant said, nor a shout of joy, as Schwartz thought, but a snuffling, and then a long, thin, tearless á-á, with the timbre of a Scotch bagpipe, purely automatic, but of discomfort. With this monotonous and dismal cry, with its red, shriveled, parboiled skin (for the child commonly loses weight the first few days), squinting, cross-eyed, pot-bellied, and bow-legged, it is not strange that, if the mother has not followed Froebel's exhortations and come to love her child before birth, there is a brief interval occasionally dangerous to the child before the maternal instinct is fully aroused." The most curious of all the monkey traits shown by the new-born baby is the one investigated by Dr. Louis Robinson. It was suggested by _The Luck of Roaring Camp_. The question was raised in conversation whether a limp and molluscous baby, unable so much as to hold up its head on its helpless little neck, could do anything so positive as to "rastle with" Kentuck's finger; and the more knowing persons present insisted that a young baby does, as a matter of fact, have a good firm hand-clasp. It occurred to Dr. Robinson that if this was true it was a beautiful Darwinian point, for clinging and swinging by the arms would naturally have been a specialty with our ancestors if they ever lived a monkey-like life in the trees. The baby that could cling best to its mother as she used hands, feet, and tail to flee in the best time over the trees, or to get at the more inaccessible fruits and eggs in time of scarcity, would be the baby that lived to bequeath his traits to his descendants; so that to this day our housed and cradled human babies would keep in their clinging powers a reminiscence of our wild treetop days. There is another class of movements, often confused with the reflex--that is, instinctive movements. Real grasping (as distinguished from reflex grasping), biting, standing, walking, are examples of this class. They are race movements, the habits of the species to which the animal belongs, and every normal member of the species is bound to come to them; yet they are not so fixed in the bodily mechanism as the reflex movements. The one instinct the human baby always brings into the world already developed is half a mere reflex act--that of sucking. It is started as a reflex would be, by the touch of some object--pencil, finger, or nipple, it may be--between the lips; but it does not act like a reflex after that. It continues and ceases without reference to this external stimulus, and a little later often begins without it, or fails to begin when the stimulus is given. If it has originally a reflex character, that character fades out and leaves it a pure instinct. My little niece evidently felt a difference between light and darkness from the first hour, for she stopped crying when her face was exposed to gentle light. Two or three report also a turning of the head toward the light within the first week. The nurse, who was intelligent and exact, thought she saw this in the case of my niece. I did not, but I saw instead a constant turning of the eyes toward a person coming near her--that is, toward a large dark mass that interrupted the light. No other sign of vision appeared in the little one during the first fortnight. The eyes were directed to nothing, fixed on nothing. They did not wink if one made a pass at them. There was no change of focus for near or distant seeing. The baby showed no sign of hearing anything until the third day, when she started violently at the sound of tearing paper, some eight feet from her. After that, occasional harsh or sudden sounds--oftener the rustling of paper than anything else--could make her start or cry. It is well established by the careful tests of several physiologists that babies are deaf for a period lasting from several hours to several days after birth. Taste and smell were senses that the baby gave no sign of owning till much later. The satisfaction of hunger was quite enough to account for the contentment she showed in nursing; and when she was not hungry she would suck the most tasteless object as cheerfully as any other. Our baby showed from the first that she was aware when she was touched. She stopped crying when she was cuddled or patted. She showed comfort in the bath, which may have been in part due to freedom from the contact of clothes, and to liking for the soft touches of the water. She responded with sucking motions to the first touch of the nipple on her lips. Our baby showed temperament--luckily of the easy-going and cheerful kind--from her first day, though we could hardly see this except by looking backward. On the twenty-fifth day, toward evening, when the baby was lying on her grandmother's knee by the fire, in a condition of high well-being and content, gazing at her grandmother's face with an expression of attention, I came and sat down close by, leaning over the baby, so that my face must have come within the indirect range of her vision. At that she turned her eyes to my face and gazed at it with the same appearance of attention, and even of some effort, shown by the slight tension of brows and lips, then turned her eyes back to her grandmother's face, and again to mine, and so several times. The last time she seemed to catch sight of my shoulder, on which a high light struck from the lamp, and not only moved her eyes but threw her head far back to see it better, and gazed for some time with a new expression on her face--"a sort of dim and rudimentary eagerness," says my note. She no longer stared, but really looked. The baby's increased interest in seeing centered especially on the faces about her, at which she gazed with rapt interest. Even during the period of mere staring, faces had oftenest held her eyes, probably because they were oftener brought within the range of her clearest seeing than other light surfaces. The large, light, moving patch of the human face (as Preyer has pointed out) coming and going in the field of vision, and oftener chancing to hover at the point of clearest seeing than any other object, embellished with a play of high lights on cheeks, teeth, and eyes, is calculated to excite the highest degree of attention a baby is capable of at a month old. So from the very first--before the baby has yet really seen his mother--her face and that of his other nearest friends become the most active agents in his development and the most interesting things in his experience. Our baby was at this time in a way aware of the difference between companionship and solitude. In the latter days of the first month she would lie contentedly in the room with people near by, but would fret if left alone. But by the end of the month she was apt to fret when she was laid down on a chair or lounge, and to become content only when taken into the lap. This was not yet distinct memory and desire, but it showed that associations of pleasure had been formed with the lap, and that she felt a vague discomfort in the absence of these. Nature has provided an educational appliance almost ideally adapted to the child's sense condition, in the mother's face, hovering close above him, smiling, laughing, nodding, with all manner of delightful changes in the high lights; in the thousand little meaningless caressing sounds, the singing, talking, calling, that proceed from it; the patting, cuddling, lifting, and all the ministrations that the baby feels while gazing at it, and associates with it, till finally they group together and round out into the idea of his mother as a whole. Our baby's mother rather resented the idea of being to her baby only a collection of detached phenomena, instead of a mamma; but the more you think of it, the more flattering it is to be thus, as it were, dissolved into your elements and incorporated item by item into the very foundations of your baby's mental life. Herein is hinted much of the philosophy of personality; and Professor Baldwin has written a solid book, mainly to show from the development of babies and little children that all other people are part of each of us, and each of us is part of all other people, and so there is really no separate personality, but we are all one spirit, if we did but know it. 5. Sex Differences[62] As children become physically differentiated in respect of sex, so also does a mental differentiation ensue. Differences are observed in the matter of occupation, of games, of movements, and numerous other details. Since man is to play the active part in life, boys rejoice especially in rough outdoor games. Girls, on the other hand, prefer such games as correspond to their future occupations. Hence their inclination to mother smaller children, and to play with dolls. Watch how a little girl takes care of her doll, washes it, dresses and undresses it. When only six or seven years of age she is often an excellent nurse. Her need to occupy herself in such activities is often so great that she pretends that her doll is ill. In all kinds of ways, we see the little girl occupying herself in the activities and inclinations of her future existence. She practices house work; she has a little kitchen, in which she cooks for herself and her doll. She is fond of needlework. The care of her own person, and more especially its adornment, is not forgotten. I remember seeing a girl of three who kept on interrupting her elders' conversation by crying out, "New clothes!" and would not keep quiet until these latter had been duly admired. The love of self-adornment is almost peculiar to female children; boys, on the other hand, prefer rough outdoor games, in which their muscles are actively employed, robber-games, soldier-games, and the like. And whereas, in early childhood, both sexes are fond of very noisy games, the fondness for these disappears earlier in girls than in boys. Differences between the sexes have been established also by means of experimental psychology, based upon the examination of a very large number of instances. Berthold Hartmann has studied the childish circle of thought, by means of a series of experiments. Schoolboys to the number of 660 and schoolgirls to the number of 652, at ages between five and three-fourths and six and three-fourths years, were subjected to examination. It was very remarkable to see how, in respect to certain ideas, such as those of the triangle, cube, and circle, the girls greatly excelled the boys; whereas in respect of animals, minerals, and social ideas, the boys were better informed than the girls. Characteristic of the differences between the sexes, according to Meumann, from whom I take these details and some of those that follow, is the fact that the idea of "marriage" was known to only 70 boys as compared to 227 girls; whilst the idea of "infant baptism" was known to 180 boys as compared to 220 girls. The idea of "pleasure" was also much better understood by girls than by boys. Examination of the memory has also established the existence of differences between the sexes in childhood. In boys the memory for objects appears to be at first the best developed; to this succeeds the memory for words with a visual content; in the case of girls, the reverse of this was observed. In respect of numerous details, however, the authorities conflict. Very striking is the fact, one upon which a very large number of investigators are agreed, that girls have a superior knowledge of colors. There are additional psychological data relating to the differences between the sexes in childhood. I may recall Stern's investigations concerning the psychology of evidence, which showed that girls were much more inaccurate than boys. It has been widely assumed that these psychical differences between the sexes result from education, and are not inborn. Others, however, assume that the psychical characteristics by which the sexes are differentiated result solely from individual differences in education. Stern believes that in the case of one differential character, at least, he can prove that for many centuries there has been no difference between the sexes in the matter of education; this character is the capacity for drawing. Kerschensteiner has studied the development of this gift, and considers that his results have established beyond dispute that girls are greatly inferior in this respect to boys of like age. Stern points out that there can be no question here of cultivation leading to a sexual differentiation of faculty, since there is no attempt at a general and systematic teaching of draughtsmanship to the members of one sex to the exclusion of members of the other. I believe that we are justified in asserting that at the present time the sexual differentiation manifested in respect of quite a number of psychical qualities is the result of direct inheritance. It would be quite wrong to assume that all these differences arise in each individual in consequence of education. It does, indeed, appear to me to be true that inherited tendencies may be increased or diminished by individual education; and further, that when the inherited tendency is not a very powerful one, it may in this way even be suppressed. We must not forget the frequent intimate association between structure and function. Rough outdoor games and wrestling thus correspond to the physical constitution of the boy. So, also, it is by no means improbable that the little girl, whose pelvis and hips have already begun to indicate by their development their adaption for the supreme functions of the sexually mature woman, should experience obscurely a certain impulsion toward her predestined maternal occupation, and that her inclinations and amusements should in this way be determined. Many, indeed, and above all the extreme advocates of women's rights, prefer to maintain that such sexually differentiated inclinations result solely from differences in individual education: if the boy has no enduring taste for dolls and cooking, this is because his mother and others have told him, perhaps with mockery, that such amusements are unsuited to a boy; whilst in a similar way the girl is dissuaded from the rough sports of boyhood. Such an assumption is the expression of that general psychological and educational tendency, which ascribes to the activity of the will an overwhelmingly powerful influence upon the development of the organs subserving the intellect, and secondarily also upon that of the other organs of the body. We cannot dispute the fact that in such a way the activity of the will may, within certain limits, be effective, especially in cases in which the inherited tendency thus counteracted is comparatively weak; but only within certain limits. Thus we can understand how it is that in some cases, by means of education, a child is impressed with characteristics normally foreign to its sex; qualities and tendencies are thus developed which ordinarily appear only in a child of the opposite sex. But even though we must admit that the activity of the individual may operate in this way, none the less we are compelled to assume that certain tendencies are inborn. The failure of innumerable attempts to counteract such inborn tendencies by means of education throws a strong light upon the limitations of the activity of the individual will; and the same must be said of a large number of other experiences. Criminological experiences appear also to confirm the notion of an inherited sexual differentiation, in children as well as in adults. According to various statistics, embracing not only the period of childhood, but including as well the period of youth, we learn that girls constitute one-fifth only of the total number of youthful criminals. A number of different explanations have been offered to account for this disproportion. Thus, for instance, attention has been drawn to the fact that a girl's physical weakness renders her incapable of attempting violent assaults upon the person, and this would suffice to explain why it is that girls so rarely commit such crimes. In the case of offenses for which bodily strength is less requisite, such as fraud, theft, etc., the number of youthful female offenders is proportionately larger, although here also they are less numerous than males of corresponding age charged with the like offenses. It has been asserted that in the law courts girls find more sympathy than boys, and that for this reason the former receive milder sentences than the latter; hence it results that in appearance merely the criminality of girls is less than that of boys. Others, again, refer the differences in respect of criminality between the youthful members of the two sexes to the influences of education and general environment. Morrison, however, maintains that all these influences combined are yet insufficient to account for the great disproportion between the sexes, and insists that there exists in youth as well as in adult life a specific sexual differentiation, based, for the most part, upon biological differences of a mental and physical character. Such a marked differentiation as there is between the adult man and the adult woman certainly does not exist in childhood. Similarly in respect of many other qualities, alike bodily and mental, in respect of many inclinations and numerous activities, we find that in childhood sexual differentiation is less marked than it is in adult life. None the less, a number of sexual differences can be shown to exist even in childhood; and as regards many other differences, though they are not yet apparent, we are nevertheless compelled to assume that they already exist potentially in the organs of the child. 6. Racial Differences[63] The results of the Cambridge expedition to the Torres Straits have shown that in acuteness of vision, hearing, smell, etc., these peoples are not noticeably different from our own. We conclude that the remarkable tales adduced to the contrary by various travelers are to be explained, not by the acuteness of sensation, but by the acuteness of interpretation of primitive peoples. Take the savage into the streets of a busy city and see what a number of sights and sounds he will neglect because of their meaninglessness to him. Take the sailor whose powers of discerning a ship on the horizon appear to the landsman so extraordinary, and set him to detect micro-organisms in the field of a microscope. Is it then surprising that primitive man should be able to draw inferences which to the stranger appear marvelous, from the merest specks in the far distance or from the faintest sounds, odors, or tracks in the jungle? Such behavior serves only to attest the extraordinary powers of observation in primitive man with respect to things which are of use and hence of interest to him. The same powers are shown in the vast number of words he will coin to denote the same object, say a certain tree at different stages of its growth. We concluded, then, that no fundamental difference in powers of sensory acuity, nor, indeed, in sensory discrimination, exists between primitive and civilized communities. Further, there is no proof of any difference in memory between them, save, perhaps, in a greater tendency for primitive folk to use and to excel in mere mechanical learning, in preference to rational learning. But this surely is also the characteristic of the European peasant. He will never commit things to memory by thinking of their meaning, if he can learn them by rote. In temperament we meet with just the same variations in primitive as in civilized communities. In every primitive society is to be found the flighty, the staid, the energetic, the indolent, the cheerful, the morose, the even-, the hot-tempered, the unthinking, the philosophical individual. At the same time, the average differences between different primitive peoples are as striking as those between the average German and the average Italian. It is a common but manifest error to suppose that primitive man is distinguished from the civilized peasant in that he is freer and that his conduct is less under control. On the contrary, the savage is probably far more hidebound than we are by social regulations. His life is one round of adherence to the demands of custom. For instance, he may be compelled even to hand over his own children at their birth to others; he may be prohibited from speaking to certain of his relatives; his choice of a wife may be very strictly limited by traditional laws; at every turn there are ceremonies to be performed and presents to be made by him so that misfortune may be safely averted. As to the control which primitive folk exercise over their conduct, this varies enormously among different peoples; but if desired, I could bring many instances of self-control before you which would put to shame the members even of our most civilized communities. Now since in all these various mental characters no appreciable difference exists between primitive and advanced communities, the question arises, what is the most important difference between them? I shall be told, in the capacity for logical and abstract thought. But by how much logical and abstract thought is the European peasant superior to his primitive brother? Study our country folklore, study the actual practices in regard to healing and religion which prevail in every European peasant community today, and what essential differences are discoverable? Of course, it will be urged that these practices are continued unthinkingly, that they are merely vestiges of a period when once they were believed and were full of meaning. But this, I am convinced, is far from being generally true, and it also certainly applies to many of the ceremonies and customs of primitive peoples. It will be said that although the European peasant may not in the main think more logically and abstractly, he has, nevertheless, the potentiality for such thought, should only the conditions for its manifestations--education and the like--ever be given. From such as he have been produced the geniuses of Europe--the long line of artists and inventors who have risen from the lowest ranks. I will consider this objection later. At present it is sufficient for my purpose to have secured the admission that the peasants of Europe do not as a whole use their mental powers in a much more logical or abstract manner than do primitive people. I maintain that such superiority as they have is due to differences (1) of environment and (2) of variability. We must remember that the European peasant grows up in a (more or less) civilized environment; he learns a (more or less) well-developed and written language, which serves as an easier instrument and a stronger inducement for abstract thought; he is born into a (more or less) advanced religion. All these advantages and the advantage of a more complex education the European peasant owes to his superiors in ability and civilization. Rob the peasant of these opportunities, plunge him into the social environment of present primitive man, and what difference in thinking power will be left between them? The answer to this question brings me to the second point of difference which I have mentioned--the difference in variability. I have already alluded to the divergencies in temperament to be found among the members of every primitive community. But well marked as are these and other individual differences, I suspect that they are less prominent among primitive than among more advanced peoples. This difference in variability, if really existent, is probably the outcome of more frequent racial admixture and more complex social environment in civilized communities. In another sense, the variability of the savage is indicated by the comparative data afforded by certain psychological investigations. A civilized community may not differ much from a primitive one in the mean or average of a given character, but the extreme deviations which it shows from that mean will be more numerous and more pronounced. This kind of variability has probably another source. The members of a primitive community behave toward the applied test in the simplest manner, by the use of a mental process which we will call A, whereas those of a more advanced civilization employ other mental processes, in addition to A, say B, C, D, or E, each individual using them in different degrees for the performance of one and the same test. Finally, there is in all likelihood a third kind of variability, whose origin is ultimately environmental, which is manifested by extremes of nervous instability. Probably the exceptionally defective and the exceptional genius are more common among civilized than among primitive peoples. Similar features undoubtedly meet us in the study of sexual differences. The average results of various tests of mental ability applied to men and women are not, on the whole, very different for the two sexes, but the men always show considerably greater individual variation than the women. And here, at all events, the relation between the frequency of mental deficiency and genius in the two sexes is unquestionable. Our asylums contain a considerably greater number of males than of females, as a compensation for which genius is decidedly less frequent in females than in males. 7. Individual Differences[64] The life of a man is a double series--a series of effects produced in him by the rest of the world, and a series of effects produced in that world by him. A man's make-up or nature equals his tendencies to be influenced in certain ways by the world and to react in certain ways to it. If we could thus adequately describe each of a million human beings--if, for each one, we could prophesy just what the response would be to every possible situation of life--the million men would be found to differ widely. Probably no two out of the million would be so alike in mental nature as to be indistinguishable by one who knew their entire natures. Each has an individuality which marks him off from other men. We may study a human being in respect to his common humanity, or in respect to his individuality. In other words, we may study the features of intellect and character which are common to all men, to man as a species; or we may study the differences in intellect and character which distinguish individual men. Individuals are commonly considered as differing in respect to such traits either quantitatively or qualitatively, either in degree or in kind. A quantitative difference exists when the individuals have different amounts of the same trait. Thus, "John is more attentive to his teacher than James is"; "Mary loves dolls less than Lucy does"; "A had greater devotion to his country than B had"; are reports of quantitative differences, of differences in the amount of what is assumed to be the same kind of thing. A qualitative difference exists when some quality or trait possessed by one individual is lacking in the other. Thus, "Tom knows German, Dick does not"; "A is artistic, B is scientific"; "C is a man of thought, D is a man of action"; are reports of the fact that Tom has some positive amount or degree of the trait "knowledge of German" while Dick has none of it; that A has some positive amount of ability and interest in art while B has zero; whereas B has a positive amount of ability in science, of which A has none; and so on. A qualitative difference in intellect or character is thus really a quantitative difference wherein one term is zero, or a compound of two or more quantitative differences. All intelligible differences are ultimately quantitative. The difference between any two individuals, if describable at all, is described by comparing the amounts which A possesses of various traits with the amounts which B possesses of the same traits. In intellect and character, differences of kind between one individual and another turn out to be definable, if defined at all, as compound differences of degree. If we could list all the traits, each representing some one characteristic of human nature, and measure the amount of each of them possessed by a man, we could represent his nature--read his character--in a great equation. John Smith would equal so many units of this, plus so many units of that, and so on. Such a mental inventory would express his individuality conceivably in its entirety and with great exactitude. No such list has been made for any man, much less have the exact amounts of each trait possessed by him been measured. But in certain of the traits, many individuals have been measured; and certain individuals have been measured, each in a large number of traits. It is useless to recount the traits in which men have been found to differ. For there is no trait in which they do not differ. Of course, if the scale by which individuals are measured is very coarsely divided, their differences may be hidden. If, for example, ability to learn is measured on a scale with only two divisions, (1) "ability to learn less than the average kitten can" and (2) "ability to learn more than the average kitten can," all men may be put in class two, just as if their heights were measured on a scale of one yard, two yards, or three yards, nearly all men would alike be called two yards high. But whenever the scale of measurement is made fine enough, differences at once appear. Their existence is indubitable to any impartial observer. The early psychologists neglected or failed to see them precisely because the early psychology was partial. It believed in a typical or pattern mind, after the manner of which all minds were created, and from whom they differed only by rare accidents. It studied "the mind," and neglected individual minds. It studied "the will" of "man," neglecting the interests, impulses, and habits of actual men. The differences exist at birth and commonly increase with progress toward maturity. Individuality is already clearly manifest in children of school age. The same situation evokes widely differing responses; the same task is done at differing speeds and with different degrees of success; the same treatment produces differing results. There can be little doubt that of a thousand ten-year-olds taken at random, some will be four times as energetic, industrious, quick, courageous, or honest as others, or will possess four times as much refinement, knowledge of arithmetic, power of self-control, sympathy, or the like. It has been found that among children of the same age and, in essential respects, of the same home training and school advantages, some do in the same time six times as much, or do the same amount with only one-tenth as many errors. B. HUMAN NATURE AND SOCIAL LIFE 1. Human Nature and Its Remaking[65] Human beings as we find them are artificial products; and for better or for worse they must always be such. Nature has made us: social action and our own efforts must continually remake us. Any attempt to reject art for "nature" can only result in an artificial naturalness which is far less genuine and less pleasing than the natural work of art. Further, as self-consciousness varies, the amount or degree of this remaking activity will vary. Among the extremely few respects in which human history shows unquestionable growth we must include the degree and range of self-consciousness. The gradual development of psychology as a science and the persistent advance of the subjective or introspective element in literature and in all fine art are tokens of this change. And as a further indication and result, the art of human reshaping has taken definite character, has left its incidental beginnings far behind, has become an institution, a group of institutions. Wherever a language exists, as a magazine of established meanings, there will be found a repertoire of epithets of praise and blame, at once results and implements of this social process. The simple existence of such a vocabulary acts as a persistent force; but the effect of current ideals is redoubled when a coherent agency, such as public religion, assumes protection of the most searching social maxims and lends to them the weight of all time, all space, all wonder, and all fear. For many centuries religion held within itself the ripening self-knowledge and self-discipline of the human mind. Now, beside this original agency we have its offshoots, politics, education, legislation, the penal art. And the philosophical sciences, including psychology and ethics, are the especial servants of these arts. As to structure, human nature is undoubtedly the most plastic part of the living world, the most adaptable, the most educable. Of all animals, it is man in whom heredity counts for least, and conscious building forces for most. Consider that his infancy is longest, his instincts least fixed, his brain most unfinished at birth, his powers of habit-making and habit-changing most marked, his susceptibility to social impressions keenest; and it becomes clear that in every way nature, as a prescriptive power, has provided in him for her own displacement. His major instincts and passions first appear on the scene, not as controlling forces, but as elements of _play_, in a prolonged life of play. Other creatures nature could largely finish: the human creature must finish himself. And as to history, it cannot be said that the results of man's attempts at self-modeling appear to belie the liberty thus promised in his constitution. If he has retired his natural integument in favor of a device called clothing, capable of expressing endless nuances, not alone of status and wealth, but of temper and taste as well--conservatism or venturesomeness, solemnity, gaiety, profusion, color, dignity, carelessness or whim, he has not failed to fashion his inner self into equally various modes of character and custom. That is a hazardous refutation of socialism which consists in pointing out that its success would require a change in human nature. Under the spell of particular ideas monastic communities have flourished, in comparison with whose demands upon human nature the change required by socialism--so far as it calls for purer altruism and not pure economic folly--is trivial. To any one who asserts as a dogma that "human nature never changes," it is fair to reply, "It is human nature to change itself." When one reflects to what extent racial and national traits are manners of the mind, fixed by social rather than by physical heredity, while the bodily characters themselves may be due in no small measure to sexual choices at first experimental, then imitative, then habitual, one is not disposed to think lightly of the human capacity for self-modification. But it is still possible to be skeptical as to the depth and permanence of any changes which are genuinely voluntary. There are few maxims of conduct, and few laws so contrary to nature that they could not be put into momentary effect by individuals or by communities. Plato's Republic has never been fairly tried; but fragments of this and other Utopias have been common enough in history. No one presumes to limit what men can _attempt_; one only inquires what the silent forces are which determine what can _last_. What, to be explicit, is the possible future of measures dealing with divorce, with war, with political corruption, with prostitution, with superstition? Enthusiastic idealism is too precious an energy to be wasted if we can spare it false efforts by recognizing those permanent ingredients of our being indicated by the words pugnacity, greed, sex, fear. Machiavelli was not inclined to make little of what an unhampered ruler could do with his subjects; yet he saw in such passions as these a fixed limit to the power of the Prince. "It makes him hated above all things to be rapacious, and to be violator of the property and women of his subjects, from both of which he must abstain." And if Machiavelli's despotism meets its master in the undercurrents of human instinct, governments of less determined stripe, whether of states or of persons, would hardly do well to treat these ultimate data with less respect. 2. Human Nature, Folkways, and the Mores[66] It is generally taken for granted that men inherited some guiding instincts from their beast ancestry, and it may be true, although it has never been proved. If there were such inheritances, they controlled and aided the first efforts to satisfy needs. Analogy makes it easy to assume that the ways of beasts had produced channels of habit and predisposition along which dexterities and other psycho-physical activities would run easily. Experiments with new born animals show that in the absence of any experience of the relation of means to ends, efforts to satisfy needs are clumsy and blundering. The method is that of trial and failure, which produces repeated pain, loss, and disappointments. Nevertheless, it is the method of rude experiment and selection. The earliest efforts of men were of this kind. Need was the impelling force. Pleasure and pain, on the one side and the other, were the rude constraints which defined the line on which efforts must proceed. The ability to distinguish between pleasure and pain is the only psychical power which is to be assumed. Thus ways of doing things were selected which were expedient. They answered the purpose better than other ways, or with less toil and pain. Along the course on which efforts were compelled to go, habit, routine, and skill were developed. The struggle to maintain existence was carried on, not individually, but in groups. Each profited by the other's experience; hence there was concurrence toward that which proved to be most expedient. All at last adopted the same way for the same purpose; hence the ways turned into customs and became mass phenomena. Instincts were developed in connection with them. In this way folkways arise. The young learn them by tradition, imitation, and authority. The folkways, at a time, provide for all the needs of life then and there. They are uniform, universal in the group, imperative, and invariable. The operation by which folkways are produced consists in the frequent repetition of petty acts, often by great numbers acting in concert or, at least, acting in the same way when face to face with the same need. The immediate motive is interest. It produces habit in the individual and custom in the group. It is, therefore, in the highest degree original and primitive. Out of the unconscious experiment which every repetition of the ways includes, there issues pleasure or pain, and then, so far as the men are capable of reflection, convictions that the ways are conducive to social welfare. When this conviction as to the relation to welfare is added to the folkways, they are converted into mores, and, by virtue of the philosophical and ethical element added to them, they win utility and importance and become the source of the science and the art of living. It is of the first importance to notice that, from the first acts by which men try to satisfy needs, each act stands by itself, and looks no further than immediate satisfaction. From recurrent needs arise habits for the individual and customs for the group, but these results are consequences which were never conscious and never foreseen or intended. They are not noticed until they have long existed, and it is still longer before they are appreciated. Another long time must pass, and a higher stage of mental development must be reached, before they can be used as a basis from which to deduce rules for meeting, in the future, problems whose pressure can be foreseen. The folkways, therefore, are not creations of human purpose and wit. They are like products of natural forces which men unconsciously set in operation, or they are like the instinctive ways of animals, which are developed out of experience, which reach a final form of maximum adaptation to an interest, which are handed down by tradition and admit of no exception or variation, yet change to meet new conditions, still within the same limited methods, and without rational reflection or purpose. From this it results that all the life of human beings, in all ages and stages of culture, is primarily controlled by a vast mass of folkways handed down from the earliest existence of the race, having the nature of the ways of other animals, only the topmost layers of which are subject to change and control, and have been somewhat modified by human philosophy, ethics, and religion, or by other acts of intelligent reflection. We are told of savages that "it is difficult to exhaust the customs and small ceremonial usages of a savage people. Custom regulates the whole of a man's actions--his bathing, washing, cutting his hair, eating, drinking, and fasting. From his cradle to his grave he is the slave of ancient usage. In his life there is nothing free, nothing original, nothing spontaneous, no progress toward a higher and better life, and no attempt to improve his condition, mentally, morally, or spiritually." All men act in this way, with only a little wider margin of voluntary variation. The folkways are, therefore: (1) subject to a strain of improvement toward better adaptation of means to ends, as long as the adaptation is so imperfect that pain is produced. They are also (2) subject to a strain of consistency with each other, because they all answer their several purposes with less friction and antagonism when they co-operate and support each other. The forms of industry, the forms of the family, the notions of property, the constructions of rights, and the types of religion show the strain of consistency with each other through the whole history of civilization. The two great cultural divisions of the human race are the oriental and occidental. Each is consistent throughout; each has its own philosophy and spirit; they are separated from top to bottom by different mores, different standpoints, different ways, and different notions of what societal arrangements are advantageous. In their contrast they keep before our minds the possible range of divergence in the solution of the great problems of human life, and in the views of earthly existence by which life-policy may be controlled. If two planets were joined in one, their inhabitants could not differ more widely as to what things are best worth seeking, or what ways are most expedient for well-living. Custom is the product of concurrent action through time. We find it existent and in control at the extreme reach of our investigations. Whence does it begin, and how does it come to be? How can it give guidance "at the outset"? All mass actions seem to begin because the mass wants to act together. The less they know what it is right and best to do, the more open they are to suggestion from an incident in nature, or from a chance act of one, or from the current doctrines of ghost fear. A concurrent drift begins which is subject to later correction. That being so, it is evident that instinctive action, under the guidance of traditional folkways, is an operation of the first importance in all societal matters. Since the custom never can be antecedent to all action, what we should desire most is to see it arise out of the first actions, but, inasmuch as that is impossible, the course of the action after it is started is our field of study. The origin of primitive customs is always lost in mystery, because when the action begins the men are never conscious of historical action or of the historical importance of what they are doing. When they become conscious of the historical importance of their acts, the origin is already far behind. 3. Habit and Custom, the Individual and the General Will[67] The term _Sitte_ (mores) is a synonym of habit and of usage, of convention and tradition, but also of fashion, propriety, practise, and the like. Those words which characterize the habitual are usually regarded as having essentially unequivocal meanings. The truth is that language, careless of the more fundamental distinctions, confuses widely different connotations. For example, I find that custom--to return to this most common expression--has a threefold significance, namely: 1. _The meaning of a simple objective matter of fact._--In this sense we speak of the man with the habit of early rising, or of walking at a particular time, or of taking an afternoon nap. By this we mean merely that he is accustomed to do so, he does it regularly, it is a part of his manner of life. It is easily understood how this meaning passes over into the next: 2. _The meaning of a rule, of a norm which the man sets up for himself._--For example, we say he has made this or that a custom, and in a like meaning, he has made it a rule, or even a law; and we mean that this habit works like a law or a precept. By it a person governs himself and regards habit as an imperative command, a structure of subjective kind, that, however, has objective form and recognition. The precept will be formulated, the original will be copied. A rule may be presented as enjoined, insisted upon, imposed as a command which brings up the third meaning of habit: 3. _An expression for a thing willed, or a will._--This third meaning, which is generally given the least consideration, is the most significant. If, in truth, habit is the will of man, then this alone can be his real will. In this sense the proverb is significant that habit is called a second nature, and that man is a creature of habit. Habit is, in fact, a psychic disposition, which drives and urges to a specific act, and this is the will in its most outstanding form, as decision, or as "fixed" purpose. Imperceptibly, the habitual passes over into the instinctive and the impulsive. What we are accustomed to do, that we do "automatically." Likewise we automatically make gestures, movements of welcome and aversion which we have never learned but which we do "naturally." They have their springs of action in the instinct of self-preservation and in the feelings connected with it. But what we are accustomed to do, we must first have learned and practiced. It is just that practice, the frequent repetition, that brings about the performance of the act "of itself," like a reflex, rapidly and easily. The rope dancer is able to walk the rope, because he is accustomed to it. Habit and practice are also the reasons not only why a man can perform something but also why he performs it with relatively less effort and attention. Habit is the basis not only for our knowing something but also for our actually doing it. Habit operates as a kind of stimulus, and, as may be said, as necessity. The "power of habit" has often been described and often condemned. As a rule, opinions (mental attitudes) are dependent upon habit, by which they are conditioned and circumscribed. Yet, of course, opinions can also detach themselves from habit, and rise above it, and this is done successfully when they become general opinions, principles, convictions. As such they gain strength which may even break down and overcome habit. Faith, taken in the conventional religious sense of assurance of things hoped for, is a primitive form of will. While in general habit and opinion on the whole agree, there is nevertheless in their relations the seeds of conflict and struggle. Thought continually tends to become the dominating element of the mind, and man thereby becomes the more human. The same meaning that the will, in the usual individual sense, has for individual man, the social will has for any community or society, whether there be a mere loose relationship, or a formal union and permanent association. And what is this meaning? I have pointed this out in my discussion of habit, and present here the more general statement: The social will is the general volition which serves for the government and regulation of individual wills. Every general volition can be conceived as corresponding to a "thou shalt," and in so far as an individual or an association of individuals directs this "thou shalt" to itself, we recognize the autonomy and freedom of this individual or of this association. The necessary consequence of this is that the individual against all opposing inclinations and opinions, the association against opposing individuals, wherever their opposition manifests itself, attempt, at least, to carry through their will so that they work as a constraint and exert pressure. And this is essentially independent of the means which are used to that end. These pressures extend, at least in the social sense, from measures of persuasion, which appeal to a sense of honor and of shame, to actual coercion and punishment which may take the form of physical compulsion. _Sitte_ develops into the most unbending, overpowering force. 4. The Law, Conscience, and the General Will[68] In the English language we have no name for it (_Sittlichkeit_), and this is unfortunate, for the lack of a distinctive name has occasioned confusion both of thought and of expression. _Sittlichkeit_ is the system of habitual or customary conduct, ethical rather than legal, which embraces all those obligations of the citizen which it is "bad form" or "not the thing" to disregard. Indeed, regard for these obligations is frequently enjoined merely by the social penalty of being "cut" or looked on askance. And yet the system is so generally accepted and is held in so high regard, that no one can venture to disregard it without in some way suffering at the hands of his neighbors for so doing. If a man maltreats his wife and children, or habitually jostles his fellow-citizens in the street, or does things flagrantly selfish or in bad taste, he is pretty sure to find himself in a minority and the worse off in the end. But not only does it not pay to do these things, but the decent man does not wish to do them. A feeling analogous to what arises from the dictates of his more private and individual conscience restrains him. He finds himself so restrained in the ordinary affairs of daily life. But he is guided in his conduct by no mere inward feeling, as in the case of conscience. Conscience and, for that matter, law, overlap parts of the sphere of social obligation about which I am speaking. A rule of conduct may, indeed, appear in more than one sphere, and may consequently have a twofold sanction. But the guide to which the citizen mostly looks is just the standard recognized by the community, a community made up mainly of those fellow-citizens whose good opinion he respects and desires to have. He has everywhere round him an object-lesson in the conduct of decent people toward each other and toward the community to which they belong. Without such conduct and the restraints which it imposes there could be no tolerable social life, and real freedom from interference would not be enjoyed. It is the instinctive sense of what to do and what not to do in daily life and behavior that is the source of liberty and ease. And it is this instinctive sense of obligation that is the chief foundation of society. Its reality takes objective shape and displays itself in family life and in our other civic and social institutions. It is not limited to any one form, and it is capable of manifesting itself in new forms and of developing and changing old forms. Indeed, the civic community is more than a political fabric. It includes all the social institutions in and by which the individual life is influenced--such as are the family, the school, the church, the legislature, and the executive. None of these can subsist in isolation from the rest; together they and other institutions of the kind form a single organic whole, the whole which is known as the nation. The spirit and habit of life which this organic entirety inspires and compels are what, for my present purpose, I mean by _Sittlichkeit_. _Sitte_ is the German for custom, and _Sittlichkeit_ implies custom and a habit of mind and action. It also implies a little more. Fichte defines it in words which are worth quoting, and which I will put into English: What, to begin with, does _Sitte_ signify, and in what sense do we use the word? It means for us, and means in every accurate reference we make of it, those principles of conduct which regulate people in their relations to each other, and which have become matter of habit and second nature at the stage of culture reached, and of which, therefore, we are not explicitly conscious. Principles, we call them, because we do not refer to the sort of conduct that is casual or is determined on casual grounds, but to the hidden and uniform ground of action which we assume to be present in the man whose action is not deflected and from which we can pretty certainly predict what he will do. Principles, we say, which have become a second nature and of which we are not explicitly conscious. We thus exclude all impulses and motives based on free individual choice, the inward aspect of _Sittlichkeit_, that is to say, morality, and also the outward side, or law, alike. For what a man has first to reflect over and then freely to resolve is not for him a habit in conduct; and in so far as habit in conduct is associated with a particular age, it is regarded as the unconscious instrument of the Time Spirit. The system of ethical habit in a community is of a dominating character, for the decision and influence of the whole community is embodied in that social habit. Because such conduct is systematic and covers the whole of the field of society, the individual will is closely related by it to the will and the spirit of the community. And out of this relation arises the power of adequately controlling the conduct of the individual. If this power fails or becomes weak, the community degenerates and may fall to pieces. Different nations excel in their _Sittlichkeit_ in different fashions. The spirit of the community and its ideals may vary greatly. There may be a low level of _Sittlichkeit_; and we have the spectacle of nations which have even degenerated in this respect. It may possibly conflict with law and morality, as in the case of the duel. But when its level is high in a nation we admire the system, for we see it not only guiding a people and binding them together for national effort, but affording the greatest freedom of thought and action for those who in daily life habitually act in harmony with the General Will. Thus we have in the case of a community, be it the city or be it the state, an illustration of a sanction which is sufficient to compel observance of a rule without any question of the application of force. This kind of sanction may be of a highly compelling quality, and it often extends so far as to make the individual prefer the good of the community to his own. The development of many of our social institutions, of our hospitals, of our universities, and of other establishments of the kind, shows the extent to which it reaches and is powerful. But it has yet higher forms in which it approaches very nearly to the level of the obligation of conscience, although it is distinct from that form of obligation. I will try to make clear what I mean by illustrations. A man may be impelled to action of a high order by his sense of unity with the society to which he belongs, action of which, from the civic standpoint, all approve. What he does in such a case is natural to him, and is done without thought of reward or punishment; but it has reference to standards of conduct set up by society and accepted just because society has set them up. There is a poem by the late Sir Alfred Lyall which exemplifies the high level that may be reached in such conduct. The poem is called _Theology in Extremis_, and it describes the feelings of an Englishman who had been taken prisoner by Mahometan rebels in the Indian Mutiny. He is face to face with a cruel death. They offer him his life if he will repeat something from the Koran. If he complies, no one is likely ever to hear of it, and he will be free to return to England and to the woman he loves. Moreover, and here is the real point, he is not a believer in Christianity, so that it is no question of denying his Savior. What ought he to do? Deliverance is easy, and the relief and advantage would be unspeakably great. But he does not really hesitate, and every shadow of doubt disappears when he hears his fellow-prisoner, a half-caste, pattering eagerly the words demanded. I will take another example, this time from the literature of ancient Greece. In one of the shortest but not least impressive of his _Dialogues_, the "Crito," Plato tells us of the character of Socrates, not as a philosopher, but as a good citizen. He has been unjustly condemned by the Athenians as an enemy to the good of the state. Crito comes to him in prison to persuade him to escape. He urges on him many arguments, his duty to his children included. But Socrates refuses. He chooses to follow, not what anyone in the crowd might do, but the example which the ideal citizen should set. It would be a breach of his duty to fly from the judgment duly passed in the Athens to which he belongs, even though he thinks the decree should have been different. For it is the decree of the established justice of his city state. He will not "play truant." He hears the words, "Listen, Socrates, to us who have brought you up"; and in reply he refuses to go away, in these final sentences: "This is the voice which I seem to hear murmuring in my ears, like the sound of the flute in the ears of the mystic; that voice, I say, is murmuring in my ears, and prevents me from hearing any other. And I know that anything more which you may say will be vain." Why do men of this stamp act so, it may be when leading the battle line, it may be at critical moments of quite other kinds? It is, I think, because they are more than mere individuals. Individual they are, but completely real, even as individual, only in their relation to organic and social wholes in which they are members, such as the family, the city, the state. There is in every truly organized community a Common Will which is willed by those who compose that community, and who in so willing are more than isolated men and women. It is not, indeed, as unrelated atoms that they have lived. They have grown, from the receptive days of childhood up to maturity, in an atmosphere of example and general custom, and their lives have widened out from one little world to other and higher worlds, so that, through occupying successive stations in life, they more and more come to make their own the life of the social whole in which they move and have their being. They cannot mark off or define their own individualities without reference to the individualities of others. And so they unconsciously find themselves as in truth pulse-beats of the whole system, and themselves the whole system. It is real in them and they in it. They are real only because they are social. The notion that the individual is the highest form of reality, and that the relationship of individuals is one of mere contract, the notion of Hobbes and of Bentham and of Austin, turns out to be quite inadequate. Even of an everyday contract, that of marriage, it has been well said that it is a contract to pass out of the sphere of contract, and that it is possible only because the contracting parties are already beyond and above that sphere. As a modern writer, F. H. Bradley of Oxford, to whose investigations in these regions we owe much, has finely said: "The moral organism is not a mere animal organism. In the latter the member is not aware of itself as such, while in the former it knows itself, and therefore knows the whole in itself. The narrow external function of the man is not the whole man. He has a life which we cannot see with our eyes, and there is no duty so mean that it is not the realization of this, and knowable as such. What counts is not the visible outer work so much as the spirit in which it is done. The breadth of my life is not measured by the multitude of my pursuits, nor the space I take up amongst other men; but by the fulness of the whole life which I know as mine. It is true that less now depends on each of us as this or that man; it is not true that our individuality is therefore lessened; that therefore we have less in us." There is, according to this view, a General Will with which the will of the good citizen is in accord. He feels that he would despise himself were his private will not in harmony with it. The notion of the reality of such a will is no new one. It is as old as the Greeks, for whom the moral order and the city state were closely related; and we find it in modern books in which we do not look for it. Jean Jacques Rousseau is probably best known to the world by the famous words in which he begins the first chapter of the _Social Contract_: "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Those who think themselves to be the masters of others cease not to be greater slaves than the people they govern." He goes on in the next paragraph to tell us that if he were only to consider force and the effects of it, he would say that if a nation was constrained to obey and did obey, it did well, but that whenever it could throw off its yoke and did throw it off, it acted better. His words, written in 1762, became a text for the pioneers of the French Revolution. But they would have done well to read further into the book. As Rousseau goes on, we find a different conception. He passes from considering the fiction of a social contract to a discussion of the power over the individual of the General Will, by virtue of which a people becomes a people. This General Will, the _Volonté Générale_, he distinguishes from the Volonté de Tous, which is a mere numerical sum of individual wills. These particular wills do not rise above themselves. The General Will, on the other hand, represents what is greater than the individual volition of those who compose the society of which it is the will. On occasions, this higher will is more apparent than at other times. But it may, if there is social slackness, be difficult to distinguish from a mere aggregate of voices, from the will of a mob. What is interesting is that Rousseau, so often associated with doctrine of quite another kind, should finally recognize the bond of a General Will as what really holds the community together. For him, as for those who have had a yet clearer grasp of the principle, in willing the General Will we not only realize our true selves but we may rise above our ordinary habit of mind. We may reach heights which we could not reach, or which at all events most of us could not reach, in isolation. There are few observers who have not been impressed with the wonderful unity and concentration of purpose which an entire nation may display--above all, in a period of crisis. We see it in time of war, when a nation is fighting for its life or for a great cause. We have marvelled at the illustrations with which history abounds of the General Will rising to heights of which but few of the individual citizens in whom it is embodied have ever before been conscious even in their dreams. By leadership a common ideal can be made to penetrate the soul of a people and to take complete possession of it. The ideal may be very high, or it may be of so ordinary a kind that we are not conscious of it without the effort of reflection. But when it is there it influences and guides daily conduct. Such idealism passes beyond the sphere of law, which provides only what is necessary for mutual protection and liberty of just action. It falls short, on the other hand, in quality of the dictates of what Kant called the Categorical Imperative that rules the private and individual conscience, but that alone, an Imperative which therefore gives insufficient guidance for ordinary and daily social life. Yet the ideal of which I speak is not the less binding; and it is recognized as so binding that the conduct of all good men conforms to it. C. PERSONALITY AND THE SOCIAL SELF 1. The Organism as Personality[69] The organism and the brain, as its highest representation, constitute the real personality, containing in itself all that we have been, and the possibility of all that we shall be. The complete individual character is inscribed there with all its active and passive aptitudes, sympathies, and antipathies; its genius, talents, or stupidity; its virtues, vices, torpor, or activity. Of all these, what emerges and actually reaches consciousness is only a small item compared with what remains buried below, albeit still active. Conscious personality is always but a feeble portion of physical personality. The unity of the ego, consequently, is not that of the one-entity of spiritualists which is dispersed into multiple phenomena, but the co-ordination of a certain number of incessantly renascent states, having for their support the vague sense of our bodies. This unity does not pass from above to below, but from below to above; the unity of the ego is not an initial, but a terminal point. Does there really exist a perfect unity? Evidently not in the strict, mathematical sense. In a relative sense it is met with, rarely and incidentally. In a clever marksman in the act of taking aim, or in a skilled surgeon performing a difficult operation all is found to converge, both physically and mentally. Still, let us take note of the result: in these conditions the awareness of real personality disappears; the conscious individual is reduced to an idea; whence it would follow that perfect unity of consciousness and the awareness of personality exclude each other. By a different course we again reach the same conclusion; the ego is a co-ordination. It oscillates between two extreme points at which it ceases to exist: viz., perfect unity and absolute inco-ordination. All the intermediate degrees are met with, in fact, and without any line of demarcation between the healthy and the morbid; the one encroaches upon the other. Even in the normal state the co-ordination is often sufficiently loose to allow several series to coexist separately. We can walk or perform manual work with a vague and intermittent consciousness of the movements, at the same time singing, musing; but if the activity of thought increases, the singing will cease. With many people it is a kind of substitute for intellectual activity, an intermediate state between thinking and not-thinking. The unity of the ego, in a psychological sense, is, therefore, the cohesion, during a given time, of a certain number of clear states of consciousness, accompanied by others less clear, and by a multitude of physiological states which, without being accompanied by consciousness like the others, yet operate as much as, and even more than, the former. Unity, in fact, means co-ordination. The conclusion to be drawn from the above remarks is namely this, that the consensus of consciousness being subordinate to the consensus of the organism, the problem of the unity of the ego is, in its ultimate form, a biological problem. To biology pertains the task of explaining, if it can, the genesis of organisms and the solidarity of their component parts. Psychological interpretation can only follow in its wake. 2. Personality as a Complex[70] Ideas, after being experienced in consciousness, become dormant (conserved as physiological dispositions) and may or may not afterward be reawakened in consciousness as memories. Many such ideas, under conditions with some of which we are all familiar, tend to form part of our voluntary or involuntary memories and many do not. But when such is the case, the memories do not ordinarily include the whole of a given mental experience, but only excerpts or abstracts of it. Hence one reason for the fallibility of human memory and consequent testimony. Now under special conditions, the ideas making up an experience at any given moment tend to become organized into a system or complex, so that when we later think of the experience or recall any of the ideas belonging to it, the complex as a whole is revived. This is one of the principles underlying the mechanism of memory. Thus it happens that memory may, to a large extent, be made up of complexes. These complexes may be very loosely organized in that the elementary ideas are weakly bound together, in which case, when we try to recall the original experience, only a part of it is recalled. Or a complex may be very strongly organized, owing to the conditions under which it is formed, and then a large part of the experience can be recalled. In this case, any idea associated with some element in the complex may, by the law of association, revive the whole original complex. If, for instance, we have gone through a railroad accident involving exciting incidents, loss of life, etc., the words "railroad," "accident," "death," or a sudden crashing sound, or the sight of blood, or even riding in a railroad train may recall the experience from beginning to end, or at least the prominent features in it, i.e., so much as was organized. The memory of the greater part of this experience is well organized, while the earlier events and those succeeding the accident may have passed out of all possibility of voluntary recall. To take an instance commonplace enough but which happens to have just come within my observation: A fireman was injured severely by being thrown from a hose wagon rushing to a fire against a telegraph pole with which the wagon collided. He narrowly escaped death. Although three years have passed he still cannot ride on a wagon to a fire without the memory of the whole accident rising in his mind. When he does so he again lives through the accident, including the thoughts just previous to the actual collision when, realizing his situation, he was overcome with terror, and he again manifests all the organic physical expressions of fear, viz.: perspiration, tremor, and muscular weakness. Here is a well-organized and fairly limited complex. Among the loosely organized complexes in many individuals, and possibly in all of us, there are certain dispositions toward views of life which represent natural inclinations, desires, and modes of activity which, for one reason or another, we tend to suppress or are unable to give full play to. Many individuals, for example, are compelled by the exactions of their duties and responsibilities to lead serious lives, to devote themselves to pursuits which demand all their energies and thought and which, therefore, do not permit of indulgence in the lighter enjoyments of life, and yet there may be a natural inclination to partake of the pleasures which innately appeal to all mankind and which many pursue. The longing for these recurs from time to time. The mind dwells on them, the imagination is excited and weaves a fabric of pictures, thoughts, and emotions which thus become associated into a complex. There may be a rebellion and "kicking against the pricks" and thereby a liberation of the emotional force that impresses a stronger organization on the whole process. The recurrence of such a complex is one form of what we call a "mood," which has a distinctly emotional tone of its own. The revival of this feeling tone tends to revive the associated ideas and vice versa. Such a feeling-idea complex is often spoken of as "a side to one's character," to which a person may from time to time give play. Or the converse of this may hold, and a person who devotes his life to the lighter enjoyments may have aspirations and longings for more serious pursuits, and in this respect the imagination may similarly build up a complex which may express itself in a mood. Thus a person is often said to have "many sides to his character," and exhibits certain alternations of personality which may be regarded as normal prototypes of those which occur as abnormal states. Most of what has been said about the formation of complexes is a statement of commonplace facts, and I would not repeat it here were it not that, in certain abnormal conditions, disposition, subject, and other complexes, though loosely organized, often play an important part. This is not the place to enter into an explanation of dissociated personality, but in such conditions we sometimes find that disposition complexes, for instance, come to the surface and displace or substitute themselves for the other complexes which make up a personality. A complex which is only a mood or a "side of the character" of a normal individual may, in conditions of dissociation, become the main, perhaps sole, complex and chief characteristic of the new personality. In Miss Beauchamp, for instance, the personality known as BI was made up almost entirely of the religious and ethical ideas which formed one side of the original self. In the personality known as Sally we had for the most part the complex which represented the enjoyment of youthful pleasures and sports, the freedom from conventionalities and artificial restraints generally imposed by duties and responsibilities. In BIV the complex represented the ambitions and activities of practical life. In Miss Beauchamp as a whole, normal, without disintegration, it was easy to recognize all three dispositions as "sides of her character," though each was kept ordinarily within proper bounds by the correcting influence of the others. It was only necessary to put her in an environment which encouraged one or the other side, to associate her with people who strongly suggested one or the other of her own characteristics, whether religious, social, pleasure loving, or intellectual, to see the characteristics of BI, Sally, or BIV stand out in relief as the predominant personality. Then we had the alternating play of these different sides of her character. In fact, the total of our complexes, which, regarded as a whole and in view of their reaction to the environment, their behavior under the various conditions of social life, their aptitudes, feeling-tones, "habits," and faculties, we term character and personality, are in large part predetermined by the mental experiences of the past and the vestiges of memory which have been left as residual from these experiences. We are the offspring of our past. The great mass of our ideas involve associations of the origin of which we are unaware because the memories of the original experience have become split and a large portion thus has become forgotten even if ever fully appreciated. We all have our prejudices, our likes and dislikes, our tastes and aversions; it would tax our ingenuity to give a sufficient psychological account of their origin. They were born long ago in educational, social, personal, and other experiences, the details of which we have this many a year forgotten. It is the residua of these experiences that have persisted and become associated into complexes which are retained as traits of our personality. 3. The Self as the Individual's Conception of His Rôle[71] Suggestion may have its end and aim in the creation of a new personality. The experimenter then chooses the sort of personality he wishes to induce and obliges the subject to realize it. Experiments of this kind succeeding in a great many somnambulists, and usually producing very curious results, have long been known and have been repeated, one might say, almost to satiety within the last few years. When we are awake and in full possession of all our faculties we can imagine sensations different from those which we ordinarily experience. For example, when I am sitting quietly at my table engaged in writing this book, I can conceive the sensations that a soldier, a woman, an artist, or an Englishman would experience in such and such a situation. But, however fantastic the conceptions may be that we form, we do not cease to be conscious withal of our own personal existence. Imagination has taken flight fairly in space, but the memory of ourselves always remains behind. Each of us knows that he is himself and not another, that he did this yesterday, that he has just written a letter, that he must write another such letter tomorrow, that he was out of Paris for a week, etc. It is this memory of passed facts--a memory always present to the mind--that constitutes the consciousness of our normal personality. It is entirely different in the case of the two women, A---- and B----, that M. Richet studied. Put to sleep and subjected to certain influences, A---- and B---- forget their identity; their age, their clothing, their sex, their social position, their nationality, the place and the time of their life--all this has entirely disappeared. Only a single idea remains--a single consciousness--it is the consciousness of the idea and of the new being that dawns upon their imagination. They have lost the idea of their late existence. They live, talk, and think exactly like the type that is suggested to them. With what tremendous intensity of life these types are realized, only those who have been present at these experiments can know. Description can only give a weak and imperfect idea of it. Instead of imagining a character simply, they realize it, objectify it. It is not like a hallucination, of which one witnesses the images unfolding before him, as a spectator would. He is rather like an actor who is seized with passion, imagines that the drama he plays is a reality, not a fiction, and that he has been transformed, body and soul, into the personality that he sets himself to play. In order to have this transformation of personality work it is sufficient to pronounce a word with some authority. I say to A----, "You are an old woman," she considers herself changed into an old woman, and her countenance, her bearing, her feelings, become those of an old woman. I say to B----, "You are a little girl," and she immediately assumes the language, games, and tastes of a little girl. Although the account of these scenes is quite dull and colorless compared with the sight of the astonishing and sudden transformations themselves, I shall attempt, nevertheless, to describe some of them. I quote some of M----'s _objectivations_: _As a peasant._--She rubs her eyes and stretches herself. "What time is it? Four o'clock in the morning!" She walks as if she were dragging sabots. "Now, then, I must get up. Let us go to the stable. Come up, red one! come up, get about!" She seems to be milking a cow. "Let me alone, Gros-Jean, let me alone, I tell you. When I am through my work. You know well enough that I have not finished my work. Oh! yes, yes, later." _As an actress._--Her face took a smiling aspect instead of the dull and listless manner which she had just had. "You see my skirt? Well, my manager makes me wear it so long. These managers are too tiresome. As for me, the shorter the skirt the better I like it. There is always too much of it. A simple fig leaf! Mon Dieu, that is enough! You agree with me, don't you, my dear, that it is not necessary to have more than a fig leaf? Look then at this great dowdy Lucie--where are her legs, eh?" _As a priest._--She imagines that she is the Archbishop of Paris. Her face becomes very grave. Her voice is mildly sweet and drawling, which forms a great contrast with the harsh, blunt tone she had as a general. (Aside.) "But I must accomplish my charge." She leans her head on her hand and reflects. (Aloud.) "Ah! it is you, Monsieur Grand Vicar; what is your business with me? I do not wish to be disturbed. Yes, today is the first of January, and I must go to the cathedral. This throng of people is very respectful, don't you think so, monsieur? There is a great deal of religion in the people, whatever one does. Ah! a child! let him come to me to be blessed. There, my child." She holds out to him her imaginary bishop's ring to kiss. During this whole scene she is making gestures of benediction with her right hand on all sides. "Now I have a duty to perform. I must go and pay my respects to the president of the Republic. Ah! Mr. President, I come to offer you my allegiance. It is the wish of the church that you may have many years of life. She knows that she has nothing to fear, notwithstanding cruel attacks, while such an honorable man is at the head of the Republic." She is silent and seems to listen attentively. (Aside.) "Yes, fair promises. Now let us pray!" She kneels down. _As a religious sister._--She immediately kneels down and begins to say her prayers, making a great many signs of the cross; then she arises. "Now to the hospital. There is a wounded man in this ward. Well, my friend, you are a little better this morning, aren't you? Now, then, let me take off your bandage." She gestures as if she were unrolling a bandage. "I shall do it very gently; doesn't that relieve you? There! my poor friend, be as courageous before pain as you were before the enemy." I might cite other objectivations from A----'s case, in the character of old woman, little girl, young man, gay woman, etc. But the examples given seem sufficient to give some idea of the entire transformation of the personality into this or that imaginary type. It is not a simple dream, it is a _living dream_. The complete transformation of feelings is not the least curious phenomenon of these objectivations. A---- is timid, but she becomes very daring when she thinks herself a bold person. B---- is silent, she becomes talkative when she represents a talkative person. The disposition is thus completely changed. Old tastes disappear and give place to the new tastes that the new character represented is supposed to have. In a more recent paper, prepared with the co-operation of M. Ferrari and M. Hericourt, M. Richet has added a curious detail to the preceding experiments. He has shown that the subject on whom a change of personality is imposed not only adapts his speech, gestures, and attitudes to the new personality, but that even his handwriting is modified and brought into relation with the new ideas that absorb his consciousness. This modification of handwriting is an especially interesting discovery, since handwriting, according to current theories, is nothing more than a sort of imitation. I cite some examples borrowed from these authors. It is suggested in succession to a young student that he is a sly and crafty peasant, then a miser, and finally a very old man. While the subject's features and behavior generally are modified and brought into harmony with the idea of the personality suggested, we may observe also that his handwriting undergoes similar modifications which are not less marked. It has a special character peculiar to each of the new states of personality. In short, the graphic movements change like the gestures generally. In a note on the handwriting of hysterical patients, I have shown that under the influence of suggested emotions, or under the influence of sensorial stimulations, the handwriting of a hysterical patient may be modified. It gets larger, for example, in cases of dynamogenic excitation. The characteristic of the suggestion that we have just studied is that it does not bear exclusively on perception or movement--that is to say, on a limited psychic element; but there are comprehensive suggestions. They impose a topic on the subject that he is obliged to develop with all the resources of his intellect and imagination, and if the observations be carefully examined, it will also be seen that in these suggestions the faculties of perception are affected and perverted by the same standard as that of ideation. Thus the subject, under the influence of his assumed personality, ceases to perceive the external world as it exists. He has hallucinations in connection with his new psychological personality. When a bishop, he thinks he is in Notre Dame, and sees a host of the faithful. When a general, he thinks he is surrounded by troops, etc. Things that harmonize with the suggestion are conjured up. This systematic development of states of consciousness belongs to all kinds of suggestions, but is perhaps nowhere else so marked as in these transformations of personality. On the other hand, everything that is inconsistent with the suggestion gets inhibited and leaves the subject's consciousness. As has been said, alterations of personality imply phenomena of amnesia. In order that the subject may assume the fictitious personality he must begin by forgetting his true personality. The infinite number of memories that represent his past experience and constitute the basis of his normal ego are for the time being effaced, because these memories are inconsistent with the ideal of the suggestion. 4. The Natural Person versus the Social and Conventional Self[72] Somewhat after the order of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde I seem to possess two distinct personalities, being both at the same time but presenting no such striking contrast as the Jekyll-Hyde combination. They are about equally virtuous. Their main difference seems to be one of age, one being a decade or so in advance of the other. At times they work harmoniously together and again at cross-purposes. I do not seem to have developed equally. Part of me sits humbly at the feet of the other part of me and receives advice and instruction. Part of me feels constrained to confess to the other part of me when it has done wrong and meekly receives rebuke. Part of me tries to shock the other part of me and to force the more dignified part to misbehave and giggle and do things not considered correct in polite society. My younger part delights to tease the older, to doubt her motives, to interrupt her meditations. It wants to play, while my older self is more seriously inclined. My younger self is only twelve years old. This is my real self. To my own mind I am still a little girl with short dresses and a bunch of curls. For some reason my idea of self has never advanced beyond this point. The long dress and the hair piled high will never seem natural. Sometimes I enjoy this duality and again I do not. Sometimes the two parts mingle delightfully together, again they wrangle atrociously, while I (there seems to be a third part of me) sit off and watch the outcome. The older part gets tired before the younger. The younger, still fresh and in a good humor, undertakes to furnish amusement for the older. I have often thrown myself on the bed wearied and exhausted and been made to shake with laughter at the capers of the younger part of me. They are capers indeed. On these occasions she will carry on conversations with friends--real friends--fairly bristling with witticisms, and although taking both parts herself, the parry and thrust is delightful. Sometimes, however, the younger part of me seems to get up all awry. She will carry on quarrels--heated quarrels--from morning to night, taking both sides herself, with persons whom I (the combination) dearly love, and against whom I have no grievance whatever. These are a great distress to my older self. On other days she seems to take the greatest delight in torturing me with imaginary horrors. She cuts my throat, pulls my eyes out of their sockets, removes tumors, and amputates limbs until I wonder that there is anything left of me. She does it all without administering anæsthetics and seems to enjoy my horror and disgust. Again, some little jingle or tune will take her fancy and she will repeat it to herself until I am almost driven to madness. Sometimes it is only a word, but it seems to have a fascination for her and she rolls it as a sweet morsel under her tongue until sleep puts an end to it. Again, if I (the combination) fall ill, one part of me, I have never discovered which, invariably hints that I am not ill at all but merely pretending. So much so that it has become with me a recognized symptom of incipient illness. Moreover, the younger and older are never on the same side of any question. One leans to wisdom, the other to fun. I am a house divided against itself. The younger longs to dance, to go to the theater and to play cards, all of which the older disapproves. The younger mocks the older, calls her a hypocrite and the like until the older well-nigh believes it herself and almost yields to her pleadings. The older listens sedately to the sermon, while the younger plans her Easter suit or makes fun of the preacher. The older declares she will never marry, while the younger scouts the idea of being an old maid. But even if she could gain the consent of the older, it were but little better, they differ so as to their ideals. In society the difference is more marked. I seem to be a combination chaperone and protégée. The older appears at ease, the younger shy and awkward--she has never made her début. If one addresses a remark to her she is thrown into utter confusion until the older rushes to the rescue. My sympathy is with the younger, however, for even to this day I, the combination, can scarce resist the temptation to say nothing when there is nothing to say. There is something tragic to me in this Siamese-twins arrangement of two so uncongenial. I am at one and the same time pupil and teacher, offender and judge, performer and critic, chaperone and protégée, a prim, precise, old maid and a rollicking schoolgirl, a tomboy and a prude, a saint and sinner. What can result from such a combination? That we get on tolerably is a wonder. Some days, however, we get on admirably together, part of me paying compliments to the other part of me--whole days being given to this--until each of us has such a good opinion of herself and the other that we feel on equal terms and are at our happiest. But how dreadful are the days when we turn against each other! There are not words enough to express the contempt which we feel for ourselves. We seem to set each other in the corner and the combination as a whole is utterly miserable. I can but wonder and enjoy and wait to see what Myself and I will make of Me. 5. The Divided Self and Moral Consciousness[73] Two ways of looking at life are characteristic respectively of what we call the healthy-minded, who need to be born only once, and of the sick souls, who must be twice-born in order to be happy. The result is two different conceptions of the universe of our experience. In the religion of the once-born the world is a sort of rectilineal or one-storied affair, whose accounts are kept in one denomination, whose parts have just the values which naturally they appear to have, and of which a simple algebraic sum of pluses and minuses will give the total worth. Happiness and religious peace consist in living on the plus side of the account. In the religion of the twice-born, on the other hand, the world is a double-storied mystery. Peace cannot be reached by the simple addition of pluses and elimination of minuses from life. Natural good is not simply insufficient in amount and transient; there lurks a falsity in its very being. Cancelled as it all is by death, if not by earlier enemies, it gives no final balance, and can never be the thing intended for our lasting worship. It keeps us from our real good, rather; and renunciation and despair of it are our first step in the direction of the truth. There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other. In their extreme forms, of pure naturalism and pure salvationism, the two types are violently contrasted; though here, as in most other current classifications, the radical extremes are somewhat ideal abstractions, and the concrete human beings whom we oftenest meet are intermediate varieties and mixtures. Practically, however, you all recognize the difference: you understand, for example, the disdain of the Methodist convert for the mere sky-blue healthy-minded moralist; and you likewise enter into the aversion of the latter to what seems to him the diseased subjectivism of the Methodist, dying to live, as he calls it, and making of paradox and the inversion of natural appearances the essence of God's truth. The psychological basis of the twice-born character seems to be a certain discordancy or heterogeneity in the native temperament of the subject, an incompletely unified moral and intellectual constitution. "Homo duplex, homo duplex!" writes Alphonse Daudet. "The first time that I perceived that I was two was at the death of my brother Henri, when my father cried out so dramatically, 'He is dead, he is dead!' While my first self wept, my second self thought, 'How truly given was that cry, how fine it would be at the theater.' I was then fourteen years old. This horrible duality has often given me matter for reflection. Oh, this terrible second me, always seated whilst the other is on foot, acting, living, suffering, bestirring itself. This second me that I have never been able to intoxicate, to make shed tears, or put to sleep. And how it sees into things, and how it mocks!" Some persons are born with an inner constitution which is harmonious and well balanced from the outset. Their impulses are consistent with one another, their will follows without trouble the guidance of their intellect, their passions are not excessive, and their lives are little haunted by regrets. Others are oppositely constituted; and are so in degrees which may vary from something so slight as to result in a merely odd or whimsical inconsistency, to a discordancy of which the consequences may be inconvenient in the extreme. Of the more innocent kinds of heterogeneity I find a good example in Mrs. Annie Besant's autobiography. I have ever been the queerest mixture of weakness and strength, and have paid heavily for the weakness. As a child I used to suffer tortures of shyness, and if my shoe-lace was untied would feel shamefacedly that every eye was fixed on the unlucky string; as a girl I would shrink away from strangers and think myself unwanted and unliked, so that I was full of eager gratitude to anyone who noticed me kindly; as the young mistress of a house I was afraid of my servants, and would let careless work pass rather than bear the pain of reproving the ill-doer; when I have been lecturing and debating with no lack of spirit on the platform, I have preferred to go without what I wanted at the hotel rather than to ring and make the waiter fetch it. Combative on the platform in defense of any cause I cared for, I shrink from quarrel or disapproval in the house, and am a coward at heart in private while a good fighter in public. How often have I passed unhappy quarters of an hour screwing up my courage to find fault with some subordinate whom my duty compelled me to reprove, and how often have I jeered at myself for a fraud as the doughty platform combatant, when shrinking from blaming some lad or lass for doing their work badly. An unkind look or word has availed to make me shrink myself as a snail into its shell, while, on the platform, opposition makes me speak my best. This amount of inconsistency will only count as amiable weakness; but a stronger degree of heterogeneity may make havoc of the subject's life. There are persons whose existence is little more than a series of zigzags, as now one tendency and now another gets the upper hand. Their spirit wars with their flesh, they wish for incompatibles, wayward impulses interrupt their most deliberate plans, and their lives are one long drama of repentance and of effort to repair misdemeanors and mistakes. Whatever the cause of heterogeneous personality may be, we find the extreme examples of it in the psychopathic temperament. All writers about that temperament make the inner heterogeneity prominent in their descriptions. Frequently, indeed, it is only this trait that leads us to ascribe that temperament to a man at all. A _dégénéré supérieur_ is simply a man of sensibility in many directions, who finds more difficulty than is common in keeping his spiritual house in order and running his furrow straight, because his feelings and impulses are too keen and too discrepant mutually. In the haunting and insistent ideas, in the irrational impulses, the morbid scruples, dreads, and inhibitions which beset the psychopathic temperament when it is thoroughly pronounced, we have exquisite examples of heterogeneous personality. Bunyan had an obsession of the words, "Sell Christ for this, sell him for that, sell him, sell him!" which would run through his mind a hundred times together, until one day out of breath with retorting, "I will not, I will not," he impulsively said, "Let him go if he will," and this loss of the battle kept him in despair for over a year. The lives of the saints are full of such blasphemous obsessions, ascribed invariably to the direct agency of Satan. St. Augustine's case is a classic example of discordant personality. You all remember his half-pagan, half-Christian bringing up at Carthage, his emigration to Rome and Milan, his adoption of Manicheism and subsequent skepticism, and his restless search for truth and purity of life; and finally how, distracted by the struggle between the two souls in his breast, and ashamed of his own weakness of will when so many others whom he knew and knew of had thrown off the shackles of sensuality and dedicated themselves to chastity and the higher life, he heard a voice in the garden say, "Sume, lege" (take and read), and opening the Bible at random, saw the text, "not in chambering and wantonness," etc., which seemed directly sent to his address, and laid the inner storm to rest forever. Augustine's psychological genius has given an account of the trouble of having a divided self which has never been surpassed. The new will which I began to have was not yet strong enough to overcome that other will, strengthened by long indulgence. So these two wills, one old, one new, one carnal, the other spiritual, contended with each other and disturbed my soul. I understood by my own experience what I had read, "Flesh lusteth against spirit, and spirit against flesh." It was myself indeed in both the wills, yet more myself in that which I approved in myself than in that which I disapproved in myself. Yet it was through myself that habit had obtained so fierce a mastery over me, because I had willingly come whither I willed not. Still bound to earth, I refused, O God, to fight on thy side, as much afraid to be freed from all bonds as I ought to have feared being trammeled by them. Thus the thoughts by which I meditated upon thee were like the efforts of one who would awake, but being overpowered with sleepiness is soon asleep again. Often does a man when heavy sleepiness is on his limbs defer to shake it off, and though not approving it, encourage it; even so I was sure it was better to surrender to thy love than to yield to my own lusts, yet, though the former course convinced me, the latter pleased and held me bound. There was naught in me to answer thy call, "Awake, thou sleeper," but only drawling, drowsy words, "Presently; yes, presently; wait a little while." But the "presently" had no "present," and the "little while" grew long. For I was afraid thou wouldst hear me too soon, and heal me at once of my disease of lust, which I wished to satiate rather than to see extinguished. With what lashes of words did I not scourge my own soul. Yet it shrank back; it refused, though it had no excuse to offer. I said within myself: "Come, let it be done now," and as I said it, I was on the point of the resolve. I all but did it, yet I did not do it. And I made another effort, and almost succeeded, yet I did not reach it, and did not grasp it, hesitating to die to death, and live to life; and the evil to which I was so wonted held me more than the better life I had not tried. There could be no more perfect description of the divided will, when the higher wishes lack just that last acuteness, that touch of explosive intensity, of dynamogenic quality (to use the slang of the psychologists), that enables them to burst their shell, and make irruption efficaciously into life and quell the lower tendencies forever. 6. Personality of Individuals and of Peoples[74] In my opinion personality is not merely a unifying and directing principle which controls thought and action, but one which, at the same time, defines the relation of individuals to their fellows. The concept of personality includes, in addition to inner unity and co-ordination of the impulses, a definite attitude directed toward the outer world which is determined by the manner in which the individual organizes his external stimulations. In this definition the objective aspect of personality is emphasized as over against the subjective. We should not in psychological matters be satisfied with subjective definitions. The mental life is not only a sum of subjective experiences but manifests itself invariably also in a definite series of objective expressions. These objective expressions are the contributions which the personality makes to its external social environment. More than that, only these objective expressions of personality are accessible to external observation and they alone have objective value. According to Ribot, the real personality is an organism which is represented at its highest in the brain. The brain embraces all our past and the possibilities of our future. The individual character with all its active and passive peculiarities, with all its antipathies, genius, talents, stupidities, virtues, and vices, its inertia and its energy is predetermined in the brain. Personality, from the objective point of view, is the psychic individual with all his original characters, an individual in free association with his social _milieu_. Neither innate mental ability, nor creative energy, nor what we call will, in and of themselves, constitutes personality. Nothing less than the totality of psychical manifestations, all these including idiosyncrasies which distinguish one man from another and determine his positive individuality, may be said to characterize, from the objective point of view, the human personality. The intellectual horizon of persons on different cultural levels varies, but no one, for that reason (because of intellectual inferiority), loses the right to recognition as a person, provided that he maintains, over against his environment, his integrity as an individual and remains a self-determining person. It is the loss of this self-determined individuality alone that renders man completely impersonal. When individual spontaneity is feebly manifested, we speak of an ill-defined or a "passive" personality. Personality is, in short, from the objective point of view, a self-determining individual with a unique nature and a definite status in the social world around him. If now, on the basis of the preceding definition, we seek to define the significance of personality in social and public life, it appears that personality is the basis upon which all social institutions, movements, and conditions, in short all the phenomena of social life, rest. The people of our time are no more, as in the Golden Age, inarticulate masses. They are a totality of more or less active personalities connected by common interests, in part by racial origin, and by a certain similarity of fundamental psychic traits. A people is a kind of collective personality possessing particular ethnic and psychological characteristics, animated by common political aspirations and political traditions. The progress of peoples, their civilization, and their culture naturally are determined by the advancement of the personalities which compose them. Since the emancipation of mankind from a condition of subjection, the life of peoples and of societies has rested upon the active participation of each member of society in the common welfare which represents the aim of all. The personality, considered as a psychic self-determining individual, asserts itself the more energetically in the general march of historical events, the farther a people is removed from the condition of subjection in which the rights of personality are denied. In every field of activity, the more advanced personality "blazes a new trail." The passive personality, born in subjection, is disposed merely to imitate and to repeat. The sheer existence of modern states depends less on the crude physical force and its personified agencies, than on the moral cohesion of the personalities who constitute the nation. Since the beginning of time, it is only the moral values that have endured. Force can support the state only temporarily. When a nation disregards the moral forces and seeks its salvation in the rude clash of arms, it bears within itself the seeds of its own destruction. No army in the world is strong enough to maintain a state, the moral basis of which is shaken, for the strength of the army rests upon its morale. The importance of personality in the historic life of peoples is manifest in periods when social conditions accelerate the movement of social life. Personality, like every other force, reaches its maximum when it encounters resistance, in conflict and in rivalry--when it fights--hence its great value in friendly rivalry of nations in industry and culture, and especially in periods of natural calamities or of enemies from without. Since the fruits of individual development contribute to the common fund of social values, it is clear that societies and peoples which, other things being equal, possess the most advanced and active personalities contribute most to the enrichment of civilization. It does not seem necessary to demonstrate that the pacific competition of nations and their success depends on the development of the personalities which compose them. A nation weak in the development of individualities, of social units which compose it, could not defend itself against the exploitation of nations composed of personalities with a superior development. D. BIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL HEREDITY 1. Nature and Nurture[75] We have seen that the scientific position in regard to the transmissibility of modifications should be one of active scepticism, that there seems to be no convincing evidence in support of the affirmative position, and that there is strong presumption in favor of the negative. A modification is a definite change in the individual body, due to some change in "nurture." There is no secure evidence that any such individual gain or loss can be transmitted as such, or in any representative degree. How does this affect our estimate of the value of "nurture"? How should the sceptical or negative answer, which we believe to be the scientific one, affect our practice in regard to education, physical culture, amelioration of function, improvement of environment, and so on? Let us give a practical point to what we have already said. a) Every inheritance requires an appropriate nurture if it is to realize itself in development. Nurture supplies the liberating stimuli necessary for the full expression of the inheritance. A man's character as well as his physique is a function of "nature" and of "nurture." In the language of the old parable of the talents, what is given must be traded with. A boy may be truly enough a chip of the old block, but how far he shows himself such depends on "nurture." The conditions of nurture determine whether the expression of the inheritance is to be full or partial. It need hardly be said that the strength of an (inherited) individuality may be such that it expresses itself almost in the face of inappropriate nurture. History abounds in instances. As Goethe said, "Man is always achieving the impossible." Corot was the son of a successful milliner and prosperous tradesman, and he was thirty before he left the draper's shop to study nature. b) Although modifications do not seem to be transmitted as such, or in any representative degree, there is no doubt that they or their secondary results may in some cases affect the offspring. This is especially the case in typical mammals, where there is before birth a prolonged (placental) connection between the mother and the unborn young. In such cases the offspring is for a time almost part of the maternal body, and liable to be affected by modifications thereof, e.g., by good or bad nutritive conditions. In other cases, also, it may be that deeply saturating parental modifications, such as the results of alcoholic and other poisoning, affect the germ cells, and thus the offspring. A disease may saturate the body with toxins and waste products, and these may provoke prejudicial germinal variations. c) Though modifications due to changed "nurture" do not seem to be transmissible, they may be re-impressed on each generation. Thus "nurture" becomes not less, but more, important in our eyes. "Is my grandfather's environment not my heredity?" asks an American author quaintly and pathetically. Well, if not, let us secure for ourselves and for our children those factors in the "grandfather's environment" that made for progressive evolution, and eschew those that tended elsewhere. Are modifications due to changed nurture not, as such, entailed on offspring? Perhaps it is just as well, for we are novices at nurturing even yet! Moreover, the non-transmissibility cuts both ways: if individual modificational gains are not handed on, neither are the losses. Is the "nature"--the germinal constitution, to wit--all that passes from generation to generation, the capital sum without the results of individual usury; then we are freed, at least, from undue pessimism at the thought of the many harmful functions and environments that disfigure our civilization. Many detrimental acquired characters are to be seen all around us, but if they are not transmissible, they need not last. In the development of "character," much depends upon early nurture, education, and surrounding influences generally, but how the individual reacts to these must largely depend on his inheritance. Truly the individual himself makes his own character, but he does so by his habitual adjustment of his (hereditarily determined) constitution to surrounding influences. Nurture supplies the stimulus for the expression of the moral inheritance, and how far the inheritance can express itself is limited by the nurture-stimuli available just as surely as the result of nurture is conditioned by the hereditarily determined nature on which it operates. It may be urged that character, being a product of habitual modes of feeling, thinking, and acting, cannot be spoken of as _inherited_, but bodily character is also a product dependent upon vital experience. It seems to us as idle to deny that some children are "born good" or "born bad," as it is to deny that some children are born strong and others weak, some energetic and others "tired" or "old." It may be difficult to tell how far the apparently hereditary goodness or badness of disposition is due to the nutritive influences of the mother, both before and after birth, and we must leave it to the reader's experience and observation to decide whether we are right or wrong in our opinion that quite apart from maternal nutritive influence there is a genuine inheritance of kindly disposition, strong sympathy, good humor, and good will. The further difficulty that the really organic character may be half-concealed by nurture-effects, or inhibited by the external heritage of custom and tradition, seems less serious, for the selfishness of an acquired altruism is as familiar as honor among thieves. It is entirely useless to boggle over the difficulty that we are unable to conceive how dispositions for good or ill lie implicit within the protoplasmic unit in which the individual life begins. The fact is undoubted that the initiatives of moral character are in some degree transmissible, though from the nature of the case the influences of education, example, environment, and the like are here more potent than in regard to structural features. We cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, though the plasticity of character under nurture is a fact which gives us all hope. Explain it we cannot, but the transmission of the raw material of character is a fact, and we must still say with Sir Thomas Browne: "Bless not thyself that thou wert born in Athens; but, among thy multiplied acknowledgments, lift up one hand to heaven that thou wert born of honest parents, that modesty, humility, and veracity _lay in the same egg_, and came into the world with thee." 2. Inheritance of Original Nature[76] The principles of heredity (may be recapitulated as follows): First of all, we find useful the principle of the unit-character. According to this principle, characters are, for the most part, inherited independently of each other, and each trait is inherited as a unit or may be broken up into characters that are so inherited. Next, it must be recognized that characters, as such, are not inherited. Strictly, my son has not my nose, because I still have it; what was transmitted was something that determined the shape of his nose, and that is called in brief a "determiner." So the second principle is that unit-characters are inherited through determiners in the germ cells. And finally, it is recognized that there really is no inheritance from parent to child, but that parent and child resemble each other because they are derived from the same germ plasm, they are chips from the same old block; and the son is the half-brother to his father, by another mother. These three principles are the three corner stones of heredity as we know it today, the principles of the independent unit-characters each derived from a determiner in the germ plasm. How far are the known facts of heredity in man in accord with these principles? No doubt all human traits are inherited in accordance with these principles; but knowledge proceeds slowly in this field. As a first illustration I may take the case of human eye color. The iris is made up of a trestle-work of fibers, in which are suspended particles that give the blue color. In addition, in many eyes much brown pigment is formed which may be small in amount and gathered around the pupil or so extensive as to suffuse the entire iris and make it all brown. It is seen, then, that the brown iris is formed by something additional to the blue. And brown iris may be spoken of as a _positive_ character, depending on a determiner for brown pigment; and blue as a _negative_ character, depending on the absence of the determiner for brown. Now when both parents have brown eyes and come from an ancestry with brown eyes, it is probable that all of their germ cells contain the determiner for brown iris pigmentation. So when these germ cells, both carrying the determiner, unite, all of the progeny will receive the determiner from both sides of the house; consequently the determiners are double in their bodies and the resulting iris pigmentation may be said to be _duplex_. When a character is duplex in an individual, that means that when the germ cells ripen in the body of that individual each contains a determiner. So that individual is capable, so far as he is concerned, of transmitting his trait in undiminished intensity. If a parent has pure blue eyes, that is evidence that in neither of the united germ cells from which he arose was there a determiner for iris pigmentation; consequently in respect to brown iris pigmentation such a person may be said to be _nulliplex_. If, now, such a person marry an individual duplex in eye color, in whom all of the germ cells contain the determiner, each child will receive the determiner for iris pigmentation from one side of the house only. This determiner will, of course, induce pigmentation, but the pigmentation is simplex, being induced by one determiner only. Consequently, the pigmentation is apt to be weak. When a person whose pigment determiners have come from one side of the house forms germ cells, half will have and half will lack the determiner. If such a person marry a consort all of whose germ cells contain the determiner for iris pigmentation, all of the children will, of course, receive the iris pigmentation, but in half it will be duplex and in the other half it will be simplex. If the two parents both be simplex, so that, in each, half of the germ cells possess and half lack the determiner in the union of germ cells, there are four events that are equally apt to occur: (1) an egg _with_ the determiner unites with a sperm _with_ the determiner; (2) an egg _with_ the determiner unites with a sperm _without_ the determiner; (3) an egg _without_ the determiner unites with a sperm _with_ the determiner; (4) an egg _without_ the determiner unites with a sperm _without_ the determiner. Thus the character is duplex in one case, simplex in two cases, and nulliplex in one case; that is, one in four will have no brown pigment, or will be blue eyed. If one parent be simplex, so that the germ cells are equally with and without the determiner, while the other be nulliplex, then half of the children will be simplex and half nulliplex in eye pigment. Finally, if both parents be nulliplex in eye pigmentation (that is, blue eyed), then none of their germ cells will have the determiner, and all children will be nulliplex, or blue eyed. The inheritance of eye color serves as a paradigm of the method of inheritance of any unit-character. Let us now consider some of the physical traits of man that follow the same law as brown eye color, traits that are clearly positive, and due to a definite determiner in the germ plasm. Hair color is due either to a golden-brown pigment that looks black in masses, or else to a red pigment. The lighter tints differ from the darker by the absence of some pigment granules. If neither parent has the capacity of producing a large quantity of pigment granules in the hair, the children cannot have that capacity, that is, two flaxen-haired parents have only flaxen-haired children. But a dark-haired parent may be either simplex or duplex; and so two such parents _may_ produce children with light hair; but not more than one out of four. In general, the hair color of the children tends not to be darker than that of the darker parent. Skin pigment follows a similar rule. It is really one of the surprises of modern studies that skin pigment should be found to follow the ordinary law of heredity; it was commonly thought to blend. The inheritance of skin color is not dependent on race; two blonds never have brunette offspring, but brunettes may have blondes. The extreme case is that of albinos with no pigment in skin, hair, and iris. Two albinos have only albino children, but albinos may come from two pigmented parents. Similarly, straight-haired parents lack curliness, and two such have only straight-haired children. Also two tall parents have only tall children. _Shortness_ is the trait: tallness is a negative character. Also when both parents lack stoutness (are slender), all children tend to lack it. We may now consider briefly the inheritance of certain pathological or abnormal states, to see in how far the foregoing principles hold for them also. Sometimes the abnormal condition is positive, due to a new trait; but sometimes, on the contrary, the normal condition is the positive one and the trait is due to a defect. Deaf-mutism is due to a defect; but the nature of the defect is different in different cases. Deaf-mutism is so varied that frequently two unrelated deaf mutes may have hearing children. But if the deaf-mute parents are cousins, the chances that the deafness is due to the _same_ unit defect are increased and all of the children will probably be deaf. From the studies of Dr. Goddard and others, it appears that when both parents are feeble-minded all of the children will be so likewise; this conclusion has been tested again and again. But if _one_ of the parents be normal and of normal ancestry, all of the children may be normal; whereas, if the normal person have defective germ cells, half of his progeny by a feeble-minded woman will be defective. Many criminals, especially those who offend against the person, are feeble-minded, as is shown by the way they occur in fraternities with feeble-mindedness, or have feeble-minded parents. The test of the mental condition of relatives is one that may well be applied by judges in deciding upon the responsibility of an aggressor. Not only the condition of imperfect mental development, but also that of inability to withstand stress upon the nervous system, may be inherited. From the studies of Dr. Rosanoff and his collaborators, it appears that if both parents be subject to manic depressive insanity or to dementia precox, all children will be neuropathic also; that if one parent be affected and come from a weak strain, half of the children are liable to go insane; and that nervous breakdowns of these types never occur if both parents be of sound stock. Finally, a study of families with special abilities reveals a method of inheritance quite like that of nervous defect. If both parents be color artists or have a high grade of vocal ability or are littérateurs of high grade, then all of their children tend to be of high grade also. If one parent has high ability, while the other has low ability but has ancestry with high ability, part of the children will have high ability and part low. It seems like an extraordinary conclusion that high ability is inherited as though due to the absence of a determiner in the same way as feeble-mindedness and insanity are inherited. We are reminded of the poet: "Great wits to madness sure are near allied." Evidence for the relationship is given by pedigrees of men of genius that often show the combination of ability and insanity. May it not be that just that lack of control that permits "flights of the imagination" is related to the flightiness characteristic of those with mental weakness or defect? These studies of inheritance of mental defect inevitably raise the question how to eliminate the mentally defective. This is a matter of great importance because, on the one hand, it is now coming to be recognized that mental defect is at the bottom of most of our social problems. Extreme alcoholism is usually a consequence of a mental make-up in which self-control of the appetite for liquor is lacking. Pauperism is a consequence of mental defects that make the pauper incapable of holding his own in the world's competition. Sex immorality in either sex is commonly due to a certain inability to appreciate consequences, to visualize the inevitableness of cause and effect, combined sometimes with a sex-hyperesthesia and lack of self-control. Criminality in its worst forms is similarly due to a lack of appreciation of or receptivity to moral ideas. If we seek to know what is the origin of these defects, we must admit that it is very ancient. They are probably derived from our ape-like ancestors, in which they were _normal_ traits. There occurs in man a strain that has not yet acquired those traits of inhibition that characterized the more highly developed civilized persons. The evidence for this is that, as far back as we go, we still trace back the black thread of defective heredity. We have now to answer the question as to the eugenical application of the laws of inheritance of defects. First, it may be pointed out that traits due to the absence of a determiner are characterized by their usual sparseness in the pedigree, especially when the parents are normal; by the fact that they frequently appear where cousin marriages abound, because cousins tend to carry the same defects in their germ plasm, though normal themselves; by the fact that two affected parents have exclusively normal children, while two normal parents who belong to the same strain, or who both belong to strains containing the same defect, have some (about 25 per cent) defective children. But a defective married to a pure normal will have no defective offspring. The clear eugenical rule is then this: Let abnormals marry normals without trace of the defect, and let their normal offspring marry in turn into strong strains; thus the defect may never appear again. Normals from the defective strain may marry normals of normal ancestry, but must particularly avoid consanguineous marriages. The sociological conclusion is: Prevent the feeble-minded, drunkards, paupers, sex-offenders, and criminalistic from marrying their like or cousins or any person belonging to a neuropathic strain. Practically it might be well to segregate such persons during the reproductive period for one generation. Then the crop of defectives will be reduced to practically nothing. 3. Inheritance of Acquired Nature: Tradition[77] The factor in societal evolution corresponding to heredity in organic evolution is tradition; and the agency of transmission is the nervous system by way of its various "senses" rather than the germ-plasm. The organs of transmission are the eye, ear, tongue, etc., and not those of sex. The term tradition, like variation and selection, is taken in the broad sense. Variation in nature causes the offspring to differ from the parents and from one another; variation in the folkways causes those of one period (or place) to differ from their predecessors and to some extent among themselves. It is the vital fact at the bottom of change. Heredity in nature causes the offspring to resemble or repeat the present type; tradition in societal evolution causes the mores of one period to repeat those of the preceding period. Each is a stringent conservator. Variation means diversity; heredity and tradition mean the preservation of type. If there were no force of heredity or tradition, there could be no system or classification of natural or of societal forms; the creation hypothesis would be the only tenable one, for there could be no basis for a theory of descent. If there were no variation, all of nature and all human institutions would show a monotony as of the desert sand. Heredity and tradition allow respectively of the accumulation of organic or societal variations through repeated selection, extending over generations, in this or that direction. In short, what one can say of the general effects of heredity in the organic realm he can say of tradition in the field of the folkways. That the transmission is in the one case by way of the sex organs and the germ-plasm, and in the other through the action of the vocal cords, the auditory nerves, etc., would seem to be of small moment in comparison with the essential identity in the functions discharged. Tradition is, in a sense and if such a comparison were profitable, more conservative than heredity. There is in the content of tradition an invariability which could not exist if it were a dual composite, as is the constitution of the germ-plasm. Here we must recall certain essential qualities of the mores which we have hitherto viewed from another angle. Tradition always looks to the folkways as constituting the matter to be transmitted. But the folkways, after the concurrence in their practice has been established, come to include a judgment that they conduce to societal and, indeed, individual welfare. This is where they come to be properly called mores. They become the prosperity-policy of the group, and the young are reared up under their sway, looking to the older as the repositories of precedent and convention. But presently the older die, and in conformity with the ideas of the time, they become beings of a higher power toward whom the living owe duty, and whose will they do not wish to cross. The sanction of ghost-fear is thus extended to the mores, which, as the prosperity-policy of the group, have already taken on a stereotyped character. They thus become in an even higher degree "uniform, universal in a group, imperative, invariable. As time goes on, they become more and more arbitrary, positive, and imperative. If asked why they act in a certain way in certain cases, primitive people always answer that it is because they and their ancestors always have done so." Thus the transmission of the mores comes to be a process embodying the greatest conservatism and the least likelihood of change. This situation represents an adaption of society to life-conditions; it would seem that because of the rapidity of succession of variations there is need of an intensely conserving force (like ethnocentrism or religion) to preserve a certain balance and poise in the evolutionary movement. Transmission of the mores takes place through the agency of imitation or of inculcation; through one or the other according as the initiative is taken by the receiving or the giving party respectively. Inculcation includes education in its broadest sense; but since that term implies in general usage a certain, let us say protective, attitude taken by the educator (as toward the young), the broader and more colorless designation is chosen. Acculturation is the process by which one group or people learns from another, whether the culture or civilization be gotten by imitation or by inculcation. As there must be contact, acculturation is sometimes ascribed to "contagion." 4. Temperament, Tradition, and Nationality[78] The temperament of the Negro, as I conceive it, consists in a few elementary but distinctive characteristics, determined by physical organizations and transmitted biologically. These characteristics manifest themselves in a genial, sunny, and social disposition, in an interest and attachment to external, physical things rather than to subjective states and objects of introspection, in a disposition for expression rather than enterprise and action. The changes which have taken place in the manifestations of this temperament have been actuated by an inherent and natural impulse, characteristic of all living beings, to persist and maintain itself in a changed environment. Such changes have occurred as are likely to take place in any organism in its struggle to live and to use its environment to further and complete its own existence. The result has been that this racial temperament has selected out of the mass of cultural materials to which it had access, such technical, mechanical, and intellectual devices as met its needs at a particular period of its existence. It has clothed and enriched itself with such new customs, habits, and cultural forms as it was able, or permitted to use. It has put into these relatively external things, moreover, such concrete meanings as its changing experience and its unchanging racial individuality demanded. Everywhere and always it has been interested rather in expression than in action; interested in life itself rather than in its reconstruction or reformation. The Negro is, by natural disposition, neither an intellectual nor an idealist, like the Jew; nor a brooding introspective, like the East Indian; nor a pioneer and frontiersman, like the Anglo-Saxon. He is primarily an artist, loving life for its own sake. His _metier_ is expression rather than action. He is, so to speak, the lady among the races. In reviewing the fortunes of the Negro's temperament as it is manifested in the external events of the Negro's life in America, our analysis suggests that this racial character of the Negro has exhibited itself everywhere in something like the rôle of the _wish_ in the Freudian analysis of dream-life. The external cultural forms which he found here, like the memories of the individual, have furnished the materials in which the racial wish, i.e., the Negro temperament, has clothed itself. The inner meaning, the sentiment, the emphasis, the emotional color, which these forms assumed as the result of their transference from the white man to the Negro, these have been the Negro's own. They have represented his temperament--his temperament modified, however, by his experience and the tradition which he has accumulated in this country. The temperament is African, but the tradition is American. If it is true that the Jew just because of his intellectuality is a natural-born idealist, internationalist, doctrinaire, and revolutionist, while the Negro, because of his natural attachment to known familiar objects, places, and persons, is pre-adapted to conservatism and to local and personal loyalties--if these things are true, we shall eventually have to take account of them practically. It is certain that the Negro has uniformly shown a disposition to loyalty during slavery to his master and during freedom to the South and the country as a whole. He has maintained this attitude of loyalty, too, under very discouraging circumstances. I once heard Kelly Miller, the most philosophical of the leaders and teachers of his race, say in a public speech that one of the greatest hardships the Negro suffered in this country was due to the fact that he was not permitted to be patriotic. Of course all these alleged racial characteristics have a positive as well as a negative significance. Every race, like every individual, has the vices of its virtues. The question remains still to what extent so-called racial characteristics are actually racial, i.e., biological, and to what extent they are the effect of environmental conditions. The thesis of this paper, to state it again, is: (1) that fundamental temperamental qualities, which are the basis of interest and attention, act as selective agencies and as such determine what elements in the cultural environment each race will select; in what region it will seek and find its vocation in the larger social organization; (2) that, on the other hand, technique, science, machinery, tools, habits, discipline, and all the intellectual and mechanical devices with which the civilized man lives and works remain relatively external to the inner core of significant attitudes and values which constitute what we may call the will of the group. This racial will is, to be sure, largely social, that is, modified by social experience, but it rests ultimately upon a complex of inherited characteristics, which are racial. The individual man is the bearer of a double inheritance. As a member of a race, he transmits by interbreeding a biological inheritance. As a member of society or a social group, on the other hand, he transmits by communication a social inheritance. The particular complex of inheritable characters which characterizes the individuals of a racial group constitutes the racial temperament. The particular group of habits, accommodations, sentiments, attitudes, and ideals transmitted by communication and education constitutes a social tradition. Between this temperament and this tradition there is, as has been generally recognized, a very intimate relationship. My assumption is that temperament is the basis of the interests; that as such it determines in the long run the general run of attention, and this, eventually, determines the selection in the case of an individual of his vocation, in the case of the racial group of its culture. That is to say, temperament determines what things the individual and the group will be interested in; what elements of the general culture, to which they have access, they will assimilate; what, to state it pedagogically, they will learn. It will be evident at once that where individuals of the same race and hence the same temperament are associated, the temperamental interests will tend to reinforce one another, and the attention of members of the group will be more completely focused upon the specific objects and values that correspond to the racial temperament. In this way racial qualities become the basis for nationalities, a nationalistic group being merely a cultural and, eventually, a political society founded on the basis of racial inheritances. On the other hand, when racial segregation is broken up and members of a racial group are dispersed, the opposite effect will take place. This explains the phenomena which have frequently been the subject of comment and observation, that the racial characteristics manifest themselves in an extraordinary way in large homogeneous gatherings. The contrast between a mass meeting of one race and a similar meeting of another is particularly striking. Under such circumstances characteristic racial and temperamental differences appear that would otherwise pass entirely unnoticed. When the physical unity of a group is perpetuated by the succession of parents and children, the racial temperament, including fundamental attitudes and values which rest in it, is preserved intact. When, however, society grows and is perpetuated by immigration and adaptation, there ensues, as a result of miscegenation, a breaking up of the complex of the biologically inherited qualities which constitute the temperament of the race. This again initiates changes in the mores, traditions, and eventually in the institutions of the community. The changes which proceed from modification in the racial temperament will, however, modify but slightly the external forms of the social traditions, but they will be likely to change profoundly their content and meaning. Of course other factors, individual competition, the formation of classes, and especially the increase of communication, all co-operate to complicate the whole situation and to modify the effects which would be produced by racial factors working in isolation. III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS 1. Conceptions of Human Nature Implicit in Religious and Political Doctrines Although the systematic study of it is recent, there has always been a certain amount of observation and a great deal of assumption in regard to human nature. The earliest systematic treatises in jurisprudence, history, theology, and politics necessarily proceeded from certain more or less naïve assumptions in regard to the nature of man. In the extension of Roman law over subject peoples the distinction was made between _jus gentium_ and _jus naturae_, i.e., the laws peculiar to a particular nation as contrasted with customs and laws common to all nations and derived from the nature of mankind. Macauley writes of the "principles of human nature" from which it is possible to deduce a theory of government. Theologians, in devising a logical system of thought concerning the ways of God to man, proceeded on the basis of certain notions of human nature. The doctrines of original sin, the innate depravity of man, the war of the natural man and the spiritual man had a setting in the dogmas of the fall of man, redemption through faith, and the probationary character of life on earth. In striking contrast with the pessimistic attitude of theologians toward human nature, social revolutionists like Rousseau have condemned social institutions as inherently vicious and optimistically placed reliance upon human nature as innately good. In all these treatises the assumptions about human nature are either preconceptions or rationalizations from experience incidental to the legal, moral, religious, or political system of thought. There is in these treatises consequently little or no analysis or detailed description of the traits attributed to men. Certainly, there is no evidence of an effort to arrive at an understanding of human behavior from an objective study of its nature. Historic assumptions in regard to human nature, no matter how fantastic or unscientific, have exerted, nevertheless, a far-reaching influence upon group action. Periods of social revolution are ushered in by theorists who perceive only the evil in institutions and the good in human nature. On the other hand, the "guardians of society," distrustful of the impulses of human nature, place their reliance upon conventions and upon existing forms of social organization. Communistic societies have been organized upon certain ideas of human nature and have survived as long as these beliefs which inspired them controlled the behavior of members of the group. Philosophers from the time of Socrates have invariably sought to justify their moral and political theories upon a conception, if not a definition, of the nature of man. Aristotle, in his _Politics_ and Hobbes in his _Leviathan_, to refer to two classics, offer widely divergent interpretations of human nature. Aristotle emphasized man's altruistic traits, Hobbes stressed his egoistic disposition. These opposite conceptions of human behavior are explicit and in each case presented with a display of evidence. Yet students soon realize that neither philosopher, in fashioning his conception, is entirely without animus or ulterior motive. When these definitions are considered in the context in which they occur, they seem less an outgrowth of an analysis of human nature, than formulas devised in the interest of a political theory. Aristotle was describing the ideal state; Hobbes was interested in the security of an existing social order. Still, the contribution made by social and political philosophers has been real. Their descriptions of human behavior, if inadequate and unscientific, at least recognized that an understanding of human nature was a precondition to social reorganization. The fact that philosophical conceptions and ideal constructions are themselves social forces and as such frequently represent vested interests, has been an obstacle to social as well as physical science. Comte's notion that every scientific discipline must pass through a theological and metaphysical stage before it assumed the character of a positive science seems to be true as far as sociology is concerned. Machiavelli shocked the moral sense of his time, if not the moralists of all time, when he proposed to accept human nature as it is as a basis for political science. Herbert Spencer insisted upon the futility of expecting "golden conduct from leaden instincts." To the utopian social reformers of his day he pointed out a series of welfare measures in England in which the outcome was the direct opposite of the results desired. This negative criticism of preconceived notions and speculations about human nature prepared the way for disinterested observation and comparison. Certain modern tendencies and movements gave an impetus to the detached study of human behavior. The ethnologists collected objective descriptions of the behavior of primitive people. In psychology interest developed in the study of the child and in the comparative study of human and animal behavior. The psychiatrist, in dealing with certain types of abnormal behavior like hysteria and multiple personality, was forced to study human behavior objectively. All this has prepared the way for a science of human nature and of society based upon objective and disinterested observation. 2. Literature and the Science of Human Nature The poets were the first to recognize that "the proper study of mankind is man" as they were also the first to interpret it objectively. The description and appreciation of human nature and personality by the poet and artist preceded systematic and reflective analysis by the psychologist and the sociologist. In recent years, moreover, there has been a very conscious effort to make literature, as well as history, "scientific." Georg Brandes in his _Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature_ set himself the task to "trace first and foremost the connection between literature and life." Taine's _History of English Literature_ attempts to delineate British temperament and character as mirrored in literary masterpieces. The novel which emphasizes "_milieu_" and "character," as contrasted with the novel which emphasizes "action" and "plot," is a literary device for the analysis of human nature and society. Émile Zola in an essay _The Experimental Novel_ has presented with characteristic audacity the case for works of fiction as instruments for the scientific dissection and explanation of human behavior. The novelist is equally an observer and an experimentalist. The observer in him gives the facts as he has observed them, suggests the points of departure, displays the solid earth on which his characters are to tread and the phenomena develop. Then the experimentalist appears and introduces an experiment, that is to say, sets his characters going in a certain story so as to show that the succession of facts will be such as the requirements of the determinism of the phenomena under examination call for. The novelist starts out in search of a truth. I will take as an example the character of the "Baron Hulot," in _Cousine Bette_, by Balzac. The general fact observed by Balzac is the ravages that the amorous temperament of a man makes in his home, in his family, and in society. As soon as he has chosen his subject he starts from known facts, then he makes his experiment and exposes Hulot to a series of trials, placing him among certain surroundings in order to exhibit how the complicated machinery of his passions works. It is then evident that there is not only observation there, but that there is also experiment, as Balzac does not remain satisfied with photographing the facts collected by him, but interferes in a direct way to place his characters in certain conditions, and of these he remains the master. The problem is to know what such a passion, acting in such surroundings and under such circumstances, would produce from the point of view of an individual and of society; and an experimental novel, _Cousine Bette_, for example, is simply the report of the experiment that the novelist conducts before the eyes of the public. In fact, the whole operation consists of taking facts in nature, then in studying the mechanism of these facts, acting upon them, by the modification of circumstances and surroundings, without deviating from the laws of nature. Finally, you possess knowledge of the man, scientific knowledge of him, in both his individual and social relations.[79] After all that may be said for the experimental novel, however, its primary aim, like that of history, is appreciation and understanding, not generalization and abstract formulas. Insight and sympathy, the mystical sense of human solidarity, expressed in the saying "to comprehend all is to forgive all," this fiction has to give. And these are materials which the sociologist cannot neglect. As yet there is no autobiography or biography of an egocentric personality so convincing as George Meredith's _The Egoist_. The miser is a social type; but there are no case studies as sympathetic and discerning as George Eliot's _Silas Marner_. Nowhere in social science has the technique of case study developed farther than in criminology; yet Dostoévsky's delineation of the self-analysis of the murderer in _Crime and Punishment_ dwarfs all comparison outside of similar studies in fiction. The function of the so-called psychological or sociological novel stops, however, with its presentation of the individual incident or case; it is satisfied by the test of its appeal to the experience of the reader. The scientific study of human nature proceeds a step farther; it seeks generalizations. From the case studies of history and of literature it abstracts the laws and principles of human behavior. 3. Research in the Field of Original Nature Valuable materials for the study of human nature have been accumulated in archaeology, ethnology, and folklore. William G. Sumner, in his book _Folkways_, worked through the ethnological data and made it available for sociological use. By classification and comparison of the customs of primitive peoples he showed that cultural differences were based on variations in folkways and mores in adaptation to the environment, rather than upon fundamental differences in human nature. The interests of research have resulted in a division of labor between the fields of original and acquired nature in man. The examination of original tendencies has been quite properly connected with the study of inheritance. For the history of research in this field, the student is referred to treatises upon genetics and evolution and to the works of Lamarck, Darwin, DeVries, Weismann, and Mendel. Recent discoveries in regard to the mechanism of biological inheritance have led to the organization of a new applied science, "eugenics." The new science proposes a social program for the improvement of the racial traits based upon the investigations of breeding and physical inheritance. Research in eugenics has been fostered by the Galton Laboratory in England, and by the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor in the United States. Interest has centered in the study of the inheritance of feeble-mindedness. Studies of feeble-minded families and groups, as _The Kallikak Family_ by Goddard, _The Jukes_ by Dugdale, and _The Tribe of Ishmael_ by M'Culloch, have shown how mental defect enters as a factor into industrial inefficiency, poverty, prostitution, and crime. 4. The Investigation of Human Personality The trend of research in human nature has been toward the study of personality. Scientific inquiry into the problems of personality was stimulated by the observation of abnormal behavior such as hysteria, loss of memory, etc., where the cause was not organic and, therefore, presumably psychic. A school of French psychiatrists and psychologists represented by Charcot, Janet, and Ribot have made signal contributions to an understanding of the maladies of personality. Investigation in this field, invaluable for an understanding of the person, has been made in the study of dual and multiple personality. The work of Freud, Jung, Adler, and others in psychoanalysis has thrown light upon the rôle of mental conflict, repression, and the wishes in the growth of personality. In sociology, personality is studied, not only from the subjective standpoint of its organization, but even more in its objective aspects and with reference to the rôle of the person in the group. One of the earliest classifications of "kinds of conduct" has been ascribed by tradition to a disciple of Aristotle, Theophrastus, who styled himself "a student of human nature." _The Characters of Theophrastus_ is composed of sketches--humorous and acute, if superficial--of types such as "the flatterer," "the boor," "the coward," "the garrulous man." They are as true to modern life as to the age of Alexander. Chief among the modern imitators of Theophrastus is La Bruyère, who published in 1688 _Les caractères, ou les moeurs de ce siècle_, a series of essays on the manners of his time, illustrated by portraits of his contemporaries. Autobiography and biography provide source material for the study both of the subjective life and of the social rôle of the person. Three great autobiographies which have inspired the writing of personal narratives are themselves representative of the different types: Caesar's _Commentaries_, with his detached impersonal description of his great exploits; the _Confessions of St. Augustine_, with his intimate self-analysis and intense self-reproach, and the less well-known _De Vita Propria Liber_ by Cardan. This latter is a serious attempt at scientific self-examination. Recently, attention has been directed to the accumulation of autobiographical and biographical materials which are interpreted from the point of view of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. The study _Der Fall Otto Weininger_ by Dr. Ferdinand Probst is a representative monograph of this type. The outstanding example of this method and its use for sociological interpretation is "Life Record of an Immigrant" contained in the third volume of Thomas and Znaniecki, _The Polish Peasant_. In connection with the _Recreation Survey_ of the Cleveland Foundation and the _Americanization Studies of the Carnegie Corporation_, the life-history has been developed as part of the technique of investigation. 5. The Measurement of Individual Differences With the growing sense of the importance of individual differences in human nature, attempts at their measurement have been essayed. Tests for physical and mental traits have now reached a stage of accuracy and precision. The study of temperamental and social characteristics is still in the preliminary stage. The field of the measurement of physical traits is dignified by the name "anthropometry." In the nineteenth century high hopes were widely held of the significance of measurements of the cranium and of physiognomy for an understanding of the mental and moral nature of the person. The lead into phrenology sponsored by Gall and Spurzheim proved to be a blind trail. The so-called "scientific school of criminology" founded by Cesare Lombroso upon the identification of the criminal type by certain abnormalities of physiognomy and physique was undermined by the controlled study made by Charles Goring. At the present time the consensus of expert opinion is that only for a small group may gross abnormalities of physical development be associated with abnormal mental and emotional reactions. In 1905-11 Binet and Simon devised a series of tests for determining the mental age of French school children. The purpose of the mental measurements was to gauge innate mental capacity. Therefore the tests excluded material which had to do with special social experience. With their introduction into the United States certain revisions and modifications, such as the Goddard Revision, the Terman Revision, the Yerkes-Bridges Point Scale, were made in the interests of standardization. The application of mental measurements to different races and social classes raised the question of the extent to which individual groups varied because of differences in social experience. While it is not possible absolutely to separate original tendencies from their expression in experience, it is practicable to devise tests which will take account of divergent social environments. The study of volitional traits and of temperament is still in its infancy. Many recent attempts at classification of temperaments rest upon as impressionistic a basis as the popular fourfold division into sanguine, melancholic, choleric, and phlegmatic. Two of the efforts to define temperamental differences rest, however, upon first-hand study of cases. Dr. June E. Downey has devised a series of tests based upon handwriting material for measuring will traits. In her pamphlet _The Will Profile_ she presents an analysis of twelve volitional traits: revision, perseverance, co-ordination of impulses, care for detail, motor inhibition, resistance, assurance, motor impulsion, speed of decision, flexibility, freedom from inertia, and speed of movement. From a study of several hundred cases she defined certain will patterns which apparently characterize types of individuals. In her experience she has found the rating of the subject by the will test to have a distinct value in supplementing the test for mentality. Kraepelin, on the basis of his examination of abnormal mental states, offers a classification of types of psychopathic personalities. He distinguishes six groups: the excitable, the unstable, the psychopathic trend, the eccentric, the anti-social, and the contentious. In psychoanalysis a simpler twofold division is frequently made between the _introverts_, or the "introspective" and the _extroverts_, or the "objective" types of individual. The study of social types is as yet an unworked field. Literature and life surround us with increasing specializations in personalities, but attempts at classification are still in the impressionistic stage. The division suggested by Thomas into the Philistine, Bohemian, and Creative types, while suggestive, is obviously too simple for an adequate description of the rich and complex variety of personalities. This survey indicates the present status of attempts to define and measure differences in original and human nature. A knowledge of individual differences is important in every field of social control. It is significant that these tests have been devised to meet problems of policies and of administration in medicine, in industry, in education, and in penal and reformatory institutions. Job analysis, personnel administration, ungraded rooms, classes for exceptional children, vocational guidance, indicate fields made possible by the development of tests for measuring individual differences. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY I. ORIGINAL NATURE A. _Racial Inheritance_ (1) Thomson, J. Arthur. _Heredity._ London and New York, 1908. (2) Washburn, Margaret F. _The Animal Mind._ New York, 1908. (3) Morgan, C. Lloyd. _Habit and Instinct._ London and New York, 1896. (4) ----. _Instinct and Experience._ New York, 1912. (5) Loeb, Jacques. _Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology._ New York, 1900. (6) ----. _Forced Movements._ Philadelphia and London, 1918. (7) Jennings, H. S. _Behavior of the Lower Organisms._ New York, 1906. (8) Watson, John. _Behavior: an Introduction to Comparative Psychology._ New York, 1914. (9) Thorndike, E. L. _The Original Nature of Man._ Vol. I of "Educational Psychology." New York, 1913. (10) Paton, Stewart. _Human Behavior._ In relation to the study of educational, social, and ethical problems. New York, 1921. (11) Faris, Ellsworth. "Are Instincts Data or Hypotheses?" _American Journal of Sociology_, XXVII (Sept., 1921.) B. _Heredity and Eugenics_ 1. Systematic Treatises: (1) Castle, W. E., Coulter, J. M., Davenport, C. B., East, E. M., and Tower, W. L. _Heredity and Eugenics._ Chicago, 1912. (2) Davenport, C. B. _Heredity in Relation to Eugenics._ New York, 1911. (3) Goddard, Henry H. _Feeble-mindedness._ New York, 1914. 2. Inherited Inferiority of Families and Communities: (1) Dugdale, Richard L. _The Jukes._ New York, 1877. (2) M'Culloch, O. C. _The Tribe of Ishmael._ A study in social degradation. National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1888, 154-59; 1889, 265; 1890, 435-37. (3) Goddard, Henry H. _The Kallikak Family._ New York, 1912. (4) Winship, A. E. _Jukes-Edwards._ A study in education and heredity. Harrisburg, Pa., 1900. (5) Estabrook, A. H., and Davenport, C. B. _The Nam Family._ A study in cacogenics. Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., 1912. (6) Danielson, F. H., and Davenport, C. B. _The Hill Folk._ Report on a rural community of hereditary defectives. Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., 1912. (7) Kite, Elizabeth S. "The Pineys," _Survey_, XXXI (October 4, 1913), 7-13. 38-40. (8) Gesell, A. L. "The Village of a Thousand Souls," _American Magazine_, LXXVI (October, 1913), 11-13. (9) Kostir, Mary S. _The Family of Sam Sixty._ Columbus, 1916. (10) Finlayson, Anna W. _The Dack Family._ A study on hereditary lack of emotional control. Cold Spring Harbor, N. Y., 1916. II. HUMAN NATURE A. _Human Traits_ (1) Cooley, Charles H. _Human Nature and the Social Order._ New York, 1902. (2) Shaler, N. S. _The Individual._ New York, 1900. (3) Hocking, W. E. _Human Nature and Its Remaking._ New Haven, 1918. (4) Edman, Irwin. _Human Traits and Their Social Significance._ Boston, 1919. (5) Wallas, Graham. _Human Nature in Politics._ London, 1908. (6) Lippmann, Walter. _A Preface to Politics._ [A criticism of present politics from the point of view of human-nature studies.] New York and London, 1913. (7) James, William. _The Varieties of Religious Experience._ A study in human nature. London and New York, 1902. (8) Ellis, Havelock. _Studies in the Psychology of Sex._ 6 vols. Philadelphia, 1900-1905. (9) Thomas, W. I. _Source Book for Social Origins._ Chicago, 1909. [Contains extensive bibliographies.] B. _The Mores_ 1. Comparative Studies of Cultural Traits: (1) Tylor, E. B. _Primitive Culture._ Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom. 4th ed. 2 vols. London, 1903. (2) Sumner, W. G. _Folkways._ A study of the sociological importance of usages, manners, customs, mores, and morals. Boston, 1906. (3) Westermarck, E. A. _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas._ London and New York, 1908. (4) Ratzel, F. _History of Mankind._ Translated by A. J. Butler. London and New York, 1898. (5) Vierkandt, A. _Naturvölker und Kulturvölker._ Leipzig, 1896. (6) Lippert, Julius. _Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit in ihrem organischem Aufbau._ Stuttgart, 1886-87. (7) Frazer, J. G. _The Golden Bough._ A study in magic and religion. 3d ed., 12 vols. (Volume XII is a bibliography of the preceding volumes.) London and New York, 1907-15. (8) Dewey, John, and Tufts, James H. _Ethics._ New York, 1908. 2. Studies of Traits of Individual Peoples: (1) Fouillée, A. _Psychologie du peuple français._ Paris, 1898. (2) Rhys, J., and Brynmor-Jones, D. _The Welsh People._ London, 1900. (3) Fishberg, M. _The Jews._ A study of race and environment. London and New York, 1911. (4) Strausz, A. _Die Bulgaren._ Ethnographische Studien. Leipzig, 1898. (5) Stern, B. _Geschichtete der öffentlichen Sittlichkeit in Russland._ Kultur, Aberglaube, Sitten, und Gebraüche. Zwei Bände. Berlin, 1907-8. (6) Krauss, F. S. _Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven._ Wien, 1885. (7) Kidd, D. _The Essential Kafir._ London, 1904. (8) Spencer, B., and Gillen, F. J. _The Native Tribes of Central Australia._ London and New York, 1899. C. _Human Nature and Industry_ (1) Taylor, F. W. _The Principles of Scientific Management._ New York, 1911. (2) Tead, O., and Metcalf, H. C. _Personnel Administration; Its Principles and Practice._ New York, 1920. (3) Tead, O. _Instincts in Industry._ A study of working-class psychology. Boston, 1918. (4) Parker, C. H. _The Casual Laborer and Other Essays._ New York, 1920. (5) Marot, Helen. _Creative Impulse in Industry; A Proposition for Educators._ New York, 1918. (6) Williams, Whiting. _What's on the Worker's Mind._ New York, 1920. (7) Hollingworth, H. L. _Vocational Psychology; Its Problems and Methods._ New York, 1916. III. PERSONALITY A. _The Genesis of Personality_ (1) Baldwin, J. M. _Mental Development in the Child and the Race: Methods and Processes._ 3d rev. ed. New York and London, 1906. (2) Baldwin, J. M. _Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Developments._ Chap ii, "The Social Person," pp. 66-98. 3d ed., rev. and enl. New York and London, 1902. (3) Sully, J. _Studies of Childhood._ rev. ed. New York, 1903. (4) King, I. _The Psychology of Child Development._ Chicago, 1903. (5) Thorndike, E. L. _Notes on Child Study._ New York, 1903. (6) Hall, G. S. _Adolescence._ Its psychology and its relations to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion, and education. 2 vols.. New York, 1904. (7) Shinn, Milicent W. _Notes on the Development of a Child._ University of California Studies. Nos. 1-4. 1893-99. (8) Kirkpatrick, E. A. _The Individual in the Making._ Boston and New York, 1911. B. _Psychology and Sociology of the Person_ (1) James, William. _The Principles of Psychology._ Chap, x, "Consciousness of Self," I, 291-401. New York, 1890. (2) Bekhterev, V. M. (Bechterew, W. v.) _Die Persönlichkeit und die Bedingungen ihrer Entwicklung und Gesundheit._ "Grenzfragen des Nerven und Seelenlebens," No. 45. Wiesbaden, 1906. (3) Binet, A. _Alterations of Personality._ Translated by H. G. Baldwin. New York, 1896. (4) Ribot, T. A. _Diseases of Personality._ Authorized translation, 2d rev. ed. Chicago, 1895. (5) Adler, A. _The Neurotic Constitution._ New York, 1917. (6) Prince, M. _The Dissociation of a Personality._ A biographical study in abnormal psychology. 2d ed. New York, 1913. (7) ----. _The Unconscious._ The fundamentals of human personality, normal and abnormal. New York, 1914. (8) Coblenz, Felix. _Ueber das betende Ich in den Psalmen._ Ein Beitrag zur Erklaerung des Psalters. Frankfort, 1897. (9) Royce, J. _Studies of Good and Evil._ A series of essays upon problems of philosophy and life. Chap, viii, "Some Observations on the Anomalies of Self-consciousness," pp. 169-97. A paper read before the Medico-Psychological Association of Boston, March 21, 1894. New York, 1898. (10) Stern, B. _Werden and Wesen der Persönlichkeit._ Biologische und historische Untersuchungen über menschliche Individualität. Wien und Leipzig, 1913. (11) Shand, A. F. _The Foundations of Character._ Being a study of the tendencies of the emotions and sentiments. London, 1914. C. _Materials for the Study of the Person_ (1) Theophrastus. _The Characters of Theophrastus._ Translated from the Greek by R. C. Jebb. London, 1870. (2) La Bruyère, Jean de. _Les caractères, ou les moeurs de ce siècle._ Paris, 1916. _The "Characters" of Jean de La Bruyère._ Translated from the French by Henri Van Laun. London, 1885. (3) Augustinus, Aurelius. _The Confessions of St. Augustine._ Translated from the Latin by E. B. Pusly. London, 1907. (4) Wesley, John. _The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley._ New York and London, 1907. (5) Amiel, H. _Journal intime._ Translated by Mrs. Ward. London and New York, 1885. (6) Cellini, Benvenuto. _Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini._ Translated from the Italian by J. A. Symonds. New York, 1898. (7) Woolman, John. _Journal of the Life, Gospel Labors, and Christian Experiences of That Faithful Minister of Jesus Christ, John Woolman._ Dublin, 1794. (8) Tolstoy, Count Leon. _My Confession._ Translated from the Russian. Paris and New York, 1887. _My Religion._ Translated from the French. New York, 1885. (9) Riley, I. W. _The Founder of Mormonism._ A psychological study of Joseph Smith, Jr. New York, 1902. (10) Wilde, Oscar. _De Profundis._ New York and London, 1905. (11) Keller, Helen. _The Story of My Life._ New York, 1903. (12) Simmel, Georg. _Goethe._ Leipzig, 1913. (13) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and America._ "Life-Record of an Immigrant," III, 89-400. Boston, 1919. (14) Probst, Ferdinand. _Der Fall Otto Weininger._ "Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens," No. 31. Wiesbaden, 1904. (15) Anthony, Katherine. _Margaret Fuller._ A psychological biography. New York, 1920. (16) Willard, Josiah Flynt. _My Life._ New York, 1908. (17) ----. _Tramping with Tramps._ New York, 1899. (18) Cummings, B. F. _The Journal of a Disappointed Man_, by Barbellion, W. N. P. [_pseud._] Introduction by H. G. Wells. New York, 1919. (19) Audoux, Marguerite. _Marie Claire._ Introduction by Octave Mirabeau. Translated from the French by J. N. Raphael. London and New York, 1911. (20) Clemens, Samuel L. _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_, by Mark Twain [_pseud._]. New York, 1903. (21) Hapgood, Hutchins. _The Autobiography of a Thief._ New York, 1903. (22) Johnson, James W. _The Autobiography of an ex-Colored Man._ Published anonymously. Boston, 1912. (23) Washington, Booker T. _Up from Slavery._ An autobiography. New York, 1901. (24) Du Bois, W. E. B. _The Souls of Black Folk._ Chicago, 1903. (25) Beers, C. W. _A Mind That Found Itself._ An autobiography. 4th rev. ed. New York, 1917. IV. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES A. _The Nature of Individual Differences_ (1) Thorndike, E. L. _Individuality._ Boston, 1911. (2) ----. "Individual Differences and Their Causes," _Educational Psychology_, III, 141-388. New York, 1913-14. (3) Stern, W. _Ueber Psychologie der individuellen Differenzen._ Leipzig, 1900. (4) Hollingworth, Leta S. _The Psychology of Subnormal Children._ Chap. i. "Individual Differences." New York, 1920. B. _Mental Differences_ (1) Goddard, H. H. _Feeble-mindedness._ Its causes and consequences. New York, 1914. (2) Tredgold, A. F. _Mental Deficiency._ 2d ed. New York, 1916. (3) Bronner, Augusta F. _The Psychology of Special Abilities and Disabilities._ Boston, 1917. (4) Healy, William. _Case Studies of Mentally and Morally Abnormal Types._ Cambridge, Mass., 1912. C. _Temperamental Differences_ 1. Systematic Treatises: (1) Fouillée, A. _Tempérament et caractère selon les individus, les sexes et les races._ Paris, 1895. (2) Hirt, Eduard. _Die Temperamente, ihr Wesen, ihre Bedeutung, für das seelische Erleben und ihre besonderen Gestaltungen._ "Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens," No. 40. Wiesbaden, 1905. (3) Hoch, A., and Amsden, G. S. "A Guide to the Descriptive Study of Personality," _Review of Neurology and Psychiatry_, (1913), pp. 577-87. (4) Kraepelin, E. _Psychiatrie._ Ein Lehrbuch für Studierende und Ärzte. Vol. IV, chap. xvi, pp. 1973-2116. 8th ed. 4 vols. Leipzig, 1909-15. (5) Loewenfeld, L. _Ueber die geniale Geistesthätigkeit mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Genie's für bildende Kunst._ "Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens," No. 21. Wiesbaden, 1903. 2. Temperamental Types: (1) Lombroso, C. _The Man of Genius._ Translated from the Italian. London and New York, 1891. (2) ----. _L'uomo delinquente in rapporto all'antropologia, alla giurisprudenza ed alle discipline carcerarie._ 3 vols. 5th ed. Torino, 1896-97. (3) Goring, Charles. _The English Convict._ A statistical study. London, 1913. (4) Wilmanns, Karl. _Psychopathologie des Landstreichers._ Leipzig, 1906. (5) Downey, June E. "The Will Profile." A tentative scale for measurement of the volitional pattern. _University of Wyoming Bulletin_, Laramie, 1919. (6) Pagnier, A. _Le vagabond._ Paris, 1910. (7) Kowalewski, A. _Studien zur Psychologie der Pessimismus._ "Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens," No. 24. Wiesbaden, 1904. D. _Sex Differences_ (1) Ellis, H. H. _Man and Woman._ A study of human secondary sexual characters. 5th rev. ed. London and New York, 1914. (2) Geddes, P., and Thomson, J. A. _The Evolution of Sex._ London, 1889. (3) Thompson, Helen B. _The Mental Traits of Sex._ An experimental investigation of the normal mind in men and women. Chicago, 1903. (4) Montague, Helen, and Hollingworth, Leta S. "The Comparative Variability of the Sexes at Birth," _American Journal of Sociology_, XX (1914-15), 335-70. (5) Thomas, W. I. _Sex and Society._ Chicago, 1907. (6) Weidensall, C. J. _The Mentality of the Criminal Woman._ A comparative study of the criminal woman, the working girl, and the efficient working woman, in a series of mental and physical tests. Baltimore, 1916. (7) Hollingworth, Leta S. "Variability as Related to Sex Differences in Achievement," _American Journal of Sociology_, XIX (1913-14), 510-30. [Bibliography.] E. _Racial Differences_ (1) Boas, F. _The Mind of Primitive Man._ New York, 1911. (2) _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits._ 5 vols. Cambridge, 1901-08. (3) Le Bon, G. _The Psychology of Peoples._ Its influence on their evolution. New York and London, 1898. [Translation.] (4) Reuter, E. B. _The Mulatto in the United States._ Boston, 1918. (5) Bruner, F. G. "Hearing of Primitive Peoples," _Archives of Psychology_, No. 11. New York, 1908. (6) Woodworth, R. S. "Racial Differences in Mental Traits," _Science_, new series, XXI (1910), 171-86. (7) Morse, Josiah. "A Comparison of White and Colored Children Measured by the Binet-Simon Scale of Intelligence," _Popular Science Monthly_, LXXXIVC (1914), 75-79. (8) Ferguson, G. O., Jr. "The Psychology of the Negro, an Experimental Study," _Archives of Psychology_, No. 36. New York, 1916. [Bibliography.] TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES 1. Cooley's Conception of Human Nature 2. Human Nature and the Instincts 3. Human Nature and the Mores 4. Studies in the Evolution of the Mores; Prohibition, Birth Control, the Social Status of Children 5. Labor Management as a Problem in Human Nature 6. Human Nature in Politics 7. Personality and the Self 8. Personality as a Sociological Concept 9. Temperament, Milieu, and Social Types; the Politician, Labor Leader, Minister, Actor, Lawyer, Taxi Driver, Chorus Girl, etc. 10. Bohemian, Philistine, and Genius 11. The Beggar, Vagabond, and Hobo 12. Literature as Source Material for the Study of Character 13. Outstanding Personalities in a Selected Community 14. Autobiography as Source Material for the Study of Human Nature 15. Individual and Racial Differences Compared 16. The Man of Genius as a Biological and a Sociological Product 17. The Jukes and Kindred Studies of Inferior Groups 18. History of the Binet-Simon Tests 19. Mental Measurements and Vocational Guidance 20. Psychiatry and Juvenile Delinquency 21. Recent Studies of the Adolescent Girl 22. Mental Inferiority and Crime QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Is human nature that which is fundamental and alike in all individuals or is it those qualities which we recognize and appreciate as human when we meet them in individuals? 2. What is the relation between original nature and the environment? 3. What is the basis for the distinction made by Thorndike between reflexes, instincts, and inborn capacities? 4. Read carefully Thorndike's _Inventory of Original Tendencies_. What illustrations of the different original traits occur to you? 5. What do you understand by Park's statement that man is not born human? 6. "Human nature is a superstructure." What value has this metaphor? What are its limitations? Suggest a metaphor which more adequately illustrates the relation of original nature to acquired nature. 7. In what sense can it be said that habit is a means of controlling original nature? 8. What, according to Park, is the relation of character to instinct and habit? Do you agree with him? 9. What do you understand by the statement that "original nature is blind?" 10. What relation has an ideal to (a) instinct and (b) group life? 11. In what sense may we speak of the infant as the "natural man"? 12. To what extent are racial differences (a) those of original nature, (b) those acquired from experience? 13. What evidence is there for the position that sex differences in mental traits are acquired rather than inborn? 14. How do you distinguish between mentality and temperament? 15. How do you account for the great differences in achievement between the sexes? 16. What evidence is there of temperamental differences between the sexes? between races? 17. In the future will women equal men in achievement? 18. What, in your judgment, is the range of individual differences? Is it less or greater than that of racial and sex differences? 19. What do you understand is the distinction between racial inheritance as represented by the instincts, and innate individual differences? Do you think that both should be regarded as part of original nature? 20. What is the effect of education and the division of labor (a) upon instincts and (b) upon individual differences? 21. Are individual differences or likenesses more important for society? 22. What do you understand to be the significance of individual differences (a) for social life; (b) for education; (c) for industry? 23. What do you understand by the remaking of human nature? What is the importance of this principle for politics, industry, and social progress? 24. Explain the proverbs: "Habit is ten times nature," "Habit is second nature." 25. What is Cooley's definition of human nature? Do you agree or disagree with him? Elaborate your position. 26. To what extent does human nature differ with race and geographic environment? 27. How would you reinterpret Aristotle's and Hobbes's conception of human nature in the light of this definition? 28. What illustrations of the difference between folkways and mores would you suggest? 29. Classify the following forms of behavior under (a) folkways or (b) mores: tipping the hat, saluting an officer, monogamy, attending church, Sabbath observance, prohibition, immersion as a form of baptism, the afternoon tea of the Englishman, the double standard of morals, the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, the Constitution of the United States. 30. What do you understand to be the relation of the mores to human nature? 31. In what way is (a) habit related to will? (b) custom related to the general will? 32. How do you distinguish the general will (a) from law, (b) from custom? 33. Does any one of the following terms embody your conception of what is expressed by _Sittlichkeit_: good form, decency, self-respect, propriety, good breeding, convention? 34. Describe and analyze several concrete social situations where _Sittlichkeit_ rather than conscience or law controlled the behavior of the person or of the group. 35. What do you understand by convention? What is the relation of convention to instinct? Is convention a part of human nature to the same extent as loyalty, honor, etc.? 36. What is meant by the saying that mores, ritual, and convention are in the words of Hegel "objective mind"? 37. "The organism, and the brain as its highest representative, constitute the real personality." What characteristics of personality are stressed in this definition? 38. Is there any significance to the fact that personality is derived from the Latin word _persona_ (mask worn by actors)? 39. Is the conventional self a product of habit, or of _Sittlichkeit_, or of law, or of conscience? 40. What is the importance of other people to the development of self-consciousness? 41. Under what conditions does self-consciousness arise? 42. What do you understand by personality as a complex? As a total of mental complexes? 43. What is the relation of memory to personality as illustrated in the case of dual personality and of moods? 44. What do you understand Cooley to mean by the looking-glass self? 45. What illustration would you suggest to indicate that an individual's sense of his personality depends upon his status in the group? 46. "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." Is personality adequately defined in terms of a person's conception of his rôle? 47. What is the sociological significance of the saying, "If you would have a virtue, feign it"? 48. What, according to Bechterew, is the relation of personality to the social _milieu_? 49. What do you understand by the personality of peoples? What is the relation of the personality of peoples and the personalities of individuals who constitute the peoples? 50. What do you understand by the difference between nature and nurture? 51. What are acquired characters? How are they transmitted? 52. What do you understand by the Mendelian principles of inheritance: (a) the hypothesis of unit characters; (b) the law of dominance; and (c) the law of segregation? 53. What illustrations of the differences between instinct and tradition would you suggest? 54. What is the difference between the blue eye as a defect in pigmentation, and of feeble-mindedness as a defective characteristic? 55. Should it be the policy of society to eliminate all members below a certain mental level either by segregation or by more drastic measures? 56. What principles of treatment of practical value to parents and teachers would you draw from the fact that feeble inhibition of temper is a trait transmitted by biological inheritance? 57. Why is an understanding of the principles of biological inheritance of importance to sociology? 58. In what two ways, according to Keller, are acquired characters transmitted by tradition? 59. Make a list of the different types of things derived by the person (a) from his biological inheritance, and (b) from his social heritage. 60. What traits, temperament, mentality, manner, or character, are distinctive of members of your family? Which of these have been inherited, which acquired? 61. What problems in society are due to defects in man's original nature? 62. What problems are the result of defects in folkways and mores? 63. In what way do racial temperament and tradition determine national characteristics? To what extent is the religious behavior of the negro determined (a) by temperament, (b) by imitation of white culture? How do you explain Scotch economy, Irish participation in politics, the intellectuality of the Jew, etc.? FOOTNOTES: [55] Charles H. Cooley, _Social Organization_, pp. 28-30. [56] Charles H. Cooley, _Human Nature and the Social Order_, pp. 152-53. [57] _The Theory of the Leisure Class_ (New York, 1899). [58] From Edward L. Thorndike, _The Original Nature of Man_, pp. 1-7. (Teachers College, Columbia University, 1913. Author's copyright.) [59] Compiled from Edward L. Thorndike, _The Original Nature of Man_, pp. 43-194. (Teachers College, Columbia University, 1913. Author's copyright.) [60] From Robert E. Park, _Principles of Human Behavior_, pp. 9-16. (The Zalaz Corporation, 1915.) [61] Adapted from Milicent W. Shinn, _The Biography of a Baby_, pp. 20-77. (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1900. Author's copyright.) [62] From Albert Moll, _Sexual Life of the Child_, pp. 38-49. Translated from the German by Dr. Eden Paul. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1902. Reprinted by permission.) [63] From C. S. Myers, "On the Permanence of Racial Differences," in _Papers on Inter-racial Problems_, edited by G. Spiller, pp. 74-76. (P. S. King & Son, 1911.) [64] From Edward L. Thorndike, _Individuality_, pp. 1-8. (By permission of and special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Co., 1911.) [65] From W. E. Hocking, _Human Nature and Its Remaking_, pp. 2-12. (Yale University Press, 1918.) [66] From William G. Sumner, _Folkways_, pp. 2-8. (Ginn & Co., 1906.) [67] Translated and adapted from Ferdinand Tönnies, _Die Sitte_, pp. 7-14. (Literarische Anstalt, Rütten und Loening, 1909.) [68] From Viscount Haldane, "Higher Nationality," in _International Conciliation_, November, 1913, No. 72, pp. 4-12. [69] From Th. Ribot, _The Diseases of Personality_, pp. 156-57. Translated from the French. (The Open Court Publishing Co., 1891.) [70] From Morton Prince, "The Unconscious," in the _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, III (1908-9), 277-96, 426. [71] From Alfred Binet, _Alterations of Personality_, pp. 248-57. (D. Appleton & Co., 1896.) [72] From L. G. Winston, "Myself and I," in the _American Journal of Psychology_, XIX (1908), 562-63. [73] From William James, _The Varieties of Religious Experience_, pp. 166-73. (Longmans, Green & Co., 1902.) [74] Translated from V. M. Bekhterev (W. v. Bechterew), _Die Persönlichkeit und die Bedingungen ihrer Entwicklung und Gesundheit_, pp. 3-5. (J. F. Bergmann, 1906.) [75] From J. Arthur Thomson, _Heredity_, pp. 244-49. (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1908.) [76] Adapted from C. B. Davenport, "The Method of Evolution," in Castle, Coulter, Davenport, East, and Tower, _Heredity and Eugenics_, pp. 269-87. (The University of Chicago Press, 1912.) [77] From Albert G. Keller, _Societal Evolution_, pp. 212-15. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1915. Reprinted by permission.) [78] From Robert E. Park, "Education in Its Relation to the Conflict and Fusion of Cultures," in the _Publications of the American Sociological Society_, XIII (1918), 58-63. [79] Émile Zola, _The Experimental Novel_ (New York, 1893), pp. 8-9. Translated from the French by Belle M. Sherman. CHAPTER III SOCIETY AND THE GROUP I. INTRODUCTION 1. Society, the Community, and the Group Human nature and the person are products of society. This is the sum and substance of the readings in the preceding chapter. But what, then, is society--this web in which the lives of individuals are so inextricably interwoven, and which seems at the same time so external and in a sense alien to them? From the point of view of common sense, "society" is sometimes conceived as the sum total of social institutions. The family, the church, industry, the state, all taken together, constitute society. In this use of the word, society is identified with social structure, something more or less external to individuals. In accordance with another customary use of the term, "society" denotes a collection of persons. This is a vaguer notion but it at least identifies society with individuals instead of setting it apart from them. But this definition is manifestly superficial. Society is not a collection of persons in the sense that a brick pile is a collection of bricks. However we may conceive the relation of the parts of society to the whole, society is not a mere physical aggregation and not a mere mathematical or statistical unit. Various explanations that strike deeper than surface observation have been proposed as solutions for this cardinal problem of the social one and the social many; of the relation of society to the individual. Society has been described as a tool, an instrument, as it were, an extension of the individual organism. The argument runs something like this: The human hand, though indeed a part of the physical organism, may be regarded as an instrument of the body as a whole. If, as by accident it be lost, it is conceivable that a mechanical hand might be substituted for it, which, though not a part of the body, would function for all practical purposes as a hand of flesh and blood. A hoe may be regarded as a highly specialized hand, so also logically, if less figuratively, a plow. So the hand of another person if it does your bidding may be regarded as your instrument, your hand. Language is witness to the fact that employers speak of "the hands" which they "work." Social institutions may likewise be thought of as tools of individuals for accomplishing their purposes. Logically, therefore, society, either as a sum of institutions or as a collection of persons, may be conceived of as a sum total of instrumentalities, extensions of the functions of the human organism which enable individuals to carry on life-activities. From this standpoint society is an immense co-operative concern of mutual services. This latter is an aspect of society which economists have sought to isolate and study. From this point of view the relations of individuals are conceived as purely external to one another, like that of the plants in a plant community. Co-operation, so far as it exists, is competitive and "free." In contrast with the view of society which regards social institutions and the community itself as the mere instruments and tools of the individuals who compose it, is that which conceives society as resting upon biological adaptations, that is to say upon instincts, gregariousness, for example, imitation, or like-mindedness. The classic examples of societies based on instinct are the social insects, the well-known bee and the celebrated ant. In human society the family, with its characteristic differences and interdependences of the sexes and the age groups, husband and wife, children and parents, most nearly realizes this description of society. In so far as the organization of society is predetermined by inherited or constitutional differences, as is the case pre-eminently in the so-called animal societies, competition ceases and the relations of its component individuals become, so to speak, internal, and a permanent part of the structure of the group. The social organization of human beings, on the other hand, the various types of social groups, and the changes which take place in them at different times under varying circumstances, are determined not merely by instincts and by competition but by custom, tradition, public opinion, and contract. In animal societies as herds, flocks, and packs, collective behavior seems obviously to be explained in terms of instinct and emotion. In the case of man, however, instincts are changed into habits; emotions, into sentiments. Furthermore, all these forms of behavior tend to become conventionalized and thus become relatively independent of individuals and of instincts. The behavior of the person is thus eventually controlled by the formal standards which, implicit in the mores, are explicit in the laws. Society now may be defined as the social heritage of _habit and sentiment_, _folkways and mores_, _technique and culture_, all of which are incident or necessary to collective human behavior. Human society, then, unlike animal society is mainly a social heritage, created in and transmitted by communication. The continuity and life of a society depend upon its success in transmitting from one generation to the next its folkways, mores, technique, and ideals. From the standpoint of collective behavior these cultural traits may all be reduced to the one term "consensus." Society viewed abstractly is an organization of individuals; considered concretely it is a complex of organized habits, sentiments, and social attitudes--in short, consensus. The terms society, community, and social group are now used by students with a certain difference of emphasis but with very little difference in meaning. Society is the more abstract and inclusive term, and society is made up of social groups, each possessing its own specific type of organization but having at the same time all the general characteristics of society in the abstract. Community is the term which is applied to societies and social groups where they are considered from the point of view of the geographical distribution of the individuals and institutions of which they are composed. It follows that every community is a society, but not every society is a community. An individual may belong to many social groups but he will not ordinarily belong to more than one community, except in so far as a smaller community of which he is a member is included in a larger of which he is also a member. However, an individual is not, at least from a sociological point of view, a member of a community because he lives in it but rather because, and to the extent that, he participates in the common life of the community. The term social group has come into use with the attempts of students to classify societies. Societies may be classified with reference to the rôle which they play in the organization and life of larger social groups or societies. The internal organization of any given social group will be determined by its external relation to other groups in the society of which it is a part as well as by the relations of individuals within the group to one another. A boys' gang, a girls' clique, a college class, or a neighborhood conforms to this definition quite as much as a labor union, a business enterprise, a political party, or a nation. One advantage of the term "group" lies in the fact that it may be applied to the smallest as well as to the largest forms of human association. 2. Classification of the Materials Society, in the most inclusive sense of that term, the Great Society, as Graham Wallas described it, turns out upon analysis to be a constellation of other smaller societies, that is to say races, peoples, parties, factions, cliques, clubs, etc. The community, the world-community, on the other hand, which is merely the Great Society viewed from the standpoint of the territorial distribution of its members, presents a different series of social groupings and the Great Society in this aspect exhibits a totally different pattern. From the point of view of the territorial distribution of the individuals that constitute it, the world-community is composed of nations, colonies, spheres of influence, cities, towns, local communities, neighborhoods, and families. These represent in a rough way the subject-matter of sociological science. Their organization, interrelation, constituent elements, and the characteristic changes (social processes) which take place in them are the phenomena of sociological science. Human beings as we meet them are mobile entities, variously distributed through geographical space. What is the nature of the connection between individuals which permits them at the same time to preserve their distances and act corporately and consentiently--with a common purpose, in short? These distances which separate individuals are not merely spatial, they are psychical. Society exists where these distances have been _relatively_ overcome. Society exists, in short, not merely where there are people but where there is communication. The materials in this chapter are intended to show (1) the fundamental character of the relations which have been established between individuals through communication; (2) the gradual evolution of these relations in animal and human societies. On the basis of the principle thus established it is possible to work out a rational classification of social groups. Espinas defines society in terms of corporate action. Wherever separate individuals act together as a unit, where they co-operate as though they were parts of the same organism, there he finds society. Society from this standpoint is not confined to members of one species, but may be composed of different members of species where there is permanent joint activity. In the study of symbiosis among animals, it is significant to note the presence of structural adaptations in one or both species. In the taming and domestication of animals by man the effects of symbiosis are manifest. Domestication, by the selection in breeding of traits desired by man, changes the original nature of the animal. Taming is achieved by control of habits in transferring to man the filial and gregarious responses of the young naturally given to its parents and members of its kind. Man may be thought of as domesticated through natural social selection. Eugenics is a conscious program of further domestication by the elimination of defective physical and mental racial traits and by the improvement of the racial stock through the social selection of superior traits. Taming has always been a function of human society, but it is dignified by such denominations as "education," "social control," "punishment," and "reformation." The plant community offers the simplest and least qualified example of the community. Plant life, in fact, offers an illustration of a _community_ which is _not a society_. It is not a society because it is an organization of individuals whose relations, if not wholly external, are, at any rate, "unsocial" in so far as there is no consensus. The plant community is interesting, moreover, because it exhibits in the barest abstraction, the character of _competitive co-operation_, the aspect of social life which constitutes part of the special subject-matter of economic science. This struggle for existence, in some form or other, is in fact essential to the existence of society. Competition, segregation, and accommodation serve to maintain the social distances, to fix the status, and preserve the independence of the individual in the social relation. A society in which all distances, physical as well as psychical, had been abolished, in which there was neither taboo, prejudice, nor reserve of any sort; a society in which the intimacies were absolute, would be a society in which there were neither persons nor freedom. The processes of competition, segregation, and accommodation brought out in the description of the plant community are quite comparable with the same processes in animal and human communities. A village, town, city, or nation may be studied from the standpoint of the adaptation, struggle for existence, and survival of its individual members in the environment created by the community as a whole. Society, as Dewey points out, if based on instinct is an effect of communication. _Consensus_ even more than _co-operation_ or _corporate action_ is the distinctive mark of human society. Dewey, however, seems to restrict the use of consensus to group decisions in which all the members consciously and rationally participate. Tradition and sentiment are, however, forms of consensus quite as much as constitutions, rules, and elections. Le Bon's classification of social groups into heterogeneous and homogeneous crowds, while interesting and suggestive, is clearly inadequate. Many groups familiar to all of us, as the family, the play-group, the neighborhood, the public, find no place in his system.[80] Concrete descriptions of group behavior indicate three elements in the consensus of the members of the group. The first is the characteristic state of group feeling called _esprit de corps_. The enthusiasm of the two sides in a football contest, the ecstasy of religious ceremonial, the fellowship of members of a fraternity, the brotherhood of a monastic band are all different manifestations of group spirit. The second element in consensus has become familiar through the term "morale." Morale may be defined as the collective will. Like the will of the individual it represents an organization of behavior tendencies. The discipline of the individual, his subordination to the group, lies in his participation and reglementation in social activities. The third element of consensus which makes for unified behavior of the members of the group has been analyzed by Durkheim under the term "collective representations." Collective representations are the concepts which embody the objectives of group activity. The totem of primitive man, the flag of a nation, a religious creed, the number system, and Darwin's theory of the descent of man--all these are collective representations. Every society and every social group has, or tends to have, its own symbols and its own language. The language and other symbolic devices by which a society carries on its collective existence are collective representations. Animals do not possess them. II. MATERIALS A. SOCIETY AND SYMBIOSIS 1. Definition of Society[81] The idea of society is that of a permanent co-operation in which separate living beings undertake to accomplish an identical act. These beings may find themselves brought by their conditions to a point where their co-operation forces them to group themselves in space in some definite form, but it is by no means necessary that they should be in juxtaposition for them to act together and thus to form a society. A customary reciprocation of services among more or less independent individualities is the characteristic feature of the social life, a feature that contact or remoteness does not essentially modify, nor the apparent disorder nor the regular disposition of the parties in space. Two beings may then form what is to the eyes a single mass, and may live, not only in contact with each other, but even in a state of mutual penetration without constituting a society. It is enough in such a case that one looks at them as entirely distinct, that their activities tend to opposite or merely different ends. If their functions, instead of co-operating, diverge; if the good of one is the evil of the other, whatever the intimacy of their contact may be, no social bond unites them. But the nature of the functions and the form of the organs are inseparable. If two beings are endowed with functions that necessarily combine, they are also endowed with organs, if not similar, at least corresponding. And these beings with like or corresponding organs are either of the same species or of very nearly the same species. However, circumstances may be met where two beings with quite different organs and belonging even to widely remote species may be accidentally and at a single point useful to each other. A habitual relation may be established between their activities, but only on this one point, and in the time limits in which the usefulness exists. Such a case gives the occasion, if not for a society, at least for an association; that is to say, a union less necessary, less strict, less durable, may find its origin in such a meeting. In other words, beside the normal societies formed of elements specifically alike, which cannot exist without each other, there will be room for more accidental groupings, formed of elements more or less specifically unlike, which convenience unites and not necessity. We will commence with a study of the latter. To society the most alien relations of two living beings which can be produced are those of the predator and his prey. In general, the predator is bulkier than his prey, since he overcomes him and devours him. Yet smaller ones sometimes attack larger creatures, consuming them, however, by instalments, and letting them live that they themselves may live on them as long as possible. In such a case they are forced to remain for a longer or a shorter time attached to the body of their victim, carried about by it wherever the vicissitudes of its life lead them. Such animals have received the name of parasites. Parasitism forms the line inside of which our subject begins; for if one can imagine that the parasite, instead of feeding on the animal from whom he draws his subsistence, is content to live on the remains of the other's meals, one will find himself in the presence, not yet of an actual society, but of half the conditions of a society; that is to say, a relation between two beings such that, all antagonism ceasing, one of the two is useful to the other. Such is commensalism. However, this association does not yet offer the essential element of all society, co-operation. There is co-operation when the commensal is not less useful to his host than the latter is to the commensal himself, when the two are concerned in living in a reciprocal relation and in developing their double activity in corresponding ways toward a single and an identical goal. One has given to this mode of activity the name of mutualism. Domestication is only one form of it. Parasitism, commensalism, mutualism, exist with animals among the different species. 2. Symbiosis (literally "living together")[82] In gaining their wide and intimate acquaintance with the vegetable world the ants have also become acquainted with a large number of insects that obtain their nutriment directly from plants, either by sucking up their juices or by feeding on their foliage. To the former group belong the phytophthorous Homoptera, the plant lice, scale insects, or mealy bugs, tree-hoppers, lantern flies, and jumping plant lice; to the latter belong the caterpillars of the lycaenid butterflies, the "blues," or "azures," as they are popularly called. All of these creatures excrete liquids which are eagerly sought by the ants and constitute the whole, or, at any rate, an important part of the food of certain species. In return the Homoptera and caterpillars receive certain services from the ants, so that the relations thus established between these widely different insects may be regarded as a kind of symbiosis. These relations are most apparent in the case of the aphids, and these insects have been more often and more closely studied in Europe and America. The consociation of the ants with the aphids is greatly facilitated by the gregarious and rather sedentary habits of the latter, especially in their younger, wingless stages, for the ants are thus enabled to obtain a large amount of food without losing time and energy in ranging far afield from their nests. Then, too, the ants may establish their nests in the immediate vicinity of the aphid droves or actually keep them in their nests or in "sheds" carefully constructed for the purpose. Some ants obtain the honey-dew merely by licking the surface of the leaves and stems on which it has fallen, but many species have learned to stroke the aphids and induce them to void the liquid gradually so that it can be imbibed directly. A drove of plant lice, especially when it is stationed on young and succulent leaves or twigs, may produce enough honey-dew to feed a whole colony of ants for a considerable period. As the relations between ants and the various Homoptera have been regarded as mutualistic, it may be well to marshal the facts which seem to warrant this interpretation. The term "mutualism" as applied to these cases means, of course, that the aphids, coccids, and membracids are of service to the ants and in turn profit by the companionship of these more active and aggressive insects. Among the modifications in structure and behavior which may be regarded as indicating on the part of aphids unmistakable evidence of adaptation to living with ants, the following may be cited: 1. The aphids do not attempt to escape from the ants or to defend themselves with their siphons, but accept the presence of these attendants as a matter of course. 2. The aphids respond to the solicitations of the ants by extruding the droplets of honey-dew gradually and not by throwing them off to a distance with a sudden jerk, as they do in the absence of ants. 3. Many species of Aphididae that live habitually with ants have developed a perianal circlet of stiff hairs which support the drop of honey-dew till it can be imbibed by the ants. This circlet is lacking in aphids that are rarely or never visited by ants. 4. Certain observations go to show that aphids, when visited by ants, extract more of the plant juices than when unattended. The adaptations on the part of the ants are, with a single doubtful exception, all modifications in behavior and not in structure. 1. Ants do not seize and kill aphids as they do when they encounter other sedentary defenseless insects. 2. The ants stroke the aphids in a particular manner in order to make them excrete the honey-dew, and know exactly where to expect the evacuated liquid. 3. The ants protect the aphids. Several observers have seen the ants driving away predatory insects. 4. Many aphidicolous ants, when disturbed, at once seize and carry their charges in their mandibles to a place of safety, showing very plainly their sense of ownership and interest in these helpless creatures. 5. This is also exhibited by all ants that harbor root-aphids and root-coccids in their nests. Not only are these insects kept in confinement by the ants, but they are placed by them on the roots. In order to do this the ants remove the earth from the surfaces of the roots and construct galleries and chambers around them so that the Homoptera may have easy access to their food and even move about at will. 6. Many ants construct, often at some distance from their nests, little closed pavilions or sheds of earth, carton, or silk, as a protection for their cattle and for themselves. The singular habit may be merely a more recent development from the older and more general habit of excavating tunnels and chambers about roots and subterranean stems. 7. The solicitude of the ants not only envelops the adult aphids and coccids, but extends also to their eggs and young. Numerous observers have observed ants in the autumn collecting and storing aphid eggs in the chambers of their nests, caring for them through the winter and in the spring placing the recently hatched plant lice on the stems and roots of the plants. In the foregoing I have discussed the ethological relations of ants to a variety of other organisms. This, however, did not include an account of some of the most interesting symbiotic relations, namely, those of the ants to other species of their own taxonomic group and to termites. This living together of colonies of different species may be properly designated as social symbiosis, to distinguish it from the simple symbiosis that obtains between individual organisms of different species and the intermediate form of symbiosis exhibited by individual organisms that live in ant or termite colonies. The researches of the past forty years have brought to light a remarkable array of instances of social symbiosis, varying so much in intimacy and complexity that it is possible to construct a series ranging from mere simultaneous occupancy of a very narrow ethological station, or mere contiguity of domicile, to an actual fusion, involving the vital dependence or parasitism of a colony of one species on that of another. Such a series is, of course, purely conceptual and does not represent the actual course of development in nature, where, as in the animal and vegetable kingdoms in general, development has not followed a simple linear course, but has branched out repeatedly and terminated in the varied types at the present time. It is convenient to follow the European writers, von Hagens, Forel, Wasmann, and others, in grouping all the cases of social symbiosis under two heads, the compound nests and the mixed colonies. Different species of ants or of ants and termites are said to form compound nests when their galleries are merely contiguous or actually interpenetrate and open into one another, although the colonies which inhabit them bring up their respective offspring in different apartments. In mixed colonies, on the other hand, which, in a state of nature, can be formed only by species of ants of close taxonomic affinities, the insects live together in a single nest and bring up their young in common. Although each of these categories comprises a number of dissimilar types of social symbiosis, and although it is possible, under certain circumstances, as will be shown in the sequel, to convert a compound nest into a mixed colony, the distinction is nevertheless fundamental. It must be admitted, however, that both types depend in last analysis on the dependent, adoption-seeking instincts of the queen ant and on the remarkable plasticity which enables allied species and genera to live in very close proximity to one another. By a strange paradox these peculiarities have been produced in the struggle for existence, although this struggle is severer among different species of ants than between ants and other organisms. As Forel says: "The greatest enemies of ants are other ants, just as the greatest enemies of men are other men." 3. The Taming and the Domestication of Animals[83] Primitive man was a hunter almost before he had the intelligence to use weapons, and from the earliest times he must have learned something about the habits of the wild animals he pursued for food or for pleasure, or from which he had to escape. It was probably as a hunter that he first came to adopt young animals which he found in the woods or the plains, and made the surprising discovery that these were willing to remain under his protection and were pleasing and useful. He passed gradually from being a hunter to becoming a keeper of flocks and herds. From these early days to the present time, the human race has taken an interest in the lower animals, and yet extremely few have been really domesticated. The living world would seem to offer an almost unlimited range of creatures which might be turned to our profit and as domesticated animals minister to our comfort or convenience. And yet it seems as if there were some obstacle rooted in the nature of animals or in the powers of man, for the date of the adoption by man of the few domesticated species lies in remote, prehistoric antiquity. The surface of the earth has been explored, the physiology of breeding and feeding has been studied, our knowledge of the animal kingdom has been vastly increased, and yet there is hardly a beast bred in the farm-yard today with which the men who made stone weapons were not acquainted and which they had not tamed. Most of the domestic animals of Europe, America, and Asia came originally from Central Asia, and have spread thence in charge of their masters, the primitive hunters who captured them. No monkeys have been domesticated. Of the carnivores only the cat and the dog are truly domesticated. Of the ungulates there are horses and asses, pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, and reindeer. Among rodents there are rabbits and guinea-pigs, and possibly some of the fancy breeds of rats and mice should be included. Among birds there are pigeons, fowls, peacocks, and guinea-fowl, and aquatic birds such as swans, geese, and ducks, whilst the only really domesticated passerine bird is the canary. Goldfish are domesticated, and the invertebrate bees and silk-moths must not be forgotten. It is not very easy to draw a line between domesticated animals and animals that are often bred in partial or complete captivity. Such antelopes as elands, fallow-deer, roe-deer, and the ostriches of ostrich farms are on the border-line of being domesticated. It is also difficult to be quite certain as to what is meant by a tame animal. Cockroaches usually scuttle away when they are disturbed and seem to have learnt that human beings have a just grievance against them. But many people have no horror of them. A pretty girl, clean and dainty in her ways, and devoted to all kinds of animals, used to like sitting in a kitchen that was infested with these repulsive creatures, and told me that when she was alone they would run over her dress and were not in the least startled when she took them up. I have heard of a butterfly which used to come and sip sugar from the hand of a lady; and those who have kept spiders and ants declare that these intelligent creatures learn to distinguish their friends. So also fish, like the great carp in the garden of the palace of Fontainebleau, and many fishes in aquaria and private ponds, learn to come to be fed. I do not think, however, that these ought to be called tame animals. Most of the wild animals in menageries very quickly learn to distinguish one person from another, to obey the call of their keeper and to come to be fed, although certainly they would be dangerous even to the keeper if he were to enter their cages. To my mind, tameness is something more than merely coming to be fed, and, in fact, many tame animals are least tame when they are feeding. Young carnivores, for instance, which can be handled freely and are affectionate, very seldom can be touched whilst they are feeding. The real quality of tameness is that the tame animal is not merely tolerant of the presence of man, not merely has learned to associate him with food, but takes some kind of pleasure in human company and shows some kind of affection. On the other hand, we must not take our idea of tameness merely from the domesticated animals. These have been bred for many generations, and those that were most wild and that showed any resistance to man were killed or allowed to escape. Dogs are always taken as the supreme example of tameness, and sentimentalists have almost exhausted the resources of language in praising them. Like most people, I am very fond of dogs, but it is an affection without respect. Dogs breed freely in captivity, and in the enormous period of time that has elapsed since the first hunters adopted wild puppies there has been a constant selection by man, and every dog that showed any independence of spirit has been killed off. Man has tried to produce a purely subservient creature, and has succeeded in his task. No doubt a dog is faithful and affectionate, but he would be shot or drowned or ordered to be destroyed by the local magistrate if he were otherwise. A small vestige of the original spirit has been left in him, merely from the ambition of his owners to possess an animal that will not bite them, but will bite anyone else. And even this watch-dog trait is mechanical, for the guardian of the house will worry the harmless, necessary postman, and welcome the bold burglar with fawning delight. The dog is a slave, and the crowning evidence of his docility, that he will fawn on the person who has beaten him, is the result of his character having been bred out of him. The dog is an engaging companion, an animated toy more diverting than the cleverest piece of clockwork, but it is only our colossal vanity that makes us take credit for the affection and faithfulness of our own particular animal. The poor beast cannot help it; all else has been bred out of him generations ago. When wild animals become tame, they are really extending or transferring to human beings the confidence and affection they naturally give their mothers, and this view will be found to explain more facts about tameness than any other. Every creature that would naturally enjoy maternal, or it would be better to say parental, care, as the father sometimes shares in or takes upon himself the duty of guarding the young, is ready to transfer its devotion to other animals or to human beings, if the way be made easy for it, and if it be treated without too great violation of its natural instincts. The capacity to be tamed is greatest in those animals that remain longest with their parents and that are most intimately associated with them. The capacity to learn new habits is greatest in those animals which naturally learn most from their parents, and in which the period of youth is not merely a period of growing, a period of the awakening of instincts, but a time in which a real education takes place. These capacities of being tamed and of learning new habits are greater in the higher mammals than in the lower mammals, in mammals than in birds, and in birds than in reptiles. They are very much greater in very young animals, where dependence on the parents is greatest, than in older animals, and they gradually fade away as the animal grows up, and are least of all in fully grown and independent creatures of high intelligence. Young animals born in captivity are no more easy to tame than those which have been taken from the mother in her native haunts. If they remain with the mother, they very often grow up even shyer and more intolerant of man than the mothers themselves. There is no inherited docility or tameness, and a general survey of the facts fully bears out my belief that the process of taming is almost entirely a transference to human beings of the confidence and affection that a young animal would naturally give its mother. The process of domestication is different, and requires breeding a race of animals in captivity for many generations and gradually weeding out those in which youthful tameness is replaced by the wild instinct of adult life, and so creating a strain with new and abnormal instincts. B. PLANT COMMUNITIES AND ANIMAL SOCIETIES 1. Plant Communities[84] Certain species group themselves into natural associations, that is to say, into communities which we meet with more or less frequently and which exhibit the same combination of growth-forms and the same facies. As examples in northern Europe may be cited a meadow with its grasses and perennial herbs, or a beech forest with its beech trees and all the species usually accompanying these. Species that form a community must either practice the same economy, making approximately the same demands on its environment (as regards nourishment, light, moisture, and so forth), or one species present must be dependent for its existence upon another species, sometimes to such an extent that the latter provides it with what is necessary or even best suited to it (Oxalis Acetosella and saprophytes which profit from the shade of the beech and from its humus soil); a kind of symbiosis seems to prevail between such species. In fact, one often finds, as in beech forests, that the plants growing under the shade and protection of other species, and belonging to the most diverse families, assume growth-forms that are very similar to one another, but essentially different from those of the forest trees, which, in their turn, often agree with one another. The ecological analysis of a plant-community leads to the recognition of the growth-forms composing it as its ultimate units. From what has just been said in regard to growth-forms it follows that species of very diverse physiognomy can very easily occur together in the same natural community. But beyond this, as already indicated, species differing widely, not only in physiognomy but also in their whole economy, may be associated. We may therefore expect to find both great variety of form and complexity of interrelations among the species composing a natural community; as an example we may cite the richest of all types of communities--the tropical rain-forest. It may also be noted that the physiognomy of a community is not necessarily the same at all times of the year, the distinction sometimes being caused by a rotation of species. The different communities, it need hardly be stated, are scarcely ever sharply marked off from one another. Just as soil, moisture, and other external conditions are connected by the most gradual transitions, so likewise are the plant-communities, especially in cultivated lands. In addition, the same species often occur in several widely different communities; for example, Linnaea borealis grows not only in coniferous forests, but also in birch woods, and even high above the tree limit on the mountains of Norway and on the fell-fields of Greenland. It appears that different combinations of external factors can replace one another and bring into existence approximately the same community, or at least can satisfy equally well one and the same species, and that, for instance, a moist climate often completely replaces the forest shade of dry climates. The term "community" implies a diversity but at the same time a certain organized uniformity in the units. The units are the many individual plants that occur in every community, whether this be a beech forest, a meadow, or a heath. Uniformity is established when certain atmospheric, terrestrial, and other factors are co-operative, and appears either because a certain defined economy makes its impress on the community as a whole, or because a number of different growth-forms are combined to form a single aggregate which has a definite and constant guise. The analysis of a plant-community usually reveals one or more of the kinds of symbiosis as illustrated by parasites, saprophytes, epiphytes, and the like. There is scarce a forest or a bushland where examples of these forms of symbiosis are lacking; if, for instance, we investigate the tropical rain-forest we are certain to find in it all conceivable kinds of symbiosis. But the majority of individuals of a plant-community are linked by bonds other than those mentioned--bonds that are best described as _commensal_. The term _commensalism_ is due to Van Beneden, who wrote, "Le commensal est simplement un compagnon de table"; but we employ it in a somewhat different sense to denote the relationship subsisting between species which share with one another the supply of food-material contained in soil and air, and thus feed at the same table. More detailed analysis of the plant-community reveals very considerable distinctions among commensals. Some relationships are considered in the succeeding paragraphs. _Like commensals._--When a plant-community consists solely of individuals belonging to one species--for example, solely of beech, ling, or Aira flexuosa--then we have the purest example of like commensals. These all make the same demands as regards nutriment, soil, light, and other like conditions; as each species requires a certain amount of space and as there is scarcely ever sufficient nutriment for all the offspring, a struggle for food arises among the plants so soon as the space is occupied by the definite numbers of individuals which, according to the species, can develop thereon. The individuals lodged in unfavorable places and the weaklings are vanquished and exterminated. This competitive struggle takes place in all plant-communities, with perhaps the sole exceptions of sub-glacial communities and in deserts. In these _open communities_ the soil is very often or always so open and so irregularly clothed that there is space for many more individuals than are actually present; the cause for this is obviously to be sought in the climatically unfavorable conditions of life, which either prevent plants from producing seed and other propagative bodies in sufficient numbers to clothe the ground or prevent the development of seedlings. On such soil one can scarcely speak of a competitive struggle for existence; in this case a struggle takes place between the plant and inanimate nature, but to little or no extent between plant and plant. That a congregation of individuals belonging to one species into one community may be profitable to the species is evident; it may obviously in several ways aid in maintaining the existence of the species, for instance, by facilitating abundant and certain fertilization (especially in anemophilous plants) and maturation of seeds; in addition, the social mode of existence may confer other less-known advantages. But, on the other hand, it brings with it greater danger of serious damage and devastation wrought by parasites. The bonds that hold like individuals to a like habitat are, as already indicated, identical demands as regards existence, and these demands are satisfied in their precise habitat to such an extent that the species can maintain itself here against rivals. Natural unmixed associations of forest trees are the result of struggles with other species. But there are differences as regards the ease with which a community can arise and establish itself. Some species are more social than others, that is to say, better fitted to form communities. The causes for this are biological, in that some species, like Phragmites, Scirpus lacustris, Psamma (Ammophila) arenaria, Tussilago, Farfara, and Asperula odorata, multiply very readily by means of stolons; or others, such as Cirsium arvense, and Sonchus arvensis, produce buds from their roots; or yet others produce numerous seeds which are easily dispersed and may remain for a long time capable of germinating, as is the case with Calluna, Picea excelsa, and Pinus; or still other species, such as beech and spruce, have the power of enduring shade or even suppressing other species by the shade they cast. A number of species, such as Pteris aquilina, Acorus Calamus, Lemna minor, and Hypnum Schreberi, which are social, and likewise very widely distributed, multiply nearly exclusively by vegetative means, rarely or never producing fruit. On the contrary, certain species, for example, many orchids and Umbelliferae, nearly always grow singly. In the case of many species certain geological conditions have favored their grouping together into pure communities. The forests of northern Europe are composed of few species, and are not mixed in the same sense as are those in the tropics, or even those in Austria and other southern parts of Europe: the cause for this may be that the soil is geologically very recent, inasmuch as the time that has elapsed since the glacial epoch swept it clear has been too short to permit the immigration of many competitive species. _Unlike commensals._--The case of a community consisting of individuals belonging to one species is, strictly speaking, scarcely ever met with; but the dominant individuals of a community may belong to a single species, as in the case of a beech forest, spruce forest, or ling heath--and only thus far does the case proceed. In general, many species grow side by side, and many different growth-forms and types of symbiosis, in the extended sense, are found collected in a community. For even when one species occupies an area as completely as the nature of the soil will permit, other species can find room and can grow between its individuals; in fact, if the soil is to be completely covered the vegetation must necessarily always be heterogeneous. The greatest aggregate of existence arises where the greatest diversity prevails. The kind of communal life resulting will depend upon the nature of the demands made by the species in regard to conditions of life. As in human communities, so in this case, the _struggle between the like_ is the _most severe_, that is, between the species making more or less the same demands and wanting the same dishes from the common table. In a tropical mixed forest there are hundreds of species of trees growing together in such profuse variety that the eye can scarce see at one time two individuals of the same species, yet all of them undoubtedly represent tolerable uniformity in the demands they make as regards conditions of life, and in so far they are alike. And among them a severe competition for food must be taking place. In those cases in which certain species readily grow in each other's company--and cases of this kind are familiar to florists--when, for instance, Isoetes, Lobelia Dortmanna, and Litorella lacustris occur together--the common demands made as regards external conditions obviously form the bond that unites them. Between such species a competitive struggle must take place. Which of the species shall be represented by the greatest number of individuals certainly often depends upon casual conditions, a slight change in one direction or the other doubtless often playing a decisive rôle; but apart from this it appears that morphological and biological features, for example, development at a different season, may change the nature of the competition. Yet there are in every plant-community numerous species which _differ widely_ in the demands they make for light, heat, nutriment, and so on. Between such species there is less competition, the greater the disparity in their wants; the case is quite conceivable in which the _one species should require exactly what the other would avoid_; the two species would then be complementary to one another in their occupation and utilization of the same soil. There are also obvious cases in which different species are of service to each other. The carpet of moss in a pine forest, for example, protects the soil from desiccation and is thus useful to the pine; yet, on the other hand, it profits from the shade cast by the latter. As a rule, limited numbers of definite species are the most potent, and, like absolute monarchs, can hold sway over the whole area; while other species, though possibly present in far greater numbers than these, are subordinate or even dependent on them. This is the case where subordinate species only flourish in the shade or among the fallen fragments of dominant species. Such is obviously the relationship between trees and many plants growing on the ground of high forest, such as mosses, fungi, and other saprophytes, ferns, Oxalis Acetosella, and their associates. In this case, then, there is a commensalism in which individuals feed at the same table but on different fare. An additional factor steps in when species do not absorb their nutriment at the same season of the year. Many spring plants--for instance, Galanthus nivalis, Corydalis solida, and C. cava--have withered before the summer plants commence properly to develop. Certain species of animals are likewise confined to certain plant-communities. But one and the same tall plant may, in different places or soils, have different species of lowly plants as companions; the companion plants of high beech forests depend, for instance, upon climate and upon the nature of the forest soil; Pinus nigra, according to von Beck, can maintain under it in the different parts of Europe a Pontic, a central European, or a Baltic vegetation. There are certain points of resemblance between communities of plants and those of human beings or animals; one of these is the competition for food which takes place between similar individuals and causes the weaker to be more or less suppressed. But far greater are the distinctions. The plant-community is the lowest form; it is merely a congregation of units, among which there is no co-operation for the common weal, but rather a ceaseless struggle of all against all. Only in a loose sense can we speak of certain individuals protecting others, as for example, when the outermost and most exposed individuals of scrub serve to shelter from the wind others, which consequently become taller and finer; for they do not afford protection from any special motive, such as is met with in some animal communities, nor are they in any way specially adapted to act as guardians against a common foe. In the plant-community egoism reigns supreme. The plant-community has no higher units or personages in the sense employed in connection with human communities, which have their own organizations and their members co-operating, as prescribed by law, for the common good. In plant-communities there is, it is true, often (or always) a certain natural dependence or reciprocal influence of many species upon one another; they give rise to definite organized units of a higher order; but there is no thorough or organized division of labor such as is met with in human and animal communities, where certain individuals or groups of individuals work as organs, in the wide sense of the term, for the benefit of the whole community. Woodhead has suggested the term _complementary association_ to denote a community of species that live together in harmony, because their rhizomes occupy different depths in the soil; for example, he described an "association" in which Holcus mollis is the "surface plant," Pteris aquilina has deeper-seated rhizomes, and Scilla festalis buries its bulbs at the greatest depth. The photophilous parts of these plants are "seasonably complementary." The opposite extreme is provided by _competitive associations_, composed of species that are battling with each other. 2. Ant Society[85] There is certainly a striking parallelism between the development of human and ant societies. Some anthropologists, like Topinard, distinguish in the development of human societies six different types or stages, designated as the hunting, pastoral, agricultural, commercial, industrial, and intellectual. The ants show stages corresponding to the first three of these, as Lubbock has remarked. Some species, such as _Formica fusca_, live principally on the produce of the chase; for though they feed partially on the honey-dew of aphids, they have not domesticated these insects. These ants probably retain the habits once common to all ants. They resemble the lower races of men, who subsist mainly by hunting. Like them they frequent woods and wilds, live in comparatively small communities, as the instincts of collective action are but little developed among them. They hunt singly, and their battles are single combats, like those of Homeric heroes. Such species as _Lasius flavus_ represent a distinctly higher type of social life; they show more skill in architecture, may literally be said to have domesticated certain species of aphids, and may be compared to the pastoral stage of human progress--to the races which live on the products of their flocks and herds. Their communities are more numerous; they act much more in concert; their battles are not mere single combats, but they know how to act in combination. I am disposed to hazard the conjecture that they will gradually exterminate the mere hunting species, just as savages disappear before more advanced races. Lastly, the agricultural nations may be compared with the harvesting ants. Granting the resemblances above mentioned between ant and human societies, there are nevertheless three far-reaching differences between insect and human organization and development to be constantly borne in mind: a) Ant societies are societies of females. The males really take no part in the colonial activities, and in most species are present in the nest only for the brief period requisite to secure the impregnation of the young queens. The males take no part in building, provisioning, or guarding the nest or in feeding the workers or the brood. They are in every sense the _sexus sequior_. Hence the ants resemble certain mythical human societies like the Amazons, but unlike these, all their activities center in the multiplication and care of the coming generations. b) In human society, apart from the functions depending on sexual dimorphism, and barring individual differences and deficiencies which can be partially or wholly suppressed, equalized, or augmented by an elaborate system of education, all individuals have the same natural endowment. Each normal individual retains its various physiological and psychological needs and powers intact, not necessarily sacrificing any of them for the good of the community. In ants, however, the female individuals, of which the society properly consists, are not all alike but often very different, both in their structure (polymorphism) and in their activities (physiological division of labor). Each member is _visibly_ predestined to certain social activities to the exclusion of others, not as a man through the education of some endowment common to all the members of the society, but through the exigencies of structure, fixed at the time of hatching, i.e., the moment the individual enters on its life as an active member of the community. c) Owing to this pre-established structure and the specialized functions which it implies, ants are able to live in a condition of anarchistic socialism, each individual instinctively fulfilling the demands of social life without "guide, overseer, or ruler," as Solomon correctly observed, but not without the imitation and suggestion involved in an appreciation of the activities of its fellows. An ant society, therefore, may be regarded as little more than an expanded family, the members of which co-operate for the purpose of still further expanding the family and detaching portions of itself to found other families of the same kind. There is thus a striking analogy, which has not escaped the philosophical biologist, between the ant colony and the cell colony which constitutes the body of a Metazoan animal; and many of the laws that control the cellular origin, development, growth, reproduction, and decay of the individual Metazoan, are seen to hold good also of the ant society regarded as an individual of a higher order. As in the case of the individual animal, no further purpose of the colony can be detected than that of maintaining itself in the face of a constantly changing environment till it is able to reproduce other colonies of a like constitution. The queen-mother of the ant colony displays the generalized potentialities of all the individuals, just as the Metazoan egg contains _in potentia_ all the other cells of the body. And, continuing the analogy, we may say that since the different castes of the ant colony are morphologically specialized for the performance of different functions, they are truly comparable with the differentiated tissues of the Metazoan body. C. HUMAN SOCIETY 1. Social Life[86] The most notable distinction between living and inanimate beings is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment. Continuity of life means continual readaptation of the environment to the needs of living organisms. We have been speaking of life in its lowest terms--as a physical thing. But we use the word "life" to denote the whole range of experience, individual and racial. When we see a book called the _Life of Lincoln_ we do not expect to find within its covers a treatise on physiology. We look for an account of social antecedents; a description of early surroundings, of the conditions and occupation of the family; of the chief episodes in the development of character; of signal struggles and achievements; of the individual's hopes, tastes, joys, and sufferings. In precisely similar fashion we speak of the life of a savage tribe, of the Athenian people, of the American nation. "Life" covers customs, institutions, beliefs, victories and defeats, recreations and occupations. We employ the word "experience" in the same pregnant sense. And to it, as well as to life in the bare physiological sense, the principle of continuity through renewal applies. With the renewal of physical existence goes, in the case of human beings, the re-creation of beliefs, ideals, hopes, happiness, misery, and practices. The continuity of any experience, through renewing of the social group, is a literal fact. Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of life. Every one of the constituent elements of a social group, in a modern city as in a savage tribe, is born immature, helpless, without language, beliefs, ideas, or social standards. Each individual, each unit who is the carrier of the life-experience of his group, in time passes away. Yet the life of the group goes on. Society exists through a process of transmission, quite as much as biological life. This transmission occurs by means of communication of habits of doing, thinking, and feeling from the older to the younger. Without this communication of ideals, hopes, expectations, standards, opinions from those members of society who are passing out of the group life to those who are coming into it, social life could not survive. Society not only continues to exist _by_ transmission, _by_ communication, but it may fairly be said to exist _in_ transmission, _in_ communication. There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication. Men live in a community in virtue of the things which they have in common; and communication is the way in which they come to possess things in common. What they must have in common in order to form a community or society are aims, beliefs, aspirations, knowledge--a common understanding--like-mindedness, as the sociologists say. Such things cannot be passed physically from one to another, like bricks; they cannot be shared as persons would share a pie by dividing it into physical pieces. The communication which insures participation in a common understanding is one which secures similar emotional and intellectual dispositions--like ways of responding to expectations and requirements. Persons do not become a society by living in physical proximity any more than a man ceases to be socially influenced by being so many feet or miles removed from others. A book or a letter may institute a more intimate association between human beings separated thousands of miles from each other than exists between dwellers under the same roof. Individuals do not even compose a social group because they all work for a common end. The parts of a machine work with a maximum of co-operativeness for a common result, but they do not form a community. If, however, they were all cognizant of the common end and all interested in it so that they regulated their specific activity in view of it, then they would form a community. But this would involve communication. Each would have to know what the other was about and would have to have some way of keeping the other informed as to his own purpose and progress. Consensus demands communications. We are thus compelled to recognize that within even the most social group there are many relations which are not as yet social. A large number of human relationships in any social group are still upon the machine-like plane. Individuals use one another so as to get desired results, without reference to the emotional and intellectual disposition and consent of those used. Such uses express physical superiority, or superiority of position, skill, technical ability, and command of tools, mechanical or fiscal. So far as the relations of parent and child, teacher and pupil, employer and employee, governor and governed, remain upon this level, they form no true social group, no matter how closely their respective activities touch one another. Giving and taking of orders modifies action and results, but does not of itself effect a sharing of purposes, a communication of interests. Not only is social life identical with communication, but all communication (and hence all genuine social life) is educative. To be a recipient of a communication is to have an enlarged and changed experience. One shares in what another has thought and felt, and in so far, meagerly or amply, has his own attitude modified. Nor is the one who communicates left unaffected. Try the experiment of communicating, with fulness and accuracy, some experience to another, especially if it be somewhat complicated, and you will find your own attitude toward your experience changing; otherwise you resort to expletives and ejaculations. The experience has to be formulated in order to be communicated. To formulate requires getting outside of it, seeing it as another would see it, considering what points of contact it has with the life of another so that it may be got into such form that he can appreciate its meaning. Except in dealing with commonplaces and catch phrases one has to assimilate, imaginatively, something of another's experience in order to tell him intelligently of one's own experience. All communication is like art. It may fairly be said, therefore, that any social arrangement that remains vitally social, or vitally shared, is educative to those who participate in it. Only when it becomes cast in a mold and runs in a routine way does it lose its educative power. In final account, then, not only does social life demand teaching and learning for its own permanence, but the very process of living together educates. It enlarges and enlightens experience; it stimulates and enriches imagination; it creates responsibility for accuracy and vividness of statement and thought. A man really living alone (alone mentally as well as physically) would have little or no occasion to reflect upon his past experience to extract its net meaning. The inequality of achievement between the mature and the immature not only necessitates teaching the young, but the necessity of this teaching gives an immense stimulus to reducing experience to that order and form which will render it most easily communicable and hence most usable. 2. Behavior and Conduct[87] The word "behavior" is commonly used in an interesting variety of ways. We speak of the behavior of ships at sea, of soldiers in battle, and of little boys in Sunday school. "The geologist," as Lloyd Morgan remarks, "tells us that a glacier behaves in many respects like a river, and discusses how the crust of the earth behaves under the stresses to which it is subjected. Weatherwise people comment on the behavior of the mercury in the barometer as a storm approaches. When Mary, the nurse maid, returns with the little Miss Smiths from Master Brown's birthday party, she is narrowly questioned as to their behavior." In short, the word is familiar both to science and to common sense, and is applied with equal propriety to the actions of physical objects and to the manners of men. The abstract sciences, quite as much as the concrete and descriptive, are equally concerned with behavior. "The chemist and the physicist often speak of the behavior of the atoms and the molecules, or of that of gas under changing conditions of temperature and pressure." The fact is that every science is everywhere seeking to describe and explain the movements, changes, and reactions, that is to say the behavior, of some portion of the world about us. Indeed, wherever we consciously set ourselves to observe and reflect upon the changes going on about us, it is always behavior that we are interested in. Science is simply a little more persistent in its curiosity and a little nicer and more exact in its observation than common sense. And this disposition to observe, to take a disinterested view of things, is, by the way, one of the characteristics of human nature which distinguishes it from the nature of all other animals. Since every science has to do with some form of behavior, the first question that arises is this: What do we mean by behavior in human beings as distinguished from that in other animals? What is there distinctive about the actions of human beings that marks them off and distinguishes them from the actions of animals and plants with which human beings have so much in common? The problem is the more difficult because, in some one or other of its aspects, human behavior involves processes which are characteristic of almost every form of nature. We sometimes speak, for example, of the human machine. Indeed, from one point of view human beings may be regarded as psycho-physical mechanisms for carrying on the vital processes of nutrition, reproduction, and movement. The human body is, in fact, an immensely complicated machine, whose operations involve an enormous number of chemical and physical reactions, all of which may be regarded as forms of human behavior. Human beings are, however, not wholly or merely machines; they are living organisms and as such share with the plants and the lower animals certain forms of behavior which it has not thus far, at any rate, been possible to reduce to the exact and lucid formulas of either chemistry or physics. Human beings are, however, not merely organisms: they are the home and the habitat of minuter organisms. The human body is, in a certain sense, an organization--a sort of social organization--of the minute and simple organisms of which it is composed, namely, the cells, each of which has its own characteristic mode of behavior. In fact, the life of human beings, just as the life of all other creatures above the simple unicellular organisms, may be said to consist of the corporate life of the smaller organisms of which it is composed. In human beings, as in some great city, the division of labor among the minuter organisms has been carried further, the interdependence of the individual parts is more complete, and the corporate life of the whole more complex. It is not strange, therefore, that Lloyd Morgan begins his studies of animal behavior by a description of the behavior of the cells and Thorndike in his volume, _The Original Nature of Man_, is led to the conclusion that the original tendencies of man have their basis in the neurones, or nerve cells, and in the changes which these cells and their ancestors have undergone, as a result of the necessity of carrying on common and corporate existences as integral parts of the human organism. All acquired characteristics of men, everything that they learn, is due to mutual stimulations and associations of the neurones, just as sociologists are now disposed to explain civilization and progress as phenomena due to the interaction and association of human beings, rather than to any fundamental changes in human nature itself. In other words, the difference between a savage and a civilized man is not due to any fundamental differences in their brain cells but to the connections and mutual stimulations which are established by experience and education between those cells. In the savage those possibilities are not absent but latent. In the same way the difference between the civilization of Central Africa and that of Western Europe is due, not to the difference in native abilities of the individuals and the peoples who have created them, but rather to the form which the association and interaction between those individuals and groups of individuals has taken. We sometimes attribute the difference in culture which we meet among races to the climate and physical conditions generally, but, in the long run, the difference is determined by the way in which climate and physical condition determine the contacts and communications of individuals. So, too, in the corporate life of the individual man it is the association of the nerve cells, their lines of connection and communication, that is responsible for the most of the differences between the ignorant and the educated, the savage and civilized man. The neurone, however, is a little unicellular animal, like the amoeba or the paramecium. Its life consists of: (1) eating, (2) excreting waste products, (3) growing, (4) being sensitive, and (5) movement, and, as Thorndike expresses it: "The safest provisional hypothesis about the action of the neurones singly is that they retain the modes of behavior common to unicellular animals, so far as consistent with the special conditions of their life as an element of man's nervous system." In the widest sense of the term, behavior may be said to include all the chemical and physical changes that go on inside the organism, as well as every response to stimulus either from within or from without the organism. In recent studies of animal behavior, however, the word has acquired a special and technical meaning in which it is applied exclusively to those actions that have been, or may be, modified by conscious experience. What the animal does in its efforts to find food is behavior, but the processes of digestion are relegated to another field of observation, namely, physiology. In all the forms of behavior thus far referred to, human and animal nature are not fundamentally distinguished. There are, however, ways of acting that are peculiar to human nature, forms of behavior that man does not share with the lower animals. One thing which seems to distinguish man from the brute is self-consciousness. One of the consequences of intercourse, as it exists among human beings, is that they are led to reflect upon their own impulses and motives for action, to set up standards by which they seek to govern themselves. The clock is such a standard. We all know from experience that time moves more slowly on dull days, when there is nothing doing, than in moments of excitement. On the other hand, when life is active and stirring, time flies. The clock standardizes our subjective tempos and we control ourselves by the clock. An animal never looks at the clock and this is typical of the different ways in which human beings and animals behave. Human beings, so far as we have yet been able to learn, are the only creatures who habitually pass judgment upon their own actions, or who think of them as right or wrong. When these thoughts about our actions or the actions of others get themselves formulated and expressed they react back upon and control us. That is one reason we hang mottoes on the wall. That is why one sees on the desk of a busy man the legend "Do it now!" The brutes do not know these devices. They do not need them perhaps. They have no aim in life. They do not work. What distinguishes the action of men from animals may best be expressed in the word "conduct." Conduct as it is ordinarily used is applied to actions which may be regarded as right or wrong, moral or immoral. As such it is hardly a descriptive term since there does not seem to be any distinctive mark about the actions which men have at different times and places called moral or immoral. I have used it here to distinguish the sort of behavior which may be regarded as distinctively and exclusively human, namely, that which is self-conscious and personal. In this sense blushing may be regarded as a form of conduct, quite as much as the manufacture of tools, trade and barter, conversation or prayer. No doubt all these activities have their beginnings in, and are founded upon, forms of behavior of which we may find the rudiments in the lower animals. But there is in all distinctively human activities a conventional, one might almost say a contractual, element which is absent in action of other animals. Human actions are more often than not controlled by a sense or understanding of what they look like or appear to be to others. This sense and understanding gets itself embodied in some custom or ceremonial observance. In this form it is transmitted from generation to generation, becomes an object of sentimental respect, gets itself embodied in definite formulas, is an object not only of respect and reverence but of reflection and speculation as well. As such it constitutes the mores, or moral customs, of a group and is no longer to be regarded as an individual possession. 3. Instinct and Character[88] In no part of the world, and at no period of time, do we find the behavior of men left to unchartered freedom. Everywhere human life is in a measure organized and directed by customs, laws, beliefs, ideals, which shape its ends and guide its activities. As this guidance of life by rule is universal in human society, so upon the whole it is peculiar to humanity. There is no reason to think that any animal except man can enunciate or apply general rules of conduct. Nevertheless, there is not wanting something that we can call an organization of life in the animal world. How much of intelligence underlies the social life of the higher animals is indeed extremely hard to determine. In the aid which they often render to one another, in their combined hunting, in their play, in the use of warning cries, and the employment of "sentinels," which is so frequent among birds and mammals, it would appear at first sight that a considerable measure of _mutual understanding_ is implied, that we find at least an analogue to human custom, to the assignment of functions, the division of labor, which mutual reliance renders possible. How far the analogy may be pressed, and whether terms like "custom" and "mutual understanding," drawn from human experience, are rightly applicable to animal societies, are questions on which we shall touch presently. Let us observe first that as we descend the animal scale the sphere of _intelligent activity_ is gradually narrowed down, and yet behavior is still regulated. The lowest organisms have their definite methods of action under given conditions. The amoeba shrinks into itself at a touch, withdraws the pseudopodium that is roughly handled, or makes its way round the small object which will serve it as food. Given the conditions, it acts in the way best suited to avoid danger or to secure nourishment. We are a long way from the intelligent regulation of conduct by a general principle, but we still find action adapted to the requirements of organic life. When we come to human society we find the basis for a social organization of life already laid in the animal nature of man. Like others of the higher animals, man is a gregarious beast. His interests lie in his relations to his fellows, in his love for wife and children, in his companionship, possibly in his rivalry and striving with his fellow-men. His loves and hates, his joys and sorrows, his pride, his wrath, his gentleness, his boldness, his timidity--all these permanent qualities, which run through humanity and vary only in degree, belong to his inherited structure. Broadly speaking, they are of the nature of instincts, but instincts which have become highly plastic in their mode of operation and which need the stimulus of experience to call them forth and give them definite shape. The mechanical methods of reaction which are so prominent low down in the animal scale fill quite a minor place in human life. The ordinary operations of the body, indeed, go upon their way mechanically enough. In walking or in running, in saving ourselves from a fall, in coughing, sneezing, or swallowing, we react as mechanically as do the lower animals; but in the distinctly human modes of behavior, the place taken by the inherited structure is very different. Hunger and thirst no doubt are of the nature of instincts, but the methods of satisfying hunger and thirst are acquired by experience or by teaching. Love and the whole family life have an instinctive basis, that is to say, they rest upon tendencies inherited with the brain and nerve structure; but everything that has to do with the satisfaction of these impulses is determined by the experience of the individual, the laws and customs of the society in which he lives, the woman whom he meets, the accidents of their intercourse, and so forth. Instinct, already plastic and modifiable in the higher animals, becomes in man a basis of character which determines how he will take his experience, but without experience is a mere blank form upon which nothing is yet written. For example, it is an ingrained tendency of average human nature to be moved by the opinion of our neighbors. This is a powerful motive in conduct, but the kind of conduct to which it will incite clearly depends on the kind of thing that our neighbors approve. In some parts of the world ambition for renown will prompt a man to lie in wait for a woman or child in order to add a fresh skull to his collection. In other parts he may be urged by similar motives to pursue a science or paint a picture. In all these cases the same hereditary or instinctive element is at work, that quality of character which makes a man respond sensitively to the feelings which others manifest toward him. But the kind of conduct which this sensitiveness may dictate depends wholly on the social environment in which the man finds himself. Similarly it is, as the ordinary phrase quite justly puts it, "in human nature" to stand up for one's rights. A man will strive, that is, to secure that which he has counted on as his due. But as to what he counts upon, as to the actual treatment which he expects under given circumstances, his views are determined by the "custom of the country," by what he sees others insisting on and obtaining, by what has been promised him, and so forth. Even such an emotion as sexual jealousy, which seems deeply rooted in the animal nature, is largely limited in its exercise and determined in the form it takes by custom. A hospitable savage, who will lend his wife to a guest, would kill her for acting in the same way on her own motion. In the one case he exercises his rights of proprietorship; in the other, she transgresses them. It is the maintenance of a claim which jealousy concerns itself with, and the standard determining the claim is the custom of the country. In human society, then, the conditions regulating conduct are from the first greatly modified. Instinct, becoming vague and more general, has evolved into "character," while the intelligence finds itself confronted with customs to which it has to accommodate conduct. But how does custom arise? Let us first consider what custom is. It is not merely a habit of action; but it implies also a judgment upon action, and a judgment stated in general and impersonal terms. It would seem to imply a bystander or third party. If A hits B, B probably hits back. It is his "habit" so to do. But if C, looking on, pronounces that it was or was not a fair blow, he will probably appeal to the "custom" of the country--the traditional rules of fighting, for instance--as the ground of his judgment. That is, he will lay down a rule which is general in the sense that it would apply to other individuals under similar conditions, and by it he will, as an impartial third person, appraise the conduct of the contending parties. The formation of such rules, resting as it does on the power of framing and applying general conceptions, is the prime differentia of human morality from animal behavior. The fact that they arise and are handed on from generation to generation makes social tradition at once the dominating factor in the regulation of human conduct. Without such rules we can scarcely conceive society to exist, since it is only through the general conformity to custom that men can understand each other, that each can know how the other will act under given circumstances, and without this amount of understanding the reciprocity, which is the vital principle of society, disappears. 4. Collective Representation and Intellectual Life[89] Logical thought is made up of concepts. Seeking how society can have played a rôle in the genesis of logical thought thus reduces itself to seeking how it can have taken a part in the formation of concepts. The concept is opposed to sensual representations of every order--sensations, perceptions, or images--by the following properties. Sensual representations are in a perpetual flux; they come after each other like the waves of a river, and even during the time that they last they do not remain the same thing. Each of them is an integral part of the precise instant when it takes place. We are never sure of again finding a perception such as we experienced it the first time; for if the thing perceived has not changed, it is we who are no longer the same. On the contrary, the concept is, as it were, outside of time and change; it is in the depths below all this agitation; it might be said that it is in a different portion of the mind, which is serener and calmer. It does not move of itself, by an internal and spontaneous evolution, but, on the contrary, it resists change. It is a manner of thinking that, at every moment of time, is fixed and crystallized. In so far as it is what it ought to be, it is immutable. If it changes, it is not because it is its nature to do so, but because we have discovered some imperfection in it; it is because it had to be rectified. The system of concepts with which we think in everyday life is that expressed by the vocabulary of our mother-tongue; for every word translates a concept. Now language is something fixed; it changes but very slowly, and consequently it is the same with the conceptual system which it expresses. The scholar finds himself in the same situation in regard to the special terminology employed by the science to which he has consecrated himself, and hence in regard to the special scheme of concepts to which this terminology corresponds. It is true that he can make innovations, but these are always a sort of violence done to the established ways of thinking. And at the same time that it is relatively immutable, the concept is universal, or at least capable of becoming so. A concept is not my concept; I hold it in common with other men, or, in any case, can communicate it to them. It is impossible for me to make a sensation pass from my consciousness into that of another; it holds closely to my organism and personality and cannot be detached from them. All that I can do is to invite others to place themselves before the same object as myself and to leave themselves to its action. On the other hand, conversation and all intellectual communication between men is an exchange of concepts. The concept is an essentially impersonal representation; it is through it that human intelligences communicate. The nature of the concept, thus defined, bespeaks its origin. If it is common to all, it is the work of the community. Since it bears the mark of no particular mind, it is clear that it was elaborated by a unique intelligence, where all others meet each other, and after a fashion, come to nourish themselves. If it has more stability than sensations or images, it is because the collective representations are more stable than the individual ones; for while an individual is conscious even of the slight changes which take place in his environment, only events of a greater gravity can succeed in affecting the mental status of a society. Every time that we are in the presence of a _type_ of thought or action which is imposed uniformly upon particular wills or intelligences, this pressure exercised over the individual betrays the intervention of the group. Also, as we have already said, the concepts with which we ordinarily think are those of our vocabulary. Now it is unquestionable that language, and consequently the system of concepts which it translates, is the product of collective elaboration. What it expresses is the manner in which society as a whole represents the facts of experience. The ideas which correspond to the diverse elements of language are thus collective representations. Even their contents bear witness to the same fact. In fact, there are scarcely any words among those which we usually employ whose meaning does not pass, to a greater or less extent, the limits of our personal experience. Very frequently a term expresses things which we have never perceived or experiences which we have never had or of which we have never been the witnesses. Even when we know some of the objects which it concerns, it is only as particular examples that they serve to illustrate the idea which they would never have been able to form by themselves. Thus there is a great deal of knowledge condensed in the word which I never collected, and which is not individual; it even surpasses me to such an extent that I cannot even completely appropriate all its results. Which of us knows all the words of the language he speaks and the entire signification of each? This remark enables us to determine the sense in which we mean to say that concepts are collective representations. If they belong to a whole social group, it is not because they represent the average of the corresponding individual representations; for in that case they would be poorer than the latter in intellectual content, while, as a matter of fact, they contain much that surpasses the knowledge of the average individual. They are not abstractions which have a reality only in particular consciousnesses, but they are as concrete representations as an individual could form of his own personal environment; they correspond to the way in which this very special being, society, considers the things of its own proper experience. If, as a matter of fact, the concepts are nearly always general ideas, and if they express categories and classes rather than particular objects, it is because the unique and variable characteristics of things interest society but rarely; because of its very extent, it can scarcely be affected by more than their general and permanent qualities. Therefore it is to this aspect of affairs that it gives its attention: it is a part of its nature to see things in large and under the aspect which they ordinarily have. But this generality is not necessary for them, and, in any case, even when these representations have the generic character which they ordinarily have, they are the work of society and are enriched by its experience. The collective consciousness is the highest form of the psychic life, since it is the consciousness of the consciousnesses. Being placed outside of and above individual and local contingencies, it sees things only in their permanent and essential aspects, which it crystallizes into communicable ideas. At the same time that it sees from above, it sees farther; at every moment of time, it embraces all known reality; that is why it alone can furnish the mind with the molds which are applicable to the totality of things and which make it possible to think of them. It does not create these molds artificially; it finds them within itself; it does nothing but become conscious of them. They translate the ways of being which are found in all the stages of reality but which appear in their full clarity only at the summit, because the extreme complexity of the psychic life which passes there necessitates a greater development of consciousness. Collective representations also contain subjective elements, and these must be progressively rooted out if we are to approach reality more closely. But howsoever crude these may have been at the beginning, the fact remains that with them the germ of a new mentality was given, to which the individual could never have raised himself by his own efforts; by them the way was opened to a stable, impersonal and organized thought which then had nothing to do except to develop its nature. D. THE SOCIAL GROUP 1. Definition of the Group[90] The term "group" serves as a convenient sociological designation for any number of people, larger or smaller, between whom such relations are discovered that they must be thought of together. The "group" is the most general and colorless term used in sociology for combinations of persons. A family, a mob, a picnic party, a trade union, a city precinct, a corporation, a state, a nation, the civilized or the uncivilized population of the world, may be treated as a group. Thus a "group" for sociology is a number of persons whose relations to each other are sufficiently impressive to demand attention. The term is merely a commonplace tool. It contains no mystery. It is only a handle with which to grasp the innumerable varieties of arrangements into which people are drawn by their variations of interest. The universal condition of association may be expressed in the same commonplace way: people always live in groups, and the same persons are likely to be members of many groups. Individuals nowhere live in utter isolation. There is no such thing as a social vacuum. The few Robinson Crusoes are not exceptions to the rule. If they are, they are like the Irishman's horse. The moment they begin to get adjusted to the exceptional condition, they die. Actual persons always live and move and have their being in groups. These groups are more or less complex, more or less continuous, more or less rigid in character. The destinies of human beings are always bound up with the fate of the groups of which they are members. While the individuals are the real existences, and the groups are only relationships of individuals, yet to all intents and purposes the groups which people form are just as distinct and efficient molders of the lives of individuals as though they were entities that had existence entirely independent of the individuals. The college fraternity or the college class, for instance, would be only a name, and presently not even that, if each of its members should withdraw. It is the members themselves, and not something outside of themselves. Yet to A, B, or C the fraternity or the class might as well be a river or a mountain by the side of which he stands, and which he is helpless to remove. He may modify it somewhat. He is surely modified by it somewhat; and the same is true of all the other groups in which A, B, or C belong. To a very considerable extent the question, Why does A, B, or C do so and so? is equivalent to the question, What are the peculiarities of the group to which A, B, or C belongs? It would never occur to A, B, or C to skulk from shadow to shadow of a night, with paint-pot and brush in hand, and to smear Arabic numerals of bill-poster size on sidewalk or buildings, if "class spirit" did not add stimulus to individual bent. Neither A, B, nor C would go out of his way to flatter and cajole a Freshman, if membership in a fraternity did not make a student something different from an individual. These are merely familiar cases which follow a universal law. In effect, the groups to which we belong might be as separate and independent of us as the streets and buildings of a city are from the population. If the inhabitants should migrate in a body, the streets and buildings would remain. This is not true of human groups, but their reaction upon the persons who compose them is no less real and evident. We are in large part what our social set, our church, our political party, our business and professional circles are. This has always been the case from the beginning of the world, and will always be the case. To understand what society is, either in its larger or its smaller parts, and why it is so, and how far it is possible to make it different, we must invariably explain groups on the one hand, no less than individuals on the other. There is a striking illustration in Chicago at present (summer, 1905). Within a short time a certain man has made a complete change in his group-relations. He was one of the most influential trade-union leaders in the city. He has now become the executive officer of an association of employers. In the elements that are not determined by his group-relationships he is the same man that he was before. Those are precisely the elements, however, that may be canceled out of the social problem. All the elements in his personal equation that give him a distinct meaning in the life of the city are given to him by his membership in the one group or the other. Till yesterday he gave all his strength to organizing labor against capital. Now he gives all his strength to the service of capital against labor. Whatever social problem we confront, whatever persons come into our field of view, the first questions involved will always be: To what groups do these persons belong? What are the interests of these groups? What sort of means do the groups use to promote their interests? How strong are these groups, as compared with groups that have conflicting interests? These questions go to one tap root of all social interpretation, whether in the case of historical events far in the past, or of the most practical problems of our own neighborhood. 2. The Unity of the Social Group[91] It has long been a cardinal problem in sociology to determine just how to conceive in objective terms so very real and palpable a thing as the continuity and persistence of social groups. Looked at as a physical object society appears to be made up of mobile and independent units. The problem is to understand the nature of the bonds that bind these independent units together and how these connections are maintained and transmitted. Conceived of in its lowest terms the unity of the social group may be compared to that of the plant communities. In these communities, the relation between the individual species which compose it seems at first wholly fortuitous and external. Co-operation and community, so far as it exists, consists merely in the fact that within a given geographical area, certain species come together merely because each happens to provide by its presence an environment in which the life of the other is easier, more secure, than if they lived in isolation. It seems to be a fact, however, that this communal life of the associated plants fulfils, as in other forms of life, a typical series of changes which correspond to growth, decay and death. The plant community comes into existence, matures, grows old, and eventually dies. In doing this, however, it provides by its own death an environment in which another form of community finds its natural habitat. Each community thus precedes and prepares the way for its successor. Under such circumstances the succession of the individual communities itself assumes the character of a life-process. In the case of the animal and human societies we have all these conditions and forces and something more. The individuals associated in an animal community not only provide, each for the other, a physical environment in which all may live, but the members of the community are organically pre-adapted to one another in ways which are not characteristic of the members of a plant community. As a consequence, the relations between the members of the animal community assume a much more organic character. It is, in fact, a characteristic of animal society that the members of a social group are organically adapted to one another and therefore the organization of animal society is almost wholly transmitted by physical inheritance. In the case of human societies we discover not merely organically inherited adaptation, which characterizes animal societies, but, in addition, a great body of habits and accommodations which are transmitted in the form of social inheritance. Something that corresponds to social tradition exists, to be sure, in animal societies. Animals learn by imitation from one another, and there is evidence that this social tradition varies with changes in environment. In man, however, association is based on something more than habits or instinct. In human society, largely as a result of language, there exists a conscious community of purpose. We have not merely folkways, which by an extension of that term might be attributed to animals, but we have mores and formal standards of conduct. In a recent notable volume on education, John Dewey has formulated a definition of the educational process which he identifies with the process by which the social tradition of human society is transmitted. Education, he says in effect, is a self-renewing process, a process in which and through which the social organism lives. With the renewal of physical existence goes, in the case of human beings, the re-creation of beliefs, ideals, hopes, happiness, misery and practices. The continuity of experience, through renewal of the social group, is a literal fact. Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of life. Under ordinary circumstances the transmission of the social tradition is from the parents to the children. Children are born into the society and take over its customs, habits, and standards of life simply, naturally, and without conflict. But it will at once occur to anyone that the physical life of society is not always continued and maintained in this natural way, i.e., by the succession of parents and children. New societies are formed by conquest and by the imposition of one people upon another. In such cases there arises a conflict of cultures, and as a result the process of fusion takes place slowly and is frequently not complete. New societies are frequently formed by colonization, in which case new cultures are grafted on to older ones. The work of missionary societies is essentially one of colonization in this sense. Finally we have societies growing up, as in the United States, by immigration. These immigrants, coming as they do from all parts of the world, bring with them fragments of divergent cultures. Here again the process of assimilation is slow, often painful, not always complete. 3. Types of Social Groups[92] Between the two extreme poles--the crowd and the state (nation)--between these extreme links of the chain of human association, what are the other intermediate groups, and what are their distinctive characteristics? Gustave Le Bon thus classifies the different types of crowds (aggregations): A. Heterogeneous crowds 1. Anonymous (street crowds, for example) 2. Not anonymous (parliamentary assemblies, for example) B. Homogeneous crowds 1. Sects (political, religious, etc.) 2. Castes (military, sacerdotal, etc.) 3. Classes (bourgeois, working-men, etc.) This classification is open to criticism. First of all, it is inaccurate to give the name of crowd indiscriminately to every human group. Literally (from the etymological standpoint) this objection seems to me unanswerable. Tarde more exactly distinguishes between crowds, associations, and corporations. But we retain the generic term of "crowd" because it indicates the first stage of the social group which is the source of all the others, and because with these successive distinctions it does not lend itself to equivocal meaning. In the second place, it is difficult to understand why Le Bon terms the sect a _homogeneous_ crowd, while he classifies parliamentary assemblies among the _heterogeneous_ crowds. The members of a sect are usually far more different from one another in birth, education, profession, social status, than are generally the members of a political assembly. Turning from this criticism to note without analyzing heterogeneous crowds, let us then proceed to determine the principal characteristics of the three large types of homogeneous crowds, the classes, the castes, the sects. The heterogeneous crowd is composed of _tout le monde_, of people like you, like me, like the first passer-by. _Chance_ unites these individuals physically, the _occasion_ unites them psychologically; they do not know each other, and after the moment when they find themselves together, they may never see each other again. To use a metaphor, it is a psychological meteor, of the most unforeseen, ephemeral, and transitory kind. On this accidental and fortuitous foundation are formed here and there other crowds, always heterogeneous, but with a certain character of stability or, at least, of periodicity. The audience at a theater, the members of a club, of a literary or social gathering, constitute also a crowd but a different crowd from that of the street. The members of these groups know each other a little; they have, if not a common aim, at least a common custom. They are nevertheless "anonymous crowds," as Le Bon calls them, because they do not have within themselves the nucleus of organization. Proceeding further, we find crowds still heterogeneous, but not so anonymous--juries, for example, and assemblies. These small crowds experience a new sentiment, unknown to anonymous crowds, that of responsibility which may at times give to their actions a different orientation. Then the parliamentary crowds are to be distinguished from the others because, as Tarde observes with his habitual penetration, they are double crowds: they represent a majority in conflict with one or more minorities, which safeguards them in most cases from unanimity, the most menacing danger which faces crowds. We come now to homogeneous crowds, of which the first type is the sect. Here are found again individuals differing in birth, in education, in profession, in social status, but united and, indeed, voluntarily cemented by an extremely strong bond, a common faith and ideal. Faith, religious, scientific, or political, rapidly creates a communion of sentiments capable of giving to those who possess it a high degree of homogeneity and power. History records the deeds of the barbarians under the influence of Christianity, and the Arabs transformed into a sect by Mahomet. Because of their sectarian organization, a prediction may be made of what the future holds in store for the socialists. The sect is a crowd, picked out and permanent; the crowd is a transitory sect which has not chosen its members. The sect is a chronic kind of crowd; the crowd is an acute kind of sect. The crowd is composed of a multitude of grains of sand without cohesion; the sect is a block of marble which resists every effort. When a sentiment or an idea, having in itself a reason for existence, slips into the crowd, its members soon crystallize and form a sect. The sect is then the first crystallization of every doctrine. From the confused and amorphous state in which it manifests itself to the crowd, every idea is predestined to define itself in the more specific form of the sect, to become later a party, a school, or a church--scientific, political, or religious. Any faith, whether it be Islamism, Buddhism, Christianity, patriotism, socialism, anarchy, cannot but pass through this sectarian phase. It is the first step, the point where the human group in leaving the twilight zone of the anonymous and mobile crowd raises itself to a definition and to an integration which then may lead up to the highest and most perfect human group, the nation. If the sect is composed of individuals united by a common idea and aim, in spite of diversity of birth, education, and social status, the caste unites, on the contrary, those who could have--and who have sometimes--diverse ideas and aspirations, but who are brought together through identity of profession. The sect corresponds to the community of faith, the caste to the community of professional ideas. The sect is a _spontaneous_ association; the caste is, in many ways, a _forced_ association. After having chosen a profession--let it be priest, soldier, magistrate--a man belongs necessarily to a caste. A person, on the contrary, does not necessarily belong to a sect. And when one belongs to a caste--be he the most independent man in the world--he is more or less under the influence of that which is called _esprit de corps_. The caste represents the highest degree of organization to which the homogeneous crowd is susceptible. It is composed of individuals who by their tastes, their education, birth, and social status, resemble each other in the fundamental types of conduct and mores. There are even certain castes, the military and sacerdotal, for example, in which the members at last so resemble one another in appearance and bearing that no disguise can conceal the nature of their profession. The caste offers to its members ideas already molded, rules of conduct already approved; it relieves them, in short, of the fatigue of thinking with their own brains. When the caste to which an individual belongs is known, all that is necessary is to press a button of his mental mechanism to release a series of opinions and of phrases already made which are identical in every individual of the same caste. This harmonious collectivity, powerful and eminently conservative, is the most salient analogy which the nations of the Occident present to that of India. In India the caste is determined by birth, and it is distinguished by a characteristic trait: the persons of one caste can live with, eat with, and marry only individuals of the same caste. In Europe it is not only birth, but circumstances and education which determine the entrance of an individual into a caste; to marry, to frequent, to invite to the same table only people of the same caste, exists practically in Europe as in India. In Europe the above-mentioned prescriptions are founded on convention, but they are none the less observed. We all live in a confined circle, where we find our friends, our guests, our sons- and daughters-in-law. Misalliances are assuredly possible in Europe; they are impossible in India. But if there religion prohibits them, with us public opinion and convention render them very rare. And at bottom the analogy is complete. The class is superior to the caste in extent. If the psychological bond of the sect is community of faith, and that of the caste community of profession, the psychological bond of the class is community of interests. Less precise in its limits, more diffuse and less compact than the caste or the sect, the class represents today the veritable crowd in a dynamic state, which can in a moment's time descend from that place and become statically a crowd. And it is from the sociological standpoint the most terrible kind of crowd; it is that which today has taken a bellicose attitude, and which by its attitude and precepts prepares the brutal blows of mobs. We speak of the "conflict of the classes," and from the theoretical point of view and in the normal and peaceful life that signifies only a contest of ideas by legal means. Always depending upon the occasion, the audacity of one or many men, the character of the situation, the conflict of the classes is transformed into something more material and more violent--into revolt or into revolution. Finally we arrive at the state (nation). Tocqueville said that the classes which compose society form so many distinct nations. They are the greatest collectivities before coming to the nation, the state. This is the most perfect type of organization of the crowd, and the final and supreme type, if there is not another collectivity superior in number and extension, the collectivity formed by race. The bond which unites all the citizens of a state is language and nationality. Above the state there are only the crowds determined by race, which comprise many states. And these are, like the states and like the classes, human aggregates which in a moment could be transformed into violent crowds. But then, and justly, because their evolution and their organization are more developed, their mobs are called armies, and their violences are called wars, and they have the seal of legitimacy unknown in other crowds. In this order of ideas war could be defined as the supreme form of collective crimes. 4. _Esprit de Corps_, Morale, and Collective Representations of Social Groups[93] War is no doubt the least human of human relationships. It can begin only when persuasion ends, when arguments fitted to move minds are replaced by the blasting-powder fitted to move rocks and hills. It means that one at least of the national wills concerned has deliberately set aside its human quality--as only a human will can do--and has made of itself just such a material obstruction or menace. Hence war seems, and is often called, a contest of brute forces. Certainly it is the extremest physical effort men make, every resource of vast populations bent to increase the sum of power at the front, where the two lines writhe like wrestlers laboring for the final fall. Yet it is seldom physical force that decides a long war. For war summons skill against skill, head against head, staying-power against staying-power, as well as numbers and machines against machines and numbers. When an engine "exerts itself" it spends more power, eats more fuel, but uses no nerve; when a man exerts himself, he must bend his will to it. The extremer the physical effort, the greater the strain on the inner or moral powers. Hence the paradox of war: just because it calls for the maximum material performance, it calls out a maximum of moral resource. As long as guns and bayonets have men behind them, the quality of the men, the quality of their minds and wills, must be counted with the power of the weapons. And as long as men fight in nations and armies, that subtle but mighty influence that passes from man to man, the temper and spirit of the group, must be counted with the quality of the individual citizen and soldier. But how much does this intangible, psychological factor count? Napoleon in his day reckoned it high: "In war, the moral is to the physical as three to one." For war, completely seen, is no mere collision of physical forces; it is a collision of will against will. It is, after all, the mind and will of a nation--a thing intangible and invisible--that assembles the materials of war, the fighting forces, the ordnance, the whole physical array. It is this invisible thing that wages the war; it is this same invisible thing that on one side or the other must admit the finish and so end it. As things are now, it is the element of "morale" that controls the outcome. I say, as things are now; for it is certainly not true as a rule of history that will-power is enough to win a war, even when supported by high fighting spirit, brains, and a good conscience: Belgium had all this, and yet was bound to fall before Germany had she stood alone. Her spirit worked miracles at Liége, delayed by ten days the marching program of the German armies, and thereby saved--perhaps Paris, perhaps Europe. But the day was saved because the issue raised in Serbia and in Belgium drew to their side material support until their forces could compare with the physical advantages of the enemy. Morale wins, not by itself, but by turning scales; it has a value like the power of a minority or of a mobile reserve. It adds to one side or the other the last ounce of force which is to its opponent the last straw that breaks its back. Perhaps the simplest way of explaining the meaning of morale is to say that what "condition" is to the athlete's body, morale is to the mind. Morale is condition; good morale is good condition of the inner man: it is the state of will in which you can get most from the machinery, deliver blows with the greatest effect, take blows with the least depression, and hold out for the longest time. It is both fighting-power and staying-power and strength to resist the mental infections which fear, discouragement, and fatigue bring with them, such as eagerness for any kind of peace if only it gives momentary relief, or the irritability that sees large the defects in one's own side until they seem more important than the need of defeating the enemy. And it is the perpetual ability to come back. From this it follows that good morale is not the same as good spirits or enthusiasm. It is anything but the cheerful optimism of early morning, or the tendency to be jubilant at every victory. It has nothing in common with the emotionalism dwelt on by psychologists of the "crowd." It is hardly to be discovered in the early stages of war. Its most searching test is found in the question, How does war-weariness affect you? No one going from America to Europe in the last year could fail to notice the wide difference between the mind of nations long at war and that of a nation just entering. Over there, "crowd psychology" had spent itself. There was little flag-waving; the common purveyors of music were not everywhere playing (or allowed to play) the national airs. If in some Parisian cinema the Marseillaise was given, nobody stood or sang. The reports of atrocities roused little visible anger or even talk--they were taken for granted. In short, the simpler emotions had been worn out, or rather had resolved themselves into clear connections between knowledge and action. The people had found the mental gait that can be held indefinitely. Even a great advance finds them on their guard against too much joy. As the news from the second victory of the Marne begins to come in, we find this despatch: "Paris refrains from exultation." And in the trenches the same is true in even greater degree. All the bravado and illusion of war are gone, also all the nervous revulsion; and in their places a grimly reliable resource of energy held in instant, almost mechanical, readiness to do what is necessary. The hazards which it is useless to speculate about, the miseries, delays, tediums, casualties, have lost their exclamatory value and have fallen into the sullen routine of the day's work. Here it is that morale begins to show in its more vital dimensions. Here the substantial differences between man and man, and between side and side, begin to appear as they can never appear in training camp. Fitness and readiness to act, the positive element in morale, is a matter not of good and bad alone, but of degree. Persistence, courage, energy, initiative, may vary from zero upward without limit. Perhaps the most important dividing line--one that has already shown itself at various critical points--is that between the willingness to defend and the willingness to attack, between the defensive and the aggressive mentality. It is the difference between docility and enterprise, between a faith at second hand dependent on neighbor or leader, and a faith at first hand capable of assuming for itself the position of leadership. But readiness to wait, the negative element in morale, is as important as readiness to act, and oftentimes it is a harder virtue. Patience, especially under conditions of ignorance of what may be brewing, is a torment for active and critical minds such as this people is made of. Yet impetuosity, exceeding of orders, unwillingness to retreat when the general situation demands it, are signs not of good morale but the reverse. They are signs that one's heart cannot be kept up except by the flattering stimulus of always going forward--a state of mind that may cause a commanding officer serious embarrassment, even to making impossible decisive strokes of strategy. In fact, the better the morale, the more profound its mystery from the utilitarian angle of judgment. There is something miraculous in the power of a bald and unhesitating announcement of reverse to steel the temper of men attuned to making sacrifices and to meeting emergencies. No one can touch the deepest moral resources of an army or nation who does not know the fairly regal exaltation with which it is possible for men to face an issue--_if they believe in it_. There are times when men seem to have an appetite for suffering, when, to judge from their own demeanor, the best bait fortune could offer them is the chance to face death or to bear an inhuman load. This state of mind does not exist of itself; it is morale at its best, and it appears only when the occasion strikes a nerve which arouses the super-earthly vistas of human consciousness or subconsciousness. But it commonly appears at the summons of a leader who himself welcomes the challenge of the task he sets before his followers. It is the magic of King Alfred in his appeal to his chiefs to do battle with the Danes, when all that he could hold out to them was the prospect of his own vision, This--that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher. Morale, for all the greater purposes of war, is a state of faith; and its logic will be the superb and elusive logic of human faith. It is for this reason that morale, while not identical with the righteousness of the cause, can never reach its height unless the aim of the war can be held intact in the undissembled moral sense of the people. This is one of the provisions in the deeper order of things for the slow predominance of the better brands of justice. There are still officers in army and navy--not as many as formerly--who believe exclusively in the morale that works its way into every body of recruits through discipline and the sway of _esprit de corps_. "They know that they're here to can the Kaiser, and that's all they need to know," said one such officer to me very recently. "After a man has been here two months, the worst punishment you can give him is to tell him he can't go to France right away. The soldier is a man of action; and the less thinking he does, the better." There is an amount of practical wisdom in this; for the human mind has a large capacity for adopting beliefs that fit the trend of its habits and feelings, and this trend is powerfully molded by the unanimous direction of an army's purpose. There is an all but irresistible orthodoxy within a body committed to a war. And the current (pragmatic) psychology referred to, making the intelligence a mere instrument of the will, would seem to sanction the maxim, "First decide, and then think accordingly." But there are two remarks to be made about this view; first, that in the actual creation of morale within an army corps much thinking is included, and nothing is accomplished without the consent of such thoughts as a man already has. Training does wonders in making morale, when nothing in the mind opposes it. Second, that the morale which is sufficient for purposes of training is not necessarily sufficient for the strains of the field. The intrinsic weakness of "affective morale," as psychologists call it, is that it puts both sides on the same mental and moral footing: it either justifies our opponents as well as ourselves, or it makes both sides the creatures of irrational emotion. Crowds are capable of doing reasonless things upon impulse and of adopting creeds without reflection. But an army is not a crowd; still less is a nation a crowd. A mob or crowd is an unorganized group of people governed by less than the average individual intelligence of its members. Armies and nations are groups of people so organized that they are controlled by an intelligence higher than the average. The instincts that lend, and must lend, their immense motive-power to the great purposes of war are the servants, not the masters, of that intelligence. III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS 1. The Scientific Study of Societies Interest in the study of "society as it is" has had its source in two different motives. Travelers' tales have always fascinated mankind. The ethnologists began their investigations by criticising and systematizing the novel and interesting observations of travelers in regard to customs, cultures, and behavior of people of different races and nationalities. Their later more systematic investigations were, on the whole, inspired by intellectual curiosity divorced from any overwhelming desire to change the manner of life and social organizations of the societies studied. The second motive for the systematic observation of actual society came from persons who wanted social reforms but who were forced to realize the futility of Utopian projects. The science of sociology as conceived by Auguste Comte was to substitute fact for doctrines about society. But his attempt to interpret social evolution resulted in a philosophy of history, not a natural science of society. Herbert Spencer appreciated the fact that the new science of sociology required an extensive body of materials as a basis for its generalizations. Through the work of assistants he set himself the monumental task of compiling historical and cultural materials not only upon primitive and barbarous peoples but also upon the Hebrews, the Phoenicians, the French and the English. These data were classified and published in eight large volumes under the title _Descriptive Sociology_. The study of human societies was too great to be satisfactorily compassed by the work of one man. Besides that, Spencer, like most English sociologists, was more interested in the progress of civilization than in its processes. Spencer's _Sociology_ is still a philosophy of history rather than a science of society. The philosophy of history took for its unit of investigation and interpretation the evolution of human society as a whole. The present trend in sociology is toward the study of _societies_ rather than _society_. Sociological research has been directed less to a study of the stages of evolution than to the diagnosis and control of social problems. Modern sociology's chief inheritance from Comte and Spencer was a problem in logic: What is a society? Manifestly if the relations between individuals in society are not merely formal, and if society is something more than the sum of its parts, then these relations must be defined in terms of interaction, that is to say, in terms of process. What then is _the social process_; what are the social processes? How are social processes to be distinguished from physical, chemical, or biological processes? What is, in general, the nature of the relations that need to be established in order to make of individuals in society, members of society? These questions are fundamental since they define the point of view of sociology and describe the sort of facts with which the science seeks to deal. Upon these questions the schools have divided and up to the present time there is no very general consensus among sociologists in regard to them. The introductory chapter to this volume is at once a review of the points of view and an attempt to find answers. In the literature to which reference is made at the close of chapter iii the logical questions involved are discussed in a more thoroughgoing way than has been possible to do in this volume. Fortunately science does not wait to define its points of view nor solve its theoretical problems before undertaking to analyze and collect the facts. The contrary is nearer the truth. Science collects facts and answers the theoretical questions afterward. In fact, it is just its success in analyzing and collecting facts which throw light upon human problems that in the end justifies the theories of science. 2. Surveys of Communities The historian and the philosopher introduced the sociologist to the study of society. But it was the reformer, the social worker, and the business man who compelled him to study the community. The study of the community is still in its beginnings. Nevertheless, there is already a rapidly growing literature on this topic. Ethnologists have presented us with vivid and detailed pictures of primitive communities as in McGee's _The Seri Indians_, Jenk's _The Bontoc Igorot_, Rivers' _The Todas_. Studies of the village communities of India, of Russia, and of early England have thrown new light upon the territorial factor in the organization of societies. More recently the impact of social problems has led to the intensive study of modern communities. The monumental work of Charles Booth, _Life and Labour of the People in London_, is a comprehensive description of conditions of social life in terms of the community. In the United States, interest in community study is chiefly represented by the social-survey movement which received impetus from the Pittsburgh Survey of 1907. For sociological research of greater promise than the survey are the several monographs which seek to make a social analysis of the community, as Williams, _An American Town_, or Galpin, _The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community_. With due recognition of these auspicious beginnings, it must be confessed that there is no volume upon human communities comparable with several works upon plant and animal communities. 3. The Group as a Unit of Investigation The study of societies is concerned primarily with types of social organization and with attitudes and cultural elements embodied in them. The survey of communities deals essentially with social situations and the problems connected with them. The study of social groups was a natural outgrowth of the study of the individual. In order to understand the person it is necessary to consider the group. Attention first turned to social institutions, then to conflict groups, and finally to crowds and crowd influences. Social institutions were naturally the first groups to be studied with some degree of detachment. The work of ethnologists stimulated an interest in social origins. Evolution, though at first a purely biological conception, provoked inquiry into the historical development of social structure. Differences in institutions in contemporary societies led to comparative study. Critics of institutions, both iconoclasts without and reformers within, forced a consideration of their more fundamental aspects. The first written accounts of conflict groups were quite naturally of the propagandist type both by their defenders and by their opponents. Histories of nationalities, for example, originated in the patriotic motive of national glorification. With the acceptance of objective standards of historical criticism the ground was prepared for the sociological study of nationalities as conflict groups. A school of European sociologists represented by Gumplowicz, Ratzenhofer, and Novicow stressed conflict as the characteristic behavior of social groups. Beginnings, as indicated in the bibliography, have been made of the study of various conflict groups as gangs, labor unions, parties, and sects. The interest in the mechanism of the control of the individual by the group has been focused upon the study of the crowd. Tarde and Le Bon in France, Sighele in Italy, and Ross in the United States were the pioneers in the description and interpretation of the behavior of mobs and crowds. The crowd phenomena of the Great War have stimulated the production of several books upon crowds and crowd influences which are, in the main, but superficial and popular elaborations of the interpretations of Tarde and Le Bon. Concrete material upon group behavior has rapidly accumulated, but little or no progress has been made in its sociological explanation. At present there are many signs of an increasing interest in the study of group behavior. Contemporary literature is featuring realistic descriptions. Sinclair Lewis in _Main Street_ describes concretely the routine of town life with its outward monotony and its inner zest. Newspapers and magazines are making surveys of the buying habits of their readers as a basis for advertising. The federal department of agriculture in co-operation with schools of agriculture is making intensive studies of rural communities. Social workers are conscious that a more fundamental understanding of social groups is a necessary basis for case work and community organization. Surveys of institutions and communities are now being made under many auspices and from varied points of view. All this is having a fruitful reaction upon the sociological theory. 4. The Study of the Family The family is the earliest, the most elementary, and the most permanent of social groups. It has been more completely studied, in all its various aspects, than other forms of human association. Methods of investigation of family life are typical of methods that may be employed in the description of other forms of society. For that reason more attention is given here to studies of family life than it is possible or desirable to give to other and more transient types of social groups. The descriptions of travelers, of ethnologists and of historians made the first contributions to our knowledge of marriage, ceremonials, and family organization among primitive and historical peoples. Early students of these data devised theories of stages in the evolution of the family. An anthology might be made of the conceptions that students have formulated of the original form of the family, for example, the theory of the matriarchate by Bachofen, of group marriage growing out of earlier promiscuous relations by Morgan, of the polygynous family by Darwin, of pair marriage by Westermarck. An example of the ingenious, but discarded method of arranging all types of families observed in a series representing stages of the evolution is to be found in Morgan's _Ancient Society_. A survey of families among primitive peoples by Hobhouse, Ginsberg, and Wheeler makes the point that even family life is most varied upon the lower levels of culture, and that the historical development of the family with any people must be studied in relation to the physical and social environment. The evolutionary theory of the family has, however, furnished a somewhat detached point of view for the criticism of the modern family. Social reformers have used the evolutionary theory as a formula to justify attacks upon the family as an institution and to support the most varied proposals for its reconstruction. Books like Ellen Key's _Love and Marriage_ and Meisel-Hess, _The Sexual Crisis_ are not scientific studies of the family but rather social political philippics directed against marriage and the family. The interest stimulated by ethnological observation, historical study, and propagandist essays has, however, turned the attention of certain students to serious study of the family and its problems. Howard's _History of Matrimonial Institutions_ is a scholarly and comprehensive treatise upon the evolution of the legal status of the family. Annual statistics of marriage and divorce are now compiled and published by all the important countries except the United States government. In the United States, however, three studies of marriages and divorces have been made; one in 1887-88, by the Department of Labor, covering the twenty years from 1867-86 inclusive; another in 1906-7, by the Bureau of the Census, for the twenty years 1887-1906; and the last, also by the Bureau of the Census, for the year 1916. The changes in family life resulting from the transition from home industry to the factory system have created new social problems. Problems of woman and child labor, unemployment, and poverty are a product of the machine industry. Attempts to relieve the distress under conditions of city life resulted in the formation of charity organization societies and other philanthropic institutions, and in attempts to control the behavior of the individuals and families assisted. The increasing body of experience gained by social agencies has gradually been incorporated in the technique of the workers. Mary Richmond in _Social Diagnosis_ has analyzed and standardized the procedure of the social case worker. Less direct but more fundamental studies of family life have been made by other investigators. Le Play, a French social economist, who lived with the families which he observed, introduced the method of the monographic study of the economic organization of family life. Ernst Engel, from his study of the expenditure of Saxon working-class families, formulated so-called "laws" of the relation between family income and family outlay. Recent studies of family incomes and budgets by Chapin, Ogburn, and others have thrown additional light upon the relationship between wages and the standard of living. Interest in the economics of the family is manifested by an increasing number of studies in dietetics, household administration and domestic science. Westermarck in his _History of Human Marriage_ attempted to write a sociology of the family. Particularly interesting is his attempt to compare the animal family with that of man. The effect of this was to emphasize instinctive and biological aspects of the family rather than its institutional character. The basis for a psychology of family life was first laid in the _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_ by Havelock Ellis. The case studies of individuals by psychoanalysts often lead into family complexes and illuminate the structure of family attitudes and wishes. The sociological study of the family as a natural and a cultural group is only now in its beginnings. An excellent theoretical study of the family as a unity of interacting members is presented in Bosanquet, _The Family_. The family as defined in the mores has been described and interpreted, as for example, by Thomas in his analysis of the organization of the large peasant family group in the first two volumes of the _Polish Peasant_. Materials upon the family in the United States have been brought together by Calhoun in his _Social History of the American Family_. While the family is listed by Cooley among primary groups, the notion is gaining ground that it is primary in a unique sense which sets it apart from all other social groups. The biological interdependence and co-operation of the members of the family, intimacies of closest and most enduring contacts have no parallel among other human groups. The interplay of the attractions, tensions, and accommodations of personalities in the intimate bonds of family life have up to the present found no concrete description or adequate analysis in sociological inquiry. The best case studies of family life at present are in fiction, not in the case records of social agencies, nor yet in sociological literature. Arnold Bennett's trilogy, _Clayhanger_, _Hilda Lessways_, and _These Twain_, suggests a pattern not unworthy of consideration by social workers and sociologists. _The Pastor's Wife_, by the author of _Elizabeth and Her German Garden_, is a delightful contrast of English and German mores in their effect upon the intimate relations of family life. In the absence of case studies of the family as a natural and cultural group the following tentative outline for sociological study is offered: 1. _Location and extent in time and space._--Genealogical tree as retained in the family memory; geographical distribution and movement of members of small family group and of large family group; stability or mobility of family; its rural or urban location. 2. _Family traditions and ceremonials._--Family romance; family skeleton; family ritual, as demonstration of affection, family events, etc. 3. _Family economics._--Family communism; division of labor between members of the family; effect of occupation of its members. 4. _Family organization and control._--Conflicts and accommodation; superordination and subordination; typical forms of control--patriarchy, matriarchy, consensus, etc.; family _esprit de corps_, family morale, family objectives; status in community. 5. _Family behavior._--Family life from the standpoint of the four wishes (security, response, recognition, and new experience); family crises; the family and the community; familism versus individualism; family life and the development of personality. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY I. THE DEFINITION OF SOCIETY (1) Kistiakowski, Dr. Th. _Gesellschaft und Einselwesen; eine methodologische Studie._ Berlin, 1899. [A review and criticism of the principal conceptions of society with reference to their value for a natural science of society.] (2) Barth, Paul. _Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Sociologie._ Leipzig, 1897. [A comparison of the different schools and an attempt to interpret them as essays in the philosophy of history.] (3) Espinas, Alfred. _Des sociétés animales._ Paris, 1877. [A definition of society based upon a comparative study of animal associations, communities, and societies.] (4) Spencer, Herbert. "The Social Organism," _Essays, Scientific, Political and Speculative_. I, 265-307. New York, 1892. [First published in _The Westminster Review_ for January, 1860.] (5) Lazarus, M., and Steinthal, H. "Einleitende Gedanken zur Völkerpsychologie als Einladung zu einer Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft," _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_, I (1860), 1-73. [This is the most important early attempt to interpret social phenomena from a social psychological point of view. See p. 35 for definition of _Volk_ "the people."] (6) Knapp, G. Friedrich. "Quételet als Theoretiker," _Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik_, XVIII (1872), 89-124. (7) Lazarus, M. _Das Leben der Seele in Monographien über seine Erscheinungen und Gesetze._ Berlin, 1876. (8) Durkheim, Émile. "Représentations individuelles et représentations collectives," _Revue de métaphysique et de morale_, VI (1898), 273-302. (9) Simmel, Georg. _Über sociale Differenzierung._ Sociologische und psychologische Untersuchungen. Leipzig, 1890. [See also in Bibliography, chap. i, volumes listed under Systematic Treatises.] II. PLANT COMMUNITIES AND ANIMAL SOCIETIES (1) Clements, Frederic E. _Plant Succession._ An analysis of the development of vegetation. Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1916. (2) Wheeler, W. M. "The Ant-Colony as an Organism," _Journal of Morphology_, XXII (1911), 307-25. (3) Parmelee, Maurice. _The Science of Human Behavior._ Biological and Psychological Foundations. New York, 1913. [Bibliography.] (4) Massart, J., and Vandervelde, É. _Parasitism, Organic and Social._ 2d ed. Translated by W. Macdonald. Revised by J. Arthur Thomson. London, 1907. (5) Warming, Eug. _Oecology of Plants._ An introduction to the study of plant communities. Oxford, 1909. [Bibliography.] (6) Adams, Charles C. _Guide to the Study of Animal Ecology._ New York, 1913. [Bibliography.] (7) Waxweiler, E. "Esquisse d'une sociologie," _Travaux de l'Institut de Sociologie (Solvay), Notes et mémoires_, Fasc. 2. Bruxelles, 1906. (8) Reinheimer, H. _Symbiosis._ A socio-physiological study of evolution. London, 1920. III. THE CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIAL GROUPS A. _Types of Social Group_ 1. Non-territorial Groups: (1) Le Bon, Gustave. _The Crowd._ A study of the popular mind. London, 1897. (2) Sighele, S. _Psychologie des sectes._ Paris, 1898. (3) Tarde, G. _L'opinion et la foule._ Paris, 1901. (4) Fahlbeck, Pontus. _Klasserna och Samhallet._ Stockholm, 1920. (Book review in _American Journal of Sociology_, XXVI [1920-21], 633-34.) (5) Nesfield, John C. _Brief View of the Caste System of the North-western Provinces and Oudh_. Allahabad, 1885. 2. Territorial Groups: (1) Simmel, Georg. "Die Grossstädte und das Geistesleben," _Die Grossstadt_, Vorträge und Aufsätze zur Städteausstellung, von K. Bücher, F. Ratzel, G. v. Mayr, H. Waentig, G. Simmel, Th. Peterman, und D. Schäfer. Dresden, 1903. (2) Galpin, C. J. _The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community._ Madison, Wis., 1915. (Agricultural experiment station of the University of Wisconsin. Research Bulletin 34.) [See also _Rural Life_, New York, 1918.] (3) Aronovici, Carol. _The Social Survey._ Philadelphia, 1916. (4) McKenzie, R. D. _The Neighborhood._ A study of local life in Columbus, Ohio. Chicago, 1921 [in press]. (5) Park, Robert E. "The City. Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the City Environment," _American Journal of Sociology_, XX (1914-15), 577-612. (6) Sims, Newell L. _The Rural Community, Ancient and Modern._ New York, 1920. B. _Studies of Individual Communities:_ (1) Maine, Sir Henry. _Village-Communities in the East and West._ London, 1871. (2) Baden-Powell, H. _The Indian Village Community._ Examined with reference to the physical, ethnographic, and historical conditions of the provinces. London, 1896. (3) Seebohm, Frederic. _The English Village Community._ Examined in its relations to the manorial and tribal systems and to the common or open field system of husbandry. An essay in economic history. London, 1883. (4) McGee, W. J. "The Seri Indians," _Bureau of American Ethnology 17th Annual Report 1895-96._ Washington, 1898. (5) Rivers, W. H. R. _The Todas._ London and New York, 1906. (6) Jenks, Albert. _The Bontoc Igorot._ Manila, 1905. (7) Stow, John. _A Survey of London._ Reprinted from the text of 1603 with introduction and notes by C. L. Kingsford. Oxford, 1908. (8) Booth, Charles. _Life and Labour of the People in London_, 9 vols. London and New York, 1892-97. 8 additional volumes, 1902. (9) Kellogg, P. U., ed. _The Pittsburgh Survey._ Findings in 6 vols. Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1909-14. (10) Woods, Robert. _The City Wilderness._ A settlement study, south end of Boston. Boston, 1898. ----. _Americans in Process._ A settlement study, north and west ends of Boston. Boston, 1902. (11) Kenngott, G. F. _The Record of a City._ A social survey of Lowell, Massachusetts. New York, 1912. (12) Harrison, Shelby M., ed. _The Springfield Survey._ A study of social conditions in an American city. Findings in 3 vols. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1918. (13) Roberts, Peter. _Anthracite Coal Communities._ A study of the demography, the social, educational, and moral life of the anthracite regions. New York and London, 1904. (14) Williams, J. M. _An American Town._ A sociological study. New York, 1906. (15) Wilson, Warren H. _Quaker Hill._ A sociological study. New York, 1907. (16) Taylor, Graham R. _Satellite Cities._ A study of industrial suburbs. New York and London, 1915. (17) Lewis, Sinclair. _Main Street._ New York, 1920. (18) Kobrin, Leon. _A Lithuanian Village._ Translated from the Yiddish by Isaac Goldberg. New York, 1920. IV. THE STUDY OF THE FAMILY A. _The Primitive Family_ 1. The Natural History of Marriage: (1) Bachofen, J. J. _Das Mutterrecht._ Eine Untersuchung über die Gynaikokratie der alten Welt nach ihrer religiösen und rechtlichen Natur. Stuttgart, 1861. (2) Westermarck, E. _The History of Human Marriage._ London, 1891. (3) McLennan, J. F. _Primitive Marriage._ An inquiry into the origin of the form of capture in marriage ceremonies. Edinburgh, 1865. (4) Tylor, E. B. "The Matriarchal Family System," _Nineteenth Century_, XL (1896), 81-96. (5) Dargun, L. von. _Mutterrecht und Vaterrecht._ Leipzig, 1892. (6) Maine, Sir Henry. _Dissertations on Early Law and Custom._ Chap. vii. London, 1883. (7) Letourneau, C. _The Evolution of Marriage and of the Family._ (Trans.) New York, 1891. (8) Kovalevsky, M. _Tableau des origines et de l'évolution de la famille et de la propriété._ Stockholm, 1890. (9) Lowie, Robert H. _Primitive Society._ New York, 1920. (10) Starcke, C. N. _The Primitive Family in Its Origin and Development._ New York, 1889. (11) Hobhouse, L. T., Wheeler, G. C., and Ginsberg, M. _The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples._ London, 1915. (12) Parsons, Elsie Clews. _The Family._ An ethnographical and historical outline. New York and London, 1906. 2. Studies of Family Life in Different Cultural Areas: (1) Spencer, B., and Gillen, F. J. _The Native Tribes of Central Australia._ Chap. iii, "Certain Ceremonies Concerned with Marriage," pp. 92-111. London and New York, 1899. (2) Rivers, W. H. R. _Kinship and Social Organization._ "Studies in Economics and Political Science," No. 36. In the series of monographs by writers connected with the London School of Economics and Political Science. London, 1914. (3) Rivers, W. H. R. "Kinship," _Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, Report._ V, 129-47, VI, 92-125. (4) Kovalevsky, M. "La famille matriarcale au Caucase," _L'Anthropologie_, IV (1893), 259-78. (5) Thomas, N. W. _Kinship Organizations and Group Marriage in Australia._ Cambridge, 1906. (6) Malinowski, Bronislaw. _The Family among the Australian Aborigines._ A sociological study. London, 1913. B. _Materials for the Study of Familial Attitudes and Sentiments_ (1) Frazer, J. G. _Totemism and Exogamy._ A treatise on certain early forms of superstition and society. London, 1910. (2) Durkheim, É. "La prohibition de l'inceste et ses origines," _L'année sociologique._ I (1896-97), 1-70. (3) Ploss, H. _Das Weib in der Natur- und Völkerkunde._ Leipzig, 1902. (4) Lasch, R. "Der Selbstmord aus erotischen Motiven bei den primitiven Völkern," _Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft_, II (1899), 578-85. (5) Jacobowski, L. "Das Weib in der Poesie der Hottentotten," _Globus_, LXX (1896), 173-76. (6) Stoll, O. _Das Geschlechtsleben in der Völkerpsychologie._ Leipzig, 1908. (7) Crawley, A. E. "Sexual Taboo: A Study in the Relations of the Sexes," _The Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, XXIV (1894-95), 116-25; 219-35; 430-46. (8) Simmel, G. "Zur Psychologie der Frauen," _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_, XX, 6-46. (9) Finck, Henry T. _Romantic Love and Personal Beauty._ Their development, causal relations, historic and national peculiarities. London and New York, 1887. (10) ----. _Primitive Love and Love Stories_. New York, 1899. (11) Kline, L. W. "The Migratory Impulse versus Love of Home," _American Journal of Psychology_, X (1898-99), 1-81. (12) Key, Ellen. _Love and Marriage._ Translated from the Swedish by A. G. Chater; with a critical and biographical introduction by Havelock Ellis. New York and London, 1912. (13) Meisel-Hess, Grete. _The Sexual Crisis._ A critique of our sex life. Translated from the German by E. and C. Paul. New York, 1917. (14) Bloch, Iwan. _The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relation to Modern Civilization._ Translated from the 6th German ed. by M. Eden Paul. Chap. viii, "The Individualization of Love," pp. 159-76. London, 1908. C. _Economics of the Family_ (1) Grosse, Ernst. _Die Formen der Familie und die Formen der Wirtschaft._ Freiburg, 1896. (2) Le Play, P. G. Frédéric. _Les ouvriers européens._ Études sur les travaux, la vie domestique, et la condition morale des populations ouvrières de l'Europe. Précédées d'un exposé de la méthode d'observation. Paris, 1855. [Comprises a series of 36 monographs on the budgets of typical families selected from the most diverse industries.] (3) Le Play, P. G. Frédéric. _L'organisation de la famille._ Selon le vrai modèle signalé par l'histoire de toutes les races et de tous les temps. Paris, 1871. (4) Engel, Ernst. _Die Lebenskosten belgischer Arbeiter-Familien früher und jetzt._ Ermittelt aus Familien-Haushaltrechnungen und vergleichend zusammengestellt. Dresden, 1895. (5) Chapin, Robert C. _The Standard of Living among Workingmen's Families in New York City._ Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1909. (6) Talbot, Marion, and Breckinridge, Sophonisba P. _The Modern Household._ Rev. ed. Boston, 1919. [Bibliography at the end of each chapter.] (7) Nesbitt, Florence. _Household Management._ Preface by Mary E. Richmond. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1918. D. _The Sociology of the Family_ 1. Studies in Family Organization: (1) Bosanquet, Helen. _The Family._ London and New York, 1906. (2) Durkheim, É. "Introduction à la sociologie de la famille." _Annales de la faculté des lettres de Bordeaux_ (1888), 257-81. (3) ----. "La famille conjugale," _Revue philosophique_, XLI (1921), 1-14. (4) Howard, G. E. _A History of Matrimonial Institutions Chiefly in England and the United States._ With an introductory analysis of the literature and theories of primitive marriage and the family. 3 vols. Chicago, 1904. (5) Thwing, Charles F. and Carrie F. B. _The Family._ A historical and social study. Boston, 1887. (6) Goodsell, Willystine. _A History of the Family as a Social and Educational Institution._ New York, 1915. (7) Dealey, J. Q. _The Family in Its Sociological Aspects._ Boston, 1912. (8) Calhoun, Arthur W. _A Social History of the American Family from Colonial Times to the Present._ 3 vols. Cleveland, 1917-19. [Bibliography.] (9) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and America._ "Primary-Group Organization," I, 87-524, II. Boston, 1918. [A study based on correspondence between members of the family in America and Poland.] (10) Du Bois, W. E. B. _The Negro American Family._ Atlanta, 1908. [Bibliography.] (11) Williams, James M. "Outline of a Theory of Social Motives," _American Journal of Sociology_, XV (1909-10), 741-80. [Theory of motives based upon observation of rural and urban families.] 2. Materials for the Study of Family Disorganization: (1) Willcox, Walter F. _The Divorce Problem._ A study in statistics. ("Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law," Vol. I. New York, 1891.) (2) Lichtenberger, J. P. _Divorce._ A study in social causation. New York, 1909. (3) United States Bureau of the Census. _Marriage and Divorce_, 1867-1906. 2 vols. Washington, 1908-09. [Results of two federal investigations.] (4) ----. _Marriage and Divorce 1916._ Washington, 1919. (5) Eubank, Earle E. _A Study in Family Desertion._ Department of Public Welfare. Chicago, 1916. [Bibliography.] (6) Breckinridge, Sophonisba P., and Abbott, Edith. _The Delinquent Child and the Home._ A study of the delinquent wards of the Juvenile Court of Chicago. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1912. (7) Colcord, Joanna. _Broken Homes._ A study of family desertion and its social treatment. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1919. (8) Kammerer, Percy G. _The Unmarried Mother._ A study of five hundred cases. Boston, 1918. (9) Ellis, Havelock. _The Task of Social Hygiene._ Boston, 1912. (10) Myerson, Abraham. "Psychiatric Family Studies," _American Journal of Insanity_, LXXIV (April, 1918), 497-555. (11) Morrow, Prince A. _Social Diseases and Marriage._ Social prophylaxis. New York, 1904. (12) Periodicals on Social Hygiene: _Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft_, Bd. 1, April, 1914-, Bonn [1915-]. _Social Hygiene_, Vol. I, December, 1914-, New York [1915-]. _Die Neuere Generation_, Bd. I, 1908-Berlin [1908-]. Preceded by _Mutterschutz_, Vols. I-III. TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES 1. Society and the Individual: The Cardinal Problem of Sociology. 2. Historic Conceptions of Society: Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, etc. 3. Plant Communities. 4. Animal Societies: The Ant Colony, the Bee Hive. 5. Animal Communities, or Studies in Animal Ecology. 6. Human Communities, Human Ecology, and Economics. 7. The Natural Areas of the City. 8. Studies in Group Consciousness: National, Sectional, State, Civic. 9. Co-operation versus Consensus. 10. Taming as a Form of Social Control. 11. Domestication among Plants, Animals, and Man. 12. Group Unity and the Different Forms of Consensus: _Esprit de corps_, Morale, Collective Representations. 13. The Social Nature of Concepts. 14. Conduct and Behavior. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. What, in your opinion, are the essential elements in Espinas' definition of society? 2. In what sense does society differ from association? 3. According to Espinas' definition, which of the following social relations would constitute society: robber and robbed; beggar and almsgiver; charity organization and recipients of relief; master and slave; employer and employee? 4. What illustrations of symbiosis in human society occur to you? 5. Are changes resulting from human symbiosis changes (a) of structure, or (b) of function? 6. What are the likenesses and the differences between social symbiosis in human and in ant society? 7. What is the difference between taming and domestication? 8. What is the relation of domestication to society? 9. Is man a _tamed_ or a _domesticated_ animal? 10. What are the likenesses between a plant and a human community? What are the differences? 11. What is the fundamental difference between a plant community and an ant society? 12. What are the differences between human and animal societies? 13. Does the ant have customs? ceremonies? 14. Do you think that there is anything akin to public sentiment in ant society? 15. What is the relation of education to social heredity? 16. In what way do you differentiate between the characteristic behavior of machines and human beings? 17. "Society not only continues to exist _by_ transmission, _by_ communication, but it may fairly be said to exist _in_ transmission, _in_ communication." Interpret. 18. How does Dewey's definition of society differ from that of Espinas? Which do you prefer? Why? 19. Is consensus synonymous with co-operation? 20. Under what conditions would Dewey characterize the following social relations as society: master and slave; employer and employee; parent and child; teacher and student? 21. In what sense does the communication of an experience to another person change the experience itself? 22. In what sense are concepts _social_ in contrast with sensations which are _individual_? Would it be possible to have concepts outside of group life? 23. How does Park distinguish between behavior and conduct? 24. In what ways is human society in its origin and continuity based on conduct? 25. To what extent does "the animal nature of man" (Hobhouse) provide a basis for the social organization of life? 26. What, according to Hobhouse, are the _differentia_ of human morality from animal behavior? 27. What do you understand by a collective representation? 28. How do you distinguish between the terms society, social community, and group? Can you name a society that could not be considered as a community? Can you name a community that is not a society? 29. In what, fundamentally, does the unity of the group consist? 30. What groups are omitted in Le Bon's classification of social groups? Make a list of all the groups, formal and informal, of which you are a member. Arrange these groups under the classification given in the General Introduction (p. 50). Compare this classification with that made by Le Bon. 31. How do you distinguish between _esprit de corps_, morale, and collective representation as forms of consensus? 32. Classify under _esprit de corps_, morale, or collective representation the following aspects of group behavior: rooting at a football game; army discipline; the flag; college spirit; the so-called "war psychosis"; the fourteen points of President Wilson; "the English never know when they are beaten"; slogans; "Paris refrains from exultation"; crowd enthusiasm; the Golden Rule; "where there's a will there's a way"; Grant's determination, "I'll fight it out this way if it takes all summer"; ideals. 33. "The human mind has a large capacity for adopting beliefs that fit the trends of its habits and feelings." Give concrete illustrations outside of army life. 34. What is the importance of the study of the family as a social group? FOOTNOTES: [80] See _supra_, chap. i, pp. 50-51. [81] Translated from Alfred Espinas, _Des sociétés animales_ (1878), pp. 157-60. [82] Adapted from William M. Wheeler, _Ants, Their Structure, Development, Behavior_, pp. 339-424. (Columbia University Press, 1910.) [83] Adapted from P. Chalmers Mitchell, _The Childhood of Animals_, pp. 204-21. (Frederick A. Stokes & Co., 1912.) [84] Adapted from Eugenius Warming, _Oecology of Plants_, pp. 12-13, 91-95. (Oxford University Press, 1909.) [85] Adapted from William E. Wheeler, _Ants, Their Structure, Development, and Behavior_, pp. 5-7. (Columbia University Press, 1910.) [86] From John Dewey, _Democracy and Education_, pp. 1-7. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1916. Reprinted by permission.) [87] From Robert E. Park, _Principles of Human Behavior_, pp. 1-9. (The Zalaz Corporation, 1915.) [88] Adapted from L. T. Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_, pp. 1-2, 10-12. (Henry Holt & Co., 1915.) [89] Adapted from Émile Durkheim, _Elementary Forms of Religious Life_, pp. 432-37. (Allen & Unwin, 1915.) [90] From Albion W. Small, _General Sociology_, pp. 495-97. (The University of Chicago Press, 1905.) [91] From R. E. Park, "Education in Its Relation to the Conflict and Fusion of Cultures," in the _Publications of the American Sociological Society_, VIII (1918), 38-40. [92] Translated from S. Sighele, _Psychologie des Sectes_, pp. 42-51. (M. Giard et Cie., 1898.) [93] Adapted from William E. Hocking, _Morale and Its Enemies_, pp. 3-37. (Yale University Press, 1918.) CHAPTER IV I. INTRODUCTION 1. Geological and Biological Conceptions of Isolation Relations of persons with persons, and of groups with groups, may be either those of isolation or those of contact. The emphasis in this chapter is placed upon _isolation_, in the next chapter upon _contact_ in a comparison of their effects upon personal conduct and group behavior. Absolute isolation of the person from the members of his group is unthinkable. Even biologically, two individuals of the higher animal species are the precondition to a new individual existence. In man, postnatal care by the parent for five or six years is necessary even for the physiological survival of the offspring. Not only biologically but sociologically complete isolation is a contradiction in terms. Sociologists following Aristotle have agreed with him that human nature develops within and decays outside of social relations. Isolation, then, in the social as well as the biological sense is _relative_, not _absolute_. The term "isolation" was first employed in anthropogeography, the study of the relation of man to his physical environment. To natural barriers, as mountains, oceans, and deserts, was attributed an influence upon the location of races and the movements of peoples and the kind and the degree of cultural contact. The nature and the extent of separation of persons and groups was considered by geographers as a reflex of the physical environment. In biology, isolation as a factor in the evolution and the life of the species, is studied from the standpoint of the animal group more than from that of the environment. Consequently, the separation of species from each other is regarded as the outcome not only of a sheer physical impossibility of contact, but even more of other factors as differences in physical structure, in habits of life, and in the instincts of the animal groups. J. Arthur Thomson in his work on "Heredity" presents the following compact and illuminating statement of isolation as a factor in inheritance. The only other directive evolution-factor that biologists are at all agreed about, besides selection, is isolation--a general term for all the varied ways in which the radius of possible intercrossing is narrowed. As expounded by Wagner, Weismann, Romanes, Gulick, and others, isolation takes many forms--spatial, structural, habitudinal, and psychical--and it has various results. It tends to the segregation of species into subspecies, it makes it easier for new variations to establish themselves, it promotes prepotency, or what the breeders call "transmitting power," it fixes characters. One of the most successful breeds of cattle (Polled Angus) seems to have had its source in one farmsteading; its early history is one of close inbreeding, its prepotency is remarkable, its success from our point of view has been great. It is difficult to get secure data as to the results of isolation in nature, but Gulick's recent volume on the subject abounds in concrete illustrations, and we seem warranted in believing that conditions of isolation have been and are of frequent occurrence. Reibmayr has collected from human history a wealth of illustrations of various forms of isolation, and there seems much to be said for his thesis that the establishment of a successful race or stock requires the alternation of periods of inbreeding (endogamy) in which characters are fixed, and periods of outbreeding (exogamy) in which, by the introduction of fresh blood, new variations are promoted. Perhaps the Jews may serve to illustrate the influence of isolation in promoting stability of type and prepotency; perhaps the Americans may serve to illustrate the variability which a mixture of different stocks tends to bring about. In historical inquiry into the difficult problem of the origin of distinct races, it seems legitimate to think of periods of "mutation"--of discontinuous sporting--which led to numerous offshoots from the main stock, of the migration of these variants into new environments where in relative isolation they became prepotent and stable.[94] The biological use of the term "isolation" introduces a new emphasis. Separation may be spatial, but its effects are increasingly structural and functional. Indeed, spatial isolation was a factor in the origin of species because of specialized organic adaptation to varied geographic conditions. In other words, the structure of the species, its habits of life, and its original and acquired responses, tend to isolate it from other species. Man as an animal species in his historical development has attempted with fair success to destroy the barriers separating him from other animals. Through domestication and taming he has changed the original nature and habits of life of many animals. The dog, the companion of man, is the summit of human achievement in association with animals. Nevertheless, the barriers that separate the dog and his master are insurmountable. Even if "a candidate for humanity," the dog is forever debarred from any share in human tradition and culture. 2. Isolation and Segregation In geography, isolation denotes separation in space. In sociology, the essential characteristic of isolation is found in exclusion from communication. Geographical forms of isolation are sociologically significant in so far as they prevent communication. The isolation of the mountain whites in the southern states, even if based on spatial separation, consisted in the absence of contacts and competition, participation in the progressive currents of civilization. Biological differences, whether physical or mental, between the different races are sociologically important to the extent to which they affect communication. Of themselves, differences in skin color between races would not prevent intercommunication of ideas. But the physical marks of racial differences have invariably become the symbols of racial solidarity and racial exclusiveness. The problems of humanity are altogether different from what they would have been were all races of one complexion as they are of one blood. Certain physical and mental defects and differences in and of themselves tend to separate the individual from his group. The deaf-mute and the blind are deprived of normal avenues to communication. "My deafness," wrote Beethoven, "forces me to live in exile." The physically handicapped are frequently unable to participate in certain human activities on equal terms with their fellows. Minor physical defects and marked physical variations from the normal tend to become the basis of social discrimination. Mental differences frequently offer still greater obstacles to social contacts. The idiot and the imbecile are obviously debarred from normal communication with their intelligent associates. The "dunce" was isolated by village ridicule and contempt long before the term "moron" was coined, or the feeble-minded segregated in institutions and colonies. The individual with the highest native endowments, the genius, and the talented enjoy or suffer from a more subtle type of isolation from their fellows, that is, the isolation of eminence. "The reason of isolation," says Thoreau, a lover of solitude, "is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar; and when we soar, the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none left." So far, isolation as a tool of social analysis has been treated as an effect of geographical separation or of structural differentiation resulting in limitation of communication. Social distances are frequently based on other subtler forms of isolation. The study of cultural differences between groups has revealed barriers quite as real and as effective as those of physical space and structure. Variations in language, folkways, mores, conventions, and ideals separate individuals and peoples from each other as widely as oceans and deserts. Communication between England and Australia is far closer and freer than between Germany and France. Conflict groups, like sects and parties, and accommodation groups like castes and classes depend for survival upon isolation. Free intercourse of opposing parties is always a menace to their morale. Fraternization between soldiers of contending armies, or between ministers of rival denominations is fraught with peril to the fighting efficiency of the organizations they represent. The solidarity of the group, like the integrity of the individual, implies a measure at least of isolation from other groups and persons as a necessary condition of its existence. The life-history of any group when analyzed is found to incorporate within it elements of isolation as well as of social contact. Membership in a group makes for increasing contacts within the circle of participants, but decreasing contacts with persons without. Isolation is for this reason a factor in the preservation of individuality and unity. The _esprit de corps_ and morale of the group is in large part maintained by the fixation of attention upon certain collective representations to the exclusion of others. The memories and sentiments of the members have their source in common experiences of the past from which non-members are isolated. This natural tendency toward exclusive experiences is often reinforced by conscious emphasis upon secrecy. Primitive and modern secret societies, sororities, and fraternities have been organized around the principle of isolation. Secrecy in a society, like reserve in an individual, protects it from a disintegrating publicity. The family has its "skeleton in the closet," social groups avoid the public "washing of dirty linen"; the community banishes from consciousness, if it can, its slums, and parades its parks and boulevards. Every individual who has any personality at all maintains some region of privacy. A morphological survey of group formation in any society discloses the fact that there are lateral as well as vertical divisions in the social structure. Groups are arranged in strata of relative superiority and inferiority. In a stratified society the separation into castes is rigid and quite unalterable. In a free society competition tends to destroy classes and castes. New devices come into use to keep aspiring and insurgent individuals and groups at the proper social level. If "familiarity breeds contempt" respect may be secured by reserve. In the army the prestige of the officer is largely a matter of "distance." The "divinity that doth hedge the king" is due in large part to the hedge of ceremonial separating him from his subjects. Condescension and pity, while they denote external contact, involve an assumption of spiritual eminence not to be found in consensus and sympathy. As protection against the penetration of the inner precincts of personality and the group individuality, there are the defenses of suspicion and aversion, of reticence and reserve, designed to insure the proper social distance. 3. Classification of the Materials The materials in the present chapter are intended to illustrate the fact that individuality of the person and of the group is both an effect of and a cause of isolation. The first selections under the heading "Isolation and Personal Individuality" bring out the point that the function of isolation in personal development lies not so much in sheer physical separation from other persons as in freedom from the control of external social contacts. Thus Rousseau constructs an ideal society in the solitude of his forest retreat. The lonely child enjoys the companionship of his imaginary comrade. George Eliot aspires to join the choir invisible. The mystic seeks communion with divinity. This form of isolation within the realm of social contacts is known as privacy. Indeed privacy may be defined as withdrawal from the group, with, at the same time, ready access to it. It is in solitude that the creative mind organizes the materials appropriated from the group in order to make novel and fruitful innovations. Privacy affords opportunity for the individual to reflect, to anticipate, to recast, and to originate. Practical recognition of the human demand for privacy has been realized in the study of the minister, the office of the business man, and the den of the boy. Monasteries and universities are institutions providing leisure and withdrawal from the world as the basis for personal development and preparation for life's work. Other values of privacy are related to the growth of self-consciousness, self-respect, and personal ideals of conduct. Many forms of isolation, unlike privacy, prevent access to stimulating social contact. Selections under the heading "Isolation and Retardation" indicate conditions responsible for the arrest of mental and personal growth. The cases of feral men, in the absence of contradictory evidence, seem adequate in support of Aristotle's point that social contacts are indispensable for human development. The story by Helen Keller, the talented and celebrated blind deaf-mute, of her emergence from the imprisonment of sense deprivation into the free life of communication is a most significant sociological document. With all of us the change from the animal-like isolation of the child at birth to personal participation in the fullest human life is gradual. In Helen Keller's case the transformation of months was telescoped into minutes. The "miracle" of communication when sociologically analyzed seems to consist in the transition from the experience of _sensations_ and _sense perceptions_ which man shares in common with animals to the development of _ideas_ and _self-consciousness_ which are the unique attributes of human beings. The remaining selections upon isolation and retardation illustrate the different types of situations in which isolation makes for retardation and retardation in turn emphasizes the isolation. The reversion of a man of scientific training in the solitudes of Patagonia to the animal level of mentality suggests that the low intelligence of the savage, the peasant, and the backward races is probably due more to the absence of stimulating contacts than to original mental inferiority. So the individuality and conservatism of the farmer, his failure to keep pace with the inhabitant of the town and city, Galpin assigns to deficiency in social contacts. Then, too, the subtler forms of handicap in personal development and achievement result from social types of isolation, as race prejudice, the sheltered life of woman, exclusiveness of social classes, and make for increased isolation. Up to this point, isolation has been treated statically as a cause. Under the heading, "Isolation and Segregation" it is conceived as an effect, an effect of competition, and the consequent selection and segregation. The first effect of the introduction of competition in any society is to break up all types of isolation and provincialism based upon lack of communication and contact. But as competition continues, natural and social selection comes into play. Successful types emerge in the process of competitive struggle while variant individuals who fail to maintain the pace or conform to standard withdraw or are ejected from the group. Exiled variants from several groups under auspicious circumstances may in turn form a community where the process of selection will be directly opposite to that in their native groups. In the new community the process of selection naturally accentuates and perfects the traits originally responsible for exclusion. The outcome of segregation is the creation of specialized social types with the maximum of isolation. The circle of isolation is then complete. This circular effect of the processes of competition, selection, and segregation, from isolation to isolation, may be found everywhere in modern western society. Individual variants with criminalistic tendencies exiled from villages and towns through the process of selection form a segregated group in city areas popularly called "breeding places of crime." The tribe of Pineys, Tin Town, The Village of a Thousand Souls, are communities made up by adverse selection of feeble-minded individuals, outcasts of the competitive struggle of intelligent, "high-minded" communities. The result is the formation of a criminal type and of a feeble-minded caste. These slums and outcast groups are in turn isolated from full and free communication with the progressive outside world. National individuality in the past, as indicated in the selections upon "Isolation and National Individuality," has been in large degree the result of a cultural process based upon isolation. The historical nations of Europe, biologically hybrid, are united by common language, folkways, and mores. This unity of mother tongue and culture is the product of historical and cultural processes circumscribed, as Shaler points out, by separated geographical areas. A closer examination of the cultural process in the life of progressive historical peoples reveals the interplay of isolation and social contacts. Grote gives a penetrating analysis of Grecian achievement in terms of the individuality based on small isolated land areas and the contacts resulting from maritime communication. The world-hegemony of English-speaking peoples today rests not only upon naval supremacy and material resources but even more upon the combination of individual development in diversified areas with large freedom in international contacts. II. MATERIALS A. ISOLATION AND PERSONAL INDIVIDUALITY 1. Society and Solitude[95] It had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together in few words than in that speech: "Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god." For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society in any man hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue that it should have any character at all of the divine nature except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher conversation, such as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen, as Epimenides the Candian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana; and truly and really in divers of the ancient hermits and Holy Fathers of the Church. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. The Latin adage meeteth with it a little: _Magna civitas magna solitudo_ ("A great town is a great solitude"), because in a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighborhoods. But we may go further, and affirm most truly that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; and, even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast and not from humanity. 2. Society in Solitude[96] What period do you think, sir, I recall most frequently and most willingly in my dreams? Not the pleasures of my youth: they were too rare, too much mingled with bitterness, and are now too distant. I recall the period of my seclusion, of my solitary walks, of the fleeting but delicious days that I have passed entirely by myself, with my good and simple housekeeper, with my beloved dog, my old cat, with the birds of the field, the hinds of the forest, with all nature, and her inconceivable Author. But what, then, did I enjoy when I was alone? Myself; the entire universe; all that is; all that can be; all that is beautiful in the world of sense; all that is imaginable in the world of intellect. I gathered around me all that could delight my heart; my desires were the limit of my pleasures. No, never have the voluptuous known such enjoyments; and I have derived a hundred times more happiness from my chimeras than they from their realities. The wild spot of the forest [selected by Rousseau for his solitary walks and meditations] could not long remain a desert to my imagination. I soon peopled it with beings after my own heart, and, dismissing opinion, prejudice, and all factitious passions, I brought to these sanctuaries of nature men worthy of inhabiting them. I formed with these a charming society, of which I did not feel myself unworthy. I made a golden age according to my fancy, and, filling up these bright days with all the scenes of my life that had left the tenderest recollections, and with all that my heart still longed for, I affected myself to tears over the true pleasures of humanity--pleasure so delicious, so pure, and yet so far from men! Oh, if in these moments any ideas of Paris, of the age, and of my little author vanity, disturbed my reveries, with what contempt I drove them instantly away, to give myself up entirely to the exquisite sentiments with which my soul was filled. Yet, in the midst of all this, I confess the nothingness of my chimeras would sometimes appear, and sadden me in a moment. 3. Prayer as a Form of Isolation[97] He who prays begins his prayer with some idea of God, generally one that he has received from instruction or from current traditions. He commonly retires to a quiet place, or to a place having mental associations of religious cast, in order to "shut out the world." This beginning of concentration is followed by closing the eyes, which excludes a mass of irrelevant impressions. The body bows, kneels, or assumes some other posture that requires little muscular tension and that may favor extensive relaxation. Memory now provides the language of prayer or of hallowed scripture, or makes vivid some earlier experiences of one's own. The worshiper represents to himself his needs, or the interests (some of them happy ones) that seem most important, and he brings them into relation to God by thinking how God regards them. The presupposition of the whole procedure is that God's way of looking at the matters in question is the true and important one. Around God, then, the interests of the individual are now freshly organized. Certain ones that looked large before the prayer began, now look small because of their relation to the organizing idea upon which attention has focused. On the other hand, interests that express this organizing idea gain emotional quality by this release from competing, inhibiting considerations. To say that the will now becomes organized toward unity and that it acquires fresh power thereby is simply to name another aspect of the one movement. This movement is ideational, emotional, and volitional concentration, all in one, achieved by fixation of attention upon the idea of God. Persons who have been troubled with insomnia, or wakefulness or disturbing dreams, have been enabled to secure sound sleep by merely relaxing the muscles and repeating mechanically, without effort at anything more, some formula descriptive of what is desired. The main point is that attention should fix upon the appropriate organizing idea. When this happens in a revival meeting one may find one's self unexpectedly converted. When it happens in prayer one may be surprised to find one's whole mood changed from discouragement to courage, from liking something to hating it (as in the case of alcoholic drinks, or tobacco), or from loneliness to the feeling of companionship with God. This analysis of the structure of prayer has already touched upon some of its functions. It is a way of getting one's self together, of mobilizing and concentrating one's dispersed capacities, of begetting the confidence that tends toward victory over difficulties. It produces in a distracted mind the repose that is power. It freshens a mind deadened by routine. It reveals new truth, because the mind is made more elastic and more capable of sustained attention. Thus does it remove mountains in the individual, and, through him, in the world beyond. The values of prayer in sickness, distress, and doubt are by no means measurable by the degree to which the primary causes thereof are made to disappear. There is a real conquest of trouble, even while trouble remains. It is sometimes a great source of strength, also, merely to realize that one is fully understood. The value of having some friend or helper from whom I reserve no secrets has been rendered more impressive than ever by the Freud-Jung methods of relieving mental disorders through (in part) a sort of mental house-cleaning, or bringing into the open the patient's hidden distresses and even his most intimate and reticent desires. Into the psychology of the healings that are brought about by this psychoanalysis we need not go, except to note that one constant factor appears to be the turning of a private possession into a social possession, and particularly the consciousness that another understands. I surmise that we shall not be far from the truth here if we hold that, as normal experience has the _ego-alter_ form, so the continuing possession of one's self in one's developing experience requires development of this relation. We may, perhaps, go as far as to believe that the bottling up of any experience as merely private is morbid. But, however this may be, there are plenty of occasions when the road to poise, freedom, and joy is that of social sharing. Hence the prayer of confession, not only because it helps us to see ourselves as we are, but also because it shares our secrets with another, has great value for organizing the self. In this way we get relief from the misjudgments of others, also, and from the mystery that we are to ourselves, for we lay our case, as it were, before a judge who does not err. Thus prayer has value in that it develops the essentially social form of personal self-realization. To complete this functional view of prayer we must not fail to secure the evolutionary perspective. If we glance at the remote beginnings, and then at the hither end, of the evolution of prayer we discover that an immense change has taken place. It is a correlate of the transformed character of the gods, and of the parallel disciplining of men's valuations. In the words of Fosdick, prayer may be considered as dominant desire. But it is also a way of securing domination over desire. It is indeed self-assertion; sometimes it is the making of one's supreme claim, as when life reaches its most tragic crisis; yet it is, even in the same act, submission to an over-self. Here, then, is our greater problem as to the function of prayer. It starts as the assertion of any desire; it ends as _the organization of one's own desires into a system of desires recognized as superior and then made one's own_. 4. Isolation, Originality, and Erudition[98] The question as to how far the world's leaders in thought and action were great readers is not quite an easy one to answer, partly because the sources of information are sometimes scanty, and partly because books themselves have been few in number. If we could prove that since the days of Caxton the world's total of original thought declined in proportion to the increase of published works, we should stand on firm ground, and might give orders for a holocaust such as that which Hawthorne once imagined. But no such proof is either possible or probable. We can only be impressed by the fact that the finest intellectual epoch of history was marked by a comparative absence of the manuscripts which were books to the Greeks, and if a further analysis of the lives of men of light and leading in all ages should show that their devotion to the books of the period was slight, it will only accentuate the suspicion that even today we are still minus the right perspective between the printed volume and the thinking mind. Buddha, Christ, St. Paul, Mohammed--these are names of men who changed the course of history. But do they suggest vast scholarship, or a profound acquaintance with books in any sense whatever? They were great originators, even though they built on other men's foundations, but their originality was not inspired by libraries. Can we imagine Mohammed poring over ancient manuscripts in order to obtain the required knowledge and impetus for his new religion? With Buddha was it not 1 per cent papyrus roll and 99 per cent meditation? When St. Paul was struck down on the way to Damascus, he did not repair to the nearest Jewish seminary to read up prophecy. He says: "I went into Arabia." The desert solitude was the only place in which to find a rationale of his new experience. And was it not in a similar life of solitude that Jesus--Essene-like--came to self-realization? Deane's _Pseudepigrapha: Books that Influenced our Lord and His Apostles_ does not suggest that the Messiah obtained his ideas from the literature of the Rabbis, much less from Greek or other sources; indeed, the New Testament suggests that in the earliest years he showed a genius for divine things. It will be urged that to restrict this inquiry to great names in religion would be unfair because such leaders are confessedly independent of literature; indeed, they are often the creators of it. True; but that fact alone is suggestive. If great literature can come from meditation alone, are we not compelled to ask: "Where shall wisdom be found and where is the place of understanding?" Is enlightenment to be found only in the printed wisdom of the past? We know it is not, but we also know it is useless to set one source of truth over against another, as if they were enemies. The soul has its place and so has the book; but need it be said that the soul has done more wonderful things than the book? Language is merely the symbol; the soul is the reality. But let us take other names with different associations--e.g., Plato, Charlemagne, Caesar, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Bismarck. Can it be said of any one of these that he owed one-third of his distinction to what he learned from manuscripts or books? We do know, indeed, that Bismarck was a wide reader, but it was on the selective principle as a student of history and affairs. His library grew under the influence of the controlling purpose of his life--i.e., the unification of Germany, so that there was no vague distribution of energy. Of Shakespeare's reading we know less, but there is no evidence that he was a collector of books or that he was a student after the manner of the men of letters of his day. The best way to estimate him as a reader is to judge him by the references in his plays, and these do not show an acquaintance with literature so extensive as it is intensive. The impression he made on Ben Johnson, an all-round scholar, was not one of learning--quite otherwise. The qualities that impressed the author of _Timber, or Discoveries upon Men and Matter_, were Shakespeare's "open and free nature," his "excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped." And, true to himself, Ben Jonson immediately adds: "_Sufflaminandus erat_, as Augustus said of Haterius." Shakespeare, when in the company of kindred spirits, showed precisely the kind of talk we should expect--not Latin and Greek or French and Italian quotations, not a commentary on books past or present, but a stream of conversation marked by brilliant fancy, startling comparison, unique contrast, and searching pathos, wherein life, not literature, was the chief subject. B. ISOLATION AND RETARDATION 1. Feral Men[99] What would the results be if children born with a normal organism and given food and light sufficient to sustain life were deprived of the usual advantage of human intercourse? What psychic growth would be possible? Perhaps no character ever aroused greater interest than Caspar Hauser. More than a thousand articles of varying merit have been written concerning him. In the theaters of England, France, Germany, Hungary, and Austria, plays were founded on his strange story and many able men have figured in the history of his case. According to a letter which he bore when found at Nürnberg one afternoon in 1828, he was born in 1812, left on the doorstep of a Hungarian peasant's hut, adopted by him, and reared in strict seclusion. At the time of his appearance in Nürnberg, he could walk only with difficulty. He knew no German, understood but little that was said to him, paid no heed to what went on about him, and was ignorant of social customs. When taken to a stable, he at once fell asleep on a heap of straw. In time it was learned that he had been kept in a low dark cell on the ground; that he had never seen the face of the man who brought him food, that sometimes he went to sleep after the man gave him a drink; that on awakening he found his nails cut and clean clothing on his body; and that his only playthings had been two wooden horses with red ribbons. When first found, he suffered much pain from the light, but he could see well at night. He could distinguish fruit from leaves on a tree, and read the name on a doorplate where others could see nothing in the darkness. He had no visual idea of distance and would grasp at remote objects as though they were near. He called both men and women _Bua_ and all animals _Rosz_. His memory span for names was marvelous. Drawing upon the pages of Von Kolb and Stanhope, a writer in _The Living Age_ says that he burned his hand in the first flame that he saw and that he had no fear of being struck with swords, but that the noise of a drum threw him into convulsions. He thought that pictures and statuary were alive, as were plants and trees, bits of paper, and anything that chanced to be in motion. He delighted in whistles and glittering objects, but disliked the odor of paint, fabrics, and most flowers. His hearing was acute and his touch sensitive at first, but after interest in him had lessened, all his senses showed evidence of rapid deterioration. He seemed to be wanting in sex instinct and to be unable to understand the meaning of religious ceremonies. Merker, who observed him secretly during the early days which he spent in jail, declared that he was "in all respects like a child." Meyer, of the school at Ansbach, found him "idle, stupid, and vain." Dr. Osterhausen found a deviation from the normal in the shape of his legs, which made walking difficult, but Caspar never wearied of riding on horseback. His autopsy revealed a small brain without abnormalities. It simply gave evidence of a lack of development. To speak of children who have made the struggle for life with only animals for nurses and instructors is to recall the rearing of Cyrus in a kennel and the fabulous story of the founding of Rome. Yet Rauber has collected many cases of wild men and some of them, taken as they are from municipal chronicles and guaranteed by trustworthy writers, must be accepted as authentic. a) The Hessian Boy. Was discovered by hunters in 1341, running on all fours with wolves; was captured and turned over to the landgrave. Was always restless, could not adapt himself to civilized life, and died untamed. The case is recorded in the Hessian chronicles by Wilhelm Dilich. Rousseau refers to it in his _Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de Pinégalité parmi les hommes_. b) The Irish Boy. Studied and described by Dr. Tulp, curator of the gymnasium at Amsterdam; features animal, body covered with hair; lived with sheep and bleated like them; stolid, unconscious of self; did not notice people; fierce, untamable, and indocible; skin thick, sense of touch blunted so that thorns and stones were unnoticed. Age about sixteen. (Rauber.) c) The Lithuanian Boys. Three are described. The first was found with bears in 1657; face not repulsive nor beastlike; hair thick and white; skin dry and insensitive; voice a growl; great physical strength. He was carefully instructed and learned to obey his trainer to some degree but always kept the bear habit; ate vegetable food, raw flesh, and anything not containing oils; had a habit of rolling up in secluded places and taking long naps. The second, said to have been captured in 1669, is not so well described as the third, which Dr. Connor, in the _History of Poland_, says was found in 1694. This one learned to walk erect with difficulty, but was always leaping restlessly about; he learned to eat from a table, but mastered only a few words, which he spoke in a voice harsh and inhuman. He showed great sagacity in wood life. d) The Girl of Cranenburg. Born in 1700; lost when sixteen months old; skin dark, rough, hard; understood but little that was said to her; spoke little and stammeringly; food--roots, leaves, and milk. (Rauber.) e) Clemens of Overdyke. This boy was brought to Count von der Ricke's Asylum after the German struggle with Napoleon. He knew little and said little. After careful training it was gathered that his parents were dead and that a peasant had adopted him and set him to herd pigs. Little food was given him, and he learned to suck a cow and eat grass with the pigs. At Overdyke he would get down on his hands and knees and pull up vegetables with his teeth. He was of low intelligence, subject to fits of passion, and fonder of pigs than of men.[100] f) Jean de Liége. Lost at five; lived in the woods for sixteen years; food--roots, plants, and wild fruit; sense of smell extraordinarily keen; could distinguish people by odor as a dog would recognize his master; restless in manner, and always trying to escape. (Rauber.) g) The Savage of Aveyron. After capture, was given into the care of Dr. Itard by Abbé Sicard. Dermal sense duller than in animals; gaze wandering; language wanting and ideas few; food--raw potatoes, acorns, and fruit; would eagerly tear open a bird and eat it raw; indolent, secretive; would hide in the garden until hunger drove him to the kitchen; rolled in new snow like an animal; paid no heed to the firing of a gun, but became alert at the cracking of a nut; sometimes grew wildly angry; all his powers were then enlarged; was delighted with hills and woods, and always tried to escape after being taken to them; when angry would gnaw clothing and hurl furniture about; feared to look from a height, and Itard cured him of spasms of rage by holding his head out of a window; met all efforts to teach him with apathy, and learned but little of language.[101] h) The Wolf Children of India. The two cases described by a writer in _Chambers' Journal_ and by Rauber were boys of about ten years. Both ate raw food but refused cooked food; one never spoke, smiled, or laughed; both shunned human beings of both sexes, but would permit a dog to eat with them; they pined in captivity, and lived but a short time.[102] i) Peter of Hanover. Found in the woods of Hanover; food--buds, barks, roots, frogs, eggs of birds, and anything else that he could get out of doors; had a habit of wandering away in the spring; always went to bed as soon as he had his supper; was unable to walk in shoes at first, and it was long before he would tolerate a covering for his head. Although Queen Caroline furnished him a teacher, he could never learn to speak; he became docile, but remained stoical in manner; he learned to do farm work willingly unless he was compelled to do it; his sense of hearing and of smell was acute, and before changes in the weather he was sullen and irritable; he lived to be nearly seventy years old.[103] j) The Savage of Kronstadt. Of middle size, wild-eyed, deep-jawed, and thick-throated; elbows and knees thick; cuticle insensitive; unable to understand words or gestures perfectly; generally indifferent; found 1784.[104] k) The Girl of Songi. According to Rauber, this is one of the most frequently quoted of feral cases. The girl came out of the forest near Chalons in 1731. She was thought to be nine years old. She carried a club in her hand, with which she killed a dog that attacked her. She climbed trees easily, and made niches on walls and roofs, over which she ran like a squirrel. She caught fish and ate them raw; a cry served for speech. She showed an instinct for decorating herself with leaves and flowers. She found it difficult to adapt herself to the customs of civilized life and suffered many fits of sickness. In 1747 she was put into a convent at Chalons. She learned something of the French language, of domestic science, and embroidery. She readily understood what was pointed out to her but always had certain sounds which were not understood. She claimed to have first begun to reflect after the beginning of her education. In her wild life she thought only of her own needs. She believed that the earth and the trees produced her, and her earliest memory of shelter was of holes in the ground.[105] 2. From Solitude to Society[106] The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrast between the two lives which it connects. It was the third of March, 1887, three months before I was seven years old. The morning after my teacher came she led me into her room and gave me a doll. The little blind children at the Perkins Institution had sent it and Laura Bridgman had dressed it; but I did not know this until afterward. When I had played with it a little while, Miss Sullivan slowly spelled into my hand the word "d-o-l-l." I was at once interested in this finger play and tried to imitate it. When I finally succeeded in making the letters correctly I was flushed with childish pleasure and pride. Running downstairs to my mother I held up my hand and made the letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed; I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation. In the days that followed I learned to spell in this uncomprehending way a great many words, among them _pin_, _hat_, _cup_ and a few verbs like _sit_, _stand_, and _walk_. But my teacher had been with me several weeks before I understood that everything has a name. One day, while I was playing with my new doll, Miss Sullivan put my big rag doll into my lap also, spelled "d-o-l-l" and tried to make me understand that "d-o-l-l" applied to both. Earlier in the day we had had a tussle over the words "m-u-g" and "w-a-t-e-r." Miss Sullivan had tried to impress it upon me that "m-u-g" is _mug_ and that "w-a-t-e-r" is _water_, but I persisted in confounding the two. In despair she had dropped the subject for the time, only to renew it at the first opportunity. I became impatient at her repeated attempts and, seizing the new doll, I dashed it upon the floor. I was keenly delighted when I felt the fragments of the broken doll at my feet. Neither sorrow nor regret followed my passionate outburst. I had not loved the doll. In the still, dark world in which I lived there was no strong sentiment or tenderness. I felt my teacher sweep the fragments to one side of the hearth, and I had a sense of satisfaction that the cause of my discomfort was removed. She brought me my hat, and I knew I was going out into the warm sunshine. This thought, if a wordless sensation may be called a thought, made me hop and skip with pleasure. We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Some one was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word _water_, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten--a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away. I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. I felt my way to the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had done, and for the first time I felt repentance and sorrow. I learned a great many new words that day. I do not remember what they all were; but I do know that _mother_, _father_, _sister_, _teacher_, were among them--words that were to make the world blossom for me, "like Aaron's rod, with flowers." It would have been difficult to find a happier child than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of that eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time longed for a new day to come. 3. Mental Effects of Solitude[107] I spent the greater part of one winter at a point on the Rio Negro, seventy or eighty miles from the sea. It was my custom to go out every morning on horseback with my gun, and, followed by one dog, to ride away from the valley; and no sooner would I climb the terrace and plunge into the gray universal thicket, than I would find myself as completely alone as if five hundred instead of only five miles separated me from the valley and river. So wild and solitary and remote seemed that gray waste, stretching away into infinitude, a waste untrodden by man, and where the wild animals are so few that they have made no discoverable path in the wilderness of thorns. Not once nor twice nor thrice, but day after day I returned to this solitude, going to it in the morning as if to attend a festival, and leaving it only when hunger and thirst and the westering sun compelled me. And yet I had no object in going--no motive which could be put into words; for, although I carried a gun, there was nothing to shoot--the shooting was all left behind in the valley. Sometimes I would pass an entire day without seeing one mammal and perhaps not more than a dozen birds of any size. The weather at that time was cheerless, generally with a gray film of cloud spread over the sky, and a bleak wind, often cold enough to make my bridle hand quite numb. At a slow pace, which would have seemed intolerable in other circumstances, I would ride about for hours at a stretch. On arriving at a hill, I would slowly ride to its summit, and stand there to survey the prospect. On every side it stretched away in great undulations, wild and irregular. How gray it all was! Hardly less so near at hand than on the haze-wrapped horizon, where the hills were dim and the outline blurred by distance. Descending from my outlook, I would take up my aimless wanderings again, and visit other elevations to gaze on the same landscape from another point; and so on for hours; and at noon I would dismount and sit or lie on my folded poncho for an hour or longer. One day, in these rambles, I discovered a small grove composed of twenty or thirty trees, growing at a convenient distance apart, that had evidently been resorted to by a herd of deer or other wild animals. This grove was on a hill differing in shape from other hills in its neighborhood; and after a time I made a point of finding and using it as a resting-place every day at noon. I did not ask myself why I made choice of that one spot, sometimes going miles out of my way to sit there, instead of sitting down under any one of the millions of trees and bushes on any other hillside. I thought nothing at all about it, but acted unconsciously. Only afterward it seemed to me that, after having rested there once, each time I wished to rest again the wish came associated with the image of that particular clump of trees, with polished stems and clean bed of sand beneath; and in a short time I formed a habit of returning, animal-like, to repose at that same spot. It was perhaps a mistake to say that I would sit down and rest, since I was never tired: and yet, without being tired, that noonday pause, during which I sat for an hour without moving, was strangely grateful. All day there would be no sound, not even the rustle of a leaf. One day while _listening_ to the silence, it occurred to my mind to wonder what the effect would be if I were to shout aloud. This seemed at the time a horrible suggestion, which almost made me shudder; but during those solitary days it was a rare thing for any thought to cross my mind. In the state of mind I was in, thought had become impossible. My state was one of _suspense_ and _watchfulness_; yet I had no expectation of meeting with an adventure, and felt as free from apprehension as I feel now when sitting in a room in London. The state seemed familiar rather than strange, and accompanied by a strong feeling of elation; and I did not know that something had come between me and my intellect until I returned to my former self--to thinking, and the old insipid existence. I had undoubtedly _gone back_, and that state of intense watchfulness, or alertness rather, with suspension of the higher intellectual faculties, represented the mental state of the pure savage. He thinks little, reasons little, having a surer guide in his instincts; he is in perfect harmony with nature, and is nearly on a level, mentally, with the wild animals he preys on, and which in their turn sometimes prey on him. 4. Isolation, and the Rural Mind[108] As an occupation farming has dealt largely, if not exclusively, with the growth and care of plant and animal life. Broadly speaking, the farmer has been engaged in a struggle with nature to produce certain staple traditional raw foods and human comfort materials in bulk. He has been excused, on the whole, from the delicate situations arising from the demands of an infinite variety of human wishes, whims, and fashions, perhaps because the primary grains, fruits, vegetables, fibers, animals, and animal products, have afforded small opportunity for manipulation to satisfy the varying forms of human taste and caprice. This exemption of the farmer in the greater part of his activity from direct work upon and with persons and from strenuous attempts to please persons, will doubtless account very largely, perhaps more largely than mere isolation on the land, for the strong individualism of the country man. In striking contrast, the villager and city worker have always been occupied in making things or parts of things out of such impressionable materials as iron, wood, clay, cloth, leather, gold, and the like, to fit, suit, and satisfy a various and increasingly complex set of human desires; or they have been dealing direct with a kaleidoscopic human mind, either in regard to things or in regard to troubles and ideals of the mind itself. This constant dealing with persons in business will account even more than mere congestion of population for the complex organization of city life. The highly organized social institutions of the city, moreover, have reinforced the already keen-edged insight of the city man of business, so that he is doubly equipped to win his struggles. The city worker knows men, the farmer knows nature. Each has reward for his deeper knowledge, and each suffers some penalty for his circle of ignorance. Modern conditions underlying successful farm practice and profit-making require of the farmer a wider and more frequent contact with men than at any time in the past. His materials, too, have become more plastic, subject to rapid change by selection and breeding. The social problem of the farmer seems to be how to overcome the inevitable handicap of a social deficiency in the very nature of his occupation, so as to extend his acquaintance with men; and secondly, how to erect social institutions on the land adequate to reinforce his individual personality so as to enable him to cope with his perplexities. Occasions must be created, plans must be made, to bring people together in a wholesale manner so as to facilitate this interchange of community acquaintance. Especially is it necessary for rural children to know many more children. The one-room district school has proved its value in making the children of the neighborhood acquainted with one another. One of the large reasons for the consolidated and centralized school is the increased size of territorial unit, with more children to know one another and mingle together. Intervisiting of district schools--one school, teachers and pupils, playing host to a half-dozen other schools, with some regularity, using plays and games, children's readiest means of getting acquainted--is a successful means of extending acquaintance under good auspices. If large-scale acquaintance--men with men, women with women, children with children--in a rural community once becomes a fact, the initial step will have been taken for assuring the rise of appropriate social institutions on the land of that community. 5. The Subtler Effects of Isolation[109] The mechanics of modern culture is complicated. The individual has access to materials outside his group, from the world at large. His consciousness is built up not only by word of mouth but by the printed page. He may live as much in German books as in fireside conversation. Much more mail is handled every day in the New York post-office than was sent out by all the thirteen states in a year at the close of the eighteenth century. But by reason of poverty, geographical isolation, caste feeling, or "pathos," individuals, communities, and races may be excluded from some of the stimulations and copies which enter into a high grade of mind. The savage, the Negro, the peasant, the slum dwellers, and the white woman are notable sufferers by exclusion. Easy communication of ideas favors differentiation of a rational and functional sort, as distinguished from the random variations fostered by isolation. And it must be remembered that any sort is rational and functional that really commends itself to the human spirit. Even revolt from an ascendant type is easier now than formerly because the rebel can fortify himself with the triumphant records of the non-conformers of the past. The peasant [at the middle of the nineteenth century], limited in a cultural respect to his village life, thinks, feels, and acts solely in the bounds of his native village; his thought never goes beyond his farm and his neighbor; toward the political, economic, or national events taking place outside of his village, be they of his own or of a foreign country, he is completely indifferent, and even if he has learned something of them, this is described by him in a fantastic, mythological way, and only in this adopted form is it added to his cultural condition and transmitted to his descendants. Every peasant farm produced almost exclusively for itself, only to the most limited extent for exchange; every village formed an economic unit, which stood in only a loose economic connection with the outer world. Outwardly complete isolation of the village settlements and their inhabitants from each other and from the rest of the country and other classes of society; inwardly complete homogeneity, one and the same economic, social, and cultural equality of the peasant mass, no possibility of advance for the more gifted and capable individuals, everyone pressed down to a flat level. The peasant of one village holds himself, if not directly hostile, at least as a rule not cordial to the peasants of another village. The nobles living in the same village territory even wanted to force upon the peasants an entirely different origin, in that with the assistance of the Biblical legend they wished to trace him from the accursed Ham (from this the curse and insult _Ty chamie_, "Thou Ham"), but themselves from Japhet, of better repute in the Bible, while they attributed to the Jews, Shem as an ancestor. The pathetic effect of isolation on the state of knowledge is recorded in many of the stories of runaway slaves: With two more boys, I started for the free states. We did not know where they were, but went to try to find them. We crossed the Potomac and hunted round and round and round. Some one showed us the way to Washington; but we missed it, and wandered all night; then we found ourselves where we set out. For our purposes race prejudice may be regarded as a form of isolation. And in the case of the American Negro this situation is aggravated by the fact that the white man has developed a determination to keep him in isolation--"in his place." Now, when the isolation is willed and has at the same time the emotional nature of a tabu, the handicap is very grave indeed. It is a fact that the most intelligent Negroes are usually half or more than half white, but it is still a subject for investigation whether this is due to mixed blood or to the fact that they have been more successful in violating the tabu. The humblest white employee knows that the better he does his work, the more chance there is for him to rise in the business. The black employee knows that the better he does his work, the longer he may do it; he cannot often hope for promotion. All these careers are at the very outset closed to the Negro on account of his color; what lawyer would give even a minor case to a Negro assistant? Or what university would appoint a promising young Negro as tutor? Thus the white young man starts in life knowing that within some limits and barring accidents, talent and application will tell. The young Negro starts knowing that on all sides his advance is made doubly difficult, if not wholly shut off, by his color. In all walks of life the Negro is liable to meet some objection to his presence or some discourteous treatment. If an invitation is issued to the public for any occasion, the Negro can never know whether he would be welcomed or not; if he goes he is liable to have his feelings hurt and get into unpleasant altercation; if he stays away, he is blamed for indifference. If he meet a lifelong white friend on the street, he is in a dilemma; if he does not greet the friend he is put down as boorish and impolite; if he does greet the friend he is liable to be flatly snubbed. If by chance he is introduced to a white woman or man, he expects to be ignored on the next meeting, and usually is. White friends may call on him, but he is scarcely expected to call on them, save for strictly business matters. If he gain the affections of a white woman and marry her he may invariably expect that slurs will be thrown on her reputation and on his, and that both his and her race will shun their company. When he dies he cannot be buried beside white corpses. Kelly Miller, himself a full-blooded black (for which the Negroes have expressed their gratitude), refers to the backwardness of the negro in the following terms: To expect the Negroes of Georgia to produce a great general like Napoleon when they are not even allowed to carry arms, or to deride them for not producing scholars like those of the Renaissance when a few years ago they were forbidden the use of letters, verges closely upon the outer rim of absurdity. Do you look for great Negro statesmen in states where black men are not allowed to vote? Above all, for southern white men to berate the Negro for failing to gain the highest rounds of distinction reaches the climax of cruel inconsistency. One is reminded of the barbarous Teutons in _Titus Andronicus_, who, after cutting out the tongue and hacking off the hands of the lovely Lavinia, ghoulishly chided her for not calling for sweet water with which to wash her delicate hands. It is not too much to say that no Negro and no mulatto, in America at least, has ever been fully in the white man's world. But we must recognize that their backwardness is not wholly due to prejudice. A race with an adequate technique can live in the midst of prejudice and even receive some stimulation from it. But the Negro has lost many of the occupations which were particularly his own, and is outclassed in others--not through prejudice but through the faster pace of his competitors. Obviously obstacles which discourage one race may stimulate another. Even the extreme measures in Russia and Roumania against the Jew have not isolated him. He has resources and traditions and technique of his own, and we have even been borrowers from him. C. ISOLATION AND SEGREGATION 1. Segregation as a Process[110] Within the limitations prescribed, however, the inevitable processes of human nature proceed to give these regions and these buildings a character which it is less easy to control. Under our system of individual ownership, for instance, it is not possible to determine in advance the extent of concentration of population in any given area. The city cannot fix land values, and we leave to private enterprise, for the most part, the task of determining the city's limits and the location of its residential and industrial districts. Personal tastes and convenience, vocational and economic interests, infallibly tend to segregate and thus to classify the populations of great cities. In this way the city acquires an organization which is neither designed nor controlled. Physical geography, natural advantages, and the means of transportation determine in advance the general outlines of the urban plan. As the city increases in population, the subtler influences of sympathy, rivalry, and economic necessity tend to control the distribution of population. Business and manufacturing seek advantageous locations and draw around them a certain portion of the population. There spring up fashionable residence quarters from which the poorer classes are excluded because of the increased value of the land. Then there grow up slums which are inhabited by great numbers of the poorer classes who are unable to defend themselves from association with the derelict and vicious. In the course of time every section and quarter of the city takes on something of the character and qualities of its inhabitants. Each separate part of the city is inevitably stained with the peculiar sentiments of its population. The effect of this is to convert what was at first a mere geographical expression into a neighborhood, that is to say, a locality with sentiments, traditions, and a history of its own. Within this neighborhood the continuity of the historical processes is somehow maintained. The past imposes itself upon the present and the life of every locality moves on with a certain momentum of its own, more or less independent of the larger circle of life and interests about it. In the city environment the neighborhood tends to lose much of the significance which it possessed in simpler and more primitive forms of society. The easy means of communication and of transportation, which enables individuals to distribute their attention and to live at the same time in several different worlds, tends to destroy the permanency and intimacy of the neighborhood. Further than that, where individuals of the same race or of the same vocation live together in segregated groups, neighborhood sentiment tends to fuse together with racial antagonisms and class interests. In this way physical and sentimental distances reinforce each other, and the influences of local distribution of the population participate with the influences of class and race in the evolution of the social organization. Every great city has its racial colonies, like the Chinatowns of San Francisco and New York, the Little Sicily of Chicago, and various other less pronounced types. In addition to these, most cities have their segregated vice districts, like that which until recently existed in Chicago, and their rendezvous for criminals of various sorts. Every large city has its occupational suburbs like the Stockyards in Chicago, and its residence suburbs like Brookline in Boston, each of which has the size and the character of a complete separate town, village, or city, except that its population is a selected one. Undoubtedly the most remarkable of these cities within cities, of which the most interesting characteristic is that they are composed of persons of the same race, or of persons of different races but of the same social class, is East London, with a population of 2,000,000 laborers. The people of the original East London have now overflowed and crossed the Lea, and spread themselves over the marshes and meadows beyond. This population has created new towns which were formerly rural villages, West Ham, with a population of nearly 300,000; East Ham, with 90,000; Stratford, with its "daughters," 150,000; and other "hamlets" similarly overgrown. Including these new populations we have an aggregate of nearly two millions of people. The population is greater than that of Berlin or Vienna, or St. Petersburg, or Philadelphia. It is a city full of churches and places of worship, yet there are no cathedrals, either Anglican or Roman; it has a sufficient supply of elementary schools, but it has no public or high school, and it has no colleges for the higher education, and no university; the people all read newspapers, yet there is no East London paper except of the smaller and local kind.... In the streets there are never seen any private carriages; there is no fashionable quarter ... one meets no ladies in the principal thoroughfares. People, shops, houses, conveyances--all together are stamped with the unmistakable seal of the working class. Perhaps the strangest thing of all is this: in a city of two millions of people there are no hotels! That means, of course, that there are no visitors. In the older cities of Europe, where the processes of segregation have gone farther, neighborhood distinctions are likely to be more marked than they are in America. East London is a city of a single class, but within the limits of that city the population is segregated again and again by racial and vocational interests. Neighborhood sentiment, deeply rooted in local tradition and in local custom, exercises a decisive selective influence upon city population and shows itself ultimately in a marked way in the characteristics of the inhabitants. 2. Isolation as a Result of Segregation[111] There is the observed tendency of mental defectives to congregate in localized centers, with resulting inbreeding. Feeble-mindedness is a social level and the members of this level, like those in other levels, are affected by social and biological tendencies, such as the congregation of like personalities and the natural selection in matings of persons of similar mental capacities. These are general tendencies and not subject to invariable laws. The feeble-minded are primarily quantitatively different from normals in mental and social qualities, and do not constitute a separate species. The borderline types of high-grade feeble-minded and low-grade normals may therefore prove exceptions to the general rule. But such studies as Davenport and Danielson's "Hill Folk," Davenport and Estabrook's "Nams," Dugdale's "Jukes," Kostir's "Sam Sixty," Goddard's "Kallikaks," Key's "Vennams" and "Fale-Anwals," Kite's "Pineys," and many others emphatically prove that mental defectives show a tendency to drift together, intermarry, and isolate themselves from the rest of the community, just as the rich live in exclusive suburbs. Consequently they preponderate in certain localities, counties, and cities. In a large measure this segregation is not so much an expression of voluntary desire as it is a situation forced upon mental defectives through those natural intellectual and social deficiencies which restrict them to environments economically and otherwise less desirable to normal people. This phenomenon is most conspicuous in rural communities where such migratory movements as the modern city-drift have exercised a certain natural selection, but it is also plainly evident in the slums and poorer sections of the cities, both large and small, as any field worker will testify. Closely related to this factor of isolation are the varying percentages of mental defectives found in different states and in different sections of the same state, city or community. It is therefore likely that the percentages of mental defectives among different groups of juvenile delinquents will vary according to the particular ward, city, county, or state, whence the delinquents come. For this reason it is essential to any study of the number of mental defectives in a group of juvenile delinquents coming from a particular locality, that some idea should be available as to the probable or approximate number of mental defectives in that community. If more mental defectives are found among the population in the slum quarter of a city than in the residential quarter, it is to be expected that there will be more mental defectives in groups of juvenile delinquents from the slum quarter, because, in the first place, they constitute a larger proportion of the population, and because, secondly, of their greater proneness to social offenses. Moreover, the prevalence of the feeble-minded in certain localities may affect the attitude of the law-enforcing machinery toward the children of that community. A further result of the innate characteristics and tendencies of the feeble-minded is to be found in the effect upon them of the biological law of natural selection, resulting from the universal struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. We need not discuss here its profound influences, economic and otherwise, upon the lives of the mentally defective in general, but it will be profitable to review briefly the effect of natural selection upon the juvenile delinquent group. Any group of delinquents is subject to this selection from the times of offenses to final commitment. It undergoes a constant sifting process whose operation is mainly determined by the natural consequences of the group members; a large proportion of the "lucky," the intelligent, or the socially favored individuals escape from the group, so that the remaining members of the group are the least fit socially and intellectually. The mentally defective delinquents constitute an undue proportion of this unfit residue, for although they may receive as many favors of chance as do their intellectually normal fellow-delinquents, they cannot, like them, by reason of intelligence or social status, escape the consequences of their delinquent acts. Furthermore, the feeble-minded offender is caught oftener than are his more clever and energetic companions of normal endowments, and after apprehension he is less likely to receive the benefits of police and court prejudices, or the advantages of family wealth and social influence. If placed on probation he is more likely to fail, because of his own weaknesses and his unfavorable environment. Hence the feeble-minded delinquent is much more likely to come before the court and also to be committed to a reformatory, jail, or industrial school than is his companion of normal mind. Therefore practically every group of juvenile delinquents which ultimately reaches commitment will have a very different aspect with regard to its proportion of mental defectives from that larger group of offenders, apprehended or non-apprehended, of which it was once a part. In fact, it is doubtful if any group of apprehended, detained, or probationed offenders can be said to be representative, or at least to be exactly representative, of the true proportion of mental defectives among all delinquents. Except where specific types of legal procedure bring about the elimination of the defectives, it seems as if it must inevitably result that the operation of natural selection will continually increase the proportion of mental defectives above that existing in the original group. This factor of natural selection has not to our knowledge been given adequate consideration in any published investigation on delinquency. But if our estimate of its effects is at all justified, then most examinations of juvenile delinquents, especially in reform and industrial schools, have disclosed proportions of mental defectives distinctly in excess of the original proportion previously existent among the entire mass of all offenders. The reports of these examinations have given rise to quite erroneous impressions concerning the extent of criminality among the feeble-minded and its relation to the whole volume of crime, and have consequently led to inaccurate deductions. The feeble-minded are undoubtedly more prone to commit crime than are the average normals; but through disregard of the influences of this factor of natural selection, as well as of others, both the proportion of crime committed by mental defectives and the true proportion of mental defectives among delinquents and criminals have very often been exaggerated. D. ISOLATION AND NATIONAL INDIVIDUALITY 1. Historical Races as Products of Isolation[112] The continent of Europe differs from the other great land-masses in the fact that it is a singular aggregation of peninsulas and islands, originating in separate centers of mountain growth, and of enclosed valleys walled about from the outer world by elevated summits. Other continents are somewhat peninsulated; Asia approaches Europe in that respect; North America has a few great dependencies in its larger islands and considerable promontories; but Africa, South America, and Australia are singularly united lands. The highly divided state of Europe has greatly favored the development within its area of isolated fields, each fitted for the growth of a separate state, adapted even in this day for local life although commerce in our time binds lands together in a way which it did not of old. These separated areas were marvelously suited to be the cradles of peoples; and if we look over the map of Europe we readily note the geographic insulations which that remarkably varied land affords. Beginning with the eastern Mediterranean, we have the peninsula on which Constantinople stands--a region only partly protected from assault by its geographic peculiarities; and yet it owes to its partial separation from the mainlands on either side a large measure of local historic development. Next, we have Greece and its associated islands, which--a safe stronghold for centuries--permitted the nurture of the most marvelous life the world has ever known. Farther to the west the Italian peninsula, where during three thousand years the protecting envelope of the sea and the walls of Alps and Apennines have enabled a score of states to attain a development; where the Roman nation, absorbing, with its singular power of taking in other life, a number of primitive centers of civilization, grew to power which made it dominant in the ancient world. Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, have each profited by their isolation, and have bred diverse qualities in man and contributed motives which have interacted in the earth's history. Again, in Spain we have a region well fitted to be the cradle of a great people; to its geographic position it owed the fact that it became the seat of the most cultivated Mahometanism the world has ever known. To the Pyrenees, the mountain wall of the north, we owe in good part the limitation of that Mussulman invasion and the protection of central Europe from its forward movement, until luxury and half-faith had sapped its energies. Going northward, we find in the region of Normandy the place of growth of that fierce but strong folk, the ancient Scandinavians, who, transplanted there, held their ground, and grew until they were strong enough to conquer Britain and give it a large share of the quality which belongs to our own state. To a trifling geographic accident we owe the isolation of Great Britain from the European continent; and all the marvelous history of the English folk, as we all know, hangs upon the existence of that narrow strip of sea between the Devon coast and the kindred lowlands of northern France. East of Britain lie two peninsulas which have been the cradle of very important peoples. That of Sweden and Norway is the result of mountain development; that of Denmark appears to be in the main the product of glacial and marine erosion, differing in its non-mountainous origin from all the other peninsulas and islands of the European border. Thus on the periphery of Europe we have at least a dozen geographical isolated areas, sufficiently large and well separated from the rest of the world to make them the seats of independent social life. The interior of the country has several similarly, though less perfectly, detached areas. Of these the most important lie fenced within the highlands of the Alps. In that extensive system of mountain disturbances we have the geographical conditions which most favor the development of peculiar divisions of men, and which guard such cradled peoples from the destruction which so often awaits them on the plains. Thus, while the folk of the European lowlands have been overrun by the successive tides of invasion, their qualities confused, and their succession of social life interrupted, Switzerland has to a great extent, by its mountain walls, protected its people from the troubles to which their lowland neighbors have been subjected. The result is that within an area not twice as large as Massachusetts we find a marvelous diversity of folk, as is shown by the variety in physical aspect, moral quality, language, and creed in the several important valleys and other divisions of that complicated topography. After a race has been formed and bred to certain qualities within a limited field, after it has come to possess a certain body of characteristics which gives it its particular stamp, the importance of the original cradle passes away. There is something very curious in the permanence of race conditions after they have been fixed for a thousand years or so in a people. When the assemblage of physical and mental motives are combined in a body of country folk, they may endure under circumstances in which they could not have originated; thus, even in our domesticated animals and plants, we find that varieties created under favorable conditions, obtaining their inheritances in suitable conditions, may then flourish in many conditions of environment in which they could not by any chance have originated. The barnyard creatures of Europe, with their established qualities, may be taken to Australia, and there retain their nature for many generations; even where the form falls away from the parent stock, the decline is generally slow and may not for a great time become apparent. This fixity of race characteristics has enabled the several national varieties of men to go forth from their nurseries, carrying the qualities bred in their earlier conditions through centuries of life in other climes. The Gothic blood of Italy and of Spain still keeps much of its parent strength; the Aryan's of India, though a world apart in its conditions from those which gave it character in its cradle, is still, in many of its qualities, distinctly akin to that of the home people. Moor, Hun and Turk--all the numerous folk we find in the present condition of the world so far from their cradle-lands--are still to a great extent what their primitive nurture made them. On this rigidity which comes to mature races in the lower life as well as in man, depends the vigor with which they do their appointed work. 2. Geographical Isolation and Maritime Contact[113] Greece, considering its limited total extent, offers but little motive, and still less of convenient means, for internal communication among its various inhabitants. Each village or township occupying its plain with the inclosing mountains, supplied its own main wants, whilst the transport of commodities by land was sufficiently difficult to discourage greatly any regular commerce with neighbors. In so far as the face of the interior country was concerned, it seemed as if nature had been disposed from the beginning to keep the population of Greece socially and politically disunited by providing so many hedges of separation and so many boundaries, generally hard, sometimes impossible, to overleap. One special motive to intercourse, however, arose out of this very geographical constitution of the country, and its endless alternation of mountain and valley. The difference of climate and temperature between the high and low grounds is very great; the harvest is secured in one place before it is ripe in another, and the cattle find during the heat of summer shelter and pasture on the hills, at a time when the plains are burnt up. The practice of transferring them from the mountains to the plain according to the change of season, which subsists still as it did in ancient times, is intimately connected with the structure of the country, and must from the earliest period have brought about communication among the otherwise disunited villages. Such difficulties, however, in the internal transit by land were to a great extent counteracted by the large proportion of coast and the accessibility of the country by sea. The prominences and indentations in the line of Grecian coast are hardly less remarkable than the multiplicity of elevations and depressions which everywhere mark the surface. There was no part of Greece proper which could be considered as out of reach of the sea, while most parts of it were convenient and easy of access. As the only communication between them was maritime, so the sea, important even if we look to Greece proper exclusively, was the sole channel for transmitting ideas and improvements, as well as for maintaining sympathies--social, political, religious, and literary--throughout these outlying members of the Hellenic aggregate. The ancient philosophers and legislators were deeply impressed with the contrast between an inland and a maritime city: in the former, simplicity and uniformity of life, tenacity of ancient habits and dislike of what is new or foreign, great force of exclusive sympathy and narrow range both of objects and ideas; in the latter, variety and novelty of sensations, expansive imagination, toleration, and occasional preference for extraneous customs, greater activity of the individual and corresponding mutability of the state. This distinction stands prominent in the many comparisons instituted between the Athens of Periclês and the Athens of the earlier times down to Solon. Both Plato and Aristotle dwell upon it emphatically--and the former especially, whose genius conceived the comprehensive scheme of prescribing beforehand and insuring in practice the whole course of individual thought and feeling in his imaginary community, treats maritime communication, if pushed beyond the narrowest limits, as fatal to the success and permanence of any wise scheme of education. Certain it is that a great difference of character existed between those Greeks who mingled much in maritime affairs and those who did not. The Arcadian may stand as a type of the pure Grecian landsman, with his rustic and illiterate habits--his diet of sweet chestnuts, barley cakes, and pork (as contrasted with the fish which formed the chief seasoning for the bread of an Athenian)--his superior courage and endurance--his reverence for Lacedaemonian headship as an old and customary influence--his sterility of intellect and imagination as well as his slackness in enterprise--his unchangeable rudeness of relations with the gods, which led him to scourge and prick Pan if he came back empty-handed from the chase; while the inhabitant of Phokaea or Miletus exemplifies the Grecian mariner, eager in search of gain--active, skilful, and daring at sea, but inferior in steadfast bravery on land--more excitable in imagination as well as more mutable in character--full of pomp and expense in religious manifestations toward the Ephesian Artemis or the Apollo of Branchidae: with a mind more open to the varieties of Grecian energy and to the refining influences of Grecian civilization. The configuration of the Grecian territory, so like in many respects to that of Switzerland, produced two effects of great moment upon the character and history of the people. In the first place, it materially strengthened their powers of defense: it shut up the country against those invasions from the interior which successively subjugated all their continental colonies; and it at the same time rendered each fraction more difficult to be attacked by the rest, so as to exercise a certain conservative influence in assuring the tenure of actual possessors: for the pass of Thermopylae between Thessaly and Phokis, that of Kithaeron between Boeotia and Attica, or the mountainous range of Oneion and Geraneia along the Isthmus of Corinth, were positions which an inferior number of brave men could hold against a much greater force of assailants. But, in the next place, while it tended to protect each section of Greeks from being conquered, it also kept them politically disunited and perpetuated their separate autonomy. It fostered that powerful principle of repulsion, which disposed even the smallest township to constitute itself a political unit apart from the rest, and to resist all idea of coalescence with others, either amicable or compulsory. To a modern reader, accustomed to large political aggregations, and securities for good government through the representative system, it requires a certain mental effort to transport himself back to a time when even the smallest town clung so tenaciously to its right of self-legislation. Nevertheless, such was the general habit and feeling of the ancient world, throughout Italy, Sicily, Spain, and Gaul. Among the Hellens it stands out more conspicuously, for several reasons--first, because they seem to have pushed the multiplication of autonomous units to an extreme point, seeing that even islands not larger than Peparethos and Amorgos had two or three separate city communities; secondly, because they produced, for the first time in the history of mankind, acute systematic thinkers on matters of government, amongst all of whom the idea of the autonomous city was accepted as the indispensable basis of political speculation; thirdly, because this incurable subdivision proved finally the cause of their ruin, in spite of pronounced intellectual superiority over their conquerors; and lastly, because incapacity of political coalescence did not preclude a powerful and extensive sympathy between the inhabitants of all the separate cities, with a constant tendency to fraternize for numerous purposes, social, religious, recreative, intellectual, and aesthetical. For these reasons, the indefinite multiplication of self-governing towns, though in truth a phenomenon common to ancient Europe as contrasted with the large monarchies of Asia, appears more marked among the ancient Greeks than elsewhere; and there cannot be any doubt that they owe it, in a considerable degree, to the multitude of insulating boundaries which the configuration of their country presented. Nor is it rash to suppose that the same causes may have tended to promote that unborrowed intellectual development for which they stand so conspicuous. General propositions respecting the working of climate and physical agencies upon character are indeed treacherous; for our knowledge of the globe is now sufficient to teach us that heat and cold, mountain and plain, sea and land, moist and dry atmosphere, are all consistent with the greatest diversities of resident men: moreover, the contrast between the population of Greece itself, for the seven centuries preceding the Christian era, and the Greeks of more modern times, is alone enough to inculcate reserve in such speculations. Nevertheless we may venture to note certain improving influences, connected with their geographical position, at a time when they had no books to study, and no more advanced predecessors to imitate. We may remark, first, that their position made them at once mountaineers and mariners, thus supplying them with great variety of objects, sensations, and adventures; next, that each petty community, nestled apart amidst its own rocks, was sufficiently severed from the rest to possess an individual life and attributes of its own, yet not so far as to subtract it from the sympathies of the remainder; so that an observant Greek, commercing with a great diversity of half-countrymen, whose language he understood, and whose idiosyncrasies he could appreciate, had access to a larger mass of social and political experience than any other man in so unadvanced an age could personally obtain. The Phoenician, superior to the Greek on shipboard, traversed wider distances and saw a greater number of strangers, but had not the same means of intimate communion with a multiplicity of fellows in blood and language. His relations, confined to purchase and sale, did not comprise that mutuality of action and reaction which pervaded the crowd at a Grecian festival. The scene which here presented itself was a mixture of uniformity and variety highly stimulating to the observant faculties of a man of genius--who at the same time, if he sought to communicate his own impressions, or to act upon this mingled and diverse audience, was forced to shake off what was peculiar to his own town or community, and to put forth matter in harmony with the feelings of all. It is thus that we may explain, in part, that penetrating apprehension of human life and character, and that power of touching sympathies common to all ages and nations, which surprises us so much in the unlettered authors of the old epic. Such periodical intercommunion of brethren habitually isolated from each other was the only means then open of procuring for the bard a diversified range of experience and a many-colored audience; and it was to a great degree the result of geographical causes. Perhaps among other nations such facilitating causes might have been found, yet without producing any results comparable to the Iliad and Odyssey. But Homer was nevertheless dependent upon the conditions of his age, and we can at least point out those peculiarities in early Grecian society without which Homeric excellence would never have existed--the geographical position is one, the language another. 3. Isolation as an Explanation of National Differences[114] To decide between race and environment as the efficient cause of any social phenomenon is a matter of singular interest at this time. A school of sociological writers, dazzled by the recent brilliant discoveries in European ethnology, show a decided inclination to sink the racial explanation up to the handle in every possible phase of social life in Europe. It must be confessed that there is provocation for it. So persistent have the physical characteristics of the people shown themselves that it is not surprising to find theories of a corresponding inheritance of mental attributes in great favor. This racial school of social philosophers derives much of its data from French sources. For this reason, and also because our anthropological knowledge of that country is more complete than for any other part of Europe, we shall confine our attention primarily to France. In the unattractive upland areas of isolation is the Alpine broad-headed race common to central Europe. At the north, extending down in a broad belt diagonally as far as Limoges and along the coast of Brittany, there is intermixture with the blond, long-headed Teutonic race; while along the southern coast, penetrating up the Rhone Valley, is found the extension of the equally long-headed but brunet Mediterranean stock. These ethnic facts correspond to physical ones; three areas of geographical isolation are distinct centers of distribution of the Alpine race. The organization of the family is the surest criterion of the stage of social evolution attained by a people. No other phase of human association is so many-sided, so fundamental, so pregnant for the future. For this reason we may properly begin our study by an examination of a phenomenon which directly concerns the stability of the domestic institution--viz., divorce. What are the facts as to its distribution in France? Marked variations between different districts occur. Paris is at one extreme; Corsica, as always, at the other. Of singular interest to us is the parallel which at once appears between this distribution of divorce and that of head form. The areas of isolation peopled by the Alpine race are characterized by almost complete absence of legal severance of domestic relations between husband and wife. Do the facts instanced above have any ethnic significance? Do they mean that the Alpine type, as a race, holds more tenaciously than does the Teuton to its family traditions, resenting thereby the interference of the state in its domestic institutions? A foremost statistical authority, Jacques Bertillon, has devoted considerable space to proving that some relation between the two exists. Confronted by the preceding facts, his explanation is this: that the people of the southern departments, inconstant perhaps and fickle, nevertheless are quickly pacified after a passionate outbreak of any kind. Husband and wife may quarrel, but the estrangement is dissipated before recourse to the law can take place. On the other hand, the Norman peasant, Teutonic by race, cold and reserved, nurses his grievances for a long time; they abide with him, smoldering but persistent. "Words and even blows terminate quarrels quickly in the south; in the north they are settled by the judge." From similar comparisons in other European countries, M. Bertillon draws the final conclusion that the Teutonic race betrays a singular preference for this remedy for domestic ills. It becomes for him an ethnic trait. Another social phenomenon has been laid at the door of the Teutonic race of northern Europe; one which even more than divorce is directly the concomitant of modern intellectual and economic progress. We refer to suicide. Morselli devotes a chapter of his interesting treatise upon this subject to proving that "the purer the German race--that is to say, the stronger the Germanism (e.g., Teutonism) of a country--the more it reveals in its psychical character an extraordinary propensity to self-destruction." Consider for a moment the relative frequency of suicide with reference to the ethnic composition of France. The parallel between the two is almost exact in every detail. There are again our three areas of Alpine racial occupation--Savoy, Auvergne, and Brittany--in which suicide falls annually below seventy-five per million inhabitants. There, again, is the Rhone Valley and the broad diagonal strip from Paris to Bordeaux, characterized alike by strong infusion of Teutonic traits and relative frequency of the same social phenomenon. Divorce and suicide will serve as examples of the mode of proof adopted for tracing a number of other social phenomena to an ethnic origin. Thus Lapouge attributes the notorious depopulation of large areas in France to the sterility incident upon intermixture between the several racial types of which the population is constituted. This he seeks to prove from the occurrence of a decreasing birth-rate in all the open, fertile districts where the Teutonic element has intermingled with the native population. Because wealth happens to be concentrated in the fertile areas of Teutonic occupation, it is again assumed that this coincidence demonstrates either a peculiar acquisitive aptitude in this race or else a superior measure of frugality. By this time our suspicions are aroused. The argument is too simple. Its conclusions are too far-reaching. By this we do not mean to deny the facts of geographical distribution in the least. It is only the validity of the ethnic explanation which we deny. We can do better for our races than even its best friends along such lines of proof. With the data at our disposition there is no end to the racial attributes which we might saddle upon our ethnic types. Thus, it would appear that the Alpine type in its sterile areas of isolation was the land-hungry one described by Zola in his powerful novels. For, roughly speaking, individual land-holdings are larger in them on the average than among the Teutonic populations. Peasant proprietorship is more common also; there are fewer tenant farmers. Crime in the two areas assumes a different aspect. We find that among populations of Alpine type, in the isolated uplands, offenses against the person predominate in the criminal calendar. In the Seine basin, along the Rhone Valley, wherever the Teuton is in evidence, on the other hand, there is less respect for property; so that offenses against the person, such as assault, murder, and rape, give place to embezzlements, burglary, and arson. It might just as well be argued that the Teuton shows a predilection for offenses against property; the native Celt an equal propensity for crimes against the person. Appeal to the social geography of other countries, wherein the ethnic balance of power is differently distributed, may be directed against almost any of the phenomena we have instanced in France as seemingly of racial derivation. In the case either of suicide or divorce, if we turn from France to Italy or Germany, we instantly perceive all sorts of contradictions. The ethnic type, which is so immune from propensity to self-destruction or domestic disruption in France, becomes in Italy most prone to either mode of escape from temporary earthly ills. For each phenomenon culminates in frequency in the northern half of the latter country, stronghold of the Alpine race. Nor is there an appreciable infusion of Teutonism, physically speaking, herein, to account for the change of heart. Of course, it might be urged that this merely shows that the Mediterranean race of southern Italy is as much less inclined to the phenomenon than the Alpine race in these respects, as it in turn lags behind the Teuton. For it must be confessed that even in Italy neither divorce nor suicide is so frequent anywhere as in Teutonic northern France. Well, then, turn to Germany. Compare its two halves in these respects again. The northern half of the empire is most purely Teutonic by race; the southern is not distinguishable ethnically, as we have sought to prove, from central France. Bavaria, Baden, and Würtemberg are scarcely more Teutonic by race than Auvergne. Do we find differences in suicide, for example, following racial boundaries here? Far from it; for Saxony is its culminating center; and Saxony, as we know, is really half-Slavic at heart, as is also eastern Prussia. Suicide should be most frequent in Schleswig-Holstein and Hanover, if racial causes were appreciably operative. The argument, in fact, falls to pieces of its own weight, as Durkheim has shown. His conclusion is thus stated: "If the Germans are more addicted to suicide, it is not because of the blood in their veins, but of the civilization in which they have been raised." A summary view of the class of social phenomena seemingly characteristic of the distinct races in France, if we extend our field of vision to cover all Europe, suggests an explanation for the curious coincidences and parallelisms noted above, which is the exact opposite of the racial one. Our theory, then, is this: that most of the social phenomena we have noted as peculiar to the areas occupied by the Alpine type are the necessary outcome, not of racial proclivities but rather of the geographical and social isolation characteristic of the habitat of this race. The ethnic type is still pure for the very same reason that social phenomena are primitive. Wooden ploughs pointed with stone, blood revenge, an undiminished birth-rate, and relative purity of physical type are all alike derivatives from a common cause, isolation, directly physical and coincidently social. We discover, primarily, an influence of environment where others perceive phenomena of ethnic inheritance. 4. Natural versus Vicinal Location in National Development[115] In contradistinction to continental and intercontinental location, anthropogeography recognizes two other narrower meanings of the term. The innate mobility of the human race, due primarily to the eternal food-quest and increase of numbers, leads a people to spread out over a territory till they reach the barriers which nature has set up, or meet the frontiers of other tribes and nations. Their habitat or their specific geographic location is thus defined by natural features of mountain, desert, and sea, or by the neighbors whom they are unable to displace, or more often by both. A people has, therefore, a twofold location, an immediate one, based upon their actual territory, and a mediate or vicinal one, growing out of its relations to the countries nearest them. The first is a question of the land under their feet; the other, of the neighbors about them. The first or natural location embodies the complex of local geographic conditions which furnish the basis for their tribal or national existence. This basis may be a peninsula, island, archipelago, an oasis, an arid steppe, a mountain system, or a fertile lowland. The stronger the vicinal location, the more dependent is the people upon the neighboring states, but the more potent the influence which it can, under certain circumstances, exert upon them. Witness Germany in relation to Holland, France, Austria, and Poland. The stronger the natural location, on the other hand, the more independent is the people and the more strongly marked is the national character. This is exemplified in the people of mountain lands like Switzerland, Abyssinia, and Nepal; of peninsulas like Korea, Spain, and Scandinavia; and of islands like England and Japan. Today we stand amazed at that strong primordial brand of the Japanese character which nothing can blur or erase. Clearly defined natural locations, in which barriers of mountains and sea draw the boundaries and guarantee some degree of isolation, tend to hold their people in a calm embrace, to guard them against outside interference and infusion of foreign blood, and thus to make them develop the national genius in such direction as the local geographic conditions permit. In the unceasing movements which have made up most of the historic and prehistoric life of the human race, in their migrations and counter-migrations, their incursions, retreats, and expansions over the face of the earth, vast unfenced areas, like the open lowlands of Russia and the grasslands of Africa, present the picture of a great thoroughfare swept by pressing throngs. Other regions, more secluded, appear as quiet nooks, made for a temporary halt or a permanent rest. Here some part of the passing human flow is caught as in a vessel and held till it crystallizes into a nation. These are the conspicuous areas of race characterization. The development of the various ethnic and political offspring of the Roman Empire in the naturally defined areas of Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and France illustrates the process of national differentiation which goes on in such secluded-locations. III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS 1. Isolation in Anthropogeography and Biology A systematic treatise upon isolation as a sociological concept remains to be written. The idea of isolation as a tool of investigation has been fashioned with more precision in geography and in biology than in sociology. Research in human geography has as its object the study of man in his relations to the earth. Students of civilization, like Montesquieu and Buckle, sought to explain the culture and behavior of peoples as the direct result of the physical environment. Friedrich Ratzel with his "thorough training as a naturalist, broad reading, and travel" and above all, his comprehensive knowledge of ethnology, recognized the importance of direct effects, such as cultural isolation. Jean Brunhes, by the selection of small natural units, his so-called "islands," has made intensive studies of isolated groups in the oases of the deserts of the Sub and of the Mzab, and in the high mountains of the central Andes. Biology indicates isolation as one of the factors in the origin of the species. Anthropology derives the great races of mankind--the Caucasian, the Ethiopian, the Malay, the Mongolian, and the Indian--from geographical separation following an assumed prehistoric dispersion. A German scholar, Dr. Georg Gerland, has prepared an atlas which plots differences in physical traits, such as skin color and hair texture, as indicating the geographical distribution of races. 2. Isolation and Social Groups Anthropogeographical and biological investigations have proceeded upon the assumption, implicit or explicit, that the geographic environment, and the physical and mental traits of races and individuals, _determine_ individual and collective behavior. What investigations in human geography and heredity actually demonstrate is that the geographic environment and the original nature of man _condition_ the culture and conduct of groups and of persons. The explanations of isolation, so far as it affects social life, which have gained currency in the writings of anthropologists and geographers, are therefore too simple. Sociologists are able to take into account forms of isolation not considered by the students of the physical environment and of racial inheritance. Studies of folkways, mores, culture, nationality, the products of a historical or cultural process, disclose types of social contact which transcend the barriers of geographical or racial separation, and reveal social forms of isolation which prevent communication where there is close geographical contact or common racial bonds. The literature upon isolated peoples ranges from investigations of arrest of cultural development as, for example, the natives of Australia, the Mountain Whites of the southern states, or the inhabitants of Pitcairn Island to studies of hermit nations, of caste systems as in India, or of outcast groups such as feeble-minded "tribes" or hamlets, fraternities of criminals, and the underworld of commercialized prostitution. Special research in dialects, in folklore, and in provincialism shows how spatial isolation fixes differences in speech, attitudes, folkways, and mores which, in turn, enforce isolation even when geographic separation has disappeared. The most significant contribution to the study of isolation from the sociological standpoint has undoubtedly been made by Fishberg in a work entitled _The Jews, a Study of Race and Environment_. The author points out that the isolation of the Jew has been the result of neither physical environment nor of race, but of social barriers. "Judaism has been preserved throughout the long years of Israel's dispersion by two factors: its separative ritualism, which prevented close and intimate contact with non-Jews, and the iron laws of the Christian theocracies of Europe which encouraged and enforced 'isolation.'"[116] 3. Isolation and Personality Philosophers, mystics, and religious enthusiasts have invariably stressed privacy for meditation, retirement for ecstatic communion with God, and withdrawal from the contamination of the world. In 1784-86 Zimmermann wrote an elaborate essay in which he dilates upon "the question whether it is easier to live virtuously in society or in solitude," considering in Part I "the influence of occasional retirement upon the mind and the heart" and in Part II "the pernicious influence of a total exclusion from society upon the mind and the heart." Actual research upon the effect of isolation upon personal development has more of future promise than of present accomplishment. The literature upon cases of feral men is practically all of the anecdotal type with observations by persons untrained in the modern scientific method. One case, however, "the savage of Aveyron" was studied intensively by Itard, the French philosopher and otologist who cherished high hopes of his mental and social development. After five years spent in a patient and varied but futile attempt at education, he confessed his bitter disappointment. "Since my pains are lost and efforts fruitless, take yourself back to your forest and primitive tastes; or if your new wants make you dependent on society, suffer the penalty of being useless, and go to Bicêtre, there to die in wretchedness." Only second in importance to the cases of feral men are the investigations which have been made of the results of solitary confinement. Morselli, in his well-known work on _Suicide_, presented statistics showing that self-destruction was many times as frequent among convicts under the system of absolute isolation as compared with that of association during imprisonment. Studies of Auburn prison in New York, of Mountjoy in England, and penal institutions on the continent show the effects of solitary incarceration in the increase of cases of suicides, insanity, invalidism, and death. Beginnings have been made in child study, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis of the effects of different types of isolation upon personal development. Some attention has been given to the study of effects upon mentality and personality of physical defects such as deaf-mutism and blindness. Students of the so-called "morally defective child," that is the child who appears deficient in emotional and sympathetic responses, suggest as a partial explanation the absence in infancy and early childhood of intimate and sympathetic contacts with the mother. An investigation not yet made but of decisive bearing upon this point will be a comparative study of children brought up in families with those reared in institutions. Psychiatry and psychoanalysis in probing mental life and personality have related certain mental and social abnormalities to isolation from social contact. Studies of paranoia and of egocentric personalities have resulted in the discovery of the only or favorite child complex. The exclusion of the boy or girl in the one-child family from the give and take of democratic relations with brothers and sisters results, according to the theory advanced, in a psychopathic personality of the self-centered type. A contributing cause of homosexuality, it is said by psychoanalysts, is the isolation during childhood from usual association with individuals of the same sex. Research in dementia praecox discloses a symptom and probably a cause of this mental malady to be the withdrawal of the individual from normal social contacts and the substitution of an imaginary for a real world of persons and events. Dementia praecox has been related by one psychoanalyst to the "shut-in" type of personality. The literature on the subject of privacy in its relation to personal development is fragmentary but highly promising for future research. The study of the introspective type of personality suggests that self-analysis is the counterpart of the inhibition of immediate and impulsive self-expression in social relations. Materials for an understanding of the relation of retirement and privacy to the aesthetic, moral, and creative life of the person may be found in the lives of hermits, inventors, and religious leaders; in the studies of seclusion, prayer, and meditation; and in research upon taboo, prestige, and attitudes of superiority and inferiority. BIBLIOGRAPHY: MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF ISOLATION I. CHARACTERISTIC SENTIMENTS AND ATTITUDES OF THE ISOLATED PERSON (1) Zimmermann, Johann G. _Solitude._ Or the effects of occasional retirement on the mind, the heart, general society. Translated from the German. London, 1827. (2) Canat, René. _Une forme du mal du siècle._ Du sentiment de la solitude morale chez les romantiques et les parnassiens. Paris, 1904. (3) Goltz, E. von der. _Das Gebet in der aeltesten Christenheit._ Leipzig, 1901. (4) Strong, Anna L. _A Consideration of Prayer from the Standpoint of Social Psychology._ Chicago, 1908. (5) Hoch, A. "On Some of the Mental Mechanisms in Dementia Praecox," _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, V (1910), 255-73. [A study of the isolated person.] (6) Bohannon, E. W. "Only Child," _Pedagogical Seminary_, V (1897-98), 475-96. (7) Brill, A. A. _Psychanalysis._ Its theories and practical application. "The Only or Favorite Child in Adult Life," pp. 253-65. 2d rev. ed. Philadelphia and London, 1914. (8) Neter, Eugen. _Das einzige Kind und seine Erziehung._ Ein ernstes Mahnwort an Eltern und Erzieher. München, 1914. (9) Whiteley, Opal S. _The Story of Opal._ Boston, 1920. (10) Delbrück, A. _Die pathologische Lüge und die psychisch abnormen Schwindler._ Stuttgart, 1891. (11) Healy, Wm. _Pathological Lying._ Boston, 1915. (12) Dostoévsky, F. _The House of the Dead; or, Prison Life in Siberia._ Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett. New York, 1915. (13) Griffiths, Arthur. _Secrets of the Prison House, or Gaol Studies and Sketches._ I, 262-80. London, 1894. (14) Kingsley, Charles. _The Hermits._ London and New York, 1871. (15) Baring-Gould, S. _Lives of Saints._ 16 vols. Rev. ed. Edinburgh, 1916. [See references in index to hermits.] (16) Solenberger, Alice W. _One Thousand Homeless Men._ A study of original records. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1911. II. TYPES OF ISOLATION AND TYPES OF SOCIAL GROUPS (1) Fishberg, Maurice. _The Jews._ A study of race and environment. London and New York, 1911. (2) Gummere, Amelia M. _The Quaker._ A study in costume. Philadelphia, 1901. (3) Webster, Hutton. _Primitive Secret Societies._ A study in early politics and religion. New York, 1908. (4) Heckethorn, C. W. _The Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries._ A comprehensive account of upwards of one hundred and sixty secret organizations--religious, political, and social--from the most remote ages down to the present time. 2 vols. New ed., rev. and enl. London, 1897. (5) Fosbroke, Thomas D. _British Monachism, or Manners and Customs of the Monks and Nuns of England._ London, 1817. (6) Wishart, Alfred W. _A Short History of Monks and Monasteries._ Trenton, N.J., 1900. [Chap. i, pp. 17-70, gives an account of the monk as a type of human nature.] III. GEOGRAPHICAL ISOLATION AND CULTURAL AREAS (1) Ratzel, Friedrich. _Politische Geographie; oder, Die Geographie der Staaten, des Verkehres und des Krieges._ 2d. ed. München, 1903. (2) Semple, Ellen. _Influences of Geographic Environment, on the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropogeography._ Chap. xiii, "Island Peoples," pp. 409-72. New York, 1911. [Bibliography.] (3) Brunhes, Jean. _Human Geography._ An attempt at a positive classification, principles, and examples. 2d ed. Translated from the French by T. C. LeCompte. Chicago, 1920. [See especially chaps. vi, vii, and viii, pp. 415-569.] (4) Vallaux, Camille. _La Mer._ (Géographie Sociale.) Populations maritimes, migrations, pêches, commerce, domination de la mer, Chap. iii, "Les isles et l'insularité." Paris, 1908. (5) Gerland, Georg. _Atlas der Völkerkunde._ Gotha, 1892. [Indicates the geographical distribution of differences in skin color, hair form, clothing, customs, languages, etc.] (6) Ripley, William Z. _The Races of Europe._ A sociological study. New York, 1899. (7) Campbell, John C. _The Southern Highlander and His Homeland._ New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1921. [Bibliography.] (8) Barrow, Sir John. _A Description of Pitcairn's Island and Its Inhabitants._ With an authentic account of the mutiny of the ship "Bounty" and of the subsequent fortunes of the mutineers. New York, 1832. (9) Routledge, Mrs. Scoresby. _The Mystery of Easter Island._ The story of an expedition. Chap. xx, "Pitcairn Island." London, 1919. (10) Galpin, Charles J. _Rural Life._ New York, 1918. IV. LANGUAGE FRONTIERS AND NATIONALITY (1) Dominian, Leon. _The Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe._ New York, 1917. [Bibliography, pp. 348-56.] (2) Auerbach, Bertrand. _Les Races et les nationalités en Autriche-Hongrie._ 2d rev. ed. Paris, 1917. (3) Bernhard, L. _Das polnische Gemeinwesen im preussischen Staat._ Die Polenfrage. Leipzig, 1910. (4) Bourgoing, P. de. _Les guerres d'idiome et de nationalité._ Tableaux, esquisses, et souvenirs d'histoire contemporaine. Paris, 1849. (5) _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. XI, "The Growth of Nationalities." Cambridge, 1909. (6) Meillet, A. "Les Langues et les Nationalités," _Scientia_, Vol. XVIII, (Sept., 1915), pp. 192-201. (7) Pfister, Ch. "La limite de la langue française et de la langue allemande en Alsace-Lorraine," Considérations historiques. _Bull. Soc. Géogr. de l'Est_, Vol. XII, 1890. (8) This, G. "Die deutsch-französische Sprachgrenze in Lothringen," _Beiträge zur Landes- und Volkskunde von Elsass-Lothringen_, Vol. I, Strassburg, 1887. (9)----. "Die deutsch-französische Sprachgrenze in Elsass," _ibid._, 1888. V. DIALECTS AS A FACTOR IN ISOLATION (1) Babbitt, Eugene H. "College Words and Phrases," _Dialect Notes_, II (1900-1904), 3-70. (2)----. "The English of the Lower Classes in New York City and Vicinity," _Dialect Notes_, Vol. I, Part ix, 1896. (3)----. "The Geography of the Great Languages," _World's Work_, Feb. 15 (1907-8), 9903-7. (4) Churchill, William. _Beach-la-mar: the Jargon or Trade Speech of the Western Pacific._ Washington, 1911. (5) Dana, Richard H., Jr. _A Dictionary of Sea Terms._ London, 1841. (6) Elliott, A.M. "Speech-Mixture in French Canada: English and French," _American Journal of Philology_, X (1889), 133. (7) Flaten, Nils. "Notes on American-Norwegian with a Vocabulary," _Dialect Notes_, II (1900-1904), 115-26. (8) Harrison, James A. "Negro-English," _Transactions and Proceedings American Philological Association_, XVI (1885), Appendix, pp. xxxi-xxxiii. (9) Hempl, George. "Language-Rivalry and Speech-Differentiation in the Case of Race-Mixture," _Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association_. XXIX (1898), 31-47. (10) Knortz, Karl. _Amerikanische Redensarten und Volksgebräuche._ Leipzig, 1907. (11) Letzner, Karl. _Wörterbuch der englischen Volkssprache Australiens und der englischen Mischsprachen._ Halle, 1891. (12) Pettman, Charles. _Africanderisms._ A glossary of South African colloquial words and phrases and of place and other names. London and New York, 1913. (13) Ralph, Julian. "The Language of the Tenement-Folk," _Harper's Weekly_, XLI (Jan. 23, 1897), 90. (14) Skeat, Walter W. _English Dialects from the Eighth Century to the Present Day_. Cambridge, 1911. (15) Yule, Henry, and Burnell, A. C. _Hobson-Jobson._ A glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical, and discursive; new ed. by Wm. Crooke, London, 1903. VI. PHYSICAL DEFECT AS A FORM OF ISOLATION (1) Bell, Alexander G. "Memoir upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race." _National Academy of Sciences, Memoirs_, II, 177-262. Washington, D.C., 1884. (2) Fay, Edward A. _Marriages of the Deaf in America._ An inquiry concerning the results of marriages of the deaf in America. Washington, D.C., 1893. (3) Desagher, Maurice. "La timidité chez les aveugles," _Revue philosophique_, LXXVI (1913), 269-74. (4) Best, Harry. _The Deaf._ Their position in society and the provision for their education in the United States. New York, 1914. (5) ----. _The Blind._ Their condition and the work being done for them in the United States. New York, 1919. VII. FERAL MEN (1) Rauber, August. _Homo Sapiens Ferus_; oder, Die Zustände der Verwilderten und ihre Bedeutung für Wissenschaft, Politik, und Schule. Leipzig, 1885. (2) Seguin, Edward. _Idiocy and Its Treatment by the Physiological Method._ Pp. 14-23. New York, 1866. (3) Bonnaterre, J. P. _Notice historique sur le sauvage de l'Aveyron, et sur quelques autres individus qu'on a trouvés dans les forêts à différentes époques._ Paris, 1800. (4) Itard, Jean E. M. G. _De l'éducation d'un homme sauvage, et des premiers developpemens physiques et moraux du jeune sauvage de l'Aveyron._ Pp. 45-46. Paris, 1801. (5) Feuerbach, Paul J. A. von. _Caspar Hauser._ An account of an individual kept in a dungeon from early childhood, to about the age of seventeen. Translated from the German by H. G. Linberg. London, 1834. (6) Stanhope, Philip Henry [4th Earl]. _Tracts relating to Caspar Hauser._ Translated from the original German. London, 1836. (7) Lang, Andrew. _Historical Mysteries._ London, 1904. (8) Tredgold, A. F. _Mental Deficiency._ "Isolation Amentia," pp. 297-305. 3d rev. ed. New York, 1920. TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES 1. Isolation as a Condition of Originality. 2. The Relation of Social Contact and of Isolation to Historic Inventions and Discoveries, as the Law of Gravitation, Mendelian Inheritance, the Electric Light, etc. 3. Isolated Types: the Hermit, the Mystic, the Prophet, the Stranger, and the Saint. 4. Isolation, Segregation, and the Physically Defective: as the Blind, the Deaf-Mute, the Physically Handicapped. 5. Isolated Areas and Cultural Retardation: the Southern Mountaineer, Pitcairn Islanders, the Australian Aborigines. 6. "Moral" Areas, Isolation, and Segregation: City Slums, Vice Districts, "Breeding-places of Crime." 7. The Controlled versus the Natural process of Segregation of the Feeble-minded. 8. Isolation and Insanity. 9. Privacy in the Home. 10. Isolation and Prestige. 11. Isolation as a Defence against the Invasion of Personality. 12. Nationalism as a Form of Isolation. 13. Biological and Social Immunity: or Biological Immunity from Infection, Personal or Group Immunity against Social Contagion. 14. The Only Child. 15. The Pathological Liar Considered from the Point of View of Isolation. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Is the distinction between isolation and social contact relative or absolute? 2. What illustrations of the various forms of isolation, spatial, structural, habitudinal, and psychical, occur to you? 3. By what process does isolation cause racial differentiation? 4. What is the relation of endogamy and exogamy (a) to isolation, and (b) to the establishment of a successful stock or race? 5. In what ways do the Jews and the Americans as racial types illustrate the effects of isolation and of contact? 6. What do you understand to be Bacon's definition of solitude? 7. What is the point in the saying "A great town is a great solitude"? 8. What is the sociology of the creation by a solitary person of imaginary companions? 9. Under what conditions does an individual prefer solitude to society? Give illustrations. 10. What are the devices used in prayer to secure isolation? 11. "Prayer has value in that it develops the essentially social form of personal self-realization." Explain. 12. What are the interrelations of social contact and of privacy in the development of the ideal self? 13. What do you understand by the relation of erudition to originality? 14. In what ways does isolation (a) promote, (b) impede, originality? What other factors beside isolation are involved in originality? 15. What is the value of privacy? 16. What was the value of the monasteries? 17. What conclusions do you derive from the study of the cases of feral men? Do these cases bear out the theory of Aristotle in regard to the effect of isolation upon the individual? 18. What is the significance of Helen Keller's account of how she broke through the barriers of isolation? 19. What were the mental effects of solitude described by Hudson? How do you explain the difference between the descriptions of the effect of solitude in the accounts given by Rousseau and by Hudson? 20. How does Galpin explain the relation of isolation to the development of the "rural mind"? 21. What are the effects of isolation upon the young man or young woman reared in the country? 22. Was Lincoln the product of isolation or of social contact? 23. To what extent are rural problems the result of isolation? 24. What do you understand by Thomas' statement, "The savage, the Negro, the peasant, the slum dwellers, and the white woman are notable sufferers by exclusion"? 25. What other of the subtler forms of isolation occur to you? 26. Is isolation to be regarded as always a disadvantage? 27. What do you understand by segregation as a process? 28. Give illustrations of groups other than those mentioned which have become segregated as a result of isolation. 29. How would you describe the process by which isolation leads to the segregation of the feeble-minded? 30. Why does a segregated group, like the feeble-minded, become an isolated group? 31. What are other illustrations of isolation resulting from segregation? 32. How would you compare Europe with the other continents with reference to number and distribution of isolated areas? 33. What do you understand to be the nature of the influence of the cradle land upon "the historical race"? 34. What illustrations from the Great War would you give of the effects (a) of central location; (b) of peripheral location? 35. How do you explain the contrast between the characteristics of the inhabitants of the Grecian inland and maritime cities? 36. To what extent may (a) the rise of the Greek city state, (b) Grecian intellectual development, and (c) the history of Greece, be interpreted in terms of geographic isolation? 37. To what extent can you explain the cultural retardation of Africa, as compared with European progress, by isolation? 38. Does race or isolation explain more adequately the following cultural differences for the several areas of France--divorce, intensity of suicide, distribution of awards, relative frequency of men of letters? 39. What is the relation of village and city emigration and immigration to isolation? 40. What is the difference between a natural and a vicinal location? 41. In what ways does isolation affect national development? 42. What is the relation of geographical position in area to literature? FOOTNOTES: [94] J. Arthur Thomson, _Heredity_, pp. 536-37. (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1908.) [95] From Francis Bacon, _Essays_, "Of Friendship." [96] Adapted from Jean Jacques Rousseau, _Letter to the President de Malesherbes, 1762_. [97] Adapted from George Albert Coe, _The Psychology of Religion_, pp. 311-18. (The University of Chicago Press, 1917.) [98] From T. Sharper Knowlson, _Originality_, pp. 173-75. (T. Werner Laurie, 1918.) [99] From Maurice H. Small, "On Some Psychical Relations of Society and Solitude," in the _Pedagogical Seminary_, VII, No. 2 (1900), 32-36. [100] _Anthropological Review_, I (London, 1863), 21 ff. [101] _All the Year_, XVIII, 302 ff. [102] _Chambers' Journal_, LIX, 579 ff. [103] _The Penny Magazine_, II, 113. [104] Wagner, _Beitragen zur philosophischen Anthropologie_; Rauber, pp. 49-55. [105] "Histoire d'une jeune fille sauvage trouvée dans les bois à l'âge de dix ans," _Magazin der Natur, Kunst, und Wissenschaft_, Leipzig, 1756, pp. 219-72; _Mercure de France_, December, 1731; Rudolphi, _Grundriss der Physiologie_, I, 25; Blumenbach, _Beiträge zur Naturgeschichte_, II, 38. [106] Adapted from Helen Keller, _The Story of My Life_, pp. 22-24. (Doubleday, Page & Co., 1917.) [107] Adapted from W. H. Hudson, "The Plains of Patagonia," _Universal Review_, VII (1890), 551-57. [108] Adapted from C. J. Galpin, _Rural Social Centers in Wisconsin_, pp. 1-3. (Wisconsin Experiment Station, Bulletin 234, 1913.) [109] Adapted from W. I. Thomas, "Race Psychology," in the _American Journal of Sociology_, XVII (1911-12), 744-47. [110] Adapted from Robert E. Park, "The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Behavior in the City Environment," in the _American Journal of Sociology_, XX (1915), 579-83. [111] Adapted from L. W. Crafts and E. A. Doll, "The Proportion of Mental Defectives among Juvenile Delinquents," in the _Journal of Delinquency_, II (1917), 123-37. [112] Adapted from N. S. Shaler, _Nature and Man in America_, pp. 151-66. (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1900.) [113] Adapted from George Grote, _History of Greece_, II, 149-57. (John Murray, 1888.) [114] From William Z. Ripley, _The Races of Europe_, pp. 515-30. (D. Appleton & Co., 1899.) [115] Adapted from Ellen C. Semple, _Influences of Geographic Environment_, pp. 132-33. (Henry Holt & Co., 1911.) [116] Fishberg, _op. cit._, p. 555. CHAPTER V SOCIAL CONTACTS I. INTRODUCTION 1. Preliminary Notions of Social Contact The fundamental social process is that of interaction. This interaction is (a) of persons with persons, and (b) of groups with groups. The simplest aspect of interaction, or its primary phase, is contact. Contact may be considered as the initial stage of interaction, and preparatory to the later stages. The phenomena of social contact require analysis before proceeding to the more difficult study of the mechanism of social interaction. "With whom am I in contact?" Common sense has in stock ready answers to this question. There is, first of all, the immediate circle of contact through the senses. Touch is the most intimate kind of contact. Face-to-face relations include, in addition to touch, visual and auditory sensations. Speech and hearing by their very nature establish a bond of contact between persons. Even in common usage, the expression "social contact" is employed beyond the limits fixed by the immediate responses of touch, sight, and hearing. Its area has expanded to include connection through all the forms of communication, i.e., language, letters, and the printed page; connection through the medium of the telephone, telegraph, radio, moving picture, etc. The evolution of the devices for communication has taken place in the fields of two senses alone, those of hearing and seeing. Touch remains limited to the field of primary association. But the newspaper with its elaborate mechanism of communication gives publicity to events in London, Moscow, and Tokio, and the motion picture unreels to our gaze scenes from distant lands and foreign peoples with all the illusion of reality. The frontiers of social contact are farther extended to the widest horizons, by commerce. The economists, for example, include in their conception of society the intricate and complex maze of relations created by the competition and co-operation of individuals and societies within the limits of a world-wide economy. This inclusion of unconscious as well as conscious reciprocal influences in the concept of social relations brings into "contact" the members of a village missionary society with the savages of the equatorial regions of Africa; or the pale-faced drug addict, with the dark-skinned Hindu laborers upon the opium fields of Benares; or the man gulping down coffee at the breakfast table, with the Java planter; the crew of the Pacific freighter and its cargo of spices with the American wholesaler and retailer in food products. In short, everyone is in a real, though concealed and devious, way in contact with every other person in the world. Contacts of this type, remote from the familiar experiences of everyday life, have reality to the intellectual and the mystic and are appreciated by the masses only when co-operation breaks down, or competition becomes conscious and passes into conflict. These three popular meanings of contacts emphasize (1) the intimacy of sensory responses, (2) the extension of contact through devices of communication based upon sight and hearing, and (3) the solidarity and interdependence created and maintained by the fabric of social life, woven as it is from the intricate and invisible strands of human interests in the process of a world-wide competition and co-operation. 2. The Sociological Concept of Contact The use of the term "contact" in sociology is not a departure from, but a development of, its customary significance. In the preceding chapter the point was made that the distinction between isolation and contact is not absolute but relative. Members of a society spatially separate, but socially in contact through sense perception and through communication of ideas, may be thereby mobilized to collective behavior. Sociological interest in this situation lies in the fact that the various kinds of social contacts between persons and groups determine behavior. The student of problems of American society, for example, realizes the necessity of understanding the mutual reactions involved in the contacts of the foreign and the native-born, of the white and the negro, and of employers and employees. In other words, contact, as the first stage of social interaction, conditions and controls the later stages of the process. It is convenient, for certain purposes, to conceive of contact in terms of space. The contacts of persons and of groups may then be plotted in units of _social distance_. This permits graphic representation of relations of sequence and of coexistence in terms both of units of separation and of contact. This spatial conception may now be applied to the explanation of the readings in social contacts. 3. Classification of the Materials In sociological literature there have grown up certain distinctions between types of social contacts. Physical contacts are distinguished from social contacts; relations within the "in-group" are perceived to be different from relations with the "out-group"; contacts of historical continuity are compared with contacts of mobility; primary contacts are set off from secondary contacts. How far and with what advantage may these distinctions be stated in spatial terms? a) _Land as a basis for social contacts._--The position of persons and peoples on the earth gives us a literal picture of the spatial conception of social contact. The cluster of homes in the Italian agricultural community suggests the difference in social life in comparison with the isolated homesteads of rural America. A gigantic spot map of the United States upon which every family would be indicated by a dot would represent schematically certain different conditions influencing group behavior in arid areas, the open country, hamlets, villages, towns, and cities. The movements of persons charted with detail sufficient to bring out variations in the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly routine, would undoubtedly reveal interesting identities and differences in the intimacy and intensity of social contacts. It would be possible and profitable to classify people with reference to the routine of their daily lives. b) _Touch as the physiological basis of social contact._--According to the spatial conception the closest contacts possible are those of touch. The physical proximity involved in tactile sensations is, however, but the symbol of the intensity of the reactions to contact. Desire and aversion for contacts, as Crawley shows in his selection, arise in the most intimate relations of human life. Love and hate, longing and disgust, sympathy and hostility increase in intensity with intimacy of association. It is a current sociological fallacy that closeness of contact results only in the growth of good will. The fact is, that with increasing contact either attraction or repulsion may be the outcome, depending upon the situation and upon factors not yet fully analyzed. Peculiar conditions of contact, as its prolonged duration, its frequent repetition, just as in the case of isolation from normal association, may lead to the inversion of the original impulses and sentiments of affection and antipathy.[117] c) _Contacts with the "in-group" and with the "out-group."_--The conception of the we-group in terms of distance is that of a group in which the solidarity of units is so complete that the movements and sentiments of all are completely regulated with reference to their interests and behavior as a group. This control by the in-group over its members makes for solidity and impenetrability in its relations with the out-group. Sumner in his _Folkways_ indicates how internal sympathetic contacts and group egotism result in double standards of behavior: good-will and co-operation within the members of the in-group, hostility and suspicion toward the out-group and its members. The essential point is perhaps best brought out by Shaler in his distinction between sympathetic and categoric contacts. He describes the transition from contacts of the out-group to those of the in-group, or from remote to intimate relations. From a distance, a person has the characteristics of his group, upon close acquaintance he reveals his individuality. d) _Historical continuity and mobility._--Historical continuity, which maintains the identity of the present with the past, implies the existence of a body of tradition which is transmitted from the older to the younger generations. Through the medium of tradition, including in that term all the learning, science, literature, and practical arts, not to speak of the great body of oral tradition which is after all a larger part of life than we imagine, the historical and cultural life is maintained. This is the meaning of the long period of childhood in man during which the younger generation is living under the care and protection of the older. When, for any reason, this contact of the younger with the older generation is interrupted--as is true in the case of immigrants--a very definite cultural deterioration frequently ensues. Contacts of mobility are those of a changing present, and measure the number and variety of the stimulations which the social life and movements--the discovery of the hour, the book of the moment, the passing fads and fashions--afford. Contacts of mobility give us novelty and news. It is through contacts of this sort that change takes place. Mobility, accordingly, measures not merely the social contacts that one gains from travel and exploration, but the stimulation and suggestions that come to us through the medium of communication, by which sentiments and ideas are put in social circulation. Through the newspaper, the common man of today participates in the social movements of his time. His illiterate forbear of yesterday, on the other hand, lived unmoved by the current of world-events outside his hamlet. The _tempo_ of modern societies may be measured comparatively by the relative perfection of devices of communication and the rapidity of the circulation of sentiments, opinions, and facts. Indeed, the efficiency of any society or of any group is to be measured not alone in terms of numbers or of material resources, but also in terms of mobility and access through communication and publicity to the common fund of tradition and culture. e) _Primary and secondary contacts._--Primary contacts are those of "intimate face-to-face association"; secondary contacts are those of externality and greater distance. A study of primary association indicates that this sphere of contact falls into two areas: one of intimacy and the other of acquaintance. In the diagram which follows, the field of primary contacts has been subdivided so that it includes (x) a circle of greater intimacy, (y) a wider circle of acquaintanceship. The completed chart would appear as shown on page 285. Primary contacts of the greatest intimacy are (a) those represented by the affections that ordinarily spring up within the family, particularly between parents and children, husband and wife; and (b) those of fellowship and affection outside the family as between lovers, bosom friends, and boon companions. These relations are all manifestations of a craving for response. These personal relationships are the nursery for the development of human nature and personality. John Watson, who studied several hundred new-born infants in the psychological laboratory, concludes that "the first few years are the all-important ones, for shaping the emotional life of the child."[118] The primary virtues and ideals of which Cooley writes so sympathetically are, for the most part, projections from family life. Certainly in these most intimate relations of life in the contacts of the family circle, in the closest friendships, personality is most severely tried, realizes its most characteristic expressions, or is most completely disorganized. [Illustration: FIG. 3 A, primary contacts; x, greater intimacy; y, acquaintanceship; B, secondary contacts] Just as the life of the family represents the contacts of touch and response, the neighborhood or the village is the natural area of primary contacts and the city the social environment of secondary contacts. In primary association individuals are in contact with each other at practically all points of their lives. In the village "everyone knows everything about everyone else." Canons of conduct are absolute, social control is omnipotent, the status of the family and the individual is fixed. In secondary association individuals are in contact with each other at only one or two points in their lives. In the city, the individual becomes anonymous; at best he is generally known in only one or two aspects of his life. Standards of behavior are relative; the old primary controls have disappeared; the new secondary instruments of discipline, necessarily formal, are for the most part crude and inefficient; the standing of the family and of the individual is uncertain and subject to abrupt changes upward or downward in the social scale. Simmel has made a brilliant contribution in his analysis of the sociological significance of "the stranger." "The stranger" in the sociological sense is the individual who unites in his social relations primary and secondary contacts. Simmel himself employs the conception of social distance in his statement of the stranger as the combination of the near and the far. It is interesting and significant to determine the different types of the union of intimacy and externality in the relations of teacher and student, physician and patient, minister and layman, lawyer and client, social worker and applicant for relief. A complete analysis of the bearing upon personal and cultural life of changes from a society based upon contacts of continuity and of primary relations to a society of increasing mobility organized around secondary contacts cannot be given here. Certain of the most obvious contrasts of the transition may, however, be stated. Increasing mobility of persons in society almost inevitably leads to change and therefore to loss of continuity. In primary groups, where social life moves slowly, there is a greater sense of continuity than in secondary groups where it moves rapidly. There is a further contrast if not conflict between direct and intimate contacts and contacts based upon communication of ideas. All sense of values, as Windelband has pointed out,[119] rests upon concrete experience, that is to say upon sense contacts. Society, to the extent that it is organized about secondary contacts, is based upon abstractions, upon science and technique. Secondary contacts of this type have only secondary values because they represent means rather than ends. Just as all behavior arises in sense impressions it must also terminate in sense impressions to realize its ends and attain its values. The effect of life in a society based on secondary contacts is to build up between the impulse and its end a world of means, to project values into the future, and to direct life toward the realization of distant hopes. The ultimate effect upon the individual as he becomes accommodated to secondary society is to find a substitute expression for his primary response in the artificial physical environment of the city. The detachment of the person from intimate, direct, and spontaneous contacts with social reality is in large measure responsible for the intricate maze of problems of urban life. The change from concrete and personal to abstract and impersonal relations in economic and social life began with the Industrial Revolution. The machine is the symbol of the monotonous routine of impersonal, unskilled, large-scale production just as the hand tool is the token of the interesting activity of personal, skilled, handicraft work. The so-called "instinct of workmanship" no longer finds expression in the anonymous standardized production of modern industry.[120] It is not in industry alone that the natural impulses of the person for response, recognition, and self-expression are balked. In social work, politics, religion, art, and sport the individual is represented now by proxies where formerly he participated in person. All the forms of communal activity in which all persons formerly shared have been taken over by professionals. The great mass of men in most of the social activities of modern life are no longer actors, but spectators. The average man of the present time has been relegated by the influence of the professional politician to the rôle of taxpayer. In social work organized charity has come between the giver and the needy. In these and other manifold ways the artificial conditions of city life have deprived the person of most of the natural outlets for the expression of his interests and his energies. To this fact is to be attributed in large part the restlessness, the thirst for novelty and excitement so characteristic of modern life. This emotional unrest has been capitalized by the newspapers, commercialized recreations, fashion, and agitation in their appeal to the sensations, the emotions, and the instincts loosened from the satisfying fixations of primary-group life. The _raison d'être_ of social work, as well as the fundamental problem of all social institutions in city life must be understood in its relation to this background. II. MATERIALS A. PHYSICAL CONTACT AND SOCIAL CONTACT 1. The Frontiers of Social Contact[121] Sociology deals especially with the phenomena of _contact_. The reactions which result from voluntary or involuntary contact of human beings with other human beings are the phenomena peculiarly "social," as distinguished from the phenomena that belong properly to biology and psychology. In the first place, we want to indicate, not the essence of the social, but the location, the sphere, the extent, of the social. If we can agree where it is, we may then proceed to discover what it is. The social, then, is the term next beyond the individual. Assuming, for the sake of analysis, that our optical illusion, "the individual," is an isolated and self-sufficient fact, there are many sorts of scientific problems that do not need to go beyond this fact to satisfy their particular terms. Whether the individual can ever be abstracted from his conditions and remain himself is not a question that we need here discuss. At all events, the individual known to our experience is not isolated. He is connected in various ways with one or more individuals. The different ways in which individuals are connected with each other are indicated by the inclusive term "contact." Starting, then, from the individual, to measure him in all his dimensions and to represent him in all his phases, we find that each person is what he is by virtue of the existence of other persons, and by virtue of an alternating current of influence between each person and all the other persons previously or at the same time in existence. The last native of Central Africa around whom we throw the dragnet of civilization, and whom we inoculate with a desire for whiskey, adds an increment to the demand for our distillery products, and affects the internal revenue of the United States, and so the life-conditions of every member of our population. This is what we mean by "contact." So long as that African tribe is unknown to the outside world, and the world to it, so far as the European world is concerned, the tribe might as well not exist. The moment the tribe comes within touch of the rest of the world, the aggregate of the world's contacts is by so much enlarged; the social world is by so much extended. In other words, the realm of the social is the realm of circuits of reciprocal influence between individuals and the groups which individuals compose. The general term "contact" is proposed to stand for this realm, because it is a colorless word that may mark boundaries without prejudging contents. Wherever there is physical or spiritual contact between persons, there is inevitably a circuit of exchange of influence. The realm of the social is the realm constituted by such exchange. It extends from the producing of the baby by the mother, and the simultaneous producing of the mother by the baby, to the producing of merchant and soldier by the world-powers, and the producing of the world-powers by merchant and soldier. The most general and inclusive way in which to designate all the phenomena that sociology proper considers, without importing into the term premature hypotheses by way of explanation, is to assert that they are the phenomena of "contact" between persons. In accordance with what was said about the division of labor between psychology and sociology, it seems best to leave to the psychologist all that goes on inside the individual and to say that the work of the sociologist begins with the things that take place between individuals. This principle of division is not one that can be maintained absolutely, any more than we can hold absolutely to any other abstract classification of real actions. It serves, however, certain rough uses. Our work as students of society begins in earnest when the individual has become equipped with his individuality. This stage of human growth is both cause and effect of the life of human beings side by side in greater or lesser numbers. Under those circumstances individuals are produced; they act as individuals; by their action as individuals they produce a certain type of society; that type reacts on the individuals and helps to transform them into different types of individuals, who in turn produce a modified type of society; and so the rhythm goes on forever. Now the medium through which all this occurs is the fact of contacts, either physical or spiritual. In either case, contacts are collisions of interests in the individuals. 2. The Land and the People[122] Every clan, tribe, state, or nation includes two ideas, a people and its land, the first unthinkable without the other. History, sociology, ethnology, touch only the inhabited areas of the earth. These areas gain their final significance because of the people who occupy them; their local conditions of climate, soil, natural resources, physical features, and geographic situation are important primarily as factors in the development of actual or possible inhabitants. A land is fully comprehended only when studied in the light of its influence upon its people, and a people cannot be understood apart from the field of its activities. More than this, human activities are fully intelligible only in relation to the various geographic conditions which have stimulated them in different parts of the world. The principles of the evolution of navigation, of agriculture, of trade, as also the theory of population, can never reach their correct and final statement, unless the data for the conclusions are drawn from every part of the world and each fact interpreted in the light of the local conditions whence it sprang. Therefore anthropology, sociology, and history should be permeated by geography. Most systems of sociology treat man as if he were in some way detached from the earth's surface; they ignore the land basis of society. The anthropogeographer recognizes the various social forces, economic and psychologic, which sociologists regard as the cement of societies; but he has something to add. He sees in the land occupied by a primitive tribe or a highly organized state the underlying material bond holding society together, the ultimate basis of their fundamental social activities, which are therefore derivatives from the land. He sees the common territory exercising an integrating force--weak in primitive communities where the group has established only a few slight and temporary relations with its soil, so that this low social complex breaks up readily like its organic counterpart, the low animal organism found in an amoeba; he sees it growing stronger with every advance in civilization involving more complex relations to the land--with settled habitations, with increased density of population, with a discriminating and highly differentiated use of the soil, with the exploitation of mineral resources, and, finally, with that far-reaching exchange of commodities and ideas which means the establishment of varied extra-territorial relations. Finally, the modern society or state has grown into every foot of its own soil, exploited its every geographic advantage, utilized its geographic location to enrich itself by international trade, and, when possible, to absorb outlying territories by means of colonies. The broader this geographic base, the richer, more varied, its resources, and the more favorable its climate to their exploitation, the more numerous and complex are the connections which the members of a social group can establish with it, and through it with each other; or, in other words, the greater may be its ultimate historical significance. 3. Touch and Social Contact[123] General ideas concerning human relations are the medium through which sexual taboo works, and these must now be examined. If we compare the facts of social taboo generally, or of its subdivision, sexual taboo, we find that the ultimate test of human relations, in both _genus_ and _species_, is _contact_. An investigation of primitive ideas concerning the relations of man with man, when guided by this clue, will lay bare the principles which underlie the theory and practice of sexual taboo. Arising, as we have seen, from sexual differentiation, and forced into permanence by difference of occupation and sexual solidarity, this segregation receives the continuous support of religious conceptions as to human relations. These conceptions center upon contact, and ideas of contact are at the root of all conceptions of human relations at any stage of culture; contact is the one universal test, as it is the most elementary form, of mutual relations. Psychology bears this out, and the point is psychological rather than ethnological. As I have pointed out before and shall have occasion to do so again, a comparative examination, assisted by psychology, of the emotions and ideas of average modern humanity is a most valuable aid to ethnological inquiry. In this connection, we find that desire or willingness for physical contact is an animal emotion, more or less subconscious, which is characteristic of similarity, harmony, friendship, or love. Throughout the world, the greeting of a friend is expressed by contact, whether it be nose-rubbing, or the kiss, the embrace, or the clasp of hands; so the ordinary expression of friendship by a boy, that eternal savage, is contact of arm and shoulder. More interesting still for our purpose is the universal expression by contact of the emotion of love. To touch his mistress is the ever-present desire of the lover, and in this impulse, even if we do not trace it back, as we may without being fanciful, to polar or sexual attraction inherent in the atoms, the [Greek: philia] of Empedocles, yet we may place the beginning and ending of love. When analyzed, the emotion always comes back to contact. Further, mere willingness for contact is found universally when the person to be touched is healthy, if not clean, or where he is of the same age or class or caste, and, we may add, for ordinary humanity the same sex. On the other hand, the avoidance of contact, whether consciously or subconsciously presented, is no less the universal characteristic of human relations where similarity, harmony, friendship, or love is absent. This appears in the attitude of men to the sick, to strangers, distant acquaintances, enemies, and in cases of difference of age, position, sympathies or aims, and even of sex. Popular language is full of phrases which illustrate this feeling. Again, the pathology of the emotions supplies many curious cases where the whole being seems concentrated upon the sense of touch, with abnormal desire or disgust for contact; and in the evolution of the emotions from physiological pleasure and pain, contact plays an important part in connection with functional satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the environment. In the next place, there are the facts, first, that an element of thought inheres in all sensation, while sensation conditions thought; and secondly, that there is a close connection of all the senses, both in origin--each of them being a modification of the one primary sense of touch--and in subsequent development, where the specialized organs are still co-ordinated through tactile sensation, in the sensitive surface of organism. Again, and here we see the genesis of ideas of contact, it is by means of the tactile sensibility of the skin and membranes of sense-organs, forming a sensitized as well as a protecting surface, that the nervous system conveys to the brain information about the external world, and this information is in its original aspect the response to impact. Primitive physics, no less than modern, recognizes that contact is a modified form of a blow. These considerations show that contact not only plays an important part in the life of the soul but must have had a profound influence on the development of ideas, and it may now be assumed that ideas of contact have been a universal and original constant factor in human relations and that they are so still. The latter assumption is to be stressed, because we find that the ideas which lie beneath primitive taboo are still a vital part of human nature, though mostly emptied of their religious content; and also because, as I hold, ceremonies and etiquette, such as still obtain, could not possess such vitality as they do unless there were a living psychological force behind them, such as we find in elementary ideas which come straight from functional processes. These ideas of contact are _primitive_ in each sense of the word, at whatever stage of culture they appear. They seem to go back in origin and in character to that highly developed sensibility of all animal and even organized life, which forms at once a biological monitor and a safeguard for the whole organism in relation to its environment. From this sensibility there arise subjective ideas concerning the safety or danger of the environment, and in man we may suppose these subjective ideas as to his environment, and especially as to his fellow-men, to be the origin of his various expressions of avoidance or desire for contact. Lastly, it is to be observed that avoidance of contact is the most conspicuous phenomenon attaching to cases of taboo when its dangerous character is prominent. In taboo the connotation of "not to be touched" is the salient point all over the world, even in cases of permanent taboo such as belongs to Samoan and Maori chiefs, with whom no one dared come in contact; and so we may infer the same aversion to be potential in all such relations. B. SOCIAL CONTACT IN RELATION TO SOLIDARITY AND TO MOBILITY 1. The In-Group and the Out-Group[124] The conception of "primitive society" which we ought to form is that of small groups scattered over a territory. The size of the groups is determined by the conditions of the struggle for existence. The internal organization of each group corresponds to its size. A group of groups may have some relation to each other (kin, neighborhood, alliance, connubium, and commercium) which draws them together and differentiates them from others. Thus a differentiation arises between ourselves, the we-group, or in-group, and everybody else, or the others-groups, out-groups. The insiders in a we-group are in a relation of peace, order, law, government, and industry, to each other. Their relation to all outsiders, or others-groups, is one of war and plunder, except so far as agreements have modified it. If a group is exogamic, the women in it were born abroad somewhere. Other foreigners who might be found in it are adopted persons, guest-friends, and slaves. The relation of comradeship and peace in the we-group and that of hostility and war toward others-groups are correlative to each other. The exigencies of war with outsiders are what make peace inside, lest internal discord should weaken the we-group for war. These exigencies also make government and law in the in-group, in order to prevent quarrels and enforce discipline. Thus war and peace have reacted on each other and developed each other, one within the group, the other in the intergroup relation. The closer the neighbors, and the stronger they are, the intenser is the warfare, and then the intenser is the internal organization and discipline of each. Sentiments are produced to correspond. Loyalty to the group, sacrifice for it, hatred and contempt for outsiders, brotherhood within, warlikeness without--all grow together, common products of the same situation. Ethnocentrism is the technical name for this view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it. Folkways correspond to it to cover both the inner and the outer relation. Each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders. Each group thinks its own folkways the only right ones, and if it observes that other groups have other folkways, these excite its scorn. Opprobrious epithets are derived from these differences. "Pig-eater," "cow-eater," "uncircumcised," "jabberers," are epithets of contempt and abomination. 2. Sympathetic Contacts versus Categoric Contacts[125] Let us now consider what takes place when two men, mere strangers to one another, come together. The motive of classification, which I have considered in another chapter, leads each of them at once to recognize the approaching object first as living, then as human. The shape and dress carry the categorizing process yet farther, so that they are placed in groups, as of this or that tribe or social class, and as these determinations are made they arouse the appropriate sympathies or hatreds such as by experience have become associated with the several categories. Be it observed that these judgments are spontaneous, instinctive, and unnoticed. They are made so by immemorial education in the art of contact which man has inherited from the life of the ancestral beasts and men; they have most likely been in some measure affirmed by selection, for these determinations as to the nature of the neighbor were in the lower stages of existence in brute and man of critical importance, the creatures lived or died according as they determined well or ill, swiftly or slowly. If we observe what takes place in our own minds at such meetings we will see that the action in its immediateness is like that of the eyelids when the eye is threatened. As we say, it is done before we know it. With this view as to the conditions of human contact, particularly of what occurs when men first meet one another, let us glance at what takes place in near intercourse. We have seen that at the beginning of any acquaintance the fellow-being is inevitably dealt with in the categoric way. He is taken as a member of a group, which group is denoted to us by a few convenient signs; as our acquaintance with a particular person advances, this category tends to become qualified. Its bounds are pushed this way and that until they break down. It is to be noted in this process that the category fights for itself, or we for it, so that the result of the battle between the immediate truth and the prejudice is always doubtful. It is here that knowledge, especially that gained by individual experience, is most helpful. The uninformed man, who begins to find, on the nearer view of an Israelite, that the fellow is like himself, holds by his category in the primitive way. The creature _is_ a Jew, therefore the evidence of kinship must not count. He who is better informed is, or should be, accustomed to amend his categories. He may, indeed, remember that he is dealing with a neighbor of the race which gave us not only Christ, but all the accepted prophets who have shaped our own course, and his understanding helps to cast down the barriers of instinctive prejudice. At the stage of advancing acquaintance where friendship is attained, the category begins to disappear from our minds. We may, indeed, measure the advance in this relation by the extent to which it has been broken down. Looking attentively at our mental situation as regards those whom we know pretty well, we see that most of them are still, though rather faintly, classified into groups. While a few of the nearer stand forth by themselves, all of the nearest to our hearts are absolutely individualized, so that our judgments of them are made on the basis of our own motives and what we of ourselves discern. We may use categoric terms concerning our lovers, spouses, or children, but they have no real meaning; these persons are to us purely individual, all trace of the inclusive category has disappeared; they are, in the full sense of the word, our neighbors, being so near that when we look upon them we see nothing else, not even ourselves. Summing up these considerations concerning human contact, it may be said that the world works by a system of individualities rising in scale as we advance from the inorganic through the organic series until we find the summit in man. The condition of all these individuals is that of isolation; each is necessarily parted from all the others in the realm, each receiving influences, and, in turn, sending forth its peculiar tide of influences to those of its own and other kinds. This isolation in the case of man is singularly great for the reason that he is the only creature we know in the realm who is so far endowed with consciousness that he can appreciate his position and know the measure of his solitude. In the case of all individuals the discernible is only a small part of what exists. In man the measure of this presentation is, even to himself, very small, and that which he can readily make evident to his neighbor is an exceedingly limited part of the real whole. Yet it is on this slender basis that we must rest our relations with the fellow man if we are to found them upon knowledge. The imperfection of this method of ascertaining the fellow-man is well shown by the trifling contents of the category discriminations we apply to him. While, as has been suggested, much can be done by those who have gained in knowledge of our kind by importing understandings into our relations with men, the only effective way to the betterment of those relations is through the sympathies. What can be done by knowledge in helping us to a comprehension of the fellow-man is at best merely explanatory of his place in the phenomenal world; of itself it has only scientific value. The advantage of the sympathetic way of approach is that in this method the neighbor is accounted for on the supposition that he is ourself in another form, so we feel for and with him on the instinctive hypothesis that he is essentially ourself. There can be no question that this method of looking upon other individualities is likely to lead to many errors. We see examples of these blunders in all the many grades of the personifying process, from the savage's worship of a tree or stone to the civilized man's conception of a human-like god. We see them also in the attribution to the lower animals of thoughts and feelings which are necessarily limited to our own kind, but in the case of man the conception of identity gives a minimum of error and a maximum of truth. It, indeed, gives a truer result than could possibly be attained by any scientific inquiries that we could make, or could conceive of being effectively made, and this for the following reasons. When, as in the sympathetic state, we feel that the neighbor of our species is essentially ourself, the tacit assumption is that his needs and feelings are as like our own as our own states of mind at diverse times are like one another, so that we might exchange motives with him without experiencing any great sense of strangeness. What we have in mind is not the measure of instruction or education, not the class or station or other adventitious circumstances, but the essential traits of his being. Now this supposition is entirely valid. All we know of mankind justifies the statement that, as regards all the qualities and motives with which the primal sympathies deal, men are remarkably alike. Their loves, hates, fears, and sorrows are alike in their essentials; so that the postulate of sympathy that the other man is essentially like one's self is no idle fancy but an established truth. It not only embodies the judgment of all men in thought and action but has its warrant from all the science we can apply to it. It is easy to see how by means of sympathy we can at once pass the gulf which separates man from man. All the devices of the ages in the way of dumb or spoken language fail to win across the void, and leave the two beings apart; but with a step the sympathetic spirit passes the gulf. In this strange feature we have the completion of the series of differences between the inorganic and the organic groups of individualities. In the lower or non-living isolations there is no reason why the units should do more than mechanically interact. All their service in the realm can be best effected by their remaining forever completely apart. But when we come to the organic series, the units begin to have need of understanding their neighbors, in order that they may form those beginnings of the moral order which we find developing among the members even of the lowliest species. Out of this sympathetic accord arises the community, which we see in its simple beginnings in the earlier stages of life; it grows with the advance in the scale of being, and has its supreme success in man. Human society, the largest of all organic associations, requires that its units be knit together in certain common purposes and understandings, and the union can only be made effective by the ways of sympathy--by the instinctive conviction of essential kinship. 3. Historical Continuity and Civilization[126] In matters connected with political and economical institutions we notice among the natural races very great differences in the sum of their civilization. Accordingly we have to look among them, not only for the beginnings of civilization, but for a very great part of its evolution, and it is equally certain that these differences are to be referred less to variations in endowment than to great differences in the conditions of their development. Exchange has also played its part, and unprejudiced observers have often been more struck in the presence of facts by agreement than by difference. "It is astonishing," exclaims Chapman, when considering the customs of the Damaras, "what a similarity there is in the manners and practices of the human family throughout the world. Even here, the two different classes of Damaras practice rites in common with the New Zealanders, such as that of chipping out the front teeth and cutting off the little finger." It is less astonishing if, as the same traveler remarks, their agreement with the Bechuanas goes even farther. Now, since the essence of civilization lies first in the amassing of experiences, then in the fixity with which these are retained, and lastly in the capacity to carry them farther or to increase them, our first question must be, how is it possible to realize the first fundamental condition of civilization, namely, the amassing a stock of culture in the form of handiness, knowledge, power, capital? It has long been agreed that the first step thereto is the transition from complete dependence upon what Nature freely offers to a conscious exploitation through man's own labor, especially in agriculture or cattle-breeding, of such of her fruits as are most important to him. This transition opens at one stroke all the most remote possibilities of Nature, but we must always remember at the same time that it is still a long way from the first step to the height which has now been attained. The intellect of man and also the intellect of whole races shows a wide discrepancy in regard to differences of endowment as well as in regard to the different effects which external circumstances produce upon it. Especially are there variations in the degree of inward coherence and therewith of the fixity or duration of the stock of intellect. The want of coherence, the breaking up of this stock, characterizes the lower stages of civilization no less than its coherence, its inalienability, and its power of growth do the higher. We find in low stages a poverty of tradition which allows these races neither to maintain a consciousness of their earlier fortunes for any appreciable period nor to fortify and increase their stock of intelligence either through the acquisitions of individual prominent minds or through the adoption and fostering of any stimulus. Here, if we are not entirely mistaken, is the basis of the deepest-seated differences between races. The opposition of historic and non-historic races seems to border closely upon it. There is a distinction between the quickly ripening immaturity of the child and the limited maturity of the adult who has come to a stop in many respects. What we mean by "natural" races is something much more like the latter than the former. We call them races deficient in civilization, because internal and external conditions have hindered them from attaining to such permanent developments in the domain of culture as form the mark of the true civilized races and the guaranties of progress. Yet we should not venture to call any of them cultureless, so long as none of them is devoid of the primitive means by which the ascent to higher stages can be made--language, religion, fire, weapons, implements; while the very possession of these means, and many others, such as domestic animals and cultivated plants, testifies to varied and numerous dealings with those races which are completely civilized. The reasons why they do not make use of these gifts are of many kinds. Lower intellectual endowment is often placed in the first rank. That is a convenient but not quite fair explanation. Among the savage races of today we find great differences in endowments. We need not dispute that in the course of development races of even slightly higher endowments have got possession of more and more means of culture, and gained steadiness and security for their progress, while the less endowed remained behind. But external conditions, in respect to their furthering or hindering effects, can be more clearly recognized and estimated; and it is juster and more logical to name them first. We can conceive why the habitations of the savage races are principally to be found on the extreme borders of the inhabited world, in the cold and hot regions, in remote islands, in secluded mountains, in deserts. We understand their backward condition in parts of the earth which offer so few facilities for agriculture and cattle-breeding as Australia, the Arctic regions, or the extreme north and south of America. In the insecurity of incompletely developed resources we can see the chain which hangs heavily on their feet and confines their movements within a narrow space. As a consequence their numbers are small, and from this again results the small total amount of intellectual and physical accomplishment, the rarity of eminent men, the absence of the salutary pressure exercised by surrounding masses on the activity and forethought of the individual, which operates in the division of society into classes, and the promotion of a wholesome division of labor. A partial consequence of this insecurity of resources is the instability of natural races. A nomadic strain runs through them all, rendering easier to them the utter incompleteness of their unstable political and economical institutions, even when an indolent agriculture seems to tie them to the soil. Thus it often comes about that, in spite of abundantly provided and well-tended means of culture, their life is desultory, wasteful of power, unfruitful. This life has no inward consistency, no secure growth; it is not the life in which the germs of civilization first grew up to the grandeur in which we frequently find them at the beginnings of what we call history. It is full rather of fallings-away from civilization and dim memories from civilized spheres which in many cases must have existed long before the commencement of history as we have it. By the word "civilization" or "culture" we denote usually the sum of all the acquirements at a given time of the human intelligence. When we speak of stages, of higher and lower, of semi-civilization, of civilized and "natural" races, we apply to the various civilizations of the earth a standard which we take from the degree that we have ourselves attained. Civilization means _our_ civilization. The confinement, in space as in time, which isolates huts, villages, races, no less than successive generations, involves the negation of culture; in its opposite, the intercourse of contemporaries and the interdependence of ancestors and successors, lies the possibility of development. The union of contemporaries secures the retention of culture, the linking of generations its unfolding. The development of civilization is a process of hoarding. The hoards grow of themselves so soon as a retaining power watches over them. In all domains of human creation and operation we shall see the basis of all higher development in intercourse. Only through co-operation and mutual help, whether between contemporaries, whether from one generation to another, has mankind succeeded in climbing to the stage of civilization on which its highest members now stand. On the nature and extent of this intercourse the growth depends. Thus the numerous small assemblages of equal importance, formed by the family stocks, in which the individual had no freedom, were less favorable to it than the larger communities and states of the modern world, with their encouragement to individual competition. 4. Mobility and the Movement of Peoples[127] Every country whose history we examine proves the recipient of successive streams of humanity. Even sea-girt England has received various intruding peoples, from the Roman occupation to the recent influx of Russian Jews. In prehistoric times it combined several elements in its population, as the discovery of the "long barrow" men and "round barrow" men by archaeologists and the identification of a surviving Iberian or Mediterranean strain by ethnologists go to prove. Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India tell the same story, whether in their recorded or unrecorded history. Tropical Africa lacks a history; but all that has been pieced together by ethnologists and anthropologists, in an effort to reconstruct its past, shows incessant movement--growth, expansion, and short-lived conquest, followed by shrinkage, expulsion, or absorption by another invader. To this constant shifting of races and peoples the name of historical movement has been given, because it underlies most of written history and constitutes the major part of unwritten history, especially that of savage and nomadic tribes. Among primitive peoples this movement is simple and monotonous. It involves all members of the tribe, either in pursuit of game or following the herd over the tribal territory, or in migrations seeking more and better land. Among civilized peoples it assumes various forms and especially is differentiated for different members of the social group. The civilized state develops specialized frontiers--men, armies, explorers, maritime traders, colonists, and missionaries, who keep a part of the people constantly moving and directing external expansion, while the mass of the population converts the force once expended in the migrant food-quest into internal activity. Here we come upon a paradox. The nation as a whole, with the development of sedentary life, increases its population and therewith its need for external movements; it widens its national area and its circle of contact with other lands, enlarges its geographical horizon, and improves its internal communication over a growing territory; it evolves a greater mobility within and without, which attaches, however, to certain classes of society, not to the entire social group. This mobility becomes the outward expression of a whole complex of economic wants, intellectual needs, and political ambitions. It is embodied in the conquests which build up empires, in the colonization which develops new lands, in the world-wide exchange of commodities and ideas which lifts the level of civilization till this movement of peoples becomes a fundamental fact of history. Otis Mason finds that the life of a social group involves a variety of movements characterized by different ranges or scopes: (1) The daily round from bed to bed. (2) The annual round from year to year, like that of the Tunguse Orochon of Siberia who, in pursuit of various fish and game, change their residence within their territory from month to month, or the pastoral nomads who move with the seasons from pasture to pasture. (3) Less systematic outside movements covering the tribal sphere of influence, such as journeys or voyages to remote hunting or fishing grounds, forays or piratical descents upon neighboring lands, eventuating usually in conquest, expansion into border regions for occasional occupation, or colonization. (4) Participation in streams of barter or commerce. (5) And, at a higher stage, in the great currents of human intercourse, experience, and ideas, which finally compass the world. In all this series the narrower movement prepares for the broader, of which it constitutes at once an impulse and a part. Civilized man is at once more and less mobile than his primitive brother. Every advance in civilization multiplies and tightens the bonds uniting him with his soil, makes him a sedentary instead of a migratory being. On the other hand, every advance in civilization is attended by the rapid clearing of the forests, by the construction of bridges and interlacing roads, the invention of more effective vehicles for transportation whereby intercourse increases, and the improvement of navigation to the same end. Civilized man progressively modifies the land which he occupies, removes or reduces obstacles to intercourse, and thereby approximates it to the open plain. Thus far he facilitates movements. But while doing this he also places upon the land a dense population, closely attached to the soil, strong to resist incursion, and for economic reasons inhospitable to any marked accession of population from without. Herein lies the great difference between migration in empty or sparsely inhabited regions, such as predominated when the world was young, and in the densely populated countries of our era. As the earth grew old and humanity multiplied, peoples themselves became the greatest barriers to any massive migrations, till in certain countries of Europe and Asia the historical movement has been reduced to a continual pressure, resulting in compression of population here, repression there. Hence, though political boundaries may shift, ethnic boundaries scarcely budge. The greatest wars of modern Europe have hardly left a trace upon the distribution of its peoples. Only in the Balkan Peninsula, as the frontiers of the Turkish Empire have been forced back from the Danube, the alien Turks have withdrawn to the shrinking territory of the Sultan and especially to Asia Minor. Where a population too great to be dislodged occupies the land, conquest results in the eventual absorption of the victors and their civilization by the native folk, as happened to the Lombards in Italy, the Vandals in Africa, and the Normans in England. Where the invaders are markedly superior in culture, though numerically weak, conquest results in the gradual permeation of the conquered with the religion, economic methods, language, and customs of the newcomers. The latter process, too, is always attended by some intermixture of blood, where no race repulsion exists, but this is small in comparison to the diffusion of civilization. This was the method by which Greek traders and colonists Hellenized the countries about the eastern Mediterranean and spread their culture far back from the shores which their settlements had appropriated. In this way Saracen armies, soon after the death of Mohammed, Arabized the whole eastern and southern sides of the Mediterranean from Syria to Spain, and Arab merchants set the stamp of their language and religion on the coasts of East Africa as far as Mozambique. The handful of Spanish adventurers who came upon the relatively dense populations of Mexico and Peru left among them a civilization essentially European, but only a thin strain of Castilian blood. Thus the immigration of small bands of people sufficed to influence the culture of that big territory known as Latin America. Throughout the life of any people, from its fetal period in some small locality to its well-rounded adult era marked by the occupation and organization of a wide national territory, gradations in area mark gradations of development. And this is true, whether we consider the compass of their commercial exchanges, the scope of their maritime ventures, the extent of their linguistic area, the measure of their territorial ambitions, or the range of their intellectual interests and human sympathies. From land to ethics, the rule holds good. Peoples in the lower stages of civilization have contracted spatial ideas, desire and need at a given time only a limited territory, though they may change that territory often; they think in small linear terms, have a small horizon, a small circle of contact with others, a small range of influence, only tribal sympathies; they have an exaggerated conception of their own size and importance, because their basis of comparison is fatally limited. With a mature, widespread people like the English or French, all this is different; they have made the earth their own, so far as possible. Just because of this universal tendency toward the occupation of ever larger areas and the formation of vaster political aggregates, in making a sociological or political estimate of different peoples, we should never lose sight of the fact that all racial and national characteristics which operate toward the absorption of more land and impel to political expansion are of fundamental value. A ship of state manned by such a crew has its sails set to catch the winds of the world. Territorial expansion is always preceded by an extension of the circle of influence which a people exerts through its traders, its deep-sea fishermen, its picturesque marauders and more respectable missionaries, and earlier still by a widening of its mere geographical horizon through fortuitous or systematic exploration. C. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY CONTACTS 1. Village Life in America (from the Diary of a Young Girl)[128] _November 21, 1852._--I am ten years old today, and I think I will write a journal and tell who I am and what I am doing. I have lived with my Grandfather and Grandmother Beals ever since I was seven years old, and Anna, too, since she was four. Our brothers, James and John, came too, but they are at East Bloomfield at Mr. Stephen Clark's Academy. Miss Laura Clark of Naples is their teacher. Anna and I go to school at District No. 11. Mr. James C. Cross is our teacher, and some of the scholars say he is cross by name and cross by nature, but I like him. He gave me a book by the name of _Noble Deeds of American Women_, for reward of merit, in my reading class. _Friday._--Grandmother says I will have a great deal to answer for, because Anna looks up to me so and tries to do everything that I do and thinks whatever I say is "gospel truth." The other day the girls at school were disputing with her about something and she said, "It is so, if it ain't so, for Calline said so." I shall have to "toe the mark," as Grandfather says, if she keeps watch of me all the time and walks in my footsteps. _April 1, 1853._--Before I go to school every morning I read three chapters in the Bible. I read three every day and five on Sunday and that takes me through the Bible in a year. Those I read this morning were the first, second, and third chapters of Job. The first was about Eliphaz reproveth Job; second, benefit of God's correction; third, Job justifieth his complaint. I then learned a text to say at school. I went to school at quarter to nine and recited my text and we had prayers and then proceeded with the business of the day. Just before school was out, we recited in _Science of Things Familiar_, and in Dictionary, and then we had calisthenics. _July._--Hiram Goodrich, who lives at Mr. Myron H. Clark's, and George and Wirt Wheeler ran away on Sunday to seek their fortunes. When they did not come back everyone was frightened and started out to find them. They set out right after Sunday school, taking their pennies which had been given them for the contribution, and were gone several days. They were finally found at Palmyra. When asked why they had run away, one replied that he thought it was about time they saw something of the world. We heard that Mr. Clark had a few moments' private conversation with Hiram in the barn and Mr. Wheeler the same with his boys and we do not think they will go traveling on their own hook again right off. Miss Upham lives right across the street from them and she was telling little Morris Bates that he must fight the good fight of faith and he asked her if that was the fight that Wirt Wheeler fit. She probably had to make her instructions plainer after that. _1854, Sunday._--Mr. Daggett's text this morning was the twenty-second chapter of Revelation, sixteenth verse, "I am the root and offspring of David and the bright and morning star." Mrs. Judge Taylor taught our Sunday-school class today and she said we ought not to read our Sunday-school books on Sunday. I always do. Mine today was entitled, _Cheap Repository Tracts by Hannah More_, and it did not seem unreligious at all. _Tuesday._--Mrs. Judge Taylor sent for me to come over to see her today. I didn't know what she wanted, but when I got there she said she wanted to talk and pray with me on the subject of religion. She took me into one of the wings. I never had been in there before and was frightened at first, but it was nice after I got used to it. After she prayed, she asked me to, but I couldn't think of anything but "Now I lay me down to sleep," and I was afraid she would not like that, so I didn't say anything. When I got home and told Anna, she said, "Caroline, I presume probably Mrs. Taylor wants you to be a missionary, but I shan't let you go." I told her she needn't worry for I would have to stay at home and look after her. After school tonight I went out into Abbie Clark's garden with her and she taught me how to play "mumble te peg." It is fun, but rather dangerous. I am afraid Grandmother won't give me a knife to play with. Abbie Clark has beautiful pansies in her garden and gave me some roots. _Sunday._--I almost forgot that it was Sunday this morning and talked and laughed just as I do week days. Grandmother told me to write down this verse before I went to church so I would remember it: "Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear than to offer the sacrifice of fools." I will remember it now, sure. My feet are all right anyway with my new patten leather shoes on, but I shall have to look out for my head. Mr. Thomas Howell read a sermon today as Mr. Daggett is out of town. Grandmother always comes upstairs to get the candle and tuck us in before she goes to bed herself, and some nights we are sound asleep and do not hear her, but last night we only pretended to be asleep. She kneeled down by the bed and prayed aloud for us, that we might be good children and that she might have strength given her from on high to guide us in the straight and narrow path which leads to life eternal. Those were her very words. After she had gone downstairs we sat up in bed and talked about it and promised each other to be good, and crossed our hearts and "hoped to die," if we broke our promise. Then Anna was afraid we would die, but I told her I didn't believe we would be as good as that, so we kissed each other and went to sleep. _Sunday._--Rev. Mr. Tousley preached today to the children and told us how many steps it took to be bad. I think he said lying was first, then disobedience to parents, breaking the Sabbath, swearing, stealing, drunkenness. I don't remember just the order they came. It was very interesting, for he told lots of stories and we sang a great many times. I should think Eddy Tousley would be an awful good boy with his father in the house with him all the while, but probably he has to be away part of the time preaching to other children. _December 20, 1855._--Susan B. Anthony is in town and spoke in Bemis Hall this afternoon. She made a special request that all the seminary girls should come to hear her as well as all the women and girls in town. She had a large audience and she talked very plainly about our rights and how we ought to stand up for them, and said the world would never go right until the women had just as much right to vote and rule as the men. She asked us all to come up and sign our names who would promise to do all in our power to bring about that glad day when equal rights would be the law of the land. A whole lot of us went up and signed the paper. When I told Grandmother about it she said she guessed Susan B. Anthony had forgotten that St. Paul said the women should keep silence. I told her no, she didn't, for she spoke particularly about St. Paul and said if he had lived in these times, instead of eighteen hundred years ago, he would have been as anxious to have the women at the head of the government as she was. I could not make Grandmother agree with her at all and she said we might better all of us stayed at home. We went to prayer meeting this evening and a woman got up and talked. Her name was Mrs. Sands. We hurried home and told Grandmother and she said she probably meant all right and she hoped we did not laugh. _February 21, 1856._--We had a very nice time at Fannie Gaylord's party and a splendid supper. Lucilla Field laughed herself almost to pieces when she found on going home that she had worn her leggins all the evening. We had a pleasant walk home but did not stay till it was out. Someone asked me if I danced every set and I told them no, I set every dance. I told Grandmother and she was very much pleased. Some one told us that Grandfather and Grandmother first met at a ball in the early settlement of Canandaigua. I asked her if it was so and she said she never danced since she became a professing Christian and that was more than fifty years ago. _May, 1856._--We were invited to Bessie Seymour's party last night and Grandmother said we could go. The girls all told us at school that they were going to wear low neck and short sleeves. We have caps on the sleeves of our best dresses and we tried to get the sleeves out, so we could go bare arms, but we couldn't get them out. We had a very nice time, though, at the party. Some of the Academy boys were there and they asked us to dance but of course we couldn't do that. We promenaded around the rooms and went out to supper with them. Eugene Stone and Tom Eddy asked to go home with us but Grandmother sent our two girls for us, Bridget Flynn and Hannah White, so they couldn't. We were quite disappointed, but perhaps she won't send for us next time. _Thursday, 1857._--We have four sperm candles in four silver candlesticks and when we have company we light them. Johnnie Thompson, son of the minister, Rev. M. L. R. P., has come to the academy to school and he is very full of fun and got acquainted with all the girls very quick. He told us this afternoon to have "the other candle lit" for he was coming down to see us this evening. Will Schley heard him say it and he said he was coming too. _Later._--The boys came and we had a very pleasant evening but when the 9 o'clock bell rang we heard Grandfather winding up the clock and scraping up the ashes on the hearth to cover the fire so it would last till morning and we all understood the signal and they bade us good night. "We won't go home till morning" is a song that will never be sung in this house. _September, 1857._--Grandmother let Anna have six little girls here to supper to-night: Louisa Field, Hattie Paddock, Helen Coy, Martha Densmore, Emma Wheeler, and Alice Jewett. We had a splendid supper and then we played cards. I do not mean regular cards, mercy no! Grandfather thinks those kinds are contageous or outrageous or something dreadful and never keeps them in the house. Grandmother said they found a pack once, when the hired man's room was cleaned, and they went into the fire pretty quick. The kind we played was just "Dr. Busby," and another "The Old Soldier and His Dog." There are counters with them, and if you don't have the card called for you have to pay one into the pool. It is real fun. They all said they had a very nice time, indeed, when they bade Grandmother good night, and said: "Mrs. Beals, you must let Carrie and Anna come and see us some time," and she said she would. I think it is nice to have company. _August 30, 1858._--Some one told us that when Bob and Henry Antes were small boys they thought they would like to try, just for once, to see how it would seem to be bad, so in spite of all of Mr. Tousley's sermons they went out behind the barn one day and in a whisper Bob said, "I swear," and Henry said, "So do I." Then they came into the house looking guilty and quite surprised, I suppose, that they were not struck dead just as Ananias and Sapphira were for lying. _February, 1859._--Mary Wheeler came over and pierced my ears today, so I can wear my new earrings that Uncle Edward sent me. She pinched my ear until it was numb and then pulled a needle through, threaded with silk. Anna would not stay in the room. She wants hers done but does not dare. It is all the fashion for girls to cut off their hair and friz it. Anna and I have cut off ours and Bessie Seymour got me to cut off her lovely long hair today. It won't be very comfortable for us to sleep with curl papers all over our heads, but we must do it now. I wanted my new dress waist which Miss Rosewarne is making to hook up in front, but Grandmother said I would have to wear it that way all the rest of my life so I had better be content to hook it in the back a little longer. She said when Aunt Glorianna was married, in 1848, it was the fashion for grown-up women to have their waists fastened in the back, so the bride had hers made that way but she thought it was a very foolish and inconvenient fashion. It is nice, though, to dress in style and look like other people. I have a Garibaldi waist and a Zouave jacket and a balmoral skirt. _1860, Sunday._--Frankie Richardson asked me to go with her to teach a class in the colored Sunday School on Chapel Street this afternoon. I asked Grandmother if I could go and she said she never noticed that I was particularly interested in the colored race and she said she thought I only wanted an excuse to get out for a walk Sunday afternoon. However, she said I could go just this once. When we got up as far as the Academy, Mr. Noah T. Clarke's brother, who is one of the teachers, came out and Frank said he led the singing at the Sunday school and she said she would give me an introduction to him, so he walked up with us and home again. Grandmother said that when she saw him opening the gate for me, she understood my zeal in missionary work. "The dear little lady," as we often call her, has always been noted for her keen discernment and wonderful sagacity and loses none of it as she advances in years. Some one asked Anna the other day if her Grandmother retained all her faculties and Anna said, "Yes, indeed, to an alarming degree." Grandmother knows that we think she is a perfect angel even if she does seem rather strict sometimes. Whether we are seven or seventeen we are children to her just the same, and the Bible says, "Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right." We are glad that we never will seem old to her. I had the same company home from church in the evening. His home is in Naples. _Christmas, 1860._--I asked Grandmother if Mr. Clarke could take Sunday night supper with us and she said she was afraid he did not know the catechism. I asked him Friday night and he said he would learn it on Saturday so that he could answer every third question anyway. So he did and got along very well. I think he deserves a pretty good supper. 2. Secondary Contacts and City Life[129] Modern methods of urban transportation and communication--the electric railway, the automobile, and the telephone--have silently and rapidly changed in recent years the social and industrial organization of the modern city. They have been the means of concentrating traffic in the business districts; have changed the whole character of retail trade, multiplying the residence suburbs and making the department store possible. These changes in the industrial organization and in the distribution of population have been accompanied by corresponding changes in the habits, sentiments, and character of the urban population. The general nature of these changes is indicated by the fact that the growth of cities has been accompanied by the substitution of indirect, "secondary," for direct, face-to-face, "primary" relations in the associations of individuals in the community. By primary groups I mean those characterized by intimate face-to-face association and co-operation. They are primary in several senses, but chiefly in that they are fundamental in forming the social nature and ideals of the individual. The result of intimate association, psychologically, is a certain fusion of individualities in a common whole, so that one's very self, for many purposes at least, is the common life and purpose of the group. Perhaps the simplest way of describing this wholeness is by saying that it is a "we"; it involves the sort of sympathy and mutual identification for which "we" is the natural expression. One lives in the feeling of the whole and finds the chief aims of his will in that feeling. Touch and sight, physical contact, are the basis for the first and most elementary human relationships. Mother and child, husband and wife, father and son, master and servant, kinsman and neighbor, minister, physician, and teacher--these are the most intimate and real relationships of life and in the small community they are practically inclusive. The interactions which take place among the members of a community so constituted are immediate and unreflecting. Intercourse is carried on largely within the region of instinct and feeling. Social control arises, for the most part spontaneously, in direct response to personal influences and public sentiment. It is the result of a personal accommodation rather than the formulation of a rational and abstract principle. In a great city, where the population is unstable, where parents and children are employed out of the house and often in distant parts of the city, where thousands of people live side by side for years without so much as a bowing acquaintance, these intimate relationships of the primary group are weakened and the moral order which rested upon them is gradually dissolved. Under the disintegrating influences of city life most of our traditional institutions, the church, the school, and the family, have been greatly modified. The school, for example, has taken over some of the functions of the family. It is around the public school and its solicitude for the moral and physical welfare of the children that something like a new neighborhood and community spirit tends to get itself organized. The church, on the other hand, which has lost much of its influence since the printed page has so largely taken the place of the pulpit in the interpretation of life, seems at present to be in process of readjustment to the new conditions. It is probably the breaking down of local attachments and the weakening of the restraints and inhibitions of the primary group, under the influence of the urban environment, which are largely responsible for the increase of vice and crime in great cities. It would be interesting in this connection to determine by investigation how far the increase in crime keeps pace with the increasing mobility of the population. It is from this point of view that we should seek to interpret all those statistics which register the disintegration of the moral order, for example, the statistics of divorce, of truancy, and of crime. Great cities have always been the melting-pots of races and of cultures. Out of the vivid and subtle interactions of which they have been the centers, there have come the newer breeds and the newer social types. The great cities of the United States, for example, have drawn from the isolation of their native villages great masses of the rural populations of Europe and America. Under the shock of the new contacts the latent energies of these primitive peoples have been released, and the subtler processes of interaction have brought into existence not merely vocational but temperamental types. Transportation and communication have effected, among many other silent but far-reaching changes, what I have called the "mobilization of the individual man." They have multiplied the opportunities of the individual man for contact and for association with his fellows, but they have made these contacts and associations more transitory and less stable. A very large part of the populations of great cities, including those who make their homes in tenements and apartment houses, live much as people do in some great hotel, meeting but not knowing one another. The effect of this is to substitute fortuitous and casual relationship for the more intimate and permanent associations of the smaller community. Under these circumstances the individual's status is determined to a considerable degree by conventional signs--by fashion and "front"--and the art of life is largely reduced to skating on thin surfaces and a scrupulous study of style and manners. Not only transportation and communication, but the segregation of the urban population, tends to facilitate the mobility of the individual man. The processes of segregation establish moral distances which make the city a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate. This makes it possible for individuals to pass quickly and easily from one moral milieu to another and encourages the fascinating but dangerous experiment of living at the same time in several different contiguous, perhaps, but widely separated worlds. All this tends to give to city life a superficial and adventitious character; it tends to complicate social relationships and to produce new and divergent individual types. It introduces, at the same time, an element of chance and adventure, which adds to the stimulus of city life and gives it for young and fresh nerves a peculiar attractiveness. The lure of great cities is perhaps a consequence of stimulations which act directly upon the reflexes. As a type of human behavior it may be explained, like the attraction of the flame for the moth, as a sort of tropism. The attraction of the metropolis is due in part, however, to the fact that in the long run every individual finds somewhere among the varied manifestations of city life the sort of environment in which he expands and feels at ease; finds, in short, the moral climate in which his peculiar nature obtains the stimulations that bring his innate qualities to full and free expression. It is, I suspect, motives of this kind which have their basis, not in interest nor even in sentiment, but in something more fundamental and primitive which draw many, if not most, of the young men and young women from the security of their homes in the country into the big, booming confusion and excitement of city life. In a small community it is the normal man, the man without eccentricity or genius, who seems most likely to succeed. The small community often tolerates eccentricity. The city, on the contrary, rewards it. Neither the criminal, the defective, nor the genius has the same opportunity to develop his innate disposition in a small town that he invariably finds in a great city. Fifty years ago every village had one or two eccentric characters who were treated ordinarily with a benevolent toleration, but who were regarded meanwhile as impracticable and queer. These exceptional individuals lived an isolated existence, cut off by their very eccentricities, whether of genius or of defect, from genuinely intimate intercourse with their fellows. If they had the making of criminals, the restraints and inhibitions of the small community rendered them harmless. If they had the stuff of genius in them, they remained sterile for lack of appreciation or opportunity. Mark Twain's story of _Pudd'n Head Wilson_ is a description of one such obscure and unappreciated genius. It is not so true as it was that-- Full many a flower is born to blush unseen And waste its fragrance on the desert air. Gray wrote the "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" before the existence of the modern city. In the city many of these divergent types now find a milieu in which for good or for ill their dispositions and talents parturiate and bear fruit. 3. Publicity as a Form of Secondary Contact[130] In contrast with the political machine, which has founded its organized action on the local, personal, and immediate interests represented by the different neighborhoods and localities, the good-government organizations, the bureaus of municipal research, and the like have sought to represent the interests of the city as a whole and have appealed to a sentiment and opinion neither local nor personal. These agencies have sought to secure efficiency and good government by the education of the voter, that is to say, by investigating and publishing the facts regarding the government. In this way publicity has come to be a recognized form of social control, and advertising--"social advertising"--has become a profession with an elaborate technique supported by a body of special knowledge. It is one of the characteristic phenomena of city life and of society founded on secondary relationships that advertising should have come to occupy so important a place in its economy. In recent years every individual and organization which has had to deal with the public, that is to say, the public outside the smaller and more intimate communities of the village and small town, has come to have its press agent, who is often less an advertising man than a diplomatic man accredited to the newspapers, and through them to the world at large. Institutions like the Russell Sage Foundation, and to a less extent the General Education Board, have sought to influence public opinion directly through the medium of publicity. The Carnegie Report upon Medical Education, the Pittsburgh Survey, the Russell Sage Foundation Report on Comparative Costs of Public-School Education in the Several States, are something more than scientific reports. They are rather a high form of journalism, dealing with existing conditions critically, and seeking through the agency of publicity to bring about radical reforms. The work of the Bureau of Municipal Research in New York has had a similar practical purpose. To these must be added the work accomplished by the child-welfare exhibits, by the social surveys undertaken in different parts of the country, and by similar propaganda in favor of public health. As a source of social control public opinion becomes important in societies founded on secondary relationships of which great cities are a type. In the city every social group tends to create its own milieu, and, as these conditions become fixed, the mores tend to accommodate themselves to the conditions thus created. In secondary groups and in the city, fashion tends to take the place of custom, and public opinion rather than the mores becomes the dominant force in social control. In any attempt to understand the nature of public opinion and its relation to social control, it is important to investigate, first of all, the agencies and devices which have come into practical use in the effort to control, enlighten, and exploit it. The first and the most important of these is the press, that is, the daily newspaper and other forms of current literature, including books classed as current. After the newspaper, the bureaus of research which are now springing up in all the large cities are the most interesting and the most promising devices for using publicity as a means of control. The fruits of these investigations do not reach the public directly, but are disseminated through the medium of the press, the pulpit and other sources of popular enlightenment. In addition to these, there are the educational campaigns in the interest of better health conditions, the child-welfare exhibits, and the numerous "social advertising" devices which are now employed, sometimes upon the initiative of private societies, sometimes upon that of popular magazines or newspapers, in order to educate the public and enlist the masses of the people in the movement for the improvement of conditions of community life. The newspaper is the great medium of communication within the city, and it is on the basis of the information which it supplies that public opinion rests. The first function which a newspaper supplies is that which was formerly performed by the village gossip. In spite, however, of the industry with which newspapers pursue facts of personal intelligence and human interest, they cannot compete with the village gossips as a means of social control. For one thing, the newspaper maintains some reservations not recognized by gossip, in the matters of personal intelligence. For example, until they run for office or commit some other overt act that brings them before the public conspicuously, the private life of individual men or women is a subject that is for the newspaper taboo. It is not so with gossip, partly because in a small community no individual is so obscure that his private affairs escape observation and discussion; partly because the field is smaller. In small communities there is a perfectly amazing amount of personal information afloat among the individuals who compose them. The absence of this in the city is what, in large part, makes the city what it is. 4. From Sentimental to Rational Attitudes[131] I can imagine it to be of exceeding great interest to write the history of mankind from the point of view of the stranger and his influence on the trend of events. From the earliest dawn of history we may observe how communities developed in special directions, no less in important than in insignificant things, because of influences from without. Be it religion or technical inventions, good form in conduct or fashions in dress, political revolutions or stock-exchange machinery, the impetus always--or, at least, in many cases--came from strangers. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the history of the intellectual and religious growth of the bourgeois the stranger should play no small part. Throughout the whole of the Middle Ages in Europe, and to a large extent in the centuries that followed, families left their homes to set up their hearths anew in other lands. The wanderers were in the majority of cases economic agents with a strongly marked tendency toward capitalism, and they originated capitalist methods and cultivated them. Accordingly, it will be helpful to trace the interaction of migrations and the history of the capitalist spirit. First, as to the facts themselves. Two sorts of migrations may be distinguished--those of single individuals and those of groups. In the first category must be placed the removal, of their own free will, of a family, or it may even be of a few families, from one district or country to another. Such cases were universal. But we are chiefly concerned with those instances in which the capitalist spirit manifested itself, as we must assume it did where the immigrants were acquainted with a more complex economic system or were the founders of new industries. Take as an instance the Lombards and other Italian merchants, who in the early Middle Ages carried on business in England, France, and elsewhere. Or recall how in the Middle Ages many an industry, more especially silk weaving, that was established in any district was introduced by foreigners, and very often on a capitalist basis. "A new phase in the development of the Venetian silk industry began with the arrival of traders and silk-workers from Lucca, whereby the industry reached its zenith. The commercial element came more and more to the fore; the merchants became the organizers of production, providing the master craftsman with raw materials which he worked up." So we read in Broglio d'Ajano. We are told a similar tale about the silk industry in Genoa, which received an enormous impetus when the Berolerii began to employ craftsmen from Lucca. In 1341 what was probably the first factory for silk manufacture was erected by one Bolognino di Barghesano, of Lucca. Even in Lyons tradition asserts that Italians introduced the making of silk, and, when in the sixteenth century the industry was placed on a capitalist basis, the initiative thereto came once more from aliens. It was the same in Switzerland, where the silk industry was introduced by the Pelligari in 1685. In Austria likewise we hear the same tale. Silk-making in these instances is but one example; there were very many others. Here one industry was introduced, there another; here it was by Frenchmen or Germans, there by Italians or Dutchmen. And always the new establishments came at the moment when the industries in question were about to become capitalistic in their organization. Individual migrations, then, were not without influence on the economic development of society. But much more powerful was the effect of the wanderings of large groups from one land to another. From the sixteenth century onward migrations of this sort may be distinguished under three heads: (1) Jewish migrations; (2) the migration of persecuted Christians, more especially of Protestants; and (3) the colonizing movement, particularly the settlement in America. We come, then, to the general question, Is it not a fact that the "stranger," the immigrant, was possessed of a specially developed capitalist spirit, and this quite apart from his environment, and, to a lesser degree, his religion or his nationality? We see it in the old states of Europe no less than in the new settlements beyond; in Jews and Gentiles alike; in Protestants and Catholics (the French in Louisiana were, by the middle of the nineteenth century, not a whit behind the Anglo-Saxons of the New England states in this respect). The assumption therefore forces itself upon us that this particular social condition--migration or change of habitat--was responsible for the unfolding of the capitalist spirit. Let us attempt to show how. If we are content to find it in a single cause, it would be the breach with all old ways of life and all old social relationships. Indeed, the psychology of the stranger in a new land may easily be explained by reference to this one supreme fact. His clan, his country, his people, his state, no matter how deeply he was rooted in them, have now ceased to be realities for him. His first aim is to make profit. How could it be otherwise? There is nothing else open to him. In the old country he was excluded from playing his part in public life; in the colony of his choice there is no public life to speak of. Neither can he devote himself to a life of comfortable, slothful ease; the new lands have little comfort. Nor is the newcomer moved by sentiment. His environment means nothing to him. At best he regards it as a means to an end--to make a living. All this must surely be of great consequence for the rise of a mental outlook that cares only for gain; and who will deny that colonial activity generates it? "Our rivulets and streams turn mill wheels and bring rafts into the valleys, as they do in Scotland. But not one ballad, not a single song, reminds us that on their banks men and women live who experience the happiness of love and the pangs of separation; that under each roof in the valleys life's joys and sorrows come and go." This plaint of an American of the old days expresses my meaning; it has been noted again and again, particularly by those who visited America at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The only relationship between the Yankee and his environment is one of practical usefulness. The soil, as one of them says, is not regarded as "the mother of men, the hearth of the gods, the abiding resting-place of the past generations, but only as a means to get rich." There is nothing of "the poetry of the place" anywhere to check commercial devastations. The spire of his village is for the American like any other spire; in his eyes the newest and most gaudily painted is the most beautiful. A waterfall for him merely represents so much motive power. "What a mighty volume of water!" is, as we are assured, the usual cry of an American on seeing Niagara for the first time, and his highest praise of it is that it surpasses all other waterfalls in the world in its horse-power. Nor has the immigrant or colonial settler a sense of the present or the past. He has only a future. Before long the possession of money becomes his one aim and ambition, for it is clear to him that by its means alone will he be able to shape that future. But how can he amass money? Surely by enterprise. His being where he is proves that he has capacities, that he can take risks; is it remarkable, then, that sooner or later his unbridled acquisitiveness will turn him into a restless capitalist undertaker? Here again we have cause and effect. He undervalues the present; he overvalues the future. Hence his activities are such as they are. Is it too much to say that even today American civilization has something of the unfinished about it, something that seems as yet to be in the making, something that turns from the present to the future? Another characteristic of the newcomer everywhere is that there are no bounds to his enterprise. He is not held in check by personal considerations; in all his dealings he comes into contact only with strangers like himself. As we have already had occasion to point out, the first profitable trade was carried on with strangers; your own kith and kin received assistance from you. You lent out money at interest only to the stranger, as Antonio remarked to Shylock, for from the stranger you could demand more than you lent. Nor is the stranger held in check by considerations other than personal ones. He has no traditions to respect; he is not bound by the policy of an old business. He begins with a clean slate; he has no local connections that bind him to any one spot. Is not every locality in a new country as good as every other? You therefore decide upon the one that promises most profit. As Poscher says, a man who has risked his all and left his home to cross the ocean in search of his fortune will not be likely to shrink from a small speculation if this means a change of abode. A little traveling more or less can make no difference. So it comes about that the feverish searching after novelties manifested itself in the American character quite early. "If to live means constant movement and the coming and going of thoughts and feelings in quick succession, then the people here live a hundred lives. All is circulation, movement, and vibrating life. If one attempt fails, another follows on its heels, and before every one undertaking has been completed, the next has already been entered upon" (Chevalier). The enterprising impulse leads to speculation; and here again early observers have noticed the national trait. "Everybody speculates and no commodity escapes from the speculating rage. It is not tulip speculation this time, but speculations in cottons, real estate, banks, and railways." One characteristic of the stranger's activity, be he a settler in a new or an old land, follows of necessity. I refer to the determination to apply the utmost rational effort in the field of economic and technical activity. The stranger must carry through plans with success because of necessity or because he cannot withstand the desire to secure his future. On the other hand, he is able to do it more easily than other folk because he is not hampered by tradition. This explains clearly enough why alien immigrants, as we have seen, furthered commercial and industrial progress wherever they came. Similarly we may thus account for the well-known fact that nowhere are technical inventions so plentiful as in America, that railway construction and the making of machinery proceed much more rapidly there than anywhere else in the world. It all comes from the peculiar conditions of the problem, conditions that have been termed colonial--great distances, dear labor, and the will to progress. The state of mind that will have, nay, must have, progress is that of the stranger, untrammeled by the past and gazing toward the future. Yet results such as these are not achieved by strangers merely because they happen to be strangers. Place a negro in a new environment; will he build railways and invent labor-saving machines? Hardly. There must be a certain fitness; it must be in the blood. In short, other forces beside that of being merely a stranger in a strange land are bound to co-operate before the total result can be fully accounted for. There must be a process of selection, making the best types available, and the ethical and moral factor, too, counts for much. Nevertheless, the migrations themselves were a very powerful element in the growth of capitalism. 5. The Sociological Significance of the "Stranger"[132] If wandering, considered as the liberation from every given point in space, is the conceptual opposite to fixation at such a point, then surely the sociological form of "the stranger" presents the union of both of these specifications. It discloses, indeed, the fact that relations to space are only, on the one hand, the condition, and, on the other hand, the symbol, of relations to men. The stranger is not taken here, therefore, in the sense frequently employed, of the wanderer who comes today and goes tomorrow, but rather of the man who comes today and stays tomorrow, the potential wanderer, so to speak, who, although he has gone no further, has not quite got over the freedom of coming and going. He is fixed within a certain spatial circle, but his position within it is peculiarly determined by the fact that he does not belong in it from the first, that he brings qualities into it that are not, and cannot be, native to it. The union of nearness and remoteness, which every relation between men comprehends, has here produced a system of relations or a constellation which may, in the fewest words, be thus formulated: The distance within the relation signifies that the Near is far; the very fact of being alien, however, that the Far is near. For the state of being a stranger is naturally a quite positive relation, a particular form of interaction. The inhabitants of Sirius are not exactly strangers to us, at least not in the sociological sense of the word as we are considering it. In that sense they do not exist for us at all. They are beyond being far and near. The stranger is an element of the group itself, not otherwise than the Poor and the various "inner enemies," an element whose inherent position and membership involve both an exterior and an opposite. The manner, now, in which mutually repulsive and opposing elements here compose a form of a joint and interacting unity may now be briefly analyzed. In the whole history of economics the stranger makes his appearance everywhere as the trader, the trader his as the stranger. As long as production for one's own needs is the general rule, or products are exchanged within a relatively narrow circle, there is no need of any middleman within the group. A trader is only required with those products which are produced entirely outside of the group. Unless there are people who wander out into foreign lands to buy these necessities, in which case they are themselves "strange" merchants in this other region, the trader must be a stranger. No other has a chance for existence. This position of the stranger is intensified in our consciousness if, instead of leaving the place of his activity, he fixes himself in it. This will be possible for him only if he can live by trade in the rôle of a middleman. Any closed economic group in which the division of the land and of the crafts which satisfy the local demands has been achieved will still grant an existence to the trader. For trade alone makes possible unlimited combinations, in which intelligence finds ever wider extensions and ever newer accessions, a thing rarely possible in the case of the primitive producer with his lesser mobility and his restriction to a circle of customers which could only very gradually be increased. Trade can always absorb more men than primary production, and it is therefore the most favorable province for the stranger, who thrusts himself, so to speak, as a supernumerary into a group in which all the economic positions are already possessed. History offers as the classic illustration the European Jew. The stranger is by his very nature no landowner--in saying which, land is taken not merely in a physical sense but also in a metaphorical one of a permanent and a substantial existence, which is fixed, if not in space, then at least in an ideal position within the social order. The special sociological characteristics of the stranger may now be presented. a) _Mobility._--In the more intimate relations of man to man, the stranger may disclose all possible attractions and significant characters, but just as long as he is regarded as a stranger, he is in so far no landowner. Now restriction to trade, and frequently to pure finance, as if by a sublimation from the former, gives the stranger the specific character of mobility. With this mobility, when it occurs within a limited group, there occurs that synthesis of nearness and remoteness which constitutes the formal position of the stranger; for the merely mobile comes incidentally into contact with every single element but is not bound up organically, through the established ties of kinship, locality, or profession, with any single one. b) _Objectivity._--Another expression for this relation lies in the objectivity of the stranger. Because he is not rooted in the peculiar attitudes and biased tendencies of the group, he stands apart from all these with the peculiar attitude of the "objective," which does not indicate simply a separation and disinterestedness but is a peculiar composition of nearness and remoteness, concern and indifference. I call attention to the domineering positions of the stranger to the group, as whose archtype appeared that practice of Italian cities of calling their judges from without, because no native was free from the prejudices of family interests and factions. c) _Confidant._--With the objectivity of the stranger is connected the phenomenon which indeed belongs chiefly, but not indeed exclusively, to the mobile man: namely, that often the most surprising disclosures and confessions, even to the character of the confessional disclosure, are brought to him, secrets such as one carefully conceals from every intimate. Objectivity is by no means lack of sympathy, for that is something quite outside and beyond either subjective or objective relations. It is rather a positive and particular manner of sympathy. So the objectivity of a theoretical observation certainly does not mean that the spirit is a _tabula rasa_ on which things inscribe their qualities, but it means the full activity of a spirit working according to its own laws, under conditions in which accidental dislocations and accentuations have been excluded, the individual and subjective peculiarities of which would give quite different pictures of the same object. d) _Freedom from convention._--One can define objectivity also as freedom. The objective man is bound by no sort of proprieties which can prejudice for him his apprehension, his understanding, his judgment of the given. This freedom which permits the stranger to experience and deal with the relation of nearness as though from a bird's-eye view, contains indeed all sorts of dangerous possibilities. From the beginnings of things, in revolutions of all sorts, the attacked party has claimed that there has been incitement from without, through foreign emissaries and agitators. As far as that is concerned, it is simply an exaggeration of the specific rôle of the stranger; he is the freer man, practically and theoretically; he examines the relations with less prejudice; he submits them to more general, more objective, standards, and is not confined in his action by custom, piety, or precedents. e) _Abstract relations._--Finally, the proportion of nearness and remoteness which gives the stranger the character of objectivity gets another practical expression in the more abstract nature of the relation to him. This is seen in the fact that one has certain more general qualities only in common with the stranger, whereas the relation with those organically allied is based on the similarity of just those specific differences by which the members of an intimate group are distinguished from those who do not share that intimacy. All personal relations whatsoever are determined according to this scheme, however varied the form which they assume. What is decisive is not the fact that certain common characteristics exist side by side with individual differences which may or may not affect them but rather that the influence of this common possession itself upon the personal relation of the individuals involved is determined by certain conditions: Does it exist in and for these individuals and for these only? Does it represent qualities that are general in the group, to be sure, but peculiar to it? Or is it merely felt by the members of the group as something peculiar to individuals themselves whereas, in fact, it is a common possession of a group, or a type, or mankind? In the last case an attenuation of the effect of the common possession enters in, proportional to the size of the group. Common characteristics function, it is true, as a basis for union among the elements, but it does not specifically refer these elements to each other. A similarity so widely shared might serve as a common basis of each with every possible other. This too is evidently one way in which a relation may at the same moment comprehend both nearness and remoteness. To the extent to which the similarities become general, the warmth of the connection which they effect will have an element of coolness, a feeling in it of the adventitiousness of this very connection. The powers which united have lost their specific, centripetal character. This constellation (in which similarities are shared by large numbers) acquires, it seems to me, an extraordinary and fundamental preponderance--as against the individual and personal elements we have been discussing--in defining our relation to the stranger. The stranger is near to us in so far as we feel between him and ourselves similarities of nationality or social position, of profession or of general human nature. He is far from us in so far as these similarities reach out over him and us, and only ally us both because in fact they ally a great many. In this sense a trait of this strangeness easily comes into even the most intimate relations. Erotic relations show a very decided aversion, in the stage of first passion, to any disposition to think of them in general terms. A love such as this (so the lover feels) has never existed before, nor is there anything to be compared with our passion for the beloved person. An estrangement is wont, whether as cause or as result it is difficult to decide, to set in at that moment in which the sentiment of uniqueness disappears from the connection. A scepticism of its value in itself and for us fastens itself to the very thought that after all one has only drawn the lot of general humanity, one has experienced a thousand times re-enacted adventure, and that, if one had not accidentally encountered this precise person, any other one would have acquired the same meaning for us. And something of this cannot fail to be present in any relation, be it ever so intimate, because that which is common to the two is perhaps never common only to them but belongs to a general conception, which includes much else, many possibilities of similarities. As little actuality as they may have, often as we may forget them, yet here and there they crowd in like shadows between men, like a mist gliding before every word's meaning, which must actually congeal into solid corporeality in order to be called rivalry. Perhaps this is in many cases a more general, at least more insurmountable, strangeness than that afforded by differences and incomprehensibilities. There is a feeling, indeed, that these are actually not the peculiar property of just that relation but of a more general one that potentially refers to us and to an uncertain number of others, and therefore the relation experienced has no inner and final necessity. On the other hand, there is a sort of strangeness, in which this very connection on the basis of a general quality embracing the parties is precluded. The relation of the Greeks to the Barbarians is a typical example; so are all the cases in which the general characteristics which one takes as peculiarly and merely human are disallowed to the other. But here the expression "the stranger" has no longer any positive meaning. The relation with him is a non-relation. He is not a member of the group itself. As such he is much more to be considered as near and far at the same moment, seeing that the foundation of the relation is now laid simply on a general human similarity. Between these two elements there occurs, however, a peculiar tension, since the consciousness of having only the absolutely general in common has exactly the effect of bringing into particular emphasis that which is not common. In the case of strangers according to country, city, or race, the individual characteristics of the person are not perceived; but attention is directed to his alien extraction which he has in common with all the members of his group. Therefore the strangers are perceived, not indeed as individuals, but chiefly as strangers of a certain type. Their remoteness is no less general than their nearness. With all his inorganic adjacency, the stranger is yet an organic member of the group, whose uniform life is limited by the peculiar dependence upon this element. Only we do not know how to designate the characteristic unity of this position otherwise than by saying that it is put together of certain amounts of nearness and of remoteness, which, characterizing in some measure any sort of relation, determine in a certain proportion and with characteristic mutual tension the specific, formal relation of "the stranger." III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS 1. Physical Contacts The literature of the research upon social contacts falls naturally under four heads: physical contacts, sensory contacts, primary contacts, and secondary contacts. The reaction of the person to contacts with things as contrasted with his contacts with persons is an interesting chapter in social psychology. Observation upon children shows that the individual tends to respond to inanimate objects, particularly if they are unfamiliar, as if they were living and social. The study of animism among primitive peoples indicates that their attitude toward certain animals whom they regarded as superior social beings is a specialization of this response. A survey of the poetry of all times and races discloses that nature to the poet as well as to the mystic is personal. Homesickness and nostalgia are an indication of the personal and intimate nature of the relation of man to the physical world. It seems to be part of man's original nature to take the world socially and personally. It is only as things become familiar and controllable that he gains the concept of mechanism. It is natural science and machinery that has made so large a part of the world impersonal for most of us. The scientific study of the actual reaction of persons and groups to their physical environment is still in the pioneer stage. The anthropogeographers have made many brilliant suggestions and a few careful and critical studies of the direct and indirect effects of the physical environment not merely upon man's social and political organization but upon his temperament and conduct. Huntington's suggestive observations upon the effect of climate upon manners and efficiency have opened a wide field for investigation.[133] Interest is growing in the psychology and sociology of the responses of individuals and groups to the physical conditions of their environment. Communities, large and small in this country, as they become civic conscious, have devised city plans. New York has made an elaborate report on the zoning of the city into business, industrial, and residential areas. A host of housing surveys present realistic pictures of actual conditions of physical existence from the standpoint of the hygienic and social effects of low standards of dwelling, overcrowding, the problem of the roomer. Even historic accounts and impressionistic observations of art and ornament, decoration and dress, indicate the relation of these material trappings to the self-consciousness of the individual in his social milieu. The reservation must be made that studies of zoning, city planning, and housing have taken account of economic, aesthetic, and hygienic factors rather than those of contacts. Implicit, however, in certain aspects of these studies, certainly present often as an unconscious motive, has been an appreciation of the effects of the urban, artificial physical environment upon the responses and the very nature of plastic human beings, creatures more than creators of the modern leviathan, the Great City. Glimpses into the nature and process of these subtle effects appear only infrequently in formal research. Occasionally such a book as _The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets_ by Jane Addams throws a flood of light upon the contrasts between the warmth, the sincerity, and the wholesomeness of primary human responses and the sophistication, the coldness, and the moral dangers of the secondary organization of urban life. A sociological study of the effect of the artificial physical and social environment of the city upon the person will take conscious account of these social factors. The lack of attachment to home in the city tenant as compared with the sentiments and status of home-ownership in the village, the mobility of the urban dweller in his necessary routine of work and his restless quest for pleasure, the sophistication, the front, the self-seeking of the individual emancipated from the controls of the primary group--all these represent problems for research. There are occasional references in literature to what may be called the inversion of the natural attitudes of the city child. His attention, his responses, even his images become fixed by the stimuli of the city streets.[134] To those interested in child welfare and human values this is the supreme tragedy of the city. 2. Touch and the Primary Contacts of Intimacy The study of the senses in their relations to personal and social behavior had its origins in psychology, in psychoanalysis, in ethnology, and in the study of races and nationalities with reference to the conflict and fusion of cultures. Darwin's theory of the origin of the species increased interest in the instincts and it was the study of the instincts that led psychologists finally to define all forms of behavior in terms of stimulus and response. A "contact" is simply a stimulation that has significance for the understanding of group behavior. In psychoanalysis, a rapidly growing literature is accessible to sociologists upon the nature and the effects of the intimate contacts of sex and family life. Indeed, the Freudian concept of the _libido_ may be translated for sociological purposes into the desire for response. The intensity of the sentiments of love and hate that cement and disrupt the family is indicated in the analyses of the so-called "family romance." Life histories reveal the natural tendencies toward reciprocal affection of mother and son or father and daughter, and the mutual antagonism of father and son or mother and daughter. In ethnology, attention was early directed to the phenomena of taboo with its injunction against contamination by contacts. The literature of primitive communities is replete with the facts of avoidance of contact, as between the sexes, between mother-in-law and son-in-law, with persons "with the evil eye," etc. Frazer's volume on "Taboo and the Perils of the Soul" in his series entitled _The Golden Bough_, and Crawley, in his book, _The Mystic Rose_, to mention two outstanding examples, have assembled, classified, and interpreted many types of taboo. In the literature of taboo is found also the ritualistic distinction between "the clean" and "the unclean" and the development of reverence and awe toward "the sacred" and "the holy." Recent studies of the conflict of races and nationalities, generally considered as exclusively economic or political in nature, bring out the significance of disgusts and fears based fundamentally upon characteristic racial odors, marked variations in skin color and in physiognomy as well as upon differences in food habits, personal conduct, folkways, mores, and culture. 3. Primary Contacts of Acquaintanceship Two of the best sociological statements of primary contacts are to be found in Professor Cooley's analysis of primary groups in his book _Social Organization_ and in Shaler's exposition of the sympathetic way of approach in his volume _The Neighbor_. A mass of descriptive material for the further study of the primary contacts is available from many sources. Studies of primitive peoples indicate that early social organizations were based upon ties of kinship and primary group contacts. Village life in all ages and with all races exhibits absolute standards and stringent primary controls of behavior. The Blue Laws of Connecticut are little else than primary-group attitudes written into law. Common law, the traditional code of legal conduct sanctioned by the experience of primary groups, may be compared with statute law, which is an abstract prescription for social life in secondary societies. Here also should be included the consideration of programs and projects for community organization upon the basis of primary contacts, as for example, Ward's _The Social Center_. 4. Secondary Contacts The transition from feudal societies of villages and towns to our modern world-society of great cosmopolitan cities has received more attention from economics and politics than from sociology. Studies of the industrial basis of city life have given us the external pattern of the city: its topographical conditions, the concentration of population as an outcome of large-scale production, division of labor, and specialization of effort. Research in municipal government has proceeded from the muck-raking period, indicated by Lincoln Steffens' _The Shame of the Cities_ to surveys of public utilities and city administration of the type of those made by the New York Bureau of Municipal Research. Social interest in the city was first stimulated by the polemics against the political and social disorders of urban life. There were those who would destroy the city in order to remedy its evils and restore the simple life of the country. Sociology sought a surer basis for the solution of the problems from a study of the facts of city life. Statistics of population by governmental departments provide figures upon conditions and tendencies. Community surveys have translated into understandable form a mass of information about the formal aspects of city life. Naturally enough, sympathetic and arresting pictures of city life have come from residents of settlements as in Jane Addam's _Twenty Years at Hull House_, Robert Wood's _The City Wilderness_, Lillian Wald's _The House on Henry Street_ and Mrs. Simkhovitch's _The City Worker's World_. Georg Simmel has made the one outstanding contribution to a sociology or, perhaps better, a social philosophy of the city in his paper "The Great City and Cultural Life." BIBLIOGRAPHY: MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF SOCIAL CONTACTS I. THE NATURE AND IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL CONTACTS (1) Small, Albion W. _General Sociology._ An exposition of the main development in sociological theory from Spencer to Ratzenhofer, pp. 486-91. Chicago, 1905. (2) Tarde, Gabriel. _The Laws of Imitation_. Translated from the French by Elsie Clews Parsons. Chap. iii, "What Is a Society?" New York, 1903. (3) Thomas, W. I. "Race Psychology: Standpoint and Questionnaire, with Particular Reference to the Immigrant and the Negro." _American Journal of Sociology_, XVII (May, 1912), 725-75. (4) Boas, Franz. _The Mind of Primitive Man._ New York, 1911. II. INTIMATE SOCIAL CONTACTS AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE SENSES (1) Simmel, Georg. _Soziologie._ Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. Exkurs über die Soziologie der Sinne, pp. 646-65. Leipzig, 1908. (2) Crawley, E. _The Mystic Rose._ A study of primitive marriage. London and New York, 1902. (3) Sully, James. _Sensation and Intuition._ Studies in psychology and aesthetics. Chap, iv, "Belief: Its Varieties and Its Conditions." London, 1874. (4) Moll, Albert. _Der Rapport in der Hypnose._ Leipzig, 1892. (5) Elworthy, F. T. _The Evil Eye._ An account of this ancient and widespread superstition. London, 1895. (6) Lévy-Bruhl. _Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures._ Paris, 1910. (7) Starbuck, Edwin D. "The Intimate Senses as Sources of Wisdom," _The Journal of Religion_, I (March, 1921), 129-45. (8) Paulhan, Fr. _Les transformations saddles des sentiments._ Paris, 1920. (9) Stoll, O. _Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie._ Chap. ix, pp. 225-29. Leipzig, 1904. (10) Hooper, Charles E. _Common Sense._ An analysis and interpretation. Being a discussion of its general character, its distinction from discursive reasoning, its origin in mental imagery, its speculative outlook, its value for practical life and social well-being, its relation to scientific knowledge, and its bearings on the problems of natural and rational causation. London, 1913. (11) Weigall, A. "The Influence of the Kinematograph upon National Life," _Nineteenth Century and After_, LXXXIX (April, 1921), 661-72. III. MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF MOBILITY (1) Vallaux, Camille. "Le sol et l'état," _Géographie sociale._ Paris, 1911. (2) Demolins, Edmond. _Comment la route crée le type social._ Les grandes routes des peuples; essai de géographie social. 2 vols. Paris, 1901. (3) Vandervelde, É. _L'exode rural el le retour aux champs._ Chap. iv, "Les conséquences de l'exode rural." (Sec. 3 discusses the political and intellectual, the physical and moral consequences of the rural exodus, pp. 202-13.) Paris, 1903. (4) Bury, J. B. _A History of Freedom of Thought._ London and New York, 1913. (5) Bloch, Iwan. _Die Prostitution._ Handbuch der gesamten Sexualwissenschaft in Einzeldarstellungen. Berlin, 1912. (6) Pagnier, Armand. _Du vagabondage et des vagabonds._ Étude psychologique, sociologique et médico-légale. Lyon, 1906. (7) Laubach, Frank C. _Why There Are Vagrants._ A study based upon an examination of one hundred men. New York, 1916. (8) Ribton-Turner, Charles J. _A History of Vagrants and Vagrancy and Beggars and Begging._ London, 1887. (9) Florian, Eugenio. _I vagabondi._ Studio sociologicoguiridico. Parte prima, "L'Evoluzione del vagabondaggio." Pp. 1-124. Torino, 1897-1900. (10) Devine, Edward T. "The Shiftless and Floating City Population," _Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_, X (September, 1897), 149-164. IV. SOCIAL CONTACTS IN PRIMARY GROUPS (1) Sumner, Wm. G. _Folkways._ A study of the sociological importance of usages, manners, customs, mores, and morals. "The In-Group and the Out-Group," pp. 12-16. Boston, 1906. (2) Vierkandt, Alfred. _Naturvölker und Kulturvölker._ Ein Beitrag zur Socialpsychologie. Leipzig, 1896. (3) Pandian, T. B. _Indian Village Folk._ Their Works and Ways. London, 1897. (4) Dobschütz, E. v. _Die urchristlichen Gemeinden._ Sittengeschichtliche Bilder. Leipzig, 1902. (5) Kautsky, Karl. _Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation._ Translated by J. L. and E. G. Mulliken. London, 1897. (6) Hupka, S. von. _Entwicklung der westgalizischen Dorfzustände in der 2. Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, verfolgt in einem Dörferkomplex._ Zürich, 1910. (7) Wallace, Donald M. _Russia._ Chaps. vi, vii, viii, and ix. New York, 1905. (8) Ditchfield, P. H. _Old Village Life, or, Glimpses of Village Life through All Ages._ New York, 1920. (9) Hammond, John L., and Hammond, Barbara. _The Village Labourer, 1760-1832._ A study in the government of England before the reform bill. London, 1911. (10) _The Blue Laws of Connecticut._ A collection of the earliest statutes and judicial proceedings of that colony, being an exhibition of the rigorous morals and legislation of the Puritans. Edited with an introduction by Samuel M. Schmucker. Philadelphia, 1861. (11) Nordhoff, C. _The Communistic Societies of the United States._ From personal visit and observation. Including detailed accounts of the Economists, Zoarites, Shakers, the Amana, Oneida, Bethel, Aurora, Icarian, and other existing societies, their religious creeds, social practices, numbers, industries, and present condition. New York, 1875. (12) Hinds, William A. _American Communities and Co-operative Colonies._ 2d rev. Chicago, 1908. [Contains notices of 144 communities in the United States.] (13) L'Houet, A. _Zur Psychologie des Bauerntums._ Ein Beitrag. Tübingen, 1905. (14) Pennington, Patience. _A Woman Rice-Planter._ New York, 1913. (15) Smedes, Susan D. _A Southern Planter._ London, 1889. (16) Sims, Newell L. _The Rural Community, Ancient and Modern._ Chap. iv, "The Disintegration of the Village Community." New York, 1920. (17) Anderson, Wilbert L. _The Country Town._ A study of rural evolution. New York, 1906. (18) Zola, Émile. _La Terre._ Paris, 1907. [Romance.] V. SOCIAL CONTACTS IN SECONDARY GROUPS (1) Weber, Adna Ferrin. _The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century._ A study in statistics. New York, 1899. (2) Preuss, Hugo. _Die Entwicklung des deutschen Städtewesens._ I Band. Leipzig, 1906. (3) Green, Alice S. A. (Mrs. J. R.) _Town Life in the Fifteenth Century._ London and New York, 1894. (4) Toynbee, Arnold. _Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century in England._ London, 1890. (5) Hammond, J. L., and Hammond, Barbara. _The Town Labourer, 1760-1832._ The new civilization. London, 1917. (6) ----. _The Skilled Labourer_, 1760-1832. London, 1919. [Presents the detailed history of particular bodies of skilled workers during the great change of the Industrial Revolution.] (7) Jastrow, J. "Die Stadtgemeinschaft in ihren kulturellen Beziehungen." (Indicates the institutions which have come into existence under conditions of urban community life.) _Zeitschrift für Socialwissenschaft_, X (1907), 42-51, 92-101. [Bibliography.] (8) Sombart, Werner. _The Jews and Modern Capitalism._ Translated from the German by M. Epstein. London, 1913. (9) ----. _The Quintessence of Capitalism._ A study of the history and psychology of the modern business man. Translated from the German by M. Epstein. New York, 1915. (10) Wallas, Graham. _The Great Society._ A psychological analysis. New York, 1914. (11) Booth, Charles. _Life and Labour of the People in London._ V, East London, chap, ii, "The Docks." III, chap, iv, "Influx of Population." London, 1892. (12) Marpillero, G. "Saggio di psicologia dell'urbanismo," _Rivista italiana di sociologia_, XII (1908), 599-626. (13) Besant, Walter. _East London._ London and New York, 1901. (14) _The Pittsburgh Survey--the Pittsburgh District._ Robert A. Woods, "Pittsburgh, an Interpretation." Allen T. Burns, "Coalition of Pittsburgh Coal Fields." New York, 1914. (15) _Hull House Maps and Papers._ A presentation of nationalities and wages in a congested district of Chicago, together with comments and essays on problems growing out of the social conditions. New York, 1895. (16) Addams, Jane. _Twenty Years at Hull House._ With autobiographical notes. New York, 1910. (17) ----. _The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets._ New York, 1909. (18) Simkhovitch, Mary K. _The City Worker's World in America._ New York, 1917. (19) Park, R. E., and Miller, H. A. _Old World Traits Transplanted._ New York, 1921. (20) Park, Robert E. _The Immigrant Press and Its Control._ (In press.) (21) Steiner, J. F. _The Japanese Invasion._ A study in the psychology of inter-racial contacts. Chicago, 1917. (22) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and America._ Monograph of an immigrant group. Vol. IV, Chicago, 1918. (23) Cahan, Abraham. _The Rise of David Levinsky._ A novel. New York and London, 1917. (24) Hasanovitz, Elizabeth. _One of Them._ Chapters from a passionate autobiography. Boston, 1918. (25) Ravage, M. E. _An American in the Making._ The life story of an immigrant. New York and London, 1917. (26) Ribbany, Abraham Mitrie. _A Far Journey._ Boston, 1914. (27) Riis, Jacob A. _The Making of an American._ New York and London, 1901. (28) Cohen, Rose. _Out of the Shadow._ New York, 1918. TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES 1. The Land as the Basis for Social Contacts. 2. Density of Population, Social Contacts and Social Organization. 3. Mobility and Social Types, as the Gypsy, the Nomad, the Hobo, the Pioneer, the Commercial Traveler, the Missionary, the Globe-Trotter, the Wandering Jew. 4. Stability and Social Types, as the Farmer, the Home-Owner, the Business Man. 5. Sensory Experience and Human Behavior. Nostalgia (Homesickness). 6. Race Prejudice and Primary Contacts. 7. Taboo and Social Contact. 8. Social Contacts in a Primary Group, as the Family, the Play Group, the Neighborhood, the Village. 9. Social Control in Primary Groups. 10. The Substitution of Secondary for Primary Contacts as the Cause of Social Problems, as Poverty, Crime, Prostitution, etc. 11. Control of Problems through Secondary Contacts, as Charity Organization Society, Social Service Registration Bureau, Police Department, Morals Court, Publicity through the Press, etc. 12. The Industrial Revolution and the Great Society. 13. Attempts to Revive Primary Groups in the City, as the Social Center, the Settlement, the Social Unit Experiment, etc. 14. Attempts to Restore Primary Contacts between Employer and Employee. 15. The Anonymity of the Newspaper. 16. Standardization and Impersonality of the Great Society. 17. The Sociology of the Stranger; a Study of the Revivalist, the Expert, the Genius, the Trader. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. What do you understand by the term contact? 2. What are the ways in which geographic conditions influence social contacts? 3. What are the differences in contact with the land between primitive and modern peoples? 4. In what ways do increasing social contacts affect contacts with the soil? Give concrete illustrations. 5. What is the social significance of touch as compared with that of the other senses? 6. In what sense is touch a social contact? 7. By what principle do you explain desire or aversion for contact? 8. Give illustrations indicating the significance of touch in various fields of social life. 9. How do you explain the impulse to touch objects which attract attention? 10. What are the differences in contacts within and without the group in primitive society? 11. In what way do external relations affect the contacts within the group? 12. Give illustrations of group egotism or ethnocentrism. 13. To what extent does the dependence of the solidarity of the in-group upon its relations with the out-groups have a bearing upon present international relations? 14. To what extent is the social control of the immigrant dependent upon the maintenance of the solidarity of the immigrant group? 15. What are our reactions upon meeting a person? a friend? a stranger? 16. What do you understand Shaler to mean by the statement that "at the beginning of any acquaintance the fellow-being is evidently dealt with in the categoric way"? 17. How far is "the sympathetic way of approach" practical in human relations? 18. What is the difference in the basis of continuity between animal and human society? 19. What types of social contacts make for historical continuity? 20. What are the differences of social contacts in the movements of primitive and civilized peoples? 21. To what extent is civilization dependent upon increasing contacts and intimacy of contacts? 22. Does mobility always mean increasing contacts? 23. Under what conditions does mobility contribute to the increase of experience? 24. Does the hobo get more experience than the schoolboy? 25. Contrast the advantages and limitations of historical continuity and of mobility. 26. What do you understand by a primary group? 27. Are primary contacts limited to members of face-to-face groups? 28. What attitudes and relations characterize village life? 29. Interpret sociologically the control by the group of the behavior of the individual in a rural community. 30. Why has the growth of the city resulted in the substitution of secondary for primary social contacts? 31. What problems grow out of the breakdown of primary relations? What problems are solved by the breakdown of primary relations? 32. Do the contacts of city life make for the development of individuality? personality? social types? 33. In what ways does publicity function as a form of secondary contact in American life? 34. Why does the European peasant first become a reader of newspapers after his immigration to the United States? 35. Why does the shift from country to city involve a change (a) from concrete to abstract relations; (b) from absolute to relative standards of life; (c) from personal to impersonal relations; and (d) from sentimental to rational attitudes? 36. How far is social solidarity based upon concrete and sentimental rather than upon abstract and rational relations? 37. Why does immigration make for change from sentimental to rational attitudes toward life? 38. In what way is capitalism associated with the growth of secondary contacts? 39. How does "the stranger" include externality and intimacy? 40. In what ways would you illustrate the relation described by Simmel that combines "the near" and "the far"? 41. Why is it that "the stranger" is associated with revolutions and destructive forces in the group? 42. Why does "the stranger" have prestige? 43. In what sense is the attitude of the academic man that of "the stranger" as compared with the attitude of the practical man? 44. To what extent does the professional man have the characteristics of "the stranger"? 45. Why does the feeling of a relation as unique give it value that it loses when thought of as shared by others? 46. What would be the effect upon the problem of the relation of the whites and negroes in the United States of the recognition that this relation is of the same kind as that which exists between other races in similar situations? FOOTNOTES: [117] Alexander Pope, in smooth lines, and with apt phrases, has concretely described this process of perversion: "Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace." [118] H. S. Jennings, John B. Watson, Adolph Meyer, and W. I. Thomas, "Practical and Theoretical Problems in Instinct and Habit," _Suggestions of Modern Science Concerning Education_, p. 174. [119] See Introduction, pp. 8-10. [120] Thorstein Veblin, _The Instinct of Workmanship, and the State of the Industrial Arts_. (New York, 1914.) [121] From Albion W. Small, _General Sociology_, pp. 486-89. (The University of Chicago Press, 1905.) [122] From Ellen C. Semple, _Influences of Geographic Environment_, pp. 51-53. (Henry Holt & Co., 1911.) [123] From Ernest Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_, pp. 76-79. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1902. Reprinted by permission.) [124] From W. G. Sumner, _Folkways_, pp. 12-13. (Ginn & Co., 1906.) [125] Adapted from N. S. Shaler, _The Neighbor_, pp. 207-27. (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1904.) [126] From Friedrich Ratzel, _The History of Mankind_, I, 21-25. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1896. Reprinted by permission.) [127] Adapted from Ellen C. Semple, _Influences of Geographic Environment_, pp. 75-84, 186-87. (Henry Holt & Co., 1911.) [128] Adapted from Caroline C. Richards, _Village Life in America_, pp. 21-138. (Henry Holt & Co., 1912.) [129] From Robert E. Park, "The City," in the _American Journal of Sociology_, XX (1914-15), 593-609. [130] From Robert E. Park, "The City," in the _American Journal of Sociology_, XX (1914-15), 604-7. [131] Adapted from Werner Sombart, _The Quintessence of Capitalism_, pp. 292-307. (T. F. Unwin, Ltd., 1915.) [132] Translated from Georg Simmel, _Soziologie_, pp. 685-91. (Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1908.) [133] Ellsworth Huntington, _Climate and Civilization_. (New Haven, 1915.) [134] The following is one of the typical illustrations of this point. An art teacher conducted a group of children from a settlement, in a squalid city area, to the country. She asked the children to draw any object they wished. On examination of the drawings she was astonished to find not rural scenes but pictures of the city streets, as lamp-posts and smokestacks. CHAPTER VI SOCIAL INTERACTION I. INTRODUCTION 1. The Concept of Interaction The idea of interaction is not a notion of common sense. It represents the culmination of long-continued reflection by human beings in their ceaseless effort to resolve the ancient paradox of unity in diversity, the "one" and the "many," to find law and order in the apparent chaos of physical changes and social events; and thus to find explanations for the behavior of the universe, of society, and of man. The disposition to be curious and reflective about the physical and social universe is human enough. For men, in distinction from animals, live in a world of ideas as well as in a realm of immediate reality. This world of ideas is something more than the mirror that sense-perception offers us; something less than that ultimate reality to which it seems to be a prologue and invitation. Man, in his ambition to be master of himself and of nature, looks behind the mirror, to analyze phenomena and seek causes, in order to gain control. Science, natural science, is a research for causes, that is to say, for mechanisms, which in turn find application in technical devices, organization, and machinery, in which mankind asserts its control over physical nature and eventually over man himself. Education, in its technical aspects at least, is a device of social control, just as the printing press is an instrument that may be used for the same purpose. Sociology, like other natural sciences, aims at prediction and control based on an investigation of the nature of man and society, and nature means here, as elsewhere in science, just those aspects of life that are determined and predictable. In order to describe man and society in terms which will reveal their nature, sociology is compelled to reduce the complexity and richness of life to the simplest terms, i.e., elements and forces. Once the concepts "elements" or "forces" have been accepted, the notion of interaction is an evitable, logical development. In astronomy, for example, these elements are (a) the masses of the heavenly bodies, (b) their position, (c) the direction of their movement, and (d) their velocity. In sociology, these forces are institutions, tendencies, human beings, ideas, anything that embodies and expresses motives and wishes. In _principle_, and with reference to their logical character, the "forces" and "elements" in sociology may be compared with the forces and elements in any other natural science. Ormond, in his _Foundations of Knowledge_,[135] gives an illuminating analysis of interaction as a concept which may be applied equally to the behavior of physical objects and persons. The notion of interaction is not simple but very complex. The notion involves not simply the idea of bare collision and rebound, but something much more profound, namely, the internal modifiability of the colliding agents. Take for example the simplest possible case, that of one billiard ball striking against another. We say that the impact of one ball against another communicates motion, so that the stricken ball passes from a state of rest to one of motion, while the striking ball has experienced a change of an opposite character. But nothing is explained by this account, for if nothing happens but the communication of motion, why does it not pass through the stricken ball and leave its state unchanged? The phenomenon cannot be of this simple character, but there must be a point somewhere at which the recipient of the impulse gathers itself up, so to speak, into a knot and becomes the subject of the impulse which is thus translated into movement. We have thus movement, impact, impulse, which is translated again into activity, and outwardly the billiard ball changing from a state of rest to one of motion; or in the case of the impelling ball, from a state of motion to one of rest. Now the case of the billiard balls is one of the simpler examples of interaction. We have seen that the problem it supplies is not simple but very complex. The situation is not thinkable at all if we do not suppose the internal modifiability of the agents, and this means that these agents are able somehow to receive internally and to react upon impulses which are communicated externally in the form of motion or activity. The simplest form of interaction involves the supposition, therefore, of internal subject-points or their analogues from which impulsions are received and responded to. Simmel, among sociological writers, although he nowhere expressly defines the term, has employed the conception of interaction with a clear sense of its logical significance. Gumplowicz, on the other hand, has sought to define social interaction as a principle fundamental to all natural sciences, that is to say, sciences that seek to describe change in terms of a process, i.e., physics, chemistry, biology, psychology. The logical principle is the same in all these sciences; the _processes_ and the _elements_ are different. 2. Classification of the Materials The material in this chapter will be considered here under three main heads: (a) society as interaction, (b) communication as the medium of interaction, and (c) imitation and suggestion as mechanisms of interaction. a) _Society as interaction._--Society stated in mechanistic terms reduces to interaction. A person is a member of society so long as he responds to social forces; when interaction ends, he is isolated and detached; he ceases to be a person and becomes a "lost soul." This is the reason that the limits of society are coterminous with the limits of interaction, that is, of the participation of persons in the life of society. One way of measuring the wholesome or the normal life of a person is by the sheer external fact of his membership in the social groups of the community in which his lot is cast. Simmel has illustrated in a wide survey of concrete detail how interaction defines the group in time and space. Through contacts of historical continuity, the life of society extends backward to prehistoric eras. More potent over group behavior than contemporary discovery and invention is the control exerted by the "dead hand of the past" through the inertia of folkways and mores, through the revival of memories and sentiments and through the persistence of tradition and culture. Contacts of mobility, on the other hand, define the area of the interaction of the members of the group in space. The degree of departure from accepted ideas and modes of behavior and the extent of sympathetic approach to the strange and the novel largely depend upon the rate, the number, and the intensity of the contacts of mobility. b) _Communication as the medium of social interaction._--Each science postulates its own medium of interaction. Astronomy and physics assume a hypothetical substance, the ether. Physics has its principles of molar action and reaction; chemistry studies molecular interaction. Biology and medicine direct their research to the physiological interaction of organisms. Psychology is concerned with the behavior of the individual organism in terms of the interaction of stimuli and responses. Sociology, as collective psychology, deals with communication. Sociologists have referred to this process as intermental stimulation and response. The readings on communication are so arranged as to make clear the three natural levels of interaction: (x) that of the senses; (y) that of the emotions; and (z) that of sentiments and ideas. Interaction through sense-perceptions and emotional responses may be termed the natural forms of communication since they are common to man and to animals. Simmel's interpretation of interaction through the senses is suggestive of the subtle, unconscious, yet profound, way in which personal attitudes are formed. Not alone vision, but hearing, smell and touch exhibit in varying degrees the emotional responses of the type of appreciation. This means understanding other persons or objects on the perceptual basis. The selections from Darwin and from Morgan upon emotional expression in animals indicate how natural expressive signs become a vehicle for communication. A prepossession for speech and ideas blinds man to the important rôle in human conduct still exerted by emotional communication, facial expression, and gesture. Blushing and laughter are peculiarly significant, because these forms of emotional response are distinctively human. To say that a person blushes when he is self-conscious, that he laughs when he is detached from, and superior to, and yet interested in, an occurrence means that blushing and laughter represent contrasted attitudes to a social situation. The relation of blushing and laughter to social control, as an evidence of the emotional dependence of the person upon the group, is at its apogee in adolescence. Interaction through sensory impressions and emotional expression is restricted to the communication of attitudes and feelings. The selections under the heading "Language and the Communication of Ideas" bring out the uniquely human character of speech. Concepts, as Max Müller insists, are the common symbols wrought out in social experience. They are more or less conventionalized, objective, and intelligible symbols that have been defined in terms of a common experience or, as the logicians say, of a universe of discourse. Every group has its own universe of discourse. In short, to use Durkheim's phrase, concepts are "collective representations." History has been variously conceived in terms of great events, epoch-making personalities, social movements, and cultural changes. From the point of view of sociology social evolution might profitably be studied in its relation to the development and perfection of the means and technique of communication. How revolutionary was the transition from word of mouth and memory to written records! The beginnings of ancient civilization with its five independent centers in Egypt, the Euphrates River Valley, China, Mexico, and Peru appear to be inextricably bound up with the change from pictographs to writing, that is to say from symbols representing words to symbols representing sounds. The modern period began with the invention of printing and the printing press. As books became the possession of the common man the foundation was laid for experiments in democracy. From the sociological standpoint the book is an organized objective mind whose thoughts are accessible to all. The rôle of the book in social life has long been recognized but not fully appreciated. The Christian church, to be sure, regards the Bible as the word of God. The army does not question the infallibility of the Manual of Arms. Our written Constitution has been termed "the ark of the covenant." The orthodox Socialist appeals in unquestioning faith to the ponderous tomes of Marx. World-society of today, which depends upon the almost instantaneous communication of events and opinion around the world, rests upon the invention of telegraphy and the laying of the great ocean cables. Wireless telegraphy and radio have only perfected these earlier means and render impossible a monopoly or a censorship of intercommunication between peoples. The traditional cultures, the social inheritances of ages of isolation, are now in a world-process of interaction and modification as a result of the rapidity and the impact of these modern means of the circulation of ideas and sentiments. At the present time it is so popular to malign the newspaper that few recognize the extent to which news has freed mankind from the control of political parties, social institutions, and, it may be added, from the "tyranny" of books. c) _Imitation and suggestion the mechanistic forms of interaction._--In all forms of communication behavior changes occur, but in two cases the processes have been analyzed, defined, and reduced to simple terms, viz., in imitation and in suggestion. Imitation, as the etymology of the term implies, is a process of copying or learning. But imitation is learning only so far as it has the character of an experiment, or trial and error. It is also obvious that so-called "instinctive" imitation is not learning at all. Since the results of experimental psychology have limited the field of instinctive imitation to a few simple activities, as the tendencies to run when others run, to laugh when others laugh, its place in human life becomes of slight importance as compared with imitation which involves persistent effort at reproducing standard patterns of behavior. This human tendency, under social influences, to reproduce the copy Stout has explained in psychological terms of attention and interest. The interests determine the run of attention, and the direction of attention fixes the copies to be imitated. Without in any way discounting the psychological validity of this explanation, or its practical value in educational application, social factors controlling interest and attention should not be disregarded. In a primary group, social control narrowly restricts the selection of patterns and behavior. In an isolated group the individual may have no choice whatsoever. Then, again, attention may be determined, not by interests arising from individual capacity or aptitude, but rather from _rapport_, that is, from interest in the prestige or in the personal traits of the individual presenting the copy. The relation of the somewhat complex process of imitation to the simple method of trial and error is of significance. Learning by imitation implies at once both identification of the person with the individual presenting the copy and yet differentiation from him. Through imitation we appreciate the other person. We are in sympathy or _en rapport_ with him, while at the same time we appropriate his sentiment and his technique. Ribot and Adam Smith analyze this relation of imitation to sympathy and Hirn points out that in art this process of internal imitation is indispensable for aesthetic appreciation. In this process of appreciation and learning the primitive method of trial and error comes into the service of imitation. In a real sense imitation is mechanical and conservative; it provides a basis for originality, but its function is to transmit, not to originate the new. On the other hand, the simple process of trial and error, a common possession of man and the animals, results in discovery and invention. The most scientifically controlled situation for the play of suggestion is in hypnosis. An analysis of the observed facts of hypnotism will be helpful in arriving at an understanding of the mechanism of suggestion in everyday life. The essential facts of hypnotism may be briefly summarized as follows: (a) The establishment of a relation of _rapport_ between the experimenter and the subject of such a nature that the latter carries out suggestions presented by the former. (b) The successful response by the subject to the suggestion is conditional upon its relation to his past experience. (c) The subject responds to his own idea of the suggestion, and not to the idea as conceived by the experimenter. A consideration of cases is sufficient to convince the student of a complete parallel between suggestion in social life with suggestion in hypnosis, so far, at least, as concerns the last two points. Wherever rapport develops between persons, as in the love of mother and son, the affection of lovers, the comradeship of intimate friends, there also arises the mechanism of the reciprocal influence of suggestion. But in normal social situations, unlike hypnotism, there may be the effect of suggestion where no rapport exists. Herein lies the significance of the differentiation made by Bechterew between active perception and passive perception. In passive perception ideas and sentiments evading the "ego" enter the "subconscious mind" and, uncontrolled by the active perception, form organizations or complexes of "lost" memories. It thus comes about that in social situations, where no rapport exists between two persons, a suggestion may be made which, by striking the right chord of memory or by resurrecting a forgotten sentiment, may transform the life of the other, as in conversion. The area of suggestion in social life is indicated in a second paper selected from Bechterew. In later chapters upon "Social Control" and "Collective Behavior" the mechanism of suggestion in the determination of group behavior will be further considered. Imitation and suggestion are both mechanisms of social interaction in which an individual or group is controlled by another individual or group. The distinction between the two processes is now clear. The characteristic mark of imitation is the tendency, under the influence of copies socially presented, to build up mechanisms of habits, sentiments, ideals, and patterns of life. The process of suggestion, as differentiated from imitation in social interaction, is to release under the appropriate social stimuli mechanisms already organized, whether instincts, habits, or sentiments. The other differences between imitation and suggestion grow out of this fundamental distinction. In imitation attention is alert, now on the copy and now on the response. In suggestion the attention is either absorbed in, or distracted from, the stimulus. In imitation the individual is self conscious; the subject in suggestion is unconscious of his behavior. In imitation the activity tends to reproduce the copy; in suggestion the response may be like or unlike the copy. II. MATERIALS A. SOCIETY AS INTERACTION 1. The Mechanistic Interpretation of Society[136] In every natural process we may observe the two essential factors which constitute it, namely, heterogeneous elements and their reciprocal interaction which we ascribe to certain natural forces. We observe these factors in the natural process of the stars, by which the different heavenly bodies exert certain influences over each other, which we ascribe either to the force of attraction or to gravity. "No material bond unites the planets to the sun. The direct activity of an elementary force, the general force of attraction, holds both in an invisible connection by the elasticity of its influence." In the chemical natural process we observe the most varied elements related to each other in the most various ways. They attract or repulse each other. They enter into combinations or they withdraw from them. These are nothing but actions and interactions which we ascribe to certain forces inherent in these elements. The vegetable and animal natural process begins, at any rate, with the contact of heterogeneous elements which we characterize as sexual cells (gametes). They exert upon each other a reciprocal influence which sets into activity the vegetable and animal process. The extent to which science is permeated by the hypothesis that heterogeneous elements reacting upon each other are necessary to a natural process is best indicated by the atomic theory. Obviously, it is conceded that the origins of all natural processes cannot better be explained than by the assumption of the existence in bodies of invisible particles, each of which has some sort of separate existence and reacts upon the others. The entire hypothesis is only the consequence of the concept of a natural process which the observation of nature has produced in the human mind. Even though we conceive the social process as characteristic and different from the four types of natural processes mentioned above, still there must be identified in it the two essential factors which constitute the generic conception of the natural process. And this is, in fact, what we find. The numberless human groups, which we assume as the earliest beginnings of human existence, constitute the great variety of heterogeneous ethnic elements. These have decreased with the decrease in the number of hordes and tribes. From the foregoing explanation we are bound to assume as certain that in this field we are concerned with ethnically different and heterogeneous elements. The question now remains as to the second constitutive element of a natural process, namely, the definite interaction of these elements, and especially as to those interactions which are characterized by regularity and permanency. Of course, we must avoid analogy with the reciprocal interaction of heterogeneous elements in the domain of other natural processes. In strict conformity with the scientific method we take into consideration merely such interactions as the facts of common knowledge and actual experience offer us. Thus will we be able, happily, to formulate a principle of the reciprocal interaction of heterogeneous ethnic, or, if you will, social elements, the mathematical certainty and universality of which cannot be denied irrefutably, since it manifests itself ever and everywhere in the field of history and the living present. This principle may be very simply stated: Every stronger ethnic or social group strives to subjugate and make serviceable to its purposes every weaker element which exists or may come within the field of its influence. This thesis of the relation of heterogeneous ethnic and social elements to each other, with all the consequences proceeding from it, contains within it the key to the solution of the entire riddle of the natural process of human history. We shall see this thesis illustrated ever and everywhere in the past and the present in the interrelations of heterogeneous ethnic and social elements and become convinced of its universal validity. In this latter relation it does not correspond at all to such natural laws, as, for example, attraction and gravitation or chemical affinity, or to the laws of vegetable and animal life. In order better to conceive of this social natural law in its general validity, we must study it in its different consequences and in the various forms which it assumes according to circumstances and conditions. 2. Social Interaction as the Definition of the Group in Time and Space[137] Society exists wherever several individuals are in reciprocal relationship. This reciprocity arises always from specific impulses or by virtue of specific purposes. Erotic, religious, or merely associative impulses, purposes of defense or of attack, of play as well as of gain, of aid and instruction, and countless others bring it to pass that men enter into group relationships of acting for, with, against, one another; that is, men exercise an influence upon these conditions of association and are influenced by them. These reactions signify that out of the individual bearers of those occasioning impulses and purposes a unity, that is, a "society," comes into being. An organic body is a unity because its organs are in a relationship of more intimate interchange of their energies than with any external being. A _state_ is _one_ because between its citizens the corresponding relationship of reciprocal influences exists. We could, indeed, not call the world _one_ if each of its parts did not somehow influence every other, if anywhere the reciprocity of the influences, however mediated, were cut off. That unity, or socialization, may, according to the kind and degree of reciprocity, have very different gradations, from the ephemeral combination for a promenade to the family; from all relationships "at will" to membership in a state; from the temporary aggregation of the guests in a hotel to the intimate bond of a medieval guild. Everything now which is present in the individuals--the immediate concrete locations of all historical actuality--in the nature of impulse, interest, purpose, inclination, psychical adaptability, and movement of such sort that thereupon or therefrom occurs influence upon others, or the reception of influence from them--all this I designate as the content or the material of socialization. In and of themselves, these materials with which life is filled, these motivations which impel it, are not social in their nature. Neither hunger nor love, neither labor nor religiosity, neither the technique nor the functions and results of intelligence, as they are given immediately and in their strict sense, signify socialization. On the contrary, they constitute it only when they shape the isolated side-by-sideness of the individuals into definite forms of with-and-for-one-another, which belong under the general concept of reciprocity. Socialization is thus the _form_, actualizing itself in countless various types, in which the individuals--on the basis of those interests, sensuous or ideal, momentary or permanent, conscious or unconscious, casually driving or purposefully leading--grow together into a unity, and within which these interests come to realization. That which constitutes "society" is evidently types of reciprocal influencing. Any collection of human beings whatsoever becomes "society," not by virtue of the fact that in each of the number there is a life-content which actuates the individual as such, but only when the vitality of these contents attains the form of reciprocal influencing. Only when an influence is exerted, whether immediately or through a third party, from one upon another has society come into existence in place of a mere spatial juxtaposition or temporal contemporaneousness or succession of individuals. If, therefore, there is to be a science, the object of which is to be "society" and nothing else, it can investigate only these reciprocal influences, these kinds and forms of socialization. For everything else found within "society" and realized by means of it is not "society" itself, but merely a content which builds or is built by this form of coexistence, and which indeed only together with "society" brings into existence the real structure, "society," in the wider and usual sense. The persistence of the group presents itself in the fact that, in spite of the departure and the change of members, the group remains identical. We say that it is the same state, the same association, the same army, which now exists that existed so and so many decades or centuries ago; this, although no single member of the original organization remains. Here is one of the cases in which the temporal order of events presents a marked analogy with the spatial order. Out of individuals existing side by side, that is, apart from each other, a social unity is formed. The inevitable separation which space places between men is nevertheless overcome by the spiritual bond between them, so that there arises an appearance of unified interexistence. In like manner the temporal separation of individuals and of generations presents their union in our conceptions as a coherent, uninterrupted whole. In the case of persons spatially separated, this unity is effected by the reciprocity maintained between them across the dividing distance. The unity of complex being means nothing else than the cohesion of elements which is produced by the reciprocal exercise of forces. In the case of temporally separated persons, however, unity cannot be effected in this manner, because reciprocity is lacking. The earlier may influence the later, but the later cannot influence the earlier. Hence the persistence of the social unity in spite of shifting membership presents a peculiar problem which is not solved by explaining how the group came to exist at a given moment. a) _Continuity by continuance of locality._--The first and most obvious element of the continuity of group unity is the continuance of the locality, of the place and soil on which the group lives. The state, still more the city, and also countless other associations, owe their unity first of all to the territory which constitutes the abiding substratum for all change of their contents. To be sure, the continuance of the locality does not of itself alone mean the continuance of the social unity, since, for instance, if the whole population of a state is driven out or enslaved by a conquering group, we speak of a changed civic group in spite of the continuance of the territory. Moreover, the unity of whose character we are speaking is psychical, and it is this psychical factor itself which makes the territorial substratum a unity. After this has once taken place, however, the locality constitutes an essential point of attachment for the further persistence of the group. But it is only one such element, for there are groups that get along without a local substratum. On the one hand, there are the very small groups, like the family, which continue precisely the same after the residence is changed. On the other hand, there are the very large groups, like that ideal community of the "republic of letters," or the other international associations in the interest of culture, or the groups conducting international commerce. Their peculiar character comes from entire independence of all attachment to a definite locality. b) _Continuity through blood relationship._--In contrast with this more formal condition for the maintenance of the group is the physiological connection of the generations. Community of stock is not always enough to insure unity of coherence for a long time. In many cases the local unity must be added. The social unity of the Jews has been weakened to a marked degree since the dispersion, in spite of their physiological and confessional unity. It has become more compact in cases where a group of Jews have lived for a time in the same territory, and the efforts of the modern "Zionism" to restore Jewish unity on a larger scale calculate upon concentration in one locality. On the other hand, when other bonds of union fail, the physiological is the last recourse to which the self-maintenance of the group resorts. The more the German guilds declined, the weaker their inherent power of cohesion became, the more energetically did each guild attempt to make itself exclusive, that is, it insisted that no persons should be admitted as guildmasters except sons or sons-in-law of masters or the husbands of masters' widows. The physiological coherence of successive generations is of incomparable significance for the maintenance of the unitary self of the group, for the special reason that the displacement of one generation by the following _does not take place all at once_. By virtue of this fact it comes about that a continuity is maintained which conducts the vast majority of the individuals who live in a given moment into the life of the next moment. The change, the disappearance and entrance of persons, affects in two contiguous moments a number relatively small compared with the number of those who remain constant. Another element of influence in this connection is the fact that human beings are not bound to a definite mating season, but that children are begotten at any time. It can never properly be asserted of a group, therefore, that at any given moment a new generation begins. The departure of the older and the entrance of the younger elements proceed so gradually and continuously that the group seems as much like a unified self as an organic body in spite of the change of its atoms. If the change were instantaneous, it is doubtful if we should be justified in calling the group "the same" after the critical moment as before. The circumstance alone that the transition affected in a given moment only a minimum of the total life of the group makes it possible for the group to retain its selfhood through the change. We may express this schematically as follows: If the totality of individuals or other conditions of the life of the group be represented by a, b, c, d, e; in a later moment by m, n, o, p, q; we may nevertheless speak of the persistence of identical selfhood if the development takes the following course: a, b, c, d, e--m, b, c, d, e--m, n, c, d, e--m, n, o, d, e--m, n, o, p, e--m, n, o, p, q. In this case each stage is differentiated from the contiguous stage by only one member, and at each moment it shares the same chief elements with its neighboring moments. c) _Continuity through membership in the group._--This continuity in change of the individuals who are the vehicles of the group unity is most immediately and thoroughly visible when it rests upon procreation. The same form is found, however, in cases where this physical agency is excluded, as, for example, within the Catholic clerus. Here the continuity is secured by provision that enough persons always remain in office to initiate the neophytes. This is an extremely important sociological fact. It makes bureaucracies tenacious, and causes their character and spirit to endure in spite of all shifting of individuals. The physiological basis of self-maintenance here gives place to a psychological one. To speak exactly, the preservation of group identity in this case depends, of course, upon the amount of invariability in the vehicles of this unity, but, at all events, the whole body of members belonging in the group at any given moment only separate from the group after they have been associated with their successors long enough to assimilate the latter fully to themselves, i.e., to the spirit, the form, the tendency of the group. The immortality of the group depends upon the fact that the change is sufficiently slow and gradual. The fact referred to by the phrase "immortality of the group" is of the greatest importance. The preservation of the identical selfhood of the group through a practically unlimited period gives to the group a significance which, _ceteris paribus_, is far superior to that of the individual. The life of the individual, with its purposes, its valuations, its force, is destined to terminate within a limited time, and to a certain extent each individual must start at the beginning. Since the life of the group has no such a priori fixed time limit, and its forms are really arranged as though they were to last forever, the group accomplishes a summation of the achievements, powers, experiences, through which it makes itself far superior to the fragmentary individual lives. Since the early Middle Ages this has been the source of the power of municipal corporations in England. Each had from the beginning the right, as Stubbs expresses it, "of perpetuating its existence by filling up vacancies as they occur." The ancient privileges were given expressly only to the burghers and their heirs. As a matter of fact, they were exercised as a right to add new members so that, whatever fate befell the members and their physical descendants, the corporation, as such, was held intact. This had to be paid for, to be sure, by the disappearance of the individual importance of the units behind their rôle as vehicles of the maintenance of the group, for the group security must suffer, the closer it is bound up with the perishable individuality of the units. On the other hand, the more anonymous and unpersonal the unit is, the more fit is he to step into the place of another, and so to insure to the group uninterrupted self-maintenance. This was the enormous advantage through which during the Wars of the Roses the Commons repulsed the previously superior power of the upper house. A battle that destroyed half the nobility of the country took also from the House of Lords one-half its force, because this is attached to the personalities. The House of Commons is in principle assured against such weakening. That estate at last got predominance which, through the equalizing of its members, demonstrated the most persistent power of group existence. This circumstance gives every group an advantage in competition with an individual. d) _Continuity through leadership._--On this account special arrangements are necessary so soon as the life of the group is intimately bound up with that of a leading, commanding individual. What dangers to the integrity of the group are concealed in this sociological form may be learned from the history of all interregnums--dangers which, of course, increase in the same ratio in which the ruler actually forms the central point of the functions through which the group preserves its unity, or, more correctly, at each moment creates its unity anew. Consequently a break between rulers may be a matter of indifference where the prince only exercises a nominal sway--"reigns, but does not govern"--while, on the other hand, we observe even in the swarm of bees that anarchy results so soon as the queen is removed. Although it is entirely false to explain this latter phenomenon by analogy of a human ruler, since the queen bee gives no orders, yet the queen occupies the middle point of the activity of the hive. By means of her antennae she is in constant communication with the workers, and so all the signals coursing through the hive pass through her. By virtue of this very fact the hive feels itself a unity, and this unity dissolves with the disappearance of the functional center. e) _Continuity through the hereditary principle._--In political groups the attempt is made to guard against all the dangers of personality, particularly those of possible intervals between the important persons, by the principle: "The king never dies." While in the early Middle Ages the tradition prevailed that when the king dies his peace dies with him, this newer principle contains provision for the self-preservation of the group. It involves an extraordinarily significant sociological conception, viz., the king is no longer king as a person, but the reverse is the case, that is, his person is only the in itself irrelevant vehicle of the abstract kingship, which is as unalterable as the group itself, of which the kingship is the apex. The group reflects its immortality upon the kingship, and the sovereign in return brings that immortality to visible expression in his own person, and by so doing reciprocally strengthens the vitality of the group. That mighty factor of social coherence which consists of loyalty of sentiment toward the reigning power might appear in very small groups in the relation of fidelity toward the person of the ruler. For large groups the definition that Stubbs once gave must certainly apply, viz.: "Loyalty is a habit of strong and faithful attachment to a person, not so much by reason of his personal character as of his official position." By becoming objectified in the deathless office, the princely principle gains a new psychological power for concentration and cohesion within the group, while the old princely principle that rested on the mere personality of the prince necessarily lost power as the size of the group increased. f) _Continuity through a material symbol._--The objectification of the coherence of the group may also do away with the personal form to such an extent that it attaches itself to a material symbol. Thus in the German lands in the Middle Ages the imperial jewels were looked upon as the visible realization of the idea of the realm and of its continuity, so that the possession of them gave to a pretender a decided advantage over all other aspirants, and this was one of the influences which evidently assisted the heir of the body of the deceased emperor in securing the succession. In view of the destructibility of a material object, since too this disadvantage cannot be offset, as in the case of a person, by the continuity of heredity, it is very dangerous for the group to seek such a support for its self-preservation. Many a regiment has lost its coherence with the loss of its standard. Many kinds of associations have dissolved after their palladium, their storehouse, their grail, was destroyed. When, however, the social coherence is lost in this way, it is safe to say that it must have suffered serious internal disorder before, and that in this case the loss of the external symbol representing the unity of the group is itself only the symbol that the social elements have lost their coherence. When this last is not the case, the loss of the group symbol not only has no disintegrating effect but it exerts a direct integrating influence. While the symbol loses its corporeal reality, it may, as mere thought, longing, ideal, work much more powerfully, profoundly, indestructibly. We may get a good view of these two opposite influences of the forms of destruction of the group symbol upon the solidity of the group by reference to the consequences of the destruction of the Jewish temple by Titus. The hierarchal Jewish state was a thorn in the flesh of the Roman statecraft that aimed at the unity of the empire. The purpose of dissolving this state was accomplished, so far as a certain number of the Jews were concerned, by the destruction of the temple. Such was the effect with those who cared little, anyway, about this centralization. Thus the alienation of the Pauline Christians from Judaism was powerfully promoted by this event. For the Palestinian Jews, on the other hand, the breach between Judaism and the rest of the world was deepened. By this destruction of its symbol their national religious exclusiveness was heightened to desperation. g) _Continuity through group honor._--The sociological significance of honor as a form of cohesion is extraordinarily great. Through the appeal to honor, society secures from its members the kind of conduct conducive to its own preservation, particularly within the spheres of conduct intermediate between the purview of the criminal code, on the one hand, and the field of purely personal morality, on the other. By the demands upon its members contained in the group standard of honor the group preserves its unified character and its distinctness from the other groups within the same inclusive association. The essential thing is the specific idea of honor in narrow groups--family honor, officers' honor, mercantile honor, yes, even the "honor among thieves." Since the individual belongs to various groups, the individual may, at the same time, be under the demands of several sorts of honor which are independent of each other. One may preserve his mercantile honor, or his scientific honor as an investigator, who has forfeited his family honor, and vice versa; the robber may strictly observe the requirements of thieves' honor after he has violated every other; a woman may have lost her womanly honor and in every other respect be most honorable, etc. Thus honor consists in the relation of the individual to a particular circle, which in this respect manifests its separateness, its sociological distinctness, from other groups. h) _Continuity through specialized organs._--From such recourse of social self-preservation to individual persons, to a material substance, to an ideal conception, we pass now to the cases in which social persistence takes advantage of an organ composed of a number of persons. Thus a religious community embodies its coherence and its life principle in its priesthood; a political community its inner principle of union in its administrative organization, its union against foreign power in its military system; this latter in its corps of officers; every permanent union in its official head; transitory associations in their committees; political parties in their parliamentary representatives. B. THE NATURAL FORMS OF COMMUNICATION 1. Sociology of the Senses: Visual Interaction[138] It is through the medium of the senses that we perceive our fellow-men. This fact has two aspects of fundamental sociological significance: (a) that of appreciation, and (b) that of comprehension. a) _Appreciation._--Sense-impressions may induce in us affective responses of pleasure or pain, of excitement or calm, of tension or relaxation, produced by the features of a person, or by the tone of his voice, or by his mere physical presence in the same room. These affective responses, however, do not enable us to understand or to define the other person. Our emotional response to the sense-image of the other leaves his real self outside. b) _Comprehension._--The sense-impression of the other person may develop in the opposite direction when it becomes the medium for understanding the other. What I see, hear, feel of him is only the bridge over which I reach his real self. The sound of the voice and its meaning, perhaps, present the clearest illustration. The speech, quite as much as the appearance, of a person, may be immediately either attractive or repulsive. On the other hand, what he says enables us to understand not only his momentary thoughts but also his inner self. The same principle applies to all sense-impressions. The sense-impressions of any object produce in us not only emotional and aesthetic attitudes toward it but also an understanding of it. In the case of reaction to non-human objects, these two responses are, in general, widely separated. We may appreciate the emotional value of any sense-impression of an object. The fragrance of a rose, the charm of a tone, the grace of a bough swaying in the wind, is experienced as a joy engendered within the soul. On the other hand, we may desire to understand and to comprehend the rose, or the tone, or the bough. In the latter case we respond in an entirely different way, often with conscious endeavor. These two diverse reactions which are independent of each other are with human beings generally integrated into a unified response. Theoretically, our sense-impressions of a person may be directed on the one hand to an appreciation of his emotional value, or on the other to an impulsive or deliberate understanding of him. Actually, these two reactions are coexistent and inextricably interwoven as the basis of our relation to him. Of course, appreciation and comprehension develop in quite different degrees. These two diverse responses--to the tone of voice and to the meaning of the utterance; to the appearance of a person and to his individuality; to the attraction or repulsion of his personality and to the impulsive judgment upon his character as well as many times upon his grade of culture--are present in any perception in very different degrees and combinations. Of the special sense-organs, the eye has a uniquely sociological function. The union and interaction of individuals is based upon mutual glances. This is perhaps the most direct and purest reciprocity which exists anywhere. This highest psychic reaction, however, in which the glances of eye to eye unite men, crystallizes into no objective structure; the unity which momentarily arises between two persons is present in the occasion and is dissolved in the function. So tenacious and subtle is this union that it can only be maintained by the shortest and straightest line between the eyes, and the smallest deviation from it, the slightest glance aside, completely destroys the unique character of this union. No objective trace of this relationship is left behind, as is universally found, directly or indirectly, in all other types of associations between men, as, for example, in interchange of words. The interaction of eye and eye dies in the moment in which the directness of the function is lost. But the totality of social relations of human beings, their self-assertion and self-abnegation, their intimacies and estrangements, would be changed in unpredictable ways if there occurred no glance of eye to eye. This mutual glance between persons, in distinction from the simple sight or observation of the other, signifies a wholly new and unique union between them. The limits of this relation are to be determined by the significant fact that the glance by which the one seeks to perceive the other is itself expressive. By the glance which reveals the other, one discloses himself. By the same act in which the observer seeks to know the observed, he surrenders himself to be understood by the observer. The eye cannot take unless at the same time it gives. The eye of a person discloses his own soul when he seeks to uncover that of another. What occurs in this direct mutual glance represents the most perfect reciprocity in the entire field of human relationships. Shame causes a person to look at the ground to avoid the glance of the other. The reason for this is certainly not only because he is thus spared the visible evidence of the way in which the other regards his painful situation, but the deeper reason is that the lowering of his glance to a certain degree prevents the other from comprehending the extent of his confusion. The glance in the eye of the other serves not only for me to know the other but also enables him to know me. Upon the line which unites the two eyes, it conveys to the other the real personality, the real attitude, and the real impulse. The "ostrich policy" has in this explanation a real justification: who does not see the other actually conceals himself in part from the observer. A person is not at all completely present to another, when the latter sees him, but only when he also sees the other. The sociological significance of the eye has special reference to the expression of the face as the first object of vision between man and man. It is seldom clearly understood to what an extent even our practical relations depend upon mutual recognition, not only in the sense of all external characteristics, as the momentary appearance and attitude of the other, but what we know or intuitively perceive of his life, of his inner nature, of the immutability of his being, all of which colors unavoidably both our transient and our permanent relations with him. The face is the geometric chart of all these experiences. It is the symbol of all that which the individual has brought with him as the pre-condition of his life. In the face is deposited what has been precipitated from past experience as the substratum of his life, which has become crystallized into the permanent features of his face. To the extent to which we thus perceive the face of a person, there enters into social relations, in so far as it serves practical purposes, a super-practical element. It follows that a man is first known by his countenance, not by his acts. The face as a medium of expression is entirely a theoretical organ; it does not act, as the hand, the foot, the whole body; it transacts none of the internal or practical relations of the man, it only tells about him. The peculiar and important sociological art of "knowing" transmitted by the eye is determined by the fact that the countenance is the essential object of the interindividual sight. This knowing is still somewhat different from understanding. To a certain extent, and in a highly variable degree, we know at first glance with whom we have to do. Our unconsciousness of this knowledge and its fundamental significance lies in the fact that we direct our attention from this self-evident intuition to an understanding of special features which determine our practical relations to a particular individual. But if we become conscious of this self-evident fact, then we are amazed how much we know about a person in the first glance at him. We do not obtain meaning from his expression, susceptible to analysis into individual traits. We cannot unqualifiedly say whether he is clever or stupid, good- or ill-natured, temperamental or phlegmatic. All these traits are general characteristics which he shares with unnumbered others. But what this first glance at him transmits to us cannot be analyzed or appraised into any such conceptual and expressive elements. Yet our initial impression remains ever the keynote of all later knowledge of him; it is the direct perception of his individuality which his appearance, and especially his face, discloses to our glance. The sociological attitude of the blind is entirely different from that of the deaf-mute. For the blind, the other person is actually present only in the alternating periods of his utterance. The expression of the anxiety and unrest, the traces of all past events, exposed to view in the faces of men, escape the blind, and that may be the reason for the peaceful and calm disposition, and the unconcern toward their surroundings, which is so often observed in the blind. Indeed, the majority of the stimuli which the face presents are often puzzling; in general, what we see of a man will be interpreted by what we hear from him, while the opposite is more unusual. Therefore the one who sees, without hearing, is much more perplexed, puzzled, and worried, than the one who hears without seeing. This principle is of great importance in understanding the sociology of the modern city. Social life in the large city as compared with the towns shows a great preponderance of occasions to _see_ rather than to _hear_ people. One explanation lies in the fact that the person in the town is acquainted with nearly all the people he meets. With these he exchanges a word or a glance, and their countenance represents to him not merely the visible but indeed the entire personality. Another reason of especial significance is the development of public means of transportation. Before the appearance of omnibuses, railroads, and street cars in the nineteenth century, men were not in a situation where for periods of minutes or hours they could or must look at each other without talking to one another. Modern social life increases in ever growing degree the rôle of mere visual impression which always characterizes the preponderant part of all sense relationship between man and man, and must place social attitudes and feelings upon an entirely changed basis. The greater perplexity which characterizes the person who only sees, as contrasted with the one who only hears, brings us to the problems of the emotions of modern life: the lack of orientation in the collective life, the sense of utter lonesomeness, and the feeling that the individual is surrounded on all sides by closed doors. 2. The Expression of the Emotions[139] Actions of all kinds, if regularly accompanying any state of the mind, are at once recognized as expressive. These may consist of movements of any part of the body, as the wagging of a dog's tail, the shrugging of a man's shoulders, the erection of the hair, the exudation of perspiration, the state of the capillary circulation, labored breathing, and the use of the vocal or other sound-producing instruments. Even insects express anger, terror, jealousy, and love by their stridulation. With man the respiratory organs are of especial importance in expression, not only in a direct, but to a still higher degree in an indirect, manner. Few points are more interesting in our present subject than the extraordinarily complex chain of events which lead to certain expressive movements. Take, for instance, the oblique eyebrows of a man suffering from grief or anxiety. When infants scream loudly from hunger or pain, the circulation is affected, and the eyes tend to become gorged with blood; consequently the muscles surrounding the eyes are strongly contracted as a protection. This action, in the course of many generations, has become firmly fixed and inherited; but when, with advancing years and culture, the habit of screaming is partially repressed, the muscles round the eyes still tend to contract, whenever even slight distress is felt. Of these muscles, the pyramidals of the nose are less under the control of the will than are the others, and their contraction can be checked only by that of the central fasciae of the frontal muscle; these latter fasciae draw up the inner ends of the eyebrows and wrinkle the forehead in a peculiar manner, which we instantly recognize as the expression of grief or anxiety. Slight movements, such as these just described, or the scarcely perceptible drawing down of the corners of the mouth, are the last remnants or rudiments of strongly marked and intelligible movements. They are as full of significance to us in regard to expression as are ordinary rudiments to the naturalist in the classification and genealogy of organic beings. That the chief expressive actions exhibited by man and by the lower animals are now innate or inherited--that is, have not been learned by the individual--is admitted by everyone. So little has learning or imitation to do with several of them that they are from the earliest days and throughout life quite beyond our control; for instance, the relaxation of the arteries of the skin in blushing, and the increased action of the heart in anger. We may see children only two or three years old, and even those born blind, blushing from shame; and the naked scalp of a very young infant reddens from passion. Infants scream from pain directly after birth, and all their features then assume the same form as during subsequent years. These facts alone suffice to show that many of our most important expressions have not been learned; but it is remarkable that some, which are certainly innate, require practice in the individual before they are performed in a full and perfect manner; for instance, weeping and laughing. The inheritance of most of our expressive actions explains the fact that those born blind display them, as I hear from the Rev. R. H. Blair, equally well with those gifted with eyesight. We can thus also understand the fact that the young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movement. We are so familiar with the fact of young and old animals displaying their feelings in the same manner that we hardly perceive how remarkable it is that a young puppy should wag its tail when pleased, depress its ears and uncover its canine teeth when pretending to be savage, just like an old dog; or that a kitten should arch its little back and erect its hair when frightened and angry, like an old cat. When, however, we turn to less common gestures in ourselves, which we are accustomed to look at as artificial or conventional--such as shrugging the shoulders as a sign of impotence, or the raising the arms with open hands and extended fingers as a sign of wonder--we feel perhaps too much surprise at finding that they are innate. That these and some other gestures are inherited we may infer from their being performed by very young children, by those born blind, and by the most widely distinct races of man. We should also bear in mind that new and highly peculiar tricks, in association with certain states of the mind, are known to have arisen in certain individuals and to have been afterward transmitted to their offspring, in some cases for more than one generation. Certain other gestures, which seem to us so natural that we might easily imagine that they were innate, apparently have been learned like the words of a language. This seems to be the case with the joining of the uplifted hands and the turning up of the eyes in prayer. So it is with kissing as a mark of affection; but this is innate, in so far as it depends on the pleasure derived from contact with a beloved person. The evidence with respect to the inheritance of nodding and shaking the head as signs of affirmation and negation is doubtful, for they are not universal, yet seem too general to have been independently acquired by all the individuals of so many races. We will now consider how far the will and consciousness have come into play in the development of the various movements of expression. As far as we can judge, only a few expressive movements, such as those just referred to, are learned by each individual; that is, were consciously and voluntarily performed during the early years of life for some definite object, or in imitation of others, and then became habitual. The far greater number of the movements of expression, and all the more important ones, are, as we have seen, innate or inherited; and such cannot be said to depend on the will of the individual. Nevertheless, all those included under our first principle were at first voluntarily performed for a definite object, namely, to escape some danger, to relieve some distress, or to gratify some desire. For instance, there can hardly be a doubt that the animals which fight with their teeth have acquired the habit of drawing back their ears closely to their heads when feeling savage from their progenitors having voluntarily acted in this manner in order to protect their ears from being torn by their antagonists; for those animals which do not fight with their teeth do not thus express a savage state of mind. We may infer as highly probable that we ourselves have acquired the habit of contracting the muscles round the eyes whilst crying gently, that is, without the utterance of any loud sound, from our progenitors, especially during infancy, having experienced during the act of screaming an uncomfortable sensation in their eyeballs. Again, some highly expressive movements result from the endeavor to check or prevent other expressive movements; thus the obliquity of the eyebrows and the drawing down of the corners of the mouth follow from the endeavor to prevent a screaming-fit from coming on or to check it after it has come on. Here it is obvious that the consciousness and will must at first have come into play; not that we are conscious in these or in other such cases what muscles are brought into action, any more than when we perform the most ordinary voluntary movements. The power of communication between the members of the same tribe by means of language has been of paramount importance in the development of man; and the force of language is much aided by the expressive movements of the face and body. We perceive this at once when we converse on an important subject with any person whose face is concealed. Nevertheless there are no grounds, as far as I can discover, for believing that any muscle has been developed or even modified exclusively for the sake of expression. The vocal and other sound-producing organs by which various expressive noises are produced seem to form a partial exception; but I have elsewhere attempted to show that these organs were first developed for sexual purposes, in order that one sex might call or charm the other. Nor can I discover grounds for believing that any inherited movement which now serves as a means of expression was at first voluntarily and consciously performed for this special purpose--like some of the gestures and the finger-language used by the deaf and dumb. On the contrary, every true or inherited movement of expression seems to have had some natural and independent origin. But when once acquired, such movements may be voluntarily and consciously employed as a means of communication. Even infants, if carefully attended to, find out at a very early age that their screaming brings relief, and they soon voluntarily practice it. We may frequently see a person voluntarily raising his eyebrows to express surprise, or smiling to express pretended satisfaction and acquiescence. A man often wishes to make certain gestures conspicuous or demonstrative, and will raise his extended arms with widely opened fingers above his head to show astonishment or lift his shoulders to his ears to show that he cannot or will not do something. We have seen that the study of the theory of expression confirms to a certain limited extent the conclusion that man is derived from some lower animal form, and supports the belief of the specific or subspecific unity of the several races; but as far as my judgment serves, such confirmation was hardly needed. We have also seen that expression in itself, or the language of the emotions, as it has sometimes been called, is certainly of importance for the welfare of mankind. To understand, as far as is possible, the source or origin of the various expressions which may be hourly seen on the faces of the men around us, not to mention our domesticated animals, ought to possess much interest for us. From these several causes we may conclude that the philosophy of our subject has well deserved that attention which it has already received from several excellent observers, and that it deserves still further attention, especially from any able physiologist. 3. Blushing[140] Blushing is the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions. Monkeys redden from passion, but it would require an overwhelming amount of evidence to make us believe that any animal could blush. The reddening of the face from a blush is due to the relaxation of the muscular coats of the small arteries, by which the capillaries become filled with blood; and this depends on the proper vasomotor center being affected. No doubt if there be at the same time much mental agitation, the general circulation will be affected; but it is not due to the action of the heart that the network of minute vessels covering the face becomes under a sense of shame gorged with blood. We can cause laughing by tickling the skin, weeping or frowning by a blow, trembling from the fear of pain, and so forth; but we cannot cause a blush by any physical means--that is, by any action on the body. It is the mind which must be affected. Blushing is not only involuntary, but the wish to restrain it, by leading to self-attention, actually increases the tendency. The young blush much more freely than the old, but not during infancy, which is remarkable, as we know that infants at a very early age redden from passion. I have received authentic accounts of two little girls blushing at the ages of between two and three years; and of another sensitive child, a year older, blushing when reproved for a fault. Many children at a somewhat more advanced age blush in a strongly marked manner. It appears that the mental powers of infants are not as yet sufficiently developed to allow of their blushing. Hence, also, it is that idiots rarely blush. Dr. Crichton Browne observed for me those under his care, but never saw a genuine blush, though he has seen their faces flush, apparently from joy, when food was placed before them, and from anger. Nevertheless some, if not utterly degraded, are capable of blushing. A microcephalous idiot, for instance, thirteen years old, whose eyes brightened a little when he was pleased or amused, has been described by Dr. Behn as blushing and turning to one side when undressed for medical examination. Women blush much more than men. It is rare to see an old man, but not nearly so rare to see an old woman, blushing. The blind do not escape. Laura Bridgman, born in this condition, as well as completely deaf, blushes. The Rev. R. H. Blair, principal of the Worcester College, informs me that three children born blind, out of seven or eight then in the asylum, are great blushers. The blind are not at first conscious that they are observed, and it is a most important part of their education, as Mr. Blair informs me, to impress this knowledge on their minds; and the impression thus gained would greatly strengthen the tendency to blush, by increasing the habit of self-attention. The tendency to blush is inherited. Dr. Burgess gives the case of a family consisting of a father, mother, and ten children, all of whom, without exception, were prone to blush to a most painful degree. The children were grown up; "and some of them were sent to travel in order to wear away this diseased sensibility, but nothing was of the slightest avail." Even peculiarities in blushing seem to be inherited. Sir James Paget, whilst examining the spine of a girl, was struck at her singular manner of blushing; a big splash of red appeared first on one cheek, and then other splashes, variously scattered over the face and neck. He subsequently asked the mother whether her daughter always blushed in this peculiar manner and was answered, "Yes, she takes after me." Sir J. Paget then perceived that by asking this question he had caused the mother to blush and she exhibited the same peculiarity as her daughter. In most cases the face, ears, and neck are the sole parts which redden; but many persons, whilst blushing intensely, feel that their whole bodies grow hot and tingle; and this shows that the entire surface must be in some manner affected. Blushes are said sometimes to commence on the forehead, but more commonly on the cheeks, afterward spreading to the ears and neck. In two albinos examined by Dr. Burgess, the blushes commenced by a small circumscribed spot on the cheeks, over the parotidean plexus of nerves, and then increased into a circle; between this blushing circle and the blush on the neck there was an evident line of demarcation, although both arose simultaneously. The retina, which is naturally red in the albino, invariably increased at the same time in redness. Every one must have noticed how easily after one blush fresh blushes chase each other over the face. Blushing is preceded by a peculiar sensation in the skin. According to Dr. Burgess the reddening of the skin is generally succeeded by a slight pallor, which shows that the capillary vessels contract after dilating. In some rare cases paleness instead of redness is caused under conditions which would naturally induce a blush. For instance, a young lady told me that in a large and crowded party she caught her hair so firmly on the button of a passing servant that it took some time before she could be extricated; from her sensation she imagined that she had blushed crimson but was assured by a friend that she had turned extremely pale. The mental states which induce blushing consist of shyness, shame, and modesty, the essential element in all being self-attention. Many reasons can be assigned for believing that originally self-attention directed to personal appearance, in relation to the opinion of others, was the exciting cause, the same effect being subsequently produced, through the force of association, by self-attention in relation to moral conduct. It is not the simple act of reflecting on our own appearance, but the thinking what others think of us, which excites a blush. In absolute solitude the most sensitive person would be quite indifferent about his appearance. We feel blame or disapprobation more acutely than approbation; and consequently depreciatory remarks or ridicule, whether of our appearance or conduct, cause us to blush much more readily than does praise. But undoubtedly praise and admiration are highly efficient: a pretty girl blushes when a man gazes intently at her, though she may know perfectly well that he is not depreciating her. Many children, as well as old and sensitive persons, blush when they are much praised. Hereafter the question will be discussed how it has arisen that the consciousness that others are attending to our personal appearance should have led to the capillaries, especially those of the face, instantly becoming filled with blood. My reasons for believing that attention directed to personal appearance, and not to moral conduct, has been the fundamental element in the acquirement of the habit of blushing will now be given. They are separately light, but combined possess, as it appears to me, considerable weight. It is notorious that nothing makes a shy person blush so much as any remark, however slight, on his personal appearance. One cannot notice even the dress of a woman much given to blushing without causing her face to crimson. It is sufficient to stare hard at some persons to make them, as Coleridge remarks, blush--"account for that he who can." With the two albinos observed by Dr. Burgess, "the slightest attempt to examine their peculiarities" invariably caused them to blush deeply. Women are much more sensitive about their personal appearance than men are, especially elderly women in comparison with elderly men, and they blush much more freely. The young of both sexes are much more sensitive on this same head than the old, and they also blush much more freely than the old. Children at a very early age do not blush; nor do they show those other signs of self-consciousness which generally accompany blushing; and it is one of their chief charms that they think nothing about what others think of them. At this early age they will stare at a stranger with a fixed gaze and unblinking eyes, as on an inanimate object, in a manner which we elders cannot imitate. It is plain to everyone that young men and women are highly sensitive to the opinion of each other with reference to their personal appearance; and they blush incomparably more in the presence of the opposite sex than in that of their own. A young man, not very liable to blush, will blush intensely at any slight ridicule of his appearance from a girl whose judgment on any important subject he would disregard. No happy pair of young lovers, valuing each other's admiration and love more than anything else in the world, probably ever courted each other without many a blush. Even the barbarians of Tierra del Fuego, according to Mr. Bridges, blush "chiefly in regard to women, but certainly also at their own personal appearance." Of all parts of the body, the face is most considered and regarded, as is natural from its being the chief seat of expression and the source of the voice. It is also the chief seat of beauty and of ugliness, and throughout the world is the most ornamented. The face, therefore, will have been subjected during many generations to much closer and more earnest self-attention than any other part of the body; and in accordance with the principle here advanced we can understand why it should be the most liable to blush. Although exposure to alternations of temperature, etc., has probably much increased the power of dilatation and contraction in the capillaries of the face and adjoining parts, yet this by itself will hardly account for these parts blushing much more than the rest of the body; for it does not explain the fact of the hands rarely blushing. With Europeans the whole body tingles slightly when the face blushes intensely; and with the races of men who habitually go nearly naked, the blushes extend over a much larger surface than with us. These facts are, to a certain extent, intelligible, as the self-attention of primeval man, as well as of the existing races which still go naked, will not have been so exclusively confined to their faces, as is the case with the people who now go clothed. We have seen that in all parts of the world persons who feel shame for some moral delinquency are apt to avert, bend down, or hide their faces, independently of any thought about their personal appearance. The object can hardly be to conceal their blushes, for the face is thus averted or hidden under circumstances which exclude any desire to conceal shame, as when guilt is fully confessed and repented of. It is, however, probable that primeval man before he had acquired much moral sensitiveness would have been highly sensitive about his personal appearance, at least in reference to the other sex, and he would consequently have felt distress at any depreciatory remarks about his appearance; and this is one form of shame. And as the face is the part of the body which is most regarded, it is intelligible that any one ashamed of his personal appearance would desire to conceal this part of his body. The habit, having been thus acquired, would naturally be carried on when shame from strictly moral causes was felt; and it is not easy otherwise to see why under these circumstances there should be a desire to hide the face more than any other part of the body. The habit, so general with everyone who feels ashamed, of turning away or lowering his eyes, or restlessly moving them from side to side, probably follows from each glance directed toward those present, bringing home the conviction that he is intently regarded; and he endeavors, by not looking at those present, and especially not at their eyes, momentarily to escape from this painful conviction. 4. Laughing[141] Sympathy, when it is not the direct cause, is conditional to the existence of laughter. Sometimes it provokes it; always it spreads it, sustains and strengthens it. First of all, it is so much the nature of laughter to communicate itself that when it no longer communicates itself it ceases to exist. One might say that outbursts of merriment need to be encouraged, that they are not self-sufficient. Not to share them is to blow upon them and extinguish them. When, in an animated and mirthful group, some one remains cold or gloomy, the laughter immediately stops or is checked. Yet those whom the common people call, in their picturesque language, wet blankets, spoil-sports, or kill-joys, are not necessarily hostile to the gaiety of the rest. They may only have, and, in fact, very often do have, nothing but the one fault of being out of tune with this gaiety. But even their calm appears an offense to the warmth and the high spirits of the others and kills by itself alone this merriment. Not only is laughter maintained by sympathy but it is even born of sympathy. The world is composed of two kinds of people: those who make one laugh and those who are made to laugh, these latter being infinitely more numerous. How many there are, indeed, who have no sense of humor, and who, of themselves, would not think of laughing at things at which they do nevertheless laugh heartily because they see others laugh. As for those who have a ready wit and a sense of the comic, do they not enjoy the success of their jokes as much, if not more, than their jokes themselves? Their mirthfulness, then, at least, grows with the joy of spreading it. Very often it happens that many good humorists are temperamentally far from gay, and laugh at their jokes only on the rebound, echoing the laughter which they provoke. To laugh, then, is to share the gaiety of others, whether this gaiety is communicated from them to us or from us to them. It seems that we can be moved to laughter only by the merriment of others, that we possess ours only indirectly when others send it to us. Human solidarity never appears more clearly than in the case of laughter. Yet can one say that sympathy actually produces laughter? Is it not enough to say that it increases it, that it strengthens its effects? All our sentiments are without doubt in a sense revealed to us by others. How many, as Rochefoucauld says, would be ignorant of love if they had never read novels! How many in the same way would never have discovered by themselves the laughable side of people and things. Yet even the feelings which one experiences by contagion one can experience only of one's own accord, in one's own way, and according to one's disposition. This fact alone of their contagion proves that from one's birth one carries the germ in himself. Sympathy would explain, then, contagion, but not the birth, of laughter. The fact is that our feelings exist for ourselves only when they acquire a communicative or social value; they have to be diffused in order to manifest themselves. Sympathy does not create them but it gives them their place in the world. It gives them just that access of intensity without which their nature cannot develop or even appear: thus it is that our laughter would be for us as if it did not exist, if it did not find outside itself an echo which increases it. From the fact that sympathy is the law of laughter, does it follow that it is the cause? Not at all. It would be even contradictory to maintain this. A laugh being given, others are born out of sympathy. But the first laugh or one originally given, where does it get its origin? Communicated laughter implies spontaneous laughter as the echo implies a sound. If sympathy explains one, it is, it would seem, an antipathy or the absence of sympathy which produces the other. "The thing at which we laugh," says Aristotle, "is a defect or ugliness which is not great enough to cause suffering or injury. Thus, for example, a ridiculous face is an ugly or misshapen face, but one on which suffering has not marked." Bain says likewise, "The laughable is the deformed or ugly thing which is not pushed to the point where it is painful or injurious. An occasion for laughter is the degradation of a person of dignity in circumstances which do not arouse a strong emotion," like indignation, anger, or pity. Descartes puts still more limits upon laughter. Speaking of malice he says that laughter cannot be provoked except by misfortunes not only _light_ but also _unforseen_ and _deserved_. "Derision or mockery," he says, "is a kind of joy mixed with hate, which comes from one's perceiving some _little misfortune_ in a person _whom one thinks deserves it_. We hate this misfortune but are happy at seeing it in some one who merits it, and, _when this happens unexpectedly, surprise causes us to burst out laughing_. But this misfortune must be small, for if it is great we cannot believe that he who meets it deserves it, unless one has a very malicious or hateful nature." This fact can be established directly by analyzing the most cruel laughter. If we enter into the feelings of the one who laughs and set aside the disagreeable sentiments, irritation, anger, and disgust, which at times they produce upon us, we come to understand even the savage sneer which appears to us as an insult to suffering; the laugh of the savage, trampling his conquered enemy under foot, or that of the child torturing unfortunate animals. This laugh is, in fact, inoffensive in its way, it is cruel in fact but not in intention. What it expresses is not a perverse, satanic joy but a _heartlessness_, as is so properly said. In the child and the savage sympathy has not been born, that is to say, the absence of imagination for the sufferings of others is complete. As a result we have a negative cruelty, a sort of altruistic or social anaesthesia. When such an anaesthesia is not complete, when the altruistic sensibility of one who laughs is only dull, his egotism being very keen, his laughter might appear still less hatefully cruel. It would express then not properly the joy of seeing others suffer but that of not having to undergo their suffering and the power of seeing it only as a spectacle. Analogous facts may be cited closer to us, easier to verify. Those who enjoy robust health often laugh at invalids: their imagination does not comprehend physical suffering, they are incapable of sympathizing with those who experience it. Likewise those who possess calm and even dispositions cannot witness without laughing an excess of mad anger or of impotent rage. In general we do not take seriously those feelings to which we ourselves are strangers; we consider them extravagant and amusing. "How can one be a Persian?" To laugh is to detach one's self from others, to separate one's self and to take pleasure in this separation, to amuse one's self by contrasting the feelings, character, and temperament of others and one's own feelings, character, and temperament. _Insensibility_ has been justly noted by M. Bergson as an essential characteristic of him who laughs. But this _insensibility_, this heartlessness, gives very much the effect of a positive and real ill nature, and M. Bergson had thus simply repeated and expressed in a new way, more precise and correct, the opinion of Aristotle: the cause of laughter is malice mitigated by insensibility or the absence of sympathy. Thus defined, malice is after all essentially relative, and when one says that the object of our laughter is the misfortune of someone else, _known by us_ to be endurable and slight, it must be understood that this misfortune may be _in itself_ very serious as well as undeserved, and in this way laughter is often really cruel. The coarser men are, the more destitute they are of sympathetic imagination, and the more they laugh at one another with an offensive and brutal laugh. There are those who are not even touched by contact with physical suffering; such ones have the heart to laugh at the shufflings of a bandy-legged man, at the ugliness of a hunchback, or the repulsive hideousness of an idiot. Others there are who are moved by physical suffering but who are not at all affected by moral suffering. These laugh at a self-love touched to the quick, at a wounded pride, at the tortured self-consciousness of one abashed or humiliated. These are, in their eyes, harmless, and slight pricks which they themselves, by a coarseness of nature, or a fine moral health, would endure perhaps with equanimity, which at any rate they do not feel in behalf of others, with whom they do not suffer in sympathy. _Castigat ridendo mores._ According to M. A. Michiels, the author of a book upon the _World of Humor and of Laughter_, this maxim must be understood in its broadest sense. "Everything that is contrary to the absolute ideal of human perfection," in whatever order it be, whether physical, intellectual, moral, or social, arouses laughter. The fear of ridicule is the most dominant of our feelings, that which controls us in most things and with the most strength. Because of this fear one does "what one would not do for the sake of justice, scrupulousness, honor, or good will;" one submits to an infinite number of obligations which morality would not dare to prescribe and which are not included in the laws. "Conscience and the written laws," says A. Michiels, "form two lines of ramparts against evil, the ludicrous is the third line of defense, it stops, brands, and condemns the little misdeeds which the guards have allowed to pass." Laughter is thus the great censor of vices, it spares none, it does not even grant indulgence to the slightest imperfections, of whatever nature they be. This mission, which M. Michiels attributes to laughter, granting that it is fulfilled, instead of taking its place in the natural or providential order of things, does it not answer simply to those demands, whether well founded or not, which society makes upon each of us? M. Bergson admits this, justly enough, it appears, when he defines laughter as a social bromide. But then it is no longer mere imperfection in general, it is not even immorality, properly speaking; it is merely unsociability, well or badly understood, which laughter corrects. More precisely, it is a special unsociability, one which escapes all other penalties, which it is the function of laughter to reach. What can this unsociability be? It is the self-love of each one of us in so far as it has anything disagreeable to others in it, an abstraction of every injurious or hateful element. It is the harmless self-love, slight, powerless, which one does not fear but one scorns, yet for all that does not pardon but on the contrary pitilessly pursues, wounds, and galls. Self-love thus defined is vanity, and what is called the moral correction administered by laughter is the wound to self-love. "The specific remedy for vanity," says M. Bergson, "is laughter, and the essentially ridiculous is vanity." One sees in what sense laughter is a "correction." Whether one considers the jests uttered, the feelings of the jester, or of him at whom one jests, laughter appears from the point of view of morality as a correction most often undeserved, unjust--or at least disproportionate to the fault--pitiless, and cruel. In fact, the self-love at which one laughs is, as we have said, harmless. Besides it is often a natural failing, a weakness, not a vice. Even if it were a vice, the jester would not be justified in laughing at it, for it does not appear that he himself is exempt. On the contrary, his vanity is magnified when that of others is upon the rack. Finally the humiliation caused by laughter is not a chastisement which one accepts but a torture to which one submits; it is a feeling of resentment, of bitterness, not a wholesome sense of shame, nor one from which anyone is likely to profit. Laughter may then have a social use; but it is not an act of justice. It is a quick and summary police measure which will not stand too close a scrutiny but which it would be imprudent either to condemn or to approve without reserve. Society is established and organized according to natural laws which seem to be modeled on those of reason, but self-loves discipline themselves, they enter into conflict and hold each other in check. C. LANGUAGE AND THE COMMUNICATION OF IDEAS 1. Intercommunication in the Lower Animals[142] The foundations of intercommunication, like those of imitation, are laid in certain instinctive modes of response, which are stimulated by the acts of other animals of the same social group. Some account has already been given of the sounds made by young birds, which seem to be instinctive and to afford an index of the emotional state at the time of utterance. That in many cases they serve to evoke a like emotional state and correlated expressive behavior in other birds of the same brood cannot be questioned. The alarm note of a chick will place its companions on the alert; and the harsh "krek" of a young moor-hen, uttered in a peculiar crouching attitude, will often throw others into this attitude, though the maker of the warning sound may be invisible. That the cries of her brood influence the conduct of the hen is a matter of familiar observation; and that her danger signal causes them at once to crouch or run to her for protection is not less familiar. No one who has watched a cat with her kittens, or a sheep with her lambs, can doubt that such "dumb animals" are influenced in their behavior by suggestive sounds. The important questions are, how they originate, what is their value, and how far such intercommunication--if such we may call it--extends. There can be but little question that in all cases of animals under natural conditions such behavior has an instinctive basis. Though the effect may be to establish a means of communication, such is not their conscious purpose at the outset. They are presumably congenital and hereditary modes of emotional expression which serve to evoke responsive behavior in another animal--the reciprocal action being generally in its primary origin between mate and mate, between parent and offspring, or between members of the same family group. _And it is this reciprocal action which constitutes it a factor in social evolution._ Its chief interest in connection with the subject of behavior lies in the fact that it shows the instinctive foundations on which intelligent and eventually rational modes of intercommunication are built up. For instinctive as the sounds are at the outset, by entering into the conscious situation and taking their part in the association-complex of experience, they become factors in the social life as modified and directed by intelligence. To their original instinctive value as the outcome of stimuli, and as themselves affording stimuli to responsive behavior, is added a value for consciousness in so far as they enter into those guiding situations by which intelligent behavior is determined. And if they also serve to evoke, in the reciprocating members of the social group, similar or allied emotional states, there is thus added a further social bond, inasmuch as there are thus laid the foundations of sympathy. "What makes the old sow grunt and the piggies sing and whine?" said a little girl to a portly, substantial farmer. "I suppose they does it for company, my dear," was the simple and cautious reply. So far as appearances went, that farmer looked as guiltless of theories as man could be. And yet he gave terse expression to what may perhaps be regarded as the most satisfactory hypothesis as to the primary purpose of animal sounds. They are a means by which each indicates to others the fact of his comforting presence; and they still, to a large extent, retain their primary function. The chirping of grasshoppers, the song of the cicada, the piping of frogs in the pool, the bleating of lambs at the hour of dusk, the lowing of contented cattle, the call-notes of the migrating host of birds--all these, whatever else they may be, are the reassuring social links of sound, the grateful signs of kindred presence. Arising thus in close relation to the primitive feelings of social sympathy, they would naturally be called into play with special force and suggestiveness at times of strong emotional excitement, and the earliest differentiations would, we may well believe, be determined along lines of emotional expression. Thus would originate mating cries, male and female after their kind; and parental cries more or less differentiated into those of mother and offspring, the deeper note of the ewe differing little save in pitch and timbre from the bleating of her lamb, while the cluck of the hen differs widely from the peeping note of the chick in down. Thus, too, would arise the notes of anger and combat, of fear and distress, of alarm and warning. If we call these the instinctive language of emotional expression, we must remember that such "language" differs markedly from the "language" of which the sentence is the recognized unit. It is, however, not improbable that, through association in the conscious situation, sounds, having their origin in emotional expression and evoking in others like emotional states, may acquire a new value in suggesting, for example, the presence of particular enemies. An example will best serve to indicate my meaning. The following is from H. B. Medlicott: In the early dawn of a grey morning I was geologizing along the base of the Muhair Hills in South Behar, when all of a sudden there was a stampede of many pigs from the fringe of the jungle, with porcine shrieks of _sauve qui peut_ significance. After a short run in the open they took to the jungle again, and in a few minutes there was another uproar, but different in sound and in action; there was a rush, presumably of the fighting members, to the spot where the row began, and after some seconds a large leopard sprang from the midst of the scuffle. In a few bounds he was in the open, and stood looking back, licking his chops. The pigs did not break cover, but continued on their way. They were returning to their lair after a night's feeding on the plain, several families having combined for mutual protection; while the beasts of prey were evidently waiting for the occasion. I was alone, and, though armed, I did not care to beat up the ground to see if in either case a kill had been effected. The numerous herd covered a considerable space, and the scrub was thick. The prompt concerted action must in each case have been started by the special cry. I imagine that the first assailant was a tiger, and the case was at once known to be hopeless, the cry prompting instant flight, while in the second case the cry was for defense. It can scarcely be doubted that in the first case each adult pig had a vision of a tiger, and in the second of a leopard or some minor foe. If we accept Mr. Medlicott's interpretation as in the main correct, we have in this case: (1) common action in social behavior, (2) community of emotional state, and (3) the suggestion of natural enemies not unfamiliar in the experience of the herd. It is a not improbable hypothesis, therefore, that in the course of evolution the initial value of uttered sounds is emotional; but that on this may be grafted in further development the indication of particular enemies. If, for example, the cry which prompts instant flight among the pigs is called forth by a tiger, it is reasonable to suppose that this cry would give rise to a representative generic image of that animal having its influence on the conscious situation. But if the second cry, for defense, was prompted sometimes by a leopard and sometimes by some other minor foe, then this cry would not give rise to a representative image of the same definiteness. Whether animals have the power of intentionally differentiating the sounds they make to indicate different objects is extremely doubtful. Can a dog bark in different tones to indicate "cat" or "rat," as the case may be? Probably not. It may, however, be asked why, if a pig may squeak differently, and thus, perhaps, incidentally indicate on the one hand "tiger" and on the other hand "leopard," should not a dog bark differently and thus indicate appropriately "cat" or "rat"? Because it is assumed that the two different cries in the pig are the instinctive expression of two different emotional states, and Mr. Medlicott could distinguish them; whereas, in the case of the dog, we can distinguish no difference between his barking in the one case and the other, nor do the emotional states appear to be differentiated. Of course there may be differences which we have failed to detect. What may be regarded, however, as improbable is the _intentional_ differentiation of sounds by barking in different tones with the _purpose_ of indicating "cat" or "rat." Such powers of intercommunication as animals possess are based on direct association and refer to the here and the now. A dog may be able to suggest to his companion the fact that he has descried a worriable cat; but can a dog tell his neighbor of the delightful worry he enjoyed the day before yesterday in the garden where the man with the biscuit tin lives? Probably not, bark he never so expressively. From the many anecdotes of dogs calling others to their assistance or bringing others to those who feed them or treat them kindly, we may indeed infer the existence of a social tendency and of the suggestive effects of behavior, but we cannot derive conclusive evidence of anything like descriptive communication. Such intentional communication as is to be found in animals, if indeed we may properly so call it, seems to arise by an association of the performance of some act in a conscious situation involving further behavior for its complete development. Thus the cat which touches the handle of the door when it wishes to leave the room has had experience in which the performance of this act has coalesced with a specific development of the conscious situation. The case is similar when your dog drops a ball or stick at your feet, wishing you to throw it for him to fetch. Still, it is clear that such an act would be the perceptual precursor of the deliberate conduct of the rational being by whom the sign is definitely realized as a sign, the intentional meaning of which is distinctly present to thought. This involves a judgment concerning the sign as an object of thought; and this is probably beyond the capacity of the dog. For, as Romanes himself says, "It is because the human mind is able, so to speak, to stand outside of itself and thus to constitute its own ideas the subject-matter of its own thought that it is capable of judgment, whether in the act of conception or in that of predication. We have no evidence to show that any animal is capable of objectifying its own ideas; and therefore we have no evidence that any animal is capable of judgment." 2. The Concept as the Medium of Human Communication[143] There is a petrified philosophy in language, and if we examine the most ancient word for "name," we find it is _nâman_ in Sanskrit, _nomen_ in Latin, _namô_ in Gothic. This _nâman_ stands for _gnâman_, and is derived from the root _gnâ_, to know, and meant originally that by which we know a thing. And how do we know things? The first step toward the real knowledge, a step which, however small in appearance, separates man forever from all other animals, is _the naming of a thing_, or the making a thing knowable. All naming is classification, bringing the individual under the general; and whatever we know, whether empirically or scientifically, we know it by means of our general ideas. At the very point where man parts company with the brute world, at the first flash of reason as the manifestation of the light within us, there we see the true genesis of language. Analyze any word you like and you will find that it expresses a general idea peculiar to the individual to whom the name belongs. What is the meaning of moon? The measurer. What is the meaning of sun? The begetter. What is the meaning of earth? The ploughed. If the serpent is called in Sanskrit _sarpa_, it is because it was conceived under the general idea of creeping, an idea expressed by the root _srip_. An ancient word for man was the Sanskrit _marta_, the Greek _brotos_, the Latin _mortalis_. _Marta_ means "he who dies," and it is remarkable that, where everything else was changing, fading, and dying, this should have been chosen as the distinguishing name for man. There were many more names for man, as there were many names for all things in ancient languages. Any feature that struck the observing mind as peculiarly characteristic could be made to furnish a new name. In common Sanskrit dictionaries we find 5 words for hand, 11 for light, 15 for cloud, 20 for moon, 26 for snake, 33 for slaughter, 35 for fire, 37 for sun. The sun might be called the bright, the warm, the golden, the preserver, the destroyer, the wolf, the lion, the heavenly eye, the father of light and life. Hence that superabundance of synonyms in ancient dialects, and hence that struggle for life carried on among these words, which led to the destruction of the less strong, the less fertile, the less happy words, and ended in the triumph of _one_ as the recognized and proper name for every object in every language. On a very small scale this process of natural selection, or, as it would better be called, elimination, may still be watched even in modern languages, that is to say, even in languages so old and stricken in years as English and French. What it was at the first burst of dialects we can only gather from such isolated cases as when von Hammer counts 5,744 words all relating to the camel. The fact that every word is originally a predicate--that names, though signs of individual conceptions, are all, without exception, derived from general ideas--is one of the most important discoveries in the science of language. It was known before that language is the distinguishing characteristic of man; it was known also that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes; but that these two were only different expressions of the same fact was not known till the theory of roots had been established as preferable to the theories both of onomatopoicia and of interjections. But, though our modern philosophy did not know it, the ancient poets and framers of language must have known it. For in Greek, language is _logos_, but _logos_ means also reason, and _alogon_ was chosen as the name and the most proper name, for brute. No animal, so far as we know, thinks and speaks except man. Language and thought are inseparable. Words without thought are dead sounds; thoughts without words are nothing. To think is to speak low; to speak is to think aloud. The word is the thought incarnate. What are the two problems left unsettled at the end of the _Science of Language_: "How do mere cries become phonetic types?" and "How can sensations be changed into concepts?" What are these two, if taken together, but the highest problem of all philosophy, viz., "What is the origin of reason?" 3. Writing as a Form of Communication[144] The earliest stages of writing were those in which pictographic forms were used; that is, a direct picture was drawn upon the writing surface, reproducing as nearly as possible the kind of impression made upon the observer by the object itself. To be sure, the drawing used to represent the object was not an exact reproduction or full copy of the object, but it was a fairly direct image. The visual memory image was thus aroused by a direct perceptual appeal to the eye. Anyone could read a document written in this pictograph form, if he had ever seen the objects to which the pictures referred. There was no special relation between the pictures or visual forms at this stage of development and the sounds used in articulate language. Concrete examples of such writing are seen in early monuments, where the moon is represented by the crescent, a king by the drawing of a man wearing a crown. The next stage of development in writing began when the pictographic forms were reduced in complexity to the simplest possible lines. The reduction of the picture to a few sketchy lines depended upon the growing ability of the reader to contribute the necessary interpretation. All that was needed in the figure was something which would suggest the full picture to the mind. Indeed, it is probably true that the full picture was not needed, even in the reader's consciousness. Memory images are usually much simplified reproductions of the perceptual facts. In writing we have a concrete expression of this tendency of memory to lose its full reproductive form and to become reduced to the point of the most meager contents for conscious thought. The simplification of the written forms is attained very early, and is seen even in the figures which are used by savage tribes. Thus, to represent the number of an enemy's army, it is not necessary to draw full figures of the forms of the enemy; it is enough if single straight lines are drawn with some brief indication, perhaps at the beginning of the series of lines, to show that these stand each for an individual enemy. This simplification of the drawing leaves the written symbol with very much larger possibilities of entering into new relations in the mind of the reader. Instead, now, of being a specific drawing related to a specific object, it invites by its simple character a number of different interpretations. A straight line, for example, can represent not only the number of an enemy's army but it can represent also the number of sheep in a flock, or the number of tents in a village, or anything else which is capable of enumeration. The use of a straight line for these various purposes stimulates new mental developments. This is shown by the fact that the development of the idea of the number relation, as distinguished from the mass of possible relations in which an object may stand, is greatly facilitated by this general written symbol for numbers. The intimate relation between the development of ideas on the one hand and the development of language on the other is here very strikingly illustrated. The drawing becomes more useful because it is associated with more elaborate ideas, while the ideas develop because they find in the drawing a definite content which helps to mark and give separate character to the idea. As soon as the drawing began to lose its significance as a direct perceptual reproduction of the object and took on new and broader meanings through the associations which attached to it, the written form became a symbol, rather than a direct appeal to visual memory. As a symbol it stood for something which, in itself, it was not. The way was thus opened for the written symbol to enter into relation with oral speech, which is also a form of symbolism. Articulate sounds are simplified forms of experience capable through association with ideas of expressing meanings not directly related to the sounds themselves. When the written symbol began to be related to the sound symbol, there was at first a loose and irregular relation between them. The Egyptians seem to have established such relations to some extent. They wrote at times with pictures standing for sounds, as we now write in rebus puzzles. In such puzzles the picture of an object is intended to call up in the mind of the reader, not the special group of ideas appropriate to the object represented in the picture, but rather the sound which serves as the name of this object. When the sound is once suggested to the reader, he is supposed to attend to that and to connect with it certain other associations appropriate to the sound. To take a modern illustration, we may, for example, use the picture of the eye to stand for the first personal pronoun. The relationship between the picture and the idea for which it is used is in this case through the sound of the name of the object depicted. That the early alphabets are of this type of rebus pictures appears in their names. The first three letters of the Hebrew alphabet, for example, are named, respectively, _aleph_ which means ox, _beth_ which means house, and _gimmel_ which means camel. The complete development of a sound alphabet from this type of rebus writing required, doubtless, much experimentation on the part of the nations which succeeded in establishing the association. The Phoenicians have generally been credited with the invention of the forms and relations which we now use. Their contribution to civilization cannot be overestimated. It consisted, not in the presentation of new material or content to conscious experience, but rather in the bringing together by association of groups of contents which, in their new relation, transformed the whole process of thought and expression. They associated visual and auditory content and gave to the visual factors a meaning through association which was of such unique importance as to justify us in describing the association as a new invention. There are certain systems of writing which indicate that the type of relationship which we use is not the only possible type of relationship. The Chinese, for example, have continued to use simple symbols which are related to complex sounds, not to elementary sounds, as are our own letters. In Chinese writing the various symbols, though much corrupted in form, stand each for an object. It is true that the forms of Chinese writing have long since lost their direct relationship to the pictures in which they originated. The present forms are simplified and symbolical. So free has the symbolism become that the form has been arbitrarily modified to make it possible for the writer to use freely the crude tools with which the Chinaman does his writing. These practical considerations could not have become operative, if the direct pictographic character of the symbols had not long since given place to a symbolical character which renders the figure important, not because of what it shows in itself, but rather because of what it suggests to the mind of the reader. The relation of the symbol to elementary sounds has, however, never been established. This lack of association with elementary sounds keeps the Chinese writing at a level much lower and nearer to primitive pictographic forms than is our writing. Whether we have a highly elaborated symbolical system, such as that which appears in Chinese writing, or a form of writing which is related to sound, the chief fact regarding writing, as regarding all language, is that it depends for its value very much more upon the ideational relations into which the symbols are brought in the individual's mind than upon the impressions which they arouse. The ideational associations which appear in developed language could never have reached the elaborate form which they have at present if there had not been social co-operation. The tendency of the individual when left to himself is to drop back into the direct adjustments which are appropriate to his own life. He might possibly develop articulation to a certain extent for his own sake, but the chief impulse to the development of language comes through intercourse with others. As we have seen, the development of the simplest forms of communication, as in animals, is a matter of social imitation. Writing is also an outgrowth of social relations. It is extremely doubtful whether even the child of civilized parents would ever have any sufficient motive for the development of writing, if it were not for the social encouragement he receives. 4. The Extension of Communication by Human Invention[145] No one who is asked to name the agencies that weave the great web of intellectual and material influences and counter-influences by which modern humanity is combined into the unity of society will need much reflection to give first rank to the newspaper, along with the post, railroad, and telegraph. In fact, the newspaper forms a link in the chain of modern commercial machinery; it is one of those contrivances by which in society the exchange of intellectual and material goods is facilitated. Yet it is not an instrument of commercial intercourse in the sense of the post or the railway, both of which have to do with the transport of persons, goods, and news, but rather in the sense of the letter and circular. These make the news capable of transport only because they are enabled by the help of writing and printing to cut it adrift, as it were, from its originator and give it corporeal independence. However great the difference between letter, circular, and newspaper may appear today, a little reflection shows that all three are essentially similar products, originating in the necessity of communicating news and in the employment of writing in its satisfaction. The sole difference consists in the letter being addressed to individuals, the circular to several specified persons, the newspaper to many unspecified persons. Or, in other words, while letter and circular are instruments for the private communication of news, the newspaper is an instrument for its publication. Today we are, of course, accustomed to the regular printing of the newspaper and its periodical appearance at brief intervals. But neither of these is an essential characteristic of the newspaper as a means of news publication. On the contrary, it will become apparent directly that the primitive paper from which this mighty instrument of commercial intercourse is sprung appeared neither in printed form nor periodically, but that it closely resembled the letter from which, indeed, it can scarcely be distinguished. To be sure, repeated appearance at brief intervals is involved in the very nature of news publication. For news has value only so long as it is fresh; and to preserve for it the charm of novelty its publication must follow in the footsteps of the events. We shall, however, soon see that the periodicity of these intervals, as far as it can be noticed in the infancy of journalism, depended upon the regular recurrence of opportunities to transport the news, and was in no way connected with the essential nature of the newspaper. The regular collection and despatch of news presupposes a widespread interest in public affairs, or an extensive area of trade exhibiting numerous commercial connections and combinations of interest, or both at once. Such interest is not realized until people are united by some more or less extensive political organization into a certain community of life-interest. The city republics of ancient times required no newspaper; all their needs of publication could be met by the herald and by inscriptions, as occasion demanded. Only when Roman supremacy had embraced or subjected to its influence all the countries of the Mediterranean was there need of some means by which those members of the ruling class who had gone to the provinces as officials, tax-farmers, and in other occupations, might receive the current news of the capital. It is significant that Caesar, the creator of the military monarchy and of the administrative centralization of Rome, is regarded as the founder of the first contrivance resembling a newspaper. Indeed, long before Caesar's consulate it had become customary for Romans in the provinces to keep one or more correspondents at the capital to send them written reports on the course of political movement and on other events of the day. Such a correspondent was generally an intelligent slave or freedman intimately acquainted with affairs at the capital, who, moreover, often made a business of reporting for several. He was thus a species of primitive reporter, differing from those of today only in writing, not for a newspaper, but directly for readers. On recommendation of their employers, these reporters enjoyed at times admission even to the senate discussions. Antony kept such a man, whose duty it was to report to him not merely on the senate's resolutions but also on the speeches and votes of the senators. Cicero, when proconsul, received through his friend, M. Caelius, the reports of a certain Chrestus, but seems not to have been particularly well satisfied with the latter's accounts of gladiatorial sports, law-court proceedings, and the various pieces of city gossip. As in this case, such correspondence never extended beyond a rude relation of facts that required supplementing through letters from party friends of the absent person. These friends, as we know from Cicero, supplied the real report on political feeling. The innovation made by Caesar consisted in instituting the publication of a brief record of the transactions and resolutions of the senate, and in his causing to be published the transactions of the assemblies of the plebs, as well as other important matters of public concern. The Germanic peoples who, after the Romans, assumed the lead in the history of Europe were neither in civilization nor in political organization fitted to maintain a similar constitution of the news service; nor did they require it. All through the Middle Ages the political and social life of men was bounded by a narrow horizon; culture retired to the cloisters and for centuries affected only the people of prominence. There were no trade interests beyond the narrow walls of their own town or manor to draw men together. It is only in the later centuries of the Middle Ages that extensive social combinations once more appear. It is first the church, embracing with her hierarchy all the countries of Germanic and Latin civilization, next the burgher class with its city confederacies and common trade interests, and, finally, as a counter-influence to these, the secular territorial powers, who succeed in gradually realizing some form of union. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries we notice the first traces of an organized service for transmission of news and letters in the messengers of monasteries, the universities, and the various spiritual dignitaries; in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we have advanced to a comprehensive, almost postlike, organization of local messenger bureaus for the epistolary intercourse of traders and of municipal authorities. And now, for the first time, we meet with the word _Zeitung_, or newspaper. The word meant originally that which was happening at the time (_Zeit_ = "time"), a present occurrence; then information on such an event, a message, a report, news. Venice was long regarded as the birthplace of the newspaper in the modern acceptation of the word. As the channel of trade between the East and the West, as the seat of a government that first organized the political news service and the consular system in the modern sense, the old city of lagoons formed a natural collecting center for important news items from all lands of the known world. Even early in the fifteenth century, as has been shown by the investigations of Valentinelli, the librarian of St. Mark's Library, collections of news had been made at the instance of the council of Venice regarding events that had either occurred within the republic or been reported by ambassadors, consuls, and officials, by ships' captains, merchants, and the like. These were sent as circular despatches to the Venetian representatives abroad to keep them posted on international affairs. Such collections of news were called _fogli d'avvisi_. The further development of news publication in the field that it has occupied since the more general adoption of the printing-press has been peculiar. At the outset the publisher of a periodical printed newspaper differed in no wise from the publisher of any other printed work--for instance, of a pamphlet or a book. He was but the multiplier and seller of a literary product, over whose content he had no control. The newspaper publisher marketed the regular post-news in its printed form just as another publisher offered the public a herbal or an edition of an old writer. But this soon changed. It was readily perceived that the contents of a newspaper number did not form an entity in the same sense as the contents of a book or pamphlet. The news items there brought together, taken from different sources, were of varying reliability. They needed to be used judicially and critically: in this a political or religious bias could find ready expression. In a still higher degree was this the case when men began to discuss contemporary political questions in the newspapers and to employ them as a medium for disseminating party opinions. This took place first in England during the Long Parliament and the Revolution of 1640. The Netherlands and a part of the imperial free towns of Germany followed later. In France the change was not consummated before the era of the great Revolution: in most other countries it occurred in the nineteenth century. The newspaper, from being a mere vehicle for the publication of news, became an instrument for supporting and shaping public opinion and a weapon of party politics. The effect of this upon the internal organization of the newspaper undertaking was to introduce a third department, the _editorship_, between news collecting and news publication. For the newspaper publisher, however, it signified that from a mere seller of news he had become a dealer in public opinion as well. At first this meant nothing more than that the publisher was placed in a position to shift a portion of the risk of his undertaking upon a party organization, a circle of interested persons, or a government. If the leanings of the paper were distasteful to the readers, they ceased to buy the paper. Their wishes thus remained, in the final analysis, the determining factor for the contents of the newspapers. The gradually expanding circulation of the printed newspapers nevertheless soon led to their employment by the authorities for making public announcements. With this came, in the first quarter of the last century, the extension of private announcements, which have now attained, through the so-called advertising bureaus, some such organization as political news-collecting possesses in the correspondence bureaus. The modern newspaper is a capitalistic enterprise, a sort of news-factory in which a great number of people (correspondents, editors, typesetters, correctors, machine-tenders, collectors of advertisements, office clerks, messengers, etc.) are employed on wage, under a single administration, at very specialized work. This paper produces wares for an unknown circle of readers, from whom it is, furthermore, frequently separated by intermediaries, such as delivery agencies and postal institutions. The simple needs of the reader or of the circle of patrons no longer determine the quality of these wares; it is now the very complicated conditions of competition in the publication market. In this market, however, as generally in wholesale markets, the consumers of the goods, the newspaper readers, take no direct part; the determining factors are the wholesale dealers and the speculators in news: the governments, the telegraph bureaus dependent upon their special correspondents, the political parties, artistic and scientific cliques, men on 'change, and, last but not least, the advertising agencies and large individual advertisers. Each number of a great journal which appears today is a marvel of economic division of labor, capitalistic organization, and mechanical technique; it is an instrument of intellectual and economic intercourse, in which the potencies of all other instruments of commerce--the railway, the post, the telegraph, and the telephone--are united as in a focus. D. IMITATION 1. Definition of Imitation[146] The term "imitation" is used in ordinary language to designate any repetition of any act or thought which has been noted by an observer. Thus one imitates the facial expression of another, or his mode of speech. The term has been brought into prominence in scientific discussions through the work of Gabriel Tarde, who in his _Les lois de l'imitation_ points out that imitation is a fundamental fact underlying all social development. The customs of society are imitated from generation to generation. The fashions of the day are imitated by large groups of people without any consciousness of the social solidarity which is derived from this common mode of behavior. There is developed through these various forms of imitation a body of experiences which is common to all of the members of a given social group. In complex society the various imitations which tend to set themselves up are frequently found to be in conflict; thus the tendency toward elaborate fashions in dress is constantly limited by the counter-tendency toward simpler fashions. The conflict of tendencies leads to individual variations from the example offered at any given time, and, as a result, there are new examples to be followed. Complex social examples are thus products of conflict. This general doctrine of Tarde has been elaborated by a number of recent writers. Royce calls attention to the fundamental importance of imitation as a means of social inheritance. The same doctrine is taken up by Baldwin in his _Mental Development in the Child and Race_, and in _Social and Ethical Interpretations_. With these later writers, imitation takes on a significance which is somewhat technical and broader than the significance which it has either with Tarde or in the ordinary use of the term. Baldwin uses the term to cover that case in which an individual repeats an act because he has himself gone through the act. In such a case one imitates himself and sets up what Baldwin terms a circular reaction. The principle of imitation is thus introduced into individual psychology as well as into general social psychology, and the relation between the individual's acts and his own imagery is brought under the same general principle as the individual's responses to his social environment. The term "imitation" in this broader sense is closely related to the processes of sympathy. The term "social heredity" has very frequently been used in connection with all of the processes here under discussion. Society tends to perpetuate itself in the new individual in a fashion analogous to that in which the physical characteristics of the earlier generation tend to perpetuate themselves in the physical characteristics of the new generation. Since modes of behavior, such as acts of courtesy, cannot be transmitted through physical structure, they would tend to lapse if they were not maintained through imitation from generation to generation. Thus imitation gives uniformity to social practices and consequently is to be treated as a form of supplementary inheritance extending beyond physical inheritance and making effective the established forms of social practice. 2. Attention, Interest, and Imitation[147] Imitation is a process of very great importance for the development of mental life in both men and animals. In its more complex forms it presupposes trains of ideas; but in its essential features it is present and operative at the perceptual level. It is largely through imitation that the results of the experience of one generation are transmitted to the next, so as to form the basis for further development. Where trains of ideas play a relatively unimportant part, as in the case of animals, imitation may be said to be the sole form of social tradition. In the case of human beings, the thought of past generations is embodied in language, institutions, machinery, and the like. This distinctively human tradition presupposes trains of ideas in past generations, which so mold the environment of a new generation that in apprehending and adapting itself to this environment it must re-think the old trains of thought. Tradition of this kind is not found in animal life, because the animal mind does not proceed by way of trains of ideas. None the less, the more intelligent animals depend largely on tradition. This tradition consists essentially in imitation by the young of the actions of their parents, or of other members of the community in which they are born. The same directly imitative process, though it is very far from forming the whole of social tradition in human beings, forms a very important part of it. a) _The imitative impulse._--We must distinguish between ability to imitate and impulse to imitate. We may be already fully able to perform an action, and the sight of it as performed by another may merely prompt us to reproduce it. But the sight of an act performed by another may also have an educational influence; it may not only stimulate us to do what we are already able to do without its aid; it may also enable us to do what we could not do without having an example to follow. When the cough of one man sets another coughing, it is evident that imitation here consists only in the impulse to follow suit. The second man does not learn how to cough from the example of the first. He is simply prompted to do on this particular occasion what he is otherwise quite capable of doing. But if I am learning billiards and someone shows me by his own example how to make a particular stroke, the case is different. It is not his example which in the first instance prompts me to the action. He merely shows the way to do what I already desire to do. We have then first to discuss the nature of the imitative impulse--the impulse to perform an action which arises from the perception of it as performed by another. This impulse is an affair of attentive consciousness. The perception of an action prompts us to reproduce it when and so far as it excites interest or is at least intimately connected with what does excite interest. Further, the interest must be of such a nature that it is more fully gratified by partially or wholly repeating the interesting action. Thus imitation is a special development of attention. Attention is always striving after a more vivid, more definite, and more complete apprehension of its object. Imitation is a way in which this endeavor may gratify itself when the interest in the object is of a certain kind. It is obvious that we do not try to imitate all manner of actions, without distinction, merely because they take place under our eyes. What is familiar and commonplace or what for any other reason is unexciting or insipid fails to stir us to re-enact it. It is otherwise with what is strikingly novel or in any way impressive, so that our attention dwells on it with relish or fascination. It is, of course, not true that whatever act fixes attention prompts to imitation. This is only the case where imitation helps attention, where it is, in fact, a special development of attention. This is so when interest is directly concentrated on the activity itself for its own sake rather than for the sake of its possible consequences and the like ulterior motives. But it is not necessary that the act in itself should be interesting; in a most important class of cases the interest centers, not directly in the external act imitated, but in something else with which this act is so intimately connected as virtually to form a part of it. Thus there is a tendency to imitate not only interesting acts but also the acts of interesting persons. Men are apt to imitate the gestures and modes of speech of those who excite their admiration or affection or some other personal interest. Children imitate their parents or their leaders in the playground. Even the mannerisms and tricks of a great man are often unconsciously copied by those who regard him as a hero. In such instances the primary interest is in the whole personality of the model; but this is more vividly and distinctly brought before consciousness by reproducing his external peculiarities. Our result, then, is that interest in an action prompts to imitation in proportion to its intensity, provided the interest is of a kind which will be gratified or sustained by imitative activity. b) _Learning by imitation._--Let us now turn to the other side of the question. Let us consider the case in which the power of performing an action is acquired in and by the process of imitation itself. Here there is a general rule which is obvious when once it is pointed out. It is part of the still more general rule that "to him that hath shall be given." Our power of imitating the activity of another is strictly proportioned to our pre-existing power of performing the same general kind of action independently. For instance, one devoid of musical faculty has practically no power of imitating the violin playing of Joachim. Imitation may develop and improve a power which already exists, but it cannot create it. Consider the child beginning for the first time to write in a copybook. He learns by imitation; but it is only because he has already some rudimentary ability to make such simple figures as pothooks that the imitative process can get a start. At the outset, his pothooks are very unlike the model set before him. Gradually he improves; increased power of independent production gives step by step increased power of imitation, until he approaches too closely the limits of his capacity in this direction to make any further progress of an appreciable kind. But this is an incomplete account of the matter. The power of learning by imitation is part of the general power of learning by experience; it involves mental plasticity. An animal which starts life with congenital tendencies and aptitudes of a fixed and stereotyped kind, so that they admit of but little modification in the course of individual development, has correspondingly little power of learning by imitation. At higher levels of mental development the imitative impulse is far less conspicuous because impulsive activity in general is checked and overruled by activity organized in a unified system. Civilized men imitate not so much because of immediate interest in the action imitated as with a view to the attainment of desirable results. 3. The Three Levels of Sympathy[148] Sympathy is not an instinct or a tendency, i.e., a group of co-ordinated movements adapted to a particular end, and showing itself in consciousness as an emotion, such as fear, anger, sex attraction; it is, on the contrary, a highly generalized psycho-physiological property. To the specialized character of each emotion it opposes a character of almost unlimited plasticity. We have not to consider it under all its aspects but as one of the most important manifestations of emotional life, as the basis of the tender emotions, and one of the foundations of social and moral existence. a) _The first phase._--In its primitive form sympathy is reflex, automatic, unconscious, or very slightly conscious; it is, according to Bain, the tendency to produce in ourselves an attitude, a state, a bodily movement which we perceive in another person. This is imitation in its most rudimentary form. Between sympathy and imitation, at any rate in this primitive period, I see only one difference of aspect: sympathy everywhere marks the passive, receptive side of the phenomenon; imitation, its active and motor side. It manifests itself in animals forming aggregates (not societies), such as a flock of sheep, or a pack of dogs who run, stop, bark all at the same time, through a purely physical impulse of imitation; in man, infectious laughter or yawning, walking in step, imitating the movements of a rope-walker while watching him, feeling a shock in one's legs when one sees a man falling, and a hundred other occurrences of this kind are cases of physiological sympathy. It plays a great part in the psychology of crowds, with their rapid attacks and sudden panics. In nervous diseases, there is a superfluity of examples: epidemics of hysteric fits, convulsive barking, hiccup, etc. I omit the mental maladies (epidemics of suicide, double or triple madness) since we are only considering the purely physiological stage. To sum up, sympathy is originally a property of living matter: as there is an organic memory and an organic sensitiveness, being those of the tissues and ultimate elements which compose them, there is an organic sympathy, made up of receptivity and imitative movements. b) _The second phase._--The next phase is that of sympathy in the psychological sense, necessarily accompanied by consciousness; it creates in two or more individuals analogous emotional states. Such are the cases in which we say that fear, indignation, joy, or sorrow are communicated. It consists in feeling an emotion existing in another, and is revealed to us by its physiological expression. This phase consists of two stages. (1) The first might be defined as psychological unison. If, during this period of unison, we could read the minds of those who sympathize, we should see a single emotional fact reflected in the consciousness of several individuals. L. Noiré, in his book, _Ursprung der Sprache_, has proposed the theory that language originated in community of action among the earliest human beings. When working, marching, dancing, rowing, they uttered (according to this writer) sounds which became the appellatives of these different actions, or of various objects; and these sounds, being uttered by all, must have been understood by all. Whether this theory be correct or not (it has been accepted as such by Max Müller), it will serve as an illustration. But this state of sympathy does not by itself constitute a tie of affection or tenderness between those who feel it; it only prepares the way for such an emotion. It may be the basis of a certain social solidarity, because the same internal states excite the same acts of a mechanical, exterior, non-moral solidarity. (2) The second stage is that of sympathy, in the restricted and popular sense of the word. This consists of psychological unison, _plus_ a new element: there is added another emotional manifestation, tender emotion (benevolence, sympathy, pity, etc.). It is no longer sympathy pure and simple, it is a binary compound. The common habit of considering phenomena only under their higher and complete forms often misleads us as to their origin and constitution. Moreover, in order to understand that this is a case of duality--the fusion of two distinct elements--and that our analysis is not a factitious one, it is sufficient to point out that sympathy (in the etymological sense) may exist without any tender emotion--nay, that it may exclude instead of excite it. According to Lubbock, while ants carry away their wounded, bees--though forming a society--are indifferent toward each other. It is well known that gregarious animals nearly always shun and desert a wounded member of the herd. Among men, how many there are who, when they see suffering, hasten to withdraw themselves from the spectacle, in order to escape the pain which it sympathetically awakens in them. This impulse may go to the length of aversion, as typified by Dives in the Gospel. It is therefore a complete psychological error to consider sympathy as capable, unaided, of delivering men from egoism; it only takes the first step, and not always that. c) _The third phase._--Under its intellectual form, sympathy is an agreement in feelings and actions, founded on unity of representation. The law of development is summed up in Spencer's formula, "The degree and range of sympathy depend on the clearness and extent of representation." I should, however, add: on condition of being based on an emotional temperament. This last is the source _par excellence_ of sympathy, because it vibrates like an echo; the active temperament lends itself less to such impulses, because it has so much to do in manifesting its own individuality that it can scarcely manifest those of others; finally, the phlegmatic temperament does so least of all, because it presents a minimum of emotional life; like Leibnitz' monads, it has no windows. In passing from the emotional to the intellectual phase, sympathy gains in extent and stability. In fact, emotional sympathy requires some analogy in temperament or nature; it can scarcely be established between the timid and the daring, between the cheerful and the melancholic; it may be extended to all human beings and to the animals nearest us, but not beyond them. On the contrary, it is the special attribute of intelligence to seek resemblances or analogies everywhere, to unify; it embraces the whole of nature. By the law of transfer (which we have already studied) sympathy follows this invading march and comprehends even inanimate objects, as in the case of the poet, who feels himself in communion with the sea, the woods, the lakes, or the mountains. Besides, intellectual sympathy participates in the relative fixity of representation; we find a simple instance of this in animal societies, such as those of the bees, where unity or sympathy among the members is only maintained by the perception or representation of the queen. 4. Rational Sympathy[149] As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did, and never can, carry us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations. Neither can that faculty help us to this any other way than by representing to us what would be our own, if we were in his case. It is the impressions of our own senses only, not those of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them. His agonies, when they are thus brought home to ourselves, when we have thus adopted and made them our own, begin at last to affect us, and we then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels. For, as to be in pain or distress of any kind excites the most excessive sorrow, so to conceive or to imagine that we are in it excites some degree of the same emotion, in proportion to the vivacity or dulness of the conception. That this is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others, that it is by changing places in fancy with the sufferer that we come either to conceive or to be affected by what he feels, may be demonstrated by many obvious observations, if it should not be thought sufficiently evident of itself. When we see a stroke aimed, and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel it in some measure and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer. The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies as they see him do, and as they feel that they themselves must do if in his situation. Persons of delicate fibers and a weak constitution of body complain that in looking on the sores and ulcers which are exposed by beggars in the streets they are apt to feel an itching or uneasy sensation in the corresponding part of their own bodies. The horror which they conceive at the misery of those wretches affects that particular part in themselves more than any other because that horror arises from conceiving what they themselves would suffer if they really were the wretches whom they are looking upon, and if that particular part in themselves was actually affected in the same miserable manner. The very force of this conception is sufficient, in their feeble frames, to produce that itching or uneasy sensation complained of. Men of the most robust make observe that in looking upon sore eyes they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own, which proceeds from the same reason; that organ, being in the strongest man more delicate than any other part of the body, is the weakest. Upon some occasions sympathy may seem to arise merely from the view of a certain emotion in another person. The passions upon some occasions may seem to be transfused from one man to another instantaneously and antecedent to any knowledge of what excited them in the person principally concerned. Grief and joy, for example, strongly expressed in the look and gestures of any person at once affect the spectator with some degree of a like painful or agreeable emotion. A smiling face is, to everybody that sees it, a cheerful object, as a sorrowful countenance, on the other hand, is a melancholy one. This, however, does not hold universally, or with regard to every passion. There are some passions of which the expressions excite no sort of sympathy, but, before we are acquainted with what gave occasion to them, serve rather to disgust and provoke us against them. The furious behavior of an angry man is more likely to exasperate us against himself than against his enemies. As we are unacquainted with his provocation, we cannot bring his case home to ourselves, nor conceive anything like the passions which it excites. But we plainly see what is the situation of those with whom he is angry, and to what violence they may be exposed from so enraged an adversary. We readily, therefore, sympathize with their fear or resentment, and are immediately disposed to take part against the man from whom they appear to be in danger. If the very appearances of grief and joy inspire us with some degree of the like emotions, it is because they suggest to us the general idea of some good or bad fortune that has befallen the person in whom we observe them: and in these passions this is sufficient to have some little influence upon us. The effects of grief and joy terminate in the person who feels these emotions, of which the expressions do not, like those of resentment, suggest to us the idea of any other person for whom we are concerned and whose interests are opposite to his. The general idea of good or bad fortune, therefore, creates some concern for the person who has met with it; but the general idea of provocation excites no sympathy with the anger of the man who has received it. Nature, it seems, teaches us to be more averse to enter into this passion, and, till informed of its cause, to be disposed rather to take part against it. Even our sympathy with the grief or joy of another, before we are informed of the cause of either, is always extremely imperfect. General lamentations, which express nothing but the anguish of the sufferer, create rather a curiosity to inquire into his situation, along with some disposition to sympathize with him, than any actual sympathy that is very sensible. The first question which we ask is, What has befallen you? Till this be answered, though we are uneasy both from the vague idea of his misfortune and still more from torturing ourselves with conjectures about what it may be, yet our fellow-feeling is not very considerable. Sympathy, therefore, does not arise so much from the view of the passion as from that of the situation which excites it. We sometimes feel for another a passion of which he himself seems to be altogether incapable, because, when we put ourselves in his case, that passion arises in our breast from the imagination, though it does not in his from the reality. We blush for the impudence and rudeness of another, though he himself appears to have no sense of the impropriety of his own behavior, because we cannot help feeling with what confusion we ourselves should be covered, had we behaved in so absurd a manner. Of all the calamities to which the condition of mortality exposes mankind, the loss of reason appears, to those who have the least spark of humanity, by far the most dreadful; and they behold that last stage of human wretchedness with deeper commiseration than any other. But the poor wretch who is in it laughs and sings, perhaps, and is altogether insensible to his own misery. The anguish which humanity feels, therefore, at the sight of such an object cannot be the reflection of any sentiment of the sufferer. The compassion of the spectator must arise altogether from the consideration of what he himself would feel if he was reduced to the same unhappy situation, and, what perhaps is impossible, was at the same time able to regard it with his present reason and judgment. What are the pangs of a mother when she hears the meanings of her infant, that, during the agony of disease, cannot express what it feels? In her idea of what it suffers, she joins to its real helplessness her own consciousness of that helplessness and her own terrors for the unknown consequences of its disorder; and, out of all these, forms for her own sorrow the most complete image of misery and distress. The infant, however, feels only the uneasiness of the present instant, which can never be great. With regard to the future it is perfectly secure in its thoughtlessness and want of anxiety, the great tormentors of the human breast, from which reason and philosophy will in vain attempt to defend it when it grows up to a man. But whatever may be the cause of sympathy, or however it may be excited, nothing pleases us more than to observe in other men a fellow-feeling with all the emotions of our own breast; nor are we ever so much shocked as by the appearance of the contrary. Those who are fond of deducing all our sentiments from certain refinements of self-love think themselves at no loss to account, according to their own principles, both for this pleasure and for this pain. Man, say they, conscious of his own weakness and of the need which he has for the assistance of others, rejoices whenever he observes that they adopt his own passions because he is then assured of that assistance and grieves whenever he observes the contrary, because he is then assured of their opposition. But both the pleasure and the pain are always felt so instantaneously, and often upon such frivolous occasions, that it seems evident that neither of them can be derived from any such self-interested consideration. A man is mortified when, after having endeavored to divert the company, he looks round and sees that nobody laughs at his jests but himself. On the contrary, the mirth of the company is highly agreeable to him and he regards this correspondence of their sentiments with his own as the greatest applause. 5. Art, Imitation, and Appreciation[150] The investigation into the psychology of masses, as well as the experiments on suggestive therapeutics, have proved to how great an extent mental states may be transmitted from individual to individual by unconscious imitation of the accompanying movements. The doctrine of universal sympathy, a clear statement of which was given long ago in the ethical theory of Adam Smith, has thus acquired a psychological justification in the modern theories of imitative movement. Contemporary science has at last learned to appreciate the fundamental importance of imitation for the development of human culture. And some authors have even gone so far as to endeavor to deduce all sociological laws from this one principle. At the same time natural history has begun to pay more and more attention to the indispensability of imitation for the full development of instincts, as well as for training in those activities which are the most necessary in life. It is fortunate for the theory of art that the importance of the imitative functions has thus been simultaneously acknowledged in various departments of science. Whatever one may think of the somewhat audacious generalizations which have been made in the recent application of this new principle, it is incontestable that the aesthetic activities can be understood and explained only by reference to the universal tendency to imitate. It is also significant that writers on aesthetic had felt themselves compelled to set up a theory of imitation long before experimental psychologists had begun to turn their attention in this direction. In Germany the enjoyment of form and form-relations has, since Vischer's time, been interpreted as the result of the movements by which, not only our eye, but also our whole body follows the outlines of external things. In France Jouffroy stated the condition for the receiving of aesthetic impressions to be a "power of internally imitating the states which are externally manifested in living nature." In England, finally, Vernon Lee and Anstruther Thompson have founded a theory of beauty and ugliness upon this same psychical impulse to copy in our own unconscious movements the forms of objects. And in the writings of, for instance, Home, Hogarth, Dugald Stewart, and Spencer, there can be found a multitude of isolated remarks on the influence which is in a direct way exercised on our mental life by the perception of lines and forms. In most of these theories and observations, however, the imitative activity has been noticed only in so far as it contributes to the aesthetic delight which may be derived from sensual impressions. But its importance is by no means so restricted as this; on the contrary, we believe it to be a fundamental condition for the existence of intuition itself. Without all these imperceptible tracing movements with which our body accompanies the adaptation of the eye-muscles to the outlines of external objects, our notions of depth, height, and distance, and so on, would certainly be far less distinct than they are. On the other hand, the habit of executing such movements has, so to say, brought the external world within the sphere of the internal. The world has been measured with man as a standard, and objects have been translated into the language of mental experience. The impressions have hereby gained, not only in emotional tone, but also in intellectual comprehensibility. Greater still is the importance of imitation for our intuition of moving objects. And a difficult movement itself is fully understood only when it has been imitated, either internally or in actual outward activity. The idea of a movement, therefore, is generally associated with an arrested impulse to perform it. Closer introspection will show everyone to how great a part our knowledge, even of persons, is built up of motor elements. By unconscious and imperceptible copying in our own body the external behavior of a man, we may learn to understand him with benevolent or malevolent sympathy. And it will, no doubt, be admitted by most readers that the reason why they know their friends and foes better than they know anyone else is that they carry the remembrance of them not only in their eyes, but in their whole body. When in idle moments we find the memory of an absent friend surging up in our minds with no apparent reason, we may often note, to our astonishment, that we have just been unconsciously adopting one of his characteristic attitudes, or imitating his peculiar gestures or gait. It may, however, be objected that the above-mentioned instances refer only to a particular class of individuals. In other minds, it will be said, the world-picture is entirely built up of visual and acoustic elements. It is also impossible to deny that the classification of minds in different types, which modern psychology has introduced, is as legitimate as it is advantageous for the purposes of research. But we can hardly believe that such divisions have in view anything more than a relative predominance of the several psychical elements. It is easily understood that a man in whose store of memory visual or acoustic images occupy the foremost place may be inclined to deny that motor sensations of unconscious copying enter to any extent into his psychical experience. But an exclusively visual world-image, if such a thing is possible, must evidently be not only emotionally poorer, but also intellectually less distinct and less complete, than an intuition, in which such motor elements are included. The importance of motor sensations in the psychology of knowledge is by itself of no aesthetic interest. The question has been touched upon in this connection only because of the illustration which it gives to the imitation theory. If, as we believe is the case, it is really necessary, for the purpose of acquiring a complete comprehension of things and events, to "experience" them--that is to say, to pursue and seize upon them, not only with that particular organ of sense to which they appeal, but also by tracing movements of the whole body--then there is no need to wonder at the universality of the imitative impulse. Imitation does not only, according to this view, facilitate our training in useful activities, and aid us in deriving an aesthetic delight from our sensations; it serves also, and perhaps primarily, as an expedient for the accommodating of ourselves to the external world, and for the explaining of things by reference to ourselves. It is therefore natural that imitative movements should occupy so great a place among the activities of children and primitive men. And we can also understand why this fundamental impulse, which has played so important a part in racial as well as in individual education, may become so great as to be a disease and dominate the whole of conscious life. As children we all imitated before we comprehended, and we have learned to comprehend by imitating. It is only when we have grown familiar by imitation with the most important data of perception that we become capable of appropriating knowledge in a more rational way. Although no adult has any need to resort to external imitation in order to comprehend new impressions, it is still only natural that in a pathological condition he should relapse into the primitive imitative reaction. And it is equally natural that an internal, i.e., arrested, imitation should take place in all our perceptions. After this explanation of the universality of this phenomenon we have no further need to occupy ourselves with the general psychology of imitation. We have here only to take notice of its importance for the communication of feeling. As is well known, it is only in cases of abnormally increased sensibility--for instance, in some of the stages of hypnotism and thought transmission--that the motor counterpart of a mental state can be imitated with such faithfulness and completeness that the imitator is thereby enabled to partake of all the _intellectual_ elements of the state existing in another. The hedonic qualities, on the other hand, which are physiologically conditioned by much simpler motor counterparts, may of course be transmitted with far greater perfection: it is easier to suggest a pleasure than a thought. It is also evident that it is the most general hedonic and volitional elements which have been considered by the German authors on aesthetic in their theories on internal imitation ("Die innere Nachahmung"). They seem to have thought that the adoption of the attitudes and the performance of the movements which usually accompany a given emotional state will also succeed to some extent in producing a similar emotional state. This assumption is perfectly legitimate, even if the connection between feeling and movement be interpreted in the associative way. And it needs no justification when the motor changes are considered as the physiological correlate of the feeling itself. Everyday experience affords many examples of the way in which feelings are called into existence by the imitation of their expressive movements. A child repeats the smiles and the laughter of its parents, and can thus partake of their joy long before it is able to understand its cause. Adult life naturally does not give us many opportunities of observing this pure form of direct and almost automatic transmission. But even in adult life we may often meet with an exchange of feeling which seems almost independent of any intellectual communication. Lovers know it, and intimate friends like the brothers Goncourt, to say nothing of people who stand in so close a rapport with each other as a hypnotiser and his subject. And even where there is no previous sympathetic relation, a state of joy or sadness may often, if it is only distinctly expressed, pass over, so to say, from the individual who has been under the influence of its objective cause, to another who, as it were, borrows the feeling, but remains unconscious of its cause. We experience this phenomenon almost daily in the influence exerted upon us by social intercourse, and even by those aspects of nature--for instance, blue open sky or overhanging mountains--which naturally call up in us the physical manifestation of emotional states. The coercive force with which our surroundings--animate or inanimate--compel us to adopt the feelings which are suggested by their attitudes, forms, or movements, is perhaps as a rule too weak to be noticed by a self-controlled, unemotional man. But if we want an example of this influence at its strongest, we need but remember how difficult it is for an individual to resist the contagion of collective feeling. On public occasions the common mood, whether of joy or sorrow, is often communicated even to those who were originally possessed by the opposite feeling. So powerful is the infection of great excitement that--according to M. Féré--even a perfectly sober man who takes part in a drinking bout may often be tempted to join in the antics of his drunken comrades in a sort of second-hand intoxication, "drunkenness by induction." In the great mental epidemics of the Middle Ages this kind of contagion operated with more fatal results than ever before or afterward. But even in modern times a popular street riot may often show us something of the same phenomenon. The great tumult in London in 1886 afforded, it is said, a good opportunity of observing how people who had originally maintained an indifferent attitude were gradually carried away by the general excitement, even to the extent of joining in the outrages. In this instance the contagious effect of expressional movements was undoubtedly facilitated by their connection with so primary an impulse as that of rapine and destruction. But the case is the same with all the activities which appear as the outward manifestations of our strongest feeling-states. They all consist of instinctive actions with which everyone is well familiar from his own experience. It is therefore natural that anger, hate, or love may be communicated almost automatically from an individual to masses, and from masses to individuals. Now that the principle of the interindividual diffusion of feeling has been stated and explained, we may return to our main line of research and examine its bearings on the expressional impulse. We have seen that in the social surroundings of the individual there is enacted a process resembling that which takes place within his own organism. Just as functional modifications spread from organ to organ, just as wider and wider zones of the system are brought into participation in the primary enhancement or inhibition, so a feeling is diffused from an individual to a circle of sympathisers who repeat its expressional movements. And just as all the widened "somatic resonances" contribute to the primary feeling-tone increased strength and increased definiteness, so must the emotional state of an individual be enhanced by retroactive stimulation from the expressions by which the state has, so to say, been continued in others. By the reciprocal action of primary movements and borrowed movements, which mutually imitate each other, the social expression operates in the same way as the individual expression. And we are entitled to consider it as a secondary result of the general expressional impulse, that when mastered by an overpowering feeling we seek enhancement or relief by retroaction from sympathisers, who reproduce and in their expression represent the mental state by which we are dominated. In point of fact, we can observe in the manifestations of all strong feelings which have not found a satisfactory relief in individual expression, a pursuit of social resonance. A happy man wants to see glad faces around him, in order that from their expression he may derive further nourishment and increase for his own feeling. Hence the benevolent attitude of mind which as a rule accompanies all strong and pure joy. Hence also the widespread tendency to express joy by gifts or hospitality. In moods of depression we similarly desire a response to our feeling from our surroundings. In the depth of despair we may long for a universal cataclysm to extend, as it were, our own pain. As joy naturally makes men good, so pain often makes them hard and cruel. That this is not always the case is a result of the increased power of sympathy which we gain by every experienced pain. Moreover, we have need of sympathetic rapport for our motor reactions against pain. All the active manifestations of sorrow, despair, or anger which are not wholly painful in themselves are facilitated by the reciprocal influence of collective excitement. Thus all strong feelings, whether pleasurable or painful, act as socialising factors. This socialising action may be observed at all stages of development. Even the animals seek their fellows in order to stimulate themselves and each other by the common expression of an overpowering feeling. As has been remarked by Espinas, the flocking together of the male birds during the pairing season is perhaps as much due to this craving for mutual stimulation as to the desire to compete for the favor of the hen. The howling choirs of the macaws and the drum concerts of the chimpanzees are still better and unmistakable instances of collective emotional expression. In man we find the results of the same craving for social expression in the gatherings for rejoicing or mourning which are to be met with in all tribes, of all degrees of development. And as a still higher development of the same fundamental impulse, there appears in man the artistic activity. The more conscious our craving for retroaction from sympathisers, the more there must also be developed in us a conscious endeavor to cause the feeling to be appropriated by as many as possible and as completely as possible. The expressional impulse is not satisfied by the resonance which an occasional public, however sympathetic, is able to afford. Its natural aim is to bring more and more sentient beings under the influence of the same emotional state. It seeks to vanquish the refractory and arouse the indifferent. An echo, a true and powerful echo--that is what it desires with all the energy of an unsatisfied longing. As a result of this craving the expressional activities lead to artistic production. The work of art presents itself as the most effective means by which the individual is enabled to convey to wider and wider circles of sympathisers an emotional state similar to that by which he is himself dominated. E. SUGGESTION 1. A Sociological Definition of Suggestion[151] The nature of suggestion manifestly consists not in any external peculiarities whatever. It is based upon the peculiar kind of relation of the person making the suggestion to the "ego" of the subject during the reception and realization of the suggestion. Suggestion, is, in general, one of many means of influence of man on man that is exercised with or without intention on persons, who respond either consciously or unconsciously. For a closer acquaintance with what we call "suggestion," it may be observed that our perceptive activities are divided into (a) active, and (b) passive. a) _Active perception._--In the first case the "ego" of the subject necessarily takes a part, and according to the trend of our thinking or to the environmental circumstances directs the attention to these or those external impressions. These, since they enter the mind through the participation of attention and will and through reflection and judgment, are assimilated and permanently incorporated in the personal consciousness or in our "ego." This type of perception leads to an enrichment of our personal consciousness and lies at the bottom of our points of view and convictions. The organization of more or less definite convictions is the product of the process of reflection instituted by active perception. These convictions, before they become the possession of our personal consciousness, may conceal themselves awhile in the so-called subconsciousness. They are capable of being aroused at any moment at the desire of the "ego" whenever certain experienced representations are reproduced. b) _Passive perception._--In contrast to active perception we perceive much from the environment in a passive manner without that participation of the "ego." This occurs when our attention is diverted in any particular direction or concentrated on a certain thought, and when its continuity for one or another reason is broken up, which, for instance, occurs in cases of so-called distraction. In these cases the object of the perception does not enter into the personal consciousness, but it makes its way into other spheres of our mind, which we call the general consciousness. The general consciousness is to a certain degree independent of the personal consciousness. For this reason everything that enters into the general consciousness cannot be introduced at will into the personal consciousness. Nevertheless products of the general consciousness make their way into the sphere of the personal consciousness, without awareness by it of their original derivation. In passive perception, without any participation of attention, a whole series of varied impressions flow in upon us and press in past our "ego" directly to the general consciousness. These impressions are the sources of those influences from the outer world so unintelligible even to ourselves, which determine our emotional attitudes and those obscure motives and impulses which often possess us in certain situations. The general consciousness, in this way, plays a permanent rôle in the spiritual life of the individual. Now and then an impression passively received in the train of an accidental chain of ideas makes its way into the sphere of the personal consciousness as a mental image, whose novelty astounds us. In specific cases this image or illusion takes the form of a peculiar voice, a vision, or even a hallucination, whose origin undoubtedly lies in the general consciousness. When the personal consciousness is in abeyance, as in sleep or in profound hypnosis, the activity of the general consciousness comes into the foreground. The activity of the general consciousness is limited neither by our ways of viewing things nor by the conditions under which the personal consciousness operates. On this account, in a dream and in profound hypnosis acts appear feasible and possible which with our full personal consciousness we would not dare to contemplate. This division of our mind into a personal and a general consciousness affords a basis for a clear understanding of the principles of suggestion. The personal consciousness, the so-called "ego," aided by the will and attention, largely controls the reception of external impressions, influences the trend of our ideas, and determines the execution of our voluntary behavior. Every impression that the personal consciousness transmits to the mind is usually subject to a definite criticism and remodeling which results in the development of our points of view and of our convictions. This mode of influence from the outer world upon our mind is that of "logical conviction." As the final result of that inner reconstruction of impressions appears always the conviction: "This is true, that useful, inevitable, etc." We can say this inwardly when any reconstruction of the impressions has been affected in us through the activity of the personal consciousness. Many impressions get into our mind without our remarking them. In case of distraction, when our voluntary attention is in abeyance, the impression from without evades our personal consciousness and enters the mind without coming into contact with the "ego." Not through the front door, but--so to speak--up the back steps, it gets, in this case, directly into the inner rooms of the soul. Suggestion may now be defined as the direct infection of one person by another of certain mental states. In other words, suggestion is the penetration or inoculation of a strange idea into the consciousness, without direct immediate participation of the "ego" of the subject. Moreover, the personal consciousness in general appears quite incapable of rejecting the suggestion, even when the "ego" detects its irrationality. Since the suggestion enters the mind without the active aid of the "ego," it remains outside the borders of the personal consciousness. All further effects of the suggestion, therefore, take place without the control of the "ego." By the term suggestion we do not usually understand the effect upon the mind of the totality of external stimuli, but the influence of person upon person which takes place through passive perception and is therefore independent of the activity of the personal consciousness. Suggestion is, moreover, to be distinguished from the other type of influences operating through mental processes of attention and the participation of the personal consciousness, which result in logical convictions and the development of definite points of view. Lowenfeld emphasized a distinction between the actual process of "suggesting" and its result, which one simply calls "suggestion." It is self-evident that these are two different processes, which should not be mistaken for each other. A more adequate definition might be accepted, which embraces at once the characteristic manner of the "suggesting," and the result of its activity. Therefore for suggestion it is not alone the process itself that is characteristic, or the kind of psychic influence, but also the result of this reaction. For that reason I do not understand under "suggesting" alone a definite sort and manner of influence upon man but at the same time the eventual result of it; and under "suggestion" not only a definite psychical result but to a certain degree also the manner in which this result was obtained. An essential element of the concept of suggestion is, first of all, a pronounced directness of action. Whether a suggestion takes place through words or through attitudes, impressions, or acts, whether it is a case of a verbal or of a concrete suggestion, makes no difference here so long as its effect is never obtained through logical conviction. On the other hand, the suggestion is always immediately directed to the mind by evading the personal consciousness, or at least without previous recasting by the "ego" of the subject. This process represents a real infection of ideas, feelings, emotions, or other psychophysical states. In the same manner there arise somewhat similar mental states known as auto-suggestion. These do not require an external influence for their appearance but originate immediately in the mind itself. Such is the case, for instance, when any sort of an image forces itself into the consciousness as something complete, whether it is in the form of an idea that suddenly emerges and dominates consciousness, or a vision, a premonition, or the like. In all these cases psychic influences which have arisen without external stimulus have directly inoculated the mind, thereby evading the criticism of the "ego" or of personal consciousness. "Suggesting" signifies, therefore, to inoculate the mind of a person more or less directly with ideas, feelings, emotions, and other psychical states, in order that no opportunity is left for criticism and consideration. Under "suggestion," on the other hand, is to be understood that sort of direct inoculation of the mind of an individual with ideas, feelings, emotions, and other psychophysical states which evade his "ego," his personal self-consciousness, and his critical attitude. Now and then, especially in the French writers, one will find besides "suggestion" the term "psychic contagion," under which, however, nothing further than involuntary imitation is to be understood (compare A. Vigouroux and P. Juquelier, _La contagion mentale_, Paris, 1905). If one takes up the conception of suggestion in a wider sense, and considers by it the possibility of involuntary suggestion in the way of example and imitation, one will find that the conceptions of suggestion and of psychic contagion depend upon each other most intimately, and to a great extent are not definitely to be distinguished from each other. In any case, it is to be maintained that a strict boundary between psychic contagion and suggestion does not always exist, a fact which Vigouroux and Juquelier in their paper have rightly emphasized. 2. The Subtler Forms of Suggestion[152] In one very particular respect hypnotism has given us a lesson of the greatest importance to psychology: it has proved that special precautionary measures must be taken in planning psychological experiments. The training of hypnotics has thrown light on this source of error. A hypnotizer may, often without knowing it, by the tone of his voice or by some slight movement cause the hypnotic to exhibit phenomena that at first could only be produced by explicit verbal suggestion, and that altogether the signs used by the hypnotizer to cause suggestions may go on increasing in delicacy. A dangerous source of error is provided by the hypnotic's endeavor to divine and obey the experimenter's intentions. This observation has also proved useful in non-hypnotic experiments. We certainly knew before the days of hypnotism that the signs by which A betrays his thoughts to B may gradually become more delicate. We see this, for example, in the case of the schoolboy, who gradually learns how to detect from the slightest movement made by his master whether the answer he gave was right or not. We find the same sort of thing in the training of animals--the horse, for instance, in which the rough methods at first employed are gradually toned down until in the end an extremely slight movement made by the trainer produces the same effect that the rougher movements did originally. But even if this lessening in the intensity of the signals exists independently of hypnosis, it is the latter that has shown us how easily neglect of this factor may lead to erroneous conclusions being drawn. The suggestibility of the hypnotic makes these infinitesimal signals specially dangerous in his case. But when once this danger was recognized, greater attention was paid to this source of error in non-hypnotic cases than before. It is certain that many psychological experiments are vitiated by the fact that the subject knows what the experimenter wishes. Results are thus brought about that can only be looked upon as the effects of suggestion; they do not depend on the external conditions of the experiment but on what is passing in the mind of the subject. An event which at the time of its occurrence created a considerable commotion (I refer to the case of Clever Hans), will show how far we may be led by neglecting the above lesson taught us by hypnotism. If the Berlin psychologist Stumpf, the scientific director of the committee of investigation, had but taken into consideration the teachings of hypnotism, he would never have made the fiasco of admitting that the horse, Clever Hans, had been educated like a boy, not trained like an animal. Clever Hans answered questions by tapping his hoof on the stage; and the observers, more particularly the committee presided over by Stumpf, believed that answers tapped out were the result of due deliberation on the part of the horse, exactly as spiritists believe that the spirits hold intelligent intercourse with them by means of "raps." One tap denoted a, two taps b, three taps c, etc.; or, where numbers were concerned, one tap signified 1, two taps 2, etc. In this way the animal answered the most complicated questions. For instance, it apparently not only solved such problems as 3 times 4 by tapping 12 times, and 6 times 3 by tapping 18 times, but even extracted square roots, distinguished between concords and discords, also between ten different colors, and was able to recognize the photographs of people; altogether, Clever Hans was supposed to be at that time about upon a level with fifth-form boys (the fifth form is the lowest form but one in a German gymnasium). After investigating the matter, Stumpf and the members of his committee drew up the following conjoint report, according to which only one of two things was possible--either the horse could think and calculate independently, or else he was under telepathic, perhaps occult, influence: The undersigned met together to decide whether there was any trickery in the performance given by Herr v. Osten with his horse, i.e., whether the latter was helped or influenced intentionally. As the result of the exhaustive tests employed, they have come to the unanimous conclusion that, apart from the personal character of Herr v. Osten, with which most of them were well acquainted, the precautions taken during the investigation altogether precluded any such assumption. Notwithstanding the most careful observation, they were well unable to detect any gestures, movements, or other intimations that might serve as signs to the horse. To exclude the possible influence of involuntary movements on the part of spectators, a series of experiments was carried out solely in the presence of Herr Busch, councilor of commissions. In some of these experiments, tricks of the kind usually employed by trainers were, in his judgment as an expert, excluded. Another series of experiments was so arranged that Herr v. Osten himself could not know the answer to the question he was putting to the horse. From previous personal observations, moreover, the majority of the undersigned knew of numerous individual cases in which other persons had received correct answers in the momentary absence of Herr v. Osten and Herr Schillings. These cases also included some in which the questioner was either ignorant of the solution or only had an erroneous notion of what it should be. Finally, some of the undersigned have a personal knowledge of Herr v. Osten's method, which is essentially different from ordinary "training" and is copied from the system of instruction employed in primary schools. In the opinion of the undersigned, the collective results of these observations show that even unintentional signs of the kind at present known were excluded. It is their unanimous opinion that we have here to deal with a case that differs in principle from all former and apparently similar cases; that it has nothing to do with "training" in the accepted sense of the word, and that it is consequently deserving of earnest and searching scientific investigation. Berlin, September 12, 1904. [Here follow the signatures, among which is that of Privy Councilor Dr. C. Stumpf, university professor, director of the Psychological Institute, member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences.] Anyone who has done critical work in the domain of hypnotism after the manner insisted on by the Nancy school cannot help considering Stumpf's method of investigation erroneous from the very outset. A first source of error that had to be considered was that someone present--it might have been Herr v. Osten or it might have been anyone else--unintentionally had given the horse a sign when to stop tapping. It cannot be considered sufficient, as stated in Stumpf's report, that Herr v. Osten did not know the answer; no one should be present who knows it. This is the first condition to be fulfilled when making such experiments. Anybody who has been engaged in training hypnotized subjects knows that these insignificant signs constitute one of the chief sources of error. Some of the leading modern investigators in the domain of hypnotism--Charcot and Heidenhain, for instance--were misled by them at the time they thought they had discovered new physical reflexes in hypnosis. But in 1904, by which time suggestion had been sufficiently investigated to prevent such an occurrence, a psychologist should not have fallen into an error that had been sufficiently made more than twenty years previously. But the main point is this: signs that are imperceptible to others are nevertheless perceived by a subject trained to do so, no matter whether that subject be a human being or an animal. 3. Social Suggestion and Mass or "Corporate" Action[153] In most cases the crowd naturally is under leaders, who, with an instinctive consciousness of the importance and strength of the crowd, seek to direct it much more through the power of suggestion than by sound conviction. It is conceivable, therefore, that anyone who understands how to arrest the attention of the crowd, may always influence it to do great deeds, as history, indeed, sufficiently witnesses. One may recall from the history of Russia Minin, who with a slogan saved his native land from the gravest danger. His "Pawn your wife and child, and free your fatherland" necessarily acted as a powerful suggestion on the already intense crowd. How the crowd and its sentiments may be controlled is indicated in the following account by Boris Sidis: On the 11th of August, 1895, there took place in the open air a meeting at Old Orchard, Maine. The business at hand was a collection for missionary purposes. The preacher resorted to the following suggestions: "The most remarkable remembrance which I have of foreign lands is that of multitudes, the waves of lost humanity who ceaselessly are shattered on the shores of eternity. How despairing are they, how poor in love--their religion knows no joy, no pleasure, nor song. Once I heard a Chinaman say why he was a Christian. It seemed to him that he lay in a deep abyss, out of which he could not escape. Have you ever wept for the sake of the lost world, as did Jesus Christ? If not, then woe to you. Your religion is then only a dream and a blind. We see Christ test his disciples. Will he take them with him? My beloved, today he will test you. [Indirect suggestion.] He could convert a thousand millionaires, but he gives you an opportunity to be saved. [More direct suggestion.] Are you strong enough in faith? [Here follows a discussion about questions of faith.] Without faith God can do no great things. I believe that Jesus will appear to them who believe firmly in him. My dear ones, if only you give for the sake of God, you have become participants in the faith. [Still more direct suggestion.] The youth with the five loaves and the two little fishes [the story follows]. When everything was ended, he did not lose his loaves; there were twelve baskets left over. O my dear ones, how will that return! Sometime the King of Kings will call to you and give you an empire of glory, and simply because you have had a little faith in him. It is a day of much import to you. Sometime God will show us how much better he has guarded our treasure than we ourselves." The suggestion had the desired effect. Money streamed from all sides; hundreds became thousands, tens of thousands. The crowd gave seventy thousand dollars. Of analogous importance are the factors of suggestions in wars, where the armies go to brilliant victories. Discipline and the sense of duty unite the troops into a single mighty giant's body. To develop its full strength, however, this body needs some inspiration through a suggested idea, which finds an active echo in the hearts of the soldiers. Maintenance of the warlike spirit in decisive moments is one of the most important problems for the ingenious general. Even when the last ray of hope for victory seems to have disappeared, the call of an honored war chief, like a suggestive spark, may fire the hosts to self-sacrifice and heroism. A trumpet signal, a cry "hurrah," the melody of the national hymn, can here at the decisive moment have incalculable effects. There is no need to recall the rôle of the "Marsellaise" in the days of the French Revolution. The agencies of suggestion in such cases make possible, provided that they are only able to remove the feeling of hopelessness, results which a moment before are neither to be anticipated nor expected. Where will and the sense of duty alone seem powerless, the mechanisms of suggestion may develop surprising effects. Excited masses are, it is well known, capable of the most inhuman behavior, and indeed for the very reason that, instead of sound logic, automatism and impulsiveness have entered in as direct results of suggestion. The modern barbarities of the Americans in the shape of lynch law for criminals or those who are only under a suspicion of a crime redound to the shame of the land of freedom, but find their full explanation in that impulsiveness of the crowd which knows no mercy. The multitude can, therefore, ever be led according to the content of the ideas suggested to it, as well to sublime and noble deeds as, on the other hand, to expressions of the lower and barbaric instincts. That is the art of manipulating the masses. It is a mistake to regard popular assemblies who have adopted a certain uniform idea simply as a sum of single elements, as is now and then attempted. For one is dealing in such cases, not with accidental, but with actual psychical, processes of fusion, which reciprocal suggestion is to a high degree effective in establishing and maintaining. The aggressiveness of the single elements of the mass arrives in this at their high point at one and the same time, and with complete spiritual unanimity the mass can now act as _one_ man; it moves, then, like one enormous social body, which unites in itself the thoughts and feelings of all by the very fact that there is a temper of mind common to all. Easily, however, as the crowd is to excite to the highest degrees of activity, as quickly--indeed, much more quickly--does it allow itself, as we have already seen, to be dispersed by a panic. Here too the panic rests entirely on suggestion, contra-suggestion, and the instinct of imitation, not on logic and conviction. Automatism, not intelligence, is the moving factor therein. Other, but quite generally favorable, conditions for suggestions are universally at hand in the human society, whose individual members in contrast to the crowd are physically separated from each other but stand in a spiritual alliance to each other. Here obviously those preliminary conditions for the dissemination of psychical infections are lacking as they exist in the crowd, and the instruments of the voice, of mimicry, of gestures, which often fire the passions with lightning rapidity, are not allowed to assert themselves. There exists much rather a certain spiritual cohesion on the ground perhaps of common impressions (theatrical representations), a similar direction of thoughts (articles in periodicals, etc.). These conditions are quite sufficient to prepare the foundation on which similar feelings propagate themselves from individual to individual by the method of suggestion and auto-suggestion, and similar decisions for many are matured. Things occur here more slowly, more peacefully, without those passionate outbreaks to which the crowd is subjected; but this slow infection establishes itself all the more surely in the feelings, while the infection of the crowd often only continues for a time until the latter is broken up. Moreover, such contagious examples in the public do not usually lead to such unexpected movements as they easily induce in the crowd. But here, too, the infection frequently acts in defiance of a man's sound intelligence; complete points of view are accepted upon trust and faith, without further discussion, and frequently immature resolutions are formed. On the boards representing the stage of the world there are ever moving idols, who after the first storm of admiration which they call out, sink back into oblivion. The fame of the people's leaders maintains itself in quite the same way by means of psychical infection through the similar national interest of a unified group. It has often happened that their brightness was extinguished with the first opposition which the masses saw setting its face against their wishes and ideals. What we, however, see in close popular masses recurs to a certain degree in every social milieu, in every larger society. Between the single elements of such social spheres there occur uninterrupted psychical infections and contra-infections. Ever according to the nature of the material of the infection that has been received, the individual feels himself attracted to the sublime and the noble, or to the lower and bestial. Is, then, the intercourse between teacher and pupil, between friends, between lovers, uninfluenced by reciprocal suggestion? Suicide pacts and other mutual acts present a certain participation of interacting suggestion. Yet more. Hardly a single deed whatever occurs that stands out over the everyday, hardly a crime is committed, without the concurrence of third persons, direct or indirect, not unseldom bearing a likeness to the effects of suggestion. We must here admit that Tarde was right when he said that it is less difficult to find crimes of the crowd than to discover crimes which were not such and which would indicate no sort of promotion or participation of the environment. That is true to such a degree that one may ask whether there are any individual crimes at all, as the question is also conceivable whether there are any works of genius which do not have a collective character. Many believe that crimes are always pondered. A closer insight into the behavior of criminals testifies, however, in many cases that even when there is a long period of indecision, a single encouraging word from the environment, an example with a suggestive effect, is quite sufficient to scatter all considerations and to bring the criminal intention to the deed. In organized societies, too, a mere nod from the chief may often lead with magic power to a crime. The ideas, efforts, and behavior of the individual may by no means be looked on as something sharply distinct, individually peculiar, since from the form and manner of these ideas, efforts, and behavior, there shines forth ever, more or less, the influence of the milieu. In close connection with this fact there stands also the so-called astringent effect of the milieu upon the individuals who are incapable of rising out of their environment, of stepping out of it. In society that bacillus for which one has found the name "suggestion" appears certainly as a leveling element, and, accordingly, whether the individual stands higher or lower than his environment, whether he becomes worse or better under its influence, he always loses or gains something from the contact with others. This is the basis of the great importance of suggestion as a factor in imposing a social uniformity upon individuals. The power of suggestion and contra-suggestion, however, extends yet further. It enhances sentiments and aims and enkindles the activity of the masses to an unusual degree. Many historical personages who knew how to embody in themselves the emotions and the desires of the masses--we may think of Jeanne d'Arc, Mahomet, Peter the Great, Napoleon I--were surrounded with a nimbus by the more or less blind belief of the people in their genius; this frequently acted with suggestive power upon the surrounding company which it carried away with a magic force to its leaders, and supported and aided the mission historically vested in the latter by means of their spiritual superiority. A nod from a beloved leader of any army is sufficient to enkindle anew the courage of the regiment and to lead them irresistibly into sure death. Many, it is well known, are still inclined to deny the individual personality any influence upon the course of historic events. The individual is to them only an expression of the views of the mass, an embodiment of the epoch, something, therefore, that cannot actively strike at the course of history; he is much rather himself heaved up out of the mass by historic events, which, unaffected by the individual, proceed in the courses they have themselves chosen. We forget in such a theory the influences of the suggestive factors which, independently of endowments and of energy, appear as a mighty lever in the hands of the fortunately situated nature and of those created to be the rulers of the masses. That the individual reflects his environment and his time, that the events of world-history only take their course upon an appropriately prepared basis and under appropriately favorable circumstances, no one will deny. There rests, however, in the masters of speech and writing, in the demagogues and the favorites of the people, in the great generals and statesmen, an inner power which welds together the masses for battle for an ideal, sweeps them away to heroism, and fires them to do deeds which leave enduring impressions in the history of humanity. I believe, therefore, that suggestion as an active agent should be the object of the most attentive study for the historians and the sociologists. Where this factor is not reckoned with, a whole series of historical and social phenomena is threatened with the danger of incomplete, insufficient, and perhaps even incorrect elucidation. III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS 1. The Process of Interaction The concept of universal interaction was first formulated in philosophy. Kant listed community or reciprocity among his dynamic categories. In the Herbartian theory of a world of coexisting individuals, the notion of reciprocal action was central. The distinctive contribution of Lotze was his recognition that interaction of the parts implies the unity of the whole since external action implies internal changes in the interacting objects. Ormond in his book _The Foundations of Knowledge_ completes this philosophical conception by embodying in it a conclusion based on social psychology. Just as society is constituted by interacting persons whose innermost nature, as a result of interaction, is internal to each, so the universe is constituted by the totality of interacting units internally predisposed to interaction as elements and products of the process. In sociology, Gumplowicz arrived at the notions of a "natural social process" and of "reciprocal action of heterogeneous elements" in his study of the conflict of races. Ratzenhofer, Simmel, and Small place the social process and socialization central in their systems of sociology. Cooley's recent book _The Social Process_ is an intimate and sympathetic exposition of "interaction" and the "social process." "Society is a complex of forms or processes each of which is living and growing by interaction with the others, the whole being so unified that what takes place in one part affects all the rest. It is a vast tissue of reciprocal activity, differentiated into innumerable systems, some of them quite distinct, others not readily traceable, and all interwoven to such a degree that you see different systems according to the point of view you take."[154] This brief résumé of the general literature upon the social process and social interaction is introductory to an examination of the more concrete material upon communication, imitation, and suggestion. 2. Communication "Many works have been written on Expression, but a greater number on Physiognomy" wrote Charles Darwin in 1872. Physiognomy, or the interpretation of character through the observation of the features, has long been relegated by the scientific world to the limbo occupied by astrology, alchemy, phrenology, and the practice of charlatans. While positive contributions to an appreciation of human expression were made before Darwin, as by Sir Charles Bell, Pierre Gratiolet, and Dr. Piderit, his volume on _The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals_ marked an epoch in the thinking upon the subject. Although his three principles of utility, antithesis, and direct nervous discharge to explain the signs of emotions may be open to question, as the physiological psychologist, Wilhelm Wundt, asserts, the great value of his contribution is generally conceded. His convincing demonstration of the universal similarity of emotional expression in the various human races, a similarity based on a common human inheritance, prepared the way for further study. Darwin assumed that the emotion was a mental state which preceded and caused its expression. According to the findings of later observation, popularly known as the James-Lange Theory, the emotion is the mental sign of a behavior change whose external aspects constitute the so-called "expression." The important point brought out by this new view of the emotion was an emphasis upon the nature of physiological changes involved in emotional response. Certain stimuli affect visceral processes and thereby modify the perception of external objects. The impetus to research upon this subject given by Darwin was first manifest in the reports of observation upon the expression of different emotions. Fear, anger, joy, were made the subjects of individual monographs. Several brilliant essays, as those by Sully, Dugas, and Bergson, appeared in one field alone, that of laughter. In the last decade there has been a distinct tendency toward the experimental study of the physiological and chemical changes which constitute the inner aspect of emotional responses, as for example, the report of Cannon upon his studies in his book _Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear, and Rage_. Simultaneous with this study of the physiological aspect of the emotional responses went further observation of its expression, the manifestation of the emotion. The research upon the communication of emotions and ideas proceeded from natural signs to gesture and finally to language. Genetic psychologists pointed out that the natural gesture is an abbreviated act. Mallery's investigation upon "Sign Language among North American Indians Compared with that among Other Peoples and Deaf Mutes" disclosed the high development of communication by gestures among Indian tribes. Wilhelm Wundt in his study of the origin of speech indicated the intimate relation between language and gesture in his conclusion that speech is vocal gesture. Similarly research in the origin of writing derives it, as indicated earlier in this chapter, through the intermediate form of pictographs from pictures. The significance for social life of the extension of communication through inventions has impressed ethnologists, historians, and sociologists. The ethnologist determines the beginnings of ancient civilization by the invention of writing. Historians have noted and emphasized the relation of the printing press to the transition from medieval to modern society. Graham Wallas in his _Great Society_ interprets modern society as a creation of the machine and of the artificial means of communication. Sociological interest in language and writing is turning from studies of origins to investigations of their function in group life. Material is now available which indicates the extent to which the group may be studied through its language. Accordingly the point of view for the study of orthodox speech, or "correct" English, is that of the continuity of society; just as the standpoint for the study of heterodox language, or "slang," is that of the life of the group at the moment. The significance of the fact that "every group has its own language" is being recognized in its bearings upon research. Studies of dialects of isolated groups, of the argot of social classes, of the technical terms of occupational groups, of the precise terminology of scientific groups suggest the wide range of concrete materials. The expression "different universes of discourse" indicates how communication separates as well as unites persons and groups. 3. Imitation Bagehot's _Physics and Politics_ published in 1872, with its chapter on "Imitation," was the first serious account of the nature of the rôle of imitation in social life. Gabriel Tarde, a French magistrate, becoming interested in imitation as an explanation of the behavior of criminals, undertook an extensive observation of its effects in the entire field of human activities. In his book _Laws of Imitation_, published in 1890, he made imitation synonymous with all intermental activity. "I have always given it (imitation) a very precise and characteristic meaning, that of the action at a distance of one mind upon another.... By imitation I mean every impression of interpsychical photography, so to speak, willed or not willed, passive or active."[155] "The unvarying characteristic of every social fact whatsoever is that it is imitative, and this characteristic belongs exclusively to social facts."[156] In this unwarranted extension of the concept of imitation Tarde undeniably had committed the unpardonable sin of science, i.e., he substituted for the careful study and patient observation of imitative behavior, easy and glittering generalizations upon uniformities in society. Contributions to an understanding of the actual process of imitation came from psychologists. Baldwin brought forward the concept of circular reaction to explain the interrelation of stimulus and response in imitation. He also indicated the place of imitation in personal development in his description of the dialectic of personal growth where the self develops in a process of give-and-take with other selves. Dewey, Stout, Mead, Henderson, and others, emphasizing the futility of the mystical explanation of imitation by imitation, have pointed out the influence of interest and attention upon imitation as a learning process. Mead, with keen analysis of the social situation, interprets imitation as the process by which the person practices rôles in social life. The studies of Thorndike may be mentioned as representative of the important experimental research upon this subject. 4. Suggestion The reflective study of imitation originated in attempts at the explanation of uniformities in the behavior of individuals. Research in suggestion began in the narrow but mysterious field of the occult. In 1765 Mesmer secured widespread attention by advancing the theory that heavenly bodies influence human beings by means of a subtle fluid which he called "animal magnetism." Abbé Faria, who came to Paris from India in 1814-15, demonstrated by experiments that the cause of the hypnotic sleep was subjective. With the experiments in 1841 of Dr. James Braid, the originator of the term "hypnotism," the scientific phase of the development of hypnotism began. The acceptance of the facts of hypnotism by the scientific world was the result of the work of Charcot and his students of the so-called Nancy School of Psychology. From the study of hypnotism to observation upon the rôle of suggestion in social life was a short step. Binet, Sidis, Münsterberg have formulated psychological definitions of suggestion and indicated its significance for an understanding of so-called crowd phenomena in human behavior. Bechterew in his monograph _Die Bedeutung der Suggestion im Sozialen Leben_ has presented an interpretation of distinct value for sociological research. At the present time there are many promising developments in the study of suggestion in special fields, such as advertising, leadership, politics, religion. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY I. INTERACTION AND SOCIAL INTERACTION (1) Lotze, Hermann. _Metaphysic._ Vol. I, chap, vi, "The Unity of Things." Oxford, 1887. (2) Ormond, Alexander T. _Foundations of Knowledge._ Chap, vii, "Community or Interaction." London and New York, 1900. (3) Gumplowicz, L. _Der Rassenkampf._ Sociologische Untersuchungen. Pp. 158-75. Innsbruck, 1883. (4) Simmel, Georg. "Über sociale Differenzierung, sociologische und psychologische Untersuchungen." _Staats- und Socialwissenschaftliche Forschungen_, edited by G. Schmoller. Vol. X. Leipzig, 1891. (5) Royce, J. _The World and the Individual._ 2d ser. "Nature, Man, and the Moral Order," Lecture IV. "Physical and Social Reality." London and New York, 1901. (6) Boodin, J. E. "Social Systems," _American Journal of Sociology_, XXIII (May, 1918), 705-34. (7) Tosti, Gustavo. "Social Psychology and Sociology," _The Psychological Review_, V (July, 1898), 348-61. (8) Small, Albion W. _General Sociology._ Chicago, 1905. (9) Cooley, Charles H. _The Social Process._ New York, 1918. II. SOCIAL INTERACTION AND SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS (1) Marshall, Henry R. _Consciousness._ Chap, vii, "Of Consciousnesses More Complex than Human Consciousnesses." New York and London, 1909. (2) Baldwin, James Mark. _Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development._ A study in social psychology. New York and London, 1906. (3) Royce, Josiah. "Self-Consciousness, Social Consciousness and Nature," _Philosophical Review_, IV (1895), 465-85; 577-602. (4) ----. "The External World and the Social Consciousness," _Philosophical Review_, III (1894), 513-45. (5) Worms, René. _Organisme et Société._ Chap. x, "Fonctions de Relation." Paris, 1896. (6) Mead, G. H. "Social Consciousness and the Consciousness of Meaning," _Psychological Bulletin_, VII (Dec. 15, 1910), 397-405. (7) ----. "Psychology of Social Consciousness Implied in Instruction," _Science_, N. S., XXI (1910), 688-93. (8) Novicow, J. _Conscience et volonté sociales._ Paris, 1897. (9) McDougall, W. _The Group Mind._ A sketch of the principles of collective psychology with some attempt to apply them to the interpretation of national life and character. New York and London, 1920. (10) Ames, Edward S. "Religion in Terms of Social Consciousness," _The Journal of Religion_, I (1921), 264-70. (11) Burgess, E. W. _The Function of Socialization in Social Evolution._ Chicago, 1916. (12) Maciver, R. M. _Community._ A sociological study, being an attempt to set out the nature and fundamental laws of social life. London, 1917. III. COMMUNICATION AND INTERACTION A. _The Emotions and Emotional Expression_ (1) James, William. _The Principles of Psychology._ Vol. II, chap. xxv. New York, 1896. (2) Dewey, John. "The Theory of Emotion," _Psychological Review_, I (1894), 553-69; II (1895), 13-32. (3) Wundt, Wilhelm. _Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie._ 3 vols. 6th ed. Leipzig, 1908-11. (4) Ribot, T. _The Psychology of the Emotions._ London and New York, 1898. (5) Darwin, Charles. _The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals._ London and New York, 1873. (6) Rudolph, Heinrich. _Der Ausdruck der Gemütsbewegungen des Menschen dargestellt und erklärt auf Grund der Urformen-und der Gesetze des Ausdrucks und der Erregungen._ Dresden, 1903. (7) Piderit, T. _Mimik und Physiognomik._ Rev. ed. Detmold, 1886. (8) Cannon, Walter B. _Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear, and Rage._ An account of recent researches into the function of emotional excitement. New York and London, 1915. (9) Hirn, Yrjö. _The Origins of Art._ A psychological and sociological, inquiry. London and New York, 1900. (10) Bergson, H. _Le Rire._ Essai sur la signification du comique. Paris, 1900. (11) Sully, James. _An Essay on Laughter._ Its forms, its causes, its development, and its value. London and New York, 1902. (12) Dugas, L. _Psychologie du rire._ Paris, 1902. (13) Groos, Karl. _The Play of Man._ Translated from the German by Elizabeth L. Baldwin. New York, 1901. (14) ----. _The Play of Animals._ Translated from the German by Elizabeth L. Baldwin. New York, 1898. (15) Royce, J. _The Spirit of Modern Philosophy._ An essay in the form of lectures. Chap. xii, "Physical Law and Freedom: The World of Description and the World of Appreciation." Boston, 1892. (16) Bücher, Karl. _Arbeit und Rhythmus._ Leipzig, 1902. (17) Mallery, Garrick. "Sign Language among North American Indians compared with That among Other Peoples and Deaf Mutes." _United States Bureau of American Ethnology. First Annual Report._ Washington, 1881. B. _Language and the Printing Press_ (1) Schmoller, Gustav. _Grundriss der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre._ Chap, ii, 2, "Die psychophysischen Mittel menschlicher Verständigung: Sprache und Schrift." Leipzig, 1900. (2) Lazarus, Moritz. "Das Leben der Seele," _Geist und Sprache_, Vol. II. Berlin, 1878. (3) Wundt, Wilhelm. "Völkerpsychologie." Eine Untersuchung der Entwicklungsgesetze von Sprache, Mythus, und Sitte. _Die Sprache_, Vol. I. Part i. Leipzig, 1900. (4) Wuttke, Heinrich. _Die deutschen Zeitschriften und die Entstehung der öffentlichen Meinung._ Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Zeitungswesens. Leipzig, 1875. (5) Mason, William A. _A History of the Art of Writing._ New York, 1920. (6) Bücher, Carl. _Industrial Evolution._ Translated from the German by S. M. Wickett. Chap. vi, "The Genesis of Journalism." New York, 1901. (7) Dibblee, G. Binney. _The Newspaper._ New York and London, 1913. (8) Payne, George Henry. _History of Journalism in the United States._ New York and London, 1920. (9) Kawabé, Kisaburo. _The Press and Politics in Japan._ A study of the relation between the newspaper and the political development of modern Japan. Chicago, 1921. (10) Münsterberg, Hugo. _The Photoplay._ A psychological study. New York, 1916. (11) Kingsbury, J. E. _The Telephone and Telephone Exchanges._ Their invention and development. London and New York, 1915. (12) Borght, R. van der. _Das Verkehrswesen._ Leipzig, 1894. (13) Mason, O. T. _Primitive Travel and Transportation._ New York, 1897. C. _Slang, Argot, and Universes of Discourse_ (1) Farmer, John S. _Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present._ A dictionary, historical and comparative, of the heterodox speech of all classes of society for more than three hundred years. With synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, etc. London, 1890-1904. (2) Sechrist, Frank K. _The Psychology of Unconventional Language._ Worcester, Mass., 1913. (3) Ware, J. Redding. _Passing English of the Victorian Era._ A dictionary of heterodox English, slang and phrase. New York, 1909. (4) Hotten, John C. _A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words._ Used at the present day in the streets of London; the universities of Oxford and Cambridge; the houses of Parliament; the dens of St. Giles; and the palaces of St. James. Preceded by a history of cant and vulgar language; with glossaries of two secret languages, spoken by the wandering tribes of London, the costermongers, and the patterers. London, 1859. (5) ----. _The Slang Dictionary._ Etymological, historical, and anecdotal. New York, 1898. (6) Farmer, John S. _The Public School Word-Book._ A contribution to a historical glossary of words, phrases, and turns of expression, obsolete and in present use, peculiar to our great public schools, together with some that have been or are modish at the universities. London, 1900. (7) _A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew._ In its several tribes of gypsies, beggars, thieves, cheats, etc., with an addition of some proverbs, phrases, and figurative speeches, etc. London, 1690. Reprinted, 19--. (8) Kluge, F. _Rotwelsch._ Quellen und Wortschatz der Gaunersprache und der verwandten Geheimsprachen. Strassburg, 1901. (9) Barrère, Albert, and Leland, C. G., editors. _A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, and Cant._ Embracing English, American, and Anglo-Indian slang, pidgin English, gypsies' jargon, and other irregular phraseology. 2 vols. London, 1897. (10) Villatte, Césaire. _Parisismen._ Alphabetisch geordnete Sammlung der eigenartigen Ausdrucksweisen des Pariser Argot. Ein Supplement zu allen französisch-deutschen Wörterbüchern. Berlin, 1899. (11) Delesalle, Georges. _Dictionnaire argot-français et français-argot._ Nouvelle Edition. Paris, 1899. (12) Villon, François. _Le jargon et jobelin de François Villon, suivi du jargon an théatre._ Paris, 1888. (13) Saineanu, Lazar. _L'Argot ancien_ (1455-1850). Ses éléments constitutifs, ses rapports avec les langues secrètes de l'Europe méridionale et l'argot moderne, avec un appendice sur l'argot juge par Victor Hugo et Balzac; par Lazare Sainéan, pseud. Paris, 1907. (14) Dauzat, Albert. _Les argots des métiers franco-provençaux._ Paris, 1917. (15) Leland, Charles G. _The English Gypsies and Their Languages._ 4th ed. New York, 1893. (16) _Dictionnaire des termes militaires et de l'argot poilu._ Paris, 1916. (17) Empey, Arthur Guy. _Over the Top._ By an American soldier who went, Arthur Guy Empey, machine gunner, serving in France; together with Tommy's dictionary of the trenches. New York and London, 1917. (18) Smith, L. N. _Lingo of No Man's Land; or, War Time Lexicon._ Compiled by Sergt. Lorenzo N. Smith. Chicago, 1918. (19) Saineanu, Lazar. _L'Argot des tranchées._ D'après les lettres des poilus et les journaux du front. Paris, 1915. (20) Horn, Paul. _Die deutsche Soldatensprache._ Giessen, 1905. IV. IMITATION AND SUGGESTION A. _Imitation_ (1) Bagehot, Walter. _Physics and Politics; or, Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of "Natural Selection" and "Inheritance" to Political Society._ New York, 1873. (2) Tarde, Gabriel. _The Laws of Imitation._ Translated from the 2d. French ed. by Elsie Clews Parsons. New York, 1903. (3) Baldwin, James M. _Mental Development in the Child and the Race._ Methods and processes. 3d. rev. ed. New York, 1906. (4) ----. _Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development._ A study in social psychology. 4th ed. New York, 1906. (5) Royce, Josiah. _Outlines of Psychology._ An elementary treatise with some practical applications. New York, 1903. (6) Henderson, Ernest N. _A Text-Book in the Principles of Education._ Chap. xi, "Imitation." New York, 1910. (7) Thorndike, E. L. _Educational Psychology._ Vol. I., The Original Nature of Man. Chap. viii, pp. 108-22. New York, 1913. (8) Hughes, Henry. _Die Mimik des Menschen auf Grund voluntarischer Psychologie._ Frankfurt a. M., 1900. (9) Park, Robert E. _Masse und Publikum._ Eine methodologische und soziologische Untersuchung. Chap. ii, "Der soziologische Prozess," describes the historical development of the conception of imitation in its relation to sympathy and mimicry in the writings of Hume, Butler, and Dugald Stewart. Bern, 1904. (10) Smith, Adam. _The Theory of Moral Sentiments._ To which is added a dissertation on the origin of languages. London, 1892. (11) Ribot, T. _The Psychology of the Emotions._ Part II, chap. iv, "Sympathy and the Tender Emotions," pp. 230-38. Translated from the French, 2d ed. London, 1911. (12) Dewey, John. "Imitation in Education," _Cyclopedia of Education_, III, 389-90. (13) Him, Yrjö. _The Origins of Art._ A psychological and sociological inquiry. Chap. vi, "Social Expression." London and New York, 1900. B. _Suggestion_ (1) Moll, Albert. _Hypnotism._ Including a study of the chief points of psychotherapeutics and occultism. Translated from the 4th enl. ed. by A. F. Hopkirk. London and New York, 1909. (2) Binet, A., and Féré, Ch. _Animal Magnetism._ New York, 1892. (3) Janet, Pierre. _L'Automisme psychologique._ Essai de psychologie expérimental sur les formes inférieures de l'activité humaine. Paris, 1889. (4) Bernheim, H. _Hypnotisme, Suggestion, Psychothérapie._ Paris, 1891. (5) Richet, Ch. _Experimentelle Studien auf dem Gebiete der Gedankenübertragung und des sogenannten Hellsehens._ Deutsch von Frhrn. von Schrenck-Notzing. Stuttgart, 1891. (6) Pfungst, Oskar. _Clever Hans (The Horse of Mr. von Osten)._ A contribution to experimental animal and human psychology. New York, 1911. [Bibliography.] (7) Hansen, F. C. C., and Lehmann, A. _Über unwillkürliches Flüstern._ Philosophische Studien, Leipzig, XI (1895), 471-530. (8) Féré, Ch. _Sensation et mouvement._ Chap, xix, pp. 120-24. Paris, 1887. (9) Sidis, Boris. _The Psychology of Suggestion._ A research into the subconscious nature of man and society. New York, 1898. (10) Bechterew, W. v. _Die Bedeutung der Suggestion im Sozialen Leben._ Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens. Wiesbaden, 1905. (11) Stoll, Otto. _Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie._ Leipzig, 1904. (12) Binet, Alfred. _La Suggestibilité._ Paris, 1900. (13) Münsterberg, Hugo. _Psychotherapy._ Chap. v, "Suggestion and Hypnotism," pp. 85-124. New York, 1909. (14) Cooley, Charles. _Human Nature and the Social Order._ Chap. ii. New York, 1902. (15) Gulick, Sidney. _The American Japanese Problem._ A study of the racial relations of the East and the West. Pp. 118-68. New York, 1914. (16) Fishberg, Maurice. _The Jews._ A study of race and environment. London and New York, 1911. TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES 1. A History of the Concept of Social Interaction. 2. Interaction and the Atomic Theory. 3. Interaction and Social Consciousness. 4. Interaction and Self-Consciousness. 5. Religion and Social Consciousness. 6. Publicity and Social Consciousness. 7. Interaction and the Limits of the Group. 8. The Senses and Communication: a Comparative Study of the Rôle of Touch, Smell, Sight, and Hearing in Social Intercourse. 9. Facial Expression as a Form of Communication. 10. Laughter and Blushing and Self-Consciousness. 11. The Sociology of Gesture. 12. The Subtler Forms of Interaction; "Mind-Reading," "Thought Transference." 13. Rapport, A Study of Mutual Influence in Intimate Associations. 14. A History of Imitation as a Sociological Theory. 15. Suggestion as an Explanation of Collective Behavior. 16. Adam Smith's Theory of the Relation of Sympathy and Moral Judgment. 17. Interest, Attention, and Imitation. 18. Imitation and Appreciation. 19. The History of Printing and of the Press. 20. Modem Extensions of Communication: the Telephone, the Telegraph, Radio, the Motion Picture, Popular Music. 21. An Explanation of Secondary Society in Terms of Secondary Devices of Communication. 22. Graham Wallas' Conception of the Problem of Social Heritages in Secondary Society. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. What do you understand Gumplowicz to mean by a "natural process"? 2. Do you think that the idea of a "natural process" is applicable to society? 3. Is Gumplowicz' principle of the interaction of social elements valid? 4. What do you understand Simmel to mean by society? by socialization? 5. Do you agree with Simmel when he says, "In and of themselves, these materials with which life is filled, these motivations which impel it, are not social in their nature"? 6. In what ways, according to Simmel, does interaction maintain the mechanism of the group in time? 7. What do you understand to be the distinction which Simmel makes between attitudes of appreciation and comprehension? 8. "The interaction of individuals based upon mutual glances is perhaps the most direct and purest reciprocity which exists." Explain. 9. Explain the sociology of the act of looking down to avoid the glance of the other. 10. In what way does Simmel's distinction between the reactions to other persons of the blind and the deaf-mute afford an explanation of the difference between the social life of the village and of the large city? 11. In what sense are emotions expressive? To whom are they expressive? 12. What is the relation of emotional expression to communication? 13. Why would you say Darwin states that "blushing is the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions"? 14. Does a person ever blush in isolation? 15. What in your opinion is the bearing of the phenomenon of blushing upon interaction and communication? 16. What is the difference between the function of blushing and of laughing in social life? 17. In what sense is sympathy the "law of laughter"? 18. What determines the object of laughter? 19. What is the sociological explanation of the rôle of laughter and ridicule in social control? 20. What are the likenesses and differences between intercommunication among animals and language among men? 21. What is the criterion of the difference between man and the animal, according to Max Müller? 22. In your opinion, was the situation in which language arose one of unanimity or diversity of attitude? 23. "Language and ideational processes developed together and are necessary to each other." Explain. 24. What is the relation of the evolution of writing as a form of communication (a) to the development of ideas, and (b) to social life? 25. What difference in function, if any, is there between communication carried on (a) merely through expressive signs, (b) language, (c) writing, (d) printing? 26. How does the evolution of publicity exhibit the extension of communication by human invention? 27. In what ways is the extension of communication related to primary and secondary contacts? 28. Does the growth of communication make for or against the development of individuality? 29. How do you define imitation? 30. What is the relation of attention and interest to the mechanism of imitation? 31. What is the relation of imitation to learning? 32. What is the relation of imitation to the three phases of sympathy differentiated by Ribot? 33. What do you understand by Smith's definition of sympathy? How does it differ from that of Ribot? 34. Under what conditions is the sentiment aroused in the observer likely to resemble that of the observed? When is it likely to be different? 35. In what sense is sympathy the basis for passing a moral judgment upon a person or an act? 36. What do you understand by "internal imitation"? 37. What is the significance of imitation for artistic appreciation? 38. What do you understand by the term "appreciation"? Distinguish between "appreciation" and "comprehension." (Compare Hirn's distinction with that made by Simmel.) 39. Upon what is the nature of suggestion based? How do you define suggestion? 40. What do you understand by Bechterew's distinction between active perception and passive perception? 41. Why can we speak of suggestion as a mental automatism? 42. How real is the analogy of suggestion to an infection or an inoculation? 43. What do you understand by the distinction between personal consciousness and general consciousness? 44. What is the significance of attention in determining the character of suggestion? 45. What is the relation of rapport to suggestion? 46. How would you distinguish suggestion from other forms of stimulus and response? 47. Is suggestion a term of individual or of social psychology? 48. What is the significance of the case of Clever Hans for the interpretation of so-called telepathy? of muscle reading? 49. How extensive, would you say, are the subtler forms of suggestion in normal life? What illustrations would you give? 50. What is the rôle of social contagion in mass action? 51. What do you understand Bechterew to mean by "the psychological processes of fusion"? "spiritual cohesion," etc.? 52. What does it mean to say that historical personages "embody in themselves the emotions and the desires of the masses"? 53. What, in your judgment, are the differentiating criteria of suggestion and imitation? 54. What do you understand is meant by speaking of imitation and suggestion as mechanisms of interaction? FOOTNOTES: [135] Pp. 70 and 72. [136] Translated and adapted from Ludwig Gumplowicz, _Der Rassenkampf_, pp. 158-61. (Innsbruck: Wagnerische Univ. Buchhandlung, 1883.) [137] Translated from Georg Simmel, _Soziologie_, by Albion W. Small, _American Journal of Sociology_, XV (1909), 296-98; III (1898), 667-83. [138] Translated and adapted from Georg Simmel, _Soziologie_, pp. 646-51. (Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1908.) [139] Adapted from Charles Darwin, _The Expression of the Emotions_, pp. 350-67. (John Murray, 1873.) [140] Adapted from Charles Darwin, _The Expression of the Emotions_, pp. 310-37. (John Murray, 1873.) [141] Translated and adapted from L. Dugas, _Psychologie du rire_, pp. 32-153. (Félix Alcan, 1902.) [142] Adapted from C. Lloyd Morgan, _Animal Behaviour_, pp. 193-205. (Edward Arnold, 1908.) [143] Adapted from F. Max Müller, _The Science of Language_, I, 520-27. (Longmans, Green & Co., 1891.) [144] Adapted from Charles H. Judd, _Psychology_, pp. 219-24. (Ginn & Co., 1917.) [145] Adapted from Carl Bücher, _Industrial Evolution_. Translated by S. Morley Wickett, pp. 216-43. (Henry Holt & Co., 1907.) [146] From Charles H. Judd, "Imitation," in _Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education_, III, 388-89. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1912. Reprinted by permission.) [147] Adapted from G. F. Stout, _A Manual of Psychology_, pp. 390-91. (The University Tutorial Press, 1913.) [148] Adapted from Th. Ribot, _The Psychology of the Emotions_, pp. 230-34. (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898.) [149] Adapted from Adam Smith, _The Theory of Moral Sentiments_, pp. 3-10. (G. Bell & Sons, 1893.) [150] From Yrjö Hirn, _The Origins of Art_, pp. 74-85. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1900. Reprinted by permission.) [151] Translated and adapted from the German, _Die Bedeutung der Suggestion im Sozialen Leben_, pp. 10-15, from the original Russian of W. v. Bechterew. (J. F. Bergmann, Wiesbaden, 1905.) [152] Adapted from Albert Moll, _Hypnotism_, pp. 453-57. The Contemporary Science Series. (Walter Scott, 1909.) [153] Translated and adapted from the German, _Die Bedeutung der Suggestion im Sozialen Leben_, pp. 134-42, from the original Russian of W. v. Bechterew. (Wiesbaden: J. F. Bergmann, 1905.) [154] _The Social Process_, p. 28. [155] P. xiv. [156] P. 41. CHAPTER VII SOCIAL FORCES I. INTRODUCTION 1. Sources of the Notion of Social Forces The concept of interaction is an abstraction so remote from ordinary experience that it seems to have occurred only to scientists and philosophers. The idea of forces behind the manifestations of physical nature and of society is a notion which arises naturally out of the experience of the ordinary man. Historians, social reformers, and students of community life have used the term in the language of common sense to describe factors in social situations which they recognized but did not attempt to describe or define. Movements for social reform have usually met with unexpected obstacles. Public welfare programs have not infrequently been received with popular antagonism instead of popular support. Lack of success has led to the search for causes, and investigation has revealed the obstacles, as well as the aids, to reform embodied in influential persons, "political bosses," "union leaders," "the local magnate," and in powerful groups such as party organizations, unions, associations of commerce, etc. Social control, it appears, is resident, not in individuals as individuals, but as members of communities and social groups. Candid recognition of the rôle of these persons and groups led popular writers on social, political, and economic topics to give them the impersonal designation "social forces." A student made the following crude and yet illuminating analysis of the social forces in a small community where he had lived: the community club, "the Davidson clique," and the "Jones clique" (these two large family groups are intensely hostile and divide village life); the community Methodist church; the Presbyterian church group (no church); the library; two soft-drink parlors where all kinds of beverages are sold; the daily train; the motion-picture show; the dance hall; a gambling clique; sex attraction; gossip; the "sporting" impulse; the impulse to be "decent." "The result," he states, "is a disgrace to our modern civilization. It is one of the worst communities I ever saw." The most significant type of community study has been the social survey, with a history which antedates its recent developments. Yet the survey movement from the _Domesday Survey_, initiated in 1085 by William the Conqueror, to the recent _Study of Methods of Americanization_ by the Carnegie Corporation, has been based upon an implicit or explicit recognition of the interrelations of the community and its constituent groups. The _Domesday Survey_, although undertaken for financial and political purposes, gives a picture of the English nation as an organization of isolated local units, which the Norman Conquest first of all forced into closer unity. The surveys of the Russell Sage Foundation have laid insistent emphasis upon the study of social problems and of social institutions in their context within the life of the community. The central theme of the different divisions of the Carnegie _Study of Methods of Americanization_ is the nature and the degree of the participation of the immigrant in our national and cultural life. In short, the survey, wittingly or unwittingly, has tended to penetrate beneath surface observations to discover the interrelations of social groups and institutions and has revealed community life as a _constellation of social forces_. 2. History of the Concept of Social Forces The concept of social forces has had a history different from that of interaction. It was in the writings of the historians rather than of the sociologists that the term first gained currency. The historians, in their description and interpretation of persons and events, discerned definite motives or tendencies, which served to give to the mere temporal sequence of the events a significance which they did not otherwise possess. These tendencies historians called "social forces." From the point of view and for the purposes of reformers social forces were conceived as embodied in institutions. For the purposes of the historian they are merely tendencies which combine to define the general trend of historical change. The logical motive, which has everywhere guided science in formulating its conceptions, is here revealed in its most naïve and elementary form. Natural science invariably seeks to describe change in terms of process, that is to say, in terms of interaction of tendencies. These tendencies are what science calls forces. For the purposes of an adequate description, however, it is necessary not merely to conceive change in terms of the interplay of forces, but to think of these forces as somehow objectively embodied, as social forces are conceived to be embodied in institutions, organizations, and persons. These objects in which the forces are, or seem to be, resident are not forces in any real or metaphysical sense, as the physicists tell us. They are mere points of reference which enable us to visualize the direction and measure the intensity of change. Institutions and social organizations may, in any given situation, be regarded as social forces, but they are not ultimate nor elementary forces. One has but to carry the analysis of the community a little farther to discover the fact that institutions and organizations may be further resolved into factors of smaller and smaller denominations until we have arrived at individual men and women. For common sense the individual is quite evidently the ultimate factor in every community or social organization. Sociologists have carried the analysis a step farther. They have sought to meet the problem raised by two facts: (1) the same individual may be a member of different societies, communities, and social groups at the same time; (2) under certain circumstances his interests as a member of one group may conflict with his interests as a member of another group, so that the conflict between different social groups will be reflected in the mental and moral conflicts of the individual himself. Furthermore, it is evident that the individual is, as we frequently say, "not the same person" at different times and places. The phenomena of moods and of dual personality has sociological significance in just this connection. From all this it is quite evident that the individual is not elementary in a sociological sense. It is for this reason that sociologists have invariably sought the sociological element, not in the individual but in his appetites, desires, wishes--the human motives which move him to action. 3. Classification of the Materials The readings in this chapter are arranged in the natural order of the development of the notion of social forces. They were first thought of by historians as tendencies and trends. Then in the popular sociology social forces were identified with significant social objects in which the factors of the situations under consideration were embodied. This was a step in the direction of a definition of the elementary social forces. Later the terms interests, sentiments, and attitudes made their appearance in the literature of economics, social psychology, and sociology. Finally the concept of the wishes, first vaguely apprehended by sociologists under the name "desires," having gained a more adequate description and definition in the use made of it by psychoanalysis, has been reintroduced into sociology by W. I. Thomas under the title of the "four wishes." This brief statement is sufficient to indicate the motives determining the order of the materials included under "Social Forces." In the list of social forces just enumerated, attitudes are, for the purposes of sociology, elementary. They are elementary because, being tendencies to act, they are expressive and communicable. They present us human motives in the only form in which we can know them objectively, namely, as behavior. Human motives become social forces only so far as they are communicable, only when they are communicated. Because attitudes have for the purposes of sociology this elementary character, it is desirable to define the term "attitude" before attempting to define its relation to the wishes and sentiments. a) _The social element defined._--What is an attitude? Attitudes are not instincts, nor appetites, nor habits, for these refer to specific tendencies to act that condition attitudes but do not define them. Attitudes are not the same as emotions or sentiments although attitudes always are emotionally toned and frequently supported by sentiments. Opinions are not attitudes. An opinion is rather a statement made to justify and make intelligible an existing attitude or bias. A wish is an inherited tendency or instinct which has been fixed by attention directed to objects, persons, or patterns of behavior, which objects then assume the character of values. An attitude is the tendency of the person to react positively or negatively to the total situation. Accordingly, attitudes may be defined as the mobilization of the will of the person. Attitudes are as many and as varied as the situations to which they are a response. It is, of course, not to be gainsaid that instincts, appetites, habits, emotions, sentiments, opinions, and wishes are involved in and with the attitudes. Attitudes are mobilizations and organizations of the wishes with reference to definite situations. My wishes may be very positive and definite in a given situation, but my attitude may be wavering and undetermined. On the other hand, my attitude may be clearly defined in situations where my wishes are not greatly involved. It is characteristic of the so-called academic, as distinguished from the "practical" and emotional, attitude that, under its influence, the individual seeks to emphasize all the factors in the situation and thus qualifies and often weakens the will to act. The wishes enter into attitudes as components. How many, varied, ill-defined, and conflicting may be and have been the wishes that have determined at different times the attitudes and the sentiments of individuals and nations toward the issues of war and peace? The fundamental wishes, we may assume, are the same in all situations. The attitudes and sentiments, however, in which the wishes of the individual find expression are determined not merely by these wishes, but by other factors in the situation, the wishes of other individuals, for example. The desire for recognition is a permanent and universal trait of human nature, but in the case of an egocentric personality, this wish may take the form of an excessive humility or a pretentious boasting. The wish is the same but the attitudes in which it finds expression are different. The attitudes which are elementary for _sociological analysis_ may be resolved by _psychological analysis_ into smaller factors so that we may think, if we choose, of attitudes as representing constellations of smaller components which we call wishes. In fact it has been one of the great contributions of psychoanalysis to our knowledge of human behavior that it has been able to show that attitudes may be analyzed into still more elementary components and that these components, like the attitudes, are involved in a process of interaction among themselves. In other words there is organization, tension, and change in the constituent elements of the attitudes. This accounts, in part, for their mutability. b) _Attitudes as behavior patterns._--If the attitude may be said to play the rôle in sociological analysis that the elementary substances play in chemical analysis, then the rôle of the wishes may be compared to that of the electrons. The clearest way to think of attitudes is as behavior patterns or units of behavior. The two most elementary behavior patterns are the tendency to approach and the tendency to withdraw. Translated into terms of the individual organism these are tendencies to expand and to contract. As the self expands to include other selves, as in sympathy and in fellowship, there is an extension of self-feeling to the whole group. Self-consciousness passes over, in the rapport thus established, into group consciousness. In the expansive movements characteristic of individuals under the influence of crowd excitements the individual is submerged in the mass. On the other hand, in movements of withdrawal or of recoil from other persons, characteristic of fear and embarrassment, there is a heightening of self-consciousness. The tendency to identify one's self with other selves, to lose one's self in the ecstasy of psychic union with others, is essentially a movement toward contact; while the inclination to differentiate one's self, to lead a self-sufficient existence, apart from others, is as distinctly a movement resulting in isolation. The simplest and most fundamental types of behavior of individuals and of groups are represented in these contrasting tendencies to approach an object or to withdraw from it. If instead of thinking of these two tendencies as unrelated, they are thought of as conflicting responses to the same situation, where the tendency to approach is modified and complicated by a tendency to withdraw, we get the phenomenon of _social distance_. There is the tendency to approach, but not too near. There is a feeling of interest and sympathy of A for B, but only when B remains at a certain distance. Thus the Negro in the southern states is "all right in his place." The northern philanthropist is interested in the advancement of the Negro but wants him to remain in the South. At least he does not want him for a neighbor. The southern white man likes the Negro as an individual, but he is not willing to treat him as an equal. The northern white man is willing to treat the Negro as an equal but he does not want him too near. The wishes are in both cases essentially the same but the attitudes are different. The accommodations between conflicting tendencies, so flagrantly displayed in the facts of race prejudice, are not confined to the relation of white men and black. The same mechanisms are involved in all the subordinations, exclusions, privacies, social distances, and reserves which we seek everywhere, by the subtle devices of taboo and social ritual, to maintain and defend. Where the situation calls forth rival or conflicting tendencies, the resulting attitude is likely to be an accommodation, in which what has been described as distance is the determining factor. When an accommodation takes the form of the domination of A and the submission of B, the original tendencies of approach and withdrawal are transformed into attitudes of superordination and subordination. If primary attitudes of expansion and of contraction are thought of in terms of lateral distance, then attitudes of superiority and inferiority may be charted in the vertical plane as illustrated by the following diagram: [Illustration: FIG. 4.--A = tendency to approach; B = tendency to withdraw; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 = distance defining levels of accommodation; X = superordination; Y = subordination.] This polar conception of attitudes, in which they are conceived in terms of movements of expansion and contraction, of approach and withdrawal, of attraction and repulsion, of domination and submission, may be applied in an analysis of the sentiments. A sentiment, as defined by McDougall, is "an organized system of emotional dispositions centered about the idea of some object." The polarity of the sentiments is, however, one of its evident and striking characteristics. Love and hate, affection and dislike, attachment and aversion, self-esteem and humility have this character of polarity because each pair of sentiments and attitudes represents a different constellation of the same component wishes. A significant feature of sentiments and attitudes is inner tension and consequent tendency to mutation. Love changes into hate, or dislike is transformed into affection, or humility is replaced by self-assertion. This mutability is explained by the fact, just mentioned, that the sentiment-attitude is a complex of wishes and desires organized around a person or object. In this complex one motive--love, for example--is for a moment the dominant component. In this case components which tend to excite repulsion, hostility, and disgust are for the moment suppressed. With a change in the situation, as in the distance, these suppressed components are released and, gaining control, convert the system into the opposite sentiment, as hate. c) _Attitudes and wishes._--The wishes, as popularly conceived, are as numerous as the objects or values toward which they are directed. As there are positive and negative values, so there are positive and negative wishes. Fears are negative wishes. The speculations of the Freudian school of psychology have attempted to reduce all wishes to one, the _libido_. In that case, the wishes, as we know them and as they present themselves to us in consciousness, are to be regarded as offshoots or, perhaps better, specifications of the _one wish_. As the one wish is directed to this or that object, it makes of that object a value and the object gives its name to the wish. In this way the one wish becomes many wishes. Science demands, however, not a theory of the origin of the wishes but a classification based on fundamental natural differences; differences which it is necessary to take account of in explaining human behavior. Thomas' fourfold classification fulfils this purpose. The wish for security, the wish for new experience, the wish for response, and the wish for recognition are the permanent and fundamental unconscious motives of the person which find expression in the many and changing concrete and conscious wishes. As wishes find expression in characteristic forms of behavior they may also be thought of in spatial terms as tendencies to move toward or away from their specific objects. The wish for security may be represented by position, mere immobility; the wish for new experience by the greatest possible freedom of movement and constant change of position; the wish for response, by the number and closeness of points of contact; the wish for recognition, by the level desired or reached in the vertical plane of superordination and subordination. The fundamental value for social research of the classification inheres in the fact that the wishes in one class cannot be substituted for wishes in another. The desire for response and affection cannot be satisfied by fame and recognition or only partially so. The wholesome individual is he who in some form or other realizes all the four fundamental wishes. The security and permanence of any society or association depends upon the extent to which it permits the individuals who compose it to realize their fundamental wishes. The restless individual is the individual whose wishes are not realized even in dreams. This suggests the significance of the classification for the purposes of social science. Human nature, and personality as we know it, requires for its healthy growth security, new experience, response, and recognition. In all races and in all times these fundamental longings of human nature have manifested themselves; the particular patterns in which the wish finds expression and becomes fixed depends upon some special experience of the person, is influenced by individual differences in original nature, and is circumscribed by the folkways, the mores, the conventions, and the culture of his group. II. MATERIALS A. TRENDS, TENDENCIES, AND PUBLIC OPINION 1. Social Forces in American History[157] That political struggles are based upon economic interests is today disputed by few students of society. The attempt has been made in this work to trace the various interests that have arisen and struggled in each social stage and to determine the influence exercised by these contending interests in the creation of social institutions. Back of every political party there has always stood a group or class which expected to profit by the activity and the success of that party. When any party has attained to power, it has been because it has tried to establish institutions or to modify existing ones in accord with its interests. Changes in the industrial basis of society--inventions, new processes, and combinations and methods of producing and distributing goods--create new interests with new social classes to represent them. These improvements in the technique of production are the dynamic element that brings about what we call progress in society. In this work I have sought to begin at the origin of each line of social progress. I have first endeavored to describe the steps in mechanical progress, then the social classes brought into prominence by the mechanical changes, then the struggle by which these new classes sought to gain social power, and, finally, the institutions which were created or the alterations made in existing institutions as a consequence of the struggle or as a result of the victory of a new class. It has seemed to me that these underlying social forces are of more importance than the individuals that were forced to the front in the process of these struggles, or even than the laws that were established to record the results of the conflict. In short, I have tried to describe the dynamics of history rather than to record the accomplished facts, to answer the question, "Why did it happen?" as well as, "What happened?" An inquiry into causes is manifestly a greater task than the recording of accomplished facts. To determine causes it is necessary to spend much time in the study of "original documents"--the newspapers, magazines, and pamphlet literature of each period. In these, rather than in the "musty documents" of state, do we find history in the making. Here we can see the clash of contending interests before they are crystallized into laws and institutions. 2. Social Tendencies as Social Forces[158] The philosophy of the eighteenth century viewed external nature as the principal thing to be considered in a study of society, and not society itself. The great force in society was extraneous to society. But according to the philosophy of our times, the chief forces working in society are truly social forces, that is to say, they are immanent in society itself. Let us briefly examine the social forces which are at work, either concentrating or diffusing the ownership of wealth. If it is true that, necessarily, there is going forward a concentration of property, that the rich are necessarily becoming richer, that wealth is passing into fewer and fewer hands, this gives a strong reason for believing that those are right who hold to the fact that every field of production must soon be controlled by monopoly. If, on the other hand, we find that the forces which make for diffusion are dominant, we may believe that it is quite possible for society to control the forces of production. a) Forces operating in the direction of concentration of wealth: (1) The unearned increment of land, especially in cities, is no doubt a real force. (2) The trust movement is operating in its earlier phases, at least, in the direction of concentration. (3) In the third place, war, whenever it comes, carries with it forces which bring wealth to the few rather than to the many. (4) Arrangements of one kind and another may be mentioned by means of various trust devices to secure the ends of primogeniture and entail. (5) Another force operating to concentrate the ownership of wealth may be called economic inertia. According to the principle of inertia, forces continue to operate until they are checked by other forces coming into contact with them. b) Forces which operate to diffuse wealth: (1) Education, broadly considered, should be mentioned first of all. (2) Next, mention must be made of the public control of corporations. (3) Changes in taxation are the third item in this enumeration of forces. (4) The development of the idea of property as a trust is next mentioned. (5) Profit-sharing and co-operation. (6) Sound currency is next mentioned. (7) Public ownership of public utilities is a further force. (8) Labor organizations. (9) Institutions, especially in the interest of the wage-earning and economically weaker elements in the community. (10) Savings institutions and insurance. 3. Public Opinion: School of Thought and Legislation in England[159] Public legislative opinion, as it has existed in England during the nineteenth century, presents several noteworthy aspects or characteristics. They may conveniently be considered under five heads: the existence at any given period of a predominant public opinion; the origin of such opinion; the development and continuity thereof; the checks imposed on such opinion by the existence of counter-currents and cross-currents of opinion; the action of laws themselves as the creators of legislative opinion. _First_, there exists at any given time a body of beliefs, convictions, sentiments, accepted principles, or firmly rooted prejudices, which, taken together, make up the public opinion of a particular era, or what we may call the reigning or predominant current of opinion, and, as regards at any rate the last three or four centuries, and especially the nineteenth century, the influence of this dominant current of opinion has, in England, if we look at the matter broadly, determined, directly or indirectly, the course of legislation. _Second_, the opinion which affects the development of the law has, in modern England at least, often originated with some single thinker or school of thinkers. No doubt it is at times allowable to talk of a prevalent belief or opinion as "being in the air," by which expression is meant that a particular way of looking at things has become the common possession of all the world. But though a belief, when it prevails, may at last be adopted by the whole of a generation, it rarely happens that a widespread conviction has grown up spontaneously among the multitude. "The initiation," it has been said, "of all wise or noble things comes, and must come, from individuals; generally at first from some one individual," to which it ought surely to be added that the origination of a new folly or of a new form of baseness comes, and must in general come, at first from individuals or from some one individual. The peculiarity of individuals, as contrasted with the crowd, lies neither in virtue nor in wickedness but in originality. It is idle to credit minorities with all the good without ascribing to them most, at least, of the evils due to that rarest of all human qualities--inventiveness. The course of events in England may often, at least, be thus described: A new and, let us assume, a true idea presents itself to some one man of originality or genius; the discoverer of the new conception, or some follower who has embraced it with enthusiasm, preaches it to his friends or disciples, they in their turn become impressed with its importance and its truth, and gradually a whole school accepts the new creed. These apostles of a new faith are either persons endowed with special ability or, what is quite as likely, they are persons who, owing to their peculiar position, are freed from a bias, whether moral or intellectual, in favor of prevalent errors. At last the preachers of truth make an impression, either directly upon the general public or upon some person of eminence, say a leading statesman, who stands in a position to impress ordinary people and thus to win the support of the nation. Success, however, in converting mankind to a new faith, whether religious or economical or political, depends but slightly on the strength of the reasoning by which the faith can be defended, or even on the enthusiasm of its adherents. A change of belief arises, in the main, from the occurrence of circumstances which incline the majority of the world to hear with favor theories which, at one time, men of common sense derided as absurdities or distrusted as paradoxes. The doctrine of free trade, for instance, has in England for about half a century held the field as an unassailable dogma of economic policy, but a historian would stand convicted of ignorance or folly who should imagine that the fallacies of protection were discovered by the intuitive good sense of the people, even if the existence of such a quality as the good sense of the people be more than a political fiction. The principle of free trade may, as far as Englishmen are concerned, be treated as the doctrine of Adam Smith. The reasons in its favor never have been, nor will, from the nature of things, be mastered by the majority of any people. The apology for freedom of commerce will always present, from one point of view, an air of paradox. Every man feels or thinks that protection would benefit his own business, and it is difficult to realize that what may be a benefit for any man taken alone may be of no benefit to a body of men looked at collectively. The obvious objections to free trade may, as free traders conceive, be met; but then the reasoning by which these objections are met is often elaborate and subtle and does not carry conviction to the crowd. It is idle to suppose that belief in freedom of trade--or indeed in any other creed--ever won its way among the majority of converts by the mere force of reasoning. The course of events was very different. The theory of free trade won by degrees the approval of statesmen of special insight, and adherents to the new economic religion were one by one gained among persons of intelligence. Cobden and Bright finally became potent advocates of truths of which they were in no sense the discoverers. This assertion in no way detracts from the credit due to these eminent men. They performed to admiration the proper function of popular leaders; by prodigies of energy and by seizing a favorable opportunity, of which they made the very most use that was possible, they gained the acceptance by the English people of truths which have rarely, in any country but England, acquired popularity. Much was due to the opportuneness of the time. Protection wears its most offensive guise when it can be identified with a tax on bread, and therefore can, without patent injustice, be described as the parent of famine and starvation. The unpopularity, moreover, inherent in a tax on corn is all but fatal to a protective tariff when the class which protection enriches is comparatively small, whilst the class which would suffer keenly from dearness of bread and would obtain benefit from free trade is large, and, having already acquired much, is certain soon to acquire more political power. Add to all this that the Irish famine made the suspension of the corn laws a patent necessity. It is easy, then, to see how great in England was the part played by external circumstances--one might almost say by accidental conditions--in determining the overthrow of protection. A student should further remark that after free trade became an established principle of English policy, the majority of the English people accepted it mainly on authority. Men who were neither land-owners nor farmers perceived with ease the obtrusive evils of a tax on corn, but they and their leaders were far less influenced by arguments against protection generally than by the immediate and almost visible advantage of cheapening the bread of artisans and laborers. What, however, weighed with most Englishmen, above every other consideration, was the harmony of the doctrine that commerce ought to be free, with that disbelief in the benefits of state intervention which in 1846 had been gaining ground for more than a generation. It is impossible, indeed, to insist too strongly upon the consideration that whilst opinion controls legislation, public opinion is itself far less the result of reasoning or of argument than of the circumstances in which men are placed. Between 1783 and 1861 negro slavery was abolished--one might almost say ceased of itself to exist--in the northern states of the American Republic; in the South, on the other hand, the maintenance of slavery developed into a fixed policy, and before the War of Secession the "peculiar institution" had become the foundation stone of the social system. But the religious beliefs and, except as regards the existence of slavery, the political institutions prevalent throughout the whole of the United States were the same. The condemnation of slavery in the North, and the apologies for slavery in the South, must therefore be referred to difference of circumstances. Slave labor was obviously out of place in Massachusetts, Vermont, or New York; it appeared to be, even if in reality it was not, economically profitable in South Carolina. An institution, again, which was utterly incompatible with the social condition of the northern states harmonized, or appeared to harmonize, with the social conditions of the southern states. The arguments against the peculiar institution were in themselves equally strong in whatever part of the Union they were uttered, but they carried conviction to the white citizens of Massachusetts, whilst, even when heard or read, they did not carry conviction to the citizens of South Carolina. Belief, and, to speak fairly, honest belief, was to a great extent the result, not of argument, nor even of direct self-interest, but of circumstances. What was true in this instance holds good in others. There is no reason to suppose that in 1830 the squires of England were less patriotic than the manufacturers, or less capable of mastering the arguments in favor of or against the reform of Parliament. But everyone knows that, as a rule, the country gentlemen were Tories and anti-reformers, whilst the manufacturers were Radicals and reformers. Circumstances are the creators of most men's opinions. _Third_, the development of public opinion generally, and therefore of legislative opinion, has been in England at once gradual, or slow, and continuous. The qualities of slowness and continuity may conveniently be considered together, and are closely interconnected, but they are distinguishable and essentially different. Legislative public opinion generally changes in England with unexpected slowness. Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_ was published in 1776; the policy of free exchange was not completely accepted by England till 1846. All the strongest reasons in favor of Catholic emancipation were laid before the English world by Burke between 1760 and 1797; the Roman Catholic Relief Act was not carried till 1829. The opinion which changes the law is in one sense the opinion of the time when the law is actually altered; in another sense it has often been in England the opinion prevalent some twenty or thirty years before that time; it has been as often as not in reality the opinion, not of today, but of yesterday. Legislative opinion must be the opinion of the day, because, when laws are altered, the alteration is of necessity carried into effect by legislators who act under the belief that the change is an amendment; but this law-making opinion is also the opinion of yesterday, because the beliefs which have at last gained such hold on the legislature as to produce an alteration in the law have generally been created by thinkers or writers who exerted their influence long before the change in the law took place. Thus it may well happen that an innovation is carried through at a time when the teachers who supplied the arguments in its favor are in their graves, or even--and this is well worth noting--when in the world of speculation a movement has already set in against ideas which are exerting their full effect in the world of action and of legislation. Law-making in England is the work of men well advanced in life; the politicians who guide the House of Commons, to say nothing of the peers who lead the House of Lords, are few of them below thirty, and most of them are above forty, years of age. They have formed or picked up their convictions, and, what is of more consequence, their prepossessions, in early manhood, which is the one period of life when men are easily impressed with new ideas. Hence English legislators retain the prejudices or modes of thinking which they acquired in their youth; and when, late in life, they take a share in actual legislation, they legislate in accordance with the doctrines which were current, either generally or in the society to which the law-givers belonged, in the days of their early manhood. The law-makers, therefore, of 1850 may give effect to the opinions of 1830, whilst the legislators of 1880 are likely enough to impress upon the statute book the beliefs of 1860, or rather the ideas which in the one case attracted the young men of 1830 and in the other the youth of 1860. We need not therefore be surprised to find that a current of opinion may exert its greatest legislative influence just when its force is beginning to decline. The tide turns when at its height; a school of thought or feeling which still governs law-makers has begun to lose its authority among men of a younger generation who are not yet able to influence legislation. _Fourth_, the reigning legislative opinion of the day has never, at any rate during the nineteenth century, exerted absolute or despotic authority. Its power has always been diminished by the existence of counter-currents or cross-currents of opinion which were not in harmony with the prevalent opinion of the time. A counter-current here means a body of opinion, belief, or sentiment more or less directly opposed to the dominant opinion of a particular era. Counter-currents of this kind have generally been supplied by the survival of ideas or convictions which are gradually losing their hold upon a given generation, and particularly the youthful part thereof. This kind of "conservatism" which prompts men to retain convictions which are losing their hold upon the mass of the world is found, it should be remarked, as much among the adherents of one religious or political creed as of another. Any Frenchman who clung to Protestantism during the reign of Louis the Fourteenth; any north-country squire who in the England of the eighteenth century adhered to the Roman Catholicism of his fathers; Samuel Johnson, standing forth as a Tory and a High Churchman amongst Whigs and Free Thinkers; the Abbé Gregoire, retaining in 1830 the attitude and the beliefs of a bishop of that constitutional church of France whereof the claims have been repudiated at once by the Church and by the State; James Mill, who, though the leader in 1832 of philosophic Radicals, the pioneers as they deemed themselves of democratic progress, was in truth the last "of the eighteenth century"--these are each and all of them examples of that intellectual and moral conservatism which everywhere, and especially in England, has always been a strong force. The past controls the present. Counter-currents, again, may be supplied by new ideals which are beginning to influence the young. The hopes or dreams of the generation just coming into the field of public life undermine the energy of a dominant creed. Counter-currents of opinion, whatever their source, have one certain and one possible effect. The certain effect is that a check is imposed upon the action of the dominant faith. _Fifth_, laws foster or create law-making opinion. This assertion may sound, to one who has learned that laws are the outcome of public opinion, like a paradox; when properly understood, it is nothing but an undeniable, though sometimes neglected, truth. B. INTERESTS, SENTIMENTS, AND ATTITUDES 1. Social Forces and Interaction[160] We must guard at the outset against an illusion that has exerted a confusing influence. There are no social forces which are not at the same time forces lodged in individuals, deriving their energy from individuals and operating in and through individuals. There are no social forces that lurk in the containing ether, and affect persons without the agency of other persons. There are, to be sure, all the physical conditions that affect persons just as they affect all other forms of matter. So far, these are not social forces at all. They do not get to be social forces until they get into persons, and in these persons they take the form of feelings which impel them to react upon other persons. Persons are thus transmuters of physical forces into social forces; but all properly designated social forces are essentially personal. They are within some persons, and stimulate them to act upon other persons; or they are in other persons, and exert themselves as external stimuli upon otherwise inert persons. In either case social forces are personal influences passing from person to person and producing activities that give content to the association. The conception of social forces was never challenged so long as it was merely an everyday commonplace. When it passed into technical forms of expression, doubts began to be urged. If anyone in the United States had questioned the existence of Mrs. Grundy fifty years ago, he would have been pitied and ignored as a harmless "natural." Social forces in the form of gossip, and personified in Mrs. Grundy, were real to everybody. But the particular species of social forces which Mrs. Grundy represented were neither more nor less real than the other social forces which had no name in folklore. Persons incessantly influence persons. The modes of this influence are indescribably varied. They are conscious and unconscious, accidental and momentary, or deliberate and persistent; they are conventional and continuous, the result of individual habit, or of customs crystallized into national or racial institutions. The simple fact which the concept "social forces" stands for is that every individual acts and is acted upon in countless ways by the other persons with whom he associates. These modes of action and reaction between persons may be classified, and the more obvious and recurrent among them may be enumerated. More than this, the action of these social forces may be observed, and the results of observation may be organized into social laws. Indeed, there would be only two alternatives, if we did not discover the presence and action of social forces. On the one hand, social science would at most be a subdivision of natural science; on the other hand, the remaining alternative would be the impossibility of social science altogether. But social forces are just as distinctly discernible as chemical forces. The fact that we are not familiar with them no more makes against their existence and their importance than general ignorance of the pressure of the atmosphere takes that phenomenon out of the physical world. They are not only the atmosphere but they are a very large part of the moral world in general. If we could compose a complete account of the social forces, we should at the same time have completed, from one point of attention at least, a science of everything involved in human society. "All beings which can be said to perform actions do so in obedience to those mental states which are denominated desires." But we have gone back a step beyond the desires and have found it necessary to assume the existence of underlying interests. These have to desires very nearly the relation of substance to attribute, or, in a different figure, of genus to species. Our interests may be beyond or beneath our ken; our desires are strong and clear. I may not be conscious of my health interests in any deep sense, but the desires that my appetites assert are specific and concrete and real. The implicit interests, of which we may be very imperfectly aware, move us to desires which may correspond well or ill with the real content of the interests. At all events, it is these desires which make up the active social forces, whether they are more or less harmonious with the interests from which they spring. The desires that the persons associating actually feel are practically the elemental forces with which we have to reckon. They are just as real as the properties of matter. They have their ratios of energy, just as certainly as though they were physical forces. They have their peculiar modes of action, which may be formulated as distinctly as the various modes of chemical action. Every desire that any man harbors is a force making or marring, strengthening or weakening, the structure and functions of the society of which he is a part. What the human desires are, what their relations are to each other, what their peculiar modifications are under different circumstances--these are questions of detail which must be answered in general by social psychology, and in particular by specific analysis of each social situation. The one consideration to be urged at this point is that the concept "social forces" has a real content. It represents reality. There are social forces. They are the desires of persons. They range in energy from the vagrant whim that makes the individual a temporary discomfort to his group, to the inbred feelings that whole races share. It is with these subtle forces that social arrangements and the theories of social arrangements have to deal. 2. Interests[161] During the past generation, the conception of the "atom" has been of enormous use in physical discovery. Although no one has ever seen an atom, the supposition that there are ultimate particles of matter in which the "promise and potency" of all physical properties and actions reside has served as a means of investigation during the most intensive period of research in the history of thought. Without the hypothesis of the atom, physics and chemistry, and in a secondary sense biology, would have lacked chart and compass upon their voyages of exploration. Although the notion of the atom is rapidly changing, and the tendency of physical science is to construe physical facts in terms of motion rather than of the traditional atom, it is probably as needless as it is useless for us to concern ourselves as laymen with this refinement. Although we cannot avoid speaking of the smallest parts into which matter can be divided, and although we cannot imagine, on the other hand, how any portions of matter can exist and not be divisible into parts, we are probably quite as incapable of saving ourselves from paradox by resort to the vortex hypothesis in any form. That is, these subtleties are too wonderful for most minds. Without pushing analysis too far, and without resting any theory upon analogy with the atom of physical theory, it is necessary to find some starting-place from which to trace up the composition of sentient beings, just as the physicists assumed that they found their starting-place in the atom. The notion of interests is accordingly serving the same purpose in sociology which the notion of atoms has served in physical science. Interests are the stuff that men are made of. More accurately expressed, the last elements to which we can reduce the actions of human beings are units which we may conveniently name "interests." It is merely inverting the form of expression to say: _Interests are the simplest modes of motion which we can trace in the conduct of human beings._ To the psychologist the individual is interesting primarily as a center of knowing, feeling, and willing. To the sociologist the individual begins to be interesting when he is thought as knowing, feeling, and willing _something_. In so far as a mere trick of emphasis may serve to distinguish problems, this ictus indicates the sociological starting-point. The individual given in experience is thought to the point at which he is available for sociological assumption, when he is recognized as a center of activities which make for something outside of the psychical series in which volition is a term. These activities must be referred primarily to desires, but the desires themselves may be further referred to certain universal interests. In this character the individual becomes one of the known or assumed terms of sociology. The individual as a center of active interests may be thought both as the lowest term in the social equation and as a composite term whose factors must be understood. These factors are either the more evident desires, or the more remote interests which the individual's desires in some way represent. At the same time, we must repeat the admission that these assumed interests are like the atom of physics. They are the metaphysical recourse of our minds in accounting for concrete facts. We have never seen or touched them. They are the hypothetical substratum of those regularities of conduct which the activities of individuals display. We may start with the familiar popular expressions, "the farming interest," "the railroad interest," "the packing interest," "the milling interest," etc., etc. Everyone knows what the expressions mean. Our use of the term "interest" is not co-ordinate with these, but it may be approached by means of them. All the "interests" that are struggling for recognition in business and in politics are highly composite. The owner of a flour mill, for example, is a man before he is a miller. He becomes a miller at last because he is a man; i.e., because he has interests--in a deeper sense than that of the popular expressions--which impel him to act in order to gain satisfactions. The clue to all social activity is in this fact of individual interests. Every act that every man performs is to be traced back to an interest. We eat because there is a desire for food; but the desire is set in motion by a bodily interest in replacing exhausted force. We sleep because we are tired; but the weariness is a function of the bodily interest in rebuilding used-up tissue. We play because there is a bodily interest in use of the muscles. We study because there is a mental interest in satisfying curiosity. We mingle with our fellow-men because there is a mental interest in matching our personality against that of others. We go to market to supply an economic interest, and to war because of some social interest of whatever mixed or simple form. With this introduction, we may venture an extremely abstract definition of our concept "interest." In general, _an interest is an unsatisfied capacity, corresponding to an unrealized condition, and it is predisposition to such rearrangement as would tend to realize the indicated condition_. Human needs and human wants are incidents in the series of events between the latent existence of human interest and the achievement of partial satisfaction. Human interests, then, are the ultimate terms of calculation in sociology. _The whole life-process, so far as we know it, whether viewed in its individual or in its social phase, is at last the process of developing, adjusting, and satisfying interests._ No single term is of more constant use in recent sociology than this term "interests." We use it in the plural partly for the sake of distinguishing it from the same term in the sense which has become so familiar in modern pedagogy. The two uses of the term are closely related, but they are not precisely identical. The pedagogical emphasis is rather on the voluntary attitude toward a possible object of attention. The sociological emphasis is on attributes of persons which may be compared to the chemical affinities of different elements. To distinguish the pedagogical from the sociological use of the term "interest," we may say pedagogically of a supposed case: "The boy has no _interest_ in physical culture, or in shopwork, or in companionship with other boys, or in learning, or in art, or in morality." That is, attention and choice are essential elements of interest in the pedagogical sense. On the other hand, we may say of the same boy, in the sociological sense: "He has not discovered his health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, and rightness _interests_." We thus imply that interests, in the sociological sense, are not necessarily matters of attention and choice. They are affinities, latent in persons, pressing for satisfaction, whether the persons are conscious of them either generally or specifically, or not; they are indicated spheres of activity which persons enter into and occupy in the course of realizing their personality. Accordingly, we have virtually said that interests are merely specifications in the make-up of the personal units. We have several times named the most general classes of interests which we find serviceable in sociology, viz.: _health_, _wealth_, _sociability_, _knowledge_, _beauty_, and _rightness_. We need to emphasize, in addition, several considerations about these interests which are the motors of all individual and social action. First, there is a subjective and an objective aspect of them all. It would be easy to use terms of these interests in speculative arguments in such a way as to shift the sense fallaciously from the one aspect to the other; e.g., moral conduct, as an actual adjustment of the person in question with other persons, is that person's "interest," in the objective sense. On the other hand, we are obliged to think of something in the person himself impelling him, however unconsciously, toward that moral conduct, i.e., interest as "unsatisfied capacity" in the subjective sense. So with each of the other interests. The fact that these two senses of the term are always concerned must never be ignored; but, until we reach refinements of analysis which demand use for these discriminations, they may be left out of sight. Second, human interests pass more and more from the latent, subjective, unconscious state to the active, objective, conscious form. That is, before the baby is self-conscious, the baby's essential interest in bodily well-being is operating in performance of the organic functions. A little later the baby is old enough to understand that certain regulation of his diet, certain kinds of work or play, will help to make and keep him well and strong. Henceforth there is in him a co-operation of interest in the fundamental sense, and interest in the derived, secondary sense, involving attention and choice. If we could agree upon the use of terms, we might employ the word "desire" for this development of interest; i.e., physiological performance of function is, strictly speaking, the health interest; the desires which men actually pursue within the realm of bodily function may be normal or perverted, in an infinite scale of variety. So with each of the other interests. Third, with these qualifications provided for, resolution of human activities into pursuit of differentiated interests becomes the first clue to the combination that unlocks the mysteries of society. For our purposes in this argument we need not trouble ourselves very much about nice metaphysical distinctions between the aspects of interest, because we have mainly to do with interests in the same sense in which the man of affairs uses the term. The practical politician looks over the lobby at Washington and he classifies the elements that compose it. He says: "Here is the railroad interest, the sugar interest, the labor interest, the army interest, the canal interest, the Cuban interest, etc." He uses the term "interest" essentially in the sociological sense but in a relatively concrete form, and he has in mind little more than variations of the wealth interest. He would explain the legislation of a given session as the final balance between these conflicting pecuniary interests. He is right, in the main; and every social action is, in the same way, an accommodation of the various interests which are represented in the society concerned. 3. Social Pressures[162] The phenomena of government are from start to finish phenomena of force. But force is an objectionable word. I prefer to use the word pressure instead of force, since it keeps the attention closely directed upon the groups themselves, instead of upon any mystical "realities" assumed to be underneath and supporting them, and since its connotation is not limited to the narrowly "physical." We frequently talk of "bringing pressure to bear" upon someone, and we can use the word here with but slight extension beyond this common meaning. Pressure, as we shall use it, is always a group phenomenon. It indicates the push and resistance between groups. The balance of the group pressures _is_ the existing state of society. Pressure is broad enough to include all forms of the group influence upon group, from battle and riot to abstract reasoning and sensitive morality. It takes up into itself "moral energy" and the finest discriminations of conscience as easily as bloodthirsty lust of power. It allows for humanitarian movements as easily as for political corruption. The tendencies to activity are pressures, as well as the more visible activities. All phenomena of government are phenomena of groups pressing one another, forming one another, and pushing out new groups and group representatives (the organs or agencies of government) to mediate the adjustments. It is only as we isolate these group activities, determine their representative values, and get the whole process stated in terms of them that we approach to a satisfactory knowledge of government. When we take such an agency of government as a despotic ruler, we cannot possibly advance to an understanding of him except in terms of the group activities of his society which are most directly represented through him, along with those which almost seem not to be represented through him at all, or to be represented to a different degree or in a different manner. And it is the same with democracies, even in their "purest" and simplest forms, as well as in their most complicated forms. We cannot fairly talk of despotisms or of democracies as though they were absolutely distinct types of government to be contrasted offhand with each other or with other types. All depends for each despotism and each democracy and each other form of government on the given interests, their relations, and their methods of interaction. The interest groups create the government and work through it; the government, as activity, works "for" the groups; the government, from the viewpoint of certain of the groups, may at times be their private tool; the government, from the viewpoint of others of the groups, seems at times their deadly enemy; but the process is all one, and the joint participation is always present, however it may be phrased in public opinion or clamor. It is convenient most of the time in studying government to talk of these groups as interests. But I have already indicated with sufficient clearness that the interest is nothing other than the group activity itself. The words by which we name the interests often give the best expression to the value of the group activities in terms of other group activities: if I may be permitted that form of phrasing, they are more qualitative than quantitative in their implications. But that is sometimes a great evil as well as sometimes an advantage. We must always remember that there is nothing in the interests purely because of themselves and that we can depend on them only as they stand for groups which are acting or tending toward activity or pressing themselves along in their activity with other groups. When we get the group activities on the lower planes worked out and show them as represented in various forms of higher groups, culminating in the political groups, then we make progress in our interpretations. Always and everywhere our study must be a study of the interests that work through government; otherwise we have not got down to facts. Nor will it suffice to take a single interest group and base our interpretation upon it, not even for a special time and a special place. No interest group has meaning except with reference to other interest groups; and those other interest groups are pressures; they count in the government process. The lowest of despised castes, deprived of rights to the protection of property and even life, will still be found to be a factor in the government, if only we can sweep the whole field and measure the caste in its true degree of power, direct or represented, in its potentiality of harm to the higher castes, and in its identification with them for some important purposes, however deeply hidden from ordinary view. No slaves, not the worst abused of all, but help to form the government. They are an interest group within it. Tested by the interest groups that function through them, legislatures are of two general types. First are those which represent one class or set of classes in the government as opposed to some other class, which is usually represented in a monarch. Second are those which are not the exclusive stronghold of one class or set of classes, but are instead the channel for the functioning of all groupings of the population. The borders between the two types are of course indistinct, but they approximate closely to the borders between a society with class organization and one with classes broken down into freer and more changeable group interests. Neither the number of chambers in the legislative body nor the constitutional relations of the legislature to the executive can serve to define the two types. The several chambers may represent several classes, or again the double-chamber system may be in fact merely a technical division, with the same interests present in both chambers. The executive may be a class representative, or merely a co-ordinate organ, dividing with the legislature the labor of providing channels through which the same lot of manifold interest groups can work. It lies almost on the surface that a legislature which is a class agency will produce results in accordance with the class pressure behind it. Its existence has been established by struggle, and its life is a continual struggle against the representatives of the opposite class. Of course there will be an immense deal of argument to be heard on both sides, and the argument will involve the setting forth of "reasons" in limitless number. It is indeed because of the advantages (in group terms, of course) of such argument as a technical means of adjustment that the legislative bodies survive. Argument under certain conditions is a greater labor-saver than blows, and in it the group interests more fully unfold themselves. But beneath all the argument lies the strength. The arguments go no farther than the strength goes. What the new Russian duma will get, if it survives, will be what the people it solidly represents are strong enough to make it get, and no more and no less, with bombs and finances, famine and corruption funds alike in the scale. But the farther we advance among legislatures of the second type, and the farther we get away from the direct appeal to muscle and weapon, the more difficult becomes the analysis of the group components, the greater is the prominence that falls to the process of argumentation, the more adroitly do the group forces mask themselves in morals, ideals, and phrases, the more plausible becomes the interpretation of the legislature's work as a matter of reason, not of pressure, and the more common it is to hear condemnations of those portions of the process at which violence shows through the reasoning as though they were per se perverted, degenerate, and the bearers of ruin. There is, of course, a strong, genuine group opposition to the technique of violence, which is an important social fact; but a statement of the whole legislative process in terms of the discussion forms used by that anti-violence interest group is wholly inadequate. 4. Idea-Forces[163] The principle that I assume at the outset is that every idea tends to act itself out. If it is an isolated idea, or if it is not counterbalanced by a stronger force, its realization must take place. Thus the principle of the struggle for existence and of selection, taking the latter word in its broadest sense, is in my opinion as applicable to ideas as to individuals and living species; a selection takes place in the brain to the advantage of the strongest and most exclusive idea, which is thus able to control the whole organism. In particular, the child's brain is an arena of conflict for ideas and the impulses they include; in the brain the new idea is a new force which encounters the ideas already installed, and the impulses already developed therein. Assume a mind, as yet a blank, and suddenly introduce into it the representation of any movement, the idea of any action--such as raising the arm. This idea being isolated and unopposed, the wave of disturbance arising in the brain will take the direction of the arm, because the nerves terminating in the arm are disturbed by the representation of the arm. The arm will therefore be lifted. Before a movement begins, we must think of this; now no movement that has taken place is lost; it is necessarily communicated from the brain to the organs if unchecked by any other representation or impulse. The transmission of the idea to the limbs is inevitable as long as the idea is isolated or unopposed. This I have called the law of idea-forces, and I think I have satisfactorily explained the curious facts in connection with the impulsive actions of the idea. The well-known experiments of Chevreul on the "pendule explorateur," and on the divining rod, show that if we represent to ourselves a movement in a certain direction, the hand will finally execute this movement without our consciousness, and so will transmit it to the instrument. Table-turning is the realization of the expected movement by means of the unconscious motion of the hands. Thought-reading is the interpretation of imperceptible movements, in which the thought of the subject betrays itself, even without his being conscious of it. In the process that goes on when we are fascinated or on the point of fainting, a process more obvious in children than in adults, there is an inchoate movement which the paralysis of the will fails to check. When I was a lad, I was once running over a plank across the weir of a river, it never entering my head that I ran any risk of falling; suddenly this idea came into play like a force obliquely compounded with the straight course of thought which had up to that moment been guiding my footsteps. I felt as if an invisible arm had seized me and was dragging me down. I shrieked and stood trembling above the foaming water until assistance came. Here the mere idea of vertigo produced vertigo. A plank on the ground may be crossed without arousing any idea of falling; but if it is above a precipice, and we think of the distance below, the impulse to fall is very strong. Even when we are in perfect safety we may feel what is known as the "fascination" of a precipice. The sight of the gulf below, becoming a fixed idea, produces a resultant inhibition on all other ideas. Temptation, which is always besetting a child because everything is new to it, is nothing but the power of an idea and its motor impulse. The power of an idea is the greater, the more prominently it is singled out from the general content of consciousness. This selection of an idea, which becomes so exclusive that the whole consciousness is absorbed in it, is called _monoïdeism_. This state is precisely that of a person who has been hypnotized. What is called hypnotic suggestion is nothing but the artificial selection of one idea to the exclusion of all others, so that it passes into action. Natural somnambulism similarly exhibits the force of ideas; whatever idea is conceived by the somnambulist, he carries into action. The kind of dream in which children often live is not without analogy to somnambulism. The fixed idea is another instance of the same phenomenon, which is produced in the waking state, and which, when exaggerated, becomes monomania, a kind of morbid monoïdeism; children, having very few ideas, would very soon acquire fixed ideas, if it were not for the mobility of attention which the ceaseless variation of the surrounding world produces in them. Thus all the facts grouped nowadays under the name of auto-suggestion may, in my opinion, be explained. Here we shall generalize the law in this form: every idea conceived by the mind is an auto-suggestion, the selective effect of which is only counterbalanced by other ideas producing a different auto-suggestion. This is especially noticeable in the young, who so rapidly carry into action what is passing through their minds. The philosophers of the seventeenth century, with Descartes and Pascal, considered sentiments and passions as indistinct thoughts, as "thoughts, as it were, in process of precipitation." This is true. Beneath all our sentiments lies a totality of imperfectly analyzed ideas, a swelling stream of crowded and indistinct reasons by the momentum of which we are carried away and swept along. Inversely, sentiments underlie all our ideas; they smoulder in the dying embers of abstractions. Even language has a power because it arouses all the sentiments which it condenses in a formula; the mere names "honor" and "duty" arouse infinite echoes in the consciousness. At the name of "honor" alone, a legion of images is on the point of surging up; vaguely, as with eyes open in the dark, we see all the possible witnesses of our acts, from father and mother to friends and fellow-countrymen; further, if our imagination is vivid enough, we can see those great ancestors who did not hesitate under similar circumstances. "We must; forward!" We feel that we are enrolled in an army of gallant men; the whole race, in its most heroic representatives, is urging us on. There is a social and even a historical element beneath moral ideas. Besides, language, a social product, is also a social force. The pious mind goes farther still; duty is personified as a being--the living Good whose voice we hear. Some speak of lifeless formulas; of these there are very few. A word, an idea, is a formula of possible action and of sentiments ready to pass into acts; they are "verbs." Now, every sentiment, every impulse which becomes formulated with, as it were, a _fiat_, acquires by this alone a new and quasi-creative force; it is not merely rendered visible by its own light to itself but it is defined, specified, and selected from the rest, and _ipso facto_ directed in its course. That is why formulas relative to action are so powerful for good or evil; a child feels a vague temptation, a tendency for which it cannot account. Pronounce in its hearing the formula, change the blind impulse into the luminous idea, and this will be a new suggestion which may, perhaps, cause it to fall in the direction to which it was already inclined. On the other hand, some formulas of generous sentiments will carry away a vast audience immediately they are uttered. The genius is often the man who translates the aspirations of his age into ideas; at the sound of his voice a whole nation is moved. Great moral, religious, and social revolutions ensue when the sentiments, long restrained and scarcely conscious of their own existence, become formulated into ideas and words; the way is then opened, the means and the goal are visible alike, selection takes place, all the volitions are simultaneously guided in the same direction, like a torrent which has found the weakest point in the dam. 5. Sentiments[164] We seldom experience the primary emotions in the pure or unmixed forms in which they are commonly manifested by the animals. Our emotional states commonly arise from the simultaneous excitement of two or more of the instinctive dispositions; and the majority of the names currently used to denote our various emotions are the names of such mixed, secondary, or complex emotions. That the great variety of our emotional states may be properly regarded as the result of the compounding of a relatively small number of primary or simple emotions is no new discovery. Descartes, for example, recognized only six primary emotions, or passions as he termed them, namely--admiration, love, hatred, desire, joy, and sadness, and he wrote, "All the others are composed of some out of these six and derived from them." He does not seem to have formulated any principles for the determination of the primaries and the distinction of them from the secondaries. The compounding of the primary emotions is largely, though not wholly, due to the existence of sentiments, and some of the complex emotional processes can only be generated from sentiments. Before going on to discuss the complex emotions, we must therefore try to understand as clearly as possible the nature of a sentiment. The word "sentiment" is still used in several different senses. M. Ribot and other French authors use its French equivalent as covering all the feelings and emotions, as the most general name for the affective aspect of mental processes. We owe to Mr. A. F. Shand the recognition of features of our mental constitution of a most important kind that have been strangely overlooked by other psychologists, and the application of the word "sentiments" to denote features of this kind. Mr. Shand points out that our emotions, or, more strictly speaking, our emotional dispositions, tend to become organized in systems about the various objects and classes of objects that excite them. Such an organized system of emotional tendencies is not a fact or mode of experience, but is a feature of the complexly organized structure of the mind that underlies all our mental activity. To such an organized system of emotional tendencies centered about some object Mr. Shand proposes to apply the name "sentiment." This application of the word is in fair accordance with its usage in popular speech, and there can be little doubt that it will rapidly be adopted by psychologists. The organization of the sentiments in the developing mind is determined by the course of experience; that is to say, the sentiment is a growth in the structure of the mind that is not natively given in the inherited constitution. This is certainly true in the main, though the maternal sentiment might almost seem to be innate; but we have to remember that in the human mother this sentiment may, and generally does, begin to grow up about the idea of its object, before the child is born. The growth of the sentiments is of the utmost importance for the character and conduct of individuals and of societies; it is the organization of the affective and conative life. In the absence of sentiments our emotional life would be a mere chaos, without order, consistency, or continuity of any kind; and all our social relations and conduct, being based on the emotions and their impulses, would be correspondingly chaotic, unpredictable, and unstable. It is only through the systematic organization of the emotional dispositions in sentiments that the volitional control of the immediate promptings of the emotions is rendered possible. Again, our judgments of value and of merit are rooted in our sentiments; and our moral principles have the same source, for they are formed by our judgments of moral value. The sentiments may be classified according to the nature of their objects; they then fall into three main classes: the concrete particular, the concrete general, and the abstract sentiments--e.g., the sentiment of love for a child, of love for children in general, of love for justice or virtue. Their development in the individual follows this order, the concrete particular sentiments being, of course, the earliest and most easily acquired. The number of sentiments a man may acquire, reckoned according to the number of objects in which they are centered, may, of course, be very large; but almost every man has a small number of sentiments--perhaps one only--that greatly surpass all the rest in strength and as regards the proportion of his conduct that springs from them. Each sentiment has a life-history, like every other vital organization. It is gradually built up, increasing in complexity and strength and may continue to grow indefinitely, or may enter upon a period of decline, and may decay slowly or rapidly, partially or completely. When any one of the emotions is strongly or repeatedly excited by a particular object, there is formed the rudiment of a sentiment. Suppose that a child is thrown into the company of some person given to frequent outbursts of violent anger, say, a violent-tempered father who is otherwise indifferent to the child and takes no further notice of him than to threaten, scold, and, perhaps, beat him. At first the child experiences fear at each exhibition of violence, but repetition of these incidents very soon creates the habit of fear, and in the presence of his father, even in his mildest moods, the child is timorous; that is to say, the mere presence of the father throws the child's fear-disposition into a condition of sub-excitement, which increases on the slightest occasion until it produces all the subjective and objective manifestations of fear. As a further stage, the mere idea of the father becomes capable of producing the same effects as his presence; this idea has become associated with the emotion; or, in stricter language, the psychophysical disposition whose excitement involves the rise to consciousness of this idea, has become associated or intimately connected with the psychophysical disposition whose excitement produces the bodily and mental symptoms of fear. Such an association constitutes a rudimentary sentiment that we can only call a sentiment of fear. In a similar way, a single act of kindness done by A to B may evoke in B the emotion of gratitude; and if A repeats his kindly acts, conferring benefits on B, the gratitude of B may become habitual, may become an enduring emotional attitude of B towards A--a sentiment of gratitude. Or, in either case, a single act--one evoking very intense fear or gratitude--may suffice to render the association more or less durable and the attitude of fear, or gratitude, of B toward A more or less permanent. 6. Social Attitudes[165] "Consciousness," says Jacques Loeb, "is only a metaphysical term for phenomena which are determined by associative memory. By associative memory I mean that mechanism by which a stimulus brings about not only the effects which its nature and the specific structure of the irritable organ call for, but by which it brings about also the effects of other stimuli which formerly acted upon the organism almost or quite simultaneously with the stimulus in question. If an animal can be trained, if it can learn, it possesses associative memory." In short, because we have memories we are able to profit by experiences. It is the memories that determine, on the whole, what objects shall mean to us, and how we shall behave toward them. We cannot say, however, that a perception or an object is ever wholly without meaning to us. The flame to which the child stretches out its hand means, even before he has any experience of it, "something to be reached for, something to be handled." After the first experience of touching it, however, it means "something naturally attractive but still to be avoided." Each new experience, so far as it is preserved in memory, adds new meanings to the objects with which it is associated. Our perceptions and our ideas embody our experiences of objects and so serve as signs of what we may expect of them. They are the means by which we are enabled to control our behavior toward them. On the other hand, if we lose our memories, either temporarily or permanently, we lose at the same time our control over our actions and are still able to respond to objects, but only in accordance with our inborn tendencies. After all our memories are gone, we still have our original nature to fall back upon. There is a remarkable case reported by Sidis and Goodhart which illustrates the rôle that memory plays in giving us control over our inherited tendencies. It is that of Rev. Thomas C. Hanna, who, while attempting to alight from a carriage, lost his footing, fell to the ground and was picked up unconscious. When he awoke it was found that he had not only lost the faculty of speech but he had lost all voluntary control of his limbs. He had forgotten how to walk. He had not lost his senses. He could feel and see, but he was not able to distinguish objects. He had no sense of distance. He was in a state of complete "mental blindness." At first he did not distinguish between his own movements and those of other objects. "He was as much interested in the movements of his own limbs as in that of external things." He had no conception of time. "Seconds, minutes, and hours were alike to him." He felt hunger but he did not know how to interpret the feeling and had no notion of how to satisfy it. When food was offered him he did not know what to do with it. In order to get him to swallow food it had to be placed far back in his throat, in order to provoke reflex swallowing movements. In their report of the case the authors say: Like an infant, he did not know the meaning of the simplest words, nor did he understand the use of language. Imitation was the factor in his first education. He learned the meaning of words by imitating definite articulate sounds made in connection with certain objects and activities. The pronunciation of words and their combination into whole phrases he acquired in the same imitative way. At first he simply repeated any word and sentence heard, thinking that this meant something to others. This manner of blind repetition and unintelligent imitation was, however, soon given up, and he began systematically to learn the meaning of words in connection with the objective content they signified. As in the case of children who, in their early developmental stage, use one word to indicate many objects different in their nature, but having some common point of superficial resemblance, so was it in the case of Mr. Hanna: the first word he acquired was used by him to indicate all the objects he wanted. The first word he learned was "apple" and for a time apple was the only word he knew. At first he learned only the names of particular objects. He did not seem able to learn words with an abstract or general significance. But although he was reduced to a state of mental infancy, his "intelligence" remained, and he learned with astonishing rapidity. "His faculty of judgment, his power of reasoning, were as sound and vigorous as ever," continues the report. "The content of knowledge seemed to have been lost, but the form of knowledge remained as active as before the accident and was perhaps even more precise and definite." One reason why man is superior to the brutes is probably that he has a better natural memory. Another reason is that there are more things that he can do, and so he has an opportunity to gain a wider and more varied experience. Consider what a man can do with his hands! To this he has added tools and machinery, which are an extension of the hand and have multiplied its powers enormously. It is now pretty well agreed, however, that the chief advantage which mankind has over the brutes is in the possession of speech by which he can communicate his ideas. In comparatively recent times he has supplemented this means of communication by the invention of the printing press, the telegraph, and the telephone. In this way he has been able not only to communicate his experiences but to fund and transmit them from one generation to another. As soon as man began to point out objects and associate them with vocal sounds, he had obtained possession of a symbol by which he was able to deliberately communicate his desires and his intentions to other men in a more precise and definite way than he had been able to do through the medium of spontaneous emotional expression. The first words, we may suppose, were onomatopoetic, that is to say, vocal imitations of the objects to which they referred. At any rate they arose spontaneously in connection with the situation that inspired them. They were then imitated by others and thus became the common and permanent possession of the group. Language thus assumed for the group the rôle of perception in the individual. It became the sign and symbol of those meanings which were the common possession of the group. As the number of such symbols was relatively small in comparison to the number of ideas, words inevitably came to have different meanings in different contexts. In the long run the effect of this was to detach the words from the particular contexts in which they arose and loosen their connections with the particular sentiments and attitudes with which they were associated. They came to have thus a more distinctively symbolic and formal character. It was thus possible to give them more precise definitions, to make of them abstractions and mental toys, which the individual could play with freely and disinterestedly. Like the child who builds houses with blocks, he was able to arrange them in orders and systems, create ideal structures, like the constructions of mathematics, which he was then able to employ as means of ordering and systematizing his more concrete experiences. All this served to give the individual a more complete control over his own experience and that of the group. It made it possible to analyze and classify his own experiences and compare them with those of his fellows and so, eventually, to erect the vast structure of formal and scientific knowledge on the basis of which men are able to live and work together in co-operation upon the structure of a common civilization. The point is that the breadth of the experience over which man has control and the disinterestedness with which he is able to view it is the basis of the intellectual attainment of the individual, as of the race. If human beings were thoroughly rational creatures, we may presume that they would act, at every instant, on the basis of all their experience and all the knowledge that they were able to obtain from the experience of others. The truth is, however, that we are never able, at any one time, to mobilize, control, and use all the experience and all the knowledge that we now possess and which, if we were less human than we are, might serve to guide and control our actions. It is precisely the function of science to collect, organize, and make available for our practical uses the fund of experience and of knowledge we do possess. Not only do we already have more knowledge than we can use, but much of our personal and individual experience drops out and is lost in the course of a lifetime. Meanwhile, later experiences are constantly adding themselves to the earlier ones. In this way the meaning of the world is constantly changing for us, much as the surface of the earth is constantly under the influence of the weather. The actual constellation of our memories and ideas is determined at any given moment not merely by processes of association but also by processes of dissociation. Practical interests, sentiments, and emotional outbursts--love, fear, and anger--are constantly interrupting the logical and constructive processes of the mind. These forces tend to dissolve established connections between ideas and disintegrate our memories so that they rarely function as a whole or as a unit, but rather as more or less dissociated systems. The mere act of attention, for example, so far as it focuses the activities upon a single object, tends to narrow the range of associations, check deliberation, and, by isolating one idea or system of ideas, prepares us to act in accordance with them without regard to the demands of other ideas in the wider but now suppressed context of our experience. The isolation of one group of ideas implies the suppression of other groups which are inconsistent with them or hinder the indicated action. When the fundamental instinct-emotions are aroused, they invariably have the effect of isolating the ideas with which they are associated and of inhibiting the contrary emotions. This is the explanation of war. When the fighting instincts are stirred, men lose the fear of death and the horror of killing. When an idea, particularly one that is associated with some original tendency of human nature, is thus isolated in consciousness, the tendency is to respond to it automatically, just as one would respond to a simple reflex. This explains the phenomena of suggestion. A state of suggestibility is always a pre-condition of suggestion, and suggestibility means just such an isolation and dissociation of the suggested idea as has been described. Hypnotic trance may be defined as a condition of abnormal suggestibility, in which the subject tends to carry out automatically the commands of the experimenter, "as if," as the familiar phrase puts it, "he had no will of his own," or rather, as if the will of the experimenter had been substituted for that of the subject. In fact the phenomena of auto-suggestion, in which one obeys his own suggestion, seems to differ from other forms of the same phenomena only in the fact that the subject obeys his own commands instead of those of the experimenter. Not only suggestion and auto-suggestion, but imitation, which is nothing more than another form of suggestion, are made possible by the existence of mental mechanisms created by dissociation. Hypnotism represents an extreme but temporary form of dissociation of the memories, artificially produced. Fascination and abstraction (absent-mindedness) are milder forms of the same phenomena with this difference, that they occur "in nature" and without artificial stimulation. A more permanent dissociation is represented in moods. The memories which connect themselves with moods are invariably such as will support the dominant emotion. At the same time memories which tend in any way to modify the prevailing tone of the mood are spontaneously suppressed. It is a familiar fact that persons whose occupations or whose mode of life brings them habitually into different worlds, so that the experiences in one have little or nothing in common with those of the other, inevitably develop something akin to a dual personality. The business man, for example, is one person in the city and another at his home in the suburbs. The most striking and instructive instances of dissociation, however, are the cases of dual or multiple personality in which the same individual lives successively or simultaneously two separate lives, each of which is wholly oblivious of the other. The classic instance of this kind is the case of the Rev. Ansel Bourne reported by William James in his _Principles of Psychology_. Ansel Bourne was an itinerant preacher living at Greene, Rhode Island. On January 19, 1887, he drew $551.00 from a bank in Providence and entered a Pawtucket horse car and disappeared. He was advertised as missing, foul play being suspected. On the morning of March 24, at Norristown, Pennsylvania, a man calling himself A. J. Brown awoke in a fright and called on the people of the house to tell him who he was. Later he said he was Ansel Bourne. Nothing was known of him in Norristown except that six weeks before he had rented a small shop, stocked it with stationery, confectionery, and other small articles, and was carrying on a quiet trade "without seeming to anyone unnatural or eccentric." At first it was thought he was insane, but his story was confirmed and he was returned to his home. It was then deemed that he had lost all memory of the period which had elapsed since he boarded the Pawtucket car. What he had done or where he had been between the time he left Providence and arrived in Norristown, no one had the slightest information. In 1890 he was induced by William James to submit to hypnotism in order to see whether in his trance state his "Brown" memories would come back. The experiment was so successful that, as James remarks, "it proved quite impossible to make him, while in hypnosis, remember any of the facts of his normal life." The report continues: He had heard of Ansel Bourne, but "didn't know as he had ever met the man." When confronted with Mrs. Bourne he said that he had "never seen the woman before," etc. On the other hand, he told of his peregrinations during the lost fortnight, and gave all sorts of details about the Norristown episode. The whole thing was prosaic enough; and the Brown-personality seems to be nothing but a rather shrunken, dejected, and amnesic extract of Mr. Bourne himself. He gave no motive for the wandering except that there was "trouble back there" and he "wanted rest." During the trance he looks old, the corners of his mouth are drawn down, his voice is slow and weak, and he sits screening his eyes and trying vainly to remember what lay before and after the two months of the Brown experience. "I'm all hedged in," he says, "I can't get out at either end. I don't know what set me down in that Pawtucket horse-car, and I don't know how I ever left that store or what became of it." His eyes are practically normal, and all his sensibilities (save for tardier response) about the same in hypnosis as in waking. I had hoped by suggestion to run the two personalities into one, and make the memories continuous, but no artifice would avail to accomplish this, and Mr. Bourne's skull today still covers two distinct personal selves. An interesting circumstance with respect to this case and others is that the different personalities, although they inhabit the same body and divide between them the experiences of a single individual, not only regard themselves as distinct and independent persons but they exhibit marked differences in character, temperament, and tastes, and frequently profess for one another a decided antipathy. The contrasts in temperament and character displayed by these split-off personalities are illustrated in the case of Miss Beauchamp, to whose strange and fantastic history Morton Prince has devoted a volume of nearly six hundred pages. In this case, the source of whose morbidity was investigated by means of hypnotism, not less than three distinct personalities in addition to that of the original and real Miss Beauchamp were evolved. Each one of these was distinctly different and decidedly antipathetic to the others. Pierre Janet's patient, Madam B, however, is the classic illustration of this dissociated personality. From the time she was sixteen years of age, Léonie, as she was called, had been so frequently hypnotized and subjected to so much clinical experimentation that a well-organized secondary personality was elaborated, which was designated as Léontine. Léonie was a poor peasant woman, serious, timid, and melancholy. Léontine was gay, noisy, restless, and ironical. Léontine did not recognize that she had any relationship with Léonie, whom she referred to as "that good woman," "the other," who "is not I, she is too stupid." Eventually a third personality, known as Léonore, appeared who did not wish to be mistaken for either that "good but stupid woman" Léonie, nor for the "foolish babbler" Léontine. Of these personalities Léonie possessed only her own memories, Léontine possessed the memories of Léonie and her own, while the memories of Léonore, who was superior to them both, included Madam B's whole life. What is particularly interesting in connection with this phenomenon of multiple personality is the fact that it reveals in a striking way the relation of the subconscious to the conscious. The term subconscious, as it occurs in the literature of psychology, is a word of various meanings. In general, however, we mean by subconscious a region of consciousness in which the dissociated memories, the "suppressed complexes," as they are called, maintain some sort of conscious existence and exercise an indirect though very positive influence upon the ideas in the focus of consciousness, and so upon the behavior of the individual. The subconscious, in short, is the region of the suppressed memories. They are suppressed because they have come into conflict with the dominant complex in consciousness which represents the personality of the individual. "Emotional conflicts" have long been the theme of literary analysis and discussion. In recent years they have become the subject of scientific investigation. In fact a new school of medical psychology with a vast literature has grown up around and out of the investigations of the effects of the suppression of a single instinct--the sexual impulse. A whole class of nervous disorders, what are known as psychoneuroses, are directly attributed by Dr. Sigmund Freud and the psychoanalytic school, as it is called, to these suppressions, many of which consist of memories that go back to the period of early childhood before the sexual instinct had attained the form that it has in adults. The theory of Freud, stated briefly, amounts to this: As a result of emotional conflicts considerable portions of the memories of certain individuals, with the motor impulses connected with them, are thrust into the background of the mind, that is to say, the subconscious. Such suppressed memories, with the connected motor dispositions, he first named "suppressed complexes." Now it is found that these suppressed complexes, which no longer respond to stimulations as they would under normal conditions, may still exercise an indirect influence upon the ideas which are in the focus of consciousness. Under certain conditions they may not get into consciousness at all but manifest themselves, for example, in the form of hysterical tics, twitchings, and muscular convulsions. Under other circumstances the ideas associated with the suppressed complexes tend to have a dominating and controlling place in the life of the individual. All our ideas that have a sentimental setting are of this character. We are all of us a little wild and insane upon certain subjects or in regard to certain persons or objects. In such cases a very trivial remark or even a gesture will fire one of these loaded ideas. The result is an emotional explosion, a sudden burst of weeping, a gust of violent, angry, and irrelevant emotion, or, in case the feelings are more under control, merely a bitter remark or a chilling and ironical laugh. It is an interesting fact that a jest may serve as well to give expression to the "feelings" as an expletive or any other emotional expression. All forms of fanaticism, fixed ideas, phobias, ideals, and cherished illusions may be explained as the effects of mental mechanisms created by the suppressed complexes. From what has been said we are not to assume that there is any necessary and inevitable conflict among ideas. In our dreams and day-dreams, as in fairyland, our memories come and go in the most disorderly and fantastic way, so that we may seem to be in two places at the same time, or we may even be two persons, ourselves and someone else. Everything trips lightly along, in a fantastic pageant without rhyme or reason. We discover something of the same freedom when we sit down to speculate about any subject. All sorts of ideas present themselves; we entertain them for a moment, then dismiss them and turn our attention to some other mental picture which suits our purpose better. At such times we do not observe any particular conflict between one set of ideas and another. The lion and the lamb lie down peacefully together, and even if the lamb happens to be inside we are not particularly disturbed. Conflict arises between memories when our personal interests are affected, when our sentiments are touched, when some favorite opinion is challenged. Conflict arises between our memories when they are connected with some of our motor dispositions, that is to say, when we begin to act. Memories which are suppressed as a result of emotional conflicts, memories associated with established motor dispositions, inevitably tend to find some sort of direct or symbolic expression. In this way they give rise to the symptoms which we meet in hysteria and psychasthenia--fears, phobias, obsessions, and tics, like stammering. The suppressed complexes do not manifest themselves in the pathological forms only, but neither do the activities of the normal complexes give any clear and unequivocal evidence of themselves in ordinary consciousness. We are invariably moved to act by motives of which we are only partially conscious or wholly unaware. Not only is this true, but the accounts we give to ourselves and others of the motives upon which we acted are often wholly fictitious, although they may be given in perfect good faith. A simple illustration will serve, however, to indicate how this can be effected. In what is called post-hypnotic suggestion we have an illustration of the manner in which the waking mind may be influenced by impulses of whose origin and significance the subject is wholly unaware. In a state of hypnotic slumber the suggestion is given that after awaking the subject will, upon a certain signal, rise and open the window or turn out the light. He is accordingly awakened and, at the signal agreed upon while he was in the hypnotic slumber but of which he is now wholly unconscious, he will immediately carry out the command as previously given. If the subject is then asked why he opened the window or turned out the light, he will, in evident good faith, make some ordinary explanation, as that "it seemed too hot in the room," or that he "thought the light in the room was disagreeable." In some cases, when the command given seems too absurd, the subject may not carry it out, but he will then show signs of restlessness and discomfort, just for instance as one feels when he is conscious that he has left something undone which he intended to do, although he can no longer recall what it was. Sometimes when the subject is not disposed to carry out the command actually given, he will perform some other related act as a substitute, just as persons who have an uneasy conscience, while still unwilling to make restitution or right the wrong which they have committed, will perform some other act by way of expiation. Our moral sentiments and social attitudes are very largely fixed and determined by our past experiences of which we are only vaguely conscious. "This same principle," as Morton Prince suggests, "underlies what is called the 'social conscience,' the 'civic' and 'national conscience,' 'patriotism,' 'public opinion,' what the Germans call 'Sittlichkeit,' the war attitude of mind, etc. All these mental attitudes may be reduced to common habits of thought and conduct derived from mental experiences common to a given community and conserved as complexes in the unconscious of the several individuals of the community." Sentiments were first defined and distinguished from the emotions by Shand, who conceived of them as organizations of the emotions about some particular object or type of object. Maternal love, for example, includes the emotions of fear, anger, joy, or sorrow, all organized about the child. This maternal love is made up of innate tendencies but is not itself a part of original nature. It is the mother's fostering care of the child which develops her sentiments toward it, and the sentiment attaches to any object that is bound up with the life of the child. The cradle is dear to the mother because it is connected with her occupation in caring for the child. The material fears for its welfare, her joy in its achievements, her anger with those who injure or even disparage it, are all part of the maternal sentiment. The mother's sentiment determines her attitude toward her child, toward other children, and toward children in general. Just as back of every sensation, perception, or idea there is some sort of motor disposition, so our attitudes are supported by our sentiments. Back of every political opinion there is a political sentiment and it is the sentiment which gives force and meaning to the opinion. Thus we may think of opinions merely as representative of a psycho-physical mechanism, which we may call the sentiment-attitude. These sentiment-attitudes are to be regarded in turn as organizations of the original tendencies, the instinct-emotions, about some memory, idea, or object which is, or once was, the focus and the end for which the original tendencies thus organized exist. In this way opinions turn out, in the long run, to rest on original nature, albeit original nature modified by experience and tradition. C. THE FOUR WISHES: A CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIAL FORCES 1. The Wish, the Social Atom[166] The Freudian psychology is based on the doctrine of the "wish," just as physical science is based, today, on the concept of function. Both of these are what may be called dynamic concepts, rather than static; they envisage natural phenomena not as things but as processes and largely to this fact is due their pre-eminent explanatory value. Through the "wish" the "thing" aspect of mental phenomena, the more substantive "content of consciousness," becomes somewhat modified and reinterpreted. This "wish," which as a concept Freud does not analyze, includes all that would commonly be so classed, and also whatever would be called impulse, tendency, desire, purpose, attitude, and the like, not including, however, any emotional components thereof. Freud also acknowledges the existence of what he calls "negative wishes," and these are not fears but negative purposes. An exact definition of the "wish" is that it is _a course of action_ which some mechanism of the body is _set_ to carry out, whether it actually does so or does not. All emotions, as well as the feelings of pleasure and displeasure, are separable from the "wishes," and this precludes any thought of a merely hedonistic psychology. The wish is any purpose of project for _a course of action_, whether it is being merely entertained by the mind or is being actually executed--a distinction which is really of little importance. We shall do well if we consider this to be, as in fact it is, dependent on a _motor attitude_ of the physical body, which goes over into overt action and _conduct_ when the wish is carried into execution. It is this "wish" which transforms the principal doctrines of psychology and recasts the science, much as the "atomic theory" and later the "ionic theory" have reshaped earlier conceptions of chemistry. This so-called "wish" becomes the unit of psychology, replacing the older unit commonly called "sensation," which latter, it is to be noted, was a _content_ of consciousness unit, whereas the "wish" is a more dynamic affair. Unquestionably the mind is somehow "embodied" in the body. But how? Well, if the unit of mind and character is a "wish," it is easy enough to perceive how it is incorporated. It is, this "wish," something which the body as a piece of mechanism can do--a course of action with regard to the environment which the machinery of the body is capable of carrying out. This capacity resides clearly in the parts of which the body consists and in the way in which these are put together, not so much in the matter of which the body is composed, as in the forms which this matter assumes when organized. In order to look at this more closely we must go a bit down the evolutionary series to the fields of biology and physiology. Here we find much talk of nerves and muscles, sense-organs, reflex arcs, stimulation, and muscular response, and we feel that somehow these things do not reach the core of the matter, and that they never can; that spirit is not nerve or muscle; and that intelligent conduct, to say nothing of conscious thought, can never be reduced to reflex arcs and the like--just as a printing press is not merely wheels and rollers, and still less is it chunks of iron. The biologist has only himself to thank if he has overlooked a thing which lay directly under his nose. He has overlooked the _form of organization_ of these his reflex arcs, has left out of account that step which assembles wheels and rollers into a printing press, and that which organizes reflex arcs, as we shall presently see, into an intelligent, conscious creature. Evolution took this important little step of organization ages ago, and thereby produced the rudimentary "wish." Now in the reflex arc a sense-organ is stimulated and the energy of stimulation is transformed into nervous energy, which then passes along an afferent nerve to the central nervous system, passes through this and out by an efferent or motor nerve to a muscle, where the energy is again transformed and the muscle contracts. Stimulation at one point of the animal organism produces contraction at another. The principles of irritability and of motility are involved, but all further study of _this_ process will lead us only to the physics and chemistry of the energy transformations--will lead us, that is, in the direction of _analysis_. If, however, we inquire in what way such reflexes are combined or "integrated" into more complicated processes, we shall be led in exactly the opposite direction, that of _synthesis_, and here we soon come, as is not surprising, to a synthetic novelty. This is _specific response_ or _behavior_. In this single reflex something is done to a sense-organ and the process within the organ is comparable to the process in any unstable substance when the foreign energy strikes it; it is strictly a chemical process, and so for the conducting nerve, likewise for the contracting muscle. It happens, as a physiological fact, that in this process stored energy is released so that a reflex contraction is literally comparable to the firing of a pistol. But the reflex arc is not "aware" of anything, and indeed there is nothing more to say about the process unless we should begin to analyze it. But even two such processes going on together in one organism are a very different matter. Two such processes require two sense-organs, two conduction paths, and two muscles; and since we are considering the result of the two in combination, the relative anatomical location of these six members is of importance. For simplicity I will take a hypothetical but strictly possible case. A small water animal has an eyespot located on each side of its anterior end; each spot is connected by a nerve with a vibratory silium or fin on the side of the posterior end; the thrust exerted by each fin is toward the rear. If, now, light strikes one eye, say the right, the left fin is set in motion and the animal's body is set rotating toward the right like a rowboat with one oar. This is all that one such reflex arc could do for the animal. Since, however, there are now two, when the animal comes to be turned far enough toward the right so that some of the light strikes the second eyespot (as will happen when the animal comes around facing the light), the second fin, on the right side, is set in motion, and the two together propel the animal forward in a straight line. The direction of this line will be that in which the animal lies when its two eyes receive equal amounts of light. In other words, by the combined operation of two reflexes the animal swims _toward the light_, while either reflex alone would only have set it spinning like a top. It now responds specifically in the direction of the light, whereas before it merely spun when lashed. Suppose, now, that it possess a _third_ reflex arc--a "heat spot" so connected with the same or other fins that when stimulated by a certain intensity of heat it initiates a nervous impulse which stops the forward propulsion. The animal is still "lashed," but nevertheless no light can force it to swim "blindly to its death" by scalding. It has the rudiments of "intelligence." But so it had before. For as soon as two reflex arcs capacitate it mechanically to swim _toward light_, it was no longer exactly like a pinwheel; it could respond specifically toward at least one thing in its environment. It is this objective reference of a process of release that is significant. The mere reflex does not refer to anything beyond itself; if it drives an organism in a certain direction, it is only as a rocket ignited at random shoots off in some direction, depending on how it happened to lie. But specific response is not merely in some random direction, it is _toward an object_, and if this object is moved, the responding organism changes its direction and still moves after it. And the objective reference is that the organism is _moving with reference to some object or fact of the environment_. For the organism, while a very interesting mechanism in itself, is one whose movements turn on objects outside of itself, much as the orbit of the earth turns upon the sun; and these external, and sometimes very distant, objects are as much _constituents_ of the behavior process as is the organism which does the turning. It is this _pivotal outer object_, the object of specific response, which seems to me to have been overneglected. It is not surprising, then, that in animals as highly organized reflexly as are many of the invertebrates, even though they should possess no other principle of action than that of specific response, the various life-activities should present an appearance of considerable intelligence. And I believe that in fact this intelligence is solely the product of accumulated specific responses. Our present point is that the specific response and the "wish" as Freud uses the term, are one and the same thing. 2. The Freudian Wish[167] "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride" is a nursery saw which, in the light of recent developments in psychology, has come to have a much more universal application than it was formerly supposed to have. If the followers of the Freudian school of psychologists can be believed--and there are many reasons for believing them--all of us, no matter how apparently contented we are and how well we are supplied with the good things of the earth, are "beggars," because at one time or another and in one way or another we are daily betraying the presence of unfulfilled wishes. Many of these wishes are of such a character that we ourselves cannot put them into words. Indeed, if they were put into words for us, we should straightway deny that such a wish is or was ever harbored by us in our waking moments. But the stretch of time indicated by "waking moments" is only a minor part of the twenty-four hours. Even during the time we are not asleep we are often abstracted, day-dreaming, letting moments go by in reverie. Only during a limited part of our waking moments are we keenly and alertly "all there" in the possession of our faculties. There are thus, even apart from sleep, many unguarded moments when these so-called "repressed wishes" may show themselves. In waking moments we wish only for the conventional things which will not run counter to our social traditions or code of living. But these open and above-board wishes are not very interesting to the psychologist. Since they are harmless and call for the kinds of things that everybody in our circle wishes for, we do not mind admitting them and talking about them. Open and uncensored wishes are best seen in children (though children at an early age begin to show repressions). Only tonight I heard a little girl of nine say: "I wish I were a boy and were sixteen years old--I'd marry Ann" (her nine-year old companion). And recently I heard a boy of eight say to his father: "I wish you would go away forever; then I could marry mother." The spontaneous and uncensored wishes of children gradually disappear as the children take on the speech conventions of the adult. But even though the crassness of the form of expression of the wish disappears with age, there is no reason to suppose that the human organism ever gets to the point where wishes just as unconventional as the above do not rise to trouble it. Such wishes, though, are immediately repressed; we never harbor them nor do we express them clearly to ourselves in our waking moments. The steps by which repression takes place in the simpler cases are not especially difficult to understand. When the child wants something it ought not to have, its mother hands it something else and moves the object about until the child reaches out for it. When the adult strives for something which society denies him, his environment offers him, if he is normal, something which is "almost as good," although it may not wholly take the place of the thing he originally strove for. This in general is the process of substitution or sublimation. It is never complete from the first moment of childhood. Consequently it is natural to suppose that many of the things which have been denied us should at times beckon to us. But since they are banned they must beckon in devious ways. These sometime grim specters both of the present and of the past cannot break through the barriers of our staid and sober waking moments, so they exhibit themselves, at least to the initiated, in shadowy form in reverie, and in more substantial form in the slips we make in conversation and in writing, and in the things we laugh at; but clearest of all in dreams. I say the meaning is clear to the initiated because it does require special training and experience to analyze these seemingly nonsensical slips of tongue and pen, these highly elaborated and apparently meaningless dreams, into the wishes (instinct and habit impulses) which gave them birth. It is fortunate for us that we are protected in this way from having to face openly many of our own wishes and the wishes of our friends. We get our clue to the dream as being a wish fulfilment by taking the dreams of children. Their dreams are as uncensored as is their conversation. Before Christmas my own children dreamed nightly that they had received the things they wanted for Christmas. The dreams were clear, logical, and open wishes. Why should the dreams of adults be less logical and less open unless they are to act as concealers of the wish? If the dream processes in the child run in an orderly and logical way, would it indeed not be curious to find the dream processes of the adult less logical and full of meaning? This argument gives us good a priori grounds for supposing that the dreams of adults too are full of meaning and are logical; that there is a wish in every dream and that the wish is fulfilled in the dream. The reason dreams appear illogical is due to the fact that if the wish were to be expressed in its logical form it would not square with our everyday habits of thought and action. We should be disinclined to admit even to ourselves that we have such dreams. Immediately upon waking only so much of the dream is remembered, that is, put into ordinary speech, as will square with our life at the time. The dream is "censored," in other words. The question immediately arises, who is the censor or what part of us does the censoring? The Freudians have made more or less of a "metaphysical entity" out of the censor. They suppose that when wishes are repressed, they are repressed into the "unconscious," and that this mysterious censor stands at the trapdoor lying between the conscious and the unconscious. Many of us do not believe in a world of the unconscious (a few of us even have grave doubts about the usefulness of the term consciousness), hence we try to explain censorship along ordinary biological lines. We believe that one group of habits can "down" another group of habits--or instincts. In this case our ordinary system of habits--those which we call expressive of our "real selves"--inhibit or quench (keep inactive or partially inactive) those habits and instinctive tendencies which belong largely in the past. This conception of the dream as having both censored and uncensored features has led us to divide the dream into its specious or manifest content (face value, which is usually nonsensical) and its latent or logical content. We should say that while the manifest content of the dream is nonsensical, its true or latent content is usually logical and expressive of some wish that has been suppressed in the waking state. On examination the manifest content of dreams is found to be full of symbols. As long as the dream does not have to be put into customary language, it is allowed to stand as it is dreamed--the symbolic features are uncensored. Symbolism is much more common than is ordinarily supposed. All early language was symbolic. The language of children and of savages abounds in symbolism. Symbolic modes of expression both in art and in literature are among the earliest forms of treating difficult situations in delicate and inoffensive ways. In other words, symbols in art are a necessity and serve the same purpose as does the censor in the dreams. Even those of us who have not an artistic education, however, have become familiar with the commoner forms of symbolism through our acquaintance with literature. In the dream, when the more finely controlled physiological processes are in abeyance, there is a tendency to revert to the symbolic modes of expression. This has its use, because on awaking the dream does not shock us, since we make no attempt to analyze or trace back in the dream the symbol's original meaning. Hence we find that the manifest content is often filled with symbols which occasionally give us the clue to the dream analysis. The dream then brings surcease from our maladjustments: If we are denied power, influence, or love by society or by individuals, we can obtain these desiderata in our dreams. We can possess in dreams the things which we cannot have by day. In sleep the poor man becomes a Midas, the ugly woman handsome, the childless woman surrounded by children, and those who in daily life live upon a crust in their dreams dine like princes (after living upon canned goods for two months in the Dry Tortugas, the burden of my every dream was food). Where the wished-for things are compatible with our daily code, they are remembered on awaking as they were dreamed. Society, however, will not allow the unmarried woman to have children, however keen her desire for them. Hence her dreams in which the wish is gratified are remembered in meaningless words and symbols. Long before the time Freud's doctrine saw the light of day, William James gave the key to what I believed to be the true explanation of the wish. Thirty years ago he wrote: I am often confronted by the necessity of standing by one of my selves and relinquishing the rest. Not that I would not, if I could, be both handsome and fat and well dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million a year, be a wit, a _bon vivant_, and a lady-killer, as well as a philosopher, a philanthropist, a statesman, a warrior, and African explorer, as well as a "tone-poet" and a saint. But the thing is simply impossible. The millionaire's work would run counter to the saint's; the _bon vivant_ and the philanthropist would trip each other up; the philosopher and the lady-killer could not well keep house in the same tenement of clay. Such different characters may conceivably at the outset of life be alike possible to a man. But to make any one of them actual, the rest must more or less be suppressed. What James is particularly emphasizing here is that the human organism is instinctively capable of developing along many different lines, but that due to the stress of civilization some of these instinctive capacities must be thwarted. In addition to these impulses which are instinctive, and therefore hereditary, there are many habit impulses which are equally strong and which for similar reasons must be given up. The systems of habits we form (i.e., the acts we learn to perform) at four years of age will not serve us when we are twelve, and those formed at the age of twelve will not serve us when we become adults. As we pass from childhood to man's estate, we are constantly having to give up thousands of activities which our nervous and muscular systems have a tendency to perform. Some of these instinctive tendencies born with use are poor heritages; some of the habits we early develop are equally poor possessions. But, whether they are "good" or "bad," they must give way as we put on the habits required of adults. Some of them yield with difficulty and we often get badly twisted in attempting to put them away, as every psychiatric clinic can testify. It is among these frustrated impulses that I would find the biological basis of the unfulfilled wish. Such "wishes" need never have been "conscious" and _need never have been suppressed into Freud's realm of the unconscious_. It may be inferred from this that there is no particular reason for applying the term "wish" to such tendencies. What we discover then in dreams and in conversational slips and other lapses are really at heart "reaction tendencies"--tendencies which we need never have faced nor put into words at any time. On Freud's theory these "wishes" have at one time been faced and put into words by the individual, and when faced they were recognized as not squaring with his ethical code. They were then immediately "repressed into the unconscious." A few illustrations may help in understanding how thwarted tendencies may lay the basis for the so-called unfulfilled wish which later appears in the dream. One individual becomes a psychologist in spite of his strong interest in becoming a medical man, because at the time it was easier for him to get the training along psychological lines. Another pursues a business career, when, if he had had his choice, he would have become a writer of plays. Sometimes on account of the care of a mother or of younger brothers and sisters, a young man cannot marry, even though the mating instinct is normal; such a course of action necessarily leaves unfulfilled wishes and frustrated impulses in its train. Again a young man will marry and settle down when mature consideration would show that his career would advance much more rapidly if he were not burdened with a family. Again, an individual marries and without even admitting to himself that his marriage is a failure he gradually shuts himself off from any emotional expression--protects himself from the married state by sublimating his natural domestic ties, usually in some kind of engrossing work, but often in questionable ways--by hobbies, speed manias, and excesses of various kinds. In connection with this it is interesting to note that the automobile, quite apart from its utilitarian value, is coming to be a widely used means of repression or wish sublimation. I have been struck by the enormously increasing number of women drivers. Women in the present state of society have not the same access to absorbing kinds of works that men have (which will shortly come to be realized as a crime far worse than that of the Inquisition). Hence their chances of normal sublimation are limited. For this reason women seek an outlet by rushing to the war as nurses, in becoming social workers, pursuing aviation, etc. Now if I am right in this analysis these unexercised tendencies to do things other than we are doing are never quite got rid of. We cannot get rid of them unless we could build ourselves over again so that our organic machinery would work only along certain lines and only for certain occupations. Since we cannot completely live these tendencies down, we are all more or less "unadjusted" and ill adapted. These maladjustments are exhibited whenever the brakes are off, that is, whenever our higher and well-developed habits of speech and action are dormant, as in sleep, in emotional disturbances, etc. Many but not all of these "wishes" can be traced to early childhood or to adolescence, which is a time of stress and strain and a period of great excitement. In childhood the boy often puts himself in his father's place; he wishes that he were grown like his father and could take his father's place, for then his mother would notice him more and he would not have to feel the weight of authority. The girl likewise often becomes closely attached to her father and wishes her mother would die (which in childhood means to disappear or go away) so that she could be all in all to her father. These wishes, from the standpoint of popular morality, are perfectly innocent; but as the children grow older they are told that such wishes are wrong and that they should not speak in such a "dreadful" way. Such wishes are, then, gradually suppressed--replaced by some other mode of expression. But the replacement is often imperfect. The apostle's saying, "When we become men we put away childish things" was written before the days of psychoanalysis. 3. The Person and His Wishes[168] The human being has a great variety of "wishes," ranging from the desire to have food to the wish to serve humanity. Anything capable of being appreciated (wished for) is a "value." Food, money, a poem, a political doctrine, a religious creed, a member of the other sex, etc., are values. There are also negative values--things which exist but which the individual does not want, which he may even despise. Liquor or the Yiddish language may be a positive value for one person and a negative value for another. The state of mind of the individual toward a value is an "attitude." Love of money, desire for fame, appreciation of a given poem, reverence for God, hatred of the Jew, are attitudes. We divide wishes into four classes: (1) the desire for new experience; (2) the desire for security; (3) the desire for recognition; (4) the desire for response. 1. The desire for new experience is seen in simple forms in the prowling and meddling activities of the child, and the love of adventure and travel in the boy and the man. It ranges in moral quality from the pursuit of game and the pursuit of pleasure to the pursuit of knowledge and the pursuit of ideals. It is found equally in the vagabond and the scientific explorer. Novels, theaters, motion pictures, etc., are means of satisfying this desire vicariously, and their popularity is a sign of the elemental force of this desire. In its pure form the desire for new experience implies motion, change, danger, instability, social irresponsibility. The individual dominated by it shows a tendency to disregard prevailing standards and group interests. He may be a complete failure, on account of his instability; or a conspicuous success, if he converts his experiences into social values--puts them in the form of a poem, makes of them a contribution to science, etc. 2. The desire for security is opposed to the desire for new experience. It implies avoidance of danger and death, caution, conservatism. Incorporation in an organization (family, community, state) provides the greatest security. In certain animal societies (e.g., the ants) the organization and co-operation are very rigid. Similarly among the peasants of Europe, represented by our immigrant groups, all lines of behavior are predetermined for the individual by tradition. In such a group the individual is secure as long as the group organization is secure, but evidently he shows little originality or creativeness. 3. The desire for recognition expresses itself in devices for securing distinction in the eyes of the public. A list of the different modes of seeking recognition would be very long. It would include courageous behavior, showing off through ornament and dress, the pomp of kings, the display of opinions and knowledge, the possession of special attainments--in the arts, for example. It is expressed alike in arrogance and in humility, even in martyrdom. Certain modes of seeking recognition we define as "vanity," others as "ambition." The "will to power" belongs here. Perhaps there has been no spur to human activity so keen and no motive so naïvely avowed as the desire for "undying fame," and it would be difficult to estimate the rôle the desire for recognition has played in the creation of social values. 4. The desire for response is a craving, not for the recognition of the public at large, but for the more intimate appreciation of individuals. It is exemplified in mother-love (touch plays an important rôle in this connection), in romantic love, family affection, and other personal attachments. Homesickness and loneliness are expressions of it. Many of the devices for securing recognition are used also in securing response. Apparently these four classes comprehend all the positive wishes. Such attitudes as anger, fear, hate, and prejudice are attitudes toward those objects which may frustrate a wish. Our hopes, fears, inspirations, joys, sorrows are bound up with these wishes and issue from them. There is, of course, a kaleidoscopic mingling of wishes throughout life, and a single given act may contain a plurality of them. Thus when a peasant emigrates to America he may expect to have a good time and learn many things (new experience), to make a fortune (greater security), to have a higher social standing on his return (recognition), and to induce a certain person to marry him (response). The "character" of the individual is determined by the nature of the organization of his wishes. The dominance of any one of the four types of wishes is the basis of our ordinary judgment of his character. Our appreciation (positive or negative) of the character of the individual is based on his display of certain wishes as against others, and on his modes of seeking their realization. The individual's attitude toward the totality of his attitudes constitutes his conscious "personality." The conscious personality represents the conception of self, the individual's appreciation of his own character. III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS Literature on the concept of social forces falls under four heads: (1) popular notions of social forces; (2) social forces and history; (3) interests, sentiments, and attitudes as social forces; and (4) wishes as social forces. 1. Popular Notions of Social Forces The term "social forces" first gained currency in America with the rise of the "reformers," so called, and with the growth of popular interest in the problems of city life; that is, labor and capital, municipal reform and social welfare, problems of social politics. In the rural community the individual had counted; in the city he is likely to be lost. It was this declining weight of the individual in the life of great cities, as compared with that of impersonal social organizations, the parties, the unions, and the clubs, that first suggested, perhaps, the propriety of the term social forces. In 1897 Washington Gladden published a volume entitled _Social Facts and Forces: the Factory, the Labor Union, the Corporation, the Railway, the City, the Church_. The term soon gained wide currency and general acceptance. At the twenty-eighth annual National Conference of Charities and Correction, at Washington, D.C., Mary E. Richmond read a paper upon "Charitable Co-operation" in which she presented a diagram and a classification of the social forces of the community from the point of view of the social worker[169] given on page 492. Beginning in October, 1906, there appeared for several years in the journal of social workers, _Charities and Commons_, now _The Survey_, editorial essays upon social, industrial, and civic questions under the heading "Social Forces." In the first article E. T. Devine made the following statement: "In this column the editor intends to have his say from month to month about the persons, books, and events which have significance as social forces.... Not all the social forces are obviously forces of good, although they are all under the ultimate control of a power which makes for righteousness." [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF FORCES WITH WHICH THE CHARITY WORKER MAY CO-OPERATE A. Family Forces B. Personal Forces C. Neighborhood Forces D. Civic Forces E. Private Charitable Forces F. Public Relief Forces A.--_Family Forces._ Capacity of each member for Affection Training Endeavor Social development. B.--_Personal Forces._ Kindred. Friends. C.--_Neighborhood Forces._ Neighbors, landlords, tradesmen. Former and present employers. Clergymen, Sunday-school teachers, fellow church members. Doctors. Trade-unions, fraternal and benefit societies, social clubs, fellow-workmen. Libraries, educational clubs, classes, settlements, etc. Thrift agencies, savings-banks, stamp-savings, building and loan associations. D.--_Civic Forces._ School-teachers, truant officers. Police, police magistrates, probation officers, reformatories. Health department, sanitary inspectors, factory inspectors. Postmen. Parks, baths, etc. E.--_Private Charitable Forces._ Charity organization society. Church of denomination to which family belongs. Benevolent individuals. National, special, and general relief societies. Charitable employment agencies and work-rooms. Fresh-air society, children's aid society, society for protection of children, children's homes, etc. District nurses, sick-diet kitchens, dispensaries, hospitals, etc. Society for suppression of vice, prisoner's aid society, etc. F.--_Public Relief Forces._ Almshouses. Outdoor poor department. Public hospitals and dispensaries.] Ten years later a group of members in the National Conference of Social Work formed a division under the title "The Organization of the Social Forces of the Community." The term community, in connection with that of social forces, suggests that every community may be conceived as a definite constellation of social forces. In this form the notion has been fruitful in suggesting a more abstract, intelligible, and, at the same time, sounder conception of the community life. Most of the social surveys made in recent years are based upon this conception of the community as a complex of social forces embodied in institutions and organizations. It is the specific task of every community survey to reveal the community in its separated and often isolated organs. The references to the literature on the community surveys at the conclusion of chapter iii, "Society and the Group,"[170] will be of service in a further study of the application of the concept of social forces to the study of the community. 2. Social Forces and History Historians, particularly in recent years, have frequently used the expression "social forces" although they have nowhere defined it. Kuno Francke, in the Preface of his book entitled _A History of German Literature as Determined by Social Forces_, states that it "is an honest attempt to analyze the social, religious, and moral forces which determined the growth of German literature as a whole." Taine in the Preface to _The Ancient Régime_ says: "Without taking any side, curiosity becomes scientific and centres on the secret forces which direct the wonderful process. These forces consist of the situations, the passions, the ideas, and the wills of each group of actors, and which can be defined and almost measured."[171] It is in the writings of historians, like Taine in France, Buckle in England, and Karl Lamprecht in Germany, who started out with the deliberate intention of writing history as if it were natural history, that we find the first serious attempts to use the concept of social forces in historical analysis. Writers of this school are quite as much interested in the historical process as they are in historical fact, and there is a constant striving to treat the individual as representative of the class, and to define historical tendencies in general and abstract terms. But history conceived in those terms tends to become sociology. "History," says Lamprecht, "is a _socio-psychological science_. In the conflict between the old and the new tendencies in historical investigation, the main question has to do with social-psychic, as compared and contrasted with individual-psychic factors; or to speak somewhat generally, the understanding on the one hand of conditions, on the other of heroes, as the motive powers in the course of history."[172] It was Carlyle--whose conception of history is farthest removed from that of Lamprecht--who said, "Universal history is at bottom the history of great men." The criticism of history by historians and the attempts, never quite successful, to make history positive furnish further interesting comment on this topic.[173] 3. Interest, Sentiments, and Attitudes as Social Forces More had been written, first and last, about human motives than any other aspect of human life. Only in very recent years, however, have psychologists and social psychologists had either a point of view or methods of investigation which enabled them to analyze and explain the facts. The tendency of the older introspective psychology was to refer in general terms to the motor tendencies and the will, but in the analysis of sensation and the intellectual processes, will disappeared. The literature on this subject covers all that has been written by the students of animal behavior and instinct, Lloyd Morgan, Thorndike, Watson, and Loeb. It includes the interesting studies of human behavior by Bechterew, Pavlow, and the so-called objective school of psychology in Russia. It should include likewise writers like Graham Wallas in England, Carleton Parker and Ordway Tead in America, who are seeking to apply the new science of human nature to the problems of society.[174] Every social science has been based upon some theory, implicit or explicit, of human motives. Economics, political science, and ethics, before any systematic attempt had been made to study the matter empirically, had formulated theories of human nature to justify their presuppositions and procedures. In classical political economy the single motive of human action was embodied in the abstraction "the economic man." The utilitarian school of ethics reduced all human motives to self-interest. Disinterested conduct was explained as enlightened self-interest. This theory was criticized as reducing the person to "an intellectual calculating machine." The theory of evolution suggested to Herbert Spencer a new interpretation of human motives which reasserted their individualistic origin, but explained altruistic sentiments as the slowly accumulated products of evolution. Altruism to Spencer was the enlightened self-interest of the race. It was the English economists of the eighteenth century who gave us the first systematic account of modern society in deterministic terms. The conception of society implicit in Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_ reflects at once the temper of the English people and of the age in which he lived.[175] The eighteenth century was the age of individualism, laissez faire and freedom. Everything was in process of emancipation except woman. The attention of economists at this time was directed to that region of social life in which the behavior of the individual is most individualistic and least controlled, namely, the market place. The economic man, as the classical economists conceived him, is more completely embodied in the trader in the auction pit, than in any other figure in any other situation in society. And the trader in that position performs a very important social function.[176] There are, however, other social situations which have created other social types, and the sociologists have, from the very first, directed their attention to a very different aspect of social life, namely, its unity and solidarity. Comte conceived humanity in terms of the family, and most sociologists have been disposed to take the family as representative of the type of relations they are willing to call social. Not the auction pit but the family has been the basis of the sociological conception of society. Not competition but control has been the central fact and problem of sociology. Socialization, when that word is used as a term of appreciation rather than of description, sets up as the goal of social effort a world in which conflict, competition, and the externality of individuals, if they do not disappear altogether, will be so diminished that all men may live together as members of one family. This, also, is the goal of progress according to our present major prophet, H. G. Wells.[177] It is intelligible, therefore, that sociologists should conceive of social forces in other terms than self-interest. If there had been no other human motives than those attributed to the economic man there would have been economics but no sociology, at least in the sense in which we conceive it today. In the writings of Ratzenhofer and Small human interests are postulated as both the unconscious motives and the conscious ends of behavior. Small's classification of interests--health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, rightness--has secured general acceptance. "Sentiment" was used by French writers, Ribot, Binet, and others, as a general term for the entire field of affective life. A. F. Shand in two articles in _Mind_, "Character and the Emotions" and "Ribot's Theory of the Passions," has made a distinct contribution by distinguishing the sentiments from the emotions. Shand pointed out that the sentiment, as a product of social experience, is an organization of emotions around the idea of an object. McDougall in his _Social Psychology_ adopted Shand's definition and described the organization of typical sentiments, as love and hate. Thomas was the first to make fruitful use of the term attitude, which he defined as a "tendency to act." Incidentally he points out that attitudes are social, that is, the product of interaction. 4. Wishes and Social Forces Ward had stated that "The social forces are wants seeking satisfaction through efforts, and are thus social motives or motors inspiring activities which either create social structures through social synergy or modify the structures already created through innovation and conation."[178] Elsewhere Ward says that "desire is the only motive to action."[179] The psychoanalytic school of psychiatrists have attempted to reduce all motives to one--the wish, or _libido_. Freud conceived that sex appetite and memories connected with it were the unconscious sources of some if not all of the significant forms of human behavior. Freud's interpretation of sex, however, seemed to include the whole field of desires that have their origin in touch stimulations. To Jung the _libido_ is vital energy motivating the life-adjustments of the person. Adler from his study of organic inferiority interpreted the _libido_ as the wish for completeness or perfection. Curiously enough, these critics of Freud, while not accepting his interpretation of the unconscious wish, still seek to reduce all motives to a single unit. To explain all behavior by one formula, however, is to explain nothing. On the other hand, interpretation by a multitude of unrelated conscious desires in the fashion of the older sociological literature is no great advance beyond the findings of common sense. The distinctive value of the definition, and classification, of Thomas lies in the fact that it reduces the multitude of desires to four. These four wishes, however, determine the simplest as well as the most complex behavior of persons. The use made of this method in his study of the Polish peasant indicated its possibilities for the analysis of the organization of the life of persons and of social groups. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY I. POPULAR NOTION OF SOCIAL FORCES (1) Patten, Simon N. _The Theory of Social Forces._ Philadelphia, 1896. (2) Gladden, Washington. _Social Facts and Forces._ The factory, the labor union, the corporation, the railway, the city, the church. New York, 1897. (3) Richmond, Mary. "Charitable Co-operation," _Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction_, 1901, pp. 298-313. (Contains "Diagram of Forces with which Charity Worker may Co-operate.") (4) Devine, Edward T. _Social Forces._ From the editor's page of _The Survey_. New York, 1910. (5) Edie, Lionel D., Editor. _Current Social and Industrial Forces._ Introduction by James Harvey Robinson. New York, 1920. (6) Burns, Allen T. "Organization of Community Forces for the Promotion of Social Programs," _Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction_, 1916, pp. 62-78. (7) _Social Forces._ A topical outline with bibliography. Wisconsin Woman's Suffrage Association, Educational Committee. Madison, Wis., 1915. (8) Wells, H. G. _Social Forces in England and America._ London and New York, 1914. II. HISTORICAL TENDENCIES AS SOCIAL FORCES (1) Lamprecht, Karl. _What Is History?_ Five lectures on the modern science of history. Translated from the German by E. A. Andrews. London and New York, 1905. (2) Loria, A. _The Economic Foundations of Society._ Translated from the 2d French ed. by L. M. Keasbey. London and New York, 1899. (3) Beard, Charles A. _An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States._ New York, 1913. (4) Brandes, Georg. _Main Currents in Nineteenth-Century Literature._ 6 vols. London, 1906. (5) Taine, H. A. _The Ancient Régime._ Translated from the French by John Durand. New York, 1891. (6) Buckle, Henry Thomas. _History of Civilization in England._ 2 vols. New York, 1892. (7) Lacombe, Paul. _De l'histoire considérée comme science._ Paris, 1894. (8) Francke, Kuno. _Social Forces in German Literature._ A study in the history of civilization. New York, 1896. (9) Hart, A. B. _Social and Economic Forces in American History._ From _The American Nation, A History_. London and New York, 1904. (10) Turner, Frederick J. _Social Forces in American History, The American Historical Review_, XVI (1910-11), 217-33. (11) Woods, F. A. _The Influence of Monarchs._ Steps in a new science of history. New York, 1913. III. INTERESTS AND WANTS A. _Interests, Desires, and Wants as Defined by the Sociologist_ (1) Ward, Lester F. _Dynamic Sociology, or Applied Social Science._ As based upon statical sociology and the less complex sciences. "The Social Forces," I, 468-699. New York, 1883. (2) ----. _Pure Sociology._ A treatise on the origin and spontaneous development of society. Chap. xii, "Classification of the Social Forces," pp. 256-65. New York, 1903. (3) ----. _The Psychic Factors of Civilization._ Chap. ix, "The Philosophy of Desire," pp. 50-58, chap. xviii, "The Social Forces," pp. 116-24. Boston, 1901. (4) Small, Albion W. _General Sociology._ Chaps. xxvii and xxxi, pp. 372-94; 425-42. Chicago, 1905. (5) Ross, Edward A. _The Principles of Sociology._ Part II, "Social Forces," pp. 41-73. New York, 1920. (6) Blackmar, F. W., and Gillin, J. L. _Outlines of Sociology._ Part III, chap ii, "Social Forces," pp. 283-315. New York, 1915. (7) Hayes, Edward C. "The 'Social Forces' Error," _American Journal of Sociology_, XVI (1910-11), 613-25; 636-44. (8) Fouillée, Alfred. _Education from a National Standpoint._ Translated from the French by W. J. Greenstreet. Chap. i, pp. 10-27. New York, 1892. (9) ----. _Morale des idées-forces._ 2d ed. Paris, 1908. [Book II, Part II, chap. iii, pp. 290-311, describes opinion, custom, law, education from the point of view of "Idea-Forces."] B. _Interests and Wants as Defined by the Economist_ (1) Hermann, F. B. W. v. _Staatswirthschaftliche Untersuchungen._ Chap. ii. München, 1870. [First of the modern attempts to classify wants.] (2) Walker, F. A. _Political Economy._ 3d ed. New York, 1888. [See discussion of competition, pp. 91-111.] (3) Marshall, Alfred. _Principles of Economics._ An introductory volume. Chap. ii, "Wants in Relation to Activities," pp. 86-91. 6th ed. London, 1910. (4) ----. "Some Aspects of Competition," _Journal of the Royal Statistical Society._ Sec. VII, "Modern Analysis of the Motives of Business Competition," LIII (1890), 634-37. [See also Sec. VIII, "Growing Importance of Public Opinion as an Economic Force," pp. 637-41.] (5) Menger, Karl. _Grundsatze der Volkswirthschaftslehre._ Chap. ii, Wien, 1871. (6) ----. _Untersuchungen über die Methode der Socialwissenschaften und der politischen Ökonomie insbesondere._ Chap. vii, "Über das Dogma," etc. Leipzig, 1883. (7) Jevons, W. S. _The Theory of Political Economy._ Chap. ii, "Theory of Pleasure and Pain," pp. 28-36; "The Laws of Human Wants," pp. 39-43. 4th ed. London, 1911. (8) Bentham, Jeremy. "A Table of the Springs of Action." Showing the several species of pleasures and pains of which man's nature is susceptible; together with the several species of _interests_, _desires_ and _motives_ respectively corresponding to them; and the several sets of appellatives, _neutral_, _eulogistic_, and _dyslogistic_, by which each species of _motive_ is wont to be designated. [First published in 1817.] _The Works of Jeremy Bentham_, I, 195-219. London, 1843. C. _Wants and Values_ (1) Kreibig, Josef K. _Psychologische Grundlegung eines Systems der Wert-Theorie._ Wien, 1902. (2) Simmel, Georg. _Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft._ Eine Kritik der ethischen Grundbegriffe. Vol. I, chap. iv, "Die Glückseligkeit." 2 vols. Berlin, 1904-05. (3) Meinong, Alexius. _Psychologische-ethische Untersuchungen zur Wert-Theorie._ Graz, 1894. (4) Ehrenfels, Chrn. v. _System der Wert-Theorie._ 2 vols. Leipzig, 1897-98. (5) Brentano, Franz. _Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte._ Chap. vi-ix, pp. 256-350. Leipzig, 1874. (6) Urban, Wilbur Marshall. _Valuation, Its Nature and Laws._ Being an introduction to the general theory of value. London, 1909. (7) Cooley, Charles H. _Social Process._ Part VI, "Valuation," pp. 283-348. New York, 1918. IV. SENTIMENTS, ATTITUDES, AND WISHES (1) White, W. A. _Mechanisms of Character Formation._ An introduction to psychoanalysis. New York, 1916. (2) Pfister, Oskar. _The Psychoanalytic Method._ Translated from the German by Dr. C.R. Payne. New York, 1917. (3) Jung, Carl G. _Analytical Psychology._ Translated from the German by Dr. Constance E. Long. New York, 1916. (4) Adler, Alfred. _The Neurotic Constitution._ Outlines of a comparative individualistic psychology and psychotherapy. Translated from the German by Bernard Glueck. New York, 1917. (5) Freud, Sigmund. _General Introduction to Psychoanalysis._ New York, 1920. (6) Tridon, André. _Psychoanalysis and Behavior._ New York, 1920. (7) Holt, Edwin B. _The Freudian Wish and Its Place in Ethics._ New York, 1915. (8) Mercier, C.A. _Conduct and Its Disorders Biologically Considered._ London, 1911. (9) Bechterew, W. v. _La psychologie objective._ Translated from the Russian. Paris, 1913. (10) Kostyleff, N. _Le mécanisme cérébral de la pensée._ Paris, 1914. (11) Bentley, A. F. _The Process of Government._ A study of social pressures. Chicago, 1908. (12) Veblen, T. _The Theory of the Leisure Class._ An economic study in the evolution of institutions. New York, 1899. [Discusses the wish for recognition.] (13) ----. _The Instinct of Workmanship._ And the state of the industrial arts. New York, 1914. [Discusses the wish for recognition.] (14) McDougall, William. _An Introduction to Social Psychology._ Chaps. v-vi, pp. 121-73. 13th ed. Boston, 1918. (15) Shand, A. F. "Character and the Emotions," _Mind._, n. s., V (1896), 203-26. (16) ----. "M. Ribot's Theory of the Passions," _Mind._, n. s., XVI (1907), 477-505. (17) ----. _The Foundations of Character._ Being a study of the tendencies of the emotions and sentiments. Chaps. iv-v, "The Systems of the Sentiments," pp. 35-63. London, 1914. (18) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and America._ III, 5-81. Boston, 1919. TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES 1. The Concept of Forces in the Natural Sciences. 2. Historical Interpretation and Social Forces. 3. The Concept of Social Forces in Recent Studies of the Local Community. 4. Institutions as Social Forces: The Church, the Press, the School, etc. 5. Institutions as Organizations of Social Forces: Analysis of a Typical Institution, Its Organization, Dominant Personalities, etc. 6. Persons as Social Forces: Analysis of the Motives determining the Behavior of a Dominant Personality in a Typical Social Group. 7. Group Opinion as a Social Force. 8. Tendencies, Trends, and the Spirit of the Age. 9. History of the Concepts of Attitudes, Sentiments, and Wishes as Defined in Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Sociology. 10. Attitudes as the Organizations of Wishes. 11. The Freudian Wish. 12. Personal and Social Disorganization from the Standpoint of the Four Wishes. 13. The Law of the Four Wishes: All the Wishes Must Be Realized. A Wish of One Type, Recognition, Is Not a Substitute for a Wish of Another Type, Response. 14. The Dominant Wish: Its Rôle in the Organization of the Person and of the Group. 15. Typical Attitudes: Familism, Individualism, "Oppressed Nationality Psychosis," Race Prejudice. 16. The Mutability of the Sentiment-Attitude: Love and Hate, Self-esteem and Humility, etc. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Make a list of the outstanding social forces affecting social life in a community which you know. What is the value of such an analysis? 2. How does Simons use the term "social forces" in analyzing the course of events in American history? 3. In what sense do you understand Ely to use the term "social forces"? 4. Would there be, in your opinion, a social tendency without conflict with other tendencies? 5. How far is it correct to predict from present tendencies what the future will be? 6. What do you understand by _Zeitgeist_, "trend of the times," "spirit of the age"? 7. What do you understand by public opinion? How does it originate? 8. Is legislation in the United States always a result of public opinion? 9. Does the trend of public opinion determine corporate action? 10. Is public opinion the same as the sum of the opinion of the members of the group? 11. What is the relation of social forces to interaction? 12. Is it possible to study trends, tendencies, and public opinion as integrations of interests, sentiments, and attitudes? 13. Are desires the fundamental "social elements"? 14. What do you understand Small to mean when he says, "The last elements to which we can reduce the actions of human beings are units which we may conveniently name 'interests'"? 15. What is Small's classification of interests? Do you regard it as satisfactory? 16. What do you think is the difference between an impulse and an interest? 17. Do people behave according to their interests or their impulses? 18. Make a chart showing the difference in interests of six persons with whom you are acquainted. 19. Make a chart indicating the variations in interests of six selected groups. 20. What difference is there, in your opinion, between interests and social pressures? 21. Do you consider the following statement of Bentley's correct: "No slaves, not the worst abused of all, but help to form the government"? 22. Does the group exert social pressure upon its members? Give illustrations. 23. What do you understand to be the differences between an idea and an idea-force? 24. Give illustrations of idea-forces. 25. Are there any ideas that are not idea-forces? 26. What do you understand by a sentiment? 27. What is the difference between an interest and a sentiment? Give an illustration of each. 28. Are sentiments or interests more powerful in influencing the behavior of a person or of a group? 29. What do you understand by a social attitude? 30. What is a mental conflict? 31. To what extent does unconsciousness rather than consciousness determine the behavior of a person? Give an illustration where the behavior of a person was inconsistent with his rational determination. 32. What do you understand by mental complexes? 33. What is the relation of memory to mental complexes? 34. What do you understand by personality? What is its relation to mental complexes? 35. What is meant by common sense? 36. How does Holt define the Freudian wish? 37. What distinction does he make between the wish and the motor attitude? 38. How would you illustrate the difference between an attitude and a wish as defined in the introduction? 39. How far would you say that the attitude may be described as an organization of the wishes? 40. How far is the analogy between the wish as the social atom and the attitude as the social element justified? 41 What is the "psychic censor"? 42. What is the Freudian theory of repression? Is repression conscious or unconscious? 43. What is the relation of wishes to occupational selection? 44. Give illustrations of the "four wishes." 45. Describe a person in terms of the type of expression of these four wishes. 46. What social problems arise because of the repression of certain wishes? 47. "Wishes in one class cannot be substituted for wishes in another." Do you agree? Elaborate your position. 48. Analyze the organization of a group from the standpoint of the four wishes. FOOTNOTES: [157] Adapted from A. M. Simons, in the Preface to _Social Forces in American History_, pp. vii-viii. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1912. Reprinted by permission.) [158] Adapted from Richard T. Ely, _Evolution of Industrial Society_, pp. 456-84. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1903. Reprinted by permission.) [159] Adapted from A. V. Dicey, _Law and Public Opinion in England_, pp. 19-41. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1905. Reprinted by permission.) [160] Adapted from Albion W. Small, _General Sociology_, pp. 532-36. (The University of Chicago Press, 1905.) [161] Adapted from Albion W. Small, _General Sociology_, pp. 425-36. (The University of Chicago Press, 1905.) [162] Adapted from Arthur F. Bentley, _The Process of Government_, pp. 258-381. (The University of Chicago Press, 1908.) [163] Adapted from Alfred Fouillée, _Education from a National Standpoint_, pp. 10-16. (D. Appleton & Co., 1897.) [164] Adapted from William McDougall, _An Introduction to Social Psychology_, pp. 121-64. (John W. Luce & Co., 1916.) [165] From Robert E. Park, _Principles of Human Behavior_, pp. 18-34. (The Zalaz Corporation, 1915.) [166] Adapted from Edwin B. Holt, _The Freudian Wish and Its Place in Ethics_, pp. 3-56. (Henry Holt & Co., 1915.) [167] Adapted from John B. Watson, "The Psychology of Wish Fulfillment," in the _Scientific Monthly_, III (1916), 479-86. [168] A restatement from a paper by William I. Thomas, "The Persistence of Primary-Group Norms in Present-Day Society," in Jennings, Watson, Meyer, and Thomas, _Suggestions of Modern Science Concerning Education_. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1917. Reprinted by permission.) [169] _Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction_, 1901, p. 300. [170] See p. 219. [171] H. A. Taine, _The Ancient Régime_, Preface, p. viii. (New York, 1891.) [172] Karl Lamprecht, _What Is History?_ p. 3. (New York, 1905.) [173] See chap. i, _Sociology and the Social Sciences_, pp. 6-12. [174] See references, chap. ii, "Human Nature," p. 149. [175] For a discussion of the philosophical background of Adam Smith's political philosophy see Wilhelm Hasbach, _Untersuchungen über Adam Smith_. (Leipzig, 1891.) [176] "The science of Political Economy as we have it in England may be defined as the science of business, such as business is in large productive and trading communities. It is an analysis of that world so familiar to many Englishmen--the 'great commerce' by which England has become rich. It assumes the principal facts which make that commerce possible, and as is the way of an abstract science it isolates and simplifies them: it detaches them from the confusion with which they are mixed in fact. And it deals too with the men who carry on that commerce, and who make it possible. It assumes a sort of human nature such as we see everywhere around us, and again it simplifies that human nature; it looks at one part of it only. Dealing with matters of 'business,' it assumes that man is actuated only by motives of business. It assumes that every man who makes anything, makes it for money, that he always makes that which brings him in most at least cost, and that he will make it in the way that will produce most and spend least; it assumes that every man who buys, buys with his whole heart, and that he who sells, sells with his whole heart, each wanting to gain all possible advantage. Of course we know that this is not so, that men are not like this; but we assume it for simplicity's sake, as an hypothesis."--Walter Bagehot, _The Postulates of English Political Economy_. (New York and London, 1885.) [177] H. G. Wells, _The Outline of History_, Vol. II, pp. 579-95. (New York, 1920.) [178] _Pure Sociology_, p. 261. (New York, 1903.) [179] _Dynamic Sociology_, II, 90.(New York, 1883.) CHAPTER VIII COMPETITION I. INTRODUCTION 1. Popular Conception of Competition Competition, as a universal phenomenon, was first clearly conceived and adequately described by the biologists. As defined in the evolutionary formula "the struggle for existence" the notion captured the popular imagination and became a commonplace of familiar discourse. Prior to that time competition had been regarded as an economic rather than a biological phenomenon. It was in the eighteenth century and in England that we first find any general recognition of the new rôle that commerce and the middleman were to play in the modern world. "Competition is the life of trade" is a trader's maxim, and the sort of qualified approval that it gives to the conception of competition contains the germ of the whole philosophy of modern industrial society as that doctrine was formulated by Adam Smith and the physiocrats. The economists of the eighteenth century were the first to attempt to rationalize and justify the social order that is based on competition and individual freedom. They taught that there was a natural harmony in the interests of men, which once liberated would inevitably bring about, in the best of all possible worlds, the greatest good to the greatest number. The individual man, in seeking his own profit, will necessarily seek to produce and sell that which has most value for the community, and so "he is in this, as in many other cases," as Adam Smith puts it, "led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention." The conception has been stated with even greater unction by the French writer, Frédéric Bastiat. Since goods which seem at first to be the exclusive property of individuals become by the estimable decrees of a wise providence [competition] the common possession of all; since the natural advantages of situation, the fertility, temperature, mineral richness of the soil and even industrial skill do not accrue to the producers, because of competition among themselves, but contribute so much the more to the profit of the consumer; it follows that there is no country that is not interested in the advancement of all the others.[180] The freedom which commerce sought and gained upon the principle of laissez faire has enormously extended the area of competition and in doing so has created a world-economy where previously there were only local markets. It has created at the same time a division of labor that includes all the nations and races of men and incidentally has raised the despised middleman to a position of affluence and power undreamed of by superior classes of any earlier age. And now there is a new demand for the control of competition in the interest, not merely of those who have not shared in the general prosperity, but in the interest of competition itself. "Unfair competition" is an expression that is heard at the present time with increasing frequency. This suggests that there are rules governing competition by which, in its own interest, it can and should be controlled. The same notion has found expression in the demand for "freedom of competition" from those who would safeguard competition by controlling it. Other voices have been raised in denunciation of competition because "competition creates monopoly." In other words, competition, if carried to its logical conclusion, ends in the annihilation of competition. In this destruction of competition by competition we seem to have a loss of freedom by freedom, or, to state it in more general terms, unlimited liberty, without social control, ends in the negation of freedom and the slavery of the individual. But the limitation of competition by competition, it needs to be said, means simply that the process of competition tends invariably to establish an equilibrium. The more fundamental objection is that in giving freedom to economic competition society has sacrificed other fundamental interests that are not directly involved in the economic process. In any case economic freedom exists in an order that has been created and maintained by society. Economic competition, as we know it, presupposes the existence of the right of private property, which is a creation of the state. It is upon this premise that the more radical social doctrines, communism and socialism, seek to abolish competition altogether. 2. Competition a Process of Interaction Of the four great types of interaction--competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation--competition is the elementary, universal and fundamental form. Social contact, as we have seen, initiates interaction. But competition, strictly speaking, is _interaction without social contact_. If this seems, in view of what has already been said, something of a paradox, it is because in human society competition is always complicated with other processes, that is to say, with conflict, assimilation, and accommodation. It is only in the plant community that we can observe the process of competition in isolation, uncomplicated with other social processes. The members of a plant community live together in a relation of mutual interdependence which we call social probably because, while it is close and vital, it is not biological. It is not biological because the relation is a merely external one and the plants that compose it are not even of the same species. They do not interbreed. The members of a plant community adapt themselves to one another as all living things adapt themselves to their environment, but there is no conflict between them because they are not conscious. Competition takes the form of conflict or rivalry only when it becomes conscious, when competitors identify one another as rivals or as enemies. This suggests what is meant by the statement that competition is interaction _without social contact_. It is only when minds meet, only when the meaning that is in one mind is communicated to another mind so that these minds mutually influence one another, that social contact, properly speaking, may be said to exist. On the other hand, social contacts are not limited to contacts of touch or sense or speech, and they are likely to be more intimate and more pervasive than we imagine. Some years ago the Japanese, who are brown, defeated the Russians, who are white. In the course of the next few months the news of this remarkable event penetrated, as we afterward learned, uttermost ends of the earth. It sent a thrill through all Asia and it was known in the darkest corners of Central Africa. Everywhere it awakened strange and fantastic dreams. This is what is meant by social contact. a) _Competition and competitive co-operation._--Social contact, which inevitably initiates conflict, accommodation, or assimilation, invariably creates also sympathies, prejudices, personal and moral relations which modify, complicate, and control competition. On the other hand, within the limits which the cultural process creates, and custom, law, and tradition impose, competition invariably tends to create an impersonal social order in which each individual, being free to pursue his own profit, and, in a sense, compelled to do so, makes every other individual a means to that end. In doing so, however, he inevitably contributes through the mutual exchange of services so established to the common welfare. It is just the nature of the trading transaction to isolate the motive of profit and make it the basis of business organization, and so far as this motive becomes dominant and exclusive, business relations inevitably assume the impersonal character so generally ascribed to them. "Competition," says Walker, "is opposed to sentiment. Whenever any economic agent does or forbears anything under the influence of any sentiment other than the desire of giving the least and gaining the most he can in exchange, be that sentiment patriotism, or gratitude, or charity, or vanity, leading him to do otherwise than as self interest would prompt, in that case also, the rule of competition is departed from. Another rule is for the time substituted."[181] This is the significance of the familiar sayings to the effect that one "must not mix business with sentiment," that "business is business," "corporations are heartless," etc. It is just because corporations are "heartless," that is to say impersonal, that they represent the most advanced, efficient, and responsible form of business organization. But it is for this same reason that they can and need to be regulated in behalf of those interests of the community that cannot be translated immediately into terms of profit and loss to the individual. The plant community is the best illustration of the type of social organization that is created by competitive co-operation because in the plant community competition is unrestricted. b) _Competition and freedom._--The economic organization of society, so far as it is an effect of free competition, is an ecological organization. There is a human as well as a plant and an animal ecology. If we are to assume that the economic order is fundamentally ecological, that is, created by the struggle for existence, an organization like that of the plant community in which the relations between individuals are conceivably at least wholly external, the question may be very properly raised why the competition and the organization it has created should be regarded as social at all. As a matter of fact sociologists have generally identified the social with the moral order, and Dewey, in his _Democracy and Education_, makes statements which suggest that the purely economic order, in which man becomes a means rather than an end to other men, is unsocial, if not anti-social. The fact is, however, that this character of _externality_ in human relations is a fundamental aspect of society and social life. It is merely another manifestation of what has been referred to as the distributive aspect of society. Society is made up of individuals spatially separated, territorially distributed, and capable of independent locomotion. This capacity of independent locomotion is the basis and the symbol of every other form of independence. Freedom is fundamentally freedom to move and individuality is inconceivable without the capacity and the opportunity to gain an individual experience as a result of independent action. On the other hand, it is quite as true that society may be said to exist only so far as this independent activity of the individual is _controlled_ in the interest of the group as a whole. That is the reason why the problem of control, using that term in its evident significance, inevitably becomes the central problem of sociology. c) _Competition and control._--Conflict, assimilation and accommodation as distinguished from competition are all intimately related to control. Competition is the process through which the distributive and ecological organization of society is created. Competition determines the distribution of population territorially and vocationally. The division of labor and all the vast organized economic interdependence of individuals and groups of individuals characteristic of modern life are a product of competition. On the other hand, the moral and political order, which imposes itself upon this competitive organization, is a product of conflict, accommodation and assimilation. Competition is universal in the world of living things. Under ordinary circumstances it goes on unobserved even by the individuals who are most concerned. It is only in periods of crisis, when men are making new and conscious efforts to control the conditions of their common life, that the forces with which they are competing get identified with persons, and competition is converted into conflict. It is in what has been described as the _political process_ that society consciously deals with its crises.[182] War is the political process par excellence. It is in war that the great decisions are made. Political organizations exist for the purpose of dealing with conflict situations. Parties, parliaments and courts, public discussion and voting are to be considered simply as substitutes for war. d) _Accommodation, assimilation, and competition._--Accommodation, on the other hand, is the process by which the individuals and groups make the necessary internal adjustments to social situations which have been created by competition and conflict. War and elections change situations. When changes thus effected are decisive and are accepted, conflict subsides and the tensions it created are resolved in the process of accommodation into profound modifications of the competing units, i.e., individuals and groups. A man once thoroughly defeated is, as has often been noted, "never the same again." Conquest, subjugation, and defeat are psychological as well as social processes. They establish a new order by changing, not merely the status, but the attitudes of the parties involved. Eventually the new order gets itself fixed in habit and custom and is then transmitted as part of the established social order to succeeding generations. Neither the physical nor the social world is made to satisfy at once all the wishes of the natural man. The rights of property, vested interests of every sort, the family organization, slavery, caste and class, the whole social organization, in fact, represent accommodations, that is to say, limitations of the natural wishes of the individual. These socially inherited accommodations have presumably grown up in the pains and struggles of previous generations, but they have been transmitted to and accepted by succeeding generations as part of the natural, inevitable social order. All of these are forms of control in which competition is limited by status. Conflict is then to be identified with the political order and with conscious control. Accommodation, on the other hand, is associated with the social order that is fixed and established in custom and the mores. Assimilation, as distinguished from accommodation, implies a more thoroughgoing transformation of the personality--a transformation which takes place gradually under the influence of social contacts of the most concrete and intimate sort. Accommodation may be regarded, like religious conversion, as a kind of mutation. The wishes are the same but their organization is different. Assimilation takes place not so much as a result of changes in the organization as in the content, i.e., the memories, of the personality. The individual units, as a result of intimate association, interpenetrate, so to speak, and come in this way into possession of a common experience and a common tradition. The permanence and solidarity of the group rest finally upon this body of common experience and tradition. It is the rôle of history to preserve this body of common experience and tradition, to criticise and reinterpret it in the light of new experience and changing conditions, and in this way to preserve the continuity of the social and political life. The relation of social structures to the processes of competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation may be represented schematically as follows: SOCIAL PROCESS SOCIAL ORDER Competition The economic equilibrium Conflict The political order Accommodation Social organization Assimilation Personality and the cultural heritage 3. Classification of the Materials The materials in this chapter have been selected to exhibit (1) the rôle which competition plays in social life and all life, and (2) the types of organization that competition has everywhere created as a result of the division of labor it has everywhere enforced. These materials fall naturally under the following heads: (a) the struggle for existence; (b) competition and segregation; and (c) economic competition. This order of the materials serves the purpose of indicating the stages in the growth and extension of man's control over nature and over man himself. The evolution of society has been the progressive extension of control over nature and the substitution of a moral for the natural order. Competition has its setting in the struggle for existence. This struggle is ordinarily represented as a chaos of contending individuals in which the unfit perish in order that the fit may survive. This conception of the natural order as one of anarchy, "the war of each against all," familiar since Hobbes to the students of society, is recent in biology. Before Darwin, students of plant and animal life saw in nature, not disorder, but order; not selection, but design. The difference between the older and the newer interpretation is not so much a difference of fact as of point of view. Looking at the plant and animal species with reference to their classification they present a series of relatively fixed and stable types. The same thing may be said of the plant and animal communities. Under ordinary circumstances the adjustment between the members of the plant and animal communities and the environment is so complete that the observer interprets it as an order of co-operation rather than a condition of competitive anarchy. Upon investigation it turns out, however, that the plant and animal communities are in a state of unstable equilibrium, such that any change in the environment may destroy them. Communities of this type are not organized to resist or adapt themselves as communities to changes in the environment. The plant community, for example, is a mere product of segregation, an aggregate without nerves or means of communication that would permit the individuals to be controlled in the interest of the community as a whole.[183] The situation is different in the so-called animal societies. Animals are adapted in part to the situation of competition, but in part also to the situation of co-operation. With the animal, maternal instinct, gregariousness, sex attraction restrict competition to a greater or less extent among individuals of the same family, herd, or species. In the case of the ant community competition is at a minimum and co-operation at a maximum. With man the free play of competition is restrained by sentiment, custom, and moral standards, not to speak of the more conscious control through law. It is a characteristic of competition, when unrestricted, that it is invariably more severe among organisms of the same than of different species. Man's greatest competitor is man. On the other hand, man's control over the plant and animal world is now well-nigh complete, so that, generally speaking, only such plants and animals are permitted to exist as serve man's purpose. Competition among men, on the other hand, has been very largely converted into rivalry and conflict. The effect of conflict has been to extend progressively the area of control and to modify and limit the struggle for existence within these areas. The effect of war has been, on the whole, to extend the area over which there is peace. Competition has been restricted by custom, tradition, and law, and the struggle for existence has assumed the form of struggle for a livelihood and for status. Absolute free play of competition is neither desirable nor even possible. On the other hand, from the standpoint of the individual, competition means mobility, freedom, and, from the point of view of society, pragmatic or experimental change. Restriction of competition is synonymous with limitation of movement, acquiescence in control, and telesis, Ward's term for changes ordained by society in distinction from the natural process of change. The political problem of every society is the practical one: how to secure the maximum values of competition, that is, personal freedom, initiative, and originality, and at the same time to control the energies which competition has released in the interest of the community. II. MATERIALS A. THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 1. Different Forms of the Struggle for Existence[184] The formula "struggle for existence," familiar in human affairs, was used by Darwin in his interpretation of organic life, and he showed that we gain clearness in our outlook on animate nature if we recognize there, in continual process, a struggle for existence not merely analogous to, but fundamentally the same as, that which goes on in human life. He projected on organic life a sociological idea, and showed that it fitted. But while he thus vindicated the relevancy and utility of the sociological idea within the biological realm, he declared explicitly that the phrase "struggle for existence" was meant to be a shorthand formula, summing up a vast variety of strife and endeavor, of thrust and parry, of action and reaction. Some of Darwin's successors have taken pains to distinguish a great many different forms of the struggle for existence, and this kind of analysis is useful in keeping us aware of the complexities of the process. Darwin himself does not seem to have cared much for this logical mapping out and defining; it was enough for him to insist that the phrase was used "in a large and metaphorical sense," and to give full illustrations of its various modes. For our present purpose it is enough for us to follow his example. a) _Struggle between fellows._--When the locusts of a huge swarm have eaten up every green thing, they sometimes turn on one another. This cannibalism among fellows of the same species--illustrated, for instance, among many fishes--is the most intense form of the struggle for existence. The struggle does not need to be direct to be real; the essential point is that the competitors seek after the same desiderata, of which there is a limited supply. As an instance of keen struggle between nearly related species, Darwin referred to the combats of rats. The black rat was in possession of many European towns before the brown rat crossed the Volga in 1727; whenever the brown rat arrived, the black rat had to go to the wall. Thus at the present day there are practically no black rats in Great Britain. Here the struggle for existence is again directly competitive. It is difficult to separate the struggle for food and foothold from the struggle for mates, and it seems clearest to include here the battles of the stags and the capercailzies, or the extraordinary lek of the blackcock, showing off their beauty at sunrise on the hills. b) _Struggle between foes._--In the locust swarm and in the rats' combats there is competition between fellows of the same or nearly related species, but the struggle for existence includes much wider antipathies. We see it between foes of entirely different nature, between carnivores and herbivores, between birds of prey and small mammals. In both these cases there may be a stand-up fight, for instance between wolf and stag, or between hawk and ermine; but neither the logic nor the biology of the process is different when all the fight is on one side. As the lemmings, which have overpopulated the Scandinavian valleys, go on the march they are followed by birds and beasts of prey, which thin their ranks. Moreover, the competition between species need not be direct; it will come to the same result if both types seek after the same things. The victory will be with the more effective and the more prolific. c) _Struggle with fate._--Our sweep widens still further, and we pass beyond the idea of competition altogether to cases where the struggle for existence is between the living organism and the inanimate conditions of its life--for instance, between birds and the winter's cold, between aquatic animals and changes in the water, between plants and drought, between plants and frost--in a wide sense, between Life and Fate. We cannot here pursue the suggestive idea that, besides struggle between individuals, there is struggle between groups of individuals--the latter most noticeably developed in mankind. Similarly, working in the other direction, there is struggle between parts or tissues in the body, between cells in the body, between equivalent germ-cells, and, perhaps, as Weismann pictures, between the various multiplicate items that make up our inheritance. 2. Competition and Natural Selection[185] The term "struggle for existence" is used in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual but success in leaving progeny. Two canine animals in a time of dearth may be truly said to struggle with each other which shall get food and live. But a plant on the edge of a desert is said to struggle for life against the drought, though more properly it should be said to be dependent on the moisture. A plant which annually produces a thousand seeds, of which only one of an average comes to maturity, may be more truly said to struggle with the plants of the same and other kinds which already clothe the ground. The mistletoe is dependent on the apple and a few other trees, but can only in a far-fetched sense be said to struggle with these trees, for, if too many of these parasites grow on the same tree, it languishes and dies. But several seedling mistletoes growing close together on the same branch may more truly be said to struggle with each other. As the mistletoe is disseminated by birds, its existence depends on them; and it may metaphorically be said to struggle with other fruit-bearing plants in tempting the birds to devour and thus disseminate its seeds. In these several senses which pass into each other, I use for convenience' sake the general term of "struggle for existence." A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase. Every being which during its natural lifetime produces several eggs or seeds must suffer destruction during some period of its life, and during some season or occasional year, otherwise, on the principle of geometrical increase, its numbers would quickly become so inordinately great that no country could support the product. Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms; for in this case there can be no artificial increase of food, and no prudential restraint from marriage. Although some species may be now increasing more or less rapidly in numbers, all cannot do so, for the world would not hold them. There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate in less than a thousand years there would literally not be standing-room for his progeny. Linnaeus has calculated that if an annual plant produced only two seeds--and there is no plant so unproductive as this--and their seedlings next year produced two, and so on, then in twenty years there would be a million plants. The elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals, and I have taken some pains to estimate its probable minimum rate of natural increase; it will be safest to assume that it begins breeding when thirty years old and goes on breeding till ninety years old, bringing forth six young in the interval and surviving till one hundred years old; if this be so, after a period of from 740 to 750 years there would be nearly nineteen million elephants alive, descended from the first pair. The struggle for life is most severe between individuals and varieties of the same species. As the species of the same genus usually have, though by no means invariably, much similarity in habits and constitution, and always similarity in structure, the struggle will generally be more severe between them if they come into competition with each other than between the species of distinct genera. We see this in the recent extension over parts of the United States of one species of swallow having caused the decrease of another species. The recent increase of the missel-thrush in parts of Scotland has caused the decrease of the song-thrush. How frequently we hear of one species of rat taking the place of another species under the most different climates! In Russia the small Asiatic cockroach has everywhere driven before it its great congener. In Australia the imported hive-bee is rapidly exterminating the small, stingless native bee. We can dimly see why the competition should be most severe between allied forms which fill nearly the same place in the economy of nature; but probably in no one case could we precisely say why one species has been victorious over another in the great battle of life. A corollary of the highest importance may be deduced from the foregoing remarks, namely, that the structure of every organic being is related, in the most essential yet often hidden manner, to that of all the other organic beings with which it comes into competition for food or residence or from which it has to escape or on which it preys. This is obvious in the structure of the teeth and talons of the tiger; and in that of the legs and claws of the parasite which clings to the hair on the tiger's body. But in the beautifully plumed seed of the dandelion, and in the flattened and fringed legs of the water-beetle, the relation seems at first confined to the elements of air and water. Yet the advantage of plumed seeds no doubt stands in the closest relations to the land being already thickly clothed with other plants; so that the seeds may be widely distributed and fall on unoccupied ground. In the water beetle, the structure of its legs, so well adapted for diving, allows it to compete with other aquatic insects, to hunt for its own prey, and to escape serving as prey to other animals. The store of nutriment laid up within the seeds of many plants seems at first sight to have no sort of relation to other plants. But from the strong growth of young plants produced from such seeds, as peas and beans, when sown in the midst of long grass, it may be suspected that the chief use of the nutriment in the seed is to favor the growth of seedlings whilst struggling with other plants growing vigorously all around. Look at a plant in the midst of its range; why does it not double or quadruple its numbers? We know that it can perfectly well withstand a little more heat or cold, dampness or dryness, for elsewhere it ranges into slightly hotter or colder, damper or drier, districts. In this case we can clearly see that if we wish in imagination to give the plant the power of increasing in number, we should have to give it some advantage over its competitors, or over the animals which prey upon it. On the confines of its geographical range, a change of constitution with respect to climate would clearly be an advantage to our plant; but we have reason to believe that only a few plants or animals range so far, that they are destroyed exclusively by the rigor of the climate. Not until we reach the extreme confines of life, in the Arctic regions or on the borders of an utter desert, will competition cease. The land may be extremely cold or dry, yet there will be competition between some few species, or between the individuals of the same species, for the warmest or dampest spots. Hence we can see that when a plant or an animal is placed in a new country amongst new competitors, the conditions of its life will generally be changed in an essential manner, although the climate may be exactly the same as in its former home. If its average numbers are to increase in its new home, we should have to modify it in a different way to what we should have had to do in its native country; for we should have to give it some advantage over a different set of competitors or enemies. It is good thus to try in imagination to give to any one species an advantage over another. Probably in no single instance should we know what to do. This ought to convince us of our ignorance on the mutual relations of all organic beings, a conviction as necessary as it is difficult to acquire. All that we can do is to keep steadily in mind that each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ratio; that each at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction. When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply. 3. Competition, Specialization, and Organization[186] Natural selection acts exclusively by the preservation and accumulation of variations, which are beneficial under the organic and inorganic conditions to which each creature is exposed at all periods of life. The ultimate result is that each creature tends to become more and more improved in relation to its conditions. This improvement inevitably leads to the gradual advancement of the organization of the greater number of living beings throughout the world. But here we enter on a very intricate subject, for naturalists have not defined to each other's satisfaction what is meant by an advance in organization. Amongst the vertebrata the degree of intellect and an approach in structure to man clearly come into play. It might be thought that the amount of change which the various parts and organs pass through in their development from the embryo to maturity would suffice as a standard of comparison; but there are cases, as with certain parasitic crustaceans, in which several parts of the structure become less perfect, so that the mature animal cannot be called higher than its larva. Von Baer's standard seems the most widely applicable and the best, namely, the amount of differentiation of the parts of the same organic being, in the adult state, as I should be inclined to add, and their specialization for different functions; or, as Milne Edwards would express it, the completeness of the division of physiological labor. But we shall see how obscure this subject is if we look, for instance, to fishes, amongst which some naturalists rank those as highest which, like the sharks, approach nearest to amphibians; whilst other naturalists rank the common bony or teleostean fishes as the highest, inasmuch as they are most strictly fishlike and differ most from the other vertebrate classes. We see still more plainly the obscurity of the subject by turning to plants, amongst which the standard of intellect is, of course, quite excluded; and here some botanists rank those plants as highest which have every organ, as sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils, fully developed in each flower; whereas other botanists, probably with more truth, look at the plants which have their several organs much modified and reduced in number as the highest. If we take as the standard of high organization the amount of differentiation and specialization of the several organs in each being when adult (and this will include the advancement of the brain for intellectual purposes), natural selection clearly leads toward this standard; for all physiologists admit that the specialization of organs, inasmuch as in this state they perform their functions better, is an advantage to each being; and hence the accumulation of variations tending toward specialization is within the scope of natural selection. On the other hand, we can see, bearing in mind that all organic beings are striving to increase at a high ratio and to seize on every unoccupied or less well-occupied place in the economy of nature, that it is quite possible for natural selection gradually to fit a being to a situation in which several organs would be superfluous or useless: in such cases there would be retrogression in the scale of organization. But it may be objected that if all organic beings thus tend to rise in the scale, how is it that throughout the world a multitude of the lowest forms still exist; and how is it that in each great class some forms are far more highly developed than others? Why have not the more highly developed forms everywhere supplanted and exterminated the lower? On our theory the continued existence of lowly organisms offers no difficulty for natural selection, or the survival of the fittest does not necessarily include progressive development--it only takes advantage of such variations as arise and are beneficial to each creature under its complex relations of life. And it may be asked what advantage, as far as we can see, would it be to an infusorian animalcule--to an intestinal worm, or even to an earthworm--to be highly organized. If it were no advantage, these forms would be left, by natural selection, unimproved or but little improved, and might remain for indefinite ages in their present lowly condition. And geology tells us that some of the lowest forms, as the infusoria and rhizopods, have remained for an enormous period in nearly their present state. But to suppose that most of the many low forms now existing have not in the least advanced since the first dawn of life would be extremely rash; for every naturalist who has dissected some of the beings now ranked as very low in the scale must have been struck with their really wondrous and beautiful organization. Nearly the same remarks are applicable if we look to the different grades of organization within the same great group; for instance, in the vertebrata to the coexistence of mammals and fish; amongst mammalia to the coexistence of man and the ornithorhynchus; amongst fishes to the coexistence of the shark and the lancelet (Amphioxus), which later fish in the extreme simplicity of its structure approaches the invertebrate classes. But mammals and fish hardly come into competition with each other; the advancement of the whole class of mammals, or of certain members in this class, to the highest grade would not lead to their taking the place of fishes. Physiologists believe that the brain must be bathed by warm blood to be highly active, and this requires aerial respiration; so that warm-blooded mammals when inhabiting the water lie under a disadvantage in having to come continually to the surface to breathe. With fishes, members of the shark family would not tend to supplant the lancelet; for the lancelet, as I hear from Fritz Müller, has as sole companion and competitor on the barren sandy shore of South Brazil an anomalous annelid. The three lowest orders of mammals, namely, marsupials, edentata, and rodents, coexist in South America in the same region with numerous monkeys, and probably interfere little with each other. Although organization, on the whole, may have advanced and may be still advancing throughout the world, yet the scale will always present many degrees of perfection; for the high advancement of certain whole classes, or of certain members of each class, does not at all necessarily lead to the extinction of those groups with which they do not enter into close competition. In some cases, lowly organized forms appear to have been preserved to the present day from inhabiting confined or peculiar stations, where they have been subjected to less severe competition and where their scanty numbers have retarded the chance of favorable variations arising. Finally, I believe that many lowly organized forms now exist throughout the world from various causes. In some cases variations or individual differences of a favorable nature may never have arisen for natural selection to act on and accumulate. In no case, probably, has time sufficed for the utmost possible amount of development. In some few cases there has been what we must call retrogression of organization. But the main cause lies in the fact that under very simple conditions of life a high organization would be of no service--possibly would be of actual disservice, as being of a more delicate nature and more liable to be put out of order and injured. 4. Man: An Adaptive Mechanism[187] Everything in nature, living or not living, exists and develops at the expense of some other thing, living or not living. The plant borrows from the soil; the soil from the rocks and the atmosphere; men and animals take from the plants and from each other the elements which they in death return to the soil, the atmosphere, and the plants. Year after year, century after century, eon after eon, the mighty, immeasurable, ceaseless round of elements goes on, in the stupendous process of chemical change, which marks the eternal life of matter. To the superficial observer, nature in all her parts seems imbued with a spirit of profound peace and harmony; to the scientist it is obvious that every infinitesimal particle of the immense concourse is in a state of desperate and ceaseless struggle to obtain such share of the available supply of matter and energy as will suffice to maintain its present ephemeral form in a state of equilibrium with its surroundings. Not only is this struggle manifest among living forms, among birds and beasts and insects in their competition for food and habitat, but--if we may believe the revelations of the science of radio-activity--a process of transmutation, of disintegration of the atoms of one element with simultaneous formation of another element, is taking place in every fragment of inanimate matter, a process which parallels in character the more transitory processes of life and death in organisms and is probably a representation of the primary steps in that great process of evolution by which all terrestrial forms, organic and inorganic, have been evolved from the original ether by an action inconceivably slow, continuous, and admitting of no break in the series from inanimate to animate forms. From colloidal slime to man is a long road, the conception of which taxes our imaginations to the utmost, but it is an ascent which is now fairly well demonstrated. Indeed, the problems of the missing links are not so difficult as is the problem of the origin of the organs and functions which man has acquired as products of adaptation. For whether we look upon the component parts of our present bodies as useful or useless mechanisms, we must regard them as the result of age-long conflicts between environmental forces and organisms. Everywhere something is pursuing and something is escaping another creature. It is a constant drama of getting food and of seeking to escape being made food, evolving in the conflict structures fitted to accomplish both reactions. Everywhere the strong prey upon the weak, the swift upon the slow, the clever upon the stupid; and the weak, the slow, the stupid, retaliate by evolving mechanisms of defense, which more or less adequately repel or render futile the oppressor's attack. For each must live, and those already living have proved their right to existence by a more or less complete adaptation to their environment. The result of this twofold conflict between living beings is to evolve the manifold structures and functions--teeth, claws, skin, color, fur, feathers, horns, tusks, wily instincts, strength, stealth, deceit, and humility--which make up character in the animal world. According to the nature and number of each being's enemies has its own special mechanism been evolved, distinguishing it from its fellows and enabling it to get a living in its particular environment. In every case the fate of each creature seems to have been staked upon one mechanism. The tiger by its teeth and claws, the elephant and the rhinoceros by their strength, the bird by its wings, the deer by its fleetness, the turtle by its carapace--all are enabled to counter the attacks of enemies and to procreate. Where there is a negative defense, such as a shell or quills, there is little need and no evidence of intelligence: where a rank odor, no need and no presence of claws or carapace; where sting or venom, no need and no possession of odor, claws, shell, extraordinary strength, or sagacity. Where the struggle is most bitter, there exist the most complex and most numerous contrivances for living. Throughout its whole course the process of evolution, where it is visible in the struggle of organisms, has been marked by a progressive victory of brain over brawn. And this, in turn, may be regarded as but a manifestation of the process of survival by _lability_ rather than by _stability_. Everywhere the organism that exhibits the qualities of quick response, of extreme sensibility to stimuli, of capacity to change, is the individual that survives, "conquers," "advances." The quality most useful in nature, from the point of view of the domination of a wider environment, is the quality of _changeableness_, _plasticity_, _mobility_, or _versatility_. Man's particular means of adaptation to his environment is this quality of versatility. By means of this quality expressed through the manifold reactions of his highly organized central nervous system, man has been able to dominate the beasts and to maintain himself in an environment many times more extensive than theirs. Like the defensive mechanisms of shells, poisons, and odors, man's particular defensive mechanism--his versatility of nervous response (mind)--was acquired automatically as a result of a particular combination of circumstances in his environment. In the Tertiary era--some twenty millions of years ago--the earth, basking in the warmth of a tropical climate, had produced a luxuriant vegetation and a swarming progeny of gigantic small-brained animals for which the exuberant vegetation provided abundant and easily acquired sustenance. They were a breed of huge, clumsy, and grotesque monsters, vast in bulk and strength, but of little intelligence, that wandered heavily on the land and gorged lazily on the abundant food at hand. With the advance of the carnivora, the primitive forerunners of our tigers, wolves, hyenas, and foxes, came a period of stress, comparable to a seven years of famine following a seven years of plenty, which subjected the stolid herbivorous monsters to a severe selective struggle. Before the active onslaught of lighter, lither, more intelligent foes, the clumsy, inelastic types succumbed, those only surviving which, through the fortunate possession of more varied reactions, were able to evolve modes of defense equal to the modes of attack possessed by their enemies. Many, unable to evolve the acute senses and the fleet limbs necessary for the combat on the ground, shrank from the fray and acquired more negative and passive means of defense. Some, like the bat, escaped into the air. Others, such as the squirrel and the ape, took refuge in the trees. It was in this concourse of weak creatures which fled to the trees because they lacked adequate means of offense, defense, or escape on the ground that the lineaments of man's ancient ancestor might have been discerned. One can imagine what must have been the pressure from the carnivora that forced a selective transformation of the feet of the progenitor of the anthropoids into grasping hands. Coincidentally with the tree life, man's special line of adaptation--_versatility_--was undoubtedly rapidly evolved. Increased versatility and the evolution of hands enabled man to come down from the trees millions of years thereafter, to conquer the world by the further evolution and exercise of his organ of strategy--the brain. Thus we may suppose have arisen the intricate reactions we now call mind, reason, foresight, invention, etc. Man's claim to a superior place among animals depends less upon _different_ reactions than upon a _greater number_ of reactions as compared with the reactions of "lower" animals. Ability to respond adaptively to more elements in the environment gives a larger dominion, that is all. The same measure applies within the human species--the number of nervous reactions of the artist, the financier, the statesman, the scientist, being invariably greater than the reactions of the stolid savage. That man alone of all animals should have achieved the degree of versatility sufficient for such advance is no more remarkable than that the elephant should have evolved a larger trunk and tusks than the boar; that the legs of the deer should be fleeter than those of the ox; that the wings of the swallow should outfly those of the bat. Each organism, in evolving the combination of characters commensurate with safety in its particular environment, has touched the limit of both its necessity and its power to "advance." There exists abundant and reliable evidence of the fact that wherever man has been subjected to the stunting influences of an unchanging environment fairly favorable to life, he has shown no more disposition to progress than the most stolid animals. Indeed, he has usually retrograded. The need to fight for food and home has been the spur that has ever driven man forward to establish the manifold forms of physical and mental life which make up human existence today. Like the simple adaptive mechanisms of the plant by which it gets air, and of the animal by which it overcomes its rivals in battle, the supremely differentiated functions of thought and human relations are the outcome of the necessity of the organism to become adapted to entities in its environment. B. COMPETITION AND SEGREGATION 1. Plant Migration, Competition, and Segregation[188] Invasion is the complete or complex process of which migration, ecesis (the adjustment of a plant to a new home), and competition are the essential parts. It embraces the whole movement of a plant or group of plants from one area into another and their colonization in the latter. From the very nature of migration, invasion is going on at all times and in all directions. Effective invasion is predominantly local. It operates in mass only between bare areas and adjacent communities which contain species capable of pioneering, or between contiguous communities which offer somewhat similar conditions or contain species of wide range of adjustment. Invasion into a remote region rarely has any successional effect (effect tending to transform the character of a plant community), as the invaders are too few to make headway against the plants in possession or against those much nearer a new area. Invasion into a new area or a plant community begins with migration when this is followed by ecesis. In new areas, ecesis produces reaction (the effect which a plant or a community exerts upon its habitat) at once, and this is followed by aggregation and competition, with increasing reaction. In an area already occupied by plants, ecesis and competition are concomitant and quickly produce reactions. Throughout the development migrants are entering and leaving, and the interactions of the various processes come to be complex in the highest degree. Local invasion in force is essentially _continuous_ or _recurrent_. Between contiguous communities it is _mutual_, unless they are too dissimilar. The result is a transition area or ecotone which epitomizes the next stage in development. By far the greater amount of invasion into existing vegetation is of this sort. The movement into a bare area is likewise continuous, though it is necessarily not mutual, and hence there is no ecotone during the earlier stages. The significant feature of continuous invasion is that an outpost may be repeatedly reinforced, permitting rapid aggregation and ecesis, and the production of new centers from which the species may be extended over a wide area. Contrasted with continuous invasion is intermittent or periodic movement into distant regions, but this is rarely concerned in succession. When the movement of invaders into a community is so great that the original occupants are driven out, the invasion is _complete_. A topographic feature or a physical or a biological agency that restricts or prevents invasions is a barrier. Topographic features are usually permanent and produce permanent barriers. Biological ones are often temporary and exist for a few years or even a single season. Temporary barriers are often recurrent, however. Barriers are complete or incomplete with respect to the thoroughness of their action. They may affect invasion either by limiting migration or by preventing ecesis. Biological barriers comprise plant communities, man and animals, and parasitic plants. The limiting effect of a plant community is exhibited in two ways. In the first place, an association acts as a barrier to the ecesis of species invading it from associations of another type, on account of the physical differences of the habitats. Whether such a barrier be complete or partial will depend upon the relative unlikeness of the two areas. Shade plants are unable to invade a prairie, though the species of open thickets or woodland may do so to a certain degree. Closed communities (one in which all the soil is occupied) likewise exert a marked influence in decreasing invasion by reason of the intense and successful competition which all invaders must meet. Closed associations usually act as complete barriers, while more open ones restrict invasion in direct proportion to the degree of occupation. To this fact may be traced the fundamental law of succession (the law by which one type of community or formation is succeeded by another) that the number of stages is determined largely by the increasing difficulty of invasion as the area becomes stabilized. Man and animals affect invasion by the destruction of germules. Both in bare areas and in seral stages the action of rodents and birds is often decisive to the extent of altering the whole course of development. Man and animals operate as marked barriers to ecesis wherever they alter conditions unfavorably to invaders or where they turn the scale in competition by cultivating, grazing, camping, parasitism, etc. The absence of pollinating insects is sometimes a curious barrier to the complete ecesis of species far out of their usual habitat or region. Parasitic fungi decrease migration in so far as they affect seed production. They restrict or prevent ecesis either by the destruction of invaders or by placing them at a disadvantage with respect to the occupants. By the term _reaction_ is understood the effect which a plant or a community exerts upon its habitat. In connection with succession, the term is restricted to this special sense alone. It is entirely distinct from the response of the plant or group, i.e., its adjustment and adaptation to the habitat. In short, the habitat causes the plant to function and grow, and the plant then reacts upon the habitat, changing one or more of its factors in decisive or appreciable degree. The two processes are mutually complementary and often interact in most complex fashion. The reaction of a community is usually more than the sum of the reactions of the component species and individuals. It is the individual plant which produces the reaction, though the latter usually becomes recognizable through the combined action of the group. In most cases the action of the group accumulates or emphasizes an effect which would otherwise be insignificant or temporary. A community of trees casts less shade than the same number of isolated individuals, but the shade is constant and continuous, and hence controlling. The significance of the community reaction is especially well shown in the case of leaf mold and duff. The leaf litter is again only the total of the fallen leaves of all the individuals but its formation is completely dependent upon the community. The reaction of plants upon wind-borne sand and silt-laden waters illustrates the same fact. 2. Migration and Segregation[189] All prehistoric investigation, as far as it relates to the phenomena of the animate world, necessarily rests upon the hypothesis of migration. The distribution of plants, of the lower animals, and of men over the surface of the earth; the relationships existing between the different languages, religious conceptions, myths and legends, customs and social institutions--all these seem in this one assumption to find their common explanation. Each fresh advance in culture commences, so to speak, with a new period of wandering. The most primitive agriculture is nomadic, with a yearly abandonment of the cultivated area; the earliest trade is migratory trade; the first industries that free themselves from the household husbandry and become the special occupations of separate individuals are carried on itinerantly. The great founders of religion, the earliest poets and philosophers, the musicians and actors of past epochs, are all great wanderers. Even today, do not the inventor, the preacher of a new doctrine, and the virtuoso travel from place to place in search of adherents and admirers--notwithstanding the immense recent development in the means of communicating information? As civilization grows older, settlement becomes more permanent. The Greek was more settled than the Phoenician, the Roman than the Greek, because one was always the inheritor of the culture of the other. Conditions have not changed. The German is more migratory than the Latin, the Slav than the German. The Frenchman cleaves to his native soil; the Russian leaves it with a light heart to seek in other parts of his broad fatherland more favorable conditions of living. Even the factory workman is but a periodically wandering peasant. To all that can be adduced from experience in support of the statement that in the course of history mankind has been ever growing more settled, there comes a general consideration of a twofold nature. In the first place, the extent of fixed capital grows with advancing culture; the producer becomes stationary with his means of production. The itinerant smith of the southern Slav countries and the Westphalian iron works, the pack-horses of the Middle Ages and the great warehouses of our cities, the Thespian carts and the resident theater mark the starting and the terminal points of this evolution. In the second place, the modern machinery of transportation has in a far higher degree facilitated the transport of goods than of persons. The distribution of labor determined by locality thereby attains greater importance than the natural distribution of the means of production; the latter in many cases draws the former after it, where previously the reverse occurred. The migrations occurring at the opening of the history of European peoples are migrations of whole tribes, a pushing and pressing of collective units from east to west, which lasted for centuries. The migrations of the Middle Ages ever affect individual classes alone; the knights in the crusades, the merchants, the wage-craftsmen, the journeymen hand-workers, the jugglers and minstrels, the villeins seeking protection within the walls of a town. Modern migrations, on the contrary, are generally a matter of private concern, the individuals being led by the most varied motives. They are almost invariably without organization. The process repeating itself daily a thousand times is united only through the one characteristic, that it is everywhere a question of change of locality by persons seeking more favorable conditions of life. Among all the phenomena of masses in social life suited to statistical treatment, there is without doubt scarcely one that appears to fall of itself so completely under the general law of causality as migrations; and likewise hardly one concerning whose real cause such misty conceptions prevail. The whole department of migrations has never yet undergone systematic statistical observation; exclusive attention has hitherto been centered upon remarkable individual occurrences of such phenomena. Even a rational classification of migrations in accord with the demand of social science is at the present moment lacking. Such a classification would have to take as its starting-point the result of migrations from the point of view of population. On this basis they would fall into these groups: (1) migrations with continuous change of locality; (2) migrations with temporary change of settlement; (3) migrations with permanent settlement. To the _first_ group belong gypsy life, peddling, the carrying on of itinerant trades, tramp life; to the _second_, the wandering of journeymen craftsmen, domestic servants, tradesmen seeking the most favorable spots for temporary undertakings, officials to whom a definite office is for a time entrusted, scholars attending foreign institutions of learning; to the _third_, migration from place to place within the same country or province and to foreign parts, especially across the ocean. An intermediate stage between the first and second group is found in the _periodical migrations_. To this stage belong the migrations of farm laborers at harvest time, of the sugar laborers at the time of the _campagne_, of the masons of Upper Italy and the Ticino district, common day-laborers, potters, chimney-sweeps, chestnut-roasters, etc., which occur at definite seasons. In this division the influence of the natural and political insulation of the different countries is, it is true, neglected. It must not, however, be overlooked that in the era of nationalism and protection of national labor political allegiance has a certain importance in connection with the objective point of the migrations. It would, therefore, in our opinion, be more just to make another division, taking as a basis the politico-geographical extent of the migrations. From this point of view migrations would fall into _internal_ and _foreign_ types. Internal migrations are those whose points of departure and destination lie within the same national limits; foreign, those extending beyond these. The foreign may again be divided into _continental_ and _extra-European_ (generally transmaritime) emigration. One can, however, in a larger sense designate all migrations that do not leave the limits of the Continent as internal, and contrast with them real emigration, or transfer of domicile to other parts of the globe. Of all these manifold kinds of migration, the transmaritime alone has regularly been the subject of official statistics; and even it has been but imperfectly treated, as every student of this subject knows. The periodic emigrations of labor and the peddling trade have occasionally been also subjected to statistical investigation--mostly with the secondary aim of legislative restriction. Yet these migrations from place to place within the same country are vastly more numerous and in their consequences vastly more important than all other kinds of migration put together. Of the total population of the kingdom of Belgium there were, according to the results of the census of December 31, 1880, not less than 32.8 per cent who were born outside the municipality in which they had their temporary domicile; of the population of Austria (1890), 34.8 per cent. In Prussia, of 27,279,111 persons, 11,552,033, or 42.4 per cent, were born outside the municipality where they were domiciled. More than two-fifths of the population had changed their municipality at least once. If we call the total population born in a given place and domiciled anywhere within the borders of the country that locality's _native_ population, then according to the conditions of interchange of population just presented the native population of the country places is greater than their actual population; that of the cities, smaller. A balancing of the account of the internal migrations in the grand duchy of Oldenburg gives the cities a surplus, and country municipalities a deficit, of 15,162 persons. In the economy of population one is the complement of the other, just as in the case of two brothers of different temperament, one of whom regularly spends what the other has laboriously saved. To this extent, then, we are quite justified from the point of view of population in designating the cities man-consuming and the country municipalities man-producing social organisms. There is a very natural explanation for this condition of affairs in the country. Where the peasant, on account of the small population of his place of residence, is much restricted in his local choice of help, adjoining communities must supplement one another. In like manner the inhabitants of small places will intermarry more frequently than the inhabitants of larger places where there is a greater choice among the native population. Here we have the occasion for very numerous migrations to places not far removed. Such migrations, however, only mean a local exchange of socially allied elements. This absorption of the surplus of emigration over immigration is the characteristic of modern cities. If in our consideration of this problem we pay particular attention to this urban characteristic and to a like feature of the factory districts--where the conditions as to internal migrations are almost similar--we shall be amply repaid by the discovery that in such settlements the result of internal shiftings of population receives its clearest expression. Here, where the immigrant elements are most numerous, there develops between them and the native population a social struggle--a struggle for the best conditions of earning a livelihood or, if you will, for existence, which ends with the adaptation of one part to the other, or perhaps with the final subjugation of the one by the other. Thus, according to Schliemann, the city of Smyrna had in the year 1846 a population of 80,000 Turks and 8,000 Greeks; in the year 1881, on the contrary, there were 23,000 Turks and 76,000 Greeks. The Turkish portion of the population had thus in thirty-five years decreased by 71 per cent, while the Greeks had increased ninefold. Not everywhere, to be sure, do those struggles take the form of such a general process of displacement; but in individual cases it will occur with endless frequency within a country that the stronger and better-equipped element will overcome the weaker and less well-equipped. Thus we have here a case similar to that occurring so frequently in nature: on the same terrain where a more highly organized plant or animal has no longer room for subsistence, others less exacting in their demands take up their position and flourish. The coming of the new is in fact not infrequently the cause of the disappearance of those already there and of their withdrawal to more favorable surroundings. If these considerations show that by no means the majority of internal migrations find their objective point in the cities, they at the same time prove that the trend toward the great centers of population can, in itself be looked upon as having an extensive social and economic importance. It produces an alteration in the distribution of population throughout the state; and at its originating and objective points it gives rise to difficulties which legislative and executive authority has hitherto labored, usually with but very moderate success, to overcome. It transfers large numbers of persons almost directly from a sphere of life where barter predominates into one where money and credit exchange prevail, thereby affecting the social conditions of life and the social customs of the manual laboring classes in a manner to fill the philanthropist with grave anxiety. 3. Demographic Segregation and Social Selection[190] There are two ways in which demographic crystallization may have taken place. A people may have become rigid horizontally, divided into castes, or social strata; or it may be geographically segregated into localized communities, varying in size all the way from the isolated hamlet to the highly individualized nation. Both of these forms of crystallization are breaking down today under the pressure of modern industrialism and democracy, in Europe as well as in America. The sudden growth of great cities is the first result of the phenomenon of migration which we have to note. We think of this as essentially an American problem. We comfort ourselves in our failures of municipal administration with that thought. This is a grievous deception. Most of the European cities have increased in population more rapidly than in America. This is particularly true of great German urban centers. Berlin has outgrown our own metropolis, New York, in less than a generation, having in twenty-five years added as many actual new residents as Chicago, and twice as many as Philadelphia. Hamburg has gained twice as many in population since 1875 as Boston; Leipzig has distanced St. Louis. The same demographic outburst has occurred in the smaller German cities as well. Beyond the confines of the German Empire, from Norway to Italy, the same is true. Contemporaneously with this marvellous growth of urban centers we observe a progressive depopulation of the rural districts. What is going on in our New England states, especially in Massachusetts, is entirely characteristic of large areas in Europe. Take France, for example. The towns are absorbing even more than the natural increment of country population; they are drawing off the middle-aged as well as the young. Thus great areas are being actually depopulated. A process of selection is at work on a grand scale. The great majority today who are pouring into the cities are those who, like the emigrants to the United States in the old days of natural migration, come because they have the physical equipment and the mental disposition to seek a betterment of their fortunes away from home. Of course, an appreciable contingent of such migrant types is composed of the merely discontented, of the restless, and the adventurous; but, in the main, the best blood of the land it is which feeds into the arteries of city life. Another more certain mode of proof is possible for demonstrating that the population of cities is largely made up either of direct immigrants from the country or of their immediate descendants. In German cities, Hansen found that nearly one-half their residents were of direct country descent. In London it has been shown that over one-third of its population are immigrants; and in Paris the same is true. For thirty of the principal cities of Europe it has been calculated that only about one-fifth of their increase is from the loins of their own people, the overwhelming majority being of country birth. The first physical characteristic of urban populations, as compared with those of country districts, which we have to note, is their tendency toward that shape of head characteristic of two of our racial types, Teutonic and Mediterranean respectively. It seems as if for some reason the broad-headed Alpine race was a distinctly rural type. Thirty years ago an observer in the ethnically Alpine district of south central France noted an appreciable difference between town and country in the head form of the people. In a half-dozen of the smaller cities his observations pointed to a greater prevalence of the long-headed type than in the country roundabout. Dr. Ammon of Carlsruhe, working upon measurements of thousands of conscripts of the Grand Duchy of Baden, discovered radical differences here between the head form in city and country, and between the upper and lower classes in the larger towns. Several explanations for this were possible. The direct influence of urban life might conceivably have brought it about, acting through superior education, habits of life, and the like. There was no psychological basis for this assumption. Another tenable hypothesis was that in these cities, situated, as we have endeavored to show, in a land where two racial types of population were existing side by side, the city for some reason exerted superior powers of attraction upon the long-headed race. If this were true, then by a combined process of social and racial selection, the towns would be continually drawing unto themselves that tall and blond Teutonic type of population which, as history teaches us, has dominated social and political affairs in Europe for centuries. This suggested itself as the probable solution of the question; and investigations all over Europe during the last five years have been directed to the further analysis of the matter. Is this phenomenon, the segregation of a long-headed physical type in city populations, merely the manifestation of a restless tendency on the part of the Teutonic race to reassert itself in the new phases of nineteenth-century competition? All through history this type has been characteristic of the dominant classes, especially in military and political, perhaps rather than purely intellectual, affairs. All the leading dynasties of Europe have long been recruited from its ranks. The contrast of this type, whose energy has carried it all over Europe, with the persistently sedentary Alpine race is very marked. A certain passivity, or patience, is characteristic of the Alpine peasantry. As a rule, not characterized by the domineering spirit of the Teuton, this Alpine type makes a comfortable and contented neighbor, a resigned and peaceful subject. Whether this rather negative character of the Alpine race is entirely innate, or whether it is in part, like many of its social phenomena, merely a reflection from the almost invariably inhospitable habitat in which it has long been isolated, we may not pretend to decide. Let us now for a moment take up the consideration of a second physical characteristic of city populations--viz., stature. If there be a law at all in respect of average statures, it demonstrates rather the depressing effects of city life than the reverse. For example, Hamburg is far below the average for Germany. All over Britain there are indications of this law, that town populations are, on the average, comparatively short of stature. Dr. Beddoe, the great authority upon this subject, concludes his investigation of the population of Great Britain thus: "It may therefore be taken as _proved_ that the stature of men in the large towns of Britain is lowered considerably below the standard of the nation, and as _probable_ that such degradation is hereditary and progressive." A most important point in this connection is the great variability of city populations in size. All observers comment upon this. It is of profound significance. The people of the west and east ends in each city differ widely. The population of the aristocratic quarters is often found to exceed in stature the people of the tenement districts. We should expect this, of course, as a direct result of the depressing influence of unfavorable environment. Yet there is apparently another factor underlying that--viz., social selection. While cities contain so large a proportion of degenerate physical types as on the average to fall below the surrounding country in stature, nevertheless they also are found to include an inordinately large number of very tall and well-developed individuals. In other words, compared with the rural districts, where all men are subject to the same conditions of life, we discover in the city that the population has differentiated into the very tall and the very short. The explanation for this phenomenon is simple. Yet it is not direct, as in Topinard's suggestion that it is a matter of race or that a change of environment operates to stimulate growth. Rather does it appear that it is the growth which suggests the change. The tall men are in the main those vigorous, mettlesome, presumably healthy individuals who have themselves, or in the person of their fathers, come to the city in search of the prizes which urban life has to offer to the successful. On the other hand, the degenerate, the stunted, those who entirely outnumber the others so far as to drag the average for the city as a whole below the normal, are the grist turned out by the city mill. They are the product of the tenement, the sweat shop, vice, and crime. Of course, normally developed men, as ever, constitute the main bulk of the population, but these two widely divergent classes attain a very considerable representation. We have seen thus far that evidence seems to point to an aggregation of the Teutonic long-headed population in the urban centers of Europe. Perhaps a part of the tall stature in some cities may be due to such racial causes. A curious anomaly now remains, however, to be noted. City populations appear to manifest a distinct tendency toward brunetness--that is to say, they seem to comprise an abnormal proportion of brunet traits, as compared with the neighboring rural districts. This tendency was strikingly shown to characterize the entire German Empire when its six million school children were examined under Virchow's direction. In twenty-five out of thirty-three of the larger cities were the brunet traits more frequent than in the country. Austria offers confirmation of the same tendency toward brunetness in twenty-four out of its thirty-three principal cities. Farther south, in Italy, it was noted much earlier that cities contained fewer blonds than were common in the rural districts roundabout. In conclusion let us add, not as additional testimony, for the data are too defective, that among five hundred American students at the Institute of Technology in Boston, roughly classified, there were 9 per cent of pure brunet type among those of country birth and training, while among those of urban birth and parentage the percentage of such brunet type rose as high as 15. It is not improbable that there is in brunetness, in the dark hair and eye, some indication of vital superiority. If this were so, it would serve as a partial explanation for the social phenomena which we have been at so much pains to describe. If in the same community there were a slight vital advantage in brunetness, we should expect to find that type slowly aggregating in the cities; for it requires energy and courage, physical as well as mental, not only to break the ties of home and migrate, but also to maintain one's self afterward under the stress of urban life. From the preceding formidable array of testimony it appears that the tendency of urban populations is certainly not toward the pure blond, long-headed, and tall Teutonic type. The phenomenon of urban selection is something more complex than a mere migration of a single racial element in the population toward the cities. The physical characteristics of townsmen are too contradictory for ethnic explanations alone. To be sure, the tendencies are slight; we are not even certain of their universal existence at all. We are merely watching for their verification or disproof. There is, however, nothing improbable in the phenomena we have noted. Naturalists have always turned to the environment for the final solution of many of the great problems of nature. In this case we have to do with one of the most sudden and radical changes of environment known to man. Every condition of city life, mental as well as physical, is at the polar extreme from those which prevail in the country. To deny that great modifications in human structure and functions may be effected by a change from one to the other is to gainsay all the facts of natural history. 4. Inter-racial Competition and Race Suicide[191] I have thus far spoken of the foreign arrivals at our ports, as estimated. Beginning with 1820, however, we have custom-house statistics of the numbers of persons annually landing upon our shores. Some of these, indeed, did not remain here; yet, rudely speaking, we may call them all immigrants. Between 1820 and 1830, population grew to 12,866,020. The number of foreigners arriving in the ten years was 151,000. Here, then, we have for forty years an increase, substantially all out of the loins of the four millions of our own people living in 1790, amounting to almost nine millions, or 227 per cent. Such a rate of increase was never known before or since, among any considerable population over any extensive region. About this time, however, we reach a turning-point in the history of our population. In the decade 1830-40 the number of foreign arrivals greatly increased. Immigration had not, indeed, reached the enormous dimensions of these later days. Yet, during the decade in question, the foreigners coming to the United States were almost exactly fourfold those coming in the decade preceding, or 599,000. The question now of vital importance is this: Was the population of the country correspondingly increased? I answer, No! The population of 1840 was almost exactly what, by computation, it would have been had no increase in foreign arrivals taken place. Again, between 1840 and 1850, a still further access of foreigners occurred, this time of enormous dimensions, the arrivals of the decade amounting to not less than 1,713,000. Of this gigantic total, 1,048,000 were from the British Isles, the Irish famine of 1846-47 having driven hundreds of thousands of miserable peasants to seek food upon our shores. Again we ask, Did this excess constitute a net gain to the population of the country? Again the answer is, No! Population showed no increase over the proportions established before immigration set in like a flood. In other words, as the foreigners began to come in larger numbers, the native population more and more withheld their own increase. Now this correspondence might be accounted for in three different ways: (1) It might be said that it was a mere coincidence, no relation of cause and effect existing between the two phenomena. (2) It might be said that the foreigners came because the native population was relatively declining, that is, failing to keep up its pristine rate of increase. (3) It might be said that the growth of the native population was checked by the incoming of the foreign elements in such large numbers. The view that the correspondence referred to was a mere coincidence, purely accidental in origin, is perhaps that most commonly taken. If this be the true explanation, the coincidence is a most remarkable one. In the June number of this magazine, I cited the predictions as to the future population of the country made by Elkanah Watson, on the basis of the censuses of 1790, 1800, and 1810, while immigration still remained at a minimum. Now let us place together the actual census figures for 1840 and 1850, Watson's estimates for those years, and the foreign arrivals during the preceding decade: 1840 1850 The census 17,069,453 23,191,876 Watson's estimates 17,116,526 23,185,368 ___________ ___________ The difference -47,073 +6,508 Foreign arrivals during the preceding decade 599,000 1,713,000 Here we see that, in spite of the arrival of 500,000 foreigners during the period 1830-40, four times as many as had arrived during any preceding decade, the figures of the census coincided closely with the estimate of Watson, based on the growth of population in the pre-immigration era, falling short of it by only 47,073 in a total of 17,000,000; while in 1850 the actual population, in spite of the arrival of 1,713,000 more immigrants, exceeded Watson's estimates by only 6,508 in a total of 23,000,000. Surely, if this correspondence between the increase of the foreign element and the relative decline of the native element is a mere coincidence, it is one of the most astonishing in human history. The actuarial degree of improbability as to a coincidence so close, over a range so vast, I will not undertake to compute. If, on the other hand, it be alleged that the relation of cause and effect existed between the two phenomena, this might be put in two widely different ways: either that the foreigners came in increasing numbers because the native element was relatively declining, or that the native element failed to maintain its previous rate of increase because the foreigners came in such swarms. What shall we say of the former of these explanations? Does anything more need to be said than that it is too fine to be the real explanation of a big human fact like this we are considering? To assume that at such a distance in space, in the then state of news-communication and ocean-transportation, and in spite of the ignorance and extreme poverty of the peasantries of Europe from which the immigrants were then generally drawn, there was so exact a degree of knowledge not only of the fact that the native element here was not keeping up its rate of increase but also of the precise ratio of that decline as to enable those peasantries, with or without a mutual understanding, to supply just the numbers necessary to bring our population up to its due proportions, would be little less than laughable. Today, with quick passages, cheap freights, and ocean transportation there is not a single wholesale trade in the world carried on with this degree of knowledge, or attaining anything like this point of precision in results. The true explanation of the remarkable fact we are considering I believe to be the last of the three suggested. The access of foreigners, at the time and under the circumstances, constituted a shock to the principle of population among the native element. That principle is always acutely sensitive alike to sentimental and to economic conditions. And it is to be noted, in passing, that not only did the decline in the native element, as a whole, take place in singular correspondence with the excess of foreign arrivals, but it occurred chiefly in just those regions to which the newcomers most freely resorted. But what possible reason can be suggested why the incoming of the foreigner should have checked the disposition of the native toward the increase of population at the traditional rate? I answer that the best of good reasons can be assigned. Throughout the northeastern and northern middle states, into which, during the period under consideration, the newcomers poured in such numbers, the standard of material living, of general intelligence, of social decency, had been singularly high. Life, even at its hardest, had always had its luxuries; the babe had been a thing of beauty, to be delicately nurtured and proudly exhibited; the growing child had been decently dressed, at least for school and church; the house had been kept in order, at whatever cost, the gate hung, the shutters in place, while the front yard had been made to bloom with simple flowers; the village church, the public schoolhouse, had been the best which the community, with great exertions and sacrifices, could erect and maintain. Then came the foreigner, making his way into the little village, bringing--small blame to him!--not only a vastly lower standard of living, but too often an actual present incapacity even to understand the refinements of life and thought in the community in which he sought a home. Our people had to look upon houses that were mere shells for human habitations, the gate unhung, the shutters flapping or falling, green pools in the yard, babes and young children rolling about half naked or worse, neglected, dirty, unkempt. Was there not in this a sentimental reason strong enough to give a shock to the principle of population? But there was, besides, an economic reason for a check to the native increase. The American shrank from the industrial competition thus thrust upon him. He was unwilling himself to engage in the lowest kind of day labor with these new elements of the population; he was even more unwilling to bring sons and daughters into the world to enter into that competition. For the first time in our history, the people of the free states became divided into classes. Those classes were natives and foreigners. Politically, the distinction had only a certain force, which yielded more or less readily under partisan pressure; but socially and industrially that distinction has been a tremendous power, and its chief effects have been wrought upon population. Neither the social companionship nor the industrial competition of the foreigner has, broadly speaking, been welcome to the native. It hardly needs to be said that the foregoing descriptions are not intended to apply to all of the vast body of immigrants during this period. Thousands came over from good homes; many had all the advantages of education and culture; some possessed the highest qualities of manhood and citizenship. But let us proceed with the census. By 1860 the causes operating to reduce the growth of the native element--to which had then manifestly been added the force of important changes in the manner of living, the introduction of more luxurious habits, the influence of city life, and the custom of "boarding"--had reached such a height as, in spite of a still-increasing immigration, to leave the population of the country 310,503 below the estimate. The fearful losses of the Civil War and the rapid extension of habits unfavorable to increase of numbers make any further use of Watson's computations uninstructive; yet still the great fact protrudes through all the subsequent history of our population that the more rapidly foreigners came into the United States, the smaller was the rate of increase, not merely among the native population separately, but throughout the population of the country, as a whole, including the foreigners. The climax of this movement was reached when, during the decade 1880-90, the foreign arrivals rose to the monstrous total of five and a quarter millions (twice what had ever before been known), while the population, even including this enormous re-enforcement, increased more slowly than in any other period of our history except, possibly, that of the great Civil War. If the foregoing views are true, or contain any considerable degree of truth, foreign immigration into this country has, from the time it first assumed large proportions, amounted, not to a reinforcement of our population, but to a replacement of native by foreign stock. That if the foreigners had not come the native element would long have filled the places the foreigners usurped, I entertain not a doubt. The competency of the American stock to do this it would be absurd to question, in the face of such a record as that for 1790 to 1830. During the period from 1830 to 1860 the material conditions of existence in this country were continually becoming more and more favorable to the increase of population from domestic sources. The old man-slaughtering medicine was being driven out of civilized communities; houses were becoming larger; the food and clothing of the people were becoming ampler and better. Nor was the cause which, about 1840 or 1850, began to retard the growth of population here to be found in the climate which Mr. Clibborne stigmatizes so severely. The climate of the United States has been benign enough to enable us to take the English shorthorn and greatly to improve it, as the re-exportation of that animal to England at monstrous prices abundantly proves; to take the English race-horse and to improve him to a degree of which the startling victories of Parole, Iroquois, and Foxhall afford but a suggestion; to take the Englishman and to improve him, too, adding agility to his strength, making his eye keener and his hand steadier, so that in rowing, in riding, in shooting, and in boxing, the American of pure English stock is today the better animal. No! Whatever were the causes which checked the growth of the native population, they were neither physiological nor climatic. They were mainly social and economic; and chief among them was the access of vast hordes of foreign immigrants, bringing with them a standard of living at which our own people revolted. C. ECONOMIC COMPETITION 1. Changing Forms of Economic Competition[192] There is a sense in which much of the orthodox system of political economy is eternally true. Conclusions reached by valid reasoning are always as true as the hypotheses from which they are deduced. It will remain forever true that if unlimited competition existed, most of the traditional laws would be realized in the practical world. It will also be true that in those corners of the industrial field which still show an approximation to Ricardian competition there will be seen as much of correspondence between theory and fact as candid reasoners claim. If political economy will but content itself with this kind of truth, it need never be disturbed by industrial revolutions. The science need not trouble itself to progress. This hypothetical truth, or science of what would take place if society were fashioned after an ideal pattern, is not what Ricardo believed that he had discovered. His system was positive; actual life suggested it by developing tendencies for which the scientific formulas which at that time were traditional could not account. It was a new industrial world which called for a modernized system of economic doctrine. Ricardo was the first to understand the situation, to trace the new tendencies to their consummation, and to create a scientific system by insight and foresight. He outran history in the process, and mentally created a world more relentlessly competitive than any which has existed; and yet it was fact and not imagination that lay at the basis of the whole system. Steam had been utilized, machines were supplanting hand labor, workmen were migrating to new centers of production, guild regulations were giving way, and competition of a type unheard of before was beginning to prevail. A struggle for existence had commenced between parties of unequal strength. In manufacturing industries the balance of power had been disturbed by steam, and the little shops of former times were disappearing. The science adapted to such conditions was an economic Darwinism; it embodied the laws of a struggle for existence between competitors of the new and predatory type and those of the peaceable type which formerly possessed the field. Though the process was savage, the outlook which it afforded was not wholly evil. The survival of crude strength was, in the long run, desirable. Machines and factories meant, to every social class, cheapened goods and more comfortable living. Efficient working establishments were developing; the social organism was perfecting itself for its contest with crude nature. It was a fuller and speedier dominion over the earth which was to result from the concentration of human energy now termed centralization. The error unavoidable to the theorists of the time lay in basing a scientific system on the facts afforded by a state of revolution. This was attempting to derive permanent principles from transient phenomena. Some of these principles must become obsolete; and the work demanded of modern economists consists in separating the transient from the permanent in the Ricardian system. How much of the doctrine holds true when the struggle between unequal competitors is over, and when a few of the very strongest have possession of the field? In most branches of manufacturing, and in other than local transportation, the contest between the strong and the weak is either settled or in process of rapid settlement. The survivors are becoming so few, so powerful, and so nearly equal that if the strife were to continue, it would bid fair to involve them all in a common ruin. What has actually developed is not such a battle of giants but a system of armed neutralities and federations of giants. The new era is distinctly one of consolidated forces; rival establishments are forming combinations, and the principle of union is extending itself to the labor and the capital in each of them. Laborers who once competed with each other are now making their bargains collectively with their employers. Employers who under the old régime would have worked independently are merging their capital in corporations and allowing it to be managed as by a single hand. Predatory competition between unequal parties was the basis of the Ricardian system. This process was vaguely conceived and never fully analyzed; what was prominent in the thought of men in connection with it was the single element of struggle. Mere effort to survive, the Darwinian feature of the process, was all that, in some uses, the term "competition" was made to designate. Yet the competitive action of an organized society is systematic; each part of it is limited to a specific field, and tends, within these limits, to self-annihilation. An effort to attain a conception of competition that should remove some of the confusion was made by Professor Cairnes. His system of "non-competing groups" is a feature of his value theory, which is a noteworthy contribution to economic thought. Mr. Mill had followed Ricardo in teaching that the natural price of commodities is governed by the cost of producing them. Professor Cairnes accepts this statement, but attaches to it a meaning altogether new. He says, in effect: Commodities do indeed exchange according to their cost of production; but cost is something quite different from what currently passes by that name. That is merely the outlay incurred by the capitalist-employer for raw materials, labor, etc. The real cost is the personal sacrifice made by the producing parties, workmen as well as employers. It is not a mercantile but a psychological phenomenon, a reaction upon the men themselves occasioned by the effort of the laborer and the abstinence of the capitalist. These personal sacrifices gauge the market value of commodities within the fields in which, in the terms of the theory, competition is free. The adjustment takes place through the spontaneous movement of capital and labor from employments that yield small returns to those that give larger ones. Capital migrates freely from place to place and from occupation to occupation. If one industry is abnormally profitable, capital seeks it, increases and cheapens its product, and reduces its profits to the prevailing level. Profits tend to a general uniformity. Wages are said to tend to equality only within limits. The transfer of labor from one employment to another is checked by barriers. What we find, in effect [continues Professor Cairnes], is not a whole population competing indiscriminately for all occupations, but a series of industrial layers, superimposed on one another, within each of which the various candidates for employment possess a real and effective power of selection, while those occupying the several strata are, for all purposes of effective competition, practically isolated from each other. We may perhaps venture to arrange them in some such order as this: first, at the bottom of the scale there would be the large group of unskilled or nearly unskilled laborers, comprising agricultural laborers, laborers engaged in miscellaneous occupations in towns, or acting in attendance on skilled labor. Secondly, there would be the artisan group, comprising skilled laborers of the secondary order--carpenters, joiners, smiths, masons, shoemakers, tailors, hatters, etc., etc.--with whom might be included the very large class of small retail dealers, whose means and position place them within the reach of the same industrial opportunities as the class of artisans. The third layer would contain producers and dealers of a higher order, whose work would demand qualifications only obtainable by persons of substantial means and fair educational opportunities; for example, civil and mechanical engineers, chemists, opticians, watchmakers, and others of the same industrial grade, in which might also find a place the superior class of retail tradesmen; while above these there would be a fourth, comprising persons still more favorably circumstanced, whose ampler means would give them a still wider choice. This last group would contain members of the learned professions, as well as persons engaged in the various careers of science and art, and in the higher branches of mercantile business. It is essential to the theory that not only workmen but their children should be confined to a producing group. The equalizing process may take place even though men do not actually abandon one occupation and enter another; for there exists, in the generation of young men not yet committed to any occupation, a disposable fund of labor which will gravitate naturally to the occupations that pay the largest wages. It is not necessary that blacksmiths should ever become shoemakers, or vice versa, but only that the children of both classes of artisans should be free to enter the trade that is best rewarded. Professor Cairnes does not claim that his classification is exhaustive, nor that the demarcation is absolute: No doubt the various ranks and classes fade into each other by imperceptible gradations, and individuals from all classes are constantly passing up or dropping down; but while this is so, it is nevertheless true that the average workman, from whatever rank he be taken, finds his power of competition limited for practical purposes to a certain range of occupations, so that, however high the rates of remuneration in those which lie beyond may rise, he is excluded from sharing them. We are thus compelled to recognize the existence of non-competing industrial groups as a feature of our social economy. It will be seen that the competition which is here under discussion is of an extraordinary kind; and the fact that the general term is applied to it without explanation is a proof of the vagueness of the conceptions of competition with which acute writers have contented themselves. Actual competition consists invariably in an effort to undersell a rival producer. A carpenter competes with a carpenter because he creates a similar utility and offers it in the market. In the theory of Professor Cairnes the carpenter is the competitor of the blacksmith, because his children may enter the blacksmith's calling. In the actual practice of his own trade, the one artisan in no wise affects the other. It is potential competition rather than actual that is here under discussion; and even this depends for its effectiveness on the action of the rising generation. Modern methods of production have obliterated Professor Cairnes's dividing lines. Potential competition extends to every part of the industrial field in which men work in organized companies. Throwing out of account the professions, a few trades of the highest sort, and the class of labor which is performed by employers themselves and their salaried assistants, it is practically true that labor is in a universal ebb and flow; it passes freely to occupations which are, for the time being, highly paid, and reduces their rewards to the general level. This objection to the proposed grouping is not theoretical. The question is one of fact; it is the development of actual industry that has invalidated the theory which, in the seventies, expressed an important truth concerning economic relations in England. Moreover, the author of the theory anticipated one change which would somewhat lessen its applicability to future conditions. He recorded his belief that education would prove a leveler, and that it would merge to some extent the strata of industrial society. The children of hod-carriers might become machinists, accountants, or lawyers when they could acquire the needed education. He admitted also that new countries afford conditions in which the lines of demarcation are faint. He was not in a position to appreciate the chief leveling agency, namely, the machine method of production as now extended and perfected. Education makes the laborer capable of things relatively difficult, and machines render the processes which he needs to master relatively easy. The so-called unskilled workmen stand on a higher personal level than those of former times; and the new methods of manufacturing are reducing class after class to that level. Mechanical labor is resolving itself into processes so simple that anyone may learn them. An old-time shoemaker could not become a watchmaker, and even his children would have found difficulties in their way had they attempted to master the higher trade; but a laster in a Lynn shoe factory can, if he will, learn one of the minute trades that are involved in the making of a Waltham watch. His children may do so without difficulty; and this is all that is necessary for maintaining the normal balance between the trades. The largest surviving differences between workmen are moral. Bodily strength still counts for something, and mental strength for more; but the consideration which chiefly determines the value of a workman to the employer who intrusts to him costly materials and a delicate machine is the question of fidelity. Character is not monopolized by any social class; it is of universal growth, and tends by the prominent part which it plays in modern industry, to reduce to their lowest terms the class differences of the former era. The rewards of professional life are gauged primarily by character and native endowment, and are, to this extent, open to the children of workmen. New barriers, however, arise here in the ampler education which, as time advances, is demanded of persons in these pursuits; and these barriers give to a part of the fourth and highest class in the scheme that we are criticising a permanent basis of existence. Another variety of labor retains a pre-eminence based on native adaptations and special opportunities. It is the work of the employer himself. It is an organizing and directing function, and in large industries is performed only in part by the owners. A portion of this work is committed to hired assistants. Strictly speaking, the entrepreneur, or employer, of a great establishment is not one man, but many, who work in a collective capacity, and who receive a reward that, taken in the aggregate, constitutes the "wages of superintendence." To some members of this administrative body the returns come in the form of salaries, while to others they come partly in the form of dividends; but if we regard their work in its entirety, and consider their wages in a single sum, we must class it with entrepreneur's profits rather than with ordinary wages. It is a different part of the product from the sum distributed among day laborers; and this fact separates the administrative group from the class considered in our present inquiry. Positions of the higher sort are usually gained either through the possession of capital or through relations to persons who possess it. Though clerkships of the lower grade demand no attainments which the children of workmen cannot gain, and though promotion to the higher grades is still open, the tendency of the time is to make the transition from the ranks of labor to those of administration more and more difficult. The true laboring class is merging its subdivisions, while it is separating more sharply from the class whose interests, in test questions, place them on the side of capital. 2. Competition and the Natural Harmony of Individual Interests[193] The general industry of the society never can exceed what the capital of the society can employ. As the number of workmen that can be kept in employment by any particular person must bear a certain proportion to his capital, so the number of those that can be continually employed by all the members of a great society must bear a certain proportion to the whole capital of that society and never can exceed that proportion. No regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital can maintain. It can only divert a part of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone; and it is by no means certain that this artificial direction is likely to be more advantageous to the society than that into which it would have gone of its own accord. Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society. As every individual, therefore, endeavors as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry and so to direct that industry that its product may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner that its product may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it. What is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ, and of which the product is likely to be of the greatest value, every individual, it is evident, can, in his local situation, judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it. 3. Competition and Freedom[194] What, after all, is competition? Is it something that exists and acts of itself, like the cholera? No, competition is simply the absence of oppression. In reference to the matters that interest me, I _prefer_ to choose for myself and I do not want anyone else to choose for me against my will; that's all. And if anyone undertakes to substitute his judgment for mine in matters that concern me I shall demand the privilege of substituting my wishes for his in matters which concern him. What guaranty is there that this arrangement will improve matters? It is evident that competition is liberty. To destroy liberty of action is to destroy the possibility and consequently the faculty of choosing, judging, comparing; it is to kill intelligence, to kill thought, to kill man himself. Whatever the point of departure, there is where modern reforms always end; in order to improve society it is necessary to annihilate the individual, upon the assumption that the individual is the source of all evil, and as if the individual was not likewise the source of all good. 4. Money and Freedom[195] Money not only makes the relation of individuals to the group a more independent one, but the content of the special forms of associations and the relations of the participants to these associations is subject to an entirely new process of differentiation. The medieval corporations included in themselves all the human interests. A guild of cloth-makers was not an association of individuals which cultivated the interests of cloth-making exclusively. It was a community in a vocational, personal, religious, political sense and in many other respects. And however technical the interests that might be grouped together in such an association, they had an immediate and lively interest for all members. Members were wholly bound up in the association. In contrast to this form of organization the capitalistic system has made possible innumerable associations which either require from their members merely money contributions or are directed toward mere money interests. In the case of the business corporation, especially, the basis of organization of members is exclusively an interest in the dividends, so exclusively that it is a matter of entire indifference to the individual what the society (enterprise) actually produces. The independence of the person of the concrete objects, in which he has a mere money interest, is reflected, likewise, in his independence, in his personal relations, of the other individuals with whom he is connected by an exclusive money interest. This has produced one of the most effective cultural formations--one which makes it possible for individuals to take part in an association whose objective aim it will promote, use, and enjoy without this association bringing with it any further personal connection or imposing any further obligation. Money has brought it about that one individual may unite himself with others without being compelled to surrender any of his personal freedom or reserve. That is the fundamental and unspeakably significant difference between the medieval form of organization which made no difference between the association of men as men and the association of men as members of an organization. The medieval form or organization united equally in one circle the entire business, religious, political, and friendly interests of the individuals who composed it. III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS 1. Biological Competition The conception of competition has had a twofold origin: in the notions (a) of the struggle for existence and (b) of the struggle for livelihood. Naturally, then, the concept of competition has had a parallel development in biology and in economics. The growth of the notion in these two fields of thought, although parallel, is not independent. Indeed, the fruitful process of interaction between the differing formulations of the concept in biology and economics is a significant illustration of the cross-fertilization of the sciences. Although Malthus was a political economist, his principle of population is essentially biological rather than economic. He is concerned with the struggle for existence rather than for livelihood. Reacting against the theories of Condorcet and of Godwin concerning the natural equality, perfectability, and inevitable progress of man, Malthus in 1798 stated the dismal law that population tends to increase in geometrical progression and subsistence in arithmetical progression. In the preface to the second edition of his _Essay on the Principle of Population_ Malthus acknowledged his indebtedness to "Hume, Wallace, Dr. Adam Smith and Dr. Price." Adam Smith no doubt anticipated and perhaps suggested to Malthus his thesis in such passages in the _Wealth of Nations_ as, "Every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the means of their subsistence," "The demand for men necessarily regulates the production of men." These statements of the relation of population to food supply, however, are incidental to Smith's general theories of economics; the contribution of Malthus lay in taking this principle out of its limited context, giving it the character of scientific generalization, and applying it to current theories and programs of social reform. The debt of biology to Malthus is acknowledged both by Darwin and by Wallace. Fifteen months after Darwin had commenced his inquiry a chance reading of Malthus' _Essay on the Principle of Population_ gave him the clue to the explanation of the origin of species through the struggle for existence. During an attack of intermittent fever Wallace recalled Malthus' theory which he had read twelve years before and in it found the solution of the problem of biological evolution. Although the phrase "the struggle for existence" was actually used by Malthus: Darwin, Wallace, and their followers first gave it a general application to all forms of life. Darwin in his _The Origin of Species_, published in 1859, analyzed with a wealth of detail the struggle for existence, the nature and forms of competition, natural selection, the survival of the fittest, the segregation and consequent specialization of species. Biological research in recent years has directed attention away from the theory of evolution to field study of plant and animal communities. Warming, Adams, Wheeler, and others have described, in their plant and animal ecologies, the processes of competition and segregation by which communities are formed. Clements in two studies, _Plant Succession_ and _Plant Indicators_, has described in detail the life-histories of some of these communities. His analysis of the succession of plant communities within the same geographical area and of the relations of competitive co-operation of the different species of which these communities are composed might well serve as a model for similar studies in human ecology. 2. Economic Competition Research upon competition in economics falls under two heads: (a) the natural history of competition, and (b) the history of theories of competition. a) Competition on the economic level, i.e., of struggle for livelihood, had its origins in the market place. Sir Henry Maine, on the basis of his study of village communities, states in effect that the beginnings of economic behavior are first to be seen in neutral meeting places of strangers and foes. In order to understand what a market originally was, you must try to picture to yourselves a territory occupied by village-communities, self-acting and as yet autonomous, each cultivating its arable land in the middle of its waste, and each, I fear I must add, at perpetual war with its neighbour. But at several points, points probably where the domains of two or three villages converged, there appear to have been spaces of what we should now call neutral ground. These were the Markets. They were probably the only places at which the members of the different primitive groups met for any purpose except warfare, and the persons who came to them were doubtless at first persons especially empowered to exchange the produce and manufactures of one little village-community for those of another. But, besides the notion of neutrality, another idea was anciently associated with markets. This was the idea of sharp practice and hard bargaining. What is the real origin of the feeling that it is not creditable to drive a hard bargain with a near relative or friend? It can hardly be that there is any rule of morality to forbid it. The feeling seems to me to bear the traces of the old notion that men united in natural groups do not deal with one another on principles of trade. The only natural group in which men are now joined is the family; and the only bond of union resembling that of the family is that which men create for themselves by friendship. The general proposition which is the basis of Political Economy, made its first approach to truth under the only circumstances which admitted of men meeting at arm's length, not as members of the same group, but as strangers. Gradually the assumption of the right to get the best price has penetrated into the interior of these groups, but it is never completely received so long as the bond of connection between man and man is assumed to be that of family or clan connection. The rule only triumphs when the primitive community is in ruins. What are the causes which have generalized a Rule of the Market until it has been supposed to express an original and fundamental tendency of human nature, it is impossible to state fully, so multifarious have they been. Everything which has helped to convert a society into a collection of individuals from being an assemblage of families has helped to add to the truth of the assertion made of human nature by the Political Economists.[196] The extension of the relations of the market place to practically all aspects of life having to do with livelihood has been the outcome of the industrial revolution and the growth of Great Society. Standardization of commodities, of prices, and of wages, the impersonal nature of business relations, the "cash-nexus" and the credit basis of all human relations has greatly extended the external competitive forms of interaction. Money, with its abstract standards of value, is not only a medium of exchange, but at the same time symbol par excellence of the economic nature of modern competitive society. The literature describing change from the familial communism, typical of primitive society, to the competitive economy of modern capitalistic society is indicated in the bibliography. b) The history of competition as a concept in political economy goes back to the Physiocrats. This French school of economists, laying stress upon the food supply as the basis and the measure of the wealth of the nation, demanded the abolition of restrictions upon agricultural production and commerce. The Physiocrats based their theories upon the natural rights of individuals to liberty. The miserable state of the nation seemed to demand a _volte face_. Taxes were many and indirect. Let them be single and direct. Liberty of enterprise was shackled. Let it be free. State-regulation was excessive. _Laissez-faire!_ Their economic plea for liberty is buttressed by an appeal to Nature, greater than kings or ministers, and by an assertion of the natural, inherent rights of man to be unimpeded in his freedom except so far as he infringes upon that of others.[197] While the Physiocrats emphasized the beneficent effects of freedom in industry to which the individual has a natural right, Adam Smith, in his book _The Wealth of Nations_, emphasized the advantages of competition. To him competition was a protection against monopoly. "It [competition] can never hurt either the consumer or the producer; on the contrary it must tend to make the retailers both sell cheaper and buy dearer than if the whole trade was monopolized by one or two persons!"[198] It was at the same time of benefit to both producer and consumer. "Monopoly is a great enemy to good management which can never be universally established but in consequence of that free and universal competition which forces everybody to have recourse to it for the sake of self-defence."[199] Before Darwin, competition had been conceived in terms of freedom and of the natural harmony of interests. His use of the term introduced into competition the notion of struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. This new conception, in which competition appears as a fundamental process in all life, has been a powerful prop to the laissez faire policy and has led to its continuance regardless of the misery and destitution which, if it did not create, it certainly did not remedy. The works of Herbert Spencer, the greatest expounder of the doctrine of evolution, contain a powerful massing of evidence in favor of laissez faire as a conclusion to be drawn from a scientific study of human behavior. "Nothing but the slow modifications of human nature by the discipline of social life," he said, "can produce permanently advantageous changes. A fundamental error pervading the thinking of nearly all parties, political and social, is that evils admit of immediate and radical remedies."[200] With the growth of large-scale production with the tendency to the formation of combinations and monopolies, as a result of freedom of competition, works began to appear on the subject of unrestricted competition. The expressions "unfair" and "cut-throat" competition, which occur frequently in recent literature, suggest the new point of view. Another euphemism under which other and more far-reaching proposals for the limitation of competition and laissez faire have been proposed is "social justice." In the meantime the trend of legislation in England for a hundred years, as Mr. A. V. Dicey[201] has pointed out, has been, in spite of Herbert Spencer, away from the individualistic and in the direction of a collectivistic social order. This means more legislation, more control, and less individual liberty. The full meaning of this change in law and opinion can only be fully understood, however, when it is considered in connection with the growth of communication, economic organization, and cities, all of which have so increased the mutual interdependence of all members of society as to render illusory and unreal the old freedoms and liberties which the system of laissez faire was supposed to guarantee. 3. Competition and Human Ecology The ecological conception of society is that of a society created by competitive co-operation. Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_ was a description of society in so far as it is a product of economic competition. David Ricardo, in his _Principles of Political Economy_, defined the process of competition more abstractly and states its consequences with more ruthless precision and consistency. "His theory," says Kolthamer in his introduction, "seems to be an everlasting justification of the _status quo_. As such at least it was used." But Ricardo's doctrines were both "a prop and a menace to the middle classes," and the errors which they canonized have been the presuppositions of most of the radical and revolutionary programs since that time. The socialists, adopting his theories of value and wages, interpreted Ricardo's crude expressions to their own advantage. To alter the Ricardian conclusions, they said, alter the social conditions upon which they depend: to improve upon subsistence wage, deprive capital of what it steals from labour--the value which labour creates. The land-taxers similarly used the Ricardian theory of rent: rent is a surplus for the existence of which no single individual is responsible--take it therefore for the benefit of all, whose presence creates it.[202] The anarchistic, socialistic, and communistic doctrines, to which reference is made in the bibliography, are to be regarded as themselves sociological phenomena, without reference to their value as programs. They are based on ecological and economic conceptions of society in which competition is the fundamental fact and, from the point of view of these doctrines, the fundamental evil of society. What is sociologically important in these doctrines is the wishes that they express. They exhibit among other things, at any rate, the character which the hopes and the wishes of men take in this vast, new, restless world, the Great Society, in which men find themselves but in which they are not yet, and perhaps never will be, at home. 4. Competition and the "Inner Enemies": the Defectives, the Dependents, and the Delinquents Georg Simmel, referring, in his essay on "The Stranger," to the poor and the criminal, bestowed upon them the suggestive title of "The Inner Enemies." The criminal has at all times been regarded as a rebel against society, but only recently has the existence of the dependent and the defective been recognized as inimical to the social order.[203] Modern society, so far as it is free, has been organized on the basis of competition. Since the status of the poor, the criminal, and the dependent, has been largely determined by their ability or willingness to compete, the literature upon defectiveness, dependency, and delinquency may be surveyed in its relation to the process of competition. For the purposes of this survey the dependent may be defined as one who is unable to compete; the defective as the person who is, if not unable, at least handicapped, in his efforts to compete. The criminal, on the other hand, is one who is perhaps unable, but at any rate refuses, to compete according to the rules which society lays down. Malthus' _Essay on the Principle of Population_ first called attention to the pathological effects of the struggle for existence in modern society and emphasized the necessity of control, not merely in the interest of the defeated and rejected members of society, but in the interest of society itself. Malthus sought a mitigation, if not a remedy, for the evils of overpopulation by what he called "moral restraint," that is, "a restraint from marriage, from prudential motives, with a conduct strictly moral during the period of restraint." The alternatives were war, famine, and pestilence. These latter have, in fact, been up to very recent times the effective means through which the problem of overpopulation has been solved. The Neo-Malthusian movement, under the leadership of Francis Place, Richard Carlile, and Robert Dale Owen in the decade of 1820-30 and of Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant in the decade of 1870-80, advocated the artificial restriction of the family. The differential decline in the birth-rate, that is, the greater decrease in the number of children in the well-to-do and educated classes as compared with the poor and uneducated masses, was disclosed through investigations by the Galton Eugenics Laboratory in England and characterized as a national menace. In the words of David Heron, a study of districts in London showed that "one-fourth of the married population was producing one-half of the next generation." In United States less exhaustive investigation showed the same tendency at work and the alarm which the facts created found a popular expression in the term "race-suicide." It is under these circumstances and as a result of investigations and agitations of the eugenists, that the poor, the defective, and the delinquent have come to be regarded as "inner enemies" in a sense that would scarcely have been understood a hundred years ago. Poverty and dependency in modern society have a totally different significance from that which they have had in societies in the past. The literature descriptive of primitive communities indicated that in the economic communism of a society based on kinship, famines were frequent but poverty was unknown. In ancient and medieval societies the dependency, where it was not professional, as in the case of the mendicant religious orders, was intimate and personal. In this respect it differed widely from the organized, official, and supervised philanthropy of our modern cities. With the abolition of serfdom, the break-up of the medieval guilds, and the inauguration of a period of individual freedom and relatively unrestricted competition (laissez faire) which ushered in the modern industrial order, the struggle for existence ceased to be communal, and became individual. The new order based on individual freedom, as contrasted with the old order based on control, has been described as a system in which every individual was permitted to "go to hell in his own individual way." "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will," said Mill, "is to prevent harm to others. His own good either physical or moral is not a sufficient warranty." Only when the individual became a criminal or a pauper did the state or organized society attempt to control or assist him in the competitive struggle for existence.[204] Since competitive industry has its beginnings in England, the study of the English poor laws is instructive. Under the influence of Malthus and of the classical economists the early writers upon poverty regarded it as an inevitable and natural consequence of the operation of the "iron laws" of political economy. For example, when Harriet Martineau was forced to admit, by the evidence collected by the Factory Commissioners in 1833, that "the case of these wretched factory children seems desperate," she goes on to add "the only hope seems to be that the race will die out in two or three generations." Karl Marx, accepting the Ricardian economics, emphasized the misery and destitution resulting from the competitive process, and demanded the abolition of competition and the substitution therefor of the absolute control of a socialistic state. Recent studies treat poverty and dependency as a disease and look to its prevention and cure. Trade unions, trade associations, and social insurance are movements designed to safeguard industry and the worker against the now generally recognized consequences of unlimited competition. The conceptions of industrial democracy and citizenship in industry have led to interesting and promising experiments. In this connection, the efforts of employers to protect themselves as well as the community from accidents and occupational diseases may be properly considered. During and since the Great War efforts have been made on a grand scale to rehabilitate, re-educate, and restore to usefulness the war's wounded soldiers. This interest in the former soldiers and the success of the efforts already made has led to an increased interest in all classes of the industrially handicapped. A number of surveys have been made, in different parts of the country, of the crippled, and efforts are in progress to discover occupations and professions in which the deaf, the blind, and otherwise industrially handicapped can be employed and thus restored to usefulness and relative independence. The wide extension of the police power in recent times in the interest of public health, sanitation, and general public welfare represents the effort of the government, in an individualistic society in which the older sanctions and securities no longer exist, to protect the individual as well as the community from the effects of unrestricted competition. The literature of criminology has sought an answer to the enigma of the criminal. The writings of the European criminologists run the gamut of explanation from Lombroso, who explained crime as an inborn tendency of the criminal, to Tarde, who defines the criminal as a purely social product. W. A. Bonger,[205] a socialist, has sought to show that criminality is a direct product of the modern economic system. Without accepting either the evidence or the conclusions of Bonger, it cannot be gainsaid that the modern offender must be studied from the standpoint of his failure to participate in a wholesome and normal way in our competitive, secondary society which rests upon the institution of private property and individual competition. The failure of the delinquent to conform to the social code may be studied from two standpoints: (a) that of the individual as an organization of original mental and temperamental traits, and (b) that of a person with a status and a rôle in the social group. The book _The Individual Delinquent_, by William Healy, placed the study of the offender as an individual upon a sound scientific basis. That the person can and should be regarded as part and parcel of his social milieu has been strikingly illustrated by T. M. Osborne in two books, _Within Prison Walls_ and _Society and Prisons_. The fact seems to be that the problem of crime is essentially like that of the other major problems of our social order, and its solution involves three elements, namely: (a) the analysis of the aptitudes of the individual and the wishes of the person; (b) the analysis of the activities of our society with its specialization and division of labor; and (c) the accommodation or adjustment of the individual to the social and economic environment. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY I. BIOLOGICAL COMPETITION (1) Crile, George W. _Man an Adaptive Mechanism._ New York, 1901. (2) Darwin, Charles. _The Origin of Species._ London, 1859. (3) Wallace, Alfred Russel. _Studies Scientific and Social._ 2 vols. New York, 1900. (4) ----. _Darwinism._ An exposition of the theory of natural selection with some of its applications. Chap. iv, "The Struggle for Existence," pp. 14-40; chap. v, "Natural Selection by Variation and Survival of the Fittest," pp. 102-25. 3d ed. London, 1901. (5) Weismann, August. _On Germinal Selection as a Source of Definite Variation._ Translated from the German. Chicago, 1896. (6) Malthus, T. R. _An Essay on the Principle of Population._ Or a view of its past and present effects on human happiness, with an inquiry into our prospects respecting the future removal or mitigation of the evils which it occasions. 2d ed. London, 1803. [1st ed., 1798.] (7) Knapp, G. F. "Darwin und Socialwissenschaften," _Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik_. Erste Folge, XVIII (1872), 233-47. (8) Thomson, J. Arthur. _Darwinism and Human Life._ New York, 1918. II. ECONOMIC COMPETITION (1) Wagner, Adolf. _Grundlegung der politischen Ökonomie._ Pp. 794-828. [The modern private industrial system of free competition.] Pp. 71-137. [The industrial nature of men.] Leipzig, 1892-94. (2) Effertz, Otto. _Arbeit und Boden._ System der politischen Ökonomie. Vol. II, chaps, xix, xx, xxi, xxiii, xxiv, pp. 237-320. Berlin, 1897. (3) Marshall, Alfred. _Principles of Economics._ Appendix A, "The Growth of Free Industry and Enterprise," pp. 723-54. London, 1910. (4) Seligman, E. R. A. _Principles of Economics._ Chap, x, pp. 139-53. New York, 1905. (5) Schatz, Albert. _L'Individualisme économique et social, ses origines, son évolution, ses formes contemporaines._ Paris, 1907. (6) Cunningham, William. _An Essay on Western Civilization in Its Economic Aspects._ Medieval and modern times. Cambridge, 1913. III. FREEDOM AND LAISSEZ FAIRE (1) Simmel, Georg. _Philosophie des Geldes._ Chap. iv, "Die individuelle Freiheit," pp. 279-364. Leipzig, 1900. (2) Bagehot, Walter. _Postulates of English Political Economics._ With a preface by Alfred Marshall. New York and London, 1885. (3) Oncken, August. _Die Maxime Laissez Faire et Laissez Passer, ihr Ursprung, ihr Werden._ Bern, 1886. (4) Bastiat, Frédéric. _Harmonies économiques._ 9th ed. Paris, 1884. (5) Cunningham, William. _The Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times._ Vol. III, "Laissez Faire." 3 vols. 3d ed. Cambridge, 1903. (6) Ingram, John K. _A History of Political Economy._ Chap. v, "Third Modern Phase; System of Natural Liberty." 2d ed. New York, 1908. (7) Hall, W. P. "Certain Early Reactions against Laissez Faire," _Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1913._ I, 127-38. Washington, 1915. (8) Adams, Henry C. "Relation of the State to Industrial Action," _Publications of the American Economic Association_, I (1887), 471-549. IV. THE MARKETS (1) Walker, Francis A. _Political Economy._ Chap. ii, pp. 97-102. 3d ed. New York, 1887. [Market defined.] (2) Grierson, P. J. H. _The Silent Trade._ A contribution to the early history of human intercourse. Edinburgh, 1903. [Bibliography.] (3) Maine, Henry S. _Village Communities in the East and West._ Lecture VI, "The Early History of Price and Rent," pp. 175-203. New York, 1885. (4) Walford, Cornelius. _Fairs, Past and Present._ A chapter in the history of commerce. London, 1883. (5) Bourne, H. R. F. _English Merchants._ Memoirs in illustration of the progress of British commerce. New ed. London, 1898. (6) Webb, Sidney and Beatrice. _Industrial Democracy._ Part III, chap. ii, "The Higgling of the Market," pp. 654-702. New ed. London, 1902. (7) Bagehot, Walter. _Lombard Street._ A description of the money market. New York, 1876. V. COMPETITION AND INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION (1) Crowell, John F. _Trusts and Competition._ Chicago, 1915. [Bibliography.] (2) Macrosty, Henry W. _Trusts and the State._ A sketch of competition. London, 1901. (3) Carter, George R. _The Tendency toward Industrial Combination._ A study of the modern movement toward industrial combination in some spheres of British industry; its forms and developments, their causes, and their determinant circumstances. London, 1913. (4) Levy, Hermann. _Monopoly and Competition._ A study in English industrial organization. London, 1911. (5) Haney, Lewis H. _Business Organization and Combination._ An analysis of the evolution and nature of business organization in the United States and a tentative solution of the corporation and trust problems. New York, 1914. (6) Van Hise, Charles R. _Concentration and Control._ A solution of the trust problem in the United States. New York, 1912. (7) Kohler, Josef. _Der unlautere Wettbewerb._ Darstellung des Wettbewerbsrechts. Berlin und Leipzig, 1914. (8) Nims, Harry D. _The Law of Unfair Business Competition._ Including chapters on trade secrets and confidential business relations; unfair interference with contracts; libel and slander of articles of merchandise, trade names and business credit and reputation. New York, 1909. (9) Stevens, W. H. S. _Unfair Competition._ A study of certain practices with some reference to the trust problem in the United States of America. Chicago, 1917. (10) Eddy, Arthur J. _The New Competition._ An examination of the conditions underlying the radical change that is taking place in the commercial and industrial world; the change from a competitive to a co-operative basis. New York, 1912. (11) Willoughby, W. W. _Social Justice._ A critical essay. Chap. ix, "The Ethics of the Competitive Process," pp. 269-315. New York, 1900. (12) Rogers, Edward S. _Good Will, Trade-Marks and Unfair Trading._ Chicago, 1914. VI. SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM (1) Stirner, Max. (Kaspar Schmidt). _The Ego and His Own._ Translated from the German by S. T. Byington. New York, 1918. (2) Godwin, William. _An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness._ Book V, chap. xxiv. London, 1793. (3) Proudhon, Pierre Joseph. _What Is Property?_ An inquiry into the principle of right and of government. Translated from the French by B. R. Tucker. New York, 189-? (4) Zenker, E. V. _Anarchism._ A criticism and history of the anarchist theory. Translated from the German. New York, 1897. [With bibliographical references.] (5) Bailie, William. _Josiah Warren, the First American Anarchist._ A sociological study. Boston, 1906. (6) Russell, B. A. W. _Proposed Roads to Freedom._ Socialism, anarchism, and syndicalism. New York, 1919. (7) Mackay, Thomas, editor. _A Plea for Liberty._ An argument against socialism and socialistic legislation. New York, 1891. (8) Spencer, Herbert. "The Man _versus_ the State," Appendix to _Social Statics_. New York, 1897. (9) Marx, Karl, and Engels, Frederick. _Manifesto of the Communist Party._ Authorized English translation edited and annotated by Frederick Engels. London, 1888. (10) Stein, L. _Der Socialismus und Communismus des heutigen Frankreichs._ Ein Beitrag zur Zeitgeschichte. Leipzig, 1848. (11) Guyot, Édouard. _Le Socialisme et l'évolution de l'Angleterre contemporaine_ (1880-1911). Paris, 1913. (12) Flint, Robert. _Socialism._ 2d ed. London, 1908. (13) Beer, M. _A History of British Socialism._ Vol. I, "From the Days of the Schoolmen to the Birth of Chartism." Vol. II, "From Chartism to 1920." London, 1919-21. (14) Levine, Louis. _Syndicalism in France._ 2d ed. New York, 1914. (15) Brissenden, Paul F. _The I. W. W._ A study of American syndicalism. New York, 1919. [Bibliography.] (16) Brooks, John Graham. _American Syndicalism._ New York, 1913. (17) ----. _Labor's Challenge to the Social Order._ Democracy its own critic and educator. New York, 1920. VII. COMPETITION AND "THE INNER ENEMIES" A. _The Struggle for Existence and Its Social Consequences_ (1) Henderson, Charles R. _Introduction to the Study of the Dependent, Defective, and Delinquent Classes, and of Their Social Treatment._ 2d ed. Boston, 1908. (2) Grotjahn, Alfred. _Soziale Pathologie._ Versuch einer Lehre von den sozialen Beziehungen der menschlichen Krankheiten als Grundlage der sozialen Medizin und der sozialen Hygiene. Berlin, 1912. (3) Lilienfeld, Paul de. _La Pathologie sociale._ Avec une préface de René Worms. Paris, 1896. (4) Thompson, Warren S. _Population._ A study in Malthusianism. New York, 1915. (5) Field, James A. "The Early Propagandist Movement in English Population Theory," _American Economic Association Bulletin_, 4th Ser., I (1911), 207-36. (6) Heron, David. _On the Relation of Fertility in Man to Social Status._ And on the changes in this relation that have taken place during the last fifty years. London, 1906. (7) Elderton, Ethel M. "Report on the English Birthrate." University of London, Francis Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics. _Eugenics Laboratory Memoirs_, XIX-XX. London, 1914. (8) D'Ambrosio, Manlio A. _Passività Economica._ Primi principi di una teoria sociologica della popolazione economicamente passiva. Napoli, 1909. (9) Ellwood, Charles A. _Sociology and Modern Social Problems._ Rev. ed. New York, 1913. B. _Poverty, Labor, and the Proletariat_ (1) Woods, Robert A., Elsing, W. T., and others. _The Poor in Great Cities._ Their problems and what is being done to solve them. New York, 1895. (2) Rowntree, B. Seebohm. _Poverty, a Study of Town Life._ London, 1901. (3) Devine, Edward T. _Misery and Its Causes._ New York, 1909. (4) Marx, Karl. _Capital._ A critical analysis of capitalist production. Chap. xv, "Machinery and Modern Industry." Translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, and edited by Frederick Engels. London, 1908. (5) Hobson, John A. _Problems of Poverty._ An inquiry into the industrial condition of the poor. London, 1891. (6) Kydd, Samuel [Alfred, pseud.] _The History of the Factory Movement._ From the year 1802 to the enactment of the ten hours' bill in 1847. 2 vols. London, 1857. (7) Rowntree, B. S., and Lasker, Bruno. _Unemployment, a Social Study._ London, 1911. (8) Beveridge, William Henry. _Unemployment._ A problem of industry. 3d ed. London, 1912. (9) Parmelee, Maurice. _Poverty and Social Progress._ New York, 1916. (10) Gillin, John L. _Poverty and Dependency._ Their relief and prevention. New York, 1921. (11) Sombart, Werner. _Das Proletariat; Bilder und Studien._ Frankfurt am Main, 1906. (12) Riis, Jacob A. _How the Other Half Lives._ Studies among the tenements of New York. New York, 1890. (13) Nevinson, Margaret W. _Workhouse Characters and Other Sketches of the Life of the Poor._ London, 1918. (14) Sims, George R. _How the Poor Live; and Horrible London._ London, 1898. C. _The Industrially Handicapped_ (1) Best, Harry. _The Deaf._ Their position in society and the provision for their education in the United States. New York, 1914. (2) ----. _The Blind._ Their condition and the work being done for them in the United States. New York, 1919. (3) United States Bureau of the Census. _The Blind and the Deaf, 1900._ Washington, 1906. (4) ----. _Deaf-Mutes in the United States._ Analysis of the census of 1910 with summary of state laws relating to the deaf as of January 1, 1918. Washington, 1918. (5) ----. _The Blind in the United States 1910._ Washington, 1917. (6) Niceforo, Alfredo. _Les Classes pauvres._ Recherches anthropologiques et sociales. Paris, 1905. (7) Goddard, Henry H. _Feeble-mindedness, Its Causes and Consequences._ Chap. i, "Social Problems," pp. 1-20. New York, 1914. (8) Popenoe, Paul B., and Johnson, Roswell H. _Applied Eugenics._ Chap. ix, "The Dysgenic Classes," pp. 176-83. New York, 1918. (9) Pintner, Rudolph, and Toops, Herbert A. "Mental Test of Unemployed Men," _Journal of Applied Psychology_, I (1917), 325-41; II (1918), 15-25. (10) Oliver, Thomas. _Dangerous Trades._ The historical, social, and legal aspects of industrial occupations affecting health, by a number of experts. New York, 1902. (11) Jarrett, Mary C. "The Psychopathic Employee: a Problem of Industry," _Bulletin of the Massachusetts Commission on Mental Diseases_, I (1917-18), Nos. 3-4, 223-38. Boston, 1918. (12) Thompson, W. Gilman. _The Occupational Diseases._ Their causation, treatment, and prevention. New York, 1914. (13) Kober, George M., and Hanson, William C., editors. _Diseases of Occupation and Vocational Hygiene._ Philadelphia, 1916. (14) Great Britain. Ministry of Munitions. _Health of Munition Workers Committee._ Hours, fatigue, and health in British munition factories. Reprints of the memoranda of the British Health of Munition Workers Committee, April, 1917. Washington, 1917. (15) Great Britain Home Department. _Report of the Committee on Compensation for Industrial Diseases._ London, 1907. (16) McMurtrie, Douglas C. _The Disabled Soldier._ With an introduction by Jeremiah Milbank. New York, 1919. (17) Rubinow, I. M. "A Statistical Consideration of the Number of Men Crippled in War and Disabled in Industry," _Publication of Red Cross Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men_. Series I, No. 4, Feb. 14, 1918. (18) Love, Albert G., and Davenport, C. B. _Defects Found in Drafted Men._ Statistical information compiled from the draft records showing the physical condition of the men registered and examined in pursuance of the requirements of the selective-service act. War Department, U.S. Surgeon General's Office, Washington, 1920. D. _Alcoholism and Drug Addiction_ (1) Partridge, George E. _Studies in the Psychology of Intemperance._ New York, 1912. (2) Kelynack, T. N. _The Drink Problem of Today in Its Medicosociological Aspects._ New York, 1916. (3) Kerr, Norman S. _Inebriety or Narcomania._ Its etiology, pathology, treatment, and jurisprudence. 3d ed. London, 1894. (4) Elderton, Ethel M. "A First Study of the Influence of Parental Alcoholism on the Physique and Ability of the Offspring." _Eugenics Laboratory Memoirs_, University of London, Francis Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics. London, 1910. (5) Koren, John. _Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem._ An investigation made for the Committee of Fifty under the direction of Henry W. Farnam. Boston, 1899. (6) Towns, Charles B. _Habits that Handicap._ The menace of opium, alcohol, and tobacco, and the remedy. New York, 1916. (7) Wilbert, Martin I. "The Number and Kind of Drug Addicts," _U.S. Public Health Reprint_, No. 294. Washington, 1915. (8) Rowntree, B. Seebohm. _Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium._ Chap. xxvi, "The Drink Problem." London, 1910. (9) McIver, J., and Price, G. F. "Drug Addiction," _Journal of the American Medical Association_, LXVI (1915), 476-80. [A study of 147 cases.] (10) Stanley, L. L. "Drug Addictions," _Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology_, X (1919), 62-70. [Four case studies.] E. _Crime and Competition_ (1) Parmelee, Maurice. _Criminology._ Chap. vi, pp. 67-91. New York, 1918. (2) Bonger, William A. _Criminality and Economic Conditions._ Translated from the French by H. P. Horton, with editorial preface by Edward Lindsey and with an introduction by Frank H. Norcross. Boston, 1916. (3) Tarde, G. "La Criminalité et les phénomènes économiques," _Archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, XVI (1901), 565-75. (4) Van Kan, J. _Les Causes économiques de la criminalité._ Étude historique et critique d'étiologie criminelle. Lyon, 1903. (5) Fornasári di Verce, E. _La Criminalità e le vicende economiche d'Italia, dal 1873 al 1890, con prefazione di Ces. Lombroso._ Torino, 1894. (6) Devon, J. _The Criminal and the Community._ London and New York, 1912. (7) Breckinridge, Sophonisba, and Abbott, Edith. _The Delinquent Child and the Home._ Chap. iv, "The Poor Child: The Problem of Poverty," pp. 70-89. New York, 1912. (8) Donovan, Frances. _The Woman Who Waits._ Boston, 1920. (9) Fernald, Mabel R., Hayes, Mary H. S., and Dawley, Almena. _A Study of Women Delinquents in New York State._ With statistical chapter by Beardsley Ruml; preface by Katharine Bement Davis. Chap. xi, "Occupational History and Economic Efficiency," pp. 304-79. New York, 1920. (10) Miner, Maude. _The Slavery of Prostitution._ A plea for emancipation. Chap. iii, "Social Factors Leading to Prostitution," pp. 53-88. New York, 1916. (11) Ryckère, Raymond de. _La Servante criminelle._ Étude de criminologie professionelle. Paris, 1908. TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES 1. The Struggle for Existence and the Survival of the Fittest. 2. Economic Competition and the Economic Equilibrium. 3. "Unfair" Competition and Social Control. 4. Competition versus Sentiment. 5. The History of the Market, the Exchange, the Board of Trade. 6. The Natural History of the Laissez-Faire Theory in Economics and Politics. 7. Competition, Money, and Freedom. 8. Competition and Segregation in Industry and in Society. 9. The Neo-Malthusian Movement and Race Suicide. 10. The Economic Order of Competition and "the Inner Enemies." 11. The History of the English Poor Law. 12. Unemployment and Poverty in a Competitive, Secondary Society. 13. Modern Economy and the Psychology of Intemperance. 14. Modern Industry, the Physically Handicapped and Programs of Rehabilitation. 15. Crime in Relation to Economic Conditions. 16. Methods of Social Amelioration: Philanthropy, Welfare Work in Industry, Social Insurance, etc. 17. Experiments in the Limitation of Competition: Collective Bargaining, Trade Associations, Trade Boards, etc. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. In what fields did the popular conceptions of competition originate? 2. In what way does competition as a form of interaction differ from conflict, accommodation, and assimilation? 3. What do you understand to be the difference between struggle, conflict, competition, and rivalry? 4. What are the different forms of the struggle for existence? 5. In what different meanings do you understand Darwin to use the term "the struggle for existence"? How many of these are applicable to human society? 6. What do you understand Darwin to mean when he says: "The structure of every organic being is related, in the most essential yet often hidden manner, to that of all the other organic beings with which it comes into competition for food or residence, or from which it has to escape, or on which it preys"? Does his principle, in your opinion, also apply to the structure of social groups? 7. What examples of competition occur to you in human or social relations? In what respects are they (a) alike, (b) different, from competition in plant communities? 8. To what extent is biological competition present in modern human society? 9. Does competition always lead to increased specialization and higher organization? 10. What evidences are there in society of the effect of competition upon specialization and organization? 11. What do you understand Crile to mean by the sentence: "In every case the fate of each creature seems to have been staked upon one mechanism"? What is this mechanism with man? 12. Do you think that Crile has given an adequate explanation of the evolution of mind? 13. Is there a difference in the character of the struggle for existence of animals and of man? 14. What is the difference in competition within a community based on likenesses and one based on diversities? 15. Compare the ecological concept "reaction" with the sociological conception "control." 16. What do you understand by the expression "the reaction of a community is usually more than the sum of the reaction of the component species and individuals"? Explain. 17. How far can the terms migration, ecesis, and competition, as used by Clements in his analysis of the invasion of one plant community by another, be used in the analysis of the process by which immigrants "invade" this country, i.e., migrate, settle, and are assimilated, "Americanized"? 18. What are the social forces involved in (a) internal, (b) foreign, migrations? 19. What do you understand by the term segregation? To what extent are the social forces making for segregation (a) economic, (b) sentimental? Illustrate. 20. In what ways has immigration to the United States resulted in segregation? 21. Does the segregation of the immigrant in our American cities make for or against (a) competition, (b) conflict, (c) social control, (d) accommodation, and (e) assimilation? 22. What are the factors producing internal migration in the United States? 23. In what sense is the drift to the cities a result of competition? 24. What is Ripley's conclusion in regard to urban selection and the ethnic composition of cities? 25. What are the outstanding results of demographic segregation and social selection in the United States? 26. What, in your judgment, are the chief characteristics of inter-racial competition? 27. To what extent do you agree with Walker's analysis of the social forces involved in race suicide in the United States? 28. In what specific ways is competition now a factor in race suicide? 29. What will be the future effects of inter-racial competition upon the ethnic stock of the American people? 30. "There is a sense in which much of the orthodox system of political economy is eternally true." Explain. 31. To what extent and in what sense is economic competition unconscious? 32. What differences other than innate mental ability enter into competition between different social groups and different persons? 33. Who are your competitors? 34. Of the existence (as identified persons) of what proportion of these competitors are you unconscious? 35. What is meant by competitive co-operation? Illustrate. (See pp. 508, 558.) 36. What do you understand by the term "economic equilibrium"? 37. Is "economic equilibrium" identical with "social solidarity"? What is the relation, if any, between the two concepts? 38. To what extent does competition make for a natural harmony of individual interests? 39. What did Adam Smith mean by "an invisible hand"? 40. "Civilization is the resultant not of conscious co-operation but of the unconscious competition of individuals." Do you agree or disagree with this statement? 41. "By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it." What is the argument for and against this position? 42. Why has the laissez-faire theory in economics been largely abandoned? 43. What do you understand by the term "freedom"? How far may freedom be identified with freedom of competition? 44. Do you accept the conception of Bastiat that "competition is liberty"? 45. How does money make for freedom? Does it make for or against co-operation? Are co-operation and competition mutually antagonistic terms? 46. Under what circumstances do you have competition between individuals and competition between groups? 47. What do you understand by the statement that anarchism, socialism, and communism are based upon the ecological conceptions of society? 48. What is the difference between an opinion or a doctrine taken (a) as a datum, and (b) as a value? 49. From what point of view may the dependent, the delinquent, and the defective be regarded as "inner enemies"? Is this notion individualistic, socialistic, or how would you characterize it? FOOTNOTES: [180] Bastiat, Frédéric, _Oeuvres complètes_, tome VI, "Harmonies économiques," 9e édition, p. 381. (Paris, 1884.) [181] Walker, Francis A., _Political Economy_, p. 92. (New York, 1887.) [182] See chap. i, pp. 51-54. [183] The introduction of the rabbit into Australia, where predatory competitors are absent, has resulted in so great a multiplication of the members of this species that their numbers have become an economic menace. The appearance of the boll weevil, an insect which attacks the cotton boll, has materially changed the character of agriculture in areas of cotton culture in the South. Scientists are now looking for some insect enemy of the boll weevil that will restore the equilibrium. [184] Adapted from J. Arthur Thomson, _Darwinism and Human Life_, pp. 72-75. (Henry Holt & Co., 1910.) [185] Adapted from Charles Darwin, _The Origin of Species_, pp. 50-61. (D. Appleton & Co., 1878.) [186] Adapted from Charles Darwin, _The Origin of Species_, pp. 97-100. (D. Appleton & Co., 1878.) [187] Adapted from George W. Crile, _Man: An Adaptive Mechanism_, pp. 17-39. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1916. Reprinted by permission.) [188] Adapted from F. E. Clements, _Plant Succession_. An analysis of the development of vegetation, pp. 75-79. (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1916.) [189] Adapted from Carl Bücher, _Industrial Evolution_, pp. 345-69. (Henry Holt & Co., 1907.) [190] From William Z. Ripley, _The Races of Europe_, pp. 537-59. (D. Appleton & Co., 1899.) [191] Adapted from Francis A. Walker, _Economics and Statistics_, II, 421-26. (Henry Holt & Co., 1899.) [192] Adapted from John B. Clark, "The Limits of Competition," in Clark and Giddings, _The Modern Distributive Process_, pp. 2-8. (Ginn & Co., 1888.) [193] Adapted from Adam Smith, _An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations_, I (1904), 419, 421. (By kind permission of Messrs. Methuen & Co., Ltd.) [194] Translated from Frédéric Bastiat, _Oeuvres complètes_, tome VI, "Harmonies économiques," 9e édition, p. 350. (Paris, 1884.) [195] Translated from Georg Simmel, _Philosophie des Geldes_, pp. 351-52. (Duncker und Humblot, 1900.) [196] Henry S. Maine, _Village-Communities in the East and West_, pp. 192-97. (New York, 1889.) [197] Henry Higgs, _The Physiocrats_, p. 142. (London, 1897.) [198] Adam Smith, _Wealth of Nations_ (Cannan's edition), I, 342. London, 1904. [199] _Ibid._ I, 148. [200] Thomas Mackay, _A Plea for Liberty_. An argument against socialism and socialistic legislation, consisting of an introduction by Herbert Spencer and essays by various writers, p. 24. (New York, 1891.) [201] _Lectures on the Relation between Law and Opinion in England, during the Nineteenth Century._ 2d ed. (London, 1914). [202] _The Principles of Taxation._ Everyman's Library. Preface by F. W. Kolthamer, p. xii. [203] _Soziologie_, p. 686. (Leipzig, 1908.) [204] John Stuart Mill, _On Liberty_. (London, 1859.) [205] _Criminality and Economic Conditions._ (Boston, 1916.) CHAPTER IX CONFLICT I. INTRODUCTION 1. The Concept of Conflict The distinction between competition and conflict has already been indicated. Both are forms of interaction, but competition is a struggle between individuals, or groups of individuals, who are not necessarily in contact and communication; while conflict is a contest in which contact is an indispensable condition. Competition, unqualified and uncontrolled as with plants, and in the great impersonal life-struggle of man with his kind and with all animate nature, is unconscious. Conflict is always conscious, indeed, it evokes the deepest emotions and strongest passions and enlists the greatest concentration of attention and of effort. Both competition and conflict are forms of struggle. Competition, however, is continuous and impersonal, conflict is intermittent and personal. Competition is a struggle for position in an economic order. The distribution of populations in the world-economy, the industrial organization in the national economy, and the vocation of the individual in the division of labor--all these are determined, in the long run, by competition. The status of the individual, or a group of individuals, in the social order, on the other hand, is determined by rivalry; by war, or by subtler forms of conflict. "Two is company, three is a crowd" suggests how easily the social equilibrium is disturbed by the entrance of a new factor in a social situation. The delicate nuances and grades of attention given to different individuals moving in the same social circle are the superficial reflections of rivalries and conflicts beneath the smooth and decorous surfaces of polite society. In general, we may say that competition determines the position of the individual in the community; conflict fixes his place in society. Location, position, ecological interdependence--these are the characteristics of the community. Status, subordination and superordination, control--these are the distinctive marks of a society. The notion of conflict, like the fact, has its roots deep in human interest. Mars has always held a high rank in the hierarchy of the gods. Whenever and wherever struggle has taken the form of conflict, whether of races, of nations, or of individual men, it has invariably captured and held the attention of spectators. And these spectators, when they did not take part in the fight, always took sides. It was this conflict of the non-combatants that made public opinion, and public opinion has always played an important rôle in the struggles of men. It is this that has raised war from a mere play of physical forces and given it the tragic significance of a moral struggle, a conflict of good and evil. The result is that war tends to assume the character of litigation, a judicial procedure, in which custom determines the method of procedure, and the issue of the struggle is accepted as a judgment in the case. The duello, as distinguished from the wager of battle, although it never had the character of a judicial procedure, developed a strict code which made it morally binding upon the individual to seek redress for wrongs, and determined in advance the methods of procedure by which such redress could and should be obtained. The penalty was a loss of status in the particular group of which the individual was a member. It was the presence of the public, the ceremonial character of the proceedings, and the conviction that the invisible powers were on the side of truth and justice that gave the trial by ordeal and the trial by battle a significance that neither the duello nor any other form of private vengeance ever had. It is interesting in this connection, also, that political and judicial forms of procedure are conducted on a conflict pattern. An election is a contest in which we count noses when we do not break heads. A trial by jury is a contest in which the parties are represented by champions, as in the judicial duels of an earlier time. In general, then, one may say competition becomes conscious and personal in conflict. In the process of transition competitors are transformed into rivals and enemies. In its higher forms, however, conflict becomes impersonal--a struggle to establish and maintain rules of justice and a moral order. In this case the welfare not merely of individual men but of the community is involved. Such are the struggles of political parties and religious sects. Here the issues are not determined by the force and weight of the contestants immediately involved, but to a greater or less extent, by the force and weight of public opinion of the community, and eventually by the judgment of mankind. 2. Classification of the Materials The materials on conflict have been organized in the readings under four heads: (a) conflict as conscious competition; (b) war, instincts, and ideals; (c) rivalry, cultural conflicts, and social organization; and (d) race conflicts. a) _Conscious competition._--Self-consciousness in the individual arises in the contacts and conflicts of the person with other persons. It manifests itself variously in pride and in humility, vanity and self-respect, modesty and arrogance, pity and disdain, as well as in race prejudice, chauvinism, class and caste distinctions, and in every other social device by which the social distances are maintained. It is in these various responses called forth by social contacts and intercourse that the personality of the individual is developed and his status defined. It is in the effort to maintain this status or improve it; to defend this personality, enlarge its possessions, extend its privileges, and maintain its prestige that conflicts arise. This applies to all conflicts, whether they are personal and party squabbles, sectarian differences, or national and patriotic wars, for the personality of the individual is invariably so bound up with the interests and order of his group and clan, that, in a struggle, he makes the group cause his own. Much has been said and written about the economic causes of war, but whatever may be the ultimate sources of our sentiments, it is probably true that men never go to war for economic reasons merely. It is because wealth and possessions are bound up with prestige, honor, and position in the world, that men and nations fight about them. b) _War, instincts, and ideals._--War is the outstanding and the typical example of conflict. In war, where hostility prevails over every interest of sentiment or utility which would otherwise unite the contending parties or groups, the motives and the rôle of conflict in social life present themselves in their clearest outline. There is, moreover, a practical reason for fixing upon war as an illustration of conflict. The tremendous interest in all times manifested in war, the amazing energies and resources released in peoples organized for military aggression or defense, the colossal losses and sacrifices endured for the glory, the honor, or the security of the fatherland have made wars memorable. Of no other of the larger aspects of collective life have we such adequate records. The problem of the relation of war to human instincts, on the one hand, and to human ideals, on the other, is the issue about which most recent observation and discussion has centered. It seems idle to assert that hostility has no roots in man's original nature. The concrete materials given in this chapter show beyond question how readily the wishes and the instincts of the person may take the form of the fighting pattern. On the other hand, the notion that tradition, culture, and collective representations have no part in determining the attitudes of nations toward war seems equally untenable. The significant sociological inquiry is to determine just in what ways a conjunction of the tendencies in original nature, the forces of tradition and culture, and the exigencies of the situation determine the organization of the fighting pattern. We have historical examples of warlike peoples becoming peaceful and of pacific nations militaristic. An understanding of the mechanism of the process is a first condition to any exercise of control. c) _Rivalry, cultural conflicts, and social organization._--Rivalry is a sublimated form of conflict where the struggle of individuals is subordinated to the welfare of the group. In the rivalry of groups, likewise, conflict or competition is subordinated to the interests of an inclusive group. Rivalry may then be defined as conflict controlled by the group in its interest. A survey of the phenomena of rivalry brings out its rôle as an organizing force in group life. In the study of conflict groups it is not always easy to apply with certainty the distinction between rivalry and conflict made here. The sect is a conflict group. In its struggle for survival and success with other groups, its aim is the highest welfare of the inclusive society. Actually, however, sectarian warfare may be against the moral, social, and religious interests of the community. The denomination, which is an accommodation group, strives through rivalry and competition, not only to promote the welfare of the inclusive society, but also of its other component groups. In cultural and political conflict the function of conflict in social life becomes understandable and reasonable. The rôle of mental conflicts in the life of the individual is for the purpose of making adjustments to changing situations and of assimilating new experiences. It is through this process of conflict of divergent impulses to act that the individual arrives at decisions--as we say, "makes up his mind." Only where there is conflict is behavior conscious and self-conscious; only here are the conditions for rational conduct. d) _Race conflicts._--Nowhere do social contacts so readily provoke conflicts as in the relations between the races, particularly when racial differences are re-enforced, not merely by differences of culture, but of color. Nowhere, it might be added, are the responses to social contact so obvious and, at the same time, so difficult to analyze and define. Race prejudice, as we call the sentiments that support the racial taboos, is not, in America at least, an obscure phenomenon. But no one has yet succeeded in making it wholly intelligible. It is evident that there is in race prejudice, as distinguished from class and caste prejudice, an instinctive factor based on the fear of the unfamiliar and the uncomprehended. Color, or any other racial mark that emphasizes physical differences, becomes the symbol of moral divergences which perhaps do not exist. We at once fear and are fascinated by the stranger, and an individual of a different race always seems more of a stranger to us than one of our own. This naïve prejudice, unless it is re-enforced by other factors, is easily modified, as the intimate relations of the Negroes and white man in slavery show. A more positive factor in racial antagonism is the conflict of cultures: the unwillingness of one race to enter into personal competition with a race of a different or inferior culture. This turns out, in the long run, to be the unwillingness of a people or a class occupying a superior status to compete on equal terms with a people of a lower status. Race conflicts like wars are fundamentally the struggles of racial groups for status. In this sense and from this point of view the struggles of the European nationalities and the so-called "subject peoples" for independence and self-determination are actually struggles for status in the family of nations. Under the conditions of this struggle, racial or national consciousness as it manifests itself, for example, in Irish nationalism, Jewish Zionism, and Negro race consciousness, is the natural and obvious response to a conflict situation. The nationalistic movements in Europe, in India, and in Egypt are, like war, rivalry and more personal forms of conflict, mainly struggles for recognition--that is, honor, glory, and prestige. II. MATERIALS A. CONFLICT AS CONSCIOUS COMPETITION 1. The Natural History of Conflict[206] All classes of society, and the two sexes to about the same degree, are deeply interested in all forms of contest involving skill and chance, especially where the danger or risk is great. Everybody will stop to watch a street fight, and the same persons would show an equal interest in a prize fight or a bull fight, if certain scruples did not stand in the way of their looking on. Our socially developed sympathy and pity may recoil from witnessing a scene where physical hurt is the object of the game, but the depth of our interest in the conflict type of activity is attested by the fascination which such a game as football has for the masses, where our instinctive emotional reaction to a conflict situation is gratified to an intense degree by a scene of the conflict pattern. If we examine, in fact, our pleasures and pains, our moments of elation and depression, we find that they go back for the most part to instincts developed in the struggle for food and rivalry for mates. The structure of the organism has been built up gradually through the survival of the most efficient structures. Corresponding with a structure mechanically adapted to successful movements, there is developed on the psychic side an interest in the conflict situation as complete and perfect as is the structure itself. The emotional states are, indeed, organic preparations for action, corresponding broadly with a tendency to advance or retreat; and a connection has even been made out between pleasurable states and the extensor muscles, and painful states and the flexor muscles. We can have no adequate idea of the time consumed and the experiments made in nature before the development of these types of structure and interest of the conflict pattern, but we know from the geological records that the time and experiments were long and many, and the competition so sharp that finally, not in man alone, but in all the higher classes of animals, body and mind, structure and interest, were working perfectly in motor actions of the violent type involved in a life of conflict, competition, and rivalry. There could not have been developed an organism depending on offensive and defensive movements for food and life without an interest in what we call a dangerous or precarious situation. A type without this interest would have been defective, and would have dropped out in the course of development. The fact that our interests and enthusiasms are called out in situations of the conflict type is shown by a glance at the situations which arouse them most readily. War is simply an organized form of fight, and as such is most attractive, or, to say the least, arouses the interests powerfully. With the accumulation of property and the growth of sensibility and intelligence it becomes apparent that war is a wasteful and unsafe process, and public and personal interests lead us to avoid it as much as possible. But, however genuinely war may be deprecated, it is certainly an exciting game. The Rough Riders in this country recently, and more recently the young men of the aristocracy of England, went to war from motives of patriotism, no doubt, but there are unmistakable evidences that they also regarded it as the greatest sport they were likely to have a chance at in a lifetime. And there is evidence in plenty that the emotional attitude of women toward war is no less intense. Grey relates that half a dozen old women among the Australians will drive the men to war with a neighboring tribe over a fancied injury. The Jewish maidens went out with music and dancing and sang that Saul had slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands. The young women of Havana are alleged, during the late Spanish War, to have sent pieces of their wardrobe to young men of their acquaintance who hesitated to join the rebellion, with the suggestion that they wear these until they went to the war. The feud is another mode of reaction of the violent, instinctive, and attractive type. The feud was originally of defensive value to the individual and to the tribe, since in the absence of criminal law the feeling that retaliation would follow was a deterrent from acts of aggression. But it was an expensive method of obtaining order in early society, since response to stimulus reinstated the stimulus, and every death called for another death; so, finally, after many experiments and devices, the state has forbidden the individual to take justice into his own hands. In out-of-the-way places, however, where governmental control is weak, men still settle their disputes personally, and one who is familiar with the course of a feud cannot avoid the conclusion that this practice is kept up, not because there is no law to resort to, but because the older mode is more immediate and fascinating. I mean simply that the emotional possibilities and actual emotional reactions in the feud are far more powerful than in due legal process. Gladiatorial shows, bear baiting, bull fighting, dog and cock fighting, and prize fighting afford an opportunity to gratify the interest in conflict. The spectator has by suggestion emotional reactions analogous to those of the combatant, but without personal danger; and vicarious contests between slaves, captives, and animals, whose blood and life are cheap, are a pleasure which the race allowed itself until a higher stage of morality was reached. Pugilism is the modification of the fight in a slightly different way. The combatants are members of society, not slaves or captives, but the conflict is so qualified as to safeguard their lives, though injury is possible and is actually planned. The intention to do hurt is the point to which society and the law object. But the prize fight is a fight as far as it goes, and the difficulties which men will surmount to "pull off" and to witness these contests are sufficient proof of their fascination. A football game is also a fight, with the additional qualification that no injury is planned, and with an advantage over the prize fight in the fact that it is not a single-handed conflict, but an organized mêlée--a battle where the action is more massive and complex and the strategic opportunities are multiplied. It is a fact of interest in this connection that, unless appearances are deceptive, altogether the larger number of visitors to a university during the year are visitors to the football field. It is the only phase of university life which appeals directly and powerfully to the instincts, and it is consequently the only phase of university life which appeals equally to the man of culture, the artist, the business man, the man about town, the all-round sport, and, in fact, to all the world. The instincts of man are congenital; the arts and industries are acquired by the race and must be learned by the individual after birth. We have seen why the instinctive activities are pleasurable and the acquired habits irksome. The gambler represents a class of men who have not been weaned from their instincts. There are in every species biological "sports" and reversions, and there are individuals of this kind among sporting men who are not reached by ordinary social suggestion and stimuli. But granting that what we may call the instinctive interests are disproportionately strong in the sporting class, as compared with, say, the merchant class, yet these instincts are also strongly marked in what may roughly be called the artist class and in spite of a marked psychic disposition for stimuli of the emotional type; and precisely because of this disposition, the artist class has a very high social value. Art products are, indeed, perhaps more highly esteemed than any other products whatever. The artist class is not, therefore, socially unmanageable because of its instinctive interest, though perhaps we may say that some of its members are saved from social vagabondage only because their emotional predisposition has found an expression in emotional activities to which some social value can be attached. 2. Conflict as a Type of Social Interaction[207] That conflict has sociological significance inasmuch as it either produces or modifies communities of interest, unifications, organizations, is in principle never contested. On the other hand, it must appear paradoxical to the ordinary mode of thinking to ask whether conflict itself, without reference to its consequences or its accompaniments, is not a form of socialization. This seems, at first glance, to be merely a verbal question. If every reaction among men is a socialization, of course conflict must count as such, since it is one of the most intense reactions and is logically impossible if restricted to a single element. The actually dissociating elements are the causes of the conflict--hatred and envy, want and desire. If, however, from these impulses conflict has once broken out, it is in reality the way to remove the dualism and to arrive at some form of unity, even if through annihilation of one of the parties. The case is, in a way, illustrated by the most violent symptoms of disease. They frequently represent the efforts of the organism to free itself from disorders and injuries. This is by no means equivalent merely to the triviality, _si vis pacem para bellum_, but it is the wide generalization of which that special case is a particular. Conflict itself is the resolution of the tension between the contraries. That it eventuates in peace is only a single, specially obvious and evident, expression of the fact that it is a conjunction of elements. As the individual achieves the unity of his personality, not in such fashion that its contents invariably harmonize according to logical or material, religious or ethical, standards, but rather as contradiction and strife not merely precede that unity but are operative in it at every moment of life; so it is hardly to be expected that there should be any social unity in which the converging tendencies of the elements are not incessantly shot through with elements of divergence. A group which was entirely centripetal and harmonious--that is, "unification" merely--is not only impossible empirically, but it would also display no essential life-process and no stable structure. As the cosmos requires _Liebe und Hass_, attraction and repulsion, in order to have a form, society likewise requires some quantitative relation of harmony and disharmony, association and dissociation, liking and disliking, in order to attain to a definite formation. Society, as it is given in fact, is the result of both categories of reactions, and in so far both act in a completely positive way. The misconception that the one factor tears down what the other builds up, and that what at last remains is the result of subtracting the one from the other (while in reality it is much rather to be regarded as the addition of one to the other), doubtless springs from the equivocal sense of the concept of unity. We describe as unity the agreement and the conjunction of social elements in contrast with their disjunctions, separations, disharmonies. We also use the term unity, however, for the total synthesis of the persons, energies, and forms in a group, in which the final wholeness is made up, not merely of those factors which are unifying in the narrower sense, but also of those which are, in the narrower sense, dualistic. We associate a corresponding double meaning with disunity or opposition. Since the latter displays its nullifying or destructive sense _between the individual elements_, the conclusion is hastily drawn that it must work in the same manner upon the _total relationship_. In reality, however, it by no means follows that the factor which is something negative and diminutive in its action between individuals, considered in a given direction and separately, has the same working throughout the totality of its relationships. In this larger circle of relationships the perspective may be quite different. That which was negative and dualistic may, after deduction of its destructive action in particular relationships, on the whole, play an entirely positive rôle. This visibly appears especially in those instances where the social structure is characterized by exactness and carefully conserved purity of social divisions and gradations. The social system of India rests not only upon the hierarchy of the castes but also directly upon the reciprocal repulsion. Enmities not merely prevent gradual disappearance of the boundaries within the society--and for this reason these enmities may be consciously promoted, as guaranty of the existing social constitution--but more than this, the enmities are directly productive sociologically. They give classes and personalities their position toward each other, which they would not have found if these objective causes of hostility had been present and effective in precisely the same way but had not been accompanied by the feeling of enmity. It is by no means certain that a secure and complete community life would always result if these energies should disappear which, looked at in detail, seem repulsive and destructive, just as a qualitatively unchanged and richer property results when unproductive elements disappear; but there would ensue rather a condition as changed, and often as unrealizable, as after the elimination of the forces of co-operation--sympathy, assistance, harmony of interests. The opposition of one individual element to another in the same association is by no means merely a negative social factor, but it is in many ways the only means through which coexistence with individuals intolerable in themselves could be possible. If we had not power and right to oppose tyranny and obstinacy, caprice and tactlessness, we could not endure relations with people who betray such characteristics. We should be driven to deeds of desperation which would put the relationships to an end. This follows not alone for the self-evident reason--which, however, is not here essential--that such disagreeable circumstances tend to become intensified if they are endured quietly and without protest; but, more than this, opposition affords us a subjective satisfaction, diversion, relief, just as under other psychological conditions, whose variations need not here be discussed, the same results are brought about by humility and patience. Our opposition gives us the feeling that we are not completely crushed in the relationship. It permits us to preserve a consciousness of energy, and thus lends a vitality and a reciprocity to relationships from which, without this corrective, we should have extricated ourselves at any price. In case the relationships are purely external, and consequently do not reach deeply into the practical, the latent form of conflict discharges this service, i.e., aversion, the feeling of reciprocal alienation and repulsion, which in the moment of a more intimate contact of any sort is at once transformed into positive hatred and conflict. Without this aversion life in a great city, which daily brings each into contact with countless others, would have no thinkable form. The activity of our minds responds to almost every impression received from other people in some sort of a definite feeling, all the unconsciousness, transience, and variability of which seem to remain only in the form of a certain indifference. In fact, this latter would be as unnatural for us as it would be intolerable to be swamped under a multitude of suggestions among which we have no choice. Antipathy protects us against these two typical dangers of the great city. It is the initial stage of practical antagonism. It produces the distances and the buffers without which this kind of life could not be led at all. The mass and the mixtures of this life, the forms in which it is carried on, the rhythm of its rise and fall--these unite with the unifying motives, in the narrower sense, to give to a great city the character of an indissoluble whole. Whatever in this whole seems to be an element of division is thus in reality only one of its elementary forms of socialization. A struggle for struggle's sake seems to have its natural basis in a certain formal impulse of hostility, which forces itself sometimes upon psychological observation, and in various forms. In the first place, it appears as that natural enmity between man and man which is often emphasized by skeptical moralists. The argument is: Since there is something not wholly displeasing to us in the misfortune of our best friends, and, since the presupposition excludes, in this instance, conflict of material interests, the phenomenon must be traced back to an a priori hostility, to that _homo homini lupus_, as the frequently veiled, but perhaps never inoperative, basis of all our relationships. 3. Types of Conflict Situations[208] a) _War._--The reciprocal relationship of primitive groups is notoriously, and for reasons frequently discussed almost invariably, one of hostility. The decisive illustration is furnished perhaps by the American Indians, among whom every tribe on general principles was supposed to be on a war footing toward every other tribe with which it had no express treaty of peace. It is, however, not to be forgotten that in early stages of culture war constitutes almost the only form in which contact with an alien group occurs. So long as inter-territorial trade was undeveloped, individual tourneys unknown, and intellectual community did not extend beyond the group boundaries, there was, outside of war, no sociological relationship whatever between the various groups. In this case the relationship of the elements of the group to each other and that of the primitive groups to each other present completely contrasted forms. Within the closed circle hostility signifies, as a rule, the severing of relationships, voluntary isolation, and the avoidance of contact. Along with these negative phenomena there will also appear the phenomena of the passionate reaction of open struggle. On the other hand, the group as a whole remains indifferently side by side with similar groups so long as peace exists. The consequence is that these groups become significant for each other only when war breaks out. That the attitude of hostility, considered likewise from this point of view, may arise independently in the soul is the less to be doubted since it represents here, as in many another easily observable situation, the embodiment of an impulse which is in the first place quite general, but which also occurs in quite peculiar forms, namely, _the impulse to act in relationships with others_. In spite of this spontaneity and independence, which we may thus attribute to the antagonistic impulse, there still remains the question whether it suffices to account for the total phenomena of hostility. This question must be answered in the negative. In the first place, the spontaneous impulse does not exercise itself upon every object but only upon those that are in some way promising. Hunger, for example, springs from the subject. It does not have its origin in the object. Nevertheless, it will not attempt to satisfy itself with wood or stone but it will select only edible objects. In the same way, love and hatred, however little their impulses may depend upon external stimuli, will yet need some sort of opposing object, and only with such co-operation will the complete phenomena appear. On the other hand, it seems to me probable that the hostile impulse, on account of its formal character, in general intervenes, only as a reinforcement of conflicts stimulated by material interest, and at the same time furnishes a foundation for the conflict. And where a struggle springs up from sheer formal love of fighting, which is also entirely impersonal and indifferent both to the material at issue and to the personal opponent, hatred and fury against the opponent as a person unavoidably increase in the course of the conflict, and probably also the interest in the stake at issue, because these affections stimulate and feed the psychical energy of the struggle. It is advantageous to hate the opponent with whom one is for any reason struggling, as it is useful to love him with whom one's lot is united and with whom one must co-operate. The reciprocal attitude of men is often intelligible only on the basis of the perception that actual adaptation to a situation teaches us those feelings which are appropriate to it; feelings which are the most appropriate to the employment or the overcoming of the circumstances of the situation; feelings which bring us, through psychical association, the energies necessary for discharging the momentary task and for defeating the opposing impulses. Accordingly, no serious struggle can long continue without being supported by a complex of psychic impulses. These may, to be sure, gradually develop into effectiveness in the course of the struggle. The purity of conflict merely for conflict's sake, accordingly, undergoes adulteration, partly through the admixture of objective interests, partly by the introduction of impulses which may be satisfied otherwise than by struggle, and which, in practice, form a bridge between struggle and other forms of reciprocal relationship. I know in fact only a single case in which the stimulus of struggle and of victory in itself constitutes the exclusive motive, namely, the war game, and only in the case that no further gain is to arise than is included in the outcome of the game itself. In this case the pure sociological attraction of self-assertion and predominance over another in a struggle of skill is combined with purely individual pleasure in the exercise of purposeful and successful activity, together with the excitement of taking risks with the hazard of fortune which stimulates us with a sense of mystic harmony of relationship to powers beyond the individual, as well as the social occurrences. At all events, the war game, _in its sociological motivation_, contains absolutely nothing but struggle itself. The worthless markers, for the sake of which men often play with the same earnestness with which they play for gold pieces, indicate the formalism of this impulse which, even in the play for gold pieces, often far outweighs the material interest. The thing to be noticed, however, is that, in order that the foregoing situations may occur, certain sociological forms--in the narrower sense, unifications--are presupposed. There must be agreement in order to struggle, and the struggle occurs under reciprocal recognition of norms and rules. In the motivation of the whole procedure these unifications, as said above, do not appear, but the whole transaction shapes itself under the forms which these explicit or implicit agreements furnish. They create the technique. Without this, such a conflict, excluding all heterogeneous or objective factors, would not be possible. Indeed, the conduct of the war game is often so rigorous, so impersonal, and observed on both sides with such nice sense of honor that unities of a corporate order can seldom in these respects compare with it. b) _Feud and faction._--The occasion for separate discussion of the feud is that here, instead of the consciousness of difference, an entirely new motive emerges--the peculiar phenomenon of social hatred, that is, of hatred toward a member of a group, not from personal motives, but because he threatens the existence of the group. In so far as such a danger threatens through feud within the group, the one party hates the other, not alone on the material ground which instigated the quarrel, but also on the sociological ground, namely, that we hate the enemy of the group as such; that is, the one from whom danger to its unity threatens. Inasmuch as this is a reciprocal matter, and each attributes the fault of endangering the whole to the other, the antagonism acquires a severity which does not occur when membership in a group-unity is not a factor in the situation. Most characteristic in this connection are the cases in which an actual dismemberment of the group has not yet occurred. If this dismemberment has already taken place, it signifies a certain termination of the conflict. The individual difference has found its sociological termination, and the stimulus to constantly renewed friction is removed. To this result the tension between antagonism and still persisting unity must directly work. As it is fearful to be at enmity with a person to whom one is nevertheless bound, from whom one cannot be freed, whether externally or subjectively, even if one will, so there is increased bitterness if one will not detach himself from the community because he is not willing to give up the value of membership in the containing unity, or because he feels this unity as an objective good, the threatening of which deserves conflict and hatred. From such a correlation as this springs the embittering with which, for example, quarrels are fought out within a political faction or a trade union or a family. The individual soul offers an analogy. The feeling that a conflict between sensuous and ascetic feelings, or selfish and moral impulses, or practical and intellectual ambitions, within us not merely lowers the claims of one or both parties and permits neither to come to quite free self-realization but also threatens the unity, the equilibrium, and the total energy of the soul as a whole--this feeling may in many cases repress conflict from the beginning. In case the feeling cannot avail to that extent, it, on the contrary, impresses upon the conflict a character of bitterness and desperation, an emphasis as though a struggle were really taking place for something much more essential than the immediate issue of the controversy. The energy with which each of these tendencies seeks to subdue the others is nourished not only by their egoistic interest but by the interest which goes much farther than that and attaches itself to the unity of the ego, for which this struggle means dismemberment and destruction if it does not end with a victory for unity. Accordingly, struggle within a closely integrated group often enough grows beyond the measure which its object and its immediate interest for the parties could justify. The feeling accumulates that this struggle is an affair not merely of the party but of the group as a whole; that each party must hate in its opponent, not an opponent merely, but at the same time the enemy of its higher sociological unity. c) _Litigation._--Moreover, what we are accustomed to call the joy and passion of conflict in the case of a legal process is probably, in most cases, something quite different, namely, the energetic sense of justice, the impossibility of tolerating an actual or supposed invasion of the sphere of right with which the ego feels a sense of solidarity. The whole obstinacy and uncompromising persistence with which parties in such struggles often maintain the controversy to their own hurt has, even in the case of the aggressive party, scarcely the character of an attack in the proper sense, but rather of a defense in a deeper significance. The point at issue is the self-preservation of the personality which so identifies itself with its possessions and its rights that any invasion of them seems to be a destruction of the personality; and the struggle to protect them at the risk of the whole existence is thoroughly consistent. This individualistic impulse, and not the sociological motive of struggle, will consequently characterize such cases. With respect to the form of the struggle itself, however, judicial conflict is, to be sure, of an absolute sort; that is, the reciprocal claims are asserted with a relentless objectivity and with employment of all available means, without being diverted or modified by personal or other extraneous considerations. The judicial conflict is, therefore, absolute conflict in so far as nothing enters the whole action which does not properly belong in the conflict and which does not serve the ends of conflict; whereas, otherwise, even in the most savage struggles, something subjective, some pure freak of fortune, some sort of interposition from a third side, is at least possible. In the legal struggle everything of the kind is excluded by the matter-of-factness with which the contention, and absolutely nothing outside the contention, is kept in view. This exclusion from the judicial controversy of everything which is not material to the conflict may, to be sure, lead to a formalism of the struggle which may come to have an independent character in contrast with the content itself. This occurs, on the one hand, when real elements are not weighed against each other at all but only quite abstract notions maintain controversy with each other. On the other hand, the controversy is often shifted to elements which have no relation whatever to the subject which is to be decided by the struggle. Where legal controversies, accordingly, in higher civilizations are fought out by attorneys, the device serves to abstract the controversy from all personal associations which are essentially irrelevant. If, on the other hand, Otto the Great ordains that a legal controversy shall be settled by judicial duel between professional fighters, there remains of the whole struggle of interests only the bare form, namely, that there shall be struggle and victory. This latter case portrays, in the exaggeration of caricature, the reduction of the judicial conflict to the mere struggle element. But precisely through its pure objectivity because it stands quite beyond the subjective antitheses of pity and cruelty, this unpitying type of struggle, as a whole, rests on the presupposition of a unity and a community of the parties never elsewhere so severely and constantly maintained. The common subordination to the law, the reciprocal recognition that the decision can be made only according to the objective weight of the evidence, the observance of forms which are held to be inviolable by both parties, the consciousness throughout the whole procedure of being encompassed by a social power and order which are the means of giving to the procedure its significance and security--all this makes the legal controversy rest upon a broad basis of community and consensus between the opponents. It is really a unity of a lesser degree which is constituted by the parties to a compact or to a commercial transaction, a presupposition of which is the recognition, along with the antithesis of interests, that they are subject to certain common, constraining, and obligatory rules. The common presuppositions, which exclude everything that is merely personal from the legal controversy, have that character of pure objectivity to which, on its side, the sharpness, the inexorableness, and the absoluteness of the species of struggle correspond. The reciprocity between the dualism and the unity of the sociological relationship is accordingly shown by the judicial struggle not less than by the war game. Precisely the most extreme and unlimited phases of struggle occur in both cases, since the struggle is surrounded and maintained by the severe unity of common norms and limitations. d) _The conflict of impersonal ideals._--Finally, there is the situation in which the parties are moved by an objective interest; that is, where the interest of the struggle, and consequently the struggle itself, is differentiated from the personality. The consciousness of being merely the representative of superindividual claims--that is, of fighting not for self but only for the thing itself--may lend to the struggle a radicalism and mercilessness which have their analogy in the total conduct of many very unselfish and high-minded men. Because they grant themselves no consideration, they likewise have none for others and hold themselves entirely justified in sacrificing everybody else to the idea to which they are themselves a sacrifice. Such a struggle, into which all the powers of the person are thrown, while victory accrues only to the cause, carries the character of respectability, for the reputable man is the wholly personal, who, however, understands how to hold his personality entirely in check. Hence objectivity operates as _noblesse_. When, however, this differentiation is accomplished, and struggle is objectified, it is not subjected to a further reserve, which would be quite inconsistent; indeed, that would be a sin against the content of the interest itself upon which the struggle had been localized. On the basis of this common element between the parties--namely, that each defends merely the issue and its right, and excludes from consideration everything selfishly personal--the struggle is fought out without the sharpness, but also without the mollifyings, which come from intermingling of the personal element. Merely the immanent logic of the situation is obeyed with absolute precision. This form of antithesis between unity and antagonism intensifies conflict perhaps most perceptibly in cases where both parties actually pursue one and the same purpose; for example, in the case of scientific controversies, in which the issue is the establishment of the truth. In such a case, every concession, every polite consent to stop short of exposing the errors of the opponent in the most unpitying fashion, every conclusion of peace previous to decisive victory, would be treason against that reality for the sake of which the personal element is excluded from the conflict. With endless varieties otherwise, the social struggles since Marx have developed themselves in the above form. Since it is recognized that the situation of laborers is determined by the objective organization and formulas of the productive system, independent of the will and power of individual persons, the personal embitterment incident to the struggle in general and to local conflicts exemplifying the general conflict necessarily diminishes. The entrepreneur is no longer, as such, a blood-sucker and damnable egotist; the laborer is no longer universally assumed to act from sinful greed; both parties begin, at least, to abandon the program of charging the other with demands and tactics inspired by personal malevolence. This literalizing of the conflict has come about in Germany rather along the lines of theory; in England, through the operation of the trade unions, in the course of which the individually personal element of the antagonism has been overcome. In Germany this was effected largely through the more abstract generalization of the historical and class movement. In England it came about through the severe superindividual unity in the actions of the unions and of the combinations of employers. The intensity of the struggle, however, has not on that account diminished. On the contrary, it has become much more conscious of its purpose, more concentrated, and at the same time more aggressive, through the consciousness of the individual that he is struggling not merely, and often not at all, for himself but rather for a vast superpersonal end. A most interesting symptom of this correlation was presented by the boycotting of the Berlin breweries by the labor body in the year 1894. This was one of the most intense local struggles of the last decade. It was carried on by both sides with extraordinary energy, yet without any personal offensiveness on either side toward the other, although the stimulus was close at hand. Indeed, two of the party leaders, in the midst of the struggle, published their opinions about it in the same journal. They agreed in their formulation of the objective facts, and disagreed in a partisan spirit only in the practical conclusions drawn from the facts. Inasmuch as the struggle eliminated everything irrelevantly personal, and thereby restricted antagonism quantitatively, facilitating an understanding about everything personal, producing a recognition of being impelled on both sides by historical necessities, this common basis did not reduce but rather increased, the intensity, the irreconcilability, and the obstinate consistency of the struggle. B. WAR, INSTINCTS, AND IDEALS 1. War and Human Nature[209] What can be said of the causes of war--not its political and economic causes, nor yet the causes that are put forth by the nations engaged in the conflict, but its psychological causes? The fact that war to no small extent removes cultural repressions and allows the instincts to come to expression in full force is undoubtedly a considerable factor. In his unconscious man really takes pleasure in throwing aside restraints and permitting himself the luxury of the untrammeled expression of his primitive animal tendencies. The social conventions, the customs, the forms, and institutions which he has built up in the path of his cultural progress represent so much energy in the service of repression. Repression represents continuous effort, while a state of war permits a relaxation of this effort and therefore relief. We are familiar, in other fields, with the phenomena of the unconscious, instinctive tendencies breaking through the bounds imposed upon them by repression. The phenomena of crime and of so-called "insanity" represent such examples, while drunkenness is one instance familiar to all. _In vino veritas_ expresses the state of the drunken man when his real, that is, his primitive, self frees itself from restraint and runs riot. The psychology of the crowd shows this mechanism at work, particularly in such sinister instances as lynching, while every crowd of college students marching yelling and howling down the main street of the town after a successful cane rush exhibits the joy of unbottling the emotions in ways that no individual would for a moment think of availing himself. In addition to these active demonstrations of the unconscious there are those of a more passive sort. Not a few men are only too glad to step aside from the burden of responsibilities which they are forced to carry and seek refuge in a situation in which they no longer have to take the initiative but must only do as they are directed by a superior authority. The government in some of its agencies takes over certain of their obligations, such as the support of wife and children, and they clear out, free from the whole sordid problem of poverty, into a situation filled with dramatic interest. Then, too, if anything goes wrong at home they are not to blame, they have done their best, and what they have done meets with public approval. Is it any wonder that an inhabitant of the slums should be glad to exchange poverty and dirt, a sick wife and half-starved children, for glorious freedom, especially when he is urged by every sort of appeal to patriotism and duty to do so? But all these are individual factors that enter into the causes of war. They represent some of the reasons why men like to fight, for it is difficult not to believe that if no one wanted to fight war would be possible at all. They too represent the darker side of the picture. War as already indicated offers, on the positive side, the greatest opportunities for the altruistic tendencies; it offers the most glorious occasion for service and returns for such acts the greatest possible premium in social esteem. But it seems to me that the causes of war lie much deeper, that they involve primarily the problems of the herd rather than the individual, and I think there are good biological analogies which make this highly probable. The mechanism of integration explains how the development of the group was dependent upon the subordination of the parts to the whole. This process of integration tends to solve more and more effectively the problems of adjustment, particularly in some aspects, in the direction of ever-increasing stability. It is the process of the structuralization of function. This increase in stability, however, while it has the advantage of greater certainty of reaction, has the disadvantage of a lessened capacity for variation, and so is dependent for its efficiency upon a stable environment. As long as nothing unusual is asked of such a mechanism it works admirably, but as soon as the unusual arises it tends to break down completely. Life, however, is not stable; it is fluid, in a continuous state of flux, so, while the development of structure to meet certain demands of adaptation is highly desirable and necessary, it of necessity has limits which must sooner or later be reached in every instance. The most typical example of this is the process of growing old. The child is highly adjustable and for that reason not to be depended upon; the adult is more dependable but less adjustable; the old man has become stereotyped in his reactions. Nature's solution of this _impasse_ is death. Death insures the continual removal of the no longer adjustable, and the places of those who die are filled by new material capable of the new demands. But it is the means that nature takes to secure the renewal of material still capable of adjustment that is of significance. From each adult sometime during the course of his life nature provides that a small bit shall be detached which, in the higher animals, in union with a similar detached bit of another individual will develop into a child and ultimately be ready to replace the adult when he becomes senile and dies. Life is thus maintained by a continuous stream of germ plasm and is not periodically interrupted in its course, as it seems to be, by death. The characteristics of this detached bit of germ plasm are interesting. It does not manifest any of that complicated structure which we meet with in the other parts of the body. The several parts of the body are highly differentiated, each for a specific function. Gland cells are developed to secrete, muscle cells to contract, bone cells to withstand mechanical stresses, etc. Manifestly development along any one of these lines would not produce an individual possessing, in its several parts, all of these qualities. Development has to go back of the point of origin of these several variations in order to include them all. In other words, regeneration has to start with relatively undifferentiated material. This is excellently illustrated by many of the lower, particularly the unicellular, animals, in which reproduction is not yet sexual, but by the simple method of division. A cell comes to rest, divides into two, and each half then leads an independent existence. Before such a division and while the cell is quiescent--in the resting stage, as it is called--the differentiations of structure which it had acquired in its lifetime disappear; it becomes undifferentiated, relatively simple in structure. This process has been called dedifferentiation. When all the differentiations which had been acquired have been eliminated, then division--rejuvenescence--takes place. From this point of view we may see in war the preliminary process of rejuvenescence. International adjustments and compromises are made until they can be made no longer; a condition is brought about which in Europe has been termed the balance of power, until the situation becomes so complicated that each new adjustment has such wide ramifications that it threatens the whole structure. Finally, as the result of the accumulated structure of diplomatic relations and precedents, a situation arises to which adjustment, with the machinery that has been developed, is impossible and the whole house of cards collapses. The collapse is a process of dedifferentiation during which the old structures are destroyed, precedents are disavowed, new situations occur with bewildering rapidity, for dealing with which there is no recognized machinery available. Society reverts from a state in which a high grade of individual initiative and development was possible to a relatively communistic and paternalistic state, the slate is wiped clear, and a start can be made anew along lines of progress mapped out by the new conditions--rejuvenescence is possible. War, from this point of view, is a precondition for development along new lines of necessity, and the dedifferentiation is the first stage of a constructive process. Old institutions have to be torn down before the bricks with which they were built can be made available for new structures. This accounts for the periodicity of war, which thus is the outward and evident aspect of the progress of the life-force which in human societies, as elsewhere, advances in cycles. It is only by such means that an _impasse_ can be overcome. War is an example of ambivalency on the grandest scale. That is, it is at once potent for the greatest good and the greatest evil: in the very midst of death it calls for the most intense living; in the face of the greatest renunciation it offers the greatest premium; for the maximum of freedom it demands the utmost giving of one's self; in order to live at one's best it demands the giving of life itself. "No man has reached his ethical majority who would not die if the real interests of the community could thus be furthered. What would the world be without the values that have been bought at the price of death?" In this sense the great creative force, love, and the supreme negation, death, become one. That the larger life of the race should go forward to greater things, the smaller life of the individual must perish. In order that man shall be born again, he must first die. Does all this necessarily mean that war, from time to time, in the process of readjustment, is essential? I think no one can doubt that it has been necessary in the past. Whether it will be in the future depends upon whether some sublimated form of procedure can adequately be substituted. We have succeeded to a large extent in dealing with our combative instincts by developing sports and the competition of business, and we have largely sublimated our hate instinct in dealing with various forms of anti-social conduct as exhibited in the so-called "criminal." It remains to be seen whether nations can unite to a similar end and perhaps, by the establishment of an international court, and by other means, deal in a similar way with infractions of international law. 2. War as a Form of Relaxation[210] The fact is that it does not take a very careful reader of the human mind to see that all the utopias and all the socialistic schemes are based on a mistaken notion of the nature of this mind. It is by no means sure that what man wants is peace and quiet and tranquillity. That is too close to ennui, which is his greatest dread. What man wants is not peace but a battle. He must pit his force against someone or something. Every language is most rich in synonyms for battle, war, contest, conflict, quarrel, combat, fight. German children play all day long with their toy soldiers. Our sports take the form of contests in football, baseball, and hundreds of others. Prize fights, dog fights, cock fights, have pleased in all ages. When Rome for a season was not engaged in real war, Claudius staged a sea fight for the delectation of an immense concourse, in which 19,000 gladiators were compelled to take a tragic part, so that the ships were broken to pieces and the waters of the lake were red with blood. You may perhaps recall Professor James's astonishing picture of his visit to a Chautauqua. Here he found modern culture at its best, no poverty, no drunkenness, no zymotic diseases, no crime, no police, only polite and refined and harmless people. Here was a middle-class paradise, kindergarten and model schools, lectures and classes and music, bicycling and swimming, and culture and kindness and elysian peace. But at the end of a week he came out into the real world, and he said: Ouf! What a relief! Now for something primordial and savage, even though it were as bad as an Armenian massacre, to set the balance straight again. This order is too tame, this culture too second-rate, this goodness too uninspiring. This human drama, without a villain or a pang; this community so refined that ice-cream soda-water is the utmost offering it can make to the brute animal in man; this city simmering in the tepid lakeside sun; this atrocious harmlessness of all things--I cannot abide with them. What men want, he says, is something more precipitous, something with more zest in it, with more adventure. Nearly all the Utopias paint the life of the future as a kind of giant Chautauqua, in which every man and woman is at work, all are well fed, satisfied, and cultivated. But as man is now constituted he would probably find such a life flat, stale, and unprofitable. Man is not originally a working animal. Civilization has imposed work upon man, and if you work him too hard he will quit work and go to war. Nietzsche says man wants two things--danger and play. War represents danger. It follows that all our social utopias are wrongly conceived. They are all based on a theory of pleasure economy. But history and evolution show that man has come up from the lower animals through a pain economy. He has struggled up--fought his way up through never-ceasing pain and effort and struggle and battle. The utopias picture a society in which man has ceased to struggle. He works his eight hours a day--everybody works--and he sleeps and enjoys himself the other hours. But man is not a working animal, he is a fighting animal. The utopias are ideal--but they are not psychological. The citizens for such an ideal social order are lacking. Human beings will not serve. Our present society tends more and more in its outward form in time of peace toward the Chautauqua plan, but meanwhile striving and passion burn in the brain of the human units, till the time comes when they find this insipid life unendurable. They resort to amusement crazes, to narcotic drugs, to political strife, to epidemics of crime, and finally to war. The alcohol question well illustrates the tendencies we are pointing out. Science and hygiene have at last shown beyond all question that alcohol, whether in large or smaller doses, exerts a damaging effect upon both mind and body. It lessens physical and mental efficiency, shortens life, and encourages social disorder. In spite of this fact and, what is still more amazing, in spite of the colossal effort now being put forth to suppress by legislative means the traffic in liquor, the per capita consumption of alcoholic drinks in the United States increases from year to year. From a per capita consumption of four gallons in 1850, it has steadily risen to nearly twenty-five gallons in 1913. Narcotic drugs, such as alcohol and tobacco, relieve in an artificial way the tension upon the brain by slightly paralyzing temporarily the higher and more recently developed brain centers. The increase in the use of these drugs is therefore both an index of the tension of modern life and at the same time a means of relieving it to some extent. Were the use of these drugs suddenly checked, no student of psychology or of history could doubt that there would be an immediate increase of social irritability, tending to social instability and social upheavals. Psychology, therefore, forces upon us this conclusion. Neither war nor alcohol can be banished from the world by summary means nor direct suppressions. The mind of man must be made over. As the mind of man is constituted, he will never be content to be a mere laborer, a producer and a consumer. He loves adventure, self-sacrifice, heroism, relaxation. These things must somehow be provided. And then there must be a system of education of our young differing widely from our present system. The new education will not look to efficiency merely and ever more efficiency, but to the production of a harmonized and balanced personality. We must cease our worship of American efficiency and German _Streberthum_ and go back to Aristotle and his teaching of "the mean." 3. The Fighting Animal and the Great Society[211] We must agree that man as he has existed, so far as we can read the story of his development, has been, and as he exists today still is, a fighting animal--that is to say that he has in the past answered, and still answers, certain stimuli by the immediate reactions which constitute fighting. We find evidence of the existence of this fighting instinct in the ordinary men around us. Remove but for a moment the restraints given in our civilized lands and this tendency is likely to become prominent upon the slightest stimulation. We see this exemplified in the lives of the pioneer and adventurer the world over: in that of the cowboy of the far West, in that of the rubber collector on the Amazon, in that of the ivory trader on the Congo. Then, too, the prize fighter is still a prominent person in our community, taken as a whole, and even in our sports, as engaged in by "gentlemen amateurs," we find it necessary to make rigid rules to prevent the friendly contest from developing into a fierce struggle for individual physical dominance. But man gained his pre-eminent position among the animals mainly through his ability to form co-operative groups working to common ends; and long before the times of which anthropological research give us any clear knowledge, man had turned his individualistic fighting instincts to the service of his group or clan. That is to say, he had become a warrior, giving his best strength to co-operative aggression in behalf of satisfactions that could not be won by him as an individual acting for himself. Our earlier studies have taught us also that if man's instinctive tendencies could in any manner be inhibited or modified, so that he came to display other characteristics than those observed in the present expression of these inborn instincts, then the law of his nature would in that very fact be changed. We are thus led to ask whether the biologist finds evidence that an animal's instincts can be thus changed in mode of expression. The biologist speaks to us somewhat as follows. Although new racial characteristics have very rarely, if ever, been gained by the obliteration of instincts, changes in racial characteristics have not infrequently occurred as the result of the control, rather than the loss, of these inherited instincts. This control may become effective in either one of two ways: first, by the thwarting or inhibition of the expression of the instincts; or secondly, by the turning of its expression to other uses than that which originally resulted in its fixation. As an example of the thwarting of the expression of an instinct we may take the functioning of the sexual instinct, which, as we see it in animals in general, has been inhibited in the human animal by the habits acquired by man as he has risen in the scale. This mode of change--that of the mere chaining of the instinctive tendency--is subject to one great difficulty. The chain may by chance be broken; the inhibition may be removed; then the natural instinctive tendency at once shows itself. Remove the restraints of civilized society but a little, and manifestations of the sexual instinct of our race appear in forms that are not far removed from those observed in the animal. Place a man under conditions of starvation and he shows himself as greedy as the dog. The second mode of change--that of the transference of functioning of the instincts into new channels--meets this special difficulty, for it does not depend upon the chaining of the instinct. It actually makes use of the instinct. And the more important to the race the newer reference of the instinct's functioning turns out to be, the more certain is it to replace the original reference. If the new mode of functioning brings marked advantage that is lost by reversion to the earlier manifestation of the instinct, so that such a reversion to this earlier manifestation is a detriment to the race, then the change is likely to become a permanent one. No better example of this second mode of change of an instinct's functioning can be found than in the very existence of war itself. The basic instinct is one that led the savage man to fight to protect himself or to gain something for himself by aggressive attack. War has come into being as the result of a transfer of the functioning of this instinct, which at first had only an individualistic reference, so that it has come to have a clan or national reference. The early man found he could not have success as an individual unless he joined with his fellow-men in defense and aggression; and that meant war. And note that this transfer of reference of the expression of this fighting instinct soon became so important to the race that reversion to its primal individualistic reference had to be inhibited. Aggressive attack by an individual upon another of his own clan or nation necessarily tended to weaken the social unit and to reduce its strength in its protective and aggressive wars; and thus such attacks by individuals came to be discountenanced and finally in large measure repressed. Here, it will be observed, the fighting instinct of the individual has not been obliterated; it has not even been bound with chains; but its modes of expression have been altered to have racial significance, and to have so great a significance in this new relation that reversion to its primary form of expression has become a serious obstacle to racial advance. So it appears after all that, although instincts can rarely if ever be obliterated, their manifestations may be so altered as to give the animal quite new characteristics. And this means that if the characteristics which we describe as the expressions of man's fighting instincts could be so changed that these expressions were inhibited or turned into quite new channels, the man would no longer be describable as a fighting animal. The first indication in our conscious life of any tendency to inhibit or modify the functioning of any instinct or habit must appear in the form of a dislike of, a revulsion from, the resultants of this functioning; and in the creation of an ideal of functioning that shall avoid the discomforts attendant upon this revulsion. And when such an ideal has once been gained, it is possible, as we have seen, that the characteristics of nature may be changed by our creative efficiency through the devising of means looking to the realization of the ideal. We have the clearest evidence that this process is developing in connection with these special instincts that make for war; for we men and women in these later times are repelled by the results of the functioning of these fighting instincts, and we have created the ideal of peace, the conception of a condition that is not now realized in nature, but which we think of as possible of realization. But the very existence of an ideal is indicative of a tendency, on the part of the man who entertains it, to modify his characteristic activities. Thus it appears that we have in the very existence of this ideal of peace the evidence that we may look for a change in man's nature, the result of which will be that we shall no longer be warranted in describing him as a fighting animal. C. RIVALRY, CULTURAL CONFLICTS, AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 1. Animal Rivalry[212] Among mammals the instinct of one and all is to lord it over the others, with the result that the one more powerful or domineering gets the mastery, to keep it thereafter as long as he can. The lower animals are, in this respect, very much like us; and in all kinds that are at all fierce-tempered the mastery of one over all, and of a few under him over the others, is most salutary; indeed, it is inconceivable that they should be able to exist together under any other system. On cattle-breeding establishments on the pampas, where it is usual to keep a large number of fierce-tempered dogs, I have observed these animals a great deal and presume they are much like feral dogs and wolves in their habits. Their quarrels are incessant; but when a fight begins, the head of the pack as a rule rushes to the spot, whereupon the fighters separate and march off in different directions or else cast themselves down and deprecate their tyrant's wrath with abject gestures and whines. If the combatants are both strong and have worked themselves into a mad rage before their head puts in an appearance, it may go hard with him; they know him no longer and all he can do is to join in the fray; then if the fighters turn on him he may be so injured that his power is gone and the next best dog in the pack takes his place. The hottest contests are always between dogs that are well matched; neither will give place to the other and so they fight it out; but from the foremost in power down to the weakest there is a gradation of authority; each one knows just how far he can go, which companion he can bully when he is in a bad temper or wishes to assert himself, and to which he must humbly yield in his turn. In such a state the weakest one must yield to all the others and cast himself down, seeming to call himself a slave and worshiper of any other member of the pack that chances to snarl at him or command him to give up his bone with good grace. This masterful or domineering temper, so common among social mammals, is the cause of the persecution of the sick and weakly. When an animal begins to ail he can no longer hold his own; he ceases to resent the occasional ill-natured attacks made on him; his non-combative condition is quickly discovered, and he at once drops down to a place below the lowest; it is common knowledge in the herd that he may be buffeted with impunity by all, even by those that have hitherto suffered buffets but have given none. But judging from my own observation, this persecution is not, as a rule, severe, and is seldom fatal. 2. The Rivalry of Social Groups[213] Conflict, competition, and rivalry are the chief causes which force human beings into groups and largely determine what goes on within them. Conflicts, like wars, revolutions, riots, still persist, but possibly they may be thought of as gradually yielding to competitions which are chiefly economic. Many of these strivings seem almost wholly individual, but most of them on careful analysis turn out to be intimately related to group competition. A third form, rivalry, describes struggle for status, for social prestige, for the approval of inclusive publics which form the spectators for such contests. The nation is an arena of competition and rivalry. Much of this emulation is of a concealed sort. Beneath the union services of churches there is an element, for the most part unconscious, of rivalry to secure the approval of a public which in these days demands brotherliness and good will rather than proselyting and polemics. Many public subscriptions for a common cause are based upon group rivalry or upon individual competition which is group-determined. The Rhodes scholarships are in one sense a means of furthering imperial interest. Christmas presents lavished upon children often have a bearing upon the ambition of the family to make an impression upon rival domestic groups. In the liberal policy of universities which by adding to the list of admission subjects desire to come into closer relations with the public schools, there is some trace of competition for students and popular applause. The interest which nations manifest in the Hague Tribunal is tinged with a desire to gain the good will of the international, peace-praising public. The professed eagerness of one or both parties in a labor dispute to have the differences settled by arbitration is a form of competition for the favor of the onlooking community. Thus in international relationships and in the life-process of each nation countless groups are in conflict, competition, or rivalry. This idea of the group seeking survival, mastery, aggrandizement, prestige, in its struggles with other groups is a valuable means of interpretation. Let us survey rapidly the conditions of success as a group carries on its life of strife and emulation. In order to survive or to succeed the group must organize, cozen, discipline, and stimulate its members. Fortunately it finds human nature in a great measure fashioned for control. Collective pride or group egotism is an essential source of strength in conflict. Every efficient group cultivates this sense of honor, importance, superiority, by many devices of symbol, phrase, and legend, as well as by scorn and ridicule of rivals. The college fraternity's sublime self-esteem gives it strength in its competition for members and prestige. There is a chauvinism of "boom" towns and religious sects, as well as of nations. What pride and self-confidence are to the individual, ethnocentrism, patriotism, local loyalty are to social unities. Diffidence, humility, self-distrust, tolerance, are as dangerous to militant groups as to fighting men. Then too the group works out types of personality, hero types to be emulated, traitor types to be execrated. These personality types merge into abstract ideals and standards. "Booster" and "knocker" bring up pictures of a struggling community which must preserve its hopefulness and self-esteem at all hazards. "Statesman" and "demagogue" recall the problem of selection which every self-governing community must face. "Defender of the faith" and "heretic" are eloquent of the Church's dilemma between rigid orthodoxy and flexible accommodation to a changing order. With a shifting in the conflict or rivalry crises, types change in value or emphasis, or new types are created in adjustment to the new needs. The United Stated at war with Spain sought martial heroes. The economic and political ideals of personality, the captains of industry, the fascinating financiers, the party idols, were for the time retired to make way for generals and admirals, soldiers and sailors, the heroes of camp and battleship. The war once over, the displaced types reappeared along with others which are being created to meet new administrative, economic, and ethical problems. The competing church retires its militant and disputatious leaders in an age which gives its applause to apostles of concord, fraternal feeling, and co-operation. At a given time the heroes and traitors of a group reflect its competitions and rivalries with other groups. Struggle forces upon the group the necessity of cozening, beguiling, managing its members. The vast majority of these fall into a broad zone of mediocrity which embodies group character and represents a general adjustment to life-conditions. From this medial area individuals vary, some in ways which aid the group in its competition, others in a fashion which imperils group success. It is the task of the group both to preserve the solidarity of the medial zone and to discriminate between the serviceable and the menacing variants. The latter must be coerced or suppressed, the former encouraged and given opportunity. In Plato's _Republic_ the guardians did this work of selection which in modern groups is cared for by processes which seem only slightly conscious and purposeful. The competing group in seeking to insure acquiescence and loyalty elaborates a protective philosophy by which it creates within its members the belief that their lot is much to be preferred to that of other comradeships and associations. Western Americans take satisfaction in living in a free, progressive, hospitable way in "God's country." They try not to be pharisaical about the narrowness of the East, but they achieve a sincere scorn for the hidebound conventions of an effete society. Easterners in turn count themselves fortunate in having a highly developed civilization, and they usually attain real pity for those who seem to live upon a psychic, if not a geographic, frontier. The middle class have a philosophy with which they protect themselves against the insidious suggestions that come from the life of the conspicuous rich. These, on the other hand, half expecting that simplicity and domesticity may have some virtue, speak superciliously of middle-class smugness and the bourgeois "home." The less prosperous of the professional classes are prone to lay a good deal of stress upon their intellectual resources as compared with the presumptive spiritual poverty of the affluent. Country folk encourage themselves by asserting their fundamental value to society and by extolling their own simple straightforward virtues, which present so marked a contrast to the devious machinations of city-dwellers. Booker Washington's reiterated assertion that if he were to be born again he would choose to be a Negro because the Negro race is the only one which has a great problem contains a suggestion of this protective philosophy. This tendency of a group to fortify itself by a satisfying theory of its lot is obviously related to group egotism and is immediately connected with group rivalry. The competing group derides many a dissenter into conformity. This derision may be spontaneous, or reflective and concerted. The loud guffaw which greets one who varies in dress or speech or idea may come instantly or there may be a planned and co-operative ridicule systematically applied to the recalcitrant. Derision is one of the most effective devices by which the group sifts and tests the variants. Upon the small number of rebels who turn a deaf ear to epithets, ostracism is brought to bear. This may vary from the "cold shoulder" to the complete "boycott." Losing the friendship and approval of comrades, being cut off from social sympathy, is a familiar form of group pressure. Ridicule and derision are a kind of evanescent ostracism, a temporary exclusion from the comradeship. There are many degrees in the lowering of the social temperature: coolness, formality of intercourse, averted looks, "cutting dead," "sending to Coventry," form a progressive series. Economic pressure is more and more a resort of modern groups. Loss of employment, trade, or professional practice brings many a rebel to time. All coercion obviously increases as the group is hard pressed in its conflicts, competitions, and rivalries. These crises and conflicts of a competing group present problems which must be solved--problems of organization, of inventions of many kinds, of new ideas and philosophies, of methods of adjustment. The conditions of competition or rivalry upset an equilibrium of habit and custom, and a process of problem-solving ensues. A typhoid epidemic forces the village to protect itself against the competition of a more healthful rival. The resourceful labor union facing a corporation which offers profit-sharing and retiring allowances must formulate a protective theory and practice. A society clique too closely imitated by a lower stratum must regain its distinction and supremacy. A nation must be constantly alert to adjust itself to the changing conditions of international trade and to the war equipment and training of its rivals. The theory of group rivalry throws light upon the individual. The person has as many selves as there are groups to which he belongs. He is simple or complex as his groups are few and harmonious or many and conflicting. What skilful management is required to keep business and moral selves from looking each other in the eye, to prevent scientific and theological selves from falling into discussion! Most men of many groups learn, like tactful hosts, to invite at a given time only congenial companies of selves. A few brave souls resolve to set their house in order and to entertain only such selves as can live together with good will and mutual respect. With these earnest folk their groups have to reckon. The conflicts of conscience are group conflicts. Tolerance is a sign that once vital issues within the group are losing their significance, or that the group feels secure, or that it is slowly, even unconsciously, merging into a wider grouping. Theological liberality affords a case in point. In the earlier days of sectarian struggle tolerance was a danger both to group loyalty and to the militant spirit. Cynicism for other reasons is also a menace. It means loss of faith in the collective ego, in the traditions, shibboleths, symbols, and destiny of the group. Fighting groups cannot be tolerant; nor can they harbor cynics. Tolerance and cynicism are at once causes and results of group decay. They portend dissolution or they foreshadow new groupings for struggle over other issues on another plane. Evangelical churches are drawing together with mutual tolerance to present a united front against modern skepticism and cynicism which are directed against the older faiths and moralities. The subjective side of group rivalry offers an important study. The reflection of the process of control in personal consciousness is full of interest. The means by which the rebellious variant protects himself against the coercion of his comrades have been already suggested in the description of ridicule and epithet. These protective methods resolve themselves into setting one group against another in the mind of the derided or stigmatized individual. A national group is to be thought of as an inclusive unity with a fundamental character, upon the basis of which a multitude of groups compete with and rival each other. It is the task of the nation to control and to utilize this group struggle, to keep it on as high a plane as possible, to turn it to the common account. Government gets its chief meaning from the rivalry of groups to grasp political power in their own interests. Aristocracy and democracy may be interpreted in terms of group antagonism, the specialized few versus the undifferentiated many. The ideal merges the two elements of efficiency and solidarity in one larger group within which mutual confidence and emulation take the place of conflict. Just as persons must be disciplined into serving their groups, groups must be subordinated to the welfare of the nation. It is in conflict or competition with other nations that a country becomes a vivid unity to the members of constituent groups. It is rivalry which brings out the sense of team work, the social consciousness. 3. Cultural Conflicts and the Organization of Sects[214] It is assumed, I suppose, that contradictions among ideas and beliefs are of various degrees and of various modes besides that specific one which we call logical incompatibility. A perception, for example, may be pictorially inconsistent or tonically discordant with another perception; a mere faith unsupported by objective evidence may be emotionally antagonistic to another mere faith, as truly as a judgment may be logically irreconcilable with another judgment. And this wide possibility of contradiction is particularly to be recognized when the differing ideas or beliefs have arisen not within the same individual mind but in different minds, and are therefore colored by personal or partisan interest and warped by idiosyncrasy of mental constitution. The contradictions of, or rather _among_, ideas and beliefs, with which we are now concerned, are more extensive and more varied than mere logical duels; they are also less definite, less precise. In reality they are culture conflicts in which the opposing forces, so far from being specific ideas only or pristine beliefs only, are in fact more or less bewildering complexes of ideas, beliefs, prejudices, sympathies, antipathies, and personal interests. It is assumed also, I suppose, that any idea or group of ideas, any belief or group of beliefs, may happen to be or may become a common interest, shared by a small or a large number of individuals. It may draw and hold them together in bonds of acquaintance, of association, even of co-operation. It thus may play a group-making rôle. Contradictory ideas or beliefs, therefore, may play a group-making rôle in a double sense. Each draws into association the individual minds that entertain it or find it attractive. Each also repels those minds to whom it is repugnant, and drives them toward the group which is being formed about the contradictory idea or belief. Contradictions among ideas and beliefs, then, it may be assumed, tend on the whole to sharpen the lines of demarcation between group and group. These assumptions are, I suppose, so fully justified by the everyday observation of mankind and so confirmed by history that it is unnecessary now to discuss them or in any way to dwell upon them. The question before us therefore becomes specific: "Are contradictions among ideas and beliefs likely to play an _important_ group-making rôle in the future?" I shall interpret the word important as connoting quality as well as quantity. I shall, in fact, attempt to answer the question set for me by translating it into this inquiry, namely: What kind or type of groups are the inevitable contradictions among ideas and beliefs most likely to create and to maintain within the progressive populations of the world from this time forth? Somewhat more than three hundred years ago, Protestantism and geographical discovery had combined to create conditions extraordinarily favorable to the formation of groups or associations about various conflicting ideas and beliefs functioning as nuclei; and for nearly three hundred years the world has been observing a remarkable multiplication of culture groups of two fundamentally different types. One type is a sect, or denomination, having no restricted local habitation but winning adherents here and there in various communes, provinces, or nations, and having, therefore, a membership either locally concentrated or more or less widely dispersed; either regularly or most irregularly distributed. The culture group of the other type, or kind, is a self-sufficing community. It may be a village, a colony, a state, or a nation. Its membership is concentrated, its habitat is defined. To a very great extent, as everybody knows, American colonization proceeded through the formation of religious communities. Such were the Pilgrim and the Puritan commonwealths. Such were the Quaker groups of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Such were the localized societies of the Dunkards, the Moravians, and the Mennonites. As late as the middle of the nineteenth century the American people witnessed the birth and growth of one of the most remarkable religious communities known in history. The Mormon community of Utah, which, originating in 1830 as a band of relatives and acquaintances, clustered by an idea that quickly became a dogma, had become in fifty years a commonwealth _de facto_, defying the authority _de jure_ of the United States. We are not likely, however, again to witness a phenomenon of this kind in the civilized world. Recently we have seen the rise and the astonishingly rapid spread of another American religion, namely, the Christian Science faith. But it has created no community group. It has created only a dispersed sect. It is obvious to any intelligent observer, however untrained in sociological discrimination he may be, that the forces of Protestantism, still dividing and differentiating as they are, no longer to any great extent create new self-sufficing communities. They create only associations of irregular geographical dispersion, of more or less unstable or shifting membership. In a word, the conflicting-idea forces, which in our colonial days tended to create community groups as well as sects, tend now to create sectarian bodies only--mere denominational or partisan associations. A similar contrast between an earlier and a later stage of culture group-making may be observed if we go back to centuries before the Protestant Reformation, there to survey a wider field and a longer series of historical periods. It is a commonplace of historical knowledge that in all of the earliest civilizations there was an approximate identification of religion with ethnic consciousness and of political consciousness with both religious and race feeling. Each people had its own tribal or national gods, who were inventoried as national assets at valuations quite as high as those attached to tribal or national territory. When, however, Roman imperial rule had been extended over the civilized world, the culture conflicts that then arose expended their group-creating force in simply bringing together like believers in sectarian association. Christianity, appealing to all bloods, in some measure to all economic classes, and spreading into all sections of the eastern Mediterranean region, did not to any great extent create communities. And what was true of Christianity was in like manner true of the Mithras cult, widely diffused in the second Christian century. Even Mohammedanism, a faith seemingly well calculated to create autonomous states, in contact with a world prepared by Roman organization could not completely identify itself with definite political boundaries. The proximate causes of these contrasts are not obscure. We must suppose that a self-sufficing community might at one time, as well as at another, be drawn together by formative beliefs. But that it may take root somewhere and, by protecting itself against destructive external influences, succeed for a relatively long time in maintaining its integrity and its solidarity, it must enjoy a relative isolation. In a literal sense it must be beyond easy reach of those antagonistic forces which constitute for it the outer world of unbelief and darkness. Such isolation is easily and often possible, however, only in the early stages of political integration. It is always difficult and unusual in those advanced stages wherein nations are combined in world-empires. It is becoming well-nigh impossible, now that all the continents have been brought under the sovereignty of the so-called civilized peoples, while these peoples themselves, freely communicating and intermingling, maintain with one another that good understanding which constitutes them, in a certain broad sense of the term, a world-society. The proximate effects also of the contrast that has been sketched are generally recognized. So long as blood sympathy, religious faith, and political consciousness are approximately coterminous, the groups that they form, whether local communities or nations, must necessarily be rather sharply delimited. They must be characterized also by internal solidarity. Their membership is stable because to break the bond of blood is not only to make one's self an outcast but is also to be unfaithful to the ancestral gods; to change one's religion is not only to be impious but is also to commit treason; to expatriate one's self is not only to commit treason but is also to blaspheme against high heaven. But when associations of believers or of persons holding in common any philosophy or doctrine whatsoever are no longer self-sufficing communities, and when nations composite in blood have become compound in structure, all social groups, clusters, or organizations, not only the cultural ones drawn together by formative ideas, but also the economic and the political ones, become in some degree plastic. Their membership then becomes to some extent shifting and renewable. Under these circumstances any given association of men, let it be a village, a religious group, a trade union, a corporation, or a political party, not only takes into itself new members from time to time; it also permits old members to depart. Men come and men go, yet the association or the group itself persists. As group or as organization it remains unimpaired. The economic advantage secured by this plasticity and renewableness is beyond calculation enormous. It permits and facilitates the drafting of men at any moment from points where they are least needed, for concentration upon points where they are needed most. The spiritual or idealistic advantage is not less great. The concentration of attention and of enthusiasm upon strategic points gives ever-increasing impetus to progressive movements. Let us turn now from these merely proximate causes and effects of group formation to take note of certain developmental processes which lie farther back in the evolutionary sequence and which also have significance for our inquiry, since, when we understand them, they may aid us in our attempt to answer the question, What kind of group-making is likely to be accomplished by cultural conflicts from this time forth? The most readily perceived, because the most pictorial, of the conflicts arising between one belief and another are those that are waged between beliefs that have been localized and then through geographical expansion have come into competition throughout wide frontier areas. Of all such conflicts, that upon which the world has now fully entered between occidental and oriental ideas is not merely the most extensive; it is also by far the most interesting and picturesque. Less picturesque but often more dramatic are the conflicts that arise within each geographical region, within each nation, between old beliefs and new--the conflicts of sequent, in distinction from coexistent, ideas; the conflicts in time, in distinction from the conflicts in space. A new knowledge is attained which compels us to question old dogmas. A new faith arises which would displace the ancient traditions. As the new waxes strong in some region favorable to it, it begins there, within local limits, to supersede the old. Only then, when the conflict between the old as old and the new as new is practically over, does the triumphant new begin to go forth spatially as a conquering influence from the home of its youth into regions outlying and remote. Whatever the form, however, that the culture conflict assumes, whether serial and dramatic or geographical and picturesque, its antecedent psychological conditions are in certain great essentials the same. Men array themselves in hostile camps on questions of theory and belief, not merely because they are variously and conflictingly informed, but far more because they are mentally unlike, their minds having been prepared by structural differentiation to seize upon different views and to cherish opposing convictions. That is to say, some minds have become rational, critical, plastic, open, outlooking, above all, intuitive of objective facts and relations. Others in their fundamental constitution have remained dogmatic, intuitive only of personal attitudes or of subjective moods, temperamentally conservative and instinctive. Minds of the one kind welcome the new and wider knowledge; they go forth to embrace it. Minds of the other kind resist it. In the segregation thus arising, there is usually discoverable a certain tendency toward grouping by sex. Whether the mental and moral traits of women are inherent and therefore permanent, or whether they are but passing effects of circumscribed experience and therefore possibly destined to be modified, is immaterial for my present purpose. It is not certain that either the biologist or the psychologist is prepared to answer the question. It is certain that the sociologist is not. It is enough for the analysis that I am making now if we can say that, as a merely descriptive fact, women thus far in the history of the race have generally been more instinctive, more intuitive of subjective states, more emotional, more conservative than men; and that men, more generally than women, have been intuitive of objective relations, inclined therefore to break with instinct and to rely on the later-developed reasoning processes of the brain, and willing, consequently, to take chances, to experiment, and to innovate. If so much be granted, we may perhaps say that it is because of these mental differences that in conflicts between new and old ideas, between new knowledge and old traditions, it usually happens that a large majority of all women are found in the camp of the old, and that the camp of the new is composed mainly of men. In the camp of the new, however, are always to be found women of alert intelligence, who happen also to be temperamentally radical; women in whom the reasoning habit has asserted sway over instinct, and in whom intuition has become the true scientific power to discern objective relations. And in the camp of the old, together with a majority of all women, are to be found most of the men of conservative instinct, and most of those also whose intuitive and reasoning powers are unequal to the effort of thinking about the world or anything in it in terms of impersonal causation. Associated with all of these elements, both male and female, may usually be discovered, finally, a contingent of priestly personalities; not necessarily religious priests, but men who love to assert spiritual dominion, to wield authority, to be reverenced and obeyed, and who naturally look for a following among the non-skeptical and easily impressed. Such, very broadly and rudely sketched, is the psychological background of culture conflict. It is, however, a background only, a certain persistent grouping of forces and conditions; it is not the cause from which culture conflicts proceed. D. RACIAL CONFLICTS 1. Social Contacts and Race Conflict[215] There is a conviction, widespread in America at the present time, that among the most fruitful sources of international wars are racial prejudice and national egotism. This conviction is the nerve of much present-day pacifism. It has been the inspiration of such unofficial diplomacy, for example, as that of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in its effort to bring about a better understanding between the Japanese and America. This book, _The Japanese Invasion_, by Jesse F. Steiner, is an attempt to study this phenomenon of race prejudice and national egotism, so far as it reveals itself in the relations of the Japanese and the Americans in this country, and to estimate the rôle it is likely to play in the future relations of the two countries. So far as I know, an investigation of precisely this nature has not hitherto been made. One reason for this is, perhaps, that not until very recent times did the problem present itself in precisely this form. So long as the nations lived in practical isolation, carrying on their intercourse through the medium of professional diplomats, and knowing each other mainly through the products they exchanged, census reports, and the discreet observations of polite travelers, racial prejudice did not disturb international relations. With the extension of international commerce, the increase of immigration, and the interpenetration of peoples, the scene changes. The railway, the steamship, and the telegraph are rapidly mobilizing the peoples of the earth. The nations are coming out of their isolation, and distances which separated the different races are rapidly giving way before the extension of communication. The same human motives which have led men to spread a network of trade-communication over the whole earth in order to bring about an exchange of commodities are now bringing about a new distribution of populations. When these populations become as mobile as the commodities of commerce, there will be practically no limits--except those artificial barriers, like the customs and immigration restrictions, maintained by individual states--to a world-wide economic and personal competition. Furthermore when the natural barriers are broken down, artificial barriers will be maintained with increasing difficulty. Some conception of the extent of the changes which are taking place in the world under the influence of these forces may be gathered from the fact that in 1870 the cost of transporting a bushel of grain in Europe was so great as to prohibit its sale beyond a radius of two hundred miles from a primary market. By 1883 the importation of grains from the virgin soil of the western prairies in the United States had brought about an agricultural crisis in every country in western Europe. One may illustrate, but it is scarcely possible to estimate, the economic changes which have been brought about by the enormous increase in ocean transportation. In 1840 the first Cunard liner, of 740 horse-power with a speed of 8.5 knots per hour, was launched. In 1907, when the Lusitania was built, ocean-going vessels had attained a speed of 25 knots an hour and were drawn by engines of 70,000 horse-power. It is difficult to estimate the economic changes which have been brought about by the changes in ocean transportation represented by these figures. It is still less possible to predict the political effects of the steadily increasing mobility of the peoples of the earth. At the present time this mobility has already reached a point at which it is often easier and cheaper to transport the world's population to the source of raw materials than to carry the world's manufactures to the established seats of population. With the progressive rapidity, ease, and security of transportation, and the increase in communication, there follows an increasing detachment of the population from the soil and a concurrent concentration in great cities. These cities in time become the centers of vast numbers of uprooted individuals, casual and seasonal laborers, tenement and apartment-house dwellers, sophisticated and emancipated urbanites, who are bound together neither by local attachment nor by ties of family, clan, religion, or nationality. Under such conditions it is reasonable to expect that the same economic motive which leads every trader to sell in the highest market and to buy in the lowest will steadily increase and intensify the tendency, which has already reached enormous proportions of the population in overcrowded regions with diminished resources, to seek their fortunes, either permanently or temporarily, in the new countries of undeveloped resources. Already the extension of commerce and the increase of immigration have brought about an international and inter-racial situation that has strained the inherited political order of the United States. It is this same expansive movement of population and of commerce, together with the racial and national rivalries that have sprung from them, which first destroyed the traditional balance of power in Europe and then broke up the scheme of international control which rested on it. Whatever may have been the immediate causes of the world-war, the more remote sources of the conflict must undoubtedly be sought in the great cosmic forces which have broken down the barriers which formerly separated the races and nationalities of the world, and forced them into new intimacies and new forms of competition, rivalry, and conflict. Since 1870 the conditions which I have attempted to sketch have steadily forced upon America and the nations of Europe the problem of assimilating their heterogeneous populations. What we call the race problem is at once an incident of this process of assimilation and an evidence of its failure. The present volume, _The Japanese Invasion: A Study in the Psychology of Inter-racial Contact_, touches but does not deal with the general situation which I have briefly sketched. It is, as its title suggests, a study in "racial contacts," and is an attempt to distinguish and trace to their sources the attitudes and the sentiments--that is to say, mutual prejudices--which have been and still are a source of mutual irritation and misunderstanding between the Japanese and American peoples. Fundamentally, prejudice against the Japanese in the United States is merely the prejudice which attaches to every alien and immigrant people. The immigrant from Europe, like the immigrant from Asia, comes to this country because he finds here a freedom of individual action and an economic opportunity which he did not find at home. It is an instance of the general tendency of populations to move from an area of relatively closed, to one of relatively open, resources. The movement is as inevitable and, in the long run, as resistless as that which draws water from its mountain sources to the sea. It is one way of redressing the economic balance and bringing about an economic equilibrium. The very circumstances under which this modern movement of population has arisen implies then that the standard of living, if not the cultural level, of the immigrant is lower than that of the native population. The consequence is that immigration brings with it a new and disturbing form of competition, the competition, namely, of peoples of a lower and of a higher standard of living. The effect of this competition, where it is free and unrestricted, is either to lower the living standards of the native population; to expel them from the vocations in which the immigrants are able or permitted to compete; or what may, perhaps, be regarded as a more sinister consequence, to induce such a restriction of the birth rate of the native population as to insure its ultimate extinction. The latter is, in fact, what seems to be happening in the New England manufacturing towns where the birth rate in the native population for some years past has fallen below the death rate, so that the native stock has long since ceased to reproduce itself. The foreign peoples, on the other hand, are rapidly replacing the native stocks, not merely by the influence of new immigration, but because of a relatively high excess of births over deaths. It has been assumed that the prejudice which blinds the people of one race to the virtues of another and leads them to exaggerate that other's faults is in the nature of a misunderstanding which further knowledge will dispel. This is so far from true that it would be more exact to say that our racial misunderstandings are merely the expression of our racial antipathies. Behind these antipathies are deep-seated, vital, and instinctive impulses. Racial antipathies represent the collision of invisible forces, the clash of interests, dimly felt but not yet clearly perceived. They are present in every situation where the fundamental interests of races and peoples are not yet regulated by some law, custom, or any other _modus vivendi_ which commands the assent and the mutual support of both parties. We hate people because we fear them, because our interests, as we understand them at any rate, run counter to theirs. On the other hand, good will is founded in the long run upon co-operation. The extension of our so-called altruistic sentiments is made possible only by the organization of our otherwise conflicting interests and by the extension of the machinery of co-operation and social control. Race prejudice may be regarded as a spontaneous, more or less instinctive, defense-reaction, the practical effect of which is to restrict free competition between races. Its importance as a social function is due to the fact that free competition, particularly between people with different standards of living, seems to be, if not the original source, at least the stimulus to which race prejudice is the response. From this point of view we may regard caste, or even slavery, as one of those accommodations through which the race problem found a natural solution. Caste, by relegating the subject race to an inferior status, gives to each race at any rate a monopoly of its own tasks. When this status is accepted by the subject people, as is the case where the caste or slavery systems become fully established, racial competition ceases and racial animosity tends to disappear. That is the explanation of the intimate and friendly relations which so often existed in slavery between master and servant. It is for this reason that we hear it said today that the Negro is all right in his place. In his place he is a convenience and not a competitor. Each race being in its place, no obstacle to racial co-operation exists. The fact that race prejudice is due to, or is in some sense dependent upon, race competition is further manifest by a fact that Mr. Steiner has emphasized, namely, that prejudice against the Japanese is nowhere uniform throughout the United States. It is only where the Japanese are present in sufficient numbers to actually disturb the economic status of the white population that prejudice has manifested itself to such a degree as to demand serious consideration. It is an interesting fact also that prejudice against the Japanese is now more intense than it is against any other oriental people. The reason for this, as Mr. Steiner has pointed out, is that the Japanese are more aggressive, more disposed to test the sincerity of that statement of the Declaration of Independence which declares that all men are equally entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"--a statement, by the way, which was merely a forensic assertion of the laissez faire doctrine of free and unrestricted competition as applied to the relations of individual men. The Japanese, the Chinese, they too would be all right in their place, no doubt. That place, if they find it, will be one in which they do not greatly intensify and so embitter the struggle for existence of the white man. The difficulty is that the Japanese is still less disposed than the Negro or the Chinese to submit to the regulations of a caste system and to stay in his place. The Japanese are an organized and morally efficient nation. They have the national pride and the national egotism which rests on the consciousness of this efficiency. In fact, it is not too much to say that national egotism, if one pleases to call it such, is essential to national efficiency, just as a certain irascibility of temper seems to be essential to a good fighter. Another difficulty is that caste and the limitation of free competition is economically unsound, even though it be politically desirable. A national policy of national efficiency demands that every individual have not merely the opportunity but the preparation necessary to perform that particular service for the community for which his natural disposition and aptitude fit him, irrespective of race or "previous condition." Finally, caste and the limitation of economic opportunity is contrary, if not to our traditions, at least to our political principles. That means that there will always be an active minority opposed to any settlement based on the caste system as applied to either the black or the brown races, on grounds of political sentiment. This minority will be small in parts of the country immediately adversely affected by the competition of the invading race. It will be larger in regions which are not greatly affected. It will be increased if immigration is so rapid as to make the competition more acute. We must look to other measures for the solution of the Japanese problem, if it should prove true, as seems probable, that we are not able or, for various reasons, do not care permanently to hold back the rising tide of the oriental invasion. I have said that fundamentally and in principle prejudice against the Japanese in America today was identical with the prejudice which attaches to any immigrant people. There is, as Mr. Steiner has pointed out, a difference. This is due to the existence in the human mind of a mechanism by which we inevitably and automatically classify every individual human being we meet. When a race bears an external mark by which every individual member of it can infallibly be identified, that race is by that fact set apart and segregated. Japanese, Chinese, and Negroes cannot move among us with the same freedom as the members of other races because they bear marks which identify them as members of their race. This fact isolates them. In the end the effect of this isolation, both in its effects upon the Japanese themselves and upon the human environment in which they live, is profound. Isolation is at once a cause and an effect of race prejudice. It is a vicious circle--isolation, prejudice; prejudice, isolation. Were there no other reasons which urge us to consider the case of the Japanese and the oriental peoples in a category different from that of the European immigrant, this fact, that they are bound to live in the American community a more or less isolated life, would impel us to do so. In conclusion, I may perhaps say in a word what seems to me the practical bearing of Mr. Steiner's book. Race prejudice is a mechanism of the group mind which acts reflexly and automatically in response to its proper stimulus. That stimulus seems to be, in the cases where I have met it, unrestricted competition of peoples with different standards of living. Racial animosities and the so-called racial misunderstandings that grow out of them cannot be explained or argued away. They can only be affected when there has been a readjustment of relations and an organization of interests in such a way as to bring about a larger measure of co-operation and a lesser amount of friction and conflict. This demands something more than a diplomacy of kind words. It demands a national policy based on an unflinching examination of the facts. 2. Conflict and Race Consciousness[216] The Civil War weakened but did not fully destroy the _modus vivendi_ which slavery had established between the slave and his master. With emancipation the authority which had formerly been exercised by the master was transferred to the state, and Washington, D.C., began to assume in the mind of the freedman the position that formerly had been occupied by the "big house" on the plantation. The masses of the Negro people still maintained their habit of dependence, however, and after the first confusion of the change had passed, life went on, for most of them, much as it had before the war. As one old farmer explained, the only difference he could see was that in slavery he "was working for old Marster and now he was working for himself." There was one difference between slavery and freedom, nevertheless, which was very real to the freedman. And this was the liberty to move. To move from one plantation to another in case he was discontented was one of the ways in which a freedman was able to realize his freedom and to make sure that he possessed it. This liberty to move meant a good deal more to the plantation Negro than one not acquainted with the situation in the South is likely to understand. If there had been an abundance of labor in the South; if the situation had been such that the Negro laborer was seeking the opportunity to work, or such that the Negro tenant farmers were competing for the opportunity to get a place on the land, as is so frequently the case in Europe, the situation would have been fundamentally different from what it actually was. But the South was, and is today, what Nieboer called a country of "open," in contradistinction to a country of "closed" resources. In other words, there is more land in the South than there is labor to till it. Land owners are driven to competing for laborers and tenants to work their plantations. Owing to his ignorance of business matters and to a long-established habit of submission, the Negro after emancipation was placed at a great disadvantage in his dealings with the white man. His right to move from one plantation to another became, therefore, the Negro tenant's method of enforcing consideration from the planter. He might not dispute the planter's accounts, because he was not capable of doing so, and it was unprofitable to attempt it, but if he felt aggrieved he could move. This was the significance of the exodus in some of the southern states which took place about 1879, when 40,000 people left the plantations in the Black Belts of Louisiana and Mississippi and went to Kansas. The masses of the colored people were dissatisfied with the treatment they were receiving from the planters and made up their minds to move to "a free country," as they described it. At the same time it was the attempt of the planter to bind the Negro tenant who was in debt to him to his place on the plantation that gave rise to the system of peonage that still exists in a mitigated form in the South today. When the Negro moved off the plantation upon which he was reared he severed the personal relations which bound him to his master's people. It was just at this point that the two races began to lose touch with each other. From this time on the relations of the black man and white, which in slavery had been direct and personal, became every year, as the old associations were broken, more and more indirect and secondary. There lingers still the disposition on the part of the white man to treat every Negro familiarly, and the disposition on the part of every Negro to treat every white man respectfully. But these are habits which are gradually disappearing. The breaking down of the instincts and habits of servitude and the acquisition by the masses of the Negro people of the instincts and habits of freedom have proceeded slowly but steadily. The reason the change seems to have gone on more rapidly in some cases than others is explained by the fact that at the time of emancipation 10 per cent of the Negroes in the United States were already free, and others, those who had worked in trades, many of whom had hired their own time from their masters, had become more or less adapted to the competitive conditions of free society. One of the effects of the mobilization of the Negro has been to bring him into closer and more intimate contact with his own people. Common interests have drawn the blacks together, and caste sentiment has kept the black and white apart. The segregation of the races, which began as a spontaneous movement on the part of both, has been fostered by the policy of the dominant race. The agitation of the Reconstruction period made the division between the races in politics absolute. Segregation and separation in other matters have gone on steadily ever since. The Negro at the present time has separate churches, schools, libraries, hospitals, Y.M.C.A. associations, and even separate towns. There are, perhaps, a half-dozen communities in the United States, every inhabitant of which is a Negro. Most of these so-called Negro towns are suburban villages; two of them, at any rate, are the centers of a considerable Negro farming population. In general it may be said that where the Negro schools, churches, and Y.M.C.A. associations are not separate they do not exist. It is hard to estimate the ultimate effect of this isolation of the black man. One of the most important effects has been to establish a common interest among all the different colors and classes of the race. This sense of solidarity has grown up gradually with the organization of the Negro people. It is stronger in the South, where segregation is more complete, than it is in the North where, twenty years ago, it would have been safe to say it did not exist. Gradually, imperceptibly, within the larger world of the white man, a smaller world, the world of the black man, is silently taking form and shape. Every advance in education and intelligence puts the Negro in possession of the technique of communication and organization of the white man, and so contributes to the extension and consolidation of the Negro world within the white. The motive for this increasing solidarity is furnished by the increasing pressure, or perhaps I should say by the increasing sensibility of Negroes to the pressure and the prejudice without. The sentiment of racial loyalty, which is a comparatively recent manifestation of the growing self-consciousness of the race, must be regarded as a response and "accommodation" to changing internal and external relations of the race. The sentiment which Negroes are beginning to call "race pride" does not exist to the same extent in the North as in the South, but an increasing disposition to enforce racial distinctions in the North, as in the South, is bringing it into existence. One or two incidents in this connection are significant. A few years ago a man who is the head of the largest Negro publishing business in this country sent to Germany and had a number of Negro dolls manufactured according to specifications of his own. At the time this company was started, Negro children were in the habit of playing with white dolls. There were already Negro dolls on the market, but they were for white children and represented the white man's conception of the Negro and not the Negro's ideal of himself. The new Negro doll was a mulatto with regular features slightly modified in favor of the conventional Negro type. It was a neat, prim, well-dressed, well-behaved, self-respecting doll. Later on, as I understand, there were other dolls, equally tidy and respectable in appearance, but in darker shades, with Negro features a little more pronounced. The man who designed these dolls was perfectly clear in regard to the significance of the substitution that he was making. He said that he thought it was a good thing to let Negro girls become accustomed to dolls of their own color. He thought it important, as long as the races were to be segregated, that the dolls, which, like other forms of art, are patterns and represent ideals, should be segregated also. This substitution of the Negro model for the white is a very interesting and a very significant fact. It means that the Negro has begun to fashion his own ideals and in his own image rather than in that of the white man. It is also interesting to know that the Negro doll company has been a success and that these dolls are now widely sold in every part of the United States. Nothing exhibits more clearly the extent to which the Negro had become assimilated in slavery or the extent to which he has broken with the past in recent years than this episode of the Negro doll. The incident is typical. It is an indication of the nature of tendencies and of forces that are stirring in the background of the Negro's mind, although they have not succeeded in forcing themselves, except in special instances, into clear consciousness. In this same category must be reckoned the poetry of Paul Lawrence Dunbar, in whom, as William Dean Howells has said, the Negro "attained civilization." Before Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Negro literature had been either apologetic or self-assertive, but Dunbar "studied the Negro objectively." He represented him as he found him, not only without apology, but with an affectionate understanding and sympathy which one can have only for what is one's own. In Dunbar, Negro literature attained an ethnocentric point of view. Through the medium of his verses the ordinary shapes and forms of the Negro's life have taken on the color of his affections and sentiments, and we see the black man, not as he looks, but as he feels and is. It is a significant fact that a certain number of educated--or rather the so-called educated--Negroes were not at first disposed to accept at their full value either Dunbar's dialect verse or the familiar pictures of Negro life which are the symbols in which his poetry usually found expression. The explanation sometimes offered for the dialect poems was that "they were made to please white folk." The assumption seems to have been that if they had been written for Negroes it would have been impossible in his poetry to distinguish black people from white. This was a sentiment which was never shared by the masses of the people, who, upon the occasions when Dunbar recited to them, were fairly bowled over with amusement and delight because of the authenticity of the portraits he offered them. At the present time Dunbar is so far accepted as to have hundreds of imitators. Literature and art have played a similar and perhaps more important rôle in the racial struggles of Europe than of America. One reason seems to be that racial conflicts, as they occur in secondary groups, are primarily sentimental and secondarily economic. Literature and art, when they are employed to give expression to racial sentiment and form to racial ideals, serve, along with other agencies, to mobilize the group and put the masses _en rapport_ with their leaders and with each other. In such cases art and literature are like silent drummers which summon into action the latent instincts and energies of the race. These struggles, I might add, in which a submerged people seek to rise and make for themselves a place in a world occupied by superior and privileged races, are not less vital or less important because they are bloodless. They serve to stimulate ambitions and inspire ideals which years, perhaps, of subjection and subordination have suppressed. In fact, it seems as if it were through conflicts of this kind, rather than through war, that the minor peoples were destined to gain the moral concentration and discipline that fit them to share, on anything like equal terms, in the conscious life of the civilized world. Until the beginning of the last century the European peasant, like the Negro slave, bound as he was to the soil, lived in the little world of direct and personal relations, under what we may call a domestic régime. It was military necessity that first turned the attention of statesmen like Frederick the Great of Prussia to the welfare of the peasant. It was the overthrow of Prussia by Napoleon in 1807 that brought about his final emancipation in that country. In recent years it has been the international struggle for economic efficiency which has contributed most to mobilize the peasant and laboring classes in Europe. As the peasant slowly emerged from serfdom he found himself a member of a depressed class, without education, political privileges, or capital. It was the struggle of this class for wider opportunity and better conditions of life that made most of the history of the previous century. Among the peoples in the racial borderland the effect of this struggle has been, on the whole, to substitute for a horizontal organization of society--in which the upper strata, that is to say, the wealthy or privileged class, was mainly of one race and the poorer and subject class was mainly of another--a vertical organization in which all classes of each racial group were united under the title of their respective nationalities. Thus organized, the nationalities represent, on the one hand, intractable minorities engaged in a ruthless partisan struggle for political privilege or economic advantage and, on the other, they represent cultural groups, each struggling to maintain a sentiment of loyalty to the distinctive traditions, language, and institutions of the race they represent. This sketch of the racial situation in Europe is, of course, the barest abstraction and should not be accepted realistically. It is intended merely as an indication of similarities, in the broader outlines, of the motives that have produced nationalities in Europe and are making the Negro in America, as Booker Washington says, "a nation within a nation." It may be said that there is one profound difference between the Negro and the European nationalities, namely, that the Negro has had his separateness and consequent race consciousness thrust upon him because of his exclusion and forcible isolation from white society. The Slavic nationalities, on the contrary, have segregated themselves in order to escape assimilation and escape racial extinction in the larger cosmopolitan states. The difference is, however, not so great as it seems. With the exception of the Poles, nationalistic sentiment may be said hardly to have existed fifty years ago. Forty years ago when German was the language of the educated classes, educated Bohemians were a little ashamed to speak their own language in public. Now nationalist sentiment is so strong that, where the Czech nationality has gained control, it has sought to wipe out every vestige of the German language. It has changed the names of streets, buildings, and public places. In the city of Prag, for example, all that formerly held German associations now fairly reeks with the sentiment of Bohemian nationality. On the other hand, the masses of the Polish people cherished very little nationalist sentiment until after the Franco-Prussian War. The fact is that nationalist sentiment among the Slavs, like racial sentiment among the Negroes, has sprung up as the result of a struggle against privilege and discrimination based upon racial distinctions. The movement is not so far advanced among Negroes; sentiment is not so intense, and for several reasons probably never will be. From what has been said it seems fair to draw one conclusion, namely: under conditions of secondary contact, that is to say, conditions of individual liberty and individual competition, characteristic of modern civilization, depressed racial groups tend to assume the form of nationalities. A nationality, in this narrower sense, may be defined as the racial group which has attained self-consciousness, no matter whether it has at the same time gained political independence or not. In societies organized along horizontal lines the disposition of individuals in the lower strata is to seek their models in the strata above them. Loyalty attaches to individuals, particularly to the upper classes, who furnish, in their persons and in their lives, the models for the masses of the people below them. Long after the nobility has lost every other social function connected with its vocation the ideals of the nobility have survived in our conception of the gentleman, genteel manners and bearing--gentility. The sentiment of the Negro slave was, in a certain sense, not merely loyalty to his master but to the white race. Negroes of the older generations speak very frequently, with a sense of proprietorship, of "our white folks." This sentiment was not always confined to the ignorant masses. An educated colored man once explained to me "that we colored people always want our white folks to be superior." He was shocked when I showed no particular enthusiasm for that form of sentiment. The fundamental significance of the nationalist movement must be sought in the effort of subject races, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, to substitute, for those supplied them by aliens, models based on their own racial individuality and embodying sentiments and ideals which spring naturally out of their own lives. After a race has achieved in this way its moral independence, assimilation, in the sense of copying, will still continue. Nations and races borrow from those whom they fear as well as from those whom they admire. Materials taken over in this way, however, are inevitably stamped with the individuality of the nationalities that appropriate them. These materials will contribute to the dignity, to the prestige, and to the solidarity of the nationality which borrows them, but they will no longer inspire loyalty to the race from which they are borrowed. A race which has attained the character of a nationality may still retain its loyalty to the state of which it is a part, but only in so far as that state incorporates, as an integral part of its organization, the practical interests, the aspirations and ideals of that nationality. The aim of the contending nationalities in Austria-Hungary at the present time seems to be a federation, like that of Switzerland, based upon the autonomy of the different races composing the empire. In the South, similarly, the races seem to be tending in the direction of a bi-racial organization of society, in which the Negro is gradually gaining a limited autonomy. What the ultimate outcome of this movement may be it is not safe to predict. 3. Conflict and Accommodation[217] In the first place, what is race friction? To answer this elementary question it is necessary to define the abstract mental quality upon which race friction finally rests. This is racial "antipathy," popularly spoken of as "race prejudice." Whereas prejudice means mere predilection, either for or against, antipathy means "natural contrariety," "incompatibility," or "repugnance of qualities." To quote the Century Dictionary, antipathy "expresses most of constitutional feeling and least of volition"; "it is a dislike that seems constitutional toward persons, things, conduct, etc.; hence it involves a dislike for which sometimes no good reason can be given." I would define racial antipathy, then, as a natural contrariety, repugnancy of qualities, or incompatibility between individuals or groups which are sufficiently differentiated to constitute what, for want of a more exact term, we call races. What is most important is that it involves an instinctive feeling of dislike, distaste, or repugnance, for which sometimes no good reason can be given. Friction is defined primarily as a "lack of harmony," or a "mutual irritation." In the case of races it is accentuated by antipathy. We do not have to depend on race riots or other acts of violence as a measure of the growth of race friction. Its existence may be manifested by a look or a gesture as well as by a word or an act. A verbal cause of much useless and unnecessary controversy is found in the use of the word "race." When we speak of "race problems" or "racial antipathies," what do we mean by "race"? Clearly nothing scientifically definite, since ethnologists themselves are not agreed upon any classification of the human family along racial lines. Nor would this so-called race prejudice have the slightest regard for such classification, if one were agreed upon. It is something which is not bounded by the confines of a philological or ethnological definition. The British scientist may tell the British soldier in India that the native is in reality his brother, and that it is wholly absurd and illogical and unscientific for such a thing as "race prejudice" to exist between them. Tommy Atkins simply replies with a shrug that to him and his messmates the native is a "nigger"; and in so far as their attitude is concerned, that is the end of the matter. The same suggestion, regardless of the scientific accuracy of the parallel, if made to the American soldier in the Philippines, meets with the same reply. We have wasted an infinite amount of time in interminable controversies over the relative superiority and inferiority of different races. Such discussions have a certain value when conducted by scientific men in a purely scientific spirit. But for the purpose of explaining or establishing any fixed principle of race relations they are little better than worthless. The Japanese is doubtless quite well satisfied of the superiority of his people over the mushroom growths of western civilization, and finds no difficulty in borrowing from the latter whatever is worth reproducing, and improving on it in adapting it to his own racial needs. The Chinese do not waste their time in idle chatter over the relative status of their race as compared with the white barbarians who have intruded themselves upon them with their grotesque customs, their heathenish ideas, and their childishly new religion. The Hindu regards with veiled contempt the racial pretensions of his conqueror, and, while biding the time when the darker races of the earth shall once more come into their own, does not bother himself with such an idle question as whether his temporary overlord is his racial equal. Only the white man writes volumes to establish on paper the fact of a superiority which is either self-evident and not in need of demonstration, on the one hand, or is not a fact and is not demonstrable, on the other. The really important matter is one about which there need be little dispute--the fact of racial differences. It is the practical question of differences--the fundamental differences of physical appearance, of mental habit and thought, of social customs and religious beliefs, of the thousand and one things keenly and clearly appreciable, yet sometimes elusive and undefinable--these are the things which at once create and find expression in what we call race problems and race prejudices, for want of better terms. In just so far as these differences are fixed and permanently associated characteristics of two groups of people will the antipathies and problems between the two be permanent. Probably the closest approach we shall ever make to a satisfactory classification of races as a basis of antipathy will be that of grouping men according to color, along certain broad lines, the color being accompanied by various and often widely different, but always fairly persistent, differentiating physical and mental characteristics. This would give us substantially the white--not Caucasian, the yellow--not Chinese or Japanese, and the dark--not Negro, races. The antipathies between these general groups and between certain of their subdivisions will be found to be essentially fundamental, but they will also be found to present almost endless differences of degrees of actual and potential acuteness. Here elementary psychology also plays its part. One of the subdivisions of the Negro race is composed of persons of mixed blood. In many instances these are more white than black, yet the association of ideas has through several generations identified them with the Negro--and in this country friction between this class and white people is on some lines even greater than between whites and blacks. Race conflicts are merely the more pronounced concrete expressions of such friction. They are the visible phenomena of the abstract quality of racial antipathy--the tangible evidence of the existence of racial problems. The form of such expressions of antipathy varies with the nature of the racial contact in each instance. Their different and widely varying aspects are the confusing and often contradictory phenomena of race relations. They are dependent upon diverse conditions, and are no more susceptible of rigid and permanent classification than are the whims and moods of human nature. It is more than a truism to say that a condition precedent to race friction or race conflict is contact between sufficient numbers of two diverse racial groups. There is a definite and positive difference between contact between individuals and contact between masses. The association between two isolated individual members of two races may be wholly different from contact between masses of the same race groups. The factor of numbers embraces, indeed, the very crux of the problems arising from contact between different races. A primary cause of race friction is the vague, rather intangible, but wholly real, feeling of "pressure" which comes to the white man almost instinctively in the presence of a mass of people of a different race. In a certain important sense all racial problems are distinctly problems of racial distribution. Certainly the definite action of the controlling race, particularly as expressed in laws, is determined by the factor of the numerical difference between its population and that of the inferior group. This fact stands out prominently in the history of our colonial legislation for the control of Negro slaves. These laws increased in severity up to a certain point as the slave population increased in numbers. The same condition is disclosed in the history of the ante-bellum legislation of the southern, eastern, New England, and middle western states for the control of the free Negro population. So today no state in the Union would have separate car laws where the Negro constituted only 10 or 15 per cent of its total population. No state would burden itself with the maintenance of two separate school systems with a negro element of less than 10 per cent. Means of local separation might be found, but there would be no expression of law on the subject. Just as a heavy increase of Negro population makes for an increase of friction, direct legislation, the protection of drastic social customs, and a general feeling of unrest or uneasiness on the part of the white population, so a decrease of such population, or a relatively small increase as compared with the whites, makes for less friction, greater racial tolerance, and a lessening of the feeling of necessity for severely discriminating laws or customs. And this quite aside from the fact of a difference of increase or decrease of actual points of contact, varying with differences of numbers. The statement will scarcely be questioned that the general attitude of the white race, as a whole, toward the Negro would become much less uncompromising if we were to discover that through two census periods the race had shown a positive decrease in numbers. Racial antipathy would not decrease, but the conditions which provoke its outward expression would undergo a change for the better. There is a direct relation between the mollified attitude of the people of the Pacific coast toward the Chinese population and the fact that the Chinese population decreased between 1890 and 1900. There would in time be a difference of feeling toward the Japanese now there if the immigration of more were prohibited by treaty stipulation. There is the same immediate relation between the tolerant attitude of whites toward the natives in the Hawaiian Islands and the feeling that the native is a decadent and dying race. Aside from the influence of the Indian's warlike qualities and of his refusal to submit to slavery, the attitude and disposition of the white race toward him have been influenced by considerations similar to those which today operate in Hawaii. And the same influence has been a factor in determining the attitude of the English toward the slowly dying Maoris of New Zealand. At no time in the history of the English-speaking people and at no place of which we have any record where large numbers of them have been brought into contact with an approximately equal number of Negroes have the former granted to the latter absolute equality, either political, social, or economic. With the exception of five New England states, with a total Negro population of only 16,084 in 1860, every state in the Union discriminated against the Negro politically before the Civil War. The white people continued to do so--North as well as South--as long as they retained control of the suffrage regulations of their states. The determination to do so renders one whole section of the country practically a political unit to this day. In South Africa we see the same determination of the white man to rule, regardless of the numerical superiority of the black. The same determination made Jamaica surrender the right of self-government and renders her satisfied with a hybrid political arrangement today. The presence of practically 100,000 Negroes in the District of Columbia makes 200,000 white people content to live under an anomaly in a self-governing country. The proposition is too elementary for discussion that the white man when confronted with a sufficient number of Negroes to create in his mind a sense of political unrest or danger either alters his form of government in order to be rid of the incubus or destroys the political strength of the Negro by force, by evasion, or by direct action. In the main, the millions in the South live at peace with their white neighbors. The masses, just one generation out of slavery and thousands of them still largely controlled by its influences, accept the superiority of the white race as a race, whatever may be their private opinion of some of its members. And, furthermore, they accept this relation of superior and inferior as a mere matter of course--as part of their lives--as something neither to be questioned, wondered at, or worried over. Despite apparent impressions to the contrary, the average southern white man gives no more thought to the matter than does the Negro. As I tried to make clear at the outset, the status of superior and inferior is simply an inherited part of his instinctive mental equipment--a concept which he does not have to reason out. The respective attitudes are complementary, and under the mutual acceptance and understanding there still exist unnumbered thousands of instances of kindly and affectionate relations--relations of which the outside world knows nothing and understands nothing. In the mass, the southern Negro has not bothered himself about the ballot for more than twenty years, not since his so-called political leaders let him alone; he is not disturbed over the matter of separate schools and cars, and he neither knows nor cares anything about "social equality." But what of the other class? The "masses" is at best an unsatisfactory and indefinite term. It is very far from embracing even the southern Negro, and we need not forget that seven years ago there were 900,000 members of the race living outside of the South. What of the class, mainly urban and large in number, who have lost the typical habit and attitude of the Negro of the mass, and who, more and more, are becoming restless and chafing under existing conditions? There is an intimate and very natural relation between the social and intellectual advance of the so-called Negro and the matter of friction along social lines. It is, in fact, only as we touch the higher groups that we can appreciate the potential results of contact upon a different plane from that common to the masses in the South. There is a large and steadily increasing group of men, more or less related to the Negro by blood and wholly identified with him by American social usage, who refuse to accept quietly the white man's attitude toward the race. I appreciate the mistake of laying too great stress upon the utterances of any one man or group of men, but the mistakes in this case lie the other way. The American white man knows little or nothing about the thought and opinion of the colored men and women who today largely mold and direct Negro public opinion in this country. Even the white man who considers himself a student of "the race question" rarely exhibits anything more than profound ignorance of the Negro's side of the problem. He does not know what the other man is thinking and saying on the subject. This composite type which we poetically call "black," but which in reality is every shade from black to white, is slowly developing a consciousness of its own racial solidarity. It is finding its own distinctive voice, and through its own books and papers and magazines, and through its own social organizations, is at once giving utterance to its discontent and making known its demands. And with this dawning consciousness of race there is likewise coming an appreciation of the limitations and restrictions which hem in its unfolding and development. One of the best indices to the possibilities of increased racial friction is the Negro's own recognition of the universality of the white man's racial antipathy toward him. This is the one clear note above the storm of protest against the things that are, that in his highest aspirations everywhere the white man's "prejudice" blocks the colored man's path. And the white man may with possible profit pause long enough to ask the deeper significance of the Negro's finding of himself. May it not be only part of a general awakening of the darker races of the earth? Captain H. A. Wilson, of the English army, says that through all Africa there has penetrated in some way a vague confused report that far off somewhere, in the unknown, outside world, a great war has been fought between a white and a yellow race, and won by the yellow man. And even before the Japanese-Russian conflict, "Ethiopianism" and the cry of "Africa for the Africans" had begun to disturb the English in South Africa. It is said time and again that the dissatisfaction and unrest in India are accentuated by the results of this same war. There can be no doubt in the mind of any man who carefully reads American Negro journals that their rejoicing over the Japanese victory sounded a very different note from that of the white American. It was far from being a mere expression of sympathy with a people fighting for national existence against a power which had made itself odious to the civilized world by its treatment of its subjects. It was, instead, a quite clear cry of exultation over the defeat of a white race by a dark one. The white man is no wiser than the ostrich if he refuses to see the truth that in the possibilities of race friction the Negro's increasing consciousness of race is to play a part scarcely less important than the white man's racial antipathies, prejudices, or whatever we may elect to call them. III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS 1. The Psychology and Sociology of Conflict, Conscious Competition, and Rivalry Consciousness has been described as an effect of conflict--conflict of motor tendencies in the individual, conflict of sentiments, attitudes, and cultures in the group. The individual, activated in a given situation by opposing tendencies, is compelled to redefine his attitude. Consciousness is an incident of this readjustment. Frequently adjustment involves a suppression of one tendency in the interest of another, of one wish in favor of another. Where these suppressions are permanent, they frequently result in disorders of conduct and disorganization of the personality. The suppressed wish, when suppression results in disturbances of the conscious life, has been called by psychoanalysts a _complex_. Freud and his colleagues have isolated and described certain of these complexes. Most familiar of these are the Oedipus complex, which is explained as an effect of the unconscious conflict of father and son for the love of the mother; and the Electra complex, which similarly has as its source the unconscious struggle of mother and daughter for the affection of the father. Adler, in his description of the "inferiority" complex, explains it as an effect of the conflict growing out of the contrast between the ideal and the actual status of the person. Other mental conflicts described by the psychoanalysts are referred to the "adopted child" complex, the Narcissus complex, the sex shock, etc. These conflicts which disturb the mental life of the person are all the reflections of social relations and are to be explained in terms of status and the rôle of the individual in the group. Emulation and rivalry represent conflict at higher social levels, where competition has been translated into forms that inure to the survival and success of the group. Research in this field, fragmentary as it is, confirms the current impression of the stimulation of effort in the person through conscious competition with his fellows. Adler's theory of "psychic compensation" is based on the observation that handicapped individuals frequently excel in the very fields in which they are apparently least qualified to compete. Demosthenes, for example, became a great orator in spite of the fact that he stuttered. Ordahl presents the only comprehensive survey of the literature in this field. Simmel has made the outstanding contribution to the sociological conception of conflict. Just as the attitudes of the individual person represent an organization of antagonistic elements, society, as he interprets it, is a unity of which the elements are conflicting tendencies. Society, he insists, would be quite other than it is, were it not for the aversions, antagonisms, differences, as well as the sympathies, affections, and similarities between individuals and groups of individuals. The unity of society includes these opposing forces, and, as a matter of fact, society is organized upon the basis of conflict. Conflict is an organizing principle in society. Just as the individual, under the influences of contact and conflict with other individuals, acquires a status and develops a personality, so groups of individuals, in conflict with other groups, achieve unity, organization, group consciousness, and assume the forms characteristic of conflict groups--that is to say, they become parties, sects, and nationalities, etc. 2. Types of Conflict Simmel, in his study of conflict, distinguished four types--namely, war, feud and faction, litigation, and discussion, i.e., the impersonal struggles of parties and causes. This classification, while discriminating, is certainly not complete. There are, for example, the varied forms of sport, in which conflict assumes the form of rivalry. These are nevertheless organized on a conflict pattern. Particularly interesting in this connection are games of chance, gambling and gambling devices which appeal to human traits so fundamental that no people is without example of them in its folkways. Gambling is, according to Groos, "a fighting play," and the universal human interest in this sport is due to the fact that "no other form of play displays in so many-sided a fashion the combativeness of human nature."[218] The history of the duel, either in the form of the judicial combat, the wager of battle of the Middle Ages, or as a form of private vengeance, offers interesting material for psychological or sociological investigation. The transition from private vengeance to public prosecution, of which the passing of the duel is an example, has not been completed. In fact, new forms are in some cases gradually gaining social sanction. We still have our "unwritten laws" for certain offenses. It is proverbially difficult to secure the conviction, in certain parts of the country, Chicago, for example, of a woman who kills her husband or her lover. The practice of lynching Negroes in the southern states, for offenses against women, and for any other form of conduct that is construed as a challenge to the dominant race, is an illustration from a somewhat different field, not merely of the persistence, but the gradual development of the so-called unwritten law. The circumstances under which these and all other unwritten laws arise, in which custom controls in contravention of the formal written code, have not been investigated from the point of view of sociology and in their human-nature aspects. Several studies of games and gambling, in some respects the most unique objectivations of human interest, have been made from the point of view of the fundamental human traits involved, notably Thomas' article on _The Gaming Instinct_, Groos's chapter on "Fighting Play," in his _Play of Man_, and G. T. W. Patrick's _Psychology of Relaxation_, in which the theory of catharsis, familiar since Aristotle, is employed to explain play, laughter, profanity, the drink habit, and war. Original materials exist in abundance for the study of feud, litigation, and war. No attempt seems to have been made to study feud and litigation comparatively, as Westermarck has studied marriage institutions. Something has indeed been done in this direction with the subject of war, notably by Letourneau in France and by Frobenius in Germany. Sumner's notable essay on _War_ is likewise an important contribution to the subject. The literature upon war, however, is so voluminous and so important that it will be discussed later, separately, and in greater detail. Quite as interesting and important as that of war is the natural history of discussion, including under that term political and religious controversy and social agitation, already referred to as impersonal or secondary conflict. The history of discussion, however, is the history of freedom--freedom, at any rate, of thought and of speech. It is only when peace and freedom have been established that discussion is practicable or possible. A number of histories have been written in recent years describing the rise of rationalism, as it is called, and the rôle of discussion and agitation in social life. Draper's _History of the Intellectual Development of Europe_ and Lecky's _History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe_ are among the earlier works in this field. Robertson's _History of Free Thought_ is mainly a survey of religious skepticism but contains important and suggestive references to the natural processes by which abstract thought has arisen out of the cultural contacts and conflicts among peoples, which conquest and commerce have brought into the same universe of discourse. What we seem to have in these works are materials for the study of the communal processes through which thought is formulated. Once formulated it becomes a permanent factor in the life of the group. The rôle of discussion in the communal process will be considered later in connection with the newspaper, the press agent, propaganda, and the various factors and mechanisms determining the formation of public opinion. 3. The Literature of War The emphasis upon the struggle for existence which followed the publication of Darwin's _The Origin of Species_, in 1859, seemed to many thinkers to give a biological basis for the necessity and the inevitability of war. No distinction was made by writers of this school of thought between competition and conflict. Both were supposed to be based on instinct. Nicolai's _The Biology of War_ is an essay with the avowed design of refuting the biological justification of war. Psychological studies of war have explained war either as an expression of instinct or as a reversion to a primordial animal-human type of behavior. Patrick, who is representative of this latter school, interprets war as a form of relaxation. G. W. Crile has offered a mechanistic interpretation of war and peace based on studies of the chemical changes which men undergo in warfare. Crile comes to the conclusion, however, that war is an action pattern, fixed in the social heredity of the national group, and not a type of behavior determined biologically. The human nature of war and the motives which impel the person to the great adventure and the supreme risk of war have not been subjected to sociological study. A mass of material, however, consisting of personal documents of all types, letters, common-sense observation, and diaries is now available for such study. Much of the literature of war has been concentrated on this problem of the abolition of war. There are the idealists and the conscientious objectors who look to good will, humanitarian sentiment, and pacificism to end war by the transformation of attitudes of men and the policies of nations. On the other hand, there are the hard-headed and practical thinkers and statesmen who believe, with Hobbes, that war will not end until there is established a power strong enough to overawe a recalcitrant state. Finally, there is a third group of social thinkers who emphasize the significance of the formation of a world public opinion. This "international mind" they regard of far greater significance for the future of humanity than the problem of war or peace, of national rivalries, or of future race conflicts. 4. Race Conflict A European school of sociologists emphasizes conflict as the fundamental social process. Gumplowicz, in his book _Die Rassenkampf_, formulated a theory of social contacts and conflicts upon the conception of original ethnic groups in terms of whose interaction the history of humanity might be written. Novicow and Ratzenhofer maintain similar, though not so extreme, theories of social origins and historical developments. With the tremendous extension of communication and growth of commerce, the world is today a great community in a sense that could not have been understood a century ago. But the world, if it is now one community, is not yet one society. Commerce has created an economic interdependence, but contact and communication have not resulted in either a political or a cultural solidarity. Indeed, the first evidences of the effects of social contacts appear to be disruptive rather than unifying. In every part of the world in which the white and colored races have come into intimate contact, race problems have presented the most intractable of all social problems. Interest in this problem manifests itself in the enormous literature on the subject. Most of all that has been written, however, is superficial. Much is merely sentimental, interesting for the attitudes it exhibits, but otherwise adding nothing to our knowledge of the facts. The best account of the American situation is undoubtedly Ray Stannard Baker's _Following the Color Line_. The South African situation is interestingly and objectively described by Maurice Evans in _Black and White in South East Africa_. Steiner's book, _The Japanese Invasion_, is, perhaps, the best account of the Japanese-American situation. The race problem merges into the problem of the nationalities and the so-called subject races. The struggles of the minor nationalities for self-determination is a phase of racial conflict; a phase, however, in which language rather than color is the basis of division and conflict. 5. Conflict Groups In chapter i conflict groups were divided into gangs, labor organizations, sects, parties, and nationalities.[219] Common to these groups is an organization and orientation with reference to conflict with other groups of the same kind or with a more or less hostile social environment, as in the case of religious sects. The spontaneous organizations of boys and youths called gangs attracted public attention in American communities because of the relation of these gangs to juvenile delinquency and adolescent crime. An interesting but superficial literature upon the gang has developed in recent years, represented typically by J. Adams Puffer _The Boy and his Gang_. The brief but picturesque descriptions of individual gangs seem to indicate that the play group tends to pass over into the gang when it comes into conflict with other groups of like type or with the community. The fully developed gang appears to possess a restricted membership, a natural leader, a name--usually that of a leader or a locality--a body of tradition, custom and a ritual, a rendezvous, a territorial area which it holds as a sort of possession and defends against invasion by other groups. Attention was early called, as by Mr. Brewster Adams in an article _The Street Gang as a Factor in Politics_, to the facility with which the gang graduates into a local political organization, representing thus the sources of political power of the typical American city. Although the conflict of economic groups is not a new nor even a modern phenomenon, no such permanent conflict groups as those represented by capital and labor existed until recent times. Veblen has made an acute observation upon this point. The American Federation of Labor, he states, "is not organized for production but for bargaining." It is, in effect, an organization for the strategic defeat of employers and rival organizations, by recourse to enforced unemployment and obstruction; not for the production of goods and services.[220] Research in the labor problem by the Webbs in England and by Commons, Hoxie, and others in this country has been primarily concerned with the history and with the structure and functions of trade unions. At present there is a tendency to investigate the human-nature aspects of the causes of the industrial conflict. The current phrases "instincts in industry," "the human factor in economics," "the psychology of the labor movement," "industry, emotion, and unrest" indicate the change in attitude. The essential struggle is seen to lie not in the conflict of classes, intense and ruthless as it is, but more and more in the fundamental struggle between a mechanical and impersonal system, on the one hand, and the person with his wishes unsatisfied and insatiable on the other. All attempts to put the relations of capital and labor upon a moral basis have failed hitherto. The latest and most promising experiment in this direction is the so-called labor courts established by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and their employees. The literature upon sects and parties has been written for the most part with the purpose of justifying, to a critical and often hostile public, the sectarian and partisan aims and acts of their several organizations. In a few works such as Sighele's _Psychologie des sectes_ and Michels' _Political Parties_ an attempt has been made at objective description and analysis of the mechanisms of the behavior of the sect and of the party. The natural history of the state from the tribe to the modern nation has been that of a political society based on conflict. Franz Oppenheimer maintains the thesis in his book _The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically_, that conquest has been the historical basis of the state. The state is, in other words, an organization of groups that have been in conflict, i.e., classes and castes; or of groups that are in conflict, i.e., political parties. A nationality, as distinct from a nation, as for instance the Irish nationality, is a language and cultural group which has become group conscious through its struggle for status in the larger imperial or international group. Nationalism is, in other words, a phenomenon of internationalism. The literature upon this subject is enormous. The most interesting recent works on the general topic are Dominian's _The Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe_, Pillsbury's _The Psychology of Nationality and Internationalism_, and Oakesmith's _Race and Nationality_. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY I. PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY OF CONFLICT A. _Conflict and Social Process_ (1) Simmel, Georg. "The Sociology of Conflict." Translated from the German by Albion W. Small. _American Journal of Sociology_, IX (1903-4), 490-525; 672-89; 798-811. (2) Gumplowicz, Ludwig. _Der Rassenkampf._ Sociologische Untersuchungen. Innsbruck, 1883. (3) Novicow, J. _Les Luttes entre sociétés humaines et leurs phases successives._ Paris, 1893. (4) Ratzenhofer, Gustav. _Wesen und Zweck der Politik._ Als Theil der Sociologie und Grundlage der Staatswissenschaften. 3 vols. Leipzig, 1893. (5) ----. _Die sociologische Erkenntnis._ Positive Philosophie des Socialen Lebens. Leipzig, 1898. (6) Sorel, Georges. _Reflections on Violence._ New York, 1914. B. _Conflict and Mental Conflict_ (1) Healy, William. _Mental Conflicts and Misconduct._ Boston, 1917. (2) Prince, Morton. _The Unconscious._ The fundamentals of personality, normal and abnormal. Chap. xv, "Instincts, Sentiments, and Conflicts," pp. 446-87; chap, xvi, "General Phenomena Resulting from Emotional Conflicts," pp. 488-528. New York, 1914. (3) Adler, Alfred. _The Neurotic Constitution._ Outlines of a comparative individualistic psychology and psychotherapy. Translated by Bernard Glueck and John E. Lind. New York, 1917. (4) Adler, Alfred. _A Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical Compensation._ A contribution to clinical medicine. Translated by S. E. Jelliffe. "Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series," No. 24. New York, 1917. (5) Lay, Wilfrid. _Man's Unconscious Conflict._ A popular exposition of psychoanalysis. New York, 1917. (6) Blanchard, Phyllis. _The Adolescent Girl._ A study from the psychoanalytic viewpoint. Chap. iii, "The Adolescent Conflict," pp. 87-115. New York, 1920. (7) Weeks, Arland D. _Social Antagonisms._ Chicago, 1918. C. _Rivalry_ (1) Baldwin, J. Mark, editor. _Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology._ Article on "Rivalry." Vol. II, pp. 476-78. (2) Vincent, George E. "The Rivalry of Social Groups," _American Journal of Sociology_, XVI (1910-11), 469-84. (3) Ordahl, George. "Rivalry: Its Genetic Development and Pedagogy," _The Pedagogical Seminary_, XV (1908), 492-549. [Bibliography.] (4) Ely, Richard T. _Studies in the Evolution of Industrial Society._ Chap. ii, "Rivalry and Success in Economic Life," pp. 152-63. New York, 1903. (5) Cooley, Charles H. _Personal Competition: Its Place in the Social Order and Effect upon Individuals; with Some Considerations on Success._ "Economic Studies," Vol. IV, No. 2. New York, 1899. (6) Triplett, Norman. "The Dynamogenic Factors in Pacemaking and Competition," _American Journal of Psychology_, IX (1897-98), 507-33. (7) Baldwin, J. Mark. "La Concurrence sociale et l'individualisme," _Revue Internationale de sociologie_, XVIII (1910), 641-57. (8) Groos, Karl. _The Play of Man._ Translated with author's co-operation by Elizabeth L. Baldwin with a preface by J. Mark Baldwin. New York, 1901. D. _Discussion_ (1) Bagehot, Walter. _Physics and Politics._ Or thoughts on the application of the principles of "Natural Selection" and "Inheritance" to political society. Chap. v, "The Age of Discussion," pp. 156-204. New York, 1875. (2) Robertson, John M. _A Short History of Free Thought, Ancient and Modern._ 2 vols. New York, 1906. (3) Windelband, Wilhelm. _Geschichte der alten Philosophie._ "Die Sophistik und Sokrates," pp. 63-92. München, 1894. (4) Mackay, R. W. _The Progress of the Intellect as Exemplified in the Religious Development of the Greeks and Hebrews._ 2 vols. London, 1850. (5) Stephen, Sir Leslie. _History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century._ 2d ed., 2 vols. London, 1881. (6) Damiron, J. Ph. _Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la philosophie au 18ième siècle._ 3 vols. Paris, 1858-64. (7) Draper, J. W. _History of the Intellectual Development of Europe._ Rev. ed., 2 vols. New York, 1904. (8) ----. _History of the Conflict between Religion and Science._ New York, 1873. (9) Lecky, W. E. H. _History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe._ Rev. ed., 2 vols. New York, 1903. (10) White, Andrew D. _History of the Warfare of Science with Theology._ An expansion of an earlier essay, "The Warfare of Science," 2d. ed., 1877. 2 vols. New York, 1896. (11) Haynes, E. S. P. _Religious Persecution._ A study in political psychology. London, 1904. II. TYPES OF CONFLICT A. _War_ 1. Psychology and Sociology of War: (1) Darwin, Charles. _The Descent of Man._ Chaps. xvii and xviii. "Secondary Sexual Characters of Mammals," pp. 511-67. (Gives account of the fighting instinct in males and the methods of fighting of animals.) 2d rev. ed. New York, 1907. (2) Johnson, George E. "The Fighting Instinct: Its Place in Life," _Survey_, XXXV (1915-16), 243-48. (3) Thorndike, Edward L. _The Original Nature of Man._ "Fighting," pp. 68-75. New York, 1913. (4) Hall, G. Stanley. "A Study of Anger," _American Journal of Psychology_, X (1898-99), 516-91. (5) Patrick, G. T. W. _The Psychology of Social Reconstruction._ Boston, 1920. (6) ----. _The Psychology of Relaxation._ Chap. vi, "The Psychology of War," pp. 219-52. Boston, 1916. (7) Pillsbury, W. B. _The Psychology of Nationalism and Internationalism._ New York, 1919. (8) Trotter, W. _Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War._ London, 1916. (9) La Grasserie, R. de. "De l'intolerance comme phénomène social," _Revue International de Sociologie_, XVIII (1910), 76-113. (10) Percin, Alexandra. _Le Combat._ Paris, 1914. (11) Huot, Louis, and Voivenel, Paul. _Le Courage._ Paris, 1917. (12) Porter, W. T. _Shock at the Front._ Boston, 1918. (13) Lord, Herbert Gardiner. _The Psychology of Courage._ Boston, 1918. (14) Hall, G. Stanley. _Morale, the Supreme Standard of Life and Conduct._ New York, 1920. (15) Roussy, G., and Lhermitte, J. _The Psychoneuroses of War._ Translated by W. B. Christopherson. London, 1918. (16) Babinski, J. F., and Froment, J. _Hysteria or Pithiatism, and Reflex Nervous Disorders in the Neurology of the War._ Translated by J. D. Rolleston, with a preface by E. Farquhar Buzzard. London, 1918. 2. The Natural History of War: (1) Sumner, William G. _War and Other Essays._ Edited with an introduction by Albert Galloway Keller. New Haven, 1911. (2) Letourneau, Ch. _La Guerre dans les diverses races humaines._ Paris, 1895. (3) Frobenius, Leo. _Weltgeschichte des Krieges._ Unter Mitwirkung von Oberstleutnant a. D. H. Frobenius u. Korvetten-Kapitän a. D. E. Kohlhauer. Hannover, 1903. (4) Bakeless, John. _The Economic Causes of Modern Wars._ A study of the period 1878-1918. New York, 1921. (5) Crosby, Oscar T. _International War, Its Causes and Its Cure._ London, 1919. (6) Sombart, Werner. _Krieg und Kapitalismus._ Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des modernen Kapitalismus. Vol. II, München, 1913. (7) Lagorgette, Jean. _Le Rôle de la guerre._ Étude de sociologie générale. Préface de M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu. Paris, 1906. (8) Steinmetz, S. R. _Der Krieg als sociologisches Problem._ Pp. 21 ff. Amsterdam, 1899. (9) ----. _Die Philosophie des Krieges._ "Natur- und kultur-philosophische Bibliothek," Band VI. Leipzig, 1907. (10) Constantin, A. _Le rôle sociologique de la guerre et le sentiment national._ Suivi de la guerre comme moyen de sélection collective, par S. R. Steinmetz. "Bibliothèque scientifique internationale," Tome CVIII. Paris. 1907. (11) Keller, Albert G. _Through War to Peace._ New York, 1918. (12) Worms, René, editor. "Les luttes sociales." Études et paroles de E. Levasseur, Lord Avebury, René Worms, J. Novicow, Lester F. Ward, A. P. Xénopol, Louis Gumplowicz, Ferdinand Tönnies, Raoul de la Grasserie, Simon Halpércine, Ludwig Stein, Émile Worms, Charles M. Limousin, Frederick Harrison, C. L. Loch, G. Arcoleo, R. Garofalo, J. K. Kochanowski, Léon Phillipe, Alfredo Niceforo, N. A. Abrikossof, Adolphe Landry. _Annales de l'institut international de sociologie._ Tome XI. Paris, 1907. (13) Fielding-Hall, H. _Nature of War and Its Causes._ London, 1917. (14) Oliver, Frederick S. _Ordeal by Battle._ London, 1915. 3. War and Human Nature: (1) Petit-Dutaillis, C. E. "L'Appel de guerre en Dauphiné Ier 2 août 1914," _Annales de l'Université de Grenoble_, XXVII (1915), 1-59. [Documents consisting of letters written by instructors and others describing the sentiments with which the declaration of war was received.] (2) Wood, Walter, editor. _Soldiers' Stories of the War._ London, 1915. (3) Buswell, Leslie. _Ambulance No. 10: Personal Letters from the Front._ Boston, 1916. (4) Kilpatrick, James A. _Tommy Atkins at War as Told in His Own Letters._ New York, 1914. (5) Fadl, Said Memun Abul. "Die Frauen des Islams und der Weltkrieg," _Nord und Süd_, CLV (Nov. 1915), 171-74. [Contains a letter from a Turkish mother to her son at the front.] (6) Maublanc, René. "La guerre vue par des enfants (septembre, 1914)." (Recits par des enfants de campagne.) _Revue de Paris_, XXII (septembre-octobre, 1915), 396-418. (7) Daudet, Ernest, editor. "L'âme française et l'âme allemande." Lettres de soldats. _Documents pour l'histoire de la guerre._ Paris, 1915. (8) "Heimatsbriefe an russische Soldaten." (Neue philologische Rundschau; hrsg. von dr. C. Wagener und dr. E. Ludwig in Bremen, jahrg. 1886-1908.) _Die neue Rundschau_, II (1915), 1673-83. (9) "The Attack at Loos," by a French Lieutenant. "Under Shell-Fire at Dunkirk," by an American Nurse. "The Winter's War," by a British Captain. "The Bitter Experience of Lorraine," by the Prefect of Meurthe-et-Moselle. _Atlantic Monthly_, CXVI (1915), 688-711. (10) Böhme, Margarete. _Kriegsbriefe der Familie Wimmel._ (Personal experiences in the Great War). Dresden, 1915. (11) Chevillon, André. "Lettres d'un soldat," _Revue de Paris_, XXII (juillet-août, 1915), 471-95. (12) Boutroux, Pierre. "Les soldats allemands en campagne, d'après leur correspondance," _Revue de Paris_, XXII (septembre-octobre, 1915), 323-43; 470-91 (13) West, Arthur Graeme. _The Diary of a Dead Officer._ Posthumous papers. London, 1918. (14) Mayer, Émile. "Emotions des chefs en campagne," _Bibliothèque universelle et Revue Suisse_, LXIX (1913), 98-131. (15) Wehrhan, K. "Volksdichtung über unsere gefallenen Helden," _Die Grenzboten_, LXXIV (No. 28, July 14, 1915), 58-64. [Calls attention to growth of a usage (anfangs, wagte sich der Brauch nur schüchtern, hier und da, hervor) of printing verses, some original, some quoted, in the death notices.] (16) Naumann, Friedrich. "Der Kriegsglaube," _Die Hilfe_, XXI (No. 36, Sept. 9, 1915), 576. [Sketches the forces that have created a war creed, in which all confessions participate, immediately and without formalities.] (17) Roepke, Dr. Fritz. "Der Religiöse Geist in deutschen Soldatenbriefen," _Die Grenzboten_, LXXIV (No. 30, July 28, 1915), 124-28. [An interesting analysis of letters which are not reproduced in full.] (18) Wendland, Walter, "Krieg und Religion," _Die Grenzboten_, LXXIV (No. 33, Sept. 11, 1915), 212-19. [Reviews the literature of war and religion.] (19) Bang, J. P. _Hurrah and Hallelujah._ The teaching of Germany's poets, prophets, professors, and preachers; a documentation. From the Danish by Jessie Bröchner. London and New York, 1917. B. _Race Conflict_ 1. Race Relations in General: (1) Bryce, James. _The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind._ Oxford, 1903. (2) Simpson, Bertram L. _The Conflict of Colour._ The threatened upheaval throughout the world, by Weale, B. L. P. [_pseud._]. London, 1910. (3) Steiner, Jesse F. _The Japanese Invasion._ A study in the psychology of inter-racial contacts. Chicago, 1917. (4) Stoddard, T. Lothrop. _The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy._ New York, 1920. (5) Blyden, Edward W. _Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race._ London, 1888. (6) Spiller, G., editor. _Papers on Inter-racial Problems._ Communicated to the First Universal Races Congress, London, 1911, pp. 463-77. Boston, 1911. [Bibliography on Race Problems.] (7) Baker, Ray Stannard. _Following the Color Line._ An account of Negro citizenship in the American democracy. New York, 1908. (8) Miller, Kelly. _Race Adjustment._ Essays on the Negro in America. New York, 1908. (9) Stephenson, Gilbert T. _Race Distinctions in American Law._ New York, 1910. (10) Mecklin, John M. _Democracy and Race Friction._ A study in social ethics. New York, 1914. (11) Evans, Maurice. _Black and White in South East Africa._ London, 1911. (12) ----. _Black and White in the Southern States._ A study of the race problem in the United States from a South African point of view. London, 1915. (13) Brailsford, H. N. _Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future._ London, 1906. (14) Means, Philip A. _Racial Factors in Democracy._ Boston, 1918. 2. Race Prejudice: (1) Crawley, Ernest. _The Mystic Rose._ A study of primitive marriage. Pp. 33-58; 76-235. London, 1902. [Taboo as a mechanism for regulating contacts.] (2) Thomas, W. I. "The Psychology of Race-Prejudice," _American Journal of Sociology_, IX (1903-4), 593-611. (3) Finot, Jean. _Race Prejudice._ Translated from the French by Florence Wade-Evans. London, 1906. (4) Pillsbury, W. B. _The Psychology of Nationality and Internationalism._ Chap. iii, "Hate as a Social Force," pp. 63-89. New York, 1919. (5) Shaler, N. S. "Race Prejudices," _Atlantic Monthly_, LVIII (1886), 510-18. (6) Stone, Alfred H. _Studies in the American Race Problem._ Chap. vi, "Race Friction," pp. 211-41. New York, 1908. (7) Mecklin, John M. _Democracy and Race Friction._ A study in social ethics. Chap v, "Race-Prejudice," pp. 123-56. New York, 1914. (8) Bailey, T. P. _Race Orthodoxy in the South._ And other aspects of the negro question. New York, 1914. (9) Parton, James. "Antipathy to the Negro," _North American Review_, CXXVII (1878), 476-91. (10) Duncan, Sara Jeannette. "Eurasia," _Popular Science Monthly_, XLII (1892), 1-9. (11) Morse, Josiah. "The Psychology of Prejudice," _International Journal of Ethics_, XVII (1906-7), 490-506. (12) McDougall, William. _An Introduction to Social Psychology._ Chap. xi, "The Instinct of Pugnacity," pp. 279-95; "The Instinct of Pugnacity and the Emotion of Anger," pp. 49-61. 4th rev. ed. Boston, 1912. (13) Royce, Josiah. _Race Questions, Provincialism, and Other American Problems._ Chap. i, "Race Questions and Prejudices," pp. 1-53. New York, 1908. (14) Thomas, William I. "Race Psychology: Standpoint and Questionnaire, with Particular Reference to the Immigrant and the Negro," _American Journal of Sociology_, XVII (1912-13), 725-75. (15) Bryce, James. _Race Sentiment as a Factor in History._ A lecture delivered before the University of London, February 22, 1915. London, 1915. 3. Strikes: (1) Schwittau, G. _Die Formen des wirtschaftlichen Kampfes, Streik, Boykott, Aussperung, usw._ Eine volkswirtschaftliche Untersuchung auf dem Gebiete der gegenwärtigen Arbeitspolitik. Berlin, 1912. [Bibliography.] (2) Hall, Frederick S. _Sympathetic Strikes and Sympathetic Lockouts._ "Columbia University Studies in Political Science." Vol. X. New York, 1898. [Bibliography.] (3) Bing, Alexander M. _War-time Strikes and Their Adjustment._ With an introduction by Felix Adler. New York, 1921. (4) Egerton, Charles E., and Durand, E. Dana. _U. S. Industrial Commission Reports of the Industrial Commission on Labor Organizations._ "Labor Disputes and Arbitration." Washington, 1901. (5) Janes, George M. _The Control of Strikes in American Trade Unions._ Baltimore, 1916. (6) United States Strike Commission, 1895. _Report on the Chicago Strike of June-July, 1894, by the United States Strike Commission._ Washington, 1895. (7) Warne, Frank J. "The Anthracite Coal Strike," _Annals of the American Academy_, XVII (1901), 15-52. (8) Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, 1902-3. _Report to the President on the Anthracite Coal Strike of May-October, 1902, by the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission._ Washington, 1903. (9) Hanford, Benjamin. _The Labor War in Colorado._ New York, 1904. (10) Rastall, B. M. _The Labor History of the Cripple Creek District._ A study in industrial evolution. Madison, Wis., 1908. (11) United States Bureau of Labor. _Report on Strike at Bethlehem Steel Works, South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania._ Prepared under the direction of Charles P. Neill, commissioner of labor. Washington, 1910. (12) Wright, Arnold. _Disturbed Dublin._ The story of the great strike of 1913-14, with a description of the industries of the Irish Capital. London, 1914. (13) Seattle General Strike Committee. _The Seattle General Strike._ An account of what happened in the Seattle labor movement, during the general strike, February 6-11, 1919. Seattle, 1919. (14) Interchurch World Movement. _Report on the Steel Strike of 1919._ New York, 1920. (15) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. _Report in Regard to the Strike of Mine Workers in the Michigan Copper District._ Bulletin No. 139. February 7, 1914. (16) ----. _Strikes and Lockouts, 1881-1905._ Twenty-first annual report, 1906. (17) Foster, William Z. _The Great Steel Strike and Its Lessons._ New York, 1920. (18) Wolman, Leo. "The Boycott in American Trade Unions," _Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science_, Vol. XXXIV. Baltimore, 1916. (19) Laidler, Harry W. _Boycotts and the Labor Struggle._ Economic and legal aspects. With an introduction by Henry R. Seager. New York and London, 1914. (20) Hunter, Robert. _Violence and the Labour Movement._ New York, 1914. [Bibliography.] 4. Lynch Law and Lynching: (1) Walling, W. E. "The Race War in the North," _Independent_, LXV (July-Sept. 1908), 529-34. (2) "The So-Called Race Riot at Springfield," by an Eye Witness. _Charities_, XX (1908), 709-11. (3) Seligmann, H. J. "Race War?" _New Republic_, XX (1919), 48-50. [The Washington race riot.] (4) Leonard, O. "The East St. Louis Pogrom," _Survey_, XXXVIII (1917), 331-33. (5) Sandburg, Carl. _The Chicago Race Riots, July, 1919._ New York, 1919. (6) Chicago Commission on Race Relations. _Report on the Chicago Race Riot._ [In Press.] (7) Cutler, James E. _Lynch-Law._ An investigation into the history of lynching in the United States. New York, 1905. (8) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. _Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1918._ New York, 1919. (9) ----. _Burning at Stake in the United States._ A record of the public burning by mobs of six men, during the first six months of 1919, in the states of Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas. New York, 1919. C. _Feuds_ (1) Miklosich, Franz. _Die Blutrache bei den Slaven._ Wien, 1887. (2) Johnston, C. "The Land of the Blood Feud," _Harper's Weekly_, LVII (Jan. 11, 1913), 42. (3) Davis, H., and Smyth, C. "The Land of Feuds," _Munseys'_, XXX (1903-4), 161-72. (4) "Avenging Her Father's Death," _Literary Digest_, XLV (November 9, 1912), 864-70. (5) Campbell, John C. _The Southern Highlander and His Homeland._ Pp. 110-13. New York, 1921. (6) Wermert, Georg. _Die Insel Sicilien, in volkswirtschaftlicher, kultureller, und sozialer Beziehung._ Chap. xxvii, "Volkscharacter und Mafia." Berlin, 1901. (7) Heijningen, Hendrik M. K. van. _Het Straf- en Wraakrecht in den Indischen Archipel._ Leiden, 1916. (8) Steinmetz, S. R. _Ethnologische Studien zur ersten Entwicklung der Strafe, nebst einer psychologischen Abhandlung über Grausamkeit und Rachsucht._ 2 vols. Leiden, 1894. (9) Wesnitsch, Milenko R. _Die Blutrache bei den Südslaven._ Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Strafrechts. Stuttgart, 1889. (10) Bourde, Paul. _En Corse._ L'esprit de clan--les moeurs politiques--les vendettas--le banditisme. Correspondances adressées au "Temps." Cinquième édition. Paris, 1906. (11) Dorsey, J. Owen. "Omaha Sociology," chap. xii, "The Law," sec. 310, "Murder," p. 369. In _Third Annual Report of the U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology, 1881-82._ Washington, 1884. (12) Woods, A. "The Problem of the Black Hand," _McClure's_, XXXIII (1909), 40-47. (13) Park, Robert E., and Miller, Herbert A. _Old World Traits Transplanted._ New York, 1921. [See pp. 241-58 for details of rise and decline of Black Hand in New York.] (14) White, F. M. "The Passing of the Black Hand," _Century_, XCV, N. S. 73 (1917-18), 331-37. (15) Cutrera, A. _La Mafia e i mafiosi._ Origini e manifestazioni. Studio di sociologia criminale, con una carta a colori su la densità della Mafia in Sicilia. Palermo, 1900. D. _The Duel and the Ordeal of Battle_ (1) Millingen, J. G. _The History of Duelling._ Including narratives of the most remarkable personal encounters that have taken place from the earliest period to the present time. 2 vols. London, 1841. (2) Steinmetz, Andrew. _The Romance of Duelling in All Times and Countries._ London, 1868. (3) Sabine, Lorenzo. _Notes on Duels and Duelling._ Boston, 1855. (4) Patetta, F. _Le Ordalie._ Studio di storia del diritto e scienza del diritto comparato. Turino, 1890. (5) Lea, Henry C. _Superstition and Force._ Essays on the wager of law, the wager of battle, the ordeal, torture. 4th ed., rev., Philadelphia, 1892. (6) Neilson, George. _Trial by Combat._ In Great Britain. Glasgow and London, 1890. E. _Games and Gambling_ (1) Culin, Stewart. "Street Games of Boys in Brooklyn, N.Y.," _The Journal of American Folk-Lore_, IV (1891), 221-37. (2) ----. _Korean Games._ With notes on the corresponding games of China and Japan. Philadelphia, 1895. (3) ----. "Games of the North American Indians," _Twenty-fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1902-3._ Washington, 1907. (4) Steinmetz, Andrew. _The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims, in all Times and Countries, Especially in England and in France._ London, 1870. (5) Thomas, W. I. "The Gaming Instinct," _American Journal of Sociology_, VI (1900-1901), 750-63. (6) O'Brien, Frederick. _White Shadows in the South Seas._ Chap. xxii, pp. 240-48. [Memorable Game for Matches in the Cocoanut Grove of Lano Kaioo]. III. CONFLICT GROUPS A. _Gangs_ (1) Johnson, John H. _Rudimentary Society Among Boys._ "Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science," 2d series, XI, 491-546. Baltimore, 1884. (2) Puffer, J. Adams. _The Boy and His Gang._ Boston, 1912. (3) Sheldon, H. D., "Institutional Activities of American Children," _American Journal of Psychology_, IX (1899), 425-48. (4) Thurston, Henry W. _Delinquency and Spare Time._ A study of a few stories written into the court records of the City of Cleveland. Cleveland, Ohio., 1918. (5) Woods, Robert A., editor. _The City Wilderness._ A settlement study by residents and associates of the South End House. Chap. vi, "The Roots of Political Power," pp. 114-47. Boston, 1898. (6) Hoyt, F. C. "The Gang in Embryo," _Scribner's_, LXVIII (1920), 146-54. [Presiding justice of the Children's Court of the city of New York.] (7) _Boyhood and Lawlessness._ Chap. iv, "His Gangs," pp. 39-54. Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1914. (8) Culin, Stewart. "Street Games of Boys in Brooklyn, N.Y.," _The Journal of American Folklore_, IV (1891), 221-37. [For observations on gangs see p. 235.] (9) Adams, Brewster. "The Street Gang as a Factor in Politics," _Outlook_ LXXIV (1903), 985-88. (10) Lane, W. D. "The Four Gunmen," _The Survey_, XXXII (1914), 13-16. (11) Rhodes, J. F. "The Molly Maguires in the Anthracite Region of Pennsylvania," _American Historical Review_, XV (1909-10) 547-61. (12) Train, Arthur. "Imported Crime: The Story of the Camorra in America," _McClure's_, XXXIX (1912), 82-94. B. _Sects_ (1) Nordhoff, Charles. _The Communistic Societies of the United States from Personal Visit and Observation._ Including chapters on "The Amana Society," "The Separatists of Zoar," "The Shakers," "The Oneida and Wallingford Perfectionists," "The Aurora and Bethel Communes." New York, 1875. (2) Gillin, John L. _The Dunkers: A Sociological Interpretation._ New York, 1906. [Columbia University dissertation, V, 2.] (3) Milmine, Georgine. _The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science._ New York, 1909. (4) Gehring, Johannes. _Die Sekten der russischen Kirche, 1003-1897._ Nach ihrem Ursprunge und inneren Zusammenhange dargestellt. Leipzig, 1898. (5) Grass, K. K. _Die russischen Sekten._ I, "Die Gottesleute oder Chlüsten"; II, "Die weissen Tauben oder Skopzen." Leipzig, 1907-9. (6) Lea, Henry Charles. _The Moriscos of Spain._ Their conversion and expulsion. Philadelphia, 1901. (7) Friesen, P. M. _Geschichte der alt-evangelischen mennoniten Brüderschaft in Russland (1789-1910) im Rahmen der mennonitischen Gesamtgeschichte._ Halbstadt, 1911. (8) Kalb, Ernst. _Kirchen und Sekten der Gegenwart._ Unter Mitarbeit verschiedener evangelischer Theologen. Stuttgart, 1905. (9) Mathiez, Albert. _Les origines des cultes révolutionnaires._ (1789-92). Paris, 1904. (10) Rossi, Pasquale. _Mistici e Settarii._ Studio di psicopatologia collettiva. Milan, 1900. (11) Rohde, Erwin. _Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen._ Freiburg, 1890. C. _Economic Conflict Groups_ (1) Webb, Sidney and Beatrice. _Industrial Democracy._ London, 1897. (2) ----. _The History of Trade Unionism._ (Revised edition extended to 1920.) New York and London, 1920. (3) Commons, John R., editor. _Trade Unionism and Labor Problems_, Boston, 1905. (4) ----. _History of Labor in the United States._ 2 vols. New York, 1918. (5) Groat, George G. _An Introduction to the Study of Organized Labor in America._ New York, 1916. (6) Hoxie, Robert F. _Trade Unionism in the United States._ New York, 1917. (7) Marot, Helen. _American Labor Unions._ By a member. New York, 1914. (8) Carlton, Frank T. _Organized Labor in American History._ New York, 1920. (9) Levine, Louis. _Syndicalism in France._ 2d rev. ed. of _The Labor Movement in France._ New York and London, 1914. (10) Brissenden, Paul Frederick. _The I.W.W., A Study of American Syndicalism._ New York, 1919. [Bibliography.] (11) Brooks, John Graham. _American Syndicalism; the I.W.W._ New York, 1913. (12) ----. _Labor's Challenge to the Social Order._ Democracy its own critic and educator. New York, 1920. (13) Baker, Ray Stannard. _The New Industrial Unrest._ Reasons and remedies. New York, 1920. (14) Commons, John R. _Industrial Democracy._ New York, 1921. (15) Brentano, Lujo. _On the History and Development of Gilds and the Origin of Trade Unions._ London, 1870. D. _Parties_ (1) Bluntschli, Johann K. _Charakter und Geist der politischen Parteien._ Nördlingen, 1869. (2) Ostrogorskïi, Moisei. _Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties._ Translated from the French by F. Clarke with a preface by Right Hon. James Bryce. New York and London, 1902. (3) Lowell, A. Lawrence. _Governments and Parties in Continental Europe._ 2 vols. Boston, 1896. (4) Merriam, C. E. _The American Party System._ In press. (5) Haynes, Frederick E. _Third Party Movements since the Civil War, with Special Reference to Iowa._ A study in social politics. Iowa City, 1916. (6) Ray, P. O. _An Introduction to Political Parties and Practical Politics._ New York, 1913. (7) Bryce, James. _The American Commonwealth._ 2 vols. New rev. ed. New York, 1911. (8) Hadley, Arthur T. _Undercurrents in American Politics._ Being the Ford Lectures, delivered at Oxford University, and the Barbour-Page Lectures, delivered at the University of Virginia in the spring of 1914. New Haven, 1915. (9) Lowell, A. Lawrence. _Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1901._ 2 vols. "The Influence of Party upon Legislation in England and America" (with four diagrams), I, 319-542. Washington, 1902. (10) Beard, Charles A. _Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy._ New York, 1915. (11) Morgan, W. T. _English Political Parties and Leaders in the Reign of Queen Anne, 1702-1710._ New Haven, 1920. (12) Michels, Robert. _Political Parties._ A sociological study of the oligarchical tendencies of modern democracy. Translated by Eden and Cedar Paul. New York, 1915. (13) Haines, Lynn. _Your Congress._ An interpretation of the political and parliamentary influences that dominate law-making in America. Washington, D.C., 1915. (14) Hichborn, Franklin. _Story of the Session of the California Legislature._ San Francisco, 1909, 1911, 1913, 1915. (15) Myers, Gustavus. _The History of Tammany Hall._ 2d ed. rev. and enl. New York, 1917. (16) Roosevelt, Theodore. _An Autobiography._ New York, 1913. (17) Platt, Thomas C. _Autobiography._ Compiled and edited by Louis J. Lang. New York, 1910. (18) Older, Fremont. _My Own Story._ San Francisco, 1919. (19) Orth, Samuel P. _The Boss and the Machine._ A chronicle of the politicians and party organization. New Haven, 1919. (20) Riordon, William L. _Plunkitt of Tammany Hall._ A series of very plain talks on very practical politics, delivered by ex-Senator George Washington Plunkitt, the Tammany philosopher, from his rostrum--the New York County Court House boot-black stand. New York, 1905. E. _Nationalities_ (1) Oakesmith, John. _Race and Nationality._ An inquiry into the origin and growth of patriotism. New York, 1919. (2) Lillehei, Ingebrigt. "Landsmaal and the Language Movement in Norway," _Journal of English and Germanic Philology_, XIII (1914), 60-87. (3) Morris, Lloyd R. _The Celtic Dawn._ A survey of the renascence in Ireland, 1889-1916. New York, 1917. (4) Keith, Arthur. _Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point of View._ London, 1919. (5) Barnes, Harry E. "Nationality and Historiography" in the article "History, Its Rise and Development," _Encyclopedia Americana_, XIV, 234-43. (6) Fisher, H. A. "French Nationalism," _Hibbert Journal_, XV (1916-17), 217-29. (7) Ellis, H. "The Psychology of the English," _Edinburgh Review_, CCXXIII (April, 1916), 223-43. (8) Bevan, Edwyn R. _Indian Nationalism._ An independent estimate. London, 1913. (9) Le Bon, Gustave. _The Psychology of Peoples._ London, 1898. (10) Francke, K. "The Study of National Culture," _Atlantic Monthly_, XCIX (1907), 409-16. (11) Auerbach, Bertrand. _Les races et nationalités en Autriche-Hongrie._ Deuxième édition revisée. Paris, 1917. (12) Butler, Ralph. _The New Eastern Europe._ London, 1919. (13) Kerlin, Robert T. _The Voice of the Negro 1919._ New York, 1920. [A compilation from the colored press of America for the four months immediately succeeding the Washington riots.] (14) Boas, F. "Nationalism," _Dial_, LXVI (March 8, 1919), 232-37. (15) Buck, Carl D. "Language and the Sentiment of Nationality," _The American Political Science Review_, X (1916), 44-69. (16) McLaren, A. D. "National Hate," _Hibbert Journal_, XV (1916-17), 407-18. (17) Miller, Herbert A. "The Rising National Individualism," _Publications of the American Sociological Society_, VIII (1913), 49-65. (18) Zimmern, Alfred E. _Nationality and Government._ With other wartime essays. London and New York, 1918. (19) Small, Albion W. "Bonds of Nationality," _American Journal of Sociology_, XX (1915-16), 629-83. (20) Faber, Geoffrey. "The War and Personality in Nations," _Fortnightly Review_, CIII (1915), 538-46. Also in _Living Age_, CCLXXXV (1915), 265-72. TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES 1. The History of Conflict as a Sociological Concept 2. Types of Conflict: War, the Duello, Litigation, Gambling, the Feud, Discussion, etc. 3. Conflict Groups: Gangs, Labor Organizations, Sects, Parties, Nationalities, etc. 4. Mental Conflicts and the Development of Personality 5. Sex Differences in Conflict 6. Subtler Forms of Conflict: Rivalry, Emulation, Jealousy, Aversion, etc. 7. Personal Rivalry in Polite Society 8. Conflict and Social Status 9. The Strike as an Expression of the Wish for Recognition 10. Popular Justice: the History of the Molly Maguires, of the Night Riders, etc. 11. The Sociology of Race Prejudice 12. Race Riots in the North and the South 13. War as an Action Pattern, Biological or Social? 14. War as a Form of Relaxation 15. The Great War Interpreted by Personal Documents 16. Conflict and Social Organization 17. Conflict and Social Progress QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. How do you differentiate between competition and conflict? 2. Is conflict always conscious? 3. How do you explain the emotional interest in conflict? 4. In your opinion, are the sexes in about the same degree interested in conflict? 5. In what way do you understand Simmel to relate conflict to social process? 6. What are the interrelations of war and social contacts? 7. "Without aversion life in a great city would have no thinkable form." Explain. 8. "It is advantageous to hate the opponent with whom one is struggling." Explain. 9. Give illustrations of feuds not mentioned by Simmel. 10. How do you distinguish between feuds and litigation? 11. What examples occur to you of conflicts of impersonal ideals? 12. What are the psychological causes of war? 13. "We may see in war the preliminary process of rejuvenescence." Explain. 14. Has war been essential to the process of social adjustment? Is it still essential? 15. What do you understand by war as a form of relaxation? 16. How do you interpret Professor James's reaction to the Chautauqua? 17. What is the rôle of conflict in recreation? 18. Is it possible to provide psychic equivalents for war? 19. What application of the sociological theory of the relation of ideals to instinct would you make to war? 20. How do you distinguish rivalry from competition and conflict? 21. What bearing have the facts of animal rivalry upon an understanding of rivalry in human society? 22. What are the different devices by which the group achieves and maintains solidarity? How many of these were characteristic of the war-time situation? 23. In what way is group rivalry related to the development of personality? 24. How does rivalry contribute to social organization? 25. What do you understand by Giddings' distinction between cultural conflicts and "logical duels"? 26. Have you reason for thinking that culture conflict will play a lesser rôle in the future than in the past? 27. To what extent was the world-war a culture conflict? 28. Under what circumstances do social contacts make (a) for conflict, and (b) for co-operation? 29. What has been the effect of the extension of communication upon the relations of nations? Elaborate. 30. What do you understand by race prejudice as a "more or less instinctive defense-reaction"? 31. To what extent is race prejudice based upon race competition? 32. Do you believe that it is possible to remove the causes of race prejudice? 33. In what ways does race conflict make for race consciousness? 34. What are the different elements or forces in the interaction of races making for race conflict and race consciousness? 35. Is a heightening of race consciousness of value or of disadvantage to a racial group? 36. How do you explain the present tendency of the Negro to substitute the copying of colored models for the imitation of white models? 37. "In the South, the races seem to be tending in the direction of a bi-racial organization of society, in which the Negro is gradually gaining a limited autonomy." Interpret. 38. "All racial problems are distinctly problems of racial distribution." Explain with reference to relative proportion of Negroes, Chinese, and Japanese in certain sections of the United States. 39. Why have few or no race riots occurred in the South? 40. Under what circumstances have race riots occurred in the North? FOOTNOTES: [206] Adapted from William I. Thomas, "The Gaming Instinct," in the _American Journal of Sociology_, VI (1900-1901), 750-63. [207] Adapted from a translation of Georg Simmel, _Soziologie_, by Albion W. Small, "The Sociology of Conflict," in the _American Journal of Sociology_, IX (1903-4), 490-501. [208] Adapted from a translation of Georg Simmel, _Soziologie_, by Albion W. Small, "The Sociology of Conflict," in the _American Journal of Sociology_, IX (1903-4), 505-8. [209] Adapted from William A. White, _Thoughts of a Psychiatrist on the War and After_, pp. 75-87. (Paul B. Hoeber, 1919.) [210] From G. T. W. Patrick, "The Psychology of War," in the _Popular Science Monthly_, LXXXVII (1915), 166-68. [211] Adapted from Henry Rutgers Marshall, _War and the Ideal of Peace_, pp. 96-110. (Duffield & Co., 1915.) [212] Adapted from William H. Hudson, "The Strange Instincts of Cattle," _Longman's Magazine_, XVIII (1891), 393-94. [213] Adapted from George E. Vincent, "The Rivalry of Social Groups," in the _American Journal of Sociology_, XVI (1910-11), 471-84. [214] Adapted from Franklin H. Giddings, "Are Contradictions of Ideas and Beliefs Likely to Play an Important Group-making Rôle in the Future?" in the _American Journal of Sociology_, XIII (1907-8), 784-91. [215] From Robert E. Park, Introduction to Jesse F. Steiner, _The Japanese Invasion_. (A. C. McClurg & Co., 1917.) [216] From Robert E. Park, "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups," in _Publications of the American Sociological Society_, VIII (1913), 75-82. [217] Adapted from Alfred H. Stone, "Is Race Friction between Blacks and Whites in the United States Growing and Inevitable?" in the _American Journal of Sociology_, XIII (1907-8), 677-96. [218] Karl Groos, _The Play of Man_, p. 213. (New York, 1901.) [219] _Supra_, p. 50. [220] _The Dial_, LXVII (Oct. 4, 1919), 297. CHAPTER X ACCOMMODATION I. INTRODUCTION 1. Adaptation and Accommodation The term _adaptation_ came into vogue with Darwin's theory of the origin of the species by natural selection. This theory was based upon the observation that no two members of a biological species or of a family are ever exactly alike. Everywhere there is variation and individuality. Darwin's theory assumed this variation and explained the species as the result of natural selection. The individuals best fitted to live under the conditions of life which the environment offered, survived and produced the existing species. The others perished and the species which they represented disappeared. The differences in the species were explained as the result of the accumulation and perpetuation of the individual variations which had "survival value." Adaptations were the variations which had been in this way selected and transmitted. The term _accommodation_ is a kindred concept with a slightly different meaning. The distinction is that adaptation is applied to organic modifications which are transmitted biologically; while accommodation is used with reference to changes in habit, which are transmitted, or may be transmitted, sociologically, that is, in the form of social tradition. The term first used in this sense by Baldwin is defined in the _Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology_. In view of modern biological theory and discussion, two modes of adaptation should be distinguished: (a) adaptation through variation [hereditary]; (b) adaptation through modification [acquired]. For the functional adjustment of the individual to its environment [(b) above] J. Mark Baldwin has suggested the term "accommodation," recommending that adaptation be confined to the structural adjustments which are congenital and heredity [(a) above]. The term "accommodation" applies to any acquired alteration of function resulting in better adjustment to environment and to the functional changes which are thus effected.[221] The term accommodation, while it has a limited field of application in biology, has a wide and varied use in sociology. All the social heritages, traditions, sentiments, culture, technique, are accommodations--that is, acquired adjustments that are socially and not biologically transmitted. They are not a part of the racial inheritance of the individual, but are acquired by the person in social experience. The two conceptions are further distinguished in this, that adaptation is an effect of competition, while accommodation, or more properly social accommodation, is the result of conflict. The outcome of the adaptations and accommodations, which the struggle for existence enforces, is a state of relative equilibrium among the competing species and individual members of these species. The equilibrium which is established by adaptation is biological, which means that, in so far as it is permanent and fixed in the race or the species, it will be transmitted by biological inheritance. The equilibrium based on accommodation, however, is not biological; it is economic and social and is transmitted, if at all, by tradition. The nature of the economic equilibrium which results from competition has been fully described in chapter viii. The plant community is this equilibrium in its absolute form. In animal and human societies the community has, so to speak, become incorporated in the individual members of the group. The individuals are adapted to a specific type of communal life, and these adaptations, in animal as distinguished from human societies, are represented in the division of labor between the sexes, in the instincts which secure the protection and welfare of the young, in the so-called gregarious instinct, and all these represent traits that are transmitted biologically. But human societies, although providing for the expression of original tendencies, are organized about tradition, mores, collective representations, in short, _consensus_. And consensus represents, not biological adaptations, but social accommodations. Social organization, with the exception of the order based on competition and adaptation, is essentially an accommodation of differences through conflicts. This fact explains why diverse-mindedness rather than like-mindedness is characteristic of human as distinguished from animal society. Professor Cooley's statement of this point is clear: The unity of the social mind consists not in agreement but in organization, in the fact of reciprocal influence or causation among its parts, by virtue of which everything that takes place in it is connected with everything else, and so is an outcome of the whole.[222] The distinction between accommodation and adaptation is illustrated in the difference between domestication and taming. Through domestication and breeding man has modified the original inheritable traits of plants and animals. He has changed the character of the species. Through taming, individuals of species naturally in conflict with man have become accommodated to him. Eugenics may be regarded as a program of biological adaptation of the human race in conscious realization of social ideals. Education, on the other hand, represents a program of accommodation or an organization, modification, and culture of original traits. Every society represents an organization of elements more or less antagonistic to each other but united for the moment, at least, by an arrangement which defines the reciprocal relations and respective spheres of action of each. This accommodation, this _modus vivendi_, may be relatively permanent as in a society constituted by castes, or quite transitory as in societies made up of open classes. In either case, the accommodation, while it is maintained, secures for the individual or for the group a recognized status. Accommodation is the natural issue of conflicts. In an accommodation the antagonism of the hostile elements is, for the time being, regulated, and conflict disappears as overt action, although it remains latent as a potential force. With a change in the situation, the adjustment that had hitherto successfully held in control the antagonistic forces fails. There is confusion and unrest which may issue in open conflict. Conflict, whether a war or a strike or a mere exchange of polite innuendoes, invariably issues in a new accommodation or social order, which in general involves a changed status in the relations among the participants. It is only with assimilation that this antagonism, latent in the organization of individuals or groups, is likely to be wholly dissolved. 2. Classification of the Materials The selections on accommodation in the materials are organized under the following heads: (a) forms of accommodation; (b) subordination and superordination; (c) conflict and accommodation; and (d) competition, status, and social solidarity. a) _Forms of accommodation._--There are many forms of accommodation. One of the most subtle is that which in human geography is called acclimatization, "accommodation to new climatic conditions." Recent studies like those of Huntington in his "Climate and Civilization" have emphasized the effects of climate upon human behavior. The selection upon acclimatization by Brinton states the problems involved in the adjustment of racial groups to different climatic environments. The answers which he gives to the questions raised are not to be regarded as conclusive but only as representative of one school of investigators and as contested by other authorities in this field. Naturalization, which in its original sense means the process by which a person is made "natural," that is, familiar and at home in a strange social milieu, is a term used in America to describe the legal process by which a foreigner acquires the rights of citizenship. Naturalization, as a social process, is naturally something more fundamental than the legal ceremony of naturalization. It includes accommodation to the folkways, the mores, the conventions, and the social ritual (_Sittlichkeit_). It assumes also participation, to a certain extent at least, in the memories, the tradition, and the culture of a new social group. The proverb "In Rome do as the Romans do" is a basic principle of naturalization. The cosmopolitan is the person who readily accommodates himself to the codes of conduct of new social milieus.[223] The difficulty of social accommodation to a new social milieu is not always fully appreciated. The literature on homesickness and nostalgia indicates the emotional dependence of the person upon familiar associations and upon early intimate personal relations. Leaving home for the first time, the intense lonesomeness of the rural lad in the crowds of the city, the perplexity of the immigrant in the confusing maze of strange, and to him inexplicable, customs are common enough instances of the personal and social barriers to naturalization. But the obstacles to most social adjustments for a person in a new social world are even more baffling because of their subtle and intangible nature. Just as in biology balance represents "a state of relatively good adjustment due to structural adaptation of the organism as a whole" so accommodation, when applied to groups rather than individuals, signifies their satisfactory co-ordination from the standpoint of the inclusive social organization. Historically, the organization of the more inclusive society--i.e., states, confederations, empires, social and political units composed of groups accommodated but not fully assimilated--presents four typical constellations of the component group. Primitive society was an organization of kinship groups. Ancient society was composed of masters and slaves, with some special form of accommodation for the freeman and the stranger, who was not a citizen, to be sure, but was not a slave either. Medieval society rested upon a system of class, approaching castes in the distances it enforced. In all these different situations competition took place only between individuals of the same status. In contrast with this, modern society is made up of economic and social classes with freedom of economic competition and freedom in passage, therefore, from one class to the other. b) _Subordination and superordination._--Accommodation, in the area of personal relations, tends to take the form of subordination and superordination. Even where accommodation has been imposed, as in the case of slavery, by force, the personal relations of master and slave are invariably supported by appropriate attitudes and sentiments. The selection "Excerpts from the Journal of a West India Slave Owner" is a convincing exhibit of the way in which attitudes of superordination and subordination may find expression in the sentiments of a conscientious and self-complacent paternalism on the part of the master and of an ingratiating and reverential loyalty on the part of the slave. In a like manner the selection from the "Memories of an Old Servant" indicates the natural way in which sentiments of subordination which have grown up in conformity with an accepted situation eventually become the basis of a life-philosophy of the person. Slavery and caste are manifestly forms of accommodation. The facts of subordination are quite as real, though not as obvious, in other phases of social life. The peculiar intimacy which exists, for example, between lovers, between husband and wife, or between physician and patient, involves relations of subordination and superordination, though not recognized as such. The personal domination which a coach exercises over the members of a ball team, a minister over his congregation, the political leader over his party followers are instances of the same phenomena. Simmel in his interesting discussion of the subject points out the fact that the relations of subordination and superordination are reciprocal. In order to impose his will upon his slaves it was necessary for the master to retain their respect. No one had a keener appreciation of the aristocracy nor a greater scorn for the "poor white" than the Negro slaves in the South before the war. The leader of the gang, although he seems to have decisions absolutely in his hand, has a sense of the attitudes of his followers. So the successful political leader, who sometimes appears to be taking risks in his advocacy of new issues, keeps "his ear close to the grass roots of public opinion." In the selection upon "The Psychology of Subordination and Superordination" Münsterberg interprets suggestion, imitation, and sympathy in terms of domination and submission. Personal influence, prestige, and authority, in whatever form they find expression, are based, to a greater or less extent, on the subtle influences of suggestion. The natural affections are social bonds which not infrequently assume the form of bondage. Many a mother has been reduced to a condition of abject subjection through her affection for a son or a daughter. The same thing is notoriously true of the relations between the sexes. It is in social complexes of this sort, rather than in the formal procedures of governments, that we must look for the fundamental mechanism of social control. The conflicts and accommodations of persons with persons and of groups with groups have their prototypes in the conflicts and accommodations of the wishes of the person. The conflicts and accommodations in the mental life of the person have received the name in psychoanalysis of _sublimation_. The sublimation of a wish means its expression in a form which represents an accommodation with another conflicting wish which had repressed the original response of the first wish. The progressive organization of personality depends upon the successful functioning of this process of sublimation. The wishes of the person at birth are inchoate; with mental development these wishes come into conflict with each other and with the enveloping social milieu. Adolescence is peculiarly the period of "storm and stress." Youth lives in a maze of mental conflicts, of insurgent and aspiring wishes. Conversion is the sudden mutation of life-attitudes through a reorganization or transformation of the wishes. c) _Conflict and accommodation._--The intrinsic relation between conflict and accommodation is stated in the materials by Simmel in his analysis of war and peace and the problems of compromise. "The situations existing in time of peace are precisely the conditions out of which war emerges." War, on the other hand, brings about the adjustments in the relations of competing and conflict groups which make peace possible. The problem, therefore, must find a solution in some method by which the conflicts which are latent in, or develop out of, the conditions of peace may be adjusted without a resort to war. In so far as war is an effect of the mere inhibitions which the conditions of peace impose, substitutes for war must provide, as William James has suggested, for the expression of the expanding energies of individuals and nations in ways that will contribute to the welfare of the community and eventually of mankind as a whole. The intention is to make life more interesting and at the same time more secure. The difficulty is that the devices which render life more secure frequently make it less interesting and harder to bear. Competition, the struggle for existence and for, what is often more important than mere existence, namely, status, may become so bitter that peace is unendurable. More than that, under the condition of peace, peoples whose life-habits and traditions have been formed upon a basis of war frequently multiply under conditions of peace to such an extent as to make an ultimate war inevitable. The natives of South Africa, since the tribal wars have ceased, have so increased in numbers as to be an increasing menace to the white population. Any amelioration of the condition of mankind that tends to disturb the racial equilibrium is likely to disturb the peace of nations. When representatives of the Rockefeller Medical Foundation proposed to introduce a rational system of medicine in China, certain of the wise men of that country, it is reported, shook their heads dubiously over the consequences that were likely to follow any large decrease in the death-rate, seeing that China was already overpopulated. In the same way education, which is now in a way to become a heritage of all mankind, rather than the privilege of so-called superior peoples, undoubtedly has had the effect of greatly increasing the mobility and restlessness of the world's population. In so far as this is true, it has made the problem of maintaining peace more difficult and dangerous. On the other hand, education and the extension of intelligence undoubtedly increase the possibility of compromise and conciliation which, as Simmel points out, represent ways in which peace may be restored and maintained other than by complete victory and subjugation of the conquered people. It is considerations of this kind that have led men like von Moltke to say that "universal peace is a dream and not even a happy one," and has led other men like Carnegie to build peace palaces in which the nations of the world might settle their differences by compromise and according to law. d) _Competition, status, and social solidarity._--Under the title "Competition, Status, and Social Solidarity" selections are introduced in the materials which emphasize the relation of competition to accommodation. Up to this point in the materials only the relations of conflict to accommodation have been considered. Status has been described as an effect of conflict. But it is clear that economic competition frequently becomes conscious and so passes over into some of the milder forms of conflict. Aside from this it is evident that competition in so far as it determines the vocation of the individual, determines indirectly also his status, since it determines the class of which he is destined to be a member. In the same way competition is indirectly responsible for the organization of society in so far as it determines the character of the accommodations and understandings which are likely to exist between conflict groups. Social types as well as status are indirectly determined by competition, since most of them are vocational. The social types of the modern city, as indicated by the selection on "Personal Competition and the Evolution of Individual Types," are an outcome of the division of labor. Durkheim points out that the division of labor in multiplying the vocations has increased and not diminished the unity of society. The interdependence of differentiated individuals and groups has made possible a social solidarity that otherwise would not exist. II. MATERIALS A. FORMS OF ACCOMMODATION 1. Acclimatization[224] The most important ethnic question in connection with climate is that of the possibility of a race adapting itself to climatic conditions widely different from those to which it has been accustomed. This is the question of acclimatization. Its bearings on ethnic psychology can be made at once evident by posing a few practical inquiries: Can the English people flourish in India? Will the French colonize successfully the Sudan? Have the Europeans lost or gained in power by their migration to the United States? Can the white or any other race ultimately become the sole residents of the globe? It will be seen that on the answers to such questions depends the destiny of races and the consequences to the species of the facilities of transportation offered by modern inventions. The subject has therefore received the careful study of medical geographers and statisticians. I can give but a brief statement of their conclusions. They are to the effect, first, that when the migration takes place along approximately the same isothermal lines, the changes in the system are slight; but as the mean annual temperature rises, the body becomes increasingly unable to resist its deleterious action until a difference of 18° F. is reached, at which continued existence of the more northern races becomes impossible. They suffer from a chemical change in the condition of the blood cells, leading to anemia in the individual and to extinction of the lineage in the third generation. This is the general law of the relation to race and climate. Like most laws it has its exceptions, depending on special conditions. A stock which has long been accustomed to change of climate adapts itself to any with greater facility. This explains the singular readiness of the Jews to settle and flourish in all zones. For a similar reason a people who at home are accustomed to a climate of wide and sudden changes, like that of the eastern United States, supports others with less loss of power than the average. A locality may be extremely hot but unusually free from other malefic influences, being dry with regular and moderate winds, and well drained, such as certain areas between the Red Sea and the Nile, which are also quite salubrious. Finally, certain individuals and certain families, owing to some fortunate power of resistance which we cannot explain, acclimate successfully where their companions perish. Most of the instances of alleged successful acclimatization of Europeans in the tropics are due to such exceptions, the far greater number of the victims being left out of the count. If these alleged successful cases, or that of the Jews or Arabs, be closely examined, it will almost surely be discovered that another physiological element has been active in bringing about acclimatization, and that is the mingling of blood with the native race. In the American tropics the Spaniards have survived for four centuries; but how many of the _Ladinos_ can truthfully claim an unmixed descent? In Guatemala, for example, says a close observer, _not any_. The Jews of the Malabar coast have actually become black, and so has also in Africa many an Arab claiming direct descent from the Prophet himself. But along with this process of adaptation by amalgamation comes unquestionably a lowering of the mental vitality of the higher race. That is the price it has to pay for the privilege of survival under the new conditions. But, in conformity to the principles already laid down as accepted by all anthropologists, such a lowering must correspond to a degeneration in the highest grades of structure, the brain cells. We are forced, therefore, to reach the decision that the human species attains its highest development only under moderate conditions of heat, such as prevail in the temperate zones (an annual mean of 8°-12° C.); and the more startling conclusion that the races now native to the polar and tropical areas are distinctly _pathological_, are types of degeneracy, having forfeited their highest physiological elements in order to purchase immunity from the unfavorable climatic conditions to which they are subject. We must agree with a French writer, that "man is not cosmopolitan," and if he insists on becoming a "citizen of the world" he is taxed heavily in his best estate for his presumption. The inferences in racial psychology which follow this opinion are too evident to require detailed mention. Natural selection has fitted the Eskimo and the Sudanese for their respective abodes, but it has been by the process of regressive evolution; progressive evolution in man has confined itself to less extreme climatic areas. The facts of acclimatization stand in close connection with another doctrine in anthropology which is interesting for my theme, that of "ethno-geographic provinces." Alexander von Humboldt seems to have been the first to give expression to this system of human grouping, and it has been diligently cultivated by his disciple, Professor Bastian. It rests upon the application to the human species of two general principles recognized as true in zoölogy and botany. The one is that every organism is directly dependent on its environment (the _milieu_), action and reaction going on constantly between them; the other is, that no two faunal or floral regions are of equal rank in their capacity for the development of a given type of organism. The features which distinguish one ethno-geographic province from another are chiefly, according to Bastian, meteorological, and they permit, he claims, a much closer division of human groups than the general continental areas which give us an African, a European, and an American subspecies. It is possible that more extended researches may enable ethnographers to map out, in this sense, the distribution of our species; but the secular alterations in meteorologic conditions, combined with the migratory habits of most early communities, must greatly interfere with a rigid application of these principles in ethnography. The historic theory of "centres of civilisation" is allied to that of ethno-geographic provinces. The stock examples of such are familiar. The Babylonian plain, the valley of the Nile, in America the plateaus of Mexico and of Tiahuanuco are constantly quoted as such. The geographic advantages these situations offered--a fertile soil, protection from enemies, domesticable plants, and a moderate climate--are offered as reasons why an advanced culture rapidly developed in them, and from them extended over adjacent regions. Without denying the advantages of such surroundings, the most recent researches in both hemispheres tend to reduce materially their influence. The cultures in question did not begin at one point and radiate from it, but arose simultaneously over wide areas, in different linguistic stocks, with slight connections; and only later, and secondarily, was it successfully concentrated by some one tribe--by the agency, it is now believed, of cognatic rather than geographic aids. Assyriologists no longer believe that Sumerian culture originated in the delta of the Euphrates, and Egyptologists look for the sources of the civilization of the Nile Valley among the Libyans; while in the New World not one but seven stocks partook of the Aztec learning, and half a dozen contributed to that of the Incas. The prehistoric culture of Europe was not one of Carthaginians or Phoenicians, but was self-developed. 2. Slavery Defined[225] In most branches of knowledge the phenomena the man of science has to deal with have their technical names, and, when using a scientific term, he need not have regard to the meaning this term conveys in ordinary language; he knows he will not be misunderstood by his fellow-scientists. For instance, the Germans call a whale _Wallfisch_, and the English speak of shellfish; but a zoölogist, using the word fish, need not fear that any competent person will think he means whales or shellfish. In ethnology the state of things is quite different. There are a few scientific names bearing a definite meaning, such as the terms "animism" and "survival," happily introduced by Professor Tylor. But most phenomena belonging to our science have not yet been investigated, so it is no wonder that different writers (sometimes even the same writer on different pages) give different names to the same phenomenon, whereas, on the other hand, sometimes the same term (e.g., matriarchate) is applied to widely different phenomena. As for the subject we are about to treat of, we shall presently see that several writers have given a definition of slavery; but no one has taken the trouble to inquire whether his definition can be of any practical use in social science. Therefore, we shall try to give a good definition and justify it. But we may not content ourselves with this; we must also pay attention to the meaning of the term "slavery" as commonly employed. There are two reasons for this. First, we must always rely upon the statements of ethnographers. If an ethnographer states that some savage tribe carries on slavery, without defining in what this "slavery" consists, we have to ask: What may our informant have meant? And as he is likely to have used the word in the sense generally attached to it, we have to inquire: What is the ordinary meaning of the term "slavery"? The second reason is this. Several theoretical writers speak of slavery without defining what they mean by it; and we cannot avail ourselves of their remarks without knowing what meaning they attach to this term. And as they too may be supposed to have used it in the sense in which it is generally used, we have again to inquire: What is the meaning of the term "slavery" in ordinary language? The general use of the word, as is so often the case, is rather inaccurate. Ingram says: Careless or rhetorical writers use the words "slave" and "slavery" in a very lax way. Thus, when protesting against the so-called "Subjection of Women," they absurdly apply those terms to the condition of the wife in the modern society of the west--designations which are inappropriate even in the case of the inmate of Indian zenanas; and they speak of the modern worker as a "wage-slave," even though he is backed by a powerful trade-union. Passion has a language of its own, and poets and orators must doubtless be permitted to denote by the word "slavery" the position of subjects of a state who labor under civil disabilities or are excluded from the exercise of political power; but in sociological study things ought to have their right names, and those names should, as far as possible, be uniformly employed. But this use of the word we may safely regard as a metaphor; nobody will assert that these laborers and women are really slaves. Whoever uses the term slavery in its ordinary sense attaches a fairly distinct idea to it. What is this idea? We can express it most generally thus: a slave is one who is not free. There are never slaves without there being freemen too; and nobody can be at the same time a slave and a freeman. We must, however, be careful to remember that, man being a "social animal," no man is literally free; all members of a community are restricted in their behavior toward each other by social rules and customs. But freemen at any rate are relatively free; so a slave must be one who does not share in the common amount of liberty, compatible with the social connection. The condition of the slave as opposed to that of the freeman presents itself to us under the three following aspects: First, every slave has his master to whom he is subjected. And this subjection is of a peculiar kind. Unlike the authority one freeman sometimes has over another, the master's power over his slave is unlimited, at least in principle; any restriction put upon the master's free exercise of his power is a mitigation of slavery, not belonging to its nature, just as in Roman law the proprietor may do with his property whatever he is not by special laws forbidden to do. The relation between master and slave is therefore properly expressed by the slave being called the master's "possession" or "property"--expressions we frequently meet with. Secondly, slaves are in a lower condition as compared with freemen. The slave has no political rights; he does not choose his government, he does not attend the public councils. Socially he is despised. In the third place, we always connect with slavery the idea of compulsory labor. The slave is compelled to work; the free laborer may leave off working if he likes, be it at the cost of starving. All compulsory labor, however, is not slave labor; the latter requires that peculiar kind of compulsion that is expressed by the word "possession" or "property" as has been said before. Recapitulating, we may define a slave in the ordinary sense of the word as a man who is the property of another, politically and socially at a lower level than the mass of the people, and performing compulsory labor. The great function of slavery can be no other than a _division of labor_. Division of labor is taken here in the widest sense, as including not only a qualitative division, by which one man does one kind of work and another a different kind, but also a quantitative one, by which one man's wants are provided for, not by his own work only, but by another's. A society without any division of labor would be one in which each man worked for his own wants, and nobody for another's; in any case but this there is a division of labor in this wider sense of the word. Now this division can be brought about by two means. "There are two ways" says Puchta "in which we can avail ourselves of the strength of other men which we are in need of. One is the way of free commerce, that does not interfere with the liberty of the person who serves us, the making of contracts by which we exchange the strength and skill of another, or their products, for other performances on our part: hire of services, purchase of manufactures, etc. The other way is the subjugation of such persons, which enables us to dispose of their strength in our behalf but at the same time injures the personality of the subjected. This subjection can be imagined as being restricted to certain purposes, for instance to the cultivation of the land, as with soil-tilling serfs, the result of which is that this subjection, for the very reason that it has a definite and limited aim, does not quite annul the liberty of the subjected. But the subjection can also be an unlimited one, as is the case when the subjected person, in the whole of his outward life, is treated as but a means to the purposes of the man of power, and so his personality is entirely absorbed. This is the institution of slavery." 3. Excerpts from the Journal of a West India Slave Owner[226] Soon after nine o'clock we reached Savannah la Mar, where I found my trustee, and a whole cavalcade, waiting to conduct me to my own estate; for he had brought with him a curricle and pair for myself, a gig for my servant, two black boys upon mules, and a cart with eight oxen to convey my baggage. The road was excellent, and we had not above five miles to travel; and as soon as the carriage entered my gates, the uproar and confusion which ensued sets all description at defiance. The works were instantly all abandoned; everything that had life came flocking to the house from all quarters; and not only the men, and the women, and the children, but, "by a bland assimilation," the hogs, and the dogs, and the geese, and the fowls, and the turkeys, all came hurrying along by instinct, to see what could possibly be the matter, and seemed to be afraid of arriving too late. Whether the pleasure of the negroes was sincere may be doubted; but certainly it was the loudest that I ever witnessed: they all talked together, sang, danced, shouted, and, in the violence of their gesticulations, tumbled over each other, and rolled about upon the ground. Twenty voices at once enquired after uncles, and aunts, and grandfathers, and great-grandmothers of mine, who had been buried long before I was in existence, and whom, I verily believe, most of them only knew by tradition. One woman held up her little naked black child to me, grinning from ear to ear, "Look, Massa, look here! him nice lilly neger for Massa!" Another complained, "So long since none come see we, Massa; good Massa, come at last." As for the old people, they were all in one and the same story: now they had lived once to see Massa, they were ready for dying tomorrow, "them no care." The shouts, the gaiety, the wild laughter, their strange and sudden bursts of singing and dancing, and several old women, wrapped up in large cloaks, their heads bound round with different-colored handkerchiefs, leaning on a staff, and standing motionless in the middle of the hubbub, with their eyes fixed upon the portico which I occupied, formed an exact counterpart of the festivity of the witches in Macbeth. Nothing could be more odd or more novel than the whole scene; and yet there was something in it by which I could not help being affected; perhaps it was the consciousness that all these human beings were my _slaves_;--to be sure, I never saw people look more happy in my life; and I believe their condition to be much more comfortable than that of the laborers of Great Britain; and, after all, slavery, in _their_ case, is but another name for servitude, now that no more negroes can be forcibly carried away from Africa and subjected to the horrors of the voyage and of the seasoning after their arrival; but still I had already experienced, in the morning, that Juliet was wrong in saying "What's in a name?" For soon after my reaching the lodging-house at Savannah la Mar, a remarkably clean-looking negro lad presented himself with some water and a towel--I concluded him to belong to the inn--and, on my returning the towel, as he found that I took no notice of him, he at length ventured to introduce himself by saying, "Massa not know me; _me your slave!_"--and really the sound made me feel a pang at the heart. The lad appeared all gaiety and good humor, and his whole countenance expressed anxiety to recommend himself to my notice, but the word "slave" seemed to imply that, although he did feel pleasure then in serving me, if he had detested me he must have served me still. I really felt quite humiliated at the moment, and was tempted to tell him, "Do not say that again; say that you are my negro, but do not call yourself my slave." As I was returning this morning from Montego Bay, about a mile from my own estate, a figure presented itself before me, I really think the most picturesque that I ever beheld: it was a mulatto girl, born upon Cornwall, but whom the overseer of a neighboring estate had obtained my permission to exchange for another slave, as well as two little children, whom she had borne to him; but, as yet, he had been unable to procure a substitute, owing to the difficulty of purchasing single negroes, and Mary Wiggins is still my slave. However, as she is considered as being manumitted, she had not dared to present herself at Cornwall on my arrival, lest she should have been considered as an intruder; but she now threw herself in my way to tell me how glad she was to see me, for that she had always thought till now (which is the general complaint) that "_she had no massa_;" and also to obtain a regular invitation to my negro festival tomorrow. By this universal complaint, it appears that, while Mr. Wilberforce is lamenting their hard fate in being subject to a master, _their_ greatest fear is the not having a master whom they know; and that to be told by the negroes of another estate that "they belong to no massa," is one of the most contemptuous reproaches that can be cast upon them. Poor creatures, when they happened to hear on Wednesday evening that my carriage was ordered for Montego Bay the next morning, they fancied that I was going away for good and all, and came up to the house in such a hubbub that my agent was obliged to speak to them, and pacify them with the assurance that I should come back on Friday without fail. But to return to Mary Wiggins: she was much too pretty not to obtain her invitation to Cornwall; on the contrary, I _insisted_ upon her coming, and bade her tell her _husband_ that I admired his taste very much for having chosen her. I really think that her form and features were the most _statue-like_ that I ever met with; her complexion had no yellow in it and yet was not brown enough to be dark--it was more of an ash-dove color than anything else; her teeth were admirable, both for color and shape; her eyes equally mild and bright; and her face merely broad enough to give it all possible softness and grandness of contour: her air and countenance would have suited Yarico; but she reminded me most of Grassini in "La Vergine del Sole," only that Mary Wiggins was a thousand times more beautiful, and that, instead of a white robe, she wore a mixed dress of brown, white, and dead yellow, which harmonized excellently with her complexion; while one of her beautiful arms was thrown across her brow to shade her eyes, and a profusion of rings on her fingers glittered in the sunbeams. Mary Wiggins and an old cotton tree are the most picturesque objects that I have seen for these twenty years. I really believe that the negresses can produce children at pleasure, and where they are barren, it is just as hens will frequently not lay eggs on shipboard, because they do not like their situation. Cubina's wife is in a family way, and I told him that if the child should live, I would christen it for him, if he wished it. "Tank you, kind massa, me like it very much: much oblige if massa do that for _me_, too." So I promised to baptize the father and the baby on the same day, and said that I would be godfather to any children that might be born on the estate during my residence in Jamaica. This was soon spread about, and, although I have not yet been here a week, two women are in the straw already, Jug Betty and Minerva: the first is wife to my head driver, The Duke of Sully, but my sense of propriety was much gratified at finding that Minerva's husband was called Captain. I think nobody will be able to accuse me of neglecting the religious education of my negroes, for I have not only promised to baptize all the infants, but, meeting a little black boy this morning, who said that his name was Moses, I gave him a piece of silver, and told him that it was for the sake of Aaron; which, I flatter myself, was planting in his young mind the rudiments of Christianity. On my former visit to Jamaica, I found on my estate a poor woman nearly one hundred years old, and stone blind. She was too infirm to walk, but two young negroes brought her on their backs to the steps of my house, in order, as she said, that she might at least touch massa, although she could not see him. When she had kissed my hand, "that was enough," she said: "now me hab once kiss a massa's hand, me willing to die tomorrow, me no care." She had a woman appropriated to her service and was shown the greatest care and attention; however, she did not live many months after my departure. There was also a mulatto, about thirty years of age, named Bob, who had been almost deprived of the use of his limbs by the horrible cocoa-bay, and had never done the least work since he was fifteen. He was so gentle and humble and so fearful, from the consciousness of his total inability of soliciting my notice, that I could not help pitying the poor fellow; and whenever he came in my way I always sought to encourage him by little presents and other trifling marks of favor. His thus unexpectedly meeting with distinguishing kindness, where he expected to be treated as a worthless incumbrance, made a strong impression on his mind. 4. The Origin of Caste in India[227] If it were possible to compress into a single paragraph a theory so complex as that which would explain the origin and nature of Indian caste, I should attempt to sum it up in some such words as the following: A caste is a marriage union, the constituents of which were drawn from various different tribes (or from various other castes similarly formed) in virtue of some industry, craft, or function, either secular or religious, which they possessed in common. The internal discipline, by which the conditions of membership in regard to connubial and convivial rights are defined and enforced, has been borrowed from the tribal period which preceded the period of castes by many centuries, and which was brought to a close by the amalgamation of tribes into a nation under a common scepter. The differentia of _caste_ as a marriage union consists in some community of function; while the differentia of _tribe_ as a marriage union consisted in a common ancestry, or a common worship, or a common totem, or in fact in any kind of common property except that of a common function. Long before castes were formed on Indian soil, most of the industrial classes, to which they now correspond, had existed for centuries, and as a rule most of the industries which they practiced were hereditary on the male side of the parentage. These hereditary classes were and are simply the concrete embodiments of those successive stages of culture which have marked the industrial development of mankind in every part of the world. Everywhere (except at least in those countries where he is still a savage), man has advanced from the stage of hunting and fishing to that of nomadism and cattle-grazing, and from nomadism to agriculture proper. Everywhere has the age of metallurgy and of the arts and industries which are coeval with it been preceded by a ruder age, when only those arts were known or practiced which sufficed for the hunting, fishing, and nomad states. Everywhere has the class of ritualistic priests and lettered theosophists been preceded by a class of less-cultivated worshipers, who paid simple offerings of flesh and wine to the personified powers of the visible universe without the aid of a hereditary professional priesthood. Everywhere has the class of nobles and territorial chieftains been preceded by a humbler class of small peasant proprietors, who placed themselves under their protection and paid tribute or rent in return. Everywhere has this class of nobles and chieftains sought to ally itself with that of the priests or sacerdotal order; and everywhere has the priestly order sought to bring under its control those chiefs and rulers under whose protection it lives. All these classes had been in existence for centuries before any such thing as caste was known on Indian soil; and the only thing that was needed to convert them into castes, such as they now are, was that the Brahman, who possessed the highest of all functions--the priestly--should set the example. This he did by establishing for the first time the rule that no child, either male or female, could inherit the name and status of Brahman, unless he or she was of Brahman parentage on _both_ sides. By the establishment of this rule the principle of marriage unionship was superadded to that of functional unionship; and it was only by the combination of these two principles that a caste in the strict sense of the term could or can be formed. The Brahman, therefore, as the Hindu books inform us, was "the first-born of castes." When the example had thus been set by an arrogant and overbearing priesthood, whose pretensions it was impossible to put down, the other hereditary classes followed in regular order downward, partly in imitation and partly in self-defence. Immediately behind the Brahman came the Kshatriya, the military chieftain or landlord. He therefore was the "second-born of castes." Then followed the bankers or upper trading classes (the Agarwal, Khattri, etc.); the scientific musician and singer (Kathak); the writing or literary class (Kayasth); the bard or genealogist (Bhat); and the class of inferior nobles (Taga and Bhuinhar) who paid no rent to the landed aristocracy. These, then, were the third-born of castes. Next in order came those artisan classes, who were coeval with the age and art of metallurgy; the metallurgic classes themselves; the middle trading classes; the middle agricultural classes, who placed themselves under the protection of the Kshatriya and paid him rent in return (Kurmi, Kachhi, Mali, Tamboli); and the middle serving classes, such as Napit and Baidya, who attended to the bodily wants of their equals and superiors. These, then, were the fourth-born of castes; and their rank in the social scale has been determined by the fact that their manners and notions are farther removed than those of the preceding castes from the Brahmanical ideal. Next came the inferior artisan classes, those who preceded the age and art of metallurgy (Teli, Kumhar, Kalwar, etc.); the partly nomad and partly agricultural classes (Jat, Gujar, Ahir, etc.); the inferior serving classes, such as Kahar; and the inferior trading classes, such as Bhunja. These, then, were the fifth-born of castes, and their mode of life is still farther removed from the Brahmanical ideal than that of the preceding. The last-born, and therefore the lowest, of all the classes are those semisavage communities, partly tribes and partly castes, whose function consists in hunting or fishing, or in acting as butcher for the general community, or in rearing swine and fowls, or in discharging the meanest domestic services, such as sweeping and washing, or in practicing the lowest of human arts, such as basket-making, hide-tanning, etc. Thus throughout the whole series of Indian castes a double test of social precedence has been in active force, the industrial and the Brahmanical; and these two have kept pace together almost as evenly as a pair of horses harnessed to a single carriage. In proportion as the function practiced by any given caste stands high or low in the scale of industrial development, in the same proportion does the caste itself, impelled by the general tone of society by which it is surrounded, approximate more nearly or more remotely to the Brahmanical idea of life. It is these two criteria combined which have determined the relative ranks of the various castes in the Hindu social scale. 5. Caste and the Sentiments of Caste Reflected in Popular Speech[228] No one indeed can fail to be struck by the intensely popular character of Indian proverbial philosophy and by its freedom from the note of pedantry which is so conspicuous in Indian literature. These quaint sayings have dropped fresh from the lips of the Indian rustic; they convey a vivid impression of the anxieties, the troubles, the annoyances, and the humors of his daily life; and any sympathetic observer who has felt the fascination of an oriental village would have little difficulty in constructing from these materials a fairly accurate picture of rural society in India. The _mise en scène_ is not altogether a cheerful one. It shows us the average peasant dependent upon the vicissitudes of the season and the vagaries of the monsoon, and watching from day to day to see what the year may bring forth. Should rain fall at the critical moment his wife will get golden earrings, but one short fortnight of drought may spell calamity when "God takes all at once." Then the forestalling Baniya flourishes by selling rotten grain, and the Jat cultivator is ruined. First die the improvident Musalman weavers, then the oil-pressers for whose wares there is no demand; the carts lie idle, for the bullocks are dead, and the bride goes to her husband without the accustomed rites. But be the season good or bad, the pious Hindu's life is ever overshadowed by the exactions of the Brahman--"a thing with a string round its neck" (a profane hit at the sacred thread), a priest by appearance, a butcher at heart, the chief of a trio of tormentors gibbeted in the rhyming proverb: Blood-suckers three on earth there be, The bug, the Brahman, and the flea. Before the Brahman starves the king's larder will be empty; cakes must be given to him while the children of the house may lick the grindstone for a meal; his stomach is a bottomless pit; he eats so immoderately that he dies from wind. He will beg with a lakh of rupees in his pocket, and a silver begging-bowl in his hand. In his greed for funeral fees he spies out corpses like a vulture, and rejoices in the misfortunes of his clients. A village with a Brahman in it is like a tank full of crabs; to have him as a neighbor is worse than leprosy; if a snake has to be killed the Brahman should be set to do it, for no one will miss him. If circumstances compel you to perjure yourself, why swear on the head of your son, when there is a Brahman handy? Should he die (as is the popular belief) the world will be none the poorer. Like the devil in English proverbial philosophy, the Brahman can cite scripture for his purpose; he demands worship himself but does not scruple to kick his low-caste brethren; he washes his sacred thread but does not cleanse his inner man; and so great is his avarice that a man of another caste is supposed to pray "O God, let me not be reborn as a Brahman priest, who is always begging and is never satisfied." He defrauds even the gods; Vishnu gets the barren prayers while the Brahman devours the offerings. So Pan complains in one of Lucian's dialogues that he is done out of the good things which men offer at his shrine. The next most prominent figure in our gallery of popular portraits is that of the Baniya, money-lender, grain-dealer, and monopolist, who dominates the material world as the Brahman does the spiritual. His heart, we are told, is no bigger than a coriander seed; he has the jaws of an alligator and a stomach of wax; he is less to be trusted than a tiger, a scorpion, or a snake; he goes in like a needle and comes out like a sword; as a neighbor he is as bad as a boil in the armpit. If a Baniya is on the other side of a river you should leave your bundle on this side, for fear he should steal it. When four Baniyas meet they rob the whole world. If a Baniya is drowning you should not give him a hand: he is sure to have some base motive for drifting down stream. He uses light weights and swears that the scales tip themselves; he keeps his accounts in a character that no one but God can read; if you borrow from him, your debt mounts up like a refuse heap or gallops like a horse; if he talks to a customer he "draws a line" and debits the conversation; when his own credit is shaky he writes up his transactions on the wall so that they can easily be rubbed out. He is so stingy that the dogs starve at his feast, and he scolds his wife if she spends a farthing on betel-nut. A Jain Baniya drinks dirty water and shrinks from killing ants and flies, but will not stick at murder in pursuit of gain. As a druggist the Baniya is in league with the doctor; he buys weeds at a nominal price and sells them very dear. Finally, he is always a shocking coward: eighty-four Khatris will run away from four thieves. Nor does the clerical caste fare better at the hands of the popular epigrammatist. Where three Kayasths are gathered together a thunderbolt is sure to fall; when honest men fall out the Kayasth gets his chance. When a Kayasth takes to money-lending he is a merciless creditor. He is a man of figures; he lives by the point of his pen; in his house even the cat learns two letters and a half. He is a versatile creature, and where there are no tigers he will become a shikari; but he is no more to be trusted than a crow or a snake without a tail. One of the failings sometimes imputed to the educated Indian is attacked in the saying, "Drinking comes to a Kayasth with his mother's milk." Considering the enormous strength of the agricultural population of India, one would have expected to find more proverbs directed against the great cultivating castes. Possibly the reason may be that they made most of the proverbs, and people can hardly be expected to sharpen their wit on their own shortcomings. In two provinces, however, the rural Pasquin has let out very freely at the morals and manners of the Jat, the typical peasant of the eastern Punjab and the western districts of the United Provinces. You may as well, we are told, look for good in a Jat as for weevils in a stone. He is your friend only so long as you have a stick in your hand. If he cannot harm you he will leave a bad smell as he goes by. To be civil to him is like giving treacle to a donkey. If he runs amuck it takes God to hold him. A Jat's laugh would break an ordinary man's ribs. When he learns manners, he blows his nose with a mat, and there is a great run on the garlic. His baby has a plowtail for a plaything. The Jat stood on his own corn heap and called out to the King's elephant-drivers, "Hi there, what will you take for those little donkeys?" He is credited with practicing fraternal polyandry, like the Venetian nobility of the early eighteenth century, as a measure of domestic economy, and a whole family are said to have one wife between them. The Doms, among whom we find scavengers, vermin-eaters, executioners, basket-makers, musicians, and professional burglars, probably represent the remnants of a Dravidian tribe crushed out of recognition by the invading Aryans and condemned to menial and degrading occupations. Sir G. Grierson has thrown out the picturesque suggestion that they are the ancestors of the European gypsies and that Rom or Romany is nothing more than a variant of Dom. In the ironical language of the proverbs the Dom figures as "the lord of death" because he provides the wood for the Hindu funeral pyre. He is ranked with Brahmans and goats as a creature useless in time of need. A common and peculiarly offensive form of abuse is to tell a man that he has eaten a Dom's leavings. A series of proverbs represents him as making friends with members of various castes and faring ill or well in the process. Thus the Kanjar steals his dog, and the Gujar loots his house; on the other hand, the barber shaves him for nothing, and the silly Jolahaa makes him a suit of clothes. His traditions associate him with donkeys, and it is said that if these animals could excrete sugar, Doms would no longer be beggars. "A Dom in a palanquin and a Brahman on foot" is a type of society turned upside down. Nevertheless, outcast as he is, the Dom occupies a place of his own in the fabric of Indian society. At funerals he provides the wood and gets the corpse clothes as his perquisite; he makes the discordant music that accompanies a marriage procession; and baskets, winnowing-fans, and wicker articles in general are the work of his hands. In the west of India, Mahars and Dheds hold much the same place as the Dom. In the walled villages of the Maratha country the Mahar is the scavenger, watchman, and gate-keeper. His presence pollutes; he is not allowed to live in the village; and his miserable shanty is huddled up against the wall outside. But he challenges the stranger who comes to the gate, and for this and other services he is allowed various perquisites, among them that of begging for broken victuals from house to house. He offers old blankets to his god, and his child's playthings are bones. The Dhed's status is equally low. If he looks at a water jar he pollutes its contents; if you run up against him by accident, you must go off and bathe. If you annoy a Dhed he sweeps up the dust in your face. When he dies, the world is so much the cleaner. If you go to the Dheds' quarter you find there nothing but a heap of bones. This relegation of the low castes to a sort of ghetto is carried to great lengths in the south of India where the intolerance of the Brahman is very conspicuous. In the typical Madras village the Pariahs--"dwellers in the quarter" (_para_) as this broken tribe is now called--live in an irregular cluster of conical hovels of palm leaves known as the _parchery_, the squalor and untidiness of which present the sharpest contrasts to the trim street of tiled masonry houses where the Brahmans congregate. "Every village," says the proverb, "has its Pariah hamlet"--a place of pollution the census of which is even now taken with difficulty owing to the reluctance of the high-caste enumerator to enter its unclean precincts. "A palm tree," says another, "casts no shade; a Pariah has no caste and rules." The popular estimate of the morals of the Pariah comes out in the saying, "He that breaks his word is a Pariah at heart"; while the note of irony predominates in the pious question, "If a Pariah offers boiled rice will not the god take it?" the implication being that the Brahman priests who take the offerings to idols are too greedy to inquire by whom they are presented. B. SUBORDINATION AND SUPERORDINATION 1. The Psychology of Subordination and Superordination[229] The typical suggestion is given by words. But the impulse to act under the influence of another person arises no less when the action is proposed in the more direct form of showing the action itself. The submission then takes the form of imitation. This is the earliest type of subordination. It plays a fundamental rôle in the infant's life, long before the suggestion through words can begin its influence. The infant imitates involuntarily as soon as connections between the movement impulses and the movement impressions have been formed. At first automatic reflexes produce all kinds of motions, and each movement awakes kinesthetic and muscle sensations. Through association these impressions become bound up with the motor impulses. As soon as the movements of other persons arouse similar visual sensations the kinesthetic sensations are associated and realize the corresponding movement. Very soon the associative irradiation becomes more complex, and whole groups of emotional reactions are imitated. The child cries and laughs in imitation. Most important is the imitation of the speech movement. The sound awakes the impulse to produce the same vocal sound long before the meaning of the word is understood. Imitation is thus the condition for the acquiring of speech, and later the condition for the learning of all other abilities. But while the imitation is at first simply automatic, it becomes more and more volitional. The child intends to imitate what the teacher shows as an example. This intentional imitation is certainly one of the most important vehicles of social organization. The desire to act like certain models becomes the most powerful social energy. But even the highest differentiation of society does not eliminate the constant working of the automatic, impulsive imitation. The inner relation between imitation and suggestion shows itself in the similarity of conditions under which they are most effective. Every increase of suggestibility facilitates imitation. In any emotional excitement of a group every member submits to the suggestion of the others, but the suggestion is taken from the actual movements. A crowd in a panic or a mob in a riot shows an increased suggestibility by which each individual automatically repeats what his neighbors are doing. Even an army in battle may become, either through enthusiasm or through fear, a group in which all individuality is lost and everyone is forced by imitative impulses to fight or escape. The psychophysical experiment leaves no doubt that this imitative response releases the sources of strongest energy in the mental mechanism. If the arm lifts the weight of an ergograph until the will cannot overcome the fatigue, the mere seeing of the movement carried out by others whips the motor centers to new efficiency. We saw that our feeling states are both causes and effects of our actions. We cannot experience the impulse to action without a new shading of our emotional setting. Imitative acting involves, therefore, an inner imitation of feelings too. The child who smiles in response to the smile of his mother shares her pleasant feeling. The adult who is witness of an accident in which someone is hurt imitates instinctively the cramping muscle contractions of the victim, and as a result he feels an intense dislike without having the pain sensations themselves. From such elementary experiences an imitative emotional life develops, controlled by a general sympathetic tendency. We share the pleasures and the displeasures of others through an inner imitation which remains automatic. In its richer forms this sympathy becomes an _altruistic sentiment_; it stirs the desire to remove the misery around us and unfolds to a general mental setting through which every action is directed toward the service to others. But from the faintest echoing of feelings in the infant to the highest self-sacrifice from altruistic impulse, we have the common element of submission. The individual is feeling, and accordingly acting, not in the realization of his individual impulses, but under the influence of other personalities. This subordination to the feelings of others through sympathy and pity and common joy takes a new psychological form in the affection of tenderness and especially parental love. The relation of parents to children involves certainly an element of superordination, but the mentally strongest factor remains the subordination, the complete submission to the feelings of those who are dependent upon the parents' care. In its higher development the parental love will not yield to every momentary like or dislike of the child, but will adjust the educative influence to the lasting satisfactions and to the later sources of unhappiness. But the submission of the parents to the feeling tones in the child's life remains the fundamental principle of the family instinct. While the parents' love and tenderness mean that the stronger submits to the weaker, even up to the highest points of self-sacrifice, the loving child submits to his parents from feelings which are held together by a sense of dependence. This feeling of dependence as a motive of subordination enters into numberless human relations. Everywhere the weak lean on the strong, and choose their actions under the influence of those in whom they have confidence. The corresponding feelings show the manifold shades of modesty, admiration, gratitude, and hopefulness. Yet it is only another aspect of the social relation if the consciousness of dependence upon the more powerful is felt with fear and revolt, or with the nearly related emotion of envy. The desire to assert oneself is no less powerful, in the social interplay, than the impulse to submission. Society needs the leaders as well as the followers. Self-assertion presupposes contact with other individuals. Man protects himself against the dangers of nature, and man masters nature; but he asserts himself against men who interfere with him or whom he wants to force to obedience. The most immediate reaction in the compass of self-assertion is indeed the _rejection of interference_. It is a form in which even the infant shows the opposite of submission. He repels any effort to disturb him in the realization of the instinctive impulses. From the simplest reaction of the infant disturbed in his play or his meal, a straight line of development leads to the fighting spirit of man, whose pugnaciousness and whose longing for vengeance force his will on his enemies. Every form of rivalry, jealousy, and intolerance finds in this feeling group its source of automatic response. The most complex intellectual processes may be made subservient to this self-asserting emotion. But the effort to impose one's will on others certainly does not result only from conflict. An entirely different emotional center is given by the mere desire for _self-expression_. In every field of human activity the individual may show his inventiveness, his ability to be different from others, to be a model, to be imitated by his fellows. The normal man has a healthy, instinctive desire to claim recognition from the members of the social group. This interferes neither with the spirit of co-ordination nor with the subordination of modesty. In so far as the individual demands acknowledgement of his personal behavior and his personal achievement, he raises himself by that act above others. He wants his mental attitude to influence and control the social surroundings. In its fuller development this inner setting becomes the ambition for leadership in the affairs of practical life or in the sphere of cultural work. The superficial counterpart is the desire for _self-display_ with all its variations of vanity and boastfulness. From the most bashful submission to the most ostentatious self-assertion, from the self-sacrifice of motherly love to the pugnaciousness of despotic egotism, the social psychologist can trace the human impulses through all the intensities of the human energies which interfere with equality in the group. Each variation has its emotional background and its impulsive discharge. Within normal limits they are all equally useful for the biological existence of the group and through the usefulness for the group ultimately serviceable to its members. Only through superordination and subordination does the group receive the inner firmness which transforms the mere combination of men into working units. They give to human society that strong and yet flexible organization which is the necessary condition for its successful development. 2. Social Attitudes in Subordination: Memories of an Old Servant[230] Work is a great blessing, and it has been wisely arranged by our divine Master that all his creatures should have a work to do of some kind. Some are weak and some are strong. Old and young, rich and poor, there is that work expected from us, and how much happier we are when we are at our work. There are so many things to learn, so many different kinds of work that must be done to make the world go on right. And some work is easier than others; but all ought to be well done, and in a cheerful, contented manner. Some prefer working with hands and feet; they say it is easier than the head work; but surely both are heavy work, for it does depend on your ability. Boys and girls do not leave school so early as they did fifty or sixty years ago. The boys went out quite happy and manly to do their herding at some farm, and would be very useful for some years till they preferred learning some trade, etc.; then a younger boy just filled his place; and by doing this they did learn farming a good bit, and this helped them on in after years if they wanted to go back to farming again. We regret to see that the page-boy is not wanted so much as he used to be; and what a help that used to be for a young boy. He learns a great deal by being first of all a while in the stable yard or garage before he goes into the gentleman's house, and he is neat and tidy at all times for messages. We have seen many of them in our young days; and even the waif has been picked up by a good master, and began in the stables and worked his way up to be a respected valet in the same household, and often and often told the story of his waif life in the servants' hall. The old servant has seen many changes and in many cases prefers the good old ways; there may be some better arrangements made, we cannot doubt that, but we are surprised at good old practices that our late beloved employers had ignored by their own children after they have so far grown up. Servants need the good example from their superiors, and when they hear the world speak well of them they do look for the good ways in the home life. We all like to hold up an employer's good name, surely we do if we are interested at all in our work, and if we feel that we cannot do our duty to them we ought to go elsewhere and not deceive them. We are trusted with a very great deal, and it is well for us if we are doing all we can as faithful servants, and in the end lay down our tools with the feeling that we have tried to do our best. We must remember that each one is born in his station in life, wisely arranged by "One Who Knows and Who Is Our Supreme Ruler." No one can alter this nor say to him, "What Doest Thou?" so we must each and all keep our station and honor the rich man and the poor man who humbly tries to live a Christian life, and when their faults are seen by us may we at once turn to ourselves and look if we are not human, too, and may be as vile as they. We have noticed some visitors very rude to the servants and so different to our own employers, and we set a mark on them, for we would not go to serve them. We remember once when our lady's brother was showing a visiting lady some old relics near the front door they came upon the head housemaid who was cleaning the church pew chairs (they were carried in while the church was being repaired), and she was near a very old grand piano. The lady asked in such a jeer, "And is this the housemaid's piano"? The gentleman looked very hard at the housemaid, for we were sure that he was very annoyed at her, but we did not hear his answer; but the housemaid had the good sense to keep quiet, but she could have told her to keep her jeers, for we were not her class of servant, neither was she our class of employer. We heard her character after, and never cared to see her. Some servants take great liberties, and then all are supposed to be alike; but we are glad that all ladies are not like this, for the world would be poor indeed; they would soon ruin all the girls--and no wonder her husband had left her. We heard of a gentleman who fancied his laundry-maid, so he called his servants together and told them that he was to marry her and bring her home as the lady of his house, and he hoped they would all stay where they were; but if they felt that they could not look upon her as their mistress and his wife, they were free to go away. And not one of them left, for they stayed on with them for years. This is a true story from one who knew them and could show us their London house. Now we have lived with superior servants, and we would much rather serve them even now in our old age than serve any lady who can never respect a servant. Nothing brings master and servant closer together than the sudden sore bereavement, and very likely this book could not be written so sad were it not for the many sad days that have been spent in service, and now so very few of the employers are to be seen; and when they are with us we feel that we are still respected by them, for there is the usual welcome--for they would look back the same as we do on days that are gone by. In our young days the curtsy was fashionable; you would see every man's daughter bobbing whenever they met the lady or gentlemen or when they met their teacher. The custom is gone now, and we wonder why; but the days are changed, and some call it education that is so far doing this; it cannot be education, for we do look for more respect from the educated than from the class that we called the ignorant. How well off the servants are in these years of war, for they have no rent to worry about and no anxiety about their coal bill, nor how food, etc., is to be got in and paid for, no taxes nor cares like so many poor working men; they are also sure of their wages when quarter day comes round. It is true she may have a widow mother who requires some help with rent, coals, or food, but there are many who ought to value a good situation, whether in the small comfortable house as general or in larger good situations where a few servants are, for we have seen them all and know what they have been like, and so, we say that all as a rule ought to be very thankful that they are the domestic servant and so study to show gratitude by good deeds to all around, as there is work just now for everyone to do. A great deal more could easily be written, and we hope some old servant may also speak out in favor of domestic service, and so let it be again what it has been, and when both will look on each other as they ought, for there has always been master and servant, and we have the number of servants, or near the number, given here by one who knows, 1,330,783 female domestic servants at the last census in 1911, and so the domestic service is the largest single industry that is; there are more people employed as domestic servants than any other class of employment. Before closing this book the writer would ask that a kinder interest may be taken in girls who may have at one time been in disgrace; many of them have no homes and we might try to help them into situations. This appeal is from the old housekeeper and so from one who has had many a talk with young girls for their good; but they have often been led far astray. We ought to give them the chance again, by trying to get them situations, and if the lady is not her friend, nor the housekeeper, we pity her. 3. The Reciprocal Character of Subordination and Superordination[231] Every social occurrence consists of an interaction between individuals. In other words, each individual is at the same time an active and a passive agent in a transaction. In case of superiority and inferiority, however, the relation assumes the appearance of a one-sided operation; the one party appears to exert, while the other seems merely to receive, an influence. Such, however, is not in fact the case. No one would give himself the trouble to gain or to maintain superiority if it afforded him no advantage or enjoyment. This return to the superior can be derived from the relation, however, only by virtue of the fact that there is a reciprocal action of the inferior upon the superior. The decisive characteristic of the relation at this point is this, that the effect which the inferior actually exerts upon the superior is determined by the latter. The superior causes the inferior to produce a given effect which the superior shall experience. In this operation, in case the subordination is really absolute, no sort of spontaneity is present on the part of the subordinate. The reciprocal influence is rather the same as that between a man and a lifeless external object with which the former performs an act for his own use. That is, the person acts upon the object in order that the latter may react upon himself. In this reaction of the object no spontaneity on the part of the object is to be observed, but merely the further operation of the spontaneity of the person. Such an extreme case of superiority and inferiority will scarcely occur among human beings. Rather will a certain measure of independence, a certain direction of the relation proceed also from the self-will and the character of the subordinate. The different cases of superiority and inferiority will accordingly be characterized by differences in the relative amount of spontaneity which the subordinates and the superiors bring to bear upon the total relation. In exemplification of this reciprocal action of the inferior, through which superiority and inferiority manifests itself as proper socialization, I will mention only a few cases, in which the reciprocity is difficult to discern. When in the case of an absolute despotism the ruler attaches to his edicts the threat of penalty or the promise of reward, the meaning is that the monarch himself will be bound by the regulation which he has ordained. The inferior shall have the right, on the other hand, to demand something from the lawgiver. Whether the latter subsequently grants the promised reward or protection is another question. The spirit of the relation as contemplated by the law is that the superior completely controls the inferior, to be sure, but that a certain claim is assured to the latter, which claim he may press or may allow to lapse, so that even this most definite form of the relation still contains an element of spontaneity on the part of the inferior. Still farther; the concept "law" seems to connote that he who gives the law is in so far unqualifiedly superior. Apart from those cases in which the law is instituted by those who will be its subjects, there appears in lawgiving as such no sign of spontaneity on the part of the subject of the law. It is, nevertheless, very interesting to observe how the Roman conception of law makes prominent the reciprocity between the superior and the subordinate elements. Thus _lex_ means originally "compact," in the sense, to be sure, that the terms of the same are fixed by the proponent, and the other party can accept or reject it only _en bloc_. The _lex publica populi Romani_ meant originally that the king proposed and the people accepted the same. Thus even here, where the conception itself seems to express the complete one-sidedness of the superior, the nice social instinct of the Romans pointed in the verbal expression to the co-operation of the subordinate. In consequence of like feeling of the nature of socialization the later Roman jurists declared that the _societas leonina_ is not to be regarded as a social compact. Where the one absolutely controls the other, that is, where all spontaneity of the subordinate is excluded, there is no longer any socialization. Once more, the orator who confronts the assembly, or the teacher his class, seems to be the sole leader, the temporary superior. Nevertheless everyone who finds himself in that situation is conscious of the limiting and controlling reaction of the mass which is apparently merely passive and submissive to his guidance. This is the case not merely when the parties immediately confront each other. All leaders are also led, as in countless cases the master is the slave of his slaves. "I am your leader, therefore I must follow you," said one of the most eminent German parliamentarians, with reference to his party. Every journalist is influenced by the public upon which he seems to exert an influence entirely without reaction. The most characteristic case of actual reciprocal influence, in spite of what appears to be subordination without corresponding reaction, is that of hypnotic suggestion. An eminent hypnotist recently asserted that in every hypnosis there occurs an actual if not easily defined influence of the hypnotized upon the hypnotist, and that without this the effect would not be produced. 4. Three Types of Subordination and Superordination[232] Three possible types of superiority present themselves. Superiority may be exercised (a) by an individual, (b) by a group, (c) by an objective principle higher than individuals. a) _Subordination to an individual._--The subordination of a group to a single person implies a very decided unification of the group. This is equally the case with both the characteristic forms of this subordination, viz.: (1) when the group with its head constitutes a real internal unity; when the superior is more a leader than a master and only represents in himself the power and the will of the group; (2) when the group is conscious of opposition between itself and its head, when a party opposed to the head is formed. In both cases the unity of the supreme head tends to bring about an inner unification of the group. The elements of the latter are conscious of themselves as belonging together, because their interests converge at one point. Moreover the opposition to this unified controlling power compels the group to collect itself, to condense itself into unity. This is true not alone of the political group. In the factory, the ecclesiastical community, a school class, and in associated bodies of every sort it is to be observed that the termination of the organization in a head, whether in case of harmony or of opposition, helps to effect unification of the group. This is most conspicuous to be sure in the political sphere. History has shown it to be the enormous advantage of monarchies that they unify the political interests of the popular mass. The totality has a common interest in holding the prerogatives of the crown within their boundaries, possibly in restricting them; or there is a common field of conflict between those whose interests are with the crown and those who are opposed. Thus there is a supreme point with reference to which the whole people constitutes either a single party or, at most, two. Upon the disappearance of its head, to which all are subordinate--with the end of this political pressure--all political unity often likewise ceases. There spring up a great number of party factions which previously, in view of that supreme political interest for or against the monarchy, found no room. Wonder has often been felt over the irrationality of the condition in which a single person exercises lordship over a great mass of others. The contradiction will be modified when we reflect that the ruler and the individual subject in the controlled mass by no means enter into the relationship with an equal _quantum_ of their personality. The mass is composed through the fact that many individuals unite fractions of their personality--one-sided purposes, interests and powers, while that which each personality as such actually is towers above this common level and does not at all enter into that "mass," i.e., into that which is really ruled by the single person. Hence it is also that frequently in very despotically ruled groups individuality may develop itself very freely, in those aspects particularly which are not in participation with the mass. Thus began the development of modern individuality in the despotisms of the Italian Renaissance. Here, as in other similar cases (for example, under Napoleon I and Napoleon III), it was for the direct interest of the despots to allow the largest freedom to all those aspects of personality which were not identified with the regulated mass, i.e., to those aspects most apart from politics. Thus subordination was more tolerable. b) _Subordination to a group._--In the second place the group may assume the form of a pyramid. In this case the subordinates stand over against the superior not in an equalized mass but in very nicely graded strata of power. These strata grow constantly smaller in extent but greater in significance. They lead up from the inferior mass to the head, the single ruler. This form of the group may come into existence in two ways. It may emerge from the autocratic supremacy of an individual. The latter often loses the substance of his power and allows it to slip downward, while retaining its form and titles. In this case more of the power is retained by the orders nearest to the former autocrat than is acquired by those more distant. Since the power thus gradually percolates, a continuity and graduation of superiority and inferiority must develop itself. This is, in fact, the way in which in oriental states the social forms often arise. The power of the superior orders disintegrates, either because it is essentially incoherent and does not know how to attain the above-emphasized proportion between subordination and individual freedom; or because the persons comprising the administration are too indolent or too ignorant of governmental technique to preserve supreme power. For the power which is exercised over a large circle is never a constant possession. It must be constantly acquired and defended anew if anything more than its shadow and name is to remain. The other way in which a scale of power is constructed up to a supreme head is the reverse of that just described. Starting with a relative equality of the social elements, certain elements gain greater significance; within the circle of influence thus constituted certain especially powerful individuals differentiate themselves until this development accommodates itself to one or to a few heads. The pyramid of superiority and inferiority is built in this case from below upward, while in the former case the development was from above downward. This second form of development is often found in economic relationships, where at first there exists a certain equality between the persons carrying on the work of a certain industrial society. Presently some of the number acquire wealth; others become poor; others fall into intermediate conditions which are as dependent upon an aristocracy of property as the lower orders are upon the middle strata; this aristocracy rises in manifold gradations to the magnates, of whom sometimes a single individual is appropriately designated as the "king" of a branch of industry. By a sort of combination of the two ways in which graded superiority and inferiority of the group come into being the feudalism of the Middle Ages arose. So long as the full citizen--either Greek, Roman, or Teutonic--knew no subordination under an individual, there existed for him on the one hand complete equality with those of his own order, but on the other hand rigid exclusiveness toward those of lower orders. Feudalism remodeled this characteristic social form into the equally characteristic arrangement which filled the gap between freedom and bondage with a scale of classes. A peculiar form of subordination to a number of individuals is determination by vote of a majority. The presumption of majority rule is that there is a collection of elements originally possessing equal rights. In the process of voting the individual places himself in subordination to a power of which he is a part, but in this way, that it is left to his own volition whether he will belong to the superior or the inferior, i.e., the outvoted party. We are not now interested in cases of this complex problem in which the superiority is entirely formal, as, for example, in resolves of scientific congresses, but only with those in which the individual is constrained to an action by the will of the party outvoting him, that is, in which he must practically subordinate himself to the majority. This dominance of numbers through the fact that others, though only equal in right, have another opinion, is by no means the matter of course which it seems to us today in our time of determinations by masses. Ancient German law knew nothing of it. If one did not agree with the resolve of the community, he was not bound by it. As an application of this principle, unanimity was later necessary in the choice of king, evidently because it could not be expected or required that one who had not chosen the king would obey him. The English baron who had opposed authorizing a levy, or who had not been present, often refused to pay it. In the tribal council of the Iroquois, as in the Polish Parliament, decisions had to be unanimous. There was therefore no subordination of an individual to a majority, unless we consider the fact that a proposition was regarded as rejected if it did not receive unanimous approval, a subordination, an outvoting, of the person proposing the measure. When, on the contrary, majority rule exists, two modes of subordination of the minority are possible, and discrimination between them is of the highest sociological significance. Control of the minority may, in the first place, arise from the fact that the many are more powerful than the few. Although, or rather because, the individuals participating in a vote are supposed to be equals, the majority have the physical power to coerce the minority. The taking of a vote and the subjection of the minority serves the purpose of avoiding such actual measurement of strength, but accomplishes practically the same result through the count of votes, since the minority is convinced of the futility of such resort to force. There exist in the group two parties in opposition as though they were two groups, between which relative strength, represented by the vote, is to decide. Quite another principle is in force, however, in the second place, where the group as a unity predominates over all individuals and so proceeds that the passing of votes shall _merely give expression to the unitary group will_. In the transition from the former to this second principle the enormously important step is taken from a unity made up merely of the sum of individuals to recognition and operation of an abstract objective group unity. Classic antiquity took this step much earlier--not only absolutely but relatively earlier--than the German peoples. Among the latter the oneness of the community did not exist over and against the individuals who composed it but entirely in them. Consequently the group will was not only not enacted but it did not even exist so long as a single member dissented. The group was not complete unless all its members were united, since it was only in the sum of its members that the group consisted. In case the group, however, is a self-existent structure--whether consciously or merely in point of fact--in case the group organization effected by union of the individuals remains along with and in spite of the individual changes, this self-existent unity--state, community, association for a distinctive purpose--must surely will and act in a definite manner. Since, however, only one of two contradictory opinions can ultimately prevail, it is assumed as more probable that the majority knows or represents this will better than the minority. According to the presumptive principle involved the minority is, in this case, not excluded but included. The subordination of the minority is thus in this stage of sociological development quite different from that in case the majority simply represents the stronger power. In the case in hand the majority does not speak in its own name but in that of the ideal unity and totality. It is only to this unity, which speaks by the mouth of the majority, that the minority subordinates itself. This is the immanent principle of our parliamentary decisions. c) _Subordination to an impersonal principle._--To these must be joined, third, those formations in which subordination is neither to an individual nor yet to a majority, but to an impersonal objective principle. Here, where we seem to be estopped from speaking of a _reciprocal influence_ between the superior and the subordinate, a sociological interest enters in but two cases: first, when this ideal superior principle is to be interpreted as the psychological consolidation of a real social power; second, when the principle establishes specific and characteristic relationships between those who are subject to it in common. The former case appears chiefly in connection with the moral imperatives. In the moral consciousness we feel ourselves subject to a decree which does not appear to be issued by any personal human power; we hear the voice of conscience only in ourselves, although with a force and definiteness, in contrast with all subjective egoism, which, as it seems, could have had its source only from an authority outside the subject. As is well known, the attempt has been made to resolve this contradiction by the assumption that we have derived the content of morality from social decrees. Whatever is serviceable to the species and to the group, whatever on that account is demanded of the members for the self-preservation of the group, is gradually bred into individuals as an instinct, so that it asserts itself as a peculiar autonomous impression by the side of the properly personal, and consequently often contradictory, impulses. Thus would be explained the double character of the moral command. On the one side it appears to us as an impersonal order to which we have simply to yield. On the other side, however, no visible external power but only our own most real and personal instinct enforces it upon us. Sociologically this is of interest as an example of a wholly peculiar form of reaction between the individual and his group. The social force is here completely grown into the individual himself. We now turn to the second sociological question raised by the case of subordination to an impersonal ideal principle. How does this subordination affect the reciprocal relation of the persons thus subordinated in common? The development of the position of the _pater familias_ among the Aryans exhibits this process clearly. The power of the _pater familias_ was originally unlimited and entirely subjective; that is, his momentary desire, his personal advantage, was permitted to give the decision upon all regulations. But this arbitrary power gradually became limited by a feeling of responsibility. The unity of the domestic group, embodied in the _spiritus familiaris_, grew into the ideal power, in relation to which the lord of the whole came to regard himself as merely an obedient agent. Accordingly it follows that morals and custom, instead of subjective preference, determine his acts, his decisions, his judicial judgments; that he no longer behaves as though he were absolute lord of the family property, but rather the manager of it in the interest of the whole; that his position bears more the character of an official station than that of an unlimited right. Thus the relation between superiors and inferiors is placed upon an entirely new basis. The family is thought of as standing above all the individual members. The guiding patriarch himself is, like every other member, subordinate to the family idea. He may give directions to the other members of the family only in the name of the higher ideal unity. C. CONFLICT AND ACCOMMODATION 1. War and Peace as Types of Conflict and Accommodation[233] It is obvious that the transition from war to peace must present a more considerable problem than the reverse, i.e., the transition from peace to war. The latter really needs no particular scrutiny. For the situations existing in time of peace are precisely the conditions out of which war emerges and contain in themselves struggle in a diffused, unobserved, or latent form. For instance, if the economic advantage which the southern states of the American Union had over the northern states in the Civil War as a consequence of the slave system was also the reason for this war, still, so long as no antagonism arises from it, but is merely immanent in the existing conditions, this source of conflict did not become specifically a question of war and peace. At the moment, however, at which the antagonism began to assume a color which meant war, an accumulation of antagonisms, feelings of hatred, newspaper polemics, frictions between private persons, and on the borders reciprocal moral equivocations in matters outside of the central antithesis at once manifested themselves. The transition from peace to war is thus not distinguished by a special sociological situation. Rather out of relationships existing within a peaceful situation antagonism is developed immediately, in its most visible and, energetic form. The case is different, however, if the matter is viewed from the opposite direction. Peace does not follow so immediately upon conflict. The termination of strife is a special undertaking which belongs neither in the one category nor in the other, like a bridge which is of a different nature from that of either bank which it unites. The sociology of struggle demands, therefore, at least as an appendix, an analysis of the forms in which conflict is terminated, and these exhibit certain special forms of reaction not to be observed in other circumstances. The particular motive which in most cases corresponds with the transition from war to peace is the simple longing for peace. With the emergence of this factor there comes into being, as a matter of fact, peace itself, at first in the form of the wish immediately parallel with the struggle itself, and it may without any special transitional form displace struggle. We need not pause long to observe that the desire for peace may spring up both directly and indirectly; the former may occur either through the return to power of this peaceful character in the party which is essentially in favor of peace; or through the fact that, through the mere change of the formal stimulus of struggle and of peace which is peculiar to all natures, although in different rhythms, the latter comes to the surface and assumes a control which is sanctioned by its own nature alone. In the case of the indirect motive, however, we may distinguish, on the one hand, the exhaustion of resources which, without removal of the persistent contentiousness, may instal the demand for peace; and, on the other hand, the withdrawal of interest from struggle through a higher interest in some other object. The latter case begets all sorts of hypocrisies and self-deceptions. It is asserted and believed that peace is desired from ideal interest in peace itself and the suppression of antagonism, while in reality only the object fought for has lost its interest and the fighters would prefer to have their powers free for other kinds of activity. The simplest and most radical sort of passage from war to peace is victory--a quite unique phenomenon in life, of which there are, to be sure, countless individual forms and measures, which, however, have no resemblance to any of the otherwise mentioned forms which may occur between persons. Victory is a mere watershed between war and peace; when considered absolutely, only an ideal structure which extends itself over no considerable time. For so long as struggle endures there is no definitive victor, and when peace exists a victory _has been_ gained but the act of victory has ceased to exist. Of the many shadings of victory, through which it qualifies the following peace, I mention here merely as an illustration the one which is brought about, not exclusively by the preponderance of the one party, but, at least in part, through the resignation of the other. This confession of inferiority, this acknowledgment of defeat, or this consent that victory shall go to the other party without complete exhaustion of the resources and chances for struggle, is by no means always a simple phenomenon. A certain ascetic tendency may also enter in as a purely individual factor, the tendency to self-humiliation and to self-sacrifice, not strong enough to surrender one's self from the start without a struggle, but emerging so soon as the consciousness of being vanquished begins to take possession of the soul; or another variation may be that of finding its supreme charm in the contrast to the still vital and active disposition to struggle. Still further, there is impulse to the same conclusion in the feeling that it is worthier to yield rather than to trust to the last moment in the improbable chance of a fortunate turn of affairs. To throw away this chance and to elude at this price the final consequences that would be involved in utter defeat--this has something of the great and noble qualities of men who are sure, not merely of their strengths, but also of their weaknesses, without making it necessary for them in each case to make these perceptibly conscious. Finally, in this voluntariness of confessed defeat there is a last proof of power on the part of the agent; the latter has of himself been able to act. He has therewith virtually made a gift to the conqueror. Consequently, it is often to be observed in personal conflicts that the concession of the one party, before the other has actually been able to compel it, is regarded by the latter as a sort of insult, as though this latter party were really the weaker, to whom, however, for some reason or other, there is made a concession without its being really necessary. Behind the objective reasons for yielding "for the sake of sweet peace" a mixture of these subjective motives is not seldom concealed. The latter may not be entirely without visible consequences, however, for the further sociological attitude of the parties. In complete antithesis with the end of strife by victory is its ending by compromise. One of the most characteristic ways of subdividing struggles is on the basis of whether they are of a nature which admits of compromise or not. 2. Compromise and Accommodation[234] On the whole, compromise, especially of that type which is brought to pass through negotiation, however commonplace and matter of fact it has come to be in the processes of modern life, is one of the most important inventions for the uses of civilization. The impulse of uncivilized men, like that of children, is to seize upon every desirable object without further consideration, even though it be already in the possession of another. Robbery and gift are the most naïve forms of transfer of possession, and under primitive conditions change of possession seldom takes place without a struggle. It is the beginning of all civilized industry and commerce to find a way of avoiding this struggle through a process in which there is offered to the possessor of a desired object some other object from the possessions of the person desiring the exchange. Through this arrangement a reduction is made in the total expenditure of energy as compared with the process of continuing or beginning a struggle. All exchange is a compromise. We are told of certain social conditions in which it is accounted as knightly to rob and to fight for the sake of robbery; while exchange and purchase are regarded in the same society as undignified and vulgar. The psychological explanation of this situation is to be found partly in the fact of the element of compromise in exchange, the factors of withdrawal and renunciation which make exchange the opposite pole to all struggle and conquest. Every exchange presupposes that values and interest have assumed an objective character. The decisive element is accordingly no longer the mere subjective passion of desire, to which struggle alone corresponds, but the value of the object, which is recognized by both interested parties but which without essential modification may be represented by various objects. Renunciation of the valued object in question, because one receives in another form the quantum of value contained in the same, is an admirable reason, wonderful also in its simplicity, whereby opposed interests are brought to accommodation without struggle. It certainly required a long historical development to make such means available, because it presupposes a psychological generalization of the universal valuation of the individual object, an abstraction, in other words, of the value for the objects with which it is at first identified; that is, it presupposes ability to rise above the prejudices of immediate desire. Compromise by representation, of which exchange is a special case, signifies in principle, although realized only in part, the possibility of avoiding struggle or of setting a limit to it before the mere force of the interested parties has decided the issue. In distinction from the objective character of accommodation of struggle through compromise, we should notice that conciliation is a purely subjective method of avoiding struggle. I refer here not to that sort of conciliation which is the consequence of a compromise or of any other adjournment of struggle but rather to the reasons for this adjournment. The state of mind which makes conciliation possible is an elementary attitude which, entirely apart from objective grounds, seeks to end struggle, just as, on the other hand, a disposition to quarrel, even without any real occasion, promotes struggle. Probably both mental attitudes have been developed as matters of utility in connection with certain situations; at any rate, they have been developed psychologically to the extent of independent impulses, each of which is likely to make itself felt where the other would be more practically useful. We may even say that in the countless cases in which struggle is ended otherwise than in the pitiless consistency of the exercise of force, this quite elementary and unreasoned tendency to conciliation is a factor in the result--a factor quite distinct from weakness, or good fellowship; from social morality or fellow-feeling. This tendency to conciliation is, in fact, a quite specific sociological impulse which manifests itself exclusively as a pacificator, and is not even identical with the peaceful disposition in general. The latter avoids strife under all circumstances, or carries it on, if it is once undertaken, without going to extremes, and always with the undercurrents of longing for peace. The spirit of conciliation, however, manifests itself frequently in its full peculiarity precisely after complete surrender to the struggle, after the conflicting energies have exercised themselves to the full in the conflict. Conciliation depends very definitely upon the external situation. It can occur both after the complete victory of the one party and after the progress of indecisive struggle, as well as after the arrangement of the compromise. Either of these situations may end the struggle without the added conciliation of the opponents. To bring about the latter it is not necessary that there shall be a supplementary repudiation or expression of regret with reference to the struggle. Moreover, conciliation is to be distinguished from the situation which may follow it. This may be either a relationship of attachment or alliance, and reciprocal respect, or a certain permanent distance which avoids all positive contacts. Conciliation is thus a removal of the roots of conflict, without reference to the fruits which these formerly bore, as well as to that which may later be planted in their place. D. COMPETITION, STATUS, AND SOCIAL SOLIDARITY 1. Personal Competition, Social Selection, and Status[235] The function of personal competition, considered as a part of the social system, is to assign to each individual his place in that system. If "all the world's a stage," this is a process that distributes the parts among the players. It may do it well or ill, but after some fashion it does it. Some may be cast in parts unsuited to them; good actors may be discharged altogether and worse ones retained; but nevertheless the thing is arranged in some way and the play goes on. That such a process must exist can hardly, it seems to me, admit of question; in fact, I believe that those who speak of doing away with competition use the word in another sense than is here intended. Within the course of the longest human life there is necessarily a complete renewal of the persons whose communication and co-operation make up the life of society. The new members come into the world without any legible sign to indicate what they are fit for, a mystery to others from the first and to themselves as soon as they are capable of reflection: the young man does not know for what he is adapted, and no one else can tell him. The only possible way to get light upon the matter is to adopt the method of experiment. By trying one thing and another and by reflecting upon his experience, he begins to find out about himself, and the world begins to find out about him. His field of investigation is of course restricted, and his own judgment and that of others liable to error, but the tendency of it all can hardly be other than to guide his choice to that one of the available careers in which he is best adapted to hold his own. I may say this much, perhaps, without assuming anything regarding the efficiency or justice of competition as a distributor of social functions, a matter regarding which I shall offer some suggestions later. All I wish to say here is that the necessity of some selective process is inherent in the conditions of social life. It will be apparent that, in the sense in which I use the term, competition is not necessarily a hostile contention, nor even something of which the competing individual is always conscious. From our infancy onward throughout life judgments are daily forming regarding us of which we are unaware, but which go to determine our careers. "The world is full of judgment days." A and B, for instance, are under consideration for some appointment; the experience and personal qualifications of each are duly weighed by those having the appointment to make, and A, we will say, is chosen. Neither of the two need know anything about the matter until the selection is made. It is eligibility to perform some social function that makes a man a competitor, and he may or may not be aware of it, or, if aware of it, he may or may not be consciously opposed to others. I trust that the reader will bear in mind that I always use the word competition in the sense here explained. There is but one alternative to competition as a means of determining the place of the individual in the social system, and that is some form of status, some fixed, mechanical rule, usually a rule of inheritance, which decides the function of the individual without reference to his personal traits, and thus dispenses with any process of comparison. It is possible to conceive of a society organized entirely upon the basis of the inheritance of functions, and indeed societies exist which may be said to approach this condition. In India, for example, the prevalent idea regarding the social function of the individual is that it is unalterably determined by his parentage, and the village blacksmith, shoemaker, accountant, or priest has his place assigned to him by a rule of descent as rigid as that which governs the transmission of one of the crowns of Europe. If all functions were handed down in this way, if there were never any deficiency or surplus of children to take the place of their parents, if there were no progress or decay in the social system making necessary new activities or dispensing with old ones, then there would be no use for a selective process. But precisely in the measure that a society departs from this condition, that individual traits are recognized and made available, or social change of any sort comes to pass, in that measure must there be competition. Status is not an active process, as competition is; it is simply a rule of conservation, a makeshift to avoid the inconveniences of continual readjustment in the social structure. Competition or selection is the only constructive principle, and everything worthy the name of organization had at some time or other a competitive origin. At the present day the eldest son of a peer may succeed to a seat in the House of Lords simply by right of birth; but his ancestor got the seat by competition, by some exercise of personal qualities that made him valued or loved or feared by a king or a minister. Sir Henry Maine has pointed out that the increase of competition is a characteristic trait of modern life, and that the powerful ancient societies of the old world were for the most part non-competitive in their structure. While this is true, it would be a mistake to draw the inference that status is a peculiarly natural or primitive principle of organization and competition a comparatively recent discovery. On the contrary the spontaneous relations among men, as we see in the case of children, and as we may infer from the life of the lower animals, are highly competitive, personal prowess and ascendency being everything and little regard being paid to descent simply as such. The régime of inherited status, on the other hand, is a comparatively complex and artificial product, necessarily of later growth, whose very general prevalence among the successful societies of the old world is doubtless to be explained by the stability and consequently the power which it was calculated to give to the social system. It survived because under certain conditions it was the fittest. It was not and is not universally predominant among savages or barbarous peoples. With the American Indians, for example, the definiteness and authority of status were comparatively small, personal prowess and initiative being correspondingly important. The interesting monograph on Omaha sociology, by Dorsey, published by the United States Bureau of Ethnology, contains many facts showing that the life of this people was highly competitive. When the tribe was at war any brave could organize an expedition against the enemy, if he could induce enough others to join him, and this organizer usually assumed the command. In a similar way the managers of the hunt were chosen because of personal skill; and, in general, "any man can win a name and rank in the state by becoming 'wacuce' or brave, either in war or by the bestowal of gifts and the frequent giving of feasts." Throughout history there has been a struggle between the principles of status and competition regarding the part that each should play in the social system. Generally speaking the advantage of status is in its power to give order and continuity. As Gibbon informs us, "The superior prerogative of birth, when it has obtained the sanction of time and popular opinion, is the plainest and least invidious of all distinctions among mankind," and he is doubtless right in ascribing the confusion of the later Roman Empire largely to the lack of an established rule for the transmission of imperial authority. The chief danger of status is that of suppressing personal development, and so of causing social enfeeblement, rigidity, and ultimate decay. On the other hand, competition develops the individual and gives flexibility and animation to the social order, its danger being chiefly that of disintegration in some form or other. The general tendency in modern times has been toward the relative increase of the free or competitive principle, owing to the fact that the rise of other means of securing stability has diminished the need for status. The latter persists, however, even in the freest countries, as the method by which wealth is transmitted, and also in social classes, which, so far as they exist at all, are based chiefly upon inherited wealth and the culture and opportunities that go with it. The ultimate reason for this persistence--without very serious opposition--in the face of the obvious inequalities and limitations upon liberty that it perpetuates is perhaps the fact that no other method of transmission has arisen that has shown itself capable of giving continuity and order to the control of wealth. 2. Personal Competition and the Evolution of Individual Types[236] The ancient city was primarily a fortress, a place of refuge in time of war. The modern city, on the contrary, is primarily a convenience of commerce and owes its existence to the market place around which it sprang up. Industrial competition and the division of labor, which have probably done most to develop the latent powers of mankind, are possible only upon condition of the existence of markets, of money and other devices for the facilitation of trade and commerce. The old adage which describes the city as the natural environment, of the free man still holds so far as the individual man finds in the chances, the diversity of interests and tasks, and in the vast unconscious co-operation of city life, the opportunity to choose his own vocation and develop his peculiar individual talents. The city offers a market for the special talents of individual men. Personal competition tends to select for each special task the individual who is best suited to perform it. The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause, as the effect of the division of labour. The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom and education. When they came into the world, and for the first six or eight years of their existence, they were perhaps very much alike, and neither their parents nor playfellows could perceive any remarkable difference. About that age, or soon after, they come to be employed in different occupations. The difference of talents comes then to be taken notice of, and widens by degrees, till at last the vanity of the philosopher is willing to acknowledge scarce any resemblance. But without the disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, every man must have procured to himself every necessary and conveniency of life which he wanted. All must have had the same duties to perform, and the same work to do, and there could have been no such difference of employment as could alone give occasion to any great difference of talent. As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labour, so the extent of this division must always be limited by the extent of that power, or, in other words, by the extent of the market.... There are some sorts of industry, even of the lowest kind, which can be carried on nowhere but in a great town. Success, under conditions of personal competition, depends upon concentration upon some single task, and this concentration stimulates the demand for rational methods, technical devices, and exceptional skill. Exceptional skill, while based on natural talent, requires special preparation, and it has called into existence the trade and professional schools, and finally bureaus for vocational guidance. All of these, either directly or indirectly, serve at once to select and emphasize individual differences. Every device which facilitates trade and industry prepares the way for a further division of labor and so tends further to specialize the tasks in which men find their vocations. The outcome of this process is to break down or modify the older organization of society, which was based on family ties, on local associations, on culture, caste, and status, and to substitute for it an organization based on vocational interests. In the city every vocation, even that of a beggar, tends to assume the character of a profession, and the discipline which success in any vocation imposes, together with the associations that it enforces, emphasizes this tendency. The effect of the vocations and the division of labor is to produce, in the first instance, not social groups but vocational types--the actor, the plumber, and the lumber-jack. The organizations, like the trade and labor unions, which men of the same trade or profession form are based on common interests. In this respect they differ from forms of association like the neighborhood, which are based on contiguity, personal association, and the common ties of humanity. The different trades and professions seem disposed to group themselves in classes, that is to say, the artisan, business, and professional classes. But in the modern democratic state the classes have as yet attained no effective organization. Socialism, founded on an effort to create an organization based on "class consciousness," has never succeeded in creating more than a political party. The effects of the division of labor as a discipline may therefore be best studied in the vocational types it has produced. Among the types which it would be interesting to study are: the shopgirl, the policeman, the peddler, the cabman, the night watchman, the clairvoyant, the vaudeville performer, the quack doctor, the bartender, the ward boss, the strike-breaker, the labor agitator, the school teacher, the reporter, the stockbroker, the pawnbroker; all of these are characteristic products of the conditions of city life; each with its special experience, insight, and point of view determines for each vocational group and for the city as a whole its individuality. 3. Division of Labor and Social Solidarity[237] The most remarkable effect of the division of labor is not that it accentuates the distinction of functions already divided but that it makes them interdependent. Its rôle in every case is not simply to embellish or perfect existing societies but to make possible societies which, without it, would not exist. Should the division of labor between the sexes be diminished beyond a certain point, the family would cease to exist and only ephemeral sexual relations would remain. If the sexes had never been separated at all, no form of social life would ever have arisen. It is possible that the economic utility of the division of labor has been a factor in producing the existing form of conjugal society. Nevertheless, the society thus created is not limited to merely economic interests; it represents a unique social and moral order. Individuals are mutually bound together who otherwise would be independent. Instead of developing separately, they concert their efforts; they are interdependent parts of a unity which is effective not only in the brief moments during which there is an interchange of services but afterward indefinitely. For example, does not conjugal solidarity of the type which exists today among the most cultivated people exert its influence constantly and in all the details of life? On the other hand, societies which are created by the division of labor inevitably bear the mark of their origin. Having this special origin, it is not possible that they should resemble those societies which have their origin in the attraction of like for like; the latter are inevitably constituted in another manner, repose on other foundations, and appeal to other sentiments. The assumption that the social relations resulting from the division of labor consist in an exchange of services merely is a misconception of what this exchange implies and of the effects it produces. It assumes that two beings are mutually dependent the one on the other, because they are both incomplete without the other. It interprets this mutual dependence as a purely external relation. Actually this is merely the superficial expression of an internal and more profound state. Precisely because this state is constant, it provokes a complex of mental images which function with a continuity independent of the series of external relations. The image of that which completes us is inseparable from the image of ourselves, not only because it is associated with us, but especially because it is our natural complement. It becomes then a permanent and integral part of self-consciousness to such an extent that we cannot do without it and seek by every possible means to emphasize and intensify it. We like the society of the one whose image haunts us, because the presence of the object reinforces the actual perception and gives us comfort. We suffer, on the contrary, from every circumstance which, like separation and death, is likely to prevent the return or diminish the vivacity of the idea which has become identified with our idea of ourselves. Short as this analysis is, it suffices to show that this complex is not identical with that which rests on sentiments of sympathy which have their source in mere likeness. Unquestionably there can be the sense of solidarity between others and ourselves only so far as we conceive others united with ourselves. When the union results from a perception of likeness, it is a cohesion. The two representations become consolidated because, being undistinguished totally or in part, they are mingled and are no more than one, and are consolidated only in the measure in which they are mingled. On the contrary, in the case of the division of labor, each is outside the other, and they are united only because they are distinct. It is not possible that sentiments should be the same in the two cases, nor the social relations which are derived from them the same. We are then led to ask ourselves if the division of labor does not play the same rôle in more extended groups; if, in the contemporaneous societies where it has had a development with which we are familiar, it does not function in such a way as to integrate the social body and to assure its unity. It is quite legitimate to assume that the facts which we have observed reproduce themselves there, but on a larger scale. The great political societies, like smaller ones, we may assume maintain themselves in equilibrium, thanks to the specialization of their tasks. The division of labor is here, again, if not the only, at least the principal, source of the social solidarity. Comte had already reached this point of view. Of all the sociologists, so far as we know, he is the first who has pointed out in the division of labor anything other than a purely economic phenomenon. He has seen there "the most essential condition of the social life," provided that one conceives it "in all its rational extent, that is to say, that one applies the conception to the ensemble of all our diverse operations whatsoever, instead of limiting it, as we so often do, to the simple material usages." Considered under this aspect, he says: It immediately leads us to regard not only individuals and classes but also, in many respects, the different peoples as constantly participating, in their own characteristic ways and in their own proper degree, in an immense and common work whose inevitable development gradually unites the actual co-operators in a series with their predecessors and at the same time in a series with their successors. It is, then, the continuous redivison of our diverse human labors which mainly constitutes social solidarity and which becomes the elementary cause of the extension and increasing complexity of the social organism. If this hypothesis is demonstrated, division of labor plays a rôle much more important than that which has ordinarily been attributed to it. It is not to be regarded as a mere luxury, desirable perhaps, but not indispensable to society; it is rather a condition of its very existence. It is this, or at least it is mainly this, that assures the solidarity of social groups; it determines the essential traits of their constitution. It follows--even though we are not yet prepared to give a final solution to the problem, we can nevertheless foresee from this point--that, if such is really the function of the division of labor, it may be expected to have a moral character, because the needs of order, of harmony, of social solidarity generally, are what we understand by moral needs. Social life is derived from a double source: (a) from a similarity of minds, and (b) from the division of labor. The individual is socialized in the first case, because, not having his own individuality, he is confused, along with his fellows, in the bosom of the same collective type; in the second case, because, even though he possesses a physiognomy and a temperament which distinguish him from others, he is dependent upon these in the same measure in which he is distinguished from them. Society results from this union. Like-mindedness gives birth to judicial regulations which, under the menace of measures of repression, impose upon everybody uniform beliefs and practices. The more pronounced this like-mindedness, the more completely the social is confused with the religious life, the more nearly economic institutions approach communism. The division of labor, on the other hand, gives birth to regulations and laws which determine the nature and the relations of the divided functions, but the violation of which entails only punitive measures not of an expiatory character. Every code of laws is accompanied by a body of regulations purely moral. Where the penal law is voluminous, moral consensus is very extended; that is to say, a multitude of collective activities is under the guardianship of public opinion. Where the right of reparation is well developed, there each profession maintains a code of professional ethics. In a group of workers there invariably exists a body of opinion, diffused throughout the limits of the group, which, although not fortified with legal sanctions, still enforces its decrees. There are manners and customs, recognized by all the members of a profession, which no one of them could infringe without incurring the blame of society. Certainly this code of morals is distinguished from the preceding by differences analogous to those which separate the two corresponding kinds of laws. It is, in fact, a code localized in a limited region of society. Furthermore, the repressive character of the sanctions which are attached to it is sensibly less accentuated. Professional faults arouse a much feebler response than offenses against the mores of the larger society. Nevertheless, the customs and code of a profession are imperative. They oblige the individual to act in accordance with ends which to him are not his own, to make concessions, to consent to compromises, to take account of interests superior to his own. The consequence is that, even where the society rests most completely upon the division of labor, it does not disintegrate into a dust of atoms, between which there can exist only external and temporary contacts. Every function which one individual exercises is invariably dependent upon functions exercised by others and forms with them a system of interdependent parts. It follows that, from the nature of the task one chooses, corresponding duties follow. Because we fill this or that domestic or social function, we are imprisoned in a net of obligations from which we do not have the right to free ourselves. There is especially one organ toward which our state of dependencies is ever increasing--the state. The points at which we are in contact with it are multiplying. So are the occasions in which it takes upon itself to recall us to a sense of the common solidarity. There are then two great currents in the social life, collectivism and individualism, corresponding to which we discover two types of structure not less different. Of these currents, that which has its origin in like-mindedness is at first alone and without rival. At this moment it is identified with the very life of the society; little by little it finds its separate channels and diminishes, whilst the second becomes ever larger. In the same way, the segmentary structure of society is more and more overlaid by the other, but without ever disappearing completely. III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS 1. Forms of Accommodation The literature upon accommodation will be surveyed under four heads; (a) forms of accommodation; (b) subordination and superordination; (c) accommodation groups; and (d) social organization. The term accommodation, as has been noted, developed as a differentiation within the field of the biological concept of adaptation. Ward's dictum that "the environment transforms the animal, while man transforms the environment"[238] contained the distinction. Thomas similarly distinguished between the animal with its method of adaptation and man with his method of control. Bristol in his work on _Social Adaptation_ is concerned, as the subtitle of the volume indicates, "with the development of the doctrine of adaptation as a theory of social progress." Of the several types of adaptation that he proposes, however, all but the first represent accommodations. Baldwin, though not the first to make the distinction, was the first student to use the separate term accommodation. "By accommodation old habits are broken up, and new co-ordinations are made which are more complex."[239] Baldwin suggested a division of accommodation into the three fields: acclimatization, naturalization, and equilibrium. The term equilibrium accurately describes the type of organization established by competition between the different biological species and the environment, but not the more permanent organizations of individuals and groups which we find in human society. In human society equilibrium means organization. The research upon acclimatization is considerable, although there is far from unanimity of opinion in regard to its findings. Closely related to acclimatization but in the field of social naturalization are the accommodations that take place in colonization and immigration. In colonization the adjustment is not only to climatic conditions but to the means of livelihood and habits of life required by the new situation. Historic colonial settlements have most infrequently been made in inhospitable areas, and that involved accommodations to primitive peoples of different and generally lower cultural level than the settlers. Professor Keller's work on _Colonization_ surveys the differences in types of colonial ventures and describes the adjustments involved. It includes also a valuable bibliography of the literature of the subject. In immigration the accommodation to the economic situation and to the folkways and mores of the native society are more important than in colonization. The voluminous literature upon immigration deals but slightly with the interesting accommodations of the newcomer to his new environment. One of the important factors in the process, as emphasized in the recent "Americanization Study" of the Carnegie Corporation, is the immigrant community which serves as a mediating agency between the familiar and the strange. The greater readiness of accommodation of recent immigrants as compared with that of an earlier period has been explained in terms of facilities of transportation, communication, and even more in the mobility of employment in large-scale modern industry with its minute subdivision of labor and its slight demand for skill and training on the part of the employees. The more subtle forms of accommodation to new social situations have not been subjected to analysis, although there is a small but important number of studies upon homesickness. In fiction, to be sure, the difficulties of the tenderfoot in the frontier community, or the awkward rural lad in an urban environment and the _nouveau riche_ in their successful entrée among the social élite are often accuately and sympathetically described. The recent immigrant autobiographies contain materials which throw much new light on the situation of the immigrant in process of accommodation to the American environment. The whole process of social organization is involved in the processes by which persons find their places in groups and groups are articulated into the life of the larger and more inclusive societies. The literature on the taming of animals, the education of juveniles and adults, and on social control belongs in this field. The writings on diplomacy, on statescraft, and upon adjudication of disputes are also to be considered here. The problem of the person whether in the narrow field of social work or the broader fields of human relations is fundamentally a problem of the adjustment of the person to his social milieu, to his family, to his primary social groups, to industry, and to cultural, civic, and religious institutions. The problems of community organization are for the most part problems of accommodation, of articulation of groups within the community and of the adjustment of the local Community to the life of the wider community of which it is a part. Adjustments of personal and social relations in the past have been made unreflectively and with a minimum of personal and social consciousness. The extant literature reveals rather an insistent demand for these accommodations than any systematic study of the processes by which the accommodations take place. Simmel's observation upon subordination and superordination is almost the only attempt that has been made to deal with the subject from the point of view of sociology. 2. Subordination and Superordination Materials upon subordination and superordination may be found in the literature under widely different names. Thorndike, McDougall, and others have reported upon the original tendencies in the individual to domination and submission or to self-assertion and self-abasement. Veblen approaches nearer to a sociological explanation in his analysis of the self-conscious attitudes of invidious comparison and conspicuous waste in the leisure class. The application of our knowledge of rapport, esprit de corps, and morale to an explanation of personal conduct and group behavior is one of the most promising fields for future research. In the family, rapport and consensus represent the most complete co-ordination of its members. The life of the family should be studied intensively in order to define more exactly the nature of the family consensus, the mechanism of family rapport, and minor accommodations made to minimize conflict and to avert tendencies to disintegration in the interest of this real unity. Strachey's _Life of Queen Victoria_ sketches an interesting case of subordination and superordination in which the queen is the subordinate, and her adroit but cynical minister, Disraeli, is the master. Future research will provide a more adequate sociology of subordination and superordination. A survey of the present output of material upon the nature and the effects of personal contacts reinforces the need for such a fundamental study. The obsolete writings upon personal magnetism have been replaced by the so-called "psychology of salesmanship," "scientific methods of character reading," and "the psychology of leadership." The wide sale of these books indicates the popular interest, quite as much as the lack of any fundamental understanding of the technique of human relations. 3. Accommodation Groups The field of investigation available for the study of accommodation groups and their relation to conflict groups may perhaps be best illustrated by the table on page 722. The existence of conflict groups like parties, sects, nationalities, represents the area in any society of unstable equilibrium. Accommodation groups, classes, castes, and denominations on the other hand, represent in this same society the areas of stable equilibrium. A boys' club carries on contests, under recognized rules, with similar organizations. A denomination engages in fraternal rivalry with other denominations for the advancement of common interests of the church universal. A nation possesses status, rights, and responsibilities only in a commonwealth of nations of which it is a member. Conflict Groups Accommodation Groups 1. Gangs 1. Clubs 2. Labor organizations, employers' 2. Social classes, vocational associations, middle-class unions, groups tenant protective unions 3. Races 3. Castes 4. Sects 4. Denominations 5. Nationalities 5. Nations The works upon accommodation groups are concerned almost exclusively with the principles, methods, and technique of organization. There are, indeed, one or two important descriptive works upon secret organizations in primitive and modern times. The books and articles, however, on organized boys' groups deal with the plan of organization of Boy Scouts, Boys' Brotherhood Republic, George Junior Republics, Knights of King Arthur, and many other clubs of these types. They are not studies of natural groups. The comparative study of social classes and vocational groups is an unworked field. The differentiation of social types, especially in urban life, and the complexity and subtlety of the social distinctions separating social and vocational classes, opens a fruitful prospect for investigation. Scattered through a wide literature, ranging from official inquiries to works of fiction, there are, in occasional paragraphs, pages, and chapters, observations of value. In the field of castes the work of research is well under way. The caste system of India has been the subject of careful examination and analysis. Sighele points out that the prohibition of intermarriage observed in its most rigid and absolute form is a fundamental distinction of the caste. If this be regarded as the fundamental criterion, the Negro race in the United States occupies the position of a caste. The prostitute, in America, until recently constituted a separate caste. With the systematic breaking up of the segregated vice districts in our great cities prostitution, as a caste, seems to have disappeared. The place of the prostitute seems to have been occupied by the demimondaine who lives on the outskirts of society but who is not by any means an outcast. It is difficult to dissociate the materials upon nationalities from those upon nations. The studies, however, of the internal organization of the state, made to promote law and order, would come under the latter head. Here, also, would be included studies of the extension of the police power to promote the national welfare. In international relations studies of international law, of international courts of arbitration, of leagues or associations of nations manifest the increasing interest in the accommodations that would avert or postpone conflicts of militant nationalities. In the United States there is considerable literature upon church federation and the community church. This literature is one expression of the transition of the Protestant churches from sectarian bodies, engaged in warfare for the support of distinctive doctrines and dogmas, to co-operating denominations organized into the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. 4. Social Organization Until recently there has been more interest manifested in elaborating theories of the stages in the evolution of society than in analyzing the structure of different types of societies. Durkheim, however, in _De la division du travail social_, indicated how the division of labor and the social attitudes, or the mental accommodations to the life-situation, shape social organization. Cooley, on the other hand, in his work _Social Organization_ conceived the structure of society to be "the larger mind," or an outgrowth of human nature and human ideals. The increasing number of studies of individual primitive communities has furnished data for the comparative study of different kinds of social organization. Schurtz, Vierkandt, Rivers, Lowie, and others in the last twenty years have made important comparative studies in this field. The work of these scholars has led to the abandonment of the earlier notions of uniform evolutionary stages of culture in which all peoples, primitive, ancient, and modern alike, might be classified. New light has been thrown upon the actual accommodations in the small family, in the larger family group, the clan, gens or sib, in the secret society, and in the tribe which determined the patterns of life of primitive peoples under different geographical and historical conditions. At the present time, the investigations of social organization of current and popular interest have to do with the problems of social work and of community life. "Community organization," "community action," "know your own community" are phrases which express the practical motives behind the attempts at community study. Such investigations as have been made, with a few shining exceptions, the Pittsburgh Survey and the community studies of the Russell Sage Foundation, have been superficial. All, perhaps, have been tentative and experimental. The community has not been studied from a fundamental standpoint. Indeed, there was not available, as a background of method and of orientation, any adequate analysis of social organization. A penetrating analysis of the social structure of a community must quite naturally be based upon studies of human geography. Plant and animal geography has been studied, but slight attention has been given to human geography, that is, to the local distribution of persons who constitute a community and the accommodations that are made because of the consequent physical distances and social relationships. Ethnological and historical studies of individual communities furnish valuable comparative materials for a treatise upon human ecology which would serve as a guidebook for studies in community organization. C. J. Galpin's _The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community_ is an example of the recognition of ecological factors as basic in the study of social organization. In the bibliography of this chapter is given a list of references to certain of the experiments in community organization. Students should study this literature in the light of the more fundamental studies of types of social groups and studies of individual communities listed in an earlier bibliography.[240] It is at once apparent that the rural community has been more carefully studied than has the urban community. Yet more experiments in community organization have been tried out in the city than in the country. Reports upon social-center activities, upon community councils, and other types of community organization have tended to be enthusiastic rather than factual and critical. The most notable experiment of community organization, the Social Unit Plan, tried out in Cincinnati, was what the theatrical critics call a _succès d'estime_, but after the experiment had been tried it was abandoned. Control of conditions of community life is not likely to meet with success unless based on an appreciation and understanding of human nature on the one hand, and of the natural or ecological organization of community life on the other. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY I. THE PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY OF ACCOMMODATION A. _Accommodation Defined_ (1) Morgan, C. Lloyd, and Baldwin, J. Mark. Articles on "Accommodation and Adaptation," _Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology_, I, 7-8, 14-15. (2) Baldwin, J. Mark. _Mental Development in the Child and the Race._ Methods and processes. Chap, xvi, "Habit and Accommodation," pp. 476-88. New York, 1895. (3) Simmel, Georg. _Soziologie._ Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. "Kompromiss und Versöhnung," pp. 330-36. Leipzig, 1908. (4) Bristol, L. M. _Social Adaptation._ A study in the development of the doctrine of adaptation as a theory of social progress. Cambridge, Mass., 1915. (5) Ross, E. A. _Principles of Sociology._ "Toleration," "Compromise," "Accommodation," pp. 225-34. New York, 1920. (6) Ritchie, David G. _Natural Rights._ A criticism of some political and ethical conceptions. Chap. viii, "Toleration," pp. 157-209. London, 1895. (7) Morley, John. _On Compromise._ London, 1874. (8) Tardieu, É. "Le cynisme: étude psychologique," _Revue philosophique_, LVII (1904), 1-28. (9) Jellinek, Georg. _Die Lehre von den Staatenverbindungen._ Berlin, 1882. B. _Acclimatization and Colonization_ (1) Wallace, Alfred R. Article on "Acclimatization." _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, I, 114-19. (2) Brinton, D. G. _The Basis of Social Relations._ A study in ethnic psychology. Part II, chap. iv, "The Influence of Geographic Environment," pp. 180-99. New York, 1902. (3) Ripley, W. Z. _The Races of Europe._ A sociological study. Chap. xxi, "Acclimatization: the Geographical Future of the European Races," pp. 560-89. New York, 1899. [Bibliography.] (4) Virchow, Rudolph. "Acclimatization," _Popular Science Monthly_, XXVIII (1886), 507-17. (5) Boas, Franz. "Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants," _Report of Immigration Commission, 1907._ Washington, 1911. (6) Keller, Albert G. _Colonization._ A study of the founding of new societies. Boston, 1908. [Bibliography.] (7) ----. "The Value of the Study of Colonies for Sociology," _American Journal of Sociology_, XII (1906), 417-20. (8) Roscher, W., and Jannasch, R. _Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung._ 3d ed. Leipzig, 1885. (9) Leroy-Beaulieu, P. _De la colonisation chez les peuples modernes._ 5th ed., 2 vols. Paris, 1902. (10) Huntington, Ellsworth. _Civilization and Climate._ Chap. iii, "The White Man in the Tropics," pp. 35-48. New Haven, 1915. (11) Ward, Robert De C. _Climate._ Considered especially in relation to man. Chap. viii, "The Life of Man in the Tropics," pp. 220-71. New York, 1908. (12) Bryce, James. "British Experience in the Government of Colonies," _Century_, LVII (1898-99), 718-29. C. _Superordination and Subordination_ (1) Simmel, Georg. "Superiority and Subordination as Subject Matter of Sociology," translated from the German by Albion W. Small, _American Journal of Sociology_, II (1896-97), 167-89, 392-415. (2) Thorndike, E. L. _The Original Nature of Man._ "Mastering and Submissive Behavior," pp. 92-97. New York, 1913. (3) McDougall, William. _An Introduction to Social Psychology._ "The Instincts of Self-Abasement (or Subjection) and of Self-Assertion (or Self-Display) and the Emotions of Subjection and Elation," pp. 62-66. 12th ed. Boston, 1917. (4) Münsterberg, Hugo. _Psychology, General and Applied._ Chap. xviii, "Submission," pp. 254-64. New York, 1914. (5) Galton, Francis. _Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development._ "Gregarious and Slavish Instincts," pp. 68-82. New York, 1883. (6) Ellis, Havelock. _Studies in the Psychology of Sex._ Vol. III, "Analysis of the Sexual Impulse." "Sexual Subjection," pp. 60-71; 85-87. Philadelphia, 1914. (7) Calhoun, Arthur W. _A Social History of the American Family._ From colonial times to the present. Vol. II, "From Independence through the Civil War." Chap. iv, "The Social Subordination of Woman," pp. 79-101. 3 vols. Cincinnati, 1918. (8) Galton, Francis. "The First Steps toward the Domestication of Animals," _Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London_, III, 122-38. D. _Conversion_ (1) Starbuck, Edwin D. _The Psychology of Religion._ London, 1899. (2) James, William. _The Varieties of Religious Experience._ Lectures ix and x, "Conversion," pp. 189-258. London, 1902. (3) Coe, George A. _The Psychology of Religion._ Chap. x, "Conversion," pp. 152-74. Chicago, 1916. (4) Prince, Morton. "The Psychology of Sudden Religious Conversion," _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, I (1906-7), 42-54. (5) Tawney, G. A. "The Period of Conversion," _Psychological Review_, XI (1904), 210-16. (6) Partridge, G. E. _Studies in the Psychology of Intemperance._ Pp. 152-63. New York, 1912. [Mental cures of alcoholism.] (7) Begbie, Harold. _Twice-born Men._ A clinic in regeneration. A footnote in narrative to Professor William James's _The Varieties of Religious Experience_. New York, 1909. (8) Burr, Anna R. _Religious Confessions and Confessants._ With a chapter on the history of introspection. Boston, 1914. (9) Patterson, R. J. _Catch-My-Pal._ A story of Good Samaritanship. New York, 1913. (10) Weber, John L. "A Modern Miracle, the Remarkable Conversion of Former Governor Patterson of Tennessee," _Congregationalist_, XCIX (1914), 6, 8. [See also "The Conversion of Governor Patterson," _Literary Digest_, XLVIII (1914), 111-12.] II. FORMS OF ACCOMMODATION A. _Slavery_ (1) Letourneau, Ch. _L'évolution de l'esclavage dans les diverses races humaines._ Paris, 1897. (2) Nieboer, Dr. H. J. _Slavery as an Industrial System._ Ethnological researches. The Hague, 1900. [Bibliography.] (3) Wallon, H. _Historie de l'esclavage dans l'antiquité._ 2d ed., 3 vols. Paris, 1879. (4) Sugenheim, S. _Geschichte der Aufhebung der Leibeigenschaft und Hörigkeit in Europa bis um die Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts._ St. Petersburg, 1861. (5) Edwards, Bryan. _The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies._ 3 vols. London, 1793-1801. (6) Helps, Arthur. _Life of Las Casas, "the Apostle of the Indies."_ 5th ed. London, 1890. (7) Phillips, Ulrich B. _American Negro Slavery._ A survey of the supply, employment, and control of Negro labor as determined by the plantation régime. New York, 1918. (8) ----. _Plantation and Frontier, 1649-1863._ Documentary history of American industrial society. Vols. I-II. Cleveland, 1910-11. (9) _A Professional Planter._ Practical rules for the management and medical treatment of Negro slaves in the Sugar Colonies. London, 1803. [Excerpt in Phillips, U. B., _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 129-30.] (10) Russell, J. H. "Free Negro in Virginia, 1619-1865," _Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science._ Baltimore, 1913. (11) Olmsted, F. L. _A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States._ With remarks on their economy. New York, 1856. (12) Smedes, Susan D. _Memorials of a Southern Planter._ Baltimore, 1887. (13) Sartorius von Walterhausen, August. _Die Arbeitsverfassung der englischen Kolonien in Nordamerika._ Strassburg, 1894. (14) Ballagh, James C. "A History of Slavery in Virginia," _Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science_. Baltimore, 1902. (15) McCormac, E. I. "White Servitude in Maryland, 1634-1820," _Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science_. Baltimore, 1904. (16) Kemble, Frances A. _Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839._ New York, 1863. B. _Caste_ (1) Risley, Herbert H. _The People of India._ Calcutta and London, 1915. (2) ----. _India._ Ethnographic Appendices, being the data upon which the caste chapter of the report is based. Appendix IV. Typical Tribes and Castes. Calcutta, 1903. (3) Bouglé, M. C. "Remarques générales sur le régime des castes," _L'Année sociologique_, IV (1899-1900), 1-64. (4) Crooke, W. "The Stability of Caste and Tribal Groups in India," _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_, XLIV (1914), 270-81. (5) Bhattacharya, Jogendra Nath. _Hindu Castes and Sects._ An exposition of the origin of the Hindu caste system and the bearing of the sects toward each other and toward other religious systems. Calcutta, 1896. (6) Somló, F. _Der Güterverkehr in der Urgesellschaft._ "Zum Ursprung der Kastenbildung," pp. 157-59. Instituts Solvay: Travaux de l'Institut de Sociologie. _Notes et mémoires_, Fascicule 8. Bruxelles, 1909. (7) Ratzel, Friedrich. _Völkerkunde._ I, 81. 2d rev. ed. Leipzig and Wien, 1894. [The origin of caste in the difference of occupation.] (8) Iyer, L. K. Anantha Krishna. _The Cochin Tribes and Castes._ London, 1909. (9) Bailey, Thomas P. _Race Orthodoxy in the South._ And other aspects of the Negro question. New York, 1914. C. _Classes_ (1) Bücher, Carl. _Industrial Evolution._ Translated from the 3d German edition by S. Morley Wickett. Chap. ix, "Organization of Work and the Formation of Social Classes," pp. 315-44. New York, 1907. (2) Hobhouse, L. T. _Morals in Evolution._ A study in comparative ethics. Part I, chap. vii, "Class Relations," pp. 270-317. New York, 1915. (3) Schmoller, Gustav. _Grundriss der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre._ Vol. I, Book II, chap. vi, "Die gesellschaftliche Klassenbildung," pp. 391-411. 6. Aufl. Leipzig, 1901. (4) Cooley, Charles H. _Social Organization._ Part IV, "Social Classes," pp. 209-309. New York, 1909. (5) Bauer, Arthur. "Les classes sociales," _Revue internationale de sociologie_, XI (1903), 119-35; 243-58; 301-16; 398-413; 474-98; 576-87. [Includes discussions at successive meetings of the Société de Sociologie de Paris by G. Tarde, Ch. Limousin, H. Monin, René Worms, E. Delbet, L. Philippe, M. Coicou, H. Blondel, G. Pinet, P. Vavin, E. de Roberty, G. Lafargue, M. le Gouix, M. Kovalewsky, I. Loutschisky, E. Séménoff, Mme. de Mouromtzeff, R. de la Grasserie, E. Cheysson, D. Draghicesco.] (6) Bouglé, C. _Les idées égalitaires._ Étude sociologique. Paris, 1899. (7) Thomas, William I. _Source Book for Social Origins._ "The Relation of the Medicine Man to the Origin of the Professional Occupations," pp. 281-303. Chicago, 1909. (8) Tarde, Gabriel. "L'hérédité des professions," _Revue internationale de sociologie_, VIII (1900), 50-59. [Discussion of the subject was continued under the title "L'hérédité et la continuité des professions," pp. 117-24, 196-207.] (9) Knapp, Georg F. _Die Bauernbefreiung und der Ursprung der Landarbeiter in den älteren Theilen Preussens._ Leipzig, 1887. (10) Zimmern, Alfred E. _The Greek Commonwealth._ Politics and economics in fifth-century Athens. Pp. 255-73, 323-47, 378-94. 2d rev. ed. Oxford, 1915. (11) Mallock, W. H. _Aristocracy and Evolution._ A study of the rights, the origin, and the social functions of the wealthier classes. New York, 1898. (12) Veblen, Thorstein. _The Theory of the Leisure Class._ An economic study in the evolution of institutions. New York, 1899. (13) D'Aeth, F. G. "Present Tendencies of Class Differentiation," _Sociological Review_, III (1910), 267-76. III. ACCOMMODATION AND ORGANIZATION A. _Social Organization_ (1) Durkheim, É. _De la division du travail social._ 2d ed. Paris, 1902. (2) Cooley, Charles H. _Social Organization._ A study of the larger mind. Part V, "Institutions," pp. 313-92. New York, 1909. (3) Salz, Arthur. "Zur Geschichte der Berufsidee," _Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft_, XXXVII (1913), 380-423. (4) Rivers, W. H. R. _Kinship and Social Organization._ Studies in economic and political science. London, 1914. (5) Schurtz, Heinrich. _Altersklassen und Männerbünde._ Eine Darstellung der Grundformen der Gesellschaft. Berlin, 1902. (6) Vierkandt, A. "Die politischen Verhältnisse der Naturvölker," _Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft_, IV, 417-26, 497-510. (7) Lowie, Robert H. _Primitive Society._ Chap. x, "Associations," chap. xi, "Theory of Associations," pp. 257-337. New York, 1920. (8) Zimmern, Alfred E. _The Greek Commonwealth._ Politics and economics in fifth-century Athens. 2d rev. ed. Oxford, 1915. (9) Thomas, William I. _Source Book for Social Origins._ Ethnological materials, psychological standpoint, classified and annotated bibliographies for the interpretation of savage society. Part VII, "Social Organization, Morals, the State," pp. 753-869. Chicago, 1909. [Bibliography.] B. _Secret Societies_ (1) Simmel, Georg. "The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies," translated from the German by Albion W. Small, _American Journal of Sociology_, XI (1905-6), 441-98. (2) Heckethorn, C. W. _The Secret Societies of All Ages and Countries._ A comprehensive account of upwards of one hundred and sixty secret organizations--religious, political, and social--from the most remote ages down to the present time. New ed., rev. and enl., 2 vols. London, 1897. (3) Webster, Hutton. _Primitive Secret Societies._ A study in early politics and religion. New York, 1908. (4) Schuster, G. _Die geheimen Gesellschaften, Verbindungen und Orden._ 2 vols. Leipzig, 1906. (5) Boas, Franz. "The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians," _U.S. National Museum, Annual Report, 1895_, pp. 311-738. Washington, 1897. (6) Frobenius, L. "Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas," _Abhandlungen der Kaiserlichen Leopoldinisch-Carolinischen deutschen Akademie der Naturforscher_, LXXIV, 1-278. (7) Pfleiderer, Otto. _Primitive Christianity, Its Writings and Teachings in Their Historical Connections._ Vol. III, chap, i, "The Therapeutae and the Essenes," pp. 1-22. Translated from the German by W. Montgomery. New York, 1910. (8) Jennings, Hargrave. _The Rosicrucians, Their Rites and Mysteries._ 3d rev. and enl. ed., 2 vols. London, 1887. (9) Stillson, Henry L., and Klein, Henri F. Article on "The Masonic Fraternity," _The Americana_, XVIII, 383-89. [Bibliography.] (10) Johnston, R. M. _The Napoleonic Empire in Southern Italy and the Rise of the Secret Societies._ Part II, "The Rise of the Secret Societies," Vol. II, pp. 3-139, 153-55; especially chap. ii, "Origin and Rites of the Carbonari," Vol. II, pp. 19-44. London, 1904. [Bibliography.] (11) Fleming, Walter L. _Documentary History of Reconstruction._ Vol. II, chap. xii, "The Ku Klux Movement," pp. 327-77. Cleveland, 1907. (12) Lester, J. C., and Wilson, D. L. _The Ku Klux Klan._ Its origin, growth, and disbandment. With appendices containing the prescripts of the Ku Klux Klan, specimen orders and warnings. With introduction and notes by Walter L. Fleming. New York and Washington, 1905. (13) La Hodde, Lucien de. _The Cradle of Rebellions._ A history of the secret societies of France. Translated from the French by J. W. Phelps. New York, 1864. (14) Spadoni, D. _Sètte, cospirazioni e cospiratori nello Stato Pontificio all'indomani della restaurazioni._ Torino, 1904. (15) "Societies, Criminal," _The Americana_, XXV, 201-5. (16) Clark, Thomas A. _The Fraternity and the College._ Being a series of papers dealing with fraternity problems. Menasha, Wis., 1915. C. _Social Types_ (1) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, F. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and America._ Monograph of an immigrant group. Vol. III, "Life Record of an Immigrant." Boston, 1919. ["Introduction," pp. 5-88, analyzes and interprets three social types: the philistine, the bohemian, and the creative.] (2) Paulhan, Fr. _Les caractères._ Livre II, "Les types déterminés par les tendances sociales," pp. 143-89. Paris, 1902. (3) Rousiers, Paul de. _L'élite dans la société moderne._ Son rôle, etc. Paris, 1914. (4) Bradford, Gamaliel, Jr. _Types of American Character._ New York, 1895. (5) Kellogg, Walter G. _The Conscientious Objector._ Introduction by Newton D. Baker. New York, 1919. (6) Hapgood, Hutchins. _Types from City Streets._ New York, 1910. (7) Bab, Julius. _Die Berliner Bohème._ Berlin, 1905. (8) Cory, H. E. _The Intellectuals and the Wage Workers._ A study in educational psychoanalysis. New York, 1919. (9) Buchanan, J. R. _The Story of a Labor Agitator._ New York, 1903. (10) Taussig, F. W. _Inventors and Money-Makers._ New York, 1915. (11) Stoker, Bram. _Famous Impostors._ London, 1910. D. _Community Organization_ (1) Galpin, Charles J. "Rural Relations of the Village and Small City," _University of Wisconsin Bulletin No. 411._ (2) ----. _Rural Life._ Chaps. vii-xi, pp. 153-314. New York, 1918. (3) Hayes, A. W. _Rural Community Organization._ Chicago, 1921. [In Press.] (4) Morgan, E. L. "Mobilizing a Rural Community," _Massachusetts Agricultural College, Extension Bulletin No. 23._ Amherst, 1918. (5) "Rural Organization," _Proceedings of the Third National Country Life Conference, Springfield, Massachusetts, 1920._ Chicago, 1921. (6) Hart, Joseph K. _Community Organization._ New York, 1920. (7) _National Social Unit Organization, Bulletins 1, 2, 2a, 3, 4, 5._ Cincinnati, 1917-19. (8) Devine, Edward T. "Social Unit in Cincinnati," _Survey_, XLIII (1919), 115-26. (9) Hicks, Mary L., and Eastman, Rae S. "Block Workers as Developed under the Social Unit Experiment in Cincinnati," _Survey_ XLIV (1920), 671-74. (10) Ward, E. J. _The Social Center._ New York, 1913. [Bibliography.] (11) Collier, John. "Community Councils--Democracy Every Day," _Survey_, XL (1918), 604-6; 689-91; 709-11. [Describes community defense organizations formed in rural and urban districts during the war.] (12) Weller, Charles F. "Democratic Community Organization," An after-the-war experiment in Chester, _Survey_, XLIV (1920), 77-79. (13) Rainwater, Clarence E. _Community Organization._ Sociological Monograph No. 15, University of Southern California. Los Angeles, 1920. [Bibliography.] TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES 1. Biological Accommodation and Social Accommodation. 2. Acclimatization as Accommodation. 3. The Psychology of Accommodation. 4. Conversion as a Form of Accommodation: A Study of Mutations of Attitudes in Religion, Politics, Morals, Personal Relation, etc. 5. The Psychology and Sociology of Homesickness and Nostalgia. 6. Conflict and Accommodation: War and Peace, Enmity and Conciliation, Rivalry and Status. 7. Compromise as a Form of Accommodation. 8. The Subtler Forms of Accommodation: Flattery, "Front," Ceremony, etc. 9. The Organization of Attitudes in Accommodation: Prestige, Taboo, Rapport, Prejudice, Fear, etc. 10. Slavery, Caste, and Class as Forms of Accommodation. 11. The Description and Analysis of Typical Examples of Accommodation: the Political "Boss" and the Voter, Physician and Patient, the Coach and the Members of the Team, the Town Magnate and His Fellow-Citizens, "The Four Hundred" and "Hoi Polloi," etc. 12. Social Solidarity as the Organization of Competing Groups. 13. Division of Labor as a Form of Accommodation. 14. A Survey of Historical Types of the Family in Terms of the Changes in Forms of Subordination and Superordination of Its Members. 15. Social Types as Accommodations: the Quack Doctor, the Reporter, the Strike Breaker, the Schoolteacher, the Stockbroker, etc. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. How do you distinguish between biological adaptation and social accommodation? 2. Is domestication biological adaptation or accommodation? 3. Give illustrations of acclimatization as a form of accommodation. 4. Discuss phenomena of colonization with reference to accommodation. 5. What is the relation of lonesomeness to accommodation? 6. Do you agree with Nieboer's definition of slavery? Is the slave a person? If so, to what extent? How would you compare the serf with the slave in respect to his status? 7. To what extent do slavery and caste as forms of accommodation rest upon (a) physical force, (b) mental attitudes? 8. What is the psychology of subordination and superordination? 9. What do you understand to be the relation of suggestion and rapport to subordination and superordination? 10. What is meant by a person "knowing his place"? 11. How do you explain the attitude of "the old servant" to society? Do you agree with her in lamenting the change in attitude of persons engaged in domestic service? 12. What types of the subtler forms of accommodation occur to you? 13. What arguments would you advance for the proposition that the relation of superiority and inferiority is reciprocal? 14. "All leaders are also led, as in countless cases the master is the slave of his slaves." Explain. 15. What illustrations, apart from the text, occur to you of reciprocal relations in superiority and subordination? 16. What do you understand to be the characteristic differences of the three types of superordination and subordination? 17. How would you classify the following groups according to these three types: the patriarchal family, the modern family, England from 1660 to 1830, manufacturing enterprise, labor union, army, boys' gang, boys' club, Christianity, humanitarian movement? 18. What do you think Simmel means by the term "accommodation"? 19. How is accommodation related to peace? 20. Does accommodation end struggle? 21. In what sense does commerce imply accommodation? 22. What type of interaction is involved in compromise? What illustrations would you suggest to bring out your point? 23. Does compromise make for progress? 24. Is a compromise better or worse than either or both of the proposals involved in it? 25. What, in your judgment, is the relation of personal competition to the division of labor? 26. What examples of division of labor outside the economic field would you suggest? 27. What do you understand to be the relation of personal competition and group competition? 28. In what different ways does status (a) grow out of, and (b) prevent, the processes of personal competition and group competition? 29. To what extent, at the present time, is success in life determined by personal competition, and social selection by status? 30. In what ways does the division of labor make for social solidarity? 31. What is the difference between social solidarity based upon like-mindedness and based upon diverse-mindedness? FOOTNOTES: [221] _Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology_, I, 15, 8. [222] _Social Organization_, p. 4. [223] A teacher in the public schools of Chicago came in possession of the following letter written to a friend in Mississippi by a Negro boy who had come to the city from the South two months previously. It illustrates his rapid accommodation to the situation including the hostile Irish group (the Wentworth Avenue "Mickeys"). Dear leon I write to you--to let you hear from me--Boy you don't know the time we have with Sled. it Snow up here Regular. We Play foot Ball. But Now we have So much Snow we don't Play foot Ball any More. We Ride on Sled. Boy I have a Sled call The king of The hill and She king to. tell Mrs. Sara that Coln Roscoe Conklin Simon Spoke at St Mark the church we Belong to. Gus I havnt got chance to Beat But to Boy. Sack we show Runs them Mickeys. Boy them scoundle is bad on Wentworth Avenue. Add 3123a Breton St Chi ill. [224] From Daniel G. Brinton, _The Basis of Social Relations_, pp. 194-99. (Courtesy of G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London, 1902.) [225] From Dr. H. J. Nieboer, _Slavery as an Industrial System_, pp. 1-7. (Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1910.) [226] From Matthew G. Lewis, _Journal of a West India Proprietor_, pp. 60-337. (John Murray, 1834.) [227] From "Modern Theories of Caste: Mr. Nesfield's Theory," Appendix V, in Sir Herbert Risley, _The People of India_, pp. 407-8. (W. Thacker & Co., 1915.) [228] From Sir Herbert Risley, _The People of India_, pp. 130-39. (W. Thacker & Co., 1915.) [229] From Hugo Münsterberg, _Psychology, General and Applied_, pp. 259-64, (D. Appleton & Co., 1914.) [230] Adapted from _Domestic Service_, by An Old Servant, pp. 10-110. (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1917.) [231] Adapted from a translation of Georg Simmel by Albion W. Small, "Superiority and Subordination," in the _American Journal of Sociology_, II (1896-97), 169-71. [232] Adapted from a translation of Georg Simmel by Albion W. Small, "Superiority and Subordination," in the _American Journal of Sociology_, II (1896-97), 172-86. [233] Adapted from a translation of Georg Simmel by Albion W. Small, "The Sociology of Conflict," in the _American Journal of Sociology_, IX (1903-4), 799-802. [234] Adapted from a translation of Georg Simmel by Albion W. Small, "The Sociology of Conflict," in the _American Journal of Sociology_, IX (1903-4), 804-6. [235] Adapted from Charles H. Cooley, "Personal Competition," in _Economic Studies_, IV (1899), No. 2, 78-86. [236] From Robert E. Park, "The City," in the _American Journal of Sociology_, XX (1915), 584-86. [237] Translated and adapted from Émile Durkheim, _La division du travail social_, pp. 24-209. (Félix Alcan, 1902.) [238] _Pure Sociology_, p. 16. [239] _Mental Development in the Child and the Race_, p. 23. [240] _Supra_, pp. 218-19. CHAPTER XI ASSIMILATION I. INTRODUCTION 1. Popular Conceptions of Assimilation The concept assimilation, so far as it has been defined in popular usage, gets its meaning from its relation to the problem of immigration. The more concrete and familiar terms are the abstract noun Americanization and the verbs Americanize, Anglicize, Germanize, and the like. All of these words are intended to describe the process by which the culture of a community or a country is transmitted to an adopted citizen. Negatively, assimilation is a process of denationalization, and this is, in fact, the form it has taken in Europe. The difference between Europe and America, in relation to the problem of cultures, is that in Europe difficulties have arisen from the forcible incorporation of minor cultural groups, i.e., nationalities, within the limits of a larger political unit, i.e., an empire. In America the problem has arisen from the voluntary migration to this country of peoples who have abandoned the political allegiances of the old country and are gradually acquiring the culture of the new. In both cases the problem has its source in an effort to establish and maintain a political order in a community that has no common culture. Fundamentally the problem of maintaining a democratic form of government in a southern village composed of whites and blacks, and the problem of maintaining an international order based on anything but force are the same. The ultimate basis of the existing moral and political order is still kinship and culture. Where neither exist, a political order, not based on caste or class, is at least problematic. Assimilation, as popularly conceived in the United States, was expressed symbolically some years ago in Zangwill's dramatic parable of _The Melting Pot_. William Jennings Bryan has given oratorical expression to the faith in the beneficent outcome of the process: "Great has been the Greek, the Latin, the Slav, the Celt, the Teuton, and the Saxon; but greater than any of these is the American, who combines the virtues of them all." Assimilation, as thus conceived, is a natural and unassisted process, and practice, if not policy, has been in accord with this laissez faire conception, which the outcome has apparently justified. In the United States, at any rate, the tempo of assimilation has been more rapid than elsewhere. Closely akin to this "magic crucible" notion of assimilation is the theory of "like-mindedness." This idea was partly a product of Professor Giddings' theory of sociology, partly an outcome of the popular notion that similarities and homogeneity are identical with unity. The ideal of assimilation was conceived to be that of feeling, thinking, and acting alike. Assimilation and socialization have both been described in these terms by contemporary sociologists. Another and a different notion of assimilation or Americanization is based on the conviction that the immigrant has contributed in the past and may be expected in the future to contribute something of his own in temperament, culture, and philosophy of life to the future American civilization. This conception had its origin among the immigrants themselves, and has been formulated and interpreted by persons who are, like residents in social settlements, in close contact with them. This recognition of the diversity in the elements entering into the cultural process is not, of course, inconsistent with the expectation of an ultimate homogeneity of the product. It has called attention, at any rate, to the fact that the process of assimilation is concerned with differences quite as much as with likenesses. 2. The Sociology of Assimilation Accommodation has been described as a process of adjustment, that is, an organization of social relations and attitudes to prevent or to reduce conflict, to control competition, and to maintain a basis of security in the social order for persons and groups of divergent interests and types to carry on together their varied life-activities. Accommodation in the sense of the composition of conflict is invariably the goal of the political process. Assimilation is a process of interpenetration and fusion in which persons and groups acquire the memories, sentiments, and attitudes of other persons or groups, and, by sharing their experience and history, are incorporated with them in a common cultural life. In so far as assimilation denotes this sharing of tradition, this intimate participation in common experiences, assimilation is central in the historical and cultural processes. This distinction between accommodation and assimilation, with reference to their rôle in society, explains certain significant formal differences between the two processes. An accommodation of a conflict, or an accommodation to a new situation, may take place with rapidity. The more intimate and subtle changes involved in assimilation are more gradual. The changes that occur in accommodation are frequently not only sudden but revolutionary, as in the mutation of attitudes in conversion. The modifications of attitudes in the process of assimilation are not only gradual, but moderate, even if they appear considerable in their accumulation over a long period of time. If mutation is the symbol for accommodation, growth is the metaphor for assimilation. In accommodation the person or the group is generally, though not always, highly conscious of the occasion, as in the peace treaty that ends the war, in the arbitration of an industrial controversy, in the adjustment of the person to the formal requirements of life in a new social world. In assimilation the process is typically unconscious; the person is incorporated into the common life of the group before he is aware and with little conception of the course of events which brought this incorporation about. James has described the way in which the attitude of the person changes toward certain subjects, woman's suffrage, for example, not as the result of conscious reflection, but as the outcome of the unreflective responses to a series of new experiences. The intimate associations of the family and of the play group, participation in the ceremonies of religious worship and in the celebrations of national holidays, all these activities transmit to the immigrant and to the alien a store of memories and sentiments common to the native-born, and these memories are the basis of all that is peculiar and sacred in our cultural life. As social contact initiates interaction, assimilation is its final perfect product. The nature of the social contacts is decisive in the process. Assimilation naturally takes place most rapidly where contacts are primary, that is, where they are the most intimate and intense, as in the area of touch relationship, in the family circle and in intimate congenial groups. Secondary contacts facilitate accommodations, but do not greatly promote assimilation. The contacts here are external and too remote. A common language is indispensable for the most intimate association of the members of the group; its absence is an insurmountable barrier to assimilation. The phenomenon "that every group has its own language," its peculiar "universe of discourse," and its cultural symbols is evidence of the interrelation between communication and assimilation. Through the mechanisms of imitation and suggestion, communication effects a gradual and unconscious modification of the attitudes and sentiments of the members of the group. The unity thus achieved is not necessarily or even normally like-mindedness; it is rather a unity of experience and of orientation, out of which may develop a community of purpose and action. 3. Classification of the Materials The selections in the materials on assimilation have been arranged under three heads: (a) biological aspects of assimilation; (b) the conflict and fusion of cultures; and (c) Americanization as a problem in assimilation. The readings proceed from an analysis of the nature of assimilation to a survey of its processes, as they have manifested themselves historically, and finally to a consideration of the problems of Americanization. a) _Biological aspects of assimilation._--Assimilation is to be distinguished from amalgamation, with which it is, however, closely related. Amalgamation is a biological process, the fusion of races by interbreeding and intermarriage. Assimilation, on the other hand, is limited to the fusion of cultures. Miscegenation, or the mingling of races, is a universal phenomenon among the historical races. There are no races, in other words, that do not interbreed. Acculturation, or the transmission of cultural elements from one social group to another, however, has invariably taken place on a larger scale and over a wider area than miscegenation. Amalgamation, while it is limited to the crossing of racial traits through intermarriage, naturally promotes assimilation or the cross-fertilization of social heritages. The offspring of a "mixed" marriage not only biologically inherits physical and temperamental traits from both parents, but also acquires in the nurture of family life the attitudes, sentiments, and memories of both father and mother. Thus amalgamation of races insures the conditions of primary social contacts most favorable for assimilation. b) _The conflict and fusion of cultures._--The survey of the process of what the ethnologists call _acculturation_, as it is exhibited historically in the conflicts and fusions of cultures, indicates the wide range of the phenomena in this field. (1) Social contact, even when slight or indirect, is sufficient for the transmission from one cultural group to another of the material elements of civilization. Stimulants and firearms spread rapidly upon the objective demonstration of their effects. The potato, a native of America, has preceded the white explorer in its penetration into many areas of Africa. (2) The changes in languages in the course of the contacts, conflicts, and fusions of races and nationalities afford data for a more adequate description of the process of assimilation. Under what conditions does a ruling group impose its speech upon the masses, or finally capitulate to the vulgar tongue of the common people? In modern times the printing-press, the book, and the newspaper have tended to fix languages. The press has made feasible language revivals in connection with national movements on a scale impossible in earlier periods. The emphasis placed upon language as a medium of cultural transmission rests upon a sound principle. For the idioms, particularly of a spoken language, probably reflect more accurately the historical experiences of a people than history itself. The basis of unity among most historical peoples is linguistic rather than racial. The Latin peoples are a convenient example of this fact. The experiment now in progress in the Philippine Islands is significant in this connection. To what extent will the national and cultural development of those islands be determined by native temperament, by Spanish speech and tradition, or by the English language and the American school system? (3) Rivers in his study of Melanesian and Hawaiian cultures was impressed by the persistence of fundamental elements of the social structure. The basic patterns of family and social life remained practically unmodified despite profound transformations in technique, in language, and in religion. Evidently many material devices and formal expressions of an alien society can be adopted without significant changes in the native culture. The question, however, may be raised whether or not the complete adoption of occidental science and organization of industry would not produce far-reaching changes in social organization. The trend of economic, social, and cultural changes in Japan will throw light on this question. Even if revolutionary social changes actually occur, the point may well be made that they will be the outcome of the new economic system, and therefore not effects of acculturation. (4) The rapidity and completeness of assimilation depends directly upon the intimacy of social contact. By a curious paradox, slavery, and particularly household slavery, has probably been, aside from intermarriage, the most efficient device for promoting assimilation. Adoption and initiation among primitive peoples provided a ceremonial method for inducting aliens and strangers into the group, the significance of which can only be understood after a more adequate study of ceremonial in general. c) _Americanization as a problem of assimilation._--Any consideration of policies, programs, and methods of Americanization gain perspective when related to the sociology of assimilation. The "Study of Methods of Americanization," of the Carnegie Corporation, defines Americanization as "the participation of the immigrant in the life of the community in which he lives." From this standpoint participation is both the medium and the goal of assimilation. Participation of the immigrant in American life in any area of life prepares him for participation in every other. What the immigrant and the alien need most is an opportunity for participation. Of first importance, of course, is the language. In addition he needs to know how to use our institutions for his own benefit and protection. But participation, to be real, must be spontaneous and intelligent, and that means, in the long run, that the immigrant's life in America must be related to the life he already knows. Not by the suppression of old memories, but by their incorporation in his new life is assimilation achieved. The failure of conscious, coercive policies of denationalization in Europe and the great success of the early, passive phase of Americanization in this country afford in this connection an impressive contrast. It follows that assimilation cannot be promoted directly, but only indirectly, that is, by supplying the conditions that make for participation. There is no process but life itself that can effectually wipe out the immigrant's memory of his past. The inclusion of the immigrant in our common life may perhaps be best reached, therefore, in co-operation that looks not so much to the past as to the future. The second generation of the immigrant may share fully in our memories, but practically all that we can ask of the foreign-born is participation in our ideals, our wishes, and our common enterprises. II. MATERIALS A. BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF ASSIMILATION 1. Assimilation and Amalgamation[241] Writers on historical and social science are just beginning to turn their attention to the large subject of social assimilation. That the subject has until recently received little attention is readily seen by a mere glance at the works of our leading sociologists and historians. The word itself rarely appears; and when the theme is touched upon, no clearly defined, stable idea seems to exist, even in the mind of the author. Thus Giddings at one time identifies assimilation with "reciprocal accommodation." In another place he defines it as "the process of growing alike," and once again he tells us it is the method by which foreigners in the United States society become Americans. Nor are M. Novicow's ideas on the subject perfectly lucid, for he considers assimilation sometimes as a _process_, at other times as an _art_, and again as a _result_. He makes the term "denationalization" coextensive with our "assimilation," and says that the ensemble of measures which a government takes for inducing a population to abandon one type of culture for another is denationalization. Denationalization by the authority of the state carries with it a certain amount of coercion; it is always accompanied by a measure of violence. In the next sentence, however, we are told that the word "denationalization" may also be used for the non-coercive _process_ by which one nationality is assimilated with another. M. Novicow further speaks of the _art_ of assimilation, and he tells us that the _result_ of the intellectual struggle between races living under the same government, whether free or forced, is in every case assimilation. Burgess also takes a narrow view of the subject, restricting the operation of assimilating forces to the present and considering assimilation a result of modern political union. He says: "In modern times the political union of different races under the leadership of the dominant race results in assimilation." From one point of view assimilation is a process with its active and passive elements; from another it is a result. In this discussion, however, assimilation is considered as a process due to prolonged contact. It may, perhaps, be defined as that process of adjustment or accommodation which occurs between the members of two different races, if their contact is prolonged and if the necessary psychic conditions are present. The result is group homogeneity to a greater or less degree. Figuratively speaking, it is the process by which the aggregation of peoples is changed from a mere mechanical mixture into a chemical compound. The process of assimilation is of a psychological rather than of a biological nature, and refers to the growing alike in character, thoughts, and institutions, rather than to the blood-mingling brought about by intermarriage. The intellectual results of the process of assimilation are far more lasting than the physiological. Thus in France today, though nineteen-twentieths of the blood is that of the aboriginal races, the language is directly derived from that imposed by the Romans in their conquest of Gaul. Intermarriage, the inevitable result to a greater or less extent of race contact, plays its part in the process of assimilation, but mere mixture of races will not cause assimilation. Moreover, assimilation is possible, partially at least, without intermarriage. Instances of this are furnished by the partial assimilation of the Negro and the Indian of the United States. Thinkers are beginning to doubt the great importance once attributed to intermarriage as a factor in civilization. Says Mayo-Smith, "It is not in unity of blood but in unity of institutions and social habits and ideals that we are to seek that which we call nationality," and nationality is the result of assimilation. 2. The Instinctive Basis of Assimilation[242] It is a striking fact that among animals there are some whose conduct can be generalized very readily in the categories of self-preservation, nutrition, and sex, while there are others whose conduct cannot be thus summarized. The behavior of the tiger and the cat is simple and easily comprehensible, whereas that of the dog with his conscience, his humor, his terror of loneliness, his capacity for devotion to a brutal master, or that of the bee with her selfless devotion to the hive, furnishes phenomena which no sophistry can assimilate without the aid of a fourth instinct. But little examination will show that the animals whose conduct it is difficult to generalize under the three primitive instinctive categories are gregarious. If, then, it can be shown that gregariousness is of a biological significance approaching in importance that of the other instincts we may expect to find in it the source of these anomalies of conduct, and of the complexity of human behavior. Gregariousness seems frequently to be regarded as a somewhat superficial character, scarcely deserving, as it were, the name of an instinct, advantageous, it is true, but not of fundamental importance or likely to be deeply ingrained in the inheritance of the species. This attitude may be due to the fact that among mammals, at any rate, the appearance of gregariousness has not been accompanied by any very gross physical changes which are obviously associated with it. To whatever it may be due, this method of regarding the social habit is, in the opinion of the present writer, not justified by the facts, and prevents the attainment of conclusions of considerable fruitfulness. A study of bees and ants shows at once how fundamental the importance of gregariousness may become. The individual in such communities is completely incapable, often physically, of existing apart from the community, and this fact at once gives rise to the suspicion that, even in communities less closely knit than those of the ant and the bee, the individual may in fact be more dependent on communal life than appears at first sight. Another very striking piece of general evidence of the significance of gregariousness as no mere late acquirement is the remarkable coincidence of its occurrence with that of exceptional grades of intelligence or the possibility of very complex reactions to environment. It can scarcely be regarded as an unmeaning accident that the dog, the horse, the ape, the elephant, and man are all social animals. The instances of the bee and the ant are perhaps the most amazing. Here the advantages of gregariousness seem actually to outweigh the most prodigious differences of structure, and we find a condition which is often thought of as a mere habit, capable of enabling the insect nervous system to compete in the complexity of its power of adaptation with that of the higher vertebrates. From the biological standpoint the probability of gregariousness being a primitive and fundamental quality in man seems to be considerable. It would appear to have the effect of enlarging the advantages of variation. Varieties not immediately favorable, varieties departing widely from the standard, varieties even unfavorable to the individual, may be supposed to be given by it a chance of survival. Now the course of the development of man seems to present many features incompatible with its having proceeded among isolated individuals exposed to the unmodified action of natural selection. Changes so serious as the assumption of the upright posture, the reduction in the jaw and its musculature, the reduction in the acuity of smell and hearing, demand, if the species is to survive, either a delicacy of adjustment with the compensatingly developing intelligence so minute as to be almost inconceivable, or the existence of some kind of protective enclosure, however imperfect, in which the varying individuals may be sheltered from the direct influence of natural selection. The existence of such a mechanism would compensate losses of physical strength in the individual by the greatly increased strength of the larger unit, of the unit, that is to say, upon which natural selection still acts unmodified. The cardinal quality of the herd is homogeneity. It is clear that the great advantage of the social habit is to enable large numbers to act as one, whereby in the case of the hunting gregarious animal strength in pursuit and attack is at once increased beyond that of the creatures preyed upon, and in protective socialism the sensitiveness of the new unit to alarms is greatly in excess of that of the individual member of the flock. To secure these advantages of homogeneity, it is evident that the members of the herd must possess sensitiveness to the behavior of their fellows. The individual isolated will be of no meaning; the individual as part of the herd will be capable of transmitting the most potent impulses. Each member of the flock tending to follow his neighbor, and in turn to be followed, each is in some sense capable of leadership; but no lead will be followed that departs widely from normal behavior. A lead will only be followed from its resemblance to the normal. If the leader go so far ahead as definitely to cease to be in the herd, he will necessarily be ignored. The original in conduct, that is to say, resistiveness to the voice of the herd, will be suppressed by natural selection; the wolf which does not follow the impulses of the herd will be starved; the sheep which does not respond to the flock will be eaten. Again, not only will the individual be responsive to impulses coming from the herd but he will treat the herd as his normal environment. The impulse to be in and always to remain with the herd will have the strongest instinctive weight. Anything which tends to separate him from his fellows, as soon as it becomes perceptible as such, will be strongly resisted. So far we have regarded the gregarious animal objectively. Let us now try to estimate the mental aspects of these impulses. Suppose a species in possession of precisely the instinctive endowments which we have been considering to be also self-conscious, and let us ask what will be the forms under which these phenomena will present themselves in its mind. In the first place, it is quite evident that impulses derived from herd feeling will enter the mind with the value of instincts--they will present themselves as "a priori syntheses of the most perfect sort needing no proof but their own evidence." They will not, however, it is important to remember, necessarily always give this quality to the same specific acts, but will show this great distinguishing characteristic that they may give to any opinion whatever the characters of instinctive belief, making it into an "a priori synthesis"; so that we shall expect to find acts which it would be absurd to look upon as the results of specific instincts carried out with all the enthusiasm of instinct and displaying all the marks of instinctive behavior. In interpreting into mental terms the consequences of gregariousness we may conveniently begin with the simplest. The conscious individual will feel an unanalysable primary sense of comfort in the actual presence of his fellows and a similar sense of discomfort in their absence. It will be obvious truth to him that it is not good for man to be alone. Loneliness will be a real terror insurmountable by reason. Again, certain conditions will become secondarily associated with presence with, or absence from, the herd. For example, take the sensations of heat and cold. The latter is prevented in gregarious animals by close crowding and experienced in the reverse condition; hence it comes to be connected in the mind with separation and so acquires altogether unreasonable associations of harmfulness. Similarly, the sensation of warmth is associated with feelings of the secure and salutary. Slightly more complex manifestations of the same tendency to homogeneity are seen in the desire for identification with the herd in matters of opinion. Here we find the biological explanation of the ineradicable impulse mankind has always displayed toward segregation into classes. Each one of us in his opinions, and his conduct, in matters of dress, amusement, religion, and politics, is compelled to obtain the support of a class, of a herd within the herd. The most eccentric in opinion or conduct is, we may be sure, supported by the agreement of a class, the smallness of which accounts for his apparent eccentricity, and the preciousness of which accounts for his fortitude in defying general opinion. Again, anything which tends to emphasize difference from the herd is unpleasant. In the individual mind there will be an analysable dislike of the novel in action or thought. It will be "wrong," "wicked," "foolish," "undesirable," or, as we say, "bad form," according to varying circumstances which we can already to some extent define. Manifestations relatively more simple are shown in the dislike of being conspicuous, in shyness, and in stage fright. It is, however, sensitiveness to the behavior of the herd which has the most important effects upon the structure of the mind of the gregarious animal. This sensitiveness is, as Sidis has clearly seen, closely associated with the suggestibility of the gregarious animal, and therefore with that of man. The effect of it will clearly be to make acceptable those suggestions which come from the herd, and those only. It is of especial importance to note that this suggestibility is not general, and that it is only herd suggestions which are rendered acceptable by the action of instinct. B. THE CONFLICT AND FUSION OF CULTURES 1. The Analysis of Blended Cultures[243] In the analysis of any culture, a difficulty which soon meets the investigator is that he has to determine what is due to mere contact and what is due to intimate intermixture, such intermixture, for instance, as is produced by the permanent blending of one people with another, either through warlike invasion or peaceful settlement. The fundamental weakness of most of the attempts hitherto made to analyze existing cultures is that they have had their starting-point in the study of material objects, and the reason for this is obvious. Owing to the fact that material objects can be collected by anyone and subjected at leisure to prolonged study by experts, our knowledge of the distribution of material objects and of the technique of their manufacture has very far outrun that of the less material elements. What I wish now to point out is that in distinguishing between the effects of mere contact and the intermixture of peoples, material objects are the least trustworthy of all the constituents of culture. Thus in Melanesia we have the clearest evidence that material objects and processes can spread by mere contact, without any true admixture of peoples and without influence on other features of the culture. While the distribution of material objects is of the utmost importance in suggesting at the outset community of culture, and while it is of equal importance in the final process of determining points of contact and in filling in the details of the mixture of cultures, it is the least satisfactory guide to the actual blending of peoples which must form the solid foundation of the ethnological analysis of culture. The case for the value of magico-religious institutions is not much stronger. Here, again, in Melanesia there is little doubt that whole cults can pass from one people to another without any real intermixture of peoples. I do not wish to imply that such religious institutions can pass from people to people with the ease of material objects, but to point out that there is evidence that they can and do so pass with very little, if any, admixture of peoples or of the deeper and more fundamental elements of the culture. Much more important is language; and if you will think over the actual conditions when one people either visit or settle among another, this greater importance will be obvious. Let us imagine a party of Melanesians visiting a Polynesian island, staying there for a few weeks, and then returning home (and here I am not taking a fictitious occurrence, but one which really happens). We can readily understand that the visitors may take with them their betel-mixture, and thereby introduce the custom of betel-chewing into a new home; we can readily understand that they may introduce an ornament to be worn in the nose and another to be worn on the chest; that tales which they tell will be remembered, and dances they perform will be imitated. A few Milanesian words may pass into the language of the Polynesian island, especially as names for the objects or processes which the strangers have introduced; but it is incredible that the strangers should thus in a short visit produce any extensive change in the vocabulary, and still more that they should modify the structure of the language. Such changes can never be the result of mere contact or transient settlement but must always indicate a far more deeply seated and fundamental process of blending of peoples and cultures. Few will perhaps hesitate to accept this position; but I expect my next proposition to meet with more skepticism, and yet I believe it to be widely, though not universally, true. This proposition is that the social structure, the framework of society, is still more fundamentally important and still less easily changed except as the result of the intimate blending of peoples, and for that reason furnishes by far the firmest foundation on which to base the process of analysis of culture. I cannot hope to establish the truth of this proposition in the course of a brief address, and I propose to draw your attention to one line of evidence only. At the present moment we have before our eyes an object-lesson in the spread of our own people over the earth's surface, and we are thus able to study how external influence affects different elements of culture. What we find is that mere contact is able to transmit much in the way of material culture. A passing vessel, which does not even anchor, may be able to transmit iron, while European weapons may be used by people who have never even seen a white man. Again, missionaries introduce the Christian religion among people who cannot speak a word of English or any language but their own or only use such European words as have been found necessary to express ideas or objects connected with the new religion. There is evidence how readily language may be affected, and here again the present day suggests a mechanism by which such a change takes place. English is now becoming the language of the Pacific and of other parts of the world through its use as a _lingua franca_, which enables natives who speak different languages to converse not only with Europeans but with one another, and I believe that this has often been the mechanism in the past; that, for instance, the introduction of what we now call the Melanesian structure of language was due to the fact that the language of an immigrant people who settled in a region of great linguistic diversity came to be used as a _lingua franca_, and thus gradually became the basis of the languages of the whole people. But now let us turn to social structure. We find in Oceania islands where Europeans have been settled as missionaries or traders perhaps for fifty or a hundred years; we find the people wearing European clothes and European ornaments, using European utensils and even European weapons when they fight; we find them holding the beliefs and practicing the ritual of a European religion; we find them speaking a European language, often even among themselves, and yet investigation shows that much of their social structure remains thoroughly native and uninfluenced, not only in its general form, but often even in its minute details. The external influence has swept away the whole material culture, so that objects of native origin are manufactured only to sell to tourists; it has substituted a wholly new religion and destroyed every material, if not every moral, vestige of the old; it has caused great modification and degeneration of the old language; and yet it may have left the social structure in the main untouched. And the reasons for this are clear. Most of the essential social structure of a people lies so below the surface, it is so literally the foundation of the whole life of the people, that it is not seen; it is not obvious, but can only be reached by patient and laborious exploration. I will give a few specific instances. In several islands of the Pacific, some of which have had European settlers on them for more than a century, a most important position in the community is occupied by the father's sister. If any native of these islands were asked who is the most important person in the determination of his life-history, he would answer, "My father's sister"; and yet the place of this relative in the social structure has remained absolutely unrecorded, and, I believe, absolutely unknown, to the European settlers in those islands. Again, Europeans have settled in Fiji for more than a century, and yet it is only during this summer that I have heard from Mr. A. M. Hocart, who is working there at present, that there is the clearest evidence of what is known as the dual organization of society as a working social institution at the present time. How unobtrusive such a fundamental fact of social structure may be comes home to me in this case very strongly, for it wholly eluded my own observation during a visit three years ago. Lastly, the most striking example of the permanence of social structure which I have met is in the Hawaiian Islands. There the original native culture is reduced to the merest wreckage. So far as material objects are concerned, the people are like ourselves; the old religion has gone, though there probably still persists some of the ancient magic. The people themselves have so dwindled in number, and the political conditions are so altered, that the social structure has also necessarily been greatly modified, and yet I was able to ascertain that one of its elements, an element which I believe to form the deepest layer of the foundation, the very bedrock of social structure, the system of relationship, is still in use unchanged. I was able to obtain a full account of the system as actually used at the present time, and found it to be exactly the same as that recorded forty years ago by Morgan and Hyde, and I obtained evidence that the system is still deeply interwoven with the intimate mental life of the people. If, then, social structure has this fundamental and deeply seated character, if it is the least easily changed, and only changed as the result either of actual blending of peoples or of the most profound political changes, the obvious inference is that it is with social structure that we must begin the attempt to analyze culture and to ascertain how far community of culture is due to the blending of peoples, how far to transmission through mere contact or transient settlement. The considerations I have brought forward have, however, in my opinion an importance still more fundamental. If social institutions have this relatively great degree of permanence, if they are so deeply seated and so closely interwoven with the deepest instincts and sentiments of a people that they can only gradually suffer change, will not the study of this change give us our surest criterion of what is early and what is late in any given culture, and thereby furnish a guide for the analysis of culture? Such criteria of early and late are necessary if we are to arrange the cultural elements reached by our analysis in order of time, and it is very doubtful whether mere geographical distribution itself will ever furnish a sufficient basis for this purpose. I may remind you here that before the importance of the complexity of Melanesian culture had forced itself on my mind, I had already succeeded in tracing out a course for the development of the structure of Melanesian society, and after the complexity of the culture had been established, I did not find it necessary to alter anything of essential importance in this scheme. I suggest, therefore, that while the ethnological analysis of cultures must furnish a necessary preliminary to any general evolutionary speculations, there is one element of culture which has so relatively high a degree of permanence that its course of development may furnish a guide to the order in time of the different elements into which it is possible to analyze a given complex. If the development of social structure is thus to be taken as a guide to assist the process of analysis, it is evident that there will be involved a logical process of considerable complexity in which there will be the danger of arguing in a circle. If, however, the analysis of culture is to be the primary task of the anthropologist, it is evident that the logical methods of the science will attain a complexity far exceeding those hitherto in vogue. I believe that the only logical process which will in general be found possible will be the formulation of hypothetical working schemes into which the facts can be fitted, and that the test of such schemes will be their capacity to fit in with themselves, or, as we generally express it, "explain" new facts as they come to our knowledge. This is the method of other sciences which deal with conditions as complex as those of human society. In many other sciences these new facts are discovered by experiment. In our science they must be found by exploration, not only of the cultures still existent in living form, but also of the buried cultures of past ages. 2. The Extension of Roman Culture in Gaul[244] The Roman conquest of Gaul was partially a feat of arms; but it was much more a triumph of Roman diplomacy and a genius for colonial government. Roman power in Gaul was centered in the larger cities and in their strongly fortified camps. There the laws and decrees of Rome were promulgated and the tribute of the conquered tribes received. There, too, the law courts were held and justice administered. Rome bent her efforts to the Latinizing of her newly acquired possessions. Gradually she forced the inhabitants of the larger cities to use the Latin tongue. But this forcing was done in a diplomatic, though effective, manner. Even in the days of Caesar, Latin was made the only medium for the administration of the law, the promulgation of decrees, the exercise of the functions of government, the administration of justice, and the performing of the offices of religion. It was the only medium of commerce and trade with the Romans, of literature and art, of the theater and of social relations. Above all, it was the only road to office under the Roman government and to political preferment. The Roman officials in Gaul encouraged and rewarded the mastery of the Latin tongue and the acquirement of Roman culture, customs, and manners. Thanks to this well-defined policy of the Roman government, native Gauls were found in important offices even in Caesar's time. The number of these Gallo-Roman offices increased rapidly, and their influence was steadily exercised in favor of the acquirement, by the natives, of the Latin language. A greater inducement still was held out to the Gauls to acquire the ways and culture of their conquerors. This was the prospect of employment or political preference and honors in the imperial city of Rome itself. Under this pressure so diplomatically applied, the study of the Latin language, grammar, literature, and oratory became a passion throughout the cities of Gaul, which were full of Roman merchants, traders, teachers, philosophers, lawyers, artists, sculptors, and seekers for political and other offices. Latin was the symbol of success in every avenue of life. Native Gauls became noted merchant princes, lawyers, soldiers, local potentates at home, and favorites of powerful political personages in Rome and even in the colonies outside Gaul. Natives of Gaul, too, reached the highest offices in the land, becoming even members of the Senate; and later on a native Gaul became one of the most noted of the Roman emperors. The political policy of Rome made the imposition of the Latin language upon the cities of Gaul a comparatively easy matter, requiring only time to assure its accomplishment. Everywhere throughout the populous cities of Gaul there sprang up schools that rivaled, in their efficacy and reputation, the most famous institutions of Rome. Rich Romans sent their sons to these schools because of their excellence and the added advantage that they could acquire there a first-hand knowledge of the life and customs of the natives, whom they might be called upon in the future to govern or to have political or other relations with. Thus all urban Gaul traveled Rome-ward--"all roads led to Rome." The influence of Roman culture extended itself much more slowly over the rural districts, the inhabitants of which, in addition to being much more conservative and passionately attached to their native institutions and language, lacked the incentive of ambition and of commercial and trade necessity. A powerful Druidical priesthood held the rural Celts together and set their faces against Roman culture and religion. But even in the rural districts Latin made its way slowly and in a mangled form, yet none the less surely. This was accomplished almost entirely through the natural pressure from without exercised by the growing power of the Latin tongue, which had greatly increased during the reign of the Emperor Claudius (41-54 A.D.). Claudius, who was born in Lyon and educated in Gaul, opened to the Gauls all the employments and dignities of the empire. On the construction of the many extensive public works he employed many inhabitants of Gaul in positions requiring faithfulness, honesty, and skill. These, in their turn, frequently drew laborers from the rural districts of Gaul. These latter, during their residence in Rome or other Italian cities, or in the populous centers of Gaul, acquired some knowledge of Latin. Thus, in time, through these and other agencies, a sort of _lingua franca_ sprang up throughout the rural districts of Gaul and served as a medium of communication between the Celtic-speaking population and the inhabitants of the cities and towns. This consisted of a frame of Latin words stripped of most of their inflections and subjected to word-contractions and other modifications. Into this frame were fitted many native words which had already become the property of trade and commerce and the other activities of life in the city, town, and country. Thus, as the influence of Latin became stronger in the cities, it continued to exercise greater pressure on the rural districts. This pressure soon began to react upon the centers of Latin culture. The uneducated classes of Gaul everywhere, even in the cities, spoke very imperfect Latin, the genius of which is so different from that of the native tongues of Gaul. But while the cities afforded some correction for this universal tendency among the masses to corrupt the Latin language, the life of the rural districts, where the native tongues were still universally spoken, made the disintegration of the highly inflected Roman speech unavoidable. As the masses in the city and country became more Latinized, at the expense of their native tongues, the corrupted Latin spoken over immense districts of the country tended to pass current as the speech of the populace and to crowd out classical or school Latin. As this corrupted local Latin varied greatly in different parts of the country, due to linguistic and other influences, there resulted numerous Roman dialects throughout Gaul, many of which are still in existence. The introduction of Christianity gave additional impulse to the study of Latin, which soon became the official language of the Christian church; and it was taught everywhere by the priests to the middle and upper classes, and they also encouraged the masses to learn it. It seemed as if this was destined to maintain the prestige of Latin as the official language of the country. But in reality it hastened its downfall by making it more and more the language of the illiterate masses. Soon the rural districts furnished priests who spoke their own Roman tongue; and the struggle to rehabilitate the literary Latin among the masses was abandoned. The numerous French dialects of Latin had already begun to assume shape when the decline of the Roman Empire brought the Germanic tribes down upon Gaul and introduced a new element into the Romanic speech, which had already worked its will upon the tongue of the Caesars. Under its influence the loose Latin construction disappeared; articles and prepositions took the place of the inflectional terminations brought to a high state of artificial perfection in Latin; and the wholesale suppression of unaccented syllables had so contracted the Latin words that they were often scarcely recognizable. The modification of vowel sounds increased the efficacy of the disguise assumed by Latin words masquerading in the Romanic dialects throughout Gaul; and the Celtic and other native words in current use to designate the interests and occupations of the masses helped to differentiate the popular speech from the classical Latin. Already Celtic, as a spoken tongue, had almost entirely disappeared from the cities; and even in the rural districts it had fallen into a certain amount of neglect, as the _lingua franca_ of the first centuries of Roman occupation, reaching out in every direction, became the ever-increasing popular speech. 3. The Competition of the Cultural Languages[245] Some time ago a typewriter firm, in advertising a machine with Arabic characters, made the statement that the Arabic alphabet is used by more people than any other. A professor of Semitic languages was asked: "How big a lie is that?" He answered: "It is true." In a certain sense, it is true; the total population of all the countries whose inhabitants use the Arabic alphabet (if they use any) is slightly larger than that of those who use the Latin alphabet and its slight variations, or the Chinese characters (which of course are not an alphabet), or the Russian alphabet. If, however, the question is how many people can actually use any alphabet or system of writing, the Arabic stands lowest of the four. The question of the relative importance of a language as a literary medium is a question of how many people want to read it. There are two classes of these: those to whom it is vernacular, and those who learn it in addition to their own language. The latter class is of the greater importance in proportion to its numbers; a man who has education enough to acquire a foreign language is pretty sure to use it, while many of the former class, who can read, really do read very little. Those who count in this matter are those who can get information from a printed page as easily as by listening to someone talking. A fair index of the relative number of these in a country is the newspaper circulation there. A language must have a recognized literary standard and all the people in its territory must learn to use it as such before its influence goes far abroad. English, French, and German, and they alone, have reached this point. French and German have no new country, and practically the whole of their country is now literate; their relative share in the world's reading can only increase as their population increases. Spanish and Russian, on the other hand, have both new country and room for a much higher percentage of literacy. It is probable that all the countries in temperate zones will have universal literacy by the end of the century. In this case, even if no one read English outside its vernacular countries, it would still hold its own as the leading literary language. German and French are bound to fall off relatively as vernaculars, and this implies a falling off of their importance as culture languages; but the importance of English in this respect is bound to grow. The first place among foreign languages has been given to it in the schools of many European and South American countries; Mexico and Japan make it compulsory in all schools of upper grades; and China is to follow Japan in this respect as soon as the work can be organized. The number of people who can actually read, or will learn if now too young, for the various languages of the world appears to be as follows: Number in Millions Per Cent English 136 27.2 German 82 16.4 Chinese[A] 70 14.0 French 28 9.6 Russian 30 6.0 Arabic 25 5.0 Italian 18 4.6 Spanish 12 2.6 Scandinavian 11 2.2 Dutch and Flemish 9 1.9 Minor European[B] 34 6.8 Minor Asiatic[B] 16 3.2 Minor African and Polynesian[B] 2+ 0.5 Total 473+ 100.0 Notes: [A] Not a spoken language, but a system of writing. [B] None representing as much as 1 per cent of total. English, therefore, now leads all other languages in the number of its readers. Three-fourths of the world's mail matter is addressed in English. More than half of the world's newspapers are printed in English, and, as they have a larger circulation than those in other languages, probably three-fourths of the world's newspaper reading is done in English. The languages next in importance, French and German, cannot maintain their relative positions because English has more than half of the new land in the temperate zone and they have none. The languages which have the rest of the new territory, Spanish and Russian, are not established as culture languages, as English is. No other language, not even French or German, has a vernacular so uniform and well established, and with so few variations from the literary language. English is spoken in the United States by more than fifty million people with so slight variations that no foreigner would ever notice them. No other language whatever can show more than a fraction of this number of persons who speak so nearly alike. It is then probable that, within the century, English will be the vernacular of a quarter instead of a tenth of the people of the world, and be read by a half instead of a quarter of the people who can read. 4. The Assimilation of Races[246] The race problem has sometimes been described as a problem in assimilation. It is not always clear, however, what assimilation means. Historically the word has had two distinct significations. According to earlier usage it meant "to compare" or "to make like." According to later usage it signifies "to take up and incorporate." There is a process that goes on in society by which individuals spontaneously acquire one another's language, characteristic attitudes, habits, and modes of behavior. There is also a process by which individuals and groups of individuals are taken over and incorporated into larger groups. Both processes have been concerned in the formation of modern nationalities. The modern Italian, Frenchman, and German is a composite of the broken fragments of several different racial groups. Interbreeding has broken up the ancient stocks, and interaction and imitation have created new national types which exhibit definite uniformities in language, manners, and formal behavior. It has sometimes been assumed that the creation of a national type is the specific function of assimilation and that national solidarity is based upon national homogeneity and "like-mindedness." The extent and importance of the kind of homogeneity that individuals of the same nationality exhibit have been greatly exaggerated. Neither interbreeding nor interaction has created, in what the French term "nationals," a more than superficial likeness or like-mindedness. Racial differences have, to be sure, disappeared or been obscured, but individual differences remain. Individual differences, again, have been intensified by education, personal competition, and the division of labor, until individual members of cosmopolitan groups probably represent greater variations in disposition, temperament, and mental capacity than those which distinguished the more homogeneous races and peoples of an earlier civilization. What then, precisely, is the nature of the homogeneity which characterizes cosmopolitan groups? The growth of modern states exhibits the progressive merging of smaller, mutually exclusive, into larger and more inclusive, social groups. This result has been achieved in various ways, but it has usually been followed or accompanied by a more or less complete adoption by the members of the smaller groups of the language, technique, and mores of the larger and more inclusive ones. The immigrant readily takes over the language, manners, the social ritual, and outward forms of his adopted country. In America it has become proverbial that a Pole, Lithuanian, or Norwegian cannot be distinguished, in the second generation, from an American born of native parents. There is no reason to assume that this assimilation of alien groups to native standards has modified to any great extent fundamental racial characteristics. It has, however, erased the external signs which formerly distinguished the members of one race from those of another. On the other hand, the breaking up of the isolation of smaller groups has had the effect of emancipating the individual man, giving him room and freedom for the expansion and development of his individual aptitudes. What one actually finds in cosmopolitan groups, then, is a superficial uniformity, a homogeneity in manners and fashion, associated with relatively profound differences in individual opinions, sentiments, and beliefs. This is just the reverse of what one meets among primitive peoples, where diversity in external forms, as between different groups, is accompanied by a monotonous sameness in the mental attitudes of individuals. There is a striking similarity in the sentiments and mental attitudes of peasant peoples in all parts of the world, although the external differences are often great. In the Black Forest, in Baden, Germany, almost every valley shows a different style of costume, a different type of architecture, although in each separate valley every house is like every other and the costume, as well as the religion, is for every member of each separate community absolutely after the same pattern. On the other hand, a German, Russian, or Negro peasant of the southern states, different as each is in some respects, are all very much alike in certain habitual attitudes and sentiments. What, then, is the rôle of homogeneity and like-mindedness, such as we find them to be, in cosmopolitan states? So far as it makes each individual look like every other--no matter how different under the skin--homogeneity mobilizes the individual man. It removes the social taboo, permits the individual to move into strange groups, and thus facilitates new and adventurous contacts. In obliterating the external signs, which in secondary groups seem to be the sole basis of caste and class distinctions, it realizes, for the individual, the principle of _laissez faire_, _laissez aller_. Its ultimate economic effect is to substitute personal for racial competition, and to give free play to forces that tend to relegate every individual, irrespective of race or status, to the position he or she is best fitted to fill. As a matter of fact, the ease and rapidity with which aliens, under existing conditions in the United States, have been able to assimilate themselves to the customs and manners of American life have enabled this country to swallow and digest every sort of normal human difference, except the purely external ones, like the color of the skin. It is probably true, also, that like-mindedness of the kind that expresses itself in national types contributes indirectly by facilitating the intermingling of the different elements of the population to the national solidarity. This is due to the fact that the solidarity of modern states depends less on the homogeneity of population than, as James Bryce has suggested, upon the thoroughgoing mixture of heterogeneous elements. Like-mindedness, so far as that term signifies a standard grade of intelligence, contributes little or nothing to national solidarity. Likeness is, after all, a purely formal concept which of itself cannot hold anything together. In the last analysis social solidarity is based on sentiment and habit. It is the sentiment of loyalty and the habit of what Sumner calls "concurrent action" that gives substance and insures unity to the state as to every other type of social group. This sentiment of loyalty has its basis in a _modus vivendi_, a working relation and mutual understanding of the members of the group. Social institutions are not founded in similarities any more than they are founded in differences, but in relations, and in the mutual interdependence of parts. When these relations have the sanction of custom and are fixed in individual habit, so that the activities of the group are running smoothly, personal attitudes and sentiments, which are the only forms in which individual minds collide and clash with one another, easily accommodate themselves to the existing situation. It may, perhaps, be said that loyalty itself is a form of like-mindedness or that it is dependent in some way upon the like-mindedness of the individuals whom it binds together. This, however, cannot be true, for there is no greater loyalty than that which binds the dog to his master, and this is a sentiment which that faithful animal usually extends to other members of the household to which he belongs. A dog without a master is a dangerous animal, but the dog that has been domesticated is a member of society. He is not, of course, a citizen, although he is not entirely without rights. But he has got into some sort of practical working relations with the group to which he belongs. It is this practical working arrangement, into which individuals with widely different mental capacities enter as co-ordinate parts, that gives the corporate character to social groups and insures their solidarity. It is the process of assimilation by which groups of individuals, originally indifferent or perhaps hostile, achieve this corporate character, rather than the process by which they acquire a formal like-mindedness, with which this paper is mainly concerned. The difficulty with the conception of assimilation which one ordinarily meets in discussions of the race problem is that it is based on observations confined to individualistic groups where the characteristic relations are indirect and secondary. It takes no account of the kind of assimilation that takes place in primary groups where relations are direct and personal--in the tribe, for example, and in the family. Thus Charles Francis Adams, referring to the race problem in an address at Richmond, Virginia, in November, 1908, said: The American system, as we know, was founded on the assumed basis of a common humanity, that is, absence of absolutely fundamental racial characteristics was accepted as an established truth. Those of all races were welcomed to our shores. They came, aliens; they and their descendants would become citizens first, natives afterward. It was a process first of assimilation and then of absorption. On this all depended. There could be no permanent divisional lines. That theory is now plainly broken down. We are confronted by the obvious fact, as undeniable as it is hard, that the African will only partially assimilate and that he cannot be absorbed. He remains an alien element in the body politic. A foreign substance, he can neither be assimilated nor thrown out. More recently an editorial in the _Outlook_, discussing the Japanese situation in California, made this statement: The hundred millions of people now inhabiting the United States must be a united people, not merely a collection of groups of different peoples, different in racial cultures and ideals, agreeing to live together in peace and amity. These hundred millions must have common ideals, common aims, a common custom, a common culture, a common language, and common characteristics, if the nation is to endure. All this is quite true and interesting, but it does not clearly recognize the fact that the chief obstacle to the assimilation of the Negro and the Oriental are not mental but physical traits. It is not because the Negro and the Japanese are so differently constituted that they do not assimilate. If they were given an opportunity, the Japanese are quite as capable as the Italians, the Armenians, or the Slavs of acquiring our culture and sharing our national ideals. The trouble is not with the Japanese mind but with the Japanese skin. The Jap is not the right color. The fact that the Japanese bears in his features a distinctive racial hallmark, that he wears, so to speak, a racial uniform, classifies him. He cannot become a mere individual, indistinguishable in the cosmopolitan mass of the population, as is true, for example, of the Irish, and, to a lesser extent, of some of the other immigrant races. The Japanese, like the Negro, is condemned to remain among us an abstraction, a symbol--and a symbol not merely of his own race but of the Orient and of that vague, ill-defined menace we sometimes refer to as the "yellow peril." This not only determines to a very large extent the attitude of the white world toward the yellow man but it determines the attitude of the yellow man toward the white. It puts between the races the invisible but very real gulf of self-consciousness. There is another consideration. Peoples we know intimately we respect and esteem. In our casual contact with aliens, however, it is the offensive rather than the pleasing traits that impress us. These impressions accumulate and reinforce natural prejudices. Where races are distinguished by certain external marks, these furnish a permanent physical substratum upon which and around which the irritations and animosities, incidental to all human intercourse, tend to accumulate and so gain strength and volume. Assimilation, as the word is here used, brings with it a certain borrowed significance which it carried over from physiology, where it is employed to describe the process of nutrition. By a process of nutrition, somewhat similar to the physiological one, we may conceive alien peoples to be incorporated with, and made part of, the community or state. Ordinarily assimilation goes on silently and unconsciously, and only forces itself into popular conscience when there is some interruption or disturbance of the process. At the outset it may be said, then, that assimilation rarely becomes a problem except in secondary groups. Admission to the primary group, that is to say, the group in which relationships are direct and personal, as, for example, in the family and in the tribe, makes assimilation comparatively easy and almost inevitable. The most striking illustration of this is the fact of domestic slavery. Slavery has been, historically, the usual method by which peoples have been incorporated into alien groups. When a member of an alien race is adopted into the family as a servant or as a slave, and particularly when that status is made hereditary, as it was in the case of the Negro after his importation to America, assimilation followed rapidly and as a matter of course. It is difficult to conceive two races farther removed from each other in temperament and tradition than the Anglo-Saxon and the Negro, and yet the Negro in the southern states, particularly where he was adopted into the household as a family servant, learned in a comparatively short time the manners and customs of his master's family. He very soon possessed himself of so much of the language, religion, and the technique of the civilization of his master as, in his station, he was fitted or permitted to acquire. Eventually, also, Negro slaves transferred their allegiance to the state of which they were only indirectly members, or at least to their masters' families, with whom they felt themselves in most things one in sentiment and interest. The assimilation of the Negro field hand, where the contact of the slave with his master and his master's family was less intimate, was naturally less complete. On the large plantations, where an overseer stood between the master and the majority of his slaves, and especially on the sea island plantations off the coast of South Carolina, where the master and his family were likely to be merely winter visitors, this distance between master and slave was greatly increased. The consequence is that the Negroes in these regions are less touched today by the white man's influence and civilization than elsewhere in the southern states. C. AMERICANIZATION AS A PROBLEM IN ASSIMILATION[247] 1. Americanization as Assimilation The Americanization Study has assumed that the fundamental condition of what we call "Americanization" is the participation of the immigrant in the life of the community in which he lives. The point here emphasized is that patriotism, loyalty, and common sense are neither created nor transmitted by purely intellectual processes. Men must live and work and fight together in order to create that community of interest and sentiment which will enable them to meet the crises of their common life with a common will. It is evident, however, that the word "participation" as here employed has a wide application, and it becomes important for working purposes to give a more definite and concrete meaning to the term. 2. Language as a Means and a Product of Participation Obviously any organized social activity whatever and any participation in this activity implies "communication." In human, as distinguished from animal, society common life is based on a common speech. To share a common speech does not guarantee participation in the community life but it is an instrument of participation, and its acquisition by the members of an immigrant group is rightly considered a sign and a rough index of Americanization. It is, however, one of the ordinary experiences of social intercourse that words and things do not have the same meanings with different people, in different parts of the country, in different periods of time, and, in general, in different contexts. The same "thing" has a different meaning for the naïve person and the sophisticated person, for the child and the philosopher; the new experience derives its significance from the character and organization of the previous experiences. To the peasant a comet, a plague, and an epileptic person may mean a divine portent, a visitation of God, a possession by the devil; to the scientific man they mean something quite different. The word "slavery" had very different connotations in the ancient world and today. It has a very different significance today in the southern states and in the northern states. "Socialism" has a very different significance to the immigrant from the Russian pale living on the "East Side" of New York City, to the citizen on Riverside Drive, and to the native American in the hills of Georgia. Psychologists explain this difference in the connotation of the same word among people using the same language in terms of difference in the "apperception mass" in different individuals and different groups of individuals. In their phraseology the "apperception mass" represents the body of memories and meanings deposited in the consciousness of the individual from the totality of his experiences. It is the body of material with which every new datum of experience comes into contact, to which it is related, and in connection with which it gets its meaning. When persons interpret data on different grounds, when the apperception mass is radically different, we say popularly that they live in different worlds. The logician expresses this by saying that they occupy different "universes of discourse"--that is, they cannot talk in the same terms. The ecclesiastic, the artist, the mystic, the scientist, the Philistine, the Bohemian, represent more or less different "universes of discourse." Even social workers occupy universes of discourse not mutually intelligible. Similarly, different races and nationalities as wholes represent different apperception masses and consequently different universes of discourse and are not mutually intelligible. Even our remote forefathers are with difficulty intelligible to us, though always more intelligible than the Eastern immigrant because of the continuity of our tradition. Still it is almost as difficult for us to comprehend _Elsie Dinsmore_ or the _Westminster Catechism_ as the Koran or the Talmud. It is apparent, therefore, that in the wide extension and vast complexity of modern life, in which peoples of different races and cultures are now coming into intimate contact, the divergences in the meanings and values which individuals and groups attach to objects and forms of behavior are deeper than anything expressed by differences in language. Actually common participation in common activities implies a common "definition of the situation." In fact, every single act, and eventually all moral life, is dependent upon the definition of the situation. A definition of the situation precedes and limits any possible action, and a redefinition of the situation changes the character of the action. An abusive person, for example, provokes anger and possibly violence, but if we realize that the man is insane this redefinition of the situation results in totally different behavior. Every social group develops systematic and unsystematic means of defining the situation for its members. Among these means are the "don'ts" of the mother, the gossip of the community, epithets ("liar," "traitor," "scab"), the sneer, the shrug, the newspaper, the theater, the school, libraries, the law, and the gospel. Education in the widest sense--intellectual, moral, aesthetic--is the process of defining the situation. It is the process by which the definitions of an older generation are transmitted to a younger. In the case of the immigrant it is the process by which the definitions of one cultural group are transmitted to another. Differences in meanings and values, referred to above in terms of the "apperception mass," grow out of the fact that different individuals and different peoples have defined the situation in different ways. When we speak of the different "heritages" or "traditions" which our different immigrant groups bring, it means that, owing to different historical circumstances, they have defined the situation differently. Certain prominent personalities, schools of thought, bodies of doctrine, historical events, have contributed in defining the situation and determining the attitudes and values of our various immigrant groups in characteristic ways in their home countries. To the Sicilian, for example, marital infidelity means the stiletto; to the American, the divorce court. And even when the immigrant thinks that he understands us, he nevertheless does not do this completely. At the best he interprets our cultural traditions in terms of his own. Actually the situation is progressively redefined by the consequences of the actions, provoked by the previous definitions, and a prison experience is designed to provide a datum toward the redefinition of the situation. It is evidently important that the people who compose a community and share in the common life should have a sufficient body of common memories to understand one another. This is particularly true in a democracy, where it is intended that the public institutions should be responsive to public opinion. There can be no public opinion except in so far as the persons who compose the public are able to live in the same world and speak and think in the same universe of discourse. For that reason it seems desirable that the immigrants should not only speak the language of the country but should know something of the history of the people among whom they have chosen to dwell. For the same reason it is important that native Americans should know the history and social life of the countries from which the immigrants come. It is important also that every individual should share as fully as possible a fund of knowledge, experience, sentiments, and ideals common to the whole community and himself contribute to this fund. It is for this reason that we maintain and seek to maintain freedom of speech and free schools. The function of literature, including poetry, romance, and the newspaper, is to enable all to share victoriously and imaginatively in the inner life of each. The function of science is to gather up, classify, digest, and preserve, in a form in which they may become available to the community as a whole, the ideas, inventions, and technical experience of the individuals composing it. Thus not merely the possession of a common language but the wide extension of the opportunities for education become conditions of Americanization. The immigration problem is unique in the sense that the immigrant brings divergent definitions of the situation, and this renders his participation in our activities difficult. At the same time this problem is of the same general type as the one exemplified by "syndicalism," "bolshevism," "socialism," etc., where the definition of the situation does not agree with the traditional one. The modern "social unrest," like the immigrant problem, is a sign of the lack of participation and this is true to the degree that certain elements feel that violence is the only available means of participating. 3. Assimilation and the Mediation of Individual Differences In general, a period of unrest represents the stage in which a new definition of the situation is being prepared. Emotion and unrest are connected with situations where there is loss of control. Control is secured on the basis of habits and habits are built up on the basis of the definition of the situation. Habit represents a situation where the definition is working. When control is lost it means that the habits are no longer adequate, that the situation has changed and demands a redefinition. This is the point at which we have unrest--a heightened emotional state, random movements, unregulated behavior--and this continues until the situation is redefined. The unrest is associated with conditions in which the individual or society feels unable to act. It represents energy, and the problem is to use it constructively. The older societies tended to treat unrest by defining the situation in terms of the suppression or postponement of the wish; they tried to make the repudiation of the wish itself a wish. "Contentment," "conformity to the will of God," ultimate "salvation" in a better world, are representative of this. The founders of America defined the situation in terms of participation, but this has actually taken too exclusively the form of "political participation." The present tendency is to define the situation in terms of social participation, including demand for the improvement of social conditions to a degree which will enable all to participate. But, while it is important that the people who are members of the same community should have a body of common memories and a common apperception mass, so that they may talk intelligibly to one another, it is neither possible nor necessary that everything should have the same meaning for everyone. A perfectly homogeneous consciousness would mean a tendency to define all situations rigidly and sacredly and once and forever. Something like this did happen in the Slavic village communities and among all savage people, and it was the ideal of the medieval church, but it implies a low level of efficiency and a slow rate of progress. Mankind is distinguished, in fact, from the animal world by being composed of persons of divergent types, of varied tastes and interests, of different vocations and functions. Civilization is the product of an association of widely different individuals, and with the progress of civilization the divergence in individual human types has been and must continue to be constantly multiplied. Our progress in the arts and sciences and in the creation of values in general has been dependent on specialists whose distinctive worth was precisely their divergence from other individuals. It is even evident that we have been able to use productively individuals who in a savage or peasant society would have been classed as insane--who perhaps were indeed insane. The ability to participate productively implies thus a diversity of attitudes and values in the participants, but a diversity not so great as to lower the morals of the community and to prevent effective co-operation. It is important to have ready definitions for all immediate situations, but progress is dependent on the constant redefinitions for all immediate situations, and the ideal condition for this is the presence of individuals with divergent definitions, who contribute, in part consciously and in part unconsciously, through their individualism and labors to a common task and a common end. It is only in this way that an intelligible world, in which each can participate according to his intelligence, comes into existence. For it is only through their consequences that words get their meanings or that situations become defined. It is through conflict and co-operation, or, to use a current phrase of economists, through "competitive co-operation," that a distinctively human type of society does anywhere exist. Privacy and publicity, "society" and solitude, public ends and private enterprises, are each and all distinctive factors in human society everywhere. They are particularly characteristic of historic American democracy. In this whole connection it appears that the group consciousness and the individual himself are formed by communication and participation, and that the communication and participation are themselves dependent for their meaning on common interests. But it would be an error to assume that participation always implies an intimate personal, face-to-face relation. Specialists participate notably and productively in our common life, but this is evidently not on the basis of personal association with their neighbors. Darwin was assisted by Lyell, Owen, and other contemporaries in working out a new definition of the situation, but these men were not his neighbors. When Mayer worked out his theory of the transmutation of energy, his neighbors in the village of Heilbronn were so far from participating that they twice confined him in insane asylums. A postage stamp may be a more efficient instrument of participation than a village meeting. Defining the situation with reference to the participation of the immigrant is of course not solving the problem of immigration. This involves an analysis of the whole significance of the qualitative and quantitative character of a population, with reference to any given values--standards of living, individual level of efficiency, liberty and determinism, etc. We have, for instance, in America a certain level of culture, depending, let us say as a minimum, on the perpetuation of our public-school system. But, if by some conceivable _lusus naturae_ the birth rate was multiplied a hundred fold, or by some conceivable cataclysm a hundred million African blacks were landed annually on our eastern coast and an equal number of Chinese coolies on our western coast, then we should have neither teachers enough nor buildings enough nor material resources enough to impart even the three R's to a fraction of the population, and the outlook of democracy, so far as it is dependent upon participation, would become very dismal. On the other hand, it is conceivable that certain immigrant populations in certain numbers, with their special temperaments, endowments, and social heritages, would contribute positively and increasingly to our stock of civilization. These are questions to be determined, but certainly if the immigrant is admitted on any basis whatever the condition of his Americanization is that he shall have the widest and freest opportunity to contribute in his own way to the common fund of knowledge, ideas, and ideals which makes up the culture of our common country. It is only in this way that the immigrant can "participate" in the fullest sense of the term. III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS 1. Assimilation and Amalgamation The literature upon assimilation falls naturally under three main heads: (1) assimilation and amalgamation; (2) the conflict and fusion of cultures; and (3) immigration and Americanization. Literature on assimilation is very largely a by-product of the controversy in regard to the relative superiority and inferiority of races. This controversy owes its existence, in the present century, to the publication in 1854 of Gobineau's _The Inequality of Human Races_. This treatise appeared at a time when the dominant peoples of Europe were engaged in extending their benevolent protection over all the "unprotected" lesser breeds, and this book offered a justification, on biological grounds, of the domination of the "inferior" by the "superior" races. Gobineau's theory, and that of the schools which have perpetuated and elaborated his doctrines, defined culture as an essentially racial trait. Other races might accommodate themselves to, but could not originate nor maintain a superior culture. This is the aristocratic theory of the inequalities of races and, as might be expected, was received with enthusiasm by the chauvinists of the "strong" nations. The opposing school is disposed to treat the existing civilizations as largely the result of historical accident. The superior peoples are those who have had access to the accumulated cultural materials of the peoples that preceded them. Modern Europe owes its civilization to the fact that it went to school to the ancients. The inferior peoples are those who did not have this advantage. Ratzel was one of the first to venture the theory that the natural and the cultural peoples were fundamentally alike and that the existing differences, great as they are, were due to geographical and cultural isolation of the less advanced races. Boas' _Mind of Primitive Man_ is the most systematic and critical statement of that view of the matter. The discussion which these rival theories provoked has led students to closer studies of the effects of racial contacts and to a more penetrating analysis of the cultural process. The contacts of races have invariably led to racial intermixture, and the mixed breed, as in the case of the mulatto, the result of the white-Negro cross, has tended to create a distinct cultural as well as a racial type. E. B. Reuter's volume on _The Mulatto_ is the first serious attempt to study the mixed blood as a cultural type and define his rôle in the conflict of races and cultures. Historical cases of the assimilation of one group by another are frequent. Kaindl's investigations of the German settlements in the Carpathian lands are particularly instructive. The story of the manner in which the early German settlers in Cracow, Galicia, were Polonized mainly under the influence of the Polish nobility, is all the more interesting when it is contrasted with the German colonists in the Siebenbürgen, which have remained strongholds of the German language and culture in the midst of a population of Roumanian peasants for nearly eight hundred years. Still more interesting are the recent attempts of the Prussians to Germanize the former province of Posen, now reunited to Poland. Prussia's policy of colonization of German peasants in Posen failed for several reasons, but it failed finally because the German peasant, finding himself isolated in the midst of a Polish community, either gave up the land the government had acquired for him and returned to his native German province, or identified himself with the Polish community and was thus lost to the cause of German nationalism. The whole interesting history of that episode is related in Bernard's _Die Polenfrage_, which is at the same time an account of the organization of an autonomous Polish community within the limits of a German state. The competition and survival of languages affords interesting material for the study of cultural contacts and the conditions that determine assimilation. Investigations of the racial origins of European peoples have discovered a great number of curious cultural anomalies. There are peoples like the Spreewälder who inhabit a little cultural island of about 240 miles square in the Province of Brandenburg, Prussia. Surviving remnants of a Slavic people, they still preserve their language and their tribal costumes, and, although but thirty thousand in number and surrounded by Germans, maintain a lively literary movement all their own. On the other hand, the most vigorous and powerful of the Germanic nationalities, the Prussian, bears the name of a conquered Slavic people whose language, "Old Prussian," not spoken since the seventeenth century, is preserved only in a few printed books, including a catechism and German-Prussian vocabulary, which the German philologists have rescued from oblivion. 2. The Conflict and Fusion of Cultures The contacts and transmission of cultures have been investigated in different regions of social life under different titles. The ethnologists have investigated the process among primitive peoples under the title acculturation. Among historical peoples, on the other hand, acculturation has been called assimilation. The aim of missions has been, on the whole, to bring the world under the domination of a single moral order; but in seeking to accomplish this task they have contributed greatly to the fusion and cross-fertilization of racial and national cultures. The problem of origin is the first and often the most perplexing problem which the study of primitive cultures presents.[248] Was a given cultural trait, i.e., a weapon, a tool, or a myth, borrowed or invented? For example, there are several independent centers of origin and propagation of the bow and arrow. Writing approached or reached perfection in at least five different, widely separated regions. Other problems of acculturation which have been studied include the following: the degree and order of transmissibility of different cultural traits; the persistence or the immunity against change of different traits; the modification of cultural traits in the process of transmission; the character of social contacts between cultural groups; the distance that divides cultural levels; and the rôle of prestige in stimulating imitation and copying. The development of a world-commerce, the era of European colonization and imperial expansion in America, Asia, and Africa and Australia, the forward drive of occidental science and the Western system of large-scale competitive industry have created racial contacts, cultural changes, conflicts, and fusions of unprecedented and unforeseen extent, intensity, and immediateness. The crash of a fallen social order in Russia reverberates throughout the world; reports of the capitalization of new enterprises indicate that India is copying the economic organization of Europe; the feminist movement has invaded Japan; representatives of close to fifty nations of the earth meet in conclave in the assembly of the League of Nations. So complete has been in recent years the interpenetration of peoples and cultures that nations are now seeking to preserve their existence not alone from assault from without by force of arms, but they are equally concerned to protect themselves from the more insidious attacks of propaganda from within. Under these circumstances the ancient liberties of speech and press are being scrutinized and questioned. Particularly is this true when this freedom of speech and press is exercised by alien peoples, who criticize our institutions in a foreign tongue and claim the right to reform native institutions before they have become citizens and even before they are able to use the native language. 3. Immigration and Americanization The presence of large groups of foreign-born in the United States was first conceived of as a problem of immigration. From the period of the large Irish immigration to this country in the decades following 1820 each new immigrant group called forth a popular literature of protest against the evils its presence threatened. After 1890 the increasing volume of immigration and the change in the source of the immigrants from northwestern Europe to southeastern Europe intensified the general concern. In 1907 the Congress of the United States created the Immigration Commission to make "full inquiry, examination, and investigation into the subject of immigration." The plan and scope of the work as outlined by the Commission "included a study of the sources of recent immigration in Europe, the general character of incoming immigrants, the methods employed here and abroad to prevent the immigration of persons classed as undesirable in the United States immigration law, and finally a thorough investigation into the general status of the more recent immigrants as residents of the United States, and the effect of such immigration upon the institutions, industries, and people of this country." In 1910 the Commission made a report of its investigations and findings together with its conclusions and recommendations which were published in forty-one volumes. The European War focused the attention of the country upon the problem of Americanization. The public mind became conscious of the fact that "the stranger within our gates," whether naturalized or unnaturalized, tended to maintain his loyalty to the land of his origin, even when it seemed to conflict with loyalty to the country of his sojourn or his adoption. A large number of superficial investigations called "surveys" were made of immigrant colonies in the larger cities of the country. Americanization work of many varieties developed apace. A vast literature sprang up to meet the public demand for information and instruction on this topic. In view of this situation the Carnegie Corporation of New York City undertook in 1918 a "Study of the Methods of Americanization or Fusion of Native and Foreign Born." The point of view from which the study was made may be inferred from the following statement by its director, Allen T. Burns: Americanization is the uniting of new with native born Americans in fuller common understanding and appreciation to secure by means of self-government the highest welfare of all. Such Americanization should produce no unchangeable political, domestic, and economic régime delivered once for all to the fathers, but a growing and broadening national life, inclusive of the best wherever found. With all our rich heritages, Americanism will develop through a mutual giving and taking of contributions from both newer and older Americans in the interest of the common weal. This study will follow such an understanding of Americanization. The study, as originally planned, was divided into ten divisions, as follows: the schooling of the immigrant, the press and the theater, adjustment of homes and family life, legal protection and correction, health standards and care, naturalization and political life, industrial and economic amalgamation, treatment of immigrant heritages, neighborhood agencies, and rural developments. The findings of these different parts of the study are presented in separate volumes. This is the most recent important survey-investigation of the immigrant, although there are many less imposing but significant studies in this field. Among these are the interesting analyses of the assimilation process in Julius Drachsler's _Democracy and Assimilation_ and in A. M. Dushkin's study of _Jewish Education in New York City_. The natural history of assimilation may be best studied in personal narratives and documents, such as letters and autobiographies, or in monographs upon urban and rural immigrant communities. In recent years a series of personal narrative and autobiographical sketches have revealed the intimate personal aspects of the assimilation process. The expectancy and disillusionment of the first experiences, the consequent nostalgia and homesickness, gradual accommodation to the new situation, the first participations in American life, the fixation of wishes in the opportunities of the American social environment, the ultimate identification of the person with the memories, sentiments, and future of his adopted country--all these steps in assimilation are portrayed in such interesting books as _The Far Journey_ by Abraham Rihbany, _The Promised Land_ by Mary Antin, _Out of the Shadow_ by Rose Cohen, _An American in the Making_ by M. E. Ravage, _My Mother and I_ by E. C. Stern. The most reflective use of personal documents for the study of the problems of the immigrant has been made by Thomas and Znaniecki in _The Polish Peasant in Europe and America_. In these studies letters and life-histories have been, for the first time, methodically employed to exhibit the processes of adjustment in the transition from a European peasant village to the immigrant colony of an American industrial community. The work of Thomas and Znaniecki is in a real sense a study of the Polish community in Europe and America. Less ambitious studies have been made of individual immigrant communities. Several religious communities composed of isolated and unassimilated groups, such as the German Mennonites, have been intensively studied. Materials valuable for the study of certain immigrant communities, assembled for quite other purposes, are contained in the almanacs, yearbooks, and local histories of the various immigrant communities. The most interesting of these are the _Jewish Communal Register_ of New York and the studies made by the Norwegian Lutheran Church in America under the direction of O. M. Norlie.[249] SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY I. ASSIMILATION AND AMALGAMATION A. _The Psychology and Sociology of Assimilation_ (1) Wundt, Wilhelm. "Bermerkungen zur Associationslehre," _Philosophische Studien_, VII (1892), 329-61. ["Complication und Assimilation," pp. 334-53.] (2) ----. _Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie._ "Assimilationen," III, 528-35. 5th ed. Leipzig, 1903. (3) Ward, James. "Association and Assimilation," _Mind_, N.S., II (1893), 347-62; III (1894), 509-32. (4) Baldwin, J. Mark. _Mental Development in the Child and the Race._ Methods and processes. "Assimilation, Recognition," pp. 308-19. New York, 1895. (5) Novicow, J. _Les Luttes entre sociétés humaines et leur phases successives._ Book II, chap. vii, "La Dénationalisation," pp. 125-53. Paris, 1893. [Definition of denationalization.] (6) Ratzenhofer, Gustav. _Die sociologische Erkenntnis_, pp. 41-42. Leipzig, 1898. (7) Park, Robert E. "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups with Particular Reference to the Negro," _American Journal of Sociology_, XIX (1913-14), 606-23. (8) Simons, Sarah E. "Social Assimilation," _American Journal of Sociology_, VI (1900-1901), 790-822; VII (1901-2), 53-79, 234-48, 386-404, 539-56. [Bibliography.] (9) Jenks, Albert E. "Assimilation in the Philippines as Interpreted in Terms of Assimilation in America," _Publications of the American Sociological Society_, VIII (1913), 140-58. (10) McKenzie, F. A. "The Assimilation of the American Indian," _Publications of the American Sociological Society_, VIII (1913), 37-48. [Bibliography.] (11) Ciszewski, S. _Kunstliche Verwandschaft bei den Südslaven._ Leipzig, 1897. (12) Windisch, H. _Taufe und Sünde im ältesten Christentum bis auf Origines_. Ein Beitrag zur altchristlichen Dogmengeschichte. Tübingen, 1908. B. _Assimilation and Amalgamation_ (1) Gumplowicz, Ludwig. _Der Rassenkampf._ Sociologische Untersuchungen, sec. 38, "Wie die Amalgamirung vor sich geht," pp. 253-63. Innsbruck, 1883. (2) Commons, John R. _Races and Immigrants in America._ Chap. ix, "Amalgamation and Assimilation," pp. 198-238. New ed. New York, 1920. [See also pp. 17-21.] (3) Ripley, William Z. _The Races of Europe._ A sociological study. Chap. ii, "Language, Nationality, and Race," pp. 15-36. Chap. xviii, "European Origins: Race and Culture," pp. 486-512. New York, 1899. (4) Fischer, Eugen. _Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen._ Anthropologische und ethnographische Studien am Rehobother Bastardvolk in Deutsch-Südwest Afrika. Jena, 1913. (5) Mayo-Smith, Richmond. "Theories of Mixture of Races and Nationalities," _Yale Review_, III (1894), 166-86. (6) Smith, G. Elliot. "The Influence of Racial Admixture in Egypt," _Eugenics Review_, VII (1915-16), 163-83. (7) Reuter, E. B. _The Mulatto in the United States._ Including a study of the rôle of mixed-blood races throughout the world. Boston, 1918. (8) Weatherly, Ulysses G. "The Racial Element in Social Assimilation," _Publications of the American Sociological Society_, V (1910), 57-76. (9) ----. "Race and Marriage," _American Journal of Sociology_, XV (1909-10), 433-53. (10) Roosevelt, Theodore. "Brazil and the Negro," _Outlook_, CVI (1904), 409-11. II. THE CONFLICT AND FUSION OF CULTURES A. _Process of Acculturation_ (1) Ratzel, Friedrich. _The History of Mankind._ Vol. I, Book I, sec. 4, "Nature, Rise and Spread of Civilization," pp. 20-30. Vol. II, Book II, sec. 31, "Origin and Development of the Old American Civilization," pp. 160-70. Translated from the 2d German ed. by A. J. Butler. 3 vols. London, 1896-98. (2) Rivers, W. H. R. "The Ethnological Analysis of Culture," _Report of the 81st Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science_, 1911, pp. 490-99. (3) Frobenius, L. _Der Ursprung der afrikanischen Kulturen._ Berlin, 1898. (4) Boas, Franz. _The Mind of Primitive Man._ Chap. vi, "The Universality of Cultural Traits," pp. 155-73. Chap. vii, "The Evolutionary Viewpoint," pp. 174-96. New York, 1911. (5) Vierkandt, A. _Die Stetigkeit im Kulturwandel._ Eine sociologische Studie. Leipzig, 1908. (6) McGee, W. J. "Piratical Acculturation," _American Anthropologist_, XI (1898), 243-51. (7) Crooke, W. "Method of Investigation and Folklore Origins," _Folklore_, XXIV (1913), 14-40. (8) Graebner, F. "Die melanesische Bogenkultur und ihre Verwandten," _Anthropos_, IV (1909), 726-80, 998-1032. (9) Lowie, Robert H. "On the Principle of Convergence in Ethnology," _Journal of American Folklore_, XXV (1912), 24-42. (10) Goldenweiser, A. A. "The Principle of Limited Possibilities in the Development of Culture," _Journal of American Folklore_, XXVI (1913), 259-90. (11) Dixon, R. B. "The Independence of the Culture of the American Indian," _Science_, N.S., XXXV (1912), 46-55. (12) Johnson, W. _Folk-Memory._ Or the continuity of British archaeology. Oxford, 1908. (13) Wundt, Wilhelm. _Völkerpsychologie._ Eine Untersuchung der Entwicklungsgesetze von Sprache, Mythus, und Sitte. Band I, "Die Sprache." 3 vols. Leipzig, 1900-1909. (14) Tarde, Gabriel. _The Laws of Imitation._ Translated from the 2d French ed. by Elsie Clews Parsons. New York, 1903. B. _Nationalization and Denationalization_ (1) Bauer, Otto. _Die Nationalitätenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie._ Wien, 1907. Chap. vi, sec. 30, "Der Sozialismus und das Nationalitätsprinzip," pp. 507-21. (In: Adler, M. and Hildering, R. _Marx-Studien; Blätter zur Theorie und Politik des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus._ Band II. Wien, 1904. (2) Kerner, R. J. _Slavic Europe._ A selected bibliography in the western European languages, comprising history, languages, and literature. "The Slavs and Germanization," Nos. 2612-13, pp. 193-95. Cambridge, Mass., 1918. (3) Delbrück, Hans. "Das Polenthum," _Preussische Jahrbücher_, LXXVI (April, 1894), 173-86. (4) Warren, H. C. "Social Forces and International Ethics," _International Journal of Ethics_, XXVII (1917), 350-56. (5) Prince, M. "A World Consciousness and Future Peace," _Journal of Abnormal Psychology_, XI (1917), 287-304. (6) Reich, Emil. _General History of Western Nations, from 5000 B.C. to 1900 A.D._ "Europeanization of Humanity," pp. 33-65, 480-82. (Vols. I-II published.) London, 1908. (7) Thomas, William I. "The Prussian-Polish Situation: an Experiment in Assimilation," _American Journal of Sociology_, XIX (1913-14), 624-39. (8) Parkman, Francis. _Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian Wars after the Conquest of Canada._ 8th ed., 2 vols. Boston, 1877. [Discusses the cultural effects of the mingling of French and Indians in Canada.] (9) Moore, William H. _The Clash._ A study in nationalities. New York, 1919. [French and English cultural contacts in Canada.] (10) Mayo-Smith, Richmond. "Assimilation of Nationalities in the United States," _Political Science Quarterly_, IX (1894), 426-44, 649-70. (11) Kelly, J. Liddell. "New Race in the Making; Many Nationalities in the Territory of Hawaii--Process of Fusion Proceeding--the Coming Pacific Race," _Westminster Review_, CLXXV (1911), 357-66. (12) Kallen, H. M. _Structure of Lasting Peace._ An inquiry into the motives of war and peace. Boston, 1918. (13) Westermarck, Edward. "Finland and the Czar," _Contemporary Review_, LXXV (1899), 652-59. (14) Brandes, Georg. "Denmark and Germany," _Contemporary Review_, LXXVI (1899), 92-104. (15) Marvin, Francis S. _The Unity of Western Civilization._ Essays. London and New York, 1915. (16) Fishberg, Maurice. _The Jews: a Study in Race and Environment._ London and New York, 1911. [Chap. xxii deals with assimilation versus nationalism.] (17) Bailey, W. F., and Bates, Jean V. "The Early German Settlers in Transylvania," _Fortnightly Review_, CVII (1917), 661-74. (18) Auerbach, Bertrand. _Les Races et les nationalités en Autriche-Hongrie._ Paris, 1898. (19) Cunningham, William. _Alien Immigrants to England._ London and New York, 1897. (20) Kaindl, Raimund Friedrich. _Geschichte der Deutschen in den Karpathenländern._ Vol. I, "Geschichte der Deutschen in Galizien bis 1772." 3 vols. in 2. Gotha, 1907-11. C. _Missions_ (1) Moore, Edward C. _The Spread of Christianity in the Modern World._ Chicago, 1919. [Bibliography.] (2) World Missionary Conference. _Report of the World Missionary Conference, 1910._ 9 vols. Chicago, 1910. (3) Robinson, Charles H. _History of Christian Missions._ New York, 1915. (4) Speer, Robert E. _Missions and Modern History._ A study of the missionary aspects of some great movements of the nineteenth century. 2 vols. New York, 1904. (5) Warneck, Gustav. _Outline of a History of Protestant Missions from the Reformation to the Present Time._ A contribution to modern church history. Translated from the German by George Robson. Chicago, 1901. (6) Creighton, Louise. _Missions._ Their rise and development. New York, 1912. [Bibliography.] (7) Pascoe, C. F. _Two Hundred Years of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 1701-1900._ Based on a digest of the Society's records. London, 1901. (8) Parkman, Francis. _The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century._ Part II. "France and England in North America." Boston, 1902. (9) Bryce, James. _Impressions of South Africa._ Chap. xxii, "Missions," pp. 384-93. 3d ed. New York, 1900. (10) Sumner, W. G. _Folkways._ "Missions and Antagonistic Mores," pp. 111-14, 629-31. New York, 1906. (11) Coffin, Ernest W. "On the Education of Backward Races," _Pedagogical Seminary_, XV (1908), 1-62. [Bibliography.] (12) Blackmar, Frank W. _Spanish Colonization in the South West._ "The Mission System," pp. 28-48. "Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science." Baltimore, 1890. (13) Johnston, Harry H. _George Grenfell and the Congo._ A history and description of the Congo Independent State and adjoining districts of Congoland, together with some account of the native peoples and their languages, the fauna and flora, and similar notes on the Cameroons, and the Island of Fernando Pô, the whole founded on the diaries and researches of the late Rev. George Grenfell, B.M.S., F.R.S.G.; and on the records of the British Baptist Missionary society; and on additional information contributed by the author, by the Rev. Lawson Forfeitt, Mr. Emil Torday, and others. 2 vols. London, 1908. (14) Kingsley, Mary H. _West African Studies._ Pp. 107-9, 272-75. 2d ed. London, 1901. (15) Morel, E. D. _Affairs of West Africa._ Chaps. xxii-xxiii, "Islam in West Africa," pp. 208-37. London, 1902. (16) Sapper, Karl. "Der Charakter der mittelamerikanischen Indianer," _Globus_, LXXXVII (1905), 128-31. (17) Fleming, Daniel J. _Devolution in Mission Administration._ As exemplified by the legislative history of five American missionary societies in India. New York, 1916. [Bibliography.] III. IMMIGRATION AND AMERICANIZATION A. _Immigration and the Immigrant_ (1) United States Immigration Commission. _Reports of the Immigration Commission._ 41 vols. Washington, 1911. (2) Lauck, William J., and Jenks, Jeremiah. _The Immigration Problem._ New York, 1912. (3) Commons, John R. _Races and Immigrants in America._ New ed. New York, 1920. (4) Fairchild, Henry P. _Immigration._ A world-movement and its American significance. New York, 1913. [Bibliography.] (5) Ross, E. A. _The Old World in the New._ The significance of past and present immigration to the American people. New York, 1914. (6) Abbott, Grace. _The Immigrant and the Community._ With an introduction by Judge Julian W. Mack. New York, 1917. (7) Steiner, Edward A. _On the Trail of the Immigrant._ New York, 1906. (8) ----. _The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and Flow._ Chicago, 1909. (9) Brandenburg, Broughton. _Imported Americans._ The story of the experiences of a disguised American and his wife studying the immigration question. New York, 1904. (10) Kapp, Friedrich. _Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the State of New York._ New York, 1880. B. _Immigrant Communities_ (1) Faust, Albert B. _The German Element in the United States._ With special reference to its political, moral, social, and educational influence. New York, 1909. (2) Green, Samuel S. _The Scotch-Irish in America, 1895._ A paper read as the report of the Council of the American Antiquarian Society, at the semi-annual meeting, April 24, 1895, with correspondence called out by the paper. Worcester, Mass., 1895. (3) Hanna, Charles A. _The Scotch-Irish._ Or the Scot in North Britain, North Ireland, and North America. New York and London, 1902. (4) Jewish Publication Society of America. _The American Jewish Yearbook._ Philadelphia, 1899. (5) _Jewish Communal Register, 1917-1918._ 2d ed. Edited and published by the Kehillah (Jewish Community) of New York City. New York, 1919. (6) Balch, Emily G. _Our Slavic Fellow Citizens._ New York, 1910. (7) Horak, Jakub. _Assimilation of Czechs in Chicago._ [In press.] (8) Millis, Harry A. _The Japanese Problem in the United States._ An investigation for the Commission on Relations with Japan appointed by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. New York, 1915. (9) Fairchild, Henry P. _Greek Immigration to the United States._ New Haven, 1911. (10) Burgess, Thomas. _Greeks in America._ An account of their coming, progress, customs, living, and aspirations; with a historical introduction and the stories of some famous American-Greeks. Boston, 1913. (11) Coolidge, Mary R. _Chinese Immigration._ New York, 1909. (12) Foerster, Robert F. _The Italian Emigration of Our Times._ Cambridge, Mass., 1919. (13) Lord, Eliot, Trenor, John J. D., and Barrows, Samuel J. _The Italian in America._ New York, 1905. (14) DuBois, W. E. Burghardt. _The Philadelphia Negro, A Social Study._ Together with a special report on domestic service by Isabel Eaton. "Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, Series in Political Economy and Public Law," No. 14. Philadelphia, 1899. (15) Williams, Daniel J. _The Welsh of Columbus, Ohio._ A study in adaptation and assimilation. Oshkosh, Wis., 1913. C. _Americanization_ (1) Drachsler, Julius. _Democracy and Assimilation._ The blending of immigrant heritages in America. New York, 1920. [Bibliography.] (2) Dushkin, Alexander M. _Jewish Education in New York City._ New York, 1918. (3) Thompson, Frank V. _Schooling of the Immigrant._ New York, 1920. (4) Daniels, John. _America via the Neighborhood._ New York, 1920. (5) Park, Robert E., and Miller, Herbert A. _Old World Traits Transplanted._ New York, 1921. (6) Speek, Peter A. _A Stake in the Land._ New York, 1921. (7) Davis, Michael M. _Immigrant Health and the Community._ New York, 1921. (8) Breckinridge, Sophonisba P. _New Homes for Old._ New York, 1921. (9) Leiserson, William M. _Adjusting Immigrant and Industry._ [In press.] (10) Gavit, John P. _Americans by Choice._ [In press.] (11) Claghorn, Kate H. _The Immigrant's Day in Court._ [In press.] (12) Park, Robert E. _The Immigrant Press and Its Control._ [In press.] New York, 1921. (13) Burns, Allen T. _Summary of the Americanization Studies of the Carnegie Corporation of New York._ [In press.] (14) Miller, Herbert A. _The School and the Immigrant._ Cleveland Education Survey. Cleveland, 1916. (15) Kallen, Horace M. "Democracy versus the Melting-Pot, a Study of American Nationality." _Nation_, C (1915), 190-94, 217-20. (16) Gulick, Sidney L. _American Democracy and Asiatic Citizenship._ New York, 1918. (17) Talbot, Winthrop, editor. _Americanization._ Principles of Americanism; essentials of Americanization; technic of race-assimilation. New York, 1917. [Annotated bibliography.] (18) Stead, W. T. _The Americanization of the World._ Or the trend of the twentieth century. New York and London, 1901. (19) Aronovici, Carol. _Americanization._ St. Paul, 1919. [Also in _American Journal of Sociology_, XXV (1919-20), 695-730.] D. _Personal Documents_ (1) Bridges, Horace. _On Becoming an American._ Some meditations of a newly naturalized immigrant. Boston, 1919. (2) Riis, Jacob A. _The Making of an American._ New York, 1901. (3) Rihbany, Abraham Mitrie. _A Far Journey._ Boston, 1914. (4) Hasanovitz, Elizabeth. _One of Them._ Chapters from a passionate autobiography. Boston, 1918. (5) Cohen, Rose. _Out of the Shadow._ New York, 1918. (6) Ravage, M. E. _An American in the Making._ The life-story of an immigrant. New York, 1917. (7) Cahan, Abraham. _The Rise of David Levinsky._ A novel. New York, 1917. (8) Antin, Mary. _The Promised Land._ New York, 1912. (9) ----. _They Who Knock at Our Gates._ A complete gospel of immigration. New York, 1914. (10) Washington, Booker T. _Up from Slavery._ An autobiography. New York, 1901. (11) Steiner, Edward A. _From Alien to Citizen._ The story of my life in America. New York, 1914. (12) Stern, Mrs. Elizabeth Gertrude (Levin). _My Mother and I._ New York, 1919. (13) DuBois, W. E. Burghardt. _Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil._ New York, 1920. (14) ----. _The Souls of Black Folk._ Essays and sketches. Chicago, 1903. (15) Hapgood, Hutchins. _The Spirit of the Ghetto._ Studies of the Jewish quarter in New York. Rev. ed. New York, 1909. TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES 1. Race and Culture, and the Problem of the Relative Superiority and Inferiority of Races. 2. The Relation of Assimilation to Amalgamation. 3. The Mulatto as a Cultural Type. 4. Language as a Means of Assimilation and a Basis of National Solidarity. 5. History and Literature as Means for Preserving National Solidarity. 6. Race Prejudice and Segregation in Their Relations to Assimilation and Accommodation. 7. Domestic Slavery and the Assimilation of the Negro. 8. A Study of Historical Experiments in Denationalization; the Germanization of Posen, the Russianization of Poland, the Japanese Policy in Korea, etc. 9. The "Melting-Pot" versus "Hyphen" in Their Relation to Americanization. 10. A Study of Policies, Programs, and Experiments in Americanization from the Standpoint of Sociology. 11. The Immigrant Community as a Means of Americanization. 12. The Process of Assimilation as Revealed in Personal Documents, as Antin, _The Promised Land_; Rihbany, _A Far Journey_; Ravage, _An American in the Making_; etc. 13. Foreign Missions and Native Cultures. 14. The Rôle of Assimilation and Accommodation in the Personal Development of the Individual Man. 15. Assimilation and Accommodation in Their Relations to the Educational Process. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. What do you understand Simons to mean by the term "assimilation"? 2. What is the difference between amalgamation and assimilation? 3. How are assimilation and amalgamation interrelated? 4. What do you consider to be the difference between Trotter's explanation of human evolution and that of Crile? 5. What do you understand Trotter to mean by the gregarious instinct as a mechanism controlling conduct? 6. Of what significance is the distinction made by Trotter between (a) the three individual instincts, and (b) the gregarious instincts? 7. What is the significance of material and non-material cultural elements for the study of race contact and intermixture? 8. How do you explain the difference in rapidity of assimilation of the various types of cultural elements? 9. What factors promoted and impeded the extension of Roman culture in Gaul? 10. What social factors were involved in the origin of the French language? 11. To what extent does the extension of a cultural language involve assimilation? 12. In what sense do the cultural languages compete with each other? 13. Do you agree with the prediction that within a century English will be the vernacular of a quarter of the people of the world? Justify your position. 14. Does Park's definition of assimilation differ from that of Simons? 15. What do you understand Park to mean when he says, "Social institutions are not founded in similarities any more than they are founded in differences, but in relations, and in the mutual interdependence of the parts"? What is the relation of this principle to the process of assimilation? 16. What do you understand to be the difference between the type of assimilation (a) that makes for group solidarity and corporate action, and (b) that makes for formal like-mindedness? What conditions favor the one or the other type of assimilation? 17. What do you understand by the term "Americanization"? 18. Is there a difference between Americanization and Prussianization? 19. With what programs of Americanization are you familiar? Are they adequate from the standpoint of the sociological interpretation of assimilation? 20. In what way is language both a means and a product of assimilation? 21. What is meant by the phrases "apperception mass," "universes of discourse," and "definitions of the situations"? What is their significance for assimilation? 22. In what way does assimilation involve the mediation of individual differences? 23. Does the segregation of immigrants make for or against assimilation? 24. In what ways do primary and secondary contacts, imitation and suggestion, competition, conflict and accommodation, enter into the process of assimilation? FOOTNOTES: [241] Adapted from Sarah E. Simons, "Social Assimilation," in the _American Journal of Sociology_, VI (1901), 790-801. [242] Adapted from W. Trotter, "Herd Instinct," in the _Sociological Review_, I (1908), 231-42. [243] From W. H. R. Rivers, "The Ethnological Analysis of Culture," in _Nature_, LXXXVII (1911), 358-60. [244] From John H. Cornyn, "French Language," in the _Encyclopedia Americana_, XI (1919), 646-47. [245] Adapted from E. H. Babbitt, "The Geography of the Great Languages," in _World's Work_, XV (1907-8), 9903-7. [246] From Robert E. Park, "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups," in the _Publications of the American Sociological Society_, VIII (1914), 66-72. [247] The three selections under this heading are adapted from _Memorandum on Americanization_, prepared by the Division of Immigrant Heritages, of the Study of Methods of Americanization, of the Carnegie Corporation, New York City, 1919. [248] See chap. i, pp. 16-24. [249] See _Menighetskalenderen_. (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Publishing Co. 1917.) CHAPTER XII SOCIAL CONTROL I. INTRODUCTION 1. Social Control Defined Social control has been studied, but, in the wide extension that sociology has given to the term, it has not been defined. All social problems turn out finally to be problems of social control. In the introductory chapter to this volume social problems were divided into three classes: Problems (a) of administration, (b) of policy and polity, (c) of social forces and human nature.[250] Social control may be studied in each one of these categories. It is with social forces and human nature that sociology is mainly concerned. Therefore it is from this point of view that social control will be considered in this chapter. In the four preceding chapters the process of interaction, in its four typical forms, competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation, has been analyzed and described. The community and the natural order within the limits of the community, it appeared, are an effect of competition. Social control and the mutual subordination of individual members to the community have their origin in conflict, assume definite organized forms in the process of accommodation, and are consolidated and fixed in assimilation. Through the medium of these processes, a community assumes the form of a society. Incidentally, however, certain definite and quite spontaneous forms of social control are developed. These forms are familiar under various titles: tradition, custom, folkways, mores, ceremonial, myth, religious and political beliefs, dogmas and creeds, and finally public opinion and law. In this chapter it is proposed to define a little more accurately certain of these typical mechanisms through which social groups are enabled to act. In the chapter on "Collective Behavior" which follows, materials will be presented to exhibit the group in action. It is in action that the mechanisms of control are created, and the materials under the title "Collective Behavior" are intended to illustrate the stages, (a) social unrest, (b) mass movements, (c) institutions in which society is formed and reformed. Finally, in the chapter on "Progress," the relation of social change to social control will be discussed and the rôle of science and collective representations in the direction of social changes indicated. The most obvious fact about social control is the machinery by which laws are made and enforced, that is, the legislature, the courts, and the police. When we think of social control, therefore, these are the images in which we see it embodied and these are the terms in which we seek to define it. It is not quite so obvious that legislation and the police must, in the long run, have the support of public opinion. Hume's statement that governments, even the most despotic, have nothing but opinion to support them, cannot be accepted without some definition of terms, but it is essentially correct. Hume included under opinion what we would distinguish from it, namely, the mores. He might have added, using opinion in this broad sense, that the governed, no matter how numerous, are helpless unless they too are united by "opinion." A king or a political "boss," having an army or apolitical "machine" at his command, can do much. It is possible, also, to confuse or mislead public opinion, but neither the king nor the boss will, if he be wise, challenge the mores and the common sense of the community. Public opinion and the mores, however, representing as they do the responses of the community to changing situations, are themselves subject to change and variation. They are based, however, upon what we have called fundamental human nature, that is, certain traits which in some form or other are reproduced in every form of society. During the past seventy years the various tribes, races, and nationalities of mankind have been examined in detail by the students of ethnology, and a comparison of the results shows that the fundamental patterns of life and behavior are everywhere the same, whether among the ancient Greeks, the modern Italians, the Asiatic Mongols, the Australian blacks, or the African Hottentots. All have a form of family life, moral and legal regulations, a religious system, a form of government, artistic practices, and so forth. An examination of the moral code of any given group, say the African Kaffirs, will disclose many identities with that of any other given group, say the Hebrews. All groups have such "commandments" as "Honor thy father and mother," "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal." Formerly it was assumed that this similarity was the result of borrowing between groups. When Bastian recorded a Hawaiian myth resembling the one of Orpheus and Eurydice, there was speculation as to how this story had been carried so far from Greece. But it is now recognized that similarities of culture are due, in the main, not to imitation, but to parallel development. The nature of man is everywhere essentially the same and tends to express itself everywhere in similar sentiments and institutions.[251] There are factors in social control more fundamental than the mores. Herbert Spencer, in his chapter on "Ceremonial Government," has defined social control from this more fundamental point of view. In that chapter he refers to "the modified forms of action caused in men by the presence of their fellows" as a form of control "out of which other more definite controls are evolved." The spontaneous responses of one individual to the presence of another which are finally fixed, conventionalized, and transmitted as social ritual constitute that "primitive undifferentiated kind of government from which political and religious government are differentiated, and in which they continue immersed." In putting this emphasis upon ceremonial and upon those forms of behavior which spring directly and spontaneously out of the innate and instinctive responses of the individual to a social situation, Spencer is basing government on the springs of action which are fundamental, so far, at any rate, as sociology is concerned. 2. Classification of the Materials The selections on social control have been classified under three heads: (a) elementary forms of social control, (b) public opinion, and (c) institutions. This order of the readings indicates the development of control from its spontaneous forms in the crowd, in ceremony, prestige, and taboo; its more explicit expression in gossip, rumor, news, and public opinion; to its more formal organization in law, dogma, and in religious and political institutions. Ceremonial, public opinion, and law are characteristic forms in which social life finds expression as well as a means by which the actions of the individual are co-ordinated and collective impulses are organized so that they issue in behavior, that is, either (a) primarily expressive--play, for example--or (b) positive action. A very much larger part of all human behavior than we ordinarily imagine is merely expressive. Art, play, religious exercises, and political activity are either wholly or almost wholly forms of expression, and have, therefore, that symbolic and ceremonial character which belongs especially to ritual and to art, but is characteristic of every activity carried on for its own sake. Only work, action which has some ulterior motive or is performed from a conscious sense of duty, falls wholly and without reservation into the second class. a) _Elementary forms of social control._--Control in the crowd, where rapport is once established and every individual is immediately responsive to every other, is the most elementary form of control. Something like this same direct and spontaneous response of the individual in the crowd to the crowd's dominant mood or impulse may be seen in the herd and the flock, the "animal crowd." Under the influence of the vague sense of alarm, or merely as an effect of heat and thirst, cattle become restless and begin slowly moving about in circles, "milling." This milling is a sort of collective gesture, an expression of discomfort or of fear. But the very expression of the unrest tends to intensify its expression and so increases the tension in the herd. This continues up to the point where some sudden sound, the firing of a pistol or a flash of lightning, plunges the herd into a wild stampede. Milling in the herd is a visible image of what goes on in subtler and less obvious ways in human societies. Alarms or discomforts frequently provoke social unrest. The very expression of this unrest tends to magnify it. The situation is a vicious circle. Every attempt to deal with it merely serves to aggravate it. Such a vicious circle we witnessed in our history from 1830 to 1861, when every attempt to deal with slavery served only to bring the inevitable conflict between the states nearer. Finally there transpired what had for twenty years been visibly preparing and the war broke. Tolstoi in his great historical romance, _War and Peace_, describes, in a manner which no historian has equaled, the events that led up to the Franco-Russian War of 1812, and particularly the manner in which Napoleon, in spite of his efforts to avoid it, was driven by social forces over which he had no control to declare war on Russia, and so bring about his own downfall. The condition under which France was forced by Bismarck to declare war on Prussia in 1870, and the circumstances under which Austria declared war on Serbia in 1914 and so brought on the world-war, exhibit the same fatal circle. In both cases, given the situation, the preparations that had been made, the resolutions formed and the agreements entered into, it seems clear that after a certain point had been reached every move was forced. This is the most fundamental and elementary form of control. It is the control exercised by the mere play of elemental forces. These forces may, to a certain extent, be manipulated, as is true of other natural forces; but within certain limits, human nature being what it is, the issue is fatally determined, just as, given the circumstances and the nature of cattle, a stampede is inevitable. Historical crises are invariably created by processes which, looked at abstractly, are very much like milling in a herd. The vicious circle is the so-called "psychological factor" in financial depressions and panics and is, indeed, a factor in all collective action. The effect of this circular form of interaction is to increase the tensions in the group and, by creating a state of expectancy, to mobilize its members for collective action. It is like the attention in the individual: it is the way in which the group prepares to act. Back of every other form of control--ceremonial, public opinion, or law--there is always this interaction of the elementary social forces. What we ordinarily mean by social control, however, is the arbitrary intervention of some individual--official, functionary, or leader--in the social process. A policeman arrests a criminal, an attorney sways the jury with his eloquence, the judge passes sentence; these are the familiar formal acts in which social control manifests itself. What makes the control exercised in this way social, in the strict sense of that term, is the fact that these acts are supported by custom, law, and public opinion. The distinction between control in the crowd and in other forms of society is that the crowd has no tradition. It has no point of reference in its own past to which its members can refer for guidance. It has therefore neither symbols, ceremonies, rites, nor ritual; it imposes no obligations and creates no loyalties. Ceremonial is one method of reviving in the group a lively sense of the past. It is a method of reinstating the excitements and the sentiments which inspired an earlier collective action. The savage war dance is a dramatic representation of battle and as such serves to rouse and reawaken the warlike spirit. This is one way in which ceremonial becomes a means of control. By reviving the memories of an earlier war, it mobilizes the warriors for a new one. Ernst Grosse, in _The Beginnings of Art_, has stated succinctly what has impressed all first-hand observers, namely, the important rôle which the dance plays in the lives of primitive peoples. The dances of the hunting peoples are, as a rule, mass dances. Generally the men of the tribe, not rarely the members of several tribes, join in the exercises, and the whole assemblage then moves according to one law in one time. All who have described the dances have referred again and again to this "wonderful" unison of the movements. In the heat of the dance the several participants are fused together as into a single being, which is stirred and moved as by one feeling. During the dance they are in a condition of complete social unification, and the dancing group feels and acts like a single organism. _The social significance of the primitive dance lies precisely in this effect of social unification._ It brings and accustoms a number of men who, in their loose and precarious conditions of life, are driven irregularly hither and thither by different individual needs and desires, to act under one impulse with one feeling for one object. It introduces order and connection, at least occasionally, into the rambling, fluctuating life of the hunting tribes. It is, besides wars, perhaps the only factor that makes their solidarity vitally perceptible to the adherents of a primitive tribe, and it is at the same time one of the best preparations for war, for the gymnastic dances correspond in more than one respect to our military exercises. It would be hard to overestimate the importance of the primitive dance in the culture development of mankind. All higher civilization is conditioned upon the uniformly ordered co-operation of individual social elements, and primitive men are trained to this co-operation by the dance.[252] The dance, which is so characteristic and so universal a feature of the life of primitive man--at once a mode of collective expression and of collective representation--is but a conventionalized form of the circular reaction, which in its most primitive form is represented by the milling of the herd. b) _Public opinion._--We ordinarily think of public opinion as a sort of social weather. At certain times, and under certain circumstances, we observe strong, steady currents of opinion, moving apparently in a definite direction and toward a definite goal. At other times, however, we note flurries and eddies and counter-currents in this movement. Every now and then there are storms, shifts, or dead calms. These sudden shifts in public opinion, when expressed in terms of votes, are referred to by the politicians as "landslides." In all these movements, cross-currents and changes in direction which a closer observation of public opinion reveals, it is always possible to discern, but on a much grander scale, to be sure, that same type of circular reaction which we have found elsewhere, whenever the group was preparing to act. Always in the public, as in the crowd, there will be a circle, sometimes wider, sometimes narrower, within which individuals are mutually responsive to motives and interests of one another, so that out of this interplay of social forces there may emerge at any time a common motive and a common purpose that will dominate the whole. Within the circle of the mutual influence described, there will be no such complete rapport and no such complete domination of the individual by the group as exists in a herd or a crowd in a state of excitement, but there will be sufficient community of interest to insure a common understanding. A public is, in fact, organized on the basis of a universe of discourse, and within the limits of this universe of discourse, language, statements of fact, news will have, for all practical purposes, the same meanings. It is this circle of mutual influence within which there is a universe of discourse that defines the limits of the public. A public like the crowd is not to be conceived as a formal organization like a parliament or even a public meeting. It is always the widest area over which there is conscious participation and consensus in the formation of public opinion. The public has not only a circumference, but it has a center. Within the area within which there is participation and consensus there is always a focus of attention around which the opinions of the individuals which compose the public seem to revolve. This focus of attention, under ordinary circumstances, is constantly shifting. The shifts of attention of the public constitute what is meant by the changes in public opinion. When these changes take a definite direction and have or seem to have a definite goal, we call the phenomenon a social movement. If it were possible to plot this movement in the form of maps and graphs, it would be possible to show movement in two dimensions. There would be, for example, a movement in space. The focus of public opinion, the point namely at which there is the greatest "intensity" of opinion, tends to move from one part of the country to another.[253] In America these movements, for reasons that could perhaps be explained historically, are likely to be along the meridians, east and west, rather than north and south. In the course of this geographical movement of public opinion, however, we are likely to observe changes in intensity and changes in direction (devagation). Changes in intensity seem to be in direct proportion to the area over which opinion on a given issue may be said to exist. In minorities opinion is uniformly more intense than it is in majorities and this is what gives minorities so much greater influence in proportion to their numbers than majorities. While changes in intensity have a definite relation to the area over which public opinion on an issue may be said to exist, the devagations of public opinion, as distinguished from the trend, will probably turn out to have a direct relation to the character of the parties that participate. Area as applied to public opinion will have to be measured eventually in terms of social rather than geographical distance, that is to say, in terms of isolation and contact. The factor of numbers is also involved in any such calculation. Geographical area, communication, and the number of persons involved are in general the factors that would determine the concept "area" as it is used here. If party spirit is strong the general direction or trend of public opinion will probably be intersected by shifts and sudden transient changes in direction, and these shifts will be in proportion to the intensity of the party spirit. Charles E. Merriam's recent study of political parties indicates that the minority parties formulate most of the legislation in the United States.[254] This is because there is not very great divergence in the policies of the two great parties and party struggles are fought out on irrelevant issues. So far as this is true it insures against any sudden change in policy. New legislation is adopted in response to the trend of public opinion, rather than in response to the devagations and sudden shifts brought about by the development of a radical party spirit. All these phenomena may be observed, for example, in the Prohibition Movement. Dicey's study of _Law and Public Opinion in England_ showed that while the direction of opinion in regard to specific issues had been very irregular, on the whole the movement had been in one general direction. The trend of public opinion is the name we give to this general movement. In defining the trend, shifts, cross-currents, and flurries are not considered. When we speak of the tendency or direction of public opinion we usually mean the trend over a definite period of time. When the focus of public attention ceases to move and shift, when it is fixed, the circle which defines the limits of the public is narrowed. As the circle narrows, opinion itself becomes more intense and concentrated. This is the phenomenon of crisis. It is at this point that the herd stampedes. The effect of crisis is invariably to increase the dangers of precipitate action. The most trivial incident, in such periods of tension, may plunge a community into irretrievable disaster. It is under conditions of crisis that dictatorships are at once possible and necessary, not merely to enable the community to act energetically, but in order to protect the community from the mere play of external forces. The manner in which Bismarck, by a slight modification of the famous telegram of Ems, provoked a crisis in France and compelled Napoleon III, against his judgment and that of his advisers, to declare war on Germany, is an illustration of this danger.[255] It is this narrowing of the area over which a definite public opinion may be said to exist that at once creates the possibility and defines the limits of arbitrary control, so far as it is created or determined by the existence of public opinion. Thus far the public has been described almost wholly in terms that could be applied to a crowd. The public has been frequently described as if it were simply a great crowd, a crowd scattered as widely as news will circulate and still be news.[256] But there is this difference. In the heat and excitement of the crowd, as in the choral dances of primitive people, there is for the moment what may be described as complete fusion of the social forces. Rapport has, for the time being, made the crowd, in a peculiarly intimate way, a social unit. No such unity exists in the public. The sentiment and tendencies which we call public opinion are never unqualified expressions of emotion. The difference is that public opinion is determined by conflict and discussion, and made up of the opinions of individuals not wholly at one. In any conflict situation, where party spirit is aroused, the spectators, who constitute the public, are bound to take sides. The impulse to take sides is, in fact, in direct proportion to the excitement and party spirit displayed. The result is, however, that both sides of an issue get considered. Certain contentions are rejected because they will not stand criticism. Public opinion formed in this way has the character of a judgment, rather than a mere unmeditated expression of emotion, as in the crowd. The public is never ecstatic. It is always more or less rational. It is this fact of conflict, in the form of discussion, that introduces into the control exercised by public opinion the elements of rationality and of fact. In the final judgment of the public upon a conflict or an issue, we expect, to be sure, some sort of unanimity of judgment, but in the general consensus there will be some individual differences of opinion still unmediated, or only partially so, and final agreement of the public will be more or less qualified by all the different opinions that co-operated to form its judgment. In the materials which follow a distinction is made between public opinion and the mores, and this distinction is important. Custom and the folkways, like habit in the individual, may be regarded as a mere residuum of past practices. When folkways assume the character of mores, they are no longer merely matters of fact and common sense, they are judgments upon matters which were probably once live issues and as such they may be regarded as the products of public opinion. Ritual, religious or social, is probably the crystallization of forms of behavior which, like the choral dance, are the direct expression of the emotions and the instincts. The mores, on the other hand, in so far as they contain a rational element, are the accumulations, the residuum, not only of past practices, but of judgments such as find expression in public opinion. The mores, as thus conceived, are the judgments of public opinion in regard to issues that have been settled and forgotten. L. T. Hobhouse, in his volume, _Morals in Evolution_, has described, in a convincing way, the process by which, as he conceives it, custom is modified and grows under the influence of the personal judgments of individuals and of the public. Public opinion, as he defines it, is simply the combined and sublimated judgments of individuals. Most of these judgments are, to be sure, merely the repetition of old formulas. But occasionally, when the subject of discussion touches us more deeply, when it touches upon some matter in which we have had a deeper and more intimate experience, the ordinary patter that passes as public opinion is dissipated and we originate a moral judgment that not only differs from, but is in conflict with, the prevailing opinion. In that case "we become, as it were, centers from which judgments of one kind or another radiate and from which they pass forth to fill the atmosphere of opinion and take their place among the influences that mould the judgments of men." The manner in which public opinion issues from the interaction of individuals, and moral judgments are formed that eventually become the basis of law, may be gathered from the way in which the process goes on in the daily life about us. No sooner has the judgment escaped us--a winged word from our own lips--than it impinges on the judgment similarly flying forth to do its work from our next-door neighbor, and if the subject is an exciting one the air is soon full of the winged forces clashing, deflecting or reinforcing one another as the case may be, and generally settling down toward some preponderating opinion which is society's judgment on the case. But in the course of the conflict many of the original judgments are modified. Discussion, further consideration, above all, the mere influence of our neighbour's opinion reacts on each of us, with a stress that is proportioned to various mental and moral characteristics of our own, our clearness of vision, our firmness, or, perhaps, obstinacy of character, our self-confidence, and so forth. Thus, the controversy will tend to leave its mark, small or great, on those who took part in it. It will tend to modify their modes of judgment, confirming one, perhaps, in his former ways, shaping the confidence of another, opening the eyes of a third. Similarly, it will tend to set a precedent for future judgments. It will affect what men say and think on the next question that turns up. It adds its weight, of one grain it may be, to some force that is turning the scale of opinion and preparing society for some new departure. In any case, we have here in miniature at work every day before our eyes the essential process by which moral judgments arise and grow.[257] c) _Institutions._--An institution, according to Sumner, consists of a concept and a structure. The concept defines the purpose, interest, or function of the institution. The structure embodies the idea of the institution and furnishes the instrumentalities through which the idea is put into action. The process by which purposes, whether they are individual or collective, are embodied in structures is a continuous one. But the structures thus formed are not physical, at least not entirely so. Structure, in the sense that Sumner uses the term, belongs, as he says, to a category of its own. "It is a category in which custom produces continuity, coherence, and consistency, so that the word 'structure' may properly be applied to the fabric of relations and prescribed positions with which functions are permanently connected." Just as every individual member of a community participates in the process by which custom and public opinion are made, so also he participates in the creation of the structure, that "cake of custom" which, when it embodies a definite social function, we call an institution. Institutions may be created just as laws are enacted, but only when a social situation exists to which they correspond will they become operative and effective. Institutions, like laws, rest upon the mores and are supported by public opinion. Otherwise they remain mere paper projects or artefacts that perform no real function. History records the efforts of conquering peoples to impose upon the conquered their own laws and institutions. The efforts are instructive, but not encouraging. The most striking modern instance is the effort of King Leopold of Belgium to introduce civilization into the Congo Free State.[258] Law, like public opinion, owes its rational and secular character to the fact that it arose out of an effort to compromise conflict and to interpret matters which were in dispute. To seek vengeance for a wrong committed was a natural impulse, and the recognition of this fact in custom established it not merely as a right but as a duty. War, the modern form of trial by battle, the vendetta, and the duel are examples that have survived down to modern times of this natural and primitive method of settling disputes. In all these forms of conflict custom and the mores have tended to limit the issues and define the conditions under which disputes might be settled by force. At the same time public opinion, in passing judgment on the issues, exercised a positive influence on the outcome of the struggle. Gradually, as men realized the losses which conflicts incurred, the community has intervened to prevent them. At a time when the blood feud was still sanctioned by the mores, cities of refuge and sanctuaries were established to which one who had incurred a blood feud might flee until his case could be investigated. If it then appeared that the wrong committed had been unintentional or if there were other mitigating circumstances, he might find in the sanctuary protection. Otherwise, if a crime had been committed in cold blood, "lying in wait," or "in enmity," as the ancient Jewish law books called it, he might be put to death by the avenger of blood, "when he meeteth him."[259] Thus, gradually, the principle became established that the community might intervene, not merely to insure that vengeance was executed in due form, but to determine the facts, and thus courts which determined by legal process the guilt or innocence of the accused were established. It does not appear that courts of justice were ever set up within the kinship group for the trial of offenses, although efforts were made there first of all, by the elders and the headmen, to compromise quarrels and compose differences. Courts first came into existence, the evidence indicates, when society was organized over wider areas and after some authority had been established outside of the local community. As society was organized over a wider territory, control was extended to ever wider areas of human life until we have at present a program for international courts with power to intervene between nations to prevent wars.[260] Society, like the individual man, moves and acts under the influence of a multitude of minor impulses and tendencies which mutually interact to produce a more general tendency which then dominates all the individuals of the group. This explains the fact that a group, even a mere casual collection of individuals like a crowd, is enabled to act more or less as a unit. The crowd acts under the influence of such a dominant tendency, unreflectively, without definite reference to a past or a future. The crowd has no past and no future. The public introduces into this vortex of impulses the factor of reflection. The public presupposes the existence of a common impulse such as manifests itself in the crowd, but it presupposes, also, the existence of individuals and groups of individuals representing divergent tendencies. These individuals interact upon one another _critically_. The public is, what the crowd is not, a discussion group. The very existence of discussion presupposes objective standards of truth and of fact. The action of the public is based on a universe of discourse in which things, although they may and do have for every individual somewhat different value, are describable at any rate in terms that mean the same to all individuals. The public, in other words, moves in an objective and intelligible world. Law is based on custom. Custom is group habit. As the group acts it creates custom. There is implicit in custom a conception and a rule of action, which is regarded as right and proper in the circumstances. Law makes this rule of action explicit. Law grows up, however, out of a distinction between this rule of action and the facts. Custom is bound up with the facts under which the custom grew up. Law is the result of an effort to frame the rule of action implicit in custom in such general terms that it can be made to apply to new situations, involving new sets of facts. This distinction between the law and the facts did not exist in primitive society. The evolution of law and jurisprudence has been in the direction of an increasingly clearer recognition of this distinction between law and the facts. This has meant in practice an increasing recognition by the courts of the facts, and a disposition to act in accordance with them. The present disposition of courts, as, for example, the juvenile courts, to call to their assistance experts to examine the mental condition of children who are brought before them and to secure the assistance of juvenile-court officers to advise and assist them in the enforcement of the law, is an illustration of an increasing disposition to take account of the facts. The increasing interest in the natural history of the law and of legal institutions, and the increasing disposition to interpret it in sociological terms, from the point of view of its function, is another evidence of the same tendency. II. MATERIALS A. ELEMENTARY FORMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL 1. Control in the Crowd and the Public[261] In August, 1914, I was a cowboy on a ranch in the interior of British Columbia. How good a cowboy I would not undertake to say, because if there were any errands off the ranch the foreman seemed better able to spare me for them than anyone else in the outfit. One ambition, and one only, possessed me in those days. And it was not to own the ranch! All in the world I wanted was to accumulate money enough to carry me to San Francisco when the Panama exposition opened in the autumn. After that I didn't care. It would be time enough to worry about another job when I had seen the fair. Ordinarily I was riding the range five days in the week. Saturdays I was sent on a 35-mile round trip for the mail. It was the most delightful day of them all for me. The trail lay down the valley of the Fraser and although I had been riding it for months it still wove a spell over me that never could be broken. Slipping rapidly by as though escaping to the sea from the grasp of the hills that hemmed it in on all sides, the river always fascinated me. It was new every time I reached its edge. An early Saturday morning in August found me jogging slowly along the trail to Dog Creek. Dog Creek was our post-office and trading-center. This morning, however, my mind was less on the beauties of the Fraser than on the Dog Creek hotel. Every week I had my dinner there before starting in mid-afternoon on my return to the ranch, and this day had succeeded one of misunderstanding with "Cookie" wherein all the boys of our outfit had come off second-best. I was hungry and that dinner at the hotel was going to taste mighty good. Out there on the range we had heard rumors of a war in Europe. We all talked it over in the evening and decided it was another one of those fights that were always starting in the Balkans. One had just been finished a few months before and we thought it was about time another was under way, so we gave the matter no particular thought. But when I got within sight of Dog Creek I knew something was up. The first thing I heard was that somebody had retreated from Mons and that the Germans were chasing them. So, the Germans were fighting anyway. Then a big Indian came up to me as I was getting off my pony and told me England's big white chief was going to war, or had gone, he wasn't certain which, but he was going too. Would I? I laughed at him. "What do you mean, go to war?" I asked him. I wasn't English; I wasn't Canadian. I was from the good old U.S.A. and from all we could understand the States were neutral. So, I reasoned, I ought to be neutral too, and I went in to see what there might be to eat. There was plenty of excitement in the dining-room. Under its influence I began to look at the thing in a different light. While I was an alien, I had lived in Canada. I had enjoyed her hospitality. Much of my education was acquired in a Canadian school. Canadians were among my dearest friends. Some of these very fellows, there in Dog Creek, were "going down" to enlist. All the afternoon we argued about it. Politics, economics, diplomacy; none of them entered into the question. In fact we hadn't the faintest idea what the war was all about. Our discussion hinged solely on what we, personally, ought to do. England was at war. She had sent out a call to all the Empire for men; for help. Dog Creek heard and was going to answer that call. Even if I were an alien I had been in that district for more than a year and I owed it to Dog Creek and the district to join up with the rest. By that time I wanted to go. I was crazy to go! It would be great to see London and maybe Paris and some of the other famous old towns--if the war lasted long enough for us to get over there. I began to bubble over with enthusiasm, just thinking about it. So I made an appointment with some of the boys for the next evening, rode back to the ranch and threw the mail and my job at the foreman. A week later we were in Vancouver. Then things began to get plainer--to some of the fellows. We heard of broken treaties, "scraps of paper," "Kultur," the rights of nations, big and small, "freedom of the seas," and other phrases that meant less than nothing to most of us. It was enough for me, then, that the country which had given me the protection of its laws wanted to help England. I trusted the government to know what it was doing. Before we were in town an hour we found ourselves at a recruiting office. By the simple expedient of moving my birthplace a few hundred miles north I became a Canadian and a member of the expeditionary force--a big word with a big meaning. Christmas came and I was in a well-trained battalion of troops with no more knowledge of the war than the retreat from Mons, the battles of the Marne and the Aisne, and an occasional newspaper report of the capture of a hundred thousand troops here and a couple of hundred thousand casualties somewhere else. We knew, at that rate, it couldn't possibly last until we got to the other side, but we prayed loudly that it would. In April we heard of the gassing of the first Canadians at Ypres. Then the casualty lists from that field arrived and hit Vancouver with a thud. Instantly a change came over the city. Before that day, war had been a romance, a thing far away about which to read and over which to wave flags. It was intangible, impersonal. It was the same attitude the States exhibited in the autumn of '17. Then suddenly it became real. This chap and that chap; a neighbor boy, a fellow from the next block or the next desk. Dead! Gassed! This was war; direct, personal, where you could count the toll among your friends. Personally, I thought that what the Germans had done was a terrible thing and I wondered what kind of people they might be that they could, without warning, deliver such a foul blow. In a prize ring the Kaiser would have lost the decision then and there. We wondered about gas and discussed it by the hour in our barracks. Some of us, bigger fools than the rest, insisted that the German nation would repudiate its army. But days went by and nothing of the kind occurred. It was then I began to take my soldiering a little more seriously. If a nation wanted to win a war so badly that it would damn its good name forever by using means ruled by all humanity as beyond the bounds of civilized warfare, it must have a very big object in view. And I started--late it is true--to obtain some clue to those objects. May found us at our port of embarkation for the voyage to England. The news of the "Lusitania" came over the wires and that evening our convoy steamed. For the first time, I believe, I fully realized I was a soldier in the greatest war of all the ages. Between poker, "blackjack," and "crown and anchor" with the crew, we talked over the two big things that had happened in our soldier lives--gas and the "Lusitania." And to these we later added liquid fire. Our arguments, our logic, may have been elemental, but I insist they struck at the root. I may sum them up thus: Germany was not using the methods of fighting that could be countenanced by a civilized nation. As the nation stood behind its army in all this barbarism, there must be something inherently lacking in it despite its wonderful music, its divine poetry, its record in the sciences. It, too, must be barbarian at heart. We agreed that if it should win this war it would be very uncomfortable to belong to one of the allied nations, or even to live in the world at all, since it was certain German manners and German methods would not improve with victory. And we, as a battalion, were ready to take our places in France to back up our words with deeds. A week or so later we landed in England. A marked change had come over the men since the day we left Halifax. Then most of us regarded the whole war, or our part in it, as more or less of a lark. On landing we were still for a lark, but something else had come into our consciousness. We were soldiers fighting for a cause--a cause clear cut and well defined--the saving of the world from a militarily mad country without a conscience. At our camp in England we saw those boys of the first division who had stood in their trenches in front of Ypres one bright April morning and watched with great curiosity a peculiar looking bank of fog roll toward them from the enemy's line. It rolled into their trenches, and in a second those men were choking and gasping for breath. Their lungs filled with the rotten stuff, and they were dying by dozens in the most terrible agony, beating off even as they died a part of the "brave" Prussian army as it came up behind those gas clouds; came up with gas masks on and bayonets dripping with the blood of men lying on the ground fighting, true, but for breath. A great army, that Prussian army! And what a "glorious" victory! Truly should the Hun be proud! So far as I am concerned, Germany did not lose the war at the battle of the Marne, at the Aisne, or at the Yser. She lost it there at Ypres, on April 22, 1915. It is no exaggeration when I say our eagerness to work, to complete our training, to learn how to kill, so we could take our places in the line, and help fight off those mad people, grew by the hour. _They_ stiffened our backs and made us fighting mad. We saw what they had done to our boys from Canada; they and their gas. The effect on our battalion was the effect on the whole army, and, I am quite sure, on the rest of the world. They put themselves beyond the pale. They compelled the world to look on them as mad dogs, and to treat them as mad dogs. We trained in England until August, when we went to France. To all outward appearances we were still happy, carefree soldiers, all out for a good time. We were happy! We were happy we were there, and down deep there was solid satisfaction, not on account of the different-colored books that were issuing from every chancellory in Europe, but from a feeling rooted in white men's hearts, backed by the knowledge of Germany's conduct, that we were there in a righteous cause. Our second stop in our march toward the line was a little village which had been occupied by the Boches in their mad dash toward Paris. Our billet was a farm just on the edge of the village. The housewife permitted us in her kitchen to do our cooking, at the same time selling us coffee. We stayed there two or three days and became quite friendly with her, even if she did scold us for our muddy boots. Two pretty little kiddies played around the house, got in the way, were scolded and spanked and in the next instant loved to death by Madame. Then she would parade them before a picture of a clean-cut looking Frenchman in the uniform of the army, and say something about "après la guerre." In a little crib to one side of the room was a tiny baby, neglected by Madame, except that she bathed and fed it. The neglect was so pronounced that our curiosity was aroused. The explanation came through the _estaminet_ gossip, and later from Madame herself. A Hun captain of cavalry had stayed there a few days in August, '14, and not only had he allowed his detachment full license in the village, but had abused his position in the house in the accustomed manner of his bestial class. As Madame told us her story; how her husband had rushed off to his unit with the first call for reserves, leaving her alone with two children, and how the blond beast had come, our fists clenched and we boiled with rage. That is German war! but it is not all. What will be the stories that come out of what is now occupied France? This Frenchwoman's story was new to us then, but, like other things in the war, as we moved through the country it became common enough, with here and there a revolting detail more horrible than anything we had heard before. Now and then Germany expresses astonishment at the persistence of the British and the French. They are a funny people, the Germans. There are so many things they do not, perhaps cannot, understand. They never could understand why Americans, such as myself, who enlisted in a spirit of adventure, and with not a single thought on the justice of the cause, could experience such a marked change of feeling as to regard this conflict as the most holy crusade in which a man could engage. It is a holy crusade! Never in the history of the world was the cause of right more certainly on the side of an army than it is today on the side of the allies: We who have been through the furnace of France know this. I only say what every other American who has been fighting under an alien flag said when our country came in: "Thank God we have done it. Some boy, Wilson, believe me!" 2. Ceremonial Control[262] If, disregarding conduct that is entirely private, we consider only that species of conduct which involves direct relations with other persons; and if under the name government we include all control of conduct, however arising; then we must say that the earliest kind of government, the most general kind of government, and the government which is ever spontaneously recommencing, is the government of ceremonial observance. This kind of government, besides preceding other kinds, and besides having in all places and times approached nearer to universality of influence, has ever had, and continues to have, the largest share in regulating men's lives. Proof that the modifications of conduct called "manners" and "behavior" arise before those which political and religious restraints cause is yielded by the fact that, besides preceding social evolution, they precede human evolution: they are traceable among the higher animals. The dog afraid of being beaten comes crawling up to his master clearly manifesting the desire to show submission. Nor is it solely to human beings that dogs use such propitiatory actions. They do the like one to another. All have occasionally seen how, on the approach of some formidable Newfoundland or mastiff, a small spaniel, in the extremity of its terror, throws itself on its back with legs in the air. Clearly then, besides certain modes of behavior expressing affection, which are established still earlier in creatures lower than man, there are established certain modes of behavior expressing subjection. After recognizing this fact, we shall be prepared to recognize the fact that daily intercourse among the lowest savages, whose small loose groups, scarcely to be called social, are without political or religious regulation, is under a considerable amount of ceremonial regulation. No ruling agency beyond that arising from personal superiority characterizes a horde of Australians; but every such horde has imperative observances. Strangers meeting must remain some time silent; a mile from an encampment approach has to be heralded by loud _cooeys_; a green bough is used as an emblem of peace; and brotherly feeling is indicated by exchange of names. Ceremonial control is highly developed in many places where other forms of control are but rudimentary. The wild Comanche "exacts the observance of his rules of etiquette from strangers," and "is greatly offended" by any breach of them. When Araucanians meet, the inquiries, felicitations, and condolences which custom demands are so elaborate that "the formality occupies ten or fifteen minutes." That ceremonial restraint, preceding other forms of restraint, continues ever to be the most widely diffused form of restraint we are shown by such facts as that in all intercourse between members of each society, the decisively governmental actions are usually prefaced by this government of observances. The embassy may fail, negotiation may be brought to a close by war, coercion of one society by another may set up wider political rule with its peremptory commands; but there is habitually this more general and vague regulation of conduct preceding the more special and definite. So within a community acts of relatively stringent control coming from ruling agencies, civil and religious, begin with and are qualified by this ceremonial control which not only initiates but in a sense envelops all other. Functionaries, ecclesiastical and political, coercive as their proceedings may be, conform them in large measure to the requirements of courtesy. The priest, however arrogant his assumption, makes a civil salute; and the officer of the law performs his duty subject to certain propitiatory words and movements. Yet another indication of primordialism may be named. This species of control establishes itself anew with every fresh relation among individuals. Even between intimates greetings signifying continuance of respect begin each renewal of intercourse. And in the presence of a stranger, say in a railway carriage, a certain self-restraint, joined with some small act like the offer of a newspaper, shows the spontaneous rise of a propitiatory behavior such as even the rudest of mankind are not without. So that the modified forms of action caused in men by the presence of their fellows constitute that comparatively vague control out of which other more definite controls are evolved--the primitive undifferentiated kind of government from which the political and religious governments are differentiated, and in which they ever continue immersed. 3. Prestige[263] Originally _prestige_--here, too, etymology proves to be an _enfant terrible_--means delusion. It is derived from the Latin _praestigiae_ (_-arum_)--though it is found in the forms _praestigia_ (_-ae_) and _praestigium_ (_-ii_) too: the juggler himself (dice-player, rope-walker, "strong man," etc.) was called _praestigiator_ (_-oris_). Latin authors and mediaeval writers of glossaries took the word to mean "deceptive juggling tricks," and, as far as we know, did not use it in its present signification. The _praestigiator_ threw dice or put coins on a table, then passed them into a small vessel or box, moved the latter about quickly and adroitly, till finally, when you thought they were in a certain place, the coins turned up somewhere else: "The looker-on is deceived by such innocent tricks, being often inclined to presume the sleight of hand to be nothing more or less than magic art." The practice of French writers in the oldest times was, so far as we have been able to discover, to use the word _prestige_ at first in the signification above assigned to the Latin "praestigiae" (_prestige_, _prestigiateur_, _-trice_, _prestigieux_). The use of the word was not restricted to the prestige of prophets, conjurers, demons, but was transferred by analogy to delusions the cause of which is not regarded any longer as supernatural. Diderot actually makes mention of the prestige of harmony. The word "prestige" became transfigured, ennobled, and writers and orators refined it so as to make it applicable to analogies of the remotest character. Rousseau refers to the prestige of our passions, which dazzles the intellect and deceives wisdom. Prestige is the name continually given to every kind of spell, the effect of which reminds us of "prestige" ("cet homme exerce une influence que rassemble à une prestige"--Littre), and to all magic charms and attractive power which is capable of dulling the intellect while it enhances sensation. We may read of the prestige of fame, of the power which, in default of prestige, is brute force; in 1869 numberless placards proclaimed through the length and breadth of Paris that Bourbeau, Minister of Public Instruction, though reputed to be a splendid lawyer, "lacked prestige"--"Bourbeau manque de prestige." The English and German languages make use of the word in the latter meaning as opposed to the imaginary virtue of the conjurer; the same signification is applied, generally speaking, to the Italian and Spanish _prestigio_, only that the Italian _prestigiáo_ and the Spanish _prestigiador_, just like the French _prestigiateur_, have, as opposed to the more recent meaning, kept the older significance; neither of them means anything more or less than conjurer or juggler. The market clown, the rope-walker, the sword-swallower, the reciter of long poems, the clever manipulator who defies imitation--all possess prestige: but on the other hand, prestige surrounds demoniacal spells, wizardry, and all effectiveness not comprehensible by logic. We state something of someone when we say that he possesses prestige; but our statement is not clear, and the predicate cannot be distinguished from the subject. Of what is analysable, well-known, commonplace, or what we succeed in understanding thoroughly, in attaining or imitating, we do not say that it possesses prestige. What is the relation between _prestige_ and _prejudice_? When what is unintelligible, or mysterious, is at one time received with enthusiasm, at another with indignation, _what renders necessary these two extreme sentiments of appreciation_ which, though appearing under apparently identical circumstances, are diametrically opposed to one another? The most general form of social prejudice is that of race. A _foreigner_ is received with prejudice, conception, or prestige. If we put "conception" aside, we find prejudice and prestige facing one another. We see this split most clearly demonstrated if we observe the differences of conduct in the reception of strangers by primitive peoples. In Yrjö Hirn's _Origins of Art_ we are told that those travellers who have learned the tongues of savages have often observed that their persons were made the subjects of extemporized poems by the respective savages. Sometimes these verses are of a derisive character; at other times they glorify the white man. When do they deride, when glorify? Where strong prejudice values are present, as in the case of Negroes, every conception of equality and nationalism incorporated in the statute-book is perverted. All that _appears_ permanently divergent is made the subject of damnatory prejudice; and the more apparent and seeming, the more primitive the impression that restrains, the more general the prejudice; smell affects more keenly than form, and form more than mode of thought. If a member of a nation is not typical, but exercises an exclusive, personal impression on us, he possesses prestige; if he is typical, he is indifferent to us, or we look down upon him and consider him comical. To sum up: the stranger whom we feel to be divergent as compared with ourselves is indifferent or the object of prejudice; the stranger whom we feel ourselves unable to measure by our own standard, whose measure--not his qualities--we feel to be different, we receive with prestige. We look with prejudice on the stranger whom we dissociate, and receive with prestige the stranger who is dissociated. Even in the animal world we come across individuals consistently treated with deference, of which, in his work on the psychical world of animals, Perty has plenty to tell us: "Even in the animal world," he says, "there are certain eminent individuals, which in comparison with the other members of their species show a superiority of capability, brain power, and force of will, and obtain a _predominance_ over the other animals." Cuvier observed the same in the case of a buck which had only one horn; Grant tells us of a certain ourang-outang which got the upper hand of the rest of the monkeys and often threatened them with the stick; from Naumann we hear of a clever crane which ruled over all the domestic animals and quickly settled any quarrels that arose among them. Far more important than these somewhat obscure observations is the peculiar social mechanism of the animal world to be found in the mechanical following of the leaders of flocks and herds. But this obedience is so conspicuously instinctive, so genuine, and so little varying in substance and intensity, that it can hardly be identified with prestige. Bees are strong royalists; but the extent to which their selection of a queen is instinctive and strictly exclusive is proved by the fact that the smell of a strange queen forced on them makes them hate her; they kill her or torture her--though the same working bees prefer to die of hunger rather than allow their own queen to starve. Things are radically changed when animals are brought face to face with man. Some animals sympathize with men, and like to take part in their hunting and fighting, as the dog and the horse; others subject themselves as a result of force. Consequently men have succeeded in _domesticating_ a number of species of animals. It is here that we find the first traces, in the animal world, of phenomena, reactions of conduct in the course of development, which, to a certain extent, remind us of the reception of prestige. The behaviour of a dog, says Darwin, which returns to its master after being absent--or the conduct of a monkey, when it returns to its beloved keeper--_is far different from what these animals display towards beings of the same order as themselves_. In the latter case the expressions of joy seem to be somewhat less demonstrative, and all their actions evince a feeling of equality. Even Professor Braubach declares that _a dog looks upon its master as a divine person_. Brehm gives us a description of the tender respect shown towards his children by a chimpanzee that had been brought to his home and domesticated. "When we first introduced my little six-weeks-old daughter to him," he says, "at first he regarded the child with evident astonishment, as if desirous to convince himself of its human character, then touched its face with one finger with remarkable gentleness, and amiably offered to shake hands. This trifling characteristic, which I observed in the case of all chimpanzees reared in my house, is worthy of particular emphasis, because it seems to prove that _our man-monkey descries and pays homage to that higher being, man, even in the tiniest child. On the other hand, he by no means shows any such friendly feelings towards creatures like himself--not even towards little ones_." In every stage of the development of savage peoples we come across classical examples of mock kings--of the "primus inter pares," "duces ex virtute," _not_ "ex nobilitate reges"--of rational and valued leaders. The savages of Chile elect as their chief the man who is able to carry the trunk of a tree farthest. In other places, military prowess, command of words, crafts, a knowledge of spells are the causal sources of the usually extremely trifling homage due to the chieftain. "Savage hordes in the lowest stage of civilization are organized, like troops of monkeys, on the basis of authority. The strongest old male by virtue of his strength acquires a certain ascendancy, which lasts as long as his physical strength is superior to that of every other male...." Beyond that given by nature, primitive society recognizes no other prestige, for the society of savages lacks the subjective conditions of prestige--settlement in large numbers and permanency. The lack of distance compels the savage to respect only persons who hold their own in his presence: this conspicuous clearness of the estimation of primitive peoples is the cause that has prevailed on us to dwell so long on this point. That the cause of this want of prestige among savages is the lack of concentration in masses, not any esoteric peculiarity, is proved by the profound psychological appreciation of the distances created by nature, and still more by the expansion of tribal life into a barbarian one. The tenfold increase of the number of a tribe renders difficult a logical, ethical, or aesthetic selection of a leader, as well as an intuitive control of spells and superstitions. The dramatic _mise en scène_ of human prestige coincides with the first appearance of this concentration in masses, and triumphs with its triumph. 4. Prestige and Status in South East Africa[264] In no other land under the British flag, except, perhaps, in the Far East, certainly in none of the great self-governing colonies with which we rank ourselves, is the position of white man _qua_ white man so high, his status so impugnable, as in South East Africa. Differing in much else, the race instinct binds the whites together to demand recognition as a member of the ruling and inviolable caste, even for the poorest, the degraded of their race. And this position connotes freedom from all manual and menial toil; without hesitation the white man demands this freedom, without question the black man accedes and takes up the burden, obeying the race command of one who may be his personal inferior. It is difficult to convey to one who has never known this distinction the way in which the very atmosphere is charged with it in South East Africa. A white oligarchy, every member of the race an aristocrat; a black proletariat, every member of the race a server; the line of cleavage as clear and deep as the colours. The less able and vigorous of our race, thus protected, find here an ease, a comfort, a recognition to which their personal worth would never entitle them in a homogeneous white population. When uncontaminated by contact with the lower forms of our civilization, the native is courteous and polite. Even today, changed for the worse as he is declared to be by most authorities, a European could ride or walk alone, unarmed even with a switch, all through the locations of Natal and Zululand, scores of miles away from the house of any white man, and receive nothing but courteous deference from the natives. If he met, as he certainly would, troops of young men, dressed in all their barbaric finery, going to wedding or dance, armed with sticks and shields, full of hot young blood, they would still stand out of the narrow path, giving to the white man the right of way and saluting as he passed. I have thus travelled alone all over South East Africa, among thousands of blacks and never a white man near, and I cannot remember the natives, even if met in scores or hundreds, ever disputing the way for a moment. All over Africa, winding and zigzagging over hill and dale, over grassland and through forest, from kraal to kraal, and tribe to tribe, go the paths of the natives. In these narrow paths worn in the grass by the feet of the passers, you could travel from Natal to Benguela and back again to Mombasa. Only wide enough for one to travel thereon, if opposite parties meet one must give way; cheerfully, courteously, without cringing, often with respectful salute, does the native stand on one side allowing the white man to pass. One accepts it without thought; it is the expected, but if pondered upon it is suggestive of much. 5. Taboo[265] Rules of holiness in the sense just explained, i.e., a system of restrictions on man's arbitrary use of natural things, enforced by the dread of supernatural penalties, are found among all primitive peoples. It is convenient to have a distinct name for this primitive institution, to mark it off from the later developments of the idea of holiness in advanced religions, and for this purpose the Polynesian term "taboo" has been selected. The field covered by taboos among savage and half-savage races is very wide, for there is no part of life in which the savage does not feel himself to be surrounded by mysterious agencies and recognise the need of walking warily. Moreover all taboos do not belong to religion proper, that is, they are not always rules of conduct for the regulation of man's contact with deities that, when taken in the right way, may be counted on as friendly, but rather appear in many cases to be precautions against the approach of malignant enemies--against contact with evil spirits and the like. Thus alongside of taboos that exactly correspond to rules of holiness, protecting the inviolability of idols and sanctuaries, priest and chiefs, and generally of all persons and things pertaining to the gods and their worship, we find another kind of taboo which in the Semitic field has its parallel in rules of uncleanness. Women after childbirth, men who have touched a dead body, and so forth, are temporarily taboo and separated from human society, just as the same persons are unclean in Semitic religion. In these cases the person under taboo is not regarded as holy, for he is separated from approach to the sanctuary as well as from contact with men; but his act or condition is somehow associated with supernatural dangers, arising, according to the common savage explanation, from the presence of formidable spirits which are shunned like an infectious disease. In most savage societies no sharp line seems to be drawn between the two kinds of taboo just indicated, and even in more advanced nations the notions of holiness and uncleanness often touch. Among the Syrians, for example, swine's flesh was taboo, but it was an open question whether this was because the animal was holy or because it was unclean. But though not precise, the distinction between what is holy and what is unclean is real; in rules of holiness the motive is respect for the gods, in rules of uncleanliness it is primarily fear of an unknown or hostile power, though ultimately, as we see in the Levitical legislation, the law of clean and unclean may be brought within the sphere of divine ordinances, on the view that uncleanness is hateful to God and must be avoided by all that have to do with Him. The fact that all the Semites have rules of uncleanness as well as rules of holiness, that the boundary between the two is often vague, and that the former as well as the latter present the most startling agreement in point of detail with savage taboos, leaves no reasonable doubt as to the origin and ultimate relations of the idea of holiness. On the other hand, the fact that the Semites--or at least the northern Semites--distinguish between the holy and the unclean, marks a real advance above savagery. All taboos are inspired by awe of the supernatural, but there is a great moral difference between precautions against the invasion of mysterious hostile powers and precautions founded on respect for the prerogative of a friendly god. The former belong to magical superstition--the barrenest of all aberrations of the savage imagination--which, being founded only on fear, acts merely as a bar to progress and an impediment to the free use of nature by human energy and industry. But the restrictions on individual licence which are due to respect for a known and friendly power allied to man, however trivial and absurd they may appear to us in their details, contain within them germinant principles of social progress and moral order. To know that one has the mysterious powers of nature on one's side so long as one acts in conformity with certain rules, gives a man strength and courage to pursue the task of the subjugation of nature to his service. To restrain one's individual licence, not out of slavish fear, but from respect for a higher and beneficent power, is a moral discipline of which the value does not altogether depend on the reasonableness of sacred restrictions; an English schoolboy is subject to many unreasonable taboos, which are not without value in the formation of character. But finally, and above all, the very association of the idea of holiness with a beneficent deity, whose own interests are bound up with the interests of a community, makes it inevitable that the laws of social and moral order, as well as mere external precepts of physical observance, shall be placed under the sanction of the god of the community. Breaches of social order are recognised as offences against the holiness of the deity, and the development of law and morals is made possible, at a stage when human sanctions are still wanting, or too imperfectly administered to have much power, by the belief that the restrictions on human licence which are necessary to social well-being are conditions imposed by the god for the maintenance of a good understanding between himself and his worshippers. Various parallels between savage taboos and Semitic rules of holiness and uncleanness will come before us from time to time; but it may be useful to bring together at this point some detailed evidences that the two are in their origin indistinguishable. Holy and unclean things have this in common, that in both cases certain restrictions lie on men's use of and contact with them, and that the breach of these restrictions involves supernatural dangers. The difference between the two appears, not in their relation to man's ordinary life, but in their relation to the gods. Holy things are not free to man, because they pertain to the gods; uncleanness is shunned, according to the view taken in the higher Semitic religions, because it is hateful to the god, and therefore not to be tolerated in his sanctuary, his worshippers, or his land. But that this explanation is not primitive can hardly be doubted when we consider that the acts that cause uncleanness are exactly the same which among savage nations place a man under taboo, and that these acts are often involuntary, and often innocent, or even necessary to society. The savage, accordingly, imposes a taboo on a woman in childbed, or during her courses, and on the man who touches a corpse, not out of any regard for the gods, but simply because birth and everything connected with the propagation of the species on the one hand, and disease and death on the other, seem to him to involve the action of superhuman agencies of a dangerous kind. If he attempts to explain, he does so by supposing that on these occasions spirits of deadly power are present; at all events the persons involved seem to him to be sources of mysterious danger, which has all the characters of an infection and may extend to other people unless due precautions are observed. This is not scientific, but it is perfectly intelligible, and forms the basis of a consistent system of practice; whereas, when the rules of uncleanness are made to rest on the will of the gods, they appear altogether arbitrary and meaningless. The affinity of such taboos with laws of uncleanness comes out most clearly when we observe that uncleanness is treated like a contagion, which has to be washed away or otherwise eliminated by physical means. Take the rules about the uncleanness produced by the carcases of vermin in Lev. 11:32 ff.; whatever they touch must be washed; the water itself is then unclean, and can propagate the contagion; nay, if the defilement affect an (unglazed) earthen pot, it is supposed to sink into the pores, and cannot be washed out, so that the pot must be broken. Rules like this have nothing in common with the spirit of Hebrew religion; they can only be remains of a primitive superstition, like that of the savage who shuns the blood of uncleanness, and such like things, as a supernatural and deadly virus. The antiquity of the Hebrew taboos, for such they are, is shown by the way in which many of them reappear in Arabia; cf. for example Deut. 21:12, 13, with the Arabian ceremonies for removing the impurity of widowhood. In the Arabian form the ritual is of purely savage type; the danger to life that made it unsafe for a man to marry the woman was transferred in the most materialistic way to an animal, which it was believed generally died in consequence, or to a bird. B. PUBLIC OPINION 1. The Myth[266] There is no process by which the future can be predicted scientifically, nor even one which enables us to discuss whether one hypothesis about it is better than another; it has been proved by too many memorable examples that the greatest men have committed prodigious errors in thus desiring to make predictions about even the least distant future. And yet, without leaving the present, without reasoning about this future, which seems forever condemned to escape our reason, we should be unable to act at all. Experience shows that the _framing of a future, in some indeterminate time_, may, when it is done in a certain way, be very effective, and have very few inconveniences; this happens when the anticipations of the future take the form of those myths, which enclose with them all the strongest inclinations of a people, of a party, or of a class, inclinations which recur to the mind with the insistence of instincts in all the circumstances of life; and which give an aspect of complete reality to the hopes of immediate action by which, more easily than by any other method, men can reform their desires, passions, and mental activity. We know, moreover, that these social myths in no way prevent a man profiting by the observations which he makes in the course of his life, and form no obstacle to the pursuit of his normal occupations. The truth of this may be shown by numerous examples. The first Christians expected the return of Christ and the total ruin of the pagan world, with the inauguration of the kingdom of the saints, at the end of the first generation. The catastrophe did not come to pass, but Christian thought profited so greatly from the apocalyptic myth that certain contemporary scholars maintain that the whole preaching of Christ referred solely to this one point. The hopes which Luther and Calvin had formed of the religious exaltation of Europe were by no means realised; these fathers of the Reformation very soon seemed men of a past era; for present-day Protestants they belong rather to the Middle Ages than to modern times, and the problems which troubled them most occupy very little place in contemporary Protestantism. Must we for that reason deny the immense result which came from their dreams of Christian renovation? It must be admitted that the real developments of the Revolution did not in any way resemble the enchanting pictures which created the enthusiasm of its first adepts; but without those pictures, would the Revolution have been victorious? Many Utopias were mixed up with the Revolutionary myth, because it had been formed by a society passionately fond of imaginative literature, full of confidence in the "science," and very little acquainted with the economic history of the past. These Utopias came to nothing; but it may be asked whether the Revolution was not a much more profound transformation than those dreamed of by the people who in the eighteenth century had invented social Utopias. In our own times Mazzini pursued what the wiseacres of his time called a mad chimera; but it can no longer be denied that, without Mazzini, Italy would never have become a great power, and that he did more for Italian unity than Cavour and all the politicians of his school. A knowledge of what the myths contain in the way of details which will actually form part of the history of the future is then of small importance; they are not astrological almanacs; it is even possible that nothing which they contain will ever come to pass--as was the case with the catastrophe expected by the first Christians. In our own daily life, are we not familiar with the fact that what actually happens is very different from our preconceived notion of it? And that does not prevent us from continuing to make resolutions. Psychologists say that there is heterogeneity between the ends in view and the ends actually realised: the slightest experience of life reveals this law to us, which Spencer transferred into nature, to extract therefrom his theory of the multiplication of effects. The myth must be judged as a means of acting on the present; any attempt to discuss how far it can be taken literally as future history is devoid of sense. _It is the myth in its entirety which is alone important:_ its parts are only of interest in so far as they bring out the main idea. No useful purpose is served, therefore, in arguing about the incidents which may occur in the course of a social war, and about the decisive conflicts which may give victory to the proletariat; even supposing the revolutionaries to have been wholly and entirely deluded in setting up this imaginary picture of the general strike, this picture may yet have been, in the course of the preparation for the revolution, a great element of strength, if it has embraced all the aspirations of socialism, and if it has given to the whole body of revolutionary thought a precision and a rigidity which no other method of thought could have given. To estimate, then, the significance of the idea of the general strike, all the methods of discussion which are current among politicians, sociologists, or people with pretensions to political science, must be abandoned. Everything which its opponents endeavour to establish may be conceded to them, without reducing in any way the value of the theory which they think they have refuted. The question whether the general strike is a partial reality, or only a product of popular imagination, is of little importance. All that it is necessary to know is, whether the general strike contains everything that the socialist doctrine expects of the revolutionary proletariat. To solve this question, we are no longer compelled to argue learnedly about the future; we are not obliged to indulge in lofty reflections about philosophy, history, or economics; we are not on the plane of theories, and we can remain on the level of observable facts. We have to question men who take a very active part in the real revolutionary movement amidst the proletariat, men who do not aspire to climb into the middle class and whose mind is not dominated by corporative prejudices. These men may be deceived about an infinite number of political, economical, or moral questions; but their testimony is decisive, sovereign, and irrefutable when it is a question of knowing what are the ideas which most powerfully move them and their comrades, which most appeal to them as being identical with their socialistic conceptions, and thanks to which their reason, their hopes, and their way of looking at particular facts seem to make but one indivisible unity. Thanks to these men, we know that the general strike is indeed what I have said: the _myth_ in which socialism is wholly comprised, i.e., a body of images capable of evoking instinctively all the sentiments which correspond to the different manifestations of the war undertaken by socialism against modern society. Strikes have engendered in the proletariat the noblest, deepest, and most moving sentiments that they possess; the general strike groups them all in a co-ordinated picture, and, by bringing them together, gives to each one of them its maximum of intensity; appealing to their painful memories of particular conflicts, it colours with an intense life all the details of the composition presented to consciousness. We thus obtain that intuition of socialism which language cannot give us with perfect clearness--and we obtain it as a whole, perceived instantaneously. 2. The Growth of a Legend[267] Hardly had the German armies entered Belgium when strange rumors began to circulate. They spread from place to place, they were reproduced by the press, and they soon permeated the whole of Germany. It was said that the Belgian people, instigated by the clergy, had intervened perfidiously in the hostilities; had attacked by surprise isolated detachments; had indicated to the enemy the positions occupied by the troops; that women, old men, and even children had been guilty of horrible atrocities upon wounded and defenseless German soldiers, tearing out their eyes and cutting off fingers, nose, or ears; that the priests from their pulpits had exhorted the people to commit these crimes, promising them as a reward the Kingdom of Heaven, and had even taken the lead in this barbarity. Public credulity accepted these stories. The highest powers in the state welcomed them without hesitation and indorsed them with their authority. Even the Emperor echoed them, and, taking them for a text, advanced, in the famous telegram of September 8, 1914, addressed to the President of the United States, the most terrible accusations against the Belgian people and clergy. At the time of the invasion of Belgium, it was the German army which, as we have seen, constituted the chief breeding ground for legendary stories. These were disseminated with great rapidity among the troops; the _liaison_ officers, the dispatch riders, the food convoys, the victualling posts assured the diffusion of them. These stories were not delayed in reaching Germany. As in most wars, it was the returning soldiery who were responsible for the transmission of them. From the first day of hostilities in enemy territory the fighting troops were in constant touch with those behind them. Through the frontier towns there was a continual passage of convoys, returning empty or loaded with prisoners and wounded. These last, together with the escorting soldiers, were immediately surrounded and pressed for news by an eager crowd. It is they who brought the first stories. As a silent listener, seated on the boulevards, I have noticed how curious people, men and women, question the wounded who are resting there, suggesting to them answers to inquiries on the subject of the battles, the losses, and the atrocities of war; how they interpret silence as an affirmative answer and how they wish to have confirmed things always more terrible. I am convinced that shortly afterward they will repeat the conversation, adding that they have heard it as the personal experience of somebody present at the affair. In their oral form stories of this kind are not definite, their substance is malleable; they can be modified according to the taste of the narrator; they transform themselves; they evolve. To sum up, not only do the soldiers, returned from the field of battle, insure the transmission of the stories, they also elaborate them. The military post links the campaigning army directly with Germany. The soldiers write home, and in their letters they tell of their adventures, which people are eager to hear, and naturally they include the rumors current among the troops. Thus a soldier of the Landsturm writes to his wife that he has seen at Liége a dozen priests condemned to death because they put a price on the heads of German soldiers; he had also seen there civilians who had cut off the breasts of a Red Cross nurse. Again, a Hessian schoolmaster tells in a letter how his detachment had been treacherously attacked at Ch----by the inhabitants, with the curé at their head. Submitted to the test of the German military inquiry these stories are shown to be without foundation. Received from the front and narrated by a soldier who professes to have been an eyewitness, they are nevertheless clothed in the public view with special authority. Welcomed without control by the press, the stories recounted in letters from the front appear, however, in the eyes of the readers of a paper clothed with a new authority--that which attaches to printed matter. They lose in the columns of a paper their individual and particular character. Those who send them have, as the _Kölnische Volkszeitung_ notes, usually effaced all personal allusions. The statements thus obtain a substance and an objectivity of which they would otherwise be devoid. Mixed with authentic news, they are accepted by the public without mistrust. Is not their appearance in the paper a guaranty of accuracy? Besides imposing itself on public credulity, the printed story fixes itself in the mind. It takes a lasting form. It has entered permanently into consciousness, and more, it has become a source of reference. All these pseudo-historical publications are, however, only one aspect of the abundant literary production of the Great War. All the varieties of popular literature, the romances of cloak and sword, the stories of adventure, the collections of news and anecdotes, the theater itself, are in turn devoted to military events. The great public loves lively activity, extraordinary situations, and sensational circumstances calculated to strike the imagination and cause a shiver of horror. So one finds in this literature of the lower classes the principal legendary episodes of which we have studied the origin and followed the development; accommodated to a fiction, woven into a web of intrigue, they have undergone new transformations; they have lost every indication of their source; they are transposed in the new circumstances imagined for them; they have usually been dissociated from the circumstances which individualize them and fix their time and place. The thematic motives from which they spring nevertheless remain clearly recognizable. The legendary stories have thus attained the last stage of their elaboration and completed their diffusion. They have penetrated not only into the purlieus of the cities but into distant countries; into centers of education as among the popular classes. Wounded convalescents and soldiers on leave at home for a time have told them to the city man and to the peasant. Both have found them in letters from the front; both have read them in journals and books, both have listened to the warnings of the government and to the imperial word. The schoolteacher has mixed these episodes with his teaching; he has nourished with them infantile imaginations. Scholars have read the text of them in their classbooks and have enacted them in the games inspired by the war; they have told them at home in the family circle, giving them the authority attached to the master's word. Everywhere these accounts have been the subject of ardent commentaries; in the village, in the councils held upon doorsteps, and in the barrooms of inns; in the big cafés, the trams, and the public promenades of towns. Everywhere they have become an ordinary topic of conversation, everywhere they have met with ready credence. The term _franc tireur_ has become familiar. Its use is general and its acceptance widespread. A collection of prayers for the use of the Catholic German soldiers includes this incredible text: "Shame and malediction on him who wishes to act like the Belgian and French, perfidious and cruel, who have even attacked defenseless wounded." 3. Ritual, Myth, and Dogma[268] The antique religions had for the most part no creed; they consisted entirely of institutions and practices. No doubt, men will not habitually follow certain practices without attaching a meaning to them; but as a rule we find that while the practice was rigorously fixed, the meaning attached to it was extremely vague, and the same rite was explained by different people in different ways, without any question of orthodoxy or heterodoxy arising in consequence. In ancient Greece, for example, certain things were done at a temple, and people were agreed that it would be impious not to do them. But if you had asked why they were done, you would probably have had several mutually contradictory explanations from different persons, and no one would have thought it a matter of the least religious importance which of these you chose to adopt. Indeed, the explanations offered would not have been of a kind to stir any strong feeling; for in most cases they would have been merely different stories as to the circumstances under which the rite first came to be established, by the command or by the direct example of the god. The rite, in short, was connected not with a dogma but with a myth. In all the antique religions, mythology takes the place of dogma; that is, the sacred lore of priests and people, so far as it does not consist of mere rules for the performance of religious acts, assumes the form of stories about the gods; and these stories afford the only explanation that is offered of the precepts of religion and the prescribed rules of ritual. But, strictly speaking, this mythology was no essential part of ancient religion, for it had no sacred sanction and no binding force on the worshippers. The myths connected with individual sanctuaries and ceremonies were merely part of the apparatus of the worship; they served to excite the fancy and sustain the interest of the worshipper; but he was often offered a choice of several accounts of the same thing, and, provided that he fulfilled the ritual with accuracy, no one cared what he believed about its origin. Belief in a certain series of myths was neither obligatory as a part of true religion, nor was it supposed that, by believing, a man acquired religious merit and conciliated the favour of the gods. What was obligatory or meritorious was the exact performance of certain sacred acts prescribed by religious tradition. This being so, it follows that mythology ought not to take the prominent place that is too often assigned to it in the scientific study of ancient faiths. So far as myths consist of explanations of ritual, their value is altogether secondary, and it may be affirmed with confidence that in almost every case the myth was derived from the ritual, and not the ritual from the myth; for the ritual was fixed and the myth was variable, the ritual was obligatory and faith in the myth was at the discretion of the worshipper. The conclusion is, that in the study of ancient religions we must begin, not with myth, but with ritual and traditional usage. Nor can it be fairly set against this conclusion, that there are certain myths which are not mere explanations of traditional practices, but exhibit the beginnings of larger religious speculation, or of an attempt to systematise and reduce to order the motley variety of local worships and beliefs. For in this case the secondary character of the myths is still more clearly marked. They are either products of early philosophy, reflecting on the nature of the universe; or they are political in scope, being designed to supply a thread of union between the various worships of groups, originally distinct, which have been united into one social or political organism; or, finally, they are due to the free play of epic imagination. But philosophy, politics, and poetry are something more, or something less, than religion pure and simple. There can be no doubt that, in the later stages of ancient religions, mythology acquired an increased importance. In the struggle of heathenism with scepticism on the one hand and Christianity on the other, the supporters of the old traditional religions were driven to search for ideas of a modern cast, which they could represent as the true inner meaning of the traditional rites. To this end they laid hold of the old myths, and applied to them an allegorical system of interpretation. Myth interpreted by the aid of allegory became the favourite means of infusing a new significance into ancient forms. But the theories thus developed are the falsest of false guides as to the original meaning of the old religions. Religion in primitive times was not a system of belief with practical applications; it was a body of fixed traditional practices, to which every member of society conformed as a matter of course. Men would not be men if they agreed to do certain things without having a reason for their action; but in ancient religion the reason was not first formulated as a doctrine and then expressed in practice, but conversely, practice preceded doctrinal theory. Men form general rules of conduct before they begin to express general principles in words; political institutions are older than political theories, and in like manner religious institutions are older than religious theories. This analogy is not arbitrarily chosen, for in fact the parallelism in ancient society between religious and political institutions is complete. In each sphere great importance was attached to form and precedent, but the explanation why the precedent was followed consisted merely of a legend as to its first establishment. That the precedent, once established, was authoritative did not appear to require any proof. The rules of society were based on precedent, and the continued existence of the society was sufficient reason why a precedent once set should continue to be followed. I say that the oldest religious and political institutions present a close analogy. It would be more correct to say that they were parts of one whole of social custom. Religion was a part of the organised social life into which a man was born, and to which he conformed through life in the same unconscious way in which men fall into any habitual practice of the society in which they live. Men took the gods and their worship for granted, just as they took the other usages of the state for granted, and if they reasoned or speculated about them, they did so on the presupposition that the traditional usages were fixed things, behind which their reasonings must not go, and which no reasoning could be allowed to overturn. To us moderns religion is above all a matter of individual conviction and reasoned belief, but to the ancients it was a part of the citizen's public life, reduced to fixed forms, which he was not bound to understand and was not at liberty to criticise or to neglect. Religious non-conformity was an offence against the state; for if sacred tradition was tampered with the bases of society were undermined, and the favour of the gods was forfeited. But so long as the prescribed forms were duly observed, a man was recognised as truly pious, and no one asked how his religion was rooted in his heart or affected his reason. Like political duty, of which indeed it was a part, religion was entirely comprehended in the observance of certain fixed rules of outward conduct. From the antique point of view, indeed, the question what the gods are in themselves is not a religious but a speculative one; what is requisite to religion is a practical acquaintance with the rules on which the deity acts and on which he expects his worshippers to frame their conduct--what in II Kings 17:26 is called the "manner" or rather the "customary law" (_mishpat_) of the god of the land. This is true even of the religion of Israel. When the prophets speak of the knowledge of God, they always mean a practical knowledge of the laws and principles of His government in Israel, and a summary expression for religion as a whole is "the knowledge and fear of Jehovah," i.e., the knowledge of what Jehovah prescribes, combined with a reverent obedience. The traditional usages of religion had grown up gradually in the course of many centuries, and reflected habits of thought characteristic of very diverse stages of man's intellectual and moral development. No one conception of the nature of the gods could possibly afford the clue to all parts of that motley complex of rites and ceremonies which the later paganism had received by inheritance, from a series of ancestors in every state of culture from pure savagery upwards. The record of the religious thought of mankind, as it is embodied in religious institutions, resembles the geological record of the history of the earth's crust; the new and the old are preserved side by side or rather layer upon layer. The classification of ritual formations in their proper sequence is the first step towards their explanation, and that explanation itself must take the form, not of a speculative theory, but of a rational life-history. 4. The Nature of Public Opinion[269] "_Vox populi_ may be _vox Dei_, but very little attention shows that there has never been any agreement as to what _vox_ means or as to what _populus_ means." In spite of endless discussions about democracy, this remark of Sir Henry Maine is still so far true that no other excuse is needed for studying the conceptions which lie at the very base of popular government. In doing so one must distinguish the form from the substance; for the world of politics is full of forms in which the spirit is dead--mere shams, but sometimes not recognized as such even by the chief actors, sometimes deceiving the outside multitude, sometimes no longer misleading anyone. Shams, are, indeed, not without value. Political shams have done for English government what fictions have done for English law. They have promoted growth without revolutionary change. But while shams play an important part in political evolution, they are snares for the political philosopher who fails to see through them, who ascribes to the forms a meaning that they do not really possess. Popular government may in substance exist under the form of a monarchy, and an autocratic despotism can be set up without destroying the forms of democracy. If we look through the forms to observe the vital forces behind them; if we fix our attention, not on the procedure, the extent of the franchise, the machinery of elections, and such outward things, but on the essence of the matter, popular government, in one important aspect at least, may be said to consist of the control of political affairs by public opinion. If two highwaymen meet a belated traveler on a dark road and propose to relieve him of his watch and wallet, it would clearly be an abuse of terms to say that in the assemblage on that lonely spot there was a public opinion in favor of a redistribution of property. Nor would it make any difference, for this purpose, whether there were two highwaymen and one traveler, or one robber and two victims. The absurdity in such a case of speaking about the duty of the minority to submit to the verdict of public opinion is self-evident; and it is not due to the fact that the three men on the road form part of a larger community, or that they are subject to the jurisdiction of a common government. The expression would be quite as inappropriate if no organized state existed; on a savage island, for example, where two cannibals were greedy to devour one shipwrecked mariner. In short, the three men in each of the cases supposed do not form a community that is capable of a public opinion on the question involved. May this not be equally true under an organized government, among people that are for certain purposes a community? To take an illustration nearer home. At the time of the Reconstruction that followed the American Civil War the question whether public opinion in a southern state was or was not in favor of extending the suffrage to the Negroes could not in any true sense be said to depend on which of the two races had a slight numerical majority. One opinion may have been public or general in regard to the whites, the other public or general in regard to the Negroes, but neither opinion was public or general in regard to the whole population. Examples of this kind could be multiplied indefinitely. They can be found in Ireland, in Austria-Hungary, in Turkey, in India, in any country where the cleavage of race, religion, or politics is sharp and deep enough to cut the community into fragments too far apart for an accord on fundamental matters. In all these instances an opinion cannot be public or general with respect to both elements in the state. For that purpose they are as distinct as if they belonged to different commonwealths. You may count heads, you may break heads, you may impose uniformity by force; but on the matters at stake the two elements do not form a community capable of an opinion that is in any rational sense public or general. If we are to employ the term in a sense that is significant for government, that imports any obligation moral or political on the part of the minority, surely enough has been said to show that the opinion of a mere majority does not by itself always suffice. Something more is clearly needed. But if the opinion of a majority does not of itself constitute a public opinion, it is equally certain that unanimity is not required. Unanimous opinion is of no importance for our purpose, because it is perfectly sure to be effective in any form of government, however despotic, and it is, therefore, of no particular interest in the study of democracy. Legislation by unanimity was actually tried in the kingdom of Poland, where each member of the assembly had the right of _liberum veto_ on any measure, and it prevented progress, fostered violence, and spelled failure. The Polish system has been lauded as the acme of liberty, but in fact it was directly opposed to the fundamental principle of modern popular government; that is, the conduct of public affairs in accord with a public opinion which is general, although not universal, and which implies under certain conditions a duty on the part of the minority to submit. A body of men are politically capable of a public opinion only so far as they are agreed upon the ends and aims of government and upon the principles by which those ends shall be attained. They must be united, also, about the means whereby the action of the government is to be determined, in a conviction, for example, that the views of a majority--or it may be some other portion of their numbers--ought to prevail, and a political community as a whole is capable of public opinion only when this is true of the great bulk of the citizens. Such an assumption was implied, though usually not expressed in all theories of the social compact; and, indeed, it is involved in all theories that base rightful government upon the consent of the governed, for the consent required is not a universal approval by all the people of every measure enacted, but a consensus in regard to the legitimate character of the ruling authority and its right to decide the questions that arise. One more remark must be made before quitting the subject of the relation of public opinion to the opinion of the majority. The late Gabriel Tarde, with his habitual keen insight, insisted on the importance of the intensity of belief as a factor in the spread of opinions. There is a common impression that public opinion depends upon and is measured by the mere number of persons to be found on each side of a question; but this is far from accurate. If 49 per cent of a community feel very strongly on one side, and 51 per cent are lukewarmly on the other, the former opinion has the greater public force behind it and is certain to prevail ultimately, if it does not at once. One man who holds his belief tenaciously counts for as much as several men who hold theirs weakly, because he is more aggressive and thereby compels and overawes others into apparent agreement with him, or at least into silence and inaction. This is, perhaps, especially true of moral questions. It is not improbable that a large part of the accepted moral code is maintained by the earnestness of a minority, while more than half of the community is indifferent or unconvinced. In short, public opinion is not strictly the opinion of the numerical majority, and no form of its expression measures the mere majority, for individual views are always to some extent weighed as well as counted. Without attempting to consider how the weight attaching to intensity and intelligence can be accurately gauged, it is enough for our purpose to point out that when we speak of the opinion of a majority we mean, not the numerical, but the effective, majority. 5. Public Opinion and the Mores[270] We are interested in public opinion, I suppose, because public opinion is, in the long run, the sovereign power in the state. There is not now, and probably there never has been a government that did not rest on public opinion. The best evidence of this is the fact that all governments have invariably sought either to _control_ or, at least, to inspire and direct it. The Kaiser had his "official" and his "semiofficial" organs. The communists in Russia have taken possession of the schools. It is in the schoolroom that the bolshevists propose to complete the revolution. Hume, the English historian, who was also the greatest of English philosophers, said: As force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and the most military governments as well as to the most free and popular. The soldan of Egypt, or the emperor of Rome, might drive their helpless subjects, like brute beasts, against their sentiments and inclinations, but he must at least have led his mameluks, or praetorian bands, like men, by their opinions. Hume's statement is too epigrammatic to be true. Governments can and do maintain themselves by force rather than consent. They have done this even when they were greatly inferior in numbers. Witness Cortez in Mexico, the Belgians in the Congo, and the recent English conquest, with two hundred aeroplanes, of the Mad Mullah in Somaliland. Civilized people must be governed in subtle ways. Unpopular governments maintain themselves sometimes by taking possession of the means of communication, by polluting the sources of information, by suppressing newspapers, by propaganda. Caspar Schmidt, "Max Stirner," the most consistent of anarchists, said the last tyranny is the tyranny of the idea. The last tyrant, in other words, is the propagandist, the individual who gives a "slant" to the facts in order to promote his own conception of the welfare of the community. We use the word public opinion in a wider and in a narrower sense. The public, the popular mind, is controlled by something more than opinion, or public opinion, in the narrower sense. We are living today under the subtle tyranny of the advertising man. He tells us what to wear, and makes us wear it. He tells us what to eat, and makes us eat it. We do not resent this tyranny. We do not feel it. We do what we are told; but we do it with the feeling that we are following our own wild impulses. This does not mean that, under the inspiration of advertisements, we act irrationally. We have reasons; but they are sometimes after-thoughts. Or they are supplied by the advertiser. Advertising is one form of social control. It is one way of capturing the public mind. But advertising does not get its results by provoking discussion. That is one respect in which it differs from public opinion. Fashion is one of the subtler forms of control to which we all bow. We all follow the fashions at a greater or less distance. Some of us fall behind the fashions, but no one ever gets ahead of them. No one ever can get ahead of the fashions because we never know what they are, until they arrive. Fashion, in the broad sense, comes under the head of what Herbert Spencer called ceremonial government. Ceremony, he said, is the most primitive and the most effective of all forms of government. There is no rebellion against fashion; no rebellion against social ritual. At least these rebellions never make martyrs or heroes. Dr. Mary Walker, who wore men's clothes, was a heroine no doubt, but never achieved martyrdom. So far as ceremonial government finds expression in a code it is etiquette, social ritual, form. We do not realize how powerful an influence social form is. There are breaches of etiquette that any ordinary human being would rather die than be guilty of. We often speak of social usages and the dictates of fashion as if they were imposed by public opinion. This is not true, if we are to use public opinion in the narrower sense. Social usages are not matters of opinion; they are matters of custom. They are fixed in habits. They are not matters of reflection, but of impulse. They are parts of ourselves. There is an intimate relation between public opinion and social customs or the mores, as Sumner calls them. But there is this difference: Public opinion fluctuates. It wobbles. Social customs, the mores, change slowly. Prohibition was long in coming; but the custom of drinking has not disappeared. The mores change slowly; but they change _in one direction_ and they change _steadily_. Mores change as fashion does; as language does; by a law of their own. Fashions must change. It is in their nature to do so. As the existing thing loses its novelty it is no longer stimulating; no longer interesting. It is no longer the fashion. What fashion demands is not something new; but something different. It demands the old in a new and stimulating form. Every woman who is up with the fashion wants to be in the fashion; but she desires to be something different from everyone else, especially from her best friend. Language changes in response to the same motives and according to the same law. We are constantly seeking new metaphors for old ideas; constantly using old metaphors to express new ideas. Consider the way that slang grows! There is a fashion or a trend in public opinion. A. V. Dicey, in his volume on _Law and Opinion in England_, points out that there has been a constant tendency, for a hundred years, in English legislation, from individualism to collectivism. This does not mean that public opinion has changed constantly in one direction. There have been, as he says, "cross currents." Public opinion has veered, but the changes in the mores have been steadily in one direction. There has been a change in the fundamental attitudes. This change has taken place in response to changed conditions. Change in mores is something like change in the nest-building habits of certain birds, the swallows, for example. This change, like the change in bird habits, takes place without discussion--without clear consciousness--in response to changed conditions. Furthermore, changes in the mores, like changes in fashion, are only slightly under our control. They are not the result of agitation; rather they are responsible for the agitation. There are profound changes going on in our social organization today. Industrial democracy, or something corresponding to it, is coming. It is coming not entirely because of social agitation. It is coming, perhaps, in spite of agitation. It is a social change, but it is part of the whole cosmic process. There is an intimate relation between the mores and opinion. The mores represent the attitudes in which we agree. Opinion represents these attitudes in so far as we do not agree. We do not have opinions except over matters which are in dispute. So far as we are controlled by habit and custom, by the mores, we do not have opinions. I find out what my opinion is only after I discover that I disagree with my fellow. What I call my opinions are for the most part invented to justify my agreements or disagreements with prevailing public opinion. The mores do not need justification. As soon as I seek justification for them they have become matters of opinion. Public opinion is just the opinion of individuals plus their differences. There is no public opinion where there is no substantial agreement. But there is no public opinion where there is not disagreement. Public opinion presupposes public discussion. When a matter has reached the stage of public discussion it becomes a matter of public opinion. Before war was declared in France there was anxiety, speculation. After mobilization began, discussion ceased. The national ideal was exalted. The individual ceased to exist. Men ceased even to think. They simply obeyed. This is what happened in all the belligerent countries except America. It did not quite happen here. Under such circumstances public opinion ceases to exist. This is quite as true in a democracy as it is in an autocracy. The difference between an autocracy and a democracy is not that in one the will of the people finds expression and in the other it does not. It is simply that in a democracy a larger number of the citizens participate in the discussions which give rise to public opinion. At least they are supposed to do so. In a democracy everyone belongs, or is supposed to belong, to one great public. In an autocracy there are perhaps many little publics. What rôle do the schools and colleges play in the formation of public opinion? The schools transmit the tradition. They standardize our national prejudices and transmit them. They do this necessarily. A liberal or college education tends to modify and qualify all our inherited political, religious, and social prejudices. It does so by bringing into the field of discussion matters that would not otherwise get into the public consciousness. In this way a college education puts us in a way to control our prejudices instead of being controlled by them. This is the purpose of a liberal education. The emancipation which history, literature, and a wider experience with life give us permits us to enter sympathetically into the lives and interests of others; it widens that area over which public opinion rather than force exercises control. It makes it possible to extend the area of political control. It means the extension of democratic participation in the common life. The universities, by their special studies in the field of social science, are seeking to accumulate and bring into the view of public opinion a larger body of attested fact upon which the public may base its opinion. It is probably not the business of the universities to agitate reforms nor to attempt directly to influence public opinion in regard to current issues. To do this is to relax its critical attitude, lessen its authority in matters of fact, and jeopardize its hard-won academic freedom. When a university takes over the function of a political party or a church it ceases to perform its function as a university. 6. News and Social Control[271] Everywhere today men are conscious that somehow they must deal with questions more intricate than any that church or school had prepared them to understand. Increasingly they know that they cannot understand them if the facts are not quickly and steadily available. Increasingly they are baffled because the facts are not available; and they are wondering whether government by consent can survive in a time when the manufacture of consent is an unregulated private enterprise. For in an exact sense the present crisis of western democracy is a crisis in journalism. I do not agree with those who think that the sole cause is corruption. There is plenty of corruption, to be sure, moneyed control, caste pressure, financial and social bribery, ribbons, dinner parties, clubs, petty politics. The speculators in Russian rubles who lied on the Paris Bourse about the capture of Petrograd are not the only example of their species. And yet corruption does not explain the condition of modern journalism. Mr. Franklin P. Adams wrote recently: Now there is much pettiness--and almost incredible stupidity and ignorance--in the so-called free press; but it is the pettiness, etc., common to the so-called human race--a pettiness found in musicians, steamfitters, landlords, poets, and waiters. And when Miss Lowell [who had made the usual aristocratic complaint] speaks of the incurable desire in all American newspapers to make fun of everything in season and out, we quarrel again. There is an incurable desire in American newspapers to take things much more seriously than they deserve. Does Miss Lowell read the ponderous news from Washington? Does she read the society news? Does she, we wonder, read the newspapers? Mr. Adams does read them, and when he writes that the newspapers take things much more seriously than they deserve, he has, as the mayor's wife remarked to the queen, said a mouthful. Since the war, especially, editors have come to believe that their highest duty is not to report but to instruct, not to print news but to save civilization, not to publish what Benjamin Harris calls "the Circumstances of Publique Affairs, both abroad and at home," but to keep the nation on the straight and narrow path. Like the kings of England, they have elected themselves Defenders of the Faith. "For five years," says Mr. Cobb of the _New York World_, "there has been no free play of public opinion in the world. Confronted by the inexorable necessities of war, governments conscripted public opinion. They goose-stepped it. They taught it to stand at attention and salute. It sometimes seems that, after the armistice was signed, millions of Americans must have taken a vow that they would never again do any thinking for themselves. They were willing to die for their country but not willing to think for it." That minority, which is proudly prepared to think for it, and not only prepared but cocksure that it alone knows how to think for it, has adopted the theory that the public should know what is good for it. The work of reporters has thus become confused with the work of preachers, revivalists, prophets, and agitators. The current theory of American newspaperdom is that an abstraction like the truth and a grace-like fairness must be sacrificed whenever anyone thinks the necessities of civilization require the sacrifice. To Archbishop Whately's dictum that it matters greatly whether you put truth in the first place or the second, the candid expounder of modern journalism would reply that he put truth second to what he conceived to be the national interest. Judged simply by their product, men like Mr. Ochs or Viscount Northcliffe believe that their respective nations will perish and civilization decay unless their idea of what is patriotic is permitted to temper the curiosity of their readers. They believe that edification is more important than veracity. They believe it profoundly, violently, relentlessly. They preen themselves upon it. To patriotism, as they define it from day to day, all other considerations must yield. That is their pride. And yet what is this but one more among myriad examples of the doctrine that the end justifies the means? A more insidiously misleading rule of conduct was, I believe, never devised among men. It was a plausible rule as long as men believed that an omniscient and benevolent Providence taught them what end to seek. But now that men are critically aware of how their purposes are special to their age, their locality, their interests, and their limited knowledge, it is blazing arrogance to sacrifice hard-won standards of credibility to some special purpose. It is nothing but the doctrine that I want what I want when I want it. Its monuments are the Inquisition and the invasion of Belgium. It is the reason given for every act of unreason, the law invoked whenever lawlessness justifies itself. At bottom it is nothing but the anarchical nature of man imperiously hacking its way through. Just as the most poisonous form of disorder is the mob incited from high places, the most immoral act the immorality of a government, so the most destructive form of untruth is sophistry and propaganda by those whose profession it is to report the news. The news columns are common carriers. When those who control them arrogate to themselves the right to determine by their own consciences what shall be reported and for what purpose, democracy is unworkable. Public opinion is blockaded. For when a people can no longer confidently repair "to the best fountains for their information," then anyone's guess and anyone's rumor, each man's hope and each man's whim, become the basis of government. All that the sharpest critics of democracy have alleged is true if there is no steady supply of trustworthy and relevant news. Incompetence and aimlessness, corruption and disloyalty, panic and ultimate disaster, must come to any people which is denied an assured access to the facts. No one can manage anything on pap. Neither can a people. Few episodes in recent history are more poignant than that of the British prime minister, sitting at the breakfast table with that morning's paper before him, protesting that he cannot do the sensible thing in regard to Russia because a powerful newspaper proprietor has drugged the public. That incident is a photograph of the supreme danger which confronts popular government. All other dangers are contingent upon it, for the news is the chief source of the opinion by which government now proceeds. So long as there is interposed between the ordinary citizen and the facts a news organization determining by entirely private and unexamined standards, no matter how lofty, what he shall know, and hence what he shall believe, no one will be able to say that the substance of democratic government is secure. The theory of our constitution, says Mr. Justice Holmes, is that truth is the only ground upon which men's wishes safely can be carried out. In so far as those who purvey the news make of their own beliefs a higher law than truth, they are attacking the foundations of our constitutional system. There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and shame the devil. In a few generations it will seem ludicrous to historians that a people professing government by the will of the people should have made no serious effort to guarantee the news without which a governing opinion cannot exist. "Is it possible," they will ask, "that at the beginning of the twentieth century nations calling themselves democracies were content to act on what happened to drift across their doorsteps; that apart from a few sporadic exposures and outcries they made no plans to bring these common carriers under social control, that they provided no genuine training schools for the men upon whose sagacity they were dependent; above all, that their political scientists went on year after year writing and lecturing about government without producing one single, significant study of the process of public opinion?" And then they will recall the centuries in which the church enjoyed immunity from criticism, and perhaps they will insist that the news structure of secular society was not seriously examined for analogous reasons. 7. The Psychology of Propaganda[272] Paper bullets, according to Mr. Creel, won the war. But they have forever disturbed our peace of mind. The war is long since over, all but saying so; but our consciousness of the immanence of propaganda bids fair to be permanent. It has been discovered by individuals, by associations, and by governments that a certain kind of advertising can be used to mold public opinion and control democratic majorities. As long as public opinion rules the destinies of human affairs, there will be no end to an instrument that controls it. The tremendous forces of propaganda are now common property. They are available for the unscrupulous and the destructive as well as for the constructive and the moral. This gives us a new interest in its technique, namely, to inquire if anywhere there is an opportunity for regulative and protective interference with its indiscriminate exploitation. Until recently the most famous historical use of the term propaganda made it synonymous with foreign missions. It was Pope Gregory XV who almost exactly three centuries ago, after many years of preparation, finally founded the great Propaganda College to care for the interests of the church in non-Catholic countries. With its centuries of experience this is probably the most efficient organization for propaganda in the world. Probably most apologetics is propaganda. No religion and no age has been entirely free from it. One of the classical psychoanalytic case histories is that of Breuer's water glass and the puppy dog. A young lady patient was utterly unable to drink water from a glass. It was a deep embarrassment. Even under the stress of great thirst in warm weather and the earnest effort to break up a foolish phobia, the glass might be taken and raised, but it couldn't be drunk from. Psychoanalysis disclosed the following facts. Underlying this particular phobia was an intense antipathy to dogs. The young lady's roommate had been discovered giving a dog a drink from the common drinking-glass. The antipathy to the dog was simply transferred to the glass. The case is a commonplace in the annals of hysteria. But let us examine the mechanism. Suppose that I had wanted to keep that drinking-glass for my own personal use. A perfectly simple and effective expedient it would have been in the absence of other good motives to capitalize that antipathy by allowing her to see the dog drink out of the glass. The case would then have been a perfect case of propaganda. All propaganda is capitalized prejudice. It rests on some emotional premise which is the motive force of the process. The emotional transfer is worked by some associative process like similarity, use, or the causal relationship. The derived sympathetic antipathy represents the goal. The great self-preservative, social, and racial instincts will always furnish the main reservoir of motive forces at the service of propaganda. They will have the widest and the most insistent appeal. Only second to these in importance are the peculiar racial tendencies and historical traditions that represent the genius of a civilization. The racial-superiority consciousness of the Germans operated as a never-ending motive for their "Aushalten" propaganda. We Americans have a notable cultural premise in our consideration for the underdog. Few things outside our consciousness of family will arouse us as surely and as universally as this modification of the protective instinct. In addition to the group tendencies that arise from a community of experience, individual propaganda may use every phase of individual experience, individual bias and prejudice. I am told that first-class salesmen not infrequently keep family histories of their customers, producing a favorable attitude toward their merchandise by way of an apparent personal interest in the children. Apparently any group of ideas with an emotional valence may become the basis for propaganda. There are three limitations to the processes of propaganda. The first is emotional recoil, the second is the exhaustion of available motive force, the third is the development of internal resistance or negativism. The most familiar of the three is emotional recoil. We know only too well what will happen if we tell a boy all the things that he likes to do are "bad," while all the things that he dislikes are "good." Up to a certain point the emotional value of bad and good respectively will be transferred to the acts as we intend. But each transfer has an emotional recoil on the concepts good and bad. At the end a most surprising thing may happen. The moral values may get reversed in the boy's mind. Bad may come to represent the sum total of the satisfactory and desirable, while good may represent the sum total of the unsatisfactory and the undesirable. To the pained adult such a consequence is utterly inexplicable, only because he fails to realize that all mental products are developments. There is always a kind of reciprocity in emotional transfer. The value of the modified factor recoils to the modifying factor. The whole mechanism of the transfer and of the recoil may best be expressed in terms of the conditioned reflex of Pavlov. The flow of saliva in a dog is a natural consequence to the sight and smell of food. If concurrently with the smelling of food the dog is pinched, the pinch ceases to be a matter for resentment. By a process of emotional transfer, on being pinched the dog may show the lively delight that belongs to the sight and smell of food. Even the salivary secretions may be started by the transfigured pinch. It was the great operating physiologist Sherrington who exclaimed after a visit to Pavlov that at last he understood the psychology of the martyrs. But it is possible so to load the smell of food with pain and damage that its positive value breaks down. Eating-values may succumb to the pain values instead of the pain to the eating-values. This is the prototype of the concept bad when it gets overloaded with the emotional value of the intrinsically desirable. The law of recoil seems to be a mental analogue of the physical law that action and reaction are equal and in opposite directions. The second limitation to propaganda occurs when the reciprocal effects of transfer exhaust the available motive forces of a mind. Propaganda certainly weakens the forces that are appealed to too often. We are living just now in a world of weakened appeals. Many of the great human motives were exploited to the limit during the war. It is harder to raise money now than it was, harder to find motives for giving that are still effective. One of my former colleagues once surprised and shocked me by replying to some perfectly good propaganda in which I tried to tell him that certain action was in the line of duty, to the effect that he was tired of being told that something was his duty, and that he was resolved not to do another thing because it was his duty. There seems to be evidence that in some quarters, at least, patriotism, philanthropy, and civic duty have been exploited as far as the present systems will carry. It is possible to exhaust our floating capital of social-motive forces. When that occurs we face a kind of moral bankruptcy. A final stage of resistance is reached when propaganda develops a negativistic defensive reaction. To develop such negativisms is always the aim of counterpropaganda. It calls the opposed propaganda, prejudiced, half-truth, or, as the Germans did, "Lies, All Lies." There is evidence that the moral collapse of Germany under the fire of our paper bullets came with the conviction that they had been systematically deceived by their own propagandists. There are two great social dangers in propaganda. Great power in irresponsible hands is always a social menace. We have some legal safeguards against careless use of high-powered physical explosives. Against the greater danger of destructive propaganda there seems to be little protection without imperiling the sacred principles of free speech. The second social danger is the tendency to overload and level down every great human incentive in the pursuit of relatively trivial ends. To become _blasé_ is the inevitable penalty of emotional exploitation. I believe there may well be grave penalties in store for the reckless commercialized exploitation of human emotions in the cheap sentimentalism of our moving pictures. But there are even graver penalties in store for the generation that permits itself to grow morally _blasé_. One of our social desiderata, it seems to me, is the protection of the great springs of human action from destructive exploitation for selfish, commercial, or other trivial ends. The slow constructive process of building moral credits by systematic education lacks the picturesqueness of propaganda. It also lacks its quick results. But just as the short cut of hypnotism proved a dangerous substitute for moral training, so I believe we shall find that not only is moral education a necessary precondition for effective propaganda, but that in the end it is a safer and incomparably more reliable social instrument. C. INSTITUTIONS 1. Institutions and the Mores[273] Institutions and laws are produced out of mores. An institution consists of a concept (idea, notion, doctrine, interest) and a structure. The structure is a framework, or apparatus, or perhaps only a number of functionaries set to co-operate in prescribed ways at a certain conjuncture. The structure holds the concept and furnishes instrumentalities for bringing it into the world of facts and action in a way to serve the interests of men in society. Institutions are either crescive or enacted. They are crescive when they take shape in the mores, growing by the instinctive efforts by which the mores are produced. Then the efforts, through long use, become definite and specific. Property, marriage, and religion are the most primary institutions. They began in folkways. They became customs. They developed into mores by the addition of some philosophy of welfare, however crude. Then they were made more definite and specific as regards the rules, the prescribed acts, and the apparatus to be employed. This produced a structure and the institution was complete. Enacted institutions are products of rational invention and intention. They belong to high civilization. Banks are institutions of credit founded on usages which can be traced back to barbarism. There came a time when, guided by rational reflection on experience, men systematized and regulated the usages which had become current, and thus created positive institutions of credit, defined by law and sanctioned by the force of the state. Pure enacted institutions which are strong and prosperous are hard to find. It is too difficult to invent and create an institution, for a purpose, out of nothing. The electoral college in the Constitution of the United States is an example. In that case the democratic mores of the people have seized upon the device and made of it something quite different from what the inventors planned. All institutions have come out of mores, although the rational element in them is sometimes so large that their origin in the mores is not to be ascertained except by a historical investigation (legislatures, courts, juries, joint-stock companies, the stock exchange). Property, marriage, and religion are still almost entirely in the mores. Amongst nature men any man might capture and hold a woman at any time, if he could. He did it by superior force which was its own supreme justification. But his act brought his group and her group into war, and produced harm to his comrades. They forbade capture, or set conditions for it. Beyond the limits, the individual might still use force, but his comrades were no longer responsible. The glory to him, if he succeeded, might be all the greater. His control over his captive was absolute. Within the prescribed conditions, "capture" became technical and institutional, and rights grew out of it. The woman had a status which was defined by custom, and was very different from the status of a real captive. Marriage was the institutional relation, in the society and under its sanction, of a woman to a man, where the woman had been obtained in the prescribed way. She was then a "wife." What her rights and duties were was defined by the mores, as they are today in all civilized society. Acts of legislation come out of the mores. In low civilization all societal regulations are customs and taboos, the origin of which is unknown. Positive laws are impossible until the stage of verification, reflection, and criticism is reached. Until that point is reached there is only customary law, or common law. The customary law may be codified and systematized with respect to some philosophical principles, and yet remain customary. The codes of Manu and Justinian are examples. Enactment is not possible until reverence for ancestors has been so much weakened that it is no longer thought wrong to interfere with traditional customs by positive enactment. Even then there is reluctance to make enactments, and there is a stage of transition during which traditional customs are extended by interpretation to cover new cases and to prevent evils. Legislation, however, has to seek standing ground on the existing mores, and it soon becomes apparent that legislation, to be strong, must be consistent with the mores. Things which have been in the mores are put under police regulation and later under positive law. It is sometimes said that "public opinion" must ratify and approve police regulations, but this statement rests on an imperfect analysis. The regulations must conform to the mores, so that the public will not think them too lax or too strict. The mores of our urban and rural populations are not the same; consequently legislation about intoxicants which is made by one of these sections of the population does not succeed when applied to the other. The regulation of drinking-places, gambling-places, and disorderly houses has passed through the above-mentioned stages. It is always a question of expediency whether to leave a subject under the mores, or to make a police regulation for it, or to put it into the criminal law. Betting, horse racing, dangerous sports, electric cars, and vehicles are cases now of things which seem to be passing under positive enactment and out of the unformulated control of the mores. When an enactment is made there is a sacrifice of the elasticity and automatic self-adaptation of custom, but an enactment is specific and is provided with sanctions. Enactments come into use when conscious purposes are formed, and it is believed that specific devices can be framed by which to realize such purposes in the society. Then also prohibitions take the place of taboos, and punishments are planned to be deterrent rather than revengeful. The mores of different societies, or of different ages, are characterized by greater of less readiness and confidence in regard to the use of positive enactments for the realization of societal purposes. 2. Common Law and Statute Law[274] It probably would have surprised the early Englishman if he had been told that either he or anybody else did not know the law--still more that there was ever any need for any parliament or assembly to tell him what it was. They all knew the law, and they all knew that they knew the law, and the law was a thing that they knew as naturally as they knew fishing and hunting. They had grown up into it. It never occurred to them as an outside thing. So it has been found that where you take children, modern children, at least boys who are sons of educated parents, and put them in large masses by themselves, they will, without apparently any reading, rapidly invent a notion of law; that is, they will invent a certain set of customs which are the same thing to them as law, and which indeed are the same as law. They have tried in Johns Hopkins University experiments among children, to leave them entirely alone, without any instruction, and it is quite singular how soon customs will grow up, and it is also quite singular, and a thing that always surprises the socialist and communist, that about the earliest concept at which they will arrive is that of private property! They will soon get a notion that one child owns a stick, or toy, or seat, and the others must respect that property. This I merely use as an illustration to show how simple the notion of law was among our ancestors in England fifteen hundred years ago, and how it had grown up with them, of course, from many centuries, but in much the same way that the notion of custom or law grows up among children. The "law" of the free Angelo-Saxon people was regarded as a thing existing by itself, like the sunlight, or at least as existing like a universally accepted custom observed by everyone. It was five hundred years before the notion crept into the minds, even of the members of the British Parliaments, that they could make a new law. What they supposed they did, and what they were understood by the people to do, was merely to declare the law, as it was then and as it had been from time immemorial; the notion always being--and the farther back you go and the more simple the people are, the more they have that notion--that their free laws and customs were something which came from the beginning of the world, which they always held, which were immutable, no more to be changed than the forces of nature; and that no Parliament, under the free Angelo-Saxon government or later under the Norman kings who tried to make them unfree, no king could ever make a law but could only declare what the law was. The Latin phrase for that distinction is _jus dare_, and _jus dicere_. In early England, in Anglo-Saxon times, the Parliament never did anything but tell what the law was; and, as I have said, not only what it was then but what it had been, as they supposed, for thousands of years before. The notion of a legislature to make new laws is an entirely modern conception of Parliament. The notion of law as a statute, a thing passed by a legislature, a thing enacted, made new by representative assembly, is perfectly modern, and yet it has so thoroughly taken possession of our minds, and particularly of the American mind (owing to the forty-eight legislatures that we have at work, besides the national Congress, every year, and to the fact that they try to do a great deal to deserve their pay in the way of enacting laws), that statutes have assumed in our minds the main bulk of the concept of law as we formulate it to ourselves. Statutes with us are recent, legislatures making statutes are recent everywhere; legislatures themselves are fairly recent; that is, they date only from the end of the Dark Ages, at least in Anglo-Saxon countries. Representative government itself is supposed, by most scholars, to be the one invention that is peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon people. I am quite sure that all the American people when they think of law in the sense I am now speaking of, even when they are not thinking necessarily of statute law, do mean, nevertheless, a law which is enforced by somebody with power, somebody with a big stick. They mean a law, an ordinance, an order or dictate addressed to them by a sovereign, or at least by a power of some sort, and they mean an ordinance which if they break they are going to suffer for, either in person or in property. In other words, they have a notion of law as a written command addressed by the sovereign to the subject, or at least by one of the departments of government to the citizen. Now that, I must caution you, is in the first place rather a modern notion of law, quite modern in England; it is really Roman, and was not law as it was understood by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. He did not think of law as a thing written, addressed to him by the king. Neither did he necessarily think of it as a thing which had any definite punishment attached or any code attached, any "sanction," as we call it, or thing which enforces the law; a penalty or fine or imprisonment. There are just as good "sanctions" for law outside of the sanctions that our people usually think of as there are inside of them, and often very much better; for example, the sanction of a strong custom. Take any example you like; there are many states where marriage between blacks and whites is not made unlawful but where practically it is made tremendously unlawful by the force of public opinion [mores]. Take the case of debts of honor, so called, debts of gambling; they are paid far more universally than ordinary commercial debts, even by the same people; but there is no law enforcing them--there is no sanction for the collection of gambling debts. And take any custom that grows up. We know how strong our customs in college are. Take the mere custom of a club table; no one dares or ventures to supplant the members at that table. That kind of sanction is just as good a law as a law made by statute and imposing five or ten dollars' penalty or a week's imprisonment. And judges or juries recognize those things as laws, just as much as they do statute laws; when all other laws are lacking, our courts will ask what is the "custom of the trade." These be laws, and are often better enforced than the statute law; the rules of the New York Stock Exchange are better enforced than the laws of the state legislature. Now all our early Anglo-Saxon law was law of that kind. For the law was but universal custom, and that custom had no sanction; but for breach of the custom anybody could make personal attack, or combine with his friends to make attack, on the person who committed the breach, and then, when the matter was taken up by the members of both tribes, and finally by the witenagemot as a judicial court, the question was, what the law was. That was the working of the old Anglo-Saxon law, and it was a great many centuries before the notion of law changed from that in their minds. And this "unwritten law" perdures in the minds of many of the people today. 3. Religion and Social Control[275] As a social fact religion is, indeed, not something apart from mores or social standards; it is these as regarded as "sacred." Strictly speaking there is no such thing as an unethical religion. We judge some religions as unethical because the mores of which they approve are not our mores, that is, the standards of higher civilization. All religions are ethical, however, in the sense that without exception they support customary morality, and they do this necessarily because the values which the religious attitude of mind universalizes and makes absolute are social values. Social obligations thus early become religious obligations. In this way religion becomes the chief means of conserving customs and habits which have been found to be safe by society or which are believed to conduce to social welfare. As the guardian of the mores, religion develops prohibitions and "taboos" of actions of which the group, or its dominant class, disapproves. It may lend itself, therefore, to maintaining a given social order longer than that order is necessary, or even after it has become a stumbling-block to social progress. For the same reason it may be exploited by a dominant class in their own interest. It is in this way that religion has often become an impediment to progress and an instrument of class oppression. This socially conservative side of religion is so well known and so much emphasized by certain writers that it scarcely needs even to be mentioned. It is the chief source of the abuses of religion, and in the modern world is probably the chief cause of the deep enmity which religion has raised up for itself in a certain class of thinkers who see nothing but its negative and conservative side. There is no necessity, however, for the social control which religion exerts being of a non-progressive kind. The values which religion universalizes and makes absolute may as easily be values which are progressive as those which are static. In a static society which emphasizes prohibitions and the conservation of mere habit or custom, religion will also, of course, emphasize the same things; but in a progressive society religion can as easily attach its sanctions to social ideals and standards beyond the existing order as to those actually realized. Such an idealistic religion will, however, have the disadvantages of appealing mainly to the progressive and idealizing tendencies of human nature rather than to its conservative and reactionary tendencies. Necessarily, also, it will appeal more strongly to those enlightened classes in society who are leading in social progress rather than to those who are content with things as they are. This is doubtless the main reason why progressive religions are exceedingly rare in human history, taking it as a whole, and have appeared only in the later stages of cultural evolution. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for believing that the inevitable evolution of religion has been in a humanitarian direction, and that there is an intimate connection between social idealism and the higher religions. There are two reasons for this generalization. The social life becomes more complex with each succeeding stage of upward development, and groups have therefore more need of commanding the unfailing devotion of their members if they are to maintain their unity and efficiency as groups. More and more, accordingly, religion in its evolution has come to emphasize the self-effacing devotion of the individual to the group in times of crisis. And as the complexity of social life increases, the crises increase in which the group must ask the unfailing service and devotion of its members. Thus religion in its upward evolution becomes increasingly social, until it finally comes to throw supreme emphasis upon the life of service and of self-sacrifice for the sake of the group; and as the group expands from the clan and the tribe to humanity, religion necessarily becomes less tribal and more humanitarian until the supreme object of the devotion which it inculcates must ultimately be the whole of humanity. III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS 1. Social Control and Human Nature Society, so far as it can be distinguished from the individuals that compose it, performs for those individuals the function of a mind. Like mind in the individual man, society is a control organization. Evidence of mind in the animal is the fact that it can make adjustments to new conditions. The evidence that any group of persons constitutes a society is the fact that the group is able to act with some consistency, and as a unit. It follows that the literature on social control, in the widest extension of that term, embraces most that has been written and all that is fundamental on the subject of society. In chapter ii, "Human Nature," and the later chapters on "Interaction" and its various forms, "Conflict," "Accommodation," and "Assimilation," points of view and literature which might properly be included in an adequate study of social control have already been discussed. The present chapter is concerned mainly with ceremonial, public opinion, and law, three of the specific forms in which social control has universally found expression. Sociology is indebted to Edward Alsworth Ross for a general term broad enough to include all the special forms in which the solidarity of the group manifests itself. It was his brilliant essay on the subject published in 1906 that popularized the term social control. The materials for such a general, summary statement had already been brought together by Sumner and published in 1906 in his _Folkways_. This volume, in spite of its unsystematic character, must still be regarded as the most subtle analysis and suggestive statement about human nature and social relations that has yet been written in English. A more systematic and thoroughgoing review of the facts and literature, however, is Hobhouse's _Morals in Evolution_. After Hobhouse the next most important writer is Westermarck, whose work, _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_, published in 1906, was a pioneer in this field. 2. Elementary Forms of Social Control Literature upon elementary forms of social control includes materials upon ceremonies, taboo, myth, prestige, and leadership. These are characterized as elementary because they have arisen spontaneously everywhere out of original nature. The conventionalized form in which we now find them has arisen in the course of their repetition and transmission from one generation to another and from one culture group to another. The fact that they have been transmitted over long periods of time and wide areas of territory is an indication that they are the natural vehicle for the expression of fundamental human impulses. It is quite as true of leadership, as it is of myth and prestige, that it springs directly out of an emotional setting. The natural leaders are never elected and leadership is, in general, a matter that cannot be rationally controlled. The materials upon ceremony, social ritual, and fashion are large in comparison with the attempts at a systematic study of the phenomena. Herbert Spencer's chapter on "Ceremonial Government," while it interprets social forms from the point of view of the individual rather than of the group, is still the only adequate survey of the materials in this special field. Ethnology and folklore have accumulated an enormous amount of information in regard to primitive custom which has yet to be interpreted from the point of view of more recent studies of human nature and social life. The most important collections are Frazer's _Golden Bough_ and his _Totemism and Exogamy_. Crawley's _The Mystic Rose_ is no such monument of scholarship and learning as Frazer's _Golden Bough_, but it is suggestive and interesting. Prestige and taboo represent fundamental human traits whose importance is by no means confined to the life of primitive man where, almost exclusively hitherto, they have been observed and studied. The existing literature on leadership, while serving to emphasize the importance of the leader as a factor in social organization and social process, is based on too superficial an analysis to be of permanent scientific value. Adequate methods for the investigation of leadership have not been formulated. In general it is clear, however, that leadership must be studied in connection with the social group in which it arises and that every type of group will have a different type of leader. The prophet, the agitator, and the political boss are types of leaders in regard to whom there already are materials available for study and interpretation. A study of leadership should include, however, in addition to the more general types, like the poet, the priest, the tribal chieftain, and the leader of the gang, consideration of leadership in the more specific areas of social life, the precinct captain, the promoter, the banker, the pillar of the church, the football coach, and the society leader. 3. Public Opinion and Social Control Public opinion, "the fourth estate" as Burke called it, has been appreciated, but not studied. The old Roman adage, _Vox populi, vox dei_, is a recognition of public opinion as the ultimate seat of authority. Public opinion has been elsewhere identified with the "general will." Rousseau conceived the general will to be best expressed through a plebiscite at which a question was presented without the possibilities of the divisive effects of public discussion. The natural impulses of human nature would make for more uniform and beneficial decisions than the calculated self-interest that would follow discussion and deliberation. English liberals like John Stuart Mill, of the latter half of the nineteenth century, looked upon freedom of discussion and free speech as the breath of life of a free society, and that tradition has come down to us a little shaken by recent experience, but substantially intact. The development of advertising and of propaganda, particularly during and since the world-war, has aroused a great many misgivings, nevertheless, in regard to the traditional freedom of the press. Walter Lippmann's thoughtful little volume, _Liberty and the News_, has stated the whole problem in a new form and has directed attention to an entirely new field for observation and study. De Tocqueville, in his study of the early frontier, _Democracy in America_, and James Bryce, in his _American Commonwealth_, have contributed a good deal of shrewd observation to our knowledge of the rôle of political opinion in the United States. The important attempts in English to define public opinion as a social phenomenon and study it objectively are A. V. Dicey's _Law and Opinion in England in the Nineteenth Century_ and A. Lawrence Lowell's _Public Opinion and Popular Government_. Although Dicey's investigation is confined to England and to the nineteenth century, his analysis of the facts throws new light on the nature of public opinion in general. The intimate relation between the press and parliamentary government in England is revealed in an interesting historical monograph by Michael Macdonagh, _The Reporters' Gallery_. 4. Legal Institutions and Law Public law came into existence in an effort of the community to deal with conflict. In achieving this result, however, courts of law invariably have sought to make their decisions first in accordance with precedent, and second in accordance with common sense. The latter insured that the law would be administered equitably; the former that interpretations of the law would be consistent. Post says: Jural feelings are principally feelings of indignation as when an injustice is experienced by an individual, a feeling of fear as when an individual is affected by an inclination to do wrong, a feeling of penitence as when the individual has committed a wrong. With the feeling of indignation is joined a desire for vengeance, with the feeling of penitence a desire of atonement, the former tending towards an act of vengeance and the latter towards an act of expiation. The jural judgments of individuals are not complete judgments; they are based upon an undefined sense of right and wrong. In the consciousness of the individual there exists no standard of right and wrong under which every single circumstance giving rise to the formation of a jural judgment can be subsumed. A simple instinct impels the individual to declare an action right or wrong.[276] If these motives are the materials with which the administration of justice has to deal, the legal motive which has invariably controlled the courts is something quite different. The courts in the administration of law have invariably sought, above all else, to achieve consistency. It is an ancient maxim of English law that "it is better that the law should be certain than that the law should be just."[277] The conception implicit in the law is that the rule laid down in one case must apply in every similar case. In the effort to preserve this consistency in a constantly increasing variety of cases the courts have been driven to the formulation of principles, increasingly general and abstract, to multiply distinctions and subtleties, and to operate with legal fictions. All this effort to make the law a rationally consistent system was itself inconsistent with the conception that law, like religion, had a natural history and was involved, like language, in a process of growth and decay. It is only in recent years that comparative jurisprudence has found its way into the law schools. Although there is a vast literature upon the subject of the history of the law, Maine's _Ancient Law_, published in 1861, is still the classic work in this field in English. More recently there has sprung up a school of "legal ethnology." The purpose of these studies is not to trace the historical development, of the law, but to seek in the forms in use in isolated and primitive societies materials which will reveal, in their more elementary expressions, motives and practices that are common to legal institutions of every people. In the Preface to a recent volume of _Select Readings on the Origin and Development of Legal Institutions_, the editors venture the statement, in justification of the materials from sociology that these volumes include, that "contrary, perhaps, to legal tradition, the law itself is only a social phenomenon and not to be understood in detachment from human uses, necessities and forces from which it arises." Justice Holmes's characterization of law as "a great anthropological document" seems to support that position. Law in its origin is related to religion. The first public law was that which enforced the religious taboos, and the ceremonial purifications and expiations were intended to protect the community from the divine punishment for any involuntary disrespect or neglect of the rites due the gods which were the first crimes to be punished by the community as a whole, and for the reason that failure to punish or expiate them would bring disaster upon the community as a whole. Maine says that the earliest conceptions of law or a rule of life among the Greeks are contained in the Homeric words _Themis_ and _Themistes_. When a king decided a dispute by a sentence, the judgment was assumed to be the result of direct inspiration. The divine agent, suggesting judicial awards to kings or to gods, the greatest of kings, was _Themis_. The peculiarity of the conception is brought out by the use of the plural. _Themistes_, Themises, the plural of Themis, are the awards themselves, divinely dictated to the judge. Kings are spoken of as if they had a store of "Themistes" ready to hand for use; but it must be distinctly understood that they are not laws, but judgments. "Zeus, or the human king on earth," says Mr. Grote, in his _History of Greece_, "is not a law-maker, but a judge." He is provided with Themistes, but, consistently with the belief in their emanation from above, they cannot be supposed to be connected by any thread of principle; they are separate, isolated judgments.[278] It is only in recent times, with the gradual separation of the function of the church and the state, that legal institutions have acquired a character wholly secular. Within the areas of social life that are represented on the one hand by religion and on the other by law are included all the sanctions and the processes by which society maintains its authority and imposes its will upon its individual members.[279] SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY I. SOCIAL CONTROL AND HUMAN NATURE (1) Maine, Henry S. _Dissertations on Early Law and Custom_. New York, 1886. (2) Kocourek, Albert, and Wigmore, John H., editors. _Evolution of Law_. Select readings on the origin and development of legal institutions. Vol. I, "Sources of Ancient and Primitive Law." Vol. II, "Primitive and Ancient Legal Institutions." Vol. III, "Formative Influences of Legal Development." Boston, 1915. (3) Sumner, W. G. _Folkways_. A study of the sociological importance of usages, manners, customs, mores, and morals. Boston, 1906. (4) Letourneau, Ch. _L'Évolution de la morale_. Paris, 1887. (5) Westermarck, Edward. _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_, 2 vols. London, 1906-8. (6) Hobhouse, L. T. _Morals in Evolution_. New ed. A study in comparative ethics. New York, 1915. (7) Durkheim, Émile. _The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life_. A study in religious sociology. Translated from the French by J. W. Swain. London, 1915. (8) Novicow, J. _Conscience et volonté sociales_. Paris, 1897. (9) Ross, Edward A. _Social Control_. A survey of the foundations of order. New York, 1906. (10) Bernard, Luther L. _The Transition to an Objective Standard of Social Control_. Chicago, 1911. II. ELEMENTARY FORMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL A. _Leadership_ (1) Woods, Frederick A. _The Influence of Monarchs_. Steps in a new science of history. New York, 1913. (2) Smith, J. M. P. _The Prophet and His Problems_. New York, 1914. (3) Walter, F. _Die Propheten in ihrem sozialen Beruf und das Wirtschaftsleben ihrer Zeit_. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Sozialethik. Freiburg-in-Brisgau, 1900. (4) Vierkandt, A. "Führende Individuen bei den Naturvölkern," _Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft_, XI (1908), 542-53, 623-39. (5) Dixon, Roland B. "Some Aspects of the American Shaman," _The Journal of American Folk-Lore_, XXI (1908), 1-12. (6) Kohler, Josef. _Philosophy of Law_. (Albrecht's translation.) "Cultural Importance of Chieftainry." "Philosophy of Law Series," Vol. XII. [Reprinted in the _Evolution of Law_, II, 96-103.] (7) Fustel de Coulanges. _The Ancient City_, Book III, chap. ix, "The Government of the City. The King," pp. 231-39. Boston, 1896. (8) Leopold, Lewis. _Prestige_. A psychological study of social estimates. London, 1913. (9) Clayton, Joseph. _Leaders of the People_. Studies in democratic history. London, 1910. (10) Brent, Charles H. _Leadership_. New York, 1908. (11) Rothschild, Alonzo. _Lincoln: Master of Men_. A study in character. Boston, 1906. (12) Mumford, Eben. _The Origins of Leadership_. Chicago, 1909. (13) Ely, Richard T. _The World War and Leadership in a Democracy_. New York, 1918. (14) Terman, L. M. "A Preliminary Study of the Psychology and Pedagogy of Leadership," _Pedagogical Seminary_, XI (1904), 413-51. (15) Miller, Arthur H. _Leadership_. A study and discussion of the qualities most to be desired in an officer. New York, 1920. (16) Gowin, Enoch B. _The Executive and His Control of Men_. A study in personal efficiency. New York, 1915. (17) Cooley, Charles H. "Genius, Fame and the Comparison of Races," _Annals of the American Academy_, IX (1897), 317-58. (18) Odin, Alfred. _Genèse des grands hommes, gens de lettres français modernes_. Paris, 1895. [See Ward, Lester F., _Applied Sociology_, for a statement in English of Odin's study.] (19) Kostyleff, N. _Le Mécanisme cérébral de la pensée_. Paris, 1914. [This is a study of the mechanism of the inspiration of poets and writers of romance.] (20) Chabaneix, Paul. _Physiologie cérébrale_. Le subconscient chez les artistes, les savants, et les écrivains. Bordeaux, 1897-98. B. _Ceremony, Rites, and Ritual_ (1) Spencer, Herbert. _The Principles of Sociology, Part IV_, "Ceremonial Institutions." Vol. II, pp. 3-225. London, 1893. (2) Tylor, Edward B. _Primitive Culture_. Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom. Chap. xviii, "Rites and Ceremonies," pp. 362-442. New York, 1874. (3) Frazer, J. G. _Totemism and Exogamy_. A treatise on certain early forms of superstition and society. 4 vols. London, 1910. (4) Freud, Sigmund. _Totem and Taboo_. Resemblances between the psychic life of savages and neurotics. Authorized translation from the German by A. A. Brill. New York, 1918. (5) James, E. O. _Primitive Ritual and Belief_. An anthropological essay. With an introduction by R. R. Marett. London, 1917. (6) Brinton, Daniel G. _The Religious Sentiment: Its Source and Aim_. A contribution to the science and philosophy of religion. Chap. vi, "The Cult, Its Symbols and Rites," pp. 197-227. New York, 1876. (7) Frazer, J. G. _Golden Bough_. A study in magic and religion. Part VI, "The Scapegoat." 3d ed. London, 1913. (8) Nassau, R. H. _Fetichism in West Africa_. Forty years' observation of native customs and superstitions. New York, 1907. (9) Hubert, H., and Mauss, M. "Essai sur la nature et la fonction de sacrifice," _L'Année sociologique_, II (1897-98), 29-138. (10) Farnell, L. R. _The Higher Aspects of Greek Religion_. New York, 1912. (11) ----. _The Cults of the Greek States_. 5 vols. Oxford, 1896-1909. (12) ----. "Religious and Social Aspects of the Cult of Ancestors and Heroes," _Hibbert Journal_, VII (1909), 415-35. (13) Harrison, Jane E. _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_. Cambridge, 1903. (14) De-Marchi, A. _Il Culto privato di Roma antica_. Milano, 1896. (15) Oldenberg, H. _Die Religion des Veda_. Part III, "Der Cultus," pp. 302-523. Berlin, 1894. C. _Taboo_ (1) Thomas, N. W. Article on "Taboo" in _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, XXVI, 337-41. (2) Frazer, J. G. _The Golden Bough_. A study in magic and religion. Part II, "Taboo and the Perils of the Soul." London, 1911. (3) Kohler, Josef. _Philosophy of Law_. "Taboo as a Primitive Substitute for Law." "Philosophy of Law Series," Vol. XII. Boston, 1914. [Reprinted in _Evolution of Law_, II, 120-21.] (4) Crawley, A. E. "Sexual Taboo," _Journal of Anthropological Institute_, XXIV (London, 1894), 116-25, 219-35, 430-45. (5) Gray, W. "Some Notes on the Tannese," _Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie_, VII (1894), 232-37. (6) Waitz, Theodor, und Gerland, Georg. _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, VI, 343-63. 6 vols. Leipzig, 1862-77. (7) Tuchmann, J. "La Fascination," _Mélusine_, II (1884-85), 169-175, 193-98, 241-50, 350-57, 368-76, 385-87, 409-17, 457-64, 517-24; III (1886-87), 49-56, 105-9, 319-25, 412-14, 506-8. (8) Durkheim, É. "La prohibition de l'inceste et ses origines," _L'Année sociologique_, I (1896-97), 38-70. (9) Crawley, A. E. "Taboos of Commensality," _Folk-Lore_, VI (1895), 130-44. (10) Hubert, H., and Mauss, M. "Le Mana," _L'Année sociologique_, VII (1902-3), 108-22. (11) Codrington, R. H. _The Melanesians_. Studies in their anthropology and folklore. "Mana," pp. 51-58, 90, 103, 115, 118-24, 191, 200, 307-8. Oxford, 1891. D. _Myths_ (1) Sorel, Georges. _Reflections on Violence_. Chap. iv, "The Proletarian Strike," pp. 126-67. Translated from the French by T. E. Hulme. New York, 1912. (2) Smith, W. Robertson. _Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_. "Ritual, Myth and Dogma," pp. 16-24. New ed. London, 1907. (3) Harrison, Jane E. _Themis_. A study of the social origins of Greek religion. Cambridge, 1912. (4) Clodd, Edward. _The Birth and Growth of Myth_. Humboldt Library of Popular Science Literature. New York, 1888. (5) Gennep, A. van. _La Formation des légendes_. Paris, 1910. (6) Langenhove, Fernand van. _The Growth of a Legend_. A study based upon the German accounts of _francs-tireurs_ and "atrocities" in Belgium. With a preface by J. Mark Baldwin. New York, 1916. (7) Case, S. J. _The Millennial Hope_. Chicago, 1918. (8) Abraham, Karl. _Dreams and Myths_. Translated from the German by W. A. White. "Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series," No. 15. Washington, 1913. (9) Pfister, Oskar. _The Psychoanalytic Method_. Translated from the German by C. R. Payne. Pp. 410-15. New York, 1917. (10) Jung, C. G. _Psychology of the Unconscious_. A study of the transformations and symbolisms of the libido. A contribution to the history of the evolution of thought. Authorized translation from the German by Beatrice M. Hinkle. New York, 1916. (11) Brinton, Daniel G. _The Religious Sentiment: Its Source and Aim_. A contribution to the science and philosophy of religion. Chap. v, "The Myth and the Mythical Cycles," pp. 153-96. New York, 1876. (12) Rivers, W. H. R. "The Sociological Significance of Myth," _Folk-Lore_, XXIII (1912), 306-31. (13) Rank, Otto. _The Myth of the Birth of the Hero_. A psychological interpretation of mythology. "Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series," No. 18. Translated from the German by Drs. F. Robbins and Smith E. Jelliffe. Washington, 1914. (14) Freud, Sigmund. "Der Dichter und das Phantasieren," _Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre_. 2d ed. Wien, 1909. III. PUBLIC OPINION AND SOCIAL CONTROL A. _Materials for the Study of Public Opinion_ (1) Lowell, A. Lawrence. _Public Opinion and Popular Government_. New York, 1913. (2) Tarde, Gabriel. _L'Opinion et la foule_. Paris, 1901. (3) Le Bon, Gustave. _Les Opinions et les croyances; genèse-évolution_. Paris, 1911. [Discusses the formation of public opinion, trends, etc.] (4) Bauer, Wilhelm. _Die öffentliche Meinung und ihre geschichtlichen Grundlagen_. Tübingen, 1914. (5) Dicey, A. V. _Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century_. 2d ed. London, 1914. (6) Shepard, W. J. "Public Opinion," _American Journal of Sociology_, XV (1909), 32-60. (7) Tocqueville, Alexius de. _The Republic of the United States of America_. Book IV. "Influence of Democratic Opinion on Political Society," pp. 306-55. 2 vols. in one. New York, 1858. (8) Bryce, James. _The American Commonwealth_, Vol. II, Part IV, "Public Opinion," pp. 239-64. Chicago, 1891. (9) ----. _Modern Democracies_. 2 vols. New York, 1921. (10) Lecky, W. E. H. _Democracy and Liberty_. New York, 1899. (11) Godkin, Edwin L. _Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy_. Boston, 1898. (12) Sageret, J. "L'opinion," _Revue philosophique_, LXXXVI (1918), 19-38. (13) Bluntschli, Johann K. Article on "Public Opinion," _Lalor's Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy and of the Political History of the United States_. Vol. III, pp. 479-80. (14) Lewis, George C. _An Essay on the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion_. London, 1849. (15) Jephson, Henry. _The Platform_. Its rise and progress. 2 vols. London, 1892. (16) Junius. (Pseud.) _The Letters of Junius_. Woodfall's ed., revised by John Wade. 2 vols. London, 1902. (17) Woodbury, Margaret. _Public Opinion in Philadelphia, 1789-1801_. "Smith College Studies in History." Vol. V. Northampton, Mass., 1920. (18) Heaton, John L. _The Story of a Page_. Thirty years of public service and public discussion in the editorial columns of _The New York World_. New York, 1913. (19) _Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers_. New York, 1906. (20) Harrison, Shelby M. _Community Action through Surveys_. A paper describing the main features of the social survey. Russell Sage Foundation. New York, 1916. (21) Millioud, Maurice. "La propagation des idées," _Revue philosophique_, LXIX (1910), 580-600; LXX (1910), 168-91. (22) Scott, Walter D. _The Theory of Advertising_. Boston, 1903. B. _The Newspaper as an Organ of Public Opinion_ (1) Dana, Charles A. _The Art of Newspaper Making_. New York, 1895. (2) Irwin, Will. "The American Newspaper," _Colliers_, XLVI and XLVII (1911). [A series of fifteen articles beginning in the issue of January 21 and ending in the issue of July 29, 1911.] (3) Park, Robert E. _The Immigrant Press and Its Control_. [In Press.] New York, 1921. (4) Stead, W. T. "Government by Journalism," _Contemporary Review_, XLIX (1886), 653-74. (5) Blowitz, Henri G. S. A. O. de. _Memoirs of M. de Blowitz_. New York, 1903. (6) Cook, Edward. _Delane of the Times_. New York, 1916. (7) Trent, William P. _Daniel Defoe: How to Know Him_. Indianapolis, 1916. (8) Oberholtzer, E. P. _Die Beziehungen zwischen dem Staat und der Zeitungspresse im Deutschen Reich_. Nebst einigen Umrissen für die Wissenschaft der Journalistik. Berlin, 1895. (9) Yarros, Victor S. "The Press and Public Opinion," _American Journal of Sociology_, V (1899-1900), 372-82. (10) Macdonagh, Michael. _The Reporters' Gallery_. London, 1913. (11) Lippmann, Walter. _Liberty and the News_. New York, 1920. (12) O'Brien, Frank M. _The Story of the Sun, New York, 1833-1918_. With an introduction by Edward Page Mitchell, editor of _The Sun_. New York, 1918. (13) Hudson, Frederic. _Journalism in the United States, from 1690 to 1872_. New York, 1873. (14) Bourne, H. R. Fox. _English Newspapers_. London, 1887. (15) Andrews, Alexander. _The History of British Journalism_. 2 vols. London, 1859. (16) Lee, James Melvin. _A History of American Journalism_. Boston, 1917. IV. LAW AND SOCIAL CONTROL A. _The Sociological Conception of Law_ (1) Post, Albert H. "Ethnological Jurisprudence." Translated from the German by Thomas J. McCormack. _Open Court_, XI (1897), 641-53, 718-32. [Reprinted in _Evolution of Law_, II, 10-36.] (2) Vaccaro, M. A. _Les Bases sociologiques_. Du droit et de l'état. Translated by J. Gaure. Paris, 1898. (3) Duguit, Léon. _Law in the Modern State_. With introduction by Harold Laski. Translated from the French by Frida and Harold Laski. New York, 1919. [The inherent nature of law is to be found in the social needs of man.] (4) Picard, Edmond. _Le Droit pur_. Secs. 140-54. Paris, 1908. [Translated by John H. Wigmore, under the title "Factors of Legal Evolution," in _Evolution of Law_, III, 163-81.] (5) Laski, Harold J. _Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty_. New Haven, 1917. (6) ----. _Authority in the Modern State_. New Haven, 1919. (7) ----. _The Problem of Administrative Areas_. An essay in reconstruction. Northampton, Mass., 1918. B. _Ancient and Primitive Law_ (1) Maine, Henry S. _Ancient Law_. 14th ed. London, 1891. (2) Fustel de Coulanges. _The Ancient City_. A study on the religion, laws, and institutions of Greece and Rome. Boston, 1894. (3) Kocourek, Albert, and Wigmore, J. H., editors. _Sources of Ancient and Primitive Law_. "Evolution of Law Series." Vol. I. Boston, 1915. (4) Steinmetz, S. R. _Rechtsverhältnisse von eingeborenen Völkern in Afrika und Oceanien_. Berlin, 1903. (5) Sarbah, John M. _Fanti Customary Law_. A brief introduction to the principles of the native laws and customs of the Fanti and Akan districts of the Gold Coast with a report of some cases thereon decided in the law courts. London, 1904. [Reprinted in _Evolution of Law_, I, 326-82.] (6) McGee, W. J. "The Seri Indians," _Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology_, 1895-96. Part I, pp. 269-95. [Reprinted in _Evolution of Law_, I, 257-78.] (7) Dugmore, H. H. _Compendium of Kafir Laws and Customs_. Grahamstown, South Africa, 1906. [Reprinted in _Evolution of Law_, I 292-325.] (8) Spencer, Baldwin, and Gillen, F. J. _The Northern Tribes of Central Australia_. London, 1904. [Reprinted in _Evolution of Law_, I, 213-326.] (9) Seebohm, Frederic. _Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law_. Being an essay supplemental to (1) "The English Village Community," (2) "The Tribal System in Wales." London, 1903. C. _The History and Growth of Law_ (1) Wigmore, John H. "Problems of the Law's Evolution," _Virginia Law Review_, IV (1917), 247-72. [Reprinted, in part, in _Evolution of Law_, III, 153-58.] (2) Robertson, John M. _The Evolution of States_. An introduction to English politics. New York, 1913. (3) Jhering, Rudolph von. _The Struggle for Law_. Translated from the German by John J. Lalor. 1st ed. Chicago, 1879. [Chap. i, reprinted in _Evolution of Law_, III, 440-47.] (4) Nardi-Greco, Carlo. _Sociologia giuridica_. Chap. viii, pp. 310-24. Torino, 1907. [Translated by John H. Wigmore under the title "Causes for the Variation of Jural Phenomena in General," in _Evolution of Law_, III, 182-97.] (5) Bryce, James. _Studies in History and Jurisprudence_. Oxford, 1901. (6) ----. "Influence of National Character and Historical Environment on the American Law." Annual address to the Bar Association, 1907. _Reports of American Bar Association_, XXXI (1907), 444-59. [Abridged and reprinted in _Evolution of Law_, III, 369-77.] (7) Pollock, Frederick, and Maitland, Frederic W. _The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I_. 2d ed. Cambridge, 1899. (8) Jenks, Edward. _Law and Politics in the Middle Ages_. With a synoptic table of sources. London, 1913. (9) Holdsworth, W. S. _A History of English Law_. 3 vols. London, 1903-9. (10) _The Modern Legal Philosophy Series_. Edited by a committee of the Association of American Law Schools. 13 vols. Boston, 1911-. (11) _Continental Legal History Series_. Published under the auspices of the Association of American Law Schools. 11 vols. Boston, 1912-. (12) _Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History._ Compiled and edited by a committee of the Association of American Law Schools. 3 vols. Boston, 1907-9. TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES 1. Social Interaction and Social Control 2. Social Control as the Central Fact and the Central Problem of Sociology 3. Social Control, Collective Behavior, and Progress 4. Manipulation and Participation as Forms of Social Control 5. Social Control and Self-Control 6. Accommodation as Control 7. Elementary Forms of Social Control: Ceremony, Fashion, Prestige, and Taboo, etc. 8. Traditional Forms of Control, as Folkways, Mores, Myths, Law, Education, Religion, etc. 9. Rumors, News, Facts, etc., as Forms of Control 10. Case Studies of the Influence of Myths, Legends, "Vital Lies," etc., on Collective Behavior 11. The Newspaper as Controlling and as Controlled by Public Opinion 12. Gossip as Social Control 13. Social Control in the Primary Group in the Village Community as Compared with Social Control in the Secondary Group in the City 14. An Analysis of Public Opinion in a Selected Community 15. The Politician and Public Opinion 16. The Social Survey as a Mechanism of Social Control 17. A Study of Common Law and Statute Law from the Standpoint of Mores and Public Opinion 18. A Concrete Example of Social Change Analyzed in Terms of Mores, the Trend, and Public Opinion, as Woman's Suffrage, Prohibition, the Abolition of Slavery, Birth Control, etc. 19. The Life History of an Institution from the Standpoint of Its Origin and Survival as an Agency of Control 20. Unwritten Law; a Case Study 21. Legal Fictions and Their Function in Legal Practice 22. The Sociology of Authority in the Social Group and in the State 23. Maine's Conception of Primitive Law 24. The Greek Conception of Themistes and Their Relation to Code of Solon QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. What do you understand by social control? 2. What do you mean by elementary social control? How would you distinguish it from control exercised by public opinion and law? 3. How does social control in human society differ from that in animal society? 4. What is the natural history of social control in the crowd and the public? 5. What is the fundamental mechanism by which control is established in the group? 6. How do you explain the process by which a crisis develops in a social group? How is crisis related to control? 7. Under what conditions is a dictatorship a necessary form of control? Why? 8. In what way does the crowd control its members? 9. Describe and analyze your behavior in a crowd. Were you conscious of control by the group? 10. What is the mechanism of control in the public? 11. In what sense is ceremony a control? 12. How do music, rhythm, and art enter into social control? 13. Analyze the mechanism of the following forms of ceremonial control: the salute, the visit, the decoration, forms of address, presents, greetings. What other forms of ceremonial control occur to you? 14. What is the relation of fashions to ceremonial control? 15. What is the meaning to the individual of ceremony? 16. What are the values and limitations of ceremonial control? 17. What do you understand by "prestige" in interpreting control through leadership? 18. In what sense is prestige an aspect of personality? 19. What relation, if any, is there between prestige and prejudice? 20. How do you explain the prestige of the white man in South East Africa? Does the white man always have prestige among colored races? 21. What is the relation of taboo to contact? (See pp. 291-93.) 22. Why does taboo refer both to things "holy" and things "unclean"? 23. How does taboo function for social control? 24. Describe and analyze the mechanism of control through taboo in a selected group. 25. What examples do you discover of American taboos? 26. What is the mechanism of control by the myth? 27. "Myths are projections of our hopes and of our fears." Explain with reference to the Freudian wish. 28. How do you explain the growth of a legend? Make an analysis of the origin and development of the legend. 29. Under what conditions does the press promote the growth of myths and legends? 30. Does control by public opinion exist outside of democracies? 31. What is the relation of the majority and the minority to public opinion? 32. What is the distinction made by Lowell between (a) an effective majority, and (b) a numerical majority, with reference to public opinion? 33. What is the relation of mores to public opinion? 34. How do you distinguish between public opinion, advertising, and propaganda as means and forms of social control? 35. What is the relation of news to social control? 36. "The news columns are common carriers." Discuss the implications of this statement. 37. How do you explain the psychology of propaganda? 38. What is the relation between institutions and the mores? 39. What is the nature of social control exerted by the institution? 40. What is the relation of mores to common law and statute law? 41. "Under the free Anglo-Saxon government, no king could ever make a law, but could only declare what the law was." Discuss the significance of this fact. 42. In what different ways does religion control the behavior of the individual and of the group? 43. Is religion a conservative or a progressive factor in society? FOOTNOTES: [250] Chap. i, pp. 46-47. [251] Robert E. Park and Herbert A. Miller, _Old World Traits Transplanted_, pp. 1-2. (New York, 1921.) [252] Ernst Grosse, _The Beginnings of Art_, pp. 228-29. (New York, 1897.) [253] See A. L. Lowell, _Public Opinion and Popular Government_, pp. 12-13. (New York, 1913.) [254] _The American Party System_, chap. viii. (New York, 1922.) [In press.] [255] "On the afternoon of July 13, Bismarck, Roon, and Moltke were seated together in the Chancellor's Room at Berlin. They were depressed and moody; for Prince Leopold's renunciation had been trumpeted in Paris as a humiliation for Prussia. They were afraid, too, that King William's conciliatory temper might lead him to make further concessions, and that the careful preparations of Prussia for the inevitable war with France might be wasted, and a unique opportunity lost. A telegram arrived. It was from the king at Ems, and described his interview that morning with the French ambassador. The king had met Benedetti's request for the guarantee required by a firm but courteous refusal; and when the ambassador had sought to renew the interview, he had sent a polite message through his aide-de-camp informing him that the subject must be considered closed. In conclusion, Bismarck was authorized to publish the message if he saw fit. The Chancellor at once saw his opportunity. In the royal despatch, though the main incidents were clear enough, there was still a note of doubt, of hesitancy, which suggested a possibility of further negotiation. The excision of a few lines would alter, not indeed the general sense, but certainly the whole tone of the message. Bismarck, turning to Moltke, asked him if he were ready for a sudden risk of war; and on his answering in the affirmative, took a blue pencil and drew it quickly through several parts of the telegram. Without the alteration or addition of a single word, the message, instead of appearing a mere 'fragment of a negotiation still pending,' was thus made to appear decisive. In the actual temper of the French people there was no doubt that it would not only appear decisive, but insulting, and that its publication would mean war. "On July 14 the publication of the 'Ems telegram' became known in Paris, with the result that Bismarck had expected. The majority of the Cabinet, hitherto in favour of peace, were swept away by the popular tide; and Napoleon himself reluctantly yielded to the importunity of his ministers and of the Empress, who saw in a successful war the best, if not the only, chance of preserving the throne for her son. On the evening of the same day, July 14, the declaration of war was signed."--W. Alison Phillips, _Modern Europe, 1815-1899_, pp. 465-66. (London, 1903.) [256] G. Tarde, _L'opinion et la foule._ (Paris, 1901.) [257] L. T. Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution, A Study in Comparative Ethics_, pp. 13-14. (New York, 1915.) [258] E. D. Morel, _King Leopold's Rule in Africa_. (London, 1904.) [259] L. T. Hobhouse, _op. cit._, p. 85. [260] The whole process of evolution by which a moral order has been established over ever wider areas of social life has been sketched in a masterly manner by Hobhouse in his chapter, "Law and Justice," _op. cit._, pp. 72-131. [261] From Lieutenant Joseph S. Smith, _Over There and Back_, pp. 9-22. (E. P. Dutton & Co., 1917.) [262] From Herbert Spencer, _The Principles of Sociology_, II, 3-6. (Williams & Norgate, 1893.) [263] Adapted from Lewis Leopold, _Prestige_, pp. 16-62. (T. Fisher Unwin, 1913.) [264] Adapted from Maurice S. Evans, _Black and White in South East Africa_, pp. 15-35. (Longmans, Green & Co., 1911.) [265] From W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, pp. 152-447. (Adam and Charles Black, 1907.) [266] From Georges Sorel, _Reflections on Violence_, pp. 133-37. (B. W. Huebsch, 1912.) [267] Adapted from Fernand van Langenhove, _The Growth of a Legend_, pp. 5-275. (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1916.) [268] From W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, pp. 16-24. (Adam and Charles Black, 1907.) [269] Adapted from A. Lawrence Lowell, _Public Opinion and Popular Government_, pp. 3-14. (Longmans, Green & Co., 1913.) [270] From Robert E. Park, _The Crowd and the Public_. (Unpublished manuscript.) [271] Adapted from Walter Lippmann, _Liberty and the News_, pp. 4-15. (Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920.) [272] From Raymond Dodge, "The Psychology of Propaganda," _Religious Education_, XV (1920), 241-52. [273] From William G. Sumner, _Folkways_, pp. 53-56. (Ginn & Co., 1906.) [274] Adapted from Frederic J. Stimson, _Popular Law-Making_, pp. 2-16. (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912.) [275] From Charles A. Ellwood, "Religion and Social Control," in the _Scientific Monthly_, VII (1918), 339-41. [276] Albert H. Post, _Evolution of Law: Select Readings on the Origin and Development of Legal Institutions_, Vol. II, "Primitive and Ancient Legal Institutions," complied by Albert Kocourek and John H. Wigmore; translated from the German by Thomas J. McCormack. Section 2, "Ethnological Jurisprudence," p. 12. (Boston, 1915.) [277] Quoted by James Bryce, "Influence of National Character and Historical Environment on Development of Common Law," annual address to the American Bar Association, 1907, _Reports of the American Bar Association_, XXXI (1907), 447. [278] Henry S. Maine, _Ancient Law_. Its connection with the early history of society and its relation to modern ideas, pp. 4-5. 14th ed. (London, 1891.) [279] For the distinction between the cultural process and the political process see _supra_, pp. 52-53. CHAPTER XIII COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR I. INTRODUCTION 1. Collective Behavior Defined A collection of individuals is not always, and by the mere fact of its collectivity, a society. On the other hand, when people come together anywhere, in the most casual way, on the street corner or at a railway station, no matter how great the social distances between them, the mere fact that they are aware of one another's presence sets up a lively exchange of influences, and the behavior that ensues is both social and collective. It is social, at the very least, in the sense that the train of thought and action in each individual is influenced more or less by the action of every other. It is collective in so far as each individual acts under the influence of a mood or a state of mind in which each shares, and in accordance with conventions which all quite unconsciously accept, and which the presence of each enforces upon the others. The amount of individual eccentricity or deviation from normal and accepted modes of behavior which a community will endure without comment and without protest will vary naturally enough with the character of the community. A cosmopolitan community like New York City can and does endure a great deal in the way of individual eccentricity that a smaller city like Boston would not tolerate. In any case, and this is the point of these observations, even in the most casual relations of life, people do not behave in the presence of others as if they were living alone like Robinson Crusoe, each on his individual island. The very fact of their consciousness of each other tends to maintain and enforce a great body of convention and usage which otherwise falls into abeyance and is forgotten. Collective behavior, then, is the behavior of individuals under the influence of an impulse that is common and collective, an impulse, in other words, that is the result of social interaction. 2. Social Unrest and Collective Behavior The most elementary form of collective behavior seems to be what is ordinarily referred to as "social unrest." Unrest in the individual becomes social when it is, or seems to be, transmitted from one individual to another, but more particularly when it produces something akin to the milling process in the herd, so that the manifestations of discontent in A communicated to B, and from B reflected back to A, produce the circular reaction described in the preceding chapter. The significance of social unrest is that it represents at once a breaking up of the established routine and a preparation for new collective action. Social unrest is not of course a new phenomenon; it is possibly true, however, that it is peculiarly characteristic, as has been said, of modern life. The contrast between the conditions of modern life and of primitive society suggests why this may be true. The conception which we ought to form of primitive society, says Sumner, is that of small groups scattered over a territory. The size of the group will be determined by the conditions of the struggle for existence and the internal organization of each group will correspond (1) to the size of the group, and (2) to the nature and intensity of the struggle with its neighbors. Thus war and peace have reacted on each other and developed each other, one within the group, the other in the intergroup relation. The closer the neighbors, and the stronger they are, the intenser is the warfare, and then the intenser is the internal organization and discipline of each. Sentiments are produced to correspond. Loyalty to the group, sacrifice for it, hatred and contempt for outsiders, brotherhood within, warlikeness without--all grow together, common products of the same situation. These relations and sentiments constitute a social philosophy. It is sanctified by connection with religion. Men of an others-group are outsiders with whose ancestors the ancestors of the we-group waged war. The ghosts of the latter will see with pleasure their descendants keep up the fight, and will help them. Virtue consists in killing, plundering, and enslaving outsiders.[280] The isolation, territorial and cultural, under which alone it is possible to maintain an organization which corresponds to Sumner's description, has disappeared within comparatively recent times from all the more inhabitable portions of the earth. In place of it there has come, and with increasing rapidity is coming, into existence a society which includes within its limits the total population of the earth and is so intimately bound together that the speculation of a grain merchant in Chicago may increase the price of bread in Bombay, while the act of an assassin in a provincial town in the Balkans has been sufficient to plunge the world into a war which changed the political map of three continents and cost the lives, in Europe alone, of 8,500,000 combatants. The first effect of modern conditions of life has been to increase and vastly complicate the economic interdependence of strange and distant peoples, i.e., to destroy distances and make the world, as far as national relations are concerned, small and tight. The second effect has been to break down family, local, and national ties, and emancipate the individual man. When the family ceases, as it does in the city, to be an economic unit, when parents and children have vocations that not only intercept the traditional relations of family life, but make them well nigh impossible, the family ceases to function as an organ of social control. When the different nationalities, with their different national cultures, have so far interpenetrated one another that each has permanent colonies within the territorial limits of the other, it is inevitable that the old solidarities, the common loyalties and the common hatreds that formerly bound men together in primitive kinship and local groups should be undermined. A survey of the world today shows that vast changes are everywhere in progress. Not only in Europe but in Asia and in Africa new cultural contacts have undermined and broken down the old cultures. The effect has been to loosen all the social bonds and reduce society to its individual atoms. The energies thus freed have produced a world-wide ferment. Individuals released from old associations enter all the more readily into new ones. Out of this confusion new and strange political and religious movements arise, which represent the groping of men for a new social order. 3. The Crowd and the Public Gustave Le Bon, who was the first writer to call attention to the significance of the crowd as a social phenomenon,[281] said that mass movements mark the end of an old régime and the beginning of a new. "When the structure of a civilization is rotten, it is always the masses that bring about its downfall."[282] On the other hand, "all founders of religious or political creeds have established them solely because they were successful in inspiring crowds with those fanatical sentiments which have as result that men find their happiness in worship and obedience and are ready to lay down their lives for their idol."[283] The crowd was, for Le Bon, not merely any group brought together by the accident of some chance excitement, but it was above all the emancipated masses whose bonds of loyalty to the old order had been broken by "the destruction of those religious, political, and social beliefs in which all the elements of our civilization are rooted." The crowd, in other words, typified for Le Bon the existing social order. Ours is an age of crowds, he said, an age in which men, massed and herded together in great cities without real convictions or fundamental faiths, are likely to be stampeded in any direction for any chance purpose under the influence of any passing excitement. Le Bon did not attempt to distinguish between the crowd and the public. This distinction was first made by Tarde in a paper entitled "Le Public et la foule," published first in _La Revue de Paris_ in 1898, and included with several others on the same general theme under the title _L'Opinion et la foule_ which appeared in 1901. The public, according to Tarde, was a product of the printing press. The limits of the crowd are determined by the length to which a voice will carry or the distance that the eye can survey. But the public presupposes a higher stage of social development in which suggestions are transmitted in the form of ideas and there is "contagion without contact."[284] The fundamental distinction between the crowd and the public, however, is not to be measured by numbers nor by means of communication, but by the form and effects of the interactions. In the public, interaction takes the form of discussion. Individuals tend to act upon one another critically; issues are raised and parties form. Opinions clash and thus modify and moderate one another. The crowd does not discuss and hence it does not reflect. It simply "mills." Out of this milling process a collective impulse is formed which dominates all members of the crowd. Crowds, when they act, do so impulsively. The crowd, says Le Bon, "is the slave of its impulses." "The varying impulses which crowds obey may be, according to their exciting causes, generous or cruel, heroic or cowardly, but they will always be so imperious that the interest of the individual, even the interest of self-preservation, will not dominate them."[285] When the crowd acts it becomes a mob. What happens when two mobs meet? We have in the literature no definite record. The nearest approach to it are the occasional accounts we find in the stories of travelers of the contacts and conflicts of armies of primitive peoples. These undisciplined hordes are, as compared with the armies of civilized peoples, little more than armed mobs. Captain S. L. Hinde in his story of the Belgian conquest of the Congo describes several such battles. From the descriptions of battles carried on almost wholly between savage and undisciplined troops it is evident that the morale of an army of savages is a precarious thing. A very large part of the warfare consists in alarms and excursions interspersed with wordy duels to keep up the courage on one side and cause a corresponding depression on the other.[286] Gangs are conflict groups. Their organization is usually quite informal and is determined by the nature and imminence of its conflicts with other groups. When one crowd encounters another it either goes to pieces or it changes its character and becomes a conflict group. When negotiations and palavers take place as they eventually do between conflict groups, these two groups, together with the neutrals who have participated vicariously in the conflict, constitute a public. It is possible that the two opposing savage hordes which seek, by threats and boastings and beatings of drums, to play upon each other's fears and so destroy each other's morale, may be said to constitute a very primitive type of public. Discussion, as might be expected, takes curious and interesting forms among primitive peoples. In a volume, _Iz Derevni: 12 Pisem_ ("From the Country: 12 Letters"), A. N. Engelgardt describes the way in which the Slavic peasants reach their decisions in the village council. In the discussion of some questions by the _mir_ [organization of neighbors] there are no speeches, no debates, no votes. They shout, they abuse one another--they seem on the point of coming to blows; apparently they riot in the most senseless manner. Some one preserves silence, and then suddenly puts in a word, one word, or an ejaculation, and by this word, this ejaculation, he turns the whole thing upside down. In the end, you look into it and find that an admirable decision has been formed and, what is most important, a unanimous decision.... (In the division of land) the cries, the noise, the hubbub do not subside until everyone is satisfied and no doubter is left.[287] 4. Crowds and Sects Reference has been made to the crowds that act, but crowds do not always act. Sometimes they merely dance or, at least, make expressive motions which relieve their feelings. "The purest and most typical expression of simple feeling," as Hirn remarks, "is that which consists of mere random movements."[288] When these motions assume, as they so easily do, the character of a fixed sequence in time, that is to say when they are rhythmical, they can be and inevitably are, as by a sort of inner compulsion, imitated by the onlookers. "As soon as the expression is fixed in rhythmical form its contagious power is incalculably increased."[289] This explains at once the function and social importance of the dance among primitive people. It is the form in which they prepare for battle and celebrate their victories. It gives the form at once to their religious ritual and to their art. Under the influence of the memories and the emotions which these dances stimulate the primitive group achieves a sense of corporate unity, which makes corporate action possible outside of the fixed and sacred routine of ordinary daily life. If it is true, as has been suggested, that art and religion had their origin in the choral dance, it is also true that in modern times religious sects and social movements have had their origin in crowd excitements and spontaneous mass movements. The very names which have been commonly applied to them--Quakers, Shakers, Convulsionaires, Holy Rollers--suggest not merely the derision with which they were at one time regarded, but indicate likewise their origin in ecstatic or expressive crowds, the crowds that _do not act_. All great mass movements tend to display, to a greater or less extent, the characteristics that Le Bon attributes to crowds. Speaking of the convictions of crowds, Le Bon says: When these convictions are closely examined, whether at epochs marked by fervent religious faith, or by great political upheavals such as those of the last century, it is apparent that they always assume a peculiar form which I cannot better define than by giving it the name of a religious sentiment.[290] Le Bon's definition of religion and religious sentiment will hardly find general acceptance but it indicates at any rate his conception of the extent to which individual personalities are involved in the excitements that accompany mass movements. A person is not religious solely when he worships a divinity, but when he puts all the resources of his mind, the complete submission of his will, and the whole-souled ardour of fanaticism at the service of a cause or an individual who becomes the goal and guide of his thoughts and actions.[291] Just as the gang may be regarded as the perpetuation and permanent form of "the crowd that acts," so the sect, religious or political, may be regarded as a perpetuation and permanent form of the orgiastic (ecstatic) or expressive crowd. "The sect," says Sighele, "is a crowd _triée_, selected, and permanent, the crowd is a transient sect, which does not select its members. The sect is the _chronic_ form of the crowd; the crowd is the _acute_ form of the sect."[292] It is Sighele's conception that the crowd is an elementary organism, from which the sect issues, like the chick from the egg, and that all other types of social groups "may, in this same manner, be deduced from this primitive social protoplasm." This is a simplification which the facts hardly justify. It is true that, implicit in the practices and the doctrines of a religious sect, there is the kernel of a new independent culture. 5. Sects and Institutions A sect is a religious organization that is at war with the existing mores. It seeks to cultivate a state of mind and establish a code of morals different from that of the world about it and for this it claims divine authority. In order to accomplish this end it invariably seeks to set itself off in contrast with the rest of the world. The simplest and most effective way to achieve this is to adopt a peculiar form of dress and speech. This, however, invariably makes its members objects of scorn and derision, and eventually of persecution. It would probably do this even if there was no assumption of moral superiority to the rest of the world in this adoption of a peculiar manner and dress. Persecution tends to dignify and sanctify all the external marks of the sect, and it becomes a cardinal principle of the sect to maintain them. Any neglect of them is regarded as disloyalty and is punished as heresy. Persecution may eventually, as was the case with the Puritans, the Quakers, the Mormons, compel the sect to seek refuge in some part of the world where it may practice its way of life in peace. Once the sect has achieved territorial isolation and territorial solidarity, so that it is the dominant power within the region that it occupies, it is able to control the civil organization, establish schools and a press, and so put the impress of a peculiar culture upon all the civil and political institutions that it controls. In this case it tends to assume the form of a state, and become a nationality. Something approaching this was achieved by the Mormons in Utah. The most striking illustration of the evolution of a nationality from a sect is Ulster, which now has a position not quite that of a nation within the English empire. This sketch suggests that the sect, like most other social institutions, originates under conditions that are typical for all institutions of the same species; then it develops in definite and predictable ways, in accordance with a form or entelechy that is predetermined by characteristic internal processes and mechanisms, and that has, in short, a nature and natural history which can be described and explained in sociological terms. Sects have their origin in social unrest to which they give a direction and expression in forms and practices that are largely determined by historical circumstances; movements which were at first inchoate impulses and aspirations gradually take form; policies are defined, doctrine and dogmas formulated; and eventually an administrative machinery and efficiencies are developed to carry into effect policies and purposes. The Salvation Army, of which we have a more adequate history than of most other religious movements, is an example. A sect in its final form may be described, then, as a movement of social reform and regeneration that has become institutionalized. Eventually, when it has succeeded in accommodating itself to the other rival organizations, when it has become tolerant and is tolerated, it tends to assume the form of a denomination. Denominations tend and are perhaps destined to unite in the form of religious federations--a thing which is inconceivable of a sect. What is true of the sect, we may assume, and must assume if social movements are to become subjects for sociological investigation, is true of other social institutions. Existing institutions represent social movements that survived the conflict of cultures and the struggle for existence. Sects, and that is what characterizes and distinguishes them from secular institutions, at least, have had their origin in movements that aimed to reform the mores--movements that sought to renovate and renew the inner life of the community. They have wrought upon society from within outwardly. Revolutionary and reform movements, on the contrary, have been directed against the outward fabric and formal structure of society. Revolutionary movements in particular have assumed that if the existing structure could be destroyed it would then be possible to erect a new moral order upon the ruins of the old social structures. A cursory survey of the history of revolutions suggests that the most radical and the most successful of them have been religious. Of this type of revolution Christianity is the most conspicuous example. 6. Classification of the Materials The materials in this chapter have been arranged under the headings: (a) social contagion, (b) the crowd, and (c) types of mass movements. The order of materials follows, in a general way, the order of institutional evolution. Social unrest is first communicated, then takes form in crowd and mass movements, and finally crystallizes in institutions. The history of almost any single social movement--woman's suffrage, prohibition, protestantism--exhibit in a general way, if not in detail, this progressive change in character. There is at first a vague general discontent and distress. Then a violent, confused, and disorderly, but enthusiastic and popular movement, and finally the movement takes form; develops leadership, organization; formulates doctrines and dogmas. Eventually it is accepted, established, legalized. The movement dies, but the institution remains. a) _Social contagion._--The ease and the rapidity with which a cultural trait originating in one cultural group finds its way to other distant groups is familiar to students of folklore and ethnology. The manner in which fashions are initiated in some metropolitan community, and thence make their way, with more or less rapidity, to the provinces is an illustration of the same phenomenon in a different context. Fashion plays a much larger rôle in social life than most of us imagine. Fashion dominates our manners and dress but it influences also our sentiments and our modes of thought. Everything in literature, art or philosophy that was characteristic of the middle of the nineteenth century, the "mid-Victorian period," is now quite out of date and no one who is intelligent now-a-days practices the pruderies, defends the doctrines, nor shares the enthusiasms of that period. Philosophy, also, changes with the fashion and Sumner says that even mathematics and science do the same. Lecky in his history of Rationalism in Europe describes in great detail how the belief in witches, so characteristic of the Middle Ages, gradually disappeared with the period of enlightenment and progress.[293] But the enlightenment of the eighteenth century was itself a fashion and is now quite out of date. In the meantime a new popular and scientific interest is growing up in obscure mental phenomena which no man with scientific training would have paid any attention to a few years ago because he did not believe in such things. It was not good form to do so. But the changes of fashion are so pervasive, so familiar, and, indeed, universal phenomena that we do not regard the changes which they bring, no matter how fantastic, as quite out of the usual and expected order. Gabriel Tarde, however, regards the "social contagion" represented in fashion (imitation) as the fundamental social phenomenon.[294] The term social epidemic, which is, like fashion, a form of social contagion, has a different origin and a different connotation. J. F. C. Hecker, whose study of the Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages, published in 1832, was an incident of his investigation of the Black Death, was perhaps the first to give currency to the term.[295] Both the Black Death and the Dancing Mania assumed the form of epidemics and the latter, the Dancing Mania, was in his estimation the sequel of the former, the Black Death. It was perhaps this similarity in the manner in which they spread--the one by physical and the other by psychical infection--that led him to speak of the spread of a popular delusion in terms of a physical science. Furthermore, the hysteria was directly traceable, as he believed, to the prevailing conditions of the time, and this seemed to put the manifestations in the world of intelligible and controllable phenomena, where they could be investigated. It is this notion, then, that unrest which manifests itself in social epidemics is an indication of pathological social conditions, and the further, the more general, conception that unrest does not become social and hence contagious except when there are contributing causes in the environment--it is this that gives its special significance to the term and the facts. Unrest in the social organism with the social ferments that it induces is like fever in the individual organism, a highly important diagnostic symptom. b) _The crowd._--Neither Le Bon nor any of the other writers upon the subject of mass psychology has succeeded in distinguishing clearly between the organized or "psychological" crowd, as Le Bon calls it, and other similar types of social groups. These distinctions, if they are to be made objectively, must be made on the basis of case studies. It is the purpose of the materials under the general heading of "The 'Animal' Crowd," not so much to furnish a definition, as to indicate the nature and sources of materials from which a definition can be formulated. It is apparent that the different animal groups behave in ways that are distinctive and characteristic, ways which are predetermined in the organism to an extent that is not true of human beings. One other distinction may possibly be made between the so-called "animal" and the human crowd. The organized crowd is controlled by _a common purpose_ and acts to achieve, no matter how vaguely it is defined, a common end. The herd, on the other hand, has apparently no common purpose. Every sheep in the flock, at least as the behavior of the flock is ordinarily interpreted, behaves like every other. Action in a stampede, for example, is collective but it is not concerted. It is very difficult to understand how there can be concerted action in the herd or the flock unless it is on an instinctive basis. The crowd, however, responds to collective representations. The crowd does not imitate or follow its leader as sheep do a bellwether. On the contrary, the crowd _carries out the suggestions of the leader_, and even though there be no division of labor each individual acts more or less in his own way to achieve a common end. In the case of a panic or a stampede, however, where there is no common end, the crowd acts like a flock of sheep. But a stampede or a panic is not a crowd in Le Bon's sense. It is not a psychological unity, nor a "single being," subject to "the mental unity of crowds."[296] The panic is the crowd in dissolution. All effective methods of dispersing crowds involve some method of distracting attention, breaking up the tension, and dissolving the mob into its individual units. c) _Types of mass movements._--The most elementary form of mass movement is a mass migration. Such a mass movement displays, in fact, many of the characteristics of the "animal" crowd. It is the "human" herd. The migration of a people, either as individuals or in organized groups, may be compared to the swarming of the hive. Peoples migrate in search of better living conditions, or merely in search of new experience. It is usually the younger generation, the more restless, active, and adaptable, who go out from the security of the old home to seek their fortunes in the new. Once settled on the new land, however, immigrants inevitably remember and idealize the home they have left. Their first disposition is to reproduce as far as possible in the new world the institutions and the social order of the old. Just as the spider spins his web out of his own body, so the immigrant tends to spin out of his experience and traditions, a social organization which reproduces, as far as circumstances will permit, the organization and the life of the ancestral community. In this way the older culture is transplanted and renews itself, under somewhat altered circumstances, in the new home. That explains, in part, at any rate, the fact that migration tends to follow the isotherms, since all the more fundamental cultural devices and experience are likely to be accommodations to geographical and climatic conditions. In contrast with migrations are movements which are sometimes referred to as crusades, partly because of the religious fervor and fanaticism with which they are usually conducted and partly because they are an appeal to the masses of the people for direct action and depend for their success upon their ability to appeal to some universal human interest or to common experiences and interests that are keenly comprehended by the common man. The Woman's Christian Temperance Crusade, referred to in the materials, may be regarded, if we are permitted to compare great things with small, as an illustration of collective behavior not unlike the crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Crusades are reformatory and religious. This was true at any rate of the early crusades, inspired by Peter the Hermit, whatever may have been the political purposes of the popes who encouraged them. It was the same motive that led the people of the Middle Ages to make pilgrimages which led them to join the crusades. At bottom it was an inner restlessness, that sought peace in great hardship and inspiring action, which moved the masses. Somewhat the same widespread contagious restlessness is the source of most of our revolutions. It is not, however, hardships and actual distress that inspire revolutions but hopes and dreams, dreams which find expression in those myths and "vital lies," as Vernon Lee calls them,[297] which according to Sorel are the only means of moving the masses. The distinction between crusades, like the Woman's Temperance Crusade, and revolutions, like the French Revolution, is that one is a radical attempt to correct a recognized evil and the other is a radical attempt to reform an existing social order. II. MATERIALS A. SOCIAL CONTAGION 1. An Incident in a Lancashire Cotton Mill[298] At a cotton manufactory at Hodden Bridge, in Lancashire, a girl, on the fifteenth of February, 1787, put a mouse into the bosom of another girl, who had a great dread of mice. The girl was immediately thrown into a fit, and continued in it with the most violent convulsions for twenty-four hours. On the following day three more girls were seized in the same manner; and on the seventeenth, six more. By this time the alarm was so great that the whole work, in which 200 or 300 were employed, was totally stopped, and an idea prevailed that a particular disease had been introduced by a bag of cotton opened in the house. On Sunday, the eighteenth, Dr. St. Clare was sent for from Preston; before he arrived three more were seized, and during that night and the morning of the nineteenth, eleven more, making in all twenty-four. Of these, twenty-one were young women, two were girls of about ten years of age, and one man, who had been much fatigued with holding the girls. Three of the number lived about two miles from the place where the disorder first broke out, and three at another factory in Clitheroe, about five miles distant, which last and two more were infected entirely from report, not having seen the other patients, but, like them and the rest of the country, strongly impressed with the idea of the plague being caught from the cotton. The symptoms were anxiety, strangulation, and very strong convulsions; and these were so violent as to last without any intermission from a quarter of an hour to twenty-four hours, and to require four or five persons to prevent the patients from tearing their hair and dashing their heads against the floor or walls. Dr. St. Clare had taken with him a portable electrical machine, and by electric shocks the patients were universally relieved without exception. As soon as the patients and the country were assured that the complaint was merely nervous, easily cured, and not introduced by the cotton, no fresh person was affected. To dissipate their apprehension still further, the best effects were obtained by causing them to take a cheerful glass and join in a dance. On Tuesday, the twentieth, they danced, and the next day were all at work, except two or three, who were much weakened by their fits. 2. The Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages[299] So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women were seen at Aix-la-Chapelle who had come out of Germany and who, united by one common delusion, exhibited to the public both in the streets and in the churches the following strange spectacle. They formed circles hand in hand and, appearing to have lost all control over their senses, continued dancing, regardless of the by-standers, for hours together in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impressions through the senses, but were haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits whose names they shrieked out; and some of them afterward asserted that they felt as if they had been immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high. Others, during the paroxysm, saw the heavens open and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary, according as the religious notions of the age were strangely and variously reflected in their imaginations. Where the disease was completely developed, the attack commenced with epileptic convulsions. Those affected fell to the ground senseless, panting and laboring for breath. They foamed at the mouth, and suddenly springing up began their dance amid strange contortions. Yet the malady doubtless made its appearance very variously, and was modified by temporary or local circumstances, whereof non-medical contemporaries but imperfectly noted the essential particulars, accustomed as they were to confound their observation of natural events with their notions of the world of spirits. It was but a few months ere this demoniacal disease had spread from Aix-la-Chapelle, where it appeared in July, over the neighboring Netherlands. Wherever the dancers appeared, the people assembled in crowds to gratify their curiosity with the frightful spectacle. At length the increasing number of the affected excited no less anxiety than the attention that was paid to them. In towns and villages they took possession of the religious houses, processions were everywhere instituted on their account, and masses were said and hymns were sung, while the disease itself, of the demoniacal origin of which no one entertained the least doubt, excited everywhere astonishment and horror. In Liége the priests had recourse to exorcisms and endeavored by every means in their power to allay an evil which threatened so much danger to themselves; for the possessed, assembling in multitudes, frequently poured forth imprecations against them and menaced their destruction. A few months after this dancing malady had made its appearance at Aix-la-Chapelle, it broke out at Cologne, where the number of those possessed amounted to more than five hundred; and about the same time at Metz, the streets of which place are said to have been filled with eleven hundred dancers. Peasants left their plows, mechanics their workshops, housewives their domestic duties, to join the wild revels, and this rich commercial city became the scene of the most ruinous disorder. Secret desires were excited and but too often found opportunities for wild enjoyment; and numerous beggars, stimulated by vice and misery, availed themselves of this new complaint to gain a temporary livelihood. Girls and boys quitted their parents, and servants their masters, to amuse themselves at the dances of those possessed, and greedily imbibed the poison of mental infection. Above a hundred unmarried women were seen raving about in consecrated and unconsecrated places, and the consequences were soon perceived. Gangs of idle vagabonds, who understood how to imitate to the life the gestures and convulsions of those really affected, roved from place to place seeking maintenance and adventures, and thus, wherever they went, spreading this disgusting spasmodic disease like a plague; for in maladies of this kind the susceptible are infected as easily by the appearance as by the reality. At last it was found necessary to drive away these mischievous guests, who were equally inaccessible to the exorcisms of the priests and the remedies of the physicians. It was not, however, until after four months that the Rhenish cities were able to suppress these impostures, which had so alarmingly increased the original evil. In the meantime, when once called into existence, the plague crept on and found abundant food in the tone of thought which prevailed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and even, though in a minor degree, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth, causing a permanent disorder of the mind, and exhibiting, in those cities to whose inhabitants it was a novelty, scenes as strange as they were detestable. B. THE CROWD 1. The "Animal" Crowd _a. The Flock_[300] Understand that a flock is not the same thing as a number of sheep. On the stark, wild headlands of the White Mountains, as many as thirty Bighorn are known to run in loose, fluctuating hordes; in fenced pastures, two to three hundred; close-herded on the range, two to three thousand; but however artificially augmented, the flock is always a conscious adjustment. There are always leaders, middlers, and tailers, each insisting on its own place in the order of going. Should the flock be rounded up suddenly in alarm it mills within itself until these have come to their own places. There is much debate between herders as to the advantage of goats over sheep as leaders. In any case there are always a few goats in a flock, and most American owners prefer them; but the Frenchmen choose bell-wethers. Goats lead naturally by reason of a quicker instinct, forage more freely, and can find water on their own account. But wethers, if trained with care, learn what goats abhor, to take broken ground sedately, to walk through the water rather than set the whole flock leaping and scrambling; but never to give voice to alarm, as goats will, and call the herder. It appears that leaders understand their office, and goats particularly exhibit a jealousy of their rights to be first over the stepping-stones or to walk the teetering log-bridges at the roaring creeks. By this facile reference of the initiative to the wisest one, the shepherd is served most. The dogs learn to which of the flock to communicate orders, at which heels a bark or a bite soonest sets the flock in motion. But the flock-mind obsesses equally the best-trained, flashes as instantly from the meanest of the flock. By very little the herder may turn the flock-mind to his advantage, but chiefly it works against him. Suppose on the open range the impulse to forward movement overtakes them, set in motion by some eager leaders that remember enough of what lies ahead to make them oblivious to what they pass. They press ahead. The flock draws on. The momentum of travel grows. The bells clang soft and hurriedly; the sheep forget to feed; they neglect the tender pastures; they will not stay to drink. Under an unwise or indolent herder the sheep going on an unaccustomed trail will overtravel and underfeed, until in the midst of good pasture they starve upon their feet. So it is on the Long Trail you so often see the herder walking with his dogs ahead of his sheep to hold them back to feed. But if it should be new ground he must go after and press them skilfully, for the flock-mind balks chiefly at the unknown. In sudden attacks from several quarters, or inexplicable man-thwarting of their instincts, the flock-mind teaches them to turn a solid front, revolving about in the smallest compass with the lambs in their midst, narrowing and indrawing until they perish by suffocation. So they did in the intricate defiles of Red Rock, where Carrier lost 250 in '74, and at Poison Springs, as Narcisse Duplin told me, where he had to choose between leaving them to the deadly waters, or, prevented from the spring, made witless by thirst, to mill about until they piled up and killed threescore in their midst. By no urgency of the dogs could they be moved forward or scattered until night fell with coolness and returning sanity. Nor does the imperfect gregariousness of man always save us from ill-considered rushes or strangulous in-turnings of the social mass. Notwithstanding there are those who would have us to be flock-minded. It is doubtful if the herder is anything more to the flock than an incident of the range, except as a giver of salt, for the only cry they make to him is the salt cry. When the natural craving is at the point of urgency, they circle about his camp or his cabin, leaving off feeding for that business; and nothing else offering, they will continue this headlong circling about a bowlder or any object bulking large in their immediate neighborhood remotely resembling the appurtenances of man, as if they had learned nothing since they were free to find licks for themselves, except that salt comes by bestowal and in conjunction with the vaguely indeterminate lumps of matter that associate with man. As if in fifty centuries of man-herding they had made but one step out of the terrible isolation of brute species, an isolation impenetrable except by fear to every other brute, but now admitting the fact without knowledge, of the God of the Salt. Accustomed to receiving this miracle on open bowlders, when the craving is strong upon them, they seek such as these to run about, vociferating, as if they said, In such a place our God has been wont to bless us, come now, let us greatly entreat Him. This one quavering bleat, unmistakable to the sheepman even at a distance, is the only new note in the sheep's vocabulary, and the only one which passes with intention from himself to man. As for the call of distress which a leader raised by hand may make to his master, it is not new, is not common to flock usage, and is swamped utterly in the obsession of the flock-mind. _b. The Herd_[301] My purpose in this paper is to discuss a group of curious and useless emotional instincts of social animals, which have not yet been properly explained. Excepting two of the number, placed first and last in the list, they are not related in their origin; consequently they are here grouped together arbitrarily, only for the reason that we are very familiar with them on account of their survival in our domestic animals, and because they are, as I have said, useless; also because they resemble each other, among the passions and actions of the lower animals, in their effect on our minds. This is in all cases unpleasant, and sometimes exceedingly painful, as when species that rank next to ourselves in their developed intelligence and organized societies, such as elephants, monkeys, dogs, and cattle, are seen under the domination of impulses, in some cases resembling insanity, and in others simulating the darkest passions of man. These instincts are: (1) The excitement caused by the smell of blood, noticeable in horses and cattle among our domestic animals, and varying greatly in degree, from an emotion so slight as to be scarcely perceptible to the greatest extremes of rage or terror. (2) The angry excitement roused in some animals when a scarlet or bright red cloth is shown to them. So well known is this apparently insane instinct in our cattle that it has given rise to a proverb and metaphor familiar in a variety of forms to everyone. (3) The persecution of a sick or weakly animal by its companions. (4) The sudden deadly fury that seizes on the herd or family at the sight of a companion in extreme distress. Herbivorous mammals at such times will trample and gore the distressed one to death. In the case of wolves, and other savage-tempered carnivorous species, the distressed fellow is frequently torn to pieces and devoured on the spot. To take the first two together. When we consider that blood is red; that the smell of it is, or may be, or has been, associated with that vivid hue in the animal's mind; that blood, seen and smelt, is, or has been, associated with the sight of wounds and with cries of pain and rage or terror from the wounded or captive animal, there appears at first sight to be some reason for connecting these two instinctive passions as having the same origin--namely, terror and rage caused by the sight of a member of the herd struck down and bleeding, or struggling for life in the grasp of an enemy. I do not mean to say that such an image is actually present in the animal's mind, but that the inherited or instinctive passion is one in kind and in its working with the passion of the animal when experience and reason were its guides. But the more I consider the point, the more am I inclined to regard these two instincts as separate in their origin, although I retain the belief that cattle and horses and several wild animals are violently excited by the smell of blood for the reason just given--namely, their inherited memory associates the smell of blood with the presence among them of some powerful enemy that threatens their life. The following incident will show how violently this blood passion sometimes affects cattle, when they are permitted to exist in a half-wild condition, as on the Pampas. I was out with my gun one day, a few miles from home, when I came across a patch on the ground where the grass was pressed or trodden down and stained with blood. I concluded that some thievish Gauchos had slaughtered a fat cow there on the previous night, and, to avoid detection, had somehow managed to carry the whole of it away on their horses. As I walked on, a herd of cattle, numbering about three hundred, appeared moving slowly on to a small stream a mile away; they were traveling in a thin, long line, and would pass the blood-stained spot at a distance of seven to eight hundred yards, but the wind from it would blow across their track. When the tainted wind struck the leaders of the herd they instantly stood still, raising their heads, then broke out into loud, excited bellowings; and finally turning, they started off at a fast trot, following up the scent in a straight line, until they arrived at the place where one of their kind had met its death. The contagion spread, and before long all the cattle were congregated on the fatal spot, and began moving round in a dense mass, bellowing continually. It may be remarked here that the animal has a peculiar language on occasions like this; it emits a succession of short, bellowing cries, like excited exclamations, followed by a very loud cry, alternately sinking into a hoarse murmur and rising to a kind of scream that grates harshly on the sense. Of the ordinary "cow-music" I am a great admirer, and take as much pleasure in it as in the cries and melody of birds and the sound of the wind in trees; but this performance of cattle excited by the smell of blood is most distressing to hear. The animals that had forced their way into the center of the mass to the spot where the blood was, pawed the earth, and dug it up with their horns, and trampled each other down in their frantic excitement. It was terrible to see and hear them. The action of those on the border of the living mass, in perpetually moving round in a circle with dolorous bellowings, was like that of the women in an Indian village when a warrior dies, and all night they shriek and howl with simulated grief, going round and round the dead man's hut in an endless procession. _c. The Pack_[302] Wolves are the most sociable of beasts of prey. Not only do they gather in bands, but they arrange to render each other assistance, which is the most important test of sociability. The most gray wolves I ever saw in a band was five. This was in northern New Mexico in January, 1894. The most I ever heard of in a band was thirty-two that were seen in the same region. These bands are apparently formed in winter only. The packs are probably temporary associations of personal acquaintances, for some temporary purpose, or passing reason, such as food question or mating-instinct. As soon as this is settled, they scatter. An instance in point was related to me by Mr. Gordon Wright of Carberry, Manitoba. During the winter of 1865 he was logging at Sturgeon Lake, Ontario. One Sunday he and some companions strolled out on the ice of the lake to look at the logs there. They heard the hunting-cry of wolves, then a deer (a female) darted from the woods to the open ice. Her sides were heaving, her tongue out, and her legs cut by the slight crust of the snow. Evidently she was hard pressed. She was coming toward them, but one of the men gave a shout which caused her to sheer off. A minute later six timber wolves appeared galloping on her trail, heads low, tails horizontal, and howling continuously. They were uttering their hunting-cry, but as soon as they saw her they broke into a louder, different note, left the trail and made straight for her. Five of the wolves were abreast and one that seemed much darker was behind. Within half a mile they overtook her and pulled her down, all seemed to seize her at once. For a few minutes she bleated like a sheep in distress; after that the only sound was the snarling and the crunching of the wolves as they feasted. Within fifteen minutes nothing was left of the deer but hair and some of the larger bones, and the wolves fighting among themselves for even these. Then they scattered, each going a quarter of a mile or so, no two in the same direction, and those that remained in view curled up there on the open lake to sleep. This happened about ten in the morning within three hundred yards of several witnesses. 2. The Psychological Crowd[303] In its ordinary sense the word "crowd" means a gathering of individuals of whatever nationality, profession, or sex, and whatever be the chances that have brought them together. From the psychological point of view the expression "crowd" assumes quite a different signification. Under certain given circumstances, and only under those circumstances, an agglomeration of men presents new characteristics very different from those of the individuals composing it. The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed, doubtless transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics. The gathering has thus become what, in the absence of a better expression, I will call an organized crowd, or, if the term is considered preferable, a psychological crowd. It forms a single being, and is subjected to the law of the mental unity of crowds. It is evident that it is not by the mere fact of a number of individuals finding themselves accidentally side by side that they acquire the character of an organized crowd. A thousand individuals accidentally gathered in a public place without any determined object in no way constitute a crowd, from the psychological point of view. To acquire the special characteristics of such a crowd, the influence is necessary of certain predisposing causes, of which we shall have to determine the nature. The disappearance of conscious personality and the turning of feelings and thoughts in a definite direction, which are the primary characteristics of a crowd about to become organized, do not always involve the simultaneous presence of a number of individuals on one spot. Thousands of isolated individuals may acquire at certain moments, and under the influence of certain violent emotions--such, for example, as a great national event--the characteristics of a psychological crowd. It will be sufficient in that case that a mere chance should bring them together for their acts at once to assume the characteristics peculiar to the acts of a crowd. At certain moments half a dozen men might constitute a psychological crowd, which may not happen in the case of hundreds of men gathered together by accident. On the other hand, an entire nation, though there may be no visible agglomeration, may become a crowd under the action of certain influences. It is not easy to describe the mind of crowds with exactness, because its organization varies not only according to race and composition but also according to the nature and intensity of the exciting causes to which crowds are subjected. The same difficulty, however, presents itself in the psychological study of an individual. It is only in novels that individuals are found to traverse their whole life with an unvarying character. It is only the uniformity of the environment that creates the apparent uniformity of characters. I have shown elsewhere that all mental constitutions contain possibilities of character which may be manifested in consequence of a sudden change of environment. This explains how it was that among the most savage members of the French Convention were to be found inoffensive citizens who, under ordinary circumstances, would have been peaceable notaries or virtuous magistrates. The storm past, they resumed their normal character of quiet, law-abiding citizens. Napoleon found amongst them his most docile servants. It being impossible to study here all the successive degrees of organization of crowds, we shall concern ourselves more especially with such crowds as have attained to the phase of complete organization. In this way we shall see what crowds may become, but not what they invariably are. It is only in this advanced phase of organization that certain new and special characteristics are superposed on the unvarying and dominant character of the race; then takes place that turning, already alluded to, of all the feelings and thoughts of the collectivity in an identical direction. It is only under such circumstances, too, that what I have called above the psychological law of the mental unity of crowds comes into play. The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the following: Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act, were he in a state of isolation. There are certain ideas and feelings which do not come into being or do not transform themselves into acts except in the case of individuals forming a crowd. The psychological crowd is a provisional being formed of heterogeneous elements, which for a moment are combined, exactly as the cells which constitute a living body form by their reunion a new being which displays characteristics very different from these possessed by each of the cells singly. Contrary to an opinion which one is astonished to find coming from the pen of so acute a philosopher as Herbert Spencer, in the aggregate which constitutes a crowd there is in no sort a summing-up of or an average struck between its elements. What really takes place is a combination followed by the creation of new characteristics, just as in chemistry certain elements, when brought into contact--bases and acids, for example--combine to form a new body possessing properties quite different from those of the bodies that have served to form it. It is easy to prove how much the individual forming part of a crowd differs from the isolated individual, but it is less easy to discover the causes of this difference. To obtain, at any rate, a glimpse of them it is necessary in the first place to call to mind the truth established by modern psychology that unconscious phenomena play an altogether preponderating part not only in organic life but also in the operations of the intelligence. The conscious life of the mind is of small importance in comparison with its unconscious life. The most subtle analyst, the most acute observer, is scarcely successful in discovering more than a very small number of the unconscious motives that determine his conduct. The greater part of our daily actions are the result of hidden motives which escape our observation. It is more especially with respect to those unconscious elements that all the individuals belonging to it resemble each other, while it is principally in respect to the conscious elements of their character--the fruit of education, and yet more of exceptional hereditary conditions--that they differ from each other. Men most unlike in the matter of their intelligence possess instincts, passions, and feelings that are very similar. In the case of everything that belongs to the realm of sentiment--religion, politics, morality, the affections and antipathies, etc.--the most eminent men seldom surpass the standard of the most ordinary individuals. From the intellectual point of view an abyss may exist between a great mathematician and his bootmaker, but from the point of view of character the difference is most often slight or nonexistent. It is precisely these general qualities of character, governed by forces of which we are unconscious, and possessed by the majority of the normal individuals of a race in much the same degree, it is precisely these qualities that in crowds become common property. In the collective mind the intellectual aptitudes of the individuals, and in consequence their individuality, are weakened. The heterogeneous is swamped by the homogeneous, and the unconscious qualities obtain the upper hand. This very fact that crowds possess in common ordinary qualities explains why they can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of intelligence. The decisions affecting matters of general interest come to by an assembly of men of distinction, but specialists in different walks of life, are not sensibly superior to the decisions that would be adopted by a gathering of imbeciles. The truth is, they can only bring to bear in common on the work in hand those mediocre qualities which are the birthright of every average individual. In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated. It is not all the world, as is so often repeated, that has more wit than Voltaire, but assuredly Voltaire that has more wit than all the world, if by "all the world" crowds are to be understood. If the individuals of a crowd confined themselves to putting in common the ordinary qualities of which each of them has his share, there would merely result the striking of an average, and not, as we have said is actually the case, the creation of new characteristics. How is it that these new characteristics are created? This is what we are now to investigate. Different causes determine the appearance of these characteristics peculiar to crowds and not possessed by isolated individuals. The first is that the individual forming part of a crowd acquires, solely from numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would perforce have kept under restraint. He will be the less disposed to check himself from the consideration that, a crowd being anonymous and in consequence irresponsible, the sentiment of responsibility which always controls individuals disappears entirely. The second cause, which is contagion, also intervenes to determine the manifestation in crowds of their special characteristics, and at the same time the trend they are to take. Contagion is a phenomenon of which it is easy to establish the presence, but which it is not easy to explain. It must be classed among those phenomena of a hypnotic order. In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such a degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to the collective interest. This is an aptitude very contrary to his nature, and of which a man is scarcely capable except when he makes part of a crowd. A third cause, and by far the most important, determines in the individuals of a crowd special characteristics which are quite contrary at times to those presented by the isolated individual. I allude to that suggestibility of which, moreover, the contagion mentioned above is neither more nor less than an effect. The most careful observations seem to prove that an individual immerged for some length of time in a crowd in action soon finds himself--either in consequence of the magnetic influence given out by the crowd or from some other cause of which we are ignorant--in a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotized individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotizer. Such also is approximately the state of the individual forming part of a psychological crowd. He is no longer conscious of his acts. In his case, as in the case of the hypnotized subject, at the same time that certain faculties are destroyed, others may be brought to a high degree of exaltation. Under the influence of a suggestion, he will undertake the accomplishment of certain acts with irresistible impetuosity. This impetuosity is the more irresistible in the case of crowds than in that of the hypnotized subject, from the fact that, the suggestion being the same for all the individuals of the crowd, it gains in strength by reciprocity. The individualities in the crowd who might possess a personality sufficiently strong to resist the suggestion are too few in number to struggle against the current. At the utmost, they may be able to attempt a diversion by means of different suggestions. It is in this way, for instance, that a happy expression, an image opportunely evoked, have occasionally deterred crowds from the most bloodthirsty acts. We see, then, that the disappearance of the conscious personality, the predominance of the unconscious personality, the turning by means of suggestion and contagion of feelings and ideas in an identical direction, the tendency to immediately transform the suggested ideas into acts; these, we see, are the principal characteristics of the individual forming part of a crowd. He is no longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will. Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organized crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian--that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will. It is for these reasons that juries are seen to deliver verdicts of which each individual juror would disapprove, that parliamentary assemblies adopt laws and measures of which each of their members would disapprove in his own person. Taken separately, the men of the Convention were enlightened citizens of peaceful habits. United in a crowd, they did not hesitate to give their adhesion to the most savage proposals, to guillotine individuals most clearly innocent, and, contrary to their interest, to renounce their inviolability and to decimate themselves. The conclusion to be drawn from what precedes is that the crowd is always intellectually inferior to the isolated individual, but that, from the point of view of feelings and of the acts these feelings provoke, the crowd may, according to circumstances, be better or worse than the individual. All depends on the nature of the suggestion to which the crowd is exposed. This is the point that has been completely misunderstood by writers who have only studied crowds from the criminal point of view. Doubtless a crowd is often criminal, but also it is often heroic. It is crowds rather than isolated individuals that may be induced to run the risk of death to secure the triumph of a creed or an idea, that may be fired with enthusiasm for glory and honor, that are led on--almost without bread and without arms, as in the age of the Crusades--to deliver the tomb of Christ from the infidel, or, as in '93, to defend the fatherland. Such heroism is without doubt somewhat unconscious, but it is of such heroism that history is made. Were peoples only to be credited with the great actions performed in cold blood, the annals of the world would register but few of them. 3. The Crowd Defined[304] A crowd in the ordinary sense of that term is any chance collection of individuals. Such a collectivity becomes a crowd in the sociological sense only when a condition of _rapport_ has been established among the individuals who compose it. _Rapport_ implies the existence of a mutual responsiveness, such that every member of the group reacts immediately, spontaneously, and sympathetically to the sentiments and attitudes of every other member. The fact that A responds sympathetically toward B and C implies the existence in A of an attitude of receptivity and suggestibility toward the sentiments and attitudes of B and C. Where A, B, and C are mutually sympathetic, the inhibitions which, under ordinary circumstances, serve to preserve the isolation and self-consciousness of individuals are relaxed or completely broken down. Under these circumstances each individual, in so far as he may be said to reflect, in his own consciousness and in his emotional reactions, the sentiments and emotions of all the others, tends at the same time to modify the sentiments and attitudes of those others. The effect is to produce a heightened, intensified, and relatively impersonal state of consciousness in which all seem to share, but which is, at the same time, relatively independent of each. The development of this so-called "group-consciousness" represents a certain amount of loss of self-control on the part of the individual. Such control as the individual loses over himself is thus automatically transferred to the group as a whole or to the leader. What is meant by _rapport_ in the group may be illustrated by a somewhat similar phenomenon which occurs in hypnosis. In this case a relation is established between the experimenter and his subject such that the subject responds automatically to every suggestion of the experimenter but is apparently oblivious of suggestions coming from other persons whose existence he does not perceive or ignores. This is the condition called "isolated rapport."[305] In the case of the crowd this mutual and exclusive responsiveness of each member of the crowd to the suggestions emanating from the other members produces here also a kind of mental isolation which is accompanied by an inhibition of the stimuli and suggestions that control the behavior of individuals under the conditions of ordinary life. Under these conditions impulses long repressed in the individual may find an expression in the crowd. It is this, no doubt, which accounts for those so-called criminal and atavistic tendencies of crowds, of which Le Bon and Sighele speak.[306] The organization of the crowd is only finally effected when the attention of the individuals who compose it becomes focused upon some particular object or some particular objective. This object thus fixed in the focus of the attention of the group tends to assume the character of a _collective representation_.[307] It becomes this because it is the focus of the collectively enhanced emotion and sentiment of the group. It becomes the representation and the symbol of what the crowd feels and wills at the moment when all members are suffused with a common collective excitement and dominated by a common and collective idea. This excitement and this idea with the meanings that attach to it are called collective because they are a product of the interactions of the members of the crowd. They are not individual but corporate products. Le Bon describes the organization thus effected in a chance-met collection of individuals as a "collective mind," and refers to the group, transitory and ephemeral though it be, as a "single being." The positive factors in determining the organization of the crowd are then: (1) A condition of _rapport_ among the members of the group with a certain amount of contagious excitement and heightened suggestibility incident to it. (2) A certain degree of mental isolation of the group following as a consequence of the _rapport_ and sympathetic responsiveness of members of the group. (3) Focus of attention; and finally the consequent. (4) Collective representation. C. TYPES OF MASS MOVEMENTS 1. Crowd Excitements and Mass Movements: The Klondike Rush[308] It was near the middle of July when the steamer _Excelsior_ arrived in San Francisco from St. Michael's, on the west coast of Alaska, with forty miners, having among them seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of gold, brought down from the Klondike. When the bags and cans and jars containing it had been emptied and the gold piled on the counters of the establishment to which it was brought, no such sight had been seen in San Francisco since the famous year of 1849. On July 18 the _Portland_ arrived in Seattle, on Puget Sound, having on board sixty-eight miners, who brought ashore bullion worth a million dollars. The next day it was stated that these miners had in addition enough gold concealed about their persons and in their baggage to double the first estimate. Whether all these statements were correct or not does not signify, for those were the reports that were spread throughout the states. From this last source alone, the mint at San Francisco received half a million dollars' worth of gold in one week, and it was certain that men who had gone away poor had come back with fortunes. It was stated that a poor blacksmith who had gone up from Seattle returned with $115,000, and that a man from Fresno, who had failed as a farmer, had secured $135,000. The gold fever set in with fury and attacked all classes. Men in good positions, with plenty of money to spend on an outfit, and men with little beyond the amount of their fare, country men and city men, clerks and professional men without the faintest notion of the meaning of "roughing it," flocked in impossible numbers to secure a passage. There were no means of taking them. Even in distant New York, the offices of railroad companies and local agencies were besieged by anxious inquirers eager to join the throng. On Puget Sound, mills, factories, and smelting works were deserted by their employees, and all the miners on the upper Skeena left their work in a body. On July 21 the North American Transportation Company (one of two companies which monopolized the trade of the Yukon) was reincorporated in Chicago with a quadrupled capital, to cope with the demands of traffic. At the different Pacific ports every available vessel was pressed into the service, and still the wild rush could not be met. Before the end of July the _Portland_ left Seattle again for St. Michael's, and the _Mexico_ and _Topeka_ for Dyea; the _Islander_ and _Tees_ sailed for Dyea from Victoria, and the _G. W. Elder_ from Portland; while from San Francisco the _Excelsior_, of the Alaska Company, which had brought the first gold down, left again for St. Michael's on July 28, being the last of the company's fleet scheduled to connect with the Yukon river boats for the season. Three times the original price was offered for the passage, and one passenger accepted an offer of $1,500 for the ticket for which he had paid only $150. This, however, was only the beginning of the rush. Three more steamers were announced to sail in August for the mouth of the Yukon, and at least a dozen more for the Lynn Canal, among which were old tubs, which, after being tied up for years, were now overhauled and refitted for the voyage north. One of these was the _Williamette_, an old collier with only sleeping quarters for the officers and crew, which, however, was fitted up with bunks and left Seattle for Dyea and Skagway with 850 passengers, 1,200 tons of freight, and 300 horses, men, live stock, and freight being wedged between decks till the atmosphere was like that of a dungeon; and even with such a prospect in view, it was only by a lavish amount of tipping that a man could get his effects taken aboard. Besides all these, there were numerous scows loaded with provisions and fuel, and barges conveying horses for packing purposes. A frightful state of congestion followed as each successive steamer on its arrival at the head of the Lynn Canal poured forth its crowds of passengers and added to the enormous loads of freight already accumulated. Matters became so serious that on August 10 the United States Secretary of the Interior, having received information that 3,000 persons with 2,000 tons of baggage and freight were then waiting to cross the mountains to Yukon, and that many more were preparing to join them, issued a warning to the public (following that of the Dominion Government of the previous week) in which he called attention to the exposure, privation, suffering, and danger incident to the journey at that advanced period of the season, and further referred to the gravity of the possible consequences to people detained in the mountainous wilderness during five or six months of Arctic winter, where no relief could reach them. To come now to the state of things at the head of the Lynn Canal, where the steamers discharged their loads of passengers, horses, and freight. This was done either at Dyea or Skagway, the former being the landing-place for the Chilcoot Pass, and the latter for the White Pass, the distance between the two places being about four miles by sea. There were no towns at these places, nor any convenience for landing except a small wharf at Skagway, which was not completed, the workmen having been smitten with the gold fever. Every man had to bring with him, if he wanted to get through and live, supplies for a year: sacks of flour, slabs of bacon, beans, and so forth, his cooking utensils, his mining outfit and building tools, his tent, and all the heavy clothing and blankets suitable for the northern winter, one thousand pounds' weight at least. Imagine the frightful mass of stuff disgorged as each successive vessel arrived, with no adequate means of taking it inland! Before the end of September people were preparing to winter on the coast, and Skagway was growing into a substantial town. Where in the beginning of August there were only a couple of shacks, there were in the middle of October 700 wooden buildings and a population of about 1,500. Businesses of all kinds were carried on, saloons and low gaming houses and haunts of all sorts abounded, but of law and order there was none. Dyea also, which at one time was almost deserted, was growing into a place of importance, but the title of every lot in both towns was in dispute. Rain was still pouring down, and without high rubber boots walking was impossible. None indeed but the most hardy could stand existence in such places, and every steamer from the south carried fresh loads of people back to their homes. Of the 6,000 people who went in this fall, 200 at the most got over to the Dawson Route by the White Pass, and perhaps 700 by the Chilcoot. There were probably 1,000 camped at Lake Bennett, and all the rest, except the 1,500 remaining on the coast, had returned home to wait till midwinter or the spring before venturing up again. The question of which was the best trail was still undecided, and men vehemently debated it every day with the assistance of the most powerful language at their command. As to the crowds who had gone to St. Michael's, it is doubtful whether any of them got through to Dawson City, since the lower Yukon is impassable by the end of September, and, at any rate, in view of the prospects of short rations, it would have been rash to try. The consequence would be that they would have to remain on that desolate island during nine months of almost Arctic winter, for the river does not open again till the end of June. Here they would be absolutely without employment unless they chose to stack wood for the steamboat companies, and their only amusements (save the mark) would be drinking bad rye whiskey--for Alaska is a "prohibition" country--and poker-playing. For men with a soul above such delights, the heart-breaking monotony of a northern winter would be appalling, and it is only to be understood by those who have had to endure similar experiences themselves on the western prairies. 2. Mass Movements and the Mores: The Woman's Crusade[309] On the evening of December 23, 1873, there might have been seen in the streets of Hillsboro, Ohio, persons singly or in groups wending their way to Music Hall, where a lecture on temperance was to be delivered by Dr. Dio Lewis, of Boston, Massachusetts. Hillsboro is a small place, containing something more than 3,000 people. The inhabitants are rather better educated than is usually the case in small towns, and its society is indeed noted in that part of the country for its quietude, culture, and refinement. But Hillsboro was by no means exempt from the prevailing scourge of intemperance. The early settlers of Hillsboro were mostly from Virginia, and brought with them the old-fashioned ideas of hospitality. For many years previous to the crusade the professional men, and especially of the bar, were nearly all habitual drinkers, and many of them very dissipated. When a few earnest temperance men, among whom was Governor Allen Trimble, initiated a total-abstinence movement in or about the year 1830, the pulpit took up arms against them, and a condemnatory sermon was preached in one of the churches. Thus it was that, although from time to time men, good and true, banded themselves together in efforts to break up this dreadful state of things and reform society, all endeavors seemed to fail of any permanent effect. The plan laid down by Dr. Lewis challenged attention by its novelty at least. He believed the work of temperance reform might be successfully carried on by women if they would set about it in the right manner--going to the saloon-keeper in a spirit of Christian love, and persuading him for the sake of humanity and his own eternal welfare to quit the hateful, soul-destroying business. The doctor spoke with enthusiasm; and seeing him so full of faith, the hearts of the women seized the hope--a forlorn one, 'tis true, but still a hope--and when Dr. Lewis asked if they were willing to undertake the task, scores of women rose to their feet, and there was no lack of good men who pledged themselves to encourage and sustain the women in their work. At a subsequent meeting an organization was effected and Mrs. Eliza J. Thompson, a daughter of ex-Governor Trimble of Ohio, was elected chairman. Mrs. Thompson gives the following account of the manner in which the crusade was organized: My boy came home from Dr. Dio Lewis' lecture and said, "Ma, they've got you into business"; and went on to tell that Dio Lewis had incidentally related the successful effort of his mother, by prayer and persuasion, to close the saloon in a town where he lived when a boy, and that he had exhorted the women of Hillsboro to do the same, and fifty had risen up to signify their willingness, and that they looked to me to help them to carry out their promise. As I'm talking to you here familiarly, I'll go on to say that my husband, who had retired, and was in an adjoining room, raised up on his elbow and called out, "Oh! that's all tomfoolery!" I remember I answered him something like this: "Well, husband, the men have been in the tomfoolery business a long time; perhaps the Lord is going to call us into partnership with them." I said no more. The next morning my brother-in-law, Colonel ----, came in and told me about the meeting, and said, "Now, you must be sure to go to the women's meeting at the church this morning; they look to see you there." Our folks talked it all over, and my husband said, "Well, we all know where your mother'll take this case for counsel," and then he pointed to the Bible and left the room. I went into the corner of my room, and knelt down and opened my Bible to see what God would say to me. Just at that moment there was a tap on the door and my daughter entered. She was in tears; she held her Bible in her hand, open to the 146th Psalm. She said, "Ma, I just opened to this, and I think it is for you," and then she went away, and I sat down and read THIS WONDERFUL MESSAGE FROM GOD "Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God; which keepeth truth forever; which executeth judgment for the oppressed; the Lord looseth the prisoners; the Lord openeth the eyes of the blind; the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down; the Lord loveth the righteous; the Lord relieveth the fatherless and the widow--_but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down_. The Lord shall reign forever, even thy God, O Zion, unto all generations. Praise ye the Lord!" I knew that was for me, and I got up, put on my shoes, and started. I went to the church, in this town where I was born. I sat down quietly in the back part of the audience room, by the stove. A hundred ladies were assembled. I heard my name--heard the whisper pass through the company, "Here she is!" "She's come!" and before I could get to the pulpit, they had put me "in office"--I was their leader. Many of our citizens were there, and our ministers also. They stayed a few minutes, and then rose and went out, saying, "This is your work--we leave it with the women and the Lord." When they had gone, I just opened the big pulpit Bible and read that 146th Psalm, and told them the circumstance of my selecting it. The women sobbed so I could hardly go on. When I had finished, I felt inspired to call on a dear Presbyterian lady to pray. She did so without the least hesitation, though it was the first audible prayer in her life. I can't tell you anything about that prayer, only that the words were like fire. When she had prayed, I said--and it all came to me just at the moment--"Now, ladies, let us file out, two by two, the smallest first, and let us sing as we go, 'Give to the winds thy fears.'" We went first to John ----'s saloon. Now, John was a German, and his sister had lived in my family thirteen years, and she was very mild and gentle, and I hoped it might prove a family trait, but I found out it wasn't. He fumed about dreadfully and said, "It's awful; it's a sin and a shame to pray in a saloon!" But we prayed right on just the same. Next day the ladies held another meeting, but decided not to make any visitations, it being Christmas day, and the hotel-keepers more than usually busy and not likely to listen very attentively to our proposition. On the twenty-sixth, the hotels and saloons were visited; Mrs. Thompson presenting the appeal. And it was on this morning, and at the saloon of Robert Ward, that there came a break in the established routine. "Bob" was a social, jolly sort of fellow, and his saloon was a favorite resort, and there were many women in the company that morning whose hearts were aching in consequence of his wrong-doing. Ward was evidently touched. He confessed that it was a "bad business," said if he could only "afford to quit it he would," and then tears began to flow from his eyes. Many of the ladies were weeping, and at length, as if by inspiration, Mrs. Thompson kneeled on the floor of the saloon, all kneeling with her, even the saloonist, and prayed, pleading with indescribable pathos and earnestness for the conversion and salvation of this and all saloon-keepers. When the amen was sobbed rather than spoken, Mrs. Washington Doggett's sweet voice began, "There is a fountain," etc., in which all joined; the effect was most solemn, and when the hymn was finished the ladies went quietly away, and that was the first saloon prayer meeting. There was a saloon-keeper brought from Greenfield to H---- to be tried under the Adair law. The poor mother who brought the suit had besought him not to sell to her son--"her only son." He replied roughly that he would sell to him "as long as he had a dime." Another mother, an old lady, made the same request, "lest," she said, "he may some day fill a drunkard's grave." "Madam," he replied, "your son has as good a right to fill a drunkard's grave as any other mother's son." And in one of the Hillsboro saloons a lady saw her nephew. "O, Mr. B----," said she, "don't sell whiskey to that boy: if he has one drink he will want another, and he may die a drunkard." "Madam, I will sell to him if it sends his soul to hell," was the awful reply. The last man is a peculiarly hard, stony sort of man; his lips look as if chiseled out of flint, a man to be afraid of. One morning, when the visiting band reached his door, they found him in a very bad humor. He locked his door and seated himself on the horse block in front in a perfect rage, clenched his fist, swore furiously, and ordered us to go home. Some gentlemen, on the opposite side of the street, afterward said that they were watching the scene, ready to rush over and defend the ladies from an attack, and they were sure it would come; but one of the ladies, a sweet-souled woman, gentle and placid, kneeled just at his feet, and poured out such a tender, earnest prayer for him, that he quieted down entirely, and when she rose and offered him her hand in token of kind feeling, he could not refuse to take it. During the Crusade, a saloon-keeper (at Ocean Grove) consented to close his business. There was a great deal of enthusiasm and interest, and we women decided to compensate the man for his whiskey and make a bonfire of it in the street. A great crowd gathered about the saloon, and the barrels of whiskey were rolled out to the public square where we were to have our bonfire. Myself and two other little women, who had been chosen to knock in the heads, and had come to the place with axes concealed under our shawls, went to our work with a will. I didn't know I was so strong, but I lifted that axe like a woodman and brought it down with such force that the first blow stove in the head of a barrel and splashed the whiskey in every direction. I was literally baptized with the noxious stuff. The intention was to set it on fire, and we had brought matches for that purpose, _but it would not burn_! It was a villainous compound of some sort, but we had set out to have a fire, and were determined by some means or other to make it burn, so we sent for some coal oil and poured it on and we soon had a blaze. The man who could sell such liquors would not be likely to keep the pledge. He is selling liquors again. The crusade began at Washington C.H. only two days later than at Hillsboro. And Washington C.H. was the first place where the crusade was made prominent and successful. On Friday morning, December 26, 1873, after an hour of prayer in the M.E. Church, forty-four women filed slowly and solemnly down the aisle, and started forth upon their strange mission with fear and trembling, while the male portion of the audience remained at the church to pray for the success of this new undertaking; the tolling of the church-bell keeping time to the solemn march of the women, as they wended their way to the first drug-store on the list. (The number of places within the city limits where intoxicating drinks were sold was fourteen--eleven saloons and three drug-stores.) Here, as in every place, they entered singing, every woman taking up the sacred strain as she crossed the threshold. This was followed by the reading of the appeal and prayer; then earnest pleading to desist from their soul-destroying traffic and sign the dealer's pledge. Thus, all the day long, they went from place to place, without stopping even for dinner or lunch, till five o'clock, meeting with no marked success; but invariably courtesy was extended to them; not even their reiterated promise, "We will call again," seeming to offend. No woman who has ever entered one of these dens of iniquity on such an errand needs to be told of the heartsickness that almost over-came them as they, for the first time, saw behind those painted windows or green blinds, or entered the little stifling "back room," or found their way down winding steps into the damp, dark cellars, and realized that into _such places_ those they loved best were being landed, through the allurements of the brilliantly lighted drug-store, the fascinating billiard table, or the enticing beer gardens, with their siren attractions. A crowded house at night, to hear the report of the day's work, betrayed the rapidly increasing interest in this mission. On the twenty-seventh the contest really began, and, at the first place, the doors were found locked. With hearts full of compassion, the women knelt in the snow upon the pavement, to plead for the divine influence upon the heart of the liquor-dealer, and there held their first street prayer meeting. At night the weary but zealous workers reported at a mass meeting of the various rebuffs, and the success in having two druggists sign the pledge not to sell, except upon the written prescription of a physician. The Sabbath, was devoted to union mass meeting, with direct reference to the work in hand; and on Monday the number of ladies had increased to near one hundred. That day, December 29, is one long to be remembered in Washington, as the day upon which occurred the first surrender ever made by a liquor-dealer, of his stock of liquors of every kind and variety, to the women, in answer to their prayers and entreaties, and by them poured into the street. Nearly a thousand men, women, and children witnessed the mingling of beer, ale, wine, and whiskey, as they filled the gutters and were drunk up by the earth, while the bells were ringing, men and boys shouting, and women singing and praying to God who had given the victory. But on the fourth day, "stock sale-day," the campaign had reached its height, the town being filled with visitors from all parts of the county and adjoining villages. Another public surrender, and another pouring into the street of a larger stock of liquors than on the previous day, and more intense excitement and enthusiasm. Mass meetings were held nightly, with new victories reported constantly, until on Friday, January 21, one week from the beginning of the work, at the public meeting held in the evening, the secretary's report announced the unconditional surrender of every liquor-dealer, some having shipped their liquors back to wholesale dealers, others having poured them into the gutters, and the druggists as all having signed the pledge. Thus a campaign of prayer and song had, in eight days, closed eleven saloons, and pledged three drug-stores to sell only on prescription. At first men had wondered, scoffed, and laughed, then criticized, respected, and yielded. Morning prayer and evening mass meetings continued daily, and the personal pledge was circulated till over one thousand signatures were obtained. Physicians were called upon to sign a pledge not to prescribe ardent spirits when any other substitute could be found, and in no case without a personal examination of the patient. Early in the third week the discouraging intelligence came that a new man had taken out a license to sell liquor in one of the deserted saloons, and that he was backed by a whiskey house in Cincinnati, to the amount of $5,000, to break down this movement. On Wednesday, 'the fourteenth, the whiskey was unloaded at his room. About forty women were on the ground and followed the liquor in, and remained holding an uninterrupted prayer meeting all day and until eleven o'clock at night. The next day, bitterly cold, was spent in the same place and manner, without fire or chairs, two hours of that time the women being locked in, while the proprietor was off attending a trial. On the following day, the coldest of the winter of 1874, the women were locked out, and stood on the street holding religious services all day long. Next morning a tabernacle was built in the street, just in front of the house, and was occupied for the double purpose of _watching_ and prayer through the day; and before night the sheriff closed the saloon, and the proprietor surrendered; thus ended the third week. A short time after, on a dying-bed, this four days' liquor-dealer sent for some of these women, telling them their songs and prayers had never ceased to ring in his ears, and urging them to pray again in his behalf; so he passed away. Thus, through most of the winter of 1874 no alcoholic drinks were publicly sold as a beverage in the county. During the two intervening years weekly temperance-league meetings have been kept up by the faithful few, while frequent union mass meetings have been held, thus keeping the subject always before the people. Today the disgraceful and humiliating fact exists that there are more places where liquors are sold than before the crusade. 3. Mass Movements and Revolution _a. The French Revolution_[310] The outward life of men in every age is molded upon an inward life consisting of a framework of traditions, sentiments, and moral influences which direct their conduct and maintain certain fundamental notions which they accept without discussion. Let the resistance of this social framework weaken, and ideas which could have had no force before will germinate and develop. Certain theories whose success was enormous at the time of the Revolution would have encountered an impregnable wall two centuries earlier. The aim of these considerations is to recall to the reader the fact that the outward events of revolutions are always a consequence of invisible transformations which have slowly gone forward in men's minds. Any profound study of a revolution necessitates a study of the mental soil upon which the ideas that direct its courses have to germinate. Generally slow in the extreme, the evolution of ideas is often invisible for a whole generation. Its extent can only be grasped by comparing the mental condition of the same social classes at the two extremities of the curve which the mind has followed. The actual influence of the philosophers in the genesis of the Revolution was not that which was attributed to them. They revealed nothing new, but they developed the critical spirit which no dogma can resist, once the way is prepared for its downfall. Under the influence of this developing critical spirit things which were no longer very greatly respected came to be respected less and less. When tradition and prestige had disappeared, the social edifice suddenly fell. This progressive disaggregation finally descended to the people, but was not commenced by them. The people follow examples, but never set them. The philosophers, who could not have exerted any influence over the people, did exert a great influence over the enlightened portion of the nation. The unemployed nobility, who had long been ousted from their old functions and who were consequently inclined to be censorious, followed their leadership. Incapable of foresight, the nobles were the first to break with the traditions that were their only _raison d'être_. As steeped in humanitarianism and rationalism as the _bourgeoisie_ of today, they continually sapped their own privileges by their criticisms. As today, the most ardent reformers were found among the favorites of fortune. The aristocracy encouraged dissertations on the social contract, the rights of man, and the equality of citizens. At the theater it applauded plays which criticized privileges, the arbitrariness and the incapacity of men in high places, and abuses of all kinds. As soon as men lose confidence in the foundations of the mental framework which guides their conduct, they feel at first uneasy and then discontented. All classes felt their old motives of action gradually disappearing. Things that had seemed sacred for centuries were now sacred no longer. The censorious spirit of the nobility and of the writers of the day would not have sufficed to move the heavy load of tradition but that its action was added to that of other powerful influences. We have already stated, in citing Bossuet, that under the _ancien régime_ the religious and civil governments, widely separated in our day, were intimately connected. To injure one was inevitably to injure the other. Now even before the monarchical idea was shaken, the force of religious tradition was greatly diminished among cultivated men. The constant progress of knowledge had sent an increasing number of minds from theology to science by opposing the truth observed to the truth revealed. This mental evolution, although as yet very vague, was sufficient to show that the traditions which for so many centuries had guided men had not the value which had been attributed to them, and that it would soon be necessary to replace them. But where discover the new elements which might take the place of tradition? Where seek the magic ring which would raise a new social edifice on the remains of that which no longer contented men? Men were agreed in attributing to reason the power that tradition and the gods seemed to have lost. How could its force be doubted? Its discoveries having been innumerable, was it not legitimate to suppose that by applying it to the construction of societies it would entirely transform them? Its possible function increased very rapidly in the thoughts of the more enlightened, in proportion as tradition seemed more and more to be distrusted. The sovereign power attributed to reason must be regarded as the culminating idea which not only engendered the Revolution but governed it throughout. During the whole Revolution men gave themselves up to the most persevering efforts to break with the past and to erect society upon a new plan dictated by logic. Slowly filtering downward, the rationalistic theories of the philosophers meant to the people simply that all the things which had been regarded as worthy of respect were now no longer worthy. Men being declared equal, the old masters need no longer be obeyed. The multitude easily succeeded in ceasing to respect what the upper classes themselves no longer respected. When the barrier of respect was down the Revolution was accomplished. The first result of this new mentality was a general insubordination. Mme. Vigée Lebrun relates that on the promenade at Longchamps men of the people leaped on the footboards of the carriages, saying, "Next year you will be behind and we shall be inside." The populace was not alone in manifesting insubordination and discontent. These sentiments were general on the eve of the Revolution. "The lesser clergy," says Taine, "are hostile to the prelates; the provincial gentry to the nobility of the court; the vassals to the seigneurs; the peasants to the townsmen, etc." This state of mind, which had been communicated from the nobles and clergy to the people, also invaded the army. At the moment the States General were opened, Necker said: "We are not sure of the troops." The officers were becoming humanitarian and philosophical. The soldiers, recruited from the lowest class of the population, did not philosophize, but they no longer obeyed. In their feeble minds the ideas of equality meant simply the suppression of all leaders and masters, and therefore of all obedience. In 1790 more than twenty regiments threatened their officers, and sometimes, as at Nancy, threw them into prison. The mental anarchy which, after spreading through all classes of society, finally invaded the army was the principal cause of the disappearance of the _ancien régime_. "It was the defection of the army affected by the ideas of the Third Estate," wrote Rivarol, "that destroyed royalty." The genesis of the French Revolution, as well as its duration, was conditioned by elements of a rational, affective, mystic, and collective nature, each category of which was ruled by a different logic. The rational element usually invoked as an explanation exerted in reality but very slight influence. It prepared the way for the Revolution, but maintained it only at the outset, while it was still exclusively middle class. Its action was manifested by many measures of the time, such as the proposals to reform the taxes, the suppression of the privileges of a useless nobility, etc. As soon as the Revolution reached the people, the influence of the rational elements speedily vanished before that of the affective and collective elements. As for the mystic elements, the foundation of the revolutionary faith, they made the army fanatical and propagated the new belief throughout the world. We shall see these various elements as they appeared in events and in the psychology of individuals. Perhaps the most important was the mystic element. The Revolution cannot be clearly comprehended--we cannot repeat it too often--unless it is considered as the formation of a religious belief. What I have said elsewhere of all beliefs applies equally to the Revolution. They impose themselves on men apart from reason and have the power to polarize men's thoughts and feelings in one direction. Pure reason had never such a power, for men were never impassioned by reason. The religious forms rapidly assumed by the Revolution explain its power of expansion and the prestige which it possessed and has retained. Few historians have understood that this great monument ought to be regarded as the foundation of a new religion. The penetrating mind of Tocqueville, I believe, was the first to perceive as much. He wrote: The French Revolution was a political revolution which operated in the manner of and assumed something of the aspect of a religious revolution. See by what regular and characteristic traits it finally resembled the latter; not only did it spread itself far and wide like a religious revolution, but, like the latter, it spread itself by means of preaching and propaganda. A political revolution which inspires proselytes, which is preached as passionately to foreigners as it is accomplished at home: consider what a novel spectacle was this. Although the mystic element is always the foundation of beliefs, certain affective and rational elements are quickly added thereto. A belief thus serves to group sentiments and passions and interests which belong to the affective domain. Reason then envelops the whole, seeking to justify events in which, however, it played no part whatever. At the moment of the Revolution everyone, according to his aspirations, dressed the new belief in a different rational vesture. The peoples saw in it only the suppression of the religious and political despotisms and hierarchies under which they had so often suffered. Writers like Goethe and thinkers like Kant imagined that they saw in it the triumph of reason. Foreigners like Humboldt came to France "to breathe the air of liberty and to assist at the obsequies of despotism." These intellectual illusions did not last long. The evolution of the drama soon revealed the true foundations of the dream. _b. Bolshevism_[311] Great mass movements, whether these be religious or political, are at first always difficult to understand. Invariably they challenge existing moral and intellectual values, the revaluation of which is, for the normal mind, an exceedingly difficult and painful task. Moreover the definition of their aims and policies into exact and comprehensive programs is generally slowly achieved. At their inception and during the early stages of their development there must needs be many crude and tentative statements and many rhetorical exaggerations. It is safe to assert as a rule that at no stage of its history can a great movement of the masses be fully understood and fairly interpreted by a study of its formal statements and authentic expositions only. These must be supplemented by a careful study of the psychology of the men and women whose ideals and yearnings these statements and expositions aim to represent. It is not enough to know and comprehend the creed: it is essential that we also know and comprehend the spiritual factors, the discontent, the hopes, the fears, the inarticulate visionings of the human units in the movement. This is of greater importance in the initial stages than later, when the articulation of the soul of the movement has become more certain and clear. No one who has attended many bolshevist meetings or is acquainted with many of the individuals to whom bolshevism makes a strong appeal will seriously question the statement that an impressively large number of those who profess to be Bolshevists present a striking likeness to extreme religious zealots, not only in the manner of manifesting their enthusiasm, but also in their methods of exposition and argument. Just as in religious hysteria a single text becomes a whole creed to the exclusion of every other text, and instead of being itself subject to rational tests is made the sole test of the rationality of everything else, so in the case of the average Bolshevist of this type a single phrase received into the mind in a spasm of emotion, never tested by the usual criteria of reason, becomes not only the very essence of truth but also the standard by which the truth or untruth of everything else must be determined. Most of the preachers who become pro-Bolshevists are of this type. People who possess minds thus affected are generally capable of, and frequently indulge in, the strictest logical deduction and analysis. Sometimes they acquire the reputation of being exceptionally brilliant thinkers because of this power. But the fact is that their initial ideas, upon which everything is pivoted, are derived emotionally and are not the results of a deliberate weighing of available evidence. The initial movement is one of feeling, of emotional impulse. The conviction thereby created is so strong and so dominant that it cannot be affected by any purely rational functional factors. People of this type jump at decisions and reach very positive convictions upon the most difficult matters with bewildering ease. For them the complexities and intricacies which trouble the normal mind do not exist. Everything is either black or white: there are no perplexing intervening grays. Right is right and wrong is wrong; they do not recognize that there are doubtful twilight zones. Ideas capable of the most elaborate expansion and the most subtle intricacies of interpretation are immaturely grasped and preached with naïve assurance. Statements alleged to be facts, no matter what their source, if they seem to support the convictions thus emotionally derived, are received without any examination and used as conclusive proof, notwithstanding that a brief investigation would prove them to be worthless as evidence. If we take the group of American intellectuals who at present are ardent champions of bolshevism we shall find that, with exceptions so few as to be almost negligible, they have embraced nearly every "ism" as it arose, seeing in each one the magic solvent of humanity's ills. Those of an older generation thus regarded bimetallism, for instance. What else could be required to make the desert bloom like a garden and to usher in the earthly Paradise? The younger ones, in their turn, took up anarchist-communism, Marxian socialism, industrial unionism, syndicalism, birth control, feminism, and many other movements and propagandas, each of which in its turn induced ecstatic visions of a new heaven and a new earth. The same individuals have grown lyrical in praise of every bizarre and eccentric art fad. In the banal and grotesque travesties of art produced by cubists, futurists, _et al._, they saw transcendent genius. They are forever seeking new gods and burying old ones. It would be going too far to say that these individuals are all hystericals in the pathological sense, but it is strictly accurate to say that the class exhibits marked hysterical characteristics and that it closely resembles the large class of over-emotionalized religious enthusiasts which furnish so many true hystericals. It is probable that accidents of environment account for the fact that their emotionalism takes sociological rather than religious forms. If the sociological impetus were absent, most of them would be religiously motived to a state not less abnormal. To understand the spread of bolshevist agitation and sympathy among a very considerable part of the working class in this country, we must take into account the fact that its logical and natural nucleus is the I.W.W. It is necessary also to emancipate our minds from the obsession that only "ignorant foreigners" are affected. This is not a true estimate of either the I.W.W. or the bolshevist propaganda as a whole. There are indeed many of this class in both, but there are also many native Americans, sturdy, self-reliant, enterprising, and courageous men. The peculiar group psychology which we are compelled to study is less the result of those subtle and complex factors which are comprehended in the vague term "race" than of the political and economic conditions by which the group concerned is environed. The typical native-born I.W.W. member, the "Wobbly" one frequently encounters in our mid-western and western cities, is very unlike the hideous and repulsive figure conjured up by sensational cartoonists. He is much more likely to be a very attractive sort of man. Here are some characteristics of the type: figure robust, sturdy, and virile; dress rough but not unclean; speech forthright, deliberate, and bold; features intelligent, frank, and free from signs of alcoholic dissipation; movements slow and leisurely as of one averse to over-exertion. There are thousands of "wobblies" to whom the specifications of this description will apply. Conversation with these men reveals that, as a general rule, they are above rather than below the average in sobriety. They are generally free from family ties, being either unmarried or, as often happens, wife-deserters. They are not highly educated, few having attended any school beyond the grammar-school grade. Many of them have, however, read a great deal more than the average man, though their reading has been curiously miscellaneous in selection and nearly always badly balanced. Theology, philosophy, sociology, and economics seem to attract most attention. In discussion--and every "Wobbly" seems to possess a passion for disputation--men of this type will manifest a surprising familiarity with the broad outlines of certain theological problems, as well as with the scriptural texts bearing upon them. It is very likely to be the case, however, that they have only read a few popular classics of what used to be called rationalism--Paine's _Age of Reason_, Ingersoll's lectures in pamphlet form, and Haeckel's _Riddle of the Universe_ are typical. A surprisingly large number can quote extensively from Buckle's _History of Civilization_ and from the writings of Marx. They quote statistics freely--statistics of wages, poverty, crime, vice, and so on--generally derived from the radical press and implicitly believed because so published, with what they accept as adequate authority. Their most marked peculiarity is the migratory nature of their lives. Whether this is self-determined, a matter of temperament and habit, or due to uncontrollable factors, it is largely responsible for the contempt in which they are popularly held. It naturally brings upon them the reproach and resentment everywhere visited upon "tramps" and "vagabonds." They rarely remain long enough in any one place to form local attachments and ties or anything like civic pride. They move from job to job, city to city, state to state, sometimes tramping afoot, begging as they go; sometimes stealing rides on railway trains, in freight cars--"side-door Pullmans"--or on the rods underneath the cars. Frequently arrested for begging, trespassing, or stealing rides, they are often victims of injustice at the hands of local judges and justices. The absence of friends, combined with the prejudice against vagrants which everywhere exists, subjects them to arbitrary and high-handed injustice such as no other body of American citizens has to endure. Moreover, through the conditions of their existence they are readily suspected of crimes they do not commit; it is all too easy for the hard-pushed police officer or sheriff to impute a crime to the lone and defenseless "Wobbly," who frequently can produce no testimony to prove his innocence, simply because he has no friends in the neighborhood and has been at pains to conceal his movements. In this manner the "Wobbly" becomes a veritable son of Ishmael, his hand against the hand of nearly every man in conventional society. In particular he becomes a rebel by habit, hating the police and the courts as his constant enemies. Doubtless the great majority of these men are temperamentally predisposed to the unanchored, adventurous, migratory existence which they lead. Boys so constituted run away to sea, take jobs with traveling circuses, or enlist as soldiers. The type is familiar and not uncommon. Such individuals cannot be content with the prosaic, humdrum, monotonous life of regular employment. As a rule we do not look upon this trait in boy or man as criminal. Many a hardworking, intelligent American, who from choice or from necessity is a migratory worker, following his job, never has an opportunity to vote for state legislators, for governor, for congressman or president. He is just as effectively excluded from the actual electorate as if he were a Chinese coolie, ignorant of our customs and our speech. We cannot wonder that such conditions prove prolific breeders of bolshevism and similar "isms." It would be strange indeed if it were otherwise. We have no right to expect that men who are so constantly the victims of arbitrary, unjust, and even brutal treatment at the hands of our police and our courts will manifest any reverence for the law and the judicial system. Respect for majority rule in government cannot fairly be demanded from a disfranchised group. It is not to be wondered at that the old slogan of socialism, "Strike at the ballot-box!"--the call to lift the struggle of the classes to the parliamentary level for peaceful settlement--becomes the desperate, anarchistic I.W.W. slogan, "Strike at the ballot-box with an ax!" Men who can have no family life cannot justly be expected to bother about school administration. Men who can have no home life but only dreary shelter in crowded work-camps or dirty doss-houses are not going to bother themselves with municipal housing reforms. In short, we must wake up to the fact that, as the very heart of our problem, we have a bolshevist nucleus in America composed of virile, red-blooded Americans, racy of our soil and history, whose conditions of life and labor are such as to develop in them the psychology of reckless, despairing, revengeful bolshevism. They really are little concerned with theories of the state and of social development, which to our intellectuals seem to be the essence of bolshevism. They are vitally concerned only with action. Syndicalism and bolshevism involve speedy and drastic action--hence the force of their appeal. Finally, if we would understand why millions of people in all lands have turned away from old ideals, old loyalties, and old faiths to bolshevism, with something of the passion and frenzy characteristic of great messianic movements, we must take into account the intense spiritual agony and hunger which the Great War has brought into the lives of civilized men. The old gods are dead and men are everywhere expectantly waiting for the new gods to arise. The aftermath of the war is a spiritual cataclysm such as civilized mankind has never before known. The old religions and moralities are shattered and men are waiting and striving for new ones. It is a time suggestive of the birth of new religions. Man cannot live as yet without faith, without some sort of religion. The heart of the world today is strained with yearning for new and living faiths to replace the old faiths which are dead. Were some persuasive fanatic to arise proclaiming himself to be a new Messiah, and preaching the religion of action, the creation of a new society, he would find an eager, soul-hungry world already predisposed to believe. 4. Mass Movements and Institutions: Methodism[312] The corruption of manners which has been general since the restoration was combated by societies for "the reformation of manners," which in the last years of the seventeenth century acquired extraordinary dimensions. They began in certain private societies which arose in the reign of James II, chiefly under the auspices of Beveridge and Bishop Horneck. These societies were at first purely devotional, and they appear to have been almost identical in character with those of the early Methodists. They held prayer meetings, weekly communions, and Bible-readings; they sustained charities and distributed religious books, and they cultivated a warmer and more ascetic type of devotion than was common in the Church. Societies of this description sprang up in almost every considerable city in England and even in several of those in Ireland. In the last years of the seventeenth century we find no less than ten of them in Dublin. Without, however, altogether discarding their first character, they assumed, about 1695, new and very important functions. They divided themselves into several distinct groups, undertaking the discovery and suppression of houses of ill fame, and the prosecution of swearers, drunkards, and Sabbath-breakers. They became a kind of voluntary police, acting largely as spies, and enforcing the laws against religious offenses. The energy with which this scheme was carried out is very remarkable. As many as seventy or eighty persons were often prosecuted in London and Westminster for cursing and swearing, in a single week. Sunday markets, which had hitherto been not uncommon, were effectually suppressed. Hundreds of disorderly houses were closed. Forty or fifty night-walkers were sent every week to Bridewell, and numbers were induced to emigrate to the colonies. A great part of the fines levied for these offenses was bestowed on the poor. In the fortieth annual report of the "Societies for the Reformation of Manners" which appeared in 1735, it was stated that the number of prosecutions for debauchery and profaneness in London and Westminster alone, since the foundation of the societies, had been 99,380. The term Methodist was a college nickname bestowed upon a small society of students at Oxford, who met together between 1729 and 1735 for the purpose of mutual improvement. They were accustomed to communicate every week, to fast regularly on Wednesdays and Fridays, and on most days during Lent; to read and discuss the Bible in common, to abstain from most forms of amusement and luxury, and to visit sick persons and prisoners in the gaol. John Wesley, the future leader of the religious revival of the eighteenth century, was the master-spirit of this society. The society hardly numbered more than fifteen members, and was the object of much ridicule at the university; but it included some men who afterward played considerable parts in the world. Among them was Charles, the younger brother of John Wesley, whose hymns became the favorite poetry of the sect, and whose gentler, more submissive, and more amiable character, though less fitted than that of his brother for the great conflicts of public life, was very useful in moderating the movement, and in drawing converts to it by personal influence. Charles Wesley appears to have originated the society at Oxford; he brought Whitefield into its pale, and besides being the most popular poet he was one of the most persuasive preachers of the movement. In the course of 1738 the chief elements of the movement were already formed. Whitefield had returned from Georgia, Charles Wesley had begun to preach the doctrine with extraordinary effect to the criminals in Newgate and from every pulpit into which he was admitted. Methodist societies had already sprung up under Moravian influence. They were in part a continuation of the society at Oxford, in part a revival of those religious societies that have been already noticed as so common after the Revolution. The design of each was to be a church within a church, a seedplot of a more fervent piety, the center of a stricter discipline and a more energetic propagandism than existed in religious communities at large. In these societies the old Christian custom of love-feasts was revived. The members sometimes passed almost the whole night in the most passionate devotions, and voluntarily submitted to a spiritual tyranny that could hardly be surpassed in a Catholic monastery. They were to meet every week, to make an open and particular confession of every frailty, to submit to be crossexamined on all their thoughts, words, and deeds. The following among others were the questions asked at every meeting: "What known sin have you committed since our last meeting? What temptations have you met with? How were you delivered? What have you thought, said, or done of which you doubt whether it be sin or not? Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?" Such rules could only have been accepted under the influence of an overpowering religious enthusiasm, and there was much truth in the judgment which the elder brother of John Wesley passed upon them in 1739. "Their societies," he wrote to their mother, "are sufficient to dissolve all other societies but their own. Will any man of common sense or spirit suffer any domestic to be in a band engaged to relate to five or ten people everything without reserve that concerns the person's conscience how much soever it may concern the family? Ought any married persons to be there unless husband and wife be there together?" From this time the leaders of the movement became the most active of missionaries. Without any fixed parishes they wandered from place to place, proclaiming their new doctrine in every pulpit to which they were admitted, and they speedily awoke a passionate enthusiasm and a bitter hostility in the Church. We may blame, but we can hardly, I think, wonder at the hostility all this aroused among the clergy. It is, indeed, certain that Wesley and Whitefield were at this time doing more than any other contemporary clergymen to kindle a living piety among the people. Yet before the end of 1738 the Methodist leaders were excluded from most of the pulpits of the Church, and were thus compelled, unless they consented to relinquish what they considered a Divine mission, to take steps in the direction of separation. Two important measures of this nature were taken in 1739. One of them was the creation of Methodist chapels, which were intended not to oppose or replace, but to be supplemental and ancillary to, the churches, and to secure that the doctrine of the new birth should be faithfully taught to the people. The other and still more important event was the institution by Whitefield of field-preaching. The idea had occurred to him in London, where he found congregations too numerous for the church in which he preached, but the first actual step was taken in the neighborhood of Bristol. At a time when he was himself excluded from the pulpits at Bristol, and was thus deprived of the chief normal means of exercising his talents, his attention was called to the condition of the colliers at Kingswood. He was filled with horror and compassion at finding in the heart of a Christian country, and in the immediate neighborhood of a great city, a population of many thousands, sunk in the most brutal ignorance and vice, and entirely excluded from the ordinances of religion. Moved by such feelings, he resolved to address the colliers in their own haunts. The resolution was a bold one, for field-preaching was then utterly unknown in England, and it needed no common courage to brave all the obloquy and derision it must provoke, and to commence the experiment in the center of a half-savage population. Whitefield, however, had a just confidence in his cause and in his powers. Standing himself upon a hillside, he took for his text the first words of the sermon which was spoken from the Mount, and he addressed with his accustomed fire an astonished audience of some two hundred men. The fame of his eloquence spread far and wide. On successive occasions, five, ten, fifteen, even twenty thousand were present. It was February, but the winter sun shone clear and bright. The lanes were filled with carriages of the more wealthy citizens, whom curiosity had drawn from Bristol. The trees and hedges were crowded with humbler listeners, and the fields were darkened by a compact mass. The voice of the great preacher pealed with a thrilling power to the outskirts of that mighty throng. The picturesque novelty of the occasion and of the scene, the contagious emotion of so great a multitude, a deep sense of the condition of his hearers and of the momentous importance of the step he was taking, gave an additional solemnity to his eloquence. His rude auditors were electrified. They stood for a time in rapt and motionless attention. Soon tears might be seen forming white gutters down cheeks blackened from the coal mine. Then sobs and groans told how hard hearts were melting at his words. A fire was kindled among the outcasts of Kingswood which burnt long and fiercely, and was destined in a few years to overspread the land. But for the simultaneous appearance of a great orator and a great statesman, Methodism would probably have smouldered and at last perished like the very similar religious societies of the preceding century. Whitefield was utterly destitute of the organizing skill which could alone give a permanence to the movement, and no talent is naturally more ephemeral than popular oratory; while Wesley, though a great and impressive preacher, could scarcely have kindled a general enthusiasm had he not been assisted by an orator who had an unrivaled power of moving the passions of the ignorant. The institution of field-preaching by Whitefield in the February of 1739 carried the impulse through the great masses of the poor, while the foundation by Wesley, in the May of the same year, of the first Methodist chapel was the beginning of an organized body capable of securing and perpetuating the results that had been achieved. From the time of the institution of lay preachers Methodism became in a great degree independent of the Established Church. Its chapels multiplied in the great towns, and its itinerant missionaries penetrated to the most secluded districts. They were accustomed to preach in fields and gardens, in streets and lecture-rooms, in market places and churchyards. On one occasion we find Whitefield at a fair mounting a stage which had been erected for some wrestlers, and there denouncing the pleasures of the world; on another, preaching among the mountebanks at Moorfields; on a third, attracting around his pulpit ten thousand of the spectators at a race course; on a fourth, standing beside the gallows at an execution to speak of death and of eternity. Wesley, when excluded from the pulpit of Epworth, delivered some of his most impressive sermons in the churchyard, standing on his father's tomb. Howell Harris, the apostle of Wales, encountering a party of mountebanks, sprang into their midst exclaiming, in a solemn voice, "Let us pray," and then proceeded to thunder forth the judgments of the Lord. Rowland Hill was accustomed to visit the great towns on market day in order that he might address the people in the market place, and to go from fair to fair preaching among the revelers from his favorite text, "Come out from among them." In this manner the Methodist preachers came in contact with the most savage elements of the population, and there were few forms of mob violence they did not experience. In 1741 one of their preachers named Seward, after repeated ill treatment in Wales, was at last struck on the head while preaching at Monmouth, and died of the blow. In a riot, while Wheatley was preaching at Norwich, a poor woman with child perished from the kicks and blows of the mob. At Dublin, Whitefield was almost stoned to death. At Exeter he was stoned in the very presence of the bishop. At Plymouth he was violently assaulted and his life seriously threatened by a naval officer. Scenes of this kind were of continual occurrence, and they were interspersed with other persecutions of a less dangerous description. Drums were beaten, horns blown, guns let off, and blacksmiths hired to ply their noisy trade in order to drown the voices of the preachers. Once, at the very moment when Whitefield announced his text, the belfry gave out a peal loud enough to make him inaudible. On other occasions packs of hounds were brought with the same object, and once, in order to excite the dogs to fury, a live cat in a cage was placed in their midst. Fire engines poured streams of fetid water upon the congregation. Stones fell so thickly that the faces of many grew crimson with blood. At Hoxton the mob drove an ox into the midst of the congregation. At Pensford the rabble, who had been baiting a bull, concluded their sport by driving the torn and tired animal full against the table on which Wesley was preaching. Sometimes we find innkeepers refusing to receive the Methodist leaders in their inns, farmers entering into an agreement to dismiss every laborer who attended a Methodist preacher, landlords expelling all Methodists from their cottages, masters dismissing their servants because they had joined the sect. The magistrates, who knew by experience that the presence of a Methodist preacher was the usual precursor of disturbance and riot, looked on them with the greatest disfavor, and often scandalously connived at the persecutions they underwent. It was frequently observed by Wesley that his preaching rarely affected the rich and the educated. It was over the ignorant and the credulous that it exercised its most appalling power, and it is difficult to overrate the mental anguish it must sometimes have produced. Timid and desponding natures unable to convince themselves that they had undergone a supernatural change, gentle and affectionate natures who believed that those who were dearest to them were descending into everlasting fire, must have often experienced pangs compared with which the torments of the martyr were insignificant. The confident assertions of the Methodist preacher and the ghastly images he continually evoked poisoned their imaginations, haunted them in every hour of weakness or depression, discolored all their judgments of the world, and added a tenfold horror to the darkness of the grave. Sufferings of this description, though among the most real and the most terrible that superstition can inflict, are so hidden in their nature that they leave few traces in history; but it is impossible to read the journals of Wesley without feeling that they were most widely diffused. Many were thrown into paroxysms of extreme, though usually transient, agony; many doubtless nursed a secret sorrow which corroded all the happiness of their lives, while not a few became literally insane. On one occasion Wesley was called to the bedside of a young woman at Kingswood. He tells us: She was nineteen or twenty years old, but, it seems, could not write or read. I found her on the bed, two or three persons holding her. It was a terrible sight. Anguish, horror, and despair above all description appeared in her pale face. The thousand distortions of her whole body showed how the dogs of hell were gnawing at her heart. The shrieks intermixed were scarce to be endured. But her stony eyes could not weep. She screamed out as soon as words could find their way, "I am damned, damned, lost forever: six days ago you might have helped me. But it is past. I am the devil's now.... I will go with him to hell. I cannot be saved." They sang a hymn, and for a time she sank to rest, but soon broke out anew in incoherent exclamations, "Break, break, poor stony hearts! Will you not break? What more can be done for stony hearts? I am damned that you may be saved!"... She then fixed her eyes in the corner of the ceiling, and said, "There he is, ay, there he is! Come, good devil, come! Take me away."... We interrupted her by calling again on God, on which she sank down as before, and another young woman began to roar out as loud as she had done. For more than two hours Wesley and his brother continued praying over her. At last the paroxysms subsided and the patient joined in a hymn of praise. In the intense religious enthusiasm that was generated, many of the ties of life were snapped in twain. Children treated with contempt the commands of their parents, students the rules of their colleges, clergymen the discipline of their Church. The whole structure of society, and almost all the amusements of life, appeared criminal. The fairs, the mountebanks, the public rejoicings of the people, were all Satanic. It was sinful for a woman to wear any gold ornament or any brilliant dress. It was even sinful for a man to exercise the common prudence of laying by a certain portion of his income. When Whitefield proposed to a lady to marry him, he thought it necessary to say, "I bless God, if I know anything of my own heart, I am free from that foolish passion which the world calls love." "I trust I love you only for God, and desire to be joined to you only by His commands, and for His sake." It is perhaps not very surprising that Whitefield's marriage, like that of Wesley, proved very unhappy. Theaters and the reading of plays were absolutely condemned, and Methodists employed all their influence with the authorities to prevent the erection of the former. It seems to have been regarded as a divine judgment that once, when _Macbeth_ was being acted at Drury Lane, a real thunderstorm mingled with the mimic thunder in the witch scene. Dancing was, if possible, even worse than the theater. "Dancers," said Whitefield, "please the devil at every step"; and it was said that his visit to a town usually put "a stop to the dancing-school, the assemblies, and every pleasant thing." He made it his mission to "bear testimony against the detestable diversions of this generation"; and he declared that no "recreations, considered as such, can be innocent." Accompanying this asceticism we find an extraordinary revival of the grossest superstition. It was a natural consequence of the essentially emotional character of Methodism that its disciples should imagine that every strong feeling or impulse within them was a direct inspiration of God or Satan. The language of Whitefield--the language in a great degree of all the members of the sect--was that of men who were at once continually inspired and the continual objects of miraculous interposition. In every perplexity they imagined that, by casting lots or opening their Bibles at random, they could obtain a supernatural answer to their inquiries. In all matters relating to Satanic interference, Wesley was especially credulous. "I cannot give up to all the Deists in Great Britain the existence of witchcraft till I give up the credit of all history, sacred and profane." He had no doubt that the physical contortions into which so many of his hearers fell were due to the direct agency of Satan, who tore the converts as they were coming to Christ. He had himself seen men and women who were literally possessed by devils; he had witnessed forms of madness which were not natural, but diabolical, and he had experienced in his own person the hysterical affections which resulted from supernatural agency. If Satanic agencies continually convulsed those who were coming to the faith, divine judgments as frequently struck down those who opposed it. Every illness, every misfortune that befell an opponent, was believed to be supernatural. Molther, the Moravian minister, shortly after the Methodists had separated from the Moravians, was seized with a passing illness. "I believe," wrote Wesley, "it was the hand of God that was upon him." Numerous cases were cited of sudden and fearful judgments which fell upon the adversaries of the cause. A clergyman at Bristol, standing up to preach against the Methodists, "was suddenly seized with a rattling in his throat, attended with a hideous groaning," and on the next Sunday he died. At Todmorden a minister was struck with a violent fit of palsy immediately after preaching against the Methodists. At Enniscorthy a clergyman, having preached for some time against Methodism, deferred the conclusion of the discourse to the following Sunday. Next morning he was raging mad, imagined that devils were about him, "and not long after, without showing the least sign of hope, he went to his account." At Kingswood a man began a vehement invective against Wesley and Methodism. "In the midst he was struck raving mad." A woman, seeing a crowd waiting for Wesley at the church door, exclaimed, "They are waiting for their God." She at once fell senseless to the ground, and next day expired. "A party of young men rode up to Richmond to disturb the sermons of Rowland Hill. The boat sank, and all of them were drowned." At Sheffield the captain of a gang who had long troubled the field-preachers, was bathing with his companions. "Another dip," he said, "and then for a bit of sport with the Methodists." He dived, struck his head against a stone, and appeared no more. By such anecdotes and by such beliefs a fever of enthusiasm was sustained. But with all its divisions and defects the movement was unquestionably effecting a great moral revolution in England. It was essentially a popular movement, exercising its deepest influence over the lower and middle classes. Some of its leaders were men of real genius, but in general the Methodist teacher had little sympathy with the more educated of his fellow-countrymen. To an ordinarily cultivated mind there was something extremely repulsive in his tears and groans and amorous ejaculations, in the coarse and anthropomorphic familiarity and the unwavering dogmatism with which he dealt with the most sacred subjects, in the narrowness of his theory of life and his utter insensibility to many of the influences that expand and embellish it, in the mingled credulity and self-confidence with which he imagined that the whole course of nature was altered for his convenience. But the very qualities that impaired his influence in one sphere enhanced it in another. His impassioned prayers and exhortations stirred the hearts of multitudes whom a more decorous teaching had left absolutely callous. The supernatural atmosphere of miracles, judgments, and inspirations in which he moved, invested the most prosaic life with a halo of romance. The doctrines he taught, the theory of life he enforced, proved themselves capable of arousing in great masses of men an enthusiasm of piety which was hardly surpassed in the first days of Christianity, of eradicating inveterate vice, of fixing and directing impulsive and tempestuous natures that were rapidly hastening toward the abyss. Out of the profligate slave-dealer, John Newton, Methodism formed one of the purest and most unselfish of saints. It taught criminals in Newgate to mount the gallows in an ecstasy of rapturous devotion. It planted a fervid and enduring religious sentiment in the midst of the most brutal and most neglected portions of the population, and whatever may have been its vices or its defects, it undoubtedly emancipated great numbers from the fear of death, and imparted a warmer tone to the devotion and a greater energy to the philanthropy of every denomination both in England and the colonies. III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS 1. Social Unrest The term collective behavior, which has been used elsewhere to include all the facts of group life, has been limited for the purposes of this chapter to those phenomena which exhibit in the most obvious and elementary way the processes by which societies are disintegrated into their constituent elements and the processes by which these elements are brought together again into new relations to form new organizations and new societies. Some years ago John Graham Brooks wrote a popular treatise on the labor situation in the United States. He called the volume _Social Unrest_. The term was, even at that time, a familiar one. Since then the word unrest, in both its substantive and adjective forms, has gained wide usage. We speak in reference to the notorious disposition of the native American to move from one part of the country to another, of his restless blood, as if restlessness was a native American trait transmitted in the blood. We speak more often of the "restless age," as if mobility and the desire for novelty and new experience were peculiarly characteristic of the twentieth century. We use the word to describe conditions in different regions of social life in such expressions as "political," "religious," and "labor" unrest, and in every case the word is used in a sense that indicates change, but change that menaces the existing order. Finally, we speak of the "restless woman," as of a peculiar modern type, characteristic of the changed status of women in general in the modern world. In all these different uses we may observe the gradual unfolding of the concept which seems to have been implicit in the word as it was first used. It is the concept of an activity in response to some urgent organic impulse which the activity, however, does not satisfy. It is a diagnostic symptom, a symptom of what Graham Wallas calls "balked disposition." It is a sign that in the existing situation some one or more of the four wishes--security, new experience, recognition, and response--has not been and is not adequately realized. The fact that the symptom is social, that it is contagious, is an indication that the situations that provoke it are social, that is to say, general in the community or the group where the unrest manifests itself. [313] The materials in which the term unrest is used in the sense indicated are in the popular discussions of social questions. The term is not defined but it is frequently used in connection with descriptions of conditions which are evidently responsible for it. Labor strikes are evidences of social unrest, and the literature already referred to in the chapter on "Conflict"[1] shows the conditions under which unrest arises, is provoked and exploited in labor situations. The relation of unrest to routine and fatigue has been the subject of a good deal of discussion and some investigation. The popular conception is that labor unrest is due to the dull driving routine of machine industry. The matter needs further study. The actual mental experiences of the different sexes, ages, temperamental and mental types under the influence of routine would add a much needed body of fact to our present psychology of the worker. 2. Psychic Epidemics If social unrest is a symptom of disorganization, then the psychic epidemics, in which all the phenomena of social unrest and contagion are intensified, is evidence positive that disorganization exists. Social disorganization must be considered in relation to reorganization. All change involves a certain amount of disorganization. In order that an individual may make new adjustments and establish new habits it is inevitable that old habits should be broken up, and in order that society may reform an existing social order a certain amount of disorganization is inevitable. Social unrest may be, therefore, a symptom of health. It is only when the process of disorganization goes on so rapidly and to such an extent that the whole existing social structure is impaired, and society is, for that reason, not able to readjust itself, that unrest is to be regarded as a pathological symptom. There is reason to believe, contrary to the popular conception, that the immigrant in America, particularly in the urban environment, accommodates himself too quickly rather than too slowly to American life. Statistics show, particularly in the second generation, a notable increase in juvenile delinquency, and this seems to be due to the fact that in America the relation between parents and children is reversed. Owing to the children's better knowledge of English and their more rapid accommodation to the conditions of American life, parents become dependent upon their children rather than the children dependent upon their parents. Social epidemics, however, are evidence of a social disintegration due to more fundamental and widespread disorders. The literature has recorded the facts but writers have usually interpreted the phenomena in medical rather than sociological terms. Stoll, in his very interesting but rather miscellaneous collection of materials upon primitive life, disposes of the phenomena by giving them another name. His volume is entitled _Suggestion and Hypnotism in Folk Psychology_.[314] Friedmann, in his monograph, _Über Wahnideen im Völkerleben_, is disposed as a psychiatrist to treat the whole matter as a form of "social" insanity. 3. Mass Movements In spite of the abundance of materials on the subject of mass movements no attempt has been made as yet to collect and classify them. There have been a number of interesting books in the field of collective psychology, so called mainly by French and Italian writers--Sighele, Rossi, Tarde, and Le Bon--but they are not based on a systematic study of cases. The general assumption has been that the facts are so obvious that any attempt to study systematically the mechanisms involved would amount to little more than academic elaboration of what is already obvious, a restatement in more abstract terms of what is already familiar. On the other hand, shepherds and cowboys, out of their experience in handling cattle and sheep, have learned that the flock and the herd have quite peculiar and characteristic modes of collective behavior which it is necessary to know if one is to handle them successfully. At the same time, practical politicians who make a profession of herding voters, getting them out to the polls at the times they are needed and determining for them, by the familiar campaign devices, the persons and the issues for which they are to cast their ballots, have worked out very definite methods for dealing with masses of people, so that they are able to predict the outcome with considerable accuracy far in advance of an election and make their dispositions accordingly. Political manipulation of the movements and tendencies of popular opinion has now reached a point of perfection where it can and will be studied systematically. During the world-war it was studied, and all the knowledge which advertisers, newspaper men, and psychologists possessed was used to win the war. Propaganda is now recognized as part of the grand strategy of war. Not only political and diplomatic victories, but battles were won during the world-war by the aid of this insidious weapon. The great victory of the Austrian and German armies at Caporetto which in a few days wiped out all the hard-won successes of the Italian armies was prepared by a psychic attack on the morale of the troops at the front and a defeatist campaign among the Italian population back of the lines. In the battle of Caporetto the morale of the troops at the front was undermined by sending postal cards and letters to individual soldiers stating that their wives were in illicit relations with officers and soldiers of the allies. Copies of Roman and Milanese newspapers were forged and absolute facsimiles of familiar journals were secretly distributed or dropped from Austrian aeroplanes over the Italian lines. These papers contained sensational articles telling the Italians that Austria was in revolt, that Emperor Charles had been killed. Accompanying these were other articles describing bread riots throughout Italy and stating that the Italian government, unable to quell them with its own forces, had sent British and French re-enforcing troops and even Zulus into the cities, and that these troops were shooting down women and children and priests without mercy. This attack upon the morale of the troops was followed by an unforeseen assault upon a quiet sector, which succeeded in piercing the line at numerous points. In the confusion that followed the whole structure of the defense crumbled, and the result was disastrous. When the final history of the world-war comes to be written, one of its most interesting chapters will be a description of the methods and devices which were used by the armies on both sides to destroy the will to war in the troops and among the peoples behind the lines. If the application of modern science to war has multiplied the engines of destruction, the increase of communication and the interpenetration of peoples has given war among civilized peoples the character of an internal and internecine struggle. Under these circumstances propaganda, in the sense of an insidious exploitation of the sources of dissension and unrest, may as completely change the character of wars of peoples as they were once changed by the invention of gunpowder. In this field there is room for investigation and study, for almost all attempts thus far made to put advertising on a scientific basis have been made by students of individual rather than social psychology. 4. Revivals, Religious and Linguistic For something more than a hundred years Europe has experienced a series of linguistic and literary revivals, that is to say revivals of the folk languages and the folk cultures. The folk languages are the speech of peoples who have been conquered but not yet culturally absorbed by the dominant language group. They are mostly isolated rural populations who have remained to a large extent outside of the cosmopolitan cultures of the cities. These people while not wholly illiterate have never had enough education in the language of the dominant peoples of the cities to enable them to use this alien speech as a medium of education. The consequence is that, except for a relatively small group of intellectuals, they have been cut off from the main current of European life and culture. These linguistic revivals have not been confined to any one nation, since every nation in Europe turns out upon analysis to be a mosaic of minor nationalities and smaller cultural enclaves in which the languages of little and forgotten peoples have been preserved. Linguistic revivals have, in fact, been well-nigh universal. They have taken place in France, Spain, Norway, Denmark, in most of the Balkan States, including Albania, the most isolated of them all, and in all the smaller nationalities along the Slavic-German border--Finland, Esthonia, Letvia, Lithuania, Poland, Bohemia, Slovakia, Roumania, and the Ukraine. Finally, among the Jews of Eastern Europe, there has been the Haskala Movement, as the Jews of Eastern Europe call their period of enlightenment, a movement that has quite unintentionally made the Judeo-German dialect (Yiddish) a literary language. At first blush, it seems strange that the revivals of the folk speech should have come at a time when the locomotive and the telegraph were extending commerce and communication to the uttermost limits of the earth, when all barriers were breaking down, and the steady expansion of cosmopolitan life and the organization of the Great Society, as Graham Wallas has called it, seemed destined to banish all the minor languages, dialects, and obsolescent forms of speech, the last props of an international provincialism, to the limbo of forgotten things. The competition of the world-languages was already keen; all the little and forgotten peoples of Europe--the Finns, Letts, Ukrainians, Russo-Carpathians, Slovaks, Slovenians, Croatians, the Catalonians of eastern Spain, whose language, by the way, dates back to a period before the Roman Conquest, the Czechs, and the Poles--began to set up presses and establish schools to revive and perpetuate their several racial languages. To those who, at this time, were looking forward to world-organization and a universal peace through the medium of a universal language, all this agitation had the appearance of an anachronism, not to say a heresy. It seemed a deliberate attempt to set up barriers, where progress demanded that they should be torn down. The success of such a movement, it seemed, must be to bring about a more complete isolation of the peoples, to imprison them, so to speak, in their own languages, and so cut them off from the general culture of Europe.[315] The actual effect has been different from what was expected. It is difficult, and for the masses of the people impossible, to learn through the medium of a language that they do not speak. The results of the efforts to cultivate Swedish and Russian in Finland, Polish and Russian in Lithuania, Magyar in Slovakia and at the same time to prohibit the publication of books and newspapers in the mother-tongue of the country has been, in the first place, to create an artificial illiteracy and, in the second, to create in the minds of native peoples a sense of social and intellectual inferiority to the alien and dominant race. The effect of the literary revival of the spoken language, however, has been to create, in spite of the efforts to suppress it, a vernacular press which opened the gates of western culture to great masses of people for whom it did not previously exist. The result has been a great cultural awakening, a genuine renaissance, which has had profound reverberations on the political and social life of Europe. The literary revival of the folk speech in Europe has invariably been a prelude to the revival of the national spirit in subject peoples. The sentiment of nationality has its roots in memories that attach to the common possessions of the people, the land, the religion, and the language, but particularly the language. Bohemian patriots have a saying, "As long as the language lives, the nation is not dead." In an address in 1904 Jorgen Levland, who was afterward Premier of Norway, in a plea for "freedom with self-government, home, land, and our own language," made this statement: "Political freedom is not the deepest and greatest. Greater is it for a nation to preserve her intellectual inheritance in her native tongue." The revival of the national consciousness in the subject peoples has invariably been connected with the struggle to maintain a press in the native language. The reason is that it was through the medium of the national press that the literary and linguistic revivals took place. Conversely, the efforts to suppress the rising national consciousness took the form of an effort to censor or suppress the national press. There were nowhere attempts to suppress the spoken language as such. On the other hand, it was only as the spoken language succeeded in becoming a medium of literary expression that it was possible to preserve it under modern conditions and maintain in this way the national solidarity. When the Lithuanians, for example, were condemned to get their education and their culture through the medium of a language not their own, the effect was to denationalize the literate class and to make its members aliens to their own people. If there was no national press, there could be no national schools, and, indeed, no national church. It was for this reason that the struggle to maintain the national language and the national culture has always been a struggle to maintain a national press. European nationalists, seeking to revive among their peoples the national consciousness, have invariably sought to restore the national speech, to purge it of foreign idioms, and emphasize every mark which serves to distinguish it from the languages with which it tended to fuse.[316] Investigation of these linguistic revivals and the nationalist movement that has grown out of them indicates that there is a very intimate relation between nationalist and religious movements. Both of them are fundamentally cultural movements with incidental political consequences. The movement which resulted in the reorganization of rural life in Denmark, the movement that found expression in so unique an institution as the rural high schools of Denmark, was begun by Bishop Grundtvig, called the Luther of Denmark, and was at once a religious and a nationalist movement. The rural high schools are for this reason not like anything in the way of education with which people outside of Denmark are familiar. They are not technical schools but cultural institutions in the narrowest, or broadest, sense of that term.[317] The teaching is "scientific," but at the same time "inspirational." They are what a Sunday school might be if it were not held on Sunday and was organized as Mr. H. G. Wells would organize it and with such a bible as he would like to have someone write for us.[318] The popular accounts which we have of religious revivals do not at first suggest any very definite relations, either psychological or sociological, between them and the literary revivals to which reference has just been made. Religious revivals, particularly as described by dispassionate observers, have the appearance of something bizarre, fantastic, and wild, as indeed they often are. What must strike the thoughtful observer, however, is the marked similarity of these collective religious excitements, whether among civilized or savage peoples and at places and periods remote in time and in space. Frederick Morgan Davenport, who has collected and compared the materials in this field from contemporary sources, calls attention in the title of his volume, _Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals_, to this fundamental similarity of the phenomena. Whatever else the word "primitive" may mean in this connection it does mean that the phenomena of religious revivals are fundamentally human. From the frantic and disheveled dances of the Bacchantes, following a wine cart through an ancient Greek village, to the shouts and groans of the mourners' bench of an old-time Methodist camp-meeting, religious excitement has always stirred human nature more profoundly than any other emotion except that of passionate love. In the volume by Jean Pélissier, _The Chief Makers of the National Lithuanian Renaissance_ (_Les Principaux artisans de la renaissance nationale lituanienne_), there is a paragraph describing the conversion of a certain Dr. Kudirka, a Lithuanian patriot, to the cause of Lithuanian nationality. It reads like a chapter from William James's _The Varieties of Religious Experience_.[319] It is materials like this that indicate how close and intimate are the relations between cultural movements, whether religious or literary and national, at least in their formal expression. The question that remains to be answered is: In what ways do they differ? 5. Fashion, Reform and Revolution A great deal has been written in recent times in regard to fashion. It has been studied, for example, as an economic phenomenon. Sombart has written a suggestive little monograph on the subject. It is in the interest of machine industry that fashions should be standardized over a wide area, and it is the function of advertising to achieve this result. It is also of interest to commerce that fashions should change and this also is largely, but not wholly, a matter of advertising. Tarde distinguishes between custom and fashion as the two forms in which all cultural traits are transmitted. "In periods when custom is in the ascendant, men are more infatuated about their country than about their time; for it is the past which is pre-eminently praised. In ages when fashion rules, men are prouder, on the contrary, of their time than of their country."[320] The most acute analysis that has been made of fashion is contained in the observation of Sumner in _Folkways_. Sumner pointed out that fashion though differing from, is intimately related to, the mores. Fashion fixes the attention of the community at a given time and place and by so doing determines what is sometimes called the Spirit of the Age, the _Zeitgeist_. By the introduction of new fashions the leaders of society gain that distinction in the community by which they are able to maintain their prestige and so maintain their position as leaders. But in doing this, they too are influenced by the fashions which they introduce. Eventually changes in fashion affect the mores.[321] Fashion is related to reform and to revolution, because it is one of the fundamental ways in which social changes take place and because, like reform and revolution, it also is related to the mores. Fashion is distinguished from reform by the fact that the changes it introduces are wholly irrational if not at the same time wholly unpredictable. Reform, on the other hand, is nothing if not rational. It achieves its ends by agitation and discussion. Attempts have been made to introduce fashions by agitation, but they have not succeeded. On the other hand, reform is itself a fashion and has largely absorbed in recent years the interest that was formerly bestowed on party politics. There has been a great deal written about reforms but almost nothing about _reform_. It is a definite type of collective behavior which has come into existence and gained popularity under conditions of modern life. The reformer and the agitator, likewise, are definite, temperamental, and social types. Reform tends under modern conditions to become a vocation and a profession like that of the politician. The profession of the reformer, however, is social, as distinguished from party politics. Reform is not revolution. It does not seek to change the mores but rather to change conditions in conformity with the mores. There have been revolutionary reformers. Joseph II of Austria and Peter the Great of Russia were reformers of that type. But revolutionary reforms have usually failed. They failed lamentably in the case of Joseph II and produced many very dubious results under Peter. A revolution is a mass movement which seeks to change the mores by destroying the existing social order. Great and silent revolutionary changes have frequently taken place in modern times, but as these changes were not recognized at the time and were not directly sought by any party they are not usually called revolutions. They might properly be called "historical revolutions," since they are not recognized as revolutions until they are history. There is probably a definite revolutionary process but it has not been defined. Le Bon's book on the _Psychology of Revolution_, which is the sequel to his study of _The Crowd_, is, to be sure, an attempt, but the best that one can say of it is that it is suggestive. Many attempts have been made to describe the processes of revolution as part of the whole historical process. This literature will be considered in the chapter on "Progress." SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY I. DISORGANIZATION, SOCIAL UNREST, AND PSYCHIC EPIDEMICS A. _Social Disorganization_ (1) Cooley, Charles H. _Social Organization._ Chap. xxx, "Formalism and Disorganization," pp. 342-55; chap. xxxi, "Disorganization: the Family," pp. 356-71; chap. xxxii, "Disorganization: the Church," pp. 372-82; chap. xxxiii, "Disorganization: Other Traditions," pp. 383-92. New York, 1909. (2) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, Florian. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and America._ Monograph of an immigrant group. Vol. IV, "Disorganization and Reorganization in Poland," Boston, 1920. (3) ----. _The Polish Peasant in Europe and America._ Vol. V, "Organization and Disorganization in America," Part II, "Disorganization of the Immigrant," pp. 165-345. Boston, 1920. (4) Friedländer, L. _Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire._ Authorized translation by L. A. Magnus from the 7th rev. ed. of the Sittengeschichte Roms. 4 vols. London, 1908-13. (5) Lane-Poole, S. _The Mohammedan Dynasties._ Charts showing "Growth of the Ottoman Empire" and "Decline of the Ottoman Empire," pp. 190-91. London, 1894. (6) Taine, H. _The Ancient Régime._ Translated from the French by John Durand. New York, 1896. (7) Wells, H. G. _Russia in the Shadows._ New York, 1921. (8) Patrick, George T. W. _The Psychology of Social Reconstruction._ Chap. vi, "Our Centripetal Society," pp. 174-98. Boston, 1920. (9) Ferrero, Guglielmo. "The Crisis of Western Civilization," _Atlantic Monthly_, CXXV (1920), 700-712. B. _Social Unrest_ (1) Brooks, John Graham. _The Social Unrest._ Studies in labor and socialist movements. London, 1903. (2) Fuller, Bampfylde. _Life and Human Nature._ Chap. ii, "Change," pp. 24-45. London, 1914. (3) Wallas, Graham. _The Great Society._ A psychological analysis. Chap. iv, "Disposition and Environment," pp. 57-68. New York, 1914. [Defines "the baulked disposition," see also pp. 172-74.] (4) Healy, William. _The Individual Delinquent._ A textbook of diagnosis and prognosis for all concerned in understanding offenders. "Hypomania, Constitutional Excitement," pp. 609-13. Boston, 1915. (5) Janet, Pierre. _The Major Symptoms of Hysteria._ Fifteen lectures given in the medical school of Harvard University. New York, 1907. (6) Barr, Martin W., and Maloney, E. F. _Types of Mental Defectives._ "Idiot Savant," pp. 128-35. Philadelphia, 1920. (7) Thomas, Edward. _Industry, Emotion and Unrest._ New York, 1920. (8) Parker, Carleton H. _The Casual Laborer and Other Essays._ Chap. i, "Toward Understanding Labor Unrest," pp. 27-59. New York, 1920. (9) _The Cause of World Unrest._ With an introduction by the editor of _The Morning Post_ (of London). New York, 1920. (10) Ferrero, Guglielmo. _Ancient Rome and Modern America._ A comparative study of morals and manners. New York, 1914. (11) Veblen, Thorstein. "The Instinct of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labor," _American Journal of Sociology_, IV (1898-99), 187-201. (12) Lippmann, Walter. "Unrest," _New Republic_, XX (1919), 315-22. (13) Tannenbaum, Frank. _The Labor Movement._ Its conservative functions and social consequences. New York, 1921. (14) Baker, Ray Stannard. _The New Industrial Unrest._ Its reason and remedy. New York, 1920. (15) MacCurdy, J. T. "Psychological Aspects of the Present Unrest," _Survey_, XLIII (1919-20), 665-68. (16) Myers, Charles S. _Mind and Work._ The psychological factors in industry and commerce. Chap. vi, "Industrial Unrest," pp. 137-69. New York, 1921. (17) Adler, H. M. "Unemployment and Personality--a Study of Psychopathic Cases," _Mental Hygiene_, I (1917), 16-24. (18) Chirol, Valentine. _Indian Unrest._ A reprint, revised and enlarged from _The Times_, with an introduction by Sir Alfred Lyall. London, 1910. (19) Münsterberg, Hugo. _Social Studies of Today._ Chap. ii, "The Educational Unrest," pp. 25-57. London, 1913. (20) ----. _American Problems._ From the point of view of a psychologist. Chap. v, "The Intemperance of Women," pp. 103-13. New York, 1912. (21) Corelli, Marie. "The Great Unrest," _World Today_, XXI (1912), 1954-59. (22) Ferrero, Guglielmo. _The Women of the Caesars._ New York, 1911. (23) Myerson, Abraham. The Nervous Housewife. Boston, 1920. (24) Mensch, Ella. _Bilderstürmer in der Berliner Frauenbewegung._ 2d ed. Berlin, 1906. C. _Psychic Epidemics_ (1) Hecker, J. F. C. _The Black Death and the Dancing Mania._ Translated from the German by B. G. Babington. Cassell's National Library. New York, 1888. (2) Stoll, Otto. _Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie._ 2d ed. Leipzig, 1904. (3) Friedmann, Max. _Über Wahnideen im Völkerleben._ Wiesbaden, 1901. (4) Regnard, P. _Les maladies épidémiques de l'esprit._ Sorcellerie, magnétisme, morphinisme, délire des grandeurs. Paris, 1886. (5) Meyer, J. L. _Schwärmerische Greuelscenen oder Kreuzigungsgeschichte einer religiösen Schwärmerinn in Wildensbuch, Canton Zürich._ Ein merkwürdiger Beytrag zur Geschichte des religiösen Fanatismus. 2d ed. Zürich, 1824. (6) Gowen, B. S. "Some Aspects of Pestilences and Other Epidemics," _American Journal of Psychology_, XVIII (1907), 1-60. (7) Weygandt, W. _Beitrag zur Lehre von den psychischen Epidemien._ Halle, 1905. (8) _Histoire des diables de Loudun._ Ou de la possession des Religieuses Ursulines et de la condamnation et du supplice d'Urbain Grandier, curé de la même ville, cruels effets de la vengeance du Cardinal de Richelieu. Amsterdam, 1740. (9) Finsler, G. "Die religiöse Erweckung der zehner und zwanziger Jahre unseres Jahrhunderts in der deutschen Schweiz," _Züricher Taschenbuch auf das Jahr 1890._ Zürich, 1890. (10) Fauriel, M. C. _Histoire de la croisade centre les hérétiques Albigeois._ Écrite en vers provençaux par un poête contemporain. (Aiso es la consos de la crozada contr els ereges Dalbeges.) Paris, 1837. (11) Mosiman, Eddison. _Das Zungenreden, geschichtlich und psychologisch untersucht._ Tübingen, 1911. [Bibliography.] (12) Vigouroux, A., and Juquelier, P. _La contagion mentale._ Paris, 1905. (13) Kotik, Dr. Naum. "Die Emanation der psychophysischen Energie," _Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens._ Wiesbaden, 1908. (14) Aubry, P. "De l'influence contagieuse de la publicité des faits criminels," _Archives d'anthropologie criminelle_, VIII (1893), 565-80. (15) Achelis, T. _Die Ekstase in ihrer kulturetten Bedeutung._ Kulturprobleme der Gegenwart. Berlin, 1902. (16) Cadière, L. "Sur quelques Faits religieux ou magiques, observés pendant une épidémie de choléra en Annam," _Anthropos_, V (1910), 519-28, 1125-59. (17) Hansen, J. _Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexenprozess im Mittelalter und die Entstehung der grossen Hexenverfolgung._ München, 1900. (18) Hansen, J. _Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im Mittelalter._ Bonn, 1901. (19) Rossi, P. _Psicologia collettiva morbosa._ Torino, 1901. (20) Despine, Prosper. _De la Contagion morale._ Paris, 1870. (21) Moreau de Tours. _De la Contagion du suicide à propos de l'épidémie actuelle._ Paris, 1875. (22) Aubry, P. _La Contagion du meutre._ Étude d'anthropologie criminelle. 3d ed. Paris, 1896. (23) Rambosson, J. _Phénomènes nerveux, intellectuels et moraux, leur transmission par contagion._ Paris, 1883. (24) Dumas, Georges. "Contagion mentale, épidémies mentales, folies collectives, folies grégaires," _Revue philosophique_, LXXI (1911), 225-44, 384-407. II. MUSIC, DANCE, AND RITUAL (1) Wallaschek, Richard. _Primitive Music._ An inquiry into the origin and development of music, songs, instruments, dances, and pantomimes of savage races. London, 1893. (2) Combarieu, J. _La Musique et le magic._ Étude sur les origines populaires de l'art musical; son influence et sa fonction dans les sociétés. Paris, 1908. (3) Simmel, Georg. "Psychologische und ethnologische Studien über Musik," _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_, XIII (1882), 261-305. (4) Boas, F. "Chinook Songs," _Journal of American Folk-Lore_, I (1888), 220-26. (5) Densmore, Frances. "The Music of the Filipinos," _American Anthropologist_, N.S., VIII (1906), 611-32. (6) Fletcher, Alice C. _Indian Story and Song from North America._ Boston, 1906. (7) ----. "Indian Songs and Music," _Journal of American Folk-Lore_, XI (1898), 85-104. (8) Grinnell, G. B. "Notes on Cheyenne Songs," _American Anthropologist_, N.S., V (1903), 312-22. (9) Mathews, W. "Navaho Gambling Songs," _American Anthropologist_, II (1889), 1-20. (10) Hearn, Lafcadio. "Three Popular Ballads," _Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan_, XXII (1894), 285-336. (11) Ellis, Havelock. "The Philosophy of Dancing," _Atlantic Monthly_, CXIII (1914), 197-207. (12) Hirn, Yrjö. _The Origins of Art._ A psychological and sociological inquiry. Chap. xvii, "Erotic Art," pp. 238-48. London, 1900. (13) Pater, Walter. _Greek Studies._ A series of essays. London, 1911. (14) Grosse, Ernst. _The Beginnings of Art._ Chap. viii, "The Dance," pp. 207-31. New York, 1898. (15) Bücher, Karl. _Arbeit und Rhythmus._ 3d ed. Leipzig, 1902. (16) Lhérisson, E. "La Danse du vaudou," _Semaine médicale_, XIX (1899), xxiv. (17) Reed, V. Z. "The Ute Bear Dance," _American Anthropologist_, IX (1896) 237-44. (18) Gummere, F. B. _The Beginnings of Poetry._ New York, 1901. (19) Fawkes, J. W. "The Growth of the Hopi Ritual," _Journal of American Folk-Lore_, XI (1898), 173-94. (20) Cabrol, F. _Les origines liturgiques._ Paris, 1906. (21) Gennep, A. van. _Les Rites de passage._ Paris, 1909. (22) Pitre, Giuseppe. _Feste patronali in Sicilia._ Palermo, 1900. (23) Murray, W. A. "Organizations of Witches in Great Britain," _Folk-Lore_, XXVIII (1917), 228-58. (24) Taylor, Thomas. _The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries._ New York, 1891. (25) Tippenhauer, L. G. _Die Insel Haiti._ Leipzig, 1893. [Describes the Voudou Ritual.] (26) Wuensch, R. _Das Frühlingsfest der Insel Malta._ Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der antiken Religion. Leipzig, 1902. (27) Loisy, Alfred. _Les mystères païens et le mystère chrétien._ Paris, 1919. (28) Lummis, Charles F. _The Land of Poco Tiempo._ Chap. iv, "The Penitent Brothers," pp. 77-108. New York, 1893. (29) "Los Hermanos Penitentes," _El Palacio_, VIII (1920), 3-20, 73-74. III. THE CROWD AND THE PUBLIC A. _The Crowd_ (1) Le Bon, Gustave. _The Crowd._ A study of the popular mind. London, 1920. (2) Tarde, G. _L'Opinion et la foule._ Paris, 1901. (3) Sighele, S. _Psychologie des Aulaufs und der Massenverbrechen._ Translated from the Italian by Hans Kurella. Leipzig, 1897. (4) ----. _La foule criminelle._ Essai de psychologie collective. 2d ed., entièrement refondue. Paris, 1901. (5) Tarde, Gabriel. "Foules et sectes au point de vue criminel," _Revue des deux mondes_, CXX (1893), 349-87. (6) Miceli, V. "La Psicologia della folla," _Rivista italiana di sociologia_, III (1899), 166-95. (7) Conway, M. _The Crowd in Peace and War._ New York, 1915. (8) Martin, E. D. _The Behavior of Crowds._ New York, 1920. (9) Christensen, A. _Politics and Crowd-Morality._ New York, 1915. (10) Park, R. E. _Masse und Publikum._ Bern, 1904. (11) Clark, H. "The Crowd." "University of Illinois Studies." _Psychological Monograph_, No. 92, XXI (1916), 26-36. (12) Tawney, G. A. "The Nature of Crowds," _Psychological Bulletin_, II (1905), 329-33. (13) Rossi, P. _Le suggesteur et la foule, psychologie du meneur._ Paris, 1904. (14) ----. _I suggestionatori e la folla._ Torino, 1902. (15) ----. "Dell'Attenzione collettiva e sociale," _Manicomio_, XXI (1905), 248 ff. B. _Political Psychology_ (1) Beecher, Franklin A. "National Politics in Its Psychological Aspect," _Open Court_, XXXIII (1919), 653-61. (2) Boutmy, Émile. _The English People._ A study of their political psychology. London, 1904. (3) Palanti, G. "L'Esprit de corps. (Remarques sociologiques.)" _Revue philosophique_, XLVIII (1899), 135-45. (4) Gardner, Chas. S. "Assemblies," _American Journal of Sociology_, XIX (1914), 531-55. (5) Bentham, Jeremy. _Essay on Political Tactics._ Containing six of the principal rules proper to be observed by a political assembly, in the process of forming a decision: with the reasons on which they are grounded; and a comparative application of them to British and French practice. London, 1791. (6) Tönnies, Ferdinand. "Die grosse Menge und das Volk," _Schmollers Jahrbuch_, XLIV (1920), 317-45. [Criticism of Le Bon's conception of the crowd.] (7) Botsford, George W. _The Roman Assemblies._ From their origin to the end of the Republic. New York, 1909. (8) Crothers, T. D. "A Medical Study of the Jury System," _Popular Science Monthly_, XLVII (1895), 375-82. (9) Coleman, Charles T. "Origin and Development of Trial by Jury," _Virginia Law Review_, VI (1919-20), 77-86. C. _Collective Psychology in General_ (1) Rossi, P. _Sociologia e psicologia collettiva._ 2d ed. Roma, 1909. (2) Straticò, A. _La Psicologia collettiva._ Palermo, 1905. (3) Worms, René. "Psychologie collective et psychologie individuelle," _Revue international de sociologie_, VII (1899), 249-74. (4) Brönner, W. "Zur Theorie der kollektiv-psychischen Erscheinungen," _Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik_, CXLI (1911), 1-40. (5) Newell, W. W. "Individual and Collective Characteristics in Folk-Lore," _Journal of American Folk-Lore_, XIX (1906), 1-15. (6) Campeano, M. _Essai de psychologie militaire individuelle et collective._ Avec une préface de M. Th. Ribot. Paris, 1902. (7) Hartenberg, P. "Les émotions de Bourse. (Notes de psychologie collective)." _Revue philosophique_, LVIII (1904), 163-70. (8) Scalinger, G. M. _La Psicologia a teatro._ Napoli, 1896. (9) Burckhard, M. "Das Theater." Die Gesellschaft. _Sammlung Sozial-Psychologische Monographien_, 18. Frankfurt-am-Main, 1907. (10) Woolbert, C. H. "The Audience." "University of Illinois Studies." _Psychological Monograph_, No. 92, XXI (1916), 36-54. (11) Howard, G. E. "Social Psychology of the Spectator," _American Journal of Sociology_, XVIII (1912), 33-50. (12) Peterson, J. "The Functioning of Ideas in Social Groups," _Psychological Review_, XXV (1918), 214-26. IV. MASS MOVEMENTS (1) Bryce, James. "Migrations of the Races of Men Considered Historically," _Contemporary Review_, LXII (1892), 128-49. (2) Mason, Otis T. "Migration and the Food Quest: A Study in the Peopling of America," _American Anthropologist_, VII (1894), 275-92. (3) Pflugk-Harttung, Julius von. _The Great Migrations._ Translated from the German by John Henry Wright. Philadelphia, 1905. (4) Bradley, Henry. _The Story of the Goths._ From the earliest times to the end of the Gothic dominion in Spain. New York, 1888. (5) Jordanes. _The Origin and Deeds of the Goths._ English version by Charles C. Mierow. Princeton, 1908. (6) Archer, T. A., and Kingsford, C. L. _The Crusades._ New York, 1894. (7) Ireland, W. W. "On the Psychology of the Crusades," _Journal of Mental Science_, LII (1906), 745-55; LIII (1907), 322-41. (8) Groves, E. R. "Psychic Causes of Rural Migration," _American Journal of Sociology_, XXI (1916), 623-27. (9) Woodson, Carter G. _A Century of Negro Migrations._ Washington, 1918. [Bibliography.] (10) Fleming, Walter L. "'Pap' Singleton, the Moses of the Colored Exodus," _American Journal of Sociology_, XV (1909-10), 61-82. (11) Bancroft, H. H. _History of California._ Vol. VI, 1848-59. Chaps. ii-ix, pp. 26-163. San Francisco, 1888. [The discovery of gold in California.] (12) Down, T. C. "The Rush to the Klondike," _Cornhill Magazine_, IV (1898), 33-43. (13) Ziegler, T. _Die geistigen und socialen Strömungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts._ Berlin, 1899. (14) Zeeb, Frieda B. "Mobility of the German Woman," _American Journal of Sociology_, XXI (1915-16), 234-62. (15) Anthony, Katharine S. _Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia._ New York, 1915. [Bibliography.] (16) Croly, Jane (Mrs.). _The History of the Woman's Club Movement in America._ New York, 1898. (17) Taft, Jessie. _The Woman Movement from the Point of View of Social Consciousness._ Chicago, 1916. (18) Harnack, Adolf. _The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries._ Translated from the 2d rev. German ed. by James Moffatt. New York, 1908. (19) Buck, S. J. _The Agrarian Crusade._ A chronicle of the farmer in politics. New Haven, 1920. (20) _Labor Movement._ The last six volumes of _The Documentary History of American Industrial Society_. Vols. V-VI, 1820-40, by John R. Commons and Helen L. Sumner; Vols. VII-VIII, 1840-60, by John R. Commons; Vols. IX-X, 1860-80, by John R. Commons and John B. Andrews. Cleveland, 1910. (21) Begbie, Harold. _The Life of General William Booth._ The Founder of the Salvation Army. 2 vols. New York, 1920. (22) Wittenmyer, Annie (Mrs.). _History of the Women's Temperance Crusade._ A complete official history of the wonderful uprising of the Christian women of the United States against the liquor traffic which culminated in the Gospel Temperance Movement. Introduction by Frances E. Willard. Philadelphia, 1878. (23) Gordon, Ernest. _The Anti-alcohol Movement in Europe._ New York, 1913. (24) Cherrington, Ernest H. _The Evolution of Prohibition in the United States of America._ A chronological history of the liquor problem and the temperance reform in the United States from the earliest settlements to the consummation of national prohibition. Westerville, Ohio, 1920. (25) Woods, Robert A. _English Social Movements._ New York, 1891. (26) Zimand, Savel. _Modern Social Movements._ Descriptive summaries and bibliographies. New York, 1921. V. REVIVALS, RELIGIOUS AND LINGUISTIC A. _Religious Revivals and the Origin of Sects_ (1) Meader, John R. Article on "Religious Sects," _Encyclopedia Americana_, XXIII, 355-61. [List of nearly 300 denominations and sects.] (2) Articles on "sects," _Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics_, XI, 307-47. [The subject and author of the different articles are "Sects (Buddhist)," T. W. Rhys Davids; "Sects (Chinese)," T. Richard; "Sects (Christian)," W. T. Whitley; "Sects (Hindu)," W. Crooke; "Sects (Jewish)," I. Abrahams; "Sects (Russian)," K. Grass and A. von Stromberg; "Sects (Samaritan)," N. Schmidt; "Sects (Zoroastrian)," E. Edwards. Bibliographies.] (3) United States Bureau of the Census. _Religious Bodies, 1906._ 2 vols. Washington, 1910. (4) ----. _Religious Bodies, 1916._ 2 vols. Washington, 1919. (5) Davenport, Frederick M. _Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals._ A study in mental and social evolution. New York, 1905. (6) Mooney, James. "The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890." _14th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology_ (1892-93), 653-1136. (7) Stalker, James. Article on "Revivals of Religion," _Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics_, X, 753-57. [Bibliography.] (8) Burns, J. _Revivals, Their Laws and Leaders._ London, 1909. (9) Tracy, J. _The Great Awakening._ A history of the revival of religion in the time of Edwards and Whitefield. Boston, 1842. (10) Finney, C. G. _Autobiography._ London, 1892. (11) Hayes, Samuel P. "An Historical Study of the Edwardean Revivals," _American Journal of Psychology_, XIII (1902), 550-74. (12) Maxon, C. H. _The Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies._ Chicago, 1920. [Bibliography.] (13) Gibson, William. _Year of Grace._ Edinburgh, 1860. [Irish revival, 1859.] (14) Moody, W. R. _The Life of Dwight L. Moody._ New York, 1900. (15) Bois, Henri. _Le Réveil au pays de Galles._ Paris, 1906. [Welsh revival of 1904-6.] (16) ----. _Quelques réflexions sur la psychologie des réveils._ Paris, 1906. (17) Cartwright, Peter. _Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, the Backwoods Preacher._ Cincinnati, 1859. (18) MacLean, J. P. "The Kentucky Revival and Its Influence on the Miami Valley," _Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications_, XII (1903), 242-86. [Bibliography.] (19) Cleveland, Catharine C. _The Great Revival in the West, 1797-1805._ Chicago, 1916. [Bibliography.] (20) Rogers, James B. _The Cane Ridge Meeting-House._ To which is appended the autobiography of B. W. Stone. Cincinnati, 1910. (21) Stchoukine, Ivan. _Le Suicide collectif dans le Raskol russe._ Paris, 1903. (22) Bussell, F. W. _Religious Thought and Heresy in the Middle Ages._ London, 1918. (23) Egli, Emil. _Die Züricher Wiedertäufer zur Reformationszeit._ Zürich, 1878. (24) Bax, Ernest Belfort. _Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists._ New York, 1903. (25) Schechter, S. _Documents of Jewish Sectaries._ 2 vols. Cambridge, 1910. (26) Graetz, H. _History of the Jews._ 6 vols. Philadelphia, 1891-98. (27) Jost, M. _Geschichte des Judenthums und seiner Sekten._ 3 vols. Leipzig, 1857-59. (28) Farquhar, J. N. _Modern Religious Movements in India._ New York, 1915. (29) Selbie, W. B. _English Sects._ A history of non-conformity. Home University Library. New York, 1912. (30) Barclay, Robert. _The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth._ London, 1876. [Bibliography.] (31) Jones, Rufus M. _Studies in Mystical Religion._ London, 1909. (32) Braithwaite, W. C. _Beginnings of Quakerism._ London, 1912. (33) Jones, Rufus M. _The Quakers in the American Colonies._ London, 1911. (34) Evans, F. W. _Shakers._ Compendium of the origin, history, principles, rules and regulations, government, and doctrines of the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. With biographies of Ann Lee, William Lee, James Whittaker, J. Hocknell, J. Meacham, and Lucy Wright. New York, 1859. (35) Train, J. _The Buchanites from First to Last._ Edinburgh, 1846. (36) Miller, Edward. _The History and Doctrines of Irvingism._ Or of the so-called Catholic and Apostolic Church. 2 vols. London, 1878. (37) Neatby, W. Blair. _A History of the Plymouth Brethren._ London, 1901. (38) Lockwood, George B. _The New Harmony Movement._ "The Rappites." Chaps. ii-iv, pp. 7-42. [Bibliography.] (39) James, B. B. _The Labadist Colony of Maryland._ Baltimore, 1899. (40) Dixon, W. H. _Spiritual Wives._ 2 vols. London, 1868. (41) Randall, E. O. _History of the Zoar Society from Its Commencement to Its Conclusion._ Columbus, 1899. (42) Loughborough, J. N. _The Great Second Advent Movement._ Its rise and progress. Nashville, Tenn., 1905. [Adventists.] (43) Harlan, Rolvix. _John Alexander Dowie and the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in Zion._ Evansville, Wis., 1906. (44) Smith, Henry C. _Mennonites of America._ Mennonite Publishing House, Scotdale, Pa., 1909. [Bibliography.] (45) La Rue, William. _The Foundations of Mormonism._ A study of the fundamental facts in the history and doctrines of the Mormons from original sources. With introduction by Alfred Williams Anthony. New York, 1919. [Bibliography.] B. _Language Revivals and Nationalism_ (1) Dominian, Leon. _Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe._ New York, 1917. (2) Bourgoing, P. de. _Les Guerres d'idiome et de nationalité._ Paris, 1849. (3) Meillet, A. "Les Langues et les nationalités," _Scientia_, XVIII, (1915), 192-201. (4) Rhys, John, and Brynmor-Jones, David. _The Welsh People._ Chap. xii, "Language and Literature of Wales," pp. 501-50. London, 1900. (5) Dinneen, P. S. _Lectures on the Irish Language Movement._ Delivered under the auspices of various branches of the Gaelic League. London, 1904. (6) Montgomery, K. L. "Some Writers of the Celtic Renaissance," _Fortnightly Review_, XCVI (1911), 545-61. (7) ----. "Ireland's Psychology: a Study of Facts," _Fortnightly Review_, CXII (1919), 572-88. (8) Dubois, L. Paul. _Contemporary Ireland._ With an introduction by T. M. Kettle, M. P. London, 1908. (9) _The Teaching of Gaelic in Highland Schools._ Published under the auspices of the Highland Association. London, 1907. (10) Fedortchouk, Y. "La Question des nationalités en Austriche-Hongrie: les Ruthenes de Hongrie," _Annales des nationalités_, VIII (1915), 52-56. (11) Seton-Watson, R. W. [Scotus Viator, _pseud_.] _Racial Problems in Hungary._ London, 1908. [Bibliography.] (12) Samassa, P. "Deutsche und Windische in Sudösterreich," _Deutsche Erde_, II (1903), 39-41. (13) Wace, A. J. B., and Thompson, M. S. _The Nomads of the Balkans._ London, 1914. (14) Tabbé, P. _La vivante Roumanie._ Paris, 1913. (15) Louis-Jarau, G. _L'Albanie inconnue._ Paris, 1913. (16) Brancoff, D. M. _La Macédoine et sa population Chrétienne._ Paris, 1905. (17) Fedortchouk, Y. _Memorandum on the Ukrainian Question in Its National Aspect._ London, 1914. (18) Vellay, Charles. "L'Irredentisme hellénique," _La Revue de Paris_, XX (Juillet-Août, 1913), 884-86. (19) Sands, B. _The Ukraine._ London, 1914. (20) Auerbach, B. "La Germanization de la Pologne Prussienne. La loi d'expropriation," _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, LVII (1908), 109-125. (21) Bernhard, L. _Das polnische Gemeinwesen im preussischen Staat._ Die Polenfrage. Leipzig, 1910. (22) Henry, R. "La Frontière linguistique en Alsace-Lorraine," _Les Marches de l'Est_, 1911-1912, pp. 60-71. (23) Nitsch, C. "Dialectology of Polish Languages," _Polish Encyclopaedia_, Vol. III. Cracow, 1915. (24) Witte, H. "Wendische Bevölkerungsreste in Mecklenburg," _Forschungen zur deutschen Landes- und Volkskunde_, XVI (1905), 1-124. (25) Kaupas, A. "L'Église et les Lituaniens aux États-Unis d'Amérique," _Annales des Nationalités_, II (1913), 233 ff. (26) Pélissier, Jean. _Les Principaux artisans de la renaissance nationale lituanienne._ Hommes et choses de Lituanie. Lausanne, 1918. (27) Jakstas, A. "Lituaniens et Polonais." _Annales des nationalités_, VIII (1915), 219 ff. (28) Headlam, Cecil. _Provence and Languedoc._ Chap. v, "Frédéric Mistral and the Félibres." London, 1912. (29) Belisle, A. _Histoire de la presse franco-américaine._ Comprenant l'historique de l'émigration des Canadiens-Français aux États-Unis, leur développement, et leur progrès. Worcester, Mass., 1911. VI. ECONOMIC CRISES (1) Wirth, M. _Geschichte der Handelskrisen._ Frankfurt-am-Main, 1890. (2) Jones, Edward D. _Economic Crises._ New York, 1900. (3) Gibson, Thomas. _The Cycles of Speculation._ 2d ed. New York, 1909. (4) Bellet, Daniel. _Crises économique._ Crises commerciales. Crises de guerre. Leur caractères, leur indices, leurs effects. Paris, 1918. (5) Clough, H. W. "Synchronous Variations in Solar and Terrestrial Phenomena," _Astrophysical Journal_, XXII (1905), 42-75. (6) Clayton, H. H. "Influence of Rainfall on Commerce and Politics," _Popular Science Monthly_, LX (1901-2), 158-65. (7) Mitchell, Wesley C. _Business Cycles._ Berkeley, Cal., 1913. (8) Moore, Henry L. _Economic Cycles: Their Law and Cause._ New York, 1914. (9) Hurry, Jamieson B. _Vicious Circles in Sociology and Their Treatment._ London, 1915. (10) Thiers, Adolphe. _The Mississippi Bubble._ A memoir of John Law. To which are added authentic accounts of the Darien expedition and the South Sea scheme. Translated from the French by F. S. Fiske. New York, 1859. (11) Wiston-Glynn, A. W. _John Law of Lauriston._ Financier and statesman, founder of the Bank of France, originator of the Mississippi scheme, etc. London, 1907. (12) Mackay, Charles. _Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds._ 2 vols. in one. London, 1859. [Vol. I, the Mississippi scheme, the South Sea bubble, the tulipomania, the alchymists, modern prophecies, fortune-telling, the magnetisers, influence of politics and religion on the hair and beard. Vol. II, the crusades, the witch mania, the slow prisoners, haunted houses, popular follies of great cities, popular admiration of great thieves, duels and ordeals, relics.] VII. FASHION, REFORM, AND REVOLUTION A. _Fashion_ (1) Spencer, Herbert. _Principles of Sociology._ Part IV, chap. xi, "Fashion," II, 205-10. London, 1893. (2) Tarde, Gabriel. _Laws of Imitation._ Translated from the 2d French ed. by Elsie Clews Parsons. Chap. vii, "Custom and Fashion," pp. 244-365. New York, 1903. (3) Simmel, G. _Philosophie der Mode._ Berlin, 1905. (4) ----. "The Attraction of Fashion," _International Quarterly_, X (1904), 130-55. (5) Sumner, W. G. _Folkways._ "Fashion," pp. 184-220. Boston, 1906. (6) Sombart, Werner. "Wirtschaft und Mode," _Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens._ Wiesbaden, 1902. (7) Clerget, Pierre. "The Economic and Social Rôle of Fashion." _Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution_, 1913, pp. 755-65. Washington, 1914. (8) Squillace, Fausto. _La Moda._ L'abito è l'uomo. Milano, 1912. (9) Shaler, N. S. "The Law of Fashion," _Atlantic Monthly_, LXI (1888), 386-98. (10) Patrick, G. T. W. "The Psychology of Crazes," _Popular Science Monthly_, LVII (1900), 285-94. (11) Linton, E. L. "The Tyranny of Fashion," _Forum_ III (1887), 59-68. (12) Bigg, Ada H. "What is 'Fashion'?" _Nineteenth Century_, XXXIII (1893), 235-48. (13) Foley, Caroline A. "Fashion," _Economic Journal_, III (1893), 458-74. (14) Aria, E. "Fashion, Its Survivals and Revivals," _Fortnightly Review_, CIV (1915), 930-37. (15) Thomas, W. I. "The Psychology of Woman's Dress," _American Magazine_, LXVII (1908-9), 66-72. (16) Schurtz, Heinrich. _Grundzüge einer Philosophie der Tracht._ Stuttgart, 1871. (17) Wechsler, Alfred. _Psychologie der Mode._ Berlin, 1904. (18) Stratz, Carl H. _Die Frauenkleidung und ihre natürliche Entwicklung._ Stuttgart, 1904. (19) Holmes, William H. "Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art," _Fourth Annual Report of the U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology, 1882-83_, pp. 437-65. Washington, 1886. (20) Kroeber, A. L. "On the Principle of Order in Civilization as Exemplified by Changes of Fashion," _American Anthropologist_, N.S., XXI (1919), 235-63. B. _Reform_ (1) Sumner, W. G. _Folkways._ "Reform and Revolution," pp. 86-95. Boston, 1906. (2) Patrick, G. T. W. _The Psychology of Social Reconstruction._ Chaps. i-ii, "Psychological Factors in Social Reconstruction," pp. 27-118. Boston, 1920. (3) Jevons, William S. _Methods of Social Reform._ And other papers. London, 1883. (4) Pearson, Karl. _Social Problems._ Their treatment, past, present, and future. London, 1912. (5) Mallock, W. H. _Social Reform as Related to Realities and Delusions._ An examination of the increase and distribution of wealth from 1801 to 1910. New York, 1915. (6) Matthews, Brander. "Reform and Reformers," _North American_, CLXXXIII (1906), 461-73. (7) Miller, J. D. "Futilities of Reformers," _Arena_, XXVI (1901), 481-89. (8) Lippmann, Walter. _A Preface to Politics._ Chap. v, "Well Meaning but Unmeaning: The Chicago Vice Report," pp. 122-58. New York, 1913. (9) Stanton, Henry B. _Sketches of Reforms and Reformers, of Great Britain and Ireland._ 2d rev. ed. New York, 1850. (10) Stoughton, John. _William Wilberforce._ London, 1880. (11) Field, J. _The Life of John Howard._ With comments on his character and philanthropic labours. London, 1850. (12) Hodder, Edwin. _The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G., as Social Reformer._ New York, 1898. (13) Atkinson, Charles M. _Jeremy Bentham, His Life and Work._ London, 1905. (14) Morley, John. _The Life of Richard Cobden._ Boston, 1890. (15) Bartlett, David W. _Modern Agitators._ Or pen portraits of living American reformers. New York, 1855. (16) Greeley, Horace. _Hints toward Reforms._ In lectures, addresses, and other writing. New York, 1850. (17) Austin, George L. _The Life and Times of Wendell Phillips._ New ed. Boston, 1901. (18) Hill, Georgiana. _Women in English Life._ From medieval to modern times. Period III, chap. v, "The Philanthropists," Vol. II, pp. 59-74; Period IV, chap. xi, "The Modern Humanitarian Movement," Vol. II, pp. 227-36. 2 vols. London, 1896. (19) Yonge, Charlotte M. _Hannah More._ Famous women. Boston, 1888. (20) Besant, Annie. _An Autobiography._ 2d ed. London, 1908. (21) Harper, Ida H. _The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony._ Including public addresses, her own lectures and many from her contemporaries during fifty years. A story of the evolution of the status of woman. 3 vols. Indianapolis, 1898-1908. (22) Whiting, Lilian. _Women Who Have Ennobled Life._ Philadelphia, 1915. (23) Willard, Frances E. _Woman and Temperance._ Or the work and workers of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. 3d ed. Hartford, Conn., 1883. (24) Gordon, Anna A. _The Beautiful Life of Frances E. Willard._ A memorial volume. Introduction by Lady Henry Somerset. Chicago, 1898. C. _Revolution_ (1) Le Bon, Gustave. _The Psychology of Revolution._ Translated from the French by Bernard Miall. New York, 1913. (2) Petrie, W. M. F. _The Revolutions of Civilisation._ London, 1912. (3) Hyndman, Henry M. _The Evolution of Revolution._ London, 1920. (4) Adams, Brooks. _The Theory of Social Revolutions._ New York, 1913. (5) Landauer, G. _Die Revolution._ "Die Gesellschaft, Sammlung sozial-psychologischer Monographien." Frankfurt-am-Main, 1907. (6) Thomas, W. I. _Source Book for Social Origins._ "Crisis and Control," pp. 13-22. Chicago, 1909. (7) Ellwood, Charles A. "A Psychological Theory of Revolutions," _American Journal of Sociology_, XI (1905-6), 49-59. (8) ----. _Introduction to Social Psychology._ Chap. viii, "Social Change under Abnormal Conditions," pp. 170-87. New York, 1917. (9) King, Irving. "The Influence of the Form of Social Change upon the Emotional Life of a People," _American Journal of Sociology_, IX (1903-4), 124-35. (10) Toynbee, Arnold. _Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century in England._ New ed. London, 1908. (11) Knowles, L. C. A. _The Industrial and Commercial Revolutions in Great Britain during the Nineteenth Century._ London, 1921. (12) Taine, H. A. _The French Revolution._ Translated from the French by John Durand. 3 vols. New York, 1878-85. (13) Olgin, Moissaye J. _The Soul of the Russian Revolution._ Introduction by Vladimir G. Simkhovitch. New York, 1917. (14) Spargo, John. _The Psychology of Bolshevism._ New York, 1919. (15) Khoras, P. "La Psychologie de la révolution chinoise," _Revue des deux mondes_, VIII (1912), 295-331. (16) Le Bon, Gustave. _The World in Revolt._ A psychological study of our times. Translated from the French by Bernard Miall. New York, 1921. (17) Lombroso, Cesare. _Le Crime politique et les révolutions par rapport au droit, à l'anthropologie criminelle et à science du gouvernement._ Translated by A. Bouchard. Paris, 1912. (18) Prince, Samuel H. _Catastrophe and Social Change._ Based upon a sociological study of the Halifax disaster. "Columbia University Studies in Political Science." New York, 1920. TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES 1. Collective Behavior and Social Control 2. Unrest in the Person and Unrest in the Group 3. The Agitator as a Type of the Restless Person 4. A Study of Adolescent Unrest: the Runaway Boy and the Girl Who Goes Wrong 5. A Comparison of Physical Epidemics with Social Contagion 6. Case Studies of Psychic Epidemics: the Mississippi Bubble, Gold Fever, War-Time Psychosis, the Dancing Mania in Modern Times, etc. 7. Propaganda as Social Contagion: an Analysis of a Selected Case 8. A Description and Interpretation of Crowd Behavior: the Orgy, the Cult, the Mob, the Organized Crowd 9. The "Animal" Crowd: the Flock, the Herd, the Pack 10. A Description of Crowd Behavior on Armistice Day 11. The Criminal Crowd 12. The Jury, the Congenial Group, the Committee, the Legislature, the Mass Meeting, etc., as Types of Collective Behavior 13. Crowd Excitements and Mass Movements 14. A Study of Mass Migrations: the Barbarian Invasions, the Settlement of Oklahoma, the Migrations of the Mennonnites, the Treks of the Boers, the Rise of Mohammedanism, the Mormon Migrations, etc. 15. Crusades and Reforms: the Crusades, the Abolition Movement, Prohibition, the Woman's Temperance Crusades, Moving-Picture Censorship, etc. 16. Fashions, Revivals, and Revolutions 17. The Social Laws of Fashions 18. Linguistic Revivals and the Nationalist Movements 19. Religious Revivals and the Origin of Sects 20. Social Unrest, Social Movements, and Changes in Mores and Institutions QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. What do you understand by collective behavior? 2. Interpret the incident in a Lancashire cotton factory in terms of sympathy, imitation, and suggestion. 3. What simple forms of social contagion have you observed? 4. In what sense may the dancing mania of the Middle Ages be compared to an epidemic? 5. Why may propaganda be interpreted as social contagion? Describe a concrete instance of propaganda and analyze its _modus operandi_. 6. What are the differences in behavior of the flock, the pack, and the herd? 7. Is it accurate to speak of these animal groups as "crowds"? 8. What do you understand Le Bon to mean by "the mental unity of crowds"? 9. Describe and analyze the behavior of crowds which you have observed. 10. "The crowd is always intellectually inferior to the isolated individual." "The crowd may be better or worse than the individual." Are these statements consistent? Elaborate your position. 11. In what sense may we speak of sects, castes, and classes as crowds? 12. What do you mean by a social movement? 13. What is the significance of a movement? 14. Why is movement to be regarded as the fundamental form of freedom? 15. How does crowd excitement lead to mass movements? 16. What were the differences in the characteristics of mass movements in the Klondike Rush, the Woman's Crusade, Methodism, and bolshevism? 17. What are the causes of social unrest? 18. What is the relation of social unrest to social organization? 19. How does Le Bon explain the mental anarchy at the time of the French Revolution? 20. What was the nature of this mental anarchy in the different social classes? Are revolutions always preceded by mental anarchy? 21. What was the relative importance of belief and of reason in the French Revolution? 22. What are the likenesses and differences between the origin and development of bolshevism and of the French Revolution? 23. Do you agree with Spargo's interpretation of the psychology (a) of the intellectual Bolshevists, and (b) of the I.W.W.? 24. Are mass movements organizing or disorganizing factors in society? Illustrate by reference to Methodism, the French Revolution, and bolshevism. 25. Under what conditions will a mass movement (a) become organized, and (b) become an institution? FOOTNOTES: [280] W. G. Sumner, _Folkways_. A study of the sociological importance of usages, manners, customs, mores, and morals, pp. 12-13. (Boston, 1906.) [281] Scipio Sighele, in a note to the French edition of his _Psychology of Sects_, claims that his volume, _La Folla delinquente_, of which the second edition was published at Turin in 1895, and his article "Physiologie du succès," in the _Revue des Revues_, October 1, 1894, were the first attempts to describe the crowd from the point of view of collective psychology. Le Bon published two articles, "Psychologie des foules" in the _Revue scientifique_, April 6 and 20, 1895. These were later gathered together in his volume _Psychologie des foules_, Paris, 1895. See Sighele _Psychologie des sectes_, pp. 25, 39. [282] Gustave Le Bon, _The Crowd_. A study of the popular mind, p. 19. (New York, 1900.) [283] _Ibid._, p. 83. [284] _L'Opinion et la foule_, pp. 6-7. (Paris, 1901.) [285] _The Crowd_, p. 41. [286] Sidney L. Hinde, _The Fall of the Congo Arabs_, p. 147. (London, 1897.) Describing a characteristic incident in one of the strange confused battles Hinde says: "Wordy war, which also raged, had even more effect than our rifles. Mahomedi and Sefu led the Arabs, who were jeering and taunting Lutete's people, saying that they were in a bad case, and had better desert the white man, who was ignorant of the fact that Mohara with all the forces of Nyange was camped in his rear. Lutete's people replied: 'Oh, we know all about Mohara; we ate him the day before yesterday.'" This news became all the more depressing when it turned out to be true. See also Hirn, _The Origins of Art_, p. 269, for an explanation of the rôle of threats and boastings in savage warfare. [287] Robert E. Park and Herbert A. Miller, _Old World Traits Transplanted_. Document 23, pp. 32-33. (New York, 1921.) [288] Yrjö Hirn, _The Origins of Art_. A psychological and sociological inquiry, p. 87. (London, 1900.) [289] _Ibid._, p. 89. [290] Le Bon, _op. cit._, p. 82. [291] _Ibid._, p. 82. [292] Scipio Sighele, _Psychologie des sectes_, p. 46. (Paris, 1898.) [293] W. E. H. Lecky, _History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe._ 2 vols. (Vol. I.) (New York, 1866.) [294] See Gabriel Tarde, _Laws of Imitation._ [295] J. F. C. Hecker, _Die Tanzwuth, eine Volkskrankheit im Mittelalter._ (Berlin, 1832.) See Introduction of _The Black Death and the Dancing Mania_. Translated from the German by B. G. Babington. Cassell's National Library. (New York, 1888.) [296] Le Bon, _op. cit._, p. 26. [297] Vernon Lee [pseud.], _Vital Lies._ Studies of some varieties of recent obscurantism. (London, 1912.) [298] Taken from _Gentleman's Magazine_, March, 1787, p. 268. [299] Adapted from J. F. C. Hecker, _The Black Death, and the Dancing Mania_, pp. 106-11. (Cassell & Co., 1888.) [300] From Mary Austin, _The Flock_, pp. 110-29. (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1906.) [301] From W. H. Hudson, "The Strange Instincts of Cattle," in _Longman's Magazine_, XVIII (1891), 389-91. [302] From Ernest Thompson Seton, "The Habits of Wolves," in _The American Magazine_, LXIV (1907), 636. [303] Adapted from Gustave Le Bon, _The Crowd_, pp. 1-14. (T. Fisher Unwin, 1897.) [304] From Robert E. Park, _The Crowd and the Public_. (Unpublished manuscript.) [305] Moll, _Hypnotism_, pp. 134-36. [306] Sighele, _Psychologie des Auflaufs und der Massenverbrechen_ (translated from the Italian), p. 79. [307] Durkheim, _The Elementary Forms of Religious Life_, pp. 432-37. [308] Adapted from T. C. Down, "The Rush to the Klondike," in the _Cornhill Magazine_, IV (1898), 33-43. [309] Adapted from Mrs. Annie Wittenmyer, _History of the Woman's Temperance Crusade_ (1878), pp. 34-62. [310] Adapted from Gustave Le Bon, _The Psychology of Revolution_, pp. 147-70. (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1913.) [311] Adapted from John Spargo, _The Psychology of Bolshevism_, pp. 1-120. (Harper & Brothers, 1919.) [312] Adapted from William E. H. Lecky, _A History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, III, 33-101. (D. Appleton & Co., 1892.) [313 1] _Supra_, pp. 652-53; 657-58. [314] Otto Stoll, _Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie_. 2d ed. (Leipzig, 1904.) [315] Robert E. Park, _Immigrant Press and Its Control_, chap. ii, "Background of the Immigrant Press." (New York, 1921. In press.) [316] _Ibid._ [317] Anton H. Hollman, _Die dänische Volkshochschule und ihre Bedeutung für die Entwicklung einer völkischen Kultur in Dänemark_. (Berlin, 1909.) [318] H. G. Wells, _The Salvaging of Civilization_, chaps. iv-v, "The Bible of Civilization," pp. 97-140. (New York, 1921.) [319] See _The Immigrant Press and Its Control_, chap. ii, for a translation of Dr. Kudirka's so-called "Confession." [320] Gabriel Tarde, _The Laws of Imitation_. Translated from the 2d French ed. by Elsie Clews Parsons, p. 247. (New York, 1903.) [321] Sumner, _Folkways_, pp. 200-201. CHAPTER XIV PROGRESS I. INTRODUCTION 1. Popular Conceptions of Progress It seems incredible that there should have been a time when mankind had no conception of progress. Ever since men first consciously united their common efforts to improve and conserve their common life, it would seem there must have been some recognition that life had not always been as they found it and that it could not be in the future what it then was. Nevertheless, it has been said that the notion of progress was unknown in the oriental world, that the opposite conception of deterioration pervaded all ancient Asiatic thought. In India the prevailing notion was that of vast cycles of time "through which the universe and its inhabitants must pass from perfection to destruction, from strength and innocence to weakness and depravity until a new mahá-yuga begins."[322] The Greeks conceived the course of history in various ways, as progress and as deterioration, but in general they thought of it as a cycle. The first clear description of the history of mankind as a progression by various stages, from a condition of primitive savagery to civilization, is in Lucretius' great poem _De Rerum Natura_. But Lucretius does not conceive this progress will continue. On the contrary he recognizes that the world has grown old and already shows signs of decrepitude which foreshadow its ultimate destruction. It is only in comparatively recent times that the world has sought to define progress philosophically, as part of the cosmic process, and has thought of it abstractly as something to be desired for its own sake. Today the word progress is in everyone's mouth; still there is no general agreement as to what progress is, and particularly in recent years, with all the commonly accepted evidences of progress about them, skeptics have appeared, who, like the farmer who saw for the first time a camel with two humps, insisted "there's no such animal." The reason there is no general understanding in regard to the meaning of progress, as it has been defined by the philosophers, is not because there is no progress in detail, but because the conception of progress in general involves a balancing of the goods against the ills of life. It raises the question whether the gains which society makes as a whole are compensation for the individual defeats and losses which progress inevitably involves. One reason why we believe in progress, perhaps, is that history is invariably written by the survivors. In certain aspects and with people of a certain temperament, what we ordinarily call progress, considering what it costs, will always seem a very dubious matter. William Ralph Inge, Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, seems to be the most eminent modern example of the skeptic. Human nature has not been changed by civilization. It has neither been leveled up nor leveled down, to an average mediocrity. Beneath the dingy uniformity of international fashions in dress, man remains what he has always been--a splendid fighting animal, a self-sacrificing hero, and a bloodthirsty savage. Human nature is at once sublime and horrible, holy and satanic. Apart from the accumulation of knowledge and experience, which are external and precarious acquisitions, there is no proof that we have changed much since the first stone age.[323] It must be remembered in this connection that progress, in so far as it makes the world more comfortable, makes it more complicated. Every new mechanical device, every advance in business organization or in science, which makes the world more tolerable for most of us, makes it impossible for others. Not all the world is able to keep pace with the general progress of the world. Most of the primitive races have been exterminated by the advance of civilization, and it is still uncertain where, and upon what terms, the civilized man will let the remnant of the primitive peoples live. It has been estimated that, in the complicated life of modern cities, at least one-tenth of the population is not competent to maintain an independent, economic existence, but requires an increasing amount of care and assistance from the other nine-tenths.[324] To the inferior, incompetent, and unfortunate, unable to keep pace with progress, the more rapid advance of the world means disease, despair, and death. In medicine and surgery alone does progress seem wholly beneficent, but the eugenists are even now warning us that our indiscriminate efforts to protect the weak and preserve the incompetent are increasing the burdens of the superior and competent, who are alone fit to live. On the other hand, every new invention is a response to some specific need. Every new form of social control is intended to correct some existing evil. So far as they are successful they represent progress. Progress in the concrete has reference to recognized social values. Values, as Cooley points out, have no meaning except with reference to an organism. "The organism is necessary to give meaning to the idea [value]; there must be worth _to_ something. It need not be a person; a group, an institution, a doctrine, any organized form of life will do; and that it be conscious of the values that motivates it is not at all essential."[325] Any change or adaptation to an existing environment that makes it easier for a person, group, institution, or other "organized form of life" to live may be said to represent progress. Whether the invention is a new plow or a new six-inch gun we accept it as an evidence of progress if it does the work for which it is intended more efficiently than any previous device. In no region of human life have we made greater progress than in the manufacture of weapons of destruction. Not everyone would be willing to admit that progress in weapons of warfare represents "real" progress. That is because some people do not admit the necessity of war. Once admit that necessity, then every improvement is an evidence of progress, at least in that particular field. It is more easy to recognize progress in those matters where there is no conflict in regard to the social values. The following excerpt from Charles Zueblin's preface to his book on American progress is a concrete indication of what students of society usually recognize as progress. Already this century has witnessed the first municipalized street railways and telephones in American cities; a national epidemic of street paving and cleaning; the quadrupling of electric lighting service and the national appropriation of display lighting; a successful crusade against dirt of all kinds--smoke, flies, germs,--and the diffusion of constructive provisions for health like baths, laundries, comfort stations, milk stations, school nurses and open air schools; fire prevention; the humanizing of the police and the advent of the policewomen; the transforming of some municipal courts into institutions for the prevention of crime and the cure of offenders; the elaboration of the school curriculum to give every child a complete education from the kindergarten to the vocational course in school or university or shop; municipal reference libraries; the completion of park systems in most large cities and the acceptance of the principle that the smallest city without a park and playground is not quite civilized; the modern playground movement giving organized and directed play to young and old; the social center; the democratic art museum; municipal theaters; the commission form of government; the city manager; home rule for cities; direct legislation--a greater advance than the whole nineteenth century compassed.[326] 2. The Problem of Progress Sociology inherited its conception of progress from the philosophy of history. That problem seems to have had its origin in the paradox that progress at retail does not insure progress at wholesale. The progress of the community as individuals or in specific directions may, for example, bring about conditions which mean the eventual destruction of the community as a whole. This is what we mean by saying that civilizations are born, grow, and decay. We may see the phenomenon in its simplest form in the plant community, where the very growth of the community creates a soil in which the community is no longer able to exist. But the decay and death of one community creates a soil in which another community will live and grow. This gives us the interesting phenomenon of what the ecologists call "succession." So individuals build their homes, communities are formed, and eventually there comes into existence a great city. But the very existence of a great city creates problems of health, of family life, and social control which did not exist when men lived in the open, or in villages. Just as the human body generates the poisons that eventually destroy it, so the communal life, in the very process of growth and as a result of its efforts to meet the changes that its growth involves, creates diseases and vices which tend to destroy the community. This raises the problem in another form. Communities may and do grow old and die, but new communities profiting by the experience of their predecessors are enabled to create social organizations, more adequate and better able to resist social diseases and corrupting vices. But in order to do this, succeeding communities have had to accumulate more experience, exercise more forethought, employ more special knowledge and a greater division of labor. In the meantime, life is becoming constantly more complex. In place of the simple spontaneous modes of behavior which enable the lower animals to live without education and without anxiety, men are compelled to supplement original nature with special training and with more and more elaborate machinery, until life, losing its spontaneity, seems in danger of losing all its joy. Knowledge accumulates apace and its applications threaten the very existence of civilized man. The production of the flying machine represented a considerable advance in mechanical knowledge; but I am unaware of any respect in which human welfare has been increased by its existence; whereas it has not only intensified enormously the horrors of war, and, by furnishing criminal and other undesirable characters with a convenient means of rapid and secret movement, markedly diminished social security, but it threatens, by its inevitable advance in construction, to make any future conflict virtually equivalent to the extermination of civilized man. And the maleficent change in the conditions of human life which the flying machine has produced from the air, the submarine parallels from the depths of the sea; indeed, the perception of this truth has led to the very doubtfully practicable suggestion that the building of submarines be made illegal.... Moreover if life itself is more secure, there is at the present moment a distinct tendency towards a diminution of personal liberty. The increasing control by the state over the conduct and activities of the individual; the management of his children, the details of his diet and the conduct of his ordinary affairs; tend more and more to limit his personal freedom. But the restriction of his liberty amounts to a reduction of his available life just as complete loss of liberty differs little from complete loss of life.[327] It is this condition which, in spite of progress in details, has raised in men's minds a question whether there is progress in general, and if there is, whether the mass of mankind is better or worse because of it. 3. History of the Concept of Progress The great task of mankind has been to create an organization which would enable men to realize their wishes. This organization we call civilization. In achieving this result man has very slowly at first, but more rapidly in recent times, established his control over external nature and over himself. He has done this in order that he might remake the world as he found it more after his own heart. But the world which man has thus remade has in turn reacted back upon man and in doing so has made him human. Men build houses to protect them from the weather and as places of refuge. In the end these houses have become homes, and man has become a domesticated animal, endowed with the sentiments, virtues, and lasting affections that the home inevitably cultivates and maintains. Men made for themselves clothing for ornament and for comfort, and men's, and especially women's, clothes have become so much a part of their personalities that without them they cease to be persons and have no status in human society. Except under very exceptional circumstances a man who appeared without clothing would be treated as a madman, and hunted like a wild animal. Men have built cities for security and for trade, and cities have made necessary and possible a division of labor and an economic organization. This economic organization, on the other hand, has been the basis of a society and a social order which imposes standards of conduct and enforces minute regulations of the individual life. Out of the conditions of this common life there has grown a body of general and ruling ideas: liberty, equality, democracy, fate, providence, personal immortality, and progress. J. B. Bury, who has written a history of the idea of progress, says that progress is "the animating and controlling idea of western civilization." But in defining progress he makes a distinction between ideas like progress, providence, and fate and ideas like liberty, toleration, and socialism. The latter are approved or condemned because they are good or bad. The former are not approved or condemned. They are matters of fact, they are true or false. He says: When we say that ideas rule the world, or exercise a decisive power in history, we are generally thinking of those ideas which express human aims and depend for their realisation on the human will, such as liberty, toleration, equality of opportunity, socialism. Some of these have been partly realised, and there is no reason why any of them should not be fully realised, in a society or in the world, if it were the united purpose of a society or of the world to realise it. They are approved or condemned because they are held to be good or bad, not because they are true or false. But there is another order of ideas that play a great part in determining and directing the course of man's conduct but do not depend on his will--ideas which bear upon the mystery of life, such as Fate, Providence, or personal immortality. Such ideas may operate in important ways on the forms of social action, but they involve a question of fact and they are accepted or rejected not because they are believed to be useful or injurious, but because they are believed to be true or false. The idea of the progress of humanity is an idea of this kind, and it is important to be quite clear on the point.[328] All of the ideas mentioned are of such a general nature, embody so much of the hopes, the strivings, and the sentiments of the modern world, that they have, or did have until very recently, something of the sanctity and authority of religious dogmas. All are expressions of wishes, but there is this difference: ideas, like liberty, toleration, etc., reflect the will of the people who accept them; ideas like providence and progress, on the contrary, represent their hopes. The question of the progress of humanity like that of personal immortality is, as Bury points out, a question of fact. "It is true or false but it cannot be proved whether true or false. Belief in it is an act of faith." When we hypostatize our hopes and wishes and treat them as matters of fact, even though they cannot be proved to be either true or false, they assume a form which Sorel describes as myth. The progress of humanity, as Herbert Spencer and the other Victorians understood it, is such a myth. Dean Inge calls it a "superstition" and adds: "To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy. The superstition of progress had the singular good fortune to enslave at least three philosophies--those of Hegel, of Comte, and of Darwin."[329] The conception of progress, if a superstition, is one of recent origin. It was not until the eighteenth century that it gained general acceptance and became part of what Inge describes as the popular religion. The conception which it replaced was that of providence. But the Greeks and Romans knew nothing of providence. They were under the influence of another idea of a different character, the idea, namely, of nemesis and fate. And before them there were more primitive peoples who had no conception of man's destiny at all. In a paper, not yet published, Ellsworth Faris has sketched the natural history of the idea of progress and its predecessors and of a new conception, control, that is perhaps destined to take its place. The idea of progress which has been so influential in modern times is not a very old conception. In its distinctive form it came into existence in the rationalistic period which accompanied the Renaissance. Progress, in this sense, means a theory as to the way in which the whole cosmic process is developing. It is the belief that the world as a whole is growing better through definite stages, and is moving "to one far-off divine event." The stages preceding this idea may be thought of under several heads. The first may be called "cosmic anarchy," in which we find "primitive people" now living. It is a world of chaos, without meaning, and without purpose. There is no direction in which human life is thought of as developing. Death and misfortune are for the most part due to witchcraft and the evil designs of enemies; good luck and bad luck are the forces which make a rational existence hopeless. Another stage of thinking is that which was found among the Greeks, the conception of the cosmic process as proceeding in cycles. The golden age of the Greeks lay in the past, the universe was considered to be following a set course, and the whole round of human experience was governed and controlled by an inexorable fate that was totally indifferent to human wishes. The formula which finally arose to meet this situation was "conformity to nature," a submission to the iron laws of the world which it was vain to attempt to change. This idea was succeeded in medieval Europe by the idea of providence, in which the world was thought of as a theater on which the drama of human redemption was enacted. God has created man free, but man was corrupted by the fall, given an opportunity to be redeemed by the gospel, and the world was soon to know the final triumph and happiness of the saved. Most of the early church fathers expected the end of the world very soon, many of them in their own lifetime. This is distinctly different from the preceding two ideas. All life had meaning to them, for the evil in the world was but God's way to accomplish his good purposes. It was man's duty to submit, but submission was to take the form of faith in an all-wise beneficent and perfect power, who was governing the world and who would make everything for the best. The idea of progress arose on the ruins of this concept of providence. In the fourteenth century, progress did not mean merely the satisfaction of all human desires either individual or collective. The idea meant far more than that. It was the conviction that the world as a whole was proceeding onward indefinitely to greater and greater perfection. The atmosphere of progress was congenial to the construction of utopias and schemes of perfection which were believed to be in harmony with the nature of the world itself. The atmosphere of progress produced also optimists who were quite sure everything was in the long run to be for the best, and that every temporary evil was sure to be overcome by an ultimate good. The difficulty in demonstrating the fact of progress has become very real as the problem has been presented to modern minds. It is possible to prove that the world has become more complex. It is hardly possible to prove that it has become better, and quite impossible to prove that it will continue to do so. From the standpoint of the Mohammedan Turks, the last two hundred years of the world's history have not been years of marked progress; from the standpoint of their enemies, the reverse statement is obviously true. The conception which seems to be superseding the idea of progress in our day is that of control. Each problem whether personal or social is thought of as a separate enterprise. Poverty, disease, crime, vice, intemperance, or war, these are definite situations which challenge human effort and human ingenuity. Many problems are unsolved; many failures are recorded. The future is a challenge to creative intelligence and collective heroism. The future is thought of as still to be made. And there is no assurance that progress will take place. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that progress will not take place unless men are able by their skill and devotion to find solutions for their present problems, and for the newer ones that shall arise. The modern man finds this idea quite as stimulating to him as the idea of progress was to his ancestor of the Renaissance or the idea of providence to his medieval forebears. For while he does not blindly believe nor feel optimistically certain things will come about all right, yet he is nerved to square his shoulders, to think, to contrive, and to exert himself to the utmost in his effort to conquer the difficulties ahead, and to control the forces of nature and man. The idea of providence was not merely a generalization on life, it was a force that inspired hope. The idea of progress was likewise not merely a concept, it was also an energizing influence in a time of great intellectual activity. The idea that the forces of nature can be controlled in the service of man, differs from the others, but is also a dynamic potency that seems to be equally well adapted to the twentieth century. The conception that man's fate lies somehow in his own hands, if it gains general acceptance, will still be, so far as it inspires men to work and strive, an article of faith, and the image in which he pictures the future of mankind, toward which he directs his efforts, will still have the character of myth. That is the function of myths. It is this that lends an interest to those ideal states in which men at different times have sought to visualize the world of their hopes and dreams. 4. Classification of the Materials The purpose of the materials in this chapter is to exhibit the variety and diversity of men's thought with reference to the concept of progress. What they show is that there is as yet no general agreement in regard to the meaning of the term. In all the special fields of social reform there are relatively definite conceptions of what is desirable and what is not desirable. In the matter of _progress in general_ there is no such definition. Except for philosophical speculation there is no such thing as "progress in general." In practice, progress turns out to be a number of special tasks. The "progress of civilization" is, to be sure, a concept in good standing in history. It is, however, a concept of appreciation rather than one of description. If history has to be rewritten for every new generation of men, it is due not merely to the discovery of new historical materials, but just to the fact that there is a new generation. Every generation has its own notion of the values of life, and every generation has to have its own interpretation of the facts of life. It is incredible that Strachey's _Life of Queen Victoria_ could have been written forty years ago. It is incredible that the mass of men should have been able to see the Victorian Age, as it is here presented, while they were living it. The materials in this chapter fall under three heads: (a) the concept of progress, (b) progress and science, (c) progress and human nature. a) _The concept of progress._--The first difficulty in the study of progress is one of definition. What are the signs and symptoms, the criteria of progress? Until we have framed some sort of a definition we cannot know. Herbert Spencer identified progress with evolution. The law of organic progress is the law of all progress. Intelligence, if we understand by that the mere accumulations of knowledge, does not represent progress. Rather it consists in "those internal modifications of which this larger knowledge is an expression." In so far, Spencer's conception is that of the eugenists. Real progress is in the breed--in the germ plasm. For men like Galton, Karl Pearson, and Madison Grant,[330] what we call civilization is merely the efflorescence of race. Civilizations may pass away, but if the racial stock is preserved, civilization will reproduce itself. In recent years, a school of political philosophy has sprung up in Europe and in the United States, which is seeking to define our social policy toward the "inner enemies," the dependents, the defectives, and the delinquents, and a foreign policy toward immigrant races and foreign peoples, on the general conception that the chief aim of society and the state is to preserve the germ plasm of the Nordic race.[331] For Spencer, however, the conception that all values were in the organism was modified by the conviction that all life was involved in an irreversible process called evolution which would eventually purge the race and society of the weak, the wicked, and the unfit. In contrast, both with the views of Spencer and of the eugenists, Hobhouse, voicing a conviction that was first expressed by Huxley,[332] believes that man is bound to intervene in the beneficent law of natural selection. He insists, in fact, that social development is something quite distinct and relatively independent of the organic changes in the individual. It is, in other words, a sociological rather than a biological product. It is an effect of the interaction of individuals and is best represented by organized society and by the social tradition in which that organization is handed on from earlier to later generations. b) _Progress and science._--In contrast with other conceptions of progress is that of Dewey, who emphasizes science and social control, or, as he puts it, the "problem of discovering the needs and capacities of collective human nature as we find it aggregated in racial or national groups on the surface of the globe." The distinction between Hobhouse and Dewey is less in substance than in point of view. Hobhouse, looking backward, is interested in progress itself rather than in its methods and processes. Dewey, on the other hand, looking forward, is interested in a present program and in the application of scientific method to the problems of social welfare and world-organization. Arthur James Balfour, the most intellectual of the elder statesmen of England, looking at progress through the experience of a politician, speaks in a less prophetic and authoritative tone, but with a wisdom born of long experience with men. For him, as for many other thoughtful minds, the future of the race is "encompassed with darkness," and the wise man is he who is content to act in "a sober and a cautious spirit," seeking to deal with problems as they arise. c) _Progress and human nature._--Progress, which is much a matter of interpretation, is also very largely a matter of temperament. The purpose of the material upon human nature and progress is to call attention to this fact. Progress is with most people an article of faith, and men's faiths, as to their content, at least, are matters of temperament. The conservative who perhaps takes a mild interest in progress is usually "a sober and cautious" person, fairly content with the present and not very sure about the future. The radical, on the other hand, is usually a naturally hopeful and enthusiastic individual, profoundly pessimistic about the present, but with a boundless confidence in even the most impossible future. Philosophy, like literature, is, in the final analysis, the expression of a temperament, more or less modified by experience. The selections from Schopenhauer and Bergson may be regarded, therefore, as the characteristic reactions of two strikingly different temperaments to the conception of progress and to life. The descriptions which they give of the cosmic process are, considered formally, not unlike. Their interpretations and the practical bearings of these interpretations are profoundly different. It is not necessary for the students of sociology to discuss the merits of these different doctrines. We may accept them as human documents. They throw light, at any rate, upon the idea of progress, and upon all the other fundamental ideas in which men have sought to formulate their common hopes and guide their common life. II. MATERIALS A. THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS 1. The Earliest Conception of Progress[333] The word "progress," like the word "humanity," is one of the most significant. It is a Latin word, not used in its current abstract sense until after the Roman incorporation of the Mediterranean world. The first writer who expounds the notion with sufficient breadth of view and sufficiently accurate and concrete observation to provide a preliminary sketch was the great Roman poet, Lucretius. He begins by describing a struggle for existence in which the less well-adapted creatures died off, those who wanted either the power to protect themselves or the means of adapting themselves to the purposes of man. In this stage, however, man was a hardier creature than he afterward became. He lived like the beasts of the field and was ignorant of tillage or fire or clothes or houses. He had no laws or government or marriage and, though he did not fear the dark, he feared the real danger of fiercer beasts. Men often died a miserable death, but not in multitudes on a single day as they do now by battle or shipwreck. The next stage sees huts and skins and fire which softened their bodies, and marriage and the ties of family which softened their tempers. And tribes began to make treaties of alliance with other tribes. Speech arose from the need which all creatures feel to exercise their natural powers, just as the calf will butt before his horns protrude. Men began to apply different sounds to denote different things, just as brute beasts will do to express different passions, as anyone must have noticed in the cases of dogs and horses and birds. No one man set out to invent speech. Fire was first learned from lightning and the friction of trees, and cooking from the softening and ripening of things by the sun. Then men of genius invented improved methods of life, the building of cities and private property in lands and cattle. But gold gave power to the wealthy and destroyed the sense of contentment in simple happiness. It must always be so whenever men allow themselves to become the slaves of things which should be their dependents and instruments. They began to believe in and worship gods, because they saw in dreams shapes of preterhuman strength and beauty and deemed them immortal; and as they noted the changes of the seasons and all the wonders of the heavens they placed their gods there and feared them when they spoke in the thunder. Metals were discovered through the burning of the woods, which caused the ores to run. Copper and brass came first and were rated above gold and silver. And then the metals took the place of hands, nails, teeth, and clubs, which had been men's earliest arms and tools. Weaving followed the discovery of the use of iron. Sowing, planting, and grafting were learned from nature herself, and gradually the cultivation of the soil was carried farther and farther up the hills. Men learned to sing from the birds, and to blow on pipes from the whistling of the zephyr through the reeds; and those simple tunes gave as much rustic jollity as our more elaborate tunes do now. Then, in a summary passage at the end, Lucretius enumerates all the chief discoveries which men have made in the age-long process--ships, agriculture, walled cities, laws, roads, clothes, songs, pictures, statues, and all the pleasures of life--and adds, "These things practice and the experience of the unresting mind have taught mankind gradually as they have progressed from point to point." It is the first definition and use of the word in literature. 2. Progress and Organization[334] The current conception of progress is shifting and indefinite. Sometimes it comprehends little more than simple growth--as of a nation in the number of its members and the extent of territory over which it spreads. Sometimes it has reference to quantity of material products--as when the advance of agriculture and manufactures is the topic. Sometimes the superior quality of these products is contemplated; and sometimes the new or improved appliances by which they are produced. When, again, we speak of moral or intellectual progress, we refer to states of the individual or people exhibiting it; while, when the progress of science or art is commented upon, we have in view certain abstract results of human thought and action. Not only, however, is the current conception of progress more or less vague, but it is in great measure erroneous. It takes in not so much the reality of progress as its accompaniments--not so much the substance as the shadow. That progress in intelligence seen during the growth of the child into the man, or the savage into the philosopher, is commonly regarded as consisting in the greater number of facts known and laws understood; whereas the actual progress consists in those internal modifications of which this larger knowledge is the expression. Social progress is supposed to consist in the making of a greater quantity and variety of the articles required for satisfying men's wants; in the increasing security of person and property; in widening freedom of action; whereas, rightly understood, social progress consists in those changes of structure in the social organism which have entailed these consequences. The current conception is a ideological one. The phenomena are contemplated solely as bearing on human happiness. Only those changes are held to constitute progress which directly or indirectly tend to heighten human happiness; and they are thought to constitute progress simply because they tend to heighten human happiness. But rightly to understand progress, we must learn the nature of these changes, considered apart from our interests. Ceasing, for example, to regard the successive geological modifications that have taken place in the earth as modifications that have gradually fitted it for the habitation of man, and as therefore constituting geological progress, we must ascertain the character common to these modifications--the law to which they all conform. And similarly in every other case. Leaving out of sight concomitants and beneficial consequences, let us ask what progress is in itself. In respect to that progress which individual organisms display in the course of their evolution, this question has been answered by the Germans. The investigations of Wolff, Goethe, and von Baer have established the truth that the series of changes gone through during the development of a seed into a tree, or an ovum into an animal, constitute an advance from homogeneity of structure to heterogeneity of structure. In its primary stage, every germ consists of a substance that is uniform throughout, both in texture and chemical composition. The first step is the appearance of a difference between two parts of this substance; or, as the phenomenon is called in physiological language, a differentiation. Each of these differentiated divisions presently begins itself to exhibit some contrast of parts; and by and by these secondary differentiations become as definite as the original one. This process is continuously repeated--is simultaneously going on in all parts of the growing embryo; and by endless differentiations of this sort there is finally produced that complex combination of tissues and organs constituting the adult animal or plant. This is the history of all organisms whatever. It is settled beyond dispute that organic progress consists in a change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. Now, we propose to show that this law of organic progress is the law of all progress. Whether it be in the development of the earth, in the development of life upon its surface, in the development of society, of government, of manufactures, of commerce, of language, literature, science, art--this same evolution of the simple into the complex, through successive differentiations, holds throughout. From the earliest traceable cosmic changes down to the latest results of civilization, we shall find that the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous is that in which progress essentially consists. 3. The Stages of Progress[335] If we regard the course of human development from the highest scientific point of view, we shall perceive that it consists in educing more and more the characteristic faculties of humanity, in comparison with those of animality; and especially with those which man has in common with the whole organic kingdom. It is in this philosophical sense that the most eminent civilization must be pronounced to be fully accordant with nature, since it is, in fact, only a more marked manifestation of the chief properties of our species, properties which, latent at first, can come into play only in that advanced state of social life for which they are exclusively destined. The whole system of biological philosophy indicates the natural progression. We have seen how, in the brute kingdom, the superiority of each race is determined by the degree of preponderance of the animal life over the organic. In like manner we see that our social evolution is only the final term of a progression which has continued from the simplest vegetables and most insignificant animals, up through the higher reptiles to the birds and the mammifers, and still on to the carnivorous animals and monkeys, the organic characteristics retiring and the animal prevailing more and more, till the intellectual and moral tend toward the ascendancy which can never be fully obtained, even in the highest state of human perfection that we can conceive of. This comparative estimate affords us the scientific view of human progression, connected, as we see it is, with the whole course of animal advancement, of which it is itself the highest degree. The analysis of our social progress proves indeed that, while the radical dispositions of our nature are necessarily invariable, the highest of them are in a continuous state of relative development, by which they rise to be preponderant powers of human existence, though the inversion of the primitive economy can never be absolutely complete. We have seen that this is the essential character of the social organism in a statical view; but it becomes much more marked when we study its variations in their gradual succession. 4. Progress and the Historical Process[336] The conclusion which these reflections suggest is that the uncritical application of biological principles to social progress results in an insuperable contradiction. The factors which determine the survival of physical organism, if applied as rules for the furtherance of social progress, appear to conflict with all that social progress means. A sense of this conflict is no doubt responsible for the further reconstruction which the biological view has in recent years undergone. Biologists now begin to inquire seriously whether "natural" selection may not be replaced by a rational selection in which "fitness for survival" would at length achieve its legitimate meaning, and the development of the race might be guided by reasoned conceptions of social value. This is a fundamental change of attitude, and the new doctrine of eugenics to which it has given rise requires careful examination. Before proceeding to this examination, however, it will be well to inquire into the causes of the contrast on which we have insisted between biological evolution and social progress. Faced by this contradiction, we ask ourselves whether social development may not be something quite distinct from the organic changes known to biology, and whether the life of society may not depend upon forces which never appear in the individual when he is examined merely as an individual or merely as a member of a race. Take the latter point first. It is easily seen in the arguments of biologists that they conceive social progress as consisting essentially in an improvement of the stock to which individuals belong. This is a way of looking at the matter intelligible enough in itself. Society consists of so many thousand or so many million individuals, and if, comparing any given generation with its ancestors, we could establish an average improvement in physical, mental, or moral faculty, we should certainly have cause to rejoice. There is progress so far. But there is another point of view which we may take up. Society consists of individual persons and nothing but individual persons, just as the body consists of cells and the product of cells. But though the body may consist exclusively of cells, we should never understand its life by examining the lives of each of its cells as a separate unit. We must equally take into account that organic interconnection whereby the living processes of each separate cell co-operate together to maintain the health of the organism which contains them all. So, again, to understand the social order we have to take into account not only the individuals with their capabilities and achievements but the social organization in virtue of which these individuals act upon one another and jointly produce what we call social results; and whatever may be true of the physical organism, we can see that in society it is possible that individuals of the very same potentialities may, with good organization, produce good results, and, with bad organization, results which are greatly inferior. The social phenomenon, in short, is not something which occurs in one individual, or even in several individuals taken severally. It is essentially an interaction of individuals, and as the capabilities of any given individual are extraordinarily various and are only called out, each by appropriate circumstances, it will be readily seen that the nature of the interaction may itself bring forth new and perhaps unexpected capacities, and elicit from the individuals contributing to it forces which, but for this particular opportunity, might possibly remain forever dormant. If this is so, sociology as a science is not the same thing as either biology or psychology. It deals neither with the physical capacities of individuals as such nor with their psychological capacities as such. It deals rather with results produced by the play of these forces upon one another, by the interaction of individuals under the conditions imposed by their physical environment. The nature of the forces and the point of these distinctions may be made clear by a very simple instance. The interplay of human motives and the interaction of human beings is the fundamental fact of social life, and the permanent results which this interaction achieves and the influence which it exercises upon the individuals who take part in it constitute the fundamental fact of social evolution. These results are embodied in what may be called, generically, tradition. So understood, tradition--its growth and establishment, its reaction upon the very individuals who contribute to building it up, and its modifications by subsequent interactions--constitutes the main subject of sociological inquiry. Tradition is, in the development of society, what heredity is in the physical growth of the stock. It is the link between past and future, it is that in which the effects of the past are consolidated and on the basis of which subsequent modifications are built up. We might push the analogy a little further, for the ideas and customs which it maintains and furnishes to each new generation as guides for their behavior in life are analogous to the determinate methods of reaction, the inherited impulses, reflexes, and instincts with which heredity furnishes the individual. The tradition of the elders is, as it were, the instinct of society. It furnishes the prescribed rule for dealing with the ordinary occasions of life, which is for the most part accepted without inquiry and applied without reflection. It furnishes the appropriate institution for providing for each class of social needs, for meeting common dangers, for satisfying social wants, for regulating social relations. It constitutes, in short, the framework of society's life which to each new generation is a part of its hereditary outfit. But of course in speaking of tradition as a kind of inheritance we conceive of it as propagated by quite other than biological methods. In a sense its propagation is psychological, it is handed on from mind to mind, and even though social institutions may in a sense be actually incorporated in material things, in buildings, in books, in coronation robes, or in flags, still it need not be said that these things are nothing but for the continuity of thought which maintains and develops their significance. Yet the forces at work in tradition are not purely psychological; at least they are not to be understood in terms of individual psychology alone. What is handed on is not merely a set of ideas but the whole social environment; not merely certain ways of thinking or of acting but the conditions which prescribe to individuals the necessity for thinking or acting in certain specific ways if they are to achieve their own desires. The point is worth dwelling on, because some writers have thought to simplify the working of tradition by reducing it to some apparently simple psychological phenomenon like that of imitation. In this there is more than one element of fallacy. Now the growth of tradition will in a sense gravely modify the individual members of the society which maintains it. To any given set of institutions a certain assemblage of qualities, mental and physical, will be most appropriate, and these may differ as much as the qualities necessary for war differ from those of peaceful industry. Any tradition will obviously call forth from human beings the qualities appropriate to it, and it will in a sense select the individuals in which those qualities are the best developed and will tend to bring them to the top of the social fabric, but this is not to say that it will assert the same modification upon the stock that would be accomplished by the working of heredity. The hereditary qualities of the race may remain the same, though the traditions have changed and though by them one set of qualities are kept permanently in abeyance, while the other are continually brought by exercise to the highest point of efficiency. We are not to conclude that physical heredity is of no importance to the social order; it must be obvious that the better the qualities of the individuals constituting a race, the more easily they will fit themselves into good social traditions, the more readily they will advance those traditions to a still higher point of excellence, and the more stoutly they would resist deterioration. The qualities upon which the social fabric calls must be there, and the more readily they are forthcoming, the more easily the social machine will work. Hence social progress necessarily implies a certain level of racial development, and its advance may always be checked by the limitations of the racial type. Nevertheless, if we look at human history as a whole, we are impressed with the stability of the great fundamental characteristics of human nature and the relatively sweeping character and often rapid development of social change. In view of this contrast we must hesitate to attribute any substantial share in human development to biological factors, and our hesitation is increased when we consider the factors on which social change depends. It is in the department of knowledge and industry that advance is most rapid and certain, and the reason is perfectly clear. It is that on this side each generation can build on the work of its predecessors. A man of very moderate mathematical capacity today can solve problems which puzzled Newton, because he has available the work of Newton and of many another since Newton's time. In the department of ethics the case is different. Each man's character has to be formed anew, and though teaching goes for much, it is not everything. The individual in the end works out his own salvation. Where there is true ethical progress is in the advance of ethical conceptions and principles which can be handed on; of laws and institutions which can be built up, maintained, and improved. That is to say, there is progress just where the factor of social tradition comes into play and just so far as its influence extends. If the tradition is broken, the race begins again where it stood before the tradition was formed. We may infer that, while the race has been relatively stagnant, society has rapidly developed, and we must conclude that, whether for good or for evil, social changes are mainly determined, not by alterations of racial type, but by modifications of tradition due to the interactions of social causes. Progress is not racial but social. B. PROGRESS AND SCIENCE 1. Progress and Happiness[337] Human progress may be properly defined as that which secures the _increase of human happiness_. Unless it do this, no matter how great a civilization may be, it is not progressive. If a nation rise, and extend its sway over a vast territory, astonishing the world with its power, its culture, and its wealth, this alone does not constitute progress. It must first be shown that its people are happier than they would otherwise have been. If a people be seized with a rage for art, and, in obedience to their impulses or to national decrees, the wealth of that people be laid out in the cultivation of the fine arts, the employment of master artists, the decoration of temples, public and private buildings, and the embellishment of streets and grounds, no matter to what degree of perfection this purpose be carried out, it is not to progress unless greater satisfaction be derived therefrom than was sacrificed in the deprivations which such a course must occasion. To be progressive in the true sense, it must work an increase in the sum total of human enjoyment. When we survey the history of civilization, we should keep this truth in view, and not allow ourselves to be dazzled by the splendor of pageantry, the glory of heraldry, or the beauty of art, literature, philosophy, or religion, but should assign to each its true place as measured by this standard. It cannot be denied that civilization, by the many false practices which it has introduced, by the facilities which its very complexity affords to the concealment of crime, and by the monstrous systems of corruption which fashion, caste, and conventionality are enabled to shelter, is the direct means of rendering many individuals miserable in the extreme; but these are the necessary incidents to its struggles to advance under the dominion of natural forces alone. It would involve a great fallacy to deduce from this the conclusion that civilization begets misery or reduces the happiness of mankind. Against this gross but popular mistake may be cited the principle before introduced, which is unanimously accepted by biologists, that an organism is perfect in proportion as its organs are numerous and varied. This is because, the more organs there are, the greater is the capacity for enjoyment. For this enjoyment is quantitative as well as qualitative, and the greater the number of faculties, the greater is the possible enjoyment derivable from their normal exercise. To say that primitive man is happier than enlightened man, is equivalent to saying that an oyster or a polyp enjoys more than an eagle or an antelope. This could be true only on the ground that the latter, in consequence of their sensitive organisms, suffer more than they enjoy; but if to be happy is to escape from all feeling, then it were better to be stones or clods, and destitute of conscious sensibility. If this be the happiness which men should seek, then is the Buddhist in the highest degree consistent when he prays for the promised _Nirvâna_, or annihilation. But this is not happiness--it is only the absence of it. For happiness can only be increased by increasing the capacity for feeling, or emotion, and, when this is increased, the capacity for suffering is likewise necessarily increased, and suffering must be endured unless sufficient sagacity accompanies it to prevent this consequence. And that is the truest progress which, while it indefinitely multiplies and increases the facilities for enjoyment, furnishes at the same time the most effective means of preventing discomfort, and, as nearly all suffering is occasioned by the violation of natural laws through ignorance of or error respecting those laws, therefore that is the truest progress which succeeds in overcoming ignorance and error. Therefore, we may enunciate the principle that progress is in proportion to the opportunities or facilities for exercising the faculties and satisfying desire. 2. Progress and Prevision[338] We have confused rapidity of change with progress. We have confused the breaking down of barriers by which advance is made possible with advance itself. We had been told that the development of industry and commerce had brought about such an interdependence of peoples that war was henceforth out of the question--at least upon a vast scale. But it is now clear that commerce also creates jealousies and rivalries and suspicions which are potent for war. We were told that nations could not long finance a war under modern conditions; economists had demonstrated that to the satisfaction of themselves and others. We see now that they had underrated both the production of wealth and the extent to which it could be mobilized for destructive purposes. We were told that the advance of science had made war practically impossible. We now know that science has not only rendered the machinery of war more deadly but has also increased the powers of resistance and endurance when war comes. If all this does not demonstrate that the forces which have brought about complicated and extensive changes in the fabric of society do not of themselves generate progress, I do not know what a demonstration would be. Has man subjugated physical nature only to release forces beyond his control? The doctrine of evolution has been popularly used to give a kind of cosmic sanction to the notion of an automatic and wholesale progress in human affairs. Our part, the human part, was simply to enjoy the usufruct. Evolution inherited all the goods of divine Providence and had the advantage of being in fashion. Even a great and devastating war is not too great a price to pay for an awakening from such an infantile and selfish dream. Progress is not automatic; it depends upon human intent and aim and upon acceptance of responsibility for its production. It is not a wholesale matter, but a retail job, to be contracted for and executed in sections. Spite of the dogma which measures progress by increase in altruism, kindliness, peaceful feelings, there is no reason that I know of to suppose that the basic fund of these emotions has increased appreciably in thousands and thousands of years. Man is equipped with these feelings at birth, as well as with emotions of fear, anger, emulation, and resentment. What appears to be an increase in one set and a decrease in the other set is, in reality, a change in their social occasions and social channels. Civilized man has not a better endowment of ear and eye than savage man; but his social surroundings give him more important things to see and hear than the savage has, and he has the wit to devise instruments to reinforce his eye and ear--the telegraph and telephone, the microscope and telescope. But there is no reason for thinking that he has less natural aggressiveness or more natural altruism--or will ever have--than the barbarian. But he may live in social conditions that create a relatively greater demand for the display of kindliness and which turn his aggressive instincts into less destructive channels. There is at any time a sufficient amount of kindly impulses possessed by man to enable him to live in amicable peace with all his fellows; and there is at any time a sufficient equipment of bellicose impulses to keep him in trouble with his fellows. An intensification of the exhibition of one may accompany an intensification of the display of the other, the only difference being that social arrangements cause the kindly feelings to be displayed toward one set of fellows and the hostile impulses toward another set. Thus, as everybody knows, the hatred toward the foreigner characterizing peoples now at war is attended by an unusual manifestation of mutual affection and love within each warring group. So characteristic is this fact that that man was a good psychologist who said that he wished that this planet might get into war with another planet, as that was the only effective way he saw of developing a world-wide community of interest in this globe's population. The indispensable preliminary condition of progress has been supplied by the conversion of scientific discoveries into inventions which turn physical energy, the energy of sun, coal, and iron, to account. Neither the discoveries nor the inventions were the product of unconscious physical nature. They were the product of human devotion and application, of human desire, patience, ingenuity, and mother-wit. The problem which now confronts us, the problem of progress, is the same in kind, differing in subject-matter. It is a problem of discovering the needs and capacities of collective human nature as we find it aggregated in racial or national groups on the surface of the globe, and of inventing the social machinery which will set available powers operating for the satisfaction of those needs. We are living still under the dominion of a laissez faire philosophy. I do not mean by this an individualistic, as against a socialistic, philosophy. I mean by it a philosophy which trusts the direction of human affairs to nature, or Providence, or evolution, or manifest destiny--that is to say, to accident--rather than to a contriving and constructive intelligence. To put our faith in the collective state instead of in individual activity is quite as laissez faire a proceeding as to put it in the results of voluntary private enterprise. The only genuine opposite to a go-as-you-please, let-alone philosophy is a philosophy which studies specific social needs and evils with a view to constructing the special social machinery for which they call. 3. Progress and the Limits of Scientific Prevision[339] Movement, whether of progress or of retrogression, can commonly be brought about only when the sentiments opposing it have been designedly weakened or have suffered a natural decay. In this destructive process, and in any constructive process by which it may be followed, reasoning, often very bad reasoning, bears, at least in western communities, a large share as cause, a still larger share as symptom; so that the clatter of contending argumentation is often the most striking accompaniment of interesting social changes. Its position, therefore, and its functions in the social organism are frequently misunderstood. People fall instinctively into the habit of supposing that, as it plays a conspicuous part in the improvement or deterioration of human institutions, it therefore supplies the very basis on which they may be made to rest, the very mold to which they ought to conform; and they naturally conclude that we have only got to reason more and to reason better in order speedily to perfect the whole machinery by which human felicity is to be secured. Surely this is a great delusion. A community founded upon argument would soon be a community no longer. It would dissolve into its constituent elements. Think of the thousand ties most subtly woven out of common sentiments, common tastes, common beliefs, nay, common prejudices, by which from our very earliest childhood we are all bound unconsciously but indissolubly together into a compacted whole. Imagine these to be suddenly loosed and their places taken by some judicious piece of reasoning on the balance of advantage, which, after taking all proper deductions, still remains to the credit of social life. These things we may indeed imagine if we please. Fortunately, we shall never see them. Society is founded--and from the nature of the human beings which constitute it, must, in the main, be always founded--not upon criticism but upon feelings and beliefs, and upon the customs and codes by which feelings and beliefs are, as it were, fixed and rendered stable. And even where these harmonize, so far as we can judge, with sound reason, they are in many cases not consciously based on reasoning; nor is their fate necessarily bound up with that of the extremely indifferent arguments by which, from time to time, philosophers, politicians, and, I will add, divines have thought fit to support them. We habitually talk as if a self-governing or free community was one which managed its own affairs. In strictness, no community manages its own affairs, or by any possibility could manage them. It manages but a narrow fringe of its affairs, and that in the main by deputy. It is only the thinnest surface layer of law and custom, belief and sentiment, which can either be successfully subjected to destructive treatment, or become the nucleus of any new growth--a fact which explains the apparent paradox that so many of our most famous advances in political wisdom are nothing more than the formal recognition of our political impotence. As our expectations of limitless progress for the race cannot depend upon the blind operation of the laws of heredity, so neither can they depend upon the deliberate action of national governments. Such examination as we can make of the changes which have taken place during the relatively minute fraction of history with respect to which we have fairly full information shows that they have been caused by a multitude of variations, often extremely small, made in their surroundings by individuals whose objects, though not necessarily selfish, have often had no intentional reference to the advancement of the community at large. But we have no scientific ground for suspecting that the stimulus to these individual efforts must necessarily continue; we know of no law by which, if they do continue, they must needs be co-ordinated for a common purpose or pressed into the service of a common good. We cannot estimate their remoter consequences; neither can we tell how they will act and react upon one another, nor how they will in the long run affect morality, religion, and other fundamental elements of human society. The future of the race is thus encompassed with darkness; no faculty of calculation that we possess, no instrument that we are likely to invent, will enable us to map out its course, or penetrate the secret of its destiny. It is easy, no doubt, to find in the clouds which obscure our paths what shapes we please: to see in them the promise of some millennial paradise, or the threat of endless and unmeaning travel through waste and perilous places. But in such visions the wise man will put but little confidence, content, in a sober and cautious spirit, with a full consciousness of his feeble powers of foresight and the narrow limits of his activity, to deal as they arise with the problems of his own generation. 4. Eugenics as a Science of Progress[340] Eugenics is the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage. What is meant by improvement? There is considerable difference between goodness in the several qualities and in that of the character as a whole. The character depends largely on the _proportion_ between qualities whose balance may be much influenced by education. We must therefore leave morals as far as possible out of the discussion, not entangling ourselves with the almost hopeless difficulties they raise as to whether a character as a whole is good or bad. Moreover, the goodness or badness of character is not absolute, but relative to the current form of civilisation. A fable will best explain what is meant. Let the scene be the Zoölogical Gardens in the quiet hours of the night, and suppose that, as in old fables, the animals are able to converse, and that some very wise creature who had easy access to all the cages, say a philosophic sparrow or rat, was engaged in collecting the opinions of all sorts of animals with a view of elaborating a system of absolute morality. It is needless to enlarge on the contrariety of ideals between the beasts that prey and those they prey upon, between those of the animals that have to work hard for their food and the sedentary parasites that cling to their bodies and suck their blood and so forth. A large number of suffrages in favour of maternal affection would be obtained, but most species of fish would repudiate it, while among the voices of birds would be heard the musical protest of the cuckoo. Though no agreement could be reached as to absolute morality, the essentials of Eugenics may be easily defined. All creatures would agree that it was better to be healthy than sick, vigorous than weak, well fitted than ill fitted for their part in life. In short, that it was better to be good rather than bad specimens of their kind, whatever that kind might be. So with men. There are a vast number of conflicting ideals of alternative characters, of incompatible civilisations; but all are wanted to give fulness and interest to life. Society would be very dull if every man resembled the highly estimable Marcus Aurelius or Adam Bede. The aim of Eugenics is to represent each class or sect by its best specimens; that done, to leave them to work out their common civilisation in their own way. The aim of Eugenics is to bring as many influences as can be reasonably employed, to cause the useful classes in the community to contribute _more_ than their proportion to the next generation. The course of procedure that lies within the functions of a learned and active Society such as the Sociological may become, would be somewhat as follows: 1. Dissemination of a knowledge of the laws of heredity so far as they are surely known, and promotion of their further study. Few seem to be aware how greatly the knowledge of what may be termed the _actuarial_ side of heredity has advanced in recent years. The average closeness of kinship in each degree now admits of exact definition and of being treated mathematically, like birth- and death-rates, and the other topics with which actuaries are concerned. 2. Historical inquiry into the rates with which the various classes of society (classified according to civic usefulness) have contributed to the population at various times, in ancient and modern nations. There is strong reason for believing that national rise and decline is closely connected with this influence. It seems to be the tendency of high civilisation to check fertility in the upper classes, through numerous causes, some of which are well known, others are inferred, and others again are wholly obscure. The latter class are apparently analogous to those which bar the fertility of most species of wild animals in zoölogical gardens. Out of the hundreds and thousands of species that have been tamed, very few indeed are fertile when their liberty is restricted and their struggles for livelihood are abolished; those which are so and are otherwise useful to man becoming domesticated. There is perhaps some connection between this obscure action and the disappearance of most savage races when brought into contact with high civilisation, though there are other and well-known concomitant causes. But while most barbarous races disappear, some, like the Negro, do not. It may therefore be expected that types of our race will be found to exist which can be highly civilised without losing fertility; nay, they may become more fertile under artificial conditions, as is the case with many domestic animals. 3. Systematic collection of facts showing the circumstances under which large and thriving families have most frequently originated; in other words, the _conditions_ of Eugenics. The names of the thriving families in England have yet to be learnt, and the conditions under which they have arisen. We cannot hope to make much advance in the science of Eugenics without a careful study of facts that are now accessible with difficulty, if at all. The definition of a thriving family, such as will pass muster for the moment at least, is one in which the children have gained distinctly superior positions to those who were their classmates in early life. Families may be considered "large" that contain not less than three adult male children. The point to be ascertained is the _status_ of the two parents at the time of their marriage, whence its more or less eugenic character might have been predicted, if the larger knowledge that we now hope to obtain had then existed. Some account would, of course, be wanted of their race, profession, and residence; also of their own respective parentages, and of their brothers and sisters. Finally, the reasons would be required why the children deserved to be entitled a "thriving" family, to distinguish worthy from unworthy success. This manuscript collection might hereafter develop into a "golden book" of thriving families. The Chinese, whose customs have often much sound sense, make their honours retrospective. We might learn from them to show that respect to the parents of noteworthy children, which the contributors of such valuable assets to the national wealth richly deserve. 4. Influences affecting Marriage. The passion of love seems so overpowering that it may be thought folly to try to direct its course. But plain facts do not confirm this view. Social influences of all kinds have immense power in the end, and they are very various. If unsuitable marriages from the eugenic point of view were banned socially, or even regarded with the unreasonable disfavour which some attach to cousin marriages, very few would be made. The multitude of marriage restrictions that have proved prohibitive among uncivilised people would require a volume to describe. 5. Persistence in setting forth the national importance of Eugenics. There are three stages to be passed through. _Firstly_, it must be made familiar as an academic question, until its exact importance has been understood and accepted as a fact; _secondly_, it must be recognised as a subject whose practical development deserves serious consideration; and _thirdly_, it must be introduced into the national conscience, like, a new religion. It has, indeed, strong claims to become an orthodox religious tenet of the future, for Eugenics cooperates with the workings of Nature by securing that humanity shall be represented by the fittest races. What Nature does blindly, slowly, and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly. I see no impossibility in Eugenics becoming a religious dogma among mankind, but its details must first be worked out sedulously in the study. The first and main point is to secure the general intellectual acceptance of Eugenics as a hopeful and most important study. Then let its principles work into the heart of the nation, who will gradually give practical effect to them in ways that we may not wholly foresee. C. PROGRESS AND HUMAN NATURE 1. The Nature of Man[341] Man is certainly an animal that, when he lives at all, lives for ideals. Something must be found to occupy his imagination, to raise pleasure and pain into love and hatred, and change the prosaic alternative between comfort and discomfort into the tragic one between happiness and sorrow. Now that the hue of daily adventure is so dull, when religion for the most part is so vague and accommodating, when even war is a vast impersonal business, nationality seems to have slipped into the place of honor. It has become the one eloquent, public, intrepid illusion--illusion, I mean, when it is taken for an ultimate good or a mystical essence, for of course nationality is a fact. It is natural for a man to like to live at home, and to live long elsewhere without a sense of exile is not good for his moral integrity. It is right to feel a greater kinship and affection for what lies nearest to one's self. But this necessary fact and even duty of nationality is accidental; like age or sex it is a physical fatality which can be made the basis of specific and comely virtues; but it is not an end to pursue or a flag to flaunt or a privilege not balanced by a thousand incapacities. Yet of this distinction our contemporaries tend to make an idol, perhaps because it is the only distinction they feel they have left. Everywhere in the nineteenth century we find a double preoccupation with the past and with the future, a longing to know what all experience might have been hitherto, and on the other hand to hasten to some wholly different experience, to be contrived immediately with a beating heart and with flying banners. The imagination of the age was intent on history; its conscience was intent on reform. 2. Progress and the Mores[342] What now are some of the leading features in the mores of civilized society at the present time? Undoubtedly they are monogamy, anti-slavery, and democracy. All people now are more nervous than anybody used to be. Social ambition is great and is prevalent in all classes. The idea of class is unpopular and is not understood. There is a superstitious yearning for equality. There is a decided preference for city life, and a stream of population from the country into big cities. These are facts of the mores of the time. Our societies are almost unanimous in their response if there is any question raised on these matters. Medieval people conceived of society under forms of status as generally as we think of it under forms of individual liberty. The mores of the Orient and Occident differ from each other now, as they apparently always have differed. The Orient is a region where time, faith, tradition, and patience rule. The Occident forms ideals and plans, and spends energy and enterprise to make new things with thoughts of progress. All details of life follow the leading ways of thought of each group. We can compare and judge ours and theirs, but independent judgment of our own, without comparison with other times or other places, is possible only within narrow limits. Let us first take up the nervous desire and exertion which mark the men of our time in the western civilized societies. There is a wide popular belief in what is called progress. The masses in all civilized states strain toward success in some adopted line. Struggling and striving are passionate tendencies which take possession of groups from time to time. The newspapers, the popular literature, and the popular speakers show this current and popular tendency. This is what makes the mores. 3. War and Progress[343] Let us see what progress means. It is a term which covers several quite different things. There is material progress, by which I understand an increase in wealth, that is, in the commodities useful to man, which give him health, strength, and longer life, and make his life easier, providing more comfort and more leisure, and thus enabling him to be more physically efficient, and to escape from that pressure of want which hampers the development of his whole nature. There is intellectual progress--an increase in knowledge, a greater abundance of ideas, the training to think, and to think correctly, the growth in capacity for dealing with practical problems, the cultivation of the power to enjoy the exercise of thought and the pleasures of letters and art. There is moral progress--a thing harder to define, but which includes the development of those emotions and habits which make for happiness--contentment and tranquility of mind; the absence of the more purely animal and therefore degrading vices (such as intemperance and sensuality in all its other forms); the control of the violent passions; good will and kindliness toward others--all the things which fall within the philosophical conception of a life guided by right reason. People have different ideas of what constitutes happiness and virtue, but these things are at any rate included in every such conception. A further preliminary question arises. Is human progress to be estimated in respect to the point to which it raises the few who have high mental gifts and the opportunity of obtaining an education fitting them for intellectual enjoyment and intellectual vocations, or is it to be measured by the amount of its extension to and diffusion through each nation, meaning the nation as a whole--the average man as well as the superior spirits? You may sacrifice either the many to the few--as was done by slavery--or the few to the many, or the advance may be general and proportionate in all classes. Again, when we think of progress, are we to think of the world as a whole, or only of the stronger and more capable races and states? If the stronger rise upon the prostrate bodies of the weaker, is this clear gain to the world, because the stronger will ultimately do more for the world, or is the loss and suffering of the weaker to be brought into the account? I do not attempt to discuss these questions; it is enough to note them as fit to be remembered; for perhaps all three kinds of progress ought to be differently judged if a few leading nations only are to be regarded, or if we are to think of all mankind. It is undeniable that war has often been accompanied by an advance in civilization. If we were to look for progress only in time of peace there would have been little progress to discover, for mankind has lived in a state of practically permanent warfare. The Egyptian and Assyrian monarchs were always fighting. The author of the Book of Kings speaks of spring as the time when kings go forth to war, much as we should speak of autumn as the time when men go forth to shoot deer. "War is the natural relation of states to one another," said Plato. The fact has been hardly less true since his day, though latterly men have become accustomed to think of peace as the normal, war as the abnormal or exceptional, relation of states to one another. In the ancient world, as late as the days of Roman conquest, a state of peace was the rare exception among civilized states as well as barbarous tribes. But Carthage, like her Phoenician mother-city, went on building up a mighty commerce till Rome smote her down, and the Hellenic people, in its many warring cities, went on producing noble poems and profound philosophical speculations, and rearing majestic temples and adorning them with incomparable works of sculpture, in the intervals of their fighting with their neighbors of the same or other races. The case of the Greeks proves that war and progress are compatible. The capital instance of the association of war with the growth and greatness of a state is found in Prussia. One may say that her history is the source of the whole thesis and the basis of the whole argument. It is a case of what, in the days when I learned logic at the University of Oxford, we used to call the induction from a single instance. Prussia, then a small state, began her upward march under the warlike and successful prince whom her people call the Great Elector. Her next long step to greatness was taken by Frederick II, again by favor of successful warfare, though doubtless also by means of a highly organized, and for those days very efficient, administration. Voltaire said of Frederick's Prussia that its trade was war. Another war added to her territory in 1814-15. Three successful wars--those of 1864, 1866, and 1870-71--made her the nucleus of a united German nation and the leading military power of the Old World. Ever since those victories her industrial production, her commerce, and her wealth have rapidly increased, while at the same time scientific research has been prosecuted with the greatest vigor and on a scale unprecedentedly large. These things were no doubt achieved during a peace of forty-three years. But it was what one may call a belligerent peace, full of thoughts of war and preparations for war. There is no denying that the national spirit has been carried to a high point of pride, energy, and self-confidence, which have stimulated effort in all directions and secured extraordinary efficiency in civil as well as in military administration. Here, then, is an instance in which a state has grown by war and a people has been energized by war. Next, let us take the cases which show that there have been in many countries long periods of incessant war with no corresponding progress in the things that make civilization. I will not speak of semi-barbarous tribes, among the more advanced of which may be placed the Albanians and the Pathans and the Turkomans, while among the more backward were the North American Indians and the Zulus. But one may cite the case of the civilized regions of Asia under the successors of Alexander, when civilized peoples, distracted by incessant strife, did little for the progress of arts or letters or government, from the death of the great conqueror till they were united under the dominion of Rome and received from her a time of comparative tranquillity. The Thirty Years' War is an example of long-continued fighting which, far from bringing progress in its train, inflicted injuries on Germany from which she did not recover for nearly two centuries. In recent times there has been more fighting in South and Central America, since the wars of independence, than in any other civilized countries. Yet can anyone say that anything has been gained by the unending civil wars and revolutions, or those scarcely less frequent wars between the several republics, like that terrible one thirty years ago in which Peru was overcome by Chile? Or look at Mexico. Except during the years when the stern dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz kept order and equipped the country with roads and railways, her people have made no perceptible advance and stand hardly higher today than when they were left to work out their own salvation a hundred years ago. Social and economic conditions have doubtless been against her. All that need be remembered is that warfare has not bettered those conditions or improved the national character. If this hasty historical survey has, as I frankly admit, given us few positive and definite results, the reason is plain. Human progress is affected by so many conditions besides the presence or absence of fighting that it is impossible in any given case to pronounce that it has been chiefly due either to war or to peace. Two conclusions, however, we may claim to have reached, though they are rather negative than positive. One is that war does not necessarily arrest progress. Peoples may advance in thought, literature, and art while they are fighting. The other is that war cannot be shown to have been a cause of progress in anything except the wealth or power of a state which extends its dominions by conquest or draws tribute from the vanquished. What, then, are the causes to which the progress of mankind is due? It is due partly, no doubt, if not to strife, to competition. But chiefly to thought, which is more often hindered than helped by war. It is the races that know how to think, rather than the far more numerous races that excel in fighting rather than in thinking, that have led the world. Thought, in the form of invention and inquiry, has given us those improvements in the arts of life and in the knowledge of nature by which material progress and comfort have been obtained. Thought has produced literature, philosophy, art, and (when intensified by emotion) religion--all the things that make life worth living. Now the thought of any people is most active when it is brought into contact with the thought of another, because each is apt to lose its variety and freedom of play when it has worked too long upon familiar lines and flowed too long in the channels it has deepened. Hence isolation retards progress, while intercourse quickens it. The great creative epochs have been those in which one people of natural vigor received an intellectual impulse from the ideas of another, as happened when Greek culture began to penetrate Italy, and thirteen centuries later, when the literature of the ancients began to work on the nations of the medieval world. Such contact, with the process of learning which follows from it, may happen in or through war, but it happens far oftener in peace; and it is in peace that men have the time and the taste to profit fully by it. A study of history will show that we may, with an easy conscience, dismiss the theory of Treitschke--that war is a health-giving tonic which Providence must be expected constantly to offer to the human race for its own good. The future progress of mankind is to be sought, not through the strifes and hatreds of the nations, but rather by their friendly co-operation in the healing and enlightening works of peace and in the growth of a spirit of friendship and mutual confidence which may remove the causes of war. 4. Progress and the Cosmic Urge _a. The "Élan Vitale"_[344] All life, animal and vegetable, seems in its essence like an effort to accumulate energy and then to let it flow into flexible channels, changeable in shape, at the end of which it will accomplish infinitely varied kinds of work. That is what the _vital impetus_, passing through matter, would fain do all at once. It would succeed, no doubt, if its power were unlimited, or if some reinforcement could come to it from without. But the impetus is finite, and it has been given once for all. It cannot overcome all obstacles. The movement it starts is sometimes turned aside, sometimes divided, always opposed; and the evolution of the organized world is the unrolling of this conflict. The first great scission that had to be effected was that of the two kingdoms, vegetable and animal, which thus happen to be mutually complementary, without, however, any agreement having been made between them. To this scission there succeeded many others. Hence the diverging lines of evolution, at least what is essential in them. But we must take into account retrogressions, arrests, accidents of every kind. And we must remember, above all, that each species behaves as if the general movement of life stopped at it instead of passing through it. It thinks only of itself, it lives only for itself. Hence the numberless struggles that we behold in nature. Hence a discord, striking and terrible, but for which the original principle of life must not be held responsible. It is therefore conceivable that life might have assumed a totally different outward appearance and designed forms very different from those we know. With another chemical substratum, in other physical conditions, the impulsion would have remained the same, but it would have split up very differently in course of progress; and the whole would have traveled another road--whether shorter or longer who can tell? In any case, in the entire series of living beings no term would have been what it now is. There are numerous cases in which nature seems to hesitate between the two forms, and to ask herself if she shall make a society or an individual. The slightest push is enough, then, to make the balance weigh on one side or the other. If we take an infusorian sufficiently large, such as the Stentor, and cut it into two halves each containing a part of the nucleus, each of the two halves will generate an independent Stentor; but if we divide it incompletely, so that a protoplasmic communication is left between the two halves, we shall see them execute, each from its side, corresponding movements; so that in this case it is enough that a thread should be maintained or cut in order that life should affect the social or the individual form. Thus, in rudimentary organisms consisting of a single cell, we already find that the apparent individuality of the whole is the composition of an _undefined_ number of potential individualities potentially associated. But, from top to bottom of the series of living beings, the same law is manifested. And it is this that we express when we say that unity and multiplicity are categories of inert matter, that the vital impetus is neither pure unity nor pure multiplicity, and that if the matter to which it communicates itself compels it to choose one of the two, its choice will never be definitive: it will leap from one to the other indefinitely. The evolution of life in the double direction of individuality and association has therefore nothing accidental about it: it is due to the very nature of life. Essential also is the progress to reflexion. If our analysis is correct, it is consciousness, or rather supra-consciousness, that is at the origin of life. Consciousness, or supra-consciousness, is the name for the rocket whose extinguished fragments fall back as matter; consciousness, again, is the name for that which subsists of the rocket itself, passing through the fragments and lighting them up into organisms. But this consciousness, which is a _need of creation_, is made manifest to itself only where creation is possible. It lies dormant when life is condemned to automatism; it wakens as soon as the possibility of a choice is restored. That is why, in organisms unprovided with a nervous system, it varies according to the power of locomotion and of deformation of which the organism disposes. And in animals with a nervous system, it is proportional to the complexity of the switchboard on which the paths called sensory and the paths called motor intersect--that is, of the brain. Consciousness corresponds exactly to the living being's power of choice; it is coextensive with the fringe of possible action that surrounds the real action: consciousness is synonymous with invention and with freedom. Now, in the animal, invention is never anything but a variation on the theme of routine. Shut up in the habits of the species, it succeeds, no doubt, in enlarging them by its individual initiative; but it escapes automatism only for an instant, for just the time to create a new automatism. The gates of its prison close as soon as they are opened; by pulling at its chain it succeeds only in stretching it. With man, consciousness breaks the chain. In man, and in man alone, it sets itself free. The whole history of life until man has been that of the effort of consciousness to raise matter, and of the more or less complete overwhelming of consciousness by the matter which has fallen back on it. The enterprise was paradoxical, if, indeed, we may speak here otherwise than by metaphor of enterprise and of effort. It was to create with matter, which is necessity itself, an instrument of freedom, to make a machine which should triumph over mechanism, and to use determinism of nature to pass through the meshes of the net which this very determinism had spread. But, everywhere except in man, consciousness has let itself be caught in the net whose meshes it tried to pass through: it has remained the captive of the mechanisms it has set up. Automatism, which it tries to draw in the direction of freedom, winds about it and drags it down. It has not the power to escape, because the energy it has provided for acts is almost all employed in maintaining the infinitely subtle and essentially unstable equilibrium into which it has brought matter. But man not only maintains his machine, he succeeds in using it as he pleases. Doubtless he owes this to the superiority of his brain, which enables him to build an unlimited number of motor mechanisms, to oppose new habits to the old ones unceasingly, and, by dividing automatism against itself, to rule it. He owes it to his language, which furnishes consciousness with an immaterial body in which to incarnate itself and thus exempts it from dwelling exclusively on material bodies, whose flux would soon drag it along and finally swallow it up. He owes it to social life, which stores and preserves efforts as language stores thought, fixes thereby a mean level to which individuals must raise themselves at the outset, and by this initial stimulation prevents the average man from slumbering and drives the superior man to mount still higher. But our brain, our society, and our language are only the external and various signs of one and the same internal superiority. They tell, each after its manner, the unique, exceptional success which life has won at a given moment of its evolution. They express the difference of kind, and not only of degree, which separates man from the rest of the animal world. They let us guess that, while at the end of the vast springboard from which life has taken its leap, all the others have stepped down, finding the cord stretched too high, man alone has cleared the obstacle. It is in this quite special sense that man is the "term" and the "end" of evolution. Life, we have said, transcends finality as it transcends the other categories. It is essentially a current sent through matter, drawing from it what it can. There has not, therefore, properly speaking, been any project or plan. On the other hand, it is abundantly evident that the rest of nature is not for the sake of man: we struggle like the other species, we have struggled against other species. Moreover, if the evolution of life had encountered other accidents in its course, if, thereby, the current of life had been otherwise divided, we should have been, physically and morally, far different from what we are. For these various reasons it would be wrong to regard humanity, such as we have it before our eyes, as prefigured in the evolutionary movement. It cannot even be said to be the outcome of the whole of evolution, for evolution has been accomplished on several divergent lines, and while the human species is at the end of one of them, other lines have been followed with other species at their end. It is in a quite different sense that we hold humanity to be the ground of evolution. From our point of view, life appears in its entirety as an immense wave which, starting from a centre, spreads outwards, and which on almost the whole of its circumference is stopped and converted into oscillation: at one single point the obstacle has been forced, the impulsion has passed freely. It is this freedom that the human form registers. Everywhere but in man, consciousness has had to come to a stand; in man alone it has kept on its way. Man, then, continues the vital movement indefinitely, although he does not draw along with him all that life carries in itself. On other lines of evolution there have traveled other tendencies which life implied, and of which, since everything interpenetrates, man has, doubtless, kept something, but of which he has kept only very little. _It is as if a vague and formless being, whom we may call, as we will_, man _or_ superman, _had sought to realize himself, and had succeeded only by abandoning a part of himself on the way_. The losses are represented by the rest of the animal world, and even by the vegetable world, at least in what these have that is positive and above the accidents of evolution. From this point of view, the discordances of which nature offers us the spectacle are singularly weakened. The organized world as a whole becomes as the soil on which was to grow either man himself or a being who morally must resemble him. The animals, however distant they may be from our species, however hostile to it, have none the less been useful traveling companions, on whom consciousness has unloaded whatever encumbrances it was dragging along, and who have enabled it to rise, in man, to heights from which it sees an unlimited horizon open again before it. Consciousness is distinct from the organism it animates, although it must undergo its vicissitudes. As the possible actions which a state of consciousness indicates are at every instant beginning to be carried out in the nervous centres, the brain underlies at every instant the motor indications of the state of consciousness; but the interdependency of consciousness and brain is limited to this; the destiny of consciousness is not bound up on that account with the destiny of cerebral matter. Finally, consciousness is essentially free; it is freedom itself; but it cannot pass through matter without settling on it, without adapting itself to it: this adaptation is what we call intellectuality; and the intellect, turning itself back towards active, that is to say, free, consciousness, naturally makes it enter into the conceptual forms into which it is accustomed to see matter fit. It will therefore always perceive freedom in the form of necessity; it will always neglect the part of novelty or of creation inherent in the free act; it will always substitute for action itself an imitation artificial, approximative, obtained by compounding the old with the old and the same with the same. Thus, to the eyes of a philosophy that attempts to reabsorb intellect in intuition, many difficulties vanish or become light. But such a doctrine does not only facilitate speculation; it gives us also more power to act and to live. For, with it, we feel ourselves no longer isolated in humanity, humanity no longer seems isolated in the nature that it dominates. As the smallest grain of dust is bound up with our entire solar system, drawn along with it in that undivided movement of descent which is materiality itself, so all organized beings, from the humblest to the highest, from the first origins of life to the time in which we are, and in all places, as in all times, do but evidence a single impulsion, the inverse of the movement of matter, and in itself indivisible. All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death. _b. The "Dunkler Drang"_[345] Every glance at the world, to explain which is the task of the philosopher, confirms and proves that _will to live_, far from being an arbitrary hypostasis or an empty word, is the only true expression of its inmost nature. Everything presses and strives towards _existence_, if possible _organized existence_, i.e., _life_, and after that to the highest possible grade of it. In animal nature it then becomes apparent that _will to live_ is the keynote of its being, its one unchangeable and unconditioned quality. Let anyone consider this universal desire for life, let him see the infinite willingness, facility, and exuberance with which the will to live pressed impetuously into existence under a million forms everywhere and at every moment, by means of fructification and of germs, nay, when these are wanting, by means of _generatio aequivoca_, seizing every opportunity, eagerly grasping for itself every material capable of life: and then again let him cast a glance at its fearful alarm and wild rebellion when in any particular phenomenon it must pass out of existence; especially when this takes place with distinct consciousness. Then it is precisely the same as if in this single phenomenon the whole world would be annihilated forever, and the whole being of this threatened living thing is at once transformed into the most desperate struggle against death and resistance to it. Look, for example, at the incredible anxiety of a man in danger of his life, the rapid and serious participation in this of every witness of it, and the boundless rejoicing at his deliverance. Look at the rigid terror with which a sentence of death is heard, the profound awe with which we regard the preparations for carrying it out, and the heartrending compassion which seizes us at the execution itself. We would then suppose there was something quite different in question than a few less years of an empty, sad existence, embittered by troubles of every kind, and always uncertain: we would rather be amazed that it was a matter of any consequence whether one attained a few years earlier to the place where after an ephemeral existence he has billions of years to be. In such phenomena, then, it becomes visible that I am right in declaring that _the will to live_ is that which cannot be further explained, but lies at the foundation of all explanations, and that this, far from being an empty word, like the absolute, the infinite, the idea, and similar expressions, is the most real thing we know, nay, the kernel of reality itself. But if now, abstracting for a while from this interpretation drawn from our inner being, we place ourselves as strangers over against nature, in order to comprehend it objectively, we find that from the grade of organized life upwards it has only one intention--that of the _maintenance of the species_. To this end it works, through the immense superfluity of germs, through the urgent vehemence of the sexual instinct, through its willingness to adapt itself to all circumstances and opportunities, even to the production of bastards, and through the instinctive maternal affection, the strength of which is so great that in many kinds of animals it even outweighs self-love, so that the mother sacrifices her life in order to preserve that of the young. The individual, on the contrary, has for nature only an indirect value, only so far as it is the means of maintaining the species. Apart from this, its existence is to nature a matter of indifference; indeed nature even leads it to destruction as soon as it has ceased to be useful for this end. Why the individual exists would thus be clear; but why does the species itself exist? That is a question which nature when considered merely objectively cannot answer. For in vain do we seek by contemplating her for an end of this restless striving, this ceaseless pressing into existence, this anxious care for the maintenance of the species. The strength and the time of the individuals are consumed in the effort to procure sustenance for themselves and their young, and are only just sufficient, sometimes even not sufficient, for this. The whole thing, when regarded thus purely objectively, and indeed as extraneous to us, looks as if nature was only concerned that of all her (Platonic) _Ideas_, i.e., permanent forms, none should be lost. For the individuals are fleeting as the water in the brook; and Ideas, on the contrary, are permanent, like its eddies: but the exhaustion of the water would also do away with the eddies. We would have to stop at this unintelligible view if nature were known to us only from without, thus were given us merely _objectively_, and we accepted it as it is comprehended by knowledge, and also as sprung from knowledge, i.e., in the sphere of the idea, and were therefore obliged to confine ourselves to this province in solving it. But the case is otherwise, and a glance at any rate is afforded us into the _interior of nature_; inasmuch as this is nothing else than _our own inner being_, which is precisely where nature, arrived at the highest grade to which its striving could work itself up, is now by the light of knowledge found directly in self-consciousness. Thus the subjective here gives the key for the exposition of the objective. In order to recognize, as something original and unconditioned, that exceedingly strong tendency of all animals and men to retain life and carry it on as long as possible--a tendency which was set forth above as characteristic of the subjective, or of the will--it is necessary to make clear to ourselves that this is by no means the result of any objective _knowledge_ of the worth of life, but is independent of all knowledge; or, in other words, that those beings exhibit themselves, not as drawn from in front, but as impelled from behind. If with this intention we first of all review the interminable series of animals, consider the infinite variety of their forms, as they exhibit themselves always differently modified according to their element and manner of life, and also ponder the inimitable ingenuity of their structure and mechanism, which is carried out with equal perfection in every individual; and finally, if we take into consideration the incredible expenditure of strength, dexterity, prudence, and activity which every animal has ceaselessly to make through its whole life; if, approaching the matter more closely, we contemplate the untiring diligence of wretched little ants, the marvellous and ingenious industry of the bees, or observe how a single burying-beetle (_Necrophorus vespillo_) buries a mole of forty times its own size in two days in order to deposit its eggs in it and insure nourishment for the future brood (Gleditsch, _Physik. Bot. Oekon. Abhandl._, III, 220), at the same time calling to mind how the life of most insects is nothing but ceaseless labour to prepare food and an abode for the future brood which will arise from their eggs, and which then, after they have consumed the food and passed through the chrysalis state, enter upon life merely to begin again from the beginning the same labour; then also how, like this, the life of the birds is for the most part taken up with their distant and laborious migrations, then with the building of their nests and the collection of food for their brood, which itself has to play the same rôle the following year; and so all work constantly for the future, which afterwards makes bankrupt--then we cannot avoid looking round for the reward of all this skill and trouble, for the end which these animals have before their eyes, which strive so ceaselessly--in short, we are driven to ask: What is the result? What is attained by the animal existence which demands such infinite preparation? And there is nothing to point to but the satisfaction of hunger and the sexual instinct, or in any case a little momentary comfort, as it falls to the lot of each animal individual, now and then in the intervals of its endless need and struggle. Take, for example, the mole, that unwearied worker. To dig with all its might with its enormous shovel claws is the occupation of its whole life; constant night surrounds it; its embryo eyes only make it avoid the light. It alone is truly an _animal nocturnum_; not cats, owls, and bats, who see by night. But what, now, does it attain by this life, full of trouble and devoid of pleasure? Food and the begetting of its kind; thus only the means of carrying on and beginning anew the same doleful course in new individuals. In such examples it becomes clear that there is no proportion between the cares and troubles of life and the results or gain of it. The consciousness of the world of perception gives a certain appearance of objective worth of existence to the life of those animals which can see, although in their case this consciousness is entirely subjective and limited to the influence of motives upon them. But the _blind_ mole, with its perfect organization and ceaseless activity, limited to the alternation of insect larvae and hunger, makes the disproportion of the means to the end apparent. Let us now add the consideration of the human race. The matter indeed becomes more complicated, and assumes a certain seriousness of aspect; but the fundamental character remains unaltered. Here also life presents itself by no means as a gift for enjoyment, but as a task, a drudgery to be performed; and in accordance with this we see, in great and small, universal need, ceaseless cares, constant pressure, endless strife, compulsory activity, with extreme exertion of all the powers of body and mind. Many millions, united into nations, strive for the common good, each individual on account of his own; but many thousands fall as a sacrifice for it. Now senseless delusions, now intriguing politics, incite them to wars with each other; then the sweat and the blood of the great multitude must flow, to carry out the ideas of individuals, or to expiate their faults. In peace industry and trade are active, inventions work miracles, seas are navigated, delicacies are collected from all ends of the world, the waves engulf thousands. All strive, some planning, others acting; the tumult is indescribable. But the ultimate aim of it all, what is it? To sustain ephemeral and tormented individuals through a short span of time in the most fortunate ease with endurable want and comparative freedom from pain, which, however, is at once attended with ennui; then the reproduction of this race and its striving. In this evident disproportion between the trouble and the reward, the will to live appears to us from this point of view, if taken objectively, as a fool, or subjectively, as a delusion, seized by which everything living works with the utmost exertion of its strength for something that is of no value. But when we consider it more closely, we shall find here also that it is rather a blind pressure, a tendency entirely without ground or motive. The law of motivation only extends to the particular actions, not to willing _as a whole and in general_. It depends upon this, that if we conceive of the human race and its action _as a whole and universally_, it does not present itself to us, as when we contemplate the particular actions, as a play of puppets who are pulled after the ordinary manner by threads outside them; but from this point of view, as puppets that are set in motion by internal clockwork. For if, as we have done above, one compares the ceaseless, serious, and laborious striving of men with what they gain by it, nay, even with what they ever can gain, the disproportion we have pointed out becomes apparent, for one recognizes that that which is to be gained, taken as the motive power, is entirely insufficient for the explanation of that movement and that ceaseless striving. What, then, is a short postponement of death, a slight easing of misery or deferment of pain, a momentary stilling of desire, compared with such an abundant and certain victory over them all as death? What could such advantages accomplish taken as actual moving causes of a human race, innumerable because constantly renewed, which unceasingly moves, strives, struggles, grieves, writhes, and performs the whole tragi-comedy of the history of the world, nay, what says more than all, _perseveres_ in such a mock-existence as long as each one possibly can? Clearly this is all inexplicable if we seek the moving causes outside the figures and conceive the human race as striving, in consequence of rational reflection, or something analogous to this (as moving threads), after those good things held out to it, the attainment of which would be a sufficient reward for its ceaseless cares and troubles. The matter being taken thus, everyone would rather have long ago said, "Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle," and have gone out. But, on the contrary, everyone guards and defends his life, like a precious pledge entrusted to him under heavy responsibility, under infinite cares and abundant misery, even under which life is tolerable. The wherefore and the why, the reward for this, certainly he does not see; but he has accepted the worth of that pledge without seeing it, upon trust and faith, and does not know what it consists in. Hence I have said that these puppets are not pulled from without, but each bears in itself the clockwork from which its movements result. This is _the will to live_, manifesting itself as an untiring machine, an irrational tendency, which has not its sufficient reason in the external world. It holds the individuals firmly upon the scene, and is the _primum mobile_ of their movements; while the external objects, the motives, only determine their direction in the particular case; otherwise the cause would not be at all suitable to the effect. For, as every manifestation of a force of nature has a cause, but the force of nature itself none, so every particular act of will has a motive, but the will in general has none: indeed at bottom these two are one and the same. The will, as that which is metaphysical, is everywhere the boundary-stone of every investigation, beyond which it cannot go. We often see a miserable figure, deformed and shrunk with age, want, and disease, implore our help from the bottom of his heart for the prolongation of an existence, the end of which would necessarily appear altogether desirable if it were an objective judgment that determined here. Thus instead of this it is the blind will, appearing as the tendency to life, the love of life, and the sense of life; it is the same which makes the plants grow. This sense of life may be compared to a rope which is stretched above the puppet show of the world of men, and on which the puppets hang by invisible threads, while apparently they are supported only by the ground beneath them (the objective value of life). But if the rope becomes weak the puppet sinks; if it breaks the puppet must fall, for the ground beneath it only seemed to support it: i.e., the weakening of that love of life shows itself as hypochondria, spleen, melancholy: its entire exhaustion as the inclination to suicide. And as with the persistence in life, so is it also with its action and movement. This is not something freely chosen; but while everyone would really gladly rest, want and ennui are the whips that keep the top spinning. Therefore everything is in continual strain and forced movement, and the course of the world goes on, to use an expression of Aristotle's (_De coelo_ ii. 13), [Greek: "ou physei, alla bia"] (_motu, non naturali sed molento_). Men are only apparently drawn from in front; really they are pushed from behind; it is not life that tempts them on, but necessity that drives them forward. The law of motivation is, like all causality, merely the form of the phenomenon. In all these considerations, then, it becomes clear to us that the will to live is not a consequence of the knowledge of life, is in no way a _conclusio ex praemissis_, and in general is nothing secondary. Rather, it is that which is first and unconditioned, the premiss of all premisses, and just on that account that from which philosophy must _start_, for the will to live does not appear in consequence of the world, but the world in consequence of the will to live. III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS 1. Progress and Social Research The problem of progress comes back finally to the problem of the ultimate good. If the world is getting better, measured by this ultimate standard, then there is progress. If it is growing worse, then there is retrogression. But in regard to the ultimate good there is no agreement. What is temporary gain may be ultimate loss. What is one man's evil may be, and often seems to be, another man's good. In the final analysis what seems evil may turn out to be good and what seems good may be an eventual evil. But this is a problem in philosophy which sociology is not bound to solve before it undertakes to describe society. It does not even need to discuss it. Sociology, just as any other natural science, accepts the current values of the community. The physician, like the social worker, assumes that health is a social value. With this as a datum his studies are directed to the discovery of the nature and causes of diseases, and to the invention of devices for curing them. There is just as much, and no more, reason for a sociologist to formulate a doctrine of social progress as there is for the physician to do so. Both are concerned with specific problems for which they are seeking specific remedies. If there are social processes and predictable forms of change in society, then there are methods of human intervention in the processes of society, methods of controlling these processes in the interest of the ends of human life, methods of progress in other words. If there are no intelligible or describable social processes, then there may be progress, but there will be no sociology and no _methods of progress_. We can only hope and pray. It is not impossible to formulate a definition of progress which does not assume the perfectibility of mankind, which does not regard progress as a necessity, and which does not assume to say with finality what has happened or is likely to happen to humanity as a whole.[346] Progress may be considered as the addition to the sum of accumulated experience, tradition, and technical devices organized for social efficiency. This is at once a definition of progress and of civilization, in which civilization is the sum of social efficiencies and progress consists of the units (additions) of which it is composed. Defined in these terms, progress turns out to be a relative, local, temporal, and secular phenomenon. It is possible, theoretically at least, to compare one community with another with respect to their relative efficiency and their relative progress in efficiency, just as we can compare one institution with another in respect to its efficiency and progress. It is even possible to measure the progress of humanity in so far as humanity can be said to be organized for social action. This is in fact the point of view which sociologists have adopted as soon as progress ceased to be, for sociology, a matter of definition and became a matter of observation and research. Score cards for neighborhoods and for rural communities have already been devised.[347] 2. Indices of Progress A few years ago, Walter F. Willcox, in an article "A Statistician's Idea of Progress," sought to define certain indices of social progress which would make it possible to measure progress statistically. "If progress be merely a subjective term," he admitted, "statistics can throw no light upon it because all such ends as happiness, or self-realization, or social service are incapable of statistical measurement." Statistics works with indices, characteristics which are accessible to measurement but are "correlated with some deeper immeasurable characteristic." Mr. Willcox took as his indices of progress: 1. Increase in population. 2. Length of life. 3. Uniformity in population. 4. Racial homogeneity. 5. Literacy. 6. Decrease of the divorce rate. Certainly these indices, like uniformity, are mere temporary measures of progress, since diversity in the population is not per se an evil. It becomes so only when the diversities in the community are so great as to endanger its solidarity. Applying his indices to the United States, Mr. Willcox sums up the result as follows: The net result is to indicate for the United States a rapid increase of population and probable increase in length of life, and increase in racial uniformity and perhaps in uniformity of other sorts connected with immigration, and at the same time a decrease in uniformity in the stability and social serviceability of family life. Some of these indications look towards progress, others look towards retrogression. As they cannot be reduced to any common denominator, the statistical method is unable to answer the question with which we started.[348] The securing of indices which will measure satisfactorily even such social values as are generally accepted is difficult. The problem of giving each index in the series a value or weight in proportion to the value of all the others is still more difficult. This statement, at any rate, illustrates the procedure and the method. The whole subject of numerical indices for the measurement of civilization and progress has recently been discussed in a little volume by Alfredo Niceforo,[349] professor in the School of Criminal Law at Rome. He proposes as indices of progress: 1. The increase in wealth and in the consumption of goods, and the diminution of the mortality rate. These are evidences of material progress. 2. The diffusion of culture, and "when it becomes possible to measure it," the productivity of men of genius. This is the measure of intellectual superiority. 3. Moral progress he would measure in terms of crime. 4. There remains the social and political organization, which he would measure in terms of the increase and decrease of individual liberty. In all these attempts to measure the progress of the community the indices have invariably shown progression in some direction, retrogression in others. From the point of view of social research the problem of progress is mainly one of getting devices that will measure all the different factors of progress and of estimating the relative value of different factors in the progress of the community. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. THE DEFINITION OF PROGRESS (1) Dewey, John. "Progress," _International Journal of Ethics_, XXVI (1916), 311-22. (2) Bury, J. B. _The Idea of Progress_. An inquiry into its origin and growth. London, 1921. (3) Bryce, James. "What is Progress?" _Atlantic Monthly_, C (1907), 145-56. (4) Todd, A. J. _Theories of Social Progress_. A critical attempt to formulate the conditions of human advance. New York, 1918. (5) Woods, E. B. "Progress as a Sociological Concept," _American Journal of Sociology_, XII (1906-7), 779-821. (6) Cooley, Charles H. _The Social Process_. Chap, xxvii, "The Sphere of Pecuniary Valuation," pp. 309-28. New York, 1918. (7) Mackenzie, J. S. "The Idea of Progress," _International Journal of Ethics_, IX (1899), 195-213. (8) Bergson, H. _Creative Evolution_. New York, 1911. (9) Frobenius, L. _Die Weltanschauung der Naturvölker_. Weimar, 1899. (10) Inge, W. R. _The Idea of Progress_. The Romanes Lecture, 1920. Oxford, 1920. (11) Balfour, Arthur J. _Arthur James Balfour, as Philosopher and Thinker_. A collection of the more important and interesting passages in his non-political writings, speeches, and addresses, 1879-1912. Selected and arranged by Wilfrid M. Short. "Progress," pp. 413-35. London and New York, 1912. (12) Carpenter, Edward. _Civilization, Its Cause and Cure_. And other essays. New and enlarged ed. London and New York, 1917. (13) Nordau, Max S. _The Interpretation of History_. Translated from the German by M. A. Hamilton. Chap viii, "The Question of Progress." New York, 1911. (14) Sorel, Georges. _Les Illusions du progrès_. 2d ed. Paris, 1911. (15) Allier, R. "Pessimisme et civilisation," _Revue Encyclopédique_, V (1895), 70-73. (16) Simmel, Georg. "Moral Deficiencies as Determining Intellectual Functions," _International Journal of Ethics_, III (1893), 490-507. (17) Delvaille, Jules. _Essai sur histoire de l'idée de progrès jusq'à la fin du 18ième siècle_. Paris, 1910. (18) Sergi, G. "Qualche idea sul progresso umano," _Rivista italiana di sociologia_, XVII (1893), 1-8. (19) Barth, Paul. "Die Frage des sittlichen Fortschritts der Menschheit," _Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie_, XXIII (1899), 75-116. (20) Lankester, E. Ray. _Degeneration_. A chapter in Darwinism, and parthenogenesis. Humboldt Library of Science. New York. 18--. (21) Lloyd, A.H. "The Case of Purpose against Fate in History," _American Journal of Sociology_, XVII (1911-12), 491-511. (22) Case, Clarence M. "Religion and the Concept of Progress," _Journal of Religion_, I (1921), 160-73. (23) Reclus, E. "The Progress of Mankind," _Contemporary Review_, LXX (1896), 761-83. (24) Bushee, F. A. "Science and Social Progress," _Popular Science Monthly_, LXXIX (1911), 236-51. (25) Jankelevitch, S. "Du Rôle des idées dans l'évolution des sociétés," _Revue philosophique_, LXVI (1908), 256-80. II. HISTORY, THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AND PROGRESS (1) Condorcet, Marquis de. _History of the Progress of the Human Mind_. London, 1795. (2) Comte, Auguste. _The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte_. (Translated from the French by Harriet Martineau) Book VI, chap, ii, vi. 2d ed. 2 vols. London, 1875-90. (3) Caird, Edward. _The Social Philosophy and Religion of Comte_. 2d ed. Glasgow and New York, 1893. (4) Buckle, Henry Thomas. _History of Civilization in England_. 2 vols. From 2d London ed. New York, 1903. (5) Condorcet, Marie J.A.C. _Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain_. 2 vols in one. Paris, 1902. (6) Harris, George. _Civilization Considered as a Science_. In relation to its essence, its elements, and its end. London, 1861. (7) Lamprecht, Karl. _Alte und neue Richtungen in der Geschichtswissenschaft_. Berlin, 1896. (8) ----. "Individualität, Idee und sozialpsychische Kraft in der Geschichte," _Jahrbücher für National-Ökonomie und Statistik_, XIII (1897), 880-900. (9) Barth, Paul. _Philosophie der Geschichte als Sociologie_. Erster Teil, "Einleitung und kritische Übersicht." Leipzig, 1897. (10) Rickert, Heinrich. _Die Grenzen der Naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung_. Leipzig, 1902. (11) Simmel, Georg. _Die Problems der Geschichtsphilosophie_. Eine erkenntnistheoretische Studie. 2d ed. Leipzig, 1905. (12) Mill, John Stuart. _A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive_. Being a connected view of the principles of evidence and the methods of scientific investigation. 8th ed. New York and London, 1900. (13) Letelier, Valentin. _La Evoluçion de la historia_. 2d ed. 2 vols. Santiago de Chile, 1900. (14) Teggart, Frederick J. _The Processes of History._ New Haven, 1918. (15) Znaniecki, Florian. _Cultural Reality._ Chicago, 1919. (16) Hibben, J. G. "The Philosophical Aspects of Evolution," _Philosophical Review_, XIX (1910), 113-36. (17) Bagehot, Walter. _Physics and Politics._ Or thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society. Chap. vi, "Verifiable Progress Politically Considered," pp. 205-24. New York, 1906. (18) Crawley, A. E. "The Unconscious Reason in Social Evolution," _Sociological Review_, VI (1913), 236-41. (19) Froude, James A. "Essay on Progress," _Short Studies on Great Subjects._ 2d Ser. II, 245-79, 4 vols. New York, 1888-91. (20) Morley, John. "Some Thoughts on Progress," _Educational Review_, XXIX (1905), 1-17. III. EVOLUTION AND PROGRESS (1) Spencer, Herbert. "Progress, Its Law and Cause," _Westminster Review_, LXVII (1857), 445-85. [Reprinted in Everyman's edition of his _Essays_, pp. 153-97. New York, 1866.] (2) Federici, Romolo. _Les Lois du Progrès._ II, 32-35, 44, 127, 136, 146-47, 158 ff., 223, etc. 2 vols. Paris, 1888-91. (3) Baldwin, James Mark. _Development and Evolution._ Including psychophysical evolution, evolution by orthoplasy, and the theory of genetic modes. New York, 1902. (4) Adams, Brooks. _The Law of Civilization and Decay._ An essay on history. New York and London, 1903. (5) Kidd, Benjamin. _Principles of Western Civilization._ London, 1902. (6) ----. _Social Evolution._ New ed. New York and London, 1896. (7) Müller-Lyer, F. _Phasen der Kultur und Richtungslinien des Fortschritts._ Soziologische Überblicke. München, 1908. (8) McGee, W. J. "The Trend of Human Progress," _American Anthropologist_, N. S., I (1899), 401-47. (9) Carver, Thomas N. _Sociology and Social Progress._ A handbook for students of sociology. Boston, 1905. (10) Weber, L. _Le Rythme du progrès._ Étude sociologique. Paris, 1913. (11) Baldwin, J. Mark. _Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development._ Chap. xiv. "Social Progress," pp. 537-50. New York, 1906. (12) Kropotkin, P. _Mutual Aid._ A factor of evolution. London, 1902. (13) Wallace, Alfred R. _Social Environment and Moral Progress._ London and New York, 1913. (14) Freeman, R. Austin. _Social Decay and Regeneration._ With an introduction by Havelock Ellis. Boston, 1921. IV. EUGENICS AND PROGRESS (1) Galton, Francis, and others. "Eugenics, Its Scope and Aims," _American Journal of Sociology_, X (1904-5), 1-25. (2) Saleeby, Caleb W. _The Progress of Eugenics._ London, 1914. (3) Ellis, Havelock. _The Problem of Race Regeneration._ New York, 1911. (4) Pearson, Karl. _National Life from the Standpoint of Science._ 2d ed. London, 1905. (5) Saleeby, Caleb W. _Methods of Race Regeneration._ New York, 1911. (6) Davenport, C. B. _Heredity in Relation to Eugenics._ New York, 1911. (7) Demoor, Massart, et Vandervelde. _L'Évolution régressive en biologie et en sociologie._ Paris, 1897. (8) Thomson, J. Arthur. "Eugenics and War," _Eugenics Review_, VII (1915-16), 1-14. (9) Southard, E. E. "Eugenics _vs._ Cacogenics," _Journal of Heredity_, V (1914), 408-14. (10) Conn, Herbert W. _Social Heredity and Social Evolution._ The other side of eugenics. Cincinnati, 1914. (11) Popenoe, Paul, and Johnson, R. H. _Applied Eugenics._ New York, 1918. (12) Kelsey, Carl. "Influence of Heredity and Environment upon Race Improvement," _Annals of the American Academy_, XXXIV (1909) 3-8. (13) Ward, L. F. "Eugenics, Euthenics and Eudemics," _American Journal of Sociology_, XVIII (1912-13), 737-54. V. PROGRESS AND THE MORAL ORDER (1) Harrison, Frederic. _Order and Progress._ London, 1875. (2) Hobhouse, Leonard T. _Social Evolution and Political Theory._ Chaps, i, ii, vii, pp. 1-39; 149-65. New York, 1911. (3) ----. _Morals in Evolution._ A study in comparative ethics. 2 vols. New York, 1906. (4) Alexander, Samuel. _Moral Order and Progress._ An analysis of ethical conceptions. 2d ed. London, 1891. (5) Chapin, F. S. "Moral Progress," _Popular Science Monthly_, LXXXVI (1915), 467-71. (6) Keller, Albert G. _Societal Evolution._ New York, 1915. (7) Dellepiane, A. "Le Progrès et sa formule. La lutte pour le progrès," _Revue Internationale de sociologie_, XX (1912), 1-30. (8) Burgess, Ernest W. _The Function of Socialization in Social Evolution._ Chicago, 1916. (9) Ellwood, C. A. "The Educational Theory of Social Progress," _Scientific Monthly_, V (1917), 439-50. (10) Bosanquet, Helen. "The Psychology of Social Progress," _International Journal of Ethics_, VII (1896-97), 265-81. (11) Perry, Ralph Barton. _The Moral Economy_. Chap, iv, "The Moral Test of Progress," pp. 123-70. New York, 1909. (12) Patten, S. N. "Theories of Progress," _American Economic Review_, II (1912), 61-68. (13) Alexander, H. B. "The Belief in God and Immortality as Factors in Race Progress." _Hibbert Journal_, IX (1910-11), 169-87. VI. UTOPIAS (1) Plato. _The Republic of Plato_. Translated into English by Benjamin Jowett. 2 vols. Oxford, 1908. (2) More, Thomas. _The "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More_. Ralph Robinson's translation, with Roper's "Life of More" and some of his letters. London, 1910. (3) _Ideal Commonwealths_. Comprising More's "Utopia," Bacon's "New Atlantis," Campanella's "City of the Sun," and Harrington's "Oceana," with introductions by Henry Morley. Rev. ed. New York, 1901. (4) Kaufmann, Moritz. _Utopias, or Schemes of Social Improvement_. From Sir Thomas More to Karl Marx. London, 1879. (5) Bacon, Francis. _New Atlantis_. Oxford, 1915. (6) Campanella, Tommaso. _La città di sole e aforasmi politici_. Lanciana, Carabba, 19--. (7) Andreä, Johann V. _Christianopolis_. An ideal state of the seventeenth century. Translated from the Latin by T. E. Held. New York, 1916. (8) Harrington, James. _The Oceana of James Harrington_. London, 1700. (9) Mandeville, Bernard de. _Fable of the Bees_. Or private vices, public benefits. Edinburgh, 1772. [First published in 1714.] (10) Cabet, Étienne. _Voyage en Icarie_. 5th ed. Paris, 1848. (11) Butler, Samuel. _Erewhon: or over the Range_. New York, 1917. [First published in 1872.] (12) ----. _Erewhon Revisited Twenty Years Later_. New York, 1901. (13) Lytton, Edward Bulwer. _The Coming Race_. London, 1871. (14) Bellamy, Edward. _Looking Backward, 2000-1887_. Boston, 1898. (15) Morris, William. _News from Nowhere_. Or an epoch of rest, being some chapters from a utopian romance. New York, 1910. [First published in 1891.] (16) Hertzka, Theodor. _Freeland_. A social anticipation. New York, 1891. (17) Wells, H. G. _A Modern Utopia_. New York, 1905. (18) ----. _New Worlds for Old_. New York, 1908. VII. PROGRESS AND SOCIAL WELFARE (1) Crozier, John B. _Civilization and Progress_. 3d ed., pp. 366-440. London and New York, 1892. (2) Obolensky, L. E. ["Self-Consciousness of Classes in Social Progress"] _Voprosy filosofii i psichologuïi_, VII (1896), 521-51. [Short review in _Revue philosophique_, XLIV (1897), 106.] (3) Mallock, William H. _Aristocracy and Evolution_. A study of the rights, the origin, and the social functions of the wealthier classes. London, 1898. (4) Tenney, E. P. _Contrasts in Social Progress_. New York, 1907. (5) Hall, Arthur C. _Crime in Its Relations to Social Progress_. New York, 1902. (6) Hughes, Charles E. _Conditions of Progress in a Democratic Government_. New Haven, 1910. (7) Parmelee, Maurice. _Poverty and Social Progress_. Chaps. vi-vii. New York, 1916. (8) George, Henry. _Progress and Poverty_. Book X, chap. iii. New York, 1899. (9) Nasmyth, George. _Social Progress and the Darwinian Theory_. New York, 1916. (10) Harris, George. _Inequality and Progress_. New York, 1897. (11) Irving, L. "The Drama as a Factor in Social Progress," _Fortnightly Review_, CII (1914), 268-74. (12) Salt, Henry S. _Animal Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress_. New York, 1894. (13) Delabarre, Frank A. "Civilisation and Its Effects on Morbidity and Mortality," _Journal of Sociologic Medicine_, XIX (1918), 220-23. (14) Knopf, S. A. "The Effects of Civilisation on the Morbidity and Mortality of Tuberculosis," _Journal of Sociologic Medicine_, XX (1919), 5-15. (15) Giddings, Franklin H. "The Ethics of Social Progress," in the collection _Philanthropy and Social Progress_. Seven essays ... delivered before the School of Applied Ethics at Plymouth, Mass., during the session of 1892. With introduction by Professor Henry C. Adams. New York and Boston, 1893. (16) Morgan, Alexander. _Education and Social Progress_. Chaps. vi, ix-xxi. London and New York, 1916. (17) Butterfield, K. L. _Chapters in Rural Progress._ Chicago, 1908. (18) Robertson, John M. _The Economics of Progress._ New York, 1918. (19) Willcox, Walter F. "A Statistician's Idea of Progress," _International Journal of Ethics_, XXIII (1913), 275-98. (20) Zueblin, Charles. _American Municipal Progress._ Rev. ed. New York, 1916. (21) Niceforo, Alfredo. _Les Indices numérique de la civilisation et du progrès_. Paris, 1921. (22) Todd, A. J. _Theories of Social Progress._ Chap, vii, "The Criteria of Progress," pp. 113-53. New York, 1918. TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES 1. The History of the Concept of Progress 2. Popular Notions of Progress 3. The Natural History of Progress: Evolution of Physical and Mental Traits, Economic Progress, Moral Development, Intellectual Development, Social Evolution 4. Stages of Progress: Determined by Type of Control over Nature, Type of Social Organization, Type of Communication, etc. 5. Score Cards and Scales for Grading Communities and Neighborhoods 6. Progress as Wish-Fulfilment: an Analysis of Utopias 7. Criteria or Indices of Progress: Physical, Mental, Intellectual, Economic, Moral, Social, etc. 8. Progress as an Incident of the Cosmic Process 9. Providence versus Progress 10. Happiness as the Goal of Progress 11. Progress as Social Change 12. Progress as Social Evolution 13. Progress as Social Control 14. Progress and the Science of Eugenics 15. Progress and Socialization 16. Control through Eugenics, Education, and Legislation QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. What do you understand by progress? 2. How do you explain the fact that the notion of progress originated? 3. What is the relation of change to progress? 4. What is Spencer's law of evolution? Is it an adequate generalization? What is its value? 5. Why do we speak of "stages of progress"? 6. To what extent has progress been a result (a) of eugenics, (b) of tradition? 7. What do you understand by progress as (a) a historical process, and (b) increase in the content of civilization? 8. What is the relation of progress to happiness? 9. "We have confused rapidity of change with progress." Explain. 10. "Progress is not automatic." Elaborate your position with reference to this statement. 11. What is the relation of prevision to progress? 12. Do you believe that mankind can control and determine progress? 13. "Our expectations of limitless progress cannot depend upon the deliberate action of national governments." Contrast this statement of Balfour with the statement of Dewey. 14. "A community founded on argument would dissolve into its constituent elements." Discuss this statement. 15. What is Galton's conception of progress? 16. What would you say to the possibility or the impossibility of the suggestion of eugenics becoming a religious dogma as suggested by Galton? 17. What is the relation, as conceived by the eugenists, as between germ plasm and culture? 18. Is progress dependent upon change in human nature? 19. How are certain persistent traits of human nature related to progress? 20. What is meant by the statement that progress is in the mores? 21. What are the different types of progress analyzed by Bryce? Has advance in each of them been uniform in the last one thousand years? 22. Does war make for or against progress? 23. What is the relation of freedom to progress? 24. What place has the myth in progress? 25. To what extent is progress as a process of realizing values a matter of temperament, of optimism, and of pessimism? FOOTNOTES: [322] Robert Flint, _The Philosophy of History in Europe_, I, 29-30. (London, 1874.) [323] W. R. Inge, _Outspoken Essays_, i, "Our Present Discontents," p. 2. (London, 1919.) [324] Charles Booth, _Labour and Life of the People_, I, 154-55, 598. 2d ed. (London, 1889.) [325] Charles Cooley, _The Social Process_, p. 284. (New York, 1918.) [326] Charles Zueblin, _American Municipal Progress_, pp. xi-xii. New and rev. ed. (New York, 1916.) [327] R. Austin Freeman, _Social Decay and Regeneration_. With an introduction by Havelock Ellis. Pp. 16-17. (Boston, 1921.) [328] J. B. Bury, _The Idea of Progress._ An inquiry into its origin and growth, p. 1. (London, 1921.) [329] W. R. Inge, _The Idea of Progress_, p. 9. The Romanes Lecture, 1920. (Oxford, 1920.) [330] Author of _The Passing of a Great Race, or the Racial Basis of European History_. (New York, 1916.) [331] See Stoddard Lothrop, _The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy_ (New York, 1920); and William McDougall, _Is America Safe for Democracy?_ (New York, 1921.) [332] Thomas H. Huxley, _Evolution and Ethics and Other Lectures_, Lecture ii, pp. 46-116. (New York, 1894.) [333] Adapted from F. S. Marvin, _Progress and History_, pp. 8-10. (Oxford University Press, 1916. [334] Adapted from Herbert Spencer, _Essays_, I, 8-10. (D. Appleton & Co., 1899.) [335] Adapted from Auguste Comte, _Positive Philosophy_, II, 124. (Trübner & Co., 1875.) [336] Adapted from Leonard T. Hobhouse, _Social Evolution and Political Theory_, pp. 29-39. (The Columbia University Press, 1911.) [337] From Lester F. Ward, _Dynamic Sociology_, II, 174-77. (D. Appleton & Co., 1893.) [338] Adapted from John Dewey, "Progress," in the _International Journal of Ethics_, XXVI (1916), 312-18. [339] From _The Mind of Arthur James Balfour_, by Wilfrid M. Short, pp. 293-97. (Copyright 1918, George H. Doran Company, publishers.) [340] From Francis Galton, "Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope, and Aims," in the _American Journal of Sociology_, X (1904-5), 1-6. [341] Adapted from G. Santayana, _Winds of Doctrine_, pp. 6-8. (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913.) [342] Adapted from W. G. Sumner, "The Mores of the Present and the Future," in the _Yale Review_, XVIII (1909-10), 235-36. (Quoted by special permission of the _Yale Review_.) [343] Adapted from James Bryce, "War and Human Progress," in _International Conciliation_, CVIII (November, 1916), 13-27. [344] From Henri Bergson, _Creative Evolution_, translated by Arthur Mitchell, pp. 253-71. (Henry Holt & Co., 1913.) [345] From Arthur Schopenhauer, _The World as Will and Idea_, III, 107-18. (Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1909.) [346] Scientific optimism was no doubt rampant before Darwin. For example, Herschel says: "Man's progress towards a higher state need never fear a check, but must continue till the very last existence of history." But Herbert Spencer asserts the perfectibility of man with an assurance which makes us gasp. "Progress is not an accident, but a necessity. What we call evil and immorality must disappear. It is certain that man must become perfect." "The ultimate development of the ideal man is certain--as certain as any conclusion in which we place the most implicit faith; for instance, that all men will die." "Always towards perfection is the mighty movement--towards a complete development and a more unmixed good."--W. R. Inge, _The Idea of Progress_, p. 9. (Oxford, 1920.) [347] "Scale for Grading Neighborhood Conditions," _Publications of the Whittier State School, Research Bulletin, No. 5_, Whittier, Cal., May, 1917. "Guide to the Grading of Neighborhoods," _Publications of the Whittier State School, Research Bulletin, No. 8_, Whittier, Cal., April, 1918. Dwight Sanderson, "Scale for Grading Social Conditions in Rural Communities," _New York State Agricultural College Bulletin_ [in press], Ithaca, N.Y., 1921. [348] "A Statistician's Idea of Progress," _International Journal of Ethics_, XVIII (1913), 296. [349] _Les indices numériques de la civilisation et du progrès_. (Paris, 1921.) INDEX OF NAMES [Page numbers in italics refer to selections or short extracts.] Abbott, Edith, 223, 569. Abbott, Grace, 780. Abraham, Karl, 857. Abrahams, I., 943. Abrikossof, N. A., 649. Achelis, T., 937. Adams, Brewster, 643, 656. Adams, Brooks, 950, 1006. Adams, Charles C., 218, 554. Adams, Charles F., _760_. Adams, Franklin P., _834_. Adams, Henry, _5_, 14, _15_, 563. Addams, Jane, 329, 331, 335. Addison, Joseph, 66. Adler, Alfred, 144, 150, 497, 501, 638, 645, 646. Adler, H. M., 936. Alexander, H. B., 1008. Alexander, Samuel, 1007. Alexander the Great, 987. Alfred [_pseud._], _see_ Kydd, Samuel. Alher, R., 1004. Ambrosio, M. A. d', 566. Ames, Edward S., 426. Amiel, H., 151. Ammon, Dr. O., 535. Amsden, G. S., 152. Anderson, Wilbert L., 334. Andreä, Johann V., 1008. Andrews, Alexander, 860. Andrews, John B., 942. Anthony, Katharine S., 151, 942. Anthony, Susan B., 949. Antin, Mary, 774, 782, 783. Antony, Marc, 386. Archer, T. A., 941. Arcoleo, G., 649. Aria, E., 948. Aristotle, 11, 29, 30, 32, 61, 140, 144, 156, 223, 231, 261, 373, 640, 1000. Aronovici, Carol, 218, 782. Atkinson, Charles M., 949. Aubry, P., 937, 938. Audoux, Marguerite, 151. Auerbach, Bertrand, 275, 660, 778. Augustinus, Aurelius (Saint Augustine), 122, 144, 150. Austin, George L., 949. Austin, John, 106. Austin, Mary, _881-83_. Avebury, _Lord_, 649. Bab, Julius, 731. Babbitt, Eugene H., 275, _754-56_. Babinski, J. F., 648. Bachofen, J. J., 214, 220. Bacon, Lord Francis, 66, _233-34_, 1008. Baden-Powell, H., 219. Baer, Karl Ernst von, 967. Bagehot, Walter, 423, 429, _495-96_, 563, 564, 646. Bailey, Thomas P., 652, 728. Bailey, W. F., 778. Bailie, William, 565. Bakeless, John, 648. Baker, Ray Stannard, 643, 651, 658, 936. Balch, Emily G., 781. Baldwin, J. Mark, 41, 85, 149, 150, 390, 423, 425, 429, 646, 663, 719, 725, 775, 1006. Balfour, Arthur James, 964, _977-79_, 1004. Ballagh, James C., 728. Bancroft, H. H., 942. Bang, J. P., 650. Barbellion, W. N. P. [_pseud._], _see_ Cummings, B. F. Barclay, Robert, 944. Baring Gould, S., 274. Barnes, Harry E., 659. Barr, Martin W., 935. Barrère, Albert, 428. Barrow, _Sir_ John, 275. Barrows, Samuel J., 781. Barth, Paul, _4_, 211, 1004, 1005. Bartlett, David W., 949. Bastian, A., 673, 787. Bastiat, Frederic, _505-6_, _552-53_, 563, 573. Bates, Jean V., 778. Bauer, Arthur, 729. Bauer, Otto, 777. Bax, Ernest B., 944. Beard, Charles A., 498, 658. Beaulieu, P. Leroy, _see_ Leroy-Beaulieu, P. Bechterew, W. v, _123-25_, 150, 157, 345, _408-12_, _415-20_, 424, 430, 433, 434, 494, 501. Beck, von, 179. Beddoe, _Dr._ John, 536. Beecher, Franklin A., 940. Beer, M., 566. Beers, C. W., 152. Beethoven, Ludwig von, 228. Begbie, Harold, 727, 942. Behn, 366. Belisle, A., 946. Bell, Alexander G., 276. Bell, Sir Charles, 421. Bellamy, Edward, 1008. Bellet, Daniel, 947. Bennett, Arnold, 216. Bentham, Jeremy, 106, 500, 940, 949. Bentley, A. F., _458-61_, 501, 503. Bergson, Henri, 373, 374, 422, 426, 964, _989-94_, 1004. Bernard, Luther L., 854. Bernhard, L., 275, 770, 946. Bernheim, A., 430. Bertillon, Jacques, 265. Besant, Annie, 120, 121, 559, 949. Besant, Walter, 335. Best, Harry, 276, 567. Bevan, Edwyn R., 659. Beveridge, W. H., 567. Bhattacharya, Jogendra N., 728. Bigg, Ada H., 948. Binet, Alfred, _113-17_, 145, 150, 154, 424, 430, 496. Bing, Alexander M., 652. Bismarck, 238, 239, 789. Blackmar, F. W., 499, 779. Blair, R. H., 362, 366. Blanchard, Phyllis, 646. Bloch, Iwan, 221, 333. Blondel, H., 729. Blowitz, Henri de, 859. Blumenbach, J. F., 243. Bluntschli, Johann K., 658, 858. Blyden, Edward W., 651. Boas, Franz, 19, 154, 332, 660, 725, 730, 770, 777, 938. Bodenhafer, Walter B., 48. Böhme Margarete, 650. Bohannon, E. W., 273. Bois, Henri, 943. Bonger, W. A., 562, 569. Bonnaterre, J. P., 277. Boodin, J. E., 425. Booth, Charles, 44, _45_, 59, 212, 219, 335, 955. Booth, William, 942. Borght, R. van der, 427. Bosanquet, Helen, 215, 222, 1008. Bossuet, J. B., 906. Botsford, George W., 940. Bouglé, C., 728, 729. Bourde, Paul, 654. Bourgoing, P. de, 275, 945. Bourne, _Rev._ Ansel, 472, 473. Bourne, H. R. Fox, 564, 859. Boutmy, Émile, 940. Boutroux, Pierre 650. Bradford, Gamaliel, Jr., 731. Bradlaugh, Charles, 559. Bradley, F. H., 106. Bradley, Henry, 941. Braid, James, 424. Brailsford, H. N., 651. Braithwaite, W. C., 944. Brancoff, D. M., 946. Brandenburg, Broughton, 780. Brandes, Georg, 141, 498, 778. Braubach, Prof., 810. Breckinridge, Sophonisba P., 222, 223, 569, 782. Brehm, A. E., 810. Brent, Charles H., 855. Brentano, Lujo, 500, 658. Breuer, J., 838. Bridges, 368. Bridges, Horace, 782. Bridgman, Laura, 244, 366. Bright, John, 447. Brill, A. A., 273. Brinton, Daniel G., _666_, _671-74_, 725, 857. Brissenden, Paul Frederick, 566, 658. Bristol, Lucius M., 718, 725. Bronner, Augusta F., 152. Brönner, W., 941. Brooks, John Graham, 566, 658, 925, 935. Browne, Crichton, 366. Browne, Sir Thomas, 65, _128_. Bruhl, S. Levy, _see_ Levy Bruhl, S. Brunhes, Jean, 270, 274. Bryan, William J., 734. Bryce, James, 650, 652, 658, 726, 759, 779, 851, 852 n., 858, 861, 941, _984-89_, 1004. Brynmor-Jones, David, 149, 945. Buchanan, J. R., 731. Buck, Carl D., 660. Buck, S. J., 942. Buckle, Henry Thomas, 270, 493, 498, 912, 1005. Bücher, Karl, _385-89_, 427, _529-33_, 728. Bunyan, John, 122. Burckhard, M., 941. Burgess, Dr., 366, 367, 368. Burgess, Ernest W., 426, 1007. Burgess, John, 741. Burgess, Thomas, 781. Burke, Edmund, 449, 850. Burnell, A. C., 276. Burns, Allen T., 59, 335, 498, _773_, 782. Burns, J., 943. Burr, Anna R., 727. Bury, J. B., 333, _958-59_, 1004. Busch, 414. Bushee, F. A., 1005. Bussell, F. W., 904. Buswell, Leslie, 649. Butler, Joseph, 429. Butler, Ralph, 660. Butler, Samuel, 1008. Butterfield, K. L., 1010. Cabet, Étienne, 1008. Cabrol, F., 939. Cadière, L., 937. Caelius, 386. Caesar, 144, 238, 386, 387. Cahan, Abraham, 335, 782. Caird, Edward, 1005. Cairnes, J. E., _546_, _547_, _548_. Calhoun, Arthur W., 215, 222, 726. Cambarieu, J., 938. Campanella, Tommaso, 1008. Campbell, John C., 275, 654. Campeano, M., 941. Canat, René, 273. Cannon, Walter B., 422, 426. Cardan, Jerome, 144. Carlton, Frank T., 657. Carlyle, Thomas, 494. Carnegie, Andrew, 670. Carpenter, Edward, 1004. Carter, George R., 564. Cartwright, Peter, 944. Carver, Thomas N., 1006. Case, Clarence M., 1005. Case, S. J., 857. Castle, W. E., _128-33_, 147. Caxton, William, 237. Cellini, Benvenuto, 151. Chabaneix, Paul, 855. Chapin, F. Stuart, 59, 1007. Chapin, Robert C., 215, 222. Chapman, 298. Charcot, J. M., 144, 415, 424. Charlemagne, 238. Cherrington, Ernest H., 942. Chevillon, Andre, 650. Chevreul, M. E., 462. Cheysson, E., 729. Chirol, Valentine, 936. Chrestus, 386. Christensen, A., 940. Churchill, William, 275, 428. Cicero, 386, 387. Ciszewski, S., 775. Claghorn, Kate H., 782. Clarendon, Earl of, 65. Clark, H., 940. Clark, John B., _544-50_. Clark, Thomas A., 731. Claudius, Emperor, 752. Clayton, H. H., 947. Clayton, Joseph, 855. Clemens, Samuel L., (Mark Twain, _pseud._), 152. Clements, Frederic E., 217, _526-28_, 554, 571. Clerget, Pierre, 948. Cleveland, Catharine C., 944. Clibborne, 543. Clodd, Edward, 857. Clough, H. W., 947. Cobb, Irvin, _735_. Cobden, Richard, 447, 949. Coblenz, Felix, 150. Codrington, R. H., 857. Coe, George Albert, _235-37_, 726. Coffin, Ernest W., 779. Cohen, Rose, 336, 774, 782. Coicou, M., 729. Colcord, Joanna, 223. Coleman, Charles T., 940. Coleridge, Samuel T., 368. Collier, John, 732. Commons, John R., 644, 657, 658, 776, 780, 942. Comte, Auguste, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 24, 25, 39, 43, 44, 57, 60, 61, 68, 140, 210, 496, _716_, 959, _968-69_, 1005. Condorcet, Marie J. A. C., 3, 553, 1005. Conn, Herbert W., 1007. Connor, Dr. Bernard, 241. Constantin, A., 648. Conway, M., 940. Cook, Edward, 859. Cooley, Charles H., 56, 58, 67, _67-68_, 70, _71_, 147, 154, 156, 157, 216, 285, 330, 421, 425, 430, 500, 646, _665_, _708-12_, _723_, 729, 855, 934, 955, 1004. Coolidge, Mary R., 781. Corelli, Marie, 936. Cornyn, John H., _751-54_. Corot, Jean Baptiste Camille, 126. Cory, H. E., 731. Coulter, J. M., 128-33, 147. Crafts, L. W., _254-57_. Crawley, A. Ernest, 221, _291-93_, 282, 330, 332, 651, 850, 856, 857, 1006. Creighton, Louise, _779_. Crile, George W., _522-26_, 562, 571, 641, 563, 564, 783. Croly, Jane (Mrs.), 942. Crooke, William, 276, 728, 777, 943. Crosby, Arthur T., 648. Crothers, T. D., 940. Crowell, John F., 564. Crozier, John B., 1009. Culin, Stewart, 655, 656. Cummings, B. F., 151. Cunningham, William, 563. Cutler, James E., 654. Cutrera, A., 655. Cuvier, Georges, i.e., J. L. N. F., 809. D'Aeth, F. G., 729. Damiron, J. Ph., 647. Dana, Charles A., 859. Dana, Richard H., Jr., 276. Daniels, John, 781. Danielson, F. H., 147, 254. Dargun, L. von, 220. Darwin, Charles, 7, 143, 165, 214, 329, 342, _361-65_, _365-70_, 421, 422, 426, 432, 512, 513, 514, _515-19_, _519-22_, 554, 557, 562, 563, 570, 571, 641, 647, 663, 768, 810, 959, 1001. Daudet, Alphonse, 120. Daudet, Ernest, 649. Dauzat, Albert, 429. Davenport, C. B., 71, _128-33_, 147, 254, 568, 1007. Davenport, Frederick M., 943. Davids, T. W. Rhys, 943. Davis, H., 654. Davis, Katharine B., 570. Davis, Michael M., 781. Dawley, Almena, 569. Dealey, J. Q., 222. Deane, 238. DeGreef, Guillaume, 58. Delabarre, Frank A., 1009. Delbet, E., 729. Delbrück, A., 273, 777. Delesalle, Georges, 428. Dellepaine, A., 1007. Delvaille, Jules, 1004. De-Marchi, A, 856. Demolins, Edmond, 333. Demoor, Jean, 1007. Demosthenes, 638. Densmore, Frances, 938. Desagher, Maurice, 276. Descartes, René, 372, 463, 465. Despine, Prosper, 938, 940. Devine, Edward T., 333, _491_, 498, 567, 732. Devon, J., 569. Dewey, John, _36_, _37_, 38, 149, 164, _182-85_, 200, 225, 424, _426_, 430, 509, 964, _975-77_, 1004, 1010. Dibblee, G. Binney, 427. Dicey, A. V., _445-51_, 557, 793, 831, 851, 858. Dilich, Wilhelm, 241. Dinneen, P. S., 945. Disraeli, Benjamin, 721. Ditchfield, P. H., 334. Dixon, Roland B., 777, 854. Dixon, W. H., 945. Dobschütz, E. von, 333. Dodge, Raymond, _837-41_. Doll, E. A., _254-57_. Dominian, Leon, 275, 645, 945. Donovan, Frances, 569. Dorsey, J. Owen, 655, 711. Dostoévsky, F., 142, 273. Down, T. C., _895-98_, 942. Downey, June E., 146, 153. Drachsler, Julius, 774, 781. Draghicesco, D., 729. Draper, J. W., 641, 647. Dubois, L. Paul, 945. Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt, 152, 222, 781, 783. Dugas, L., _370-75_, 422, 426. Dugdale, Richard L., 143, 147, 254. Dugmore, H. H., 861. Duguit, Léon, 850. Dumas, Georges, 938. Dunbar, Paul Lawrence, 627. Duncan, Sara Jeannette, 652. Durand, E. Dana, 652. Durkheim, Émile, 18, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, _39_, 40, 58, 164, _193-96_, 217, 221, 222, _267_, _268_, 343, 671, _714-18_, 723, 729, 854, 857, 894. Dushkin, Alexander M., 774, 781. Dutaillis, C. E. Petit-, _see_ Petit-Dutaillis, C. E. East, E. M., _128-33_, 147. Eastman, R. S., 732. Eaton, Isabel, 781. Eddy, Arthur J., 565. Edie, Lionel D., 498. Edman, Irwin, 148. Edwards, Bryan, _727_. Edwards, E., 943. Edwards, Milne, _519_. Effertz, Otto, 563. Egerton, Charles E., 652. Egli, Emil, 944. Ehrenfels, Chrn. v., 500. Elderton, Ethel M., 566, 568. Eliot, George, 142, 231. Elliott, A. M., 276. Ellis, Havelock, 148, 153, 215, 221, 223, 659, 726, 938, 957, 1007. Ellwood, Charles A., 41, 58, 566, _846-48_, 950. Elsing, W. T., 566. Elworthy, F. T., 332. Ely, Richard T., _444-45_, 502, _646_, 855. Empey, Arthur Guy, 429. Engel, Ernst, 215, 222. Engelgardt, A. N., 870. Engels, Frederick, 565. Espinas, Alfred, 163, _165-66_, 217, 224, 225, 407. Estabrook, A. H., 147, 254. Eubank, Earle E., 223. Evans, F. W., 944. Evans, Maurice S., 643, 651, _811-12_. Faber, Geoffrey, 660. Fadl, Said Memum Abul, 649. Fahlbeck, Pontus, 218. Fairfield, Henry P., 780, 781. Faria, Abbé, 424. Faris, Ellsworth, 147, _960-62_. Farmer, John S., 427, 428. Farnell, L. R., 856. Farnam, Henry W., 569. Farquhar, J. N., 944. Fauriel, M. C., 937. Faust, Albert B., 780. Fawkes, J. W., 939. Fay, Edward A., 276. Fedortchouk Y., 946. Féré, Ch., 405, 430. Ferguson, G. O., Jr., 154. Fernald, Mabel R., 569. Ferrari, G. O., 115. Ferrero, Guglielmo, 935, 936. Feuerbach, Paul J. A., von, 277. Field, J., 949. Field, James, A., 566. Fielding Hall, H., 649. Finck, Henry T., 221. Finlayson, Anna W., 148. Finney, C. J., 943. Finot, Jean, 651. Finsler, G., 937. Fischer, Eugen, 776. Fishberg, Maurice, 149, _271_, 274, 431, 778. Fisher, H. A., 639. Flaten, Nils, 276. Fleming, Daniel J., 780. Fleming, Walter L., 730, 731, 942. Fletcher, Alice C., 938. Flint, Robert, 565, 953. Florian, Eugenio, 333. Foerster, Robert F., 781. Foley, Caroline A., 948. Forel, A., 169, 170. Fornarsi di Verce, E., 569. Fosbroke, Thomas D., 274. Fosdick, H. E., 237. Foster, William Z., 653. Fouillée, Alfred, 149, 152, _461-64_, 499. Francke, Kuno, 493, 498, 660. Frazer, J. G., 149, 221, 330, 850, 855, 856. Frederici, Romolo, 1006. Frederick the Great, 628, 986. Freeman, Edward A., 3, 10, _23_. Freeman, R. Austin, 957, 1007. Freud, Sigmund, 41, 144, 236, 329, 475, 478, 479, 482, 486, 487, 497, 501, 504, 638, 855, 858. Friedländer, L., 935. Friedmann, Max, 927, 937. Friesen, P. M., 657. Frobenius, Leo, 640, 648, 730, 776, 1004. Froebel, F. W. A., 82. Froment, J., 648. Froude, James A., 1006. Fuller, Bampfylde, 935. Fustel de Coulanges, 855, 860. Gall, F. J., 145. Galpin, Charles J., 212, 218, _247-49_, 275, 724, 731. Galton, Francis, 726, 963, _979-83_, 1007, 1011. Gardner, Charles S., 940. Garofalo, R., 649. Gavit, John P., 782. Geddes, P., 153. Gehring, Johannes, 657. Gennep, A. van, 857. George, Henry, 1009. Gerland, Georg, 270, 274, 856. Gesell, A. L., 148. Gibbon, Edward, 711. Gibson, Thomas, 947. Gibson, William, 943. Giddings, Franklin H., _32_, 33, 36, 40, 58, 544, _610-16_, 661, 735, 740, 1009. Gilbert, William S., _65_. Gillen, F. J., 149, 220, 861. Gillin, J. L. 499, 567, 657. Ginsberg, M., 214, 220. Gladden, Washington, 491, 498. Glynn, A. W. Wiston-, _see_ Wiston-Glynn. Gobineau, Arthur de, 769. Goddard, Henry H., 131, 143, 147, 152, 254, 568. Godkin, Edwin L., 858. Godwin, William, 553. Godwin, William, 565. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 126, 909, 967. Goldenweiser, A. A., 777. Goltz, E. von der, 273. Goncourt, Edward de, and Jules de, 405. Goodhart, S. P., 468. Goodsell, Willystine, 222. Gordon, Anna A., 950. Gordon, Ernest, 942. Goring, Charles, 145, 153. Gould S. Baring-, _see_ Baring-Gould, S. Gowen, B. S., 937. Gowin, Enoch B., 855. Graebner, F., 777. Graetz, H., 944. Grant, 809. Grant, Madison, 963. Grass, K., 943. Grass, K. K., 657. Grasserie, R., de la, _see_ La Grasserie, R. de. Gratiolet, Pierre, 421. Gray, Thomas, 314. Gray, W., 856. Greco, Carlo Nardi-, _see_ Nardi-Greco, Carlo. Greeley, Horace, 949. Green, Alice S. A., 334. Green, Samuel S., 780. Gregoire, Abbé, 451. Gregory XV, 837. Grierson, Sir G., 687. Grierson, P. J. H., 564. Griffiths, Arthur, 274. Grinnell, G. B., 938. Groat, George G., 657. Groos, Karl, 426, 639, 640, 646. Grosse, Ernst, 221, _790_, 939. Grote, George, 233, _260-64_. Grotjahn, Alfred, 566. Groves. E. R., 941. Grundtvig, N. F. S., _Bishop_, 931. Gulick, Sidney L., 431, 782. Gummere, Amelia M., 274. Gummere, F. B., 939. Gumplowicz, Ludwig, 212, 341, _346-48_, 420, 425, 431, 642, 645, 649, 776. Guyot, Édouard, 565. Hadley, Arthur T., 658. Haeckel, Ernst, 912. Hagens, von, 169. Haines, Lynn, 659. Haldane, _Viscount_, _102-8_. Hall, Arthur C., 1009. Hall, Frederick S., 652. Hall, G. Stanley, 77, 150, 647, 648. Hall, H., Fielding-, _see_ Fielding-Hall, H. Hall, W. P., 563. Halpércine, Simon, 649. Hammer, von, 380. Hammond, Barbara, 334. Hammond, John L., 334. Haney, Levi H., 564. Hanford, Benjamin, 653. Hanna, Charles A., 780. Hanna, Rev. Thomas C., 468, 469. Hansen, F. C. C., 430, 535. Hansen, J., 937, 938. Hanson, William C., 568. Hapgood, Hutchins, 152, 731, 783. Harlan, Rolvix, 945. Harnack, Adolf, 942. Harper, Ida H., 949. Harrington, James, 1008. Harris, Benjamin, 834. Harris, George, 1005, 1009. Harrison, Frederic, 649, 1007. Harrison, James A., 276. Harrison, Jane E., 17, _18_, 856, 857. Harrison, Shelby M., 59, 219, 859. Hart, A. B., 499. Hart, Joseph K., 731. Hartenberg, P., 941. Hartmann, Berthold, 86. Harttung, Pflug-, _see_ Pflug-Harttung. Hasanovitz, Elizabeth, 335, 782. Hasbach, Wilhelm, 495. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 237. Hayes. A. W., 731. Hayes, Edward C., 499. Hayes, Mary H., 569. Hayes, Samuel P., 943. Haynes, E. S. P., 647. Haynes, Frederick E., 658. Headlam, Cecil, 946. Healy, William, 59, 152, 273, 562, 645, 935. Hearn, Lafcadio, 938. Heaton, John L., 859. Hecker, J. F. C., 875, _879-81_, 936. Heckethorn, C. W., 274, 730. Hegel, G. W. F., 69, 156, 959. Heidenhain, 415. Heijningen, Hendrik M. K. van, 654. Helps, Sir Arthur, _66_, 727. Hempl, Georg, 276. Henderson, Charles R., 566. Henderson, Ernest L., 424, 429. Henry, R., 946. Hericourt, 115. Hermann, F. B. W. v., 499. Heron, David, 560, 566. Herschel, Sir J. F. W., 1001. Hertzka, Theodor, 1009. Hess, Grete Meisel, _see_ Meisel Hess. Hibben, J. G., 1006. Hichborn, Franklin, 659. Hicks, Mary L., 732. Higgs, Henry, _556_. Hill, Georgiana, 949. Hinde, Sidney L., _869_. Hinds, William A., 334. Hirn, Yrjö, 344, _401-7_, 426, 430, 433, 808, 869, 870, 938. Hirt, Eduard, 152. Hobbes, Thomas, _25_, 29, 30, 61, 106, 140, 156, 223, 512, 642. Hobhouse, Leonard T., 56, _190-93_, 214, 220, 225, 728, 795, _796_, _798_ n., 849, 854, 963, 964, _969-73_. Hobson, John A., 567. Hocart, A. M., 749. Hoch, A., 152, 273. Hocking, W. E., _95-97_, 148, _205-9_. Hodder, Edwin, 949. Hogarth, William, 402. Holdsworth, W. S., 861. Hollingworth, H. L., 149. Hollingworth, Leta S., 152, 153. Hollman, Anton H., 931. Holmes (Judge), 736, 853. Holmes, William H., 948. Holt, Edward B., _478-82_, 501, 503. Home, H., _Lord Kames_, 402. Homer, 264. Hooper, Charles E., 332. Horak, Jakub, 781. Horn, Paul, 429. Hotten, John C., 428. Howard, G. E., 214, 222. Howard, John, 949. Howells, William Dean, 627. Hoxie, Robert F., 644, 657. Hoyt, F. C., 656. Hubert, H., 856, 857. Hudson, Frederic, 859. Hudson, W. H., _245-47_, _604-5_, _883-86_. Hughes, Charles C., 1009. Hughes, Henry, 429. Humboldt, Alexander von, 673, 909. Hume, David, 3, 429, 553, 786, _829-30_. Hunter, Robert, 653. Huntington, Ellsworth, 328, 666, 726. Huot, Louis, 648. Hupka, S. von, 333. Hurry, Jamieson B., 947. Huxley, Thomas H., 963. Hyde, 749. Hyndman, Henry M., 950. Inge, William R., _954_, 959, _1001_, 1004. Ingersoll, Robert, 912. Ingram, John K., 563, 675. Ireland, W. W., 941. Irving, L., 1009. Irwin, Will, 859. Itard, Dr. Jean E. M. G., 242, 271, 277. Iyer, L. K. A. K., 728. Jacobowski, L., 221. Jakstas, A., 946. James, B. B., 945. James, E. O., 856. James, William, 77, _119-23_, 148, 150, 421, 426, 472, 473, 486, 598, 661, 669, 726, 736, 932. Janes, George M., 652. Janet, Pierre, 144, 430, 935. Jankelevitch, S., 1005. Jannasch, R., 726. Jarau, G. Louis-, _see_ Louis-Jarau. Jarrett, Mary C., 568. Jastrow, J., 335. Jellinek, Georg, 725. Jenks, Albert, 211, 219, 775. Jenks, Edward, 861. Jenks, Jeremiah, 780. Jennings, Hargrave, 730. Jennings, H. S., 147, 285, 488. Jephson, Henry, 858. Jevons, William S., 500, 948. Jhering, Rudolph von, 861. Johnson, George E., 647. Johnson, James W., 152. Johnson, John H., 656. Johnson, R. H., 568, 1007. Johnson, Samuel, 451. Johnson, W., 777. Johnston, C., 654. Johnston, Harry H., 779. Johnston, R. M., 730. Jones, David Brynmor-, _see_ Brynmor Jones. Jones, Edward D., 947. Jones, Rufus M., 944. Jonson, Ben, 239. Jordanes, 941. Joseph II, of Austria, 934. Jost, M., 944. Jouffroy, T. S., 402. Judd, Charles H., _381-84_, _390-91_. Jung, Carl G., 144, 236, 497, 501, 857. Junius [_pseud._], 858. Juquelier, P., 411, 412, 937 Kaindl, Raimund F., 770, 778. Kalb, Ernst, 657. Kallen, Horace M., 778, 782. Kammerer, Percy G., 223. Kan, J. van, 569. Kant, Immanuel, 82, 108, 420, 909. Kapp, Friedrich, 780. Kaufmann, Moritz, 1008. Kaupas, H., 946. Kautsky, Karl, 333. Kawabé, Kisaburo, 427. Keith, Arthur 659. Keller, Albert G., 72, _134-35_, 157, 648, 719, 726, 1007. Keller, Helen, 151, 231, _243-45_. Kellogg, Paul U., 59, 219. Kellogg, Walter G., 731. Kelly, J. Liddell, 778. Kelsey, Carl, 1007. Kelynack, T. N., 568. Kemble, Frances A., 728. Kenngott, G. F., 219. Kerlin, Robert T., 660. Kerner, R. J., 777. Kerr, Norman S., 568. Kerschensteiner, Georg, 87. Key, Ellen, 214, 221, 254. Khoras, P., 950. Kidd, Benjamin, 1006. Kidd, D., 149. Kilpatrick, James A., 649. King, Irving, 150, 950. Kingsbury, J. E., 427. Kingsford, C. L., 941. Kingsley, Charles, 274. Kingsley, Mary H., 779. Kipling, Rudyard, 67. Kirchhoff. G. R., 13. Kirkpatrick, E. A., 150. Kistiakowski, _Dr._ Th., 217. Kite, Elizabeth S., 147, 254. Klein, Henri F., 730. Kline, L. W., 221. Kluge, F., 428. Knapp, G. F., 217, 563, 729. Knopf, S. A., 1009. Knortz, Karl, 276. Knowles, L. C. A., 950. Knowlson, T. Sharper, _237-39_. Kober, George M., 568. Kobrin, Leon, 219. Kochanowski, J. K., 649. Kocourek, Albert, 854, 860. Kohler, Josef, 564, 854, 856. Kolthamer, F. W., 558. Koren, John, 569. Kostir, Mary S., 148, 254. Kostyleff, N., 501, 855. Kotik, _Dr._ Naum, 937. Kovalewsky, M., 220, 729. Kowalewski, A., 153. Kraepehn, E., 146, 153. Krauss, F. S., 149. Kreibig, Josef K., 500. Kroeber, A. L., 948. Kropotkin, P., 1006. Kudirka, _Dr._, 932. Kydd, Samuel (Alfred, _pseud._), 567. LaBruyère, Jean de, 144, 151. Lacombe, Paul, 498. Lafargue, G., 729. Lagorgette, Jean, 648. La Grasserie, R. de, 647, 649, 729. La Hodde, Lucien de, 731. Laidler, Harry W., 653. Lamarck, J. B., 143 Lamprecht, Karl, 493, _494_, 498, 1005. Landauer, G., 950. Landry, A., 649. Lane, W. D., 656. Lane-Poole, S., 935. Lang, Andrew, 277. Lange, C. G., 421. Langenhove, Fernand van, _819-22_, 857. Lankester, E. Ray, 1005. Lapouge, V., 266. La Rochefoucauld, François, 371. La Rue, William, 945. Lasch, R., 221. Laski, Harold, 860. Laubach, Frank C., 333. Lauck, William J., 780. Law, John, 947. Lay, Wilfrid, 646. Lazarus, Moritz, 217, 427. Lea, Henry C., 655, 657. Le Bon, Gustave, 33, 34, 41, 58, 154, 164, 200, 201, 213, 218, 225, 659, 858, 867, _868_, 869, _871_, 876, _887-93_, 894, _905-9_, 927, 939, 950, 952. Lecky, W. E. H., 641, 647, 858, 875, _915-24_. Lee, James Melvin, 860. Lee, Vernon (_pseud._), 402, 878. Le Gouix, M., 729. Lehmann, A., 430. Leiserson, William M., 782. Leland, C. G., 428, 429. Leonard, O., 654. Leopold III, 797. Leopold, Lewis, _807-11_, 855. LePlay, P. G. Frédéric, 215, 221, 222. Leroy Beaulieu, P., 726. Lester, J. C., 730. Letcher, Valentin, 1005. Letourneau, Ch., 220, 640, 648, 727, 854. Letzner, Karl, 276. Levasseur, E. de, 649. Levine, Louis, 566, 658. Lévy-Bruhl, L., _24_, _332_. Levy, Hermann, 564. Lewis, George G., 858. Lewis, Matthew G., _677-81_. Lewis, Sinclair, 213, 219. Lhérisson, E., 939. Lhermitte, J., 648. L'Houet, A., 334. Lichtenberger, J. P., 223. Lilienfeld, Paul von, 28, 58, 566. Lillehei, Ingebrigt, 659. Limousin, Ch., 649, 729. Linnaeus, 516. Linton, E. L., 948. Lippert, Julius, 148. Lippmann, Walter, 148, _834-37_, 851, 859, 936, 949. Lloyd, A. H., 1005. Lock, C. L., 649. Lockwood, George B., 945. Loeb, Jacques, 79, _80_, 81, 147, 467, 494. Lowenfeld, L., 153, 410. Loisy, Alfred, 939. Lombroso, Cesare. 145, 153, 562, 951. Lord, Eliot, 781. Lord, Herbert Gardiner, 648. Loria, A., 498. Lotze, Hermann, 420, 425. Loughborough, J. N., 945. Louis-Jarau, G., 946. Loutschisky, I., 729. Love, Albert G., 568. Lowell, A. Lawrence, 658, 792, _826-29_, 851, 858, 864. Lowie, Robert H., 18, _19_, 220, 723, 730, 777. Lubbock, J., 180, 396. Lucretius, 953, 965, 966. Lummis, Charles F., 939. Lyall, Sir Alfred, 105. Lyell, Charles, 768. Lyer, F. Müller-, _see_ Müller-Lyer. Lytton, Edward Bulwer, 1008. Macauley, T. B. 139. McCormac, E. I., 728. M'Culloch, O. C., 143, 147. MacCurdy, J. T., 936. Macdonagh, Michael, 851, 859. McDougall, William, 58, 425, 441, _464-67_, 496, 501, 652, 721, 726, 963. McGee, W. J., 211, 219, 777, 860, 1006. Mach, Ernst, 13. Machiavelli, 97, 140. Maciver, R. M., 426. McIver, J., 569. Mackay, Charles, 947. Mackay, R. W., 647. MacKay, Thomas, 557, 565. McKenzie, F. A., 775. Mackenzie, J. S., 1004. McKenzie, R. D., 218. McLaren, A. D., 660. MacLean, J. P., 944. McLennan, J. F., 220. McMurtrie, Douglas C., 568. Macrosty, Henry W., 564. Maine, Sir Henry S., 219, 220, _555_, 564, 826, 852, _853_, 854, 860, 862. Maitland, Frederic W., 861. Malinowski, Bronislaw, 220. Mallery, Garrick, 422, 427. Mallock, W. H., 729, 949, 1009. Maloney, E. F., 935. Malthus, T. R., 7, 516, 553, 554, 559, 561, 563. Mandeville, Bernard de, 1008. Marchi, A. De, _see_ De Marchi, A. Marot, Helen, 149, 657. Marpillero, G., 335. Marshall, Alfred, 500, 563. Marshall, Henry R., 425, _600-3_. Martin, E. D., 940. Martineau, Harriet, 1, 2, 57, 561. Marvin, Francis S., 778, _965-66_. Marx, Karl, 561, 565, 567, 912. Mason, Otis T., 302, 427, 941. Mason, William A., 427. Massart, J., 218, 1007. Mathiez, Albert, 657. Matthews, Brander, 949. Matthews, W., 938. Maublanc, René, 649. Mauss, M., 856, 857. Maxon, C. H., 943. Mayer, Émile, 650. Mayer, J. R., 768. Mayo Smith, Richmond, 741, 776, 778. Mead, G. H., 424, 425. Meader, John R., 943. Means, Philip A., 651. Mecklin, John M., 651, 652. Medlicott, H. B., _377_. Meillet, A., 275, 945. Meinong, Alexius, 500. Meisel Hess, Grete, 214, 221. Mendel, G., 71, 143, 157. Menger, Karl, 500. Mensch, Ella, 936. Mercier, C. A., 501. Meredith, George, 142. Merker, 240. Merriam, Charles E., 658, 792. Mesmer, F. A., 424. Metcalf, H. C., 149. Meumann, Ernst, 86. Meyer, Adolph, 285, 488. Meyer, J. L., 937. Miceli, V., 939. Michels, Robert 644, 659. Michiels, A., 373, 374. Miklosich, Franz, 654. Mill, James, 451. Mill, John Stuart, 546, 560, 850, 1005. Miller, Arthur H., 855. Miller, Edward, 944. Miller, Herbert A., 335, 655, 660, 781, 782, _786-87_, 870. Miller, J. D., 949. Miller, Kelly 137, _251_, 651. Millingen, J. G., 655. Milhoud, Maurice, 859. Millis, Harry A., 781. Milmine, Georgine, 657. Miner, Maude, 670. Minin, 415. Mirabeau, Octave, 151. Mitchell, P. Chalmers, _170-73_. Mitchell, Wesley C., 947. Moll, Albert, _85-89_, 332, _412-15_, 430. Moltke, Count von, 670, 793 n. Monin, H., 729. Montagu, 7. Montague, Helen, 153. Montesquieu, _3_, 270. Montgomery, K. L., 945. Moody, Dwight L., 943. Moody, W. R., 943. Mooney, James, 943. Moore, Edward C., 778. Moore, Henry L., 947. Moore, William H., 778. More, Hannah, 949. More, Thomas, 1008. Moreau de Tours, 938. Morel, E. D., 779, 797. Morgan, Alexander, 1009. Morgan, C. Lloyd, 147, 186, 187, 342, _375-79_, 494, 725. Morgan, E. L., 731. Morgan, Lewis H., 214, 749. Morgan, W. T., 658. Morley, John, 725, 949, 1006. Morris, Lloyd R., 659. Morris, William, 1008. Morrow, Prince A., 223. Morse, Josiah, 652. Morselli, Henry, 266, 272, 273. Mosiman, Eddison, 937. Mouromtzeff, Mme de, 729. Müller, F. Max, _379-81_, 395, 432. Müller, Fritz, 521. Müller-Lyer, F., 1006. Mumford, Eben, 855. Münsterberg, Hugo, 424, 427, 430, _668-92_, 726, 936. Murray, W. A., 939. Myers, C. S., _89-92_, 936. Myers, Gustavus, 659. Myerson, Abraham, 223, 936. Napoleon I, 238, 241, 419, 628, 789. Napoleon III, 793. Nardi-Greco, Carlo, 861. Nasmyth, George, 1009. Nassau, R. H., 856. Naumann, Friedrich, 650, 809. Neatby, W. Blair, 945. Neill, Charles P., 653. Neilson, George, 655. Nesbitt, Florence, 222. Nesfield, John C., 218, _681-84_. Neter, Eugen, 273. Nevinson, Margaret W., 567. Newell, W. W., 941. Newton, Sir Isaac, _13_. Niceforo, Alfredo, 567, 649, _1003_, 1010. Nicolai, G. F., 641. Nieboer, Dr H. J., _674-77_, 727, 733. Nims, Harry D., 564. Nitsch, C., 946. Noiré, L., 395. Nordau, Max, 1004. Nordhoff, Charles, 334, 656. Norhe, O. M., 775. Novicow, J., 212, 425, 642, 645, 649, 740, 741, 775, 854. Oakesmith, John, 645, 659. Oberholtzer, E. P., 859. Obolensky, L. E., 1008. O'Brien, Frank M., 859. O'Brien, Frederick, 656. Odin, Alfred, 855. Oertel, Hans, 22. Ogburn, W. F., 215. Oldenberg, H., 856. Older, Fremont, 659. Olgin, Moissaye J., 950. Oliver, Frederick S., 649. Oliver, Thomas, 568. Olmsted, F. L., 727. Oncken, August, 563. Oppenheimer, Franz, _50_, 644. Ordahl, George, 639, 646. Ormond, Alexander T., _340_, 420, 425. Orth, Samuel P., 659. Osborne, T. M., 562. Osten, 413, 414, 430. Osterhausen, Dr., 240. Ostrogorsku, Johann K., 658. Owen, Richard, 768. Owen, Robert Dale, 559. Paget, _Sir_ James, 366. Pagnier, Armand, 153, 333. Paine, Thomas, 912. Palanti, G., 940. Pandian, T. B., 333. Park, Robert E., _76-81_, _135-39_, 155, _185-89_, _198-200_, 218, 225, 252, _311-15_, _315-17_, 335, 429, _467-78_, _616-23_, 623-31, 655, _712-14_, _756-62_, 775, 781, 782, 784, _786-87_, _829-33_, 859, 870, _893-95_, _930_, 934. Parker, Carleton H., 149, 494, 936. Parkman, Francis, 778, 779. Parmelee, Maurice, 217, 267, 569, 1009. Parsons, Elsie Clews, 220. Parton, James, 652. Partridge, G. E., 568, 727. Pascal, 463. Pascoe, C. F., 779. Pasteur, Louis, 44. Pater, Walter, 939. Patetta, F., 655. Paton, Stewart, 147. Patrick, G. T. W., _598-600_, 640, 641, 647, 935, 948. Patten, Simon N., 498, 1008. Patterson, R. J., 727. Paulhan, Fr., 332, 731. Pavlo, I. P., 494, 839. Payne, George Henry, 427. Pearson, Karl, 13, _14_, 949, 963, 1007. Pélissier, Jean, 932, 946. Pennington, Patience, 334. Percin, Alexandre, 648. Periander, 67. Perry, Bliss, _40_. Perry, Ralph B., 1008. Perty, M., 809. Peter the Great, 934. Peterson, J., 941. Petit-Dutaillis, C. E., 649. Petman, Charles, 276. Petrie, W. M. F., 950. Pfister, Ch., 275. Pfister, Oskar, 501, 857. Pfleiderer, Otto, 730. Pflug-Harttung, Julius von, 941. Pfungst, Oskar, 430. Philippe, L., 649, 729. Phillips, Ulrich B., 727. Phillips, W. Alison, _793-94_ n. Phillips, Wendell, 949. Picard, Edmond, 860. Piderit. T., 421, 426. Pillsbury, W. B., 645, 647, 651. Pinet, G., 729. Pintner, Rudolf, 568. Pitre, Giuseppe, 939. Place, Francis, 559. Plato, 96, 105, 238, 261, 607, 1008. Platt, Thomas G., 659. Ploss, H., 221. Plunkitt, G. W., 659. Pollock Frederick, 861. Pope, Alexander, 83 n. Popenoe, Paul, 568, 1007. Porter, W. T., 648. Post, Albert H., _851-52_. Powell, H. Baden-, _see_ Baden-Powell, H. Poynting, J. H., 13. Preuss, Hugo, 334. Preyer, W., 84. Price, Dr., 553. Price, G. F., 569. Prince, Morton, 70, _110-13_, 150, 474, 477, 645, 727, 777. Prince, Samuel H., 951. Probst, Ferdinand, 144, 151. Proudhon, P. J., 565. Puchta, G. F., 677. Puffer, J. Adams, 643, 656. Rainwater, Clarence E., 732. Ralph, Julian, 276. Rambosson, J., 938. Randall, E. O., 945. Rank, Otto, 858. Rastall, B. M., 653. Ratzel, Friedrich, 148, 270, 274, _298-301_, 728, 776. Ratzenhofer, Gustav, 36, 58, 212, 421, 496, 642, 645, 775. Rauber, August, 241, 242, 243, 277. Ravage, M. E., 336, 782, 783. Ray, P. O., 658. Reclus, E., 1005. Reed, V. Z., 939. Regnard, P., 937. Reich, Emil, 778. Reinheimer, H., 218. Reuter, E. B., 154, 770, 776. Rhodes, J. F., 656. Rhys, John, 149, 945. Ribot, Th. A., _108-10_, 124, 144, 150, 344, _394-97_, 426, 430, 433, 496. Ribton-Turner, Charles J., 333. Ricardo, David, 544, 546, 558. Richard. T., 943. Richards, Caroline C., 305-11. Richet, Ch., 113, 115, 430. Richmond, Mary E., 59, 215, 491, 498. Rickert, Heinrich, 10, 1005. Rihbany, Abraham M., 336, 774, 782, 783. Riis, Jacob A. 336, 567, 782. Riley, I. W., 151. Riordan, William L., 659. Ripley, William Z., _264-68_, 275, _534-38_, 572, 725, 776. Risley, Herbert H., 681, _684-88_, 728. Ritchie, David G., 725. Rivarol, Antoine, 908. Rivers, W. H. R., 211, 219, 220, 723, 729, 738, _746-50_, 776, 857. Roberts, Peter, 219. Robertson, John M., 641, 646, 861, 1010. Roberty, E. de, 729. Robinson, Charles H., 779. Robinson, James Harvey, _5_, _6_, 498. Robinson, Louis, 82. Roepke, Dr. Fritz, 650. Rogers, Edward S., 565. Rogers, James B., 944. Rohde, Erwin, 657. Romanes, G. J., 379. Roosevelt, Theodore, 659, 776. Rosanoff, A. J., 132. Roscher, W., 726. Ross, Edward A., 58, 213, 499, 725, 780, 849, 854. Rossi, Pasquale, 557, 927, 938. Rothschild, Alonzo, 855. Rousiers, Paul de, 731. Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 107, 139, 223, 231, _234-35_, 241, 850. Roussy, G., 648. Routledge, Mrs. Scoresby, 275. Rowntree, B. Seebohm, 567, 569. Royce, Josiah, 150, 390, 425, 426, 429, 652. Rubinow, I. M., 568. Rudolph, Heinrich, 426. Rudolphi, K. A., 243. Russell, B. A. W., 565. Russell, J. H., 727. Ryckère, Raymond de, 569. Sabine, Lorenzo, 655. Sageret, J., 858. Sagher, Maurice de, 276. Saineanu, Lazar, 428, 429. Saint-Simon, C. H. comte de, 3, 4. Saleeby, Caleb W., 1007. Salt, Henry S., 1009. Salz, Arthur, 729. Samassa, P., 946. Sandburg, Carl, 654. Sanderson, Dwight, 1002. Sands, B., 946. Santayana, G., _983_. Sapper, Karl, 780. Sarbah, John M., 860. Sartorius von Walterhausen, August, 728. Scalinger, G. M., 941. Schaeffle, Albert, 28, 58. Schatz, Albert, 563. Schechter, S., 944. Schmidt, Caspar, 565, 830. Schmidt, N., 943. Schmoller, Gustav, 427, 729. Schmucker, Samuel M. (ed.), 334. Schopenhauer, Arthur, 964, _994-1000_. Schurtz, Heinrich, 723, 729, 948. Schwartz, 82. Schwittau, G., 652. Scott, Walter D., 859. Secrist, Frank K., 428. Seebohm, Frederic, 219, 861. Seguin, Edward, 277. Selbie, W. B., 944. Seligman, E. R. A., 563. Seligmann, H. J., 654. Séménoff, E., 729. Semple, Ellen C., _268-69_, 274, _289-91_, _301-5_. Sergi, G., 1004. Seton, Ernest Thompson, _886-87_. Seton-Watson, R. W., 946. Shaftesbury, _Seventh Earl of_, 949. Shakespeare, William, 238, 239. Shaler, N. S., 148, 233, _257-59_, 283, _294-98_, 330, 337, 651, 948. Shand, A. F., 150, 465, 477, 496, 497, 501. Sheldon, H. D., 656. Shepard, W. J., 858. Sherrington, C. S., 838. Shinn, Milicent W., _82-85_, 150. Short, Wilfrid M., _977-79_. Shuster, G., 730. Sicard, Abbé, 242. Sidis, Boris, _415-16_, 424, 430, 468. Sighele, Scipio, 41, 58, _200-205_, 213, 218, 644, 722, 867, _872_, 894, 927, 939. Simkhovitch, (Mrs.) Mary K., 331. Simmel, Georg, 10, 36, 58, 151, 217, 218, 221, 286, _322-27_, 331, 332, 341, 342, _348-56_, _356-61_, 421, 425, 432, 433, 500, 559, 563, _582-86_, _586-94_, 639, 645, 670, _695-97_, _697-703_, _703-6_, _706-8_, 720, 725, 726, 730, 733, 938, 947, 1004, 1005. Simon, Th., 145, 154. Simons, A. M., _443-44_, 502. Simons, Sarah E., _740-41_, 775. Simpson, Bertram L., 650. Sims, George R., 567. Sims, Newell L., 218, 334. Skeat, Walter W., 276. Small, Albion W., 36, 58, _196-98_, _288-89_, 332, 348, 425, 427, _451-54_, _454-58_, 496, 499, 503, 582, 586, 645, 660, 695, 697, 703, 706, 726. Small, Maurice H., _239-43_. Smedes, Susan D., 334, 728. Smith, Adam, 344, _397-401_, 401, 429, 431, 433, 447, 449, 495, 505, _550-51_, 553, 554, 556, 558, 572. Smith, Henry C., 945. Smith, J. M. P., 854. Smith, _Lieut._ Joseph S., _800-805_. Smith, Lorenzo N., 429. Smith, Richmond Mayo-, _see_ Mayo-Smith, Richmond. Smith, W. Robertson, _16_, _813-16_, _822-26_, 857. Smyth, C., 654. Socrates, 105, 140, 646. Solenberger, Alice W., 274. Solon, 261. Sombart, Werner, _317-22_, 335, 567, 648, 948. Somló, F., 728. Sorel, Georges, 645, _816-19_, 857, 959, 1004. Southard, E. E., 1007. Spadoni, D., 731. Spargo, John, _909-15_, 950, 952. Speek, Peter A., 781. Speer, Robert E., 779. Spencer, Baldwin, 149, 220, 861. Spencer, Herbert, 24, _25_, _26_, _27_, 28, 43, 44, 58, 60, 61, 141, 210, 217, 396, 402, 495, 557, 565, 787, _805-7_, 831, 849, 855, 889, 947, 959, 963, _966-68_, 1001, 1006, 1010. Spiller, G. (ed.), _89-92_, 651. Spurzheim, J. F. K., 145. Squillace, Fausto, 948. Stalker, James, 943. Stanhope, Philip Henry (Fourth Earl), 240, 277. Stanley, L. L., 569. Stanton, Henry B., 949. Starbuck, Edwin D., 332, 726. Starcke, C. N., 220. Stchoukine, Ivan, 944. Stead, W. T., 782, 859. Steffens, Lincoln, 331. Stein, L., 565, 649. Steiner, Edward A., 780, 782. Steiner, Jesse F., 335, 616, 621, 622, 643, 651. Steinmetz, Andrew, 655. Steinmetz, S. R., 648, 654, 860. Steinthal, H., 217. Stephen, Sir Leslie, 647. Stephenson, Gilbert T., 651. Stern, B., 86, 87, 149, 150. Stern, Mrs. Elizabeth G., 774, 783. Stern, W., 152. Stevens, W. H. S., 565. Stewart, Dugald, 402, 429. Stillson, Henry L., 730. Stimson, Frederic J., _843-46_. Stirner, Max [_pseud._], _see_ Schmidt, Caspar. Stoddard, Lothrop, 963. Stoker, Bran, 731. Stoll, Otto, 221, 332, 430, 926 f, 937. Stone, Alfred H., _631-37_, 651. Stoughton, John, 949. Stout, G. F., 344, _391-94_, 424. Stow, John, 219. Strachey, Lytton, 721, 962. Straticò, A., 940. Stratz, Carl H., 948. Strausz, A., 149. Stromberg, A. von, 943. Strong, Anna L., 273. Stubbs, William, 353, 354. Stumpf, C., 413, 414. Sugenheim, S., 727. Sullivan, Anne, 243, 244. Sully, J., 150, 332, 422, 426. Sumner, Helen L., 942. Sumner, William G., 36, 37, 46, _97-100_, 143, 147, 283, _293-94_, 333, 640, 648, 759, 779, 796, 797, 831, 841-43, 849, 854, _866_, 933, 948, _983-84_. Swift, Jonathan, 67. Tabbé, P., 946. Taft, Jessie, 942. Taine, H. A., 141, _493_, 498, 907, 935, 950. Talbot, Marion, 222. Talbot, Winthrop, 782. Tannenbaum, Frank, _49_, 936. Tarde, Gabriel, _21_, 22, 32, _33_, 36, 37, 41, 58, 201, 202, 213, 218, 332, 390, 418, 423, 429, 562, 569, 729, 777, 794 n., 828, 858, 868, 875, 927, _933_, 939, 947. Tardieu, É., 725. Taussig, F. W., 731. Tawney, G. A., 727, 940. Taylor, F. W., 149. Taylor, Graham R., 219. Taylor, Thomas, 939. Tead, Ordway, 149, 494. Teggart, Frederick J., 1006. Tenney, E. P., 1009. Terman, L. M., 855. Theophrastus, 144, 151. Thiers, Adolphe, 947. This, G., 275. Thomas, Edward, 935. Thomas, N. W., 220, 856. Thomas, William I., _47_, _52_, _57_, _59_, 144, 146, 148, 151, 153, 215, 222, _249-52_, 285, 332, 335, 438, 442, _488-90_, 497, 501, _579-82_, 640, 651, 652, 655, 718, 729, 730, 731, 774, 778, 935, 948, 950. Thompson, Anstruther, 402. Thompson, Frank V., 781. Thompson, Helen B., 153. Thompson, M. S., 946. Thompson, Warren S., 566. Thompson, W. Gilman, 568. Thomson, J. Arthur, 13, 71, _126-28_, 147, 153, 218, _513-15_, 563, 1007. Thorndike, Edward L., 68, 71, _73-76_, _78_, _92-94_, 147, 150, 152, 155, 187, 424, 429, 494, 647, 721, 726. Thoreau, H. D., 229. Thurston, Henry W., 656. Thwing, Charles F., and Carrie F. B., 222. Tippenhauer, L. G., 939. Tocqueville Alexius de, 851, 858, _909_. Todd, Arthur J., 1004, 1010. Tolstoy, _Count_ Leon, 151, 789. Tönnies, Ferdinand, _100-102_, 649, 740. Toops, Herbert A., 568. Topinard, Paul, 537. Tosti, Gustavo, 425. Tower, W. L., _128-33_, 147. Towns, Charles B., 569. Toynbee, Arnold, 334, 950. Tracy, J., 943. Train, Arthur, 656. Train, J., 944. Tredgold, A. F., 152, 277. Treitschke, Heinrich von, 988. Trenor, John J. D., 781. Trent, William P., 859. Tridon, André, 501. Triplett, Norman, 646. Trotter, W., _31_, 647, _742-45_, 783, 784. Tuchmann, J., 856. Tufts, James H., 149. Tulp, Dr., 241. Turner, Charles J. Ribton-, _see_ Ribton-Turner, Charles J. Turner, Frederick J., 499. Twain, Mark [_pseud._] _see_ Clemens, Samuel L. Tylor, Edward B., 19, 148, 220, 674, 855. Urban, Wilbur M., 500. Vaccaro, M. A., 860. Vallaux, Camille, 274, 333. Vandervelde, É., 218, 333, 1007. Van Hise, Charles R., 564. Vavin, P., 729. Veblen, Thorstein, 71, 287, 501, 644, 721, 729, 936. Vellay, Charles, 946. Vierkandt, Alfred, 148, 333, 723, 729, 777, 854. Vigouroux, A., 411, 412, 937. Villatte, Césaire, 428. Villon, François, 428. Vincent, George E., 58, _605-10_, 646. Virchow, Rudolph, 537, 725. Vischer, F. T., 402. Voivenel, Paul, 648. Voltaire, 986. Von Kolb, 240. Vries, Hugo de, 143. Wace, A. J. B., 946. Wagner, 243. Wagner, Adolf, 563. Waitz, Theodor, 856. Wald, Lilian, 331. Walford, Cornelius, 564. Walker, Francis A., 499, _508_, _539-44_, 564, 572. Wallace, 553. Wallace, Alfred R., 562, 554, 725, 1006. Wallace, Donald M., 333. Wallas, Graham, 148, 162, 335, 422, 431, 494, 925, 929, 935. Wallaschek, Richard, 938. Walling, W. E., 653. Wallon, H., 727. Walter, F., 854. Ward, E. J., 331, 732. Ward, James, 775. Ward, Lester F., 58, 497, 499, 513, 649, 718, _973-75_, 1007. Ward, Robert de C., 726. Ware, J. Redding, 428. Warming, Eugenius, _173-80_, 218, 554. Warne, Frank J., 653. Warneck, Gustav, 779. Warren, H. C., 777. Warren, Josiah, 565. Washburn, Margaret F., 147. Washington, Booker T., 152, 607, 629, 782. Wasmann, Eric, 169. Watson, Elkanah, 540, 543. Watson, John B., 81, 147, 285, _482-88_, 488, 494. Watson, R. W. Seton-, _see_ Seton-Watson, R. W. Waxweiler, E., 218. Weatherly, U. G., 776. Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, 564, 644, 657. Weber, Adna P., 334. Weber, John L., 727. Weber, L., 1006. Webster, Hutton, 274, 730. Wechsler, Alfred, 948. Weeks, Arland D., 646. Wehrhan, K., 650. Weidensall, C. J., 153. Weigall, A., 332. Weismann, August, 143, 515, 563. Weller, Charles F., 732. Wells, H. G., 151, 496, 498, 932, 935, 1009. Wendland, Walter, 650. Wermert, George, 654. Wesley, Charles, 916. Wesley, John, 151, 916 ff. Wesnitsch, Milenko R., 654. West, Arthur Graeme, 650. Westermarck, Edward, 16, _17_, 60, 147, 214, 215, 220, 640, 778, 849, 854. Weygandt, W., 937. Whately, Archbishop, 735. Wheeler, G. C., 220. Wheeler, William M., _167-70_, _180-82_, 214, 217, 554. White, Andrew D., 647. White, F. M., 655. White, W. A., 500, 594-98. Whitefield, George, 916 ff. Whiting, Lilian, 949. Whitley, W. T., 943. Wigmore, John H., 854, 860, 861. Wilberforce, William, 949. Wilbert, Martin I., 569. Wilde, Oscar, 151. Willard, Frances E., 942, 950. Willard, Josiah Flynt, 151. Willcox, Walter F., 223, _1002-3_, 1010. Williams, Daniel J., 781. Williams, J. M., 212, 219, 223. Williams, Whiting, 149. Willoughby, W.W., 565. Wilmanns, Karl, 153. Wilson, D. L., 730. Wilson, _Captain_ H. A., 637. Wilson, Warren H., 219. Windelband, Wilhelm, _8-10_, 286-646. Windisch, H., 775. Winship, A. E., 147. Winston, L. G., _117-19_. Wirth, M., 947. Wishart, Alfred W., 274. Wiston-Glynn, A. W., 947. Witte, H., 946. Wittenmyer, _Mrs._ Annie, _898-905_, 942. Wolff, C. F., 967. Wolman, Leo, 653. Wood, Walter, 649, (ed). Woodbury, Margaret, 859. Woodhead, 179. Woods, A., 655. Woods, E. B., 1004. Woods, Frederick A., 499, 854. Woods, Robert A., 219, 331, 335, 566, 656 (ed.), 943. Woodson, Carter G., 941. Woodworth, R. S., 154. Woolbert, C. H., 941. Woolman, John, 151. Wordsworth, William, _66_. Worms, Émile, 649. Worms, René, 28, _29_, 58, 61, 425, 649 (ed.), 729. Wright, Arnold, 653. Wright, Gordon, 886. Wuensch, R., 939. Wundt, Wilhelm, 21, 421, 422, 426, 427, 775, 777. Wuttke, Heinrich, 427. Xénopol, A. P., 649. Yule, Henry, 276. Zangwill, Israel, 734. Zeeb, Frieda B., 942. Zenker, E. V., 565. Ziegler, T., 942. Zimand, Savel, 943. Zimmermann, Johann G., 271, 273. Zimmern, Alfred E., 660, 729, 730. Znaniecki, Florian, _47_, _52_, _57_, _59_, 144, 151, 222, 335, 501, 774, 935, 1006. Zola, Émile, 141, _142_, 266, 334. Zueblin, Charles, _955-56_, 1010. GENERAL INDEX ACCLIMATIZATION: _bibliography_, 725-26; as a form of accommodation, 666, 671-74, 719. ACCOMMODATION: _chap. x_, 663-733; _bibliography_, 725-32; and adaptation, 663-65; and assimilation, 735-36; and competition, 664-65; and compromise, 706-8; and conflict, 631-37, 669-70, 703-8; creates social organization, 511; defined, 663-64; distinguished from assimilation, 511; facilitated by secondary contacts, 736-37; in the form of domination and submission, 440-41; in the form of slavery, 674-77, 677-81; forms of, 666-67, 671-88, 718-20; and historic forms of the organization of society, 667; investigations and problems, 718-25; natural issue of conflict, 665; and the origin of caste in India, 681-84, 684-88; and peace, 703-63; in relation to competition, 510-11; in relation to conflict, 511; as subordination and superordination, 667-69. _See_ Subordination and superordination. ACCOMMODATION GROUPS, classified, 50, 721-23. ACCULTURATION: _bibliography_, 776-77; defined, 135; problems of, 771-72; and tradition, 172; transmission of cultural elements, 737. ADAPTATION, and accommodation, 663-65. ADVERTISING. _See_ Publicity. AGGREGATES, SOCIAL: composed of spacially separated units, 26; and organic aggregates, 25. AMALGAMATION: _bibliography_, 776; and assimilation, 740-41, 769-71; fusion of races by intermarriage, 737-38; result of contacts of races, 770. _See_ Miscegenation. AMERICANIZATION: _bibliography_, 781-83; as assimilation, 762-63; and immigration, 772-75; as participation, 762-63; as a problem of assimilation, 739-40, 762-69; Study of Methods of, 736, 773-74; surveys and studies of, 772-75. _See_ Immigration. ANARCHISM: _bibliography_, 565-66; economic doctrine of, 558. ANARCHY, of political opinion and parties, 2. ANIMAL CROWD. _See_ Crowd, animal. ANIMAL SOCIETY: bee and ant community, 742; prestige in, 809-10. ANTHROPOLOGY, 10. APPRECIATION: in relation to imitation, 344, 401-7; and sense impressions, 356-57. ARCHAEOLOGY, as a new social science, 5. ARGOT, _bibliography_, 427-29. ART: as expressive behavior, 787-88; origin in the choral dance, 871. ASSIMILATION: _chap. xi_, 734-84; _bibliography_, 775-83; and accommodation, 735-36; and amalgamation, 740-41, 769-71; Americanization as, 762-63; based on differences, 724; biological aspects of, 737-38, 740-45; conceived as a "Melting Pot," 734; defined, 756, 761; and democracy, 734; distinguished from accommodation, 511; facilitated by primary contacts, 736-37, 739, 761-62; final product of social contact, 736-37; in the formation of nationalities, 756-58; fusion of cultures, 737; of the Germans in the Carpathian lands, 770; instinctive basis of, 742-45; investigations and problems, 769-75; as like-mindedness, 735, 741; and mediation of individual differences, 766-69; natural history of, 774; in personal development, 511; popular conceptions of, 724-35; a problem of secondary groups, 761; a process of prolonged contact, 741; of races, 756-62; and racial differences, 769-70; sociology of, 735-37. _See_ Amalgamation, Americanization, Cultures, conflict and fusion of, Denationalization. ATTENTION, in relation to imitation, 344, 391-94. ATTITUDES: _bibliography_, 501; as behavior patterns, 439-42; complexes of, 57; polar conception of, 441-42; as the social element, 438-39; as social forces, 467-78; in subordination and superordination, 692-95; and wishes, 442-43; wishes as components of, 439. BALKED DISPOSITION, a result of secondary contacts, 287. BEHAVIOR: defined, 185-86; expressive and positive, 787-88. BEHAVIOR, COLLECTIVE. _See_ Collective behavior. BEHAVIOR PATTERNS, and culture, 72. BLUSHING, communication by, 365-70. BOLSHEVISM, 909-15. BUREAU OF MUNICIPAL RESEARCH, of New York City, 46, 315. CARNEGIE REPORT UPON MEDICAL EDUCATION, 315. CASTE: _bibliography_, 728; as an accommodation of conflict, 584; defined, 203-4; a form of accommodation group, 50; interpreted by superordination and subordination, 684-88; its origin in India, 681-84; and the limitation of free competition, 620-22; study of, 722-23. CATEGORIC CONTACTS. _See_ Sympathetic contacts. CEREMONY: _bibliography_, 855-56; as expressive behavior, 787-88; fundamental form of social control, 787. CHARACTER: defined, 81; inherited or acquired, 127-28; and instinct, 190-93; as the organization of the wishes of the person, 490; related to custom, 192-93. CIRCLE, VICIOUS. _See_ Vicious circle. CIRCULAR REACTION. _See_ Reaction, circular. CITY: an area of secondary contacts, 285-87; aversion, a protection of the person in the, 584-85; and the evolution of individual types, 712-14; growth of, 534-35; physical human type of, 535-38; planning, studies of, 328-29; studies of, 331. CIVILIZATION: and historical continuity, 298-301; life of, 956-57; and mobility, 303-5; a part of nature, 3; an organization to realize wishes, 958; and permanent settlement, 529-30. CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS, 40. CLASSES, SOCIAL: _bibliography_, 728-29; defined, 204-5; as a form of accommodation groups, 50; patterns of life of, 46; separated by isolation, 230; study of, 722. CLEVER HANS, case of, 412-15. COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR: _chap. xiii_, 865-952; _bibliography_, 934-51; defined, 865; investigations and problems, 924-34; and the origin of concerted activity, 32; and social control, 785-86; and social unrest, 866-67. _See_ Crowd, Herd, Mass movements, Public. COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS: defined, 195; of society, 28. COLLECTIVE FEELING, and collective thinking, 17. COLLECTIVE MIND, and social control, 36-43. COLLECTIVE REPRESENTATION: application of Durkheim's conception of, 18; contrasted with sensation, 193; in the crowd, 894-95; defined, 164-65, 195-96; and intellectual life, 193-96; and public opinion, 38. COLLECTIVISM: and the division of labor, 718. COLONIZATION: _bibliography_, 725-26; a form of accommodation, 719; and mobility, 302. COMMON PURPOSE, as ideal, wish, and obligation, 33. COMMUNISM, economic doctrine of, 558. COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION: _bibliography_, 731-32; study of, 724-25. COMMUNICATION: _bibliography_, 275-76; 426-29; and art, 37; basis of participation in community life, 763-66; basis of society, 183-85; basis of world-society, 343; by blushing, 365-70; concept, the medium of, 379-81; extension of, by human invention, 343, 385-89; a form of social interaction, 36; and inter-stimulation, 37; by laughing, 370-75; in the lower animals, 375-79; as the medium of social interaction, 341-43; natural forms of, 356-75; newspaper as medium of, 316-17; rôle of the book in, 343; study of, 421-23; through the expression of the emotions, 342, 361-75; through language and ideas, 375-89; through the senses, 342, 356-61; writing as a form of, 381-84. _See_ Language, Newspaper, Publicity. COMMUNITIES: _bibliography_, 59, 219; animal, 26; defined, 161; local and territorial, 50; plant, _bibliography_, 217-18; plant, organization of, 26, 173-80; 526-28; plant, unity of, 198-99; rural and urban, 56; scale for grading, 1002 n.; studies of, 211-12, 327-29. COMMUNITY, as a constellation of social forces, 436, 493. COMPETITION: _chap, viii_, 505-65; _bibliography_, 552-70; and accommodation, 510-11, 664-65; biological, 553-54; changing forms of, 545-50; conscious, as conflict, 574, 576, 579-94; and control, 509-10; of cultural languages, 754-56, 771; and the defectives, the dependents, and the delinquents, 559-62; destroys isolation, 232; economic, 544-54, 554-558; and the economic equilibrium, 505-6, 511; the elementary process of interaction, 507-11; elimination of, and caste, 620-22; and freedom, 506-7, 509, 513, 551-52; history of theories of, 556-58; and human ecology, 558; and the "inner enemies," 559-62; investigations and problems 553-62; and laissez faire, 554-58; the "life of trade," 505; makes for progress, 988; makes for specialization and organization, 519-22; and man as an adaptive mechanism, 522-26; and mobility, 513; most severe between members of the same species, 517; and the natural harmony of individual interests, 550-51; natural history of, 555-56; and natural selection, 515-19; opposed to sentiment, 509; personal, as conflict, 574, 575-76; personal, and the evolution of individual types, 712-14; personal, and social selection, 708-12; and plant migration, 526-28; popular conception of, 504-7; and race suicide, 539-44; restricted by custom, tradition, and law, 513; and segregation, 526-44; and social contact, 280-81; and social control, 561-62; and social solidarity, 670-71, 708-18; and the standard of living, 543-44; and status, 541-43, 670-71, 708-18; and the struggle for existence, 505, 512, 513-15, 515-19, 522-26, 545-50; unfair, 506. _See_ Competitive co-operation. COMPETITIVE CO-OPERATION: Adam Smith's conception of an "invisible hand," 504, 551; in the ant community, 512-13; and competition, 508; complementary association, 179-80; and human ecology, 558; and participation, 767-78; in the plant community, 163. COMPREHENSION, and sense impressions, 357-61. COMPROMISE, a form of accommodation, 706-8. CONCEPTS: as collective representations, 193-96; as medium of communication, 379-81. CONDUCT: as self-conscious behavior, 188-89. CONFLICT: _chap. ix_, 574-662; _bibliography_, 645-60; accommodation, 511, 631-37, 665, 669-70, 703-8; of beliefs, and the origin of sects, 611-12; concept of, 574-76; as conscious competition, 281, 574, 576, 579-94; cultural, and the organization of sects, 610-16; cultural, and sex differences, 615-16; cultural, and social organization, 577-78; determines the status of the person in society, 574-75, 576; emotional, 475-76; and fusion of cultures, 738-39, 746-62, 740-45; and fusion of cultures and social unity, 200; of impersonal ideals, 592-94; instinctive interest in, 579-82; investigations and problems, 639-45; natural history of, 579-82; and origin of law, 850-52; as personal competition, 575-76; and the political order, 551; psychology and sociology of, 638-39; race, and social contact, 615-23; and race consciousness, 623-31; racial, 616-37; and the rise of nationalities, 628-31; and repression, 601-2; and social control, 607-8; as a struggle for status, 574, 578-79; as a type of social interaction, 582-86; types of, 239-41, 586-94; and the unification of personality, 583-84. _See_ Feud, Litigation, Mental conflict, Race conflicts, Rivalry, War. CONFLICT GROUPS, classified, 50. CONSCIENCE: as an inward feeling, 103; a manifestation of the collective mind, 33; a peculiar possession of the gregarious animals, 31. CONSCIOUS, 41. CONSCIOUSNESS: national and racial, 40-41; and progress, 990-94. CONSCIOUSNESS, SOCIAL: _bibliography_, 425-26; of the community, 48; existence of, 28; as mind of the group, 41; in the person, 29; and the social organism, 39. CONSENSUS: defined, 164; social, and solidarity, 24; social, closer than the vital, 25; as society, 161; versus co-operation, 184. CONTACT, maritime, and geographical, 260-64. CONTACTS, PRIMARY: _bibliography_, 333-34; and absolute standards, 285-86; defined, 284, 311; distinguished from secondary contacts, 284-87, 305-27; facilitate assimilation, 736-37, 739; of intimacy and acquaintanceship, 284-85; related to concrete experience, 286; and sentimental attitudes, 319-20; studies of, 329-31; in village life in America, 305-11. CONTACTS, SECONDARY: _bibliography_, 334-36; and abstract relations, 325; accommodation, facilitated by, 736-37; and capitalism, 317-22; a cause of the balked disposition, 287; characteristic of city life, 285-87, 311-15; conventional, formal, and impersonal, 56; defined, 284; distinguished from primary contacts, 284-87, 305-27; laissez faire in, 758; modern society based on, 286-87; publicity as a form of, 315-17; and the problems of social work, 287; and rational attitudes, 317-22; sociological significance of the stranger, 286, 322-27; studies of, 331. CONTACTS, SOCIAL: _chap. v_, 280-338; _bibliography_, 332-36; in assimilation, 736-37; avoidance of, 292-93, 330; defined, 329; desire for, 291-92; distinguished from physical contacts, 282; economic conception of, 280-81; extension through the devices of communication, 280-81; as the first stage of social interaction, 280, 282; frontiers of, 288-89; intensity of, 282-83; investigations and problems of, 327-31; land as a basis for, 282, 289-91; preliminary notions of, 280-81; and progress, 988-89; and race conflict, 615-23; and racial intermixture, 770; and social forces, 36; sociological concept of, 281-82; spatial conception of, 282; sympathetic versus categoric, 294-98; in the transmission of cultural objects, 746. _See_ Communication; Contacts, primary; Contacts, secondary; Continuity; Interaction, social; Mobility; Touch; We-group and others-group. CONTAGION, SOCIAL: _bibliography_, 936-38; and collective behavior, 874-86, 878-81; in fashion, 874-75; and psychic epidemics, 926-27. CONTINUITY: through blood-relationship, 351-52; by continuance of locality, 350; through group honor, 355-56; through the hereditary principle, 353-54; historical, 283-84, 298-301; through leadership, 353-54; through material symbols, 354-55; through membership in the group, 352-53; through specialized organs, 356. CONTROL: aim of sociology, 339; defined, 182; the fundamental social fact, 34; loss of, and unrest, 766-67. _See_ Control, social. CONTROL, SOCIAL: _chap. xii_, 785-864; _bibliography_, 854-61; absolute in primary groups, 285-86, 305-11; through advertising, 830; in the animal "crowd," 788-90; as an artefact, 29; central problem of society, 42; and collective behavior, 785-86; and the collective mind, 36-43; and competition, 509-10, 561-62; and conflict, 607-8; and corporate action, 27; in the crowd, 790-91; in the crowd and the public, 800-805; defined, 785-87; and definitions of the situation, 764-65; elementary forms of, 788-91, 800-816, 849-50; and human nature, 785-87, 848-49; and the individual, 52; investigations and problems, 848-53; through laughter, 373-75; mechanisms of, 29; through news, 834-37; through opinion, 191-92; organization of, 29; through prestige, 807-11, 811-12; through propaganda, 837-41; in the public, 791-96, 800-805; through public opinion in cities, 316-17; resting on consent, 29; with the savage, 90; and schools of thought, 27-35; and social problems, 785; as taming, 163. _See_ Ceremonial, Law, Leadership, Institutions, Mores, Myth, Taboo. CONVERSION: _bibliography_, 726-27; as the mutation of attitudes and wishes, 669; religious, and the social group, 48. CO-OPERATION: of the machine type, 184. _See_ Collective behavior, Corporate action. CORPORATE ACTION: problem of, 30; and social consciousness, 41-42; and social control, 27; as society, 163. _See_ Collective behavior. CRIME, from the point of view of the primary group, 48, 49. _See_ Defectives, dependents, and delinquents. CRISES, ECONOMIC: _bibliography_, 947. CRISIS, and public opinion, 793, 794. CROWD: _bibliography_, 939-40; animal, 788-89, 876, 881-87; characteristics of, 890-93; classified, 200-201; control in the, 790-91, 800-805; defined, 868, 893-95; excitement of, in mass movements, 895-98; homogeneous and heterogeneous, 200-201; "in being," 33; milling in, 869; organized, 33, 34; "psychological," 34, 876-77, 887-93; psychology of, 5; and the public, 867-70; and unreflective action, 798-99. CULTURAL DIFFERENCES, as caused by isolation, 229. CULTURAL PROCESS: the function of, 52-54; and isolation, 233. CULTURAL RESEMBLANCES, interpretation of, 19. CULTURAL TRAITS: independently created, 20; transmission of, 21. CULTURE: and behavior patterns, 72; materials, why diffused, 20; Roman, extension of in Gaul, 751-54. CULTURES, CONFLICT AND FUSION OF: _bibliography_, 776-80; analysis of blended, 746-50; comparative study of, 18; conflict and fusion of, 738-39, 746-62, 771-72; fusions of, nature of the process, 20. CUSTOM: as the general will, 102; and law, 799. _See_ Mores. DANCE: _bibliography_, 938-39; and corporate action, 870-71. DANCING MANIA OF THE MIDDLE AGES, 875, 879-81. DEFECTIVES, DEPENDENTS, AND DELINQUENTS: _bibliography_, 147-48, 566-70; and competition, 559-62; isolated groups, 232-33, 254-57, 271; and progress, 954-55; solution of problems of, 562. DEFINITION OF THE SITUATION, 764-65. DENATIONALIZATION: _bibliography_, 777-78; implies coercion, 740-41; as negative assimilation, 724; in the Roman conquest of Gaul, 751-54. DENOMINATIONS: as accommodation groups, 50; distinguished from sects, 873. DESIRES: in relation to interests, 456; as social forces, 437-38, 453-54, 455, 497. DIALECTS: _bibliography_, 275, 427-29; caused by isolation, 271; of isolated groups, 423; _lingua franca_, 752-54. DISCOURSE, UNIVERSES OF. _See_ Universes of discourse. DISCUSSION, _bibliography_, 646-47. DISORGANIZATION, SOCIAL: _bibliography_, 934-35; and change, 55; disintegrating influences of city life, 312-13; and emancipation of the individual, 867. DIVISION OF LABOR: and collectivism, 718; and co-operation, 42; and individualism, 718; and the moral code, 717-18; physiological, 26; in slavery, 677; and social solidarity, 714-18; and social types, 713-14. DOGMA, as based upon ritual and myth, 822-26. DOMESDAY SURVEY, 436. DOMESTICATION: defined, 163; of animals, 171-73. DOMINATION. _See_ Subordination and superordination. DUEL: _bibliography_, 655. ECESIS, defined, 526. ECONOMIC COMPETITION. _See_ Competition. ECONOMIC CONFLICT GROUPS: _bibliography_, 657-58. ECONOMIC CRISES. _See_ Crises, economic. ECONOMIC MAN, as an abstraction to explain behavior, 495-96. ECONOMIC PROCESS, and personal values, 53-54. ECONOMICS: conception of society of, 280-81; and the economic process, 53-54; use of social forces in, 494-96. _See_ Competition. EDUCATION: device of social control, 339; purpose of, 833. EMOTIONS, expressions of: _bibliography_, 426-27; study of, 421-22. EPIDEMICS, PSYCHIC OR SOCIAL. _See_ Contagion, social. EQUILIBRIUM, a form of accommodation, 667-719. ESPRIT DE CORPS: as affective morale, 209; defined, 164; in relation to isolation, 229-30. ETHNOLOGY: and history, 18; as a social science, 5. EUGENICS: _bibliography_, 1007; and biological inheritance, 133; as human domestication, 163; and progress, 969-73, 979-83; research in, 143. EVOLUTION, SOCIAL: and progress, _bibliography_, 1006-7. FAMILY: _bibliography_, 220-23, 947-48; government of, 46; outline for sociological study, 216; a primary group, 56; as a social group, 50; study of, 213-16. FASHION: a form of imitation, 390; as social contagion, 874-75; and social control, 831-32; study of, 933-34. FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS. _See_ Defectives, dependents, and delinquents. FERAL MEN: _bibliography_, 277; result of isolation, 71-72, 239-43. FERMENTATION, SOCIAL, 34. FEUD: _bibliography_, 654-55; as a form of conflict, 588-90; as the personal settlement of disputes, 581. FLOCK, 881-83. FOLK PSYCHOLOGY: aim of, 21; its origin, 20; and sociology, 5. FOLKLORE, as a social science, 5. FOLKWAYS: not creations of human purpose, 98. _See_ Customs, Mores. FORCES, SOCIAL: _chap. vii_, 435-504; _bibliography_, 498-501; in American history, 443-44; attitudes as, 437-42, 457-78; desires as, 437-38, 453-54, 497; gossip as, 452; in history, 436-37, 493-94; history of the concept of, 436-37; idea-forces as, 461-64; and interaction, 451-54; interests, as, 454-58, 458-62, 494-96; investigations and problems of, 491-97; organized in public opinion, 35; popular notions of, 491-93; in public opinion in England, 445-51; social pressures as, 458-61; and the social survey, 436; in social work, 435-37, 491-93; sources of the notion of, 435-36; tendencies as, 444-45; trends as, 436-37. _See_ Attitudes, Desires, Interests, Sentiments, and Wishes. FREEDOM: _bibliography_, 563; and competition, 506-7, 509, 551-52; and laissez faire, 560-61; as the liberty to move, 323; of thought and speech, 640-41. FRENCH REVOLUTION, 905-9. GALTON LABORATORY FOR NATIONAL EUGENICS, 143, 560. GAMES AND GAMBLING: _bibliography_, 655; study of, 640. GANGS: _bibliography_, 656; as a form of conflict groups, 50, 870; permanent form of crowd that acts, 872. GENERAL EDUCATION BOARD, 315. GENIUS, among civilized peoples, 92. GEOGRAPHY: and history, 8; as a science, 7. GOVERNMENT: a technical science, 1. _See_ Politics. GREGARIOUSNESS, regarded as an instinct, 30, 742-45. GROUP, PRIMARY, defined, 50, 56. GROUP SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, 51. GROUPS, SECONDARY: in relation to conflict and accommodation, 50. _See_ Contacts, secondary. GROUPS, SOCIAL: _bibliography_, 218-23, 274, 333-36; accommodation type of, 721-23; centers of new ideas, 21; and character, 57; classification of, 50, 200-205; concept of, 47; co-operation in, 22; defined, 45, 196-98; determines types of personality, 606-7; investigations of, 210-16, 270-71; natural, 30; organization and structure of, 51; persistence of, 349-56; a real corporate existence, 33; rivalry of, 605-10; and social problems, 50; study of, 643-45; subordination to, 609-702; types of, 47-51; unit of classification, 161-62; unit of investigation, 212-13; unity of, 198-200. _See_ Groups, primary, Groups, secondary, Contacts, primary, Contacts, secondary, also the names of specific groups. GROWTH, SOCIAL, 26. HABIT, as the individual will, 100-102. HERD: behavior of, 30; contagion in, 885-86; homogeneity of, 31; instinct of the, 32, 724-45, 884-86; milling in the, 788-90; simplest type of social group, 30. HEREDITY AND EUGENICS: _bibliography_, 147-48. HERITAGES, SOCIAL: complex of stimuli, 72; of the immigrant, 765; investigation of, 51; transmission of, 72. HISTORICAL FACT, 7. HISTORICAL PROCESS, and progress, 969-73. HISTORICAL RACES: as products of isolation, 257-60. HISTORY: a catalogue of facts, 14; defined by Karl Pearson, 14; and geography, 15; as group memory, 51-52; mother science of all the social sciences, 42, 43; as a natural science, 23; and the natural sciences, 6; scientific, 4, 14; and sociology, 5, 1-12, 16-24. HOMOGENEITY: and common purpose, 32; and like-mindedness, 32. HOUSING, and zoning studies, 328-29. HUMAN BEINGS, as artificial products, 95. HUMAN ECOLOGY, and competition, 558. HUMAN NATURE: _chap. ii_, 64-158; _bibliography_, 147-54; adaptability of, 95-97; Aristotle's conception of, 140; defined, 65-67; described in literature, 141-43; description and explanation of, 79; founded on instincts, 77-78; and the four wishes, 442-43; Hobbes' conception, 140; human interest in, 64-65; investigations and problems, 139-46; and law, 12-16; Machiavelli's conception, 140; and the mores, 97-100; political conceptions, 140-41; problems of, 47; product of group life, 67; product of social intercourse, 47; product of society, 159; and progress, 954, 957-58, 964-65, 983-1000; religious conceptions of, 139; and social control, 785-87; 848-49; and social life, 69; Spencer's conception, 141; and war, 594-98. HUMAN NATURE AND INDUSTRY: _bibliography_, 149. HUMAN SOCIETY: contrasted with animal societies, 199-200; and social life, 182-85. HYPNOTISM: a form of dissociation of memory, 472; post-hypnotic suggestion, 477. _See_ Suggestion. IDEA-FORCES, 461-64. _See_ Sentiment, Wishes. IMITATION: _bibliography_, 429-30; active side of sympathy, 394-95; and appropriation of knowledge, 403-4; and art, 401-8; circular reaction, 390-91; communication by, 72; defined, 344, 390-91, 391-94; in emotional communication, 404-7; and fashion, 390; and the imitative process, 292-93; internal, 404-5; and like-mindedness, 33; as a process of learning, 344, 393-94; and rapport, 344; in relation to attention and interest, 344, 391-94; in relation to trial and error, 344-45; and the social inheritance, 390-91; as the social process, 21; study of, 423-24; and suggestion, differentiated, 346; and suggestion, inner relation between, 688-889; and the transmission of tradition, 391-92. IMMIGRATION: _bibliography_, 780-81; and Americanization, 772-75; involves accommodation, 719. _See_ Migration. IMMIGRATION COMMISSION, REPORT OF, 772-73. INBORN CAPACITIES, defined, 73-74. INDIVIDUAL: _bibliography_, 149-50, 152-53; an abstraction, 24; isolated, 55; and person 55; subordination to, 698-99. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES: _bibliography_, 152-54, 276; assimilation and the mediation of, 766-69; cause of isolation, 228-29; described, 92-94; developed by city life, 313-15; measurement of, 145-46; in primitive and civilized man, 90; and sex differences, 87. INDIVIDUAL REPRESENTATION, 37, 193. INDIVIDUALISM, and the division of labor, 718. INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION: _bibliography_, 564-65; impersonality of, 287. INHERITANCE, BIOLOGICAL: _bibliography_, 147. INHERITANCE, SOCIAL: through imitation, 390-91. _See_ Heritages, social. "INNER ENEMIES." _See_ Defectives, dependents, and delinquents. INSPIRATION, and public sentiment, 34, 35. INSTINCTS: _bibliography_, 147-48, 152-54; and character, 190-93; in conflict, 576-77; 579-82; defined, 73-74; gregarious, 742-45; in the human baby, 82-84; instinctive movements as race movements, 82; physiological bases of assimilation, 742-45. _See_ Human nature, Original nature. INSTITUTIONS: defined, 796-97, 841; investigations of, 51; and law, 797-99; and mass movements, 915-24; and mores, 841-43; natural history of, 16; and sects, 872-74; and social control, 796-99, 841-48, 851-53. INTERACTION, SOCIAL: _chap. vi_, 339-434; _bibliography_, 425-31; in communication, 341-43, 344-46, 356-89, 408-42; concept of, 339-41; in conflict, 582-86; defines the group in time and space, 341, 348-56; history of the concept, 420-21; imitation as a mechanistic form of, 344, 390-407; investigations and problems, 420-24; language, science, religion, public opinion, and law products of, 37; and mobility, 341; Ormond's analysis, 340; as a principal fundamental to all the natural sciences, 341-42, 346-48; in secondary contacts in the large city, 360-61; and social forces, 451-54; and social process, 36, 421; visual, 356-61. _See_ Communication, Imitation, Process, social, Suggestion, and Sympathy. INTEREST: in relation to imitation, 344, 391-94. INTERESTS: _bibliography_, 499-500; classification of, 456-57; defined, 456; and desires, 456; instincts and sentiments, 30; natural harmony of, 550-51; as social forces, 454-58, 458-62. INTIMACY: _bibliography_, 332; and the desire for response, 329-30; form of primary contact, 294-85. INVERSION, of impulses and sentiments, 283, 292, 329. INVESTIGATION, and research, 45. ISOLATION: _chap. iv_, 226-79; _bibliography_, 273-77; in anthropogeography, 226, 269-70; barrier to invasion in plant communities, 527-28; in biology, 227-28, 270; cause of cultural differences, 229; cause of dialects, 271; cause of mental retardation, 231, 239-52; cause of national individuality, 233, 257-69; cause of originality, 237-39; cause of personal individuality, 233-39, 271-73; cause of race prejudice, 250-52; cause of the rural mind, 247-49; circle of, 232; destroyed by competition, 232; disappearance of, 866-67; effect upon social groups, 270-71; feral men, 239-43; geographical, and maritime contact, 260-64; investigations and problems of, 269-73; isolated groups, 270-71; mental effects of, 245-47; and prayer, 235-37; and the processes of competition, selection and segregation, 232-33; product of physical and mental differences, 228-29; result of segregation, 254-57; and secrecy, 230; and segregation, 228-30; and solidarity, 625-26; solitude and society, 243-45; subtler effects of, 249-52. JEW: product of isolation, 271; racial temperament, 136-37; as the sociological stranger, 318-19, 323. KLONDIKE RUSH, 895-98. LABOR ORGANIZATIONS: as conflict groups, 50. LABORING CLASS, psychology of, 40. LAISSEZ FAIRE: _bibliography_, 563; and competition, 554-58; and individual freedom, 560-61; in secondary contacts, 758. LANGUAGE: _bibliography_, 427-29; as condition of Americanization, 765-66; gesture, 362-64; and participation, 763-66. _See_ Communication, Speech community. LANGUAGE GROUPS AND NATIONALITIES, 50-51. LANGUAGE REVIVALS AND NATIONALISM: _bibliography_, 945-46; study of 930-32. LANGUAGES: comparative study of, and sociology, 5, 22; cultural, competition of, 754-56, 771. LAUGHTER: communication by, 370-75; essays upon, 422; in social control, 373-75; and sympathy, 370-73, 401. LAW: _bibliography_, 860-62; based on custom and mores, 799, 843-46; common and statute, 842-46; comparative study of, 5; and conscience, 102-8; and creation of law-making opinion, 451; formation of, 16; and the general will, 102-8; and human nature, 12-16; as influenced by public opinion, 446-51; and institutions, 797-99; and legal institutions, 851-53; moral, 13; municipal, 13; natural, defined, 11; natural, distinguished from other forms, 12; and public opinion, 446-51; and religion, 853; result of like-mindedness, 717; social, as an hypothesis, 12; "unwritten," 640. LAWS OF NATURE, 13. LAWS OF PROGRESS, 15. LAWS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION, 18. LEADERSHIP: _bibliography_, 854-55; in the flock, 881-83; and group continuity, 353-54; interpreted by subordination and superordination, 695-97, 697-98; in Methodism, 916-17; study of, 721, 849-50. _See_ Collective behavior, Social control, Suggestion, Subordination and superordination. LEGEND: as a form of social control, 819-22; growth of, 819-22; in the growth of Methodism, 922-23. _See_ Myth. LEGISLATION. _See_ Law. LIKE-MINDEDNESS: and corporate action, 42; as an explanation of social behavior, 32-33; formal, in assimilation, 757-60; in a panic, 33-34. LINGUA FRANCA, 752-54. LITERATURE, and the science of human nature, 141-43. LITIGATION, as a form of conflict, 590-92. LYNCHING: _bibliography_, 653-54. MAN: an adaptive mechanism, 522-26; economic, 495-96; the fighting animal, 600-603; the natural, 82-85; as a person, 10; a political animal, 10, 32; primitive and civilized, sensory discrimination in, 90. _See_ Human nature, Individual, Person, Personality. MARKETS: _bibliography_, 564; and the origin of competition, 555-56. MASS MOVEMENTS: _bibliography_, 941-43; crowd excitements and, 895-98; and institutions, 915-24; and mores, 898-905; and progress, 54; and revolution, 905-15; study of, 927-32; types of, 895-924. MEMORY: associative, Loeb's definition, 467; rôle of, in the control of original nature, 468-71. MENTAL CONFLICT: _bibliography_, 645-46; and the disorganization of personality, 638; its function in individual and group action, 578; and sublimation, 669. MENTAL DIFFERENCES. _See_ Individual differences. METHODISM, 915-24. MIGRATION: classified into internal and foreign, 531-33; and mobility, 301-5; in the plant community, 526-28; and segregation, 529-33. _See_ Immigration, mobility. MILLING, in the herd, 788-90. MIND, COLLECTIVE, 887, 889-90. MISCEGENATION: and the mores, 53. _See_ Amalgamation. MISSIONS: _bibliography_, 778-80; and the conflict and fusion of cultures, 771; and social transmission, 200. MOBILITY: _bibliography_, 333; and communication, 284; and competition, 513; contrasted with continuity, 286; defined, 283-84; facilitated by city life, 313-14; and instability of natural races, 300-301; of the migratory worker, 912-13; and the movement of the peoples, 301-5; and news, 284; and social interaction, 341; and the stranger, 323-24. _See_ Communication, Contacts, social, Migration. MOBILIZATION, of the individual man, 313. MORALE: defined, 164; and isolation, 229-30; of social groups, 205-9. _See Esprit de corps_, Collective representation, Consciousness, social. MORES: _bibliography_, 148-49; as the basis of social control, 786-87; and conduct, 189; and human nature, 97-100; influence of, 30; and institutions, 841-43; and mass movements, 898-905; and miscegenation, 53; not subject of discussion, 52-53; and progress, 983-84; and public opinion, differentiated, 832. MOVEMENTS. _See_ Mass movements. MUSIC: _bibliography_, 938-39. MYTHOLOGY, comparative study of, 5. MYTHS: _bibliography_, 857-58; as a form of social control, 816-19; progress as a, 958-62; relation to ritual and dogma, 822-26; revolutionary, 817-19, 909, 911; and socialism, 818-19. _See_ Legend. NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, as affected by natural or vicinal location, 268-69. NATIONAL DIFFERENCES, explained by isolation, 264-68. NATIONALITIES: _bibliography_, 275, 659-60; assimilation in the formation of, 756-58; conflict groups, 50, 628-31; defined, 645; and nations, 723; and patterns of life, 46; and racial temperament, 135-39. _See_ Denationalization, Nationalization, Language revivals. NATIONALIZATION: _bibliography_, 777-78. NATURAL HISTORY: and natural science, 16; of a social institution, 16. NATURAL SCIENCE: defined 12; and history, 8. NATURALIZATION, SOCIAL: as a form of accommodation, 666-67, 719. NATURE: defined, 11; laws of, 13; and nurture, 126-28. NATURE, HUMAN. _See_ Human nature. NEGRO: accommodation of, in slavery and freedom, 631-37; assimilation of, 960-62; race consciousness of, 623-31; racial temperament of, 136-37, 762. NEIGHBORHOOD: deterioration of, 252-54; as a local community, 50; as a natural area of primary contacts, 285; as a primary group, 56; scale for grading, 1002 n. NEO-MALTHUSIAN MOVEMENT, 559-60. NEWS: and social control, 834-37. _See_ Newspaper, Publicity. NEWSPAPER: _bibliography_, 427, 859-60; historical development of, 385-89; as medium of communication, 316-17. _See_ Public opinion, Publicity. NOMINALISM, and social psychology, 41. NOMINALISTS, and realists in sociology, 36. OPINION. _See_ Public opinion. ORDEAL OF BATTLE: _bibliography_, 655. ORGANISM, SOCIAL: and biological, 28; Comte's conception of, 24-25, 39; humanity or Leviathan? 24-27; and the separate organs, 27; Spencer's definition of, 25; Spencer's essay on, 28. ORGANIZATION, SOCIAL: _bibliography_, 729-30; of groups, 51; and progress, 966-68; and rivalry, 604-16; study of, 723-25. ORGANIZATIONS, sociological and biological, 26. ORIGINAL NATURE: an abstraction, 68; control over, 81; controlled through memory, 468-71; defined, 56, 73-74; and environment, 73; inheritance of, 128-33; of man, 68-69; research in, 143. _See_ Individual, Individual differences, Instincts. ORIGINAL TENDENCIES: inventory of, 75-76; range of, 74. ORIGINALITY: accumulated commonplaces, 21; in relation to isolation, 237-39. PACK, 886-87. PARTICIPATION: Americanization as, 762-63; and competitive co-operation, 767-68; language as a means and a product of, 763-66. _See_ Americanization, Assimilation, Collective behavior, Social control. PARTIES: _bibliography_, 658-59; as conflict groups, 50. PATTERNS OF LIFE, in nationalities, 46; in social classes, 46. PEACE, as a type of accommodation, 703-6. PERIODICALS, SOCIOLOGICAL: _bibliography_, 59-60. PERSON: _bibliography_, 150-52, 273-74; effect of city upon, 329; and his wishes, 388-90; as an individual with status, 55. _See_ Personality, Status. PERSONALITY: _bibliography_, 149-52; alterations of, 113-17; classified, 146; as a complex, 69, 110-13; conscious, 490; defined, 70, 112-13; defined in terms of attitudes, 490; disorganization of, and mental conflict, 628; dissociation of, 472-75; effect of isolation upon, 233-39, 271-73; and the four wishes, 442-43; and group membership, 609; harmonization of conflict, 583-84; of individuals and peoples, 123-25; investigation of, 143-45; as the organism, 108-10; shut-in type of, 272; and the social group, 48; study of, 271-73; and suggestion, 419-20; types of, determined by the group, 606-7. _See_ Individual, Person, Self, Status. PERSONS, defined, 55; as "parts" of society, 36; product of society, 159. PHILOSOPHY, and natural science, 4. PITTSBURGH SURVEY, 315, 724. PLANT COMMUNITIES. _See_ Communities. PLAY: as expressive behavior, 787-88. POLITICS: _bibliography_, 940; comparative, Freeman's lectures on, 23; as expressive behavior, 787-88; among the natural sciences, 3; as a positive science, 3; shams in, 826-82. POVERTY. _See_ Defectives, dependents, and delinquents. PRESTIGE: with animals, 809-10; defined, 807; and prejudice, 808-9; in primitive society, 810-11, 811-12; in social control, 807-11, 811-12; and status in South East Africa, 811-12. _See_ Leadership, Status. PRIMARY CONTACTS. _See_ Contacts, primary. PRINTING-PRESS, _bibliography_, 427. PRIVACY: defined, 231; values of, 231. PROBLEMS, ADMINISTRATIVE: practical and technical, 46. PROBLEMS, HISTORICAL: become psychological and sociological, 19. PROBLEMS OF POLICY: political and legislative, 46. PROBLEMS, SOCIAL: classification of, 45, 46; of the group, 47. PROCESS, historical, 51; political, as distinguished from the cultural, 52-54. PROCESS, SOCIAL: defined, 51; and interaction, 36, 346; natural, 346-48, 420-21; and social progress, 51-55. PROGRESS: _chap. xiv_, 952-1011; _bibliography_, 57-58, 1004-10; as the addition to the sum of accumulated experience, 1001-2; concept of, 962-63, 965-73; and consciousness, 990-94; and the cosmic urge, 989-1000; criteria of, 985-86; and the defectives, the dependents, and the delinquents, 954-55; and the _dunkler drang_, 954-1000; earliest conception of, 965-66; and the _élan vitale_, 989-94; and eugenics, 969-73; and happiness, 967, 973-75; and the historical process, 969-73; history of the concept of, 958-62; as a hope or myth, 958-62; and human nature, 954, 957-58, 964-65, 983-1000; indices of, 1002-3; investigations and problems, 1000-3; laws of, 15; and the limits of scientific prevision, 978-79; and mass movements, 54; a modern conception, 960-62; and the mores, 983-84; and the nature of man, 983; and organization, 966-68; popular conceptions of, 953-56; and prevision, 975-77; problem of, 956-58; and providence, in contrast, 960-62; and religion, 846-48; a result of competition, 988; a result of contact, 988-89; and science, 973-83; and social control, 786; and social process, 51-58; and social research, 1000-12; and social values, 955; stages of, 968-69; types of, 985-96; and war, 984-89. PROPAGANDA: in modern nations, 772; psychology of, 837-41. PROVIDENCE: in contrast with progress, 960-62. PSYCHOLOGY, COLLECTIVE, _bibliography_, 940-41. PUBLIC: and the crowd, 867-70; control in, 800-805; a discussion group, 798-99, 870. PUBLIC OPINION: _bibliography_, 858-60; changes in intensity and direction of, 792-93; and collective representations, 38; combined and sublimated judgments of individuals, 795-96; continuity in its development, 450-51; and crises, 793-94; cross currents in, 450-51, 791-93; defined, 38; and legislation in England, 445-51; and mores, 829-33; nature of, 826-29; opinion of individuals plus their differences, 832-33; organization of, 51; organization of social forces, 35; and schools of thought, 446-49; and social control, 786, 816-41, 850-51; as social weather, 791-93; as a source of social control in cities, 316-17; supported by sentiment, 478. PUBLICITY: as a form of social contact, 315-17; as a form of social control, 830; historical evolution of the newspaper, 385-89; and publication, 38. RACE CONFLICT: _bibliography_, 650-52; and race prejudice, 578-79; study of, 642-43. RACE CONSCIOUSNESS: and conflict, 623-31; in relation to literature and art, 626-29. RACE PREJUDICE: and competition of peoples with different standards of living, 620-23; as a defense-reaction, 620; a form of isolation, 250-52; and inter-racial competition, 539-44; a phenomenon of social distance, 440; and prestige, 808-9; and primary contacts, 330; and race conflicts, 578-79. RACES: assimilation of, 756-62; defined, 631-33. RACIAL DIFFERENCES: _bibliography_, 154; and assimilation, 769-70; basis of race prejudice and conflict, 631-33; in primitive and civilized man, 89-92. RAPPORT: in the crowd, 893-94; in hypnotism, 345; in imitation, 344; in suggestion, 345. REACTION, CIRCULAR: in collective behavior and social control, 788-92; in imitation, 390-91; in social unrest, 866. REALISTS, and nominalists in sociology, 43. REALISM, and collective psychology, 41. REFLEX: defined, 73; as response toward an object, 479-82; Watson's definition of, 81. REFORM: _bibliography_, 948-50; method of effecting, 47; study of, 934. RESEARCH, SOCIAL: and progress, 1000-1002; and sociology, 43-57. RESEARCH, sociological, defined, 44. RELIGION: as an agency of social control, 846-48; comparative study of, 5; as expressive behavior, 787-88; as the guardian of mores, 847; and law, 853; Methodism, 915-24; origin in the choral dance, 871; and revolutionary and reform movements, 873-74, 908-9. RELIGIOUS REVIVALS, AND THE ORIGIN OF SECTS: _bibliography_, 933-45; study of, 932-33. RESPONSE, MULTIPLE, and multiple causation, 75. REVIVALS. _See_ Language revivals, Religious revivals. REVOLUTION: _bibliography_, 950-51; bolshevism, 909-15; French, 905-9; and mass movements, 905-15; moral, and Methodism, 923-24; and religion, 873-74; 908-9; study of, 934. RITES. _See_ Ritual. RITUAL: _bibliography_, 855-56, 938-39; as a basis of myth and dogma, 822-26. RIVALRY: _bibliography_, 646; animal, 604-5; and national welfare, 609-10; of social groups, 605-10; and social organization, 577-78, 604-16; sublimated form of conflict, 577-78. ROCKEFELLER MEDICAL FOUNDATION, 670. RURAL COMMUNITIES: as local groups, 50. _See_ Communities. RURAL MIND, as a product of isolation, 247-49. RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION, social surveys, 46, 315, 724. SALVATION ARMY, 873. SCIENCE: and concrete experience, 15; and description, 13; and progress, 973-83. SCIENCES, ABSTRACT, instrumental character of, 15. SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION, and common sense, 80. SECONDARY CONTACTs. _See_ Contacts, secondary. SECRET SOCIETIES, _bibliography_, 730-32. SECTS: _bibliography_, 656-57; as conflict groups, 50; defined, 202-3; distinguished from denomination, 873; and institutions, 872-74; origin in conflict of beliefs, 611-12; origin in the crowd, 870-72; permanent form of expressive crowd, 872. _See_ Religious revivals. SEGREGATION: and competition, 526-44; and isolation, 228-30, 254-57; and migration, 529-33; in the plant community, 526-28; as a process, 252-54; and social selection, 534-38. SELECTION, SOCIAL: and demographic segregation, 534-38; personal competition and status, 708-12. SELF: conventional, versus natural person, 117-19; divided, and moral consciousness, 119-23; as the individual's conception of his rôle, 113-17; "looking-glass," 70-71. _See_ Individual, Person, Personality. SENSES, SOCIOLOGY OF, _bibliography_, 332. SENSORIUM, SOCIAL, 27, 28. SENTIMENTS: _bibliography_, 501; of caste, 684-88; and competition, 508; classification of, 466-67; and idea-forces, 463-64; of loyalty, as basis of social solidarity, 759; McDougall's definition, 441, 465; mutation of, 441-42; related to opinion, 478; as social forces, 464-67. SEX DIFFERENCES: _bibliography_, 153-54; and cultural conflicts, 615-16; described, 85-89. SITTLICHKEIT: defined, 102-4. SITUATION: definition of, 764-65; and response, 73. SLANG, _bibliography_, 427-29. SLAVERY: _bibliography_, 727-28; defined, 674-77; and the division of labor, 677; interpreted by subordination and superordination, 676, 677-81. SOCIAL ADVERTISING. _See_ Publicity. SOCIAL AGGREGATES. _See_ Aggregates, social. SOCIAL CHANGES, and disorganization, 55. SOCIAL CLASSES. _See_ Classes, social. SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS. _See_ Consciousness, social. SOCIAL CONTACT. _See_ Contact, social. SOCIAL CONTROL. _See_ Control, social. SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION. _See_ Disorganization, social. SOCIAL DISTANCE: graphic representation of, 282; maintained by isolation, 230; as psychic separation, 162; and race prejudice, 440. SOCIAL FACT: classification of, 51; imitative, 21. SOCIAL FORCES. _See_ Forces, social. SOCIAL GROUPS. _See_ Groups, social. SOCIAL HERITAGES. _See_ Heritages, social. SOCIAL INTERACTION. _See_ Interaction, social. SOCIAL LIFE: defined, 183-85; and human nature, 182-85. SOCIAL MOVEMENTS. _See_ Mass movements. SOCIAL ORGANISM. _See_ Organism, social. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. _See_ Organization, social. SOCIAL PHENOMENA: causes of, 17; as susceptible of prevision, 1. SOCIAL PRESSURES, as social forces, 458-61. SOCIAL PROBLEMS. _See_ Problems, social. SOCIAL PROCESS. _See_ Process, social. SOCIAL REFORM. _See_ Problem, social, Reform. SOCIAL SENSORIUM. _See_ Sensorium, social. SOCIAL SOLIDARITY. _See_ Solidarity, social. SOCIAL SURVEYS. _See_ Surveys, social. SOCIAL TYPES. _See_ Types, social. SOCIAL UNIT PLAN, 724. SOCIAL UNITY, as a product of isolation, 229-30. SOCIAL UNREST. _See_ Unrest, social. SOCIALISM: _bibliography_, 565-66; economic doctrines of, 558; function of myth in, 818-19. SOCIALIZATION: the goal of social effort, 496; as the unity of society, 348-49. SOCIETY: _bibliography_, 217-23; animal, _bibliography_, 217-18; in the animal colony, 24; ant, 180-82; an artefact, 30; based on communication, 183-84; collection of persons, 158; collective consciousness of, 28; "collective organism," 24; as consensus, 161; defined, 159-62, 165-66, 348-49; differentiated from community and social group, 161-62; as distinct from individuals, 27; exists in communication, 36; an extension of the individual organism, 159-60; and the group, _chap. iii_, 159-225; _bibliography_, 217-23; from an individualistic and collectivistic point of view, 41, 42; investigations and problems of, 210-16; mechanistic interpretation of, 346-48; metaphysical science of, 2; as part of nature, 29; product of nature and of design, 30; scientific study of, 210-11; and social distance, 162; as social interaction, 341, 348; and the social process, 211; and solitude, 233-34, 234-45; as the sum total of institutions, 159; and symbiosis, 165-73. SOCIOLOGY: aims at prediction and control, 339-40; in the classification of the sciences, 6; as collective psychology, 342; Comte's program, 1; a description and explanation of the cultural process, 35; an experimental science, 6; a fundamental science, 6; and history, 1-12, 16-24; as an independent science, 1; origin in history, 23; origin of, 5, 6; and the philosophy of history, 44; positive science of society, 3; representative works in, _bibliography_, 57-59; rural and urban, 40; schools of, 28; a science of collective behavior, 24; a science of humanity, 5; and social research, 43-57; and the social sciences, _chap. i._, 1-63. SOCIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION: methods of, _bibliography_, 58-59. SOCIOLOGICAL METHOD, 23. SOCIOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW, 16. SOLIDARITY, SOCIAL: and the division of labor, 714-18; and loyalty, 759; and status and competition, 670-71, 708-18. SOLITUDE. _See_ Isolation. SPEECH COMMUNITY, changes in, 22. _See_ Language. STATE, sociological definition of, 50. STATISTICS, as a method of investigation, 51. STATUS: and competition, 541-43, 670-71, 708-18; determined by conflict, 574-75, 576; determined by members of a group, 36; of the person in the city, 313; and personal competition and social selection, 708-12; and prestige in South East Africa, 811-12; and social solidarity, 670-71, 708-18. _See_ Prestige. STRANGER, sociology of, 317-22, 322-27. STRIKES, _bibliography_, 652-53. STRUCTURE, SOCIAL, permanence of, 746-50. STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE: and competition, 505, 512, 513-15, 522-26; and natural selection, 515-19. _See_ Competition. STRUGGLE: for struggle's sake, 585-86. SUBLIMATION: the accommodation of mental conflict, 669. SUBMISSION. _See_ Subordination and superordination. SUBORDINATION AND SUPERORDINATION, _bibliography_, 726; in accommodation, 667-68; in animal rivalry, 604-5; in caste, 684-88; in leadership, 695-97; literature of, 721; psychology of, 688-92; reciprocal character of, 695-97; in slavery, 676, 677-81; social attitudes in, 692-95; three types of, 697-703. SUGGESTION: _bibliography_, 430-31; basis of social change, 22; case of Clever Hans, 412-15; and contra-suggestion, 419; in the crowd, 415-16; defined, 408; distinguished from imitation, 345-46; in hypnotism, 345, 412, 424, 471-72; and idea-forces, 461-64; and imitation, inner relation between, 688-89; and leadership, 419-20; and mass or corporate action, 415-20; as a mechanistic form of interaction, 344-46, 408-20; and perception, active and passive, 345, 408-12; personal and general consciousness, 409-12; and personality, 419-20; as psychic infection, 410-12; in social life, 345-46, 408-20, 424; study of, 424; subtler forms of, 413-15. _See_ Hypnotism. SUPERORDINATION. _See_ Subordination and superordination. SURVEY, SOCIAL: as a type of community study, 436; types of, 46. SYMBIOSIS: in the ant community, 167-70; in the plant community, 175-80 SYMPATHETIC CONTACTS, versus categoric contacts, 294-98. SYMPATHY: and imagination, 397-98; imitation its most rudimentary form, 394-95; intellectual or rational, 396-97, 397-401; the "law of laughter," 370-73, 401; psychological unison, 395; Ribot's three levels of, 394-97. TABOO: _bibliography_, 856-58; and religion, 847; and rules of holiness and uncleanness, 813-16; as social control, 813-16; and touch, 291-93. _See_ Touch. TAMING, of animals, 170-73. TEMPERAMENT: _bibliography_, 152-53; divergencies in, 91; of Negro, 762; racial and national, 135-39. TOUCH: as most intimate kind of contact, 280; and social contact, 282-83, 291-93; study of, 329-30; and taboo, 291-93. TRADITION: and inheritance of acquired nature, 134-35; and temperament, 135-39; versus acculturation, 72. _See_ Heritages, social. TRANSMISSION: by imitation and inculcation, 72, 135; and society, 183; Tarde's theory of, 21. TYPES, SOCIAL: _bibliography_, 731; in the city, 313-15; and the division of labor, 713-14; result of personal competition, 712-14. UNIVERSES OF DISCOURSE: _bibliography_, 427-29; and assimilation, 735, 764; "every group has its own language," 423. _See_ Communication, Language, Publicity. UNREST, MORAL, 57. UNREST, SOCIAL: _bibliography_, 935-36; and circular reaction, 866; and collective behavior, 866-67; increase of Bohemianism, 57; in the I.W.W., 911-15; like milling in the herd, 788; manifest in discontent and mental anarchy, 907-8; product of the artificial conditions of city life, 287, 329; result of mobility, 320-21; sign of lack of participation, 766-67; and social contagion, 875-76; studies of, 924-26; and unrealized wishes, 442-43. URBAN COMMUNITIES: as local groups, 50. _See_ Communities. UTOPIAS, _bibliography_, 1008-9. VALUES: _bibliography_, 500; object of the wish, 442; personal and impersonal, 54; positive and negative, 488; and progress, 955. VICIOUS CIRCLE, 788-89. VOCATIONAL GROUPS, as a type of accommodation groups, 50. WANTS AND VALUES, _bibliography_, 499-500. WAR: _bibliography_, 648-50; as an exciting game, 580; as a form of conflict, 575-76, 576-77, 586-88, 703-6; and the "Great Society," 600-601; and human nature, 594-98; literature of, 641-42; and man as the fighting animal, 600-603; and possibility of its sublimation, 598; the preliminary process of rejuvenescence, 596-97; and progress, 984-89; in relation to instincts and ideals, 576-77, 594-603; as relaxation, 598-603; and social utopia, 599. WE-GROUP: and collective egotism, 606; and others-group defined, 283, 293-94; ethnocentrism, 294. WILL: common, 106; general, 107-8; general, in relation to law and conscience, 102-8; individual, 101; social, 102. WISH, the Freudian, 438, 442, 478-80, 482-88, 497. WISHES: _bibliography_, 501; and attitudes, 442-43; civilization organized to realize, 958; as components of attitudes, 439; and growth of human nature and personality, 442-43; as libido, 442; organized into character, 90; of the person, 388-90; as psychological unit, 479; and the psychic censor, 484-88; and the reflex, 479-82; repressed, 482-83; as the social atoms, 478-82; Thomas' classification of, 438, 442, 488-90, 497; and values, 442, 488. WOMAN'S TEMPERANCE CRUSADE, 898-905. WRITING: as form of communication, 381-84; pictographic forms, 381; by symbols, 382-83.